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The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Why Jalen Brunson is #9 in my NBA player rankings for 2025 | New York Knicks
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Jason
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Jason
Apply the volume. All right. Welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We are continuing our top 10 in our player rankings today with number nine, Jalen Brunson. We're going to be doing a deep dive on Jalen and what he does for this New York Knicks team. At the tail end of the show today, Denzel Washington came out and was pretty critical of the current state of sports media and as you guys know, have followed me over the years. I'm bullish on the current state of sports media. I think it's been a better situation than we've ever had before and so I have some comments on that as well at the tail end of the show. You guys know the drill before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter_JasonLT so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson is doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for content throughout the remainder of the season. And last but not least, if you disagree with any of these rankings in any way, shape or form, please go in the YouTube comments here, write mailbag with a colon and then explain just in an elevator pitch why you disagree with the ranking. Make a basketball case. And then on Fridays throughout the remainder of this list, we have plenty of time about another month or so over the course of this off season where where we'll be covering these guys. Drop your arguments and we'll get to them in our Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of this series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So for Jalen BRUNSON at number nine, this is his first appearance in the top 10 since we started doing this Hoops Tonight top 25 list, which I believe this is our fourth time doing it. If I remember correctly, last year in review For Jalen Brunson, 65 games played. Basically played in every game outside of a stretch late in the season after he sprained his ankle in a game against the Los Angeles Lakers in a game where he was playing, playing the best, some of the best basketball of his career in that stretch and was just absolutely torching the Lakers before he suffered that ankle injury. His averages this season, 26 points per game, three rebounds and seven assists. One stock per game on 0.9 steals per game. His percentages, he was 49% from the field, 38% from three and 82% from the line. A career high. 6.9 free throw attempts per game, 55% in effective field goal percentage. That's just field goal percentage weighted for threes and then 61% in true shooting. This was the first time in his career where he averaged over 20 points per game and over 60% true shooting. And that led to an award heavy season for Brunson. He finished 10th in MVP voting. He made The All Star team for the second consecutive year. He was selected second team all NBA and he won the clutch Player of the Year award. We're going to be talking a lot about Jalen Brunson as a clutch player in today's show. He followed it up with a super impressive playoff run. He averaged 29 points, three rebounds and seven assists. His efficiency took a small hit down to 58%, but that's still very respectful, respectable for playoff scoring. And that's just a very impressive stat line any way you try to slice it. Similar to Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Brunson has established himself now after multiple years as one of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. In his three playoff runs since joining the Knicks, that's 42 games. Jalen Brunson has averaged 30 points, four rebounds and seven assists per game on 57% true shooting. Again, one of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. Let's start here with Jalen Brunson. Why do I have him ranked ahead of a guy like Donovan Mitchell, for example, or even some of the younger stars further down on the list, guys like Cade Cunningham? It comes down to exactly why I picked the Knicks to beat the Pistons in that playoff series last year. If you guys remember, I predicted that it would be a tougher series, but I predicted that the Knicks would end up winning because of Jalen Brunson and his ability to be the superior game manager. This was the exact same reason why I picked Jalen Brunson and and the Knicks to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers a few years back, but because I believed in Jalen Brunson as a superior game manager. This is a concept that we've talked about a lot over the course of the last six months. The idea that in basketball games, your job as a point guard or as a primary initiator is not just to get to your 30 points, but to generate a ton of shots, sometimes 50, 60, 70 shots for your entire team for entire games. And that's not just points and assists either. Sometimes that's just creating an initial advantage that gets drove and kicked a few times into some sort of easy shot. That may not manifest as an assist for a guy like Jalen Braun, sinner for your primary shot creator. But that is going to be birthed out of the initial advantage that he creates. You generate, generate that first closeout that guy drives it generates an even better spot up opportunity. That guy drives it maybe hits a cutter, maybe hits a wide open shooter to end the sequence. The guy who isn't going to get any credit for that is the guy who's generated that first advantage, when the reality is that second guy may not be as good at making an advantage without that first closeout coming out of him. And that's why that role of shot creation is so valuable. Just a simple stat to kind of demonstrate this relative to a guy like Donovan Mitchell. Jalen Brunson passed out of pick and roll almost 900 times this year, was the fourth most in the entire NBA. Four for perspective. Donovan Mitchell did so 517 times. So there's a huge gap in the just the embracing of simple advantages. You know, there were some things that I think the Knicks need to improve on as a team on offense. I think they have another level they can get to with their personnel, especially in the playoffs. Like the Knicks were fifth in offensive rating in the regular season this year, but their offense took a pretty substantial dip in the postseason. They went down to it was like right under 113 in offensive rating if I remember correctly. And part of the reason for that is like there wasn't enough variety added in around Jalen Brunson. So Jalen would wear down at times. I didn't think that Tom Thibodeau did enough of a job investing throughout the season on trying to come up with more reliable ways to initiate offense. Take for example like OG an Anobi posting up. They ran about 100 OG Anobi post ups in the regular season and that was an action that I wanted them to explore more in the postseason. But when you only ran it like a little over once a game in the regular season, it's not established enough to be something that you can really depend on. And I if you maybe run 200 post ups for OG an Adobe in the regular season or more actions where maybe an action that gets OG and Adobe coming downhill off of some sort of designed play to get him involved or a three man action with Bridges and Anunoby and Cat involved. Something that has Brunson where he can have about like 10 to 15 more possessions a game where he can just go stand in the corner instead of having to face ball pressure and create that initial advantage that could just prevent him from wearing down. And I did actually think that Brunson wore down a little bit over the tail end of that playoff run. By game six against Indiana he looked like it. Nehard kind of had him in cuffs. And a big part of that is just that he was so worn down at that point in the postseason. I don't blame that on Brunson I think Brunson has done a really nice job as a game manager and at, you know, kind of embracing the easy stuff that's available throughout games. We're going to talk about that more in a minute, but overall, I think that if you invest more in the regular season, I think this is going to be a big part of Mike Brown's job there. If you invest more in the regular season, in establishing stuff so that it can become more reliable in the postseason, so that you have some more diversity, it'll prevent you from kind of tanking as an offense the way that they did. And again, it's not all OG and Adobe post ups, but it's just finding, you know, three or four other ways to initiate your offense but actually running them hundreds and hundreds of times in the regular season so that they feel second nature. One of the things that I've noticed over the course of my first several years covering the NBA is that like when you get into the postseason, a lot of the cute shit that you do in the regular season kind of stops working when you get to the postseason. Because if you, if you run something 50, 75 times, it can create some highlights and make an interesting talking point in a team specific podcast. But if it's not something that they're running hundreds of times, it's not going to be something that they count on, that they can rely on when they get to the postseason. And I do think that this Knicks roster has the type of, you know, aggregate ball handling talent to add a little bit more of that diversity, even just again, something simple like not having Brunson face as much ball pressure as he faces over the course of games, just getting them into more situations where they can get the offense started in other ways. But compared to many of his small guard peers, I think Brunson is just better at being a point guard, like managing the flow of games and running a team while also hitting the absurd scoring titles, title totals. Excuse me. And again, it's worth mentioning that the Knicks had the fifth best offense in the NBA last year in the regular season, despite some of those issues that I talked about earlier. The beautiful thing about Brunson's game management was his ability to strangle the game as it progressed further into it. So, for example, Jalen Brunson is a guy that we view as one of the best clutch players in the NBA wins clutch Player of the Year award this year. We're going to go over some of the numbers later, but it's not like Jalen Brunson was Coming out the gates in first quarters and playing the same way. He was easing his way into games, taking advantage of more of those easy available reads throughout the first three quarters, letting the game kind of flow. And then he would hit the jets down the stretch because he knew it was more realistic and more achievable for him to do it in a shorter burst, hyper efficiently to push his team over the top. Then it would be for him to try to strangle games from start to finish finish. So for example, these are Jalen Brunson's usage rates from quarter to quarter throughout the game. In the first quarter, 27.8%. In the second quarter, 27.7%. In the third quarter, 26.8%. In the fourth quarter, his usage rate would skyrocket to 34%. This is the, this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say understanding the flow of basketball games. Jalen Brunson is one of the most surgical half court scorers that we have in our league. But he cannot just come out and play like that from the jump. He invests in the simple decision making throughout the first three quarters. Then he hits the jets down the stretch and delivers the knockout punch. That's why he won clutch Player of the Year award. He won, excuse me, he made 52 clutch field goals this year in the regular season that led the entire NBA. He shot 52% on those clutch shots. He had 28 assists to just eight turnovers in clutch situations in the Knicks as a team had a 19 and 12 record in clutch games, which was the fifth best win percentage in clutch situations in the entire NBA. And that extended into the playoffs. Or once again, Brunson was a monster down the stretch of games. He made 17 clutch shots which led the playoff field and his team went 7 and 4 in clutch playoff games, which was the fourth best clutch win percentage of any playoff team. So let's now dive into, now that we've gone over a bunch of the numbers, let's dive into the specifics of Jalen Brunson's skill set and how it manifests in various play types throughout the Knicks offense. So first of all, he was an elite, high volume pick and roll player last year. He ran 1637 pick and rolls, including passes, generating 1772 points. That was 1.08 points per possession, which is well above average. Out of the 13 players to run at least a thousand pick and rolls last year you ranked sixth on that list. So firmly in that group of high volume, high efficiency pick and roll shot creators in the NBA started with excellent shot making. And again this is, this is Brunson's calling card. Like if he was this and being a, you know, Luka Doncic level passer, he'd be one of the top three or four players in the game. But he is absolutely one of the very best scores and shot makers in the NBA. Starts with pull up three. So in pick and roll we kind of work through a progression, right? Like if the guy dies on the screen or if you can get him set up on the screen a certain way to get separation, there's a pull up three to be had there. If he chases you over the top and you get good screen on him, there's mid range scoring, right? There's pull up midis, there's floaters, things along those lines. If the guy stays attached and funnels you towards the basket, there's closer range floaters, there's layups. And then of course as the defense reacts to you, there's the playmaking piece out of it. That is the progression of pick and roll. Starting with pull up threes. Super high volume, 146 of them in pick and roll last year. So this is strictly threes pulling up out of pick and roll 38%, which is awesome. That's an incredible number. Watch the tape. He's just really good at setting up his man for screens. Re screens before on the first screen, just again hiding like he's going to go one way, setting up his body and his fakes. We're going to talk a lot about his ball handling fakes later. But like him setting up his man like he's going to go one way and then coming back the other way. Or if he plans on coming off of a screen this way, he might make an aggressive move that way to try to get the defender to cut him off that way. Which then puts him in trail position so that he can catch him on the screen. It's an art form getting your defender set up for the screen. It's every bit as important as the screeners job. You've got to get the defender into position where it's very easy to screen him. And so he would use that to get that initial separation and he'd shoot 38% from three then deadly mid to short range scoring. He was 52% on jump shots inside of 17ft and he was 52% on floaters. All on over 200 attempts in each category. That, that really, if you're asking how is it that Jalen Brunson is such an effective crunch time score. It's that it's. We talk about this nonstop. It's been one of the main talking points we've used with respect to guys like Jokic, Shay Gilgis, Alexander, Kevin Durant. If you have a shot that you can get to, a perimeter shot, meaning even if they pack the paint, you can still get to it. And if you can make it more than half the time, that is what drives elite crunch time scoring. And Jalen Brunson with the floater and with the jumper inside his 17ft was a healthy chunk over 50% on massive volume that there's only a handful of guys in the entire league that can do that. Jalen Brunson is one of them. That's what makes him such a reliable crunch time scorer. Then for a small guard, he's excellent at making layups. He was 60% this year on 275 layup attempts. That's a truly very impressive number for a small guard. And then lastly, he has a gift for getting defenders out of position and drawing fouls. He uses a lot of what I would consider to be non basketball plays. Low gathers, awkward shooting angles, awkward driving angles, things along those lines. But I'm going to say what I always say about this sort of thing. I hate that shit. Even on the team I root for. I hate when Luca does it, I hate when Austin Reeves does it. I think it's bad for the game. Ideally, within the next five to 10 years, non basketball plays would be legislated out. But my beef with it centers around the NBA, not on the players. It's the NBA and their inability to stop rewarding players for it. As far as I'm concerned, the players are just competitors and they're looking for every single competitive edge they can get. And if the refs are going to give them points for doing these things, they're going to view it as an opportunity to score more points, which is going to give them an opportunity to win basketball games. So I don't blame the players for it. I hate it. I don't think it's fun to watch. There are inconsistencies there that drive me crazy. But I don't blame the players. I blame the league. The playmaking stuff with Brunson is mostly just about reacting to what the defense is giving him. I watched a bunch of Brunson pick and roll tape this morning and there's very little of what we would consider to be highlight material. Like he'll throw the occasional no look backdoor pass to a guy as he looks off a help defender and hits a cutter or he'll whip a cross court pass every once in a while. But you're not going to see. You know, when you watch some of the higher level playmakers in our game, the true top tier playmakers, you're not going to see five or six of these like beautiful anticipatory passers per game. Like there's he's more of a reactionary passer than he is an anticipatory passer. That said, he's a very good reactionary passer. He doesn't turn the ball over much for a guy who uses the ball as much as he does. And he's good at taking easy reads when they're available, which again is what game management is. That's, that's all. Being a point guard is fundamentally at an extraordinary level. It's that anticipatory passing. But at a fundamental level, it's just about taking what the defense gives you over and over and over again. If he sees a guy digging down to the nail, he'll throw a swing pass to the opposite wing. If the screen defender sticks to him in a ball screen with Cat, he'll pitch it back to Cat in the pick and pop. If he gets into the lane and OG OG Anunoby's man steps in to help, he's going to swing it out to the corner to OG so that he can attack. That level of playmaking is plenty to make Jalen Brunson one of the best pick and roll players in the league. Because he's such a gifted scorer. He's one of the very best scorers in the NBA and he's got enough of that playmaking ability to make him one of the best pick and roll players in the NBA. The only area where Brunson and the Knicks as a team really struggled. The rivalries, the marching bands, the upsets. Saturdays just got way more fun. College football is back. Think you know the game? Put your college football knowledge to the test with DraftKings sportsbook and turn your picks into big payouts. From live betting during the game to rivalry week, odds boosts and so much more, DraftKings sportsbook has everything you need to stay in the action from kickoff to the final whistle. 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With Brunson in pick and roll was with blitzes. There were eight players in the NBA who faced at least 50 blitzes last year according to synergy. And Brunson's blitzes generated just 0.68 points per possession, which was far and away the worst mark on that list. He was a little sped up in those situations. He was a little turnover prone. He turned the ball over about 18% of the time in those situations. And Brunson kind of just struggled to get the ball out to the right guy with enough accuracy so that he can beat the defense. Like a lot of times, like a deflected pass or a pass that's a little off target will force the guy who has to go get it to like lunge or take steps away from the attack zone to go get the ball, which then just gives the defense time to recover. And so as a team, the Knicks just weren't very good at handling that. But Brunson in particular struggled a little bit. It's not terribly uncommon to see some smaller players struggle with blitzes just because of all the length that they have to deal with. You're going to see a lot of the bigger players handle it better. I always, like Kevin Durant, often would be able to just outreach everybody over the top and just dump it off to the roll man. Luke is really good at that as well. It's just kind of tough for smaller guards in that situation. Brunson was excellent one on one situations last year as well. 423 isos and post ups. 459 points. That's 1.09 points per possession, which is elite. Jalen Brunson has a truly remarkable gift for getting defenders out of position and for getting separation on dribble drives. It's a combination of a couple of different things. One, he is very good in terms of his start stop quickness. We're going to talk a lot about, you know, I've talked a lot about over the course of the last several years, the idea of like when it comes to guys like Luca, I think Shay Gil just Alexander kind of falls into this mix to Jalen Brunson, guys, they have like one defining athletic trait, right? Like for Luca, it's that he's big. He's just so big as a ball handler that if he gets any angle on you, you're just done because he can just use that shoulder to shield you off, shake elders Alexander, it's these like weird long steps that he can make. He has like really strong hamstrings and he can just. When he makes that first step, he covers so much ground and it just kind of makes him really difficult to deal with athletically in that way. Jalen Brunson, it start, stop, quickness. He does have a quick first step. That's the foundational trait. But none of those three guys are what we would consider to be like top tier athletes, right? Like Shay Gil just Alexander is far from an Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic is far from a LeBron James and Jalen Brunson is far from a Derrick Rose. But all three of those guys are profoundly impactful one on one players. Why is that? It's because at their core they are incredibly fundamentally sound. These are the kinds of guys that actually makes the most sense for you to watch as a young basketball player and to try to emulate. For Shea Gilgis Alexander, it's dribbling through contact in the ability to relentlessly chain together counter moves. We've talked about this, like every move is connected to a counter. So a lot of times even if you slide your feet right and you get in front of Shay, he's just going the other way and you got to get in front of him again and then he's going to go the other way and he's going to. He's just, he's so good at chaining together dribble combinations that like, it's kind of just a perpetual motion that's impossible to stay in front of. You look at a guy like Luka. I think Luka and Jalen Brunson both kind of fit this mold where it's the incredible change of pace and the selling of moves. All change of paces is come to a complete stop and freeze the defender, then hit the jets. If you can change pace, you can get defenders to freeze. And if you can get defenders to freeze, you have an opportunity to beat them to a spot on offense. And then the second piece of it is that selling of every single part of every single move. Jalen Brunson, I was watching, you know, I was watching a ton of film of him, of him this morning. It's amazing how many simple moves he'll use. He's not. These guys aren't going to do Kyrie Irving, wicked ball handling, but what they are going to do is a very simple move, very well executed. Jalen Brunson will hit really hard in and out dribbles. He'll be sitting in that left hand he'll be and it's an in and out dribble where on the in and out. When he turns his head, his hips, his shoulders, his eyes, everything is facing towards the left and then he brings it across. It's a very simple move, but if you sell it with your body and you sell it with your eyes, it's going to work. If I'm staring right at you and I just go like that, if I just do an in and out dribble, it ain't going to work. You're not going to buy into that fake, right? It doesn't matter if I do the most wicked side to side crossover of all time, if I don't sell the move. Jalen Brunson's awesome at this one too. He'll sit with the ball high in his left hand and then he'll just cross over. It's like just a little snatch cross. And he can cause a lot of problems in ball screens with that. When he sets up like he's going to go to a ball screen, waits for the defender to get into position to chase over the top and then he'll whip it across right as the defender buys into it. It's simple, it's fundamental. There's not a whole lot of like, you know, jaw dropping highlight, real material there in terms of ball handling, but it's damn effective. And it's because of that simple fundamental approach to change of pace into selling every single part of your moves and then from there. And again lastly, I just want to say like, that's why young players need to emulate them. Like regardless of what level you're trying to play, if you're trying to play in high school, if you're trying to play in college, you're trying to play in the pros relative to whatever level of natural ability you have. These are guys that are not considered to be top tier athletes, that are consistently making top tier athletes look stupid with what they can do on offense. These are things that all of you can learn. These are things where like if you're trying to just play point guard on your high school team and you're five, eight and you're not overly quick if you emphasize these fundamental things in skill development even you can barbecue good athletes at the high school level gets a little tougher as you go up and you need to have some trait that separates you in some way shape or form. But at the, at any level in a mediocre athlete can be a damn effect. A damned effective offensive player just by breeding These kind of fundamental approaches to your ball handling and footwork. From there, it's really the versatility of finishing moves for Jalen. He isn't just like a. Nor like most small guards are like forward facing jump shooters. So they're going to, you know, shoot out of a high hesitation. They might hit an in and out dribble, they might hit a sidestep one way or the other. But there's kind of like all forward facing moves, right? One of the things that makes Jalen Brunson a really impactful shot maker is he can shoot over both shoulders. Like he can get into your body and bump you and then fade over his right shoulder or fade over his left shoulder. Most small guards can't do that. He can take you down to the post. Jaylen Brunson can score out of the post. That's something that a lot of smaller guards won't look to do. He can shoot turnarounds. He can occasionally go to a little hook shot out of there that he can make. There is a diversity of shot making ability. In and out, going right, in and out, going left, sidestep, going right, sidestep, going left, hard step back, turn around over his right shoulder, turn around over his left shoulder. One legged fade away, hook shot over his right shoulder. He's got all of that in the bag. And so that allows him to kind of pick and choose the appropriate finishing move for the separation that he gets and for the type of defender that he's going after. And that kind of gives him just the versatility to be a super, super impactful scorer in this league in a lot of ways. Even though their games look different, Jalen Brunson reminds me of the Damian Lillard of this era. Clearly not one of the top tier stars in the league, but firmly in that second tier. A guy who has established himself as one of the best scorers in basketball, one of the best clutch players in basketball, and with enough development as a playmaker to be an excellent game manager. A guy who could clearly lead a championship offense if surrounded by enough talent. But I actually think Brunson has one additional leg up on a guy like a Damian Lillard in his era. To be clear, no one's going to get up here and try to say that Jalen Brunson is a good defender and he can also be lazy sometimes in the regular season, which especially in the context of Carl Anthony Towns, can be damaging to a team's defense. But I do think that Jalen Brunson is the kind of guy that you can build a functional playoff defense around with the right personnel. And I do think that's a separator for him compared to many of the other small guards in NBA history. Even a guy like Damian Lillard, as I've talked about a lot on this show, there are two different types of bad defenders. Guys who struggle physically and guys who struggle mentally. Now, if you're both, you're dead on arrival. But if you struggle physically, there's a certain amount of like, I can prepare for that. I have a I can game plan around your physical limitations. But mistake making breaks a game plan mistake making I can't prepare for. How do I plan if what I tell you to do in the game plan, I can't count on you to do. Jalen Brunson's going to give up layups and slips on hedges sometimes when he's throwing a hedge and yeah, when he's lazy, sometimes he won't sprint fast enough out of a rotation. And sometimes those sorts of things can cause issues. But in a big spot, in a big playoff game, I feel like Jalen Brunson will at least stick to the game plan and do his job. That, to me, is the bare minimum of what you have to be to be able to build a functional playoff defense around somebody. Take like a guy like Carl Anthony Towns as a counterexample, a guy who's very prone to mental mistakes, even a guy like Carol towns on the 2024 Timberwolves, an elite defense. Their defense posted a 120 defensive rating in that playoff run when Gobert was off the floor and Cat was on. Now just that was with elite perimeter defenders next to him. J.D. mcDaniels and Kyle Anderson and Akil Alexander Walker and Anthony Edwards. They were, he was surrounded and anchored by elite athletes on the perimeter and they could not get stops in the postseason. You can't build a functional defensive scheme around a defender who's prone to too many mental mistakes. Jalen Brunson can be lazy sometimes, especially in the regular season, and he certainly has his physical limitations. But he competes and he will execute his part of the game plan and which I think makes him at least a higher floor defender than many of his small guard peers in in recent eras. And again, like, I'm not trying to say that Jalen's a good defender. I'm just saying he's a more functional playoff defender than many of his peers. In recent years. Jalen Brunson has become one of the best offensive players in the game today. He's an Elite scorer who becomes absolutely deadly in crunch time. He's a willing passer and game manager and with enough of an attention to detail to at least make him workable on the defensive end of the floor. So he comes in at number nine on this year's list. All right, before we get out of here today, Denzel Washington had a hell of a quote the other day. Went on a. I can't remember which show he went on, but something on espn. But he said, everyone, everybody's got an opinion. In fact, we live in a world of opinion errors. They're all on the shows. A bunch of the guys, a couple that have played, but most of them who haven't, who have an opinion about what something should be when they haven't done it. Those who can, do. Those who can't talk about those who can. Those who have know what they're talking about. Those who haven't, don't, period. That's how I feel about that. This is one of my biggest pet peeves about the way athletes in particular act when it comes to the media. Obviously Denzel is not an athlete, but this is a take that we've seen many athletes parrot over the years. First and foremost, I despise the gatekeeping element of this. I love basketball so much, and the game has been very good to me. It paid for my college. It helped me see much of the United States at a young age. It helped me to enjoy some of the greatest experiences of my life. Like I, I, every once in a while, you, you just sit down and reminisce and I think about like, you know, maybe a, a huge dunk that I had in a big spot or a clutch shot that I hit, or, you know, a hot streak where I couldn't miss for a little while. You think about those moments and they're literally some of the coolest moments of my life. I think about, you know, when you get a big dunk on the road, like a real dunk that shocks everybody and you hear that sound, go through the arena. It's. I could never describe it to you guys. It's just one of the coolest feelings that you could ever experience as a human. And I think about it all the time. I miss it. I miss playing in those environments and getting to experience those things. The game of basketball has been very, very good to me. But I'm not selfish enough or close minded enough to think that I'm the only guy who loves basketball or girl who loves basketball out there, or that you have to have played the Game to love basketball. That makes no sense. I'm super lucky. I was born into a 66 frame. I've got a 610 wingspan and a good amount of natural athletic ability. I also worked very hard and I'm proud of the player that I've become over the years, especially as an adult. But I also know that I'm very lucky. There are people out there who love the game every bit as much as I do, but that didn't get the opportunity to pursue it the way that I did. Who am I to say that that person isn't allowed to love the game or to watch the game, or to study the game, or to talk about the game, or to write about the game? I have learned so much over the years from people who have never played the game in many cases. For those people, their love of the game in the absence of being able to play it manifests in what it takes to pour their heart and soul into the study of the game. It's all about perspective. Everyone has unique perspective. Yes, a current or former NBA player can provide a certain perspective on the game that we could never provide. Even a guy like me who played but didn't play at the NBA level. I can't provide some of the perspective that current or former NBA players can provide. But we each have our own unique angle and that angle manifests out of our love for the game. Mine will include some references to my playing experience, but guys, if you asked me, my playing experience is actually a very small portion of what I would think this show kind of comes out of. I think it mostly comes out of a love for the game and studying the game. I. I know a hell of a lot more about basketball now than I did the last time I suited up in a college basketball uniform. Maybe there's a man or a woman out there who provides unique analytical perspective that comes from a high level understanding of advanced statistics. There are lots of guys out there, lots of girls out there that haven't played, but make us all smarter about the game. Maybe there's a man or woman out there who's excellent with advanced schematics. I look at guys like Cransis McBasketball, who covers the Lakers, does an incredibly good job of giving us a detailed understanding of actions and counters on both ends of the floor or half court hoops. He's a college coach who will post entire playbooks of NBA teams for us to study. That's an immense value. There are men and women who provide excellent basketball perspective on fundamentals and can explain complicated Things on a granular level for fans. I think Pete Zayas covers the Lakers is an example of this type of guy. I learned so much about how modern NBA fundamentals work from Pete. Zach Lowe on a national scale is an example of this kind of guy. There are men and women who do an excellent job covering the league from the standpoint of reporting. Mark Stein is an incredible example. I highly recommend all of you guys subscribe to Mark Stein Substack. It's an excellent way to just get kind of like a regular newsletter where you can stay up to speed on what's happening around the NBA. It's not just disrespectful or inappropriate to discount these people just because they haven't played in the NBA. It's also, frankly, stupid. You're an idiot if you don't think someone like Caitlin Cooper, who does a phenomenal job covering the Indiana Pacers. You're an idiot if you don't think Caitlin Caitlin Cooper can teach you something about NBA basketball. You are limiting your own ability to learn at that point. And frankly, while there are many current and former NBA players who are doing great work, I want to emphasize that there are many who do great work. There are also many current and former players who are doing shitty work, doing very little prep, and just getting on camera and talking shit. Literally everything that Denzel was criticizing, I've seen professional athletes do in the media. Yeah, Jason, but what about the talking heads? Even those people carry great value in my opinion. Bill Simmons is one of the great storytellers who covers the NBA. I don't agree with everything Bill says, but he's so important to the NBA media landscape. With his ability to add like, historical aura to each season, he brings like a. A certain drama element that I think is actually important. It's part of, like, how we all fell in love with the game as kids. You know, it's funny, you. You get to be older and you focus on that stuff a little less. But like, that is the stuff that gets you to romanticize basketball, to romanticize the NBA and love it so much when you're younger, that's important. Colin Cowherd, his ability to tie things to day to day life in a way that we can all relate to. Still to this day. I regularly, a few times a week, listen to Colin Cowherd's opening monologue on the Hurt. It's easy to listen to. I can relate it to my everyday life and you can just feel his passion and love for it pouring out of it. These. These people don't put up big numbers by accident. They capture people's attention with their perspective that flows out of their love for what they do. So I totally disagree with Denzel's perspective here. I think sports media is in a better place than ever before. It's more of a meritocracy than ever before. Any single one of you who has valuable perspective can buy inexpensive equipment, record content, post to YouTube or to social media. And if you capture people's attention, you'll get a natural push from the algorithm and you will build an audience and you will have success that has made it so that there is more to choose from than ever before. For instance, Stephen A. Smith is not my cup of tea. I have remarkable respect for him as a talent. I think he's a legend. But I'm. I don't personally enjoy his content. I don't have to watch Stephen A. Smith. Like, I literally don't ever have to watch him if I don't want to. I can pick whatever I want. If you're in the mood for deeply analytical content, it's out there. If you're in the mood for something analytical but more easily digestible, it's out there. If you're into storytelling, it's out there. If you're into the historian element, the, the. The. The drama, the intrigue, it's out there. The reporting, it's out there. And guess what? If you want to listen to a former player who can offer their unique perspective from having played in the NBA, you can find that out there, too. So let's stop gatekeeping basketball, and let's stop gatekeeping whatever sport it is you love. I don't own the rights to love basketball. Neither does Kevin Durant. Neither does Draymond Green. Neither does Caitlin Cooper or Zach Lowe. If you love it and you put in the work and you have something of value to offer, I encourage all of that from flooding our marketplace. The more there is, the better it is for all of us. You all have every right to love the game, and if you love it enough to want to talk about it, you should go after it. And I think attempts to stifle those folks or belittle those folks or gatekeep those folks is incredibly lame to me. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back on Friday with our next mailbag. I will see you guys then.
- [48:27]
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Jason
Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
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Jason
Whoa, this thing moves.
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Jason
Or the chips?
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Colin Cowherd
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- [50:49]
Jason
This is an I heart podcast.