The last time we left Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie and Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, the former teammates had exchanged some very personal barbs over a feud that extends back to January.
Dinwiddie said the Wizards didn’t play winning basketball after losing to them during this time with the Dallas Mavericks, Kuzma hit him with a firehose of emojis. Dinwiddie said Kuzma was an insecure non-star who prioritizes money, then Kuzma whipped out “Dins***tie” before tearing into the point guard with a Twitter thread.
The beef was the delightfully random kind that seemingly only basketball players are capable of, and neither player came out of it looking great.
So, of course, Dinwiddie decided to keep it going.
Spencer Dinwiddie embellishes his NBA resume to dunk on Kyle Kuzma
Ahead of the Nets’ first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers, Dinwiddie was asked the inevitable question about Kuzma and decided to again criticize him while praising his own accomplishments.
“The funny part about it, right, there was a lot of contradictions. He resorted to some name-calling, Dins***tie, which is something I probably heard when I was like 10 years old. I think at the end of the day, the biggest piece here was — it’s like that theory from 8 Mile … The way Eminem approaches the final battle. If you approach it with truth, what is there to hide? There’s nothing there.
“I spoke truth and got rebutted with 10-year-old insults.”
Dinwiddie probably isn’t wrong that Kuzma’s profane modification of his name was childish, but the point guard complaining about “contradictions” and saying he “spoke truth” is very funny for reasons that will become clear over the next six paragraphs or so.
“If we were going to talk about my career and things that I’ve done that are unique and possibly different. I led our team to the playoffs when the max players were hurt, averaging over 20 [points] a game, so won a lot of games there. I’ve been to the Western Conference finals with Luka obviously and the Mavs. Been to the playoffs every year for the last five or six years.
As we did in our previous episode of Dinwiddie v. Kuzma, we must note Dinwiddie is doing some incredible stretching of truth and logic in order to criticize Kuzma.
For example, when Dinwiddie said he “led” the Nets to the playoffs in 2020, he probably doesn’t want people to remember the Nets went 30-34 in games he played that season. Or that he has only played in three NBA playoffs in his career, not the last five or six.
He had, in fact, played in six career playoff games, total, before last season.
Plus, not that we have to make Kuzma’s argument for him, but bragging about reaching a conference finals while feuding with a person who has won a championship is a heck of a reach (Dinwiddie ranked fifth on the 2021-22 Mavericks in playoff minutes, Kuzma ranked sixth on the 2019-20 Lakers).
This is some delusional stuff from Dinwiddie, who previously said Kuzma left the Lakers for money (he was traded for Russell Westbrook) and that if Kuzma was good enough, the Lakers would have kept him (Dinwiddie has been traded four times in his career). None of this stuff is right, either in fact or in spirit, and it says a lot more about Dinwiddie than he thinks it does.
And for some reason, he had to bring Rick Fox into this.
“Some people are blessed to be in situations. We don’t get mad at Rick Fox for winning a championship with Kobe and Shaq. Some people are blessed and that’s great, but we can’t act like Rick Fox led them to a championship.”
That naturally drew a response from Rick Fox. The three-time champion noted he was a captain on those three championship teams:
If Dinwiddie is to be believed, this is the last we’ll hear about the feud. For his sake, we hope he’s right.
