- 2 days ago
Willard and Dibs react to Andre Iguodala saying that Steph Curry will never be understood. What did he mean by that?
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00:00You know, we played this Iguodala thing a few times
00:02and maybe the lead is sticking in there
00:07and we've kind of buried it.
00:09A little bit of a head scratcher.
00:10We've listened to this two or three times.
00:12Listen to it again.
00:14And then I got a question for you.
00:17Take a listen.
00:17There's Andre Iguodala with Richard Jefferson
00:20on the Richard Show.
00:21Of your teammates,
00:21who's most likely to become a head coach?
00:23Bogut.
00:24Most likely to give the best advice after a bad loss?
00:27Dreamer.
00:28Most likely to be understood 10 years too late?
00:31Steph.
00:32They'll never understand.
00:33Most likely to turn a film session into philosophy?
00:36Philosophy is an opinion.
00:37Yes, so who's going to turn the film session?
00:39Me too.
00:40Most likely to already known the startup would fail?
00:43Oh, Sean Livingston.
00:44Most likely to win a debate and a card game in the same night?
00:48Dreamer.
00:48Most likely to narrate the Dynasty documentary?
00:51I already did that.
00:52Jeez.
00:53Most likely to deserve a better Hall of Fame argument
00:56than people give him?
00:57Clay.
00:57Smartest teammate you ever had?
00:59Andre Miller.
01:00Best passer you ever played with?
01:01Andre Miller.
01:02Best locker room mood changer?
01:04Chris Chiosa.
01:05Most misunderstood teammate you've ever had?
01:07Man, I had a lot of teammates.
01:09Yeah, but you played 19 years.
01:11The most misunderstood teammate?
01:12Oh, Al Anderson.
01:13Okay.
01:14So, we let you listen to the entire thing,
01:16but let's go back to one that was at the beginning.
01:20The way Richard Jefferson phrased it, I believe,
01:24is the most likely to be understood 10 years too late.
01:30Yeah.
01:31And Andre goes, Steph.
01:34He didn't even hesitate.
01:36And then he says, they'll never understand.
01:39Because we know the way Andre Iguodalafe is about Steph Curry,
01:43I think there's a piece of this I understand,
01:44but can we dig into this a little bit?
01:47Like, what's your reaction to that?
01:48Is Steph Curry, quote, misunderstood?
01:52And if so, in what way?
01:54Well, the way I was thinking about it is the way we perceive Steph Curry.
01:59And I think it was Bob Fitzgerald, the great TV play-by-play guy
02:02who dubbed him the baby-faced assassin.
02:05That might have been early in his career.
02:07And so, what we think about Steph is he is unbelievably talented,
02:11best shooter of all time, but he is kind of a nice guy.
02:15He's a really good guy.
02:17He's been married to the same woman forever.
02:19He's got four kids.
02:20He loves philanthropy and charity and all the rest of it.
02:23But I'm just getting from that that Steph is much more of a, not a killer,
02:30that's probably overly aggressive in describing Steph,
02:33but we know he's the petty king.
02:35He's actually the one who called himself that.
02:37So, I do think that there is much more of an edge to Steph Curry
02:42than any of us on the outside actually see.
02:44Okay, so you went to kind of edginess,
02:46like who Steph is.
02:48What if my mind went to, what Andre is trying to tell us is you have officially
02:54now realized that Steph is great, but you still don't get how great.
02:59And you never will.
03:00Right, that's part of it.
03:00You're never, ever going to understand how great Steph Curry is.
03:08And I get it.
03:10I think I get what he's saying.
03:12At least that's how I interpret it.
03:14If you think about the fact that we've sort of just sat with, okay, Steph has now made the top
03:2110 board.
03:22I think for most people, Steph has made the top 10 board.
03:26Okay, fine.
03:26Steph made the top 10 board.
03:28Look at your other nine.
03:30Look at all of them.
03:31Every single one of them are absolutely overwhelming, physical, behemoth human beings.
03:40But Steph Curry, known throughout league circles over the last decade and a half, as the most feared offensive player
03:49in the entire league in terms of trying to defend him, trying to keep up with him.
03:55And he does it all at 6'2", maybe 3', soaking wet, probably just a barely touch over 200 pounds.
04:06And I do think what Andre is saying is accurate.
04:10I do think, even still, today, I still think it's undersold.
04:15I don't even know how to make sense of flip your wrist and the ball goes three quarters of the
04:22court in Memphis and goes in.
04:24I don't know how to make sense of Steph Curry sometimes.
04:29And that's just where my mind went.
04:31I think Andre Iguodala still thinks that Steph Curry is underrated.
04:36And maybe that's what he meant with the word misunderstood.
04:39Probably.
04:40I mean, I do think that there's some of it that we don't ever see about who Steph actually is.
04:45And the front-facing Steph Curry is, I mean, aw shucks, is too dramatic to describe it.
04:52But he's just a, he's a great guy.
04:54And I think that when you're in that locker room and you play as long as Steph has and as
04:59long as Andre Iguodala did,
05:00you can't just be an easygoing aw shucks guy and survive.
05:04But what you're talking about is probably the majority of it.
05:08And just looking at the numbers, number one all-time and three-pointers made, we know that.
05:13He has an 858 three-point bulge on James Harden, who's number two.
05:19So, yes, I think that we all will misunderstand his greatness.
05:24If he winds up with 5,000 threes, which he needs another 750, but if he plays three more years,
05:30he might get there.
05:31And the gap between himself and number two will be almost impenetrable.
05:37But what you're describing, I think, is the biggest part of the misunderstanding, which is take all your goats.
05:44If he's 10th all-time, who's one through nine?
05:46Okay, you go to Kareem, 7'2", Wilt Chamberlain, 7'0", Michael Jordan, 6'6", LeBron, 6'8", Magic Johnson,
05:566'9", point guard, Larry Bird, 6'10".
05:58And I'm obviously leaving people out on just a breezy list here, but every other person you want to mention,
06:05Tim Duncan is 6'11", and all the rest of it.
06:08And this guy is just 6'2", we'll give him 6'3", and he was a three-star recruit at
06:15a high school, and nobody wanted you.
06:17Even though your dad was an NBA player, and it took a couple of unbelievable runs at Davidson to even
06:22get noticed,
06:23then you get passed over twice by Minnesota, and you've got all these physical problems early, and then you go
06:29on to be the best shooter ever?
06:31I wonder if Warrior fans kind of agree or disagree with that.
06:35Is Steph Curry essentially misunderstood on some level?
06:40You know, somebody called in earlier and was talking about how there's no way to measure the gravity.
06:46And to a piece of that, I sort of disagree, because I'm like, I don't have, and maybe this is
06:54what they meant,
06:54I don't have necessarily the data, we talked about jersey sales, that's data.
06:59Steph Curry remains number one last year.
07:02But for me, it was a much more organic look at that.
07:06Steph Curry kind of came onto the scene right as I was becoming a dad,
07:10and so just driving kids to school or being at youth sports events or being at those youth basketball games
07:18that we've all watched,
07:19you referee them so you see it all the time.
07:22There is no basketball player in my lifetime, maybe outside of Jordan.
07:27Like, when you and I were of a certain age, people would go over to the playground,
07:31and there was always at least one doofus, if not four, that would run around with their tongue hanging out.
07:38They would run around and play with your tongue hanging out.
07:41And we got to a point where people had to have, like, an advisory thing,
07:46where they're like, got to watch out, because if you play basketball with your tongue hanging out,
07:50and you go into the lane, you might get fouled, and you might bite your tongue.
07:55And you might hurt yourself.
07:57You might bite your tongue off.
08:00So that's the only thing I can ever compare this to, with the way that somebody was emulated
08:07and the way that somebody had an effect on the youth of the country.
08:12Michael Jordan was it, and I have seen no one, no LeBron, no Kobe, no Shaq,
08:21no one, who has had that kind of an effect on that generation, the schoolyard generation,
08:29than Steph Curry.
08:31If we want to look at it from that angle, there's two.
08:34Michael, Steph, end of book.
08:37But even Michael, like, okay, you're going to try to emulate Michael Jordan
08:41by running around with your tongue out of your mouth?
08:44Okay, that's about all you can do, because you can't rise and dunk.
08:48You can't shoot the shots that he would shoot.
08:51But when you look at Steph Curry, and you are, I'm thinking about your kids right now,
08:55and, you know, your 12-year-old, and even your older son, who was probably four or five
09:00when Steph was really making his big moves, like, you could look at Steph Curry
09:04and dream that you could be Steph Curry, because he's not 6'11".
09:09And, like, you look at LeBron, and you can emulate LeBron if you want.
09:13You could put powder in your hands and throw it into the sky.
09:15But you're probably not going to be 6'8", 240 with elite athleticism.
09:21It's just not going to be that way.
09:22But Steph is a guy you could look at and say, as a kid, you could say,
09:26you know what, I could do that.
09:28If he can do that at his size, maybe I can do that.
09:32Now, spoiler alert, you can't.
09:33But at least you can look at that and dream about it.
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09:59Okay, he didn't even just say, oh, Steph.
10:02Steph is the one that will be sort of understood, but 10 years too late.
10:07And then he followed up, he goes, they'll never understand.
10:10I mean, is this in perpetuity?
10:12No matter what happens?
10:14Like, we're never going to fully understand the gravity of Steph Curry?
10:19I appreciate this about Andre Iguodala.
10:22There is, tucked into all of this, a little concern for the Warriors.
10:28And, you know, Andre, I think, has spoken the truth a lot
10:31over the last few years.
10:34And he strikes, without having all the quotes in front of me,
10:38he strikes a chord of all of this stuff.
10:42You know, it's not to take credit away from Klay Thompson,
10:46Draymond Green, Steve Kerr, Joe Lacob,
10:49but it's Chase Center.
10:52It's the value of the team.
10:57It's the championships.
10:59It's Kevin Durant coming.
11:01It's the fact that LeBron is even considering coming.
11:04All of these things.
11:05He's like, it's one thing.
11:07It's Steph.
11:09That's it.
11:09It's just Steph.
11:12That's what makes all of this go.
11:14Maybe that's what he means.
11:15They'll never understand.
11:18And maybe they'll understand, but not at the same time,
11:22give the level of appreciation.
11:24And I know that you just said earlier, like, you know,
11:27he's entered the top 10.
11:29And I wonder if you go outside this market,
11:32maybe it's 10 years from now, and you look back at this run.
11:35And I'm sure even now there are many people across this country who would not put him in the top
11:4010.
11:41And you would look at his four titles and you'd say, well, two of them were checkbook championships.
11:45You needed Kevin Durant to come in and deliver those two.
11:49I think that there's more naysaying that goes on about this run outside the market than it does here.
11:55And that is partly, I think, what he's referring to because, you know,
11:59you'll never understand how great he is because you look at, well,
12:03Iguodala won the finals MVP the first time, and then Kevin Durant won the next two finals MVP.
12:09So if you're not here in this market, you probably don't have the same appreciation.
12:14I just asked AI who the consensus top 10 NBA players are of all time.
12:19You think Steph Curry's on the list?
12:21Uh, no.
12:23Yeah.
12:23According to AI?
12:24AI.
12:24Probably not.
12:26AI is not on the list either, though, by the way.
12:28Either AI.
12:29Andre Iguodala or Allen Iverson?
12:31Correct.
12:32Um, number one, Michael Jordan.
12:33Number two, LeBron James.
12:34I love how AI is like, this is the list.
12:37These are the 10.
12:38Right.
12:39It's widely agreed upon.
12:41No, it's not.
12:42But anyway, Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Magic, Russell, Wilt, Larry Bird, Tim Duncan, Shaq, Kobe.
12:52Honestly, I cannot really, like, if you're in a strike,
12:55one of them to get Steph on, I, we could spend a whole week of shows on that.
13:01It'd be tough.
13:02Right.
13:03And, like, Kobe, yes.
13:05LeBron and Michael, sure.
13:07I think Wilt and Kareem, absolutely.
13:09Bill Russell, I didn't really watch.
13:11But, I mean, all he did was defend and win.
13:14And, you know, Larry and Magic.
13:15And, you start going through that list.
13:17It's hard to find a spot for the show.
13:19Yeah, you can't argue with it.
13:20But, you also can't.
13:22I don't think you can really argue Steph if he's on the list.
13:27Right.
13:27But, again, what I think we do out in the world is we, and rightfully so,
13:33we elevate him by some of these people because these people are all huge.
13:39They're absolutely huge.
13:42Like, Shaq is a better basketball player than Steph?
13:46Preposterous.
13:47It's preposterous.
13:48Right.
13:49I mean, obviously, it's different basketball players.
13:52And I just think about, for me, this debate is a lot like the best quarterback debate.
13:57Well, you need to talk about the situation and the play call and the rest of it.
14:01So, if you take Shaq, for example, right now, as a 19-year-old coming out of LSU,
14:06here comes Shaquille O'Neal, 7'1", 285 pounds of highly skilled big man,
14:13he's not going to be as impactful in this NBA.
14:16Or, if you take Steph Curry and you plop him down next to Bob Cousy in 1961,
14:22well, we don't even have the three-pointer.
14:25And, by the way, the long shot is frowned upon.
14:28So, all right, is Steph going to be as good in 1961 as he is now?
14:31Of course not.
14:33Let's go to Will, who's driving to Tahoe.
14:36Good on you, Will.
14:37Thanks for calling.
14:38What's up?
14:40Hey, guys.
14:41Well, I think one of the things is thinking of Steph purely as a shooter.
14:45I mean, just a sense of him being frail when he came in.
14:47He's built his body every single year, and he's one of the best at driving the hole.
14:52I mean, there's just some of the drives through big men, and he's tough.
14:56Remember when he boxed out Dwight Howard?
14:58I mean, he's a great rebounder as a guard, too.
15:01So, that sense of him, you know, like what you're saying is, well, he does what we do.
15:05We're not built like that, and we can't bang with Dwight Howard.
15:08I think he's just much more of a physical presence than he used to be.
15:12And then, I mean, even if he's not hitting his threes, he's dangerous.
15:15So, I just think he's way more well-balanced and tough than people tend to give him credit for.
15:22Well, thanks.
15:23Yeah, I just think there's so much nuance to the things that he's doing.
15:29And I always give a lot of love in sports to people who do really, really good things that we're
15:35not seeing.
15:36Like, we don't see it on TV.
15:37You don't see what Steph is doing off the ball.
15:40You don't see what a great left tackle does in football.
15:43You're watching the ball.
15:45So, you don't see it.
15:47And I think that that's huge.
15:51And for sure, that's a huge part.
15:53I can't tell you how many, whether it's scouts, whether it's head coaches that put game plans together for the
16:00last 10 years have all talked about the hardest thing for our players to do is guard Steph Curry.
16:06It's the hardest, hardest, hardest player to guard in the league.
16:09Because he's not a guy who, when he has the ball, is the only time that he's a threat.
16:14So, when he doesn't have the ball, he's equally dangerous because there are multiple screens being set.
16:20But he's running around like a madman.
16:22And his timing on his cuts are so precise that, you know, even if it's two passes away from him
16:27maybe getting open, he's already setting up the defender to get to his spot.
16:31And then once he gets the ball, good luck trying to stop him.
16:35And I keep going back to the Olympics and watching the sequence in that fourth quarter of the gold medal
16:40game where he hits a three.
16:42Then it's a pump fake, side dribble, hits a three.
16:45Then he hits another three.
16:46And then the ridiculous one where he's like fading right with two guys on him and he hits a three.
16:50When he starts getting in that mode, he is unguardable.
16:54And his unguardability counts for three points, not just two.
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