The Right Time with Bomani Jones - LeBron James the Cyborg, Tiger Woods Dominance, Usain Bolt the Flash | 7.16

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

On today's episode of The Right Time, Bomani Jones is joined by Spencer Hall, host of the Shutdown Fullcast podcast, to discuss "futuristic" athletes. The show begins with Bo telling the story about the first time he heard about Usain Bolt (4:59) and why a gold medal wasn't an option when running against Bolt during his prime (9:39). They move on to reminiscing about Randy Moss, where Spencer talks about the first time he saw Moss play at Marshall vs Army (13:38) and why he may be the most perfect football player who has ever lived (17:50). After the break, Bo and Spencer converse about Cam Newton being a one-man team at Auburn (25:48) and why Newton still would've gone #1 overall in the 2011 NFL Draft despite the future Hall of Famers in it (28:42). They round out the show by saying why LeBron James is the best open court basketball player ever (33:00) and why we'll never see dominance quite like Tiger Woods ever again (45:57) and why the ceiling does not exist for Victor Wembanyama. (51:44) . . . Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Buy 'The Right Time' merch: http://therighttimebomani.com/ Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media: http://lnk.to/therighttime Support the Show: Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code BOMANI. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. 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. All right, guys, we're trying something here.

We've got a series that we came up with, which is top 25 athletes of the last 25 years. So I guess the top 25 athletes of the new millennium. That is how we do it. We have already released athletes 25 through 21. So go check that out in the archives. If you have not gotten there, so what we're going to do is we're going to give you five,

and then we're going to come and we're going to talk about some topic along the way while talking about these 25 athletes. But man, Ryan, did a great job of putting this all together. So I appreciate you checking this out with us. The first step we're going to have is athletes that when you watched them just felt like the future. And to join us to talk about this is a futuristic man himself, the greatest college football writer in America.

Spencer Hall, what's going on? I am looking towards the future via the past for you because I think the cool thing about this concept is essentially we do get to remember some guys, right? Yeah. But it's not just remembering guys because they're funny. It's remembering that moment when you saw them and you're like, I'm obsolete.

Like, not only, it's the moment when I feel like elite athletes look at another athlete and feel like I did in fifth grade when they go, nope. never going to be good at any of this. That guy is. Bud D. told a story all here about the time that he and Pimp C met DeAngelo. It was after Brown Sugar came out and Pelt asked DeAngelo what equipment he used and he said he used ASR 10 to do the album, which apparently was a piece of machinery that Pimp was very

familiar with. And then after DeAngelo left, Pimp said that apparently if he did that after ASR 10, I don't know what, I got no idea what I was supposed to do with that. I must need to read the manual or something. That is basically the equivalent on these things. I saw a clip if we were going to go back in the day to give an example of the sort of phenomenon that we are describing. Did you see this clip that was bouncing around of Tim Brown telling the story of Bo Jackson

asking for a play with no blocking? No, I have not seen this. So he says that this had to be 87, right, or 88. It must have been Tim Brown's rookie year. And he said that they were sitting in a meeting and they were drawing up it felt like a counter or whatever. And he said to Bo screamed out, Bo don't want no block it. And he's like, what?

Bo don't want no block it. And so on the play, all the blocking goes to the right and Bo goes to the left with the plan being basically that he can outrun everybody or, as the way Tim Brown put it, unfortunately for our friend Mike Harton, Bo will run through you. And so I forget how many yards it was, but it's everybody going one way. Bo Jackson going the other. in somebody's chest, straight in for a touchdown. That's obscene.

But that's what we're talking. That's what we're talking about here, right? Yes. Bo Jackson, by the way, would still be from the future. Still. Today. Today. He would still be from the future.

This is the wild thing I can say confidently about Bo Jackson. Even in this market that he's devalued the running back, he would be the Derek Henry exception. He would still be from the future at a position that is effectively the past. Yeah, that's the way to put it for the kids. The unfathomable combination of size, speed, power, and all that for Derek Henry, I need you to understand. Bo Jackson is in a different role than Derek Kennedy.

With all due respect to Derek Henry. Yes, yes. All due respect. This was the clip of Bo Jackson with the white socks, flat-footed, throwing that dude out from right field, a Yankee stand. at third base and then you realize if you're our age that if he's with the white socks, that means he's doing it with plastic hill. Uh-huh.

Remember that when he was recovering from an injury, Bo Jackson would shoot a bow and arrow with his toes accurately in his backyard. Not real. Yes. Yes. I'd rather fight of Peterbilt. Yeah. It'll be faster and my odds are better.

And my odds are better. Yeah, I don't want it. It's throwing it out there. But man, there's so many examples that, like, jump to mind when you feel like you're watching something that is outright to future. And I'm going to throw an example at you on this one. And I feel safe saying that it's the future

because it's the man who has done something that literally still has not been done. And I remember very clearly, this is not the same moment that he did something that has not been done, but this had not been done up until that point. I was doing a radio show in August, of 2008. I think, yeah, it had to be August. It was August 2008.

And, you know, when you do radio, you do remotes. And when you do remotes, it's because there's some sort of sponsorship deal that's there. And in this case, I was doing radio for a station that had the contract for Duke football. Okay. And this is the first year of cut clips, which is to say they were ass until proven otherwise, right? And so I guess it was some kind of like fun football, flink, fling, some kind of, you know, come watch the football team this season event. And I'm there at that awful stadium and I'm up in the box and I'm doing the show.

And somebody told, sent me a link and was like, this is the 100 meter dash finals from Beijing. I was unaware that Usain Bold existed, right? I had no clue that this guy was anybody. And I remember they went up and down the line and they said that he was the world record holder. I'm like, oh, okay, well, you know, that obviously means something. And his big old 6-5 dude, and they get down the line and they say it's him. And he does that shit where he starts rubbing his face. And then he does the whole like bow and arrow type thing or whatever that was.

And I was like, huh, I wonder what's going on here. And the race started, like all of you saying Bolt races start, where all the dudes with the shorter legs get this lead. And then it looked like they stayed still and he got shot out of a camp. And before he even gets to the finish line, he's turning around and looking at them. I think he only broke the Olympic record there. But I was like, I could not believe it was that amazing just watching somebody running a straight line. It is astonishing to watch somebody make something that simple.

I think that's the thing that makes Bolt so stunning because. he's doing something that anyone can do. That's the thing. It's not like you might watch an NHL player play, and you're three steps removed from even starting that process, understanding that process. You have to learn how to skate. You'd have to learn how to handle a puck.

You've got to learn how to shoot, and you've got to learn how to play defense. Like that's your three or four steps removed from ever starting that. There's a lot of gear. Same Bolt can do his job in his birthday suit. Like that's running. He could just run. And the fact that everything about him,

was different. It'd be different if he were one of these running back looking guys, right? Like Gatlin was one of these guys. He'd go, okay, I know for a fact, football ties. He could do that if he wanted to. No, towering, huge, awful starter. Awful starter. Everybody who knows track of field will look at his starts and go,

it does not make sense. It does not make sense how bad bolt is off the line and where he ends up. there are times when you look at athletes like Bolt, a guy who stands out for me like right now, who's that kind of guy who's a complete different sport, but a different level of this. A simple thing, riding a bike, Taj Pogachar, I'm probably butchering his name. He's a writer. Do you know what his chief asset is, Bo? Relative to his peers, pain tolerance.

Pain tolerance. He takes more pain and can hurt longer than anyone else. Writers like Lance Armstrong, okay, who, well, augmented, certainly had his share of being able to take pain. Or like, yeah, he's the best. It's not close, right? Or when you watch Leo Messi, like when you watch Leo Messi, you know, at 5-5, right, a guy who looks like a normal human being

and suddenly he's doing something with a ball that normal human beings have never done. Not like, oh, kind of like this guy. No, one of one. One of one. And I think that's what we're talking about here is when you go, you have redefined something that other people thought was done. We thought we knew how to run. No. No, Seymol actually knows how to run.

The rest of us are just learning. First of all, nice of you to call 5'5 normal. Yeah. Second thing on you saying, Bo, I don't know if you remember in 2012 in London where he won the 100 meter final. And I remember that Tyson Gay ran a 9-8-5 and did I get a medal. But what I remember that I will never lose sight of is how happy silver and bronze were. Because they understood going in. Gold was not on the table, right?

Like, you know what? Silver in that race? You know what it felt like? It felt like Kobe's 81. Kobe's 81 is not the most points that anybody has ever scored. But we have decided that that 100 thing is not happening, all right? Way to go getting that silver when gold is really like triple platinum. When we can take all of your accomplishments and turn someone else's second place into their first,

that's how I know you occupy a unique place of a minimum. gravity in the sporting cosmos. Everybody who played against Michael Jordan. Everybody. You go, man, Charles Barkley, that's incredible. He had 50 in a playoff game. Well, why am I mentioning that? Because he never touching a ring.

Never touched a ring. Why? Because there was a very selfish man, a very selfish and very gifted man who didn't want anybody else. The list of players that he denied titles to, absolutely incredible. And that's what we're, that's what we're talking about. You know, like I am, when I think about all of the like swimmers, all of the like lady swimmers who put in thousands of hours, Beau, like black line fever, right? I'm just looking at the pool.

This is all I'm doing. I went to Stanford. I got a 4.0. I finished first. I beat everybody. I'm faster in the water than anybody else. Katie Ledecki walks in. You know what you do?

Silver feels great. Silver's a nice metal. I love it. That, was it, the 1,500? where like she's out and dry in her in her in her in her regular clothes yeah and you just got finished with the hardest earned silver of your life yeah congratulations that's the best silver anyone's ever gotten yeah yeah yeah like honestly with her i i like why you even be trying hard like it's it's i mean i mean if you want to that's fine i'm not saying that you can't but

But like you ever consider like just a leisurely stroll through the pool? I mean, I think you'd still win. You know, she can take a glass of milk and put it on the back of her head and swim and it doesn't spill. There's video of this. I am not lying. You can go watch. I encourage you to go watch. That's a different human being.

We're playing different sports. I made a new sport and now you have to play it. And you will finish second or third every time because I'm just that much better. And I think this is, this is, I can go on about this for days because I think there's no end. Nothing is hyperbole when we talk about some of these athletes. Nothing is exaggeration. The things that they are doing, like the things that Maradona did on the soccer field, right? While the numbers don't exactly show it because of the game, everyone talks about he saw space differently.

He made the ball and the game something different when he was on the field. And that's, that's what we're talking about, right? Like, I think musicians get this a lot too, right? Like when somebody asked Eric Clapton, hey, you know, like, what's that feel like being the best guitarist in the world? And he's like, go ask Prince. Because it's not me. God, I wish that quote was real so they could ask Prince about it. And Prince could say, I love immigrants.

We can do that, but we could be like, hey, Eric Clapton, super pro immigration. Big pro immigration guy. Totally, totally. I want to make something clear also about the way that we did this. list is that this top 25 to qualify at the turn of the century you had to be 25 or younger. That's what you had to do

to be on this list. And a part of why that specification existed was to make sure some people got into the discussion. And one of them I will now ask you about it is, do you have any recollection of the first time that you saw Randy Gene Moss play football? I do.

It was against Army when he was at Marshall. First of all, of all of the sacrifices we have asked our enlisted men and women to make guarding Randy Moss one-on-one at Corner is among the most unfair. That's what I would say.

The thing I first noticed about him is he wore high socks. He wore high socks. And like Hussein Bolt, this is why he's like Bolt, nothing that tall should move like that. Nothing because he wore the socks and you could see the flashes of color when he moved, right? because it was kind of dingy. It was on videotape, and it was not live.

That's how we all saw Randy for the first time because he played for Marshall. And it was not live. And you saw it, and it was a little bit like a cryptid. It was like seeing Bigfoot. You go, I don't know if I really saw that. You go, oh, he's playing against Army. It couldn't be that hard. And then he played for the Vikings.

And everybody's like, yeah, this guy's really good. And I was like, I don't know. He played FCS. You know, he played down there. He's playing against plumbers, right? I think a lot of people thought he was playing against plumbers. He was not playing against plumbers. It didn't matter.

He made everyone look the same. That's the first time I saw him, and the thing I noticed was the movement. People don't understand that athletes in general, what differentiates them from the general population, is movement. They can move. And what differentiates somebody who is an absolute freak like Randy, who is good at everything. Remember at Marshall, his teammate said that he didn't know how to dive. He didn't know how to go off the high dive. I knew how to swim, was great at it.

It was really fast, actually. But he didn't know how to dive. So the Marshall dive team showed him how to do a gainer, half gainer, twist, and he was doing them on the first attempt. Like he could see it and he could mimic it. That's the kind of like differentiating talent you see among athletes. And that's where Randy was. All right.

So for the young people who don't know the Randy Moss narrative art, which is a doozy and a time. problematic. He was the number one football player in America coming from West Virginia, a state that does not produce football players. He signed to go to Notre Dame. He got in trouble for his involvement in a fight in high school, and he went to jail, and when he signed the bail paperwork, he was wearing a Notre Dame hat that was the same

colors as Pittsburgh, just to remind you that we are dealing with West Virginia. Notre Dame came up with an credible explanation for why it was that they were not letting him in after this had happened. And Lou Holtz called Bobby Bouten and said, I got somebody for you, a phone call that I never would have made. I'm not saying that if I was Lou Holtz, I wouldn't have called some place for the young man to go. But it would not have been Florida State. That is to say that Randy Moss and a gentleman named Peter Warwick that you young people don't know anything about, but good God came in at the same time. but the condition was that Randy Moss had to redshirt. They said that he scored a touchdown in every practice and scrimmage that he participated in at Florida State.

He then got kicked out of Florida State because he came home to West Virginia and he failed a drug test with his PO. There's some questions about how exactly that happened. And he wound up going to Marshall, which was the best team in the FCS, and it is totally unfair that he participated. Our buddy, Kevin Van Volcan Bird, played for the Montana team that played against Moss. And he said that all they did on the played ride home was trying to devise strategies for what you're supposed to do against the guy like that. He never told me what they came up with, but it sounded a lot like treating him like it was the punt team and he was the gunner and putting two people there. So he gets to the NFL. He plays for the Vikings who at the time had the best pair of wide receivers in the league already.

He is there and there was a Monday night game. I believe it was against the Packers. And that whole year, the game against the Cowboys on Thanksgiving where he had three catches for three touchdowns. He's taller than everybody. He's faster than everybody. His hand game is crazy. His route game is crazy. Like, I believe for the position that he played,

he is the most perfect football player who ever existed. Nobody was better built to do that whatever their job was, that Randy Moss was at being a wide receiver because he was a borderline all-American caliber football, I mean, basketball player. So when you're going up to get the ball and you're fighting for a rebound, basically, look who's there. he did the thing that is not supposed to happen against defenses. Defenses are built to constrain.

A defenses are built to have a top. You're not supposed to be able to take the top off the defense. And the thing that Randy Mawson interviews, as a pro against some of the most God-tier athletes you will ever see, cornerbacks who are built to read, react, and live in space all day long, Randy would be like, my job is to take the top off the defense,

which is amazing because when you do that, it's like a defensive end on the defensive side. If I can break this one contain, the whole structure falls apart. When the Vikings were really good and Randy was able to take the top off the defense, they were capable of doing anything. Chris Carter had to,

like the happiest times in his life had to be playing with Randy. Because do you know what they're worried about? Not you. Not you. Everyone's absolutely terrified of Randy. Randy and Dante Colpepper, greatest video game combo of all time in real life.

Like they could do things in real life that you did in the game regularly. Also go find the NFL films clip of them talking about about calling calls. Call tails, just like PlayStation. Always call tails. And then for whatever reason, Dante did not call tails,

Randy Mouse was hot. I told you called tails. They don't play PlayStation like we do. Oh my God. I mean, like on top of all that, like on top of on top of Randy just being physically superlative, right? Like on top of him getting one of the best second acts in NFL history by being Tom Brady's safety blanket. It's nice when your safety blanket when your outlet receiver is the definition of an outlet receiver is the 30-yard go. Right?

Yes. That's an amazing thing. On top of all that, Randy's just singular for being Randy. just the fact that that voice, that look, right? Like he would, he had the like visor. He had the like high socks. He just looked different. And on top of all that, you said best football player.

And I'm glad you said that, not wide receiver, football player. Duke Block, strong as hell. At Marshall, his linemen talked about how Randy would wrestle them. And more often than not, at least wrestle them to a draw, while giving them 100 pounds of total body weight different. Yeah, like football player, not just wide receiver, not just athlete, football player. Spencer, his first game with Tom Brady, and it was the game that we realized, oh, this is going to be a problem. Because Randy Moss had played with good quarterbacks.

Dante Colpeper of his best was excellent. Randall Cunningham, we got the last flicker of life that he had to offer. But it wasn't Tom Brady, and Tom Brady had never played with a legitimate wide receiver. And, of course, that first year, Tom Brady breaks the league record for touchdown passes. Randy Moss breaks the league record for touchdown receptions. And in that first game against the Jets, when he ran past Dorel Revis and two others, just ran past him.

And Tom Brady was like, shit, man, I can just throw this up there. The Randy Moss Classic, chug it up there, dog. Yeah. And by the way, you talk about being able to run past Revis and these guys. It looks like running past. It's also, I can't get my hands on him. He's too strong.

It's not just speed. Speed's there. and that's the terrifying part, but something that big and strong can also move like a gazelle. Like I, there was, there is no greater crime in football history than the Giants beating that Patriots team

because the one time you give me a Patriots team that I enjoy watching, the one time you put Randy in a position to win a Super Bowl, that happens. Just criminality. All right. We're going to come back.

We're going to talk some more about some amazing people. Like it's so many of them that you're looking at it like, hey, I think that we maybe missed on a couple, but don't you worry, we're going to get to the big ones right here on the right top. Nothing beats relaxing on a hot summer day and watching baseball. And the simplest way to get in on

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I want to talk about one from college football and very particularly from college football. not that it didn't look like the future in the NFL, but it really looked like the future in college. And there are a lot of examples that we can point to on this one. We only have so much time here. But is it possible for you or I to explain what the 2010 Cam Newton season was? Separate from all the drama,

just the realization of, oh, this is real. It's the, like, he is the promise fulfilled of five or six different quarterbacks leading up to this, right? Like there are guys who hinted at the potential of a passing and running quarterback. There are guys who hinted at the potential of putting him in a spread offense, right? Like Mike Vic, okay, Mike Vick said Virginia Tech, but he was playing in a 1950s offense. And so everything he does is kind of improvisation and not really built around him.

You get guys like Major Harris, even before him, who were guys who could run, guys who could throw, but never really got the opportunity to sort of utilize that full skill set. You look at Cam, and all of a sudden it's like somebody hits all the sliders at once. all of them. It's in the perfect place because it's at Auburn with Gus Malzan, who managed to see what he's got and isn't afraid to run him and isn't afraid to give him passing routes or a pass design that really plays into his strengths. You give you get the size. I don't think people understand how big him is. He's he's big for his size and everyone knows like you could go look it up. He's like almost six and a half feet tall, 240 pounds. at playing weight and fast, right? So you get the size, you get the speed, you get the arm, right? Which Young was a little while, but he manages to get that under control at Auburn. You know, they really craft around his skills and his strengths there.

And then you get a spot where they just ride him. And there's very, very few teams that have really sort of gone all in on one player quite like that team. Did go look at the number of players they have in the NFL off that team? But that's not about to say, why did they go all in on that? one guy. He was all they had. And you didn't really notice it while you were watching, but he was literally all they had. Not one other player on offense, I believe, played a game. Yeah. You get Nick Fairley on the D-line. And I believe that's, I believe that's it. In terms of that team, more than any other team, is carried by one guy. One singular talent.

And at any point, he does exactly what they need him to do. You want to talk about hitting all the right every time they needed a 150 yard rushing game out of Cam, they got one, right? They would come to a game and go, well, I guess we're a run team today. They would run. And then if they needed a big passing game, then they could get it from Cam. They didn't necessarily have the tools to do that. He just sort of forced it and made it happen. Who is he throwing to?

Philip Lutzenkirkin, you know, like RIP, okay? But he didn't have the tools to do that and yet made it happen anyway. I saw the LSU game live and I saw it at field level. and I saw it in a bunch of LSU fans. And I can't tell you, I've never seen a bigger negative impact on a team, on a fan base of psyche mid game than that run. The run against LSU. If you'll remember, Patrick Peterson is on the field.

Like there are real players he is going against. And he is running around them like it's the schoolyard. Like it's a high school tape. If you'd seen this high school tape, you'd gone, oh man, that guy's talented. Can't wait to see what, you know, real athletes can put him through. Let's see if he rises to the challenge. he made guys who later went on to play for, you know, a decade in the NFL look clueless on that run.

And he's not even breathing hard halfway through that. He doesn't hit the, he doesn't hit the gas until like about four seconds, five seconds into that play. All right. So let's run through the 2011 NFL draft. Okay. These are the things, which I think has a chance in the end is going down is maybe the greatest draft in the history of the NFL. Like it was really that incredible. This is a draft that had Bob Miller.

A.J. Green, Patrick Peterson, Julio Jones. Guys, you don't remember but were beasts like Alton Smith. Tyrant Smith, J.J. Watt. I've named a lot of Hall of Famers already, by the way. Robert Quinn, another beast. Mike Pouncey, Cam Jordan, Mark Ingram, Cam Hayward, Colin Kaepernick.

Like, I can go up and down. Richard Sherman was in this draft. Justin Houston. So many dudes. And if you had Jarrell Casey, my bad. I just keep scrolling down the wiki and finding more guys. if you do this draft again, the number one pick is still Cam Newton. And what I think is hard to explain to people is how crazy it was in a way that he was the number one overall pick. Because this was at a time where the idea of a pro offense still mattered, right?

And that was a high school offense they were running at Auburn. I don't mean that as an insult, but it was an offense that a high school coach basically brought and put in. Right. Malzon was coaching high school five years before he was doing this. where Cam is talking to John Gruden in the quarterback camp and being like, look, our play has just got numbers, right? Like we just got to get up there and move it. All the things that they said make you not a pro quarterback and all the things that you need to learn to be a pro quarterback.

Anyway, that's the number one overall pick. Because even with Von Miller looking dead at you, you don't pass on this without a really good reason. Single greatest value of a replacement player in the history of college football. At any position. At any position, right? Like maybe the defensive equivalent is endomiconsu in terms of,

because, you know, Indomacin Su was a great pro, but in college he was something else. Yes. Because his distance between whoever was going to take his place was so much different. Cam is, I'm holding my hands for anyone who's listening to the podcast in frame of the camera. I'm about to take my right hand to put it out of frame well above it to show where Cam would be because there was nobody who was, and I think this is where you go, okay, we get back to how different were you, right?

Like, okay, Cam Newton was the backup to Tim Tebow at Florida. Tebow, if Cam Newton had had time at Florida, he would not have made Tim Tebow a memory, but he would have put up numbers that just simply, it would have dwarfed what he had done, particularly because he probably would have had a little more talent around him than he had at Auburn. A little, a little, huh?

A little. Just a little. Like, look, and this is no knock on Tebow. The one thing that Florida has never pulled off is the undefeated national championships. Nope. With all that talent that they had at Florida, particularly the 08 squad, right? That's the one that Tebow started. All that talent, they still lost a regular season game, right? Yeah.

Cam Newton's Auburn Tigers. And they are Cam Newton's Auburn Tigers, okay? Coach wasn't no good either. they went undefeated in the SEC, including the 27-point comeback at Alabama. These things, at Alabama, at Alabama, at Alabama, at Alabama, and the L.S, okay, the LSU game was at home. Now that it's always tricky because LSU were white in all the games. But those two teams, they beat were teams that were easily the best two teams in the country the next season. And they were kind of the same.

I mean, there wasn't a terrible difference between what those squads were. Cam Newton beat them by himself looking unlike anything we'd ever seen according to a paradigm unlike anything that we'd ever see. Like Cam ushers in the true shifting of NFL offenses because look, you just got to do what this guy can do. Yeah. Right? Like this is, he's so big that all your, some of your concerns about what happens

when more of a run first offense, you've got to get out to wait with those. Cam is so big that like he shook off a car crash as a pro. That's, which if we go like, okay, are we really talking about Superman here and you go, kind of, kind of? Like it's not, it was his gimmick. And it's what he did when he scored touchdowns. But that's different. You had to adjust to him because the things that he could do. Like if you, I watched him play his best, one of his best games.

I watched him play against LSU in that season. I watched him play against Oregon in the title game. And, and Bo he wasn't good in that title game. And do you know what an off-night Cam Newton does? When's a national title? That's what an off-night Cam Newton does. Yes, it's amazing how bad he could be and still turn the tide of a game. It's amazing.

If you look at that Alabama game, what test do you want him to pass? If you say, okay, well, this is the best college football player of all time. Well, you know, what was his game? And I'm like, against Prime Bama, the heart of the Nick Sabin beast, right? Hell itself, he went in, took whatever he wanted, and left on the road after spotting them, you know, three TDs or whatever. Yeah. Yes. There are two guys I want to get to here because I think they can be somewhat easy to forget

because they become so somic, so commonplace in what we think about. I will start with LeBron James. Sure. To this day, if I tell you there's a guy that. size that does the things that he did coming out. You still kind of can't believe it. At the time, 6-8-240, the best open-court player basketball has ever seen with a computer brain who will eventually, like, develop a jump shot that makes them all-world unstoppable

and incredible. But no, like the first time, you know, because look, we had. I felt like we had heard a lot about LeBron, and, you know, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and they were playing some of his games on ESPN, but most of us really hadn't seen it. And it was one, we'd seen high school players get in. And all, even like, even back to Kobe Bryant, right? Even Kevin Garnett, they looked like guys who just came out of high school. They did not, they could play in the NBA, but they didn't look like they were like,

it would have been better if they had gone to college. Yeah. there was no reason whatsoever for LeBron James to step foot on campus and it was clear after one night. The best knock on LeBron James is a compliment. And it's this. The biggest weakness in bronze game is that it had to involve other people. Yes. That's it.

That's it. Like the only there have been people who made entire sports careers, sports media careers out of weaponizing. this and saying that, you know, he couldn't take over games. There's a thing in LeBron's head where fundamentally he understands that basketball is a team sport, maybe too much sometimes because sometimes he would trust his teammates, even when you didn't want him to.

That's the thing is you look at him and go, why would you ever pass it? You go, because that's the right thing to do, right? Yes. That's like, it is bizarre to say this for somebody who is as physically gifted as he is. And I mean out of bounds,

off the charts, not built like anyone else, literally built different dude. He's a cerebral player. He's an intellectual player when it comes to how he sees basketball. And that's crazy to me. By the way, I just want to say this as a point of enthusiasm, not necessarily of insight. There's like five different LeBron's, right? Like if you're selecting them, there's like five different ones. Big Braun is the coolest basketball player ever.

Big Brought, like Mecca Bronn. Like the one in Miami. Miami Bron. Miami Bron. Right? I'm talking like stone crab and shrimp appetizers, Braun. I'm talking brawn, big pancakes, Braun. Like, Bron, when he's almost got a little bit of body fat on him, almost.

I think this is like the same era where Tristan Thompson was talking about where he's like, where they were saying, oh yeah, Braun spends like $2 million a year on his body and he sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber. Then they asked Tristan Thompson about it. And he's like, man, his diet sucks. He needs like a stack of pancakes and like a bunch of candy. And then he comes out and he dunks on you. He sucks. He's different. Love that brawn.

Miami, the whole era of Miami Braun, man, that was four incredible years. It was the easiest four years of producing sports content ever because you knew topic one was the heat game. Like no,

not even Jordan commanded the attention of America in the way that those heat teams, did for that sustained four-year period. It was wild to look back on. And he was so good, right? So good. I do not think that even at his best,

I can't say that I think his best was better than Jordan's best. But there was no way that you were watching him play and you could think that something could have been better than that. Like the people who have LeBron in that place in their world, if you watched in Miami, I get why you would feel that way, right? Like it's like when you you mess around in here, they're like 10 different rappers that if you hear them, you're like, yo, nobody's better than this.

Yeah. Somebody has to be, but you're like, no, nobody's better than this. That's Braun, really for the first three years. The fourth year, not as much. But when he was the best offensive and defensive player in the NBA, listen, game six against the Warriors, game six against the Warriors, like games five and six, really, against the Warriors when they do come back and they are, you know,

and they do win the title in Cleveland. First of all, he won in Cleveland. I don't know. This is again, when I hit the point of like, we can't continue this conversation any further. You want a title for a professional franchise in Cleveland, specifically the Cavaliers. And you did it. I don't want to say single-handedly, but it's not happening without you. Like that's 100, like that's 100% certain.

You're not getting close without you. When he does that, it's like listening to Kendrick on Control. It's like watching Federer when he was in like the ninth set of a tiebreaker at Wimbledon where he manages to jump into the queen's lap and still put the ball over the net and then recover. Like it was at that point,

you're watching somebody do something at the highest level of expression, right? And then he does the block. Like before that, right? The block and then the dunk that wasn't. Like there's legendary in Chapel Hill, the tip dunk that wasn't, this crazy tip dunk that.

Vince Carter almost hit against Duke, I want to say in the 98 season, where it's just like, it was so cold that it's remembered even though it was missed, right? Yeah. That dunk where I don't see how he didn't break his arm when he landed on his hand, coming down on the ground and played through the rest of it. But if he makes that dunk the ultimate exclamation point on what they did to the warders, that would have been to me. The best in-game dunk of all time worldwide is Vince Carter jumping over that dude

to the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. But the best NBA end-game dunk of all time if LeBron had made that would have been that one. It would have been that one. And even then, he didn't need it. Like, that's the amazing part. Like, one of the best feelings in sports, and this is what you get with a lot of these guys is this, that when you're watching them, you go, that person's not letting it happen. You could lose, but that person single-handedly is not letting it happen, right? Again, our critiques of LeBron are all compliments, right?

He was maybe too intellectual in the sense that he actually involved his teammates because that was what you're supposed to do according to the game. And also, if you're doing that Jordan versus, you know, LeBron thing, you go, well, Jordan had a greater drive to win. You go, well, yeah, he wasn't psychopathic about it. Like this, you know, like all of the things where you go, hey, maybe that thing Michael Jordan did was kind of crazy. That's crazy person stuff You know He goes well I won You go I'm not arguing that

I'm also saying The thing you did was demonstrably insane Yeah and it was I mean It was years deep I didn't really quite recognize Just how I mean even while being part of it at the time And knowing like it was super dope and fun But when LeBron left Miami

And went back to Cleveland Which meant that they were running All the first run of Cleveland clips again You were like oh that was smaller brown Like Big Braun there was a certain value but young at its springiest LeBron right like a little bit less Bo Jackson a little closer to Randy Moss yeah it just a deranged level of talent that like if you want to know how spoiled you are it's that this guy has been around this long has been this good and has been this many

different types of players at this many different franchises right like Michael Jordan was one kind of player. LeBron has now been like three or four different kinds of players across the board, and he's been successful at all of them. This is hard mode. Like he played the game on super hard mode and one. Yeah. Now for the guy that made us be amazed by something that regular people never thought could be amazing. El Drico himself, Tiger Woods. Yeah. Tiger. Like, do you remember the, remember where you were for the 97 Masters? Because I do. glued to the TV is where I was because, you know, if you grew up, I don't know, your dad was probably not a regular master's watcher, I'm guessing.

No, sir. No, sir. No, sir. The socialist was not so big in the Augustin National. No, sir. You're trying to give the liberation theory guy telling him, what's the name of the tournament? You go, it's called the Masters. It's out.

It's done. Yeah. I can't sell math on that. No chance. Also, the Masters, generally speaking, all of that you can really get into if you play golf. And that's what made the Tiger Woods thing so wild was I never played golf or been anywhere near it while understanding. Oh, ho, ho, there's a thing happening here. Yeah.

It is astonishing to consider, because I grew up watching the Masters with my dad. Because that's, you know, that's the person who, like, hey, we're going to watch the Masters. Okay, we're going to watch the Masters. And I'd watch guys tear up that course before, but more often than not, you watch people be torn up by it for various reasons, whether it's the way the course is built, whether the pressure on the final round gets to you. And I've never seen anybody treat that like a put-putt course. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about somebody who treated it like there were windmills on the greens. somebody who couldn't like the astonishing thing is this that he treated it like somebody who they

who was playing a sport that they had to build new courses for which is literally what happened right you had to change the actual arena to suit his weaknesses if any that's that's what I saw the first time I played tiger as you go oh yeah they're going to have to change everything because of the way this guy does think. He took a queen and treated it like a flusie. Like, you think you're not, that's not how you're supposed to treat a woman of that stature. That's not what you're supposed to do.

And he's like, they all the same to me. They all the same. They all the same when you pimp it. Maybe an especially interesting observation given what happened to Tiger Woods later in his career. That is fair. That is fair. But hold on, but think about this. And you made the point with that.

And I think we can forget now it's been. so long that there are people who don't understand the concept of tiger proofing the course at the masters now is there a tinge of you know shutting down to black man hell yeah yes it is there but tiger woods so thoroughly dominated their course that they were like we have to make sure that never happens again now i would understand all that changing of the course if everybody was doing it but he won that by like 10 strokes or something like that yep they changed that course as much as they could to stop one man. And what is underrated about that was he still won it three more times before the last win a couple of years ago. But even with them specifically engineering this course

so much so that no left-hander had ever won the damn thing until they started tweaking the course and then left-hander started winning it all the time because that's how far they were going to try to shut down Tiger Woods because he so thoroughly wrecked their course and then went around and did it to everybody else's course too. The oldest course, the most venerable course in Golf, St. Andrews, Tiger Woods owns it. I don't remember, was it Pebble Beach in 2000, where he was like 15 under and nobody else was under par. Yeah. And you have to understand golf is a sport where people don't really post batting averages in terms of win percentage.

Like if you are Ben Hogan, Ben Hogan was and is still regarded as one of the best ever. and he's legendary, and he was considered to be terrifying in terms of his dominance, and he'd win 21%. 21% of his tournaments entered. Tiger, Tiger for his career,

and we're including, you know, like the bad years, right? Like, he could get up, I think, in 2013, he won 30%, 31% of his tournaments entered. Some people don't, touch a major and they're considered great golfers. Some guys earn a million dollars and they don't place higher than fifth or 10. Like it's possible to do that in golf. He would just outright dominate. No one does that. No one. It's taken this long. Like we do a lot of judging by peers,

right? Like we talk about LeBron and you go, okay, I'm going to reach back 20 years, right? We feel like we get one of these guys or one of these people in every sport once every 10 or 20 years. And then you finally have somebody to compare them to, right? It's finally like, ah, I finally have another mountain I could like measure this one off of. It's taken 25 years for anybody to get close to that kind of dominance, right? Yes. Like Scotty Sheffler this past year finally posted a season that was as dominant where if you saw him coming, you were like, oh, you know, I was thinking about maybe finishing third at the open. But I guess I'm going to be fourth because he's there, right?

Somebody who distorts the landscape. That's what Tiger is. Additionally, too, can I tell you this? You talk about like Bomani Jones trademark beat him downs, okay? And how much people can enjoy watching beat him downs? They might enjoy watching one. They might enjoy watching two. I lived through this.

People would see Tiger up by eight and be like, yeah, let's watch this shit. Got to get to tune in now. I've got to watch him thrash, people. It was week in and week out. People did not tire of watching this man red line it of breaking scoreboards. By the way, that 2000 US

open, I was wrong. He wasn't 15 under. He was 12 under. He won by 15 strokes. Do you understand what we are saying here? Nobody else was at three over. So I should look at what he did for the whole

first round, right? Because look, after the first round, I'm looking at it now, he was at six under. Miguel Anhe Jimenez was at five under, right? Miguel ended the tournament at four over. Okay? After round two, Tiger was eight under. Second place was two under. After the third round, Tiger was still eight under, but nobody else was under at all. They kept trying to come up with rivals for him. They tried every single one they could. Duval. Oh, Woods Duval. That's going to be a thing. Nope. Nope. Guess his career? Guess whose career took a nose dive through no real fault of his own. That's right. He's a little too rich to care.

Little too rich to care. Tiger Woods, the only thing that stopped Tiger was Tiger. Like that's, that's ultimate. That's totally true. Like, if you go and read one of the best pieces of sports journalism of like the last 25 years is, is Wright Thompson's insane deep dive on why Tiger finally managed to like level out, flatten and began to suffer. The only thing that took Tiger out was Tiger and his weird obsessions with his dad and military training and women and everything else that was in his head. That's the only thing that took him out. Golf, the one sport that everyone agrees where the opponent is you, it was true for him, right? It was true.

Other people might rightfully blame their clubs. Other people might rightfully blame lack of practical. time. The only thing that stopped him was him, man. The last futuristic guy I will mention very briefly, as we don't have that much career to talk about yet. However, Victor Wimbenyama is perhaps the most futuristic thing I have ever seen, right? Like just the very idea, because it's not even so much about, yes, part of it obviously is clearly like unreal athleticism, except he's a seven foot five guard. who also does tall people things does tall people things

and really when we talk about Tiger the thing that you can carry forward into talking about when Minyama is changing the geometries changing the actual measurements of what you're dealing with because what should be a respectable amount of distance for any other player that you're defending is not for him right

the shooting range for a man that big is bigger when he's there right I think video games help people understand how dominant these are because you go, okay, I can adjust the sliders. I can go in. Look at what you have to do to make a Victor Wenbanyama. This is something that if you created him in 2K 10 years ago, people go, I'm not going to play with you. It's cheating. You did something. I'm not going to use him. This is a real human being. And this is where you go, okay, what's the sort of thing that can stop him? And you go, really, the only thing that can stop him

is injury. And that's another thing that like maybe we haven't mentioned enough through all of these people who were remembering with being like super different and changing the game, right? Is that ultimately they're all really lucky. I know that they can take a lot of time taking care of their body and preventing injury and things like that. But like the other thing that you have to admit, and I guess this is humbling. This is the kind of thing where you go, hey, they're just like us. Only in one respect. They're dependent on luck too. Because LeBron, yes, he's taking great care of his body. He's had fantastic injury luck, fantastic injury luck for his entire career. Well, is it luck or is it a certain thing?

So did I tell you that Larry Fitzgerald did the Costa show that was doing of HBO. And I forget who it was. It may have been me, may have been Howard. And we were like, hey, man, how many surgeries have you had? He's like, none. What? A football player? None.

None. You would be surprised how many of those great players that we talk about going through. How many of them have had no surgeries? Yeah. And I do think there's a luck component, but also some people just build different. I mean, some people, those telomeres don't shorten quite as quickly. Yeah, some people, the red blood cells just pump a little harder. Yeah, I, it luck, that's genetic luck in a lot of cases, right, which they have obviously. But like, that's, you can take a lot of great careers and you can take a lot of great careers and injury will alter the trajectory. That's what I'm not hoping

happens with Wembenyama, because if you watch, him play, the ceiling does not really exist for what he's capable of. And on top of all that, Victor Wenbanyama is a team player? It's like, this is, when you go, okay, hey, what's a compliment? You can pay him. You go, I would not be a team player if I had that body. I would be the most selfish player imaginable. There'd be no reason. He a team player. You know, who ain't team players, his team, especially that goddamn Cisco. I have you watching so many games. Like, why don't y'all just do like we would in the video game and just keep hitting the alley up button over and over and over

again, Cisco. What are you talking about? Like, shout out to that dude that were a rookie of the year for them. We should have never found out. I should have never been passing that motherfucker to ball, man. Cisco, get a ball to the dude that's taller than the goal. Listen, Jeff Teague talks about that, about being told by Nick Van Exile. He's like, hey, listen, you want to be on this team? You want to make this team?

Get the ball to Iso Joe. Get the ball to Joe. Jeff Teague said he got the ball to. the ball to Joe and Joe's like, yeah, you're going to be all right, kid. I'm like, you know what? If I'm on that team, do you know what I'm doing every time I get the ball? I'm looking up, I'm looking up Big W. I'm speaking French. Yeah, I'm saying, bonjour, saffa, sir. Pass the ball to will. Okay? There's not much for us to talk about here. Yeah. Pass the ball to will. Got it?

Good. Spencer Hall. Check him out. Channel 6 and other places. My brother, I greatly appreciate you. No. Thank you, sir. Fun. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this three times a week and sometimes a little bit more. Brian Brumley handles 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.