Jamal Crawford and Kyrie Irving are well-known in the NBA community for their otherworldly ball-handling skills. Therefore, a 1v1 match-up between the two would be box-office television, there’s no doubt about that. Appearing on Shaquille O’Neal’s The Big Podcast, Crawford recalled the times he worked out with Kyrie back in the day. He also revealed how an 11-year-old Irving used to watch him work his magic during the Seattle Pro-Ams.
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Kyrie Irving had plenty of one-on-one battles against Crawford when the latter stayed in Seattle later on. It was during Irving’s last year with the Boston Celtics when he went up against Crawford in his home city. The former Clippers guard then pointed out that if people watched the footage of their match-ups, they would have witnessed some top-notch action. The 44-year-old even remembers the h2h between them.
J Crossover said during the podcast, “If there was ever footage of me and him going at it, oh my god, it was crazy. He’d do a move, we actually at the end of it, he won six, I had six. Not one-on-one, the one-on-one is…”
However, before Crawford could talk about the one-on-one action, Shaq jumped in and expressed his desire to see a 13th match-up between the two. Since both had six games each, a decider is only a natural ask. “So we need a Game 13,” intervened Shaq.
J Crossover agreed that they indeed need a decider to settle things. However, many hoops fans would lament not having the footage of watching the two go at it when Crawford was still in the league, albeit in his last years. Then the smooth ball handler laid out another interesting story.
Jamal Crawford missed the Uncle Drew train
In 2018, Kyrie Irving starred in the movie Uncle Drew as the protagonist. The movie also had Shaquille O’Neal and other NBA legends. Jamal Crawford revealed to Shaq that he was originally supposed to be Uncle Drew. However, before the 2017-18 season, he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Then Wolves HC Tim Thibodeau used to organize summer training camps for the team. Therefore, the former Clippers guard had to commit to these camps as the new addition to the roster. He didn’t want to leave the impression that since he was coming from LA, these camps were beneath him.
“I was supposed to be Uncle Drew with you. I just got traded to Minnesota, we were going to shoot and Thibodeau had offseason workouts. I didn’t want to be Hollywood coming from LA,” Crawford told Shaq
O’Neal was appalled at the idea of having workouts in the offseason before the official training camps. Crawford then explained to Shaq that the current Knicks coach has “no off switch”. Thibs goes above and beyond to keep his players game-ready and organize training camp in the offseason. This is why Crawford couldn’t be available for the shoot of Uncle Drew.
