The Ringer NBA Show - Ep. 86: B.J. Armstrong

Episode Date: March 16, 2017

The Ringer's Chris Vernon is joined by former NBA champion B.J. Armstrong to discuss MJ's popularity (5:00), targeting players like Draymond Green (14:00), the lack of development in the D-League (25:00), the age-limit rule (33:00), and Derrick Rose's injury-riddled career (44:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by GM Street. It's a new podcast we're launching this Friday hosted by Tate Fraser and former NFL GM Mike Lombardi. Oh, man, this is going to be good. The show is going to give you an insider's perspective to the NFL's biggest storylines week to week. You can find it on the Ringer NFL show podcast feed on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or wherever you get podcasts. Welcome to The Ringer NBA show. I'm Chris Vernon. Joining me today is former NBA player and champion.

and agent now for the Wasserman group represents Derek Rose, Draymond Green, Bismack Viombo, Javall McGee, Denzel Valentine, and a slew of others for the Wasserman group. He is BJ Armstrong. What's up, BJ? Hey, what's going on, guys? Appreciate it, and thanks for having me on. So before I get into all the business of basketball

and NBA topics I want to get to you with, I do want to ask you because March Madness is upon us, Once upon a time, you were a star guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes. What does BJ Armstrong remember the most about tournament experience? Well, how special it was to partake in such a great... You know, the excitement of the thrill of not knowing where you're going to get seated, where are you going to play, and I just remember it was the guys, the coaches, the athletic, you know, you're out of the fans.

So it was always great in playing under that much pressure, you know, where 40 minutes, every possession, every shot means something was just a great time. So it was very exciting. And I was very fortunate to play in that for all four years while I was in college. And one year, I think it was in 87, we reached the final eight. And we ended up losing to UNOV to go to the Final Four. And the great coach Tarkain. Jerry Tarkhanian, you know, was there.

But it was great. We loved it. I loved it. I loved the experience, and it's always a great time of the year, and I have fond memories of March Madness. It's crazy. I went back and looked it up, right? So in 87, you lose in this epic game, the UNLV. Turn around the next year, and you get to play UNLV in the tournament again, and you beat the brakes off of them before ended up losing to Arizona. And that Arizona team had Steve Kerr, Tom Tolbert, Sean Elliott.

It had Kenny Lofton, who turned out to be an amazing baseball player. Oh, thanks for the memories. You know, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to forget all this. Don't forget that UNOV team that we lost to, we were up 20 at half. So, you know, I had great memories, but also these memories hurt. Sean Elliott and Steve Curran. They constantly remind me. Jet Bushler and all those guys, Kenny Lothin was like, I play a professional baseball and I beat you, you know.

So these guys are always giving me a hard time, but that was a great team. and they made it to the final four, I think. I don't think they won it that year, but, you know, that was a great team. It's great to play in the NCAA tournament. Okay, so now the cloak is off. I can expect that your entire first answer was total baloney. Like, you resent, your memories of the NCAA tournament are horrible.

Oh, yeah, it's awful. I'm sitting here. I won't even watch the games now because of my memories. No, it was very competitive, and like I said, But it was definitely tough. It took me a little while to get over that. You know what? You know, I just went the final game of the season.

But, you know, you win some, you lose some. And the deeper you go, obviously harder it is to lose. So the ups and downs of that tournament, but it was a lot of fun to participate. Your name always stands out when you get quoted as Agent B.J. Armstrong, because people remember you from your playing career. Yet what I'm fascinated by is you don't hear. hear that, like when somebody says his agent blank, it's almost never a former player. And I don't know how many are in. There are certainly very few and not that have been extremely successful.

Why do you think it is so uncommon for former players to become agents? I can't answer that. I really don't know, but I can share with you my story of why I decided to get into the business. When I played, I was just always curious about how things, college, like, you know, how come that cannon sign was on, you know, on the rafters right there? You know, how did,

curious about this business, you know, why were we playing on CBS? Why were we playing on ESPN, Big Monday? And I was just very fortunate. I played with this guy in Chicago named Michael Jordan, who was just as popular as he was as a basketball player on the court. He was more popular off the court.

the business of basketball was exploding right around the same time that ESPN and all these other, you know, cable networks were coming into play and tilt side of the game. So I was just fascinated always about the business. And I had an up close and front seat of watching Michael Jordan how he was creating this brand that no one else had created. You know, Magic was big. Larry Bird was big. Dr. J. was big, but they weren't reaching the audience that of Michael Jordan was able to reach some

years later. And I was just fascinated with it. I was fascinated with the growth of contracts. I was fascinated with how the game was expanding globally. And I wanted to know how it worked from the inside out. And that's why I became an agent because I felt it would have been very helpful for me if someone, you know, not just showing up in shorts and tank top and playing in a game and getting 15 to 20 points.

No, I wanted to know how this business really worked. I wanted to know how, you know, Samsung became the official phone of the MBA or whatever the partner or the partnership was. And how he was able to work them. I saw how he was choosing certain partners to work with and not to work with. And I saw how coming together. You know, it's some type of hybrid now where you're getting your – because you're competing against other entities, if you will, to compete for that – for their dollar, for their vision. viewership. So I just became fascinated. I'm still fascinated with the business. I'm fascinated now with podcasts. I'm fascinated with where this business are going to be a couple years from

today. So this whole social media theme and how it evolves to me just, I'm just always curious of where the business are going to go, and that's how I got in the business. There's that business side of it, BJ, but isn't a lot of it the maintenance of players and those relationships and taking care of what they need taking care of? And so, So it strikes me that maybe some former players wouldn't want to put up with that side of it. Well, I think learned as a player, the one thing I learned kind of get into that, that lifestyle that they're into. There's nothing going on in a conversation that we're doing what we're doing and how this business is, because this is short-lived. You know, this NBA is only three to four years.

That's the average lifespan. You know, everyone thinks they're going to have this 10, 12, 13-year career. No, that's not the reality of the situation. We have a better chance of only doing this for a very short time than we do to have fortunately to play 11 years. And I had no idea that, you know what, when you have a LeBron James or you have an art job or my job is to help these people understand the facts. And I don't think, I think so many people think I'm a little different. I'm not impressed by the stars. I wasn't a star as a player, but I was able to play and have a very successful career by not being a star.

You're going to be, I have a different perspective, and I probably, because of my playing days, I probably can say things to probably these kids probably couldn't say or didn't understand themselves. That makes sense. What's the hardest thing to get across to them on the way the business works, that players don't quite grasp? Well, I think the hardest thing for people to understand is to answer the question. And I think we all have to answer is who am I? Who am I for real, right? We all come out of college.

We're the star player, right? We get the ball, we get the shots, we get the plays. Everyone in the NBA was at one time or another a star, whether it was high school, collegiate in Europe or whatever your avenue of coming to the NBA. The hardest thing to get people to understand is that you don't have to be a star to play in this league and getting young people to learn how to play without the ball. that's the hardest thing.

You know, the hardest thing for any player is to learn how to be an effective player without the ball. Because up until that point, you've always had the ball. So the player that makes the transition from learning how to play without the ball are probably the most successful players they ever play in our league. As great of a player as Michael Jordan was with the ball in his hands, because he's truly magnificent. He was phenomenal with his fundamentals of knowing how to play, without the ball, which allow players like myself to play alongside him.

I think that's the hardest thing for any young player to learn is to learn how to play and be an effective player without the ball. And once you can get young people to understand that, now you have the ability with so many wonderful, young, talented players, to build a team. And I think that's the hardest thing you hear coaches talk about it all the time. That's why they always want experienced players, because, you know, at 7, 8, 9 years, you understand that

it's impossible for me to do everything on a team. And young players, that's a very hard thing from them to learn because their entire life they've had the ball in their hands and they've always been very good. But up here, that's not the case if you're going to be on a good team in the NBA. Do you go out of your way to target those guys? Because obviously I look at the client list and you got, you know, guys like Draymond and Denzel Valentine, right?

I feel like in part you're talking about guys exactly like that. And so whenever you're recruiting guys, you're deciding who you want to represent, end, is it typically... Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I look for two things when I... I look for two things that I've learned that works up here at the NBA level. It's totally works.

You've got to have a certain level of talent to play up here. Mental toughness. Physically, you don't have... Reggie Miller wasn't the most physical imposing figure I ever played against when I played. But mentally, he was very, very tough, tough-minded people. Because tough-minded people can handle the truth. All right? You have to be coached up here.

Every great player that I've ever seen, it's such an advantage to be organized as a team once you come out on the floor so that you can perform and do your job. So it goes right into everything that we just talked about. If you don't want to be coached, if you don't have the ability to understand what constructive criticism is all about, if you don't have the ability to understand how to function within a group, you'll never be successful up here. So I look for those two things, talented players and tough-minded players. because those tough players can understand that, you know what, you don't have to have the ball and me call plays for you to make a contribution to us to win and be a successful team. And those players are the players that I look for in college basketball

that can make that transition because there's very few of us that actually have what I call that stand-alone talent. You know, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, LeBron, James, Kobe Bryant, those guys are stand-alone talents. They can go to any. But most of us, we have to get the right fit, and we have to be in the right. There are a few players. Russell Westbrook is a stand-alone talent. He can just go out there and do what he.

He'll go average 25 wherever he's playing. But some of us need to be in the right place, the right honest with who you are and what you're going to be in this league. Because a lot of guys don't want to hear that. And it just feels like the whole, like when you're talking about the tough minded of this stuff, it feels like even more important than ever, given all the distractions, because if you are young and you're not playing well, you know, it might be your coach is jumping on you, and then you just call your mom and dad,

or you call your agent, you can bitch to them, whatever. But you didn't used to go on your phone and have like a million people telling you how bad you suck. You know what I mean? Like, and these guys, they do, right? You post an Instagram photo and, like, the comments are, you suck or you tweet something. It's like, stop tweeting, go to the gym, you suck.

You know what I mean? Like, now, if you're not. tough-minded? Like if you take that stuff to heart and you let it bother you, I mean, it can kill guys, right? Yeah, and again, that's the toughness that you, that I look for. You know, I try to always help the guys to understand the environment in which they're planning. Social media is here and it's here to stay. And it's a part of our culture. And you have to understand what social media is and how to use it properly. And you have to understand that so that you can

utilize all of the resources and things around you to do your job. If you can't say no and get off of your social media, I find it very hard for you to be able to perform up here because you're constantly on social media, talking, you know, wondering what people are saying about you. At some point, you've got to turn it off and you got to go out there and play. And if you can't Accept criticism because it's so prevalent in our society today. I can post during the game. You miss a shot. I can tweet immediately.

Man, you stink. Man, trade this guy or what have you. So having this mental toughness to me is an advantage that's going to allow you to get rid of all the background noise. In the end, you're going to be evaluated on your ability to perform inside those lines. And do you have that ability to do that? And are you tough enough to do that? Sounds easy, but people are really, get really distracted by the things outside of the game. You know, you hear a lot of trash talking.

You hear a lot of, you know, guys tweeting and Instagram and Snapchatting and all these things. But in the end, who has the ability to turn that all off and just focusing in on what you get paid to do, which is perform and play and do it to the best of your ability. As an agent, how much coaching do you have to do regarding that? and how much monitoring. Do you just constantly monitor what everybody is doing that's on your client roster? Well, the thing that I constantly remind myself now that I'm 50 myself is that at one point, I was 20, 21 years of age and allow young people to grow, all right, and allow young people to make mistakes.

I'm constantly encouraging my kids and my clients. that, yes, I've made mistakes and I will continue to make mistakes, but if the people who are the most successful are the self-correcting people, how many times can you self-correct? How many times can you correctly, you know, self-correct yourself to go about doing things and say, okay, I made a mistake here, but you don't need me to, like, I know it all or like I was perfect. No, I did the same mistakes that you did at 22, 23 years of age.

But self-correcting people are the most successful. So I'm constantly encouraging them to have the ability to reflect and understand works and what doesn't work in this league, in this business that you've chosen. So I try to empower them. I try to make them responsible for their decisions and not just them on making good or bad decisions. Most of the things that they've, you know, they're going to do or have done, I've done it. Thank you, social media back then when we were planning. I just tried to really encourage the young kids.

kids, be who you are. Some of the things I have to offer some of the things, because I'm just talking to you from experience, maybe it would help you avoid some of those pitfalls that you're going to go down. But again, mostly what I'm here do is to encourage them because they know what they're going through. I've already done it. So I think that's very helpful for them, because I wish I would have had that when

I was a player that I could talk to someone who had already done what I was about to go through. we're not naming any names but like in fairness you never like snapchatted a picture of your wiener or something and when something like that happens do you just do you just laugh about it or do you get mad I do you know what I I I most of the stuff that happens I do laugh about it because I always wonder like what were they thinking and then I always try to put myself in there like if I was 20 years old would I be doing that and the answer is probably yes you know I mean, you know, so, again, I try to have a sense of humor about it. Yeah.

And but at the same time, what's great about it is you love to see you, and they may do things that's crazy. But then at 28, 29, it's that guy that now he can't score 30 at night. Most of this, I just kind of smile at it because I've seen so many things over the years that now I'm just kind of like, okay, that's just part of, you know, what this environment is that we've all chosen. But the real life starts, you know, once you retire, 35. Now guys are playing, you know, 38, 40 years old.

Watching Vince Carter down there play, I mean, it's great. And so, you know, I just think that's, you know, that's just, you know, it's kind of a human experience. So like I said, I just have fun with it. But it's great to see young people mature and growing to the people that we all knew they could become. All right, BJ, I want to ask you about this new collective bargaining agreement, and how it's going to affect things, but first, I want to tell you about Simply Safe. Did I close that window? Did I lock that garage? These questions can nag at you while you're out of the house,

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The biggest changes in your mind to the business of the NBA with the new collective bargaining agreement. Well, you know, I haven't had a chance to read it. But I think some of the, you know, the big changes clearly are, you know, the rookie skill contracts. what the max players could possibly earn in this league. And I think the big thing for the players, you know, fight for their share of the revenue that this league is making. I mean, that's just like it's the right for the owners to fight for their share of the revenue that this league is making. I think the one thing that we all can negotiate the best deal they can,

on their behalf. The players should, the league should, and then you try to get to that sweet spot, that common ground where everyone can benefit from the popularity and growth of this sport, of this game. So I haven't had a chance to read the Incollective Bargaining Agreement. You know, we've seen details. We've got like notes on what it is, but I'm just waiting to see the detail so that I can really understand not what it looks like today, but what it's going to look like and how that's going to play, you know, five, six, seven years because in the end, you know, you want to have the entire pitcher so that you can give the best advice

that you possibly can on behalf of your clients. And so I'm waiting to get that as well. One of the things we know that's going to be in it is the expanded rosters. And I'm interested in your point of view on this because you've got the – you'll have the extra two players. that can be flex players, that can go back and forth from the D-League team that a franchise may have to the NBA team, right? So do you think that that is going to be a big enough carrot for guys to want to, that more guys are going to want to be involved in the D-League rather than, because as I understand it, when you're in the D-League, you get paid D-League salary, and then when you get called up, you get NBA salary, and you can just, toggle back and forth.

That being said, will that be a big enough carrot for guys? And I know you represent a lot overseas that more guys will want to go the D-League route rather than going overseas to pursue their professional dreams. Well, my initial thought without seeing it is the guys that I work with. You know what? Give yourself the best opportunity. You know, don't look at the short...

Would you rather just play with and be... done or would you rather go overseas and play for 12 or 13 years at whatever, $500 to a million dollars tax-free? So I'm always encouraging people to think in the big picture. My initial thoughts when you were saying that is, okay, what exactly, the NBA is not a league where you come to develop. The D-League is not the place where you're going to develop as far as playing the game isn't played the same as the NBA. I'm not going to find Russell Westbrook, Damien Lil, are going to see that level of athletes in the D-League.

I'm not going to get the same coaching in the D-League that I'm going to get in the NBA game. But what I can get is to maximize my time, right? Now, if the D-League contracts are as a competitor, then that's a different conversation. So my initial thought is, okay, what is this involved and what opportunity? I don't think career in the D-League matters more than, say, a plan.

Given the opportunity, I just want to give them the chance. Not that you will make the NBA or not what you won't make the NBA. I want to give them the chance to have a career for themselves where they actually maximize their time and their effort and their energy. Say whether the D-League is the right players to think long-term and invest in yourself. You should always invest in yourself. And if you are the player that you think you can become, then look at it as, you know, I have it longer.

You take care of yourself and you're lucky enough not to have any significant injuries. So I always encourage people to think big picture. Has your perception of the D-League changed over the course of the last couple of years? Do you have higher thoughts on it than you used to or no? Well, right now, get them ready for the NBA. What is it going to be? are we going to mimic how we play in the NBA so that these players can, you know, what is it?

You know, we got to figure it out. It has to have an identity of what it is, what it wants to be. But more importantly, I think we have to give these kids an opportunity to figure out to how to create. If you're a young player, maybe if you play down there for one year and then you had a chance to go, that's, you know, maybe that's an idea. But I don't think long term playing in the D league is not your best. option. So right now, I think the D-League now, I think it has, I think the D-League doesn't want to

compete. So there's a fine way. You don't want the best players in college basketball to say, you know what, why go play at a major college, I can just play in the D-League? So it wants to be, and what's the best long-term solution so that everyone need to continue their business? That being said, if it was B.J. Armstrong's vote on the age limit, where do you come down? and what should it be if you don't agree with what it currently is? Well, I don't think it's so much. I don't think so much. LeBron James was ready to play.

They put their name in the draft. They have to draft them. That's very important. Just because I have to be able to see a LeBron James and make the proper evaluation on LeBron James. But no one will tell you LeBron James wasn't ready to play at 18. He was. But then that doesn't mean that another kid who may be the number one play,

in high school that year, he may not be ready. And I have to be able to see that and make that decision as well. I can't compare the number, just because this player is number one or this player is number two, to say that he's going to be the next LeBron James. That's not going to happen. So for me, the responsibilities who are making these decisions, what are we doing to properly evaluate these players so that we can say, yes, he's ready, and no. and that way the responsibility is on us.

Not the players putting their name in. If you put your name in and you're afraid not to draft this guy because you might miss the next guy, then to me it seems like maybe you guys aren't doing your homework. But that's just me. Just like when you ask me about the type of kid that I recruit, there's a certain kid that I like to. I'm looking for a certain thing that I think be able to partake and perform in the NBA.

I think that is you need to be as important. works up here and ourselves the opportunity to draft that player. We don't have to draft every 18-year-old just because they put their name in the draft. Okay, so you think kids should be able to leave after high school? Well, look, who am I to say right, wrong, or indifferent? I'm not here to say whether it's good or bad. I have, for me, based on what I believe and – but every situation is different. I can't – every situation –

is a different decision. Just like every kid that I recruit, I have to recruit and look at that kid in his unique situation. So every situation has a different story, a different story, different things that they want to achieve. I have to look at what kind of person is this, you know, as compared to this type of person.

Yeah, right, but it has to be, but BJ, you know. I can't group everyone into the same and put them all in one bucket and say 19 or 20 or what happens. you, every situation I want to look at that unique situation. Because that's how I look at... But it has to be a uniform rule. It has to be a uniform rule that the NBA has. They just have to decide, do you have to go to college for a year, or can you leave straight

after high school, or do you have to go to college for two years, or whatever it may be? Right? I mean, I get that you have to look at it as a unique situation, but the NBA just has to have a flat rule that applies to everyone. Well, I mean, that's their choice. I'm not here to tell the NBA out to do their business. That's their choice. You know, that's their decision that they have to abide by.

Again, to me, it's about people. And like I said, I look at people for who they are and not from what I want them to be. So if that's the NBA's route, hey, so be it. I will deal with that. But every kid that I look at is a unique kid. every kid that I meet or every person that I meet, I look at that person for who they are. So that's the NBA's decision and that's their business, and I'm sure they'll figure it out, but, you know, I want to look at that person and treat that person, you know,

for the person that they are allowing me to see. And every person and every kid that I've met, different things that they're able to, some things they can do, some things they can't do, and I just want to look at that unique person for who they are and not for, you know, something that I'm just going to impose my will because that's a rule. I don't know if that's the right thing as well. Understood. All right.

I got a little confused. Let me just phrase it this way. If you ran the league, what would the rule be? If you ran the league, what would the rule be? I ran the league. That's a big question, right? That's a big question. And then just saying a 19-year-old kid or a 20-year-old kid, if I ran the league, my first thing would be is,

I firmly believe in the educational, understand what they're walking into will help me do my business. Okay? And what I mean by that is handle the problems of a 19 or 20-year-old league of today's youth. Is this league and as executives? Are we prepared to handle today's youth in what comes with it? So before I could answer that question, I got to first look at myself. When I start looking in this league, what am I really expecting? to do when I have a 19-year-old kid.

Now, I'm going to get fired. What am I really expect when my owner or my general manager, but then the media is going to come down on me. Well, and in fairness, even in the- In fairness, even in your position, right? So, what type of environment, what type of an environment that I, what do I truly expect? Because as an MBA business,

I am charging premium prices. So to me, it just comes down to what am I trying to do, and two, what kind of environment can I have? It allows me to develop because you can't do both. Either you're going to commit to developing this 19 or 20 years, or you're going to, or you're going to commit to winning. Now, winning basketball games requires, for the most part, experienced players. So to me, it just comes down to what is the business that we are trying to achieve for that?

because clearly you don't want to miss a LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, a Kevin Garnett, a Dwight Howard. You don't have the answer. And it's a bigger question than just saying, 18 or 20 years old. You have to look at the big picture in what you're trying to achieve as a league. And I think that requires all 30 teams, all 30 owners, and the people that work in this league to really what are we're trying to do. Because a league, even today, are the younger players who've all come out one and done, the Carmelo Anthony, the Derek Roses, or the kids who came straight out of high school.

What are we're going to do as a league if the best players in the league are the younger kids? And we can't just overlook them and say what we did in the past because it's a new game, it's a new era. And these kids, I just think it's a bigger, deep enough into before we can really come up with an educated, because I believe in the educational system. At the very beginning of our conversation, one of the things you talked about was letting guys know what they are,

that that was the most important thing, business of basketball-wise. Well, you have got this odd, probably insane collision course in this with not just a role player type guy, but a guy you just mentioned, Derek Rose, who you have been part of Derek's story since he first came into the NBA. And you have this just ridiculous assent to MVP status in the NBA. And then a career that got crippled by injury after injury for some amount of time. and now there's been this season with the Knicks, which obviously the Knicks stuff hasn't gone all that well. And Derek has not been All-Star MVP level, whatever. If you can't just tell me like the emotional story of Derek Rose from your perspective and kind of how that ties into the whole, you know, what you are, what you used to be. You know, we mentioned Vince Carter earlier, right?

Like here's a guy that carries himself. He plays a role now in the NBA. and shoots three-pointers. Once upon a time, Vince Carter was the biggest thing in the world, right? And so it's hard to be the biggest thing in the world. And you represented a guy that was in Derek. At one moment in time for that flashpoint, when he's the MVP of the league, he's got the billion-dollar shoe deal and he's got everything going.

And then it kind of falls apart on him for a couple of years. Just tell me what that whole thing has been like over the course of his career. Well, I think in that particular case, I think, again, when you understand that injuries are a part of the game, nobody to play this game without having an injury. You hope that you don't have a significant injury during the any time of your career. And I'm very sensitive to that because there have been many injuries that have cut great players career short, you know, a lot Grant Hill. you know, Grand Hill, without question, was a Hall of Fame talent until an example. You know, Michael Jordan, people forget that he, you know, set off for a year and a half or two with a foot injury, you know, for a significant amount of time.

So no player is going to escape an injury. You just hope it's not a significant injury. What has it been like for Derek? Well, I think it's probably been talked about more than actually what really happened. He had a significant injury during the course of a game. Okay? He didn't get hurt working out. He didn't get hurt practicing.

He got hurt in a game doing what he loves to do. That's what he got. He got hurt on the job. That's just the fact. The hard part of all of this is knowing that when you're a game, and all of us deal with this, your game is predicated on your game. your athletic ability. Now what you're seeing is Derek Rose how to be Derek Rose knowing very well that he doesn't need to rely on the speeding quickness, but that he wants to be just as effective

while he's figuring out who he is. All right? Now, what does that mean? I'll give you an example. When Michael Jordan came into this lead, Michael Jordan was an athlete. He was an athlete's athlete. He was running, dunking, jumping, doing all those things. When he came back from the foot injury, he was a totally different player. Instead of you talking about him dunking on people,

you started talking about the fadeaway. The 30 points were still there. He just did it in a different way. The funny thing that I watch young players today is they're fading away and don't even know why they're fading away. The young Michael Jordan never would have shot a fade away. Now, what you're seeing with Derek Rose, because it's a different time, you know, we didn't have social media, we can dissect and do things immediately.

What you're seeing Derek Rose is he's figuring out how to play. This lead now is played at a pace. We're seeing games now. When Derek Rose got hurt, I think it was in 2012, I believe, somewhere around there. The game was played differently than it's played right now in 2017. We're seeing teams today play at a different pace. I just watched the game the other night with the Houston Rockets where they shot over 53s in a game. That's a different game than they were playing in 2012.

That was a different game than it was 50. The pace of the game is different. The speed of the game is different. How you play, how you defend. There's no more fighting through picks. Everyone switches. There's no more, you know, get the first good three. So this is a different game.

What you're seeing with him, and you see with any player, is they have to figure out how to play this new game because they miss a year or two in Derek's case. They've missed that time. You can't not make up lost time. But what you can do is figure out and go through the process to figure out how to be successful. So people say he's not where he's at.

Here's a kid now that's on a new team that's averaging 18 points in about five assists a game. That's not bad. It's not bad. That's not that. So he's not getting to the free throw line. That gives him 24 points a game or somewhere around there. What more can you ask?

Okay. Than it was two or three years ago. Steph Curry and the three ball has created a different game. The stretch four in our game today, and I say our game, and the NBA game today has created an entirely different way of playing and preparing for a game of basketball. one of my clients, Draymond Green, what his real effect is on the game, but I just know that he's really affecting the game as a 6-7, 6-8 power 4, and he can play center, power 4, he guards

1s, 2, 3s, 4s, and 5s. That there is as unique as I've seen. Ryan Anderson, who plays for Houston Rockets, that stretch 4 has really created problems and havoc on the game over the last two or three years. So it's a different game. Derek is learning this different game. He's learning that, you know, the system and the coaches and the way they play is different. To think that things will remain the same and play, if Michael Jordan was playing today,

he would be playing a different game because the rules and the way they play is different. Seven or eight threes as a team back when we played, that was a lot of three. They had like six or seven threes by himself at 40 years of age last night. Okay, he's not at. averaging 25 like he did that year. But to watch how he's changing his game to be effective. And it's all about consistently knowing what you can do night in and night out. The goal of every player that comes in the NBA is what he does every single night. So I am thrilled the fact that Derek is putting together a similar points of game right now at this stage in his

career. And this being really, I guess it's the second season of him coming back where he's be able to play over 60, 70 games. I'm thrilled. He's thrilled. Now he knows what he has to do. And I think next year, you will see Derek Rose because now he's getting the understanding of how this league is played. And I think you'll see him be even better next year than he was this year. He is BJ Armstrong.

He's got a podcast to BJMbuquer. And it's got a website, BJNbuquer.com. So people can go check out the podcast. You guys have all kinds of different athletes on there and obviously talk NBC. throughout the week. BJ Armstrong, thanks for listening another edition of the NBA show.

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