Coming up, everything we learned about the NBA season so far, plus a Minnesota Timberwolves deep dive. Next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. Me and Chris Ryan did shot caller as part of Rock Bottom Month. This is an awesome, awesome, awesome movie. It's a prison movie. It's one of my favorite action movies of the last ten years. And it's on Netflix now if you want to watch it before we post the podcast on Monday night, it will eventually land on my YouTube channel as well, YouTube.com Bill Simmons, where we put up videos and clips from this podcast and from the rewatchables as well. We do some walk and talk shorts, or I do on there as well. Coming up on this podcast, Ryan Rusell and I are going to talk about an incredible night of Sunday night hoops. And then we're going to do everything we learned about the NBA season so far, which was really fun. Double segment. And then last but not least, a Minnesota Timberwolves deep dive into the Glen Taylor era, which I guess was the Glen Taylor error.

And it's still going. But this is a very fun podcast. Talks of March Madness at the end as well. It's all next. First reference from pro Jim. All right, we're taping this a little before 07:00 Pacific time on Sunday night. We're gonna play a game called what did we learn this season? But before we do that, Sunday night NBA was so exciting, so interesting, so explosive. All these games going out at once. Rosillo, they're, they're like afraid of March Madness. They kind of duck out on Friday and Saturday night. And then they load the schedule for after the final eight games and we ended up with all in a row, OKC, New York, Minnesota, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Golden State, all games that meant something, just all happening at the same time. It was complete chaos. We'll start with OKC New York, which was an absolutely awesome, awesome, awesome game. OKC. Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. I'll start there.

What are you out?

I just always feel like they're too small and it seems inconceivable. And it's like, this is it. They can't do this. Once we get to the playoffs, how are they going to even in this next game? The last minute the Knicks kept getting those offensive rebounds, like, see, this is what, this is what I'm saying about OKC. Not enough size. And then, of course, they end up winning the game. And the thing that struck me, as always, with them, there's like, this calm competitiveness to them, right? They make big shots, and nobody celebrates. It's like handshakes after buzzer beaters with. With 2 seconds left in the clock. There's just. Just this competitive, calm, icy team that I think, you know, winning that game in New York with the crowd like that. Not easy.

No, that was an awesome game. It felt like MSG chaos. There was a stretch there where it was a turnover fest. Nobody could make any free throws. So it was just kind of wild. So as I'm sitting there going, I'm just going to feel bad for whoever loses this, because I don't know that it means anything necessarily, but I understand your thunder point, because at this stretch, with how deep this league is, and in particular the west, you're looking at it through well. Will this team be a team, I think, and win two rounds to get to the Western Conference finals. So if you're knocking Thunder for that, like, I get it. It's the same thing with New York. Like, this New York story is incredible. Og's out again. He barely.

Randall's been out for a month and.

A half, way more than that. January 27 was his last game.

Two months.

Mitchell comes back, plays two games, injures the ankle again. So it's a barrage of threes. The first half, it felt like New York was punking them a bit, or especially in the third quarter, because they're just physical and they're scrapping. It's like, no, you don't get to just set up and do whatever you want. Like, we're coming after you. And, you know, I watch New York, and I, like, this is one of the most incredible stories for who they've been and what Brunson's been able to do. But I can't help but think, like, it feels a bit like the 2017 Celtics with Isaiah Thomas running pick and roll at the top every single possession. Avery Bradley was the number two scoring option for that team.

Had to get hot in a game seven.

Yeah. So it was awesome. But you go, all right, but, like, now what am I supposed to do?

And, well, the only thing with them is they're an unfinished product, right? Cause when Randall comes back, at least you now have a second option to go to. And then an Obi is their best defender.

And with his shooting, the way OG is shot historically from the corners and what he was doing when he came back. But it's just incredibly frustrating about his availability, really. Throughout his career. So, you know, this is a tough one to have the lead OKC turns it on. And look, just an aside, Jalen Williams won is how I write him down because Jalen Williams too is starting to win me over. I held, it was a very personal resentment on a lot of the charge calls they got at Arkansas and he got all the calls. And I hated it when I watched these, that tournament the year and did the draft stuff with him. But Jalen Williams won is a stud.

I'm so glad you brought this up because he's like 150 to one to win most improved award. And I feel like if you, I mean, I know it started last year and like the last six, seven weeks of the season, like he really started to become like an 1819 points a game guy. But this guy hits big shots at the end of games. Over and over again the last few weeks he's hit monster buckets. Like, not just like, oh, I was in the corner and somebody drew a double team and I hit one like shots that he created and scored on. And he's also guarding the best guy on the other team, you know, at least half the time unless Dork can do it for them. But I think as a two way guy, we had to do, we have to do one more ringer, 100 that we had to do our, you know, rank the hundred best players. I had him 25th and I actually was like, is this, is this high enough? Should I like how, how many two way guys in the league are, can do this? But you saw it tonight.

I mean, the guy Shay was, you know, a little off and New York was throwing a lot of stuff at him and J dub just, just took it over. I'm just wildly impressed by that dude. It's year two. He's. I don't think he's 22 yet. I think I want to say he's 21. If you're doing like trade value, he would have to be in the top 15 to 16 now for what he is.

He's 23 in a couple of weeks. His three point shooting jumped from like 34, 35 last year to 43 this year.

He's in the top ten as a three point shooter in the whole league.

Yeah. And the thing I had mentioned last week on my podcast, I've been just watching him a lot lately because of their matchups and he's got that Kawhi shoulder drive where it doesn't have to be just a sprint. It's all right. Okay, cool. Like, you think you shut me off. And even Houston in Thompson, who's a terrific defender, but he's just still so young. His body hasn't filled out yet. He's like, I'm just going to get into you and then I'm going to get myself some space. Like, he plays like a guy who's been playing like five, seven years in the league. And the other part of this thunder thing is the giddy just stretch here where him, Sga missing some games is the best thing that could have happened to giddy this season because you started to see it more and more this season where if giddy were out there with Jalen Williams and Sga and depending on how they're using their bigs and look, OKC can throw a ton of guys at you with their depth and rotation of what they want to do, and they all kind of interchangeable, which is the beauty of this team.

But there was always this sacrifice. Like every team's always figuring out, okay, what's the one thing we can live with? And what you saw more and more teams doing is just like, look, just sag off a giddy all the time.

Jaden McDaniels in that Minnesota game today, they're like, good luck.

Yeah, right, right. Like, and Jayden's been better offensively here for a couple of weeks, too. But the game plan, they'll be like, all right, well, you know, you still have to go ahead and prove it to us and get. He got Devonchenzo twice. He hit the three. He had twelve points, I think, in the fourth quarter. And it's reminded us kind of who he was as a draft prospect because his minutes have declined, his shot attempts have declined, the shooting has gone down. But this is a really important stretch. Like, if he has a nice run in the playoffs, I think these couple weeks here are going to be the things that unlocked him.

That's a good point. The one thing you mentioned on Jalen Williams, you mentioned the Kawhi thing. I'm going to be careful. I did this last week talking about Jalen Green and was like, you know, I'm not saying he reminds me young Kobe. I'm just saying there's a couple moments where I'm like, oh, he looks like late nineties Kobe when he goes to the basketball.

By the way, all sane people understand what's happening when we do this, ok?

Like, nobody, like, nobody thinks Anthony Edwards.

Is actually going to be better than fucking Michael Jordan.

Okay? Yeah. We're saying facial expressions, right? There's pieces. We're just talking pieces. There's a lot of Kawhi when I watched Jalen Williams, and I was thinking, like, Kawhi Leonard, year two, what was going on there? Well, they made the 2013 finals that year. That was the year when we really started to wonder what. What's going on with this guy? Like, this guy's guarding LeBron. And that was the, you know, that was the best version ever of LeBron. And Kawhi seemed pretty comfortable in the mix with them and was just playing crunch time. And it was during that run we were saying to ourselves, this might be a possible. They could pass the torch gym down the road. It seemed conceivable Jalen Williams is further ahead of the game than Kawhi was in year two. And I think offensively, similarities, body wise, offensively, he's better already. And could he be Kawhi 2.0? I think is a real question.

I don't know if he'll reach Kawhi defensively. That's a pretty big ask. But as far as offensively, where it was, it wasn't until year five for Kawhi where he was actually somebody taking enough shots to be thought of as like, okay, this guy's a real threat. I mean, he was still at, what, ten shots a game in his third year. But when you.

When you were watching Kawhi in year two, were you thinking, this guy has a chance to be like Pippin defensively? Cause I think we talked about it, but I don't think it was like a lock or anything. We could see the seeds.

Kawhi was such a strange evaluation because he was like, it felt like he was a power forward in college at times, and you were just like, I don't like, what do you do with this guy? Because it looks, like, really good. But I think the similarity that I like that you're going with here is it doesn't mean the guy has to be exactly like him or surpass him career wise or match it, where at some points it felt like Kawhi was living in a neighborhood. Who's the best player in the league? Like, there were times you're like, okay, he's the best player in the league. Maybe he didn't have the belt for long enough to actually say he technically had the belt. The way you do it. Cause I think the way you do it keeps us kind of smart, you know, it's like a year thing. It's not, hey, you were gaining February, right?

Exactly.

Exactly. But Kawhi has athleticism that we forget about, and then he'll do something where you go, oh, my God. And it's not the Jalen Green stuff or the Anthony Edwards stuff. It's just this other stuff that he does with his body control that it blows your mind that he does it. And I think Jalen Williams has some of that stuff where it's never as impressive as a Jalen Green thing, but there's just ways he'll just work, guys, and then he'll explode on some of these drives. Like that dunk he had tonight was, was just, it was a huge part of the game, too. So, you know, that's the thing is like two scores like that, that seem to be really complementary of each other, which I think you're seeing more and more with Kyrie and Luca in Dallas. That's the kind of stuff that gets me excited. Now, granted, there's other things I'd like to see, too. The rebound has gotten a little bit better, but, yeah, I mean, it gets back to like, will chet, will chet be enough to get you out of the west?

You know what would have been nice? If they did anything at the trade deadline that could have helped.

I think we've covered that.

Yeah, Hayward. Eleven minutes tonight. That was your big move? Yeah, we got. What'd you do with the deadline? We got a guy that was money minutes. Come on. Three more games to quickly run through. By the way. Shout out to the Knicks crowd. Just an awesome crowd tonight.

Awesome.

Like, really, really, really great. And it, and it came through the tv. I loved it. Minnesota. Chicago. So Minnesota has the conference. All of a sudden, their hands tonight for a second, right? It's like, oh, they'll beat Chicago. The knicks are going to beat OKC. Minnesota is going to be the one seed, and all of a sudden this is what the Bulls do. The Bulls are the best 500 team I've ever watched in my life. Because there's nights when they look like if you just, if you were like, in a coma and you woke up and you just watch basketball for one night and you watch the Bulls, you'd be like, is that, are they going to be in these finals? Like, what's their record? Like 55 and 20? Said, no, no, they're 38 and 39. They just do it. They, they came down the stretch and they out. Crunch time. A Minnesota team that really need it, they, they just use McDaniels against Minnesota. And it was the first time watching Minnesota where I was like, okay, I know it's fun to say they don't need towns and this is more fun and blah, blah, blah, but they actually need tents.

Chicago is clutch city I mean, this team plays so many clutch games every single night. And if you look at the post all star breakdown of this stuff, they actually have the number five clutch offense in the NBA in comparison to Minnesota. It's number 22. Now, granted, some of the clutch stuff can get a little weird. Like, if you look at net rating for clutch, there'll be a team that has the same net rating at the other team and the records are completely different. And how many of you played Chicago should be very comfortable in clutch games because it feels like 75% of them are clutch games. And yeah, I'm always going to worry about Minnesota's execution. It just. I started kind of buying into Ann enough going like, I think he'll. He'll win you more games than he'll lose you. But it's really about Jaden. It's about Alexander Walker hitting threes. Um, Nas Reed having to obviously step up with his commitment. Like they were so good against Denver. And granted, it was Denver without Murray because when you watch go bear, it was like, okay, wait, you're going to put Nasrid on Jokic and then you're going to put go bear on Aaron Gordon.

So that whole baseline dunker thing, like that just means you're bringing go bear closer to Jokic now. So now if you're going to bring Gordon out, cool. We're not. We're going to have go bear closing out to him at the three point line. So I don't. I don't know how much I expected probably more of these Timberwolves games for them offensively because that's kind of who they are in some of these late spots. But I'm still like relatively pleased. The record has been good enough to still be fighting for the one seed here with a week and a half to go.

They were eight and a half point favorites tonight. If you look at the west right now, OKC is one, Denver is two, and Minnesota is three, which would mean it's probably Minnesota, New Orleans. This could all flip. There's eight games left. Teams play each other. It's too early to say, but the three seed is kind of where I don't want to be. I don't want to play that New Orleans team. We'll go into them when we do what we learn this season. But I want to be in one of the top two seeds. Dallas, Houston. This is a real thing that happened because I wrote down all the awards odds for the podcast tonight and Luca was plus 750 to win MVP on Fanduel. He had 32 points at halftime of this. Of this Houston game. And the odds dropped to five to one because he was that good. I mean, it was one of. It was one of the best taps anyone's played all season. It was ridiculous. It felt like if he really wanted to, he could add 70. They killed Houston. Houston needed the game, too. Golden State's playing at the same time.

Golden State ends up beating San Antonio. Houston's now two back. Dallas went into that game, and you could feel it in the first quarter where they were like, you know what? Now, enough with. Enough with your streak. It's a cute story, but now you're with the big boys. There's some texas stuff there. That's Dallas. Houston's a nice little rivalry in general. Luca just killed them. And then Kyrie took over in the second half. Dallas now Rosalo, twelve and two in their last 14. They're in a tie now for the division with New Orleans. And for the five spot, they're second and net in the last 14. And then Luca feels like this is about the best we've seen him night tonight. Would you say that this is the most comfortable he's seen? Is just like. Like a 30 to 35 a night with, like, eight, nine? It just seems like that's every night now.

I think it's the best because I think it's the most comfortable he's ever been, not having to have the basketball as much as he's had it throughout his career. And that's the thing I've noticed the most from them late in games where, you know, they'll let Kyrie Cook. And this is all basketball people ever wanted from Kyrie, is just, hey, we understand who you are as a player, but let's just see it for a little while. I mean, this is somebody that hasn't had a playoff moment now for, like, eight years. So when it's stable and when it's like this, and Gafford's been a nice plus. I like PJ Washington more than you do, but I think there's just the minutes are being used on better players after those two guys, and they'll be. There'll be stretches with Dallas where I'll look at him and go, hey, wait, Lucas in? Like, he's actually in, but he's okay.

Off the good point. It's like, oh, I thought that was Maxi Kleber. Oh, it's. It's Luca. My bad. I was squinting at the tv. Yeah. And they can do this wingman roulette thing with Jones and Exum and Josh Green. It's like kind of one of them will have it going every game and you never know which one. Like, in the game a couple of nights ago, exam hit the biggest three of the game. But I think it's a really important point about Kyrie. This feels the most 20, 1617 cavs ish of any point in his career in seven years where he just seems super comfortable when Luca has it going. You can kind of watch what Kyrie does. If you're, if you just see him on the tv, he knows he's not getting the ball and he's fine with it. And he's just kind of waiting and he waits and he waits and then he'll have his little run when he gets to take a couple shots. But I think with the Luca piece of it, if I'm the quippers, I'm like, how did this happen? Like, this could now be the four five for us.

We're going to have this guy again. And if there's a legacy of the Kawhi Paul George thing, Luke is kind of the foil for this whole era for them. Right. He's super comfortable against them. He loves playing them. There's the Kyrie piece, too. And I just would not want to see them in the five seed. That would be the most fun. I think that would be the most fun round one series. Right? Fitz, Dallas Clippers. That's like, got to watch every minute of that series. Yeah.

And good luck figuring out the Clippers. I know they beat Charlotte today. Paul George is shot against Jonathan Isaac the other night in Orlando to close that.

Holy shit.

Was like an all timer. And George had been pretty bad up until the last few possessions of that game. And then he hit one of the most impressive shots of the season.

I used to Jonathan Isaac, it was like nobody had league pass on the Clipper bench. Like, hey, Paul, just take that tall guy, see if you can take him off the drip.

Well, I think, I think he thought he was going to get rid of him in the wash and then he still, like, he threw him a fake. And Isaac recovers enough to then get out and contest. And George is, you know, it's almost like a fighter where he knew the length. Like he knew where he had to be on the release. But the Clippers defense, since the all star break, it's so bad that I don't know that you can just chalk it up to, hey, these guys have been here before. Cause collectively they haven't. Like, it's like a lot like the nets thing where when they had everybody kind of working. It still didn't really feel like they had it all that often. I mean, it wasn't that many games, but you were like, okay, when these guys get together and you're like, I'd just like to see it for like two months. And for two months we got that. And they were locked in. They were smoking everybody. And now when you look at their defense, it's 20. Let me see here. 27.

Their last. Last 20. Their 27th defensive rating.

So that's down there with Chicago and four teams that are tanking. I mean, it's not just bad, it's terrible.

So Portland has a better defensive rating than them the last 20 games. Charlotte has a better defensive rate than last 20 games. I do think with, with the Clippers, you know, in the NFL, every year, there's the team. Like it was the Dolphins last year. The team. The first ten weeks of the season, it's one thing. And then the more we have tape on them, the weather starts to turn, and then all of a sudden, the moment's just gone. I can't decide if the moment's gone yet for the Clippers, but it just feels like whatever style they had, that seems, it's like, what's this? Oh, my God. How do you stop like this? And now there's enough tape that teams seem super comfortable against them, especially offensively attacking them.

I just can't believe there's no way the defense should be that bad. There's no way the defense should be that.

There's a little bit of a malaise with them, too, again, where you just, it's like a top five or six unhappiest team for like 20 minutes when you're watching league pass and just flipping around and say, oh, what's wrong with those guys? Then they'll snap out of it. But the joy that those guys had in December, January, it feels like has gone south a little bit. And the Paul George thing, you know, this is a real thing. The Philly, the Philly Enquirer wrote about it a few days ago about that. They're targeting George and they have all this cap space, but I think. I think there's a lot of people curious. Like, if Dallas, let's say Dallas beats the Clippers in round one, is Paul George going to be just pumped to be like, all right, let's run it back, I'll sign my last contract and let's do this again? Or would he want to, you know, sniff around somewhere else because he's the guy that gets the least credit out all those guys. It's Kawhi Harden, and then it's kind of like, oh, yeah, and Paul George, you know, and meanwhile, he's got a legitimate third team on Ba candidate, but I'd be interested to see if he sticks around if they get bounced like in five by Dallas.

I just don't know why the Clippers wouldn't figure out a way just to get it done. Because whatever you think he is.

Yeah.

You're saying that he would say, I don't care about the money now. And you guys could have extended me. You didn't. So now I'm just going to leave because we lost.

You extended Kawhi. You didn't do it with me. And you know what? Good luck, everybody. I had fun. Thanks for having me. And that's it.

One other thing on the Clippers, though, because I looked this up.

Yeah.

I was like, all right, what else is happening? The defensive number so bad, Bill. I just don't think it can be attributed to anything other than just not caring. Like, it's, it's so bad. I don't know that it's just tape. I don't know that it's the Dolphins offense. There you go. Wait a minute. If you guys do this or if it's a certain team, like, they're just, they're actually not a great matchup. And that whole thing was fake, and it doesn't really matter now. I'm not there yet with it, although I'd be scared to death if I'm a Clippers fan. And it's Luca again in the first round, considering the history and how great those great those series were. Yeah, but I was looking at the number of passes because you just know, like, you just know who those teams are going to be that don't pass the ball a ton. And sometimes when I think of the transition to regular season, of the playoffs, like, that's something that scares me. Like, do you guys ever move the ball? Does anybody ever cut off the ball? Like, do you become easier to defend once everybody's more locked into their effort level?

So the Clippers are, not surprisingly, last in passes per game in the NBA. So you go, okay. Yeah, they, they throw the least amount of passes in a game. Just count total pass. Okay, but here's the thing. Oklahoma City, Boston, the Lakers, Milwaukee, Houston and Dallas are all in the bottom eight with Toronto, who's terrible.

So. So it's the more heliocentric teams.

It's more of, we have the better players and we don't want you getting rid of the basketball, even though Denver's going to throw passes, Golden State's just different. Nobody's ever going to be Golden State, you know, so you can't really compare it to that. But, you know, when you looked at that number the first time, I'm like, oh, I found something. They don't. And then you go, wait a minute, who else doesn't, you know? All right, I don't think that's it.

Well, the last game we had tonight was San Antonio. Golden State. Golden State held on San Antonio starting lineup. Champini, Osmond, Tyce, Jones, Branham. That's who they're putting with. One of the best prospects of the last 50 years of basketball. And yet.

So hand and Keldon were all out even though they played.

I get it. I get it. And wendy still had 32, nine and five, three blocks and, and kept the spurs in that game. And Golden State held on. They have two game lead over Houston. We seem safe now for a Lakers. Golden State, 910. Who knows? I don't trust Golden State. They could, they could go backwards in 1 second and all of a sudden we'd be like, oh, my God, why did I fall for that? But they have one four in a row and it seems like that Orlando game when Draymond gets kicked out in four minutes, they're on the road. Steph's not having a good game. And it just all the, it was all lined up for their season to go sideways and they fought and they kept it. And Clay's been a lot better the last month. Anyway, we took a break. We're talking about San Antonio under the context of what did we learn? This season is next. Vandals putting ball in your court for the rest of the NBA season. Right now, new customers get $200 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet. That is $200 if your bet wins.

I just did a tweet about this on Sunday, was talking about the Minnesota Denver OKC log jam in the west. And Denver had the best odds to win the conference, mostly because of their schedule. But you should watch how those odds move because you can bet on the division, which is basically betting on the one seed. You could also bet on Dallas versus New Orleans, who's going to have a higher record with them. You could bet on all the NBA awards. So many fun things to do. You could do quick bets, live, same game parlays, player props and more for the individual games. And by the way, in North Carolina, the wait's over. Fando officially live in the tar heel state visit fando.com B's make your first beta layup Fando official sportsbook partner the NBA you must be 21 plus and president select states gambling problem 1800 gambler or visit rg dash help.com first online real money wager only $10 1st deposit required bonus issued as non withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook dot fanduel.com dot all right, Rosillo, I asked you to play a game with me called what did we learn this season where we just wrote down a bunch of big picture things about the season, season that we think will summarize the season, describe what happened this season, ultimately be what we remember just about the regular season.

Cause the playoffs are, you know, and we're not just talking the tip go, oh, my God, Jokic. Three MVP's, four years. Like, just things that jump out. And we mentioned Wemby at the start. At the end of the last break, if Wendy stays healthy, he's going to be the greatest center since Shaq. I think that's. I would lock that in. And I think greatest center since Kareem is really in play for me. And I was looking at his stats, and I was thinking in the context of he's 20, 212 and four this year, right? 22 points, twelve rebounds, four assists. And he's averaging three and a half blocks a game now he should 47%. That's the worst his stats are ever going to be. And if you go back and you look at some of the greatest players in the history of the league, LeBron as a rookie, 21 a game, 44%. He shot 29% from three. Shaq was 23 a game. Hakeem was 21 and twelve. Durant was 20 points a game, 43% shooting, 29% from three. Luka was 21, eight and 643 percent. You look at guys like Dirk, Kobe, Curry, Giannis, KG, Jokic, you can't even talk about the rookie years.

The point is, like, there's going to be a 25% to 40% bump from rookie year stats to apex stats, which means if you just look at his rookie season and then try to translate it, does this mean he's going to average like 20, 817 and six with five blocks a game? I don't even know what the fucking ceiling is. I just know. I've never seen anybody like this guy before. What he did in that Knicks game the other night, which I know you watched, that was, I was like, stupefied watching that. It looked like when dad decides to play with the kids and it's Nerf hoop in the bedroom, and then the dad just starts dunking, and it's like, come on, dad, you're ruining the game. Wemby's like, dad, in the Nerf game. It's like, come on, stop, man. You can't stay in that close to the room. It's not fair. Come on. That's what he's doing with adults in the best league we have. And I just think that, for me, the ceiling is now off. I don't know what to expect, but if you told me he's going to be the best center since Kareem, I would be more prone to believe that than to not believe it.

So that's going to be the number one thing I say we learned this season is he's even a better prospect than he was hyped.

Yeah, he's better. He's been better. Even if he had struggled and looked like, because there were some moments at the beginning of the year where I was like, oh, it looks a little clunky getting into some of the offense, and it's still, it's like, tonight was so bad because of the lineup that we were talking about. You're like, hey, do you guys figure out, like, a decent pass to him? They tried to throw him one where he was, like, sprinting into a crowd in the paint and transition, and they threw it, like, at his waist, and you were like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Then there was another base, there was another baseline cut where he just, he actually looked at the guy and point. He was right at the rim, and he just pointed straight up, being like, hey, just, just throw it in the air, like, casual in the middle of the play. And then it was like, oh, that's right. I can just throw it up there to him. And then he has throw it to.

The seven foot five guy who could reach at the top of the back.

Work the drop step turnaround, and one sort of dunk on Jackson Davis as payback for when he got him. And I'm still, you know, it's, it's three guys for defensive player of the year. It's Rudy, it's Herb Jones, or it's, it's Wembanyama. And I know most, no one else would vote for Wembanyama. I know we've already discussed it was the breakout video and the whole deal. I just don't think there's anybody else in the league that gets to guys to do u turns the way he does. And Gobert does it plenty, I think there's some with Wen Benyama where you have guys who are like, nope. And then three dudes will be stuck on one side of the paint being like, what the hell? Like, I thought you were going to keep going and you're supposed to cut it. I'm supposed to flare, and it's like, I don't know. I don't want to go near you.

Right. It's like a two second reset. We're like, oh, wait, whoa. Okay.

Right? They got to go over there. They got to bring it back out. It's like you start the shot clock with, like, five less seconds when he's out there, because the first thing you go to do, if you're around him, you're like, wait, I I don't even. I don't want to get embarrassed. I don't want to do this. And it doesn't even really show up in a stat other than, you know, maybe a tougher shot a little bit later on. So I'm with you. I don't really know what the ceiling would be. I don't like, if you're. If you're just talking raw numbers and the growth that we have with the best players, it's a great way to look at it because you look at those rookie years and you're like, yeah, this might be the worst number. It'll depend on how much better the roster is around him. How many shots does he want to take?

Do they get what a real point guard do for him? Just somebody who can get him ten easy points a game, just on lobs and. And just good entry passes? Yeah.

Do they add something? Do we get surprised this summer where they add somebody who's been around and wants his 20 shots? You know? So does that impact? Like, if they're terrible again, but just somebody who can set him up a little bit better? I don't know why he couldn't get 30. If they're going to give him 18 to 20 shots, could he get 30?

Seems realistic, especially if he starts hitting more threes. You're right. I probably went too low on the points. One thing that he does that I don't ever. There's been other guys that do this occasionally, but I don't remember seeing this quite this way. Is his offensive rebound tip backs or his alley oops, where he just kind of redirects alley oops, but these off balance ones where it doesn't even occur to you as it's happening that he's going to actually score and then he scores. Like, it'll be somebody shot. He's behind somebody who's boxing him out, and he'll just reach over and, like, flick the offensive rebound in and you're like, wait, did that. Hey, was that legal? Was that. And it's like, yeah, that was legal. But it's honestly, the only thing I can remember like this is watching those wilt tapes from the early sixties when Wilt was going against all those six, nine white guys and the offensive goaltending was legal, and shots would just go around the rim and Wilt would just come in and, like, tip them in and. But Wembley's doing. It's not offensive goaltending, but he just put. So now that he's starting to figure out, oh, and I'm around the paint.

Good things usually happen. Now that that part's unlocked. His just arms create baskets constantly. And, you know, this stretch that he's having now, it feels legitimate to me. I also. We talked about this last week, but I love how. I love how competitive he is. You know, like that Knicks game, he gave the. He gave the speech after to the sideline person in front of the player, and he was just like, we couldn't have done this without you, San Antonio. Like, he's just been coached perfectly. He went to, like, superstar camp in France for ten years, where they're just like, here's what you do in this situation. Here's what you do in this situation. He's just got it. He's got every piece of it. And I'm like, I could not be more all in. I am all 100% in.

I can't wait until, like, five or six years when he hasn't won a ring yet and guys are just shitting on him on tv. That's when we'll know he's really arrived.

Right. We need a backlash. I'm seven shots at him because it.

Is going to happen. And it's like, just remember these moments. Remember these moments where nothing was really at stake and it was so much fun. And could he potentially add to the list of people that exceeded absurd expectations? Because the list is like, Tiger and LeBron and, you know, oh, Toni, sort of Peyton Manning. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, he's just tough that his contemporary got seven of them and he ended up with a second one.

Denver mostly.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But in the personality part, like, if you talk about him going to star camp, like, obviously this has to be natural, though. This has to be really who he is. And we had Doug McDermott on the pod this week. And of course, I was like, look, I'm going to do five minutes on one banyama. And I think the most revealing part of that was like, hey, when guys go at him, he's into it. He's like, pissed.

Like, oh, you remember the Chet thing was the most fun part of the season almost for him when they were just doing the motto on mono thing. That was great.

It's the best sign that that's the way he feels about himself. Because, you know, you can have all the talent, you can have all the size, you can be the most heralded prospect, but you never really know. Like, deep down, some guys are like, this is a little harder than I thought, or this is annoying. Or maybe I'll, you know, I'll get my Max deal, and maybe year five, I'll really start to, like, change my approach. It seems like from day one, he's everything you could want. And that's why I'm just so happy about it for him. But it is inevitable the roommate theory will strike again because it's probably going to take a while. Well, I don't. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe the ceiling is different for him and that he's going to be so good that he's going to raise people up around him. But it's just, it's funny how it happens with these stars at the same timeline. Come in. Everybody loves you. Like, it's going to happen to ant. Like, if Ant doesn't get one in two years, right? It just sucks.

Is he taking this seriously enough?

He's a little. Is he a little too goofy?

Does he need to change the people around him? Right.

Everything we love about his personality now, like, he's country. It's funny, every, like, his one liners after the dunk in Utah, all the stuff that he was saying, and you're like, my God, who is this guy? And then we'll take all of those things and you will have not changed at all, and you will not want enough for us. And we'll start wondering if you're different even though you're not.

He's in another Sandler movie. Is he taking this seriously enough?

Yeah. Yeah. It's the, it's when Roy McElroy got a girlfriend. I'll never forget that tv show. He's like, well, you got a girlfriend. He's the only fucking golfer who's having sex. He's the only one. God, you'd think he would have held out longer.

Um, I say this carefully. Wemby's season has been so good that there's now only two paths for how the rest of his career goes. Either he becomes at least what Shaq was, and maybe Kareem, or, knock on what? I hope this doesn't happen, but, you know, like a Ralph Sampson direction where he gets hurt, or Bill Walton, like that direction, and he becomes this amazing what if. Or like, oh, my God, if Wendby hadn't gotten hurt. Dot, dot, dot. And obviously, we talked about last week, how light on his feet he was. I actually think. I think athletically and coordination, and I just. If he gets hurt, I don't think it would be any less realistic than anyone else getting hurt. When I watch him, it doesn't strike me as some of these other centers, you know, we talked about Yao and Odin, and you just watch the way those guys moved up and down the corner, like, ooh, can't imagine watching this for 15 years. Wendy's light on his feet. So I think that's positive. But the ceiling has been fucking removed. What do you have for your first? What do we learn this season?

I've got a few.

I thought we could alternate.

All right, one of you.

That was a good one, though, Wembley. We had to hit the hardest.

I've got a few. Why don't you go first?

Okay. 304 million for Jalen Brown. Fucking worth it. You know what? That guy's been awesome. I'm so proud of that guy. You could go one or two ways when you get a contract like that. That guy has made himself better. He's been the best player in the team for the last six weeks. He guarded Dame Lillard and Zion Williamson within the span of eight days and took the challenge and was like, I want to fucking do this. And went hard. He makes big shots. He's gotten better. He's worked on his left hand. There's an alpha side to him now that I just didn't think existed, and I think he's the biggest reason. If you're just looking on variables of things you didn't expect. I knew poor Zingas had a chance to be really good. I knew Drew holiday was going to be good. I knew this team was talented, but he went up a level. And for me, he's. He's an absolute omb guy now. And I think it's going to be unfair for reason. Stats, to compare these dudes, because Tatum could have better stats and Jalen Brown could have better stats. If those guys cared about stats.

They do not care about stats this season. They're doing all the little shit to try to help the team win. And it's stuff like yesterday when he's like, let me guard Zion. I'm going to take them. And that was the biggest reason they won that game. I just think he's been awesome, and it's like, he took so much shit for that contract, and everybody should apologize.

The defense against New Orleans, as that game developed, was off the top charts.

Did you know that he had it.

In him to do that? Well, it's funny. Cause there was one moment in the game where he was standing directly next to Tatum, and it was just one of those reminders like how guys are size wise. You're like, man, Tatum is significantly bigger than Jalen Brown. And you're like, but Jalen is taking on whether it was the dame assignment, the Zion stuff. I like how you rounded up his left hand. Cause I'm not there with you yet.

Well, it's. It's. It's not a. It's not an albatross. It's still not awesome. And by the way, I'm still nervous every time. I'm not saying he's perfect.

Were you feeling this way after they blew the 30 point lead to Atlanta and the first back to back loss to Atlanta when they decided to just stop? Did they run out of passes in that game? In the fourth quarter, they were like, hey, guys, like, challenges, we're out of passes, so don't pass it to anybody. Four minutes to go.

I don't know what. I don't know what to say about the last two minutes of some of these celtic games. You know what's. Here's what I'm hoping. Rosala. So first half of that New Orleans Boston game was awesome. It was really good. It was an up and down. Both teams really wanted it. I thought Zion was great, like, just really playing hard. And the Celtics didn't get a couple calls near the end of the first half and came out in the second half pissed off and played the best quarter they played in a long time. But one of the things I loved was they just went through poor Zingis and they were like, oh, you know what we should do is go through our seven foot three guy that they don't really have a matchup for. And this is my point about crunch time. When they play through Porzingis, the other team panics. And I don't know why they haven't figured that out yet. Maybe they're saving it for the playoffs, but when they play through him, either on the foul line or in the low block, the other team panics. And they'll send a second guy and now you have space and now you have open shooters.

When they just have Jalen or Tatum dribbling 25ft from the basketball and everyone else is standing around. It's easy to stop the other teams rooting for you to do that. And I, to me, Porzingis is the crunch time weapon in this team that they just don't use. And last night they used it or yesterday.

I generally agree with you. You know, it's one of those things whenever we talk about like some of these bigger decisions and you sit in a room and you go, hey, do we want to make Jalen Brown the highest paid player in the history of the sport? Then you should sit there and be able to say no. But it's just not the way that it works with NBA contracts.

It's why.

Yeah, okay, so what are you going to do? You're just going to let them walk to prove a point? You're going to hold out? And so then what? When you look at the salary structure, what you owe everybody else? So I'm, I'm generally with you. I just had to push back on the left hand thing a little bit. I'm going to stay on that theme, though, because this is good. This is something I've been thinking about. If I were a feature writer, I would do this piece. I would talk to GM's from multiple sports and I would talk about this and maybe it had to do with, I don't know, a couple months ago I went to go play hoops and a dad and his son kicked us off because they said they had drill work to do. And I said, why don't you just have your son play with us? And he was like, what are you nuts? Playing a game to learn basketball. So I don't want to make this.

To learn how to interact with other players in a chemistry fashion now.

So I have a working theory. I'm pretty sure it's right. But you know, there's been a multiple, multiple. There have been multiple factors on why we've seen some of the offensive explosion and of course the officiating correction that we've seen month or so, but there an easier score on top of we've never had better scores, we've never had more talented players. It's just not debatable. But sometimes I wonder if too much of the offseason work goes into individual performance where you're working on these drills solely to try to have like as many finishing moves, as many moves into your shot as you possibly can have, because you'll see these isolated moves in gamestape. You're like, I can't even believe he thought that was a good idea. And it went in, and I'm talking across the league, like, sga shot that beat the Knicks. Like, that was a brutal shot. Now, granted, he had McBride on him, so it was a little easier to shoot over the top. McBride was the original defensive assignment, so it wasn't kind of some switch with 4 seconds left. So, you know, that's, that's a different debate for New York.

Do you think he's going in?

No, not from that angle. And the way he turned around on it. But like, every night, there's so many of those shots, you're like, this. This league is stacked, but I think it's hurting execution at times. And I've asked him, and you almost.

Need a name for this theory. It's like the, the individual skill, personal trainer albatross personal trainer albatross theory.

So the stuff that you're working on in the season, I wasn't going to go there, but, but it, but it takes away from like, okay, but do you, do you know what, are you recognizing the help tendencies? Are you taking a shot? Like, I was at a Clippers Lakers game, the big comeback with LeBron, there is a two for one where it was Westbrook, I think, hardened to end a quarter. It was one of the worst two for ones. Like, Westbrook tried it and then Harden tried it or the other way around. No, that wouldn't have worked.

No.

Excuse me. Westbrook wasn't playing. It was D'Angelo Russell, one of my other favorites, and then Hardin tried his, and they were just two absolute dog shit shots. And you're like, cool guys. You both tried to out two for one each other. And so I wonder if there are coaches or general managers that would say, and I've, I've talked to a few people that think I'm onto something with it, or they've talked about it. And then I, I asked a hockey guy, I asked a guy who lives out here, works for an NHL front office, and I said, look, this is something I'm noticing in basketball, but I don't know enough about. I'll never know anything about hockey to feel like I'm comfortable talking about it. But when I'll see videos of guys in their stick skills and some of the shit they're doing, I'm like, do you have the best individual skills you've ever had in your sport? But guys kind of just don't know what the fuck to do. And he was like, it's all we talk about.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Pain, lenitis.

I just wonder if, if guys are working on, like, stuff that happens in a game and learning about like, you know, you can make this a little easier on yourself. Despite your toolbox of absurd moves that gets you free for a make.

Do you think what you're talking about is actually a microcosm of real life?

Whoa.

Working on their own stuff and not spending enough time with other people. You just.

Derek Thompson. Me.

Yeah. I went full plane English on your ass. I really like that theory. It's excellent. I'm going to give you my next one. Little less big picture, but still big picture. Point guards still matter. It's one of the things I learned this season.

That's a good segue.

Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio. You know what's nice is to have a guy who could just bring the ball up, set the offense, throw a good entry pass, tell guys what to do, be kind of a leader. Be like, hey, man, I know you missed your last four, but I'm coming to you. I'm going to slash and kick. Be ready. I'm going to get that to you. Just basic stuff that's worked in basketball for the last century, basically. I still care about it. I still think the position matters. And even if you look at Minnesota with Conley, who's feels like he's 100 years old at this point, he's still important for that team. He's that calming influence. And just like, you know, it's, I like, I watch Phoenix and I'm just like, I'd be so nice if they just had any decent point guard for 25 minutes a game to just, to just be like, hey, Devin Booker, I gotcha. Just, you don't have to worry about dribbling the ball up anymore, being pressured, like, just go over there, stand the corner, come off two screens. I'm going to find you hit a couple shots. We don't have enough point guards is really the bigger problem.

But this, we had way worse situations. I remember o four. I used to write about how Jason Kidd should be the automatic QB for both all star sides. When they had the all star game, he was just, just play point guard for both sides. So we've been in worse spots of this, but I still feel like point guards matter.

You know what's really hard to work on when you're doing individual drills? Entry passes and setting up other guys. The number of players that can throw good entry passes, like to fake the pass one way and then throw it to the guy in a bounce, like, to his outside hip away from the defender. It's also just a lack of post play, too. Like, these guys will get into the post and they're so rarely getting touches down there, they don't know how to shield the defender or keep the arms away or have one arm back and the other arm be the target away. So, yeah, sometimes it's not even the lack of entry pass stuff. I'm just psyched that we're not even an hour in and we're digging really deep into one of my favorite things that I'm passionate about, like entry passes. The guy poor.

Did you see Purdue? Did you see Purdue today?

Yeah.

Some really sweet ones where they're like.

Well, they better figure it out.

Throwing Edie's left hand so he can spin right away as he gets the pass. Like basic shit that we grew up with. I felt like at the. At my dying end of pickup, I was still great at throwing entry passes. Like, that was it when I was like Terminator two, dying in the fire pit holding my hand up, I could still throw an entry pass. That was.

That's why I used to feel so bad for Embiid, because I'm like, this guy's going to go like the first five years of his career and no one can throw him an entry pass.

It's not just like throwing it to the guy, it's like, are you throwing it to him so he can catch the ball and move at the same time? Is. Are you spinning into the. That's one of the things with Jokic. Like, Jokic was. Had one of the great random games he's had in a couple of years today, and especially in the third quarter, he's not just getting assists, he's throwing every pass he's throwing. It's perfect for where the guy's about to shoot at three. It's an alley right next to the rim. He's like basically cutting somebody's food and feeding them with it. And those are his passes. And I don't know, I just miss. I miss great entry passes.

Denver, I wanted to. I wanted to see that from Denver today, by the way, because I know Cleveland on. Yeah, they needed it is still somebody you got to kind of take seriously. And they got Mitchell back today, but they've. They've really struggled since the all star break. Like, across the board, there's not a lot there to get you really excited about, you know, but I thought Denver's offense was so bad against Minnesota. It was a reminder. It's like, man, Murray not being there. Like, Reggie Jackson is probably the only on ball creator that they have. Yeah. And you could see Jokic isn't comfortable being like, do you guys really want me to take 30 shots tonight? And then he was actually having some bad nights. I thought Denver came out being like, enough of this shit today. I know it's Cleveland, but I doesn't really mean anything. No, but it's a hell of a lot better seeing that than seeing their offense get as bogged down as it looked. A couple of games without Murray, which is just a reminder of how important Murray is, especially in the rare minutes he's out there without Jokic.

It was an MVP game from Jokic. He was like, I don't like. I don't really like the way we've been playing lately, so I'm just going to be completely awesome for two and a half hours. Let's take a break, and then we'll keep going with this.

Mobley was good. No, he was. He was good.

I was, like, talking during the no hitter. I didn't want to say anything. He's been hitting. He hit a big three in crunch time the other night. There's been some moments where I'm like. Cause I haven't sold one cent of my stock.

I just don't think he's going to be nearly the guy ceiling wise that we hoped for the job. But you know what? This is actually good, because I have a few more of these. Are we still doing these?

Yeah, we're taking a break, coming back and doing more. All right, come back. What's your next one?

Which direction do I go here? Let's just stay on the mobley thing, because I think the lesson with some of these younger players is you'd rather be wrong, just flat out be wrong, than quit on the player. And this Jalen Green resurgence, I had.

The same one, is terrific.

I think the cade stuff from earlier in the year, you're like, wait a minute, what is this guy? And you know what? It's a shitty situation. We've covered the Pistons, at least. They're a bad team with players that I kind of like, which is the same way I thought of Houston before they went on this run, where I was like, okay, this team isn't any good, but at least there's a couple things. You're like, what if this breaks the right way? What? What? Or Jalen Suggs, another really good example out of the gate. You're like, there's just not enough offense. This is Sue Gonzaga actually thought they got. They're like, they didn't. He could shoot it that well. And this is actually really who he is. And how do you play this undersized guard who can't even shoot? And all these different things. We get really excited about the top picks. We want them to be awesome right away. And, look, I know everybody's killing our guy. Scoot after the -58 but I'll say this about a. -58 you can't do it by yourself.

What's tough is he's also at a -57 yeah.

No, not great.

Not awesome.

Not, not great, Bob.

Well, I wrote down the same thing Rosillo. I wrote Jalen Green reminds us yet again, it's terrifying to give up on elite raw talent, and that's it.

And his OKC game, it wasn't even the numbers of the makes or the way he played. Like, decisions every single time was awesome. The right decisions in that Oklahoma City win. I was like, I didn't even know that. I was like, I didn't even. There was a point where I was like, he's never gonna be like that. He's never gonna figure this out.

If you just showed us that game two months ago, we wouldn't have believed it was him. Right? You'd have been like, what, did. Did he get replaced? I wrote down five guys for this. Mobley, Garland, Cade, Ivy, and Lamelo. And Lamello is the one I would be the fastest to give up on. Cause I don't know if the light bulb is gonna click for him, but.

I just want to see him play at this point, so.

Yeah, well, every year, it's something. All right, I'm going to. I'm going to go. Cleveland has to trade Mitchell this summer, and it's like, in all caps and bold where the teams. It's not perfect. It feels like they've gotten worse. In March. They. They were embarrassed today against Denver. I just don't like what I'm watching. He had a chance, you know, there was, I'm sure you saw over the weekend, there was a story where he could. The word non committal could not be strong enough about their asking about a cleaving extension because the owner had said something about, we feel really good about signing Donovan, and he wouldn't even be like, yeah, it would be nice to stay here. Like, he was just like, I'm not talking about that. And he's clearly out, and they're just going to have to trade him this summer. And by the way he'll be the best trade guy on the market. But I think. I think, to me, what are we heading into? April? There might be a month left of Mitchell and the Cavs. Like, we might get to the end of the month, and that'll be it.

We'll never see him, that uniform again. But I just. I just think he's out. All right.

Don't you think that's a little quick, though? I mean, the guy was incredible in February. You know, they went on that stretch where it was, what, 17 and one? And Mobley and Garland only played seven games each out of that stretch. So he's been back, what, four games? I mean, I know today was ugly, but he missed.

Would you be afraid to play them in a playoff series? Cause I wouldn't.

I just don't know who they are.

They don't know who they are. They knew who they were when it was Mitchell and Jared Allen and shooters.

Afraid is a bit like, I like Orlando. I'm not afraid of playing that offense in the fourth quarter.

Ceridian, I talked about that before you came on. It's. It's too ugly. Why can't Franz shoot anymore? The fuck happened?

I don't know what's going on there.

It's like a 25% three point shooter now.

Anyway, since the all star break, Orlando is the number one defense in the NBA, okay? They're the number five rebounding team. They're actually 19th on offense, which for them, was surprisingly higher than I thought. But clutch. They're the 30th ranked offense out of. They're a minus eleven in net rating in clutch time.

It feels like it when you watch it. All right, let me. Let me put fake Fanduel odds on this. I'll give you even odds. Mitchell is in a Cleveland uniform in October.

No, I'm not.

Yes or no?

I bet no, because you can't lose this asset for nothing. But what if Mitchell said, hey, I'm in? And that meant you had to trade garland? What would you do?

There's some teams that I feel like would go 140 cents in the dollar for Garland.

So maybe that's the move. What if you go to Mitchell, be like, hey, we used to, because, look, are you going to go to the Knicks now? Like, everybody thought, well, that doesn't even make any sense anymore. And I still wonder what the Knicks are going to do with the OG price. Even though, like, do you feel like they had already figured that price out the same way the pacers had to figure out, get some assurances on Siokum.

Miami is always lingering with this stuff.

Yeah, Mitch, I'm not talking about OG. I'm talking about Mitchell. Okay.

I'm just saying like that. But I'm just thinking about, if he's leaving Cleveland, where's he going? Which is a great point. I don't think he goes to the Knicks at this point. Cause I think their long game now, Brunson is so good. Their long game now is, let's get Mikael Bridges and let's keep filling around the fringes and just keep making this team awesome. And wait for. Could Giannis be available in two years? Shit like that.

I love the two score thing. Mitchell and Brunson would probably just be too much.

I don't. It doesn't make sense, okay? It doesn't fit with what they're. So. To me, it's Miami, it's Brooklyn. If you just want to be in.

New York, same page, then. Okay. Do you agree with me that Mitchell. Because we've just seen. And I like Garland a lot, that Mitchell's, like, peak version of him, especially with some of the playoff stuff that we have seen that you're like, okay, well, if Mitchell's in, we commit to Mitchell long term, and then we figure out how to piece that stuff around in a Garland trade. And I'm with you.

I think this is our weakness, though, with Garland, because I think we both. Both of us like him maybe more than the asset itself. I love Garland. I still feel I want to see him with his own team at some point. That's the San Antonio move. In my mind, that's like the San Antonio overpay, where it's like, let's just start with one being garland. So, if. But that. That would involve Mitchell. Wanted to stay in Cleveland. All right, we went too long. What do you got?

Uh, I'll do. I'll do a quicker one here. Um, the latvian laser. Davis Burtons.

Yeah.

Um, did some shooting drills with his latvian coach. I heard. I learned about this in the broadcast today, where the latvian coach thought his american shooting drills were too easy, so they had him do the shooting drill with gloves on. Gardening gloves. And he couldn't stop until he made ten in a row with gloves on. So I just wanted to add that to perhaps the list of season. The dumbest fucking training methods ever, because I just.

What an amazing tidbit. Gardener gloves for three point shooter.

Yeah, there was all sorts of stuff, and I patch, I believe in there. They were giving us everything that Charlotte broadcast, you know? I love the Charlotte broadcast. You never know what you're going to get. They keep the energy high all the time. But he had to make ten in a row with, with, with gardening gloves on.

Steve Lapis said with six minutes to go in the Purdue game that, that Ed and connect on Tennessee that these were two of the greatest performances in the history of this tournament. Steve Lapis said this with six minutes left the game. I don't even think both of them had more than 30 points yet. And his, the play by play guy was like, well, maybe we're getting there. It was like one of those. I think they were thinking about cutting his bike.

There was an NBA broadcast, I'm not going to say which one, where the guy had been in for three and a half minutes. And I'll admit he wasn't exactly lighting it up. He wasn't super noticeable, but he was so unnoticeable to this broadcast that they said he had just checked in. He'd been playing for three and a half minutes. That doesn't happen.

Wasn't John Tay Porter?

No.

Okay.

No, I don't know what he'll be checking in.

I have. I'll do three quick ones. New owner syndrome. Undefeated. I just think HBO like, it can't be forgotten. This, this latest, like going all in on Bradley Beal, who's a nice player, but, you know, you're paying 50 billion a year for somebody who's like 17 a game and gets hurt every few weeks. You could build a real contender around Zion. I think we learned that this season. For real. I don't know if he can stay healthy, but this was the first time watching this team where I'm like, yeah, I I see it. I see it on both ends. Cause I think his defense has been way better. I don't. The rebounding I'll never be happy with, but from a two way standpoint, Zion and shape, I feel like that's the foundation of a team that is going to be a bitch in the playoffs. If he can stay in shape. I know that's in your wheelhouse. And then just. We've talked about this before, but ant with just having the ceiling now as being the best under 30 USA guy is something we learned this season, but we don't need to talk about that.

What do you have for your next one? Phoenix.

I think I'm off totally. That loss on Monday against San Antonio, they were so bad on defense and they get Denver for the second time in, I don't know, three weeks. And then they play at OKC on Friday and I was kind of looking forward to that because I'm just like, holding out hope, being like, are you guys going to put together some kind of stretch here? And I felt like there was that one little stretch there in January where they won a bunch of games, but it may have been the schedule or Dallas wasn't fully formed yet, but that OKC game, they're just so frustrating. I don't know why they keep making the mistakes they make. They close out. If there's one versus two on the other side, they close out to the worst three point shooter. Bowl gets eaten up on a screen. He's fucking done. Like, he has no interest to getting back into the play. So I think that's why despite, like, some of the cool plays that end up on Instagram with him, you're just like, all right. And then, you know, it gets really frustrating because then you'll have beal get stuck and he turns around and throws it to nobody.

Durant will, will have a couple plays defensively where he's a little checked out. I mean, Booker is usually always my go to with them, but against San Antonio, there was a play where he just let, like, Sohan. Sohan went one, one on three on the right side and not one guy, like, even shifted over to him. The number of times, like, Phoenix leads the league in after the other team scores, it's two guys underneath the basket looking at each other, being like, what the hell happened there? And as great as Grayson Allen has been, it's. It's Grayson Allen season for any top perimeter ball handler who's just like, all right, come on out here, and, you know, come get it because I'm going to go at you the entire time. And when you looked at Phoenix's remaining schedule, it was off the charts harder than everybody else. Denver, Oklahoma City, they split those, and they finished with New Orleans. Cleveland, Minnesota. New Orleans. Clippers. Clippers. Sacramento, Minnesota. I mean, I don't know what the final seed is going to be, but I think I always held out hope, Bill, that I was going to talk myself into, like, a matchup where I go, okay, hey, they all played together for a month.

It's been better three weeks ago, but I was really trying to talk myself into it, and it's not there. I'm glad you brought up Grayson Allen because that was one of the things I learned this year. He's not the best three point shooter in the league, and I don't even think it's a percentage thing.

I think he's not a better shooter than Steph.

Come on. Listen. He's at 47% for three. Well, Steph does that. You know what I mean? Like in, I'm talking about that wing, three point. Like, Clay was the best guy in the league for a while. Carver was in there, and JJ Reddick, you know that? Like that.

Whatever you're talking about the non create your own three pointer thing.

I'm talking about that. That guy.

I remember one time, Van Pelt and I got an argument about Curry and Korver.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I didn't phrase it.

I know what a percentage can say, but.

So he's at 47%. He's at 187 three. So he's going to be over 200 by the end of the year. Only four guys in the history of the league, 203 is 47% for the season. Kyle Korver, JJ Reddick, Joe Harris, and Glenn Rice. In 1997, Steph did 250 with 40% twice this year. At least when I did this yesterday, maybe it flipped for a second, but only nine guys are 43% and up for three point shooting this season. For some reason, we have more, better three point shooters, but less, like, awesome three point shooters. And Grayson Allen is just like, I just would not have it, but he was a throw in for that bucks trade, right? It's like, oh, and they got Grayson Allen. It's like, oh, great. You can't even play him in a playoff series, and now he's basically inherited this. Kyle Korver, Reddick, Joe Harris, whatever the legacy of that championship belt is, and I did not have him on my bingo card. Racillo is my point.

Well, in theory, his life should be easier the same way anyone who joins the best version of the Splash brothers. Right. The same thing with Luca. Like, your job should be easier offensively because we have this other thing that's going to take all the attention away from you. And you would think other players would figure that kind of stuff out of Milwaukee. Yeah, but it's frustrating. That's my point, though. Like, it's frustrating as I've been with Phoenix. Like, it should be better, but now it's making it sound like I'm not agreeing with you because I do agree with you and you do give him credit, because now this guy's going to play in the league a really long time. Like, he's going to get a big number at some point where you're like, okay. Because he's not. Just could be ready now. Some of these guys would just sit in the corner, and it's like, the only shot they have. And they have this absurd percentage, and then people talk him up as shooters. Grayson can get moved off of his spot, reset, and then shoot because he did handle the ball enough in college.

Like, there was more there. There was more athleticism. There was a way, you know, it was like one of the things, even with JJ Reddick, like, I remember when the light bulb went off for me, I'm like, anybody that's just looking at this guy is, all right, you're just going to sit in the corner. We're going to space you out. Because free throw rate attempts went way up at Duke. You're like, no, this guy's. There's more in his bag. But in the NBA, like, five guys aren't allowed to do that, even if you're good at it. But I think the thing that makes him better than just the stick in the corner, muscle memory. Never deviate from this shot. Somebody closes out, then you know the guy's going to get stuck and he can't reset. Grayson can do all of those things. So we agree.

What's your next one?

If you tank in Toronto, no one cares. Now, I'm not anti Toronto.

They've had some great ones. There's. What are they? One in 14 in their last 15, or something like that? Yeah.

I don't know what Fanduel's numbers are every day on those, but, like, every time you kind of look at it and be like, can. Can we not have to give out a for. Can we just say, bet against the Raptors five times this week? But at this point, it's too late. Like, everybody's caught on. So in March, they have played Jamias Ramsey, who actually liked the tech. Javon Freeman, Liberty, huge fan of Independence Day. Kobe Simmons. Well, Diante is probably not going to play too many more games. DJ Carton and Mohamed Ugay, whose brother is also in the league, too. Toronto is. They're like, you know, they're making you work when you turn on a Raptors game. Cause you'll be like, wait, who the fuck is this guy again? And not that anybody should be giving the Raptors a hard time, because there's also. Their pick is top six protected, so.

They need to be in the top six.

They are doing the right thing, but it's just off the radar completely and tanking in general because of the play in and certainly because of this year's draft class on top of everything else, like, nobody's. I just always felt like the people screaming about how bad tanking was, even though I agreed with them philosophically, it was like, okay, what do you want these guys to do? Like, win games that don't matter down the stretch. So congrats to Toronto. It's just been a little tougher to keep up with every roster move.

So me and Sal and house and hench made four bets during the all star break, as I. We do. We do conglomerate bets sometimes for fun. One of them was Toronto. The over under for them on FanDuel was like 29 and a half for wins at that all star break, or 28 and a half. It was high twenties. And I was like, we're going fucking under Toronto. Toronto wants to keep their pick under. One of the other ones we did was Detroit, who has to get to 14 wins for us, and they're at 13. And that's been worth the price of admission because they lose games on, bam, 27 footers. And so hench just goes nuts on all those. And then we did Dallas and Milwaukee both to win the. Their visions as a parlay at four to one. So those are the three. But it's just been fun because Toronto, by the first week of March, we're like, lock that one. And it's. It's a wrap. They don't care.

I definitely think if you're on it, you can. Well, you know, well, that's why you're.

Going to move to Vegas. One. You're going to do one year in Vegas where you just lose your mind.

I had so much fun going, and just you.

I see. I know that look because I've seen it and I've had it. You had a twinkle in your eye that one time we made it to Vegas. You're just like, man, I could just really live here and just bet games.

But no ocean.

Have a good time.

It would have to be a promotional thing. It would have to be something where there's a reason.

In Vegas for a month. Yeah.

And you go, I'm going to bet every game on the slate in Vegas. I've even thought about it. But the no ocean thing, I'm not a Vegas guy. All right? I already know that.

But I also like the ocean.

To be able to just wake up and then look at the board. And then I started talking to the guys at the Aria book, and I'd be like, hey, like, what are you, like, what's going on? Yeah, you know, who's. Who's. Who's doing what? And then I was there enough that I'd get drinks with a couple different guys, and then they would just be telling me about the world. And that's, I think, especially when you have to give out picks and how frustrated you get when you don't get things right. But back to the original point, like, I think if you're on it, like people are on it when you look at those totals for the second half after the all star break, to your point, Toronto having to find a way to protect that pick. Hey, which regular season team doesn't give a shit? Punts on the rest of this. Okay. Why are they projected to go seven, eight games over 500 when they haven't done that in the first half? So that's something I think I'll put more work in the next year. We have to give out those picks.

I left one other bet we did, which was classic was we did the Minnesota over, which was 56 and a half, and like a day later towns got hurt. Or two days later, whatever it was, like, towns got hurt within a week of when we made that bet. Last one for me, and we talked about OKC earlier. But I do wonder, is this Golden State for the 2020s? Potentially because we're ten years from Golden State in 2014 old when there were pieces of what we ended up all of a sudden in a year they won the title. But in 2014, that was the Marc Jackson dresses in black for game seven against the Clippers. But we were like clay and Curry. This is potentially special. Like, there's something here. We didn't think they were winning the title a year later. We didn't know they were going four titles over the next eight years, but we knew. We knew something was going on. And I wonder with OKC, you think, what's the 2000 and twenty's version of small ball? And it's pretty similar to what the warriors had, where you have the one awesome guard, in this case SGA.

You have the one great sidekick, Jalen Williams, who we talked about earlier in the podcast. And then you have to have this one super unique big. So in the mid 2010s, they had Draymond, who it took us a while to realize, like, oh, could Draymond just be their starting center and then all of a sudden happen? And I think it's Chet for OKC. So they have the same foundation. They also have, you know, Golden State had the black swan event of KD in 2016. These guys have all these picks that they, you know, they're going to have to cash in at some point. But I guess the recipe is some luck, some skill with who you picked and a really savvy plan. And in this case, the luck was the SGA getting SGA in that Paul George trade and getting. Trading for a guy who ends up being one of the five best guys in the league, it's just really unusual. It does not happen very often on top of all the picks they got. So anyway, I just, I think they're on the same kind of trajectory Golden State was. I don't know if that's going to mean one title, three titles, four titles, zero titles.

But they're hitting a lot of the same checkpoints.

I wonder if they would package giddy.

I think you'd have to think about it because he kind of, when we talked earlier about teams that, how important the point guard position is and somebody who can just take control of the team and run it and throw good entry passes and set guys up, he can do that. He doesn't really get to use those skills in the same way in this OKC team. Yeah.

Because the last couple of weeks have been just a reminder and how big he is, too, and on some of those drives. But obviously there'd be some challenges. You wonder if, you know, the other team would be leery of it even though he was cleared after the investigation. But, you know, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen. As far as if he were available, I'm sure 29 teams wouldn't say, hey, not interested.

So they're getting calls. Do you have any in more. Do you want to take a break? What's your, what's your one you wanted to do and you held off on and decided, no, I'm not going to throw that one out there. I have one. I'll throw it out, but I'm only going to do it if you do it.

Do you know who leads the league in fourth quarter scoring?

Is it the Rosen?

No, it's a really good guess. It is. LeBron James with 40 today. Thought it was worth mentioning him. Wow, the 40 piece. And that's.

I, you know, I'm glad you brought him up because he's probably going to make it all NBA team. And he had nine three pointers today and he's, you know, still chugging along. Man, you're 21.

Yeah, he's one, Fox is two. Yanis, I mean, look, it's a lot of the good guys. You'd expect the ball to be in their hands.

Yeah. At the end.

Derozan's 8th. He's only an 8th and a point off, so that was a really good guess. I'm trying to find. Jalen Williams is actually 14th and I think he's ahead of. Yeah, he's ahead of SGA, so. But if I look at the points, I bet you the differential isn't all that much. Chainlin's at seven points yet. SGA 6.3. Lowery marketing, plucky Utah Jazz.

Talk about tanking. They were like, we got to get rid of some of these guys that are helping us.

Well, glad to see the Kings get a win there because this back to back Dallas losses were frustrating. You could even call the first one a little scheduled, but I think it's just a wake up call of where Dallas is now in the west and.

The Kings are a cross off to be. If Monk's going to be out for.

Four to six weeks, that's terrible news.

That's the team you want to play now, if they're in there, I'm going to mumble my last one under my breath and then we'll go to a break. He culture might not work quite as well when the league is really super loaded. Wow. Just saying it.

Dangerous territory for these two guys. Dangerous territory. But I was way more anti them than you were last year, so I should be the one saying it.

Kind of tough to press that on off button whenever you want when there's like 18 good teams in the week.

I wonder how they're going to close these last two weeks.

I. That's the team. Them and them and Cleveland are the two teams I just have no feel for. I don't understand either team at all. All right, we're taking a break. All right, coming back, we were almost at the 80 minutes mark and we have not talked about the Minnesota sale yet, which was the most fun kind of underground NBA. I know it's a public story, but also, like, a great. Getting texts from people and just like, what everybody is talking about and some of it's out there, some of it isn't. I talked about it a tiny bit on Thursday's pod. This seems like it's headed for court. It's one of the weirdest situations we've had in a while where one where the A Rod Laurie side's like, hey, we had the money. I don't know what's going on. And Taylor's like, they didn't make their deadlines on moving on. They're just minority owners, but it's clearly headed for court. Um, I want to talk about Glenn Taylor in a second, but you, we, you and I haven't talked about this. What's your take? Just from a weirdo NBA storyline standpoint.

Well, you're much better on this. I think you're one of the best when it comes to this ownership stuff. So I don't know what kind of circles you run in, so I'm going to get out of the way here.

Thank you.

But we knew that, like, there was two points in the timeline that kind of didn't make any sense, right? They were like, wait, are they not going to be able to make the payment? And there's like, oh, no, they may be able to make the payment. And then there was like, a rod doesn't have his side and Laurie has to get his. So, like, that was twice with this. We were like, what's going on? And now we're at this point where Taylor's like, yeah, whatever. Deadlines are deadlines, and you're out. And is it because he's mad that they didn't stick to their word or however they were vetted financially? Like, I don't know how this stuff works.

When you want to buy a nice.

House, usually the bank's going to want to figure out if you have any money when you're buying an NBA franchise. I imagine there's some version of betting, or is it money that's at such a high level that there's just kind of an understanding if you're in that world, I can't imagine nobody's actually not worried about what's going on or how flush you are liquid with this kind of transaction. But is it because they didn't follow the dates, or is it because the team's worth way more now and they're good in comparison to what Taylor had as the sticker price.

Yeah, it's like if you're selling your house over the course of three years for half as much as it's worth three years later, and the other people allegedly are missing deadlines and don't have that, and they're still scrambling to pay and all that stuff. You can understand why he backed out. I mean, they can say what they want, but they were trying to find $300 million until the bitter end. They were talking to big financial firms. They were talking to people like Eric Schmidt, the Google guy. They needed $300 million. And I think I'm going to be interested to see how the league handles it, because you have this ownership group buying a team that forget about having the money to run the team once they own it, and all that, all of that costs, but they don't even have the money, it seems like, to pay for the team in the first place. So my guess is the NBA is probably okay with this, maybe playing out for Taylor side. It's certainly the weirdest. I've never seen somebody try to buy an NBA team on layaway before. And this is, like, a really successful league.

People want these franchises. It's weird that he chose them. It's weird that he picked this strategy of, oh, yeah, just pay for it over the time. Like. Like he was selling them like a Rolex at a pawn shop or something. I just. I'm just so confused by it. It's the kind of thing that would happen in, like, 1983.

Well, it happened in 1996 with the Islanders. Right, which is the John Spano story with that, right.

We ended up doing a 30 for 30 on that one.

That guy was. That guy was acting like me in college ducking a landlord. Except he was buying the islanders, and they'd be like, no, I faxed it over. No, it's good. Oh, shoot, it's Friday. Yeah, check back on Monday. It should be in the Internet account. There's a little lag. I don't. Well, here's what I would ask on the financing part. Okay, so say you all agree to a terms here, and then it's like, actually, we don't have, like, maybe there's other investments. Like, sometimes when you're going to buy a house and they have you send over all your financials and you may have a position with a stock, because this happened to me once, and then the stock gets wiped out, and then you're like, oh, shit. You know? Like, there's nothing funnier than the guy being like, I got to move some stuff around. Like, well, I don't want to hear about moving stuff around. I just want to hear about where it is. And look, it was a lesson, and it was something that I was able to fix, but at the same time, like, it was just something down the road.

It's like, hey, when you're about to make a major transaction, don't put yourself at risk. Like, don't have exposure to anything where you could start a Monday opening up a file, going, holy shit. Like, it's, as I can attest to, it's a terrible feeling when you're in kind of that in between area of like, wait, am I not going to be able to do this? So anyway, with this, why wouldn't there be somebody. Why wouldn't there be some kind of bank? Because we know the rules are completely different at this level where there's just some other bank that would be like, okay, look, you guys fucked up. You didn't have the money or whatever happened to lead you to this point. But you're investing in something where the number you got it at is so much lower than what it's actually worth that we'll lend you the money. We're going to hammer you on the rate. It's not going to be a great rate. We're going to make you give us. You know, there's going to be a little pain in there, but we're all going to get this done. It's because what everybody wants to happen, like how?

How is that not happening? That's the part that I don't understand.

It's a great question. So let's say they need. I think the number is 300 million. Feel pretty confident that's what they were looking for. So that's 20% of what the original purchase price was. Maybe there are some bumps in that. So your question is, why wouldn't you invest $300 million when the team was worth 1.5, when now it's probably worth three? That seems like a good deal. You're doubling your money right away. The answer is, I think there's some hesitation and confusion about how solid this ownership group is if they don't even have the money, as it seems to take over the team in the first place. You're investing in this ownership group that then doesn't have the liquid assets year to year that you feel great about going forward. So I'm investing in something where I'm not sure, you know, the person can pay for stuff. And that's why, just think about it. These guys can, like those big financial firms, they can spend 300 million on whatever they want, right? So if they're going to do this, it's like, hey, short term, we'll double our money, but what are we getting into? And the fact that they couldn't get that money from somebody allegedly, is, I think, alarming.

That's probably the answer. Then the fact that nobody has done that, that there isn't a bank going on.

Pretty sure that's the answer. Can we go through Glenn Taylor and his greatest moments?

Go for it.

So remember my basketball pyramid that I did, which actually started with baseball in the early two thousands when I wrote the column. My buddy gus's dad had this idea for a hall of Fame pyramid. I wrote it out for baseball, and then I ended up doing for my basketball book, what if the hall of Fame was actually a pyramid? 96 members, five levels. Lowest level. Level five or level one? Next level, level two. The players get a little better level three. And then the last level is the Pantheon. And I was thinking, we don't have enough owners for owner hall of Fame Pyramid, but we could make a little mini pyramid of the worst owners of the last 30 years, right? Do a little mini pyramid of ten people. Donald Sterling is the worst, right? I think he's the MJ of the conversation, doing a worst owner mini pyramid. Sterling has to be first.

It'd be tough to beat that.

Then you go down to the second level, and I think it's Robert Sarver and George Shin, two guys who basically had to lose their team. Sarver had to sell his team and also really cheaped out during the Steve Nash era. No Phoenix fan is like, man, I loved having Robert Sarver as my owner. I think he has to be second. And George Shin owned that Charlotte team, and he had like two different sex scandal things happen. And basically had to move the team out of Charlotte. Like they. Charlotte, like, was like, you gotta get the fuck outta here. And remember Charlotte.

Charlotte got like football crowds for basketball.

Yeah. And the city of Charlotte was like, you gotta go, dude. You gotta leave.

And look at all the tenants. And I'm exaggerating a bit here, but when you look at all the tenants numbers from those days, you're like, they lj morning era. They packed them in there because it was just a bigger capacity than everybody else. And that fan base loved him. So, like, you're talking about a fan base. They moved, turning that was that into it. It wasn't like it was someplace that didn't care.

It'd be like a vocation was like, you guys got to leave. The team has to go, we have to leave our city. And then he goes to New Orleans, and it ends up he sells the team and then even have an owner, right? It ends up, by the end of the two, by 22 ten. Stern has to take over the team because they can't find anybody. I sell it back to the league. So I have him. I have Sarver and Shane on level, basically level two for the mini pyramid. Level three is three names. Glen Taylor. And I'll make the case for him in a second. Michael Jordan, who owns Charlotte. And nothing good happened the entire time he was there. Like, literally nothing. And then Howard Schultz, who owned the Seattle SuperSonics and sold them to an ownership group that he knew was going to move them to Oklahoma City. And I think he has to be in the top six because he's actually directly responsible. Team leaving. And then the last level I had, Prokorov Ted Leonce, Tom Gorz and James Dolan as my level four. That is my mini pyramid for worst NBA owners.

Prokorov underrated, came in, spent a lot of money, and he's like, actually, you know what? This was a huge mistake. I went out, cut all the costs, and it just leaves up with no picks. He's like, I'm out of here, guys. I'll see you later. It's like, wait, we have no picks left.

I remember teams being worried and I don't even know if it's like, real or not, but it was just because it was a Prokorov. They were like, who knows what that guy's going to be able to pull in free agency. Like, what do you mean? They'd be like, well, you know, this country is yours. Like, where is this? It's yours.

Remember Karen Lenko signed for less money, and people were like, oh, what do you have over.

Hey, Leonardo, was there any consideration by the committee for Robert L. Johnson, who named the Bobcats after himself?

He made. So my honorable mention was Chris Cohen, the Warriors guy who sold to lake up. Jerry Reinsdorf, who's in the third biggest market in the league and doesn't pay the luxury tax. David Stern as the New Orleans owner. Your guy, Bobcat, Bob Johnson. Karen Davidson owned the Pistons for a couple of years. It was, was brutal to the point that they were excited. I think. I think Gore is after him. And then Paul, Paul Gaston. Don't forget about Paul gas. Horrible owner for the sake. So, yeah, I'm sure there is more, but yeah, so I got sterling, top level sarver, Shin Taylor, Jordan Schultz, Prokhorov, Leon says Gore, James Dolan. That is my mini pyramid for the worst owners of the last 30 years. So Taylor ranks fourth.

Did you have the Cleveland owner in there?

Which one? Well, it's last 30 years, so I couldn't put Stepien in there. Yeah, Stepien's worst of all time. It's him and sterling in the finals. Can I give you some Glenn Taylor data?

I know you want to, and I don't want to go anywhere. I'm here an audience.

So you bought the team in the mid nineties heading into the 95 season. These stats are unbelievable. I actually, I was kind of stunned doing the research. They have eleven playoff appearances since he bought the team in 1995. Before the Internet, he bought the team. Ten first round exits out of the eleven playoff appearance appearances.

So only that Western Conference finals with Garnet.

Oh, four. That was his one run. He has 21 playoff victories in 30 years. He's averaging .66 playoff victories per year for the three decades. He has zero playoff series wins since 2014. The team did not win a single playoff game from 2005 to 2018. And then just some of the highlights when he was there, he hired David Khan as his GM, who's just an all time, all time worst GM we've ever had.

Did that just a real quick. Did that give you a window of hope that one day you would run a team?

Yes, it absolutely did.

I noticed that we were two years.

Where I was like, yeah, this could happen.

There was. I just felt like there was very aggressive campaigning. Well, if you can do it, like, I felt like all of your columns had a hint at, like, I'm ready.

Yeah, I'm kidding. But I'm also right here. He did the illegal Joe Smith contract and lost four first rounders. Made history there. 2009 draft. He oversaw a draft where they took Ricky Rubio and Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry. He hired Kevin McHale as his coach. His or his GM, his GM coach and his coach. He hired Kurt Rambis as his head coach. Remember how bad Kurt Rambis was as a head coach? Like, legendarily bad. Like, people were doing radio segments. We've never seen a worse head coach than this. Memory. Is Phil Jackson the tree of Phil?

I just felt like people didn't understand him. Go ahead.

Remember the Kevin love when everybody was getting five year maxes like Westbrook out of that zero eight class and he wanted a five year max, and they're like, nope. And then they're like, here's what we'll do instead. Three years and you have an opt out after year three as a sign of faith on both sides. And he's like, cool. And then within two years, he's like, get me out of here. That was absolutely attic. They didn't resign Chauncey Billups that year when he was awesome for them. They could have taken Brandon Roy and instead they. They traded one spot for Randy Foy and cash. They took Chris Dunn over Jabbal Murray. They hired flip Saunders to run everything. They had coach GM Tom Thibodeau, where he was the coach, but also made all the decisions. They did. The a Rod Laurie fiasco. They traded Jimmy Butler for, what was it? Sarge Covington and a pack of meatballs.

No, there's a trade. There's another pick in there.

Jared Bayless and, like, a second rounder. I don't know if they got a pick. From 2006 to 2011, they drafted 67354, and two still didn't make the playoffs, they traded Sam Cassell and a first for Marco Yarish. They were like, no, no, we'll throw in a first, too. We got to get Marco Yarish. They traded Ray Allen with the 1998 1st for Stefan Marbury and they took Shabazz Mohammed over Giannis Antetokounpo. Those are just some of the highlights of the Glen Taylor solo.

Yeah, it was only a second rounder. Justin Patton, he was in that.

I forgot Justin Patton was in that chat. Yeah. So Glenn Taylor, underrated, horrific. So if I'm a Timberwolves fan, I was looking forward to kind of getting away from Glenn Taylor, but now he's like, you know what, we're actually good now. Might stick around.

No.

Could you imagine?

The problem was they traded the fact that they traded for him to Chicago and a year later, so it's done. Levine and marketing was what we needed to remember. And then for Butler, not what you're.

Talking a year and a half later.

Months later, it's Bayless Covington, charic and Mateo Spagnolo.

Glenn Taylor, I have him number four, worst owner for the last 30 years. Good dresser. Anything to add? Any last Minnesota thoughts?

I actually feel better about them post cat because of how everybody else has stepped up. I think better. I know McDaniels, you know, was, was kind of the target today, but he's been better. You know, Rudy's always going to be solid. I'm never going to love when he has a ton of touch touches offensively, but, and, you know, look, man, I thought it was going to get even though, you know, you know how I feel about Kat. I thought it was just going to be a problem for them because it was going to be able to just easier to load up on ant. And I think the best part about this stretch is that ant, now, as much as I love him and like, I have to be honest, do you think this guy's so good he can just kind of carry them to four playoff wins in the first round? Can he do enough offensively? Because I just didn't like enough of the offense around them and I still can be his task and I think I'm there with him. I do like the fact that they're still right into this with two weeks.

I know I had said a week and a half earlier, but two weeks to go, I feel better and I know they lost today, but, you know, whatever.

Listen, man, you win 56, 57 games in a year where you lose towns basically with a third of the season to go. Pretty impressive.

And Finch is awesome. You know, everybody was up in arms about him getting the gig and they didn't know anything about him. And even though, you know, we've talked about the Rudy trade far too often with Tim Conley and Matt Lloyd running this, like, you've got two guys that are really good at this. Now, the Alexander Walker part of that trade, like that guy plays real minutes or he hits big shots, he plays defense. Ant, when he's up for it defensively to close a game, he's right there with, you know, I wouldn't put anybody at Herb Jones class, but, like, ant gets really. MOntY MORris the other night was chasing somebody around like crazy, and I was like, man, this team, team has decided that with their adversity, they're going to keep fighting and take the fight to everybody else. So, yeah, I think it was the Denver game because Denver was, was kind of a mess that night anyway, and Minnesota had a lot to do with it. So that's all I have on it.

I had Herb Jones. We were doing that ringer hundred, and he was one of my toughest guys to figure out where to put him. Where did you put him? I feel like he's genuinely gotten better month by month this season, especially offensively. He's really confident with the ball now. So it was not like I always just thought he was going to be a stand in the corner guy, but now, you know, because they lost some guys and he had to play a little bit of point and a little bit of a ball handling role, and I just think he's really kind of blossomed. I had him. I had him. 55 was my list, which in this league is really good. Cause I think there's a little bit of a drop off when you get around 60. We kind of move into like, the Brook Lopez level of like, awesome role players, but it's a different level of player. But I had him way up there. I asked you, before we go, I asked you, by the way, Zion's defense.

The other night in Milwaukee, it was at home against Milwaukee. He had two blitzes on Lillard, where I was like you'd be. And then his drive past Giannis, it wasn't that he got fouled, didn't make the lit, it's that he wanted to drive on Giannis in a huge possession. And that's the kind of stuff with Zion. It's not going to be a numbers thing. It's not going to be, hey, it's like, we already know he can give us insane stats if he wants to, but there are moments of competitiveness and fighting him now and effort on defense that we're seeing with him. That really makes me like what New Orleans could be. Even though they're still tinkering a bit, whether it's the Larry Nance junior stuff that they're doing with different lineups, they had to play more valance units against Brooke Lopez. They even brought Matt Ryan into that game at one point, which is a little surprising. Dyson Daniels had been back recently, Ingram still gone, but they're still tinkering with it. But that's just another group that I like.

We agree. So I mentioned the ringer top hundred earlier. I asked you to make a top 20 just because I was curious where Wenbanyama was on the list. I'm going to read you the list I made that I'm going to send in and you tell me if this is crazy. So I had Yokich Giannis, Luka Shea, Jason Tatum, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Curry, Embiid Edwards, Davis Brunson, LeBron Booker Wembanyama 15. Is that crazy?

No, I don't think it is. I think he's in the 15 to 20 range.

Okay. So that that puts him ahead of Mitchell Williamson, Butler, Murray Halliburton, Fox, Adebayo, Jalen Brown, George J dub sub bonus, et cetera. But I think from what we're watching now, what he's doing night tonight, I think he has to be in the top 15 to 20. I don't. I don't think there's any way around it.

To have him ahead a couple of those names, to have him ahead of Murray. You know, we like never be in the playoffs and we know what Murray's capable of.

I don't feel great about it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even that's where the toughest guys for lists like this, for me, were Butler and Jamal Murray. And bam, too, to a lesser extent, because I know bam, fab bam in a playoff series, the list looks different. But this is just best players right now.

Bam leads the league most minutes per game in fourth quarters in case. In case anybody gets stuck with that one at a Buffalo Wild wings.

I watched a lot of basketball this week. I actually flew back east and was watching the women's and the men's and Celtics Pelicans. And I gotta say, I really, I really enjoyed the women's tournament. And this weekend, I think is becoming, is moving up the ladder for me from a sports weekend standpoint with the women's games on that Saturday, but also with all the final eight games heading into the final four, I just thought it was. I thought the basketball was really, really fun to watch. The, the LSU game against UCLA was excellent. And I thought that. I don't know how much juju Watkins, you've been watching, but she's basically. I feel like she's the next Taurasi, but she had one of those games where she just couldn't make a shot in the second half for like 40 minutes. Like nothing was going in. And you could see her trying to figure out in real time, my team doesn't have anybody else. What do I do? And so they put her at the foul line and she went to the hoop a couple of times. She just started getting to the line and doing free throws like old school, really smart, superstar style.

Ended up shot like 1314. They eked out the game, but it was really interesting watching her have that moment. She's 19. She's my daughter's age. She was in the same class in LA as my kid. You forget how young these kids are, but to watch them in real time try to solve these bigger than life situations was pretty cool. These games. Tomorrow night, I was playing LSU. That game's going to be awesome. Like, I don't ever remember looking forward to a non final four women's game before. And I don't know, I just. I think the hoops has been really good. I really like the Purdue Tennessee game today. The UConn center last night was unbelievable. And it's like, could we get UConn and Purdue, like, two giant centers, actually? Could that be, like, a thing that happens in a. In a final four game where. Or in a title game where it's just like these two behemoths, old school style? I just think I've been really enjoyed. March Madness is my point. I know you've been watching a bunch, too.

Yeah. I couldn't believe that UConn game because you know that Klingon's going to be priority based on the two options that Illinois had at center, and UConn's not playing great offensively. It's a 23 23 game, and then through the end of the first half and the start of the second half, UConn goes on a 30 to nothing run against a team that was ranked 10th in the country. Yeah, 30 to nothing. And they counted it up that it was 50 minutes of real time in between Illinois scoring. So UConn can throw a million things at you. And Stephon Castle, who's their other lottery projected guy, he didn't even score. Like, he actually had points, but, I mean, he didn't get his first bucket until the thing had long been done. And yeah, I'm sure all of us are wondering what the Klingon Edie thing would be because it's actually somebody body wise, who can at least get in the way of Edie a little bit. But then you wonder if UConn's like, no, let's go with our athletes, and instead we're going to try to counter this and make Edie have to come out, which is, you know, easier said than done because you're going to be giving up something on the other side of it.

So. But at least UConn has these differences. I thought the Alabama Clemson game was one of the best games I've watched in the tournament because, like, you're watching going, you know, Clemson is somebody who doesn't lock in all season long. You're like, that guy's good. That guy's good.

That guy's good.

That guy's good. But Alabama had a little bit more size. Clemson kept missing their free throws. The guard for Alabama, you know, missed everything to start it and then couldn't miss the rest of the way. So it's. It's been a lot of fun. And then you throw in an NC state like that to go on the run through the ACC and then take care of Duke, which was perfect because, like, it sucked for Duke that it was NC State. Cause somebody yelled, it's like, okay, this is Duke. And it's not a great Duke team by Duke standards. And you're like, wow, this team's going to end up in the final four. When you, you know, paying attention to it through a little bit of the season, you're like, they're not really Duke again or the way you'd expect him to be. And it's just brutal for Duke because you're like, oh, great, we're playing a team from our conference that already beat us, that doesn't care. Like, there's nothing. There's no the. You're not going to be in awe of us at all because we've already played.

I wish you had told me that before. I was. When I was deciding whether to hedge my duke to make the final four or five to one bet, which I didn't hedge. Yeah, but I don't know.

I mean, I don't. I don't know. Like, I actually ended up in Boston during the games. I was back in New York. I went to the UVM stuff. I went to all those games on the first round on that Friday, and then I flew back to Martha's Vineyard. I think I was in the east coast for ten days. It rained for nine. And then we were trying to balance a few different things. I was trying to see if I could go see Shane Gillis, but I was already so behind on the NBA stuff that the last two days I've been here, it's been all NBA. However, we did make a detour. Myself and my buddy midnight Jerry to Biddy Earlys. Have you ever been to Biddy Earlys? In Boston? So it's probably one of the better dive bars I've ever been to. We played darts. We cleaned house.

Yep.

And it was just every single character you can imagine. Young, old, fun. Not fun, just a good old melting pot of a Boston dive bar, people.

And.

And, like, one guy came up and said hello, and I was like, cool, awesome. Great to meet you. Throw a coors light on our tab, buddy. Thanks for listening. I was like, man, you really are nice. I'm like, yeah, so nice. And then another guy comes over, and he's like, I don't know who you are, and I don't care. And I was like, great.

You think you're better than me, right? Right.

And then he came over a second time to remind me that he didn't know who I was and that I really don't care who you are. And I was like, that's fucking awesome, man. You win. You win the award. You win the don't care award. And then Jerry goes to him. It's funny, though. You've come up to him twice, and we've come up to you zero times.

Right?

And then it was like, it stung him a bit. And, you know, that was. That was sort of it. I don't know if he was telling his buddies that story the next day, like, so I went up to this guy, and I really gave him the what for, and then his buddy came over the top, like, fucking third man in the ring and made me feel like a dick. But it was good night otherwise.

That sounds fun. Yeah, it's too bad. Like, they had this one final eight game, and there was a 30 to nothing run in the game, and it wasn't, wasn't. It was kind of weird to watch. It was fun from a dominant standpoint, but not a fun sporting event, you know?

No. And the second game was so late in Boston that I was like, I don't even know if that's happening. And, you know, I watched opening day. I mean, it was funny because you said how? Like the NBA. Thursday they played two games. Sunday they staggered all these to get away from the elite eight stuff. Baseball was like, what tournament?

Right?

Like, we don't, we don't care.

And then they're going head to head against everything.

I got to watch the game because we were on. We went out and grabbed something to eat, and then I was like, I just want to be able to, you know, watch the Red Sox. It's opening day. Granted, I hate when it's on the west coast back when you're east. So I was like, all right, 1005, 1st pitch. But I'm just thrilled that Tyler O'Neill's off to a hot start. Two home runs, you know, that his dad apparently was Mister Canada in 1975.

What does Mister Canada mean? Oh, like bodybuilder?

Yeah.

Really? I've landed on Drake May for the Pats at number three. That's my, that's my final decision. That's what I want.

You had a good tweet the other day. I don't love having teams do what you're suggesting, but they need to turn the vibes around and they just need to draft a quarterback is essentially your point, right?

It's been a catastrophe of a winter for Bob Kraft. The documentary was an all time backfire. He could have just disappeared for five months and it would have been a better decision than the press conference, him pretending he didn't know about the, you know, the facilities and the shit like that. And it's just like, oh, man, you're just digging a hole, buddy. It's almost like he's 82 years old. They need to just take somebody that the fans can be excited about and move forward. Just move forward with somebody that they can put on a poster. And if they take Drake, man, he shouldn't even play next year, right? Just sit him for a year. Do the Mahomes Alex Smith move with Brissette and just, just let him, let him ease into it. They're on the left tackle, that I'm a good receiver, but they should take Drake May. And by the way, when they say, like, trade back for three first round picks, it's two first round picks because you're in the three spot. If you trade with Minnesota for eleven, that's you're giving up your first round pick. So you're basically trading to move back eight spots for the 23rd pick and next year's pick.

Why would you do that?

I like that you did that because no one ever does it that way.

No one ever does that.

It sounds so much better to say.

Three first round picks for number three, it's like, yeah, but they gave up a first round pick. They got two first round picks.

Exactly. I don't like when teams are like, hey, like, if they don't like Drake May, they can't take him for vibes. But I get your point.

Why would they not like Drake May? Like, whether you're in, whether you're out, whether you don't like the fact that he was better two years ago than he was last year, whether you think he's like, is. You're worried about his accuracy, whatever it is, there's enough there that it's all the same shit with Josh Allen in 2018. Like, to a t where it's like, this guy's a fucking specimen. This guy's a great guy. He's a leader. Everyone who says in North Carolina, like.

Culture setter sounds like Terry O'Neal, Mister Canada, 1975.

The stuff that is fixable with him is fixable. It's not like Jaden Daniels. Like, he showed up at pro Dave's 210. That, to me, that means he's 203. That's like the reverse of, like, the UFC fighter cutting weight and then put it on the weight after. Jaden Daniels probably had, like three dinners the night before to get to 210. He's going to be 02:03. 02:04 like, I know that guy's talented, but I'm terrified of that guy. I think he's too skinny. I'm just worried about it. I don't, I don't think when you're that skinny or you're that too skinny, too short, that just scares me. With quarterbacks. We just went through with Bryce Young said, no, no, he's short, but it's fine. It's like, too short.

So, yeah, that, that definitely happened with the two short thing. Everybody was just like, no, no, it's been working.

It's like, was it, is it six 4229 right now? Which means what? He'll be 245?

Well, I don't, he doesn't have to be. It's, it's really depends on how big he was.

You add muscle and, and that kill end up being 245.

If he wants to, I'm sure he could, but he also, you know, there's diminishing return at some point on how much weight you want to add. But, yes, your general point is you're right. Like, even as big as you are in your early twenties, you're likely going to fill out and be that. That man, something. I don't know, but then there's other people walking around and like, oh, I've had a 28 inch waist since I was 14.

It's like, that's going to be my son.

I have a question for you.

Yeah.

Have you watched the Steve Martin documentary yet?

No, it's on my list.

It is fucking awesome. Morgan Neville, a 24, man. They're unbelievable.

You loved it since two parts.

I loved it. I might even watch it again.

Wow. It's a documentary watch.

Can we do it as a rewatchable?

We could. I got a. It's certainly eligible.

It's so good. I mean, out of the park for a documentary on a guy. And the fact that it's two parts that you're. When it's over, you're like, please don't be over. And you know it isn't over because, you know, it's in two parts and you're just so happy. And it's. And the thing is, it's not like one of those salacious. It's not the dirt. Motley crue, you know, because Steve Martin wasn't that kind of guy. He's the opposite. But they just. They hit it out of the park. Can't recommend it enough.

Have you ever seen the movie shot caller?

I love shot caller.

That's the rewatchable for tomorrow. Oh, good. Me and CR did that for rock bottom month. We did shot caller. I should have asked you. I should have figured. You like that movie?

I bought it.

Great. It's. It's great.

It's fucking awesome.

It's like. It's.

It's one of those scripts. You're like, what if a guy did this and you're like, how's it end? Is it suck?

Does the end suck?

And with this one, you're like, totally believable. Find yourself rooting.

Okay.

How's he gonna get out of this?

Incredible.

Like, I'm not trying to give the movie away, but it. Every turn that it takes, you're like, all right. Have you gone? It's like severance. Like, I'm really worried about how they're gonna land.

I should have asked you. I just gonna ask you. When we have movies, like, anytime somebody's.

In prison in a movie, you give me a call.

We did. We did the prison pyramid for actually. Cause CR is like dangling cash. I went through all my. It's a good pod. I went through all my check marks. What I need. What I need from a prison movie. Yeah, it's good. All right, next one. Next time we do a prison one, you're in. Roselle, you got two podcasts this week. And then when we come back next week, there's going to be a week to go. We'll have some award stuff. There's some all NBA stuff that's brewing. There's still some good arguments. Coach of the year is in place. Six band. There's some first team all NBA spot, second team on NBA guards. And we'll also have a better idea of who's going to be in the playoffs and who's playing, too. Rosillo, good to see you as always. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Rossello, thanks to Kyle Creighton, Steve Ceruti for producing as well. Don't forget to check out one shining podcast if you want all your march madness stuff. Getting ready for the Final four. Don't forget to check out YouTube.com Bill Simmons don't forget about the rewatchables.

Come on Monday night. We did shot caller and I will see you on this feed on Tuesday. Must be 21 plus and president in select states, FanDuel is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. Gambling problem called 1800 Gambler visit fanduel.com RG in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont call 100 next step or text next step to 53342. In Arizona, 8887-8977 or visit ccpg.org chattinconicut 809 with it in Indiana 805 224700 or visit ks gamblinghelp.com. In Kansas, eight seven seven city zero stop in Louisiana, md gamblinghelp.org in Maryland, 800 gambler.net in West Virginia, 805 224700. In Wyoming, hope is here. Visit Gambling helpline ma.org or call 800 327 50 50 for 24/7 supported Massachusetts or call 18778 Hope NY or text Hope NY in New York.