You. Coming up, Rosal and I talk basketball, basketball, basketball and a whiff of Mac Jones next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network, where I have a new rewatchables coming on Monday night thanks to the Larry David role. I got to tell you what it is risky business. One of my favorite movies of the can't believe we haven't done it yet. Tom Cruise's breakout role. This puts him, I think this is his his 14th rewatchable. So he's in the lead by two. And we still have some cruise movies left that we have not done. Tom Cruise, our all time leader. So that's coming Monday night. You'll be able to eventually watch the video on YouTube.com billsimmons as well, where you can find clips and videos from this podcast and from the rewatchables and sometimes some walking talks. So go check it out. Oscars was tonight. It was a really good telecast. I really enjoyed it. It felt like the Oscars again. Jimmy did great, no surprise. But just in general, it just felt like the Oscars I grew up with. It moved, had some good moments. The Ryan Gosling Ken song was really fun.

Tina Turner was the last person in memoriam. I thought for sure it was going to be Ryan O'Neill or Burt Packerack. So that was an upset. But they didn't have betting ods for that. They did have betting ODs for Emma Stone. And if you remember Matt Bell and I on this podcast a couple of days ago, that was our upset pick. It wasn't that much of an upset. She was like plus 130, plus 140. But Emma Stone, best actress. So we got that one. I may or may not have bet on it in real life. Don't tell anyone. Before we get to the podcast, wanted to mention Rosilla and I talked about the rockets glowingly for a couple of minutes, actually in the latter half of the podcast, and we taped everything before the Oscar started, so we didn't know Shangoon got hurt, got wheeled off. It was like a knee ankle thing. They're going to find out how bad it is tomorrow, but just wanted to flag that because it would be weird to listen to us praise the rockets in Shangoon and not mention that he got injured. Anyway, the podcast is coming right now.

Let's bring in our friends from Projip. All right, we're taping this a little after 230 Pacific time. Doing a little early today. I want to watch the Oscars. I love the Oscars. Rosillo, it's all screwed up. Daylight savings time today. Then they moved the Oscars to 04:00 Pt. So we're doing hoops now. Biggest thing, you're going to watch the.

Oscars over Anthony Edwards against the Lakers.

I'm going to have Anthony Edwards against the Lakers on another TV. This is why we have multiple TVs. I've friends hosting the Oscars.

Who's your friend?

Jimmy Kimmel, my old boss is hosting the Oscars. I want to start here was like, what house? We've been talking about the foul situation in the NBA. You, I think, did multiple opening segments about this new era we were in with the NBA with guys diving into people, lurching into people. You started getting a ton of feedback. I was getting feedback vicariously just because we do podcasts together and I had people reaching out. We were in threads with multiple people. And then over the all star break, something crazy happens. They actually change how they're officiating the games and we're all watching it and we're going this different. I went to two Laker games I think I talked about in a previous pod. I'm like, man, this is really physical. Like, I'm surprised. The Lakers Nuggets game, I went to 17 free throws total. Just in general, something has shifted. Ethan Sherwood Strauss, our friend, wrote about it for his substac yesterday, too. But you noticed right away, right? When were you like, oh, my God, they're actually changing this just, I would.

Say different freedom of movement plays where sometimes when you're looking for it, you find it, right? So as soon as I started thinking I was noticing it, then I felt like I was noticing it even more because I was looking for it. But there's just certain plays know we can get into which ones you like or don't like, and some of the numbers that Ethan shared. But even today with the Clippers, like Norm Powell hooks a defensive player's arm. Now, he exaggerated it pretty bad, but then he got called for the foul, and I was like, wait, okay, that's a little different. There was a play last night with Durant going up against Jalen Brown where I couldn't believe Jalen Brown wasn't called for a foul. Durant hits the bucket because he's incredible.

Can't wait to talk about that second half. Durant was getting mauled, right, and he had 45 points, but under the old rules, I think he would add 60 because they would have called every single foul.

So the single play that led me to lose my mind on a couple of pods was just the drive where the offensive player is parallel to the paint. They're not even veering towards the rim, and you're staying parallel with them as the defensive player, and then they veer into you at the last second and then they kind of haul it. Mean, really, you know, Trey Young has done it a million times.

Well, it's like if you're on a highway and the car in the middle lane just veers into your lane, and then they're doing the police report and it's like, whose fault was it? And it was like the guy to the left, the guy who was just going straightforward, it's his fault. He's 100% to blame. Is he? So.

I don't know if this is. The numbers bear it out. Like pre all star game teams are averaging 115.7 points per game. Post all Star game, it's 111.7. Free throws are down from almost 23 attempts to 20 attempts. But pre all Star, we're also talking.

And the offensive ratings are down, too. Well, we had a bunch of people that were up that I think now there's still like a top six or seven, but then it's a pretty dramatic drop after that.

But you're also looking at 53 to 55 games pre all Star. Like eight to eleven games, depending on the time that this podcast released today. So yes, I am noticing it, but there are other times where I'm like, man, it just looks like the defender is being more. He's just being allowed to be more physical, cutting off the driving path. That's the thing I'm noticing more. And it doesn't necessarily mean like foul, non foul. It's just, oh, wow. Like they collided there a little bit and they just let him keep playing. And by the way, I'm all for it.

Well, there was another thing going on, too. The sharps picked it up immediately and were betting the unders, and the unders were hitting pretty huge before Vegas realized what was going on, I think started adjusting. But I have so many anecdotes from just watching basketball in person and then on TV. But the big play that jumps out to me the most is the end of that Celtics Cavs game. When Tatum, when he had that last possession and he dribbled up and garland armbars him and elbows him, and it was all stuff that nobody was getting away with.

Bad. You think that was a bad overturn?

No, oh, no, not the foul itself. I'm talking about the way he was defending him before Tatum even shot the shot. What's changed now is when the little.

Player in that matchup physically is going to be allowed to do whatever he wants all the time. Yeah, fair initiated, but go ahead.

Well, he did, but I noticed that. I noticed the game. I went to the Denver Lakers game, Yokich, when he was doing his kind of back down, whirly burly thing, and the Lakers were just kind of clubbing them and they were just letting it go. I mean, they didn't even get to ten free throws in that game. And then last night, the sun Celtics, it made me start wondering, what is this change going to do better or worse for the Celtics? Because defensively, especially holiday and white now can ratchet it up a level. But on the other end, I thought it was way harder for Tatum and Brown to kind of get to their spots. And they played really well last night. But I was watching it going, man, if they were calling fouls like they normally did, I actually think the Celtics would be winning this game by 20. It was just a lot of work to get the shots that they wanted. And when that gets to the playoffs, the reason I think this is so important is like, who wins from this? Who wins from this change? And it's like, guess who wins the fucking heat?

The Jason Voorhees of the NBA. They're going to take advantage of this the most, and this is going to benefit them the best. I think the Celtics with the guards, that's going to really help them. And I think Minnesota would be the other team that if this is going to be more physical, Minnesota is going to be even with or without towns, Minnesota is going to be really hard to score against. If Edwards and McDaniels, at the top of the key are allowed to get a little more handsy with Gobert behind them.

Yeah, I think that's a really good call, especially McDaniels, because he lives in foul trouble and he's so aggressive. Now, I know Minnesota fans aren't thrilled with the way the officiating ended the other night, and maybe we'll get to that Cleveland game. But I don't think too many Minnesota fans were complaining about the officiating against the Pacers the night previous to that. The Anthony Edwards welcoming party to the rest of the, you know, McDaniels also had two really stupid fouls. So the foul on Garland at the end of the shot clock when he reaches back across into him is just like the shot clocks back to expire. You have to be smarter than that in those spots. But now, if you bring it out big picture, because I started thinking about it too this morning just going, all right, wait, if this is real, which I still think we need to see more than nine to ten games of like, okay, everything's different now. The league is different.

Yeah. It's two and a half weeks now, right? Yeah.

I just know that whenever that feels like something becomes a priority, the tendency seems to kind of default back to what you're comfortable with. And I don't know if this happened, I don't think the league is going to admit it. And then I also thought it was kind of funny that once it's happened, then the complaint becomes from the teams, some teams, depending on which side of this argument they're on, of like, wait, you're just going to do this in the middle of the season? And I read that stuff and I'm like, yeah, fucking right, because it sucked before. So what's your solution? Hey, this thing that keeps happening that sucks, that puts defensive players in a helpless situation. They have like, literally no options on drives. Your idea is just ride it out for the next few months and then maybe we'll get to it.

We'll change it in July.

Yeah. Be happy. If the league did in fact do this, that the league was like, hey, enough of this. I also wonder how much of just the all star weekend, which I don't have any time for. It's not for me. I think complaining about it is probably more pointless because it's almost like people forget it takes twelve months and then they forget how bad it was the year before. This year was not the first year that this isn't fun to watch. But whether it was just this point of frustration, I don't know if any of the things are combined with it, but you're right. Like, which teams, which players do you go, wait a minute. This actually now maybe ticks it their way a couple of points in advantage because of how physical they can be. Especially with the perimeter stuff. Because some of the teams, it looked like they felt helpless on the perimeter. It was just nothing you could ever wonder.

I don't think this is a top three reason they did it, but it might be in the top five. Knowing that the Olympics are coming for the NBA and for a lot of the best players in the league that are going to be playing for different countries and how drastically different those games are officiated than what we're watching over. Like, especially if the goal of the NBA is like, man, it'd be nice if Team USA was able to pull off a gold medal. This was not the training ground this NBA season. We have for how to play the FIFA rules, which are completely different, different flow. Nobody gets a call ever in FIFA. I don't know. I thought I'd flag that too. But the biggest thing for me is who wins from this?

Who else do you think wins? Because I think your McDaniel's point is a perfect. Like that might be the best example.

I think this hurts Denver a tiny bit because Jokic, I felt like was officiated a tiny bit unfairly to begin with, is a little bit of Shaqitis with how the referee is like, well, he's so big, what are we supposed to do? But he does get mauled all the time.

I think he gets ass kicked all the time. So seeing a game after this, let it go. So I don't know if that's necessarily any different in the Lakers game than all the other times. As much as we both love Steve Kerr, I think his frustration after that Denver game when he had a lot of free throws was about some of the stuff, the bigger picture stuff that we're talking about, when in reality, like, Jokic isn't the best person to use as the example because in comparison to the other, like because he's in the post and because he's working slowly, I think people are allowed to be way more physical with him because it's not out in the open with the ball heading towards the basket.

I think it's bad for the Knicks because especially the Brunson centric when he comes back. But the Brunson centric offense they had, tough one, especially if you're allowed to be really physical against that. I think that could hurt them. Cerudi's magic, we'll see now that they're going to be a four seed now that they have home court in round one, probably now we'll see how it plays out. But it's definitely even watching Durant last night, who's having an incredible offensive year. I mean, his numbers, I wanted to talk about that later, but his numbers at age 35 compared to the other seasons in his career, like the percentages are actually higher now. Does that have to do with how they're calling the games the free flow and play, all that stuff? Or is he figured out a way, Brady style to actually get better? As he said, he's mid thirty s. I don't fully understand it, but he's like a 53, 45, 86 guy percentage wise. This is the best percentages he's ever had. Even yesterday there was a point in the celtic game and the Celtics played well last night, that was about as.

Without poor Zingis. That's about as well as they could play. And Durant was like 15 for 20 at one point. Do you see that?

Well, yeah. Showed his stats every time. You're like, all right, Boston's got this. Boston's got this. And you're like, something would happen. No, they don't.

Yeah.

And look, I was curious to see how they would look after the Cleveland loss. And I think we should probably talk about the Denver loss at some point or the Denver win.

I want to do that next.

Yeah. All right. But staying on this, though, with the scoring part of, like, in what motivated this stuff, whether it was complaints from teams, know, just watching enough in the first half of the season, where you. Is this, is this what it is now for offensive players? And you had the Embiid game, you had the towns game, you had the Booker game in there. And Booker's always good for like, one crazy one. The funniest thing, I think, is, like, how the Luca one became negative, and I know Mavs fans turned it into somehow this massive campaign to be against. I I think it's as simple. It was just, he was the guy that scored his points after the other guys did. And then it became not so much, how great is Luca, but, like, what the hell is going on in this sport? Because I would tell you that I thought Luca's game is the most impressive out of all of those games because he could have shot even more if he wanted to against Atlanta, but he was actually making the right reads because they still had to win. That know, as bad as Atlanta is defensively, I don't know what pop was trying to do to Wembanyama in that embiid game.

We're just never going to bring a double and we're just going to see weird.

Yeah, I think pop had a dinner reservation like ten minutes after the game that he was trying to get to.

That's what was so scary about MB's night, that it was so easy where when I looked at Luca, I went, he still has to make the right basketball play with the way this game is playing out. But because Lucas was after those guys, then I think you know it as well how it works when you're at ESPN and it's okay, what's the topic today for the shows? The topic pivoted from, oh, my God, MB had 70. Like, how great is he? To this is the fourth guy to do this in a very short amount of time. Like, what the hell is going on?

Look, for a couple of years, 50s were as bad. 50 used to really mean something. When somebody had 50, I'm like, oh, my God, that guy had 50.

50. I know.

And then 50 is just. I feel like, how many guys of the league would you not be surprised by a 50 point game from? At least 30?

Yeah, depend on the circumstance. Who else was hurt or whatever.

Because Jalen Brown can have a 50 point game at this point. I never would have been a million years thought he was going to score 50 points in a game. But it's probably going to happen, or maybe not. Now that we have these new rules.

Should we try to come up with how many guys you'd say no to? 50 bones Highland. Could Bones Highland get 50?

Maybe. Right situation. Playing for a lottery team.

Mere coffee. I got Clippers on the mind after that game.

Today, every team has two guys who could probably have gotten 50 under these old rules. Do you want to pivot to Boston Denver? Did we hit this enough?

Do you have more on this, or do you want to go to Boston Denver?

The only thing I would say on this and then we can move to Boston Denver is the amount of private discourse about what was going on with the rules and how mad people on the different teams were versus what was being discussed publicly. I thought there was a pretty big disparity. I really feel like the feeling I got, and I think you felt the same, especially after you started really talking about it and people reached out to you, is that people in the league felt like this was a crisis. Like, this was like, if we don't fix this, we might not be able to pull this back. Like, this might become what basketball is. And I think people were just like, this sucks. It's a bad product. It's hard to coach. It's making guys who are mediocre players look good, and it's making good players look great. And this is bullshit, and we have to fix this. So I don't know if Adam went to all star weekend and was talking to a bunch of people about or what happens. He also has Joe Dumars is really important behind the scenes, I think, you know, a little like how Theo Epstein was tasked with, hey, can you help us fix baseball?

Do you have any ideas? And then he really put time and thought and energy into it and studied and came up with changes. I think Dumars has been involved behind the scenes.

I wouldn't be surprised by, you know, I know that there's always, like, a reminder of when you think people like you, like how often I would take calls from teams to bitch about other media members.

Right.

I know you and I have talked about this, so I've never been delusional enough to think that I haven't been the subject of somebody calling another media member to be like, that Rasulo guy sucks.

Right?

But having said that, with the understanding, knowing that it likely almost certainly exists, I didn't get one team to reach out to me to tell me I.

Was wrong after I. Yeah, nobody's like, you're crazy. This is great.

No. And there are people that I think I'm close enough with that, but I'm like, hey, I think you're off base on this, or you're nuts, or here's what you should look at. It was across the board. Keep talking about this.

Yeah, totally. That's what made it so interesting. It was like, please, maybe you'll make a difference. Be picketing outside Silver's office, year 2029.

Just me at the center court, heroes among us.

Ryan Sillo. His monolog on a January 15 podcast was the catalyst. Let's take a break. We'll do Boston Denver. All right, so I talked about Boston Denver on my Thursday night podcast after the game. You did not talk about it because you did not have a podcast the next day. So finish the sentence. For me, the gap between Boston and Denver is Dot, dot, dot, insurmountable. Okay, explain.

I don't think it's necessarily wide. I just don't think we were talking a little bit. Let me say it this way, about how many players could kind of carry a team for a night, right? How many players could carry a team all by themselves against a really good team? And then I started thinking of the unsolvable question of who's playing today? That's know, is yanis actually unsolvable, or is there maybe some little plan that you could put in? And then it starts to become a really short list. And I'd say, like, luka's unsolvable. And then beyond that, it's, Jokic and Boston tried some different things. Maybe they needed to try even more things. They went to Drew late. It just doesn't really matter. And watching the two games, they match up, we all know how good Boston is. I just don't think that they're better than Denver. I don't think it was. Know. It's funny how people can pick and choose where it's like, well, Tatum had an off night, and he's like, yeah, but Jalen Brown went insane. So I gotta make enough threes. Like, Denver shot 19% from three. All right, so whatever the gap is, I'm not going to sit here and say it's this massive gap.

It just feels like because of Yokich right now for Boston, it's an insurmountable gap. I don't have distance for you. What do you think? Do you think it's flukey? Do you think it's solvable? Where are you at with those two teams?

I think the series would be very similar to what the Lakers Nugget series was last spring, where the games were close. And then in the last six to eight minutes, Denver just out executed the Lakers because they had better options and they have the Yokich Murray cheat code, the Boston piece of it. I just don't feel 100% comfortable. I'm going to love the shot when it's 115 to 114 with a minute 40 left. I just don't know if I'm going to love whatever shot is about to happen, and that's the hardest thing to get over. I don't think Tatum's the player. I still don't think he's a finished product, and you really feel it in some of these games. Whereas Denver, Jokic, I don't know if he's a finished product, but he's pretty goddamn close and he's super comfortable and knows exactly what he wants to do. Mahoney, I don't want to repeat what Mahoney and I talked about on Thursday, but it's like that guy just knows, oh, you're going to do this, then I'll do this. Oh, you're going to do that. I'll do this. And there's just no way to fight it.

The last time I can remember anything like this was the 17 warriors, that first warriors team, when they really figured out the Durant, Curry, Clay, the spacing and just like, oh, you're going to guard Durant with that guy. Okay. And they'll ride that. Oh, you're getting a little lazy chasing Curry around this, or are we going to do this? And there was just no way to stop it. And Denver, like, you really have to hope that their bench sucks or that porter sucks, you're hoping, or that Murray is going to take too long to get going. But anything relating to Yokich, he's going to get to 30, 213 and 16 in any game he wants. And in the end of the game, he's going to have a 70% chance of getting a basket. So when I think about what team can beat them, maybe it's the Celtics if they're taking a bunch of threes. But to me, the model is more like that Booker Durant. Like that Sunday game a week ago where it's like, all right, you're going to score, but we are, too. And we're going to try to score more than you did.

And you're going to score 20 points in the last four minutes of this game, and we're going to score 22. And that's how we beat you. But that said, I still think it's unrealistic in a seven game series to beat those guys four times. I don't know what their ODs are to win the title, but to me, they're like almost prohibitive favorites. I think it's going to be so hard to beat those guys, don't you?

Yeah, I'm there, especially with the Clippers cooling here. And granted, Kawhi and Paul George didn't even play today against Milwaukee, even though they're incredibly competitive, and then they weren't going to keep up the 25 and six pace, but when they got it rolling, but throughout it all, their defense still wasn't necessarily that great. And yet, when you look at Denver defensively, the profile of it last year, it's like, well, it doesn't really matter. I watch basketball and I go hard or easy. Hard or easy. Tatum has that three. Boston almost steals that one because that's what that would have been. Because for two plus hours, I'm like, man, this feels hard for Boston and for Denver, it just feels easier.

Well, you know why they almost stole it? Because drew hit two crazy threes in a row when the game was basically over and it was like, whoa. It was like, he know he did like the Superman punch to get the Celtics back in the game. Where'd that come from? And then all of a sudden, the momentum flipped in like 5 seconds. But yeah, Denver felt like they were in control the whole time. Right now, Celtics are plus 210 on Fanduel and Denver is plus 420. And that makes no sense to me. But their job is to put the ODS try to get public betting. Like, I know Boston is more of a public team, but Denver should be the favorite.

They should be the favorite. And I just know every one of the models, like, even going all the way back to 22 all the way back, right, two years ago, but when you'd see some of the stuff that was up on Boston's profile and it was like 88% chance of winning the NBA Finals, and you're just like, look, they're good, but what whatever it is, it's been this group that's obviously been overhauled here a bit with Drew and Przingis and smart not being involved. They're a better team now. And look at it this way. I was going through the strength of schedule for many teams. Like, Denver's got the easiest of any of the teams in the top four. OKC is going to have Minnesota, just less towns, right? But if you're just looking at like opposing schedule, Denver's got the 24th toughest schedule. So you could frame it a different way. But Boston, they've got the easiest schedule and the winning percentage of combined opponents is 415. Miami has the second easiest one and the combined opponent winning percentage is 446. Like, there's a massive gap when you look at the strength, the schedule that's remaining for Boston.

So Boston won eleven straight and yet you can still find a way after the Cleveland loss to go like, what is it? Dean Wade.

Dean Wade, who had zero points two nights later in 33 minutes, literally zero points.

I knew you would probably be like, give me Dean Wade's line immediately.

I look at the Cleveland box score every game because that was such a stupid loss where Dean Wade just leaves his body for 20 minutes out of nowhere.

When I went back and watched it, I was like, you guys, meaning the Celtics, you guys just decided to lose Dean Wade, like after he hit four.

Maybe call time out and be like, hey, guys.

Yeah, I know you want to blame Missoula.

How about boxing? I'm blaming him, right?

Drew holiday is terrific. Keep an eye on the guy. You have to defend. And in that spot, Dean Wade gets the offensive rebound. So it's a constant cycle of Boston. They lose to Cleveland and then it's like this team and you're like, they just won eleven straight, though. But I thought the Denver game was one of the most revealing games of the season for the Celtics because it just shows you. You can say the gap is massive, you can say the gap is thin. I just think the best way to frame it is that because of it's. It's insurmountable. Like if you keep prazingis in, clearly they stayed single coverage with him, with Prasingis for a good chunk of the first half of the, you know, that's not going to work. But then if they bring in another big, like Tillman or Horford and then keep Przingis out there, then now you don't have to have Jokic defend Prasingis to take him away. So now he's not playing as much defense. And then they went with Drew holiday. Like, the biggest thing is trying to figure out how to limit Gordon's threat in the dunker spot when he's running the baseline.

Off of all the shit you want to do with Jokic, you have to figure out a way to limit his impact. And Boston did a bad job of that. And I think physically it might just be really hard for most teams to have the second guy, whoever that is, whether it's a slow power forward or an undersized four, like, hey, this beast of a guy who can jump out of the gym is going to get all these incredible passes. He's going to make the right cut. He's figured out that role perfectly. We saw it in the Lakers game. And that dunk that he had where he caught it off the rim and threw up, like for an in game dunk, that's one of the best in game dunks you're going see.

Totally agree with Gordon now. We're doing thing. We're just agreeing with each other. The thing with gordon, I don't know how long he's been playing with Yokage. What has it been like? Is it three years now? Three and a half?

Three plus?

Yeah. It's just nuts watching how attuned they are to each other at this point. We've seen it with all the great teams that had extended runs going back to the 80s where the guys, they hit this other level where there's a familiarity that becomes an advantage. And he now has that. Jokic has that now with Gordon and with Murray, where they've just had too many reps now. And so when you're competing against him, you're also competing against the reps. And Gordon just always knows what Yokich is going to do. Even when you're watching it live and you're like, oh, he's going to shoot that. Oh, no, that was actually an alley. Gordon's the only one in the building who knows it's going to be an alley. And they've just leveraged this dude. Who, how many guys would you want in that Gordon spot over the last 25 years who would just be like, I don't care if I shoot that much. It's basically like what the Suns always wanted for Sean Marion, right? Hey, man, just play defense and be around the rim.

But then they were on the break, remember, and he was like, I want you to shoot more. And it was one of those things of like, the coach having the confidence in you to shoot more and then you become a better shooter because of it. So I think you're right about early, Marion, but one of the great things about him is he evolved into somebody that like, oh, wait, we actually have to go out to the corner with him.

Did you think he was going.

Got. I don't know what the numbers are off the top of my head. I just thought eventually he was like somebody you had to worry about out there. But Gordon, you're sitting there trying to think about what do you do with Denver? And now you're seeing teams just ignore Gordon when he's positioned on the like, because they're just trying to do whatever they can. It's like the only thing people can do with Oklahoma City. If Giddy's in with the starters, it's like, all right, sag off of giddy, hoping the help is closer to this SGA stuff that you have, but SGA is just surrounded. When you go through the thunder shooters, you just go, wait, that guy's at 40. That guy's at 45. Are you kidding me? It's like six dudes you got to worry about. So it spaces all out perfectly for SGA. So the only thing you're noticing defense is doing be like, let's just sell out and tell giddy to shoot the entire time. Gordon's at like 28%. He had a couple of years there where he was like 34 or 35 from three, where it felt like that.

Would be a good second spectrum sketch. Like, who do you think has been left alone by the most feet this season? Gordon will have somewhere. There's nobody within seven, 8ft of him. They're just like, fuck it. Go ahead, man.

You think it's Draymond?

Oh, yeah, you're right. It's Draymond. That'd be a good all star team.

And he's been shooting well this year, too, so it's not so much the percentage, it's how many of these are you going to burn us with? You can be like, oh, this guy's at 40%. Cool. He's taking one point at a game, but really cool.

It makes you wonder how many guys over the last, since we started watching basketball, how many guys are like a Gordon type that they just never found the right situation and they kind of came and went and they had a solid career.

Everybody wanted to be a small forward. Remember, because of his athleticism, he had looked like enough handle. And coming out of Arizona, I remember talking to teams going like, man, if this guy, we get him in and we're like, you've got to be kidding me with physically what he's capable of doing.

But the Celtics loved him for years.

All right, but know, calling myself out here when he was the hot name on the trade market, I kind of was like, have you paid attention to who he's been in Orlando? Because it's probably a little disappointing. I mean, there's a reason they're trading this guy even after the next contract.

And the trade was bad. You go back in that trade, it feels like it's $0.30 in the dollar. It seemed more reasonable at the time.

He was just stuck. He was just stuck. And it wasn't really working out. And credit Denver, clearly knowing better than I would have at the time that it's like, no. When you get somebody with, like, if you put Gordon's metrics up against his Denver metrics, like Orlando, it's two different people.

Right?

So he turned into this because of him. But you're right. It's the perfect compliment.

So we'll cross off a. I didn't tell you we're going to do this. Give me a one word answer.

I love it.

On why each team will not win the title. One word. It's like password plus. It's like a 60s game show. One word. Boston. Why won't they win the title?

They won't have the best player on the floor.

That's not one word.

Insatiable. Insatiable. One word. One word. What is this fucking one word?

It's a fucking 60s game show. I should have prepped you.

No, that's fine. I like this. It's like when I did it with Chauncey Billups and turned into a spoken word thing and I jammed him up, it wasn't the best interview I've ever done. One word. One word.

Let's run the audio.

Chauncey, limitations.

Oh, I like it. I would have said Alpha because at some point in the playoffs, it becomes Alpha versus Alpha. And I'm not sure Tatum has the bag yet to match a couple of the guys that they might have to play in a playoff series.

Yeah, and it sucks for Tatum because it's literally a couple guys.

Yeah, it's like, oh, no, you're not one of the three best guys at the end of the game. But, yeah, if it's him versus jokic, I'm just betting on Jokic. What do you got for Cleveland? I'll go first.

Go ahead. I came up with one, but go ahead.

Clumsy.

Okay, sell me on clumsy.

I'm not sure. They're five guys. The five guys, they want to be their five guys together. It still feels a little clumsy to me. I don't know if it's a five. That totally makes sense yet.

I think that's good. Do you think clumsy's as good or better for Phoenix?

Phoenix would be health for me. It's like if we get him back, oh, when he comes back, it's just that's, that's the team they've been for five months and Duran has been healthy the whole time. He's like, we need him back. It's like Beal's been injured three different times already this year.

When you look at their fourth quarter numbers, I mean, they're horrifying, right? They're differential. It's the worst in the league, I think, or at least it was going into the fourth quarter.

Duran's clutch numbers are bad, but I.

Don'T never know what to do with any of their numbers because you go, well, because they're a different version every couple of weeks. So what's their thing? Like when I watch Phoenix, I go, what's their thing that they go to other than if Booker's initiating and the team's defending the high screen a certain way, then you know where Booker's going to get to his. Like, I can envision that. I think there's a lot of times where Durant has to get it off the dribble because then if he's not, he's like waiting to watch it happen to the other side. So I don't know that they really kind of know what their finishing move is because maybe continuity would be a better word for Phoenix.

Continuity is a good one. So Mahoney and I talked about them on Thursday and basically came up with.

This, that there's talking about this Mahoney guy a lot, dude.

Well, there's the four teams of the four contenders and then there's six more teams. Right. And the question was, if you're going to rank those two groups, would you put Phoenix just in the second group or would you put them in kind of their own group? Because the upside is a little different than the other teams in that group. New Orleans, Dallas, the Lakers, Golden State.

I put them in their own group. I like it. I think that you have to do it.

That's where we landed because I think the ceiling of what they can do where they're just like, you're going to score 122, we'll score 124 is just a little higher with the Durant Booker combo. I mean, you think about the year they've had. I didn't think Nurkage would stay healthy this long. He did. I didn't like Grayson Allen at all. He's been awesome. Like, I don't even know what he's worth now in free agency. He might be like a 70 million for four years type of guy. And Durant has been healthy and really good all season. So if you told me those three things for the year, I would have thought we would have been higher on him, but we just haven't seen it. They just can't keep those dudes together. What would your word be for Milwaukee?

Better. Because they're better. They just are. The defensive numbers have spiked up, I think even though it was weird tonight or today, I should say, against the Clippers, like once they figured out what they wanted to do with Harden and get the ball out of his hands, and then Harden waited way too long to decide to become an offensive player. I think he had his twelveth and 13th points of two minutes left in the game. And then Harden's like, I better start chucking my way back into this one. But I was really impressed. I'd say, on the whole, what are they, ten and nine now with Doc? There's a lot of good jokes to make. When he had taken over, we knew how bad they were defensively and all that stuff. Look, they're still going to have some problems on the perimeter defensively, like D'Angelo Russell's incredible night against them the other night, which was just an all timer, but he beats Lillard on the perimeter and Brooks kind of caught in that. I would love to know what their rule on that would have been. It's like, hey, at that point with Russell, do, you know, just sell out on him because Lillard is probably going to get beat and you have to bring Brooke up.

The point is that I've just seen better defense from them. And that other game where Lillard didn't have anybody and he had to go off, he did ends up with 40 in that game. So I just think that they're better and they need to be taken. I don't care what the standings are, I think they need to be taken more as a serious threat. Despite always having a really good record throughout, how frustrating so many months of the season has been because of the standard that they're held to.

You know, I'm the body language doctor.

I know you've been great at it.

I don't know what form of MD this is, but I'm also like the quote, the quote doctor. I like reading the quotes, especially when a team has a change, if you read the quotes that some of the Bucs players have about what's going like, to me, it feels legitimate. Like, Lopez just had a long paragraph quote about how everything's been simplified and everyone's on the same page now, and it's stuff you don't say unless you actually think, oh, we figured, shit. Whereas when things are going badly, the quotes will be different. Right. And they were different for the Bucks three months ago where it's like, yeah, we just. They were bad.

They were. I mean, you're being nice about it. They were pretty bad.

Yeah. It's like, we're just not good enough right now, and we've got to figure out a better way to dot, dot, dot, and just things where you're like, oh, that's not good. That sounds bad. And now they flip that. And Middleton isn't back yet. Jay Crowder actually looked semi playable in the Clipper game today, so if they can get even 20 minutes out of him, Portis has been really good for them lately.

It's like two months with Portis, and the big Lillard game was the other Clippers game back there where they won, where I think Jay only played 18 minutes in that game. So I'm not necessarily there with you as Crowder as an option here.

Listen, they're going to need swings in the playoffs. They're going to need probably three to four guys, if they're playing Boston, that can at least not get the shit kicked out of them by Tatum and Brown, and they're going to need Crowder, Conniton, one of those guys is going to have to play better. How many guys have had their best game of the season against Dame? If you had to guess, I kind of wish I'd looked this up. Halliburton had a game against him where I think it was like, send it to the hall of Fame. But I think, guys, if I was a point guard and it was like, oh, milwaukee. If I'm Darius Garland, I'm like, oh, yeah, these guys can't wait. I'm going to try to go for 50.

Yeah. Bad defensively, but their overall numbers are dramatically better now. So you already knew it. And that was the win. It's why this summer when they ended up getting him. And of course, you're in favor of getting Dame Lillard, but there's always, like, some local reporter that's willing to write, the dame's not nearly as bad on defense as people say. And then it's like, no, he is. It's okay. Yeah, he's awesome.

Well, everybody, over and over again. He comes through in last three, four minutes of these games, and he did it today with the Clippers again. He has a knack for. He makes the one or two or three biggest shots of the game. What's your word for OKC? I would go with size. I think that's pretty easy.

Yeah. Rebounding, depending on. I don't know. I looked at it this week. They're the second worst rebounding team in the league, and the eyes back it up. There's certain nights with them in a matchup against another guy where you're like, it's just really hard for them in the glass here.

And they put a lot on Chet, where this dude's like, wait, 20? Yeah. So if Chet has a bad game, you guys basically are going to get out rebounded by 20.

Now, I'm not worried about his injuries because I'm like, he survived this season the number of times where I feel like he is twist. What's the game? It's like a game of Twister on the twister underneath the basket after the play has happened, and there's just limbs all over the place. And he's like, getting up and I'm like, man, I just feel like I've seen that too much.

Who are your top five? Oh, no, guys. Because obviously Porzingis is one for me, but I think Chet's too. Where it's like three times a game, you just feel like Chet just got hurt or is about to get hurt. Who is it?

Wemby's definitely won.

Oh, Wemby's a good one. Yeah, he's in the top three, probably durant. Durant's a good one. Durant takes some hard kind of stumble. He had it yesterday in the second half of the celtic game. He fell backwards and he flung the ball forward, but it looked like his knee. He looked like Naganu in the Joshua fight. Like he just kind of fell straight back.

You know what? When LeBron, when he's checking for blood, I'm just devastated. The edge of my seat. And then when there's no blood, I'm the most relieved person in America.

Every time there's no blood, it just seems like this is the time where it's going to happen. What's your one word from Minnesota?

I would say it's two words. So I need a thesaurus in front of me.

You can do two words.

I would just say closing, closing, closing, closing. And it's really about closing offense. I'm not worried about the closing defense whatsoever. So even though cat's not exactly my favorite player of all time, depending on his health, he provides some version of spacing. And as much as we all love ant, are you really going to be able to do this on your own.

For seven for 27 the day after his great game?

Cleveland. Yeah, that wasn't great.

You know who was over for breakfast today at my house? Jimmy Kimmel. The ewing theory community committee. Because they were in town to see Minnesota with Nas Reed in towns'spot. They just wanted to check it out. Towns checks a lot of the boxes, man. Wow. Oh, no. They've lost towns. That would be their season's over. It's like, is it?

Yeah, that's a good segment. If we have nothing. If you have nothing, like, I'm on vacation, and you just go, top five. Closest Ewing theory.

When I wrote one of my first columns ever for page two was 2001. And I wrote the whole ewing theory, which was from my old site. Dave Cerilli was the guy who came up with it. I blew it out, had all these rules. And one of the guys I picked in 2001, it was somewhere in the spring, summer was Drew Bledsoe. And when Brady got hurt, I wrote the column right after and I was like, the ewing theory. This is it. The test is here. Tom Brady, ewing theory. I'm all in. You can go back and read. But. And then he fucking ewing theory'd all the way to the Super bowl. But Nas Reed's good. And it's like, I guarantee Nas Reed is like, oh, no, I have to play more minutes. Like, Nas Reed is like, this is my time. He was unbelievable the other night. That game was awesome the other night. But he was really, I think. I don't know. Obviously it's not good to lose towns, but there is some ewing theory stuff there. Last one word, team clippers. Health. Yeah, health is the right word. That's fine.

Although they've got Norm Powell, 24, savage filling up the box score.

So if he can play a couple of games here and get some stats, I think he plays himself into the six man because it's him and monk, I think, are the two best six men. Just eye test watching games where it's like, oh, that guy's feeling it. And they can swing like two and a half to like every two and a half weeks, they'll swing a game. All right, we're going to do a 2004 versus 2024 thing, but let's take a break. All right, so you wanted to do this the talent now versus 20 years ago. And I was looking at the all NBA from 20 years ago and it actually made me do a little tester for if I had to pick the all NBA right now, who would the guys be? Which led me down this Tatum versus durant rabbit hole. Because I think everybody thinks the all NBA right now would probably be Yanis Tatum, Yokich Luca and SGA, even though we're not picking positions. But Durant's like not that far away from Tatum if you're going to do the best record thing with Tatum and they're going to be the number one team by five games and Tatum stats are pretty close, but I do feel like Durant could steal that first team Omba spot if he had a strong last 20.

Anyway, why did you want to do this? Give me the preamble. Why did you want to do this?

I always like asking myself, like, who the top five players are. Pretty much like, I don't know, beginning of the year, middle of the year, towards probably after the playoffs, which the playoffs probably influences stuff a little bit too much. I personally need you if you're going to be a top five player, like, you have to do what you're doing and do it for like a couple know, or maybe there's just a magical playoff run inside of the two years of big regular season numbers. So I think SGA is kind of on the cusp of this, even though this year there's no question he's having one of the five best seasons and I think the top four is pretty easy, right? It's Jokic, it's Luca, it's Giannis, it's Embiid. I'd put it in that order. And then maybe it's, know, it's felt like Durant's in there. Tatum's been argued. I think Kawhi, during that stretch, you were like, dude, are you watching what this guy's doing right now? A little reminder. But the whole point of the exercise was like, after I would get the five bill, I'd be like, okay, so now I'm kind of at ten.

We did this a year ago, right? We said our ten top five guys for we did it. Exactly. We had fun with it because we was like, there's nine top five guys.

So we haven't even mentioned ant. You just start going through it and I'm like, okay, so the league has never been deeper. And then I went back and looked. I just randomly picked like ten and 20 years ago. I'm so glad that you liked 304 because when you go through who the guys were, who the real Shakers were in the league, you're like, it is not even close. Now. Maybe you'd find another random year where.

It'S the perfect year to do it, though, because this was the season that led to a little bit similar to what happened to the all star break where we were like, we got to fix this. This is crazy. We had that Pistons Pacers series that year. This is the year the Pistons beat the Lakers, but they changed the pace of the games. They did some rule stuff. The Suns came in and stuff started to shift.

Sam Casell was fourth in windshares.

Sam Casell was second team all NBA. I'll give the listeners. So it was duncan and KG, shaq, kobe, jason Kidd, pretty good. All NBA, first team. That was the. Wasn't that, was that the trial year for Kobe or was that the year before?

I think it was the year before.

Second team. Tmac, who was in that last Orlando year before they ended up trading him. Pesia Stojakovic, second team all NBA. Jermaine O'Neill, big Indiana season, Ben Wallace on the Pistons and Sam Casell, who had just an awesome season with Minnesota. Third team was Ron Artest, Dirk Nowitzky, Yao Ming, Baron Davis, Michael Red. What's interesting about that top 15 is I think at least four or five of those guys were available in trades at some point either during that season or right after, like TMAc was getting shot. I wrote a trade value, call him that summer and it was like, Baron Davis, could you get him? Michael Red versus TMac. What about Tracy McGrady? Where is he going? Kobe. It was like Kobe versus Shaq. Who's going to go? Shaq did get traded, so it was just a weird year. But those were our best 15 players in 2004.

So if you go through it now, right? So Yokich and bead Luca, I'm just going off of like, I'm going to go off a box score plus minus here, all right? Because I don't think there's going to be a name in here where you're like, what the hell's happening? We didn't even mention Curry yet. Which, if you look at what Golden State's record was before his knee injury, it was right up there with everybody.

Well, can I give a temp? All NBA, three teams just to separate it?

Yeah, do that, do that. And by the way, when I'm saying Golden State's record, it was the 13 and six stretch of when I was kind of like chopping up the season into different segments there and I was like, wow, golden State had like the best record in the NBA there, right, for a few weeks.

Go ahead. First team, Giannis, tatum, jokic, Luca Sga. That's probably it, unless durant sneaks in there. Second team. Durant kawhi. I'm going old school with the center guard position. I know we're supposed to just pick five players. I'm not doing that. I'm just telling you now as a voter, I'm still going to use positions. Durant, kawhi, Anthony Davis. Guards are really hard. I put Edwards and mitchell for second team. Third team I'd palo and butler, sabonus, Halliburton and Brunson.

Can you do the third one one more time? I'm just writing it down.

Palo, butler, sabonus, Halliburton and Brunson. Which means on the bubble for all NBA are the following guys. Bam. Booker, curry, fox marketing, who's going to fade because Utah is starting to get a little tanky. LeBron, who's starting to be banged up and I think is going to not make it. Jalen Brown, who's actually been coming on. Embiid, who's not going to make it. Paul George. And then we go into this other group of like Gobert, Harden, Towns, Maxi Dame, Wemby Zion, Ja, Kyrie Triple J, Randall, Chet, Derek White, Jalen Williams, Barnes Ingram, Cade, Franz, Trey, Garland, Ananobi, Siakam, Bridges, Pritchard, Shangoon, Bain, Porzingis, Holiday, Mobley, Gordon, Colby, White and Murray were 60 deep and the 60th guy in that list was Murray, who's 22 a game and is probably going to get traded this summer for three first round picks or two or whatever.

Yeah, I actually don't have anything to add to it other than if you go back through four, you've made the point. All I'd be doing is just repeating it over and over again. Because when you're looking at some of this stuff, you go like, Richard Jefferson was 9th in offensive box score rating in three, four.

I think he was like 22nd in my trade value list that year.

Right? James Posey's top 15. Brad Miller was 14th in this the windshare thing. I mean, if I'm just pulling up some of the stuff, I didn't really want to do points. But yeah, there's good players. You're like, hey, what about Steve Nash? Well, this is pre Phoenix Steve Nash. The list of some of these guys that have some of the best metrics, whether it's James Posey, Kirilenko who was good but was kind of a short lived thing. Brad Miller, Antonio Daniels, Memedo core, nice player, Eric Dampier, Elton brands all over the stat lists. CarLos Boozer, like comparing that group to the names that you just threw, I don't see how there's any comparison other than you might argue the biases of just the recency bias of it all.

Yeah, the four was weird because it had this class of guys coming, right? LeBron, Wade, Amari, Carmelo, Marion Karalenko, these guys that young guys that clearly seem like they had potential. And then you had the guys who were like kind of at the crossroads where you had Pierce, Vince. That was when we were like, what's going on with Vince? Is he just not going to be a guy? Iverson rumors he's going to get traded. Powell, what's happening with him? Does he have it? Marbury, it's like, does this guy, are you just 35 and 47 if he's your best guy, Steve Francis, what is he, arenas, Ray Allen, is he ever going to put it together? Odom. And it was just going through, and then you had those kind of steady dudes like the Ben Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Billips, people like that. But it just felt like from a talent standpoint, you were really only going to be happy as a fan with maybe 40% of the list. Now I look at the talent in that top 60 and you're really nitpicking. If you're like, oh, I don't know, Desmond Bain, he's got to stay healthy.

Like, you're saying stuff like that. These guys are all really good. And then for Wemby to just be a bubble guy when he's been such a revelation. The last month I thought Zach Lowe did a good job on Friday. Just like, Wemby's here. What do we do? What if you're the, like, this is no longer a three year plan. You have all these to, you need a plan for next year. Like, why would you waste this?

Do you?

I think you need better. Let's hear it. Let's hear this ag.

I couldn't believe some of the wemby stuff from this. Like, he really wants to win now. Okay, well, cool. You're on a team that had the number one pick. That means they sucked. Unless it was part of some of the transaction where you lucked out with the number one want. What are you going to do? You, you're going to ask out if I was a Spurs fan? I'm like, are you guys serious? We didn't even make it a full season and we're going to start talking about.

Oh, I wasn't even talking about the Wemby side of it. I was talking about the spurs side of it.

I see what you're saying. I was focusing on the media stuff from this. You're right. Okay. That was the story that I was thinking of because you brought up Zach. You're right. The Zach part of this, meaning the spurs part of this, is that it's not a three year Runway of like, let's just. Because he's so good already. But I don't mean, here's what I would ask anybody that presents this kind of stuff. Wemby being this good and having the wiring that you want for what is now going to be his responsibility to carry this franchise.

Yeah.

If you're running the spurs, are you going? The joke I always make is like when the player gets mad and it's like as if the entire front office is sitting around, be like, what do you want to do today? Be like, I don't know, dude.

Yeah, let's make the franchise upset.

Yeah, what do you want to do? And then they show up to work the next day after the player complains. Be like, hey, you know what? Let's try to be better starting today. So I don't think the spurs you could talk about like, all right, you got to maybe bring in a veter a little bit early, maybe. Okay. But it's also the spurs, too. And I think I trust them enough that they're going to make the moves that are presented to them that make sense for them. As opposed to, why do you trust the spurs?

Are you trusting past performance from like the mid 2010s? What have they done in the last five years that make you feel like you should trust the Spurs?

I guess bottomed out after what usually teams do after a really long sustained run, except their sustained run was like 16 years, 17 years.

This seems like the right spot for us to apologize to Kelden Johnson for not including him in the all disappointment all stars.

Can we make sure the breakout video isn't what's going on with Kelden Johnson's ass? He looked thick in person.

Well, sometimes when you sign a contract, what's interesting about comparing the 20 years apart is how LeBron was just coming off his rookie year, but we all saw enough in the rookie year. We're like, oh, God, this guy. This is going to be really special. It was just kind of, no question. Same thing for Wemby. And they're at the beginning of this rocket ship, but there's all these other great players around them, like LeBron had Wade and Carmelo, who I think we were probably higher on in four than maybe where we landed, even though Carmelo.

Had a good career.

But I just thought Carmelo was going to be like basically what Durant did, where he's just going to be 28 to 30 a game for 15 years. And it wasn't quite that.

Let me get back to your original point, because I derailed. Yeah, I screwed it up there because I interpreted what you were talking about as the media stuff that was happening.

Like speculative people, like the tension, even though it turned out to be misguided.

What would you do, what would you do now differently after this Wembyama season in comparison to, say, wemby being, you know, I'm not sure who he's going to be. If there wasn't a certainty that we feel like we have after his rookie year, what would you. So what changes maybe is the better question.

All right, so we're running San Antonio. They put us in charge. The first thing I would want to do is I would want to go back in history and see how other teams handled the same situation. Because if you remember, like Cleveland, they kind of panicked pretty quickly. They thought they were further along than maybe they were, and all of a sudden they were in the chasing the assets thing and spending a ton of money. And that's what led to Larry Hughes. They screwed up the boozer situation.

He left that really Ben Wallace Serbiac deal.

Yeah, they started chasing it. They had Shaq for a year, and by 2009 they were in a lot of trouble. And it was like the college kid who kept putting stuff on his credit card, and then it eventually backfired, but the boozer thing really fucked them. So I wonder if that hadn't happened, does it play out a little differently with him? Kobe was in a different situation because he was with.

It was. It was also just different because we weren't ready for a perimeter player straight out of high school to become what he was, which, I know it sounds stupid, but that's just how it worked in the sports world, whether it was Garnett coming out and people being offended by him even doing it. Then once Kobe did, it was like, who this high school guard thinks he's going to do this?

Take shots and playoff games? Yeah, crunch time. Who is he?

It's just the way it worked, and everybody was wrong, so keep going.

I'll tell you, here's a good model. I just thought of this. So Wade incredibly promising rookie year, and then they said, fuck it. And they went all in and got Shaq. And if you look back, that trade seemed like a no brainer for them. But it wasn't a no brainer at the time because Shaq, people thought he was out of shape. People thought he was past his prime.

You had to give him the extension, too, that the Lakers didn't want to give him.

Yeah, they gave up Odom and they gave up Butler in that trade. And both of those guys were in like the top 30 of my trade value. I think they were able to dump the Brian grant contract in it. I think they gave up a pick, but that trade wasn't a no brainer. Now it seems like a no brainer, but the reason they did it was they were like, we want to be good right now because we have Dwayne Wade and we think he's special and that next year he got hurt in the playoffs. I still think they would have made the playoffs or the finals if he didn't get hurt. Remember that against the Pistons? He got hurt, like, midway through that series. I thought they were ready to make it that year. So maybe that's the model. I mean, maybe they should look at how Miami handled that Wade situation. Be like, hey, could we be good right away? I would not. Just like, oh, we're going to do the presty thing. We're going to stockpile picks, build slow, because one thing, they're going to have a high pick this year, but the draft isn't very good, right?

So one of the questions is, if you're them, let's say you're in the top five, do you want to draft a guy with potential and a higher ceiling, or do you want to draft a guy who's a little further along, a little more proven? Do you want to hit a double or you want to hit a home run?

I want to hit home runs. I'm not going to. Like, one of the dumbest draft arguments ever was when Jordan was still with the Wizards. And they're like, they're going to take Shane Badier because he's ready to plug in right now. And you're like, no, you're not. You're not taking Shane Baddier, number one. I mean, this is stuff that was actually proposed going back now, what, 25 years? This isn't even me in the media, just an annoyed sports fan being like, that's so fucking stupid. As I would read it going, but there was people that do what we do now, then making the argument that that's the thing that made the most sense. And that's not even a double man for a number one pick. That's a single. So I don't think the spurs would necessarily do that kind of thing. And by the way, back to the Cavs thing, I know I've said this before, but part of the pressure of trying to make sure that LeBron knew that they were committed, that actually influenced them to make a lot of those trades that actually were just more expensive with not really much upgrade whatsoever.

Well, he had that one extension coming in six or seven, right? So they had to.

We all should have seen the writing on the wall when it's like, wait, all of these guys did this deal collectively?

Like, they all did them shorter, except Carmelo.

Yeah, that's right.

Carmelo was the one that he did the extra year, and I think he didn't get the memo. Maybe he didn't look at his text that day when they were like, here's the plan, go to 2006 version of WhatsApp.

But no, if I go back at these cleats, I've done this before with greater depth. But when they had the Larry Hughes deal, by the way, when they signed.

Larry Hughes, I like that move for them because Larry Hughes was good.

That was another guy.

I don't really know what happened to him after he got the last contract, but he was having a good moments on the Wizards.

I guess I would just tell you, like, go through all those Cleveland years when they're desperate to try to make it work, after it was clear a couple years in for LeBron, and when you say, well, definitely don't do that, it's like, well, they were doing it because they were scared that he was going to think that they weren't invested, and Gilbert didn't care. He would always take on more money in these deals, but it never allowed him the freedom for what Miami was able to put together by having all that cap space because they were in such a rush with it all now, Wemunyama would have to be so good. I don't really like planning for cap space. I think it's probably the worst of the three strategies. Trades being the best, draft being the second best, which is its own problem, and then free agency just waiting around for free. It's. It's pretty stupid. So if a trade presents itself that makes sense, where you feel like you're raising the level, you're.

I love the trey young idea for them. I've said that over and over again, and I just like, why?

Why do you love that.

I just like the combo. I think it would be super fun to watch. I don't think they're going to win a title with Yama the next three years, but they could be fun to watch and competitive. And I just like the combo. He needs somebody that, the same way Jokic looks out for Gordon, he needs the guard version of that. Somebody who's like, this is my toy, that I'm just. This guy's seven foot five and he's around the rim, and he's unbelievable. An athlete. I'm just going to get him baskets. And if they don't find that person next year, maybe it's not Trey or maybe it's somebody else, but that's what they need. It's not about power forward. They need a guard who knows what the fuck he's doing. If I were them, I would overpay for any guard. Like Garland. Like, fuck it. What's your price for Garland? We're not trading him. Well, everyone has a price. What's your price? What do you want for him? Well, no, we're not trading him. All right, what if it's four first round picks and two swaps? Like, just fucking go for it. Get somebody who's like a real guy.

The lobs would be great. And you could also argue that Trey's deficiencies on defense, like, Maybeama's able to cover those up, even though that's ruling out a lot of the space on the floor that Weimanyama is not going to show all the way to the three point line over and over and over again. But I just think it'd be frustrating for women. Yama, who's going to be the face of this franchise, be like, okay, what play is this? And be like, all right, this is the play where I dribble the ball until 4 seconds up in the shot clock. And then at this point, I need you to stop looking at me and then turn around to see if you can get the rebound right.

AK the 2004 Paul Pierce.

I don't want to do that to Victor.

Last thing on that 2004 versus 2023 thing, looking at the list of guys, one of the things that really jumped out to me was the creative guards that we have now versus what we had in four. I remember having a joke that Jason Kidd should just have to play 48 minutes in the All Star game because we had so few point guards. But even you look at the guards that during that stretch, that was the Marbury and Francis, that era, that was Iverson as a point guard, but he wasn't really a point guard. He was a shooting guard. That was Billups who was sort of a point guard, but not really. It was really Steve Nash and kid were the only two pure Tony Parker who was a scoring point guard. Now we have all these guys who know just sick creators and in some cases, like Garland doesn't even have the ball enough on Cleveland. I think that guy could be like Steve Nashish on the right team, but we're not going to see it. I'm super happy with the point guard situation.

Yeah. And when I was looking at that list from 20 years ago, too, like, Bibby's kind of the early version of what we're talking about now because Bibby still had a couple more good years in him and then it was over.

But it's coming to an end pretty soon.

Yeah, he was kind of one of those like, wait, is he a point guard? We used to get mad about it. What is he?

I used to have a zero guard. Baron Davis was like that, too. It's like he's not.

Baron's perfect for what you're.

What is he? Yeah, Marbury was another one. It's like these are guys that aren't going into games thinking, all right, I got to take care of my guys. I got to make sure I get Marbury going right away.

Marbury would have those stat lines where you go, wait, can I say that he's doing his own thing when he had another 35 and eleven? Yeah, but then I'm sure if you look back at some of the other.

Stuff, you just realize, quick tank of Palooza 2024 update. We're taping this before some of the games today, but Washington to Detroit, they're going to be in a battle for tape for number one. San Antonio has a pretty good grasp on three and Charlote's four, two wins behind them and Portland is two wins behind them. So that's like our top five. And then we have Memphis and Toronto and Brooklyn kind of lurking the big tank of Palooza storylines. What do the spurs do about Wemby if they decide, you know, we got to make sure we get a top three pick? Do they be like, hey, can you take a little extra time with that ankle sprain? Do they start sitting him because he's so good he can fuck up two wins near the end of the season and all of a sudden they fall from three to five. The biggest storyline is Toronto to me because Toronto gave up that top six protected pick for Pearl and they're seven right now. And that could be a team where guys just start going away for the season pretty soon. But it's like Scotty Burns. We found some tendonitis.

Hey, quickly, we're a little worried about your knee. You're going to have to sit down for a little bit. But I think getting the 7th pick and then giving that to San Antonio is a disaster. So if I were them, I might start thinking, know a version of what Dallas did last then and they had a day off.

I mean, they lost important last night in overtime and it didn't even feel like a fluke.

Right. Brooklyn does not have a pick and right now they're 8th. So they're going to be like, what are they? They're going to be guns blazing going for it. And then Utah, who's two and eight in their last ten at 28 wins, who traded a couple of their glue guys, they seem pretty interested in maybe going backwards one more time here, which we were, what were we talking three weeks ago? We could never figure out what Danny wants to do. It seems like the zag, the unexpected Danny zag this time is let's actually suck. Are we cool with that?

Yeah, because even if we're sitting here and been talking about it now, people have been pointing to the 24 draft for a couple of years going, hey, by the way, when 24 comes up, this is going to be really bad. I've not started what I do for it, but I would say that guys still would rather have the 6th pick than the like no front office is going to ah, this draft sucks. Just let's make sure Colin Sexton and Larry are closing games all the, they're definitely, there are some younger guys on Utah too where you can get these guys some minutes. I mean, county went off again, which I think know for a rookie, I don't really care about the inefficiency or any of this stuff, but are you capable of having some moments where it really looks like you're taking over offensively and who knows, like the Conte George Redraft could be two years from now where you're, wow, like this guy, both.

Him and Jaden Ivy have moments. Perfect. Where you go, okay, something's there.

That's Ivy point.

Something's going on.

I won't use this now because we were talking about it this morning with the different stuff we want to do. But I do want to take the bottom teams. Do like an aggressive bottom segment for the pod where you look at it and you go, all right, would you rather be Houston or would you rather be San Antonio because Houston's depth. Houston is way up there for me on league pass rankings now. Okay? Especially with the Kim Whitmore piece of this taken over. And I wish Tari Eason wasn't hurt because I felt like he just.

I know that was such a bummer.

He just gets in the game and you're like, I don't know what's going to happen, but he's going to impact it. And Thompson has those moments. And I'd say even Jalen Green's had a couple just nice games recently.

I mean, he had probably the best dunk of the year. I don't know.

How about that Brandon Boston one today against Giannis and was that was up?

I'm with you on Houston. I don't know what they are, but it seems like they all respect eme. I don't think they totally know who their best five guys are, but there's something, and I like, I I'm sure.

Part of it's okay if you're developing something, how come you bring in Brooks and Van Vliet to take all these shots? But it's like, okay. But last year we got annoyed when Jalen Green and Kevin Porter Jr. Were just going back and forth and taking a million. You know, you can't have it both ways. So when I look at Houston, I look at depth and we haven't even mentioned the best player out of all of them. And that's, you know, who knows what he's capable of doing because he's just incredible how smart he is, all of the stuff, how creative he know and who cares where he's at defensively now? Because there was a time where it felt like Jokic might be the problem defensively for Denver, like really making sure they could go all the way. And that's not even anything we even talk about anymore. So when I look at created, I.

Think you created a new segment, either or. So would you rather be Houston or San Antonio?

The easy answer is just because basketball is about having the guy and if you have a chance of having the guy, then the conversation's over. But the depth of Houston even allows me to ask, so I don't want to do because I have like four of them of the bad teams, we'll just go, would you rather be this team or that team? Which I think we already gave away the Houston San Antonio one.

I'd rather be San Antonio because of Wemby, obviously.

Yes.

But I did pause, which would have been inconceivable. Right. Also, the Thompsons are another one like we were talking about Ivy and Kanthi Jordan.

Ivy's the perfect example of it.

Thompsons are like, wait, what's this guy? What just happened because you didn't like Ivy?

And his last tournament I did was bad. And I was like, look, I'm just telling. Well, but I might not be right, but I'm just saying physically, some of the stuff he does, he's fast, is very special and he's more of a basketball player than I would say even the Thompsons are, even though you might argue Thompson's physically are like just slight tick above.

People can't stay in front of him now, maybe they can with the new rules, but Ivy, when he wants to go by you, he's going by you. That's it. He doesn't really know what he's going to do when he goes by you, but he's going to go by you. He's one of those guys with wiseman.

Detroit's got five guys I'm still excited about.

I kind of like.

Just that motherfucker hasn't stopped shooting.

I know he's going for it. I think what's been fun about the tank of Palooza this year is I like watching every team except like I'm surprised by the league pass choices because usually those early games and the east always has more bad teams than the west. And those early games that come on at four, you're ah, this team against this team, this sucks. But I don't mind watching Charlote. I bet on them a bunch of times.

I overdid it with Charlote in that bad coast window. So like I had to wean myself off of it a bit because there was about a two or three year stretch where I was like 04:00 guess we're starting a day with Charlote again. And after the Wizards live game against Denver, I was like, we're don't. Although I'd say there's some kispert numbers in there that you might get excited about. I think Denny Avdia Live has a different experience.

I like both of those guys. Both those guys are going to be on a good team at some point in their lives, don't you think?

They're going to be in the league a long time?

They will be on a contending team out there in a big playoff game. You're like, oh, remember when that guy was on the Wizards and they went ten and 65, whatever they did. I like all the crappy teams except for Washington. I can't watch them. Even Memphis some of their young guys are like fun to watch.

Memphis brings it, man.

Yeah.

Now when you're watching Memphis, you got to be connected to the Internet because there's a couple of times there you're like, wait, what's going on here?

Yeah, who's that guy? Yeah, Chicago had one the other day, like two weeks ago. The white guy who's been playing a lot. And I was like, I don't know who that is. Is that Andres Dociotti? Is he back? It was like an overtime game. He played like 30 minutes. I'd never heard of him.

No, he's only been with him like six games or something like that. Eight games. Is it Bidham?

Yeah.

Turkish rookie, 24.

Crunch time.

Now there's a huge guy on Memphis. And I can't believe I let this go because I was like, wait, what's.

Going on with him? You know what's interesting about Houston, by the way?

No. Well, yes, I do. Jemison just out there beasting on people. Matt hurt out there eight games into his career was like, green light. I had a green light out the womb.

Brooklyn's got Houston's. Brooklyn is sending Houston their unprotected pick, which we've discussed in the past. But Houston has all these assets. Plus probably not making the playoffs are.

Going the other way. That's another thing. There's like this three team parlay here happening where everybody's just going to keep.

Playing hard because their pick to OKC. Yeah, but they're getting Brooklyn's pick, which is going to be the best of all the let's. Before we go to break, let's play this out. You're running the spurs and I call you and I say, hey, I think we're going to trade Lamello. You guys interested? I am. Okay.

I am. I'm not. You know, what's your, what are you. What are you thinking here?

Couldn't help but notice you have two of the top eight picks thanks to the Yakub Pearl deal and your own first. Yeah, we'll take back Keldon Johnson. Do you think. Has he tried gluten free Lasagna?

Now, see, this might turn into something. It could have been just a bad alternate uniform. I just thought he looked a little thicker in person. I don't know.

Lamello. How many picks for Lamello?

It starts at three, but then it.

Depends on like, to me it's two and a half.

I don't think. Well, if you want to tell me because of the injury history, that's fine.

But injury history the other problem is.

That you're Charlote and there's nothing exciting about your basketball team and you have somebody that is that exciting. This is basically the Trey young argument from Atlanta in Charlote. So I don't know if they would do it because he's such a huge star for that fan base in a place that's huge star.

That's done nothing. I mean, to me, if I was a Hornets fan, I would be so much more excited about Brandon Miller than I was about Lamello. Brandon Miller is like a real guy. Kudos to Koc. He crushed that one. I think that guy's going to be a potential all NBA guy someday. I'm really impressed by him. That kind of carries himself, too. I think he's got it real quick, though.

Just imagine if this were a better draft. Like if we thought like, man, this draft. And who knows with the way that everybody talks about drafts and be like, hey, remember, everybody thought 24 was going to be terrible. And then three years later you're like, look at all these guys. I think the problem is for this draft in particular, if you do look at the top guys, you're like, I got to pick one of these guys number one because we've been so spoiled through the last few years. But the thunder having if this were a better draft and the Thunder having two lottery picks to go with whatever they do this year in the playoffs, and who knows, maybe presto. Just nail it with one of the two and you'll go, I can't believe that team got somebody in the lottery.

Well, that leads us perfectly to the retradables. 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. So Joe Smith you're talking about. Oh, we ended up with the number one pick and we didn't even maybe get somebody who was awesome. Joe Smith, number one pick in 1995. The guys that went after him, Garnett went after him, Rashid Wallace, Stackhouse. There were guys, but Joe Smith seemed like the safest bet. He was a good college player. 2010 Guy in Maryland ended up playing for twelve teams and was involved in six trades that I want to rip through really quickly. But the one we're going to talk about is the three trade, which was Joe Smith and Anthony Peeler from Minnesota to Philly and Sam Cassell and urban Johnson going to Minnesota.

And at the time Sam had bounced around a little bit, but everybody liked him. But it was always like, oh, we can get that guy for Sam Cassell done. And he just started kind of moving around. He was a little bit older, but he had the Houston Rockets pedigree. And this trade led to Kevin Garnett's one great Timberwolf season where I thought they had a legitimate chance to beat the Lakers. I think Sam Cassell got hurt in that Lakers series. I think they would have beaten them if he wasn't that. It's kind of crazy to think that's all they had to give up for Sam Cassell.

Probably worth letting the younger guys know that it's Irvin Johnson from New Orleans.

Good point. This was center Irvin Johnson. This was Milwaukee Bucks 2001 eastern finals on that team that got robbed against the Sixers when they had over 100 more fouls than Philly. That series that urban Johnson. Can I read you some of the Joe Smith trades, though?

I want to hear leave out any make up a few.

1998 Golden State Philly, Joe Smith and Brian Shaw for Clarence Witherspoon and Jim Jackson. A two for two. Three. The one I mentioned. Six. Milwaukee and Denver traded straight up for Ruben Patterson. Seven. Iverson goes to Denver. Coming back Andre Miller, Joe Smith and picks 2008. The trade we mentioned earlier in the podcast, Ben Wallace, who is not Ben Wallace anymore. Joe Smith, who was not Joe Smith anymore. Wally Zerbiak, who is not Wally Zerbiak anymore. And Delante west to Cleveland for Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Iran Newbull and Daniel Marshall. Eight for eight. I think there might have even been more people in that. And then in 2008, he was in a three team trade that landed Mo Williams in Cleveland. Damon Jones went somewhere and Joe Smith went somewhere. So he was in six trades that were all kind of meaningful except for the Ruben Patterson one. But the cassell one was the one that mattered, I think, the most. Out of all those trades. Iverson to Denver was fun for a year and a half.

Yeah, it was over pretty quick.

Yeah.

Because it was, oh, you're just going to go now, and then I'm going to go, and then you're going to go, and then I'm going to go.

The banjos.

It felt like Philly was more motivated to make sure he wasn't in the east on top everything else, because remember that summer there was a ton of smoke with the Celtics. Iverson thing was a fire.

They were like, here's Al Jefferson and multiple first round picks for Iverson.

I think there was a point. I don't know if Ange would say that it was done done, because it's never done unless it's done. And then it wasn't. But it felt like there was a couple of days there where it was like, oh, this is actually going to happen. But that the front office was like, we just can't have Iverson in the Celtics jersey. Like, even if we get people back, we like, we can't have that happen. You know what I love about the Garnett part of this, though, is that somebody that I think is the ultimate winner was considered a loser. And the difference of playoff results where I can sound like I'm not being consistent, where I'm like, I like this player, but he doesn't have the playoff success, or I don't like this player and look at all of his playoff failures, and it's like, wait a minute. It's like, yeah, but I'm not. I'm also going on every other thing that I saw. And yet Garnett labeled with this when then his career becomes like, you can't fathom watching him in the second act of his career going, imagine when people thought this guy led to losing basketball games.

His team sucked and he had the worst luck. I don't know how many columns I wrote about it, but even like that Joe Smith, when they legally, ironically, Joe Smith, they legally signed Joe Smith's on fire today. Big Joe Smith fought big usage for him. Remember, they lost three first round picks.

Because they had paperwork on it.

It's just brutal. And then the Serbiac thing was always weird. Anyway, that's it for the retradables. Thanks again to workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR rockstar with workday. To learn more, visit workday.com. All right, coming back. So there was a LeBron. He wants a max deal, three more years, big salary, and that became a news story over the course of the week, and it seems like it's going to happen. There was a picture of him with Genie Bus. I just want to talk this out whether it makes sense if you're the Lakers, to pay LeBron three years, basically a max deal, are you doing that because he's a star, because you value him as a Laker? Are you doing it because you actually think this is a way to win another title? What are the motivations? I mean, obviously you're going to talk yourself into if we have him and Davis and we can fit some other and make one more trade and we have three first round picks to trade, I'm going to go through some of the evidence in a second that that might be a mistake, but what is the goal of one more max for him if you're the Lakers, in your opinion?

I've said this before, but I imagine it's close to their rationale with the Kobe deal. When he had the torn Achilles, they gave him the two year extension. They didn't want him to become a free agent. That extension was 48 and a half million over the next two. It was an absurd number. Now, technically, it was a bit of a pay cut, but the reason it was absurd is they're like, wait, what are you doing? And their talking point, which, again, I think I just talked about this last week, was we want stars to know they're taken care of with the Los Angeles Lakers. It was a very bus driven thing and that was their whole point. And that the other stars will know that if you come here, we'll take care of you. So I guess we're going to put that thing to the test ten years later because that deal doesn't make any sense. You can be the biggest LeBron fan in the world. It doesn't make any sense. I do wonder if there's a bit of the Boris leaking the number thing where Boris is like, hey, Bryce Harper is going to be a half a billion dollar player.

And then you get him for 330,000,000. You're like, man, what a steal. We lucked out. So it'd be smarter, rich Paul or LeBron to be like, yeah, we're looking for 160. That's what we're looking for. That could be what you're looking for. But the Lakers would be like, who are we bidding against? Like, you sign them with Utah, you can sign with Detroit this year. Like, are you going to go to any of those teams cap space? You're not going to go to any of those places. You clearly love LA and what LA and retiring a laker will mean to you to continue to be out here, which is a real thing. And yeah, sure, you could leave and then always come back. And then we rekindle this whole thing. But as great as he is and as far as he's gone, beyond what we could ever expect for somebody his age, that contract makes absolutely no sense. So I don't even know if I believe that 160 is actually in play or if it just got Boris out.

So I'm glad you brought up the Kobe thing because his rationale at the time for doing that, which killed their cap and made it basically impossible for them to win a title, was he was like, why should I take a pay cut? I've been selling out this building for most of the century and I'm going to make as much money as I can make, and it's up to them to put a good team around me. It's not my job. That's their job. My job is to get paid the most and to do really well. I guess the difference in this case with LeBron is if he wants to win another title and he takes like 50 million a year, when Davis is making 50 million a year, it basically means they're not going to win another title and he's going to be stuck at five or four and that's it. Here's some numbers this season in the last two, what do you think their record is when LeBron plays this season? In the last two, would you say 500? Way over 500. Below 500. I would say it's right around 585 and 82. His on off net this year, 47th out of 93 for anyone playing over 30 plus minutes a game.

They're plus 2.2 when he plays. Their best lineup with him is LeBron, Ad, Reeves, Dlo and Rui plus 3.5. LeBron, Ad, Reeves, Dlo, Prince -4.7 the big question for me that I might be trying.

That might be a prince thing. It might be a prince, although he's been better the last couple.

The big question for me is if LeBron wants this contract again and I have him and ad because they just signed him new extension. So those are my two expensive guys. I'm paying 100 million plus a year for those guys with salary cap, second apron, all this stuff, do I actually have a chance to contend for the title if those are my two best guys? Last year, you would have said yes. This year. So their offensive rating this year is 17th in the league last year, 19th year before, 22nd year before 24th, 2020, 11th. They've been a below the curve offense with LeBron and with Davis for an entire presidential term now. And I was looking back at some of the like Kobe's last two Laker years after the Achilles, 24th in offense, 29th in offense. MJ's two Wizards years, they were 15th and 17th in offense. This is offensive rating. Kobe in 20, 12, 13. His last two really good Laker years, he was 10th and 8th. So the question for me Rosalo is if you're giving LeBron this contract, you're basically saying he's Tom Brady. The age, none of this applies. He's superhuman.

He's going to keep going into his mid forty s. The difference? Brady, when he was on the Pats, 2016 2nd in DBOA offense 2017 1st 2018 5th 2019 last patch year 11th 2020 on Tampa 3rd 2021 1st 2022 18th his first bad year. Brady was always impacting his offense as a top five offense, really all the way through until he hit 45 years old. And you can't say the same about LeBron. So the question is why? Because his stats are still the same. The eye test, he still looks good. Why? So it's everyone else's fault. But who are you trying to get? If I'm already paying 110,000,000 to two guys, who do they expect to get as royal guys? Because Dealo is a pretty good player, right? He's a good offensive player, I think for that position, for making 17 million a year. Reeves is a pretty good offensive player. Rui is a pretty good six foot ten, three point guy who can guard people. Their team's not that bad, and they're a 500 team.

Well, they've been better lately, so maybe there's that. This stretch where they don't leave California, where they're playing teams all above 500, was kind of like, well, what's going to happen here? But there was always a break in between the games. So you kind of felt like coming out of this. There's reasons why it should be a challenge, there's reasons why it isn't. But they've been better. Look, right? Would you agree with me? Would they been beating better teams? I mean, the D'Angelo Russell part of this is remarkable because he's somebody who went from, hey, remember when he got his contract last year and it was 17.3, but then there was a player option on the big trade, flashing trade sign next to it because we figured, hey, if we trade you, this will give you the protection because it felt like even that number was really high. He has been incredible. I would say offensively, I'm always going to be worried about him just falling asleep defensively, even in the biggest, better.

Defensively than I think he's been in years past.

Okay, maybe. But he's offensive, trying offensively, what he's done, what he did the other night against Milwaukee, I mean, it's just all time stuff. So the funny part was when you heard about DeAngelo Russell's name mentioned in trade conversation, which it certainly was. I mean, they would have traded him if they got something back they, like. The other team's hang up was like, well, he's going to pick up his $18.7 million player option and we don't want to trade for him. Minnesota couldn't wait to get him out of there. It doesn't seem like he lasts anywhere very long. So maybe it's all new and it's all better after these two months. I obviously don't believe that, but I'm not going to say that he hasn't been great when he's been great. But the fucked up part of it is now he actually might opt out of this thing, right, because another team.

Try to trade him for two months.

Yeah, maybe. Or likely he's going to opt out because he knows what's out there, not because of his feelings being hurt. Despite what he had said recently about it being public humiliation for it all. Your greater point is the right point, though. What are you actually signing up for if you're just running it back one more time? Because you're not going to have a ton of freedom. And Kobe, it was weird going back to those Kobe years because if you look at the stats, they're terrible. He just took a ton of shots. He was below 30% from three the last year. He wasn't passing it to anybody, and it was just kind of a big farewell. And I think there were Laker fans that care more about Kobe than they ever cared about the Lakers. So I think everybody was kind of cool with it out here.

Yeah, it was like, last chance to see Kobe. Yeah, he's going to put up shots. We don't care. We win.

Good for you. But you remember one of the talking points in the media to that was that because Kobe. Right, because it's Kobe. It's like, he's not going to settle for anything less than a championship. It's like, man, I think he actually took the most money he could knowing that it's going to be really hard. And I'm not saying anybody should be taking pay.

Kobe was like, I won five. I'm good. Cut me some checks because I'm going to retire in two years. But that's not how it was talked about.

It was like as if it's almost like the Yama stuff you were talk about earlier, that Kobe's standard was so extreme and his work ethic and the way he saw things that everybody had to be in on it. And it's like, yeah, actually, the last year especially, it was like, just get some shots up here.

The bigger question to me is, why would a team with LeBron and Davis not be that successful offensively for a four year stretch? I think we have a pretty good sample size now that something about those two, no matter what kind of shooters and people you put around them, it just hasn't really don't. And they've tried every type of player and every type of whatever it would seem like.

I don't think it's been every type of player. I think it's a lot of different looks with limited options because what type.

Of player haven't they had? They've had, like, the Schroeder type, they've had the Caruso type, they've had the Rui type, they've had the prince type.

The really good type, maybe, but that's the thing. Those are nice players, but if you're.

Paying 110,000,000 a year to two guys, you're done. Have trouble?

Yeah, you're done.

Now they gave away all their draft picks for, but they're going to get him back.

That was the whole point of not making a trade now is that maybe that guy's coming with those three picks and they go, okay, we were able to move.

So there was Trey Young buz with them, right? Does Trey Young change this destiny if it's Trey Young, LeBron and Davis? And do you think Trey Young and LeBron would be a good combo? Because I don't. I think Trey Young would drive LeBron crazy.

Peak LeBron, which, let's just say it's like, most of the years. No, I wonder if he'd be like, hey, I'm good with, like, you can take a bunch of shots here in the regular season, I'm not going to care about the scoring numbers for me. And then at least we have another person know. Obviously, everybody knows how I feel about Trey, but, like, come playoff time, I know that guy's ready to.

Right? So that's why he's got to go to the wonder. So I was thinking, because the last couple bird celtic years weren't happy, the MJ wizard stuff. There was a lot of stuff about how hard it was to play with him. Kobe's last few years with the Lakers, same thing. I wonder if somebody becomes so famous as an older, older superstar. This is what Doug Collins always used to say when I did TV with him. He's like, oh, coach, man, you don't want to coach an aging superstar. That's the worst place to be. You don't want to do that. Coach. I wonder if it's just hard to play LeBron for two reasons. One is that he's LeBron. So it's like, all right, there's four minutes left. Well, obviously LeBron has to have the ball. But then the other part is if you're a supporting cast member and it's like, if your team loses, it's your fault. The team wins. It's LeBron's the reason they. And there's. There's some psychology to it. You're playing with this dude that you grew up idolizing, right? You were a young kid. You're like, I can't believe I'm playing with LeBron.

You're not going to stand up to him. So I wonder if it does something with. And it's not just him because it didn't happen with Brady and the Bucks, but football is also different. You need each other. You have to rely.

There's also in and out.

It's like a corporate offense, defense. So I just wonder, I don't know what type of team you would put around LeBron and Davis, I guess, is my point.

Are you suggesting that the offensive numbers are just like. Even though. Because I've talked about this, too. You didn't even have LeBron missed time this year like you normally would, all right? You had ad for all the talk about who they were or weren't last season. Like, ad figuring it out and closing strong was the reason they're even competitive with Denver. That's it. Okay? The RUI trade was nice, and, you know, nice part of it.

Davis was awesome in the playoffs.

Yeah. And especially when you get to go up against Golden State, you're like, oh, wait. This is the whole reason we spent so much time talking about this guy because for a while there, at least, like, when I listen to local radio on Laker stuff, it's like, what can you get for Anthony? This? It's like, well, if you're thinking about trading him, and that means the market couldn't be that great because the guy just couldn't seem like he could stay healthy. And part of me wonders if you play enough games where you are getting beat up physically that you're not as likely to get injured because you're used to taking all these bumps where on the fall ranking of guys going down. I used to be worried about Anthony Davis all the like, he got elbowed like crazy the other night against Giannis on that drive. And look, he looked legitimately hurt and was obviously limited afterwards. Last year, I'd figure okay, what does that mean? Is he going to be out for three weeks?

You spent more time analyzing him, probably.

Than because I've defended him so much. Like, so much. Maybe it's the cowherd dinners, or maybe when I've gone on where he tried to call him Rashid Wallace, and I was like, I think he has the third highest PR in playoff history. So I don't think that that's true. I think that Portland New Orleans series when he was still with the Pelicans and what he did against trailblazers, and that in the hope of could this guy be the best player in the NBA? There's still that Memphis regular season game that I was just so excited about. I've always loved him, but now I'm a little disappointed that there's a limited version of him. But whatever it is, it's still really awesome. And I don't have a good answer for what I think is a really insightful point by you of like, wait, if you're getting this piece of the pie, which is checking the box with ad, and you're getting the back of the baseball card numbers with LeBron that are here, and you feel good about Reeves, the Rui thing works. Granted. They need Vando.

Russell outkicked his coverage.

Russell has been on fire for two months here.

Yeah, almost three. We're heading toward the other problem. I didn't mention this. So one of the things you could say is what LeBron should do is just take a minimum deal and they could spend that money on other players. They're at 141 next year, and that's assuming LeBron takes the player option. I think I have that right. So they got Davis at 43, they have RUi at 17, Reeves at twelve. So that's 72. Vincent and Vanderbilt, that's 21 each. So now they're at 93. There's really no scenario where it could be like, oh, I'll create cap space for us by doing this, because you can't do it. So I don't know. They're kind of stuck with where they are. Right? But on the other hand, you have LeBron James and you have one of the most famous basketball players of all time, and it's like, we won the title in 2020. We're good. We're going to ride this out. We have the chance because we've done it before. Who knows? We might strike oil with a couple of these role players. It's still LeBron names. Maybe we could do it. But I just think the data doesn't back it up.

I wouldn't do it. I don't care. I would just go and, like, you could think, oh, well, you don't own the team or the Laker thing and all that stuff. There's no way I'm going like, hey, this is good. I also think that this price is floated out as a negotiation and that he wouldn't end up making $60 million a year at age 42.

We would have said that with Kobe ten years ago. We would have said, oh, there's no way they're going to pay him 40. And they did. I think Jeannie's kind of. She's, like, weirdly loyal with this stuff.

Yeah, but Kobe was like, 36 and 37. But granted, it was coming off the Achilles. So maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. But the other point of this, too, that I looked at these numbers, do you know where the Lakers are on defense since January 1?

What is it, 25th? Yeah, I mean, I'm on record. I don't love the LeBron, Rui Davis, all three of them at the same time as a possible closing lineup, because I just think there's certain wings that that's like, they just can't guard wings with that. You saw with the Boston, the Christmas game, Tatum and Brown, they had no chance against those guys. So we'll see. It's a fascinating one. I was surprised that that story came out when it did and it was tied to Bronnie and whether he might end up in the draft, all of it. The timing of it was pretty weird. Anyway, all right, we're wrapping up because I want to watch the Oscars.

No, I have one question.

Yeah.

How will you remember the Mac Jones era?

Oh, thank you. It's funny, I was talking to my dad about it today. I think one of the strangest rise and quick falls I can ever remember from a Boston athlete. I was thinking like a guys like Phil Plantar and like, D. Brown his rookie year, when it really seemed like we might have this all NBA guard. He was playing in big moments and playoff games, and he was so exciting. There's been guys that, these flash in the pan guys, and they never went away. But this was the most abrupt, where it's like, this guy went from a playoff quarterback to unplayable in less than two years, right? Yeah.

It was over quick when he was okay that first year, and he was okay. It was just funny because it was like, hey, he's average, slightly above game manager. You know, who was slightly above average? Who used to man these streets back in the day? And then he was second place behind Jamar Chase, an offensive rookie of the year voting.

Nobody thought that Pats team was going to do anything in the first. What were they, eight and two or nine and two or something? And he was good. I feel like the Colts game changed his legacy a little bit for not his legacy how teams played him. They had that. I think it was a night game, and the Colts just stacked the line and were like, we dare you to throw over us. And he couldn't really do it. And then that was. And that's. Every team played them that way. They're like, oh, cool. Their receivers can't get just. We'll just press. But I really feel like that second year, they fucked them. You know, I'm obviously in a very pro Belichick mode these days because of that Apple documentary, but I think this is one of Belichick's massive mistakes, was just not hiring an offensive coordinator and QB coach that could kind of treat Mack like a plant that needed to be watered and needed to be put in the sun and just take care of the asset. And I don't think they took care of the asset at all.

There's no disagreement on taking care of it. It's like, hey, you know what we're going to do to you? We're going to make it even harder. You're going to appreciate this when you're older. It's like, no, can I just have a receiver like all the other rookie quarterbacks on their first contract? And then the Patricia part of it was just indefensible.

I don't know whether money or Belichick was afraid to bring somebody in, but it was just the absolute weirdest, strangest, most inexplicable thing he did when he was the coach. How about.

Does that mean you're like, wait, you had to give up something for him because this got so bad? Like, he was so bad this year. I wonder if he's ruined and he'll never have the same opportunity.

My dad thinks he's ruined, but six round pick, it's like nothing.

Yeah, but I don't even know why I'm giving up a six. I watch 2023. I'll just wait. I got to outbid somebody. Does somebody offer you a 7th? Okay, here's a six.

It's so hard to find a quarterback, though. And there's good history of guys with some pedigree who just completely fell apart and then changed teams and put it back. I mean, Baker got $100 million today.

Yeah, but that's actually really rare. Okay.

What he. Jim Pocket.

Done. Jim Douglas. All right, so 50 years and then. Okay, so I'll give you 40 years.

Try to think. Jim Swrgy, Jim Harbaugh.

It's actually pretty rare. And he was so bad this past year, it kind of surprised me when I do go back and look at his rookie stats, and I personally was kind of like, are you guys all going to like my budies? You guys going to talk yourself into this? Because Brady got off to a slow offensive start, that you have the next Brady because you get a white guy back there?

I was all in. I liked thought.

I'm aware. I'm aware. I remember I listened to the episode after they ran it a million times against Buffalo in the cold, and you were like, I don't think the Bills can recover from this as a franchise. You were ready to close the door. One of my worst teams.

Well, now the Bills are done. What did they win? Never made a super bowl. Maybe. Was I wrong?

Who knows? We need more data.

Yeah, it's too bad. I would love to sliding doors, the Mac thing, and come out of that rookie year, and Belichick's like, Mac, I got you this. I got you this. The other thing that's interesting is I really think he wanted to trade him last year and sign Mayfield. Like, by all accounts, that really does seem like it was one of the breaking points with him and kraft.

I don't know how many there are. Maybe you're right about that. But I was thinking Wickersham reported it.

And Wickersham's pretty dialed in.

Well, then that's all I need to know. Because if Bill were still there, this has Russell Wilson written all over it because he's cheap and he did it somewhere else. And that checks two billboxes. Like, oh, wait, I can prove, because it's all offset language. So you go to Russell Wilson being like, hey, whatever you make from us, you just have to pay them back. So take as little from us as possible.

Keep our team better. I actually think he's a good asset. Wilson.

I don't know. Here's what I would say about the personality part of it, which I've already done, is I going to know what I'm getting? Am I getting a humbled Russell Wilson where it's like, enough of this bullshit, this propaganda, and the whole marketing of you, and you be just a slightly more normal guy, and I don't even know if he's capable of doing. It's not a bet I would want to make. So I kind of want to see it happen for him in Pittsburgh. I kind of want to see it, but I don't think Pittsburgh deserves that. I cannot think of worse personality fit, but just think about that. Can you imagine a worse quarterback personality fit than in Russell Wilson in the city of Pittsburgh?

That'd be like having can't do it.

Kirk Cousins in charge of the freaknick documentary.

That would be was thinking. I was thinking Atlanta made a ton of sense. If they know he might be toast.

By the way, he might be like done.

It looked like he didn't want to get hit anymore was my read after, after watching, especially in the late games because they were on a lot and there weren't a lot of late games, so, and it just seemed like he didn't want to get hit anymore, which happens, but if you're just going to get him for free, I think you got to investigate it.

Because I think there's eight or nine teams. You figure four or five of the eight or nine teams that don't know who their week one starter is.

Yeah, you're right. I want him to go to a team that has a quarterback, but they're not happy about the quarterback, where he can be in like a QB battle like the Giants, where it's like Daniel Jones or Wilson, who's it going to be? And the Giants fans are like, this sucks.

You know what?

How did we get in this?

No, you just hit it. It has to be the Giants because then he can leak stuff into the New York media.

Yeah, every day they're talking about who got more.

Jones, poor guy is going to be miserable. And then it's just going to be, oh yeah, he bought like an incredible apartment.

He bought like a $45 million apartment.

He misses practice helicopter filling in with Kelly Ripa.

He's working his media career already. Yeah, that'd be great. Giants are the best. All right, Rosillo, I will see you next Sunday.

See ya.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rosillo. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerrutti. As always, don't forget you can go to YouTube.com slash bill Simmons for clips and videos from this podcast and from the rewatchables. New rewatchables come on Monday night, risky business and I'll see you on this feed on Tuesday. Wanna see them?

Wanna waste?

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