The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast Prime Cuts - USMNT Has A LONG Way To Go, Christian Pulisic, Jaylen Brown Trade

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

Colin’s top takes of the week. First, he reacts to USMNT losing to Belgium in the Round of 16 at the World Cup. Colin gives his take on Christian Pulisic & Matt Freese's performance. Where does United State go from here? Will they ever breakthrough in soccer?  Then, he’s joined by 'First Things First' co-host Danny Parkins on the podcast. Colin explains why he missed The Herd today off the top. Then they go into Christian Pulisic's rest comments and give their takes on the US Soccer player and what the future holds for him. Finally, they deep dive into the Celtics trading Jaylen Brown and why Jaylen's value across the league wasn't as much as fans & media thought.  TIMELINE 03:00 Reaction to USMNT losing to Belgium 13:00 Christian Pulisic & Team USA soccer 35:00 Jaylen Brown Trade All lines provided by @hardrockbet (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates!  #Volume See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Right now, 200 bucks off, square hardware at square.com slash go-slash-C-U-A-R-E dot com slash go-slash-C-L-L-L-L. Well, it was a nice run. It was a nice run. But I mean, I think ultimately, if you look at the teams in the World Cup, there is kind of a class of eight.

And Spain, we all know who it is, Argentina. Belgium now counts, although they've gotten a little older. But remember, in 2018, they were one of the three, four best teams in the world. And, I mean, I think it was pretty obvious. I think the first seven or eight minutes,

you could say it was nerves. But after that, we weren't winning enough one-on-one battles. We weren't maintaining enough possession. We got very few good shots on goal. We looked like we were outclassed. We looked like we did against Paraguay. Just flip the sides.

And so, and I also think it's a little bit like the NFL playoffs, is that the better teams you face, the better coaches you face. And, you know, you can get through the AFC or the NFC South. You know, then you match up against, you know, the Buffaloes and the Philadelphias and the McVeys and, you know, just the better coaches and the better teams. And your flaws become gigantic holes. And, I mean, Matt Freeze looked like an MLS goalie tonight. I mean, when he had Tim Howard, we've had Tony Mayola, Casey Keller, Tim Howard, who was a huge physical presence, a great athlete, hyper aggressive, big, strong presence and goal.

Matt Freeze looks like an MLS goalie. You know, an embarrassing mistake, playing with his feet. I mean, that's like that's stuff you see on a Tuesday night in the MLS. That's just not good enough. And again, it's not exposed against Paraguay that didn't have much of a dynamic offense or Australia. But it does get exposed against Belgium. And, you know, I thought, again, one of the things I've said throughout this tournament is soccer fans love to kind of project that you don't understand soccer. You could see it very quickly.

First five or six minutes, we just could not maintain any fluidity or any flow. We couldn't win the one-on-one battles. until the very end. We couldn't get quality shots. And when Belgium was in their offensive end, it was just easier. There was much greater ease to get quality shots. Tim Reams, a 38-year-old defender, although there are things I like about Tim Ream, he got physically dominated on that second goal. So the back end was our weakness, and again, you face better countries and better players, and it's completely absolutely exposed. Also, listen, Christian Pulisic, if you look at the best teams, Harry Keynes had a great tournament. So is messy. So is Embopon.

Bay. So was Erling Holland for Norway. Christian Fulisick did not. He's a slight player. He's always been fragile. He gets banged up again. And I didn't think he played with any confidence today. You know, he wasn't winning his one-on-ones. And he kind of, you know, gave the ball up early in his one-on-one opportunities. He just gave it up. That feels a little bit like kind of bailing. You're lacking confidence. Then later he gets injured on a legal play, was not a foul. So, I mean, again, I don't think it's overly complex. I think we faced a team that beat us handily. I think it was five to two and a friendly with great scoring opportunities. And, you know, we kind of felt like we weren't playing some of our best players. But, you know, in this instance, we played our best players

and we were just outclassed. You know, and, you know, you can blame Pocetino. What I really like about this is that you can't blame the coach. We love Pocetino before about Jim. We can't look at him with dismay now. Is that soccer is always going to be about who's got the more, who has the most passing, dribbling skill, who can create better opportunities, more shots on goal. I mean, how many quality shots did we get on goal tonight? Two. Even the, even the Malik Tillman goal on the free kick was a ricochet.

So I think I would rather lose this way than be frustrated. I mean, Baligan really only got one opportunity on goal. A couple of the notes I wrote down, you know, 22 minute mark, no shots on goal. Belgium 2-1, physical domination, Pulisic shaky. first USA corner kick was at the end of the first half. I just think when you see a team that has a higher level of skill, more experience in bigger games, and said at one point,

Stu Holden was asked about how do you get better in big games? And his answer was appropriate. You plan them. And Belgium just felt like they had been in more games like this. You know, it was funny. In the first seven or eight minutes, I saw that they were calling it nervy. And I'm like, yeah,

I'll give you that for about five minutes. And then it was really, really clear. We could not. There must have been six, seven, eight, nine straight moments where it would come down to a one-on-one battle. And Belgium always came out with a ball. And we met our match. But we know. Now, if we flipped goalies, would we have a greater opportunity?

Yeah. But we weren't going to beat Belgium. I thought Matt Fries felt like a little bit out of his depth. This was a little too big for him. And it happens. But we kind of know where we stand. You know, the Argentina's, you know, we're closer to Brazil than we've ever been. We're closer to Portugal than we've ever been.

But there does feel like a gap, a skill gap between England, five of the top 33 players in this tournament. where I was reading an article before the tournament by Fox, five of the top 33 were from England. And, I mean, you watched Jude Bellingham and you watched Harry Kane against Mexico, they were easily the two best players on the pitch. And you watched that in NBA games. You see that when you watch great football teams.

You can just see the best players jump through the television. So it didn't matter if we were playing a 4-2-3-1 or we had Gio-Rena substituted in at half. It just didn't matter. We just got outclassed. And that's where we stand as of today. You know, and something to remember. We have the best football, basketball, baseball, and hockey league in the world. And you can look at the Olympics and say, well, look at what we did are men's and women's won gold at the Olympics and hockey. But hockey is dwarfed in revenue by soccer. Soccer's got $45 billion annually in revenue. in soccer. That's like six to seven billion annually in hockey because of the international elite events, sponsorships, the international television rights. If you want to dominate international

soccer, it is much harder than dominating international hockey. It's just, it means more to far more countries. It's just, hockey's just not as broad. It often feels like a cold weather experience, It's a cold weather country experience, whereas everybody can play soccer. Norway is good at it. Cape Verde is good at it. Argentina and France are amazing at it. And so, you know, we generally are kind of the hub of revenue globally for sports. Soccer's different.

We spend about $400 million between our men's and women's team annually 400 million, and that's on par with men. any of the top teams, but not greater than. And we also don't have the cultural fixation, fascination, intensity or passion that other nations do. I don't look at this World Cup as a failure. I think we earned ourselves another World Cup sometime very soon. Our infrastructure is so capable of hosting it. But I think it's just, it's the one sport, the one Rubik's Cube, we're trying to decipher. And it really comes down to revenue.

It's massive, very difficult to buy your way to championships. And again, we have some really nice players. But saying in a globe with 215 countries that were not in the top eight, there's no great shame on it. But I thought we were outclass. And I will say Sebastian Burhalter adds great energy. We had great fight until the end. But we met our match.

And that's okay. I mean, it's not okay. It's infuriating. It's in Seattle. But I don't think you walk away from this and say, listen, we gave it a good run. We gave it a good fight. You just keep chipping away. Remember, England has won one World Cup.

Spain has won one World Cup. This shit is hard. You know, and I'm sure I'll just get blasted my text tonight when I wake up tomorrow. We'll be. We'll never compete. This is worthless. We got outclass tonight. Belgium added on that final goal.

So if you count the friendly against tonight, five to two and four to one, our back end was completely over. overwhelmed. A clean sweep. In the two times we face Belgium gives you a sense of where we currently are on the soccer global map. Remember, our average age is under 27. So a majority of this team is back with more European and international experience. It's not on our soil, but generally group stages aren't our greatest challenge. It's the knockout stage. But this is a very young team going forward. 26.9 years old is the average age. Still one of the youngest teams at this World Cup. So by the way, if you're wondering, I am healthy enough to do a 45-minute podcast today, but my boss has called me after yesterday's show. I played hurt yesterday. I had a fever,

and the stomach virus is going around the Midwest. So I went to bed last night at 735. Took Theraflu. I broke my fever, so I'm okay. Stomach's a mess. It's a Midwest thing, whatever. But We had this plan, and I think it's fitting because there's so many things I want to talk about with the Annie Parkins. So, you know, listen, every four years after we lose in the World Cup, the drum beats. It's our culture. You know, it's our youth movement. But I did think it was kind of instructive that Carly Lloyd, Stu Holden, Alexi Lawless, all kind of had the same drumbeat, which is, hey, Christian Pulisic, Nobody wants to hear about rest.

This isn't baseball. You don't have a game tomorrow. We don't want to hear about rest. And I think it's fair, and I'll tell you why. Poulissix is a smaller athlete, has never messed a World Cup game, and you know he hasn't been healthy 100% of the time. We know Poulissick's not Erling Holland. He's not a soccer version of Grom.

But he gets banged up a lot. He's 27. But there is an indifference or a lack of urge sometimes that comes off as condescending from Pulisic. Like he's above it all. And I, we don't like that from our athlete. By the way, if you said that in Argentina, the Argentinian press would savage you. If you said it in Greece or Italy or London, you'd get crushed for it. I think my knock on Pulisic is that this is, this is different than the other sports. It's every four years. Soccer already faces a little cynicism because of the

flopping. So you kind of fake injuries all the time. So like when you come up and say, all right, I can still see on the pitch, you can still move. I don't want to hear about rest. I don't think that's unfair. I think it's pandering to call that unfair. I think that's very reasonable international soccer commentary by Carly, Stu, and Alexi. Of course. I mean, he after the game said that he thought he maybe sprained his ankle. We expect you to play through a sprained ankle, right? Right. I mean, if it would have come out afterwards that he would have ruptured his Achilles,

you know, no one would have said anything, you know, but it was like, wait, you kicked the other guy, you kind of stubbed your foot into the ground, you were hobbling around out there. We like, we expect you to be able to hobble that off. And I'm not saying that I could do it, but I am saying that world class athlete should be able to do it. And this is the thing. I am not a 24-7-365 soccer person, but I really prepped very hard ahead of this World Cup.

I take my job very seriously with how first things first overtime is going. Like Nick Wilds and Brew are not on the show with me, so I'm doing the full hour with me and Dax McCarty and maybe other soccer people that we bring on. So like I prepped my ass off ahead of this World Cup. part of that was watching the five-part Team USA documentary. And in the documentary, there was a whole section of time on Policic feeling defensive and pushing back against the old American soccer establishment, guys like Alexey and Landon, who had criticized him for skipping the Gold Cup. They were like, you've got to play in the Gold Cup.

Because this is such a huge tournament for Team USA, and it's a home world cup. And he was like, I need the rest and I have to prioritize rest. And they really criticized them. And he pushed back against it. And then Policic also, I know he's not the most media friendly guy, but I think that's a little overstated. There's also a nine-part documentary just about him on Paramount. It's the Polisic story.

And then he was profiled in GQ ahead of this tournament. And he said, it's just another big tournament. Like, I came out of this thing saying, I am. honestly wonder if the World Cup is as big of a deal to him as playing for A.C. Milan. He makes his money from A.C. Milan. It's the biggest American transfer fee in the history of our country. Like, it's weird to say, but I honestly felt like, do we care? Does Donovan care? Does Alexi care more about wearing the crest of America than Polisic does? And I know he laid his body on the line and had the great goal in the last World Cup against Iran and all of those things,

but you would never catch Messi saying it's just another tournament about the World Cup. And so I think when you combine skipping the Gold Cup, it's just another tournament. Asking out of both a group stage game and a knockout stage game with non-devastating injuries, these people who are soccer establishments, people in America who played the game, they did not reach this conclusion on Policic just because of the game against Belgium. This is years in the making for them with Policic. And I think it's totally fair to question if playing for America in the World Cup is his absolute number one priority. Listen, I've said this about Luca Dantage, his reality now and Joe Burroughs.

They're both like one more injury away from we're out of the peak. Like they're injury prone. Like I've said that about Luca. He's never in great shape. He now has three straight years of being injured. If it becomes four, that devastatingly great trade isn't as great as you thought. Neither Dallas or the Lakers are viable. So, and I think, but one of the things that pushes back, I would push back is our soccer

culture isn't terribly hard. I mean, we still consider playing college soccer a big deal, where if you go internationally to Morocco, the best African nation now in terms of soccer, if you go to England and you go to other places, like that collegiate soccer, it's academies. And ours is, hey, get a D1 scholarship. And it's a little, I would say it's a little precious. It doesn't really, it's, and by the way, in basketball, one of the reasons there's so many great international players that have usurp, like our great domestic players, is their academy system is better than our AAU system. And I do think sometimes the people that cover soccer for a living, especially the print people,

New York Times, the athletic, they get a little precious. They get a little defensive. They start pandering. You don't understand soccer. I don't have to be a chef to know the fish is undercooked. I'm sending it back to the kitchen. I don't have to be a music critic to know that guy's a hack and that person's great. Like, you don't have to be an expert. Pulisic is 27, injury prone.

And to your point, there's a sense he lacks kind of like urgency. There's a certain aesthetic and a certain commentary where I feel like, bro, this shit matters. Like, a lot. I mean, I mean, this. World Cup was so successful, America's probably going to get another one sooner than anticipated. I've read that several times. This has been a groundbreaking World Cup. Yeah, listen, that's why you have, there's a lot here. And I think it's fascinating. And I know sometimes, like, the hottest take is the best take. But I think there's a lot here.

Like, the World Cup has been a huge success. Rating. Ratings, attendance. My six-year-old asked for a Jersey. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he's getting into it. It's like growing soccer in America, all of that. That is happening even without the U.S. stepping forward. I also think the U.S. did make progress in this specific way. If you look in the rearview mirror. Like, I think the, say we're the 18th best team in the world for our number. Yeah. I think the gap between us and like the 50th best team has grown. Whereas like we've, the last now four. World Cups that we've made, we've made it to the same round every time, the round of 16. Yeah.

But in the past, we've kind of eeked our way there. Draws, one-one games. And in this World Cup, and I know part of it is we're the host country, so we got the pot one draw. I know part of it is expanded field. So there's a round of 32 now, so a little bit weaker competition. But we kind of kicked the shit out of some teams. Scored three goals, scored four goals, had the most first half goals of any team in the whole tournament

through the round of 32. like we were putting the ball in the back of the net. I do think we have separated ourselves a bit from Paraguay and Australia and teams like that. But when you lose as convincingly as we did to Belgium, the whole thing was, are you going to take a step forward? We still have a huge gap between us and the truly top teams. Yes. Well, it's interesting you bring that up. So here are the quarter finalists.

France, Argentina, England, Belgium, Spain. Those are world powers. World Pouts, yeah. Switzerland, once again, fifth, sixth straight World Cup. I think this is the third or the fourth time they made to the quarters, historically respected. Morocco is now brilliant federation, apparently, depth, top African nation. And then Norway has a superstar. Yeah.

Okay. So either superstar, soccer power, respected historical, relevant European team, or the best African nation. that's who beat us out. And I would say this between Casey Keller, you know, Tim Howard's, we were uniquely weakened goalie. We had an MLS goalie. Our goalies have always been English primarily Casey Keller, European guy for 15 years. If we had one of our usual goalies in, we lose two to one. Yes. We don't give up the second or the third goal. We give up the first. We give up the last. we lose two to one, we're outplayed, but the sense is, well, if Belgium beat Spain, we're losing to really good people.

So, A, you're right, there's growth. B, look at who ends up in the quarters, the best African nation superpowers. The other thing that should be noted is participation. Remember this, Danny. Look at the world going forward. A lot of parents don't want their kids to play football because of violence. Basketball genetically, let's be honest, it is a really tall person sport. Baseball to kids, often a lot of standing around and boring.

Hockey, super expensive. Soccer's fun. There is pay to play, but it's cheaper than hockey. Probably two to three times cheaper. This will increase participation. No question. And my guess is, although albeit we're pay to play, I think in communities, if you really saw it,

the local teams really saw a spectacular kid at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, you'd find a way to engineer it and get them in. There's a lot of visibility now with soccer, the academy system is broader. So I do think to your point, this was an absolute win. Better goalie, we lose two to one. And we were embarrassed. We weren't beaten.

It's not that we lost. It's how we lost. And it got really embarrassing in the last 30 to 40 minutes. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing from jump with how cautious they played. Like I did not consider the fact that we could get blown out in that game. And we did. And I thought that that was apparent pretty early on.

I was like, oh my God. Like it just, like the moment felt a little too big for them. And it is, I mean, Egypt almost beat Argentina and would have been further than us. And then we would have been like, well, what about this group that is like, why can't we be Egypt? And I do think it's totally fair to be like, why can't we have our Erling Holland? Like, we thought it was going to be Freddie Adieu. It wasn't. We thought it was going to be Christian Polic.

It wasn't. Now people are like, there's this kid, Kevin Sullivan, who's 16 on Philly and MLS. And I'm like, I can't keep waiting for the. great savior to come. And I do think, and again, I am not an expert on the pay to play thing, but there is something to our best player is for Lauren Balligan, who was completely developed in England. Like, you know what I mean? His parents are Nigerian.

He came up through the English club scene. And the only reason he was able to play for Americas because his mom had him here in birthright citizenship, because she was pregnant and deemed that it wasn't. good for her to fly back when she was pregnant. And he was like, I don't know that I'll start if I play on England because of Harry Kane and everything that they have. So I'll go play for America. Like, we got to figure out why they were able to develop our best player and figure out a way

for us to be able to develop a couple of our best, our own best players. Yeah. And by the way, they're, you know, if you look at France and a lot of these nations, you, there is these routes to get your best players. Apparently the Federation in Morocco. I was reading about it this morning, actually, as my stomach flu was ravaging through the house, Morocco's Federation apparently has done a really good job to find connections through Europe. And that's why they have so much depth.

If you watch Morocco, talking about a dark horse, like, you watch them, and maybe the fastest team left, man, they are like in France speed. They got a bunch wings, midfielders. They move. They're hard to defend. So I think a lot of this is federation-based, academy-based, and it's hurting our basketball a little bit. I mean, who are our best domestic players? Cooper Flagg, Ant Edwards, Jason Tatum.

And it feels like there's a drop-off. Like with Trey Young? I mean, the analytics don't like Jalen Brown. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, but I do believe every four years there is this chorus is that we're not growing. There's clear growth from participation. to elevation of skill and technical expertise. I think we're a little soft.

I think the soccer culture is a little harder in England than Argentina than it is here. But I felt growth. I did too. I felt growth, like I said, kind of looking like we distanced ourselves from the lesser teams, which we were a part of. And I'm not sure if we grew enough in the direction of the top teams. And I'm going to be very interested. And like, because, listen, poachina was expensive.

Like, what, what do they do with him? I know everybody wants him back. And I do, too. I like him. It did seem interesting to me that it was like, we weren't tough enough. We weren't ready to play, but we love the manager. It's like, I don't know. Some of that might be on coaching.

Like, I don't exactly know. But I do think that, you know, they've opened up USA soccer complexes and training development programs. Like, you spend more money on it. You will develop better players and you need a continuity of program. And to your point, this tournament kind of flipped. My whole life watching the U.S. on the international level, it was like, can we score goals? Right.

Like, we had four goals. We had four goals in the 2022 World Cup in total. In total. This time, it's like, okay, we can score goals. Like, if we took Tim Howard and a couple of great American defenders from the past and put them on this team, with Balligan and some of our midfielders and, you know, forward players. We could have had a great team. It's just we don't have the, we got to put it all together at once.

See, I feel better about this because I'd rather say we got to find a better goalie than we just don't have the technical skill to score goals. I feel broadly great about our technical skill. It'll only get better. This whole team comes back probably with three to four additions. At least. But we just have to find a goalie. I always felt like we got a goalie.

I wish we had seven guys who could pass and dribble like they're going to they do in England. So I feel broadly very good about it. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, listen, Tim Ream was too old and too slow as like our main defensive player, right? So, like, I think it is probably, yeah, I was reading articles about like projecting the 2030 men's national team roster. And it's very difficult to do. But there are there are names. You know, Dax McCarty, RF, our first things first analyst who's been great. He played a ton of MLS. He played on the men's national team. He knows the MLS. He's like, yeah, there's a lot of really young talent. but they just, we need to hit. Like, we need, we need to hit on some stars.

I mean, Belgium is sobbing in Lukaku, and it's like, would he be our best player? Like, he came off the bench for them. Weston McKinney is really good for us, but he's been like, okay on Juventus. You know, Christian Polisic, a huge deal. He led Milan in goals and assists, but Milan was really disappointing. Like, they weren't, you know, he was like a good player on a historically great team. that also had a bad year. So we do need to, we have players who are playing in Spain and Italy and Europe and all over,

but like we need, we need stars. We need to keep leveling up. We're not there yet. Today's show is brought to you by our friends and our presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet, Florida Sportsbook. Listen, the world's biggest soccer tournament is here. Everybody. You seen the ratings?

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Listen to First America on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The World Cup is underway and it's been incredible. On our podcast, The Away End with Daniel Alarcon and John Green, we're talking about the games that have delighted us, the teams that have inspired us, what we're loving and what surprised us, all to the lens of being massive fans of the world's most beautiful game. Daniel, this tournament has been magical so far. The expanded field of teams has created some incredible matchups that have already made this World Cup one to remember. And now things get even more exciting with the intensity of the knockout rounds as the field is whittled down to one World Cup champion on July 19th. When you say it like that, I got a pain in my heart that the tournament is over. But there's a lot of soccer yet to go.

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as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five-year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. make it look more defined.

They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I want to shift to Jalen Brown. That's obviously a bit of big story.

Overshadowed by the Olympics, overshadowed by the World Cup, obviously. So it's interesting. When analytics, football analytics, we don't talk about a lot, soccer analytics, hockey analytics, not so much. It's really been,

it's taken over baseball and basketball. Analytics, if you're not upstairs, if you're not in on analytics all in, to like a Celtics level, you're falling behind and your view as sort of hacky and Jurassic. So in baseball, analytics marginalize the manager.

Players didn't have to love it, but it was really about the manager now may not even fill out the lineup. That going with your gut instincts is like, it sounds like a bad president. No, you have to read the briefings in the morning. You can't go with your gut, right? Analytics in basketball isn't about the coach,

because they all believe in it. It's about the high-scoring player who's a bad analytic player. So whereas baseball managers grumbled about it, like Moneyball, you know, the art how moment with Brad Pitt, right? In basketball, the analytics punish often the Trey Young, the Jalen Brown, not the baseball manager. The first time I heard about analytic, a good player in analytics was Monta Ellis for the warriors who people just in it.

I wasn't even like paying it. attention, but I remember high usage rate, didn't do much on the defensive end, didn't necessarily elevate teammates. And so the point being is, so now you're seeing players get a little, like the Jalen Brown story is really an analytically beholden franchise. Nobody's more formulaic than the Boston Celtics. And Brown's a bad analytic player. So in the departments of the Celtics, so the coaching staff asked about Jalen Brown, and they're like, and I guess it really, he pushes back in analytics. The analytic department with the Celtics is like, yeah, move him.

Tatum's camp, according to stories, is not close to it. And the ownership guys are, he's really expensive. So if somebody was going to get rid of me, there'd be several departments at Fox you'd go to. If all four were like, coward doesn't work in analytics. He doesn't get along with Nick Wright. You know, to be honest with you, he's really expensive. and the boss at FS1 in him, he said he's not that coachable. So the truth of the matter is, analytics to baseball marginalized most managers.

What it's doing in the NBA now is the Trey Youngs and the Jalen Browns were conditioned to think they score 28. They're great. And the data now says, they don't work for a shoot quickly, pass, quickly offense. Yeah, I think that there's also, you know, the CBA, and it gets confusing, first apron, second apron, you know, bird rights. People don't like talking about it. But in baseball, you do have some owners that are willing to just kind of spend over it. And if they're willing to pay the tax, they can pay it. Basketball doesn't really operate that way.

And so Jalen Brown, I do think, is. I think it's been a little overstated. He is an excellent basketball player. Yes. But if he was making 40 million, everybody would want him. But because he's going to make 55 million, people are like, yeah, we can replace that production in a different way. So I think it is like, yes, analytically driven, but it's also analytically driven

relative to the cap. Like that's how you have to look at it. Like, can we get 90% of the production for 70%? percent of the cost. Right. Which is business. And I think that that is, and then you add in the personality stuff with him and Tatum and all of it that you go in that direction.

And listen, Brad Stevens, I've said it before. I will say it again. For my book, Pipeline of the Pros, we talked to dozens of coaches and executives in the NBA. He is, maybe other than Theo Epstein, the smartest person I've ever talked to in sports. media, coach, player, executive. He didn't like get the wool pulled over his eyes on this one. Right? Like, he got fleeced.

No, he didn't. Like, I have not spoken to him about this. I haven't spoken to him since the book. He's not that kind of guy. But like, he, it is a, he didn't get fleeced. And so I actually came out of this trade thinking, they actually weren't close to getting Janus. Like, I don't, like, I think that the Bucks used that.

as leverage with Miami to get as much out of that deal as they could have possibly wanted. I don't think the league viewed Jalen Brown at that contract as a supremely valuable basketball talent. And it is fascinating because it might be the biggest disconnect, Colin, that I can remember in basketball between media and eye test and watching the games and analytics and an understanding of the money because the media just voted him sixth for MVP. If you would have said to me a month ago, top 10 two-way players in basketball, I think Jalen Brown would have been on my list. Sure.

Right. Just like removing money from it. And now he's traded for Paul George and a couple of picks. It is a crazy story to wrap your head around. Well, Joel M. B'd won MVP. Yeah. I would argue push back that he didn't even fit with the Olympic team. When you put him with winning great players, most of them analytically superior,

Embed didn't really fit. So Embedds the classic, I mean, I don't know what his analytics are. Paul George is a very good analytic player. I think what's happened with the second apron is everybody chooses one player. In Denver, it's Yokic. And then what you do is build to support his weaknesses. Yokic wasn't a good defensive player. Let's get Aaron Gordon from Orlando, athletic, springy.

Now, Gordon has sort of do age and have injuries. they probably stuck with Jamal Murray a little longer, who's not super athletic, but they're like, they fit like a glove, right? And in Boston, they made a decision. They're like, okay, we're going to go with one of these guys going forward. We can get out of the Paul George contract sooner. And he's also not going to get an extension. We're not going to get into those talks. And the be truth is, if you have to put him next to each other, we're into analytics. Tadem is better analytically. The coaches feel more strongly about him. We win when a usage rate is here with Tatim. And Brown is struggling. You know, he can be a dribble the air out of the ball player at times. And,

and you can't get that usage rate, according to the Celtic staff. I mean, you're seeing stuff now. This is why it's coming out. It's leaking. The Celtic staff saying, here's the usage rate. We win 90% of the times when Tatum has 33% usage rate. We struggle to get there when Browns on the floor with him. It really comes down to this organization is more formulaic than any, and they had to make a choice and they chose the guy they probably liked a little more, they felt was more willing to listen to coaching

and that analytically was superior. Yes, so I need to be very clear. I am not shocked that they traded Jalen Brown. The thing that is still hard for me to wrap my head around is that you could only get Paul George and a couple of picks for him. But that's the part that, like, I would have thought you could have gotten more

for teams that didn't have a guy like Jason Tatum that has some redundancies with Jalen Brown. Like that's the thing. Like he did just be the, he was just the best player on a team that won 50 plus games when Taiton missed the whole year. He is a finals MVP. He does, we were talking about Policic. Like, he does play. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he doesn't sit games. He doesn't get hurt. He is tough. He does give you effort on defense. Like all of those things. Like, I just, I still am surprised that you weren't able to get more for Jalen Brown. But I think because of the apron and the money and all of it, more teams are going in that direction. And just to bring in another story,

I wouldn't love giving Donovan Mitchell the contract that the Cavs just gave him. Guy who has had inconsistent playoff performances, guy who hasn't won big, guy who is undersized, guy who has had some injuries, and you're going to pay him all of that money, you know, into his 30s as an undersized guard. I wouldn't love it. But my guess is, they're like, what other top 10 player are we going to be able to get? Free agency is basically dead. Maybe we'll trade this contract in the future. But like, we are in the Donovan Mitchell business because we have no other path.

We have to keep our own guys. That's right. That's right. And Hardin is not a guy you want to do that with. Mowgli's probably not a guy you're going to pay that. Whereas the Celtics felt we got two of them. Yeah. Right?

And so we're going to move the guy that the staff decides. I mean, you can tell from leaks. Yeah. You can tell what gets out how people felt about him. Like, you can tell coachability. You know, I was thinking about this. I was thinking about this last night because as I said, I got into bed at seven. So I did.

It took me a while to fall asleep. That I thought, you know, I was in local for 14, ESPN for a decade, Fox for a decade. I own my own company now. So I've seen a lot of this stuff where corporations all the time. I've seen it a lot, not on-air people, but upstate. like when talented people leave and the CEO of a company, whether it was a local TV, Fox, ESPN, or even at the volume, when you move off productive people. And it does come down to some of the stuff that you've read leaked with Jalen Brown. Like I was reading this stuff and it just, it kind of jarred memories.

I thought, you know, I sometimes, first of all, companies make mistakes and let the wrong person go. That could be, that could be the case. Case and point. Colin Coward. Whatever. They're on the record with that. That is out there. They're like,

it was a mistake. That's nice. Well, ESPN also let go of Mike Tariko. And I should say NBC bought him. But when that happened, I remember calling one of the top three people at ESPN. I'm like, you let who's going to be, who's your lead voice at the company?

I don't understand what you're doing. Like the NBC came in and, you know, paid him a lot. but it was like, there are times companies, I think, in my opinion, make mistakes. Of course. So that's, if Tatum gets hurt again, you're like, pooh. Yeah. Well, you made a big mistake. Secondly, it usually comes down to, these are the discussions you hear.

Remember when NBC had to pick between Letterman and Leno? Bill Carter wrote about this at the time of the New York Times, is that Robert Wright ran GE, who owned NBC. And he comes in, the air conditioning is broke, the meetings in Florida, he walks into the room. It's a great movie. It's a great book by Bill Carter. And he asks, who's easier to work with? Lennerman or Leno. Everybody's like, Lennel.

Everybody loves Jay Leno. Right? Like, Leno won the room. He'd gone to NBC affiliates. I even saw him in Vegas when I was at an NBC affiliate. Leno played to the affiliates. He played to the advertisers. And the question was, who's easier to deal with?

There are, according to certain reports out now. People felt like the staff work with Tatum more easily than Jalen Brown. I've seen that happen 20 times in my career that that and and again, companies make mistakes. If Tatum gets hurt again, they made a mistake. But, but it's sometimes it is just, ah, the staff likes him, listens a little better, you know, whatever it is. And so I kind of feel like the stories I'm reading coming out is the staff chose Tatum. They like Tatum. Yeah. And Tatum is Tatum is awesome. Tatum is an awesome. Better jump shooter, higher ceiling, more fluid.

Yeah. And they're like, we won, what was it, 56 games. We won 56 games with Jalen Brown doing it. And now we'll just have Tatum do it. And we're going to reallocate that. And like, they're not going to be the same team. They'll have Paul George. Okay, fine. They'll have Mike Conley.

Okay, fine. But they also added Mitchell Robinson. Like one of the best offensive rebounders. defense, like the whole thing was we need to change our, you know, our identity and who we are and be more diversified and, you know, not do the same thing all the time. Well, Mitchell Robinson is going to make the Celtics look really different next year. Like, they should have a fully healthy Tatum, a better backup point guard, and one of the best rebounders in the entire sport. Like, they're probably going to win 54 games next year and be a real threat in the Eastern

conference. So I'm not like predicting the demise of the Celtics over this at all. I just I did this on the show, but like, when it was like, Jalen Brown's clearly going to get traded, I did some mock trades, you know, and I just put them in the trade machine, had some fun for 30 minutes, came up with some that I liked and put them out there. And it was like Jabari Smith, Kevin Durant and a couple of draft picks to Houston. And it was like, Kauai Leonard and a couple of first round picks and send him to the Clippers. And like, send him to Atlanta and give them, you know, Nikiel Alexander Walker. and Cominga and Risha Shea and some picks.

And if you go and you look at the comments from people with Celtic Clovers, you're an idiot, you don't know ball. Like that's 50 cents on the dollar. And then they all hated the Paul George trade. And I was offering way more for Jalen Brown than they got. So I think, again, like the surprising thing is Brad Stevens does not appear to be an outlier in how he views Jalen Brown. Like, the market says Jalen Brown is nowhere near the sixth best player in basketball. And I think that is what a lot of us, myself included.

Like, I really am still like recalibrating. I'm like, because I like analytics. I like numbers, but I'm pretty sure Jalen Brown is better than whatever calculation, even with his contract, that people are telling me that he's worth. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.