Steph Curry and LeBron James Aren’t Great, Other Players Are Just Stupid, Says 3x All-Star

If you ask Gilbert Arenas why certain veterans remain dominant on the court, it’s because their opponents are relatively “basic.” This week on Gil’s Arena, the 3x All-Star expanded on an opinion he made a year ago. It’s a little tough to swallow but the NBA community thinks he has a point. Arena is sticking by his harsh commentary by sharing the segment from the show on his X page. He described it as “Gil explains how low IQ players have extended careers of older players.”

We remember the basketball IQ debate he kick-started last year. He’s added another element to it. “When you ask why LeBron James and Steph Curry and these older guys are still DOMINATING, the answer without offending anybody is because everybody is just stupid.”

Arenas referred to conditioning and practicing strategies that were common when he was an NBA player from 2001 to 2013. According to him, those tactics made experienced players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry learn individually as they were developed in their formative years. “If you didn’t learn in training camp, you didn’t get to play like that.”

“Now there ain’t no training camp,” he refers to the current training scene. “So now when you got all these young kids and you sittin’ here like,” he demonstrates someone confused and on their own.

Comments under the video agree that veterans like King James and The Chef know many plays that give them an edge. When Arenas made the same point last year, he was a little ahead of his time.

Gilbert Arenas challenged Draymond Green

In January 2023, Curry’s teammate Draymond Green sparked a debate when he claimed that more than half the class of young NBA players have a good basketball IQ. Arenas countered that Green was being too kind. He presented statistical evidence that several players jumping from the AAU to the league lacked a decent basketball IQ compared to pros in the ’80s and ’90s because they lacked training at the collegiate level.

LeBron didn’t play college basketball while Curry did. The nuance doesn’t concern Gils Arena viewers this time. When Arenas said, “The older guys playing this rookie, he’s slow but he has all these moves,” fans chimed in that younger players need to improve their basketball IQ.

His point is similar to what Kobe Bryant, who trained in Italy, once made regarding the AAU and European training camps. Arenas also said European players like Nikola Jokić are better because they have “structure to their game.”

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