The Ringer NBA Show - How Will Kyrie Irving’s Early-Season Controversy Impact the Brooklyn Nets? | Real Ones

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Logan and Raja discuss Kyrie’s most recent polarizing actions and how this early-season distraction will impact the rest of the season for the Nets (2:00). Later, the guys give their flowers to Cavs general manager Koby Altman for the team and culture he’s helped build in Cleveland (38:00). Hosts: Logan Murdock and Raja Bell Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Production Assistant: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, this is Rob Harvilla from 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, the world's greatest loopy and perverse and inaccurately named music nostalgia podcast. We're doing 90 songs now because there's too many songs. Pearl Jam, J-Z, Jewel, YouTube, Cher, Hootie. These are just some of the names people yell at me on the internet because we're back. More great songs, more rad special guests, more loopy perversity. Join us once more on 60 Songs That Explain the 90s every Wednesday on Spotify. What's popping?

Logan Burdock here, Roger Bell there. Roger came on the program. He is a proponent of midday naps. How are you feeling right now, Ra? You just got up. When you got on the Zoom, I thought that, I thought that, you know, the West Coasters on the Mondays are usually the ones

that are kind of getting back into gear and stuff. And then you come on the platform and you over here like, what's up? What's popping, Ron? How you doing? Yeah, no, I'm good. It wasn't midday. It was mid-morning.

And I had taken my kids. kids to school. And I was up last night just trying to catch up on some of those games. You know, I don't get to watch them all live because some of them are hell of late. So I went to sleep. And so I was up. I was up late catching some games that I hadn't caught the end of. And I was sitting around like, yo, I'm going to just take a little nap. And it's about an hour ago. A little power nap. I woke up. And I'm a little grogier than I thought I'd be. I thought it would be more like rejuvenating. And I'm just, yeah, I'm just a little slow to it right now. That's all.

I think I got a topic that will rejuvenate both of us today. It was a bit of a weekend for the Brooklyn Nets. And I said, I think, either last episode or the episode before, didn't really want to talk about the Brooklyn Nets, right? They're not, you know, we don't know where they are as a team right now. It's early in the season, was taking a basketball lens towards the Brooklyn Nets. You know, they haven't, you know, a lot of offseason changes, you know, some turmoil, they have to get over.

So it's just, it's not, it's not the right time to judge them. And then, and then, you know, Kyrie, first he tweeted, and then he stepped to the podium, Raja. First, he tweeted some, some, a film with some anti-Semitic, uh, topics in it. And then, you know, he, uh, he went, played a game and he was at. about his tweet, which drew the ire of his, even the owner of his basketball team. And, you know, so many groups. And then he went back and forth and all of these things.

This is my thing, Rajah. And I don't want to get too much into, like, the topics that he tweeted about. Or, you know, we could get it to, you know, his response to said things. But my thing with Kyrie is it's always something. And not in a good way. It's always just, you know, just one of those. guys that when that it's always you always have at least like one of those guys on your team right usually it's a young guy you know but there's it's always something with this person why what

does it always have why does kairi always have to to be that guy and where do the nets go from here raja where what are we doing right now where do they go from here it's an interesting question because it's really early. And I think even Nets ownership and management knows that this was going to take a bit of time to gel. And you have guys coming back off of whole seasons missed in multiple parts of your team, Joe Harris and Ben Simmons. And so the jury was going to be out on them for a huge chunk of the first half of this season. right? I think that would have been a prudent thing for the people of importance in the Brooklyn front offices to think. We're going to have to make a determination on this, maybe a quarter of the way into the season, a third of the way into the season. It'll be too early anytime before that. But it's interesting because it's a recurring theme with this now, with the distraction of this. And again, I think you're right. I don't want to touch the content necessarily.

This just becomes every year there's something going on and there are distractions. And in the past, at times, they've been insurmountable. And so it just throws a monkey wrench in the way you look at evaluating this team because that now has to be a factor. You were hoping that wasn't a factor this year. You were hoping that this could be purely about basketball, purely about. about on-court chemistry, purely about ability to affect wins and losses. And I think, you know, now when you've got your owner having to come out,

it's a bigger distraction than I think even we're making it out to be this early in the season for a team that has been just disrupted year after year with destructions and for a player, quite frankly, who always seems to be at the root of them. And this isn't a Kyrie bash session at all, but it's just, it is what it is. Some people are magnets for stuff like that. They're polarizing in that way. They've always got something going on. And so I just feel bad.

I watched my man leave the tunnel the other night and just utter frustration and slam. I know, I know Steve. I've known Steve a long time. I've known him a long time. When I saw him blow up the other night at that official and lose his, his mind the way he did. I know that's in him. See, he carries himself really well and most people don't see the super fiery competitor, but trust, you don't become a player that's accomplished the things that he's accomplished unless you're an Uber competitor, right? So for anyone saying,

like, oh my God, that's not, that's not completely out of character for him to care that much, but he's usually under control enough to not let anyone see it. And he, and he hides it. And when I saw him lose his stuff, man, I was like, damn, dude. Like, that's, and then I, then there were the clips of him coming out of the tunnel. He looked really frustrated and, and I don't know where you go. I don't know. I just think it's messy. And if this is going to be a headache that we have to worry about, you know, lingering into the year, it's just messiness.

I don't know. I feel bad, man. I feel bad for, you know, I feel bad. It's just, right? We're not even in November yet. That's the biggest thing, man. It's Halloween, man. It's Halloween, dude.

Like, what are we? I just, because we all, we've talked about this just in general with early seasons. You're trying to figure yourself out as a basketball team. You're trying to work habits in, right? You're trying to, you're trying to just figure out what you're going to be this season, right? And become a team. and I will say this, and it's not, and it's not just what just happened with Kyrie just now

as like the root of his issues with this team. There's also like, we kind of swept this under the road because again, we didn't want to talk about the Nets too early this season, but you see clips like Kyrie called himself trying to hold other players accountable like Ben Simmons telling him to shoot the bar. He can't foul out. How do you act like, how do you be, You can't be a leader like this when you're doing other shit that's distracting from the common goal, you know?

And I know that the Nets said, the Nets had a player's meeting following their last game, which a players meeting the first month of the season just isn't great. No matter how you slice it in those things never work. But my thing is this, though, when you, when you, hmm, I'm just, I'm gathering a lot of thoughts. here, but when you have these many problems early in the season and the root of it is one guy, you could say all those things like how Katie is saying, this isn't affecting the locker room, this isn't affecting it. I'm not in the locker room, but it's definitely affecting the locker room. There's no way, yeah.

It's 100%. And now it might not affect the locker room on surface level. You might not walk into their locker room and look around and be able to feel a different energy coming from different people because of these type of incidents or this specific incident. That's not how it necessarily affects a locker room. It's not as superficial as that. It's not right there. But everyone has an amount of emotional bandwidth, right? Like there's a, there's that, you know, things that you can absorb of emotions that you can give out and take in and vibrate off of you. And there's only everyone, it's like an odometer on a car. Every car is

is different, right? There's no set number. There's no set amount of shit that you can take before it's too much, right? So we're all walking around with these varied degrees of emotional bandwidth. And in an organization, any sports organization, especially, you know, in these professional leagues, there are so many things that are trying to be sorted out within an organization. There's so many players, there's so many staff members, there's so many moving parts that a lot of a coach or a general manager or coaches emotional bandwidth is spent and rationed portioned out so that they can get by, bro.

You know, like, I got 10% for Logan today. Hopefully his problems aren't. And that's just on an average team. That's on an average team. That's on an average team. And so I would make the case that in Brooklyn, because of where they are as a team in this process and coming off of last year,

you've got more going on than normal. that everyone is kind of expending emotional bandwidth on. And it's natural. It's nothing to point a finger at. There's no blame game going on with it. It's just the price of doing business, right? But when you have to now start spending some of that on situations like this and dealing with the fallout of this and now we're rushing people to media sessions

and now we have to shut down media sessions and now as a general manager, I got to call Steve in and say, hey, Steve, do you see what happened with Kyrie today? Kyrie and the media are into it again. Just be aware if you're asked the question. Here's how we want to approach that. If they ask X, Y, and Z, you shut that down. That's just taking emotional capital out. It's just draining me.

Like you're taking away bandwidth for shit that I could be using somewhere else more productively. And that's how it starts to affect the locker room. Can you dig what I'm saying? It puts people more on edge. It saps people. So now a normal, benign. conversation between Steve Nash or any other coach or Sean Marks and any other player that would normally be like, hey, man, I don't want to really necessarily have this conversation with you

right now, but I have more than enough in reserve to hold my tongue, let you bounce this off of me if you're unhappy, absorb it, come back to you in a rational way that would keep the ball moving forward. I can't now do that because I'm fried because of all the shit that I've been dealing with. And so now I lash back out at you. Right? Like I didn't, I didn't give you the response that would have been best for the team. And now a snowball effect has started, right? So now you're back in the locker room. Bear with me. And you're a little bit on edge because this conversation didn't go great. Right. And I approach you on some shit that you normally might be like, Raj, come on with that

bullshit, man. But now you're fried. And so you lash out at me. And now you and I are beefing. And that's how it works so you can't afford for all of these distractions to be creeping in and steal an emotional bandwidth bro because you've been around kairy do you think that he consciously knows this because every time this is every single stop he's been at right where the the emotional bandwidth to some degree is fried by the end of by the time i don't know about cleveland necessarily but at you know there were reports that in boston um i mean the emotional bandwidth last year with the net was just fried, you know, just at that point. Do you think he consciously knows these things that he's doing this?

Or like, what is the cycle normally with Kyrie? Is it, I'm going to go do so, I'm going to say some wild stuff. I'm going to reel it back, get my teammates in back on my corner. Like, what is the, what is usually the cycle when Kyrie goes through, you know, something like this? Kyrie is not a bad guy at all. You may or may not agree with some of his opinions. or some of his theories or conspiracy theories, but at his heart, I don't believe him to be a bad dude.

Kyrie is very Kyrie-centric. So does he do it on purpose knowing that this is not really, but he doesn't really care, if that makes sense? So he's just going to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, without any real concern for what it's going to do to the team. And this is leadership. And this is why he didn't really affect emotional bandwidth in Cleveland that way.

Because LeBron, and this is what LeBron doesn't get credit for, enough. LeBron makes sure that everything is in line. All people are in line with LeBron's vision and LeBron's culture. So, you know, there's not a whole ton of a lot of things, you know, outside of the scope of playing basketball. that coaches have to deal with, the general managers have to deal with. Sure, they got to figure out the, you know, the player situation. Are we trading, so on and so forth? But you rarely get a ton of distractions.

Like, that's what, you know, Westbrook's kind of unique in that regard. LeBron usually has people kind of, you know, on the same page with him. And he handles that. And Kyrie was like that. Because when you have LeBron, if a young Kyrie is going to defer to anyone and be in line for anyone, who's it going to be? It's going to be LeBron. It's going to be LeBron.

And so to some degree he was. And then he began to kind of outgrow that, right, in his mind. And that's when he started wanting to leave, but he's not a leader. He's not. He's a brilliant basketball player. But he doesn't really care. This was a very long answer to your short question. He doesn't care.

So he just does what he does with no concern with how that's going to reverberate around the organization or what the ramifications are going to be for the people that will have to answer the questions for him every day because that's what it, you know, that's a thing. why the fuck I got to get up there? I don't want to go in on a fucking Monday as as Joe Harris and I'm not speaking for Joe Harris. I'm just using him as example.

Like I had a great weekend. I didn't do shit. I was enjoying my time trying to get healthy, ready to play some ball. And here I go, got to answer anti-Semitic questions about fucking Kyrie Irving. I don't want to do that shit.

Yeah. And so he doesn't care. And so he's not really a leader. And so that's why I said. And that's why it's even funnier when you were talking about like Irie trying to take the position of leadership. Don't.

just follow. Just get in line and just follow. The thing is though, the thing is though with that is he's in like, now it's the difference in organizations though, right? You spoke about LeBron. And also that was a specific time in Kyrie's life. He was a young dude, right? So it might have been easier for him to fall in line for someone else's leadership.

For sure. But there's also the Nets organization where a lot of their quote-unquote leaders are passive people, right? Like, or just like, oh, we're going to crowdsource. We're going to, we're going to work together. And they see Kyrie at a different light. They see him as a face of a franchise and taking all these responsibilities that, you know, they should not.

They should not. But that's what happens. But here's a thing, though. But it was just about the way that how Kyrie came to Brooklyn. He came as like, I'm doing you guys a favor, right? So he's almost in. boldened to act this way, right? And you have, you know, his, and it's a different relationship that he has with Kevin

Durant than he has with the LeBron James, right, where it's more of a partnership than a, nah, man, you're the little homie, you tie it, but you're the little homie. Now this is like, we're brothers and we're co, we're co-leading this ship. Yeah. I mean, in theory, in a perfect world, yes. KD has to be the leader of that team. And here's where Brooklyn has come up short. And I mean, amongst, I guess, a lot of places where they've come up short with this iteration of the Nets.

They knew that KD wasn't a vocal leader. They knew that. They also knew that Kyrie wasn't going to lead because I fucking told them that. So they have failed in finding the person that can come into. that locker room as a sub-level player to them and lead a character dude, someone that can come into that building. And even if he is, you know, averaging eight or nine points a game with a hellified defensive effort or rebounding effort or assist, whatever his real job is, he can be the backbone

of culture setting and leading and holding people accountable because he is verbal and he's got a steady emotional state, like you don't have that. And that's where they've come up short because I don't know Kevin well. I don't. But he seems to be kind of moody. And I've heard that he's not the most vocal in terms of leadership. And so if you've got two dudes like that and then a bunch of guys, I mean, I kind of know the rest of those dudes. I don't know that they're culture driving leader type of players.

Then you've failed them. Well, the thing is, though, Roger, they've been, from the moment that they signed on, or they signed on, they have been emboldened to not care about authority, right? They, when they got there, when Katie got there, he signs, so Kyrie signs, and what else did they do? They say, oh, hey, get our homie DeAndre Jordan, we want to get him paid to, you know? We want to go get him paid, give him some bread as well. never mind what he had done in previous seasons that would justify he is not worth the contract that he did right but i mean you're worth what they give you but still you get what i'm saying sure so from the moment that they were that they were even step foot on in brooklyn they had the opportunity to make it in their own way and you could see it's not worked out at all at all like we're starting to see in a lot of ways that

these two, the two stars on the team would probably be more effective in other situations and have been way more effective in other situations because of what other situations have done for their personality or how they drive with their personality. And now we're just seeing kind of what, like,

what we were, the worst case scenario of when they signed together. Because I remember when they signed to Brooklyn, both Katie and Kyrie, there were both of like, uh, okay, but their talent, suggest that they could do something special. But when you kind of layer it back, this thing never really had a chance in hindsight, right? Like, it never really had a chance because you embolded,

you embolded two players to make it in their own light. And it's not a partnership. This was never a partnership. And that's, it's pretty sad when you, when you look at how it's come because no one is winning in this scenario. No one. No, it's,

it is unfortunate that it's played out like this. And I don't mean to make it sound like the reason where we are is because of Brooklyn brass. That's that's not necessarily it. I mean, they're culpable. But, you know, Kyrie and Kevin are equally as culpable. And so, like, you know, in any relationship, when you, when you are starting out in that, like, my young son, Dia, for example, like, he's just getting out there, man. He's, you know, he's growing up a little bit. He's out in the world.

he's got friends and you know some of his friends came at him sideways the other day for something he chose to do without them and I said to deal I said hey man do you is that are you okay with that

like do you enjoy being being spoken to or harassed the way you're harassed does that make you feel good for having someone question your decisions like that and he was like no I said well

this is really early in your relationship you need to check that shit you need to check it right now and you need to make it known that they can either be cool with you and you can continue to be friends and all of that but they got to respect your boundaries or then you don't need to be friends with them and that was my advice to him but that's my advice to the nets too hey man this is this is the way it's going to be i don't give a shit i don't care like these are our parameters and we're going to this is how we're going to for as much as the Kyrie, the Kevin Durant's, the LeBron's, the, the greats, want to do things their way? Do you know what

they also respect? What's that? Structure. Limits, boundaries. They respect that. They might not always love it, but they respect it. And I feel like as a parent, you know, if you forgive me for vacillating between these two scenarios, like I feel as a parent, my job isn't to always be your friend and make you feel good and tell you something that you like. My job is to try to help you get where you're trying to go. And sometimes those are hard conversations. Sometimes there's some structure in that conversation. And there's some penalties for the shit that you do outside of the scope of what I told you was going to be allowed to happen under the roof.

And I don't think Brooklyn's done a good job. So now you've got kind of chaos like that, right? We've got chaos. But I will take it back to this again, where it has gone wrong because I do think it could have work from a talent perspective. And I know this because I had these conversations. When were these conversations, Rob? When were just over the years?

These conversations were before they even went to training camp for the first time. It's when a staff was being assembled in Brooklyn. And we were talking about the makeup of the roster. And I had way more experience with Kyrie. And Steve had way more experience with. This is when you were like thinking about going to the staff. Absolutely. Yeah.

And we're just kind of talking out how Steve wants to play, what his philosophy is going to look like, how exciting some of the pieces are on the roster. What else do you think we would need? Like we're having these conversations as I'm pacing my backyard around the pool. I was excited. You know, this was cool shit. And one of the things that we came to after talking for a while was the need. For that type of player, the names that came up at the time were like Andre Aguadala or PJ Tucker. Names like that, not necessarily those guys, but those were some of the names of a guy that could come in and had the kind of gravitas, maybe had a little bit of tread left on the tire where he could actually get out there because you have to, right?

It can't just be somebody sitting over there. It's got to be somebody in the trenches with you. but would come in and provide that type of steady, stable, leadership, professional, grown-up accountability. And they just haven't been able to find the piece. And that's unfortunate because I do think that that piece would have meant a whole lot to this process, more than I can even articulate on this podcast. It would have meant a lot because they are both brilliant players. But they're both individuals, man.

They're indie. They're indie guys. You take either one of them and put them on a team with real established culture and they don't have to be the one that answers every question or the buck stops with them every night. And you get a different human being out of both of them, I'm sure. That's just interesting you said that because, I mean, Kevin obviously had that in Golden State and Kyrie had that to a large extent in Cleveland, right? But this is what's interesting. just about, I guess, human beings or players in general, some people just aren't satisfied with their position for better or worse, right?

They're just like, like, for whatever reason, Kevin did not like the structure of Golden State. And it was untenable for him to stay there, right? And, you know, there's always a human nature of, man, I got to get out of this situation. I got, it's going to be better. I go to Brooklyn or I go to New York. It's probably going to be better than this. I just can't take this anymore. And then, or Kyrie said, thinking,

because I don't think I've ever seen LeBron just say, this is probably the only time where I've ever seen LeBron say, I guess he's saying this not what Anthony Davis is just not happening. But like, I'm giving you the franchise. I want to see you take this and make this into your own vision. I think that's what LeBron was saying to Kyrie. It just didn't work out that way, but I've never seen LeBron do that, right? And then he goes like, no, no, I can't do this anymore.

I can't be under this. And I need to go somewhere else, right? Goes to Boston and then comes here. Are we just seeing another example of the grass is just not always greener? Yeah, that's exactly. Yes, that's exactly what that is. And we all, all humans go through that transition of being a son or a dog. or a nephew or a niece or grant, whatever, and growing and getting older and feeling like,

hey, I could take on more of this responsibility and I can handle some of these things. And that's healthy too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Let me help you, you know, some of these bills now are mine to pay. Like, let me, let me, you know, carry more of my weight around the house as I grow up and do some things from mom and dad. And then, you know, you get out of school and you got a job.

and now, now, you know, the dynamic shifts. You know what happened with me and my dad, where it's more, you know, my dad and I are, we're both grown men now. And, you know, and then there comes a point where, you know, I'm younger, my dad's older. Like, there's still real reverence and I love my daddy's all. Like my dad is my everything, man, but,

but more of the stuff kind of revolves around our family now because we're the younger family, you know? And so that happens. But, But when you're when you are in the the younger stages and the development stages and you have a really solid person and thankfully my dad was dad and my mom was dad for me. And I'm sure, you know, you had that as well. But when you have those figures, you have to do everything you can to learn from them.

And you have to, you know, you have to learn those lessons and take the things that you like about it and maybe change the things that you don't like about it and be always tinkering with what you're going to be when you get the helm. And I don't think, you know, I don't think Kyrie really did that in underneath LeBron. And so it's okay. He was just ready to jump ship? Was he just always ready to jump ship, you think? I don't know because I didn't have those conversations in fairness to Kyrie.

But, but if, you know, I always talk about what, what the Aaron McKees and the Eric Snows and the DeKembe Matumbos and the Michael Finley's and the Nick Van Exels and the George Lynch's and the Popeye Jones and the Avery Johnson's, what what they did for me teaching me. had to be a pro. I watched them. I studied that. Now, my game wasn't going to look like theirs. I mean, I was a different person. And I would fail in some regards and succeed in other regards and imitating them. But how to be a pro is what I was trying to figure out.

How does a kid who was never, ever given shit in terms of an accolade on a basketball court, how does he figure out how to be a 10-year NBA? pro. How can I make this work? And so I made it my mission to watch those dudes and figure that shit out. And I don't think he did that. I don't think he said, God, I might have the best leader and the best culture driver in ever. Yeah. And let me soak all of this in. And so then when I am ready to have my own team, I hit the floor. He didn't, I don't, it doesn't look like he did that. Yeah. I, I, I, we can go out. I'm sure we'll have a lot more. season to talk about Kyrie, but I do want to put a bow on it for today.

If you're the Brooklyn Nets right now, can I just, can I just say something though? Just before you go ahead, go again, because this was Kyrie-centric and everything like that, there's no general beef with Kyrie. Again, I think he's a solid human being. We're talking about leadership. When you get put in the big boy seat of an organization, there are things that You have to provide in order for that organization to reach its goals. And in that context, I stand by everything I just said. It's one thing to see that big boy chair and to go to see it, you know, like, especially in Cleveland, you know, and you see kind of like how, and I think Kyrie's alluded to this in the past. But you see how LeBron kind of carries himself, right?

And he kind of, as a leader, I'm going to be honest with you, just in my short time being like, I've been around LeBron, but I haven't been around around LeBron. But in the times that I've been around and you go into their locker room pregame and things like that, he kind of makes that make that shit look easy, man. But for a guy that is in charge of every single thing that happens in that locker room, he makes it look easy to a to a teammate that's like, man, I could do that. I could do that. You know, I can, I can, you know, get the dinners ready, make sure I make the playlist, get, like, get team dinner outings and, and, you know, just bring a team together. I could do that. I could do that if it was my show, you know.

And, but I've seen with Kyrie to get, he's gotten to that table where he's a franchise guy, and you could see that he probably thought he could do it. And it's not, it's not bearing out right now. It's just the bottom line right now. Right. And you know what the beauty of this is? Can still change it. Can still change it.

I mean, you know, tigers really change their stripes, but you could, you could. In theory, you could. And here's another thing, and I know this wasn't about LeBron, but let me just say this. Like great, great people tend to do this. Dudes who, you know, just are uber successful people. They don't always care if they're the smartest in the room or coming off like they're the smartest in the room. They surround themselves with people who are smarter than, them that can they can be fountains to their to their soul that can help them problem

solve in ways that maybe their third eye forgive me can't isn't open to you know and then you empower and you trust them and so i've always said that i'm a lebron fan on the court i i love everything he does but i'm more of a fan of the the the the way he moves off the court with his brain trust. And yeah, like sometimes they, they get, you know, a bad rap for manipulating things and stuff like that. But like, that in of itself is brilliant. Being able to move pieces around a chess board of an NBA that players, especially young black men, have never ever been historically able to do. That's a, that's a win. And so he surrounded himself with really, really smart, laser-focused people that help him and help take a lot of back to this emotional

bandwidth off of him because they're able to handle some of that stuff. And he can drive in his lane. And he can handle all the stuff that falls under his umbrella. And so I just think he's special in that. And I think aside from the basketball part, when he leaves and he's done, I think in terms of leadership, I mean, people are. going to miss that. You're going to look back and be like, Jesus, we didn't appreciate that. Yeah, for sure. I do want to put a bow on this. Shout out to LeBron, but I do want to, I want to put a bow on this Nets situation. I have a question, real question, because I have what I would do in this situation, but I want to get your take first. When you, if you're

in Brooklyn Nets front office, at this point of the season, we only have one win. I think they're like one in five. They played a Paceous tonight. Do you just consider, I'm just going to trade I think it's going to trade both of these guys and just get on with it and get picks or get what I got to get and just cut bait. We've proven that we are a front office who can win with less talent and just start over? No. No? Okay. I don't because you didn't prove that with this iteration of your organization.

There's so many things that have changed in that building. You had different people at the top. You had different people. So no. I wouldn't. I mean, at this point, I would, again, still see what we look like in 15 more games, you know, 12, 15 more games. I want to know what we're going to look like before I start doing anything like that.

I don't know. What about you, bro? I mean, what's your thought? I mean, I'm of the mind that you might want to just, I think you should cut off. I do. You think what? Because I think you should cut bait. Because I don't think that, I mean, you might be a little bit more optimistic than I am,

but I don't think that this is getting better any time soon. I mean, like I said, we're not even in November yet. We've already had the offseason, an offseason from hell if you're a front office. You had these trade requests and all these things going on. You try to make it happen in the first few weeks of the season. It's, you be, and you're trying to do it. on the low, and then this thing happens over the weekend. It's the biggest story in the NBA.

And nothing from the past suggests that this is going to continue to work. There's, there's, there's, I can't argue. I can't argue with anything. There's nothing. It's just like, you know what I'm saying? It's just like when you're about, this has all the makings of when you're about to break up with your partner or something like that. And there's those little times where you can keep convincing yourself that it's going

be okay and it's going to do good and we're going to and everyone else sees that the writing is on the wall and you just break up with shorty you know what I'm saying that's what this seems like and I just feel like we're what are you going to know in a month that you don't already know now yeah you're not going to give kirean extension after all these things that are happening you know Kevin's already said that he might he already is expressed that he would want to trade at some point what are we doing I just don't see a path to the success under the current or duration of what's going on right now. So that's fair. And while I don't have a real argument for any of it, I would just, my caveat to what I said would be, I wouldn't just blow it up just to blow it up.

Now, if the right deal came along, I wouldn't be afraid to move pieces if that makes sense, right? So maybe I should clarify that. I'm not just saying our shit. I quit. Like, let's give me what you go. if you come, if you stepped to me correct with something that makes a lot of sense from my franchise, I would not be afraid

if I were Brooklyn. But I wouldn't be out there. I think there's time. I don't think you have to do that. Man, it's tough times in Brooklyn, man. I'm all of Brooklyn fans, man, who feel for you, dog. Let's take a quick break. We're going to talk about a success story in the Eastern Conference.

And we are back. Honestly, Roger, just for the next to last segment, we just went so hard on the Kyrie stuff. I just want to give flowers. I want to get flowers to Kobe Allman, who was overseen just a, what would have said, Cleveland Renaissance? They're five and one right now. They just beat the New York Knicks. What do you think about this, this Cleveland team and where they can go?

Man, they had a really good offseason, got down to Mitchell into the fold. And it's funny because we talked about what I always think about this with. teams, right, who are trying to build. And they build, this has been like the new age on how you build a team, which is we're going to get a whole bunch of, you know, we're going to do really good in a front office, we're going to draft well, we're going to do all these things. And if we get a chance, we're going to get a superstar or a star to co-sign this movement that we're doing, right? And that, we talked about the nets that how that could go wrong. How was it, it's gone just so much better for the Cleveland Cavaliers so far, right? And I guess that's the guys that you bring in,

but what have you thought about the job that Kobe Alman has done? I think Kobe's done a fantastic job. And I do think that success through a process like the Cavs have been going through, while you have to give some to the players for sure, it has to kind of be equally parsed out to management. And the culture established in the building and around the town, and in the locker rooms. And Kobe, I spent a lot of time with Kobe

when I was on David Griffin's staff there in Cleveland. And he's a really good down-to-earth dude, super bright, had basketball in his background on a lot of levels and had a great feel for it and a great feel for people. He was really good with people. And I think that's part of it. And I don't think you can underestimate how much a part of it that is. Now, you know, definitely some shrewd moves, some really good draft picks, you know, being able

to swoop in when none of us saw the Donovan Mitchell to Cleveland card being played, but there he was. And so, you know, obviously very good at his job there with the nuts and bolts of the job. But the behind the scenes, management of people, making people feel wanted and important, and part of the family, I think is really cool. And then, you know, he's got another guy in Mike Gansy. I want to give a shout out to Mike Gansy who was on the staff. I think he was their G-League affiliate GM when I was there, played at West Virginia, Cleveland guy.

But he's the assistant GM. I mean, he's the head GM now and Kobe is president or something like that. But anyway, they've got a really good staff of guys that are good, that work hard, that grind. But our basketball guys played were around the game. and are great people people, forgive. That's great people people is an actual thing. That's an actual thing to say, yes. And then you know who I want to give a shout out to straight up?

Who's that? Fucking Kevin Love, man. Kevin Love, there's been a lot of movement around there with younger players. He's been through different highs and lows as a cav. He's had frustrations. He's had successes, but he's still there. He's still standing solid 20, 20 minutes a game, roughly 12 points a game, eight boards.

And you would be naive if you didn't think that his voice and his leadership was playing, wasn't playing a huge part in what's going on there too. So I want to give a shout out to Caleb. That makes sense. What is what the Cavs done kind of say about team building in this era, right? Like what is the perfect way to team build if you can draw it up,

is it drafting, getting good guys in the building? If you were in that front office, how does that front office go? And what does that say about how you should or should not build a team in the NBA? For the draft process,

the one that I went through, and the free agency that I went through, there was a emphasis put on character. And, And I remember when we took, I think we took Chetty Ostman in that first round of the draft that year. Really cool experience being in the war room and sitting there watching the picks go by and the phone ringing and stuff like that. It was a really cool experience. And Chetty's playing well.

I mean, he's 26 minutes a game, probably, you know, 11 and a half points. But I remember, I think Chico Averbuck was maybe the scout that was on the European Trail. Trent Redding was out there too. but it wasn't just all about who he was as a player, you know? And there was a lot that went into it in terms of the dive into his personal, the backstory on who he was, the touching base with all the people around the club that he was playing for. And they felt really comfortable with him.

And so I guess, and I don't get paid to do this anymore, I didn't stay long enough to really learn how to do it, but I would guess getting the, getting the proportions right of good player to good person is really, really important. And if either, if it's out of whack in either way, if he's a really good player and a slight shitbird, you might have a problem as a human being, right? A shitbird is a human being and a really good player.

Or if he's not a great player, but he's just a great dude, you could be in trouble too. So you've got to get that recipe right. And way too often in the NBA, way too often in the NBA, you see people take the swing at the tantalizing talent and disregard the human being that you're getting and what that human being brings into your locker room. And you rarely ever see the other one. I mean, people don't miss on, hey, great guy. Well, they become coaches.

We're going to throw a bag at the great guy. They become coaches, brother. Right. Fair. But a lot of people miss on, no, yo, man, this guy can really. play. And so we're going to like sweep some of this stuff under the rug. And yeah, you might get away with it sometimes, but it doesn't always work. And I think Cleveland gets that right more often than not. They find guys that have that equal parts, great player or just really solid player and whatever

you're asking them to do and really good dude. I mean, we always just, we always, we always, whenever, I know, we can end on this, but we always, I think that's a lesson. We always get tantalized with the star, with all that, because we just want a quick fix. We want to just get the franchise on the right path, so we get the tantalizing talent. And you forget, you need the whole package, man.

You need solid dudes in the locker room, bro. That's life. That's life. Yeah, yes, yes, because you don't want to go straight up. You want to go just to, I don't know what I'm saying, but you want to just a steady rise, just continually throughout. You know, you don't want to just go up

and then crash and burn and go down. Yeah, and even in your in your world, like when you're a young buck, like my mom used to tell me, man, like it's not all about the outside. You know, you got to figure out what's inside. Like that, that's superficial stuff, you know, like you're looking for quality and substance. You're looking for, you're looking for equal parts, right, of outside and inside. That's what you're looking for. Don't, don't fool, don't fall for that. Hey, because, Raza, a lot of motherfuckers be outside too.

much and it fucks them up. You know? You know, they don't have balance in their life, you know? Because, you know, Kobe and the Cavs got good balance, my boy. There you go. There you go. All right, man. Well, you know what?

That's the, that's the monster for this week, y'all. Stay balanced. And that's been another edition of Monday, real ones. We're here Mondays and Thursdays. Make sure you check us out. We'll see you guys Thursday, man. See what happens. Man, maybe we might have somebody.

Maybe we won't. We'll see. All right. you guys soon. Halva.