Quote:
Originally Posted by Groundhog
Unfortunately for Kyrie (and Boston) I think he's picked up more than a little bit of LeBron's extreme alpha dog personality, without LeBron's extreme ability to influence the game as much on both ends (in his prime).
|
I wouldn't call LeBron an extreme alpha dog - he's way too passive aggressive with all his interviews and social media posts. I do think Kyrie has picked up a lot of his attitude from that, and some from a true alpha dog - Kobe. There was a quote from Kyrie (from his time in Cleveland) where he talks about how Kobe told him you need to have conflict on the floor or in the locker room to be great, and it's just insane. Teams with true alpha's that won championships have some conflict because you have insanely competitive people like Kobe, MJ, Kevin Garnett, even a Draymond Green, but they're not good because of the conflict they're good because they're talented and competitive. Plus Kobe probably cost the Lakers another title or two by pushing Shaq out the door.
The weird part is that until the all-star break and Kyrie fanning the Knicks rumors it was pretty much all narrative - once they made the lineup change to start the Marcus's and play Gordon Hayward less (plus Hayward/Brown/Horford started playing better) they were the second best team in the NBA by net rating for 2-3 months. Now the last two weeks have happened and it's hard not to agree with everyone that it's unfixable and we're better off if Kyrie leaves, but this team is still very talented and has shown they can beat Milwaukee & Toronto & dominate Philadelphia H2H. Who knows, it'd be great to just ignore them until the playoffs, but you look at the schedule and it's Golden State on national TV tonight, the Lakers Saturday night on ABC in the worst team chemistry of 2019 bowl, Philly again a week later, with 2 against the Kings team that is sneaky my favorite League Pass team right now in the middle.
On the bright side it seems like the Clippers will hold on to the 8 seed, and the Lakers and LeBron shitshow has been quite enjoyable. Inbounding the ball off the back of the backboard and everyone's body language afterwards is one of the most astounding things I've seen. The last inbounding play that cracked me up like that was Russell Westbrook's hilarious 6 step travel.