The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Hulk Hogan's "Legacy" Ranking Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant & Kevin Durant | 7.28

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

On today's episode of The Right Time, Bomani Jones reflects on the passing Hulk Hogan. He discusses the wrestler's cultural significance, whether it is fair to "gravedig" and how the entertainer should be remembered (1:40). Later, He continues his list of the top 25 athletes of the last 25 years (24:30). He explains why it's so difficult to rank NFL greats like Aaron Donald and Peyton Manning and NBA stars like Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Durant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We are going to continue our list of the top 25 athletes of the last 25 years for the year 2025.

A little later on in the show. I want to lead off, you know. I think I've been pretty transparent with you guys. I like to be honest with you. I don't ever want to give you guys. I think this is the respect that I have from my audience and always have, and you may have heard me say this before, but it is important. I will never say something to you that I myself would not believe.

Therefore, I am going to wind up being honest with you, right? You know I'm doing this list because it ain't really shit popping, right? Like, you understand that I'm doing this because we have to, but also we are trying to make interesting content for you. We're not half-assing it. We're giving it a lot of thought, right? But the bottom line is it really ain't that much that is going on right now. So this is what we're giving you.

With that in mind, I also realized that I was trying to come up with something to talk about before we got into the list today. And it was like, damn, nothing has really happened. Like a whole entire weekend happened. It was Hall of Fame weekend. That was cool. Shout out to each hero. Y'all ain't know he spoke that much English, but there he was. You know what I'm saying?

I can only imagine how many people came in front of him and embarrassed. Harris themselves talking to him like it was a rush hour. You know what I mean? Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? And, you know, he's speaking English, better than half of y'all. But anyway, with that in mind, I'm going to talk to you about something that I have literally been thinking about all weekend. I've been thinking about it since Thursday. Okay. Now, Hulk Hogan died on Thursday. I think it was Thursday. Whatever. Hulk Hogan died. A lot of people did a little grave dancing when Hulk Hogan died.

I don't think I danced on his grave. I may have sent a couple of texts that said prayers down. However, there was definite grave dancing, and a big part of why there was grave dancing was, quite honestly, people have been getting these Hulkomania jokes off now for a really, really, really long time. Like the folks in the Tweetow sphere have been preparing for Hulk Hogan to die for a very long time. And all the jokes they had been getting off already, they were set to get off.

This was just, this was just what it was, right? It's a whole lot of memes around it. Ryan, you ever seen the meme of him in the NWO get up and he sprayed painting the end on the wall? I've not seen that one. Yeah, yeah. Presumably in real time he was doing NWO. but you know, given all the other stuff. Given the things we've learned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying, right? It's kind of like that South Park, what you call it. People who annoy you. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, there we go. Like, that's kind of what we had. So, you know, we've been ready for this to happen. The Holster was 71, three score 10, baby, long life. You know what I'm saying?

It's not like he died a little early than he was supposed to necessarily. You're wrestling. You lived a 70, shit, man. That's like being 150 years old when you think about. But anyway, I mentioned the grave dancing because my good buddy, Ethan Strauss, wrote a column that was chastising those who chose to dance on Hulk Hogan's grave and to say that that made them look small. And, you know, Ethan's my guy. I guess I've known Ethan now for, I don't think 15 years, but a very, very, very long time. and, you know, since, you know, he started writing the stuff he's been writing lately, you know, I still rock with him because I think a lot of the stuff he says actually makes sense, right?

The job and the columnist is not to make me like him is to make me think. And generally speaking, he makes me think, man, I hated that Hulk Hogan column so much, man. And I'd be trying not to do this because I know how patronized Nick is seen. I started texting him about it. And I ain't want to seem like I was wagging my finger at him. But I was wagging my finger. I don't know if it was at him, but there was definitely some, it was, it was, it was, it was. It was all, it was, you know what I'm saying?

The wagon had taken place. And the reason I wagged my finger about it was, I understand that everybody needs an angle. But under those circumstances, I think that I would have raised the question as to why it is that people feel so compelled to dance on this particular person's grave rather than it makes you look bad to dance on his grave. Like, people know that. And I also do think that with the breakdown of our civility that is a result of having the internet in our pockets all of the time, that we are more inclined to do that. So like, there's levels at which I see why you would choose to do that. But nah, nah, nah, not this time. And I think that there's a number of reasons that the hulkshire guy's grave danced on. But Ethan and I were going back and forth about it. And he made a point that I thought was fairly interesting was one. He said, said he wasn't really into Rasselan growing up, which I could totally see. And he said he didn't realize how many people were into Rasselin, which on one level I think was interesting. The other is, I don't know exactly how old Ethan is. I think I'm probably four or five years older than him, but that's enough of a difference in age that the significance of what Rassland

was was different in his childhood than it was in mine. Yeah, we have a larger age that me and you. And I understood Hulk Hogan as a Mount Rushmore wrestler. I did not, I did not understand how famous Hulk Hogan was. Okay. So that is interesting for you to say, because here's what I did not realize until fairly recently and like reading different books and watching

the Mr. Big Man doc that Netflix did. Because I stopped watching wrestling sometime in the 90s because, duh, I turned 12. You know what I'm saying? You motherfuckers just really still out here watching wrestling. I'm not talking about you, Lance. I love

you, the rest of you guys. Like, I'm just kind of like, yeah, you know how I feel about y'all watching wrestling, especially those of y'all who get sensitive when I call it wrestling. How dare you? You watching wrestling and you're mad, I call it wrestling? Anyway, I didn't quite realize that the wrestling of my very small age childhood was the beginning of the rise of wrestling, right? So I don't remember Rasselmania 1 or 2. I do remember Rasselmania 3. Did you see the number of how many people

watched that? The Rassumania 3, I know it was like 80,000 people in the joint. They aired a replay on NBC and 33 million people watched it. Wow. Okay. That's how big hope it was.

Yeah, they realized that. Like that is what, but it's partly him, it's partly Rastling, it's all of this. But Ethan raised this question to somebody who was not really into Rasselin.

And he was asking, why was Hulk Hogan such a big deal? Why did people love Hulk Hogan so much? And I have spent the last 96 hours and change trying to come up with an answer to that question, and I do not have it. We all in everything I read stipulated that he was a giant, enormous pop culture figure,

that he was the most famous of all the rasslers. I did not see anything that I thought gave a real explanation as to why it was that this guy was that popular and that famous, right? Because the thing is, you got to win over your block before you can win over your region, before you can win over your country, before you can win over the world, right? In this case, I'm using the block as being rassling.

like he had to win over rassling to move into this bigger world of pop culture fate right how exactly he won over rasseling and i mean the rassland fans not the machinations of the rassling business right just winning over and becoming such a popular rassland fan vince can't make you like who you like or not like who you want to like like it doesn't work that way right those crowds who loved the hulkshire were real. We all acknowledge that he was a bad rassler. We all generally stipulate that he was a bad rassler, and the majority of the really popular rasslers are good rassers. He wasn't exactly the coolest rassler. I mean, he ain't no Rick Flair, right? we also wind up with that part. He's not really that guy. And low key, his character was a little bit corny.

Right? The training the prayers and the vitamins, even though we found out that the vitamins, you couldn't buy them in stores. You know what I'm saying? Like, he out here telling you take vitamins to get as big as me. Meanwhile, he's putting his pants down and putting his booty out. right neither here nor there so why exactly is it that we had so much affection for the hulkster right and look that's the question that gets us to the grave dancing because the grave dancing came around because people found it this is my belief that people found it to be so disappointing when you found out like the depths of hulkomania's racism like that was that was tough for a lot of people. Like, I can't, I can't begin to explain to the majority of you what the

heel turn of 1996, well, Hulkomania got down with the NWO was. It was grown men crying. It was like finding out that Santa Claus was a pimp. Like, it, like the L's wasn't really doing it because they wanted to. The L's was out here on the stroll, right? it was jarring for people. And this is with the understanding that rassling is not real. I'm sorry. This is with the understanding

that rassling is scripted. Okay? Even with that understanding, people were heartbroken because somehow, some way, even after we found out that the vitamins wasn't vitamins, there was a level of trust and care

that people had for this character to the place where they did not believe it was a character. And again, I don't really understand why we cared so much about this dude in the first place, right? Now, there was very solid positioning of him, given the times of the 80s and going into the 90s, right? Like, Hulk Hogan was a Captain American sort of figure, right? You got to fight in the Irish sheet when we're on rock with Iran, right? well, Rockwood Soviet Union. He was out here fighting Nikolai Volkov. Man, they had to make Sergeant Slaughter an Iraqi.

You know what I'm saying? I know that's not how you say them words, man, but we're talking about wrestling. They don't say shit right over there. So anyway, Sergeant Slaughter, he pledged Iraqi, and then Hulk Hogan was going against him and various fake Iraqis they put on his side. Apparently, somehow, this is amazing.

The Iron Sheik was with Iran, and then he switched cheek. to play for Iraq. They had just been in a war like the year before. Rassling. Different shit. But anyway, yeah, you put Hulk Hogan on the sides of these people and everything else. But the magnitude of the star in a wrestling and out of wrestling, when I was a kid, and maybe this was part of it, right? Like, this is what I've stopped and thought about. One thing that I thought they did a great job of with the hulkster when I was younger, it felt like he never wrestled unless you paid $20 to watch. Like he wasn't on all-American wrestling on USA.

He wasn't on WWF superstars on the weekend. He might come out there. He might do some talking, but you ain't never really get to see the hulkster rassel. It felt like the macho man was wrestling four times a week on TV. You never saw the hulgster. The hongster held the title down for four years in a row. It was like he was FDR, right? It was like Rassel a dictator or whatever. Like he was, he was like the king. He was never going anywhere.

And then when he finally lost his championship, it was because they cheated and then they had a whole tournament where it was a chance that he could get the whole thing back, right? Every time the huckster came to the ring, it took him five minutes to even wrestle. If he was going to wrestle, they played that whole.

American song because it took him all that time to get out there. He'd be in the ring doing that and that to everybody and he rip off his shirt. He did the whole night. It was amazing. And again, what exactly was it that we were here for? It was, it was, it was, it was. It was stunning how high the Q rating for Hulkomania was. Stunning how high the Q rating was. Stunning how high the Q rating was. And I still don't have a great answer, right? Like when I used to do radio in Raleigh, you know, this was the year 2008 when I started doing it, divided times in America or whatever. A lot of white people didn't really like the idea of me doing that show. I'm sure there were some black people who didn't either, but they didn't feel like calling me and telling me about

it every day. You know what I'm saying? And so they called me, tell me I was racist, tell me I was this, tell me I was that. And then one day I had Rick Flair on as a guest, and the guy told me that if I had Rick Flair on, I couldn't have been so bad. You know what I'm saying? Rassland is, rassland is like sandwich shops. You go to the sandwich shop. It's a little bit of everybody in there, right? Like there is no one particular demographic really when it comes to that. Rassland, very similar, especially since most of us watching his kids. But anyway, Rassland, I figured out as the device was a bit unified. Every now and then, when I just wanted to give everybody a pick me up and us all feel good, I knew a few things that could work, right? And one of them,

invariably, was that real American song that the Holkster would come to the ring to. And to this day, even after we found out everything about the Hulkster, you played a real American song, I'm about to be jamming up in here. Like it goes to a place inside me. And look, I don't know if you guys have been paying much attention to me when I talk about my upbringing, but I did not grow up in a house raised by a man that was really out here putting all for the real American. And what the hell is a real American anyway?

He said that he was fighting for the rights of every man. We know goddamn well, Hulk Hogan wasn't doing that. Right. But you play that song, man. I'm right here. The dude that made that song, his other song is called Rock and Roll Hoochie Coot. Does that sound like what I'm about?

Does that sound like what I came from? Hell no. But you start playing that and we all start jamming. Like he was that unifying sort of figure. Was he just that good on the mic? Because anybody, you do a Hulkomania impression in writing. All you got to do is put the word, brother at the end of something.

I know exactly how it sounds. All of us do. All of us do. It is across the board. I don't know how many people that we can truly say this about, right? I can't think of a song that as many people know the words to as people know if you go, what you're going to do, brother. Right? I don't know how. For somebody that people in his real life didn't seem to like that much, what we found out later, people didn't seem to like that much. And even at the time, now, he wasn't the rock. The rock was hilarious. Right? The rock is like every. So, so, so, so how did we get here? I don't have an answer to that. I'm not here to give you an answer. I'm just telling you I thought it was fascinating that I still could not come up with why it is because I wanted to come up better with why it was to explain to Ethan that to give him an explanation for why it hurt so bad for a lot of people when you found out what the hulksster was about. And I know for black people, hey, man, we don't necessarily want to be, you know, admit this and I understand how it sounds, but it's the truth, man. It's a special kind of pain when you feel like you got a white homie and then you find out he kicking it like your granddaddy told you. You know what I'm saying?

Like, like, it's, it's rough when you find that out. It's a, it's a unique sort of sting and betrayal that you get in those moments, right? However, we know things about Rick Flair that aren't so great. When Rick Flair dies, we're not going to break them out like that. It doesn't land the same. Like, as much as people like me loved Rick Flair, there's something different about Hulk Hogan. It just landed completely different.

It just went there. It's an interesting thought, something worth considering. Now, I want to say one last thing about the Hulgster before we move on. My buddy David Dennis wrote a collar for Anscape that I thought was interesting. And it was kind of sort of in the same. vein as the grave dancing topic, which was his argument about Hulk Hogan was, because the question was, what was Hulk Hogan's legacy? And I just want to take a moment to say, we've really gone too far when we start talking about legacy. The man was a playfighter for a living, and you're talking

about what his legacy is. He's not Muhammad Ali, all right? But the question came up as to what his legacy was, and David made the argument that if you are a racist, that is your legacy, right? And I understood what I felt like the larger point of that was, but I also think that that is absolutely not true. It's true if you want it to be, but a legacy is not a personal idea to me, right? Like, a legacy is something that is really a consensus argument, right? There are lots of people who have demonstrated themselves to be racist, to be misogynist, to be all kinds of terrible people, and that doesn't necessarily become what their legacy is, right? If we were to put this into musical terms,

R. Kelly's legacy is going to be the way he treated women and everything that came around it. And I said women. I have to say females, because we're not just talking about women. We're talking about girls too, right? That is going to be his legacy. James Brown's legacy is not beating women.

I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But if you were to ask somebody what the legacy of James Brown is, it's not that, right? This doesn't, this doesn't map one to one in that way. But if you do exhibit those characteristics, if you do do things like traffic women, beat women, you know, doing towards, they end of them, whatever, it is on the board that that will be your legacy. Like, that is an option. With Hulk Hogan, again, it is hard to have a legacy when what we know you for is play fighting. There's no substance there. Okay? Like, what is the Rock's legacy? Does the Rock have a legacy? He's a very entertaining playfighter.

Like, that is not, that does not mean that you have a legacy, right? But when Bobby Bowden died, I did a couple of shows, and I did Rich Eisen's show. And we were talking about Bobby Bowden. You know, Bobby Bowden died, I want to say, in 2021 and, or somewhere around there. But anyway, Bobby apparently had been sick right around the 2020 election. And he put out a statement, or it was a statement put out on his behalf that said that he was doing fine and he didn't have much longer to go, but that he wanted to live long enough so that he could vote for President Trump. With 2021, okay. He said he wanted to live long enough so that he could vote for President Trump. He chose that as his legacy.

that man said that's what he wanted to in his dying days or dying weeks dying months whatever it was that was what he wanted that is how he wanted to be remembered and i have no choice but to do it and that was whack too because people my age i like bobby bowing right but that was what we had to do that was his call he decided that's what he wanted right hogan showed up at that wild rally at madison square guard and he was implying that Kamala harris who he refused to pronounce her name properly He talked about, used her name, like he was one of them cats that he used to wrestle against. He had opportunities to atone with what he got to do it, got caught saying. He didn't do that.

He wanted to be remembered in this way. He didn't even have the wherewithal, because if you look up what he said about his daughter, and he said his daughter was dating some N-word and that he hoped that at least if she was dating the N-word, it could be a rich N-word, like a rapper or a basketball player. And all I'm saying is Kanye West had not one but two hits along that premise. And that was before he went crazy, at least publicly. The first person to say something like that, just throwing it out there. That being said, the example of the person that I made out there bears a resemblance to a Nazi.

Anyway, the hulkscher put that out there. He had chances to be like, hey, my bad. And he was, no, no. That wasn't it. That wasn't it. he ain't even have it in him to be like i didn't mean it and this from a man known for telling amazing lies ryan did you know that hulk hogan once said that he was almost made the the bass player for metallic after chris after cliff burton died no i never heard that one before

yes hong hog hog hong you know that friend that'd be saying anything yeah some people are really masters of their own delusion yeah man he'll tell any lie he couldn't even cook up a lot in this case, he couldn't even cook up and wasn't me. Couldn't even do it. Couldn't even do it. Didn't think he had to. Didn't think he had to. He wanted us to think this about him.

And if he wanted us to think this about him, then he must not have minded it some people danced on his grave. That was his call. I'm just going to take a little bit more time to try to figure out why I care about this at all. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are back to resume our list of the top 25 athletes of the last 25 years and are in this year, 2025. Now, to give you guys a recap on where we have gone so far, let's go. Number 25 was Randy Moss. Number 24, Cam Newton. Number 23, Albert Pooleu

host. Number 22, Ray Lewis. Number 21, Tim Duncan. Number 20, your wild card selection. So I ain't got to hear about that one person. Number 19, Katie Ledecki. Number 18, Mike Trout. Number 17, Lamar Jackson. Number 16, Aaron Rogers. Just your reminder. Everyone on this list was under the age of 25 in the year of Our Lord, 2000, January 1st, 2000. You were under 25 at that point. We are only going with North Americans here just to make this an easier list. For us to put together, we will give you five more today, and then we will give you the last 10 over the course of the next couple of weeks. All right.

Number 15, Aaron Donald. Now, I recognize that this may be a surprise. selection for some of you on, you know, this list. And I get where you are coming from. That being said, the reason that I am going with Aaron Donald at number 15 is this. Aaron Donald put himself into a position to have an argument for being the greatest defensive player of his era. I struggle with greatest defensive player of all time in a world with Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White. Are you comfortable saying since Lawrence Taylor or does that Reggie White

kind of get in the way of that for you? Well, yeah. See, I look at Reggie White and Lawrence Taylor is very contemporaneously overlapping, though Reggie White's career was longer. I mean, there's an argument that Reggie White was a better player than Lawrence Taylor, that if you put Reggie White in New York and put Lawrence Taylor in Philadelphia and Green Bay, that the way that we talk about them might flip-flop. Especially with, you know, Lawrence Taylor being attached to Bill Belichack.

Yes, well, well, To be fair, Bill Belichick being attached. Also attached to Lars Taylor. It's a good point. You've heard the story that Belichick tells he was holding some meeting early on when he had the job and he tells Parcells. He's like, well, Taylor was late this morning. And Belichick said, well, did you wait? Yeah, yeah.

Like, this is what it was going to be. The thing with Aaron Donald is, if the description of you as a football player is that you are a rich man's John Randall, you are doing a lot. Like the undersized defensive tackle who's just operating on a Tasmanian devil sort of way. Hey man, that's a, to be a better version of John Randall is crazy. To be a defensive player that we saw, I feel like when the Rams won that Super Bowl over the Bengals and that last drive, Aaron Donald won the game, like a quarterback wins a game winning drive. Like it was a game winning drive for a defensive.

player like we would talk about Joe Montana or Tom Brady having a game winning drive. And I just can't think of too many people that I would speak of in that same context or in that same way. Like he's that guy. Did you see the Jared first dude talking about working out with Eruddle? And he said that he tried to find, and this is after Aaron Donald has retired. And he tried to find any way to get out of it because he wanted to call the police. It was so bad.

He tried to tell Aaron Donald he had to leave to open the door for his mama at his house. and Aaron Donald wouldn't try to hear it. I mean, that's incredible. But we look at Aaron Donald, 10 years, eight first team all pros, one Devens of Rookie of the Year, and then that one year he only played 11 games. Yes. And then he did like a Jim Brown.

Dipped. I have nothing. What else is there for me to do here, right? I'm out. I'm out. He earned his place here. Number 15 is Aaron Donald, which takes us into number 14,

Peyton Man. Now, guys, I need to start telling you some things, okay? The thing about the top 25 list is that it can only have 25 people. The thing about the top 15 is it can only have 15 people and somebody has to be number 14. That's the place where we're getting to where this is really, really tough. And Peyton Manning is probably the greatest regular season quarterback who has ever lived. you know, Aaron, Aaron Rogers is in a very similar place in this competition. Peyton Manning, that coach on a field thing was like realer than it has ever been for anybody with Peyton Manning, right?

That is exactly what he was in the way that he went about this. And I don't think that anybody's game has been more about manipulating what was going on in order to get the result that he was going for. One small quirky thing about Peyton Manning that I don't think gets talked about, and I think just throw it out there. I don't think that there's any quarterback physically bigger than Peyton Manning who is better than Peyton Manning. Like he's in that 6-5-66 range where the quarterbacks don't necessarily, like, it gets a little wonky for those guys at that point. Peyton Manning was that dude. Peyton Manning, I can't explain to you guys who were young what the Colts meant before he got there. They had a lucky year, a couple years before with Jim Harbaugh, got them to the AFC champion.

game, but for my life, the Colts were booty butt cheeks. It's horrible, horrible. They were terrible with Marshall Falls. You know what I'm saying? They were just not it. He changed everything about the way that we look at them, the way that whole region looked at football. That's a basketball state that became a football thing in the face of Peyton Manning. The thing is, and when we start doing something at this level, when we start having to explain some of the margins, it's very simple. why Peyton Manning stops here at 14, and that is, Peyton Manning was a playoff underperformer. And there's no way around it.

And to me, the blessing of Currison, Peyton Manning, was that coach on the field thing. Peyton was notorious for not making any adjustments to what he or the team did in the postseason from the regular season. So when everybody else is cooking up something new, they is out there still running that same small handful of plays with the receivers lined up in the same places every single time. And once you got to the postseason, it's not terrible. We don't talk about postseason football like we talk about postseason basketball,

where we think of it as just being an entirely different game in basketball. But what does happen in postseason football is those windows get just a little bit tighter and the not excellent arm strength comes into play. And you can't okey-doke them with your brain in the same way. So why Peyton Manning would be below the people who are above him, it's really the tightness of that margin. But he was that dude, right? He was that dude.

The thing is that Scott Casmar. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name, right? He does a lot of stats stuff. And I see him on Twitter a lot. And his thing is, I think he's a Colts guy, is his big thing is that Tom Brady is the luckiest quarterback of all time. And he has a point, not using that as shade here, but he does have a point. And that we have a tendency to underrate the accomplishments of Peyton Manning.

And he is probably correct, right? You're going to look at the statistical performance and what he gave, especially after the neck injury. It's really, really, really, really, really incredible. But there's a little bit of the other stuff, and that's why he's F-14. All right, coming up next, we have 13, 12, and 11. All right.

Our next three are basketball players. Number 13, Kevin Durant. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. this was maybe the trickiest guy for me to figure out where to put him because if we lined up all the basketball players in a line, right? And let's take the centers out of the equation because they are, they require some different things to think about and consider, right? So we're getting Shaq, we're getting wilt, right? We're getting all of those dudes out of here. We are getting the centers out of here.

And you say, okay, now pick guys. And you get any player in NBA history. Number one is Michael Jordan. Okay. I think number two is LeBron James. Ryan, I don't have anybody I'm taking before Kevin Durant. No, I mean, just the logic of he's probably the tallest guy out there. And he can make a shot from every single place in the court.

make a shot and more accurately get a bucket. Yeah. Right? Like it's not just he's taking these shots. Oh, you need me to go get a bucket. I'm going to go get this bucket. And it's never looked easier than it's looked when I go get a bucket. It never has.

He is the creative player in so many ways. And he is a two-time finals, two-time finals MVP. He is an NBA MVP. he has an argument that from the year 2014, if you take away injuries, from 2014 through 2017 or maybe even 2018, that he was the best player in the NBA, right? And we don't think about him that way at all. I mean, he's a stretch in his career where you look at just, you know,

shares of him where he comes up in MVP, 252, 2, 2, 2, 1. And that is before the Golden State run. Right. Like this is, in 2014 when he won the MVP, and I talk about this on this show a lot, the statistic that maps almost one-to-one to winning MVP is win-shares per 48 minutes.

And in 2014, Kevin Durant won the MVP and had the win-shares per 48 minutes. He also led the league in win-shares for 48 minutes in 2017, that first year with the Warriors, when there was no way in the world we were ever going to give him the MVP. there was no way after you left Oklahoma City for Golden State. The same way they weren't going to give it to LeBron in 2011, right? Like there was no chance, even though I think both players in each case deserve that MVP.

They weren't going to give it to those guys. But where are the basketball players outside of the ones I gave you that are that much better than Kevin Durant? Now, Durant winds up with how we view the last, I guess it's six years of his career now, right? There's the year with the Achilles injury, then where he's out with the Achilles injury, and then the years with the net. And, hey, how much differently do we talk about Kevin Durant if his foot's not on the line in that game against Milwaukee? Right.

Are we then talking about a three-time champion with three finals MVPs who did it with two franchises, right? How much differently are we talking about Kevin Durant if Kyrie Irving just went and got the shot? Right. It is as though we blame Kevin. Kevin Durant for a lot of these exterior factors because we can't appreciate the idea that the man wanted to go work somewhere else. We chastise him for going to Golden State and then we chastise him for leaving. Right.

I don't know if there's ever been a player in his position that we have treated what I would deem to be more unfairly than we had treated Durant. It wound up in an entirely unique situation where quite possibly the best player in the NBA had a chance to go to quite possibly the greatest NBA team ever. It just worked out that way. The rules are supposed to make it impossible. They figured it out. He went. He did that.

Hey, man, they was too good. So what would have been okay? You know? Like, what would have been fine? So I can go on and on, on and on about the greatness of Duran. I can go on and on about how we don't give him enough credit. And by the way, how I don't think we give him enough credit for the early portion of his career, okay?

That first year, 0708, he was playing two guard at 19 years old at seven feet tall. He was probably 611 then or whatever in Seattle. That next year, that team started off terribly. They fired the coach at the beginning of the years, Russell Westberg's rookie year, and then they picked it up. The year after that, they got James Harden. year four with a team full of children, they went to the Western Conference Finals. Year four, year five, they went to the NBA finals.

Year six, they may have been the best team in the NBA, and then Russell Westbrook hurt his knee when Patrick Beverly ran into him. The next year, they went to the Western Conference Finals and lost to one of the great teams of all time, but also had some injury issues. I think Abaka was the one that was hurt that year. The year after that, he breaks his foot, 2016, they blew the 3-1 lead. His is a story of this close, this close.

And we don't think about him in the way that we think about a lot of other players that we think about as being cursed or we think about as having terrible luck. He had awful luck. And the one time he took his luck into his own hands, we act like he did something wrong. He is here at number 13. and I don't know. Maybe I'm doing them wrong. Let's see who else is above him on the list.

Number 12. All right, Ryan, I understand if you don't want to be in the next part of this video. I don't even really want to be in the next part of the video. Okay, like if you want to leave, you can. This is me calling the ISO for this player. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to get out the way. Yeah, right.

Number 12 is Kobe Bryant. Okay, okay, guys, guys, everybody from this point on the list on is a super duper beast, okay? Everybody from here on is a super duper beast. Kobe Bryant was a super duper beast. Young Kobe is actually, and this is actually, and this is, Afro Kobe, really underrated. I spent many years believing that Shaq carried Kobe through those runs. And I do think in the year 2000, Shaq was that guy. I think anybody would have been number two. You go look at that 2001 season, particularly the 2001 postseason. No, they were,

they was right here. They were this and this. They were that good together. And in 2002, I think Kobe was still in the same space of Shack. And in 2003, that may have been the place at which he got better than him. That is where I think we need to give Kobe more. That is where we need to treat Kobe in a different way in terms of evaluating the greatness of what he provided. And considering the fact that when we're talking about 2001, he's 22 years old when he's doing this. 22. The other thing to consider that I think is important, I think is somewhat underrated,

is that up until that point, all the guys that were coming straight from high school into the league, all of them were big men. Colby was a guard. Like, that was a little different. Like, it's one thing when these guys are coming in and they're walking in with some form of an NBA body. Kobe, yes, to a degree, but especially in an era of the physicality of the mid-90s, it is wild that he came in. And yeah, it took us their time to get there. And the thing that I value and respect about Kobe more than anything else, and I've come to value and respect it more and more as I've become older is the outright fearlessness and his outright fear, lack of a fear of failure, right? It's the most admirable thing about Michael Jordan. And it is the thing that Kobe Bryant adopted above

of anything else is, if I make it, I make it, if I miss it, I miss it, but I'm willing to take it. Now, I think he took that way too far at various points, but you can't teach that. And that is the thing that I think that most of us wish we had more of within us. Yeah, I think there is two interesting points of Kobe that you kind of grow in legacy as, you know, we get further and further away from it. One is how much everyone in that time was trying to do a Michael Jordan impression, and he was the only one who could. Yes.

And two, you talk about, you know, the fearlessness to take the shot. I think there is an additional, like, the amount of respect from his peers and the amount of the kind of cult of personality he has created about himself. Yes. Is that he has done that better than other of his peers by a wide margin. So the thing about Kobe and the opinion of his peers is very important because let's say that I had no access. to what his peers had to say about him. I have certain opinions of him as a basketball player, both in terms of what he actually did

and in terms of the way that he went about doing. Right. However, I believe that people in my position have to humble themselves to a degree and say that even if you do not believe or agree, even if you do not agree with the way that his peers and contemporaries talk about Kobe or the terms or the tone or the rarefied air that they put him in.

You have to acknowledge the fact that they do it. Right. The guys that know way more about this stuff that I do and know about it in an experiential way have their ways that they discuss him and the ways that they talk about him. And they put him there as the closest thing to Michael Jordan. I got stats that say other things, right?

We got team records, by the way, that often say other things. We have all of that. But those cats were there, right? Like I talk about with Jordan and that the youngsters need to understand about it is no matter what you think you're getting out of looking up on YouTube, man, we were there. And people have gotten on me for being like, oh, you looked on YouTube and saw that Jordan was that dude. No, I went back on YouTube and got reminded of what I had already seen because it had been so long. And it was just like, oh, yeah, that's right. Because in the end, I was there when that happened.

And it was easy to forget what it looked like. And then you looked at it and were like, oh, yeah, my bad. But I was there. Okay. they were there with Kobe in a much different way in a much different capacity. There is a legend that has been built up. Like, I think it's dishonest the way these guys now get out here and talk about how, man, y'all saying Kobe wasn't the greatest.

Wasn't nobody talking like that when he was alive? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wasn't nobody really talking the way y'all talk about him now when he was alive, because that's what happens when people die, right? Like, the hangiography takes place, and we tend to go out. a little bit too far. Like, I think that we are actually far more complimentary of Kobe in death than we were in life. I think in life, we approach it differently, but nobody wants to feel like they're bagging on the dead guy, right? Like, even, I mean, I'm being very careful with the way

that I choose my words here. Um, in talking about him. Um, no, no, like, we, we were critical of him when he was alive as a basketball player. And we were for a number of reasons, but that we is largely people on the outside, like people who were not actually playing basketball. Those who play basketball talk about him in terms that I have to give credence to and offer a certain measure of respect to, you know, and I think it's important that I and anybody else who operates in this position to remember those things. All right. Number 11. Number 11 is Wadale Stephen Curry. Ryan, I'm going to be honest with you.

A big part of why I'm putting Steph Curry where I have him. And maybe I should have put him higher. It's because every time I have ever dared to underestimate Stephen Curry in any sort of way. And this is going back nearly to the Bush administration. Yeah, kind of, yeah, you're right.

It does. It does. Or at the very least, the daughter of Obama, right? Anytime that I have underestimated him, he has taken my underestimation. He has taken it and wiped his keister and then asked me to smell. Every single time, every single time it has happened, he has asked me to do it. Now look, he has redefined the way NBA basketball is played. For better or worse, by the way.

I always love what this happens. Something happens and you've only seen one person do it ever. And everybody thinks that they can do it. Right? Like that is where we go with Steph Curry. The truth is, he is a bigger guy than Isaiah Thomas, but I would say they are in similar classes in terms of size. Under 6-4.

Yeah, those are the guys. Right? Those are the guys that have really been that dude for champions that could carry you home at the sizes that they played at. It was more impressive for Isaiah because the game was much more physical and there was not, there was a three-point shot, but the paradigm had not adapted. there was still a lag in place with how that was dealt with.

Steph Curry has won four championships. Steph, I see people make this point that the 2024 Olympics, where you have LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry, and we're bringing this thing home with those four guys. And it was Steph Curry. That was the guy that took the shot. Right. But here's what I love about that.

none of those guys were deferring to each other. That isn't really what I think happened there. What happened was, Steph was like, I'm the dude that's supposed to be taking this shot. So I'm going to take this shot. And of course he should. Do you realize how unfair it is

to let Steph Curry play out of a short three-point line? That's like letting Shaq play on a nine and a half foot go. Like, I can't even believe they even let him in the tournament. Let him let Steph Curry get three points for them shots that he was taking. Are you kidding me? That's just like colossally and wholly unfair. But I remember, and I don't know, I think those of you who are younger may not remember this. And I even think that those of us who are around because now it's been so long may not remember this.

When they fired Mark Jackson in 2014, which seemed to be as much just because Joe Lacob hated his guts, right? When they fired him, our question was, well, how much better do you think this team is supposed to get? The Warriors had been terrible for my entire adult life at that point. how much better did you think that they were supposed to be when their best player was Steph Curry and their second best player was, what's it, Clay Thompson? Like, how good did you think? They just want 50 games.

Some people were not going to believe this, but this is where people were asking the question, could you win games, win the playoffs, jump shooting? Right, right. Like, how good could you be with those guys? And they went from winning 50 games to winning 67. do you know how hard it is to be a 50 win team and become a 67 win team with basically the same players? But see, the thing is, it's largely about jump shooting.

And we just never seen anybody that made as many jump shots as they did. Like the rate at which they were making shots with Steph also being a legitimate and credible threat to go to the basket, with a two-year period where he may have been within that time where I say Kevin Durant might have been the best player in the NBA. Steph Curry at his size, playing the type of game he played, also had that same argument. He became full on superstar. And the question was, and I had this question that was fair, are we dealing with the system player? And the answer was yes, but the system is Stefan Curry. Like, he is it.

Andrea Godala, who actually I recall, said I was being a hoe for raising that question. And I'm like, damn, buddy, we're just talking. We ain't even cool, me and you. But I was just raising the question. But he's right. The system was Steph. The system was it. I remember I sat in front of JJ Redding one time,

and he looked at me like I was so crazy. And that is another example, dudes who played basketball in the way they, what they are like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, homie, you need to fall back on this one. This guy is that guy. This guy is it. And he is the, if truly,

the defining basketball player of the last 10 years. You could say that LeBron has been the face of the league, But for the last 10 years, has it been LeBron or has it been Steph Curry? Like, these are fair questions to ask. I don't have the definitive answer for it. But they became that TV draw on the back of Steph Curry. Remember, when LeBron went to Cleveland and they had Kyrie and they got Kevin Love, they were supposed to be the story of the league.

And Steph just went up there and took it. On a team where, and look, this is the big one. And y'all can get as mad at me about this one as you want. one, okay? Steph Curry is getting Clay Thompson and Draymond Green into the Hall of Fame. And I'm not saying that those are not excellent players. I'm saying I don't think either of those guys make it to the Hall of Fame if they don't play for the Warriors. And I will give you an example of this on Draymond Green. What makes Draymond Green a better player than Sean Marion? Right. Sean Marion was basically giving you all the things that Draymond Green was giving you

as a defender while giving you more athleticism and was a better offensive player. Okay. I think Sean Marion should be in the Hall of Fame. I think he probably ultimately will make it into the Hall of Fame. You don't think of Sean Marion as a lights out Hall of Fame. If Sean Marion played with Steph Curry, he's going in the Hall of Fame, right? It's the same thing with Clay Thompson. I don't have the easy, he's such a good shooter that I don't really have an easy cop for

like who's the other guy that's not going to make the Hall of Fame that goes there with Clay Thompson. But Steph's getting those guys in. We have a tendency to look at it and say, well, okay, if a team wins championships, then that means they must have X number of Hall of Famers. You start adding it up. You start backfilling the qualifications. And that, I think, is the part where Steph Curry becomes underrated. If you stop looking at it like, like the Warriors were not a super team, at least before

Kevin Durant, let's put it like that. That wasn't a super team. They were a team that had superb results and the superb results. were a byproduct of Steph Curry, right? But those weren't guys that are going to be superstars playing for other teams. That was not Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch that was out there with him. That wasn't it. But his teams were better than the teams that Miami had with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch.

That tells you what time it was with Steph Curry. And that is why I've got him above Kobe. I've got him above Duran. Even if you ask me to pick teams, I'm picking Duran. even when if you asked me who the best player on those Warriors teams were when Kevin Durant was there, I would still tell you Kevin Durant. But if you asked me to put together this list, I put Steph Curry above him. I know it does it all the way make sense.

But you can't tell me it don't feel right. But let me tell you what don't necessarily feel right. Those last three guys, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, Ryan, are we sure those guys are better than Tim Duggan? Certainly more interesting. Definitely more interesting. Better. Five-time champion, three-times finals MVP.

His teams were championship contenders every year of his career except for two. And those two years when they weren't was when they were reconfiguring the office to get more in line with the seven seconds or less spurt. sons and to move into the new error, right? So the Spurs lost in the first round of the playoffs after winning 60 games to the Grizzlies. And we were like, damn, I guess they're done. And then 2013 and 2014 happened where they were the Ray Allen shot away from back-to-back championships with the 2014 team, one of the greatest of all time. And we look at it as a team that did not really have a star player except it had what

they've always had. Tim Duncan guaranteeing that you had a top three defense in the NBA just by his mere presence. Yeah, I mean, I think you, didn't they win 50 games every year who was there except the 2011 season when there was only 66? And the 99 season where there were only 50. Yeah. Yes. That is, that is basically it. It's tough because, again, back to our, Kevin, how we started this, Kevin Durant. If you're picking, you know, players.

Right. Kevin, Tim Duncan might go forth, but he's also accomplished more, almost as much of all of them. Well, you know, nobody really wants to pick the guy when I wouldn't. no haircut. Like, that doesn't, that, the only way, like, that is not that you don't, not at his size, you don't assume. Yeah, you don't assume that he's a, that he's a really good basketball player under those circumstances. Like, Tim Duncan looking like he'd do the dirty work as opposed to being the dude that holds it all down. And he might be the greatest dirty work player of all time. Might be. So, Steph Curry is number 11. Tim Duncan is clocking in at number, number,

21, but maybe he should be number 11. I don't know. I don't know. But that is up to number 11. We have got 10 more names left on the list. This is going to be fun. Remember, if you have any thoughts on what this list is, are you amongst yourselves? I don't care what you think. But ladies and gentlemen, Thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this here three times a week. Ryan Brumley handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. And we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.