The Ringer NBA Show - Howard Beck Returns With Observations from Celtics-Warriors, the Pelicans’ Chances at a Title Run, and the Historic Parity of This Season’s Standings | Real Ones

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Logan is joined once again by Howard Beck of ‘Sports Illustrated’ to discuss their takeaways from the first rematch between the Celtics and Warriors since last year’s NBA Finals, and also debate the realistic chance at a Pelicans Finals run (2:32). Later, they talk about Beck’s article on the historic parity of this year’s NBA standings and how that will impact the trade market (34:07). Finally, they wrap up by talking about how the high spending rate in today’s league has changed the way teams are built (50:26). Host: Logan Murdock Guest: Howard Beck Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Production Assistant: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Peace! We're out of here. What up, what up? This is Logan Murdoch, real ones. Had a really great episode with Howard Beck. Just so you know, there might be a little bit of ambient noise on my mic. There's been a little renovations at the pad. So it might be a little bit of drilling going on.

But great episode nonetheless with Howard Beck. So tap in. We'll talk to you guys soon. Peace. What's popping? Logan Murdoch here. No, Roger Bell. He is under the weather.

So we got an honorary rural one in the building. Someone is a friend of the show. He comes on all the time. He's here maybe every once every couple of months. He's our guy. He's the man, the myth, the legend. Howard, motherfucking Beck. How you doing, Howard?

I'm good. That's, in fact, the way they printed it on my birth certificate at the Oakland Kaiser, in fact. Middle name motherfucking. Wait, are you, are you Oakland Kaiser? Is that your, is that your first husband? Yes, sir. Me and me and the vice president.

There you go. So you are Oakland Kaiser. I'm across the street at Summit. So, you know, we were right across. born right across the street from each other. Is there an Oakland hospital rivalry? Like, do you think they, like, they walk out of their buildings at each other each day

and, like, kind of sneer across the street from each other? Is there a, is that a thing? I don't know. I never, I sometimes think about that when I'm driving down Broadway. I was like, because you know on one side there's the big Kaiser institution, and then you go on the other side of it. It's summit.

It's just right over it. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. I'm a, I'm a, that might be some investigative journalism I do soon. There you go. There's a whole cultural exploration there to do, I'm sure. But good to be with you.

Good to be an honorary real one. Not as real as you and Raja. But, you know, I'll do what I can. I'll elevate as much as I'm capable of. Man, you know, you got. But I want to talk real quick. We're going to get into some of, some of Beck's work in a second. I was in Chase Center in San Francisco over the weekend.

For what I think is one of the bigger matchups of the early season thus far, Warrior Celtics. it was one of those games where there's a few games on the calendar that just matter more than the others and I think this was one of those just with the Celtics being as good as they've been over the course of this season and just mashing everybody and the Warriors who were a team that is still trying to get right.

You know, they're a team that went through its lumps, you know, the Jordan Pool, Draymond Green situation to start and just losing to start the season pretty big. So, Howard, I want to give my thoughts on this. And I want to start with the Celtics. And I told you how that this is a, that was a game that, that everyone circles on their calendar, one of those games you have to win.

And I was really expecting a statement went out of the Celtics, one of those games where you exercise a lot of demons in you and you kick the shit out of the team that beat you in a regular season game on a national scale. did not see that from the Celtics. And it kind of disappointed me. I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but how much should I look into this game in terms of what the Celtics are going to do going forward?

So one of the drawbacks of covering this league for as long as I have, year 26, is that these signature matchups, these marquee games, these big rivalry games, the finals rematch, doesn't quite hit me the same way, maybe as it once did.

I'm a little, like, numb to the whole idea of, like, statement game in December. It doesn't exist. And I really don't think it exists for a team like the Warriors that if I've been there, done that, they have at a whole other level, right? Teams won a bunch of championships, including the most recent one. They don't need to prove anything to themselves. It's not that it doesn't matter. I think it's still, like, a good, like, marker for them.

It's nice that they, in this part of the season where they've kind of gotten their feedback onto them and they're playing more like themselves again. They're still not where they want to be in the standings. They still got some guys who, you know, quite haven't quite got their games together yet. The bench is still an issue. But beating the Celtics pretty handily in their first rematch when the Celtics came in as arguably the best team in the NBA,

I think is good. I don't put that much on it. And I don't think the Warriors probably will either. But I think that's a nice box for them to check. The Celtics side of it actually is interesting, though. I think that's different because they're not the team that's won championships. They're not the team that's all in their 30s and that's already like, you know, established who they are.

They're still the young hungry team that had a chance to win the championship and then lost the last three games of the finals and got beat pretty handily then, had some doubts raised about them individually, collectively. They go out, they bring in Brogden, they bring in Galinari, who of course is not playing because he's hurt. They certainly expected better themselves.

And when Jason Tatum after the game said, oh, did the whole you guys thing, you know, we didn't think it was a big statement game. You guys did. The media did. The fans did. It wasn't a big deal. I'm sorry. Bullshit. Come on.

Who you think you're fooling? And it's fine if it means something to you. Go ahead and just say, yeah, it meant something. And we lost and it sucks. And we'll get them next time. At least that would be believable. I'd be more accepting of that than just saying, oh, it didn't mean anything. No, like, this is the team you're chasing.

Now, you're also, you got to beat the bucks. You might have to deal with the Sixers at some point or the Nets at some point. The Warriors may not even be the team in the finals that you face in June should you make it back. But they are the team that kept you from winning a championship in the moment that you got as close as you've ever been. Don't tell me it doesn't matter. It matters. By the way, by the way, by the way, they won in your building. The Warriors won in your building too.

Yeah. And just, it really turned up afterwards as you. is me when I saw. And they listened to it and they heard it and they were bothered by it. And my colleague, Chris Mannix, wrote extensively and very nicely about that moment and what it meant to Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown and the rest of them to have to hear that in their building that night and how that drove them in the off season. Listen, everybody in this league, especially the longer you've been in this league, whether

it's manufacturing ways to keep yourself motivated, whether it's real stuff, keep yourself motivated. Every season you come in with something, right? Even the Warriors have talked about this at times. Like, you had to reshuffle the rocket. to get some fresh blood. You need some guys who haven't been there. You need to find new things to chase to keep yourself engaged at a high level. The Celtics didn't even need to manufacture anything. That thing is real. So for them to downplay it afterward is kind of silly. I do think it matters to the extent that the Celtics, you know, they need to establish themselves at an elite level

night in, night out. They have the season overall. That's a game that would have cemented it that much further, and they didn't get it. And that's fine. I don't think, listen, I don't think it matters ultimately in terms of whether they can win the East or whether they can win the championship. They're incredible. They're a great team. And they've been playing out of their minds, especially, you know, their offense has been

on, like, this historic pace. They'll be fine, but the game meant something. It definitely meant something. And you and I know this back, where if you're a team that's vying to win a title, you obviously got to win a lot of games. You got to win, you know, do a lot of things to get to that point. But the one thing you have to do in this league is if you're gunning for a title, you have to win the right games, right?

Where there's probably like four or five games that you have to win. And I'm not putting hell of stock onto this game in particular. I was disappointed in what I saw from the Celtics. But the biggest reason I think I was disappointed was this is a team that they remind me a lot, and this is going to make a lot of people pissed off. They remind me a lot of the 08-09 Lakers, if that makes sense, right? Where a team that got,

that probably wasn't ready for the moment, good enough to get to the finals, wasn't ready for the moment, gets blown out, gets beaten, and the next year, you remember that year, they just had a fuck you type year

where they, I think they win 65 games. They go to the finals, they beat the magic. That was nine, right? Lost the Celtics in 0-8. Lost the Celtics in 0-8. Beat the Magic in Nine.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. So that team that went on to beat the Magic in 09, I kind of seen some similarities with this team just in terms of, or at least that's what I was hoping that they would be, right, when I watched them play. Just because they were just mashing people to start the season. And I felt like this was going to be the culmination where I remember I was talking to

a lot of people pregame, just like, you know, I mean, I think this is going to be a statement win for the, for the Celtics. Like, this is going to be a game. The Warriors are reeling. Yeah, they're on a mini run, but they came in, I think, losing two straight. And the Celtics came off a win against Phoenix. And we'll talk about Phoenix in a second,

where they just utterly embarrassed the suns. They beat them by like 40 points. You think that they're just going to keep rolling and rolling. And honestly, just looking in the, you know, I'm a vibes checker, Beck, it definitely looked like one of those, it looked like the same games that we saw in the finals, where Tatum is just somehow hesitant.

And he, they had, they, the warriors are missing Wiggins. They had Looney. They had sometimes Jordan Poole on, on Jason Tatum. They just, they had guys that you would think that Jason Tatum could just eat for lunch. And he just, he struggled mildly throughout the game. It, it didn't see, it seemed like the Celtics are the Celtics are the Celtics. And I, I think, I don't, I don't, I don't want to hedge. too much because it's this December, but it does, it did seem disappointing to see the effort

that they brought out. And then for Jason Tatum to be like, this is a you guys thing and you guys, no, man, this is Saturday night. This is, this is a, this is the Saturday ABC showcase. They put these two teams on the schedule for a reason. You knew what this was. This is a time for you guys to do something and it didn't happen. Should I be that disappointed in the Celtics in the way that I am out? I think there's, I think that's fair to, to, to an extent, right? Because the Jason Tatum we saw, let's focus on him for a second, because he's kind of the glaring aspect of that game and that loss for them. The Jason Tatum that we saw for the first month or so of this season, like nobody in the NBA was playing better, right? Like, best player in the

NBA vibes going for him. Yeah, right. Like may not literally be, may or may not literally be, but best player in the NBA vibes, as you say, yes. Like, I'm in the conversation, folks, deal with it. I'm here. I'm in the MVP discussion and I'm going to be for the next 10 years. And in so many aspects of the game, too, right? Like he was, you know, he's scoring from everywhere. He's mixing it up. He's defending at his usual level. His playmaking, I think, is at his probably his all-time best. He's doing everything. He's being the guy. It's not just going out there and putting up numbers. It was being the guy. It was leading his team. It was elevating his team. And like, nothing's changed. I think he's still that guy. But he wasn't that night. He wasn't that night against the team.

that you should most want to beat and the team that you struggled against in the finals notably. So to have a performance reminiscent of that is a little, you know, mildly troubling. Again, it's just December. It's just December. But you want to get that one. And you, like, it's hard not to look at it and go like, oh, you know, maybe this team has you, maybe this team's in your head a little bit, you know? Or maybe this team just really knows how to defend you and put you in uncomfortable

spots. And, you know, you'd have to go back and. rewatch it to see how true that might be. But, you know, we're human. We look for trends, right? Jason Tate, struggling against the Warriors while being dominant almost all the rest of his games is kind of a trend at this point. And it will be until he proves otherwise. So, you know, by the way, I was just looking this up while we were talking. Like, for all the talk of the warrior struggles, and those were obviously very real, over the last 15 games, they're now actually a top 10 defensive team. And that was the part that everybody was most worried about, of course.

You know, Clay coming around physically is part of that. You know, Dremont, Wiggins, everybody. And so when, you know, when they've got all those guys, they can throw at Tatum and keep mixing it up against them the same way that they did in the finals, that's part of it. Part of it is that they're, I don't know if they're defending quite back to the level that they were last season. But last 15 games, offensive rating is eighth and defensive rating is seventh. So they've, they've kind of come around. Like the warriors are kind of rounding into shape, you know, in the abstract, statistically here. All right. So I was going to go lead into my next question. Do you still believe in the Warriors institution? Let me preface this question, because when I, when I

watch the Celtics, the game was a microcosm of this, right? You see the Celtics like, damn, they could be, they could, they should be beating this team. And then the institution of the Warriors always wins out. It just seemed like the Warriors were inevitable in that situation. You get what I'm saying? Do you still believe in the inevitability of what the Warriors bring? So I'm going to answer that, but first I'm going to tell you why I momentarily thought you might be alluding to something else. I thought, ooh, the Warriors institution. Like, do we believe in a team that has not extended Bob Myers, that news dropping hours before they play that game? And an institution that invested hard, invested heavily into the idea of the two timelines, the dual track.

And that's not looking all that great at the moment. So I thought you were kind of going more broadly like, we can go into that after that. I've met more. So let's go. Let's explore that. Let's explore that, though. Let's go into that, and then we can talk about the game itself. Yeah, because I do still believe in the Warriors for this season. Broadly, listen, Steve Kerr would probably be the first person to say, everything ends, right?

He's been part of that before, obviously, with the Bulls, most notably, but like everything ends. I'm not saying it's time for the Warriors to end, and I don't think they're ready to end, and I don't think that's coming immediately, but we're, obviously, we're getting closer, based on ages and everything else. I don't think Bob Myers is leaving. That's just my gut. I don't think so either. But if he did, you and I would start to think about the other version of this question.

Ooh, the Warriors is an institution. What does it mean? What does a Warriors franchise without Bob Myers mean? Well, in the general sense, though, if you talk about the Warriors institution as a whole, we don't give a lot of credence. We don't really talk about this, but the institution in a lot of ways is Bob Myers. He is the guy that kind of kept that glue together. He is the guy that when Draymond goes off the rails, he brings him back into the fold, right?

And he can also, especially at a time like this, when you start the season with as much controversy as the Warriors did, and you're going into a summer that is probably one of the most, the most uncertain summers for the Warriors that we've kind of had in recent memory. I think this is definitely the summer with the most questions since 2019 when Kevin left. But this is, if anything, and this is why this is the argument that Bob Myers gets re-signed and that they go off into the sunset, is that this is probably the time that they need Bob Myers more than ever, if we're going to be frank. For sure, for sure, to navigate what's going to be the choppiest waters they've had at least since 2019. Maybe not the choppiest waters ever, but at least since. 2019. I'd make the argument that it's one of the choppiest waters ever. I'd make the argument it's the choppiest waters ever. Because at least in 2019, you knew you had stuff coming back

and that Clay would eventually get healthy. And in this case, we've got everybody that much older and a lot of financial pressures and the young guys not delivering as of yet. Yeah, I would say so. Like, this is the time that you would want him there. But I would also just say this. Like, you know, we've all talked ad nauseum about Warriors' culture and what that means. And every time you bring that up, the first thing that Bob Myers or Steve Kerr will say is, well, the culture is Steph. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. I think Steph is 75, 80 percent of that. But the rest of it is some combination of Steve Kerr, Bob Myers, and maybe even a couple percentage points of Joe Lakob and that ownership group that have given, that have empowered their best people to do the things that they do, you know, that front office and Steve Kerr and staff, that have given them all. all the resources financially in the world to do all this stuff. So there's a little bit of ownership group there too. But Bob Myers, not only is his basketball acumen, not only the way he operates with his front office and the collaborative approach they've always taken, but also just his humanity. Like if you think about a healthy culture, a healthy workplace, I think about Bob Myers

coming out literally the day that we all find out about Draymond's punch. And Bob Myers, like there are teams in this league, including one of my backyard, where the GM is, doesn't talk ever. Not good times, not bad times, not medium times, not any times. Bob Myers came out at a time that things were there at their most sensitive, they're most alarming, their most fragile potentially, and said, no, I'm going to come out and I'm going to say, here's what we know and here's what we don't, and here's what I can tell you and what I'm not going to tell you. That accountability and that humanity is really important. And I also think about it in the wake of Durant blowing out as Achilles that night in Toronto back in 2019. And Bob Myers sitting up there in,

tears, basically. Like, that humanity is part of their culture, too. So Bob Myers leaving, if that were to happen, I think is a huge blow to just the whole fabric of what the warriors are. It's still about the players at the end of the day. And it's still about Steph more than anybody at the end of the day. But that would be a bad look. I don't think it's going to happen.

We went through this with Messiah, Jiri, and the Raptors a couple years ago. You know, sanity and logical decision-making one out there. I'm sure it will here too. we don't even really know what the holdup is. So this is a fact without context at this point. Exactly. I agree with you. And also, here's another thing.

And I've written about this extensively, and I know you have two as well. And when you talk to anybody within the Warriors organization, you ask the question, what do they want to be? And the thing is, they want to be a glitzier, glamorous, more glamorous version of the San Antonio Spurs. They want that longevity. They want that type of longevity. And how do you do that? You keep the people that have been successful in place. As long as Steph is playing at a high level, and maybe that's, I don't know, three, four

more years, we'll see what happens. But as long as that's on a high level, you keep the institution in place. I firmly believe that. That's what they have to do. And you should honestly, as long as Bob wants to be in charge, he should be in charge. As long as Kerr wants to be coaching, you keep them in charge. As long as Steph wants to play on your roster, you keep them people in charge. And I think that's what's going to win out in Golden State.

You know, anything can happen. But if you look at history as a guide and what the warriors want to accomplish, I think that Bob Meyer stays in place. I'd be stunned, stunned, absolutely shocked beyond belief if he weren't. Could you imagine the shock waves if he likes, if it announces, oh, Bob Myers is not returning? It's not even just like it. It wouldn't just be a footnote. That would have, that would knock off.

that would have so many different effects towards different types of thing. What is Steph going to think about that? Who's going to navigate through this offseason when, honestly, the roster might, is going to look a lot of different, in my opinion. It's going to look a lot. I don't know the moves, but it's going to look a lot different than it does this season. But it goes back to, again, the thoughts that popped in my head when you said, do you believe in the Warriors institution?

Because part one, Bob Myers, part two, as you said, next summer, right? Like, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, opting in, opting out? Are they trading in with a year left on his deal if he opted in? Is, are walking? Um, you know, those are questions. We never would have thought about the, the Warriors without Draymond before, but we're getting, feels like closer to that, that possibility, right? Like, just by, by contract and age and circumstance, it's hard to say that that's not somewhere out there, right? What if they won a title in this, and that delays the inevitable, right? If they win a title, they're not trading away anyone. I think if they win a title with this roster, they're going to go, they're going to go in full and try to win another one. So like, it's just so many different question marks. And I think you need to ride the ship as long as you have this going on. Yeah, agreed.

So to the actual question of like, do I believe in the Warriors institution like for the season, like their ability to repeat and all of that? I do. I absolutely do. part of it is we've seen them start to recover, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, over the last 15 games, which is a decent chunk. 15 games is at least a month of games. They've been top 10, both offense and defense. We see Steph playing an MVP level every night. Clay, Clay is actually looking like pre-A-Eleas Clay.

That was another thing I wanted to say really quickly about the Jason Tatum thing. I cannot disrespect Clay. Clay was defending his ass off on Jason Taylor. He was defending his ass off. He was to his thing. He was. And how many times have we, like, how many moments of that clay have we seen since he came back? And when we say since he came back, it's still been less than a year, right?

He was out for two and a half years. Almost a thousand days. Yeah. And just came back in January. We're in December now. So it's been 11 months. It's not even 12 months yet. And we're judging him on like, oh, well, Clay, you know, he's got his moments here and there.

But he's not the old Clay anymore. And then, well, he had the off season. This summer, and he still doesn't, it's, you know, it's a lot, folks. It's a lot that you got to go through. I did this math the other day. I'm going to do it real quick again here on basketball reference. All right. Last 10 games for Clay Thompson, averaging 23 and a half points, shooting 450 from three point range, 449. But 44.9% for three point range while averaging 23 points a game. 3.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists. Like, he's looking like the old clay, the offensive stats, and that's a 10 game. sample. That's that's that's more than a couple of games.

And defensively what we saw the other night against Boston against Tatum, that's a really good sign for them to say the least. And and they need it because, you know, Jordan Poole's still a little up and down and young and Kuminga's showing signs again, but, you know, it's hard to rely on that night and night out. And again, Kumiga's not Clay. He doesn't bring everything to the table that Clay does. But when you just need a critical mass of guys who can do something with the ball in their hands, who can score, who can tell. take some of the pressure off stuff. Seeing, you know, 2018, 19 version of clay back again is huge for them.

On top of everything else, by the way, like, who do you fear in the Western Conference right now? I mean, we'll talk about, you know, parody in a minute probably, but like, no one's pulling away. So there's that. The Warriors, despite everything, are four and a half games out of first. Pelicans are in first right now, and they're really, really good. And the Grizzlies we know are good.

And the Nuggets are good. the sons are good, a little shaky at the moment. Kings are revived. I don't think they're in the title chase. Portland is fine. They're not in the title chase. The Clippers might be. We'll see. They're still trying to get healthy and I still don't know what to make of Kaua Ler. Do you trust any of those teams in a seven-game series against the Warriors? That's the thing. That's the thing, right? So when you're trying to make an argument that the Warriors can't repeat, it's got to be, well, then who? Like, who is it that they can't beat? Or who is it that is so stacked that you just can't

deal with them. Now, Zion's just a whole other thing, man. Like, Zion's from a different planet. And I don't know that any team can stop Zion, especially when he's got eventually Brandon Ingram back out there with him. He's hurt right now. And CJ McCollum in that group, like, they're really well balanced. And I think they're going to be a handful for anybody. But no, there's no one team. And they don't have the experience, right? Like, that group has never really been through it. They've been to one playoff series. Once CJ arrived, the rest of the young guys really haven't been anywhere. Zion's never been in a playoff series. So, yeah, there's no team in the West that you look at and say, like, this team is the class of the West or far and away better than anybody else.

And when the Warriors are clicking on all cylinders, they're probably still the best team. So there's still a path there. But, man, it's a dog fight in the West. You made a great transition, Howard, just in terms of talking about the Pelicans. Is that some team that's really fascinating to me? They are the team. They remind me of just the natural evolution of like, they remind me of in a different way, maybe the thunder of that early 2010s, right, where they're a team that they're winning exponentially.

You know, they got the eighth seed and they really made some noise last year. I was at that, I was at that Phoenix series a little bit. And they were a team that was kind of on the ascent. And I know that they're getting a lot of love right now. should, but I don't, I just don't trust them right now. I don't, and this has nothing to do with how good they are, how, how, how, how, where they're going to be. I just mean in this moment in time, I don't trust them in the postseason.

I don't, just for all the reasons that you laid out, is there, can you give me really quickly the, um, the Pelicans, uh, title, the title run right now? Just give it to me right now, how it figures itself out. Like, what does it do? How, how, how should I be convinced that everyone's telling me that the Pelicans all the Pelicans, they're ready to make a finals, and they're ready to make a finals. And I'm looking at them. I'm like, have you guys seen the last few champions?

It doesn't work that way. That's not how it works. What is the Pelicans path to a title this season? And I was one, let me back up. Preseason. And I wrote, you know, Zion Williamson feature for our cover for the NBA preview issue, right? So I spent time with Zion. And I certainly spent a lot of time in the preseason thinking about the Pelicans and what it

meant that Zion Williamson, this kind of generational type talent, was coming back to a team that added C.J. McCollum that made this unlikely playoff run after recovering midseason after getting C.J. McCollum in that trade and what they could become. And I thought, like, in a tough Western conference, all right, I think the Pelicans are ready to be a top six team. They're ready to get an outright playoff spot without needing the play in. That was my, my optimistic view of the Pelicans. I think they're ready to bust the top six. And here we are. They've got the best record in the West in mid-December, they are third overall in defensive rating. They are behind only Cleveland and Milwaukee.

They are fifth overall in offense. So they've got their top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. That's a pretty big deal, and it's not a fluke. They've got great individual defenders. They've got a lot of versatility in their lineup. They've got a ton of shooting. And they've got at full strength, they've got three guys, Logan, who can all do a lot of stuff with the ball in their hands.

If you watched them beat the Sons in that second game, probably in the first game too, I watched the entire second game. I didn't see as much of the first game. Zion's playing Point Zion still. We thought, oh, they got C.J. McCollum, well, he's now the primary ball handler. Plus, they've got Ingram, and he's not playing right now.

But, like, there's two guys who need the ball in their hands a lot. And I do still think, by the way, to the extent that I still have some, it's not even skepticism, just curiosity about the Pelicans. It's like when they're at full strength, you still got to find the right balance between those three. They all need to eat. They all need the ball in their hands. They're all used to controlling the offense and having the ball in their hands a lot. I think there's still some working out that'll have to be done.

But so far, so good. And they all seem like no one's being selfish on this team. That's a really good sign. You know, Zion's not too over-eager after being out for a year and a half of trying to say, I got to do it all now and show that I'm still me. Like, there are those, he has those moments for sure. But it's not a lot. but he's bringing the ball up the court.

He's run in place. He's, you know, and then willingly giving it up and might get it back, might not. Like, they've got so many ways to attack you. And Zion on the move with the ball is scary as shit for anybody in the NBA. And Ingram can create with the ball in his hands, and obviously C.J. McCollum can. Like, how many teams have that kind of luxury and versatility, plus a lot of shooting and defense around them? So, listen, in the abstract. there's nothing about them that says to me that they can't actually make a title run other than

the obvious. And look, I'm a big believer in the unwritten, not the unwritten rules of the NBA, but the unwritten axioms of the NBA. And one of them is that youth doesn't win. And one of them is that you've got to take your lumps if you're a team that has not been through it yet. They were in one playoff series without Zion and lost of the sons in six games. I don't think you usually go from that to finals. But then again, the Phoenix Suns just kind of completely trashed that model, that axiom just a couple seasons ago. So it could happen again. And this is the thing. If I'm going to make an argument that the Warriors, despite whatever flaws they've got, can get back to the finals because the West

is so wide open and there's no one, other than I got to be able to make the same argument probably for New Orleans and Phoenix and maybe even Denver, too, and the Clippers, right? Like, it's anybody, if you've got the requisite talent in the West right now, it's almost anybody's race. It's going to be who's healthy and clicking in March and April. That is interesting. I mean, I get what you're saying, and I understand that I understand why you're saying it. My thing is I just, you know, it's a whole different game in the postseason. Yeah, it's cool that you have the stats and you and you have the offensive and defensive efficiency right now. But what about when a team, a good team, a really great

defensive team can just hone in on Zion and she, the film, and honing on him for two weeks, right? that's another thing that Zion just had like to your point just hasn't faced yet just a team that is locked in on beating him and taking him away and they're going to have to go through those growing pains in the similar way that like the grizzlies have right grisies are a great team I think the grisleys are going to be a great team for years to come and but we'll see what happens I just I love what they're doing they're doing things that a young team does like the the dunk at the end of a game that you have in the bag right they're just doing. really young team shit. That's why that's what gives... It was amazing. It was a great dunk. And I love the energy. However, that it just shows your youth and it just shows you're just...

I don't think you're... I just don't think they're ready yet. I think that they're going to be... I really... I want the Pelicans to be really good. Did you see that fucking crowd when they played against the Sons again? Dude, they are... New Orleans is ready. They're ready.

They're ready for a contender. I just don't know if it's going to happen. this season in particular. It has nothing to do with them and how good they can be. It's just a growing, I'm a believer of the growing pains and taking your lumps. And it's all good. I think that they're going to figure it out. I just, I'm not, I'm not sold just yet. By the way, before any Grizzlies fans hit me for not putting them in that sentence with the clippers and the nuggets and the suns and the pelicans and the warriors, the Grizzlies are obviously in that conversation too. If it's anybody's race, they are in that conversation. I do think that the youth and an experience

of the Grizzlies was among the factors in not being able to get through the Warriors. I do think those same factors could be in play when the Pelicans get to the postseason next spring. I don't think Zion's showboating dunk, to me, it doesn't matter one way or the other in terms of their readiness. But I see what you're saying, Logan. You're not wrong in saying, like, that is an indication still of their immaturity on some level because I don't believe in the unwritten rules. It's not like, I don't care about the dunk. I loved it. I will, I always, I was here for it. It just speaks to what a team does when they're on the ascent is all I'm saying.

That's what it seemed like. Like that's what teams do when they're on the ascent. No, I get you. And I think that's fair. I also think, by the way, still, if I'm Kvonne Luni, Draymond, whoever else, I don't want any pieces like that. I'm hoping somebody else knocks the Pelicans out before I see them in the playoffs. Like not that they would fear them. The Warriors aren't going to fear anybody.

Zion's just a whole other thing, man. It's, yeah, look, I think it's, I think any skepticism about them based on their youth and experience is fair. And there's a lot of youth in that rotation, right? Like outside of CJ and maybe Larry Nance Jr. And I don't even think like the two of them, like, obviously, CJ got a ton of playoff experience in Portland and some big, big games. Larry Nance, you know, a little bit.

The rest of that roster, the rest of that Pelicans roster is not, you know, there's not, CJ might have more playoff experience than like the rest of the rotation combined. for all I know. And I think that matters. And I think that will show up in the postseason. So if that's the source of skepticism, like, I think that's fair. Let's take a quick break. And I want to talk about parody and the NBA. And we are back. I want to talk about Howard's story from last week. It is entitled, This NBA season's Dirty Middle Secret and Unparalleled Parity. It's a really, really good article. It makes you guys check that on on Sports Illustrated.com, the daily cover. But you really got into talking about parody in the NBA.

And there were some numbers that I really, that was really good. You talked about the number of teams within three games of 500 during the first quarter of this season. And I think you went from the 90s all the way into present day. So in the three seasons that have had the most teams within three games of 500 during the first quarter of the season, actually four seasons. It is the current season, the 22, 23 season with 17 teams. the 21, 22 season with 13 teams, the 0506 season with 15 teams, and the 95-96 season with 12 teams.

Now, when I look at the amount of parity in the league throughout these seasons, these all seem like transitional years within the NBA, right? Where you talk about the 95-96 season with the – it's always defined by the 96 Bulls. but it's also when Kevin Garnett is about to come into the league, right? When Shaq's about to come into his own and he's about three or four years from making, you know, the Lakers dynasty, right? And then you have the 05-06 season where, you know, LeBron is kind of coming into his own. He's about a couple of years away from going to the finals. And then you have the Spurs run right there. But you have like about a big bit of a changing of the guard.

I'm starting to see that now with these last two seasons where, where you see, you know, the Kevin Durants are getting older, the Steph Currys are getting older. LeBron James is in his 20th year and shows no signs of slowing up. But what does that tell you with parity in the NBA? Is it a matter of, do you think it's because of a transitional time where we are in the league or what other factors would you put into the reason why we're having so much parity in the league right now? Yeah, I mean, if we were talking about just a changing in the guard, changing of the guard, at the finals level, you would look at Steph, LeBron, even though the Warriors were just there again, but Steph, LeBron, Kevin Durant, Kauai, Leonard,

like those four guys have accounted for, I don't have it off the top of my head, but how many finals and how many championships in the last decade plus, just those four guys, Steph, KD, Kawhi, LeBron, right? And they're all, like three of those guys are up there. Kauai's not quite as old, but might as well be based on his health and his last. of availability. But that's at the top, top level. And the interesting thing, Logan, about the parody right now is, we still have an upper shelf, right? Milwaukee, Boston, and New Orleans are at the top of the league. There's a bunch of teams clustered at the bottom, you know, Orlando, Detroit, Houston, right? It's this really wide middle. That's the thing, right? You alluded to the stat that we

used in the story at the quartermark of the season, 17 teams within three games of 500, meaning either three over or three under, that's the most ever in the NBA. And by other metrics that the NBA keeps that were more complicated that I did not want to get into, because I didn't understand them because I'm not a statistician. Yes, every indication was that through one quarter of the season, this is the tightest the NBA's ever been. So the question is why. And I don't think there's any definitive answers.

And it may not last. It may not last even the course of this season and it may not last until next season. But I did survey a bunch of people for the story just to get some theories. You point out the changing of the guard or kind of suggest maybe there's part of that. One of the things that people kept telling me was like, it's just that the talent is so good right now. We've got so much great talent. So even while you've got the older players are still playing at a high level, right? Like normally guys in their mid-30s, Steph's not supposed to be playing like an MVP anymore.

LeBron, Kevin Durant. Like these guys shouldn't still be playing at this level. But in today's NBA, they are. And while they're still playing at that level, we have Luca and Jason Tatum and, you know, obviously Yokic is now kind of mid-career. But we've got this. We've got the younger guys. We've got the John Morant, Shee Gilgis Alexander breakout star, D.Aren Fox starting to break out. Like, we've got a bunch of young guys, Zion, who are kind of ready to be the driving forces in this league, Devin Booker, another one.

but the old guys are not playing like old guys. The guys who defined the last decade of NBA basketball are still playing at an incredibly high level. So that doesn't happen normally. So that's probably all part of it. And people, broadly speaking, agreed too that the level of talent overall in the NBA has just never been better. And I think that that's true.

But there were some other theories about parity. Some people said it was the coaching. and embracing of analytics as well and that there's better coaching than there's ever been. It's the way that the schedule has been optimized, so there's fewer schedule losses, which might benefit the teams that don't have as much talent. It's an equalizing force.

And then, you know, from the league's perspective, they certainly felt like, hey, listen, we reshuffled the lottery odds, made them flatter. We instituted this play in tournament, and that's made it less, there's less incentive to tank. So if there's less incentive to tank, in theory,

more teams are starting each season actually attempting to win so that they can at least be in the play in chase. One of the other things that I would like to add on that is just player health in general, right? Like the way players take care of their bodies is way different than, you know, back in the day, right? So you have a lot more availability of your top guys.

And I know there has been a lot, I just meant more of like science when you talk about how KD is playing at a high level and LeBron is playing at this level and this 20th NBA season. I think that is also a factor as well. Yeah, it's insane. No, sports science is part of this too, for sure. And there's two sides to the player rest thing, right?

Like, teams and players will defend load management, player rest, whatever you want to call it, on the basis of it will extend careers, on the basis of it will potentially save you from injuries that are caused by fatigue. And that's a kind of an unprovable thing, right? You can't prove the injuries that never happened and say this is the reason why they didn't happen. Positive side of that is, in theory, that's why guys are playing even deeper into their careers. I mean, you can put Chris Paul in that conversation too, right? Like, he's starting to show that decline, but man, the guy's still been, you know, an all-MBA caliber guard the last couple of years into his late 30s.

The flip side of it is to the parody question, if stars are resting more than ever, if players are resting more than ever, again, that's opening the door for less talented teams to beat the more talented teams some nights. And so maybe that's part of the even aspect of the standings too. So we just got out of the moratorium in terms of when guys that got signed over the summer can get traded. And I think about a team like the Lakers, right, who are definitely in the trade market. And other teams just like that, who were kind of in the middle of the road. But as you touched on, you know, the top of the Western Conference and the bottom of the Western Conference in terms of playoff standings is about three or four games. Like it's not like theoretically a team at the bottom. could go and go on a quick little run and get to the near the top of the standings.

Warriors could be a good example of that if they continue this, their trend that they're going through. How do you feel that the level of parity right now will affect this season in terms of the trade market when, if you look at the Lakers, some Russell Westbrook is playing really, really well right now. And that's a big trade piece for them. Do they roll the dice and say, hey, he's playing well with us right now? Or do they keep it? Or do they say, no, we're going to cut bait. We know what it is. We're going to trade him. How is that going to affect this level of parity? How will that affect how we see this trade market? Yeah, let me take the macro view first, which is that if the parity holds through the next

month, the next two months, really, like, it could really screw up the trade market entirely for the season, right? If too many teams feel like they can't pull the plot, right, you need sellers. You know, you'll always have potential buyers, teams that want to buy, teams that want to buy, that want to fortify themselves for the stretch run, for the playoffs, for a specific matchup that they have in mind, a guy goes down, we need another shooter, we need another, you know, perimeter defender, whatever it may be, there will always be buyers. But there's, you're going to have a lack of sellers if the standings are still this tight, if everybody thinks, oh, we're two wins away from being, at least being a play-in team. And, you know, look, the owner of the team really

wants us to be relevant and really wants us, you know, they want a shot at that playoff cash and that playoff gate or, you know, hey, you know, if you're a team like the Kings, like the Kings are solidly fine right now. But if you were on the edge, you'd be like, no, man, we, we're all in to break our longest in North America playoff drought right now. Like, we're not, we're not, we're not planning for next year. We're it's all about now. So if you don't have enough teams that are willing to kind of, you know, take a couple steps back in the, in the near term, the whole trade market could get screwed up. So we'll see. Well, we won't know for a while how, if the parody holds and whether it has a negative impact on the trade market. On the Lakers in specific,

Logan, this Westbrook thing is interesting, right? Because, all right, so interesting. On the other hand, they barely beat the Pistons last night with all three of their stars available and playing. There are four games under 500 as we speak. They're 12th in the West. They're still badly flawed. And the Westbrook thing is funny, right? He's played just well enough that, okay, this is working. He's embraced the sixth man thing. He's playing really effectively in that role. But he still can't shoot. He still doesn't defend. He still doesn't play off the ball. He still sometimes takes just absolutely baffling shots at the worst times. Like all the flaws of Russell Westbrook still exist.

All the flaws of the Lakers roster still exist. And no matter how well he plays, it's not like some team out there thinks they're one Russell Westbrook and his $47 million salary away from making the playoffs or from winning a championship. So there's no market for him without the one or two future picks attached, no matter how well he's played. Right. The Lakers are in this interesting situation, though, right, where this summer can be a really big summer for them as well, right?

They get that $47 million off of their books from Russell Westbrook, and they can probably go get someone in the offseason, whatever that is. I'm doing the Lakers propaganda machine where, you know, It's always next year. We are there. Lakers always got free agency, right? And everybody wants to come because we're the Lakers. Exactly.

But the thing is, though, they have to, the front office in Los Angeles has to tow that line of saying, hey, man, we want to win right now versus, hey, dog, if we just be patient, we can, we can really, we can really put together a roster and keep our picks. What's up?

What's popping? Right? Like, they're in that, they're in that situation. It's going to be interesting. Do you think that Russell's going to stay on the team? by the end of the year, will he have a Lakers jersey on? Educated guess.

I think there's a better than average chance that he still is in a Laker jersey when the season ends. I don't think that's actually the right thing, though. My opinion is they need to trade him still. Because the Westbrook plus picks trade, whether it's for Heald and Turner, whatever it's for, to me is still the smartest pass because we don't know how many more seasons of this LeBron you're going to get. you may get none. This might be the last one. One of these years is going to be the last one that LeBron plays at an all-MBA

level. One of them is going to be. It might be this one. And if it's this one and you're counting on rolling into the postseason should you make it, and that's no guarantee. And you're counting on rolling in with this roster? Come on. This roster's not getting out of the first round.

I mean, it might not even get to the playing game right now at this point. And if they got to the play and they're not even guaranteed to get out of the playing into the playoffs. and then as a seventh or eighth seed against a Pelicans team. There's a fun matchup, by the way. The Pelicans eliminating the Lakers, and then the Pelicans swapping for their pick. That would be tight. But there's another, I mean, that is a great one.

I'm keeping mine out, my hope out for Lakers Kings in Sacramento. That one would be fun, too, for all kinds of other reasons. For all nostalgia reasons. Listen, man, you know me. As a veteran of many, many Lakers' Kings playoff games. I would welcome that. But come on, Lakers Pelicans, after the Anthony Davis swap, after the Pelicans have swap rights on the Lakers pick next June.

I don't have home court advantage. Do they have home court advantage? Oh, man. The Pelicans fans going at Anthony Davis, like, oh, man, it would just, there would just be so much fun stuff there. But no, like, I don't think the Lakers have a reasonable chance of making a playoff run of any sort with this roster. So deciding, like, it's a really interesting thing, Logan, for the franchise to make a decision, you know what?

We know, like, maybe they don't know the roster's flawed. Maybe they don't think it's flawed. But if they realize the same flaws that the rest of the world does with this roster, it's fine. You know what? We'll fix it this summer. You're basically consciously saying, we know we can't go anywhere, but we would rather keep our picks because we're afraid of trading them. and we'll just burn the year and we'll say, you know what?

We'll take care of it next season. You don't know what next season's going to bring. You don't know what version of LeBron you're going to get. So I think you have to be all in all the time at this stage. And if that means trading Westbrook and one or both of those future picks, you do it. You may not be getting an All-Star in return. It doesn't matter.

You need to fill some holes. You don't have enough shooting. You don't have enough defense. You don't have enough size. So my argument, is I think they should just, I mean, if it requires putting picks out with Russell Westbrook and in a trade, and you could just let them go for nothing in the offseason, I'm more inclined to just keep them. Why not?

You know, the most important thing is all parties are aligned. The most important thing is winning right now, Logan. The most important thing is that by 2027, like, LeBron could be retired. Like, you only have now. Like, what are you waiting for? That's fair. I know, I know. I just don't think that they have a chance of winning this season whether they make a trade or not. Like, I think the Lakers are doomed in a lot of ways already.

And you know what? That may well be the case. And if that is the case, like that's a pretty depressing reality for them to be having to internally acknowledge if they believe that too. Because that's what it really is, right? There's two ways of interpreting no moves. We think we're good enough, in which case they're diluting themselves. or we know we've got no shot even if we made a good trade, in which case that's a pretty bad indictment of them too. I would love to get LeBron on Truth Serum. I would love to get him just to see what he truly feels about his roster, even though that he kind of helped create. That would be fascinated.

But I think we know. I think we know. He's biting his tongue this time, but like we know. You know, he's. And yeah, he's at least partially responsible because he, he was an advocate for the Westbrook deal, which was catastrophically bad decision by them. But, you know, and no one trade is going to fix everything, right? Like, the only thing that could fix the Lakers at this point is a freaking time machine to go back and resign Alex Caruso, not trade Kuzma and Contavius-Cawwell Pope for Russell Westwood.

For no reason. For no reason. They didn't have to do that deal. I keep going back. Keep Danny Green for that matter, too. Like, use that time. If you go get that time machine, use it. well, take back basically every move you made since the championship.

This is a very depressing conversation. I do want to, but more on the parity side, you did bring up a good point in terms of the hard cap to keep parity going in the, in the league. I'm not sure that's going to happen. I don't think, I don't know if you're sure if that's going to happen at all. Like, will we ever have a hard cap in this league? Do you think we're ever going to get to that point? What will be a more reasonable expectation in terms of how the cap will be going forward?

So I'm going to just step out of my journalist role here for a second and just say, like, if I were a competitive balance purist, right? If I thought, so actually, I'm going to bring this up. Jerry Buss once years ago, people always surprised when I bring up this anecdote, and I wish I had the quote in front of me. Jerry Buss used to meet with us, the Laker Beatwriters, once a year in the preseason when I was covering the team. And this was sometime around like, you know, 2000, maybe 99. It's probably 2000 because it was after that CBA had been signed. And that was the CBA, the 98 lockout going into 99, was the first one that had max salaries for individual players.

It was the first CBA that instituted a luxury tax, a far lesser luxury tax. But so the tax was going to come into play a couple years down the road. They built it in so that it would be delayed. So people could get ready for it. And we asked Jerry, Bus at one point about, probably about the tax itself in this new system with all these restrictions. And Jerry Bus, famously a highly competitive poker player in his time. And Jerry Bus said, listen, I'm a poker player.

I'm paraphrasing him. But it was basically like, I'm a poker player. And to me, how do you know the best, you know, player at the table? We all start with the same number of chips and now we see who's best. And that was his argument, by the way, in favor of a system in which everyone more or less had the same limits on spending. This is the owner of the Lakers talking. The Lakers who now make a bazillion times more than almost any other team other than the NICS in their local TV revenue, who are, along with the Knicks, the biggest contributors to revenue sharing, which then goes

to all these smaller market teams. It's a different time. Granted, this is 20 years ago. But Jerry, I always remembered that quote, Logan, because there's a kind of a platonic, competitive ideal there. Hey, what if we all just started with the same number of chips and see who's them smartest on on on our on our on our players right so a hard cap system a true hard cap an NFL style hard cap where everybody spends the same amount and if you want this guy you might have to cut that guy or or let this guy walk in free agency um it's never going to happen but would it would it be the closest to 30 team parity we'd ever see yes well here's the other thing though we're already at the at historical parody before you even

put a hard cap in, right? Like, who spent the most, who spent the most money last year? I mean, the Warriors did spend the, spend a lot of money. But you know who else spent a lot of money? The Brooklyn Nets. Where did they go? And another, and another small market, like, it doesn't, it's going to work. I feel like the game is going to work itself out no matter what, right? Like, you're going to get, competence is going to always win. I'll push back on that slightly. So competence can trump spending, but competence plus spending power can be unbeatable, right? That's the Warriors. Yeah. And so the Nets had spending power minus, I would say, the competence.

I'm not saying that means that Sean Markson is incompetent. I'm just saying, like, it's the wrong big three, right? And it was one wrong player in particular. And then, you know, everything else comes unraveled and then you make a trade that you weren't planning to make, all that stuff. So spending alone doesn't guarantee anything. But if you're a really smart franchise and you've got the spending power that, say, the Grizzlies or the Pacers or the Hornets or, you know, the Timberwolves that they don't have, the thunder. My counterpoint to what you're saying about, hey, listen, you know, you could spend at the

high end at the low end and you could still have a championship team. The best counter to that is the thunder. The thunder that had Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka, and had to make tough choices because the new punitive luxury tax was coming in after the 2011 CBA, and they weren't willing to spend as high as as they needed to to keep James Harden. They were fearful of the tax. The Warriors don't care. The Warriors don't care because they don't have to care. So if every team could do what the Warriors did. So that's the thing. Take the Warriors' draft record. I'll push back on that a little bit. I'll push back on the Warriors not caring a little bit.

They were over the summer, they were not making the money that they thought they were going to make. Is that fair? They weren't. They weren't doing that. They were in the red for the first time throughout their run, right? Now, they double down and signed Wiggins and Poole, but if they're not winning titles, they're going to fill that pinch and they're going to trade a lot of those guys. This is what's going to happen. So here's the best way for me to frame this. And I don't, like, to me, this is an indisputable argument. Take the Warriors, everything they've done, every draft pick, every trade, every hire, the coach, the GM, everything. But magically transport that franchise, starting in 2014 or whatever,

or starting with the Steph draft, but that franchise isn't in San Francisco or Oakland, in the Bay Area. They're in Memphis this whole time. They're in Oklahoma City this whole time. This team isn't together right now. This roster, as we know it, is not together right now.

And that is proof positive of why spending does matter. It's not that you could spend your way to prosperity on the court necessarily. It's that if you make all the smart moves, the smart moves are going to get you players who are eventually going to command max deals. And only some teams, a handful, can afford to keep maxing and maxing and maxing a bunch of guys. And a bunch of other teams, the majority of teams, and certainly all the small market teams, would have had to have cut loose a bunch of those guys by now because of the punitive nature of the luxury tax system as it exists.

So if we talk about, like, does this system promote competitive balance? Some aspects of it do and some don't. and the spending is still an issue, which is why the MBA is proposing the quote-unquote upper spending limit, which sounds like a euphemism for a hard cap. I've looked into it a little bit. It's not really a hard cap. It's really a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a lot of have now. But at some point, you can't just keep spending hundreds of millions on the tax just for the sake of keeping your team together because now the band of payrolls is so wide. You're trying to keep teams within a slightly closer band. That's all. That's what the NBA's goal is.

Well, it's just interesting because the current luxury tax error that we're in now was put in place. The thought of it was teams are just not going to want to spend that much money, right? And there's obviously been different revenue streams coming into the league, right? Streaming the new TV deal is going to be really, really interesting. And we'll see what happens. But there's been such this influx of CASA. And we also have the venture capitalists that have come in and during this era had unlimited gobs of money, right?

It's just, I don't think it's going to happen. The upper spending limit might happen. But my argument is I just feel like at a certain point, teams are still going to try to are going to try and go into circumvented. It's not going to change the. way that the culture of what we already have in this league. Teams are still going to spend money. They're still going to be outliers.

There's still going to be all these things. I don't think that a hard cap or I don't think an upper spending limit is honestly going to change that. I mean, I know that there's going to be more guys situated around the league that wouldn't otherwise be there. But I feel like the same organizations will still be at the top no matter where it's going to be,

depending on just basically on their front office and what they do with their, with their teams. I think that's always going to be the case. I think the question is more like, so the salary cap is what, 120, 125 million or whatever, and then the tax is a couple, you know, whatever, 20, 25 million more than that. So let's just say there's a system where the cap is 120 and the tax is 150. And the teams that are over the tax are at 160, 170, 180, and then because of the way the taxes start getting higher and higher and there's a repeater tax, A team like the Warriors might only be spending, say, 180 on actual payroll, but they're

throwing out another $200 million in luxury taxes, right? They can afford to do that. The Grizzlies are going to hit the tax, and they're going to try not to go too far because they don't make as much. And now you're going to have two teams that are rivals in their conference that have both been really – like, no one would disagree. The Grizzlies have been really smart about trades, about – signings, about draft, about everything.

They've just, they've been really good. One of the best franchises in the NBA right now in terms of the way they're running the basketball side. But they're going to come up against the ceiling that the Warriors will never come up against. So that's, that's the real issue. And if one team, if you have a band of payrolls in the league where at the bottom end, there are teams that are like a little over, that are over the cap, but under the tax.

So say they're spending 140, and then you have other teams like the Warriors and the Nets that are spending 300, like that's just too, too big of a. span. That's the NBA's position. Not agreeing, not disagreeing, just, but that, like, you can see where they think that that's a concern and certainly concern for their smaller markets. And, you know, that, like, that's an age-old issue. Thank you so much for coming on, Mr. Beck. I really appreciate it. That has been another edition of Monday Real Ones. Rajah, our hearts are with you, brother. We'll see you hopefully on Thursday, Big Dog. Get well. Thanks again, man. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Logan. Appreciate you, man. Get well, Roger. Yes, sir. Peace.