PTI - Who wins the NBA MVP Race? And is Mazzulla the Coach of the Year?

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon alongside, Kendrick Perkins analyzes the intense competition for NBA MVP and The Coach of the Year, weighing different playing styles and impacts. 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. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Pablo Torre. Wilbon is off today, and I am honored that you invited me back on to co-host with you, Tony. I'm Tony Cornerstone, I'm just trying to stay on your good side.

You're a tough guy now. Yeah. You know, I got to be careful. I got to be careful about you. I'm confused. Yeah. I'm just your friendly neighborhood sports journalist. Why?

What's in your closets? Tony, anything? As they say, be afraid. Be very afraid. Welcome to PTI, everybody. Wilbon is off chunking and blading, so I'm joined by our great friend, the host of the podcast, Pablo Tori, finds out Mr. Pablo Tori. And we begin today with talk of the NBA MVP. J.J. Reddick boosted his guy, Luca Donchich last night, saying Donchich is leading the Lakers' great recent success.

The Lakers are 15 and 2 since February 28th, including a win last night over Washington. And in that span, Donchich is averaging 36.5 points on 49.3% shooting. eight rebounds, seven assists a game. A leading contender for MVP as well, Oklahoma City, Shea Gilgis Alexander, said he was not going to stump for himself for MVP even after last night's 47 points against Detroit. He prefers to let his play to the talking,

and we all know that Victor Wembeyanama publicly says he wants to be the MVP. Wembeñama had 41 last night with 16 rebounds against Chicago. Pablo, which approach to the MVP award has the most impact on you? none of the campaigning strategies, Tony, as you know, from your time in D.C., none of it really replaces the substance at hand. Like, I've seen Daryl Morey be so thirsty for James Hard and Joelle Embed.

I've seen people say I would never insert myself into this process. I don't care. I'm looking at the merits, though, the subjects on their own merits. And I'm like, okay, where do I put Donchich? I'm putting him probably fourth. I think Chey Gildos Alexander, number one, Thunder the Best Team. He's averaging 55% on 32 points a game. For a guard, that's insane.

Yokic is leading the league and rebounds and assists as a center. Wembe, if he wasn't playing as little as he was, 400 to 500 minutes less than the other guys. I'd probably pick him because of his defense. And Donchich, nothing to be of chamed up is just he's number four to me, number four on the list. So I really like the fact that Wembenyama has said publicly he wants to be the MVP and that he wants there to be no doubt about the separation he has from everybody else. The Lakers are 15 and 2 lately, Pablo. That's really good. The spurs are 25 and 2 since February 1st. And Wembe Ghanma is in the middle of that. Shea Gildjus Alexander, it's fine that he doesn't want to campaign for this. He doesn't have to. He won it last year. He's having about the same year, and his team is the best team in the league, so it's very easy to vote for him, and I think that humility will help him.

Donchich has been great lately. There's a quote, though, from Donchich, which indicates to me that he thinks he's not that high with the voters. He says, the better I play, the more I go down than the ratings. But here's the thing. They've been very much better this year than last year. They've been very much better most recently than earlier in the season. and J.J. Reddick is 100% right to stump for Donchich. It's 100% right to do that.

You know, and I get all of it. But on the ballot that I have, if I had one, it would be Jalen Brown first. Because I think what he's done in the absence of Jason Tatum is terrific. And then second for me would be Wemba Njama, but it would have been Cade Cunningham had he not gotten hurt,

because Detroit is on top in the east. And then I would have Gilgis Alexander, Donchich and Yokic, who is, and I'm sure you agree with this, simply the best basketball player in the world. He's the best player in the world. Oh, it's, look, we're at a point in the NBA where the MVP race, you could tell me any of those names are the winner, and I'm not going to storm the league office.

Like, we are blessed with an abundance of high-level talent. A lot of it international, by the way, Jalen Brown kind of sticking out on that list of guys. But we're good. And I think it's a difference of minor differences as opposed to one obvious choice. But I want to move, Tony, from awards to comeuppance because duck's captain Radco Gutus

faced the Maple Leafs last night for the first time since putting their star, Austin Matthews, out for the season with that knee-on-knee hit. And Gudis had been injured and could have ducked the game. But he decided to play to, quote, "'Stand behind my own mistakes,' end quote. And so with the drop of the puck,

Toronto's Max Domi dropped his gloves and punched Goudis 10 times without receiving a single punch in return. Tony, did Radco Goudis earn back a measure of your respect by doing that, by playing and taking his punishment? Absolutely. Absolutely. He has been a guy who's been suspended multiple times. He has taken people out.

He took out Austin Matthews for the rest of the year. He did not have to play in this game. Anaheim is not going back to Toronto this year. He could have said, just scratch me and I'm done. But instead, he made it very publicly clear that he wanted to be out there, made it very publicly clear that you could take a shot at him. He was going to be there. Give him your best shot. And he knew that the honor of Toronto depended on getting in a fight with him.

So as you say, as soon as they have the opening puck drop, the most senior Toronto player in terms of being a fighter, Max Domi, went after him. There were two more dustups. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. and this will sound like frontier justice, Pablo. But I think what Goudis did is honorable to get out there. I don't know if it'll satisfy all the fans of the Maple Leafs, because Matthews is the captain of the Maple Leafs, but to me to say, I'm here, take your best shot.

I'm not going anywhere. I, yes, he got back respect from me. Yes, he did. Yeah, no, we're living in a time where like the guardrails of honor and shame have never mattered less. except in hockey, where we're learning that there are depths to that honor code. I mean, Tony, this was a samurai taking out his katana blade and sticking it into his own intestines saying, I deserve this. And more than that, I will be nonviolent in my expression

of shame. I didn't realize that this was a process that was so obviously dictated. Like you just said, yeah, of course Tommy had to do it. because he was the number one guy in terms of experience. But also, remember, they didn't do this in the game when Austin Matthews got hurt. And so, Guas also helped bail out the honor of the Maple Leafs by giving himself at that altar. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I found this.

I found the entire exercise. I know it's violent. Wilbon always says they only fight in the NHL and not in Europe and not the Olympics, except that Goudis is from Europe. And he's been in 50 fights in the NHL. He's been more fights than Leon Spinks in his whole career. But I found this commendable, Pablo. His behavior in this action, I found commendable.

Let's move to the NFL. The first game of the season this year for San Francisco will be in Melbourne, Australia, against the Rams. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan does not want to go to Australia for this game or any game. Yesterday, Shanahan was asked if he saw positives here and he said, quote, I don't see any pro. It's cool for the league to play globally, but as far as the team doing it,

no, there's not much benefit, unquote. The Niners will not get a buy week after the Australia game, and the flight to Melbourne is 16 hours each way. Pablo, do the positives outweigh the negatives for the NFL? No, they don't. And the NFL, it's funny to frame it around Wants, as Kyle Shanahan was doing, because the NFL, we're in the Wants business now. The NFL doesn't need to see the planet as this risk board to conquer, but they do. Apparently, Australia is on that list, and that's confusing to me because Australia is about as far away. from the United States as you can get.

Also, it's not a big market. It's like smaller than Texas. And also, I don't really see how you could plausibly keep doing this because it's a 15-hour flight. But the NFL wants to build another market because they just want it. And do they need it? Absolutely not.

I will say the one good thing for this game, theoretically, when you look at it, it's a division game. So two teams in the same division have to bear this. and they are very good teams and they are incumbent playoff teams. The bad news is they're in the same division as Seattle, the Super Bowl winner. And I don't know if there's how large the disadvantage is for 32 hours in the air when you're not making Seattle do it.

I understand what the NFL is doing. I understand the idea of a global footprint. I understand why they would want to be in Australia. If I owned the 49ers, I want my team to be worth more. So, yeah, I'm in favor of global stuff. I understand why they're going. They're closest to it in proximity. That's why East Coast teams go to London games.

But if I'm the coach of the 49ers, Pablo, I don't want this. I don't, this is 32 hours in the air is going to affect me this game, the next game, and the game after. And if I'm the coach of the 49ers, I don't care how many Christian McCaffrey jerseys I sell in Melbourne or Sydney. I don't care about that. So I don't want this game. I don't.

Yeah. Tony, I'm very aware that you don't want this as a hypothetical NFL coach. I also know even more acutely that you don't want this as you. Can you imagine getting on a plane you personally for 16 hours direct? That's the shortest thing you got? It's too long. I'll tell you another thing that's interesting, that Kyle Shanahan mentioned that they're also playing in Mexico City this coming season.

Well, that flight, I mean, the subtext of that is, look what you're doing us, you're killing us, you're making us do all these games. That flight's four hour and 15 minutes. They also play at the Giants in New Jersey. That's over five hours. So nobody's going to say let's cancel game with the Giants because the Giants stink. You'd play them in Mexico City or anywhere if you could. Let's take a break.

Coming up, the Pistons were missing four starters last night but still took the Thunder to overtime. We're going to ask Kendrick Perkins what that means. We'll also ask him if he thinks the Coach of the Year award is stupid, like Joe Missoula insists it. It's interesting what you said about the code in the NHL, that they still have that code. Yeah, because he could have ducked that game. Easy. We've got some NBA questions for our great friend from NBA today, ESPN NBA analyst, Kendrick Perkins. Let's start with this. The Pistons' top five scorers, they were out last night, top five,

and they still pushed Oklahoma City to overtime on the road. What, if anything, Perk? What if anything do you take from that game? That SGA is the MVP of the league, and he's getting me. my vote that we just witnessed a guy coming off a back to back going against a fierce

Detroit Piston team that played with a physical style of play and that a guy that didn't make no excuses without having his robin and Jalen Williams dropped 47. Can we understand the moment for a second when it comes to SGA?

We're talking about a guy that just went on a championship run led a team, went deep into the postseason into June, all of a sudden come back the following season without his robin, lead his team to the top record in the NBA, 60-win season, and he joined

the company of Michael Jeffrey Jordan again, four consecutive seasons of averaging 30 and shooting over 50% from the field. I got the email today, was I'm going to be participating as a voter or not? I put yes, and SDA is getting penciled in as my MVP.

Perk, I want to stay at the top of the standings. The team's trailing the thunder. The Cavs got the Lakers tonight. Which team are you higher on Los Angeles or Cleveland? I'm actually high on Cleveland, to be honest with you. I feel like they have all the pieces, you know, to go and actually make a legit push in the Eastern Conference. But let me say this to you. Out of all the teams in the league, they're the team that's under the most pressure.

Monovin Mitchell is under the most pressure. He's a guy that hasn't led the team to conference finals. Now you're playing with a guy James Hardin who's going to relieve pressure from you. James Harden also is one of the best facilitators in the game. He's going to make Evan Mobley and Jared Allen better. We saw that last night. Evan Mobley had a season high at 34 points. So when you talk about what they added at the trade deadline

and what they need to accomplish and the focus that they have, have to have. I'm looking at the calves, and I believe that they're going to be a sleeper because no one is picking them as their favorite, but they have all the pieces and check all the boxes. Okay, so you check the box on being a voter for MVP. I want to take us to the other award that's been making news. So coach of the year, right? This is Celtics head coach Joe Missoula on the premise of that award. I'll read you the quote. I don't need it. I think it's stupid. They shouldn't have it. I don't ever want to be asked or talk about it again. It's just that dumb, end And he goes on to say that a team success is really about the players and the staff perk and you're shaking your head.

So do you agree with Joe Missoula about the stupidity of the award? You know what's the sad point? Is that Joe Missoula is a candidate for Coach of the Year. And that was one of the most asinine things I've ever heard in my life when it comes to disrespecting that position. Like you're disrespecting greats like field. Jackson who had to manage egos of a Scotty Pipp and Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman. You're disrespecting of Phil Jackson that had to manage egos between Kobe and Shaq.

You're disrespecting Greg Popovich and Red Arbach. And also you're making it, you're disrespecting the guys that's coming up under you that actually want access to these type of jobs of being a head coach. Like head coaches matter. They spend more time in the gym and away from their families than players do. When you talk about sacrificing, coaches really do sacrifice. They don't stand by 24 hours a day. A player could call an assistant coach at 2 in the morning and say that he want to get shots up

and that coach better get his ass up and meet him at the gym so that he could be available to work that player out. And I love Joe Missoula. I think he has a different personality, but he's a hell of a coach. But that right there, it just didn't sit well with me, and it was one of the most assonide things I've ever heard. I want you to see me. It's silent applause for what you just said. I am applauding you.

That was great. And we will get you out of here on this. Anthony Edwards missed the tip last night because the quote is nature called. As a player, how often are you forced to make a decision? Whether to play or just go to the bathroom. How often, Perk? I mean, listen, I'm willing to bet if you take a survey or take a poll that 80% of current and former players all had the same routine of using the restroom

before they started the game. Now, you can't help it that nature called at a certain time when you typically probably go 20 or 30 minutes before you have to run out on the floor. Yeah. But everyone has their routine, and majority of the guys that I play with, hell, they had their own stall. They had their personal stall that they wanted to use before they went out on the floor. So this is not surprising to me. This is just part of it.

Let me tell you a quick story. Ray John Rondo used to get to the facility, work out on the floor, take a shower, put his game jersey on, and then go out there and play. We thought it was weird, but it was easy. his routine. So whatever floats your boat, whatever's going to make you perform at Ohio's level, damn it, do it. I see what you say there floats your boat. That's a, I see what you did there. Thank you, Perk. Thank you, Perk. Let's take one last break. Still to come, Texas and South Carolina make it a repeat final four. And players on your MLB package need to be smaller than they appear. Yeah, it's good because that helps them

you know, get a shorter strike zone. It's better for them. Yes, ABS, not IBS, which is more relevant to the topic we just discussed. Investigators. Happy time. People, happy 64th birthday, John Taylor. The 49ers wide receiver began his football career with failure. Taylor did not make his college team at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte,

North Carolina. Taylor then enrolled at Delaware State and made the team as a walk-on. Taylor played his college football in Dover, Delaware, and was so good there. He was drafted in third round by the 49ers. Taylor played his entire nine-year NFL career in San Francisco, caught 347 passes, 5,598 yards, and 43 touchdowns, mostly from Joe Montana and Steve Young. Taylor's most famous catch came with 34 seconds left in Super Bowl 23

to beat the Cincinnati Bengals, and that one was from Montana. Yeah, Tony, I totally underestimated the trajectory of John Taylor, who after high school went to work at a liquor, warehouse instead of taking baseball scholarships, then then did everything you just said. And of course, ends up being a protagonist in one of the great sports photographs, let alone sports moments and greatest touchdowns you've ever seen. Happy anniversary Wade Boggs on this day 28 years ago. The future first ballot hall of famer in Boston Red Sox legend made history for another

franchise by hitting the first home run ever for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in their inaugural game. Boggs Homer to write in the sixth inning with the Tigers ahead 11-9. nothing. So Boggs got the franchise's first RBI as well. Bob spent 18 years in the majors, mainly with the Red Sox, but also the Yankees and Rays. Boggs won the American League batting title five of six years from 1983 to 1988. His 328 career batting average is the highest of any living former player, one 10,000th of a point ahead of Rod Carew.

Boggs is behind only Brooks Robinson and George Brett for consecutive all-star appearances by a third baseman. and Boggs had 12. And yet the number that occurs to me now is 73, which is the number that Wade Boggs himself said, the number of beers he drank on a single cross-country flight in the 90s, which I continue to investigate. Big, yeah, that podcast is made for that.

Happy Trails, Michigan and TCU. Both teams fell to one seeds in the lead aid of the women's bracket last night. In the early game, Texas crushed Michigan by 36, on par with the team's average margin of victory in its four tournament games of 35 and a half. The Longhorns now advance to face UCLA, who they beat in November,

the Bruins' only loss of the season. In the late game, South Carolina top TCU by 26. So South Carolina and Dawn Staley now get Yukon and Gino Oriama. All the final four teams are won seeds, and all were in last year's final four, which was won by Yukon. The Huskies have not lost a game in nearly 14 months. Yeah, we're watching both tournaments now be devoid of Cinderella's,

but UConn and South Carolina, three of the last four championships went to those teams. I imagine it might happen again. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm gratified when the ones get into it. You know, I think you see the best teams when all the ones get in, and in the men's side, what is it, a 1-1 or 2 and a 3? You're getting the best teams.

Let's go to the big finish. Mark Cuban told the Intersections podcast that he does not regret selling them abs, but does regret selling them to the AIDL's and Dumont families, your thoughts? Yeah. When did he realize that and why won't he tell me the answer to that question on my podcast? The new Giants manager, Tony Vitella, won his first game last night.

Is that significant? Yeah, he's the riskiest hires, college coach. Laser measurements of the baseball system to the ABS system, baseball players, as resulted in many being one to three inches shorter than listed. Your thoughts? I'm 5'10 and 3 quarters inches. Precision is important. The Golden Knights beat the Canucks last night, and John Torral.

Borella's first game as coach. Are you impressed? Fabulous, TORTS, fabulous. Last one. U.S. men soccer takes on Portugal to Niagara. Is that significant? Yes, 72 days, apparently, till the World Cup, maybe don't get crushed by another foreign country.

That'd be good. We're out of time. We'll try to do better the next time. I'm Tony Cornhus. And I'm Pablo Torre. Thank you for watching. Pablo Torre finds out as my show, but for now, your sports center.

Good job, Pablo. Thank you.