The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Cooper Flagg-Mavericks Conspiracies, Celtics Future, Giannis Trades | 5.14

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Bomani Jones is joined by Tom Haberstroh of Yahoo Sports to discuss the Jayson Tatum injury and NBA lottery results. Bo starts off the show by saying this seems like a career-altering injury for Jayson Tatum (1:17), similar to Derrick Rose, and why we never saw these types of injuries years ago (9:31). Moving onto the NBA lottery results, Bo says if you believe the NBA rigged the lottery for the Dallas Mavericks you're stupid (29:05) and if Cooper Flagg is a star or high end second option (37:27)? Bo and Tom also float the idea of Giannis Antetokounmpo being traded to Dallas for the 1st pick (38:15) and why San Antonio may make the most sense to pair him with Wemby (45:02). They round out the show by asking if the Draft Lottery actually works (58:46) and suggesting an NBA national signing day may be a better option than an NBA Draft? (1:04:36) . . . 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. 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 Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Support the Show: Discover faster, more reliable search with Perplexity today. Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at perplexity.com! https://pplx.ai/bomani-jones When any player scores 50 or more points in a game, DashPass members save 50% on an order, up to $10 off. Use promo code NBA50 to redeem. See further terms and conditions at https://drd.sh/8ONpZP/ Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code BOMANI. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A Wave Original presented by perplexity. My name is Beaumani 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.

It is that time of week where we have a guest join us. Check them out at Yahoo Sports covering the NBA with the fresh mussy bows in the background. Tom Havistro was going on. A lot, Bo. A lot is going on. Usually I say something perfunctory like, hey, not much. Nothing's going on. There is a lot going on, Beau.

Maybe some might say too much. Like, how do we do a podcast based on what has transpired in the NBA in the last 24 hours? That's about to say the 24 hours before we do this, right? Because we're sitting here on Tuesday morning, May the 13th. The 24 hours before this in the NBA have been lunacy on a number of levels, right? It's to the place where I don't know exactly where. to start, right? So I will say this. Let's start with what I think, well, I can't even, I was by say, let's start with what the biggest news was. I don't know how you say what the biggest news

of that time period was. I do think, though, the most far-reaching thing that happened is going to prove to be the Jason Tatum entry, I believe, right? And as we sit here, I'm going to, let's operate on the assumption that what has happened is a career altering injury, not a career ending one, not that Jason Tatum won't ever be excellent. But I want to know your opinion on this because you have a great grasp of NBA history. Derek Rose maybe fits what I'm talking about here, but I cannot think of an injury to a player this age that I think just on its face will have such long-term implications perhaps for the future of the NBA. Because with Derek Rose, it turned out to be the first injury and then you had the ACLs here, then you had the

meniscus and it was kind of a thing after a thing after the thing. And injury like it looks like Tatum suffered is the kind of thing where you know off the rip. This guy is probably not going to be the same again, right? Like it's that form of injury. But it's also an injury that in my experience doesn't happen to guys at 26 years old. Like these sorts of things normally happen to people much later. But he is a top four or five MVP candidate in the league. His teams have consistently gone to the conference finals or better for an eight-year period. He is an Olympian, and his team, while they're going out to figure something out with what to do with the salary cap and everything else, looked at being a position after winning a championship

to keep being good. And at the very least, the team would have Jason Tatum, right? You start there and then you work the rest out. Their question is about just how good he is, but you know saying we start with Jason Tatum is not the worst place to be. now there's a potential for a career-altering injury here. And I look at the Celtics who've got what, five guys that make something like $30 million a year, counting Tatum and try to figure out what they do and what that change,

what that means the East is now? If you're a star player, do you now want to go to the East because the East now looks a little more wobbly than it had before? Everything is haywire. The Knicks might be able to make it to the NBA finals in part because this has happened. Like, I feel like the whole league got shaken up when Tatum went to the ground. 100%. And when you look at the Jason Tatum injury and what it looks like to be an Achilles injury, the way, the mechanism of pushing off that ground and having him grab at the ankle and not put weight on it at the end, this is what went through my mind is we've got five Achilles tear this season, five Achilles tears in the NBA this season. Damian Lillard. We had James Wiseman, who's, you know, a number two pick, but not a guy. Wow, that guy had one. He had one and it was kind of under the radar. because he has fallen out of the league here and there. Jason Tatum comes into this year having played just about every season,

deep into the postseason, playing the Olympics. And I dare say the Boston Celtics have never faced this situation. Like they've never had a situation in which they have to look at the foreseeable future without Jason Tatum. I looked at this up, Bo. Since he entered the league, Jason Tatum has played more games and more minutes than any other player in the NBA. He has averaged 88 games a year since he was drafted number three overall in 2017. This guy is a constant. He is the Ironman of the Boston Celtics. When you look

at how to build the team over the next five years, you could pencil in Jason Tatum there. And now they got to erase it for the next season, it looks like, with a devastating leg injury. And we're operating under the assumption that this is going to be something that will, at the very least knock them out for much of next season and potentially be up. So what you're looking at is a Boston Celtics team that just sold by the way, just sold to another group trying to get in on the Jason Tatum and Boston Celtics business. And I wonder how much this injury might have changed the math on that business proposal and that ownership group looking to acquire when their best player might be out for the next season. You look at Clay Thompson, a guy that in the 2019,

NBA finals was the Iron Man of the Golden State Warriors and then went down with an ACL injury and then an Achilles injury. That is the only comp I can come up with with a guy who was so durable, so stable, and then all of a sudden gone for about a year and a half. And I'm not saying that we're going to have a double whammy of Jason Tatum having an ACL and an Achilles. We have never seen a player come back from that combo before. But the only player that has- Other than Clay Thompson. Right. I'm saying, until Clay Thompson did it, we had never seen a player do that, right? Unprecedented. So that's really what we're looking at is Clay Thompson is the only player who has played

as many games as Jason Tatum has through his first eight games, eight seasons of his career. Like the last one to do it, 700 games over eight seasons is Clay Thompson. And everyone thought that dude is going to be out there. He's a hooper. He's a gamer. He's a gym rat. He's going to be out there. And then all of a sudden, everything changed.

The difference is Clay Thompson wasn't Steph. Jason Tatum is the step of this Boston Celtics franchise. And so you can point to Derek Rose. You can point to, I'm trying to think of another cataclysmic injury like this for a guy in his prime after winning a championship. It's tough to pinpoint one because it's just so rare, right? It's just the guy is the Iron Man. And I think that's what's lost on people is he's played,

24,900 minutes since he entered the league. He has played more minutes in the NBA than Carl Anthony Towns has, and Carl Anthony Towns was drafted two years before Jason Tatum was drafted. He has already played more minutes than Jalen Brown played in his NBA career, and Jalen Brown was the number three pick in 2016.

So Jason Tatum, this idea that he's going to be out potentially for the next season is something that the Boston Celtics have never faced because he's always been there. He's been a metronome. He's been the constant for the Boston Celtics. And now with a CBA that is so punitive that it freezes down the line first round picks. You can't trade them.

It makes it much harder to trade and get out of your mess as the Phoenix Suns found out this year. This is a potential for the Boston Celsius to look in the cells in the mirror and say like, this group, this core that we had that we thought we were going to keep for another season, it might make sense to move off of this and try to rebuild on the fly or retool on the fly without Jason Tatum going forward for the next foreseeable future. You bringing this up about James Wiseman is really interesting to me because, again, as I was saying, I don't think of the Achilles as a young man's injury. I think of it as an older player's injury.

Kevin Durant's Achilles was in year 12. Kobe Bryant was in year 16. Dominique Wilkins, I believe he tore as Achilles when he was 32 or something like that. And that was the goal standard for, oh, you can be good again, but he was really only good again for about a year because of the point in his career where it happens. Guys, this age with what is by and large an overuse entry, right? Like it's a little tear, a little tear, little tear, little tear, a little tear, boom, pop, right? Like that's basically, you know, the mechanism by which this normally takes place. It is staggering to think, as you said, five guys having this happened this year, that not that this is the new normal,

but this is something that's on the board that I would not have thought would have been on the board. Well, Bo, let me put this in another way. DeJante Murray, 28 years old, this year suffered a torn Achilles and he was out with the New Orleans Pelicans for much of this season.

So it's not just Damian Lillard, who's on the back nine of his career. It's a guy like DeJante Murray who's like Jason Tatum entering his prime years. And the new normal, it is actually the new normal, these stars who are getting hurt at the postseason when it matters most.

If Donovan Mitchell misses Tuesday night's game, that would mean there are six All-Stars who are missing playoff games this post-season. In the 1995 to 1999 post-seasons, we only saw four players, four All-Stars, combined in those five seasons, to miss a playoff game. We've already seen six if Donovan Mitchell misses this game. If he doesn't miss this game,

we're already in an area that in the 90s and early 2000s, we just didn't see this. Like the number of star injuries in the postseason haven't just doubled. They've actually increased since 2008 five-fold, Beaumani. And since the late 1990s, the star injury rate has increased sevenfold. So, Bo, you're looking at Steph Curry, Donovan Mitchell, Jason Tatum, Jimmy Butler missing a game. Evan Mobley, Darius Garland getting injured.

This is the new normal. And I wonder how the NBA goes about how to fix this problem, which is like, we want to see Janus at the end of the finish line or Steph or LeBron or all of these super duper stars at the end. We might be getting a situation and there's no disrespect to the Indiana Pacers. But we could be looking at an OKC, Indiana. NBA finals this season, when we had the chance of LeBron and Luca, we had the chance of Steph Curry, we had the chance of an assortment of groupings of superstars, and the teams

are battered in ways that in this era, the last like five, 10 years, star players are not guaranteed to finish out with their teams. In the 90s and early 2000s, you'd get maybe one or two guys. Now we have five, six, seven, eight guys who are injured every postseason, and this is the new normal. So let me throw something out there before the show came on. We were talking to our guy Ryan and Ryan went to see Paul Skeen's pitch, right? And the argument was because you never know, right? With a big old power pitch we've seen this happen a number of times. You never know. The legendary case in terms of what we're, I'm going to land the plane, don't you worry. But Kerry Wood being the infamous case, right? 1998, 20 strikeouts, maybe the best pitch game anybody has

ever had. And if you ever go watch a rerun of that game he had against. the Astros in 98. It is unreal. But Wood was legendary coming out of Texas. He was from a town outside of Dallas for all the miles he had on him already for being in the state playoffs. In the state playoffs in Texas, there was a coin flip and the teams got to decide if it was a one game playoff or a best of three. And so if you were one team and you were going against Kerry Wood and you won the flip, you wanted best of three. Because if it's just one game against Kerry Wood, who have no chance, right? But those young guys, throwing all those pitches and throwing all those curve balls. We've seen this forever with power

pitches and baseball. It's just a matter of time before your arm goes out. It's just kind of, you know, just kind of a question of win. Some guys develop their lower bodies well enough to where this doesn't come up, but a lot has to go right for you to be correct. The analog in basketball, obviously, is these boys play so much basketball now during summers year after year after year as children. And I am wondering if we are, if somebody like really got into the research on this, if this is why we're going to see these overuse injuries, why stuff like load management matters because the guys have so many miles now by the time they're in their early 20s, where James Wiseman at age 24 has an Achilles tear. By the way, poor guy. Nothing with,

nothing since he left Nashville has gone the way he thought it would. Yeah. And look, Baxter Holmes did a great story over at ESPN. few years ago looking at the the bodies like Adam silver has talked about this and the medical science community at the NBA they've looked at MRIs and x-rays of the players coming into the league the medicals of players draft combine coming into the league and the doctors are looking at this and saying are you sure this is an 18 year old like the way that the bodies have been eroding and breaking down, I don't think it's a coincidence given that the professionalization of youth sports and the AAU circuit and the fact that you play three, four, five games

in a day or a weekend, that stuff didn't used to happen. And not only that, the specialization is a big part of this is that you're grinding down the same joints. It's not like Steve Nash is going out and playing soccer and then he's like, oh yeah, I'll go play basketball too. Or we look at all the dual sport guys, Bo Jackson, Dion Sanders. I mean, hell, I'm sitting in front of a Wake Forest, Mugsy Boggs, Jersey, Rusty LaRue in three different sports at Wakefield. We don't see that anymore, Bo. Like, we don't see that anymore. And I think a lot of this is pointing to the same thing, which is, if you don't win a title with your young group in that first five, 10 years, like, you're not going to win it because of the bodies that are breaking down. Henry Abbott just wrote a great

book called Ballistic. It just came out a week ago. And there was a guy within the NBA who told him Henry Abbott over at true hoop.com for the book. He said, in the NBA, there is a 100% injury rate. A hundred percent injury rate. It's not a matter of if. And we see in the case of Jason Tatum, it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when. And I do believe that LeBron has spoiled us, Bo. Like the LeBron James play every year, 100 games a year, and is always at the finish line for 20 years. I think we've been spoiled to think that this is normal. But Damian Lillard snapping his Achilles at his age, that's normal. Larry Bird didn't play after age 35. Isaiah Thomas didn't play after age 35. And that was after an Achilles tear with Isaiah, you can go look at it and is dead on. and Achilles tear and he hung around for a couple three more years.

So what we're seeing with KD, medical science has allowed these guys to come back and play. But you saw with KD, like after he came back, he played, but he had to come back with injuries. And it was a start and stop with hamstring issues and hasn't been able to put it together over a full entire season. So this is a devastating, potentially devastating injury for Jason Tatum, a guy that has been a metronome for the Boston Celtics.

but in today's CBA climate and looking at that tax bill for next season and looking at this very mysterious upper respiratory issue that Chris Stavs Brazingis is facing and he's been giving them nothing against the New York Knicks. I mean, it's going to be a serious, a serious look in the mirror for the Boston Celtics. I mean, one thing that could be interesting in this short run, right? Jalen Brown could put on a cape. Like that, like in the short run in this series, like game five, If Jalen Brown is who Jalen Brown thinks he is eight, and to be fair, it wasn't Jason Tatum that was

final's MVP. It wasn't Jason Tatum's that was Eastern Conference finals MVP last year, though my bad the other day I got this wrong. Tatum won it in 2022. But it was Jalen Brown who did those things. And I don't care how cool those dudes say they are. You're not going to tell me that there's not a part of Jalen Brown that doesn't want this moment except they was putting needles in his knee. I know. I know. And here's the. upside if you're the boss of Celtics. It's the silver lining, everyone feels terrible in New England right now. But they were nine and two this season without Jason Tatum. The Celtics have done this before in the sense in small sample sizes, a game here, a game there. They're nine and two this

season, including a win against Orlando in the first in the first round and that in that wrist injury. So there is some evidence pointing to that they're not just a good team. They're a great team still without Jason Tatum. But that supposes that Chris Stap's Berzingis is playing at 100%, which He isn't right now. So there is a chance that you use the word cape, which it reminded me of the fact that Superman just put out a national TV campaign around Jason Tatum being Superman. And this is just the business that we're in,

is that like when they're building that whole storyline and that advertising campaign around Jason Tatum of being Superman, always showing up and always stepping up in big moments, this is unfortunately the way that things sometimes go is, is this isn't just a basketball story and a personal story. It's a business story too. And the fact that we might be watching the next three weeks, these NBA playoffs and having Jason Tatum as Superman with a cape,

meanwhile, he's on the sidelines and undergoing surgery, which is a, the juxtaposition of that is something that can only happen in sports. And look, the Celtics were probably going to lose that game, right? They were down by nine when he left. They were probably going to lose that game. However, Jason Tatum, I am a person who has been critical of the fact that I don't feel like Jason Tatum's a guy that you can say, hey, we need this game, go out there and get it, right? And it's not because he hasn't had big games in those

moments, is that they feel a little more random to me than asserted. Like, it doesn't feel like LeBron Game 6 in Boston, call it 2013, I believe that year was, right? Like, it doesn't feel like that or 2012. It feels more like, oh, Jason Tatum is hitting shots. However, on Monday night, it felt like Jason Tatum came to play. And this is in spite of him playing a type of basketball that I lolled. He shot 16 threes, but he made seven out of them. And it wasn't, they didn't feel random when they was leaving his hand. They felt like they were going in. Like it felt like he did the thing. But what has to terrify Boston, he was seven for 16 from three. He and Derek White combined 13 for 27. And the rest of them dudes, five for 21 from three. And they kept on chugging them up.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is what we're looking at. at with Joe Missoula is more Missoula ball because the only way that they're going to make up that difference, I think in their minds, is to continue and actually throw more of those slingshots from down. So like when you're when you're Peyton Pritchard, you've got the green light always when you're on the floor. But without Jason Tatum, they're going to be leaning on that dude to sub in. And I'm looking at this situation under the assumption that the Knicks will close out this series and win. I'm not saying it's a zero percent chance of Boston coming back down 3-1 without Jason Tatum. Crazyer things.

have happened in this league, and we might get into that here a little bit. But the Boston Celtics, before this happened, I would have thought there's no way that you entertain trading Jalen Brown to whoever wins the Cooper flag sweepstakes. But now with Jason Tatum being out, and you're looking at a crazy tax bill and all these contracts that are building up

over time where if you're the Boston Celtics, you're looking at not just next season that Porzingis is making $30 million. Derek White is at 28. Holidays at 32, 34, and 37. They got Drew Holiday making $37 million in 2028, okay? That's a guy who's 34 years old right now. And so are you able to move off of those contracts, KP, Drew Holiday, and kind of do a rebuild on the fly?

It's going to be tough. But we just had this conversation with the Dallas Mavericks. Things change quickly in today's NBA, Bo. Yeah. Well, the trick bag with those guys that you talk about, particularly those last two, right, Porzingis and Holiday, they are really only that valuable to other teams as good as you. Right. Like, it is difficult to do business within your class group in the NBA and somebody actually

get better. Yeah. I mean, you look at the trade that actually got Drew Holiday in Boston was the Milwaukee box coming off a championship year, just a couple months removed from that and saying, oh, yeah, we're going to retool around Damian Lillard and Janice and Adaccompo. now Milwaukee. I don't think Milwaukee's going to be doing that trade. They're looking at this and say, I want my picks back from New Orleans and Portland. I think that's the more likely scenario is a team like Milwaukee that looks like they're going to be a perennial title contender is getting

out of that game. So, man, this is the way the NBA operates now and the future is not guaranteed. We hear that cliche, but it is true, especially in the league right now, where the last six NBA champions did not repeat and the last six didn't even make it out of the second round, Bumani. So we're looking at this with the Boston Celtics a month ago. No one would have thought they would never make it out of the second round. But now it looks like it's almost all but determined that once again, a reigning champion won't even make it to the conference finals in that following season. That's the thing about the NBA currently that I hate. But coming up next, so I talked about it a little bit. We're going to get back to the winner of the Cooper Flag Sweep

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Bonus award is non-withdrawable pick-six bonus picks that expire in 14 days. Women at time offer terms at pick6.draftings.com slash promos. All right, we are back on the right time with Tom Havistro. Nico got the number one pick in the draft. I can't stop laughing at this. Cooper flag is at the very least going to be drafted with that pick, probably by Boston, I mean, probably by Dallas. I am convinced that Mavericks fans would rather lose.

They would rather lose with Luca than win without them. But I also think this creates a very interesting situation because having Cooper Flag is not really on the timeline of success that this team is on, right? I'm not exactly sure what they do. I know what I would do, but I am curious what your thoughts were when you saw. It was either going to be Dallas and San Antonio.

San Antonio would have been just absolutely, insane if he wound up going two out of three lotteries are a blank person lottery and they had if they had won two of them that would have been nuts but now he goes to dallas which is it's funny i mean you could say bimani that the dallas mavericks won the jackpot in that in that cooper flag sweepstakes on draft lottery night on monday night i would argue that someone who hit even a bigger jackpot is conspiracy theories. Yes. Yo, the number of text messages that I got when that went down was on the level of when Luca got traded in just like, are you kidding me? Like rigged all this stuff that people were

hitting me up being like, I can't believe the NBA would allow this to happen. And in fact, more people were saying that they made this happen. And I don't know how to respond to that because I, look, as a host with a me and Al Hassan, the basketball Illamani podcast, we entertain some of these ideas because the NBA has had conspiracies happen before. We're looking at Jont-A Porter was just a year ago where an NBA player was actively trying to fix his bets and was getting guys in a group to win those bets on millions of dollars being put down or being potentially to be won. And he was arrested just not a year ago.

We had the Tim Donegis scandal. We've had the Joe Smith scandal. We've had the Brian Calangelo scandal. lot of reason in the NBA to look at the league with very cynical and skeptical eye. But this, the Dallas Mavericks trading Luca Donchich after a finals run and then being rewarded a few months later with the number one overall pick with the 1.8% odds. It is crazy, Bo. Like, it is fueling the fire of every cynical sports fan.

I'm not even talking about NBA fans. I'm talking non-MBA fans who are looking at the NBA and see, I told you so. That's rigged. And unfortunately, like, Bo, it looks really bad. But how does the NBA rig this? Like, I don't understand the mechanism by which they could do this. Hold on. Not only do you raise the question of how does the NBA rig it,

the explanation as to why completely escapes me. What is, what is, well, let's talk about the mechanism of the plan, right? Because for this, was it a conspiracy that they came to after the fact? right is that what happened because otherwise you're telling me the plan was i need you to trade lucca to LA for what is peanuts and then i need everybody on your team to get hurt okay and then we need to get them into the lottery and then if i am not mistaken they had the same record i think as the bulls and it was a coin flip about which team got which odds and so dallas i think won the coin flip and they got the number the set of numbers that wound up being what got him there

We are here and people think it's a conspiracy because people are fucking stupid. There's no other way around it. I've looked at it and what makes me so mad about how fucking stupid they are, I had somebody tell me that by me saying it wasn't a conspiracy that I was trying too hard to sound smart, right? This motherfucker is out here playing four goddamn, whatever kind of dimensions. There it is. Chess, out is, I'm the one that's trying too hard to be smart when you are trying to explain. to me why there is a conspiracy involving all of these actors. And every year, media people go

and actually watch the lottery and see how it is done. And people are so positive. Of course, it's too obvious that this would happen. But nobody can tell me why the league would want to do this. They say, well, to keep the Lakers relevant. Yeah, because LeBron James wasn't doing that. What are you talking about? Bo, I would say, regardless if it is rigged or not. I'm not saying it is. The NBA does have a corruption problem perception, like the perception of corruption with the league

that the instant that this happens, everyone thinks that the Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks and Nico Harrison, they all conspired to make this happen. Whether it's true or not, I think there is truth in the fact that there is an image problem here that the NBA has to face. And it has legs with the Jonte Porter scandal that it wasn't,

a football player. It wasn't a baseball player. It was an NBA player, not just any NBA player, an NBA player who was the brother of a famous NBA brother, a brother of a famous NBA player, Michael Porter Jr. So you can understand why a league that seems to continue to trip over itself with these scandals, and it wasn't an NFL official that was caught betting on his own games and potentially throwing those games and fixing those games in Tim Donagie. It was the NBA official. It wasn't a baseball umpire who was doing. doing it, it was an NBA guy. So I do think that there is a separate issue, which the NBA has to face, is like Rick Welts, the former NBA league office member who designed the All-Star Game,

who designed the draft lottery, and goes on the record to the Washington Post, Ben Gulliver. Did you see this quote from Rick Welts, who's the now of the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks? He had said on the record to the Washington Post that this is surreal. that they won the draft lottery, given the fact that he designed the draft lottery and was in the room for Patrick Ewing in 1985, and he has been dealing with conspiracy theory stories ever since. So this is something that is going to tail the NBA for as long as they're around because of all the scandals that have happened. However, you're operating under the pretense that the Dallas Mavericks snapped Kyrie Irving's ACL on purpose to tank the

those games and then won one of those play-in games and then lost against the Memphis Grizzlies in the second playoff game or playing game to make sure that they get a playoffs and the coin. All of those things had to happen. So I guess the question is, when did the league in your opinion step in to fix this? Because the timeline of events, you can't say that they forced the trade and then they weren't even in position to be in the play in at that point. So I don't know.

It is crazy. It is crazy, but that's the league, a league that has been scarred by scandals before. And unfortunately, this is the image problem that the NBA has. I think part of it is the league, but another part of it is just things that are fundamental to basketball. Like before it was the NBA that was wrought with these sorts of allegations. It was college basketball 50, 60, 70 years ago. And the truth is, whether it be a player or an official, one person can have more of an effect on a basketball game than any other game.

Like you and I have had plenty of conversations that we won't have in front of people about some of these matters, about folks and officials whose names we will not talk about here, right? And not the usual suspects either, right? It's easy because one guy can do so much to change an outcome in basketball to where you'll never be able to shake it in that regard. The other thing I think that hurts the NBA on that is, I think I was talking to Ethan Strauss, about this. How many players full on believe, for example, that the league

will stop them from winning a series? Like, this is a thing that players 100% believe. LeBron James went on the Pat McAfee show and suggested that the league rigged the draft lottery so that Cleveland win it. LeBron James just a few weeks ago, the most famous player

in the league, arguably in sports in America, just went on a national show on ESPN, elite partner, and was saying, yeah, you saw what happened in 2003. And he was wink, wink, nudge, and then goes on Twitter last night on X and does laughing emojis right after, just a few weeks after he went on Pat McAfee and alleged a conspiracy theory to have Cleveland win the draft lottery in 2003. So it's the call's coming from inside the house.

I did a story on Tom thefinder.com last year, how Andre Iigadala, potentially a future Hall of Famer, a finals MVP, a guy who is leading the NBA players union went on a podcast a year ago, BOMani, and said he believes that referees fix playoff games. This is not some sort of like minority niche opinion. This is the loudest voices in the sport, the most powerful voices in the sport, believe that it's not on the up and up

or at least are suggesting it. And that is maybe more interesting than the fact that the NBA is, systemically more vulnerable because of what you said is that one player can potentially fix or impact the game in ways that NFL 11 players on the team 22 on the field and baseball. They can't possibly have as much impact and influence than one basketball player. But when the players are saying it, Bo, why wouldn't the fans follow suit and say if they're saying it, man, we're not crazy out here, are we? No, no, I think that's a fair point.

I just think that people need to actually walk through some of the things that they are talking about, right? Like, I'm just saying, a league that rigs its lottery doesn't let San Antonio win three of the biggest lotteries ever. That's stupid. Bad business right there. A league that rigs its lottery. Now, Cooper flagged to Dallas. This is the point I made to people. It was only a couple of months ago that people were trying to tell me a conspiracy theory. that the reason that Luca got traded to the Lakers is because the Adelson were really just going to move the team out of Dallas, a top five metro market, if I am not mistaken, to Las Vegas.

So at once they were going to, the conspiracy had people ready to move the team out of Dallas, but now to prop Dallas back up, they got to get Cooper flagged there. Now, if you want to tell me that somehow Dallas paid everybody off because it's somewhere written in the city charter that they best basketball player got to be a white man. Hey, maybe we can talk, right? This will, this will be, they will go, if Cooper Flag is what people think, they will have 40 straight years of white excellence at the, at the head of that team. You know what I'm saying? And look, I know a lot about Dallas. They don't mind, you know, every team, you know how jealous Danny Ains is of that? Red Arborback is like,

you got to be kidding me. You know how hard I tried to do that after Byrd retired? Man, the Cooper Flag story, where does Nico go here? Because you saw the video. I'm guessing you saw the video of the Mavs draft room where they're just going nuts after they win the draft lottery. And I would say after watching that, I'm like, they're not trading that dude. They're not trading that dude. They're going to, but they're going to. I'd send him to Milwaukee.

Let's figure out. How do we get Yonis would be my question. I think there are more questions about the outcome for Cooper Flagg than is advertised. Well, he's 19, right? he's 19. So if you're going to win championships with that, dude, it's going to be five, six years down the line. That's point. That's point number one, right? Point number two for me is, is he, and this is not an insult, right? Is he a super duper high level number two guy on your team? The part that gives me reservation about saying that is apparently he wrecks shop against all the pros,

get ready for the Olympics, right? Like that is, I think, the big thing that carries me through because from watching him, he seems to be a big guy that's got handles and does a bunch of things, not really sort of twitchy. Now, the Yokic era is showing us that we perhaps overvalue athleticism, right? Totally fair point to make all the way across. But Janus is the second best player in the NBA right now. And I know his better days are behind him. But I think he's still got some pretty good days right here.

If you got a team with Anthony Davis and Janus that also kind of lets Anthony Davis, Davis now play the kind of basketball that he actually wants to play and keep one lively or Gaffert and you've got those guys, it does turn into a no-fly zone out there, right? I see arguments for it. I don't know. I would see what Milwaukee had to say. Sorry, I know I interrupted you. I'm sorry, but I would just see.

That's great. Because then you're arguing that the reason why Nico Harrison was jumping for joy, like he literally won the lottery, right? Is because he knew that was Janus, not Cooper Flag. He knew, like, I got the top position in the Yonnas sweepstakes. And I thought, going into the draft, B'amani, I thought if Houston or San Antonio jumped to number two, they would get Janus. It wasn't that they got the number two pick, is that they got Janus.

Because you could take the Dylan Harper pick and you could put a couple young players, whether it's DeFon Castle, or whether it's Reed Shepard, Jabari Smith, and the first round picks, and you send them up to Milwaukee. But then Nico Harrison got Cooper flag. And that is of all the GMs who would think about, hey, the new balance guy, is this the right guy for me going forward? We already know how important Nike is to Nico Harrison and all the clients that he's had down the row, but he's going to get the opportunity to draft not a Nike guy and build his franchise around him.

Man, it just makes me think, look, this isn't crazy to think that they would trade the number one overall pick. In 1992, the Orlando Magic got won the Shaq sweepstakes and then 93 they got Chris Weber. And what do they do, Beaumani? Traded it. They traded him. They traded down to number three, get Anthony Hardaway. I was watching this clip last night. And three first round picks, if I'm not mistaken.

And one of them turned into Vince Carter. But then Golden State traded that pick for, I think it was Anton Jameson, right? Yes. So, look, they got three first. round picks Todd Fuller, Vince Carter, and I want to, was a Keon Clark? It was like, it was three successive like 20, it was 1996, 98 and 2000, whatever it was. One of them was Vince Carter and Anthony Hardaway. So they get Penny and you're wondering to yourself like, would Nico Harrison do the same thing?

Is, A, I really like C-Web. I really like Cooper Flag, but I want to win right now in a position that in my mind, He says defense wins championships, and Yadda Senda Kupa is ready right now to win a championship on the back of a defensive-minded team than Cooper Flag is. So before I thought San Antonio, by winning the number two overall pick, they were going to get Yonis and Nade Kupo next to Victor Wembenyama and Dier and Fox. Now I'm not so sure. I don't know where Nico Harrison goes from here, but man, trading Cooper Flag is a bonkers idea. They might burn the place down, to be perfectly honest. that the whole reason he can't do it is they might they might they're they're really mad they're

still really mad this made them feel a little bit better Dallas fam to tell you but it's a heat check for Nico it's a heat check right yeah yeah but but knowing what we know about Nico right now one thing I'm gonna get to that me put a pin in that part I want to say this before I forget it it is very interesting though how different the draft is now versus that draft in 1993 which is the difference in the age of the players that go into the draft which is to say in 1993, you could get a player that can help you win right now. Like, they made the decision in Orlando that they needed a point guard more than they needed a power forward.

And so they went and got Penny Hardaway. But Penny Hardaway was a win now player. They were in the NBA finals two years later because they got win now players in back-to-back draft. You don't get win. LeBron James was not a win now player when he was the number one overall pick in that draft. I don't know the last time.

There was a truly win now player that was the number one overall pick in a draft, even if that guy went to a sorry team, but say Elton Brand when he got drafted, if you had put him on a good team, he might have been a win now guy, right? Like he was that good. The players just aren't that, they're not ready for that when they come into the league now. So if you can turn the Cooper Flagg lottery ticket, which probably is not going to truly bear fruit until he's on the verge of the second contract, if not already there, for not just a player, but what do we know about Nico?

who is Nico's platonic ideal of a basketball player? It's that dude. It's that dude right there. Right. Kobe Bryant's his guy. And we think about all these Kobe system guys as these wing players like Jason Tatum, Demarder Rosen, James Hardin. Like there's a particular archetype of player that is the Kobe system guy.

But all the stuff, the work ethic, the maniacal work ethic, they're willing to do this, no matter what and everything else, Yonis is exactly that guy. Right. If you want to establish a culture type of dude, Janus is the guy for you. Now, whether Janus wants to go there becomes its own discussion. But I am absolutely going to find out what it will take and then I'll make the decision from there. Because as Nico said when he made the trade, I ain't going to be here for so long if it don't work. And that trade hasn't worked. Okay. Regardless of what happens with Luca, I don't care of Luca Terry's and kill his tomorrow.

The trade didn't work because they want to kill you in Dallas, Nico. You're scared to come to work. all right it didn't work you might want to see about this i want to ask you this question pomani because someone asked me like hey you can't win now with cooper flag and your point is salient because of the fact that when tim duncan was drafted number one overall and joined the san antonio spurs david robinson was the same age that anthony davis is now okay so could you imagine a world in which they get back into the NBA finals quickly with cooper flag and the answer is tim duncan was way older than what Cooper Flag is right now.

So in one mind, you're like, hey, David Robinson, the analogy is that David Robinson and AD, it worked for the San Antonio Spurs, but you got no Kyrie next season. And that's the thing is if you're making a trade for Janus, does Yonis sign off on that in between, you know, behind closed doors? Does he sign off on that deal knowing he's trying to escape that situation

with Damien Lillard? and he's going to a team that doesn't have a go-to ball handler that makes life easier for him because Kyraving's dealing with a torn ACL. So we'll see on that. But right now, I think the San Antonio Spurs are the frontrunners for the Yonis sweepstakes. And right now, Wembe is on a two-year runway of having a mid-level contract, making $10, $11, $12 million a year. And so you can fit in a Yonis contract in there for only the next couple years. And then it becomes very hard, very cumbersome to build around Wembe in a way that, man, if that dude is dealing with a deep vein thrombosis, it's unpredictable where this goes. Hopefully it ends up like what Brandon Ingram had a couple

years ago or Assar Thompson had a year ago where he was back after a procedure in his shoulder. Hopefully that's the case. But it makes things a whole lot of. easier if you got Janice next to Wembe and Deer and Fox than it does when you're just looking at Stefan Castle and Dylan Harper and wondering, hey, is it ever going to work for us? Okay. So I hadn't given San Antonio that much thought, but now that you brought it up, here are my immediate thoughts. Number one, tell me a team is going to have Victor and a team is going to have Yonis. You are my favorites to win the title. I just don't understand how anybody else is supposed to score. I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't know

how that's supposed to work. Number two, I know this won't work, but you have to at least start with, you sure you don't want Deerrin Fox first. Like, are you positive if you don't want that? I'm not sure you, I'm not sure that dude plays winning basketball. I'm not positive. He's that guy, right? Um, but if they can get Yonis to San Antonio, which, I mean, I don't know that much about Janus, I don't know how much he wants to live in a city. Different people are built different ways, right? It doesn't sound like he's trying to leave Milwaukee because he wants to leave the city of Milwaukee. It sounds like he'll want to leave Milwaukee because he wants to play for a better basketball team. However, I think the teams that we had seen bandied about for Janus,

what was it, New York, Houston, and Miami. Yeah, and look, I think the swoosh factor matters here with Nico and Dallas. Like, I think it does. I think it does. I don't want to say it's the thing, but it is a thing. In the NBA, in the world of business that we operate in, I think it matters. So I think you can add Dallas to that mix. Yeah. All I'm saying is San Antonio is the thing that is not like any of those that I pointed out. I don't, I don't, hey man, I don't know how much that man like Mexican food. Like maybe that does it, right? But that's, if there's a tipping point, they, But San Antonio real good at getting these dudes from other countries and teaching them about America via San Antonio.

And then maybe they want to stick around and they do ATB commercials and all of that stuff. I ain't leaving Milwaukee just to go to no goddamn San Antonio, man. Like it's just, that's just cold. That's cold. I mean, that's hot walking. You know what I'm saying? I'll throw this one at you, Golden State. If Kaminga plays this well, can Golden State get in the ring for Janus End of Kumpo?

Stefan Curry and Yonis Anna Senda Kumpo share it. an agency. You've seen them at All-Stars and you've seen them in the Olympics. They, like after the game is over, you can see those two are paling up after the game. And I don't think that's nothing. Like we laughed about it with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in Charlotte at the

All-Star game. Then all of a sudden they're on the same team. Like you can laugh about that all you want. But man, the Golden State Warriors by holding on to their young assets and I will, I will, to the day I die, I think that the two timeline strategy by Joe Lacob and that organization was dumb. James Wiseman, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Camiga.

But I will reverse course. If that package gets me Janice and End of Kumpo, I will kiss Joe Lacobs' feet if he gets. Oh, well, it ends well. Yeah. If they turn Kaminga and a bunch of picks and get Janice and Endicompo to play with Steph Curry for the twilight of his career, man.

Hey, light years, light years, man. Hey, low key, that's what Nico's doing. Nate Silver said the tweet, and it was like, you know, Luca Dachins and Cooper, I mean, Cooper Flag and Anthony Davis for Luga Dachich, really isn't that bad of a train when you stop to think about it that way. That's what Nico tell us. Now, if there's anybody that's arguing conspiracy, it's Nico, bro, I told you, I told you I had a plan. Did I not? Did I? Did I? Did I not? He's got it there. No, this is, this, this is going to be

something. Like, I, I think it's important for the NBA and for, fans of the NBA to get themselves out of the place where the transaction market is more interesting to them than the basketball, right? But we got one last hurrah for Kevin Durant, because I don't know how much, I don't know how much more he has left, but there's still one last chance for somebody to make a move and get him. He's going to be on the move this offseason. How Boston decides to manage the catastrophe that is just falling at their feet, that is going to happen. You look at a team like Indiana that's got to start looking at things like if Boston falls off. Everybody in the east that's at the top has got to be like,

yo, we're a move away, right? Like every single one of them, where you be Indiana, Cleveland, which still a move, they're still a guy short. I don't care how many, they can win 75 games in a regular season. It's very clear from watching them. There's still a guy short, right? No matter how good you think Evan Mobley is, there's still a guy short. Somebody in the east is going to be there to make a move. This is going to be one of the most fascinating off seasons that we've seen. And you mentioned Golden State, I ask you this, do you think they have any chance? chance of winning this series against Minnesota? Not if it's preseason Jimmy, Jimmy,

Jimmy Butler. He has to have more than nine field goal. He's not here for this anymore. He's looking up that mountain at that age and all those miles on those tires and just saying, man, I can't lead you to the promised land. Yeah, he had a bad game. And they had that point, that game where he scored 33, right? And he got that done. But he had a, he did not have the game that they needed him to have. Kaminga did play very well. Now, if you're, Golden State. Do you give some thought to find a way for Kaminga to go out there and put up about 45 and then see if you can saddle somebody with them? Yes. I think they're rooting for that scenario. I think that's the tough thing with the, with the Steve Kerr and him being in the doghouse

all season long is like the best chance that they get another star in the league is that Kaminga turns into a star right now. Like, if you can get him to have, you know, 30 points here, 25 and 10, like that does a lot for his trade stock, not just because you can have that player in your coffers, it's that you can flip him to go get the player that you want. And that's the thing about Jonathan Cominga is I think the better that he plays, it's the more likely that he gets shipped out of there. I got hell for saying that if I were the Warriors, I would not, in a hypothetical world where you try to come up with a trade package for LeBron. I'm like, if you're the Warriors, the guy you don't give up is Kaminka, right?

I wasn't saying I wouldn't trade LeBraw for Kaminga one or one to one. However, he's still 22. Like, we're still early in this. The question is whether or not he plays losing basketball, which I think is fair, right? He's still 22. There's still a chance that this could really turn out to be a thing because he was a guy who was coming out of high school as the number one player in America in a lot of people's eyes. you could get me to think about this.

I don't know how much I'd give up for the lottery ticket, but at 22, I'm still trying to kick the tires on this. Hey, there's a lot of teams right now, Charlotte, Utah, Washington, Brooklyn, who are feeling a little butt hurt right now after what happened on Monday night. And so if there's anyone that can help a team and get a player, like Utah,

if Larry Markinen, who's in his mid-20s, Like, Larry Markin is not a guy that is going to be on the timeline of Will Hardy and Walker Kessler, Isaiah Collier, and Kiante, Judge, and whoever they pick in the lottery this year. But if you're the Golden State Warriors and you potentially have seven foot clay on your team, I've always said he's like seven foot clay. He's an incredible shooter and really big for his size. Larry Mark and a guy who averaged 25 points a game a couple years ago, but he's turning 28 in a week. So like Utah, I think a lot of teams are going to be calling them marketing.

I think a lot of teams are going to see what Philly does that they get in, they win that lottery, so to speak, and they're able to retain their pick and not send it over to OKC. We haven't even talked about OKC in this. OKC has 13 tradable first round picks, 13 tradable first round picks going forward. So if the Yonah sweepstakes, if they want to be number one on that list, we know that OKC can get on the top of that list.

But we'll see what happens this postseason. Let me just say this last thing. And OKC is, like I say, if yon does get to Milwaukee, OKC, brother, hey man, you must love basketball. But I just wanted to throw this out here because you mentioned the teams that were really hurt about losing that lottery. No one, I repeat, no one is more hurt about losing that lottery than Daddy Age and the Utah Jazz. And unfortunately, there is nothing that Jonathan Camingas is African-Nus. ass can do to make that particular pain feel any better. No, sir. It cannot be done. Never mind the fact

that Danny Ains is still smart from that 07 lottery where they didn't get neither Greg Oton nor Kevin Durant. I just, do you remember when Gordon Hayward left and went to Boston, he made the pilgrimage, right? Like he achieved a measure of destiny for him and the, I think it's the play-by-play man for the jazz. He did an interview with some radio stage and he kept it falky. He kept it a buck. He was like, if we can't keep a white American basketball player here, what chance do we have with anybody else? And Cooper Flagg was right there. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe somebody is holding out hope that perhaps Kaminga practices a religion that may make him want to go to Utah. You never know what them folks from over there. You know what I'm saying? But I'm just saying,

what is going to take to make Utah feel better? Jonathan Kamegan can score 50 points a game. and I don't think it's going to work. If I'm picking up what you're putting down, you're telling me that Danny Aange is now reeling, reeling after that Cooper Flag missing out on him and calling up Houston about Reed Shepard, right? Yes, he is. Look, all I'm telling you is,

I heard you already talking about, you know, they got, you know, Walker Kessler, you know what I'm saying? They got marketing for right now. I mean, hey, man, look. Canipel looks pretty good in Utah Jazz uniform. Let me tell you. That right, all I'm going to say is this about Utah. Did you know that they retired Jeff Hornacex jersey?

I had no idea. They retired Jeff Hornacex jersey. And that's not the same to me, for example, as like Oklahoma City retiring Nick Collison's jersey. They kind of need to put something up in the rafters, right? Like, it just needed to be done. However, they retired Jeff Hornacex jersey. And while Jeff Hornacek was in Utah, he never made an all-star game. They never won a championship.

And he never averaged 17 points a game. but he did get his ass kicked by Jerry Stackhouse in one of my favorite moments in the history of the NBA. Kingston, man, you don't mess with a boy from Kingston. No, you don't. No, you don't. No, you don't. I'm glad to see that that word got down to Wake Forest also. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Hey, listen, man, Stack when he came to Miami, I remember just like everybody got in line when he got in that locker room. Like Miami in 2010, they brought in Jerry Stackhouse. People forget about this. And I was, It's like, oh, oh, it's a different locker room now. It's like James Johnson, I bring up another weight guy,

James Johnson over there in Indiana, where everything's getting crazy, everyone's getting chirpy, and then James Johnson walks in the room and says, uh-uh, quiet down, quiet down. Well, it's interesting because James Johnson knows various forms of Kung Fu, where at Jerry Stackhouse is what they call an autodidact. Natural talent, learned it along the way. man it's great to see him on the sidelines he's an assistant coach for the golden state warriors and i presume that the reason why he's there is to try to keep draymond green in check and just

someone on the bench to make sure that he doesn't get crazy out there because the fact is without stepf curry draymond green is four statistically four times more likely to get ejected in an NBA game than if he is playing with stephen curry in that game so rudy gobert pointed this out and man, we talk about people who are winners this week. Rudy Gobert is feeling like a big-time winner. Oh, my God. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

Can I show you just how secure I am in my manhood? Let's see it. Well, not that, but, you know. Great call. Jerry Stackhouse needs to put out his skincare regimen. I don't know if you have noticed, but Jerry Stackhouse is out. Jerry Stackhouse skincare game is bananas.

Like, is bananas enough that I notice? I mean, us us bald folk, we flock together, Beaumont. So once you get that skincare routine, can you just like, let me know? Yeah, I haven't talked to stack in a while. I will tell you after we get off of here when I asked him about the Hornacek situation because it's a great story that I have to keep between the crew. Can I ask you this? And this is kind of on the same topic of Utah, is do you think that the results last

night prove that the draft lottery works or that it's broken? I think that the draft lottery is held up by what we talked about before, which is the nature of a singular transformative player and what that can do. I think that they had, I think it works in the sense that they have greatly disincentivized the wanton tanking that we saw from Philadelphia, for example, right? And yes, I do think that there's a difference between losing on purpose and just being sorry. I think that there is a legitimate moral difference in what it is that they're doing. And I think that you can't have a situation where teams are incentivized to lose. And by making the

top four picks about the same odds that you could get them, I think that it should have shown these teams that tanking only helps me so much. And it also should have shown these teams that hardly anybody has won by tanking. Like I think the law, the thing that's been lost in this is that it's a different draft. It's a different league where the two best players in the NBA were the 41st pick in the 13th pick, right? We have another two times finals MVP who was the 13th pick in the draft, who was traded for George Hill, who was the 27th pick in the draft when he was in the, you know, like, I think that there's a value in telling people you're going to have to go out here and perhaps lose the old-fashioned way, right? I think there's something to that. The problem

the league wound up having is all these private equity type dorks and these quant guys like hinky and the rest of them came in. It's one thing for you to tank because Tim Duncan's going to be in the draft. It's one thing for you to tank because, say, Shaquille O'Neal is going to be in the draft. You don't even know who's going to be in that motherfucker and you out here tanking. Like, you tank and you get Monsieur Risa Shea. Yeah. Say it again. Zachary Risa Shea. There we go. I love how you knew exactly where I was going and knew that I was not going to be able to get there. But you also knew I wasn't getting there. It wasn't about to happen over here. But yeah, Like once you start doing that, no, like we do have a big problem or just because one guy used, and I don't think one guy can have the effect that used to either.

Anthony Davis has been as good as we thought he was and he hasn't been as impactful as 15 years before him, a guy like him would have proven to be. You know what I mean? Like that's, I think that's kind of the thing that we have to stop making people think that not just that losing on purpose is okay, but that losing on purpose is okay. And then it'd be something that a whole segment of your media would champion. All right, let's go through the list here. 2012, Anthony Davis. Has he been a champion as the best player on his team? I would already know.

Anthony Bennett, we know the answer to that. Keep going on. Andrew Wiggins, we know the answer to that. You know, All-Star on a championship team wasn't the best player, wasn't the second best player. Arguably, probably not the third best player. Carl Anthony Towns in 2015, number one overall pick. We know his story.

Ben Simmons, Markell Fultz, DeAndre Aten, Zion Williamson. Anthony Edwards, TBD, right? Cade Cunningham, Palo Bencaro, Wembe, and Riesa Shea. Those are the number one overall picks. And none of them, as far as I can tell, have been the best player on a championship team. That's not to say that they're not good.

It's just if your math and your calculus in your head is we are going to tank so that we can win the lottery and get that player and win a championship, it's a different NBA now. And unfortunately, because we don't have these guys like Tim Duncan coming out three, four years of evidence that this is the best player and we should be tanking for this guy. These guys are coming into the league at 18 years old, 19 years old. And it's harder to know whether you're going to get an Anthony Bennett or you're going to get

an Anthony Davis. And that's one of the problems with tanking is one year you get Wembe and the other you get Risa Shed. So Winshairs per 48, which I always say is the stat that maps most closely to who's going to win the MVP. And it's going to happen again. this year because Shea Gilger is Alexander by two tenths, hundred, thousands of a point is above Yokic, but again, it's going to map out one to one. I'm going to take out the big guys can often overpopulate this sample, right? Like Isaiah Hardinstein, for example, is the top 10 guy, Jalen Duren. So I'm going to throw them out for the point that I'm making. Yeah. Shea, Yokic, Yonis, Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler was fifth in league this year, by the way.

Tyrese Halliburton, Evan Mobley, Sabonis, Carl Towns, Anthony Davis, shockingly Peyton Pritchard, Damian Lillard, Jason Tatum, Amin Thompson, Jalen Brunson, Darius Garland. We would say that that is not a bad list when talking about, you know, the top, however many players in the league. Show me the super high draft picks in that list.

You know what I mean? Like Carl Towns is there, but we know his issues are somewhat different. Anthony Davis is a zillion years old and he's on this list. but all I'm saying is the guys that you're tanking to get are not necessarily worth embarrassing yourself for. You look at the Boston Celtics that they get some of these guys. I mean, the Boston Celtics traded out of the number one overall pick because they did not believe in Markell Fultz and traded down to get Jason Tatum. That's how much they didn't believe in retaining the number one overall pick. And then they go and they win a championship with that guy at number three.

Look, this is where I think the pageantry of the draft and it's an awkward fit. At one point in the broadcast last night, ESPN had said that, hey, the Philadelphia 76ers are out. They did not retain their pick. And then they had to go back in and it was very confusing. And then you had Cooper Flagg getting interviewed and he didn't seem all that happy to be on the Dallas Mavericks. It was an awkward whole ceremony. But I think Amino Hassan was on to something when the idea of the draft, what if we did free agency with draft prospects, I just think you give cap space or you give the lottery is basically if you're the worst team in the NBA, you have the largest salary that you can offer these guys.

But it's not necessarily you get these guys. And I think that would curb a lot of the tanking that we see in the league. Hey, man, I've been an anti-draft guy forever. I'm not saying to me and stole my idea, but I ain't saying he didn't. You know what I'm saying? Because that's dead in line with how I feel about this. I'm not saying. Just be clear.

But like get rid of the draft. give people slots based on their record and then let the market do his thing. Do you think the NBA would do that? Never. Never. Draft is it, although I do think if they had a, here's a crazy name for it, National Signing Day, I think it could turn into a giant big deal. I think it could turn into a giant big deal.

Well, Bumani, I saw Greenie talking about this on GetUp and he was like, every other league should adopt the draft lottery because look at what happen. The Dallas Mavericks who tried to win this season, which are on its merits, I don't think that they tried to win this season. If you're trading Luca Donchich, who led you to the NBA finals. But his point was the NFL should adopt this, the Major League Baseball should adopt this. And my counter to that is the NBA has this system in place and yet we see tanking by these teams. They do not look at the 14% odds of you winning the number one overall pick in a rational way. Yes.

14% odds of winning the number one pick. pick is the same as Clay Thompson bricking a free throw. You're walking up there and saying, I am going to recalibrate this entire franchise to bank on the fact that Clay Thompson will miss that free throw. It is not a 50% probability. It is not a 40, it is a 14% probability. And yet, in the face of that information, we are seeing these really smart organizations are looking at the math and saying, yeah, we need a tank. A 14% chance. We need to. to tank. And that is really interesting from a behavioral economic standpoint is at which point, how many years of this of the Atlanta Hawks winning with a 3% chance of winning the lottery,

getting Zachary Reese to Shea and the Dallas Mavericks winning with 1.8%. How many more years of these long shots do we need to see before teams start changing their behavior and responding to the incentive structure that even if you are the worst team in the NBA, the highest probability that you have to winning the number one overall pick is just for. 14%. Are we in the midst of a really long lag, right? And so what I mean by that, I'll never forget this. In one of those semesters in college where I didn't want to be there, I think this may be the only thing that I remembered out of this whole semester of intermediate macroeconomic theory was the concept of lags, right? We talk about monetary policy. Four lags. Recognition, decision, action,

and impact. So there is a lag between when a problem occurs and it is recognized. Then once it is recognized you make a decision on what to do, but there is a lag between the recognition and then the decision. Then after you make the decision, you have to get into an action. There's a lag between the decision on what to do and the actual implementation. And then after it's implemented, there is a lag between the action and the impact. Perhaps we are just really long in the lag between the action and the impact. And maybe it's just easier to be stupid. Right. It's just easier as a GM to say, you know what, we're not going to be that good. We'll just be the worst because somebody else is going to try this.

Because say what you want about Pat Riley. I love that he is like, we aren't losers over here. All right? Only losers try to lose. San Antonio, I thought what they did was embarrassing and they didn't get nearly enough scoring for it. And it got him Victor, but I'm not sure how much else it truly got him. I don't want none of them. Cisco and Vassel. I don't want. want them dudes on my team? Man, I would say I cover the Blazers on their broadcast. This year, a lot of people thought they were going to tank, and a lot of people thought they were going to be in the running for Cooper Flag.

But Chauncey Billups and Denny Obdia and Donovan Klingan and Tamani Kamara, they put together one of the best second half teams in the NBA there after the All-Star break. actually since January 19th, I think they feel a lot better about their future right now with the core that they had and that they were really good in the second half of this season rather than being a Charlotte Hornets franchise or rather than being a Washington Wizards franchise.

And that's a very real decision by an organization is like, do we pull these guys because we're winning too much? And Chauncea Billis was like, no, we're going to go all 82 games, we're going to try to win these games. And you saw that that theory of like, hey, the best we can do is 14%. But there's going to be an Atlanta Hawks last year, 3%, or 1.8%, that it might not be the

worst thing to be at like 10 in the draft lottery odds. And I think that is interesting. It's a zero-sum game. If you flatten the odds, Bomani, at the top, someone else has to get better odds. And it's usually those 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 teams that are getting a lot better fattened odds at winning the number one over. all pick. So it is interesting. How long before we see teams saying, you know what? Yeah, we're not going to pull Lowry Markin and Walker Kessler and have Walker Kessler shooting 10 threes a game.

We're actually going to try to win some of these games because you know what? 14% is 14%. By the way, I also love Will Hardy because that first year, he was like, what are you being losing? I don't lose, dog. What are you kidding me? We going to get this done. And then they'll be like, oh, let's see. Can you do it with what are behind your back? Damn. He's. did that too, huh? Okay. Yeah. Will Hardy has, he had an amazing line earlier this season. He called it a masterpiece of dog shit when they lost to the Dallas Mavericks by 50 points. A masterpiece of dog shit. They gave him a huge extension a couple weeks ago because this dude is their coach.

They know that he is their coach. He is their Brad Stevens. Like Danny Aange identified Brad Stevens and was like, I want that guy eight year contract right off the rip. Same thing with Will Hardy. and they're going to have to wait a little bit longer for their Cooper flag. We'll see about the Reed Shepherd talks. We'll see. That is Tom Havistrow. Check him out at Yahoo Sports.

Also, you got a newsletter, right? Yeah, yeah, Tom thefinder.com. Check that out. And also got basketball Illuminati over at Count the Dings and pack your knives. If you're a Top Chef fan, go check out Pack Your Knives, our Top Chef Recap podcast. It makes no sense that it took me seven years to get you all this, man. This has been fantastic.

I appreciate you. Hey, salute, Bhamani. Appreciate it. All right now. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this three times a week, Ryan Brumley handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. 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.

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