Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective - What Will Warriors Do With Kuminga? + Concern Level For Knicks & Watch Out For Denver

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN's Vince Goodwill and Bobby Marks to discuss Jonathan Kuminga’s trade demand in Golden State including what the most likely resolution is to this saga. Then, the guys review the Knicks’ current rough patch breaking down if it is temporary or a symptom of a larger issue before diving into some chaotic and some unheard NBA stories. Finally, we talk how Denver has put themselves in a strong position while Jokic has been out.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Hello and welcome to the Whoop Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing on Thursday afternoon, actually late morning here in Los Angeles.

Joining me from across the hall in the studios here at the ESPN's gorgeous Los Angeles Production Center is our man Bobby Marks, who's hanging out with me in LA this week. Hey, Bobby. Hey, Brian. I feel a bit nostalgia being in this. I think I might be the last person who's been in the studio for a long time here. Yeah, we recently, I guess earlier, I guess last. year now, they closed the LA production of Sports Center.

So that's like the old, currently defunct Sports Center, Los Angeles Studio. But it'll always come back. You know, the moment that they decided to close that production, I'm sure, guaranteed that we'd come back to L.A. at some point. joining us from our Detroit Bureau in I always said there's never a better time to be in the Great Lakes than mid-January.

It's Vince Goodwill. That is cute. There's no worse time to be in the Great Lakes right now, Wendy. You guys have L.A. privilege. It was a massive snowstorm in the Great Lakes last night. Unexpected, believe it or not. Aren't those those are the best kind. Love those.

but like aren't like you know you're not you know you're you've got Chicago connections you live there for years like isn't this what the Chicago Bears fans like dream of like I heard it's going to be like one or two degrees for this playoff game this weekend like isn't isn't this what you want to showcase your hearty roots in the in the upper Midwest absolutely not I feel bad for whomever and I may know the person who's going to Chicago to cover the Bears Rams game this weekend and baby I feel bad for her Yeah, you have a close connection there. And I hope you're sending her off with lots of gear. He did gear.

He did get, Wendy. Yeah, no kidding. All right. So I am going to try to maintain my composure for the next five to 12 minutes because Jonathan Cominga demanded a trade today, as reported by Shams, Tarania, and Anthony Slater. If you listen to the podcast, you know that his agent, Aaron Turner, came on with Anthony Slater to discuss Comingas contract situation last fall. It was one of my more remarkable podcasts I've done the last 10 years of the ESPN because we had an active negotiation basically taking place on the podcast, which is unusual. It was, you know, it's something they wanted to do, you know.

And so, Bobby, you've been involved in many negotiations. You've been involved in many trade situations with players. I just want to point out that Jonathan Cominga, regardless of what you think of him as a talent, regardless of what you think of him as how the Warriors have handled him, which we'll get into. He is not played in 13 games. Okay? He could have played in a game about two weeks ago. Steve Kerr announced pregame that because the Warriors were resting players that he was going to play. And then he said his back hurt and he didn't play.

You've heard of quiet quitting. The Warriors and the and Cuminga have quit loudly on each other. And we are talking about a player who is not playing for it. I mean, this is not a comment on him as a person. This is not a comment on his situation. It's not a comment on his talent. We're talking about a player who is not playing on a team that Jimmy Butler says is mediocre. and Steve Kerr says is a fading dynasty, which both people, both comments are accurate, in my opinion.

So in what world is a player demand a public trade in a situation like this, Bobby? And I'm going to try to be quiet now and let your expertise in these situations take over. Well, he could have just let me with my tweet last night at midnight at the Intuit dome when I said, as the clock strikes midnight, Jonathan Camingia now. Well, you weren't helping either with that tweet. Jonathan Caminga is now trade eligible along with 10 other players here. He could have let that just sit. And listen, when he signed the contract in October, after that long holdout or negotiation,

because he was a restricted free agent, we all knew that January 15th was going to be the day that we would be talking about Jonathan Cominga. And as you said, now it becomes public knowledge that he has asked to be traded, a player that started the first 12 games in Golden State and now has been a DNP, a marriage that has been fading for a long time. And as you know, is definitely broken right now. I think it will be interesting. The veterans have said they want resolution.

I think it will be interesting to see. So do I. I think it will be interesting because, listen, teams know that Golden State, they think they have to trade Jonathan Cummina. I think if you're Mike Dunleavy Jr., their GM, you do want to trade Jonathan Camingo, but what is coming in, right? Like, what are the offers that are coming in where you don't have to take back money or where, you know, the goal is to get front court help,

but every, you know, whether it be Sacramento or some of the other team, they all got guards. Like, I don't know how many more guards this Golden State team needs and everything like that. But we have three weeks roughly to the trade deadline here. But I do think it's not something that all of a sudden Mike Dunleavy wakes up this morning, but like, oh, my God, now we got to trade them. They've been lining up scenarios probably since the start of the season, or even when he started when he signed that contract.

Wendy, I feel staying quiet, Vince. I feel conflicted about this in a way. Don't stay quiet because, Wendy, where we have made our. bones in this business being in locker rooms of contentious. Thank God he made the trade demand. Nobody would know possibly know that he wanted to be trained. Not at all. No body language, none of that, right? There's two schools of thought here. And two things can be true that John Kinga is not the greatest fit and has never been the greatest fit in the Golden State Warrior system and maybe hasn't necessarily always tried to be in service of all these other.

guys. You're basically saying, young player, we want you to come in and be in service of Draymond Green on one end, being service of stepping Curry on the other end, and to that end that equals what? That's very difficult in today's NBA where your contract is going to be measured on how you perform individually and tell them to do that. And then you win a championship in your first year. So you're like, okay, I've done things in service. Now it's my time to do that. secondarily, if the organization has long known that this player is not a good fit, it should have never gotten this far, period. It should have never gotten this far.

And teams, and Bobby, you can speak to this. Teams are so afraid of making a mistake. They're so afraid of letting a guy go too soon that they don't want to cut bait before, you know, NFL. NFL will cut you a year before as opposed to a year. and usually that refers to like age and performance, not necessarily fit. But this has been bad fit from the beginning. They should have never drafted his ass to begin with. Like we can just say that.

They should have never drafted them to begin with whether it was the two timelines or not, and they have not wanted to come off of that mistake, whether that's, you know, the owner, whether that's, you know, Bob Myers before and, you know, Mike Dunle-leavy Jr., now, whatever it was. This move should have been made years ago. And now I don't feel bad for. either party because this move has been so long. Y'all ever had a woman quiet quit you?

Y'all are too old to have a woman quiet with you. No, I don't think so, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope not. If the answers no, then if you're not sure, the answer is no. Being quiet, quit ain't fun. They just tell you that. It ain't fun.

I've got some friends where it's happened that I've dealt with tangentially. So, but I got you. I got you, Vince. I'm just saying, let's hit me off off. Let's get me up offline. I'll help you out. Well, doesn't it make, like what meant to your point, like, and I know we play Monday morning quarterback and we look at everything that's happened in Cominga's situation. And I wonder if you gave Mike Donleavy Jr. Truthsherom right now, it's like the whole restricted free agency process here. Now you're, I don't want to say, stuck with a $22 million player. But, and as I said, like what happens if you can't trade them? And you basically, that the situation continues evolves with that locker room. It's almost like, part. Part of you thinks that would you rather just have had him not on the roster this year?

I know you have to, you look at him as a trade asset, and he's restricted, and you can parlay him into something here. But that's going to be the, you know, like on the other end, it's like, well, we would have probably been better of not even just having him on our roster. Yeah, well, I would just say the team that really wanted him was the Sacramento Kings, right? They wanted him in the summer. And, you know, according to this Slater and Schaam's reporting, they still want him now. And the Warriors had a standard that they wanted for the deal and they wouldn't do the deal. There may be another team or two that has interest. But with all due respect to my former colleague here at ESPN, Scott Perry, the kings are not known for being thought leaders.

So, I mean, like, what does it say that, like, people aren't beating down the doors for this guy when he was a restricted free agent? Well, I won't say that's fair. When Scott just got there, you can't put 20 years of Kings ineptitude on one executive. when that mess is a mess. I don't think Kamina necessarily takes a big leap away from the mess, but I don't think he adds to it either. Like they're going to have to, in theory, come up off of Malik Monk. Like, they have a glut of guards as it is.

They aren't the most athletic. You know what I mean? I'm just saying, like, there isn't robust interest in him because if there was, he would have already been traded or signed by somebody else last summer. So you're saying he's a player that's not of value. I'm saying that why? Why has this led to so much consternation?

Like, if he is a player of value, the struggling warriors would be playing him. Listen, I looked at the numbers this morning. They're nine points better when he's not on a floor. I mean, what are we talking about? You know, I mean, like, again, like, Aaron was really great to come on the podcast. It's not personal, okay? I just, I will say this. So every week, I do a Q&A on threads, okay?

This is a, I guess it's a plug. If you want to go over on threads, you can find me, you can send me a message. My colleagues who help me do that, they say to me every single week, guys, for months on end, they get like oodles of questions about Cumminga. Like every week for months, I don't get it. I know the Warriors have a big fan base. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he gets relocated in a year from now. I turn in my All-Star bout and I'm like, Jonathan Cumminga, beautiful story. What am I missing? I mean, he's a fine, he's a fine player. But my God. a question, Wendy, and I don't like to play devil's advocate because the devil doesn't need an

application. Right? All right. That's a nice term phrase, but yes, you do. Thank you. Are we giving, we are turning the warriors into this infallible organization that doesn't make mistakes. And you're saying because, no, no, no, I'm just saying, like the general tone of it, not from you, Wendy, the general tone of it is, man, if you can't fit in there, then it's a problem with you. But there have been players, really good players, who have not fit in there. Like, you remember the Kelly Ubre year where he didn't fit in there? And now, like, granted, it's three or four years later. He's in Philly, a valuable reserve, a valuable player there. Like, I think sometimes we have to take a step back and say, hey, this can be a good player, a productive player, a leading,

not leading player, but a helpful player in the right situation. In this situation with Dremont Green, who can't shoot, and Jimmy Butler, who doesn't shoot isn't going to be conducive to that for this particular player. And it doesn't make the player bad or organization bad. It just means that these two people shouldn't be together. That's all. Fair point. We've done our 12 minutes. I'm prepared to move on. I wish the Warriors, Jonathan Cumminger, his representation, Shams, Slater, the Warriors fans, the citizens of Santa Clara, citizens of Northern California. I wish you the best in this process as it unfolds. Listen, my friend, in about two hours, and the A and a C block, you know, we're, you know,

like, save yourself here. I mean, like, seriously, the A and the C. So, like, you know, you know, this is high-level TV parlance, you know, generally over the course of an hour-long show, there's five blocks, A, B, C, D, you know, high-level stuff there. And, you know, let's pull the curtain back a little bit. When we have a really, interesting topic on MBA today. What we do is, is we have it in the A block and then we, what they call retreat it in the C block. The reason they do this is because even in today's day and age, people tend to come to television shows on linear at the top and the bottom of the hour. And so if it's your big story, you know, you come back to it when you hit about the bottom

of the hour to reengage the audience. And many, many days, like it's good smart business. Jonathan Caminka is getting the A and C treatment today, Bobby. Yes, he is. Hey, he's even getting the trade machine touchscreen treatment, Brian. Well, that is, well, on all honesty, like, I need that. Like, I'm because, you know, I mean, because actually there is some intricacies with that because the warriors are so close to the aprons and they can't take back more money and I want to see where he could go. Like, I think, you know, not to glaze you as they say, but, you know. I'll be watching and learning on that segment.

More Hoop Collective podcast after this. Okay. Speaking of Northern California, Vince, the New York Knicks are in Northern California, and they had a very unpleasant visit to Sacramento on Wednesday. I do not know how tonight's game, or they are playing the aforementioned Golden State Warriors, you know, a lot of times we're a little bit worried. We're doing this podcast earlier in the day,

and we're a little bit worried about like, boy, what if we do something and then, you know, trust me, we jinx the hell out of everybody all the time anyway. But we do pay attention to what we're going to talk about, knowing teams are going to play tonight. I don't think Kaming is going to play. So I don't think we need to worry about that. But, you know, the Knicks are playing in Golden State tonight, and it is possible that the Knicks look spectacular and have a brilliant game. So let's acknowledge that. Having said that, Vince, the Knicks are on a skid right now. six of their last 10 games.

They have not really played very well since they won the Cup, which the Cup is only three years old, but we are now seeing a bit of a trend where the team that wins the Cup has a lagg after it. Certainly it happened to the Lakers last year, happened to the Bucks last year, although I think the Bucks had some roster challenges, but it's definitely happened to the Knicks now.

More to the point, Jalen Brunson turned his ankle. We don't have an update just yet because it's early in the day out in the West Coast here. It's the same ankle that he's had injuries with the last couple of years, including earlier this year. So it's a little bit worrying about that. But, you know, it's not going to be a long-term injury. But regardless of that, like the Knicks are not performing well.

And they had just gotten to a place where Jim Dolan had come out and said publicly, I think we win the championship. And not that I think it has anything to do with it, but the point is that internally the Knicks were feeling good about themselves. As somebody who pays close attention to them, what is your diagnosis as to what's going on with this team? I think zooming all the way out beyond the obvious stuff. They look slow.

They don't look quick. Like this game has played so much faster than what it was. And I wonder to some degree, let's say the game is past them by like they're a bunch of 35-year-olds, but they don't have the fresh legs, so to speak. Like when Josh Hart was out for those eight games, it just showed you the importance of, they went three and five. They weren't out rebounding teams.

You had to play Towns and Mitch Robinson together, which is something that they clearly do not want to do, even though they started off the year wanting to do that. Towns is going off saying, you know, I got to make the big sacrifice and everything else. Like, that's what Mike has told me from the beginning. They lose by 30 the night that they play Detroit in Detroit, when Jim Dolan says,

we're going to get to the finals and we should win it and all this other nonsense. And I look at this, they're landlocked, Bobby. Like there were 200K below the apron. Listen, there are 148,000 below the second apron. They can't sign a 15th player until April 2nd. And this is kind of who they are right now. And my thing is, towns had a great season last year, a great season when people thought that he was going to kind of struggle with the glare of the New York stage.

And he didn't get his extension before this season. His numbers have gone down all across the board so far this season. season. He just turned 30. He does have the history of injuries. I think his birthday was in November, right? I was just, I was just trying to have some fun. Just trying to lighten the loose. Oh, sorry. Sorry, my bad. But no, and the fact that they are depending on Mitchell Robinson and saying, man, we got to keep you upright for the playoffs because when you play, man, you save with so many possessions on offense, you're in the clips on defense. man, this just doesn't feel good right now. But they spend a lot of time on the road. Jalen Brunton is hurt.

He always comes back. Like, this could just be a bump in the road, but I don't think this is something that you should ignore right now, especially when that play with Towns Loathing and didn't come back to the play, and Mike Brown was really upset and caught a timeout. And you got waxed by the Kings on Mike Brown's comeback game. You're supposed to win one for the coach. They were there for two days, you know.

And I think they actually stayed in a hotel in Sacramento, which, by the way, one of the weirder stories of the year so far. Yeah, we need an investigation into that rocket situation. Yeah, so the rockets who are struggling. And again, I would like to comment about the rockets, but they are playing Oklahoma City tonight. And at some point, we're going to get some rockets proper content. But I am concerned that I will say things about them and then they will beat the thunder, even though the thunder are back on their feet. But the Rockets came to Sacramento on the second night of a back-to-back earlier this week. And Mark Spears from Anscape reported that one of the reasons why they looked a little sluggish was because they stayed in San Francisco.

They had played in Portland the night before. They flew down to San Francisco and stayed there, then took the hour and a half bus ride up. And it was like, why would you do that? You know, I live in Omaha. I'm not, you know, we don't have a Rich Carlton. So I'm not throwing stones. But, you know, I know Sacramento doesn't have maybe the hotels that you would find in Paris, but NBA teams have been staying there for decades.

There's perfectly fine accommodations. So I don't know what that was all about. But beyond that, I do believe the Knicks found appropriate accommodations in Sacramento. Did not. Yeah, Mike Brown came back and saw people. And, you know, somebody's birthday, they had dinner for somebody. I can't remember. Chris Jent, I think.

Oh, yeah, Chris Jett, his longtime assistant. coach, Chris Jent. Happy birthday, Chris. I won't say how old these. Calf's Corner. Isn't that back to your old days? Yeah, well, I saw Chris a few months ago when I was at a Knicks game. And I asked him how his son was doing because his son was, I remember, used to

shoot around and be the ball boy for the calves. And he's like, oh, yeah, he already graduated from college two years ago. And I was like, oh, my God. I mean, I'm not going to be. I'm not going to, you know, you guys saw that story about, you know, Charlie Villeneueva told that story on that podcast this week about, um, uh, Corey McGettie, Kyle Singley. And like, I hadn't seen Charlie. Oh, really? Did you, did you know about that? Absolutely. Okay. All right. They, they canceled. They canceled practice and told the media that we weren't having practice today. And, you know, a birdie, you know, we should be going to story time. A birdie tells me, little bit later, what happens? And I'm like, well, those guys are two dukies, you know,

Mugetti, Kyle Singler. And of course, there's some Duke on Duke crime. And I was told that Mugetti gave him a warning and said, hey, you know, when you come off the screen, don't do that. Whatever that thing is, he said, don't do that. And the very next time, it was done. And Corey McGettie, who looked like a 30-year-old when he was 18, gave Kyle Singler the one-two and Kyle Singler, to my knowledge, had no clue he had even been knocked out. He woke up like, literally like, what happened? That's what Charlie was saying. That's what Charlie was saying. It just was reminding me, because, you know, Charlie came into the, you know, Charlie is the same class, high school classes as LeBron. So, like, I met Charlie when he was, like, doing the high school all

our game circuit. You know, Charlie telling OG stories just reminded me how old I was. By the way, can I just say, I am waiting for the Dennis Schrooter appearance on a podcast, or maybe it'll happen in a media session, or will we hear this story about what went down with Luca? Because I don't know, I'm not even going to say what's going around because it's definitely, you know, game of telephone is growing

in, it's growing. But like, let's just say the the, there's a lot of chatter on the, on the, NBA team group chats about what went down between Schroeder and Luca Donchich. And let's just say Schroeder's reputation has been burnished. He did not get three-game suspension for trying to strike Luca Donchich, nor did I think he strike him once. But I'll wait. I'll wait for the podcast appearance. Nope.

Wendy, here's my standard. Here's my standard. Isaiah Stewart, when he laid hands on Eubanks from in Phoenix and the Lone Dock, he got three games. Now, one, I want to know who snitched, right? That's my general. My general thing is if it's a fight between two men in the parking lot, the lead don't need to get involved, right?

But somebody. Yeah, but here's the, that happened with December 28th, right? It was reported last week, right? Yeah. Well, it was reported when he got suspended. Yeah. And the day and age of like, this ain't 95 when we get like, you'll pick up the newspaper in the morning and like not on the internet.

And so like there was a gap there where there was nothing. Did you know about it? Did you either of you guys heard about it? I had not heard of it. I mean, it was a little bit on the holidays. Also, I will say this. There are some arenas or the pathway from the locker rooms to the players parking lot. Most, most arenas, the players park in the loading dock.

and it's underground. Some arenas, their cars are outside, but it's always at the loading dock. In crypto, the Players Park in the Loading Dock, which is underground, which is on the locker room level. Some places, the players have a secured walkway to get to the Players Parkland. In crypto, that's not the case.

You have to walk through who's ever got access to, you know, you walk past the media, per se. You walk past the people tearing out the cameras and the cords and the people setting up the, don't forget, Wendy, the famous police

presence in 2018 with the Rockets and Clippers. And Dennis Truder was once a Laker, so he knows

all the nooks and crannies of that building and he was waiting on Mr. Donchich. I can only

presume from the story that was told that, you know, whether the Andre Aiton was there to maybe prevent

this from getting worse or not, that Dennis Schroeder said he was going to do something and did it. And like you said, reputation burnished. I want to say so much more, but I'm not going to. So you're saying it possibly could have happened in the quote-unquote secret hallway?

Absolutely. So, Bobby, you know about the, it's not really secret, but you know about the secret hallway. Yeah. You know, when I was in the secret hallway last, a couple years ago, I said it on the podcast, when I fell on a boat in the Bahamas. and cracked my ribs. Did you see their doctor? Is that what we did?

I did. It was over the holidays. I fell, you don't, you know, you didn't hear the story, Vince? No. I was in the Bahamas with my family for the holidays, and I fell on a boat. It was extremely embarrassing. Thank God there's never been footage coming to light. And I cracked my ribs and I flew out to L.A.

And I was in really bad pain. And I, you know, couldn't get into a doctor because it was all closed. and the Lakers very kindly let me use their facilities and their team doctor gave me an X-ray to check to see, like to make sure my lung wasn't punctured. But I want you like, no, I did count down NBA today that week, injured. You know, I'm not even questionable. No low management for you.

Hell no. So anyway, so you had to go on the secret hallway to get to the X-ray room. But so you're saying it could have been in the secret hallway. I see. I'm saying. I haven't heard that, but it does make sense. that could happen. I'm saying that Dennis Schroeder knew exactly where he could run up on Luca Donchich and have an altercation. I'm also saying, I'm also saying, maybe he didn't run up. Maybe he

walked up. Maybe, look, Dennis Truder don't say him the type that's going to run. He wants you to see him coming, right? He wants you, he wants to see if you're going to run or walk away, if you're going going to run towards a smoke. He's going to tell you he's coming, right? And here's the other part of it. These buildings got cameras in every nuthous cranny. Of course. Of course. Who got the footage? Oh, yeah. TMC doesn't have it yet.

Apparently, the footage is tighter kept at crypto than it is at Chase Center. I'll just leave it at that. By the way, this has been discussed before, but as long as we're bringing this up, one of my favorite stories in my time covering the NBA was the Jerry Stackhouse. And I mean, he's told the story you can find it. So I'm sorry if you've already heard it and we're repeating. But Bobby, you know this story, right? I do. I do. I do.

It was Kirk Snyder, who was a young player for Utah, got into it with Jerry Stackhouse, who was near the end of his career, but, you know, already an OG and not somebody who messed with. Sort of, you know, you know, you know, McGeady is slash was built like a tank. You know, like, that's not a guy to mess with, even though he was, it was, it was, I basically ended his career, right? Vince, he was never seen in the NBA again after that, that Cory McGeady thing. So Stackhouse is near the end. he's playing for Dallas. Kirk Snyder says some stuff in the game to Stackhouse.

Stackhouse says, I'll see you after. But my favorite part of this story is that, and this is back when players wore suits to and from games. The game ends. Stackhouse goes to the equipment manager of the Mavericks and says, can you get me a sweat, practice, you know, sweatsuit? And he's like, sure, and he gives him a sweatsuit. He puts a sweatsuit on, goes out, waits at the Utah bus.

Kirk Snyder comes up, he clocks him upside the head, then goes back, takes a sweatsuit off, because he didn't want to get blood on his suit. That is an all-timer. That's some Charles Oakley stuff. I didn't want to get blood on my suit. Yes, please. Can I tell the Oakley story?

Okay, so this happens at Staples. Oh my God, this is all the synergy, Wendy. This is at Staples. Oakley is with, I believe, the Toronto Raptors at the time. They're playing one of the teams. one of the LA teams. I'm trying not to get us to narrow it down for the victim here. Set player, prominent enough player, does something like slick.

Maybe he sticks his leg behind Oakley's knee during a rebound or something like that prevents him from jumping or whatever it was. And Oak says, if you do that again, I'm going to beat your ass. Some point throughout the game later. A more sincere threat was never issued in the NBA. said player does the same exact thing again. Oak says nothing. Oak don't even issue the same threat. A man issued the threat once you have crossed said line. Retribution must be paid. That's not the bad part. Walking around the winding hallway of the Staples Center, he sees said player with his girlfriend and his baby. Set player is holding the baby. Oak walks up, very gently, removes the baby from custody of its daddy, hands it to the woman very gently,

smacks the player. Don't punch him, just smacks him, walks away. Now, one version of the story says that he smacked the player, took the baby back, handed it back to the player. I don't know if that part happened Great if it did But I tend to believe He walked up Took the baby, hand the baby to the lady

Smack the player And went on about his way Because he said he was going to do something And he did it Because that's oak Oh, I've never heard it You've never heard that story before No

Bobby, do you have any stories You can share? Well, listen, we had You know, I've shared this story with you before Brian And we had a secret hall back. We had a secret stairway at the old Meadowlands where it went from the suite we sat into the, it dropped us off at the referees or locker room.

And there was a game where I did attempt to try to get into that referee's locker room. I can't believe this, Bobby. This is so out of character for you. You must have been so much younger. After Vince Carter, I'd gotten thrown out of a game versus San Antonio and was on his way to scoring 50 points. and after the game I beat with my boss Rod Thorne, man who drafted Michael Jordan, beeline it down the stairwell and attempted to get into that locker room.

Now, this was in 2006, so this is 19 years ago. I would say if that would be happened now, that executive would probably be home with his wife and kids for an extended long period of time. But back then, the rules were a little bit different. Did anybody get smacked? No, there's no snacking. More Hoop Collective podcast after this. Anyway, the Nick struggles.

They've lost six or last ten games. And so here's the thing, Vince. This team was an elite offensive team for most of the year. And, look, they're not great defensively. And honestly, if you look at these last ten games, they're a bottom five defense. And you could look at that and say, well, there's your answer right there. And I agree, they need to be better defensively.

And I'm sure Mike Brown is, you know, hard working at that. But what's happened is that they've lost their offensive mojo. Because for a while there, the way they were, you know, we came on here and praised how they were getting production, you know, 8, 9, 10 guys deep. That they're, you know, they were getting awesome offensive season for Moji and Anobie, offensive season for Mikhail Bridges. even though Towns' numbers are down a little bit, particularly a three-point shooting, he's still averaging 2010.

Like he's still having productive game up for a productive game. That offense has just slid way back. You know, in the last 10 games, they're 12th, which is fine. But their way they're set up, they're going to need to be elite offensively. And so they need to get that back. I would say, Bobby, that I kind of have a rule that I never evaluate a team, like making any sort of assumptions

or sweeping generalizations. about a team when they're on a long West Coast trip, especially in January. It's just never when you're going to put your best foot forward. Well, I think, too, Brian, like, they're, you know, as you guys have said, like, they'll be judged when we get to April and May and hopefully for them June, kind of probably the same as Cleveland, another team that has had high expectations. I did think they had Portland on Sunday against a team, Portland team that had been playing pretty well.

And that was, I think it was the first game, maybe Josh Hart was back. I thought that was probably one of their more complete games, I guess, from start to finish here. But I'm interested to see what they do in Golden State on Thursday night. But yeah, just a disappointing from start to finish, man. I know the Brunson injury, but that was a non-competitive game from start to finish. Yeah. And look, I mean, the Kings are still fighting. How do you think the Red Hot Kings, how do you think Scott Perry feels when he keeps on seeing these wins?

And then he's like, hey, AJ, the Bantsa, and, Darren Peterson and Cameron Boozer and now we're drafted 9th, 8th. I would just say that Malik Monk knows the mission. You know, he was out of the rotation, he came back in, and he is firing that ball into that basket. Because the thing about Malik Monk is that he's just got two years left on his contract. He's got a player option for over 20 million in two years. And, you know, there's a good chance he's picking that up. And obviously, this guy would be traded if he didn't have the two years.

If he had one year left, he would be traded. But he is working his backside off to help the kings. I mean help himself. So the other day, the Lakers were there, and obviously the Lakers had been mentioned as a possible place from Leak Monk. And he was on his best behavior for that game. So I get it.

Before we move on with our days, I do also want to call some attention to the Denver Nuggets, they won on the second night of a back-to-back in Dallas on Wednesday. That in and of itself is not that stunning because Dallas is in their own position. Also, Cooper Flagg rolled his ankle in that game and missed the second half, and I hope he's okay. It didn't look that serious.

And by the way, let's be honest, like, if Cooper Flagg has one thing mildly, and he likes to play games, he has not missed much time at all. I suspect he will continue to do that. but if there's any reason to keep Cooper Flag out of a game, the Mavericks are going to do so for the good of Cooper Flag and also the good of their mission going forward. So I'm not arguing that this was the most impressive win in the history of the Nuggets franchise. But it wasn't on the second night of a back-to-back. The Mavericks had the rest advantage and we're home. And the Nuggets won pretty much wire to wire.

And so I just want to point out, Peyton Watson had another great game. The guy's averaging over 20 points in the nine games. Yokich is out. By the way, Yokic is nearing, getting closer to return. He's back on the court. So that's a good sign. I think probably, you know, hopefully no setbacks before the end of the month. You know, it was sort of, sort of said as he'd be out through January. It doesn't sound like that's going to be the case. So that's really good for a number of reasons. But there's six and three since he went down. Most of those games have been on the road. In fact, guys, the Nuggets are, they have 24 road games and only 17 home games so far. So they've played the most road games. They have the most road wins.

And that means that the rest of the season, they have seven more home games and road games. They're in second place in the Western Conference. And I think they have one of the two or three easiest schedules left. Now, get sort of into trouble sort of counting stuff like that, especially in the NBA. But my point is that the nuggets have put themselves in tremendous position. If you listen to the podcast, you know, Bobby, do you know what I mean? when I say the Doug Moe standings? No, what is that?

Yeah, so I asked Michael Malone last night about it. He didn't know what the hell I was talking about either. George Carl taught it to me, but he got it from Doug Moe. You know, this is especially effective at this time of the year where... Does it affect road games? Does it impact road games have something to do with it? Winning road games? So you take the number of road wins and you subtract the home losses and you generate a number.

And obviously, the more, the higher the number, the better your situation is. So it's a way to evaluate teams when schedules are on balance, such as when you've played 24 road games versus 17 home games. And so the nuggets are 17 and 7 on the road, 11 and 6 at home. So that generates 17 road wins, six home losses. It generates a plus 11, which is spectacular at this point in the season. And just to illustrate this, the Thunder, who, well, you know,

are 34 and 7 at this point. They have a game tonight against Houston. They're 14 and 4 on the road and 20 and 2 at home, which is obviously both great records, but 14 minus 2, that's plus 12. So the Thunder in the Doug Moe standings are plus 12, and the nuggets are plus 11. And so what I'm saying here is, you know,

there's health and all of these things, but, you know, the spurs are tied with the nuggets for the two seed. And the spurs have their rodeo trip coming up, you know, where they have to vacate their arena for the long. It always straddles the All-Star game. And look, there have been years where the Spurs destroy the rodeo trip.

But, you know, and the Spurs actually had some Austin games coming up. The Spurs have actually played more road games and home games, but they haven't even gone through their quote- And they travel a lot of miles too, the Spurs have. Right. And they've come out pretty well.

Yeah. Well, the Spurs have done great, especially, you know, like, as the Nuggets have done great without Yokich, the Spurs have been awesome without Victor. So having said that, though, I'm just saying Denver has put themselves in position to, even though they're tied for second and there's three teams, you know, really if Denver went on a three game losing streak, they'd be in the play in. That's how tight the West is. You know, Denver and San Antonio both have 13 losses. As we sit here and do this, Minnesota, the Lakers and Rockets all have 14 losses and that spots four, five, and six. It's very tightly packed. It's not like the Denver is running away with it. But what I'm saying is that this play that they've gotten, This excellent play from Watson. Jamal Murray had another really good game last night. It's put them in a position where their schedule remaining is in there.

They've definitely got the easiest schedule and the easiest home road differential amongst all those teams in the West going forward. The Thunder, meanwhile, have the hardest schedule left. Not that I'm worrying and worrying at night about them, but I'm just saying like the nuggets are in really, considering everything's happened to them, Bobby, they're in really good position. I'm just calling that out.

Well, I mean, it's starting, I think it was last week when they were in Philadelphia and they had basically eight players. And they've been able to beyond keep their head above water with all these injuries here. And they've, you know, with Christian Brown and then Aaron Gordon come back and managing their minutes. And then as you said, Peyton Watson has exploded. I think it's 22 points in the last 10 games. And I had a scout last night at the Clipper game. Do they pay the wrong guy? You know?

I don't know. And I know it's easy to say right now. You're talking about Christian Brown who got a $100 million extension. Because the reality is that unless this ownership group or unless they're going to make a trade this summer, unless this ownership group wants to go deep into the beyond luxury tax and the, you know, the apron stuff, like he might be one of the better free agents out there, restricted free agents out there. But it wasn't just Christian Brown that they paid. I mean, they had, they obviously had. Michael Porter on their books, and it wasn't like that was going to go away. But the trade that they made to bring in Cam Johnson, I mean, Cam Johnson is, let me see what he's owed.

He's got one year left at $23 million. But the key is that Cam is going to be on their books next year. Christian Brown is going to be on their books at, let's see, what his first year number is, at $21 million. So, you know, you're bringing up something that's something that's something to think about when you look at what Watson's doing. You know, when Calvin Booth, who's no longer there, had this plan of basically getting all these young kids to basically balance when you had Murray and Porter and Yokic and Gordon and your young players were going to be like your infrastructure, you're starting to see a little bit of a realization of it with Watson and Pickett and, you know, some of the other. And I know getting Bruce Brown and Hardaway Jr. have helped and, you know, Valcunis is out and everything. but they've had two-way contributions. Solomon Jones has been really good when he's played here.

Spencer Jones. Oh, Spencer Jones. I think Solomon Jones plays for the 49ers. I got football on my mind right now. I don't know why that is. Spencer Jones, yes, Spencer Jones has been really good. And so, yeah, it's pretty remarkable to see that they've been able to kind of withstand everything with all these injuries. Now you have an opportunity in front of you.

because I know when Yokic went down, a lot of us were thinking how far are the nuggets going to slip in the Western standings? Are they going to slip down to this, you know, playing territory and everything else? Now when you have a secondary score like Watson where you don't have to force feed Yokic necessarily to control all the usage, same thing with Jamal Murray. Whenever he has to do too much, he gets tired down the stretch of seasons. This balances out the roster in so many ways now. And I think we have generally viewed the Western Conference as the Oklahoma City invitational for the foreseeable future. And when I look at Denver and I look at Minnesota, I look at teams that have championship profiles.

Like maybe we don't look at Minnesota as being a championship profile team because they've lost handily in the Western Conference finals the past couple years. It's an accomplishment to get there, but they weren't really, you know, super competitive. I want to say they went down 3-0 in both of those series, so you didn't really get a feel for them having a threat to get to the finals. Now, I look at both teams, and I think they're both legitimate threats, even as much as San Antonio, even more than San Antonio, who we focused a lot on because of their success against Oklahoma City. I don't think this is going to be an easy road for the thunder this season, like in these playoffs. And if you look through, you know, the modern NBA, oh, modern NBA history, but the last five years, no championship. has gotten out of the second round in the following year after winning.

Like, I think there's something to that in terms of championship fatigue and teams catching you and everything else. Denver is well positioned to take advantage. Minnesota is well positioned to take advantage. I think we have to look beyond Oklahoma City and the record and maybe winning 73 games and everything else. They have to actually focus on getting out because this road is going to be even harder than it was last year. if he's having to make a hotel reservation in Denver. You know, I'm not, I have them in Oklahoma City already. I'm not, you know, but, you know.

Well, hopefully whoever plays them doesn't have to stay in Colorado Springs, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, I hope. I hope there's got to be an explanation. I just haven't, maybe there was an explanation I didn't see. Maybe there's a very good explanation I didn't see. I just thought it was like one of the more fascinating things I've seen. Good points, Vince.

All right, that's all. Oh, and now we're going to retreat the, Jonathan Cominga situation. Let's talk about Sacramento and Dallas in the apron and yeah. All right. Thank you very much, Bobby. I'll see you on set here in a few minutes.

Thank you very much, Vince. I'll see you in some secret tunnel. And I'm not going to be holding the baby, but I'm not looking to throw hands. Thank you to Jackson, Devon, and Tucker, and Mark, all of our producers putting everything together. By the way, happy bladed birthday to Jackson. We had a birthday this week.

Has Jackson cracked 30 yet? Where are we at it with this age? I don't want to... He's definitely not cracked 30. No, all right. I mean, yeah, he's, no, he's definitely not fair. He's got that youthful look.

Yes, I know. I know. All right, thank you for listening and watching the hoop collective this week. We'll talk to you next week.