Is Luka Doncic OVERRATED? Kyrie Irving On Point Or DELUSIONAL ? Is Ben Simmons CRITICISM Fair?
57In This Livestream We Discuss
The Dallas Mavericks are now 0-2 in their Western Conference Semifinals series against the Phoenix Suns. They fell to the Suns 129-109 Wednesday night in their second road game of the series.
Luka Doncic led the Mavs in points and assists in the loss, recording 35 points, five rebounds, and seven assists. Despite his remarkable statistics and leadership throughout the regular season and playoffs, Skip Bayless isn’t sold on the young point guard. "Luka is not a superstar by any stretch of the imagination."
The Nets were blindsided when a New York City vaccinate mandate would not let unvaccinated Kyrie Irving play in home games.
The Nets originally said Irving would not be with the team as long as he remained unvaccinated, but with injuries and a large losing skid, they changed their tune in December, and welcomed him for road games -- he returned to the court in January.
But Irving, who described himself as a "martyr," while talking on the ETCs Podcast, said the Nets had "no plan, no vision" to have him play in road games earlier than he did.
"When we got into training camp in San Diego, I was not expecting a mandate to be brought down in a way that it wasn't going to allow me to play at all. I had the opportunity to play in away games still, but there was no plan in place, there was no vision of how it was going to work for our team, and I think that really impacted not just me, but a lot of people. So just had to sit in that hot seat for a little, and deal with it man.
The NBA announced its list of the 75 greatest players in league history when the 2021-22 season began, yet even with the season over for most of the league, some of the snubs are still bitter that they missed out. Naturally, Kyrie Irving numbers among those snubbed. In April, the Brooklyn Nets star implied that he believes that he was originally on the list, but was removed due to his many controversial statements and actions. "I think I'll leave it to the conspiracy theorists. I think I was on the list... but I guess I'm not," Irving said.
Irving further argued that Wednesday on an appearance on The ETCs with Kevin Durant podcast that he belonged on the list as someone who represents "the mastery of basketball."
"I really admire a lot of the talent that has come through our league that has really set cornerstones and foundational shots, pathways for people to follow right or to achieve better, to want to achieve better," Irving said. "So I can't sit here and debate. You know whether or not I was or I wasn't. I can only tell you how I feel, and absolutely I feel like I deserve to be on that top 75 list."
Ben Simmons underwent back surgery on Thursday to address a herniated disc in his back, an injury that flared up at just the wrong time and kept him out of a first-round series against the Boston Celtics.
The murky timeline of Simmons’ injury has left many analysts doubting whether Simmons was truly too hurt to play at all this season. Upon his trade, all of the reports indicated that Simmons was healthy and looking forward to playing, but as the weeks stretched on, Simmons was repeatedly listed as out for “reconditioning.” Simmons later started experiencing back soreness which delayed his return further.
Still, in the middle of the Celtics series, all indications were that Simmons planned to play. He joined his teammates in practice, and we saw plenty of footage of Simmons making basketball moves on a court and even dunking the ball. Unfortunately, just before Game 4, it was reported that Simmons woke up and experienced back pain again, and his injury was apparently severe enough that he was not able to sit on the bench to see the Nets get swept out of the postseason.
Commentators like Stephen A. Smith and Shaquille O’Neal shredded Simmons for not at least attempting to play a few minutes. O’Neal dubbed it a “punk move,” while Smith argued earlier this week that the real reason Simmons never played this season was to protect his grievance claim against the 76ers.
Simmons had a response for his critics on Twitter. Simmons retweeted a video made by Doc Holliday, in which Holliday calls out all of the national media members who criticized Simmons for not returning to the court
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