The Ringer NBA Show - A Year Later: Did the Clippers Win the Blake Griffin Trade? | Heat Check (Ep. 368)

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

The Los Angeles Clippers host Blake Griffin for the first time since the controversial trade (3:27), the Boston Celtics falter despite their talent (15:26), the New York Knicks accelerate their tank (28:08), and rookies’ statistical comparisons encourage or discourage fans (49:32). Host: John Gonzalez Guests: Joe House, Dan Devine, Zach Kram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's heat check is brought to you by Yahoo Daily Fantasy. Yahoo Daily Fantasy is starting the year off hot every day. They're running a $100,000 fantasy basketball contest, and that has zero management fee. That means Yahoo is making nothing on this contest. Fewer players equals better odds for you. More than one in five people who play will double their money. Not a bad way to kick off the new year. There's a limit of 10 entries per person, so don't miss these contests. Go to yahoo.com slash daily fantasy.

Use promo code Yahoo 25 when you make your money. your first deposit for $25 in free play. And now, heat check. Welcome to heat check. I'm your host, John Gonzalez. Joined once again, he's back from the road. It's my producer, Isaac Lee. What's up, Isaac?

It's good to be back, man. I was in Seattle last week. And when I arrived in Los Angeles, beautiful sunny, Los Angeles. Oh, wait, it's raining here. What's going on, Gons? I'm freaking out. Driving in the rain is extremely weird and foreign to me.

Yeah, I love Los Angeles. I've lived here for, it'll be three years. this summer. And it still amuses me when it rains because everybody loses their shit. I will say in your defense, though, that because it never rains here, one of the things that I always have to remind myself is how to turn on the windshield wipers in my car, because it happens so infrequently that I'm just like, oh shit, yeah, how do I do it in this car? Is it upwards? Downright, right, right. But like, meanwhile, like, everything you've ever heard about Los Angeles is 1,000% true as it pertains to rain here. People just, it's end of days. People just, like, abandon their car.

and put them up on blocks. Fires break out. It's all kinds of crazy shit. But you made it. You made it in the office. You made it back from Seattle. I'm very excited to have you back. You went and saw the Clippers and Blake,

which we'll get into later on in the program. You took over the Ringer NBA Twitter feed. Yeah. It was exciting. You did a great job. So we'll get into that a little bit later in the program. I want to remind you first, thanks for listening.

Please rate and review us in all of our fantastic Ringer NBA shows and pods. If you would be so inclined and so kind. And also want to remind you, we have lots of great content on the Ringer.com. KOC has a piece, finding new roles for the NBA's most misused talents. DJ Foster has a story about why Nikola Vucevic could be someone to watch at the trade deadline. We have a staff piece up there about the NBA trade deadline tracker. And this has nothing to do with basketball.

I don't care. I'm throwing it out there because it's good content. The flat circle, the premiere of our post-game true detective show with Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion, two dudes we love, multitalented. You want to check that out. Later on in the show, the Yellow King himself, Dan Devine. will be here to discuss the Knicks. And for the first time ever, Zach Cram will be here.

He had a killer piece where he devised this formula to come up with the top five comps for every player from the 2018 lottery. Some very interesting and unexpected names were assigned to some of those lottery picks. So we're going to break that down with him. But first, as I mentioned, Blake Griffin played his first game

against the Clippers since being traded. Isaac was there. And also, Kyrie had some, shall we say, interesting things to say to his teammates. madness ensued, and for that we need our senior madness correspondent. Boom, Shakalaka! He's heating up! All right, joining me on the other line from House of Carbs and from Shaq House.

He took a snow day. It's snowing a lot in the DMV. It's Joe House. What up? Yeah, well, I'm gone. How you doing, baby? Now look, no rest for the weary. It's a snow day. It's January here in Washington, D.C., but I encourage all of the heat check listeners. I took the advantage of having a little bit of time to myself. I have some golf clubs that need some swings. I'm out there in the snow at House from BC on the Graham, Wong-Gon, getting the swing. Because, you know, hashtag dedication, Wongon.

Hashtag brand, you got the whole thing going on. I'm glad that you took a snow day because it gives us more time to talk. It's raining here in L.A. It's snowing there. It's a perfect time for us to chop up a little basketball talk because some spicy stuff happened over the weekend. Blake Griffin made his triumphant return to Los Angeles to play his former team, the Clippers.

One Isaac Lee, before we even get into the madness of Blake Griffin and how hilarious the pregame stuff was, House, Isaac Lee took over the Ringer NBA Twitter feed. Did you see this? Not only did I see it, I enjoyed it greatly. It seemed like maybe Ice can chime in here.

Ice, it seemed like you were a little conflicted, my brother. Conflicted is one word for it. There was a lot of mixed emotions going on. generally speaking, the Clippers crowd was hesitant to, I guess, root against Blake because Blake were so used to seeing him in a Clippers jersey. It's interesting because, like, yeah, on the one hand, you think, okay, he was, like, their guy of that era, somebody who helped resurrect a dead franchise. On the other hand, the general thing here, given how acrimonious the split was,

I'm surprised there wasn't more booing. Like, I wonder about Clippers fans sometimes and whether or not they know the appropriate emotion. Well, that's just funny coming from a Philly guy. That's what I mean. Where is the player loyalty? He didn't do anything wrong. He signed the long-term contract. They told him Clipper for life.

He went and got that tattoo on his rear end. I know I've seen his butt. And he's ready to do it to it. And the next thing you know, he's by a snowboot. So he gets shipped out to Detroit. So let's get into that. He comes back with the Pistons. The Pistons win 109-104 over the Clippers.

Blake has 44. But before the game even begins, it was really funny. So he's warming up. He's going through his whole routine. And if you haven't seen this, I highly encourage all of the Heat Check listeners to go out and seek out this video

because it is golden. And I want to watch it on loop. I want it to be like a house. I want it to be like a clockwork orange where they pin open my eyelids. And I only watch this for the rest of my life because it was really great. So Steve Bomber is off to the side

watching Blake warm up. And as Blake finishes his routine, Balmer kind of goes over to him. He's standing on the sideline. Balmer goes over to him with his hand extended. and Blake immediately picks up speed and sprints into the locker room and Balmer just looks around

because he got left hanging and somebody sees Balmer standing there and Balmer sort of shrugs and that was it. They did not exchange Pleasantry's pregame. Post game, Blake Griffin said, nice to get the game over with. There was so much hype.

It's over. I'm moving on and they're moving on. And then he said, for nine years now, because he was asked specifically about sort of snubbing Balmer. He said for nine years now, As soon as I'm done doing my pregame shooting, I make sure there's a path and I take off running to the locker room and I don't stop running.

I don't change that for anybody. That's what it was. Planned and simple. It wasn't anything planned. House, where's your bullshit detector on this? Do you believe him? I'm going to give you a three-part answer.

Please. The first part to this, I feel very fortunate in my life. I don't really have any enemies. I don't really have any true acrimony with anybody. But if I did, on a daily basis, what I would be sending that enemy of mine is this loop. You said it right, Wong God.

This is how I feel about you, enemy of mine. But I will say this. I think it is hilarious. And just to emphasize the point, Blake got a little faulty with the crew. He said he could use a curse word, in fact. And whoever it is that put it up on Twitter or put it on Instagram, first he said, you know, that's BS.

that you guys know me, you know this is my routine, and somebody's going to take a clip of that and put it up there, suggesting that, you know, there was some media manufactured tomfoolery. How about this, Juan, Don? Let me put this to you. If indeed, it is the case that this is Blake's unabiding and relentless and uninterrupted approach to beginning the basketball game.

Do you think that Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers, For more than one basketball game. He was the owner of the Clippers for a good chunk. A couple of games. Yeah, a meaningful number of games. He owned a team. Do you think that he would be familiar with this routine, Juan Gondon? Yeah, you'd think.

You know, I think both things can be true here. Before I give you my answer on what I believe this to be, Isaac, what did you make of it? Because I have a lot of thoughts here, aside from the fact that I thought it was hilarious. Well, first of all, shouts to Yovan Buha of the athletic, friend of the ringer who reported this first. former Grantland intern, I believe, so connections there.

But what I thought of it was, you know, this is actually what Blake did or does as his routine, but it's 100% a snub. Like, there's no doubt. Yes. So here's what I'm saying about, like, it was funny and this might be his routine. But all of these things could also be true that in addition to the fact that this might be his routine, that it was also as Isaac just pointed out, a snub. Because as we learned, before the game even went down, before this practice, or I mean, before the shoot around,

where Blake is warming up and getting ready and Balmer's got his hand extended. Before all that happened, the great Kevin Arnivitz from ESPN wrote a long piece about Blake Griffin, which outlined how the trade went down and how pissed off Blake Griffin was and probably rightly so because they did put him through that whole like museum thing where they brought him in.

They're like, you're going to be a Clipper for life and they had all this memorabilia. Let me interrupt you. Please, please interrupt. Why should the Clippers fans have booed Blake Griffin? Yeah, you're right. There's probably no good reason to do it other than to just do it, but I mean, like, he definitely

thought that he... I'm sorry for interrupting. No, no, you're always welcome to interrupt. We enjoy the interruptions here in the asides. I think, like, if you're the clippers and you go through that whole thing, it's hilarious that you then ship him off to, you know, basketball, Siberia, in Detroit. But as we learned in that Kevin Arnett's story, since that trade, first, he didn't take the phone call from Lawrence Frank when the trade

went down. And then since that trade, he hadn't talked to any of the team's principal. not Balmer, not Lawrence Frank, not Doc Rivers, none of those guys. So the idea that all of a sudden, like, he saw Steve Balmer with his handout, and, you know, that was just part of his routine and nothing more. Of course it was. This is a continuation of, I'm pissed off. You traded me to Detroit. I'm not going to shake your hand.

I'm going to sprint into the locker room and, you know, fuck off. And I'm okay with that. Like you said, if you went and you sign that big contract and then you get traded, you'd be like, no, I don't want to talk to that person. Yeah. Look, I mean, that is some A plus plus. pettiness right there. That is Blake. The universe delivered that beautiful moment to him of Balmer. I guess Balmer's take is it wasn't personal. It's just business. I mean, I haven't, I'm not part of Klipper Nation, so I didn't do the deep dive on the team side of things. But, you know,

I mean, the universe delivered it up on a silver platter and Blake pooped right on that platter, as he should have as far as I personally could do. Yeah, and as Doc said afterwards, like most trades don't go very well. That's not surprising. I mean, he obviously thought he was going to be in Los Angeles and then, you know, six months later, he gets shipped out. So what brings me to, you know, now that we have a little distance from this, and I'm interested to get Isaac's take on this as well. So they, they signed him in 2017 in the summer to a max contract. Tell him he's going to be a clipper for like. They go through this whole thing. Six months later, he gets traded for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Bobon, and a 2018 first that was used in that swap along with some seconds with Charlotte to get SGA. Here's my question. Who won

the trade. So it really pains me to say this because when this trade actually first went down, I was devastated. And also, Haley O'Shaughnessy, if you're listening, please cover your ears because I don't want to affirm that you were right. But the clippers kind of won the trade. So now with a little bit of perspective, you think they made the right move? Yeah. So I mean, I had tweeted this earlier. Now this is no longer true, but since the end of Lop City this year, they had a better record than the Houston Rockets, which is Chris Paul's team, now no longer. And the Detroit Pist's, which Blake Griffin's team and the Dallas Mavericks, which is DeAndre Jordan's team. The Clippers are actually performing better in the regular season.

Of course, they won't go too far in the playoffs, but they are performing better in the regular season without the Lop City trio. So, yeah, I think they won the trade and they have a pretty bright future with all the cap space they have this summer, with SGA, with Lou Williams on a pretty team-friendly deal. This is a really good roster, a really good situation. I mean, trust Jerry West. He's literally the logo. It pains me to say this because I love Blake, and Blake is my guy, but I think the Clippers won the deal. House?

Yeah, so I'm glad you invoked Jerry West, I, because that's where this all begins and ends. It was a brilliant move for the Clippers, and it is kind of shocking to the system to see a team do what the Clippers did, but they quickly reached the conclusion that they made a mistake with that contract that they offered to Blake. They are, in that respect, the anti-wizard. They took recognition and cognition of what they bought themselves and immediately found a way to work themselves out of that cap-space hell. And it's a nice happenstance that it's a very likable team.

Like the combination of Doc and Patrick Beverly and Lou Williams kind of setting the tone, they've really created a culture there for the young guys. For Tobias, who's not that young necessarily in terms of years in the league, but still early in his career. And this is the first time that he's ever been in a situation where there's a kind of a discipline and a rigor and expectation that's put upon him by like veterans who can really have an impact on his career.

And Shay, what do we call him? Ice? She Gildedis Alexander. SGA. No, I know that part. We just call him SGA. because I can't get all that out of a plus that. What a great situation for him to arrive in, right?

Yeah. They have, for all the things that I've mentioned, in terms of the road in front of them, the most important thing in this version of the NBA, if you are franchised like the Clippers, the most important asset is flexibility, and they have it in space. Yeah, I think if you're just looking at the way these teams

are performed as well this year, I mean, the Clippers are smack dab in the middle of the Western Conference playoff picture. they've been in this hunt the whole season. We've talked about how they don't, their top line talent. If, you know, Tobias Harris is their best player, but they're just good across the board.

They're a professional basketball team. And I think like trade wise, you know, we're all in agreement here. I mean, Tobias Harris plus SGA, plus cap flexibility equals you win. Because that Blake Griffin contract, I love Blake when he's healthy. I don't love Blake at the number that they're paying him.

And I think that it's going to be difficult for Detroit to fix it. I really like Detroit's new management group. I'm a big fan of it. Stephansky and Malik Rose and that whole group. They're good dudes. They're smart dudes. And I think that they'll try to figure it out in Detroit. But I also think what happened before they came in made it more difficult.

And so does that number that they're paying Blake Griffin. So yeah, if I had a pick, I'd rather be the clippers right now than the Pistons. So good for the clippers. Steve Ballmer didn't get a handshake, but they won the deal. All right, I want to go to Boston because this is something house. We've never done this on heat check before. We're going to talk about the Celtics. It's never happened.

It's never happened on heat check. The Rigger NBA show has never talked about the Celtics. It's first time for everything. Kyrie Irving, not very happy. All of a sudden, things in Boston, people are wondering what's going on up there. The Boston Celtics are currently in fifth place house. In the Eastern Conference, they trail the Raptors, Bucks, Pacers, and Philadelphia's 76ers. They've lost two in a row, including this weekend house.

They go and play the Magic, and they lose by two. The Magic were on a four-game losing streak. The Magic ended up beating the Celtics, and Kyrie was really pissed afterwards. and he said, it doesn't matter who you're going against. It matters the type of preparation that you have, what you're going out and trying to accomplish, what's the big picture?

What are we doing here? These are a lot of things that I don't think that some of my teammates have faced every single day. It's not easy to be great. The things that you're doing, that you've done your whole career, of being able to co-spy in certain situations and you've gotten away with your youth

and stuff like that. Being in a championship ball club, you can't get away with that. Holy shit. shots fired from inside the house Kyrie were evering not happy so what happened was there was an inbound play house at the very end of the game Hayward inbounded

it and it looked like they were going to set a screen Al Horford was going to set a screen for Kyrie or maybe Al would flash and give the ball to Kyrie it didn't go that way instead they just inbounded it to Tatum who took a fadeaway baseline two missed it and they lost the game and afterwards you saw Kyrie with his hands up he was basically just standing at half court like with his

hands up incredulous and then afterwards he was mouthing Brad Stevens and Gordon Hayward, what do you make of all this? Because he clearly was not excited about the way that not only the game went down, but the way that the Celtics are playing right now. Yeah, so this is a glorious moment. Isn't it just? Well, you know me as a relatively humble person, hopefully.

I don't often come on here and try and pat myself on the back. I will say, I'll pat you on the back, do it. Yeah, thank you very much. I was all the Bill Simmons podcast on Thursday, and we were going through his NBA, all-star starter ballot. And, you know, anytime we talk NBA, there's got to be some Celtics fault.

And I will tell you, the way the Celtics discussion went, now that we were taped like sort of and had the match up with the heat. And Simmons observed that in his estimation, the Celtics had just played their very best game against the Pacers. They really kicked the Pacers' ass

and that maybe the Celtics had found a rotation. You know, they used the first half of the season to kind of get the chemistry issues sorted out. But Bill Simmons was very bullish on the Celtics in that conversation. I, of course, went right along with it. I mean, who am I to disagree with the pod father? But I will tell you, it was one of my all-time happiest moments

that immediately after that podcast, the Celtics went out and laid an egg against the heat, and then not two nights later, they're up against Orlando, four-game losing streak Orlando Magic, and they kind of gacked the end of gameplay. Tyree is pissed off, and here we are. What a beautiful turn of event. So happy about that, Wonga.

And just to be clear, I mean, like, despite the fact that, you sound elated and I might even sound elated, we're neutral observers here. I mean, of course we're not rooting against the Boston Celtics. We just like basketball. But they are struggling,

and I think that this infighting is interesting. On the one hand, I look at them, then I go, all right, there are only two games behind the Sixers for that four seed, which would be home court advantage halfway through the season in the Easter conference for the playoff picture, right? And they've got the second best net rating in the entire NBA. Only the Milwaukee Bucks are better. They're better than the Warriors, the Thunder, the Pacers, a whole bunch of these teams.

And yet, as we mentioned, this chemistry issue thing has like dogged them all year. Now you've got Kyrie. And he's set a bunch of other shit, too. He said about last year when he got hurt and the young guys like, had their run through the Eastern Conference playoffs. He said, last year, we had nothing to lose. We came into this season with expectations, and it's real. It's tough and it's hard.

The young guys don't know what it takes to be a championship level team. And then he said, if they think it's hard now, what do they think it'll be like when we're trying to get to the finals? Then he said, we can't be comfortable being a fifth seed. I'm not comfortable with it. A whole bunch of these things that he said, I think, are fascinating. I want to know where the lie is. there was a conversation in Ringer NBA Slack where I guess basically the Celtics contingent and the Ringer were saying like they wish he hadn't said this out loud.

As a media company, I'm thrilled he said it out loud because it provides us with a lot of content. But do you think it's helpful within the team dynamic? No, no, it's not helpful. This is the essence of Kyrie though. As far as I'm concerned, I have long held the belief that whatever he did to engineer his departure from Cleveland was wrong. headed, ill-founded, and not likely to lead to basketball success.

Leaving behind, you know, going to the franchise for which you're under contract for another two and a half years, three years, whatever it was, and telling them, I know I don't want to play with the best player in the game, I'm going to affirmatively and actively eliminate the possibility that I'm going to play in the NBA finals this upcoming season. I think there's something going on there. He might just be a selfish dick, Wongon. And here's the thing about all of the observations he had to make about his young teammate. I wonder if he remembers, I looked at that.

The day that he jettisoned, he hit eject on the Celtic season, was April the 5th last year. Did he watch the playoffs? Did he go to any of those games? The Celtics showed an extraordinary level. of points. The reason for the expectations for the Celtics in this upcoming season is because all those young guys play well beyond their ears. I mean, all that happened is they got into a game seven against LeBron, the greatest player of this generation and possibly the history of the NBA, and lost a game seven, because that pressure got to them finally. But, you know,

stuff about these guys don't know what it takes. They had 55 wins last year. Kyrie only played in 60 games. I mean, I'm not sure exactly what point it is that Kyrie's making. I will say this. Let me ask you this question. What would you put the odd at Kyrie Irving playing in a Celtics jersey in the 2019-2020 season? So this was going to be my next question.

This is great. It's almost like you've been on this podcast a bunch. and you can read my mind. Previously, he had said, right? He said, oh, you know, I'm putting this all the bed. I'm going to stay with the Celtics. I want to be with the Celtics. He says all this stuff and all of a sudden, like, the doors open again, right?

I mean, I don't, percentage wise, I don't know, one in five maybe that he walks, but every time he says something like this and he gets frustrated, it makes people wonder. And I'll tell you what, in New York, they're already talking about it on sports talk radio. They're already writing columns about it. I mean, this is exactly the kind of Fisher that they were hoping for. just enough of a crack for them to think, maybe he slips out of there. Maybe he doesn't want to,

like he wants his own team, maybe the Celtics isn't the best spot for him. It brought me great joy to see that the New York Post had something up immediately. Of course. About, you know, this is exactly the opportunity that the next deed. But I think it's funny.

You said one in five. That's only a 20% chance that you think he leaves. I think it's much closer to like 50-50 and maybe even tilting against him being on the team. Yeah, because at the end of the day, they still have a couple more years of rookie contract. Like all that cash flexibility that comes from young guys exceeding the expectation of what, you know, young guys are capable of. That's where real value is generated in the NBA. And, you know, I do think it's the case that the Suffolk did indeed sort of find a rotation that was going to work.

And they may yet put these couple games in their rearview mirror and rip off. you know, 15 wins or so, because I do think there's something to them having experimented through the first half of the season, and, you know, Hayward's getting a little more comfortable. Like, they're still a high upside to the Celtics team. Oh, for sure. They're so deep. But the window's closing on the time in which the Celtics could trade Kyrie. But I honestly thought at the beginning of this season that him saying that he would commit to the Celtics

was like exactly the right thing for him to say. but I think that the suffix ought to have, and maybe there's still a possibility. We're still a couple, three weeks away from a trade deadline, two and a half weeks away, that they'll consider getting a young asset if they reach the conclusion that they don't need a long-term investment in Kyrie Irving.

This little attitude moment here, I think, is telling, but it's really reflective of sort of what his engine is all about, as far as I'm concerned. The whole thing, though, like when I look at each of his statements, I go, where's the lie? He's right. They didn't have anything to lose last year. They did come into this season with expectations.

It does take a lot to be a championship level team. They shouldn't be comfortable with being a fifth seed. Maybe he said the quiet part loud and he shouldn't have done that. But for me, like maybe sometimes these young guys, like that he's trying to marshal and push forward and he's trying to be a leader, maybe sometimes you do need to call them out in public. And the behind the closed doors thing that he might have tried previously. perhaps he wasn't getting the kind of results that he wanted from that, or maybe it was just frustration boiling over.

But I look at each of these statements, and he didn't say anything that didn't seem true to me. And the ironic part of all of it is, you know who he sounded like? He sounded like LeBron. That's something LeBron would say, where he's like, yeah, man, shit, we got a lot of work to do to be a championship level team.

Like he learned from one of the greatest of all time, and now he's kind of like, you know, he wanted to get away from him, but now he's kind of being like him. Well, here's the crucial difference, though. He ain't LeBron. No, that's true. LeBron has a track record of being a leader of men.

This is Kyrie's first. Karee is getting what he asked for. I want to be with a franchise where I can kind of be the alpha dog, and I can try and steer the course of things. And, you know, I'm just a little bit underwhelmed. Now, to be fair, he did. If I was going to be generous about it, I give him a lot of credit for Chris.

creating the environment last season to let all those young guys flourish. You know, Jalen Brown and Terry Rozier and Jason Tatum, they all were able to like definitely play loose and I'll give Carrie a little bit of credit for creating that sort of space, creating that headroom, right? But, you know, they also deserve some credit for what they did from April the 5th through game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. I think they showed a level of voice, a level of professionalism, and they showed that they were not going to be cowed by the moment.

That Sixers' series, all by itself, was a pretty impressive, pretty veteran. Now, again, they have Al Horford, and he's kind of a quiet leader. But I just, you know, I just wonder about the fit. It can be, as you observed kind of earlier in this conversation, both things could be true. Kyrie can just now have said a whole bunch of things that are true about the state of the Celtics. And on the other hand, I have my doubts about whether or not he's a leader of Ben.

Look, you can't see me right now because we're doing a podcast, but I'm tenting my fingers like an evil villain because I'm loving this so much. I don't know if it is a one in five chance that he walks. Like I forecasted it or a 50% chance like you did or greater, but that there is a chance now and that we're talking about it. You know, again, far be it from us

to delight in the misery of the Boston South. Celtics. We're just saying it's happening. Just happening. I'll say this, though. A hundred percent chance we have Joe House back on the heat check podcast sometime soon. House, stay warm in the snow. Thanks for doing this. Love you, Juan, guys. I always say yes when you call. You're the best. Thanks, buddy. All right, that was Joe House. We love what House comes on the program, and we love this next guy, too. It's Dan Devine. All right, joining me on the other line, staff writer extraordinaire from New York City.

Stan Devine, what's up, homie? Not a whole lot, Gans. How you doing, man? Good. Thanks for doing this. So, as you know, I spent some time with the Knicks when they were on their West Coast road trip. We're going to start with your New York Knicks. Spent some time with them when they were on their West Coast road trip. Their handlers speak very highly of you, by the way. Immediately they were talking about Dan Devine.

Everybody in New York talks about Dan Devine, apparently. Well, it's news to me, but I mean, I guess they'd rather talk well about me than have to talk about what's going on with the Knicks right now. Yes, so that was kind of the crux of my story where I went for years, and you know this better than anybody being a New Yorker and a Knicks fan and a basketball writer for years and years and years, they're stuck in that mediocre middle where they couldn't figure out how to get good, but they weren't willing to, for whatever reason, get super bad because they always had this pipe dream of, hey, you know, we're the Knicks and we play in New York, and we're just going to throw a bunch of money at people, and they're going to come in and they're going to headline

the garden, and they're going to fix us, but that never went down that way. So I think finally, for whatever reason, part of it, obviously is Chris Stap's Porzingas being out this season, and we can get into that in a second whether or not he should continue to be out. But they're bottoming out here. They have 10 wins as we record this. Only the Cleveland Cavaliers have fewer wins with nine wins. They're doing the right thing here, no?

I think so. I mean, it certainly feels wrong in the moment when you're watching a team lose 19 of 22 games. No, no. That's a real tag. No, you've got to lean into this. As a die-hard tank enthusiast, somebody who watched a lot of bad basketball,

you've got to lean into it. the Tony Rotins and the Alexi Schedds of the world are your friends. Well, I will say, two things that I ever got to write was after Tony Rotin's first ever triple double. And I was like, holy cow, Tony Rodin's a player. They got something there. No, they don't. And I still believe that could have been the case.

And Sched, you know, who does not love themselves, some Lexi Sched. Of course. Nix fans and Sixers fans share that. It's a nice Venn diagram right there. But, yeah, I mean, it's absolutely the right thing. I wrote about it a little bit earlier this year. I didn't get to, you know, have the sort of in-depth coverage that you did with spending time with them, but they're finally the right kind of bad.

This is the idea. If you're going to be bad, it'd be awful. And if you're going to be awful, it be awful with young guys while you sort of try to take the shot at seeing who might wind up being a contributor. I think the issue that you run into is they've made this sort of that flamed out with their first teams and saying, we're going to take sort of a shot at you as a distressed asset, see if we can rehabilitate you and make you into a foundational piece. Because clearly there's talent there. There's something to like there. We just got to see if we can bring it back out of you. And, you know, varying levels of success with that, certainly some positive stuff with Emmanuel Moudier and Noah Vonley, less so with Mario Hizonia.

The question is then, you know, are you going to pay to keep those guys around because they're going to be on expiring contracts or unrestricted free agency? So that's when sort of the rubber meets the road on this rehab idea. But the general approach of, let's be as bad as we can while we have no hope. It seems to make a lot of sense. Yeah, I think so too. You touched on two things there that I struggled with in my piece and that Chris and I, Chris Ryan, who is my editor and wears many hats here at the ringer, like we were debating.

Literally, literally very many hats. Very many hats. He has a lot of wonderful hats and figuratively as well. But I wanted to bounce this off of you because you just mentioned Mudié and you just mentioned Vonle. And so Mutee is playing better than he had obviously in Denver. And Von Leigh is playing better than he had

in Portland and Charlotte. But I struggled with are they good stats, bad team guys, or are they actually being rehabilitated. Like, have the Knicks and Fisdale. I really like Fisdale a lot, by the way. I think he's smart. I think the approach that he's taking with these guys is the right one.

Direct, candid. This is what we're doing. All of that makes sense to me. But, like, has Fisdale actually fixed them? Or is this just a byproduct of, like, of course, Emmanuel Mudier and Vonle would be the perfect guys you'd want to tank? I mean, I'm a little skeptical with Mudié, if it's only because I think a lot of it is predicated on him being like a downhill point guard, where he can,

get to the room. And he certainly got the physical profile to be able to do that effectively and to be really good at working in the pick and roll, getting into the paint, bouncing off the guy and getting a shot up. He's finishing a lot better and shooting a lot better than he did when he was in Denver. Some of that might be confident. It absolutely might be, you know, that under Fisdale and, you know, unleashed a little bit, he gets more of an opportunity there and he's responding in kind. Some of it might just be over the course of 40 games. The coin has wound up heads more often than not, where, you know, we used to have a much rougher run of it. And I think with him, he feels like the kind of guy that I'd rather,

I'd rather not be the team that pays to find out if this was for real. Yeah. I think that that's, that's the question when you look at him going into restricted free agency, the enticing part of a really young point guard with that kind of physical profile and the sort of peripheral stats that he's put up this year and the advanced numbers, there's a lot to like, but I think, you know, that's the one that would make me a little bit queasyer. In terms of Vonle, though, like, you know, having big guys who can defend multiple positions really considerably well and then also have a little bit more in their game. He's shown more of a face-up game. He's shown more of an outside shot than he had.

I think a lot of it with him was consistency and opportunity, similar to what I was saying, with Moodye. He went to Charlotte early and he never really cracked in there. And Portland was a team that was sort of ready-made and trying to make a push, didn't have a whole lot of time for a young guy to figure himself out there. And so now that's the kind of guy that I think would be interesting because you need as many versatile defensive pieces as possible. So I think that's one where I might be a little bit more intrigued at what the price tag is to keep him around, or if I was another team looking for a young front court guy to build with, because he might not hurt you on defense, which is going to give him more chances to succeed on the other end.

But you're absolutely right. To look at these things and say it's a little bit of a mystery box right now, and I think that's sort of what makes it a bit of an issue for the Knicks is like, okay, so we've seen what these guys look like now, but in the best version of who we want to be, do these guys even have any kind of role? I think the price point is right. With Von Le, how much is he going to cost? Then it becomes interesting.

With Mudié, I probably wouldn't want to be the team that pays him to find out either. But this tanking thing, like with Mudié moving into the starting lineup and playing better and then like sort of, I don't want to say committing to him, but using him more heavily, is interesting because it's come at the expense of Frank Nillikina, who I spoke to for the piece. And Frank, it seems like a really nice kid. and he was trying to say the right things, and he was, like, praising Mudey A, and he was praising Fisdale,

but you could see, like, it was kind of frustrating him because, you know, in November and December, his minutes dipped big time, and on top of that, he was catching DMPCs, and this is a guy you drafted just two years ago,

and I don't quite understand what they're doing with him, because if you are going to, like, their whole thing that they kept telling me when I was asking about this season was, judge us on our player development, which is completely fair. Like, they don't want to say tank,

and we're going to get, into that in a second because it's, I think, caused some some aggravation within the team structure. They don't want to say that they want to talk about player development. That's fine. But you've got a young guy who clearly needs to develop and how are you developing him by gluing his ass to the bench and not playing him? Like, before

he got hurt in L.A., here's some of his minutes logs. 29 minutes, 16 minutes, 14 minutes, DNPCD on Christmas Day. 21 minutes, 16 minutes, 18 minutes. Like, that's really tough. From your guards. You can play defense

have the numbers in front of me right now, but in the sort of short sample that he played with Porzingis last year when they were both healthy, the Knicks were actually a pretty significant plus in those minutes. Like, there was a couple hundred minutes and they were, you know, I don't know, plus 50 something or something like that. For a team as bad as they were last year, that's nothing to sneeze at and something worth a longer look. Because the idea of being able to sort of corral a pick and roll or, you know, fluster an opposing offense with a super long point guard and a seven-foot-three guy at the rim, that sounds like the modern NBA to me. It feels right. So I think there's a sense that you've got to try to figure out everything you can

to get his other end of the floor up to snuff because what matters in terms of getting, the Knicks have not had very few consistently good defenses over the last 15, 20 years. And if you want to get back to being a team that stops people, that seems like a pretty good place to start. Yeah. The other school of thought is that this guy can't do anything on offense.

And this is the issue. And that's fair. Yes, you need to give him the opportunity to run, but if he's not going to get downhill with the dribble, if his handle is not tight enough to be able to hold up against pressure, if he's not a good enough shooter from anywhere beyond like 15 feet for that to matter, there's an aspect of this that's sort of like the offensive game is almost like false without the mystery. You can't really do a whole heck of a lot in certain points, and it's not putting any pressure on the defense, which then makes it harder for you to evaluate other guys because then they're not in a context where their point guard is creating and setting them up. and there are valid points to both sides of it.

To me, I think that there needs to be a, you know, they've needed a defensive overhaul for a generation now, and I think Milakina seems like somebody who should be part of that, but if the idea is you need to have the optimal sort of circumstances to find out what you have in other guys, a point guard who puts no pressure on the defense makes that tough, which is why then you see Fisdale lean more toward Mudié, more toward Trey Burke,

and guys that are at least decisive off the dribble. Yeah, you'd think Fis would be the perfect guy to do the defensive overhaul thing, too, because he had some really good, obviously he had better players in Miami when he was assistant there, but he was part of really good defenses there. He's part of really good defenses in Memphis. He did say when we were asking him about that, that he tried to put in some what he described as complicated defensive concepts and that this young team that is just like learning how to play with each other and learning who, like what each other's tendencies are, it was just too much for them. So he's gone the other way now and tried to simplify everything. And then like, I guess,

build from there. So I suppose that'll take some time. But offensively, Nilequina, he returned after that injury, the ankle injury that he had against the Lakers, played 28 minutes against the 76ers. 76ers pulled out a big win over the juggerna Nix, three-point win over the juggernax. Nillikina played 28 minutes. And to your point about his offense, he went four for 11. He shot one three and he missed it. He only got to the line twice, missed both of those. I mean, he doesn't look confident right now offensively, so I could understand why, you know, if you're Fisda, you go, well, why do we even bother? He's only scored in double digits.

I'm looking at his game log now once in the last month. I mean, it's tough. It's a struggle for him. But so all of this kind of goes into the whole tanking fold. And you and I and a lot of other people, I think, from an academic standpoint, think it makes sense. There are people in the Knicks who play for the Knicks who do not like it. One of them might be Chris Staps Porzingas. There have been reports about how he might want to come back.

And the Knicks are like, man, maybe you don't need to come back right now. Where are you on Chris Staps, Porsingis and whether or not he should return? Yeah, I mean, I think it makes all the sense in the world to keep them on ice as long as possible. You know, you're not playing for anything of note this year, clearly, and the more losses you get, the better your chances of drawing a high draft pick, et cetera, et cetera. You know, we get the, you know, what you call it the academic case for it. I'm a little less concerned, you know, there was the report out of, I think Stefan Bondi out of the New York Daily News had the report that, you know, it's not just a fatal complaint that Porzingis is going to get the full-fledged Max offer of his rookie

extension and theater he'll sign it right away because he has some some questions about the organization frankly who wouldn't and you know that everything could get a little bit more picky and messy with that situation than you might have expected because generally speaking if a guy gets a max off or off his rookie deal he's just signing it saying thank you very much and we'll figure out the drama in two years I expect that to happen more than I would expect you know this to become some sort of protracted issue with the Prisengis saying you know I'm only going to sign it if you solve these problems three or something like that I don't

I don't think that's really going to be the issue here. But the other sort of big piece of this is the Knicks are representing and operating as if they're a team that's going to try to go big game hunting and free agency. And if you hope to do that, if you hope to land a Kevin Durant, if you hope to land a Kyrie Irving, if you hope to land one of these other sort of superstar kind of players, you know, those guys are going to want to know what they're coming into play with and who they're going to be able to line up with. So the idea of getting poisoning is back on the court for at least some sort of a stretch run,

you know, an opportunity to see that, you know, yeah, he can get back on the court, he can get back up and down. He looks like the same sort of three-point shooting, shot-blocking, you know, mythical beast that we saw before. I think that might be an important thing from a sales perspective in that situation, but if you're asking me, I think that discretion has got to be the better part of Valor there. He's what's going to matter for the next half decade. You pay him as much as you can as soon as you can,

and then, you know, you hope that everybody else sort of takes the long view, too. Yeah, you want to make sure that he's healthy. You want to make sure that the full tank is completed. the point that you make about, you know, from a sales perspective, seeing him get out there is important. And I would go one step further with that as well. You want to keep him happy too, right? You want to, like if he wants to play and you want to create an environment

that's a positive environment that you can sell to other players, potential free agents, that is equally important. If he's pissed off and the environment is still dysfunctional as it's been with the Knicks for a very long time, that's less attractive to potential free agents. And it's not just Chris Stapp's. Like, what the Knicks? These things have like a way of leaking out, sometimes involuntarily. And sometimes they're just like on full public display.

Like when they were out in L.A., Hardaway was flat out talking about, I don't like this, right? I like my teammates. I like my coach. I don't like that we're, you know, he didn't even want to use the word tag. He just was like, this doesn't feel good. I don't like the way that this goes. I understand that the fans, it might make sense to them. But then he did the whole, like, have they ever played basketball a bit?

Because if they were in my shoes, they wouldn't like it either. And neither does, by the way, Ennis Cantor, who has been goddamn hilarious all season long, but he got really pissed off, as you know, about Luke Cornett being in the starting lineup over him. Luke Cornett previously of the G League, had a meeting with the front office. Scott Perry told him, according to Ennis,

that he is a very, very good player. And Cantor then said, you know, he had all these plans to make the All-Star game this year, which was goddamn amazing. And then my favorite part was, if we're winning, this is about him coming off the bench. If we're winning, it's good, but if we're losing, it's a problem. If this adjustment is going to get us a win, cool, but if not, there's going to be a problem.

Despite the fact that Cantor is very much about Cantor, can you see his side? Can you see Hardaway side? I mean, I get if you're those guys and your veterans, you want to win, do they have a point? Yeah, I mean, totally. I think from their perspective, yeah, who would want to go to work and get smashed every day? Like, that's a bummer. That is not a fun way to spend a, you know, what's becoming an increasingly cold winter in New York. Like, you don't want to have to go and get, you know, kind of crushed and feel like you've got no hope at, that said, awful defense that's second worst in the NBA

performs that way in large part or to some degree because Enniz Canter can't play defense. Not that they've been world beaters with this is, you know, there's a reason why Enzcanter isn't an all-star, you know, and it's that. It's not the rebounding and it's not the scoring. It's that. I would also submit to you. that it could be that he ate seven cheeseburgers and fries on his quote, cheat day and then had a call out sick the next day?

I think, like, if you want to be an All-Star, you might want to be on the court. But I did enjoy the video. Who among us? Who among us has not on a cheap day or just a random Tuesday? Decided this is the time for, I guess maybe not you. You keep it tight. But, like, I mean, some of the rest of us, we have an issue with that. I want you to do that and then call Vary and be like, yeah, man, can't blog today.

Bergers really put me under. Well, you know what the bummer is? Like, I feel like, maybe not seven, but like, I mean, I've probably blogged through a few burgers in the past. Listen, there's an expectation of professionalism among us blog types, you know, but we've got to make sure we get done. But I think, and the Hardaway, too, you know, Hardaway is miscast as a number one scoring guy right now.

He's a guy that should be a complimentary option. You know, Bill Simmons continues to talk about the idea that if you had him on a team, like, I don't know, like Dallas or some other situation where he's a number two, number three kind of guy as opposed to the top guy, the efficiency would be better, or Utah, or something like that. But like all these guys are miscast because this team is what it is. This team is a team to get through this season, sort of see what these pieces might wind up being beyond that. And then like there's, there is no long term plan for this team. So yeah, if you're a guy who wants to know where my next paycheck is coming from, where, you know,

what the sort of next arc of my career is going to be, yeah, you want no part of this, except for the part that allows you to stack numbers and make an all-star. appearance, do whatever you need to do to try to burnish your resume, and I think it's hard to do when you're on a 10-and-33 team or whatever. Last next thing for you. Are you sure? You don't want to talk about this for another hour? I was going to say, we've already gone way longer on the Knicks than I anticipate.

I had like 40 things I want to touch on with you. We did one. It's the next. But I have to ask this because he was the December rookie of the month. I mean, where are you on Kevin Knox? Are you a believer? Stick, I think, you know, the thing that people loved in Summer League was the idea that he was a guy who was going to get downhill.

who's going to catch the ball and make quick decisions and put pressure on the rim. And, you know, drive, you know, we haven't had a whole lot of slashes and drivers on the Knicks in the last few years who have, you know, really given your reason to get excited. And if the outside shot comes along with that, I mean, the overall shooting percentages are not great, but he's been willing to fire and hitting a little bit better from beyond the arc, too. That plus the rebounding at that sort of combo forward spot, I like the idea of him as a sort of a small ball four on a team that has Chris Staps in the middle or another maybe all-star caliber, three, four guy that may come from the West Coast when given all of the money in the world this summer.

I think he makes some sense there, and that is a bright spot. You know, we talk about some of the other developmental stumbling blocks. I think the opportunities he's getting afforded and what he's doing with them are pretty exciting. I'm rooting for me. He seems like a nice kid. He's a big body. He's got a lot going for him. The upside is there.

Not a lot of bright spots in Newark right now. He's pretty much it. I hope it works out. I had a whole bunch of other things that I wanted to get to you on because you wrote stuff about the Timberwolves youth movement and you wrote about Kyle Kuzma being a score first guy and you know they just lost at home without LeBron to the friggin Cavaliers but we can't because you've got to go because you've got a million things to write. Anything you want to plug before you go? Well, I think the first thing I want to do is say like maybe that's a ring or curse type situation. That might be my first that I write about Kuzma and then immediately the Lakers go in the tank. So it's nice to be welcome to board like that.

Yeah, I've got something coming up on a team that I think I know is really close to your heart one that you love very much, the Boston Celtics. Yeah. That'll be coming up because it's interesting times in Boston, man. That was a weekend to forget for them. So I've got something on them coming up later today. And, you know, there'll be more for me every day over at the ringer.com. Speaking of the ringer curse, Danny just wrote about Kyrie and then immediately they go in

the tank and Kyrie starts popping off. I was talking to House about it before you came on the show. And I just want to reiterate, I am not delighting in their misery. This is not a shot in Freud situation. Playing it straight. This is another way that you are showing that. Dan Devine, you're the best, homie. Thanks for doing it.

Thanks, Gans. All right, that was Dan Devine. We always love when he joins the show. Before we go to Zach Cram, I want to bring up our NBA watch of the night. Hornets and Spurs tonight, Isaac Lee. Unlike Kauai Leonard, I believe that Tony Parker's return will be much more positive.

Absolutely. I'm excited about this. I think that Spurs fans, I know Shea's excited about it. Should be a good game. It's on NBA TV. And I just want to mention this again because Dan Devine has pointed it out about a million times both on Slack and Twitter. December, I wrote a piece for The Ringer.com about how bad the Spurs are playing, how they didn't look like the Spurs. There was a reason for it because they all talked about how bad they looked.

Patty Mills was like, we don't have Tony Parker anymore. We don't have anyone anymore. Who's the leader around here? It was like end of days. Since then, they're killing it. Listen, the Ringer blessings. It's real. And since then they've been on a tear.

they're murdering everybody and Godspeed to DeMar to to Paddy Mills to Lamarcus to pop to all of the spurs and Tony Parker will get probably a hero's welcome tonight and then I expect that the Hornets will lose and everybody will be quite excited so check that out on NBA TV

and remember gang if you want to watch every NBA game be sure to subscribe to NBA League Pass on NBA.com Amazon or your local cable or satellite provider and now it's bringing Kramer All right joining me on the other line I'm super excited about this for the first time ever.

And that's my fault. I'm going to take the hit on that one. First time ever. Staff writer in Chicago just moved out there. Zach Cramm joins us on the program. What's up, Kramer? Hello. I'm excited for my first heat check.

So you do a ringer MLB show all the time. You guys are on hiatus, but when it comes back, you want to check that out. You do binge mode, all kinds of stuff. First ever heat check. And I'll tell you what, for your first ever appearance, this is a fire story you wrote. You came up with a story where you did. player comps for all of the lottery picks using very cram methodology that I like stared out for a while and you had a piece in there where you were like if math wasn't your thing. I'm pretty sure you wrote

that for me because my eyes closed over. I have no idea how you came. There was charts and graphs. I think there was a graphing calculator used. I'm always curious about your methodology. Can you give us the abridged version on how you came up with this piece? Yeah. So basically I collected stats for every rookie who qualified for the minutes per game leaderboard since 2000 and looked at them through a variety of statistics. There were the basic per game stats, points, rebounds, steals, blocks, assists, and then sort of trying to encompass their playing style. So how often they take three pointers, how often they get to the free throw line, their usage rate, and their true shooting percentage, trying to get basically a wide angle lens view of each rookie. And I was able to compare

each rookie of this year's class to the previous rookies and kind of develop a similarity score. So I think the least similar pairing for any rookie this year is Trey Young, who his similarity score to Omar Ashik was the worst in the entire group. And that kind of makes sense. It's kind of hard to think of two more dissimilar players. But then what we were looking for is who was similar. So that was helpful because it, in a lot of cases, confirms some pre-draft notions like Carl Anthony Towns showed up as the top comp for DeAndre Aiton, which is good for, you know, people like Kevin O'Connor, who said before the draft, he reminds me of Carl Anthony Towns. Well, halfway through his first rookie year, he's playing like him.

Yeah. And it was helpful for that and helpful for some surprises. Well, so we're going to go through a lot of these. We're not going to do them all. But as you mentioned with DeAndre Aten, I thought his comps were like about what I'd expect, even maybe better than I'd expect. There were other players who will get to, because I don't want to give away the ghost here, where I was blown away by some of the comps.

So let's go through these. Let's start with DeAndre Aten, the top five comps were Carl Anthony Towns, Nicola Yokic, John Collins, Brooke Lopez, Al Horford. If you're a Sons fan, that's great. Yeah, I think I found that besides John Collins, who's obviously still on his rookie contract.

The other four all made it, you know, at least $100 million in their careers. It shows Aiton is basically going to be what we expect. He's been a tremendous offensive force. I think the presence of Towns and Yoket at the top of his list also maybe reinforces the notion that he needs to improve his defense a lot. But I think Luke is getting all of the rookie attention and rightly so, but it's not like Aiton's a bad number one overall pick.

No, I think he's been fine. I think defensively, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement there. There's also been moments in games where he's been knocked for maybe effort. Like how much, like, is he really playing hard latent games when maybe the score's gotten away from them a little bit? He got knocked for that when they played the Sixers in November. in Philly. But I like him on the whole. Marvin Bagley one is 1,000% how you ended up on this show because I immediately,

I saw this and I immediately took to Ringer Slack and fired up a Riley McAtee mention. And he was not at all thrilled with this. Tell the people who the number one Marvin Bagley cop was. Nanad Khrushich, and if you're not excited about Nanakrystich as the number two overall pick, I don't know what to tell you. The whole time I was just thinking about Isaac singing the baffling Kings to Bagley over Luca. This was so good. Now, there's some better comps further on down.

Yokic came in as his third best comp. Yao Ming came in as his fourth best comp and John Collins is his fifth best comp. So if you're a Kings fan, you'd go, all right, it could be worse. But the first one just made me fall off my chair laughing. Yeah, and I think Bagley is a good reminder that, first of all, we're comparing these rookies who have only played half a season to overall rookie seasons for everyone else. So it certainly might change at the end of the year. And with Bagley especially,

he's been hurt for so long he was playing somewhat inconsistently before then. So I'm not sure if this is as predictive as, say, D'Andre Aitens might be because there's just so much of a larger sample there. All right. So Luca is the one that I think everybody's going to want to talk about here. And this is the one that blew me away when I looked at all of his comps. Because I didn't expect this. Like when I saw DeAndre Aitens, I was like, that's better than,

and I probably anticipated. Sun's fans are going to be happy with this. I don't know that you made Mavs fans feel good with the comps that came up on this one. Let's go through them one by one. The number one comp is five is hilarious. The number one comp is Tyreek Evans, who, you know, in his rookie season,

he was really good, but I don't think for a variety of reasons, both situational fit and also his health, probably hasn't had the career that either Tyreek Evans or Tyreek Evans fans probably would have expected or wanted. Yeah, that's true. Tyreek, I tweeted over the weekend about Luca coming close to averaging 20 points,

five rebounds, and five assists as a rookie. And a bunch of Kings fans were like, oh, so I guess he might be as good as as Tyreek Evans one day because Evans is one of five people who has ever done that. It's Tyreek, Luca, LeBron, Oscar Robertson, and Michael Jordan. I think the interesting thing about Luca and Tyreeks specifically is that he had the lowest similarity score of anybody's top comp. What Luca is doing is just so extraordinary from anyone we have ever seen before, how he's combining usage rate and true shooting percentage,

how he's getting to the free throw line and also shooting a lot of threes. So even though Evans is his number one comp, the similarity score there actually wasn't that high. It's just that nobody has ever come close to doing exactly what Luca has done this year. Luca is singular, so I think that'll make people feel better about it. Brandon Roy came in at number two, obviously a good player, but fell by injury. Number three was C. Francis, who started out his career hot and then completely fell off. Four is fantastic if you're a Mavs fan and a Luca fan and you want to believe that he could become Damian Lillard.

That one was great. Five. You tell the people five, because this is the one that will make Mavs fans want to pull out their hair if they have any. You know what? It's Carmelo Anthony. And Camelo Anthony, if Luca has Carmelo Anthony's career, that's a Hall of Fame career. Maybe that's not what Mavs fans think right now when they think Luca will win MVP. every year, but I think that's a pretty good outcome for someone who's still a rookie, and I think

Lucas' passing numbers are already better than Mello's ever worse. So he definitely has some wiggar room there. He is a hall. Look, you're right. Carmelo is a Hall of Famer. But when you say that, like, Mavs fans would take that? Would they? Because, like, you have to still take, like, if you're going to take Carmelo's career, yeah, you get the Hall of Fame at the end, but you got to take all the bullshit that went with it, which includes a lot of not winning. I'm excited for hoodie, Luca. I almost coughed up a lung. I'm sick. I'm getting over a sickness.

So thank you for almost killing me on the heat check podcast. If I die, it's yours. I think, like, I think if you're Luca, the whole thing about the comps and the similarity score is being hard because he's been so good are right. Because look, look at the all-star voting. I mean, he's at the very tippy top of the all-star voting for a reason. And he would be one of what, it's just like, you put it in slack. Was it just in this century, it would just be, he'd be the first.

just Blake Griffin and Yao Ming who would make the All-Star game as rookies, right? Yeah, he'd be, I think, the first non-big man to make it since Grant Hill like 25 years ago. It's incredible. And speaking of NBA stars and teams, it's time for NBA All-Star voting. And this year's actually easy. This is seamless. I'm just dropping it in here. It's actually easier than ever for fans to vote because you can vote just by searching on Google. Just search for your favorite player or team. And you can vote right in the search bar. You can also search on Google to stay up to date with live scores and view upcoming schedules. The All-Star game is February 17th, and voting runs until January 21st.

Fans can vote for 10 players a day. Cram, I encourage you to go vote on Google. That was seamless. Thank you very much. I host a podcast for a living. They pay me for this. Let's go through some more of these comps. Here's a guy who I love personally.

I love watching him play. I think that he could end up being when all is said and done the best of the rookies. Jaron Jackson Jr. His number one comp was Jason Tatum. Christap's Porzingis came in at two, Shane Batty, 8, 3, Meta World Peace at 4, and Victor Oladipo at 5. What I see there is how I think about Jaron Jackson. Those are five really different players who do a lot of different things. And that's kind of Jaron Jackson. He's so versatile. Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. I was a bit surprised when Tatum came up as number one, but I didn't put a factor like height or position as one of the inputs.

And I was kind of glad that it came out with a surprise like this because if you look at their numbers, Tatum's rookie year and Jackson this year, their per game numbers are almost identical. They shoot the same number of threes. They get to the line at the same rate. And he's, Jaron Jackson is doing all of that while also being one of the best at-room defenders in the league. I think that's exactly right. It speaks to his multipositionality. It speaks to his sort of three and deep presence, but as a center. And I think that's really encouraging for Grizzlies.

He can do so many things on the court. Like I've mentioned this on He-Chick before. I've watched an inordinate number of Grizzlies games, and I want to once more reaffirm that this is the official podcast of the Memphis Grizzlies. It's not the mismatch and that guy that hosted on Tuesdays. It's right here at He-check for all your Grizzlies talk, but I've watched an inordinate amount of Grizzlies games this year. And every game, even when he has an off-gamer, he's in foul trouble,

which he frequently is, and that's something he definitely needs to work on. every game he does something where I'm like, wow, somebody that size shouldn't be able to launch a step back three like that or, oh man, he really got to the rim super quick and closed the distance on the guy he was defending or the way he slid over and, you know, his passing is better than I anticipated. And he's just, I'm super excited for Jaron Jackson. Yeah, and I think the most valuable part of this exercise for me wasn't necessarily pinpointing each specific player as, oh, he's going to have this comp's career because everyone's different. But when someone elicited a sort of type of player as their coms, I think that made me take notice.

Jaron Jackson was one of them. I think Colin Sexton, who we might get to in a minute, is another player where it wasn't necessarily the individual players themselves, but the kind of player actually says a lot more about what the rookies have done this far. You mentioned this guy at the top of this particular segment. Trey Young, his comps were interesting, too. They were kind of all over the place. Number one was Brandon Jennings.

He's got Damian Lillard in there. That's great. Three was Johnny Flynn, which is like red flags and sirens going off and like Hawks fans running for the exit screaming. Dennis Smith Jr. came in at four and Kemba Walker at five. Those are a little bit better. Where are you on Try Young? Yeah, I think with Young, the boomer bus potential is still there. He's having the worst shooting season of all time for a rookie who shout this much.

So if he solves that problem, he could, you know, be an all-star with the way the game is trending. someone like Kemmel Walker was a 30% three point shooter as a rookie. He obviously improved his shot. He improved his all-around game. And now he's an all-star. But someone like Brandon Jennings or Johnny Flynn or Dennis Smith Jr. Maybe going along that path was not able to make those adjustments and sort of flamed out. And I think that's where this tells you maybe what we expected coming into the draft with Young.

What we didn't expect was him to shoot this poorly. I think heading into the draft, you expected him to be shooting this poorly from three, you know, maybe the Hawks wouldn't have traded him for Luca, but he has boom or bust potentially he's always had, and this just confirms that notion. I thought he was going to be good stats, bad team guy,

and the shooting slump is definitely concerning. Like, I'm with you. Bad stats, bad team? Bad stats bad team is less encouraging than good stats bad team. The next guy on your list is kind of like no stats bad team, is Moamba. I really like Mo a lot as a human. I liked him a lot coming out of the draft.

I still think he can be a good player, The problem is twofold here. One, he's not getting a lot of run in Orlando. Two, he's now recently injured. But 2A would be Nicola Vucevich has kind of blocked his path because Nicola Vuce has been killing it, and he's probably a really good trade candidate for them. At present, his top five comps are,

and this isn't good, Marquis, Chris, then you've got Danny Granger, who was good until he got hurt. O'Cour, Caspi, and then Marquif, not Marcus Morris. As you mentioned, he's sort of the lost rookie in this group. And I'd be really curious to rerun this exercise once we get to the end of the season for Bamba, especially if Fuzovic is traded. And he does get more minutes. I mentioned in my piece with Kevin Knox, who had like a terrible first month, it was Mardbrede injury, wasn't playing that much. And then he had a great second month.

But that meant his overall comp still didn't look that great just because that first month played a disproportionate impact. So if these guys get more run and they continue to improve, maybe they'll look better at the end of the season or the converses, You know, if they're used to playing 30-game college seasons or 30-game high school seasons, and now they're playing over 82 full games, then maybe they'll get worse numbers in the second half and look even worse with the comps at the end of the season. Yeah, I'm rooting for Mo. I wrote a long piece about him last year, and I think he's a good kid. I think he's a smart kid and more minutes.

I mean, look, it's hard for you to look good if you're not on the floor and not getting minutes, which is the same thing that's happening with your next guy here, Wendell Carter Jr., as you mentioned, Jim Boylan has messed with his minutes since becoming the head coach, and he said, well, sometimes you learn by setting two. Yeah, okay, like this whole hard-ass, like drill sergeant routine, you're the Bulls. You might want to get these young guys some run because you could potentially have a really nice young core,

but you're not going to develop them in the same way that I mentioned earlier on in the program when Dan Devine was on. Like the Knicks want to be this, be judged on their player development. Well, that requires you to actually develop your players. At present, Wendell Carter Jr's comps look pretty good to start. Nicola Yocutrae right off the top. Then it's Darius Miles, which was interesting. Miles Turner, Josh Childress, and Luis Scola.

Yeah, to your point about playing time, if you look at the Bulls roster, I think Markinen and Wendell Carter would seem like the ideal big man pairing. You have Markinid to stretch the floor, maybe isn't as good at defense. But then you have Carter to anchor the defense at the five and have a high-low game. So that doesn't make much sense. I think Carter's comps speak to the. that sort of potential that he ends up as a tweener, kind of like, you know, Darius Miles did. But who knows, Darius Miles today might be a small ball five. So I'm not sure if that's as bad

an indictment as it would have seemed just five years ago. Yeah, I like that you put that in there because I think that was a really astute and interesting point that Miles might have been a small ball five, you know, had he been playing 20 years later. Colin Sexton is the next one. My eyeballs almost popped out of my head. You started this one with yikes for his top five comments, which I thought was exactly right when I read them. Number one was Marciaun, not Dylan Brooks, two was Chuck Eackens, three was Jason Richardson, four was Adam Morrison, and five was Richard Hamilton. Yikes is right. This was the most worrying set for me, and not because all those players were bad. Jason Richardson, Richard Hamilton, obviously had great

careers. Yeah. But the fact that Colin Sexton is a point guard and doesn't have any point guards in his top five is not reassuring for Cavs fans who might just say, see his low assist numbers because this speaks to his all around game. The fact that his usage rate is so high while his assist rate is so low. The fact that I think it's either here, Knox, they've been flip-flopping back and forth, has the lowest true shooting percentage in this class. One of the factors that went into these comps is defense sort of quantified by steals and blocks, but that's not a huge part of these rankings. And the fact that Sexton has also graded out as a pretty abysmal defender thus far is concerning even on top of this. So

Again, he's a rookie, he's young, he's still learning the intricacies of an NBA offense, but he doesn't even have any point guards on his list. And that's a concern. Yeah, I would be super worried if I were Cavs fans, although I think, like, I'm not sure how much you could possibly reasonably expect Colin Sexton to do so that, you know, if these comps come out and they don't look great, if I were a cast fan, I'd be like, yeah, I mean, I probably didn't have that high hopes for him, but this is much worse than anticipated. Kevin Knox is an interesting case study, as you mentioned.

Start of the season, not good for him, wasn't getting any run. December, great for him, got a lot of run, Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month. Top five comps start with. Nick Spans, meet your new J.R. Smith. Amazing. I was so happy that that stayed. But if you look at just his number since December 1st, his top comp actually makes a lot more stylistic sense. It's Kyle Kuzma.

And you can see a lot of similarities between those two players, not just because their initials are both KK, but because they actually play in a similar way, they have similar strengths, and they both sort of could adapt into the same role in a modern NBA offense. Yeah, I think the size, they're both like pretty big guys, the way that they could potentially be deployed if they keep using Knoxis way. It makes a lot of sense. This is why we're going to have you on in perpetuity now. You're going to be in the regular rotation because I hadn't gone as deep as their initials are the same. That's the kind of like in-depth super bore down analysis that you're going to get from a Zach Cram.

I should have made that one of my factors. From now on, you've got to incorporate names and initials. I'm not going to do all of these. We're just going to skip to a couple more here. Let's do, for Isaac's sake, SGA. Top five comps came in as Wally Zerbiak, Eric Bledsoe, Malcolm Brogden, Fontigo Cummings, and Amon Shumpur. The last two aside, the first three are pretty good.

Yeah, and I think when I started this exercise about two weeks before the piece ran, I think instead of Cummings and Shumpert at 4 and 5, it was like Danny Granger and Rudy Gay or something. So I wrote this long, glowing blurb about that and then had to sort of change it a bit once he slumped. But I think sort of like with Jackson, this does speak to SGA's, you know, multipositionality potential because Zerbiak and Bledsoe and Brogden all succeed in very different ways. But all those paths are still pretty open to someone who's as dynamic an athlete and as impressive a rookie as SGA. has been thus far. So I think this is, even though Justin Varyer, when he was editing this piece, commented who on Vantigo Cummings?

I think it's an encouraging list overall. Isaac, as a Clippers fan, as we've demonstrated here on Heat Check many times before, how do you feel about these comps? First of all, I also said who when I read Vontigo Cummings, because I don't know who that is. Awesome. But number two, Eric Bledso stands out to me because he was obviously drafted by the Clippers and had a pretty good, pretty solid rookie season. developed into a Clippers fan favorite.

And Chey Gildes Alexander, my large Canadian son, has the potential to become a fan favorite if he sticks around long enough, which we hope he does. So you're okay with this? Yeah, I'm pretty okay with this. I think SGA has more potential to jump these comps. Obviously, it's his rookie season. This is the worst he's ever going to be.

And it's tough to project, as you guys mentioned earlier, from the rookie season to the comp's career. So I'm optimistic that SG will surpass all of these guys on the list. I like an optimistic Clippers fan. That's good about you. All right. Last one for you. And I'm going to just do this in the interest of fairness.

Because when I brought this to Ringer Slack to make fun of Riley, Riley immediately clapped back with, why don't you get us some Markell Foltz comps then? And you did because you're Zach Graham that didn't appear in this piece. Why don't you run through some poor Markell Fultz comps? So the caveat with Fultz is that even if you combine his first two seasons thus far. He still hasn't played enough minutes to reach the qualification threshold.

I set for everyone else. Awesome. But, you know, that's okay. So take this all with some huge grains of salt. I generated Fultz's top ten comps, and they are as follows. Okay. Anthony Carter, Terence Williams, Junior Harrington, Vontigo Cummings, Fontygo.

Tyler Ullis, Nate Wolters, Raul Lopez, Jemier Nelson, Alexi Sched, and Isaiah Whitehead. I got very excited about Alexi Sched because I'm an Alexey Sched stand from way back from when they were tanking and also if I could just pick out one Jamir Nelson that gives me hope that gives me hope. Tyler Ullis and Nate Wolters as sort of the backup

point guard boilerplate there I also say who to some of these names so it's not great but again grains of salt I think Fultz obviously is in a special situation as compared to basically every other rookie we've seen so I'm glad we did this in the interest of fairness but

I even trust Bagley's comps a lot more than his. I think any time you can trade up and trade away another first round pick to get the next Fontigo coming, you've got to do it. I think this vindicates Brian Calangelo. He's out there somewhere shaking his fist. He knew he was right. Zach Cram go and read his piece on the ringer.com. It's really excellent.

You outdid yourself per usual. We're going to have you back soon. Thanks for doing this Cramer. Thank you so much. Have a good one. All right. That was Zach Cram. I want to thank Zach Cram.

Want to thank Dan Devine. And of course, our producer, back in the fold, Isaac Lee. I want to thank all of you for listening to Heechek. Please rate and review us on Apple. And be sure to listen to The Mismatch on Tuesday, group chat on Thursday, Corner 3 on Friday. Isaac and I will be back next Monday.

Thanks for listening, gang. Bye.