The Bill Simmons Podcast - A Crazy Gobert Gamble, KD’s Summer Stalemate and Boston’s Big Flex with Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: July 3, 2022

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the massive package the Timberwolves gave up to trade for Rudy Gobert (1:57), whether or not the Jazz will really keep Donovan Mitchell (33:15), the Celtics acquiring Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari, the fallout from Kevin Durant’s trade request (48:02), some rapid-fire NBA free agency observations (1:21:26), and more! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We have the Celtics and Durant. Most importantly, the Gobert trade. 25 other things that happened. We're going to cover it all.

It's all next. First, our friends from Pro Gym. All right, Ryan Masso is here. I'm just going to start your late Sunday morning as we're entrenched in the July 4th week. I'm going to start you with this. I think I hated the Rudy Gobert trade more for Minnesota

than any trade for the last 30 years that I've hated for a team. I've looked at it for two days. Wow. I've looked at what they got. I looked at my feelings for can you win with Gobert for the reasoning behind it.

And I just don't get it. And I rarely point my flag. I feel like I'll point my flag really hard when I feel really strong about something. Like Luca was a good example. Luca falling to three. I just didn't understand. I point my flag on that. I hate this trade for Minnesota, Priscilla. I hate it. I can't defend it. We'll go through everything they gave up. But my initial reaction was, what is going on? And then I looked at it for 48 hours, and I'm even more confused. If you had told me that they just gave up two unprotected picks with everything else they gave up to take Gobert and his money back, I'm still not positive I love

it for Minnesota. And I'll go on all the reasons why, but that was my initial reaction. What was your initial reaction? What is it now? I hated it then. I hate it now. I don't know if it's the worst trade in 30 years. That seems aggressive. No, I'm saying I hated it the most. And I'll go through some of the other trades. But just I vehemently dislike this trade. It depends on how you feel about Gobert, right?

So, you know, whenever you'll talk to a team and you try to think like, hey, are you Gobert guys or are you not? I think we all know what this camp has been for a few years i remember the first time truly understanding how insane his impact was on the floor over the course of a season like i remember zach low one time calling me uh because it was at espn and he's like hey i'm doing some different things he's like i like to just check in with different people and he's like did you see some of this go bear stuff and i go, I thought something was wrong when I saw the on off with him because it was so dramatic and it was such a significant number that showed you what his value was. And so I felt like I defended him a lot. I don't like guys that you don't have to guard. That's

like a fundamental belief I'm always going to have about basketball players. I kind of want you to be able to score sometimes. And I kind of want to have to worry about it a little bit. So as this has played out and you started asking around about like a Gobert market for however long you go, like some people loved him. And then there'll also be other groups that would be like, look, we like them, but our fucking analytics department comes down the hallway screaming about how amazing this guy is. And I think that's part of the Gobert divide and the confusion. So there's a really quick part of this for Minnesota where you're like, maybe it's okay. Maybe they have a nice little run here for four or five years. Maybe these picks, they loaded in.

It doesn't really matter because they all end up being in the 20s. And if we talked about for years, they can all be a little overrated. But now I think they've sort of shifted to be completely undervalued. But it's a very, very dangerous game to get into when you start kicking these picks years down the road, unprotected. When we've learnedected when we've learned if we've learned anything the last couple years you have no fucking clue who you are going to be and who your ross who's going to be on your roster in a couple years what stars are going to be in

that roster exactly so to say oh we're going to be good that's what houston thought when they started trading for russell westbrook that's what brooklyn thought when they traded for harden that's what um you know, Milwaukee's a better bet because Gianna seems to be the kind of personality that's like, I fucking love it here. Trade whatever you want for Drew Holiday. So the only part of this that I can understand is that there was such an analytic drive from it.

And Conley's awesome. You know, the new guy running it, and Matt Lloyd that he brought in from Orlando. These are really good front office guys. And I know that they're opposing field goal percentage at the rims, like 67%. It was 25th in the NBA. They wanted to kind of fix that.

But then what? But then what? Okay, cool. Maybe you win a ton of regular season games. Maybe you're a four seed. But, Bill, I'd ask you this. You just locked into this, moved this many unprotected picks, and you're going to pay Gobert $47 million in 2026.

Are you guaranteed next year? Are you going to pick them? Can you sit there today in July and say, I guarantee they win a first-round series next playoffs? Let's talk about the price. Let's talk about how we feel about Gobert, and then let's talk about how we feel about Minnesota now locked into these three guys.

So the price, three unprotected picks, 23, 25, 27. A swap, unprotected in 26. A top five protected pick in 29. They gave up Vanderbilt in this trade, who you and I really like. Like I would value him what? Like if they were just trading him before the draft, could they have gotten a pick in the 20s for him?

I would say yeah, right? I would say yeah. Right? I would say yes. I really like Vanderbilt. I like Vanderbilt a lot. 4 million, 4.7. Beasley and Beverly were two expirings that, I don't know, I feel like Utah's probably going to be able to flip.

Well, you've got to trade somebody for the money. I mean. I get it. Kessler was the 22nd pick in 2022, and Balmora was also a first-round pick. So five firsts and a 22 firsts, plus Vanderbilt, plus two good expirings. You've traded all of your trade leverage. You have no trade leverage left at all

except for D'Angelo Russell, who nobody really wants anyway. That is a prohibitive, insane price. We thought what New Orleans got for Davis, both you and I thought was too much, but we understood it from the Lakers side because now you have Davis and LeBron, you can win the title.

I don't feel that way about Minnesota. I don't feel like giving all that stuff up for Gobert and having Gobert Towns and Edwards, who's not even 21 years old yet. I don't think that locks you in anything. Can you make round two? Maybe. Sure.

Let's say round two. Is that worth trading six first round picks? I just don't think Gobert is worth that. I had him in my trade value list. I had him in like the 40s with his salary and his age. This isn't a mystery all right the only people that be screaming listeners right now have only looked at the numbers and said hey here's a number for you seven straight regular seasons to seven straight playoff seasons the defense got worse and it's only going to continue to get worse you know he's

somebody you can attack if you bring him away which isn't fair necessarily to him but he's somebody who you can like look i thought he held up pretty well in some of that weird switching shit when his entire perimeter defense for you saw it as decided other than O'Neal to stop playing defense. Yeah. That series against Dallas to me, like I liked Donovan Mitchell. Some little things started going off being like, come on, man, are you going to be one of these dudes?

We talked about it. Yeah. Right. Stop being a two way guy. Even the Clippers thing. It's not entirely fair to go bear to be like, Hey, protect the rim and then also run out and close out on Reggie Jackson in the corner. But the problem is you never have to guard him. Now, is he all of a sudden going to become more of an offensive player?

I don't want to hear about his 15 points a game. I don't want to hear it. I went through it. What's your defensive efficiency per 100 in the regular season? What is it in the playoffs that got worse all seven years? Why is it going to get better now at his age? Why are you like, if I'm going to pay somebody 47 million dollars in 2026 and i'm going to give you all these unprotected picks he's gonna be 34 right the players part of it sucks which is why they should just be able to trade picks

for the guy you want instead of also getting rid of some of your own depth in this like that's the other thing i hate about trades in the nba where you're like do you guys even want some of these guys that we're giving you because we'd like to keep one or two of them, but we can't because of the trade rules with the CBA. But if I'm doing all of these things, I have to know like, okay, I'm a lot to get in the second round and compete. I go into the West next

year feeling like I'm competing with everybody else in the top four. It has to be Davis LeBron. It's like we are giving up an insane amount of assets, but now I know we can make the finals. To me, that's the barometer for all this stuff they gave up. I don't see

any other way to think about it. Give me some examples of other trades you hated initially and still don't like it. Give me one second on that because I just wanted to follow up on your Gobert stuff really quick. 30 years old. He's made the second round three times. Utah lost five of their last six playoff series with him. He's made three All-Star games.

He's defensive player of the year three times. Second team All-NBA once. Third team All-NBA three times. Utah was 13-21 in their last 34 playoff games. He kind of got, I don't want to say played off the floor, but they kept him out because they kept him out there. But the clips and Mavs unlocked something that made it seem like there is actually a solution when you're going against Rudy Gobert in a playoff series. And by the way, not just that,

that regular season game against Golden State when Clay went off and Clay in the postgame, Bill was like, we want to try to get Gobert in every single thing we could. Right. All right. And then the times you saw like Chris Paul and you'd be like, oh, here we go. And it's not even like specific to Gobert. It's almost every one of these centers.

But I don't want to hear about the regular season plus minus. I don't want to hear about the assist. We don't care about that. I just. Right. Go ahead. How about this? Do you care about this?

Here are the centers 30 years old and over, who made an all-NBA team that weren't like Shaq, Hakeem, Kareem, like the greatest. 2015, Gasol. 01 and 02, Dikembe. 2000, 2001, David Robinson. 1989, Robert Parrish.

And then we'll remove Wilton, like all the great centers ever. I just wonder how Gobert is going to age. I mean, you could argue he was probably more impactful two years ago than he was this last year. Because he was. He's a big guy. No, you're right. He's a taller guy.

It's not an argument. He's not getting better. No way. Keep going. Well, then you think, okay, now I'm locked in to him in towns as two of my three best guys. And my other guy is not 21 years old yet. Now, we talked about Tatum for four playoff rounds in a row as Tatum's play declined and declined.

And we talked about like, well, Tatum's 24. Here's the arc of these guys as they hit their mid-20s. They're always better at 27, 28, 29. Edwards four years from now is going to be 24. So for this to work, first of all, he has to ascend to become like a Michael Jordan level talent as a guard. He's got to be like a 30 points a game guy. Then you have to figure out, can Towns and Gobert play together? We already have real questions about Towns who they just extended for even more money. Like we don't even know. Towns did some of the dumbest shit in that playoff series that you and I have seen in a basketball series in the last 20 years.

And there's real questions about, can you win 16 playoff games with this guy and win a title with how erratic he is and some of the stuff he does? And then on top of it, what are teams going to do against Towns and Gobert when they're out there together? It just feels like constantly they're going to be putting them in space and trying to beat them one-on-one. I have no idea if these guys can play together. So if I'm making this trade, when I'm giving up all these picks, I kind of want to know, can these guys play together? Do you think they can play together? I'm not positive. We're 10 minutes in. We haven't talked about the basketball part of it because I always try to figure out a way to like, oh, okay, what would I argue against myself right now? And we know that regular season, healthy Gobert,

although I would say he's declining, or at least showed signs of declining last year from Pete Gobert, maybe over the course of the regular season, it's like, man, you cannot drive on this team. Look at all this size. Anthony Edwards takes the leap that we all think he's going to take and that he's special. Maybe they flip D'Angelo Russell.

You know what I mean? Maybe at some point, maybe they win like 56 57 games like on paper i don't see it okay hold on but on paper i could i could rattle six or seven teams i might like at full health better than even minnesota right now that's the not it's just not the way things work two of those teams are going to have major injuries so maybe they sneak up in all these different things like there's a basketball part of it and maybe everybody's happy and ants the kind of guy and they love it it's like hey this hey, this is awesome. We're all cool with this. We're all young. This is funny. He's French. Who knows? Maybe they're all happy. Maybe all those firsts don't mean shit. Maybe it

doesn't mean shit, but you're absolutely right. From a playoff basketball standpoint, a league that seems to not want to have centers out there at the end of playoff games is going to be paying like 73 million for two of them. Yeah. How about this? The last couple of years, 2025 and 26, it's $100 million just for those two guys. And we haven't given Edwards the max extension that he's going to get after year three, right? So now you're all time locked in and you have no way to improve those three guys. So if it doesn't work, what happens next?

Towns asks for a trade or town starts getting shopped around. Now I have to make another trade to fix the situation I'm already in. And this goes back to something you and I have talked about a lot. I thought of you when this happened. This is a classic new owner syndrome trade. Classic. Timberwolves get these new owners. They have a little bit of a moment in the playoffs where at least it was fun. They had a fun series against

Memphis. New guy's in charge, wants to make a splash. His guy's telling, he hires Tim Connolly, gives him a lot of money. Tim Connolly's like, I think we can get Gobert. And what does the new owner go? Do it. Whatever it takes. I'm all in. Let's get them. Whatever it takes. Well, we might lose all these unprotected picks. What about 2027 and 29? I don't care. Just throw them in.

We're always going to be good. I'm going to spend money. Those picks, they'll all be non-lottery picks. This is a great trade for us. This is what happens with the new owners. We've seen this over and over and over again. New owners don't have patience. They want to get the big splash. They want to buy the yacht, take everyone on their

yacht. Like, oh, look at my Rudy Gobert yacht. Easy. Have you seen it? Come on in. Yeah, sorry. Look at my Rudy Gobert trade. Have you seen Rudy Gobert? Did you see the trade I made? Honestly, this feels like the Rudy Gobert back porch, okay? When I bought my first property, a humble little condo in West Hartford, Connecticut. Yeah. Heard great stories about that place. Some good parties. I bought a $2,500 restoration hardware fire pit thing. Because when I saw it in the catalog, I think the background was Malibu or maybe it was something like Pacific Palisades up top. And I'm like, man, look at all that teak furniture.

Look at that view. That's fucking incredible. I was looking at the back of 20 other identical condos with like plastic dividers. And I set it up that first night, sat on the couch and look back. And I'm like, I'm never going to hang out back here ever. Never. Like, I'm not looking at anything. So you're saying utah spent 25 000

on the fire pit uh i just the new the new owner thing and you know i've talked about this for years i know that you know it's something that original og simmons stuff but i you know and i've shared this with you and whatever there was a group that was looking at buying a team they had a guy who had a guy what a guy was like hey can you ask Ursula what he thinks about any of this stuff? And I said, look, whoever you talk to is going to tell you they have the magic pill for this. All right. Any GM, you're going to interview any team president, any coach. If you were to buy this team, they're going to tell you they fix everything. It's the same in the NFL. You tell owners you can fix the quarterback when you want the job. You tell owners it's the quarterback when you want to keep the job, right? You know, I can fix this guy. You just draft him to the first round. I'm your guy. And then, you know, the guy still tell owners it's the quarterback when you want to keep the job right yeah i can fix

this guy you just draft him in the first round i'm your guy and then you know the guy still stinks it's two years later and you're like hey we gotta get a different quarterback in here so you can protect yourself what happens with every new owner is they're so excited to finally own something as you're pointing out here that if you go back so i wrote like this four page thing for this prospective group here going whoever tells you they have some magic way of doing this is lying to you. It's a really hard job. It's the hardest job to be a GM. It's fucking really hard.

But you're going to have every other owner calling you saying, hey, let's do something because their GM is going to go, hey, let's get, we got new guys here. Fresh fish. It's Shawshank. It's like fresh fish. Fresh fish. And so when you look at every time ownership transfer happens, it's hysterical. I went through like 15 ownership changes and almost

the first deal is the worst one. Every time Mark Cuban, who we'd all agree is like really smart, savvy. The first thing he did was traded for Rafe LaFrance's contract. The first thing he did. What was the first thing Wick did? Traded for Rafe LaFrance's contract. Rafe LaFrance is involved in so many of these firsts. He's your picture on the book of the New Owner Syndrome book. It's a picture of Rafe LaFrance with different jerseys on. Before I was even in the business, I'll never forget. I'm driving around on my beat up Toyota pickup truck and I'm listening to Mark Cuban on Dan Patrick's show, Bill. And he's convinced. Dan Patrick was right. Dan's like, he's convinced like Dan Patrick was

right. Dan's like, man, Rafe's like, look at this contract. It was like a $70 million max of time. And then Cuban goes through this whole spiel that was brilliant because it's Cuban. It was fucking brilliant. And he's like, I'm going to, no, no, no, Dan, what you don't understand it. And by the end of the seven minute phone, or you're like, man, they got Rafe lafrenz like at the end of it i i totally changed my mind because i was like man cuban's so good at this and it was ultimately like from a basketball standpoint these owners go look at every first transaction how about go look at prokhorov yeah go google the prokhorov moves sacramento look at what sacramento did those first few years. Fundamentally, the cost is outrageous. And we'll talk about that after the break,

just how much I hate the cost of what they gave up. But then you're doing a win-now trade. Your best guy is 20 years old. Anthony Edwards is 21 in August. You and I both love Anthony Edwards. Where's he in your trade value thing? Oh, he's in the teens. I mean, I wouldn't have traded him straight up for Kevin Durant.

But all I care about if I'm a Minnesota fan is, all right, we struck oil with Anthony Edwards. How do we build something over the course of the decade so that when he hits his peak, a little like Jason Tatum just now at the Celtics, when he's in the 24

to 29 range, how do we have the best possible team with the most possible assets around him? Instead, they looked at it and said, cool, let's make a run now with 21-year-old Anthony Edwards. He needs years of reps and playoff games to figure out how to be the guy. And you and I both think he can do it, but it's not going to happen next year. And it's not going to happen the year after. And now Rudy Gobert's 33. And now I'm paying a hundred million for him in towns and every team is spacing us out. I just, I just hate it. And then here's the other question I have for you. Well, first of all, Woj, this is the funniest. Woj tweeted how the Timberwolves were elated that they hung on to

McDaniels. Congratulations. He gave up nine assets. He managed to hang on to one of them. Why wasn't Russell in this trade? Why not keep Beverly, put Russell in the trade and get Jordan Clarkson back? Because if I'm trying to win now, why aren't I trying to make a better effort to win now? Why am I trading three guys who are bench guys on a playoff team

that I'm just throwing in the trade when I have Russell, who nobody likes, who they would trade tomorrow. And I guess my answer is this, Russillo. I wonder if there's one more trade here. I wonder if they're going to trade Russell for Kyrie, and that's the last piece of this. That I don't know.

My answer to the first one would be, I doubt it. Ainge wanted D'Angelo Russell running around, pissing off DeAndre Mitchell even more. I mean, at that point, you could just buy him out if you had to. They're probably going to end up buying out the Beverly contract, right?

I want to get rid of Jordan Clarkson because the piece, we'll talk about Utah after the break. Beverly's $13 million and D'Angelo's $32 million. But you have Beasley and Beverly together, which adds up to $30 million, which is what D'Angelo makes.

I don't know. I just thought that was weird. But I do wonder, like, all right, if they, well, let's take a break and then I want you to answer this question.

If they get Kyrie for Russell, do you feel differently about this trade at all? That's next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day,

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legal drinking age. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right. So just quickly, let's say there's no place for

Kyrie to go because if the Nets took Westbrook's contract from the Lakers, everybody on that team should lose their job unless they get two first-round picks. And even then, I think it's a possible job losing potential. Wait, wait, wait. Are you serious? What? You think...

Trust me. It's hard for me to come up with only five guys I wouldn't want to be in business with in today's NBA and Westbrook and Kyrie would be first teamers but you wouldn't take Westbrook knowing you're going to pay somebody and if they took Joe Harris' contract

at Lakers and you got two more picks I wouldn't I'm just that I would want to be in a staring contest with Kyrie at that point. First of all, he's 36 and Westbrook's 47. We just saw from John Wall, Houston was like, we can't find a taker for this guy.

We're going to buy this guy out for $41.5 million or whatever it was. Now Westbrook has value. That report yesterday where the Lakers were like, maybe we can get Seth Curry. It's like, what? No. You're going to get Seth Curry? That was pretty hopeful. In a Westbrook Kyrie trade, two guys that nobody wants? If I'm

Minnesota and Russell to me is almost a sunk cost at this point for how bad he was. Would you roll the dice with Kyrie? No. Whatever. So you wouldn't? No. I mean, I don't like D'Angelo Russell at all, but it's such a different level with Kyrie that, I mean, the only reason I want to see a Nets-Kyrie trade happen

is so that I can see Nets blogs defend Russell Westbrook. That's already happened a little bit. Yeah, I'd be like, wait, you guys just did this with Kyrie, you did it with Harden, and now you're going to do it with Westbrook? Like, fuck, I feel bad for you guys. I actually feel bad. Like, I'm not even mad about it. I just am not inviting Kyrie into anything.

Like, I have at least stability right now. May not love D'Angelo Russell's game. May think there's some, you know, weird stuff. I think at times, at least just from the games I watch, you know, he had Chris Finch on, you on, so he was telling me how great Joe Russell was. That's what he's going to do. He's the head coach of these guys. But I think anybody that watched those games felt like there was a little tug of war there at times.

How much do I want to let Edwards? I think it was actually worse at times. Maybe it got a little bit better. I can't invite Kyrie to the party. I can't invite Kyrie to the party. You know, like I can't, like even if Russell shows up to my house party, I think I know what I'm getting with Kyrie. I have no idea what's going to happen. And I don't want that in the mix. I have a really dumb analogy for you. When we went to the US Open, we went to dinner, house and I, and a couple of friends, And we ordered a whole bunch of food and House insisted on ordering a lobster for the table. I think when you get lobster on its own, lobster can play nice. But if you eat lobster and you're eating a whole bunch

of other things, you're eating steak and you're eating salad and there's all these different vegetables. Cheese, potatoes. Yeah. All that stuff. Lobster doesn't play nice in your stomach with the other foods. And Kyrie is the lobster in this scenario. If you're going all in on Kyrie, it's one thing. If you're inviting him to the party, like you just said,

it's a little different. I guess my thinking is he's just, to me, seems like a better asset than D'Angelo Russell. So at least if you get him now maybe i can flip him somewhere okay where can i send russell i i know at the very least i have like because i know what's going to happen we spent what almost 30 minutes on this all right

25 minutes on it uh timberwolves two months in are going to have a great record they're going to be like the two seed and it's all going to be working out and it's going to be like awesome regular season victory lap early on for the Timberwolves. I know. I already know what's going to happen, which I think we should have said at the beginning,

like almost a PSA, even though we both don't like the deal and I feel great about it. I don't even know if that's happening, but go ahead. Okay. The only team that should be exploring this

is the Lakers. There's like... Most desperate of all the teams. Right. But the only team too that could say... Like desperate of all the teams. Right. But the only team too, that could say, like, think of all 30 front offices

having this conversation. Obviously, you could say 29 without Brooklyn. And you're like, what happens if Kyrie shows up here? Well, if you're a young team that stinks, it's probably worse to have them there

than any, you know, team, team template, right? Yeah. Cause they'll, they'll follow him as he's like a cult leader.

The young guys will be like, Kyrie's cool. I was hanging out with him last night. He has some great theories. Which is why I think I originally, like, part of Jalen Brown that I love so much was when he was kind of like, hey, man, you're like a few years older than us. He was getting sick of him, I guess. When I heard that story, was like that's that's

fucking awesome all right so the lakers you already i don't know if we're doing this but they could talk themselves into this lebron's gonna think he's got some weird sensei powers with them they're like hey it's one year kairi with us with something to prove and with lebron at least we think we think we know i wouldn't give up a single asset if I'm them in a vacuum I'm not even talking to you about if I'm running the Lakers forget LeBron

if I'm just running the Lakers and I'm like oh we're going to bring Kyrie in for Westbrook but you want me to give up my 27 first round pick for this when all these guys

are going to be gone and I'm still going to be screwed I have no chance to win the finals win or lose with this trade Kyrie comes in they're still not going to be able to guard anybody. Kyrie sucked the last three Celtic games in that playoff series.

He's being discussed like he's Isaiah Thomas in 1987, and he hasn't been that guy for five years. No, they're looking at the averages this year. I even was listening to some of our favorite NBA radio stuff, and I like all those shows. But as soon as I hear Kyrie's shooting percentages and averages, which you pointed out, I think, before I'd heard anybody say it, it's like actually playing one game in nine days makes it easier. You lit up Orlando on nine days rest? Can I give you my least favorite trades of the last 30 years?

And I ranked these based on... And I went through... Because I had done a list. I was going to do a whole podcast about this. So I just kind of cherry-picked from the list. But I was trying to think like trades I instinctively hated the most. And this is in no particular order. And then I'll end with the one I hated the most. When Toronto finally traded Vince Carter in 2004 for a bunch of crap,

and they had to take Alonzo Mourning's contract back and all that stuff. I was like, that trade's terrible. You can't feel like you have to trade Vince Carter that badly that you actually not only made your team worse short-term, but you didn't even get cap flexibility, good picks, anything. I hated that trade. TMAC for Steve Francis, Coutinho, Mobley, and Kelvin Cato was just an insane trade.

Can you think of Orlando, knowing what we know now in 2022 and T-Max on the block? What would it... That would have been more than the Gobert trade, right? That would have been like five firsts and two pick swaps. But everybody was a moron in the mid-2000s. Your guy Barkley, that trade was reprehensible the moment it happened.

To Phoenix? Yeah, Hornacek, Tim Perry. I like Tim Perry a little bit. No, that trade was reprehensible the moment it happened. To Phoenix? Yeah, Hornacek, Tim Perry. I like Tim Perry a little bit. No, that trade was like, wow, you just traded one of the best five guys. You traded one of the best

six guys in the league. You got nothing back. What are you doing? Two firsts for Eddie Curry was iconically bad immediately. Remember that? Yeah, because then they also had to pay Eddie Curry too.

Yeah. Oh, and we're paying him $60 million. And apparently the Eddie Curry thing with the Knicks was, well, nobody wants to do this deal, and we don't want to do the deal until we get this heart test thing done. And Isaiah was like, well, we don't need you to take any heart tests. Right.

No, we're fine. We'll look the other way. This is a personal one for me and House, but when Washington traded the fifth pick in the 09 draft for Randy Foy and Mike Miller, I actually thought House was going to just leave, just leave the country. He was so upset.

I was upset for him. It was the draft with Curry and Rubio, and it was a really good draft. And it was just insane where Washington's going, we're so close. These are the last two pieces. Mike Miller and Randy Foy and we're good. Now it's time to compete for a title.

That was insane. The second Chris Paul trade, which I guess was the best they could do, but just felt like, man, Eric Gordon, who I really liked, Eric Gordon's got to be awesome because Chris Paul had somehow become undervalued. And then my number one,

I hated this trade. It still makes me mad. I can't believe it happened. 1996, Dallas trades Jason Kidd for Sam Cassell, Michael Finley, and AC Green. And it was because he wasn't getting along with Jim Clemens. They were running the fucking triangle with him.

And it still is infuriating to me that they didn't understand what they had with Jason Kidd and they just made the classic three quarters for a dollar trade. He was like 22 years old. In all those cases, I was instantly revulsed by the trade, if that's even a word. And I felt the same way about the Gobert trade. My first one is the one I... you know, it was just, I remember being in a nursing home,

visiting my grandmother and I was 10 and it was 86 and it was the Moses Malone. The Sixers could have had Moses Malone. Oh, that's a great one. Yeah. It was, you know, it's funny those things that you remember so clearly. Like I remember, I don't know that it was a great thing health-wise to be 10 years old and just walking around the nursing home lighting up everybody, but that's what I would do. I would just get up and relight everybody, which I think is probably frowned upon now, being 10 and just sitting in a nursing home and then reading Reader's Digest because you're so fucking bored. But we were watching the news on a little TV set. And remember, you got to remember, my first thing was loving those Sixers teams because it was Dr. J and it was Moses.

And then this Charles Barkley guy comes along. All right. So, you know, I'm not, I know this is always weird and everybody hears this and can't understand why I'm from New England. But like that was, you know, when you're impressionable, you're a little kid. That's what I love most of anything.

Fucking love Moses Malone. And I'm like, wait, the Sixers got the first pick with this team and they could have Moses, Brad Doherty and Charles Barkley. And it's like, wait, the Sixers got the first pick with this team and they could have Moses, Brad Doherty, and Charles Barkley. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Not only are we going to trade Moses Malone for Jeff Ruland and Cliff Robinson, the former Harlan Glowtrotter, not Uncle Cliffy, they traded the number one pick, the rights to Brad Doherty for Roy Hinson, who played a hundred games games, 100 games for the Sixers. That's it. It's the most brutal combo trade in the history of the league, I think.

It doesn't get nearly enough credit as one of the worst trades in American sports history. Now, I did talk to somebody who was involved in it later on, and they said, you know, there were some things that we needed to do to kind of shuffle around that you guys didn't know about. I'm like, well, yeah, 10. I definitely didn't know about any of those things. But it's kind of like, OK, so that was your only option. Like, think about that. Think about trade. How about just take Brad Doherty?

He was sitting right there. He just drafted him first. Yeah. And they were like, you know, he had some back issues. You're like, what was Roy Hinson's? What were his pluses at that point? I forgot to mention the Pau Gasol trade which almost goes without saying but that trade almost felt like

it was the league was fixed with that well that was the other one that I always want to point to because it's funny retroactively that one feels like it's it's not as bad because of what Mark but what you have to remember is I've never heard of a trade, at least in all my years of talking to teams, it's not like I'm some reporter, but whatever, I've never heard more teams pissed off after a trade in my entire life of talking to people in the league. It was three weeks before the deadline.

Nobody knew he was available. Nobody knew he was available. That's what people were so mad about. And everybody kind of knew. They're like, oh, this is a tough one to figure out. But they go, you know, if you're going to do this shit, take some phone calls. Figure out what the market is. Pretend this isn't already wrapped up to LA. It's terrible. I've never had teams more upset than that one. From a Utah standpoint with this Gobert trade, Danny did this in Boston. All the tea leaves were pointed to this. We were talking about

the Utah blow it up potential on this podcast, on your podcast, on ringer NBA, um, the Royce O'Neal warning shot for a first round pick, by the way, how do you give up a first round pick for Royce O'Neal? Didn't they watch the playoffs? He couldn't guard anybody.

I actually think he's like the only guy that can potentially guard. He couldn't guard anyone on Memphis though. Um, I just wouldn't have given up a first form, but, uh, so now they do this trade for Gobert. Now they're all in on Wembyn Yama.

Add them to the list with San Antonio, OKC. Charlotte might be in there. We'll talk about Charlotte a little bit. And now they're saying, no, no, we're probably going to keep Mitchell. I just don't believe them. I don't believe them. I don't know how you do this trade and then don't trade Mitchell. I think Mitchell has to be traded this summer. You have to.

If you're going to do this, fucking do it. What's the point? You could have a great tank season next year and the year after. Mitchell's not going to be happy there now. He was barely happy there anyway. Now they just traded Gobert for three bench players.

They have a bunch of picks that they're probably not going to do anything with. So unless this is like a Portland situation where it's a combination reboot, but then you're also using the assets to make the team competitive again, I don't think Danny's going to do that. You and I watched him in Boston forever. Danny's like, I want to win the title. I can't win the title. I'm blowing it up until I get the pieces to win

the title. I thought Mitchell took a huge step back the last two years, and I think he has more value than what I think his value is, and I think they're going to trade him. I would agree with you on the like, hey, do you think Mitchell stays there long-term? No. I think at some point he's traded. But he'd be 26 in September.

He's under contract to the team for three more years as a player option on the fourth. There's no hurry to do this. So if Ainge were to be overwhelmed, then yeah, I think he would do it. But if there's anything I've ever learned about Ainge is that his patience, it seems like he has more patience than everybody else he's on the phone with. So I don't know that it's a, you know, I would be surprised if there was a, we have to do this before the season starts. Cause I don't think he operates that way ever. There's only one trade that I think would be sitting here now for them. And it involves a Godfather Miami trade that would have hero Duncan

Robinson's contract. You could get Gabe Vincent in there and that you're saving and just a shitload of picks and swaps and you re-sign Hero and you just start. I don't know if that's enough because I don't trust the Miami picks because that's out of all the teams when we talk about

grab the picks, you don't know what's going to happen down the road. Miami has managed to be pretty competitive now for 30 years and we know stars want to play there. And I don't see a scenario, even if they bottom out, it would be one year and they would quickly reboot it. The Knicks with Barrett and a bunch of picks, I just don't think the Knicks are going to do it. I think the Knicks really feel like Brunson is going to rejuvenate Randle. I think they want to see what they have with Brunson and Randall and RJ Barrett.

Hartenstein, I really like that signing. They brought Robinson back. If Fournier is any good, that team actually might be decent. New Orleans has McCollum and Picks. I don't think they're going to do anything like that. Sacramento has, I guess, De'Aaron Fox and Picks. I don't see them doing anything. And then Philly would be the wild card for me with Maxie'Aaron Fox and Picks. I don't see them doing anything. And then Philly would be the wild card for me

with Maxie and Tobias Harris and Picks. But the Mitchell market, as I went through all the teams, there just weren't a lot of teams that made sense for him for what the cost would be. So you may be right. Maybe they get through the summer. Maybe this is down the road. But I just don't think he stays there.

And we know the NBA moves fast. I would bet on it happening this summer versus down the road. But I think he's going either way. You might be right. And I don't think he's going to be there long term unless the Jazz think that he's the guy to build around. What have we seen that would make them think that? Two years ago, we're saying this is absolutely a guy you build around. And he's still pretty young.

And I'm with you. Some of the things are alarming. I've always kind of said, even though I like him, there's a little is absolutely a guy you build around. Yeah. And he's still pretty young. And I'm with you. Some of the things that are alarming, I've always kind of said, even though I like him, there's a little Westbrook lightish in there. Yeah. Where it's like, no, I'm just going to do this on my own and kind of make bad decisions. And they're not that far removed from the shootout with Denver. Those were some insane, insane early numbers for him in the playoffs as a young guy. Beating Paul George and Russell Westbrook.

You know, it's like, how the hell is he doing this? There's way more talent in the league and that keeps happening every year. And I just think it's a little less special to have a high volume scoring two guard who's not like an exceptional two-way player is your best guy. I don't know where that takes you in 2022. The other thing with him from a salary standpoint, 30.3, 32.6, 34.8, 37.1. So that makes this stuff hard too, because if you're getting a young asset back for him, you still need to get the other contracts to match it up. So maybe it's something that couldn't happen until February. But I know he didn't love Gobert,

that was reported a lot, but I just can't imagine he's psyched about, cool, I'm in Utah and we're going to be a lottery team now. Because they're going to be a lottery team. So if you're Utah, you're doing this correctly. You're trying to trade Mitchell now. You're trying to see what you can get for Beverly. You want to send him to some sort of playoff team. Beasley, I think, might have a modicum of value, potentially.

Would the Celtics take him in their trade exception? No. But maybe you could add Beverly and Beasley together to take something else. This, to me, seems like a blow-it-up team. I think we're in the process of the blow-it-up. The Royce O'Neal trade is another example of that was their one good wing defender. He's gone.

Ingles is gone. Gobert's gone. So what is this team? It's Mitchell and Clarkson and a bunch of weird Minnesota pieces. And I don't even know who else. I'm not saying they're awesome. I'm just saying I don't know that there's a mandate to make sure they don't open the season or open the season without Donovan Mitchell.

Okay. Because of his, can we stay on the wind horse thing for just a couple minutes? Yeah. Because that's one of the funniest things ever. And for people that't know him he's a terrific guy you know you see him at the airport couldn't be nicer stops bs's with you a little bit will ask you questions about yourself sincere guy good stock and he's been around a long time and it was so funny that he just knew he had the gobert trade but he couldn't he couldn't go with it right he just couldn't and so he's on first take and it definitely sucked for everybody else's on first

take because it's not the regulars um and he could have been next to like three crash test dummies and it wouldn't matter because like he was just going to do this thing and it was like all right let me see if i can pivot in and it sucked for everybody else on the show because they're like what is he talking about so So they're trying to guess. And they didn't want to interrupt him, which they did a nice job of not interrupting him. They kind of let him cook. Yeah, because I wonder if it's a normal staff first take.

There's no way you're getting two minutes of airspace on that show in a normal setting if Stephen A is there. Like Stephen A is not going to let you. I'm guessing he said beforehand, I have this Utah thing. Just let me cook on this. Just let me go and you'll know when I'm done. Right. And I don't think that happens if it's normally staffed.

It's not. He's getting interrupted the whole time. And so that was the beauty of it, which is also another weird thing with first take. Like I know like as guys that work around the clock, like you kind of can't, if you're an NBA person, you can't take this week off. Like the last time I did it, I think it was in 2009. You're doing radio every single day. The only break you have as a football basketball guy is kind of July and August.

But you go, you know what? You can't, you can't like, this is an insane week. That show was built for this week. So when horse has this like perfect storm of opportunity, because he's like, Hey, do you guys mind? We're all just filling in here. Like, I just go. And it was just like, how do I turn the Royce O'Neal thing into me being

right about a Gobert trade that I can't mention the particulars of today? It was fucking hilarious. And I was glad he got his day. He also had his day with the, with the Harden Simmons trade in February. I mean, he was just on that Island for five, six days and it was the red Island. I'm with you. Windhorse is a good guy. I was, I was seriously happy for him. So last Utah question, then we'll take a break. Wynne Horst is a good guy. I was seriously happy for him. So, last Utah question, then we'll take a break. Is Boston pissed about Danny, you think? You're on this

more than I am, so why don't you go? His buddy, Ryan Smith, buys the Jazz December, I think, 2020. Celtics get knocked out in April. And at that point, we were wondering, could that be it for Danny? Could the Celtics fire him? Could he leave? Could he retire? There was whispers he might be headed for something. You were talking to me about that all year long, by the way.

So I think it's fair to share. Yeah, that's fair. You would be like, hey, are you hearing anything or what's going on? Yeah, I felt like something was up. Right. All right. So he retires. What you were right about, by the way. If he retires and if you go back and you read the pieces, it's a lot of my heart attack really changed my perspective on things. I want to spend more time with my family. I'm looking for a new chapter in my life. He leaves. But his buddy had bought the jazz six months before and everyone's joke was he's going to go work for that guy.

Joke? I don't think it was a joke. I thought it was the worst kept secret for two years. I heard it forever. Before he left Boston. Yeah, it was like, oh, all right, cool.

He'll end up doing something with Utah. Now he goes to Utah, like, I don't know, six, seven months later. He's at the finals in game six sitting in the WIC, uh, the WIC Pagliuca seats. Cause they have like 12 seats next to the bench.

He had a Celtics hat on. Yeah. Three rows behind is where my dad sits. And I went to, I don't know, I went to 11 playoff games, about 49 years. He kept moving them up. Uh, I went to a lot of those Celtic games. And the thing that really jumped out was how important Will Hardy was. 49 years. He kept moving them up. I went to a lot of those Celtic games. And the thing that really jumped out was how important Will Hardy was.

If you went to one game, you're like, wow, Will Hardy, this is like having Tibbs in 08. This guy, he's complete respect command of the bench. He's the guy E-May leans on over and over again.

And this is what I'd heard all season from behind the scenes, how fucking awesome Will Hardy was. And I think the Celtics were thinking, man, it would be amazing if we could get through this whole coaching binge season without somebody stealing Will Hardy for us.

Danny's sitting right there, right next to where E-May stands watching all of this and two weeks later hires him. Also, his son works for the Celtics, Austin.

So, I don't know, man. I think they're playing nice publicly, but this is kind of a crazy situation because they could have asked for compensation from Utah, technically. Danny was under contract. He leaves, and then he takes their number one assistant. I just thought it was funny.

All right, you might be right. And I can totally understand ownership. And this is all a competitive world here. It's a very small world. And these guys get upset about a lot of things. And losing Will Hardy is a blow because it's later in the process. But it's also kind of the way business is done when it's like all of a sudden you get this insane opportunity to now be the coach. I'm not blaming Will Hardy. You wereinge's approval rating, not only in the city, but certainly nationally, which has always been sort of a joke, was pretty low. It was like, I don't know. And then you're going, would they ever fire Ainge? And I'm thinking, I don't know that that group could ever fire a member of the 86 Celtics. It just doesn't make any sense.

Or the guy who put together the 08 team or the guy who made the Tatum trade. Right. But then when you find out that Brad's just sort of burnout because the team's just tuned him out, you know, and that's a huge plus to EMA to kind of turn that thing around because it felt like, oh, wow. Like, remember the beginning of the year? You're like, man, maybe Brad Stevens is even better than we thought he is. Like, this team's the exact same thing again. And then EMA gets in the NBA finals.

So credit to him. But once Brad, it sounds like, yeah, I'm not sure I want to do this anymore because I don't think anybody's listening to me. And I think there's a family part of it with Brad Stevens, too. You know, like clearly Brad didn't love coaching the team if he decided, let me just go up to the front office. So now all of a sudden it's like, hey, we don't really have to address the age thing, even though we're a little frustrated and maybe he's losing his fastball.

So if Danny says, well, wait, if Brad goes up, I step out, but my son Austin gets to keep the gig. And then the front office, like this group I've worked with is sort of saved and there's not some massive overhaul, whether it was the Presti rumors or a Landry Fields rumor, you know, all these other rumors that it kind of felt like everybody got what they wanted. Right. So, so I don't know that even though I can understand being upset, if you go back and play out the entire timeline, and I'm sure there's some parts on it that I'm not fully correct on, things kind of all worked out. By the way, I'm not reporting that they're upset. I'm just saying there's one of two ways to take this. Either they're going to get rid of him anyway, and this is how it played out.

Or this went from, I'm just going to help my guy out to now he's running a competitor, the Utah Jazz, and now they're going to have all these picks. And if I was running the Celtics, I'd be like, man, maybe we should have gotten something for Ainge. Quinn Snyder left the Jazz. If Quinn Snyder just became the Lakers coach tomorrow and they fired Darvin Hamm,

the Jazz would be like, we want something. You left. You worked for us. You left. They're going to get some sort of thing back. Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting piece. Too quick. I think it is interesting.

And another thing, when Quinn Snyder's being offered extension, he's saying no, then we should be able to go back and play that timeline out too, going, okay, wait a minute. What are they telling him? What are they telling him? They want to pay him. We're blowing this up. You want to stay? And back and play that timeline out too, going, okay, wait a minute. What are they telling him? What are they telling him?

Like they want to pay him. You want to stay? And I had heard that Quinn was in potentially with the Lakers or it could be the Spurs. I'd heard that he was going to bounce, but then it's like, why was he going to bounce? And it's like, is it, is it an age thing or is it a direction thing?

And I don't know, like a lot of the things make sense retroactively final thought on the age piece of this, at least for me, I find it comical now that he's awesome again as a GM. And I don't know if it's a Boston thing, but the amount of people. Change of scenery. I'm not talking about Twitter. I'm talking about other respected NBA people that think Ainge is a fucking bum as an executive when it's just so not true.

You want to tell me you got mad about some of the picks in the 20s? Yeah. He had a bad stretch there, but then you also look at Rob Williams and look at Pritchard, look at Grant. It's like, oh, wait, so he's got some hits later on.

He is terrific at the top of the draft. He gets the big stuff right. He wins every trade, but it was just weird to go, wait, the same social media presence where Ainge was a fucking idiot, apparently, for years. His approval rating. He just made another fucking incredible trade. Right. So now it's like, man, Danny Ainge was a fucking idiot apparently for years because his approval rating... He just made another fucking

incredible trade. Right, so now it's like, man, Danny Ainge. That's what I wanted to talk about. I think this is important. He goes to Utah and he makes a trade that I think for Minnesota is one of the worst trades the last 30 years. We're going to take a break. When you ride transit, please be safe. Yeah, be safe.

Because what you do, others will do too. Others will do it too. So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all. Trains move quietly, so you won't hear them coming. You won't hear them coming.

See, safe riding sets an example. Yeah, an example for me. Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really? Really, really.

Ugh. This message is brought to you by Metrolinx. We left the break talking about the Celtics. Let's talk about them quickly. They get Brogdon, they get Gallinari. They don't touch their top seven. When I heard about the Brogdon trade, Woj did a tweet. He said, the Celtics have acquired Malcolm Brogdon.

And my brain immediately went to either Grant Williams is in the trade or Derek White's in the trade. And I was trying to figure out which one I felt better about because it was either Grant Williams and Tice and contracts and a pick or maybe no pick, or maybe it was just White and Tice for Brogdon. I didn't know. Then the trade came out and it was basically like we traded a quarter and some pennies and a dime and we got Malcolm Brogdon. None of the top seven are in there.

It's just a 2023 first and Neesmith, who I still like. I'm going to keep my Neesmith stock. I talked to my broker. I'm not selling my Neesmith stock.

I like this fit for him in Indiana. But the Celts... Where's he going to play? Whose minutes is he getting? I'm not selling my stock yet. I want to see for him in Indiana. But the Celts... Where's he going to play? Whose minutes is he getting? I'm not selling my stock yet. I want to see how it plays out. A couple things here.

One is they have the best line of flexibility way better than last year. They have the ability to put five shooters out. They have the ability to go small ball. They have some insurance in case White goes sideways in a playoff series. Somebody who could potentially play crunch time. A downhill point guard.

We'll talk about Brogdon in a second. But just an asset. And then the Gallinari piece, just the backup wing they didn't have last year, where you have Tatum and Brown playing the entire second half in game five because there's no wing they can even put out there. Gallinari has been in some big games. He's a classic Italian, doesn't give a shit a guy. So two really helpful pieces.

Was that anti-Italian? What do you mean? Did you just call him classic Italian doesn't give a shit guy? He's got a little fire in him. I'm half Italian. I'm allowed to call him.

Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. It's okay if you say. Worst case scenario, because the thing is like, well, Brogdon's had trouble staying healthy. It's like, cool, okay. At least he's a big contract, right?

And the thing I like about this trade is like the worst case there is Brogdon battles injuries for the next two years. And it's like, oh man, when he's out there, he's great. But he's still this big cap figure. He's going to be in the, he's like 20, 21 million. And what I like about this trade for the Celtics is these big contracts that either

works out with this top nine, or they have the ability to make these two for ones, three for ones, four for twos that they just didn't have a couple of years ago. White's at 17, Rob's at 12. Smart's, I think, at 17. Brogdon's at 20. They have trade malleability, Russillo. So I just thought this was a home run for them. Makes sense. Owners deserve credit because they're taking on this kind of tax bill. But when I first saw it, I went, eh, that makes sense.

I'm shocked how many people think this is just an absolute landslide robbery. It's not. He hasn't been out there. He doesn't play. He doesn't play. He played 75 games as a rookie. Since then, 64, 54, 56, and 36 games last season. Well, but they did. I think they could have brought him back last year.

I think they were trying to get a better pick. Okay. All right. Fine. Cool. All right. So you're going to pay $22 million and then $22.6 million the next two years for that. So you're taking on not only $45 million for a guy that doesn't have a very good track record.

You're factoring in the tax part of this, too. And I know no one ever cares about the tax thing, but they deserve credit for the ownership saying no, we're cool with this. The other part of it, going back to some of the disagreements we've had about Brogdon, the reason he went in the second round is he is one of the all-time red flag medical guys coming out of the draft.

The reason Milwaukee, because they were also frustrated with him on some of the medical stuff, the reason Milwaukee didn't want to match and keep him is because they're like, go ahead, go ahead and do it. Brogdon's been available for a long time. It reminds me a little of the Jeremy Grant trade. There are other trades where this happens

where you go, oh, that's all you could get for him. Like there's always this collection of like seven names and we probably go seven for seven being like, hey, who's been available the longest? Miles Turner's been available. Certain price range, right? 18 to 22 million bucks

and there's some sort of red flag. Yeah, so then it's like the jeremy grant trade goes down you're like oh that's the best you could do you're like well if he's kind of been available this long i defer to the idea that front officers don't wake up going hey do you want to just fucking trade somebody today that's why we're so retroactively still i you know retroactively still mad about the pal gasol trade. So teams don't do that. They figure out the market for their players. So when this deal went down, I was kind of like, yeah, that makes sense. He's been available for a long time. He's got a nasty injury history. He's a nice player when he plays. He's probably better as a bigger defender than he is as a

smaller defender. He shoots the hell out of the basketball. And I like the optionality of this from a basketball standpoint, if he's healthy, it's an absolute no brainer. Even when you factor in everything else you gave up. But I heard it felt a little bit like how dumb are the Pacers? When I think the Pacers kind of went like, wait, we get a flyer on the knee Smith thing,

a rec, reclamating that we get the first, we get the salary relief, you know, entices a serviceable rotation big. I don't think this is the what the hell were they thinking trade that I felt like so many people described

it as. Well, and they also needed to throw their hat in the ring a little bit for the French guy next year. Brogdon's, they're not making the playoffs with the team they have. The thing I liked about it the most for the Celtics, other than having another big contract that I think, and more depth because-

Yeah, no doubt. Look, they lost the title because Steph Curry is great, because Wiggins went to another level, and because they didn't have enough depth. They ultimately could only play seven guys, and their entire bench as that series went along cratered, and they didn't have enough depth. They ultimately could only play seven guys and their entire bench as that series went along cratered and they didn't have enough depth. Tatum was super tired and just didn't look like himself after four playoff rounds. And I think they were looking at it like

regular season. We have to take pressure off these guys. So now they go nine deep. The other thing that I really like about Brogdon is he was a really good bench guy. And I think that's a skill that you and I have talked about for the last four or five years. Some guys are just bad coming off the bench, right? Some guys don't get it.

They want to either play 33 minutes or if you're playing them 15 and it's just two seven-minute stints. Some guys just have trouble with that. He has proven with his time with the Bucs that he was good as a bench guy, that he could either play whatever minutes you're giving him or occasionally be a heat check downhill guy.

He had a game, Ursula, when they had, I think it was in Boston, when he was like 15 for 15 from the free throw line and he just completely torpedoed them. They couldn't stop him. No, he's awesome. He's awesome at that stuff. He goes slow that's why it was kind of a tough evaluation top of the medicals you're like is he is he slow yeah

he kind of is why does he get to the hoop every time that he just does he gets wherever he wants to go the shooting number the career he's 46 38 and 88 he was 19 6 and 5 last year granted 36 games so a little fresher on catching-and-shoot threes. He's 42%, which actually kind of drops off a little bit off the dribble. So that means, hey, can you play off? If he is willing to accept, hey, play off, be a third guard in whatever it is we're doing. Maybe you're even closing some games. I'd rather have the options than worrying about what the last five are right now at this point.

There's a basketball version of a healthy Brogdon where this is a no-brainer. But what I'm telling you is that the market told you this might have been the best they would be able to get because I've heard them available now for over a year. There's more variance with the Celtics now. The depth is massive, especially for the regular season. But the variance thing is really fun for me because I just thought this team got stale with lineups. There was only so many kind of looks they could give you. And now it's like,

they could play Brogdon, Tatum, Brown, Gallinari, and Horford, just throw them all out there together. It's like, here are five shooters who are just really good at shooting the basketball. Brogdon and Gallinari are fantastic free throw shooters. I think they're like two of the best, you know, 30 free throw shooters who also make they're like two of the best, you know, 30 free throw shooters who also make threes probably in the history of the league. They have the ability to close games down with a bunch of guys who I just feel like I trust a little bit more than some of the guys that were out there

last year from a free throw standpoint. And then I, they, the heat check piece of this can't be overstated. They didn't have that one guy or that two guy was just like, Oh, Tatum didn't have it tonight, but so-and-so came off the bench and hit seven threes or so-and-so came off the bench. He had that third quarter. We had 12 points that really helped us. They didn't have anybody like that. And it was really like, you know, if Grant

doesn't hit those threes in game seven against the Bucks, they're home in round two anyway. If Middleton plays that series, they're probably home. So I felt like they had to get better. I think they did get better. And ironically, they still have one more move. They need Rob Williams insurance. They need one more big guy. They have that trade exception, which is going to expire soon. My guess is they're not going to use it. But in general, I just think they're way better off and they got better. There's no question. So did Milwaukee. If Ingles can come back by midseason with the guys that they were able to keep and Middleton healthy,

that team's going to be really good. And I think it's Boston, Milwaukee, 1-2, 2-1, however you want to have the order. And then I think in the East, I think it's a drop to the rest of the teams. Yeah, I really kind of like what Philly's done here. I like that they put some shooting and some toughness around. Guys are kind of multi-positional with what they already have,

and it feels like they haven't given up a lot to do all those things. So I know Philly with Harden and the Embiid history there, but I don't know that Philly's that far off from them, even if that sounds weird considering I'm not always the biggest Harden guy. But yeah, if I were to say, if you ask me, do you like Boston? Do you think they're better now? It's yes, I like them. Yes, I think they're better.

I'm a little worried. If you were thinking about, well, is there a way to do TJ Warren instead of Danilo? You can't really do that because now you're bringing the two Pacers players that are never healthy to you, and then you're adding it to your tax bill, which is kind of a tough thing. So with Danilo, you're feeling like, you know, this guy shoots the hell out of the ball. The last few seasons from three, 43,

41, 41, 38%. If you put a tracker on him, they might think it's broken. He doesn't move. It's the weirdest thing ever. He's still efficient. He still finds a way to give you some spacing. He doesn't move. You's the weirdest thing ever. Like he's still efficient. He still finds a way to give you some spacing. He doesn't move. You don't believe me, Kevin Herter, who no longer with the Hawks because they just want to give him the keys of the franchise in Sacramento. But we were laughing about it. Like every time I'd watch Danil, I'll be like, is he suck? And they're like,

no, it went in again. He just doesn't sweat. He doesn't dribble. Like it's, it's crazy. So I think there's still concern, but when you're good and you're already capped out and your options are limited, it did not really give up that much in assets, there's a best case version of this that makes them a much deeper, much more versatile basketball team. So I like the deals. I just don't think the Brogdon thing

is this one-sided slam dunk that I felt like so many people were making it out to be. Fair. I really like him. As for were making it out to be. Fair. I really like him. As for what he's going to be on this team. And what you gave up? Yeah. Yeah.

Tax bill. You know, nobody cares. Golden State lost Peyton and they lost Porter. They kept Looney and they signed Dante DiFincenzo. I thought Peyton was incredibly important for them. And I thought if you're going to make reasons why the Warriors beat the Celtics in the finals, he has to be in the top four for what he gave them

as he started to play more and more minutes, what he did for them defensively, how smartly and efficiently he played with Steph. Now he just fit in that infrastructure. I thought that was a big loss for them. I don't know if DiFincenzo, you know, offensively might be more fun. But, man, I really valued what Peyton did.

So I thought that was a notable loss. It is. But when you bring in DiVincenzo for a cheaper price and you look at DiVincenzo's overall catch-and-shoot stuff, like when you looked at him going, man, this guy's fucking awesome with Milwaukee. And considering how open he's going to be in some of those Warriors lineups. Yeah. I think that's where the Warriors separate themselves. Whatever tier you think, how many teams are in that top tier of the way they run their business? Certainly Golden State's

there. Maybe they're at the top, but that to me is like a classic Bob Myers. Like, man, Peyton's really nice and he was important, but dude, that's an insane contract. Yeah, I agree. Well, it's very similar to Posey in 2008, which my dad still mentions to me probably once a month. But it's a good example of it because you go it was too much money. Yeah, you got to take that. It was too much money and he was really

important for what they did, but there was a price of the importance. And for the Warriors, paying Peyton, I mean, I don't think that could have matched the nine, but even paying him like six and a half with the luxury tax they have. So he's like a $70 million guy. But I thought he was one of the reasons they won the title. So that's a tough one to replace. I had the Durant thing, I guess we could talk about. If you had to bet on an outcome, what is it? Bet? Man. Yeah, this summer.

We're at the end of the summer. It's Labor Day weekend. Where is Kevin Durant? What team he's on? Because my bet would be Brooklyn. I want more from you on why that is before I answer. Give me your full Durant thing. Just take your shirt off. Let's go.

I don't love any of the trades that are sitting there. Doesn't seem like they love eight now. So I think the eight market cooled in a really unusual, surprising way to me. Detroit basically was like, we're out. Indiana just seems like

they're going to be more geared toward maybe going for the French guy. Maybe, but they still would have a lot of work to do to be a tanking team. Because you got Halliburton, you got Matherin in there. You know, Duarte's a nice player. I get it, but somebody's got to be bad in the East, right? Somebody has to be a bottom four team. And Detroit got better. You go through all the teams, it's like who are going to be the worst four teams?

It's really hard to figure out. Charlotte's the only one that I would be like, that team will definitely be one of the worst four teams. But, um, I think for Indiana, like, all right,

so could they sign Aiton and do some sort of trying to sign and trade where Turner goes back to Phoenix? Like, sure. Anyway, the Phoenix thing, that seems like that's cool. Miami,

the fact that they can't trade bam when did you know about that i feel like the biggest idiot in the world when did you know about the designated franchise player rookie max guys two of them can't be on the same team that yeah i honestly i'll tell you i've forgotten at times i knew i knew about it but i've also yeah i think i'm not giving myself but honestly man like you know for those of us that do this every week and the amount of cba stuff that you can kind of get lost in where you're like oh wait if you're hard capped when you can't do this or oh the reason the sign and trades were set up was some way to get power back away from all the players just demanding sign and trade so once you do that they want to put in other

limitations so that people weren't in such a hurry to do it. It is, I mean, unless you're one of the national cap guys doing it all the time. Mark's is great at it. He knows. It's not, I mean, it's kind of like I used to try to memorize all of it like, hey, Bird writes early Bird and what does it mean with that and all this different shit and it's like, I don't know man. Well, sometimes it's easy to

forget who got the designated rookie max too. You almost need like a list on your office, but Miami can't trade Bam unless simmons was also in the trade exactly yeah toronto which has become kind of the hot durant team du jour but i'm sorry i'm just not trading barnes in a durant trade okay think about what you just said because i knew you were going to say this i haven't heard you talk about this already because the toronto thing i got a call this weekend saying, don't sleep on Toronto. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. It's four days of don't sleep on Toronto.

And then it's now publicly, wake up, Toronto's in this thing. You wouldn't trade Scotty Barnes for Kevin Durant. No, I would, but that can't be the trade. Well, I mean, obviously I know this. It really has to be, the question for me is, would you trade Barnes and Siakam for Durant? Because it really has to be, the question for me is, would you trade Barnes and

Siakam for Durant? Because that would have to be the trade. And I have to throw picks into that. And I just don't, am I winning the title if I do that trade, if I'm Toronto? Here's my team. I've got KD, I have Fred Van Vliet, I have Gary Trent, I have Ananobi, Chris Boucher. Am I winning the title? Precious. Am I a title team after that? Is that like a crazy different situation than he was in in Brooklyn when he got swept? More defense, probably not as much offense. I don't know, man.

If it's Barnes and Siakam, no. If you're saying I could get him for Barnes and Ananobi and some picks and I could keep Siakam, I'd Siakam as third team all NBA. I thought he was last four months of last season. I thought he's one of the best 20 guys in the league easily. And I had him as one of the best 15. So if I'm giving a Barnes and Siakam, I better know I can win the title or make the finals. And I just don't feel like I definitely know that with that trade if I'm Toronto.

I know you voted him over Butler then, third team All-NBA. But Butler didn't play enough games. He plays 56 games a year. Yeah, I went Butler. But that's fine. It was close. I'm not against it. It was very close. But haven't we kind of landed at times with Siakam?

And he was terrific to close the year out. You just feel like there's still this sort of level that he's just not there. Well, so you would go Siakam, Barnes, two firsts, and two pick swaps for Durant? Well, first of all, after four for Gobert, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do with Durant. That's the other thing. I think the Gobert thing completely fucked up the Durant trade value piece,

which is why I think he stays. All right. There's another thing, too, depending on which teams you ask, that'll say like, hey, I'm not in a hurry for Durant trade value piece, which is why I think he stays. All right. There's another thing, too, depending on which teams you ask, that'll say like, hey, I'm not in a hurry for Durant anymore. You know what I mean? He does get hurt all the time. And I don't know if Masai,

who's terrific, would be motivated by the Kawhi thing, but that was the greatest rental since John Candy. Get it? And I don't... You know what it? And I don't, you know what I mean? Like, I don't,

I don't know if they're emboldened to think like, Hey, we'll just do it again with the rant. Like, do you know what the rant is willing to sign off on? Like we could talk about, well, he's under contract for four years,

so he has no leverage. Bullshit. Have we not learned anything in the last couple of years? Like I'm not trading for Durant, even with four years of supposed control because I don't have any control. And so is Durant going to want to go to Toronto? Does that seem like a Durant thing? Well, then you have this other piece. You have Joe Tsai, the Nets owner, who's... I don't know what the list of most powerful billionaires are, but at some point he's going

to be mentioned if you're doing the trade value for most powerful billionaires. I think there's been some stuff that's come out of this. I think he's embarrassed and confused by how the last couple of years went and is now in fuck you mode. And I don't think this is somebody that's going to be pushed around because Kyrie's like, I've opted in, now trade me to the Lakers. Josiah already, he already kowtowed to these guys for a couple of years here. The Harden trade, then getting rid of Harden,

bringing in Simmons back, getting rid of the coach, paying DeAndre Jordan what they did. He kind of rolled over for these guys for a few years. Then the rich guy circles, I'm sure there are people who are like, hey, Joe,

what's going on with the Nets? What are you doing, buddy? Why are you letting those guys run the team? You're Joe Sy. You know, he's got his face like, you're Joe fucking Sy. You let these guys do this to you? And I just think he's going to stare these guys down and get the best deal possible.

Think about how Darryl handled the Simmons trade. It's like, I'm not giving this guy away. I'll have a staring contest with him all year until I get something close to what I want. And I just don't think they're going to give Duran away because he's under contract for four years and he's unhappy. I have another theory

on this, but you go and then I'll give you my other theory. No, I want you to keep going. You're hot right now. I'm hot? You keep feeding me? Yeah. Okay. I'm doing the wind horse. I'm going to point up. Tom Brady, Bruce Arians.

Tom's like, I'm retiring. Are you? Yeah. This Miami thing doesn't work out. Yeah, I'm retiring. Are you? Yeah. This Miami thing doesn't work out. Yeah, I'm going to retire. Not really retired. Oh, Tampa changed its coach.

I'm back. I wonder if part of this with KD is Sean Marks related. I think there's some animosity toward the front office from the KD Kyrie side. I mean, Kyrie has animosity toward everybody, obviously,

but the KD side, I think there's too much smoke here dating back to the season and the playoffs with two things. One is how they handled the Kyrie thing and not having him play the road games during the season. Cause they didn't want to disrupt the continuity of the team. I'm not, I'm not defending either side on this,

but I'm just saying, I think maybe KD is like, you know, you could talk yourself into any, you're a hero in your own story, as Dave Jacoby always says. KD's like, I was tired in the first round. If he's thinking that way, and part of the reason is because they wouldn't let KD,

or Kyrie, play these road games. So there's that. You also have, you know, as we know in this world with front offices and GMs and writers who will write stories and writers who will pass along information, what has the narrative come out over the last couple months? It's that this is KD and Kyrie's fault. They did this. Poor Sean Marks. Poor Nets front office. This is what happens when you turn your team over

to these entitled dudes. I don't know if that's, I mean, that's definitely partly accurate. It feels accurate. But Sean Marks hasn't gotten nearly enough criticism, nearly enough for turning the team over to these guys, for kowtowing to their every demand, to getting rid of

Atkinson, which I think everybody feels like he's a really good coach, for how stupid it was to spend that kind of money on DeAndre Jordan, which you and I, if we had had drinks with him, he would have been like, hey, I'm thinking about giving DeAndre Jordan, what was it, three for 30? We would have been like, are you insane? Do you have league pass? Why are you doing that? Um, throwing Jared Allen in the, in the heart and

trade the whole thing. So I think there's some bitterness on both sides now where Katie and his camp is feeling like they're getting blamed for everything. And then the nets in their camp are like, you're the reason we're in this mess, which is how divorces happen, right? Except in this case, they can't get divorced. So my spidey, I have no evidence. I'm not reporting this, but I do wonder if a piece of this is if KD stays, is there going to be a fall guy if he stays?

Okay. A lot there. I think you're right that, I mean mean none of us really like blaming ourselves for anything first of all i mean that's here in our own story right if we can blame somebody else uh we're going to take that opportunity to go ahead and do it so that's that's part like when i heard stuff about like oh wait so kairi opted in durant wants out like is there a disconnect there did durant finally realize like holy shit i blew four prime years with you dude and you don't play and there's a million different reasons why you do or don't play

and it's like no he's actually mad about what they've done with kairi you're like wait a minute and as much as i love durant okay um. You know, the rings with Warriors count. The guy was fucking awesome. Toe to toe with LeBron. Right. Left Westbrook behind. Makes sense. Like, we get it.

All right. It makes even more sense years removed from it. You're like, all right, I didn't want to do it. Him not getting enough credit for the Golden State thing. You know what? I also get that part of it too. It's like, dude, of all the teams, of all the things you could have done, you went ahead and did that. And he's had to pay the price for that for a really long time. And then they went again and it's like, oh, so they went without me. And it's like,

you know, these again, you did now you're just paying attention to everybody that never was going to like you to begin with. Like the people that you're annoyed by, none of them are going to change their mind. There's nothing you can do that's going to make them go, you know what, Durant, you're actually okay in my book now after I shit on you on social media for 10 straight years. It just doesn't happen. But there's going to be some accountability here. So if that's the conclusion that they land on, like, was Sean Marks supposed to go, actually, no, we're not getting rid of Kenny Atkinson. Oh, wait, to close this deal, to get Kyrie and Durant here, to get arguably the best player in the league at the time and

supposedly another top 10 guy if he actually plays? To do that, I'm supposed to start telling you no. This is the way the job works. And I know it sucks. And I know people may not like it. Maybe Joe Sy's friends who don't understand the NBA are like, what the hell's going on? Well, Joe's been in it long enough. You're like, yeah, this is kind of what happens. This is kind of what the deal is. So I know that you had something on it and I had an open where we completely disagree that wait. So you want to blame Sean Marks for not telling you, no, what the fuck are we even talking about?

And that's where I just like, I can understand. Okay, cool. Cool presentation. I don't agree. I just, I just don't agree. It's there's, and by the way, the next version of Durant and Kyrie that want to team up and go to another team, they're all going to say yes.

They're all going to say yes, except for maybe Josiah. It's like if you... I mean, there's parents. The iPad is one of the great babysitters, right? And if you just give a six-year-old kid, you give them an iPad every day because you don't want to deal with them,

you don't want to play with them, you don't want to interact with them. The kid's just in the corner with the iPad, and that's how they spend the next six years of their life. And then all of a sudden, they get to sixth, seventh grade, and now they're having issues. They're not reading. They have attention stuff,

and it basically stems with the iPad decision. And then the kid gets mad at the parents because you gave me the iPad and the parents are like, well, we're busy, we're both working, we had to give you the iPad. And it's like, nobody's right, nobody's wrong, this is just where we landed.

I feel the same way about this Nets thing where it's like, I get it from the Nets side. I still think given DeAndre, if you're like, hey man, if you're coming into our world, you have to trust us as an organization. And giving DeAndre this kind of money is going to really hurt us competitively because he's not that guy anymore. But they did it. Whatever they saw with Atkinson when Durant didn't play that whole year, and then Kyrie only played 26 games, and they were like, we're out, get Steve Nash. They definitely, they pushed for that. So when you empower and entitle people for that long, I feel like some of that's on you. And it's also on the guys who that's how they wanted it.

They can't be mad at the next. They got everything they wanted. They got everything they wanted. And the only way that you can, do you think during the recruitment of players at this stature, you go, Hey, here's the deal. If you come to us, we're going to say no to you a bunch. And we have the last call on the coach. And we're not going to ask you about any of the rest. Then you might as well just not even recruit them. You only get so many chances to even be invited to a meeting with one of these players. And until they start playing 10 on 10, none of this shit's ever going to change.

But should the Nets have been more alarmed about how unhappy the second Kyrie season was in Boston and how unhappy the third KD scene in the Warriors were? And just like, it just seemed like they were so happy to be relevant again. They overlooked every red flag

there possibly could be. And I just think, I actually wrote this down because I wanted to mention this to you. We used to talk about what would Belichick do? It was like a good rule of life in the NFL for a long time, right? What would Belichick do here? Would he let this guy go or would he resign him? Would he turn this guy into picks? Would he trade back? Like pretty good barometer. So what would Curry do, I think is the new, what would Belichick do?

Curry doesn't want to be the GM. He doesn't want to have him put in the front office. He wants to be in an organization where he just trusts the people. I thought Steve Kerr, he had this awesome point that he said in a press conference about, it was some trade they made. You might've seen this where he was talking about how upset he was when they traded somebody. Was it the Iguodala trade? Oh, Iguodala trade. Yeah. And he had that great quote about,

I was so upset, I just wouldn't have done that. And he's like, that's why the coach can't be the GM. I was too close to, I'm too close to my team. I can't see things correctly. I have relationships with these guys and I just, I'm going to steer it toward what makes it the easiest for me as a coach and not what's best for the franchise.

He had this whole monologue about it. It was great. Players can't see what's best for a franchise. They can't. They're going to look at it through the prism of what's best for me. And for those guys, it was what's best for me is we need our buddy DeAndre Jordan. We need to pick our coach and we need to...

Oh, James Harden available. We got to go trade on for that. That's our guy. And I just don't think, I don't, there's a reason why all these jobs get split up. There's a reason why Tibbs was a failure in Minnesota as the coach and the GM. Like there's a reason the best organizations have all these different layers to them with decision-making. Look at what Stan did. Like what Stan did in Detroit. Stan's another one. When at the very end, it's like, you know what? Screw it. We'll go all in on Blake Griffin because I'm probably getting fired

anyway. That's the kind of thing after the fact that Detroit should have been able to file a grievance against him. Right. He should have had to give money back. Now, really, the owner signed off on it, so we're kind of making fun of the whole thing. Here's the point, though. In the beginning, when we mentioned Kyrie the first time, it's a hang-up by every other team except for the Lakers

that can probably talk themselves into some version of this. I don't know what the assets would be. I'd have to look at it to even explore it. For every other team, I'm like, no way with Kyrie. But four years ago with Kyrie, if you're telling me I own the team or I run the team and I can get a chance to get the rant even off of the Achilles thing, I'd do it. Because I brought up that team from before.

They were 42-40. They lost in five games to six in the first round their starters were D'Angelo Russell Kuroots Jared Allen obviously a nice player Jared Dudley started 25 games didn't what he was on the team like that's not what this is the goal isn't to be one of those

we agree I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it I'm just saying here are the ramifications three years later how do you fix it and here's how this gets fixed this gets fixed with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleinman, Durant's guy, and Josiah. And everybody else is out of that room. It's those three people fix this. Josiah hired David Levy and fired him in two months. Josiah just fired somebody recently who was like his president or whoever's in charge of revenue. The Nets were like fourth in revenue last year. And it wasn't... Joe Sy will do shit. He'll make shit happen. And he's going to get in a room with those guys. And he's going to tell them,

I'm not giving Kevin away. All we did was bend over backwards to make this guy happy for three years. You're not getting your way on this. So what do we have to do moving forward to make this work? And that's why I worry, who's more likely to leave? Is it whoever was making decisions in the front office or Kevin Durant? I think it's 50-50. I'm with you of having an open mind on this Durant thing. I don't have enough information to know whether it's inevitable or not. Because I think if Phoenix had a different owner, they probably would have figured out a way to do this already but if they had phoenix had a different owner than ayton would have had in this extension a year ago so right right that's yeah phoenix isn't exactly let's let's open the checkbook yeah because you know honestly for

durant too to just say like okay phoenix is the one the phoenix thing could get bad really quickly by the way like i don't know how know how much longer Chris Paul has in him. And before Chris Paul got there and fixed everything, that wasn't exactly some great team. Now you take eight and out of the mix and you're going, all right, maybe it's, it's a part-time Chris Paul with Booker.

Who's probably pretty close to who he's going to be at the max, which is, you know, terrific. And then Bridges, who's an incredibly inconsistent offensive player, which just has to be in the trade. Yeah.

So my guy, Eddie Johnson, he was saying like, who's an incredibly inconsistent offensive player. Bridges has to be in the trade. Yeah, Bridges would have to be in the trade anyway. So my guy, Eddie Johnson, he was talking about Booker and Phoenix because he's like, there's no way they would trade Booker straight up for Durant. You guys don't understand. This is Booker's city. It's not much different than Curry and Golden State.

It's without the titles, but same thing. Booker is the guy in Phoenix. But Booker on that extension, once that extension went through for Booker, you couldn't have done it anyway. I'm saying just in general, if you're adding Durant

with Booker, adding Durant with Booker, he's in the same situation he was in with Curry in a lot of ways, where he's going to somebody else's city and somebody else's team. That's the way it's at. But it isn't. There, but it isn't, there's just no way. What do you mean?

There's nothing comparable to going to, to golden state with Steph after they'd won a title. I'm taking out the titles and I'm taking out that stuff's better than Booker. I'm just saying like, you're still going to somebody else's city versus like what he had in Brooklyn, where it's like, we're creating this from scratch and I am the guy. That might be true locally,

nationally, not even close. Fair. All right. Taking a break quick. All right. A couple of leftovers from the last three days, then we'll go.

Let's go rapid fire. I think we can do this in 20 minutes or so. Okay. New Orleans goes all in on Zion for the max. You had David Griffin on your podcast. He basically tipped his hand on this. Um,

I mean the Porter contract, I think was the most dangerous, big, long contract we've seen with Porter's injury dated back to high injury history, dating back to high school, New Orleans had to do this with Zion. But I just, I just want to take a quick second. This seemed improbable, like what, five months ago,

with how unhappy the New Orleans situation is. Zion wasn't playing. He was overweight. And it seemed way more likely he was going to leave than that he was going to stay, be enthused by the direction of the pelicans and the whole thing i'm just surprised it it the turnaround of that was pretty impressive it is it is it also proves why like you can't be emotional you can't think about stuff in the moment you can't be going like all right you know there's just so many times we say these definitive things when it's like all right we'll give it time we'll see what happens you know whether it's there's no way this season's like right now it seems impossible that Brooklyn would start next year with Kevin Durant.

And as you just finished up proposing, maybe this does get figured out. Maybe you get through all these emotional days with all this stuff. But when Griff came on with me just a few weeks ago, this is kind of how it played out. Called him a max guy. Want to make this work. He said all of this stuff was a little overblown. I don't know that I am going to 100% agree with that because I think there was some serious disconnect

at certain points in the middle of the season, but it proved two things, that the Pelicans found a deal that they felt comfortable with. It was one Zion was happy with and keeps hammering home that point, rookie extensions. We just don't have many guys that go, you know what, I'm not going to do the rookie extension as a top pick.

Lamello could be our first. Next topic. I tweeted about this, so I'm repeating a tweet, but I just put together all the players on the Kings and I'm just, I like that team. I know they're not going to win the title. They'll be a play-in team. You sure? I'm going to enjoy watching them. That's it. I saw the tweet. I think it's all Malik Monk-based, which I love for you. Monk,

Herder, our guy. Herder, late-season Davion Mitchell. The Fox, the bonus pick-and-roll. Did you see the Murray highlights from whatever summer league weird game that was he was

immediately first shot corner three bang yeah I think there's another Italian guy not named for cheetah who had 20 through three quarters in that game as well so again summer

league we know the rule we only care about summer league if it enhances our opinion on a player dismiss it otherwise my tweet was that they reminded me from a personnel

standpoint of the weird mid-2000 teams that used to give Team USA problems. That had shooting and big guys that could move and they played with a certain speed. Pick and roll stuff that the guys just didn't want to defend. If you've heard her and Mock coming off the bench,

I'm going to take you seriously. Another one. Bruce Brown goes to Denver. Now, look, the Lakers, they're pretty clear what was going on there. They just signed three clutch guys including... The Lonnie Walker thing, I think

just general consensus in the league that was like the biggest WTF signing of all of them because they just spent two months talking about how they wanted two-way wings and then they they got Lottie Walker. Bruce Brown would have been a good Lakers signing, right? Wouldn't Bruce Brown have been the perfect mid-level exception for them? Instead, he goes to Denver.

I'm a little worried about Bruce Brown away from the best version of what it looked like the Nets could be. Because when it was good, it was like, man, I can just roll to the rim every time and nobody cares. Like when Joe Harris was playing and you had shooting and he was kind of this weird inverted smallest guy play center thing, which is what's frustrating about the Nets is Ben Simmons could ever get his shit together where there's a version of Ben Simmons on the Nets was shooting around him

that was like, man, it might have some really easy nights and some great opportunities for him. So Brown away from them scares me a little, but then you're putting them with the best passing big man perhaps we've ever seen. Well, who would you rather have on the Lakers next season, Bruce Brown or Lonnie Walker? Brown. Gun to your head. Brown. It's not the same number where it's a team that's worried about all the cast. It's funny because on our thread, we had somebody be like, I can't wait till LeBron owns a team and brings in all the clutch guys. And I immediately was like, you think once he owns a team,

he has to pay these players. He's going to bring them in. He'd be like, fuck. He's like, I may have made my teams pay them, but I'm not fucking paying for these guys. Yeah.

I like Bruce Brown on Denver. I thought that was an interesting fit because he can move without the basketball and that's a team that's going to have ball. Yeah. So yeah. Right. Nice fit for them. I thought that was an interesting fit because he can move without the basketball and that's a team that's going to have ball movement. So, nice fit for them. I thought the Lakers, look, there's still some Lakers contender buzz, which I just, I will freely admit, I just don't understand. Even if

you put Kyrie on that roster instead of Westbrook, I still don't know who's guarding anyone and I still don't understand how we just watched the playoffs and saw how important defense mattered and wing defense and being able to just defend for four straight rounds. And the Lakers are just like, yeah, but what if it's offense that's the new defense?

And it's like, no, you're always going to need stops. I didn't like their offseason at all. Which brings me to a quick section. I can't figure out what these teams are doing. So maybe you can explain it to me. I'll't figure out what these teams are doing. So maybe you can explain it to me. I'll give them, I'll give them to you one at a time. What is Portland doing in your opinion? If you had to describe it in one sentence. I think they're going for it. And, and Dame is a part of it. I mean, they want to pay Dame, like Dame went from, is he going to be

out of here to now he's getting an extension. And I think we were very early kind of sharing with the world that we kind of liked. Anthony Simons. The shooting numbers have been terrific. A hundred million. I know he's really, really young, but damn, you bring in grant like they're, they're going for it. Nerds back. If he's healthy, it's terrific.

And it does feel a little like, you know, the Portland argument used to be with a healthy Nurkic, CJ, Dame, throw in what would be Powell originally. They would always say, hey, we have the best starting five differential of any team in the NBA. So if we can just figure out, it's like, yeah, if you could also defend. So I think they're maximizing whatever they are, knowing that they had some money to spend. Well, I wonder if, does that make Sharp a possible trade guy if they're trying to be more of a playoff team this year? Like, do you take Sharp

because you think this is the next guy? Or do you take him because you think he's the best trade asset? Because this is, all the other moves you're making are signifying we want to contend and then they're sharp over there seventh pick a lot of value and he's just not gonna be ready for a couple years it doesn't seem like we i think we disagreed about this a lot in the past like i just don't think teams go well we

don't like this player as much as the other players but let's take them because they'll have more trade value later on you gotta go you gotta like who you take i think they probably love the idea of the best version of sharp could actually be really impressive because it goes in he's big and the shot goes in uh but i don't know that he you know like a lot of young guys i think he's a little detached from what everybody else is trying to do what is atlanta doing? I would imagine trying to ease the burden on Trey. I think they ran the highest, whatever, like they ran the highest pick and rolls with Trey and whoever was second was

11% lower. Like they're incredibly predictable. They got to defend better. So now they feel like they have a guard who was in that defensive rotation that gives them a big improvement. I still think there could be something else because that's just what you hear. I don't know if Hunter is going or three for one going, and I don't know

who it is. Yeah, and with Herter I felt like... They're going to have to pay Hunter. Yeah, which is a little scary too because it's like, man, when it's good, it's pretty good, but there's a lot of nights where you're like, where is he? I really like Herter, especially at that price. Yeah, because he can dribble a little

he can shoot we watch him in playoff series play pretty well and he can defend I don't know how you're simultaneously trying to contend but then you're also like just kind of dumping Herter

what you need is you need Trey to go hey we know how good you are we know you can score we know you can do all these different things you got to get something else involved here we can't be running the same shit every single like these these default possessions where it's the same thing and it's always you like those just don't win playoff basketball games and i think that miami series was was a real wake-up call instead of thinking that they were the team it was in the eastern conference finals a couple years ago. Yeah, he got demolished. What is Dallas doing, in your opinion?

I like not paying Brunson. You? I just like Brunson. I think there's a 20% sticker tax for free agents. He's probably a $20 million guy. They have to pay him $25 million. agents. He's probably a $20 million guy. Knicks had to pay him $25.

I'm trying to win a title with Luka. I don't like losing guys. So I wonder, are they getting Fournier back? Does that turn into a sign-in trade? Because that helps the Knicks a little bit too. That gives them a little more flexibility just in general. If I'm Dallas,

I have to get something back in that trade. Even if it's like Derrick Rose's contract for a year that I can flip into something, to just lose the Brunson asset is an absolute murder. And you look at, I mean, the best case ever of this was Durant and Wiggins, where Golden State could have just lost Durant instead of turning the Russell spot. But if I'm Dallas, I'm just trying to turn that into something and I wonder if it's Fournier who by the way might be pretty good on Dallas you know yeah they brought back Cleaver at a good number

Dragic is probably coming I would assume I think the Hardaway Jr. thing is easy to lose sight of like oh shit that's right they have him too and you also have Dinwiddie who you can probably involve in a lot of the stuff that you had with Jalen. They got JaVale. Yeah, and JaVale's a really nice option as a big that's not that expensive.

And then, of course, Dragic is going to be 52 years old, and I'm going to be reading a Hoops hype link about how Dallas still would love to bring him in with Luka. It'll happen this year. I forgot to mention Dragic when we were talking about the Nets and Sean Marks. So who gets the blame for the fact that they fielded that team that just

had a bunch of small guys that they missed on Millsap and they missed on Aldridge. They missed on Blake Griffin. The concept of having Dragic and Patty Mills together, all that stuff. Like, I don't feel like Durant was signing all those guys. Like, at some point,

does the Nets front office take a little heat for not having a more flexible playoff roster? Or is it just so much with Simmons dependent and they were misled

on that trade? If they're misled on that trade, shouldn't they get blamed for that? Like, how do we explain the roster that they ended the season with last year? If you and I were putting that together, wouldn't you be kind of afraid

people would be like, hey man, what happened with that roster last year? That was fucking weird. Gotta tell you, this feels like a little Rich Kleiman-ish. What do you mean? It just feels like there's a lot of, like, hey, can we point the blame? If you want to tell me that there's

other transactions that could have done it better way more blame on Durant and Kyrie just if I'm pie chart I think it's 85% blame pie 85% Durant Kyrie I'm not carrying anybody's water in this I think it's weird that the

Nets front office and ownership has now been absolved from the last three years. I don't understand it. Just as a curious person, I don't understand how that's become the mindset. I don't know what happened with the Ben Simmons deal. Why did they think Millsap could still play? They could have asked us.

It's like, why did the Knicks sign Kemba Walker? They could have asked anyone who watched basketball. When you're done, you're done. That's it. I think the Simmons thing really messed him up because not only moving out Harden,

but you couldn't, like, it's a little bit like Westbrook. Like, Westbrook not playing for the Lakers is better than him playing for the Lakers. There's no version,

like, that's it. So them going, what do we do here? We'll trade it for, you know, they're the only team, and again, they're motivated by thinking

that LeBron and the Kyrie relationship can salvage whatever version of Kyrie you're going to get for a year, which is still a tough gamble. But with the nets, like, yeah, okay. There's a bunch of stuff that doesn't work out.

But like, when you hear these stories about how Simmons would show up to some of the workouts, like ready to go. And then they're like, Oh, he's playing like he's good. He's cleared.

We're, we're doing this. And he'd have like a crew with him and like a trainer and i and then and then he just he would jog like off to the side and then people go like wait what the fuck remember the nick friedel thing right where he ben simmons dunks and then points nick friedel was like did you get that and then friedel has to like ask can i post it and what about what i told you about the Celtics game when he went out and rebounded for the guys

at halftime of a playoff game in his weird outfit for like 30 seconds and then just kind of wandered off? And everybody who's at the game is like, what's going on with this guy? Yeah, so... I don't know. Whose job is it to have intel on Simmons? But what if you're told like, hey, he's good to go and you're ready to, and now we're realizing

like a pattern. This goes back to the Philadelphia stuff. Like, remember when I did that thing where I was sharing different, you know, scouts and front offices talking about like, would you rather have Jalen Brown or Ben Simmons? And it was pretty overwhelming because guys that were plugged in were like, look, the Ben Simmons approach to all of this, this is even before it was even bad in Philadelphia was just that, you know, his,

his whole approach, it sounds like a guy who likes the gig, but doesn't want to show up. Can we go back to your rich climbing name drop? Yeah. Dude, where is that offensive to you? I apologize if it came off that way.

No, it wasn't offensive at all. Okay. I think, I think Durant, I just want to make. Okay. I think, I think Durant, I just want to make this clear. I think he's played this horribly. I thought the trade request

was horrible and I don't think he should have done it. I just don't. And the moment you do that, I think it's really hard to come back from. And I think he should take

way more blame for everything that happened the last three years. And I know guys don't blame themselves when we talked about the hero in their own story thing. But I'm not sympathetic to Durant at all on this. No, I love the guy. But the fact that you would decide to go, I'm going to put four prime years

and align it with Kyrie. And then apparently he still wants to keep it going. Do you believe that? I know that's what's been said. I don't know what to believe on the KD Kyrie thing. He picked the worst guy. Because I think Kyrie really let him down. And if he doesn't see that at this point,

I don't know what to tell you. And I still don't know what happened with the Harden piece of it either. I have a lot of lingering questions. Well, Harden was sick of Kyrie. Yeah, but how did Harden end up there in the first place? And why did everybody think it was going to work out so great? And I don't know. I can't wait for the book five years from now because I think there's going to be a lot of

revelations in it. But again, I think KD goes back. The Clippers are at191 million right now. They have $106 million for non-Kawaii, non-PG players. Those guys make $85 million and the rest of the roster makes $106 million. They're not even done yet. I just wanted to point that out. I don't... Normally, when you're just collecting assets and putting them...

At some point, there's an asset kind of cap and I feel like they're close. I didn't understand the John Wall thing for them. I thought I understood it for certain teams, but John Wall, Luke Kennard and Reggie Jackson seems excessive to me. Everybody's like great sign and great sign. It's like,

well, he's played barely anything in four years. And now that's another ego, you know, that you have to fit in, see if he'll be happy. You know, there might,

on the Clippers, there's going to be some games where you don't in, see if he'll be happy. You know, there might, on the Clippers, there's going to be some games where you don't play. It's going to be happy. Is he better than Luke Kennard? If Luke Kennard's healthy, probably not. It's just a different player.

He's just a, you know, I like it. And if Balmer, who doesn't seem to care about any of the expenses or at least doesn't, I don't know, maybe he'll bring it up later on

if they're 540 games into the season. But it's crazy how many eight-figure guys they have where you're like, wait, what does that guy make? Like Norman Powell, again, that's not even a bad number for somebody who can score like him. But Marcus Morris is still, he's still like 34 million the next two years. Kennard's still a pretty hefty number.

Covington's 23, 24 million. I think that's second year, though. Anyway, I don't know. I'm not going to keep... I've already done that long enough. I regret the segment. And then the last team, just Philly, who you seem to like more than I do because

I just don't trust the Harden thing at all. The P.J. Tucker thing, they really sold their souls two years from now for a one-year P.J. Tucker, because I can't imagine he's going to be able to play when he's 40. I really like Melton. I thought that was smart.

And in general, they have a better type of team. It seems like they're going to try to trade for Eric Gordon. But just the Harden piece of it, I'm not going to be able to get past, unless I see some footage of him and he's in the best shape of his life. And we have one of those stories where we're like, oh my God, James Harden, did you see that clip of him? If it's more of the same from last year, I just don't see it making a difference to you. Yeah. I just like what they've done so far. I just really do. I like the melting

part of it. I don't feel like they did a ton to give it up. I think we're starting to realize too, like one of my other biggest pet peeves is that everybody has to be within three years of each other when you're building these rosters. And it's like, you know who I would, like if PJ Tucker didn't have a ton of interest from other playoff teams, if I had a young team, I'd want PJ Tucker. I want PJ Tucker telling my young guys the stories that he told JJ Redick on the podcast about what a shithead he was when he was with the Raptors and how they showed him filming him sitting there. This concept, it's actually, I think it's a terrible way to build your young roster when you're rebuilding.

It's like, let's make sure everybody's within the same age range. They're all in the same cut. Because that means you've got 14 guys all thinking they're supposed to be all-stars. So seven of them are pissed off all the time. There's value. Clearly, if Miami thinks that Udonis Haslam re-signing, I don't know that these guys get enough respect.

If you already know five or six guys are never playing unless it's a blowout, why do you have to have everybody be the same fucking age? It drives me crazy when it's like, you'll see this trade, it's like, oh, this fits their timeline a little. What's wrong with having a guy who's 28 who can get buckets playing with a bunch of guys that are 22 well look at horford horford on the celtics last year helps to have the 35 year

old guy who's seen it all and he's done it all and he's been in every situation and he kind of knows adult right and he kind of knows he can't be scared yeah like even if he is a little it's like i can't be scared because i've been around for such a long time. Then they had Gallinari, who's had a pretty long, interesting life. Nice guy to have on your team. Yeah, so I like teams putting an emphasis on this now. And I do think everybody needs a fighter. Everybody needs a tough guy there. And I like that Melton can do a few different things.

And maybe it's a little bit more shooting around them. And then Maxie's going to be better. Everybody throw Tobias Harris' stats at you every now and then, but whatever. All right, we're wrapping up. Where is KD on October 30th? I don't know. I'll just say Toronto.

Really? I'll say Brooklyn. Where's Kyrie? Thailand. I think he's still on the Nets, not playing. I wouldn't rule out Minnesota, though. I just feel like they could talk themselves into that after

three drinks. Three or thirty. Three drinks at a July 4th party. Be like, what about Kyrie? Isn't that game where he scored 60 out of Orlando? You got 151 floaters on these. Can I ask you about two contracts? Yeah, and then we'll go.

Marvin Bagley, Detroit. It was a little hefty, three for 37. I like that they kept him, but I thought that, I don't know who you're competing against for three for 37. Who is the runner up in the Marvin Bagley sweepstakes?

When were you expecting to learn the second year the Mo Bamba deal was partially guaranteed? Probably when I saw the tweet. Gary Harris, same thing? I guess they just wanted to kind of... I don't know. The Mo Bamba one really surprised me. I was surprised they were interested

enough to keep him around. I kept thinking, it's not as bad as the NFL, but there's still a little football-y element to like, okay, but what's going to happen? Like how much

partial guarantee? Like I've seen a deal where a guy's 12 million on the books for the third year of the deal and you're like, it's 300,000 is guaranteed. Yeah.

Right. When are you doing your next podcast? I'll be ready to go Tuesday morning. All right. So we'll find out if something happens there.

Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Dylan Berkey as well. New rewatch must come on Monday night. We did Misery with Kathy Bates and James Conn. Nets team DVD. It was in honor of the Nets. We shouldn't dedicate it. Good to see you, Rossella.

Happy July 4th. Yeah, you too. On the wayside I'm a bruised son I never was And I don't have To ever forget