I got a really big team
And they need some really big rings
-Drake/Future
"Big Rings"
We all know how it goes - your phone lights up, a hazy glow spreading across the ceiling as the march of one text after another buzzes its way into your sleep-heavy brain. You click it quiet and roll back to your place among the pillows and blankets when the light and the buzzing return, again and again. Or maybe you check your phone after a workout, backhanding away the beads of sweat on the screen as you scroll through text after text, trying in vain to remember where you dropped the thread of the conversation.
And while most group texts are little more than a means of making plans or needling friends, maybe for keeping in touch over long distances or safely separating one friend group from another, for some, it serves another purpose entirely.
For Team Eazy, a group of guys who grew up together - literally and figuratively - in and around Michigan, many of whom attended Detroit Country Day School, it's about motivation. It's about keeping one another focused and on the right track, day in and day out, buoying spirits and ensuring, as best it can be ensured, that success is never far off.
And if recent history is any indication, the Team Eazy group text is working like a charm. They've now got three titles, three big rings, between them - two Super Bowls and an NBA Championship - in the last two years alone.
And there very well may be a fourth on the way.
***
Jacksonville Jaguars running back Jonas Gray, who won a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots in 2015 before taking his talents to Neptune Beach, initially takes credit for naming the group - a group that includes the likes of the Golden State Warriors' unique star Draymond Green, former Michigan basketball player Jordan Dumars, Buffalo Bills defensive lineman Jerel Worthy and recent Super Bowl-winner, Denver Broncos wide receiver Bennie Fowler, among others - before eventually admitting it wasn't really him alone.
Fowler and most of the other guys credit Dumars, the former Wolverine walk-on currently playing overseas in Germany and one of the founding members of Team Eazy. Dumars, though he willingly takes credit, admits Gray, the comedian of the group and a guy he's known since they were in grade school, actually coined the term "Eazy."
"One weekend we were all together up at Michigan, everyone came to visit for a weekend and any time something would happen, like, 'hey ya'll fellas wanna go downstairs and play 2K?' Jonas would be like, 'Oh, eazy,'" says Dumars. "One of the guys would be like, 'you wanna go get something to eat?' Jonas would be like, 'eazy.' And hanging out with friends, it just kind of caught on and everyone just started saying it over and over and over and it just grew into something."
You want to talk about big teams? After that, it was Team Eazy. And Team Eazy's motto?
"We work hard, but we try to make everything look easy," says Dumars.
It's as simple as that. Work hard, play hard, but always make it, take it easy.
***
But that didn't come until college. In high school at Country Day, Gray, Fowler, Dumars and former San Antonio Spurs point guard and current free agent Ray McCallum were still just a group of kids who liked to hang out together, play sports together.
Over time, though, Team Eazy grew. What was once just four or five guys expanded through AAU teams and college friendships to include Green, Worthy, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham, Boston Celtics center Jared Sullinger, Utah Jazz point guard Trey Burke, Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Frank Clark and others.
"We've always just been a group of guys that's pushed each other," says Dumars. "But it's a good balance of support and a good balance of competition."
***
What fans wouldn't give to know what goes on in the Team Eazy group text.
A behind-the-scenes look at the Warriors' 2014-15 championship run, news on the new and improved 2015-16 version? Yep. Workout videos showing off offseason gains? You bet. Questions and answers about the intricacies, the exhaustingly convoluted rules of the NBA or the NFL as told by the men who actually play the game? Of course.
But that's not all.
Green talks the most trash - "Draymond without a doubt," Fowler says, with Dumars and, well, just about everyone else seconding the notion - but that's not really a surprise. Green is widely considered one of the most talented trash talkers the NBA has to offer. But Gray, the comedian, is a close second. And Dumars? Well, he's the instigator.
That trash, through, shared among a group of professional athletes, really just represents motivation. Imagine if you called out your friends - the guys you hit the bar with, the guys you went to high school or college with - and they take the barb you tossed their way on Friday and turn it into a touchdown against the Cowboys or the Vikings on Sunday, a buzzer-beater against the Cavs or Thunder during primetime or a tight playoff series?
"It's so much positivity and so much competition that you just love it," says Worthy.
A lot of that motivation for a bunch of guys who grew up under the umbrella of athletics, of course, stems from competition. And for Team Eazy, playing across state, international and sporting lines, a lot of that competition these days revolves around college loyalties. Nearly all of the guys in the group text went to one of four schools - Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Notre Dame - so when college football season rolls around, the gloves really come off.
"Oh yeah," says Graham. "It gets serious."
"It gets a little heated," Dumars admits.
Of course, that means guys can get their pride hurt from time to time - or as Graham puts it, get "in their feelings." In fact, some guys drop out when the ribbing gets too intense.
"It's so funny because people used to be in there and then some people get out of it because it gets heated," says Graham, adding that some people "don't like to hear the truth."
Former Michigan Wolverines quarterback Devin Gardner, for instance, was one of those truth-avoiders. Because really, it's not just the heat from a college rivalry that scares some people off - it's the expectations of a group of friends that's used to winning, expects the best out of themselves and won't let you expect anything less from yourself.
According to Worthy, who came into the group along with Green when the pair were together at Michigan State, the Team Eazy guys tried to hit Gardner, struggling then through a difficult time at Michigan, with some "tough love," tried to steer him in the right direction.
Gardner did not respond well.
"It's just not for everybody," Worthy says, something like a shrug in his voice. "It's just the demand that we have for all of us to do the thing. Devin couldn't handle the criticism."
The guys didn't shun Gardner, who remains a friend to nearly everyone in the group, but he bowed out of the chat after one particularly brutal barrage of truths that he just didn't want to, wasn't ready to, hear.
"We've all gone through a tough time in our careers and he was going through a tough situation at Michigan and he thinks he's doing everything in his power to win games and then falling short and he's the one that's getting the blame," Worthy says. "So he's fighting through his own battle, but us over here, we've all been through a tough situation - I went through an ACL injury. They weren't going to let me half-ass my ACL recovery. They were still talking crap about me as if I was fully healthy, as if I was ready to play."
Worthy toughed it out then, battled through the knee injury and the Team Eazy tough love. So has Dumars. So has Gray. Green. Graham. They all have. But it's not without reason.
"The people that know you the best, you don't want them to sugarcoat it to you, you don't want them to lie to you and tell you that you're progressing," says Worthy. "But they know you, they know how good you can be."
All in good fun maybe, verbal jousts meted out with everyone's best interests at heart, but it's also no joke. Team Eazy is just another source of motivation for guys who could use it, even if on any given day most of them don't really need it. But it's there because someday, sometime, without fail, they will.
The space these guys inhabit - it's not just another world, but another universe completely. But through it all, through the ups and downs of professional seasons, of big wins and even bigger losses - and maybe because of it all - for the guys who make up Team Eazy, that familial aspect, that brotherhood, that sense of respectful, but fierce, competition, isn't ever far off.
***
When the Drake-Future song "Big Rings" came out, it became something of a touchstone for the group.
"When that song 'Big Rings' had come out, Draymond had already won," says Graham, "and we talk about all the time just motivating each other."
Fowler actually sent the group videos of himself rapping along to the song, according to Worthy - again, what fans wouldn't give... - and it just kind of stuck from there. And now, it's a Team Eazy calling card. A catchphrase. A theme song.
"Everybody's out there pursuing it. Everybody's moving in the right direction," says Worthy of what the song means to the group. "We're all rounding into the person we set out to be."
And while Worthy's back on the path after a couple of tough seasons and Dumars is trying to build himself up in the eyes of NBA scouts, Gray, Green and Fowler have already climbed that mountain, grabbed those rings.
"It's crazy," says Graham, something like wistfulness in his voice, "because I didn't realize we got three people in our chat that's got rings."
That's a consistent refrain from all the guys in the group - most didn't even realize right away after Fowler and the Broncos came out on top against the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50 that three different guys in the group had won championships. But it's just a fact of life when you're being paid millions, when you carry the weight of a fanbase and a city on your shoulders. It's hard to take a breath, pick your head up and look around, to keep context on your situation, let alone the situations of the people who, though you're close with, are carrying their own weight.
But when the realization does come, it hits heavy.
"For them to be able to touch that, it drove me to really, 'man let me get on my stuff, let me go and be the leader of this team next year," says Graham, the defensive end-turned outside linebacker under Chip Kelly-turned defensive end again in Jim Schwartz's attacking 4-3.
It's the same for Worthy. A former All-American Spartan defender and second-round pick of the Green Bay Packers, he struggled to stay healthy early during his professional career, and after an unexpected trade bounced quickly through three NFL franchises in the span of a little more than a year.
His professional road hasn't been easy so far, but watching Gray, Green and Fowler win, talking to the guys in the Team Eazy chat, has been like a cooling salve, reassuring him that better things can and do lie ahead.
"We're always talking about accomplishments," says Worthy. "Everyone's big on that. That's what kind of keeps up pushing, that's what kind of keeps us on our toes and always wanting to get more. Because our friends, our close friends, are working hard and making their dreams come true."
***
Team Eazy - the real, true, full Team Eazy - can trace its roots back to college barbecues. Over time, college hangouts in Ann Arbor and East Lansing turned into gatherings in hometowns like Bloomfield Hills, where Detroit Country Day is located, that included family. Eventually, a guy like Worthy who didn't grow up with the original crew became a part of that family.
"Those guys had all been friends for a while and they didn't really know me and they took me in and we all became cool," says Worthy, the appreciation evident in his voice.
As close as the guys remain today though, those hangouts aren't as easy to put together as they used to be. With million dollar contracts to honor and families and wives, it's hard to get away. But they talk and do what they can to meet up, even if those families don't quite understand the depth of the Team Eazy bond.
"Our spouses don't understand how close we are and they don't understand the relationship we have with one another because its just - it goes beyond just being friends," says Worthy. "It's like a brotherly bond, it's like family."
Graham, for instance, who attended Michigan and came into the group during his senior season, Dumars' junior year, is married and just had a baby girl. But many of the guys in the chat are young and single. The guys try to plan periodic gettogethers when they can, but it's not so easy with their being scattered across the country - and in Germany - and playing on professional schedules that, in a lot of instances, are too time-consuming for other things.
But Team Eazy finds a way, and when a guy like Green comes into Philly for a game against the 76ers, he'll let Graham know. The Eagles defender will go to the game, support his friend, his Team Eazy compatriot, and spend what time he can with him afterward.
It's no different after a successful championship run. Sure, to a city these guys are heroes, but to Team Eazy, they're just a friend who had a really good day.
"Right after the game, you're talking to those guys," Graham says of what it's like to be on the chat with Fowler, Green and Gray in the hours after they win a championship. "It's just cool, man, because nobodies changed, everybody is pretty much been the same person. And that's the biggest thing with me - none of this stuff changed them."
***
Naming rights, college rivalries - subtle dividing lines or no, together these guys comprise a close group of world-class athletes the likes of which it's difficult to even fathom. But for these guys, their group text conversations aren't really anything abnormal.
"We're no different than anybody else," says Worthy. "It's just the amount of pride that we have - it's unreal."
"We talk every day," Gray says, pausing to add emphasis. "I mean, that group message - guys are talking to each other all day."
Much like the rights to the group's moniker, Gray's also unafraid to take credit for Fowler's success in the NFL - success which culminated recently in the final completed pass of Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning's illustrious Hall of Fame career. But Fowler almost never ended up on an NFL field. This is where Gray, where Team Eazy, going all the way back to the beginning, has proven so critical.
"He's one of the people who actually got me to go back out for football," Fowler says of Gray.
The now-Broncos receiver didn't even play football, only basketball, through the first two years of high school; he and Gray won state championships in basketball and track those first two seasons, so it wasn't like Fowler was slacking. But Gray, something like a big brother, spoke to Fowler's mom, and the pair convinced Fowler there were gains to be made on the football field, success to be found.
After the Broncos won, Gray told Fowler he owed him some of that Super Bowl-winning check, said he hoped the Broncos' rings wouldn't be bigger than the Patriots' from 2015.
"We had the biggest ones ever," says Gray, the hefty touch of pride to his voice turning to a kind of begrudging acceptance when he admits that with the Broncos' win maybe being the last of owner Pat Bowlen's lifetime, Denver will probably "go all out."
But at the end of the day, championships or no, giant professional athlete paychecks or no, big, beautiful rings or no, the majority of the time Team Eazy is still just a bunch of friends shooting the breeze.
"We motivate each other, we just kind of uh...," Fowler lets the thought linger, though you know where it's going. "...talk trash back and forth. Just inform each other of what's going on, who's doing what. It's kind of cool to have friends like that and basically talk to them every day."
When Fowler and the Broncos won, with Fowler nabbing that late two-point conversion from Manning, it was all positivity, all congratulations on the Team Eazy thread.
"They all proud of me and the fact that Jonas won one last year then DeDe (Draymond Green) won one then now I have one," says Fowler, "it's just kind of crazy that you have three friends, three people in the same group chat, have known each other forever, and world championships in the NFL and the NBA."
***
Fans of the Warriors will be glad to know that the Team Eazy consensus is that Green and Golden State are the next to add to the championship total which, based on timing, is hard to argue - it's most likely to be Green or Burke or Sullinger or one of the other NBA players because the NBA holds its annual championship bout in the spring, when the NFL is just building up to its preseason. But it's also because Green, one of the most uniquely, explosively effective players in the pro game has, along with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, turned the Warriors into a powerhouse.
Passing 72 wins, the all-time single season mark set by Jordan's '96 Bulls, isn't inconceivable - it's almost expected at this point. So is Green adding a fourth big ring to Team Eazy's collection come May.
Ironically, Dumars, the guy who named the group and helped turn Team Eazy into more than just a handful of former high school and AAU teammates, doesn't quite have the same list of professional accomplishments and accolades to his name that Green and a lot of the other guys do. He's in his first professional season, playing small forward for the Baunach Young Pikes of the ProA league in Germany after several injury-plagued years at Michigan and one season away from the game getting his knee, his health in order. Dumars is still hopeful of someday following in the footsteps of his dad, longtime Detroit Pistons star Joe Dumars, in landing an NBA gig, still planning to join his Team Eazy brothers in the chase for those big rings.
But therein lies the beauty, the real truth of Team Eazy - it's not just a group text for highly paid professional athletes to squawk and pop off at one another. It's a way for these guys to keep up with their friends - some up, some always down - ferry them along through the tough times, and, through their own successes, through the championships won by Gray, Green and Fowler and who knows who else, inspire one another to reach newer, greater heights.
"If anything, those guys winning just makes me happy, makes me work harder," says Dumars, his voice distant but firm as it echoes across the line from Bamburg, where the sun had already set and the day was long over. "Like, 'man, I gotta join my brothers.'"
...I got a really big team
I got a really big team
Man, what a time to be alive...
