The Ringer NBA Show - Can Doc Rivers Fix the Bucks? Plus, the Heat Just Got Scary. | Group Chat

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Justin, Rob, and Wos start by giving their reactions to the Bucks' firing of head coach Adrian Griffin and hiring of Doc Rivers (1:35). They talk about how this changes the outlook on the Bucks season, whether their defense can be fixed, and more. Then they take a look at the Miami Heat’s trade for Terry Rozier. They talk about how Rozier will fit on the Heat, what kind of flexibility Miami has to make more moves going forward, and whether the Charlotte Hornets will continue to sell before the deadline (24:54). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Kevin O'Connor. Every week for seven years, Chris Vernon and I have been discussing and debating the NBA for the ringer. And if you didn't know it, we're now on our own podcast feed called The Mismatch. It's appropriately named because of our differing views and approaches to the NBA, whether it's news and rumors or the latest games. And I love our show because we'll go from yelling at each other about tanking to laughing about something that happened in a game the night before. It's my favorite part of every week.

So give the Mismatch a listen every Tuesday. and Friday on Spotify. And welcome to group chat. Yay. Yay. I am Justin Barrier, joining me on the big screen, Rob Mahoney and standing before me.

That's right. In beautiful flesh and blood. That's right. Big wise. What's up, gentlemen? Good. Fantastic. Happy to be with you guys,

seeing you guys in person. And Rob being the Zordon of the pod. I'm appreciating him on the big screen. Yeah. Is that why we're celebrating in the intro today? You guys were all together and I'm not even there. We're just trying stuff. Just trying stuff out, Rob.

I liked it. You didn't like it? I have no judgment on it one way or another. I'm just trying to understand. I'm trying to make sense of this crazy world that we live in, Justin. Yeah, aren't we all? Especially now that the Milwaukee Bucks have a new head coach. I have to say, Wastradamus, right again on this one.

Look, man, I said this online yesterday. I wasn't some fortune teller. If you've been paying attention to the box, they don't have any synergy. This doesn't seem like a group that's playing on a string, playing with some cohesion, and it's 43 games in.

And we can get into the timeline of the situation. It's just, again, even on offense where they've been successful, if you watch the games, there's no rhyme or reason to what they do. It's just individual brilliance, guys breaking off plays whenever they want.

There's no hierarchy. There's no rules-based order to what they do. It's just they have a lot of offensive talent individually. And you can do that in the regular season. But in the playoffs, you can't win NBA games playing a pickup style of basketball. And I think it was actually affecting their defense, too, just in transition. When guys aren't where they're supposed to be on the offense, that affects how you cross-match and all of this stuff.

And so I'm not surprised. And again, there's been whispered. that weren't really that quiet, to be honest, out of there from the beginning. When me and Rob went on Bill's show after the NBA in-season tournament, you know, we got accused of being body language police and all of that, but it wasn't just that. Like I talked to people who might know a thing or two about what's going on over there, and it was just like it's not good.

There's no faith in what Adrian Griffin is doing, and so management moved on. Yeah, I think it's going to be telling that in the aftermath, of this. I imagine we'll get the usual coaches and former coaches talking about how unfair it is that a guy coaching a team with a 30 and 13 record got fired. But I don't think you're going to hear a lot of spirited defenses of the high functioning nature of the Milwaukee Bucks this season. I don't know how you could watch that team and say, that's a group that has it all together. That's a group that's all on the same page. Everything we've been talking about them is about how they're a work in progress, how much left they have to figure out. And if anything, the source of our

optimism around the bucks has been the fact that they haven't looked great and they've still won this many games. Yeah. Q. Rick Carlisle just on his pulpit. Just disking everyone in front of him. Yeah, so 30 and 13, 43 games. Howard Beck was

kind of trying to tabulate how quickly this was a leash in terms of just getting some guy out of there. It seems like third fewest games for recent history or at least in recent memory. 20 second on defense. Just this team is not good.

And I guess on the one hand, you could say this was inevitable, was on the other hand, to do this mid-season and bring on Doc Rivers, who I guess he was part of the organization, at least informally, but he wasn't in the locker room,

he wasn't in the meetings. It seems like it's going to be tough. I can't think of anything in history where that led to success down the road. Yeah, I mean, immediately what came to my mind was the David Black situation. I think he had,

he started 30 and, 11, they were number one in the east, and he got fired. And essentially, management had come to the conclusion that he had lost the locker room. I mean, a lot of people were just like, this guy's blustered. I remember when he said, like, if we win the championship, I'm not going to be that phase because I've met head of states before. Fighter pilot, yeah. The David Black quote book is next. We didn't know how good we had it.

Yeah, yeah. It's thick. And so they moved on. But again, the Griffin thing, obviously. it was a red flag when Terry Stats got up and quit. Essentially Adrian Griffin yelled at him, undressed him in front of a bunch

of people at training camp while he was simply just trying to install an offense. You know, Adrian Griffin felt like he needed to implement some level of hierarchy there, which is funny in that sense because he felt threatened

by Stats. He wasn't wrong, it turns out. You know, like this is on the one hand, like why you hire Terry Stott's if you're the bucks in the first place. And it's also why I imagine Adrian Griffin didn't seem to like the idea of Terry Stott's being there very much. But this is not a new concept, a rookie head coach,

somebody who's never done the head coaching part. A lot of times they bring an old sage in to be next to you to do that. And look, you can call this speculative. People saw through that. The guy just obviously felt threatened by Terry Stott's.

And so he did that. He didn't have the right away. Nobody felt like, oh, that was justified what Griffin did right there. Everybody was like, damn, what the hell is up with this guy? And then again, when you watch the team play, there's no order to what they do. And again, from what I've been told, he was kind of just trying to be liked by everybody instead of establishing a pecking order. Like, no, Chris Middleton, we get it. You've made all-star teams.

You've got max contract. You've been a guy in this league. You're a third option now. You don't get to break off plays in the offense. You don't get to go rogue. You don't get to do what you do. There's a pecking order here. Adrian Griffin never established that.

And if you watch the team, they're not a team that has that. Like, everybody brings the ball up. Everybody does what they wants. It's this free-flowing nonsense. The defense, of course, undisciplined, doesn't take away anything. He just never did a good job. And I think the nailing the coffee for him because when people say, oh, quote, quote, he lost the team.

If you read Chris Haynes' article about this, management, the GM Horst in them, they went to practice. They watched shootarounds. They could see a group that was disconnected and had tuned this dude out. And if you're trying to win a championship, you cannot win

if everybody's tuned out the freaking coach. It's just not possible. Right. The other thing about that was is not only, he lost the team as an interesting way to frame it because I'm not sure he ever had them. This was a team that right out of the gate,

there was a lot of sense. skepticism and patience lost on the player side in terms of the style of defense they were trying to play, the exasperation in those games. And when they went to that system and the way Griffin was trying to have them play, they were just bleeding points. And so you could see the Bucks, and especially the Bucks veterans, didn't really believe in what they were running. And if that's the case in games one through five, you're not earning trust by playing this poorly on defense throughout the season. You know, I think there are a lot of teams where there are breakdowns and guys look around and it's a matter of, oh, why wasn't that rotation where it's supposed to be

whose responsibility was that there's that kind of like micro-diagnosing over the course of games when things go wrong. So much of the Bucks communication with each other during games, and maybe this is playing body language doctor a little bit. It was more the exasperated shrug of like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing collectively? Because this is not it. Well, I don't even think you need body language doctors. I don't mean to discredit your prestigious degrees here. Body language. The degrees on the wall. Please have some have at least some respect for the institution.

I can't tell because the forest is covering it. But I mean, Janus was diatriving once every three games at this point. And it's weird that he lost the locker room so quickly and so aggressively at a certain point because it sounds like Janus was the one who kind of punched his ticket. Mark Stein had this report. Yes.

That he didn't even really necessarily want Griffin. He just did not want Nick Nurse. Yes. there wasn't much detail beyond that, but I really want to know what happened between him and nurse, or maybe he just saw like Pascal Seaccom playing 42 minutes,

but I would assume that Janus, of all people, would be into that, but apparently not. And yet, even being the players coach didn't work for Griffin. Look, people are going to say this is speculation corner. The truth of the matter is he talked to O.G. Ananobe and Pascal Seaccom. He's boys with them.

It's a West African connection. Like, I don't know all the black people at Spotify, but I do know all the Haitians. It's one of those things like in the NBA. Like it's, again, it's no different than the Eastern Bloc guys. They're all very tight. Yannis is tight with the West African cats. And they gave Nick Nurse the thumbs down.

They was like, you don't want to play for that dude. And so, Janice, who this guy was in the Zoom meetings for the coaching interviews. Not that he said, no on him or no on him. And, you know, to be fair to the bucks, he hadn't signed his extension yet. And so they want to take. into account how this guy feels. I get it. And Adrian Griffin, former player,

we've seen guys, former players have success and all of that. And, you know, he's been an assistant for so long and he's been part of successful groups. And so they pulled the trick on that. It's not like Janus was like, yeah, this is the guy. This is the next Phil Jackson. I think he just was, he just soured on Nick Nurse. Because if you guys

remembered Nick Nurse was the guy. And then all of a sudden we get the report where he's, quote, quote, taking himself out of running, which was clearly just a face-saving exercise. Like, he had been 86 for whatever reason. Obviously, Mark Stein's saying it, I had said it before. Yonis is the one that acts that guy.

Right. And yeah, from what I understand, he just got bad reviews from his peers. And so that's what happened. And so, and the funny thing is, we're watching Nick Nurse in Philadelphia unlock and be in ways that we've never seen before. Like, there's no denying it. They're building something there. Even when you want to consider the partnership between Maxie and Bede,

which game by game becomes an actual partnership, an actual like bread and butter, if you will. None of that has been established in Milwaukee between Dame and Janice. Like, again, I don't want to kill Janice for this, but like it was his decision. He's the one that said no to Nick Nurse. Nick Nurse definitely knows his stuff, but he gets a lot of bad reviews. Yeah. He's the classic like...

Side Manor. We need to rape my professor for the coaches from the players. I would love to see that. I would pay for that. I was thinking it's like the great restaurant on Yelp that has horrible service. And so it ends up with like a two-star review because someone had a miserable time. But so many players who played in Toronto, I mean, the end was messy. It was like take shots in the media messy.

It was completely burnt out on that guy messy. And I think it's a combination of, in particular, nurses of very confrontational coaching style. Like he calls guys out very directly and sometimes very personally in ways that they don't always appreciate. And the combination of that and also running some dudes into the ground to the point of kind of like recurring injury in some cases, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. He's very demanding. He's very specific into what he wants. Clearly he's a good coach schematically. But in terms of the player experience, those guys are not going to vouch for you in this sort of situation.

And so it's interesting to wind all this back and think about what could have been. for the Bucks and Nick Nurse, if like the Toronto situation had just ended like normally bad, just in a normal way fizzled out in the way coaches do. But it was not that. There was a lot of acrimony there.

Well, in Griffin's defense, things did change rather quickly. They got Dame in there, what, on the eve of training camp right before things started. So the team he thought he was going to coach changed rather quickly from a defensive-minded team

that had been together for a while to trying to work Dame into the system. And also to do it. his credit, it seemed like they ushered in Doc Rivers under cloak and dagger rather quickly. In season tournament was like, what, month or two into the season? That's when

he was already talking with Griffin and all of a sudden he is an air quote consultant. So the Bucks organization probably has to bear some of this burden because they didn't make it easy on him. I'll say that. You don't think this was a far-reaching coaching search?

I just... 24 hours, yeah. I just don't think this guy was up to the task. I think the bucks in their never-ending quest to kowtow to Janus, and some would say rightfully so, they did what they thought they had to do in the moment. They got a coach in there that the guy that they deem as the most important player in franchise history was cool with. He just happened to be incompetent for the moment.

Maybe in another circumstance and another context, he could have flourished. Adrian Griffin. Competent feels extreme. He was not up to this job. Yes, he wasn't up to the task of what this job demanded. The management of the egos in this locker room. It's a veteran group. It's an accomplished group.

That takes actual skill, like people skill, in order to navigate, right? And of course, you know, he doesn't have the gravitas as a first time guy. I'm not like, look, Adrian Griffin, he came into a tricky situation, but like, this is the job, man. And if we're going to be like, yo, a lot of times black coaches get put into, you know, they get to go coach the pistons or some more

abound situation for their first time, this guy got a championship team on the platter, championship worthy. And he fumbled it. Like, you know, his contracts guaranteed, he's going to get paid. I don't feel bad for this dude. And in fact, I want to commend the bucks, because some people

would be like, was this a panic move? No. They have championship aspirations. Nobody. No, I challenge anybody to say they think Adrian Griffin could have led this group to a championship this season. So in that respect, they made the right move. Well, I think that brings us to Doc, Rob, because on the one hand, Doc does everything that we're talking about. Adrian Griffin did not. He can work a room better than anyone.

He can work a podcast show better than people who do this for a living. I'm looking at all of us. Yes. Yeah, Beth, this feels like a personal attack on the ringer.com. in the Bill Simmons podcast. We just lost a premier guest at a thin air. I love Doc on that show. He was actually really enjoyed his segments a lot.

I liked him on the ESPN broadcast. I know he wasn't for everybody, but I thought he was instantly one of the best, if not the best color guys, doing it. But on the one hand, Doc has been here before he's been coaching title contenders, what, for two decades, practically?

On the other hand, his past two spots have been known for the fact that he couldn't get them past the hump, couldn't get them past the second round. Do you think Doc is the guy for this team, Rob? He's more the guy for this team than Adrian Griffin was. There are levels to this. I think that's like a very low bar to get over.

Can he get over the bigger bar? The brass ring, if you will. I think the irony of it is in terms of coaching tenor, Doc and Bud have a lot in common. Interesting. Two guys who have been hit over the course of their careers for their failures to adjust in the playoffs, especially to those really difficult, you know,

second round type competitive situations. Doc has kind of stuck to his principles and stuck to his guys and stuck to his rotation in some situations. But I think ultimately what he's been able to do

basically throughout his career, coach a style of offense that suits the star players involved. That's something he's been good at. And getting a team up to like a baseline level of professional competence on defense, which I think he's largely done

with a few exceptions. Maybe a couple of those clippers teams were a little dicey on that end. but overall got guys to play like actual NBA defenses. And if the Bucks play like an actual NBA defense, they're going to be a contender. That's why, to me, the move is obvious because the fixes are so baseline, right?

It's like closing out, getting back in transition, ironing out your crash principles on the offensive boards. Like, these are like entry-level stuff. And then, as Rob mentioned, establishing an offensive hierarchy, a rules-based order of operations, Doc can do that. Now, you know, some of the hardest stuff like Dame and Janice developing the chemistry and developing a trust, like that's where the actual skill is going to have to, like Doc's going to actually have to show that, right?

Like developing a trust between the main characters on the team. but like this baseline stuff that just wasn't getting done, I feel like Doc is more than qualified to fix that stuff. And that's why the David Black comparison is right there with Tailu. But I think another one that's interesting to look at is the Nate McMillan takeover of the Hawks in 2021, where maybe that's uncharitable to Adrian Griffin because, you know, this team is 30 and 13. Lord Pierce was 14 and 20.

Very different winning situations. But in Atlanta, there was a night and day transformation. in terms of the vibe of that team, the efficacy of that team. And it wasn't that they were doing anything super creative. It was structure and standard setting. Very basic organizational level stuff that changed. And that's the kind of thing that Doc can help with.

I think there are two questions here, though. I think we all agree that Doc can maybe clean things up and get them back on the track they thought they were on when they first traded Fort Dame. But there's getting back to where Bud brought them and then getting them past that. Do we think that they could do that this season? Do we think that's a coaching issue?

Or is it more of a personnel issue? And so can Doc really change enough to vault them even past the Celtics at this point? Yeah, Was, I don't know how you feel about this. But for me, if Doc can get them back to the level Bud had them, Dame can take them the extra bit. Like, that's the dynamic piece they didn't have that has changed a lot of what they could do. Yeah, I remain unafraid of the crop in the east, right? As far, if I'm Milwaukee, like, obviously Boston has just been way better than them this season.

There's no, like, there's no metric that points to that not being the truth. Again, even at the 30 and 13, they got a point differential of a 25-1 team, right? They just have not been as good as the Celtics. But cleaning this stuff up and getting in a seven-game playoff series with the Celtics. Come on, y'all. We've been to this movie enough time, and I think the Celtics are going to blow their doors off if they're able to get their stuff in order, right? And so I still remain confident that they can be right there

with anybody in the East, whether it be Philly, of course, and the Celtics who have been the cream of the crop so far, I think they could get themselves to a level that will be highly competitive in a seven-game series against those guys. We're going to talk about the heat, but the East is looking a little bit more rigorous, I would say.

Top six, seven, maybe. is going to be no cakewalk, which it seemed to be earlier in the season, but the Knicks looked very good. I don't know if you guys saw that game against the Nets last night. All of a sudden, they just can't lose a game. The cab's still winning. Yeah, resurgent.

This isn't going to be a cake walk. I would probably, it's odd to say, for a team that is still second in the Eastern Conference, but I kind of still slot them in in the same spot where they are right now, where it's like they're right in the mix with the Sixers. I think the Celtics, despite recent results,

especially against the nuggets, if you just like kind of forget that for a little bit, I would still put them ahead of the pack here. Rob, where are you on the bucks with Doc in there? I kind of lean that way still, but I feel like the elephant in the room we're not mentioning is the elephant

that just scored 70 points and maybe the best player in the league this season. That's really elephant? I just mean, look, if you can score 70 on Victor Weapon Yamma, like there's a strength and a girth happening that is impressive. Joel Embed has been amazing

in a way that I think we have to start talking about the Sixers differently, especially as a team that has moves yet to make if they want to, that has some malleability that's getting a season

this good from Tyrese and from their supporting cast. I think Philly is about on Milwaukee's level. I might err towards the buck slightly, but it's ever so slight and I would not be surprised if by the end of the year

we're thinking about the Sixers as the definitive second best team, unless Doc can clean a lot of things up. Yeah, obviously if, you know, if the season ended today, which obviously it doesn't. But if it ended today, these would be the two and three seeds and ostensibly would play each other in the second round of the playoffs. Obviously, that would be an amazing series as far as I'm concerned. But again, I got a lot of respect for what Joelle is doing. He's doing it differently than he has in the past, right?

He's doing some of his same stuff, but this is not the same. exact way, right? So he's added wrinkles to how he's attacking teams. This is a different player and I'm very anxious to see it against the best defenses. You know, when coach's staffs are just locked into what you do and can game plan for you and nothing else, you know, it becomes a different prospect altogether. But again, I'm hard pressed to move off from Milwaukee because they just have such incredible talent. Like, this team is crazy talented. They just got to tighten stuff up. Over under, on when we get the first, I'm not a doctor, when they get an injury.

Three days on the job? You've ever been in a Doc Rivers press conference. You have heard that line. This guy just has so many jokes, and unfortunately he uses only two of them. Is that, and then his go-to is, that's a great question, Justin. That's a great question. He loves calling the reporters by name, boy, and they get all warm and fuzzy inside. We do.

Oh, Doc knows my name. You know what, Justin, you do ask great questions. Thank you, Rob. I appreciate that. Warm and fuzzy. All happening here. Get in on all the NBA, buzzer beaters, ankle breakers, and Tomahawk James with Fandulul, America's number one sports book.

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All right. Let's slip to the heat now. The cosmic partner, I would say, with the bucks. These two teams are linked together. Starcross, perhaps? Yeah, perhaps in some just like spiritual, like fantasy sort of way. They made a splashy trade just before the Adrian Griffin News went down yesterday. Terry Rozier to the Miami Heat for Kyle Lowry,

whose contract is expiring and a future first, which is lottery protected in 2027, unprotected in 2028. Here's how I framed it, because I wrote about this a little bit for the ringer on the offer sheet. Go check that out. But in 2016, Pat Riley talks about,

we only go for whales, right? Very memorable. It was right before the Kevin Durant chase. It was when they were in the second round of the playoffs. This is the first time they didn't back in the playoff since LeBron James left. We go star hunting. And I think since then, we've expected the heat to do that, right? Damian Liller, prime example in the offseason, right there in the mix.

Donovan Mitchell, who knows if he'll end up being available? Will we expect the heat to be in there because of their market, because of Riley, because of the championship pedigree, right? Here they've kind of pivoted and rather than waited for the next star to become available, Rob. They went with the sure thing. They just went for a mid-tier upgrade. And we can get into how much of an upgrade is with Rozier. But do you like the idea of making this team better right now,

considering the circumstances, considering who they're available to get, what the East looks like on and on, versus trying to hit the home run and waiting for Mitchell or whomever down the road? I don't think the two are mutually exclusive is the thing. You can make this deal now and still be in play for stars down the road, right? You still have, you know, I think potentially picks,

still to deal, although we need some clarity on the future protections involved in this one. It's a little messier than usual. Plus you have Tyler Hero. Plus you have Jaime Hakez, who we've been talking to death on this podcast and praising for how great he's been. You have Nicole Yovic as well who could be involved in a potential deal. There's still the parameters of something to be done. And in the meantime, you get Tara Rozier.

It's a really good player on a reasonable contract. I think they kind of still are whale hunting in a way. They just kind of threw the net over the side of the boat and Terrozier got snagged in it. and now he's on the Miami Heat. Barracuda, perhaps. A Marlin, a sword fit. Maybe those are too strong, but a decent-sized fish at the end of the day. I don't see how you could be super down on this move.

It's an obvious upgrade from what Kyle Lowry was offering at this stage in Lowry's career. You know, as much as he could be a table setter, you know, smart player, hard-nosed, all of the sort of intangible kind of stuff. He's just not at that level that he's previously been at. And Terry Rozier is just clearly a better player on offense and even on defense. Like, this guy's got quicker feet than Kyle Lowry does. Like, this isn't tough calculation. And I think, you know, if the best thing that's on the market in terms of potential

All-Star Edition is Zach Levine. And, you know, as much as I like Zach Levine, he's not heat culture. He would definitely have to. It would be culture shock if he got to Miami. But, you know, I think that the upgrade is clear. Donovan Mitchell and the Cavs have righted the ship in a way that I'm quite frankly shocked by that they've been able to maintain this thing without two of their three best players. And so when you look on the board and there's nothing there and you can improve your roster.

And again, this bears repeating. If you're Miami, there's no way you can be scared of Boston, right? You're like, we can upgrade our roster and a team that we've punked, bunch of times in the past few years. I'm sorry. I'm not going to be afraid of it. Let's upgrade our roster and see what we got. Obviously, you can't be afraid of the bucks and what they've shown. And then the Sixers, come on now.

So I understand the principle of just, why don't we just improve the roster that got to the goddamn NBA finals last year? Yeah. Let's just do that. And if they didn't go and build a team like Riley had built in the past, which was Star-laden, they definitely doubled down on this team being more much. Miami. And I mean that just culturally, but also like heat culturally. Like Terry Roseer definitely fits the guy at the bar with liquid courage who looks at you and is like, what are you looking at?

Spoken like somebody who has been that guy. No, no, no. Spoken from true experience. I would say I was the guy who was like, nothing. I guess I am the Celtics in a scenario, which is appropriate because I am from New England. I was making jokes. We're presenting. Ducey Zay before we got on Mike that I just can't wait for the Celtics and Heath to play in the playoffs this year. And scary Terry to take a big three, make it hold the follow through in the garden.

It's going to be incredible. Well, Rob, that's kind of the tradeoff there with someone like Rose here. He's been in big moments. Yes. But he has a little Mark is smart in big moments, we should say. Yes. Has a little Marcus smart in him, bumped up against the ceiling of his role with the Celtics, might take a shot or two that probably he shouldn't.

Do you think by and large, this is what the heat needed to take a step forward? Yeah, this is a trajectory we've seen a lot of times in the NBA. A talented player on a good team, bumps up against the limits of what they're allowed to do, goes to a bad team, shoots a lot, kind of forgets how to play defense a lot of the time that they're there, and then maybe circles back to a contender again and has to kind of adjust between those two extremes. Find the happy middle ground between them. And that's one area where I feel like there's enough of a track record for, for us to trust the heat on the types of players that they bring back.

Like, they're not usually wrong about this. When they bring in veteran guys, when they bring guys who have washed out at other places, not quite worked out at other places, or just upgraded what they had by bringing them in, Kyle Lowry might be the only exception. And it wasn't for lack of trying or work. It was just Kyle Lowry is older and was injured a lot and didn't, like, wasn't an offensive player by the time he came to Miami. But in terms of personality, I think there's lots of reason to think that Terrarizier could

taps back into some of the tenacious on-ball defense that he brought to the Celtics and some of the volume scoring that he brought to the Hornets. And hit a little bit of both of those things in ways that Miami needs, but not necessarily to the extremes that would be required of, you know, a star guard. Like there is a nice, a nice moderate role for him here. So no point guard on the Heath roster at this point. And now, when have they had a point guard? What is a point guard?

even Lowry was a move the ball, get it going and then run to a spot sort of guy. Is Gabe Vincent a point card? No. No. Nicolaevich is I guess their point card, but I think it's interesting to ask because Rozier will at the very

least have to do some of that in addition to Tyler Hero at least until it's time for Jimmy Butler to score and get the hell out of his way. Is there enough supplementary stuff there? Because we should mention Rozier having the best playmaking run of his career.

But on the other hand, he also had the run of the Hornets with LaMella Ball out. He was tasked probably doing that more than before. And so it is going to be a little bit more modern Rob in 2007, like no actual position basketball. Wow. Really, really pulling it back. Yeah. Are you excited to see that?

Do you think that could work? I think it does work for the heat all the time. This is a team that doesn't. run primarily not only through a point guard, but any one person, really. A lot of offense goes through BAM in the playoffs. A lot of offense goes through Jimmy. You know, Tyler Hero is going to be heavily involved, as you said. And now Rozier is kind of joining that mix as another playmaker and another ball handler.

And that's where I feel most comfortable for him. He really is kind of that two and a one's body, like a very small guard, definitely leans more score. Yes, has gotten assist this season by virtue of Lamello being out. But that's not where you want him to be. So him moving off the ball in the way that heat guys do around Bam, around Jimmy, around here, around Jaime Hawkes, who's going to continue to do playmaking for them too. That feels right.

Yeah, they're not going to ask Scary Terry to get on the ball, you know, and whip a weak side skip past the second the freaking weak side defender puts his foot in the paint. Like, they're not going to actually be James Hardin, in other words, right? Like, he's going to be making some pretty understandable. reads with the ball and he has handled like this is not a guy who you're just going to be like oh you can't trust him to handle the rock he's just not going to be eggs to be john stockton and that's never been the heat's sort of m o with their point guards in this iteration of the team so i think he's more than capable of completing the task and if you know if they want to be like yo

look tyler hero all that pick and roll stuff we kind of had you doing just be a offball movement shooter type of spot-up guy, type of, you know, a different kind of shooting guard. Go do that and let Terry do more of the on-ball duties. Like, I think that would be perfectly fine for this group. Yeah, I think that's probably where the advantage comes in. Maybe moving less off of Tyler Hero's plate because I think they had designs of him maybe growing into that role. I'm not sure I've personally seen enough of that.

He hasn't become Devin Booker as not just yet. Some people in their organization had posited before. But we talked about retrade value. I mean, heroes, the type of guy would ostensibly have to be in that package if they wanted to go forward. I don't know. I think we saw this summer that maybe the market is cool on him, in part because teams aren't as ready to accept high dollar amounts for players that aren't bulletproof stars. We're seeing more big twos and then other guys nowadays, in part because of the way the cap is being formed here. So maybe that had part of, that was part of the thinking with the heat here.

The problem with the star market, too, as it relates to players like Hero, is it's so conditional and it's so specific, right? One team has a player like Damien Lillard come available. And then the question is not, is Tyler Hero a good player? It's not, is he an attractive player to have on his current contract? It's, does that particular front office like Tyler Hero enough to make him the centerpiece of a star deal? And having canvassed a little bit around that subject, there's a lot of teams that just don't really like his style of play, who are pretty, skeptical of him as a primary piece of your offense. And when you have that

kind of mixed reputation where some teams are just kind of out on the idea of you as a star, it makes it hard for the exact right trade to come up at the exact right time with the exact right trade partner. Look at all this investigative reporting. We're doing on this podcast here. A lot of chatter. A lot of scuttlebuck going around.

This is chatter season, especially as the deadline looms. A lot of people are talking. I'm like there's been a lot of trades that have happened in like consequential trades not just like you know cleaning my books type of trade so far which makes me think that there's even more to come and teams being aggressive in the coaching market of firing people and doing that kind of stuff like i'm i'm excited about how aggressive cats are this early and and i can't wait for for the rest of the season to unfold

man and as far as miami's place in that too you know just we were talking about about whether they should wait and kind of play out the market for someone like Donovan Mitchell or another star player, for example. I think Miami had to do something. They've been in such a weird place this season and in particular, their offense over the last,

really month has just been stuck in the mud. Some of that is not having all their guys available. Some of it honestly was having Kyle Lowry in the lineup when he just literally could not score and was not respected as a scoring threat. So it would have been great for the heat to get Tyrese Halliburton, you know, John Stockton, as you said, well, it's like a great playmaker, a natural point guard.

But it's going to help them a lot just to have someone out there who's going to score points and has to be treated like he's going to score points. John Stockton would have done well with the Florida fans. I'll tell you that. Oh, yeah. That's his base. Oh, man. John Stockton has sullied his reputation these past few years, but, you know, he's still one of the goats, even if he hates Pfizer. It does seem like getting out of the play in mix was a big concern.

It's becoming a big concern for all these teams. And you look up and the heat were in fourth and now all of a sudden they're sliding into sixth and getting in danger of falling back into that where they have to win one game or maybe even play two like last year. And so, yes, I do think the timing makes sense here. Maybe that's driving so much action before we even get to the trade deadline. We should also mention it seem like they were going to be a second apron team regardless. And so this was kind of a use it or lose it sort of time period for them if a Mitchell isn't going to come on the market. They were going to be dealing with those concerns anyway.

Why not just get a good player in there and go forward? Yeah, the heat have a reputation as being a quote unquote glamour franchise, but they are always budget conscious. Every single season, no matter what the talent level is on the team, the heat are going to be budget conscious. Glamour's expensive, you know. Keeping up that lifestyle. You got to watch your budget. You can't just have any white suit. It has to be a very crisp one.

Yes. Has to be no eggs, pure white. That is fair. And them people don't need spray tans down there. They get sun all year round. Oh, well, we should talk about the other side of the trade just briefly here, because it does feel like the fire sale is on in Charlotte. I feel like we say this every two years.

I guess this one is notable, if only because Rozier had a few years left on his deal. I think it's two. and the second one has a partial guarantee after this year. But there's just really nothing else here to really hit your wagon to. Lamello's back.

Brandon Miller is showing some stuff. But other than that, I don't really know what you would be wanting to keep. So I'm curious if you guys see anyone left on the roster who you'd be targeting. We've talked about Gordon Hayward,

PJ Washington. Rob, I could already tell. You just, you want to send them somewhere. That's who I am, who I am, Justin. I can't help. help it. Yeah. PJ is, you know, obviously a veteran of the trade machine for a reason, PJ Washington as he's a really good theoretical stretch four and small ball five that you can talk yourself into for a bunch of different teams. It's worth noting that the shooting has not been great now for about

two years. And that's why I say more theoretical stretch option. I think he makes more sense as a small ball five than a stretch four at this point, clearly more of a bench player in an ideal situation. but there's lots of teams who could use that who could look at their backup center and say let's at least get a flavor of something different for that one matchup we're worried about. What do you think about Dallas for him? I don't mind it.

Their problem though, if anything, is like they're too small and already have struggles with defensive rebounding. He's not helping with that, right? He would give them more rim protection than someone like Dwight Powell does, obviously, but not necessarily as much help in terms of actual strength and size.

Yeah, they, They're kind of thin up front to begin with, and they need some level of heft. But also, they're always in the market for more athleticism, honestly, on the defensive end, where you just feel like, you know what, man, let's get some athletes out there. Let's give some sound defense at every single position and let Luca just save us and figure out the rest offensively. So obviously, PJ Washington is a guy, Miles Bridges, despite all of the mirrored. of issues that guy comes with. He's still a really talented

cat that people should be looking to get, I think, if they're trying to upgrade in talent. And I think Charlotte has basically signaled that yo, we're not doing this Jordan way anymore. We're going to get rid of these dudes,

do a full tear down, rebuild this thing. We got La Mello. We got Brandon Miller. Let's figure out everything else going from there. Cody Martin? Anyone? The other Martin? Yeah, distinctly the other Martin.

He's like the Cooper Manning of the Martin. Oh, Eli. Wow. Like, he's working his way back from a knee injury, so I think that's worth acknowledging as we're kind of shining a light on his season and his trade value. But exactly the zone of player who does not move the needle. And so if you're going to trade for Cody Martin, I would think it would have to be in a insurance player. for a team that's really light on wings,

if anything. All right. I think that's the podcast, unless you guys want to talk about my traffic issues getting in here. I really don't. But I do, just one last thing on the bucks.

I do love the idea of Doc as the little finger of the NBA, right, that he gets in there in a consultant role and he goes to management who brought him in and was like, eh, yeah, I don't know what I'm doing it. I don't know.

I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing it. And then obviously he gets the job after. I just love that as a conspiracy theory that Doc went in there to help but just sabotage it so that he could install himself. That's a great theory for me. You know, consultancy really the driving force of the American economy. A lot of people coming in and saying, hey, your company needs layoffs. Maybe the person whose job is most similar to mine in the past is not doing well enough and you should fire them.

Chaos is a consulting job. A little bit. Chaos is a ladder. Well, it's great to see, at least Waz and Isaiah. Rob, are we going to get you down here anytime soon? Let's get you down to the invite for this one. I appreciate that. It was shooting from the hip on this one, but maybe we'll get you down here in the next couple weeks.

All right, that's it for us. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely on production. Thank you to Ben Cruz. We'll be back on Sunday. We'll see you then. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Fanduel is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC.

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