The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Jason Timpf reacts to Netflix's "Redeem Team" documentary and shares why he thinks Kobe Bryant is "grossly" underrated, what went wrong for the 2004 USA Olympic team, and then compares the 2012 team starring LeBron James and Kobe Bryant with Michael Jordan's Dream Team from the 1992 Olympic Games.

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Frist (3:30)Jason Timpf reacts to Netflix's "Redeem Team" documentary and shares why he thinks Kobe Bryant is "grossly" underrated, what went wrong for the 2004 USA Olympic team, and then (18:30) compares the 2012 team starring LeBron James and Kobe Bryant with Michael Jordan's Dream Team from the 1992 Olympic Games. #volume #Herd #ColinCowherdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque.

Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the IHare radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The volume. What's up guys?

It's Jason from Hoops Tonight, presented by Fandual. Football season is here. And there is no better place to get in on the action than with Fanduel. It's my favorite sports gambling app out there. It's safe, secure, and easy to use. They have exclusive offers, tons of ways. to play like spread and money line over unders, team totals. Same game parlays where you can combine multiple bets from the same game.

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Congrats on making it to the weekend. And our season is right around the corner. After this weekend on Monday, we're going to be doing our season preview, kind of on a macro scale, just giving my final picks of the year. I feel like that's just something everybody's got to do before the ball gets thrown up for the first time. At least tell us you you think's going to win the title, you think's going to win MVP and all those sorts of things. So we'll be doing that kind of thing on Monday.

And then starting Tuesday night, the way the schedule is going to work throughout this beginning portion of the season, When we get towards the end of the season, it's going to be literally live shows every single night after the biggest game, after the five biggest games of the week during the regular season. And then once we go into the playoffs, you guys know me, I'm going to be working basically every single night through the middle of June. So that's all going to be night stuff during that latter portion of the season. During this beginning of the season, when we're working with football, it'll be a little bit more of a mix. We'll pick like two or three nights a week where there's huge games. will go live after the games, and then for the rest of the week, we'll go during the day

when I have more time to kind of pour over the film, which will be a nice little mix-up. Today we're going to be covering the Redeemed Team documentary. There are four things from that specific documentary that I want to talk about, a little bit about Kobe and how he's revered among his peers and how we should factor that more in when we're talking about him. A little bit about Larry Brown and the 04 team that lost in the Olympics, which I think is interesting and then why I think the 2012 team was better than the 2008 team and comparing the 2012 team to the 1992 original dream team. You guys know the drill before we get started.

Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT so you guys don't miss any show announcements. That's also where I put film breakdown since I can't do it on YouTube so you're going to want to follow me there. And then last but not least, for whatever reason you can't finish one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. On that note, let's talk some basketball. So my favorite part about watching that particular documentary, which I very much enjoyed a lot of cool stuff, like vintage Olympic footage. And it's kind of a cool. What's kind of cool about having that old-fashioned film is it just

when it's taking care of, man, it just shows up so good all these years later. Like some of the camera angles on the sideline of Team USA when they only had college players. That was really, really cool footage. And then it was just good to see a lot of Kobe. And, you know, like, so many NBA media now, and I think a lot of this is analytics driven, but there's several reasons behind it. But a lot of NBA media before Kobe's death and even now after hold him in relatively low esteem compared to some of his peers around the league. Most people seem to have between 10 and 13 all time based on some of the more prominent people in the media that I hear talk. I have Kobe Bryant as the third best basketball player of all time, at least in my

perimeter players list, because remember I keep perimeter players separate from Biggs. And, you know, I think it's pretty straightforward. I think he's firmly ahead of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, but a lot of people disagree with me. I think I think analytics plays a huge part in it. I mean, And first of all, analytics in general, like we talk about, anytime you try to simplify a complex game like basketball down into catch-all metrics or even lower-level metrics but used without context, it does a terrible job of quantifying the game of basketball now. It certainly doesn't translate across eras. It's just not the same watching James Harden go to work in spread pick and roll or spread ISO, spread by a ton of shooting, in many cases, without even having a center on the floor. floor. That's just not the same as Kobe Bryant playing alongside Powell Gasol and Andrew Bynum or alongside Shaq working in a triangle offense when the half court set is incredibly congested and there's

just not a lot of space to operate. And he's manufacturing shots through incredibly difficult shot making because that's what he needed. And that's what the team needed from him in order to manufacture points in a very congested mid-2000s basketball game. And so I just don't think it's fair to be like, oh, James Hardin's true shooting percentage is 58% and Kobe's was 53. Therefore, James Hardin is a better basketball player. That's just stupid to me. That's like just pull my hair out. I can't believe what I'm hearing stupid.

But that type of analytics stuff works against Kobe. He was a gunner and just general. A lot of basketball purists don't like gunners. And then obviously he has some darker parts of his story. that we don't have to get into, but all of those things kind of amount to Kobe being, in my opinion, grossly underrated all time. And the reason why I have him at number three is simple.

I simplify, I explain the analytics stuff by pointing out the obvious differences in the eras. If you actually broke it down to skill set at the two-guard position, there wasn't anybody nearly as skilled as Kobe. He was a better defensive player than everybody at his position. He was just the best at what he did. So you have to look at the way that these percentages and things worked back then and kind of keep it in the context of that era, not in the context of comparing him to all of the eras.

In general, when we're comparing eras or comparing players, I think it should focus on skill sets. It should focus on how they performed relative to their peers, not in the grand scheme of just here's how many rebounds he had versus here's how many rebounds Michael Jordan had or oh, LeBron has more assists than, you know, so-and-so. That to me, that to me is just not a good way to have that conversation. We should be talking about how they performed against their peers and how they performed in their era and the way that they impacted winning on their particular basketball teams. And then that pure scorer thing, the gunner thing, I've never looked at that as a negative.

It's just one of the archetypes. You guys probably remember this summer we did a whole thing on all of the different superstar archetypes, like that super small, super athletic guard, like the John Morant, Russell Westbrook, Derek Rose type of thing, right? Then we had the big playmaking forwards like LeBron James and your Luca Donchich and guys like that. And then we had our, you know, big men, guys like Nicoliochich, Joel, Embed, Shack, all those guys over the years. But then we also have the scoring wing. This is Kevin Durant. This is Kobe Bryant.

This is Michael Jordan. That has always been a very important part of the game of basketball. Does it sometimes get aesthetically annoying? Yeah, of course it's annoying sometimes when he rises up and shoots over three defenders and misses a shot. I can get why that would have fanned basketball purists on a certain level, but the reality is, is you need guys who are capable of taking and making crazy shots. You need guys who are insane enough to think that instead of making the extra pass or making the right play, that they should rise up and shoot.

You need guys that are wired like that within a team because not everything goes by the book. And sometimes the right play doesn't always result in the... a good result. For instance, at the end of the game against Spain, this was the grand finale of the documentary, you know, Spain goes zone, USA gets tight, they're scoring on the other end, the game is close. You need someone who's crazy enough to be on the court with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade and Dwight Howard and Chris Paul and be like, no, I'm shooting this. You know, like him against the zone taking a jab step three, that's a bad shot in theory, right? You've got this super talented team.

You've got players that should be able to succeed against the zone. You have a zone offense. In theory, yeah, you know, a jab step three, basically a contested three where he literally got fouled. That's not a good shot in theory. But he's crazy enough to take it. He's talented enough to make it. And in a game like that where everyone's got sweaty palms and it's just tight, you need

somebody that's going to rise up and knock that shot down, and that's what Kobe did. That's what he was for that group. He was the guy that was crazy enough to take the reins when everybody was a little concerned about who should take the reins. That, to me, is a huge side effect of that peer score archetype. It's incredibly valuable in the NBA, and it should never be used against Kobe. And the last reason why I have him up at number three, I think it matters that his peers revered him the way that he did. Should it be the end of the end of the all be all no. Like I don't, I don't think it should just be like, oh, people are Kobe fans, therefore he's the best. But it's part of that story. You know, I think the people that are on the court

with him, the people that that understand the way his work ethic stacks up to theirs, when they are paying him that level of respect, we should take notice. You know, like with the fact that he was able to, through a few morning workouts, prepping for the 2007 Fibaba America's games, that he was able to convince the whole team to start working out in the mornings. That's an aura thing with him. That's a power mentally that he had over his opponents. And by the way, that extends onto the court. We talked about this all the time. I talked about this a lot in the last playoff run with Steph. I believe a huge part of why Luca Donchich didn't play well in the conference finals and Jason Tatum didn't play well in the NBA finals is they're looking across the way at Steph Curry and he's so

confident and he's so comfortable and he's playing great basketball and they're nervous. And that battle of personalities can really weigh on you on a basketball court. There's kind of like a seesaw effect in every basketball game between the two best players on either team. When one clearly feels more confident is playing better than the other, it can really start to tip that scale. And I just think, I think Kobe's persona around the league and the respect that he got from his peers is woefully underplayed when we're talking about him in his career accomplishments. I wanted to talk for a second about Larry Brown and the 04 team, which, again, regardless of how you look at, they had no business losing regardless of who was on the roster. When you have Tim Duncan,

when you have Alan Iverson, when you have the young talent that they did on that team, they should have won. But they didn't. And, you know, I think, I think in general it was an interesting case study of poor roster construction and the idea of, like the idea of redundancies. So for instance, Like I, you know, I play a lot of pick of basketball these days, you know, typical 31-year-old former player just trying to scratch the competitive itch. And, you know, I find that when I play with guys that know how to play together and understand the different roles that have to be filled in a basketball court, it's easy to win games, especially when there's a clear hierarchy. And I know I can trust my guys to do what they need to do. Then you run into, you know, sometimes you go up to the gym and some of your buddies are there. there. And next thing you know, you've got four or five high level players on the team,

but they're all kind of scores, right? Or they're all dudes who like to have the ball in their hands. And then what ends up happening is like instead of everybody playing well, it kind of hurts everybody. Like no one gets in a rhythm because it turns into your turn, my turn. And you know, one of the guys in your team feels like he should be shooting more. So like he'll force things when he should in or there's a lot of just dribbling the basketball at the floor and shooting. That kind of concept, that's a basic basketball concept. You experience it in a pickup game, but you can also experience it at any level of basketball.

There is a redundancy there when you have a bunch of guys who like to do the same thing. We talk about this all the time. With a basketball lineup, there are a list of responsibilities that have to be fulfilled. And when you have stars that specialize in fulfilling specific responsibilities, like creating advantages or isolation scoring, you know, mismatch attacking, things along those lines driving the ball to the basket. But you don't have guys who specialize in spot-up roles. You don't have guys who specialize as cutters or as off-ball screeners or things along those lines, guys who dedicate their life within the NBA to defensive roles or being in the mix,

boxing out and securing defensive rebounds or going after offensive rebounds. When you don't have guys on the team that target those sorts of things, then you just have a bunch of guys who are good at this stuff and you've got those bases covered, but you're leaving all these bases uncovered, and you end up losing to a team like an Argentina or a Greece who has maybe one or two guys that fulfill the star responsibilities, and the rest of their roster is full of guys that specialize in those little things, in the dirty work. And ironically, when they were building that roster, they kind of talked about in the documentary how they went after the younger players because they couldn't get some of the bigger stars like a shack or a Kobe or things along

those lines, right? Well, instead of going after younger stars that Larry Brown wasn't going to play anyways, because Larry Brown famously didn't like playing young players, they should have just got old veteran role players. They should have just targeted five or six random dudes around the league who were vitally important role players for high-level playoff teams and put them on that roster. And then Tim Duncan and Alan Hyverson can focus on being who they are, knowing that they've got a traditional basketball group of dirty work role players behind them that can get stuff done. And I think that was just a fundamental example of fundamentally poor roster construction. And then the second part of it is, you know, the Carmelo Anthony and all those guys really

went after Larry Brown for just being, like, wanting them to play the right way and things along those lines. I've talked about this concept before on the show. But it really bothers me when coaches in general try to inflict their philosophy. on a roster rather than catering their philosophy to what the roster is good at. The truth of the matter is, is there is no right way to play basketball. The only right way to play basketball is to win. It's to score more points than the other team. Find some way to get stops.

Find some way to score baskets. And you have an assembly of players, and they all have a skill set, and there's got to be a certain way that they can feel comfortable scoring the basketball or playing defense. For instance, we talk about this all the time on the show. Some teams are more geared towards drop. Some teams are more geared towards switching. Some teams like Dallas are more geared to single creators and guys in spot-up roles.

And some teams like Boston and the Clippers are more geared towards like equal opportunity, drive and kick. Everyone has lots of time with the basketball in their hands. There's just different philosophies that fit different types of rosters. And anytime I hear something like that where a coach is trying to inflict his philosophy on a team, I'm always just ready for it to go immediately south from there. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way,

this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok. Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?

Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at It podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s.

To be clear, 84 is big to me not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really?

Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So kind of looking at the comparing the 2018 to the 2012 team. So this has been a take that I've had for years, but I think the 2012 team was considerably better than the 2018.

And I really boil it down to three things. Okay. First of all, LeBron in 2012 was twice as good as he was in 2008. Much more consistent as a shooter, a much better defensive player, a much better understanding of how to win basketball games and the details, controlling the pace of the game, understanding how to close games. In the half court, he was so much better as a surgical playmaker and as a surgical score than he was in 2008. He was just many, many times better, and he was still every bit as athletic as he was in 2008. So I've got a better version of LeBron. That's what we're starting there.

The guy, the 2012 LeBron, many people think that's his best version. I think it's 2018, but 2012, 2013, LeBron is no worse than the second best version of LeBron, who is the second best basketball player of all time. So let's go ahead and put that up there. Now I've got Kobe. I think Kobe was better in 2012 than he was in 2008. Now, I get it, he's a little bit older. But if you remember, this was during the stretch where he had gotten some treatment on his knee,

so he was more explosive. If you've ever looked at Kobe Bryant's athleticism in that 2012-2013 season, he was jumping out of the gym and dunking over literally everybody because his knees were feeling better. And then that was the year where he really figured out

kind of modern basketball and more of the spaced out environment where he could operate, instead of having to operate in the congested area around the free throw line, he was working a lot more from the three-point line.

He was working a lot more with a live dribble, a lot more spread iso, a lot more spread, pick and roll. And his percentages went through the roof. If you remember, 2012, 2013 was actually one of Kobe's most efficient seasons. Kobe, in the year or so, before his Achilles injury, I think was the best version of Kobe. So I've got better LeBron. I've got better Kobe.

And then there's the KD versus Dwayne Wade thing. Now, Dwayne Wade is incredible. In circa 2008, Dwayne Wade was incredible. I don't dispute that at all. but he kind of primarily acted as a bench score for that team, although he did play in crunch time for a lot of the games. But he had some of that redundancy. His impact on the game was somewhat limited because he was in a spot-up role often,

and Dwayne Wade's never been a fantastic spot-up player. Kevin Durant, in that 2012 Olympic run, was just a knockdown, standstill shooter. What I call aggressive spot-up shooting, meaning like you're hunting three-person. point looks off the ball to the extent where even if someone rotates to you and contests, you're still rising up into a shot. You're just not scared of anything in that regard. That type of aggressive spot-up shooting from Kevin Durant just made him a much more natural fit with the 2012 team than Dwayne Wade was with the 2008 team. So even though Wade in 08, I think was probably a better player than KD in 2012, the reality is is KD was a better

fit, which is kind of one of the themes of this particular show. So I've got better LeBron, better Kobe, and I've got KD, who's a better fit over Dwayne Wade. So I would take the 2012 team over 2008 by a pretty decent margin. Now, when we compare them to the 92 dream team, this particular debate is incredibly difficult to have. So I don't want to spend too much time on it, but it's pretty simple to me. Comparing across eras is impossible. I hate it when people start talking about like, who can guard who, like, oh, well, who's going to guard Larry Bird. on that too. Who's going to guard Michael Jordan? When you're talking about these guys who are top 10 players at the peak of their powers, none of them can guard anybody. I'm sorry, but

LeBron in 2012, if you leave him on an island with Michael Jordan, he's going to kill him. Both ways. MJ can't guard LeBron. LeBron can't guard MJ. Kobe and MJ specialize in making incredibly difficult shots. Neither of them would be able to guard each other. I'm sorry, but as we go down the rosters, position by position, everyone is the best. best at what they do, none of them can guard anybody. So it's hard to talk about specific matchups or how things would work. The two styles that they played based on the era were incredibly different. So it's impossible for me to compare anything there. The types of, the way that the 2012 team played offense doesn't even resemble the way the 1992 team played

offense. So I don't really, I can't really get into the weeds of that conversation. I would simplify it down to this. I said that two of the top, I said that my top three perimeter players of all time are MJ 1, LeBron 2, Kobe 3. So I'm getting two of the top three players of all time at the peak of their powers. That's going to matter to me. And yes, I know my four and five are, you know, my, I think I actually just bumped Larry Bird to six and put Steph past him. But my four and six is Magic and Bird. So yeah, I get that, but they weren't even close to the top of their, they weren't even close to the top of their games when they were in 1992, right? Magic was still pretty good, but Larry was injured and wasn't the same player. So when I look at the top, I like what I'm getting out of the 2012

team. And then just in general, as a philosophy, I've always been of the belief that modern basketball players are just getting better and better, not worse and worse. I know old heads really struggled with that conversation and they truly believe that there was like this golden age of basketball when everyone was better and then now everyone's just worse and they don't play the game the right way. I think that's insane. I think the 2012 basketball players are just better than the 1992 basketball players. I think the 2022 basketball players are better than the 2012 basketball players, and I will think the 2032 basketball players are better than the 2022 basketball players. That's just going to be a consistent philosophy that I keep over the years. I think that's

just human nature in the way that we advance. We get better and better in every industry as time goes on. But I very, very much enjoyed that documentary. I hope you guys do as well. Check it out on Netflix. That's all I have for today. Like I said, get ready on Monday for our season preview. and then Tuesday we're doing our first live show of the year in the evening. As always, I sincerely appreciate your support. Thanks for rocking with me over this summer. I can't even believe how successful we were over this summer. I expected things to slow down quite a bit.

So I appreciate your guys' support. And let's get into that real basketball next week. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's, Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardweight with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have any way. but you're having him with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast.

Guaranteed human.