LEBRON, BRONNY & KYRIE
I love LeBron James.
I know little about his eldest — son Bronny born in 2004, making him 16 years old.
I hear he can play.
And Kyrie Irving?
Well, he can play too.
But the more I hear about him, and more particularly, from him…the less I’m on board with him.
LeBron’s legacy is secure and has been for a very long time.
He is in the middle of the conversation as to whom may be the greatest basketball player ever.
His kid?
We’ll see.
Kyrie?
He’s well on his way to devaluing himself in form and fashion — every single time he pontificates.
Why feel the need to do it?
Is it insecurity?
Is it pomposity?
Is it his version of ‘artistry?’
C’mon man!
Kyrie Irving is an artist with a basketball in his hands — ball on a string, good shooter, good passer — a truly gifted offensive player who has had more than a whiff of success.
His detractors think he should stick to playing the game and refrain from weighing in on subjects he knows little about.
And to be clear, this is not a “Shut up and dribble,” commentary — a posture so distasteful and repugnant to me that it reeks of latent, if not blatant racism.
I would never send such a vibe.
Rather, this is simply about talking too much.
Nobody knows how smart you may — or may not — be, if you don’t so incessantly run your mouth.
And for somebody who exhibits such a profound media disdain, Irving’s flapping tongue gets him in trouble and holds him hostage, time and time again.
Charles Barkley, for one, is not impressed.
Never at a loss for words himself, and with a rich history of crossing the line, Sir Charles ripped into Kyrie pretty good.
Taking shots at him for acting like he knows it all, Chuck remarked, “When Irving, I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to say. He starts talking about what an artist is. You’re a basketball player. Yo man, you dribble a basketball, stop acting like you’re the smartest person in the world.”
The ‘Round Mound’ was just getting warmed up.
“Just answer stupid basketball questions. If you want to say something about social justice then say it and mean it because it’s important. But all that other stuff? Like yo man, shut the hell up and talk basketball…You only went to college for six months, answer basketball questions.”
When he graces the media with his mandated presence, Irving frequently goes off-script, treating each session as a podcast.
His emotions take over and generally, a good deal of rambling ensues, which rarely casts Irving in a positive light.
Several examples come to mind, in no particular order.
A few years back, he told Celtics fans at a preseason Garden event that he wanted to be a Celtic for life.
More recently, he made some half-cocked statement that if he was not to take the last shot with the game on the line, the only other teammate in whom he ever had the confidence to get the job done, would be Kevin Durant.
That didn’t sit too well with LeBron.
Shortly after Steve Nash — with no coaching experience of any sort — was hired to replace Kenny Atkinson as Brooklyn’s head coach, Irving insisted that coaching the Nets would be a communal effort; he could do it, Durant could do it, the players could essentially coach themselves.
He has since, wisely walked back those comments.
Never mind that doozy regarding the shape of the earth.
It’s flat; what, you didn’t know?
And last night (December 18) when the Nets visited Boston for each team’s final preseason game, Irving unveiled his new pregame ritual: burning sage — known as ‘smudging’ — while circling the court, to honor his Native American heritage and to “just cleanse the energy, make sure that we’re all balanced.”
His teammates don’t seem to mind.
Observes his buddy, Durant, “That’s just what he does…That’s his thing and we all respect him…We respect his method…”
Shannon Sharpe on the other hand, is in Barkley’s camp.
He tweeted @ShannonSharpe:
“Kyrie had no problem saying NBA players shouldn’t play in the bubble when he wasn’t allowed to go. Kyrie had no problem saying KD was the only teammate who could take clutch shots like him. Now all of a sudden he has nothing to say.”
Sharpe is enormously frustrated that Kyrie speaks his mind when it comes to his own “outlandish” opinions, but when it comes to answering direct basketball questions directly, all of a sudden, the words aren’t there.
“I don’t listen to Kyrie anymore. Because I’m going to sit back one day and regret the minutes I did spend listening to him.”
Bronny James, LeBron James Jr., is a five-star recruit out of Sierra Canyon in California.
A high school sophomore and considered one of the best sophomore prospects in the country, there are those who believe he could duplicate his father’s feat of going straight to the NBA upon graduation.
Drawing notice, courtesy of similarities to a Mt. Rushmore basketball legend like his dad, can offer a slippery slope to navigate.
Again, we’ll see.
And on top of that, James Sr. is becoming a global presence in other ways; he uses his expansive platform to speak out and advocate for social justice and other legitimate world-wide concerns, like education for example — and he weighs in intelligently.
And he backs it up.
As for Bronny, Senior solicited his pal, former NBA superstar Gilbert Arenas, (Agent 00 to his inner sanctum) for an honest critique of his son’s progress as a player.
Arenas was painfully honest.
Comparing father and son — both as tenth graders — the evaluation was interesting to say the least.
Arenas gave the nod to the youngster in “Shooting,” “Dribbling” and “Vertical.”
He gauged their “Passing” to be equal and judged LeBron to have greater 10th grade “Speed.”
@KingJames’ response?
“DEAD ON.”
Arenas recalled, “I text him back and I said, ‘Don’t even worry. He’s you.’”
“I said, ‘From what I can tell right now, he probably has a better shot than you did, dribbles better than you. You guys probably have the same passing ability. You were probably faster, taller. He probably jumped higher.’
And he said, ‘Yo, dead on.’”
Arenas followed up by telling ‘The King’ that, “What he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need just the internal love [of the game].”
He has had that for a long time and surely will continue to have it, provided there’s no burnout.
LeBron’s new 2-year contract extension with the 2020 champion Lakers (worth a reported $85 million) ensures that he will remain a Laker until the end of the 2022-’23 season.
This feeds speculation that he wants to play in the NBA at potentially, the same time as his son.
At the age of 38, he’ll become a free agent again in 2023, the same year Bronny graduates from high school.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver knows all this; he expects the One-and-Done rule — and the league-entry age requirement of 19 — to end in time for the 2022 Draft.
Earlier this year Silver doubled down saying, “We haven’t made it a secret recently it is our intention, although we still need to work out the details with the players association, to return to an entry age of 18.”
LeBron’s not keeping any secrets either.
In 2018, he said in a feature with Uninterrupted that playing in the NBA with (or against) Bronny would be his greatest and proudest achievement.
“You want to ask me what is the greatest achievement of my life? If I’m on the same court as my son in the NBA. That would be number one in my lifetime as an NBA player. I’ve thought about it because my son is about to be 14, and he might be able to get in there a little earlier.”
A long-shot?
Perhaps.
At this very moment Bronny probably wouldn’t be considered a true One-and-Done prospect, as other players in his class are more advanced in their development.
Case in point: Mikey Williams, fellow 2023 classmate, who goes for 50 on a regular basis while Bronny hits double figures now and then.
Different players.
Different teams.
Different game plans and strategies.
And it’s not this very moment.
Bronny’s age, genes and basketball pedigree give him plenty of room to improve, and who knows?
He could grow another six inches and become the #1 prospect by 2023.
Same end-game.
I wonder with whom LeBron would rather play, Bronny or Kyrie.
Not really; a no-brainer.
I’m reasonably sure I know against whom he’d prefer to play.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in December 2020.]
