The Ringer NBA Show - Golden State’s Unc Superteam Dream, the Jaylen Brown Sweepstakes, and the Biggest Offseason Plotlines | Group Chat

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Justin, Rob, and J. Kyle Mann are here to prepare us for the official start of free agency. They talk through all the news, including the Warriors' plan to lure LeBron to Golden State, the Jaylen Brown trade saga, Kawhi Leonard's potential return to Toronto, and much more. (00:00) Intro(2:53) LeBron to Golden State?(19:21) Jaylen Brown(44:37) The Charlotte Hornets' moves(1:07:52) The most intriguing situations Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and J. Kyle Mann Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Victoria Valencia, and Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome to group chat. I am Justin Verrier. Joining me, Rob Mahoney, Jay Kyle, man. Everything is happening. We got opt-outs. We got opt-ins. We got Malik Beasley being indicted. Just snuck really in there in between the Zach Levine opt-in and also the Dremont opt-out, which I thought was pretty interesting timing. But we saw you, Malik. We know what's going on with you. Well, and we saw Ed Davis, unfortunately, sneak into the Malik Beasley indictment.

So it's just tough times all around. if you are involved in an elaborate, multi-pronged gambling scheme. But otherwise, if you're just an NBA free agent, good times abound. It's always discreet in the flow of any conversation to announce, hey, let's switch to this encrypted disappearing text platform or whatever it is. It's all never raises any flags when you do that. So I don't know if you all saw the Ed Davis-Moleg Beasley thing. But yeah.

Should we move the group chat, group chat to Signal or something? What do you guys want to do? Whenever we're talking about something sensitive, yeah, do you think they were just waiting for like a big transaction sham's tweet to just be like, okay, fire it now? Like just mix it into the water spot. That definitely felt specific from my point of view because it was like really in short order. It was like bam, bam, bam. And then all of a sudden like you look back on it. It's just like, oh wait, this is pretty interesting because we've been waiting on this for years at this point.

but it sucks for Blake Bleasie, I guess, but like you kind of get what you pay for. Yeah. I don't know if it sucks for him if he is, you know, reaping what he has sown. There you go. All right. We got a lot to get to today because there's a lot going on in the NBA. The offseason is upon us. Tomorrow, I believe, is when the floodgates start to open tomorrow afternoon.

But we're going to get through a primer here. Not a primer. It's a primer. And we're going to go through all the big things, the Warriors, Jalen Brown, Quye Leonard, everything you want to hear. We'll do that right after this. This episode of the Ringer NBA show is presented by Ferreiro.

The world is watching. Go all in for your team this summer with Ferreiro. Enter for the chance to win a range of prizes just by purchasing your favorite treats. Like Kinder Bueno with an irresistible chocolate, wafer, and creamy hazelnut filling, or Keebler Chips Deluxe cookies with indulgent and rich chocolatey chunks,

or Ferreiro Roche squares, with crunchy hazelnuts and milk chocolate wrapped in iconic gold. Go all of it. In. Buy any two Ferreiro brands and you could win $1 million. Official rules apply. Learn more at go all in and win.com. So I was going through the Warriors just like books yesterday because it seems like something

has to happen with them. And I was like, how do they do this without really just giving their entire team a facelift? Butler is due practically 57 million, but he's not going to be back until February. and then Draymond Green is due $28 million on a player option. He opted out today. And I'm just like, something has to happen. And then we got the opt out from Draymond. And then we got the big old news that they might be just forming the expendables.

It's a real like, I was trying to think of the specific movie, like more like a Fast and the Furist or something in that realm where it's just like, I hate you, and you hate me, but we both hate the youth. So we have to come together and fight Victor Webbenyama. But who hates who in this scenario? Haven't they all kind of made up with their Olympic glory and whatnot? See, we've gone so far down the road that Steph and LeBron used to be rivals. I mean, not necessarily like heated ones, but they were pitted against each other for multiple finals at this point. But so much time has passed as it so often does. Yeah.

That was a decade ago. A lot has happened, you know? Yeah. It's getting a little comic bookie because I have this experience. I know a lot of my anchor touchpoints, whatever it is, reference. reference points circle back to me just having a son who I'm just, you know, whatever. He's, um, it is reminding me of comic books where I'll pick up one of his comic books and they'll be like, different characters are aligned or like they have alliances or they have different powers.

I'm like, I thought they hated each other. And then he's like explaining to me what happened. That's what this feels like. The comic run has just gone on to the point where, uh, Venom and Spidey you're on the same team now because they have a common enemy, you know, big maximum carnage. Shout out to my Spidey fans, that comic run. That's what this feels like. Our enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing. I mean, that's just serialized storytelling, right? Whether it's comics or soap operas or apparently the NBA.

Yeah. So the kind of conceit here is that they would trade Butler for Davis, which is already comical because we talked about this at the end of last episode. I was like, watch out for Anthony Davis because he has more of a market than you would expect for a guy who is done for practically nothing by the Dallas Mavericks. The Wizards have just held on to him, basically gave him a hotel for a couple days when he popped into town once or twice, and like, that's it. All of a sudden, they might report in the form of draft picks. But Draymond opting out, then provides them the option of signing LeBron to the mid-level.

We'll see if that's what he wants at this stage of his career. I don't know if he'll get like a bigger offer elsewhere, or at least certainly with a team that has aspirations to compete next year. But I look at the board here, Rob, and I'm just like all of a sudden the Wizards, if this does come to fruition, are huge. appropriately unc-sized and a little slower, a little bit more weight to them, their front core all of a sudden would have if this goes through AD, LeBron, Dreymann, Yaxel Lendenborg, and Christop Perzingus, who they expect to sign in free agency. I just can't believe this is a real possibility we're actually considering.

Let me start. Before we even get into the mechanics of it, do we think this is going to happen? Do we think this is likely, probable, questionable? Like, where are we on the spectrum of the Anthony Davis, LeBron James shoot the moon to get the full treatment that we're laying out here. Do we think this is even something that's likely? I would say it's probable, and the fact that it's all laid out pretty specifically means that someone has this in mind.

Is that clutch? Is that the warrior specifically? It sounds like probably both sides. I think the big thing that we don't know at this point is what the Lakers move will be in response to that. There are reports that they hadn't really been talking. LeBron and the Lakers before anything like this happened. So we'll see because they just let LeBron go and they just have to figure out his spot some other way.

They would just have cap space and they'd have to figure out something to do with it. And so I don't know, but I would put it at probable right now. I mean, that's exciting. Like, I'm eager to see this team come together, even with all of the like random front court pieces they're going to have to find time in room for. To me, the Anthony Davis part, like that part is negotiable. And you could even see it from the wizard's perspective of as you laid out, Justin, like how little they gave up at that Maverick's deal in the first. place if the Warriors end up throwing in, not just Jimmy Butler's contract, which you could ostensibly trade again, but some firsts, a handful of swaps, like that is worth Washington's

time to participate in if they want to do that. The thing I'm kind of waiting and seeing on, and this is where the clutch involvement is absolutely critical, the will LeBron James take the MLE to go play for a good team? We've been having that conversation for so long. I just kind of refuse to partake in it anymore until it actually happens. So I guess Wake me up when LeBron actually does leave like tens of millions of dollars on the table, which why would you, even if you are LeBron James? Yeah, we keep speculating about that. And it's, I've yet to see, I mean, well, you know, Bronson as a young man, granted, there's a lot of people, we won't even go there. But there's, there are a lot of machinations in ways that guys can

get compensated, you know, you hear, hear this stuff whispered about. But in the, in the, in the forefront, out in the open on Main Street, it's like, we've yet to see a guy really. LeBron's winding down. How many more opportunities is he going to have to, in the league, get this amount of money. Granted, his marketability off the court is unlike any other player in the NBA. He has all these different ways that he can be made whole. But I mean, if you're looking at, I'm looking at this from the Wizards perspective, is an expiring Jimmy Butler, and then you look at the first that they're going to have, I guess that the Warriors are going to have, and then seconds, obviously, has become a unique kind of marketplace in the draft

for negotiating with guys. We saw like a first round pick, a desirable guy who was rejected as a first round or drop all the way to what, 57 with Vassar. So that's a unique thing, but I'm just like, if I'm the Wizards, is that the most appealing thing that could happen? Because you could look at this and say, these dudes are old. This could explode. I mean, famously available, you know, Anthony Davis is headed there. They're depending on him. You've got, we were talking about the, not speculating, talking about the age of Steph Curry, going to be 39. This is going to his 39-year-old season. Draymond's, you know, not a spring chicken anymore.

You could look at this and be like, this could just blow up. And suddenly those firsts that they have could become something. Yeah. I think if you're the Wizards, you don't want to be paying Anthony Davis's next extension. In fact, I don't think most teams want to be paying Anthony Davis as the next extension. I think you can make the case for the Warriors, if only because they need to take advantage of the next year or two because the clock is very much ticking with Steph Curry. How they got to this position, despite the fact that they had.

everything in front. They had two timelines and now all of a sudden they have one very narrow one that they have to thread. It's basically this year and maybe next year, I would say, are the windows. That's a whole other podcast. It's like 10 other podcasts that I'm sure we've done in a certain point. But for the Wizards, yeah, I think it's just draft capital. It's just opportunity. For the Warriors, though, I just don't know like what this even gets them. If it does come to fruition, I guess you just want to make the best of the opportunity, Rob, where it's like it's stuff. It's big names. Like, let's just, just, just, just, just, just figure it out, right?

This will be fun and it will be profitable more than anything else. But I don't know, in terms of, like, is this a legitimate threat in the West? I don't think so. Probably not, but isn't fun and profitable and interesting enough. You know, like, I just, I don't know that the Warriors are going to get many better opportunities to put together a compelling team around Steph than something like this. Like, you can trace back the original sins wherever you want. Maybe it is kind of, you know, blundering about with.

certain draft picks, the two timelines thing in general. Maybe it is the kind of like the weight to do a Jimmy Butler style trade to begin with. They kind of like dragged their feet even into that process. And then Jimmy got hurt on top of it. And that's kind of exacerbated everything that's come with it. But here they are. Steph Curry is at this point in his career. You only have so many years to make the most of them left.

Why wouldn't you swing at the biggest thing you can swing at? And I don't think you're going to find the one player out there, especially given Golden State's finances, that's going to fix this roster. It's going to make everything whole again. That's going to magically repair Moses Moody's knee and make Jimmy Butler viable or turn his contract into an all-star level player other than something like this. Like healthy Anthony Davis and if LeBron James comes with

and if it's like a package-type deal, I just really don't see the alternative that's going to be a better solution for Steph, a better solution for Golden State, and frankly a better solution for people like us who would just want to see a version of this team that feels watchable and interesting every night. Yeah, the, I mean, the fun and the profitability aspect of it, obviously, you know, they're going to make money if they bring in lower. everybody, LeBron affects economies. We've seen that repeatedly. But the basketball side of this

would be pretty fascinating. I know we're getting kind of far down the road about assuming that it could happen. The idea of if they resign Porzengis, that just feels insane to me. You would think that he would have some opportunities for cleaner fits to slot in somewhere else across the league. But just like the idea of AD, LeBron, Draymond, like spatially, that's weird. You have, you know, LeBron has developed into a more capable jump shooter, but Draymond famously spatially challenged, AD has been tormented by, he's just had spatial demons on offense his whole career. That's a bet on defense, I mean, I would assume, right? And then you've got to think, where's the ball pressure in that group?

It's harder to hide. You know, if you have those guys, it's harder to hide Steph in high leverage situations. Like, he's probably going to be, I just, I find that all odd because you're trying to walk a tightrope of, you would need some guys who can drive the basketball on the floor. Is that going to be like, but Jimski, who are they going to do that? So just kind of balancing those two things, it would be interesting, but it feels like it's kind of self-contradictory to me to make it work. Well, I think we'd have to suss out some of the ripple effects if and when this were to happen.

But some of them that I would assume, for one, if a trade like this goes through, Gary Payton the second, all of a sudden becomes like a really important free agent for them to bring back for exactly the defensive reasons you described. famously not spatially challenged Gary Payton also. Of course not. We're just like stack, stack, stack, stack, stack. I mean, why not at that point? But also, I would think that right now the formulation is between Al Horford and

Chrisaps, Porzengis, you're getting one functional full-time center, right? Like they can kind of toggle minutes, toggle availability that between the two of them, maybe you can get a full season's worth of center play out of them. If they get AD, I don't think they bring back Porzingis on top of it. Maybe that'll be wrong. Maybe it'll just be icing on the case. on top of the icing of the icing, but it doesn't feel like that would be a good fit. It makes me wonder had Burry's just dropped one more spot.

It seems like he could have done a lot of the things that you're kind of describing there, Kyle. Instead, Yaxil just only makes them just like even bigger. It's just like at a certain point they just have fours on top of fours at this point. I think that's one thought I had when this first came down. I think the other one was like, I do wonder if the Warriors' picks are way more valuable than just getting AD. like maybe it only takes two to get AD and then you could just have a little bit more of a runway after all of this falls apart in two to three years.

And so you keep those, although that was the problem with the Warriors to begin with. But I'm just like if you're going to just like give up all the assets, there's just like a lot of draft capital here because they only owe their 2030 at this point. Can't you go out and get something bigger? Like wouldn't allow me marketing or someone with like an actual fit here be more attractive than going to get to AD? I know like the maybe it doesn't work because of the agencies and maybe that was the price of Draymond opting out to begin with. But just feels like you can do better than AD because as we mentioned like he just went for like a fake first last year or one first and like a bunch of fake other picks. It's such like he shouldn't have to give up so much. But he went for a fake first.

I guess it was one real first and one fake first if I remember correctly. But he went for that because the Mavs were the desperate team. Right. Like they were desperate to move off of him. now Golden State's the desperate team. Like they need some kind of solution here. They need to string together some sequence of moves that puts together a roster that is worth Steph's time. And right now it is not in that place.

The actual stuff is very funny, though, just like the way that all this is spinning out. And look, you have to wonder if he's being punished himself by either the basketball gods or Golden State's front office for like putting into the ether. Oh, I might have an opportunity to start with this team. Like, you know, there's really an opening here for me in the front court. the Golden State Warriors will tell you if you are a young player, even a fake young player like Yaxel Lendeborg, not so fast. You simply must have wait your turn behind these like eight bigs we're going to bring in. Lee Corso, not so fast. I would say this about Yaxel, like from listening to him talk over the past two, three years, like, there can be this confusion with guys just like, what's going on with him?

Like, why is he? I think with most people, ideally there is sort of a screen door in front of their mouth whenever And I think Yaxel is just, the door's just open. He thinks it's kind of similar to Anthony Edwards when he was younger. He's gotten a little bit, little bit better. Just about like, if he thinks it, he says it. It's just kind of, I think, and you just kind of roll with the punches, but like the free agency market here, I'm just like, do they allocate that money instead of Porzingis and go get like, Anfredi Simons? Who do they, who do they go get? I don't know.

I don't know. It needs to be a two-way player. So lean into it. Go find a way to get Drew Holiday. I don't know. But, yeah. Yeah, the finances would be really crunched at that point. I don't know.

Just looking at the West here, I'm just like, is this even a top six team? If everything goes well for a lot of the teams that we have high expectations for, like they'll be back in the play-in mix, I guess it will be a real spirited fun one. I'm sure there will be multiple documentary crews that will be chronicling this step-by-step. And that'll be fun like five years from now. Although I haven't seen an interesting sports documentary in at least five years because they're all just like completely controlled by the participants. but I'll watch it. I'll watch two episodes and just be like, oh, that's fine and then just trail off.

I don't know. Rob, is this going to matter, I think, in the big picture of the league, in the West, even? I mean, it will matter in the sense that it will be one of the biggest stories going on in the sport, just with the collision of talent and reputation and history and legacy that are all happening at the same time in a major market. Like, that's going to be a real thing. Are they going to be in a position to contend with the Thunder and the Spurs and the best team in the West, best teams in the West. I'm hard pressed to say that they would get that far,

but I also just don't, I don't see the Lowry Markinen type alternative that you're laying out. Like, we've been waiting for the Jazz to trade Lowry for so long, and now they're just not going to because they reformulated a whole other team around him. And there just really aren't that other, like, other than if you can string together enough salary to make a Jalen Brown bid, which they, I mean, doesn't really make sense from Golden States or Boston's perspective. Like, what are we talking about? Like, what else? is in the ether here. That's a clunky style fit for sure.

Jalen Brown with Steve Kerr. As we've seen, you know, like with the Olympics, I just, that does not compute on paper. Yeah. But you would rather Anthony Davis

in a crowded front court over Jalen Brown and just a crowded, like, just mismash of styles. I'm just asking. Not me. It's odd.

I mean, they're going to have to rethink the way they play for sure. I was just looking through. Yeah, I mean, I just don't see. I mean,

Quentin Grimes maybe two-way player a little bit could play with that group I know you're grinning I I'm looking at the free agency list on Spotrack here for guards I just don't oh it's It's gonna be tough it's gonna be like a buddy healed like non-guaranteed contract defaults and they bring him back to come off the bench It's gonna be stuff like that that's gonna round out Golden State's roster if if the trade like this goes through That's still not a dribbling basketball player I mean like depending on LeBron's brain an awful lot at that point I mean, I think the triangulated handling between Dremont, LeBron, and Steph is enough? Is it optimal? No.

Would you want another like dribble penetrating guard? Of course. I just don't know where that guy is going to come from. Yeah. Trade for Yokic, who all of a sudden is maybe available. Why not? All right. Since we're talking about Jalen Brown, why don't we get into the Jalen Brown sweepstakes part?

What is it? 26 at this point? just really the spiritual successor of the Yonis sweet stakes where just feels like every day something new but nothing really ends up happening do we need to get

to start with this the analytics war that broke out out of a Bobby Mark's radio hit that was aggregated and apparently not even like fully like we didn't get the full context of it do we need to talk about this? It seems all very silly.

I don't think we need to talk about it to be honest but if we want to get into the ditch and just roll around a little bit, I'm not going to take that away from you. So seventh best player on his own team. So Baylor Shireman is just at home, like, looking at Reddit being like, hell yeah, buddy, this is my moment. I always knew I was better.

It just doesn't make sense. Like, I don't know what analytics you could even be looking at that suggests that he would be somewhere in like the hundredth and 50th best player in the NBA if that was the case. it seemed weird to begin with and then it really just like everyone didn't care because all they did was just jump to the assumptions of like, analytics fucking sulk! And you have Jalen Brown jumping in

and David West I saw it in there and then you have the only analytics people being like, no, we're great. That was a different David West, by the way, I think. I don't think that was... Oh, I thought it was the real David West. I think there's an analytics guy named David West, right? No, I think this is former basketball,

former NBA player David West. See, this is great. I thought there was another person that the same name doesn't seem like that unique a name. Yeah, I mean, when I saw it, I was just like, good God. I was like, this is just going to just stir up. And the thing about like a model, like quoting a model like that, I've never built a model, but I would think in the process of building it, I would be sort of doing trial and error to make sure that it gets close to how I perceive basketball.

Or you could just, I would assume, reverse engineer it and be like these are the, maybe those are different versions of the same thing. but if I had a model that came out and said that, I'd be like, okay, in life, you hear takes from varying people, you know, using like, we won't go there, but like the political spectrum, you hear a wild thing, you'd be like, okay, that's clearly way over here, you know, and I, you kind of dial in what's in the center, what's right and what's left. Saying he's the seventh best, it's just, Jalen Brown's always been complicated for me personally in terms of my taste, sensibility as a fan of basketball.

And I'm like, it's just not quite for me. But I've lived, I've been proven to be wrong. he's won a title. He's been a part. I think that he's hard to optimize on a bass on like a championship level team, but it doesn't mean it can't be done. He's not my favorite. But to say he's seventh best, I was just like, I ejected. I was just like, I can't. It spiraled. And it did exactly what we thought it would do. It spiraled completely out of control. People started making it a race thing. I was like, oh my God, this is the darkest timeline of what like, it's, it always goes, it always goes there. And I just, I tried to sit it out as best I could.

stupid. But it's stupid in the way that I want summer discourse to be stupid. So I'm, I'm happy to poke in on it now and again. I would say a couple things. One, people have crazy deranged basketball takes across the spectrum. I think the problem with analytics as an idea is it lumps all of these computational, like, uh, like all bunch of quants into one category as if they believe one thing. There are a whole ass conferences where these people come together and just argue about what things matter and what things don't. And so the idea of like, oh, the analytics community says this. The analytics community doesn't say jack shit.

It's a bunch of people with varying models who widely disagree on things. It's going to be a lot of ego. The idea. I thought it was one base, but it's not. Turns out it's not. Yeah. The idea that like, oh, like someone who is analytics oriented thinks Jalen Brown is the seventh best player on a team to me is very similar to something.

I used to do when I was at Sports Illustrated for our preseason preview, which is the anonymous scout takes, which are these are eye test professionals. And you would not believe the shit that these people would say with a straight face and complete belief in their voice as far as who is good and who is not, who these teams should bail on, who's a complete liability. There are basketball people with an absolutely insane opinion doing every function within a front office. And so here we are with Jalen Brown, who just won a championship in near history. for one of the most analytically driven teams in the league, I don't really understand what we're doing here, but I guess we're just going around the bend one more time. Yeah, one of my favorite things is people complaining about, like,

us in media not having the level of sophistication that, like, would map on to NBA front offices. And a lot of the times I'm like, do you realize these guys are just basically working the trade machine for fun? Like, I know people specifically who just gain theory out trades in order to just come up with fun. ideas that could make their team better that ultimately just go into a file. Like, Kirk Goldsbury has talked several times about how we just basically wrote blog posts for

pop, you know? It's just like, they're doing similar things here. And one of the thing is like, yes, when you give someone anonymity, it is a hell of a fucking drug. They will say some wild shit that not even like I would even go into. And I do think someone probably, if you found the right person, was like, yeah, I mean, Jailen Brown's not that case. What, he's the seven best player in the league. But it was probably said in that sort of fashion and the more it spins out, it just seems like it's something that it wasn't. Should we do anonymous media member takes where we give anyone, you know, fellow ringer employees, people out there, complete cover. And I'm just saying the same. Honestly, that would be a great bit. Just cover for J.B.

We do the whole like voice muddling software. Like we make it completely anonymous. And they get to come in here and be like, you know what, if you gave Derek White his own team, they'd be the second seat in the Eastern Conference. Like, I just wanted, I want to, I want to hear these takes with no reputation on the line. Okay. You can get that together for us. Okay, I got you. I have the technology. There's just so much even trial and error with like, you hear teams that like hand track things, like data, but there's, there's, the people logging things can be like a weird inefficiency on some of these tracking sites and then you're like you're making these wild conclusions i know you'll probably have this experience i have where i'll see something statistically on some of these advanced sites and i'll be

like that's really interesting and then i'll follow i'll pull on the street i've talked about this on this show i'm sure and i'll get to the end of it and be like that's not true like i don't like the numbers that that is just not true so you just kind of have to just keep your head on a swivel when you're out there it's not i don't know i agree with you all people try to loop it everyone together i always joke i lumped with the nerds and I'm not like a nerd math person at all. I'm way more of a tape person. So I've kind of feel like I'm like in the middle of these two camps fighting a lot of times. I'm not a nerd. I'm a dweeb. Okay? I just want you guys to be. I'm a nerd of a certain variety for sure. But yes, but like I said, I'm not a math person at all. But just keep your nerds and

your dweaves and your dork separate. Like respect our cultures, please. In the Christian Linnaeus taxonomy, right? Or Carolos or how he says me? for what it is anymore. Well, it is funny because I don't think the Celtics think that Jalen Brown is the seventh best player, actually, but it has surprised me throughout this entire cycle of rumors. How active it feels like they are with wanting to trade him. I had someone whispered to me as the Yannis stuff was going along. Like, Jalen's actually more available than you realize.

It wasn't just an opportunity situation where they saw Yannis available. This is what we have to match. You just take Jalen, we'll get the better player. it seemed like there's just a divide there either because of Jalen's hard-headedness, because of the just shrapnel that's accrued over this relationship, or perhaps because they went through the season. It seems like they just didn't like the results. Brad Stephen seems obsessed with getting a big. And it doesn't seem coincidental that like in any of these trade scenarios are like,

oh, they get a big man. It's just like from a farm like you just, I mean, Joelle and Bede was available and good for like the one week that he does that every year at this point. You don't need to overreact and kind of upend what was a pretty good team. It seemed that I thought could get to the least East Finals last year. And so I just find myself, Rob, with all of this, like, just still confused, like, what is the motivation? Because this team just has so much good going for it. I almost feel like they should be adding to this in order to build out around Jayland and Jason even more, rather than just tearing this apart and starting anew.

Well, I think it's a combination of two things. One is the sort of this from a personality standpoint and team chemistry standpoint has sort of run its course and we're just ready to sort of move on with a new collection of people in this locker room or at least not Jalen Brown in this locker room. I think that's fair. I think the other part of it is once you cross the threshold into we are going to earnestly engage in the Yannis trade talks. And I think those talks were worth having. I think if anything, Boston like really miss an opportunity not sealing the deal and getting Yonis in the first place. that's neither here nor there. That's done. We don't have to re-litigate all that. But once you make that decision, the Jalen Brown thing is decided. Like, you only get to play the

we didn't mean it. It's not personal thing with a player one time. You get it once. And they already did it like four years ago with Kevin Durant. Like you can't go to Jalen Brown again and be like, we really love you. You're valued here. We know we just tried to trade you for the umpteenth time. But like that that toothpaste is out of the tube. And so now it's a question of what can you get for him? What makes sense? What is the optimal trade package? How long? long can you string this out without damaging the team or the progression of the season. Those are the big questions in the air right now to me more than can they keep him. Because I think once that is out there, you really just can't go back.

And it is kind of funny to think back about the Durant one in particular to think about some of the reasons that are driving the Jalen Brown discussion in general about just like, well, is he happy? Is he, you know, it just, there seems to just be general grumpiness. It is kind of funny to think about them pulling the trigger for, again, here we just say the line again famously happy and content basketball player Kevin Durant just funny to think about that timeline that that we didn't get to see yeah i just don't see an obvious fit for him as well because to me he is the perfect one-b you want to support your top 10 player just outside of that but when you

give him a team that team ceiling is going to be around like you know second round maybe western conference finals or eastern conference finals if things go well and he's because of the reasons Kyle was mentioning before, it just seems like a harder fit to really build an elite level Webbenyama competitor sort of team. Like Portland is obviously in the mix here. I just don't see the fit with him and Denny, like really being an ideal one. If anything, they do a lot of the same things. They're almost like redundant at a certain point.

If you're already pot committed to Denny, I don't see what the theory would be in order to get Brown in order to do similar things, if only to talent grab. but like still it just doesn't move the needle for me. The most interesting one on the board, honestly, Rob, for me, and I'm curious what you guys would think about, like just where he would be best suited. It would be like a team like the Clippers that just like doesn't have anything going for it per se in the immediate term

where it's like, oh, we'll just ride the quai thing out for as long as possible. I don't know if they have the right assets. I assume Wogler would probably have to be involved and maybe like the Pacers picked down the road. maybe you can get involved in the Kauai like going to Toronto or somewhere else and this is just all sorts of triangulated. But like to me he fits there where it's like a team that's on a certain tier, the play in perhaps. And he's just a younger, more long term option that could perhaps give us more options in like that like three to five year range. And we could just be better than who we are.

Maybe not the best, but we could be better. But from Boston's perspective, what are they getting in a trade like that other than if they, one in Kauai, which I don't really think they do. It would be difficult, which is why you'd have to get a third team involved. Maybe he goes to Toronto. Toronto sends something to Boston. Maybe it's more teams. And at that point, it becomes super complicated.

But I just think in terms of fit, if it's not the clippers, it's a team like the clippers that's just like here and they just want to do a little bit better with their circumstances. Yeah. One team I haven't heard a lot about, and I think this is for somewhat obvious reason, But my whole issue with the Yonis situation is there really just aren't many opportunities with Jalen Brown and his contract and the situation the Celtics find themselves in to trade for another truly elite player. Like a player of Yonis's caliber, we're not really hearing about those guys in Jalen Brown, you know, trade machining's and whatnot. It's a lot of like Herb Joneses and, you know, maybe at the high end, Jamal Murray or someone like that. All of those make sense for various reasons.

if you're the calves, would you at least have a conversation about Donovan Mitchell? And I say that because there's always that kind of thing in the air too with Mitchell of like at what point is he going to be dissatisfied with these situations. And maybe it is like a temperature checking operation

as far as like how content do you think he is with Cleveland. I don't think Jalen Brown is a perfect fit in Cleveland by any means. I think he's a lesser passer than Donovan Mitchell in a way that how it would have downstream effects for guys like Mowbly and Allen would probably force you to reconsider the shape of team in a lot of different ways.

But I just don't know how else you get if you are Boston another truly elite player where we had, what do we have Jalen Brown on the top 100, JV, like 14th or something like that? I don't see anyone in that top 13 and one of those guys is Jason Tatum being available for trade other than Kwai Leonard, who we mentioned, who I don't think the Celtics would trade for, and maybe someone like Mitchell hypothetically, who you can at least get like a maybe conversation starter out of. Yeah, I know that the fit between like Hardin and, and Jaylon Brown, I just feel like that would be just waiting to explode. Could be.

Way, way too. Of course, granted, I mean, he and Tatum have a kind of a tricky, a tricky sort of balance between those two. I'd heard someone mention the Hornets. I didn't, I mean, I don't know how that would work, Justin's grinning. Like, you'd have to be giving up another big piece of who you are. I don't know how that would work. I don't even think they have the salary to really make that plausible. No.

I think Nasree is now making the most on that team. Yeah, it would have to be, but they need Nasreed. And then, yeah, I mean, just running down through here, there's not, there aren't many great fits. And that might be a testament to what we were saying earlier. It's just a really tricky fit. I think maybe you have to have, like, volume spacing, like shooters get up a lot of three-point attempts to really make that work. Because I think the whole kind of sell on Jalen is the two-way power that you get out of him. but then you have to build your office of roster a certain way.

Well, can I throw some crackpot third wave trade machine ideas at the two of you? Look at this. Rob Mahoney, working the trade machine. I'm just trying to get in. We pray for times like this. I do it for you, Justin. Thank you. I'm going to fully admit, I don't think these are the best ideas.

But no bad ideas in a brainstorm. All the obvious stuff is already out there and on the board. So I just want to get your instant reactions to these potential outcomes. what if you traded Jalen Brown to the Sixers from Paul George and VJ Edgecombe? Sixers are taking a shotgun to their phone. They're not. Are they? They love VJ.

Why the world would they court that? Let me ask you this. What are the odds that VJ is at any point in his career a top 15 player? Like, will he ever be as good as Jalen Brown is right now? I don't think it's about that. I think the highs maybe won't reach as high, but I think VJV's, VJ is way, way more of a, like a universal donor in the basketball sense. Like he might not hit the side.

Like he, he is going to fit into a lot of iterations of high, high, high level teams, I think. And VJ's also like just an exemplary culture organizational guy. Not that like Jalen isn't that in any way, but I just think he's very much amenable to a lot of different ways that the Sixers build. There's no way I'm giving that up. And he could be an all defense guy and develop. into like a fringe primary offensive guy. No chance. I'm getting rid of him. Well, looking at this from the Celtics perspective, and this is something I don't understand, is like, what would they do with a 21-year-old? There's like a real in-between zone where you get someone who's young, maybe

still on a rookie skill contract, who's played a year or two. Obviously, Klingen has been mentioned with Portland. It's just like, that guy is like ready to play now, but he's young enough and cheap enough where I think it matters for a Jason Tatum-centric reset if you're going to do that. And that and plus you get other assets on top of that. If I'm just getting a young player, I do wonder if that's going back too far without the draft capital to either just have a longer runway or spin that into something else. Totally fair. I think that's where like Paul George, present tense player would actually be pretty useful for

Boston. I, look, I understand all of the concerns about trading someone like BJ, not just how pliable he is as a talent and on the court, but like trading a good young player on a rookie scale salary is not a smart thing to do under basically any circumstances. Not advocating that you should do it. I'm just wondering if we can have a conversation about it. You know, I'm wondering if you can get somebody on the phone. Apparently, shotguns are involved. I don't think concerns is the right word. I think these are downright hard walls where you, I don't even have to, like, it's just not happening. I don't even have to dignify what you just said with my concerns. Like, I'm not. Well, how about,

this is. Well, hold on. Do we almost trade Jalen Brown for Paul George in a past life as well? Their salaries are close. Like I would say, if you could make something else happen. Well, I'm talking about like Pacers era, Paul George. Wow. Yeah, I think that almost happened. I mean, I'm pretty sure we almost traded Jalen Brown for everybody at this point. So you would have to make a short list of players he hasn't been connected to in hypothetical deals.

Let me throw a few more at you. Could we trade Jalen Brown to the Hawks for Nikiel Alexander Walker, Jonathan Caminga, Buddy Healed Salary? And I think maybe you might need to include even with Jail. Salon's massive contract. Maybe the Hawks also include the 2027 first that is the less favorable of New Orleans in Milwaukee, which could be a pretty decent pick. Or maybe, yeah, I think it has some slight protection on it.

This is my favorite option on the board in terms of where Jaylen could go. Because I think the Hawks, even though I would personally slow play this unless some of the younger guys try to figure things out, you have Nikiel on this absolute bargain contract. I saw something, speaking of the Kwan, saying that this is the biggest bargain deal in the entire NBA. I would point out that Deneobdia makes like $11 million. It was an all-star and almost an all-MBA guy. But that's just me. That's just me. But I think like that is this sort of team where it's just like you get him at such a cost that the talent outweighs the downside of the fit. And I do think the Hawks are in a position where they're going to be pretty good no matter what they do,

adding Jalen to Jalen Johnson and whatever is left there, Fleming's and Dyson Daniels. It makes sense that the spacing fit is going to be tough with Brown and Daniels in there. Again, though, I have to ask with the Celtics, like, what does this do for Boston to have just flotsam and not even, you're not giving me any picks here, right? I think it'd be one pick, but it is a top four protected. And it's, yeah, it would be the least favorable of New Orleans in Milwaukee because there's a swap involved. But I think, I think it's Nikiel as a nice centerpiece to bring back on a reasonable contract, maybe like a Derek White era parent in terms of someone who's giving you, like, great consistent defense every night, good connective play, really good three point. shooting. Like, he fits Boston style in a lot of ways.

He's not Janus. You know, he's not an all-star that you're bringing back, like, baked tension. Oh, really? Well, you know, maybe from a certain point of view, he could be. You know, maybe we just haven't done enough reputation laundering for Nikiel Alexander Walker to reveal him to be the superstar that everyone knows him to be. Not yet. That's way more intriguing.

I mean, that salary is still, Jaylin, good God, he makes so much money. You're still off on the, you're still short on the money. but the pick is enticing. I think the money actually does work if it's Nikiel, Kuminga, and Buddy Healt. I think that those, like those combination salaries do well. With the new, with the new Healed deal,

I don't think it's on the track. I guess it's probably not on the machine yet, but yeah, it's at 48.3. But yeah. Boston needs something. It needs Fleming's, it needs Dyson Daniel.

It needs some young stuff in addition to, Nikiel is good, but like, yeah, not enough. Yeah. It's tough. I mean, honestly, and then I did have, have the Jalen Brown, Sam Houser for Jamal Murray, Cam Johnson construction that Bill has sufficiently

stolen our thunder on now. And then this Cavs idea of like, is there a Jalen Brown, I think they might have to, the Celtics might have to include more to make a Donovan Mitchell swing if Jalen Brown is the piece. So it'd be like Jalen and Jordan Walsh and a first or something like that for Donovan Mitchell. And I think they would have to dump salary in the deal. So I have to be like Dennis Schrooter or something like that. Yeah. I think the Portland option is probably the most likely one on the board, if only because if we're tracking motivations here. I think Portland leveled up last year to the point where they're no longer an asset accumulation mode. Plus, they get to the playoffs and all of a sudden you realize how much space is left to get from just good to being on the level of some of

the bigger teams on the West. And then you add in the ownership. I think ownership not only wants to make a splash, wants to put his name on something, but also, like, he's been consistent, our guy Tommy D, that despite the fact that he's doing a lot of cost cutting on the fringes, the money will show up on the court. I think this would be a proof of concept of that, just getting a supermax player in the building. And so, like, I think it makes sense from the outside, from the external forces rather than the team side of things in terms of, like, the actual fit on the court. What do you guys think if he were to end up there? Well, let me ask you about the money showing up on the court. Like, does the court stop at the sidelines? Because, like, once you get into

the bench area where the head coach is standing, is that not included? Yeah, no, it's just between the lines, the baseline does not get included here. It's not in the square footage. Apparently not. There's no egress window there. Oh. I think I would be similarly concerned to what you laid out earlier, Justin, as far as the way that Denny and Jalen Brown would fit together, doesn't really make sense to me. It's not a synergistic, you know.

It is not. I mean, for all the things that Tatum and Brown had to work through to make themselves a championship-style pairing. there was a lot of give and take there. And there was a lot of, like, learning to be better spacers for each other, learning to play off of each other in ways that I just don't think Denny would be well suited to. Like, you want the ball in Denny's hands as much as possible. And yes, you want half court counterbalances to make his life easier.

I just don't really think Jalen Brown is exactly that kind of guy right now. It could work. I mean, the more I'm thinking about it, they would, it would be clunky. They would have to figure out how to do it. But it's not like an NIMB Ben Simmons type fit where you're just, just like these don't really, we can't really position these to flow into each other. And I know you say like you want to get the ball into Denny's hands as much as possible. It's like there is a threshold where it's not like we need him pushing like 30s usage rate.

You know, I think at some point you're ramming your, you get a basketball concussion as a team. If you ram your head into the door of a superstar production, like you have to like scale it down at some point. Maybe Jaylen be open to that. I mean, you'd add another, you'd add another primary guy who is also, you know, Big time defender, like I were saying. I think it would help Portland's. And Portland already is a little stymied half court in the playoff setting. So it could, I don't know, the more I think about it, I'm like, it could work.

It would be painful to get there. But like, it's not terribly dissimilar from the Tatum experience. And maybe Brown comes away from that whole thing thinking, like, I could, I can make this work, maybe. Yeah. I understand why the Trey Murphy market is probably a little more frothy. than someone like Brown because if you're an ownership group, you'd probably say, I want Brown in the door, I want to be able to sell that we have an all-MBA guy, just like put him on the poster, him, Dame, Denny, that would be great.

But what Portland needs and what a lot of the teams were talking about, including Boston, would be someone who could just put up 10-3s a game, do a little bit of everything, develop still in the midst of what you already have. And so he makes way more sense in order to make sense of certain teams. Like Jaylen Brown is introducing problems. I think Trey is more of a problem solver. So we'll see. All right, why don't we take a break?

Come back, talk about some other off-season stuff. All right, in the midst of all of this triangulation and, like, what could happen, the Hornets have been very active before the actual buzzer goes off on the off-season. Two trades, a little mellow going to the Timberwolves, then we have Miles Bridges, Michigan State alum, going to the bosom that is Matt Ishpia in Phoenix. What a, God. I'm going to guess that of, bosom.

Of all Buzum, we do more bosom for 48 minutes, and it's all because of Justin than anybody else. You said that way too easily, like that just flowed out of you. Yeah, it is one of my go-toes. How it happened, I don't know, but. Oh, I think we know how it happened. There's a lot there.

There's some real, like, bothersome, like, Freudian coding on the things that you do easily, Justin. How I spend my offsies. is none of your business, okay? Entirely fair. I'll be honest. I like the lamello deal more

before I saw the fine print on some of the pick swaps because it ended up being three swaps in addition to, what was it, a 2033 first? Which is like so far away, I just don't even know like what planet I'm going to be living on. But like two of the swaps

have been pre-swapped and so they're not as like gang busters as you would expect. I liked it more though. I bounced out once it happened in concert with the Bridges move, Rob, because on the one side, clearly Lamello was so successful with last season. He was the engine of what was like one of the best turnarounds we've seen recently. And one of the best offenses in the league, too. But it wasn't only a few months ago that we were basically wondering whether or not this guy could stay

on the floor. So I understand selling high. And I like it in concert with Bridges because you're basically just cleaning up shop. And as you were talking about before, desperate teams have. to do something. The horns are not into that situation. And so I like the sober, long view that they showed here where they said, we're not going to buy too high on the success that we had. We have these young players. Let's figure stuff out. Like, can Khan handle the ball more? I don't know, but I want to figure that out. And I appreciate that in the face of the success that they had.

They have a lot of time between Khan and Brandon Miller, especially as kind of like the tent polls right now. And, you know, Kobe White's going to do good work for them as he did to close. close out last season, Nasreed, also a ball handler as far as Biggs go. Like, there's a lot to work through and work around and figure out what can all these guys do in these, like, slightly supercharged roles. I get that. I get the play overall as far as, like, who Lamello is as an injury risk. And frankly, this is probably like a savvy bit of business to trade him after his healthiest

season in a long time and just make the bet that, like, for as much as we like him, we just don't trust him to stay healthy. And so like, let's get while the getting's good. Let's get these picks in the door, these swaps in the door, a really good player in Nas Reid, even if he's not as good as Lamello, and just make do with this hall of stuff that we've gotten in return. I think it's an impressive hall of stuff.

I just am loath to give up Lamello ball, the basketball player. And I am probably on the far end of Lamello belief as far as these things go. But from the time he has been a hornet, they have never had a functional offense when he is not on the floor. I don't think that's an accident. And some of that has included last season with, you know, with Brandon Miller, with con, like with these guys in and out of the lineup, granted given some of the injuries there. But he's transformed what they were offensively and accelerated all of the players around him.

Like he legitimately is one of these guards whose imagination makes good players that much better. That's not a guy I want to. I'm not looking to get out of that business. But if you're going to do it, I would guess that it's for some reason like this, which is we're going to take a slight step in a different direction stylistically. We're going to get all this stuff and then figure out what to do with it. And so acting like a young, interesting, but also aggressive team in the market, I don't think it's a bad decision for the Hornets.

It just kind of bums me out that Lamello isn't going to be a part of everything that made. And frankly, was a huge reason why the Hornets were so exciting last season. Yeah, I don't think that the basketball side that was so exciting was really going to be doable, long-term is sustainable because of the choices that they were going to have to make. I mean, you know, Lamello is going to be a UFA in 2930, and then I had a written down. I mean, Brandon Miller is going to be due to extend, well, Kahn is going to be extending that summer, and then Miller is going to be extending the next summer. So you think, and you have to really think about the bridges and Lamello thing together here on the basketball sense

because they're going to have to pivot to something different because they offloaded their two most competent drivers at this point. Khan and Khan can get into the pain and can do some of his like little fade kind of shoulder spin fade jumper that he can make and then but he and Miller are really east-west players so I think you're probably if you're thinking that Kobe is going to come in it's going to be a sort of I don't know when you sit down at a at a plate at a dinner table and it's like the the entree is at one spot they're going to have to kind of just tilt it like it's it's going to be it's going to be a little different like how they approach their offense is what I'm saying like initially it was Flamello was the catalyst who came in.

Maybe that means that Miller and Kahn take a little bit more of the initiator weight, just because Justin's grinning, I'm worried. Kobe White is just more of a natural score. I think that Miller and Kahn have more playmaking sense in their game. So I just think it could offensively take a little bit of a step back in the short term. But thinking that Kobe's going to come in and just be like, okay, come in and be this game managing, you know, steady quarter. I don't think that Kobe's that guy.

I think it's more likely that Khan and Brandon take on more initiator reps. So I guess Khan and Miller are kind of like the peas in the mash, I guess. But what if you eat them together? Like you put the peas in the mash and you ate them together. There's protein in the peas. It depends on your perspective. You could come in and be like, this is a vegetarian meal. This is maybe more of the entree for now.

I don't know. I'm just trying to think creatively with you here. Well, also, I mean, let's not sugarcoat it. The offense will take a step back. I don't see a path in which Charlotte's offense is as good next season. Now, they may be a more balanced team. They may be a deeper team in certain ways. We might see exactly the kind of development you're talking about, Kyle, from Khan, from

Brandon Miller, from whoever might pop up and down this rotation as far as creation goes. But this is not going to be a top five offense anymore. It's certainly not going to be the high watermark of who they were over the last couple months of the regular season. There's just no evidence to suggest that they're going to be that kind of team. And so then the question is, what is reasonable to accept? of them and how good can they be in the short term as they kind of figure out all this stuff longer term. There's certain like Jalen Brown type qualities to like them just turning the page here

where it just feel like they're exercising the knuckleheadedness of their team. And I think no matter how what you do around the mellow, that's still going to infiltrate into like who you are as a team spiritually, culturally in the locker room and all this other stuff. And so I respect that. They're like a little bit more like boilerplate at this point they don't have the same sizzle as like a league pass team that you would expect but like naz read is a very good player who fits what they're going for there uh and i just feel like being able to take a step back reassess see what we have and just like be the better team three years from now matters so much more than just being like more exciting in the immediate with lamell they're hardier if we're going to continue this this

meal metaphor here. A little hardier, a little chewier right now, but I think you'll be feeling better about yourself in the long term. So they've gone from what to what? Like, what's the hardier upgrade?

They're now a shepherd's pie, but they were what? I think you're like a steak sizzled with like hot tockies on top of it. Hot talkies? Yeah. And now we're just like

just like a hearty quinoa-based bowl. You know? Honestly, I think a beautiful. How dare they accuse us up being nerd? I mean, that is La Mello Ball. Like, let's be real about it. There is the part of him that will forever be a 12-year-old boy.

And there's also the basketball genius lurking within. So also... Lurking within. Not going to lie, would fuck up some tachies right now. Actually, that sounds kind of delicious. So let's get that going. Lamello is hot tachies is like center of the bull's eye. That's really great.

No, I mean, I mean, like they... Lame... I was talking with somebody about this. Lamello. This may seem insane. I know Rob, you've said you're on that end of the spectrum in terms of Lamello. It's in terms of its talent. I mean, he might be the best.

He's in the conversation and might be the best ball handler passer in the world. He can do things that other people just there aren't many people. You're talking about the rarest of rarefied air in terms of talent, but it's just like how stable is he. And when that person is removed from your team, you're going to notice that. And I think it's going to ask a little bit more of some of these guys. Maybe they play through the bigs a little bit. But, I mean, if you tilt this and think about Lamello in particular about his legacy, which I just day and night think about.

I'm just consumed with it. I'm checking how his shoes are selling, you know, his jerseys, things like that. If Charlotte does not plummet, if they do pretty well in his absence, and then the Minnesota thing, which we can, I don't know how much you all want to get into that, If that fails to launch, this is a pretty big inflection point for the Lamello conversation here. Yes. Do you want to talk about the wolves now in this end of it? I don't really know what to make of it at this point.

I guess my biggest thought here, Rob, is that I guess I didn't realize the wolves were this desperate in order to make something happen. Although when you look at the particulars, it's like, yeah, I mean, like Anthony Edwards has like, what, three more years left on his deal. if this goes poorly, then you're two, like two years away, typically when guys start to ask out, and like the train is probably already off the tracks at that point. And I get the understanding, like, when you look at some of their failures in the postseason, not having that complimentary ball handle, not having the sizzle, especially when Anthony Edwards was out. I get all that stuff. In theory, sure.

I just, it does feel like they are spooning out their entire identity here, where they have been season after season, the biggest, baddest team. that can counter bigger teams like the Nuggets. And it does feel like they are aspiring to something different. And that always scares me when you have something that has been moderately successful. Yeah, I mean, I think quite successful, relative to every other team in the league that hasn't won a championship of the last three years. Like, The Wolves have been a really successful team.

I also think it's okay to pivot from that, given the way their playoffs went. This was a very interesting Western Conference bracket in terms of the number of teams that just had serious. Reckonings along the way. Like, we're going to talk a little bit about the Denver Nuggets. They're one of those teams who kind of ran into a wall and have to really reassess. I think the whole Julius Randall situation really put the wolves in a tough spot where

that's not a player who's easy to replace with just like another plug and play power forward. Like, he's too talented to just assume someone else can do what he does. And so then you do have to reconceptualize your team. If you're going to either trade Julius Randall for, you know, another starting level player, which they failed to do, or salary dump him in the manner that they did. you got to get creative. You have to start including some of these picks and some of these swaps and bring in something really dramatic.

And the most important need on the board was the counterbalancing playmaking to take pressure off Ant, to make it so that you can't just double him every time down the floor. You can't just treat him and treat the rest of the wolves as if they are a simple problem to solve. And I think Lamello does do that. Will he be available enough? Frankly, who knows? Like put these ankles in bubble wrap from like minute one that. he touches down.

The idea of him trying to walk on an icy Minnesota sidewalk makes me very nervous, frankly. So, you know, put that on the board. What's it called that you put on the bottom of your shoes? The, the, the crampons. Yeah, yeah, crampons. The hiking crampons. Can we do that? All the time for La Mello Ball, please.

Some hot pink colors. Yes. And as far as, like, who he's going to be in some of these, like, intense physical playoff series, we really have no idea because we've never seen it. And every time he's been in a play-in game, it's most of, have gone quite poorly, so I really don't know, but his role is going to be totally different. And I think the idea of him playing off Ant is very exciting to me, and those guys kind of creating a playmaking relationship is very exciting. But there are so many questions here.

Even for people who believe in Lamello as a player and as a prospect and as, you know, a reader of the floor, this is going to be something totally different from Minnesota that I think will probably demand Lamello step into a slightly different space than he's used to, that it will probably demand Jaden McDaniels playing the four, if not full-time, at least a, significant portion of the time and Ant to kind of figure out ways that all of these pieces make sense together. I think he'll be a nice release valve for Ant a lot of ways, but I think that this is going to probably there is a world where this suits Lamello pretty well. I mean, as the secondary guy to Ant because he can, and he can kind of move in and out of that primary role

as it, I mean, I had it written down here. I mean, he was like the primary player in 59% of the and its actions when he was on the floor. So he's used to being central. He can hit catch and shoot shots. He can sort of gnash to one side of the floor to the other and pass the ball and move it in a way that the wolves haven't had. Really, I can't think of a guy that they've had that's been like that, that's been kinetic and really versatile. But you're right. I mean, it definitely is, you know, they came into those playoff series being like, all right, man,

we're going to just bludging you and beat you up at the four or five spots. And it was like they did do a lot of bludgeoning and beating up. But the guard depth and the versatility and the switchability of the spurs just kind of wore them down over time. Granted, they also had Victor Wimmyniamma, which matters a wee bit. But not having Nas Reid and not having Randall there, you just, like you said, Rob assumed that McDaniels is going to slide up. And then do you play I.O. out there also with Lamello and with Anthony Edwards. And then you got to your big backstopper of Rudy Gobert.

I did enjoy the tweets where people were speculating about Gobert catching all the passes from La Mello Ball, which a lot of people were quick to point out that there's a little problem with that sentence that it starts with Rudy Gobert catching. So we'll see how that goes. But it's going to definitely be a shift of perspective for sure, similar to the Hornets. I think they should at least experiment with like how much sticky tack can you put on Rudy's hands. Like how much can you get away with before a referee notices? I think it's at least worth trying. We had a big dude on our team in high school who struggled to catch the ball. Our coach literally sprayed his hands with, I'm being serious, that happened. It had the same effect with a basketball that it would like a football? I don't know. But don't you want to find out? Didn't alter his career all that much, I'll just say. The real analytics revolution is figuring out what chemical product will make

Rudy Go Bear be able to catch high lobs. That's what I'm looking to find. Well, he does feel even more critical to the defensive success. he already was, which is a real saying something because he was already practically the entire defense. And maybe that is the calculus that they kind of came up with here. It's like despite the fact that we were big, we were counting on Rudy so much. I mean, the fact that he's 34 at this point, it does feel like a lot there. Although, I don't know if you guys have caught any of the clips of them talking about Johann Baranget lately. It's like they saw Jesus in the Dorito bag.

I told you. He went the length of the core between his legs and then he dumped it on a guy. just like, whoa! And so maybe there is a succession plan already in place there that that will solve everything. But they are pretty thin on the wings. Not only you're putting Jada McDaniels down at the four, like Edwards and I.O., both 6-4, Dante Divencenzo, if he comes back healthy next season, also 6-4, Lamello plays, like, what is he, 6-7, but plays like he's 5-11 and weighs like 100 pounds there, so I don't think he's going to be much resistance.

You think Lamello plays like he's 5-11? I mean, he's a great rebounder for one. Like, yeah, he's a little flimsy defensively, but. Right. He'll make only incredible plays, yes. Containment maybe not so much. Yeah, but yeah, he anticipates. He can disrupt, but no, I mean, he's not going to, he's not going to wall anybody up and stuff.

No. So I guess you're just hoping that, like, you can get by in the regular season, you turn it on defensively in the postseason. I.O. does enough of it. Then Jaden is obviously a menace there. it is like a real trade-up. They seem scintillating potentially, offensively. Like, this is going to be an incredibly fun team to watch over the course of next regular season. Like, how do they do it? Like, how do the pieces fit together? Do they score 130 in games some nights when things are clicking? That's great. But it does feel like defense is like you're hoping that the

backstop is there because you need it to be no matter what. Yeah, but if you have two all-NBA caliber defenders at the four, five, or the three and five, depending on how it shakes out, and, you know, a quiet bit of business that they re-up Jalen Clark to come back as well. He has to be, you know, an important part of the rotation defensively, given everything else they're giving up. Maybe that's enough to get you where you need to go, or at least the start of where you need to go. And I would hope that the offense can counterbalance it.

And that's kind of what we're going to have to do with the wolves is changing our understanding of where they win, where they've been such a solid defensive team for so many of these last couple years since they've gotten Rudy Gober. That's kind of their anchoring idea in a lot of ways. and then the offense has been a little wild, although that's settled over time. Now they're a team that could be an explosive offense that, I mean, I would think Lamello Ball

is probably the most overqualified second unit offensive driver in the league at this point. Like I can't think of another guard, like a guard tandem. They would feel as good transitioning from starters to bench as Lamello with whoever the Wals want to try it out with him. Let's jump off of that. How many backcourt tannoms in the league are as good as Lamello Ant? This is what I was kind of,

going through here. Because if you have decided that what you need next to Ant more than anything is the juice offensively and the handling in order to compliment him, you tried it in the front court with Julius Randall's worked okay the first year, didn't work the second year. I get moving on from him. But if you're trying to find another guard who is like reasonably available, the list is actually very small, very quickly. And so I understand going from the Melmell. The guys I wrote down are it's like Fox, who obviously didn't, had a worse postseason than anybody, Garland, small, going to be an issue defensively. Murray, Jamal Murray, not exactly the type you want.

Like, you get to A.J. Mitchell very quickly, and I don't think even if you give everything up for him with the Thunder, why the Thunder would be interested there. And so, like, Lamello is almost process of elimination, the guy you default to because you need what he brings. When you need what he brings, and you need what he could become, too, right? For everything that we've raved about what Lamello did with the Hornets offense last season, And the most exciting part of his game is that he still does have fat to trim and dumb decisions to weed out. And the idea that he could be exponentially better than this even still, you're not going to say that about a lot of the guys you just listed who have already kind of reached at least the first levels of their potential or just don't have as high a ceiling as Lamello does.

And so that's where you get a Wolves team that understood that they were going to have to do something that felt a little bit aggressive or a little bit desperate. it. And so once you make that decision and once you find yourself having to replace versions of the team that you've been, why not swing for the guy that has upside as opposed to, you know, yet another stable Mike Conley-esque point guard to slot into the rotation that would be helpful but not transformative. I'm serious about the backcourt. I mean, Spurs, obviously you have Castle Harper. You can keep Fox and there's the triumvirate. But the thunder obviously deserve. I don't think there is good. I mean, offensively, not as, I mean, three, they're probably better defensively, but

it can turn it on and off, obviously, but the Thunder with Jalen and Shea, granted, they have a lot of guys, and you think, I mean, that's the Eselon that you're talking about. They would have to prove, they have some things to prove. That's assuming you're classifying Jalen as a guard. Yeah. It's like, he's like a wing guard. I mean, he runs pick and roll. He can, you know, hit triple pull up threes. He can really, really pass. I mean, it's, he, and so far, he had in Lamello similar qualifications, I think, in the way that they play, play types, you know, size. I'm just trying to think it's not a lot of competition. No.

Like in terms of the quality of backcords in the league. I think the Lakers are probably the one, like Luca and Reeves. Like that feels like the kind of firepower we're talking about as far as like a true star star back court where they can play off of each other, where they can spell each other. There just aren't a lot of teams that have that kind of investment at both guard positions right now. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm excited to see what they kind of turned up here. All right. Can we actually say one more thing before we move on, Justin,

just because I think we kind of zoomed past it. Phoenix doing this Miles Bridges trade, fucking preposterous. Like, why? What? So as a result, because they traded their 2033 first. Unprotected. The players in that draft are around 12 years old right now.

They can only trade one more first round pick from here until 2033, and that pick has already been swapped twice. So they're 2028. And then they also have three seconds available. One of them they recouped in this exact deal. For Miles Bridges. The dude who anyone who was watching the Hornets last season would acknowledge

was like what was holding that team back effectively in terms of their best lineups. But I guess if you have to give up a future unprotected first, that not only could be an incredible asset in and of itself, but hamstrings your team in the process in terms of its trade flexibility, you just got to do it. I guess you balance out the roster a little. You know, he's not a shooting guard, which is nice. That is something, I guess.

Go get Morris Peterson or Goran Souton. I'm trying to think of some other Spartans who might be available. Doesn't a team work for the team? He does, yeah, I believe so. I mean, look, Dremont's a free agent now. Maybe you make it the Godfather offered a Dremont to come in some. I don't know where the money comes from, but, you know. Well, you know, when you think about Isaiah Thomas being around, I think this is sort of proof that we kind of continue to be whoever we were in that like six to eight years old range.

I don't blame, I don't blame Isbia for that. It's kind of like I get starstruck when Tashon Prince is around. You can never stop being who you are. It's like if I started a team. Yeah, I'd find a way to get Keith Bogan's in my front office or something like that, you know. That's why I'm such a cool guy because six through eight, I was just, I was just crushing. All right. Other intriguing situations still left on the board here. We each brought one to the table. Rob, do you want to go with yours first? Yeah, I would, in the vein of the Hornets and these teams that had interesting seasons

with some momentum and then doing something kind of radical, the Toronto Raptors are just everywhere right now. They were in on the lamello ball derby before they got outbid by the wolves. And now it seems like hot and heavy to trade for Kauai Leonard in a way that would accelerate a lot of plans. but also, I mean, just makes me very intrigued by how Kauai would fit into their team. Clearly a legend in Toronto. A Raptors reunion would be great for a bunch of different reasons. But if he goes back and like re-ups on a longer-term extension, I mean, they would kind of have a little bit of everything that you need to be competitive.

I don't know that all of it is in the right place at the right time in their careers just yet. And the East is certainly stacked in its way. But a Raptors team that already had my attention would I think be putting its foot down in a conference where you really have to. to feel stable to compete with the best in the East right now. Is this Kauai move? Is this the, is this, so he has this change of heart, obviously. We flip from, you know, he's trying to get out. He would only go to L.A.

He doesn't want to be in Toronto. He doesn't want to resign there. There was, I know as happy as they were about him getting that championship. It was just like, man, you really don't want to stay? Really, man? I understand, I understand that feeling from Toronto fans. But suddenly he wants to go back. I'm just kind of like, is this, I'm, there are a lot of people at the ringer who would

pull heat references and I've seen the movie I love heat I don't typically pull them but is this the equivalent of like he feels the heat coming around the corner and he's just like we need a safe house for a season and then I'll make a decision about what I want to do next we need to flee to Canada that's the move it's never the move does it not feel that way a little bit it is weird because it's like it's a coming home but he left Toronto specifically to come home where he's from in LA and that was literally the big story they had billboards up all over the place do you remember those spotlights over What was it? It's like streetlights over spotlights. That's the one.

Was the slogan. I was like, Jesus Christ. And then nobody cared about the team for five years. And Gwai just steadily scooped up the soul of whatever they had built. Yeah, it's a really weird thing, especially because a lot of the guys you're hearing as potential salary matching or just other assets going out are basically the two to three years that Messiah had before he went out, just like getting any sort of mid-tier veteran. and none of them worked. It's just like, it just shows how much respect he curries around the league and with us with media, that everyone's like, oh, maybe he's doing something here. Maybe he's buying low on quickly.

Maybe there's something with Ingram. And just none of those guys really matter. If anything, your team is Scotty Barnes, some guys you drafted more recently, CMB in particular. RJ Barrett's been good, but he's getting still paid like he is a foundational player, probably needs to get back on an extension less than that. but it's just like Ingram, do you want Ingram? Do you want quickly? Do you want Pertle? Like all of these guys just do not matter to their future.

This, if Ingram is involved in this trade going to the Clippers or otherwise, it would really cement his legacy as like the guy you trade for when you have nothing else going on. You know, just like involved in various superstar acquisitions because he's good enough to make money and productive enough to talk your way into it. And congratulations. Now you have Brandon Ingram for two to three years until you decide to really be serious about it. Yeah, it's the equivalent of like when you're trying to pick what you're going to do on like a Saturday night. This is the cycle that like, you know, you could go see a movie.

You could go to dinner, whatever. This is the cycle Megan and I go through where like once every two or three years we'll be like, we could go bowling. You want to go bowling? And then we go bowling. And we're like, yeah, bowling's cool. That was good for one night. And then we wait, two, three. You know what I mean?

I feel like that's where Ingram is on the list of, he's the equivalent of like, maybe we'll go bowling. We've done everything else. We have nothing else to do, you know. I was going to push back because I do love to bowl, but also have I been bowling in five years? All of a sudden, I look up, I wake up in morning and I haven't and I need to rectify that. People love to bowl here. I think because during the winter you just need indoor activities, then I got to say it's fine. Your wrists really start to hurt after a while.

Those balls, man. I think something's wrong with your technique. Yeah, and also, maybe your ego is making you pick the bigger ball, maybe. I don't know. It's probably what it is. Yeah. But I'm dealing. I get a lot of torque on that, you know?

You're going on a lot of bowling dates and just going straight to the heavy end of the ball rack and being like, look, this is no problem. You a spinner? You a spinner? You a spinner? I don't even know about this. No. He is a spinner, you know? Big bowler over here.

Okay. Who is the Giants pitcher? Tim Lenticum? Just had that really wild wind up and just put a lot of torque on the ball and then he just like his career was over. That's going to be me. That's you out of the bowling? Ali. They called them The Freak. That's what they call me too in the dating scene. All right. Next up, you want to talk about somebody else? Kyle, why don't you do yours?

I'm not going to act like it's on the same level as some of these other dudes, but I like this deal. I made this joke on Twitter that, here we go. This is just like, I used to be in sneaker groups back in the early 2010s, very, very involved with like Facebook sneaker groups. And you can make a killing. because there would be dudes on there. This is a little aside here, but there would be dudes, there was a whole culture of you could only wear it once. It couldn't even have a crease in it, a crease of any kind. So there would be these dudes who would buy new releases, has a little crease, they get off the shoes. And I lived in that little marketplace. But every once in a while, every once in a while, there would be somebody with a gigantic collection who would, for whatever reason, from afar, I don't know why, they would just have to suddenly get off of a lot of their stuff in a short time frame. And it was just a fire sale.

and you come up with some crazy stuff. One time I ended up with like Concord Lows and some sport blue Jordan 3s. People who love sneakers are going to know what I'm talking about. I got them for $180 together. Coo the century. That reminds me a little bit of what's going on with OKC because the price that the Pistons got Isaiah Joe for to me is great for the Pistons. I think that it suits a need for them. I wanted to just kind of, I just think that he is going to fit.

a certain role for them. I don't know if he's going to be a star, but I think adding him was a, the Thunder didn't necessarily need him, but the Pistons, I think it's a great fit. I have some more thoughts on it, but I'll let you all react to it initially there. If I can mimic your,

oh, Nikiel Alexander isn't as good as Janus in crudility, Isaiah Joe's not going to be a star, but he is very good to the point that he might be the Pistons fifth or sixth best player as currently constructed, and they just picked him up for basically nothing. Well, I think the Pistons is going to be really intriguing. this off season because they are in prime position to absorb guys like this because they have the defensive context and Cade Cunningham in order to empower those guys. They really just need

some of these shooters we talked about with Hero. They just need offensive juice and those seem like the easiest guys to get. Having said that though, I get two seconds for like a steady rotation player. It seems like a low cost. I think beef stew also went for something similar. I actually think the two seconds got rerouted in this sort of deal, but whatever. if anything, it feels like a lot considering that everyone knows that the Thunder needed to dump money. If anything, the Thunder's players are so good that they're giving up two seconds just because there's so much competition to get to those guys.

I also think that's a real market, though. Like, it may not be the return you, like, honestly, I'm just like not fretting over giving up two seconds for a good player who can actually help you in the playoffs. If you're the Pistons, he may not be up to the Thunder standards to compete in the Western conference finals. but if you were Detroit still trying to break through, still trying to run through some walls and figure out how to shoot over the top of them,

this is more than acceptable to give up when lots of teams could use an Isaiah Joe. Literally shooting over the top of them. Look at this stat. Listen here, in the past, let's see, I had this written down, in the past three seasons, playoff and regular season combined. There've only been 19 players

who have shot more than 400 relocating catch-and-chute shots. That means you're not just stationary. You've got some little movement on it. 19 guys, best shooters in the world pretty much, if you look at the list. It's like the Stephs, everybody. Isaiah Joe has the highest field goal percentage among that group. This dude can shoot these shit out of the ball. So it's kind of like the thunder.

As they went in the playoffs, you know, his minutes went down. I mean, he was down to like, he was under like 10 minutes per game because they just have a lot more options that are two-way players. And he decreased as they went down. But for the pistons, I think they have great defensive structure to kind of protect him. I just think that they feel the need here. I think he's going to hit shots for them. It's going to work.

I also think guys like Isaiah Joe are really important as you're kind of buttressing Jalen Duren as hopefully a more viable, stable playoff performer. The Pistons need to figure that out. Like how do you keep Duran aggressive? How do you keep weaponizing him? How do you keep him from falling into the sort of lulls he fell into into the playoffs where he just didn't seem like a useful offensive player for long stretches of those games? There's a bunch of ways to do it.

One of them is you really enable him as a handoff option. for guys like Duncan Robinson and Isaiah Joe. And you force teams to play up to him because someone has to handle for Isaiah Joe coming around that handoff, coming around that ball screen. And then you can do all kinds of things with Duren rolling out of that and getting good action out of it. It's not a perfect solution. It's not a one-size-fits-all.

It's going to resolve everything that's going on with Duren, but it's a start. Duren is probably going to get paid more than you would have expected after watching him in the playoffs because all it took was one team or two teams. the Lakers out there needing a center, threatening the restrictive free agent offer sheet that's going to force them to pay more for them to give him more than that. And so you hear his name, get associated with the Jalen Brown conversation. I don't really see that fit specifically, and especially with a team like the business that have so much going for them. He's going to get paid more than we expected and it's going to be fine there. But I agree. I think what they're adding

on top of that makes sense. What they need is offense. They don't need to completely just upend what this team already was despite what a travesty he was in the postseason. I also think like just big picture, is this just not a case and point of like taxing the rich actually works? Like the thunder have an abundance. Yeah. Penalize them and then all of a sudden

they have to disperse it to the lesser teams. Man, Justin Mamdani, you're really coming in from the top road? Radicalizing group chat? I'm just saying. Did you guys, anybody going to kick the tires on Jonathan Isaac? Anybody interested?

Can I, any takers? Well, I can, I can think of it, least one major cable news network that might be interested in his services. Oh, oh boy. All right, before we go. One more from me in terms of intrigue. What's going on with Nicola Yokic, man? So he didn't sign the extension last year.

There were financial considerations there where it didn't make sense long term if his aspiration was to bank as much money as possible on the extension. This year, not as much of a case. But I have to say, it does remind me a lot of the Yonah situation. No, we have to go back several Yonahs. situations ago where we just kind of think like, oh, the, the foreign-born guys are just going to stay it out here, just make the best of their current situation. They're not like the AAU generation where we're going to force their way to this team or that team. And my thing with

that was always like, I think they're just like reasonable. And then if the team isn't good enough, they probably don't want to stick around. I don't know if that's going to happen. Denver has a lot to get through this off season. It seems like they're open to tearing up their entire team around Yokic. If it happens, I think you're sitting with the wool. there, it becomes kind of a dicey preposition, where it's like, if you just like just upend what works for something that could be better, there are a lot of risk inherent to that. So we'll see. But it does feel like at the very least, like if he doesn't sign this extension, things could

get pretty dark pretty quickly when I think the assumption was he was going to be there no matter what. Yeah. I don't think there's any reason to believe just yet that he's going to leave. But if you were Nicola Yokic, wouldn't you want to see more? before you sign up to stay. Like the nuggets are in a very odd spot where they're both like getting quite expensive because of all these guys that are wanting to invest in and already invested in Payton Watson

is due for a new contract the summer as well, but also like clearly not good enough. And I think the wall that they ran into in the playoffs where Jamal Murray was just like really overtaxed. Christian Brown just had an absolute flop of a season. Aaron Gordon's injuries have become a real recurring problem for the team. Cam Johnson was really big in the elimination game, but also had some no-shows along the way. They just need more. This is a team that needs to be reimagined in certain ways, whether that's a Jalen Brown-sized move or some smaller ones. They're also potentially going to lose, you know, Tim Hardaway Jr.

They might end up having to lose Jonas Valchunis for salary reasons. There's just a lot of like bloodletting happening here. And in a way where if I were Nicole Yokic, I think I would want to kind of sit back and see what is my notoriously penny-pinching front-off is going to do to get us out of this jam while also giving us a position to grow going forward. Yeah, I think it's way more just about trusting that they're going to do right by me and I just feel like Yokic more than any other superstar in the league just has some Larry David to him where I just can't imagine, I just can't imagine him going to another city and dealing with like not, I'm sure he knows people all over the place. These are NBA players. But I just, I just,

can't imagine him wanting to deal with the bullshit of going to a new team. Him more than any other superstar. I mean, Kauai is the only guy that he just doesn't play the game. Like, Yonis, Yonis kind of plays the game, likes to be loved, has sneaker deal, does endorsements, all kinds of stuff. I just, yokech, that kind of leverage, I just don't see it with him. Because if he, he ain't going to a party if he didn't know anybody. And he probably still won't go to the party. They respect it. I think the real dark timeline for him is, is this not a one-season reboot, no matter what they do, this is actually two, because they're in the uninavial position, at least two, because they

want to keep Peyton Watson and some of their younger players in order to build Ford because their older players are more injury prone and starting to age out, despite the fact that those are the players that you probably need to hit the highest level of the team. And so you're, you need youth, but you're counting on the inexperienced. And I just, those two things don't typically coalesce with like high level expectations and win now mandates, especially in a West, where as we mentioned, the Thunder are just shedding like their 14th best player and we're like, this guy might be a top seven rotation player for the best team in the Eastern Conference. It's just like it feels like they're playing two different games. And so if I was Yokic, I totally understand him and I actually

respect him perhaps like holding their feet to the fire because like this situation isn't good enough. It probably won't be good enough long term. And frankly, if you want to go elsewhere, like, bro, live your best life. As long as they could just put you up in a hotel where you don't have to talk to other people as Kyle is talking to. Like, we can figure this out. I just think there's, everything you're saying is true, Justin, about the tough balance they find themselves in between the reliance on these veterans and also the need for higher variability. I just don't know that the high-end version that you're talking about anchored by veterans really, even exists anymore.

Like, I think that part is already deteriorated between health and just aging and natural kind of regression of the roster to the point that they do need to be a little bit more dramatic. And whether that happens this season or this off season or next really depends on what's available and the finances that are difficult to untangle here. But the championship version of the Nuggets hasn't really existed for a long time. And we've been hoping and like, oh, if they get healthy, oh, if this guy's available now and then, maybe they can recapture some of that magic.

but we're going on three years right now, and I think they've won two total playoff series during that time. Like, that's just not good enough. Yeah, the tide shifts way too fast. It gets late so early in the NBA, and it's a young man's game. And I just, you know, we've seen it. You're right, we gave them,

I think this was the threshold that we crossed where we just kept giving them the benefit of the doubt. And I know I was guilty of that too. In the playoffs, I was just like, you know, and some of that was, you know, they took OKC to game seven. And we were like, okay, it's still in there.

But this was the first time where it was like, it might still be in there, but the injuries are just putting a lid on this in a way that I think is making them rethink it in a serious way. Is variability something that we could work with? I like that. A spin-off of the variables.

But what would it be? What does it mean? The biggest swing players in the league. But isn't that already what the variables are? Sometimes. I should mention that we are finishing this up at 10368. on Pacific time.

Not a lot happened. Andrew Wiggins goes back to the heat, which is nice. They need him. They definitely need bodies on that team. But a lot of things kind of we skated by here. Marcus Smart opting out. Seems like he's destined for perhaps the rockets.

But we shall see. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely. Thank you to Ben Carus. Thank you to Victoria Valencia. We'll talk to you next time. 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming.

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