Coming up, a lot of NBA, a little NFL draft. It's next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where I have a new rewatchables coming on Monday night. Me and Van Lathan and Chris Ryan, we did internal affairs with Richard Gere and Andy Garcia. I said it's the kind of movie they don't make anymore. And Chris Ryan said, I don't know if they ever made a movie like this before since, but we had a great time. We had a lot of laughs and this was a wild, wild podcast. So that's going up Monday night. You can eventually watch it on YouTube.com billsimmons as well. We put up all the rewatchables episodes there. We also put up clips and videos from this podcast as well. It's St. Patrick's Day, so we're taping a little bit early because my wife demanded that I have a couple of drinks in there tonight. We're not doing any march madness. Listen, I'm going to watch March Madness, but let's be honest, none of us know who's on any of these teams. We're all going to fill up brackets this week. I have no real insight to offer.

If you want to listen to people talk about March Madness, I have an idea. You can go to one shining podcast with Tate Frazier and nephew Kyle pops on there as well, too. But he's going to break down all of our March madness stuff. We also have the Ringer gambling show. We also have cousin Sal against all oDs. So we have plenty of places to find march Madness stuff. You know what I didn't talk about, and I apologize. Julia Lippman, one of my favorite people. I told her I would promote this on Thursday and I forgot, but I'm going to promote it right now. She did a new podcast about the TV show Felicity that is very ambitious, that has a lot of the stars from the show, that has JJ Abrams and all kinds of people who helped make Felicity one of the most popular and long lasting network TV shows in the 21st century. So it is called Dear Felicity. You can listen to it on platforms, and it is the crowning achievement of Julia Lippman's career so far because this was her favorite show and she got to do a podcast about it.

So congrats to you, Julia. You can listen to dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're bringing in Ryan Rosillo. We're going to talk NBA, a tiny bit of NBA draft. First, our friends from Projamp we're taping this. It is a little past 03:00 Pacific time on St. Patrick's Day. Just watched Denver and Dallas. Didn't know we'd be leading the podcast with that, but Kyrie made one of the great buzer beater shots I've ever seen in my life. Priscillo, a 20 foot running lefty. It's a borderline skyhook. It almost looked like the magic junior Skyhook, but lefty over Jokic to win the game. And Maxi Kleba put his arms behind his hands behind his head like Thomas Hill after the Leitner shot. And Luca just sunk to the ground in disbelief because real basketball players are like, that shot's fucking impossible. Nobody should ever make that shot, ever.

That shot is so hard, okay, to be going that direction where it's not even really just a straightforward floater, the angle that he's at, and then he throws it in lefty. It's part of the brilliance of Kyrie and just why, when people talk about the most skilled and that kind of stuff, we know he's the best ball handler we've ever seen. There's this love for him from other just hoopers who are like, dude, some of the stuff that this guy does. And I think that's always been kind of the frustration is that I don't want to spend a lot of time on all the rest of it. But it's like, oh, how come you guys are dissing Kyrie? It's like, well, it's not that. It's just you want to see somebody have a long stretch of consistency of playing because you know what he's capable of. And the end of the game was crazy because Luca went immediately with the three down, 105, 102, unguarded for no reason. Okay, but the reason he was unguarded is because you didn't think he was going to go that early. There was 23 seconds left in the shot clock, and it really wasn't a two for one situation.

Wait, you didn't like the defense or you didn't like the shot?

I want to stay next to Luca when I'm up three with less than 30 seconds left. I'm just going to keep somebody near him. I don't care if he's 26ft away from the basket.

Yeah, I don't think you're being reasonable, though, because you don't think he's taking that three. There's no way you think he's taking that that soon. If he misses it, you're like, why would you do that. Why wouldn't you let it run down? And now they've got the ball.

But if I'm him, I just want to take a good three. I'm just like, I'm excited. They just gave me a 26 foot three. I might as well take this now.

Murray gets a great look, right? Murray gets the great look.

Missed an easy one.

Ends up being short after they were just looking like, oh, okay, here we go. Here's Denver again. This second unit that's actually shown some real promise recently where you were like, wait, have they unveiled something with Murray in the second unit? The numbers even better because the on off with Jokic is obviously traditionally a disaster with this team. And then Jokic comes back in. This is probably one of the worst Jokic games you're going to see in a while. So credit.

Yeah, he looked kind of half asleep.

I think they just mucked it up for know, Gafford, lively, PJ Kleba, all of these guys. But on top of still there was just some stuff in know, I don't know how much you want to do on all that, but that you're.

I want to go back to Kyrie.

Yeah, no, you're right.

Because enough time has passed when he had that weird celtic season that I've gone back to the basketball mode of. I just appreciate watching how good he is again. And that's all I see. And he's 25, five and five again. He's missed his usual 15 to 16 games. What was the stat they said? How many consecutive games that he played?

All right, so this is his 18th straight game that he's played, which is the longest consecutive streak of games played without missing any since 2016.

From Kyrie. Yeah. In the last eight years. This is his longest streak.

Right. So when you hear some people be frustrated, you're, I mean, that's nuts.

It's eight years. But the thing is, he's still really talented. And I was even thinking after he made that shot, and you're thinking the Lakers had a chance last February. I did not think they should have made the trade we talked about on this podcast. Both of us were against it. It was Westbrook and the 27 and 29 1st for Kyrie. Right. It seems like that was on the table for Brooklyn and they just wouldn't do the second pick. And then it ended up he goes to Dallas for Finney Smith and one unprotected first. I wonder, like you think this Lakers team, basically a 500 team this year. I wonder if they would redo that. I was against it in the moment, but you watch the artistry of him, and you think about adding that to this Davis and LeBron seasons that they're getting right now, and it's like, would that have changed their destiny at all? I'm leaning toward no, but I wanted to talk it out.

Well, you have to be fair about what you're talking about at the time you were talking about it, and at that point, it's cool to talk about after a game winner, but that whole stat that I just shared with you is the reason why the price was what it was.

He felt way more erratic February last year than maybe right now.

Well, because he was. I mean, this is the longest stretch of quiet Kyrie we've had in a really long time. Like, it got so bad.

Five months of quiet Kyrie? Yeah.

I mean, at one point, it would be so bad with him. You'd be like, okay, when's the next thing happening? But maybe he truly is whatever version of basketball happy he needs to be. And really, Luke and Kyrie carried this team today. Nobody else could make a three. They started to trap Luca. They throw it to Kleba Kiba airballs one. Granted, we know he can.

Oh, my God, that was awful.

Right? Because it was the right basketball play. There was a bunch of weird stuff happening there when they got bogged down offensively. But then Kyrie had that great stretch in the third quarter. We went for seven straight and ten points. This is what Dallas is supposed to look like, which you'd imagine a little bit better support from the three point line. There was no Josh Green today. But when you watch Dallas in this stack stack west, and I think every fan base gets really frustrated from team five on, what do you want us to do? We're talking about seven, eight, nine seeds. So, like, how excited do you want me to be about your team? But the Luca part of it, if know he and Kyrie complimenting each other, and you'd imagine better three point shooting on average than you got today. I mean, they're not a great rebounding team, and they set a record for the season on offensive rebounds. That wasn't anything you'd expect against Denver. And they were all over it.

They killed the paint.

Yeah. So it was just a really complete. Well, I can't call it a complete game because the supporting cast wasn't exactly that great offensively, but they also did some things they don't normally do. And I thought, even though it was one of the worst Jokic games I think I've seen in a while you got to give them credit for at least throwing enough bodies at him and changing how they were doubling. And I don't know if it messed him up or what, or he was just due for a bad game.

They were super physical with him, especially when he was setting those screens where he pops off. They were just chipping him. It was almost like a wide receiver or tight end coming off a line. And this go into the officiating thing we'll talk about a little bit later. But Dallas is ten and six in their last 16, but they're in the top six in net rating. And this speaks to how weird the west is right now, where there are a lot of teams, I think, in the west who are going, hey, I kind of like how we're playing right now. And yet there's no traction at all. Like, Golden State has a big win last night. That Dallas win was bad for them today, Dallas, I thought that was their biggest game of the year because New Orleans was starting to pull away from them for the division. Dallas was starting to look a little, um. They needed that. You know, Denver did the thing that they always do where they're down eight with four minutes left and you got, your lead's not big enough, they're coming back Jaws style. You just know they are.

And they came back and they took the lead and it just seemed like your classic Denver pulls it out in the last five minutes because they're the best closing team in the last seven years type of thing. Then Luke gets the three, Murray misses a bunny and then all of a sudden Kyrie hits the craziest shot possible and somebody actually beat Denver. I do think that's the recipe for beating Denver, though, where you have to have two just awesome offensive players and you're basically outscoring them down the stretch. I was saying this with Phoenix a couple of days ago or a week ago, I can't remember when we talked about this, but this is the case for why Phoenix as a long shot bet was more intriguing maybe a week ago than it is right now, but at least they could match baskets and make a couple shots down the stretch. And I don't see any other way anyone's beating Denver. Do you like this Dallas team?

Because they're like.

I just want to say their fan base is very touchy, so we got to be careful coming out of the gate. I would say top three touchiest fan base.

Well, Toronto is always in its own category for me because I've never experienced anything like that. I think there's a bunch of Milwaukee, like, content sites that it's not even just fans, where they are just such bitches about the dumbest stuff, where I'm like, do you really need this? Explain to you why this is like, why this is different than the other thing. But I wouldn't say it's all Bucks fans, but that's one, I'd say the last couple of years.

Radical Bucks fans. There's a radical side?

Yeah, it's an arm.

It's an arm.

They have plywood around their. I don't. I don't want to lump it all in together because I don't think that's fair, because I think it's kind of just human nature. Like, when everybody can say, like, oh, people have never been worse, or whatever. I'm like, no, I just think the worst people have never been louder.

Yeah. Or had more platforms to be worse.

If you took the 8 billion people on earth and threw up a pie chart of, like, who's pretty good, who's awesome, and who's fucking terrible, this would.

Be a good segment for our pie chart show, right? Exactly.

Pie chart. This would be the, like, is the pie chart slice of the worst people? Is it growing? Because I think Gladwell might say that it's growing. And I think about this a know, because I'd like to think, like, in general, most of us kind of get it.

The humans are improving in some way.

I'd like to think that most of us are walking around trying not to fuck everyone else over or just be the worst. I really believe this. But the problem is that pie slice may not actually be growing globally. It's just they have more access to be the worst.

It's just a richer, more fulfilling, more annoying pie slice.

Yeah, right.

The Miami fans are up there because not only are they just as aggressive, but even when you compliment them, they take it personally. Like, you're just saying that because you're trying to jinx us. Actually, I'm complimenting you.

You couldn't have been nicer about Miami going even.

I was saying the Miami. All year they're Michael Myers. Even today they steal one against the Pistons. Kate has a chance to basically end the game, shoots with 10 seconds left for reasons that remain unclear, misses, and then bam. Hits a 27 footer to win the game. Second time. They've just stolen a game from Detroit. But that's what Miami does. They're going to end up at, like, 46 wins somehow. And bam.

Against Yokich last week, I did a couple of minutes on it because I thought when you looked at one individual taking on that task for an entire game, I thought it and really embracing it. Right. I thought it was the best individual performance defensively against Jokic. Jokic took six shots in the first quarter. He took two the rest of the game.

And they still won, right?

And they still won.

We never finished your answer on what do you think of Dallas?

I'm going to be scared of Luca in a playoff series. Me too, because we've already seen it, whether it's the Western Conference finals run and taking out my guys in Phoenix, which is one of the most depressed podcasts I've ever done with you, those Clippers series were just incredible individual performances. Like he and Kawhi going back and like that was all time kind of. That's the kind of stuff where I still think, I don't know if you share this with me, but it's largely an irrelevant series. It's not like legacy defining, but it was this wake up call of, again, not even Luca. A lot of the Kawhi stuff you're like, this is like absurdly high level stuff that we're seeing from these two dudes. So let me just throw it back to you. If it's a seven two and Oklahoma City is a half game up now with Denver's lost, Oklahoma City has the season series against the Nuggets three one. So that's why they were ahead in the tiebreak, even though they were both with Dallas. I think the best compliment I could give mass fans is like, I wish you had a better record against the better teams in general because we go to those expanded know they're still worse off than a lot of the teams that are in front of them.

But for Luca, in that I wouldn't rule it out is, I guess my point.

The two guys, that's the strength. The PJ Washington trade I just don't think has worked that well for him. Although he did some good non scoring stuff in today's game, but he has not shot the ball well at all for them. And meanwhile, Grant's been playing pretty well in Charlote, which has been funny to watch. High level Hornets, right. I don't really trust their swings, but I'm scared of the two guys. And if you separate the west and the halves and you just go six seven, 8910, which right now is Sacramento, six Dallas Phoenix Golden State Lakers. Watching what's happened to Phoenix in a couple of the games this past week, I think has been pretty alarming. What the Celtics did to them on Thursday night. If I'm a Phoenix fan, I'm alarmed because I had my whole team.

Today was worse.

Today just the Milwaukee puts up 140 on them without Yanis. That was really weird. And Duran had a very strange game. But if it's Sacramento, Dallas, Phoenix, Golden State, the Lakers, and I'm one of the top three seeds and it's like, who don't I want to see out of those bottom five? It's clearly Dallas. It's clearly Dallas. It's not Sacramento, it's not Phoenix, and it's not Golden State or the Lakers.

Yeah, depending on the size matchup. That's where I think Sacramento would run into problems. I think Golden State would run into those problems. I mean, Golden State was great yesterday, but Anthony Davis played twelve minutes. I mean, that was a completely different.

Jackson Hayes was in crunch time.

Yeah, I mean, Jackson Hayes just isn't. There was a reason he was available for a million bucks. I know he's going to have a couple of dunks that are really nice, but if you really locked into defensively what they were doing, and we already know the Lakers without Vando are just going to be challenged defensively to begin with and Ad is cleaning up all that stuff. I think the number was four points in the paint and the twelve minutes ad was in he leaves with the eye thing doesn't come back. And then it was like 54 points in the paint. I mean, that was just a layup line for Golden State. So even the Golden States put some things together. I've actually really liked how Clay's looked this month. It seems like they figured out the rotation.

He's okay off the bench. Yeah. And I thought Draymond was excellent in that game yesterday. I liked how the Warriors.

I don't think getting off to that start because the Lakers sag off of him so much. But I think you're right about the Dallas part of it because Dallas with Luca has a better player than at this mean Luca is better than any single player. Despite how we feel about KD Booker and, you know, the collective of, you know, they've got the best guy. Yeah.

And you could feel it in that Denver game at some point when they're trading baskets and when it was know, pretty nice to have Luca on your side and pretty nice to have Kyrie as the second option bailout. Yeah, I don't, I don't think Dallas is going to win three straight rounds, but I would not be afraid of Sacramento at all. And from what I saw from Phoenix this week, we should talk about that after the break because I'm not really sure how to explain that one. Let's take a break and we'll do a deeper dive on some things. Fando is putting the 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's $200 if your bet wins. We went off the menu on Saturday night and we hit one. We hit a boost. I basically just created a bet. We call it off the menu because Fando sportsbook didn't have it. And I put some props together. We did. LeBron six plus rebounds, curry three plus threes and the Warriors 7.5 adjusted. Put them together, they boosted it to plus 150.

And guess what? We won. We're going to keep going off the menu. Stay tuned. My Twitter feed and check out Fando sportsbook because we're going to do more off the menu bets as we head toward the playoffs. Bet on the NBA with a wide range of bet types, including off the menu, quick bets, live, same game parlays, player props and more. And by the way, the wait is over. North Carolina FanDuel officially live in Tarhill State, so visit fanduel.com bs make your first bet a layup. Fanduel official sports book partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus in president select states gambling problem? Call win 800 gambler. Visit theringer.com rg first online real money wager only $10 1st deposit required. Bonus issue does non withdrawal bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook fanduel.com. All right, so we're going to do a segment called a closer look. And I had this fourth, but we'll just start here because I'm just laughing.

Segment because I just love that they're titled and it's like I get as excited as the audience does. I was like, oh, this should be.

I sent you a screenshot. You saw it.

Yeah. But this almost sounds like a real built out professional.

Thank you.

Do we have sound drops, Kyle? Can we just put some kind of transition sound?

Well, Seth Meyers is a closer look. We'll just steal his Seth Meyers thing. I had this fourth, but we can do it first. Katie Booker and Beale. Katie, Booker and Beale together. You would think like, oh, I bet when those three guys play with Grayson Allen, I bet their records really good. It's like, no, it's actually not. They're like 16 and 1116 and eleven.

After today.

Got their ass handed to them. Losses and that would be more concerning to me, like what Boston did to them on Thursday. And it wasn't just that Boston hit all the threes. They were like, hey, you guys are really excited about this nurkage thing. Has anyone really tried to use this against you yet? And he can have his 18 rebounds, whatever. But has anybody tried to do, like, what if Drew holiday guarded him and what if we just attacked him in every pick and roll? Have you really thought this through with Nurkic against good you. Have you considered all the variables that could go wrong here? And they just tortured him. And then Tatum versus Durant, which has been a two year thing now where Tatum just. I don't know what it. It's. He just has a ton of confidence against him. And then the brown piece, like, they're two guys. Pick any third guy on Boston, are just better than Phoenix's three guys.

Wait, any three guys for Boston is what you're saying? Or any.

I'm saying I'll take. Give me poor Zingis. Give me Derek white. I would just rather have any version of the three for Boston than the three for Phoenix because I wouldn't put beal on the level of any of the Boston third guys.

I just wouldn't.

Sorry, Brad fans.

I'm just trying to think that out, though, because I personally think the Booker Tatum thing is closer maybe than most people do. So again, I could be wrong. Okay. I'd still rather have Durant over Jalen. Am I wrong there?

No, I don't think you're wrong.

And then it comes down to no. Beal's talent and scoring ability is going to be beyond any third Celtic we pick.

But would you rather have Derek white or Bradley Beal?

Yeah, I can't believe. I think I'd rather just have Derrick White as the third guy than Beal.

Would you rather Porzingis and Bradley Beal?

Well, I can't even go injury history with Porzingis because beal misses so many games.

Well, I mean, one of the problems with the Beal Durant Booker thing is it just doesn't seem like those guys can all stay in the. Whereas, like, I think the Boston guys, one of the things that's made their run pretty special, knock on wood. I hope it doesn't change. But Tatum and Brown have been, like, incredibly durable. The last, really? Since 2017, right?

Yeah. I don't know if I need to pull this up on cleaning the glass. I should have done it before, but there was a couple of numbers that were shared in today's game. And by the way, today's game, just to emphasize, was way worse than what even happened against Boston. Now, if you want to convince me that it was kind of like fake competition, and Boston's like, all right, this game's over now, which is what you see from some Celtics games, I would agree with you there. The defense for Phoenix was atrocious. Atrocious. And on top of that, Milwaukee hit everything. I don't know where Phoenix was at with their intensity. Did they just go, hey, no Yanis today, who's missed only his fourth game, I think this season it's because of the hamstring. So it's not something people were super concerned about. Middleton's back, who I thought looked really good and moved well, by the way.

I thought that was encouraging.

Portis has 25 in the first half.

Well, you know what's funny? The sunshot 59% and it felt like they lost by 50.

Yeah, I know they got.

They're 14 for 33 on threes, but they just couldn't get stops.

But here are the two numbers that I want to share with you because pash shared them today. And I think if you look at the starting five, remember, like, golden State last year was like, our starting five actually has the best point differential of any starting five in the league. And you were like, yeah, but you guys never went on the road and whatever. And again, you know, who knows? If the matchups have broken different, maybe they make it still to the Western Conference finals, despite how bad the defense was, all that kind of stuff. But their fourth quarter point differential is the fifth worst in NBA history. They're minus 212 going into today. The second worst fourth quarter point differential is Miami at -93 so they're more than double. So every time I look at a Phoenix stat bill, I'm like, I don't know what to do with it when it's now 27 games with those three guys, because that's not the team that you're going to see in the playoffs, but whatever it is, it's just not clicking for them.

Well, this goes back to why I brought up the original question, and one of the things we want to do on the podcast today was kind of tilt what people think something is, the perception of it versus what we might actually be seeing, because, and I'm guilty of this, too, sometimes we think, this guy is a top ten guy, this guy's a top five guy, this guy's a top 20 guy, these guys are all awesome together. But at some point, if you're not winning games, I think that has to start to mean something, right? The Lakers have gotten a full season out of LeBron and Davis this year and they're basically a 500 team. I don't know what that means, but that has to mean something. Phoenix has these guys that are now all playing together and they're not that successful. And to be honest, Durant hasn't been that successful, even though his stats have been great. I would say if you look at his 2020 scoring percentages, all that stuff, statistically, he's as good as he's ever been. But the team performance hasn't been as good. And him and Booker together, the team performance hasn't been that good.

It's like, well, these two guys are. They're two of the best twelve guys in the league. Why shouldn't their team be great? Oh, it's not great. All right. Well, it's everybody else's fault. It's Nurkich's fault. It's the swing guys fault. They need more guys. Well, Grayson Allen's playing really well this year. Why isn't Phoenix, like, awesome? I don't get there. It seems like they're going backwards, which I think if I'm a Suns fan, I would be the most alarmed by that. Why am I getting my ass handed to me now?

I just ran a filter on the starting fives and there's a couple of teams that are still ahead of them. There's some Milwaukee combinations because of their own injuries, but Boston, Denver some versus Milwaukee would have a higher. But Phoenix is five with Nurkich and Allen and the other three guys, they played, what, 666 possessions together? They're still plus 10.6 in that differential.

But I'm with, so then it's a bench thing. So then it's like this goes down to the structure of a team. If you're just going to be this top heavy, the league is too good now to survive. Just trying to patch together a bench and trying to steal seven, eight minute stretches. Okay, that would be the other way.

To think about it, but your starters are closing the fourth quarter, so what the hell is going on there?

That's a good point. So it doesn't explain that part. This is my point, though. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The Suns, they might not even win 50 games. They have 29 losses right now with 14 games left. They're not going to be a 50 win team with Durant and Booker and Bradley Beal and Nurkage and Grayson Allen as basically the best shooter in the league. Right now.

Right? And Royce, who should be a rotation.

Guy, and Royce said they've had half the year.

Right?

And Eubanks has been a pretty good backup. I don't understand it. And then same thing with the Lakers. You look at LeBron stats, you look at what he did last night where he looked like it was the 2018 finals, and he's just bullyballing the warriors and just going through them and getting layups and getting whatever shots he's. Why he's hitting Fallaway threes falling out of bounds and they lost. Davis went out.

Were you there last night?

I wasn't.

All right, so you watched it? Did you watch it live?

No, I watched it this morning.

Okay. The first time he had the ball, I went, wait, is something going on? Are all the MVP voters there in attendance or something? LeBron's energy from the beginning of that game, and it's funny that you say 18 because that's when you kind of, what was it? Game one where you think it's the best game you've ever seen him play against Golden State.

That was one of the best games I've ever seen anyone play.

Yeah, he was unbelievable yesterday. And then your 18 comparison, it felt like the 2015 finals in the fourth quarter where it's like I'm just going to go every time I possibly can, I'm going to get as close as I can and just overpower everybody and take every single shot. And he know again, as great as he was, unfortunately it wasn't enough because all the stuff they do on know.

One thing on Phoenix, quick durant clutch stats are really bad this year because I was really studying because I was trying to figure out Tatum versus Durant for that last first team on BA and some other stuff and I was just surprised because the itest wouldn't have backed that up for me. The games I've seen, he seems like normal Durant, but he was like, I think he's like 36% down the stretch and that might be one of the reasons their fourth quarter stats are bad. I don't know. It doesn't seem like they've figured out the Booker Durant thing the same way that Dallas seems to have settled into whatever they're in with Luca and Kyrie. Kyrie seems like he knows exactly what his role is on Dallas at least. And the Phoenix guys, I really still care about the point guard position. I'm going to keep making that point all year. San Antonio, we talked about a bunch. Phoenix just basically throwing it just. It makes me nervous. And New Orleans, who we're going to talk about in a second, who has looked really exciting with points ion, and I still don't trust it for reasons I'm going to talk about later.

But I just like having somebody who knows what to do with the car keys every once in a while.

I'm not disagreeing with the point. I would agree on San Antonio. I wonder about the point Zion stuff, even though I thought it was more of a complete game and Zion's attack was kind of oh, we'll go into.

It because both of us were excited.

Yeah, but it shouldn't matter with Phoenix. I've heard the point guard thing be the reason that it's the fourth quarter. It shouldn't matter. I mean, look, even with Kyrie, but it has mattered. But it shouldn't. Booker's had to play point enough in his career earlier on, which is one of the reason why I always like him, is that he can operate the offense. I just don't know why you'd want a fourth guy with Beal, Booker and Durant in your closing group orchestrating things while those three guys are waiting. Don't. I don't think they should have a point guard. I think they needed. Well, today was so bad, I don't even know what's worth talking about in that game.

Well, who is supposed to guard the dame lower? Darren Fox?

Jalen Brunson, Royce O'Neill? Probably. But the problem is, like, you can't take Allen off because you need the spacing of what they do with Booker initiating it. And then Durant, they're going to rough him up off the ball. I also wonder with the way I know we're going to talk about some of the officiating stuff that has been a big deal last couple of weeks, does it impact a team like that? More or less. But I don't disagree with your general point guard premise. I just think for them, with three guys like that, having a fourth ball handle that's setting it up and bringing it up and doing all this kind of stuff, I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't think they should need it. And the fourth quarter numbers still shouldn't be this bad.

So what are they missing then? Because on Tuesday I think they're 27 to one to win the title. And I was thinking, this is probably the best long shot bet right now because most of Vegas and the sports books have ruined the value of future bets because they know people love future bets, so they always make them lower than they actually should. Be. But Phoenix 27 to one, I was like, that's not nothing because we haven't really seen all these guys playing together. This is the type of team that if Denver is going to lose, it's going to be a team like this with a ton of offense. Right? So then as the week went along and you watch the Boston game, you watch the Milwaukee game today, and you go, I'm glad I didn't put any wood down on Phoenix 27 to one because it looks like they're going the wrong direction.

No, but seriously, it might be as simple as not having just 30 straight games with all those guys. So, like, one week you're doing this to close games, the next week you're doing this. But when it's another on ball creator who can get to the hoop. And maybe you could argue the game was kind of decided or whatever, but Beale is actually really good in the second half to close the game, just kind of getting wherever we wanted. But that might have just been like, whatever. And both teams went small today. But maybe that's it.

What's that lineup? That's plus ten? That's the five.

Yeah, that's Allen with the three guys. It's 666 possessions based on what I have here today. So I could sort this differently and maybe it's ranked.

I wonder if the smart teams are figuring out the nerkage piece because we are now into. You're watching everybody go, oh, you have this guy. It's hunting. And we saw that with the Celtics. We saw that with the Bucks today. Can I read you a LeBron stat that I think is fascinating?

Let me grab a pen.

So normally when you look. I like looking at the basketball reference splits and just seeing like, pre post all star stats and wins, losses. Wins, losses. Usually there's no rhyme or reason to the wins losses. Sometimes guys stats will be like a tiny bit even better in losses, right? It's really hard to. You would think like, oh, when this guy plays well, they're going to win more. And in losses, he probably. LeBron stats. The Lakers are 31 and 28, or at least in the games he's played. When they win, he's shooting 55%, 46% from three. When they lose, he's 51%, 35% from three in the losses. But it's just clearly like, if he's hitting threes, they're kind of unbeatable. Which was one of the interesting things about yesterday, because usually when he plays like that, they win. Now, I guess if Davis had played, maybe that game would have been different. But how they kind of ebb and flow with how he's playing at the age that he's at is pretty crazy to me because you would have thought he would be a once a week.

Guy at this point.

Like, dame is kind of, let's be honest, dame's like a once a week, one good game a week guy. But LeBron has not been that way.

Yeah, but that could also know Dame will have his shooting duds. But he also, like, if Giannis has it going and now with the Middleton piece coming back and Portis, maybe that'll form up. Yeah, Conathon is going to get his shots up a little bit. I just, I guess I mean it in the sense that I don't know if I'd agree with him. Do you really think Dame's a once a week guy? I don't know. I gotta look at it right now.

I mean, for like the big old school dame games, I think he is. The stats back it up. Just look at the game logs.

He's just not going to have the opportunity. Yeah, all right, but I don't know.

Wait, we got to continue closer look.

Okay, sorry. How much closer are we now?

We're a whiff closer. The officiating, we both watched Nick's Kings last night. Honestly, the second half, to be fair, at one point somebody had a two by four and was just hitting some bonus with it. They weren't calling it. Somebody brought in a chair. I got to say, I love it. To me, this is what basketball should be. I love it. This is so much better. It's so much more fun. It feels like the playoffs. It's so much more physical watching the guys adjust to it in real time because they're such good athletes now. We talked about a week ago, there's even more data now about how this is definitely happening. And the league finally kind of admitted it on Friday. They said something, I think, on countdown where they're like, yeah, maybe there's an officiating. We renewed focus on blah, blah, blah. But I think it's been good. I'm in your thoughts?

Well, it's been my life's work the last couple of years, so I'm not going to complain about the correction. I feel bad for Sabonis, that guy, I don't know.

That last play when there was three guys just wailing on him, it was like watching somebody at a bar at 145 in the morning just get beaten up by three baskets.

But you can't knock him out. He's sitting there being like, is anyone going to help? Is anyone going to help? Like, I'm from out of town. I know, but I think these guys started. Yeah, Sabonus. Like, I think Tyce, Dwight Powell and Sabonus are all like, there's no five year waiting period to be inducted into the hit in the face hall of Fame.

Anthony Davis.

Tyce. Tyce has the highest, like, because he doesn't play as many minutes. The number of times he's hit in the face. Big at the. You'd be like, oh, my God. His usage of being hit in the face per the minutes he's playing is like, no one's. This is will chamberlain. Shit.

Right?

I can't believe Tyce at some point hasn't punched anyone. Just been like, I don't even care. I'll get suspended. I don't make that much.

Just, I hope he doesn't self combust and have like a little bill and boogie nights moment where he just has like a break.

Yeah.

I'm worried about does like the Willis Reed just takes out like four guys in the same fight. Punching everybody, punching, coaching.

I'm worried at some point like there's going to be some weird E 60 thing. I don't even know if that show is still on, but where it's going to be. Tice.

Shots fired, is it?

No, I'm legitimately.

I actually don't know either.

Yeah, that wasn't a shots fired thing. I don't know, but I don't know. See tice, like walking down next to a stream next to the reporter in like, Dusseldorf. And they were like, daniel, you punched.

Out six guys against the Pacers on March 29.

So anyway, it's probably the worst that it's looked. They shared the graphic last night in the ABC broadcast where in the month of March, teams are averaging around 19 free throw attempts per game, per team, which the lowest number since March. This March is the lowest month since 19 50, 51 season.

Wow. When everybody's just taking 25 foot set.

Shots right 4 seconds into the possession, just running up and down like crazy people. Because whenever you look at the possessions and shot attempts back then, but nobody could shoot. So you were like, what's going on here? And be like, this guy led the league and field goal percentage at like 37%. So when you watch this, to me, these weeks are the worst weeks because it's happening, it's real, but guys are still looking for it.

So the Lucas looking at it for every call, he's just glancing around everybody on the floor wondering why he didn't get a call.

Pacers thunder. What? A week ago I watched that game and they weren't giving the calls. Like Luca, I think, is still going to get calls because he's physical. I think Giannis is still going to get those calls. I mean, Lillard's still really good at this hunting. His, he's, he'll probably still get a few. I think Shay does a good job of getting people up, and when it's an upfake and you're in the air, no one's going to do you any favors or that kind of stuff. I have heard reports. I can't confirm it because I need another source. I need a second source that Harden's actually not hurt. He's thinking retiring because he watched a few weeks of this and said, well, fuck it, I got no chance if this is what they're going to start doing. I've seen a couple armhooks called as offensive fouls, which I've been really excited about. I've seen a couple that haven't worked out. Brunson got called for the offensive initiator last night against Sacramento, which I was thrilled with because it was true. But we're still in this confused part of like, is it real? Is it going to continue?

I think they march. Correction.

They got rid of the car accident drive, too, that we talked about last week. When the guy veers into the lane of the other guy that was called the veer guy, that one's gone.

So you're in. You like, well, if it's this, you're good.

You know, the other thing. And they did it a couple of times to Jokic today. They're letting people be more physical on the screens now. When they're getting screened, they're allowing them to kind of shove through, push through and fight through a little bit more than they used to because sometimes they would call that. They're also the block charge stuff, which has led to less reviews. It just feels in general, when guys are colliding, they're kind of letting it go unless they have to. One of the things I love, and it happened a couple of times last night in that Kings game where there would be calls. We saw today in the Dallas game, too, they'll belatedly make the call. We're, that was, I got to call that one. But they'll take like the extra split second before they call. What the most fascinating thing to me, Rosillo, is that this is so clearly like a focus that they told all the refs. This is what we're doing now and then the refs are doing it and I actually think it's gone really well. But it makes me think of all the playoff series over the years and even in the last seven years when you and I have been doing pods that we've talked about where it was like, oh, game four, they told the refs to do this.

Game five, they clearly told the refs this and people kind of thought we were nuts, but we were never nuts. This was always the case. This was always the league telling whoever the crew was, hey, watch out. When Gasol jumps over the back of Kevin Garnett. You got to call that this time. You didn't call it the last time or when Garnett setting a moving screen for the Ray Allen three. He's sticking his leg out. You got to call that this game. And now the focus is just let everything go. And I think that's just where we've landed and this is where we've ended up and this is where we're going. And I'm fine with it.

I've only cared about the offensive initiating thing because that's where it made the defender helpless. It put him in a helpless spot, the block charge thing from the lows of the early 2000 teens. There were moments in West Hartford where I was like, wait, you just have to get in front of the guy and transition and then fall down. They've done a really good job. That almost went unnoticed. How good of a job they had done cleaning that up? Do you remember where it'd be a fast break and it would be kind of one on one and the defensive player would be like, all I have to do is just kind of get in the way and then fly back, right? And you're like, that's not really what it was. And so the refs deserve credit for fixing a lot of that stuff, but I don't know if it means everything's on the table, though. I see guys now dribble towards the paint and there'll be a bump. And it wasn't even the offensive player initiating the stuff the way that I got so mad in the first half of the season. Yeah, and it's just a bump and the offensive player will kind of like, look, and you just keep playing and I think that's okay.

And sure, there's going to be some unintended consequences, going to be some big play where it looks like the defensive player got away with a little bit more physicality and maybe alters the path, alters the drive, alters the shot, who knows? But I'm okay with it because what we had before was just putting defenders in a spot where it's like, what am I supposed to do? Did you think we were going to be able to play this game without anyone ever touching the other guy? Because that's just not how basketball.

This was always my argument with the block charge when they would spend ten minutes reviewing these things, and yet they would miss the guy hitting the backboard as he blocked a shot and the backboard shaking and the shot missed. And then they wouldn't review that. I'm like, oh, bad luck. They didn't realize he hit the backboard. It's like, shit happens to me. It's all going to even out in the end, these 50 50 things. And what's not going to even out is when the game keeps stopping and keep stopping and keep stopping as we litigate. I mean, it wasn't really anyone's fault last night, but that Laker warriors, that twelve minute review, which I couldn't believe, I'm watching it this morning, they decided to leave the entire, like 14 minutes in on the rear. Yeah, maybe you could have cut that out of the final. The replay feed on NBA league pass.

Yeah, the shot clock didn't work six times. So that was on top of the review of LeBron being inbounds on the three, but then also the out of bounds.

LeBron stepped out of bounds on a three right in front of the ref. It was just like, oh, cool. What I like is now that it's more physical and now that guys are getting more away of stuff, there's a franticness to the game, especially in the last four or five minutes. And you could really feel it in that Knicks Kings game last night where it's just like, oh, shit. Oh, I have an open shot. I better take this. Versus how comfortable everyone was too comfortable before with the old rules. That's what I hated the most, is it was just too easy to score and get by people, and now it's harder. And now people are going to have to adjust. And we're not going to have a league where 75 guys could average 20 points a game, and we're not going to have a league where we're going to have 550 point games in the span of four weeks. Like, all that shit's behind us. And then the other thing that's going on is what the Knicks, who, the defensive numbers are good for them, but if you look at the pace for them, the last 15, like they're 30th in pace, I think the last 15 games, they've been able to slow the game down and make it a little more mid 2000s ish, which they can now do with these rules and how physical it is.

We asked last week which team is going to exploit this. It feels like the Knicks have done the best job so far of being like, oh, we're playing this way now. Okay. And they don't even have their full team back. I don't know when Randall's coming back. OG finally came back, but their games are just uglier and lower scoring and makes sense where we are.

Knicks number one defense in the NBA. Post all star break and defensive efficiency, but 30th in pace. The frantic thing that you said, they were always a slow paced team, though, I don't think the officiating had anything to do with that because Brunson is just going to work and work and work and then figure it out and guys are going to hit threes around him or they're not. But when I watched Thunder pacers on Tuesday and people weren't getting calls, guys were exhausted because it was like, wait a minute, that's another thing. I think the conditioning, if you're going to get one of these games where you're running up and down and the whistle just isn't there.

Oh, right, you're not getting the foul stoppages.

Yeah. And there was a moment.

You're not getting a ten minute review.

Yeah.

So it's good for the Celtics deep team. Just trying to think of ways that things might be good for the Celtics as Denver looms as a shark. All right, we'll take a break. More closer look after this. You brought up the Pacers. You want to do Halliburton quick because we're starting to move toward all NBA stuff here. And Halliburton, 1st 32 games that he played this year, he was 24 and 13. He was almost a 50, 40, 90 guy. The Pacers were 19 and 13. His last 20, he's 16 and nine. He's shooting 29% from threes. He went from 4.0 free throws when he was healthy to 2.1 now. And indies eleven and ten. And there's some all NBA stuff going on here that we can talk about in a second. That's part of the reason the stats are lower. But what do you see from Halburn?

And are you alarmed a little bit? Because as much as I liked him before the draft because of his vision, there's just stuff that he saw. He saw the game in a way that very few players ever can. So I'm not worried about that part of it. But when you look back to that December he put together, or really, I should actually say the November, because the in season tournament championship game was the beginning. But they had the other seating games. Right. The group play games in November. November. His numbers were like, whoa, what do we do with this guy? Is he going to be first team all NBA? He's 29 a game, twelve assists, three boards, but he was shooting 47% from three.

Right.

And his shot's funky. We know that. But for his career, he's 40% from three. Okay. Like 414-1424 but it's dipped down to 37 this year. So I don't think we're all of a sudden worried that they figured him out with the shot thing, because I'd have moments with him where I'd be like, can he get into his shot as quick with as much space as other guy? And eventually you're just like, I give up. I give up. I guess he's able to do it, but for whatever reason, and I know he's battled the injury stuff, and then he was playing on a minutes restriction. He just can't shoot, like two of the last three months. 30% hurt his hamstring, right? 18% from three this month.

So one of the things, and this sucks for him, but there's an all NBA piece with this, where if he gets all NBA, any of the three teams, the extension that he has coming goes from 204.5 million to 245. So it's a $40 million bump for him to make it. And right now he's qualified for 54 of the 68 games. So he's got to play eleven or less 14. But if you look, one of the reasons his numbers is down is because he played basically from January 30 through February 4, he came back and was on that 20 minutes minute restriction. And it was, you have to get to 20 minutes to qualify as one of the games to make omba. So he clearly came back, and they clearly rigged it partly so that he could get enough games to try to get to that 65. But it seems like he came back too soon, and it seems like he's not the same. And this goes to the bigger question of how is this good for the league? How is this good for a guy who feels like, I'm not ready to come back yet, but I have to come back because I got 40 million at stake, basically.

So I'm going to come back. But now this has set him back. He hasn't been the same where seven, eight weeks later. Whereas if he didn't have this minute, this game restriction, I feel like they just would have waited two more weeks, gotten it healthy, and he doesn't look healthy to me still.

Well, let's admit this is an outlier month. This isn't who he is. I mean, if he's been 40% for his career, we never really should worry about the shooting.

But is it not who he is because he's not healthy? That would be my argument. I don't think he is. I still don't think he's healthy. Sometimes those hamstring things don't. I watched it happen. I never really dealt with it. My daughter got one this year, and there's no way for it to get better. If you're playing the way they're like, you got to rest it. It's like, well, we can't rest it. It's season, and he's probably the same way. Well, I can't take two months off. We're trying to get to the four seed or the five seed. So you end up playing with it and it just never gets right. But the bigger question to me is the 65 game minimum, which I just don't like.

What would you do?

I like the spirit of it. I might do minutes or I might.

Do, but then doesn't he have to play minutes?

60 seems fine to me. 65 was aggressive because it's like you. So you sprain your ankle for two weeks and then you have one other thing and you're just not an all NBA player anymore. I think I appreciated the spirit behind it, but it seems a little unfair if it's going to cost somebody 40 million because he was having an awesome year and he pulled his hamstring. This isn't like Jimmy Butler just skipping games and Kawhi, like picking and choosing when he plays. This to me is a different situation. Plus, the game that he got hurt in when he had to come out and he was out for a while, he didn't get credit for that game because he got hurt in the first half. That's a stupid rule, too.

Yeah, okay, you're right. But the NBA had to do something or people would have manipulated this thing. We'd had guys playing three minutes to win an MVP.

The AC green.

Yeah, the AC green. Which is still one of the grossest things ever.

So bad.

It's so bad.

AC green. He played 1300 straight caves.

I remember as a kid watching that happen and just being at home going dork.

They would show it on sports center. Yeah. He would come in. Check in. Then there would be a whistle and he'd go back out.

Yeah. Just the fact that it was like you were proud of. Yeah, that's bad.

That's one of my least favorite record benders. That'd be a good segment.

Record benders.

Record benders plays 1 minute. Play it again. Another game in the books for AC Green.

Right. One of the guys from Motley Crue shows up and he's like, wrong podcast.

Kyrie's 18 game streak is more impressive than AC Green.

Whatever. He ended up. Totally.

Yeah, Kyrie played 18 straight games. It's like fucking Joe Dabashio. Yeah. So anyway, indies eleven and ten since Halliburton came back and they're going to make the playoffs right now. They are probably the 6th seed, which means they're probably getting Cleveland.

Yeah, I think they're four and a half behind them right now. Here's the other little sneaky thing about the Pacers. They remind me of one of these west teams, like pending on the night on talking about the second half of the group outside of the top four. Yeah, I kind of like this team. Like, siakam is so weird to me because there's just games where I watch and I'm like, oh, he's disappearing. Where is he? And it's like, oh, there he is. I mean, for a guy his size, to get it on the floor and finish at the rim the way he does is incredible. And now he's shooting way better because I think he was miserable in Toronto the last couple of years. 32% from three. Now he's back up to 37%. The guy's still averaging 20 a game for them. Matheran is out for the season. I like what Neesmith brings. Nemhart seems a little shot happy. But when I watch the Pacers, I'm like, not a bad team. Not a bad team.

To me. They're like east coast Sacramento to me. Good team, fun players. I'm not taking them seriously past one round.

But if it's three six with Cleveland, where when we talk about New Orleans, one of the most excited, well, I've had better days than, hey, Cleveland, New Orleans is going to be on. I'd like to just tell the audience there have been days with greater anticipation than that day. But it was a day that I was actually kind of like, all right, I really want to see what happened. Cleveland smashes them, and I'm like, what do I do with Cleveland? What do I do with this team? Who's defensively, their post all star numbers? Just aren't that good. And they won 17 to 18. They did it without Mobley and Garland for more than half that stretch. And Mitchell comes back. And by the way, for all the unhappiness like projections with what Mitchell will ultimately do, which I'm not disputing it, imagine wearing a Cavs hat while you're not playing, but being like, definitely get me the fuck out of here. That's a weird move if all the rumors are true.

Where is he going? So he's going to go to New York and play with like, New York is like Brunson's team.

Other they're going to pay OG.

They're going know other choices. Brooklyn, where. So it's going to be you and Bridges and no watching Cam Thomas shoot. Yeah, what's fun about that? So then maybe Miami. I don't know. It seems like he's in a pretty good spot. Well, you brought up New Orleans. It's time. We are now almost an hour into the podcast, New Orleans is 41 and 26. They're right behind the Clippers for the four seed. They were twelve and eleven after their awful in season tournament loss. They're 29 and 15. Since they're second in net rating over that stretch, there's a 44 game stretch where only Boston has a better net rating than them. Their last 20, they're 15 and five second in net rating. And you and I both, we haven't talked about this, but you and I both probably noticed the same thing that happened in the last four minutes of that clipper game. Do you want to say what it was?

The last four minutes of the Clippers game?

What did they do? They did something that got me super excited.

Well, why don't you just go ahead and tell us? Because.

No, I thought you would notice. So usually we notice the same things with stuff like this. They benched CJ and they just went super long, and they had Zion and Ingram and Herb Jones and Murphy and Larry Nance, and they were like, fuck it. Linked everywhere. Zion's could be our point guard and we have some shooters. And how do you guys feel about this? Clippers? And the Clippers couldn't handle it and it was kind of awesome to watch. And one of the things with Murphy, Murphy's 17 a game. In his last 15 games, he shoot 42% from three, but he's taking nine threes a game. So when you're nine threes a game and you're over 40, like you're a fucking dead eye.

He's ten attempts per game at 48% right.

Murphy's been the catalyst along with point Zion, but it is a team that had all these crunch time issues. I know you've been watching them a bunch because you have a lot of Zion stock. It's a team that's had a bunch of crunch time issues that seems to have solved some of them, and now they're turning into, like, the I don't want to see them in the playoffs team. Are we there yet? How close are we?

So 26 and 20. 115 and five since Zion's played in 56 of 67 games. Speaking of the Kyrie number, he's five games away from setting his own personal record for games played in a season.

So excited.

61. The rebounding number since we did that awesome rebounding quiz based on a 10th of a rebound differentials. January, he was 3.8. February is 5.63.8.

He's 290 pounds, 3.8 pounds, 3.8 rebounds. That's not one a quarter.

I saw it this morning when I was looking at it. I'm like, wait, we always knew what it was. That dude played in like 15 games and averaged under four rebounds per game.

Yeah, that's like point guards do that.

He had 17 shot attempts in that loss at Dallas the 15 January, he took 17 shots, played 32 minutes. He had one rebound. All right, but here's the thing. He's rebounded.

He's ate a game.

Now, every number you look at here with them, you're like, okay, wait. They're actually a really good shooting team. And I think that's the Trey Murphy point that you make. That's perfect, because, Murphy, you have to have a shooter off of all the Zion stuff. And even when CJ was playing earlier, I thought Willie Green had an answer for everything that Clippers were trying to do. Granted, there's no harden in that game, but early on, like, Kawhi was on Zion. So I was really excited about that. I was like, how aggressive is Zion going to be? And he wasn't very aggressive with him, but then he was also defending Kawhi. And then once Kawhi got his aggression going, as you know, some of the best players almost chill out those first six minutes of their substitution pattern, and I thought, oh, wait, are we going to get, like, a dud Zion game here? Because Kawhi's just on him. And then for whatever reason, Tyler tried, like, all sorts of weird shit. At one point, he was letting Zubach just sag off of him to avoid the pick. So it was like, you can't switch into zoo.

I'm just going to keep him with you, but then I'm going to tell him to sag off you because you won't shoot. It's like, okay, but now what you're doing is you're letting Zion get some momentum for the.

You're giving him the. We've seen. We've seen guys, teams try to do that to him. And there's been other players like this early LeBron. That was one of the strategies. Remember, you're going to have to make these and they would sag off him and then he would just have a head of steam and go to the basket. What I loved about Zion in that game was to pick the spots, element of it, where now he's starting to get stuff that aren't fast breaks and they aren't half court either. It's kind of that middle ground where he has the ball. Doesn't seem like it's a fast break. And then he turns the jets on and gets to the basket. I don't understand why teams don't pressure him. If he's going to be the point guard. And I feel the same way about Phoenix. That would be one of my strategies. Like, all right, you're going to have this guy bring the ball up. We're guarding him 94ft. We're going to wear him out in a playoff series. You would have to do that. You can't let Zion just like, walk the ball up and decide what he's going to do.

So that would be my one nitpick that I think they're going to see in the playoffs. It's like, if you're going to do this, we're going to have to actually make him behave like a point guard. He's going to have to dribble the ball up for 90ft.

What I really liked about it, though, is that when CJ got stuck for a little bit, then they had him off of the ball and he was coming.

CJ was off on that game.

Right. But you were just seeing things with Willie Green where it was like, okay, you guys are going to try. We're going to. We're just going to keep changing up where we initiate our offense. Yeah. So it didn't feel like Zion just coming up over half court like Van Gundy would have him, like when they weren't that good and it was like, all right, well, this is fun. I think he had set the record for the best points per 36 ever. And it was fun, but you just went, okay, this might be a little too stale. Or too predictable. They were doing stuff on the side and then they were going with plumbly. And then the Clippers try to go small and I feel like Lou goes to that Clippers small lineup to fix some things. And look, if you're on the Clippers side of this, which is its own conversation after that absurd two month stretch, you go, hey, they know what their peak is and like a vet team, they've dialed it back. Their defense has been alarming here for a while. The no hardened part of it. So that means you're playing more minutes for Bones Highland, who I know had the big assist to talk about.

You want to talk about doing your own? Yeah, like he's just on a different plan.

Hired contractor bones.

Yeah, like one on one. He might be the best player in the just there's four other guys out there. So I love what I've seen from the Pelicans now. It's been a really strong stretch with a lot of good numbers baked into all of it. And I'm just happy to see Zion from after that in season tournament where everyone got to see him at the same time, look that bad, out of shape and disinterested. But I think he still had like 30 twice the week after that game. It just feels like he's playing his most complete basketball right now.

I always felt like they were a team that was thrown together during earlier parts of the season that had just met a few weeks ago. And that Clipper game was the first time they actually looked like they had some reps with one another. They're really interesting. They have a lot of players that I like. Their bench can come in and flip games. Alvarado like if you look at all his advanced metrics stuff, it's really impressive. It's a really impactful guard off the bench. Them getting the four seed versus the five seed. Do you care?

Smoothie king center.

Does it matter? Does home court matter in this series? Kind of feel like it doesn't.

I don't know.

I don't have an answer to my take.

I mean, we could get into like I got to admit when LA the Clippers looked awful against the Rockets in the first half of that game not that long ago. Yeah, I was just like, what's going on, guys? And then they came back and they ended up winning that game. But that was another one of those Clippers games. What's up with you? Like the energy was shot was like, I don't know what their travel plans were, but did they get into Houston early?

Well, they kind of know that they have no chance at the top three, right? So now you're in this little bit of nobody get hurt until mid April. But there's another piece. This would have been a good setup for a tease, but I'll just do it now. Do the Clippers miss Westbrook more than we thought? That's coming up next. Yeah, I think that I said that when they got hurt because I have a couple of Clipper fans in my life and I was like, man, I think you're going to Miss Westbrook. He can change energies of games when they don't have energy. He just comes in and he acts like a maniac. And I watched it happen a few times this year where they were kind of dead and lethargic, and then he comes in and does crazy Russ stuff. I also think he's a really good rebounder, know? And there's games where they just get crushed on the boards and I don't know when Russ was out, Russ would just have these games where he'd have like, double figure rebound games. He had eleven rebounds against Denver and eleven rebounds against Golden State. Within three games, he had 13 rebounds against Oklahoma City, eleven against Charlote.

I did think he helped them. So whenever I think you're right, we'll see.

I didn't believe it when you said it because I have a hard time with him being involved in decisions that matter. But clearly having to go through the Lakers part of it, I think made him more ready to be this with the Clippers. But I can't, despite how I feel about him as a player, well documented, but I cannot dispute the energy part of it. His energy is always there and he would just make things like again, we all know how I feel about it, but there's just almost no one else in the league that matches his energy and intensity. Like the second he's in there, he's ready to go. And when you're playing against the backups or you're staggering one of the other three guys with him, which is usually how they would do it.

Luke Cornette's like this, too, to give him that freedom.

Yeah. Cornete. Cornette and Westbrook just rallying points for teams coming out of the second half.

See it? You can feel the energy shift when they come in. I don't know what New Orleans should have done at the trade deadline.

You think a lot.

Maybe they shouldn't have done anything. Well, you think, like, maybe that maybe improving the McCollum part would have been the spot and they extended him and he's been fine. But that man, you look at all the stuff they have, they have their own first. The rest of the decade, they have their pick between the 24 25 Lakers first. They have swaps with Milwaukee in 24 and 26. If they want them, they have the $27 first and they owe, like, somebody else's pick at one point. What would you do with that Lakers pick? Would you take it this year or would you roll the dice with next year because it's a much better draft next year?

Yeah, no, I would take it next year.

Yeah, you kind of have to, right?

It has very little to do with even who I think the Lakers would be this year or next year, but I think it's an even better bet because you got the super healthy Anthony Davis season.

What is he, LeBron season?

Right.

All right, we're going to take another break. Today's local MVP segment is brought to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, state Farm is there. And if you've been lucky enough to have good neighbors, whether they be next door, down the road or around the block, you'll know just how great it can be. I've met some real local MVPs in my time. I think my favorite was living in Charlestown where not only would people look out for each other, but even got a little bit nosy in a good way.

Right.

People interested in what's going on. Hey, don't forget to move your car. Stuff like that. Really helpful. Sometimes they weren't waking up.

Yeah, they're probably waiting for your spot.

Might have been that, too. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Can we do all NBA really fast? Because that was another closer look thing I had. So it's going to be Yoka Giannis. I just want to do this every week going forward because we only have like 15 games left, so it's good to do little snapshots. We did this last year. Yoka, Giannis, Luca, SJ are all going to be first team. That fifth spot is open, and it's probably Tatum and Kawhi and KD as the three people for that spot. Although KD's case took a hit this week, Kawhi has surprisingly played more games than I thought. He's over 60 games already, which it feels like he's hurt more than he actually is. And he's 24, six and four. The advanced stats are great. He's plus 8.9 net, all that stuff.

Well, I think when he was on the minutes restriction at the all star break, you were like, what? Right? And then you realize he's only missed six games.

Tatum's case, his offensive stats aren't quite as good as Durant's. He's going to be probably at 253 by the end of this year, which is a crazy number for a guy with his physique, super durable. All the advanced stats are great with him. He's plus 12.2 net. But the reason that I would have him in the fifth spot now is just, I just feel like when the Celtics, when a team's been this dominant during the regular season compared to everybody else, to not reward that in some way with first team Omba feels weird to me, especially if they have a guy who has a real candidate. And I say this every year, but I just think winning should be the ultimate metric. And sometimes we lose sight of, know, the same case where people are like, should Wemby be the defensive player of the year? It's like, no, his team sucks. We're not voting for Wemby for defensive player of the year.

Some of us aren't. Some of us are. You think defensive player of the year should matter?

No, just saying.

Well, no, it sounds exactly like that is what you're saying that you wouldn't vote for.

Well, we have to vote for it.

No, but you're not going to. So winning matters for MVP. We agree.

Their defense, the spurs defense, sucks. They can't have the defensive player of the year. They're like a bottom seven defense.

Okay, let's just do this, though, because this is like the a Rod with the Texas Rangers thing when they came in last and we're like, he can't be MVP. There has to exist a number. If Arod had 100 home runs and 1000 RBIs, you would be like, sorry, you were twelve games out.

You were 74 and 88. Your team. Yeah, well, if somebody had 100 homers in a season, I would hope they win the MVP.

Thousand RBis.

Do you think Wemby is having a 100 homer defensive player of the year season?

I just think it's important to define that. There actually is a line for every single person that's like, no, it's only about winning. It's like, yeah, but there could be a statistical line that would make you go, okay, I can't deny this anymore, all right?

Right now they're 23rd net rating defense.

You can net rating the shit out of me. Throw the differential.

How can you have the defensive player of the year and be 23rd in defense, though?

That's because you've watched him and he impacts the game defensively more than any player in the league right now more than Rudy Gobert? I believe so, yes.

So you're going to count the last six weeks and not the whole season. You're going to be that guy because Wemby was like a deer on ICE in some of those games the first two months. I think that should count a little bit.

A deer on ICE. He wasn't altering any shots whatsoever those two months, but he got it. What feed do you have? Who's your.

I just think he's a different guy. I think he's settled in. There's a swagger and I don't know, he just seems like he's figured it out. I don't know if that means he should be the defensive player of the year.

I just don't know why. Like, okay, rookie, you're voting for him? Yeah, I think I am.

Wow.

All right.

Do you think I'm not voting for him?

Do you think rookie of the year should matter?

For winning rookie of the year is kind of like, you probably got fucked with the team who picked you because you were a top five pick and they sucked and you're in a bad spot. It's a different scenario.

That one drives me crazy when it's like, hey, they're the 9th best team and you're the twelveth best team in your conference. It's like, all right, it was close enough. That's the tie break. You're like, what?

Yeah, I don't think we can blame the rookies. Listen, this is the last year he's not going to win it. And he said that he was like, I hope Rudy enjoys his defensive player of the year award this year because next year I'm going on a run. He's probably going to win like ten in a row, right? What's the craziest number in a row that he could win?

That you tends a lot voter fatigue.

Because you have to get hurt at one of the years.

He'll get hurt, I'd imagine, at some point. But I also think voters look at MVPs. Look at how many times. It's like, I don't know, him again. Yeah, I guess there'll be something. There'll be some campaign and maybe people.

Hasn'T looked great in the Yokich games.

This week wasn't. Yeah, this weekend wasn't terrific. I'm glad you picked out a game where the guy I like looks bad.

Because that's what I do. Who do you have in that fifth.

All NBA spot right now? I would lead Tatum because winning.

The two way stuff, the two way game, the rebounding.

He's the best player on the best team in the league, and he's been that important. He's been that consistent the whole time. Like, Kawhi's numbers are nuts. Yeah, I feel like I've seen him. Even though durant, I think, defensively has been pretty good this year, though, too. Do you see what I did there, though, with the winning thing? Because sometimes it applies for certain things. It should apply with all NBA, all NBA and MVP. I think it matters.

It should apply.

But it's not the defining thing because there are going to be other times. You're looking at the group of 15 guys and you're like, this guy is so good. It's like the Lucas stuff. There becomes a line that you get through where it's just undeniable, and you go, actually, I don't care that your team isn't in the top six in either conference. You're just that good.

We've argued about this in the past because there was that year I wouldn't vote Bradley Beal and third, Tim Omba.

But it also depends.

I didn't think he played in any meaningful games in six months, but it's like, I'm not doing it. I'm not impressed that you scored 30 a game for a bad team, but.

It depends on who the other option is. Like, if there was no other option, then you go, okay, fine. I'm okay with doing this or essentially breaking the rule that I had in place before, but when I look at somebody like Luca, if Lucas doing this and his team was last in the west, he's all NBA.

Yeah, but the thing is, if he's doing this, it would be really hard for him to go 25 and 57.

I was being dramatic. But you get.

No, but it is true, though, because we've seen some people can score 30 a game, but their team's bad and we've seen it.

Yeah, he does too many other trolling the entire game. Whatever. Now I'm making up an argument that's pointless because it's actually not happening.

Well, a couple other subplots. For Omba, it feels like Edwards is going to be second team, which is amazing.

All right, the guard group that you have right now is what?

Well, I am voting center. Two forwards, two guards. I am sticking with it. Remember, they got rid of positions. So I have for guards on first team, SgA and Luca. And then for second team right now, I would do Edwards and Brunson. Brunson's another one. His team wins and he has huge games and he's been dealt one of the worst decks of cards of any good player. Right. Randall's on pace to miss half the season. They traded for OG. He immediately got hurt. They made two trades during the season. The ship kept going. He has a superhuman burden on him on the end of these games and he delivers time and time again. Like, to me, he has to be at least the way the season's gone, he has to be second team.

Omba, what about Mitchell?

Mitchell is a tough one. I don't think Mitchell is going to make it because he is at 48 games right now. So I don't think he's going to make the minimum.

But I think. Wait, was he just ruled out, by the way, as I asked a question. Hold on, so he's at 49 games?

Yeah, I think he has to get to six to five. So that's not happening.

Yeah.

The question is, if we didn't have this rule, would you have talked yourself into them for second team? To me, I still would have had Brunson, but I would have had him on third team. And then it feels like Kawhi and Duran is the forwards and Davis still feels like the center. If you're doing traditional, then we get into this whole can LeBron and ad make all NBA teams when that team is three games over 500?

All right. Isn't there something deeper going on here, though? This feels like a Celtics Lakers. Point about two Lakers and one Celtics doesn't.

I would say there's a spot for either LeBron Zion or Jalen Brown. And I think Zion is developing a case, especially if New Orleans keeps going in the direction they're going. I mean, he's played almost a whole year. He's at 55 games, 23 six and five, shooting 58%. He's their point guard and they have a chance to be a four seed. Paul George is kind of lingering, too. Some of the advanced stats with him are really good and his shooting percentages. So he's probably lingering. And then Jalen's been the best player in the Celtics for six weeks, right? Five, six weeks.

Jalen's metrics, they're just not going to hold up. So if the voter on off stuff.

Is bad for him, yeah, but this.

Is something that was argued against, like last year, I had no problem voting them all NBA. I just felt like, hey, you know what? I've watched enough of these games where I felt like there were certain nights like he had to carry a team offensively. He's still one of the most confusing players like I've ever seen. He had a play the other night, was late in the shot clock. He wasn't looking for anybody else. He was dribling. Looked like he lost the ball. Like, ended up turned around, grabbed it at fucking 17ft, and then threw up a floater in front of two guys and it went in. And you're just like, okay, I'm trying to think of the movie where you're like, all right, I'll give you an example. College, right? The professional comes out one of my all time favorite movies. All timers. But the movie trailer and the way they tried to advertise that movie. I remember one trailer said twice as fast as speed. All right, so me and a bunch of college goons, I think it might have been like a Christmas break, maybe go up to Braintree, smoke some cigarettes in the parking lot.

That's where I saw Shawshank, that Braintree theater. Great theater.

That's where I hosted my first film festival for the warrior that no one showed up to. And then the studio got mad at me. So we're sitting there watching a professional going, whoa, dude. Twice as fast as speed? Yeah, like, fucking, whatever, dude.

Right?

You're like, this movie sucks. This is terrible. Like, what's going on? And then it clicked and you're like, this is. I left. There was like, we got tricked into seeing this thing, but this is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I loved it. That's what every Jalen Brown possession feels like.

Wow, what a tangent that I. That sounded like, slightly negative on Jalen Brown. Can I defend Jalen Brown?

I think it's positive. I've never seen a player that productive who's that good? Have so many moments where I'm like, what is going on here?

I like how aggro he's been. Especially, like, leading into the all star break, through the all star break. After the all star break, I just feel like he's one of the biggest reasons they're going to end up with the best record in the league and all these crazy advanced metrics is because he really gives a shit on these random nights, because there are nights where you're like, that was the big curse of some of the best teams in history, where they would just kind of ease up against bad teams and this Celtics team. I asked Grandy, because Grandy keeps track of this stuff. The 20 plus leads. The 15 plus leads this year, which we did a couple of weeks ago, they're up to 30, 20 plus leads this year. There's 30 games this year where they've been up by 20. There's 42 games this year where they've been up by 15. I know they're talented, but you also have to have a little bit of a killer instinct when you're running up scores like that. You have to know you're good. I think one of the reasons they know they're good is because of Jalen and the way he clicks with Tatum.

So when I think of the all NBA stuff, and I don't know if I'm going to vote for Jalen or not, but I do feel like the Celtics should probably have two guys. So for somebody to knock Jalen out, it's got to be a pretty good season. If I have 15 spots. The way he's been playing, you're pretty.

Even keel neutral about this stuff. If two Lakers were to get on with their record and only one Celtic, would you be bothered?

LeBron's cases, I mean, the stats are really great. It's kind of like eye popping where he's shooting 53%, he's 40% from three, he's played.

Jalen Brown has no chance in the advanced stuff against LeBron if it comes down to voters looking at those two guys.

Yeah. It becomes, are we really going to vote for two Lakers on a 44 and 38 team versus two Celtics on a team that just went 66 and 16 and is one of the best advanced metrics and point differential teams we've had in the history of the league, we're only going to have one Celtic. I think that's going to be the question.

It's only been ten days. Have you talked yourself into those Denver losses being a touch fluky?

Well, the other thing is you could get wacky with that third team and just say fuck it, and take like four forwards, which is another option because they gave us that option this year where it's like, oh, it's a top 15 list. So maybe with that third team, you do it because Sabonis would be the quote unquote center on the traditional third team. But would you put Sabonis over Jalen Brown and Zion and LeBron? I'm not sure. Would you? Seems like you're thinking about it.

Sabonus is another one. The numbers are absurd.

Numbers are great. 2014 and eight and shoot 61% and he plays every game, which, as you know, I value.

Yeah, he plays his ass off like he's a really durable, really good player. And the numbers almost want to have you round up who he is as a player. I was listening to the broadcast for the bloodbath game last night where it was like every home announcing crew is always going to stand up for their guys. Just an aside. When people say I stand on business, should they just admit that you saw somebody else say it in a video and you were like, I'm going to start saying it, too.

What does that mean?

I think you just yell it. You just yell it. And it means, like, how serious? However you want to be taken. You're supposed to be taken to a new level of seriousness because you saw somebody else in video yell, I stand on business. I don't know what it means, but they were making jokes essentially about, well, Sabonus is this and this, but not good enough to be an all star. Could be second team all NBA.

He should have been an all star.

Yeah. He should have been one of the replacement picks. By the time it had gone, he.

Should have made the all star team.

Right?

I don't know if he's one of the best 15 players in the league, though, which is basically what they've shifted the all NBA.

His stats would tell you he is, and I don't think that he is. So that, I think, presents the problem that I have with Sabonis at times because there's nights I'm like, what did he do? Or you're watching it going, he's in on everything. But then I'll admit New York had no issue attacking him last.

It was problematic. Booker's on the bubble and Curry's on the bubble. Palo can't quite get there, unfortunately. Sorry, Sabridy. Paul George in the bubble. And that's really probably it because Mitchell's out. Unless you want to get excited about Jimmy Butler, who's not going to make the 65 games, so we can't talk about them anyway. There's a tyrese maxi 26 a game. Trying to hold the fort, keeping it down without Joel and bead. Not too exciting.

They're not even a playing team right now. I mean, they are, but they're bad.

The big things for me is Brunson and Edwards to me are second team all NBA guys this year. And that's going to have a big impact on Edwards because I think that's going to make him an extra 40, 45 million if he makes one of the three. He's definitely making one of the three all NBA teams, right?

Yeah. I mean, look at the numbers post cat. Now the offense, 29 a game. No, I'm just saying collectively, the offense for Minnesota, you're never really going to love their numbers that much anyway because we just know how special they are defensively. When you think about Gobert, the rare chance that there's nights where you watch Edwards and defensively, like, and I think Ant is like, the offense is so much fun that it's easy to overlook. Like, you look at him in some of those closing sub patterns of games. Defensively, when he does say, I got.

Him, yeah, I got him moved. Let me take him, I'll guard him. It's fine.

So Ant is giving you the complete thing here beyond what I think other guys are even doing, and we'll see what the offensive numbers end up being without cat. But since the all star break, they're 19th in offense, which again, isn't a shock, but they're still fourth in defense.

Well, another cat can happen.

Still part of those games. It's not like he's missed all of them. Go ahead.

Well, we just have the possibility of somebody getting hot down the stretch. Of course, that could be a curry, that could be a booker. You could see LeBron just turn it up big time, but somebody could just have a run a little like what New Orleans just did.

LeBron also has a massive advantage to be doing it this long where there are going to be a lot of voters that go, you know what, it's close. The fact that he's done something we've never seen anyone do. He was. He was great last night. But again, I know it's not just one game. There's going to be a lot of voters that dig that.

If you had to pick one or the other, who would you pick?

LeBron or Jalen?

LeBron or Davis? I said to you can only have one Laker. We're not having two out of 15.

Davis.

Yeah. Okay. All right, take a break. We'll do media corner. This segment is brought to you by Workday. Get the whole band together with workday and pair finance and HR on one platform for an epic performance. With workday AI at the core, you'll make confident decisions faster than ever and you'll drive flawless business and finance operations with an agile platform that constantly evolves to future proof your organization. Be a finance and HR rock star with workday. Visit workday.com to learn more. Rosillo Justin Fields got traded to the Steelers for a six round pick that could turn into a four. It reminded me when the Bears actually traded up to get Justin Fields. They moved up from number 20 to number eleven. They added a fifth rounder and they traded first and fourth rounders in 2022 just to move up nine spots for Justin Fields and then a couple of years later they're giving him away. Does the NBA have versions of this? It feels like quarterback. No position has a higher value that craters faster than quarterback in any position. Right? Unless it's like a baseball pitcher having Tommy John surgery or can't. I can't believe the volatility of it.

I don't think there's anything like this in know when I said this, like, the NBA drafts better than the NFL does. And if you come at me, we're like, oh, no, there's busts. It's like, yeah, there's busts. But hall of Famers wouldn't be taken after six rounds. The greatest guy who maybe has ever played the quarterback position had 100 plus people go in front of him. That wouldn't happen. Just wouldn't happen. Like, Yokich is the most unlikely MVP.

198 people go against, right.

With Brady, obviously. So it's a different sport and it's all these different things. But you don't have the volatility that you have on production in the NBA that you have in the NFL. The only thing I can think of is maybe during that european, well, I shouldn't say European, I should say international phase of the next dirk and the next guys.

Oh, and the Tishka Villi, all those skittishville.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, we had Mac Jones, Kenny Pickett and Justin Fields all get traded for basically nothing. I mean, the Patriots spent a fourth round pick last year and the worst kicker in the league. So once you get fourth round on, I'm not even sure how much value there is. And that's the best case scenario for the Bears to recoup. And meanwhile, now we have this whole new slew quarterbacks this year that I want to talk about as we get into the podcast. But thanks again to workday for sponsoring this segment. The retradables be a finance and HR rockstar with workday. To learn more, visit workday.com. I wanted to ask you about NFL quick as we talk about the. We hit football in the last segment and maybe do a little media stuff, too. So there's three quarterbacks and then there's the hot name that's coming. I know you're talking about this a bunch, but I never get to talk to you about football. And then JJ McCarthy, all of a sudden he's rising up the now. And this is kind of all I do online now is read Pat's draft stuff because I'm so worried they're going to trade back or talk themselves into JJ McCarthy at three because he has intangibles and he had great interview.

I just want them to take Drake May. That would be great. Can you just stay at three and take Drake May? Can we not overthink this? Can we not trade back? Two questions. One, what's your order right now for one, two, three and then two, should anyone trade back or should from what we know about the franchise QB position and the possibilities of it and the coin flip of it that you've talked about a million times, is it worth just flipping the coin and hoping it comes up heads and you have a franchise QB over traded back and just getting a bunch of dudes?

I think you have to keep drafting them over and over and over again. All right.

That's how I feel as well.

Right? Just keep doing it. Keep fucking doing it. I remember there was a guy with a team that couldn't get it right and I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, we're just going to keep fucking bringing them in. That's what we're going to do. And when we're done, we're going to turn the page because the only way we can't. We can't look at history here. And the history is so bad with these first round picks and it feels like it's getting even worse. I think I'm going to do it to open the show on Tuesday to revisit this thing that I've worked on for just years where I would update the bus rate of first rounders. And for two decades the bus rate was at 50%.

Now it's worse.

Yeah, now it's definitely worse. Well, I'm going to update those numbers for you, Bill. So tune in on Tuesday because we.

Had the Mac, Jones, picket Fields and Wilson. Can we call Fields bust yet, though? I'm not ready to give him bust yet.

That's fine, but there's this segment of the Justin Fields fan base that I'm like, what fucking guy did you watch for the last 30 years? Because the way you sell the rest of the world on who he is is not the guy that watched. I really loved working with Mark Dominic, who was the Tampa Bay Bucks guy. He was running the show years ago and he worked at ESPN and he was on one of the NFL radio stations. I was like driving home from the boat. It was late. I was like, let me just tune into some serious and see what these guys are doing. Chopping it up, free agency, NFL draft. And Mark was like, he's had one game where he threw over 340 and it was the simplest stat, but I'm in the car going like, holy shit, in this version of the NFL, you want to talk offensive line? Every fucking coach stinks. Yeah, I got it. Didn't have enough weapons until he got his guy this year. But I did not see somebody that deserved this kind of defense, or at least not the defense to avoid taking Caleb Williams. I love Caleb Williams.

Okay? I'm willing to be surprised by anybody, but I'd be shocked if he's not going to be really good. So May was somebody I felt like all the former quarterbacks in my life that I talked to. Everybody liked May, and now Daniels has passed him in a very short amount of time from all the other people that I talked to that have gone back and watched the tape and as somebody who loves LSU and have watched every game that he's played, like all of them, I can't believe we got this year's Jaden Daniels over the guy that we saw last year. And some part of me, some weird part of me is like, has he actually really improved this much? Because I still think it should be a coin toss between he and May. Even though the draft people seem to think that there's no longer a conversation about it, that Daniels is closer to Caleb Williams than May is to Jaden.

If the Pats trade back, it's going to be really hard for me to recover.

I wish Bill still had this draft because you knew that it was happening. But if Bill were still running it, Russell Wilson would be on the Patriots cheap and was good. Four years ago, that was my favorite.

Social media moment of 2024 so far. Is Russell Wilson doing the well, look at our QB room or whatever the post he did of him and Justin Fields pretending he was excited that they got Justin Fields. I love that. There's no way he's excited. He was like, I thought he was going to compete against Kenny Pickett. Now I got to compete against all the Steeler fans are going to be like, put in Justin Fields. Put in Justin Fields. I still think Justin Fields is better than anyone they've had as a QB in the last seven years, which is.

Saying I like him better than Pickett, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, Pickett was a couple bad regular season games in a nice preseason and then everybody just assumed he was going to be the guy for a decade.

That was weird. It's a bad miss for me. I was like, they picked him as captain before the season. He's a leader.

Wait, you fell for the quarterback captain thing?

I did. I fucking fell for it.

We're going to have to get you.

To subscribe to the pod.

We do it every year. We update the captains.

Look, man.

And the only quarterbacks that aren't captains are the teams that don't have captains.

It's fine. I fell for it. I fell for the preseason.

You're falling for.

They made him a captain. He looked good in the preseason. I fell for it. I like.

You've been doing this a long time.

I know. Listen, even the greats can stumble every once in a while.

I screwed up.

I'm actually not sure if Picket's that bad because he had Matt Canada almost the entire time. But the thing that I think is alarming and why I don't think he's going to make it is some guys just don't look like when they're getting tackled they're athletic enough to handle the experience of being tackled by big dudes. He would take hits, but the hits would seem like three times worse of a hit. Some guys just fall wrong. And I think he's one of those guys. It's just always going to look bad when he gets nailed, when he gets tackled from behind. Whereas other guys, like Josh Allen, he just gets like. I saw some social media clip of Jaworski getting hit from behind and honestly looked like he got shot by the Oswald. By Oswald and the other assassins. Some guys just can't get hit in the same ways. And I think Pickett's one of them. I just don't see him staying healthy. Also, the Steeler fans were all completely out on him, which is usually a bad sign when the entire fan base is out.

Even having said what I said about Fields, I'd rather have him than Pickett. But I'm sure Wilson was like, what the fuck? And then there was some piece from Ian Rappaport where I guess there were four other teams because allegedly. Yeah, you know, I always like to look at like, okay, this is what everybody's arguing about, this quarterback. And it's like, okay, the league traded a six rounder for him, right? So what are you arguing? He was available and it was a six rounder. So then the report comes out that there were four other teams that wanted to trade, but that the team did fields the favor and the agent the favor, which certainly we're used to in the NBA and all that kind of stuff. But the McCarthy thing, these are the ones that really scare me. The late and I can't say, I don't know where, because the guy's been in the playoff and wins a national championship, but if your first argument is that he didn't do stuff because they didn't need to, I would just counter that with, yeah, that's cool. I just would have liked to see more of the other stuff.

If I'm going to be taking him 9th or 10th or higher. Your first argument can't be, I know he didn't do much, but he can. And there's a gap there. For me, there just is.

So last year, I missed on CJ Stroud. As you know, I know nothing about college football, but I missed on CJ Stroud because there had never been a good quarterback with an initial first name. That really scared me.

Wyatt.

The Ohio State thing. Wyatt tittle. But we're going back 65 years. Well, you said modern football. Well, true. This year, I feel like there's two cities that McCarthy can't play in. Philadelphia and New England. Because, yeah, I saw him before the game. When he goes and he sits next to the goalpost and he meditates to get ready for the game, like an hour before the game, and I'm just like, there's no fucking way that's flying in New England. There's no, like, can you imagine what's he fucking doing next to the goalpost? Is he meditating? I just think it goes badly. I don't like it.

Makes me nervous.

Our meditating QB, I guess Brady was eating almonds and doing pliability, and people got over it, but he'd. Well, he had a Super bowl at that point.

I wouldn't say it's the most empathetic fan base state region of the country.

There'd be some immediate curiosity. What are we getting here? Plus the Michigan thing. Fight. You take another Michigan QB. I just take Drake May. He's 230 pounds already. Drake May will be. What do you think, 250? Where does he end up weight wise? 247?

I think he's just kind of a baller. I know there's mistakes in there, and it's not as clean as Jaden Jaden's throws. And you look at some of the stuff he did with those guys, they're like, man, the numbers on this one is perfect. The numbers on this one are perfect. You just go through it all. I remember digging through some of the stuff for the Alabama game, and the Alabama game was like, nothing that happened this season has anything to do with him. He was incredible. The defense was off the charts terrible. They might have been a playoff team if they had had an average defense. But I thought there was some stuff with Drake where I'm like, this guy just feels like. It feels a little bit more.

That's so that's where I landed because a lot of people were saying Herbert and to me it's more Josh Allen because just the body type. There's a. He didn't come through in some of the biggest games he played in a. His throws are pretty erratic. Chris Sims was out on him, but Chris Sims has been. I looked at his list for the last four years and he's had some hits and some misses, but I don't.

Know who's doing it well. Like, if somebody were doing it well, it would be the most. I mean, he'd be working in the NFL. This is so hard.

Whoever nailed the CJ Stroud over Bryce Young thing last year, that's a victory lap because everybody argued about that for three months. The Daniels thing is a little.

I don't even think it was that much of an argument.

Yeah, the Daniels thing is a little more simple because everybody thinks he's talented, but the question is, how many games is he going to play when you're 206 pounds getting tackled by 300 pound dudes, how realistic is that? If he fell to three with the Pats, I'd talk myself into it immediately. I'd be like, oh, my God, this will be the most exciting patriot we've had since Randy Moss. I can't wait. But I would be way more nervous than I am. Every time Porzingis jumps up for a rebound with three guys around him, like Daniel scrambling out each time will be a heart attack. He's built like, you know, that's where I get nervous. A shorter Clark drake may. I just feel like, man, that dude's built like a fucking brick tank. He's playing and we can fix the accuracy stuff. A lot of it reminds me of the Josh Allen stuff from 2018, the stuff when people got super excited about Josh Allen, but then the people that are picking him apart, there's a lot of the same stuff that they're saying about Drake may now. So anyway, I just want the pats to get a quarterback.

After watching four years of or three years of non Brady or four years, I can't even remember how long it was.

I don't care about the pats. You know that no one believes.

I know you.

I don't care. But if they don't take a quarterback and they move back and like, what? You're just going to go, you would think that everybody running it post. Belichick would go out of their way to just take the third quarterback.

Yeah, this is like a miracle. It's a three quarterback draft. This is a miracle.

They have the third pick because Belichick wouldn't do it. Belichick be like, oh, everybody thinks I'm going to do this. Well, I'm not going to do this. And you're like, cool. Brian traded back QB two again.

He would trade it back and take a Bo Nicks.

Bo Nicks, like 38 Bo Nicks would be too flashy.

Do you like Bo Nicks?

Not as much as I like the other guys.

So who do you after? One, two, three? Who's your fourth?

Pennics.

Pennics.

But I'm scared to death of the injury there. And I know, like, look, he was hit, I think, on 11% of. No, excuse me. The number he was hit on dropbacks was the 11th lowest percentage of any quarterback. And then when you look at his stuff outside of the pocket, it falls off a cliff. It just does. So that scares me, too. And Bo Nicks, if you look at the efficiency part of it, you're like, this is the most absurd single season you can have. It's up there.

He's like three years older than Drake May.

He's older. And I think the throw stuff that Oregon does, they just do an awesome job with their.

Yeah.

And he was smart enough and had been around long enough to know how to avoid the mistakes because he used to be the guy who, third and seven, I'd be like, see what happens here? And I did not trust him at all. So statistically, he figured it all out. He took out all the garbage from his game. He's a really good athlete. But when I think of just the throwing of the football thing and the comparison of what Pennix can do with throws versus what Knicks does, I just think Pennix is at a different level. But the pennix outside of the pocket stuff is scary as shit. And he was throwing to three NFL guys. It's one thing that Rome is going to go one, but as a top ten player, but the other two receivers are fucking studs, too. So I also wonder if I let that bake into, like, I like neighbors, obviously, who's going to go top ten? But Thomas is also all season long with LSU. Like, holy shit, look at that guy. And then I think like, okay, so Drake May had Tez Walker for nine. Like, what if Drake May had three NFL receivers?

Like, would it play it out differently? And there's some Drake may games in there that make me mad about how people are critical of it when it's like we, it's some of the Caleb Williams losses. Caleb doesn't include it in some of this. Like, you go through some of those Caleb Williams losses and you go, oh, so the team gave up 45. We're going to sit here and criticize this dude, right? I can't wait to see how it all. Because I'm actually excited about the top of the draft.

I think this is one of the best drafts we've had in a while because the other fun thing is the Chargers with all this stuff that they did and they got rid of Keenan Allen, they got rid of Mike Williams. So now all of a sudden it seems like they're going to take a receiver of five and everybody thinks the Cardinals are going to take a receiver of four. And then you have the Giants at six who nobody can tell if it's going to be a QB or receiver, but it could go three QBs and then three receivers. And all the teams who think they're getting a receiver in the nine to 13 range, the top three might not even be there. So there's some trickery. The last really super fun draft we had was that draft when Devante Smith and Chase and waddle, all those guys were all in the same and it was like everybody wanted and it was unclear who was going to move up and try to get who. And that was really fun to watch in real time. I feel like this is going to be the same thing, especially if one of the teams just was like, I got to get McCarthy.

We've got to get to six to get McCarthy. See, that's all they're trading up.

Even if you like, hey, if you're doing this for a living and you're watching these guys, you are convinced of your own conclusion, right? You wouldn't have this job unless you did that. So you're not sitting there ever going, when teams trade for draft picks, they don't go, hey, man, we kind of suck at this drafting thing. Maybe we shouldn't trade for picks that much because we're not that good at it. You just assume you're unlucky or there was something, you got the guy in the room, got him in the building, and then you're like, oh, shit, this is the mistake. But it wasn't on me. It wasn't on my evaluation. I hate the game of if you're trading up like nine spots for Justin Fields, as we did when we started about this, or like five to six spots for JJ McCarthy. And you're like, I got to give up a first in 25 or 26 for this. We can't do that because if we like him, we still have a really good chance of being completely wrong, and we got to put on another first rounder to do this. I just wouldn't want to be holding to myself to that.

So you wouldn't do the Bryce Young trade again? You're Carolina.

Probably not. I wouldn't because I love Bryce, but it wasn't like he didn't come in without a ton of questions. I mean, you want to talk about fields not having the best around? Was that was a joke this year, but it looked awful because I kept watching him because I was like, is it really going to keep looking this bad? And it looked about as bad as you can see a young quarterback have as far as a season. But he also. The size part of it. You're watching him back there and you go, my like, I know that's not breaking news that he was smaller, but really seeing it in NFL pads against an NFL offensive, it just felt super short.

It just felt like he couldn't throw over the middle of the field. So then it had to be like kind of what Kyler ends up doing, like going out on the sides, but he's not as fast as. I don't know how that Bryce Young thing plays out. I liked him mostly because you liked him and you were so passionate about it. But then watching it, he just seemed small. Like small in a way that was disturbing.

There's a draft trend that's more guilty in the NBA thing. What's happening is I appreciate your trust in me, but if I have a draft take and you are leaning towards agreeing with it prior to me sharing it with you, you get so excited that it combines into this super nuclear.

Draft tape, and it actually backfires and it explodes in my face.

Well, both of ours. It's kind of I'm guilty. It's like, you don't have a drinking problem, but if you hang out with.

Me, you do, then you're like, just do one shot. Well, when you started talking about Bryce Young's poise, I was like, oh, I'm going to look for this. And then I would watch in Alabama game, I was like, rosillo's right. I've never seen so much poise. And then I.

Hey, poise for days.

Poise for days. So much poise.

I'm not going to argue that the poise calculations were off here.

Well, you know, when he didn't have poise was when he had nobody to throw to, nobody to hand the ball off his line couldn't block, and everybody seemed like they were 100 pounds heavier than him. The poise kind of went sideways, not giving up on him. I think he lost his confidence.

Yeah, I think the poise is still there. There's plenty in the poise reserve. I'd like to see him have a better chance. Three years.

Is it weird that Pennix's crappy last game made me not as excited about him as a draft prospect, even though it was one game and he might have just had a bad game and they might have thrown three things at him. I just thought he was bad in that game.

He wasn't good.

Kind of wanted him to be better. But if you're getting him top of the second round, 40th pick, to me it's like a Brandon Roy thing where the talent's there but everybody's afraid of the medicals. But it's like, well, fuck it. If we get four years out of them, that's worth the 33rd pick. We have a quarterback on a rookie contract for four years, and then every year after that is keep our fingers crossed. But I wish he had been better in that last game.

Did you watch the Texas game?

He was good in that game.

He was incredible. But he also didn't get moved off his spot all that much.

Has anyone done the data on the QB who also happens to have an awesome receiver who's going to get drafted in the top ten and how that swings, how he looks in college at.

All, the Johnny Manzell Mike Evans deal.

The Mac Jones Corollary.

Or you could just pick any of them, right? Yeah, Bama. Bama had a stretch there where it felt like they were all first rounders, one through three wide receivers for like three straight years. Work on it. I'll give you the links.

Now, it sounds like one of your, when you do the Unabomber thing, when you just like, I studied the last 38 drafts, football for 9 hours.

I did one where I looked at every quarterback's transaction, so I had to go to Wikipedia to see if they were actually on an active roster. And then I was sitting there and I go, what the fuck is wrong with like, you don't need to do this. You don't need to be looking up whether or not Kyle Bowler was active four years after he was dragged because it was like I needed to come up with all these different qualifiers. Anyway, the point is I'm updating the first round QBs we're just going to keep it at the first rounders. But half of these guys, look, of the four or five guys that we talked about, two to three are guaranteed to be flame outs. Think about that.

45% to 65% of our QBs will be flame outs. Wait, we never did media corner. So I'll just ask you this. No ringer people can be mentioned. Who do you think is the best draft person right now? You're asking your number one.

Look, it's McShay.

Okay? McShay won. Who's two?

Daniel. Jeremiah. But see, I have these guys on, all the guys, by the way. I wouldn't have guys on and be like, this guy sucks. Yeah. Let's get him for Thursday show.

I wonder, do you think it's easier or harder to be a draft guy now? Because I remember the two drafts I really threw myself into when I did the TV and we had kind of limited YouTube and less websites. Now there's so much information and so much advanced metrics and so many things to look up. It's kind of like digging a hole in the beach where it never ends. How far do you go? Can too much information be a bad thing?

Yeah, I think that plays into a lot of the stuff that we talk about. I think you did a piece on this, like, over ten years ago when it was baseball. I think this is over a ten year old piece. But it was really smart. It was basically like, we used to just sit there and watch. And now with access to this much information, no matter what you say, somebody be like, well, actually, right? And then it's like, so, wait, am I having fun still, or am I watching somebody going, I think the free throw rate thing is, like, a really good example of this. There were some pieces that came out that basically argued that nothing was actually happening, okay? And I read them and I went, I'm sorry. I've been watching basketball way too long to be convinced of anything other than this is getting really fucked up. And this needs to change whatever direction this has gone. The evolution of letting offensive players dictate games like this. I don't care about what the free throw fucking rates are, all right? I'm watching guys get away with shit in a way that I've never, ever seen it before, and it's a problem.

And there are certain nights where the actual product is unenjoyable, all right? And that's somebody who spends the majority of his year watching this sport. So you made the point. I think it was with baseball we all still cared about it around the clock that it used to be just more fun, probably being dumb and not second guessing every single observation. Wasn't that your was the.

When we used to argue about Jeter versus Nomar, and we would just argue about it, and now it's like, no, here's his defensive zone rating, and you have all these. There's actually ways to prove it, and it just made baseball less fun. I guess basketball has moved toward that a little, but it's still, like I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the suns, and I was like, something about their lineup, I don't know. And you're like, well, it is plus ten. And I'm like, okay, but I, test wise, it kind of sucks, right? No, but then the flip guess was how bad they were in the fourth quarter. So that doesn't make sense. So they're bad in the fourth quarter with this lineup, but this lineup has a good net rating. So that's where I'm like, so what is this information? These are two things that don't make sense as a combo, right?

Because we're doing the pod and we've known each other for 20 years now. I, in that moment, was just an anonymous person on X. What's wrong with this son's.

But you had said earlier that they were double as bad as anyone else in the fourth quarter.

It's the fifth worst point differential in the fourth quarter in league history.

Way more information, and it makes less sense. I wish we had none of the.

Information, but I like what you did. I think you've been watching this game a long time.

I think a lot of us have.

Been watching this game. Sometimes something smells bad. You're walking around your apartment and you're like, what the fuck is that?

Yeah, my wife left tuna fish in the fridge from nine days ago. I didn't realize it was back there. Yeah. That's how I feel about any team that thinks Nurkage can play crunch time against really smart, good teams. I just don't think it's. I'm going to die on that hill. And if they prove me wrong, they prove me wrong. But this week, really, I was like, why did I get away from thinking this, like, five days earlier? I was like, oh, sons 27, one look out. And then I watched those two games. I'm like, what am I doing?

You can't.

The way basketball is being played now, this can't be your lineup.

They did try to go small today, but today was such a disaster as we've already covered.

Well, the most important thing we learned today is that Russell Westbrook is way more important than anyone. Uh, when's your next podcast?

Tuesday. We had Ben Mendelssohn taping on Friday. The new look on Apple. I believe it comes out on Wednesdays. I love the show. I did not think I'd want to watch a show about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, but it's more about World War II and then after nazi occupation in Paris and the fashion industry. He's one of my, I don't know, three or four favorite actors. Closing lineup. I'd put him in it. I'm not worried about having to go big or go small with Mendelssohn. And the thing is, he was awesome. You know how when you have somebody you don't know. Yeah, somebody that's an actor. Actors can be a little like, you don't know, depending on the day you get them. And you know how like when you do, because obviously you've done this a really long time, so you know exactly the feeling. But when he dials it up and you get those two minutes before you even start the interview and you're like, he's into this and it's going to.

Be, oh, yeah, he's psyched to be here.

Yeah, he was that into it. I think he was appreciative too, that it was just like, hey, I love this show.

And he was like, oh, that's nice. Yeah.

And he just was like, I didn't know anything about him. That was by Ben Mendelsohn.

Next week we're doing John Wilkes Booth. Like at least a ten minute deep dive.

Great.

I have some thoughts. You hadn't watched Manhunt on Apple yet. I only watched one episode and I don't know if I'm going to continue with it, but it got me really interested in John Wilkes Booth.

It was like, after one episode, does it actually make sense? That's next week.

It's one of those. It just should have been a movie. I think we've hit that point with some of these TV shows where it's like, you know what? This should have just been a two hour movie and I would have been good.

You'd make a great that.

I don't know if I needed 9 hours of John Wilkes Booth trying to escape, but two I'm excited about. But anyway, there's some John Wilkes Booth stuff that I want to talk about. We're so good to see you. This was produced by Steve Cerudi and Kyle Creighton, as always. And I will see you on Tuesday. On this feed. And on Monday on the rewatchables, we did internal affairs with Richard Gere, Andy Garcia, and it was wonderful.

Have you run into Richard Gere because you have kept him?

It's a great actor.

Yeah, I know he is. But if he ever runs into you, he needs to thank you, because no.

One, he should shake my hand.

There's no one that's kept Richard Gere more alive than you in the last a plus lister.

He did all the work. I'm just carrying the flame. We're so good to see.

Them when we start.

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