No, I would ignore everything Michael Jordan has to say. (laughing) Of course I would watch it. I think simple-minded people tend to give simple-minded answers. The Detail Curse thing about getting into players’ heads too much is about simple-minded people who don’t understand what film study is. When you’re a player you watch film to find advantages, so you look for little areas in which you can take advantage of teams. Some of these fans that say that stuff are just idiots.

From a broader scale, it’s not just about looking at that next matchup. We don’t talk about how to win the game, that would be a three-hour “Detail” in order to break the game apart. We’re just looking at a small window of a few plays that a player could take advantage to help himself.

In a sort of a small-scale version of the show, from what you’ve seen on film, can the Cavs succeed in this finals with J.R. Smith playing the way he’s playing, or do you think Cleveland could benefit from a radical personnel change like swapping in Jordan Clarkson or Rodney Hood?

From my experience, you go with the dogs that got you to the dance. Jordan Clarkson has a lot of talent and potential, I’ve played with him and know what he can do. Rodney Hood was a 17-point-per-game scorer in the West, so I’m supposed to believe he can’t play all of a sudden? It’s just a matter of what the team chemistry is and the team dynamics are. From the outside looking in, all we can do is speculate. I’m not Ty Lue, and I’ve known Ty forever and I know there’s certain reasons why he does things. He has the finger on the pulse of what that team is doing, and as an outside observer you kind of just got to go with that flow.

That being said, if J.R. can play better I’m sure he will. He made a mistake and mistakes happen, man, whether it’s in the N.B.A. finals or not. We can sit there and ridicule it, we can talk about it and we can chastise him all we want, but the fact is it happened and now what do you do? You move on.

You played on some absolutely stacked teams, but there were a few years where you were at the top of your game but were surrounded by players who couldn’t keep up. Is that what you’re seeing with LeBron now? Is this roster a workable solution for him in an era of superteams?

It seems like he has some good talent to me. He’s got (Kyle) Korver who’s a great shooter, J.R. Smith who has always been a solid player — we focus on his one mistake and that tends to overshadow all the things he’s done to help them win a championship before — you’ve got Kevin Love, who was an All-Star and an Olympian; Rodney Hood, who was a 17-point scorer in the Western Conference; you’ve got Tristan (Thompson) who is back to playing like he played a few years ago. He’s got some workable pieces there. I don’t understand how, in order to talk about how great LeBron is we need to [expletive] on everybody else. That’s not O.K. Those guys have talent. I don’t buy this whole thing that he’s playing with a bunch of garbage.