The Ringer NBA Show - Ep. 87: Mini-Melee in OKC, Resting Players, and the 2016 NBA Draft Class With Kevin O'Connor

Episode Date: March 21, 2017

The Ringer's Chris Vernon and Kevin O'Connor discuss the spat between the Warriors and Thunder in OKC (5:00), the injury-report model in the NBA (17:00), the impact of resting stars like LeBron (23:00), redrafting the 2016 NBA draft (29:00), Malcolm Brogdon's Rookie of the Year candidacy (36:00), and the best prospects through the first weekend of the NCAA tournament (42:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And best of all, my listeners are going to get a $20 rebate off their first Seatgeek purchase. To get the $20 rebate, download the Seatgeek app, go to the Settings tab, and click Add promo code. Enter the promo code Ringer NBA. Seat Geek's going to send you $20 once you've made your first. ticket purchase. Download the Seatgeek app and enter promo code Ringer NBA today. Welcome to The Ringer NBA show. I'm Chris Vernon. Joining me as he does every Tuesday from the ringer.com is Kevin O'Connor. Kevin. Chris, 24 points for Roshan Holmes last night. Oh, good grief. I couldn't even get through the first 30 seconds of this podcast.

I couldn't let it go, Chris. I couldn't let it slide. I saw a Haley 24 points. throwing down lob dunks, hitting step back three pointers, he was unbelievable. There's an article by Haley O'Shaughnessy on the ringer.com about him today. People were sending me, people were sending me,

like I was eating my breakfast this morning, and I'm scrolling through Twitter on my mentions, and it says, shots fired, and I was like, what? And I clicked on it. It was an article about Rishan Holmes on the ringer.

Hashtag, who is Holmes? Unbelievable. Never in my life have I ever, Have I ever taken a beating over, not knowing. By the way, can we just refresh this? At the very beginning of this season, I was unaware of Rishon Holmes, who had taken literally 200 shots for one of the worst teams in NBA history last year. That is not outlandish.

But now you know him, though. Now you know who he is. I will tell you that there are a lot of famous. players in the NBA. I hear more about him than every other one combined. I will say this for Philly fans have got a major chip on their shoulder, right? Then they are very, very passionate, at least the ones I hear from, that's for sure. The big story last night was the Warriors going to Oklahoma City, and then you have this

like ridiculous mini hold me back melee with step curry and russell westbrook and samaj christian which was the absolute worst um and then curry hits the the buzzer beater going into half time and sprints into the tunnel and it was just never a competitive game this warrior's thunder game but it feels like you know in in the midst of it being such a non-competitive game at least we got the little mini melee that went on, right? It feels like ever since Kevin Durant's left for Golden State and Westbrook posted those cupcakes on Instagram, it's all been leading up to that hold me back fight. It's all been leading up to that.

And so it was nice to get it last night. I don't think it would compare to the anger that would be in the room if those teams face off in a four-game Warriors sweep series in the playoffs, which is always a possibility. I think that would be, you know, what we really, really want. But this was nice, man. That was good to see. I like seeing those scuffles, especially, you know, when all the guys are friends on teams, it's nice to see, like, a rivalry between, I don't know if it's a rivalry as much

at because the Warriors are just beating them down each time as much as it is just, teams are just flat out don't like each other. And I like that. And I wish there was a little bit more of that sprinkled in the league. There was 10 guys on the court last night, and I did this right off the top of my head. down the 10 guys and then I posted on Twitter basically a fight draft, right, of the 10 guys on the court. Oh. Yeah. Number one, I went Todd Gibson.

Number two. Okay. I'll go through. This was my top 10 in order and you can tell me who you think is underrated, overrated in my fight draft, okay? These are the 10 guys that were on the court last night. Number one, Todd Gibson. You tweeted it out too? Huh?

You tweeted it out too? Yeah, yeah, I tweeted out. Number one, Todd Gibson. Number two, Draymond Green. Number three, Zaza Pechulia. Number four, Stephen Adams. Number five, Russell Westbrook. Number six, Andrea Gwada.

Number seven, Victor Oladipo. Number eight, Samaj Christian. Number nine, Steph Curry. Number 10, Clay Thompson. So I think that's mostly fair. I have a couple questions, Chris. Why Taj Gibson ahead of Dreamon Green? I feel like Draymond's a nut.

Like he will go at you and he won't stop even when everybody else on his team is saying, Draymond, stop, stop, stop, he's going to keep going. I think they both have that bulldog mentality in them and that Todd is bigger and stronger. So that would be my answer. That's fair. That's fair. Why Zaza ahead of Stephen Adams? And by the way, Todd looks meaner, much meaner.

Dramon's smiling a lot. Zaza-Pachulia because of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Kevin Garnett head butt. Okay. Well, I won't argue with that. And I think I know why, but I want to hear your reasoning why Clay is last. I think Clay Thompson cannot fight at all. I thought you were going to say because he's always high and he's just relaxed or something.

No, no, no. I just think he cannot fight at all. And let me go back to the Pechulia thing. Pachulia reminds me of the kind of guy that like doesn't believe. lead, right, which is a big advantage when it comes to fighting. Whereas, and Adams, while I think, you know, he's got the Kiwi thing, he's very tough, I find him to be very robotic in his movements. And so I think this can be hurtful when it comes to fist of cuffs.

So I don't know. Those robotic movements is why I was so wrong about him in the 2013 draft. I was like, this guy's, you know, a robot out there. He doesn't know how to play. It comes unnatural of him. I was wrong, but I feel like it's also possible that maybe you'd be wrong for the same exact reasons I was wrong about him with basketball for him in the fighting ring. Pachulia. Maybe he's just so strong and he's not going to stop punching that he would really lead the way here.

Well, listen, if the argument I'm going to get into is Pachulia Adams, then that's fine. I mean, those are not, I'm not sticking my flag in the ground too hard for either of them. But I went with Pechulia simply because he seems to not, I don't know, he just strikes me as one not to trifle with. I think you have a little bit of big man bias here with your top four. I think I don't disagree. I think I would rank him pretty much the same way, but I think at least one of Russ, Iggy or Oladipo would probably end up finding themselves in the top three or four after the fight were to actually happen. Well, if you go back and watch a video, Oladipo, he didn't really care. about anything that was going on last night.

He wasn't really in the midst. Whereas, whereas... He's a dancer for the fight. Yeah, Westbrook, on the other hand, like, speaking of guys that don't bleed, you remember that thing last year where he got hitting it, like, dented his face?

And it was like it was like it was a machine, like he was from Terminator or something. He is Basketball Terminator. I don't even know how you get your face dented. I don't even know how that's possible. Either that, it's like he's one of the robots from Westworld. That's what he is.

the Westworld. Yep. All right. So that was the big incident that went on last night. The other thing that started circulating yesterday was this big controversy about resting players. And the reason it came up yesterday is because there was a memo that went out by Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA. In a memo sent to all 30 NBA teams on Monday, Adam Silver said that resting players has become, quote, an extremely significant issue for our league and said there will be a full discussion of the practice at the April 6th Board of Governors meeting in New York.

He went on to say, decisions of this kind do not merely implicate issues of player health and team performance on the court. They can also affect fans and business partners, impact our reputation, and damage the perception of our game with so much at stake, it's simply not acceptable for governors to be uninvolved or deferred to, making authority on these matters to others in their organization. Basically what that's saying is the owners, he is saying that the owners, that he is putting it on them, that you can't just say, well, my GM and my coach run the team. I'm the owner of the team. He is saying that they need to step in on this. This became a massive subject because of what took place over the weekend, the Cavalier

sitting guys. We have recently seen the warrior sitting guys. The Spurs, you know, notoriously famous for this. Once upon a time, David Stern find them $250,000 for sitting four of their best players on a nationally televised game. What do you make of the memo silver set out, sent out then? And what's going to happen with this? I'm a little torn. I will tell you right off the bat, I'm a little torn on this subject.

So I wrote about this on the ringer this morning, and I have a couple thoughts. For one, I think this issue is not an extremely significant issue when you look at the issues facing the NFL, when you look at the issues baseball had to deal with before or still have to deal with with declining ratings. It's not a big, extremely significant an issue, as Adam Silver called it. First of all, I think we need to be careful to have perspective here that maybe in the context of the NBA, it appears like an issue, but the league is healthier and better than it's ever been. And in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big issue at all. With that said, I do see Adam Silver's point.

I tend to lean towards the team front office coaching side of things when it comes to all issues, including like drafts, right? I still think if a player goes to college, they should go to school for two years or come straight out of school, out of high school. So I lean towards the team with most issues, including this, that they should be able to do what they want. With that said, that 1.1 overnight rating that the Cavaliers Clippers game had, that's not a great sign. And Silver and the owners from a business perspective do have a point that the best players should be playing in the best games. And the way to do that, though, is I don't think it's punishment.

I don't think fines or suspensions are really going to solve much of anything at all. As you said, Chris, David Stern, find the Spurs $250,000 a couple of years ago for arresting their older guys. For the sixth game of a road trip, for the second game of a back-to-back, I mean, they had good reason to arrest those guys for the game. It was the schedule that made them have to do it in Miami against the heat at the time with LeBron and Wade and Chris Bosch. So I think, look, they're moving the schedule up one week ahead. That's not going to solve everything. It's more of a band-aid, but it will allow the schedule makers a little bit more flexibility to, I guess, allow for more time for those marquee matchups. So instead of the Cavaliers having to go to L.A. the next night, maybe the schedule changes a little bit.

So there's a day off after the game against the Clippers to allow for that matchup to actually happen. And it's probably a really hard thing to do. Whatever algorithms they use, I think that they might be able to improve things at least a little bit. The second part, though, is that even if it remains an issue, though, I don't see suspensions or fines as a solution. I think you need to find some type of common ground, whether that's allowing teams an allocated number of DNP rest games that they can use over the course of the season, or if the team does want to rest them, they have to play for 25 to 50% of their usual minutes workload. So LeBron would have played nine minutes to 19 minutes last Saturday against the Clippers. I don't think that's ideal. but I think it's kind of a compromise in some ways.

Or at the beginning of the season when the schedule is released, there can be games designated where teams can't rest the players for DNP rest. If a player's hurt, you can do it, but not for rest. I think there's ways to do this without actually finding teams large sums of money for reasons that aren't going to solve anything. What are your thoughts on when I said, Chris? Okay. So first things first.

I have been on the other end of this, the resting players thing in a small market, right? When the Cleveland Cavaliers came to Memphis this year and it was not a big deal and it certainly doesn't make big national news necessarily, they didn't bring any of their guys. They did not bring LeBron James. They did not bring Kevin Love. They didn't bring Kyrie Irving.

None of them. They didn't even fly. And so I have a real soft spot for the people that because there were, you go to games like that and there are literally thousands of. of people in the crowd that it is their big thing of the year, right? There's a lot of people that saved up a lot of money to buy good seats because it was the one chance their kid was going to get to see LeBron James in person. And I don't want to sit here and cry a river over this kind of stuff necessarily,

but I do have empathy towards that, right? I mean, that sucks when you spend $400 to buy yourself lower bowl tickets so that your 12-year-old son who worships LeBron James can see him. as a defending champ, literally the only time he comes to town, that's lame, man, like when he doesn't show up, when none of them show up and none of them play. So there is a business on the side of this. Now, that being said, what I am interested in and fascinated in is this will change, and I don't think it's going to be a penalty thing with what you, like what you were saying. I take it from the standpoint of, okay, that in the sense that the, you know, when it's the calves and the grizzies, it doesn't make big national news and those guys sat, but it was like a blip on the radar, right? This only becomes a massive national topic and a, quote, problem for the NBA when it happens on these national TV games.

You have billions of dollars these networks have paid, right? and that I actually think that it is a problem in the sense for Adam Silver and the NBA that it happens on the big national games. I think if these teams don't, if these teams decide that they're not going to rest their players in the premier national television games that this goes away. That when they do it on a Tuesday night against the bucks, nobody's going to give a crap. and when they do it on a Thursday night in Orlando, nobody's really going to care. But Silver will make it, I think that's what will happen with this.

And I also think the schedule makers have to do a better job of taking that into account. You know, set up the schedule with your premier teams when you know there's a good likelihood that their games are going to be on national TV. Maybe, like, you know, because I, on the other hand, like, again, I said, this is not necessarily a whole black and white issue. for me. The Warriors were playing their eighth game in 13 days, and it was the second night of a back-to-back. I mean, that is a lot. And they had lost Kevin Durant in that span, by the way. I mean, that's a lot of games on the road in a short amount of time, and you were on the second half of a back-to-back. You know, making that a national television game seems to me to be

a fool's errand. And so I would, I don't know, man. I think what will happen is they'll have this meeting and silver will just kind of make it clear, yo, you want to arrest players? Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to fight completely. But there's two, and here's the other element that people have not talked about, Kevin, is these leagues, and Silver's been way more open to it than the other leagues, but these leagues do know that people gamble on their games, 100%. And that's why that was a, you know, like, And you heard a lot of people in Vegas complaining about this that right before the game in the pregame media scrums is when they, you know, when Ty Lou said, hey, nobody's playing tonight.

Well, like, that line's been posted for like almost, you know, 15 hours. And so one of the things he said was I think there's going to be two things. A, if you are going to sit players, you're going to have to announce it early in the day. and B, I think he will make it very clear that we don't want you sitting guys on national television games. If you got to sit guys, do it in the plan for that. Because you know when your national TV games are, and we have business partners, and they spent billions of dollars to put this stuff on their TV screens, and that can't be.

And I think that's what will end up happening. So I think you're touching, you touched on something that I mentioned in the article today, too and that's kind of that maybe the NBA can take a page from the NFL with injury report so like let's say on Monday morning every week the team releases like an injury report on players who are sick players who are injured or even fatigued because they have that data and and it could and it could outline the likelihood that they will miss a game for the remainder of that week Monday through Sunday or however you want to schedule the week and maybe that that would allow teams to have the breathing room to say hey, on Friday night against, you know, the Bucks, there's a chance that LeBron's going to miss the game.

And then on Friday morning or Friday afternoon, whenever the NBA forces them to say it, maybe at that point, that's when you say the player, I'll miss the game. I don't know, man. I think teams and coaches should be able to really do what they want. But from the business perspective, as we've said, like it does matter, especially for those marquee games. I think you're 100% right, Chris, in the sense that. that this isn't about those Tuesday night games against the magic. It's about those Saturday night, Sunday afternoon, Thursday night on TNT games

between two playoff contenders. It's about those Cavaliers versus Warriors matchups. It's about the spurs against the Clippers. It's about those games that they really care about. And look, they're right that we do deserve to see the best product on those games. And I just hope they don't go too far with this, whatever the punishment is, I just hope it doesn't become extreme. Well, and this is the issue.

This is the issue with having what is on one end a competitive product, right? Like that's the goal of the team with other being in the entertainment industry. You don't just get to do what you want. You just don't. You are a slave to the money. Everybody is. You know what I mean? Like you don't get to just do.

I mean, you don't get to just walk up to the, you don't get to. walk up to the podium and drink Coke if you want to. You know what I mean? Like, you don't, you can't do it. You have business partners. And if business partners are calling you and saying, you know, this is, this is ridiculous. Like, we paid you

billions of dollars. Like, this isn't what we paid for. We didn't pay, we didn't pay you billion dollars to watch frigging Imman Schumper play basketball. You know what I mean? Like, this is prime time on a weekend night. This can't be. And so he's hearing it from them. Like,

somebody did spend money to put that on television and somebody spent money to go to that game. And so that's the fine line, which is, yeah, that's fine. It's competitive. But this thing is sold. Like, somebody paid for this and that's why this thing is so successful and all these guys are making all this money. Well, and, you know, the tough part of that is, you know, the one thing we haven't touched on is it's an 82 game season and that's a lot of games. and the one easy solution would be cutting down the games to like 62 games or 66 games, but that's a really hard thing to do again because of the money factor. So I think that's by far the easiest solution if you do want to cut down on the number of games players. Well, and how about this?

Let me say this, Kevin. All right. So the whole, like, they play too many games. I just don't buy all this. And with the LeBron, like, let's just say LeBron, right? Because he's the biggest star. The two guys that really drive tickets in any market are, Steph and LeBron, all right?

Those are the guys that people come out to see way more than anybody else. That's like the rock show is coming to town. How about this? If you're so worried about LeBron James and his health and the load that he is carrying, how about in like the whatever year it is, the 17th year of his frigging career, him not playing 38 minutes a game? Like, what? Like, forgive me, but like, I don't know.

That seems outrageous to me. LeBron James is second in the NBA in minutes per game. And you're going to tell me about the workload and he needs rest and all this, yada, yada, yada. What are we talking about here? I mean, look, it's a complicated issue, right? I think that's the one thing that we can agree on here is that regardless of a team's philosophy you when it comes to rest. So maybe the cat, look, and even though you mention LeBron, you know, playing 38 minutes per game roughly, he still only missed three games this year. I believe three.

Correct me if I'm wrong. It might be more like four or five, but he still has not missed many games this season or over the course of his entire career. He took that two-week hiatus a couple years ago. But other than that, LeBron has not missed much time at all over the course of his career. So for him to be kind of the catalyst here of the conversation that star players shouldn't rest on four national TV games, it's a little bit odd to me that he's playing the kind of put it over the edge here. That's totally fair. And by the way, it's his 14th year. I gave him a couple extra years. It's his 14th year.

But that is totally fair. LeBron Jay has been a warrior and he has been a guy that has played so many games, so many years in a row. I think that in the end, Silver is just going to say, listen, this. can't be on national TV. That's what they care about. You know what I mean? Like, they can act like they care about everything. They can act like they care about a weeknight game in an Orlando or Memphis or Milwaukee or

Utah or whatever. What they really care about, especially is that Saturday night ABC thing. That Saturday night ABC thing dictates everything. The other games, like, take for instance here, the game can't even start until 8 o'clock Central because of that game. True. That's happened twice now. In fact, the Grizzlies and the Spurs played last Saturday. Couldn't start until 8 o'clock because of that game.

Like, the NBA dictates everything. That's how big that game is to them. That they move everybody else's schedule around in order to cater to that particular game. It's crazy. So what should the penalty be if a team does rest their players on a national TV game? Let's say the NBA takes precautions and setting up the schedule. So there's ample time between national TV games. It's not the second night of a back-to-back.

It's not the seventh game in a 10-day road trip, right? What should the penalty be for a team? Like, let's say the Warriors, if they rest a completely healthy, Stefan Curry, completely healthy Clay Thompson and Durant and Draymond. They all rest. What should the penalty be? In the words of LeVar Ball, a billion dollars. It's because there's no easy answer.

There is no easy answer. There's no easy answer. A fine isn't going to do anything. Here's what I'm telling you. What is a penalty that you can actually do to stop this? Here's what I'm telling you. They'll get this worked out where they tell these teams not to do it for national television games. Trust me.

That's what will happen. That's what will happen. But then when does that run out? When did teams start reverting back to old habits? Because that's what the science is telling teams to do. I mean, because look, that's what happened after Stern find the spurs. There was a report from Tom Haversstrode. Oh, no.

No, you find them. You can find them a ton of money. A hundred percent you can. Now, then you get into maybe a legal war, honestly, which is scary. But, I mean, you can find them a ton of money because the owners are not going to want to pay. You think Peter Holt loved cutting a $250,000 check for Popovich sitting his guys. Now he backs his guy no matter what, and they got the titles and whatever else. But there's not a lot of owners that want to cut a $250,000 check for sitting guys.

You know what I mean? You can say that's chicken chains to these guys, but they don't want to do it. These owners don't just want to, you know what I mean? Like to them, that's not an easy conversation to have if you're the GM. Calling your own and be like, hey, coach wants to sit these guys tonight or we're going to do some planned rest tonight, but it's going to cost us whatever, $500,000 to do it. You know what I mean? How many owners you think are going to say okay?

Yeah. Well, that's kind of my argument for, you know, some type. of compromise here. If it's going to happen, maybe there can be some type of regulation where the player is required to play a quarter. 25% of their usual minutes workload. If LeBron is having a rest night, he plays for nine minutes. And I know that's not ideal because it screws up the stats, it screws up team rotations, and there are a host of problems that come with that too. But it's just an idea. And maybe that's some type of compromise that a team and ownership might be able to find because then that way, the people who buy tickets

seven months ahead of time to go travel to L.A. or to San Antonio to see their favorite player play, they can say they saw them, even if it was just for nine minutes. They can say that they saw them. And it's some type of middle ground for the fans, for the owners, the coaches, for everybody involved. All right, Ken, we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you about reevaluating the 2016 NBA draft, which you wrote about, and also some of the NCAA tournament performers that may have helped their draft stock in the games the first weekend that we just saw. We'll tell you about that right after these words. Quick break to tell you about our sponsor, BetDSI.

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Okay. It did not suck. It just is off to a little bit of. a slow start. It's just going to take a lot of start. But here's the thing. I wrote an article before the season where it was like recalibrating expectations for the 2016

NBA draft class. And in that, I said keep in mind that this is a role player draft. It is not a star-filled draft class. There's not going to be a guy who jumps off and gets up to an incredible start like Carl Anthony Towns. It's a role player draft. And that's

exactly what it's kind of been so far. And for a young player to carve wrote a role on an NBA team is rare. So it's going to take time for these guys to really move into their roles that you'll see them in for a long time over their careers. But with that said, there have been standouts. There have been guys that have shown signs of sustaining a long career. And I think, you know, we might not see guys with big numbers, but there are guys like

Juan Hernan Gomez and Malcolm Brogden that they've done things that show they're going to be playing for quite a long time. Okay. You say is a role player draft and it's going to take a while and then we're going to look up in several years and these guys are going to be role players. That being said, who can be stars? That's the hardest to predict, right? Because we talked about this throughout this whole year, right? If you look at guys their first year, could you ever suspect they would become what they have become?

And in many cases, when we did it with the All-Star team, it was very, very difficult to figure that out, right? Like you couldn't, you would have never suspected that Kyle Lowry would become what he became. You would never suspect, even James Harden, I don't think anybody that, after his rookie year, if you and I were doing an NBA show and saying, do we think James Hardin's going to be a, you know, a guy that's in the MVP conversation every year and possibly the best offensive player in the entire league? Like, I don't think many people would have seen that after year one. So there is a bit of a skittishness I have with projecting these guys. But, I mean, is Dario Sarre's not going to be a role guy, right?

He looks great so far. And Brandon Ingram, like, is that his destiny to just be a role guy? Like, I thought Brandon Ingram was going to be a star in the league. I still think he can be a star in the league. But I do agree with you. It's going to take some time. Well, on that note, I mean, one thing that's important to say, I mean, I'm sure there's somebody listening that's like Sarich was drafted in 2014, not 2016.

This article was written as kind of a review of the 2016 rookie class. So that includes and B, it includes Sarich. But we did kind of touch on the draft itself at the beginning of the article. But with that said, I mean, to touch on Sarich, I think, I mean, look, I've said this before, and I don't care how crazy I sound saying it, but I think there's at least a chance he ends up a better player than Ben Simmons. I know I might be on an island with that, but I look at it. Sarich's game and the dude just makes winning plays in virtually every category. He needs to get a lot better on the defensive end of the floor, but he did get better over time overseas. I think,

I think that's something that could come in time with him. But on the offensive end of the floor, if we focus solely on that, Ben Simmons is a negative shooter. Dario Sarich, right now at this point of his career, is relatively average, right, from three point range. But he improved over time as he got adjusted to the three point line overseas. He's improved over the course of the season shooting the three, and I think he'll continue to improve shooting the three over the course of his career. And that opens up everything for him on the offensive end of the floor. He's a great passer with incredible passing vision,

as we've seen with his no-look passes. He can finish from every level of the floor. Simmons is an immaculate passer, right? But I think he's a little bit more one-dimensional than people think on the offensive end. So I think it's a little bit less outrageous than people think for me to say Sarich can end up better than Simmons. But with that said, those two guys are going to be really good from this draft, from this rookie slash draft class. It's hard to talk about it because Simmons didn't play this year.

But Sixers have two really good forwards going forward that are versatile and can do different things in your team. Well, I will say this, though, Kevin. You had this winshare stat in your article. And the thing that freaked me out was it was the lowest amount of windshares that we have seen since 2000, 2001, which is a historically horrendous draft, right? That's the Kenyon Martin, Stromile Swift, Darius Miles, Marcus Fisor. Mike Miller and Mike Miller and Jamal Crawford, both still in the league, by the way. Yeah.

But, I mean, you go through the rest of that draft. That is a rough draft. Rough. Really rough. But my point with that graph, though, was that look at some of the other teams on there, though. The 1996, 2003 rookie classes, they were ranked towards the middle when they ended up being some of the best draft rookie classes we've seen. The 1987 class was near the bottom, ended up being one of the best with guys like Scotty Pippen,

Reggie Miller, Horace Grant, Reggie Lewis. And if you want to really include David Robinson, who was drafted that year but didn't play until 89, you could throw him in there as well. It ranks as the third worst, but it all ended up being one of the best. So I don't know if there's necessarily a correlation. Let me present another side to this, all right, and that it may not be necessarily a total indictment of the talent level that was in the draft. But rather, it is in large part of commentary on the NBA now, which is a league that fires its coaches that this is going to be the first time nobody's been fired in forever. But the timeline on these coaches is like two to three years in many cases, unfortunately.

And unless you have some kind of directive where you have full confidence from your ownership group that you are going to be able to keep your job and that this is a process and we know that you are breaking in the young guys, you are getting them into the rotation and it might be short-term loss for long-term gain, that outside of those which are rare instances that these guys are much less apt to play rookies than ever before because the job security is worse than ever before. This year might not be the greatest of years to make that point simply because we're going to go through a season.

It appears without anybody being fired. But generally, the climate in the NBA has been, you don't keep your job for very long. And so you've got to squeeze as many wins as you possibly can out. And coaches are just inevitably going to feel better about playing veteran guys, even if they're not as good of players, rather than putting up with. rookie mistakes or taking some losses because you are trying to develop players. And I think that could be, I think that could be part of this too, right? Because how many are just told, hey, we know this is about the future and we want to build

for the future. And the best way to build for the future is to be putting our young guys out on the court and letting them get better and letting them take their lumps and learn their lessons. And if we lose, we lose. that's very uncommon. And so I think there's part of that, too. If the job security possibly was greater in the NBA, that you would see more rookies contributing, let's just say,

or playing more, right? I think that's a great point, Chris, and I had an agent text to me maybe a month ago or so. I think it was, you know, in mid-February, basically saying, look, the only reason anybody thinks Malcolm Brogden is a rookie of the year candidate is because he's actually playing. But there's other guys who can contribute in a role player level role across the league that just aren't receiving the opportunity. And that's true. There are guys that can do what Brogden has done.

And just because they're not doing it doesn't mean that they can't. Because opportunity is what's necessary oftentimes for players to show what they can do. That goes true for veterans. It's true for rookies. It's true for everybody in the league. And as you said, I think, and as you said, look, I think the league in many ways is deeper than it's ever been, right? I think you look at every team, every roster, even some of the bad ones, there's talents on the teams, and it will be hard for younger players to carve out playing time in those situations. For example, like, look at, I look at the Atlanta Hawks.

They're not a great team, they're average, but they have a lot of depth. so there's not a lot of opportunity for a guy like DeAndre Bembri to get playing time. He was one of my, I think I had him ranked the lottery last year, and yet he has barely played this season. I got like Malik Beasley. I had him ranked around 20th for the draft last year, and I think he's looked really good in very minimal minutes this year. He's a three-point shooting, athletic guard who can switch multiple positions.

He's barely played because the Nuggets have like 800 guards ahead of him on the roster. In a different situation, maybe Malik Beasel. is actually a rookie of the year candidate. Maybe if Beasley's on the Sixers, he's playing 35 minutes a game and he's averaging 17. You don't know. In an alternate universe, some of these guys could be actually flourishing. It's so largely dependent on situations for players. And I think this year, for whatever reason, a lot of guys are putting up low numbers.

And I don't think that's because it's a bad draft class. I just think they're underperforming during their rookie seasons. And I think I'm really confident that we're going to look back at this class and think that there were some surprise stars. There were some really good long-term players, those guys you want on your championship teams, those guys that you need to have supporting your stars. I think we're going to find a lot of those from this draft class. It's interesting what you brought up Brockton because he is, when you talk to assistant coaches around the league, as I have throughout the year, many of them will have the gripe. and I don't want to get into the whole AAU thing and AAU's bad and culture or whatever, but I will tell you that on more than one occasion, coaches have told me that now,

more than it has been in the past, that their job is not just coaching, but rather teaching with the young players. That a lot of these kids, because especially the elite of the elite, they don't have to be coached, right? And in many cases, it's not a real basketball coach that is coaching them or is around them all the time in the games that they're playing in their development. But they are just superior to everybody, whether that be athletically, whether that be skill-wise, whatever it may be. But then they get to the NBA and there's a lot of teaching basketball that needs to take place with these guys because they can still get by in college just on, you know, they're just better than everybody, right? Well, once you get to the NBA, you're not just better than everybody.

You've also got to be on their level intelligence-wise and knowing the way the game is played and knowing what to do in a pick and roll, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of fundamentals or what would be considered basics, many coaches find those to not be well-learned or that there's a rawness to these prospects in terms of basketball acumen that has gotten greater over the years. And therefore, when you see like a Malcolm Brogden, if you watch him play, and I saw him in person last week, he looks nothing like a rookie. I mean, he looks, he knows how to play.

He knows how to play. And that's why he's getting on the court. A, he will defend, which coaches always want their, you know, players to defend. And that's usually what pisses them off the most about rookies as defensive errors. but the other thing is he knows how to he knows how to play he knows where the ball's supposed to go he knows how to get around a screen he knows how to use a screen and so he's he's a little head of the curve in many in many cases as compared to maybe in his draft class but these guys you know they're playing high school the playing a u the most talented play one year in college and you know i mean do you think you think you think marquis chris benefited you know in

insanely from going, you know, one year? Do you think Ben Simmons, you know, benefited greatly by going to LSU for a year? I mean, I would argue no, right? And so, and they just got by on their talent anyway. It wasn't like they were learning the finer points of basketball in their year there. And so they get to the NBA and they kind of got to be taught too. And so you combine that with coaches having a shorter rope for mistakes than ever because their job security. I think, you know, you know, listen, I've made this whole case, Kevin. It might just be that these guys suck. I think, you know, you could be right, but I disagree, obviously, as I said earlier.

But I want to touch on a way, this style in which that we're kind of assessing this. So I put out those windshare numbers to kind of take a production perspective. And the reason why I did that was kind of influenced by something the ringers, Mike Lamont, Lombardi said on the GM Street podcast with Tate Fraser last week. And he described the four types of scouts that all begin with the letter P. Poor scouts who can't recognize talent. Picker scouts who pick on one thing a player can't do and lose focus on the things that they can do. Production scouts that just grade the production and projection scouts who see the talent and then project the player forward.

What I've seen a lot with this year's draft class is a lot of assessment on specifically on their production. And I think the important thing with all young players, not just rookies, I'm talking all players on their rookie contracts and players in college and high school, the assessment needs to be focused on projection. We need to look at these guys and project ahead with what are we seeing now from them that can improve and be enhanced going forward. So that's kind of the lens in which I tried to look at these players through. So even though Juan Hern and Gomez might be putting up like four points per game, it doesn't mean that he's not doing things. things with his opportunity that show that he could become a really, really good player, and maybe if he makes certain changes to his game and maybe even a borderline All-Star, I think there's certain guys across the league where you just need to look past the numbers and look specifically

at their game. And I know that's like an old school philosophy, like, you know, watch film, but I think in many ways it's kind of true because so much of the player's success is based on opportunity, and that really can't be portrayed in the numbers. I agree with you. Real quickly, let's talk about the NCAA tournament. It was the first weekend. We are down to 16 teams. And a lot of the guys that are highly projected are still left.

Josh Jackson from Kansas, DeAron Fox from Kentucky, Lonzo Ball from UCLA, you know, maybe lower in the draft, Caleb Swanigan from Purdue is still around. But a lot of first round guys still around. Who do you think has helped their stock the most in that first weekend of the NCAA tournament? nobody I don't think anything changes I I wrote about that last week I think you know we need to be careful of not riding the wave here of the of the of the March madness I guess um hype that that occurs for these guys I think I think Josh Jackson is incredible as he looked last last weekend against Michigan State he was unbelievable I think in terms of what you look for

from a scouting perspective it was everything you want to see with his ability to create shots off the dribble for himself. But with that said, it's not like we haven't seen that over the course of the year. He's shown flashes of that before. And one game in March isn't really going to change a lot for me. I think what you could see is, like Lonzo Ball's game that he had, he really controlled the pace. He controlled the tempo, and he did it on the highest of levels after kind of a sloppy first

half for himself. I think that's an encouraging thing. But again, I'm not sure it pushes him past. Markell Fultz. It might for certain teams, but I don't think, I don't think it moves as a needle in an extreme sense that these guys are suddenly going from pick 20 to pick three or pick eight to pick 25. I think, I think guys are mostly set and if anything, teams will be more a little more confident in their evaluations of certain guys. Jackson really stands out to me because last week I talked to Sonny Vicaro, who of course is the subject of 30 for 30 soul man.

And, you know, he spent his whole life in the shoe industry and made his bones by finding Michael Jordan once upon a time. He had Kobe Bryant. He had Tracy McGrady. And then his career ended when he had LeBron James all locked up. And Adidas didn't come with the money. And the rest is literally sports history. I say that to say, Sonny has done a pretty good job at talent evaluation over the years and pegging the guy. and though he is not on the scene like he used to be,

I asked him last week of everybody in this draft class if I just gave you a blank check and said, go sign a guy up for a shoe deal. Like the guy that you're going to bank on, and he said Jackson. He said that's the guy he would go and he would sign. Which is interesting. I'm a little surprised,

considering some of the off-court controversy surrounding Josh Jackson. I'm a little surprised by that. Yeah. I don't know. If we're talking about him strictly as a player, then I get it. I do get it. Like I said earlier, his talent is obvious.

I think he's a versatile defensive player. That's what teams like in today is NBA guys who can switch and defend guards and forwards. He's a little bit thin, but he has a lot of talent in the defensive end of the floor. He can handle the ball. You can use him as a secondary pick and roll ball handler. He can play alongside your guard. He's athletic. He does different things.

he can create space off the dribble. Really the key thing for him, as it is for a ton of guys, is improving his shot. I'll tell you this, is that shot for real? The other one. That's the big part. If it is,

he's a problem. I'll tell you, just from watching, like, just watching like, you know, I know you had written about watching it with a prospect's eye or with a scout's eye for the tournament.

That Kentucky Witches Hall game and Fox, I mean, thinking, when that kid fills out, I mean, I mean, big steals. And then with the game on the line, he just drives past the kid and just hammers one. Like, he is.

De Aaron Fox is, he is serious now. Big time, big time player. Wow. And I see, I kind of see, you know, every scout I talk to like him more than Monk. They all do. Really? Yes. They like Fox more than Monk.

Is it because he does more than just score? Is it a well-rounded game? Every scout that came to town that I asked and I said, you know, I would bring up Monk. I'd say, well, what about Monk for Kentucky? And every one of them would say, what about Fox for Kentucky? Hmm. I know. See, look, I lean towards Monk just because of his natural shooting ability.

But with that said, Fox does do a whole lot more things that, you know, I'm sure this weekend we'll see him as the guy that's trying to lock down Lanzo ball when Kentucky and UCLA face off against each other. and it won't be Monk. That's because Fox is a far superior defensive player. He's also the guy, he's their lead guard. He's the guy who makes things happen on the offensive and the floor for them. Monk can too, and my thing is, you know, I've said this before, is that I think if Monk did have the keys to the car and he was the point guard, he was the guy really controlling things for them, I think he can playmake a little bit more than he's actually shown with his opportunity. And that kind of calls back to what we were talking about with the NBA guys. Just because Monk isn't running pick and roll or he's not playmaking for Kentucky doesn't mean that he can't.

Devin Booker barely ever ran pick and roll his year at Kentucky. Carl Towns didn't shoot threes. Just because guys can't do things or aren't doing things doesn't mean that they can't. And I think Monk has that capability. You know what my life's goal is, right? Tell me, Chris, watch for Sean Holmes play live. To hang out with LeVar Ball this weekend. Oh, ho.

It's happened, Kevin. We're going to get him on a podcast, man. It's happened. I have already reached out to people who know people, and we will see, but you better believe I'm going to be tracking him down. Hey, do not mention my article because I'm not sure he's going to like that. Last week I wrote about Lonza Ball on the ringer, the keys to understanding his mechanics. Yeah, I'm not doing that.

Don't tell him about that. If you get him on the podcast, ask him about it, but don't tell him about it. But don't tell him about it before the podcast. I'm going to do my best. At the very best, I'm going to get him on the podcast at the very least. I've at least got to go meet the guy. LeVar Ball. He's a one of a fun dude.

Kevin, enjoy your week. Enjoy watching the NBA and the NCAA tournament games that are going on. And we will talk to you next week. Thanks, brother. You too, Chris. Have a good one. It's going to do it for another ringer NBA show. If you dig what you're hearing, go give us a rating and review on iTunes.

tunes and we will talk to you on Thursday. Today's episode is brought to you by the Ringer University podcast. That's where you can find teed-up host Mark Titus and Tate Frazier breaking down every game during March Madness. Subscribe to Ringer University right now and let our college basketball experts be your buddies for the whole tournament.