After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 4

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For the fourth time, search for NCAA March Madness right here in the Odyssey app to get started. Good morning to you. Happy, are you ready? Happy Friday. Uh-huh. It has a special ring to it, even if you haven't worked a full week like me.

But I did travel. Sometimes it's hard in the middle of the week. Trying to flip the schedule. There was some stress with the dog.

She's great now. But yeah, it's one of those weeks where I'm just trying to get assimilated again and be ready for what's to come, which is March Madness. And actually, we're getting a precursor this weekend from Selection Sunday. So we've got conference championships that are going on even now, but all the way through Sunday. Selection Sunday, so we get the brackets for March Madness. And then, Monday, Tuesday, legal tampering in the NFL.

We are on our way. Still no decision about Aaron Rodgers, but the Jets are very optimistic. If you missed my conversation with Super Bowl champion, NFL vet, and now NFL analyst, Sean King, he's actually not sold on the Aaron Rodgers-Jets marriage, and he told us why in no uncertain terms. Also, he has his theories about Lamar Jackson, and the NFL and I have mine about guaranteed contracts. So we're going to bring back part of that conversation coming up in a few minutes. It's really interesting.

The whole thing is worth it. So we talked Geno, we talked Daniel Jones, we talked, oh gosh, we talked about Calvin Ridley even, Jimmy Garoppolo. I asked him the question of next best thing. We talked Matthew Stafford. So there's a lot of meat in this conversation with Sean. We are able to keep him over two segments, so I hope that you will check it out on our podcast, which we share every weekday morning, including Fridays, on both our Twitter and Facebook page.

Right now, we've got a poll up on our show Twitter after our CBS, as well as our Facebook page, and it's very simple. We're not asking you to give us your philosophy on the moon, the stars, the sun. We're not asking you to speak a new language.

We're not asking you to tell us what rule needs to be changed in what sport and what you think about the salary cap. Nope. Just asking you yes or no. Simple.

World Baseball Classic, yes or no. It's kind of interesting to follow the early voting. For a while it was a dead heat. Then the no's pulled in front. Now the yes's have pulled in front. And when I say no's, I don't mean the body part. Although earlier, someone, I'm not going to name any names, got a thumb stuck in a nose.

So you're just going to have to go back and get the podcast for that. It happened in the first three minutes. That's how long it took for a thumb to get stuck in a nose on our final show of the work week. Again, I'm not going to name any names. I can neither confirm nor deny that it hurt. Oh no!

Oh no's! So we had a light schedule in the NBA last night. Suffice it to say that there were a couple of nationally televised games with some interest to be sure. But the other only real storyline is that the Milwaukee Bucks without Giannis get a season high from Bobby Portis. 28 points for him. They nearly squander a 20 plus point advantage to the Nets only to rally.

Why? Well because Brook Lopez had 9 blocked shots. A career high. 9 blocked shots. Not just that, but more blocked shots than any other player in the NBA this season. Pretty amazing.

As in, get that bleep out of here! You have guys like Drew, JC, Chris, you know, all our guards in forwards. They're just animals on ball. They get everyone going down hill. Get them going one way and all I have to do is just meet these guys at the rim.

It's my teammates. They do such a great job with their roles defensively. Guarding the ball so hard. Making things difficult for their team. Again, giving them one option. Making them go one way.

It's a tribute to them. Phenomenal. You know, he block on one end. The offensive rebound tip in on the other end.

You know, it was a close game and he made the plays that made the difference down the stretch. One block shy of a triple-double. Get out of here! Haven't seen one of those in a while.

Get that ish out of here! On Valley Sports Wisconsin, that's Brook Lopez. Mike Budenholzer commenting on his center's performance.

Stepping up as he often does when Giannis is unavailable. So that's one storyline from the NBA. Another is that, I mean you don't want to look now, but the Sacramento Kings are 7-1 since the All-Star break. They are tied in second place in the Western Conference. De'Aaron Fox with 16 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter. So they were up 16 points at half on the Knicks who've been red hot themselves. But they were able to pull away even after the Knicks came back to tie.

They stabilized. They pull away in the fourth quarter. De'Aaron Fox, a big reason why. And what you need to know about the Kings is they score a lot of points. But Fox says, hey, it's not just the scoring. We're at the top of the league in scoring, but I feel like offensively we can play many different ways. We can just go pick and roll. We can get into isolations. We can get into post-ups. We can still throw the ball through the elbow and have guys split.

There's just many different ways that we can attack. Something else that I think is important to note, too, is as much as the Sacramento Kings have been fairly stable for the last couple of months, they've been right there in the top two, three, four in the Western Conference, they're certainly flying under the radar. Do you know they haven't made the playoffs since the 05-06 season? They haven't won a playoff series in almost 20 years.

This is a big deal for them. They are going to make the playoffs. They are going to be more than likely in a position where they have home court advantage, at least until they would run into, say, the Denver Nuggets. And right now they're tied with the Grizzlies in the standings.

This is a sneaky good team. They've won eight of their last ten, as I say, seven and one since the break, and they can score like nobody's business. But they're not getting a ton of attention. And I just dispute the whole idea that people on the East Coast can't somehow pay attention to sports happening on the West Coast. You mean to tell me East Coasters don't pay attention to the Warriors?

Stop it. The Kings also play in other time zones, but they don't get a lot of national attention, so to see them on TNT last night was pretty amazing, not just for basketball fans, for the Sacramento fan base, which is notorious for its energy, but also for guys like Fox in the locker room. I think it's big for the organization and for the city. I mean, this is much bigger than us. Like you said, I think people know about the Sacramento crowd, but obviously we play late games. People on the East Coast or in Central Time aren't, you know, they're not, they're asleep when we're playing. So for them to be able to experience, and obviously not everybody has league pass, so for people to experience this on TNT tonight I think was huge for this fan base and for this organization. And I think once playoff time comes, obviously most all arenas are allowed, but I think this is just a special place to play.

Looking forward to it. Again, Lakers, nobody on the East Coast knows what the Lakers do. Nobody on the East Coast knows what the, I don't know, Clippers do.

I mean, come on, that to me is, I get it, it's an easy thing to say. No, it's more about the fact that the Kings haven't been relevant for 20 years. That's the reason why people haven't paid attention to them.

How many head coaches, how many different superstars, how many iterations of the roster have we gotten through Sacramento? And they've been a bottom feeder for a good portion of the last 20 years. You want people to pay attention? Win. And right now they're getting attention because they are winning. But they're still tied in the West second spot with the Memphis Grizzlies because the Grizzlies put up 48 points on the Warriors in the first quarter last night. This to me is a new low for the Warriors on the road. They suck on the road, let's be fair. These are defending champions with a core that is still the same.

Jordan Poole, Draymond Green, Defensive Player of the Year in his past. Steph Curry, who's back on the court, and Klay Thompson. And yet they cannot win on the road to save their lives. They've now dropped three in a row, but to me this is a new low for them this season. 48 points allowed to a Grizzlies team without Ja Morant. They got it down to six, maybe even five later in the game when they got hot shooting. But I don't know how you expect to win ever, nor should you win, if you give up 48 points in one quarter of a game. It was the most in franchise history for the Grizzlies.

Again, without Ja Morant and Steven Adams. As Steve Kerr actually says, this one's on him. He started four guards against the Grizzlies, and he says that was my mistake. We've gotten off to bad starts, six, seven straight games, so we were looking for a little daylight early in the game. Memphis is a good defensive team, so we wanted to spread them out.

And hopefully get some good shots early. We didn't do that. We were impatient early, and we took some really tough, quick shots. And I didn't think we got organized well enough.

So I think, in hindsight, probably got a little too cute with that. But we are where we are. We're searching a little bit on the road, and took a gamble with that, and it didn't pay off. So Steve Kerr is saying, hey, I had a plan, it didn't work out the way I expected. But yeah, they've dropped three in a row now, and they're seven and 26 on the road.

This is the defending champion, seven and 26 on the road. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. So we've put up a poll asking you if you're interested in the World Baseball Classic, as in yes or no.

And the guy writes back, why is this a question? It should absolutely be covered. So frustrating, the lack of baseball coverage. Yeah, I wasn't asking whether or not you think I should cover it on my show.

Thanks. I don't actually take suggestions about that when it comes to what I do on my show. We're literally talking about it. Not just that, but who else have we talked about tonight? Otani, Bryce Harper. We've heard from Mark DeRosa, who is the manager of the USA team. Did we hear from, I guess we didn't get to Mike Trout yet. But we've got other guys that are playing, and we wanted to share that with you.

Because why will they start this weekend against Great Britain? So yeah, I guess that's kind of ear on over his head, lost on him. A little bit. A little bit. But yeah, I wasn't asking if we should cover it. I'll decide what we cover, but thank you. It's a poll about you, my friend.

It's a poll about you. So on Twitter or Facebook, are you going to pay attention to the World Baseball Classic? I love it.

I'm looking forward to it. Mark DeRosa said he asked Coach K for advice, because Coach K has been part of USA basketball, and has won gold medals, and has coached some of the best in the world. And Mark said Coach K told him, make sure that you tell the team you're not playing for the United States.

You are the United States. Oh, I love that. Gives me chills. So inspirational. It could go on the bulletin board.

The proverbial bulletin board, if you will. So I am looking forward to it this weekend. We'll see how the ratings are initially, but I think just the fact that it's an Olympic style event, nation to nation, there's a lot of national pride, and Otani is already crushing it for Team Japan. He is playing in the Tokyo Dome. He's got all of that home cooking, gets to be there, family, friends, but he's a national hero. He's global, to be sure, but nothing like being at home with a Tokyo Dome, where you can barely hear yourself think for the opener of the World Baseball Classic against your rival, Japan.

So it's kind of amazing. Four shutout innings, four times on base. Otani's already tuned up. And what did we hear from Jason Stark last week when he joined us here on the show? He will be the story this season. Regardless of what else is going on, he will be the story this season. An update just to get back to the NBA real quickly.

Later, Kyrie Irving, that's not really NBA as much as it is Kyrie on his lonesome. But his former teammate, Kevin Durant, according to the team, is out for at least three weeks. He won't be reevaluated until three weeks down the road, which is the end of the regular season. There are four weeks left in the regular season.

The play-in tournament starts right after the Masters, so it's early April. And they're not going to have Kevin Durant until then, so I'm bummed for him. He rolls his ankle in warm-ups right before he's supposed to make his home debut with the Suns, and now he's out again.

And he was so anxious to get back. But this is kind of interesting. I don't know if I agree with this, but Antonio Daniels, who's an NBA vet, he does TV for the Pelicans, also hosts a show on Sirius XM, NBA radio. He actually doesn't think that the injury to KD will hurt the Suns' chances of winning a title. He has shown the ability to mesh with whomever, whenever, however.

That's why. To the tune of success, though, for him. It's never been a situation where Kevin Durant's been in.

And you're thinking to yourself, like, gosh, he really doesn't fit. You know, it's really not working between him and this particular guy. It's not working. It's not working between him and Russell Westbrook and James Harden. It's not working between him and Russell Westbrook. It's not working between him and Klay Thompson and Steph Curry. It's not working between him, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving. It's not working between him, Ben Simmons, and Kyrie Irving. Just the same way I feel that way with him and Chris Paul and Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton. No, if Kevin Durant comes back healthy to start the playoffs, nothing for me changes.

I get it. With KD in the lineup, they are formidable. The issue, though, is that he's only played a couple of games with these guys. And yes, he knows Chris Paul. And yes, he and Devin Booker are going to work together because they're both great players.

But it doesn't mean it's going to be seamless. Also, and it's not just about his assimilation into the Suns roster and into the flow. It's about the fact that he's played so little basketball since the turn of the, not the turn of the century, since the turn of the year. He's played so little basketball since January. I'm more worried about him and his fitness and being able to now work out and stay in baseball, baseball shape, stay in, it's all coming apart here, stay in basketball shape because he's played so little hoop since the year began.

It's just a long time to be idle for the better part of three plus months. And so that's more what I worry about. Not as much about KD fitting in with these guys because, yeah, you give the ball to KD.

That's what he does. Speaking of the WBC, even as we head into a break, MLB just shared this video from Tokyo Dome where Otani and Team Japan are warming up, getting ready to take, let's see, who are they playing? Let's see, I don't even know who they're playing, actually. Getting ready for their next game on FS1, it will be. And so they've got this video of Otani crushing a BP ball off not just the upper deck, but the automated, the video boards above the upper deck.

I mean, it's insane. So if you want to retweet it from our show account, After Hours CBS, yeah, this is from the MLB Twitter, they're all over it. They're playing South Korea.

Thank you, Producer J. So as Team Japan warms up, it'll be on FS1. Otani's already crushing the baseball. I mean, he's smiling away. He's fist pumping because everything he does right now in Tokyo, the fans are all about it. Super cool.

I'm glad for him. And it's just a neat event. So take our poll on Twitter and Facebook. World Baseball Classic, yes, no. This is your own personal feelings about it.

I'm not asking you whether or not I should cover it. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio. You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. Rogers under center. Single back offense once again. Dylan the lone setback. Fake to Dylan. Rogers to throw.

Looking around. Throws end zone. Touchdown! Helen Lazard left side of the end zone. And the Packers are back in front.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. It's going to be weird if Rogers is not playing for Green Bay. I haven't really thought about it yet because we don't actually know what he's doing.

If he's retiring, if he's playing again. We do know that the Packers gave the Jets permission to meet with them. That Rogers was agreeable. That Woody Johnson led a contingent out to California to see Rogers.

And according to the reporting from Diana Rossini and she had some locked in sources on Thursday. The Jets are very optimistic that Rogers will choose to play for them. And that the Packers and the Jets can get a deal done.

So this is the report out there. We haven't yet heard from Aaron yet. I do know that there's a lot of recruiting going on among some of the Jets players if you missed this. Now we told you, Sauce Gardener promised Aaron two things. As the reigning defensive rookie of the year promised him he would not pick him off in practice. Which I think is dumb. I think he should say, I'm going to pick you off every time. That would be more incentive to come go toe to toe. But he also promised that he would burn a cheese head in honor of Aaron Rogers joining the Jets.

So he actually went ahead and did a preemptive strike. This is on Sauce Gardener's insta. He along with the running back Breeze Hall who's recovering from the ACL. Garrett Wilson. To all rookies last year.

They get together and they sacrificially burn a cheese head in honor of Aaron. How would y'all feel if A-Rod was on the offensive side of the ball? First of all, throwing you dots. Handing you the ball off. Throwing you them swing routes. Them wheel routes. They going to open it up for me.

They going to be scared of them. Boom. Hand me off the ball. We smooth.

Super Bowl. How would you feel getting them dots? Man, I just know it's going to be precise.

It's the main thing I think about when I think about A-Rod, so. Hey, come on. Hey, I need this touch, bro. I need the touch. I need the touch. Hey, I need the touch. I need the touch. The touch of the cheese.

Hey, when it's going to this motherfucker, I'm going to turn this cheese sauce over. Come on. Oh. Damn. It's gone. It's gone, man. It's gone, bruh. Gone, man.

Ain't nothing we can do. Look at the cheese. It's turning the cheese sauce, bruh. Look. It's turning the cheese sauce, though.

Oh, bro. Y'all see that? It's really turning the cheese sauce, man. It ain't even there no more. We should've got some s'mores, for real.

We should've got some s'mores. This is what happens when football players have time off during the off-season. Yeah.

So that's the three. They were rookies. Now, second-year players, Sauce Gardner and Breece Hall, who both were amazing in their own right, mentioned sauce, but also Garrett Wilson was the offensive rookie of the year for the Jets last year as a wide receiver, and they're sacrificially turning a cheese head into cheese sauce on Sauce's, well, that's funny, on Gardner's Insta. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio. That is our segue into part of my conversation with Super Bowl champion, NFL analyst, Shaun King of Vison, who joined us from Vegas last night. I asked him how he thinks the marriage between Rodgers and the Jets would work out.

From a business standpoint for New York, it makes sense, but let me put context on what I'm about to say. Winning a Super Bowl is difficult. The National Football League has the most parity of any professional sports league in the world. It's the only league where every fan base legitimately has an opportunity from one off-season to the next to go from a not even in the conversation to a Super Bowl champ.

Look at the Tamalee Buccaneers, the team that I grew up rooting for. Think about pre-Brady and then with Brady, and so I get what the Jets are doing. The difference was Brady was motivated.

He was going to try and put everything he had into winning a Super Bowl without Bill Belichick, because that would separate him legacy-wise. I don't know that Aaron Rodgers has that same motivation. When you listen to Aaron talk, when you really focus in on what he's saying, he seems more like an athlete that's accomplished a whole lot individually, who knows he's going to be in the Hall of Fame, who doesn't really care about the hierarchy of his legacy. Five, six years ago, people were talking about Aaron Rodgers as maybe the best quarterback ever.

Now, nobody has him in that conversation. I just don't know for what the Jets would have to give up, is it worth it to ascertain what will be 40-year-old Aaron Rodgers, who's talked about retiring the last three years? What else is there if you're a team that feels like you're a quarterback away?

If I was Woody Johnson's right-hand man, and trust me, I think Woody is leading this cavalry. He wants Aaron Rodgers. He has not had a legit elite quarterback since Brett Favre. He wants Rodgers. He feels like in the AFC, in order to go up against Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, all those guys, you have to have an Aaron Rodgers-type player.

My thing would be Woody. Lamar Jackson is 26, Aaron Rodgers is 39. We're going to have to give up basically the same thing, because I'm assuming the Green Bay-New York Jets deal for Rodgers is going to mimic, in a lot of ways, the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos trade last offseason for Russell Wilson, which included multiple players going back to Seattle. So if you're Green Bay, how do you give up Aaron Rodgers and not include Sauce Gardner, or Breece Hall, or Garrett Wilson? So you can get Lamar Jackson at the same price point and give up two first-round picks. Like that would be the avenue that I would be going down if I was a Jets. Sean King is a former NFL QB, a Super Bowl champion from his time in Tampa, and now part of Visa Live based in Vegas, and he's on prime time, which is three to six Pacific.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. All right, let's talk about Lamar Jackson. I understand why teams, and in this case it's the Ravens, would balk at a fully guaranteed deal. But if you're Lamar, or if you're advising Lamar, are you sticking to that, Sean?

Or at some point, do you have to come back off it a little bit for a comfortable position for your future? At this point, I don't think you can compromise. Now, I don't advocate professional athletes not having representation.

Once you get into corporate America and you get into business ownership and different things, you understand negotiations are volatile, because both sides are trying to do what's best for them. So to be personally involved as a professional athlete, I don't know that you ever would feel your current boss is the same, because they're going to offer you things that you think are disrespectful, but that's just the art of negotiation. How does Lamar Jackson ever walk back in that building after not getting on the plane with the Ravens and attending the playoff game versus the Bengals? That was when I felt like, okay, he's played his last snap with the Ravens.

I don't know how you walk back and take back and rework that relationship. Do you sign the franchise tender, or do you say, heck no? Absolutely not. I mean, you've basically gotten what you wanted, which is if there was a team willing to play Deshaun Watson, he hadn't played for a year, and you knew he wasn't going to be able to play for the majority of the year that they signed him. You've got to think that at 26, a team would be willing to give Lamar Jackson the same thing, right?

He's already won an NFL MVP. I know the NFL is moving away from it, but they're currently the only professional sports league in America that doesn't regularly offer guaranteed contracts. So we find in life, everything's about evolving. Everything's about pivoting. This is a time in America where people are like, nobody's going to use a cell phone. Nobody wants to drive and talk on the phone. Nobody wants to be right. So I mean, things will change that we thought would never happen. So what's the issue with not having guaranteed contracts? That's the question I always have for the league side of this debate.

What's the issue? Explain that to me. Give me something rational in 2023 that is a legitimate argument about why contracts in that league should not be guaranteed. Especially with the quarterback position, you're talking about guys that are taking a lot of hits. And if someone suffers an injury, it isn't the same again.

You're talking about a league in which you can go from worst to first in one season. It's because of the salary cap. It kind of changes a whole lot if you are paying a quarterback or any player who is not able to play or isn't the same guy anymore.

Yeah, but the New York Giants just extended Daniel Jones. They can't get out of that deal. When Dallas gave Dak Prescott that deal, they can't get out of that deal. Like those deals, even if the money is not guaranteed, aren't easily set off. You can't like easily get out of those deals.

Yeah. Russell Wilson in Denver, same thing. Think about the number that Kyler Murray got guaranteed.

It was north of 180 million. So the guaranteed money is there. It's just not fully guaranteed. And teams often renegotiate. Teams often will find creative ways to get their highest paid players under a salary cap.

Sometimes deferred money, sometimes it's in bonuses. But the issue though, of course, is the salary cap hits. And so how do they get to the point where they're able to fit their quarterback, but then also work on other positions of need? So really good discussion with Sean King from Vison in Las Vegas. Super Bowl champion had some really interesting things to say about Rogers desire to keep playing as well versus Lamar Jackson. Talked about the Derek Carr.

He actually played at Tulane, so he's in the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame. Sean is. We talked about Derek Carr and then Jimmy Garoppolo, Geno Smith, Calvin Ridley. That was where we finished up.

Great conversation. Check it out on our podcast. It'll be part of our social media, so we'll put the post up throughout the day on Friday.

But you can always check it out with the free Odyssey app or via our CBS Sports Radio website. Here's our lay. But before we get to Marco Belletti, actually hang on Marco coming up Kyrie Irving. He continues to push back against perception. He doesn't want us to talk about him.

But by using his voice and his platform loudly, an hour long live stream on Twitch, he continues to bring the quote unquote unwanted attention. You are listening to the After Hours podcast. Really want to win here, really put a lot of pressure on myself at times. I think I need to scale it back a little bit just because of the second half of the season. Just feeling like we got to be great every single possession. Usually these learning curves or learning moments happen in preseason and it's just happening now, so it definitely puts a glaring eye on what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. Easy to criticize.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Kyrie Irving seemed like he was really excited for this opportunity with the Dallas Mavericks and it's been a mixed bag so far. He and Luka Doncic, now he missed one or two games. Luka has missed a few games. Plus he's dealing with a thigh injury, though thankfully the x-rays, the MRIs came back negative but he's listed as day-to-day. So the Mavericks on the court is one thing. Right now they're in that 7-10 tournament and are hoping to make some headway.

Certainly the West is very crowded, there's a lot of potential. Kyrie off the court is always a different story and as much as he wants to push back against public perception and what he thinks people are saying about him, I wish I could tell him, not that it would matter, but I wish I could tell him human-to-human. I'm not even, I call myself a z-list public figure. I'm not famous like Kyrie, but it's a stack deck when it comes to public figures in terms of social media and in terms of perception.

We don't know you personally, we only know what we see of you on the court and of course your track record and there's plenty of material there with Kyrie. But we also know what you put out there on your own platforms and as much as he feels as though he's being railroaded or perceived unfairly, honestly that's just life as a public figure. Now does he have a voice? Does he have a platform that he's allowed to use?

Absolutely. It just seems that what he wants is for people to stop pigeonholing him, people to stop saying things about him that he believes are untrue and yet the attention will continue, the prying eyes, the scrutiny, the spotlight will continue to shine as long as he does this, as long as he goes on hour-long live stream rants on Twitch that are at times so hard to understand. He's speaking English but I don't even get what he's saying half the time. So you can hear him and listen for yourself.

It was a long stream, it was over an hour, Twitch you can't go back and listen to the whole thing so a lot of what we have now is in chunks. But he once again takes aim at those people who think they know him. ...for three hours and you think you know who I am? You see a few posts? Oh Ky's woke, Ky got it, oh Ky is, oh my goodness, he just doesn't fit into the mold of all of the people and man he's different, he's crazy, he's arrogant, he's this, he's that, he's this.

All from seeing me from three hours. You get all that, Ky, what's Ky gonna do this summer? Does Ky like Dallas? What happened in Brooklyn? What happened in Boston?

What happened in Cleveland? Why did you leave LeBron? Why did you leave Jason? Why did you leave Katie? Why did you leave all these people? For three hours.

Get to ask all these legitimate questions as if 21 hours every day wasn't happening after that. Me, you would think that I'm the cancer in the locker room as if basketball is an individual sport that one person is supposed to take blame for. That's 15 guys on the team and I'm the one cancer in the room. That's what it's portrayed as, that's what you guys get, that's what they have fun doing, that's why these older bitter gentlemen and women keep my name in their mouths every day. I talked about him in a couple of days but this is noteworthy.

First of all it's not just three hours, it's not. Tyree again puts himself out there on his platform, uses his voice and this is just another example. Are we supposed to ignore this? I mean fans aren't ignoring it. He's reaching out to the people that follow him on these platforms.

He knows it's going to be big news so if you don't want people to talk about you like they know you or to talk about what we know of you then maybe be a little more private with your business. And again it's not just three hours nor is there zero precedent with Kyrie. You're right it's a team sport and we've got the accounts of the other people who were involved in Brooklyn, in Boston, Cleveland is becoming more of a distant memory but we know that there was friction there too and also you're the common denominator. In some of these situations that have become untenable you're the common denominator. No one's saying it's, well I'm not saying, I don't know what other people are saying, I'm not saying it's all your fault but just that you leave teams and problems in your wake very often. You're the one who goes AWOL, you're the one who leaves and doesn't tell your team where you're going.

Very few players in the NBA or in pro sports get away with that. And you choose to invite criticism by some of the risks that you take with your social media. Again it's a battle you can't win as a public figure but he's trying and so thus comes the attention that he seems to hate.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. He dials down on freedom and all kinds of other topics in this Twitch rant. How am I free if I know my people aren't free in Africa? How am I free if I know my indigenous people are not free in Australia? How am I free if I know kids are still working on the cobalt barns in the Congo making Teslas? These are his opinions.

He's welcome to them. Just it's interesting because he weaves that in with the idea of sports gambling. Gambling and sports betting has completely taken the purity away from and the fun away from the game at times. Let me just be honest with y'all.

Work is work but the support around it can be very distracting. You know what I mean? There's a difference between being a diehard fan and supporting your team and loving your team versus somebody that's betting on a parlay. Don't get me wrong. I don't want anybody wasting their money on me but God dang like this whole community of gamblers that's come into the game of basketball.

Y'all tell me what y'all think. You want to gamble? Why don't you gamble on something that makes sense? Now you may or may not agree with him when it comes to sports gambling. He actually goes on to say that it's ridiculous when fans slide into an athlete's DMs or blame an athlete for having a bad game and costing them money. So I agree with him there. It's just this weird juxtaposition of various topics.

He also talks about Ja Morant and the situation with Ja now and some of the mistakes that he's made. Y'all saw what's going on. Come on, man. We don't have to go into Twelski. We don't even have to go into that.

We don't have to go into that because Twelski's not the only person that's dealt with real life circumstances. He's not the only one. He won't be the only one. So guess what I'm going to do?

I'm going to stand and make sure that I'm there for my family and my friends. We all make mistakes. We all do things that we regret. But somehow when you're a celebrity and you're famous, you're underneath different rules? Yeah you are.

Somehow. Yeah, you are. It's funny. So ironic that he says that because how many chances has he received that a lesser basketball player would not think about what happened to Myers Leonard. And I'm not excusing Myers Leonard. Myers Leonard, not nearly as talented as Kyrie Irving, a role player. Myers uses a word that, now he claims he didn't know that it was a slur, that it was anti-Semitic. He is out of the league for over a year before a team will take a chance on him.

Kyrie Irving? What did he get, an eight game suspension? Forced to apologize? And we know he wasn't sorry. I mean yes, there are different rules for very talented athletes, absolutely.

There are different rules for celebrities when it comes to, oh I don't know, not getting charged with things that the average man or woman would. So yeah, that actually makes sense. But just his tone of voice too, it's so odd. And I have no idea what he's talking about with his happiness. Happy to be here. Just elated. Elated.

Just elated to be here. It's great. It's great, dude. Dude, it's great. It's great. It's great, broski.

Bro, name it. It's great. It's great. It's great, bro. It's great. It's great. This life's great, bro.

I have no complaints. It's bad. Maybe we're taking that out of context, but it's just odd.

Right, so I don't know what he was talking about before or after. Again, you can't go back and listen to a full twitch, but just to hear these rants-ish, can we hear that one again just cause, it's just so, it's like he's talking to himself, but I can't tell if he's being serious or not. Happy to be here, just elated, elated, just elated to be here. It's great. It's great, dude. Dude, it's great. It's great. It's great broski.

Bro name it. It's great. It's great. It's great, bro. It's great. It's great. It's great. This life's great, bro.

I have no complaints. I don't. It doesn't sound genuine to me, but I don't really know what he's talking about.

He actually does sound genuine when he's saying goodbye after all of that. If this ends up somehow misconstrued and they try to chop up what I said to mean a certain thing, just be aware. All right.

And just do everything you can to protect me without getting into trouble. Okay. I just love you guys. It's not about appeasing them. It's just about controlling what we can control here. All right. So peace y'all.

I love you. It's us versus them or it's him versus us. I don't know who us and them are. I assume he's speaking to his fans, to his family, but here's what I wish, that he would speak to his family and his friends privately and not put all of it out there. It's the attention he doesn't want and yet he knows he's going to get it. It's it's, yeah, it's an oxymoron really to put yourself on Twitch like that. So it reminds me of Antonio Brown.

It really does remind me of AB. Have a great weekend. Talk to you Sunday night. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio. Boom.