The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Tom Haberstroh on Giannis-Bucks Drama continues, Spurs Push for NBA title, UNC hires Mike Malone | 04.08

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by Tom Haberstroh to break down the chaos surrounding Giannis Antetokounmpo, Doc Rivers, and the Milwaukee Bucks. They dig into whether Giannis really wants out, why the Bucks�� situation feels so broken, and what a trade could mean for the rest of the league. Then they shift to the Western Conference, the rise of Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs, and whether the NBA is heading back toward an era defined by rivalries instead of parity.  They close by breaking down UNC hiring Mike Malone and whether it is the start of a paradigm shift in college basketball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wave. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A Wave Original. My name is Bobani 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 him out on Yahoo Sports and many other places, including Tom the Finder, great newsletter to which I subscribe. Tom Haberstrow. What's going on, Matt? Not a whole lot, B'amani. Glad to be here.

Hey, man. I'll get to the Mike Malone of things, perhaps a little bit later, as I realize you as a wait for us guy may have some interest in that. But we got to start with what is going on in Milwaukee, where Shams Sharania, and it should be noted, Shams is the guy to get you information. Shams is not the guy to write a 4,000-word rundown of what's been going on with a team. I don't say that as a judgment. That's just not really typically like what he does.

Maybe it's because people to act like he was lying, but he said that Yonis said that he wanted to go to the Knicks. But he sure was like, I told y'all if he wanted to go to the Knicks. But it was a long rundown of a chaotic situation with the Bucks that added, all right, so it's Yonis who keeps telling us in public he doesn't want to be traded, but we all know he wants to be traded. And then you add that with a dollop of the most. passive aggressive man in basketball,

passive aggressive Hall of Fame or Doc Rivers. You put all that together. That sounds like a terrible situation that is now boiling over in part because the bucks just want to tank and Janice just wants to play. But he doesn't want to play for them,

but they can't find a trade. What you got? What you got? Man, there's so many ways we can tackle this story, but I want to start with Doc Rivers saying Google me in a meeting and a team meeting. And Shab's Tarada in the story. And I'm glad you picked up the fact that he wrote like a 4,000 more

missive about this because that's not typically what the newsbreakers do in this day and age. So Shams essentially was like, I got the CVS receipt right here. And all of the stories, anecdotes that support the notion that Janus Adda Kumpa wants out of there, but won't be willing to say it. He doesn't want to be the guy to say, I want to trade demand. I want a trade request. And remember when Wodge,

Adrian Mocho Rowsky on draft night, he would come up with like 18 different synonyms for they're going to select this player. Remember that? Shops, Geron, if you read his story, it's similar, except there's no mention of a trade, quote, unquote, demand or trade request.

And it's very interesting how everybody in the room knows what's going on, but they're not willing to say that word, demand, request. And it's just they're all dancing around this thing that Janus doesn't want to be the bad, guy and Doc Rivers doesn't want to be there. Day one, Doc Rivers said, I don't know why they hired me. I told them not to hire me. This makes no sense. But, man, $40 million is $40 million.

And when that contract is on the table, I understand why Doc Rivers left ESPN to go take that job. But when he says, Google me and Shams Tarania in the story isn't just saying multiple sources told me. He said six stories told me. I was like, I got six people in that room telling me that this went down. So if you don't believe that I have receipts on this story, check that. I want to know exactly what the six people said, right? Because the first person was probably like,

hey, check this out. You're never going to believe this, right? And then he starts calling other people for confirmation. There's at least one. Yeah, he said that shit. another, oh, you know about bro, or bro, that's how they say it now. Bro. And the Google me was, what was it that he was saying? He's like, you guys can look me up.

I've taken teams to the playoffs that weren't supposed to go to the playoffs because he was trying to rally them into the play-end game. And the log of the short was, I do this, but what about y'all? Yeah, and Doc Rivers, man, we could do a whole 90 minutes about the Doc Rivers story. But that Boston team, it wasn't like they came out of, nowhere to win the NBA title in 2008. I think they started out like 24 and 3 that season. So it wasn't like nobody believed us.

You can't play that card with the championship year. And after that, it's a mixed bag. You know, he's like exactly 500 in the postseason as an NBA head coach. And when you look at all the three one leads, which I have a contrarian take on that. But Doc Rivers, if you go to Google me, he has been such. a punchline in the NBA that Gemini or chat GPT or any of these AI apps are probably going to put stuff at the very top of Doc Rivers' Google search that he doesn't want to be in there. Okay.

Doc's first year in Orlando, I recall as being a magic trick. Like he, not magic. But he took a team to the playoffs and people did not think was going to go to the playoffs. You have to remember that that was the period of time where they kept thinking Grant Hill might play this year. and then Grand Hill would be hurt again, right? He also had that year after the Clippers traded Chris Paul, where they absolutely exceeded expectation. I am also with you.

I think the 3-1 thing is a bit overstated. Well, one of those is like the Orlando, Orlando went up 3-1 against, I think it was Detroit. Detroit. As an eight-seat against the number one seed. I'm sorry. I don't count that as a blown lead when you're the eight seat about to upset a number one seat.

I just say, man, that's crazy that he got to a three one lead in that series. Yes, they lost it, but it was a one eight. There's a couple of those where you're just like, all right, I get it. But go on. Yeah, there's also in that three one, the weird one against the rockets, where they had the lead in game six. And then I think it was Kevin McHale was coaching the team at the time and somehow he's got the bright idea.

Maybe we should take James Hardin out of the game and just see what happens. And next thing, you know they didn't do it. but those teams were deep enough. Like the Clippers would wind up just simply not having enough gas. Like, I think Doc Rivers is a good coach. I think Doc Rivers in the Hall of Fame, which just happened, is preposterous. Because they don't really put coaches in the Hall of Fame. Like that is a, Eric Spolcher, you're in now.

Like, I had been prepared to make a, like, there's a, there's a could go either way. Nope, nope, nope, nope, you're going in. And Doc Rivers has gotten in. But where Doc Rivers is really in the Hall of Fame is making your, players not like you. Like your team not liking you in part because nothing is ever your fault. And so now you've got Janus who doesn't want to be the bad guy with Doc Rivers who never wants to be the responsible guy.

It sounds like it's no fun to be anybody on that team through the course of this year. Like none. And as I recall, do they not have control of their pick this year? So this is how it works. they have the lesser of the New Orleans pick. That's right. Because one of them goes to Atlanta. Exactly.

So the number one, if it goes number one, they don't get it. But if, let's say, New Orleans lands the number one overall pick, they send it to Atlanta. And then Milwaukee will basically get whatever they end up with, like the Milwaukee team. So they have incentive to tank. This is one of the biggest misnomer's in the NBA season that I've just, it's been a pet peeve of mine where they're like, they don't even own their own pick. They have no incentive to tank. And I'm like, yes, they do. because New Orleans is terrible.

If New Orleans is terrible, that means Milwaukee should also be terrible because that pick is going to go to Atlanta and then they're going to get whatever they are at. And so this is the math for the Milwaukee bucks is as long as New Orleans is terrible. They have every reason to be as bad as possible. So New Orleans is 26 and 54 right now

and Milwaukee's 31 and 48. They should be way lower than that because as long as that Pelicans team is in the basement, they have all the tanking potential. And so Janus, this whole thing I said from the beginning, this is the worst supporting cast for an MVP candidate we have ever seen. You can say all you want about Miles Turner, but that roster with Kyle Kuzza being your third best player is awful.

And so for those people who are like, man, this is a tough situation for Janus. I'm like, he should have been asking. out immediately once Damian Lillard had his torn Achilles and just said, look, the writing is on the wall. We had a good run. We won a championship. I'm out. But instead, like you point out, he wanted to be the whole Dwight Howard in this situation and not really be transparent. And so it just seems like everyone in this situation is not being honest about what's really happening here. The front office is tanking, wants to tank. The Doc Rivers wants his paycheck, and Janice and Accompo wants out of there.

And I just wish everyone would stop this just two-faced dealings with each other because it's just, it's nauseating. This has been 10 months of this. And I'm so tired of Janus just trying to be the good guy. His brothers are on the roster. He wants to play with them. And so he doesn't really have the leverage that he thinks he does because he, the bucks know, Bumani, the buck's.

know he doesn't want to say it. And so they're calling his bluff. And they're saying, Bomani, we got $275 million coming at you this summer. Are you really going to walk away from that? Because this is the weird thing. If Janus walks away and makes a trade demand, he will not get the maximum bag. Because it has to be with a team that he's been with for over six months. And so when you're asking for a trade, you cannot sign that super max extension with your new team,

if it's the Knicks or if it's the Miami Heat. And so the Milwaukee Bucks are like, you don't want to say that word, trade demand or that phrase. And you also got a big bag here that if you resign here, that's the only place you can get it. And we'll see how much that money and that trade demand loyalty really matters to you. What he needed to learn from Dwight,

and I've been making the Dwight comparison through all of this, and you never want to go to full Dwight, right? Like unless you're trying to block a shot, you never want to go the full Dwight. And people like good guys. The try to be a good guy, nobody likes that guy. Or they like it at first. And then they realize, ugh, I'm not sure about this.

Like, this is not a guy beloved by his peers. I don't know so much how his teammates feel about him. But they, I am certain that Bobby Portis has not enjoyed this shit at all. In fact, that story has something in there about Bobby Portis getting sick of it. and the person I don't want mad at me is the guy that broke Mero Titch's face that one time and witnesses said it didn't even look like he hit him that hard. That is not, that's not the guy I want to be in this situation with. My question for you, though, is if you do make a trade and you get Janus at this point,

what exactly are you getting, right? Because this is Janus after 13 years in the NBA. He has still put up excellent numbers, but I'm not sure any player has been more heliocentric. offensively than he has been. A guy that's putting up 35, 36, 37, 38 usage year after year after year. You start building around that. I don't know how exactly you drop that off

onto something else. Like if you drop him off onto the Knicks, you think that squad is all of a sudden going to give him 40% of the shots? Not with Jalen Brunson around. I don't think so. You saw what happened to Carl Anthony Towns this year. And when Mike Brown took over,

he was saying, hey, I don't know about this offense. Like right out the gate, Carl Anthony Towns was saying, I don't know about this offense. And the reason is because Mike Brown was like, we're giving Jalen Bruns in the ball, and we're going to make sure that we're going to not have all of Carl

Anthony Towns, histrionics and weird stuff on offensively, and they're going to run through him and Mikhail Bridges, O'GN, and Obie, and try to get the offense a little bit more reoriented away from Carl Anthony Town. So for Janus, look, Janus entering the season had been top four in MVP in each of the last seven seasons. seven years in a row he has been that durable. And I know he's had his injuries. This year it's gotten way worse.

But seven years in a row, he's been top four in MVP. He's one MVP. He's also a defensive player of the year. Finals MVP. And you're going to have a guy who's turning 32 in December. What do you do with that? What do you do with that with the calf injuries, the hyper-extended knee? And also in the finals, when he hyper-extended his knee, and then magically, it didn't seem to matter.

there's a lot of history here that if you're at the acquiring team, I think you're going to have to have a Jalen Brunson or someone else to essentially tell Yannis, hey, it's okay. You don't have to go out and get 30 for us tonight. Maybe 25 is fine. But if we're going to win in the postseason, we need Yonis to focus on the defense and we need him to just be a fast break phenom like he normally is, where he can just create dunks out of fast breaks.

like no one we've ever seen in NBA history. So for Janus, it's a guy that if you're looking at this at the back nine of his career with his athleticism, he hasn't had that major injury yet. But with the way that the NBA is trending with the high speed tempo, if you're going to win an NBA title, you've got to be guaranteed that you're going to be ready for 100 games. And he simply hasn't done that. A deep playoff run.

Janus has been a first round out or not doing anything in the postseason for four years now. So we haven't seen whether Janus's body is equipped at this age to make a deep playoff run. You know the Miami Heat are going to take a chance. You know the New York Knicks are going to take a chance. But I can understand why other teams might be a little nervous about acquiring Janus at this stage of his group. He has one of the great postseason performances of all time, game six, 2021 to bring it home. he also has been one of the great postseason underperformers of his time.

And in a way that is interesting. So I think that we could say at various points. So Kevin Garnett is an interesting guy for his career because Kevin Garnett needed to get to a place where he could be the leader, but not the guy that had to take the last shot, right? And yes, he's got Game 7 against Sacramento in 2004 where he carried him on his back. But that's not a guy who wanted that shot. We've seen it.

You could pull up clips of it. That wasn't him, right? But the difference is Kevin Garnett was not a 38 usage guy, right? Yonnis had the free throw issue, though I always gave him credit. He'd go to the line and take them, right? He was not afraid of being embarrassed and taking those shots, but he'd go and he'd take them. However, I can't think of a player that was ever as good as him that we just saw those

teams come up short like they did. He's been on the wrong side of an 8-1 loss, right? When they took that loss in the bubble that year, that was another one. The 2-0 lead that they blew to Toronto in 2019, where most of us thought that that was going to be a series that they were going to walk to because that was before we told ourselves Nick Nurse was a good coach because it looked like him and Bootinholzer were just trying to lose to each other in the course of that. But we've had all these years where he hasn't been the guy to get this done.

He's not a take us to a championship guy at this point, I don't think. I think he can be a very significant part of you going to a championship, but I don't know what he thinks of himself in all of this. I don't know what happens when you drop him off after being on a franchise that is catered to him as you should cater to a guy that's made first team all NBA seven times in a row. What happens when he goes to his next place? Miami, to me, seems like the obvious place for him to go because he is a Pat Riley, Eric Spolstra sort of dude.

Because if nothing else, he is going to go hard. He is going to be in shape. If you put him out there with bam, I don't know how other teams are supposed to score any points. Like, I think they still need to get a guy to get the shot. But that, that to me has got to be the place that I would want to wind up if I rehab. Not in New York. I, I feel the same way. Um, with the Miami Heat with, with the honest, you know that the coach is ready. Uh, the organization is ready for that guy.

They, they, look, they took Jimmy Butler to the NBA finals twice. You know, they, they, they won the number one overall seat. Or, or Jimmy Butler took them to the NBA finals twice. It all depends on your perspective. That's right. You know, my point is that they, they can, they can take this older guy. Yeah. And morph them into a championship contender like that. And, And so what we saw with Jimmy Butler where I was in this camp where he's too old and way too many miles on those tires, those Tom Tibido tires, for me to believe that they're going to actually get to a finals with Jimmy Butler. And they proved me wrong multiple times. And so I look, I got my career started in Miami. I know that organization very well.

And that is exactly the type of dude that they want in that organization. A guy who was defensive-minded, who is a hooper, a grinder, a guy who lives in the gym. will play for the Greek national team, even though it's probably not the best idea for him physically to have to endure another year of international play on a team that, look, let's be honest, they're not buying for a gold medal. They're Milwaukee,

they're Milwaukee bucks of Europe. And I'm Greek. So like, I feel a lot of national pride when I watch him playing for the Greek team. But I also know, hey, if Janus ended up Kupa wants to win another title, or maximize his career, I kind of feel like

you should probably take the summer off. Now, the other thing is Miami Heat is one team. The other team that I'm wondering about, San Antonio. San Antonio with Victor Webbeniabha. Cancel Christmas. And Stapal Castle and Air Fox. You can get Janus, I'm sure, for Dylan Harper.

Dylan Harper is one of the best young players in the league and he's still, what, 20 years old. If you're looking for young, like superstar potential, James Hardin 2.0, Milwaukee Bucks can do a lot worse than Dylan Harper as the centerpiece of a Janus trade. And if the spurs get Yonis and they got Wembe and Fox and Stefan Castle, that's why the glut of amazing young guards there of San Antonio is so terrifying. It's not because, hey, they can have James Hardin 2.0 and Sheailderis Alexander and basically all in the same, you know, team,

it's that they can parlay one of those players into a win now guy like Janus. And imagine if they do the San Antonio Twin Towers, you got David Robinson, Tim Duncan, 2.0 with Janus and Wembe. That's why I'm like, hey, if San Antonio wins this whole thing, I think maybe the rest of the league is going to have a breath of fresh air because they're not going to go out and try to upgrade. But if they lose early in this postseason,

and Wemby's like, yo, get me a guy. The honest trade is fascinating. Okay, I had never considered this as a possibility. Throw something out here at you. I got a buddy. He's from L.A., right? Kind of like L.A. private school world.

And he always talked about how he was friends with somebody who was cool with the Collins twins, Jason and Jaron Collins. And he said that they were so long that they slept and they ruled each of them slept on two beds that went the long way. Right. That's how, that's how tall they were, that you had to put another bed at the foot of the bed for them dudes to be able to lay in the bed.

And I thought about that. These two guys were on the same high school team, right? Like this is like Brooke and Robin Lopez. It's one thing to have like supersized twins, but supersized twins who are like five-star recruits and you have to play against them in high school. And what you're telling me is that the spurs could potentially recreate this because my brother's 13 years older than me. I know what it's like to never feel like you're open. Right. Like at every turn, you just feel like somebody might pitch your shit into the stands. They got two of those. Like Yadis has an argument for being the best

defensive player of his generation, right? Like he's up there with Kauai Lennard. It's a different thing because he's so much taller. But absolutely, as an interior interior defender who could also step out in all of those things. And then you're going to put him with the best defensive player I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. Ouch. It's possible, man. It's possible. It's possible we will see the first zero points in the paint game

in NBA history if that happens. You know, like no one's going in, there's no one going into that house. There's no one going inside of the ark if you got Wemby and Yannis on the floor because yonis he's not the greatest shot blocker but he's also the greatest threat like he's just him lurking there is going to terrify people from going into the paint and you got you got wemby too so they have picks they got they got dylan harper they got step castle they've got deer and fox they've got a lot of interesting pieces here that milwaukee or any other team Houston could have done this when they had fred van vleet um and stephen adams healthy

that they have some young players that they could put into a trade. Now I'm not so sure they can do that. But San Antonio, I think that's what the most interesting dynamic is. Because Wembe wants it, right? Wembe wants it and he wants it now. If there's one thing we know about Wembe, it's he's all about this life. He wants the all-star game MVP.

He wants to win All-Star. He wants the MVP. He wants to be the goat. And he's willing to say it. So if he's willing to say he's the MVP out to the public, to the media at the press conference. And if they lose in the second round because Deer & Fox has a bad series

or Stefan Castle and Dylan Harper aren't ready yet, you know he's going to make his voice heard. And the San Antonio Spurs with Victor Wemidiyama that good right now, I can understand where they're like, you know what? Let's end the NBA right now. Oklahoma City, your time is up.

We're going to go get Janus and we're going to end this right now. But you know Sam got everything he need to make a move too, though. Like, like, the arms are back, man. I say the arms race with two of the four smallest markets in America, baby. It's on. Well, not America, but you know. Yeah, yeah.

This is, this is, this is, Bommani, what the NBA needs. Because as much as Adam Silver wants to say he loves parity and he wants parity, I don't, I don't truly believe that. I think he is in the David Stern School of Thought of what's better than Lakers, Nicks. Give me Lakers, Lakers. Yes. Right. We had Jay Adande on the pod yesterday. Basketball Luminati. You should check it out every Wednesday. We dropped that podcast with Amino Hass and Anthony Mays and I. And we had Jayadonday. We were talking about how different David Stern and Adam Silver were and this league of parity where seven different teams have won titles over the last seven years. And I'm sitting here like, Bomani, I kind of want the rivalries back. I want teams going at it every season and having that story build because as much as we said, we want parody, I think we want story. I think we want

David versus Goliath. I think we want Godzilla versus King Kong, where it's like, I want these two juggernauts, O KC and San Antonio, to meet up in the playoffs, and I want them to hate each other. And we're already there except for the playoff thing. And I want that to happen. I want this rivalry. I want a Sam Presti and R.C. Buford, Janus ended Akupo bidding war, because I feel like the NBA needs this. They need these rivalries because as much as we want to say parity is the North Star of the NBA. I think that's a euphemism for another economic goal for the NBA owners rather than true parity. I think the NBA needs this in a way that I don't think people appreciate is San Antonio and

OKC. We need that rivalry in the Western Copper. All right. So coming up next, I want to talk about this exact thing because I have long felt that way, but I've wavered a little bit. I'm explaining why coming up next. You can predict the playoff action all the way to the finals with Fanduil predicts.

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I am just like you. I have felt that Dynasty Saga is the best narrative form for the NBA, right? Like with San Antonio, I think people have missed a point where there's like, oh, you're just saying they can't win because they just don't have experience. It's like, no, it's that playoff basketball is not the same kind of basketball as the regular season. And we have not seen what they will do in playoff basketball. And literally every other team we've seen pretty much has needed to figure out playoff

basketball, including the Oklahoma City juggernaut that exists now, went in and lost in the second round. That first year that they got there is the number one seed, because it's a matter of learning what it is, right? And so there's something to that where a team gets a little farther, gets a little farther, typically having somebody that they have to run up against a couple of times before they manage to get by. That is how I prefer it. However, I have to say, I am totally fascinated by what the West is, right? Like, I love the idea that this year, these games are going to matter all the way until the end. How those matchups go matter.

And it's sizing up such that I think Denver would rather be in the four than be in the three. But the Lakers having their injury situation basically locks Denver into the three. But what that means is we're going to get Yokic and the spurs in the second round. And as we just saw on Saturday, that'll be a slob knocker, right? And as good as Victor is, the best player in the NBA is still number 15. We're going to have to see that. Oklahoma City getting matched up with Hugh. That one stinks because Oklahoma City is going to walk over whoever they get in the second round.

If it stays, Lakers, Rockets in that round. But I liked the idea that I didn't really have a great handle on who was going to win the West, right? Like I look at the east that I feel very similarly where there's no team that I think you can look at just because we don't know what Jason Tam is going to look like with the pounding of playing in the postseason, right? I think they've gotten more out of the parody than I expected for them to get. Like, I think this is going to be pretty broadly an interesting postseason. But you're right, it might be the last one because those teams at the top are going to have to ramp up. Yeah, I think, I think the spurs can win it this year. I think the spurs can win it this year and overcome that playoff inexperience because if there's one thing we've seen over the last few years in the league,

is that injuries are creating more parity. injuries, like the Indiana Pacers getting all the way to the conference finals two years ago and the NBA finals last year, as much of a story as it is of Tyrese Halliburton and his amazing clutch play and Seacum and just the balling out that Andrew Nemhard and Aaron Neesmith do, it's certainly a story.

But it's also that these injuries in the Eastern Conference have paved way for the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers to go deeper into the postseason than we ever imagine. And I think that if there was going to be a year in which the San Antonio Spurs or an era where a team with no playoff experience, I'm not counting Harrison Bards in this equation, right? The playoff inexperience, that variable, I think in the 90s and early 2000s, it would matter a whole great deal. But because the game is so violent right now on the joints and because the pace is so high, I'm wondering if, we're not taking that into account enough that there is just so much variance in the postseason

now because the game is taking out so many star players that we, I mean, OKC went to two game sevens last year, Bumani. Yeah. You know? And so it's, and if Aaron Gordon is healthy in that series, you could say that that Denver wins that series against OKC. So I, part of me says, yeah, the spurs have to go by the tradition, the ritual of it is in the NBA, that you cannot just come out of the gate without any postseason runs and win the whole damn thing.

We've never seen that happen. But I kind of feel like we need to rewrite the history books with these injuries that we're seeing among star players in the NBA. Where star players this year are playing only 60% of their games, SGA, Chad Holmgren,

Jalen Williams, J-dub, they've only played 26 games together this season. and so if they're not healthy, yeah, I can see the San Antonio Spurs upsetting them in the postseason. And after that, all bets are off. I kind of feel like the San Antonio Spurs can win a title this year

and not lay down to the history of all of those teams that needed a playoff run before they won it all. Well, the series that I think would be interesting for the Spurs to kind of chart the course of what happens is if the Clippers beat the Sons in that 7-8 play-in game, assuming that's going to be the game.

I think the Clippers will win two of those because the version of Kauai Leonard that currently exist and has been playing this year, he'll get you one at least, right? Like that is an all-time great postseason perform, right? Like he's not young anymore. I want to say this is 15th year in the NBA. But I think they'll knock the spurs around a little bit, right?

They'll give them, because look, we just saw a Victor catch a rib contusion. That felt like a very skinny man injury, right? Like we just saw that thing go down. The attrition for the spurs. Like that one will be interesting for us to see how this ends up going. But also let us not forget. It's entirely possible that the legend killer Anthony Edwards

would come out here and take Denver out in the first round himself. Yeah, the West is going to be a bloodbath. And Kauai Leder, by the way, he's number five on my MVP ballot, MVP ballot. Let's just count Luca in there for now. But he's going to get first team all NBA. He deserves to get first team all NBA. Aspiration scandal aside, imagine the other owners if Kauai is winning a playoff series, you know, a 1-8 series if the Clippers somehow pulled that off and one of the most all-time biggest upsets. Steve Ballmer's just going to be laughing his way to that next round if that happens. But the GM's might care. The owners do

not care at all. What, that Steve Ballmer is getting away with us? I firmly believe that once this investigation is done and whatever they come back with, because I'm not sure that I'm not sold that he's getting away with anything. I have not been convinced of that yet. Okay. I'm just telling you, don't nobody really care. A colleague of mine made a very good point about this aspiration situation and this is the truth. The NBA's problem right now is teams trying to lose. It is not teams trying to win. Nobody really cares. I can get on with the teams trying to lose things. Did you see the piece that I did last week about the A league and the B league? I did. It is, it is unbelievable, Beaumani, how this league just morphed into two separate

leagues. And I absolutely agree with you that Adam Silver on the list of things that he has to care about is the integrity of the game and that teams are throwing games strategically with coaching decisions where I saw the coach of the Washington Wizards argue that Alex Sarr and Balala Kula Bali and Kishan George, I think, Trey Johnson, that they were on minutes restrictions due to their medical situations. And that's why they had to sit in the fourth quarter in these close games. Bub Carrington had to sit in the fourth quarter of these games, even though he played the first 12 minutes of the game, Beaumani,

and he said, yeah, we got minutes restrictions on these guys. It's a- Tom, Tuesday night, the Golden State Warriors are trailing the Sacramento Kings by a point, and the Kings intentionally filed to put the warriors on the line. They intentionally filed Steph Curry. You're like, come on. What are we doing, right? Like, I feel like the one maybe benefit of it.

It makes it feel like every team into the playoffs is coming in on a run, right? Because they get to play enough games against these bums. Like, I'm looking at the top half of the top six teams in the east right now. The Pistons have won seven out of ten. The Celtics have won eight out of ten. The Knicks have won seven out of ten. The Hawks have won seven out of ten. Everybody feeling good.

Go down to the west. Thunder, nine out of ten. Spurs, nine out of ten. 10. Nuggets, nine out of 10. Keep in mind, the one loss for the spurs was to the nuggets. Rockets, eight out of 10. Hey, man, all these bulbs got everybody else feeling good. Well, I wonder, Bomani, do you think Adam Silver cares about this or does he care about the gambling aspect of it of a lot of a lot of people who are setting the lines on this game, don't know who's playing or how much they're going to be playing and where to set these lines at?

because we just saw the Oklahoma City Thunder, I think they were favored by a record 24 points in a game, and they won by 35. And so these lines makers, they're not really sure where to put them because they don't know, like, how much these teams are actually trying to win and play their best players.

And so I'm wondering if Adam Silver, the reason why he's so publicly strident and saying, we are going to end this now full stop, you're going to see the end of tanking. Is that because the owners want this? Or is that because his business partners want this at the other gambling companies? Because it does seem like to me,

he is out here saying a lot about how he is going to end tanking. And the proposals that I'm seeing, Bomani, these seem like half measures. I don't, I, we talked about it last time I was on the show. I don't know how you, quote, solve tanking by maintaining the draft lottery. just don't see how that's possible because he's saying one thing. And then what he's coming at

with us is a totally different thing, a much more water diluted version of we're going to abolish tanking. We're going to get rid of it. And so I'm wondering if Adam Silver's just not up for this task of trying to get rid of tanking because I think we all know what that would, what that would take. And it doesn't seem like he's willing to get rid of the draft lottery, which is incentivizing teams to be as bad as possible to get the players. They're as good as possible. And they're as good as possible on the best financial construct in the rookie scale contract. Yeah, or, you know, and you and I have talked about this because they flat, by flattening the lottery odds, it's now made it more advantageous for teams that don't have to be

terrible to lose more games, right? Because they then have a greater chance in order to win. But I think for Silver, part of it is definitely what's going on with the gambling companies, right? But I also think the other part of it is, and probably the biggest part is, and probably the biggest part it's become shameful to a point of disrespect. They're playing so obviously in our faces as a collective and directly in his face as a commissioner in a way that they never would have done to David Sturr.

Right. Like it's just the measures that teams are taking in the ways that they're going about it, you can't flatly tell the paying customers we're trying to lose here. What has made it terrible for him, though, is that the paying customers have been so conditioned to think this shit is cool that they're in. in many cases, begging for losses. Like, I don't know how exactly he fixes it, but you're right. The presence of a lottery throws all this off.

The presence of a draft, honestly, you know, you and I have talked about this. The presence of a draft throws this thing off. But he does have to do something about this. But at the same time, it has been a very interesting close to the season, right? Which is something that we haven't always been able to say. You just can't have people play it in your face like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's something that I think has happened increasingly is the separation with the

play in tournament, like that you have 10 teams that are postseason eligible now, but it's created this split in ways we have never seen that there's 20 teams that are trying to win, 21 if you count the Pelicans, because they don't have the rights to their first round pick. And then everybody else is like, all right, well, if we're not going to go for the play-in, and by the way, the 10th seed in the playing ain't all at 12. cracked up to be one team has made it out of the play-in in 10 times that they've had this one team has made it out of the play-in as the number 10 seed and it was the Miami Heat last year and they got embarrassed BTA in that in that series against the Cleveland

Cavaliers and so if you're a number 10 seed or a team that's on the fringe of competing I can understand why Chicago was like all right finally we're going to pull pull the court right I can understand why Memphis, Dallas, Milwaukee is like, as long as we're just kind of like in that 9, 10, 11 range, we just saw the Atlanta Hawks jump to number one. We just saw the Dallas Mavericks get Cooper flag at number 11. So it's created this separation between the two leagues. And the teams are being as brave about this and as bold and emboldened about this as they've ever had. out right from the start of the season, and you're right, it's, it's not really worth it for those teams in that 11 range, like in the 11th of the, of the, uh, playoff standings to try to go

for it and get that number 10 seats. So I just think that the NBA has to figure this out. Um, but ultimately, yeah, I'm excited for the postseason to get here so we can get rid of that talk. We just can talk about how good okay C in San Antonio and Denver. It is going to be a, uh, absolute bloodbath. And I wonder, Bomani, I think, think the best story for the NBA would be San Antonio winning it all. Victor Wenbanyama as fully empowered

and winning a championship, but I also can't discount the idea of Victor Wenbenyama pissed as all hell and getting out in like the second round and being like, we got to ramp up. Yeah, no, no, no. A game seven loss,

whether it be to Oklahoma City or to Denver, I think is the best long run NBA situation. He took a leap this year. The first two years were the potential years from him. Now where he's taking guys to the elbow and operating in space and they are terrified of what might happen next on top of everything that happens with defense. Like now he's out here flexing in people's faces and everything else.

Like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. But if it goes, look, I was talking to somebody about this the other day and they were asking me, are the French the favorites to win the gold medal in 2028? Then I think the answer is unequivocally, yes. He tasted his own blood. at the crib in 2024. Now he gets the chance to return the favor in Los Angeles. It's going to be terrifying.

Now, if you give yourself somehow an NBA analog to that situation, I can't wait. I can't wait. It's the guy, the guy is offensively. He's developed in a way that was way faster than many imagined, but he's 22, B'amani. Like this is this is the worst he's ever going to be. Yeah.

The worst he's ever going to be. So if you have a guy who's figured out, oh, wait, no one can stop me once I, once I get downhill or once I get the ball in the post and I'm going to be watching Yokic and how he's been able to master that, that block and figure out how to play chess, you know, and literally the guy's a chess master or an aspiring chess master, Victor Wenbanyama. There's just going to be a time in the not so distant future. where he's as good offensively as he is defensively. And that's a scary thought.

I do want to ask you before we get out of here, but if you had thoughts on this Mike Malone higher, because I think NBA coaches going to college may become more of a thing now that college is becoming a bit more like the pros. Like now that you don't really have to go on the road and go get these guys. I think this would be interesting. But I think the Malone thing, it sounds like they're going to get him a legitimate staff and go get some players.

he seems to, and this I did not give him enough credit for, he understands the assignment when it comes to the soft stuff of being a college basketball coach, right? Like he knows how to talk that shit about how much he loves Carolina and all of those things. This could work. I'm for it, man. I'm for it.

Like when they announced that Michael Malone got that job, I've always felt Michael Malone is more of a college coach, his disposition, his personality. He has gotten, he's been ejected from games. where he gets his Dan Hurley on and he gets in front of an official, an NBA official makes contact and is so irate that he has to get ejected. Like, Yokic has multiple times had to step in front of Michael Malone because he just, he loses his temper, just absolutely loses it on guys.

And you saw Nikoliyokic in the press conference the other day. When asked about this, he's like, hey, I think he's going to have a really good opportunity here. I'm happy for him because he can actually teach and get players to play the right way, aka he's more of a college coach than he is an NBA coach. And I do feel like Michael Malone, just the vibe I get from him is way more college-oriented than it is. And he's won an NBA championship, which is crazy to say that I feel like Michael Malone, the way he talks about the game, he's more old school. I feel like he's better suited for the college ranks than the NBA ranks.

and look, man, I think it was the AD. Someone at Chapel Hill said, we wanted to go out and get the best available coach, professional or otherwise. And I said, wait, college sports is professional. Like, let's not, let's not mix it up. But this is an era where you have to think that college sports is professional,

getting Michael Malone, I think you're right. There's going to be a lot of guys in the NBA that feel like, oh, I can get just as much money by doing the college game and I don't have to go out in the road and recruit. Didn't Dusty May talk about this?

It's like, I haven't stepped foot in any of these houses. This is great. I love this era. Yeah, but there's also, you're going to see, I was talking to an agent who works with college players

about this a couple of weeks ago. And I asked him, I was like, so how is dealing with, I guess what we're not called a front office in college different than dealing with the front office and the pros?

He's like, it's not going to be that much different because it's going to be a bunch of guys from the pros. Like, if you were somehow a washout for whatever reason in the front office in the NBA, there's a world for you now down here. Like, I think you're going to start seeing that in football, but there's just another, there's a class of guys who maybe could not move themselves up to be in a VP of player personnel or GM or anything like that.

Well, maybe you just go down. Like all those stories we got of like, for example, Adrian Warzianowski is the GM at St. Bonaventure, for example. Well, Master P was the GM at the University of New Orleans, Shax the GM somewhere. That's about to be out the window. Like, not even so much talking about Adrian because I think that he's probably up to that task. But the idea of a ceremonial general manager, no, no, no.

I think that's about to be gone. And you're about to see a lot of guys who used to work in the pros, just like you're going to see a lot of agents who maybe weren't that great at it in the pro ranks. They're going to start moving down into college. And those are going to be the guys that then traffic in that space, which I then think is going to mean you're going to see a lot more NBA-type coaches come down there. Because what I think is about to go extinct. Curious what you think about this.

We all know college basketball, and it's a lot of guys with a lot of success. And what they did was they went and got really good players, and then they rolled the ball out there, and that's all it had to be. All of us have in our mind, that guy that's got all the wins, and all they did was roll the ball out there. Those guys are about to be cooked, because your ability to get players is not going to be enough to sustain your job anymore because the ability to give players

is going to be about money in the front office, which means I think the strategic element of college basketball is then going to go up, which is then going to increase demand for a guy like Malone because when Carolina fans were like, I don't know about this, let me tell you what you weren't going to find, a better basketball coach.

Now, it's possible you might have found a better steward for your program, and maybe you thought that Tommy Lloyd Lloyd, because of his time at Gonzaga, and with his success at Arizona would have been the guy for you. Tommy Lloyd is not a better basketball coach than Mike Malone is. Mike Malone,

I don't think we've actually undersold how good a job he did while he was in Denver. Well, yeah, and that wasn't his first stop, right? So he has the respect, like LeBron loves Michael Malone. Buggy! Yeah, like this dude, I think he's, I think he was a great hire. I thought Billy Donovan, the interesting,

part about the Billy Donovan story is that in a weird way Chicago cleaning house with the front office, the Bulls and deciding to get rid of Cornicheauvison Eversley, empowered Billy Donovan in a weird way that they're now saying the GM, the incoming front office exec has to essentially be okay with Billy Donovan as the head coach. And Billy Donovan, I don't know if he's, if he played his cards right here because he could have been the head coach of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. And now he's got the Chicago Bulls with the same ownership. You'll get paid nicely, but I feel like Billy Donovan would have been a lot happier if he

was at Carolina than if he was at the Chicago Bulls because I just have no faith in that ownership with Chicago. Has any professional franchise fumbled the bag more than the Chicago Bulls after the 90s Bulls? Well, that's why I would love if somebody could really get to the bottom of it, with Billy in getting an understanding of why he did this. And I say that because my understanding is that he never talked to anybody beyond the search firm with Carolina. Like he was never really in it. He never really got to a point of truly pursuing this. And I would imagine that he would be

trying to get to hell out of Dodge for what the Bulls have been. Like, why would you want to continue doing this? He must really just be like, I'm done with this college thing, even though I would feel like at this point all the things he probably didn't like about coaching college basketball he doesn't have to deal with anymore that being said after working with actual factual NBA players I can't really imagine what it's like working with college basketball players like this is like you go you've taken a lot of you've taken a pretty decent level of high level math you know how to cats don't remember how to add yeah like are they getting there like two plus three but if you ask them to take them to take it.

a fourth order derivative or something they might be able to do it off the top of their hands maybe that's it like billy donovan is not trying to show you motherfuckers how to add he's just not trying to do it well i i think i think the the analogy of this is bill bellichick 2.0 is way off i think mike malone is way more in tune with what works in 2026 on the basketball floor and the economics and just the the basketball talent and all the pipelines and everything i feel like he's more in tune with this and i think it's i think it's lazy to say this is Belichick all over again. Way different situation with Michael Malone,

who's in his prime as a coach, who just won a couple years ago, who still everyone really, really likes. And that Denver Nuggets organization has been in flux. And so I wouldn't hold it against Michael Malone that he was run out right before the playoffs last year. But this is, I'm bummed because Duke Harris, I feel like Wake's best player last year

is probably going to be in Chapel Hill because Michael Malone is there now. And it feels like this is not a great situation for me at Wake Forest because I think Mike's going to do a great job. I think he's got the right tools. It's just very odd to me. We've talked about this before, Bimani, how the NBA products,

like the Chapel, UNC has not produced an all-star since I think is Jameson, I want to say. Well, Jameson, Jameson, I think is the last all-star. are yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, he invents. That's the same, that's the same class. It's been a long time. But the coaching tree, too, you would imagine that they'd have more people who would be in the Chapel Hill fraternity, so to speak, and the Duke calls it a brotherhood. I'm surprised there aren't more candidates here. So that's another reason why Michael Malone got

higher, because if you're out here looking at other candidates and they weren't enthrused with Sean May or anybody internally. I can understand why Mike Malone got that job. I mean, to be fair, Shashefsky didn't really have a lot of candidates to take over for him. Carolina, there were some guys that got sent away from home to see if it would work out and it didn't. Wes Miller was a guy that I think they thought may turn out to be that guy.

And then he went to Cincinnati and you saw that that did not work out, for example. Like, bottom line is finding the guy to be coach is really, really hard. And every now and then you wind up with an example of there's the guy that's out there in the market, and then you need to coach the exact same year and you go get that guy, right? Ohio State cutting bait on Jim Tressel because they knew Urban Meyer was going to be there in a year. Florida, cutting bait on their guy and Urban Meyer was out there that year. You know what I mean? Like if there's a guy and you're the program that you can go jump in and you can go get that guy.

And this was not a year. If it's two years ago, you go get Dusty May. Right? Dusty May takes Florida Atlantic to the final four and then you go get him like Michigan just did. And then now you're the one that's out here making this happen. But this is, it's going to be an interesting season. What about Stack? What about Stack?

Do you have thoughts on him as a head coach? Because it didn't work out at the college level, but now he's with the Golden State Warriors. And I kind of hope that Stack would have gotten that job. Yeah, I don't know exactly why it did not work at Vanderbilt, right? Because Vanderbilt's not a place that everybody's going to win. It's before they got the huge influx of money. Because let me tell you one way to get money for your college basketball program,

a college football, whatever. Get that black dude in there, fired his black ass, and watch the money pile up. That happens just about every single time. And at Vanderbilt, I guarantee you, Stack is out there like, well, what do you think would have happened if you gave me that money?

What would concern me about Stack at Carolina is everybody wants to play a certain type of basketball and win a certain type of way. And Jerry Stackhouse was a scorer, but he wants to coach intense defensive basketball. And I don't know if that way is the way that Carolina wants to play. But I think this,

if he had not gotten that Vanderbilt job, I think he might have had a better chance of getting this job. I think it would have been on the board, but I also don't think the people that were hiring cared about that. And I think Roy got to make the Hubert hire, and Roy was not going to get to make another hire.

That's what I think from here. But they got a really, really, really good coach, right? Like, State's mad because they lost Will Wade, and I feel very confident that Mike Malone is a better basketball coach than Will Wade is. You know? But that, Tom Habistro, check out Tom the finder. Great newsletter for you to check out.

Also, check them out Yahoo Sports. Shout out to the folks in Portland. Check them out talking about basketball there too. My brother, I appreciate you. Hey, anytime, Amani. Appreciate it. All right, man. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time.

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