The Ringer NBA Show - All-Star Weekend, Star Rookies, and Future Stars | Heat Check (Ep. 214)

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

The Ringer’s John Gonzalez is joined by Shea Serrano to review All-Star Weekend (3:05), including Jimmy Butler’s decision to sit out the All-Star Game (8:05) and the utilization of nostalgia in the dunk contest (11:11). Then Haley O’Shaughnessy and Micah Peters come on to discuss other All-Star festivities (21:17) and the Rookie of the Year debate (32:42). Finally, Kevin O’Connor and Danny Chau sit down to evaluate the upcoming free agency (42:13) and the future All-Stars (52:33). Links Ringer staff on regular-season awards Kevin O’Connor on potential player movement Danny Chau on the 2023 All-Stars Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up on today's show, we've got a packed program. We're going to have Shea Serrano, Haley O'Shaughnessy, Michael Peters, Kevin O'Connor, Danny Chow. A lot of basketball talk, but first, a word from our sponsor. Belvedere, produced in one of the world's longest running distilleries. Belvedere vodka is the world's finest all-natural vodka. Crafted by a collection of master distillers, Belvedere is made with non-GMO, Polish rye, pure water, and no additives. Recognized for quality, Belvedere was named the ISC World Vodka producer of the year in 2015, 2016,

and 2017. Enjoy a delicious cocktail with Belvedere vodka today. And remember, always drink responsibly. The Heat Check Podcast. I'm your host, John Gonzalez. Joined as I will be every week by our producer on the ones and twos. It's Isaac Lee. What up, Isaac?

What's up? All-Star weekend this weekend, Isaac. Lots of crazy stuff happened. I was at All-Star weekend on Saturday for media availability. And, you know, you run into a bunch of people who are in town and the players are there and they go through practice and all that stuff. And everybody's, like, sort of like, kind of engaged. by it. And so I asked you when I came in, you know, like, what did you think? And you said,

I watched, like, part of the game. Yeah, I watched the first half. It wasn't very engaging basketball, to say the least. So turned it off. I cook some dinner. I actually meal prep for the week. I like that. I've got to get prepared, you know? You're very thorough. It's part of why we like you here on the podcast. You make sure everything is lined up. You do a lot of podcasts. We have a lot of podcasts here at the Ringer. One of the ones we encourage you to check out as group chat on Thursday. It's a lot of you. with Chris Ryan and Justin Barrier and friends, Palo Esco blog. He's on there, Haley O'Shaughnessy, Danny Chow. They have everybody rotating through. That's on Thursday. So you want to check that out.

You also want to check out some of the stories we've had on the ringer. Kevin O'Connor wrote one today from All-Star Weekend, things he heard about player movement, what's going to happen in the upcoming offseason. And also, Danny Chow had one from last week predicting the 2023 All-Stars. So guess what? Those two guys are going to be on the program later on. And we'll talk about all those things, all things, All-Star Weekend. We'll also have on the aforementioned Haley O'Shaughnessy, her first time, as well as Micah Peters, his first time on the heat check, talk about All-Star Weekend and, like, the crazy things that happened.

And also, Haley's really, truly awful, Donovan Mitchell take. Terrible. Terrible take, which, you know, that's very hard for me to say, because I love, listeners to this program know how much I adore Donovan Mitchell. I even call him Don, that's how much I love him. Don. So for me to go against Don, you know Haley how to be off base, so we're going to have her to defend herself and Donovan Mitchell.

But first, we're going to have one of our absolute favorites on the program, a repeat offender. He's been here before. He's going to join us again to talk about the Dunk Contest and the All-Star weekend festivities. It's Shea Serrano. Isaac, let's hit it. Joining me on the other line, he's a Ringer staff writer. He's a best-selling author. A philanthropist, an entrepreneur.

He's an all-around all-star. It's Shay Serrano. What's up, Shay? I thought you're just making words up to add on there now. It's your resume grows by the hour. So real quick, before we got, I want to talk to you about, obviously, all the All-Star weekend festivities in the game, and then specifically the dunk contest. But so yesterday, I was writing from home and, like, I had my back turned. And when I turned around later on, my wife had to put this new piece of furniture in our hallway.

And I don't even know what you'd call it. It was like a bench. You can, like, hang some coats on a hook and all that stuff, right? But on this piece of furniture, she had prominently positioned the rest of. yearbook. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, and I was excited about it. So I said to her, I was like, oh, that's great. I'm going to have Shay on the program tomorrow. I'll tell him. And she lost her shit. She was like, oh, my God, you're going to talk to Shea Serrano. I was like, well, I talked to him two weeks ago. Clearly, you did not listen to the program, but she said

she's going to listen now. So you have encouraged my wife to listen to the show, which is great, but also kind of depressing for me. Yeah, that should be depressing. Also, it should be encouraging because you have a house with a hallway big enough to put a thing in it. Our hallway is only wide enough to walk down. Our hallway is like the tube that Andy Dufrain crawls through in Shawshank Redemption. Yeah. That's how big our hallway is. That's a good hallway, though.

It led to freedom. I'm excited for you. Are we going to spend any time making fun of producer Isaac for calling himself ICE this week, or are we not doing that this time? That's standard. I just figured we'd get into that in the flow of it. I mean, whenever you feel like that's appropriate, please jump in. Oh, my God.

I think we should start with that. I was thinking on other, like, water-based nicknames we could all have since Isaac just gave himself ice. I think I'm going to go with condensation. Condensation. I like condensation. Everyone has to call me. I like condensation. I'll be precipitation.

This will be great. Oh, my God. That's a good one. I was either going on with condensation or humidity, but humidity is a little too hard to say. It is. like more things rhyme with condensation. So when we find out that ice has a mixtape out somewhere because he absolutely does it because of ice, I want to have my mixtape and I want to rhyme condensation with a lot of things. I think that he absolutely

has a mixtape out. He just hasn't told us about it yet. By the way, this is a way better start to this show than the All-Star game had yesterday. Did you watch the preamble to the actual game with Kevin Hart? I watch every single part of All-Star Week, and I love it. See, this is why I love having you on the show and we can talk about this stuff because normally I get to All All Star weekend. I'm like a little basketballed out and I'm like, I'm going to take a time out. And then the celebrity game happens and I'm like, I'm in, I'm watching the whole thing all weekend. It's madness. So what did you make of, let's start at the beginning. What did you think of Fergie? That was terrible. That was so, that was so bad. I don't know what she was doing.

What about Kevin Hart? He got death stares from like 90% of the All-Star. Damian Lillard gave him a weird look. He got an eye roll from Draymond. He made a flat earth joke to Kyrie, and Kyrie was having none of it. And it went on for a very long time. I think it might still be happening. Yeah.

You know, I'm very pro-Kevon Hart. There's no situation where you can invite Kevin Hart to introduce people and expect him to do anything other than what he did right then. Like as soon as they said, Kevin Hart's making an introduction, you go, well, he's about to make fun of every single person. It's fine.

You know, I was all, I'm for it. Did you not like it? I like Kevin Hart. It went on for a while. I felt like I was looking for the guy who kept him, like the security guard who kept him from getting on the field at the Super Bowl. Like I wanted him to just come out and get his guy. Like,

because it went on for a while and I'm like, I could watch some basketball now. Like maybe we cut this a little bit short. The game itself, they pushed the narrative very hard that they were playing and like competing and trying. Did you buy it? I thought the game was actually shockingly good for an All-Star game.

Yeah, the end of it was pretty good. The beginning part when everybody was just sort of falling down and throwing turnovers. That wasn't that great. Right. But I don't want to watch an all-star game to like watch guys play defense. I don't care about that. I want to see somebody fucking dunk it from the half court. I want to see incredible things.

I want to see them score 200 points. I've never seen that on a scoreboard before. Like let me see something like that. The whole rest of the season we're like defense wins championships. That's great. Defense doesn't win an all-star game. I need highlights. Highlights win in all.

I like highlights too. I'm pro highlight. Although at the end, defense did kind of win it because you had KD and LeBron locking down poor Steph Curry, which that's got to make for kind of like an awkward conversation

on the way back to Golden State. Yeah, that's fine. You should be able to play defense the last two minutes. They should just take turns, Duncan and shooting threes for 46 minutes. The score should be 212 to 211

going into the last two minutes. And then it should be like And then you can start. Like, here we go. Yeah. And then we're going to see who's doing what. And they should all be well-rested by the end if they're not playing defense for the whole game. Also well-rested, Jimmy G. Buckets did not play D&P tired.

Did you see this? I did. That's a power move right there. It is. So everybody always talks about L.A. Nightlife being undefeated. This is an all-timer. He couldn't get into a game where nobody was actually playing hard. What was his All-Star Weekend like?

Is that what it was? Was he just out all night? I don't know. He said, apparently he told Dan Tony, like, don't worry about it. Like, don't bother. Don't bother getting me in the rotation. I'm trying that next week. Whenever I have to send in all my articles, they're like, what are you writing for next week?

Don't sweat it. That's my new thing. Right. I'm to tell my kids and they ask if I want to play with them about it. Don't worry. I'm good. I'm all set. So that was the All-Star game.

That's probably all the coverage it requires. What's your favorite part from All-Star Weekend, though? Because as much as I want to quit the dunk contest, it's still the main thing for me. The dunk contest is probably the main thing. Although there's not, I don't know, there's not anything much more exciting than when somebody in the three-point contest hits like 10 or 11-3s in a row. I do like that. It gets a little louder with everyone. I really enjoy that.

Three-point contest was pretty bad as far as that aspect. It wasn't great. The skills contest was fine. the celebrity game is always a total shit show. The dunk contest, though, I thought was interesting, and I wanted to get into it with you, because you are, as everybody knows, 6-3, you can definitely dunk.

Absolutely. Absolutely can dunk. You are the author of the disrespectful dunk index on the ringer. So you're the perfect person for this. What did you think of the judges? Because first you had Dr. Jay and Lisa Leslie, and I was like, this is great. And then you had Chris Rock and Markey Mark and DJ Khalid.

You know, I think that that, with the exception of Mark Wahlberg, I don't need to see Mark Wahlberg up there. You're out on Marky Mark. I'm out on Marky Mark. But he has a show, and that's great. Like, the dunk contest is there. He got roasted on Twitter, like, because, I mean, there were multiple times when he was, like, you know, not impressed with your athleticism. Meanwhile, before he came out, you know, when they were introducing the judges, they had him do, like, a little dance for some reason, and he was, like, immediately winded.

I was on the wind. Sweats suited out and wind. A lot of 50s. I don't like that part. I want to get into that part with you. So, all right, so let's go through these. I put them in by order of, like, actual human and what they did in the dunk contest. So we'll go from, like, least impressive to more impressive.

Victorola Depot's most notable moment was the Black Panther mask, and he had Chadwick Boseman sitting courtside, which, like, okay, you know, you had some props. But the actual dunks themselves were overshadowed by just him putting on a mask. Yeah, you know, I had just watched Black Panther, like a few hours before then. I have not seen it. This is a spoiler-free. podcast. So to see Ola Dippo put the mask on to do the Wakanda forever sign with Black Panther, that was the only dunk I thought should have been a 50. He didn't have to dunk. He just had to do that part. Just do that. That's pretty great. It probably would have been better if he had

just sat down next to him afterwards. Yeah, no dunking. And that was the highlight for Victor Olladipo. I don't even remember him doing anything else. Dennis Smith Jr. had maybe the best dunk of the night. he had a reverse spin and he changed his hands and it was a perfect 50, but he didn't make the finals with that dunk. Yeah, that was kind of not great. That was a not great call for him to not be in the finals. I don't understand why they only do the two rounds now and only two guys go into the finals.

Either do three rounds and two guys go in or do two rounds and three guys go in. Do one of those two, but it's too fast the other way. Every year I feel like I show up for the dunk contest, like I say, I get sucked in. I'm not going to do it and then I do it. And then there's, I don't know what the rules are. know that there's somebody throwing up numbers and then somebody wins. Like, I don't know. Like, all of a sudden there were four guys and now there's two guys. I don't know what's

happening. But that was a really good dunk from Dennis Smith. Now we get to the final two guys. We had Larry Nance and we had Donovan Mitchell. And I want to know where you are on like nostalgia. So Larry Nance goes and he brings out halftime legend quick change, who I love halftime acts. I'm a big half time act guy. And he brings out quick change and he does like the quick change uniform change, and he ends up in his dad's old school son's uniform with the short shorts, which I liked quite a bit, and he did his dad's classic side windmill dunk.

What did you think of that whole bet? So Larry Nance should have won the dunk contest. He has an advantage already because he gets to mind that nostalgia without it seeming like he's just doing it to do it. Like it didn't make sense to me for Donovan Mitchell to do the Vince Carter dunk. The only reason he did it

was because it's Vince Carter and it's cool and he was like, oh, this would be cool. But we'd already seen in a previous dunk contest, I think it was Terrence Ross, put the Vince Carter jersey on, which made sense because he was playing for the Raptors at the time. It makes sense for Donovan Mitchell to do it. Larry Nance, yeah, that's his dad. Just do what your dad did in a dunk contest, and you're going to win. Yeah, and he brought his dad out.

I don't understand. I liked all that stuff. I really liked, first, like I said, the quick change component, immediately I'm in. Because I love, I go to a lot of games for work, and, like, Red Panda, legend. I was hoping Red Panda was going to come out from the back. Anything with dogs, I like the dog axe. And then are you aware of, there's a dude named the Amazing Sladec. He's like a little bit older and he puts a bunch of chairs on top of each other and climbs to the top of them?

It's crazy. There's actually two of those dudes who do this. I was unaware of it. There's the Amazing Sladec and there's another one who calls himself the Amazing Chairmaster. And I made the mistake of one time like mentioning their quote rivalry. And immediately the Amazing Sladek tweeted back at me. and said, it's already a wrap, check my history. So there's a beef between the amazing chair people.

Uh-huh. The chair guys are great. Sladek is, I got to see him one time, and he's terrifying to watch in person because if he messes up, then he's just going to die. It's over. There's no way around it. He's going to die. He's great.

The chair guy is great. Red Panda's great. The thing that I thought was funny about quick change with Larry Nance is that he was super not quick change at all. Like the curtain went up, and he took a very, very normal amount of time taking his clothes off before the thing went back down. I also like the woman who shoots the bow and arrow with her feet. Oh, great.

You know this lady? Yeah, legend. She's great. Legend. The dog guy is cool. I like when the dog walks on his front paws and then he gets in a basket. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, and they do the car wheel thing and the dog stays on top of it. It's all great. I love halftime back. So I was in on that immediately. I like the pageantry of the dunk contest. I thought it was better than the actual dunks themselves, although our colleague Roger Sherman was not quite as impressed. He was sort of like DJ Collett in our Slack where he was like, I don't know, is this actual showmanship? I thought it was.

But you're right about the Donovan Mitchell component. Like, you guys did the 2000 dunk contest for The Ringer where you and Jason and Micah did the director's commentary. Like, the original was better. Way better. To do it then. Like, even if it was just a round number, like, it's the 20th anniversary of Winfitt's like, okay, cool.

But the 18th anniversary of a dunk for a guy who plays on a team that you don't play for. makes sense. Him doing that, to me, felt very similar to, like, the judges just making numbers up. You know what it felt like? It felt like when I asked my youngest kid, what time it is,

and he just goes, yeah, it's 67. He just has a number. That's what it felt like, watch that part of the dunk contest. I like it. We should have your kids do the dunk contest judging. That would be better. That would be a horrible idea.

I want this to happen. You have to make this happen. You know a lot of people. You should make that happen. I actually, the Vince Carlin, component wasn't as cool. I thought the Dr. Duncanstein part was awesome when he had Daryl Griffiths jersey and the old school purple number 35 with the short shorts. That part made sense to

me. But then within that, though, was when he brought Kevin Hart out and I think his sister as well was out there. And he had them ducked down. And I'm like, they're very small people. Just dunk over them. Yeah, it was Kevin Hart. It was Kevin Hart's son. Donovan Mitchell's sister. He could have jumped over them. Why did they maybe have them stand up instead of duck down. That's all. Yeah, I don't know why he had them dug down when they show the replay he could have gotten over them pretty easily. That was a very

good dunk though. It was a very good dunk. I think that was like, that might have been the best dunk of the night from me. The Dennis Smith Junior dunk was impressive. Yeah. But also it wasn't like a gigantic booming thing. It was like, oh wow, he did a very hard. Like he built a very meticulous house

of toothpicks, which it's cool, but I need a big thing to happen. The Donovan Mitchell dunk when he bounced it off the back for me. That one was good. I liked Dennis Smith Jr. for sure. I also liked the Donovan Mitchell one where he used the two backboards, where he bounced one off of the first one.

But then Kenny Smith brought this up. He's like if you're indirectly, everybody just uses the wall, so it's kind of the same thing. What did you think about the double-tap one that Larry Nance did? Because there were some mixed reviews on that one. I thought that was pretty impressive. I felt like he could have done it from a little further away to make it more

obvious that he double-tapped it. On the replay, though, it was cool. That one was very similar to when Vince dunked and hung his elbow in the rim. And nobody knew at first what he did until they showed the replay. It was like that. Or remember the dunk where Dwight Howard jumped up and stuck a sticker on the backboard? Yes. To show how high he was.

It was like that. You had to see it the second time to realize what it was. And in those situations, that's where it's so great to have Kenny Smith. Because when he realizes what happened, he just goes nuts and you get to be excited too. but those dunks are always a little tricky to pull off because you need that second part. You need people to realize what happened. It's a little too hard to be like a monumental dunk. Yeah, we've talked quite a bit about the dunk contest here.

Give me Chase Serrano's on the 50-point scale. Would you give the overall dunk contest? That dunk contest was a 38. 38 out of 50. You know, it's funny, if we were just like making fun of them using DJ Callet and Mark Wahlberg the judges on contest, and then we're doing the exact same thing. Exact same thing. And we're both the same amount of unathletic.

I am extra unathletic. Before I let you go, do you play spades, by the way? Because I saw that Dwayne Wade, like, all these people were having parties here in L.A. And they're like, oh, come to our party, whatever. And Dwayne Wade, like, blew my mind. He's like, you've got to come to my spades tournament tonight. I'm like, you're having a spades tournament. I wish I had known this.

I would love to be in it. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. That's a good game to play when you want to like people. get out some frustration. Yeah, it's like a more intense Uno, that's what it's like. It's exactly like a more intense Uno. Before I let you go, though,

this morning you tweeted something out about how you were delivering cleats to a middle school. You just want to tell us about the nice things that you did for the kids? I mean, not really. No, you know what that is? One of my buddies works for Adidas.

So every so often, at the beginning of whatever sports season we're in, I ask him if I can have. And then he's a nice guy. his name is Zach Soskin. So he sends him to me. I remember even how we became friends. I'm pretty sure it happened to Twitter. And then I met him one time when I went to Portland. All I'm doing there is sending an email. I'm not like paying 65 kids, boys and girls, seven to eight grade basketball team. Can you send me these shoes? And then he handles all the rest. I'm just like, I'm the guy

who sends the text and then I'm the guy who delivers them. So I'm doing very little. These are important things. Shouts to Zach, shouts to Shays. In the 20 or so minutes that Shay and I were talking. While we were talking, he wrote three more New York Times number one bestsellers. He was multitasking throughout the whole thing. Go and cop those. He's very talented. Shea Serrano. Thanks for being on the show. All right, boy. That was Shea Serrano. He's always fun to have on the show. We'll have him back again shortly. He is a repeat offender. The next two guests, however, first timers, let's bring in Micah and Haley. One of my favorite things about working at the ring, we have many talented people.

many of whom are also young and talented. Two of them in studio with me right now. First timers on the program, Michael Peters, Haley O'Shaughnessy. Welcome. Thank you. And please, by proxy, I'd like to be called the dunk contest champion.

The dunk contest champion. All right. Let's not get crazy about this. We'll try it on for size. We're the dunk contest champion? And see how it feels. In this podcast studio right now, I am proxy. Oh, because of Donovan Mitchell.

Look, we're not, don't do the show before the show. We're going to get into Donovan Mitchell. many Donovan Mitchell things to discuss with Haley because she is very pro-Donovan Mitchell, as I'm normally, but we're going to be at odds later on in the show. How did we feel about All-Star Weekend? You were there. You were watching everything. I was around.

You were around it. You were Jason. I was All-Star Weekend adjacent. How many parties did you go to, all of them? I didn't go to all of them. I went to like three or four, maybe. This is impressive. His Instagram was TMZ.

My Instagram was not TMZ. My Instagram was maybe like the blog role on MTV News a little bit. That's something for me to aspire to. I immediately afterwards switched over to the Olympics and was in bed at like a normal hour because I got to get my Zs and also I'm old. So I'm glad that you were out enjoying yourself. I can tell how old you are because you said get my Zs. Right.

All my language is dated. I need to like make sure that I get to sleep. Otherwise, bags under the eyes. really terrible. AD, by the way, was wearing Buggie's jersey. I know, I cried. Did you? A couple of tears? Yeah, it was honestly, you missed an Aleoup

wearing the, like, initially it was when I first noticed it, but then after that I was just kind of like, this is pretty, this is pretty awesome. I thought he should have gotten ejected and or argued with somebody to really honor, Bougie, like, that would have been a much better homage? What did we feel about the All-Star Weekend in general?

You were there the entire weekend, kicking around? Do you have a good time? Would you learn? a good time. You wrote a bunch of stuff. I did. I also learned again, all over again, that Los Angeles traffic is the worst. It's not good. Yes. So there's that. Yeah, it was fun. Overall, I think that the dunk contest is officially becoming something fun again. I think so too. Like, I'm going to look forward to it and not be like, oh, I wonder if we're going to go back into the old again. I just had a long conversation with Shea about the dunk contest, so I don't want to like redunk here. but look, every year I go, eh, I'm done.

This is officially me being done. And every year that sucks me back in. No? I mean, you're out? I'm not saying I'm out. You're not saying I'm too cool. You're going to parties and stay up past. I'm not too cool for dogs.

I'm not too cool for dogs. I liked Larry Nance, Jr. redoing, like, that was cool. I like the fact that when they were pulling out old ducks, they were wearing the jerseys of the people that did them first. Like, down of Mitchell, Dunking and Vince Carter's jersey and all that. It was cool. It's just like, wasn't.

butt coming. There isn't a huge butt. It's a medium butt. It's a small butt. It's a small butt. It was kind of like he's shrugging. He's doing the shrug emoji right now. It's fine. I thought it was fun. In general, I like All-Star Weekend. And every year I was saying to Shea, I go, I'm not going to do it. And then the

celebrity game starts and I'm like, yeah, I'm in. Because it's just nonsense. The celebrity game is absolutely ridiculous. Quavo was phenomenal. The celebrity game is what gets you in? It starts at the beginning. Quavo was, he should have been subbed on for Gore and Dragich at half time in the He could have taken Jimmy Butler's spot.

Jimmy didn't even play. You could have taken Lamarcus' Aldous spot at least. Yes, any of those. Four minutes. Are you not leaning hard into the ridiculousness of the celebrity game? I don't like the celebrity game. But it's so bad. It's wonderful.

I'm too personally competitive to enjoy something like that. So you didn't enjoy Cuevo sending Rachel Dameda's stuff into the stands. Cuevo was a good part of that. Did you guys see the tweet where it was like, is there anything he can't do? And it was like a compilation of all the athletic things he was done. The best one was Cuevo professional shooter. And it was just like him like drilling a three on the gun range. And then there was a photo of him being like racial to be to being like, hey, we made up.

And he was just like massage on me, shrug emoji. Look, I like how weird it is and how terrible it is. And also you get check-ins with people that you haven't, like I'm not really focused on what's happening. with Justin Bieber in his life. And then all of a sudden he's got long hair and he whipped off his shirt and he was taking shirtless selfies on the way into the halftime locker room. Also, he got blocked by a very small child from Blackish.

Did you see that? Yeah. Doing a step back shot? I mean, like, that was perfect. You don't remember the video like when he was on, what was the name? Which tour is that? I don't know.

Maybe it was two tours ago. He's always on tour. But anyway, he was playing like basketball with his friends and not creating any kind of separation whatsoever. No. But dribbling a lot. Well, there's that video, too, where he was doing the slow motion, like, trying to cross somebody up, his buddy up. Yeah, any kind of Justin Bieber check in, Jamie Fox also was very upset over the weekend.

He ended his Sports Center interview because they asked him about Katie Holmes. These are all the things that you get. That was great. That was much better than seeing him do that cowboy rap performance that opened the game yesterday. Terrible. Yes. What was the point? It was like, remember how, like, Stefan Marbury had.

that musical and when he was playing in China, like, and it was just like the Stefan Marbury story. And they were just like, let's do that again. Let's do that. Let's make it with Kevin Hart. Put him in there. That was so bizarre. And also, how many award shows and things like this,

are we going to have to watch before people find out that putting together a bunch of random celebrities into a group and making them do a skit is not going to be funny? I should never have to be subjected to that much Rob Wrigal and that much time. Rob Riggle, I mentioned this on our Slack, is the very embodiment of the gig economy. I just went to Super Bowl and he did NFL honors. He was the host of NFL honors, their award show. And then all of a sudden was at All Star Wars. Is there no other MC?

I guess Rob Riggle. Rob Riggle's agent needs a raise. I don't know who he is, but he's doing God's work. Well, Rob Riggle graduated from the Kevin Hart School of not turning down money. You can't turn down gigs. Who knows what's going to happen? All right, so all that stuff happened. There was the skills competition in the three-point contest.

Did we like those? They were fine. The skills competition never makes sense to me because whenever you place Biggs in there. I thought that was fun. Wasn't Andre Drummond in there? And Bid kind of cheated, although not really. He did cheat. That was fun.

Apparently, and Roger Sherman mentioned this, because of course he would know the actual rules to the skills competition. But apparently you only have to try three times to get the pass through the tire. So it's legit. So the third one that he just kind of gave up on, it didn't really matter. But he also left his tag on his jersey. Did you see that? And B, forgot to take the tag off of his uniform. Maybe he just wanted you to know how much it costs.

You get him for free. You're an all-star. I know. Also, he's rich. Yeah, it's true. But I like that he forgot to take that off. And I also like that they used some of the alternate jerseys. Like, they had the Phila alternate jersey for the Sixers and the Miami Vice one,

which I think is beautiful. I'm not a jersey person. If I were going to be a jersey person, that would be mine. Miami Vice one is great, except for they are losing in those jerseys. But they're winning. You can't get a jersey like that and then lose. Give us a stat. What is their record with the jerseys on?

I can look it up, but I can tell you that last week I saw them lose twice and it was like very close games in those jerseys. I saw Dwayne Wade miss a buzzer beater in that jersey. The jerseys are definitely the problem. They looked great though. They looked great when they're in them. Maybe this is the part where we do the fashion component because you guys are both young and very fashionable. And I asked you what you thought about like the different, because, you know, also. Star, there's always people are wearing fun shoes and jackets and stuff.

And I asked you, I saw Joel Embed wearing like a gold jacket that looked like he was going to be in a Judge Dread remake. And neither of you had seen it, much to my dismay. I think you hallucinated this because I googled it. I looked it up on Twitter. I looked at his Instagram. I looked as tagged pictures on Instagram, and it was nowhere. That means it does not exist.

I spend all of my time on the internet. I haven't seen the jacket. You know what? I invite all heat check listeners to drag both of you. you on Twitter following this program because it was all over the place I'm going to show it to you right now. Please do.

All right. So I was looking for it on the internet and then I remembered that I took a screenshot of it because I liked it so much so I'll just pass it around here. Get a good look at that. It's very shimmery. I think it's nice.

I think it looks, he looks good in it. Haley is non-plus. Let me see this. Let me see this thing. Okay, so you made it sound like it was like the golden fleece thing. Well, I mean, look, I use words for a living, but a picture is better.

Yeah, but this isn't touching Andrew Wiggins, was it gold or was it silver? It was like a gold Moto Jacket he wore during the 2016. Oh, that's right, I remember that, yeah. That was pretty nice. But this was nice, this was a nice jacket. Nobody's saying it's a lovely jacket.

Right, why do you guys hate the jacket so much? Nobody's hating on the jacket, all right? It's a nice jacket. I'm just saying. Also, Carl Anthony Towns had some Rick and Morty sneakers, which I thought was a nice touch. You seem like you're not on board. Anyone ask him about that?

I never said anything about... I am merely sipping my coffee as you bring up this factoid. I'm fine with people liking... You're basically currant with the tea sipping right now. No, I like all of the Rick and Morty stuff. I just... There's also a little too much of it. You've had enough. Saturation.

I think we have reached Rick and Morty saturation point if Carl Anthony Towns is wearing Rick and Morty shoes on All Star Weekend. The reason why I wanted to have you guys discuss this stuff is because you and I had previously had a conversation about... We're not talking about visors. We are. In fact, it's in the rundown. I don't want to talk about it.

It's in the rundown. So I will talk to Haley about it. And then Micah can just be visor conversation adjacent. Previously, like maybe like six months ago before Micah cut his hair, Micah had a lot of hair. And I think for a 40-year-old have like a fair amount of hair. And we were discussing like how... You're doing well.

Thanks so much. I appreciate that. And so we had discussed like, wearing hats for him just because of how much hair he had, kind of a physical problem. And for me, why am I hiding my hair underneath the hat? It doesn't make much sense, which led us to the conversation about maybe bringing visors back. Okay. Because it's kind of like a hat for people with hair.

Mike got immediately out, which then transferred to Twitter and our guy Zito over at SB Nation, who's trying to go hashtag visor gang, bring back visors. What say you, Haleo Shenylosy on visors? First of all, it depends on the head of hair. So if you're a bald person, why are you even bothering? I think that, and this also might be controversial, but you have to have enough hair that you can see the hair popping out of the visor.

And then it's fine, yeah, they're good. I think so. I think so. We're going to break. Micah, still shaking his head at me. Zito, if you're out there, Zietz, like, get at us and tell your guy that... Visors are the sweater vests of hats. The visors are back, and we're going to get to, some ringer visors and we'll all wear them. It's going to be great.

We've got to do some actual basketball conversation here. And we did a group post before the All-Star break about, you know, things that we were excited about and who would be MVP if the season stopped right now. And also Rookie of the Year, which is where we're going to talk about Donovan Mitchell. Your guy. So I'm going to read you what you wrote. Okay. Daryl Griffith Prodigy, Donovan Mitchell.

Oh, I wrote that before the dunk contest. Before the dunk contest. What if you read it? And that's why he put the jersey on. Kind of Prussian. I'm impressed by that. I shout this proudly rather than whisper Ben Simmons because if the season ended today, the Jazz would finish on 11-game winning streak. Mitchell is the first rookie in league history to lead a team in scoring during that lengthy run. His style and athleticism also are also making the Utah Jazz's four exclamation points in a parentheses in this sentence. Offense a must-watch.

Haley, full disclosure, where did you go to school? I went to school at the University of Louisville. Full of the school. Where did Donovan Mitchell go to school? Donovan Mitchell went to school at the University of Louisville. Do you think by chance that you might be slightly biased in this conversation, should you not have recused yourself from it completely? Well, yes, so obviously I'm biased, but also I want to say that that gives me some insight. Because I've said before, I watched him in college very closely. And I had no idea that he was capable of this.

He's very good. I'm serious. I knew he was super athletic. I knew he was a good defender. I thought maybe he would be able to develop a shot, but I had no idea he was this athletic, would be able to defend this quickly. And he developed a consistent shot.

At the beginning of the league, he was shooting like just a little bit better than Lanzo ball. And now he is consistently shot off. All of these are to his credit, and I'm going to bring you in just one second because I want you to be like the arbiter of this conversation, Micah. But so he's wonderful. And anybody who's listened to the Heat Check podcast knows that I love Donovan Mitchell.

I love him so much. I call him Don. that I feel like we really know each other. However, I don't think that this is even close. Ben Simmons, he's first in assists and rebounds and steals per game among rookies, second and points per game behind our boy, Don, third in blocks per game. He has six triple doubles already.

Only Magic Johnson since 1980 has done that. Give him the award. I don't even know why we're talking about this. Micah, you're the voice of reason here. Who's the real rookie of the year? Listen, I was going to say Ben Simmons, and I appreciate that, you know, the fact that sometimes I catch Haley just singing Fight U of L to herself in the office. That's definitely not the song.

I like, whatever the fight song is, she's singing it. And again, she's clearly very biased. I, on the other hand, not at all biased, have no connection to Philadelphia that anybody could figure in this. Yeah. Which is why I'm going with Ben Simmons. Right. But I think that I'm like firmly Donovan Mitchell have after this weekend. Really?

Really? I'm going to say... The dunk contest did it for you? Yeah. See, you spoke too soon about I'm too cool for the dunk contest. I enjoyed Donovan Mitchell's performance in the dunk contest. And on top of that, I have been watching a couple of the jazz games, even though, like, I... He's great.

He got me to watch the jazz. He makes you watch the jazz, which is like... If the award was most entertaining rookie, I think maybe. You head rolled and I rolled at the same time. I would like to stop acting like entertainment doesn't... play a factor in who you choose as your rookie of the year candidate? Who loves the entertainment of the league more than me?

I think it's absolutely baked in as a component. Give me all the entertainment and storylines and narratives that I can possibly cram into my face. I love it. However, there's still some numbers in basketball. No, but seriously, the numbers. The rookie of the year always, or mostly always goes to the most high-scoring guy.

Yeah, but the, okay, so again, he is averaging the most points. Yes, wonderful, great. Wait, are points scoring? I forget that. Does points mean scoring? I think that, yeah. Listen. I think that might be it.

But what I'm saying is if you look across the board at almost every metric, Ben Simmons has him beyond like, you know, he can't shoot a three-pointer. I mean, like you would go to Ben Simmons and go, okay, he's having a better season. This is not to say that Donovan Mitchell is not having a great season. Phenomenal. Very surprising. Nobody knew he was going to do this. I was excited about him as were you, Haley O'Shaughnessy, but didn't think we'd get

this out of him. That's such. Come on. I mean, let's be honest. This is also Syivis's third year in the league. Yeah, I will admit that Simmons is like, it's kind of like what happens to LeBron. Every year of the MVP, you're like, well, I guess we need to remember him.

That's fair and funny. He's been around for a long last. I think he's as old as me. He's catching Zs. He's not going out. He's been around for a long time. All right, before I let you guys go, what are you looking forward to it? We always talk about like the second half of the season. It's not the second half. It's the final

quarter, basically. Everybody has like somewhere between like 25 and 30 games left. What do you want to say? What are you looking forward to? I'm looking forward to finding out which Cleveland player is now, like, holding all the blame whenever something goes on. Oh, you've got to blame somebody now. Right. So will it be a new player?

I don't think so. Will it be an old player? I think so. Who's your candidate? It's still going to be Kevin Love. I don't think it's going to be Kevin Love. Why? He gets out of it now?

Do you think it's going to be Jordan Clarkson? Because he's injured and by the time he comes back, something will have gone wrong enough that another person has to fall. in those train tracks. You have a case here if only because all of the people who used to regularly shit on Kevin Love by Reflex have been shipped out in trades. So maybe like some of the new guys don't know it's the cool thing to like just shit on Kevin Love all the time. So maybe.

It's not going to be Jordan Clarkson though because every time he passes there's like somewhere in the background. It's like either to LeBron or LeBron's watching and like his actual hearts are forming in his eyes. That's true. I mean like he like when did he have time to learn his three points celebration? I don't know. But I love that he did. I love that he did.

It's not a complicated thing. I'm just saying that, like, you know, it was the first game and he was doing the three-point celebration. Who knew that getting LeBron to pay attention and trying the regular season would be as simple as, like, goofing with Jordan Clarkson? Maybe that's all I needed. Maybe LeBron watches a lot of Lakers games. I mean, maybe he's got his eyes on Los Angeles. Maybe he does. Michael, what are you excited about coming up?

See, the thing is is that I wanted to say, it sucks at the Sixers in the sixers in the, the Thunder are playing each other again because I wanted to see more of the Embed Westbrook rivalry. They even gave it to each other a little bit in the All-Star game, yeah. There was that heartbreaking sequence of Embedges just draining a three in real estate

and then blocking them on the other end. I guess the proliferation of the argument about who should be the first option in OKC between Paul George and Russell Westbrook is going to be super fun. Is that a conversation? It shouldn't really be. Yeah.

I'm actually asking, right now. This is me being earnest. Are people having that conversation and I'm unaware of it? I know that at least Paulo and I have talked about it. Okay. That counts. Paul? Oh, I was like, George? Yeah. Me and Paul. Okay. Well, then. I guess I got at him. I got at him during like, you know, one of the many parties that you were at. Exactly. We were at the Nike event making Custom Air Force wars and he was just like, yo, I should have the ball in clutch situations. And you know, and you're like, you know what? Thoughtful emoji. Maybe you should. Maybe you should, Paul.

And I'll bring it up on the heat check podcast. This is great. We'll be on the lookout for that. Anything you guys want to plug that you have coming up this week? You guys are always writing things. Yeah, we are. We just like to keep it. We like to drop it.

Okay. Well, be on the lookout for them. Surprise album releases on this side, man. Be on the lookout for them. They are constantly writing. They're very talented. You're at Helio something on Twitter. And you are at Micah Peters underscore.

Yeah. Did I get the underscore in the right place? Yeah, the underscore is after my... So I'm team underscore as well. I am at underscore John Gons, and people always make fun of me because there's an underscore in there. There are many John Gonzalez is out there, so I respect your underscore because it's real in the streets for people like us who have to add an underscore to their Twitter handle, and I think that we should get a little bit of credit for it. You know, it's hard out here for a blogger.

Team underscore, team visor. Don't just cut his mickey. He's nodding and agreeing. It's Micah Peters. Team Donovan Mitchell Wiki of the year. Haley O'Shaughnessy, read them, listen to them. They're talented, gang, thanks. All right, we're going to bring in Kevin O'Connor and Danny Chow next,

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All right, we're back with two of my favorites from the draft class podcast, which you can listen to on Friday. It's two thirds of that crew. It's KOC and Danny Chow. What's up, guys? First time here. This is great. First time on the heat check. KOC is a repeat offender.

I tried to get Charks, too, to have all three of you together to try on. Charks is on a plane back to Dallas after being here for All Star Weekend, so shouts to Charks. You guys, always very busy, always writing things. The microphone is moving away from Danny. That's how hot he's coming in. The microphone needs some space. But we got a couple pieces that you guys wrote that we're going to get into. First, KOC's piece that we encourage you to read on the ringer.com today about things that he learned over All Star Week.

And primarily potential player movement KOC and what we think's going to happen with D'Andre Jure. and Ennis Cantor and Danny Green and these guys of the like, because you've written about this at length, KOC, the new sort of financial reality of the NBA. And D'Andre Jordan has an option, a player option for $24.1 million. And you were wondering, will he opt in or out? I mean, I think, you know, the main thing I talked to people this weekend

is that, like, well, what's DJ going to do? I mean, he's really the most interesting example because you have the cap flattening this year. It's not really increasing that much at all. So there's only seven teams that are going to have, like, over $10 million in cap space. So there's not a lot of money out there for guys to get, which means guys are going to get really screwed.

They're going to get lower salaries. People are going to be like, how's that such a bargain? But the one interesting guy is DJ, get that big option, like you said. Does you test free agency and try to get like a $20 million deal for four years or something? Or just opt in and try it again in 2019.

I think that's really the big question entering the summer. And he kind of services an example for some of the other guys, like Rudy Gaze and Danny Greens of the world, those types. Danny, I think for me, I know where I fall on this. If you were DeAndre Jordan, what would you do? I'm opting in. Of course you're opting in. Listen to me.

DeAndre Jordan, I could be your agent. Danny could be your agent. KOC could be your agent. KOC probably not because he's so busy doing all the other things. Danny and I could do it. Just opt in. At 24, who's giving him that money? No one.

And it's another year in L.A. You can kind of survey the landscape. It's max money that you probably aren't going to be getting in the next deal. Like, KFC brought this up in his piece about, like, he wants to be somewhere that he's wanted. Yeah. You know what? For $24.1 million, you're going to feel pretty wanted. You're going to feel fine.

You know what? Like, you'll sleep on top of a pile of money at night, and you'll be great. The thing is, you know, I had a conversation with a writer about this yesterday as well. And he basically, he was like, well, it's, you know, you opt in, right? How much money do you have to make up the following summer to, you know, make up for what you might lose this summer? Right, right, right. What's your contract value that you would get this summer over four years that you would need to get the following summer with the risk of injury and the risk of declining and whatever else? So it's complex.

It really is. I mean, I think with DJ, he said publicly, and I didn't realize this until yesterday, to be honest with you. Like, I googled it like after, you know, I had heard that he wants to be wanted. No surprise of what happened with Dallas. Then I googled it yesterday. I was like, oh, on February 9th, he said publicly he wants to be somewhere where he's wanted. So he said it in himself. But failings can change by July.

And maybe by then, he's happy to accept the Clippers' extension offer, whatever it might be. Do you think he makes in the ballpark of 20 mil per in the next contract he gets? I mean, all takes is one team. But should he? I mean, he'll be 30. I mean, listen, you're right. And we always say, like, it only takes one team and blah, blah, blah. No, if you look at what he offers, he can't step more than a foot from the basket.

That's it, right? Offensive ability, he is limited. Right, but I mean, in terms of catching a lob, he can jump up like 15 feet in the air. How much longer though? Probably higher. That's true. Right, but how much longer he's getting older? Rim protection numbers this year, a little bit down from previous seasons.

I like D'Andre Jordan. There's no way in hell I'm giving, especially in today's now, you know, changing, flattening financial landscape for the NBA. I'd rather put those funds elsewhere. Similarly, you mentioned some other guys on here, Ines Cantor, opt in immediately. Tell them, just file that paperwork now. now with the legal office. Why hasn't he already? What's he waiting for?

$18.6 million to rebound and get in arguments with LeBron on social media. He has the best job in professional sports. Take that money, Ennis Cantor. Thad Young, take the money. Danny Green take the money. Rudy Gay, maybe. I think Danny Green should maybe not.

I think, you know, a 3-and-e guy like him, maybe test the market. I think he'd at least get 10-mill. Yeah, yeah, that's probably about right for him. Rudy Gay has been hurt this year. Like, I don't know, maybe he could possibly do a little bit better. You also mentioned in your piece, Paul George, do we think he's staying or going? Nobody knows.

Just big, deep, heavy inhales by Danny Chal. He's thinking about things. I guess we'll have to wait and find out. Oh, man. It's an inside joke. It's an inside joke. Anyway, look, I mean, keep talking to people. It's no different than the ones before where you get some people in a bucket that think,

well, you know, the noise has been with him going to Los Angeles for years now. Nothing's changed unless the Thunder make a serious run. But you also have people who think maybe the Lakers aren't as appealing. Maybe you do a one-year deal with Oklahoma City. That's why I think it's complicated. I think the Lakers' lure will always be there. It's just a matter of it will be 18 or maybe 19 that it happens. I don't know.

I mean, I really don't have an answer. The thing is I kind of feel that Paul George is kind of like a subsequent domino. Like he's not going to be the first domino to fall. He's going to survey the landscape. He's going to see, you know, where LeBron goes, where, you know, all of these other guys are going. and what the makeup of teams starting to look like. I think that's his move.

What if he is the first domino? What if he's the guy who's like, I'm going to L.A.? Period. End of story. Doesn't matter if anybody else comes with me. Like, what if he does that and then other people are like, whoa.

Okay, so it doesn't matter if, and by the way, I really like having this conversation with you and getting the news with raspy-voiced KOC. It's very sultry. A lot of talking about this. This is good for your ears.

This is good for our ratings and our downloads. You get like kind of sensual KOC here from All Starbursts. KOC after dark. Kosocial. Kevin O'Sensual. Oh my God.

This is perfect. It's way better with basketball. The part that you just mentioned about Paul George and like if he goes to L.A. and it doesn't matter if anybody comes with him, that would be interesting because it kind of does matter if anybody comes. Paul George, I like Paul George a lot.

He's obviously one of the best players in the NBA. He's one of the best two-way players in the NBA. I enjoy watching him. I even, you know, like some people don't like watching defense, I do. He's not going to transform the Lakers into anything. I mean, like, not this current grill. Right, right, right, there we go.

I feel like I'm calling a 1-800 number right now. Could he, as currently constituted, plot Paul George onto this team, the Lakers, what changes? How much better they become? I feel like it kind of depends on how much of a leap Brandon Ingram takes in his third year. I'm really high on him, and we'll get into that later.

That was a good tease. you should be hosting this show. I should be sitting in that chair and you should be over here. That was really good. Yeah, Brandon Ingram is good and I think he can be considerably better and that would be interesting

to see what kind of fit he would have with Paul George. I think he'd be fine with Lanzo. The Kuzma component would be interesting. Kuzma hasn't been good defensively, so maybe you have to bring him off the bench then. I think that's a fine role for him. Yeah, I mean, you could also,

you could start all three theoretically. Paul George would have to really lock in defensively, but I think you have three, six, nine type of guys out there on the floor. interchangeable. It can be really interesting to have, but rebounding would be the question. Maybe you get DJ with them.

DJ could help you rebound. You're going to just slide them over? Get DJ, George, Ingram, Kuzma, Lanzo. He's not bad. Not bad. Doesn't really smell like a championship team to me? It doesn't. It doesn't.

It would be a little bit of, this is some like, Staples Center insider knowledge here. It would be a downgrade on the locker room. The Clippers have a sneaky good locker room compared to the Lakers locker room is fine, but the Clippers locker room is like a much, better upgraded version. For talking of players?

Just like aesthetics. If I were a player, I really kind of like the vibe in there. It's pretty cool. What about, do we even want Paul George to come to L.A.? Or do we like him on OKC? Because that's, like, the Thunder are still interesting. They're still interesting, but I don't think they're winning enough

games for us to really treat them as a contending level team. I've been accused of favoring big market teams over small market teams, but I want to see the Lakers be really good. Yeah, it's fun on the I want to see OKC be really good, too. I like to hate the Lakers, and it's hard to hate them when they're terrible.

You also, one more thing in your piece, KOC, you also brought up the one and done might be done. Do we want it to be done? Are we ready to get rid of the one and done and go back to the way things were? Hell yeah. Like Adam Silver said, he said, the league is conflicted, and so am I. I mean, I think it would be really, really cool to have high school players come out and have more randomness in the draft. Where, like, some teams have a guy ranked 25, others have them six. Where do you pick that guy?

Like, where's the best value? But on the other hand, it's a lot harder, you know, to draft like that. And I think, you know, having the increased certainty with a freshman, and that's already hard enough as is, ideally, you know, for some teams, they'd want to have them in school for two years, three years. Yeah. So that's not going to happen. So if the one and done rule is changed, would it go back to how it was pre-2005 or would it be like either you declare for the draft as a high school senior or you stay in college for two years? That's where I would love to see. I think that's the best compromise.

That way, like, the best players for sure come out, right? The guys that are ready to play and ready to come in. But then the other guys that are in between, you know, have them stay in college for two years. And that's good for NCAA basketball. And I think for the NBA, it's also good, too, because those guys, you get, instead of one year, and maybe he's just, you know, a one-hit wonder, you get two years of them to really see what kind of player he is and what he can become. I think if you can get into the NBA and make some money, you should be able to do it regardless of your... We're a free market capitalist here at the Heat Check podcast.

I don't want any of these, like, faux governors and these rules that are, like, precluding people from going out and making money. If you can make the NBA, sick or swim, good luck. Right. I think bring them in. All right. So that was KOC's piece. You should go and read that today on Theringer.com. From last week, still up on Theringer.com, always going to be up on the ringer.com.

Very interesting story that Danny wrote, trying to predict the 20, 23 All-Stars. I want to read my favorite part about this story that Danny wrote, quote, Danny. The bar, Danny, have you ever lost sleep for an entire week mulling over decisions you already know are incorrect? There is at best a 2% chance of this list of 12 players holding up in five years. I left out loud at that, Danny, because I could see you writing it and just sweating it the whole time. And you and I texted with each other. We had previously done early in our list of like top 25 players. Yep.

And I spent, you know, however many hours over like two days, like just really upset about having to put this list together. Right. This was that exercise for you. Yeah. So let's give a little glimpse of how the sausage is made here. Please tell me. We'd been planning some sort of 2023 All-Stars post for a while now. But originally, it was intended as a staff project.

We would get all of our writers involved. Right. Then they were just like, nah, Danny, you do it. Well, the problem was it was All-Star Week, the week of All-Star Weekend. Right. And, you know, we had a bunch of people in a bunch of different places. We couldn't get everyone centralized. And so our fearless managing editor,

Juliet Littman was just like, Danny, you're going to be wrangling these people anyway. So, why don't you just do it yourself? Me being the good soldier I am, I was like, yes, let's do it. And then here I am just in shambles. Yeah, you're a shell of a person. He's not even wearing clothes. He's got a burlap sack. It's tied it with an extension cord. You did a great job on this, though. It's a very interesting piece. I highly encourage people to read it. You have five players who are currently in their teens on that team. Yes. Twelve players who are currently 20 to 24. six players who are in the 25 to 29 range and just one player in his 30s. I want to run through this because you did a lot of work.

Well, no, that part was all Zach Cram, who is our resident statistician. He had gone through the past 18 All-Star Games going back to 2000 and found consistencies among the lists of rosters and stuff. And that was kind of the demographic breakdown that you would see in a typical All-Star game. It's very confusing how Zach comes up with all these things. he knows how to make the machines make numbers, and then he spits those numbers out into words. It's all very confusing, but scientific, unimpeachable.

We know that all of these guys will make it in 2020. I want to start with the teen selections. Let's just go through these. And because you guys are the draft class pot as well, you can tell me who you feel best about. The five guys that you pick to are teens, who you predict will be 2023 All-Stars, R.J. Barrett, Luca Donkich,

DeAndre Aidan, Michael Porter, Jr., and Jason Tatum. Of those guys, who do you like? Who are you the most confident in? Luca Donchich. That's why I feel best about. You're all about it. I feel like the draft class pod is all in on Luca Donchich. Yeah, you guys have made that pretty apparent.

What is it aside from you doing your sultry KOC thing, what do you like about him so much? Well, Luca, he's the type of guy who, I mean, he simply makes dudes better, right? I think with his passing ability, just his instincts on the floor, Ridiculous. Ridiculous. The reason why I'm so high on him is kind of an idea that I put into the piece. So the idea of a point guard was kind of very central to this whole thought experiment. I really think that guys like James Hardin kind of point the future of the position, point guard position.

You kind of want guys who are taller, who have different sight lines, who can throw passes at angles that you can't normally anticipate. And there's going to be this real negotiation going forward about like, okay, we have this traditional guy like Dennis Smith Jr. 6-2, athletic as hell. But there's only one real way for him to thrive and maximize his potential. And that's as being a ball-dominant point guard. Would you rather have a guy like Luca who, five years down the line, he might be a power forward. He's 6-8, 220 pounds. And he can pass, he could throw any pass in the book.

like it's a negotiation that you have to have. And in my kind of winnowing of the field, I thought, you know, having these tall point cards, it kind of feels like the future. It's some tall point cards, you can't go wrong with tall points. And the thing is, like, his scoring ability is there as well

where he can already play pick and roll at a high level for his age. You know, I think the shooting ability needs to improve, you know, from three-point reins, but he's shown the ability to hit tough shots off the dribble. And what's the most important

superstar skill? It's that. And I think the potential is there for him to be one of the best players we have in this game for the next decade. The weird thing is, once people actually get to see him like casual viewers, he's a hothead. Oh, I love that.

He's got some fire in him. Yeah, no, I like that. That's part of the reason why I always liked your guy, Mario Hizonia, because when he's, like, I liked watching him play to begin with. Noticably absent, Mario Hizone, I really expected you to throw him on here. But I loved him for the basketball purposes, but also for when they asked him if he had gone to see Messi, and he said, let Messi come see me.

And I'm like, oh, I'm in on that kid. All right, let's just blow through these next ones, this mid-tier here of guys who are in the 20 to 24 age range. Of these guys, I'm not going to run through all of them, but you've got some guys you would expect like Porzingis and Carl Anthony Towns and of course Janice and Embed. And then some guys that are, you know, maybes, Brandon Ingram, Jamal Murray. You've got Devin Booker on here, Donovan Mitchell, who we've seen is an ascendant player. Of these guys on the mid-tier age range, who are you least confident in? Porzingis, actually. Really? Yeah.

Don't tell Jason Concepcion about this. Is it just because of the injury? It was really about the injuries, but I had kind of prefaced the piece being like, I'm an eternal optimist here, and so I'm not going to leave off a guy who I think is a transcendent talent. And so that's why Porzinger is in there. A lot of people had kind of chimed in my at my mentions, being like, Lowry Markinen should absolutely be in here.

And he was a guy who I considered over Porzingis. If you look at the raw numbers, he's actually having a better rookie season. and Ben Porzinkis. I like that you pre-snubbed Lauren Mark and for the 20-20. We are, not only did you predict the 20-23 All-Stars, you predict the snubs. It's really impressive. You can see into the future. And then the 20 to 25 selections, KOC, he's got Kyrie Irving, Victor Oladipo,

Kauai, James Hardin, Steph, and KD of those guys, because now you're starting to get into that age range where guys start to lose the stuff maybe a little bit. Guys that you're worried about as they get older. I think a lot of these guys have games. that they can age quite gracefully. I think Kyrie's game is certainly built for sustainability. You know, Hardin, you know, as you mentioned earlier, his type of style. It's built on, you know, really finesse sometimes, you know, and a little physicality, not just out-leaping guys.

Carrey, same thing. Katie can age as well. I think maybe with Kauai with this weird hip injury that he has, he comes to mind. I would really like for him to come back and play basketball because I like Kauai Leonard a lot. One final note about this. I think this is great for Victor Oladipo. He's gone from being a cast off of two teams, being, I guess, a perennial all-star,

congrats to Victor Oladipo and also his agent. They're going to make a lot of money. Yeah, and this is great for his potential future albums. That's an R&B star. Big singing girl. Him and Chad Bozeman hanging out, and we're in Black Panther 12 mess by that point. That's a great idea for the dunk contest.

And then the only guy that you had on here, obviously, plus 30 was LeBron and he's the Goat. So, we've got a whole LeBron M.J. Week here at the Ringer this week. So make sure you check out all that content. I wanted to play a quick game. with you guys because you predicted the future in the 2023 All-Stars. Also, you guys play a game on draft class called Crystal Ball, right, where you like predict things. Okay. Well, here, fantastic. Right. Here at Heat Check, we have a game that is completely original, never been

played before, and also very, very different. And we call it Fortune Tellers. Okay. Very different. I'm going to give you a statement, and then you're going to complete it for me. We got it? Danny is just blinking at me and nodding. It's mixed for a great podcast. I was thinking the game was actually going to be, you know, fuck Mary kill. We could do that next time.

This one is next time on heat show. Danny, this is why I need you for show prep. I told you you should be hosting the show. All right. So the first ever fortune tellers, Isaac, are you ready for fortune tellers? Oh, yeah. All right, here we go.

First question for Danny Chow. Of the guys who played in the Rising Star game, who will be the first to win MVP, Danny Chow? Joel Embed. I love this. You have done it. This is your first time on the heat check podcast, and you have already figured out that the answer is to pander to me.

Danny spits it out there. I'm like pulling up the roster. KOC. This year's rookie of the year will be. Ben Simmons. Also right. I had Haley on earlier, and she said something about Donovan Mitchell,

and we had to cut her mic. Back to Danny Chow. Danny, what's the next non-warriers team to win a title? The Rockets. And how soon, Danny? This is an addendum. I don't know. Could it be?

I hope it's. this year because I can't imagine Dan Tony doing this again. It would be amazing if they could get past him in the West. I still think it's going to be a little bit. KOC, next year, LeBron James will play in. The Lakers.

In Los Angeles. Bringing him to Los Angeles, I like it. I think there would be a lot of drama. And also it would be easy for us because it's in our backyard. Danny Chow, next year, Paul George will play in. Picking backing off KOC. I'll say the Lakers. The Lakers are resurgent.

Isaac Lee, very upset about this. What's your answer to that? This is absurd. Is it Philly? Yeah, they're all going to go to Philly. No, for it. We're gone. Put them all in Philadelphia.

I think there's a chance. It's a very underrated city. I think there's a real chance. This is good. See, again, I think that you did some preparation on who hosts the podcast and you're like, how could we curry favor? With that Philadelphia maniac. Philly, Houston, Cleveland, L.A.

You're doing a great job. Speaking of Philadelphia, Mark Hellfoltz will play his next game in 2019. That's depressing to me, but probably. probably right. Oh, wait, wait, 2019, I had to think about this. We're in 2018.

He's not going to start next year? He's just laughing at me. It's going to take a very long. So Danny's Mike went out, and I don't know why. It's just, it seems like it was a complete coincidence. Last one for you,

KOC, the Donovan Mitchell of the 2018 draft class will be what. That's a good question. The guy that we're not, we think is going to be good, but not this good. Huh.

Okay, this is like almost a cop-out answer, but so much of this depends on situation. I mean, would Donovan Mitchell be Donovan Mitchell if he landed on a team that played him only as a backup the entire season? Oh, Kevin O'Cop out. Come on, man. But it's the truth. I mean, situation plays such a significant role in success. So imagine the ideal situations for every single prospect in the upcoming draft. Who is it? The game has slowed to a grind here, KOC. This is the end of the show. How about Michael Bridges from Villanova? I think just with his game,

and he's not going to be like a 20 point per game guy, but I think he's going to be like, oh, this guy's contributing as a 3-&D player and he went 13th. How'd that happen? I think Michael Bridges from Villanova. Villanova, 6-7, 3-D guy in case you guys aren't familiar with him.

So why we bring on the draft class guys. And he's an upper class. They're very talented. You should listen to the draft class on Fridays. You should listen to all the Ringer NBA shows. We have a ringer NBA show for you every week on tomorrow, KOC Inverno, alternate Wednesdays. We've got sources say. We've got the great group chat on Thursdays.

And this week, as I mentioned, we've got the LeBron and Michael Jordan series. So check all that stuff out. I want to say thanks to everybody who was on the show. Shea Serrano was here. Michael Peters. Peters, whatever. Haley O'Shaughnessy, KOC, Danny Chown, of course, Isaac Lee on the ones and twos. Everybody, thank you for listening to the heat check.

We'll be back next week. Bye.