The Bill Simmons Podcast - Greatest Knicks What-Ifs and a January NBA Power Poll Deep Dive

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons addresses Donovan Mitchell's 71-point game in the Cavaliers' win vs. the Bulls before running through the most impactful "What if?" moments in Knicks history, including "What if the Knicks traded for Donovan Mitchell?" (7:23). Then Bill updates his NBA Power Poll and ranks all 30 teams (35:05). Host: Bill Simmons Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, we put up our first rewatchables in 2023. It is one word movie month on the rewatchables. So we did Cliffhanger with Sly Stallone. It was me and Kyle Brandt, one of the world's premier Stallonologists. Stallonologists? Stallonagists? Anyway, Cliffhanger, new rewatchables.

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and helplines available. And listen to the end of the episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Taping this a little past 530 Pacific time on Tuesday. It's almost 24 hours since the Bills-Bengals game, which got stopped when DeMar Hamlin went down on the bills and did not get up. And we watch football all the time. We see guys go down. We see horrible collisions. We see things that make us nervous for a split second. And then the guy either gets up or it takes a second and he gets up. Or you think to yourself, man, that guy might've gotten hurt. Is he all right? He's

getting up. He's walking back to the sidelines. We have these moral decisions as we're watching football over and over and over again. And it's one of the many things that sets the sport apart. There's other sports that have things that are attached to them. Like my daughter's played soccer her whole life. There's concussions galore in soccer. Same for lacrosse, same for hockey. There's collisions everywhere. There's bad things that happen in a lot of different sports. But football is always the most precarious. And you really felt it last night because we watch so many games. I watch games every Sunday. I watch every Monday Night Football. I watch most of the Thursdays, although the Amazon ones have been pretty up and down.

But we're just conditioned to watching these collisions and we're conditioned to the guys getting up and this guy didn't get up. And as we watched the teammates reactions, which seemed completely different than the usual level of reactions, which just seemed like concern, oh, they're going to get them on the car, give them a fist bump. This was different. And you knew it was different right away. And I thought ESPN did a terrific job covering it, as a lot of people have mentioned. But this was one of those nights that you're going to remember where you were. And for me, I've been following sports for almost 50 years at this point. I still remember where I was in 1978 when Daryl Stingley got paralyzed

in the Raiders-Pats game. I was in the Cape. It was August. It was a preseason game. He went over the middle. He was a receiver that was really fun to watch. Everybody loved him.

And Jack Tatum nailed him on a pass that sailed a little bit over his head. They didn't really have the best replays back then, but you could tell it was bad. And then the game just stopped and it felt like it stopped forever.

And even I was like eight and I was like, this isn't good. This isn't good. And you just kind of know. Same thing watching Bryce Flory, Red Sox Yankees game in 2000, he got hit by a line drive and the crowd made this awful sound. And then he sat up watching Bryce Flory, Red Sox-Yankees game in 2000. He got hit by a line drive,

and the crowd made this awful sound, and then he sat up, and like a second passed, and then blood started coming out of his eye and his nose, and it was like, oh my God. And you have these moments in sports sometimes. I watched Dooku Kim die against Ray Mancini in 1982. I watched that fight. It was on CBS, Outdoors Vegas. It was like 13, 14 rounds. I loved Mancini. He ended up winning. And then five minutes later, they cut

to like Dooku Kim just getting carried off on a stretcher. And he just seemed like, it was like, wow, that doesn't look good. And then it turned out it wasn't. He died. And it was awful. And it set off this whole chain of events with boxing, and it was one of the things that led to them going to 12-round fights. So you have these moments, and sometimes you're watching the game, sometimes you see snippets.

I remember being in the Bahamas when Hank Gathers, when he collapsed, and we saw it, and it was on a TV, and we're like, what's going on? And there was on a TV and we're like, what's going on? And there was no sound and we're trying to figure out what's happening, but it looked really bad. And you just, you always remember where you are for those moments.

The worst one for me out of anything was watching the WWE pay-per-view when Owen Hart fell to his death in Kansas city, which they didn't show on the TV, but they came back from a promo and it just happened. And the announcers were just acting not like wrestling announcers. And they made a point of saying

this was not part of the show. And it definitely wasn't. And you're like, wait a second, what happened? The guy, he fell? And we didn't realize it was a malfunction and he fell 80 feet. They somehow keep the show, they get him out,

they take him to the hospital and they just keep the show going, which was probably the biggest mistake Vince McMahon ever made running the WWE, at least for in-ring stuff. 12, 15 minutes later, Jim Ross comes back and tells us Owen Hart died. And then they kept the show going. And it was insane when it happened. It was indefensible. And I couldn't help thinking

about that last night watching this Bills-Bengals game, not knowing what was going to happen to DeMar Hamlin. But also it was clear the game had to stop. And in 2023, I think it's a little bit easier to mobilize in the moment because you have so much social media and the NFL, they can deny it, whatever. But I guarantee some of the decision makers probably popped on Twitter to

get a feel for what the reaction was. It's unclear. It really does seem like they told people they had five minutes to get ready. They denied it after the fact. It wouldn't be the first time the NFL lied. I remember I watched the Jets-Lions game when Reggie Brown got hurt because it was the last game of the season. And I think they were just a local game in Boston that day because the Pats were playing on Monday night. And that was one where he got CPR in the field and they stopped the game for like 20 minutes, took them off and just kept the game going. I don't feel like you can do that anymore in 2023. And it was clear neither side wanted to play. And however they arrived to the decision, it was the right decision. It was the right decision. And you just think like you go into that Monday night game,

it's Bills-Bengals, it's Josh Allen versus Joe Burrow. It is for the number one seed in the AFC potentially. It's for if the Bengals win, they win the division. If the Bills win, then they still have a chance at number one. There's fantasy playoff implications. If you're a Pats fan, you're watching it, you're rooting against the Bills and all these different things. And you're just thinking like, Monday Night Football, this is gonna be a great one. And then it flips in two seconds

and all of a sudden now you're thinking about these things you were never prepared to think about. Most importantly, rooting for this kid who if you read anything about him or saw anything about him in the last 24 hours, Hamlin just seems like the best guy. So I hope he comes out of this healthy and happy. And thoughts and prayers are with him.

I know I speak for everybody else at The Ringer as well. And I hope that everyone on the Bills and the Bengals are doing okay too. I'm not going to have a guest today. We're going to throw it to Pearl Jam and then I'm going to come back and talk about basketball. I didn't feel to have a guest today. We're going to throw it to Pearl Jam. Then I'm going to come back and talk about basketball. I didn't feel like having a guest today. Anyway, best of luck to Mar Hamlin. I hope we see you walking around and I hope we see you with a smile on your face. All right, we're going to talk some basketball. Donovan Mitchell scored 71 points

last night. And there were multiple storylines out of this that I was fascinated by. There's a whole Knicks what if thing that I want to do in a second. I'm trying to figure out what is going on with the scoring this year. And a few people have talked about this today. I went, I'd gone back and I went through all the seasons and there's been some peaks, right? Like in the 61-62 season, I had so much trouble trying to figure out what to do with when I did my basketball book. Like, what do we do with the triple-double Oscar Robertson with Wilt averaging 50 points a game? And you go through and everything was screwed up. The teams averaged 118.8 points a game. They took 107.7 field goals.

The pace was just way too fast. And it was stupid to compare it to like the 1985 season when there were just way more shots. It was more like hockey than basketball. By 1985, it settles down a little bit. We're down to like a 110.8. And that was during like an offensive boom in the 80s when nobody was guarding anybody.

Then 1993, so that's 30 years ago. And I always felt like that was the best basketball season of that whole era in terms of like the amount of talent we had, how stacked the teams were, the Hall of Fame players that we had, Jordan at his peak. And the average that year was 105.3. And the average

86 field goals a game. But if you go for the per 100 stats, the highest team, 100 points per possessions was Phoenix at 113.3. All right. So remember that because 30 years later, the average, this is crazy. The average team scores 113.7 points again. And if you just go through from 93, it's 105.3. It drops to 96.9 and 97. Then it drops to 2004, 93.4. And that's when they started doing stuff.

They start changing the rules. They change the hand check rules. They try to quicken the pace. They do all these things. Back up to 100.0 in 2010. And then 2017, it's at 105.6. And the big difference at that point is teams are taking 27 threes a game. When you go backwards to 1997, it's 16.8 threes a game. In 2004, it's 14.9 threes a game. 2017 jumps up to 27 threes a game. And in 2023, we were at 29.3 threes per team per game. We are at 88.1 field goal attempts and 113.7 points. So the field goals are a little up. The threes are way up, but it still doesn't totally make sense. It doesn't make sense that we have this many scores in the high 20s and the low 30s. Like Embiid's averaging 33 a game. Luka's at 34. Mitchell's

now at 29. Normally you have these years, if you go back and you look at the history of the scoring, there'll be like one guy who's at like 30 and then one guy at 28, one guy at 27 and it drops. Now we just have scores all over the place. Um, and we have these crazy scoring things. Like a bunch of people talked about, we've had five 40 point scores in the same night now, I think three times in the last two weeks. And it's something that had happened four times before the 2020 season. Now there's more teams, I get it. But it just seems

like there's more scoring, more offensive brilliance. Last night, Mitchell scores 71, Clay scores 54, and you don't even really bat an eyelash anymore when this stuff is happening. So why? What is happening? It's not just people are better at making threes. I've been watching the games the last couple weeks and I just feel like they've mastered the spacing. This has been a 10-year odyssey now.

You go back to Curry in 2013 and when the threes really start taking off, that first Curry season when it's like, oh my God, what's this? What's happening? For the first time on fast breaks, three on twos, guys are going in the corners instead of trying to get layups.

So it's been 10 years now and it's been 10 years of people really understanding how to play this style on top of front offices and organizations trying to find people who play this style. So instead of having the Timothy Moskov type of guys, you want to find more and more Sam Hausers and people like that. So as weird as this sounds, my theory is that it took 10 years, but we're just getting better at playing whatever the style is with the spacing.

And you watch somebody like Jokic. And the reason I've been watching a ton of Denver and the reason I've been so fascinated by Jokic is he's the first one who's figured out the geometry. He's figured it out the best out of anybody where he's going to do his two things. Either he's going to be in the low post or he's going to set these high screens. And however the defense reacts will determine what his strategy is. And if they want to try to take away his scoring, he'll just try to feed everybody. If they want to take away the assist and cover the shooters, then he'll try to attack people one-on-one, but he's taking advantage of the space. So it's almost like basketball is becoming more like football. There was this moment in football and maybe

it was somewhere in the mid-90s when they started throwing more and they started spreading receivers out. I remember it was happening at the same time in the video games. I always loved having four receiver video games, offenses in video games, or five receivers spread out. Just fire the ball.

Forget the run game. You just think you're doing these different plays where it's like, oh, I'll send these two guys on the outside deep. And I'll send the tight end across the middle. And then I'll send the other guy in the corner. And you just see the geometry of it. It all started to make sense. And then football changed.

All of a sudden, these quarterbacks are thrown for 4,000 yards. And you can't even compare the guys from the last 20 years to the guys from the 60s and 70s. It's ridiculous. And I just wonder if that's starting to happen in basketball. I don't know. I watched a lot of that Cleveland-Chicago game last night. They were singling Mitchell for a lot of it the same way that the 81-point game Kobe had when the Toronto Sam Mitchell, who's really one of the worst coaching jobs of all time,

he just decided to single Kobe Bryant. And it was stupid. And he just sent a second guy at him. What are you doing? Nope, didn't. Kobe scores 81. Yesterday was a little similar with Mitchell, but there's some wrinkles to it.

Like if KOC had a second spectrum tweet today about the 10 best screen and roll combos we have in the league so far, according to second spectrum. And Mitchell is number four and number five with Mobley or with Jared Allen. And I noticed this, I remember mentioning this on a podcast when I went to the Clippers Cavs game, watching the Clippers try to decide what to do when Mitchell was doing the pick and roll with one of those guys. Because as soon as they rolled to the basket, he could find them. But if the center decided to try to switch with him, then Mitchell could attack him or he could pull both guys over. Or if one guy went with the center, then he would have somebody one-on-one. And it was always like he was playing little games with them. And I think that's one of the things going on with basketball right now. It seems like there's such an advantage in the offense because the rules are against being able to defend these guys to begin with. You can't hand check them anymore. If you're

on an Island with somebody, the guys are so gifted. They're probably, they have a better chance to score than ever before. They can make threes. You have to play up on them if they're a three-point shooter. Now they can go by. You can't foul them as you go by. And it just seems like everybody collectively has figured out like, oh shit, we can get to the basket whenever we want. We also have more really talented offensive players than we've ever had before.

Like I was trying to figure out the, like who would be the all-NBA right now. And you think think the guard spots are more ridiculous than ever. If Luka's a guard, you got Mitchell, you have SGA, you have Jha, you have Halliburton, you have Curry, you have Booker. You could throw Kyrie in there if you want to get nuts. You could throw James Harden in there. All those guys can go by whoever's guarding them. So we have more guys who can go by anybody. We have more players who know how to play within

space. We have better shooting than we've ever had before. And I think it's just leading to this scoring boom that I think is going to be really hard to figure out historically. I don't think you can really compare like Luka's 2022 season to like T-Max 2003 season. It's like almost a different sport. So I do wonder, I don't know if this is an aberration year, if this is just what basketball is, but I do wonder if this is becoming like what happened in football, where like when I was a kid, Cliff Branch and Stanley Morgan were the two best deep threat receivers in the league. And if you look at their stats, they would get like 20 yards a catch and they'd finish with like, you know,

900 yards, 860 yards because they'd have 45 catches. That was it. Nobody threw the ball that way because you could kill the quarterback. You could interfere with the receiver. They couldn't really go over the middle because the safeties could destroy them. And that's just the way the sport was played. And then that shifted. And now you have people with 140 catches in a season or 17 touchdowns. And I'm worried that's happening in basketball, but I'm also not worried because I think it's more fun.

It's definitely more fun than what the mid-2000s was like or the mid-1990s. So that's one thing with the Mitchell. And then the other piece I was thinking about it was Nick's what-ifs. Because them not trading for Mitchell now with how he has ascended in Cleveland. And the big question with him was, what did we watch the last two years in Utah? Did we watch somebody who was just a really good offensive guard who stopped being a two-way player? Is this guy a franchise player?

Is he almost a franchise player? What is he? When Russell and I would talk about it last summer, I always defaulted to we've at least seen him rise to the occasion in playoff series in a way that if he's your best guy, you could at least go toe-to-toe with the other team's best guy if he had the right team around him. And that's why we love the Cleveland trade so much, because we felt like this guy finally has the right team around him. Well, the Knicks would have been a good team too, because they basically would have had to give up

RJ Barrett and some picks. They could have kept Jalen Brunson. You just put him in the RJ Barrett spot. The Knicks are over 500 anyway. I defended the Knicks when that trade didn't happen. I thought they made a really good offer. I thought RJ Barrett and a couple of picks was an awesome offer for Donovan Mitchell. And you could argue maybe even a better offer than what Cleveland got back for him. Although Markkinen has turned out to be pretty great. So we didn't know that last summer. Just last summer, I was like, oh, Markkinen, Sexton, and some firsts. Is that enough? Now Markkinen's emerged as a probable all-star. But I thought the RJ Barrett and the picks offer was really good. I still don't know

totally what happened with Utah and the Knicks. It was a little weird. But now it's turning into a what if because Mitchell, imagine if he's doing this in New York. Imagine if he did that at MSG last night. Imagine if he did that for the star for a title Knicks fans. I think it's a what if. So it made me want to go through the Knicks what ifs. And I had done some of this in my book. I went back.

I talked to a couple of people. There's some honorable mention Knicks what ifs. And I had done some of this in my book. I went back. I talked to a couple people. There's some honorable mention Knicks what ifs. What if Golden State passes on Steph Curry in 2009? It seemed like they were going to take him. They were either going to take him or trade the pick to Phoenix. Steve Kerr's talked about that. They didn't expect Curry to drop to seven.

He did. And the catch is they had Monte Ellis. And I think there was a split second there when the Knicks fans were like, wait, they have Monte Ellis. They're not going to take Steph Curry too. And that Curry was going to fall to eight. It's an honorable mention. What if? I still don't think anyone's passing Curry at seven. It's amazing Minnesota passed on him twice. The Charles Smith game is another honorable mention. What if? Look, Charles Smith was who he was as a player. There's an angle of those plays where it's pretty physical.

They could have called a foul on at least two of those pippen swipes. And then who knows with that. But again, that's honorable mention. There's honorable mention for Durant in 2016 and Durant in 2019. In 2016, didn't even really take a meeting. 2019, it seemed like he was headed there and ends up going to Brooklyn instead. But they could have been in this whole Durant, Kyrie, whatever you want to call it. I'm trying to be nice because Brooklyn's playing well.

And then the other one was there was a Kevin McHale offer sheet in 1982. It was the year the salary cap changed. And you could do these restricted free agent offers. And the Knicks decided they're going to make this big offer. It was 1983, my bad. The Knicks decided they're going to make this big offer for Kevin McHale. And Red Auerbach found out about it and made offers to Marvin Webster and Sly Williams and Rory Sparrow before the Knicks officially made the McHale offer and made it so that the Knicks had to decide,

do we want to lose all three of those guys to try to sign Kevin McHale, who we might not even get anyway? And the Knicks ended up re-signing their three guys, the Celtics keep McHale. It's kind of crazy to look back on because they should have just done everything they could Celtics keep McHale. It's kind of crazy to look back on because they should have just done everything they could to get Kevin McHale. He ended up being like one

of the 35 best players of all time. And at the time we knew he was really good and our back just outwitted them. But it's an honorable mention. What if, I think if you talk to Knicks fans, especially the ones around the eighties, the McHale offer sheet, and then they all feel like there was a moment where they could add Chris Mullen when Chris Mullen was having problems. There was a Jared Wilkins for Chris Mullen trade rumor that was floating around. And I think that's in the what if class. All right. So the actual what ifs. And these are in no particular order until we get to the last couple. To me, a huge what if is what if they don't panic trade for Carmelo

before he became a free agent? Because if you remember, for Carmelo, it was better to get traded then because then he could get an extension with them that had the extra year on it. But the Knicks end up giving up Wilson Chandler, Gallinari, Raymond Felton, Mozgov, and their 2014 first, they get back Carmelo and Billups. They gave up so much. They don't really matter in the 2011 playoffs. It's basically just Melo and Billups and Amari. And then they use their amnesty on Billups instead of Amari. So they lose their amnesty in the trade too. They locked down Melo and the team's never really good enough around him. They signed Tyson Chandler. But I always wonder what would have happened had they just not done anything, called Carmelo's bluff, and either they don't get him in free agency and they are able to still build around this young team and some cap space, or they get Carmelo and get to keep all their young dudes. It's the kind of thing you do when you haven't been good in a while and you Barry. And Rick Barry, when I did my book,

I had him as the 25th best player ever. He was the best player in the 1975 Warriors who won the title. He should have won the MVP that year. They decide they're going to take Bill Bradley instead of Rick Barry in the draft. And the reason that was interesting was they couldn't get Bill Bradley for two years.

He was on a Rhodes scholarship going to Oxford. And they decided they wanted to wait. Barry was the scoring machine at the University of Miami. He goes to the Warriors and ends up lighting it up. They make the finals, I think, within two years. Had I been around, had I had my column in the mid-60s, I would have been going nuts that they should have taken Rick Perry. It's also a what if for him because he ends up going there. He ends up signing with the ABA.

He has to wait a year before he even plays. So he loses a year. He gets hurt. He basically loses three years of his prime because of injuries and lawsuits. For the Knicks, Barry becomes part of the 70 Knicks and the 73 Knicks, both of whom won titles. So it's a what if in the sense of they might not have won any titles. Here's what I wrote in my book. Barry was the second best passing forward of all time behind Larry Bird. If anyone could have fit in seamlessly with those Knicks teams, it's him. One of two extremes would have played out.

Either Barry goes down as one of the 12 greatest players ever and a New York icon, or he goes down as a temperamental, annoying asshole whom everyone in New York despised before he finally got driven out of town for eyeballing Willis Reed after a drop pass and getting thrown into the 15th row at MSG by Willis. It's one or the other. It's hard for me to believe he wouldn't have fit in with those Knicks teams. So as weird as it sounds, even though they win two titles, maybe they win more if they took Rick Barry or maybe he blows the whole thing up. I don't know. Either way, it's a what if.

Bernard King tore his ACL during the year that ended up getting the Knicks Patrick Ewing. It is a massive what if because he never came back. The craziest stat ever is Bernard King never plays with Patrick Ewing. They play together once

in the All-Star game, like six years later. But on paper, they have Bernard, who's like 34 a game. He gets hurt. They get Ewing out of it. And if we had modern knee technology, Bernard's back in a year. Instead, he's out for two and a half years, ends up getting mad at the Knicks, leaves. They never play together. And that's a legitimate what if. I would put the Mitchell trade right here, probably under that, because if you put Mitchell on this Knicks team, then they're probably a top five team in the East.

And then they're also one move away from really being something. Cause I think Brunson's been better than anyone expected. And just upgrading from Barrett, who I like to Mitchell, I think is, is reason enough to think that they'd at least be like a fringe contender, but they'd have the foundation that Brunson that have Mitchell.

They'd have Randall who they'd have him going again, cap space, potentially. I think it's a pretty good one. Another what if. Never hiring Isaiah Thomas. They do that in, I think, 2003. His first move is he trades Antonio McDyess and a bunch of other stuff in two first rounders in 2004 and 2010 to the Suns for Stefan Marbury and Penny Hardaway. Marbury is basically the equivalent of what's going to happen when somebody overpays for Trey Young in about a year. Just file that one away. Then he trades two unprotected firsts in 2006 and 07, which was a pick swap for Eddie Curry and Antonio Davis in a first rounder. And those picks became LaMarcus Aldridge and Joakim Noah.

So you just take those two. He blew up four first round picks and basically wasted five years of a 10-year decade and had a huge sex scandal. And by the time it was over, they had to do this two-year odyssey to create enough cap space to get LeBron and Wade, which is our next what if, the summer of 2010, LeBron and Wade and the Knicks fans get tricked. Maybe they tricked themselves into thinking, well, LeBron, he's going to want to come to the biggest city in the world. This is the move as a basketball player. He's got to come here and he's going to

bring his buddy Wade with him or he'll bring Chris Bosh or maybe he'll bring all three. And they end up going to Miami. They get nothing. They end up spending their cap space on Amari Stoudemire, who was awesome for a year or less than a year, and then his knee went out on him. But it is crazy that we always thought for years and years, once the Knicks get calf space and they'll be able to get, you know, Duran or LeBron and they never, ever get these guys. So that's that. And then the last what if is a big one and we'll do it right after this break. Hey, if you're looking to get more of this NBA season, now is the perfect time to download FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.

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See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. 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 home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey, and it's on Prime. All season long, watch Prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays. The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL is best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on prime. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Superbowl ring, he rocked

that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you can still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right. Last what if is a big one. It deserves its own little section for the Knicks. So you go back to 1975 and the Knicks have had a decent kind of half decade run at this point, right? 69 Knicks were really good. Lost to the Celtics. No shame in that. They win in 70. They win the title again in 73.

Millions of books written about them. People love those Knicks teams. So if you're saying like, when we get to 1975 and you're a Knicks fan, did this go okay? You would probably point to the 11 titles Boston won and be like, well, that part sucked, but got some momentum here. We won in 70, we won in 73. We had this iconic team. Everyone wrote these books about them. Beautiful basketball, the whole thing.

So then 1975, it's starting to die down. DeBuscher and Reed, I think both of those guys are gone at that point. Monroe and Frazier are still there. Kareem becomes available. He tells the Bucs during the 74, 75 season, I'm out. Like, you gotta get rid of me.

So the Knicks, he wants to go to the Knicks. He's from New York. That's his number one choice. So they start negotiating with the Knicks at the end of that season. They offer the Bucs 1.5 million and some draft picks for Kareem. And the Bucs GM was Wayne Embry, former Celtic, laughs him off. It's like, no way, not enough. He ends up dealing Kareem to the Lakers. The Lakers had the second and the eighth pick. So he gets both of those. They take Dave

Myers, a junior Bridgman. Get Brian Winters, who is a good player. He made two all-star teams. Great beard. Love Brian Winters. And Omar Smith. And they get $800,000. Way more than the Knicks could offer.

But the New York Times reported that the Knicks, if they had offered $4 million, they could have gotten Kareem. That's it. I don't even know if they needed to have picks. Just $4 million, you can have them and maybe throw in a couple firsts, who knows. The Knicks were cash poor because they had just spent $2.4 million on George McGinnis, who is an awesome ABA player, came to the NBA, wasn't that good. Here's the problem. George, his draft rights belong to the Philadelphia 76ers. good. Here's the problem. George, his draft rights belong to the Philadelphia 76ers. So they get him as a free agent. They commit this money that now they can't

spend on Kareem. And then the NBA voids the George McGinnis trade because his rights belong to the Sixers. Not only do they void it, they strip the Knicks of their 1976 number one pick for illegally signing George McGinnis. So you go from, could have just spent $4 million on Kareem, to now I don't have George McGinnis and I lost my number one pick, which would have been, if you go back, either the sixth or the seventh pick. Well, Adrian Dantley went sixth, Robert Parrish went eighth. So that kind of sucked. So then on top of it, they panic and they trade for Spencer Haywood, who I wrote a whole thing in my book about the broken mirror. He was bad luck wherever he went, just bad luck left and

right. He was this guy that was supposed to be one of the great forwards of the seventies, had some issues in Seattle. The Knicks end up, well, we'll get Spencer Haywood. He's a big name. He cost them 1.3 million. He cost them the ninth pick in 1975 that they had to trade. So they go from, instead of Kareem, they lose two first round picks and get Spencer Haywood, who ends up on three more teams in the next four years. Even worse, that leads to a year later, the ABA-NBA merger. The Nets can't afford Dr. J. They have to spend so much money just to get into the league that they know they can't afford Dr. J.

Well, what about the Knicks? The Nets owed the Knicks for 10 years when they joined the league $480,000 per year. So they say to the Knicks, you waive that penalty for us, the territorial penalty. It's 4.8 million over the next 10 years. You waive it. It's done. We'll give you Dr. J, but you waive that penalty. And the Knicks say, no. They're like, wait, the best player in the league, the most exciting NBA player of this decade, and he could be in New York City? Nah.

We're going to pass. So Philly ends up buying him for $3 million. They actually get a discount. So the next thing, maybe they could have gotten a discount. No, they didn't care. And this sucked for Doc because he goes to the Sixers. He's with a bunch of like

Me First guys, Ball Hogs, and it takes years even though those teams were just not that fun to watch for him. He starts having knee issues. Could have gone to the Knicks and just been the guy.

So two years later, this gets weirder. Two years later, the Nets, they settle the territorial fee by giving the Knicks the fourth pick in the 78 draft, their number one pick in 1979 for the 13th pick in 78

and a settlement on all the rest of the money. And that leads to the Knicks take Michael Ray Richardson with that pick. They end up eventually trading Michael Ray Richardson with that pick. They end up eventually trading Michael Ray Richardson for Bernard King. So they get Bernard King out of it. So in a weird way, I wrote my book. It led to two wildly entertaining

Michael Ray Richardson years. One, what the hell is wrong with Michael Ray season? One, awesome Bernard season. One, one and a half life altering Bernard years where he was other than Bird the best player in the league. And then that's it. So not so bad, but man, they could have had Kareem and Dr. J.

There's no better Knicks what if than that. Donovan Mitchell, pretty good, but not anywhere close to that. So there you go. Those are my Knicks what ifs. Okay. We're going to the January 3rd power poll. I did this a month ago. I'm going to do it again. I ranked everybody from 30 to one, and I'm going to read you the names, and I'm going to give you my thoughts as we go. I have six teams.

This used to be called wobbling for Wemby, but now I've switched it to trauma for Yama, for Wemby and Yama. Trauma for Yama, I like that one. I got Houston at 30, Detroit at 29, Charlotte at 28, San Antonio at 27, OKC at 26, and Orlando at 25. Hold that Orlando thought. Houston's the worst team in the league. They seem like the worst coach team in the league. I got to say, I don't really

understand what their strategy is, what they're trying to do. I don't feel like Jalen Green has made the leap that I was expecting him to make. There's nights where Porter almost, if you had no idea who was who, that Porter almost seems like a better player. Nobody plays defense on this team. Eric Gordon, poor Eric Gordon. What did he do to deserve just all the teams that he's spent out over the years?

That'd be a good documentary. Eric Gordon, my 15 worst teams that I've been on. They're 10 and 27. They're poised and ready for Yama. I really want them to figure out the Jalen Green piece. They have got to, his three-point shooting hasn't been great, but they really have to spend the next 40 games trying to figure out what is this guy as our lead creator?

Can we get him to like the 27, five and five category, 35% three-point shooting? Can we get him to like the 27, five and five category, 35% three point shooting? Can we improve his decision making, all that stuff? I think he's so talented. And my worst fear for him was just him being on bad teams year after year. Now, this is the second bad team. Detroit, their big thing is,

are they going to deal Bogdanovich? And who is he going to? And what are they getting back? But they're poised. I mean, they sat Cade for the year, whether how injured he was, who knows. The Charlotte thing's interesting. They're 10 and 28. And I have a lot of future bets for them from before the season of them missing the playoffs and their unders, things like that. There's a LaMelo thing going on though. He's taken 11.23s a game this year. And when you watch him play, he's just

kind of like, fuck it. My team's not great. I'm letting it fly. And I do think there's going to be a potentially fun second half of the season Lomelo thing that they're going to have to try to decide, do we let this go or should we start coming up with fake injuries to sit him? Jordan's never been like a total tanking guy. I think 2012 was the only year they really did it, but they got to be careful because you want to be in that top four. It's the highest percentage thing.

San Antonio is 12 and 25. There's some Jakob Pertl sweepstakes, probably the least exciting sweepstakes we've ever had, but he's going to make a huge difference for San Antonio or whoever. Devin Vassell is somebody that's now on my radar. I've watched him a couple times

and it looks like they nailed that draft pick, which is good for them because they obviously whiffed on Josh Primo. But Devin Vassell is legitimately good. I like him and Keldon Johnson. So they have the makings of something. I never thought I would see Pop coach a tank team, but we're going to see it this year. OKC, they lost Poku for six weeks, which in a weird way was bad for them because he was

their stealth, awesome tank guy. He's one of the worst plus minus guys in the league. 15 and 21, feels like that could go either way for them. I'm assuming they're going to talk to SGA soon. It's going to be like that scene in Victory when they break the goalie's arm. Not that bad, but they're going to be like, hey, I think you have an issue with your calf. And SGA's going to be like, no, my calf's fine. It's like, no, no, no, you don't I think you have an issue with your calf. And SJs could be like, no, my calf's fine. It's like, no, no, no.

You don't understand. We did an MRI of your calf. There's a tear. It's like, really? It feels great. No, no, there's a tear. We're going to sit you down. All right.

So Orlando, 13 and 24. And I don't know what I would do if I was Orlando because there are only six games behind Miami for the division right now. And they've lost a couple really, really tough, close games. Miami's 20 and 18, Atlanta's 17 and 20, Washington's 17 and 21, Orlando's 13 and 24, and Charlotte's 10 for 28. That is an awful division. That's like the AFC South in the NFL for NBA teams. There's part of me that still wonders, should Orlando try to trade for a real point guard? On the other hand, it's three plus months left. Just throw it away. Who cares? Try to get your guy. I don't know. I like the talent on that

team. And that division sucks. I would give it like two more weeks and see if we can get into like three games before I packed it in. All right. So that's the first thing. The next section is to tank or not to tank. Washington is in here. They're 17 for 21. Washington is the team this year that teams see in the schedule and they rest like their best guy or their best two guys. And then Washington will win. It's a very deceiving 17 for 21. I think of those 17 wins, 15 have come when the other team was resting their best player, I'm guessing. My move for them, I would trade Beal. They can trade him on January 15th. There's one of those trade bump things that he'd probably have to waive. But

I don't see much difference whether he's playing or he's not playing. It feels like Kuzma is the best guy in that team. And they're talking about, well, we trade Kuzma at the deadline. He's a Frazier. You can talk to me and I'd rather have Kuzma than Beal. But I wonder if there's a Philly trade. This is a good who says no. Maxie and Harris for Beal. And I think Philly would say no. Even though if I told you that you could have Embiid, Harden, and Beal

on the same team a year ago, that would have seemed insane. Harris has turned into a pretty decent guy for them for what he is. Like, he never has the ball. He's still 16 a game. He's almost 40% from three. His defense has been a little better and he's a better fit. The one that I don't really get is Maxie because Melton has come in and done, I think, a really

nice job. He's done a good job defensively. He's like a 40% three-point shooter. And I just wonder, as Max comes back from this injury, trying to bring him in, you lose a lot defensively. He's somebody that needs the ball at least a little bit. And the balls, you've hardened him. They're averaging 56 points a game. So I do wonder if Maxie Harris is a trade package. And I don't know who that ends up getting you. And we don't know who's going to become available.

But could that be like, could that be probably not Zach Levine? You'd be worried about him. But is that out there for somebody? Keep an eye on that. Beal, Harden, Embiid, Melton, and Tucker. Crunch time. Pretty interesting.

I have the Bulls at 23. They're 5-1 against the Nets, the Bucks, and the Celtics. And yet they'll lose to anybody on any given night. The thing is, the top five in the East, it's Boston, Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philly. And then it's completely wide open. Indy is sixth at 21 and 17. And if you're Chicago,

your four and a half games behind Indy, are you really that scared of Indy? Because you need to get to the sixth. I was in blow it up mode with them and I still kind of am. And you see like last night, they lose that game to Mitchell and you just think like, this just isn't our season. On the other hand, could they get to the six seed? Sure. I wouldn't give those guys away. I think to me, they're the most interesting trade team because you could tell me they do nothing.

You could tell me they completely blow it up. Everybody wants Caruso. Vucevic isn't expiring. And then DeRozan and Levine are going to have suitors. But I don't know what you do if you're Chicago, other than you kind of stammer along for the next two weeks here and figure out should you blow it up or not. I'm a little less blow it up-y than I was two weeks ago just because I feel like that sixth and down is wide open in the East. Another one that's in there, Toronto, 16 and 21. There's some bad signs with them.

Nurse is really, really, really overplaying his dudes. They have this stat that there's 36 player games for Toronto this year of 40 plus minutes, which is nuts. When you watch them, it seems like he's coaching these guys like it's game three of round two. And everybody has big minutes. It looks like Van Vliet's wearing down the times I've watched them. They just don't seem that fresh.

If you look at the five-man lineups, when they play Ananobi and Siakam and Van Vliet together, they're only plus 2.1 per 100 possessions, which is not a good sign. Last year, they were 6.2. That's according to our guy, John Schumann. But it kind of bears out when you watch it. which is not a good sign. Last year, they were 6.2. That's according to our guy, John Schumann.

But it kind of bears out when you watch it. It always feels like they don't have quite enough. They're in the game, they're hanging around, they're scrappy. And then in the last three, four minutes, the other team's just their best guys, just better than them. They've tanked before. They tanked during that Tampa season, at least a little bit, and they ended up getting Scotty Barnes out of it. And I do wonder how far this goes before they say, what do we do with this? So keep an eye on them and keep an eye on Utah. I have them at number 21. So this is an interesting group to tank or not tank. Washington, Chicago, Toronto, and Utah. And I have no feel on what any of these teams are going to do. With Utah, they're under 500 finally.

They're 10th in the West. The tanking could begin. They have Conley, they have Beasley, they have Olenek, maybe Jordan Clarkson. I mean, it's all gravy. They won the Gobert trade in the craziest way possible. They get

all those picks. Minnesota is a mess. The funniest thing is if you put Jared Vanderbilt and Kessler, the rookie, they're averaging 43 minutes a game, 15, 14, four rebounds, 15 points a game, two blocks. And Gobert is 31 minutes a game, 13, four points, 11.7 rebounds, 1.3 blocks. Their per 36 is basically the same for Vanderbilt and Kessler as it would be to have Gobert. And they got 1,000 picks back for them. It's really one of the greatest trades of all time.

I felt that way when they made it, and now I like it like 30% more. And then if you're Minnesota, we'll get to them in a second. All right, we'll do the rest of the teams in a second. When you ride transit, please be safe. Yeah, be safe. Because what you do, others will do too. Others will do it too. So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all. Trains move quietly so you won't hear

them coming. You won't hear them coming. See? Safe riding sets an example. Yeah, an example for me. Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really? Really, really. Ugh. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. Next category is called Panic Time.

I have the Lakers, Minnesota and atlanta put them any order you want um from 20 to 18 lakers are 16 and 21 lebron is edging toward 30 points a game and it's i i gotta say it's fun to watch him just on crappy teams trying to score 50 points i can't say i'm not enjoying it i'm also kind of enjoying these pieces that I'm supposed to feel bad for LeBron. He's even tried to milk the sympathy thing a little bit. It's like, well, your team traded nine first-round picks for Anthony Davis. They traded first-round picks in the Westbrook trade and in the Schroeder trade a couple of years ago, and now they have no assets left. And you're looking at the small miracles, like the fact that Austin Reeves is pretty good. Here's the part I don't understand.

Nobody's been able to explain this to me. Why did LeBron sign the extension? Why? What was he thinking? What was the point of that? Why not keep your options open? We already know that LeBron is like a billionaire. We already know that he loves to bet on himself and take things year to year. Why sign an extension and make it impossible for the team to trade you if something goes wrong? Do you realize how much more fun this season would be if LeBron was tradable right now? How many teams we'd be sending him to? How many times we'd be in the trade machine trying to figure out deals for him. It's just such a bummer.

And I don't understand why he, who is a basketball genius and one of the smartest NBA players we had, didn't look at this from a big picture standpoint and go, wow, Davis gets hurt a lot. If he gets hurt, I am fucked this year. There's no way I should sign an extension. Nope, he signed it. So it's hard for me to work up a ton of sympathy

for him because I think he should have kept his options open. Anyway, I have the Lakers at 20. I have Minnesota, another team that I have no sympathy for at 17 to 21. The Go-Bear trade is really looking like an all, all, all, all, all timer. An all timer. Like we'll be telling our grandkids about how bad it was. Towns is out for a while. There's already some rumblings that maybe he'll be available. The most exciting thing that's happened in Minnesota this year is just figuring out if the two owners would be able to come up with the money for the deadlines for these 20% of the money has to be by January 1st. There was a lot of buzz out there that they could not come

up with the second installment. So they did at the last minute. Congrats to them. Who could have guessed that A-Rod might not be able to come through in the clutch? He did. So I guess the best thing with Minnesota is Edwards is going. He's a 26, 7, and 5 guy in December and January. So congrats to him. And then Atlanta. I love Edwards, by the way. And Edwards, this might be the first time a 22-year-old guy has played himself in the shape or 21, however old he is. It felt like he played himself in shape during the first month of the season. He was Shaq in 2004. Last but not least, Atlanta at 17 and 20. On the bright side, the Capella,

Trae Young, DeJounte Murray, Collins, Hunter lineup is plus 10.8 per 100 at 324 minutes, which is a huge sample size. That's why I'm not ready to give up on this team

because their best five guys play well together, or at least the advanced metrics say so. Bogdanovic coming off the bench. I like a couple of the rookies they have. Rossello says this a lot.

Rossello loves the Atlanta roster and there's some chemistry stuff and there's some, is Trae Young any fun at all to play with stuff? I thought it was hilarious that there was some, he might ask for a trade

after the season. It's like, good luck. We'll see who's coming after you if another Atlanta season goes sideways. I can't give up on this team yet because I don't think Young is a 31% three-point shooter. He just

seems like he's been off now for an abnormally long amount of time. I don't think he's that fun to play with. I don't love the body language. I think there's a lot of problems with this team. I think they missed Kevin Herter. At the same time, I wouldn't love the body language. There's a lot of problems with this team. And I think they missed Kevin Herter. But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if after all of this turmoil, they went on a little run.

So keep an eye out of them. Just be careful betting against them the next two weeks. So those are the three. Los Angeles, Minnesota, Atlanta. All right, we have the treading water division is the Knicks at 2018. Did the what ifs for them. Portland at 19 and 17.

Portland's that guy in your fantasy league that you never know if they're going forward or if they just got drunk at the draft. I don't know what Portland's playing us. I think they want to contend, but it also wouldn't shock me if they went the other way and traded Jeremy Grant. And we're like, let's do one more and then we'll get it.

Or it wouldn't shock me if they traded Shaden Sharp for Ananobi. I have no idea what they're up to. Miami's 20-18. I have them as the 15th best team. They have three 21-point scorers. They've been in the mix now. They made the finals in 20, almost made the finals in 22. And over and over again, they've been able to regenerate themselves.

Like my wife's mother thought she lost her spleen in a car accident, but there was some tissue left and it turned out her spleen regenerated, which I'd never heard of. We thought this was like the most, it showed up in a no more riots. Like your spleen's back? That's kind of what Miami's like. They just regenerate.

You think like they're 41 and 41 in 2017. They missed the playoffs in a tiebreaker. They keep their pick. It was supposed to go to Phoenix in the Dragoch trade. And they get banned at 14th. Two years later, they go 39 and 43. Hero falls to 13. The draft craters after that.

They get him. They pull off that Butler sign and trade. It's just, I can't count them out. I watch them. I think they look old. I think they're going to get hurt. I could see them finishing 33 and 49. Or I could see them pulling off some crazy trade,

like any deal for nothing. And all of a sudden we have to deal with them again. So I have them 15 and then 14 is Phoenix, who until Booker comes back, who the hell knows. Next category, frisky and lovable, 13, Indiana, 21 and 17. And that's the team we thought was going to trade with the Lakers. It should go the other way. The Lakers should be trading with them

and offering them Davis. Their keepers are Halliburton, Matherin, Miles Turner, Nembhard. And they also have Heald and Neesmith and Duarte and McConnell as assets. And the ability to make it. They have cap space. They're the sixth team in the East right now.

They could make one more trade. Halburton's great. Halburton's a franchise guy. Over and over again, I enjoy the hell out of watching this team. So I would rather see them add to this bunch. To me, they remind me of Sacramento who had this other frisky and lovable team at 12.

Sacramento is 19 and 16. Indiana is 21 and 17. Barnes is the one, I know he's a big locker room guy for them, but he's not playing that well. He's 31% from three this year. It's like a 14 and five guy, whatever. What would happen if they moved Barnes and a future first or whatever for Bogdanovich and really got serious? Because I think if you add Bogdanovich and really got serious. Because I think if you add Bogdanovich's craftiness offensively to everything else they have, that team is an absolute bitch to play.

And right now, they're a half guy short. So keep that one in the back of your head. Wild cards, I have four. These are 11 Clippers, 10 Golden State, nine Dallas, 8 Philly. All of whom I could see ripping off a 12-game winning streak tomorrow

or injuries, who the hell knows. Kawhi. So I've been watching Kawhi carefully. He does look good. He also has this old man regular season game now that I can't tell if this is who he is or not. He seems like he never has any lift whatsoever on his jump shot.

He's only shooting 27.4% on threes. And yet, I'm still afraid of him. And I feel like he's on cruise control a little bit. So, last three years before he missed last year, he was 38% from three.

Now he's 27. Are the threes going to come back? Are his legs getting old? What's going on? The other thing that's weird for them is this Reggie Jackson, John Wall, Luke Kennard. They play Wall and Kennard together. Wall can't shoot threes anymore.

I feel like they're going to have to pick two of those guys going forward. So keep an eye on that one. Golden State's at 10 for me. Curry's back next week. They got Klay going again. Klay's last 20, 23 points a game.

He's averaging almost 11 threes a game and 41.3% from three. And I test, he's got it four out of five nights now. He'll have the terrible night, you know, every 10 days. But I think they righted the ship because you look at like their five-man lineup,

but Curry, Clay, Wiggins, Looney, and Draymond is plus 23 in 278 minutes. The bench was the issue. Well, now Poole is kind of back to being a rational confidence. Poole, again, he's had some good games. He was terrible last night, but for the most part.

Ty Jerome, they got going. DiVincenzo, Anthony Lamb, Kaminga. Maybe they can grab Alex Caruso. To me, it's Denver and Golden State and Memphis, probably in that order for teams I would trust to be in the finals. So I have them 10 and I have Dallas 9 with Luka as the wildcard. Luka's 34-99 for the year. We talked about what to make of these stats in the offensive explosion era. I have no idea what to do with it. But he started making his threes too, is the other thing.

But the Luka, Bullock, Dinwiddie, Powell, Finney-Smith lineup is plus 9.8 per 100. So that's a good sign for them. I just don't know what their trade is. I can't figure that piece out. How do they get better? What is it? Is it a buyout guy? Who is it? But they're at least winning and they're over 500 now and they got the ship going. I think the MVP is going to be really fast in this year because Philly have a number eight. They're 22 and 14. Embiid's 33 and a half, 10 rebounds, 53%. In a normal season, he would be a runaway MVP candidate.

But in this season of the offensive explosion where you have him, you have Luka, you have Jokic, you have Tatum. Now you have Donovan Mitchell almost at 30 points a game, like on and on and on. You're almost like numb to some of these stats. Big thing for them is Melton. And this is where, what I was talking about before with Maxie, Melton's been so good for them

as a defender, as a three-point shooter, that I feel like he has to be out there for them crunch time. So I'm going to be interested to see how they weave the Maxie minutes back in. I have two teams in the lingering spot. Number seven, New Orleans, they're 23-14,

and number six, Cleveland, at 24-14. Look, Cleveland has to improve that Lamar Stevens, LaVert spot. It just kills them over and over again. Nobody's afraid of those guys and they need some sort of shooter, but they've traded all their picks for Mitchell. So I don't really know how they're going to improve this team unless it's a buyout guy. New Orleans, we just haven't seen their full team yet, but at least they got Zion going. So stay tuned for when Ingram comes back. I think speaking of New Orleans and Cleveland, there's an interesting all-NBA thing brewing because I think right now you'd have first team all-NBA, Jokic, Tatum, Durant, Luka,

Mitchell. And I think second team for me would be Embiid, Jalen Brown, Giannis, SGA, and, um, and John Moran. Now you could flip John Moran and Mitchell. I'm fine with it. Um, you could also flip Giannis and I guess Tatum. I think that would be crazy, but that's how good this is where you have Embiid and Giannis and Ja have second team all NBA. That's how deep the top 10

is. Third team, AD and Siakam. We'll see how many games AD plays. Zion, Paul George, LeBron, some sort of threesome with them. Halliburton, definitely. And then Curry Booker when those guys come back. The guards are ridiculous. We're going to have seven guards. We're going to have Luka, we're going to have Mitchell, SGA, Ja, Halliburton, Curry, Booker, and we're going to have to pick six, assuming nobody gets injured. It's pretty freaking deep this year. And I haven't even mentioned the Kyrie thing. Let's talk about Kyrie. Number five is my sleeper, Brooklyn, 25 and 12 now. I'm not even sure they're a sleeper, but Kyrie post suspension, 26 points a game, 50, 40, 90 guy. Here's the thing. When you watch them, you think to yourself, this is a real contender.

This is real. I believe in this team. Claxton's never looked better. Simmons looks 90% where he was in Philly. He's still offensively, like his touch around the basket and stuff seems to come and go. But they can defend the rim, which they couldn't do last year when they got swept by Boston. Simmons, Claxton, KD, they have three guys now

that can at least give you issues. They're trying hard. It really seems like they like this coach and they want to win for them. And they have multiple dudes who just make 40% and up on threes. Seth Curry, KD. KD is one of them not this year.

He's 36%. But Kyrie, Joe Harris is in there. It's a really good team. And I hate to be a dick, but if they're going to win the title, we need five and a half more normal months from Kyrie. Do you trust it? Do you trust him not to cause more controversies

and just to be in his best behavior? I know he's a free agent after the year, but that's the thing with these guys. We haven't seen Kyrie just kind of stay normal really since 2017 for an entire season. Can he do it? Looks pretty good. Looks like they like each other. They finally unlocked KD and Kyrie with just a bunch of role guys. So at least it took four years, but at least they got that. The next list is the contenders.

Number four, Milwaukee, 23-13, 12-5 in games against teams with winning records so far, according to our guy, John Schumann. Middleton played 922 minutes in the 21 playoffs and has not really been 100% healthy since. And he's 31 years old. It doesn't make sense to me that he has this many nagging injuries.

And they're just not the same team when he's not out there. I continue to think there's chemistry stuff with them. I wonder with the coach how that goes long-term. And in general, you could tell me this team rips off a 20-game winning streak, or you could tell me that it's just off a 20-game winning streak, or you could tell me that it's just going to be choppy the rest of the way, and we're still going

to be afraid of them in the playoffs because Giannis, but they're never going to look right. I don't know where it goes, but they need Middleton back because their wings just aren't good enough. Memphis is 23-13. They just won three in four days. They beat. At Toronto, home New Orleans, home Sacramento, where they finally looked like the Grizzlies team we've been waiting for.

First two, they had John, Triple J, and Bane together. Adams lit it up, 61 rebounds in three games. But they were finally able to show us Adams with John, Triple J, and Bane, and Brooks. And that will be the ceiling of this team, those five guys, and whether they can stay healthy. I still like Golden State more as a safer pick when Curry comes back just because they have the pedigree.

And as Chris Vernon, what West team he's most afraid of, that was the team he said as well. Celtics, I have second now, 26 and 11. The only thing that changed with them, Rob Williams came back on the bright side. The downside was that the guys who were making threes in November stopped making threes in November stopped making threes in December. Hauser, 28.3. Derek White, 24%. Smart was down to 32%. But they had flame

shooting out of their ass for the first six weeks of the season, then it stopped. Horford, Tatum, Brown, Smart, and White are plus 15.6 in 242 minutes. That's without adding Rob. The thing is, now that Rob's back, they can always throw out five defenders on any team that's feeling it. I still think they're the safest bet in the East. Shout out to Jalen Brown for the 27 points he gave.

50% shooting. Never expected him to be this good of an offensive player. But look, Brooklyn's Brooklyn and Miami, and I'm sorry, Milwaukee are not going to be afraid of them. What I've seen from Brooklyn, the Simmons thing, I'm still dubious to him in a playoff game if he's getting intentionally fouled a couple times in the second quarter where his head goes, but he's certainly been better than I thought. And Kyrie is, you know, for better or worse, not going to be afraid. Sometimes that's for the worst, but I think those

are two really, really strong competitors for them. And the key for the Celtics is going to be getting that one seed and hoping that Milwaukee plays Brooklyn in the 2-3 spot. Worst case scenario would be if it was Philly versus Brooklyn in the 2-3 and Milwaukee drifted to number four, and that's your second round matchup. You have to see Giannis, Jesus. My favorite is Denver right now. My favorite to watch too, other than the Celtics, they're 24-13. The Jokic in December, 29-12, and 10. And it felt like bigger than that. The Jokic Gordon Murray KCP Porter is plus 16 per 100 for 250 minutes. That's a pretty big sample size. and what the trade is going to be. Because they have the trade exception, which you talked about last week. Can they get Purtle? Can they get Plumlee? Can they get a buyout guy?

Can they get one more shooter? Can they reduce their reliance on Bones Highland just a little bit? Because he worries me. He's an irrational confidence guy, but it's like, you want Bones Highland to be additive, not somebody you're relying on for 30 minutes a game.

But for the most part, I just think Jokic is the best player in the league. And going back to where we're talking about the space earlier, he's the one that's figured it out the most. Just night to night, he's just solving problems at this level that I've not seen in a long, long time. I don't want to throw the bird magic thing in it, but that's what it feels like watching it. It's just night after night. What he did to the Celtics on Sunday, the confidence that he gives to his team. And when they're making threes, they're unstoppable because you basically have to cross your fingers

and hope the threes aren't going in, but a lot of times they do. So I have Denver in the number one spot right now. I wonder, Denver fans out there, is Jokic in your Mount Rushmore yet? And who is the Denver Mount Rushmore? Because Elway's in there. Joe Sakich has to be in there.

And then Jokic. So you got two itches. And then who's the fourth one? So send Nephew Kyle a text or a tweet. DM, or not DM, put it in his reply as who you think the Denver Mount Rushmore is, and then he'll tell me. That's it.

That's what I got for the PowerPoll. That's it for the podcast. It was a little solo castaway edition today produced by Kyle Creighton as always. And I'll see you on this feed on Thursday. Best of luck out there to, to Mark Hamlin and the family. I don't see them when we start.

I don't have.