Gilbert Arenas on Ja Morant: He needs someone who's been in the situation to teach & guide him
Listen there. There are fighters. There are survivors. There are people who overcome the odds. And we have done that despite the technical difficulty with our guys. Gilbert Arenas in his new podcast, which he hosts with Josiah Johnson Gills Arena, airs live three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11:30 Pacific Time. 12:30 Eastern Time as part of the underdog content network, it’s available on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere else podcasts are heard. And with that it is the three time All Star three time all Gilbert Arena. Got to give it to him. You got you.
Hey I’m going to say, I’m going to say this brother. You got the realest podcast out in her like it feel like I’d be on my back porch like and people be the oh Jesus talking he be you be you be kicking it real like I’d be like. I don’t. I don’t know how they let him get away with that. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. In fact, I was Gilbert. I was listening to your, I think it was 2 podcasts to go that you put out where you were sometime in May when
you talked about John Moran. Obviously from your perspective and your experience, I thought it was fascinating listening to that conversation.
you are now and what your advice would be. You know, just like you can see Zion, you know, as as going through it. You know, I think sometimes you know when we when we grow and you know the adults are judging, we judge from. Our experience to where we are now versus who we were at that same age, right. So you know some of the knucklehead things we did at 212223, now you add 200,000,000, you add fame, you are, you add the God mentality to it. You know it makes you know individuals do dumb things
and. You know, as a person who was older than him doing stupid stuff, I can really say, right It’s it’s a it’s he needs someone who’s been in the situation, who’s learned how to be a star. No one’s taught him how to become a star. No one’s taught him how to, you know, embrace, you know, this role of a face of something. So he’s learning as it goes. And that’s the problem. I think you know the NBA or you know most of the NBA because the kids are coming in younger, that there needs to be
someone that teaches them how to to to be in this role. There’s things you can’t do anymore. You can’t be normal. You can’t go to the club. You can’t hang out with certain friends. You just can’t do certain things anymore because of who you are. And no one really teaches us that. We have to just live and learn. You know, everyone’s not fortunate. Like Kobe was where, you know, he’s going to the Laker organization. They’ve had magic, They’ve had super megastars. So they have a foundation to protect the image. Same thing with someone like LeBron.
You know, LeBron was, you know, grateful enough to have, you know, people around him that understood the bigger purpose. But for the most, no one, no one has a team that’s smart enough, that understands. That there’s a bigger goal than just right now being 21 having fun. You know Gilbert I I there’s so many questions I would I would like to ask. I’m I’m gonna go with a basketball question I’m trying I’m having very difficult time figuring out where Joker is at. Yoky obviously had an opportunity to become a three time MVP he won a
championship last night You know his his legacy seems to be all over the place. But one thing I keep coming back to is do you think he would be perceived differently. If he was black, black basketball being an NBA sport where it’s predominantly African American, If if you reversed it and and Joker was African American and he was doing what he was doing now, do you think he’d be perceived as at a higher level or you think it would be the same? I I I think it would be the same. You would think that he
has more of an advantage because he’s not black, but you know it’s still the Tim Duncan. Type of game where it doesn’t look appealing to the masses, right, The use. So if he was in LA, it would be a little bit bigger. It would be a little bit, you know he’s in Denver, you know, you know Denver, you know Cleveland, unless you are a high flying guy is is just not a sellable type of thing when it comes to just his skill. Listen. What he does, he does great. Right? When you’re talking about a basketball
player, he is a basketball player. He is the Tim Duncan. He is the the bird, the dirt. The the Karl Malone, the Michael Jordan. After he started winning the Magic Johnson. I he is the the, the, the legacy of what a true basketball player is. I think we’ve been so used to watching athletes go out and run Duncan, you know, fly that when it came, when it comes to just the pure, the pure, the pure game of basketball, he is a basketball player, which is the reason he went in second round because they don’t know
what they’re looking at anymore. They’re, you know, all these drills are one-on-one, one by himself. He’s A5 on five player put put five on five. And then tell him to be great. That’s what he does. And you can’t measure that in in in the draft. Gil, we have a mutual acquaintance, Dave Mcmenamin. I know someone from your past who helped you with your blog on NBA is a good friend of mine. We covered the Cavs together for four years. When LeBron returned and I texted Dave this morning and said you were coming on, he said
to ask you about what you knew was going on behind the scenes in LA when they were trying to get Chris Paul and Dwight Howard. So no one really knew. I was like in the middle of that somehow. So after the after the lockout, this would have been 2011, right, 2011, lockout, 2011, yeah. So I’m, I’m hearing, so I’m in Orlando, so I’m hearing about, you know, the white wanting out, right. The white wants out of here. So he wants to go to LA. So, you know, because I’m getting amnesty, they’re trying to figure out
if they should amnesty me or force Los Angeles to take my bad contract and they have to amnesty me. On the other hand, Chris Paul has made a little deal where he’s in LA. So if you look at the timeline, I think I got, I think Paul got rejected, I got amnesty. The white said he ain’t coming back, right. So what ends up happening is Chris Paul is being traded for Odom and Gasol. It’s a straight up tree, which means there’s there’s some money coming back to LA and then on the back end it’s the
white for buying them. Well, all of it seems great. It would have been great deal. But I think what happened is when Mark Cuban found out how much money was left over for the Lakers, which is back then, you know, you’re talking about about 25 million, 24 to $25 million, you’re talking about two Max players if you start them off about $12 million each, right? So if you start them off at about 12 million, 1212 1/2, you could have got LeBron James and Bosch. Those are the type of that’s how much money was left over.
So you have Kobe, LeBron James, Bosch, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul. You got the US A-Team and then when Kobe’s contracts up that’s another 2524 million that’s coming off the books where they didn’t even need Kobe at that point. They could have got you know, Duran and whoever you know it would have been a 10 year window before anybody would have like came close to. Competing with that group. And that’s what the rest of well, that’s what Mark Cuban complained about, like we had a lockout. The lockout was about big names in small markets and we’re
getting rid of them. And soon as the lockout is over with, you get rid of Chris Paul because the NBA owned the Charlotte, Charlotte Hornets at the time or New Orleans Hornets at the time. New Orleans, Yeah. So that’s why. That’s why. That’s why David Stern rejected the deal because they were afraid that the Lakers would open up to Max slots then after the trades and go get top free agents. No, the the the David Stern didn’t give nothing. No cares about that. It was the rest of the owners. That’s why I’m saying, yeah, you
know, they listen. You know, I don’t know if it’s like that in like football or baseball, but when it comes to the NBA Lakers. Chicago, Boston, the the the the the NBA is doing very well when those three teams are playing well. So you know giving Lakers that, you know that that Chris Paul and making that happen would have did great for the NBA, but the rest of the owners wasn’t having it. Mark Cuban was not having that trade. But we know that. We know that the league doesn’t give a give a **** about the
Cavs, certainly here in Cleveland. But we care about the Cavs. We were excited about last season. They play. They trade for Donovan Mitchell, were pumped. They had a really good regular season, but they flamed out in the playoffs. They lose to the Knicks. We thought they were better than the Knicks. Donovan Mitchell didn’t play particularly well in the playoffs, you know, Jared Allen completely disappeared. What do you think about this Cavs team? Is it a situation where we got to be patient, give them more time, although we’re worried that Donovan Mitchell’s going to leave? Or
do you think they need to change things up to be a real contender in the playoffs? You know, right now you, I mean, you have Donovan Mitchell. Can you get a bigger guard for Garland or? Get rid of garlic and get guard that can play the two. You have great pieces. You, you, you, you want them to develop. I think we’re in a we’re in a stage where you know, everyone thinks their team needs to be great. Right now you have young pieces you need to really like. Everyone should really look at small market teams,
should look at actually what Miami did, even though Miami’s a big market team where no one’s coming to save you. There’s not going to be some miracle trade that happened. So you have to develop within those guys need to be on a three, get like you treat these kids like college teams, right? You’re going to come in here 3-4 times a day. You’re going to work on your skills. It’s easy. We’re in Cleveland. Where you going? You know, 3-4 times a day? Let’s get better today. You know the the group is, you know, very talented,
very big. We know the problem is just unexperienced in the playoffs. Listen, in the playoffs, the regular season is like training camp. I mean, they’re like training wheels, right? In, in, in, in that. In the first round of the playoffs, just take, take, take it off and let’s see what you can do. Everyone’s paying attention to you. Everyone knows your scouting report. They know what you can do good. They know what you can do. Bad, right? They know all your plays. So when the playoffs happen, you have to be great. You there’s no room for
being Okay in the playoffs. You have to be great in the playoffs. You know, Gilbert, we’ve been through this a couple times. I get frustrated sometimes because the fans in smaller markets, they they don’t learn from the mistakes in the past. Like, you know, I tell people like, you know these young kids, you know, they come into the league and they got money. They want to be in certain cities. They want to move a certain type way. And we’re like, oh, they’re they’re not looking. And you know, we’re like, come on now, that’s we had
LeBron, we had Kyrie. I can even say Carlos Boozer. Like he he was like, I’ve been signed, but he rolled out. So my thing is when you look at Donovan Mitchell, you got two years left and he, he’s sitting there talking to Jason Tatum after the game hugging him. And I say, yo, these guys, he wants to tell you, I feel like I’m in that Apple S line. Do you believe that the Cavs will, legitimately, if they don’t win a championship or go to the Finals, have a legitimate shot at keeping a guy like Donovan
Mitchell, even though he’s from New York? And to be honest, it all depends on the player themselves, right? You know, like no one loves. Like going to Toronto. All play. All Americans hated Toronto. DeMar DeRozan loved Toronto, right? He he he was the die hard Toronto guy. Here’s my advice for just all small market teams. It’s You’re going up against Giants when you’re talking about New York when you’re talking about Golden State. Miami’s Boston. Los Angeles, right. You’re you’re dealing with big markets. So what that means is there has to be systems inside the small
markets that entices the player, right, where he feels that the city is just as equal. I mean you know if they got you know the 20 inch screen TV’s and you know the. In the Lakers locker room, you might need 40 fives, right? You you just, you need to overdo it on the little things because that’s that’s where it is. It’s the it’s really the little things, right. Like, you know, I was saying like, you know with like a person like Dan Gilbert, right? You have, you have situations in like hotels and condos and you
know things where you can build, you can build. And your freshman’s or your rookies first four year players can live there for free. You don’t spend no money it’s on the team right. That’s saving the player money that seems like you know that’s that’s that’s an advantage that the the the players have. It’s like you have to really like like roll down the red carpet when you’re in small cities and it’s it really doesn’t cost you much. And you have this player that really values what you did for him versus looking at money. Go to
Mikey Mcnuggets. Gilbert, appreciate you working through these technical difficulties with us usually wrap up at 1:00 but because we have an A list guest like you were going a little longer, this is our overtime today. So appreciate you sticking on with us for a few minutes here. It’s a two-part question Gilbert. I know it’s bad journalism, so bad job out of me already, but. You played against LeBron for essentially A decade and you saw kind of two different versions of LeBron, the beginning of his career, the Super athletic guy. Then you saw the beginning of
his Miami career when he kind of embraced the villain personality. Which version of LeBron was better to you? And I heard you on a different podcast say LeBron was the smartest guy you’ve ever played against. Can you give us a little example of maybe what made him think about basketball and see the game in a different way than most people who ever walk this planet? Yeah. See, when I, I, I consider myself a student of the game, right. I’m watching the details, the the habits, human behavior, You know, like if I’m going right and he
can jump, you know, I know if I pump fake, he’s going to get off the feet. Like, I look at all of that, right. So that was my gift, right? That I can, I can, you know, look at game tape, process it fast in the game. So. When I met LeBron, you know, 1819 and I’m at, I’m at his condo, I don’t know if that was downtown and I’m watching, you know, he has the TV’s on a wall with the Tebow inside of the TV. So he has screens inside screens and he’s watching N B2
type of NBA games as on you know, he’s watching girls, basketball, high school basketball, soccer, like he’s watching it all. It’s like a computer that was just processing information and I remember it was like game it was probably game four maybe game it was, it was, it was a game and we was we was in Cleveland and game. I think it was game five, we’re in Cleveland and. You know, I’m watching game tape trying to figure out how does he keep doing what he’s doing, what’s going on. And I caught a signal and the signal
was he decoys at the beginning of the game. So he Jimmy butlers it at the beginning of the game. He gave a signal to coach. And the takeout, Yeah, the takeout. El Gauskis. And when I seen him look over. They’re subbing out. Gauss is in, which made our coach sub out our big man. And when we did that, LeBron became very aggressive, which end up happening at the end of the game when he’s scoring his buckets. Our big man’s not there because he took his big man out and we just followed suit. Little things like
that was catching my eye and then watching his game. He stayed away from his weaknesses and only focused on the strengths. Which, Which is called intelligence, right. He’s not trying to prove that he can do something that he’s not good at yet. So while everyone’s saying, oh, he’s not taking the last shots, well, he wasn’t good at it yet. So he wasn’t going to force and lose games trying to prove everybody wrong. That is intelligence. So watching, watching the development of them, when I say which player I like the best, I’ll say today’s LeBron. Because
now you have a guy at the end of his his his journey with all the information that he’s processed over the years and still using it, which still gives him the edge. Like you’re talking about a 3839 year old guy averaging 2627 points a game is just unreal. And I tell people, if this is what he looks like today, imagine what he was moving like. At 2021 sick. It is crazy. Like we’ve the only player I could think of that was still excellent at this age was Kareem, right? I mean, Kareem was great late to
his third. Not maybe not quite as great as LeBron, but he was great. It was late 30s. I mean, Kareem was great. I don’t think the average 1450, I mean, this guy got right, but I’m 30. But like, Kareem is the only one in the conversation and it’s just, it’s absurd. As someone who played the game at such a high level, you were great player. It’s impossible for me as a regular fat guy to understand how LeBron can do this. But as someone that played the game at this highest level, how crazy is it that
he’s still this good at an age when almost every other great player is out of the game? And and when we’re talking about different, like Kareem said in the block, right, he’s a block player. So it’s not like he’s speeding through players, bullying through players, driving, blocking shots, running a fast break. I mean, he still is moving. I mean when we’re considering up and down speed he’s he still might be top five in the NBA. Which is insane for his age. So when you’re talking about slowing down and becoming 1/2 court player, what are we
talking about 4243? Like even if he starts learning how to play the post and become a post player, he will have an advantage in that spot too when he slows down. So it’s it’s sickening, but it lets you know, like how great he it, it lets you know, look at the teams he had. When he went up against the Spurs, when he was going up against Boston, when he was going up against Detroit, it was literally A1 man show and it was taking the five or the team to actually defeat, defeat him because he was
just that much better than everyone else at what he was doing. He was literally a Bugatti, the rest of us. I’m actually this is final question we get out of here. I think sometimes people be underestimating how good NBA players are and they just naturally be like oh that guy’s garbage. Who is the best garbage player you ever played against Like some like like like somebody who people the public thinks is garbage but it was unreal and you were like you don’t know how good this guy was. OK so Nick Young right. When I when
I when I seen Nicky on workout, I remember calling my dad and said Jesus. Like the kid from the valley, he mimics everything Kobe can do right, like fade away, up and under. His natural thought process is unreal if you ever seen Nick in the summer. He was dominating the elite like the the ones we’re calling the goats he was eating through. Same thing with someone like Ben Simmons in the summer and in a few weeks he will be destroying all like he’s always every year, top one, top three player in the summer, LeBron, Kyrie,
Kevin Durant. Booker Kawhi, James Harden, Trey Young. Like he is destroying these guys. It’s, you know, when you get to the NBA, it’s, it’s the difference between being a Hooper and being a basketball player. He’s he’s hooping. There’s no rules. There’s no structure, there’s no coaching, there’s no game plan. So he gets to just play his natural style, which is amazing. He shoots the ball, he does all that. I I personally think his problem is. Depth perception, You know, you know you’re playing, you know gyms and you get used to shots. When you open up
arenas. I think it messes with, you know, how far the rim really is and I don’t think he spends enough time in the arenas working on a shot. But you know, those are two players that people are like, but you know, like there’s bench players on in the NBA that will literally give you 50 a night. Damn, just get just they. We can go out there and give you Jamal Crawford. We’ll go out there and give you a 50. If you let them, it isn’t made. You know some of the things you were saying there
were reminded me of like when non players are in movies and basketball movies and I’m curious when it comes to basketball movies, white men can’t jump Hoosiers. Blue Chips. That new Adam Sandler movie Hustle. What is the best or realistic basketball movie? One of those Or maybe there’s something else I’m not even. I’m not even mentioning. Oh, we lost Gilbert. He probably got a text. I’m hoping if us back up in a SEC. If not he’s coming. I’m hoping we’re guessing he hated your question. He hated your question. He said they all sucked because you
didn’t put. He got game in there. He’s back. Yeah, we got him and he got game. I left out. He got game. I would personally, I love every single one. I will say for a Hooper Blue Chips because it was real players like it. You had all the real players in there, you know, watching, you know, I was a Penny fan then, so you know, watching Penny, watching Butch, right. You know, I would, I would consider that movie for just the hoop community, that one. But you know, above the Rim will be a great one
because of the actors. Hoosiers is one of the original, you know, movies. I like like Mike because I was. I was at the All Star game when it was when it was filming it. I was like kind of in the movie a little bit as a extra. Who was the white dude in in blue chips? He was a real player, that guy. I can’t think who that was. Like he had the big guy know, the big guy know. Yeah, right. Butcher McRae was Penny. Yeah. Neon Neon Boudreau. It was the guy from Indiana. No he
wasn’t Bobby Knight and that you had Rick Pitino. It was amazing. Gilbert we thank thank you man. Keep keep up the great work with your awesome podcast the No chill podcast and and his new show and let’s plug it one more time because Gilbert was so helpful with us. It is. The Gills Arena Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 2:30 Eastern Time, 11:30 Pacific Time. It’s Gilbert Arenas and Josiah Johnson, part of the Underdog Content network, available on the iHeartRadio app. And wherever you listen to your podcast, Gilbert Arenas, the Legend. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
