The Bill Simmons Podcast - The 2026 Made-Up NBA Awards With Zach Lowe

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe LIVE on Netflix to react to the Nuggets-Spurs OT game before discussing the Lakers' injuries (0:32). Then, they give out their 2026 Made-Up NBA Awards (23:28). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Zach Lowe Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at https://paypal.com/payin4 The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Bill Simmons podcast live on Netflix. That's Zach Lowe that you're looking at. He's at an undisclosed location. By the way, rewatchable is coming tomorrow night. We are doing Eddie and the Cruisers. It's the tail end to CR month. And then Zach's got a podcast on Tuesday. We're going to do the made-up NBA awards later in the episode,

Zach, Game of the Year yesterday. We always say Game of the Year after there's a great game, but this really was the game of the year. Antonio, Denver. It was on Amazon. I like these early Saturday afternoon PT games on Amazon because they're all over the country. Like if you're in Europe, you're watching it like you're watching on Saturday Live. We had Wembe and Joker kind of playing for the number two MVP spot, not to mention San Antonio trying to lay the Smackdown, Denver trying to get to the three seed. And the two centers just brought it out of each other. And we went in overtime. It was the biggest game of

the year for Denver to win. I thought it was a good loss for San Antonio as whereas that sounds. but more importantly, two generational guys, a really special sporting event. Like, I'm still glowing 24 hours later. What more can you ask for? These two guys are absolutely unbelievable. They danced around each other for a lot of the game before Wembe kind of took the Yolkich assignment

for most of the down the stretch. Yokich did not guard Wembe very much at all, but just sort of sometimes they would come into contact on switches and it would be like, ooh, here we go. Here's what he paid for it. And like Wemby just big boyed him on a couple postups, like just ate his shot alive. and then Yokic would get him like work the body,

get a little like weirdo hook over him and just masterpiece performance by both guys. And you could just see the sort of strategies that both teams were toying with with an eye on like maybe, maybe down the line. This could be a thing. You know, it's funny. The league was built on centers way back when.

George Miken, Russell versus Chamberlain, Kareem. This was the first 25, 30 years of the league. You had to have centers. And then we moved toward perimeter guys a little bit here. We've had some great ones. Watching two centers battle like that, even though Yokage wasn't guarding Wembe that much on the other side,

but just watching two unstoppable guys go at it like that. I don't think there's anything like it. As much fun as it is to watch Curry versus Kobe or LeBron versus KD, all the great stuff we've had over the years. There's something different when it's the centers. I mean, Yokic made that turnaround he made an O.T. I don't even know if that was a Sombor shuffle by categories. or not, but it was like, I screamed, I yelped.

I did the yoke at Joe. Oh, one of those guys. I was the best shot anyone's made all season. I can't believe it went in. Wembe couldn't believe it made it, went in. The point of the game when he made it was, was unbelievable. But Wemby shot to end regulation that he missed, where he had Gordon. And that was like, by this is why you could not give up on Denver at any point this

regular season because we didn't see yesterday as Aaron Gordon. on this Denver team. We saw it yesterday. But Gordon plays perfect defense. Wemby ends up basically just careening out of bounds on the left side, but then somehow gets this line drive shot, but because he's an alien, it was actually a good shot and probably should have gone in. And if he made that, I'd never have seen anyone make that shot in the history of basketball before, at least in that situation. Eight foot wingspan. Half your body can be flying in one direction out of bounds and you just reach out and it's like, oh, my arm is actually in semi-normal and I'll flick this shot.

No, just outrageous. And Aaron Gordon played 41 minutes, guarded Wembe for a lot of the game, did everything that Aaron Gordon always does on offense. And just, I liked when he and Stefan Castle, by the way, I had like the big boy off

where like Stefan Castle actually got into him and put it up. And then the next possession, Aaron Gordon knocked him over. That was fun. Stefan Castle was like, yeah, Aaron Gordon, you're one of the preeminent, like ass kickers in the NBA.

How about I just go right at you? Right. That guy fears nothing. he had a I might be the third best player in this game vibe to him that that entire time. The Wemby thing it's honestly like watching a horror movie

where the alien creature is starting to gain intelligence over the course of the movie and it's like this alien was scary in the first 20 minutes but now it's starting to figure shit out the competitiveness and just him understanding what he can and can't do and I actually thought it affected

Fox negatively. I think Fox, if I'm a spurs fan that things I'm nervous about, too, and both of them popped up yesterday, Wembe, when you have to put more than 30 minutes on him, which is also the MVP argument with him, too. He can give you a great 30 minutes. He's the baseball starter that can throw you six awesome innings. But if I need you to go into the ninth and throw like 130 pitches, can you do it? It's the entire New York Mets rotation, baby. Let's go. Right. There you go. I thought he looked worn out in OT just because he's not used to that kind of level of intensity for three hours and it was a long game too. The other thing was the Fox piece of it. Fox, who was this great clutch player in the Kings, who was really good, but the offense revolved around him, how do I kind of figure out

how to float in and out of this when I have an alien on my team? What's my place? How often do I take over? Should I be taking over? Am I just kind of over here? And if I'm over here, I'm not really Deeran Fox, I think they have to figure that out over the next two months. Which it's weird because for the whole season, we've been praising Deeran Fox for finding that exact right balance in his game. And it felt a little, I mean, he missed some shots, right? He missed some, like, good shots for him. And that's part of it.

Like, those go in and we're talking about a different sort of discussion. And yeah, I mean, that's, you know, the three-headed monster of Harper, Castle, and Fox is super imposing. It gives them all kinds of optionality. They can keep two of them on the floor at all times. medium term, long term, they're going to have to answer some questions about, you know, is there enough, is there enough ball for all of them? But right now, it's been perfect.

I'm going to just chalk up yesterday to a hiccup, but just a fascinating game all around. Like Christian Brown, go ahead and shoot a million quarter threes. He kind of made him pay for it. Denver, like, do we play Valanchunist? Do we not play Valenciunis? It was just an awesome, awesome basketball game. Cam Johnson, I thought, had a couple really big moments that he probably needed more than anyone in the game.

really came through, I thought. And just in general, and I thought Van Gundy did a great job yesterday. I haven't always been high on him as an announcer, but I think he's been really good this year. And I thought he captured the moment in the fourth quarter just talking about the level of play. Like this is like what we're watching right now, this is as high of a level as we're going to get in basketball in 2025, 26. And OKC can get there. I think the Celtics can get there. Like even today watching them just house Toronto and they weren't even making threes and they were up pretty comfortably.

I think there's four teams that can get to that level. I don't know if anyone else can, especially now that we have all these Lakers injuries that I want to talk about in a second. I don't know if anyone else has it in them. It's funny you say that because in the middle of right before Luca got hurt Thunderlakers the other night, I got a text from someone high up in the league, not in the league office, just in the league. saying, man, another blowout, like there's two teams playing at a different level and then there's everybody else. And I replied, and I think we're getting to the point that the only two teams that can actually push them are Denver and Boston. And, you know, it's hard to make a case

for anyone else because the level of play is just so high. And the Nuggets reminded everyone, you mentioned Cam Johnson that's super on point. He's very quietly had a good last month, like playing with a lot more verve, giving them what they need. And they didn't have paid Watson. We'll see when he comes back. He's week to week, which is like the new thing. People are now week to week with things now, which I don't know how to how to, how to. We should start this with our pods. We'll just release that. Zach might have a pot on Tuesday. Maybe not. He's week to week. Week to week. But yeah, and Cam Johnson has had a good month. And the nuggets sort of remind in a game, it felt like the nuggets needed. Like, even though they've won, they're on a

winning streak. Everyone at the top of the league is on a winning street because the third of the league is not trying to win games. It felt like they needed a power win and they got a major power win. And they never really had the lead. They were always on the fringe of being down 15. It kept fighting off. If I'm the Spurs, I'm just looking at that. We were in charge of that whole game and we shouldn't have let it get to Tote. It went Tote. We lost, but that was a good loss. We learned some things from it. San Antonio, it's like, it feels like if they've, how many times I wonder have they even been down by eight points in the last three months? I can only think of like two games. It just feels like they're in control

from the moment these games start doing whatever they want to do and they're so good. I had a castle question for you actually really quick. He might be on a third team all NBA for me. You've mentioned this now four or five times and I feel like you are

asking for permission. I feel like I'm not asking for permission. I just like you're testing it out. You're testing it out. You want someone to tell you it's okay. Do it. And I think you should do it if you want to do it. I wouldn't do it, but he's he's been unbelievable. Well, some people have Scotty Barnes on there now that, uh,

no, some people have them now that we've had some guys fell off like, Luca's now probably out, Cades probably out, so on and so on. And people are trying to talk themselves. Wouldn't give up on Luca. They're actually going to do this thing where they appeal it,

right? Because he's going to get to 60s at 64 games. They're going to do the extraordinary circumstances appeal because he was in Slovenia for the birth of his child. Can you imagine if the NBA is like, You know what? Let's get our lawyers. Let's get our top-notch litigate. Let's get Wachtel in here. We're going to go against Luca Donchison and his agent.

We don't care that you were present for the birth of your child. We're sticking by the 65 game rule. I would love if the league just dug in. Imagine how bad that would look. I bet he's, we'll see. We'll see. That's all I'm saying. Well, can they figure that out before we have to send in the votes?

Well, this is one. I joked about this. So what are you supposed to do? Put the ballots out of TBD arbitrators ruling pending. Right. Like we'll see what happens. I have a zag. So, Luca, and I didn't come up with this because a couple of listeners emailed this too,

but since I'm obviously not a huge Laker fan, I really enjoyed it. I'm going to, I'm going to pass it forward. Luca, 16 technicals this year got suspended for a game. Now he's one game short. Wow. So you're saying he deserves it? Maybe he should look in the mirror. Wow.

You've been, you've been waiting. How about this? Maybe behave a little bit better during the, maybe set a better role model example to the kids out there. You hit him with behave and you hit him with old model. Maybe don't get 16 technicals. You hit him with role models. You didn't have played 65 games already. Like we're in the Ombia.

We're talking about Barclay in 1990. Roll models. Was it Old Spice? Was that the commercial? I am not a role model? Was it old Spice? No, it was Nike. It was Nike.

It was Nike. No. It's not voting for Luca would be, I just don't understand how we're going to fill out these ballots and not have them on. Can I give you the 64 instead of 65? Can I give you the sneaky one that people haven't realized yet? What?

Devin Booker is not going to be eligible because it looks like on games played he is going to be eligible, but two of his games are sub 10 minute games because of injury. And you've got to get to 20. I think it allows for like one or two under 15 minute games. Those can count. And so he's going to max out at 6. which I don't think a lot of voters have realized yet because I see him.

And I think they are potentially going to look at appealing it too because, again, we're just like running out of guys. I actually haven't sat down. Who are appealing this to? What is there like a judge Judy for the NBA just waiting to accept the dumbest appeals ever for all NBA? I assume it's some sort of independent arbitrator that hopefully it takes, it does not take as long as the aspiration investigation.

So we're filling out the 2026 all NBA team in like eight months from now retroactively. But yeah, I haven't actually. sat down and redone my list yet because I got to cross off like four more guys. Well, I had, that's why I was thinking about Castle because if Bookers out, do it, Bookers out. Well, like I like, I like Scottie Barnes, but like I watched them today, I just think Castle is when I test wise, plus I saw in person and Castle was one of the guys that really jumped out to me this year in person. I especially since the, I think like the last two months since the All-Star break.

He's at like 43% from three. I just think he's turned into an awesome, awesome second guy. I got a great mailback question from Hams in Buffalo. Okay. Luca's at 64 games. They play Utah the last game of the year. Utah is going to need that loss. I mean, look, it can't get any worse. Wizards Nets today, I mean, you better believe I'm not watching a second of that,

but just the injury report alone, it was outrageous. And, yeah, Utah, it'll be interesting to see if they're just, like, locked into, they have the same sort of 99.4% chance of keeping their pick if a win actually matters to them. But yeah, why not? Luka on one leg, roll them out there on crutches. Like, what are you going to do? Who's going to stop him? Kyle Philipowski's going to stay in front of Luca with crutches on.

I don't think so. No way. Just the term now. I went on term named Eddie on Friday. He's going old school with his all-MBA ballot, which I don't think I'm going to do, but I really respect it, where it's like we have 75 years of we had a center on each team. And now we've thrown this way. And he's like, I don't know if I'm voting for Yokach or Wembe for first team all-M-Bay center. But whoever I have, I'm putting the other guy on the second team to keep the history. And I'm like, I really want to do that. respect it, but the catch for me is I do feel like Yokic and Wembe could belong on the same team. I know Yokic is a center, but he could. He's not, no, I'm just saying like hypothetically.

No, I'm saying. It's not like it's Patrick Ewing and Shaquille O'Neal. Like, Yolk is a point guard. He's, he's all kinds of positions. It's not even a question. If you put them on the same team, you would have this starting blueprint for the best team at the NBA. Yeah. So I feel like that's the out, but I still feel like if this was Shaq and Hakeem Elijah on or something, that's two real centers, right? Yokic, I don't know what he is. Nobody knows what he is. He doesn't, what position is he?

I have no idea. Well, we did this with MBEed and Yokic, right? And this is part of the reason why the rule I think got altered is because one of them had to be a second team all NBA center when they were like jostling for the MVP. I kind of like it. And then it looks like the mindset of you can't tell me what to do. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. Well, that's the thing.

There's a hundred votes, right? The whole point of having 100 votes is that everybody's going to come up. to their own conclusions and have their own attitudes in us. I am going to have Jaylen Duren on my second team. I don't know if he's a second team all-N-BA, but I'm going to have a center on the second team. And so I'm going to have Yokage and Wembeye first team. I'm putting a center on the second team.

I'm not going to have a forward and four guards. I just think at that point, I'm basically doing the MVP ballot. I'm just not doing that. Can we talk Lakers really quick? Sure. So do you believe the timelines they're doing out or do you think they're being intentionally patting the weeks that Luca and Reeves are going to be out?

And those guys will actually be back sooner than that. I never really know what the agenda is when they just tell you the weeks where sometimes it'll be faster. Other times it'll be slower. In this case, I just find it hard to believe Luca is going to be out for five weeks. And I find it hard to believe Reeves isn't going to play with a hurt oblique in the first round. Because all my Laker fan friends are freaking out. we've seen the oblique stuff is no joke. Like, Bancaro and Franz Wagner both got it last year,

and they were both out for a while. I don't know if it's the exact same injury, but that stuff's no joke. The Reeves' timetable was like pretty precise, four to six weeks. The Luca one, I think, was like maybe a little vaguer. I can't remember exactly. But I'm going to trust that I'm going to just ballpark a month.

Okay. So you're trust in the intel. Plus or minus a month. And that takes him out of the first round of the playoffs. And I think if those guys are both, out. I think the Lakers clearly surpass the rockets as the team that you'd most want to play in the first round if you were one of the best Western Conference teams in the top six. And so that gets you just thinking like if you're Denver, you know, what what seed do you want to chase?

Do you want to chase the three seed or do you want to stick in four or five and stick with the rockets? It's like it's a whole like it's a whole calculation now. If I'm Denver, I want to be the three seed and I want to, uh, I want to play San Antonio over OKC and route. Yeah, so that's the route for Denver. It's like if we're three, we get Minnesota instead of Houston, but we get San Antonio into second round. If we're four, four, five,

well, they might get Houston with the three six, too. Like, I still think the five, six is up in the air. Right. Couldn't play. Yeah, but the Lakers, obviously, if those guys are out, then they're not winning a first round playoff series. I don't know what's interesting about that. That's just what it is.

Here's the big winner. okay C. However this played out, OKC wins because it's probably leading to Denver and San Antonio having a bloodbath in round two and OKC playing a significantly weaker team than either of those teams in round two. OKC potentially getting Portland in round one.

And then, I don't know, Houston, Minnesota, a depleted Lakers team, which isn't going to get out of first round without those guys. This is amazing for OKC. I'm glad they caught a break. Yeah, thank God. Thank God for them.

I mean, Houston's two up on the wolves for, and the wolves are playing as we're doing this for the fifth spot. And let me look at the tiebreakers real quick. Rockets tiebreakers still in play. They play once more. That's right. They play on April 10th. It's going to be a head-to-head showdown.

So that's going to be one of the biggest games of the season in terms of seating. The other seating thing that's going on, whatever is going to happen with seven and eight in the east, where you had Toronto lose today. The Celtics just like really comfortable against Toronto if that ends up being the seventh seed. They'd be the seventh seed now. Philly, who everybody's so terrified of,

just actually defecated on the court yesterday against Detroit. It was a full defecation. It was awful. Every time everybody's like, well, Philly, watch out. They just go backwards. I mean, I know what I was going to say. A very important player did not play.

I get it. I get it. But I just thought it was notable. And you have Charlotte looming. And I am just on multiple Celtics text threads with the who would you want to play the most and the least. Because even Charlotte, I don't think Charlotte's ready to win a playoff series. Uh-oh. Bandwagon driver just, you know, cautiously switching lanes here.

Yeah, it's, it's, I think a little early for them to expect to just go in and beat Boston. With that said, I don't want to see them in the two seven matchup. Okay. I just don't. to see the, I don't want to see their dudes. I think they play with no fear, the three point shooting. I just don't want to see them. There's other teams I would rather play in that spot. And then the other one is Cleveland, who thought they were playing this perfectly. And it's like, oh, yeah, four or five, we'll play Toronto, we'll beat them, and we'll play Detroit. We love playing

Detroit. We can beat them. And now they have to play this incredibly frisky Atlanta team that lots of Hawks fans are saying you refuse to talk about now. But just who are these Hawks fans? I had a three minute monologue at the end of my last podcast with Michael Pina about a Nikiel Alexander Walker, Jalen Johnson, inverted pick and roll and how beautiful it was. I got one email. I got one email from a disgruntled hawks fan. Look, if the Cavs, the Hawks are a very good team. And this has been one of the few.

We're going to get to this. It's been one of the great stories of the NBA season, this sort of identity post-Trey Young that they have. It was like half of their identity with Trey Young. And then it just blew up and became their whole. identity once he was gone and the awkwardness was lifted away from them. And they're a million and just a few losses in their last 25 games. They've been outrageous.

If Cleveland can't beat the Hawks in a first round series in which they have home court advantage, if they're even like wobbling in fear of the Atlanta Hawks, just, just break it up already. If Cleveland lost to the Hawks in round one, they will be in trade podcasts that I do, you do, we do together. Everyone else does. They'll just be the number one go-to team for all Yannis trades. Like, Palo, pick a guy. Is it time to trade Mitchell?

Oh, the Knicks are out too? Here we go. Mitchell, the Knicks. Like, it'll just, it'll set off a chain reaction. It's time. We're going to take a break. And then the 2006 made up NBA awards. Feel a lot of pressure. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to by Fandul.

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All right. It's the 2006 made up awards. We will be doing all of our real stuff, the NBA, all NBA, MVP, rookie of the year, all that stuff. We have weeks to talk about it. But not the made-up awards. We always do it the week before the end of the season.

A bunch of awards. I sent you a whole master list. I sent you some nominees. Feel free to chime in. Extra nominees. The first award, one of the most important ones. We like to,

for the made-up awards, we like to have a big one first. Like in the Oscars, when they bring out like the best supporting actress. Like, oh, we know now. I'm never ready. Even though I know it's coming, I'm like, I just sat down.

I'm not ready for this. It's, Unicorn of the year. Normally a controversial award with a lot of good options. This year, the nominees are Victor Wembediama, Peyton Pritchard, LeBron James, and Jalen Johnson. I don't know if you had any more nominees to throw in. It's an interesting set of nominees. LeBron is obviously up there for his age. I would imagine Peyton Pritchard, we can talk about whether he deserves to be mentioned in this group or this is like a, you know, blockbuster movie that just got tossed in for best picture. But I did not add any additional nominee.

needs because the answer is obvious and I don't know what else there is to say. Yeah, it's almost unicorn of the decade is in play for Wembe. Peyton Pritchard I put in because of the bizarre stats about his two-point shooting and him near the rim and just this weird one-man post-up offense that he's been able to do, this ISO ball banging to you around. I've just never, TJ kind of veered toward a lot of this and then Pritcher took it and grabbed it and took it to another level, but I've just never seen anybody do it like this. Okay.

At 6-1, yeah, for sure. Not a lot of mystery for that first one. The next one, though, the 2011 Blake Griffin Award for most unexpected delight. And the reason we had this award, this was the year before Lob City. Blake's out his rookie year, hurts his knee, comes back the next year. Darren Davis is on this Clippers team. He's probably 20 pounds overweight. The Andre Jordan's feeling it out.

I don't remember who the coach was. Maybe it was Vinnie Del Negr. Vinnie. Yeah, Vinnie. Not a lot of high hopes. And then Blake came in and just ran a mock and was dunking on everybody. And it was like, oh, my God. The Clippers have never had a guy this fun.

The nominees for this award in no particular order. Jason Tatum's comeback. The Charlotte Hornets just in general. The All-Star game. BAM's 83-point game. Wemby leaping into the stratosphere. Jamal Murray being fucking awesome again and Kauai Leonard at age 34

becoming 2019 Kauai one more time. Any other additional nominees for you? I added one and it's the Hawks going like 14 and 1 and 15 games and 20 and 3 in their last 23 or whatever it is post-Trey-Young. I mean there are like mini runs. This is like a schedule aside. This is like an epic turnaround

in the middle of the season and like just scorched earth on the entire Eastern Conference. So I put them and they're super fun to watch the way they cut and move and pass and play defense. So I put that was my only extra nominee. So it's a heavy category already. And you forgot to mention Quinn Snyder looking like he's in Steve Carell's Rooster Show as like the other teacher who may or may not be involved with like one of the coeds. He just has that kind of bad tone.

Well, just like he's a, there's mystery to him. You don't know. You don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy. my answer to this. I don't think I could recover from the unexpected delay. Yeah. Bam's 83 point game was the winner for me.

Just out of nowhere watching somebody try to score 83 points against the tanking wizards and humiliate them when I wasn't expecting it on like a Tuesday night was my number one. So what is it for you? Did you see Jaime Hakehaku Jr. on my pod last week talking about this game?

What did he say? He was just like We were sitting there in shock that the Wizards just were continuing to let him go one-on-one. We were like, what are they doing? Like, the guy just put up 35 in the first quarter. You're not sending a second guy. They were like utterly in disbelief. Do you see what he did in the last game?

They played the Wizards again. He had 14 points. He went from 83 to 14. I found everything about it delightful too. I found the discourse, which I was set up to feel like the discourse was going to be insufferable. And I found it delightful nonetheless. I loved it. I went serious and sappy with this one.

Jason Tatum's injury last year is a flashbulb moment in NBA history. It's the same night as Cooper Flag going to Dallas in the lottery or Dallas winning the lottery. A night I'll never forget exactly where I was, what I was doing, when it happened, the whole thing. And I just, given the history of Achilles injuries, I was like my expectation, I'm going to level set at he just doesn't play at, he just doesn't play the next season because this is conference semifinals. And my optimistic take is going to be like he'll come back and look like

half of himself because that's what happens in these things. For him to come back this early and look like this for a team with this many wins is like beyond a delight. So I picked him. I didn't want to pick that because it would have been a homer pick, but now I'm jealous you picked

it. Maybe I should have picked it as well. All right. We award that to Jason Tatum. I think you want, well, we We each make our case and then we decide. So Jason Tatum wants that. All right, this is another really important award. The Gold Club Trial Award for funniest story or moment of the season. Our nominees are Michael Jordan joining NBC's MBA coverage, and it turned out to just be edited from some 10-minute interview he did where he didn't say anything.

Matt Ishbya, trash-talking everyone when the sun's hit, 32 wins. though he's traded 17 first round picks and had to play Bradley Biel, $100 million to go away to get into the luxury tax. Paul George's suspension helping put Philly under the tax. They had to make a trade too. Every Doc Rivers press conference after the bucks got blown out, where if you just left at the TV on and it cuts to Doc and the thing, and he just looks like he lost his dog and he's just like, what did I do? Why am I here? nobody going to Chris Paul's party

a tidbit from Ramona Shelburne after what went wrong with Chris Paul and the Clippers and about how he threw like a Halloween party and only two Clippers showed up Joe Missoula renouncing Coach of the Year award he was asked if he and he's like I don't care about that award don't ask me about that again it was the worst campaign of all time and then last but not least

Ben Simmons becoming a fisherman I don't know if you have any ad Absolutely loaded category. Kudos to everyone. It's an honor truly to be nominated. The only other one I thought of was the Wizards April Fool's joke going wrong

from last week. That's a great one. Which got even funnier when they issued a press release apologizing for it so serious that it was like, is this the White House apologizing for some horrible thing or something? Like it was just out. The whole thing was ridiculous.

To me, I did, I did think there was a clear winner. Not a clear winner, but a winner that was for me, the winner. Should I just say it? Or do you want to say who you? You go. I think Ben Simmons becoming a professional, semi-professional, amateur professional, whatever fisherman takes the cake for me because it was framed in the story by Mark Spears

that kind of broke this or whatever terminology you want to use. It was framed as like, you know, he's taking a break from the NBA. And this is what he's doing while he kills time. he decides what to do with his comeback in the NBA. Is that really what's going on? So I, in a loaded field, I took that one. It's great. I'm going with Michael Jordan's NBC stuff, which led to so many jokes and so much comedy,

including on your podcast. I haven't done one in a while. I had a running bit, just insights to mediocrity. I just thought they presented it like he was going to be this hugely important part of their coverage. And then it was just this interview. They clearly filmed over like Margaritas at six o'clock in Florida. Do you think there was a conversation at some point after the first level of backlash where NBC was like,

yeah, Michael, like this is not going well. Can we do another? Can you just come in for like, it'll be 20 minutes, just wear a different outfit, different location? He was like, no, I'm good. Like I did exactly what you guys. We're not doing that. Wow. It was very Megan Harris.

next award. This is a fun one. The Halliburton for Subonis Award for most fun in-season trade. Only four nominees. Zubats to the Pacers with the Quippers getting back that weird five through nine possible pick plus Matherin. Triple J to Utah. McCollum for Trey or James Hardin and a second round pick for Darius Garland. What do you have?

First of all, I like to see James. McCollum is now the headliner in the trade for you. C.J. McCollum for Trey C.C. surpass him as the headliner in the description. I had a couple other nominees, but I... What's here? What are your other nominees? I just think the Jared McCain trade is, is interesting on a number of levels, including how angry it made and continues to make our own Chris Ryan on a daily basis, losing all the

Philly fans losing their mind about it. This came down, I mean, these are three of these four are very interesting. find the trade one, all that interesting. I went hard in for Garland because it's almost like a straight up challenge trade, except one guy's 10 years older than the other guy. So it's also just a crazy vote of no confidence in the younger guy for a team that has an enormous amount at stake right now in this very season. So that one beat the Zubots one by a hair.

I agree. And that's our winner for this year. And we'll see five years from now. Who regrets that trade more? My guess would be Cleveland. Oh, speaking of trade. This is a new category that was created last year. It's called the Lucca Trade Award for the most cataclysmic moment of the season.

Our nominees. The KD. Burner scandal. All-Star Sunday. The February tanking crisis with the Utah Jazz, whatever happened that two days before when everybody went nuts, including me. Chauncey Billups arrested after the first game. Coach's one Blazers game arrested. Jimmy Butler, the knee injury, bummer.

but also felt like an official maybe end to the Curry, Draymond, whole Kirst, Steve Kerr, Warriors era. The 65 game rule just completely backfiring over the course of three weeks here. America kind of turning on inside the NBA, one of our most beloved institutions for the first time feel like there's some real, really animosity toward maybe these guys don't like the league as much.

I think they'll work it out. I'm going to bet on Barclay, who's the best media guy we ever had. And then this was brief. It was in November. It seemed like OKC was going to go 76 and 6 while the quippers were in a free fall. And we had two weeks there where we were terrified. OKC was going to go 75 and 7, but then also get the first pick in the draft.

So any other nominees for you in this category? No, I think you covered all of them. And I will congratulate you because inside the NBA's public perception of it being nominated here, feels like if the president of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was like, I really love this Norwegian film about death and mortality. We're putting it in the Best Picture nominees. Okay, we're putting it in there. I'm going tanking crisis because it's ongoing and just the noise drowned out everything

else about a prolonged period of the NBA season. It is utterly embarrassing. I mean, that slate Friday night two nights ago, top three worst night of NBA basketball in the history of the league. I mean, every game was unwatchable. What was the stat about it? It was like 25 points a game.

Was the disparity of all the games that night? It was like one of the two worst nights ever for something like that. The stat your citing is by Tim Reynolds at the AP. I don't remember exactly what it was. It was something like it was either the point spreads or the final margin had only been equaled one other time in the NBA. And it was also this season. And they're going to change the rules and everyone's just talking about it constantly.

So in an absolutely loaded field, I mean, you're talking about a coach getting arrested, rules gone haywire, a burner thing. I'm going tanking. I think you're right because the story still will not die. And every time people get tired of talking about it, something like Friday night happens and then we're off again. And honestly, we would have talked about it all weekend if the Wembee Joker game hadn't happened. Can we also just congratulate the Blazers on bookending the year with Chauncy

Billups at the beginning and this like bizarre two front office employees get fined. And so does the team for illegal contact with Hansen Yang before he was draft eligible. That was a new one for me. Yeah, that was a couple of years ago, right? Yeah, yeah, before he was draft eligible. I mentioned this on my mailbag the other day with House. We haven't talked about it. But I, to me, the seatbelt is off with the Blazers the next three months.

I agree. I agree with you. I it is weird just we are gonna take the speedboat out into the into the ocean and we're gonna fucking floor it to 110 like sunny crockett with the blazers I am prepared for anything like yonis trade new coach maybe they bring in a coach GM um any sort of wheeling and dealing uh this new owner coming in who already has this proven thing from hockey of like I'm coming in I'm rolling up my sleeves let's go and I just think they're the wild car team this year I if I had to to bet on a Yanis team. We don't have the odds for this, although I'm sure the prediction

market does, which sadly he invested in one of them. I think I would bet on Portland in the number two spot behind the Knicks. I would have the Knicks one and I would have Portland two for Yonest destinations. That's that's that's a whole. You could make you could make a lot of money if it comes true based on what I think the odds would actually be. And by the way, kind of forgotten stage, you know, offstage this year. All-time franchise icon Damian Lillard coming back to play basketball for the Blazers next year amid all of this. Could he come back for the, for the 8-9 game or the 7-8 game?

I have not even considered this possibility. Imagine that. Dame just shows up. He won the three-point contest. Well, you know what's changed? We didn't. I don't want to talk about the Bucks and you're honest. I just don't.

But I think the one thing that's changed is it's acrimonious enough now that I think he's lost the, okay, we'll accommodate whatever Janus wants. We'll trade you to whatever city you want to go to. Now I think it's like, hey, Janus, you're going to Portland. I think that's what's flipped. They're going to make the best trade for them and they're not going to worry about if his feelings are hurt or not. That would be my take. Next award. You know, an important award, almost like best.

cinematography. The 1986 Bill Walton Award, biggest impact under 20 minutes a game guy. This is the true six-man award. Alex Caruso, Hugo, Shireman, Ron Holland, Grant Williams, quietly plus 14 for the for the Hornets this year. Andre Drummond and my pick for this, Dennis Jenkins, who has just been a revelation for, uh, for, uh, for the pistons. And I think he's thrown his hat into the six-man award as well because he's been the definition of a six-man, a bench guy who when you actually need him to start

for a couple weeks, he can do it and carry you. It's a great story. I think he went to four colleges. He's somebody I never really noticed until at some point during this season, like, wow, that guy's kind of frisky. And then it's like, man, that Jenkins might be good. And then by the end of the year, it's like,

could this guy run a team? he's my pick for this one. I do want to point out that Hugo Gonzalez played one minute of garbage time today. I just want to point that out. And the initial list of nominees you've changed it, you're changing up. I mean, had Bones Highland on it,

and he's apparently been disqualified from the award here. I took Bones off. I felt like I maybe shot my wad on that one a little too excitedly because he was good for about a week. My two other additions is I did a basketball reference search

that fit the criteria. I think Mitchell Robinson deserves a hello and Clint Capella deserves a hello. I'm going to say I made a dramatic decision on this. I think the correct answer is Alex Caruso. But last night, watching Detroit, Philadelphia, watching Dennis Jenkins yet again lead Detroit with his ball handling with his shot creation, which is defense and all of it to another easy win without Cade Cunningham.

I mean, you can pick whether it's him or Jalen Duren. He's the most important reason why they have not only stayed afloat. without Kate Cunningham, but just death grip on the number one seed for a week and a half now. They never slipped for a second. So I'm flipping my vote from Caruso because Caruso, we all know Caruso. It's boring. Let's have some fun. Let's honor a guy who's really one of the stories of this particular season.

Dennis Jenkins come out from the back row wherever they sit you at this ceremony. You're getting this award. I'm really happy for him. Did a great job. And actually, I thought, increased the ceiling of the pistons because one of the things I just didn't take them as seriously as a true playoff contest. because I didn't really trust their bench. And I didn't feel like they had like the right kind of guy who could come in and maybe swing a game or a quarter. And, you know, who knows when Cade comes back, he doesn't have the car keys in the same way.

But I do feel like whatever's happened within the last four weeks, he can come into a game now and flip the game, which is what they had was Schrooter last year too. Do you think when you're thinking about big picture guys who, if you're another team, like should we target this guy? see he's trapped behind another asset. Maybe we can get this guy. I was thinking him and AJ Mitchell are the two guys that if I'm another team trying to figure out how to think outside the box with assets and picks, those would be the two I would look at. Is there anybody else who would put in that category?

Somebody who's basically really good, but maybe is being blocked by somebody or isn't in the perfect situation or might become available because of salary cap? off the top of my head I think Kaysen Wallace would also maybe qualify for this or is he overqualified for this? I'm just not, I'm just not trading him. Teams.

Would you trade, would you ever trade him if you're OKC? I wouldn't ever consider it. I mean, OECC is going to have a whole bunch of different decision trees based on, you know, do we keep all three of these stars together

for as long as possible on their max numbers? Do we not? What do we do? Like, people are going to have to go one way or another. it depends what his number is going to be too. I mean, does he get to restricted free agency and someone throws a massive offer?

She did him. I don't know. I think teams are thinking about Colin Gillespie like this. Hmm. On a lower level. But I mean, he kind of has a team. Yeah, you know, but now that he came off the bench today for the first time in a long, long time because they started Jordan Goodwin over him.

And I think they're just experimenting, do we want to, now that GIL and Green's a full-time start or do we want to just stagger our ball handling? You know, there are like Isaiah Collier on a lower level. I don't think that he's a, you know, that great of a starter kind of candidate, but I'm sure I can think of others. The 1984 John Drew Award for most stunning random statistical achievement. I knew you would love this one. So I have six nominees and I'm sure you've found a couple.

Some of them are easy. Con lead in the NBA in threes as a rookie bonkers. SGA, 55% field. goal percentage and 31 points a game as a guard. Scotty Barnes, 100 plus steals, then blocks. Derek White, I don't know if he had a block today, but heading into today, he was 10th in the league in blocks. He had 98 blocks.

Derek White is going to get to 100 blocks. Donovan Klingin, leading the league in offensive rebounds with 4.5 per game. And then Wembe averaging almost 25 points a game in less than 30 minutes a game. He's 24.7, 29.7. His per 36, I think, is at 30. So those would be my candidates. Do you have any other nominees? Wait, did you, did you wipe caniple off?

No, I had a con lead in the NBA in three. Okay, so, yeah. First of all, Derek White had no blocks today. There was one play where he, someone went up and he kind of deflected it, but I guess they called it either just a deflection or maybe the guy was passing. It would be very funny if he had 99 blocks going into the last game of the season and started just chasing blocks, like some guys chase triple doubles,

chase assists at the end of games, just trying to swat everything in sight just to get, he's like roping people in the shooting so he could go at them. Yeah, just to cinch this random award. I mean, I guess it's not a season-long thing. I thought BAM's 83-point game would be in here,

and I would even put... Oh, I was thinking for the year, but you're right, BAM. So if it was single game as eligible, BAM would win. I mean, that was just such a... like outlier event. And at the SGA,

Will Chamberlain 20-point streak, you know, it's not a year, it's more than one year. I thought that was interesting. That's a good one. I went basic on this. Call me basic like the teenagers do. I went Concaniple leading the entire NBA

and threes and walking into the league as the best shooter in the entire world, not named Steph Curry, which I think is what he's established himself as in year one, the volume, the different ways he can get shots off movement, off the dribble, both sides of the floor. It's just you could not say enough superlatives

for how great of a shooter he is in year one on a team that has been one of the stories of the season. So I went with sort of the just most boring counting stat one of all of these. It's boring, but it's the right answer because you can actually bet this before the season on Fandul. And I always like to, I'll do like a couple bets where I'll have Curry for most threes parlayed with like Wembe for most blocks.

And those are the two chalk ones. then put other stuff. I don't think Khan even had odds. So when you look at it from that perspective, because they probably have 20 guys that they'll put in there and it'll be like everybody you can think of, right? Jalen Brown, like everybody. Khan didn't have, as far as I remember,

Khan didn't have odds. So to go from that to leading the league and made threes as a rookie, which is an achievement in itself. And, you know, he as a shooter, I thought it just looked like peak prime Clay Thompson. Right? With that like some of the stuff, the quick release stuff that he was doing was like it took Clay Thompson four years to get to that point. And Khan's already there. And I don't even know where we go from here with con. It's not like his release can get faster. I guess he could maybe get move at five feet out would be the only. I don't know what else he could even add. He's just finished already.

Can I give you two more nominees? Yeah. That I forgot. Zion playing 51 out of 52 games in counting. I don't know what that that seems to be. be something. And another single game one that just was crazy, so maybe it doesn't qualify, was the night that Colell Ware had double digit points and rebounds and seven blocks and five steals off the bench. And no one had ever done that coming off the bench ever before in the history of the NBA. So I have just a little oddity for you. I actually, I don't mind when they give us those things like he's the first guy since 1963 to have 30 points, 18

rebounds, 4 assists, five blocks, and three steals. Like when they do those hot-podge things. Yeah. But it's a little over the top with how many times. Like, to me, it's like Yokic had a 20, 20 and 20. That's like a real. That's one where it's

like, all right, I can put that into some sort of context. All right. Two coaching ones really quick. I know that this is where you, Zach gets uncomfortable. Zach doesn't. I'm not uncomfortable. I'm ready.

I'm ready. Well, it's the Monty Williams Award for Worst Coaching Performance. First of all, do you think Monty Williams is the right person to have this award named after? Do you think he can you see his face on the bust? Is there somebody else you would put here? So it's got to be somebody else because that year with the Pistons was everyone,

it felt like everyone immediately agreed on day one. You know what? This was a bad idea. The money was too much. Everyone got carried away. This is a horrible idea. And he had just coached the team to the finals and 60 wins and all that. So I feel like we could we could do better.

Okay. I'll work on that. I'll talk to the committee. Nominees, Doug Christie of the Hindenburg Kings. Emaudoka had to throw them on there. Just a lot of clogged toilet in the end of these games and the team seems super unhappy. Brian Keefe, who did not double BAM out of bio for three quarters during a three-point game. Willie Green, no longer with us.

Jamal Mosley, who's been on it. It feels like the quiet hot seat now for a month and a half. And then, listen, I got to call it like it is. I think Doc Rivers is on here as well. When you have this many 20 plus point losses, as much as I love the guy, I have to just throw them on there for sake of accuracy. My winner is Doug Christie. I don't know if we have the same guy.

The committee is unanimous. Congratulations to Doug Christie. It's truly been an experience to watch across the board. The best thing you can say about it to really capture the moment is sometimes with these coaches, it's like, I wonder if he'll get another head coaching job. With Doug Christie, we have the answer already. He will never have another head coaching job. It will never happen.

No other team will hire Doug Christie. It's the nicest thing you could say about it. We've had NFL coaches like this, too, where you're watching the tail end of the season, the guy's going to get fired. It's like, I'm never going to see. The Patriots had Jared Mayo like that. It's like, we're never going to see this guy again. Doug Christie, we will never see again as a head coach.

I feel comfortable predicting this. I had forgotten about this until someone reminded me a couple weeks ago. Remember the brief, this guy's like a Hall of Fame level accomplished almost? But remember the brief John Beeline Cleveland Cavaliers era, which was over in like weeks. And then all these funny stories came out. Like the players were like, yeah, he names plays after animals. So we're out there like Colin Panda and like ant eater. And everyone's like, what are we doing here?

That was a good one. See, I had this thing when I did the mailbag with House about when we go to commercial for league pass instead of seeing the people dancing for the Jumbotron. It's a little two-minute mini documentaries about players, teams. That would be a funny wrinkle to it. It's just a two-minute John B-line documentary about the guy who, had to leave in 40 games and name plays after animals. And we just-

I think it was animals. I think it was animals. They were hippopotamus. A more positive award, the Brad Stevens Award for most untankable coach, named after Brad Stevens' 2015 performance when the team was built to tank, was supposed to tank, and just wouldn't tank. So our nominees are Joe Missoula, Jordanott, and Tiago Splitter, unless you can think of anybody else.

Well, all the coaches who would have been, like Jordy Fernandez would have been in this conversation year ago, it turns out you can tank with Jordy Fernandez as your head coach, even with Rick Carlisle as your head coach. If you try hard enough, you can tank with a Hall of Fame, Thousand Games won, all that kind of head coach. So I could not, I had no other nominees. I think my answer, oh man, this is a tough one, because this is basically one of the proxies for a coach of the year, at least who you think is going to be second. It's between Missoula and I I can't decide so you're going to have to decide. I went with Joe Missoula.

I don't think Charles Lee deserved maybe a mention here as well as a nominee because I don't think the Hornets had any idea. I don't think Hornets Brass ownership had any idea that any of this was in play at the start of the season. In fact, I think they would have preferred like, hey, I'm getting another bite at the apple. You know who had an idea?

He's got two thumbs. And he's you? I'll go to tell you. I'll go Joe Missoula just because he's the Celtics of the two seed. He's going to win Coach of the Year. They have gap year stamped all over them by everybody, and they rejected the label and just threw it in the trash. And I have to ask you then, when he wins Coach of the Year,

because I think he's going to win Coach of the Year, having denounced the entire notion of the award, what do you think he should do when he's given the award? Do you think he should just let his whole staff come up and accept it? Do you think he should throw it in a garbage can? do you think he should like give a like a speech about how stupid the whole thing is? Do you think he should let the players accept it? I'm serious.

Like what should he? He has preemptively said this award that I'm about to get is a piece of garbage that is dumb. So what does one do then upon receiving it? I'm looking at the odds now. Bickerstaff is still favored. He's minus 240. Missoula is plus 230. I don't think I think Bickerstack.

You know, with the way they've kicked. I would vote for Missoula, but with the way they've. played. It says a lot about the culture that he's instilled there and all that. So yeah, maybe I'm wrong. To answer your question, I think he would refuse to hold it, almost like an NHL players refusing to hold the conference whatever trophy that they get because you're not allowed to touch anything until the Stanley Cup. And I think he'd be dismissive of it and probably have a speech about how dumb awards are for people trying to lead their players and make everybody feel bad. They voted for You know what the real award is?

It's the journey. It's not the destination. It's the journey. Yeah, I think it is Missoula because I still don't know how this team's going to win like 56 games. It's, it just seems impossible. Now, I know they had health, good fortune with the best three guys in the team, Jalen, Pritchard, White. Those guys have stayed healthy and that's really helpful. Tatum didn't play for the first three-fourths of the season.

I just don't understand how they're going to finish 56 and 26. It's impossible. There are 14 wins higher than the over-under. All right, we're going to take a break on Spotify. We can keep going on Netflix. This episode is brought to by Volkswagen. All right, let's talk about the Volkswagen Atlas. This is a 70 powerhouse that actually makes sense for real life.

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launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx Intellects. and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. When WestJat first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get

when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to West Jetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. The late 1990s Chauncey Billups Award, best reason never to sell your stock. So explanation for this award, Chauncey Billups, drafted by the Boston Celtics 1997,

watched them play for 50 games. There was some talent there. My big takeaway was, I'm not sure this guy's a point card. I don't know if I, athlete, I don't know if I see it. They turned him into Kenny Anderson. One of my more regrettable takes. I had my old website at this time. And I was like, I kind of like to trade. Kenny Anderson's a real point guard. Didn't realize at that point that he had had some personal issues going on.

Billups bounces around. I can't think of anybody who would have kept their stock with him, lands in Minnesota, turns his career around, and then goes to Detroit and the rest is history. I don't know if you have your version of a Chauncey Billups where you learned your lesson not to give up on on great talent. Is there somebody from the past? There definitely is, but I'm blanking on the spot because I was so focused on the nominees

for this prestigious award. This is a really important award. Lamella Ball, Jared McCain, only because of Darrell. Daryl said we sold high on Jared McCain. Maybe he didn't sell high enough. Anthony Black, I can report firsthand.

I gave up on this guy. Duncan Robinson, who I think we've all given up on at least four different times over the course of his career. And then he always rallies back. And then Peyton Watson, I never saw it with Peyton Watson, never thought he'd be a guy. And there's probably others, but those were the five. Who else did you have as nominees? By the way, you know, who else? They didn't give up on Peyton Watson, but they made a very clear decision.

We're paying one guy and not the other. And we paid Christian Brown and not Peyton Watson. I would nominate just late season, late season nominees. Cody Williams is like flirting with next year's list maybe. Bones Highland, the entire Atlanta Hawks franchise. And I'm going to preemptively argue with you again and Goldsbury again. I am just going to stake my claim to the Amman Thompson portion of this argument now and say anyone who labels him a disappointment or sells their stock is going to regret it.

Leading the league in minutes. Do you know that? Is that good, bad, nothing? I'm just saying, like, it's not like he's having a bad season. I just wonder, I wonder what the next level is in. But you might be right. And we might have been too harsh. I think our winner for this category is Lamello Ball.

I don't know if you have, you never sold your stock. I was going to always get mad as people. As someone, like, I'm checking my retirement accounts every, every day. And, like, I've just, Lamello has single-handedly paid for, seven vacations that I'm going to take in a couple of years. So I, I, no brainer for me. It's Lamello Ball. There was a moment even this summer definitely, even in the, when they were four and 14, first like 20 games of the year. When it was Lamello, it was Trey Young and Jha. And I think I might even have been done a podcast segment of which guy would you bail on the

fastest, who would you kind of hold on to? And Lamello was the clear choice out of the three. Like, I would give this one a little longer. But the point is he was. closer to that conversation than is this one of the best point cards in the league, that conversation. The seesaw had swung to this side and he's rallied out. This will be, when you talk, we'll do, next week we'll do the 25 most intriguing guys in the playoffs on this spot. Okay, you were giving me the top of the last year.

Yeah, we did that last year. We did it at Grantland way back when, one of the last Grantland basketball hours. Grantland? Yeah, remember Grantland? Great website. Funny name. But we'll do that last week. I'll be interested to see where Lamello falls in the 25 most intriguing players of the playoffs.

There's a world where he's just fucking awesome and basically pulls the 2009 Derek Rose against the no KG Celtics. How many years did that series take off your life a year, a full year? I mean, so... Six months minimum. The two best first round series ever were that one and Spurs Clippers. right? I mean, you still probably have like Ben Gordon PTSD from that series.

That was the one where a lot of people, Ben Gordon became Bitcoin where you just bought in hard on Ben Gordon and it came back to bite you. So you agree on Lamello? I do. Okay. I do. We'll go quickly here. The Freeman Williams Award for Biggest Black Hole. Go look at Freeman

Williams' Basketball Reference.com if you want to have a good time. Nominees, Cam Thomas, Zach Levine, Ace Bailey, his fault. He's on a team that wants him to shoot. And then Malik Monk, I don't know if you've watched him recently on the Kings, but he's really like, I want to get traded this summer. I need some tape and has been dialing it up. It's got to be Camp Thomas, though. I just say as long as he's in the league, I think he has to get this. I abstained from the voting. I abstained from the voting. Because you got into it with one of the nominees over the summer. Well, he got into it with you.

it was appropriate and respectful of the process to abstain. Fair enough. Cam Thomas is the winner. The 2007 Kevin Garnett Award. So this is literally an award with Kevin Garnett's face from the 2006-7 season. You have to like capture the face. Trap Star who needs help escaping the most. Nominees.

Steph Curry. Janice. DeMontas Sabonis. Lori Markinen. And my personal winner, Trey Murphy. Oh, wow. I didn't see that one coming. Save Trey Murphy.

Get him to a real team. I've had enough. Enough of him on a not a real team. Let's put him on a real team. Let's put him on a team that has chemistry, that has guys that seem to like each other, that doesn't need five basketballs. Let's put him in a good situation.

Let's put him on the spurs. Let's put him on the thunder. Let's put him on the nuggets. Let's put him on those teams. Put him on the Celtics. No, no. Let's put him on the pistons. Let's put them on the hornets and go fucking crazy.

Put Trey Murphy somewhere else. No more on Trey Murphy on New Orleans. The world does not need Trey Murphy on the San Antonio Spurs or the Oklahoma City Thunder. No, we don't need that. Well, from a fear title standpoint. Yeah, fair. I'm just looking at for Trey Murphy. I feel bad for him.

Put him on a real team. Here's my thought process. It feels a little early for Trey Murphy to win this award. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Markan's finally coming out of four years. of Utah purgatory onto a good team next year. Janus is, I'm just, we don't want to talk about it. It's whatever.

And Steph doesn't, I don't think, want to leave the Warriors. And then I look around and I'm like, Domanas Sabonis, do you think he cries every night when he goes to sleep? I mean, do you think he actually weeps? He probably looks at his plus minus on that NBA site and sees the minus 15.5 or whatever it is. Do you think he watches YouTube clips of himself lighting the beam three seasons ago? And his wife is like, hey, Thomas, are you doing it again?

Come to bed? Are you doing it again? We're not lighting the beam anymore. He's an interesting one. I would still have Trey Murphy, so maybe we'll split the vote. Sabonis is an interesting one because I think people have given up on him as like you could actually win three straight playoff rounds with this guy as one of your four best guys. How about one playoff round?

Well, four best guys is too many guys. But this is why, so this is how I interpreted the word, who needs help escaping the most. I think he needs help in the form of another team valuing him more highly than the rest of the league and the consensus around the league and that they probably should. I think he needs that kind of help. I don't know what the team is because the defense stuff with him is rough. On the other hand, I think he's an incredibly skilled offensive player that if you put him with other rules, really high IQ player. I always thought if you just put him on the Warriors

with the way they play and the kind of guys that they get, I'd feel like he would thrive for them. Maybe the Bulls could get Sabonis if they take back Levine and DeRosen and just put all of the morassive players who have switched teams onto one team. Trump ruled two days ago, the Bulls and Kings are not allowed to trade anymore. This has been my rule.

This has been my, maybe that should have been my rule. He listened to. He did it on true social. Oh, gosh. So you have Sabonis. I have Trey Murphy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is one of the big awards. Okay. The Perk thinks Yokage Pads' stats award for the most scalding hot media take of the year.

Perk did say this a couple years ago. That wasn't even the hot. That wasn't even the most scold. Were you there when he said that? I was not, if I was not on TV with him, but I was there at ESPN. That was not even the most scalding thing he said about that MVP race. I remember. I, first of all, I want to apologize because I should have been keeping track of these during

the year and I didn't. So I had to kind of go off memory and some Google searches. But here, here's what we have for this category, six nominees. Perk says in December that Kauai Leonard was the worst free agent signing ever. That one actually like burned my eyebrows. Stephen A recently, I think this happened after the OKC game, suggesting Luca fakes injuries when he's not playing well. That became a whole thing. I missed that one.

Yeah, that became a thing. Perk said Charlotte limited Lamello's minutes to lower his scoring average, so he won't be an All-Star, and that would make him easier to trade. There was an OKC writer, Clemente Almanza, when the expansion thing started, who said Seattle fans, before they get the Sonics back and their history back, should have to apologize to Oklahoma City fans before they get their history back. In other words, we're going to hold your history until you apologize to us. Mark that one down.

Stephen A pushing Jalen Brown for MVP in mid-March. I love Jalen Brown, but that ship had sailed. And then Stephen A blame LeBron for ruining the slam dunk contest, which he was never in. But that's why he ruined it, though. The take was he should have been in it. But one of the things with LeBron, he really only has like two dunks. I mean, he was smart to avoid the dunk contest. He's like a cockback and one-hand dunk guy.

There was a reason he never wanted to be in it. My winner for this, unless you have any other, do you have any other nominees? I don't. The winner is the OKC writer, demanding an apology from the Seattle fans. I thought that was absolutely unbelievable. I was in awe of that take.

I couldn't decide what to do with that one because I don't know how to say this. It just, it feels more appropriate to deflate Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins than it does to deflate him. but that was so wildly insulting to an entire metropolitan area. And not only that, how would it work exactly? Are these handwritten letters that everyone in certain zip codes has to write?

Yeah, you have to digitally sign it. Is it the mayor? Is it like, what exactly are you asking for? And you're holding the Sonics earned history, the stuff that happened in Seattle over their head, like ransom for like a kidnapping? You guys won the title last year and it was like the second title for the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise.

The first one was in Seattle. All right. Another really important award, the Virginia Beach Kings Award for most contrived story on a slow news day. Remember the Virginia Beach Kings? I do.

Remember when that had like a minute? All right, nominees here. Expansion being approved for 20, 28, 29, without any bids or 23 votes from the owner. that somehow became a story. We picked the season in the cities.

Well, you don't have bids or owners yet. LeBron using Rich Paul's podcast on the Ringer to try to get the Lakers to trade Austin Reeves. This was an actual thing people thought. Stephen A feuding with the New Orleans Pelicans. This happened. Another one that I missed completely, and I Googled it, and I was like, oh, wow,

this is a real, real thing. It's like a two-day feud. Can the Jays coexist in Boston was the thing that kept happening over and over and over again. The Clippers want LeBron to replace the vacated Kauai cap space. This was a recent one.

I really enjoyed this one. It would have to involve Kauai somehow being somehow, somehow his contract being voided? What are the odds of that? Like honestly, like run our test, his car,

La Trell's pre-roll, his contract didn't get voided when he choked his coach. We'll find out when the elite law firm of Wachtel lipped Rosen-Rosen and Katz finishes its investigation in 20- five years from now, yeah. And then last but not least,

the recent one, LeBron doesn't like Memphis. Well, that's not a contrived story. That was, he said, I don't like basically said it. And then doubled down and said, I don't like Memphis either. I mean, I'm Milwaukee either. Your answer for this, or do you have any other nominees? I don't, I don't know if these fit.

I just remember a lot of media noise about, you know, we got to wait to see what the bucks really are. We can't judge the bucks until Kevin Porter Jr. comes back and plays with Janus. Like, we got to wait. We got to wait for that. Can the three guards coexist in San Antonio or do they just need to trade the Aaron Fox like right now because these two young guys are so good? I thought that was silly. And it's, it's burbling up now. We're going to talk about versions of it coming up. But specifically, like, did or did Jason Kidd not know or know about the Luca trade? ahead of time are all nominees for me.

And another one that I might actually vote for, this might have been limited to Lebitard's platform, and we all love Dan Lebitard and his show. But there was a day like a month. Speak for yourself. There was a day like a month ago where they had, unless it was AI, and I always assume everything is AI,

but it was like a long clip I saw. They finally had the discussion of like, basically, are we sure Eric Spolstra is a good coach? Are we sure like none of this is his fault? And I was like, wow. Spohy. Oh my Lord. I am sure Eric Spolster's a good coach.

Wow. That was the segment? So of all your nominees, I think I would go with Stephen A feuding with the Pelicans because it's ridiculous. It's just just saying it out loud is like the tagline of a ridiculous movie that happened. And like, but it's like, yeah. So I'd go with that one.

I think that's the winner as well. All right. One of our big ones. This is like bringing out Best Actor right now, the McKeskey Award for Best American White Guy. Previous winners.

Again, it's an American white guy. Previous winners include Ched Holmgren, Tyler Hero, Kevin Love, Mike Miller. Do two of them come out

and introduce the nominees? Like, do Tyler and Kevin Love like come out? We like, and please welcome. Kevin Love and Mike Miller with Tyler Hansborough.

I'm in awe of how loaded this class. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Nominees. Cooper Flagg just scored 51 points as a 19 year old. Con Cinepple. Peyton Pritchard. Ched Holmgren.

Austin Reeves and Donovan Klingin. Anybody else who needs to be a nominee here? Well, first of all, when I told my wife about this award, she as a Croatian person was like, wait a second, Why just American white guy, you know, wouldn't we, wouldn't we Yugoslavians clean up? It has to be American. I was like, well, that's the point. Like, we just have, do you have so many overqualified people?

Yeah. I had no notes on the nominees. It's an absolutely loaded field other than I might, although he's missed so many games, I think Tyler Heroes had a sneaky good season. I went with, I agonized over this. Austin Reeves career year, Cooper Flagg and Kinniple what they're doing. consistency, defensive dominance, health this year, dominant team.

I'm giving Chet Holmgren a repeat win for this award. It's a tough one. So I thought about a long and hard, and it comes down to which of these guys is the most reasonable all-MBA vote if one of them ended up on a third team all-MBA, which means the answer is Chad Holmgren. We have Rookie the Year for flagging Cinnipple. The other guys,

I think Reeves, before he got hurt, yeah, if he hadn't gotten hurt, I think there's a real chance he could have taken this. But I think it's Chad Holmgren. Back to back-to-back McKeskies for Chad Holmgren. I think agents have to start working this into their contracts for like, if he gets the Mokesky Award, $15,000 bonus. Not a huge, not a huge bonus by NBA standards,

but if he gets the Bill Simmons-Makesky Award, 15K. It would be funny if they put it in the CBA and you got like a, 5% salary cap bump. We did an old ESPN or Grantlandcom I did. We actually, somebody made a fake McKeskey trophy for this. And it's one of the funniest things we ever ran. It's McKeskey's face on this bronze,

whatever. And as always, I encourage people to go onto YouTube and watch McKeskey highlights. Okay. It's the fact that you have to say, as always about that. As always. I just,

as I frequently tell people. Yeah, listen. The Dennis Rodman Award for Biggest ongoing distraction. There's not going to be a lot of mystery here. Or maybe there will be because we have Janice versus Milwaukee. We have John Morant, whatever the hell was going on with him in Memphis. Kauai and the aspiration scandal. Is it a scandal?

We still don't know. And then tanking. Any other nominees for you here? 65 game rule. Yep. Okay. Burner. Scandal.

Whatever you want to say. Mark Cuban. versus the Edelson's versus the ultimate regret of life. It's Janus. It's the worst kind of distraction because it will never stop and it's reached a point of oversaturation. Yeah, it's kind of amazing to me that Kauai and aspiration isn't going to win this. But I think people tune this story out a while ago.

And I think a lot of people, including myself, are like, can you just tell me what happened when we have a final verdict? We can't escape this, Yonah. story. This is like every time you think you think it's like poison ivy every every time you think you got rid of it all of a sudden it's back again and it's been going on since August and it's been going on in a way that people are now like like I think vehemently tired of it like when he started going against him this week because they wouldn't let him play and they like I don't even think people wanted to report it anymore. I think people are just like just fucking trade them at the end of

the year. We're all done with this. Just trade them. This latest round was bordering on the absurd on a lot of different levels, whether he's healthy enough to play. We'll talk more, whatever. We won't talk more about it, but that's my pick. The Andre Blatch Award, most immediately regrettable contract or extension last 12 months, named after Andre Blatch,

who signed an extension that didn't kick in for a year. And over the course of that year, they became so unenamored with him that when they were allowed to amnesty, anyone in their roster, they amnestyed him before his extension started. Amnesty was really a great time. I love that. I think they should bring it back. Honestly, like, you should be able to use

an amnesty once every 10 years. There should have to be a ceremony too. Like everyone's got to go to a podium and it's like the opposite of being knighted. It's like something like that. That sounds great. Regrettable contracts. Palo, Jaron Jackson, Miles Turner,

Dorian Finney Smith, Chris Paul, any other nominees. Oh, I've got nominees. You want nominees? Let's go. Yeah. Just a couple of nominees. I was a little surprised, and I wouldn't pick him nor would I even nominate him. I was a little surprised Deeran Fox's name did not come up. And I think the reason is if you're going to win 60 games, you just get a pass and he's been largely good. That's how I felt. I would actually, just to pick a winner for my winner for this, I would go off the nomination list, like ordering off the menu. I'll take, for my main course, I'll take Jako Pertel contract extension. Like, since like almost $30 million a year, he wasn't even extension.

He wasn't even like becoming a free agent for two years. He had a bad back? He has back issues. He's just fine as his starting NBA center. And the Raptors are like, you know what? We don't even want you to wait, let alone two years, not even six months. Here's $90 million or $100 and whatever million. and he's had a largely forgettable injury riddled season.

It was the most inexplicable contract of the summer. So I'm going off the menu and ordering a big fat helping of Yakup Pertl. I'm not perfect. Even heroes have warts. Pertil should have been on there. That's my mistake. I think it's a great choice. It made no sense when they did it.

Also, like when we did the worst contracts draft with Waz and House, I was going hard on centers just because I feel like we've loved. learn that there's this giant inefficiency with how much you should pay a center. And if you're 20 million and up, unless this guy is Wembe or Yokage, maybe not a great idea. And Toronto just ignored all the evidence and went all in on Moriaka-Purdle, who got dominated by Namias Kada today. It would be one thing if he were approaching free agency and you thought, well, we're a good team, we don't really have a replacement for him.

That's the bird rights trap, as Hollinger calls it, that you fall into with your own guys. this was like, what, what? Like that. Really good one. 2007 Ewing Theory Award for the star most likely to be Ewing Theory next season. Janus, Zion, Kauai, Jha, KD. Any other nominees? So to be clear, what we're picking here is this person goes to a new team and his old team thrives?

Basically, KD and the Suns this year. Okay. I think the Suns are like a stealth Ewing Theory team right now. Not that they're going to win the title. but my pick is not Janice as much as I wanted to pick that one. I think Zion was my favorite one for this. It's a good pick. They clearly, if they keep your guy,

Trey Murphy, instead of trading them or getting him to a new place as you so want, and they keep the other infrastructure around what they have now and just X-Sy-Zan or turn him into a piece that fits better or whatever, that's a pretty solid case. I went with John Moran. It's a little hard because the Grizzlies don't really have a roadmap to being like who's who's the best player on the team. If not John Moran, are we going this all?

Am I going so far all in on Ty Jerome? But I just like the way. I mean, who knows what of their young guys other than Coward and some of their other core guys will be on the team next year. I've enjoyed watching the remnants of the Grizzlies play. They play hard. They've sort of bought into a style of play. They play defense. They're super hansy.

they play fast. And I could see a world where, like, the Morant cloud is removed. And they just, like, become a really fun 34 win team next year. It's become a tough place. It's definitely like a trap game, every at Memphis game now,

where these teams go, they all hate staying at the hotel, which finally became a thing in the last week. They don't really like going there. You're playing a team that's tanking, and they just kind of sneak up on you. All right. So we'll split that vote.

quick aside for this was not on the list that I sent you and I forgot about edie by the way if I forgot even forgot about yeah he'd come back um Mike Smeltz who I think was in the mailbag the last one we did he's he wanted to know why the MVP wasn't on the made up awards not most viable player most viable pocus given to the bad player and tanking team who's given too many minutes as a stealth way to make the team lose and brought back the 20-21 season when they unleashed Poku and he shot 37%

and was one of the great tanking weapons anyone's had. First of all, my apologies. That should absolutely... Next year, we will have the most valuable Poku. We'll be on the menu. He suggested Bez Embang on the Utah Jazz who all of a sudden was playing

all these big minutes for the jazz as a possibility. I guess my issue with this award is, I don't know if we'll ever be able to recreate Poku again. the combo of how bad he was, but then also this weird hope and love that the Thunder fans had for him, like there might be something there,

maybe Presti did it again, and there was nothing there. I don't know if we see that again. So Bez is among a pile of guys who are suddenly playing 40 to 48 minutes. I mean, literally entire games. And so I think to win this award, the essence of this award is,

you can't just sort of exist out there is a 3 and D kind of guy for 48 minutes, you have to have the ball and do a lot of super damaging things with it. So I'd have to think hard about who that really is this year. I don't think the guy exists. And in some cases, it's people like Sensorbaugh played 43 minutes today,

but he's actually good. He's fine. So it really, I don't, maybe most valuable Poku can't be in a word. Or maybe it's, oh, maybe it's a, you know, when you see it. It's like when the Oscars, when they bring out the guy and they give somebody,

Like it's Harrison Ford. It's a special Irvingthalberg Award for special achievement. Maybe that's how it has to go. By the way, not a hot take. Shrinking is a favorite in the low household. I just, I say it every episode to my wife. Harrison Ford, American Treasure. It's not a hot take, but I like to be reminded of it.

He's so good in the show. And he's just, he's an American treasure. These all time. Now you're sucking up to Mallory. League Pass broadcast team of the year. I'm not even going to give nominees. This is your your category. You care about this the most.

Who was your favorite league past broadcast team this year? So I, all encompassing the broadcast crew, the play of the team, how those two things mesh together. And it's got to be Charlotte. It's got to be Charlotte with Eric Collins and Del Curry and watching that team run up and down the floor and shoot threes and dunk out of leoops. It's like, look, we all know who the sort of pet broadcast teams are. We all love the New York broadcast, the Brooklyn broadcasts, lots and lots of lots of I love the Toronto broadcast, but the whole experience of Eric Collins

just losing his mind 10 times a game for a team that like, like you watch the Wizards broadcast and they'll lose their mind over like Bub Carington making a mid-range jump shot. Like a Bob! Yeah. Look at Bob Carrington showing out for the Wizards.

Timeout. Wizards are down by 21. Eric Collins is like going crazy for legitimate basketball reasons. And the whole thing, the uniforms are great, the courts great, the honeycombs, the Hornet,

everything. Charlotte. I had them as well. It's, I think the only two, well, there's three because Eddie Johnson does the Phoenix.

There's only three teams where I make sure I switch the broadcast feed. They'll give you one. And if it's Charlotte, if it's Phoenix, or the other one for me is Denver, I will switch over to their broadcast teams

to hear their people do the games. So I never, I never voted. in the top 100, the ESPN 100, that they used to do when we would rank the players. But this is how they would be ranked. You would just get like snap decision on two players. And you would just do that a bunch of times.

And they would then spit out your rankings of the players that way. That would be a fun column someday if we really just wanted to piss a lot of people off or delight a lot of people is just like that, but for league press broadcasters, just like, okay, it's Philly, Detroit. Who are you listening to? Stap, done. And just like, me too. Just see it and just see how it ends up. You said more than enough about Eric Collins.

I want to chime in. I think he's spectacular. He is like everything you would ever want from your local play-by-play guy. Because he's like, Drew Carter's like this with the Celtics too. They're overqualified to be doing the local games. Like they're really national guys. The difference with Collins is he's been in Charlotte for a while really cares, but cares like not in a way where it's like you're a little embarrassed for them.

Like they're cheering for the team too much. Like he really cares. And like somebody will make a shot against them. It would be like two minutes left. They're down one. And then some fuck up and somebody will hit a three against them. And he'll he'll just say some crazy sentence. Like, oh, isn't that a chainsaw in the tibia?

Like just he just has like this endless thing of crazy comments. The Hornets are hanging on. like a cat on a screen door. He's a 10 out of 10. I love Eric Collins. I'm so happy that. No. So good.

And Del's great. I watched the whole Del Curry day. I thought it was so genuine with those guys. And shout out to them. Note for announcers. A lot of what you're saying is he's enthusiastic without being like a gratuitous homer. And part of that is, unlike some other homers, never hostile to the other team or the

opposing players for no reason. Never going out of your way to criticize sometimes unjustly somebody on the other team. I'm blanking on her name on the Nuggets broadcast, Katie. Katie Wingy. Katie Wingy. So she's done a couple games. I thought she was fantastic. Like as the color person. I really thought like she had high level smart, like breaking down what was going on. I thought she was really good. It seems like they bounce the partners around a little bit, but I thought she was really good thing. She played at a fairly high level in college, I think. And it

seems to me that they're making her the air apparent for whenever Scott Hastings who's playing against Larry Bird in college whenever he retires. Yeah, I did the rare, I never add Twitter follows anymore, but she was really good. I was like, I'm following her on Twitter. The Lou Brown Award for

Out of Nowhere Surprise Team, where we have Phoenix, Charlotte, Boston, and Post-Tray Atlanta loaded category. I think it's probably Phoenix, though. Who had them as the seventh seed? It would have been absurd. Every other one sort of makes sense, right? Phoenix still doesn't make sense.

I still don't understand it. There's just you get a lot of mileage out of playing hard, chemistry, good top end talent and Booker, good complimentary pieces, great coaching. I mean, they're only going to finish with like whatever only. They're going to finish with 45 wins. So it's not only they've blown the doors off. People certainly they've blown the doors off expectations. I still went with the Hawks.

Like, I issued a formal apology for my Hawks optimism on my podcast around Christmas. I sat down and I reckoned with what I had done and what I had convinced people was going to happen with the Hawks. I actually thought about filming it in the vein of Will Smith's taking questions about why he slapped Chris Rock. I was going to sit down and where the baseball hat that he had and, like, we just ran out of time. And I was going to be like, read fake questions like, Zach. Why did you think Trey Young would fit with this team? And I'd be like, well, that's an interesting. Anyway, and then they were like seven in a row, 11 in a row, 15 out of 16.

Like, what's happening? It was an ultimate, what's happening for me? Okay. I think you've convinced me. I'll switch mine over because we had all given up on the Hawks and left them for dead. And it just seemed like they'll make some giant weird trade this summer and that'll be it. What's weird is, does all this happen if they don't trade Porzingis? because Kamiga's already

kind of on the outside looking in for them. I wonder if they had kept Porzingis, if that would have been a fun wild car for them. A couple more words. The ML car trying to trade for a retired Michael Jordan award for goofiest but possibly real upcoming offseason subplot. This is a thing that happened. He did call the Bulls and try to trade for a retired Michael Jordan

and they hung up on him. And then he leaked to people that he tried to trade for Michael Jordan. So technically it was true. I'm actually surprised there are not more awards name for MLCAR, but that's a different story. Nominees, this is for this guessing this summer. The Warriors trying to get Kauai. We found out before the trade deadline, they actually did try to get Kauai when they traded James Harden, the Warriors came in and tried to make a bid, didn't get them. LeBron becoming the Warriors player coach.

Palo for Janus. The Celtics trade Jalen Brown. or OkC says fuck it and trades Jdub. All those are ridiculous, but what's the one that make, oh, give me, have you have any other nominees? No, all of these broke my brain. Although, I mean, Palo for Janus is not to me goofy at all on a number of levels. It's something I pitched in the fall before I forgot that Palo was poison-pilled.

Celtics trading Jalen felt more plausible. last off season and now, but crazy things happen. His contract is what it is. I don't see now that they've reset the tax, I don't see any scenario where it happens. And Chisholm is like, he goes to every game.

He loves the team. Everybody loves the J. I don't see a scenario. I mean, I went with the Warriors trying to get Kauai, which doesn't feel goofy since it happened. But I do, I mean, God only knows what could happen this summer.

What's going to happen with Kauai was going to happen with this contract, etc. But I went with that one because LeBron's not going to become player coach, right? They could go to the Warriors, but that one is not going to be on the table. I don't know. Would they bend the rule?

If the Warriors and LeBron went to Adam and were like, can you bend this rule on the player coach? It's certainly good for business. Does LeBron want to be a coach? No, no. I just, it's stupid. I'm going to say, my answer is OKC trading J-Dub. I left that one sitting there for you. I'd rather you take it.

I just find it hard to believe they're going to be paying three max guys and Kays on Wallace, and they're going to have more stuff coming. And I just think Presti will proactively do stuff. And I don't think they're going to do this just for the record. Don't aggregate me. Be like Simmons thinks, okay. We're talking goofiest, but possibly real. This one had like a shred of, well, what happens if O.KC loses in the conference finals?

Do they just run it back? Do they get creative? They have all these picks. Do they try to upgrade Jalen Williams, who was already a top 25 guys? You're talking about last year. Yeah, I'm talking about this year. Like if they lost.

Yeah, I was going to say, what complicates all this is if they win the championship. The Zaza Pekulia Award. Pachulia? Pachulia. The Zaza Pachulia word for the one NBA rule that absolutely needs to be changed. 65 games, tanking.

Half court shots don't. Count as field goal attempts, a passion point of yours, and League Pass showing people dancing during every timeout. Anything else you would add here? You should get to pick your opponent as the number one seed, and there needs to be a time limit on reviews. Oh, that's really good. I'm going with that one.

That's my pick, too. I went off the menu. 45 seconds. That's it. Done. Every time you say you went off the menu, Joe has his stomach growls, and you think some food. Just so you know.

That's right. It should be 45 seconds. For the record, first of all, I, first of all, I do have to admit defeat on the half court shots rule. It worked. Players take half court shots. I mean, I still think it's, I like the idea of having the field goal percentage cowards have to be publicly cowardly by not shooting.

I enjoyed that, but I enjoy the heaves more. Me as well. So 45 seconds, I don't even think the refs go over to the monitor. I think they decided, a caucus and they just tell the ref and it's announced. I don't even need the refs like, but I'm going to put my headphone.

I'm out. And the refs wearing the headsets has been this weird, they are wearing them. Now they're not like on again, off again thing like what's going on with that? Why did that you know, just they did these games, the games are too long still and a close game at the end

if there's three reviews, you're just going to it's going to take too long. All right. We'll go through a couple of quick here. The 2010 Baron Davis Award for Best Individual Mail-in of the season. Sorry, Baron, I went to those games, unfortunately. John Moran, Zion, Anthony Davis, Zach Levine, or Mark Cuban. I'm going out of the box here and giving it to Mark Cuban. How is this guy still giving interviews and taking, first of all, nobody asked you to sell the team. You sold the team after you hired Nico Harrison, right, the GM who then made the Luca trade, who now you've been

badmouthed. You hired him. You picked the ownership group to sell the team to. You lost your say in the whole process. You see, you had the famous line of like, nothing's changing except my wallet or whatever he said. Yeah. You're a rich guy who I don't, didn't seem like you need the money or maybe you did of selling the team. You sold too early. You sold before the value of all the franchises went way up. You handled every piece of this wrong. Not to mention you said you were going to be involved than you weren't. And now it just feels like for the entire season he's been trying to throw

his scent off his culpability in the Luca trade which never would have happened if he's still on the team. Like, I don't think he should give interviews about it anymore. It would be my take. And so that fits the mail-in criteria for you? Yeah, because he mailed it in by selling the team. It's your fault

they traded Luca. You're Dr. Oppenheimer in this. Wow. Yeah. Is that a hot take? Don't sell the team. You don't want them to trade Luke and Donchish.

Keep the team yourself. Invoking the father of the nuclear bomb. Well, this was the NBA trade nuclear bomb. I went much, I went with John Morant because he literally stopped trying during multiple games

to the point that Blake Griffin and I think his first like, welcome to broadcasting moment, called him out at halftime of a game and then he's just disappeared. But you make quite a case for Mark Cuban. Just how about this? Point the finger this way.

Yeah, there is a lot of blame being thrown around retrospectively. It would be like if Howard Schultz, when he sold the Sonics to the Oklahoma City Thunder who were dying to bring a team to the Thunder, and then they moved the team to Oklahoma City. It's like, oh, my God, what? I can't believe that happened. It's like, you couldn't? You sold it to a bunch of guys from OKC. All right.

The Shane Batty Award for Sloan Conference stat nerd, darling du jour, it's Diabate, right? Did anyone have more fun with, though? What the fuck is going on here? Stats for the advanced metrics than all Diabate lineups and all the weird shit with him?

Or would you go with somebody else than the Moose? I'm happy to give it to Musa. A couple other names that came up for me were Dean Wade, because the Cavs are just obsessed with. Well, when Dean Wade's healthy, look out. Dyson Daniels,

Clint Capella. like Derek Jones Jr. But I'm happy to give it to the moose. Hugo, having the plus 17 net rating for most of the season was pretty crazy too. The Vitali Potopenko Award for Worst Deadline Trade for the kids out there,

1999, strike season, 50 games, Celtics are a bottom 10 team. Rick Petino, who was just a serial killer when he was running the team and just leaving bodies left and right, decided to trade an unprotected first round pick for Vitali Potopico, who was a backup center masquerading as a starter.

And that pick turned out to be the ninth pick in the draft, which would have been either Andre Miller or Sean Marion if they had it and they did not have it. Worst trade. Kobe White for nothing, Porzingis for Kamingin Heald or Simons for Vucevich or another nominee that I don't have. Jared McCain? Too soon to say. Too soon to say.

And they got real draft equity for him. Yeah. I wouldn't put that as the number one, but it could be a nominee. I mean, I'm just going, I'm zooming out and just going the entire Chicago Bulls organization for everything gets this award. I mean, I don't follow hockey and football closely enough to say this. Is there a more, I ask you then, is there a more depressing franchise in American professional sports right now than the Chicago Bulls?

I think that, yeah, to flip that around most depressed fans. base. It's down to Chicago and Sacramento, I think, in the finals. Even Sacramento is going to enter the lottery in pole position or fourth position. At least they have that. The Bulls are ninth in the lottery standings, hoping for a Derek Rose redux with Matas Buzellas and a whole bunch of like, but even Gitties like last two months have been. Now, I guess you just throw them all the way, have been just like okay. What was the Kobe White trade? And why did they? they then trade Busevich to take on six more million dollars of Simons?

What was that? I don't know. And it's tempting to say, well, they got Colin Sexton, who's been pretty good on an expiring contract, and he'll be on another team next year when he walks for nothing. And also, I mean, wherever you want to classify this. Why didn't they keep dang in the three-way trade they did? Why did they reroute him somewhere else? I mean, he needed a 22-year-old young, energetic forward?

and there are two big second draft swings or Rob Dillingham and Jaden Ivy and one of those has gone completely sideways and it's just I just... Wow, it sounds like you're, we should just move right next to the... Let's do it.

The David Khan Award for Worst GM performance. Nico Harrison, not eligible. I had him in there, but then the more I looked at it are not eligible. King's GM. I don't even know who is it. It's Scott Perry. It's Scott Perry.

Scott Perry, but it's not. It's really Vivek and whoever his kids are, the GM. Like, does somebody can announce themselves at like a dinner, it's like, I'm the GM of the Kings, but they're not actually the GM, right? They're not really making these moves. That'd be great if I went, if I started going to parties and just introducing myself as the GM of the Kings,

I just want you guys to know, I've been quiet about it, but. But I'm running the Kings. King's GM, Joe Dumars at New Orleans, John Horace on the Bucks are our winner, our tourists on the Bulls. So I don't think we'll have this job a week from now, would be my guess.

I just don't. It was really abysmal for five years here. And it's a, yeah, it's a, it's in totality, multiple year award in this case. The LeBradford Smith versus MJ award for Satis MBA feud, where we have LeBron versus Memphis, Chris Paul versus the quippers,

Stephen A versus the Pelicans, or Mark Cuban versus Nico and the Dumonts, I think, is my winner again for all the reasons I said earlier. That's my winner as well out of this group of nominees because no one is rooting for anybody in the feud. Everyone is rooting against all parties involved in the feud. And everyone is rooting for Luca Dantich to have success for another franchise. Everyone in Dallas is now somehow a Lakers fan after all of this. And so that was my saddest feud too. We're running late on time.

So we're going to cut the T Moran Award for most polarizing family member. We'll just give it to Rick Brunson right now. I was not consulted on that. That was a committee of one. The 1988, Reggie Lewis, I don't know. I just like this guy award for a young guy who's not playing much yet, but you've already bought significant stock. Really important category here. Our nominees, Ron Harper Jr., Carter Bryant, Hugo.

Will Riley He's like Madonna. He just has one name. He goes. And I can't even say it right half the time. Will Riley, a Joe House absolute favorite. Favorite.

He's not my old rookie team, you know. He should be. Kishan George. Malachi Smith. Did I say that right? Malachi. Malachi Smith. Diawara on the Dix.

And my personal pick, Neaterhaus. I'm not even going to try to say his first name on the quippers. I love Niederhouser. I was bummed out when he got hurt, and I think they would easily be the eight seed if he hadn't gotten hurt. The other ones, the stock's a little higher.

Neiderhouser, I still feel like is like dirt, dirt cheap. If I was getting a little pricier, I'd be looking at Hugo, Carter Bryant, are two that I would invest in. But I think those are already a little jacked up. Did you have any other nominees before you give us your winner? Carter Bryant is definitely, they're not taking on more buyers. at this point.

People are very high on him. They've shut the IPO and that's it. I went again off menu. Sorry, Joe House. I went Rishir Fleming in Phoenix. Oh, I like him. He should have been not. Why wasn't he nominated?

I can't answer this kind of questions. I got to talk to myself. Yeah, that was the guy, all the Celtic, well, the smart Celtic fans were hoping the tea leaves were showing that the Celtics might take him. And then the Suns jumped them?

They traded up for that pick, I think. or trade it up, something happened. Yeah. We got Hugo. Carol Dawson Award for Most Unabashed Tank Job. Carol Dawson, the guy who invented tanking

with the rockets in the Samson-Elajuvant things. So we got Utah, Washington, Brooklyn, Indiana, Sacramento, Memphis. I'm happy giving it to all six. I don't really want to separate anybody. It's a really hard one.

It's a hard field. Yeah, we're not picking a winner for that. I would pick a winner. Go ahead. I would congratulate the Washington Wizards. And I would pick them because they traded for not one, but two, good and presumably playable NBA players, pretended that they might actually play them,

actually played Trey Young for a hot second, kept pretending that they might play Anthony Davis, and then just issued one medical update after another about everyone's ramping up or ramping down or ramping in various directions, and basically played neither of them. And then stopped playing other people, too. So I mean, like the Jared Jackson Jr. had surgery. They took a $95 million for two guys to not play them. And like, are they going to extend them? What's going to happen now? It's just, it's a bizarre one. So I, in a field, it's like really 1994 best picture.

But it's a, I give it to the Wizards. I mean, you got to look at Brooklyn, too. Just playing all these young guys they have together who don't even make sense on a basketball court together. Just throwing them out there, making sure Porter Jr. doesn't play too much, all the stuff they're doing. But I, it's loaded. It's loaded. If we have to pick one, your Washington case was good.

This is, uh, it's a slightly mean-spirited award and I don't really care. The Dwight Howard. It's mean. Sorry, dude, I can't help it. I just don't really like watching to play basketball that much award. Palo, James Hardin, Jalen Green, Westbrook, Zach Levine, Rudy Gobert, Trey Young.

I'm not saying it's a bad brand of basketball. I'm just saying for me, Personally, just for me, it's not really resonating. It's not really resonating with me as a fan. I don't know if you have any other nominees. This is, I don't, again, we're not happy about saying these things. No, we're just trying to be honest. Carl Anthony Towns?

Sure. What's at him? Okay. Is that your winner? I flirted with a couple others, but my winner of this group, would probably be Zach Levine. Okay. I have him as well.

Opted into his last year of his deal at $49 million. I don't know if you saw that. Well, here's one of the marquee awards, the Ron Arteast Award. Best bet to inadvertently start the next Art Test melee. Three of the people on this almost did start the next Art Test melee a couple months ago. Isaiah Stewart,

the Moose, Ron Holland, Goga Patzi. Jose Alvarado. Donovan Klingen, who I don't think gets nearly enough credit for how feisty he is. I think he's going to be involved

in a really big fight at some point. Yokic, got to include him. J. Lin Williams, not J-dub, J-Will, Lou Dort, and the Champani brothers, both of them. They're on separate teams.

They're both in. They're both ready to go. You can see it. Who wins this for you? This is basically the, who is the guy you don't want to fuck with the most in the league or work? I mean, I don't know if it's that,

but I know it's the award for the guy who most wants to fuck with you award. True. I mean, this is becoming a pretty easy decision. It's Isaiah Stewart who, when he begins running across the entire court with fire in his eyes, it's over. Like, you're too late. You're too late. It's now a melee.

And this is the second time he's traversed the entirety of an NBA court to get himself a piece of something. The Novak's Kyrie Irving Award Best Job of maintaining good stats by not playing regularly. We're just giving this to Joel and B.

Well, listen, if you're playing once a week or every once in a while, your stats are going to be really good. So congratulations, Joelle. Agreed. I had them to.

The white chocolate was a problem award. He was a problem. 2006 guy whose season was so much better in 47 second Twitter highlights. Nominees, Ace Bailey, Kishon George.

Baranget. How do you say his name? How did he get on this list? Because if you cut 47 seconds of alley-ups and blocks from him, you would think he's like the next Wembe. Robert Williams, Time Lord, Dang, and Nolan Traori, who's my pick. I have him. I think you could cut a really nice three-minute super mix of Traori highlights,

and you would be convinced he's like a future All-MBA guy. So Ace Bailey and Usman Jang would have the most like basketbally versions. Like they'd have turnaround jumpers and post-up moves. For me, I get, can I go off menu again? Please. Joe House got hungry again. I went Danny Wolf because if you super cut like crazy Danny Wolf no look passes and then some threes and some like overhead no look past. He would be like, wow, this guy's like, Magic Johnson out here, point like just running, running things.

So I went with Danny Wolf. Wow. You did the triple crown there. You made Joe House hungry. You delighted Peter Schrager, because this is his favorite net. And you delighted Tommy Alter as well. Triple Crown. Three for three.

Thank you. All right. Three awards left. These are the big ones. The Travolta and Pulp Fiction Award for comeback of the year. Okay. Jason Tatum, obviously. Lamella Ball, Michael Porter Jr., Brandon Ingram, and whoever else you want to nominate.

I would nominate Cedeek Ben. Nicola Tollich. Nicola Tollpich. Yeah. The entire Atlanta Hawks franchise for the midseason comeback. But I would give the award again, sappy and serious, I would give the award to Jason Tatum. Yeah, this is one of those where it's like the SB's where he's in the front row with his family and he's getting nominated. So I got Tatum's winning that one.

We don't talk about that. So this is one I really wanted to give out, the 2006 LVP. for least valuable player. And least valuable player isn't the worst player, but it's least valuable. It's somebody that is working against your team at all times. I don't think there's a winner for this this year. I think some years you have it, some years you don't.

When you have 10 teams not trying, I just feel like the LVP becomes a lot harder. In a way, it could almost be given to the team, to the guy that his team's trying to tank. but he's been too good at messing up the tank would almost be the LVP in this situation. You're messing up our draft pick that makes you the least valuable.

So I don't know, if you feel like we should give this out, I'm fine with it, we could skip it. You could go the other way, and it could be a team that was at various points, including at the beginning of the season, trying to win, and investigated a crap ton of resources

to get you onto their team and enjoyed arguably the worst season of your entire career. Paul George? That's not who I was thinking of, but is perfectly fits that sort of. Who were you thinking of? I was saying, and you didn't prep me for this one.

This was not on my list of nominees. I went off the menu for House. I was thinking of Miles Turner, who just, can you remember one thing that Miles Turner did this year? Like one. Wow. And he's shot 38, he's shooting 38% on threes.

He just, he's missed a lot of games now. They're tanking now, obviously. But just given the wave and stretch sign for $25 million a year, perfect fit with Janus, blah, blah, blah. It just feels like I just never even noticed him on the court the entire season. I mean, this is why you're one of the greats. I went from thinking we shouldn't have this award to thinking you laid out the perfect. And Paul George would have been another one, right?

But Paul George actually got them under the tax by getting suspended. So in a weird way, he was viable. Miles Turner, when you throw in the stretch and what they thought it might do for their seat, basically like this Hail Mary to save their next two years, and it just didn't. And they probably, as we've talked about, overpaid him a little because centers,

unless I have an all-MBA center, I don't want to pay $25 million a year for a center. I think that's a good pick. Not entirely his fault. He did choose to leave Indiana. Off to top, it's just off the top. So I'm sure we could think of other, you know, candidates. Final word, the

2006 League Pass MVP. This is as coveted as the real MVP. I don't know. A lot of people don't talk about that. Everyone's been drinking now for a few hours. They're getting punchy. They're ready to go to the after parties. But now they've got to pay attention. They got to sit and pay attention. This is so much different than the real MVP. This is, you're going back to the legacy of like

Michael, we didn't even have League Pass in 1987. but oh my God, Michael Jordan. This is Kobe in 2006. Like, is he going to score 80 tonight? It should really be named for Blake Griffin, I think. Blake Griffin made league pass. Just a thought. Interesting.

He already has an award named after him. I know. He is the unexpected Delight Award. So the difference between this and just being the best player in the league is this is just you're flicking around and you just keep gravitating toward a team, a player. And it's just somebody you know is going to do. deliver the goods. It's like your best postmates order. 7.30, I need to, and you just go, it's your go-to.

It's like, I'm hungry. Where am I going? The nominees are Wembe, Joker, SGA. I only have three people here. Because to me, it's either Wembe or Joker. Are there any other nominees for you? I would have the Hornets as a team, but teams can't win this. It has to be a person. I mean, certainly the last month in a half, Luca has gotten into this conversation, though. I know, but it's the whole season. And if I'm going to vote for him for the season,

I also have to deal with, like, Luca from that one month when he just seemed completely miserable and was just mad at every ref for two and a half straight hours. I did not seek that out on League Pass. I thought, no, I have no other nominees. I mean, if you're just talking purely, who do I have to watch? This is Wendy versus Joker.

Yeah. This is Wembe versus Joker. You want to go first or me? No, you go. I never, I thought Joker would win this award 10 times in a row, 15 times in a row. I never thought anybody would be more must watch appointment television for me. And Victor Weniamma in his third year wins this award for me. You know, I watch every team as equally as I can.

You end up watching the best teams more because when they play each other, it's must watch. And then by the end of the season, none of these teams, the tankers are not trying to win. And, you know, so I can't watch every Spurs game because it would be derelict of duty. to the other 29 teams in the league. I feel bad when I miss the Spurs game. I feel bad when I have to read about it. I feel bad when I have to watch the highlights of it. I feel like I've missed something magical.

And if he does something magical, then I'll go back and watch that game. It'll be an extra game. But the pang of FOMO that I get has exceeded the Yokic FOMO. So it's Victor Womeniom. That was my answer as well. if you're going totality of the season, Joker wins for me because I love Denver, Joe.

It's just like the most reliable order you can make on Postmates or Uber Eats or wherever you're getting your food. What Wembe was doing in the last six weeks, I was going out of my way to watch the spurs, which has not happened. I don't think it, as much as I, and you and I are probably two of the biggest Yokage fans on the planet, just for just watching them play basketball. ball. He's so steady and you know he's there. It's like, you're not going to go, oh my God, I have to watch yoga. Like when Wembe played the Warriors last week and it was clear he was in his, I'm going to make my MVP case. I was like, I'm just not missing that game. I don't, there's no scenario where I wasn't watching it. There was no scenario where I wasn't watching the yesterday game against the Nuggets. And he's just hit that point. It's a pretty rare point to get to.

We've had it a few times since I, since we've known each other. Um, But I don't think like this, where it's like every game, you might see five things you've never seen on a basketball court before. And it's both ends of the floor, obviously, not that he's good on both ends of the floor. We know that. It's that he's unprecedented on both ends of the floor. It's the spurs figuring out the lob stuff in more creative ways as it goes on where they're just throwing it to him and he's getting it. And we're to put him on the floor to get the ball, like little stuff they're just getting better at. And even you mentioned, you know, for the whole season, it's Yokic.

because from start to finish, this guy's going to lead the league in rebounds and assists, and he's one of the maybe the most efficient high-volume score in the league and the magic of his passes and all that. Even Wembe, like, learning to reach this level, the curiosity factor was just off the charts. Like, I just wanted to see every part of even the mistakes and the things he was trying that didn't work.

And I wanted to see my curiosity was just off the charts. It's the last rule of basketball. Like, your eyes just gravitate. to where he is on the TV. When you go to see him in person, you just find yourself just watching him to just, even though the ball's over there, you're just seeing where he sets up.

He did a thing yesterday. He was in the second quarter, Valchunis, tried to post him up. Did you see that play? The one where you just took the ball at its apex, that one? He did a jump hook and Wemby didn't jump and just blocked it.

And Valchunis was like, and he just kind of whipped him to the ground. He got bad. But it was like, I've never seen any. anyone do that ever. He didn't just block it. He almost like blocked it with his elbow.

He blocked a floater in that game. I don't remember who shot it. But he came from so far away that as he was going towards the, but it was on the right side of like the foul line. As he was going toward it, I thought he's just trying to scare the guy at the end of the shot clock. He's like he just doesn't actually think he can block that shot. And then he blocked it.

And I was just like, I don't even know. What am I supposed to do now? Well, and as the legend grows with him, you could see the other players in the league. Before it was like people at the last second realizing he's there, I've got to change my plan here and there would be like two seconds of discombobulation and then they would reset the play. Now they're recognizing it as it's happening and they're just giving up on even thinking about potentially trying to make the play.

They'll dribble in the paint. They'll see him and it's like a fucking shark like you're a swimmer in the ocean. And like, I think that's a shark fin. I'm going to go this way. They just completely bail on it. They don't even really. And then the guys that challenge him are just nuts. Like the guys that are like, I'm going to take it right to him.

I'm going to bounce into his chest and double clutch and try to overpower him. And it's almost like a badge of honor that they try to do it. I've never seen anything like. You know, you know who likes to play against him and plays that way is Shen Gung. Shen Gung, you can tell is like, this guy. I can take this guy. Like, I'm going to try like that. I like that.

I like that about Shengun. And watching Joker try to solve him. Oh. And doing like, I'm now going to take him this way. I'm going to put my shoulder into him. And then I'm going to bring my jump hook a little bit further back and then try to flip it a little higher. And that should be okay. He was solving him like an MIT scientist trying to figure out like some sort of DNA model for something.

Wembe was the clear winner this year. Yokage, I don't know what else he could do. He's leading the league in his system rebate. he's doing something that only Will Chamberlain has done where you add up his first place in two categories. He's fifth and points. So if you just do one plus one plus five, he's seven. And I think that's what it is, right?

One plus one. He's seven. The only one that did that was Wilt in 1968, second and assists, first and rebounds, fourth and points, seven. And I don't think anyone in the history of the league has done that for those three categories. Usually they're like 1, 2, 12, 2, 3, 15. This is his season.

That's why I think I have Joker second for MVP heading into this last week. Interesting, because you were definitely flirting with the Wembe MVP idea. I was. I think yesterday I showed the limitations of the 29 minutes a game. And there's a durability with Yokage that I think should. That's what I'm staring at as I think of these three guys. against each other. Like, is it just easier to be 29 minutes a game and have that burden versus like what

Yokin just went through where it's like, I might have to play 45 minutes today. Well, and it adds up to significantly fewer minutes if you just want to look at it in the most raw and maybe basic ways. It's like, I don't have it in front of me, three, four hundred minute gap. All right. So your podcast is Tuesday morning. Thanks to Sam's, thanks to Sam's Club for helping us out with this live stream. thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well on the Ringer side.

And everybody else over at the Ringer. Made up awards. I feel like it was an A-plus. I'm glad. I'm glad you feel that way. I feel like your brain broke like three times. We went off menu a lot, which is part of the fun of it. Yeah, we went up menu, right-house hungry a few times.

Yeah, it was great. Thanks to everybody at Netflix. Thanks to the Ringer. And I will see you on the rewatchables tomorrow night for Eddie and the Cruisers and then back on this feed on Tuesday. Thanks, thanks everybody. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and President.

D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game in problem, call 100, 800 gambor or 1-800-7-7-7-7. Call 88879-7-7-7 or visit ccpgagging.org or MD-gamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline, MA.org, or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7-support in Massachusetts or call 8778-8-7-N-Y or text Hope NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-7-7-7-867.