The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA Buyout Mania, Brooklyn’s Destiny, and the State of Boston Sports With Raja Bell and Kevin Hench

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Raja Bell to discuss how they feel about trade deadline deals after the weekend, the bizarre NBA buyout rules, Andre Drummond’s fit on the Lakers, James Harden’s MVP run, Blake Griffin’s potential resurgence on the Nets, Aaron Gordon on the Nuggets, and their picks to make the NBA Finals (2:45). Then, Bill’s friend and die-hard Boston sports fan Kevin Hench joins the show to discuss the state of Boston sports (79:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Check out the Bakari Sellers podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. He has awesome celebrities, does politics, does sports. He has people like Delroy Lindo one week, and then Magic Johnson last week, who was awesome talking about ownership and the Showtime Lakers and all kinds of things. If you want your little blend of politics, pop culture, and sports, check out the Bakari Sellers podcast. Follow it on Spotify or subscribe on Apple Podcasts it's the Bill Simmons podcast

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last night we did commando me shay serrano kyle brandt the uh the ultimate funny action movie that's unintentionally funny and legitimately funny also launched really launched arnold's uh next 10 years of his career it's an it's a strangely important but terrible but enjoyable movie we have another one coming on Wednesday. I'm going to give you the heads up on that now. 40th anniversary of Thief, Michael Mann's first theatrical movie, an all-time classic with James Caan. It is on HBO Max. If you have HBO Max, you can watch it before we do the podcast. Yet another Michael Mann movie on the rewatchables because that's our guy. I mean, we've done Heat twice on the rewatchables.

That's our guy. We all have guys. Michael Mann is one of our guys. Coming up, Raja Bell is going to talk NBA with me. And then my friend Hench is going to come on as we celebrate, I think, almost our 20th League of Dork season, but also we're both freaking out about Boston sports. So Raj on NBA, Hench on Boston. It's all coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this. It is 9.30 Pacific time.

Raja Bell is here. You can hear him on The Real Ones with Logan Murdoch on Ringer NBA twice a week. I stole him today. I stole you from... I needed a week. I stole him today. I needed a break. I needed a break from Logan. Everyone who listens knows. It's good for the podcast marriage to mix it up, I think. You know, step out, go on a date with somebody else.

We're a few days away from the trade deadline. Just picking up the scraps. Vucevic to Chicago. A big-ass trade. We reacted to it here on this pod on Thursday. But the more I thought about it over the weekend, just a really good trade where it was like Orlando got awesome picks.

Chicago now is going to make a real push and find out if they're actually good. Is Chicago actually good? Right. I think that they can be. When I look at trades, trades bill i don't know i mean i look at them more like i i'm not great at the projection of picks right like because i the picks are just an uncertain thing like they're great picks but you're dealing in uncertainties right so like i always like to look at it from the team that got the actual pieces and i think

the bulls um are a good team now you're certainly going to find out about the Zach Levines of the world. I think that he can produce on a winning team and help them get to a spot. But those things will kind of come into focus now, right? As you have the pieces to potentially match up with other teams in the East. And so I'm of the belief that they've gotten better and they will be able to make a push in the East.

I think that team works. I keep thinking about it, last five minutes of a game, if they're playing somebody good. Like, let's say they're playing Brooklyn. Brooklyn has the most firepower in the league. Chicago now has two guys who are pretty elite offensively that they can go to, right? Levine, who I think has been on that level all season,

and he's been able to go toe-to-toe with whoever in a way that I just didn't think he was capable of. And then Vooch, you know, he's a problem. He can shoot threes. He can take smaller guys down low a little bit and do a couple different things. I do think, like, I'm just thinking playoff series, if they're sixth, seventh, eighth seed, or let's say they're in the play-in game, stuff like that, I do think they're going to be hard to play. I guess the key to me, it's weird,

and it's not one of their best guys, but they need that Rajah Bell guy in the crunch time five, right? And I think it might have to be Patrick Williams because he's 19, he's a baby. Offensively, he's not anywhere close to anything yet, but the way he's been able to defend some of these perimeter guys, ultimately it seems like it would be Vooch, Thad Young, Williams, Levine, and probably Kobe White or some sort of guard with that.

But from what you've seen of Williams, what is he on the Raja scale? Yeah, no, I like him. I think when you come into the league like he is, it's going to take you a while to kind of figure out who you are offensively. At least it did myself. When you're not one of those premier guys where the ball's going to be in your hands every night and you're going to get opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to either try to make a play or trial and error, you fail your way into figuring out what works. It just takes a while to figure out kind of who you are offensively and how you help whatever franchise it is that you're on. But to the point that you made, I figured out early that a lot of younger players that wind up playing big roles on teams that have success, they figure out the niche that they can kind of fit into, right? Like the need that that team has. And it typically is on the defensive end or it's some sort of tough guy rebounding,

nut and bolt type of bring it all together. And then I hit a jump shot here and there if I need to. And so that's the way he's going to have to help that team. And the jury, quite frankly, I talked about, I tend to think Zach Levine can do it, right? But the jury is even out on the Zach Levines of the world and the Kobe Whites, who's a younger player, as to whether or not they can do that

in the moment that you're describing, like that big moment. I know they can do it in the regular season. Everyone knows that. I tend to think he can, but that's what we're trying to figure out with Chicago. Well, you know, the Celtics got Fournier. He's a good example.

He was, I think, in one playoff series and was just really bad. You know, there's such a difference with regular season versus like, holy shit, I'm in the playoffs. I'm on national TV. The thing I like about Williams is he doesn't care if he shoots. Like, you look at his box scores, especially he'll have some games where he plays like 35 minutes. He has seven shots.

But I think he knows like the, the way I'm going to make my bones early on is defensively athleticism, stuff like that. And I just look at the best guys in this draft. And I really, I actually really liked this draft Halliburton Wiseman Lamello. Yeah. I think Patrick Williams is there as one of the four.

And then Edwards, who I think you could give me any scenario with Edwards' career and I would probably believe it. There's moments where you're like, oh man, this guy is like a more athletic Dwayne Wade. And then there's other moments where he's just like, you know, 13 for 32 in a game that they lose. I don't know what to make of him. How much have you seen of him? I have not seen a lot of him. I've not admittedly seen a lot. But Patrick.

Probably wise. I think wise not to watch a lot of Minnesota. I've not seen a lot. But I do know that those highlights, like that athleticism is off the charts. The ability to create shots for him seems to be at an elite level where at least in the NBA, when you're looking for a guy who can be your number one, you have to be at an elite level where, where, you know, at least in the NBA,

when you're looking for a guy who can be your number one, you have to be able to create a shot. Like that's just what it is, right? Like at a high level, get a shot up whenever you need to get it up. And so you've checked those boxes. I, you know, Minnesota is one of those, we talk about it all the time. It's a really hard place to evaluate anything because it's been so dysfunctional. It's just just it's so messy that even if there's something like there's a gem in in the middle of all of that it's just you got to really refine it and knock off all the soot it's just a mess so it's hard to tell i think he's going to be a really really good player but you know i don't know what it is yet because i i can't

i don't want to watch minnesota play well you saw it in the trade deadline. You'll do this when you're a GM someday. You kind of target the weak teams, right? They're like the deer in the herd that is five feet behind with a little bit of a limp. And you see the smart teams go right at them. Like Miami did it. They went after B. Litsa on the Kings, who I was always like, this guy feels like a playoff guy to me.

He's not going to start. He's not a crunch time guy, but he's a guy I can see in a series coming off the bench on a good team who knows exactly who he is and how to help. We've never seen it because he's never been on a good team, but it was just funny to me that Miami is like, yeah, we'll take this guy.

He's something. We'll throw him in here. But I would be trying to pull guys off Minnesota, Sacramento, and Detroit if I was at that trade deadline. Oh, absolutely. And what happens to bad teams sometimes is the guy like Nemanja Bielica and those type of players who are really good players and have kind of defined skill sets, they're not able to really be great in those

roles because like you don't have the great top end guys that create the platform for you to be great in your role to help a winning team right that's what it kind of boils down to like your stars are probably good not great and great stars you know allow good role players to be you know successful on winning teams. And Miami, they're smart. No one's going to doubt Pat Riley and Eric Spolstra and the brain trust there. They want guys, number one, that can really shoot the ball and have really, really good BBIQ.

Don't have to have it in their hands all the time to create shots. They're not a ball-dominant type of ISO team all the time. So yeah, that's what happens and bad teams again man like i don't mean any disrespect but you're bad for a reason you've been bad for a while i mean it's hard sometimes when you're stuck in that as a player you had it both ways as the role player right like you're one of those guys, depending on who you're with, you would rise or fall with the, with the cast. The best case scenario was playing with future hall of famers on the suns and you know exactly where you fit in, but on a lousy team, a lot of the stuff you brought to the table becomes relatively inessential, right? Yeah. It's it's so yes, the best, the best,

you know, example of it is like a, I don know, six-week span of my career when I was in Phoenix in my customary role there, just doing what I did. And we were a good team, and I knew where the shots were going to come from. They knew what I was going to do defensively. I didn't have to try to step out of my box too often. See, the thing is, NBA guys, I can step out of that box and give you 30 give you 30 points, 33 points, you know, like I can do that and like knock down eight threes and I've done it, but you can't count on me to do that every night. So you can only ask me to step out of that box once in a while. And then I got to go back in the box. So the first three weeks of that, I'm in Phoenix doing what I do.

And then I get traded the next three weeks. I'm in Charlotte, not a, not a bad team. I mean, good players, Gerald, Gerald Wallace was great. And a bad team. I mean, good players. Gerald Wallace was great and Raymond Felton was really nice player and there were pieces, but they just probably needed a little more from me than I was able to do consistently for that team to win. And so, you know, that's the difference. So now I'm cast with like Larry Brown running me off of screens, like I'm Rip Hamilton or Ray Allen or Reggie Miller. And some nights I have 25 and it looks good and we win. And then I'll give you two or three nights

where I'm like two for, or, you know, three or four for 16. And it's just not good enough to get it done. And, you know, that's the difference of the supporting cast and me not being, you know, a star in the league, a role guy. It's funny. I think Fournier is a good example of this conversation. He's weirdly consistent. You look at his last five years and he's between 17 and 20 and he's like a 38 to 40% three-point shooter. But Orlando is asking him to be

the number two creator on a team, basically. Now he goes to the Celtics, and I still can't believe they got him for the price they got him, where it's like two second-round picks. Who cares? Now they have a swing guy who's got a little size, not great defensively, but at least has some size so you can switch with him,

and maybe it won't be a complete disaster. But then offensively, now you have somebody when Jalen or Tatum aren't in the game can come in and you can actually run the offense for them. You can take Tatum and Jalen out at the same time and just say to Fournier, can we just run stuff through you for four minutes? And he's actually kind of overqualified to do that. Orlando was asking him to do that at the end of the games. Now he gets to do that at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters. I think he's in a great spot. He is. If he buys in and he's at the point in

his career, I have to imagine where he's good. Because what you're describing is a guy who's going from sitting at the buffet and it's whatever you want. And now you're telling him, hey man, you got to pick yourself four items there, but you can't take all of it because we need Jason and Jalen to get theirs, right? So sometimes that's a difficult thing for a player, depending on where you are in your career, asking him to take a little less. I think he'll be fine though.

And it fills kind of the void of Gordon Hayward. You know, he's not Gordon Hayward. He's not Gordon Hayward, but Gordon gave you another guy who you could run offense through. He could get himself a bucket, and he could set the table in times where you didn't have Jason or Jalen on the floor. It gave you some flexibility there offensively.

Yeah, the thing they really needed was a swing who just wasn't in kind of like a guy who could only do a couple things. They needed a guy who knew how to move without the ball, who could actually create a shot for somebody else. Even Tatum and Jalen, I think that's the biggest thing that they need to learn as they get better and better. They're really good for themselves. How do you make other guys better?

I remember with Pierce, it took Pierce a long time to get to that point on the Celts. It was like an eight-year odyssey. Then they had a really bad 2006 season. They didn't make the playoffs, but he was great. And he could have been like second team all-NBA that year, but the league was pretty loaded. But it was the first year he kind of realized,

oh, there's more than me just getting 25. I have to bring some other dudes in. And it's just this thing that I don't feel like has even come close to happening with Tatum yet, but I think it will three years from now. Yeah, that's the maturation process of a star. It's the arc that they follow toward a championship, if there eventually is one in the future, is understanding how to take your talents and elevate a me. Do you know what I mean? Elevate somebody that's on your team in a supporting

role, make them better. And the great ones do figure it out over time. I got to be honest, though, and I know you did not ask me, but I'm just going to go off on a tangent. Let's hear it. I work in the youth basketball world, right? And so I coach high school teams and I coach young teams all the way down to like sixth grade. And what this basketball landscape, and I vented to one of my friends yesterday, who was one of the first trainers, he worked with Jay Hernandez and Jay is now coaching a G League team. They were one of the first like skill guys that I had ever worked with as a player. It was late in my career, but they did a good job of marrying like the skill that you were learning

or the skills that you were working on with the situation that you'd be able to use them in a game so when you left a workout you knew like how that was going to translate into the game that you were playing the style that your coach asked you to play well what these guys do now is they give you a ball and you dance on it for an hour and you learn how to just go iso you know, and score. All that stuff. Yeah. And you weaponize these kids with like phenomenal individual skill sets of offense. But to your point, like not a lot of young kids now coming up through the systems really understand how to play with the other kids, how to make the other kids better.

They can get you 30, like just get out of their way. But the game's being taught at a grassroots level to kind of build players like you're talking about, where they're great with the ball and then they have to figure out as they get better and older

how to make it work with other people. I think that's what I liked about LaMelo and what was so surprising and refreshing about him before he got hurt. That he was this rookie that came in who seemed like he was fun to play with.

And that's the thing I always go back to as a refrain on this podcast. I always judge these guys by, does that person look like they're fun to play with? Lomelo seemed like he was fun to play with, didn't need the ball all the time. I think that's why maybe I value Lonzo a little bit more than some other people. Doesn't need the ball. Listen, before you said that, and I don't mean to turn it into I'm gonna agree to everything Bill's gonna say today but I when you were talking about um a lamello I was going to say it's why I loved Lonzo so much in the draft process like I loved him because I watch UCLA play and he didn't even care if he got the assist like he would get it off the glass and

rifle it up the court that would ignite a break and he'd get the hockey assist but they'd score score. And I just put myself in those other players' shoes. And I was like, Jesus, I'd love to play with that. It would be so fun because you know that if you do your job and you're where you're supposed to be, that he doesn't care. He's just going to give it to you. And Steve Nash was like that. Steve was able though to know exactly how you like the ball. I didn't want the ball if I had already made my cut and I was stationary under the rim and I'd have to go off of two feet. Steve wouldn't throw it to me there. He'd give it to me two steps earlier so I could go off of one foot

and kind of, you know, make whatever layup. But he was super unselfish, but then knew exactly where you wanted it and how you want it. I think Halliburton has that, too. I've been so impressed with how he's able to just figure out how to play with Fox. And you've seen the last few games they put Halliburton, they've just given him a bigger kind of role since he came back. And it's funny, the Kings didn't make a trade other than Bielitsa.

And we're like, yeah, we're not sellers actually. We're not going to trade Barnes. We actually kind of like our top four, and we like the way Rashawn Holmes is playing. We kind of want to see if we can make the play-in game. Normally, I would make fun of them. But I got to say, I'm okay with it. I think for them, it would actually be a good thing

to make the play-in game, get those guys the experience. I think it was good for Memphis last year. But Hal Burton is another guy like that. I really like his vibe when he's out there. Yeah, just good players that are kind of secure in the fact that they're good players, for lack of a better way to put it. I'm good.

I know I'm good. I could fit in. I can make this work with anybody. And to the Sacramento point, I'm with you. And give me some direction, right? Let's get out of this perpetual state of no direction-ness. And if you had sold, then we're right back to like, hey, what the hell are we doing here? What kind of shape are we looking to take, right?

So you like what you got, you put a stamp on that. Let's see what it looks like at the end of the season and then continue to build. At least there's some direction. And that's all I can ask for, right? If you're a Sacramento fan or someone watching. We're going to take a break. I want to talk, that leads into the buyout guys, because I think this is a really important conversation and it's a thing that's come up over the weekend. So we'll be back and talk about that. This episode is brought to you by Movember.

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suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you can still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right. So this has become part of the post-trade deadline process where certain guys are just too expensive now because the cap went way up. The rules make it really hard to trade somebody like Andre Drummond, Kevin Love, who's not a

buyout guy, but I think he's another example of somebody who I think would be useful, but he makes 31 million a year. Nobody can trade for him. Kyle Lowry, nobody could trade for him. He's not getting bought out. And we've entered this weird point where these teams kind of know post-deadline, the good teams, the three or four teams everyone cares about, Brooklyn, the Lakers, Miami, they know they're going to get a buyout guy because they're kind of the alpha dogs in the league. And it's like LaMarcus Aldridge is getting bought out. Drummond's getting bought out. Probably one in three chance we're going to get one of those guys. And it puts a little less pressure on them. The thing I don't like about it,

and look, the Celtics in 2008, one of the reasons they won the title was because they got PJ Brown as a buyout guy and he ended up saving their ass in game seven against Cleveland. What I don't like about it is it doesn't seem like there's enough of a penalty for the team that's getting the buyout guy. So like the Lakers, they just get Drummond. They add him. He's like 800,000 for the rest of the year. Of course they're going to do that. It seems like they should have a rule that for the buyout guy, it should be one third of his salary should count toward your tax. If Drummond's making $28.5 million a year and they're getting him for the last 40% of the season,

that 40% of his actual salary should count against their tax. Then if they want to do it and they want to pay more and it's going to be some sort of penalty, maybe you only pay him 800,000, but I feel like the tax piece should be some sort of penalty. Instead, they're just kind of adding signature guys. I just don't like it. I think it's really affected the league. I don't like, hey, go home for a month. We're going to try to figure out what to do.

If we can't trade you, we're just going to buy you out. Al Horford's just going home for the year. What the fuck is going on for the year. Yeah. The fuck is going on? I don't know. Well, listen,

I have, there are a lot of things that I think, um, at the next collective bargaining agreement, like when it's time to really sit down as an ownership group, they're, they're going to have to make some adjustments. Like there are,

there are, I don't know, all but two teams in the NBA right now, probably saying the same thing you're saying, right? Like, we got to do something, but this is some adjustments. Like there are, I don't know, all but two teams in the NBA right now probably saying the same thing you're saying, right? Like we got to do something, but this is some bullshit. Like this can't happen. So that and some other things like the player empowerment, the leverage that they're able to create

in certain situations where I think owners are just going to have to really sit down and try to regain some of that. Not saying that I'm on either side. I'm just that I think that's going to happen. You know, I was a guy, though, that stayed home for a year. My last year in Utah, it wasn't like the Al Horford situation because I wasn't there. I just stayed home that whole year. And the way teams can do it, the teams have some control over that you know what i mean like like they just they could just hold you until a point like well i guess that doesn't make sense

i should recant that because if they hold you to that point they're on the hook for all your salary right like utah helped me i wasn't making enough money they just held me and and to kind of spite me just helped me one day past the deadline and then now you can't sign with anybody else but those guys make too much bread i ultimately don't really you know i'm a guy that like if you've created this system you couldn't have foreseen like some of this stuff being a problem down the road like i know the competitive balance may be swung a little bit here and there but ultimately i'm going to look at things through the player's lens and like you guys created the system bro so i'm i'm all right with it does that mean it can't be fixed though because I do feel like there should be a couple fixes.

No. You know, like where the Drummond thing to me was crazy, right? He's too expensive. Yeah. He's still a relatively valuable player. He's a guy who can rebound. I actually think his impact on the Lakers is going to be a little overrated. We can talk about that in a second.

But just being able to add him for no penalty is the part that's weird to me. And that's why I do feel like there should be at least some tax repercussions with some of this stuff. Brooklyn gets Griffin, who I'm still dubious he's going to help. And then Aldridge, who can't really guard anybody anymore, but he's a guy you could throw the ball to and he can create a shot in the second quarter for three minutes. He's

something. And they just get him for nothing. I texted Steve the other day, just get your 2-3 zone playbooks out, man. Go ahead and sit. Take you eight to ten minutes a game and sit in a big old wide 2-3 zone. Yeah, seriously. But all jokes aside, I do think that there could be things that you do, man.

If the player's value, like Andre Drummond's value when he goes to sign again um is whatever number i don't know like it's exponentially more than than than lamarcus aldridge or blake griffin right like there should be some kind of implication for the team that gets to sign for eight hundred thousand dollars right because he's gonna turn around and sign like for what i don't know 30 million or something like that 20 i don't you know i'm not a numbers guy like that, but he's worth way more. So I could deal with that.

Like, I don't have the answer. It's for you guys way smarter than me, but I'm okay with there being some kind of penalty to not allow kind of these teams that are already sitting in the catbird seat to just get players for pennies on the dollar, you know? I would like to see, I think they need to twist the trade rules a little bit,

just in general. They have this thing, I think it has to be within 80% of the salaries. I've been saying this for a year. I think they can flip that. I think it can be 50%. And it would make it easier to trade. I also, they have this rule,

you can't trade first in consecutive years, basically. This is a rule that started in the 1980s with this owner named Ted Stepien, who owned the Cleveland Cavaliers and is, other than Donald Sterling, the worst owner of all time. He's actually, Ted Stepien's the most incompetent NBA owner we've ever had. He was trading his first round picks for people like Kenley Olenek, you know, like just ninth men, 10th men, just giving and ends up the Lakers end up getting, uh, I think James worthy out of one of those trades and Dallas ends up getting, you know, top five lottery picks from them, stuff like that. So they made this rule. Can't do this. You can't trade first and consecutive years. And now that's why we have all these dumb protections, but I think it really makes it harder for teams to trade.

Teams are putting these 2022, 2023 picks, top five protected. You don't know if you're actually going to get the pick. So now they can't trade the pick before that because it might be triggering. It might not. It just has gotten too complicated. We shouldn't need like a PhD to figure this shit out.

Listen, my year in the front office with Cleveland, Bill, was fascinating. And I learned so much and it was really eye opening and interesting to see it from the other side of the table. But there was so much going on. Do you know what I mean? I was basically with our team most of the time. So my job was kind of to be the conduit to the team. I represented Griff on a lot of the road trips, probably 95% of them because Griff wasn't traveling that year. So I had a lot of hands-on type of responsibilities with the team. And then I scouted and stuff like that. But I would obviously be in all the meetings and be privy to all the conversations and all the trade scenarios. And there's this huge whiteboard that people are just going up to and creating beautiful

mind scenarios where this pick is sliding over and there's this diagram. And I'm sitting there like, Jesus Christ, I can't follow that. I don't even know what's going on there. So I was like, hey, bro, if you're going to do this, you better get your books out and start studying. And you got to figure out if it's for you or not. The German thing to the Lakers. So here's what I keep coming back to, because I do think he's an asset. I was torn whether I wanted the Celtics to get him or not. The thing that scares me with him is the free throw shooting.

I mean, well, actually two things scare me. One is that we've never seen him as an asset on a good team ever. And you could say that's bad luck, or you could say if he's one of your top three guys, you can't be a good team. So that could be maybe how you look at that. But the free throw shooting basically to me means he can't play in the last six minutes of a playoff game.

You can't have him out there. So that makes him a bench guy. But I also feel like Harrell's a bench guy. I don't think Harrell is somebody that could play in the last six minutes either because of his defense. So you have two guys who are basically playing the same position, but you can't play either of them in the last six minutes of the game.

Ultimately, their destiny is going to be Davis and LeBron as the five and the four with whoever else. So on the one hand, I do think Drummond, he could give them a little bit like what Dwight Howard gave them last year. On the other hand, I think people, the way people reacted over the weekend, I was like, this guy's pretty flawed. What'd you think? I think your point is fair. I want to go back to like the best player on like one of your top three players. If he's one of your top three players, he's your best player.

And the next two players are like Reggie Jackson and someone else, then no, not going to win. But when he's number three and LeBron and Anthony Davis are number one and two, I think he can definitely exist on a team that wins a championship. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I believe that. As far as him down the stretch in a game, yeah, the free throw thing scares me a bit.

I would argue, though, that two things. Their best lineup to me really is when LeBron's at the four and AD's at the five. I just think that's where they go naturally anyway. I think that gives them the most flexibility offensively. But they did have real success in the bubble last year, just getting big on you, right? And just bullying the hell out of you.

And so if you chose to do that, I would say, he's not going to have the ball anyway. So, you know, you're basically going to be shooting with LeBron or AD or someone like that. He's going to be catching lobs, offensive rebounds, and then get those suckers back in the rim as quick as you can so that we can mitigate how many times you got to go to the free throw line. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But there is a real, there's something to what you said. Like, if you have to pump the ball into him down the stretch, you probably, you have a problem on your

hands. But I would argue that the Lakers have a bigger problem. If you're pumping the ball into him at the end of a game anyway, the Lakers are in bigger trouble than we even can address right now. Well, you also have the playing for a new contract thing, which if he's playing 14 minutes a game during the playoffs for them, I personally think he should have gone to the Knicks. If part of his job is to create value for himself for his next contract the best place to do is the next especially after Mitchell Robinson fractured his foot because now it's like this team actually needs you you'll actually really play their playoff team they might even be able

to avoid the play-in game because they just there's this resiliency to them that uh I don't know they might be able to hang around and you could have had a huge impact on them. But I get it. The LeBron Lakers thing is super sexy to guys where they're just like, wow, I get to play with LeBron. I get to play for a title. This would be awesome. I just don't know how much he's going to play. I have to imagine they had those conversations though. You know, like, cause I agree. If you're looking at it from the, if we're, if we're assuming that he's going to be shelved like towards the end of games and he's not going to have this huge role with the Lakers, then I'm going to totally agree. Look, championships are great, but it's your turn to eat.

You know what I mean? You want to make sure that you can secure the bag moving forward. You don't want to get relegated to that eighth man category. You don't want to start trying those slippers on right now. So I think that the conversations were had. The Lakers have to have plans for him. There's some wink-winks? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's not going to that blind thinking he's an eighth man or a seventh man. No chance. I do think he's an asset because the rebounding speaks for itself. Somebody who can average 15 rebounds a game for multiple years, that's something. The free throw shooting, I don't think we can gloss over it. I think he might be the worst free throw shooter of all time. His career, he's 46.7% career.

Is that the, I mean, who is lower than that? There's nobody, no way anyone, even Dwight Howard isn't that bad. So, you know, I just think it's going to be impossible for them to play him. I think it also opens them up to some hack-a-shack stuff, which I still, as much as I hate, I hate the guts of hack-a-shack. I really, I despise it. But it's effective. And it's a good way, if somebody's, you're playing somebody, they're up nine, they have

momentum, they're controlling the game, they're in a flow. And the hack-a-shack just like basically discombobulates the game for 20 minutes yep and it works yeah it chops the game up man there i you know we play with shack for was it a whole year i got to play with them i don't know yeah bits and pieces of a whole year um and pop did it to us you know i think it was in the playoffs and it was my only experience with it but it was it was it really did just derail all vibe of offense that you had going on and got frustrating for you as a player you know you knew what was coming you start to what you start to do as a player if i could take you inside you start to lose focus right because as you're going up and down the court you're like acutely aware of

everything that's going on you're super focused on job, where the shot's going to come from, the movement of players, you know, and what that means to your movement and your ability to get a shot or what you need to do defensively. Like this is all happening. And then when you know that that foul is coming every time, your focus starts to drift.

You just start to like lose sight of what's going on. Right. And then when he stops,'re like oh shit i lost my focus i gotta get it back and it just doesn't happen that easy sometimes yeah you lose control of just the basic element of basketball which is you want to get in a flow yep and as soon as that's taken away it's just it becomes weird you know it's and i think that's a key way to beat the lakers is just make the game weird. It did seem like they made a real kick the tires effort at Lowry, which I had been hearing

for a couple of days leading up and Schroeder was in the trade and maybe they didn't want to give up a tail and Horton Tucker that a lot of people reported that as part of it. It would have been Schroeder, KCP, tail and Horton Tucker. I personally would have done it. I like Kyle Lowry. My only concern with Kyle, and it's got nothing to do with Kyle. I'm a huge Kyle fan.

I think he's dope. The guy that he is, and I shouldn't really even worry about it because he did it with Kawhi. Kawhi's a ball-dominant guy, so that answers my question. But that was my surface concern was man like he he's a bulldog of a point guard you know like a conductor of offense he is like your prototypical old school i got this shit everybody gets your place how would he coexist with lebron but you know i i it was hard for me look i'm i'm a talent

horton tucker, I can't say that I'm a fan, but I realized he's a good player. Is he, is he that good bill? Like you're going to have to hit me to this. Like, is that something that would crumble a deal for you with Kyle Lowry? No, I would have done it. I, the thing with Schroeder is he's still not shooting threes that well, you know, he's like 31% this year. Uh, I do like how he's playing. I do think he has the kind of personality that fits with LeBron, and he makes sense to me as a crunch time guy for them. But I do

think teams are going to leave him open in the playoffs. And if it's a case of I could have LeBron and AD beat me, or I'm going to let Schroeder and KCP and go ahead, knock yourselves out, guys. The other thing, obviously, is Davis and can they get him healthy before the end of the season?

And LeBron is now hurt that those high, have you ever had a high ankle sprain? No, but I've seen, you know, teammates try to deal with them. They're brutal. They're, and there's, they're, the timetable on them is really, it's really just a loose timetable because they just sometimes don't heal the way you think they're going to heal. Do you know, like, and it, it winds up being, you know, it's really just a loose timetable because they just sometimes don't heal the way you think they're going to heal. Do you know? Like, and it, it winds up being, you know, I know we said four weeks,

but now we're six weeks out and it's still, so anybody telling you definitively when LeBron's coming back, they're lying to you. So my daughter had one in soccer like a year and a half ago and they were like four weeks. It was like two months. Now she doesn't have all the technology LeBron has, right? She doesn't get to lie in a hyperbaric chamber and all that stuff.

But it's a really bad injury. I was shocked by how painful it is, how it never feels right. And it's almost like you have like a broken leg. Yeah. That's how it feels. I came close. So the play that it usually happens on

is when your foot, like a traditional ankle roll is like your leg rolling out, right? And that foot kind of rolling under. And the high ankle sprain is the opposite, right? Like your leg gets kind of hit from the outside and that ankle kind of rolls in towards the floor. Yeah. So I actually broke my leg on a play like that in the CBA.

So I avoided the high ankle sprain because one of those bones in that shin area fractured. And, and, but I just a freaky, a freaky play kind of like LeBron's and all of that is excruciating. I, but I think you and I talked like way back.

I was, I was in Georgia. I came on your pod once before, and we had the Anthony Davis conversation. I love Anthony Davis. I think he's phenomenal. I think he's a phenomenal player. What's always been of concern is whether you can rely on that. And he had a phenomenal playoff run

last year. He was great. But at some point, you as a Laker franchise and as LeBron James, you have to want this man to take the torch. It's got to be passed. And you have to have concerns. I think they're valid still. Can know, like, can he withstand it? Is he built to do it as the number one, like holding the franchise down? I have concerns about that. He does seem like he's one of the league leaders in limping off or going down

and, you know, just over and over again. It just seems, I never know with injuries. Is it bad luck? Is, are certain people just predisposed to being less durability? It doesn't even matter. Like, do you know what I mean? Like I'm with you.

I don't know. But the point is, I mean, you could be, you could call it bad luck. You could call it predisposition to it. Whatever you want. The fact is the guy who I'm like trusting the franchise to, he can't have either one of those. He's got to be available. Yeah. Harden. I mean, Harden was fat at the start of the year. No question. Harden always plays. That dude never gets hurt. He's like,

he's like one of those, uh, I'm chatting like a Frank Gore type running back where he's just, just year after year, he's playing the 16 games. But meanwhile, he's one of the best offensive players of all time. I'm actually glad I wanted to talk about Harden for this little segment we're going to do for State Farm. No matter how sure you think you are in a game of basketball, anything can happen. Upsets, comebacks, buzzer beaters.

There's no such thing as certainty until the final whistle blows. James Harden is an MVP candidate. I don't think anything has ever been more surprising than that. This guy bulldozed his way out of Houston. I'm not voting for him. I do think there's going to be a segment of the media that's just like, fuck that. I don't care how good of your season was. I'm not voting for you. But he's in the mix. He's playing better than anybody else is playing basketball right now. And that's been the case for five weeks.

Is he an MVP candidate to you? 100%. And you subtract LeBron because of the high ankle for a while. You get rid of Joel Embiid in the conversation who was playing phenomenal. And the pool whittles, right? Like it shrinks on you.

Yeah, he's an MVP candidate. And I didn't even like the way that he operated there in Houston to get out for a lot of reasons. Young Steven Silas being one of them, I thought he kind of owed it to him to at least show up and be a pro until they could figure that out. But that's neither here nor there. What he's done going to Brooklyn is just masterful. I mean, he stepped into a situation that people

like me said, hey, man, I don't know if he can work in that. There are not enough balls there. He's going to have to sacrifice. And all he's done is fit in seamlessly and really orchestrate what they're doing. Kyrie's great. KD hasn't been there this whole time.

But really, the guy who makes all that work is James Harden. If you watch the games,rie's great. You know, KD hasn't been there this whole time, but really the guy who makes all that work is James Harden. If you watch the games, he's the one that makes it work. He allows, you know, Kyrie does what Kyrie does. He's going to do that wherever you put him. The guy who makes all of that flow work and kind of rations out where the ball is going to go and rations out Kyrie's opportunities, make sure he gets enough to eat and then make sure everybody else is touching. It takes it over when he needs to. That's all James Harden. Well, he's down to seven to one to win the MVP.

He is the second best odds on FanDuel. The game of basketball, no strangers, surprising great outcomes. The same can be said when it comes to shopping for insurance with State Farm. You get the personalized service of a local agent for a surprisingly great rate. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I've talked about this on a pod before. I wanted your take. I think when you're a truly great basketball player, you have different phases of yourself, right?

So I wrote about, in my book, I wrote about Jordan, how there was like four versions of Jordan. So by the time we got to the last couple of years of Chicago, it was Jordan 4.0, where he was like slower, but he had the mastery. He was able to play everything at his pace and just what a killer he was, was at a whole other level. And that version was just different than the other three versions.

And I think LeBron is another example of that, right? LeBron, you saw the first version of Cleveland LeBron. You saw the last three years of Miami LeBron. Then you saw 2018 LeBron where he just had the physicality he added, and then you saw what he's been doing with the Lakers. Harden, to me, seems like he's on another version of himself here, where I would say it's Harden 3.0, where there's an inclusiveness like what we talked about earlier. Houston, it was like, it's the James Harden show. You guys all stand in your spots. You're all props on my stage, but I'm going to be doing everything. And Chris Paul didn't love it. Westbrook probably didn't love it that much, but it was like, you guys go here and I'm going to do

my thing. The point guard version of him has been triggered a little bit more than I think we've ever seen. And how much of this do you think has to do with just the supporting cast he has or what phase of a career he's at, if you had to say? Oh, that's a good question. Let me put a percentage on three things, if you will. And I think they're all equal. I think I would give it like a, a, basically a 33% to, to all of these. Like, I think it's, it's the phase where he is in his career. Um, and not only with a skill set and mentality, but understanding that it's time to win. Like this is, I'm in a situation now where I need to,

I'd win this, right? There's a trust level and probably a recognition, like game recognizes game. Kyrie is the shit, man. He's really, really good. Kevin Durant is quite possibly the best player on the planet. I don't think Harden's been in a situation since he was younger with OKC where he's looked around and said, okay, all these dudes do what I do. So I'm going to feel more secure and trusting and giving the ball up. And I think the third part, and I think it can't be discounted is, is, you know, the situation that was already in place in Brooklyn, like understanding that you had to make this work because if you didn't, it was going to be on you. And a guy like Steve Nash and Mike D'Antoni probably in his ear about how this works the best. Let me tell you

how this works. This is what we already have in place. I've dealt with these guys. I know who they are. I know their game. Here's how I see you fitting into this, not sacrificing yourself at all, but just kind of, you know, to your point, being a different version of it, like see if that can work. And I think all three of those things together and you're looking at what you're looking at it. Yeah. He, uh, he'll, he's lapsed in the Houston heart in a little bit just because Durant hasn't played a lot. Um, but for the most part, I think when Durant comes back, you know, like when Barkley called them the dribble brothers after the trade, I thought that was really funny.

I was jealous of it. It's such a great joke, but it was also true. I did feel like the guy I felt bad for was Durant. Cause he's playing with these two other guys who seem like they had become solo acts in a lot of ways. I don't feel that way watching them. I don't feel like there's a Dribble Brothers thing.

I actually do think the ball moves. And I think they're going to be really hard to play. I guess my question is, we talked about durability with Davis before. When do we start seriously worrying about Durant here? You know, who had a really bad broken foot. I think it was 2015, who had the Achilles injury that is, I think, the worst injury you could have as a basketball player.

And now he seems to be having more below-the-waist stuff. And this hamstring thing has been like a month. And you just think like he's early 30s. He's played over 1,000 games at this point. He's seven feet tall. I start to get worried when there's structural stuff happening with somebody below the waist when they're that size and that age. You should be worried.

I think, again, it's a fair concern to have. I'm not in that locker room. I imagine that that medical team and Sean Marks and company are saying, listen, nothing matters right now. None of this means anything. So we just have to make sure that when we get into the last two weeks of the season, three weeks of the season, that we are all systems go and everyone is healthy. We don't want to be having any nagging injuries. So I'm hoping that it's more that than they just can't get him to feel good enough to play. But I still think in either case, when it's year after year after year, you have to have real concerns until you string together two or three years of relatively clean health checks. You know, if you do that, then the narrative can change.

But if it's going to be an every year thing where you got to miss two months of basketball yeah i mean you think the best ability is availability it's just what it is i love their ability with stars like to me yannis is there a safer bet to be able to play 35 minutes a game for eight months than yannis no he's a he's a monster i he's just a freak. LeBron was like that too for his entire career. Even in year 18, he finally, the injury that happened to his ankle was super fluky and is the kind of thing that you think, it's amazing that hasn't happened to him

four times in his career, where he lands on somebody's foot, somebody rolls into his ankle. He just has been able to avoid it because he's durable and he's an amazing athlete. But I do think some people are a little more predisposed to have this stuff happen. To me, Giannis is the perfect example of like,

it would take a lot for that guy to get injured. Yeah, he's like a tank. People sleep on how physically large he is, not height-wise, but just in terms of bulk and the body that he's, the armor that he's put on to withstand what he takes. It's pretty remarkable. Now, you know Aaron Nelson and those guys. Aaron Nelson's the head strength and conditioning, well, not strength and conditioning, he's the head trainer. I don't know if that's the correct term anymore, in New Orleans now.

But those guys were on the forefront. Him, Mike Elliott, who's in Utah. We were with the Suns, and they were into all this corrective stuff. So they had got the Antonio McDyess, who had had the microfracture at the time, and no one ever thought he'd be himself again. And then after he left Phoenix, he was able to be productive again. Grant Hill came in there with lingering injuries that had derailed his arc as a player, and then he was able to get back to a pretty cool version of himself. Same with Shaq.

Shaq came in with a major hip issue. He wasn't playing in Miami. And then they, so I think Nash was another one. Cause Nash had back issues in Dallas and was fine in Phoenix. That's right. So there, there are guys that are going to be, you know,

have these predispositions to kind of, you know, being injured. It's whether you have the right people in place, like in your building, they can help them navigate them sometimes. You know what I mean? And correctively get in there proactively and correct whatever's wrong so it doesn't manifest itself in, I don't know, April or May. The Suns were my

pick for a major basketball PD scandal for four years. The way they were rejuvenating everybody. That's something fishy was going on. I kept waiting for some Italian PD ring to be tied to somebody, but yeah, they did a great job there. Part of my regret. Like I was,

I was young. I was dumb. I didn't get injured a lot. And so they'd be like, Hey, come get these correctives. I was like, no,

I'm good. How much have you talked to Nash? Cause again, we, we talk about thisives. I was like, no, I'm good. I'm good. How much have you talked to Nash? Because again, we talk about this every time you're on, but you could have been working for that team. What a year that would have been. You could have written a book. So I text him, right? I could have Jack McCollum'd it, right?

Like that's a whole nother story. Sitting behind the scenes, just all access. We forgot he was even there. And then the book comes out. I text Steve the other day, like the day after the trade deadline. And I asked him if the job was still available. I was like, is it still available? Can I come to your park?

Can I grab a ring? No, but I haven't talked to him that much. I know he's busy. I'll text him every now and again. His concern from the text that we shared was, can we defend at a high enough level to get it done? And like I told you, my kind of thing was tongue in cheek was like, yo, dude, just two threes are great, man. Sit in one for a while. But that was his concern. He knows he's got that offense and he's got players, whether they can defend enough or not.

I thought Blake was going to be zero help. I just thought he was washed physically as a player, and I just didn't see it. The one thing I've noticed from the stuff I've seen with him in Brooklyn, he's become a really smart basketball player. It's so funny because he came into the league, and he was just this high-flying athlete, right, who was basically like just raw

athleticism that it's all-time example of it. And then I think over the course by the mid-2010s, he really became smart about the geometry of the floor, how to pass out a double team, stuff like that. And even you saw in Detroit, his last good year, two years ago, really had a great season. Like he was really, really, really impressive. It was like 25, 10 and five every night. And I thought it made other guys better. I don't think he's there athletically anymore,

but I have noticed, especially defensively, he's strong and he knows where to go and what to do. And I'm starting to wonder if he's going to be out there in crunch time for him, even in a limited version of himself. Oh, he's going to be out there. He's getting, now it'll be, I'm not. Oh, so you see it too. Okay. Yeah. It's not going to be, I can't say that he'll be out there every night because as they keep amassing like these, these players, there's someone's going to have a night and then the other guy's going to have a night and then someone's going to have a night. And's kind of what what i was talking about when a guy takes that step into not necessarily being a star and starts becoming a role guy is the consistency right so you're looking

for one of the three of those guys blake lamarcus uh you know uh what's the other why can't i call the other big's name that's there right now but you're looking for one of them to give you what Deandre Jordan. Oh, Deandre. Yeah. Deandre Claxton. Yeah. To give you minutes on any given night. I see Blake stepping in there and being really good. What's he like version like 5.5 of himself at this point.

He's smart. And I don't think that you can discount the dunks that you've seen in Brooklyn. This is going to sound really cheesy, right? But when he left Detroit, he hadn't dunked in how long? Who knew? I don't know. It was since December 2019 or something like that. That doesn't have shit to do with his physical ability.

I chop that up to headspace. You did not like where you were. You just weren't really engaged and willing to put forth the effort to do that. And it requires effort. And the fact that you've seen him in Brooklyn do it a couple times, I think speaks more to where he is mentally in terms of being in a spot that he'd want to be in

and enjoying it again more than it does how much he has in the tank physically. Listen, I'm not perfect. i'm wrong from time to time i know it's hard to believe for the people out there but i don't bat a thousand on predictions and opinions i thought blake no way i didn't see it i thought he was washed yeah from what i've seen just in three games he might be out there in crunch time for them in a. I don't think it'll be against Embiid, but I think against Milwaukee teams like that, I'm just trying to figure out who is the

fifth guy who's going to be out there with Durant, Harden, Harris, Kyrie. Who is your fifth guy who, it's basically the guy who's got to do all the unsung stuff. He has to deal with whoever the most physical guy on the other team is so Durant doesn't have to do all the unsung stuff. He has to deal with whoever the most physical guy on the other team is so Durant doesn't have to do it.

The only team he can't play against in crunch time is Philly because he's not going to be able to guard Embiid. But if he, let's say he's going against the Celtics, he's going against Miami, whoever, I think there's a chance if he can stay healthy for a couple more months that he might actually be out there in crunch time for them.

I think he's their best option. I'm not going to argue that at all. The caveat is if he's healthy, right? If that knee is not swelling up after every game, right? When you get to the playoffs and you're playing seven times in 14 days, that's why the big thing I had to fall to do with him was like, he's just been hurt too many times. He's had too many surgeries. I don't think he can hold up, but if they can salvage some version of him for, I think the Milwaukee series, he'd be really helpful for them if they end up playing those guys.

Yeah, and you're looking for, I mean, you're looking for what? 10 to 12 points a game and some solid defense and rebounding? Eight, you can give me eight. Right, that's what you're looking for. I can't disagree with you at all. And I would just say,

they've done a great job. Sean Marks has done a phenomenal job. The insurance that they've continued to double down on for those minutes that you're talking about, I mean, you have three bullets in the chamber for just those minutes. And really four when you throw the young Claxton in. You got four bullets that you can shoot at that one target, which is those minutes in crunch time for that. I didn't feel like they needed Drummond. That was a team I actually think they have with DeAndre and Claxton and Blake

and even my guy, Bruce Brown. They just have a lot of flexibility in that fifth spot. And all they need is a guy to do all the dirty work and to be in the right places at the right times, all that stuff. The Denver thing. I saw a little Gordon last night. The defensive part of this, I wish I had hit harder on, we did like a four part,

three hour Thursday trade deadline podcast. I wish we had hit the defensive part harder with him because I do think he's good defensively and he gives them the ability to switch and he can go bigger or smaller, a little like what the Nets could use from the greatest version of Blake. But look, it's one game. They won by 20.

You don't want to jump to conclusions, but I liked how he looked. It confirmed how I thought it might look, just seeing him out there, basically as a way more athletic Millsap. I think that's going to be a good fit for him. Did you like that trade for them? Because they didn't really give up a lot.

I liked the trade for Denver. I didn't see him play last night. The one thing I kind of worried about with Denver was their style of play is so, it's not unique because there are a few teams that do it, but not everyone plays like that, where that ball is just moving, people are moving, it's humming around.

And it takes time as a player, if you don't play in that sometimes, to acclimate and be productive in it. And so it's not shaded at at Aaron Gordon I just didn't like if he's got the capability of picking that up and playing like that it's phenomenal if it's going to take him a little while to figure out how to work around Jokic and and Murray and the pieces who already like seamlessly know how to do it you know then then the jury would still be out but I loved it it on paper. It's just the style, right?

You got to really know your way around that style. And if they didn't play it in Orlando, which I know they didn't, and you've never really been exposed, it could take a minute. He needs to get over the slam dunk contest. He's wearing number 50. Like he did a documentary about it.

It's like, dude, nobody's cared about slam dunk contest for 20 years. That's fantastic. Yeah. Win some playoff games, buddy. I remembered what I was going to complain about. If I was a Rockets fan, I would be outraged. I'd be outraged

that they could have had Ben Simmons. They could have had a real guy who's a top 25 guy that could be either the best or second best player on a perennial contender. And the GM did the whole thing where he's like, nah, I'm going to grab a bunch of picks. And if you go through those picks, none of those picks might ever be even in the top 15. And we were talking on the Thursday pod, I wanted to take on this, about this new wave.

You see it in the NBA, especially of these GMs who are just grabbing a ton of future stuff because basically it buys them time for the next three years. You can't evaluate their performance. They don't have any assets that you can evaluate. It's like, well, we have all these picks. Oh, well, you have picks. We'll be back in three years to evaluate your performance i think it's like this sneaky way to just preserve your job if i was a houston fan i would be fucking outraged that i could have had simmons and maxi and a couple firsts versus like the shit sandwich that i got yeah that that's a mess and as far as hey that might

if i'm an owner, I'm not, listen, when you sit with me, you're gonna be able to lay out a vision that gets us from here to where I want us to go in those three fucking years. Like I'm not, that's it. So don't come to me like two months from now saying, hey, we had to blow it up

and I won't see the fruits of this labor for four or five years. Like we're gonna need to do this quicker with a little bit more sense of urgency because I do have to answer to fans, right? That's the shit. I got to answer to my coach. I talked about Steve and Silas earlier.

We sold someone on coming here and having a team. And this is like a G League team at this point. I don't mean any disrespect. I shouldn't have said that. No, it is a G League team. this point. I don't mean any disrespect. I shouldn't have said that. No, it is a G League team. You should have said it. Yeah, but there's so many people I have to answer to as an owner,

and it is a mess. I just hope for this is, I don't know ownership there. I don't know the GM or anybody there. I can just talk to Steven Silas. I've crossed paths with him. I know his dad. They're great dudes.

I don't know if he's a great coach. I know he's paid his dues in the NBA, and I know he got an opportunity. And I would have hoped that it could have been a little bit more stable for any coach. I would be saying this for anyone, but I would just hope that there was some stability in your first job so

it doesn't ultimately be like, yeah, he's a mess. He can't coach because it's not his fault. He drew the all-time short straw. Goes in. He's got Fat Hardenen who's just unhappy and wants out. Then they make a terrible trade. They don't even get Levert. They decide to get Oladipo instead.

Then they give away Oladipo for four cents on the dollar. And they have a bunch of, you know, head cases might be a strong word, but there's some players who's some, some players who have difficult reputations maybe on that, on that franchise. And, and they also have this guillotine hanging over their head where if they're not in the top four, OKC gets to switch picks with them. So you add everything up and it's like, wow, you can't have a worse start to your, uh, your coaching career at Houston. Yeah, that's the shit. You almost walk in and say, listen, guys, I'm out.

I'm sorry. I can't. I want to just go be an assistant somewhere for a year and just hit reset. I can't. I don't want to do this. I'd love to see a coach do like, you know, Kyrie just like left for three games. He was just like, yeah, I'll be back.

I needed a break. It'd be funny if Steven Silas was like, hey, I'm just going to, I'll be back. I needed a break. It'd be funny if Steven Silas was like, hey, I'll be back in a month. None of this sat right with me. I just need some time to sort my feelings out and regroup. I can't coach Christian Wood anymore. I can't coach Christian Wood. He stink-eyed me for the 200th time. I just need a break.

Are you okay with Jokic winning the MVP? Because it seems like we're heading that way. Yeah, I am. I'm a huge fan of his. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one that looks at that or looked at it originally and was like, I'm not so sure about that. Like I said, even when

he was destroying the league two years ago, I was like, Hey, his body will never last like that. His body's got to get a little bit more chiseled. We got to lose some of that. Like,

and he just keeps going. He keeps getting better. He keeps adding to his game. I'm fine with him getting the MVP. I want Dirk to officially bless him as the, as kind of like a pseudo-evolutionary Dirk. I think some of the stuff he's doing for his offense, not the passing stuff,

but some of his deep post-up stuff and his three-point and his in-the-flow three-point shooting and stuff like that, it weirdly reminds me of Dirk. And Zach Lowe is the first person who pointed that out. And I was like, hmm, hmm that sounds weird they're not anything alike but then when you watch them it's like ah they kind of weirdly are alike there's some Dirkishness to his

ability outside I think that he shoots more off balance and off platform shots than Dirk does or Dirk did you know Dirk shot some amazing shots off those one legs and stuff but if you watch Dirk a or Dirk did. You know, Dirk shot some amazing shots off those one legs and stuff.

But if you watch Dirk, a lot of that was off of a solid platform. Even though he was like drifting or fading like the platform, this guy shoots some shots where you're like, no one can make, no one will make that. Like that's insane, you know? But yeah, there's some Dirkishness there for sure.

Well, sometimes we finish the season and we just kind of have to pick an mvp and it does feel like one of those seasons where you know sometimes there's not a no-brainer choice you just gotta go hmm uh finals if you had to pick right now who'd you say who would you have oh yeah that's in the east it's brooklyn um i have them as well yeah and in the west I'm going if the Lakers are healthy for me it's the Lakers

if they're healthy I know Utah's great you know I know what the Clippers the Clippers are doing and trying to I've taken the Lakers I learned a long time ago

not to get a bet against LeBron if he's healthy I wish Phoenix had done one move. What they need in your mind. Like where were we at? I would have loved to have seen them get somebody that made it so that I

didn't always have to rely on Aiton in a playoff series. That would have been my move. And I would have used that Jalen Smith kid that they picked to kind of dangle just, and I don't even, maybe that player doesn't exist, but Aiton to me is the wild card for them. It all seems fine now. They're a very good regular season team. I think they're really good.

But in a playoff series, he's the one that I'm kind of looking at, especially like I think teams will attack him. They're going to try to always have him defending smaller dudes. And I think he's hard. Crunch time, I think it's hard to use him. It doesn't seem like –

Russo pointed this out to me, and I've been monitoring it. It doesn't seem like Chris Paul totally trusts him. And there's a little bit of Ben Simmons stuff with him on offense where in these last six minutes, he's kind of like, where do I go? What do I do? Yeah, that's not great. I mean mean ben can overcome it because he's because he's yeah he's amazing amazing um and look you know like i know like anyone who's been there knows those playoffs um when those teams can really dig into what your weakness is as a team they can find

deandre and say oh there it. So we're going to target that, put it in every action we have, right? It's exposing. Those lights get really bright, and it separates. It separates. Yeah. That's what I have.

I'm intrigued by Denver, though. Denver right now, they're 28-18. They're basically two games out of the three spot. And to have a guy who's playing better than anybody else in that conference, Murray has come on big time. Yep. And I don't know. I think they're tough.

I think they like playing with each other. They're playoff tested. And I just think they're going to be a tough out. So I have them kind of marked down. I want to see what happens to them the next two weeks. I think that's a team, and you know this more than anybody, I'd like to see the team just lay the smack down on the regular season for like three weeks. Like have your little nine-game winning streak.

Have your little moment where people go, oh, okay, where you're just kind of on a roll, and I think they're a candidate for that. They're a problem as a matchup. You saw that last year. They go toe-to-toe with anybody. When they get hot, it's really tough. I'm at that point still

and I don't know what age he gets to or the lack of star power around him gets to a point where I don't trust it. It's hard for me to look past LeBron. I got to admit, it's still hard for me to look past LeBron. Like I don't, I got to admit, I'm still, it's still hard for me to look past that. Do you have any faith in Utah? No, I'm with you. I still feel, to me, the Lakers piece,

it's more like Davis is the one. I'm not worried about LeBron. It's the Davis piece. Can they get him 100% for the four straight playoff rounds? And I do think the bubble probably wore those dudes out. Before we go, how much college basketball have you been watching and do you like the product?

Bits and pieces. I do like the product. I do. Yeah, I like it. I watched Oral Roberts play. Who'd they play the other night? Narrowly. Who beat them?

Was that... It was Oregon. Oh, yeah, Arkansas. It was Arkansas. Yeah, it was Arkansas. I watched that game um i caught the one last night ucla and um alabama that was a good one i watched a good one yeah it's been entertaining yeah um it's funny because it's kind of the opposite of the nba right

where the nba is built around these signature guys that you know you you kind of the better your star is the better of a chance you have. And in college doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. It just seems way more random. You need like that one guard who just can kind of get hot for two weeks, you need a smart coach, effort. Like it's become a game that doesn't really resemble the NBA to me. A lot of one-on-one stuff, a lot of jack and threes. Yeah. So I tell the kids that I work with or the kids in my programs, and the next logical step for a lot of them

is college basketball. The NBA is an entertainment product. Now, they're the best basketball players on the planet. What they can do with the ball and showmanship within that is remarkable. But very few people get an opportunity to play in the NBA, therefore are going to have a chance to play like that. So college basketball becomes more interesting to me at times

because that's what I'm trying to prepare kids to do. So watching that and digging into it with my sons and sending video out to the kids on my team so that they can see what that looks like at the next level, sometimes for me, I watch that more than pro just because I'm dealing with kids who want to get there. It's more realistic.

Yeah, I get it. Before we go, you've had some players on real ones. I thought the most interesting one for me that you've had some really good ones. The most interesting one to me was Darren Williams because I hadn't thought about him for five years.

And this was a guy who was one of the most relevant basketball players in the world for like five years, who played on two Olympic teams, who was in the middle of all this stuff. And then it was like, all right, it's almost like he died, but he wasn't dead. He was right there on a thing. And I was like, oh yeah, Darren Williams. Remember when him and Chris Paul were like motto and motto for five years? And it just, I thought it was a really fun interview. Really interesting to hear him talk about stuff candidly,

especially the Jerry Sloan stuff. And I don't know, it kind of made me rethink how I had him in my head just historically. Yeah, he's an interesting guy, man, because he's not who you think he is all the time like once you get to know him um and he was so talented man that you know that's another that's another injury conversation he just as he as he started to get a little older those injuries just started to mount and he could never kind of regain you know what he what he was

physically but he's he's a great dude man it was good to catch up with him because I hadn't seen him in a while either. But certainly kind of misunderstood with what kind of took place in Utah and kind of the way the narrative was kind of portrayed about who he is. But he's a really solid dude, man. One of my favorite teammates. It might've been the last sneak attack superstar trade

that there were no even whispers of it. It just was like out of nowhere. And it was actually really smart because he even admitted in the podcast, like, yeah, I was probably going to leave. I couldn't get guys to come to Utah. Utah sniffed it out a year and a half left. They were like, cool.

All right, we're just going to get two lottery picks and start over. It was pretty smart. Yeah, Derek Favors came in. I'll tell the story again. We were sitting on a couch in the anatole hotel in dallas uh getting taped for a shoot around and because jerry's shoot arounds you had to get taped for so yeah we were sitting there getting taped and we're on this little bs couch and gary

briggs and brian zettler in the room and across the sports center ticker darren williams traded unbelievable what yeah i like the thing I liked about his game, I guess the best way to describe it, it was him and Barron. There was a physicality to them at the point guard position. Because I remember talking to Nash about it, where he was like, those were the two guys he hated playing against, just because he would feel it the next day.

You know, where Darren Williams was like, what was he, like 6'3", but he was thick. Thick, big bodyguard. And strong. It's weird. You would have thought that would have lasted longer. I know you can't predict injuries and stuff, but I would have thought he would have been more durable

than Chris Paul, right? If you were going to say between those two, who's going to be playing in 2021, I would have said Darren Williams. Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it i you know i darren was a solid solid physical dude man and loved you know some guys play with the physicality or they have physical attributes but they don't like embrace the the wrecking ballness that they could be he played like that he was trying to cave your chest in when he was when he had a mismatch and stuff like that.

I don't know. Those injuries started to mount in Brooklyn or New Jersey, was it, at the time? I don't really know what happened with that. For me, the guy was Carmelo. You knew when you had to play Carmelo. First of all, he was a little too big for me, but I'd play him to try to save tricks.

And those guys like Matt Harper and try to save their legs. So I'd get him. It was just so physical that it just, you were going to feel that after the game, the next day it was going to linger. I think LeBron embraced that in this like third phase of his career

that his physical overpowering stuff to make it just more of a bitch to play him. You know, you really could see that his second Cleveland stint as he got bigger and he was like, yeah, I'm actually going to make this very unenjoyable for you. He's a little more finesse, the first Cleveland stint. And even like a lot of the Miami stuff where he was just a traditional perimeter guy, but then he added the physicality. And I would imagine it would be the next day you're feeling it after you play LeBron. Nobody wants,

no one wants to keep taking two 60 to 75 in the chest. Like it's, it's very literally we come down the court, you give him the ball, he turns and keeps banging me in my chest. I have five plays each possession. I have five bumps each possession. By halftime, you're like, this is bullshit.

Somebody double-teamed him. It's the most shocking thing when you're sitting under the basket as a fan. The physicality is the single most shocking thing about those seats. I remember we sat, we were at the Super Bowl in Indianapolis and we saw Orlando play Indiana and me, House, and Jacoby were sitting underneath the basket watching Dwight Howard just bang bodies

with these Pacers guys, like Roy Hibbert, people like that. And we were just like in shock. Like Dwight Howard took almost like a football player. It was like there was like 50 football players in the game where he's just colliding with whoever, or there's an elbow, or people are going flying. You're like, holy shit, how do they do this 82 times a year,

much less playoffs? It really is incredible. And I think I've said it before too, the casual fan, someone who isn't fortunate enough to be either in a pickup game scenario where you can be up and close and personal to that or really close to the action. It doesn't come across from deeper seats in the arena, and it doesn't come across from TV. But those are battles. Those are physical wars. Dikembe Mutombo, Shaquille O'Neal,

before they changed the dislodging rule, it was 2001. If you go watch, Shaquille O'Neal, before they changed the dislodging rule, it was 2001. If you go watch what Shaquille O'Neal did to the defensive player of the year, he made it his life's mission to try to cave Dikembe Mutombo's chest every time he got the ball. And it was incredible. Larry Brown sent me down on a double team on this man. And I remember going down with two hands to give it everything I had on catching him down low so he couldn't get the ball up to the rim. And he almost dislocated both my shoulders because he took me, the ball, Dikembe, everybody up to the rim.

And I just remember being like, I had just come out of the CBA and played college basketball. I was like, I'm going to have to go to the weight room because I got to get stronger. It's made it even more unbelievable the shit Iverson was able to do back then. You know, where Iverson was 5'10 and didn't sleep and was a vampire.

And he's just bouncing off these dudes like a pinball. He was a 5'10 vampire. He was. That was, that's him in a nutshell. And just like a pinball, just bouncing around a cork in buckets. That would be, if I ever did an Iverson documentary, it would be called 5'10 Vampire, the Iverson

story. All right. Raja, Real Ones with Logan Murdoch. A very, very awesome podcast on the Ringer NBA show. You're doing a great job on that. As always, awesome to have you on The Ringer. Don't ever go work for Steve Nash. We love you at The Ringer. I love The Ringer, man. Thanks for having me. All right. All right. My buddy Kevin Hinch is here. He's popped on the pod a few times

over the years. This is the time that we talk to each other the most because the NFL draft is coming up. The Celtics season has gone sideways. Spring training has arrived. And the League of Dorks, the AL Keeper League that we've been in, I think since 2003. So we're heading on our 20-year anniversary of being in this league together. It's a 40-man roster. We have to protect up to 10 people. There's a full minor league system. Hench and I won early. We won in like our first four years. And since then, we've become like the mid-2000 Phoenix Suns. It's a tragedy every year. We made history this year, Hench.

One of our best keepers was Eloy Jimenez on the White Sox, who everyone had penciled in for 50 homers, the home run title. We had him at $5. We have the right to protect him for two more years for 15 bucks after this year. We send in our keepers. 10 hours later, his pectoral rips off his rib cage and he's out for the year. Even for us, this made history. And he has no idea that that is entirely our fault.

Like, that we are responsible for his freak injury. I mean, this year was unique in that it happened hours after we were crowing about being the favorites. I'll tell you one thing about the League of Dorks. Doesn't get any less dorkier

as we move into middle age. Oh my god. Looking forward to the hours-long draft tonight, though. It doesn't get any less dorkier as we move into middle age. Oh my God. Looking forward to the hours long draft tonight though. Yeah. We have like a five to seven hour draft tonight. We're on a Zoom. COVID times, you would think like, well, maybe we shouldn't do this draft.

Nope. We're still doing it. I think the thing that we, Hench and I spent a lot of time texting about this, where we are starting to genuinely believe that this random collection of people who don't know each other, who don't play together, they're just fantasy players that we've assembled on a roster that once they're on our team, we have the ability to change the destiny of their actual life and career. Because this has happened over and over again. I can't tell you how many injuries we've had.

And the common theme is you and me having these guys on our team. And not just injuries. Somehow our voodoo ended Andrew Benintendi's trip to the Hall of Fame. It's true. Wow. We had him, Michael, I mean, Michael Pineda, Zach Britton. We ruined his career. Forrest Whitley, we had him.

He was a top 20 prospect. He has Tommy John surgery. It's just over and over again, we've been able to just destroy these. Justin Smoke, all of these dudes for 15 years in the common denominator is us. Well, the greatest probably of our illustrious League of Dorks history is I think we got Chris Davis the year after his 53 home runs. And we were like, that's a bargain, man. $33 for Chris Davis. He never hit the ball out of the infield in the rest of his career. Yeah, he ended up having the worst season in the history of baseball as he was on our team. So yeah, so we have that tonight. We have to pretend that we're following the American League. And then we have this weird Ben Attendee situation where we kept him for two years thinking like,

of course, we'll take him for two years at 15, but you can't waive him once you protect them for two years. His career went in the tank. Last year, we didn't even have League of Dorks. We basically postponed it, did a reset button. And now he's on the Royals and is in this weird situation where if he comes back to haunt the Red Sox, it's actually good for us. But odds are he's going to come back to haunt you and I instead. Well, it's funny when you protect a guy. It's like this is the most realistic part where you sign a fantasy guy to a bad contract in this league of dorks. It's exactly like the Pablo Sandoval contract. You're fucking stuck.

You have to eat that contract. And so Benintendi will continue to haunt us. One of the trickiest parts about morale in our fantasy locker room was going to be not letting Eloy Jimenez know that he was making one third what Andrew Benintendi was making. Now none of it matters. Damn it. Yeah, I got to say, this is the most realistic fantasy league i've ever been in where you can be really you can make a commitment to somebody we were in a situation with modesty and the royals we had him for one dollar he was an amazing keeper we could have protected him for

three years at 16 because it's five it's basically five years per year for when you protect the guy after the first two years when you have him at the price. And we were in this situation where it's like we can protect him for three years, 16. But with our luck, he'd blow out his ACL. He would probably have some mental issues. And then we would just be stuck with this contract, which is like real life. When you look at our in-season text chains, we're probably logging more hours than Billy Bean in a given year of actual baseball work.

Your emails are like, quick, find out what his double-A stats were or adjust those for the Pacific Coast League. Right. Yeah, we got to knock that down by 20%. We had the fifth pick in our minor league draft last year and we were debating between Luis Patino, We got to knock that down by 20%. We had the fifth pick in our minor league draft last year. And we were debating between Luis Patino,

the guy that the Rays got for Blake Snell. The big drawback with him was the pronunciation of his name is like Rick Patino, who is our least favorite Celtic coach of all time. There was another guy, Asa Lacy, the Royals' number one pick, who seems like a stud. And then the third guy we were looking at was this guy in the Orioles who they drafted second in the 2020 draft, this lefty power hitter. His name's like Kerstad, something like that. We researched him, and it seemed like he had had some COVID issues followed by the same kind of

heart thing that Eduardo Rodriguez had in the Red Sox, it seemed like the kind of guy who belonged on our team, right? Somebody that might have a real medical thing. But fortunately for us, somebody took him right before us and we didn't have to have that conundrum. Basically saved his career, him going number four. Instead of going to us. But yeah, we're debating between Luis Patino and Asa Lacy.

Meanwhile, we've never seen either of these guys pitch. Anyway, I highly recommend over-the-top fantasy leagues. We tried one with the football thing. I thought we had a good first start with our little keeper league. I had a great season. Ended with Saquon Barkley's injury. It's always fun. Maybe it's me.

Maybe I'm the bad luck. You might be the bad luck all right so uh let's go let's go pats first we still don't have a quarterback yeah so it's it's really exciting when you see all these acquisitions uh you know the defense is like legitimately kind of loaded now. Even though you overpay for Hunter Henry and John U. Smith, obviously upgrades over the third round whiffs at tight end. Even Aguilar and Kendrick Bourne, you're like, well, they're an upgrade. And you get excited, and then you realize, oh, my God, you're building this dream house. You've got a solarium and a conservatory and a gym and a screening room.

And you're like, yeah, it's next to a nuclear waste dump. You don't have a quarterback. So who cares? Look at this beautiful house we're building. Yeah, you don't have a top 25 NFL quarterback, so none of it matters. You know, I don't – in today's NFL, when you try to wrap your head around eight TD passes and 10 picks, like you can't really process Cam's numbers in today's NFL. Like if the forward pass is not a big part of your offense, you're not a contender.

And I know that there's this thought that, well, Jacoby Myers, the Marine bird and Nikhil Harry might've been the worst position group in the NFL. It's like, yeah, that doesn't explain the balls that bounced halfway to them. I know he wasn't open, but the, but the passes one hop them. So, I mean, I've, I really hope one of these guys falls in the draft to the pads. It doesn't look like it's going to happen. All the Piranhas are moving up to take quarterbacks.

And then, you know, the hope, of course, is that maybe the Niners, even though I don't think they would, nobody wants to help Belichick, obviously. But he helped them, though. He traded them Jimmy G for the second round pick. He basically took less value for Jimmy G. So I feel like they kind of owe us. I don't think you get to call those in. Hey, remember when we made a terrible trade?

Remember that terrible trade that ended up netting us Muhammad Sanu, the lowest rated statistical wide receiver disaster in the league? Yeah. Can we get that back? Can we have Jimmy G? I would actually be excited if we had Jimmy G. He's 24-8, career as a starter.

I think he's good. He was up 10 points in the Super Bowl in the fourth quarter two years ago. Yeah, you and I seem to be two of the only people that remember that he almost won a Super Bowl. He overthrew whatever receiver that was near the end, and if that guy catches it, they might have won.

I'm going to throw a name at you. I mentioned this. I went on the ringer NFL show on Friday after the massive Dolphins trade, and we should talk about them in a second. What's what's wrong with taking a flyer on Gardner Minshew? Well, when you sent me your, your deep dive on Gardner Minshew, I think you said he has 37 touchdowns and 11 picks. Yeah.

That's his career. And he was hurt last year. I was like, okay, so we're coming off eight TDs and 10 picks. So in order for cam to match Gardner Minshew's numbers, he would have to throw 29 touchdowns and one pick to get to 37 and 11. So I was dazzled by those numbers.

And obviously the Jags were terrible, so you kind of didn't notice how good he was. But I just don't think you can contend in the NFL with Cam Newton as your quarterback. So I would be very open to a cheap Gardner Minshew or Jimmy G. Well, let me make the case for Minshew. 24 years old, his rookie season, he was six and six as a starter on a Jaguars team that wasn't exactly like a lights out team, right? Pretty unhappy season. He threw 21 TDs, six picks. He threw for almost 3,300 yards in three-fourths of a season. Then last year, he was hurt and he played hurt and he came back and he just never was totally right. But he still threw 16 TDs, five picks. I just think he's competent. And I think you could make a case like he was on shit teams the last two years and you give him a real coach

that the other appealing thing for is his price. Like he was like, what a fifth round, six round pick. So his salary is like nothing. I would much rather see them roll the dice with him, use the 15th pick for one more impact guy, and then kind of hope you get lucky. Same way like the Vikings got lucky with Case Keenum that year. I feel like you can get lucky with guys like this on good teams. I'm sold. Thank you. It just makes more sense to me than trading up to number five for Mac Jones, who I don't know if Mac Jones is going to be good. The strongest part of your insert guy's name here argument is Cam Newton.

No matter what you'd say about a player, when you go, the alternative is Cam Newton, you go, oh, that does sound good. That does sound good. We can get Billy Kilmer. That sounds good. Well, the case for Cam, forgiving him one more year,

which is being made, is that the COVID screwed him up. There is a track record with athletes getting screwed up post-COVID where they're just not right for a few months. He was good before he got COVID. Everyone in the locker room likes him.

Then they're doing the whole, if you have a full playbook, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with them bringing back Cam. I'm fine with maybe last year was an aberration. We get a better version. That's why I like the Minshew thing. If we traded like a third round pick

for Minshew, and then you bring Minshew and Cam and let the best man win versus like going all in on Mac Jones or somebody, I think it makes more sense. I would love nothing more than to come on in

November and eat crow as Cam is headed to the Pro Bowl. That would be delightful. Well, I don't know if you've read some of the COVID symptoms things, but one of the symptoms was post-COVID was when you're throwing a football, sometimes it just bounces. And it seems like that takes like eight, nine months. But it's been fun to watch Belichick spend all this money, right? As Pats fans, it was tough to complain. You came on the podcast once. We did our top 25 greatest Patriots games. We forgot games. We were doing it and it was like we couldn't even remember all of them. So it was always tough to complain about Belichick, the drafting, some of the cheap free stuff. Cause you're complaining about the most successful coach GM of all time,

but it was fun to watch him finally be like, fuck it. I'm going to go get some guys. You know, it's funny. I know a lot. I mean, everyone hates the Patriots, and they're entitled, and they should, I suppose. A lot of Patriot haters were delighted by Brady winning the Super Bowl, even though they hate Brady too, because then they got to say, oh, Belichick was just lucky. He got to ride along on the greatest team athlete of all time. And my first point would be, how many NFL coaches in history, when Drew Bledsoe said, I'm good to go, coach, the super expensive number one overall pick says, I'm ready to go. And the coach goes, I've been watching practice, and I don't know why, but this guy with inferior physical tools gives us a better chance to win. And then somehow during that process, Brady's physical tools became better than Bledsoe's. It was shocking. Every other coach would have just put the high-priced number one overall pick back in the lineup. It's the way to keep your job. And Belichick's like, no way.

The 199th pick gives us a better chance to win. And that decision, I mean, when they write the history books of coaching, nobody would have done it. And the next 20 years are owed to that ballsy decision. Well, and I was living in Boston at the time and it was like a sports media civil war the way it was the Brady Bledsoe camps. It was the best sports radio argument

I think that has ever happened in the history of Boston sports where you had the Bledsoe people who were like, we just, this guy's a superstar. We thought he was a superstar. You and I didn't. We were always like,

I remember when I wrote the Ewing theory piece, he was like one of the first examples. It was like, we've never won anything with this guy. Why are we paying him $100 million? But then there were other people that were just like, hey, something's different about this Brady guy. You can see it. The team just kind of moves differently. I was in the Brady camp. It's one of my proudest moments that I was on the right side of history with that and Harden Westbrook, the MVP vote that year. I think he puts up 44 against the Colts in his second or third start. And you're like, wait a minute. Is this guy the guy? I'm sure the Minshew-Newton debate in Boston will rage every bit as hot.

I do think Minshew would go over well in Boston because he's such a character too. But look, 37 TDs and 11 picks on a shit team is nothing to sneeze at. Those are real stats. And can you name three Jacksonville receivers? And they had a running back shit show. Fournette was terrible for them. It's not like he had a lot of help and the team was bad. I'm in. Red Sox. So there's a thing being said now that this team is very reminiscent to the 2013 under the radar team. This is a thing that's out there. There's some people that are like, we're going to suck again, long rebuild. And there's other people out there like,

actually, this team is going to be sneaky good. Watch out. What camp are you in? You know, I bet them over 81, I think is the number I got. I do think they're going to be better than people think, because I just think they're going to mash. I just think there's so many boppers in that lineup. But I don't think Evaldi, Perez, Erod, and his myocarditis, I don't think that they're actually a contender, but I do think they'll win over 85 games. I was shocked when Kellison texted me how much he won betting the 2013 Red Sox to win

the World Series. Oh, my God. Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, it's certainly worth a couple hundred bucks, I guess. This team reminds me of the teams we grew up with, like the 77 and 79 Red Sox. Teams that could bash and had no pitching to speak of whatsoever. No, when Hobson's hitting 30 home runs, batting ninth, you're like, how did we not win anything?

Like you're looking at all of those baseball cards I had. You're just looking at all those baseball cards going, how did how did we not win anything? It's like, well, Mike Torres was our ace. Like an aging Bill Lee was lobbing the ball up to the plate. That was, you know, but so it is very reminiscent. You know, I don't I mean, looking back at those 70s teams, if Soup Campbell doesn't hurt his arm, maybe, maybe. Yeah, if we don't have a relief pitcher

who throws 140 innings in a season, maybe things would have turned out better. Blue Piniella doesn't close his eyes and make that one hop stop. You know, I think out of all my friends, you and I go on kind of the quirkiest deep dives on text change. And we had a whole text chain once about how those Red Sox teams, Jerry Remy and Rick Burleson were the one-two. And I think one of them had an OBP under 300, wasn't it? One of them was like 309 and the other was like 296. It's so crazy. I had a Rick Burleson poster in my room.

I love the rooster so much. And, you know, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Remy and Burleson were an incredible one-two punch. Like no one had even calculated on base percentage in the 70s. Nobody knew that guys with no power should walk occasionally. And Remy's just up there first pitch swinging every time. It's like you weigh 130 pounds. Maybe draw a walk.

Yeah, Remy in 1978 when we lost the one-game playoff, Remy was 321 on base and Burleson was 295. Woo! Amazing. We had no idea. I remember when they started leading off Boggs. Remember how controversial that was? It just seemed insane that he would be a leadoff guy. Now it was like the smartest thing you could have done. 200 hits and 100 walks every year. Dwight Evans should have let off. Do you like baseball as much now, the way they play it? Because it's been hard. I mean,

the two things that have killed me with baseball, I don't have time to follow the teams i guess three things the mookie bets trade i still haven't recovered from and it's going to take a long long time for me to come back from that and then uh and then all the pitching changes it's just not as fun to watch it's probably a little bit of a byproduct. Obviously, you know, if our team is in the hunt, we'll start watching voraciously again. But, you know, life intervenes. You got to pick your battles. I do think the DVR really changed everybody's life, obviously. But like, you can't, it's hard to watch really any sport live. But like, baseball is a grind. Like, you can't, it's hard to watch really any sport live, but like baseball is a grind. Like you can't watch it live. So, you know, you just, you put it in the DVR and you blast through it.

On the Mookie front, it's funny. I have this ongoing argument with about 10 different Boston fans. All right. We know basically, you know, a hundred Red Sox fans who live in LA. It's hilarious. It's hilarious listening to Boston fans who did, who made the exact same decision in their lives, almost at the exact same age of Mookie Betts and would never dream of moving back to New England who go, how could that guy betray us? Hey, wait a minute. You betrayed New England. We all did. You're going in the pool with your daughter. Only J-Bug and my dad, certain people can be pissed about the Mookie Betts coming to Southern California thing. You and I can't be that pissed. It's like, yeah, it's awesome here.

And if you were given the choice of $400 million here or $400 million there, I don't know. Like Mookie didn't grow up in Boston, right? I mean, it's not like, I don't know what he owes that town. But I'm pro Mookie. To me, it's 100% the Red Sox owners that they just could have taken care of it at various points and they just didn't want to pay him. And I really think some of the

stuff they've said since, where it seems like they feel like they outsmarted the situation in some ways. Yeah, Henry is on the record as saying, we studied the performance of these long deals and these guys, when they hit 35, it just becomes a bad investment. We didn't want to do it. And my counter would be like, you print money from the Red Sox. You've made more money from this team. This was probably a better investment than any other investment ever, except for maybe the Cowboys. I would say those are probably the one, two greatest sports investments anyone's ever made. I don't really care that you're a little worried

that you might take a hair there when Mookie's age 37. I don't care. That's not my problem. Well, the other thing is also, and this is where analytics gets so depressing, you know, when, you know, Bill James and the Sabermetricians have kind of taken a lot of,

I mean, like I wouldn't have had a Rick Burleson poster in my room if the sabermetricians had had their way. And even though you can make that sabermetric argument about decline phase and what will Mookie be worth when he's 35, but his value as a human being, a player, a person, a member of the community, like there's never been a guy like him, um, you know, going out to feed the homeless after a playoff game. And the other thing that I highly doubt, even though they try to do like defensive range and run saved, when you look at the defensive plays, he's made in the playoffs that have won games,

you know, like just won games outright because he gets to everything. He throws lasers. I mean, you know, when we were hanging on to buy a thread in 2018 with Craig Kimbrell, just wheezing on the mound, giving up, you know, four base runners an inning. When he got to that ball at the line and threw out the very fast Tony Kemp at second base, it was one of those things where like, you can't, if Tony Kemp had stopped at first base, everyone would have been like, what are you doing? The ball's almost in the corner. You're fast.

Like, it's just an impossible play. And then, you And then all the catches where he's bringing home runs back. I actually don't believe you can accurately measure all of that even though they try to. Yeah, from that perspective,

I would have liked them to overpay for him. I don't know. Maybe somebody, I mean, Mookie knows. I would say properly paid, not overpaid. I just don't think paying him 400 million is not an overpay. He's the best defensive player I've ever seen on the Red Sox. He's the best base runner we've ever had. He's a classic 330, 100 RBI, 400 OBP guy. And he's the most awesome off the field guy we've probably had in the last 10 years. And somebody who could add a dramatic impact in the city.

Hey, there's one guy, there's one guy. This is how good he is. This is how good he is. Even the frozen splinters in the league of dorks could not slow this guy. Right. He was great for us. We couldn't even put our voodoo on him. Before we go, let's talk Celtics quick. We're not complaining. We won a lot of titles. So when Hench and I, we're just, it's in our DNA to complain about our teams and our players

that we root for just because that's how we grew up. You know, you can't blame us. It's like somebody who came from a damaged house or when you have a rescue dog that doesn't trust certain people. Like, you just can't blame us for no matter how many titles we win, we're still going to default to being

a little unhappy to complaining. That's just how we grew up. The Celtics team, the swing guys they would put in for Tatum and Brown, we would be texting each other, adding up the minutes of Grant Williams, Semi Ocele, Javante Grant, Javante Green. All these dudes would be like, 45 minutes, one for eight, two points. And we were just like, how are they not fixing this?

Why are they getting a zero at this position? And now Fournier, who is never going to be an all-star, but I'm trying to tell people what a massive upgrade he is from the crap that we watched. I'm just excited. I'm glad that we have a competent guy who can come off the bench. It makes me raise the ceiling of this team. And no matter how, I mean, this it's been hard, obviously, and I'm, I'm very hard on Kemba Walker, as you know, uh, 50 texts a night. Um, you know, he, he doesn't want to not have that burst. He doesn't want to not be able to get by guys anymore, but clearly when you're that small, if you're, if you're 80%, like if that knee just isn't explosive,

then you really are a liability. You can't really guard anybody. Your shooting percentage is pretty bad. You're not... There's some decent stats with him in the last 10 games. There's some signs of Kemba life. There have been a couple of finishes in traffic

that have been encouraging. And then there'll be an air ball from three that's confounding. But, but it only, no matter how down on the Celtics I am, it only takes three possessions for me to go. Yep. That's it. We figured it out. Like I can get so excited when Tatum and Brown are doing their thing. And I really, you know, we've talked about Robert Williams. I really love Robert Williams' athleticism. He definitely leads the league in blocked shots of shots the shooter thought there was no chance this shot is getting blocked. Like, you see guys going like, what just happened?

He was on the other side of the lane. Where did that guy come from? So I love the time time Lord. He leads the league in a lot of things. He also leads the league in the, Hey, that three point line, it's worth three points. If somebody shoots from the other side of it and that person that you're five feet away from, for some reason is 40% from that spot. You just need to move up. What a rollercoaster, Red. It is. I will say this. If we're heading for a first-round matchup with the Sixers, or I know that there's this little play-in.

I mean, conceivably with these things, I think we could climb out of that play-in, hopefully. But if any matchup with the Sixers, we'll be playing with house money because everyone thinks we suck and we've had this massive regression. The Sixers will be terrified. They'll be like, not these guys again. No, anybody but these guys. Because everyone's like, the Sixers and the Nets, game seven to go to the championship

series, that's going to be amazing. And it's like, oh, there's one, there's kryptonite for those Sixers. They do not want to play the Celtics in the playoffs. The one team that they can't beat is Brooklyn, the Celtics. I think they've shown, they've played Milwaukee a ton of times. I think they have a lot of confidence against Milwaukee.

Not saying they'd beat Milwaukee in a series, but I think they would go toe to toe. And they beat in Philly every time. So those two teams, I think they'd be psyched to see. And I've said this on a pod and you can back me up on this. I don't think people understand what the four and eight thing, just him being competent, how many points a game that's going to be worth because the top of the second quarter, top of the fourth quarter, the Celts would just, the other team would go on like a 10 to two run pretty much 80% of the time at the top of those two quarters. It even happened the other night, that first night when they were kicking ass on Friday night. And then it was like, all of a sudden it was an

11 point game because they couldn't, they can't keep the lead. So I just think he's worth eight points to them. The, uh, that Friday night game almost got like, are they going to have to put those guys back in? Like it got, it was like, it was over and then it wasn't quite over. Uh, the, the roughest thing, you know, speaking of analytics, like nobody had, has ever been able to communicate to Semi Ogilvy, whatever transpires, if you find yourself dribbling, stop immediately and get the ball to a competent basketball player. Like his statistics, when he puts the ball on the floor, it's never like, oh my God, first of all, not a great shooter. But when they close him out and like he dribbles baseline, you're like, oh, God.

Oh, God. He's going to either dribble out of bounds or someone's going to take it away from him or he's going to miss a bunny. Like, nothing. Here's what you haven't seen. Like, semi-up faking, two dribbles and a dunk. Like, it's like we've gotten zero out of that position. So I agree, you can't overstate those minutes. And how many minutes those guys were playing. When we were sending those texts, we're like,

they've combined for 42 minutes in this game. That's just harder. And you throw in Jeff Teague and it's like 55 minutes of just below average play. But tell me if you agree with this theory. I do feel like they partly traded Tice and Teague just so Stevens would stop using them. It was like that scene in Moneyball when they traded Carlos Pena just so Philip Seymour Hoffman's manager character would stop playing Carlos Pena

because he wanted him to play Scott Hatterberg. I think the front office was like, he's playing Tice like 35 minutes a game. Like we just have to, we have, we, this needs to end. He can't play Teague anymore. Let's just get rid of him. I know, you know, I had such a soft spot for Tice because of the effort, but that is, I said to you, I was like, maybe the visible effort it takes for him to contribute means he's not good. Like when you can see how hard a guy has to work to achieve anything, you're like, oh, maybe he's just bad. And, you know, we've talked about this a lot, but there are just certain guys where you're like, oh, I know we're excited that he made that three-pointer that's gonna haunt us in the fourth quarter when

he thinks he can make three-pointers and i mean the how many clutch three-pointers did tice make he had he had so many threes in the final minute that could have changed the outcome of games and none of them went in combined with the announcer anytime he made a three the announcer telling us how he can make those can Can't leave them out there. And we're going, no, but you're missing the point. We don't want the person in the, we just want Robert Williams to just run up and down with his hands up. Give us that.

Well, we'll see. I do think the Celtics team has been the year from hell, and I'm more optimistic than I was. I like the Fournier trade. Kind of liked what I saw from Luke Cornett on Saturday night. I've always liked that guy. Seven foot two, he shoots threes, and he's got long arms. I never understood why he didn't play for Chicago.

I don't mind him. I would much rather have, you know, play him and Taco. As you know, my theory with Taco, he goes in for four minutes. He completely discombobulates the other team for four minutes you can't play more than four minutes but when he throws out there it's like throwing a chainsaw in a hot tub the other the other nobody knows what to do and guys don't like do i challenge him he's weirdly effective he really is well uh cornet definitely seems to have that, that Brooke Lopez thing where you're like, it kind of helps to have a weird giant that can stretch the floor.

So yeah, I, I think they did well with these acquisitions enough, certainly to get me excited about the playoffs. We can, we can publish those text chains in a coffee table book for Celtics fans. That's what I'm going to do when you die. I'm just going to publish all of our texts. They're going to be amazing. Before we go, I'll give you 15 seconds on the Bruins letting Chara leave

and then him putting up some of the craziest stats by any over 40 athlete probably in the history of sports. Well, it's funny that following in the Brady move, right? There is a point where these guys so defy human history that you're like, well, at some point, at some point, Chara is not going to be a top two defenseman on his team, right? And I just,

I did a, I did a recent deep dive to look at his stats and I was like, it was like plus 13. I'm like, wow, he's, he's still a good penalty killer. He's still,

I guess it'll never change no matter how old he gets. He can still touch both sides of the rink with his stick standing still. So I guess it doesn't matter. But like, I wasn't really mad at the, at the bees for finally calling it a day with Chara. And even though we desperately miss Krug, you know, he deserved to get paid and you can't pay everybody. And so, you know, McAvoy will play his 30 minutes in the playoffs. If Grizzlet can stay healthy, I think he's a good Krug replacement on the power play.

The Bruins are maddening when they get shut out by the Devils. Can't figure it out. But nobody wants to play that team in the playoffs either. Amazing. A minute of Bruins talk. Who could have expected?

Hench, I'll see you tonight for the League of Dorks draft. Great to see you as always. I can't wait to team up and put our pox on about nine unsuspecting American League victims. They don't know what's about to hit them. All right. That's it for the podcast. Have one more coming for you later this week and another rewatchables as well. Thief is going to be on Wednesday night. And if you miss Commando, we put that up on Sunday night. Don't forget to check out all the awesome Ringer Podcast Network offerings.

And we'll see you next time.