The Ringer NBA Show - Anthony Davis to the Lakers Emergency Podcast | Group Chat

Episode Date: June 16, 2019

The Lakers and Pelicans wasted no time in kicking off a game of offseason musical chairs in the NBA. What does Davis in L.A. this early in the offseason mean for the rest of 2019 free agency? Plus, does this make the Lakers title favorites, or do they have a lot more work to do? Hosts: Chris Ryan and Justin Verrier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Just wanted to remind you guys that every Sunday night after each episode of Big Little Lies, the ringer's Amanda Dobbins and ESPN's Mina Kimes break down everything we just saw in our new after show called Big Little Live in partnership with Buick. And after you check that out, make sure to subscribe to the Mina Kimes show featuring Lenny, a weekly NFL podcast with frequent contributions from her beloved dog and sidekick named Lenny. You can subscribe to the Mina Kimes show with Lenny on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, And make sure to watch Big Little Live every Sunday night on Twitter. Basketball is very good.

Kevon Looney is a max player. The Lakers should hire Ernie Grunfield. Kauai should sign with the Warriors. Basketball is very good. Hello, and welcome to the Ringer NBA show. This is group chat. This is Chris Ryan. I am with Justin Verrier.

Hello, friends. It is an emergency Saturday evening podcast. Shout out to Bobby and Richie for coming in on a weekend. it's just a bunch of guys with nothing better to do than their Saturday night than talk about the most important trade we've had in quite some time in the NBA it's Anthony Davis dealt to the Lakers

for Lonzo Ball Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and three first round picks including the number four selection on Thursday night's 2019 NBA draft. It all goes for Anthony Davis who's heading to the Lakers where he reportedly always wanted to go

Justin finally finally this is over with this has obviously been a deal months and months in the making it sort of cost magic johnson and dell demps their jobs in some ways demps explicitly johnson you could argue it's like a aftermath of that but let's just jump right into it we're going to talk about this from the lakers perspective we're going to talk about this from the pelicans perspective can you make a case who won the trade here so i think you had a look at it from the perspective that kevin o'connor wrote about at the ringer dot com which you're you can read right now. I think for the Lakers, this is a trade that opens up a window to win now. And we'll probably get into this, but the landscape is now wide open considering what happened to the Warriors these past two finals games. So I don't know any team out there that could put together a one, two, that could best AD and LeBron James at this point. We'll see in transparency.

And so they have pride open this window. We'll see for how long it does seem like considering LeBron. Ron's age and all the other things that go into this that perhaps it might be a limited one. But we'll see. And on the Pelican side, they've set themselves up for the future, perhaps better than any franchise in the league right now. Yeah, I can't tell if it's recency bias or if I'm just high off the fumes of Twitter. I'd love to hear from people about this, but are you more excited about this iteration of the Pelicans team than you ever were about an Anthony Davis iteration? Probably.

And I think it's interesting to juxtapose how they approach the Anthony Davis era to how they're approaching the Zion era. Sure. Because almost as quickly as Anthony Davis proved himself on the NBA stage, right after his rookie season, he didn't win rookie of the year, but he pretty much made good on all of the projections and everything

that we kind of expected from him. He was who we thought he was, yeah. Absolutely. They immediately doubled down, traded future picks, got true holiday in there, traded more picks to get Omar Ashik in there, then all of a sudden that was their team.

They really just like, they accelerated, the process so they could win as soon as possible. You really are the brand the broken of the Pelicans man. You are the world's memory with the Omer Oshik get. We haven't even gotten to Solomon Hill, yeah. Here they are doing the complete opposite. They traded for not only a pair of 20-somethings,

who still have way more room to grow and just like all sorts of upside, but they have three and three first-round picks and potentially a pick swap. Yes. Is what we're hearing via Kevin O'Connor? ordering, yeah. So Kevin is reporting that the picks going to New Orleans. This is from Kevin. Are the number four selection in the 2019 draft. We know that. A protected first in 2021, an unprotected first in 2024, which is post-Lebron's contract, by the way. And yeah,

so, and then the Pelicans will also have the right to swap first in 2023, which could also be pretty attractive if this is, in fact, the last couple of years of LeBron's career. So the headline really is here that the Lakers got a player who could be the best player in the world for that span of time, but the Pelicans on the other hand got a world of possibility. This is one of the best

asset war chests in the entire league right now. Yes, and so there's a couple of different ways to approach that. I guess I'll make the case for the Lakers first of all, which is that they have two of the best players in the league now. There is a writing of the ship that just went on. When you look at everything that's

happened to this franchise over the last couple of from the tampering allegations to just the way in which they went about doing the Davis deal the first time in an earlier part of the year where they were trying to make it happen and leaking stuff and all this stuff was coming out in public.

It just seems like, and after the Baxter Holmes piece in ESPN and all the inside reporting and the palace intrigue on the Lakers, it just seems like they've kind of like figured out this one thing. And it not only brings in Davis, who's one of the top three or four players,

in the league, it just clears it all out. Clears out all the emotions, clears out all the hurt feelings, clears out all these guys who, despite their potential, might not have been crazy about going into another season with LeBron always looking over their shoulder. Right. You know, and so to me, it's like the Lakers did

the best possible version of what Lakers teams do, which is just shoot for the stars and hang out up there. And they still have this space for the third guy. And we're going to talk about who this third guy could or couldn't be. And Kyle Kuzma. And Kyle Klu's... Don't forget our guy. That being said,

and I don't know whether it's because I'm sitting here with you and you know a lot about New Orleans or whether it's just because, like, we always get more excited about potential than we do about what we actually have on hand. I can't help but feel like New Orleans won this deal. Maybe it's because you rarely see anybody ever get this kind of return on a superstar,

especially a superstar that was going to walk. And especially a superstar who has shown that he was kind of like, you know, I may or may not play. Yeah. We could have some pinky injuries. we could have some some court toe

coming into play I'm not to say I'm not trying to slander them I'm just saying like there could be like a little bit of a slow rolling it before they actually got this deal done

David Griffin just walked away with 10 years of an NBA team yeah that's amazing one thing I think really colors our perception of this entire thing is Zion

if the Pelicans have made this trade and they didn't have Zion in their pockets does it look as good well let me ask you another question then if they don't have Zion, do they do the deal? If they have whatever, the sixth pick, are they doing this trade? Like, just in a vacuum, the deal itself is a good one for the Pelicans, but they didn't have

the one player they needed ultimately to build around. Now they have that, which is the essential question for every NBA organization. Even a team like the Sixers who just tore everything to the stud, the whole goal was to find those transformative players. It wasn't necessarily to break the league system and all its other stuff that happened from it. Everyone's trying to get these one to ten guys that exist. And they did that. They fell backwards into them. And now everything from there

just becomes way easier. Yeah, and now Griffin can push the pedal down as he sees fit. He can take the number four pick. He can have two top five draft picks coming into camp in a couple of weeks with Williamson and whoever they grab

it for, whether it's Garland, whether RJ falls to four, whoever it is. Man, reunite the Duke team. New Orleans, with Ingram too. Yeah. He can do that. He can trade for. He can trade down. He can get into business with Atlanta and accumulate

more draft picks. He could trade four for an actual player. Or he could trade four for an actual player. He could trade four for an actual player and try to get somebody who is on the trajectory that Ingram and Ball and Hart already on. A couple years into the league, we understand how to get on a plane and go to a hotel and do all this stuff. You're not

19 anymore. Like, let's try. and go out there and win 45 games and maybe get into the 8 or 7 seat and make this city really excited about basketball again. What's really interesting now that I'm sitting with it just a little bit longer is that the whole Pelicans' outlook and approach with Anthony Davis was to surround him with young veterans, right? The problem was those guys were just significantly flawed and they just didn't have the ceilings that the guys that they're putting around Zion now. Like it was Tyreek Evans, who once upon a time we thought was going to be the successor to LeBron

James, the baby LeBron, so I don't personally remember thinking that, but sure, yeah. He won rookie of the year and we're all saying he played really like LeBron, I promise that happened. And Drew Holiday, a guy who had talent, but even when he made the all-star team with the Sixers, if it wasn't for

an injury replacement, at the very least it was because the East was so diminished, especially at God. These guys weren't the type of potential just like all-star talents. And Ingram, even though he's fallen off from that, there's still that guy in there, the type of guy that going into that draft, we were comparing him.

Let's see 100% clear. We do not know what Ingram Ball and Hart are because of the shit show they just played in this year. We have no idea. Like, they have basically been in an absolute clown car for the beginning of their NBA careers. Now, I don't know, like, the Pelicans are doing a great job selling the idea that they're hiring best in class across the board at their organization, that they're bringing in swing cash and Tristan Landon, and what's the guy from the son's name, Aaron Nelson?

Sure. Yeah, like, I don't really know. I don't know. But the son's doctor, essentially. Yeah, it's that. And they've had some long-term injury issues with not being able to keep guys healthy and guys who were injury-riddled all of a sudden go somewhere else and are fine like Eric Gordon. I know all about that.

Right. So they are taking steps in the right direction. The potential for Ingram, Hart, and Ball, we don't even know it. Those guys are, like, Ingram and Ball are top three picks. So they are adding Ingram and Ball to the number one pick who is basically a can't miss and possibly the number four pick. Yeah, I mean, Lonzo was a guy who not that long ago was selected over Jason Tato. Yeah. And while he's had a load of issues since then, including to like the lower half of his body, which has kept him out of like close to half of his first two seasons in the league, his shot looks broken.

But there's still that guy that we all loved in there. I think he is especially effective in this role where in recent years they've swung Drew Holiday off the ball and put a more traditional pass for his point guard around Davis and in that Alvin Gentry system. Well, now you have Lonzo passing off to Drew. Drew's going to do his same job. There's still that same setup there. Sure. And now you're getting Zion Williamson in the AD role. Like the Zoh to Zion Alleyup situation is going to be incredible. He also said the Zion to Zoh Elie.

you are going to be good. Like those guys are not interchangeable, but those guys are 21st century players. They're position free. They're they can play in a lot of different ways. Can I position free? But yeah, yeah. No, there's just so much versatility up and down that roster. It is ironic, though, that throughout this entire process, the one sore spot the Pelicans have always had is at the four spot next to Anthony Davis. And yet, even after this, they still do not have a powerful. You know what? It doesn't matter though. They're not wasting Anthony Davis anymore. I don't even know if Justin and I can arrive at a conclusion about who wins this trade. I think that the Lakers win the trade because they got Anthony Davis.

And you have to trust what you've seen and say, well, if you have a chance to put LeBron James and Anthony Davis, you should sell whatever you can to get it. So I guess the Lakers won the trade, but we're more excited about the Pelicans now than we've been in years, even when they had Anthony Davis. Yeah. And the other thing to bring up when we're talking about comparing the Pelicans, and how they built around AD versus Zion, is that they gave up draft picks for AD.

They now have, in addition to those young veterans that they had before with AD, they have more draft picks than ever. It's the complete universe. They still have their picks. So even if these guys don't play another game, they still have a load of talent and assets in order to put good players around Zion.

Yeah. Okay, so the winner, the loser, whatever, of the trade, it's basically a win-win, I think. It's not a Herschel Walker trade, which I sort of road tested that take a little bit basically to myself and on Slack. But I was just kind of like, man, this hall, I can't remember. I mean, it makes the Kauai Lenter Trade look like you were essentially selling for a penny on the dollar, especially when we saw what Kauai wound up doing almost in Lately, you know, this season. I think it just speaks to just like the desperation on the Lakers side.

Yeah. Like there isn't a team out there that needed this deal more than the Lakers side. Well, okay, so that was the thing I was going to ask you. We can get into what the Lakers are now and what the Pelicans are now and what this means for the rest of the lead. But I was going to ask you the follow-up question, the book-end question to, would the Pelicans have done this deal without Zion coming in? Is would the Lakers have done this deal without the Warriors being in the state that they're in?

So if Katie's healthy and maybe they win a title and he makes noises about coming back or maybe they lose in 70, he's like, I can't do this to Golden State. we're going to go back and get that last chip. So, K.D. Clay, let's just say in a sliding doors world, they're fine, and they're coming back next year loaded for bear. Are the Lakers as aggressive?

Probably. I mean, they have to, they had to do something here, right? I mean, they couldn't just run it back. Yeah, and that's the issue. I think they tied themselves to LeBron's like waning years, and thus that was never going to change. As long as LeBron was going to be there,

they needed to maximize the next one to two years. and so they needed to make something happen in order to make this work. We were talking pretty recently about, I don't know how accurate the reports were, but they're rumblings at the very least that if the Lakers did not get somebody in there this summer that LeBron could take a next step with,

he would consider perhaps going elsewhere. Yeah, or he could just basically demand a trade. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, let's talk about the Lakers are now because immediately after this trade happened, and one of the interesting things watching this all shakeout was... I have a sneaking suspicion that this has been done for several days

and that they were trying to give whatever the minimum amount of, like, room to the Toronto championship was. I think they still got it in before the parade, though, right? Definitely. I think that's Monday. Okay. They were haggling over Kyle Kuzma for several days. Yes.

This has been in various stages of being done, I think, for a little while. A little while. Almost immediately after this happens, Stein has a tweet that Mark Stein of the New York Times says, the Lakers are targeting Kemba. Now, Kemba Walker over at the Charlotte Hornets has been probably the most publicized free agent to be, I would say.

I mean, obviously he hasn't been busy playing basketball, so he had the opportunity. But there have been several interviews with Kemper Walker. Most of them of the variety of my heart is in Charlotte. I would even take less to stay here. Yeah, how quaint is it that Kemba Walker is at these like camps, I guess. Yeah, well, he was like an ambassador to the, to, in Japan, to the NBA or something like that.

I think he was in Japan or China. And so an athletic reporter tracked him down. And he was just out front being like, yeah, I don't want to stay in Charlotte. It's like what they want to be. And then pretty recently he got, like someone caught him at like some sort of some event, some camp that he was holding. He's just out there, which kind of shows the difference between in L.A. and some of these big markets in Charlotte where these guys are hiding.

Right. Jimmy Butler is hold up in his Texas like home Not wanting to talk to anybody Face to head to toe PSG gear Kemp is just hanging out Whatever

I hope for Kemp's sake That I don't know It doesn't really matter I was gonna say I hope for Kemp's sake That he's able He doesn't have to like live this down too much

Basically that if he decides To sign with the Lakers That he doesn't have to then go hat and hand And be like I'm sorry Charlotte You know like things changed And it's just He could could have just said, look, I really want to rate.

I've given Charlotte a bunch of years, and they've given me a bunch of trust, but I'm a free agent, so we're going to see what the offers are. That would have been the smart way to play it. Instead, it was just like, you know, I left my heart in Charlotte. And now the Lakers might woo him. You know, he was a former singer in his New York days, right? I feel like we're really in luck because we've talked so much about New Orleans and Jimba Walker, which are literally the pillars of Justin's existence.

The only two interests that I have. Do you like the idea, say, like do you like the idea of Kemmel Walker being the third piece here? I think it makes a lot of sense, and I think it makes a lot of sense if you can't get Kyrie Irving, because I think LeBron found, like, the perfect teammate for himself in Cleveland with Kyrie.

It just seems like at this point, what he needs the most, or what he values the most, is a guy who, when he wants to take plays off, which he is prone to do quite often these days, as many middle-aged men are prone to do, yeah. Right. Yeah, there are a few edits.

that I just kind of mail in and let Craig Gaines handle. Sounds good, Justin. He likes to just dump it off to a creator, let him do his thing. And that's how he conserves energy. Brian Winhorse had that piece, I think two years ago, just about how he is so considered about how he manages his minutes and his time and what he puts effort in LeBron. And so he needs that, but he also needs a guy when he wants to dominate the ball to play

off of him. And Kyrie was perfect at both. He was a point guard, but he was also like a scoring. point guard. And he was a really, really good three-point shooter. Campbell Walker is basically that. He is among the best shooters in the league. I know his 3-point percentage was down this year, but he was also shooting at an incredible

volumes. I don't think that's like an accurate read on how good he is. I think he was 39, 38 in the previous two years. And he's also probably the best deep shooter other than Steph Curry. So he really has transformed his game to the point where he's this perfect blend of a guy who can create, but he can also shoot. and I think that's the perfect guy you want, especially if you have AD in the front court

who will be able to cover you defensively and will be able to play particularly well with Coosma and LeBron in that 5-4-3 sort of lineup. So we just watched an NBA finals where a very top-heavy team, obviously ravaged by injuries. I think it's...

I would personally make the argument that Golden State at full and 100% health would have beaten the Raptors, but that's not how sports works. But we did just see a very top-heavy team get picked apart by a team with really great depth and really like even distribution of talent and smartly, smartly built to play really stout defense in the spring and summer when you need it the most. So is it stupid for the Lakers to not learn from that? And instead of taking the money that they would have for that,

that max slot, try and make some really smart. acquisitions that would fill out the roster smartly around, intelligently around Davis and James, and just try and go, here's our cash wad, flash it on the first rule of the dice, and bring in another guy. That's the other side of this for L.A. So they got your guy, and congrats for that. Yeah, twice now. They got him two summers in a row.

Like, for as much as we make fun of Lakers, they landed LeBron James and Anthony Davis in two summers. Yeah, the exceptionalism is thick right now, which hadn't been for several years. but they didn't necessarily alleviate my concerns about the front office by giving up your entire future in order to get Davis we could talk about Davis

in a bit and just like how good he is because I think that like that's kind of underrated at this point. It really is that he is this good. It's really going to come down to what they could do

with these next couple moves. Right. And it is interesting especially because Davis for most of his career we've said like that the front office in New Orleans just failed him.

They weren't like the environment that he was thrust into wasn't able to surround him with a necessary talent. Well, he's entrusting the second half of his career to Rob Belinka. Right. And an organization that at this point, I don't think anybody in the NBA has much faith in. So I think if they can go out and maybe just get a Kemba and do the same thing they did with LeBron and AD

and just sign away the top guy because of this exceptionalism, sure. Yeah. But to your point, even if they, do that. They need to fill out the roster with the appropriate guys because they lack so many things, even with those three guys in place, even with Kuzma. There's still a need for shooters. They need to be

able to defend, especially with LeBron at this point in his career. What is he as a defender? Kuzma not a good defender? And let's say it is Kempa. That's a defensively poor team. Kema's getting exposed, especially in the playoffs. Right now the Lakers have the following players under contract.

LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Mo Wagner, Kyle Cusba, Isaac Banya. Banga? Bonga? Bonga. And Jamario Jones. I'd never heard of Jimario Jones. That's a real dude. That's not a creative player. I've literally never heard.

They've also got some dead cap with Deng. And then in their orbit... I forgot about Deng. They've got some dead cap with Lual. And then they've got cap holds on KCP, Rondo, Mascallo, Stevenson, Bullock, Chandler, McGee. The Suicide Squad. All the guys that they were, we laughed at them for bringing in last year.

Yeah. They have all those guys, but they can get rid of them. You could write KCP and Penn, right? Like, he's not going anywhere. It really depends, man, because you made the Polinka joke. And I honestly, like, kind of admire Rich Paul for orchestrating this. You know, I mean, he got exactly what his client apparently wanted. His clients are both happy.

He's happy. if you told me tomorrow that Rich Paul was divesting himself of clutch and becoming the president of Lakers, I wouldn't blink twice really. I don't think he needs to do that. I don't think he does either. But there's a lot of guys out there

where I'm really curious about how the free agency market breaks for the Lakers. Because, okay, let's say they target Kauai. I don't think Kauai strikes me necessarily is the kind of guy who's like, I really need some other guys to team up with. So if Kauai leaves Toronto and goes to the Clippers, I don't know if he's going to do that now, but whatever.

Let's pencil with Kauai in either for Clippers or the Raptors. Jimmy, let's say he goes back to Philly. Mark Asall probably opt in in Toronto. Probably love to do that. Millsap? Horford? You know, Goren Drogich? Well, no, he just opted back in.

Oh, Dragach opted back in. you know, a Middleton? Does Middleton want to play in L.A. with LeBron and Davis more than he wants to play in Milwaukee with Janice? He's good, but I just don't think he's what they need. Because if they sign him, then they don't have any sort of creator other than LeBron. And then you start getting funky, you know? It starts getting, it starts getting like into the deep JJ Reddick territory, Danny Green territory. Yeah, Tobias Harris would be good. Tobias Harris would be good, but Tobias Harris presumably would have to take how big of a discount? can a player in his prime take? It really depends on... Because if he doesn't resummed with Philly,

whoever's going to give him the deal that he takes would presumably be like, here's the full boat that everything you can get besides what you could get from Philly. The Lakers can't get a hometown discount from one of these in their prime free agents, can they?

I don't know how much space the Lakers will have available. I presume it is going to be a max, if not close to a max. Yeah. So they just wouldn't have the fifth year to offer to Tobias. And I wonder at his age

at this point, how much that matters to him. And he did, I mean, he came on late in the season with the Sixers, at least in the postseason. I think he is a good player to have. I just, I don't know. He's 26 right now. He's going to be 27. It's not filling me full of hope for this team. Because like you said, you've got Polanka calling the shots.

He's had a rough start to his career as a front office guy. And it's just they've got a lot of work to do, man. They've got a lot of work to do. and they have no picks. They have literally nothing left to trade. I guess the dang cap hold. Like they can trade that number? No, they can't trade that.

Okay. So like... That's like a fix to their books. So they're just sitting on... They got five guys, no picks. And they're just hoping people are going to be like, I want to live in Los Angeles and play with the Bronn, Anthony Davis. Well, you know what?

I'm fascinated to see it. Because this is... We've been looking at like all these different paradigm changes of like, well, what if guys turned down? max money with the team that has their bird rights because they want to play where they want to play. And what if people start getting into signing one and ones more frequently because they don't mind paying insurance on themselves if they get to move around a little bit and always be in demand. Well, speaking about one and ones, Anthony Davis has already said, and I think

Chris Haynes has confirmed post the trade happening that he's still going to go into free agency. Yeah, that's what Rich Paul was like, he was like graffiti this on your skyscraper. He is going be a free agent. So there's a possibility that this ends up as another Dwight Howard and he just leaves the next year. I was waiting for somebody to say that. Like, that's definitely in play. There's a non-zero possibility. What was this Sports Illustrated cover? This is going to be fun. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Well, okay, let's take out, like, who takes what money and, and, and what years out. Who besides Kemba is, is the perfect third? If you're just playing, like, throw a dart at a name here.

I think you do need a guy who could handle the ball a little bit, who could be a creator, because those guys are also a little bit tougher to find on the open market as well. So if not Kemba, I would probably start looking at Jimmy, assuming that Kyrie and like the Kades

and all those guys are... I'm assuming that Kyrie's going to Brooklyn, but I wouldn't also lose my mind if he signed like a one-on-one with the Lakers. Oh, if Kyrie's in play, I would go after Kyrie. He's the best player, like, the best getable player on the market right now. I, so Kyrie, Davis, James, and, and whatever tumbleweeds they can gather to play around them.

I mean, on veteran minimums. That won a title in Cleveland in 80s light years better than Kevin Love. Dude, I thought, I think that Cleveland had a pretty good bench. Yeah, they did. They did. Like, where are the Tristan's coming from here? And the Cavs had draft picks in order to get those guys mid-season. And let's not forget, we already have a combustible situation with Vogel, Kid, Rambus, the Rambi.

It's not like this changes everything in Los Angeles. You still have a coach who is coaching with the guy who was the runner up for his job and then was foisted on him. I completely forgot that Frank Vogel was the coach. Yeah. Like we just spent like, oh, Nick Nurse, you're a genius. Steve Curry, you're a genius. Brad Stevens. It's like, should we not talk about the fact that, like, Frank Vogel,

it was last scene coaching Roy Hibbert and like the, not last scene coaching Roy Hibber, but we know Frank Vogel from his success with the Pacers in the East. Yeah. Obviously, he's being thrown into a cauldron here, but he's got like a guy waiting in the wings for him to screw up. Yeah, I mean, maybe Jason Kiddick can get some reps at point guard too while he's waiting to take over.

But I guess the good thing is Vogel is known for his defensive acumen. and so this team definitely is going to need that help because I think this is a good time to talk about just like Anthony Davis. Let's do it. As crazy. Like 28 minutes into this podcast, let's start talking about Anthony Davis. It's Saturday. Bobby's wearing just his casual clothes.

Bobby's got track pants. Justice's got shorts on. You can't see that from the camera. I look like I'm in Pearl Jam. Let's go on. Don't worry about it. We're just having a time, guys. Cracks and bruise after this.

Talk about AD. The reason why the price was so high is because Anthony Davis could be the best player in the world. He was talked about that as recently as earlier this season. Outside of Fred Van Vleet. Outside of Fred Vendley. And he's only getting better. Like he's 26.

He has the world in front of him. Yes, he has certain injury concerns and probably doesn't play through as much as he probably should. Wow. What a time to debate toughness. That matters when you only have five players and one of them is Isaac Banga. Bob Myers just took a deep pull from a corona.

But last year, last year, he was in the top three for defensive player of the year and we expected him to be a candidate for defensive player of the year and MVP this year. That's what happened with Janus. There's a possibility that he might win both. this year, Davis can do that.

And we're saying that Janus is probably if we're doing a Bill Simmons trade value, probably the most precious asset in the entire league. Davis can be that and he was that. I think it's crazy that we completely forgot. Davis is not recovering from some major injury. Davis didn't have some, you know, he didn't go on a walkabout through the Australian outback.

He took a couple of months off from the Pelicans where he was usually pretty dominant, even in a year where he wanted to leave. leave, he is entering his prime, if that's conceivable. Yeah. And he's about to go play with the best or second best player of all time. He was getting better this year. The next hurdle he had was to bring some of the guard skills that he had before his

growth spur and kind of apply them to his current body and his current situation. And he was a better passer than he's ever been. And he's already starting to show more flare as a ball handler. Yeah. He displayed better vision than ever. He was running a one-man fast break. Like, he's everything you want in a four or five. Yeah.

And he's playing with LeBron James. He's playing with the best ball and handler. He has ever played with one because most of the guys who were passing in the ball sucked. Like, no offense to Tim Frazier, that's my guy. But, like, he was right in the bench for the Milwaukee Bucks in the playoffs. You better respect each one more right now. He's a shooting guard. He handles the ball.

He's closer to the floor than Anthony Davis is. That's true. Hey, you're right. He's amazing. Let's also talk about LeBron. Okay. Because I'm fascinated to see how this plays out. Every LeBron team has to go through their baptisms, their purges, their crises.

This one lasted maybe a little longer than any other. He came to the Lakers. He didn't like what he had on hand. Didn't like his coach. They're all gone. Yeah. And now it's just LeBron. And he's got a, I'm sure, extra motivation after everybody was just like,

LOL, this guy's like out of his prime. L.O.L. LeBron stuck with all these losers. And they hate him. And now he's got a 26-year-old God on his team. You know, Anthony Davis is better than Chris Bosch ever was. You know, they don't have a Dwayne Wade yet. But this is shaping up to be, you know, one of the best players he's ever played with

and he's played with some pretty good ones. So there's another level perhaps to late period LeBron. We'll see. I think we all assume that what we saw last year was it for LeBron, that he might be injured more often than he ever has, that he's going to coast

more than he ever has, that he probably doesn't have the same switch that he once had. Some of those things might be true. I do think, like, the defense and the coasting, we're probably going to see a lot of that. but like he is kind of this physical marvel and to expect him to miss like 20 games and again is that's the outlier situation

it would help if he didn't miss them all at the end of the season yeah um but you have to imagine that he's going to come back next season as motivated as he's ever been because of the amount of doubting that's been going on and I usually don't put a lot of stock in like haters and and hearing the whispers but like if I was LeBron James like I would be like I would I would be like

like running laps around Staples right now because I'm so excited to play basketball again. Yeah, and that's what it comes down to that third guy for me. It's just when LeBron's signed there, there was all this big talk about how they're going to play LeBron more in the post. They wanted to get creators like Rondo and some of these other guys in order to take that burden away from him. I still think that's a big key for late period LeBron.

I think he needs guys around him that are going to do more because physically he probably can't do as much as he used to. But if you have a guy like Davis, and if Davis is going to progress in that area, and if you bring a guy like Kemba or someone like him, I think all of a sudden if LeBron at times is like a third option more than he's ever been, then it starts to make way more sense for me. If LeBron James is at times like second or third in the call sheet, that's a really good team.

Yeah. And I think also, I mean, after watching the way Toronto managed Kauai this year, you will probably see more teams do that with their stars. And I think that in the case of LeBron, I think in the case of Embed, I think in the case of a bunch of these guys, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah,

and they should probably start doing with Davis too. I've always looked at the Spurs as a prime example of how they don't care about certain games and what people say, and they just find the best things for their players and they maximize whatever they can give them. I think it's interesting now to look, look at just the landscape of the league.

Yeah, let's take a look at what this means for everybody else. I mean, so we're going to keep our eye on whether or not this means the Lakers have righted the ship and are now basically the flagship franchise of the NBA again or whether or not all the people who are there and all the people who have been brought in are going to be unable to quite manage what will obviously be like another four alarm fire circus all the time every night, every time they lose, every time they win, it'll be on house of highlights. Every time they lose,

there will be five think pieces about it. It's all coming. I don't even know if Davis has ever dealt with pressure like that. No. So, you're like three or four beatwriters, and I know all of them. And I'm in a room with one of them.

Yeah, right. So we have, that's the Laker situation. We've talked a lot about the Pelican situation. I think that we can get into that in the future before we start breaking down Ingram tape or whatever.

Let's let them draft Zion first. Let's talk about what this means for the rest of the league, though. Because I wrote in our winners and losers that's up on the ringer, that one of the losers was the Celtics. And that's not because I was born in Fairmount. That's just because I feel like they kind of either missed out on or lost out on a generation of all NBA talent.

And they were in pole position. They've been in pole position for most of the second half of this decade to acquire one of those guys. They got Kyrie. He's probably leaving. They got Hayward. That was a real shame what happened to him. and I hope he gets back to his best. They missed out on Durant.

They missed out on Paul George. I think they could have made a much better offer to San Antonio than Toronto did for Kauai. And we see what happened with having one year of Kauai. And now they've missed out on Davis. And they, I don't know, do you think that they have a better, does you think that their offer to the Lakers would have been better than what,

their offer to the Pelicans would have been better with the Lakers offered them? So it would have been what? Tatum, potentially smart in some draft picks? No, because even though the Grizzlies pick could be really good, it could be high, you have cost certainty with the Lakers being at 4 there. Like, as crazy as it is, the lottery and the crazy results that happened from there, like the fact that they ended up at 4 probably swung this,

which I imagine the Celtics will want to point out at some owners meetings pretty soon. I guess so, but then make the deal. I don't know what to say. I feel like that's the wrap on like a bunch of things. of these things where it's like, well, if we had known or we were just really high on Jalen or we didn't want to get rid of the Memphis pick yet, it's like, well, now

you guys are going to have to build around Tatum and Brown. Because if Kyrie leaves, and I don't know if Forford's going to come back, you know, Rozier's a lot of obviously going to leave. You have, I mean, they have a really good team. I'm sure they'll be up and around like the top three or four in the east, depending

on what happens with Kauai. But I feel like you have to look back over the last five or six years and just and just kind of be like, what happened there? How do we not get any of these guys? Because they could have had a bunch of them, or they could have had at least gotten in the mix for a couple of them and still retained a lot of what makes this team special.

Yeah, I think we're at the point where fans know so much about the NBA. And it's crystallized the idea that what the Celtics did, this slow approach where they stack assets and they build the right way, has become the only way. that you take your time, you get these guys in there, you grow a championship contender, then you perhaps package them all together

for the disgruntled star and all of a sudden you have your easy-baked title contender. But as we've seen over recent years, the fortune has appropriately favored the bold teams, not necessarily some of the smarter, like, good teams that took their time and did it the right way. Right. It's like stepping on the neck. It's like the warriors being like, you know what,

rather than just wait till next year and keep Harrison Barnes and keep running it like, let's go out and get Durant. The Pelicans, when they traded for DeMarcus cousins, didn't have much. They were just desperate enough

because the front office needed to keep their job in order to swing a trade for a player at that point who was viewed as toxic to a lot of organizations. The Thunder gave away a couple guys

that probably didn't fit their long term or weren't necessary long term to get a guy like Paul George. The Raptors, that team was broken, and so they decided to just go for it for this one-year window. And now we see the Lakers, a team that needed something to happen in order to maximize LeBron,

and they're willing to do enough to get Davis. Yeah, and I think that that's the thing that this Kauai Leonard season is really crystallized is that nobody's waiting for your five-year plan to come through. And that's why I think that the Sixers did what they did and why they will re-sign these guys if they can, because they are not interested in going back down and building back up again, not while they still have Simmons on a relatively cheap deal. Yeah.

And I think for a lot of these teams, like the clippers are stocked with assets. They are not holding on to them in the event that Shamit and SGA can lead them to the promised land. It's kind of appropriate that as like the superstars in the league are accelerating like how quickly teams turn over, that the teams that act quickly and are just trying to. trying to hit like a specific window or the ones that are doing well. But I think what the Lakers have done by doing so sets up a nice parallel between

the Clippers and the Lakers, because in a lot of ways they are the models for two different approaches. So you have the Lakers who are going full exceptionalism yet again and hoping that a big three model is enough to bring them to the top of the West. But as we just talked about,

they have to fill all these other spots that probably are going to dictate how well they play this season. The Clippers, on the other hand, I don't know if we've been talking about them as a two-star destination. More likely they'll end up with Kauai and probably the situation that they have now.

And so you have the Kauai team that's deep. It's the Rafters again. It's Kauai with a younger, a younger, less good version of the Raptors. And possibly just as good, to be honest. Because some of, like, maybe... It's hard to say that after the finals, man. It's really, come on.

I mean, like, it's hard to say SGA and Shamit over Kyle Lowry. You know what I mean? and Danny Green, even though I know what Danny Green and Kyle Lowry are. Defensively, they're going to be a lot worse. Yeah. And that was a big part of the Raptors' identity

and it's definitely swung some of those games in the playoffs. But I think it's super interesting that that could be the difference. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because as teams go to superstar-driven big three teams and they try to fill their rosters out with minimum guys and whatever, it almost creates this market inefficiency for good, players, not great players. So if so many teams have settled on this idea that we were just talking about where the right way to build is to get three stars and do everything you can to get three

stars and strip down your roster and make sure you don't have good players until you get good like superstar players, then all of those solid players are kind of men without country. So give me some examples. Just look at the Clippers roster. Like a guy like Lou Williams who is a Fringe All-Star is on a bargain contract. Montraelle Harrell is playing for relative bargain considering what he did this year. So if you're just, I think the Clipper has embodied this and clearly show what you can do because you probably have a lot of good players whose market has been depreciated because they just don't have as many places to go anymore.

It turns out Jerry West is smart. Could be. I mean, it's a really smart front office. Yeah. These are the type of things. I know. There's a bunch of guys there. Well, it's just like the people who see the market inefficiency before everyone else always has an advantage.

So it's fascinating to see some of these things happen in real time. Okay, Celtics, Clippers. Do you think Kauai with a ring goes west to play against LeBron and Anthony Davis and live in L.A. where he wants to live? Or do you think he stays in Toronto and runs it back and hopes they're even better with another year of Siacom and OG coming back? It's interesting. I don't know which conference is going to be weaker when it's all said and done because the... Or if guys actually give a shit about that. I mean, like, if I want to live where I want to live really plays into

well, in the second round, if we get the third seed, this could happen. Right. It didn't matter for LeBron. Right. And so I don't know what is the easier path. I mean, the bucks are probably the best team in the east, but there's a possibility that if Kwai just comes back that they have a clear path to the finals yet again. I mean, I'm sure, I think you'd have to consider it. It would be really cool

if we could spend the next few years watching the Raptors, Sixers, and Bucks duke it out in the East. And that if the East had like a truly rich competitive rivalry system rather than just LeBron and everybody else, the way it was for the 10 years before it. And the other thing that could swing is, I mean,

we've lived in an environment where everybody who was taking one plus ones. Mm-hmm. And I do wonder if one of the negative effects of Kevin Durant and Clay Thompson having these injuries, maybe guys look at that

and say that like... Yeah, I don't think Kauai needs anybody to tell him about long-term injuries, right? So maybe we're going to phase into a cycle where all of these guys start to take longer-term deals because even guys like Kyrie Irving,

I mean, he's on the younger side of some of these superstars that are going to be available, but I think he's already 27. So there aren't like a ton of prime years left. So maybe we're going to going to get to the point where a lot of these guys are staying and all of a sudden that that kind of... That changes the landscape.

Okay, Celtics, Clippers, the way that people sign their deals, where Kauai winds up, what are some other ripple effects? What are some other... How does this change some other situations? Well, I think another option is off the board in terms of like getting superstars in free agency. I mean, we talked about on a video thing that we did the other day, just how if Kevin Durant was off the board and now Clay Thompson seems like might be off the board, would

teams go the trade route and try to get Davis over maybe signing a Jimmy Butler. Well, Davis is now off the board as well. So you have three of the best four guys, five guys available on the market are all gone at this point. It's actually weirdly, like, it's now a sort of strange, lukewarm free agency class because it feels like Kyrie to Brooklyn is pretty, is pretty much a done deal. And if it's not, it would probably have to be for the Lakers or I saw the Harold say that the Celtics and Kyrie are still in communication. So it doesn't sound like Kyrie would go to the Knicks. But if Kyrie's off the board, Durant's off the board, Thompson's off the board.

I mean, Durant could still sign, but he's off the board for playing next year. Davis has been traded. Kauai is going to have to walk away from a team he just won the Larry O'Brien trophy for. And Jimmy Butler, Kemba Walker, and Tobias Harris would all have to turn down bigger money from the team that has their bird rights. Huh. Yeah. Would Jimmy Butler is looking really good right now.

Like, everybody is forgetting all about what he did in Minnesota and focusing only on what he did in the playoffs, kind of winning some of those games. Yeah, I mean, DeAngelo Russell jumps up a notch. Yeah. Doesn't DeAngelo, Russell, jump up a rung in terms of like how interested you are in him? If this is all, this is the way it's happening.

I mean, we were talking about him being like an Indiana-Orlando, Utah guy. Now, maybe. Did the Knicks max him out? It's on the table. I mean, you got to play. play the restricted dance, but it doesn't seem like he's in the long-term plans for the Nets. I don't think that they can handle a back court of those two. I mean, they have to be smarter than that to think that they can have DeAngelo and Kyrie in the backward together. They would never

get a defensive stop in their lives. And if the Nets aren't going to re-sign Russell, and they've attached themselves to Russell Plus and Kyrie Irving, and I don't know who's going to fill that second max slot now, are we looking at the Nets way differently than we were a couple weeks ago when they swung that trade for opening up the cap space? It's so strange. It's so strange because this is the first clarion call of the offseason, but it almost feels like in a weird way, it kind of also is the beginning of the end of the offseason in some ways. It would be interesting to have a chalk off season from here on out in terms of everything happening basically the way people thought. Yeah, I mean, I think the Knicks look pretty bad right now.

Okay, so that's the last one. Let's end with the Knicks. What do they do? Yeah. Do they just draft RJ and be bad next year? I think they're looking at the situation where best case scenario, they're bad with Kevin Durant. Right. Which is fine. Right. Because he's still a Hall of Famer, but I just don't know who else is going there.

And you look back to the poor Zingas deal and all of a sudden that just looks ridiculous. Oh, it seems like everybody is just sort of like better off and out each other in that situation. Yeah, I know what you mean, though. It's just, it's weird because all of these teams were clearing the decks and you just assume that they had things in their pockets. And just we forgot the fact that basketball still gets played and things happen and Kevin Durant gets hurt and all of a sudden everything changes. Yeah. All right. Well, it's going to be a while before basketball is played again, but we will be back obviously quite a few times.

Now, this is going up Saturday night. Bill and Ryan will be on the BS podcast tomorrow talking about this deal, no doubt. Monday, we're going to get a special NBA show up that's about the draft, but we'll have some Anthony Davis stuff in there. Is that right? And then we'll have draft stuff all week and more reactions to Anthony Davis as we as we fire them up. You can go to the ringer.com right now. There's two pieces up there now. One about how the Lakers are the present and the pelicans of the future.

That's from Kevin O'Connor. We also have a winners and losers piece and more pieces to come. Until then, thanks for listening for Justin Verrier. I'm Chris Ryan. This has been the Ringer NBA show. Basketball is very good. Basketball is very good.