The Bill Simmons Podcast - Wemby Gets Revenge, Morey’s Out, and a Trade-Fueled Mega-Mailbag With Kirk Goldsberry and David Jacoby

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Kirk Goldsberry to discuss the Spurs taking a 3-2 lead against the Timberwolves and the 76ers moving on from Daryl Morey (2:27). Then, David Jacoby joins to answer some mailbag questions with Bill and Kirk (41:49). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Kirk Goldsberry and David Jacoby Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Uber Eats makes last-minute gifting easy. https://www.ubereats.com/ The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Bill Simmons podcast brought to by Fandul. We're also brought to by the Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Tropic Thunder as part of Comedy Month, which we tried to tie into Netflix as a joke. All these movies are on Netflix, by the way. So we did Tropic Thunder Monday.

That was me, Chris Ryan, Van Lathen, and first-timer, Joel Anderson. I'm pretty sure next week is going to be Borat. So I'm just giving you a heads up. That's also on Netflix. They have a bunch of great comedies in general, including a bunch of comedies that we've already done on rewatchables, like 48 hours, Mrs. Dalfire and Long Cape Pauley and Ghostbusters, on and on and on. So go check that out. Coming up on this podcast, Kurt Goldsbury and I are going to recap an impressive Spurs game five win over Minnesota.

I have some big picture of thoughts about this game that aren't even tied to game five. So we'll hit that. We're going to talk about Darrell Moria getting out. out of Philly. And then we're going to go back in time because Kirk and Dave Jacobi and I did a mailbag on a whole bunch of NBA stuff. And it's really fun. So it's all next.

We're going to take a break. Hit Pearl Jam and then Kirk. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandul. It's been a wild playoff run. Not over yet. Fandall wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan. Fandle, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays during a

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Kurt Goldsbury is here. He's going to be with us throughout the podcast because we're doing a millbag with Jacoby later. I'll just tell you my basketball fan take coming out of this game because I really thought Minnesota had a genuine chance to win this series and who knows, they might win six and seven. As a basketball, fan, you're starting to really see the ceiling potential of where this spurs thing could go, right? Big spotlight, big games, more pressure now. It's like, who's going to fade from this?

Who's going to jump up? And you're seeing some of their guys, Harper specifically, where it's like, oh, shit. Like, this might be happening sooner than we thought, which is great. Because I've talked about this a million times. I like when we have great teams. That's what I grew up on. That's what I grew up on in the 80s and 90s. I like to see awesome teams.

So basketball fan bill is like, this is cool. Spurs, thunder. This is going to be great. Celtics fan bill and what are we going to talk about for eight months a year, Bill? It's kind of like, are we headed toward a world where we might be fucked here with this. Okay, so you say the San Antonio thing? Are they just going to be levitating above us for the next six, seven years? Like, talk me off the cliff.

Well, it's not a cliff where I'm sitting there in central Texas. But yeah, dude, there was a moment at the end of the third quarter where I could see why Bill Simmons, the sports guy, would feel that way, specifically with Dylan Harper, attacking the rim, finishing with his left hand, hitting layups high off the glass over Rudy Gobert's outstretched arms. Physicality, rebounds in traffic. I mean, it was the whole thing. Yeah, Stefan Castle guarding Julius Randall, making Moldz fans completely lose their mind with a Randall's stat line that I'm sure we'll talk about. But yeah, these three dudes and no disrespect to Carter Bryant, Deerrin Fox, but when we're talking about the brightest futures in the NBA, I think the San Antonio Spurs now have the best young trio in the league by far with Wembe,

Castle, and Harper, dude. And I don't know which Castle or Harper is going to be better. But yeah, what are we talking about? We're talking about a 22-year-old Victor Wenbanyama, a 21-year-old Stefan Castle Bill, and a 20-year-old Dylan Harper making huge plays in a second-round playoff series? The Harper thing is crazy. We knew it was good. We've been talking about it all year. In the playoffs, the stuff he's doing is like year three slash year four Kobe, where he's just coming in and changing the flow of these games. Like he shouldn't be doing this yet. Like Kobe came

in the league right out of high school and, you know, had that really rocky first series. He didn't really start to look like kick-ass Kobe. I don't think until midway through year two, which is where Harper is now because he's been here in college. But for point cards, this should take longer. You shouldn't look this comfortable. You shouldn't be a two-way player already. You shouldn't be coming to games and swinging games like he's doing.

And I was texting somebody about this. Like, to me, I don't say this lightly. Like having Harper and Wemby back to back, and I feel like I'm disrespecting Castle, but I think he's going to be third in this. We saw this when the Celtics added McKay. when they had bird. We saw this when the Celtic, when the Lakers added

worthy after they had magic. And we saw it when the Bulls had MJ and then they were able to get Pippin. I think Harper's potentially is a second banana. I think it's realistic to think this is a guy who could be as good as those guys, that he could be a first team O'NBA guy and a

really impact awesome second banana. You're watching in a real time. Everything we have learned about basketball, these teams happen faster than they thought. These young guys come up faster than you think. And he's, I loved him already. I can't believe the shit he's doing in these playoff games.

Yeah, it's the son of Ron Harper, these moments where he feels the contact on the lane line and a lot of guards of any age would either go to the floater or like look for a kickout. But he's like, oh, I'm going to lower my shoulder now and then go to this incredible finishing package I have through contact a lot of times. And it's just, but yeah, he has the best. footwork, the best feel for the game of any young guard in the paint. There's times where I think, Bill, he really reminds me a Shea, where he is just the smartest

scoring guard inside the three-point line of any young player I've seen. But he was spectacular tonight, and particularly in the third quarter. And one of the things that's when it was starting to become a game in the third quarter and it felt like, oh, here we go. This is going to be an awesome game. We both love Luke Cornette. But it's a roller coaster. It's like when LeBron came out for those Cavs team and you're just like, oh, my God,

are we going to survive the non-Lebron minutes? We just watched the lead go away. We had that in the second quarter in this game and it looked like, to your point, it was going to happen again in the third. And at that moment where Dylan Harper really made a few plays on both ends of the court that just grew the lead back to a comfortable margin.

I'm glad you brought up Shea. I think that's a really good comparison. And it's because of the patience and the footwork. That's it. He has patience already, which you should not have when you're 20. And he had the footwork coming in. That was one of the things that made him special. I've talked about before, I was going to those quipper games when Shea was a rookie.

Harper's just way ahead of where Shea was. We don't like Shea. We thought Shay was going to be really good. I thought he was going to be like this glue guy, athletic defensive guard. There was some offense there. But clearly like a winning player, Harper's like, I don't. honestly don't know what the ceiling is for him. I think as long as

SGA has the best guard in the league title now and he's going to have it for the next couple years and Edwards is right underneath him. But I think Harper at some point in his life will wear that crown unless he gets hurt. Well, that's what I would say the ceiling is SGA. And I say that with a great amount of respect. I agree with you.

He's one of the best guards we've seen in a very long time. But when we're talking about the ceiling of this dude, that's where I would say. And to your point, Like, the Oklahoma City Thunder would not have SGA if he was this good at Dylan Harper's age. There's no way you would get off this guy. Right. So I think, look, that's the ceiling.

SGA is one of the best players in the world, if not the best player in the world. But Dylan is, I mean, you're the, you're the historian of basketball. 20-year-olds aren't supposed to do this in the NBA playoffs, right, Bill? I was thinking about the first, McKale's rookie year, the Celtics won the title. And he was a six-man. they had Maxwell, they had Bird, they had Robert Parrish. Like it was a really deep team.

And he would come in sometimes and he would swing games because he had some low post stuff but he had the defense. And there were times, especially in the Philly series that year, when he came in and his defense definitely affected the game

and you're like, oh, this guy's pretty special. Like there's really something there. McKale was like at least two years older at Dylan Harper. I'd be like if Dylan Harper Harper after his junior year was doing this and that's the part.

I know these guys, you know, I know they mature faster now and I know I get it. Like we shouldn't be surprised when somebody's 20 and impacting a series like this. But you talk about later in a mailbag, we're talking about Deer and Fox in a later segment. And like, you have Fox. You think Fox is going to be a bridge for a couple years until you can get to these guys. And it's like, do you need a bridge? Like, what's Harper going to be like next year with a year under his belt, you know?

Yeah, that's where I thread the news. needle, you do need the bridge and I applaud the move to get Deeran Fox, but this is the best case scenario where you have the depth right now, which was huge tonight, it's been huge in this series, but you start to look out two years, three years down the road, you start to say maybe we have too many great guards and we don't have enough strength up front next to Wembe, somebody to play with Nasry and Jane McDaniels, man, and they're playing their hearts out. And that's where the spurs look a little thin to me. It reminds me of the thunds. under pre-Hartenstein, where they're a little bit soft in the middle sometimes.

That's a good comparison. Yeah. So Carter Brian played 12 minutes today and Kelton Johnson played 22 and was great. And that's kind of their patchwork size next to Wembe. They don't really necessarily, I actually think Carter Bryant's going to end up being that guy. The piece, like I was thinking about in context with the Timberwolves, who, who, after game one, I thought there was a real case. Like, wow, this is two straight conference finals for them. San Antonio's young, not quite ready yet. And I really felt like it was a 50-50 series

after game one. The odds didn't really fuck that. And now I'm looking at Minnesota. You know, they got their asses kicked today. What did they finish shooting? 38.6, 27.3. Which is right or their season average. I mean, there are series average. They're shooting under 40%. And a lot of trouble, well, a lot of trouble against. the defensive pressure sometimes. And the one thing I was worried about with them even early in this series was like, man, they're kind of relying on Mike Conley here.

I don't know old guys in a series. And then you look at tonight, what was he? 16 minutes, 5 points minus 6. But this is Mike Conley. Kudos to you. You're playing at this advanced age, but you see the young guys in the athleticism

and the speed that these guards are at. This is the San Antonio advantage when they can just put any combination of all the young guards or if they put Vassell out there or whatever, really the only team that has the kind of firepower to withstand it is probably OKC. Yeah, I'm really glad you said that. There was a moment where our man, Stefan Castle,

goes out with his third foul, eight minutes left in the second quarter. Yeah. And then you just see that depth coming in so important. You see, you know, everybody from Carter Bryant to Harrison, Barnes, Dylan Harper, Kelton Johnson played the best game of the series. Yeah. But this is a deep team.

I think Spurs played 10 guys before garbage time. And really the wolves are a thin eight there, Bill. Yeah, they're like a seven. Yeah. And that's because I mean, Dante DiVincenzo. And what I wanted to ask you about is is the Ant Man's not the Ant Man right now. He's, he's one of my favorite players to watch on the planet. He, I believe, had fewer field goal attempts than I.O. Desunum, that is, that's,

not a great stat. He is not attacking. He didn't have that swagger as much today. Well, they're going every other... Going every other day. Probably not great for him. There's a three-day break, so they don't play again until Friday.

Could potentially help him. It's really going to help Mike Conley. They got to figure out the Randall thing. He didn't shoot well again. Today, there's another guy that we didn't even talk about yet. I'm really proud of us. Victor Wambayama.

Oh, yeah. The French guy, right? One of the French guy. I don't know if he saw the beginning, but he scored a lot of points early before they took him out. He had 16 points in like six minutes, and it was a good, fuck everybody.

I'm still mad I got kicked out of game four. I owe you guys. He finished with what, 27, 17 and 5, three blocks. He's plus 24, 32 minutes. And so you have that piece, too. Well, here's the thing that Spurs fans love. So he lays an egg in game one. Okay, Minnesota comes to San Antonio steals game one.

And he was, he played like shit by his standards. And so you're sitting here in game two people like you were like, oh my God, can Minnesota win this series? And the whole time Victor is prepping to come out. And he comes out in game two and the wolves don't score for whatever, how many minutes. And he was awesome. And then obviously in game four, he gets kicked out with the elbow deservedly,

by the way, as much of Spurs home, as I am. How was he going to come out in the biggest game of his NBA career? And he came out again on fire and just dominated the first eight minutes of this game with what was he as 16 and 11 in the first quarter? Are you kidding? Yeah. And if I'm okay C thinking about the next series, you know, what am I getting from J-dub? I need I need all my horses for this next series. And I don't, St. Antonio, the question with them was, well, History of the league says, dot, dot, dot.

Nobody under 25 can lead a team no title without having a taste of it first. No young team just that get thrown in the playoff fire can survive that first year. And I just feel like all bets are off, especially with how Castle is playing. But on the OKC side, they're not 100% healthy. San Antonio, you know, knock on wood. San Antonio feels like they're running on all injury cylinders. But with the Minnesota piece, pretty devastating. Yeah.

You win seven playoff series over the last three years. You kind of had a team built. The league has these little three, four-year windows with the way the tax works. That you can, and maybe OKC in San Antonio would be a little bit of the outliers because of their young guys. But for the most part, three, four years, that's what we just saw with the Celtics. And you try to catch lightning in a bottle for one of those years. Celtics caught it in 2024. They add

holiday. They add porzengis and they're just able to, you know, everything kind of aligns and they're spending a ton of money. If you're Minnesota, you just basically went all in. You got rid of all your picks. You're playing a San Antonio team that this is the worst version of the team you're going to play

for the rest of the decade, right? You had bad luck with DiFenzo and you, and it's not 100%, but he's not 80%. He's somewhere in between there. Gobert is going to be. year older, you're not going to have Conley, you're not going to really have a way to get better. This was kind of it.

Yeah. And I don't know if I'm Tim Connolly, and I guess I'm not getting the Dallas job because they gave it to Messiah, but I don't know what my move is at that point other than dangling Randall everywhere. I like their position a little bit more than you. I think that I would say, Ant Man, still 23. Devin Chen. Remember, there's a team without Ant and Devinchenzo that beat Joker in a game six. I like their core. I could talk myself.

I think Finch is a really good coach. This is, you know, this is where I wonder if our standards are too high for too many teams. Like, they made the final four of the last two years. They have one of the best young players in the league. Can they get through with McDaniels, Ant Man, Gobert, Nas? I kind of like that core bill. And I don't know, we'll see the one thing that I think you and I will agree on is it's very annoying to have Alex Rodriguez in the conversation because normally I have

right you got a good against him yeah yeah I love these guys and I want them to do well but I was like yeah I wonder what Arod wants to do with that that just sucks for me as a red socks guy well it's interesting that you I mean I agree with you they made the final four two years in row they went they knocked out Denver I think they've done a nice job going toe to toe with with San Antonio in the series might go seven for all we know and then it's not over who knows with young guys in a game seven I was just thinking holistically, the goal is to win the title. Yeah.

And you have Ant who is one of the best five or six guys in the league, and you have this veteran team around him, and you have a real identity, and you have defense and all kinds of things. And it's tough, man, these windows close fast. You just never know. Like, we don't know. Gobert, I think, has defied the aging stuff to some degree, because usually we see these centers start to get a little mummy-ish

and a little gamey right around now. I don't feel like 100% he has. But the bigger thing to me is there's not a lot of moves. And you're in this arms race with these two teams that, an OKC is 13 first rounders over the next six years. Not to mention all the other shit they have, not to mention AJ Mitchell emerging as like the breakout star of the playoffs that we weren't expecting.

So I don't know. I'd be really bummed if I'm a wolf fan because they never have made the finals. Yeah, I kept one. wondering like, man, I don't know the math. The salary cap is not my, my expertise, but like keeping Nikiel Alexander Walker last year, they could have used him in this series. Obviously, their offense is struggling. He's such a good player in Atlanta. He was good for them last year. He would have cost them like a hundred million dollars a year if they kept them. Like the way the taxes,

they're paying like three times as much for him. Yeah. So they, but yeah, that, that's like, you're alluding to it. Like the new CBA makes it nearly impossible to keep a contender together for five years unless they're all rookie scale guys. Right, unless you draft these suits. Yeah. Right, which is what the best teams in the West have done with R.C. Buford, Brian Wright, and San Presti's work in Oklahoma City. So yeah, I don't know. I think Ant Man's still going up. I think you have a lot to be happy about Minnesota. But yeah, I think anybody in the West, to your earlier point, is staring at these two juggernauts now at the top of the standings. You know, like, what are we going to do? And by the way,

We're not breaking new news. This has been a storyline the entire season. It's just feeling more real to me because I think Minnesota is really good, right? They got their asses kicked in the second half of that game today where it was like, Jesus. You know, and the home team's supposed to win a game five. I get it. But, um,

it just feels like San Antonio is getting better to me, which is the part that would scare me if on Minnesota. They're getting better every day. Yeah. Here's my question for you. If Minnesota hypothetically in the Eastern Conference is a thing, three or a four seed this year, that team to go into the conference finals, right? Yeah, I would say, well, the Knicks are on this heater right now, but I think they're built

pretty similarly with, you know, two teams that are, they have a little bit of a window. I think the Knicks are a little bit of a lightning in a bottle like the 24, 25 Celtics are, where the way their roster set up, it's only going to get more expensive, whether they're going to have the appetite to keep paying for it. We'll see. Towns' contract goes up. Bridges' extension, I think kicks in next year, if it didn't already kick in, but it just gets pricey to keep.

Mitchell Robinson's going to be a free agent. What's he going to be worth? You do have these windows, and I think the Knicks' talent, competitive-wise, a guy going against the best guy and the other team, like they have the pieces to at least throw some haymakers,

but I would have said that about Minnesota too. Yeah. I like Minnesota's position. a little bit more than you. I think they're hoping expansion happens and they move to the Eastern Conference because all of a sudden their prognosis looks a little bit better, right?

Yeah. Let me ask you this. I wrote this down. Of course, I'm going to ask you this here. My only guest, and it's just the two of us. If we do get OKC San Antonio next round, I think this is the best series in eight years.

Okay. I like this. Yeah, I'm fired up. Yeah. just and now you can say oh there's been a lot of good series i'm not talking about entertainment value i'm talking about talent ceiling of the teams and the matchups that i went through all the all the we've had a lot of entertaining series i think you have to go back to 2018 when the rockets played the warriors the series chris paul ended up getting hurt in and the and the

warriors were going for back to back i think that's the last one with this kind of level of two teams that are basically mid-60s wins teams, maybe even better, that have a lot of guys at the peak of their powers or on their way up. And last eight years, we haven't had a series like that. We had the 2017 finals,

and we had 2016, Golden State versus OKC and then Golden State versus Cleveland. I think those were probably the three best series of the last four best series of the last 10 years. And talent-wise, next round would be on the level of San Antonio finishes. And it also, for the old guys like us,

it's like, oh, this does feel start to feel like a power struggle that's more than a year long. It feels like it's going to be like this for a while, like a Pistons Bulls situation or a Knicks Bulls thing where it's just we've had, there's thousands of those examples. But yeah, if that happens, Bill, like Wembe and Shea, to me they're the two best players in the world.

right now. Is that crazy, right? No, it's, I'm just, I finally giving up. No, no, no, no. Joker, I think he had his run. I think he's out of it now. Yeah, just some of the defensive stats we're seeing from Wembe, the fact that the Minnesota where Timberwolves are shooting like 37%

when he's on the floor in five games is his defensive impact is so incredible. But yeah, I think there's two of the best players in the world, us young cores in the league, great coaches, great organizations. I think you're right to look at it like that. This has the makings of a classic. Malleability too with lineups. Teams that can throw different looks at you depending on what the situation is. Both teams can go smaller. They can play three guards. They can play three guards, a shooter and a center. They can go bigger to, to some degree. Okay, C probably can do that a little bit better because as we said, San Antonio, feels like there may be one, one bigger guy short.

And then there's this roughing up Wembe thing, which, you know, it's funny, like, that I didn't get a chance to talk about the game when he elbowed Nause. And, you know, it's slow-mo. Slow-mo makes everything look worse. But it did seem like he sized him up for a second. But it was also 15, not to defend Wembe, but it was 15 small to medium things that led to him be mad enough to whip an elbow at somebody. Yeah.

Because you could tell the whole series, Minnesota's like, let's keep, let's keep banging on this guy. Let's keep fucking with him. Let's keep knocking him down. Like, just stay physical, stay physical. I'm old enough to remember when this was the strategy against Kareem. Kareem punched like five guys, including he broke his hand punching Kemp Benson or breaking Kent Benson's job. But Kareem, you could go find him on YouTube.

Kareem knocked down or knocked out multiple guys because he would just get fomom. fed up. Shaq was the other one we had, which Shaq, I think only, maybe he tried to punch Brad Miller. There was a few others. But Shaq, they would always pull his shoulders and you couldn't do the same stuff you did to Wembe. He was more like you tried to like kind of wear him down, almost like a boxer when you keep clinching a boxer. And he would get frustrated too. Wemby's going to have to deal with this this whole career. Minnesota's testing him. OKC has guys that will do it too. This is, this is why you have Lou Dort. And I remember when I worked at the Spurs, we used to complain about the contact allowances are so different for interior players than for guards.

Even back then last decade, it was crazy to watch like Dremont double arm bar Lamar Marcus, for instance, or Tim. And just like, okay, that's cool. But I think it's really interesting to compare the whistles of guards who attack versus a Wembe. Like, you cannot lay a finger on an attacking guard in this league. But the things that they're doing in Minnesota, by the way, this is great. This is very intelligent game plan. Do it until they call it. They did it tonight a couple times.

Yeah. McDaniels shoved them out of bounds on the play and they missed that. Nause nailed them twice. They teed up Naz for something they had been doing. And again, like, this isn't sour grapes. Do it until they call it. They hadn't been calling especially in game four. but to me it just really makes me think about how different the whistle is for different kinds of players.

And Wembe gets fouled a lot more than get called. And that is as old as the history of the game to an extent. But it's really frustrating in a time where our guards are getting so many tiki-tack calls to watch Victor get pushed around like that. Yeah, I don't like it either. Shack, you talked to listen to a podcast with anyone who played against Shack. And there's like, yeah, we fouled the shit out. of them. What are they going to call everything?

He's 380 pounds. Like what else we're going to do? Or else he just would have dunked every time. I'll be interested to see a Friday night. I think they dial up all that stuff with Wembea. And you have the Minnesota crowd. You have Ant on the three days rest. Yeah.

You have a Timberwolves team. They're on the brink in a lot of different ways because it's not going to get any better next year, right? The West is going to be Denver will lower. up in some way. Utah is going to be out of nowhere a contender. The Lakers are going to try to, you know, improve the team. Dallas is going to be better. And I'd say the West is just going to be better all the way around. And it's going to be hard to cement being the third best team. What happens if Houston gets better? You know, you just, you just don't, what happens if

Yannis gets traded on those teams? You just don't. The Clippers are getting the number five pick. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Impressive Wemby game. I'm just blown away by the Spurs. Like to watch young guys play like this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. This is something that should be two years from now happening. And it's just like it's sped out. It's like listening to a podcast at 1.5 speed or something. They're hitting these check marks. Yeah.

Like the Harper thing just breaks my brain. Point cards don't do that at age 20. They're not supposed to have control of playoff games for eight, nine minutes. So anyway, before we go, Darrell Mori got fired today. Oh, our friend. The Philadelphia 76ers general manager. A friend of mine for a long time, I've always tried to stay. You know, always weird to talk about, but I always tried to be neutral.

If they did stuff I didn't like, I would say it. If they did stuff I liked, that said it. So you knew there was going to be a fall guy after a pretty embarrassing sweep to the Nix where you had 70, 80% Knicks fans in the last two games. And there's a couple different things you could probably point to, the Embedd extension, the McCain trade seemed for some reason to be the catalyst for people to really turn on him. And a good example of, like, Sam Presti has it right by never saying anything. Darrell talks, you know, sometimes to his own detriment and made the sell high comment with McCain.

The irony is he traded McCain because they clearly told him to get into the luxury tax, right? So there's a couple moves you can make. Maybe trade Grimes. I don't know if Grimes had any value to trade Grimes without taking a contract back, which is hard. And in the McCain case, they got picks and other stuff. And McCain was kind of buried behind two guards. But that became the catalyst. So when I look at the job that he did in Philly, which was really up and down, like some really big hits and some misses too,

I guess my question, are they in a better or worse place than when he took over? Because he was able to get them out of the Ben Simmons thing. he was able to trade hard in and get some pretty decent picks from the Quippers back. I mean, I think one of them is unprotected in 28 or 29. VJ. Edgecombe, they pulled that off or they now have Maxie and Edgecombe as like the centerpiece for what they're doing. So to me, this isn't like, oh, my God, this guy fucked our team up. But at the same time, I wasn't surprised at all.

So why wasn't I surprised? Yeah, I think your worst contracts draft, which we'll talk about a little bit later, is the number one reason. When you look at what you guys had determined the one and two worst contracts in the entire association right now, Daryl did those deals. He did it with Paul George

and he did it with Joelle and Bid and what are they have in common? These are guys on the wrong side of their prime. Yeah. And he is committed to paying them ridiculous amounts of money in this second apron era. So that's what's it.

If they only had one of those deals, you'd be like, oh my God, they have a really good team building opportunity here to get over. But they're handcuffed. I mean, if Paul George is going to be healthy or Joel and B is going to be healthy, but you and I have seen this for too long to know. That's just not going to happen. So that's ultimately what it is.

I don't think it's like a disgraceful firing. I just think this thing they needed to refresh it. I think Darrell will get another job. Yeah. But ultimately, if I had to hang it on something, Bill, I would say those two contracts to Paul George and Joe L&B. That's what got it done. I would add a third one.

And this would have been controversial, but I also, you know, I was used to joke that Daryl has no emotion in any of this stuff. Like, he's just going to do what the analytic move is at all times. Like, that's the McCain trade. There was no emotion tied to that trade.

Like, if you and I were his conciliaries, and he was about to make that trade, we would say, yo, man, Philly fans really like this guy. Yeah. And if you do this, and he goes and plays well,

phone okay C, they're gonna be fucking pissed and this is Philadelphia. Like, I don't know. Like figure out another way to get into the luxury tax, right? But he's, he's analytics. That's just the way he plows ahead. I said this at the time. The move was to trade Embed when before the Knicks got towns,

when the Knicks were clearly desperately trying to, you know, made that all these picks that made an impact. And they had a real relationship with Embed. they had World Wide West and they had Leon Rose who were like, those, those are Embed's guys. Leon Rose was, that was his agency, you know, and I think out of anyone, they valued him the most. And you just had Embed being off these two seasons where he played the most games he'd ever played. And it was like 66 and 63. His stock was never going to be higher.

The history of centers and guys that size is usually going to start doing this. And I just think he could have gotten a fucking motherload from Philadelphia. Now, would the fans have been happy about it? I don't know. Yeah. But I think in retrospect, hard to say, but in retrospect, the move is like, I'm selling high, not on Jared McCain, but on Joe L. Mbid right now.

Yeah, that's probably right. And one more thing on the McCain thing, I always like to laugh at. Like, if Sam Presti is very interested in one of your guys. Yeah, hang out. Yeah, go back and be like, oh, what, what are we doing? Like, that's our best player or whatever. right don't trade with that guy when pat riley was in his prime or r c buford in his absolute prime and they were on the phone

people would be afraid to deal with them because they they had such respect for these guys basketball opinions what do you why would they want that guy oh yeah hang up the phone bill the brewers are like this too the red sox have traded for him two years in row with the brewers they basically have sam preste and the baseball and got fleeced each time so Yeah, so for Darrell, this is a 20-year run for him, right? He got hired by the Rockets in 06, took over the team in 07, had the whole Rockets run, came really close, had some bad luck, especially Chris Paul getting hurt is a great injury what-if.

Yeah. We have injury what-ifs every year. That's a really good one because they gave game seven at home. They were toe-to-to-to-to-with the Warriors. The Warriors were a little run-down at that point from 15, 16, and 17, 18. they were vulnerable. The team chemistry was going a little sideways. And then they missed all those threes in game seven.

That was the closest he got there. And then in Philly, never really felt like that team was ever going to actually make the finals. I never felt like they were. It felt like he sort of walked away from that Mori ball. I'm going to push the edge of the calculator over further than anybody else. And it felt like this Philly era Mori was more conventional. just signing the superstars and maybe even antithetical to some of the analytics movements,

including like, hey, dude, have you ever seen an aging curve? Like, don't overpay guys in their 30s. That's not something we should be doing. So, you know, it never really felt like a Darrell culture had set up in Philadelphia. Like you're alluding to these legendary teams with Hardin and Dan Tony in Houston that sort of changed the sport bill forever. And people say Steph, and I agree with that. But it was Steph shooting them, and it was Mike and Darrell building that whole team around the three-point shot that changed this league forever.

Also, the spending isn't a small thing either, right? Yeah. You know, the Knicks are spending right now. That's one of the reasons they have a really good team. They've been aggressive. Golden State during the whole run spent a ton of money to try to put together good teams. The Celtics famously spent so much money that the dinner check. came this season, they had to make all these trades or else they would have had to pay,

you know, 300 million luxury tax. Philly's not done that. They have not spent Philly and, honestly, Philly and I don't think Denver really has either. They've been two teams that had, you know, two of the best players of this decade, but always were pretty responsible with how they spent. I don't know if that would have made a difference with Philly, but it did make a difference with little stuff like the McCain trade. My last thing is my first games were at the spectrum in Philly and,

the 80s with Barclay and Dr. Jay when they they overlapped. And I was really stunned by the number of Knicks fans in the building in Philadelphia. And I wonder if that played into it. I wonder, could you imagine that ever happening in Boston or Madison Square Garden? It was kind of crazy, right? Philly, I think, has a stronger backbone than that. What are your thoughts?

I never, if you go back to the Dr. J era, and even go back, you can go back on YouTube, watch some of their home games. Not like huge crowds. I always thought when I was growing up, I always felt like they were a Flyers, Flyer City more than anything. Like that was like their team and Phillies, obviously,

Eagles. And I always felt like the Sixers were fourth, even though they had Dr. Jay for this great run. It felt like it started to flip a little bit in the 80s, especially after they won the title. And then when we got to the 90s, you know, they had a really bad run there. They trade Barclay.

And I just think that's an Eagles town first. And, you know, I don't know if the Philadelphia 76ers ever got there. Also, the process is pretty weird, man. Yeah. Like if we're going to do like a deep dive on, huh, how do you end up with 80% Knicks fans at a home playoff game? Maybe you got to look backwards at what did the process really, accomplished because you're losing four years of fans you have a chance, young fans trying

to decide on a team that's like, should I like the Sixers? Well, they intentionally lose every year. I'm going to like the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry instead. So I don't know. I'm sure there's a million different reasons for it. But I always felt like they were not like never really the main team in Philadelphia. I think that's safe to say. Yeah. Maybe that's it is. And I was just surprised to see that. And again, like you watch these environments and Minnesota or in San Antonio tonight. It's like, man, these crowds are electric. There's no way you're getting, you know,

30% of the lower bowl for the visiting team in these arenas. But in Philadelphia, which I think is a pretty good sports town. It's just crazy. Yeah, it's a weird one. Well, we'll see what they're, I'm sure, it's going to be tough this year because I don't know how many jobs are available, but I'm sure he'll be lurking in some way in that I don't see him ever. He could be a great podcast.

He could be a great podcast, though. who knows. So as his friend, I would almost recommend he didn't do that because I feel like that would get him into even more trouble. But he would be amazing because he doesn't always have the self-edit button. No, he doesn't have the filter. No. He'll just, so I don't know if I'd want him to have a podcast. But anyway, and so end of an air with Philly. We'll see, we talk later in the mailbag about is there, does Embed even have trade value? How do you even handle that situation? a whole bunch of good stuff coming. Me, Kirk, Dave Jacoby,

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Must be 21 or older to purchase alcohol. product availability varies per region C app for details. All right, we are moving back in time. It's mailbag. Me, Kurt Goldsbury, Dave Jacoby. We're recording this late morning Pacific time. So if anything happens in the next eight hours before the Timberl of Spurs game,

we're not going to apologize. We're all together in the 2014 finals in Austin, Texas. When the Spurs, Tim Duncan, and it was the last gasp of the Duncan era trying to pull off one last title. We were at a barbecue, we shot all kinds of stuff, we went out, it was great.

Jacobes, did you ever think the Spurs would be this relevant again? I felt like the last hurrah for them when we were there. I did think they would be this relevant again because it's just very spursian of them to do this, you know? Like there's only been a few dark spurs years

and they're dark, but a lot of sunlight in San Antonio. I believe we also had Prince Jeline with us, if you remember correctly. We had Prince Jeline. We reunited some of the FAB 5. Jacko joined the FAB 5 in the Chris Weber spot. It was emotional stuff.

Kirk, did you think the Spurs, I mean, granted, they nailed the lottery three years in row with three pretty obvious picks that I don't think they should get that much credit for, but three top four picks in a row, now they're back. But we worried that they were just going to become small market New Orleans for the next 30 years?

I wouldn't go that far. I knew they'd be back, but you're exactly right. Going one, four, and two in consecutive drafts. If the spurs get that opportunity, they deserve the respect here. They were going to get that right. And not only did they get those picks right, those were great one, four, and two, obviously, Wemby. Castle's a great four pick. And, man, Dylan Harper is a great two pick.

So, dude, I think that the bigger story is like, I think that one, four, two run, the spurs just got to get them back to relevance is one of the big reasons we have new lottery rules. Well, especially they were helped out that three teams passed on Castle was the other thing. That really helped them. I thought he should have out first. I have a bunch of mailbag emails for us. We're going to start with the lottery. And this is because it just happened. I don't know if you guys saw it, but the lottery happened.

Yeah. Watch someone on the line. Mike says on Monday's pod, you correctly pointed out how awkward and weird the half hour lottery telecast is. What about how lame the team representatives are? when they're on camera. They just sit there stony-faced. They barely even seem happy and the results are good.

I am a 49-year-old lifelong Wizards Bullets fan. I've been rooting for a team that has not won 50 games since I was two. My son and I felt like we were going to throw up during the lottery. We got in the top four

bouncing up and down. We won. We screamed so loud. Our dog left the room. What if instead of putting executives or former players in these seats we get super fans? Wouldn't that be more entertaining?

Jacoby, who would you put in the seats as representative? This is easy. You've come to the right place as a, you know, putting my producer head on here. You treat it like a reality television show. So you cast the people that are best for television.

Because the executives and the ex-players, they've all been there, done that. They're sort of like when you sit in the press seats at the game, you're not supposed to like cheer or like drink beer. It's boring. Like I'm going full reality television style. And we're getting the craziest, most boisterous fans. They're going to lose their minds.

when their team does something good or bad happens to them. Like we're auditioning it. Like it's like American Idol season three. You agree with that, yeah, dude, the gravity of that moment, the telecast just doesn't match it. The cadence happens too fast.

It's like, oh my God, what just happened? Like total craziness can happen. And like you said on the other podcast, like there's 15 minutes of nothing. And then they don't, and it's not like I want the American Idol,

pregnant pause after pregnant pause when somebody gets voted out or whatever. But dude, they don't, the gravity of the moment isn't respected on the, on the broadcast. And I do think it would be fun to put Joe House and have Joe House with a six pack of beer and just let them get going. And let's see what happens when, and they should have confetti fall. Yeah. Ultimately, my thesis is this, Bill, and you hit it on Sunday. The gravity of these moments is, is monumental.

We just talked about the Spurs. And the broadcast doesn't respect how important this is or how electrifying it is for these fan bases. Yeah, they seem very determined just to show us that everybody who's about to be picked as a parent and they're all excited to be there. And wherever I go, we've got like just the most generic, terrible interviews possible. And then we meet all the representatives. I don't know why. It's not like we interview any of them.

We just kind of see them for a second. I had no connection with them. Concanipples is like, why am I here? I had, so Jacoby, I had three ways this could go. And the fan thing, which, Mike mentioned as well. So you have super fans, you have a contest, you basically cast the fan. You could even turn that into some sort of reality show where it's like, here's how we landed

on the Wizards fan. Because the thing is, we're all talking about who's going to win the lottery and tanking and all this shit for seven months. And then we just kind of ripped through this lottery show in 10 minutes. Like, it's like a walk of shame for the league. They're just trying to get away with it. So celebrities, I'm sorry, actual fans who won a contest. then celebrity super fans as the second model

where you do have like your Joe House you have you know you go the Atlanta Hawks like pick anybody from the Atlantic music Atlanta music scene right Gucci Main could just be there as the Hawks representative and you just go through and then it's like we have an hour show and we talk to each representative

here's my third idea and I'm going back to the basics and I think this is actually the best idea I think the GM should have to be there as the reps I think this should be part of the job. And the reason I mention this is you have Kevin Pritchard there, who's just done this all-time hit or miss trade, where now it's a 50-50 chance to either be in the top four

or you lose the pick to the clippers. What's better drama than that? Like, the famous clip was Jerry West with the Grizzlies LeBron one, right? Where it's like, if he gets the first pick, he gets LeBron, second pick nothing. it comes up, Grizzlies their second and it just cuts to him and it looks like he's the guy in scanners whose head's about to explode.

So Jacobus, why can't it just be the GMs? Like, hey guys, if you're going to be a GM of a team, you're at the fucking lottery and you're going to be the representative and we get to see your reactions and this is just how it's going to go. And you have the GMs and the superfan sit side by side.

Oh, a combo. The Indiana Superfan can just like turn his head and look at picture and be like, look at what you've done. Why? You did this. Yeah.

Yeah. And just, I think Kirk hits something too. It's like, the rhythm of it needs to dramatically change. Yeah. Because like, let's every reveal,

let's discuss. You know what I mean? Like, let's discuss every reveal because it does, like, sometimes my brain isn't fast enough to like figure out all of the, the machinations of what it means that that team is in that spot.

And the host, the host, always misses one. I think Malika missed in the moment that Brooklyn lost their pick for like five, seconds. Well, Nagandi, remember Nagandi last year with the Sixers pick? Right. He was completely screwed. Well, that leads to the next question from Alex in Charlottesville. He said, now that we're going to have this new lottery system with the

increased volatility, how would you redesign the 30-minute telecast? How do we space out the reveals? Could we draw 16-1 in front of the audience? So the NHL did this the last two years. My dad, probably the biggest fan of the NHL draft lottery, like really genuinely loves it. And this year, the Bruins, if the Maple Leafs fell from five to, the six, the Bruins got their pick, but they revealed the picks in the correct order from one down. And the Maple Leafs won the lottery. And he said, even though it sucked for the Bruins, it was amazing. So I think it could be an hour. I think you reveal the picks. You reveal the first pick first. And then you go backwards, you know, through the top four, whatever we have with these

lotteries. And I think it's the actual GMs. And you just do it that way. And then you have like 20 minutes after where you can explain to the audience all the ramifications. Why not, Kirk? Why can't we do it this way? No, that's the way it should be. And it should be somebody like you and Zach and Bobby Marks reminding us what this means for the Dallas Mavericks or what this means for all of these. So would you stop after each pick for like two minutes? Yeah, I would. Okay. I mean, and Jacoby's the TV producer here. So I'd turn it to him. Jacoby, why can't we just have a full minute or two? Just be like, what does this mean for the Mavs? Let's reset where they are. What are the TV? What are the TV? people thinking.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I just said before. And another thing is, is I want to take it all in. I want to soak it in. It happens so fast. Right. You need time. We pay such close attention to this league that like even I am like racing up to keep up with the pace of the thing.

Why? Why are you doing that to me? Like make it more dramatic and make it me fully understand exactly what all of this means. It would be funny if the Oscars did it this way and they did like a this three, hour show. And then the last like two minutes, they just race through the best five categories. Best picture, winner. One battle. No, that's right. Dude. So last year when it was, it was, it came down to the, the spurs and the Mavs last year, right? And it was like, holy shit. Are the spurs going to get Cooper flag?

Right. You need to take like five minutes just to that needed to be like five minutes, dude. Like, oh my God, this is incredible for the state of Texas, first of all. But man, if, if the, if it's going to be Wemby and Cooper flag, yeah, like, let's have. five minutes there. Yeah, all right. We all agree. Derek from Indianapolis wants to know, as a lifelong Pacers fan, I have to ask, did the Pacers sell their soul for all the insane playoff comebacks in 2025? Because since then, game four of the 2025 finals became the Scott Foster experience. Game seven ended with Haliburton's Achilles. Howell Burton's Achilles. Howe Burton became the only NBA player to get shingles and put on weight and is on all that has to recover

from that too. And they lost their top four pick and it went number five to the clippers. Most fan bases lose the Pacers specialize in cosmic level timing. What was exchange exactly for those comeback wins? Jacoby, do you believe in the cellular soul theory, the Halliburton shot going up in the air? Do you think the karmic forces have to like balance each other out? I have good news and bad news for Derek. The bad news is absolutely yes. I mean, I mean, like, absolutely, yes, the shingles thing and the weight thing because of the medication. And this big trade for Zubach who was like great two years ago, but this year Clipper Zubach was not like tearing it up and then lose the pick. But the good news for Derek is he'll be the superfan representing the Pacers in next year.

Got your job. You're in your head. What do you think, Kirk? Do you believe in this stuff? No, that's not my job. But I think they need to be thankful. They have Tyrese Halliburton, guys. that you have one of the best point guards in the league.

This guy is offensive efficiency in a can. He had one of the more electric playoff runs we've seen last year. We just need to get that guy's foot and ankle right. And they'll be right back where I think they should be near the top of the east next year, Derek. So that's kind of near where I landed. Last year, it was an amazing ride for Pacer fans. Like, it didn't get better than that. I can't think of a more fun playoff run where they became the most memorable

thing about the playoffs, even though they didn't win the finals, which never happens, right? You think about the 25 finals. I think of the Pacers before I think about anything else that happened. So it wasn't terrible. They still have Tyrese and Siakum. They have Zubots, Nemhard, Neesmith, Tappen, T.J., Jarris Walker, Shepard. They have all their first except one. And they were losing Miles Turner either way last year.

So I don't, you know, the free agent centers this year weren't that good. maybe Hartenstein's in there, Robert Williams, Nurkich, maybe DeAndre Hayden. So you could argue they needed Zubats. The counter,

though, to that Zubat's trade. And the part that never made sense to me what happened is why did you have to do it in February? Because if you get the,

even if you get the fifth pick or the sixth pick, I still feel like the Quippers are going to be like, yeah, you're going to trade us that for Zubats? Let's do it.

The risk didn't match the reward. because I don't like making trades that are still going to be sitting there a few months later. They just could have traded Toppins contract and something smaller and the number five pick for Zubots and not giving up the other first rounder that was in there. So I just, I never thought the risk matched a reward. And I thought, Jacobs, I thought even they could have put like a thing like, wow, if this becomes the fifth or sixth pick in this draft, then we get our 29 first back or something. because I like Zubots, but it just doesn't match what the reward was, I don't think. Well, I don't want to, like, be too second-guessy after the coin flip went heads instead of tails.

You know what I mean? But I do want to say that I do like Zubach as well. I thought that, like, him and Hardin were a great duo a couple years ago. But when I think about the Pacers team in that electric run that you're talking about, what do they do? Like, they get out and run. Like, they don't want you to set up your defense. Like, they don't want to be in the half court. So I see a lot of, like, Zubach getting the rebound, throw.

rolling it out and then just kind of standing under his own basket. Go ahead, guys. Go ahead, guys. You guys take care of this. I'll be here. Well, the other thing, Kirk, is you do a trade like this and it's 50-50 odds, right? If they get the pick, Pritchard's a hero. You don't get the pick. Now your fans are kind of looking side-out at you, but now you put Zubots in a tough spot too, who's a really good player. I voted for him 13-M-B-A year ago. But now you look at him and you just watch him during games and you're just thinking about if like if keaton wogler's awesome for the clippers right you're just constantly thinking about that as you see zoobots the other thing i didn't like about the trade was before the trade deadline you do it and we thought there was a top four and then

we still knew after that the draft was good but we knew there were four guys and that's probably how the pacer's assessed it but where you're not factoring in is who's going to make a leap in February and March in college basketball. And what happened was Wogler and Aikoff made a little bit of a leap. So they're not in the top four, but they're really good value at five or six. And that's why I just would have waited. I feel like this trade would have been there in May, Kirk. Yeah, I wouldn't have.

As somebody worked for a small market team, like you're just taught, like don't trade your first round picks, especially when you're near the top. Like, just don't do it. Like, we're not, we're not playing in the free agency game. Free agency is largely dead anyway for everybody. Yeah. So like these draft picks, you have to be very, very sort of protective of if you're in a market like Indiana, especially. You're not paying the luxury tax. Yeah. Right. So when they made the deal, guys, it was like a Russian roulette moment. It was such an incredible moment. Like for that lottery, again, go back to the broadcast. Like that was a moment where the producers needed to be like, we need to give this the gravity it deserves after it happens. Right. Either the Clippers fans are going to go crazy or the Pacers fans.

We're going to go crazy. And it just, again, it blew through it. But, man, I would not have done the trade just as a small market guy. Don't give up a lottery pick if you're the Indiana Pacers. Mike Roar emails us about this. He said how in the podcast Sunday, I didn't see a conspiracy for the Pacers. Like the Pacers not getting a pick actually didn't. Conspiracy bill was not triggered by that.

Mike Roar says there was a conspiracy potentially. And he doesn't have a dog in the fight. He said the Knicks are set up to be good next few years. so are the Celtics, maybe even the Sixers. Three big markets. Do you think the NBA really wanted small market indie to get better and spoil the East party when they have small market juggernauts and Oklahoma City and San Antonio? Could they have had a third one?

That's all I've got. That's the conspiracy. I don't know, Jacoby. I kind of like it. I'm not buying it. Okay. I appreciate the effort. The parties that the Sixers are like set up to be good for the next three years.

It's like, really? Like the John Dean of Fall George making $100 million each. We have emails about that later. All right. I respected that. I tried. Dan from Tucson says, I'm sure you must feel conflicted with Jalen Duren after the playoffs so far.

A beast of the regular season. Many voted for him for all NBA, including I voted second team. Would you vote for him, Goldsbury? Jayland Duren's second team, clearly. Yeah, okay. And then he says, in the other hand, he's been off on the playoffs, getting punked by Wendell Carter and now the Cavaliers.

Restricted for age in the summer, what would you do? as the Pistons GM, would he get a max offer from other teams? Do you match it for your trade, sign and trade? Please help, Podfather. I'm a Pistons fan in crisis. Well, I think you're going to make the conference final,

so calm down a little Dan from Tucson, but it's a really weird one. Game 4, that might have been his worst playoff game out of all the bad playoff games. And what was interesting was Mobley, really, I thought Mobley was awesome in Game 4. I thought he really, you could feel him in the game, which has always been my disappointment with

Mowgli. It's like sometimes I'm not sure you're even out there. And yet, game four, you felt him the whole game. I guess the problem for the Pistons is, is Duren's offer sheet guy, Kirk? Yeah. If they're going to have cab space and you could keep Reeves, obviously have Luca and then Duren and make that your three, like, I'm just doing that. I'm overpaying them.

and then I can feel like I can do around the fringes. I think he could also be a Clippers offer sheet guy too, but I think somebody's going to offer him at least 40 plus a year, regardless of how he looked in the playoffs, right? Yeah, and then they're going to match it because you're the Detroit Pistons. You don't get Jalen Dern. Jailen Dern's 22 years old. Yeah.

It's his first real, I guess they had a deep playoff run last year, but it has been disappointing, Bill. 20 and 11 in the regular season, clearly all NBA caliber by my standards. But he's dropped down to essentially 11 point a game, eight rebound a game guy. And in the Orlando series, looked like the second best big man in the series behind Wendell Carter. That's not good. But, yeah, again, you're the Detroit Pistons.

We're not getting cute. We are going to make the conference finals, I hope, if we finish the series out. And he's a big part of their success and their plan going forward. So you're just doing it. You don't even care. Okay. What do you think you both? What's the other play?

You kind of have to do it. I want to give him credit to my. mismatch co-host, Verno, because he flagged this like two months ago. He was like, you're in a spot where you're going to have to pay Jalen Duren, and he, you know, you can dedicate so much of your percentage of your salary cap to him, and like maybe he doesn't deserve it. And maybe him underperforming in these playoffs is actually helpful to the Pistons, but I would be concerned about this, where I don't know if I'm ready to just sign

Jalen Dern to the max. I'm Cade and Dern forever, especially after what I, on the playoffs. Right. It's tough because we've seen teams get in just incredible trouble with this. I kind of feel like Memphis with Jaron Jackson was a little similar, right? I don't feel like he's a guy that should be making close to Max Money or Max Money and it kind of bore out.

The worst one ever was Bradley Beale. But we see with this Max stuff, especially with the way they change the caps, you know, the way the cap works, you basically only get two of these. So they're going to have to do it. And they're just going to have to hope that he had a bad playoffs. He's 22. And the pressure of the contract that was looming kind of scattered his brain a little bit. Because I'm watching him.

And it's like, this is not the guy I watched in the regular season. The guy in the regular season was so confident, so physical, was so good around the basket. And this guy feels like he's second guessing everything he's doing. So, you know, I can, it's understandable. If you're 22 and you have $230, $40 million waiting for. you're trying to win a title and you're just you put too much pressure on yourself so really tough one jacobs i don't know um do you uh do you remember when kade was out like he was he stepped up he was getting 30 point games and stuff that's what i really believed in jailing durn

but i'm watching the game last night i'm like i kind of like b ball paul in that spot you know what i mean i'll take b ball paul seriously like watching the game i was like that guy jumps off the screen like if i can if i can if i'm watching a playoff game and i'm like i'd rather have b ball paul out there than my max guy that That's concerning for me. We got an email. I didn't even put it in the document, but is B-Ball Paul the best third-string center of all time?

Can you research this? And I was like, I'm definitely not researching that. But if anyone has any thoughts on the greatest third-string centers of all time, please send them. Gabe from Orange County, I got this a few times. I'll give you credit to Gabe first. He was talking about how I suggested Oklahoma City FC as a thunder nickname. because they flop like a soccer team.

And he doesn't understand why that's not just OKFC. And he's saying he'd even buy a hat. What do you think, Jacob's? OKFC. Hold on a second. Multiple people wrote you about this. Well, because they were saying I screwed up. They're saying you screwed it up.

It's not Oklahoma City FC. It should just be OKFC. OKCFC is like, there's a team here. NYCFCFC. It rolls off the tongue much better than OK. So you go OKCFC. CFC. Yes, OKCFC. Not just OKFC.

We have an NYCFCFC here. Maxi Morales is my favorite player. OKCFC, Goldsparre or no? Yeah, that's a lot. But it does not give the fried chicken that OKFC does. It gives a lot of fried chicken right there. That makes house hungry. It sounds like you want some lemon pepper.

A lot of good benefits. All right, this is a good one from Andrew Ball. He said, I know you tend to avoid draft what ifs, but did the Warriors 2020 and 2020 and 2021 drafts change. the trajectory of the leak, there's not a lot of precedent for a team as good as the warrior is getting three lottery picks in a two-year span, and they pretty much whiffed on all three. What if they hit on multiple picks or traded them for real town? So I've talked about some of this before about Wiseman or Lamello. It's COVID draft. They can't work out any of those guys.

There's no March Madness. Understandable. They could have jumped back maybe and traded for Tyrese, but they claimed that nobody wanted to trade up. But even if you look at back, they have talked Detroit to trading up to two and they go back to seven and instead of Detroit taking Killian Hayes, they get Lamello and then the Warriors take Halburn. Whatever. That's a lot of what-of stuff. 2021 is more simple. It's basically they took Camingo over France and they took Moody over Trey Murphy. It's pretty crazy, A, that they went over for three and then B that they won the 22 title anyway. The part that I was interested in, guys, the Detroit. trades that they missed out on with those picks that they had just done like the LeBron Cleveland

thing. I've been like, fuck it. We're traded in these picks. Let's get a player. The best players traded from November 2020 because we were post-COVID through March 2021. Drew Holiday, six days after the draft. So that Wiggins would have had to be in it, but maybe you could have said, we'll give you the number two pick and Wiggins for Drew Holiday. I don't know if that Portland would have, I'm not, I'm sorry, New Orleans would have thought that was a better one. Harden to the Nets in March 2021. I don't think that would have been a fit. Vucevich, March 2021, there's no way the Warriors were to give in as much as Chicago Steepley did.

Here's the one that jumped out at me, though, guys. Aaron Gordon, March 2021 pre-trade deadline, basically is like Gary Harris, another, you know, who is that guy, RJ Hampton, and then a first. the Warriors could have traded like the number seven in Ubrae for Aaron Gordon and had Aaron Gordon from heading into the 21 playoffs on versus, I don't know, France. That's Jacob's, that's like a not a small what if, right? Aaron Gordon turned out to be like this huge playoff guy. He would have been perfect for them.

It's a fun what if. But like, again, like, it's easy to say now because at the time, at the time, I was like James Wise. is the perfect fit for the warriors. And I was like, this is going to go great. He can shoot. He's big. He can defend.

I was like, this is an absolute exactly what they need at the time. What if you kept the Weissman and traded? What if you traded the comminga pick for Aaron Gordon? Listen, I mean, Aaron, I mean, you know, they would have obviously gone on a much better run. And also the whole like two timelines thing, Aaron Gordon fits perfectly with, you know, the timeline that was winning the championships. It would have, that would have been amazing. I think that was the mistake, Kurt.

Like, well, no, just because Curry is not a guy who's going to demand stuff, you were at the Spurs when Tim Duncan was there at the tail end. Same thing. When you have no pressure from your star to do anything, you could try to do that dumb two timelines thing. And meanwhile, looking back, it's like clearly the move would have been Aaron Gordon, I think. Yeah, and look at the 2020 drafts, and you alluded to this was a complete, you know, cluster F, whatever. Like, nobody could see anybody. So you almost give a pass on wise man. I do think the next one is the more interesting one to look at for what they did and what a team in their position should have done.

Like doing comminga and Moody, I appreciate what they tried to do there. They missed on better players below Moody, especially. I think Shangoon is in there. He was. And yeah, you said, Trey, I'm looking again. Jalen Johnson is in there. Cool. Like, that team would have been much better if they drafted Jalen Johnson.

But they didn't. And draft is really hard. But, yeah, I think it is probably. in retrospect, you put a bunch of 30-year-olds next to stuff for one last run. Bill, yeah, it's a hard one. The bigger issue to me is for whatever reason in that cluster of years, which is like a year and year plus, there weren't like a bunch of amazing guys to go to Getcha Cubs.

Bill, so if you're going to go back in time and change time, I don't know, you're familiar with the like the films of time travel films. Have you ever seen any of those? You have to remember that, you know, if you put Gordon on the Warriors, what does that do for your guy Yokic? Right. And what does that do for the 22 finals? Yeah.

It becomes a back to the future thing. It screws up a lot of stuff. Gordon was a pretty polarizing. He was a pretty polarizing trade asset, though. Because people are like, what is it? Is this somebody that would be happy being like a complimentary player? Does he want to be the guy? I was a little similar to what Iguodal was.

All right, Chacobes, this one's specifically for you. It's from Jake, Jake in Illinois. This happened like three weeks ago, I noted it. Did you see the Laker playoff game with an approximately four-month-old baby sitting courtside next to the Lakers bench on its mother's lap? What the fuck? What are these parents thinking?

Do people not understand what a 6 foot 8, 240-pound person hitting you at full speed feels like and the damage it can do to a baby? Who intervenes here? Who's at fault? It's pure insanity should the sports are way in. I'm on the record always. I don't think anyone under like five should be courtside at a game.

I've seen, you see it, I don't know, once a week you see somebody go flying to the stands. I think it's irresponsible. I would never, I brought my eight-year-old daughter to a WMBA game in 2013, I think.

I felt a little safer on that one, but I just wouldn't in a million years, bring a four-month-old baby anywhere near a court-side Jacoby. You have seven kids? How many kids do you have now? I know that's how new one I've ate now. So that baby was essentially like an expensive handbag for that family. It's an accessory.

Like that baby, one of my big things is like, if a baby's not going to remember it, we're not going to Disney World. If the baby's not going to remember it, we're not throwing you a one-year-old birthday party. Like until you can remember things, you don't experience things. Also, put that baby to bed. It's night time. Like, what are we doing? It's like, they are just bringing the baby to be like,

look at my baby like it was a $100,000 watch or something. It's like that's a fashion accessory, a look at me, I'm a Laker fan in the front row thing. And like, the safety of the baby is whatever, but for me, it's more just like, this is stupid. Well, you obviously, the other thing would be like, oh, I took the baby because we couldn't find a babysitter. You're sitting courtside. I'm pretty sure you could afford a babysitter Kirk. I don't know where you stand on this one. Well, yeah, it is dangerous down there.

I mean, you watch this Wolf Spurr series. Like, dude, there will be at least drink. spilled, if not human being spilled over there during these games. I think that is a sound. It reminds me the exit row seating on an airplane. If you bring a kid on an airplane, you can't, try to get to that Delta exit row. That's not happening. Right. Good point. It seems, yeah, it's in baseball too. It's like they have net everywhere. It's like maybe we should be thinking about this, especially with kids under like three or four years old, right? Yeah, because there's two different ways you could have the person just flying in full speed, like doing the Roman rain spear on you,

basically trying to get a loose ball. You also get the person who tries to dive over the court side, but then they kick their leg and you get like the whiplash kick in the head. Either one of them not good for a four-month-old baby. I just, I thought that was crazy. I think that should be an automatic loser seats. Remember the Austin Reeves pass last night?

He just, he just, I think it was a left-handed just threw the ball right in the front row and it hits this guy's drink and explodes the drink. Like, if that's a baby instead of a drink, like that's huge implications there. Yeah, that would be bad.

Did Austin Reeves go to jail if he did that to a baby, Jacoby? No, the parents go to jail. Oh, yeah. We're going to take a break and come back with some Joelle Ambide questions. Oh, yeah. All playoffs long, I have been sifting through the slate and putting my favorite bets and parlias from Fandall's sportsbook on my Twitter feed, tweeting him out, trying to get as close to the game as possible. I share my favorite parlay along with possible add-ons. We hit on Friday with the Cavaliers.

and a bunch of different Mitchell point totals, depending on how aggressive you wanted to get. For game five, Pistons Cavs, the home team has won every game in this series. I think it continues. This is a Prove-A game for Duren. I actually like the rebounds for him.

I think this is the biggest game of his career, especially with restricted for agency coming. And I like the Pistons in that game. So I'll have some sort of bet for that. Futures, Nick's funder for the finals is even odds right now. It's probably the last time that will be the case for the rest of the playoffs. So if you're interested in that, Brunson, I think for the finals MVP is 8 to 1,

which if you like the next, I think they're 6 to 1 to win the finals. Just take the Brunson finals of P. Anyway, when I bet, I bet with Fandole, a brand I trust, easy to build NBA bets of all types on Fandole. And I know I'm getting great odds, payouts on my parlies, boosts every day. And I'll get my winnings instantly. Fandual, join me. Play your game.

This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that, that's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new Nespresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Iced, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that espresso kick.

And sometimes, a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at Nispresso. All right, Joelle Mbid email from Frank Farrell. He said the Sixers unexpectedly beating the Celtics won and beat enough goodwill that all my friend chats after the absolute nick thrashing subtly shifted from the Sixers should swallow Embed's money just to move on psychologically to the Sixers should trade Joel for peanuts to give him a shot somewhere else.

What insane careers he has had. My question, does winning an MVP automatically get you an automatic place in your Hall of Fame pyramid? if so, who is the lowest MVP in the pyramid. It has to be between Mbid, Derek Rose, and Westbrook. Well, I have Embed and Russ in my pyramid. I have their level two guys. I have Embeddead low 70s and I have Russ in the 60s. I do not have Derek Rose in the pyramid.

And I don't even really think it's debatable. Like you go through his career, it's basically the 2011 season when he won the MVP and made first team Omba. It was the only first team Ombia he won. And I just don't. I don't think it's enough to be like one of the best 100 guys in the history of the week. When I was researching this, though, in 2021, he finished ninth in the MVP voting. Are you guys aware of this?

There was a fan. There was a fan vote, which he won. And he got 10 points and finished ninth in the top 10 for MVP. Jacob says, Rose, a top 100, all-time guy for you? How do you assess his career? It's a weird one. this is much more your lane, Bill. I don't know if you know this.

I don't keep up moving, running. Yeah, but give me a Derek Rose. The power ranking of top 100 players of all time. That's the thing is peak Derek Rose is top 100, but the peak just didn't last that long. It's a very sharp point at the top of the mountain, you know? That's how I do. But for me, I look at it more or less like counting stats and stuff.

It's just like how he, like, you know, we talk about like roll gravity and gravity on the court. Just like fan gravity towards Chicago. attention, you know, barbershop discussion. Derek Rose sort of conquered that and led that and had a little bit of like an Iverson coolness factor in a different way. Remember when he didn't dance at the All-Star game? Like he was just like, he was sort of like cool in a different way than Iverson was,

but at the same in a comparable level. Like he sort of had like a culture implications too. He was incredible in person. I just think to me, Kirk, he's in the, he's in that group of just awesome guys. were the career they either had bad luck with injuries or bad luck with something else. And he's like first ballot for whatever that group is. But I don't think that career was there for. No, but it wasn't there for a reason.

Like his body broke. And the NBA playing this way, these guards doing what they're doing now this off and they're going to break their knees. And it sucks. And I don't want to penalize guys like that who are clearly all NBA level players, MVP caliber players. And if I'm ever going to be in charge of MVP or, Hall of Fame consideration.

Like, Derek Rose is going. Like, I love what Jacoby said. Culturally, he's important to the sport and its fans. You can point to its season in Chicago. Like, he is more significant than a lot of people that are currently honored in that museum. So that's a different combo. And I agree with that. I think if you win the MVP, you're in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah. Which is a little different than the pyramid because there's a little higher, like, the top hundred guys ever. But Hall of Fame, I think MVP's are in. You're the best player in the best. in the best league for one year, that's probably enough, I would say. Wait, can I ask you an unbeat question?

Yeah. How did you react after, on the heels of the Celtic series, watching Joelle do what he did against the Knicks? I mean, I wasn't surprised. Were you guys? It felt like he could,

he had a good week in him, right? Remember, I was with you in L.A. and Chris Ryan was like, we should sit him out game one. No, before game one, CR was saying, like we should maybe even sit him for both games.

We all saw it coming, right? No, it's Jacob's it's like a pitcher that maybe has an 85 pitch start every six days and you just have to kind of craft the rotation around it. But what's, I thought, honestly, I thought the same thing happened to LeBron in the round

two, like just going every other day when you're 41 years old. It's just, you know, there's certain things, the schedule is unforgiving. I don't think Embed was dramatically different between the Celtics and Knicks series, I thought the Knicks did a much better job of working him. Yeah, I agree with that.

You mean putting him in pick and pop and pops all the time? Yeah, making him defend in space. Sometimes if I have a fat guy covering me and pick up, I'll run from one side of the court to the other, like, you should just done that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the Knicks had better guys to throw at him too than I think the Celtics did. And also the Knicks are just playing out of their rides.

Like that seven game run they had with all the blowouts was, about as good as you're going to do in the playoffs. So, yeah. Eight game run, eight game run. You end up with the Celtics team that... Seven. Seven. You end up with the Celtics team that's trying to figure out what they are on the fly.

And then you go into this next team, that kind of figured it out. And that the Towns thing, did you, Jacobs, did you watch Towns? And we're like, why don't they use them at the top? He could be like Bill Walton? Because I don't ever remember you saying that to me. No. No. He has, like, over his Nick's tenure, he has...

a ton of like really fun highlight passes sort of like behind the back out of the post stuff or like you know like some like sort of yokeech like someone makes a back cut and he threads the needle so that he's shown that ability in flashes but not with this kind of quantity. I did not say you know we should

do make him the fulcum of the offense at the nail. Let's do that. They definitely Kirk wanted to be a little more or a little less Brunson-centric I think would have been the criticism. And it was like you know, kudos to them for figuring out 85 games into the season, but it was a really good wrinkle. Once they figured out how to not be so relying on Brunson, it was like the whole team took off. Well, it helps when Katz stays on the floor.

I'm going to say some really nice things about them. But man, some of these fouls, it's like, dude, don't be that stupid. You're too good for that. But yeah, I think Fred Katz on Zach Lowe's show yesterday had a great stat that the Towns's touches per 100 are way up in these playoffs compared to the regular season. Just another analytical piece of evidence that you guys are exactly right. They are relying on him to be a centerpiece of this offense and a passer in a way that we hadn't seen. And credit to Mike Brown here, too. Like this guy took a high stakes job and this Knicks run is featuring a lot of depth and a new look towns. And to your point, Bill, yeah, a little bit less Brunson hero ball kind of stuff.

You know, you know what this reminds me of Jacobs? A guy by the name of Dave Jacoby, pick up basketball days. just keep them involved. Water the plant. If Jacobi's running the floor, reward him for running the floor, give them the ball. If you go a little half court,

run a little pick and pop with Jacob's every once in a mile. It gets a little pouty sometimes. Yeah, you know what? Let's start rebounding more. I'll start running the floor more. You just kind of water the plant. A couple of things about Kat,

as you're completely right, is the offensive involvement creates defensive involvement. Like they're related. His defense has, much, much better. And also, like, you know, you guys aren't on, like, Knicks Reddit and, like, all of my Knicks group chats and everything. But, like, the whole story of the season, it was, like, November. He's like, I don't know my role in the offense. It's not clear yet. And then it was,

like, January. He's like, I just don't understand my role in the offense. And it was, like, I was, like, I still don't really fully understand my role in the offense. And it's like, well, I'm glad we figured that out in game four of the first round of the playoffs. You finally figured out your role in the offense under my round. Listen, some things take time. One more, Embed one. This one's a little more interesting. Just from Ted, that was all he gave, no town. The bear? Early rumors are that Darrell will be out in Philly. I'll believe it when I see it. Can we do a deep dive into possible trades for Embedde? My dream trade would be Embed for KD.

That's not happening. Does Embed make sense for anyone? Jazz, Kings, Pelicans, please tell me there's some option. All right. He's got three years, $200 million almost left. These are the only four teams I could possibly come up with. The Pelicans straight up for Zion. Pelicans just roll the dice, hope he gets healthy. I don't see them doing that, especially they're not exactly a lavish organization. So I'm going to say no on that, Kirk. Yeah, it's a no for me, Doug.

Kirk's just shaking his head sadly. One context question, you guys do the worst contracts draft, you and woes and house. Where did him be land this year? Do you remember? we was, I think Paul George won and Bid 2 or it might have been in reverse, yeah. Good context.

Then they beat the Celtics. Next team, I know, they did. Next team I have the Sacramento Kings just for Levine's expiring, just under the guise of it's the Kings, who knows what they're capable of. Vivek's like, we have Joel and Bede.

Yeah. Stoubzis. Can't be ruled out. Can't be ruled out. Can't be rolled out. It took a masterpiece. Stouskis. Yeah, you can never really.

on paper. We have, we traded up one spot to get Darius A Cuff. We have Joel and Bede. We're back, baby. They'd be, their fans should revolt if they do that. Golden State just for Jimmy Butler. So Jimmy Butler expiring

coming off knee surgery. Golden State with the 11th pick. They convince LeBron to come. They have Curry already and Dremont and they just they do the expendables thing that I've been joking about. I don't think Golden State should that. I'm just going to mention it. Jacoby's making a small smile.

I'm just thinking, can we get Mike Conley involved somehow? Al Horford. All right. It's really not going on stage. All right. This last one, I kind of talked myself into the Brooklyn Nets, who don't have their first run pick next year. Could we just do Embed for two years of Claxton and Mann who make 39 million and 36 million combined the next two years, just a straight salary dump. Throw in a year of clownie to make the contracts work. And if you're Brooklyn, now I have an interesting guy. Instead of the Liberty just blowing away my team every year where there's way more Liberty fans, sold out crowds and people, it's really

like Barclays is like a Liberty's arena, not a Nets arena. Now I have Embed. I still have salary space, maybe to go get a free agent or maybe to make Ionis trade with all my other picks or trade for whoever and I'm at least more interesting and I just hope he stays healthy. Jacoby looks like he smelled a terrible fart. No, this is the only one that makes sort of any sense. And I don't really, I don't know why Philly would be motivated to do this. Like, we're just going to get off the salary a little bit. But like, I was smiling a bit because the difference between Nets and Liberty games is,

it's absolutely wild. It's like difference between, it's like your birthday at like 25 and 55. Seriously. Like, it's so much fun. It's so funny. It's the same arena in the Liberty games. Completely different vibes. If you're the Nets, you can't say basketball doesn't work in Brooklyn

because the Liberty, it's as good as like half of the NBA games. It's awesome. So would you do that if you're the Nets, Kirk? No, no GM and my friend Sean Marks from my time of this first. No GM should be trading for Joelle Embed at this phase of his career with these. The amount of money that is owed, I anticipate if I had to put the over under a number of games, Joelle and Bede will suit up for next year. I would put it at 43.5, Bill,

are you taking the over or the under? Well, the question is, when does he play the 43 and a half? Because he came back for that Celtic series and had three good games in them and that was enough to kill the Celtics. I don't know. If I was a team that had no hope

and I had to spend the money anyway, if I'm the Nets, what else am I going to do? Right? I have salary. I'm completely irrelevant and I don't have my pick. Like, I've got to take a swing at something.

Like, okay, but, like, I think that's a jaw move. You know, like, if you're trying to sell tickets and just, and it put some energy inside your building, like, if you have John Morant or Joel Embed, which one of you, which direction you get? How about both? Can I offer you both? John Brant and Joel would be.

What can go wrong? Why not? Next question from Danny. Another one-nameer. Simmons. Did you ever explain why you thought Jalen Williams played game two of the Lakers series when you didn't. Please don't tell me your cutting corners, not watching sports and turning into Rick Riley.

What happened? Rick Riley's shot. You want to talk about this. You put this in the rundown. You copied and pasted it. You wanted to address it. I'm happy to talk about it. Here's my thing.

So we're taping right after that game two. There's two games. I'm putting together. I want to do because I have Letterman on the show after. And I'm trying to put together 25 minutes of thoughts as I'm doing it. I'm going full speed. we tape it live right after the game. And it's like speed chess and I'm old.

And I'm going around. I'm trying to figure out the minutes and I'm doing everything. I'm trying to get to the next thing. And I look at the box scored. I'm like Jay. And I just kind of brain farted. This is my second brain fart. Like I'm telling you.

It's like obviously Jacoby, you're on some of the text threads with me. I'm watching all the games. I wish I could bring my wife on to be like, hey, some people are wondering if you're watching playoff basketball. Because she'd be like, yeah. I can tell you they are because I fucking hate you.

during the first two rounds of the playoffs every year, because all you do is watch basketball. The thing is, I think I'm allowed four of these a year. And then if I get to five, maybe a series, maybe I have to talk to the family. Yeah. Because my other one this year was Seattle,

thinking the Seahawks never won the Super Bowl, which I said, even though I know, not only do I know they won the Super Bowl, but then the next year they would try to go back against some pads, I was there for that. So I think I'm allowed, because I'm old now,

I'm in my mid-50s. I think I'm allowed one just inexplicable brainfire at a corner, a quarter, and everyone's just got to deal with it. And if I get, if I'm at 10 at the end of the year, let's have a real combo. But I think four is okay, right, Kirk? Yeah, and dude, I blame our friend Jalen Rose. I mean, if it weren't for him, then we wouldn't have this crazy situation. And having two guys named Jalen Williams on the same basketball team, like, come on.

It was a tricky situation for all of us. It was a double brain fart because I looked at the minutes. I forgot there were two Jalen Williams, and I forgot that the good Jailen Williams was scratch for Game 2. He was wearing, okay, a couple things. He was wearing a pink leather jacket. You know what I mean? So that doesn't really help you against.

No. You know, he's in a pink leather jacket and they cut to him a lot. Like, I'm not, I'm your friend and I love you. But it is, there is one side of the floor. I'll take it. I'll take it. But I literally, you know, I taped last night between 1.30. and 2.30 in the morning after watching five hours of basketball.

I'm sure I messed up. I literally just interrupted you to say that the Knicks are on an eight game run and I'm a Nick fan instead of a seven game run. I was like, Bill, no, eight. That happened four minutes ago. Like, it's just sort of the way it is. But here, as someone who's been in this industry a long time, Bill, you're handling this wrong. Your talent, this is where you throw your producers under the bus. No, I've never did that. This is my fault. I've been doing this a long time. Your talent now, Bill. You can't be level-headed. You have to have the big eagle. My producers are supposed to correct that. That's why they're there.

That's what you're supposed to do. That's the talent play. I'll fuck up. Listen, I'm going to have one a quarter and that's it. The podcast is free. This is just who we're what we're dealing with now. Bill, as you're constantly area, I have to say this. I think four might be a little low.

You know? No, my goal is four. I think it's good. I think you want to set the bar a little bit lower for yourself there, buddy. Let's go 10. Yeah, let's go 10. You get a lot of potty. I think I can pull up for it.

This is my one for the quarter. Now I'm not going to have another one out quarter. Josh from D.C. says he's been a big fan of the podcast since the Picture Me Rolling Days. What a classic year that was when Picture Me Rolling was the theme. Thanks to House's Mother Day karma. The Wizards are finally interesting. And we have two passive contention.

One is just draft AJ. Two is trade down the spot. get some stuff for Utah, what would you do is the trading machine Macaso. So I already answered this on Sunday. I don't always feel this way with the draft. I feel like sometimes you got to dig in. I like this guy the most. Kirk, this is such a weird draft. I'm honestly happy with any of these four guys. And I don't know if there's any real way to say one of them is going to be the most awesome. I think

AJ's probably the safest Peterson is the highest ceiling. But I'd also be happy with the other two. And if I could move back one spot and pick up real assets, I would just, in this draft, I would do it. So what would you do? Yeah. Yeah, I'm Peterson curious at the number one spot. I'm also like, I'm Peterson curious. Yeah, I'm Peterson curious. I want to come out and just say that I love Aaron Peterson. I think all of the analytics guys in the NBA that I like to represent here from time to time are Cambooser enthusiasts. And so the eye test is DeBons. there's Peterson. But so I think the Belichick move here is to go to three and just take,

I'll take whoever's left. Oh, wow, move down two spots. If I can get something, if, who's there, Memphis? Sorry, I haven't studied the drama. Memphis is three. Chicago's four. Yeah. If Memphis would give me anything valuable because they feel strongly or,

yeah, I don't know if I'd go to four bill, but I do think there is some jockeying potential for people at one and two to think about just a little. a little bit backward like your buddy Danny Aange did so famously to get to that Tatum over Fultz era. I think that's a good, that's a good parallel. That was another drafter. I was like, I kind of like all of these guys.

And they moved back, got an extra pick that ended up not even being in a great. Turns out that was a big, big effing deal for the Boston Celtics to do that. So Washington has to be playing with that concept. Jacobs, what would you do? Would you just be like, I like this guy. I'm taking him one. Don't, don't offer many trades. Or would you sniff around?

I think you can only, as a GM, you're worried about your job and making the wrong move. I think you can only make the wrong move by trading up in this draft. Because all four of me, it feels a little bit like the MVP. Like if you have SGA, you can make a great case. If you have Yocit, you can make a great case. If you have Wimby, you can make a great case, right? So it's like all four of these guys are different players, but they have sort of like, they're all equal to me as prospects.

So if I'm, if I give up assets to move up and end up with the fourth best guy of the four, Yeah. There's egg on my face. Yeah. Shane wants to know when you brought up the wizards in the lottery karma draft, Nick Wright immediately brought up Joe House's name, and it made me wonder if Joe House is the most famous Wizards fan at this point. Can we get a celebrity Wizards fan ranking?

And then he asked, this was written last week, can House represent the Wizard, the draft lottery? So I asked the Washington fans I know, here's the list of famous Wizards fans. You tell me where House ranks. Wale, Dave Batista. Wolf Blitzer and Tiapha are the tennis square. Maybe Scott Van Pelt. I don't know if he's a wizard's fan or not.

I know he's a Maryland guy. I assume maybe he likes the wizards. Honestly, that was all I could find. So I don't know. Andrew Sharp. Andrew Sharps in there? Okay. Would you have House Fifth or would you bump him above any of those?

I mentioned, Jacob's. I mean, I'm biased here, you know. But I will say that Waleigh was the only one. I actively knew was a wizard's fan. Everyone else was news to me. And not like Tiafos out there, you know, like doing post-match interviews about Trey Johnson. Kirk? It feels like House is in the top five.

I think he's number one. I'll take a strong stance here. I think Joe House, in part because of his platform here with us at the ringer, is clearly the most famous Wizards fan. Like when people think Wizards fan, they think Joe House. And I think... You tried to do the doggie on the podcast Sunday. He got so excited, the camera burned out.

Like, he's a real fan. He's had some camera issues. We'll give him that. But I think the Wolf Blitzer one, screw Wolf Blitzer. That guy doesn't get him off the list. Never seen him with Wizards once. No, he doesn't like basketball. I don't want to live in a world with that guy.

Can we split the baby and have a house wallet partnership? I think they would make a good. Yeah, I like that. Maybe we'll give them a podcast. Zachary Gilbert and Westport, Connecticut writes in. He's 12 years old. And he says, I'm sending this on my, dad's email with his permission.

My father is a long time listener of yours, put me on the podcast, which I love. I always get excited when new one comes out. How come whenever you talk about Kevin Durant and the Warriors, you don't mention that he played with the greatest shooter ever and a top five shooter ever that made life so much easier for him, went on and on about to rant. So it's interesting. And Ethan, Ethan Strauss actually wrote about this last week on his substack about longevity rot, which there's different versions of that.

this when just when either somebody stays around too long and i've talked about this a bunch and hey i haven't talked about in my book about how the memories of somebody near the end can somehow taint the actual memories of their peak um and then you can you see it with tv too with like berkeley being on tv all the time versus carl malone not being on tv and the other stuff that's up with carl malone and now it feels like barclay's career was more significant than them alone when that wasn't the case when it's happening. I think KD, the last 10 years, really overshadowed how good those last seven OKC years were when from 2010 to 16,

he won the MVP, runner up three times, five straight first teams, made the 12 finals, won 10 playoff series. He's either the second or third best guy of the 2010s. I'd have him third behind Curry. I think it's LeBron Curry and KD. 2015 was hurt 2013 playoffs Russ got hurt

Hard and trade in 2012 screwed things up for them too and then the only thing you can really ding them on is the last three games of the 16 playoffs against Golden State because they should

I thought they had a better team that the Golden State was dragging a little bit I thought they could have finished him um Chicoves do you feel like all the Durant stuff from the last 10 years

is now starting to kind of cloud people's memories of how fucking good Durant was? Yes, I believe it's a little unfair. Like, if you look at his former teammate James Harden, who has famously sort of like underperformed in big spots, there's not a lot of those with Kevin Durant.

There's injuries and like weird Kyrie Irving stuff that took down that team and like bad vibes in Phoenix. It just sort of seems like it is his fault, but simultaneously he's still performing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if his career just ends with the Achilles injury, right? Let's just say it's over.

He doesn't come back. We would still talk about him reverentially for what he did for those 13 years, Kirk. So I don't. I do think it has clouded how good he was in his peak. Yeah. Let's not forget he tore his Achilles tendon. You just said, like, holy crap. Like Dominique was my favorite player growing up.

It ended him. Like, he technically still played after that. but it was it was over. Kevin has done a marvelous job, I think, extending his relevance into, what is he, 37. Yeah. And he's the best scorer,

in my opinion, the NBA has seen since Michael Jordan. You can tell me it's Kobe. I'm not going to get too mad at you, but it's like, this dude is by far one of the best scorers in the league's history. He's doing it at a high level at 37.

That's a Houston team who had a disappointing run in the postseason. The vibes are not immaculate. But let's not forget, Freddie Van Fleet was not there. Stephen Adams is not there. Durant got hurt. Yeah.

I'm sitting here on the 40 acres at the University of Texas. I'm not going to say anything negative about Kevin Durant, but I will say it is better to burn out than it is to fade away. And sometimes that long tail at the end of an artist or an athlete's career can sort of damage how you look back at the prime. Yeah, I would highly encourage who wrote that email? That was Young Zachary. I would highly encourage you to go on the YouTube's and go check out some Durant

from check out the USA basketball stuff and 2011 and Turkey. Check out the Rucker Park. Check out the 2012 playoffs, him running through, them beating the Clippers. Like, Durant was unbelievable. The day you were born, he probably had 40. Right. I mean, he's definitely second or third best part of the 90s. I would put him third, but also have my head of Harden.

Another career thing from Andrew B. He said one of the greatest takes in recent BS lore was that Hardin was the guard Carl Malone. Just for the record, that was Zach Lowe's take, not mine. I was jealous of it. After watching the Thunder finish off the Lakers, I watched the SGA, very vanilla walkoff interview. And I thought, does anyone actually list SGA as their favorite player? Will he be remembered as guard Tim Duncan, both dominant, but with no fans? I thought that was character assassination.

People love Tim Duncan. I love Tim Duncan. I ride for Tim Duncan. It is interesting, though, Jacob's. Like, have you met a diehard SGA guy? Well, if you met anyone who's like, my favorite guy is SGA? I'm wearing the SGA jersey. This is my dude.

Okay, I'll answer that question a second. But first, I want to address something. Like, Bill, you're one of the biggest Tim Duncan fans in the world. Kirk, you are biased by the Spurs. He was boring. Like, you know what I mean? Like, let's just have to freeze over this. Like, what do you mean?

Tim Duncan was awesome. He was boring. his personality didn't exist and his game was to turn around and like hit it off the window. You know what I mean? Like he was a dominant basketball player, won a lot of championships, but like it's not exactly like he was Anthony Edwards in the postgame

interviews and whatever. One of the four greatest teammates of all time. I do not know anyone who's like, I love SGA. I don't see any SGA jerseys anywhere like you see the other megastars in New York City. And

I do want to say this though. I I am enjoying some of his personality flares outside of his outfits. Like, we need that, like, I just, I have the answers. I just need to see the test. Like, he started to have these sort of, like, they kind of feel pre-canned, but some good post-game stuff that's kind of like this calm, cool that I'm starting to dig. He's not, like, personalityless, like your guys' favorite guy, Tim Duncan. You mean pre-canned?

Like, Noah Eagle, breaking out the Cavalach! It's a Cavalage! That was quite a while ago. It was a cavalanche, though, to be fair to know it. That was a crazy third quarter. Kirk, do you know any diehard SGA fans? No, I think that's the more interesting part of this question. I think the comp to Tim is just wildly unprofessional for a mailbag question.

SGA, it is really interesting. And this is like Jacoby's Wheelhouse and your wheelhouse, too. It's like, yeah, his approval rating outside of his home market seems to be the lowest we've seen for a player who is that dominant. since we've been doing this, right, guys? No question. If I'm in New York or if I'm in L.A and I start talking about SGA, I kind of know what the person across the table is going to start to say. I think that is sort of the more interesting part here.

I think it's actually great for him that he belongs to O.KC and everybody else is kind of poking holes. And it makes OKC want to love him more. And we're probably in an okay spot with it. And now it's time for embracing the era brought to you by New Era, the official cap of the NBA. take a trip back through some of the most iconic, court-defining moments with the new era, NBA hardwood classics collection, which is awesome. Let's be honest.

It's hard to top those legendary 90s logos. Perfect time. We had figured out that the 80s were a little over the top. We were getting a little more creative in the 90s. You can feel the influences of culture back then. And speaking of the 90s. So I think the most underrated star of the 90s, I'm biased here, but I think it was Reggie Lewis of the Boston Celtics,

who was really coming on as an asset, who was the only two guard of that generation, really to go toe to toe with Jordan when they played and was awesome in the 92 playoffs. They lose to the Celtics lose to the Cavs and 7, but it was a real breakout thing for them. He was just really good. And there were a lot of good players in the early 90s.

So, you know, when you look at the all-MBAs and stuff, really hard because you're getting bumped by guys who were Hall of Famers. But I feel like he was either the second or the third best two guard of that generation. He tragically, he went down the 93 playoffs and passed away that summer in the prime of his career. And you look at the guys, the two guards from that era, Mitch Richmond, Reggie Miller, Drozden Petrovich, who also tragically passed away.

Reggie was right up there with all of them. And I thought it was just better than Reggie Miller. So I always think about when the 90s, there's a lot of guys that, oh, man, Kenny Anderson, Derek Coleman, like you go through and there's some guys that never reached their potential. And then Reggie is at a whole other level. But I really think he could have had a fun 90s if it had just kept going with him. Anyway, the Celtics stuff from the early 90s is pretty cool, too. Take a step back in time. Check out the new era NBA Hardwoods collection available in a wide range of silhouettes, including the iconic.

fitted 5,950, or adjustable like the 940 of frame and 970 and some great hardwood classics apparel as well. Visit new eracap.com slash ringer to shop now. Use one-time code ringer and you get 20% off your first order. Go check it out. Zach from Chicago, he just says, I know you're really from the Celtics, I'm really from the nuggets. What about Jim Al-Murray for Jalen Brown straight up? Kind of interesting. No. You would do that if you're the Celtics? I'm not doing that if I'm a Celtics.

Kirk? I like Jalen's defense. Jamal doesn't have the defense. I don't think they're going to, I don't think they're going to mess with it. No. What do you think, though, Bill? Yeah, what happened to you, Bill?

The guy goes on Twitch and all of a sudden. He was like your favorite player of all time, like 10 minutes ago. Now you're like, oh, that Twitch stream makes me want to trade him for Chmoff Murray. It's a no for me, but I did go down a 10-minute rabbit hole thinking about, oh, we could replace Jalen's minutes with Hugo and Shireman and Walsh. And now we'd have these three guards and Tatum and offensively would be so much more interesting. I did entertain it for a second. That leads us to this was your big assignment.

Here's the email. Go on the record right now. I predict four NBA trades, but do it like that. And the four would be separated as boring but logical, conventional, major and somewhat surprising, and holy shit, I can't believe that guy got traded. And that email is from me.

I wrote it. I would never fake a mailbag email. I could have just said it's from like Larry in Indiana, but I wrote that one because I want to do it. I'll give you the three ones I had, and then I gave you the assignment for the holy shit trade. So boring but logical. The Warriors get Anthony Davis,

the Wizards get Butler's expiring, and like a lottery protected first and 27, and we just call it a day. That trade makes a lot of sense to me. If the Wizards can get one more asset, they're going to obviously take either DeBanzer or Peterson. They're not going to be good this year. I don't think they want to see what they have.

Could they get one small asset for Davis? He's probably not going to be happy there. And then the Golden State, if you can then get LeBron. And now I have Davis, LeBron, Dreemann, Curry, and kick tight. The boring but logical, Kirk, would you agree with that? Yeah, that's boring, but a lot. I don't think 80's very happy there.

And I could see that trying to just get away from it. And there has been interest right from Golden States to sort of reestablish having a traditional big beyond just Draymond. So I could see that one. Boring, but logical. Jacob's? I don't really understand why Washington is doing this. Like we're just taking on Butler and like what acid are you getting back? Like, I think there's, I think if you were, I don't want.

Drill down. Protected first next year. Don't you think you get a better package for AD than Butler and some sort of pick? But he's unhappy and he keeps getting hurt and he's in his 30s now. And he makes a lot of money. So that those would be the things you worry about. All right, conventional. This would be the Yonis trade.

I think the lottery, I talked about it on Sunday. Yonis and the Celtics, I think, became way more realistic after how the lottery played out. So there's a world where you can get Portland gets Jalen Brown. the Celtics get Janus and they also get Kuzma in their in their trade exception thing. And then Milwaukee gets grants contracts, Scoot Henderson, and a slew of first, including all their Milwaukee stuff that they could get back. And that ends up being the trade. Seems pretty conventional.

Out of those three, Kirk, who is like, I'm out? I don't want to do this. I'm worried about Portland. What do you think about Portland's just general? I don't know what they're doing. There's sort of an irrational player in the marketplace, right? What are your thoughts on what they're trying to accomplish? Well, if I could have, if I'm Portland, Jacobs,

then I have Denny and I have Jalen Brown and I have Klingin and I have Kamara and, you know, maybe I don't have to give up all the assets I have for Milwaukee. Dave Lillard. I have Dame coming back, Shaden Sharp coming back. So that's probably the one. If we're talking about three teamers, that's the only way the other way

with the honest and Jay and then would just be the two of them okay major and somewhat surprising this idea came from a listener Jack and Orlando

I really like this one I was jealous of it Orlando gets Jamal Murray and Cam Johnson's expiring Denver gets Franz and Suggs it's a straight two for two Franz and Sugs

for Murray and Cam Johnson it's a pretty good trade I like that for both teams I was like that I like that dude and Cam's a judge and Cam Johnson. Yeah, put it in. Call Silver.

Because Yolkich could basically be the point guard for Denver anyway, and Suggs could be the guard the other team's point guards and bring the ball up. And then Franz with Gordon and Joker, now my defense is better. And then Franz Unleashed without Palo. And then Orlando figures out the guard situation and splits up Franz and Murray. I don't know. I thought that was really good. Okay. But let's not breeze past that. That's pretty good. Pretty good trades. That makes the NBA better. That makes the NBA better right away.

Yeah. Like somewhere there's like an intern that works in the front office. It's just like, hey, yeah, do you listen to the BS pod? I was going to do a tweak and be like, well, Orlando's got to throw in Anthony Black or, oh, Denver probably. And I was like, I don't see a tweak. I think that's a really fair two for two. You know, and eventually you're solving the shooting problem that Orlando has. Like there's a defense problem.

I'm Franz isn't exactly a lockdown defender. But there's a defense problem in Denver. There's a shooting problem in Orlando. we both want to shake things up. That works. All right. I asked you for a holy shit trade. You go first, Jacoby.

What is it? So the concept is not, we'll never have the Luca trade again. But a trade that would make people go, oh my God. So what is it? So I just want to say that this is, I'm not saying this is going to happen.

I'm not predicting this. But it's like all great things. It starts with Joe House. Right. Washington has the number one pick in a great draft that's a huge asset, but they're open for business. Also, our colleague and friend, Rich Paul, has been working the phones. And he's been pulling some strings behind the scenes on behalf of his clients. Yeah. And Washington has found a dance partner. They send the number one pick and Anthony Davis

and next year's number one pick because if you acquire Anthony Davis because of some weird voodoo magic you also get the next number one pick

Oh yeah it follows yeah that's in the trade okay you trade that package number one pick and Anthony Davis and the voodoo spell

for Cooper flag Kyrie Irving and the number nine pick and here's why it makes sense there's a Ujiri did not draft flag he doesn't see the vision he's going to have the number one pick

he can start with his guy yeah yeah and then there's absolute chaos in the streets of Dallas like rioting Mark Cuban is got a face paint he's got a flag a helicopter has to land

on top of the Mavs office for for Mr. Smith's New Jiri to get in to get them away to safety like it's Jerry Jones is involved it's just chaos

like the National Guard has to come in. And it's just like, and Mark, and then somehow Mark Cuban just ends up, you know, just negotiating a peace between the fans of the Mavericks and the city. That's a great one. Yeah, I mean, them training Cooper flag,

I think could lead to a civil war in the United States. It just, it would be like the Archduke Ferdinand of America. I don't know how Dallas would start riding. God only knows what happens next. Kirk, what do you got? Well, this one hurts.

And since we're back in time, this is tough, but I'm going to stick my neck out here and be like the spurs are going to trade deer and fox. And I think they are going to get another younger wing strong player. I haven't worked out the full details. I didn't do my homework as much as Jacoby did. But what I've seen in these playoffs and in this Minnesota series, and again, I might be speaking so stupidly now for those who have time traveled with me. But I really think what I've seen in these playoffs is like, why do we have Darren Fox on this team? We have Dylan Harper. We have Stefan Castle.

We have Victor Wenbanyama. We have a clear need to get stronger on the wings and in our front court. Can we find somebody like Toronto or Houston that can give us some depth and some strength to fight with these types of Minnesota guys? So I haven't done the full homework, but that's my holy shit. the spurs are going all in with this young core moment. That would be interesting. Tough one for Dearon Fox. Attaches himself to Wembe at it lasts a year and a half.

I know it is. But I mean, I also love your idea. Like the other one I had runner up is the Jalen Williams, the one who's currently hurt with his hamstring and Chet Hunger and one of those guys for the similar reasons. Like a lot of us, these young cores, they have to get ahead of the second apron. They have to do stuff like that. You know, J.A. A. Donde says real trades travel and silence. And we never saw the Luca thing coming.

Right. So I think there are, the holy shit moments are like, oh my God. I couldn't believe that that could happen. Right. Like Jaylon Williams, she's getting traded straight up for the third pick. Like, I told you on that. I told you on the text. Yeah, like that. That's a great one. But I told you on the text, Jacobi's going to have a better one. And I was right. Well, I mean, I forgot the ending. It ended up with Joe House in a bathtub full. of Arby's roast beef. With Cooper flag. Just with the picture of Cooper flag. I'm dialing up a notch from your holy shits.

What about Ant to Atlanta? Oh. T. Wolves get Jaywin Johnson. They get 8 and 23 and 26. They got there's, Atlanta has a, a Bucks, New Orleans, worst pick in 27, the worst one of those two. They have some other stuff, first swaps. What if, Kirk, have you?

you, how long do you think Anne's gonna actually last in Minnesota if you have to guess? Well, this is, but where's Anthony from? And like, this is a team that is- Where's Anthony from, Jacoby? Do you have any ideas on that? Where's it from? Do you know how long people in the media have been trying to send basketball players back

home? It's like what we always do. It says, well, he's from the KD's from the DMV, but by the Christmas, we always do this. And I'm just saying this point in time right now is when Atlanta has the best possible, we're going to overwhelm you with an Anthony Edwards offer moment.

And I was trying to think of like every year there's a holy shit one. And usually we have some semblance of it. And then sometimes we don't. And if like the series ended badly, you know, we're the new owners in place. Who knows? And what if he's just like, send me to Atlanta? And then the other piece of it is, in Atlanta, I can't even imagine what that would be. Like they've never, not since Dominique.

had a guy in the brief Michael Vic moment, but putting it in there would just be one of, I love their crowd, like it would just be crazy. He's a perfect Atlanta representative, right? Jacoby, like that the where they go to a hawks game. They are unique. They are fun, but they are sort of flat in a sense.

Like they don't, it feels like he would be the perfect guy to change the vibes in Atlanta. And I know for a fact that that organization for years has circled him like a lot of teams do with certain players that they're suitors for years in advance being like, that's a guy. I think he might want to come to live here because he is from there.

And I don't know, but I like it and I could see it from Atlanta's perspective now. Will Tim Connolly agree with me? Probably not. But also, if you're Anthony Edwards, you look at the starting five you're currently playing with and the starting five you would be playing with Atlanta. Like, dramatic downgrade. Yeah, the only way that trades happening is if Anthony Edwards says, you're trading me. Yeah.

No, we don't want to. Finch have a fist fight on the court. You're actually going to trade me. The other one I was thinking for a holy shit was if San Antonio just said, fuck it. We'll put Dylan Harper on the table. We'll put every pick we have

and just make a run and trying to put Wemby and Ant on the same team, which would be, I don't know how the alpha piece of that would work because Wemby's definitely an alpha. But that's it. From holy shit ones, I went through everybody and it was the only

holy shit guy that really jumped out of me. Oh, no. There's one I was building that was a holy shit guy. LeBron convinces the Lakers to trade Luca. That's pretty. It seems like Luca's really embedded in there. Yeah. I had that to

Jacobi's, but I had Luca in my notes. It just feels too much. The other one is like, what if Denver's like we're never getting over San Antonio and OKC? I guess that's that. We couldn't get past

Minnesota. Yeah, we couldn't get past Minnesota without aunt in this game six. How so that that would be the one where it's like, well, this is the Herschel Walker play for the future of the Denver Nuggets organization. There's one more. I went through the Ring of 100 and I had my holy, my holy shit glasses on and my little detector. And I was going through each guy.

I was like, and the only other one was Tatum. Because I think that would elicit the proper holy shit where the Southwicks were like, you know what? Jalen was right. This actually is this team. We're trading Jason Tatum. We're like, holy shit. They're trading Tatum? That's the other. I think Aunt and Jason Tatum in that order

are the two holy shit guys. Everybody else you could believe. Like, Don of a Mitchell getting traded, I'd believe it. Like, you know, you're going through the league, Booker. It's shocking, but not really. Of other bigger names, they're never going to move. You know what I mean? Like, Luca, SGA, Wemby, flag. These guys aren't really going to move.

But I could see the Celtics trading one of the Jays. And Joker getting traded, the risk would be, he would just be like, all right, I'm going to go raise some horses now in Serbia. I'll see you guys later and you never even get to play one game with them. That's it for the mailbag. I took you guys up too much, but that was fun. Holy shit stuff.

All right, so our holy shit trade rankings, one, Tatum 2, Luca 3? No. Because Luca already got traded. Luke, I'm not putting Luke on there. He already got traded, though. He's just never ever going to happen. He's in Los Angeles. No.

I don't know, got hurt. Um, yeah. All right, Jacobs, we can hear in the mismatch Goldsbury. Thanks for being on two different segments of my pod today. That was great. My pleasure. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk and Jacoby.

Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be back here on Thursday. No game on Thursday night, actually. So I'm going to be back on Thursday. I'll have some sort of fun podcast for you. And don't forget, new rewatchables, Tropic Thunder is up. And you have six days to watch Borat.

just in case we do it on the rewatchables next Monday. So I will see you on Thursday. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opt and required bonus issued as non-drawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration of max wager amount. See terms at Sportsbook.fielder.com. Game and problem call 180-gambor or 1-800-migh-Ret 800 by reset.

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