The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Gottlieb - All Ball - with special guest Aaron Torres

Episode Date: August 12, 2018

Subscribe here to the All Ball with Doug Gottlieb Podcast https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-ball-with-doug-gottlieb/id1358843497?mt=2. All Ball with Doug Gottlieb is part of the Colin Cowherd Podcast Network. All Ball is an unfiltered podcast covering the biggest stories in college basketball and the NBA. Join Doug as he brings his unique perspective as an TV analyst and radio host. In this episode, Doug talks about the NBA schedule dropping along with latest NCAA rules, and is joined by this week's special guest, Aaron Torres. Follow Doug on twitter at @GottliebShow and go to theherdnow.com to find the latest content. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, welcome in. I'm Doug Gottlieb, and you are listening to All Ball, all basketball podcast all the time. Last week, a little bit different.

We had Chris Beard on, the Texas Tech head coach, kind of telling us the story, taking us through the progression of his career, and he's a great storyteller. We're going to get back to more storytelling next week. This week, I think there are two big things to talk about. The first is the NBA's schedule dropping,

and it's always interesting to me on how we seem to... Sometimes you can be in denial over different things. Like, you know, you can be in denial over why Duke is on national TV in college basketball so much. Or maybe not just Duke, but Duke, Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, Syracuse. Those are the schools that rate. That's why they're on TV so much.

And so it doesn't work the other way around. It's not they're on TV so much. That's why they rate. They rate. That's why they're on TV so much. Period. End of the period stop. So I do think that sometimes people question,

why are the Red Soxie Yankees always on TV? Because they rate. That's it. There's no other reason to it. it that more people will watch. And when you're in television, you're in television program, which I am not. Okay, I'm on the production side.

But the programming side, the only thing they care about is what two teams can we put on TV that get the most eyeballs? That makes everybody more money. And so when you look at the NBA schedule, it's fascinating to see the Lakers schedule and maybe more than anything, how everyone else in the league reacts.

I went through it on my radio show. The Doug Gottlieb show is daily, 3 to 6 Eastern Time, 12 to 3 Pacific, a Foxportrader.com, iHeartRadio app, SiriusXM83 for the first two hours. You could also download the podcast daily.

I went through it, and almost every team's website I went to, or almost every team's Twitter handle I went to, would say, here are the Grizzlies, here's the Memphis Grizzly's schedules, including two games with the Lakers, find out when LeBron James comes to town. LeBron James is literally the biggest show on Earth.

Now, he is in Los Angeles. He is doing the LeBron James Nike Hoops Academy. He also had his first couple workouts at the Lakers Pax facility. But this is also a week in which, it was announced he's got a Netflix show. He's got an HBO show, a Showtime show, a CBS show. There's other shows as well. And I think the question for LeBron is not does he not love basketball. I don't think that's close.

I think he loves basketball. I don't think. I know he loves basketball. But when you come to L.A. and you can have everything. I look at L.A. as, at L.A. as, have you ever been to a really nice restaurant? I'll give an example. Restaurant called the Peninsula. There's a peninsula in New York, in L.A. and Chicago, I'm sure there's others, you know, worldwide.

It's very high-end chain. And a dear friend of mine, whenever he has time and wants to have breakfast, invites me to breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel, which is right across the street, actually, from the Beverly Hills Hilton. So I'm like like a block and a half away from the Beverly Hills Hilton, centrally located, not far from the Fox lot. It's a cool spot. And it's kind of quiet, quaint, a little outdoor area to which some sun, some shade, it's great. I had breakfast there earlier this week. They actually have a buffet. But when you go to a really good buffet, or even to go to a bad buffet, like compare a, we used to have Western Sizzling in Oklahoma State or a Golden Corral or a sizzler.

Compare that buffet to a buffet at a high-end place. You go to a buffet at a high-end place, and they have a guy who makes incredible omelets, right? They have somebody else who will make you any kind of juice. You don't just get coffee. You can get cappuccino. You can get a latte. You can get it with almond milk, with soy milk. Or you can get regular coffee.

You get any kind of tea you ever wanted. And then you go through the actual buffet, and everything is magnificent. And what you end up doing is sometimes is you get so much stuff because you're, you're, you used to, you're trained to the whole, like, man, we were basketball players and we'd go to Las Vegas and we'd stay at Circus, circus, and we'd go through the buffet. You're just trying to fill up with a bunch stuff because the food wasn't that good. But you just got a bunch so you're really full and you'd burn through it anyway. Instead of just getting a great piece of avocado toast and having a cappuccino to where you feel like you're full, but not full. You feel really good. And you really got to enjoy that avocado toast with the poach egg on top just so. Instead, you just had a smorgasbord of stuff. And you eat and you like it and it's fine, but you don't really appreciate it. And it loses the quality that you're actually getting at a place like the Peninsula Hotel or, you know, top end restaurant. That's what LeBron James is running the risk of here.

Look, LeBron's in L.A. and he can do anything he wants. You know, he's got two houses. He doesn't have to move. redoing his house. Kids are going to be in private school. And there's lots of time in the day. You know, you practice for, you work out for two, two and a half hours a day, right? You come in, you get your body worked on. You do your weight lifting. You do your training. You know, you're stretching. Everything takes an hour. Then you get an hour maybe on the court, maybe a little bit longer, maybe a little bit less depending. And in the off season, that's, that's

pretty good. You don't need to do a ton. Both of those guys don't do a ton more. So, Now you have, what do you have, 20 hours left in your day? You sleep six to eight hours a night. So now you're working on, now you're working on 14 hours potentially left in your day. 14 hours at most and 12 hours, maybe at least. You've got 12 hours left. And even if you go out to dinner and you got to lunch and you chew up an hour, that's a ton of time. even if you spend time with your family, that's a ton of time.

So it's not like these are going to be time suckers to be a producer of a show on CBS. It's a game show. To be a producer of, you know, a ballers type of show, to be a producer of a documentary or the one that's going to run where it's more than an athlete. They don't individually take up time, but you do, you end up having a full plate and you lose track of that avocado toast, which used to be basketball. See, he used to be in Cleveland, to which you just throw a bunch of things on the plate because it'd make everything taste better. Now, this is all high-end stuff.

And as much as you could do a buffet, that's not the way to really enjoy a meal. Sit down, take your time, enjoy a meal. So I guess my only fear with LeBron is everybody their whole life has said, I want to do L.A., and he has the power to do so. And every website you go to, every Twitter handle you go to, everyone in the NBA is fired up about the Lakers, already a draw with LeBron, a draw come to town. Everyone in the league will benefit from it. But what's going to be fascinating to me is

the pace in Southern California is so much faster than anywhere else I've ever been. Maybe New York is the only other place. But L.A. is the pace is crazy fast. There are other time suckers, not just your kids and your wife, but travel. He's going to live in Brentwood and at the right time of day,

what is it, 20 minutes to the facility? The wrong time of day, it's an hour. It's an hour. So I'll be fascinated to see, though, if there's just too many things on his plate in year one because he's got to, there's got to be some sort of meeting of the minds between his style and Luke Walton style.

There has to be an, what is it? I think it's like 11 of the first 14 games against playoff team. They have the second. They travel the second most miles. Portland in the most miles. They're the second. The clippers are the third. Part of that is location based.

But they're flying all over Timbuktu. They're everybody's biggest game. And he's got a lot on his plate. So am I, do I think, do I totally agree with Charles Barkley with the idea that LeBron has got to move on from trying to be a great basketball player and is simply worried about being a mogul? No, but do I think he wants to be a mogul? I do. And the first year of making a transatlose. position to Southern California. I've done it twice.

And not even in LA. I'm in Orange County, which is much slower than Los Angeles. It's fast. It's fast. And it takes a while to play catch-up. Now, he's a megastar, and I guess you could say this has been his entire professional life has been going from one town car to the next, you know, and people pulling him in a million directions, different directions. But I would tell you, and most people in Los Angeles tell you, This place is different. The speed is different. The amount of pull is different. And it is a, you have, you have a buffet to which you can do, you can go hiking, you can go skiing, you can go water skiing, you can go surfing, you can hang on the beach, you can go to a nice Hollywood dinner, you go to Malibu dinner. You can go out with family, you can go with friends, you can go out with dignitaries, you can go out with celebrities. You have all these things. This is the highest end buffet you can find. But you might be smarter to just have a piece of, an avocado toast and a really good cup of coffee. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is

all ball. The other part that's interesting to me with the Lakers, a lot of people are calling out their roster, rightfully so. There are some pieces that are head scratchers. But I've explained in previous podcast that this was not a blank slate.

It was not as easy as, hey, it's LeBron. Let's go pick out some dream team of pieces. Guys have to be free agents or they has to be able to be a trade made. In this case, you need guys that were willing to sign a one-year deal because they want to keep themselves flexible for next year's free agency bonanza, as well as maintaining all these young players. Here's the part that no one's talking about. We'll talk about here. It's like the Duke basketball effect, or let's just call it the LeBron effect. As I told you to start, if you go to anybody's Twitter handle in the NBA, there will be a mention of the date

when LeBron comes to town because it's everybody's biggest game. It's. It's Alabama football, Kentucky, Duke basketball. It's everybody's biggest game. And for all those Lakers, the young ones that we all think can be good players, from a Brandon Ingram to Kyle Kuzman to a Josh Hart to a Lanzo ball, how do those guys play in one, real NBA games that matter? And two, in real NBA games that matter against teams that are loaded for bear. In the past, the past couple of years, it's not that people,

it's not like the guys went out drinking the night before the Lakers came to town, but it's closer to the truth than they were getting in bed with their milk and cookies, knowing LeBron's coming to town. You're not just playing on a team that's capable of making the playoffs in a much more talented conference than the Eastern Conference. You're doing so with LeBron James, whom is everyone's biggest game. And how the young Lakers adjust to that is as interesting as anything else. Things you can get away with in any NBA game, you can't get away within the big games.

and as it's shaping up, most every game early on the season is going to be a big game for the young Lakers. Because they're not only trying to prove to LeBron and to the staff that they can play at a high level, they got to prove themselves. And when you don't see immediate success and they may not because it's their first year together,

when you don't see occasional success, there is at least the possibility that you lose your, that you lose your, not your mojo. You lose your confidence, which is kind of your mojo. You lose your confidence. And you lose your confidence around the Bron James. He won't believe in you. He won't give you the ball.

They won't play it. It's going to be really interesting to see how this Laker thing works out. All right, then let's get into the changes in college basketball. Aaron Torres will be our guest. Work for Fox Sports, written for the athletic, as well as other sites. I'm fascinated by the amount of emotional. immediate negativity. It's like you didn't even read through all the rule changes.

Like, no, they still don't get it because Condoleezza Rice was on the commission board. All right, I didn't think the Condoleezza Rice thing made sense. I would have liked more A.U guys. But hey, at the end of the day, if what comes out of it is, they tweak the recruiting schedule a little bit. They change where you're going to go see players some. Whatever. guys can come back to school even after they've been drafted. I like that.

You can be repped by an agent while you're still in school and he can meet with you legally and buy your dinner and buy your parents' dinner and fly them up and give them travel just to have that dinner. The idea is to cut out agents that are of ill repute. That's the idea. That the legal certified agents can act like legal certified agents. Do I think this makes sense? And yes. Do I think it fixes every problem?

No. Does it create new problems? I can't say so as of yet. And I also don't love that everybody's operating on the assumption that the NBA is going to lower the age limit and let guys come straight at high school. I wasn't a good idea then. It's not a good idea now. But that's what's assumed and that's why they create this. Hey, if you have an elite player status, then you can have an agent in high school.

What's an elite player? We don't know. We're not handling it. let's pass it off to USA basketball. Not a strong look, but I think you understand there. My point is the NCAA couldn't not do anything, but any sort of massive wholesale change changes too much. So a slow push towards a different sort of summer camp look.

A slow push towards a different sort of way of viewing athletes and how we cut out the shady middleman. and meanwhile, a relative change in the transfer role, which I don't like, but does create player movement. Also, there's the players can come back and they must be on full scholarship,

but only if they stay two years in college. I like that. The idea of encouraging guys to stay in school more or welcome them back even when they try and go out and get a job in the NBA are all good things. As far as the spring and summer calendar, I don't love it. I don't know why they're,

is a need for regulation. I think you just do one open month, you know, and I think assistant coaches can be on the road all year. That's what their job is. Go out whenever, you know, if you're around a kid too much, the kid's going to get creeped out by you anyway. But this is the path they've chosen to go by. And I can't think of any one rule,

which is so terrible, so awful, that it's going to completely change the sport. I do think that takes place if guys come straight at a high school and go to the pros. The reason is all of these basketball coaches, all these executives at the NCAA who will tell you, hey, listen, the college baseball model, you know what happens if you have the college baseball model in basketball? You have college baseball. Fun sport, great sport, well coached, completely irrelevant in the national sports landscape. Let's welcome in Aaron Torres, who my colleague at Fox Sports Radio, check out his radio show, 8 to 10 Pacific Times.

Saturday nights on Fox Sports Radio. You can also read his work in The Athletic. Follow him on Twitter. At Aaron, I think it's Aaron underscore Torres. Yeah, at Aaron underscore Torres. A college football, college basketball writer, wrote something called One in Fun. Just does a really good job.

Plus, he loves to cover the recruiting scene. And Aaron, I'm wondering your initial reaction when you saw what the NCAA's decided to do with some of their new rules. Yeah, I think, you know, Doug, my reaction was frankly very similar to I think everybody else. It's the middle of the week, middle of the day, everybody's running around. You see these big, bold headlines.

Players can now have agents. Undrafted players can return to college. And you think, oh, my God, this is a landmark day. Everything has changed. Everything we knew no longer exists. And then you read the fine print, and you see that some of the rules really, frankly, aren't all that they are kind of made out to be in that big headline. You know, look, I do think there was some important change as far as the requirements.

recruiting calendar. I know that not everybody in college basketball is necessarily happy with it. And a lot of change, you know, an important change was made as far as kind of the enforcement process at the NCAA level as far as the way that investigations are going to be done and what kind of

information can be used. So it was an interesting day, Wednesday, but I think I speak for a lot of people who cover college basketball when I say that the initial headlines certainly didn't live up to what you expected once you dug into them a little bit. You know, it's funny, mentioned the enforcement, they're outsourcing their enforcement, right? Which is a great idea. Like,

of all the things people have crushed them for, the fact that they have a hand in enforcement is something that leaves you open, open to criticism. I mean, look, it's happened with the NFL with Roger Goodell being judge, jury executioner, right? And if you appeal, you appeal to Roger Goodell. Like, somehow this has gotten lost that people haven't pointed out. Even Mike DeCourse, he wrote a nice article, he didn't even point out that they are outsourcing. most of the enforcement procedure and some of the investigation part of enforcement, I think that's a really good thing, don't do you? Yeah, I do.

And, you know, look, at the end of the day, I think what people have to remember is that all of these rules, whether you like them, whether you don't like them, whether you agree with the NCAA, whether you don't, they were all put in place because the NCAA felt like there were things that they needed to get under control after everything that came out with the FBI process. you know, last fall. And so say what you want about the other stuff. This is a direct reflection of what happened with the FBI,

where you have all of these schools and all of this trouble, but it's frankly stuff that the NCAA in the past, as of previous to Wednesday, they couldn't punish the school for. So if you have an FBI wiretap or you have, you know, an FBI information that nobody else has access to, there's no way that the NCAA is going to be able to get access to that information, And as of a week ago, we were asking, can Arizona really be punished?

Can USC really be punished? What about Louisville with Brian Bowen? Well, now all of that information is usable under the new NCAA jurisdiction. So will it curb cheating? I mean, I think all of us that cover the sport know that if a guy wants to bend the rules or break the rules, he's going to do it. But in theory, you know, it makes it a little bit harder. It makes it a little bit easier for the NCAA to actually hand down punishment

if you are caught. And oh, by the way, some of the new, you know, the new verbiage in the NCAA handbook about what can be punishable and how long the punishment can be has changed as well. So I think from that perspective, and I agree with you, Doug, I think it's gotten a lot lost in the shuffle, is this idea that the punishment process has changed. And again, this is a reflection of what happened with the FBI, and in theory it should help. In theory, it should help. Aaron Torres joining us.

Okay, what about, there is this growing assumption that the NBA is going to change back to allowing players to go to the NBA draft straight out of high school. That's the big thing that I think people are misreading or not reading the fine print is the elite prospect thing threw people for a loop. What's an elite prospect, you know, that's to be determined. But if you read it, it's like, hey, look. if and when the NBA goes back to you can come straight at a high school, then the elite prospects can be represented by an agent and then if you decide to go to college, well, then you have

to cease to have a relationship or a working relationship with that agent. What's your level of belief that they are in fact going to do away with the one and done? Yeah, something you and I talked about a little bit earlier today, Doug. look, look, it seems like if you read the tea leaves, and I think only really Adam Silver and his closest confidants really have a great idea of what their plan is, but it seems like they keep moving this thing back. I mean, when Adam Silver says there's growing sentiment that we want to change it, everyone thinks, oh my God, maybe it'll be in effect as early as next year, 2019.

Then you hear the earliest it would be is 2020. Earlier this week when all this stuff comes out, John Caliperi says, hey, I've been here and it won't happen until 2022. And I think I know where you stand on this, Doug, but I think the reality is, while Adam Silver wants to win kind of the PR war as far as letting kids get to this league as early as they can make as much money as they can,

I think the people on the ground, the people with boots on the ground at the NBA level, the scouts, the front office execs, I think they don't want, I don't think they're interested in evaluating high school kids going to a, a gym where maybe there's only one guy on the court that not only has a professional future, but has a college future. I don't think they want that. I think they want that extra year where a kid has to go to college, has to compete against older competition, has to compete against players, his own age, his own skill set, his own strength, all of that

stuff. And maybe I'm crazy, but from everything I hear, and I'm sure it's probably much the same for you. I don't think most people in the NBA are really in a rush to change this rule the way that I think maybe the general public thinks that they might be. Yeah, I've always thought that Adam Silver is a little bit overreactive to Twitter narrative, right? Twitter said, right, whereas, like, look, the G League's getting better. It's an option for players straight at a high school, but the best option still remains go to one of these historic programs. I even like what the NCAA did. Obviously, I think the best, the thing that everybody likes, but we don't have maybe the best foresight and how it's going to work out is that you can go to, you know, declare for, if you go through the process correctly, declare for the draft, don't get drafted, you can come back to school.

Like, I like that. I would also point out I really like that it's kind of always been a rule, but now it's kind of set in, hey, if you stay for two years, anytime you come back, if you go to the pros, anytime you come back, you're automatically on full scholarship. Like I think that is awesome. like creating more, creating a reason to hang around and a way to come back even when you thought you weren't going to come back. Like, I think all that stuff is good. Now, we do realize that guys that declare for the draft, coach thinks he's gone, he recruits another player, you got 13 scholarships.

What happens if you're over the limit? What happens to the players who, I mean, like, look, if you decide to come back, is that player who's going to play your position, is he going to leave? Like, it's a little bit trickier than people think. But I do actually, I do actually like that stuff. I just, I don't really understand this push for. the none and done. I read Steve Kerr's article when he was working for Turner and he was saying,

hey, we need more time in college. It gives us a great, because they're more mature. They've had to answer to somebody. They've had to be around a team. This is a man's world. It's a professional. It's a job. They need some time away from however they grew up to grow up on their own before they

become a pro. I agree with that, but it feels like Adam Silver is going along with his Twitter narrative. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. And I think that there is so much value to college. And it's on the court, it's off the court. Even if we're talking strictly from a basketball perspective, first of all, by the way,

every single guy that has been forced to go to college, kind of quote-unquote forced, I'm using quotation marks, has talked about how beneficial it was. Look, Kevin Durant, for whatever he has become, the social media pariah that he's become over the last year or two. Like I've heard him say that year at Texas changed me as a person. I'm more mature. I, you know, I entered the league with a more open mind.

I had met people at Texas. I had interacted with people at Texas that I would have never interacted with if I hadn't spent that one year in college. It made me a better person. I've heard Anthony Davis say the same. But then you also look at the on-the-court stuff. And I actually think these coaches, for all the criticism that they get, they do a pretty good job of taking that 18-year-old kids.

out of high school and pre-packaging them and having them ready for the NBA for the NBA a year later. You know, look, you've been in these facilities. I've been in these facilities. I'm sure, you know, a lot of media people that are talking about this feel the same way is that you go to a UCLA, you go to an Arizona. They have a couple meals prepared for them every day. They're working with world-class strength and conditioning coaches.

They are basically, it really is almost a junior NBA. and the way that frankly, even though being in the G League is professional, it's not the same. Riding a bus in Ogden, Utah is not the same as Flying Charter from Durham, North Carolina to wherever the heck Duke is playing their next game. And so I'm with you, and I think the thing you bring up about Adam Silver replying to the Twitter narrative, I totally agree, and I think we're seeing this, because look, you know, I can think back to when this FBI thing happened,

I can think back to when he went on with our buddy Colin Cowherty a year ago and said that he was ready to make this change. Oh, I watched the Ben Simmons documentary, and these kids are not, this rule is not having the effect that it was supposed to. You know, all of a sudden here we are, one, you know, we're a year removed from the FBI stuff, and it seems like there keeps being this push to move it back, move it back, move it back, and I think it's a reflection of, like I said,

the people that actually have to make these decisions, the people whose jobs are on the line as GMs, coaches, front office people, they don't want to be drafted in a 17-year-old high school, even if it's only one year at Duke or Arizona or North Carolina, there really is a benefit to it in the evaluation process. No question. No question. I mean, you and I have talked and you brought up Trayvon Duval,

where, you know, if you go back to high school, he's probably a top pick. But now we saw him for a year. We understand that in addition to his inability to shoot, he doesn't really run a team or create shots for others the way that a guy like that should. And he's going to have to fight his way here with the bucks with a two-way, two-way contract.

He is technically a professional, but not nearly what he would have been had he not been exposed a bit of Duke. For the most part, though, it helps build guys' brands. They've got to show up on time. They've got to balance stuff with school, which is like, it's like real life only it's not, and provides them a great safety net. You and I completely agree on that one. All right, one last thing before we bid, before we did, before we,

bid adieu. The Duke incoming class, the Kentucky incoming class, comparing contrast the two for people who haven't, who don't understand, these are two loaded classes that I have to play right away, compare and contrast the two. Yeah, it's weird because, first of all, I think the top of Duke's class is unquestionably better. They have arguably the three best players in this class, R.J. Barrett, Kim, and Zion Williamson, who's the player that everybody knows, whether you're a college basketball fan, high school basketball fan or not.

But to be perfectly honest, man, I've seen all those guys. They're all kind of wings. None of them really shoot the ball that well. And I'm really curious as to how all of those guys work together. Unquestionably, those three are probably the three most talented players coming into college basketball this year. I really have doubts that it's going to work together, even the same way that was up for you.

say that? No, I was going to say even with, was it Tyler Jones, Tyos Jones' brother as a point guard, doesn't that help mitigate some of those issues? It does, it does, but I, you know, I don't know, I just, I think back, and I know what your argument would be is that two years ago when they had Grayson Allen and Luke Canard

and Jason Tatum, they didn't have that traditional point guard like Trin Jones. I get that argument. I just don't know. It's just, I don't want to do the whole cliche, one ball, a bunch of guys thing. I just don't know how it works. Now, look, Coach Kay and his recruiting pitch, I think, quite frankly, was,

hey, look, man, I had LeBron, Katie, and Carmelo on the same team at one point. We figured out a way to make it work. Yeah, but, I mean, that's that you had so much better play. Like, look, I do think, well, here's the thing. Like, I think the Trey Jones thing makes it work. It's interesting. So the Nike basketball academy has taken place in Thousand Oaks. I talked to NBA assistant GM last night, and he's like, man,

this college games were so bad. And I was like, why do you think they were so bad? And he's like, because there's no point guard. It's like, when you have no point guard, you have all wings, it just doesn't work. And I was like, exactly. So what you're describing, which I get, you know, you got R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish and Zion. But, you know, you put Zion at the four and you put a real point guard out there. Couldn't it then work?

It could, yeah. I mean, the problem is that outside of R.J. Barrett, none of them are very good shooters either. So that to me is, I just, I don't know if it could work, it could work, but the other thing with Duke, they have no real depth, they have no returning experience like last year with Grayson Allen, at least Grayson Allen was a fourth year guy. Sure. This year, I mean, four, you know, four freshmen that are going to be asked to carry that load from day one. Look, you know, look, I think it's going to be Duke is going to be what they've been the last couple years,

where I don't know that I would pick them, I don't know that I'd pick them over Virginia or North Carolina. that both return a bunch of players in the ACC in the regular season. But when you get to the term and you throw that ball up, you know, it's about having to use a Doug Gottlieb term. It's about having dudes, you know, and they are going to have dudes. So, you know, that is the gift in the curse of college basketball is that sometimes the regular season isn't as important as we want it to be. So look, if you're telling me would I be surprised if they win the national championship next year?

Absolutely not. I just think it's one of those deals that I do think there's going to be some speed bumps along the way. maybe even more than people would expect with a recruiting class like that. All right. What about Kentucky's recruiting class? Different group of guys. You know, the cool thing about Kentucky is they're playing these nationally televised games in the Bahamas as we speak here in the middle of August.

And you're getting a feel for who those guys are and what they're capable of. I don't think any of them has the long-term potential of what the Duke guys do. I think the good thing for Kentucky is they actually have some vets. I mean, look, Reed Travis, a grad transfer from Stanford, 50-year senior, two-time Pack 12, All-conference pick. PJ Washington, I think he probably would have been drafted if he stayed in the draft this past season. Comes back as a sophomore.

Nick Richards looks unbelievable, which is something I never thought I'd say. But I don't think any of the freshmen are as good. I will say this, though. I don't know how much you've gotten to watch the first couple games here, Doug. They got a kid Tyler Hero from Wisconsin. I mean, I saw him like three months ago, at the Nike Hoops Summit. I didn't think he was going to be like this.

He's been by far the best players. I think it's going to be interesting. I think Kentucky's got more depth, more experience, but those front-end guys at Duke certainly are pretty darn good. And Hero, remember, was going to go to Wisconsin and changed his mind and ends up going to Kentucky. And he is very athletic. And he can, look, he can shoot and score something that they've missed.

I will be, I'm intrigued to see, I'm intrigued to see if he'll guard anybody and I'm intrigued to see if his shot selection is really good once they get to real basketball games but he does give him a white kid with some swagger that's absolutely completely unafraid

and he does appear to have a much more refined perimeter game than some others and something that Kentucky hasn't had in a couple years and that actually at some point we'll get into this once you get close to college basketball season I like some of what Wisconsin brings back some was injured last year and some was really young young, but I do wonder with Marquette now getting in-state recruits, with Kentucky stealing

away hero, with Minnesota keeping kids home, like how long, how sustainable the Wisconsin thing is, because this is, you know, they built a fence up and then they were able to go into Minnesota and get kids during Bose regime, and occasionally getting kids out of Chicago. I mean, like, look, Frank Kaminsky was going to go to Northwestern, if not for the fact that What's his name? What was a former Northwestern coach? Why am I forgetting? Carmody.

Yeah. Bill Carmody no-showed on his campus visit. They brought him into Bill Carmody's office and he wasn't there. He was, you know, he was like out like playing golf. Like he was just not a recruiter. I didn't know that. Yeah, no. So that's, I mean, he wanted, I think his mom went there.

Like, he wanted to go Northwestern. The point was that he used to be able to get in Chicago. He used to be able to get into Minnesota. He used to build a fence around, around all the kids in Wisconsin. Now, look, maybe they can, because they're Wisconsin, they can redshirt guys. and they can bring guys along slowly and they got such an incredible program. Maybe it works anyway. But nobody's ever done it without players.

And when your recruiting base is shrinking up because of the challenges of Richard Petino and Kentucky and Marquette Wojo is doing a great job. And I do think Chris Collins is a good job Northwestern. I think that changes things. But that may be a discussion for another day. Look, I think that your perspective on the NCAA thing is pretty much right on. And the other thing is that nothing they would have done would have been received with open arms, right? But if we simply said, hey, they made it easier for kids to come back after being drafted. Do you like that?

Yes, I do. They changed recruiting calendar. All right. I'm like, look, it's changed a million times over. I don't think they perfected it. I'm not sure it needed to be changed. Whatever. It's something they felt like they were compelled to do.

I think they created greater access to legal access to agents for players while they're in school for more information. and an easier way for them to come back to school. And they took away some of their enforcement powers and enforcement duties. Like, I actually kind of think they did a decent job. They do a great job. They completely fixed the system. No, but we'd also agree, you and I would agree,

the system wasn't totally broken. That was more perception than reality. And so by not completely having an upheaval of a system that most people believe wasn't completely broken, I don't think they did a terrible job. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. And like I said earlier, obviously you see those big sweeping headlines,

and you don't see all the caveat in between. But look, my kind of big picture takeaway is you've got to start somewhere, right? And so, like, we haven't even talked about the recruiting stuff, and frankly, I think the average fan would probably bore them to tears. But, like, at the end of the day, they've changed a couple of the events over the course of the season. I think coaches aren't crazy about it. But, again, part of it is about public. perception, but two, they made this edict. They want to get sneaker money out of or try to

limit the sneaker influence in high school athletics and in recruiting. And so they changed the schedule a little bit. Everyone's, oh, this is the worst thing ever. And like, look, like you said, I don't think it's perfect, but, you know, the more that I peel back this stuff, the more that kind of realize, like, sometimes you just got to start somewhere. And like you said, Doug, like, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like, we don't have to have all the answers today. And even if we did, no matter what you do, people are still going to be upset about it. And so I used kind of the recruiting example, just as an example of, is it the perfect answer? No.

Does it piss a lot of people off? Yes. But did it do the purpose that it was intended, which is sort of kind of take away a little bit of the power of the sneaker companies without completely redoing the whole structure of the system? It did. And so to me, I'm with you. And, you know, this is something that people who follow my work, people who know me, I think the NCA in general gets a pretty bad rap. I think the vast majority of kids that come through college athletics, male, female, non-revenue,

like they got it pretty good. Like, if you're an athlete at a Big Ten school, like, you're living a pretty good life, even though there's, you know, maybe five kids on campus that are going to be able to make a living, doing whatever it is that they play as a sport. And I'm with you as like, we don't have to have all the answers today, but it was clear that they wanted to make change. They put Connoisse of Rice in charge of this commission. And yeah, like, I was the guy banging the drum on Wednesday.

What is all this? But the more that I peel it back, it's like, dude, sometimes you've got to start somewhere, and this is what it is, and it's going to continue to be tweaked over the coming years, and I'm guessing that it probably isn't the same a few years from now that it is now. But it's okay. Like I said, you got to start somewhere. Right. Nothing is forever.

And, you know, first part to fixing a problem is admitting that. there is a problem. I don't know how big the problem is, but they admit there's a problem trying to fix it. And if it doesn't work, like these rules are not set in stone. These are not the tablets come down from Mount Sinai. They're written in paper. Their amendments, they can be amended. Aaron, great stuff, as always. Appreciate your spirit and joining us so much here. Can't wait to hear your radio show, which is 8 o'clock at night on the Pacific Coast time on Saturday night. That's 11 o'clock at night on the East Coast time. You can also list to it at Fox Sports Radio.com or on SiriusXM Channel 83. Aaron Torres. Aaron, thanks so much.

Appreciate you having me, Doug. All right, that's been all, Ball. I'm Doug Gottlieb. Hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to listen to my radio show. Three to six Eastern Time, noon to three Pacific. You listen on Fox 4thrader, the IHeart Radio app, or Sirius XM Channel 83. In the meantime, subscribe, download, and rate us. Don't forget to rate us. I appreciate you listening. We'll get back to more storytelling.

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