Kanye West Gave Mike Conley A Late-Night Pep Talk Over The Phone This Summer

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Media day is a chance for players to catch up the media (and, in turn, the fans) on how their summer went coming into the new season. This often means talking about workouts, shedding pounds, adding muscle, and being in “the best shape of my life.”

It’s also where some strange stories from the summer will also come out, like in Memphis where Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley relayed the story of being woken up by a phone call from Kanye West at 12:30 at night.

Conley said he had no idea who the call was from at first but the two ended up talking for a bit, with Kanye inviting him to hang out in L.A. whenever he’s there. What surprised Conley the most was that Kanye seemed to be very knowledgable about his career, giving him a pep talk about how Mike is an underrated player and how he belongs in the upper tier of point guards in the NBA.

“It was 12:30 at night, and I was just like, ‘Hello? Who is this.’ ‘Yeah, this is ‘Ye.’ And I was like, ‘Who?’ Trying to put it together. He’s just like, ‘Man, just come out to L.A. whenever you’re out in L.A. we’ll get together. … I just want to let you know I admire you, I really like what you do, I hate to see that you’re underrated.’ Just going through all these things like he actually watches me play. I was thinking, he knows a lot about me! He wasn’t reading off a paper or anything, he was like, ‘I just think that you can be up here and they don’t see you like that.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, I’m 100% I’m with you. What can we do?! Help me.’ [laughs] … I’m looking for a feature or something. Put me in the background, sample some of my music or something.”

I really like the idea of Mike Conley being one of Kanye West’s favorite players in the NBA and him being upset that Conley doesn’t get the respect he deserves, so he calls Conley up to gas him up about how great he is. I’m just imagining that Draymond/Kevin Durant meme, but with Kanye as Draymond and Conley as Durant. If Conley balls out even more than he did last year (when he was incredible, by the way), we might have to give Kanye some credit.

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