The Bill Simmons Podcast - Mitchell’s Next Team and a Fake NBA Trade Extravaganza With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo for a classic fake NBA trades podcast. First they gush about the Timberwolves and wonder whether the Clippers are for real (1:14), before they discuss possible trade candidates, including Donovan Mitchell, Dejounte Murray, O.G. Anunoby, Zach LaVine, Draymond Green, and many more (15:04)! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, the return of Rosillo. Lots of trades. Lots of fake trades next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality.

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables last night. We did National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Me, Sean, CR, Van. Super fun. Check out all the ringer.com end of the year stuff that we've been doing.

We have had some good basketball pieces too. We have really, really, really good basketball stuff. We've done a lot of end of the year stuff both on the website and on

the podcast network. if you're, if you're jonesing for some end of the year stuff, we have it. Coming up on this podcast, Ryan Rosselli, he hasn't been on in a while.

We'll talk about that. We usually wait until the second half of the year. We couldn't this year. Too much going on. We're going to make up a lot of trades. I hope you're ready.

Hope you're sitting down. First, our friends from ProJet. All right, taping this Tuesday morning Pacific time. Our friend Ryan Rosillo is here. We're going to make up a bunch of trades, try to fix some teams. Before we do that, we're going to talk about the Timberwolves because they are the story of the year right now. They had a great win against Miami last night. I was coming up from Nick's Lakers and we talked on the

phone and you were like, you've got to watch the fourth quarter. You've got to watch it. You've got to see what happened in that game. Minnesota looks like a team that can make the finals, Rosillo. I don't think this is fluky. They're 20-5. They play defense better than everyone else in the league. They have a guy

who believes he's the best player in the league, Anthony Edwards. Whether that's true or not, he believes it. And they've gotten the Towns Go Bear thing league. They have a guy who believes he's the best player in the league, Anthony Edwards, whether that's true or not, he believes it. And they've gotten the Towns Gobert thing going. They have a bench. Can this team make the finals? Yeah, I think they can. You know, it still feels like, is it because you're more open-minded about what the West really is,

you know, in comparison to those other years where it's like, how is anybody beating Golden State, you know? So when you look at the West, you go, is Denver this insurmountable thing? Or is Oklahoma City going to add a piece, which we'll mess around with today a little bit? Are you completely writing off Phoenix? So that's how we're talking about the other three teams. And I think it would be dismissive to say Minnesota can't win the West. So I'm not going to say that. I think the towns go bare thing, like whenever go bears in the middle of the paint, you're like, okay, well, how is that going to impact a guy like Anthony Edwards getting in

the hoop? Like, is that actually going to get kind of in the way? And the way that he stepped up defensively, the way he made Bam think about his decisions and the fact that they can interchange Towns and Nas Reed as these huge spacing bigs and Gobert, you know, kind of covering for Towns defensively. And then I think one of the credits credits to all this is like towns probably reluctantly at some point maybe last year going like oh i guess this anthony edwards guy is better than me and and having the right personality to make it work because i'm not sure that towns like i would have bet that towns would be totally cool with that and then you throw in jayden back defensively like what we saw them do against the wings for boston i even think Alexander Walker stepped up his

defense where when Daniels was out, it was like, hey, that's not a total loss either. And Conley, who's a diminished version of himself, was huge last night with a couple big shots. So yeah, I'm open to it. I'm ready for it. I'm not sure that I'm predicting it, but I

think writing them off would be dismissive after, what, 25 games. You look at them and you go, I don't even really know what they need. I guess they could use point guard insurance with Conley, but... Yeah, definitely. Reed and Alexander Walker come in and they're really good. Kyle Anderson is a fun change of pace guy for them. The biggest thing is what you said with Towns, that Edwards not only is the force of personality of that team but i i think

he really gets towns going i've heard i've had a couple people tell me like he's he's kind of alpha with towns getting them kind of focused and centered and i this is probably my favorite version of towns that i've seen all year there was a play in the fourth quarter yesterday when uh he had butler on him and he just kind of bully balled him in the corner and got like a 12 footer. But the Gobert piece, the fact that they figured out how to play him in towns together, it seems seemed inconceivable a year ago. I mean, we were talking about that as being one of the worst trades in the history of the league. I still think they badly overpaid. I don't know who else they're bidding against. I still think last summer, if they wanted to trade Gobert, they would have had to attach picks to it.

That's how bad last year was. But it's been this miraculous turnaround. And I got to say, I haven't loved what I've seen from Denver. I'm still, if it was at gunpoint, I think I would still pick Jokic in the West. But this Minnesota team is built to beat Denver. Whether they can do it or not, I don't know, but they have just bigs to throw at him for four quarters. They have a guy in Edwards who I think will really attack them and think he's better than

them. And they might have home court too. They're 20 and five right now. They have a three game lead in the West and they're 11 and one at home. And when you watch their home games, they have a real home crowd thing going now too. And I just, now that they're healthy, now that McDaniels is back, I just think this keeps going. That's my take. Yeah, because that's, you know, is Denver somebody that can coast?

You know, we remember how bad they played towards the end of the regular season when it looked like Jokic didn't want the MVP. And then Malone even got on their case. So I think there's always kind of a benefit of the doubt thing that we should do with them. But at least Minnesota has size

to disrupt whatever it is that Jokic is going to do. He's probably going to have to set up a little bit differently. Some of those times where Jokic is like, alright, enough of this, and gets a deep catch and just works you in the post. And the other team has no chance against it. Minnesota has a chance against it. Like few other teams do.

So what I love about it, like I'll watch some of these teams and go like Oklahoma city is a lot of fun. Maybe there's a second best team in the West, but they need another big, like you need to be able to, as much as everybody's in love with like, Hey, here's our seven or eight man rotation and this is who we are in the place this is all we're going to do like Sacramento's too small for Denver you know Oklahoma City's probably too small for Denver Dallas is too small for Denver yeah right yeah you know so and then I think Anthony Davis if he's healthy like I've seen games in the west where I go all right well whatever the score was was one thing but like how are you going to handle it? I mean, Golden State should still have nightmares about not having

any other matchup option against Anthony Davis and LeBron getting into the restricted area at will throughout that series last year. So when you watch Minnesota and you watch, you know, even the BAM stuff that, that catch and BAM's like, Oh, like, what do I do? And BAM even got a couple to roll in or, or he would have had a disastrous fourth quarter. So I'm with you. I don't know. The headline of the pod is Minnesota's winning the whole thing, but you have to put them up there with every other team in the West.

I don't know if it's an even chance. Again, I don't know what the odds would be, but at least I can visualize what it would look like, even if it feels newer than some of the other teams you would say, hey, they're absolutely a contender to win a title.

I feel comfortable saying this at least. If they stay healthy, they're going to get the one seed in the West. I think that's going to happen. I mean, they're first in net rating with,

I'm sorry, defensive rating. And I think that's going to stay that way. I mean, they're 106.6 per 100 possessions. One interesting thing with them, when Edwards and McDaniels, you know, they have those on NBA.com with the two-man, three-man, all the different lineups. Just the two-man lineup of

Edwards and McDaniels is plus 13.8. And it feels that way when you watch them against good teams. The thing that scared me as a Celtic fan watching them lose that OT game to the T-Wolves was that Tatum and Brown just weren't getting the shots that they were happy with. Everything was contested with those guys because McDaniels and Edwards together when Edwards wants to play defense is so scary. But man, it's the story of the year. OKC, when we're going to make up some trades, I do think OKC, if they, if they really cashed in those picks and went after a couple of guys could go after them. I'm not giving up on Denver, but to me, as I look at both conferences, I can't take any contender seriously that doesn't have size because the size is back in such a big way.

You look at the East, Boston, Philly, Milwaukee, and then Miami's going to be there. And then you look at the West, and it's Minnesota and it's Denver. And probably OKC if they can add somebody. Other than that, you know, the Lakers would be the other team. And I don't know what their trade's going to be. And then after that, it depends on, you know,

whether this Clippers thing is for real, which is the other thing we have to talk about quick before we make up trades. Clippers have looked fantastic. They're just blowing teams out. And I think it's a honeymoon phase with Harden. I'm not buying it. Paul George and Kawhi are healthy.

They've been healthy the whole year. If you have all these guys together and you're telling me this is going to be the way it goes for seven months and everybody's happy, maybe I'll take that seriously for the playoffs, but we've been here with these guys in all these different ways. No matter what they're doing,

I'm just grain assaulting it. Where are you right now with it? With which part with it? With, with which, I mean, which part of it? What are you asking me?

Well, neither of us like the hard to trade. Well, and now that, now they look really good. The reason I ask it that way is because, yeah,

right now it looks awesome, but I'm never going to get that part of the back of my head to be like, okay, what's it going to look like once we actually get into the playoffs? So let's be fair to Harden here. I take Harden's side on the contract thing.

All right? I do. I don't know why a guy would give himself a $13 million haircut, which was weird because then he wanted credit for it three different times. And then it was like, yeah, but you never actually extended. Based on your argument, your position is that you were promised that you were, and whatever, you know, the six are going to say they,

they never promised anything that, that he's out of his mind. And there was a miscommunication with the whole thing. All right. So, uh, the other part that I think is fair to harden is that you just say the words I take heart inside.

I just wanted to make sure I heard that. Okay. No, I've always on the contract thing with this. I don't look, we've watched the NBA. We've talked about it for a really long time. I don't think guys give up $13 million for no reason.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So then when he first gets with the Clippers, and basketball teams seem to do this for whatever reason, they'll do something dumb because of feelings, knowing that it's a dumb thing. And to have Harden come off the bench because you can't have Westbrook play off the ball where it's like, all right, how long are you guys going to do this?

So, you know, the plus-minus fest for Harden in the beginning was a disaster, and everybody's pointing it out. Like, I referenced it, but I know even when I referenced it, it's like, yeah, but if you watch this, like, Harden's out there with the second unit because, you know,

they don't really want to disrupt Russ. But at the same time, like, Lou wasn't going to do that, and now guess what? Look at the Harden plus minus stuff that he's playing with the better players and now Westbrook

because Westbrook has to have the ball in his hands, which the Lakers are like, OK, this isn't going to work. And he didn't want to come off the bench and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, now that he's playing

with the better players and I think the more important thing, like look at Kawhi's numbers in December. They're absurd. So if that's all clicking and it was funny too, because like I was watching

the Lakers in in the dallas game and i went man if the clippers have all three of their dudes with george and kawaii and hard and healthy will they have enough if they're in a playoff series to hang up on the perimeter defensively you know granted vando's back and all that kind of stuff i was like i don't know i don't know if they'll have enough options there defensively for this perimeter stuff and maybe ad cancels it all out. So, yeah, it looks awesome. They figured out the hardened piece of it.

He's finishing at the rim far better than he was like the first two weeks when he was there that showed this massive amount of decline. But it's all irrelevant to me unless they're healthy. It's just they may end up with a great seed, but it's just a really hard team to buy. I mean, hell, Kawhi against Phoenix last year in the couple of playoff games he played, you're like, whoa, dude, this is starting to look like 2019 Toronto Kawhi. Yeah, I went on Thursday night

and I was stunned by how much better he looked than how he looked like two weeks earlier when I saw him in person. I mean, he looked like fast and explosive and just like five years ago, Kawhi. So that was more interesting to me than the Harden piece because Harden's going to come and go. Right now he's in shape.

He's happy. He's looking good. But we just know the rollercoaster ride that that guy's, this version of him, the post-Houston version of him. I just don't trust it. We've never seen him happy for more than two months. They also, they lucked out with that Daniel Tice, just being able to get another big body who at least knows where to go and what to do, you know, and they just,

they just stole him as a buyout guy. You and I, it's, you know, we, we, but we're tortured by the Tice minutes when he was in Boston, but he's at least like competent and they just kind of needed somebody who could at least just be competent, you know didn't have that once Plumlee went down. So the big thing, though, is they've had Kawhi and George healthy now for two months, and we haven't seen that in how many years? Is it okay if I don't trust it? It's like Bradley Beal could make it one day before he got hurt. I just thought the track history of if you just get hurt every year

to just think, oh, it's not going to happen this year, you're going to be healthy. I just don't trust it. No, I think they could use another big and Tice is funny

because it was just nice to be able to watch him get worked again. Like, I just wanted to see Tice, like I know now with Draymond Green we're in a different level

of sensitivity of players assaulting other players, but how many times are you going to get hit in the face? Like, watching him with Boston, how many times he just going to get hit in the face? Watching him with Boston, how many times he just would be on the baseline

with his face all red, turning to the ref, being like, did you not see that? Chris Paul annihilated him last week, got a flagrant. Chris would never do that. Tice just takes more abuse than any player in the history of the league. It's hilarious. Yeah, and I'm just glad the West Coast gets to experience.

So just a heads up to Clippers fans, you're going to see it the entire time. So, okay. Like the whole point of me going like, what are you actually asking me? It's awesome right now. It's awesome. And nothing helps your scoring output more than facing the Pacers. I mean, my God, I'm looking at that score and be like, wait, they have 103 and there's

like five minutes left in the third quarter. So it looks really good. It looks, hey, all the good players are playing. It looks really good. You know, talk to me in May. The Pacers are like one of those inside edition commercials where commercials where it's like the dark side of making the in-season tournament.

Indiana thought that their whole season was ahead of them after they made the finals. And then they never won again. It's just, it's the Lakers kind of, it seems like it broke them in some ways. And that's a team that is on my, my fake trade list. Most likely trade guy for you. Let's go back and forth. We'll swap trade guys.

Cause it's trade season. It's mid-December. Some, some trade restrictions have come off the table. It's technically, but Bobby Marks had a great tweet of like, here's the number of December trades. It wasn't a lot. Yeah, not really. Not really.

I mean, I can find it again, but I think the number, I forget if it was zero last year or one. But yeah, so you want to do what? You want to go back and forth on most likely traded guys and then throw some trades at each other? And then we'll do some trades and some teams that we think. But I thought we'll just go back and forth

with the most likely guys will end up with like a top six. But I'll let you go first. Who do you think is the single most likely good player to get traded over the next two months? I think it's Donovan Mitchell. Cleveland's in a, you know, for a young team,

we're sitting here talking about the Clippers as a health bet. The Cavs aren't supposed to be a bad health bet. And Mobley's going to be out two months. Garland has a broken jaw. You know, Mitchell's always good to miss a few games. And this is a team in the regular season last year that put up some really impressive numbers. You know, the best defense. You're like, okay, what are they going to look like in the playoffs? I'd already mentioned sometimes when I watch them in that Knicks series, I kind of think bigger

picture, like, are they going to be able to play the two bigs? So there seems like there's a bit of a power struggle here with what Mitchell wants, but it seems like no one around the league actually thinks he wants to stay in Cleveland. He's under contract next year. He's going to play option the year after that. It just, it feels like with the way the Knicks are, like the Knicks are pretty good. I want you to talk about it because you saw him in person last night.

But it just, the tea leaves on this one seem to be pointing the direction that maybe Cleveland hits the reset button to try to get some assets before it gets uglier. And this is something that's been brewing before this season. We had Garrett Bush on this podcast who's from Cleveland who does a show there. And he was saying, and this was in August, that nobody thinks he's staying there. And I think that's what we've heard. I haven't heard anybody be like, no, no, you guys are wrong. He's staying. Everybody seems to think he's out at some

point and this year was going to be the test year. Couldn't have gone worse. Mobley, I don't know how long he was hurt, but the six to eight weeks for the knee surgery, as you know, I'm always on the record. I never believe it's going to be, oh, he'll be back in six to eight weeks. I always feel like it's going to be worse than that. They weren't playing well anyway. And I think maybe what happens first, if they think they have a chance to keep Mitchell, is they change the coach. And if they don't think they have a chance to keep Mitchell,

then they move on the Mitchell trade. But I'm with you. I think I had three Mitchell trades. And I mean, it's going to be Miami or Brooklyn. And I think everybody feels pretty confident. Miami or Brooklyn or New York? Well, we'll talk about New York. I would vote Miami or Brooklyn as my favorites because especially after watching the Knicks last night,

I don't know if that's a great move to use all their assets to get another small guard who needs the ball all the time. That team is pretty Brunson dominant and Brunson's been excellent this year, but he has the ball a lot. And like to me, I would want a big if I were them or I would want like a shooter with length

versus just another small guard who needs the ball all the time. Now, if you get them at a 50% discount, I'm fine with that. But if I were them, that's not how I'd use my resources. Now, the Knicks are a little screwed because they were headed,

this summer there was a point where it was like, we make a Giannis, we make it Embiid. Those guys have a chance to be super unhappy. Giannis doesn't want to sign an extension. Embiid's got this Harden saga. Now Harden's the happiest he's been in his entire career. And Giannis, they made the Dame trade. He signed the extension. So the question for the Knicks is, is there a better asset coming down the road? And if we get Donovan Mitchell, is that really going to change our destiny? I think there's still too small. Robinson's out for a while, but even if Robinson comes back, I just don't think they have the size to compete against some of these big contenders. So how does Mitchell change that? I don't see how it would.

Well, it doesn't. I mean, granted the Robinson injury hurts. I think Tibbs, it's pretty clear how, you know, how great the organization feels about Hardenstein. And then, you know, they had Jericho Sims start a game the other day who may, you know, be only a rotational guy. He's like,

he's like a 12th man. I mean, Taj Gibson was playing fourth quarter minutes for them yesterday. Yeah. Once they signed Taj, I was like, okay, you know,

this is bad security. Yeah. I get back. So, you know, whenever we're talking about like ball-dominant guys, I admit you go, man, I'd love this awesome offensive player

to also want to play with the other guys. So you're going, okay, wait. McHalliburton style. Halliburton can have the ball, but he also doesn't need the ball. Right, and the Warriors spoiled us because you had all these terrific players that wanted to play with each other. And I would say that's

probably the exception in the NBA. So there's two things. Like, okay, so you're taking it away from Brunson. That's probably bad because even though he's ball dominant, I mean, he was so good in the fourth quarter last night, like reading the screens, the Lakers couldn't quite figure it out. He rejects another screen, hits a floater. feel for it. He gets the shot he wants every single time. So I don't know how having Mitchell

would help him. I don't count Luka as a guard. You know that. Just making sure. Sometimes it feels like mini Luka when you're watching Brunson. Because it's not necessarily fast. It's just that he changes his speeds all the time and then kind of

just finds a way. Do you see his stats this year? For Brunson? I mean, which ones? He's 48, 46, 80 are his splits. He's 46% from three this year. That's nuts. And at the end of these games, he's just doing, getting whatever shot he wants. Anyway, go ahead. I interrupted you interrupted you no so i think when you look at you go well wait a minute if you plug mitchell in here and by the way it's another small guard the teams you know when it comes to the playoffs they'll be like okay well let's see how well this brunson stuff works you know the lakers even try to blitz him at one point that i thought was like a little bit too late in the game because they were just letting him dictate everything uh you're

like maybe mitchell isn't the perfect fit you know like you know mitchell can off, but he also can get a little single-minded, you know, at times. You even saw that with Utah and stuff. So, hey, does that really fit? I don't think that's what teams do. I think teams go, hey, we have R.J. Barrett, who is now seventh and fourth quarter minutes for the Knicks. I looked it up this morning. Like, last year, no one spent more time tracking R.J. Barrett

fourth quarter minutes than I did in the world last year. You had, like, one of those walls where you're just writing a magic marker. Right. And I'm kind of like, why do you keep doing this? I mean, that's a significant drop. He was like at eight minutes in the fourth quarter, even though Tibbs would kind of sub him out strategically because defensively he clearly doesn't trust him.

Well, now he's seventh and you have to pay RJ all of this money. You know, it's 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, you know, so it's this massive extension that kicks in. And so if you added a piece with RJ, which is going to be one of my, my fake trades, you go, all right, fine. He's not perfect. And maybe there's not a perfect overlap of, of usage because they're both high usage kind of ISO players and all this stuff. And then you have to make sure you still have the Randall possessions because he's fixed some things since the disaster started the season. I think teams just go, I think teams just go, okay, cool. Yeah. It's not perfect, but it's better. It's better.

And we're removing, we're just, we're better now. We're better because we have Mitchell instead of this. Like you, you talk about waiting around for the next mad star, which will happen and we will be surprised, but I don't know, that's a tough way to build a team and be like, hey, he's not perfect, so let's wait for the perfect guy. Are you sure about that? So the case for the Knicks trying to make a move in the next two months is they have these three 2024 Dallas-Detroit-Washington picks. All of them are protected. The Dallas pick is top 10 protected, so that's going to activate the Detroit pick is protected all the way through 27

probably you're not seeing that for a couple years then the Washington pick is basically you're probably not seeing it until two years from now but they have this window to try to trade those picks because the protections who knows I just I think there's better moves for them like

not to just turn this into a next segment, but Ananobi is a free agent, right? If you're Toronto, why wouldn't you just flip Ananobi for Barrett and grab what, like one of those protected picks and just call it a day? You know, cause I, I actually like Barrett. I think he's, you know, it's a weird, this isn't maybe the perfect team for him. But when I look at a team like Toronto, I actually think he'd play better for them, plus he's Canadian. They're going to lose Zananobe at the end of the year.

They lost Van Vliet for nothing, which I still don't really understand that strategy. And I would, to me, that's a trade that made the salaries match up. And if I were the Knicks, I would rather do that and see what it looks like before I then made the Mitchell trade. Who do you think is better, OG or Mitchell?

Oh, Mitchell's better than OG. But I just think Mitchell's going to cost a shitload of stuff. Like what Cleveland gave up for Mitchell, you know, was three firsts and two swaps, and then Markkinen was in that trade, Sexton was in that trade. But nobody liked Markkinen, and everybody was off of Sexton. I'm just saying, you then can't just give him away

for two firsts and a player. They're going to be trying to get picks back. That's why I actually think, let's take a break because I think there's better Mitchell trades for them. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports.

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Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right, coming back. We're talking about Donovan Mitchell. And I was saying I thought Miami and Brooklyn were the two candidates. You felt it last night in that Miami-Minnesota game. Hero is a good score. He's a 22, 23 points a game guy. He's not as good as Donovan Mitchell is. And if they had Mitchell in that game last night, that's a different Miami, Minnesota game. They have multiple places they could go. And it's basically the same, kind of the same stuff they were offering in the Dame rumors, whatever was true or not. But if it was Mitchell for Tyler Harrow, Jovich,

who's lighting up the G League, I don't even know. I just know he's played G League games. And then you go here 24, 28, and 31st. Maybe there's some sort of swap in there. That's a pretty good outcome for the Cavs because Jairo would be able to replace a lot of that offense and is probably a better fit with Garland. And I think you and I are both way more invested in the Garland piece of this.

I've never loved the Garland-Mitchell combo. I think that's as good as Miami would do. I would not put Hawkins in the trade if I was Miami. To me, he's... I'm just not trading him. No. I don't think you have to. I mean, you also have to figure out... The whole reason for the Knicks in the first pass

through with the Mitchell thing was they didn't really believe that there was a threat, right? So they were like, okay, fine, whatever. And then Cleveland comes out of there and then hands him a couple pieces that look even better now and then all the picks. But with Hawkins, he's not the kind of guy that gets included in this stuff. He just doesn't, unless you think that Brooklyn, New York, and Miami are all bidding and then it has to happen. But, you know, is Hero better than RJ? They're different players.

I think what I like about the RJ is like his little spin move driving to the basket stuff is, if you have a team of guys who are kind of outside the perimeter and then you have him pounding, it makes sense. It's just, with him and Brunson, it's a tiny bit redundant.

And Randall. Both Randall and Barrett have similar, like that spin, kind of put your shoulder into them. Steph, I like Hero a little bit more. Yeah, I think Hero's the better player. You know, there's some numbers that would tell you this is the best Barrett's played for a while, but yet he's playing less minutes.

You know, he was around 35 minutes a game for about three years, and now he's playing less minutes. Yeah. You know, he's, he went, he was around 35 minutes a game for about three years and now he's at under 30 technically. I think the fact that quickly last night, I mean, quickly was great last night. That's the other thing with Mitchell to the Knicks, like quickly does some of the stuff you'd expect Mitchell to do. You know, he's not as good as Mitchell is, but I just don't think that's what they need. Um, the Brooklyn trade is the one that I think makes the most sense to me because Brooklyn's in a weird spot where they don't have any of their picks.

So if they're doing any sort of trade, it makes sense for them to improve, not go backwards. And they have a shitload of stuff still. They have the 27 and 29 Phoenix firsts. They have the 29 Dallas first. They have the 29 Dallas first. They have a Philly pick. They have Cam Johnson, who's eligible to be traded in a couple of weeks. So they can put together like Cam Johnson, Cam Thomas, two Phoenix first, the 29 unprotected Dallas first, and take Mitchell down. I think they have the most to offer. And then he gets to stay in New York,

him and Bridges together. And that's not nothing. And then they just sign him to an extension. I mean, he went to school in Connecticut. I think he wants to be in New York. And they just have more to offer than the Knicks do. Well, they have the picks and they don't feel like they're disrupting anything either.

Right? Right. Like it doesn't feel like with the Knicks conversation that we just had, you're going, okay, how does it fit? And I still think it's important to keep hammering this point. I think front offices go, hey, it makes us better. It makes us better. We they'd had, I think, 11 games over 500 head start when then they tore it down. Yeah. And so you kept looking at the seating being like, hey, they're still around. They're still around. It's like, yeah, they'd actually built up a bunch of wins. And that's why they're going to be in the playoffs.

And then Bridges goes off. And I think Bridges has been better, you know, after kind of a start of like, wait, was that a little fluky? Like him being the number one option? I mean, it certainly was like nobody's going to build their team and say, hey, Bridges needs to be the number one overall option. But they have, I would say Finney Smith's available. Royce O'Neal's clearly available. Dinwiddie's clearly available. Do any of those things get you more excited than RJ Barrett or Tyler Hero? Of course not. Right. Right. So you're saying if you're going in, you're going in for Mitchell.

If you're Brooklyn. Also like, if you know, I feel like after the top, after Boston, Philly, Milwaukee, the four seats kind of available right now,

you know, and it could be the Knicks. It could be whoever, but the East isn't as of available right now. And it could be the Knicks, it could be whoever, but the East isn't as good as the West. I don't know. If I were Brooklyn, I would do it because I don't really care about the picks down the road. I feel like they've lost all of their relevance. They were going toe-to-toe a little bit with the Knicks,

and now it's a wins-last-nets conversation you have. They're probably in the top five teams I've watched the least on League Pass. I just don't care. I'm just not that interested. See, put Mitchell on there. I'm a little more interested. I have a dark horse for you, though.

You might have written this down, too. What about New Orleans for him? What if I offered you C.J CJ McCollum and Dyson Daniels in my 24 first, and I gave you that Lakers pick they have that you can take it this year or next year? You know what? I'll even throw in my 27 bucks first, and I'll take Donovan Mitchell back. And now I'm ready to go. I got, hopefully, fingers crossed with Zion that he might be in shape in two months.

I got Brandon Ingram and I got Donovan Mitchell and I got length all over the place. I can spare Daniels because I have other swingmen who can defend. I got to keep Jordan Hawkins

and I'm just, and I kept Valanchunas. And Murphy. I kept Nance and I'm actually ready to contend now. I have options at the end. I have three guys I can go to at the end of the game that can score. Like, why wouldn't they get in this?

I guess because maybe because they would think they, we can't resign them in two, in two years. Yeah. I mean, that's going to be the fun part of the marketing conversation is that all of these deals, like at least Brooklyn, Mitchell would stay. New York, Mitchell would stay. And look, he's got the player option a third year from now. So, you know, sometimes you talk about Mitchell like he's expiring and maybe Cleveland's like, you guys are making too big of a deal out of this. We still have him under contract for next year.

Miami, he would likely stay. It seems to be that he would be into that. New Orleans always has to worry about this stuff. Like CJ's fine in New Orleans. You know, Dyson Daniels is probably, yeah, Dyson Daniels is probably fine in New Orleans. If I'm giving you Dyson and CJ, and I would be tempted to say yes,

because to the original Knicks point, even if it's not a perfect fit, does it raise our offensive ceiling in a playoff series? Well, with Mitchell, it does. Beyond CJ, beyond Daniels at this point. But if I'm giving you Daniels and CJ, you're not getting three picks from me. No way.

So what if it was CJ and Daniels and I'll give you my 24 first and I'll give you that Lakers pick? I feel like I personally have too much invested in Daniels, but this is the whole point. If you have all this depth, you have all these players, you've drafted so well, you still have Hawkins, you still have Najee, you still have Herb Jones, you have the wings that can cover. The wings have had to cover defensively for CJ,

so they can certainly cover for Donovan Mitchell. I'd be really tempted to do it, but I'd have to hear from Mitchell and be like, like hey can you be into this for for this year and next can you be into it because can i can i tell you can i tell you something else even beyond that i kind of like the calves more with cj and dice and dados than with mitchell i don't know that i love the cj garland thing you just got smaller and they were they were already pretty small well you and i both love daniels i would love to see him ultimately your your team down the road is garland and daniels is your backcourt which makes way more sense in my head you know but i just i want to see daniels play and and uh

here's another thing to add that to that too and like this isn't necessarily a knock on on mitchell at all it's more about who cj is as a guy and the fact that he's bought into new orleans and it's been so inconsistent you know other than that stretch last year you know when they were healthy and everything looked really good and you're like dude this team like i thought they were the deepest team in the league at one point i feel like there's a real value to cj that maybe we don't understand as much from the outside with all this is an This is an awesome guy. Yeah. There's a lot of bullshit that you deal with and it's important to have that adult. It's like the Conley thing from Minnesota. Yeah. All right. We've got all these other personalities, a couple of young dudes,

you know, go bears own battles. And so you've got just a very calming presence who's been through a lot of stuff, who understands what it's like to be a veteran. Would Mitchell be that? Even though head-to-head there's no conversation about CJ versus Donovan Mitchell. I don't think that's breaking news. I just became enamored in my head about a crunch time with Mitchell and Zion and Shape and Brandon Ingram

all out there at the same time, just what that would look like. I do have an announcement, though. This is now the eighth straight season that I've made up a fake trade with CJ McCollum in it, which broke my own personal record. Congratulations to me. Congratulations to him.

We really have something special. I've just figured out every year how to work him into a trade. So there you go. All right, so out of all those teams, what's your favorite? What's your favorite Mitchell fit? Brooklyn? No, because it's just him there with nothing necessarily.

Look, I know Bridges is better. They have a class and decision to make. You're like, okay, what do we really want to pay this guy? So you want him on the Knicks then, it sounds like. You're ready for the Knicks to just say, fuck it. I am. I am. And I know it's not perfect, and I know it means sacrifice from players that are usually at

their best, not necessarily sacrificing a ton, but having one guy initiate that pick and roll over and over and over again at that size for Brunson, as great as he is against more intense defense and in the playoffs is a bit of a concern. But look, I thought Cleveland, because they had

these two on-ball guys and Garland and Mitchell would work against New York, and then that didn't work. But I also think it gets back to kind of the stuff that we were, you know, at least it's a theory with the Mobley-Allen stuff, being like, will that work in today's game? So we're thinking like Fournier is expiring,

RJ Barrett, and then the Knicks have all their own firsts, 24 through 30. So what, three of those? I would build it around RJ. RJ goes to Dallas. Look, they have to make a Hartenstein decision. Not trading him.

Right. But they've got to pay him. Quickly is a restricted free agent. So they'll match whatever with quickly. Right. But the Knicks have done a really good job here, you know, as far as like picking, especially picking a little bit later and just finding guys. And it's, you know, at times with Grimes and even McBride, you've got heart and devincenzo like they're just guarding you to death but it's a

bunch of smaller players i would be like you know what we've done a really good job let's just start moving some of these pieces and if it means it's two picks i don't think it's three picks i think the price has gone from three to two picks but it also depends on these picks like all of these picks have been moving around bill like when you start looking at them and you're bringing up the pretension uh protection a lot of times you're like, oh, wait, so I'm going to end up with like a 22, a 25, and a 27. Right. Like, wait, like what happened?

Oh, this one now became two second rounders. Like that's not as – I liked it better when it just said I had seven firsts coming in. I didn't realize that six of them were going to be in the 20s. Right. But I think that's what we discover as we actually get closer to these picks being carried over. So yeah, I'm more on the Knicks thing.

It sounds like you like the Brooklyn thing and starting over with Bridges and Mitchell because they have no buzz. So you would say, hey, if you're... What's the piece, though, that matches R.J. Barrett? Even if it's flawed or, hey, R.J. maybe isn't the guy. I kind of like him still a little bit, too. I'm with you.

I don't know what player piece matches R.J., RJ maybe isn't the guy. I kind of like him still a little bit too. I'm with you. I did too. I don't know what player piece matches RJ and then it becomes a dueling pick thing. And is the third first with protections trump the two firsts with a worse player? So it wouldn't be a Cam Johnson, Cam Thomas combo for you plus picks? I'm not in the Cam Thomas business.

I get in the Cam Johnson business. I'm not in the Cam Thomas business. So your number one guy that you thought was going to get traded was Mitchell. Mine is DeJounte Murray. I think that happens. I think they keep Trae Young. I just think they're too far Trey Young is like the house that they've been rehabbing

for five years and now they just can't sell it they just gotta like this house might be nice someday we can't get out of this we just gotta do it this Murray Young thing doesn't work they gave it a whirl

I was in on it this year I thought I liked the Atlanta over which I think was This Murray-Young thing doesn't work. They gave it a whirl. I was in on it this year. I thought I liked the Atlanta over, which I think was 42. I thought Quinn Snyder was going to unlock some stuff and you watch it. And they're just, defensively, it's just a no-go. And Murray's a point guard.

I don't think he can play off the ball. And I think they have to move him. So my favorite Murray trade, buckle up. I like the Rockets, and I think they're too young at the Jalen Green, Jabari spots, but they're in these games,

and they're just either too inexperienced, and I just kept thinking, if I'm Atlanta, and I can get Jalen Green, and I can get Old Depot's expiring and throw me the Brooklyn 2024 first that you have and I'll give you DeJounte Murray. And now you're putting DeJounte Murray in that Jalen Green spot. Now you're going to say, well, they're too small again. He was just too small in Atlanta.

Now you have Van Vliet and DeJounte Murray as your backcourt. I just like the fit more than what they have now. And I still really like him. I think, I like the idea of having two ball handlers with Shangoon and they've got some size on the wings and I just think they'd be better. And if I'm Atlanta, Jalen Green's 21 years old. And if I could turn Murray into him in a pick,

a really good high-end first-round pick, that Brooklyn pick would be top 15 unless they trade for Mitchell. I kind of like it. Is this about getting Jalen Green out of Houston's closing group? Yeah, which the other move they could make

is just not have Jalen Green in the closing group. I wonder if he may... And play Tyree Eason and just say, you know what? Tyree Eason is better for this closing group than Jalen Green is, and we just have to admit it. Yeah, because Jalen Green, like, I'll look at it, and I was going through the D'Angelo Russell stuff, because he's going to come up at some point today where you're like, man, D'Angelo Russell took like 20 shots a game for the Warriors when he was there. Like, in what world would any team be like, hey, we want you taking 20 shots. And for as bad as

Houston was, it wasn't the end of the world that Jalen Green took 18, but I don't know if he's going to be an 18 or 19 shot a game guy. And the best versions of Green are these insane drives. He gets by everybody. He hangs in the air. He does this thing where he kind of likes to float to his left and then try to scoop it underneath you. And when it works, it looks like one of the best drives in the league. And when it doesn't, you're like, what did you think was going to happen when you took off? I still hold out some hope for Jabari. Maybe he's never going to initiate enough stuff on the ball, but I know he competes. I know he defends. The shooting numbers have been better this year. Yeah, I like Jabari. But, you know, Shingun's development and then all of Green's shots, not all of, but a chunk of Green's shots going to Van Vliet, going to Brooks, where the ball isn't in Jalen Green's hands, where it's he and Kevin Porter Jr. just going back and forth the whole time, and everybody just watches. And Jabari Smith's like, you know, am I ever going to get the ball? I think it was kind of cool that Shingun, I've seen times

this year where he gets the ball deep, and last year he would have thrown it back out to the guards and now he's kind of like, nope, I might actually be the best player on the team. So I'm going to keep going with it. And to your point with Tara Eason, if you already have the on-ball stuff with Van Vliet and Brooks, I think Green gets lost

because he just doesn't have the keys the way he did last year. All the stats are down. I mean, he's 40% field goal, he's 33% three-point. He'll have a two for 12, a three for 14. The ball seems to find him in these crunch time moments. I just think he needs to be on a not that good team where he can make his mistakes and figure out who he is. This team's almost too good for him. He's 21 years old. That's why I was thinking, could it be Charlotte? Could it be a trade like this, where he goes to Atlanta and he's next to Trey

and maybe figures it out there? I like the idea of Murray on that team. Is there a better Murray home that you have? I don't know if the Lakers could. The Lakers aren't going to have anything. Yeah, it's like they're 29 first. They try to talk you into Max Christie. The 29 first. Say that again out loud.

Yeah, Hood, Shefino. It's not enough for Murray. Unless you wanted to get into some kind of Reeves conversation but I think Murray now that would eliminate the D'Angelo Russell part of it you know Gabe Vincent hasn't played a ton this season which I think was probably part of the hope of having Gabe Vincent take some of that responsibility away from Russell when these games start to matter a little bit but I think Murray is able to defer enough. He's had to figure it out with Trey,

even though they stagger them still. I always thought, I just don't know that the Lakers are going to have the assets, but I think he's somebody there that his overall game is solid enough that he would find a way to fit in as opposed to getting in the way of guys

where I think Russell gets in the way. Would you think Knicks at a cheaper Mitchell price and you just go and you get the Jean Timmer instead? I'd be open to it, but I don't know that Atlanta is going to do that with a team that's kind of in front of them in the East. Like, what are you going to get back that makes you think you're better than, you know, if you're Atlanta?

I like how you're even discussing the Jalen Green thing, and I know you're going to get a ton of shit for it. Like, as if, okay, you just pick Houston and, you know, this guy that goes top three in the draft. You're just moving on from this quickly. I think how you're even discussing the Jalen Green thing, and I know you're going to get a ton of shit for it, as if, okay, you just pick Houston and this guy that goes top three in the draft. You're just moving on from this quickly. I think Houston's good. I think if they improve that spot, I think they have a chance to be a top six team in

the West. They can't win on the road, but they're in these close games where it seems like their games come down to two, three plays sometimes. I can't believe how good they are defensively. I mean, this stuff is incredible. And email is probably the perfect group for this person,

the perfect guy for this group. But you know, so this is why you overpay Van Vliet. And this is why you overpay Brooks. Cause nobody's taking your free agency money. Anyway, it's been really good. I,

I really, I think this is the best version we've seen him. Um, it's still a massive contract, but that's what you have to pay if you're Houston and you're not any good. And you're like, all right, we'll overpay you because we need to overpay you to get you to say yes to us. So I'm so impressed with Houston and I'm impressed with like, oh, wait, they've got that guy. Like we haven't even brought up Eamon Thompson yet. And there's times where physically he looks like the most gifted player on the floor the whole time.

So does that open up something for him? Houston probably needs some kind of stretch power forward more so than they need a DeJounte Murray. But DeJounte would be somebody where you'd go, okay, well, I know exactly what I'm getting. But I have a Cade one that's stupid because the default rule is that no teams are ever trading these guys. The Pistons can't actually trade Cade Cunningham.

Houston, it's maybe not as much because they've turned things around and they're not the nightly disaster the Pistons are. But I think front offices are scared to death to be like, yeah, we already moved on. The guy haunt them. Right, from a top three pick that was this young and we we just moved on but yeah i think the green stuff would be nicer if it looked a little bit better the same could be said for kate despite his career houston's 11 and 1 at home and 2 and 10 on the road which is really bizarre like that's a stat like out of the uh out of the 1980s i think murray goes somewhere i mean there, it's an Orlando conversation

we could probably have here where, you know, Orlando's got some picks. They have some stuff. They have contracts that are pretty easy to trade. They could take a contract back.

But Orlando's 16 and nine. I'm not sure I would mess with them yet. I think they're in a bad situation with Fultz who just seems like his knee's just not getting better. And Black's a rookie, and it's going to be a while for him. So over and over again, they have to close with these Anthony and Suggs,

basically, as their crunch time lineup. So you put Murray in there, and he kind of fits with the identity of the team that they have. But I don't know if that would be the move. If I'm Orlando, I'm not really... I mean, would you do anything if you're Orlando? I'm just kind of enjoying this season, and then I'm going to figure it out this summer.

No, I would actually be more motivated to do something now because I'm going to have to start paying Palo. Yeah, because I'm going to have to pay Palo and Wagner. This is what you want to do is you want to look at your schedule of payments here and be like, all right, let's go out and sign somebody after this. Their two most expensive players for the Magic are Isaac and Fultz. And they're not even ridiculous contracts.

Like it's absurd when you look at their salary sheet, the top two guys are at 17 million. I mean, there's some teams you're like, how many guys do I have to go through before I get to 17 million a year? And they can match a lot of different trades. But what would you, if you were trying to get somebody for Orlando, who would it be? Clay Thompson. I'm just kidding. Clay Thompson. What position is it?? Clay Thompson? I'm just kidding. Clay Thompson.

What position is it? Like a shooter? Anthony Blacks look nice, but you're right. Like if they're the fourth best team in the East and expect to like play in the playoffs, like that can't be what it is. And Fultz was really good for them. Like I think Fultz,

it kind of, so few people actually were watching Magic games last year. Yeah. You didn't notice. This guy's actually pretty good. But Suggs has been awesome for him, but he's not a point guard. But I don't know that they need a point guard because Paolo should have the ball in his hands a ton.

And Franz should be initiating his own stuff off the screens because he's so good at it. Keep going. I jumped you. I just thought that was a pretty sobering back-to-back in Boston. I know they're fourth in the East, but we've seen teams overachieve in the first 25,

30 games, whether it's schedule or whether they just started off well or some other teams were slow starters, but they lost by 17 and 17 in Boston. It just looked like teams that were on different levels. In a playoff series

they'd have no chance whether they care or not i don't know i like og for them but i think masai's really tough to deal with i mean that's just kind of the scattering of forum i mean if he wants to be tough that's great i'm not criticizing it at all but you know to your van vliet point earlier like if you know you're not going to resign him doesn't it make sense like who are you like who's toronto other know you're not going to resign him, doesn't it make sense? Like, who are you? Like, who is Toronto? Other than they're not any good. I have multiple Toronto traits.

Messiah is the guy who dated a Sports Illustrated cover model like seven years ago. And now when he goes to bars, he just thinks. Oh, that's not true? Because I was going to say shout out. No, no. Like that Raptors 2019 title win, he's now like a rational confidence GM guy. He's like, you know what we're going to do?

We're not even going to trade Fred VanViet. We're just going to lose him. We're not going to get anything for him because I'm a side. I won a title four years ago. It's like, I just don't... This team, they've been unhappy for three years. They changed the coach. They ended up, I just don't, this team, they've been unhappy for three years. They changed

the coach. They ended up, you know, they lose Nick Nurse, who has been amazing in Philly. They have an Ananobi and Siakam. Both of them are free agents at the end of the year. It doesn't seem like they have a plan for anything. And then in everyone else in the league, it's like, yeah, Masai, he's just, he does his own thing. I mean, I kind of respect it, which is why I brought it up. But it just feels like he feels no pressure at all because of that title. That's what it feels like. And it's not, you know, everybody's got a scouting report on how, oh, this GM likes to do this and this GM likes to do that. And I mean, OG Ananobi, I don't know when he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame for the number of trade rumors that he's like, well, you know, when you first were offered up for Durant, that's when we knew this guy could be special. And then, you know, we turned down this trade for OG. If they know that he likes Toronto and wants to stay there and the agents have kind of gotten on the same page as far as like, hey, this is how much it's going to cost. But I don't know what you'd be breaking up.

It'd be one thing if Toronto were competitive. Like there's certain Toronto Knights where I go, are they up 15 or down 15? You know, like, I mean, Barnes has been great. It's Barnes' team, you know, whatever the slippage was in his second year. Yeah, he's back. He's back and beyond. You know, I loved him coming in. And then his second year, I was like, maybe he's just going to be I loved him coming in and then his second year

I was like maybe he's just going to be kind of a glue guy who's really skilled and does all these great things and plays defense against all these different players. He's awesome. So you'd think you'd want to keep something around him. I would rather invest in OG despite some of the health stuff in the beginning than I would Siakam

because Siakam is such a diminished version of who he's been. If you go over his go over his numbers, like there's some stuff that'll tell you this is the worst he's been in five years. Now, granted that's because a handful of his shots are going to Barnes as he takes off and OG gets more comfortable. But even with Van Vliet gone, see Akam's attempts have gone down and he, I could have this totally wrong. I don't have any info on it at all, but I don't like, does he want to be there? Like, I know he seemed to get like, there was moments where he was unhappy with nurse, but I don't, I don't know what you're hanging on to by just going to free agency with this group

and then wondering if you're going to resign your own guys, or maybe nobody wants to pay Siakam the amount of money that he's going to have to make. Despite the fact that like, I think we had two years where we're doing our all NBA and it's like, man, Siakam's like the money that he's going to have to make. Despite the fact that I think we had two years where we're doing our all NBA and it's like, man, Siakam's like the 16th or 17th guy. So that's pretty crazy territory. It was always like somewhere between the 6th and 9th best forward. The three-point shooting

got worse every year and now he's a liability. And that's, if you're trying to trade him to a contender, that's the first thing they're going to look at. Like I had a Warriors trade a couple weeks ago where it was Wiggins and Kamingo for Siakam,

which I thought made sense because I think the Warriors need to get bigger. But then you can't have Siakam and Draymond as two of your five guys when neither of them can make a three.

I just want to point out Ananobi, 15 points a game, four rebounds a game, three, 2.5 assists a game. two point five assists a game. He shoots 37% from three. You have to be the greatest defender of all time

to command some of the prices that we've heard from these guys. Because basically, our theory has always been pretty much anyone can score 15 points a game if they play 35 minutes, so they're on a mediocre team. So defensively, he's certainly really good. I don't think he's life-altering.

It's not like their defense, you know, I watch a team like Minnesota, and could he play defense on the McDaniels-Edwards level with Gobert and Towns behind him? Sure, but I don't know. That's why I thought OG for RJ Barrett seems like a fair trade to me because I don't know if I'd want to pay him

$35 million a year. Yeah, the perception value on that is that OG is way better than RJ. He's not. Just in our world of how he gets talked about. Let's take another break. After decades of shaky hands Let's take another break. So we did Most Likely Trade, guys. My top two were Murray and Ananobi.

Your number one was Mitchell. Who's your number two? D'Angelo Russell. I mean, this isn't going to be sexy and creative. I know you love the crazy ones, but when we saw the contract extension for D'Angelo, it was $17.3 million this year with a player option at $18.7 million. I don't know what the market was.

It just kind of felt like, hey, we'll maybe overpay you, but make that second year a player option, but with the understanding that you're going to be making enough money that could be traded, right? Like they almost needed- We said that in the moment when it happened. It was clearly a cap figure contract extension. Yeah. So it's pretty simple, but I know in the past, I don't know what the updated latest of it

is that LeBron really likes Zach Levine. And then you add the clutch thing into it. And like, I know people are saying, okay, there's no market for Levine whatsoever. Never underestimate the power of an agent to find a way to get this done. I know Rich Paul has even said like, Hey,

you know, I have clients on all these teams. It doesn't mean that this is going to happen. I can't imagine that LeBron with his basketball IQ has enjoyed the D'Angelo Russell experiment. I don't want to hear about any of the raw numbers with him. He shot it really well this year. He's actually 10th and 4th quarter minutes

on the Lakers, which is a little unfair because Hood Schifino and Gabe Vinson averaged out more but play less games. So let's say D'Angelo Russell's 8th and 4th quarter minutes on the Lakers, and you're paying him this. Watching it live, too,

in the in-season tournament game sit next to you and watching him fuck up these passes. I've seen it enough for the years on TV. Everybody knows I'm not a fan, but then to watch it live where it's like, do you have any intensity to you? Is there anything that's intense

about big possessions and big decisions? So on top of that, he's been a net negative on defense his entire career if you look at the box score stuff. I think that might be the fit. I know Chicago's hoping, what's the asset that we get? I mean, I don't know that anybody's in love with Rui Hachimura.

And there's also some restrictions on when Levine can be traded because of Rui's contract and that kind of stuff and when it clears. But I think that's the simple fit because I know in the past, LeBron did like Levine. Yeah, you know, one thing I noticed last night at the Knicks game, you know, I just love watching Reeves the Knicks game you know I just love watching Reeves and I I just think he's so underrated and I mean over and over again I was going nuts that the Spurs didn't get him I'll never understand that for the rest of my life but

I think it's so important to watch him especially in the half court that you can run offense through him and he can create shots for himself or other people like a point guard, even though he's not, but he plays so well with those guys. He's so inclusive that they don't need, they don't need Russell when you have LeBron and you have Reeves at the end of these games, right?

You need just somebody who can play off them, who can hit threes. I'm with you, LeVit, you know, I don't think there's a LeVit market. It's 40 and then it just keeps going up. It's three years after this in the 40s.

LeBron's not going to care because he wants to win now. And just watching what I watched last night where Cam Reddish was playing crunch time for them. And Zach Levine's better than Cam Reddish. He's just more dangerous. You have to worry about him a little more. You can not like Zach Levine.

I don't think you're allowed to say that Cam Reddish is better than Zach Levine. I look at it. Better than Cam Reddish. He just is. If the market's that depressed and then you have, you know, the Bulls have actually won a bunch of games here with Levine out, which is his own topic.

Which was the most predictable thing. The Kobe White part, I guess, wasn't predictable that he turned into what he's turned into. But yeah, like I had a couple Zach Levine trades and they're basically just salary dumps. Like one of them was him going to Detroit, right? And Chicago getting Monty Morris and Joe Harris.

And then Isaiah Stewart goes to OKC and Chicago gets Usman Dang. And that's basically what you get for Zach Levine. I had another one where Chicago gets Gordon Hayward and Terry Rozier and Charlotte gets Zach Levine and Lonzo Ball. And they could reunite the Ball brothers and Lonzo's got a year left.

Hayward's an expiring. Rozier's having a good year. I don't even think Charlotte would do that. And just every time somebody's like, oh, how can Zach Levine not have a home? Like just go through all the teams and ask yourself who's trading for a guy that's averaging 40 this year.

He's got three years left after that. And his team immediately played better as soon as he got hurt. Not to mention the eye test, he looked miserable and he doesn't play defense. So this to me feels like a classic LeBron salvage. I'm with you.

LeBron rejuvenated J.R. Smith. J.R. Smith was basically out of the league. He figured out how to make him a guy who could play for three straight playoff series. I think he'll be able to figure it out with Zach Levine. And if he doesn't, he'll leave.

Well, you and I were talking last night. It's like, well, normally in the past, it's like, hey, trade for this guy. And then it's like, it doesn't work. And I kind of agreed with you last night on the phone call. But I mean, how many more years has he had left that he would want to leave? Do you think there's another chapter to LeBron being like,

hey, I'm going to chase a ring somewhere else and leave Los Angeles where it's clear that this is the place he wants to be. I don't know. I think I agreed with you last night on the phone and then when I thought about it this morning, do we really think LeBron's going to have... Does he have one more I'm out of here? Like Anthony Davis gets hurt, the trade doesn't

work, then he's like, hey, let's go play it in Denver. I love skiing. Do you think he has that in him? I think he's got this year. Now you got Davis, the extension. And the only reason to stay next year would be his son's going to be a senior in high school. Right?

So maybe you could say, all right, he's definitely got one more Laker year. I'll tell you this from watching him in person a couple of times. It feels like he's got like three, four years left. This has turned into the Brady quarterback thing. If you told me he's going to play until 2027, I'd believe it. I have no counter. Yeah, no, I...

He looks great. He looks fast. He's explosive. I was telling you last night on the phone, it was so funny to watch him on defense where he just is conserving maximum... He just doesn't move on defense. He's like, go to a Laker game.

And I'm not even criticizing him on it. He just figures out the spots to stand where he could basically just rest and which guys that he could just play off of and not have to move. And all he's doing is saving his energy for the other side or for quick, explosive stuff.

And it's smart. It's what he should do. I think he can play for another couple years. And if he feels like he can't win a title with this team, he's going to move on. He wants more rings. That's going to determine everything. It's not about like,

oh, I want to go down as one of the great Lakers. He wants championships. That's it. You're right about how he finds his spots, which is a compliment to him. The only time it bothers me is that I don't want you looking at your teammates for a bad defensive rotation when you were the bad rotation. That's always going to bother me.

It bothered me when he was awesome and he did it on defense. And I have no issue with everything you pointed out because I was noticing it last night too. He had Hardenstein as his assignment. And he's like, okay, if you're going to play him further away, I'm not going to deal with this. It may have been why Hardenstein had a ton of rebounds,

but I'm amazed at the stretch where in the beginning of the year, I thought like, oh, this might be the first time we start to see some of those bad physical nights. Now, he's usually due to miss about 20 plus games. Because the side-to-side stuff felt like it was a little sloppy the first month. He could still go up and down,

but going left-right, trying to stay in front of guys, it was the first time he started to look a little old. But I think lately he's looked great. Well, that spin move that he had late in the fourth quarter at the baseline where he just went, I'm like, where did that come from like that was here's like a classic lebron story and this is why when everybody talks about

how smart he is like i we were watching it and laughing as it was happening they have a jump ball and i forget who the jump ball was but it was clear the lakers were going to win and they were all lined up and then lebron all of a sudden is like, no, no, you go there, you go there. And he's like basically arranging the jump ball. And he ends up, it's on the Knicks side, Knicks basket. He's in the circle toward midcourt and he puts Davis closer to the basket. The tip goes to Davis and LeBron just fucking jets and Davis gets it and just whips it. And LeBron gets the layup, but LeBron figured it out like 25 seconds before the jump ball. And I was like, this is why he's going to play till he's 45. Like he's just smarter than everybody. The Knicks had no idea he was going to do it, but it's just these little advantages that he has with the IQ. And then the fact that

when he goes to the basket, he's bouncing off dudes. And if it doesn't go in, they're going to call a foul because it's LeBron James. He has all these edges that he just uses game to game. It's really impressive. The fact that the Knicks allowed themselves to line up that poorly on that big of a possession at a setter jump where you already know there's a gap for both teams because of the math of the other eight players. But the gap for the other team can't be towards their basket. It was hilarious.

Tibbs had almost a stroke. Yeah, I know. But to finish the LeBron part of it, I expected the bad Dirk year by now, where it's like you're still playing, but now it's over physically. And whenever that is going to happen, because I think he's going to have a really hard time not playing.

Everybody, when they're great, says, I don't want to play when i'm any ver diminished version of myself you're like yeah that's what you guys all say until you're the diminished version you start lying in the mirror and then once you accept the truth you're like you know what this is still fun i can travel you know i'm still in the spot light you know whenever lebron is playing it's going to be a big deal and that's going to be a hard thing for anyone to walk away from that kind of attention. But he's still good. He shouldn't walk away. What would he be walking away from? That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying

the years that I thought, hey, it's still kind of fun. He's around and they're restricting the minutes. But I mean, it's over. It's over. I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. So that means that you're right. If he wants to have those seasons, those seasons might be two years from now. Yeah. Like he could just go, he could just be like, I really like what Minnesota is doing. I'm just going to join the Timberwolves. You really think he would do that? I don't know. I think he wants rings. I don't know if he would do it. I think he wants rings. Unless it's, you know, the back to the sun thing

that's always been a big part of this. I mean, this hasn't been a secret. Like, does a team go, hey, do us a solid? But again, the team that would do that would be a team that is just lukewarm. You know, like, hey, we'll bring you, that's not a team that's winning a ring. Yeah, it's like a six or a seven seed.

Yeah. One thing I was thinking about with him compared to Brady, because Brady's the other one that it just kept going way longer than we expected. Brady had a couple tricks that he would play where, you know, he would just, he wouldn't take, he would try never to take big hits. He would always just get rid of the ball a second early, and he didn't care if it was incomplete.

If he didn't like the play or the way it was unfolding, he would just dump the ball, which is LeBron's equivalent of, I'm just not going to play that much defense tonight and I'm going to pick my spots. The difference is, I think why Brady stopped playing ultimately was he was still taking big hits, right? And once you hit 45, you're like, fuck this, man. I barely get out of bed the next day. LeBron still is physically dominant compared to these other dudes. He's laying out the hits. It's almost like a defensive player in football

and not an offensive player. I think it's going to keep going. Let's take a break and then we've got to talk about OKC. OKC, I think, can actually make the finals if they make a couple moves. And they have just an armada of picks. They have so many picks, I'm not even going to read you all of them.

Please don't. They have great Houston picks. They have great Clipper picks. They have their own picks. It just keeps going and going and going. There's some marketing, Utah might trade marketing stuff that I don't know if I believe, and I don't know why they would.

I don't really fully understand it, but there's been enough buzz about it that I think we have to take it seriously. To me, he was like discount Dirk last year. He's on a good contract. He's still pretty young. He's in his mid-20s. He's the perfect guy to add to this OKC team because he's got size. They're shooting. I could just see him with the nucleus they have.

And they have, they could trade. Bertans is expiring, Poku, Usman Dang. They'd trade man. They could put it in there if they wanted. They have a pick swap with Utah that they could just cancel. They have Houston top one through four protected in 24 and 26. They have Clippers unprotected first.

Like they could just go all in and get him and Olenek. And if they want to throw in Jordan Clarkson, we'll take him too. If you were OKC, is that the guy you would target? I would definitely take him if he's available. I don't know why he'd be available. He's 26. He, you know, he'd be available. He's 26.

He had a weird start to his career. It just didn't really click. There were some times even in Cleveland where I was like, he's going to be in the league, but I don't know. Then he turns into an all-star last season. Whether I believe him, I got to interview him all-star weekend in person. He was telling me how much he loved it after the ups and downs of the whole thing. He said recently in an interview, he wants

to stay there. I know a lot of people say it. It just feels like when he's saying it with everything that he's gone through, he's like, we love it here when he's talking about his family and the whole deal. One of my biggest pet peeves or just one of the things I get the most annoyed about when teams are talking about rebuilding, it's like, so I'm not allowed to have any good players. Like everybody has to suck and everybody has to be 19. Like it doesn't make any sense. I mean, eventually I have to pay some people. If marketing is happy and wants to sign an extension in Utah and I'm Utah, I don't need more firsts. I also like how he fits with Kessler. Yeah, him and Kessler together. I like the combo.

But it's also like, it's a Utah thing. Name me the top 50 players that want to play in Utah. How long is that list? All right. And it's not for everybody. You know, look, I like the place.

But if Markins is like, no, I want to do an extension. And on top of all the other people that are not going to pay other than this John Collins disaster, and he's available, shockingly. I just, I look, man, I would not be, you know, whether it was three first last year or no, it has to be five first or has to do all these things. I don't think if you're Utah, you need even more first that you can't trade for the next superstar that doesn't want to stay there. Markkinen is good enough that he wants to stay. I have no interest in trading him if I'm Andrew Zanuck. My next guy for them would have been Jared Allen, but Cleveland doesn't have their picks. If Cleveland had their pick this year,

you could talk yourself into, oh, let's gut it. Moby's out. Garland's out. We'll trade Mitchell. We'll get a bunch of picks. We'll trade Jared Allen. We'll get more stuff. And Jared Allen makes a ton of sense for OKC. Because that's the big body. But I don't think they can get him. There's Wendell Carter possibilities with them. Because I think Orlando

has proven they don't necessarily need Wendell Carter with the team they have. That they can kind of cheat around it. And maybe they can get some assets the team they have that they can kind of cheat around it and maybe they can get some assets or get some assets that they can use for a different trade. His contract's only 13.5. And then the one that I like the most,

and this is the guy I like for the Celtics, Isaiah Stewart on the Pistons, I think could have a real moment on a contender. Big Stu? Big Stu, first of all, I think he's good. I think he's...

The Celtics have a trade exception spot that I think he could fit in, but he's also a poison pill guy, so I think it gets complicated. I actually think it would be hard for them to trade for him. It wouldn't be hard for OKC to trade for him. The best thing about that dude

is he the number one I don't want to fuck with that guy in the league? Is there anyone you would put over him? James Johnson. He's not in the league anymore. No, didn't he just get picked up? Oh, he did? No, no. Look, James Johnson's the default on all things.

And so what I don't want to do is have you make a really good point and then be like, well, what about this guy? You're right. All right? You're right. And he can shoot. And it's, look, this Detroit roster is a really hard thing to figure out. Yeah.

Yeah. I like it. I have one for you, though. What do you got? Would you do Bertans? Quick aside on Bertans. Can you imagine the text thread with Poco and his buddies when Bertans gets minutes over him?

The Poco hive? Would you do Bertans? And I don't know why we're both trading Usman Jang today because I love when he gets the minutes in there. I love doing his draft stuff. At some point, you got to give up something. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like you have all these picks

and you've been taking all these guys. I think some people forget Trey Mann's even on the Thunder. Yeah. Didn't he have a couple moments? Yeah. Would you do Berton's, Jang, two of the, let's say of their war chest of picks, like two good ones.

It doesn't have to be the two best ones, but two decent ones for Miles Turner. Oh, that's interesting. When we were in Vegas, people seemed to think Indiana was going to add. They were going to try to go after Ian Inouye or Paul George if he somehow became available or really try to get a better wing. But now that they've gone the other way, maybe But what are the Pacers? That seems like a lot. The Pacers are an awesome Halliburton story.

Mathren's starting to go off a little bit more. There's, you know, I don't know if there's a completeness to his game that is going to continue because I think Mathren was like this really dynamic like I'm just going to drive on you all night long. But I don't know that everybody else felt like they were super involved when he had the ball in his hands. Turner has been an adjusted ceiling guy for me where I was like, why does everybody talk this guy up all the time to like, look, there's no market for him. And now when I

watch him, I go, you have to find a way to get some other kind of big body. Um, and Turner's going to pull one of the other teams, bigs if it's Minnesota, one big if it's a one big team in the playoffs because you have to guard him. I think Turner's had this bit of resurgence and I always love that Turner Denver matchup. Love is excessive here, but just how hard he played

against Jokic where the Thunder don't have anything there. Maybe it feels like it's too much. Bertans is involved because Turner's at $20 million. I spend way too much time trying to figure out Turner to the Western Conference trades, and I really don't think the Pacers would necessarily be blowing up any team that has any kind of chance because they can't guard anybody. So on the flip side of Indiana went the other way, would you trade Mathurin and Walker,

the rookie who doesn't play who is like the eighth pick in the draft for OG is that too much it feels a little quick on Walker from Houston like you can send me a list of like this guy you know it's like I don't know who did it

he doesn't play so if you're Toronto you could just flip in and Obi and two younger guys that are both lottery picks. That actually feels like too much for Ananobi. If I'm blindly making that offer, well, excuse me, if Toronto calls me and says, hey, we'll do OG for Mather and Walker, and you figure it out with OG's guys, and then you go, okay, does OG have any interest in re-signing with the Pacers? And he's like, I actually don't. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be like, well, see how it plays out this summer, man. But we're renting. Then you're fine. I'm not giving you Matherin straight up for him because at least Matherin's under control

and I'm not worried about where he's going the next couple of years. The OKC, there's just less big guys available than I realized, which is why I think the Isaiah Stewart is such a good fit for them because cheap contract, even with the poison pill, they can figure it out. They can make it work with the contracts they have all these picks

so they I think he's worth at least a first looking at him for the he's like literally the perfect guy for the Celtics like he's my number one

this is the guy I want for the Celtics because it doesn't touch their top six he's tough he's the kind of guy that in a playoff series

with somebody clothesline, Jason Tatum in the basket support, and he was out there, the guy wouldn't do it a second time. And I think, okay, so he needs some toughness too. And I think he would play for them. Other than that, Turner's a good one. Jared Allen is the only other one looking at all these contracts that feels like he might be available. Would you do like, look, you'd have to, whatever Oklahoma City scenario we're coming to the table with here,

it's an imaginary, it's a real pick, but I'm not going to go, ooh, I want it to be this pick this year, top whatever, because would you get in the Nick Claxton business if you were the Thunder or do you feel like,

hey, now we have a less perimeter? No, I want size. I need, because I already have a skinny guy in Chet. Yeah, that's probably what I need. I need somebody that like, oh, we're playing New Orleans in a playoff series and we literally can't guard balance shooting this because we don't have somebody on our roster

who's big enough to battle him. I got to say it. Kyle might have to turn on the TikTok camera. If you're OKC, would you think about kicking the tires on Draymond? He fits kind of the profile of the guys they like. Like somebody with the ball in their hands that can make decisions, can drive.

I mean, the shooting part, even though his shooting numbers this year are good, I don't know that any of us necessarily think that number from three-point is real. I might be. I might be willing to. Yeah, I feel like a month from now, if Golden State, if it's not starting to look better, and I

said on my pod on Thursday, I still feel like the Draymond-Steph connection and the stuff he does for Steph offensively is pretty special. But on the other hand, Golden State just might be... There might be other stuff that he's done that we don't even know about, and they just might be ready to move on. But I thought that would be an interesting gamble for OKC to just say, fuck it.

Where's the money? Because I think this is why we keep landing on Usman Jang, because it's not going to be giddy at $6.5 million. It's not going to be shit. Well, Draymond's pretty low still, so you can do it with Bertans and one other contract. It's 20. It's 20.6. Bertans and Poku, and you're million. It's not going to be pretty low still so that you can do with Bertons and one other contract. 20, 20, 20 and you're good. Yeah, but but

Bertons and Poku well, and so you're just going you're just going hey, we're going to get two picks out of this matching salaries and some picks and to be minus picks. Yeah, well, you could also say it'll throw in Dang. Does Steph want to do it?

That's the thing I don't know. And I guess we'll know in three weeks when Draymond comes back from wherever the hell he went. I have one really fun trade. Did we talk about Draymond Green straight up for Jared Allen? Just a straight up?

We just did, I guess. No, it's the first on the pod. Just straight up. Just fucking take Draymond, Donovan Mitchell stays in Cleveland, Jared Allen subsides with Golden State. Just a straight up trade.

I was trying to think who would say no to that and it took a while. I don't even know. I think Golden State just because a straight-up trade. I was trying to think who would say no to that, and it took a while. I don't even know. I think Golden State just because of the Curry piece. I don't think Curry wants Draymond traded, but I also don't know. And then Draymond, some toughness.

That Cavs team has no identity and no toughness, and could he give them the toughness? The worst way to do this pod would be you just saying, no, that wouldn't happen for all these different reasons. So I don't want to do that to you, but give me the Cleveland motivation. We don't want to trade Mitchell. We don't like the offers out there. We are still at least a playing team. We have really good offense. We were good last year. Draymond next to Mobley makes more sense than Allen next to Mobley. We now have a defensive identity and a leader. We didn't have that

before. The counter would be, why the fuck would we trade for Draymond? He looks like he's losing his mind. Yeah, strong counter. Would you do some version of Bertans just because we keep landing on him with a $ million salary this year well they

gave him 500k extra so they could trade him before the deadline so we know they're trading him so would you do that if you're Atlanta would you do that or is there a pick package there that would make sense for you to move off a Capella even though you probably like

your Okongwu Capella pairing you know like we're thewu-Capella pairing. The problem is we're taking pieces away from teams that may not look great, but they may not be in the business of being like, okay, so cool. Now we have an issue with our big rotation. Why are we doing the Thunder this favor? Would you overpay a little for Okongwu if you're going to grab an Atlanta guy? Because he makes more sense to me if I'm OKC. I'm like, hey, I know you're offering us Capella, but let's talk about the other guy.

What's it going to take? Because they could go $0.130 in the dollar for anyone they want. But that's the type of guy they need is him. They need size, shot blocking. I'm just thinking like I'm in the West. I might have to play Minnesota in a West. I might have to play Minnesota in a series. I might have to play Denver. I might have to play freaking New Orleans with Yonah.

It's like I need size. It can't be Chet Holmgren. That's too much to ask. I don't want to put 3,000 minutes on Chet Holmgren banging bodies with everybody. It's crazy. So they have to get somebody. All right, I'm going to give you my favorite dumb trade.

This solves a lot of issues for me. The Knicks get Bogdanovich from Detroit. Another shooter. Detroit gets Doug McDermott and Chetty Osmond from San Antonio. The Knicks cancel the protected pick they owe Detroit. And they give them Dallas' 2024 first. So they basically get two picks for Bogdanovich. San Antonio gets Evan Fournier and Killian Hayes.

Two French guys for Wemby. And a little Killian Hayes resurgence on a team that desperately needs a point guard. And now Wemby has French guys for Wemby and a little Killian Hayes resurgence on a team that desperately needs a point guard. And now Wemby has French guys to hang out with. I'm reading Napoleon right now. Huh? I'm reading Napoleon right now. Fascinating.

You like it? Which Napoleon book? The Napoleon book. The Napoleon book? Yeah, about 800 plus pages into it um what's biggest highlight so far he's he had a lot of heartbreak earlier on with the old ladies and uh he said that love is the distraction of the warrior which I related to you've been preaching that for a a while it's like finally this guy gets it what's your what's your iconic phrase i'd rather be oh i'd rather i'd rather be alone than annoyed yeah yeah that's pretty much it like van

van was with me at my house when i said it and it was like quiet for five minutes and he was like mulling it over he, man, what you just said fucking spoke to me. Napoleon, he would send the ladies telegrams on his way home from whatever battle and tell them, I'm going to be home in two weeks. Don't bathe. Three days. He was a big non-bather.

No, he was a fan of the natural musk he liked the odors he was an odor odor fiend in this book it says it's three days four three days okay for two weeks is a long time especially for those you know that era uh but yeah he got worked his his first wife just cheated on him all the time and she apparently didn't smile any portraits because her teeth were completely black from sucking on sugar cane in one of the territories in the West Indies. Well, they didn't have crest white strips back then, right? Not great choppers, apparently. But Napoleon was all in and she still cheated on him. So, it's unfortunate.

Sounds like a great book. It's awesome. You know, because it's, I believe it's a fair account of, you know, military genius and a complicated man. And at times a tyrant on top of everything else. Does it go into the Napoleon complex? I haven't finished it yet, but I'll let you know. I'll text you immediately.

Okay, so let's go over the French Revolution trade that you have there. That's it. I'm getting Evan Fournier's expiring and Killian Hayes on the Spurs. No surprise. I really hope the Spurs trade for some sort of point guard.

And I don't know what the fuck they're doing this year. I will never understand the Sohan thing. They finally kind of gave up on it. I don't understand the Sohan thing. They finally kind of gave up on it. I don't understand why they're so happy with just throwing away Wemby's first season and putting him in weird spots with players who don't really seem to make him

better. There's lots of point guards out there. They can get anybody. They can freaking get Monty Morris from Detroit. Just go get more point guards and put the guy in a position to succeed. I think it's weird. The pop thing, Belichick takes so much shit,

but I mean, there's way more kind of stealth whispering about what the fuck is pop doing, like in NBA circles. I think he's had a really strange couple seasons. I thought grabbing the mic was super weird during the Kawhi game. And I think thinking Sohan could play point guard was just ridiculous.

I didn't understand it at all. And I don't think they put Wemby in a position to succeed this season. I loved the experiment because I like Sohan so much that I even tweeted out, there's nothing that I've been more in favor of that doesn't make any sense in recent NBA history. Like I was all for it. well, you're right about that. Not making sense part. Right. But what I, what I didn't understand and look,

Haral Bob, who I have a ton of respect for, you know, and KOC who does a great job and all this stuff. Like when I was like, what's the point of this? Like I tweeted it out and they both kind of like KOC disagreed with me. And then Haral Bob disagreed with me.

And I'm like, look, we all understand that they don't want to plan on winning games, but you didn't need to play. So hand a point guard to, to lose games. You were going to lose games already. So that,

that part of it. And then it was like, oh, well, you know, with Draymond, you know, I saw a lot of this too.

Well, Draymond, you know, he was, he was this multi-talented guy who had like Draymond's 10 times the passer. So hand was when he was in college. So yeah,

to ask Sohan to then become this guy that understood this stuff, it didn't make any, there was just so many bad possessions. And I think despite it being good natured in trying to expand the palette for Sohan here, it also meant the other four guys were miserable. A lot of those possessions, because you couldn't get an entry pass in. He'd pick up his dribble way too early he would lose stuff in transition because he was starting to think when sohan's best ability is just to go out there it's like the tari eason thing hey just go check in the game and wreck it and that's who sohan is even if it was cool that there was this ceiling that he could be this kind of playmaker i i like i'd want him on my team like you know we go and

talk about some of these guys and get harm like evan Evan Mobley 30 teams should still want Evan Mobley but the ceiling feels like it needs to be adjusted on him Sohan's the same exact guy but I think you're being dismissive of how just the game works and if you're one of the other four guys you could even see it with Vassell where it's like dude I'm not getting the ball back to you because you're just going to clog us up and like not know where you're going or make the wrong pass. And look, they finally kind of pulled the plug on it with maybe, look, if you want to do it, why can't he do it with the second unit on one of the second unit things? He shouldn't do it on any unit. He can't run fast breaks.

He can't throw an entry pass. He would pick up his dribble 45 feet from the basket, and he wasn't a good enough shooter. There's no piece of him that's a point guard, and I just thought it was stupid. I said before in another previous episode, it reminded me of when P.J. Carlissimo decided KD was a seven-foot shooting guard, and he was like, no, this guy, people don't realize he's a shooting guard. I said, no, actually, you know what he is? He's a forward. He's going to be one of the greatest scoring forwards

of all time, you moron. What are you doing? Whoa. I hated it. I like PJ. I just thought that was stupid. Here's my big trade to throw you. This is my showstopper.

Okay. Why can't the Spurs trade for Cade Cunningham they could give Detroit their first round pick which will be a top 5 or top 6 pick this year

Toronto's first this year which is top 6 protected they could give them Atlanta's 25 first and throw in Chicago's first that's protected for 3 years starting in 2025

and ends up being top eight protected in 27. Just say fuck it. Wemby's special. What are we waiting for? This draft isn't even that great. Let's go get Cade Cunningham now. Detroit's a mess. Cade's stock is low. He's looked bad this year.

He looked good last night, but he's looked bad this year. What does it take? Hey, Detroit, you tell us. What do you want? Can I have a bunch of picks? Feel great about yourselves. Start over. New GM. Start over with a little war chest. The Cade thing

didn't totally work because in year three, you're going to have to pay him in two years. You don't even know what he is. Let's go. Let's make a deal. I spent 20 minutes trying to find Cade trades knowing full well it was a waste of time because to our Jalen Green point earlier, you're not trading Cade.

It can be awful. They could lose every game the rest of the year. The front office doesn't want to turn to the fan base and be like, okay, we screwed it up with him and then have him go play. You'd rather ride it out and have him be really disappointed. Well, the front office would have. But if I'm firing everyone in the front office and I'm Tom Gores,

and I'm like, that didn't work. We had the first, fifth, seventh, and seventh picks in the draft, and we just lost 23 games. Well, Gores should suspend. I mean, he can't fire himself, but he should at least suspend himself for giving Monte Williams the most money ever as a coach. Because first of all, there was nothing that told you that Monte

Williams is going to come in and fix it. It was a roster that was so bad it wasn't going to be fixed in the first place. If anything, you should have gone on the cheap with a coach. But when you don't think your team is going to be any good, you think, hey, we're bringing in this headliner. Like the Celtics kind of did it with Doc in the past, but at least it was Doc. This was Monte Williams who didn't even get into the playoffs with Phoenix until Chris Paul got there. So like there's Monte stuff that we can go through and be like, you're going to bring him in, who then decided to like, look, you're not going to be any good. So now Killian Hayes is going to be running stuff.

And then you had these lineups out there where it was Duren and then another big and then another non-shooter, maybe Alec Burks and Cade. The Cade numbers are scary. Zach Cram of the Ringer, who did that breakdown of him, did a fascinating job. And it was also a pretty heavy indictment of like, hey, why kate shoot i don't believe he can never shoot again he was 40 for uh from three in college he's not the most athletic guy that's above the ring and all rim and all that stuff you know shea sga isn't like the most dynamic finisher and all this stuff athletically he just has every single angle down and all the upfakes and all this stuff

he's big enough to run pick and roll where it should actually work. And you'd like to have more spacing. You'd like to have more shooting out there instead of this collection of centers that Detroit's fascinated with. So there's some Cade stuff that I'm definitely worried about, but I don't know that it's ever going to work out here. I don't think the Pistons ever, I don't think franchises would trade somebody like this, but like I kept going, like what would actually make sense for Detroit to go back to the fan base and say, Hey, we're already moving off of the number one pick from three years ago. So bear with us. I don't, I don't know that that would happen, but I'm with you. I want to find

another place for him to see if he has a chance because a lot of it's on him, but I see a lot of possessions where he starts it and then everything gets screwed up and then he ends up with the ball again. And you're like, okay, well, you know, maybe he's just not good enough to bail you out of all those possessions, but I don't know that he's actually set up to succeed either. So I'm just not sure. I'm just not like, is this who he's actually going to be? Because again, that piece on the ringer is telling you like, Hey, the guy that hits this profile, the first three seasons and granted he missed a big chunk of one.

Like those guys are not difference makers. Yeah. Right. Which is would be the case for trying to sell high and talk in San Antonio and giving up some picks. This is the NBA we grew up with in the 90s. They were especially point guards. Teams would give up on point guards. Think about the point guards.

You just got traded in the 90s. Jason Gitt got traded twice. Kenny Anderson got traded. Stephon Marbury got traded. Terrell Brandon got traded. Sam Cassell got traded twice. Guys just bounced around at early parts of their career.

Teams would get frustrated. They'd move. All these different reasons for it. And now it's the opposite. Everybody's just terrified to trade a guy they drafted because they don't want to take shit, it seems like. But in this case, I would think about it. I would just completely start over if I was to trade.

Like a complete, I would get rid of everybody who was involved in any of the decisions for the last five years. Sorry, guys, here's a watch. Here's a little bonus. You're done. And I would just start over and try to grab picks. I guess the only problem with grabbing picks in the 24 draft is people don't really seem to like this draft. Well, they don't like it now, but I'm telling you right now, once we get to April, you're going to just see a bunch of guys who are going to go, hey, you know what?

There's some talent in this. There's some guys. That happens every year. But yeah, there's no... no i mean kade was one of the celebrated top picks like it wasn't just hey he went one it's like oh you're gonna get kate like you knew what you were getting when you got number one and i have to admit like i don't know if it's just wrong like hey he wasn't that good here's all the negatives now they're accentuated in this league you can't seem to finish at the. I don't understand why he can't shoot anymore, but just his simple play

making at that size, that's supposed to work. It's supposed to work. Again, I'm not absolving him from all of it, but it felt like a mess. Then the Ivy minute stuff in the beginning, and that's the other thing too. It's the just, it's the forever argument in the NBA. The front office is like, we need to get these guys minutes. And then you see it with Chauncey Billups where after two weeks of Scoot Henderson looking terrible and he's been better lately, he's like, I'm going to finish with Malcolm Brogdon

because I'm the coach and I want to win tonight's game. And those two things are never perfectly aligned. They can say they are, but they're not perfectly aligned. But when you pay money more than anyone who's ever been paid to be just the head coach, and he decides he wants to bring Ivy along slowly instead of figuring out how the Ivy Cade thing is and get the reps, you're going to stink anyway. And it's like, no, I'm going to still fuck around with this Killian Hayes thing. You're just going, if you're in the front office, you go, what are we doing? Well, it's a little like the Patino thing a million years ago with the Celtics.

When you give a coach that much money, he thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Right? It's the worst situation to be in, an expensive coach with a bad team. We've seen this not work out over and over and over again in NBA history. The last guy, and then we'll go. There's no chance Porter Jr. would be on the table in the next two months, right? I spent, I came up with a Porter Jr. to Detroit for cage race. Oh, wow.

It's so stupid. Because it's like, would Detroit ever be like, all right, now, today is the first day of the rest of our lives. We have Michael Porter Jr. I mean, he's just not that guy. He's complementary to everything else that's going on. If you look at Denver's, Denver has that classic roster that the Celtics had a couple years ago where it's all top-heavy giant salaries and then small salaries, right? And there's no way for them to get anybody in the middle.

But there is a way if they put Porter on the table, which you could say, well, he's our fourth best guy. Could we turn him into two pieces, three pieces? I love where you're at. I love where you're at because I was looking at the Porter Jr. going, do they go, hey, let's be even better? Like we're not disrupting something that won a title. We're maybe picking somebody off that's even better. Go ahead. Sorry. I interrupted you. Portland's got that guard-heavy roster. Could you put Brogdon in there?

Could it be a Jeremy Grant return? Could you put them, Jeremy Grant, with a guard? I think the Porter Jr. Gordon thing works better than a Grant-Gordon pairing. We're just kind of figuring this out. Could it be Simons and Teibel together once those guys can get traded in January. But it feels like a two-for-one where Portland gets rid of a guard and gives them one of their swing guys who can play defense. And then Portland gets to take a real flyer on Porter here, which they would, you know, if you end up with Scoot and you still have Sharp and you have Porter and you have Aiton,

like, now I'm getting excited. I've got some size. I got some length. And Porter, he won the title last year. It's not like I'm sure he'd be sad to leave Denver. But at the same time, he's like, all right, well, I won a title. Now let me prove I can be a guy. There's something there, but I'd be surprised if Denver did anything.

Because I just think, why would you? We thought they were going to win the title. I haven't seen anything this year that makes me think I'm worried about that yet. So no, I just wanted to talk it out. Simons is better than Porter. So why would you do that if you're Portland, right first of all i don't think they would do it anyway because i just don't think porter's like yes we got him i mean that's why i was laughing at myself

as i was trying to figure out some cade well and he also has that the the back stuff and i'm sure there's physicals that you could have with him we'd be like oh my god whoa what's that right so i mean we didn't even bring that up until just now so that as i like what you're doing though with denver like is there a new ceiling for denver with some kind of piece there but i think the health thing is probably where we should have started with the porter jr on top of what he is because he's still you know he's an incredible shot maker i think he's still kind of a limited dude. And so you bring it in like, hey, this guy makes a ton of shots

and he's huge, but, you know, I don't really know how he's good. It just feels like Portland has a spare guard to trade. Either it's Simons or... It's Brogdon before it's Sharp, Scoot, or Simons. I mean, certainly it's not Scoot. Yeah, but Denver's not doing... If it's Brogdon and Tybalt for Porter, they're not doing that.

They're just keeping what they do. So that's why I don't think there's a trade there. But I think the risk for Denver is the league is so much better. And especially the top half of the league, the top seven, eight teams are just better than they were last year. And if you go back and you think about

the road that they had last year to win the title versus the road they're going to have this year, especially if they're not a top seed and they don't have home court in a couple rounds, it's just going to be harder for them. The league's fucking loaded. And instead of Miami waiting for them in the finals, it might be a Boston team that has a ton of size. It could be a Philly team that has Embiid playing the best he's ever played. We didn't even mention Philly in any of these trades. They have so many expirings. I don't even know what they need.

Okay, but where's the Philly trade? I was trying to find a Kelden Johnson from San Antonio to Philly trade because Vassell seems like he's ahead when Magan is the guy. I don't know if I would mess with it. Did mean did you see the plus minus with the Batum minutes

when Batum plays with basically all the other good guys they're like fucking great I mean I know they've had an easy schedule I know it's gonna come back to earth a little bit but easy schedule? It just seems like they need tall guys with three point shooting. It's been like it's the fourth easiest schedule so far so the net rating stuff

look they're gonna be good they're in the top three in the east no one's dismissing of that but this this run in december in particular i'm like when are they when are they going to play somebody uh although they destroyed i mean they took the soul of the lakers there that one night so i know everybody in philly is going to be like oh you guys are just doing the bottom no it's just the reality that every time i turn on philly right now i'm like up 30 up 20. I don't need to watch anymore of this game. I don't know where the piece is. And does Daryl keep the powder dry there with this summer? Does he not want to disrupt that?

Well, there's that piece too. I mean, you keep one of Batum, Covington, put them with Morris, you're at $ million bucks already. If you want to improve just the Melton spot, and I like Melton. I think he's been good for them. That gets you to 38. You just have a lot of options.

When you look at their spot track, it's hilarious. It's like eight expirings in a row. It's like Daryl's wet dream. So I'm just not, I haven't watched them enough in enough games against good teams to know what they're missing so I'd probably wait a month on that. I like Melton I do too

people can look at Harris as this big expiring but it's such a big number it's just south of 40 million and you're like okay what are you using there's only like 10 guys that make more money than him right like who guys that make more money than him. Right.

Who costs that much that the other team wants to get off of? If Clay had some resurgence, okay, cool. Now we get Clay. All right. But why does Philadelphia, or excuse me, why would Golden State want to expiring Tobias Harris? And I just don't like Levine for them. Do you?

I don't think that's a good move for them at all. That would have been the natural move this summer, thinking like, oh, they're going to have all these expirings and they could just get Levine for the expirings. But I wouldn't do that if I was them. I don't know if they can overpay for an OG, but Philly doesn't seem to have the player piece because anybody that's good, they're going to want to keep. Batum's been nice,

but there's no market for him. Covington. Is there a Kuzma? Could you turn Covington and Morris and a couple picks and a Kuzma and just call it a day? Yeah, probably. Make them worse.

That probably makes the most sense, right? Yeah, I think everybody except Koulibaly is available from Washington. Maybe that's where the Daniel Gafford Oklahoma City thing comes in. Maybe we should have led with that. Oh, that's a good one. I like that one.

All right, Rosillo. You're still doing your pod. Three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This is your time. Bowl season, football playoffs, basketball trades, Napoleon. You're just peaking right now. Basketball is taking a back trades, Napoleon. Yeah. You're just peaking right now. Basketball's taking a backseat to Napoleon,

but I promise to start watching more games in February once I'm done with it. Are you doing an all-Napoleon pod over the break? We're having the author on. Let me give the author a shout-out here on the podcast because we've been working. Wow, you went that far? You're going to have the actual author how old is this book uh i think it's only um like five or six years old so oh no it's uh it's eight

years old okay uh by the way the age rating on this one 18 and older so just to let you know we were teasing a bit there it is andrew Andrew Roberts, who apparently is also a member of parliament in England in a baron. So we're going to have to put on a nice shirt on when we interview him for a recap of the book. But again, it's going to take a little bit more time to get through. All right, Rosillo, good to see you. Thanks, man. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

Yeah, Merry Christmas. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rosillo. Thanks to Steve Cerruti, Kyle Creighton. I will see you on this feed on Thursday. I don't have.