The Bill Simmons Podcast - Biggest 2024-25 NBA Concerns With Zach Lowe

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by ESPN's Zach Lowe to discuss their biggest concerns for the 2024-25 NBA season, including Giannis's supporting cast on the Bucks, the Nuggets in a wide-open Western Conference (1:43), Joel Embiid's health, Ja Morant, the wild-card Pelicans (30:09), Celtics variables (55:28), the Lakers and Clippers, the Knicks' Julius Randle problem, and more (1:11:22). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Zach Lowe Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We put up a new Rewatchables last night and it was a banger with a capital B. That's right. We did the original John Wick movie. We had already done John Wick 2, but 10 year anniversary of John Wick's coming up. So we said, screw it. Me, Chris Ryan, and the one and only Shea Serrano. That's right. Our old friend Shea came back. I'm thinking I'm back. Yeah, he's back. And we had a great podcast. You can watch it on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well.

If you subscribe to us on YouTube. If you don't subscribe to us on YouTube, for God's sakes, what are you waiting for? Ringer Movies is the channel. The Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well, where we put all the clips and complete episodes from this podcast. And we do Guess the Lines with Cousin Sal live on Sundays. So it's football season.

I haven't talked basketball in six, seven weeks. And the season is suddenly a little more than a month away. Zach Lowe and I, we had to reunite. And we talked basketball. And it went for an hour and a half. And we're going to do it right now. First, our friends. Fresh off their Fenway Park appearance.

Pearl Jam! All right, we're taping this on a Tuesday morning. My old friend Zach Lowe is here. We used to work together at Grandland. He is still at ESPN. We like to do home and homes every once in a while. I haven't talked basketball on this podcast in like, basically since the Olympics. All of a sudden, this season is within, what is it? A month? Media days in 13 days, Bill, as we're recording this. I don't understand how it snuck up on us so fast, but what's the thing you're most excited about

before we go negative? Most excited about, I think the West is just, I have questions about everybody except Oklahoma City, at least in a regular season. I think Oklahoma City is just going to be a nasty regular season team. Everybody after that, like everybody has put Denver, Minnesota, Dallas in sharpie as 2,

3, 4. One of those teams at least is going to be disappointing. That's just the law of averages. I have questions about all of them. And some of these, Sacramento, what's going to happen in there? Pelicans have a weird high ceiling. I don't know where the floor is. Lakers, Suns. I think the West, someone is going to sneak into the top four. My pick would probably be Memphis, but we'll get it. I just think the West is really fun, top to bottom. I'm excited for just a better league. I didn't really like the season last year. The more we got some distance for it.

We had all these dumb injuries and disappointing teams. I just didn't think the playoffs were that good. And they kind of owe us. They owe us a good season. I've heard you talk about it. And I think I talked about it once. Like, what was the best playoff series

of the entire playoff run? That's the thing. I mean, probably from an entertainment standpoint, it was Philly, New York, right? And that would be my pick. Minnesota-Denver was most dramatic, but the games aren't games

I would want to watch again on Hardwood Classics. Dallas OKC was really good. Dallas OKC was underrated. Almost every other series minus a highlight here or there was pretty forgettable. Like Nick's Pacers, just war of attrition. Not that, not that, not that interesting.

Nick Sixers would be my pick. Yeah, because then you think of all the guys who were either hurt or coming back from injuries or all the teams that were compromised. The fact that we had a champion that didn't even really play a high intensity, awesome game until the Indiana series. And then they beat Indiana and

Indiana is like, here we go. And, and Indiana was a team that everybody was discounting for months and months and months. But, um, I don't, I don't know. It just never got there. So I feel like they owe us. I feel like the season's going to be awesome. Like when they left Giannis, I talked about this when they left Giannis off for Christmas day, I was like, Oh, here we go. This is good. Like we have so many good teams that Giannis didn't even make Christmas day. Um, but that's not where we're talking about today.

We're going to talk about the NBA things we're worried about. Now we are a draft. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be a draft. We can just alternate back and forth. And if somebody takes somebody else's, that's fine. But,

um, now that we're, we're not landing the plane on opening night yet, but now we're kind of within 40 minutes, the flight attendant's telling us to maybe get ready to hand the little TV things back, get your stuff, make sure you don't leave anything behind. The number one thing you are the most worried about heading into this NBA season is? Yeah, I had a no-brainer number one pick for this draft. You can go a few different directions, but for me, it's the Milwaukee Bucks. Just everything Milwaukee Bucks, top to bottom, disaster season in just every possible way last year. Coaching higher gone bad. Mid-season coaching change slash podcast retirement by Doc Rivers.

Doesn't write the ship. Writes some things about the ship, but not the whole ship. Another Giannis playoff injury wipes them out in the first round. Middleton's injured off and on all year. And Dame, just rough adjustment on all levels. Much rougher than we thought after the earthquake of a Drew Holiday trade. That was their way of saying, this other iteration of our team that won a championship, it's hit the ceiling. We can't get back to the finals with this group.

We need to jolt. We need to change. This is it. Juice the offense. Bring in one of the greatest point guards of all time. One of the greatest shooting point guards of all time. Easy chemistry with Giannis. The story just writes itself.

The whole season is a mess. Dame is even injured in the playoffs. And now, everyone's a year older. Middleton is going into potentially the last year of his deal with the player option in 25-26 same is true of Portis, Brook Lopez is going to be a free agent

Gary Trent's here on the minimum I don't know how that's going to, I'm optimistic about that but he's like this could just be a way station for him I, everyone's a year older, the injury questions particularly about Middleton kind of remain and New York got better. Philly won free agency.

Boston just rampaged to the title and brought everybody back. I don't know where Cleveland locked up. Everybody Cleveland, Orlando, Indiana are coming from like the other side of the other half of the conference, all on the upswing. I don't know where this team fits in, in the Eastern Conference hierarchy. I do know that only Philadelphia would be in the conversation for me as a team with more pressure on them in the Eastern Conference, because the Giannis Domino is always just going to be sitting there and the team just gets older around him. They haven't found a young player that's even

kind of remotely interesting so far that Giannis can look at and say, well, like in five years, that guy, that guy's going to be awesome. And I just, I don't know how this season is going to go. I have no, I have no feel for it. And the GM tried to take the Pistons job or wanted to,

and they ended up keeping him. That part was weird. They have a draft pick. The first round, he ends up taking a young guy who can't help them this year. I have the same concerns, but you could go glass half full on them too.

You're from hell last year. They trade Drew. He somehow ends up on the Celtics who become awesome. They get Dame, who we find out after the season hasn't worked out in the whole summer leading up because he was so afraid to get hurt before he got traded. He comes in. He's going through a divorce and he's just terrible.

Middleton kind of back and forth between whether he was healthy or not. Their bench was disappointing. And the Giannis stuff before last season was real. Like whether people want to believe it or not now, they didn't know whether he was going to ask for a trade or not. And that's something that happened. So now you're looking at this season and it's the same kind of

thing. I know he committed to them, but that team's old. What have you heard about Middleton's just his body? The double ankle surgeries? The double ankle surgeries? And the knees. And it just seems like his lower body is going on him.

And to me, that's the biggest issue of all for them. I mean, I've heard that they're... I haven't checked in in a while, but I haven't heard anything that he's not going to be ready to start the season or early in the season. I don't think, like I said, I haven't checked in. So I expect him to be okay. But I have heard concerns about like, does he have any

chance on defense anymore? And, you know, this is a team that's going to ask him to guard real guys and, you know, the defensive infrastructure around Giannis and Lopez, which is a great place to start. Any defense is not what it used to be. The bench is like Pat Connaughton fell off a cliff last year. I don't know what the hope is for him, but look, I make the glass half full case to people all the time because I just can't write off a team with Giannis if Giannis can just avoid these freakish injuries before the playoffs because the guy is like the freaking Terminator and Dame is still, I expect Dame to have a better

season. So there's like two ingredients right there. Coaching stability should help. I mean, the record under Doc was worse than it was under Adrian Griffin, but the Adrian Griffin thing was a disaster. It's easy to make the glass half full case. I can't write a team with Giannis. I just can't write them out of they can't win the East or whatever.

They also stole some minimum salary guys that I didn't think we had that on our bingo card. They got three guys who are going to be able to play in a playoff series for them with no money whatsoever to spend. Prince, Trent, and who else am I forgetting? Prince, Trent. There's a third one. They got a third guy.

See, it was so stealth, I can't even remember who it was. But my point is, as I make this glass half full case to people around the league. Right, DeLon Wright. No one is, oh, DeLon Wright. I love DeLon people around the league. DeLon Wright. No one is. Oh, DeLon Wright. I love DeLon Wright. I'm like DeLon Wright fan number one. That's a great signing.

But I make this case to people around the league, coaches, front office people, agents. No one's buying. Everyone's like, they stopped me halfway through. It's like someone trying to sell me Optimum, trying to get me to come back and get my cable deal. I'm canceling. I'm canceling. I'm out. You don't have to give me the spiel. get my cable deal. It's like, I don't need, I don't, I'm canceling. I'm canceling. I'm out. You don't have to give me the spiel.

I'm sorry, guy. I know you have to. It's like, no one's buying it. And I can't, I mean, they're just, I just hear they're old. This iteration isn't going to work. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm stunned at the level of pessimism about the bucks, but they would top my, I don't know who you had it or what entity

you had in the top slot, but for me, they were an easy number one. So Middleton played 33 games in 23, played 55 games last year. The minutes were low. It's 24.3, 27 for the last two seasons, 15 a game. It feels like he's at a different point in his career. Good playoffs. Again, the glass half full case involves Middleton averaging 25 a game in the playoffs against short series against the Pacers. Not short, six games against the Pacers. That's all it was, but he had to do a lot and he was pretty good. But this is a team

he's 33 this year and this is a team when they go against younger wings, you're just terrified for them. And Giannis is doing everything. But let's say they're super disappointing. Let's say that we're heading around Christmas. They're not going to be in the Christmas games and they're like one or

two games over 500. What if is the fear that Giannis would be like, I don't want to go down like this. I'm still in my prime. You guys need to fix this or send me somewhere. I don't even know what the moves are. I guess they have a lot of expiring deals. So then you're in the

mode where you have to take a big swing for somebody else's problem that's expensive. And then that goes down a whole other rabbit hole where you're like, oh, we didn't even really want to do this, but now we don't really have a choice. And we've seen so many teams fuck themselves up long-term with that. I just don't know what the outcome is if they don't do well, that doesn't involve Giannis rumors. Yeah. I mean, Giannis is locked up

ironclad through 26, 27. So this season and two more, which is great for the Bucs. That extension was a coup. It's one of the reasons why I still defend. I'm like the last person defending the Damien Lillard trade apparently today. You're defending it. Wow. Is there even one more person for the support group or no? It's just you? You're just showing

up at a coffee shop by yourself? It's just me. There's maybe a chat room with some anonymous people who are afraid to reveal their identities because they're ashamed, but it's mostly just me. There's maybe a chat room with some anonymous people who are afraid to reveal their identities because they're ashamed, but it's mostly just me. I still defend it because I do think offensively that team had maxed out. I thought it was worth

a shot. The price was pretty high. Can you defend the part that Drew Holiday ended up at the Celtics? When you're in the chat rooms? I've said before, I would love to know not what they knew, but how hard they tried

to make it a three-team trade at the time that it was happening. Yeah, you can't trust anything. So that they could just say anywhere but Boston. Anywhere but Boston. The only way to do that is if the Clippers had been involved anything so so that they could just say anywhere but boston anywhere but anywhere but boston the only way to do that is if the clippers had been involved in that trade from minute one and then you're you just you know he's going to a team that's going to keep him but i think they were

you know drew was kind of blindsided by it i mean he's talked about it i think they were so worried it was going to come out that drew was even in the trade that they were just like, you know what, we're just going to do the trade and then Portland. And then hopefully, it felt like they misread. I had heard they felt like he was going to the Clippers and they didn't see the Celtics piece coming, which I think is crazy that they didn't see that coming. I mean, everybody knew the Celtics were going to get in it, right? As soon as the Drew sweep started, it was just common sense. The Clippers were get in it, right? As soon as the Drew Sweets started, it was just common sense. The Clippers were definitely in it. I think the Heat tried to be in it,

but the Heat-Blazers relationship was, let's say, not at a strong point at that moment. But to your point, it's still not good. And to your point, if it is looking like, all right, you know what? It's just not happening.

Giannis is locked up, but I don't even know what the move is because Middleton is... By the way, nobody is locked up anymore. If Giannis wants to get traded, he's going to get traded, and that's what the league is now. If he decides, I don't like this situation,

that's it. This is how the league goes. That's largely true. You at least have the leverage of years and time on your side. In any case, where the guy has that been years. But like Middleton's essentially an expiring contract. Lopez is basically an expiring contract. The move would be Dame.

And I've said before, like, I'll bet you Miami would revisit that, you know revisit the failed Dame talks before. But what am I getting back that makes Giannis happy, if that's my concern? Now, if he comes to me and says, hey, man, if I'm here for the long haul, you need to recoup some draft picks, you get Tyler Hero, whatever fake Dame trade return you want to speculate about. I'm cool. That's one thing, but it's a tough... They can't compete with other teams for a big-name player that comes available via trade. They don't have the picks. They don't have the young players.

I don't know. This is all the reason why they would be number one on my anxiety draft. There's no scenario going into the season where they can be considered to be one of the top three teams in the East. You're just writing it up. There's no scenario where- No, I'm just saying from Fandu odds, Celtics for the conference are plus 155. The Sixers are plus 440. Now, we can talk about them later. The Knicks are plus 440. And Milwaukee's 7-1. So they're firmly in the fourth spot, at least from a betting on standpoint. Everyone has written them off.

Not me. I haven't written them off yet. I still feel like Dame has a big comeback year in him. It's very possible. Last year was just the year for Mel from him. I, at the same time, was not bullish on Dame with what everybody wanted to give up on them last year because of the small guards moving at a different point of their career.

I think there's cases to be made both ways. And I feel like we're going to know in the first couple of weeks of the season, this is like, oh shit, this looks like 1997 Dana Barrows. Or it's like, oh, this looks like 2019 Dame again. All right. So my number one pick, which I thought you were going to take, and I got to say I'm a little surprised. The Denver Nuggets. Ooh, they're, I mean, they're in my, I guess I've talked about them a lot,

so I don't want to overdo it, but they're in my top five, I would say. Not number one or number two. They lose KCP, who, granted, if you look at his playoff stats, it's not devastating, but it was a guy who was a proven defender. The Murray extension coming off his playoffs

and then the Olympics and whatever is going on with him physically, that makes you gulp. Gordon's got an extension coming. They've been passed, at least as a regular season team, by OKC and Dallas and Minnesota and maybe one other team.

This is a six-year run already. One title, one round three, that's it. They've had zero 60-win seasons. They've had the guy who's been, it's either him or Jan Esfer, who's the best player in the league since LeBron finally dipped a little Jokic turns 30 this season

and I guess my question is are we ever going to have a great Jokic team? because this team they won the title and they had that great playoff run but they've never had a great start to finish season they've never

they've never been kick-ass great for nine months. And with a guy like Jokic, especially if you compare him with some of the greats in history, which I think for both of us, he's in the top 15 of all time now. It's just a little weird and a little unlucky that it's never happened for him for nine straight months.

And the Murray thing has a huge piece of that. Murray gets hurt at the worst possible time and misses two post seasons. Last year was a complete fluke. I don't understand what happened to them. They have a 20 point lead at home in game seven and just completely fall apart. Fluke is maybe the wrong word. Whatever that was, that was one of the most unusual game segments in the history of the league. And then afterwards, all the stuff they're talking about is, yeah, we were dead. We were exhausted. It's like, go look at the history of the league. Teams have played four or five finals in a row. People have been having 9,500 game seasons for

a quarter of a decade or a half of a decade. The Warriors were in the finals every year from 15 to 19, playing 100 a game, 100 games a year. The huge bullseye, every building they go into, they're like rock stars. There's no way the Nuggets had it harder than that Warriors team. And I don't really know where this goes, but I don't like where we are. So they did go 16-4 in the playoffs the year they won the title. Obviously, they played a couple play-in teams. So you're saying never had a great year, a truly great Jokic team.

They've never won 60 games in a season. That seems impossible, but it's 100% true. You know, they've been grinders. They've been up and down. It's a team that, especially last year, that felt like they were down 10, 15. They'd come back. They'd figure out how to steal games in the fourth quarter. And then the playoffs, that went away. And I'm just nervous because as you know, Jokic and Curry are my two favorite non Celtics. And I just hope we're not on the downside of the mountain with this Nuggets run already because they don't have a lot of moves. It's the Lakers. The Porter move is the one kind of big move that can make. Other

than that, I don't know what the moves are. Well, the Porter thing becomes interesting if and when Gordonordon gets an extension because then the team is just going to become so prohibitively expensive uh because then like you get into christian brown's deal comes up and peyton watson's deal comes up and are all these guys still on the team something is going to have to give because the cronkies just aren't going to pay like 30 million over the second april whatever it's going to be 30 million over the second April, whatever it's going to be, $30 million over the tax every single year. But you talk to people around the league about Michael Porter Jr. and his injury kind of lit one of those seasons on fire. He and Murray lost the season together, lost the postseason together. People don't quite know how to value him because the on-ball aspects of his offense just haven't really developed at the same, at the same, at the rate that passers of all time probably just and this offense that's built around movement it's

absolutely perfect for him nobody really knows how that would translate his defense is average on good nights worse he's got size which helps them like for whatever yeah he's a very tall shooter which tends to age really really well but he's not like the tall shooter in the the classicant-Dirk mold where it's like, just give him the ball at the nail, let him work, he rises up. That's just the fail safe. I think the Denver one is a great pick.

They're relying on youth. I wrote about this a couple months ago. They were dead last in three-point rate last season, three-point attempt rate. They lose a good three-point rate last season, three-point attempt rate. They lose a good three-point shooter in KCP. They elevate a mediocre three-point shooter in Christian Brown. They signed the worst high-volume three-point shooter in the history of the NBA in Russell Westbrook. I intentionally left him out of my case. But there is a line somewhere where you

just have to take more threes than this or else you can't win four playoff series in a row in 2025. The math is too difficult. There's one other issue with that. We didn't even talk about Murray yet. The more miles they put on Jokic in these seasons, his three-point shot starts to go sideways, right? And that's what happened in Minnesota. That's even, he carried over to the Olympics. And teams were just like, go ahead,

man, knock yourself out. They're almost trying to jet out, mind trick them. Well, it's by far the least, it's by far the lesser of all possible evils that Jokic can inflict on you. Right. So in some ways it's like in the NFL when there's some really good offense and a quarterback that does certain things and then defenses eventually figure out, all right, we'll just do this. And if you make them, you make them. And with the amount of miles that he had last year, because they couldn't take them out, and the bench isn't, I know they have some young guys they're counting on, but it's just the ecosystem we have now in the league where you're just not going to have

deep, awesome teams anymore, unless you're in this situation, like the Celtics, where you're just going to spend a kajillion dollars for an eight man rotation. So the Westbrook piece, we've seen how many teams now try to talk themselves into this. We had Houston. Washington doesn't really count because they wanted him for a 40-minutes game and a lot of stats. The Clippers, the Lakers. This is yet another team where there's a case you can make. Well, he's going to do this.

Then Jokic is off the floor and Westbrook's energy. We can run stuff through him. His rebounding. He did some good stuff on the Clippers. Then in the playoffs, it was an abomination, he did some good stuff on the Clippers. And then in the playoffs, it was an abomination. Like, he became unplayable in the Dallas series. I mean, I remember watching those games.

Like, I just was like, what is he doing? Like, I don't know. He was so... He seemed deranged. He was on tilt the whole series. And like, yeah, like you said, Denver is a bad free throw team.

Okay, he can like just rampage to the rim and maybe get us some free throws. Sarich will probably be there back up five. So he's a shooting center, a lot of space for us to attack. And it worked out for the Clippers for like the first two, three months. It was a feel good story.

I just don't think it's going to be a game changer for them in a positive way. The best case scenario is it doesn't hurt. I think like Russ doesn't hurt. And buys them a couple months, which I think Sarich is like this too. There's these November, December players where you read like the athletic story and December 10th.

It's like Sarich is really fitting with the nuggets. And then you get to April and he's playing four minutes a game and they seem to have a few of those, but Murray's going to determine this one way or the other. If Murray's not back to where he was two years ago and whatever is going on with him continues, there's no chance. The West is too good and it's too much of a burden on Jokic, I think. Well, the extension was a clear, I mean, you have to interpret it as a vote of confidence in him because they didn't have to do it now. They didn't have to do it before the season. They could have just saw how he played in the preseason, saw how he played early in the season. They could have taken as long as they wanted to do it. Like I've argued, there is no plan B for them. I don't know what the trade would be to extricate themselves from this extension in this situation. And I love Jamal Murray, but they did have the luxury of time and they decided, no, we're just buying.

We're going all in now on Jamal Murray. We're going to go all in on a bounce back year. And I will like warning to everyone, including us, he gets off to slow starts every season. So like Jamal Murray's track record suggests that on Thanksgiving, he's going to be shooting like 37%,

33% from three. The world's going to be shooting 37%, 33% from three. The world's going to be full. That's how it goes every year. And so I'm not going to panic if he's off to a bad start. But if it's January, February, and it's like, where is... Can you give me some glimpses of playoff Jamal Murray? Because that's the whole thing. Everything else... I even think the KCP thing...

It's not awesome that you've lost Bruce Brown and KCP and Jeff Green, but I have some faith in the young guys and I just have overwhelming faith in Jokic to make everything work at its highest possible level, just provided he has just enough baseline talent around him, which has to include a pick and roll partner who is ready at go time. Like my take on the Nuggets,

there's some internal stuff that they've got to sort out, but I think, I don't know, man. I still might pick them to make the finals this year. If they can figure out enough things, I'm not as worried about the KCP thing as most people are. I'm not as worried about it either, but combined with the Bruce Brown,

and you think about how important those guys two years ago, it's just undeniable that it's changed. They're tied for the third best odds for the conference. OKC is plus 320, Minnesota plus 450, and Dallas and Denver are both 5-1. It's too early to make a finals pick, right?

You haven't made your... The only thing I did, I was in Boston for mid-August and I bet on the OKC to win the conference and the one-seed stuff just because the odds hadn't caught up with when the regular season... I did regular season stuff with them.

And then the conference stuff. Now the odds have become the right odds, but I felt like they were a little off there. The big inefficiency is Memphis, which was, I think, 22-1 to win the conference. That's down to 16-1.

I feel like a crazy person about Memphis. And maybe they're on my list of worries. Not worries, but I'm so bullish on them that I feel like a crazy person about Memphis and maybe they're on my list of worries. So let, let not worries, but like I, I'm so bullish on them that I feel like a crazy person. It worries you how much. No, I have a,

I have a specific thing that every time I'm like head over heels about Memphis and like hammer the over, like they can be the number two seed. There's one thing that I keep coming back to, but we can get to that later. Let's take a break. And then a break and then you go next. Kick off this NFL season with a win on FanDuel, America's number one sports book.

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coming back. Milwaukee and Denver are the two things we are the most worried about heading into the 2024-25 season. What is your second pick? So maybe this wasn't as high on your list because it's a little bit of a cop-out. But number two on my list was Joel Embiid's knee. I had it. I had it later, but I had the same

thing. I've been talking about this in relation to back when, flashback a year and the whole Philly situation seemed a little bit uncertain. Like, is this going to, is this going to hold together or is he going to be the next guy that asks out? And you've talked about various places you might have asked out to go to. And then Maxie blows up. They have a great season and bead scores more than a point a minute. They're cruising until he gets injured.

Then they get Paul George at free agency. Everything's all settled. And I was talking about like, man, can you really throw the five first round picks, four swaps, best young players for Joel Embiid, who is maybe the best player in the NBA when he's healthy, but gets hurt all the time. And this was before Jonathan Kaminga fell on his left knee

and he had a meniscus injury. And both his knees have been injured, I think, multiple times. The left one has definitely been injured multiple times. And it just is beginning to feel like an inevitability that at some point in every season, he's going to have an injury. And it's no longer just the... For a while, it was like the freakish injuries like pascal siakam breaks his face he has the eye socket injury there are a couple others like that

in the playoffs now it feels like the lower body stuff is starting to pile up and maybe again this is a cop out but this is a team that's obviously all in for this season having signed paul george and then they did a great we all agree they did an amazing job in the offseason rounding out the roster with Caleb Martin and some smart minimum signings. They are tailor-made to make a mid-season trade to upgrade the three, four spots in the rotation. And they have KJ Martin's contract, they have picks. Everything is riding on this season.

And it all falls away if Joel Embiid gets hurt and he seems to get hurt every year. And the repetitive nature of them is, is very worrisome to me. And it's frankly the reason why, like, I'm not going to pick them to win the East. I'm not going to pick them to win the title because Joel Embiid getting hurt feels like a more likely event than Jason Tatum getting hurt or even Giannis getting hurt, which sounds crazy because Giannis has missed the last two playoffs with injuries or anyone on the Knicks getting hurt no matter how many minutes Tibbs plays

everybody all the time. And they all got hurt. How about me getting hurt? I feel like I'm like, I, I play tennis all the time. I feel like I'm a better bet to stay healthy. I had Joel Embiid's body as one of my things. I just think he's had too many injuries and I don't think he's in shape. And we haven't seen him really in shape. And all you have to do is go back and look at the videos of him during that run when Jimmy Butler was on the team or look at him the first year when he played the 31 games.

Go look at him against Kansas. He's carrying so much more weight now on top of all the injuries that he has. It's a recipe for disaster in the NBA. We've seen it too many times. The league has changed. We shoot more threes. The defense is better. There's better scheming. I get all of it. But one thing that has never changed is physically, if you've had a lot of injuries and you're not in good shape, you're going to keep getting hurt. And that's been the case since the 1950s. And it's going to be the case with him. And I'm with you. I think when you're in the playoffs, that is a

nine-month run. And when you actually get to the playoffs, that becomes 10 weeks, the highest intensity possible. It favors the younger guys. It's bad for the older guys. It's bad for the injury-prone guys. I keep thinking about Blake Griffin when I think of Embiid where Blake Griffin had all these different injuries. Some were, you know, bad luck in his legs. Others were like he had, he broke his hand, punched it in the equipment manager. But all of a sudden he had like seven or eight injuries. And if you're out of your up, it was like, oh shit. And then the Clippers were like, we're out of the Blake Griffith business. We're trading him. And then his body broke down a year later. And I just think with centers, I'm with you. I get it.

On paper, those three guys look awesome. There's so many reasons why it might not work out. And there's a couple of reasons why it could. There was a lot of... One thing that surprised me was that you thought he's the best player in the league

when he's healthy. I just don't think he is. I mean, I said maybe. And last year, healthy Joel Embiid was what he was doing offensively was absolutely outrageous. Look, I was

early on the Jokic train. I've been saying Jokic is the best player in the NBA for a long time. Last year, it was very close because his scoring was just absolutely outrageous. His turnovers were no longer. His passing was better. His assistant turnover ratio was better. So when Paul George signed in Philly, there was some Paul George like... Schadenfreude is too strong of a word.

But even Windy was like, how many times is Paul George, like, Schadenfreude is too strong of a word, but even Windy was like, how many times is Paul George going to change teams and we're all going to go crazy about it and it's the biggest story in the NBA? And what does it lead to? This is what he's saying. How many playoff series wins has it led to? What does it amount to? And yeah, Paul George has some not great playoff moments, notably in the bubble. And then last year against Dallas, he was not good, not good enough. I have no anxiety about Paul George as a Philadelphia 76er, even in big playoff games.

He's going to be the third option. It's a perfect role for him. The pressure isn't the same. All my Sixers anxiety is about Embiid. That's the only reason I'm like, this is not my pick to make the finals. It's all about his body. And the one thing that they can control, he can control his conditioning.

He can't control the bad breaks that he keeps suffering on the court. They and he together can control the, dude, the 65 game. We're going for the MVP. We got to make all that. That stuff has got to be over now. The only thing that matters is we just have to get your body as best we have to maximize our chances that April 15th comes and you're ready to go at the highest possible level. Everything else has to be secondary

to that. And I'll bet you having not talked to his people or whatever, I'll bet you there's some agreement internally on that. I played 39 games last year. I thought in the playoffs, I mean, in the Olympics, he just looked really slow compared to where he was. And I know he wasn't totally in shape, but that's...

I was going to ask you about this. You're a huge Olympics basketball guy. I am. I love it. You're a huge... I love it. And I think you have been like 1 million percent vindicated on your... Was it Booker who didn't...

What was the Team USA, the player who didn't play Team USA one year and you had a whole thing about like, do these guys not realize the opportunity that they have to play for Team USA? Yeah. Yeah. And you got sort of tisk-tisked around the internet for like... And I think you've been vindicated because that experience clearly is helpful. It clarifies some things about where you stand in the league.

It exposed you to all these different great players. It exposed you to a different kind of pressure on a different kind of stage. It exposed you to like, I got to figure out this different game where the three-point line is closer. The spacing is all different. The officiating is different. All these variables that are different for me. And I've been dying to ask you, Embiid mostly disappointment for Team USA other than the one game he was brought there to play and the one game he was brought there to win,

which was the semifinals against Serbia. And I have said this already on my podcast. I think, I wonder if we're going to look back at that at the whole summer of the NBA, the whole offseason of the NBA, and say the single most important thing that happened was the way Joel Embiid showed up in crunch time as Team USA was about to get booted out of the Olympics. And I don't mean that he scored some points

and played good defense and battled the Oak Edge 101. I mean that after kind of, like you and Russillo talked about this too in the playoffs, kind of hot potatoing the ball sometimes against the Knicks in crunch time. He was more secure and hungry and like, give me the goddamn ball. I'm good.

I'm going to make this happen. I'm confident. I'm steely. In the fourth quarter of that game, with so much pressure on him, because you the fourth quarter of that game with so much pressure on him. Cause you know, if they lose that game and he has a shit game, it's not going to be great for Joel Embiid. It's not gonna be great for Steve Kerr. It's not gonna be great for anybody. Yeah. I honestly, I was watching that game being like, this is, this looks like

a different guy to me. And if this, if this is a transformational moment for him, maybe that matters more than anything else other than the injury stuff. I was curious, but where did you watch that game? What was your reaction to it? So I had the same reaction watching it live. And he was really smart because he knew Jokic had the four fouls and he just started attacking him and he knew that was going to work.

Then I rewatched it. And, you know, the irony of that game and that team in general was that some of the reasons that they were down big points were by some of the guys who ended up bringing them back. Like Embiid, they just got killed on the offensive boards when Embiid was out there. LeBron and Curry couldn't guard anybody.

It almost cost them the game rebounding. Yeah, that LeBron, Curry, Embiid defense, it was just a three-point shooting contest for the other team, basically. And then they figured it out down the stretch. But I'm with you that I thought it was, he just doesn't have a lot of moments that you can point to where it's like,

it's fucking nutcrunch time. Can you make a couple shots for us? And the Knicks series, I know he wasn't healthy. And that's unfortunately probably going to be his autobiography or his biography until he flips it, which he might this season. But the title of his autobiography would be, I know he wasn't healthy, dot, dot, dot.

And that's just, he's been one of the bad luck guys in the history of the league. But I do think part of it is on him because he's not in shape. Get in shape. Now, he did have a couple of massive scoring games in that series on one leg,

including a 50-point game. He has a buzzer beater in the playoffs against the Raptors. Remember that crazy three on a sideline out of bounds play? It's first round. Nobody really cares. First round, game three,

puts you up 3-0, whatever. Don't defend his playoff resume. It's not... You're not giving me the bite on this. I'm not trying to do that. But that did feel like that Serbia game felt like a moment that in a sports movie would carry over into the next season. Like in the movie, he'd get the ball late in game seven of the second round against Boston. And then there'd be like a flashback to the Olympics on the right block against Jokic and everything on the line. And then we'd flashback to the movie and he'd use the same move and make the same facial expression. That's what would happen in a movie. well this gives us an excuse to talk about the Grizzlies John Morant

so the odds are dropping they are the stealth sleeper in the Western Conference John Morant has played 257 career games he's 25 years old he's made round two once he's played 70 games the last two seasons he's made one second team all NBA

and we've gone so glass half full on this. I include myself because I think Memphis is going to be really good. I love that. I can't wait because you don't watch college. I can't wait until November 10th when you're texting me about Zach Eadie. You're like, holy shit, Zach Eadie. I love this guy. It was just a really good pick. He's going to play for them. They're getting all these guys back. And they were really dangerous two years ago and three years ago. And Ja had a couple of playoff series. He had a playoff series where he averaged, I think, high 30s. He had, I think, two postseasons where he was around 30. And I just think we're penciling that guy back in. But he's had a really tumultuous two years. I have no idea where his head's at. And the history of the league says this could go any way. He might, this might be who he is. He might just have a tumultuous career and we'll look back at him and we'll say, oh man, you know who was awesome?

John Morant. And his legacy will be Twitter videos where it's like, John Morant was a problem. And it's just him dunking on people. I thought you were going to say his legacy was going to be another kind of Twitter video. Well, that too. And just like a what could have been guy. Or, all the shit that happened in the last two years has put him in the frame of mind where he's like, you know

what? This Anthony Edwards thing, he's kind of took the spot that should have been mine. I'm coming back hard. I have my shits together. I got new people around me and they're going to be awesome. I'm worried about the tumultuous side in that we're just sad by December. They're like, oh my God,

can this guy stay out of his own fucking way? So that's why I have them second. It all makes sense. I mean, I guess john morant's availability is a cop out in the same way as dwell and beads health is right like it's an obvious thing to be worried about um i guess i guess i'm less worried about it because he came back last season and he was awesome and he made crunch time shots remember that game against the pelicans he had a massive shot a game-winning shot um and he's and then he had then he hurt his shoulder which is just a thing that crunch time shots. Remember that game against the Pelicans? He had a massive shot, a game winning shot.

And he, and then he had, then he hurt his shoulder, which is just a thing that happens. But he seemed to re, he seemed to reintegrate himself into the team pretty easily. And you said stealth, like they're the stealth sleeper in the West. There shouldn't be anything stealth about them.

We know that when they have Morant and Bain and Jackson and a decent supporting cast, they win a lot of games. The playoff record is just okay. Remember that insane series against the Timberwolves in the first round the year they made the second round and then the Dylan Brooks, LeBron stuff happened and they were summarily dismissed by the Lakers. But you know why I said stealth? Because until recently, the Lakers had better odds to win the Western Conference than Memphis did, which is just insane. That's like, do people watch basketball? I think the first time I checked their over-under on ESPN bet, it was 44 and a half. And I was just like, how? I get the West is super deep. And so all these teams are going to beat up on each other. Win

totals might be deflated as a result of that, at least outside Oklahoma City. I just think there's nothing stealth about them. My worry is, so I did go in and watch Edie college stuff after they drafted him some. Oh, good. And I see exactly what they want in him, like the screens, the short roll, the monster offensive rebounding. Hands up. And the size, the motor. The motor is what everybody loves about him.

And it's like the free throw shooting, the ability to get to the line and make free throws. They were super hot. You know the other piece of that that you'll love? He's in the end of the game. We're up to, and we're going to get fouled. The other team's going for a steal. Just lob it up to him and he catches it and gets fouled.

Big guys who shoot 80 plus at the line are just such a valuable thing to have around. It's a lot of pressure on a rookie to go in and potentially be... I think he's the front runner to be their starting center, if not

already written in pen in the starting five. That's just a lot of pressure on a rookie. That's just, that's all it may be. And maybe given his deep college experience and all that, he's the perfect rookie to walk in and accept that kind of pressure and thrive on it and not care about it. Obviously his offensive role is going to be a lesser one than it was in college.

That's probably good. That's, that's the only word I have is like, you don't, you don't see a lot of potential top three to four seeds which is what i think memphis is and if you want to call that a contender fine i think contender to like win the whole thing is is a step too far for me at this point you don't see a lot of teams like that being like yeah we're going to start a rookie

and play him 28 minutes a game or 25 minutes a game it's just not a thing that happens very often yeah i guess the counter would be he probably could have come out a year ago and got this extra year. So he's almost coming in. He's like a second-year guy versus a first-year guy. Their over-under went up to 47.5 by the way. I'm still taking it over. Yeah, I'm taking it

all the way up to 50. Would you have preferred for the fit on this team, if we're just chasing wins this year and next year, would you have liked Klingon or Edie as their rookie center? Either. Either one. I think, yeah, they just needed somebody with size.

Is this a Brandon Ingram team to you? That has been, that's been floated to me. I don't think so. I don't sense that that's a thing that's is there a brandon ingrid team i think it's gonna it's gonna be i i went through a lot of the teams that people around the league have suggested to me like like the clippers had been suggested to me i didn't sense that there was anything anything going on there the heat i i've pitched the heat before i I think you have too. I think it's going to be a... I mean, this is one of my worries

is the Brandon Ingram thing for the Pelicans. Like, what the hell is going on there? What is this team? Yeah, they had New Orleans too. We can do that quick. So, he's still on the team. I'm not sure how likely that was when they made the DeJounte Murray trade, because now

they have all these ball handlers and no, I mean, Tice is their most experienced NBA center and he's undersized as is. And it's, they seem to be just like, we're going to start Zion at center. Even, you know,

they, they might say, well, Herb Jones is taller than Zion. So Herb Jones is a set of whatever. It's just a strange team. And now they have this thing hovering over them. He skipped the informal minicamp thing and had the Instagram

whatever, passive aggressive Instagram video. Is he going to mope? Is this going to be... That would be a good website. Passive aggressive hoops hype. Just posts of passive aggressive things NBA players are doing. But it's an unforced error. This starts back at the end of the season when Griffin, for whatever reason, is just like, yeah, we got to make changes. We're going to do stuff.

And then the Ingram stuff starts immediately. And then they shop them around the league all summer. And it's an expiring contract. Nobody wants them. And now they're in the best they're in he's somewhat of a victim of the the cooper flag slash everybody wants to be in the top five of this draft so none of the bad teams which could in theory be like yeah we have assets we'll buy on uh what is he 26 25 whatever he is we'll buy on a young guy who's borderline all-star, whatever you think of him. Wing, position everybody needs.

None of those teams are super interested in helping their win totals this year and next year. He might be a good stats bad team guy or good stats mediocre team guy because he needs the ball a lot. And, you know, it's interesting that Golden State, Kerr had him on that one World Championship team.

I think that's just a total no-go because of that. Yeah, it's a no-go because they were like, oh, this isn't the type of player that succeeds in our system. He wants the ball. I don't think he's going to succeed on this New Orleans team with all the shooters. And now you add Murray. I mean, my concerns were beyond Zion and Ingram trade machine and the fact that he's going to be in every trade. Murray's not exactly like Jason Kidd

in the mid-2000s. Like, he's going to get his. McCollum's going to get his. Zion's going to get his. Trey Murphy's going to come off the bench. He's going to want some. Why? A lot of shots on this team.

Why can't we get Trey Murphy into the starting lineup? Like, we can't. How about this Murphy into the starting lineup? We can't make CJ McCollum a six-man. It's impossible to do. Why? Why can't we get Trey Murphy an extension? That's the other crazy thing about them. They're just like...

If we were the GMs of the Pelicans, I'm pretty sure we would have locked down Trey Murphy right now, heading into his fourth season. It's like, let's not even fuck around. Or you don't lock him down because maybe he's the best trade ship you have. Or you just don't lock him down because

he might come off the bench and we might be able to squeeze him a little bit in restricted free agency in the summer because no one's going to have cap space and whatever. Yeah, but this is the problem with that because I get that. And that's totally logical if you're running and whatever. But this is the problem with that. Cause I get that. And that's totally logical if you're running a team, but now you're Trey Murphy and I'm pissed you're playing,

you're playing for an extension. Now my minutes are going down and I feel like the team is like deliberately trying to lower my value. Um, it's just not, I don't, there's a lot of subplots on this team. So he's unhappy. He's probably unhappy. I'm't, there's a lot of subplots on this team. So he's unhappy.

He's probably unhappy. I'm guessing Ingram, definitely unhappy. Dejounte Murray comes in. This is my team. Zion. Hey, this is my team.

I'm Zion Williamson. Um, there's just a lot going on and they have no center. Tyson is going to be their starting center. And Zion, those are their centers. What are they going to do when they play like Embiid? I don't know.

Start, start. They like the European guy. There's good centers in the league. Jokic, like you go, there's going to be 10 centers that they're going to have to have some sort of answer to. And I just feel like this team's been snake bit. You know, you think like Zion's, you talked about that Embiid moment in the Olympics.

Zion's having this incredible game against the Lakers. He's taking it to LeBron athletically in a way that he just made LeBron seem like he's 50 years old. And then he gets hurt. The game's not even over. He can't make it to the end of the game. So to me, New Orleans is out in the playoffs. I don't have them in the playoffs.

I'm going to keep working on this. But if I had to pick eight teams, I'm not sure they're one of the eight. There's too much going on. I don't like it. I think we need to change the way we pick playoffs. I think we need to pick a top six, and then everyone after that is in the play-in or not in the play-in.

Yeah, the new school playoff. What do you think their odds are to make the playoffs right now? Because we can look this up. So they're minus one, at least on Fando, minus 188 to make the playoffs, which seems way too high to me. Because I got OKC,

I have Minnesota, I have Denver, I have Dallas. Put those in. Memphis, Phoenix. Now I'm in the Sacramento, New Orleans, Lakers,

Golden State, Houston group, maybe the Clippers. I don't know. It makes me nervous. Let's take a break and then we'll keep going. Now it's time for a special part of today's episode sponsored by my friend, NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. NFL Sunday Ticket, awesome features to help you stay on top of all the action like MultiView, another friend of mine, where you can watch up to four games at once or layer on stats and fantasy views

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their CMO, their chief multi-view officer to help pick the top four games of the week that you should watch with multi-view. And of course they loaded the early games yet again. There's three easy ones, Chargers, Steelers, two, two and O teams, two similar teams. I like that matchup, two good coaches, two teams that I was bullish on before the year. So we got that Texans Vikings, another two and O battle and two teams that have been chucking the ball around, Sam Darnold, resurgence year, I want to see it. And then Eagle Saints would be the other one. The Eagles coming off a Monday night loss, the Saints 2-0, leading in every offensive category. So those would be my

top three. And then I think for the fourth one, maybe we go Bears-Colts. Anthony Richardson, never know with that guy. Caleb Williams, can he finally put it together against a defense that hasn't been that good? And I think that would be my fourth one. So thanks again to our friends at YouTube TV. Don't miss a moment of the action. every game every sunday when you bundle nfl sunday ticket with youtube tv sign up today at youtube.com slash bs the other thing is you can add the games to your library and then just go back and watch them it's like just having an instant recording of whatever i tortured myself and watched the uh the patriots who should have beaten seattle i watched that one because my youtube tv taped it. Local and national games on YouTube TV. NFL Sunday tickets for out-of-market games. Excludes digital on the games. Device and content

restrictions apply. 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, we got to do the Celtics. I can't wait to hear what you could possibly be worried about about the Boston Celtics. Bizarre Tatum summer. True. Porzingis health. He's back in December is he?

are we sure he's December? because there's two Celtics teams there's the one that has Porzingis on it and then there's the one that doesn't during the regular season so when they say December I'm just going to assume February you know

they just won a title everyone sacrifices when you want a title. Everyone sacrifices when you win a title. Everyone's just looking out for the greater good of the team. Then you win the title. This is the premise of my entire book, The Disease of Moral from Pat Riley. It's just the sacrificing isn't as sacrifice-y once you actually win the title.

So I'm worried about that. The East is way, way, way, way better. You have... At the top. Nick's way better. Philly is going to be better. Miami is still kind of lurking. Milwaukee is still kind of lurking.

Cleveland, Orlando are sitting there. It's just not going to be the same. And then the Celtics sale is a pretty interesting added piece to this because that thing's going to be the same. And then the Celtics sale is a pretty interesting added piece to this because that thing's going to move fast. I don't think people realize how fast that's going to go. It's going to be November that team's going to be sold. That's what I think. I think it'll be mid-November. The process is in the middle of it right now. They're finishing their books. They get the books out to the prospective buyers. Kind of have a sense of who the buyers are, what it is. And it's,

is this going to be the Pagluca group that Wednesday? Is it going to be an outside group? If it's an outside group, those people are all bringing in their own people. So now you have this organization that felt like it was probably in the safest spot of any of the 30 teams, right? They had the most continuity. They had people that have been there 15, 20 years. They're at the finals thinking like, this is great, man. We have this nucleus. We're all here.

We have so much continuity. And then all of a sudden, there's going to be this sale. And the league wants $6 billion for it, which I talked about on a pod, I don't know, last month. And they wanted to tie the expansion stuff. So the league's going to be really pushing. They're going to be pushing buyers. They're going to be turning over every stone.

And it's just a lot of uncertainty for a team that should feel like they're in an awesome place. They just won the title. This is great. And instead, they might have a new owner in like December. I think they're going to. And

Wick's done this thing about how it's going to be this staggered thing. And I'm still going to be in charge. Like, I don't know, man, I'm not signing up for that one. I don't like for that being true because we just watched that happen with Cuban. I'm going to run the basketball operations. We saw it in the finals that the new people are running the Mavericks at the finals. The new people do not want the old people around. And that's going to happen, I think, with the Celtics. So whoever buys this team, if it's not the Pagluca group, that's just a giant, giant monkey wrench to bring into a title defense season.

We have sold the team. Here are the new people. They're bringing their people. And it makes me nervous. But the Tatum piece makes me the most nervous because I don't know what happened to his outside shot. And I don't know if you have any insight on that. I don't. Um, other than I'm not going to worry about it until it becomes a thing in the NBA for

like a month. Um, so let's talk about the sale. Uh, six is the number. I mentioned it over the spring summer whenever this broke like that would be the the high water mark i think that's high i think that's going to turn maybe maybe like a bidding war emerges of such frothiness that we get there but i've i've from what i've heard that's going to end up being a little high um i agree but maybe but but maybe and then you mentioned Pagliuca.

From what I've heard, he's deep in this, obviously. Are you rooting for him to get it just for the sake of stability? Is that the best possible outcome for the 2025 Celtics? I think if you're a fan of the... And I'm going to sound like I'm in the bag for this. I have no horse in the race. I'm just a fan of continuity and the fact that he's been there this whole time. I think it's super icy with Wick and Pagluca right now too, which I don't know whether that affects whether he gets it or not, but his son, everybody likes that he

went to Duke and it's a situation. He was there when Tatum was there, was he not? Yeah. It's a situation where sometimes this can go horribly when it's like, yeah, I'm going to take over and groom my son. And it's like, oh my God, the son actually seems like he's pretty good. And the buzz on him is excellent. So, you know, and a lot of the minority owners that are tied to the Pagluca team or the people that a lot of them are already there. So from a continuity standpoint, that feels the best. I'm with you. I think the six seems high because you don't have the arena. But if the arena situation is a disaster for the Celtics, it's a disaster and it's not

a disaster because their lease goes to like 2034 and that's plenty of time to build your own thing. I thought some of the stuff Cuban has said recently, I thought was really instructive and interesting about how when he took over, the NBA was moving to a technology phase in the early 2000s and that was a huge advantage for him.

And then he's like, now we're in a real estate phase and I'm not as equipped to succeed in that phase as I was in the last one. Now that might have been part bullshit because nobody really fully understands why he sold the Mavericks. I still don't have an answer for that, but I do think he's right.

I think what happened with the Warriors where they bought the team at a crazy cheap price, 10-tupled it, 20-tupled it, whatever it was, but then realized we need our own arena. We need everything to fund through us. We need a place that we're the centerpiece of. We can have concerts. We can have all these events and the real estate of it. All the tax breaks from it is great. Whoever buys the Celtics is going to have to think that way. And there's a bunch of good locations that they came up with during the Olympics when they had

the Olympics bid for five seconds. There's spots to do it. You're just going to have to pay money and, and grease some people. One of the, one of the groups that I think is possibly involved is the group that brought the Olympics, um, that the bid that fell through there, you know, construction building people. Um, but I don't know how it's going to play out. There's always a casino option. The casino is super successful there. And I don't know if the wind group has the pockets. I don't think they do, but it could be them with somebody else and they want to build an arena next to the casino. But the point is, anything you read or hear about this, other than some people circling it, which I talked about the Bezos thing.

There's people circling, but nobody's going to know until they send the books out and they get the process going. And there could be a wild card or two. I would, my bet, if I gave you over under

five and a half, would you go over or under? I'd go slightly under. Yeah, I'm thinking five, two to five, four range. Yeah. But, you know how this goes with rich guys if two people want it and it and it starts up and up and i know same thing with same thing with contract extensions on guys like trey murphy the line gets held and then the

deadline approaches all right what's an extra four million to get this done and keep Trey Murphy? Okay, fine. Just boom, done. And then the other piece is the stuff with Wick and his dad. That story is going to come out at some point. I don't think the right version of the story has come out yet, but I think that's been the biggest head-scratcher of this whole thing because Irv, the legend, rich guy legend, all-time great businessman, just revered and made one of the great investments of all time. And that's sometimes how these guys think. Where it's like, I 20-tupled my investment.

I am disciplined with this. It's time to get out. They have Epstein, who I think owns 15% of the team. I assume he's going to sell because he did his job. He 22 pulled the investment. He's going to get the fuck out. So it's a lot. My point is it's a lot of flux

with this Celtics team that this should be a happy thing. They're defending the title. We should have. And instead there's five variables already. So that's what I'm worried about. The basketball stuff. I'm just going to assume that Tatum will be Tatum.

And this will all just be a random slump, blip on the radar, whatever. The disease of me, the disease of more. I can't remember which one it is because I think it's disease of me. I call it disease of more. But then some other people say me. I just don't. I hadn't even thought about that with them because who wants

more? Like Tatum and Brown already get a ton. White and Holiday are unselfish and have been paid and just play the way they do. Porzingis is just out there to shoot threes. They play this and post-ups, which is like we saw in the finals when he went bananas

over all the Mavericks defenders in game one. They play this five-out, which is like we saw in the finals when he went bananas over all the Mavericks defenders in game one. And they play this five-out, fast-moving system that just seems to lend itself well to ball movement and Tatum and Brown still get their 25-plus a game. I just didn't think about that for them.

I didn't think about that for them. Porzingis is hurt, but they still have Horford, Cornette, Keita, who's pretty good. Still Horford. Is he 40 yet? He's like 39. Like how many? Ageless.

Ageless. What's a realistic minute limit for him? Yeah, look, they have White and Holiday who, if they aren't the two most unselfish guys in the league,

they're in the first team all-NBA for whatever list that is. And you have Horford, same thing. There's a lot of, the Joe Mazzulla, I think, had an awesome second year. And I think even when Tatum was struggling during Olympics,

Mazzulla flew out to France to kind of make sure everything was okay. That guy's locked in, knows his roster. I think the jump he made from year one to year two has been astounding. People love that dude. Going from the days that my dad and I called him second row Joe, he's been amazing. Some website had a list of the 30 best coaches, and he was like 11th. It's like, how is this dude 11th? They just won 80 games in a season.

I'm worried about the Tatum thing. I had him third coach of the year. I'm worried about the Tatum thing. I want to third coach of the year. Anyway. I'm worried about the Tatum thing. I want to see him. I talked about this on the pod last month, but going back and watching his shot as a rookie versus where it is now with this hitch that he has. Eddie Johnson had a theory that maybe he put on too much weight,

which has happened with NBA, too much muscle. And sometimes guys get muscle, and it kind of changes how they shoot. But I just, it got to the point of the Olympics. I mean, he was 0 for 16 from outside. That's a crazy stat. He could not, they couldn't play him. That was the reason he wasn't playing.

So anyway, what do you have for the next one? We can go in a number of different directions for this one, depending on kind of what team you want to hit. I just kind of want to talk about this team. So I'll pretend they were higher on my list. I got a lot of I got a lot of small worries about Minnesota that adds up to me. Signs should point to Minnesota being a very sensible finals pick. Conference finals, broke through, beat Denver on the road in Game 7. Great series from Towns, at least shooting-wise in that series. Made big shots, shot 40% from three, 50% from the field against the juggernaut, the defending champion, the team we all picked to win the West last year. Yeah, they lose the conference finals.

There's the Lucas shot in Rudy's face. Just bad series. Towns is bad again. Whatever. But everything is ascending upwards. They have the ascendant young superstar in the NBA in Anthony Edwards, a guy who wants all the smoke in crunch time. Exactly the kind of player you want handling the ball

late. Everything's pointing up and yet I just get a little, I just have a little anxiety. I have anxiety about everyone in their rotation after their top seven guys. So they have a great starting lineup, then they have Nas Reed,

sixth man of the year, and Nikhil Alexander-Walker. And after that, it's the kids and Joe Ingles. That makes me a little nervous. Like I'm counting on the kids and Joe Ingles that makes me a little nervous like I'm counting on the kids and Joe Ingles and you can talk me into like

Joe Ingles shot 43% last year he's got great pick and roll chemistry with Rudy that's cool Mike Conley is 37 on opening night will be 37 by opening night they can kind of get lost offensively when he's not on the floor and he's 37 and and they're relying on a lottery pick for the other minutes talk about

weird summers talk about weird summers rudy gobert got benched by france and and made fun of by pretty much everyone who has a platform in the NBA. I mean, it's a little ridiculous, but was the Rudy cat fit? Was that real last year? The offense still wasn't great. By the way, he's eligible for an extension right now. Is that going to be a thing?

I still think the team can make the finals. They should get far in the playoffs. I guess what I'm saying is I'm more worried is too strong a word. I'm more cautious about Minnesota than everything about their timeline suggests that I should be. You made a great case. I wrote down the year after where they had this great breakthrough moment. And sometimes we see in the league that you almost have to take a step back before you then make the next step forward.

Ant mania in 2024. I'm concerned about like, he's going to be the star of this Netflix show. Yeah. I'm sure he's going to be in a bunch of commercials. He's going to be all over the place. He's a real attraction. I think he can handle it,

but I want to see it is go bear playable at this point. Again, certain teams did the league kind of unlock how to attack it. Is Gobert playable at this point against certain teams? Did the league kind of unlock how to attack him? And then Towns, you know, Towns is almost 30 at this point.

He kind of is who he is. They're relying on that lottery pick dealing him to actually play big minutes. I really like him and our college guys were big fans of his, but he's still a rookie trying to create offense.

And they're in a hard conference and they're going to have a bullseye on them and they're not going to be taking anyone by surprise. So that would be the case. So I have a bunch of things that like I'm more worried about

than I'm like, I'm more worried about the heat than I am about the Timberwolves. I'm more worried about Zach Levine's future or whatever it is than I am about the Timberwolves. So I just wanted to talk

about the Timberwolves. I'm more worried about the Suns than the Timberwolves, but I wanted to talk about about the Timberwolves. I'm more worried about the Suns than the Timberwolves, but I wanted to talk about Minnesota, so I elevated them. I think as basketball fans, it would hurt the most that the Timberwolves weren't as fun

as they probably should be this year. The Heat, they had their run, and it might be I had them down for all the reasons you would think. But I think with Minnesota, I think we're kind of counting on them. I think the league's counting on Minnesota, I think we're kind of counting on them. I think the league's counting on them. I think the league is really counting on Ant.

And you could feel it during the Olympics. He's got the respect of the older guys, which is really important. And I think for people like my son, he turned into a guy. Like casual NBA fans under 20 are like, I like this guy. This is my guy. Casual NBA fans under 20 are like, I like this guy. This is my guy. I'm adopting him as

not my favorite team guy. I'm going to go with... Let's take one more break and then I have a double pick. Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage.

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I'm going with both LA teams, Zach. Just lumping them together. There's a world where neither of them are playoff teams. I think if you were going to isolate it, if you made me pick between who are you more worried about, just the Clippers launching this new arena that by all accounts is incredible, and they're launching around a guy who doesn't play and a guy who doesn't play defense. And it's like, come see us. Or JJ Redick, who I think is in the least enviable coaching situation

of anybody in a long time. Maybe, I guess, Missoula after E-Mail got fired. That was tough. Like, holy shit. You're talking about being thrown in the fire. Wait, wait a second. Just ask your old podcast buddy, Doc Rivers. There's nothing worse than taking over a team.

I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Following Adrian Griffin in the middle of a season for a team with Giannis and Dame, I just can't imagine a worse fate. Well, JJ might have a worse fate. This team's going to be... Because what happened is you have LeBron

and AD who had 10 weeks off for the Olympics. Basically had to play in six games, played really well. And I was guilty of it. I said it after the gold medal game. It's like, shit, when you watch these guys play at this level, it makes you think like, why can't the Lakers put a championship team around him? And then afterwards, I was like, why did I say that? Because part of this league is you got to play for nine months.

It can't be like, hey, we got to ramp up for six games. You got to ramp up for 95. And also their fifth starter, their fifth starter is not Devin Booker. Right. Right. And they don't have like all NBA guys coming off the bench. The Brownie thing is going to be super weird.

It just is. It's going to be a story day after day after day on top of the fact that if this team doesn't do that well. Wait, wait, wait. But what, like, do you think that continues

to be true? Yes. If and when he's just in the G League and he's over here and, like, we're not talking about the South Bay Lakers on NBA Today

or maybe we will be. I don't know. Like, do you think it remains a thing? Do we think he's going to be in the G League? I would think be. I don't know. Like, do you think it remains a thing? Do we think he's going to be in the G League? I would think so. I would think for,

I think JJ has... They gave him a guaranteed contract. That's fine. I will be very surprised if he doesn't spend part of the season in the G League. Listen,

you get clicks and you get paid views if you put any story with Bronny in it for basically from the preseason on, that's just how it's going to go. You saw a glimpse of it in Summer League, and then that's how it's going to keep going.

And if he's not playing for the first 10 days, then that becomes a story. Is Bronny, is JJ burying Bronny? He's 100% playing in the opening game so that they can have a moment together. Right? That's going to happen. Like, so they pass to each other,

whatever it ends up being. I it's, it's one of the coolest NBA situations we've had. And it's also going to be one of the weirdest because like, imagine being on the team. Like we saw a glimpse that there was already grumblings about the summer league team, about how everything was built around trying to get Bronny to succeed.

Some of the other guys are like, what the fuck? I just think it's going to be a story. I'm going to try to avoid the story as much as possible because I don't really care. The more interesting thing to me is, what does LeBron have? Is he even a playoff guy anymore? Can he play enough games?

Can he play more than 55, 60 games in a season with all the miles he has? Will AD ever be that healthy again? Is there going to be a difference between Darvin Hamm and JJ as a coach? Was Darvin a scapegoat for last year? The Laker fans were out on him. Palenka was out on him, but really what were you going to do with that roster anyway? It was pretty strange. So there's that. And then the Clippers side is just... It's a team built around Kawhi Leonard and James Harden

who are in their mid-30s now. Who do you think will have a better record of the two if you had to pick? It's a great question. I probably would pick the Clippers because of their role guys that...

Now I don't know. I don't know. Who would you... I would pick the Lakers. I'm good. I would pick the Lakers. Because if LeBron plays 60 games, it's probably the Lakers, right?

They'll go like 43 and 39. Well, does either of those teams have a chance to win 46 games? Yeah, I think the Lakers do. Really? Yeah, I think they do. I think those two guys, if they have health like they did last year,

which is a big if, I think those guys are that good. Well, how about the flip side of the question? Which team has a lower basement? It's the Clippers. Oh, like I... The glass half empty version of the Clippers season is like the glass is actually empty.

Yeah, the glass has smashed. My daughter threw the glass off the table and it smashed on the floor. The glass just smashed. People are stepping on it. There's blood. And Sam Presti just in the corner with a broom going, I'll clean that up for you.

Hey there! I am pessimistic about the Clippers. I've been pessimistic about the Clippers since the offseason unfolded the way it did. I still don't really understand what they did with Paul George. I saw Ty... God bless Ty Lou. He's a great coach

and he had, you know, in a story that we had, Om Young Masuk had it about like, I can't wait to prove everybody wrong. I'm like, cool.

I don't see it. So I will be one of the people that you prove wrong if you indeed win more than 40 games or whatever, if you're a 500 or if you're better than 500.

I just don't, I don't see it. Kawhi'll get hurt. The Olympics was rough. Kawhi will miss games and harden with a bunch of, you know, like, okay.

Players around him. I just, I just don't see it. The Lakers, I think what's not being talked about, about the Lakers and all the focus on Bron and ad and bronze age. And can they stay healthy to the degree they were last year. And then the Bronny thing and the JJ thing.

The Lakers depth terrifies me. But I like their starting five. I'm not a D-low guy, but I still like their starting five. I think it works. D-low, Reeves, Rui, LeBron, AD, assuming that JJ starts that lineup, which he should. Who do you trust after that? After that, it's Gabe Vincent, who missed basically all of last season. And then a bunch of guys who are either totally unproven

or proven to be guys that probably should be at the very back of your rotation. Even Jared Vanderbilt, who Laker fans love. Okay, can we fast forward to the point where he gets played off the floor in a playoff series? Like after that, after him, it's like Jackson Hayes, Dalton connect hood,

Shefino, Max Christie, who I'm optimistic about has proven nothing in the NBA there. So everyone focuses on LeBron and ad. I think he is going to play, but he's got to earn minutes. You got a bit, you got a decent contract.

Like everyone focuses on LeBron and ad. I'm like, man, if Austin Reeves misses 20 games, I like who's taking those minutes. You got a decent contract. Everyone focuses on LeBron and AD. I'm like, man, if Austin Reeves misses 20 games, who's taking those minutes? That's what scares me more about the Lakers almost than the fact that LeBron is about to turn 40 years old. Well, and you didn't even mention the other hallmark of these LeBron teams

is if it starts out slow, everyone's in trade rumors by Thanksgiving. And then it's just, we're just in trade rumor season with the Lakers from, I would say, Thanksgiving all the way through till we actually had the trade deadline. And every guy on that team is, except for maybe AD, is not safe. And they have the two picks to trade. They have Connect, who would have trade value, though they love him. And JJJJ's already drawn up plays on the whiteboard during the draft for dalton connect which is cool you can really shoot

i i don't know who the guy is that they're that they're you know putting all those chip putting some of those chips in for i've i've kind of joked before or said before like i think jeremy grant makes some sense for them just because i don't think like that i don't think i win them the title well but i don't think when portland gets religion i don't think... That's not going to win them the title. When Portland gets religion, I don't think the cost of Jeremy Grant is going to be that high. I don't think they're getting this mother load for Jeremy Grant that they think they should get. And so when the cost gets to

a point where the Lakers can meet it, but then you're going to have to trade a real salary or two to get there. And I don't know who that is that the Lakers could... It's not like you could just trade Rui Hachimura. It's like, oh, this guy's a meaningless $18 million. No, he's like a starter on your team that you need so I don't know what the move is like you can sit here and talk about at any of the potentially distressed star players that want out or borderline star players I don't know that any of them are

available or even help the Lakers that much like Zach Levine changing your life as the Lakers if they could even mechanically do that trade? Like, it's not... Like, really? I mean, really, the move would be to go the other way

because I don't think they have any chance of winning a title with this team. You go the other way and you shot Davis, but they're just not going to do that.

See, I have... I don't think they can win the title. I don't think they're a contender, really, but I will say... They have no chance to win the title. I don't think they're a contender really, but I will say... They have no chance to win the title. I have so much respect for LeBron and AD

that you put them up against pretty much any team in the West in one playoff series. Yeah, they could steal this series. They could steal a round. Yeah. Even last year... Now, this is a totally different Thunder team

that I think is going to be a juggernaut. But remember last year, all the buzz was like, oh, the Thunder, Dave, the Lakers would really be a dangerous opponent for the Thunder. I would have picked the Thunder in that series, but that's neither here nor there. Like you just like they'll just steal some games and then they'll steal a series. But I keep saying this on TV. It's a boring. It's a boring take. Winning three playoff series or two playoff series,

whatever it is, is just such a much different animal than scrounging your way to four wins one time. It's just so hard to do. It's the same issue the Warriors have. Yeah, it takes so much endurance. It takes so much stamina. It takes so much depth. I just don't see any world in which they can do that as presently constructed.

I guess the big disappointment for me the last few years is I just don't feel like ESPN was covering the Lakers. Do you think maybe they'll do more content in the Lakers this year or is it just going to be like it was last year? I'm going to predict we do a little bit less

content on the Lakers, but maybe not. I don't know. What do you have for your next pick? I can go anywhere with this one. Should we talk about Julius Randle, maybe? How about that? They were going to be

my last pick, so let's do it. What's going to happen with that? None of the Knicks fans don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. Well, because I don't think it's something that's going to happen with that? None of the Knicks fans don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. Well, because I don't think it's something that's going to derail this team that's destined for greatness or something. But it's a big piece of their team who, one way or another, they need talent. And he's talent. And he can score.

And he can get buckets. He improved in a million different ways last season before he got hurt. I love the way he was playing off of Brunson. A little more active defensively, a little more active as a passer and off the ball. But he's a $29 million salary slot that they either need his talent or down the line, not thinking beyond this year,

that needs to turn into something. And I don't know what the answer to it is. And just anytime you go into a season where a guy's eligible for extension, he doesn't get it, he know, I just, anytime you go into a season where a guy's eligible for extension, he doesn't get it. He's going to be a free agent likely as a result is, and he's been a two-time all NBA player on your team, a really, really good player. That is just a thing that you have to monitor. There's that he's going to be in trade rumors. If they start out 10 and eight or whatever, there's also the... I'm not sure who their finishing five is,

and whoever gets left out is probably going to be like, what the fuck? Could change night to night, right? Brunson, Bridges, and Ananobi are all out there. Randall Hart, DiVincenzo, Mitchell Robinson, two of those four, depending on the matchup. DiVincenzo, who was awesome last year,

who now might be a 20 minutes a game guy. It's like, what the fuck, man? I was out there killing it for you guys. Now I'm basically coming off the bench Eddie Howe style. I'm just monitoring it. It's something I've been teasing my Knicks fan friends around a lot. I also think they're, you know, not rocket science.

They're really going to miss Hartenstein. He was super important for them last year and provided something that they no longer have in any capacity. I don't trust Mitchell Robinson to stay healthy at all. I think he might be a worse health bet than Embiid. They will address this center thing one way or another. It may be via trade. It may end up having to involve Randall,

but I don't know. I don't even know what to expect with Randall. By the way, not as many centers. Because you hear there's some New Orleans too. It's like, oh, well, they'll get a center. It's like, who? Go through the 30 rosters. What center are they getting?

You want DeAndre Eaton? Dominate. I like Robinson and Achua as a platoon. I think that's fine. This is where the Bridges trade, I think, an under-discussed element of it is, he's a big talent injection

in terms of just all around talent including offensive creativity like what he did in brooklyn at least the first half year he was there he fell off a little last year that was like legit secondary creator on a good team stuff if that carries over they have a little more leeway in terms of what they can get like you mentioned hartenstein and what they can't replace from him. Defensively, he was amazing, but his passing, his floater game, he was a release valve for them offensively that they, in theory, should need less

with Mikhail Bridges there as a secondary, third creator, whatever. And Tibbs, there was a Q&A with Tibbs today on NBA.com where he cracked the door open to playing Randall at the five more. I think they're going to have to. And the reason and this is something Knicks fans

have talked about is Ananobi is so good at guarding above his size that he can actually be the five on defense so Randall doesn't have to guard the big centers of the world. And maybe that's the way this door finally gets unlocked. And that changes the minutes patterns for everybody that way the way this door finally gets unlocked. And that changes the minutes patterns for everybody that way in a way that might make sense. I think the Knicks are

going to be awesome. I really love this team. I cannot wait to watch them. I'm with you. I'm nitpicking on possible ways it could go wrong. But one thing I like is that we always talk about how teams feel like they have to do this need to finish their team in July. And this is a team that they're going to start the season. They're going to be totally fine. Their defense is going to be really good. They have one of the 10 best offensive players in the league. Maybe even higher than that in Brunson.

You can kind of move along and see what's missing. And then by the time you get to January, maybe you'll know. I'm really excited to watch Bridges and Inanobi together. And I think they're going to be... I think the Celtics-Knicks games this year are going to be fucking awesome. This is like, if you're building a team, it's exactly the two guys you would want to throw at Tatum and Brown. I thought they were the second best team in the East last year.

I said it basically the whole season, especially after Androbe. I think they were the biggest threat to Boston last season. Boston is never going to have a play. The fact that Boston got through the East without playing any of New York, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, and I know all those teams were injured, that's just an incredible run of matchup, whatever. Not luck. It's not luck. It's just like the chances of that happening.

We talk about these four teams all season long and one team wins the East and doesn't have to play any of the others is just crazy. Crazy. I actually looked up. I was trying to see what the biggest wind drops were for any finals team who won more than 64 games. Was it 64 or higher? It was the 2008 Mavs dropped 16 games from 07 when they were like 67 and 15, whatever. And then the Warriors beat them.

The We Believe Warriors just broke them. 74 Celtics. Oh, that team didn't make the finals. The 2001 Lakers was 11. 92 Bulls was 10. 14 Heat was 12. And the 84 Sixers dropped by 13. So the Celtics won 64.

I think even if you're going super pessimistic and Porzingis doesn't come back till February, them dropping in the mid-50s is just historically, unless there was a major injury, about as low as it could possibly drop. So my point is, for the one seed, I wonder what the Knicks have to get to to actually challenge the Celtics.

Because I'm just super dubious to the Porzingis thing when they throw out December. Don't you when you hear this stuff now, don't you just add four to six weeks when you hear a date like that? So yeah, December. Especially when you have the luxury of the talent that the Celtics are going to have. There's no need to rush them back.

By the way, what was the most stressful segment of a playoff game for you as a Celtics fan last year was there ever a moment you were like legitimately tense

when they blew game four the way they did even though I thought they were better than Dallas but the poor Zingas injury having no idea what to expect from him the way they did, even though I thought they were better than Dallas. But the poor Zingas injury, having no idea what to expect from him. There was part of me wondering, what happens if Luka just scores like 29 in the first half here in game five and becomes one of those like 2012 Celtics- Miami game six, LeBron situations where the best part on the court just is awesome in the first half. And now we're down 18 heading into halftime with the

thought of going back to Dallas. I remember walking around that day. I did like a three and a half hour power walk all around Boston. I just the nervous energy of like, I just don't want to fucking go back to Dallas. And I think everybody felt that way and you could feel it in the building. And then when they came out and Porzingis looked pretty good. I mean, what Porzingis did in that game, it's going to slip through the cracks of history, but that was incredible. The guy, the guy just had a surgery that's going to take him out six to eight months and he played on it and was pretty effective, especially in the second half. So I think that was the darkest for me.

His game one was at all time, just bonkers crowd moment to like coming out into the arena late, crowd goes crazy. And then he just, it was the best stretch of his entire career. He was blocking shots, hitting trail threes, dunking on people, blocking dunks. I can't, There's one team

that I cannot believe we haven't talked about. What is it? The Suns. Is it too obvious? I actually... I isolated the Suns into just Kevin Durant. Because I feel like we're...

Well, we're at this... I feel like this is it for him as an elite guy on a good team just with the age he's at, with some of the injury history he's had. And you can make excuses for the last couple years in all these different ways, but it was a bed that he bought and chose to lie in

and was responsible for just about all the decisions for it. But now the fact that they got Tyus Jones on top of having to play all together for a year, the fact that Booker and KD had that Olympic experience together, the fact that the West, none of us know what to make of the West. OKC is clearly the regular season favorite, but I have no idea who's in play for number two. And then just like where his career is, I feel like he needs one more awesome season because it shouldn't take the Olympics

for him playing well to be like, oh, I forgot Kevin Durant was this good. It kind of felt like he had fallen into that hole, right? He'd become a, I forgot he was this good guy. And just as a lifelong Durant was this good. It kind of felt like he had fallen into that hole, right? He'd become a, I forgot he was this good guy. And just as a lifelong Durant fan, I would love to see him have an awesome year and I'd love to see the Suns be good, but I don't know if it's realistic.

So you said something interesting in there, which is you have no idea who to pick for the number two seed in the West, which goes back to how we opened this episode where I was like, the most interesting thing to me is everything below Oklahoma City and the regular season standings in the West. Because you can say all these teams are the clear top four. I just don't think it's going to unfold that way. And there's going to be an interloper from below somewhere. We've talked about Memphis. I think the Suns are maybe being underrated a little bit as one of those potential interloper from below somewhere. We've talked about Memphis. I think the Suns are maybe being underrated a little bit

as one of those potential interlopers because of the bad taste, the playoff, just obliteration by Minnesota. I mean, they were awful. There's no way around it. Minnesota destroyed them, bullied them, made them look helpless. They won 49 games last year,

despite the big three barely even, not even getting, I don't think, to half a season in games played together. Well, every team's got to have a like their three best guys, whatever. Durant, Booker and I'm out. I never want to hear the word big three again. Now, putting Bradley Beal in a big three is just offensive to the history of big threes. The big two and Bradley Beal playing only three games. Only like half a big three. It's just offensive to the history of big threes. The big two and Bradley Beal playing only three games. That sounds way better.

Only like half a season together. They won 49 games. That's a lot of games. They upgraded a point guard. That's a meaningful thing. They brought back Royce O'Neal, Mason Plumlee is a legit backup center. They nailed the offseason given what they had to work with. I think they're going to be a pretty goddamn good regular season team.

My concern is just how small they are and I just don't know how you create a good enough defense out of this roster. We didn't even mention Bud. That's a huge hire for them. Bud is a really good regular season coach. He's a good coach, period. And he's been an even better defensive coach than offensive coach. Motivated, bud. He's motivated. He's ready. I think they're a dangerous, like, oh, we could, like, the Suns are the three seed. That's interesting.

The Suns are, like, two games out of the two seed with two weeks left to play. I think that's totally in play. Yeah, the Suns are 20-3. I can't believe they started out this hot. Could see it. 20-3, I don't know. If we had, had like a weirdo

first 20 game team, they're definitely one of the candidates. But I just don't know how sustainable it is over, like you said, the number of games it takes to make a legit deep playoff run. And I don't know defensively just how they raise their ceiling

to a level they're going to need it to be. Well, and then how much they're leaning on Durant to be a two-way guy at this stage. I mean, Durant, that 07 draft, were you even writing basketball in 07? No, no. Like, think how long ago that was. My son wasn't even born during the 2007 draft, and he just drove out of my driveway this morning.

That's how old Kevin Durant is. and has some injury stuff on him too i felt bad for him with the uh the foot on the line what was the foot on the line thing where everybody there's a football something happened in football yeah the first football game of the year and isaiah likely's foot was on the line it was like oh here we go with 24 hours of Durant stuff. But everyone had the same thought and that became his legacy in Brooklyn was that his, and by the way, his foot was, I went back and watched it. His foot was really in the line. Have you gone back and watched that game ever? No, I would like to at some point. It's a fascinating one because they basically have the game in regulation. If they can just make one more play and they can't,

and it gets to OT and Katie's just dead at that point and they can't get any more offense. And, um, but I, I'd kind of forgotten. I've been watching. I always do this during the summer.

I watch some old games just to get my brain ready for the season. But also I was on an airplane on Saturday and they were running 2006 game six, Miami Dallas for the finals. A game that I don't think I've watched since I wrote about it. And it was riveting. And you can't believe how many missed threes there were, how many just wide open guys just bricking. It's like, there's Jason Williams from three. That's off the mark. Gary Payton from three, off the mark. And just people bricking threes. But Alonzo Mourning was the key to that game.

Came in, he blocked like five shots and was like a maniac. And Wade was incredible. And then I went on a whole Wade kick. And I'm like, you know, Wade's the most underrated star of the 21st century. That's where I circled back on Jet Blue on a Saturday night.

Are you tapping the guy next to you, just being like, well, maybe there was nobody next to you. What about fucking Wade? Yeah, like Dwayne Wade, most underrated. Not even probably rated, right? He got to the free throw line like

20 times, but the part I forgot was they're up three. They foul Wade. He misses both free throws. Dallas gets the ball back for another three, and Terry misses it, and Miami wins. But that Miami team was just a team we'll never see again. It's Antoine Walker, Udonis Haslam, who's awesome in that game, Mourning and Shaq.

They're just playing big guys everywhere with Dwayne Wade. They've washed up Gary Payton. It's just a team that resembles no team we would watch in 2024. So let's talk about the foot on the line game again, because it's framed as this ultimate what-if moment. And I think the assumption baked into that framing is that, well, if that's a three, the Nets win the series

and the Nets then win the championship. And if they win the championship, what does that mean for this hardened Kyrie Durant core that then flames out so spectacularly just a season later? And I get why it's framed that way because the next round

they're going to play the Hawks who are this upstart. Like, how did the Hawks get here? Oh, that the next round they're going to play the Hawks who are this upstart. Like, how did the Hawks get here? Oh, that's right. Yeah, they're going to be the Hawks. And then the next round is the Suns who are just kind of like surprise, not surprised, but like they just got way better than people expected way faster. Yeah. But but people, I think, just just skip a little bit, just scoot on by the fact that Kyrie was out with an ankle injury. Remember, he landed on Middleton's foot, I think. He wasn't in that game. Is he coming back?

And Harden was playing on one leg and give him a ton of credit. He was giving them everything he had. He was huge in game six to get that to game seven. And your guy Joe Harris was basically dead. That was the other piece. He was not making a lot of shots. He could not make literally anything. So what state are the Nets in if they do get through that series? And do they have enough

to win eight more playoff games against opponents that, yeah, no one is going to really remember that Hawks team. See, I never thought of it as a Nets title because the title probably already went out the window

when those guys all got hurt. To me, it was a Durant legacy thing. Just a Durant thing? Just the what-ifs of that career, which I think he probably has the most what-ifs of anybody because there's an alternate universe where he's in year 18 on the Seattle Supersonics, and he's the most popular athlete in Seattle history. There's the what-if of the Klay Thompson game. I can't go down this one with you.

I can't. It's just too deep. It just never ends. 2019, he is the best player in the league and it's not close. And he's tearing through the playoffs when he just gets hurt in that Clipper game. And then the 21 thing with the foot in the line, which

if he had beaten the Bucs by himself, that would have been amazing. You wouldn't have been able to say shit about him. So yeah, I've been accused of being a Durant defender, and I'll admit to it. I don't think there's ever been a forward like him, and I just think his career, some of it's self-inflicted.

He's one of a kind. One of a kind and just terrible bad luck. And then we watch him in the Olympics and people are like, oh, Kevin Durant is amazing. It's like, yeah, he's been amazing this whole time. Anyway, we are going to take this to your podcast, I think in two weeks. Something like that.

Some other gimmick. By then, camp will be going on. Media day will happen. With Brandon Ingram trades? I'm saying there's no Brandon Ingram trade by then. If you were Denver, you wouldn't have at least a meeting about Porter for Brandon Ingram? You wouldn't get the staff together, hush-hush? Just be like, can we talk this out for three hours? I would get the staff together. I think that's a get the staff together, at least. What about the staff together? Hush, hush. Can we talk this out for three hours?

I would get the staff together. I think that's a get the staff together at least. What about the Pelicans? You have that with the Zion injury possibility. I don't know. I kind of like Porter. We all know what Ingram needs to do to be functionally a number two or number three on a great team, which is just shoot more threes and play better defense. And that's just like he hasn't played that way in the last couple of years. He plays like DeRozan and Durant and Kobe and the mid-range gods, which is just not quite at that level offensively, although he's really, really good. I think he's actually become a little underrated because the most recent memory of him is just

getting smothered by the thunder coming right off of an injury. And I think Brandon was pretty goddamn good. But yeah, he's got to even if he stays on the Pelicans, he's got to do those things. And we just haven't seen that stuff anyway.. He's a fear of me, of mine, as with the Miami Heat, because I just feel like they're sitting there waiting. They purposely did nothing. They're just kind of sitting there

and they could go in 19 different directions, including in the tank where all of a sudden Butler's unhappy. How bad do the Heat have to get? And I'm not saying the Heat are going to be bad.

I said last week on my podcast, like I think the Heat are even a little better than people give them credit for. But I'm just from your standpoint, when do you stop being scared of the Heat are going to be bad. I said last week on my podcast, I think the Heat are even a little better than people are giving them credit for. But I'm just, from your standpoint, when do you stop being scared of the Heat? If they're like 5-30 in three years? It's like the Friday the 13th Part 9 movie where you're still kind of scared of Voorhees. He's got like a pot belly. His head's been chopped off twice.

I'm still a little afraid of him. Plus, they still have Bam. I'm not saying you shouldn't be afraid of this team. I just feel like you're very scarred by the Heat-Celtics battles of the past 15 years. I still cannot believe Tatum sprained his ankle on the first play of that game seven.

I just want to know what the alternate universe is if he doesn't sprain his ankle on the first play of that game seven. I just want to know what the alternate universe is if he doesn't sprain his ankle in that game. What happens? It was a bummer of a game. It was a bummer. Bummer of a game.

All right, yeah, we'll do this again in a couple weeks on the old low post. Zach Lowe, great to see you. Glad all as well. Can't wait to see you on ESPN talking about the Lakers.

I'm sure there'll be some segments. And I'll see you on your podcast in a couple weeks. No comment. See you soon. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Zach Lowe. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Crane for producing. As always, don't forget,

subscribe to the Bill Simmons YouTube channel and you can watch clips and complete episodes from this podcast. New rewatchables as well. John Wick. You can listen to it. You can watch it on the Women in Movies YouTube channel. I will see you on this feed on Thursday. I don't have a few years with him

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