00:00This from Hal in Bethesda. Hal wrote me, Kevin, I'm sick and tired of the Wemby bashing. Had a lot
00:07of those tweets and emails the last few days. I'm sick and tired of the Wemby bashing. Every young superstar
00:15in our lifetime of watching the NBA had moments like the moments he just went through and saw it through
00:23to championships. Jordan, LeBron, etc.
00:26You know, a friend of mine texted me because I think we talked about this yesterday as well. Been a
00:31lot of follow up to the NBA finals from over the weekend. Game five, the win on Saturday night.
00:39And a friend of mine reminded me that, you know, even before Jordan's quest to finally get a title and
00:47all of the, you know, banging his head against the Pistons for those years.
00:51That Magic Johnson in 1984, Celtics-Lakers, the first time that Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers went head to head
01:02in the NBA finals.
01:03They met three times in the NBA finals in 84, 85 and 87.
01:09The Lakers won in 85 and 87 and the Celtics won in 84 in seven grueling games.
01:16It was really, it was the NBA sort of really coming back into vogue because the 70s were a difficult
01:25decade for the NBA and Magic and Bird basically resurrected the league and this was their first showdown in the
01:33finals.
01:34Now, let me just mention, Magic had already won two titles and Bird had already won one title.
01:39Magic had, I think, the greatest closeout game in the history of the NBA playoffs, certainly the NBA finals, when
01:47he replaced Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and played center against the 76ers in game six of the 1980 NBA finals, up
01:57three to two on the road in the spectrum in Philadelphia.
02:00And went for 42 points, 15 rebounds, and seven assists.
02:06Your point guard got moved to center for the NBA's closeout game.
02:11As great as Jalen Brunson's closeout game was on Saturday night, 45 points, it's nowhere near what Magic did.
02:20All due respect to Jalen Brunson.
02:23Magic's closeout game is number one all time, and he was a rookie when he did it.
02:30They won the title in 80 and 82.
02:34Bird won the title in 81.
02:36The Celtics beat the Houston Rockets in 81 in the finals.
02:40Now, they would also beat the Houston Rockets in the 86 finals.
02:44That may be the greatest basketball team, NBA-wise, I've ever seen, the 86 Celtics.
02:51Just as a comparison, the Knicks just had an unbelievable run that can be quantified,
02:57certainly is the greatest playoff run ever.
03:00They're not the greatest team, in my opinion, that I've ever seen.
03:04Not even close.
03:06Great team the way they played.
03:07Great run.
03:08The 86 Celtics were unbelievable.
03:11And those Lakers teams of the 80s and the Bulls teams, you know, the Lakers teams of the early 2000s.
03:15We can go through the list.
03:16There are a lot of teams, in my view, that were better championship teams than these New York Knicks.
03:24But in terms of how they played in the postseason and their run, and look, there are a lot of
03:30reasons for it.
03:31You know, they played an Eastern Conference that was hardly what, you know, you would call murderers row.
03:37I mean, they destroyed the 76ers in four straight after the 76ers took out the Celtics.
03:43That's true, but were also exhausted and injured.
03:47They took out Cleveland after they went through a seven-game grueling series with Detroit.
03:51I mean, Cleveland, as Tommy told me the other day, they were a conscientious objector for the most part.
03:57And they're just losers, you know, in terms of Harden, et cetera, on that team.
04:02They didn't have championship medal at all.
04:05Now, they played a great young team in the NBA Finals and a phenomenal defensive team in the NBA Finals.
04:13But they're not the greatest team ever.
04:15They're just not.
04:18But a friend of mine reminded me that when the Lakers lost the 84 NBA Finals to the Celtics in
04:28a seventh and deciding game,
04:29that people started to refer to Magic Johnson as tragic magic because he did not play well in those NBA
04:43Finals.
04:43In his first matchup with Larry Bird, he couldn't make shots.
04:48He couldn't hit big shots.
04:50He didn't play well.
04:52Clutch moments.
04:53This was not the baby hook, Magic Johnson, game four, you know, in the Garden.
04:59That came in 87.
05:01Magic in 84 was not good.
05:04Now, the big difference between, say, him and Wemby or him and LeBron is he had already won two titles
05:10and had already had the greatest closeout clutch performance in NBA history as a rookie.
05:18But it is true that people were really down on Magic Johnson.
05:23And look, that was his fifth season in the league at that point.
05:28He was still a young player.
05:31He would evolve into a better and more consistent offensive player and scorer, which he wasn't at that point.
05:38He wasn't.
05:39He was a phenomenal, you know, facilitator, passer.
05:43I think he's the greatest passer in the history of my lifetime watching basketball.
05:49Magic was never a great defender, but Bird wasn't either.
05:55But, yeah, you know, back to Hal and Bethesda, I'm sick and tired of the Wemby bashing.
06:01Every young superstar in our lifetime of watching the NBA had moments like the moments he just went through
06:06and sought through to championships, Jordan, LeBron, et cetera.
06:10It just made me think of the text that my friend sent me yesterday reminding me, you know,
06:15Magic, too, went through a lot of the criticism and the bashing and the scrutiny.
06:20Big difference again.
06:22Magic had two rings to his credit at that point.
06:25Magic also played on much better teams.
06:29Much better teams.
06:30I mean, he had Kareem.
06:31He had, you know, early on, the first two titles actually came with Norm Nixon in the backcourt with him.
06:37And the rest of the titles came with Byron Scott next to him.
06:42But the first two were Norm Nixon in 80 and in 82.
06:45And guys like Jamal Wilkes.
06:47I mean, Worthy was not on that 80 championship team.
06:50He wasn't on the 82 championship team.
06:53But obviously, Worthy would come later.
06:55Kareem, Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron Scott, Magic.
06:59But even the players those first two years, Kareem, Wilkes, Norm Nixon, they were really good.
07:06But anyway, back to, you know, responding to Hal.
07:10I think, you know, the Wemby bashing Hal is because he got elevated so quickly to a level that was
07:20just probably unfair to him.
07:24Although he embraced it.
07:26I mean, remember, he went on a rant about why he deserved the MVP this year over SGA.
07:34You know, Wemby was certainly feeling himself and in many ways full of himself.
07:42And I think that's part of the story here is the basketball part.
07:48We found out that he was flawed and limited offensively, much more so than it seemed to be two weeks
07:55ago.
07:56Much more so than it seemed to be two weeks ago.
07:58Now, for a lot of people, I think for me, it was that Minnesota series where I started to say,
08:05I remember coming in here one day and I'm like, I'm going to say this and people are going to
08:09be pissed.
08:09But I said, he's starting to irritate me.
08:13And it was, you know, some of the flagrants, the Nas Reed near knockout elbow, the, you know, the fact
08:22that he's not a guy that seems to want to play down low.
08:27He fancies himself to be more of a guard, more of a Kevin Durant kind of a player, guy that
08:34wants to put it between his legs four times and shoot threes.
08:38And then, you know, you got into some of the, you know, boasting.
08:41And I'm not saying that, you know, a guy with an edge and a guy that's as competitive, because here's
08:47the thing with Wemby.
08:48You know, Wemby isn't, it didn't cower like LeBron did with Miami in that first year.
08:55Wemby was all in for the fight all along.
08:58I think he crossed the line and I think he is a dirty player as we speak.
09:02And hopefully he'll grow out of that because it hurts him, hurts his team.
09:06You know, but I love his competitive, you know, badass, you know, nature.
09:12You know, I've mentioned this many times, but it's one of my favorite Coach Thompson lines.
09:17We, you know, certainly imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
09:23And so many of us at this radio station that had a chance to be around Coach Thompson for all
09:28of those years.
09:29We have so many of his sayings, but one of my favorites, and I bet you after watching Wemby in
09:36this postseason,
09:37if Coach were still around, he would, he would say what he said about a lot of players, including players
09:43he coached.
09:44I'd much rather have to tame a fool than resurrect a corpse.
09:50And that's kind of the idea.
09:53You never want the guy that is innately soft, innately non-competitive, or doesn't have that, you know, that edge.
10:04Wemby has it probably too much of it right now.
10:08Now, easier to tame a fool, rather tame a fool than resurrect a corpse.
10:14I remember him saying that all the time, and it just rings so true about, you know, players.
10:21Like, just think about the guy.
10:23A lot of that is just so innate.
10:25It's almost impossible to coach up intense competitive fierceness.
10:31That's innate.
10:33So, he'd rather tame a fool than have to resurrect a corpse.
10:38And Wemby's got some of that right now.
10:40But I think how the biggest thing with Wemby, beyond the basketball limitations that we realized,
10:45and it's going to be, I think, very interesting to watch his evolution as an offensive basketball player.
10:53To see what he becomes, to see what he desires, to see what the organization wants him to become.
11:02Because right now, he doesn't have a go-to.
11:05We don't really know what he is offensively.
11:07I mean, there have been nights where you're like, it doesn't matter what he is, and if it can't be
11:12defined, it doesn't matter.
11:13He's just dominant, like he was in game one of the Western Conference Finals against Oklahoma City.
11:19But that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch.
11:23But I think the sick and tired of Wemby bashing is much more about, you know, his over-and-over
11:31dirty play.
11:33His over-and-over proclaiming his team's the best team, they're not worried, and they're going to, you know, win
11:41against the Knicks.
11:42And, by the way, following it up by disappearing in the most critical moments of those games in the Finals.
11:52It wasn't because he was afraid, all right?
11:55LeBron looked completely and utterly out of sync and hesitant in 2011 against the Mavericks.
12:04You go back and you watch game three, he literally, every time he touches the ball, he throws it right
12:09back to whomever passed it to him.
12:11He didn't want to have any part of deciding those games.
12:15He grew out of it pretty quickly and became a big-time clutch performer, no doubt.
12:21But that's not what Wemby just went through.
12:24Wemby was in for the fight the whole way through.
12:27But Wemby ran out of gas in a lot of those games.
12:30And Wemby didn't have go-to moves offensively.
12:35He didn't have a go-to offensive game to, you know, thwart the comeback in Game 4, to get it
12:44done down the stretch in Game 5, to keep him alive.
12:48I mean, there was a lot of yapping from Wemby, a lot of yapping, and not much delivering in the
12:57Finals.
12:58I think that's a big part of why the narrative changed on him so quickly.
13:05You know, telling Mitchell Robinson, I'm in your head, talking after games as if we're good, we're absolutely the better
13:13team.
13:14And that's fine, but you better deliver.
13:18And he came up way short, way short in the Finals.
13:23But like I've said all week, 22, be patient, things change, and I bet they'll change with him.
13:31And I bet you five years from now, ten years from now, he's one of the most beloved athletes in
13:35the world.
13:36And great with titles.
13:38Although I am picking OKC right now to win next year's NBA title.
