The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Disappointment All-Stars, LeBron’s Unapproachable 40K, Minnesota Concerns, and Boston’s F-You Game With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Clippers' narrow victory over the Timberwolves (1:23), the Celtics' staggering 52-point win over the Warriors (17:56), and Lakers-Nuggets (29:58) before discussing LeBron's milestone of 40,000 points and his looming extension with the Lakers (53:17). Then they name their "Disappointment All-Stars" (1:11:26) before closing the show with some Team USA talk and Media Corner (1:50:00). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So there you go. You can follow all the videos and clips from this podcast from the rewatchables plus my walk and talk shorts on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. We'll be running clips from the podcast you're about to hear with Ryan Rosillo. First, our friends from ProJab. All right, we're taping this. It is 4.40 Pacific time. Three games we want to talk about to start with, Grisolo, on Saturday night and then today, Sunday. You and I went to Nuggets Lakers.

We watched Celtics Warriors. And then we watched Timberwolves Clippers. And they were games with some questions, but lots of answers. And I don't know, where do you want to start? Because I think we should talk about all three. Well, I can't believe you don't want to start with Boston but it's actually not a great talking point. I mean it was such a drubbing

of Golden State that I don't know what's there other than I'll probably just get out of the way for you. I do think we should start with the Clippers win. Okay let's go. What'd you see? Well they lost the first two against Minnesota so as you're trying to figure out all of these top teams in the West going like,

okay, do the Clippers have a Minnesota problem? Does this team have an OKC problem? The rock, paper, scissors thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Perfectly said. And one of the things I was looking for was with Westbrook having this injury now, would that change Ty Lue wanting to go small?

Because when I went back to game one, which Ant went off in the third quarter, that one ended up being a close final score. Game two wasn't close at all, so we didn't have to worry about some of the Minnesota clutch numbers. So that was something else we were looking for here, because after a great start by Minnesota, they're up 30-15, Clippers won in a 16-0 run. And it was just back and forth, a game in the 80s, not necessarily something we're used to, although I guess the last couple of days. But when I looked at the combination of center minutes,

in game one it was 38 minutes, in game two it was 37 minutes, but I felt like they were smaller or tried to get back in that one smaller, but that one's sort of misleading because the score was so lopsided. But it was 48 minutes of bigs and it was Tice for the most part. In crunch time too. so lopsided. But it was 48 minutes of bigs and it was Tice for the most part. He played almost 30. In crunch time too. Yeah. So you wonder if the Clippers' small strategy at times is something against Minnesota where it's like, even though other teams have tried to get Gobert stuck by having to chase a

lot of people, get them away from the rim, and maybe Tice in theory is supposed to pull Gobert away a little bit, you also have to worry about the towns part of it like whatever you think of towns and he wasn't great today uh to have the two bigs it was just something i was looking for and it was an increase in minutes at least there for tice and the combined center minutes that they got from that group and kawaii norm carried but no russ because russ hurt his hand and he was. And that was one of like Lou's kind of fun, weird, small ball lineups with Russ basically as the point center or whatever the hell he was. So he didn't have that option, which is, I thought, one of the reasons he did the center

thing. I was struck by the score and how hard it was for people to get good shots. The final score was 89-88, which a lot of times is like heading into the end of the third quarter of games we're watching in the 24th season. Neither team was over 38% or 39% shooting. And a lot of my fears for Minnesota were borne out by what I watched the last five, six minutes. I just don't love the shots they get, Rosillo.

And if you're going to play, let's pick apart each contender, that would be how I picked apart Minnesota. There's a little bit of a knucklehead factor with them down the stretch. But I don't love the shots. And it basically turns out to be they're Edwards or Towns

with not a lot of help, not a lot of action. Those guys either go on 101 or post an up. It just feels stiff to me. I don't know whether this team gets bounced in round one or they make it to the Western Finals, but neither outcome would surprise me at all. But if they get bounced in round one,

it's going to be because of the shot selection late. I just don't like it. I think other teams have better options. You think they're going to lose a 1-8 seed if they're the one seed? I'm just saying everything's on the table for me with them. I wouldn't go that far, but I'm sharing the same concern. Although three or so minutes to go, I started tracking the possessions and believe it or not, they actually had some good possessions there late after what looked like a grind. So we're agreeing here. I just was going, okay, how many times are they actually going to get a good look the

last three minutes? And there are a few in there. I think the frustrating thing is that Ant, you know, doesn't seem to learn his lesson against this team because he had 20 points in the third quarter of game one, went for 33. And when they talked about that game after the fact, Finch apparently had told Ant, like, you got to go quicker. Like, Ant is somebody I would think in these matchups,

because there's so much size, that sometimes somebody like Ant, it's better to not even send him a screen. Keep him out of the pick and roll. Keep him out of the blitzing. It felt like Ant was getting stuck a lot. He was the only one really doing anything for him. Monte Morris had a couple nice threes there.

The cap possessions are bad. You know Gobert is just kind of like an afterthought offensively. He had that nice one play to McDaniels on the dunk in the baseline. But if Ant is going to get stuck like that, I mean, they're lucky to even be in this, except for the other side of it. Harden didn't make a shot the entire game, and Paul George was terrible. Harden, at least his passing was useful. But yeah, he couldn't hit anything. And it just seems like this team's a bad matchup for some of the stuff he wants to do. I think with the Edwards piece,

if I'm the other team and there's four minutes left and Edwards has the ball, I'm kind of excited when he's shooting threes. He's an okay three-point shooter, right? He's like 38%. I don't know what his shot selection is

when he's hand in the face, but I'm just so much happier when he's not going to the basket or not trying to create stuff or they're not setting him a pick. It felt like he was going up a level in February. Did you see he averaged 31 a game in February? Like 31 a game, I know it's a shorter month, but 31 a game for a month is... Not this year, the extra day.

Huh? Leap year. Oh, yeah, that's true. We did get a couple back. Yeah, but it was 11 games in February. But for me, you're just watching it going, Kawhi's the best player on the court. Just fundamentally removing

every sort of angle and oh, they're doing this and oh, they're responding with this. It's just like, Kawhi's the best guy in this game. And for them to beat the Clippers in a series, I would think Edwards would have to be the best guy in the game. It's also kind of alarming how involved Towns is. Like, he missed 10 straight shots at one point. Did you see that?

Yeah, he started 5-for-5 and then was 5-for-15. And then, you know, he tried to hit that runner on the baseline when he got a switch on a smaller player. It was like, man like if you paused it do you think that was going in no i mean you know how hard that shot is it's like the hardest shot in basketball yeah and he's he's also behind the basket like he's not even that's just a really really hard shot altogether towns will forever confuse me on some of the stats because I swear like whenever he gets those drives going and they never look good there it's it's like somebody falling off of a balance beam and then landing when it goes in yeah it's even worse looking than those Embiid drives when Embiid is

doing the lumbering kind of lurching into somebody but yeah but I always feel like Embiid same kind of group I feel like same kind of group. I feel like Embiid knows what he's doing. I think he knows what the end result will be. We're towns. You think I'll look free ball on it. I'll just, I'll look at the stats after and go, how does he only have two turnovers? Because there's just no way they're counting like the ball being swatted at and he's just lumbering in. And then you know he's going to be baseline with his hands up, pissed off. And look, we realize he's a great shooter. And the size alone with the defense of what this team has done. So, you know, it's still a coin toss result.

So, you know, what if they... They were guarding with Harden, though, a few times. Right. In the fourth quarter, which is alarming. If they had gotten a bucket and won this game, are we like, man, the Clippers just can't beat this team. So they have major problems. Like this was a coin toss basketball game but there's just stuff with them i think to the greater point of what you're making even if there was a couple looks that i liked like i

thought there was four looks i was like hey that's actually because i expected it to be even worse that you're just like man you guys get kind of stuck you know like one of the best plays they made was conley going all right aunt's kind of out of it now, like one of the best plays they made was Conley going, all right, Ant's kind of out of it now. And like Ant passed it back to me. And then he went like left side and then skip pass it the other way to Monte Morris for that three. That was like one of the best things they did

late in the fourth quarter. But you're right. At no point did Ant look like he was better than Kawhi today, despite, you know, the previous, especially the first game, you know, it looked like Ant had the belt. Well, there's a bigger issue. And Mike Conley

has turned into one of these guys that I think he's one of the most praised glass half full guys we've had the last 12 years. Everybody just likes Mike Conley and he's been fun to watch and he's been a really good player. But this version of Mike Conley is 36 years old. For point guards,

once you pass that 36 point, it gets pretty dicey. Did you see his stats today? Zero points. Zero points in 28 minutes. He was 0 for 4. And I just don't think he's dangerous at the end of these games.

And my fear, because I think the Timberwolves are one of the scariest matchups for the Celtics if the Celtics make the finals because they have these big wings to throw on the Celtics wings and they have real size. And when the Celtics had played them, which was twice this year, the games were awesome. And it really felt like the Timberwolves were like, we can play with these guys. We're not afraid of them. And they have just size everywhere. And I thought Tatum and Brown were bothered by them. But Conley, it just feels like, you know, they extended him too for, I think, 23 million for another two years.

People are like, great deal. It's like, is Mike Conley an eight-figure-a-year guy at this point in his career? I like him. But if you think about all the point guards they're going to be going against every round, right? Like, they're going to be going against Jamal Murray. They're going to be going against Devin Booker? They're going to be going against Jamal Murray. They're going to be going against Devin Booker, if you're going to call him a point guard.

Steph, SGA, you're going down the line. Conley's losing every matchup, whoever the guard is. So they didn't fix that when they hit the trade deadline. That's one thing. There's also a knucklehead factor with them. Today, they're down three with 15 seconds left coming out of a timeout. What happens? Towns and Edwards just play

kind of hot potato and neither of them like the three that they're getting. Then Edwards says, fuck it and he just drops to the basket and dunks with three seconds left. Then the Clippers just throw the ball in and the game's over. It's like, why didn't you guys shoot three? Every other smart team in the league is getting a three offer as a set play.

So they feel a year away to me, Rosillo, the T-Wolves. If I had to pick, if I had to pick like course A, they're a surprise team in the finals. Course B, maybe they get shocked in round one and we're like, oh, they're a year away. They need to add this, this, this, and this. I would probably go that way. But with that said, I'm still afraid of them in the finals.

Yeah, I mean, if you're saying a year away from winning a title, that's probably still a compliment to who you think it can be. Yeah, no, that's fine. I mean, I guess I just sometimes the Sunday pod, I get like, okay, well, we just saw this an hour ago. So are we beating up on them a little bit too much? But I think the concerns even as a one seed are the same concerns that we saw today. And for Ant, I mean, it was a really frustrating fourth quarter for him. It's like,

you got to be better than that. He made one basket in the entire fourth quarter. He took three shots. He was one for three. And the one make is the one that you're talking about, a dunk where they wanted to give him a two so that they didn't take a three. So that was kind of frustrating. And it just, it felt like one of those games. It's like, man, if Paul George and Harden are going to be this bad, you have to win this game. But Norm was so good for him. And Kawhi was terrific.

And then on the other side, you never really know what you're going to get with Jaden offensively. You know the defense is great. So maybe the Clippers after that. Or do you know what you're going to get from Jaden? Yeah, actually, I think I do know what I'm going to get off. Because the other big game they had was that Bucs game when the Bucs won by five.

And it was a little bit of the same thing, right? Conley, four for eight, nine points. McDaniels, one for five, two points. And the Bucs, as that game went along, that was a really good game. I thought that was one of the better games of the last few weeks. And it just felt like the Bucs were better. And that's

the first time you would have said that about the Bucs in a while. So, who knows? It's going to come down to Ken Edwards. I don't want to say go up a level, but go up like a tiny step. The more you watch of this Clippers team, because what were they? 26-5 over that stretch?

Yeah, it was nuts. The more you watch them, do you like them more or less than you liked them four or five weeks ago when both of us were like, holy shit, this is a team that has some finals pedigree maybe? Well, I don't like them as much as that because that was ridiculous. And that was also unsustainable. So you could look at all this and go, hey, the Clippers had lost the first two. They probably needed this one a little bit more. And they pull it out today where it still could have gone the other way. I think the Milwaukee win was huge for them because Milwaukee continues to have these stretchers like, hey, show us, put together a few good weeks. Don't have a bad loss

in there. We can start looking at you as a team that still has a chance to come out of the East. So maybe that's what's happening there. But then after the All-Star break, you wonder if the Clippers, because they're an older group, they put together that two months, they think, okay, we're fine. We don't need to play at that level the rest of the way. So I think the season has a way of kind of, you know, cycling through schedules and all the good teams usually have some really nice stretches in there followed by some some bad ones so yeah like look they're not as dominant as they were their defense actually isn't as good as you would think it would be like if you go through some of the defensive numbers for how well they played um there's there's some stuff there with them defensively like the clippers overall offensively they're fourth defensively they're 14th if you go since january 1st and really depends on how you want to sort the offensive numbers they're all off the charts for the Clippers. They're number two in offense, but they're 18th in defense since January 1st,

which is kind of surprising for a team that we're like, yeah, I could see them maybe winning the whole thing, which I still would say today. But the Clippers against the Timberwolves, like on the season, their offense is usually like in the 120s, the low 120s per 100 possessions. And prior to today, and actually the numbers might even have gone down when they sort them again, they were like 108. So whatever it is, their offense has a problem.

They still get held to 89 here. So their offense doesn't seem to work as well against Minnesota, which you would expect because it's arguably the best defensive team in the NBA still. But I would like to see something else other than Ant where I'm like, okay, this is the thing I can kind of depend on. And I don't know if Towns, like the three-point shooting is there, but it's got to be off a drive. It's not like he's going to get that three up off the dribble. He's not going to be going through his legs and

then getting a little space like a pruner player taking that three. And the drives, even though every time I look up at his drives and his points for possession on the drives, like it ends up being better than I thought it would be because the visual of it, I'm like, uh-oh, like here we go. And sometimes he's just really bad with the basketball. I mean, sometimes I feel like he makes Jalen Brown look like Kyrie out there because it's just like guys are swatting.

Like when Harden got him today on that strip, it's a great defensive strip. I think they challenged a call on that. But it's like, dude, you're huge. You're going to be stronger with the ball in that moment. Yeah. Last 20 games, not counting today, they were number one in defensive rating.

It was 106.2, which is really, really good. They're like two points better. Most of these teams are 112. Yeah, whoever's number two, it might be Cleveland right now, they're still like two plus points better than them, which is significant. So the case for them, because we were a little down on them, I think, a little earlier in the segment,

the case for them is that their defense is so good, and when we get to the playoffs, all of these offensive stuff ends up going a little sideways. The games become a little more rock fighty and they're a good rock fight team. Like today's game against the Clippers was a rock fight, 89-88, but that's kind of what is more like the playoffs than that Celtics-Warriors game we watched. So I still feel like they need to figure out offensively who they are in the last five minutes. And I don't know if Edwards, Edwards, right. You know what they reminded me of actually like where the Celtics were in like 2020, where it was like, all right, we need a basket up.

Everybody's standing. Somebody has the ball. They're going to try to do something where like nobody's moving. You watch the Celtics today. It was beautiful. Minnesota is so far away from what we saw in that Celtic game offensively, even though they have some good players. That Celtic game, quickly, how much time? We don't spend more than three minutes on it, right?

I don't know. It was the largest halftime lead they've ever had are 44 at the half. I mean, that was just one of those games where it's going, okay, everything's going to go in. I mean,

everything went in. I wrote down, that was the first ever fuck you performance of the Tatum Brown era, not perennially a fuck you combo, but there was a fuck you to them. And it started with Draymond not guarding Jalen Brown on that one three. And Jalen Brown's like, fucking seriously, do you not have league pass? What are you doing? I don't know what Draymond was thinking with that, but in general, this is a big brother, little brother situation. And they've been the little

brother against this Warriors team for a while. They're one in five in their last six, counting the last three finals games against the Warriors. And the one win was an overtime game. The Warriors just had some sort of hold over them and they kind of needed to do it this way. This needed to be like the, we're going to beat the shit out of you and have a little attitude. And then watching Curry say afterwards, he had a quote like, that reminded me of what we used to do to teams. It felt a little torch passing. I'm trying not to get too excited about it, but I was really, really proud of how fucking cutthroat they were in that game. I mean, they were like really pouring it on in a fuck you way. I loved it. You didn't think the 41 point win against Milwaukee last year felt like that

the game seven no the towards the end of the regular season man this was different they had they can't beat this team this is like Draymond likes doing podcasts a year later about how he psyched out Jalen Brown.

And there was some extra stuff in here. They have the best point differential since the Golden State Warriors right now. Their point differential is 11.4. There's only four teams in the history of the NBA who's better than that. 72 Lakers, 71 Bucks, 96 Bulls, 17 Warriors, which are in the history of the NBA who's better than that. 72 Lakers, 71 Bucks, 96 Bulls, 17 Warriors, which are in the running for any greatest team ever conversation. Those four are usually

four of like the five or six mentioned. I don't know if it's going to continue, but just the territory they're in right now is pretty unique, the Celtics team. I have a question for you. So Joe Mazzulla, who I think was 30-1 for Coach of the Year on FanDuel like a month and a half ago. And my friend Ben Schwerin texted me and was like, why is Mazzulla 30-1? Like the Celtics have a chance to win like 65 games. This was the first kind of stretch they've had

these last three weeks. Because I think they've gone up a level the last three weeks. I really do.'ve gone up a level the last three weeks. I really do. And we talked about it a little last week. But it's the first time I was like, man, this team's very well coached. I really think they've made great strides

with all the different ways they attack offense, how they kind of take what the defense gives them now and uses it against them, how hard the guys have been playing the last few weeks. How the bench guys are always ready. Like Porzingis didn't play today. And it's like, all right, Luke Cornett, we're going to dust you off.

Can you give us some good minutes? I like the vibe with this team and I've been impressed. I'm not going to call him second row Joe anymore. I think he's earned the right to dump the nickname. What 11 straight could do for you. Yeah. The 48 and 12. You know what I like with a team is,

like, does it feel like your guys can figure it out on your own? So it doesn't really speak to coaching in-game, but it might be all the stuff that you're doing. Or it could just be, hey, these guys have been going at it now since 17, 18. You know? Right. There's a real foundation. Right. There's a foundation. But there's a foundation

with the two guys that are the most important two guys, although you could argue Porzingis is as important as Jalen Brown is just because of matchups and how he could, in theory, bring the other teams big away because you've got to stay honest with Przingis because of his shooting. But there have been games, you know, they smoked Dallas the other night, man.

And that was like, oh, wait, this guy's going to go for four minutes? Okay, now this guy's going to have his little stretch. And that was, Luka had a 37-11-12, but they lost by like 28. Yeah, that was a game sitting at home going, they're just pouring it on this team right now. Again, I think Dallas is okay. Today's loss was pretty disheartening against a beat-up Philly team. But when they get around a role like this,

and look, they'll probably have a little stretch here where we start talking about them relying on threes a little bit too much. And none of it matters. I mean, none of it matters. They're not doing that as much now, though. I think that's been one of the things I really like with how Mizzou has coached them. Because initially, I just thought they were shooting too many threes, settling too much for threes. You even saw today a couple of times, I feel like a year ago, they would have shot some threes where today Tatum, there's two things that happen with Tatum, which I've been really impressed by. One is he doesn't care if he doesn't score in the first quarter. You're laughing that now I'm doing like a Celtics orgasm. No, but I mean,

they took 49 threes today. No, I know. But that was also the pace of the game. Like they were, there were times when they passed up threes and went to the basket, I guess is my point. But the Tatum piece of it, well, part of the reason they were taking threes and went to the basket I guess is my point but the the Tatum piece of it well part of the reason they were taking threes in the beginning was Draymond Green was like I dare you to take the three they were like cool they made their first nine they were like nine for nine for three but Tatum doesn't

care if he doesn't score in the first quarter he'll kind of he'll be like I'll get mine I'm going to get to 27. I don't need him now. Oh, Jalen's feeling it. Oh,

poor Zingas has it going. I'll get mine eventually. And then he can kind of heat up in the red spots. He's been doing this over and over again. That's one thing. Uh, the other thing is, and they did this against Philly when Philly guarded the three point line,

they just attacked the basket. They've, they've gotten really good at like, oh, you're going to guard us this way? Then we'll do this. Which is something they just couldn't do last year. They're nasty, man. They're nasty. I don't know

how... I don't know. I think the weird thing for them is it's almost like, you know, an Ohio State lost to LSU in Florida in the national championship games years and years ago. We're going back like 15 years now. Yeah. And it's like people were making Ohio State jokes.

And you go, well, like, wait, everybody gets to laugh at them because they're playing in the last game. And look, last year is still, I think, one of the most absurd scenarios for them to lose to that Miami Heat team. I can't believe they lost that series. We've covered it a million times. We talked about it the entire run of it all last year. But because it's a finals loss in 22 it's to this absolute underdog in 23 that then you know it's funny because i was

watching a heat game the other night i like the heat better this year than i do last year and i'm watching the game and the announcer's like man they need caleb martin to get back to kind of who he was against boston you're like, that's the whole point. The whole point is that he became like there were things happening in their playoff run, whether it was Jimmy's numbers against Milwaukee, where you're like, wait, what did he do? And then the beginning, the way they closed out Boston and those games at home, and then what Caleb Martin was doing, and then what they actually had to do to even get one game against Denver last year. So I like the heat when I watch him now. It's like, oh, here we go. Post all-star. They're cranking it up. They're deeper. They have more options. They know they

can default to their defense. They don't have Kyle Lowry. Yeah, they don't have Kyle Lowry, although it was good to see Lowry get a couple calls today where it's like, wait, you guys are going to give him this fall down in the paint thing? yeah you guys you guys are years old right you haven't seen him enough like where i bet you the refs got together after the dallas games like man you fell for the lowry it's like yeah loser i had 20 bucks i hadn't seen it like eight months you're right you got me um so the reason i bring up the ohio state comparison is that there feels like there's more doubt for a team that should have a lot less doubt than the teams that don't even make it that far. You know, I'm shocked how often I'll have someone just in my day to day be like, hey, do you think Boston's good? I'm like, what do you mean?

Do I think they're good? I'm like, I think they're nasty. You want to tell me there's still a little hesitation until you actually do it? But I mean, them winning a title would make a lot% of their games. They've won 11 in a row. They're super deep. They have multiple scoring options. They have multiple ways to attack you. And everybody kind of compliments each other really well. Like, Derek White doesn't get in the way of anything.

Drew Holiday has had to sacrifice the most. He's not going to get in the way. Perzingis is happy. You know, he doesn't have to take a million shots there to be happy. And you have one of the top seven or eight guys with the ball in his hands to close the game and take him. 48-12, which has only happened 31 times. They were the 31st team to do it.

I was more excited about this stat until I looked at the teams and saw the 2015 Atlanta Hawks. About point differential or record? No, going 48 and 12 or better. Remember how weird that team was though? The 2015 Atlanta Hawks went 48 and 12 in their first 60 games. Yeah, but nobody liked them.

You want to talk about no one's liking it. I'm just pointing it out. And then the point differential stuff's crazy. I'm glad you brought up Drew. Because I was looking at his usage stats and his field goal attempts today. Last year in Milwaukee, his usage rate was 25. And this year it's like 16. And he was like 15.3 field goal attempts a game. This year he's like 10.3. I think he's sacrificed

the most because he's in a contract year. Now, whether he's... There's a lot of teams with cap space. Maybe he's like, I'm going to be fine. I'm just going to try to get a title here. But it's not easy to go from, I was the guy that had the ball in his hands as much as anyone on the Bucks except for Giannis to being like, I went three for seven a day and we won by 50. The fact that he's sacrificed the way he has, I think has really helped this team because there's an unselfishness to the way they play now that was not there last year.

And that's been the most delightful thing to me as a Celtic fan. I feel like the unselfishness is ramping up and guys are, you know, they're trying to create plays for each other instead of just trying to create a play for themselves. And I think that starts with him and White because those guys don't give a shit. They don't care what their stats are. They just care about filling in and being glue guys. And, you know, not to get sappy, but this is a big Celtics tradition way back when of guys sacrificing, like during the Russell era, like Paul Silas, Dennis Johnson, and Robert Parrish. This is what we grew up with. Even Ray Allen in 2008 being like, yeah, I'll throw away six shots. Give those shots to Paul Pierce and KG.

I'm good with that. This is what we grew up with, baby. We're back. Sacrifice. Somewhere Chris Bosh is like, wait, so it only happens in Boston? Yeah, yeah. It's like I'm right here. Let's take a break, and then we're going to talk about the one team that is still staring at the Celtics. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Superbowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too.

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Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator,

58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high-, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high intensity focused ultrasound waves, zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special. Learn more at sunnybrook.ca slash special. All right, Rossella, we went to Lakers Nuggets last night. We watched LeBron James get 40,000 points for his career, which was cool. And then we watched Denver lay the smackdown on them down the stretch. And Denver wanted the game for him, but that he does this every single fucking game. He seemed slightly more excited about beating the Lakers last night than usual, but to me, it's like another night for him.

Murray went into playoff Murray mode, and Porter was great and made a bunch of big shots. And then Gordon got going down the stretch, and you just watch him, and you're like, all right, this is still the team. I still feel like the Celtics can go 68 and 14. And I would still feel like the road goes through Denver. Not just because they won last year. I think Jokic is the best player in the world.

And I honestly don't even think it's that close. We have a lot of awesome players, but Jokic is just levitating over everybody right now. It is so fucking fun to watch him in person. I took my wife. I took my wife to the game. She'd never seen him. I was like, you gotta see him. Like, this is like, this is like once every 10 years territory

for what it's like to watch this guy. And she just like, couldn't believe some of the stuff he was doing. She was like, does he play like this every game? I'm like, yeah. That's why I always have the nuggets on when you're in and you're, and I have the three games on

and the nuggets are always on the big TV. But he was awesome. And it was interesting because it was supposed to be LeBron's night and I left just thinking about Jokic. So I made it to crypto four times in eight nights, which is a record for me. Lakers Clippers, Lakers Nuggets, Kings Ducks. Oh, Kings Ducks. Right right and then laker spurs well what about when rempy comes you'll be you'll be back for that dude i actually kings that's your rempy's your guy have you have you legally adopted him yet no but i just feel like can rempy just at the next warm-up go to the red line and be like hey guys can, can we take a fucking night off? Yeah. My right eye is completely closed. Can nobody fight me today, please?

Can I just get through tonight without having to fight anybody? For people listening, there's a six foot eight rookie on the Rangers that Russillo has declared his favorite hockey player in years. And this guy just gets in and fight it. He doesn't even really seem like he totally knows how to fight because I don't think people have really challenged him to fights. Who's that guy who annihilated him? Was it Oliver?

The third fight. Yeah, the third fight he had. He was throwing uppercuts. Yeah, he was just getting them. No, he got him pretty good. The Flyers fight, I thought he won. Yeah, I thought he won that too. It was a bit of a tap out, although Reeves has kind of had

the belt. Again, I'm not exactly a locked-in hockey guy, but as soon as I saw the Rempe thing, and then I went with Aaron Miller to the Kings game because he played with the Kings. We're both Vermont guys. He's a good friend. His son stayed with me this week. It was nice, the reunion, to have him back out on Manhattan Beach. Then it was funny because they put him up on the

Jumbotron. He was like, come on. And I'm like, yeah, build a statue. He's not going to get a statue. So the point is, he was like, have you noticed this Rempe guy? And he was like, have you seen his interviews? I was like, yeah, I know I've heard of him. But it wasn't like he was this top level prospect. He's just huge.

And then as soon as he talks, okay, like he had a game winner in the first game, but then he'd had like seven minutes of ice time and then 27 penalty minutes, which is, which is a tough ratio to pull off. And the interview, he's just this Canadian, like, I love those Canadian guys where they're like Western Canadian. And he died. I don't even know. I think that's where he's from. And he's like, Oh yeah, we're throwing bombs. Just full tilt.

He's like, yeah, I mean, it really is. What's funny is he's, he's an inch shorter than Chara, but seems like he's like five inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier. Like when you see it, there's something about,

he just, he's got kind of a Carl Anthony towns kind of body. Almost. He's just giant. Right. And it just to understand the hockey culture, like he's got kind of a carl anthony towns kind of body almost he's just giant right and it just to understand the hockey culture like he's stretching at you know before the game's ready to go and then one of the other just bruisers from the other teams like hey you want it he's like yeah sure do like let's go first let's go yeah so the first shift they got it's on

and that was the outdoor classic and then he had a game winner. He's not a huge goal scorer. I mean, he's never on the fucking ice because he's constantly in fights. Well, his fighting style, because the fighting almost got too good in hockey. Where it's just the science of it. He's like a throwback to the 70s, like how Terry O'Reilly used to fight, where it's just like, he's just kind of throwing bombs and he doesn't care if he gets hit. Yeah, that's true. Which is really, really unique now.

The Reeves fight was interesting because he was holding, like the key thing is like, all right, he's going to be able to hold and he has this reach. But if you're strong enough, you can kind of like impede the other guy's punches. So as he was holding with his jab hand, holding the jersey, he just started punching with the hand that was holding the jersey against Reese. That's what Chari used to do. Reese is such a badass that, you know, it's not like you're going to rough him up there.

But yeah, I mean, every time I'll be like, okay, what were the highlights from the Rangers game? And you just check it out on X. It's so funny. Him and Wemby are the big stars of social media this year. The moment anything happens, you know,

right away. I had our booker ask for him. Cause I was like, let's just do it. Cause the interview was what sold me on him. It's not that he's huge. It's not that he's just Canadian. It's not that he's getting into all these fights is when he was so excited.

They were like quite the first week. He was like, yeah, you know, couple fights game winner. He's playing, yeah, you know, couple fights, game winner. He's playing, he's playing with his toy racetrack in his hotel room.

Yeah. Like if he traveled with Legos, I wouldn't be shocked. I just want to correct you. You said our Booker, you didn't, her full name is our beloved Booker, Alison.

I know. I just don't, I just don't want anyone to know how great she is. That's fair. Yeah. Maybe I actually, I rave, I anyone to know how great she is. That's fair. Yeah. Maybe we should get this out. I rave about her all the time. So everybody knows what I think of Allison. Our beloved Booker Allison. We love you, Allison. Wait. So fourth time in eight days at the Crypto Staples, whatever the hell it's called now. And the Jokic-Murray combo. Murray wasn't even really good in the first half.

And then... I don't think he scored. Did he have two? And then at halftime, it was clear. What's interesting, I was talking to Chuck Mendenhall about this today. He's a big Nuggets fan. The Nuggets will...

They'll shift shapes during a game. Like yesterday. Because Jokic will have games where he won't shoot in the first quarter, right? It'll just be... they'll shift shapes during a game. Like yesterday, because you'll get, you'll have games where he won't shoot in the first quarter, right? It'll just be, you he'll have zero points and six assists and seven rebounds. You're like,

Whoa, is he not going to score in this game? And then all of a sudden I'll have 17 points yesterday. He, I think he had 11 shots in the first quarter and they were going to him, going to him, the Lakers regarding with Rui and they were doing the thing where Davis comes over and helps. And he was just shooting a lot and it was weird. It was uncharacteristic. And I was trying to figure out why they were

doing it that way. And the reason I think they were doing it that way was I think they, they, my guess they're worried because it's LeBron night, crowds hyped, Lakers are playing really well. And I think Malone must've thought we got to stay in this game in the first half. We'll get them second half. So they ride Jokic and Jokic is due. And then second half, and they got some good Porter shots too, but then second half, it became a Murray game. And they just shift into this different identity where now things are running through Murray more and he's using Jokic as basically his binky. And then they can shift again, last five minutes, all of a sudden it was a Jokic game again. And I think that's over everything else why they're so hard to play because they can kind of just decide who they want to be and you

can't do anything about it. I totally agree. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense because I think that's the brilliance of Jokic and, you know and the old school point guard argument that I'd always make that I think it's tough to make it in this league if you can't score and you can't shoot if you're going to be a guard now. It's not going to work. and those guys lived in the league for a really long time was that I think they just understood how to attack and how to change attacks and how to anticipate adjustments to what you're doing. And I think a lot of that gets lost now or it just doesn't really happen. It's a skill Tatum is starting to develop in real time.

I love that we got Tatum back in there. No, I'm just pulling back. No, but he really is. I feel like he is actually starting to grasp this a little bit now. Like, oh, they're doing this, so I'll do this. I don't think he thought that way last year. Yeah. You know who I think is one of the greatest, well, obviously Durant's one of the greatest scorers ever, but you'll see certain stuff that he'll do in the second half because he was anticipating what was happening. It's like, okay, wait. So if they're coming up to meet me this way then i i need to either get this shot off immediately or i need to be able to swing it

to where the help is coming from like i think duran is really really good with that and it has been for a long time it's kind of like the point of like some of the ant stuff because you know i don't know i was gonna say this is this is what an is not close to this yet yeah but i do think ant has some really good passes off of drives, and today it was bad. He had that one that led to the Norm windmill that was just, you know, he got frustrated, got too deep, and there was really no one to throw it to, so that was a bad example of it. But yeah, I think there's an understanding where the point guard would do a lot of this stuff for you, right?

So now Jokic is that guy as a center. And the other thing with Jokic too, there's just something to like, Hey, we know what it says in the program, but when you look at a guy's shoulders and you look at his, you know, his hips or you'll see where his shoulder height is in comparison to the other guys that are supposed to be as big as him. You're like, okay, he's also doing this bigger than everybody else. And that's what I love so much about going to that wizards game in Denver, what, a week and a half ago live, was that he's like, okay, these guys suck.

Like, their help is late. Like, I'm going to just screw around with them for the entire first quarter. So, you're right. Against the Lakers, and I counted it up, what, he had 25 field goal attempts,

which might be what a lot of teams would say, cool, shoot more, and maybe the other guys aren't as engaged because I think Jokic would be happy taking 10 shots in a big game, okay? As long as he's controlling everything because he still touches the ball more than anybody else in the league. But of the 25 field goal attempts, 17 of

them were against single coverage. There were six against a double. I don't know how many you would really say were hard doubles. It might ended up that AD was able to kind of cheat and stay there. But of the six double teams, they weren't all just, hey, we're double teaming you. And then there was two where he just kind of got loose and everybody lost track of the rotations and ended up wide open. But against Rui, he had Rui

in it, I think like 16, 17 times on the shot attempts. Right. And by the way, Rui played as well as he could play. But he still can't do anything with him, which isn't a knock on Rui because almost no one can do anything with him because what they're doing the entire time is,

okay, if Rui's the single assignment, which it was the whole time. Now, granted, look, he got AD a couple of times. He got LeBron once. Well, and they left Aaron Gordon alone. They were like, you're going to be open the whole game.

Good luck. Right. But they made AD at least have to think about Gordon because you could see Jokic. On those slide screens. Right, Jokic kind of waits and will even look at a guy being like, hey, go away.

Like, get him a step that way and then that's where I'm going to attack. And then it's his footwork and he has the best hands in the league and all this other stuff. So it was kind of fun to see him have to be aggressive. And then he had two late buckets where that game was Murray,

Porter didn't miss a shot. But right from like three minutes on, it's like, all right, enough of you guys. And I think the Lakers are probably doing as well as they possibly could. I don't know if you say if you're Ham, let's give him a hard double. And if he burns us with a pass to Gordon, which he's probably going to do, let's just make him think about it a little bit differently I think that might be the only thing with last night's game is that the Lakers never really made him have to think about the coverage

any differently because I went through it again this morning and it wasn't it was pretty predictable yeah sometimes these teams do this move where they're just like we're just a little joke and yo could you get his points and we'll take away everybody else and it's like okay cool do that and then when you're watching in real time, it's so demoralizing when he's just over and over again, backing dude down. It's like four footer, six footer, bank shot.

And you just can't, you can't do that for two and a half hours. He's too, he's too good. And it's too easy for him to score. So you're like, ah, we got to fix that. And then once you fix it, that's when he's like, okay, now I'm going to go to work.

And everything off his hands, Bill is so soft soft. You know it's soft on TV. Watching it in person, it feels like the balls... You're shocked when it doesn't go in. It goes in all the time already. When it doesn't go in... It falls in. Yeah, it just softly falls. It shifts down and goes, all right, I'm asked me to hang out here. Go ahead. Well, he does these things like when you see it in person, it's somehow easier to watch on TV than in person. In person, those redirect passes

when it seems like he's shooting and then you see at the last second Gordon's coming in for a dunk or somebody else or Peyton Watson, whatever. And it's like in real time, he's changing his mind or maybe he's not, but it seems like a shot. Then it's a pass. And my wife was asking like, has anyone ever, did he create this? Has anyone ever done this before? And I'm like,

I actually think he might've created this. I don't remember seeing a player decide mid move that no, I'm actually going to throw this perfect alley hoop. Because the alley hoop's always perfect. It's right next to the rim. It's the easiest. There was some Harrison Wind, I think. I think that's his name, the Nuggets guy. He had this montage today of all the Jokic-Gordon alley hoops. They're all perfect. They're all just next to the rim and Gordon just gets to put them down. But I don't, do you remember anyone doing this before? I think Luca does it a lot where you're like, you think it's going to be an up and down. You go, oh, the first thing you learn is don't leave your feet if you don't know what you're

doing. He clearly knows what options are there for him. But the visual journey of that moment, we were like, what's he going to do? You're like, oh, a perfect touch pass to this cutter. And, you know, look, I mean, Magic probably did all sorts of stuff. Yeah, Magic way back. Yeah. But Magic was almost like there was more flair to it. There's no flair with these Jokic passes. It's just these very functional, awesome decisions.

No, the flair is that you don't know where it's going. Where Magic had all the flair you can imagine. And Bird did the same. Yeah, Bird. DJ a little bit sneaky mid-83 to... You know who has one... Stop.

You know who has one section over from us? The Joker. What? Djokovic. He was there watching the Joker last night. Wait, what section were you in? I was in the section facing the Laker bench, basically. A little toward midcourt.

Oh, okay. And the Joker was right to our left, watching the Joker. Yeah. Great stuff. With Vlad A. Dibac there. They didn't put Djokovic up then because they put Vladi up on the big screen. Maybe Joker was like the other Joker.

He's like Joker 2. I really wanted to go up to Vlad Aivac and just say to him, hey man, we've never met. My name's Bill. I do podcasts. I used to write about basketball. I just had to ask, you saw Luka in person a kajillion times when he was like 15, 16, 17. How did you not take him on the Kings? What did he not do that made you go, no, it's going to be Marvin Bagley, actually? How did you not know? I knew watching NBA TV, watching these stupid freaking EuroLeague games when Luka was 17

and he was the fucking best guy in the game. How did you not know? You were right there and you watched him grow up? How'd you miss this one? I would just love to know the answer. I hope somebody asked him that. Yeah, that's pretty scary because it was kind of, it reminds me of when you were like, man, the Celtics didn't take Chris Dunn. All right.

Well, I just feel like it's just down the street. If there was a guy at, if you're living in Vermont and there was a guy at UVM who was awesome at basketball and you went to a bunch of basketball games, at some point you would have a hard opinion on the person, right? Yeah. You'd be like,

here are my thoughts. I've watched him play a bunch. He's going to be great. Yeah. Couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it didn't work out. Eddie B. We had to talk about the Lakers side of this because we were talking on the phone earlier, and I didn't understand why they were playing Cam Reddish late. Why didn't they put Russell in there? Because I thought the Nuggets had some issues with Russell. But for the most part, I don't really know what else they can do with that team because they're just not good enough defensively.

They can't get stops. And it's weird. Davis, who I think has been really good this season, right? Would you agree this has been one of the better Anthony Davis seasons? Yeah, he's played all year. He's been really good defensively. For the great turnaround last year. You know what I mean, though? The storyline

of how last year plays out, like, oh, they killed it. The trade done. They did a really good job of reinventing themselves, but they also got AD back for the whole stretch. So that's kind of what happened. So now that you're getting this kind of season out of him, and I know their second half's a little disappointing. I'll be honest with you, man. If you're a big guy

waiting for the ball in the fucking post how often is it really your fault you're not getting it in today's game like you know I see these games these shows and they'll be like oh this guy sucks he you know he only had this many shots oh really was he a big and they didn't get it to him in the post a ton

no way and I say this because that's what the game is and for Anthony Davis to be as good as he is, and granted, the shooting isn't what it used to be, like the full scope of the best version of Anthony Davis. I don't know if that perimeter guy's there anymore or we're ever going to see it again. The 15-footer doesn't look quite the same these days. That's the one thing I noticed in person. Even when it goes in, it kind of rattles in, but it doesn't seem like he has the same lift.

I wonder, do you think he just put on too much weight because they were so determined for him to be a center? Maybe it's helped him in some respects, but I don't understand why he's not around the rim all the time. Why couldn't he be the Aaron Gordon for LeBron in some ways and just be this guy? Instead, he just seems like more of a- But he's more skilled.

He was more skilled than Aaron Gordon could ever dream of being offensively. But I'm saying he just seems like he's settled into being a center versus this crazy athlete that he was, I think, when the guy we watched in New Orleans was this fucking unbelievable athlete. Remember, though, how they massaged this in the beginning where they'd keep guys around. They'd keep these centers around because he didn't want to be a center. He wanted to be a power forward and then once they got him signed up

and everything, it's like, hey, you're just going to be a center. The fact that he's been healthy and he's been this good, but look, I'll understand some of the frustration with him and having certain nights where like, how come he's not, but he always is around the rim. His stats are the same. He defends his, he's still 25 a game. That's a typical Davis season. He's still 12 rebounds a game. He's shooting 56%. It's right around where he's been at

the best spots of his career. But he also seems like an afterthought a lot of the times when you watch these close Laker games, it seems like everything is decided by LeBron or Reeves. And then sometimes D'Lo when he's in there. And Davis just seems like, hey, we're just going to use you for defense and rebounding and maybe you'll get a couple offensive rebounds and some putbacks. But I'm trying to think like,

is this Lakers team good or not? It's hard for me to accept that they're a 500 team with Davis having an awesome year. You know? And they have other guys I like. I think Reeves is a good rotation guy. LeBron is obviously a really good offensive player at this point, even

if defensively he's, you know, rough. D'Lo, above average offensive point guard who can't guard anybody. That was weird last night because they were basically like, Dinwiddie played 20 minutes last night. And I bet if you were just walking out of there and were like,

hey, over-under on Dinwiddie's minutes, you're like, I don't know, eight or nine. I forgot about 19 of the 20. Right. So you mentioned the Reddish minutes there because I think they got so frustrated with D'Angelo Russell defensively. And then they had Dinwiddie in for some of those minutes too in the fourth quarter and but reddish just isn't good like he's not a good basketball player i don't think he should

play any minutes dinwiddie just stopped like initiating offense for some reason i don't know what happened to him lost his confidence yeah but this is carried over with the nets he averaged seven shots uh per game for them in january and then now if you think it was his feud with kyle kuzma he lost his confidence remember him with the mavericks that's not like that wasn't in 20 he was like an irrational confidence guy yeah yeah that was always the thing with him is that hey maybe you're a little too into your offense but when it got going it was actually pretty good He, he had nights where it felt like he was almost unstoppable. And I saw a couple of possessions last night. I was like,

man, you don't even want the ball, do you? So it's like, okay, so if you don't want the ball, but you're out there, don't play,

then what are you doing? And, and Ham's clearly going through that. By the way, we have to talk about 40,000 points. Okay. Yeah. I was,

I was going to audible to it. I just, my last question on the Lakers, cause I feel like they're in the same spot with the warriors, where I think both of them are the good-bad teams. They're playing Washington or Charlotte or Atlanta, Toronto. I could list 10 other teams. They're probably going to win, but the better the competition is, I think the worse off they are. And even when they beat the Clippers the other night, that game was a fluke. That game was over. And then LeBron just started making a bunch of crazy shots. And the Clippers fell apart. And they stole the game.

I feel like they've stolen five or six games. But the Warriors, same thing. They were 13-3. But Denver waxed them. Celtics waxed them. But they won in Toronto the other night. I just don't, I want to like take them more seriously as kind of, oh, I could see them coming in the play-in and upset somebody, but I just don't think either of them has it. I know that's not like a hot take, but. No, I've been dismissive of both

teams as far as like winning the West. I just think the West last year was kind of a joke. Yeah, I think you're right. In comparison to what it is this year. Let's do a, let's take a break and do 40,000 points. All right. So LeBron gets 40,000 points.

And the question is, Russillo, will anyone else do this in our lifetime? No. I'm not willing to rule out Luka for this. I sent you... I broke down the numbers in four quadrants of players. And basketball reference, you can do this.

The most points people scored from ages 19 to 24, from 25 to 30, from 31 to 36, and then from 37 to 43. And it was interesting because LeBron had the most points of anyone under 25 years old. He had 12,993 and Durant was 700 behind him. Luka had almost 11,000, but he's played less games for a variety of reasons. So he is basically 2,000 behind the LeBron pace heading into age 25. From ages 25 to 30,

LeBron is 16th for most points. Bunch of dudes in front of him. Will, Harden, Gervin, Malone, Wilkins. He keeps going. Ages 31 to 36, he climbs back up. Now he's fourth again. Kareem was third. Karl Malone second.

And your number one leader for points, ages 31 to 36, Alex English. I wouldn't have guessed that in 20 tries, but that's who is the leader. And then LeBron is now fourth for ages 37 to 43. He's 2,800 behind Kareem. So there's two things going on. One is he's basically been 27 a game for 21 years

and he's been really, really durable. Luka is averaging like 34 a game and I don. And he's been really, really durable. Luca is averaging like 34 a game. And I don't think he's as durable. And I don't know if he'll care about his body in the same way, but with scoring becoming easier as the years pass and the three point, all the, all these different things. It's like if Luca averages 32 to 36 a game for like seven, eight years here, I think he's going to be a little closer than people realize. The difference is what we saw last night where LeBron's 39 years old and he still looks like a,

you know, a running back just flying through full speed and doing a lot of the stuff that he wanted. So I think Luca is the only one who has a chance is my long winded point. Yeah. I was doing the math on a couple of different guys. It's more like I looked at Anthony Edwards and just like, this is stupid. Like, I'm just going to stop, you know? Cause you start going, well, if he gets 2000 points a season for the next, however many seasons, like actually most guys don't even hit 2000 points. Like 2000 points is a huge number.

Luca's hit 2000 points one time in his career. He's going to hit it again this year. So then you're like, okay, so now I got to start plugging in 1,700, 1,800 points per season. And then you go, okay, cool. So now the next 10 years, let's tack on 18,000 to your seven that you already have of your aunt. So like, okay, it's 25,000 when you're going to be in your early 30s. And now all you have to do is score another 15,000. I don't know how

anyone's going to have the longevity. I think with scoring never being easier than it has been the last couple years, and I think this year is the apex of this, I think it's to a point where I wonder if the NBA digs in a little bit deeper on some of this stuff. I think both of us are starting to feel like they're going to actually of this. I think it's to a point where I wonder if the NBA digs in a little bit deeper on some of the stuff.

I think both of us are starting to feel like they are going to actually address this this summer. There's going to be a couple moves that they, I don't think they love this. Yeah, this is beyond now

what was supposed to happen. You know, all of us were fine with the three-point shooting and everything. I just think there's a league-wide frustration. Forget you guys on the podcast.

I'll just say this with a slight smirk on my face. I think the league, in its entirety, would rather some of this stuff be cleaned up where the offensive player can literally do whatever he wants now and get to the free throw line. They can make it a priority. They can say they're going to change it. Then it's like, okay, it's March of next season. I think Joe Dumars, I think half of the texts that he gets are clips of offensive players creating some sort of fake foul from one of the 30 coaches or GMs. I think they just send them to Dumars now. Hey, Joe, check out Trey Young. Hey, Joe, check out this Jalen Brunson play. Hey, Joe, look at this Malik Monk push off.

Like this is Joe Dumars' life right now. Something's going to change. I would agree. I think we're in agreement on that one. So, you know, are the free throw rates going to stay the same? I mean, if you look at Luka's free throw rates, he's, I mean, last year he was at 48%. So, he was getting a free throw attempt. It was for every two shots, he was getting a free throw attempt. You know who could have really challenged this 40,000? I was looking at it. It was Kobe.

It set me down this rabbit hole of Kobe's 2013 season when he lost his mind and he started playing 48 minutes every game, which was insane as it was happening. Literally, it was insane. I was doing TV that year and we were like, and everyone was like, this is happening. Like literally it was insane. I was doing TV that year and we were like, and everyone's like, this is amazing. This guy's a word. And it's like, this is insane. He's going to get hurt. And then he blew out his Achilles. But that next season, he only played six games. And then the season after that, he only played 35. And remember, he got hurt in the second to last game of the season in 2013. So if he just doesn't get hurt and then he plays, instead of 41 games, plays, I don't know, 140, he ended up with 33,643 points. He probably left another 3,000 on the table when he got hurt, right? And then maybe he stays on and keeps going for it.

And he was never really the same after he hurt his Achilles, but just him refusing to come out of games ended up being the reason he'd get 40,000 points. I remember doing segments when we were mapping out how Kobe was going to get to 40,000 points and beat Kareem and all that stuff. This was a topic in 2013, and then it was over. LeBron just never had the major injury. That was one of the secrets of his success. Kobe shot.

Oh, you're looking. See, I did this last night. I was dying. Every game is like 47 minutes, 48 minutes, 43 minutes. Well, the season you're talking about where he played the full, he averaged 39 minutes a game. But you're right. Baked in there were games

where he was like, I'm just staying out here, right? With the last 10 or 11 games, I think he averaged like 42 minutes a game. This was his age 34 season, but he'd been in the league for 17 years at that point. It was amazing when it was happening

in real time. He hated Dwight Howard so much. He was just like, I'm never coming out. I'm just staying in. I brought it up with LeBron looking for a three-year 160 deal, opt out of the player option, re-sign three years 160. And I brought up from, what, over 10 years ago, we were all still working at ESPN.

And then Kobe had, he was going to be a free agent after the 14 season where he played only six games. But clearly they didn't want to lose him. So they gave him what, the two-year deal? Yeah, murdered their cat. And the whole point was, I remember Jeannie Buss being like, we want stars to know that we take care of stars with the Lakers. Didn't help them. Durant didn't even have a meeting. So I just wonder if LeBron goes back to them and says, okay, I'm going to opt out, but I want the same love.

I want that to happen for me and considering like every time with lebron like i feel guilty about anything that i'm critical of with him because watching him last night put together the offensive game that he does keeping you in it you know being the number one option like what he did against the clippers you can call it fluky but that's ridiculous what he did to that team in the fourth quarter like it's all on me again and he hasn't even had the time off that he usually like, he'll usually have a stretch. If you go back the last four or five seasons where he's not available. So that hasn't even happened.

So then you start factoring that into like, what are the Lakers going to look like in the playoffs where it's like, man, he'd probably be better off like getting a couple of weeks. And when you look at the way the West is playing out, like all these teams are playing like a little bit harder because they don't have their own draft pick. You know,

there's a bunch of teams this year. Go ahead. You're a 500 team with them right now. You're going to give them three more years, one 60. You're also, you just gave Davis a giant extension. I wouldn't do it.

You're locking down the foundation of those two guys with a bunch of role players around them, which we're finding out year after year, it's impossible to put the right role players when you're spending a hundred million dollars on two guys with a bunch of role players around them, which we're finding out year after year, it's impossible to put the right role players when you're spending a hundred million dollars on two guys. And those two guys are the foundation of a 500 team. I think it'd be insane to do it, but I know they're going to do it. You basically have no chance at the title if you're going to do it. And he's going to get older every year. And at some point, the performance is going to decline.

I just wonder why you go, well, look, you're not going to go to Utah. You're not going to go to Detroit. You're probably not going to go to Philadelphia. You're not going to go to Orlando. There's no way they're not going to give it to him. Why can't they just be like, can we give you three for $100?

Can we do three for $90? Why do we have to pay you 60 million? This is the Kobe Bryant thing from 10 years ago where he's like, I'm not taking a pay cut. Fuck that. I've been filling this place. I remember writing about this for Grantland where it was like, on the one hand, it was selfish because he was ruining their chance to put a good team around him.

But on the other hand, he was right. He had increased the value of the team. They were selling jerseys and tickets and he was the face and the marquee guy in the franchise. He was like, I'm not taking a pay cut. And he actually did. He actually did. Like based on what the number was before that extension. Yeah, it was like slight. It was very slight. He was still making a giant number. The number itself, the $48.5 million guaranteed when he was hurt, and you were like, wait, what? What are they doing? Do you think Brady regrets taking cheaper deals from that cheapskate craft?

I would tell you there was probably some nights where he looked at the depth chart of the receivers. He was like, what am I doing? He was like, where was it? Yeah, they were. What am I doing again? The report came out. The Pats spent, they were 32nd in spending of the receivers was like, what am I doing? Where was it? Yeah, they were... What am I doing again? The report came out. The Pats spent... They were 32nd in spending for the last 10 years. And yet, we had this alleged amazing

deal with Brady where he was sacrificing to put the money back in the team, but then they really didn't. Not going to be in the documentary. The documentary that pinned Aaron Hernandez's murder on Bill Belichick in episode documentary. The documentary that pinned Aaron Hernandez's murder on Bill Belichick in episode six. If you only traded him, a man wouldn't be dead.

What am I watching? Have you done the real breakdown of this? I want to come on your podcast as a guest and just do a special breakdown of Dynasty. I haven't watched it. By the way, I want there to be a Chiefs version of this in 2040, where every episode is about something awful that happened during this Chiefs run. And I'm not going to list all the terrible things, but they're pretty easy

to figure out. But that's the equivalent of this. They did a whole episode on Brady's ACL. They did a whole episode on his torn ACL. The 2008 season, they spend 20 minutes on, they skipped over two Superbowls in the 21 game win streak, but spent 20 minutes on the 2008 season where they didn't make the playoffs for reasons that remain unclear. Who funded this? Woody Johnson?

They did a Hernandez episode and a Spygate episode. It's like, what is this? I haven't watched it. Anyway, I think with the Lakers, what is this? Anyway, um, I think with the Lakers, if I was a Laker fan,

this is the roughest spot. This is basically where the Celtics were in 2013 with KG and Pearson, those guys where you're locking down past performance, past memories versus any chance to actually win the title. So I guess the question for the Lakers is, what do you care about more? Do you care about building a new team around Davis or do you care about just, this is one of the great athletes we've ever had in any team sport and he wants to finish his career here, so we're going to give him a lot of money. History tells us they're going to pay him. They're going to pay him.

But it'd be the wrong basketball decision. Despite him moving the line of expectations of what we even think is possible. Because watching him live this many times in this short period of time, once he gets going, it's still. The head of steam that he still has at this age is pretty crazy. And he'll do it like three times a game or just turns the jets on.

It's like, and nobody's getting in front of him still, which is the same thing that was the case 15 years ago. I realized this last night, Russo. Kyle, I don't think you necessarily have to turn on the TikTok camera here, but maybe think about it. I think Jokic is the best player I've seen in person since LeBron that third year in Miami. It's been 11 years since I've seen a player in person as good as Jokic.

That third heat season when LeBron was like, we were wondering if he was going to shoot 60% and he was just athletically still at like the peak, peak, peak of his powers. I'd put him way up there. I would put 2000 Shaq. Um,

there's probably the Oh six Kobe, which I saw a couple of times that year when he was just like, I can't believe that my team's this bad. I'm just shooting every time, but it was amazing to watch. And, uh, and Duncan in the early two thousands who always get, who just gets lost now because he's not on TV and doesn't promote himself. But I think those would be the five. There was a Duncan year when he came in and just like annihilated the Celtics once. I don't remember what year it was, but it was like, Jesus, not only did we lose the lottery

and not get this guy, but this is happening? Anyway, since that LeBron season, I think this is the best I've seen. I despise the MJ LeBron political parties. Me too.

I'll agree with one of the arguments and then want to disagree just for like getting physically ill of how terrible the argument is crafted. Yeah. Even if I agree with like the general mission statement of it all. I'm thinking of starting a Duncan only feed because I'm getting I'm getting really upset about where Tim Duncan is like just getting knocked down historically in comparison with all these other guys that we see. The highlight videos just aren't going to be as cool kids, but like clearly he was doing something right. Yeah. Where are the Tim Duncan was a problem. Where are those videos? They don't exist. I'm trying to think of what would be the

latest thing you could put that would still work we're like kids today don't have any idea you know could you do like an eric bledsoe clippers run like kids don't don't have quentin richardson was a problem eric bledsoe pick and roll ball handler efficiency. Check out Synergy. Kids don't know anything. Well, it's like, what would you say on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, the percentage of white chocolate was a problem versus Tim Duncan was a problem videos?

It's probably 10 to 1 white chocolate. Yeah. Look, all of us enjoyed the white chocolate thing. All of us enjoyed it. It was adorable. It was so much fun for a little while. And then he did something recently who was like, man, if I play today, I want one guy to be like, yeah, I actually couldn't shoot that well. So they'd probably ignore the collapse. And, you know, back then you didn't have to shoot as well, but now everybody shoots well.

And I just didn't shoot it well enough. So they'd sag off of me and then it would, it would screw up all of our other actions and screens and stuff. They just ignore me. So yeah, I actually played in a better era then than today. Just being honest. All right.

So to answer the question, I think Luca at least has a puncher's chance of 40 K, but I would put the odds at 15 to one. And you think there's no chance we will not see in our lifetime? I don't. I don't think we will. I think LeBron, to his credit, is chasing something that no one else is really going to be chasing. I don't know if we're going to be lucky enough to have somebody show up in our lifetime that's going to at least be chasing Michael Jordan, because that's how special LeBron is. To sit here and just write it off and say, all right, in the next 30 years of watching hoops, we're not going to get one player.

That's a pretty big assumption. Maybe it's the wrong assumption. You could also say, well, with medicine and guys and on and on and on, and they're going to play longer. We've seen it with the quarterbacks, and we're seeing it with LeBron now. But I think LeBron is motivated by something almost every other player isn't going to be motivated by,

chasing Michael Jordan. As I've told you, I thought the last dance had an impact on him. When we're all COVID and we're all locked up and it's 10 straight weeks or five straight weeks of how unbelievable Michael Jordan was. All right. We are, uh, we're gonna take a break and then we're going to do disappointment. I'll start then. All right. We're going to take a break and then we're going to do the Disappointment All-Star Team. Alright, we're going to do the Disappointment All-Star Team

in one second. I have a hottest take for you, Rosillo. Hottest take, we're going to do these some Sunday nights. We either 100% believe them, 50% believe them, 25% believe them, or don believe them, 25% believe them, or don't believe them at all.

Here's my hottest take for you, Russell. The Heat are fucking lucky. This hot cast thing, it's so upsetting. This isn't even a hottest day. This is Bill gets pissed. No.

So they get hero because they win a fucking coin flip with Boston. They get bam at 14 because the moron Portland Trailblazers trade two picks to move up to 10 and they take Zach Collins instead of Bam. And then Kennard goes to the Pistons 12. Bam falls to 14. They get Rozier for barely anything. They get Butler because Portland, again,

Portland helps them twice. Portland's fucking stupid. They're like, yeah, we'll take us on white side so you can fit Butler in your cap. Cool. And then they get Jaquez. When the Lakers, who he's playing at UCLA, he's five feet away and he's ready to play. He's ready to be in a rotation. I like the point guard they took from Indiana.

Yeah, I know he has potential. But you have LeBron, he's 39. You need to get somebody in that draft who can play now. And they just pass on him and they end up with him and it fucking makes me mad but all of its luck this doesn't sound like a hot take that's luck everyone's like heat culture you know what the heat culture is fucking luck hey by the way they're a half game behind Orlando right now they're eight of their last ten I know exactly where they are.

They had that really bad stretch where I was looking at the totals for the second half over-unders, and I was like, wait, you're expecting them to go this many games over 500 after the All-Star break when they don't? I mean, at one point here, let's find the worst number. Well, Rozier is going now for them, which I think the Rozier-Lowry upgrade, not nothing. No.

Out of the jump, though, when they beat Milwaukee, granted, Philly stinks. New Orleans is a coin toss every night, depending on when you watch them. They beat Sacramento. They were down. Actually, no, they were up big in that one. They were down to Portland in the first half. And then, look, nobody's afraid of Portland closing out against them. And then even Denver was a good game. Portland's the first half. And then, look, nobody's afraid of Portland closing out against them. And then even Denver was like a game.

Portland's hot right now. They've been on a bit of a tear here. And I'm... I don't like it. I mean, even Jovic had 24. That's fucking bullshit. That's mad. They're good.

They're good. And when you look at the standings, depending on what happens here with the Knicks news, okay, they're, what, a game behind the Knicks. Philly's going to keep dropping even though they've won two in a row. Orlando's probably about where they're going to be. Miami can end up a four seed here, man.

Second round, rematch. They're definitely going to pass Philly and Orlando. Then if Brunson's out for at least a little while. Plus, I mean, how many... The Knicks, we have no sign when Ananobi's coming back. Ananobi doesn't seem like it. There seems like a real time when he's coming back.

Where the Randall stuff, he wasn't... We have no idea. They're going to end up being the four seed, which puts them directly in line for a round two matchup against the Boston Celtics. And probably some garbage opponent with the five seed. It'll be some team where their best guy got hurt a week before the end of the season.

It's like, we're going to play Orlando, but Paolo is out because he twisted his ankle. But that's going to be your four or five opponent. Anyway, my hottest take is Miami's lucky. All right, let's do the disappointment. We're going to call this the Disappointment All-Stars. We'll just make a team. Team of 12.

We're going 12 deep. No extra roster spots. Yeah, we'll go fast. There's a couple that we're not going to spend an hour talking about Monty Williams. Who is your number one pick for the Disappointment All-Stars? Monty Williams. 23-24 edition.

Monty Williams, captain. I don't want to make him the captain. There's two different numbers that float out there that he's 196. Let me put it this way. There's two different numbers. I think it's without Chris Paul in games and without Chris Paul on the roster. Basically, both of them tell you he's 100 games under for both. We've already covered this.

We even covered it last week. But there's a lesson in this. It's just because you've been bad for a long time doesn't mean you're due to be good. Okay, this isn't a roulette wheel. This is still, you are only going to be as good or as bad as your roster. And I felt like there were a couple teams this year. I think Charlotte thought they were going to be good. I think Portland thought, hey, we have Aiton and we got Brogdon coming off the bench and

we've got Sharp, we've got Simons, we've got the Snoop guy. Like, you know, hey, you know, it was a plucky. Maybe we're fighting for a nine or a 10 or whatever. It's like, nope. So you can start carrying yourself like you're owed improvement just because you haven't been good for a long time. And I think Detroit should have just looked at the four guys that matter, that they had these. And I still like, I think all four of those guys, I know I'll probably be super disappointed by two of them, but just like, what was the point of trying to

balance this out until you figure out what you have with those guys that you've spent these high picks on? So that's my, I don't need to do any more on. I've already spent too much time on it. My number one pick, I guess this is the second pick of the Disappointment All-Stars, Jordan Poole. And I'm going to zag a little bit. It's not just that he's been really bad to watch and that's one of the worst trades in a while now because that's one of the worst contracts in the league. I just thought it would be more fun to have him on a bad team. From a league pass standpoint, not only is it not fun, it's the opposite of fun where I feel bad for him half the time. I don't want to feel bad for guys on league pass. That's not what league pass is for. I either want to watch really good teams battling or I want to watch players on bad

teams and meaningless games put up stats. I don't want to feel sad for somebody. And over and over again, when you watch these Wizards games, you feel sad for them. I feel bad for Jordan Poole. I feel like that Draymond punch kind of changed the course of his career. And he's so bad in some of these crunch shots, like in the Laker game the other night, where he actually kept them in and got hot. And then he's like, I'm feeling it. And then he took like four or five of the worst shots I've ever seen in my life. And then like Shooting splits, 40 and 31% from three. I mean, he shot like almost 37% from three a couple years ago. And you're right. At one point with the Warriors, you're like, hey,

they did it again. They did it again with one of these late picks, high profile recruit, whole deal. He's going to be at least Lou Williams or Jamal Crawford. He's going to be one of those guys. Worst case scenario. So he's taken 14.6 field goal attempts per game. That's 52nd most shots per game in the NBA.

If you go through the top 100 field goal attempt guys, all right, the guy who takes the most shots to the hundred most, he's 99th in field goal percentage. Scoots. I mean, every advanced metric, 99th and lowest. Scoots has not one. I mean, every advanced metric is a disaster.

99th and lowest. Scoot has not had a month over 40% from the floor. So he's also probably on the border for the disappointment drive. I'm not going to pick him because I have to wait

until next year to actually be disappointed by the whole thing. I would feel a little worse for Poole if I didn't see it in person with that Wizards game. It's funny because

after we talked about the Wizards and I said multiple times how bad they were, I love chesty fans from this kind of team where I don't know what I'm talking about because they're tanking. It's like, yeah, but you know what most teams do even if they're tanking? When they inbound the ball and they're on defense, they don't just let a guy go down to the other rim. Right. In high school, you do that.

Also, what are you tanking for? This is the worst draft in 10 years. Well, you know, lock up the number one pick. It's a fun thing. I don't think they have to worry about it. And then when he said his legacy was cemented, I just don't think anybody under 30 should talk about their legacy being cemented when, you know, look, he helped that team.

But yeah. And then every like three months, Draymond will give another interview about the fight. I tried to get Iguodala this week to open up about it. All right. He didn't do it. You're up next. What's your pick?

Atlanta Hawks, 26 and 34. They were on my board. Two games up on the 11 seed Brooklyn Nets. If Brooklyn were actually like a little more stabilized, you wonder if Atlanta would miss the play in. Through 60 games last year, they were 30 and 30. They finished 41 and 41. This team should at least be 500.

But defensively, they are 28th in the league, only better than Charlotte and your Wizards. I was in Boston visiting my daughter right before the NBA season and I made a slew of future props on FanDuel. And I did really well except for everything I

put the Hawks in. Because I thought both you and I thought, oh, Quinn will get them to like 43 and 39. Yeah, that was pretty much it. We're not saying they're going to win the East, but they're going to be so good offensively. And the fact that Jalen Johnson has been as good as he is and they're still not good, some of the stats with them,

like what did I say to you? Their record against the spread, they're like 23 games under 500 against the spread, which is like impossible. Vegas 500 against the spread, which is like impossible. Vegas are just the line. I have the number. They're 19 and 41 against the spread. They're covering 31.7% of the time. It's impossible.

Charlotte is the next worst team at covering, and they're covering 41% of the time. So they're covering 10 points lower than the second worst team. Well, and it's why they need to be a high pick on the Disappointment All-Stars because they're not just disappointing. People

kept thinking it was going to turn around and they kept betting on them and be like, like the last two Brooklyn games. Oh, the Hawks are favorite against Brooklyn. It's today. They lost again. They're kind of fun to watch. They're also one of those teams that if you have somebody on the other team

that you either like watching or is on your fantasy team or something like oh he's got the Hawks tonight could be a huge game like this is the team I think Luka will be the next guy to get 81

like Kobe's 81 is going to go down over the next two to three years somebody's going to do 80 plus. And it's going to be like Luka against the Hawks type thing. But I think the Hawks are going to be involved in somebody's 81 point game. Well, he did get his 70 against the Hawks. He got 73 against them. I'm saying like the 80 plus, whenever somebody does that,

it's going to be against the team. I think he could have had more points. They actually needed to win that game, and he was making some really good passes in that game. Luka was still making the right plays. I wish I had said this prior, too, because I completely agree with you. Because Luka has the kind of game where if he just decided – I think there's a lot of players in the game that were like,

hey, I want to get 60 tonight. And then if a few go my way and I get a few free throws, maybe we get to 70, maybe we get close to 80. I think if Luka decided in an awful matchup defensively, if he said, I'm getting 20 points a quarter, I'm just going to get 80 tonight guys. And everybody was like,

awesome. Let's do it. He's like, I'm getting 20 points a quarter and I'm going to get to 80. And then Grant Williams, I'm going to foul at everybody. Ever heard of passing? Grant Williams is like,

bad idea, Luke. I don't like it. All right, my next pick. OKC not trading for a center. On the board. Have it on my board. It made me mad during the trade deadline. We talked about it a lot.

It made me mad that they used the Bertans extension for something that wasn't a center. They also used it for Gordon Hayward, who the odds of him being healthy during the playoffs, I would say is a coin flip. It's 50-50 at best. He just has some of the worst luck of anyone in the league. But the Gordon Hayward thing

was way more about clearing the cap space. Once I looked at it, sometimes I hate doing the trade deadline stuff live because of that. But when you looked at some of the stuff, there's more flexibility that allows them. That's all. Okay. Well, you know what else would have allowed them something is getting a center because

they have a chance to at least make the Western Finals. And I just think they could have topped the Gafford press. Gafford is exactly what they needed. Some flexibility, depending on the team. They just don't have enough flexibility for three straight playoff series. And I just don't fundamentally understand

why Presti, who I think has been in the running for best GM in the last 15 years, why he looked at this big picture and just thought, we don't have enough to win the title. I'm not going to use any assets when they have so many assets. I don't get it. They could have topped that Dallas trade and it would have done nothing for them. From an asset loss standpoint, they would have been fine. I know that we look at centers for a while, it felt like, hey, you can just get one. You'll get one late. They're always nobody cares. They're super cheap or whatever. And then I think, I don't know if they banked on that or what, but I just wish they had a different look. I wish they had, it's not even about every single playoff game, but depending on a certain matchup, I just wish they had a little bit more behind Chet and Jalen Williams. Yeah. If they end up playing Minnesota in a playoff series, you're basically going to have to, you know, duct tape the series together and hope Chet doesn't get in foul trouble and, you know, try to attack them different ways. I just don't, I don't know why they removed the option from themselves. All right.

Who do you have next? Tobias Harris without MB. I know he had 28 points today. Yeah. We've talked about Tobias Harris a lot. I beat this joke to death where I don't know, every month or so I would just tweet out like, Hey,

the Sixers have Tobias Harris. No, it's gets a chuckle out of me. I know. That's why I do it. January 19, 6, 3.5 assists, 51.35% from the floor and 3, 4.5 free throw attempts per game in January. So, no Embiid, right? Got hurt in that Warriors game.

That was the very end of the month. He's 15, 6, and 3.7 assists. He's shooting 25% from three, and his free throws are down by more than half so i know that like buddy healed and uber were like hey that big guy's finally out of our way yeah like shields like now it's buddy time and you know max you should be taking a ton of shots or whatever but it just unfortunately kind of reinforces some of the stuff. Like you look at Tobias, we all know how talented he is. But, you know, I would be looking at that if I'm another front office. And who knows?

Maybe it's going to be a team. It's like we got to spend our caps based on somebody and whatever. He's talented. He scored. Orlando. Come back. Yeah, he's tall. So that would fit in.

But I know he had a nice game tonight. But how do those numbers go down? Unless the argument is that Embiid just makes his life that much easier and all that stuff. But there's just certain nights where it's like, hey, man, you're going to have to take some bad shots. You're going to have to bail them out of this. And you can't quite do it. Yeah, I'm with you. I went on a three-hour walk with my wife today.

And I watched the entire Mavs Sixers game on my phone as we were walking and at halftime of the game Stephen A came on and brought up Tobias Harris and he says something like we don't talk about Tobias Harris enough

and I was like I was walking up like that's got to be one of the weirdest sentences anyone said this year that we don't talk about so we should be talking about Tobias Harris more because I feel like we've actually probably talked about Tobias Harris too much is where I landed as I walked on some side street in uh in West Hollywood I think that's the show. That's the show. We were talking about Blame Pie. All right. And I think the new show is you just have one person

that we generally trust, higher approval rating in sports media. Yeah. And they just come on for like 10 minutes a week and go, talking about this too much, need to talk about this more,

need to talk about this a little less. Too much, not enough, or just right? Right. Tobias Harris. All he's doing is keeping track of so that all of us know. Because it is, look, I'm guilty of it. I've done it plenty of times. You already should.

But when you think of the statement and then how there's never a fucking follow-up to it of we need to be talking about fill in the blank more. And then everyone at the desk- It's a big college football and NFL one. Right. Then everybody just looks at the person. It's like, okay, so what is, now what?

So it'd be like, all right, next up, Jalen Williams. And I'd be like, need to talk about him more. It's like, nope, I meant the other Jalen Williams. Oh, maybe just enough. Yeah, we're probably good. Yeah, that's a more. I meant the other Jalen Williams. Less. Oh! Maybe just enough. We're probably good. Yeah, we're probably okay. J. Will, not J. Dub. I just write one and two.

All right, my next one. I don't know if this guy's on your board. Mikael Bridges. PER went from 21 to 16 on my board oh he was okay you know average 26 a game after the KD trade a lot of talk about how he was this rising

star including on this podcast and became the guy on Brooklyn this year and it's starting to look like he's the third option. And as you and I have discussed many times, I think if you're the first option on a basketball team in the NBA, you're probably going to score around 20, 21 points as a worst case scenario. It's called the Jeremy Grant corollary.

And Kelbridge is 21 a game. Never jumps off any of the tvs for me and i just disappointed that's where this is in this is disappointment though directly in relation to like oh my god last year because he was awesome yeah it was like whoa is this guy now a top 20 guy in the league yeah and you know i was i admit all the years in Phoenix, I was like, I still score plus minus went from over three last year on not a great team with Brooklyn to zero this year. I don't love the full Cam Thomas experience.

The usage is dipped down. There's other guys taking shots, but for somebody that you thought, maybe he actually is a two on a really good team, there's just a decline there. There's a decline there for his numbers that is alarming based on how excited we were with his Brooklyn run last year. Unless he caught people by surprise. Some people are saying curse of Tommy Alter.

It's a hell of a curse. We love you, Tommy. I just thought he'd be better on Brooklyn. I agree. It seemed like, especially with scoring up 25 a game minimum. And then he was kind of floating around I just thought he'd be better on Brooklyn. I agree. It seemed like, especially with scoring up, 25 a game minimum. And then he was kind of floating around like, yeah, I guess I want to be here for now. There was a couple of those.

I know the Cy family loves him, but I'll tell you this. He would not be untradeable for me if I was the Nets. Like if OKC wanted to come in and say, hey, we're going to give you a shitload of picks here or pick a team that's got a ton of assets. Yeah, but I got to know what the picks are now. Like I think we've all fallen for this. It's like, oh, we'll give you four first. Okay, what are they? Two lottery

and two top 24 protected? I want a good young player too. I'm just Brooklyn is in all time no man's land with this team they have and they're either the 11th seed or the 10th seed. Congratulations. Who's next on your board? There's a couple that I cannot believe have not gone yet.

I'm going to do it. It's dangerous because it all could be corrected if a playoff run happens. But Dame is not the same guy. This is not who you thought you were getting if you were Bucs fan. This would have been a good hottest take. He's not the same guy. He's not the same guy. He's not the same guy. He's just not. You know what's not the same?

He's good once. I'm good once a week guy now, or I'm good once every 10 days. Or the quarter. He'll have that quarter. You're like, okay, it's Dame time. It's just not consistent. It's not like, oh my God, Dame just ripped off this eight-game stretch where he averaged 35 a game and made six threes.

I just think he's at a different point of his career. But he still can dial it up in the fourth quarters. There's been moments where he can summon it for four or five minutes, but I think over the course of the game, not the same. No, the January shooting numbers were terrible. Sub 40, sub 30 from three, but whatever. You look at that and go okay not a big deal i mean his overall shooting numbers from the floor are probably lower than people realize just because he's been such a dynamic score but he also got to the free throw line so many times and now like

february into march he's not getting on the free throw line as much which is always a bit of an alarming thing for somebody that lives off their athleticism but i think i've watched them enough to be like i still get into the floor like he's still getting to the rim he's still getting past guys he's still one of those really good small finishers i don't know if the rim rate numbers would tell me something different there but you know that's the thing i always worry about with somebody's a little bit older and had the injury history with all this stuff but just who he has been this year if you're a bucks fan you're probably you probably thought you were getting a little bit more and the numbers would tell you that you would have been getting something more.

Even in his last year with Portland, where that's a terrible defensive team, and he was still a plus seven in the box. And now he's like a plus 1.9. And his lack of interest defensively, there'll be moments that people put out clips, be like, oh, he did this. I noticed it happens a lot, think with Milwaukee. Maybe they're just like, hey, we'll worry about it when we get to the playoffs and none of this will matter.

I still think they have a chance because Giannis is that good. They're in a way better spot than they were, but I'm with you on Dame. He hasn't played in the playoffs. It'll be the first time he's played in the playoffs in three years. I forgot to do this in my hottest take about Miami. Super lucky they didn't played in the playoffs. It'll be the first time he's played in the playoffs in three years. I forgot to do this in my hottest take about Miami.

Super lucky they didn't make the Dame trade. Now you're cooking. Now I'm cooking with gas. Yeah. Fucking typical Miami. Even when they seem like they slipped in shit, it turned out it was a good thing for them. All right.

So I'm just not going to take them. I'm going to make you take them. My next disappointment all-star. We haven't had a GM yet. Masai Ujiri. I just don't understand what you've done the last three years. I don't understand the team you've assembled. I don't understand if you're trying to tank or be good.

So the Nick Nurse thing in there? The Nick Nurse thing was super weird. I don't understand if you're trying to tank or be good. Um, I don't know. Nurse thing in there. The Nick nurse thing was super weird. The not getting anything for van Vliet thing was weird. The team they have now. It's like, I kind of like this. Like I like when they play a Linux with the guards and they've got,

there's something fun and kind of 2026 about it. But at the same time, I don't think they would have any chance to even get to the second round. Um, and I don't know. I just thought Scotty Barnes, I know, I know the stats are there and I know people are excited about him. I just don't know where you're going. If he's your main guy in the last three minutes of games, I just feel like there's better offensive players that he's going to be going head-to-head with game after game.

And if you're really giving him the car keys to be your guy, I'm not sure where that's going, ultimately in the East. Well, it's a short list of guys that are like true number ones and carry you. And despite how much I love Barnes and... We both really like him. I just don't know if he's that guy. I don't think he is. Probably not how much I love Barnes and... We both really like him. I just don't know if he's that guy.

I don't think he is. Probably not. Don't love the shots. But just in general, and they might lose their pick, the Purtle trade just gets weirder by the week. And then not trading him

at the deadline is also weird. And I just, you know, I think sometimes, like he, the Kawhi thing works out, right? And they win the title. And everybody's like, this guy's amazing. Masai. Whoa. What a Jedi.

We talked about it on this pod. He's a Jedi. Amazing. Maybe that was the worst thing that could have happened to him as a GM. Because it starts making me think, ah, I can do anything. I know what I'm doing because the last few years have been pretty rough.

Most of these guys default to patience though. Do you like quickly and bear it for Inanobi and Precious? I didn't love that trade when it happened, but now I'm looking at it.

It's like, you're going to pay quickly $140 million? I think we both said we liked Barrett more before the trade happened. Yeah. To be fair. Yeah, but I'm just saying they got the second and third guys in the trade. They gave up somebody who is easily the best guy in that trade

who's now, of course, hurt. I think you, yeah, OG's hurt a lot. And he's going to be really expensive. Well, maybe that's why they did it. Yeah, but OG's corner three numbers, like I can't even know, like he's been terrific on the corner three stuff, but I don't know if you looked at it with New York.

It's like, is he going to keep that up? Because like then it's at a whole nother level with it. It sounds like you would rather he just do what everybody else did and trade for picks. And instead it was like, maybe I'm going to get these guys. But now this problem is like, once you get the guys and you know who you are, this is not a very good team. What was the point of the Atlantic trade?

Canada. Just these from Canada? Quickly had a good game today against my Hornets, who I bet on every single game. Why, to cover? Yeah, the Hornets over and over bet on every single game. Why? To cover? Yeah. The Hornets, over and over again, are treated like they're the worst team in the league. And every game, if they're playing somebody that's not like the Bucs, they'll actually

hang around. They lost to the Raptors today by five. Yeah, but we just brought them up. They're the second worst covering team in the league. No, but now this new version of their team. Yeah. I'm talking like this. My guy Grant Williams. 40 minutes today, 18

and 13, five assists. He's bringing a winning championship attitude to them. Imagine an assistant coach quote tweeting that you're a loser. We didn't talk enough about that. People listening to the pod last year, we were dropping a lot of breadcrumbs. I like him.

I think he's a nice guy. I just, you know, maybe he needed a little bit of a comeuppance and now he's had it. Who do you have for your next pick? I still have a couple of good ones left. Yeah, the problem is we said six each and then we had overlaps,

which we knew we were going to have. Can I rip off a couple more then? Yeah, I'm just going to say I'm disappointed in myself. Why? What happened? I'm on a new routine. I'm working out. Putting myself through some stuff. Just started working out, putting myself through some stuff. Just started working out? No, I've always been, but I wanted to get to another level, like another level.

Oh. The no fucking around zone. Like Eastern European steroids from the 70s? No, no. What kind of level are we talking? I think Southeast Asia. Okay. And I was doing okay. I was doing the work. i was taking the steps and then i don't

know if i fractured my leg or blew out my achilles i didn't blow up my achilles i think i'd know by now but uh you're injured yeah i couldn't walk for a day and then the pain traveled from the front of the leg to the back of the leg so it was muay Thai. And we've been about six to seven months into it. Pretty rigid, rigid training. And I was feeling good. And my buddy was visiting me and he's like, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, dude, have you looked at your birth certificate? And I was like, I'm aware, I'm aware. And the next day, he was like, can you do anything? I was like, no, I can't walk today. But I was able to walk after that day and see Jokic. Jokic doesn't walk great, so he's doing all right.

So neither of us are taking Scoot for the disappointment draft? No, I have it written down because I almost was going to say I was disappointed in myself until the leg injury. And I just have, I've said this too many times on my pod. I've said it four fucking times already. Talk to me next April and I'll give you, I'll give you everything you want. I'll give you the segment you desperately want. I don't want it. Not you, the segment you desperately want i don't want it bad

not you the royal you but i cannot do it until he's this bad again next year although i did think there were some small glimpses before this last abductor injury i've sold no sock no stock oh i love it is that because you're right or stubborn i just think that team is that team is bizarre yeah but he's also situations Sure, but he's also had moments where it's like, you don't have to be this bad. Yeah, I know. Evan Mobley not being awesome yet, I have as a personal disappointment. And by the way, since he came back from injury, he's been pretty good. He had a couple defensive sequences

earlier this week where you're just like, oh, there it is. Let's watch for it. What's the closing five of close games in the fourth quarter? Start paying attention to that because in the Dallas game, he was not in there and then came in for a defensive substitution. So it's just something I know now with Cavs games, I'll go back and I'll look at the fourth quarter to see what happened with him.

This would be a tough one for me because I was really all in on him. I think the dunk is a special player. The dunk is a little loud. I have some regrets. Yeah. Um, I mentioned the Lakers not taking Hawkeyes as a disappointment, although maybe also

a positive thing. And then I had Zion's rebounding in the disappointment All-Stars. I'm not going to put Zion in there because Zion's still been really fun to watch. The rebounding? This is new.

Sorry. Sorry. Oh, it's new. It's getting fucking worse. He just never has rebounded as well as you would think for somebody like him. He used to get seven a game. He's at five and a half this year. It's five and a half rebounds a game. You've always been a stickler. It's embarrassing.

By the way, Mobley came in today with 454 left down six and then it looks like he closed out the game but we're taping this while that happened so I didn't know that's a good sign but there's no Mitchell today one of my favorite

Charles Barkley things is when he gets mad when big guys can't get eight rebounds a game. He's right. That's two rebounds a quarter. Can't get two rebounds a quarter. He's right. It's two rebounds a quarter. Zion can't get one and a half. He can't get three rebounds a half. Three.

Like, are you rebounding instincts just that bad? Rebounding, you have to decide you want to rebound. You do. And he's decided I don't want to rebound. And he's made a decision. He's made his announcement. I'm actually good.

I'm not going to rebound. Have you made a decision for Christ? I'm going to read you all the guys who have more rebounds than Zion in the, let's see, five and a half. Oh, this would be a good game show. Does this guy have more rebounds per game than Zion? Donovan Mitchell. Active. Yes, higher or lower? Oh, higher

He's lower, he's 5.4 Wow, you set me up I did Vince Williams Jr. More or less than Zion? More 5.6 Drew Holiday.

Really good rebounding guard. I'll say he's still under. Higher. 5.7. Wait, and Zion's what again? 5.5. Five and a half rebounds a game. So we get off a tenth here.

I got to get it right. This is tough. All right. This is the game. I'll lock in. Kevin Love. Who's playing lower 17.5 minutes a game. Kevin Love.

Lower. Higher. He's averaging 6.2 rebounds a game. This is like rock, paper, scissors, and you're just in my head. I don't even know what you're going to do. I'm just going to go scissors eight straight times. James Harden. Higher.

No, lower, 5.1. You're just getting killed. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, this is the company that he's in if you look at the rebounding leaders. Zion, can you get to eight? You just get two rebounds a quarter? What's the most he's ever had in a season?

Do we know? A little over seven. It's weird because he has the explosiveness. He's got the girth. He's just not interested in doing it. So 7.2 his second year, then missed his third year, fourth year, and then he played 29 games, so he didn't get tired that year.

Look, I think when I see it, he just peels off. So neither of us took Jalen Green. No, he went off last night. There's been just enough flashes from him that I'm not giving up on something maybe significant happening with him at some point. I just wish he was on a bad team making mistakes. Feels like this team is the worst team for him. Would have been fun if he was on Charlotte or something.

I don't know. Didn't he get to do that for two years? I mean, it's not like they're awesome this year. I know, but he's still pretty young. I think he's like 21. All right, one more break and then we'll do media corner. Today's Retradables is brought to you by Nissan SUV.

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Learn more at nissanusa.com. All right, Russolo, you suggested this one. Norm Powell, who is somehow, I think, 10 to 1 to win Sixth Man of the Year award right now, but he's doing a lot more impactful stuff than that. I would say him and Malik Monk, I think, have been my two favorite Sixth Men this year in terms of guys who can come in on good teams and swing games. Once upon a time, the Clippers traded for Norman Powell and Robert Covington, and it was a salary deal where they were able to dump Eric Bledsoe. They gave them Justice Winslow, who I think it was the last year of people trying to talk themselves into Winslow. Keon Johnson. That would be a great aside, by the way.

The longest run of a career where people would not give up. I think Winslow might be the guy. Winslow might be his first team. Marvin Bagg was like, don't count me out. There's been a few. Winslow's great. It's a good one and they got a 20-25 second round pick Portland as well but basically

Powell just signed this huge deal and the Clippers are like we don't care about salary we'll take on a really good player we don't care if he's expensive and Powell's been awesome in his role and that's among the best trades the Clippers have made, I think, right? Powell is so good, okay?

He really is that good. Now, granted, look, if you're looking for assists and rebounds, fine. But a lot of these guys come up and they're just high-usage, less-minute guys. He's playing 26 minutes a game for them. He's shooting 45% from three. He's had seven seasons where he's been over 40% from three. The guy can light it up. He's shooting 45% from three. He's had seven seasons where he's been over 40% from three. The guy can light it up. He can put it on the floor. Granted, it took him like until his fifth year. And because maybe he's a little bit older because

he was a 22-year-old rookie, then he's like 26, 27 before it clicks. But you could see in some of those Toronto playoff minutes where it wasn't like he was the main driving force in the title there at all. He wasn't. But there was at least times where he was like, I just don't think this guy's afraid of anything. And when you look at the trade where Bledsoe never played for Portland, Keon played 66 games, Winslow played 40 games, that would have been a bad trade for just Covington. Right. Yeah. And Covington was making, what, 10 million a year at that point? That's what it was. what it was remember people were just like wait so they're just going to be able To do this deal because nobody else would take on both Of those contracts everybody should want

Norm Powell everybody should want this Even weirder why did Toronto trade him in the first Place even though I like Gary Trent but It seems like people are passing him around When Portland got him They were like we can't believe we got This guy for Gary Trent and Gary Trent Has a nice little run

there, but he's like, Norm scores on his own at like a really, really high level, which is a complete luxury. Like of all the teams that you go, wait, the Clippers have this guy? He's huge for them. That's it for the Retradables. It was brought to you by Nissan

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infotainment system. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. We're still a Team USA update. A little two-hour pod for us today. It's exciting. Confirmed. Embiid, Durant, LeBron, Booker, Curry, Holiday, Tatum, and Bam.

Seems like those eight are definitely on the team, which means there are four spots left. Anthony Davis has to be on this team, right? Just Anthony Davis has to be on this team, right? Just because of the lack of American bigs? Here's how I would approach this team. Be like the Lakers, but better?

We're going to have to stop Jokic in a game. We're going to have to stop Luka in a game. And we're going to have to stop fucking fill in a game. And we're going to have to stop fucking filling the weird point guard who's just going off and nobody can stay in front of him. So we're going to have enough offense. Those are the three matchups, right? Dennis Schroeder, people like that.

Shea and Jamal Murray on Canada. We need guards who can play defense. We need somebody who can defend Jokic and somebody who can hang the buka. So Embiid, Durant, LeBron, Booker, Curry, Holiday, Tatum, Bam. I would have AD as the ninth.

And then it gets interesting. There's three spots left and you're talking Bridges, Anthony Edwards, Palo, Halliburton, Derek White. I don't know how they'd go. I kind of feel like Derek White has to be in the team though. I would have Derek White. I don't know how they'd go. I kind of feel like Derek White has to be in the team though.

I would have Derek White and Drew. I'd have two glue guys. Drew can't be an option over some of the other options. Drew's in. Drew's already in though. I don't keep track of this stuff like you do. I do agree with you on this though.

Like being reluctant to want to play on this despite the commitment and the extra time and the wear and tear and all that kind of stuff to say, Hey, you're going to be around the best in the world. Like whatever you're with now with your team, you're now going to be around all these other people. Like you used to push this all the time.

Yeah. And I don't think I got it. You finally converted. Yeah. Cause you're right. Like if you were ever to say, Hey, this is your industry and you're going to spend this much time

but you're also, this is an industry where you're competing and you're going to be around all these other guys that are at the top of the industry and that's all it's going to be is this. How could you not want to be a part of that? How do you not think you would learn something from that experience that would make you better at your craft?

We've had some stretches in the past where it feel like guys were just super reluctant and And I always kind of felt like, Hey, I get it. You know, like the romanticism of it for some just isn't going to be there anymore. It's not the same thing, but knowing that you'd be developing with guys in this very specific group for the rest of your career. Like, I don't know why anybody wouldn't want to do this despite the time commitment. You be Steve Kerr, and I'm going to be the guy on the phone who calls Steve Kerr. So just react to what I say.

Hey, coach, it's Dame Lillard. I've decided to play for Team USA. I've got some great news. I'm in. Sounds good. I just signed an extension for about $35 million. I'm not stressed out anymore.

You don't think you'd be like, let me talk to Grant. That sounds great. I just want to make sure that we haven't preceded. Grant Williams? Grant Hill. Oh. Like, what do they do if Dame says he wants to be in the team?

They'll take him. You think they would take him over the stuff we need to actually win the gold medal? They would take him and they would close with different group. You said Ant's already on it, right? I don't think he's already on. I don't, I have not heard that yet. I think he needs to be on.

For the combination of like how intense he gets and some of the competitive stuff defensively, like today sucked for, that game was just a weird game and I know we, we opened the show with it, but I think Ant gets up for that stuff, and I think he would get up for it in this defensively. Yes. The question is, if he's not starting, what's that look like?

Ant, you're not going to start. It's 20-tip. It's going to be like I started my whole life. What do you mean? it's 22 it's like I started my whole life what do you mean she's coming 15 minutes a game here's some tapes

of Dwayne Wade in 2008 he didn't start so there's eight confirmed but Embiid is one of the eight and I

what would you put the odds on Embiid actually playing in the Olympics and if he goes then you have to get eight in right it doesn't make and what would you put the odds on Embiid actually playing in the Olympics? And if he goes, then you have to get Aiden. Right. It doesn't make a ton of sense for Embiid because we're

just always so worried about his health. But I would never get on the player for saying, hey, I'm going to do this. Who or any of us say, hey, you shouldn't actually do it? I also don't own the Sixers. But I just always worry about Embiid if I own or run the Sixers I'm probably

trying to talk Embiid out of it play in 2028 use this year to get healthy you got to make the finals never made a pass round two

you don't need this all right it's time for media corner you wanted this segment you care about college football way more than I do do you feel like All right, it's time for Media Corner. You wanted this segment. You care about college football way more than I do. Do you feel like combine culture has gone up a whole other level? And I can't tell if it's just because

we sent a bunch of people there and I care way more about this draft because the Pats have the number three pick. But I don't remember people being this invested in all the 40 times in the same way. And just in general, it just seems like more of a thing this year. Is it always been this much of a thing or is it growing? No, I think, I do think it's always been this much of a thing. Now, if you want to tell me if it's grown more in the last five or 10 years, I would totally agree with you.

I think the NFL network presence of this, but I just like, I love college football. The idea that I'm going to sit around in an afternoon and watch hours of guys running forties, like just let me know when they're done and I'll look them up later. Um, and I don't understand it at all. Yeah, but this isn't, I don't think this is new. I don't think it's new and it kind of feels a bit like, all right, so a bunch of people enjoy this and there's a void and this is NFL content, which crushes. So I'm not going to be upset for anybody enjoying this. I just think it's like really overblown. Like, I don't know how many times I saw that Joe Milton throw and you're like, all right, sick throw. Why wasn't he better? Right. Well, the, the Sam Hartman running in slow motion with his Charlie Whitehurst

hair flowing behind him was pretty fun. Some of the 40-yard dashes, do we care when the receiver runs a 4-2-2-40? The Patriots, they've drafted multiple guys who were fast as shit. Nothing happened with them. Taequann Thornton.

I don't know. It's just for some reason, it felt like the science of the whole thing went to a whole other level this year. And I think it's because people, it seems, it feels like football is more popular than it's ever been. It's definitely more popular than it's ever been.

In our lifetime. I think this is the single most popular it's ever been. Yeah, totally agree. Uh, the combine, like we used to have it up. I mean,

especially when you think about the job at ESPN where we'd have the monitors on and we'd be watching everything and guys would like come into the room and be like hey you know so and so just ran a 4-3-3 and i'd be like okay but what's the fucking segment what's what's the second like xavier worthy he flew same thing as joe milton like wow you know he's all right he's all right like i wouldn't even i wouldn't even discuss him with the other guys in the wide receiver class this year that I love.

So I think everybody kind of knows what it is, so I would never be upset for how overblown it is. But yeah, I think it's a little weird sometimes to just watch people like incessantly. I just think that, look, if there was no NBA content for a really long time, and this is the only thing we had.

But look, I go to the Combine every year for the NBA, and I don't tweet. I screw around. Hugo Besson, who's going to get in front of this guy? No one can stay in front of him. Hugo Besson. Besson. You know, I don't. The only things I care about is like, you're right. You're totally

right though. But I don't, I don't think this is like a one year massive spike. I think this has been going on for a few years. I was trying to figure out why I'm more immersed in it. Cause I never cared about it. And obviously the Pats have the pick, but also I just think football writing and football coverage is better. There's more people that I actually trust their opinions who put in real work and a lot of them were there. So when they were tweeting or talking on podcasts about, here's what I saw, I was just more interested than... I think in the past, it was a lot of talking out of your ass media coverage with some of this stuff. Now it's people, they're going to the combine and try to find specific things. I was the most interested in how much Jaden Daniels was going to weigh.

That was the single thing I cared about the most because it really feels like the Pats might get him at three if they keep the pick. There's a lot of buzz that they're going to trade down. And he's basically built like a Steelers second round receiver. It's like 6'4", 205, seems to be the buzz. He's listed at 210, but I don't think anyone thinks he's 210. And I just was really curious to see what, is he 203? If he's 203, is that guy going to have a career? Is it what happens the first time he gets pancaked by Jalen Carter?

Does he get up? Whereas like Drake May, I think it was two 30, something like that. But, um, but I was interested in that other than that, like the difference in a wide receiver running a four to nine and a four, four, one, like, uh, honestly, does that really matter? It's like if a three point shooter is 42% versus 39%. So out of a hundred threes, he made three more than the 39% guy. It's not like make or break, you know? No, I think it's actually, well, maybe the only thing you can think of is like, sometimes it'll be like, hey, this guy's a good three-point shooter. It's like, well, does he only take catch and shoot corner threes?

Because to me, that's not really being a great shooter. I mean, it's an unbelievably valuable thing to have. Like you can keep him in the corner. It stretches the defense there a little bit. But like you're telling me, if he puts the ball in his hands and has to get a shot up off the dribble, like he just can't make them at all. So with this, but here's the thing.

Everybody knows this, you know, but we just do it anyway. So if you went to the combine, what would you care about? Nothing. You're like, I'm doing podcasts from a week from the combine. What would you throw yourself into?

Anything? The shrimp at St. Elmo's? I'd probably do it once, yeah. Is there like, I got to watch... I've been to Indy enough. I've been to Indy enough. The D-tackles are running their 40s today. I got to get there.

No, I mean, maybe if there was a receiver who had like bad hands and you'd watch him in the drills, just again, have bad hands, you might go like, fine. Like whenever I go to the NBA combine, it's just a lot of it's physically like okay this isn't the top level but it's also a really good collection of players

even though there's barely any first rounders are going to play in it but like physically like i remember watching drew timmy in the combine and you were like oh okay like this is a problem all right and then you watch christian brown in the, and you're like, are you serious? This is nuts. You know who looked great? It was Derek White. Kyle Kuzma also looked really good. The Kawhi shooting around story, which I've told too many times already.

TJ McConnell making a kid leave. So at least there with the games, even though you're disappointed by the rosters, there's still going to be some moments where you're going to see somebody physically look differently. So with the combine, it's even harder to come up with any of that stuff for the NFL. I think everybody knows that it's kind of silly, but it's their silly. And so if they're into it, if the NFL media world is into it and they're obsessed with it for a few days, who cares? Good for them. By the way, Jaden weighing in, like Bryce Young last year, that was the big thing with him. Like, is he even 190? I heard he's 179 or whatever. He weighed in at 204. I think you can make yourself like blow up if you really want to, to weigh 10 more pounds. You could probably really do it. He looked like the smallest quarterback ever this year because at least Kyler's thick even though he's smaller interesting so people can beef up like so Jaden Daniels could show up and he's like I'm 216

but then he'll actually be 203 in August yeah I think you could figure out a way to just bulk yourself up not with muscle in that short amount of time. But I'm sure there's ways to figure it out. If fighters can cut that much weight for the weigh-in and then get it all back,

I mean, I know this is a little different than that. I just think it was like, oh, Bryce weighed in at 204, and everybody's like, okay, great. He's awesome. He's a little thicker than you thought. This is great. And then the first game, do you remember how small Bryce Young looked out there all season long? It was like he's never going to complete a pass in the middle of the field

this entire season was the feeling you got by week two. He seemed like there were all these giants around him and it's just, so you just don't know sometimes. That's the thing with Daniels where I know he's an incredible athlete. He'll be so much fun to watch.

I know Kyle will buy a jersey, but I just worry about the size. It feels like we're trading back though. It feels like we're headed for Baker Mayfield and trading back seems to be the buzz. And I don't feel great about it. Because if Drake May is there at three and they don't take him,

I think, and you trade back from that, I think that's nuts. I like Caleb a lot. I've just kind of like, I think May is just kind of a baller of a guy where it's not going to be perfect all the time. I think Caleb does the hard things really well already. And then Jaden was like, I couldn't believe it really because I'd watched the first year and didn't really love him. And then going into this year, I couldn't believe it really because I'd watched the first year and didn't really love him. And then going into this year, just week after week, it got

better and it got better. And then it was like, okay, look at this corner route that he throws. All right. Well, last year, this is how often he completed it. And these are the numbers in his rating on this throw. And then you would see what it was this year. And it was a completely different guy. So even if the eyes like dude the old miss game like they didn't have a chance defensively lsu's defense stunk on defense uh lsu's defense obviously that just uh was a little redundant there um i thought i thought jayden was was really good against alabama you know and then he got popped really bad there at the end so he was he was, he won the Heisman.

He's awesome. There's no questioning who he was this year. But I've given up on quarterbacks. I've basically given up. Unless I'm like, hey, no doubt with this guy. Or, nope, I didn't see enough with him. And I can't believe he's getting a second or third round grade. And then all the rest of these first rounders, I've gotten less confident

about it over the last however many years. How high would J.J. McCarthy have to go for you before you became you were like, okay, this is fucking stupid. What number? I don't know. McShay likes him a lot more than I do, which makes me think I'm wrong. I know he's a good athlete. I don't know. McShay likes him a lot more than I do, which makes me think I'm wrong. Um, I know he's a good athlete. Uh, did good in the cones.

Good cone time. I just don't think he was asked to do all that much. You know, they didn't have the greatest outside guys or anything like that. They didn't have to do any of those things and they won a national championship. So maybe there's way more there that McShay sees that I don't see. I like some alarming throws to the left. Oh, did you watch that? Yeah. championship. So maybe there's way more there that McShay sees that I don't see.

Some alarming throws to the left. Oh, did you watch that? I've watched everything. This is the biggest Pats draft since, I don't even know when, since the 90s. Yeah, I like Penix a lot still, but he's had the two knee injuries.

He's older. It's the Brandon Roy thing. Yeah. Where it's like when the Celtics just took Brandon Roy up their board. They're like, we're not drafting this guy. Our doctor won't let us draft him. All right. That's it for the combine. That's it. It's a subdued media corner this week. We'll have to

come back harder next week. Plug your YouTube show, by the way. Yeah, Tuesday we're going to do a live show on Tuesday. Wrapping up all the Combine stuff. So much better Combine talk than what you just heard. And then we'll do Life Advice Live as well. All right. Good to see you.

All right. That's it for the podcast. Don't forget, you can watch clips from this podcast on youtube.com slash Bill Simmons on that page. New Rewatchables coming Monday night. Roadhouse. Watch clips from this podcast on youtube.com slash Bill Simmons on that page. New Rewatchables coming Monday night, Roadhouse. And I will see you on this feed on Tuesday. Thanks to Kyle Creighton.

Thanks to Steve Cerruti. Thanks to Priscilla. See you Tuesday. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the first side of the river I don't have Must be 21 plus in President's like states. Fando is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit Fandle.com slash RG in

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