The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Breaking Down the Trade that Shocked the NBA World: Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis | 2.3

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

On today's episode of The Right Time, Bomani Jones reacts to the Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis trade that rocked the NBA world. (1:00) Bo starts the show by trying to compute this massive trade and ask why the Dallas Mavericks would trade a 25 year old superstar, that basketball fans actually pay to see play? (7:47) Bo also makes sure to point out that Anthony Davis is still a great player and should be given some credit instead of being crushed online. (20:56) Bo then looks at the Los Angeles Lakers perspective, where LeBron James now is no longer the centerpiece of the team, and why Rob Pelinka had to hide this trade from Rich Paul. (29:02) And finally, we have another round of If You Haven't Heard stories involving litigation against sports gambling, DeepSeek, and Bryan Johnson's weird medical test with his son. (38:31) Then Bomani listens to some voicemails about the craziest thing you've heard a coach say in the locker room. (48:38) IYHH Contributors:  Matteo Wong, Staff Writer at The Atlantic: “China’s DeepSeek Surprise: What to make of China’s suddenly popular new AI model” https://bit.ly/4hCzDvc Sean Gregory, Senior Sports Correspondent at TIME: “The Man Who Took On Big Tobacco Has a New Target: Sports Betting” https://bit.ly/40ZOt9G  Kase Wickman, Culture and Society reporter at Vanity Fair“Don't Die Tech Mogul Bryan Johnson Is in an Actual Penis-Measuring Contest—With His Teenage Son” https://bit.ly/42MueNQ  . . . Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media:  http://lnk.to/therighttime Support the Show:  PrizePicks: Daily Fantasy Made Easy! Visit PrizePicks.com/BOMANI and use code BOMANI for a first deposit match up to $100! Download the Viator app now and use code VIATOR10 for ten percent off your first booking in the app. Find travel experiences for you. Do more with VIATOR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A wave original. There we go. We change things up. My name is Bobati Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars.

You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. Guys, I just want to walk you through this for a little bit, right? So I went to North Carolina this weekend. I had an engagement at the Rialto Theater at Raleigh called Basketball Jones. Shout out to all the people that came. Shout out to all the people that helped put on the event. Had a good time going back to the crib, so to speak.

It's a crib of source for your boy. But anyway, I go back there. I got a flight on Sunday at 8 o'clock in the morning. Also, right fast, just want to take a brief moment before we get to all the shenanigans to tell you that I have, in fact, become a. bit of a different person. And when I say a different person, dare I say a New Yorker, because I got there at like nine something in the morning on Thursday, which meant I had to wake up crazy early on this end. You know what I'm saying? I get in, I walk into the hotel.

And there's all the people, hey, how are you? I get into the lobby. Hey, how are you? I was like, why are you talking to me? And then I remember it. Oh, yeah, that's how we do things down here. I used to remember when the New Yorkers would come down south and be so weirded out by the fact that people would be in nice to them. I'm like, what's wrong with those people? I am those people, right? And I bring that up because I had people walking up to me at the airport to talk about this. And I had to remember, oh, yeah, this is going to be a thing. People like, Katow worked at the airport clearly did not want to disturb me, clearly wanted to leave me alone.

There was no way in the world he could let me walk past without talking to me about that trade. And I want to send a shout out to my man, TD, my boss. also over here at Wave because I wouldn't have known about the trade necessarily where other people had brought it up. But I found out about the trade from TD when I woke up at 515 in the morning. And I look at my phone and TD doesn't send a text to me and Sean. And it says how he hated the timing of the Luca in AD trade. And I looked at that and I said, who the hell is AD?

Because there wasn't no way in the world that you was telling me they traded Luca Dodgers. Like Luca Dodgers went to the Lakers. There wasn't no way in the world. You was telling me that Luca Dantzich got traded for. Anthony Davis, like my brain could not compute the idea that this trade happened. And then I looked and I saw what the trade was. And I got to admit to you guys, man, I was so sleepy and it was all so crazy when I saw it.

And then I get on the internet. And the only thing I really see people in there complaining about is all you got back was Anthony Davis. And I'm like, God damn, all you got back is Anthony Davis? Is that the way that we talk about Anthony Davis at this point? I was a little floored and shocked by the way that people were just down talking Anthony Davis. They was, whew, good gracious. Now look, I said in the tweet that I had about it that I didn't, I mean, that threw me off,

even if it was fair to say all you got was Anthony Davis. And after having a little more time to let it settle in, I totally understand why it is that people looked at what the hall was and said it wasn't enough. It wasn't simply all you got was Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis being the best thing you get in that trade, I think it's pretty good. It's that they didn't get, like, all this stuff that the internet basketball people use as lubrication,

draft picks and pick swaps. You know what I'm saying? All that stuff, that's what they get out the dispenser, you know, before it's time to make it happen. Like, I understand that. They really get off on the idea and picks and stuff.

I was just, I couldn't make sense of what in the world had happened. And so I was shocked by people's ability to move immediately into anger, right? It was 7 o'clock in the morning, Sean. They was mad than a motherfucker on the internet. You got to imagine me, my situation of the trade, at getting a text of a Shams tweet that immediately everyone's first reaction was, oh, this guy got hacked. Oh, there's no way.

And then the next one was Shams replying to his own tweet saying, yes, this is actually real. Like that is the level of shock. And again, it quickly turned into anger. Yeah, okay. So I immediately started hitting up a couple people. Once it got early enough, right? Like 7 o'clock. I can send some texts and get some thoughts, get some ideas.

Now, this is the part that I feel like we're not talking about nearly enough. Everybody's floored by the idea that a five-time all-NBA player at the age of 25 got traded, period. Forget about what the return was. The idea that a guy like that guy, trade it at all is so insane that you are not going to look at just about any trade package or any like any package that's put together and say that was enough. Now, I want to be clear and we'll get to more about this part a little bit later. No, it was not enough, so to speak.

Okay. The argument that you could have opened this up to a bidding war, nah, it doesn't really hold up because we know how the NBA works. You say you open it up to a bidding war, word gets out and then Luca and his agent, who I believe is Bill Duffy, say, Luca only wants to go to insert place here. And now you don't have a bidding war anymore, right? Like that whole situation, it all stops when it becomes one to one. Nico Harrison, the general manager, decided he wanted to go get Anthony Davis, so he wanted

to go get Anthony Davis. Now, I find it a bit absurd that he couldn't have extracted more from the Lakers. But I think we're skipping over what is the biggest. The biggest. point here in the most shocking thing. I am 44 years old. I have been watching this league for as long as I can remember. And I have seen some serious headaches on some rosters. I have seen guys get mired in scandals who are not nearly as good as Luca Donchage. All right. The examples that I want to bring up, I'm reluctant to bring up because I believe they will seem a little bit crass. However, you can think of some of the things that guys have done in the NBA and still gotten extensions, not gotten cut, gone through measures of image rehab, all of these things, right?

we have seen guys be incredibly difficult to work with and da-da-da and everything else. We have seen it all. And rarely do we see those guys get traded for it. We just saw not just one of the top five to seven players in the NBA. One of the most popular players in the NBA. And by the way, not just popular in the sense that, oh, people like him or people like to click on the and watch the stuff he does playing basketball, I mean popular in the sense that he's one of the rare guys

that I believe actually sells tickets. I think good teams sell tickets, but I don't think that many players, no matter how good they are, actually make somebody want to buy a ticket to watch that person. You may want to buy a ticket to watch that team because it makes that team good. But for example,

how many people are paying money to watch Jimmy Butler in particular play basketball? You understand what I'm saying? saying Anthony Davis. Who amongst you has ever paid a dollar to specifically see Anthony Davis play basketball? People pay

money to watch Luca Donches play basketball, playing basketball in a market that is not really a basketball town where you got to give them reason to pay the money to come out here and do this. And with that guy who's made all these all-MBA

teams, and oh, by the way, got them to the NBA finals last year and didn't not just get them to the NBA finals is one of the rare players that you can look at and be like, you got us today? He can look at you and say, I got you today. And then it shapes up and he got you, right? A real live, legitimate postseason shot maker. You saw that shot he made against Minnesota. I believe it was in game two, for example. Okay. He is that guy and a team looked at that guy and in some combination of general manager, head coach, and ownership, they said, you can trade him.

That is an unprecedented circumstance in the NBA. Sean Philadelphia never traded Alan Iverson. You know what I mean? And it's clear that it's sent ripple effects through the league. You mentioned Philadelphia. Joe Lindbide and Paul George are both on the court, getting action. Oh, yeah. They out here.

Everybody out here showing up early. They getting to work. They get into work. But Iverson, I think, is a great comparison. And the reason I think this is, you ever hear what Alan Iverson said about why he didn't live weights? No. Because them shits was heavy.

Like, look, you remember when it was over for Allen, it was over. Quick. He averaged 26 points in game. And I want to say his last season in Denver, or two, not the last season. The season before last in Denver, he avered something like 26 points of game. and he was basically out of league two, three years later. Like, it fell off because his conditioning and he did not take adequate care of his body and the way that he kicked it off the court.

It took things down a notch for him, right? But they didn't get rid of him. They didn't trade him. And for those of you who weren't old enough for this, you could think of Alan Iverson just in terms of like being a style icon. Alan Iverson terrified America. And they kept him through all of that. There were court cases.

They kept him through all of that. John Morant out here playing with guns. They kept him. Now, granted, the value may not have been that high. It couldn't get so much back. But hell, look at what they got back for Luca. They kept him. Whatever is going on with Luca Donchage,

I firmly believe that the Mavericks looked at him in a way that is very similar to the way that the Falcons looked at Brett Farb. and those of you who don't know this story, the Falcons traded Brett Farv in early 1992 to the Packers for a first round pick. You all saw where Brett Farb ultimately became. Farb has talked about this many times that Jerry Glanville told him that he traded him to save his life,

which is an implication that he knew whatever it was going to take for Brett Farb to get his head out of his ass was not going to happen as long as he played for the Falcons. And in Dallas, they clearly made the call whatever it's going to take for him, to get it right is not going to happen here. And it's really not going to happen here with us paying $350 million to get them there because that's the contract that Luca was eligible for.

And look, the right was on the wall, not necessarily that something like this could happen, but that something like this wasn't right. Sean, if we could play this clip of Brian Winhorse after game three of the 2020-N-Ba finals. Yeah, I thought it was perfect that Luca fell onto the ground there in an unacceptable position to put himself in with four minutes left with five fouls. and then immediately looks at the bench and says you better bleeping challenge it, as if it's the bench's fault that he just made a terrible play. I'm standing here in the Mavericks Tunnel.

Over there is the Celtics Tunnel. That's where the winners are. If Luke is ever going to be a winner coming out of this tunnel here, he is going to have to use what's happened in this finals as a learning experience. His defensive performance is unacceptable. He is a hole on the court. The Celtics are attacking him. They are ahead in this series because they have attacked him defensively.

And you've got a situation here where Lucas is. is complaining about the officiating, they have begged him. They have talked with him, they have pleaded with him. He is costing his team because of how he treats the officials. He's a brilliant player. He does so many things well. They are here because of how he did. His performance in this game is unacceptable

and the reason why the Mavericks are not going to win. He's got to get over this. And the fact that he came out after the game and blamed the officials showed me he's nowhere close yet. So maybe over the summer somebody will get to him because nobody with the Mavericks or anybody else in his life has. And that's where the Mavericks are at this point. they're never going to get to this tunnel with the trophy if he doesn't improve those aspects of his game.

What I'm telling you is that man right there got on television and called that boy a loser. That is what he said right there. Look, that's where the winners are. You're not over there because you do stuff like this. He just called him a loser. And I don't think I'm exaggerating here, right? And Sean, we have talked about how the worst thing it is that you can call somebody is a loser. Yeah, you mentioned that quite often.

And like, Wind Horse wouldn't go out of his way to say that. You know, he's a very, he's a reporter. He's a journalist. He's very respectable in that sense. But he would never go out of his way to say that. And you mentioned earlier, like, how no one corrected him on that or no one came to his defense. He said he kept showing up. Because it was during the finals.

And like, you do something like that. You got to show up. He said he kept showing up. And not one person said a word to him about what he said, right? This was the consensus around this team is that their best player is a loser. but nobody gives up on it. And so I want to know what the magnitude of the problem is that they saw for them to make the decision to make that trade.

Like, this is one of the balliest free agent or personnel moves that I have ever seen in the history of the NBA. Like, keeping in mind, Niko traded for Kyrie when Kyrie was acting the donkey is and every day looked at Luca Dodgers and said, peace out. And I'm going to say that last part one more time and I'm going to put this in different terms. The people who are around him the most, the people who know him the best, know everything that we know about Lucas accolades and know everything that we know about what he's been when he's at his best.

And those people looked at him and traded him for, 50 cents on the dollar. I think that overall people are being incredibly kind to Dodgers in this place. Yeah, they might not have got enough for him, but the story is the fact that they even thought about trading him in the first place and what that says about both him and the league. Now, what it says about him? here are some quotes from Nico Harrison. He did some press availability on Sunday.

Yeah, I think it wasn't really like a point. I think it was like how do we make our team better? You know, there's some unique things about his contract that we had to pay attention to. You know, there's other teams that were loading up, you know, that he was going to have, he was going to be able to decide make his own decision at some point of whether he wants to be here or not, whether we want a supermax him or not,

or whether he wants to opt out. So I think we had to take all that in consideration and feel like we got out in front of what could have been a tumultuous summer. You said it a number of times. You mentioned the word culture and how Anthony and the other players you bring back fit that culture. Are you implying that Luca no longer fit that culture? No, listen, one thing about me, I'm not going to talk bad about any players.

I mean, that's not going to do us or me any good. I just say there's levels to it. And there's people that fit the culture and there's people that come in and add to the culture. And those are two distinct things. And I believe the people that we're coming in are adding to the culture. Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's something that, as Nico's brought up, we are aligned, right? And so just understanding, Luca, when I first came here, you know, excited about the opportunity to coach an upcoming star, who became a megastar.

And I was just blessed to have that opportunity to coach him. But when you look at the vision of the team and what Nico wants to build, I truly support that. And truly believe that the players that we're getting are the ones that can help us achieve that. And that's to win a championship. They said everything I just said, except they did not say it. Sean, do you think that's a fair assessment? I think that is. Like when they started getting into culture and the way they're putting it, right?

Yeah, there's a lot that they said without saying it. It was like classic like GM speak. Yeah, but see, here's the problem. All right, and this is where Nico was messing up. Like, y'all talk about Nico, like, he can't fucking read. He must not. Like, it is, it has been uncomfortable for me to watch the dialogue on the internet because, Sean, let's be honest here.

The basketball blogging demographic really, really likes Luca Donchich. And I think it's fair to say, they like Luca Donchich in a similar way to say, like, I used to like rebel cutting ham a mic. Yeah, yep, yeah, I get it. You see what I'm saying? So I want to be clear. I'm not judging you guys per se about this. However, man, you would have thought they got traded.

The way to all the basketball blog dudes reacted after that, you would have thought that they was the one that got traded off the team. They was so hot and furious in the way that they was talking about and then the way they came back. Well, why didn't you get more for them? Damn, it's like, like, okay, okay, right? Like, I'm just saying, I bring that up because Nico is going to get fired for this. we need to just go ahead and throw this out here.

In all likelihood, he is going to wind up getting fired for this for one reason or another. And I felt like the way that he conducted that press conference indicated his understanding was that all that's going to matter is whether or not we win. And if we win, fine. If we lose, I get fired, but I'm willing to take a big swing. Okay. But that did not appear to be the man who would make such a ballsy move. Like if you're going to do something like that, you got to walk in that room and not just claim credit,

not just try to take the bullets and try to say, I'm the one who did it and don't blame nobody else. You got to put them things on the table right there when you do it. I will give you an example. It's not a perfect analog. But those of you college football folks who remember this. After the 2003 season, I think Nebraska was something like nine and three that year or like that. But anyway, they fired Frank Solich, who was their head coach, who was the end of that whole time. born era in the end of the way that they did things and everything else. And I'll never forget,

it didn't work out. But that AD, I believe his name was Peterson, Scott Peterson, I think was his name. But he stood up at that press conference when he had to explain why he just ended a cultural era. He stood up there and he said, I will not concede this conference to Oklahoma and Texas, right? Which was to say, a big move needed to be made and I'm the one that made the big move. You can't get up there that microphone, whispering about making hard decisions and everything else, da, da, da. But on the other hand, what he doesn't want to do is get up there and set fire to Luca Dantzich on the way out the door, right? But this is what he did need to do. And this to me, again, I don't think we talked about how crazy it is that the trade itself happened, but I also don't think that we talk about how

crazy it is that Nico doesn't get something seemingly very important about this trade that he made, all right. So I got into an argument with somebody I've never heard of on the internet, right? And the reason I got into the argument with him was I was talking, I was just making the point again that I think y'all are really like not giving Anthony Davis enough credit for being Anthony Davis. I still can't believe. Yeah, he's 32. You can say he's brittle, but he's also played something like 92% of the games in the last two calendar years. Like I just, I just felt like we're doing kind of a disservice to a first team hall of favor, right? And so this guy hits me up and he's like, you don't appreciate the gravity of the situation. I'm like the what or the who? The gravity of the situation is Sunday morning, man.

I'm talking about basketball. And he got into this old witty-ass shit about like what this meant to Dallas and how the city feels about Luca and da-da-da. I'm like, bro, I don't care about your feelings because I didn't care about his feelings to be perfectly honest. And then he demonstrated that he doesn't care about mine. But I didn't care about his feelings. Okay, it's not my job to care about his feelings. Nico, on the other hand, it is your job to care about that man's feelings.

You just traded the franchise away. And you just up there like, hey, maybe I'll be right, maybe I'll be wrong. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You needed a very clear plan and a very clear strategy for what it is that you were going to do. And I'm here to tell him, and I don't think he understands this. on February 24th, 1994, I don't have to look that day up. The Atlanta Hawks were number one in the West

and somebody got the bright-ass idea to trade Dominique Wilkins. I ain't rooted for the Hawks not once since. And I am not alone. You could go to Atlanta and start talking to people. There's a lot of people that have told you about that day. It's the day they traded Dominique. And I was out. and a lot of other people were out

because you can't do it like this in basketball. You just traded the franchise and you sat up there in front of everybody and you was mealy-mouthed about it and you gave them some lip service or some defense wins championships, die, da, da, die. No, no, no. You just made an unprecedented trade

where you did not get back an adequate package in the eyes of pretty much everybody. Okay? Even if you're like me and you don't think the package was that bad, It feels like you should have got more. You don't have an explanation for why it is that you only offered this up to one team.

You have to explain to everybody why it is. You keep trading for your guys. And that's what you did. You went and got your guy from Nike, just like PJ Washington was your guy, just like Kyrie Irving was your guy. You don't look in the eyes of most people to be competent. I'm not saying you are incompetent. I'm saying what I think don't matter.

what everybody think do matter and they think you look foolish and you sat up there and you did nothing because somehow I don't understand this somehow you made the biggest balliest trade ever and you thought you could just come in there and talk about that like you were just reading the minutes from the meeting nah doc you got to explain this and i hate to say this but uh if you're not doing it already you better have to have a some hellified leaks ready for everybody else on this. Because otherwise, you're just going to look like a fool until they come up with a reason to fire you. I'm not saying that he was a fool for trading them because it sounds like it had to be bad for them to do it at all. I'm not saying he's a

fool for the package he got. I don't understand it and I would like a more adequate explanation. And again, I don't think a bidding war was possible. But this ain't about me. This about the world. And somehow you decided to trade Luca Donchich and didn't really have the plan for explaining it. I could understand why people wonder if you know what you're doing if you didn't understand the importance of that part. However, let us not forget, nobody's ever traded a guy that good at this time. This was crazy to begin with, apparently. of course it was going to end crazy too. So, Sean, that's the longest, I think, first block of a podcast that we've done.

Yeah, but worth it. Yeah, yeah. There wasn't really, really, really no option. But let's talk about this from the Lakers standpoint, okay? Now, Sean, you live in L.A. How's that going over? I imagine they got to be pretty happy, right? Yeah, I think Laker Nation is ecstatic.

I'm not a Laker fan, but I have a lot of friends who are, and so they're, you know, clearly pumped that they got a 25-year-old whose only big problem is he might be a little overweight. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. See, this is where I don't think that people are being wise about this. They are bringing up the fact that he has these conditioning issues. By the way, I'm just going to throw it out there. Zayal-Williamson got to be out there like, oh, so ain't that big a deal to be fat, huh?

Yeah, Zion's going to get Ozempic or something. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal when I'm fat, but him, oh, all right? I mean, I know they're not the same. I'm just telling you, but if I was Zion, I would probably feel that, you know, that's similar way or whatever. But we keep putting this in terms of conditioning, or he just might show up a little bit out of shape. Hey, man, you guys, the process matters when it does and it doesn't, right? You know, the culture stuff or whatever, it matters when it does or it doesn't.

You've just decided that this dude is somebody that you think should just be able to do whatever the hell it is they want, he wants because you like him. It's not just simply because he's good at basketball. You just think he should be able to do whatever he wants, because you happen to like him for whatever reasons it is that you happen to like him. Okay, that's fine. The question is the issue is not that he is poorly conditioned. The issue is why is he poorly conditioned?

Right. Why is it that you're already in year seven in the NBA and these things are still happening? The Mavericks decided it can't happen for them. I think that everybody's operating on this assumption that this trade will humble Luca and wake him up and he'll come back next year at 2.30. would probably stink for the Mavericks because it would never go happen for you. I just don't know who it is that moved from Dallas to Los Angeles and then was like, yep, they got to just stay at the home and stay at home and do nothing but work out and go to work.

That's what I would do if I had zillions of dollars and I lived in Los Angeles and was now the biggest star in town. Yeah, my discipline would be sky high. What are you talking about, right? There's a risk factor here, okay? But anyway, the real story is LeBron Jay. And yes, I'm the guy that talks about how not every NBA story is LeBron James story and the NBA has done itself a disservice by making everything a LeBron James story. But in a bit of an ironic twist, this is a LeBron James story because it's not a LeBron James story.

That's what makes it a LeBron James story. Just let that sit for a second. Okay. Here's what I'm saying. We got the initial reports that the Leger's made this trade and LeBron James did not know about it. and my good buddy Miles Brown said a tweet and said that LeBron found out about that trade like Michael Corleone found out that the police chief got shot. That was also my initial assumption in this. And then I thought about it a little more and I talked to a couple people around the league and I'm like, no, no, no, LeBron definitely didn't know about this.

And the reason that you know that LeBron didn't know about this is that if LeBron knew about this, then Rich Paul would have shut up. this down. There's no way Rich Paul allows this to happen. There's no way Rich Paul allows Anthony Davis, his client who wants to be in LA, to be traded. There's no way that LeBron changes what his lot is on this team.

No, this absolutely gets shut down if Rich Paul knows. Because Rich Paul finds out this is going on and then you get the mythical bidding war that we talk about and then some other team jumps in and then, you know, it goes from there. LeBron James did not know what was going on.

And I don't blame anybody again that was skeptical because no team would make a trade like that without discussing it with its superstar. Except that's what the Lakers did, which is to say LeBron James is not their superstar, which is to say this team, they had all them dudes from clutch on it, right? This team that went to got Anthony Davis because LeBron wanted it, right? This team where Anthony Davis was his man's, they sent him out of there without talking to LeBron. James. And not only did they do that, they traded for a guy that I don't think can play with LeBron, if LeBron plays, as we've known, LeBron to play, right? Here's the thing about Luca, okay? He's useless off the ball. All the people that know basketball better than I do all say that. If he is not on the ball, he is useless. So, Sean, help me out. He's useless. He's,

if Luca can't play off the ball. You think they got him to not play? Yeah, exactly. He's just going to stand there. I don't see Luca to be one to set a screen, you know, or like a backdoor action for something. And JJ is a guy who gets everyone involved as a coach. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll see how much JJ enjoys this. We'll see how much the coach and Luca experience. We'll see how much he digs this. But what this means is Lucas on the ball. And we've seen. what it looks like when Luca's on the ball. Luca's on the ball. Luca got the ball.

Luca takes the shots. Luca is not a point guard. Luca plays on the ball. I would argue that James Hardin is more of a point guard than Luca is. They are, as my buddy Shannon says, he's a point guard, not a pass guard, right? He's a lead guard. It's probably the best way to put it. We have created a universe where LeBron James is just Mr. Off the Ball now,

where LeBron James becomes another moon orbiting around Luca. is that what this is? How exactly does this work? Because I don't think the Lakers got better in the short run. I think it's going to be interesting to see how they figure out a way to make it work and the way that LeBron attempts to adapt around a guy that he has to adapt around where most people have adapted around him as long as this is gone. I just don't think that's going to work. Forget about the ego part. I don't think that Luka Dajins is capable of adapting. If this is going to work at all, LeBron's going to have to be the one to start doing this a little bit differently. Most players have a point if they're like, not even most players. This is a bit unique.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the example I'm thinking of where it reached a point where the Lakers weren't his anymore and the Lakers had to be Magic's Lakers. But there was a time period in which that transition was taking place, you know, and one's going up and one's going down and then it crosses and it becomes Magic's team, right? This isn't a transition. They went out and got LeBron's replacement on LeBron's watch. Like this is what the Lakers were able to pull off that none of LeBron's other teams have ever been able to do. They were able to adequately prepare for the post-Lebron future. Nobody else has ever been able to do that.

Every other team that has had him has written the LeBron thing out as far as it would go, hoping maybe he would stay. And then if we're bad after, then we're just bad after. But we're going to put everything in this. And the Lakers have figured themselves out away off of that train, which puts LeBron in a position he has never been in, is they don't need him. And I am very, very curious to see how all of that plays out, right?

NBA team only got room for one guy to have the biggest voice in the building or the biggest voice on the roster. That's Luca now. Luca's their future. Luke is the guy that they've got to convince to stay. Remember, Dwight Howard didn't stay, right? Luke is the guy that they have to convince to be a Laker of the future. He is the guy that they have to flatter.

LeBron James is a short-term condition. LeBron James is no longer the centerpiece of the franchise, and this is the first time that any of us have watched basketball since the year 2003, where that was the case. That is amazing to me. And by the way, I would argue that that's a move, that if you're polink or anybody else, you make that move. You absolutely do that.

You make that transition. You go ahead and do that. and I would also imagine that would feel excellent if I was Rob Polaker you beat the video game boss nobody been better at wielding that power

and in position than LeBron James and he the one that figured it out by the way right fast before we go do some advertising somebody named Logan said did both talk from the perspective of a Dallas fan at all And I want to be very clear for you. Sean, did I not do that? Did I not do that?

I think he did. I did do that. But I want to tell you right now, you need to thank me for talking about this from the perspective of a Dallas fan because nobody cares about your feelings. Like I don't understand why this is that people think somebody's supposed to weep for them under these circumstances, right? Like anybody talk about the perspective of a Dallas fan?

You go do that with them crying ass people. Do you see the people that was out in front of the building? and ordered a casket overnight and all of this stuff. You dropping flowers off, you know, like he just passed away. Sean, you know I'm torn. I'm getting more touchy-feely about this. I'm leaning more into the emotional aspects of all of this, and I understand that this, it comes with feels.

Yeah. Right? Like I get that, and you feel something about this team, and I don't want to laugh at you for having these feelings about this team. You should have these feelings about your team. I just need you to understand that they don't pay me. I am from Houston. The only time I care about the feelings of Dallas is when somebody is hurting them.

In fact, I've decided. I don't know how good the trade was, but I love it. The NBA is in full swing and the big game is right around the corner, which means you could turn $10 into $1,000 in a single game watching your favorite teams only on prize picks. You can make a prize picks line up between the NFL and the NBA in as little as 60 seconds. Sign up today and get it. $50 instantly when you play $5. You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus.

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that I can pick between both leagues and using the flex play. You know, I can still cash out if my lineup is a perfect. And as always, make sure you stick around for the end of the show to hear my upcoming picks. And if you know me, you know I'm always picking more. There you go. Make sure you go to prizepicks.com slash Beaumani and use code Beaumani for a first deposit matchup to $100. That's prizepicks.com slash Bobani. Prize picks, daily fantasy sports made easy.

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what you just told me. I'm putting the tweet up on the screen right now. This is from the Bill Simmons podcast. Kurt Goldsbury's very reputable source. He said the Luca Donchich, Anthony Davis trade, originally included multiple first and Don Connect. A deal got whittled down. I think Rob Polanco is able to convince the Mavs

that Luca's a lot of risk, his drinking, his weight problem. Okay. So what we're saying is, what's worse, Sean? People thinking you stupid or people thinking you're soft? because having all the picks and stuff in there, at least that tells us not stupid. Exactly. Saw what you saw.

And, you know, Nico mentioned multiple times his relationship with Polinko when he was at Nike and I'm like, you just let this guy steamroll you. And he's also not that good at his job, right? Exactly. Of all the guys. Steam roll him.

But how badly did he want to come off Luca that he was, that, that's, I don't think we're talking enough about that part. How bad could it have possibly been. People like, oh, because he's a little overweight. It can't be that. That's not possible. For you to do this? Just because he'll... Sorry, sorry. Do we have odd news stories for the people? Yeah, we do. Let's start with this first one here. Hi, I'm Sean Gregory, senior sports correspondent at time. My latest feature is a profile of Richard Dainerd, a bearded, bookish, 81-year-old law

professor who, back in the 80s and 90s, developed the key legal strategies that took on big tobacco. These cases ultimately led to a massive settlement between tobacco companies and the states. Big Tobacco agreed to pay states more than $200 billion and stopped advertising to kids. Cigarette sales have since dropped 59%. Danard, who runs the Public Health Advocacy Institute out of Northeastern University, has a new target, sports gambling. Americans legally bet more than $150 billion a year ago, up $25, up $25,000. percent over 2023. More than $1.5 billion is expected to be legally bet on the February 9th Chiefs Eagle

Super Bowl, a new single-day American record. Leagues and teams have partnered with Draft Kings and Fandul. The advertising is incessant. People can bet on anything and everything on their phones. Danaer believes sports betting is a new public health crisis. And recent academic papers have found that bankruptcy risk, savings depletion, and incidents of intimate partner violence rise in states with legal sports betting. Gaynor's group has filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts,

accusing draft kings of deceptive advertising. He's also helped two democratic lawmakers introduce legislation that would more strictly regulate the industry and potentially cut back on sports gambling addiction. These next few months will determine if his litigation and legislation will pay dividends. Here's a safe bet. on Super Bowl Sunday, there'll be plenty of money on the line. Sometimes I don't know how much there is for me to add, Sean. I just feel like, what are we doing?

That was pretty self-explanatory and a great report by Sean Gregory, but it's like, yeah, like, obviously we're heading towards this. You've spoken about it so many times on the show. And, you know, hinted, not even just hinted, I've been full stop like, this is going to get to this place where it's bad. And we just had that other NBA player. Blank on his name right now who. Terry Rosier.

Terry scary Terry who just got caught again. This is going to be a much more common thing as sports gambling gets even bigger. Hey, and let me tell you something. Like, whispers, this is not a report or anything right that, right? But I had heard this Terry Roseer was coming down to pike thing months ago. And the whisper was, and it's just one. Because you know what they said?

That was part of a larger thing, like a larger investigation. The big fish in that wasn't no Terry Roseanne. ear. I tell you that. And I think I've mentioned this to you. My wife is now working. She's in PR, but she's been working in a gambling company. Like they do kind of aggregating for sites and they help out a lot of places. She mentioned that no one at their company gambles. Like no one. Just from a from a value standpoint, like they've seen it so much that they're like, well, we don't, we don't partake. You know, it's like, it's crazy. Same as the social media company.

Exactly. Yep. Well, they're not exactly like that because they just, they do, but they don't let their kids. But you get to point. All right, here's the next one. Hi, I'm Mattia Wong, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers AI. Early last week, the American tech industry entered a fall in panic when a Chinese AI model emerged. This is a serious competitor to the best that U.S. firms have to offer. The program was the newest version of DeepSeek, made by a Chinese startup with the same name, and it appeared to match OpenAI's cutting-edge reasoning model, 01, with a lower cost to build and run.

DeepSeek even dethrone chat GPT as the number one free application on Apple's mobile app store in the U.S. American responses to DeepSeek are bipicated. Startups and researchers celebrated the program, not because it is Chinese, but because it is relatively open. Unlike the secrecy with which Open AI, Google and Anthropic shroud their products, DeepSeek published a detailed technical report for anyone to study, and as allowing anyone to download and build on the program's final code for free. Mark Andresan, a major venture capitalist, called Deepseek one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I've ever seen. For the current top AI firms, meanwhile, Deepseek is a serious challenge.

The speed and apparent cost-effectiveness with which the startup caught up to them could suggest that their enormous AI data centers and hundreds of billions of dollars being invested to build them are superfluous. Indeed, the AI chipmaker Navidia lost $600 billion in market value Monday, the biggest drop in history for a single day. And for China Hawks, an authoritarian regime rapidly leapt forward in the AI race, despite U.S. export controls on advanced AI hardware. Still, tremendous uncertainty surrounds Deep Seek.

Since Monday, there's been serious debate about just how much cheaper the program really was to build. And moreover, researchers and executives from top AI firms in the U.S. insist their scale-driven approach will yield much more powerful and impressive products soon. But for now, what's made Deep Seek so beloved is his transparency and being put directly in the hands of the people. This Chinese AI is ironically also a more democratic one, moving in the opposite direction of OpenAI, Google, and Anthropics oligopoly. So the thing that I found interesting, what was the one? company, Nvidia, is that what it's called? Yep. Yep. They're actually

turning, they were actually turning over a profit apparently. Because one of the things about all these AI companies is whether they're going to actually make money. For sure. That one was making a profit and had what that crazy, like 10 figure valuation, because they're in there like the hundreds of billions because these valuations are so all over the place

whether you're actually making money or not, but they weren't making money. And just the mere prospect of a competitor wiped their shit out. Just the pure prospect of an open source competitor took their stuff all the way down. Like to me, this is as much a story about the fictional nature of like valuation and everything else as anything. But also, hey man, open source Chinese stuff.

Nobody's really that nice, guys. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know, some of my finance tech buddy friends were like, you know, Deep Seek is essentially like revealing and put a spotlight on these tech bros and showing how corrupt a lot of them are and revealing this open source format that's very like, you know, Mateo Wong said, like very democratic. But I'm also like, yeah, I don't, I don't need to like be in this, you know, walking around in this open source world from a Chinese company. Like I like to keep, you know, keep my stuff away from just everything in general. So it's like,

is it even that good? After them 15 minutes where people didn't have no TikTok and they was over there trying to get on just go, they, they went straight to China. and like, what else you got for us? Dumbies. And can't admit they, can't admit we fiends. Some asshole in our chat room, Sentinel York.

I was talking about, you know, the gambling stuff. He's like, you take money from gambling companies and give sports advice. First of all, I do not give sports advice. Second of all, I said we. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I am not lying from the fact that I am part of this industry that is absolutely doing this thing. But I bring that up and the point that I'm making is people are so busy just, trying to call somebody else a hypocrite instead of listening to what's going on, that, yeah, we're going to wind up. We got issues, right? Like the social media stuff, we as a collective

are addicted. Like, this is, we're addicted to this technology. Read a good book called Tech, uh, Technoply from a man, Neil Postman, rest in peace. And we have gone from the technology serving us to us going to like we have to serve the technology and it will be our ruin. Yeah, not, uh, Great. Here's a, I guess, a little bit more of a fun, if you haven't heard, clip. We'll see. I'm Case Wickman, the Culture and Society reporter at Vanity Fair. I recently wrote about Brian Johnson taking father-son bonding to an unsettling new level. You've probably heard about Johnson in the context of his quest to live forever. He obsessively tracks his biological markers and what he can do to slow down his rate of aging, and he controversially

enlisted his teenage son as his so-called blood boy, using the teen's plasma for infusions to try and turn back the clock. He's the don't die guy. Don't worry, he's taken things further. On January 22nd, Johnson tweeted a pair of graphics depicting two data sets, the number, length, and quality of his nighttime erections, compared to his now 19-year-old sons. Before you ask, no, he did not share how the data is collected, nor what makes for a so-called high-quality erection. He did share, however, that his son enjoyed two more minutes of boner time than he did, though Johnson's were higher quality on average. Johnson's Johnson obsession is nothing new in his longevity quest, but being in a public penis

measuring contest with his teenage son is. Alongside the grass, which his son proudly retweeted on his own account, Johnson sagely told his followers to raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright. I just can't. It's the idea that the boy isn't ashamed. You know what I'm saying? Like, the idea that the boy isn't ashamed. I'm saying? Like, the idea that. that the boy is like, yeah, we'll tell everybody. And, you know, I'm gonna be honest with you. A big part of why I wouldn't not participate in this is what if on some off chance I lose?

Right. This is, when this went viral on the internet, something like, and I saw a lot of people tweeting this is like, man, maybe we should bring bullying back. Like maybe bullying would have helped him, you know, help the son be like, I don't want to take part of this. And this guy is so fascinating with his blood boy, with his now he's doing plasma. and now he's keeping track of this. It's wild.

I keep trying to make words. And I can't think of. Hey, I'll tell people this. Drake say he putting out of album on February 14th. Because that's gangster. We can move on. All right, Bo. This week's prompt was, I believe, craziest thing.

A coach has said to you while playing pretty much high school sports. We got a great selection of submissions. I'd say it right first. The craziest what I heard. I walked past. He ain't said directly to me. I heard and he said, never forget he told them boys. You play like shit.

You look like shit. And on the way home, y'all ain't about to say shit. And then he went to take an open door piss. All right. Here's the first one. Hey, Bow, just checking in with the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of coach say. my sophomore year of high school, our football team was expected to win state. Like the senior class had lost maybe five games since seventh grade.

And so everybody thought this was the year. The quarterback was supposed to go D1. Going into the year, we get a new football coach, a new head coach and the new staff. We don't think anything of it. First game goes on without a hit. We get to the second game. That's our big rivalry game. and our schools are rivals because we broke off from the original school,

and so we've been rivaled every since. And around this time, that particular school was breaking off from the county school system because they had salooned so much, they were like, we need our own stuff. We're tired of all these poor folks getting all these resources from us. So with that in mind, we get to pregame. and the coach gets a speech nobody remembers then our office a line coach comes up this guy was a former bodybuilder cast aside of basketball just like ridiculously jack he gets up and he says and let's pay this these walls are talking and you know what they're saying they're saying redneck

like, white trash, and then who drops the hard ER. And nobody had a straight face the entire time. Like either they were laughing hysterically or they were dropping their heads. We go out, lose that game, and go on to lose more games than any time in our school's history outside of the first year when there was just freshman and sophomores at the school. Yo, he thought he was killing it too. That's the best part about moments like that. He thought he was killing it.

Yeah, it's like when the coach is like thinking about this speech is like, I got a good one here. I think these kids are really going to react to it. And then it comes with laughter. It's just what a fall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who else we got? The most ridiculous coach I've ever had.

And I'm going to say we ever had because I'm talking about my entire high school basketball squad was our coach junior year. I went to St. Peter's prep and just. Jersey City, very prestigious high school, where we had arguably one of the greatest high school coaches ever right down the street from us at St. Anthony's. Our coach was not that. He was basically an old Irish guy who owned a bar. We had a tournament that year in Buffalo, New York. Our team had a mutiny, and the players coached the last game there, ourselves. We won. Anything that happened on the court, his solution was always to get low. If we missed a shot,

you got to get low. If they stole the ball from us, you didn't get low. He would give us pre-game scouting reports that were horrendous. He once designated the best player on the opposite team saying he's the guy with the big Afro. Bo, this was 1997 and 10 out of his 12 players were black. Even worse, we all knew the kid he was talking about by name. he could have just said his name. I mean, I played against his kid in the park all the time.

I digress. Another thing that should have been vetted so that he wouldn't ever be a coach, he wouldn't say dunk the ball. He would say, make a dunk shot. Give it to Jermaine, and Jermaine make a dunk shot. Completely ridiculous. But all of this pales in comparison to my favorite moment with coach. During one of his legendary free game scouting reports,

he said, and I quote, this guy's got cornrows so you know he's good. Bo, you can't make this stuff up. I appreciate you allowing me to vent. I want to dedicate this to my brother Marquise, who was our best player and had his senior year wasted dealing with this nonsense. Mark, I love you, man.

Love the show. And for all you ballers out there, watch out for the guy with the cornrows. You know he's good. I will say this, though, in that time period, because Corn Rose wasn't really to rage. You would better be good if you was going to be out there wearing some corn rolls. My coach might not, I don't even know if it was his job to allow it. But it would have been a lot of talking to if you couldn't ball and you was trying to get out there with some core rolls.

I was already losing it at the dunk shot. I thought that was enough for me. And then I heard that last line. I was like, oh, my goodness. Yeah, no, he shouldn't have said it out loud. But it was an indicator at the very least that the young man had a measure of privilege. Right, right. Yeah, he's like, something's different with this guy.

Yes. All right, here's the last one. So, Bo. This is taking from Chicago. I got to tell a story about my freshman football coach. So he's about five feet two. He's missing his whole front grill, and he wears a viz. And he's one of the same.

He said a lot of out-of-control. things, but the most out of control thing he ever said to us. We ran in the huddle, and we just going to start playing. And he was like, I want y'all to hit. We're like, yeah, all right, coach. He said, he said, I want you all right, coach. I want y'all to hit. We're like, yeah, yeah, all right, coach.

He goes, I want y'all. You let them so hard. Y'all dicks get hard. And it was just like, everybody just went quiet. I mean he told us going on the field I knew we'd get some gold with this one. I knew we'd get some gold with this one. I knew the coaches would not let us down.

I knew the coaches would not let us down. It's even better knowing that he gave the visuals of the coach, a 5-2 man with no front teeth and a visor saying that. Yes. Yes. Oh, man. Who. Sean, you got prospects for the people.

I sure do. In honor of that big trade and a couple of players that probably need to start playing well. Let's start with Zion Williamson, 34.5 points, rebounds and assists. I think he's going to score more there. Jordan Poole, 21 and a half points. I think he's going to go more there. And Dylan Brooks, who's actually been pretty good, three and a half three-pointers made against the Knicks tonight. I say more there as well.

I forgot about it. Last time I checked, they were six and 40. Yeah. That's, they've had, they've had, the Wizards have had multiple 10 plus game losing streaks this season alone. Let me tell you what this is telling me. I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again. Kyle Kuzman and Jordan Poole are proving that the idea of championship experience may be just a little bit overrated. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't change everyone now does it?

You can put on your resume. It doesn't mean you're good at it. Yeah. That's exactly what it is, right? It's somebody that cheated on the test. It's talking about these super cum laude. Got it. But ladies and gentlemen,

thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. Actually, I'm going to slow down a little bit. Shall I send me that document right fast. I want to make sure I give everybody their proper credit. But you know what I'm saying? Ladies, ladies and gentlemen. Wow, there's nothing. This was the last time for me to need to stall.

It was like something I didn't look down and check, and I'm like, oh. I just sent you. I can read it off for you this today. You know, thank you to our if you had heard contributors. Mateo Wong, staff right at the Atlantic on his China's Deep Seek surprise. Sean Gregory, senior sports correspondent at time on his article, The Man Who Took on Big Tobacco, has a new target in sports betting. And thank you to Case Wickman at Vanity Fair.

For her article on Don't Die Tech mogul, Brian Johnson, is in an actual penis measuring contest with his teenage son. Wow. You know, you could have, I guess on one level you could have summarized, but on another level, how? I don't know. I don't know how. Wow.

Ladies and gentlemen, yeah, yeah, all of that stuff. Remember, follow the right time, subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.