Phil Handy On ‘Podcast P With Paul George’

Phil Handy on Kyrie Irving and LeBron James’ relationship, training with Kobe Bryant, tensions between Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant, and more on “Podcast P with Paul George”.

We share this week’s episode of “Podcast P with Paul George”, presented by Wave Sports + Entertainment, where PG and the guys are joined by NBA coach Phil Handy.

In this episode, Phil shares his thoughts on the tension between Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant, reflects on Kyrie Irving and LeBron James’ relationship, opens up about training with Kobe during the peak of his career, and much more.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• (20:21): PHIL ON HIS MEMORIES OF TRAINING WITH KOBE BRYANT

PHIL: “…I think he respected my work ethic. I was always there early, I always stayed late. I was always on the court with whoever wanted to be on the floor and he respected my work ethic as a rookie coach. He saw what I was doing, he saw that I understood the nuances of what I was teaching. I think our first workout, Kobe, he was a dude that really knew what he wanted, right? He’s 17 years in, he was already Kobe Bryant. My very first question to him was, man, how can I help you get better? Where can I help you? Where do you want to go, what things do you want to work on? And he was very precise. I want to continue to get better with my ball handling. I want to keep starting with my footwork and continue to work on my separation on my jumper. He knew what he wanted and so that made it a whole lot easier for me to really try to dive in and just collaborate with him in terms of just helping him continue to be who he was.”

PHIL: “The biggest thing I saw with Kobe was he was such a vertical player. Kobe was one of the people– like you guys are very vertical, but you’re able to use your verticality to get people off balance and drop down into a low stance– and one of the things I told to him when I first started working with Kobe, you, you’re so vertical and you’re long. I want to help you condense your handle and become a little tighter and use the width of your body to become sharper with your hand. I remember the first time I said that to him, he was just looking at me like, what does that even mean? So I had already done my research with video and film, so I showed him a couple things. He was like, okay, that makes sense and just that was really the only thing for him because he was like I thought I was good at footwork, man– that was a whole nother masterclass when I was working with him and just as I always tell people all the time, and as coaches, it’s not just us teaching as players, man, you guys teach me, I learned so much from all of you guys in the sense of just understanding. You already know your nuances, so let me learn from you the things that you do well to where I can help accentuate your game and man, he was gracious.”

• (32:14): PHIL OPENS UP ABOUT DWIGHT HOWARD AND KOBE BRYANT’S ROCKY RELATIONSHIP AND WHY THEY DIDN’T MESH WHILE ON THE LAKERS TOGETHER

PHIL: “Dwight is a hall of famer so he was in his pond in Orlando, right? He always say the NBA, the markets are different. Orlando’s a small pond even though Dwight was a big fish. He comes from Orlando and he comes to Los Angeles, which is a big pond, and there’s already a big fish in that pond. Dwight has always been a guy that cared about how people perceived him and how people brought him in and I think LA was just such a big place in the bright lights. It wasn’t too bright for him but when him and Kobe got together, man, their relationship was, I want to say it wasn’t rocky, but they were two different players and Kobe was who he was and if you played with him, you understood who he was as a teammate. Kobe was super demanding and so if you’re the A-personality and you come to another team and sometimes there’s another A personality and that A personality might be a little bit more vocal or have a little bit more of a cutthroat attitude or mentality, it could be tough, man. So the adjustment of Dwight coming from Orlando to LA and having to deal with another superstar, sometimes those things, they don’t always mesh and people don’t really understand that. People just think, oh, Dwight, Kobe, Steve Nash, Pau Gasol, they should all be able to play well together and it don’t always work out like that. Sometimes people just don’t fit and that’s all it really boils down to. Sometimes people just don’t fit on a team and it just doesn’t work and it didn’t help that Steve Nash was not healthy that year.”

• (43:58): PHIL ON LEBRON JAMES AND KYRIE IRVING COMING TOGETHER FOR THE HISTORIC 2016 NBA FINALS GAME 5 WIN

PHIL: “If you go back and watch the film, Draymond was in front of our bench just talking noise. He was clowning, they were taunting our bench. Klay was in front of our bench and I’m sitting behind the bench during the game and I’m fuming. I’m going crazy. I’m cussing at Draymond [Green] in the second– when the game ended we were walking off the floor and I asked, I said, coach, you mind if I say something to the team, I can’t handle this so we get in the locker room, T Lou was like, yeah man, say what you need to say, man, when I tell y’all I blacked out, I blacked out. I was just so mad like, yo man, we are in the NBA finals. These dudes are kicking our ass. They talking sh*t in front of our bench. They clowned us, they punking us. No, there’s no way we not built like that and I just really wanted to just infuse the team in the sense of, come on man, we got to compete man. We can’t let these dudes, there’s no way we can let these dudes punk us like this. I had a moment, man, I blacked out. It was pretty– they said I was in players’ faces and so we went back to Cleveland man and the fellas, they responded to just competing and we won game three, we ended up losing game four and we get into the locker room and T Lou was so calm and him and LeBron [James] and they were super calm…TLou was like bring it in– If you don’t think we can win game five, don’t get on the plane. And LeBron was like, hell yeah and that was it. Brought it in, cats went their way. We get on that plane and man that game five, bro, that’s probably one of the most historic– oh my God watching Kyrie and LeBron, people could say whatever they want. Draymond was out, man, I don’t care. We still had to win the game. Them cats still had to compete and perform. Man, that’s probably one of the most epic duo performances I’ve ever seen in my life. Them cats, they went to work and it was like all they said was, we win game five, we get back to Cleveland, it’s over.”

• (50:24): PHIL SAYS THERE WAS NO TENSION BETWEEN KYRIE IRVING AND LEBRON JAMES WHEN KYRIE WANTED TO LEAVE THE CAVALIERS

PHIL: “Yeah, no tensions. Kyrie will openly tell you, he was just a young cat man. He was young. I don’t want to say he was immature, but he was a young cat that wanted to run his own ship and so he got to a point after, I think it was the fourth year we had been to the finals. Kyrie was kind like, man, I’m ready to be out from underneath his thumb. I want to do my own thing and just test the water and see if I can lead my own team and there was no rift between those two. The way the whole trade scenario came, of course the media is going to have to say this or they got to speculate on whatever they want to speculate but Kyrie just at the end of the day, he just felt like, man, I want my own team. I want to see if I could test the waters and be my own guy. I think he’s had interviews where he talked about like, man, if I would had to do it over again, I would probably make a different decision because him and LeBron, man, he were two different people. But that duo man was, they were dangerous bro.”