The Bill Simmons Podcast - Everything We Learned This NBA Season, the Worst Owner Pyramid, and a Killer Hoops Weekend With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss Knicks-Thunder, Timberwolves-Bulls, Rockets-Mavericks, and Spurs-Warriors (1:31). Then they play a game of "What did we learn this season?" that covers Jaylen Brown, Victor Wembanyama, Donovan Mitchell, the Suns, the Thunder, and much more (26:27). Finally, they dig into the Timberwolves sale debacle, rank the worst NBA owners of the past 30 years, and discuss some March Madness topics (1:15:57) before closing the show. Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, everything we learned about the NBA season so far, plus a Minnesota Timberwolves deep dive next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's

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You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey. And it's on prime all season long.

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It's on Monday. It's on Prime. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We're having new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. Me and Chris Ryan did Shot Caller as part of Rock Bottom Month. This is an awesome, awesome, awesome movie. It's a prison movie. It's one of my favorite action movies of the last 10 years.

And it's on Netflix now. If you want to watch it before we post the podcast on Monday night, it will eventually land on my YouTube channel as well. YouTube.com slash Bill Simmons, where we put up videos and clips from this podcast and from the rewatchables as well. We do some walk and talk shorts or I do on there as well. Coming up on this podcast, Ryan Russell and I are going to talk about an incredible

night of Sunday Night Hoops. And then we're going to do everything we learned about the NBA season so far, which was really fun. Double segment. And then last but not least, a Minnesota Timberwolves deep dive into the Glenn Taylor era, which I guess was the Glenn Taylor error, and it's still going. But this is a very fun podcast. We'll talk some March madness at the end as well. It's all next. First,

our friends from project. All right, we're taping this a little before 7 o'clock Pacific time on Sunday night. We're going to play a game called What Did We Learn This Season? But before we do that, Sunday Night NBA was so exciting, so interesting, so explosive. All these games going at it once. Rusillo, they're like afraid of March Madness. They kind of duck out on Friday and Saturday night,

and then they load the schedule for after the final eight games. And we ended up with all in a row, OKC New York, Minnesota, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Golden State, all games that meant something just all happening at the same time. It was complete chaos. We'll start with OKC New York, which was an absolutely awesome, awesome, awesome game. OKC, every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

I'll start there. What are you out? I just always feel like they're too small and it seems inconceivable. And it's like, this is it. They can't do this. Once we get to the playoffs, how are they going to, even in this next game, the last minute, the Knicks kept getting those offensive rebounds. Like, see, this is what, this is what I'm saying about, okay, see not enough size. And then of course they end up winning the game. And the thing that struck me as always with them, there's like this calm competitiveness to them, right? They make big

shots and nobody celebrates. It's like handshakes after buzzer beaters with two seconds left on the clock. There's just this competitive, calm, icy team that I think winning that game in New York with the crowd like that, not easy. No, that was an awesome game. It felt like MSG chaos. There was a stretch there where it was a turnover fest. Nobody could make any free throws. So it was just kind of wild. So as I'm sitting there going, I'm just going to feel bad for whoever loses this because I don't know that it means anything necessarily. But I understand your thunder point because at this stretch with how deep this league is, and in particular the West, you're looking at it through, well, will this team be a team

that I think can win two rounds and get to the Western Conference Finals? So if you're knocking the thunder for that, like I get it. It's the same thing with New York. Like this New York story is incredible. OG's out again. He barely plays. Randall's been out for a month and a half. Way more than that.

January 27th was his last game. Two months. Mitchell comes back, plays two games, injures the ankle again. So it's a barrage of threes. The first half, it felt like New York was punking them a bit, especially in the third quarter because they're just physical and they're scrapping. It's like, no, you don't get to just set up and do whatever you want. We're coming after you.

And I watch New York and I'm like, this is one of the most incredible stories for who they've been and what Brunson's been able to do. But I can't help but think it feels a bit like the 2017 Celtics with Isaiah Thomas running pick and roll at the top every single possession. Avery Bradley was the number two scoring option for that team. And it had to get hot in a game seven. Yeah, so it was awesome. But you go, all right, but now what am I supposed to do? Well, the only thing with them is they're an unfinished product, right? Because when Randall comes back,

at least you now have a second option to go to. And then Ananobi is their best defender. And with his shooting, the way OG is shot historically from the corners and what he was doing when he came back. But it's just incredibly frustrating about his availability really throughout his career. So this is a tough one to have the lead. OKC turns it on.

And just an aside, Jalen Williams won is how I write him down. Because Jalen Williams, too, was starting to win me over. It was a very personal resentment on a lot of the charge calls that he got at Arkansas. And he got all the calls, and I hated it when I watched that tournament the year and did the draft stuff with him. But Jalen Williams won is a stud.

I'm so glad you brought this up because he's like 150- one to win most improved award. And I feel like if you, I mean, I know it started last year and like the last six, seven weeks of the season, like he really started to become like an 18, 19 points a game guy, but this guy hits big shots at the end of games over and over again. The last few weeks he's hit monster buckets, like not just like, Oh, I was in the corner and somebody drew a double team and I hit one. Shots that he created and scored on. And he's also guarding the best guy on the other team at least half the time, unless

Dort can do it for them. I think as a two-way guy, we have to do one more ringer 100 that we had to do our ranked 100 best players. I had him 25th and I actually was like, is this, is this high enough? Should I like how many two way guys in the league can do this? But you saw it tonight. I mean, the guy Shay was, you know, a little off and New York was throwing a lot of stuff that I haven't J Dub just, just, uh, took it over. I I'm just wildly impressed by that dude. It's year two. He's, I don't think he's 22

yet. I think, I want to say he's 21. If you're doing like trade value, he would have to be in the top 15 to 16 now for what he is. He's 23 in a couple of weeks. His three-point shooting jumped from like 34, 35 last year to 43 this year. He's in the top 10 as a three-point shooter in the whole league. Yeah, and the thing I had mentioned last week on my pod, because I've been just watching him a lot lately because of their matchups, and he's got that Kawhi shoulder drive where it doesn't have to be just a sprint. It's, all right, okay, cool. You think you shut me off?

And even Houston in Thompson who's a terrific defender but he's just still so young his body hasn't filled out yet he's like I'm just gonna get into you and then I'm gonna get myself some space like he plays like a guy who's been playing like five seven years in the league and the other part of this thunder thing is the giddy just stretch here where him sga missing some games is the best thing that could have happened to giddy this season because you started to see it more and more this season where if giddy were out there with jalen williams and sga and depending on how they're using their bigs and look okay see you can throw a ton of guys at you with their depth and rotation of what they

want to do and they all kind of interchange, which is the beauty of this team. But there was always this sacrifice. Like every team's always figuring out, okay, what's the one thing we can live with? And what you saw more and more teams doing is just like, look, just sag off a giddy all the time. It's like Jaden McDaniels in that Minnesota game today. They're like, good luck. Yeah, right, right. Like, and Jaden's been better offensively here for a couple of weeks too, but the game plan, they'll game plan will be like, all right, well, you still have to go ahead and prove it to us. And Giddey got DiVincenzo twice. He hit the three. He had 12 points, I think, in the fourth quarter. And it's reminded us kind of who he was as a draft prospect because his minutes have declined. His shot attempts have declined. The shooting has gone down. But this is a really important stretch.

If he has a nice run in the playoffs, I think these couple weeks here are going to be the things that unlocked him. That's a good point. The one thing you mentioned on Jalen Williams, you mentioned the Kawhi thing. I'm going to be careful. I did this last week talking about Jalen Green.

I'm not saying he reminds me of young Kobe. I'm just saying there's a couple moments where I'm like, oh, he looks like late 90s Kobe when he goes to the basket. By the way, all sane people understand what's happening when we do this, okay? Nobody thinks Anthony

Edwards is actually going to be better than fucking Michael Jordan, okay? He has some facial expressions. Right. There's pieces. We're just talking pieces. There's a lot of Kawhi when I watched Jalen Williams and I was thinking like Kawhi Leonard year two, what was going on there? Well, they made the 2013 finals that year. That was the year when we really started to wonder what's going on with this guy. Like this guy's guarding LeBron. And that was the, you know, that was the best version ever of LeBron.

And Kawhi seemed pretty comfortable in the mix with him and was just playing crunch time. And it was during that run, we were saying to ourselves, this might be a possible they could pass the torch to him down the road. It seemed conceivable.

Jalen Williams is further ahead of the game than Kawhi was in year two. And I think there's a lot of similarities. Bodywise offensively he's better already and could he be Kawhi 2.0 I think is a real question I don't know if he'll reach Kawhi defensively that's that's a pretty big ask but as far as offensively where it was it wasn't until year five for Kawhi where he was actually somebody taking enough shots to be thought of as like, okay, this guy's a real threat. I mean, he was still at what? 10 shots a game in his third year. But when you were watching Kawhi in year two, were you thinking this guy has a chance to be

like Pippen defensively? Because I think we talked about it, but I don't think it was like a lock or anything. We could see the seeds. Kawhi was such a strange evaluation because he was like, it felt like he was a power forward in college at times. Right. And you were just like, I don't,

like, what do you do with this guy? Because it looks like really good. But I think the similarity that I like that you're going with here is it doesn't mean the guy has to be exactly like him or surpass him career-wise or match it,

where at some points it felt like Kawhi was living in a neighborhood where he was the best player in the league. Like, there were times you're like, okay, he's the best player in the league. Maybe he didn't have the belt for long enough to actually say he technically had the belt the way you do it. Because I think

the way you do it keeps us kind of smart. It's like a year thing. It's not, hey, you were January and February. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But Kawhi has athleticism that we forget about, and then he'll do something where you go oh my god and it's not the jalen green stuff or the anthony edwards stuff it's just this other stuff that he does with his body control that it blows your mind that he does it and i think jalen williams has some of that stuff where it's never as impressive as a jalen green thing but there's just ways he'll just work guys and then he'll explode on some of these drives like that donkey had tonight was was just man was a huge part of the game too so you know that's the

thing is like two scores like that that seem to be really complimentary of each other which i think you're seeing more and more with kairi and luca in dallas yeah that's the kind of stuff that gets me excited now granted there's other things i'd like to see too the rebound has gotten a little bit better but yeah i mean it gets back to like, will Chet be enough to get you out of the West? You know what would have been nice? If they did anything at the trade deadline, that could have helped. I think we've covered that.

Hayward, 11 minutes tonight. That was your big move? Yeah, we got what'd you do at the deadline? We got to get out of place in 11 minutes. Come on. Three more games to quickly run through. By the way, shout out to the Knicks crowd. Just an awesome crowd tonight. Awesome. Really, really, really great. And it came through the TV. I loved it. Minnesota, Chicago. So Minnesota has the conference all of a sudden

in their hands tonight for a second, right? It's like, oh, they'll beat Chicago. The Knicks are going to beat OKC. Minnesota is going to be the one seed. And all of a sudden, this is what the Bulls do. The Bulls are the best 500 team I've ever watched in my life because there's nights when they look like if you were in a coma and you woke up and you just watched basketball for one night and you watched the Bulls, you'd be like, are they going to be in these finals? What's their record? 55 and 20? I said, no, no, they're 38 and 39. They just do it. They came down the stretch and they out-crunch timed a Minnesota team that really needed it. They just used McDaniels against Minnesota. And it was the first time watching Minnesota where I was like, okay, I know it's fun to say they don't need towns and this is more fun and blah, blah, blah, but they actually need towns. Chicago is clutch city. I mean, this team

plays so many clutch games every single night. And if you look at the post all-star break, breakdown of this stuff, they actually have the number five clutch offense in the NBA in comparison to Minnesota. It's number 22. Now granted, some of the clutch stuff can get a little weird. Like if you look at net rating for clutch, there'll be a team that has the same net rating as the other team and the records are completely different in how many of you played. Chicago should be very comfortable in clutch games because it feels like 75% of them are clutch games. I'm always going to worry about Minnesota's execution. I started kind of buying into Ananuff going like, I think he'll win you more games than he'll lose you.

But it's really about Jaden. It's about Alexander Walker hitting threes. Nas Reid having to obviously step up with his commitment. They were so good against Denver, and granted, it was Denver without Murray. Because when you watch Gobert, it was like, okay, wait, you're going to put Nas Reid on Jokic, and then you're going to put Gobert on Aaron Gordon. So that whole baseline dunker thing, like that just means you're bringing Gobert closer to Jokic now. So now if you're going to bring Gordon out, cool. We're not, we're going to have Gobert

closing out to him at the three point line. So I don't, I don't know how much I, I expected probably more of these Timberwolves games for them offensively because that's kind of who they are in some of these late spots, but I'm still relatively pleased the record has been good enough to still be fighting for the one seed here

with a week and a half to go. There are eight and a half point favorites tonight. Well, you got me there. If you look at the West right now, OKC's one, Denver is two, the West right now, okay. Season one, Denver is two and Minnesota is three, which would mean it's probably Minnesota, New Orleans.

This could all flip. There's eight games left. Teams play each other. It's too early to say, but, um, the three seat is kind of where I don't want to be. I don't want to play that New Orleans team.

We'll go into them when we do what we learned this season, but, uh, I want to be in one of the top two seeds. Dallas-Houston. This is a real thing that happened because I wrote down all the awards odds for the podcast tonight,

and Luka was plus 750 to win MVP on FanDuel. He had 32 points at halftime of this Houston game, and the odds dropped to 5-1 because he was that good. I mean, it was one of the best halves anyone's played all season. It was ridiculous. It felt like if he really wanted to, he could add 70.

They killed Houston. Houston needed the game too. Golden State's playing at the same time. Golden State ends up beating San Antonio. Houston's now two back. Dallas went into that game and you could feel it in the first quarter where they were like, you know what? No. Enough with your streak. It's a cute story, but now you're with the big boys. There's some Texas stuff there. Dallas

Houston's a nice little rivalry in general. Luka just killed them and then Kyrie took over in the second half. Dallas now, 12-2 in their last 14. They're in a tie now for the division with New Orleans and for the five spot. They're second in net in the last 14. And then Luka feels like this is about the best we've seen him night to night. Would you say that? This is the most comfortable he's seen as just like a 30 to 35 a night with like eight, nine. It just seems like that's every night now. I think it's the

best because I think it's the most comfortable he's ever been not having to have the basketball as much as he's had it throughout his career. And that's the thing I've noticed the most from them late in games where they'll let Kyrie cook, and this is all basketball people ever wanted from Kyrie is just, hey, we understand who you are as a player, but let's just see it for a little while. I mean, this is somebody that hasn't had a playoff moment now for like eight years, so when it's stable and when it's like this and Gafford's been a nice plus,

I like PJ Washington more than you do. But I think there's just the minutes are being used on better players after those two guys. And there'll be, there'll be stretches with Dallas where I'll look at them and go, Hey, wait, Luca's in like he's actually in,

but he's okay. Off the ball. Good point. It was like, Oh, I thought that was Maxie Kleber. Oh, it's, it's Luca. My bad. I was squ's okay off the ball. Such a good point. It was like, oh, I thought that was Maxie Kleber. Oh, it's Luca. My bad.

I was squinting at the TV. Yeah, and they can do this wingman roulette thing with Jones and Exum and Josh Green. It's like kind of one of them will have it going every game and you never know which one. Like in the game a couple nights ago, Exum hit the biggest three of the game. But I think it's a really important point about Kyrie.

This feels the most 2016, 17 Cavs-ish of any point in his career in seven years, where he just seems super comfortable. When Luka has it going, you can kind of watch what Kyrie does if you just see him on the TV. He knows he's not getting the ball and he's fine with it. And he's just kind of waiting and he waits and he waits. And then he'll have his little run when he gets to take a couple of shots. But, um, I think with the Luca piece of it, if I'm the Clippers, I'm like, how did this happen? Like this, couldn't it now be the four or five for us. We're going to have this guy again. And if there's a legacy of the Kawhi Paul George thing, Luke is kind of the foil for this whole era for them, right?

He's super comfortable against them. He loves playing them. There's the Kyrie piece too. And I just would not want to see them in the five seed. That would be the most fun. I think that would be the most fun round one series, right? If it's Dallas Clippers. That's like, got to watch every minute of that series.

Yeah, and good luck figuring out the Clippers. I know they beat Charlotte today. Paul George's shot against Jonathan Isaac the other night in Orlando to close that well was like an all-timer. And George had been pretty bad up until the last few possessions of that game. Orlando to close that hole shit was like an all-timer and George had been pretty bad up until the last few possessions of that

game and then he hit one of the most impressive shots of the season I saw them against Jonathan Isaac it was like nobody had league pass on the quipper bench like hey

Paul just take that tall guy see if you can take him off the drift well I think I think he thought he was gonna get rid of him in the wash and then he still like he threw him a fake and isaac recovers

enough to then get out and contest and george just you know it's almost like a fighter where he knew the length like he knew where he had to be on the release um but the clippers defense since the all-star break it's so bad that i don't know that you can just chalk it up to hey these guys have been here before because collectively they haven't like it's like a that I don't know that you can just chalk it up to, hey, these guys have been here before. Because collectively, they haven't. It was a lot like the Nets thing where when they had everybody kind of working, it still didn't really feel like they had it all that often. I mean, it wasn't that many games. But you were like, okay, when these guys get together,

and you're like, I'd just like to see it for like two months. And for two months, we got that. And they were locked in. They were smoking everybody. And now when you look at their defense, it's 20. Let me see here. 27. I have in their last 20, their 27 defensive rating.

So that's down there with Chicago and four teams that are tanking. I mean, it's not just bad. It's terrible. Portland has a better defensive rating than them the last 20 games. Charlotte has a better defensive rating than them the last 20 games. Charlotte has a better defensive rate than them the last 20 games. Do you think with the Clippers, in the NFL every year, there's the team, like it was the Dolphins last year. The team, the first 10 weeks of the season, it's one thing. And then the more we have tape on them, the weather starts to turn. And then all of a sudden,

the moment's just gone. I can't decide if the moment's gone yet for the Clippers, but it just feels like whatever style they had that seemed, it's like, what's this? Oh my God, how do you stop this? And now there's enough tape that teams seem super comfortable against them, especially

offensively attacking them. I just can't believe, there's no way the defense should be that bad. There's no way the defense should be that bad. There's no way the defense should be that bad. There's a little bit of a malaise with them too again where you just

it's like a top five or six unhappiest team for like 20 minutes when you're watching league pass and just flipping around and it's like oh what's wrong with those guys? Then they'll snap out of it.

But the joy that those guys had in December or January it feels like has gone south a little it. But the joy that those guys had in December, January, it feels like has gone south a little bit. And the Paul George thing, this is a real thing. The Philly Inquirer wrote about it a few days ago about that they're targeting George and they have all this cap space. But I think there's a lot of people curious.

Like if Dallas, let's say Dallas beats the Clippers in round one, is Paul George going to be just pumped to be like, all right, let's run it back. I'll, I'll sign my last contract and let's do this again. Or would he want to, you know, sniff around somewhere else? Because he's the guy that gets the least credit out of all those guys. It's Kawhi, Harden, and then it's kind of like, oh yeah, and Paul George, you know, and meanwhile, he's's got a legitimate third team NBA candidate. But I'd be interested to see if he sticks around, if they get bounced like in five by Dallas. I just don't know why the Clippers wouldn't figure out a way just to get it done. Because whatever you think he is, you're saying that he would say,

I don't care about the money now, and you guys could have extended me, you didn't, so now I'm just going to leave because we lost the first round. Yeah, you extended Kawhi, you didn't do it with me, and you know what lost you extended kawaii you didn't do with me and you know what good luck everybody i had fun thanks for having me and that's it uh one other thing on the clippers though because i looked this up because i was like all right what else is happening the defensive number's so bad bill i just don't think it can be attributed to anything other than just not caring like it's it's so bad i don't know that it's just tape i don't know that it's the dolphins offense I don't know that it's the Dolphins' offense.

There you go. Wait a minute. If you guys do this or if it's a certain team, like, they're just, they're actually not a great matchup and that whole thing was fake and it doesn't really matter now. I'm not there yet with it, although I'd be scared to death if I'm a Clippers fan and it's Luka again in the first round considering the history and how great those series were.

But I was looking at the number of passes because you just know. You just know who those teams are going to be that don't pass the ball a ton. And sometimes when I think of the transition to regular season and the playoffs, that's something that scares me. Do you guys ever move the ball? Does anybody ever cut off the ball? Do you become easier to defend once everybody's more locked

into their effort level? So the Clippers are not surprisingly last in passes per game in the nba so you go okay they're last yeah they they throw the least amount of passes in a game just count total passes okay but here's the thing oklahoma city boston the lakers milwaukee houston and, Dallas are all in the bottom eight with Toronto who's terrible. It's the more heliocentric teams. It's more of we have the better players and we don't

want you getting rid of the basketball. Even though Denver's going to throw passes, Golden State's just different. Nobody's ever going to be Golden State. You can't really compare it to that. But when you look at that number the first time, I'm like, oh, I found something. And then you go, wait a minute, who else doesn't? You're like, all right, I don't think that's it.

Well, the last game we had tonight was San Antonio-Golden State. Golden State held on. San Antonio's starting lineup, Champinney, Osmond, Tyus Jones, Branham. That's who they're putting with one of the best prospects of the last 50 years of basketball. And yet San Antonio.

Vassell, Sohan, and Keldon were all out, even though they played the other team. I get it. I get it. And Wemby still had 32-9-5, three blocks, and kept the Spurs in that game. And Golden State held on. They have a two-game lead over Houston.

We seem safe now for a Lakers-Golden State 9-10. Who knows? I don't trust Golden State. They could go backwards in one second, and all of a sudden we'd be like, oh my God, why did I fall for that? But they have won four in a row. And it seems like that Orlando game,

when Draymond gets kicked out in four minutes, they're on the road. Steph's not having a good game, and it just, it was all lined up for their season to go sideways, and they fought and they kept it. And Klay's been a lot better the last month. Anyway, we're gonna take a break.

We're gonna talk about San Antonio under the context of what did we learn this season is next. Vandals putting ball on your court for the rest of the NBA season. Right now, new customers get $200 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet. That is $200 if your bet wins. I just did a tweet about this on Sunday.

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Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus. Spitz that expires seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gang's here, you're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer. Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes like beer, that's delicious. You don't want to load up

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So why not grab some Miller L Lights today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. All right, Russillo, I asked you to play a game with me called What Did We Learn This Season, where we just wrote down a bunch of big picture things about the season that we think will summarize the season, describe what happened this season, ultimately be what we remember, just about the regular season, because the playoffs are, you know, and we're not just talking the typical,

oh my God, Jokic, three MVPs, four years, like just things that jump out. And we mentioned Wemby at the start, at the end of the last break. If Wemby stays healthy, he's going to be the greatest center since Shaq. I think that's, I would lock that in.

And I think greatest center since Kareem is really in play for me. And I was looking at his stats and I was thinking of the context of he's 22, 12 and four this year, right? 22 points, 12 rebounds, four assists. And he's averaging three and a half blocks a game now. He should 47%. That's the worst his stats are ever going to be.

And if you go back and you look at some of the greatest players in the history of the league, LeBron as a rookie, 21 a game, 44%. He shot 29% from three. Shaq was 23 a game. Hakeem was 21 and 12. Durant was 20 points a game, 43% shooting, 29% from three. Luka was 21, eight and six, 43%. You look at guys like Dirk, Kobe, Curry, Giannis, KG, Jokic, you can't even talk about the rookie years. The point is there's going to be a 25% to 40% bump from rookie year stats to Apex stats, which means if you just look at his rookie season and then try to translate it, does this mean he's going to average 28, 17, and 6 with five blocks a game. I don't even know what the fucking ceiling is. I just know I've never seen anybody like this guy before. What he did in that Knicks game the other night, which I know you watched, I was stupefied watching that. It looked like when dad decides to play with the kids and it's Nerf hoop in the bedroom. And then the dad just starts dunking. And it's like, come on, dad, you're ruining the game. Wemby's like dad in the

Nerf game. It's like, come on, stop, man. You can't stay in that close to the room. It's not fair. Come on. That's what he's doing with adults, the best league we have. And I just think that for me, the ceiling is now off. I don't know what to expect, but if you told me he's going to be the best center since Kareem, I would be more prone to believe that than to not and it's still it's like tonight was so bad because of the lineup that we were talking about they're like hey do you guys figure out like a decent pass to him they tried to throw him one where he was like sprinting into a crowd in the paint transition and they threw it like at his waist and you were like what the fuck are you guys doing then there was another base another baseline cut where he just,

he actually looked at the guy and point, he was right at the rim and he just pointed straight up, being like, hey, just throw it in the air, like casual in the middle of the play. And then it was like, oh, that's right. I can just throw it up there to him. And then he has it. And then he gets-

Throw it to the 7'5 guy who can reach at the top of the backboard. The drop step turnaround and one sort of dunk on Jackson Davis is payback for when he got him. And I'm still, you know, it's three guys for defensive player of the year. It's Rudy, it's Herb Jones, or it's Wemba Nyama. And I know most no one else would vote for Wemba Nyama. I know we've already discussed it. It was the breakout video and the whole deal. I just don't think there's anybody else in the league that gets the guys to do U-turns the way he does and gobert does it plenty i think there's some with when benyama where you have guys who are like nope and then three dudes will be stuck on one side of the paint being like well what the hell like i thought you were going to keep going and you're supposed

to cut it i'm supposed to flare and it's like i don't know i don't want to go near right it's like it's like a two second reset we're like oh wait whoa okay right they gotta go over there they gotta bring it back out it's like you start the shot clock with like five less seconds when he's out there because the first thing you go to do if you're around him you're like wait i i don't even i don't want to get embarrassed i don't want to do this and it doesn't even really show up in a stat other than you know maybe a tougher shot a little bit later on so i'm with you i don't want to do this. And it doesn't even really show up in a stat other than, you know, maybe a tougher shot a little bit later on. So I'm with you. I don't really know what the ceiling would be. I don't like if you're, if you're just talking raw numbers and the growth that we have with the best players, it's a great way to look at it. Cause you look at those rookie years and

you're like, yeah, this might be the worst number. It'll depend on how much better the roster is around him. How many shots does he want to take yeah what do they suck again a real point guard do for him just somebody who can get him 10 easy points a game just on lobs and and just good entry passes yeah do they add something do we get surprised this summer where they add somebody who's been around and wants his 20 shots you know so does that impact like if they're terrible again but just somebody who can set him up a little bit better i don't know why he couldn't get 30 if they're going to give but just somebody who can set him up a little bit better, I don't know why he couldn't get 30 if they're going to give him 18 to 20 shots a game. Could he get 30 seems realistic, especially if he starts hitting more threes.

You're right. I probably went too low on the points. One thing that he does that I don't ever, there's been other guys that do this occasionally, but I don't remember seeing this quite this way is his offensive rebound tip backs or his alley-oops where he just kind of redirects alley-oops, but he's off balance ones where it doesn't even occur to you as it's happening that he's going to actually score. And then he scores like it'll be somebody shot. He's behind somebody who's boxing him out and he'll just reach over and like flick the offensive rebound in. And you're like, wait, did that? Hey, was that legal?

Was that? And it's like, yeah, that was legal. But honestly, the only thing I can remember like this is watching those Wilt tapes from the early 60s when Wilt was going against all those 6'9 white guys and the offensive goaltending was legal. And shots would just go around the rim and Wilt would just come in and tip them in.

But Wemby's doing it. It's not offensive goaltending, but he just puts, now that he's starting to figure out, oh, and I'm around the paint, good things usually happen. Now that that part's unlocked, his just arms create baskets constantly. And, you know, this stretch that he's having now, it feels legitimate to me. I also, we talked about this last week, but I love how competitive he is. You know, like that Knicks game,

he gave the speech after to the sideline person in front of it where they interviewed the player and he was just like, we couldn't have done this without you, San Antonio. Like he's just been coached perfectly. He went to like superstar camp in France for 10 years where they're just like, here's what you do in this's like here's what you do in this situation here's what you do in this situation he's just got it he's got every

piece of it and um i'm like i could not be more all in i am all 100 in i can't wait until like five or six years when he hasn't won a ring yet and guys are just shitting on him on tv that's when we'll know he's really arrived. Right. We need a backlash. I'm saying that because it is going to happen and it's like, just remember these moments. Remember these moments where nothing was really at stake and it was so much fun

and could he potentially add to the list of people that exceeded absurd expectations because the list is like Tiger and LeBron and you know sort of peyton manning yeah yeah but i mean he's just tough that his contemporary got seven of them and right you know he ended up with a second one obviously denver mostly yeah yeah i guess so but in the personality part like if you're talking about him going to star camp like obviously this has to be natural though this has to be really who he is and we had doug mcdermott on the pod this week and of course i was like look i'm gonna do five minutes

on wimby yama i think the most revealing part of that was like, hey, when guys go at him, he's into it. He's like pissed. Remember the Chet thing was the most fun part of the season almost for him when they were just doing the mano a mano thing. That was great. It's the best sign that that's the way he feels about himself because you can have all the talent, you can have all the size, you can be the most heralded prospect, but you never really know deep down. Some guys are like, this is a little harder than I thought, or this is annoying, or maybe I'll get my max deal, and maybe year five, I'll really start to change my approach. It seems like from day one, he's everything you could want, and that's why I'm just so happy about it for him, but it is inevitable. The roommate theory will strike again because it's

probably going to take a while well i don't maybe i don't know maybe the ceiling is different for him and that he's going to be so good that he's going to raise people up around him but it just it's funny how it happens with these stars at the same timeline come in everybody loves you like it's going to happen to ant like if ant doesn't get one in two years, it just sucks. Is he taking this seriously enough? Is he a little too goofy? Does he need to change the people around him? Everything we love about his personality now.

He's country. It's funny. His one-liners after the Dunkin' Utah, all the stuff that he was saying, and you're like, my God, who is this guy? And then we'll take all of those things and you will not changed at all. And you will not want enough for us. And we'll start wondering if you're different, even though you're not. He's in another Sandler movie. Is he taking this seriously enough? Yeah. Yeah. It's the, it's when Roy McIlroy got a girlfriend. I'll never forget

that TV show. He was like, well, he got a girlfriend. He's the only fucking golfer who's having sex? He's the only one? God, you'd think he would have held out longer. I say this carefully. Wemby's season has been so good that there's now only two paths for how the rest of his career goes.

Either he becomes at least what Shaq was and maybe Kareem or knock on wood, I hope this doesn't happen, but, you know, like a Ralph Sampson direction

where he gets hurt or Bill Walton, like that direction and he becomes this amazing what if or like, oh my God, if Wemby hadn't gotten hurt, dot, like that direction. And he becomes this amazing what if, or like, oh my God, if Wemby hadn't gotten hurt, dot, dot, dot. And obviously we talked about last week, how light on his feet he was. I actually think, I think athletically and coordination. And I just, if he gets hurt, I don't think it would be any less realistic than anyone else getting hurt.

When I watch him, it doesn't strike me as some of these other centers. We talked about Yao and Odin and you just watch the way those guys moved up and down the corner like, oh, can't imagine watching this for 15 years. Wemby's light on his feet, so I think that's positive, but the ceiling has been fucking removed. What do you have for your first, what did we learn this season? I've got a few. a few i thought we could alternate all right why don't you go that was a good one though when b we had to hit the artist um i've got a few why don't you go first okay 304 million for jalen Brown. Fucking worth it. You know what? That guy's been awesome. I'm so proud of that guy. You could go one of two ways when you get a contract like that. That guy has made himself better. He's been the best player

in the team for the last six weeks. He guarded Dame Lillard and Zion Williamson within the span of eight days and took the challenge and was like, I want to fucking do this and went hard. He makes big shots. He's gotten better. He's worked on his left hand. There's an alpha side to him now that I just didn't think existed. And I think he's the biggest reason if you're just looking on variables and things you didn't expect. I knew Porzingis had a chance to be really good. I knew Drew Holiday was going to be good. I knew this team was talented, but he went up a level. And for me, he's an absolute all NBA guy now. And I think it's going to be unfair if we're using stats to compare these dudes because Tatum could have better stats and Jalen Brown could have better stats if those guys cared about stats. They do not care about stats this season.

They're doing all the little shit to try to help the team win. And it's stuff like yesterday when he's like, let me guard Zion. I'm going to take him. And that was the biggest reason they won that game. I just think he's been awesome.

And it's like, he took so much shit for that contract and everybody should apologize. The defense against New Orleans as that game developed was off the charts. Did you know that he had it in him? To do that?

Well, it's funny because there was one moment in the game where he was standing directly next to Tatum and it was just one of those reminders like how guys are size-wise. You're like,

man, Tatum is significantly bigger than Jalen Brown. And you're like, but Jalen is taking on, whether it was the Dame assignment, the Zion stuff. I like how you rounded up his left hand because I'm not there with you yet. Well, it's not an albatross.

It's still not awesome. And by the way, him dribbling in traffic, I'm still nervous every time. I'm not saying he's perfect. Were you feeling this way after they blew the 30-point lead to Atlanta and the first back-to-back loss to Atlanta when they decided to just stop? Did they run out of passes in that game

in the fourth quarter? They were like, hey, guys, challenges, we're out of passes, so don't pass it to anybody four minutes to go. I don't know what to say about the last two minutes of some of these Celtic games. You know what? Here's what I'm hoping, Rossella. So, first half of that New Orleans-Boston game was awesome. It was really good. It was an up and down. Both teams really wanted it. I thought Zion was great, like just really playing hard. And the Celtics didn't get a couple calls near the end of the first half and came out in the second half pissed off and played the best quarter they played in a long time. But one of the things I loved was

they just went through Porzingis and they were like, oh, you know what we should do is go through our seven foot three guy that they don't really have a matchup for. And this is my point about crunch time. When they play through Porzingis, the other team panics. And I don't know why they haven't figured that out yet. Maybe they're saving it for the playoffs, but when they play through him, either on the foul line or in the low block, the other team panics and they'll send a second guy. And now you have space. And now you have open shooters.

When they just have Jalen or Tatum dribbling 25 feet from the basket and everyone else is standing around, it's easy to stop. The other team's rooting for you to do that. And to me, Porzingis is the crunch time weapon in this team that they just don't use. And last night they used it, or yesterday.

I generally agree with you. It's one of those things whenever we talk about some of these bigger decisions and you sit in a room and you go, Hey, do we want to make Jalen Brown the highest paid player in the history of the sport? Then you should sit there and be able to say no, but it's just not the way that it works with NBA contracts. We don't have a choice. Yeah. Okay. So what are you going to do? You're just going to let him walk to prove a point and you're going to hold out. And so then what, when you look at the salary structure, what you owe everybody else. So I'm, I'm generally with you. I just had to push

back on the left-hand thing a little bit. I'm going to stay on that theme though, because this is good. This is something I've been thinking about. If I were a feature writer, I would do this piece. I would talk to GMs from multiple sports and I would talk about this. Um, and maybe it had to do with, I don't know, a couple of months ago, I went to go play hoops and a dad and his son kicked us off because they said they had drill work to do. And I said, why don't you just have your son play with us? And he was like, what are you nuts playing a game to learn basketball. So I don't want to playing a game to learn basketball? So I don't want to make this about.

To learn how to interact with other players in a chemistry fashion? Nah. So I have a working theory. I'm pretty sure it's right. But, you know, there's been a multiple, multiple, there have been multiple factors on why we've seen some of the offensive explosion. And of course, the officiating correction that we've seen a month or so. But there's never an easier score on top of we've never had better scores. We've never had more talented players. It's just not debatable.

It's unbelievable. too much of the off-season work goes into individual performance where you're working on these drills solely to try to have as many finishing moves, as many moves into your shot as you possibly can have. Because you'll see these isolated moves in game stage. You're like, I can't even believe he thought that was a good idea and it went in. And I'm talking across the league. Like SGA shot that beat the Knicks. Like that was a

brutal shot. Now, granted he had McBride on him. So it was a little easy to shoot over the top. McBride was the original defensive assignment. So it wasn't kind of some switch with four seconds left. So, you know, that's, that's a different debate for New York going in. No, not from that angle and the way he turned around on it. But every night, there's so many of those shots. You're like, this league is stacked. But I think it's hurting

execution at times. And I've asked him... You almost need a name for this theory. It's like the individual skill... Personal trainer theory. Albatross. Personal trainer albatross personal trainer albatross theory so the stuff that you're working on and then you come to the season i wasn't gonna go there but but but it but it takes away from like okay but do you do you know what are you recognizing the help tendencies are you taking a shot?

Like I was at a Clippers-Lakers game, the big comeback with LeBron. There was a two-for-one where it was Westbrook, I think, Harden to end the quarter. It was one of the worst two-for-ones. Like Westbrook tried it, then Harden tried it, or the other way around. No, that wouldn't have worked. No, excuse me.

Westbrook wasn't playing. It was D'Angelo Russell, one of my other favorites, and then Harden tried his. And they were just two absolute dogshit shots. And you're like, cool, guys. You both tried to out two for one each other. And so I wonder if there are coaches or general managers that would say, and I've talked to a few people that think I'm on to something with it or they've talked about it. And then I asked a hockey guy.

I asked a guy who lives out here, works for an NHL front office. And I said, look, this is something I'm noticing in basketball, but I don't know enough about hockey. I'll never know anything about hockey to feel like I'm comfortable talking about it. But when I'll see videos of guys and their stick skills and some of the shit they're doing, I'm like, do you have the best individual skills you've ever had in your sport? But guys kind of just don't know what the fuck to do and he was like it's all we talk about oh wow yeah Hanlonitis I just I just I just wonder if if guys are working on like stuff that happens in a game and learning about, you know, you can make this a little easier on yourself despite your toolbox of absurd moves that gets you free for a make. Do you think what you're talking about is actually a microcosm of real life? Whoa. People working on their own stuff

and not spending enough time with other people? You just Derek Thompson'd me. Yeah, I went full plain English on your ass. I really like that theory. It's excellent. I'm going to give you my next one. A little less big picture, but still big picture-y.

Point cards still matter. It's one of the things I learned this season. That's a good segue. New Orleans, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio. You know what's nice is to have a guy who could just bring the ball up, set the offense, throw a good entry pass, tell guys what to do, be kind of a leader. Be like, hey man, I know you missed your last four, but I'm coming to you. I'm going to slash and kick be ready I'm going to get that to you just basic stuff

that's worked in basketball for the last century basically I still care about it I still think the position matters and even if you look at Minnesota with Conley

who's feels like he's 100 years old at this point he's still important for that team he's that calming influence

and just like you know it influence. I watch Phoenix and I'm just like, it'd be so nice if they just had any decent point guard for 25 minutes a game to just be like, hey, Devin Booker, I got you. You don't have to worry about dribbling the ball up anymore or being pressured. Just go over there, stay in the corner, come off two screens, I'm going to find you, hit a couple shots. We don't have enough point guards is really the bigger problem, but we had way worse situations. I remember in 2004, I used

to write about how Jason Kidd should be the automatic QB for both All-Star sides when they had the All-Star game. He just played point guard for both sides. So we've been in worse spots of this, but I still feel like point guard for both sides. So we've been in worse spots with this, but I still feel like point guard's better. Do you know what's really hard to work on

when you're doing individual drills? Entry passes. And setting up other guys? The number of players that can throw good entry passes, like to fake the pass one way and then throw it to the guy in a bounce, like to his outside hip to fake the pass one way and then throw it to the guy in a bounce like to his outside hip away from the defender um it's also just a lack of post play too like these guys will

get into the post and they're so rarely getting touches down there they don't know how to shield the defender or keep the arms away or have one arm back and the other arm be the target away so yeah sometimes it's not even the lack of entry pass stuff i'm just psyched that we're not even an hour in and we're digging really deep into one of my favorite things that i'm passionate about like entry passes the guy did you see purdue did you see purdue today yeah some really sweet ones where they're like they better figure it out throwing ed's left hand so he can spin right away as he gets the pass like Like basic shit that we grew up with. I felt like at my dying end of pickup, I was still great at throwing entry passes.

Like that was it. It was like when I was like Terminator 2, dying in the fire pit, holding my hand up, I could still throw an entry pass. That's why I've used to feel so bad for MB because I'm like, this guy's going to go like the first five years of his career and no one can throw him an entry pass.

Ben Simmons couldn't do it. It's not just like throwing it to the guy. It's like, this guy's going to go like the first five years of his career and no one can throw him an entry pass. Ben Simmons couldn't do it. It's not just like throwing it to the guy. It's like, are you throwing it to him so he can catch the ball and move at the same time? Are you spinning into the... That's one of the things with Jokic. Jokic had one of the great random games he's had in a couple years today, especially in the third quarter. He's not just getting assists. He's throwing every pass he's throwing.

It's perfect for where the guy's about to shoot a three. It's an alley-oop right next to the rim. He's like basically cutting somebody's food and feeding them with it. And those are his passes. And I don't know. I just miss, I miss great entry passes. Denver, I wanted to see that from Denver today, by the way,

because I know Cleveland on paper is still somebody you got to kind of take seriously. And they got Mitchell back today, but they've really struggled since the all-star break. Like across the board, there's not a lot there to get you really excited about, you know, but I thought Denver's offense was so bad against Minnesota. And it was a reminder. It's like, man, Murray not being there. Like Reggie Jackson's probably the only on-ball creator that they have. And you could see Jokic isn't comfortable being like, do you guys really want me to take 30 shots tonight?

And then he was actually having some bad nights. I thought Denver came out being like, enough of this shit today. I know it's Cleveland, but does it really mean anything? No, but it's a hell of a lot better seeing that than seeing their offense get as bogged down as it looked a couple games without Murray, which is just a reminder of how important Murray is, especially in the rare minutes he's out there without Jokic.

It was an MVP game from Jokic. He was like, I don't really like the way we've been playing lately, so I'm just going to be completely awesome for two and a half hours. Let's take a break, and then we'll keep going with this. Mobley was good. No, he was. He was good today. No, I was like talking dirt in the no hitter.

I didn't want to say anything. He's been hitting. He hit a big three in crunch time the other night. There's been some moments where I'm like, because I haven't sold one cent of my stock. I just don't think he's going to be nearly the guy ceiling wise that we hoped for the job, but you know what? This is actually good because I have a few more of these. Are we still doing these? Yeah. We're taking a break, coming back and doing more.

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All right, come back. What's your next one? Which direction do I go here? Let's just stay on the mobley thing um because i think the lesson with some of these younger players is you'd rather be wrong just flat out be wrong than quit on the player and this jalen green resurgence i had the same one is terrific um i think the stuff from earlier in the year you're like wait a minute what is this guy and you know what it's a shitty situation. We've covered the Pistons.

At least they're a bad team with players that I kind of like, which is the same way I thought of Houston before they went on this run. Where I was like, okay, this team isn't any good, but at least there's a couple things. You're like, what if this breaks the right way? Or Jalen Suggs, another really good example. Out of the gate, you're like, there's just not enough offense. This is who Gonzaga actually thought they got. They're like, they didn't think he could shoot it that well and this is actually really who he is and how do you play this undersized guard who can't even shoot and all these different things

um we get really excited about the top picks we want them to be awesome right away and look i know everybody's killing our guy scoot after the minus 58 but i'll say this about a minus 58. You can't do it by yourself. What's tough is he's also at a minus 57. Yeah. Nope. Not great. Not awesome. Not great. Well, I wrote down the same thing, Rosillo. I wrote, Jalen Green reminds us yet again it's terrifying to give up on

elite raw talent. And that's it. His OKC game, it wasn't even the numbers of the makes or the way he played like decisions every single time. It was awesome. The right decisions in that Oklahoma City win. I was like, I didn't even know that. I was like, I don't even.

There was a point where I was like, he's never going to be like that. He's never going to figure this out. If you just showed us that game two months ago, we wouldn't have believed it was him, right? You'd have been like, what? Did he get replaced? I wrote down five guys for this. Mobley, Garland, Cade, Ivy,

and Lamello. And Lamello is the one I would be the fastest to give up on. Because I don't know if the light bulb is going to click for him. I just want to see him play at this point. Yeah, well, every year it's something. All right, I'm going to go.

Cleveland has to trade Mitchell this summer. And it's like in all caps and bold where the team's, it's not perfect. It feels like they've gotten worse in March. They were embarrassed today against Denver. I just don't like what I'm watching. And he had a chance. I'm sure you saw over the weekend, there was a story where he could,

the word noncommittal could not be strong enough about their asking about a Cleveland extension because the owner had said something about, we feel really good about signing Donovan. And he wouldn't even be like, yeah, it'd be nice to stay here. Like he was just like, I'm not talking about that. And he's clearly out and they're just going to have to trade him this summer.

And by the way, he'll be the best trade guy on the market. But I think to me, what are we, is we're heading into April. There might be a month left of Mitchell and the Cavs. We might get to the end of the month and that'll be it. We'll never see him in that uniform again. But I just think he's out. All right.

Don't you think that's a little quick though? I mean, the guy was incredible in February. They went on that stretch where it was what? 17 and one and Mobley and Garland only played seven games each out of that stretch so he's been back what four games I mean I know today was ugly but he missed the first would you be afraid to play them in a playoff series because I wouldn't I just don't know who they are they don't know who they are they knew who they were when it was Mitchell and Jared Allen and shooters afraid is a bit like I like Orlando I'm not afraid of playing that offense in the fourth quarter

right Cerruti and I talked about that before you came on it's it's too ugly why can't Fran shoot anymore the fuck happened I don't know what's going on there it's like a 25 three-point shooter now anyway uh since the all-star break orlando is the number one defense in the nba okay they're the number five rebounding team they're actually 19th on offense which for them was surprisingly higher than i thought but clutch they're the 30th ranked offense out of there are minus 11 in net rating in clutch time it feels like it when you watch it all right let me let me put fake FanDuel odds on this. I'll give you even odds.

Mitchell is in a Cleveland uniform in October. No, I'm not. You betting yes or no? I bet no, because you can't lose this asset for nothing. But what if Mitchell said, hey, I'm in, and that meant you had to trade Garland? What would you do? There's some teams that I feel like would go $0.140 in the dollar for Garland.

So maybe that's the move. What if you go to Mitchell and be like, hey, we used to – because, look, are you going to go to the Knicks now? Like everybody thought, well, that doesn't even make any sense anymore. And I still wonder what the Knicks are going to do with the OG price, even though, like, do you feel like they had to already figure that price out the same way the Pacers had to figure out, get some assurances on Siakam?

Miami is always lingering with this stuff. Yeah, Mitch, I'm not, are you talking about OG? I'm talking about Mitchell. Okay, alright. I'm just saying, like, I'm just thinking about if he's leaving Cleveland, where's he going? Which is a great point. I don't think he goes to the Knicks

at this point because I think they're a long game now. Brunson is so good. Their long game now is let's get Mikael Bridges and let's keep filling around the fringes and just keep making this team awesome and wait for...

Could Giannis be available in two years? Shit like that. I love the two-score thing. Mitchell and Brunson would probably just be too much. I don't... It doesn't make doesn't make sense okay so it doesn't fit with what they're so to me it's miami it's brooklyn if you just want to be in new york same page then okay do you agree with me that mitchell because we've just seen and i like garland a lot that mitchell's like peak version of him especially with some of the playoff stuff that we have seen that you're like,

okay, well, if Mitchell's in, we commit to Mitchell longterm. And then we figure out how to piece that stuff around in a Garland trade. And I'm with you. This is our weakness though, with Garland,

because I think we both, both of us like him maybe more than the asset itself. I love Garland. I still feel, I want to see him with his own team at some point. That's the San Antonio

move in my mind. That's like the San Antonio overpay. Where it's like, let's just start with one being Garland. So, but that would involve

Mitchell wanting to stay in Cleveland. All right, we went too long. What do you got? I'll do, I'll do a quicker one here. The Latvian laser davis burtons yeah um did some shooting drills with his latvian coach i learned about this in

the broadcast today where um the latvian coach thought his American shooting drills were too easy so they had him do the shooting drill with gloves on gardening gloves and he couldn't stop until he made 10 in a row with gloves on so I just wanted to add that to perhaps the list the dumbest fucking

training methods ever what an amazing tidbit training methods ever. What an amazing tidbit. Gardner gloves for a three-point shooter. Yeah, there was all sorts of stuff. An eye patch, I believe, in there. They were giving us everything. That Charlotte broadcast.

I love the Charlotte broadcast. You never know what you're going to get. They keep the energy high all the time. But he had to make 10 in a row with gardening gloves on. Steve Lapis said with six minutes to go in the Purdue game that Eadie and Connect on Tennessee, that these were two of the greatest performances

in the history of this tournament. Steve Lapis said this with six minutes left. The game, I don't even think both of them had more than 30 points yet. And the play-by-play guy was like, well, maybe we're getting there. It was like one of those. I think they were thinking about cutting his mic off. There was an NBA broadcast, I'm not going to say which one, where the guy had been in for three and a half minutes. and I'll admit he wasn't exactly lighting it up.

He wasn't super noticeable, but he was so unnoticeable to this broadcast that they said he had just checked in. He'd been playing for three and a half minutes. That doesn't happen. Ooh. Wasn't John Tate Porter. No.

Okay. No, I don't know what he'll be checking in. I have, I'll do three quick ones. New owner syndrome undefeated. I just think HBO, it can't be forgotten. This latest, going all in on Bradley Beal, who's a nice player, but you're paying 50 billion a year for somebody who's 17 a game and gets hurt every few weeks. You can build a real contender around Zion.

I think we learned that this season, for real. I don't know if he can stay healthy, but this was the first time watching this team where I'm like, yeah, I see it. I see it on both ends, because I think his defense has been way better. The rebounding, I'll never be happy with, but from a two-way standpoint, Zion and shape, I feel like that's the foundation of a team

that is going to be a bitch in the playoffs if you can stay in shape. I know that's in your wheelhouse. And then just, we've talked about this before, but Ant with just having the ceiling now as being the best under 30 USA guy is something we learned this season, but we don't need to talk about that. What do you have for your next one phoenix i think i'm off totally that loss on

monday against san antonio they were so bad on defense and they get denver for the second time in i don't know three weeks and then they play out okC on Friday, and I was kind of looking forward to that because I'm just like holding out hope, being like, are you guys going to put together some kind of stretch here? And it felt like there was that one little stretch there in January where they won a bunch of games, but it may have been the schedule

or Dallas wasn't fully formed yet. But that OKC game, they're just so frustrating. I don't know why they keep making the mistakes they make. They close out. If there's one versus two on the other side, they close out to the worst three-point shooter. Bol Bol gets eaten up on a screen. He's fucking done. Like, he's no interest in getting back into the play.

So I think that's why, despite some of the cool plays that end up on Instagram with him, you're just like, all right. And then it gets really frustrating because then you'll have Beal get stuck and he turns around and throws it to nobody. Durant will have a couple plays defensively where he's a little checked out. I mean, Booker's usually always my go-to with them. But against San Antonio, there was a play where he just let Sohan. Sohan went one on three on the right side,

and not one guy even shifted over to him. The number of times Phoenix leads the league in after the other team scores, it's two guys underneath the basket looking at each other and being like, what the hell happened there? And as great as Grayson Allen has been, it's, it's Grayson Allen season for any top perimeter ball handler. Who's just like, all right, come on out here and, you know, come get it because I'm going to go at you the entire time.

And when you looked at Phoenix's remaining schedule, it was off the charts harder than everybody else. Denver, Oklahoma City, they split those, and they finished with New Orleans, Cleveland, Minnesota, New Orleans, Clippers, Clippers, Sacramento, Minnesota. I mean, I don't know what the final seed is going to be, but I think I always held out hope, Bill, that I was going to talk myself into like a matchup where I go,

okay, hey, they all played together for a month. It's been better three weeks ago. I, I, but I was really trying to talk myself into it. And it's not there. I'm glad you brought up Grayson Allen because that was one of the things I learned this year. He's not the best three point shooter in the league. And I don't even think it's a percentage thing. I think he's inherited. He's not a better shooter than Steph. Come on. Listen, he's at 47% for three. Well, Steph does that. You know what I mean? I'm talking about that wing three-point.

Clay was the best guy in the league for a while. Kyle Korver was in there and J.J. Redick. Whatever that title is. You're talking about the non-create-your-own-three-pointer thing. Yeah, I'm talking about that guy. I remember one time Van Pelt and I got an argument about Curry and Korver. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I see what you mean. I didn't phrase it. I know what a percentage can say, but... So he's at 47%. He's at 187 threes, so he's going to be over 200 by the end of the year. Only four guys in the history of the league, 200 threes, 47% for the season.

Kyle Korver, J.J. Redick, Joe Harris, and Glenn Rice in 1997. Steph did 250 with 45% twice. This year, at least when I did this yesterday, maybe it flipped for a second, but only nine guys are 43% and up for three-point shooting this season. For some reason,

we have more better three point shooters, but less like awesome three point shooters. And Grayson Allen is just like, I just would not have it, but he was a throw in for that bucks trade, right? It's like, oh,

and they got Grayson Allen. It's like, oh, great. You can't even play him in a playoff series. And now he's basically inherited this Kyle Korver, Redick, Joe Harris, whatever the legacy of that championship

belt is. And I did not have him on my bingo card, Rosillo, is my point. Well, in theory, his life should be easier. The same way anyone who joins the best version of the Splash Brothers, right? The same thing with Luka. Your job should be easier offensively because we have this other thing

that's going to take all the attention away from you. And you would think other players would figure that kind of stuff out. But you have that in Milwaukee. Yeah, but it's frustrating. That's my point, though. Like, as frustrated as I've been with Phoenix, like, it should be better,

but now it's making it sound like I'm not agreeing with you because I do agree with you, and you do give him credit because now this guy's going to play in the league a really long time. Like, he's going to get a big number at some point where you're like, okay, because he's not just could be right now. Some of these guys would just sit in the corner and it's like the only shot they have. And they have this absurd percentage. And then people talk them up as shooters. Grayson can get moved off of his spot,

reset, and then shoot because he did handle the ball enough in college. Like there was more there, there was more athleticism. There was a way, youism. It was like one of the things even with J.J. Redick. I remember when the light bulb went off for me, I'm like, anybody that's just looking at this guy is, all right, you're just going to sit in the corner. We're going to space you out. His free throw rate attempts went way up at Duke. You're like, no, this guy's, there's more in his bag. But in the NBA, five guys aren't allowed to do that, even if you're good at it but I think the thing that makes him better than just the stick in the corner muscle memory never deviate from this shot if somebody closes out then you know the guy's gonna get stuck and

he can't reset Grayson can do all those things so we agree what's your next one if you tank in toronto no one cares now i'm not anti they've had some great ones there's what are they 1 and 14 in their last 15 or there's something like that yeah i don't know what fan duels numbers are every day on those but like every time you kind of look at it and be like can we not have to give out a for can we just say that against the Raptors five times this week? But at this point, it's too late. Everybody's caught on. So in March, they have played Jemias Ramsey, who I actually like to tech.

Javon Freeman-Liberty, huge fan of Independence Day. Kobe Simmons. Well, Jante's probably not going to play too many more games. No relation. DJ Carton and Mohamed Ougue, whose brother is also in the league too. I think Toronto is really...

The Ougue brothers. They're making you work when you turn on a Raptors game because you'll be like, wait, who the fuck is this guy again? And not that anybody should be giving the Raptors a hard time because there's also their pick is top six protected. So they need to be in the top six.

They are doing the right thing, but it's just off the radar completely. And tanking in general because of the play in and certainly because of this year's draft class on top of everything else. Like nobody's I just always felt like the people screaming about how bad tanking was, even though I agreed with them philosophically, it was like, okay, what do you want these guys to do? Like win games that don't matter down the stretch?

So congrats to Toronto. It's just been a little tougher to keep up with every roster move. So me and Sal and House and Hench made four bets during the All-Star break. We do conglomerate bets sometimes for fun. One of them was Toronto. The over-under for them on FanDuel was like 29 and a half for wins at that all-star break, or 28 and a half. It was high 20s. And I was like,

we're going fucking under. Toronto wants to keep their pick under. One of the other ones we did was Detroit, who has to get to 14 wins for us. And they're at 13. And that's been worth the price of admission because they lose games on, bam, 27 footers. And so Hench just goes nuts on all of those. And then we did Dallas and Milwaukee, both to win their divisions as a parlay at four to one.

So those are the three. But it's just been fun because Toronto, by the first week of March, we're like, I got locked that one in. It's a wrap. They don't care. I definitely think if you're on it,

you can, well, you know. Well, that's why you're going to move to Vegas. You're going to do one year in Vegas where you just lose your mind. I had so much fun going and just wait. I know that look because I've seen it and I've had it.

You had a twinkle in your eye that one time we made it to Vegas. You're just like, man, I could just really live here and just bet games and have a good time. It would have to be a promotional thing. It would have to be something where there's a reason. He sent you to Vegas for a month. Yeah, and you go, I'm going to bet every game on the slate in Vegas. I've even thought about it, but the no ocean thing, I'm not a Vegas guy. All right, I already know that.

But I also like the ocean. To be able to just wake up and then look at the board. And then I started talking to the guys at the ARIA book, and I'd be like, hey, what are you, what's going on? Who's doing what? And then I was there enough that I'd get drinks with a couple of different guys, and then they would just be telling me about the world. And that's, I think, especially when you have to give out picks and how frustrated you get when you don't get things right. But back to the original point, I think if you're on it, like people are on it,

when you look at those totals for the second half after the All-Star break, to your point, Toronto, having to find a way to protect that pick. Hey, which regular season team doesn't give a shit?

Punts on the rest of this. Okay, why are they projected to go seven, eight games over 500 when they haven't done that in the first half? So that's something I think I'll put more work into next year when we have to give out those picks. I left one other bet we did, which was classic, was we did the Minnesota over, which was 56 and a half. And like a day later, Towns got hurt or two days later, whatever it was. It was like Towns got hurt within a week of when we made that bet. Last one for me.

And we talked about OKC earlier, but I do wonder, is this Golden State for the 2020s potentially? Because we're 10 years from Golden State in 2014 when there were pieces of what we ended up. All of a sudden in a year, they won the title. But in 2014, that was the Mark Jackson dresses in black for game seven against Clippers.

But we were like, Clay and Curry, this is potentially special. Like there's something here. We didn't think that we're in the title a year later. We didn't know they were in four titles over the next eight years, but we knew, we knew something was going on.

And I wonder with OKC, like you think like what's the 2020s version of small ball? But we knew something was going on. And I wonder with OKC, you think, what's the 2020s version of small ball? And it's pretty similar to what the Warriors had, where you have the one awesome guard, in this case, SGA. You have the one great sidekick, Jalen Williams, who we talked about earlier in the podcast.

And then you have to have this one super unique big. So in the mid-2010s, they had Draymond, who it took us a while to realize like, oh, could Draymond just be their starting center? And then all of a sudden happened. And I think it's Chet for OKC. So they have the same foundation. They also have, you know,

Golden State had the Black Swan event of KD in 2016. These guys have all of these picks that they, you know that they're going to have to cash in at some point. But I guess the recipe is some luck, some skill with who you picked, and a really savvy plan. And in this case, the luck was the SGA, getting SGA in that Paul George trade and trading for a guy who ends up being one of the five best guys in the league is just really unusual. It does not happen very often. On top of all the picks they got. So anyway, I think they're on the same kind of trajectory Golden State was. I don't know if that's going to mean one title, three titles, four titles, zero titles.

But they're hitting a lot of the same checkpoints. I wonder if they would package Giddy. I think you'd have to think about it. Because he kind of, when we talked earlier about teams that how important the point guard position is and somebody who can just take control of the team and run it and throw good entry passes

and set guys up, he can do that. He doesn't really get to use those skills in the same way in this OKC team. Yeah, because the last couple of weeks have been just a reminder and how big he is too and on some of those drives. But obviously there'd be some challenges.

You wonder if the other team would be leery of it even though he was cleared after the investigation. But I don't know what's going to happen as far as if he were available. team would be leery of it, even though he was cleared after the investigation. But, you know, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen as far as if you were available. I'm sure 29 teams wouldn't say, Hey, not interested. So they're getting calls. Do you have any more? Do you want to take a break? Um, what's your, what's your one you wanted to do and you held off on and decided, no, I'm not going to throw that one out there. I one i'll throw it out but i'm only gonna do it if you do it uh do you know who leads the league in fourth quarter scoring is it the rosen no it's a really good guess it is lebron james

with 40 today i thought it was worth mentioning him. Wow. With a 40 piece. And... That's... You know, I'm glad you brought him up because he's probably going to make it

all NBA team and he had nine three-pointers today and he's, you know, still chugging along, man. You're 21. Yeah. He's one.

Fox is two. Giannis... I mean, look, it's a lot of the good guys. You'd expect the ball to be in their hands. Yeah. At the end,

the Rosen's eighth, he's only an eighth and a point off. So, uh, that was a really good guess. Uh, I'm trying to find Jalen Williams is actually 14th and I think he's ahead of, yeah,

he's ahead of SGA. So, um, but if I look at the points, I bet you the differential isn't all that much. Jalen's at seven points. Yeah. SGA. Jesus. But if I look at the points, I bet you the differential isn't all that much. Jalen's at seven points. Yeah. SGA is 6.3.

Larry Markin in plucky Utah jazz. Talk about tanking. They were like, we got to get rid of some of these guys that are helping us. Well, glad to see the Kings get a win there because this back-to-back Dallas losses were frustrating.

You could even call the first one a little schedule-y, but I think it's just a wake-up call of where Dallas is now in the West. The Kings are a cross-off to me if Monk's going to be out for four to six weeks. That's it. That's terrible news. That's the team you want to play now

if they're in there. I'm going to mumble my last one under my breath and then we'll go to a break. Key culture might not work quite as well when the league is really super loaded. Wow. Just saying it.

Dangerous territory for these two guys. Dangerous territory. But I was way more anti them than you were last year. So I should be the one saying it. It's kind of tough to press that on-off button whenever you want when there's like 18 good teams in the league.

I wonder how they're going to close these last two weeks. That's the team. Them and Cleveland are the two teams I just have no feel for. I don't understand either team at all. All right, we're taking a break. At Pennzoil, we have one job.

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with Monopoly Double Play at McDonald's. While supplies last, 1 in 5 chances to win game piece prizes at outset. Chances to win double play prizes based on time of code entry and draw prizes based on number of entries in each draw. See rules in app. Alright, coming back. We're almost at the 80-minute mark. We have not talked about the Minnesota sale yet,

which was the most fun kind of underground NBA. I know it's a public story, but also like a great getting texts from people and just like what everybody is talking about. And some of it's out there. Some of it isn't. I talked about it a tiny bit on Thursday's pod. This seems like it's headed for court. It's one of the weirdest situations we've had in a while where the A-Rod, Lori's side's like, hey, we had the money. I don't know what's going on. And Taylor's like, they didn't make their deadlines. I'm moving on. They're just

minority owners. And it's clearly headed for court. I want to talk about Glenn Taylor in a second, but you and I haven't talked about this. What's your take just from a weirdo NBA storyline standpoint? Well, you're much better on this. I think you're one of the best when it comes to this ownership stuff. So I don't know what kind of circles you run in. So I'm going to get out of the way here. Thank you. But we knew that there was two points in the timeline that kind of circles you run in. So I'm going to get out of the way here. But, but we knew that like, there was two points in the timeline that kind of didn't make any sense. Right.

They were like, wait, are they not going to be able to make the payment? And it was like, oh no, they were maybe able to make the payment. And then there was like, A-Rod doesn't have his side and Lori has to get his.

So like that was twice with this. We were like, what's going on? And now we're at this point where Taylor's like, yeah, whatever deadlines or deadlines and you're out. And is it because he's mad that they didn't stick to their word or however they were vetted financially?

Like, I don't know how this stuff works. When you want to buy a nice house, usually the bank's going to want to figure out if you have any money. When you're buying an NBA franchise, I imagine there's some version of betting or is it money that's at such a high level that there's just kind of an understanding that if you're in that world, I can't imagine nobody's actually like not worried about what's going on or how flush you are liquid with, with this kind of transaction. But is it because they didn't follow the dates or is it because the team's worth way more now and they're good in comparison to what Taylor had as the sticker price.

Yeah. It's like if you're selling your house over the course of three years for half as much as it's worth three years later and the other people allegedly are missing deadlines and don't have that and they're still scrambling to pay and all that stuff. You can understand why he backed out. But I mean, they can say what they want, but they were trying to find $300 million until the bitter end. They were talking to big financial firms. They were talking to people like Eric Schmidt,

the Google guy. They needed $300 million. And I think I'm going to be interested to see how the league handles it because you have this ownership group buying a team that forget about having the money to run the team once they own it and all of that costs, but they don't even have the money, it seems like, to pay for the team in the first place. So my guess is the NBA is probably okay with this

maybe playing out for Taylor's side. It's certainly the weirdest. I've never seen somebody try to buy an NBA team on layaway before. I mean, this is like a really successful league. People want these franchises. It's weird that he chose them. It's weird that he picked this strategy

of, oh yeah, just pay for it over the time. Like he was selling them like a Rolex at a pawn shop or something. I just, I'm just so confused by it. It's the kind of thing that would happen in like 1983.

Well, it happened in 1996 with the Islanders, right? Which is the John Spano story. That was just awesome. We ended up doing a 30 for 30 on that one. That guy was, that guy was acting like me in college, ducking a landlord,

except he was buying the Islanders and they'd be like, no, I faxed it over. No, it's good. Oh shoot. It's Friday. Yeah.

Check back on Monday. It should be in the internet account. There's a little lag. I don't, well, here's what I would, I would ask on the financing part. Okay, so say you all agree to a terms here,

and then it's like, actually, we don't have, like maybe there's other investments. Like sometimes you're going to buy a house, and they have you send over all your financials, and you may have a position with a stock, because this happened to me once, and then the stock gets wiped out, and then you're like, oh, shit. You know, like there's nothing funnier than the guy being like,

I got to move some stuff around. Like, well, I don't want to hear about moving stuff around. I just want to hear about where it is. And look, it was a lesson and it was something that I was able to fix. But at the same time, like it was just something down the road. It's like, hey, when you're about to make a major transaction, don't put yourself at risk. Like don't have exposure to anything where you could start a Monday opening up a file going, Holy shit. Like it's, it's as, as I can attest to, it's a terrible feeling when you're in kind of that in between area of like, wait, am I not going to be able to do this? So anyway, um, with this, why wouldn't there be somebody, why wouldn't there be some kind of bank because we know the rules are completely different at this level where there's just some other bank that would be like okay look you guys fucked up you didn't have the money or whatever happened to

lead you to this point but you're investing in something where the number you got it at is so much lower than what it's actually worth that we'll lend you the money we're going to hammer hammer you on the rate. It's not going to be a great rate. There's going to be a little pain in there, but we're all going to get this done. It's because what everybody wants to happen. How is that not happening? That's the part that I don't understand. It's a great question. Let's say they need, I think the number is 300 million. I feel pretty confident that's what they were looking for. So that's 20% of what the original purchase price was. Maybe there are some bumps in that. So your question is, why wouldn't you invest $300 million when the team was worth 1.5 when now it's probably worth three? That seems like a good deal. You're doubling your money right away. The answer is, I think there's some hesitation and confusion about how solid this ownership group is.

If they don't even have the money, as it seems, to take over the team in the first place, you're investing in this ownership group that then doesn't have the liquid assets year to year that you feel great about going forward. So I'm investing in something where I'm not sure the person can pay for stuff. And that's why. Just think about it. Those big financial firms, they can spend 300 million on whatever they want, right? So if they're going to do this, it's like, hey, short term, we'll double our money. But what are we getting into? And the fact that they couldn't get that money from somebody, allegedly, is, I think, alarming.

That's probably the answer then. The fact that nobody has done that. That there isn't a bank going. I'm pretty sure that's the answer then. The fact that nobody has done that, that there isn't a bank going. I'm pretty sure that's the answer. Can we go through Glenn Taylor and his greatest moments? Go for it. So remember my basketball pyramid that I did, which actually started with baseball in the early 2000s when I wrote the column. My buddy Gus's dad had this idea for a Hall of Fame pyramid. I wrote it out for baseball.

And then I ended up doing it for my basketball book. What if the Hall of Fame was actually a pyramid? 96 members, five levels. Lowest level, level five, or level one. Next level, level two. The players get a little better, level three. And then the last level is the Pantheon. And I was thinking, we don't have enough owners for owner hall of fame pyramid,

but we could make a little mini pyramid of the worst owners of the last 30 years. Do a little mini pyramid of 10 people. Donald Sterling's the worst. I think he's the MJ of the conversation. Doing a worst owner mini pyramid. Sterling has to be first. It'd be tough to beat that. Then you go down to the second level and I think it's Robert Sarver and George Shin. Two guys who basically had to lose their team. Sarver had to sell his team and also really cheaped out during the Steve Nash era. No Phoenix

fan is like, man, I loved having Robert Sarver as my owner. I think he has to be second. And George Shin owned that Charlotte team and he had like two different sex scandal things happen and basically had to move the team out of Charlotte. Like Charlotte was like, you got to get the fuck out of here.

And remember Charlotte got like football crowds for basketball. Yeah. And the city of Charlotte was like you gotta get the fuck out of here and remember charlotte in new orleans charlotte got like football crowds for basketball yeah and they and the city of charlotte was like you gotta go dude you gotta leave if you go back and look at all the tenants and i'm exaggerating a bit here but when you look at all the tenants numbers from those days you're like they the lj morning era they packed them in there because it was just a bigger capacity than everybody else and that fan base loved him. So you're talking about a fan base turning that was that into it. It wasn't like it was someplace that didn't care. It would be like if OKC was like, you guys got to leave.

The team has to go. We have to leave our city. And then he goes to New Orleans and it ends up he sells the team and they didn't have an owner. Right? It ends up, he sells the team and they didn't have an owner, right? It ends up by the end of the, by 2010, Stern has to take over the team because they can't find anybody. I sell it back to the league. So I have him, I have Sarver and Shan on level,

basically level two for the mini pyramid. Level three is three names. Glenn Taylor, and I'll make the case for him in a second. Michael Jordan, who owns Charlotte, and nothing good happened the entire time he was there, literally nothing. And then Howard Schultz, who owned the Seattle Supersonics and sold them to an ownership group that he knew was going to move them to Oklahoma City. And I think he has to be in the top six because he's actually directly responsible for the team leaving. And then the last level, I had Prokhorov, Ted Leonsis, Tom Gores, and James Dolan as my

level four. That is my mini pyramid for worst NBA owners. Prokhorov, underrated, came in, spent a lot of money. And he's like, actually, you know what? This was a huge mistake. I went out, cut all the costs, and it just leaves up with no picks. It's like, I'm out of here, guys. I'll see you later. It's like, wait, we have no picks left. I remember teams being worried, and I don't even know if it's real or not, but it was just because it was a prokerov. They were like, who knows what that guy's going to be able to

pull in free agency. Like, what do you mean? They'd be like, well, you know, this country is yours. Like, where is this? It's yours. Remember Karolinko signed for less money and people were like, oh, what do you have over? Hey, was there any consideration by the committee for Robert L. Johnson who named the Bobcats after himself. So my honorable mention was Chris Cohen,

the Warriors guy who sold to Lake Up. Jerry Reinstorf, who's in the third biggest market in the league and doesn't pay the luxury tax. David Stern is the New Orleans owner. Your guy, Bobcat Bob Johnson. Karen Davidson owned the Pistons for a couple years and was brutal to the point that they were excited. I think Gore is after him.

And then Paul Gaston. Paul Gaston. Don't forget about Paul Gaston. I've never heard about him. Underrated, horrible owner for the Celtics. Paul Gaston. So yeah, I'm sure there is more. But yeah, so I got Sterling top level,

Sarver Shin, Taylor Jordan Schultz, Prokhorov, Leonsis, Gore, James Dolan. That is my mini pyramid for the worst owners of the last 30 years. So Taylor ranks fourth. Did you have the Cleveland owner in there? Which one? Well, it's last 30 years, so I couldn't put Stepien in there. Yeah, Stepien's worst of all time.

It's him and Sterling in the finals. Can I give you some Glenn Taylor data? I know you want to, and I don't want to go anywhere. I'm here. An audience of one. So he bought the team in the mid-90s, heading into the 95 season.

These stats are unbelievable. I actually, I was kind of stunned doing the research. They have 11 playoff appearances since he bought the team. In 1995, before the internet since he bought the team in 1995, before the internet. He bought the team. 10 first round exits out of the 11 playoff appearances.

So only that Western Conference Finals with Garnett. The 04, that was his one run. He has 21 playoff victories in 30 years. He's averaging 0.66 playoff victories per year for the three decades. He has zero playoff series wins since 2014. The team did not win a single playoff game from 2005 to 2018. And then just some of the highlights when he was there. He hired David Kahn as his GM, who's just an all-time, all-time worst GM we've ever had. Did that, just real quick, did that give you a window of hope that one day you would run a team? Yes, it absolutely did.

I noticed that. There was two years where I was like, yeah, this could happen. I just felt like there was very aggressive campaigning. Well, if he can do it. I felt like all of your columns had a hint at, like, I'm ready. Yeah, I'm kidding, but I'm also right here. He did the illegal Joe Smith contract and lost four first rounders. Made history there. 2009 draft. He oversaw a draft where they took Ricky Rubio and Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry. He hired Kevin

McHale as his coach or his GM, his GM coach and his coach, or his GM, his GM coach, and his coach. He hired Kurt Rambis as his head coach. Remember how bad Kurt Rambis was as a head coach? Like, legendarily bad. Like, people were doing radio segments. We've never seen a worse head coach than this. Remember his Phil Jackson, the tree of Phil?

I just felt like people didn't understand him. Go ahead. Remember the Kevin Love when everybody was getting five-year maxes like Westbrook out of that 08 class and he wanted a five-year max and they're like, nope. And then they're like,

here's what we'll do instead. Three years and you have an opt-out after year three as a sign of faith on both sides. And he's like, cool. And then within two years, he's like, get me out of here. That was absolutely an addict. They didn't re-sign Chauncey Billups that year when he was awesome for them.

They could have taken Brandon Roy and instead they traded one spot for Randy Foy and Cash. They took Chris Dunn over Jamal Murray. They hired Flip Saunders to run everything. They had coach GM Tom Thibodeau where he was the coach, but also made all the decisions. They took Chris Dunn over Jamal Murray. They hired Flip Saunders to run everything. They had coach GM Tom Thibodeau, where he was the coach, but also made all the decisions. They did the A-Rod-Laurie fiasco.

They traded Jimmy Butler for, what was it, Sarge Covington and a pack of meatballs? No, there was a pick in there. What was that trade? There was another pick in there. Jared Bayless and a second rounder? I don't even know if they got a pick in there there was another pick in there Jared Bayless and like a second rounder I don't even know if they got a pick

from 2006 to 2011 they drafted 6, 7, 3, 5, 4, and 2 still didn't make the playoffs they traded Sam Cassell and a first

for Marco Yaric they were like no no we'll throw in a first too we gotta get Marco Yaric they traded Ray Allen with a 1998 first for Stephon Marbury

and they took Shabazz Muhammad over Giannis Antetokounmpo. Those are just some of the highlights of the Glenn Taylor era, Russell. Yeah, it was only a second rounder. Justin Patton

was in that deal. I forgot Justin Patton was in that trade. Yeah, so Glenn Taylor, underrated, horrific. So if I'm a Timberwolves fan, I was looking forward to kind of getting away from Glenn Taylor,

but now he's like, you know what? We're actually good now. I might stick around. No, the problem was they traded the fact that they traded for him to Chicago a then a year later. So it's Dunn, Levine, and Markkinen was what we needed to remember. For Butler. Not what? You're talking 15 months later, it's Bayless, Covington, Sharich,

and Matteo Spagnuolo. Glenn Taylor. I have him number four worst owner for the last 30 years. Good dresser. Anything to add? Any last Minnesota thoughts? I actually feel better about

them post Cat because of how everybody else has stepped up. I think Conley's been better. I know McDaniels was kind of the target today, but he's been better. Rudy's always going to be solid. I'm never going to love when he has a ton of touches offensively. Look, man, I thought it was going to get, even though we know how I feel about Cat,

I thought it was just going to be a problem for them because it was going to be just easier to load up on Ant. And I think the best part about this stretch is that Ant now, as much as I love him, I have to be honest. Do you think this guy's so good he can just kind of carry them to four playoff wins in the first round? Can he do enough offensively? Because I just didn't like enough of the offense around them. And it's still going to be his task. And I think I'm there with him. I do. Like the fact that they're still

right into this with two weeks. I know I had said a week and a half earlier, but two weeks to go. I feel better. And I know they lost today, but you know, whatever. Listen, man, you win 56, 57 games in a year where you lose towns basically with a third

of the season to go. Pretty impressive. And Finch is awesome. Everybody was up in arms about him getting the gig and they didn't know anything about him. And even though we've talked about the Rudy trade far too often with Tim Conley and Matt Lloyd running this, you've got two guys that are really good at this. The Alexander Walker part of that trade, that guy plays real minutes. He hits big shots. He plays defense. Ant, when he's up for it defensively to close a game, he's right there with I wouldn't put anybody at Herb Jones' class, but Ant gets really near. Monty Morris the other night was chasing somebody around like crazy.

And I was like, man, this team has decided that with their adversity, they're going to keep fighting and take the fight to everybody else. So yeah, I think it was the Denver game because Denver was kind of a mess that night anyway. And Minnesota had a lot to do with it. So that's all I have on it. I had Herb Jones. We were doing that ringer hundred, and he was one of my toughest guys to figure out where to put them.

Where did you put him? I feel like he's genuinely gotten better month by month this season, especially offensively. He's really confident with the ball now. So it was not like, I always just thought he was going to be a stand in the corner guy, but now, you know,

because they lost some guys and he had to play a little bit of point and a little bit of a ball handling role. And, uh, I just think he's really kind of blossomed. I had him, uh, I had him 55 was my list, which in this league is really good. Cause I think there's a little bit of a drop off when you get around 60, we kind of move into like the Brook Lopez level of awesome role players, but it's a different level of player, but I had him way up there. I asked you before we go, I asked you... By the way, Zion's defense the other night in Milwaukee, it was at home against Milwaukee.

He had two blitzes on Lillard where I was like, and then his drive past Giannis, it wasn't that he got fouled, didn't make the layup. It's that he wanted to drive on Giannis in a huge possession. And that's the kind of stuff with Zion. It's not going to be a numbers thing. It's not going to be, hey, it's like we already

know he can give us insane stats if he wants to. But there are moments of competitiveness and fighting him now and effort on defense that we're seeing with him that really makes me like what New Orleans could be, even though they're still tinkering a bit whether it's the Larry Nance jr. stuff that they're doing

with different lineups they had to play more Valanciunas against Brooke Lopez they even brought Matt Ryan into that game at one point which is a little surprising Dyson Daniels have been back recently Ingram still gone but they're they're still tinkering with it but that's just another group that I like.

We agree. So I mentioned the ringer top 100 earlier. I asked you to make a top 20 just because I was curious where Wemba Nyama was on the list. I'm going to read you the list I made that I'm going to send in. And you tell me if this is crazy. So I had Jokic, Giannis, Luca, Shea, Jason Tatum, Kevin Durant, Kaunson, LeBron, Booker, Wimbinyama, 15. Is that crazy? No, I don't think it is. I think he's in the 15 to 20 range. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So that puts him ahead of Mitchell, Williamson, Butler, Murray, Halliburton, Fox, Adebayo, Jalen Brown, George, J-Dub, Sabonis, et cetera. But I think from what we're watching now, what he's doing night to night, I think he has to be in the top 15 to 20. I don't think there's any way around it. To have him ahead of a couple of those names, to have him ahead of Murray, you know, never be in the top 15 to 20. I don't think there's any way around it. To have him ahead a couple of those names, to have him ahead of Murray, you know, and be like,

never be in the playoffs and we know what Murray's capable of after last year. Yeah, I don't feel great about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even playoff. The toughest guys for lists like this,

for me, were Butler and Jamal Murray. And Bam, too, to a lesser extent. Because I know Bam, if I had Bam in a playoff series, the list looks different. But this is just best players

right now. Bam leads the league most minutes per game in fourth quarters in case anybody gets stuck with that one at a Buffalo Wild Wings. I watched a lot of basketball this week. I actually flew back east and was watching the

women's and the men's and Celtics-Palacans. I got to say, and was watching the women's and the men's and Celtics Pelicans. And I got to say, I really enjoyed the women's tournament. And this weekend, I think, is moving up the ladder for me from a sports weekend standpoint with the women's games on that Saturday, but also with all the final eight games heading into the final four. I just thought it was, I thought the basketball was really, really fun to watch. The LSU game against UCLA was excellent. And I thought that, I don't know how much Juju Watkins you've been watching, but she's basically, I feel like she's the next Taurasi, but she had one of those games where she just couldn't make a shot in the second half for like 40 minutes. Like nothing was going in. And you could see her trying to figure out in real time, my team doesn't have anybody else. What do I do? And so they put her at the foul line and she went to the hoop a couple of times. She just started getting to the line and doing free throws. Like old school, really smart superstar style. Ended up shot like 13, 14.

They eked out the game. But it was really interesting watching her have that moment. She's 19. She's my daughter's age. She was in the same class in LA as my kid. You forget how young these kids are. To watch them in real time try to solve these bigger than life situations was pretty cool. These games tomorrow night,

I was playing, uh, LSU. That game's going to be awesome. Like I, I don't ever remember looking forward to a non final four women's game before. And I don't know. I just,

I, I think the hoops has been really good. I really liked the Purdue Tennessee game today. The Yukon center last night was unbelievable. And it's like, could we get UConn and Purdue like two giant centers? Actually, could that be like a thing

that happens in a Final Four game or in a title game where it's just like these two behemoths old school style? I just think I've been really enjoying March Badness is my point. I know you've been watching a bunch too. Yeah, I couldn't believe that UConn game

because you know that Klingon's going to be a priority based on the two options that Illinois had at center. And UConn's not playing great offensively. It's a 23-23 game. And then through the end of the first half and the start of the second half, UConn goes on a 30-0 run against a team that was ranked 10th in the country. Yeah.

30-0. And they counted it up that it was 50 minutes of real time in between Illinois scoring. So UConn can throw a million things at you. And Stephon Castle, who's their other lottery projected guy, he didn't even score. He actually had points, but he didn't get his first bucket until the thing had long been done.

And yeah, I'm sure all of us are wondering what the Kling and Eadie thing would be because it's actually somebody body-wise who can at least get in the way of Eadie a little bit, but then you wonder if UConn's like, no, let's go with our athletes and instead we're going to try to counter this and make Edie have to come out, which is easier said than done because you're going to be giving up something on the other side of it. But at least UConn has these differences.

I thought the Alabama-Clemson game was one of the best games I've watched in the tournament because you're watching going, Clemson is somebody who doesn't lock in all season long. You're like, that guy's good, that guy's good, that guy's good, that guy's good. But Alabama had a little bit more size. Clemson kept missing their free throws. The guard for Alabama missed everything to start it

and then couldn't miss the rest of the way. So it's been a lot of fun and then you throw in an nc state like that to go on the run through the acc and then take care of duke which was perfect because like it sucked for duke that it was nc state because somebody else it's like okay this is duke and it's not a great duke team by duke standards and you're like wow this team's gonna end up in the final four when you you know paying attention to it through a little bit of the season you're like yeah they're not really Duke again, or the way you'd expect them to be. And it's just brutal for Duke because you're like, oh, great, we're playing a team from

our conference that already beat us that doesn't care. Like, there's nothing, there's no, you're not going to be in awe of us at all because we've already played. I wish you had told me that before I was, when I was deciding whether to hedge my Duke to make the final four or five to one bet, which I didn't hedge. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I actually ended up in Boston during the games. I was back in New York. I went to the UVM stuff. I went to all those games on the first round on that Friday. And then I flew back to Martha's Vineyard. I think I was in the East Coast for 10 days. It rained for nine. And then we were trying to balance a few

different things. i was trying to see if i could go see shane gillis but i was already so behind on the nba stuff that the last two days i've been here it's been all nba however we did make a detour myself and my buddy midnight buddy Midnight Jerry to Bitty Early's. Have you ever been to Bitty Early's in Boston? Mm-mm. So it's probably one of the better dive bars I've ever been to. We played darts.

We cleaned house. Mm. Yep. And it was just every single character you can imagine. Young, old, fun, not fun. Just a good old melting pot of a Boston dive bar people. And like one guy came up and said, hello. And I was like, cool. Awesome. Great to meet you. Throw a Coors Light on our tab, buddy. Thanks for listening. I was like, man, you really are nice.

I'm like, yeah, are nice i'm like yeah so nice and then another guy comes over and he's like i don't know who you are and i don't care and i was like great you think you're better than me right right and then he came over a second time to remind me that he didn't know who i was and that i really don't care who you are and i was like that's fucking awesome man you win you win the award you win the don't care who you are. And I was like, that's fucking awesome, man. You win. You win the award. You win the don't care award.

And then Jerry goes to him. It's funny, though. You've come up to him twice, and we've come up to you zero times. Right. And then it was like, it stung him a bit. And, you know, that was sort of it. I don't know if he was telling his buddies that story the next day. Like,

so I went up to this guy and I really gave him the what for, and then his buddy came over the top, like fucking third man in the ring and made me feel like a dick, but it was good night. Otherwise that sounds fun. Yeah. It's too bad. Like they had this one final eight game and there was a 30 to nothing run in the game. It was kind of weird to watch, it was funny. Cause you said, hell like the NBA Thursday, they played two games Sunday. They staggered all these to get

away from the elite eight stuff. It's like, but yeah, baseball was like what tournament, right? Like we don't, we don't care. And then they're going head to head against everything. I got to watch the game. Cause we were on, we went out and grabbed something to eat and then I was like, I just want to be able to watch the Red Sox. It's opening day. Granted, I hate when it's on the West Coast back when you're East. So I was like, all right, 1005 first pitch, but I'm just thrilled

that Tyler O'Neill's off to a hot start to home runs. You know that his dad apparently was Mr. Canada in 1975. What does Mr. Canada mean? Mr. Canada? Oh, like bodybuilder? Yeah. Really? I've landed on Drake May

for the Pats at number three. That's my final decision. That's who I want. You had a good tweet the other day. I don't love having teams do what you're suggesting, but they need to turn the vibes around and they just

need to draft a quarterback is essentially your point, right? It's been a catastrophe of a winter for Bob Kraft. The documentary was an all-time backfire. He could have just disappeared for five months and it would have been a better decision than the press conference, him pretending he didn't know about the facilities and the shit like that. And it's just like, oh, man, you're just digging a hole, buddy. It's almost like he's 82 years old. They need to

just take somebody that the fans can be excited about and move forward. Just move forward with somebody that they can put on a poster. And if they take Drake May, he shouldn't even play next year. Right? Just sit him for a year. Do the Mahomes-Alex Smith move with Brissette.

And just let him ease into it. They're on the left tackle. They're on a good receiver. But they should take Drake May. And by the way, when they say trade back for three first-round picks, it's two first-round picks because you're in the three spot. If you trade with Minnesota for 11, that's,

you're giving up your first round pick. So you're basically trading to move back eight spots for the 23rd pick and next year's pick. Why would you do that? I like that you did that because no one ever does it that way.

No one ever does that. It sounds so much better to say, oh, we gave up all these picks. three first round picks for number three. It's like, yeah, but they gave up a first-round pick. They got two first-round picks. Exactly. I don't like when

teams are like, hey, if they don't like Drake May, they can't take him for vibes, but I get your point. Why would they not like Drake May? Whether you're in, whether you're out, whether you don't like the fact that he was better two years ago than he was last year, whether you think he's like, is you're worried about his accuracy, whatever it is, there's enough there that it's all the same shit with Josh Allen in 2018. Like to a T where it's like, this guy's a fucking specimen.

This guy's a great guy. He's a leader. Everyone who says in North Carolina, like culture center. Sounds like Terry Oter. Um, and the stuff that is fixable with him is fixable. It's, it's not like Jaden Daniels. Like he showed up at pro day. It was two 10.

That to me, that means he's two Oh three. That's like the, you know, the reverse of like the UFC fighter, um, cut and wait and then put it on the weight after. Jaden Daniels probably had three dinners the night before to get to

210. He's going to be 203, 204. I know that guy's talented, but I'm terrified of that guy. I think he's too skinny. I'm just worried about it. I don't think when you're that skinny or you're that too skinny, too short, that just

scares me with quarterbacks. We just went through it with Bryce Young. He said, no, no, he's short, but it's fine. It's like, eh, he's actually too short. Yeah, that definitely happened with the too short thing. Everybody was just like, no, no, it's been working. It's like, was it? Drake May is 6'4", 229 right now, which means what?

He'll be 245 well i don't he doesn't have to be it's it's really depends on how big he wants to get you add muscle and that kill end up being 245 if he wants to i'm sure he could but he also you know there's diminishing return at some point on how much weight you want to add but yes your general point is you're right like even as big as you are in your early twenties, you're likely going to fill out and be that, that man. So I mean, I don't know, but then there's other people walking around and be like, Oh, I've had a 28 inch waist since I was 14. It's like, that's going to be my son. Uh, I have a question for you. Yeah. Have you watched a Steve Martin documentary yet?

No, it's on my list. It is fucking awesome. Morgan Neville. A24, man. They're unbelievable. You loved it. So it's two parts. I loved it. I might even watch it again. Wow. Documentary rewatch. Can we do it as a rewatchable? We could. I mean, it's certainly eligible. It's so good. I mean, out of the park for a documentary on a guy. And the fact that it's two parts. When it's over, you're like, please don't be over.

And you know it isn't over because you know it's in two parts. And you're just so happy. And the thing is, it's not like one of those salacious it's not the dirt motley crew you know because steve martin wasn't that kind of guy he's the opposite um but they just they hit it out of the park can't recommend it enough have you ever seen the movie shot caller i love shot caller that's the rewatchable for tomorrow oh good me and cr did that for uh rock bottom month we did shot caller i should have asked you i should have figured you'd like that movie i bought it's great it's it's great it's fucking awesome it's like it's it's one of those scripts you're like what if a guy did this

and you're like how's it end does it suck does the end suck and with this one you're like totally believable find yourself rooting okay how's he gonna get out of this incredible like i'm not trying to give the movie away but it every turn that it takes you're like all right have you gone it's like severance like i'm really worried about how they're going to land the plane. Man, I should have asked you. I'm just going to ask you when we have movies like that. Hey, anytime somebody's in prison in a movie, you give me a call.

We did the prison pyramid for actually, because CR is like- Tango and Cash? I went through all my, it's a good pod. I went through all my check marks for what I need from a prison movie. Yeah. It's good. Alright, next one. Next time we do a prison one,

you're in. We're settling to get two podcasts this week. And then when we come back next week, there's going to be a week to go. We'll have some awards stuff. There's some All-NBA stuff that's brewing. There's still some good arguments coach of the year is in place

six man there's some first team all NBA spot second team all NBA guards and and we'll also have a better idea of who's going to be in the playoffs and who's playing too

Russillo good to see you as always alright that's it for the podcast thanks to Brian Russillo thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing as well. Don't forget to check out One Shining Podcast

if you want all your March Madness stuff, getting ready for the final four. Don't forget to check out youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. Don't forget about the rewatch of us coming Monday night. We did Shot Caller. And I will see you on this feed on Tuesday. Must be 21 plus in president select states. I'm a person never lost And I don't have to wait Must be 21 plus

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