Austin Rivers recently said on the Pat McAfee Show that you could take 30 NBA players and put them in the NFL, but you couldn’t take 30 NFL players and put them in the NBA:

I don’t know how serious Austin Rivers was when he said this. It sounded like maybe he was just joking around and blowing off steam like guys do when they’re talking. He certainly didn’t do a very good job of backing up his claim, saying rappers talk about basketball players more than they do football players, like that has anything to do with anything. But claiming 30 NBA players could play in the NFL is a statement completely detached from reality. Maybe as practice squad players or waterboys, but as major contributors? No way.

The best response to this was Shannon Sharpe, a retired Hall of Fame tight-end and three-time Super Bowl champion:

Shannon was too nice. The number of NBA players that could play in the NFL isn’t five, and it certainly isn’t 30. The real number is zero.

Playing two sports at a professional level is incredibly difficult. Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson both played in the NFL and in Major League Baseball in the ‘90s, and did it at a high level, but there are no players in today’s NBA who are better athletes than either of those guys in their prime. Both Deion and Bo were elite, elite athletes.

Another example is Michael Jordan, who retired from the NBA after winning three straight championships with the Bulls to go play baseball. As great as Michael Jordan was in the NBA, not only was he not good enough at baseball to play in the major leagues, he wasn’t good enough to play AAA baseball either. Jordan was a mediocre to low-tier AA baseball player at best, and he eventually came back to basketball.

The level of arrogance from today’s NBA players is comical, and again, maybe Austin Rivers was just having fun and talking, but I sensed some insecurity from him when he was talking about the NBA versus the NFL. Even mediocre NBA players get exorbitant guaranteed contracts, yet the NBA is as unpopular as it’s been in 50 years. TV ratings are at an all-time low. Half of today’s NBA players haven’t even figured out how to set a legal screen or dribble a basketball without traveling. Superstar players routinely can’t make it through a season without taking multiple games off and exercising “load management”. Yet somehow, they can endure the controlled chaos of the NFL, a league with a 100% injury rate? Don’t make me laugh.

Maybe a small handful of NBA players could make a practice squad team after going through at least a year of training and getting their bodies ready, but even that would be a stretch. The NFL is a brutal, man’s game whose popularity is at an all-time high while the NBA can’t even keep their superstars healthy through a full season to keep people interested.

The NBA and the NFL are not comparable. Stay in your lane, Austin Rivers.