What NBA player would you want to see in a golf competition?
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LeBron vs Jordan in THE MATCH?
Matthew Bassin: LeBron James vs Michael Jordan in THE MATCH? Every time that we have seen the match so far it’s involved golfers or golfers and NFL players or Charles Barkley because he’s Charles Barkley. So it got you.
And I think about, how do we get to have one of these with NBA ballers involved in these kinds of entertaining matches? Because this is just good television. It is entertaining when you get the right personalities involved. And there’s no reason that the NBA can’t get involved in something like this.
Ryan Griffin: Yeah. There is no reason at all. You got TNT, you already have Barkley baked into it. And then you have, one of the most famous athletes of all time, who was trying to be a professional golfer at one point in his career. I was thinking about who would be like the perfect match-up for this hypothetical NBA match that we have going on.
And for me, I think two people have to be involved. I think Michael Jordan has to be involved because one, he is a great golfer. Two, he is the greatest basketball player of all time. And he talks a whole lot of crap. And then the second person who has to be involved is Steph Curry because apparently, Steph Curry was just like this amazing golfer.
If he wasn’t so good at basketball, maybe he could try his way to get on a PGA. If he was like focusing all his energy on golf. And then the other two are really up for debate and it’s like a wild card toss-up. So I think, because I was wrestling with that. I really tried to put a lot of thought in this.
So I think my format would be what Mahomes and Rogers and Brady and Josh Allen did. I would pair old guys against young guys. So I would have Michael Jordan be like the captain of his team. And then along the side of Michael Jordan, I probably ended up going with Larry Bird. Because he is a great golfer as well.
And Larry Bird’s a man who can talk some smack as well. Then on new guys, what I would do is I’d put Steph Curry obviously. And then it is a handicap because he’s probably not as good as other guys. I would still put LeBron James, so you can have the Michael and the LeBron part of it.
And here’s what I was thinking about is, if you are going to tell LeBron, you’re going to do this match. I don’t know how far ahead they set it up. Let’s say it’s a year in advance. Hey, we want you to do it this November or this June, Wednesday, whatever it is. If LeBron’s not very good at golf, he would most certainly go out and get golf lessons so that he’s not looking like a bum on national television.
And he would, again, get to go against Michael Jordan and would probably try and one-up him. And I guaranteed LeBron would have the farthest drives. So then maybe you can just let Steph carry you on your short game. And LeBron, maybe you can help out on the green a few times, but I want to see the LeBron bombs from the tee.
I want to see him talking trash. Him and Jordan, just going back and forth on something that’s not basketball-related. It probably ends up diving into basketball a little bit with how much both of these guys would just be jawing at each other.
Steph is probably the best golfer out of them all. He’s the least talker, I would say. But I bet he would get into it if Larry Bird started to jaw him a little bit. So for me, it’s I can’t lose television and I would have Jordan and Larry legend. And then I would have Steph and LeBron, and those would be my match-ups.
Matthew Bassin: So I went looking into this as well, and I was thinking about different formats because this didn’t start obviously with two football players against two football players, it started with golfers.
It was Tiger and One-on-one Shot. But then it became, let’s give them teammates. And so then you started getting football teammates. You had Tom Brady and Peyton Manning involved, and eventually, it just became the football players. So I think you’d have to probably start by getting a PGA player on each side with an NBA player on each side.
And I think it’d be a lot of fun to have it be Jordan and Steph, just because they are two phenomenal basketball players who were also two very good golfers. But if we are going with just straight NBA players playing golf.
First of all, there’s a great story, obviously, with Jr Smith retiring from the NBA, going back to college, and playing collegiate golf for, I think it was North Carolina, A and T I’m pretty sure that’s who he’s playing for.
And he flat out said that Steph Curry is the best golfer in the NBA. This means he’s a better golfer than Jr Smith who’s currently playing at a collegiate level. According to different sources. Steph is basically a scratch handicap, Michael Jordan, they say is a one. I’ve seen Michael Jordan golf multiple times in person. Because ended up in Santa Barbara where my family is from. And if he’s a one, I haven’t seen it, but that’s neither here nor there.
Ryan Griffin: Trouble on the golf course.
Matthew Bassin: Not quite that bad, but yeah. Larry Legend, they say he’s a single-digit handicap as well. And when it comes to, straight comedy and the trash talking. You’re not gonna find anyone better, Larry Bird, but I was also looking at there are a couple of others.
So Klay Thompson is a single-digit handicap. So maybe you have the Splash Brothers on one team and you get Steph and Klay going up. Now it’d be great if LeBron was a good golfer, because how much fun would it be to have Steph and Klay on one side and LeBron and Jr Smith on the other?
And you get the Cleveland Cavalier and Golden State Warrior kind of rivalry going on which would be a lot of fun. LeBron has played golf. They don’t show a handicap for them. I don’t think he plays that much. He obviously knows how to, but it takes a lot of work to become a very good golfer. It’s a different game than all the others.
But so I think the Splash Brothers versus would be a fun one. Ray Allen is a very good golfer. CB3 is a very good golfer. So maybe you have a guard’s situation where you have the older guard of CB3 and Ray Allen against the Splash Brothers. Or against Steph Curry and whoever, but the legends obviously are going to bring the attention to it.
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