Doug Gottlieb (2:57)
This is the of the Herd with Colin Cowher on Fox Sports Radio. Boom. What up America? Doug Gottlieb in for Colin. This is the Herd. Wherever you may be and however you may be listening to the show, Happy 4th of July to you. Hope you're ready for a great day. Heading out to the beach, heading out to a lake, heading up to the mountains, or you're just chilling at home like dude, I don't care. Just it's Friday. You ain't got nothing to do with. Listen to a little sports radio. Got a great show for you. I do mean great because in this hour alone, Taco NBA basketball talk with a former major league all star about a bunch of different topics. We'll talk a little ufc. We got some old school NBA, a little WNBA and some NFL. All just in this hour. Just in this hour. Matt Holiday, seven time All Star will join us upcoming in 20 minutes here on the show. It is, it's great to be with you in the herd. Obviously we're live in places like Los Angeles and I always laugh at when we post things from my show, the Doug Gottlieb show which follows this show on most Fox Sports radio stations. How people go like get another topic, don't talk about LeBron. That's by the way, my Colin doing the outside voice thing. Right, Cullen? Anyway, you can accuse me of a lot of things chasing Lebron topic is not one of them. Lebron topic is a real topic that's really been discussed and oh yeah, by the way, it pops up in your algorithm because it's what people are talking about right now. So hey kids, if you just got back from a vacation with your family or you haven't really been paying attention, there's this weird thing that happened with LeBron James and the Lakers over the past week or so, right? Free agency period open now. LeBron James is not a free agent, but could have been. Instead he opted in to his player option which will pay him roughly $53.9 million next season. But after opting in and signing or picking up his player option, his agent, Rich Paul released a statement saying, and again, I'm not going to quote it, it's not verbatim, but basically it's like, hey, LeBron wins to win a championship. So the Lakers are on a different timeline of winning a championship. So, hey, we just want you to know LeBron wants to win a championship. It insinuates that he, you know, past tense, relationship kind of over or coming to an end, and he doesn't think that they can win a championship as currently comprised in la. So he's open to any possibilities. The number one thing, one of one takeaway, you should have, like, why should I care? Again, I'm not going to sit here and argue with you whether or not you think LeBron, Magic, Bird, Jordan, Wilt, Kareem are the greatest players of all time. I'm not. There's just, I, you know, this is like the LeBron Jordan argument is like the abortion argument. You know what? Have fun trying to win that one on social media. There is no win. So this doesn't come from a place of, I don't think LeBron James is the best player of all time, but it does come from a place of, let's just kind of be honest. Is there anyone out there who would argue that Luca is at minimum a top 10 and more likely a top five player when healthy in the NBA? And you're all sitting there driving around and, you know, you get your kids in the car and you're sitting there. All right, that's reasonable. Top 10, minimum top 5, however you want your list to be. And you know, well, I didn't have in top five then Jason Tatum tours Achilles and I don't know, with Giannis and whatever, like, all right, like, I'm not going to push any argument more than it. I know he's one of the two or three best players in the sport that I love, that I played, that I coach. But again, not trying to win arguments. We're just trying to find middle ground there, right? So if he's a top 10 player, and there are a good portion of people, especially ones on TV, who will watch LeBron play on a given night, throw up LeBron stats and say LeBron's still the best player in the NBA. Now, again, I'm not going to argue that. I know that most of us know that not to be true. But if you think LeBron James is a top 10 or top 15 player and you're in a sport where suddenly now we have more parity than we've ever had in our lifetime. Eight champions over the last eight years and many of the teams that are seen as the league's elite have lost play. I mean, the three of the best teams in the east have lost elite players due to Achilles 10 and tear. Right. And as much as we talk about the west, as if all the Westers. Oh, like the warriors aren't good enough as currently comprised to compete for a championship. The Wolves aren't good enough to compete for a championship as currently comprised the Rockets. We think with Kevin Durant, it'll make them better. I'm a huge Kevin Durant fan, but it hasn't worked in his past, what, two stops close to working in Brooklyn. Not his fault they had injuries. And then the dysfunction that followed didn't work in Phoenix. Any argument there? Okay, so all these things were like, oh, the west is so like, you know, Clippers seemed like they're kind of over the hill with what they're doing now. Warriors are over the hill. Timberwolves just don't have enough. Spurs probably a year away, maybe two away from really competing at top Rockets. You know, they look better, but again, at some point you're going to get declining return on Kevin Durant. It's, it's. There's better depth. Denver has no bench. Right. There's fragile. They're not great. They still have Jokic. So if you want to make a depth of good teams. But if we're honest with ourselves, LeBron and his camp admitting the Lakers can't win, they are not focusing on or trying to in his mind or they're, you know, really how it lands on everybody. They're not good enough to win A championship with LeBron, with Luka. If you're not good enough to compete for a championship and you have two top 15, top 10 players in the league, then boy, the league must be really good. And it's not. So what LeBron and everybody else is admitting without knowing they're admitting is that LeBron's no longer a top 15, top 20 player. He's for 40. He's amazing, but in reality, he's just not. He doesn't defend with the same energy. He can be hard to play with. And there are nights in which he just doesn't have it. And those nights will likely increase over time. Right? Doesn't play all the games, has gotten hurt, what, like five of the seven years in which he's been in la? So this idea that let's just eliminate that from your argument. LeBron's a top 10 player. No, he's not. If he was, then there's no way in hell anybody would say that the Lakers can't win a championship. And most of us know Lakers can't win A championship, including LeBron James. So if we start with that, that things have changed. LeBron has to adjust to where he is, but he still wants to play for a championship contender. And he does not think the Lakers are championship contenders. There is only one other possible argument if he doesn't think the Lakers are championship contenders or says that is that LeBron is pouting because now they're doing everything to focus on Luka. And what makes Luka his the best version of himself lot LeBron James. But let's pretend for at least the radio show and for this argument, that LeBron James is in fact the bigger man. LeBron James has nothing. He just wants to win, wants to be part of a champion. Doesn't see it, doesn't feel it, because he knows in his heart he's not nearly as good as he used to be. Well, if that's the case, then what actions has LeBron actually taken to be solely focused on winning a champ championship? Over the past couple years with the Lakers, keep in mind, they've acquiesced to anything that he wanted. Hey, you want JJ Reddick to be the coach? Done. You want us to move mountains first to trade for Anthony Davis? Remember, they tried to trade for him, couldn't get it. Then Rich Paul, who also reps Anthony Davis, was like, gotta have Anthony Davis. So they moved heaven on earth. Heaven and earth to get him. They get him, they win a Covid championship, okay. But they deplete all their most of their reserves. And then when they wanted to add another player, it was going to be DeMar DeRozan done. Only LeBron stepped in, is like, nah, nah, nah. We want Russell Westbrook. You want Russell Westbrook, not DeMar DeRozan. Sure, let's overpay to get Russell Westbrook. They get Russell Westbrook. The good vibes last all of, I don't know, a month, two months. And then LeBron turns a cold shoulder. That relationship's done. Don't worry, we won't hold it against LeBron. We'll just move on from Westbrook, then ultimately move on from our coaches after moving on from, from, you know, Frank. Frank, who wins your championship. And then, you know, you move on from Darvin Ham. Now you go get J.J. redick, and then they Draft Bronny and kind of force themselves to go, yeah, no, no, Bronny has earned all of this. Then they play Bronny James, one of the last picks in the draft in the second round on opening night in the NBA. Doesn't happen normally, doesn't normally get four year guaranteed contracts. And then their G league team is turned into a LeBron James sponsored AAU team where it's just about Bronny getting buckets and about making Bronny look like he's ready to play in the NBA. They've done all these things. Oh, the only thing they did that maybe he didn't like was trade away the big guy who is repped by the same agent and upgraded for a trade that the entire world thinks they won. The entire world thinks they won. Like, I don't think the wind disparity is that great. Like I don't think it was. They literally trade away a box of basketballs used outside for one of the greatest players in the world. They trade away Anthony Davis, who's a tremendous two way player. Okay, has. And, and really what Dallas want to do is reconfigure themselves, make themselves the most dynamic defensive team in the league and tap into the potential of Anthony Davis, which still seems to be limitless, only limited by injuries. And of course Anthony Davis, as he's prone to do, gets hurt when he gets there. But it, the, the, it's not that big of a win, but it's a win and anybody would argue as such. Right? So what are you actually mad about? That the Lakers want to trade with the Mavericks? That the Lakers are going to be relevant for the next decade. The, I think the problem people are bothered with the most, this comes from me, this comes from Colin, this comes from government, this comes from teachers, comes from parents, comes to, from athletes. I can take your opinion if it's the opposite of mine, what I can't take, or your ideas or your thoughts, or, you know, if you have a plan, you go do it. What you can't take is, is hypocrisy. If you want to play for a championship and you don't think it's in LA and all that's important to you at the end of your career is winning a championship, well then just don't pick up your player option and you're a free agent and go where the hell you want, go wherever you want. Well then what do we do with Bronny? Well, again, like, again, if, if Bronnie isn't tied to you, if it wasn't a daddy ball deal. Well then that shouldn't matter to you. Of course it matters to you. And they can figure it out. They can trade Bonnie for nothing and get stuff something back in return or whatever. It's just, it's just hypocrisy. Don't tell me that you don't tell me that LeBron's the top 10 player and then say playing with Luka Doncic, they can't win a championship. Don't tell me winning, winning a championship, competing for is all that's important. And then pick up even if you are going to stay in la, if you really want to win a championship, of course you could take less money. And to people who say he's LeBron James, he doesn't have to take less money. He doesn't unless he truly believes knows he needs more help based upon the current structure of the salary cap in the NBA. And oh yeah, by the way, there's all kinds of creative contracts where you can backload it and do player options. At the end of the day they can buy you out of your last contract so that you get a walk away bonus that ends up equaling out what you would have made this year. Like all that stuff is reasonable. But this is not an opening rant. Doug Godly been for Colin the Herd on Fox portage radio, the iHeartradio app. This is not me telling you he's a terrible person or he's a bad basketball player. But what you can't have is somebody being a complete hypocrite time and again and not get called on it. Not get called. It's what irritates us about so many people in power is you say one thing and you do another and that's where we are with LeBron James. And so either he's a hypocrite and the money's really what's important and he this is just for show or he and his crew is being babies because it's no longer about him and it's always been about him. Be sure to catch live editions of.
