- Have you ever thought about what other sports would look
like if they allowed on the fly substitutions like hockey?
No stoppage,
just guys come on, - Yeah
guys com off.
- Baseball, I don't even think anyone would notice
if you didn't even have a replacement.
And then you can just come back on.
There's no way people are watching a baseball game that
closely that they would notice a left fielder
just sort of like ambling out to buy a hot dog and then
coming back whenever he feels like it.
- I want to talk about a time where LeBron James essentially
tried to do a substitution on the fly.
- Very cool. If anyone is going to do it, it's him.
- It was November of 2015.
Third quarter, halfway through.
Cavs are up 26 points.
A teammate passes him the ball,
it's a little off target
Turnover, Hawks' ball.
And LeBron has just had enough
and walks off the court.
- This is very much my energy.
Like this really feels like my sort of thing.
It's really pretty seamless.
His hands hit the floor in trying to catch this pass and he
gets up and he just, he's already walking to the bench.
- One motion.
- It's all one motion.
He's just like, nah, f***, I'm done.
- I think that's what everyone's talking about when they, like -
What separates LeBron from the rest of the league is just
it's effortless. No energy wasted.
Richard Jefferson gets up and runs to get on the court,
but the play's already started.
Hawks have already inbounded the ball
- Sure
- and it gets all the
way into the other end before the refs blow the whistle and
say "Where's guy number five"?
- Sure. Right.
Cool. Some quick points of clarification here.
One must be at the scorers table to be a legitimate
replacement substitution and the play has to be stopped for
the substitution to take place.
- Yes.
- And if you try to play with four guys, that's a technical.
- Yes. And so this, - Okay
this gets into the rule territory of what happened.
The rule itself is Rule 10, Section A, Number Three Dash B.
- Great section.
- It's top five, for sure.
And then they bury it! Errors involving the wrong number of
players at the start of play four or less will be penalized
with a non unsportsmanlike technical foul
and play shall resume from the point of interruption.
And there's a totally different rule for if it's six or more
players,
which I believe we have done another Weird Rules on.
- We have covered, sure.
- Yeah.
There's a big part of me that it feels like I understand why
neither team should have six players on the court.
But I think if the defensive team has a player who just
walks off the court, that is their choice.
Their penalty should be playing with four players until it's
time to sub somebody on.
- Yeah,
we have covered this in this series a bunch where there are
these rules that sort of penalize a team for putting
themselves at a disadvantage to begin with, where it does
seem like more of a penalty to just let that team continue
to try to play with four people.
Big ups to the Hawks also to just kind of just keep playing.
It's very possible they didn't even know what was happening
and they were just continuing to play the game like you're
supposed to do.
- I assume what's going in their mind is,
"Surely no one has walked off the court
and we need to take advantage of this numbers mismatch.
- Yeah. Someone's behind us or whatever.
We have a good look.
- I think the most interesting part of this moment
comes as LeBron is approaching the bench.
There's not an open seat.
- Right? He's sorta like, "Yo, my guy, can I get a seat?"
- If you look, Richard Jefferson has his head down,
Dellavedova actually has to tap him to be like,
"Hey, alert, the king is returning."
- I love that moment of like, "Yo dude, you're up."
Do you think he meant to call Jefferson as his own sub?
Or do you think it was literally just whatever chair he was
closest to that had a body in it?
I have very little doubt that if he had just pointed to like
an assistant coach or even somewhere just near the bench,
that person also would have probably gotten up,
very confused. I'm sure.
But he would have the seat. He would have, the chair.
- The coach would know the drill.
That would be a tearaway suit uniform already on underneath
it.
He would be the Jefferson in that scenario because I think
you are totally right. Like whatever chair he was going to,
that was going to be his at the end of the day.
- It does seem like the only person who actually understands
the gravity of the situation is Ty Lue.
Ty Lue is over here.
He's given him this, what I call the what f*** the arm.
And it's that, that arm where you're like.
- Who sees this?
- He's looking down the bench at LeBron being like,
what the f***?
What the are f*** you doing?
I would be really fascinated to see what would happen if
like a really terrible player tried to do this.
Like some guy off the bench misses a shot or drops a pass or
whatever,
and just walks to the bench and points at one of his
teammates.
I would love to see someone, not LeBron
calling their own substitution and sitting the
f*** down.
- Well, I'm picturing the gif
of Nick Young when he shoots the three and turns around to
celebrate. And in the background, the ball is missing.
- Oh, classic
- Like the rest of that gif being him,
just walking straight to the bench.
- Sure. Yeah, exactly.
I love this. And it's reminding me of like,
I think that the even higher level of this is Vontae Davis
just retiring. It's like just straight up.
Not just not playing anymore,
but getting to halftime and then getting in his car and
driving home and never playing another game of professional
football because he was just that done.
The only thing that would've made that cooler is if that too
was in the middle of a play and
he just is dodging people on his way off the field.
And then he takes off his helmet.
- The camera in the blimp shows him going
from stadium to car to just driving away.
- Yeah. And then they follow him home.
I think we've all been there where you sort of fantasize
about being in a situation,
being upset and literally just walking away from it.
- There is no clearer message a parent can send
than if like kids are causing a fuss to just be like,
"I am walking to the car right now."
- Sure, yeah.
- And I'm not gonna say a word.
Cause right now you don't matter to me.
- Another thing is.
- Oh.
Like, like LeBron did.
He was my ride home.