The Ringer NBA Show - Hypothetical Durant Landing Spots, Plus How Will Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns Co-Exist?

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

This week, James and Seerat kick off the episode with hypothetical landing spots for Kevin Durant as he looks to get out of Brooklyn. Then, they discuss the Boston Celtics’ acquisition of point guard Malcolm Brogdon, and how they would have looked had they had him during the NBA Finals. And with the Timberwolves getting Rudy Gobert, they discuss whether the big-man duo of him and Karl-Anthony Towns can work. Lastly, they share their favorite low-key free agent additions this offseason. Hosts: J. Kyle Mann and Seerat Sohi Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And welcome to a special edition, a bite-sized edition, but a delicious bite, honestly, frankly, here on July 4th when we are taping this of the Ringer NBA show. My name is Jay Kyle Mann, and I am joined by one of the sharpest minds, the sharpest basketball minds, the pride of Edmonton. You're from Edmonton, right? Am I getting there, right? You got it. What better way to ring in an American Independence holiday than the smartest Canadian on Earth? Sirot Soe. How you doing, Sir, sir?

I'm doing good, man. How are you? I mean, I really tried to, like, throw out, like, just a, like, sparkling, like, fireworks display of praise there for you. And you, the chillest person. You didn't, I mean, are you appreciating my enthusiasm? I am. It also, it makes me very uncomfortable. So I'm just trying to move off with it as we possibly can, you know. It was a really nice introduction, though. I think this is the first time that me and you have been a podcast duo as well. Yeah, it's kind of like I was thinking. You know, you and I talked the other day. I was just thinking about like the interactions that we've had on podcast.

And I was thinking about the brilliant burrito metaphor that you did the other day. I don't know that you've fleshed that out anymore or thought anymore about that. But this is kind of like one of those like that CMT show where I don't know if you've ever seen this where they just like pair artists together and have them play. You know, they like have them play each other's songs type thing. You ever seen that? You know what I've seen about? I haven't seen it. Actually, no, I have seen it.

I saw it at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. So not for real, for real. But yeah, I watched Jolly Parton get her come up with one of those shows. Oh, yeah. Some guy that, you know, probably nobody else remembers. Well, I would say. I guess that's kind of what we're doing here, right? Right.

We are kind of, we're trying new configurations of burrito, essentially, you know, like what kind of goes well together. I was eating one this morning and I was actually, I did think about. the burrito reference. In a way, we're also kind of doing what a lot of these teams are doing as well. Like today we're going to talk about Kevin Durant and the hypothetical places where he could be a good fit. I think that's kind of where we're at. I'm pretty curious about how he'll look on, on different teams and the iteration of him

that we'll get. And we'll see what happens with us too. Like, is it going to be a seamless fit? Or is it going to be more like Westbrook and Katie? You know, you don't really know. Is it like a Jail and Jason thing where we kind of just need a few reps and it'll be great? or will it be a little bit more seamless than that? I think it'll be pretty serious, to be honest.

I do too. I mean, I get a lot of shots up. I don't know what kind of player you were. I kind of have to consciously shift gears and be like, yeah, I got to move the ball anymore. But we're talking to, you're right, you're spot on. At this point, we're talking about pure hypotheticals. You know, some of the disruptions are bigger than others and the guys that are moving teams. Katie's a big one.

Luckily, we didn't have any, well, I mean, it's fun to, I guess, I guess I'm sort of spoiling it there. It was nice to have a quiet holiday today, you know, but it's also fun to talk about trades, but we're going to speculate a little bit about where Katie would go. Well, what would it look like? Let's talk about the Suns first as the first hypothetical. It seems like the Suns are going to have to give a big bite of their roster up, you know. As much as I've heard lately, it's been the idea that it's like McAil and Aiton. What do you think about, what do you think about the configuration of the Suns, let's say,

hypothetically, those are the two guys. And it seems like in the way that they've sort of padded their positional depth, that maybe that's what they have in mind. I would assume that would be the minimum of what Brooklyn would want from Phoenix in a deal like that. A, do you think that that's a good enough haul? I know we talked a little bit about this on the live show that we did with KOC. What do you think about that hall is just a baseline? Is that better than getting like a primary star to get two like big time kind of supportive

role players like that? I think it depends what you think those guys will project. out as because they were they were both confined to pretty strict roles in Phoenix so I'm not really sure that either of them is anywhere close to their stealing I think that's what probably excite me the most about trading for either of them but that said they're not they're not the best possible player you can get back and when we talked about it before I think like the framework we basically had was like you want an under 24 star and you want to get draft picks like we want everything, right? And I guess, you know, budding star, is Aitin the Budding Star? Would you,

would you put him in that category or is he like a super role player? I mean, that's been the debate, right? Coming out of college, I felt like my worries about Aiton, it's been sort of an up and down sort of ride of broken dreams, I guess. I always think of the Simpsons cartoon where it goes up, we're going to break even. Like with Aiton, when he was coming out, I had worries about him, sort of in the pit of my stomach about like him excelling and like what is that thing that helps these guys push and expand for him it's like he showed some of the raw tools of like he has touch i saw him maybe being a face-up player at some point and like being able to hit in the mid-range but like there have been questions about him like creating for himself that i think kind of lingered

and i and i do think that the the system and the presence of chris paul he rose with that tide well and function, but I still feel like a lot of those questions like you're asking about like the difference between him elevating from, you know, like a primary or from like a really high quality role player to a primary player. I'm still unsure of that. And it seems like the rest of the league is unsure of that too. Yeah. I feel like Chris Paul, while he was incredibly good to him, just as, you know, feeding him with the easiest possible buckets you could get. Didn't really do him many favors in terms of his reputation, right? At least, at least on offense.

On defense, he made incredible strides. Probably took a bit of a step back last year, but I think we've seen enough from him to know that he can definitely be an elite rep protector for an elite defense. On the other end, I'm kind of with you. I have those questions. I'm a little bit optimistic, though, just because of what we saw in college,

what we saw in his first year, where he wasn't necessarily, you know, well, he wasn't really playing on a very good team, right? So he was allowed to free, he was allowed to freestyle a little bit more. And it was interesting, right? Like I would be curious to see what he looks like on a team that allows him to do that a little bit more. Like can he turn into a reliable three-point shooting threat? And then does that open up his face-up game?

Because he's athletically, he's a monster. And his first step should, any stride as well, should allow him to get around most of the players would be defending him. So I'm pretty optimistic about him. Pretty optimistic about Mikhail, too. And, you know, both of those guys played a really vital role for the Sons. And, you know, maybe we'll still, maybe, maybe McKill will still play a vital role for the Sons. But they were basically their backbones in terms of scoring in the paint and playing defense, right?

So if we see Kevin Durant get traded for those two guys, my big question kind of just becomes, can KD make that up? Like the premise for what we want to get into today is essentially like what kind of super team do you want to build and have it be successful. Like what kind of characteristics are necessary for the players to have. And I think a Booker, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, trio would be really fascinating. And I think it would obviously just light teams on fire on offense. Just incredible scoring numbers probably could end up being like one of the best jump shooting teams of all time. would destroy you in clutch situations, hit every single free throw. But I have questions about how well balanced it would be.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of the offense is going to emanate from those two guys. It kind of makes me wonder, I think you're right. I mean, I think it would end up being one, like in terms of just pure shot making, of course, anytime you have KD, your shot making is going to kind of go to another level. I wonder how much is KD going to be wanting to move because you're going to have a situation with CP where CP is still likes to pound the ball, likes to run a lot of pick and roll, likes to have the ball in his hands.

How does Katie fit into that? And is there going to be, my question for you is going to be, do you think that, you know, Katie's had injury trouble in the past, you know, past two or three years. He's had a lot of miles on him. Do you think that he would have to evolve as a, as a passer in that situation?

Or do you think that we would have to see him sort of tweak or just tilt his game in that direction to make it sort of flow out? I always think of, I always think of like big threes as they need to have almost like that like flux capacitor like consistent like they need to have fluidity among them. Do you think that he would need to tilt us game in that direction for that to work or for that to be optimized? Yeah, I think that he's had enough reps being a primary playmaker, especially with the amount

of injuries that the nets have dealt with. He's had to kind of take that load. I feel good about him coming off of the like, you know, passing off of a double team, you know, and I think that's kind of all I need from Kevin Durant. like fees and single coverage, I'm not going to be upset with him for thinking score, right? They get enough of that from Chris Paul. Bookers also improved a ton as a playmaker too. I would almost rank them in similar places as playmakers, right?

Where they're just both high IQ basketball players who are primarily supposed to be scorers, but they spent enough time in the league and seen enough coverages to know that, well, you know, that's essentially like, you know, their teams are going to be trying to get the ball out of their hands. to me where it becomes a question is can KD be like that physical rim protecting presence that he was sometimes, you know, for the early Golden State Warriors in those first two years that he was with them. He was one of the best defensive players in the NBA. I think he averaged 1.8 blocks in the second year he was in Golden State. That was seventh in the league.

and he was kind of like a fringe defensive player of the year candidate. And he wasn't necessarily an anchor, but he was a great isolation defender. He was like LeBron in transition, just chasing down blocks and stuff. And LeBron's actually probably a good reference point for him here. I think the reason that super teams have worked with LeBron in the past is that he can enter a situation and decide who he needs to be in his prime, right? like they're like they're sort of usage malleability right

like he could you know and he developed that around the time he went to Miami. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good term for it. I like that. Yeah.

Like I made that up just now. Nice. Nice work. I really I think that if there's a version of Durant that still exists and granted it's been four or five years and you know a number of injuries since then

and a lot of wear and tear. I don't think you can necessarily be that guy for an entire regular season. But if he can do that for them, I think that's kind of where I decide whether this team could then beat the Warriors, for example, right? Their championship odds are actually tied with the Warriors right now at plus 600.

That is the sheer power of just the possibility of getting Kevin Durant is strong enough to do that for you. And there are situations where I think we've seen Katie turn it on like that, like most recently is probably against the bucks. Game seven we're going to talk about for pretty much the rest of history because of that foot on the line and how incredible he was. But the thing I always go back to was game five, 17 rebounds and 10 assists to go with 49 points. He's capable of stretching his game out in similar ways to LeBron,

but he's never been asked to do it for a full regular season. He probably also doesn't have that total like ability to become whatever the way that LeBron does, but he has some of that. And he's just a really devastating defender when he wants to be. Yeah, I think LeBron's, I mean, they're obviously different players. And whenever you're like a, I personally think that Durant is probably the most lethal dynamic score of all time in terms of just the fact that he's just an unanswerable like quandary on, on offense.

Because because of what you were saying, but I think that if he, he doesn't get enough credit, I think, for his playmaking. I think you're right. And I don't know that he would have as much kind of downhill, like, pressure on him. I don't think that he would need to do that as much, because you'd have the guards, he could sort of float in and out of that, like, spot up, pick his ISO kind of matchups as they come, run those sort of pin downs for him that he's always loved to shoot around the elbow. Those things are always going to be there. I've kind of wondered, though, I think you brought up something interesting is like he definitely had that like uh really really stretching out to try to get the ball that extra inch across the goal line type thing going on like physically it seemed

like it took a lot out of him and i brought up a stat to you um that i thought was interesting and some of this kind of goes into personnel you know it was brought up a few i think rob brought it up on bill's show that the that the katee kairie thing only played something like it was some insane number it was like 44 or something like that, really low number. KD over the course of the past five seasons, four seasons, has gradually taken more and more heavily contested shots. So it kind of makes you start to wonder how much of that is a function,

and he's dribbling less before he shoots and moving less in games on offense. It kind of makes you wonder if he is in the process of sort of a shift offensively of who he is. maybe he moves into that Dirk kind of stage of his career. He's more mobile than Dirk ever was or will be. But it makes me wonder if that's the kind of the role that he's going to be, maybe pass and out of doubles. But you brought up the defensive thing too. Is Phoenix going to be able to defensively sustain that hit?

Because as much as like McHale and Aiton have those questions as primary offensive players, their connective tissue on defense was really valuable. Do you think that the sun's, are the sun's going to be ahead or behind where they were defensively a year ago if they trade for KD? Bismack-Bionbo is your starting center for an entire season,

anchoring your defense at his age. Makes me nervous if you're trying to win a championship, especially, you know, Javille McGee is going to Dallas now too. So they're thin. And they decided to never really develop Jalen Smith, and that might come back and bite them. it. Punted him.

Yeah. Punted him into the sun. Yeah. Yeah. I guess make like, here's the thing. If the sons do trade every single draft pick that they have for Kevin Duran, it won't matter because they don't really care about the draft anyways.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have questions about it, right? I think that's why the version of Katie that we're going to get is like what everything hinges on for me, right? Like, are you going to get? the guy that we saw versus Milwaukee, or is it going to look a little bit more like Boston?

Like, his performance against the Celtics is the biggest question. It's really hard to suss out because it was the last time that we saw him, and we had never seen him or really anybody face a defense as strong as the Celtics. And I'm just kind of curious whether that's going to be just what we should expect from him going forward. I was looking some stuff up today. And Durant averaged three points per game in the paint against the Celtics. Granted, it was only four games, but it's just Kevin Durant. And he's like, I think he's around eight or nine in the regular season.

And that's been pretty consistent for him. So that was a pretty significant drop off. And there's, I don't know, there's a bunch of other stats. Like you want to look at shot distance and stuff as well. Like that was, he didn't have a great year for that either. I think, again, like what you said about personnel, definitely. accounts for some of that. But I don't know.

I'm curious. That's kind of the big question, right? Like, if he can be that, then I think, then I think the sons are probably balanced out enough. I think their offense will be good enough, right? But it's just a matter of asking a player who's 34 to kind of shift into more of a defensive anchor role be interesting for me. But it's also, I don't know, maybe it's exactly kind of like, even on a legacy level,

what you need from Kevin Durant to or what Kevin Durant needs. Don't want to get too bogged down in that topic, but we talked about it last week on actually no Saturday on the answer. You know, we like when things look hard for players, right? What we're describing here would be hard. And I think that's probably a good thing. Yeah, and you touched on just the fact that the Celtics, we talked about his, I mean, his pathway in the,

East was going to be more physically demanding, I think. You know, it's not like it's a cakewalk in the West because the chant just came from the West, but stylistically, the team seemed to be a little bit bigger. They seem to be a little bit more physical or in the East. But then on the flip side, I guess I'll talk out of both sides of my mouth here. Memphis was a super physical team. There is no easy path. You know, none of it's going to be easy. But I think also you talked about defensively, him being an anchor. I do think defensively he was a little bit underrated in that Buck's series too. Positionally, he was, he was pretty solid. I just wonder, my kind of worry with the sun or with the sons would be, are they still going to have a Luca issue? Like, because they're

going to have to come up against those types of teams and be productive because the clippers, you got to assume are going to be back. And they have two guys like that. We're talking about, like, big guys who can score and pass over the top. Is Crowder going to be enough if you lose Mikhail? Is Crowder going to be the guy that could guard those guys? Or can, can Katie chip in on that front, do you think? I think Cam Johnson could maybe step up and be the answer there. And the other thing I think is that, you know, when you redistribute your scoring,

it just allows your stars to do other things as well. Like Booker took 21 shots per game last year. If KD shows up, then that's obviously not going to be the case. He also, like, to his credit, made incredible strides defensively while doing all of that. So I can only imagine how much stronger he'd be. on defense if, you know, he didn't also have to take up such a scoring burden as well.

So I think I think, I think, I think, I think, you know, maybe same goes for Durant, you know, just in a larger discussion here, right? Like, he doesn't need to bear the entire offensive load too. So when we talk about his, him aging and everything, that could, that could help him out. That could if he, if he wants to, like, you know, not want to say recommit defensively or if he wants to, you know, put more energy out on the defensive end, he doesn't have to worry about the offense as much. Yeah.

Hypothetically here, we talked about potential of the heat. I don't know. That said, by the way, what you said. I think we could. I'm just going to be a problem

no matter what. He's a problem for everybody. Put any team in the universe out there. The Raptors, quickly here, you have a really good feel for the Raptors. What do you think about that potential deal? What do you think about?

What would they have to give up? What could they look like quickly here before we move on? Because we spend a lot of time on KD. but quickly on the Raptors, what's your feel for that? What would they look like? What would they have to give up? So they're kind of the opposite configuration.

They're second in odds to get KD in a trade. And that deal would probably include one of Pascal and Scotty Barnes. I've heard very different things about whether Barnes would be available in a deal. I don't think. Would you give him up? Um, no, I wouldn't. I don't think I would either. I wouldn't.

No, not for, not for 34 year old Katie. And like we've heard, I think now that he's, the Katie is open to the idea of playing in Toronto. So you do take away some of the risk there, but just for, you know, for how injury prone he is. And I was also, I was listening to locked on Raptors this morning. And, uh, they made an interesting point where, you know, they're talking about how stack the East is. If you're the Raptors, you've got this young stud.

Why, you know, try. to cobble together something to compete right now when the East is as good as it's ever been, when you could just wait, wait it out and see how these guys develop. And you might have a much more open runway in four or five years too. So for a number of reasons, I wouldn't, I wouldn't give up Scotty. I won't get into it too much since we talked about it on Saturday. But the Raptors in general, I think, are kind of the opposite of what the Suns would be, right? Like the Suns would be a bona fide super team right and then with with kd going to the raptors it would be a model that's actually been more successful in recent years um they would look a lot like the kawai raptors i think where kai

would i mean kd would obviously step into the kai role and be the number one option and then you get everybody else kind of in more comfortable positions for themselves right like pascal ceacum i think is i think he's like your ideal pippin you know i think he moves so well in space uh once you've somebody that can play off of, like he can play off of, like, he can just attack angles, like he's great in gaps, like he's just one of the best guys in the paint. He can score in a number of different ways there. He's a defensive dynamo. He can guard pretty much anybody on the court.

He gets it going in transition. He rebounds. He does the dirty stuff for you. And he's a pretty decent playmaker as well. Like, he's a great all-around guy whose number one weakness is that he doesn't have, like, this Kevin Durant-esque touch that, you know, and I think that's the Raptor's biggest weakness too, right? Like they were a great defensive team that were also just really ugly to watch in certain quarters because, you know, there'd be like a four minute run of like just absolutely no

scoring. So, yeah, I think, you know, you move Siakum into that role. And then, you know, Fred Bentley, I think he took, he took 17 shots per game last year and shot 40%. I'm sure he would love to shoot a little less. And I think, I think that goes for a lot of the guys on the Raptors. I imagine that, you know, Gary Trent would probably be part of any deal. We can easily replace his going with Kevin Durant's, right? So it's a little bit more of an intuitive fit, I think. And it goes, you know, I think it looks a lot like the teams that have been successful lately where it was like clear role definition of who the number one, number two is.

And then you're not so top heavy either. So you have a ton of depth. And like they can also with KD continue this experiment of just getting every skinny guy with an incredible wingspan on the same team and seeing what happens as well. And I just personally, as somebody who likes weird stuff, would be a big fan of that. We're going to get some more weird stuff in a second. I think, too, what you're hitting on is what every great team needs. And Katie is almost like the ultimate, like, offensive flex seal in a different way than

LeBron, whereas LeBron can, like, elevate all the pieces on your team and, like, hit the value of players with him is different than their value in other situations because he can make our lives easier. KD is the type good passer like we talked about, but also Kauai served this function for the Raptors where if you have an offense that can kind of function, say you like to run, whatever your offensive philosophy is, and during the regular season that works, usually those types of things hit a wall in the playoffs and a player like KD becomes like a stylistic release valve in those situations, say a late clock situation where it's, you didn't get a good shot. Okay, Katie's like the ultimate tough shot hitter or if you need a shot at the end of a

quarter, just give it to him, say go create it. I mean, that's the kind of thing that elevates you from a good team to a great team. And that's something that Katie does. I'm talking about elevating from good to great potentially. Did you like that? That worked out really well there. The president, you wrote in our notes here, the president traded for the president. The Boston Celtics, fresh off their runner up status in the NBA, needed to go out and get better obviously they needed to go they had some pretty glaring problems in terms of like taking care of the ball offensive sort of keeping keeping the plants watered things like that they go out in a deal and pick up malcolm brogden you're high on this pick why why i assume you're high on

this trade for them most people are that's the consensus what do you think brogden does for them um and what does it look like in a series how how would their series of against the warriors have looked different if they had the president in their lineup well i don't think they'd be breaking all kinds of turnover records for the finals by any means, right? I think Brockton's had like multiple seasons averaging less than two turnovers while being like just a really steady semi playmaking, but more of a set up man role while also just being a really great shooter as well. The gift with the Celtics, I think we were thinking about how they could build off of their finals run was just how everything worked so seamlessly because they had three and D guys who were just

really smart knew how to play their roles. So anybody that you'd want to bring into that situation, you don't really necessarily want to bring in like a really high defense, like say Patrick Beverly, right? Like you don't really want to bring that bad into that situation because then, you know, the defense kind of knows who they want to just leave open, right? And I think that that's what made the Celtics awesome, right? It's like, Marcus Smart was your best option for that. And that's it's not a great option. So adding Malcolm Brogden into into that rotation, I think on offense,

it's pretty seamless. And I think it just stabilizes them. Like that's essentially what they needed. They're a really talented team. And they had just one really key weakness in, in the turnover department. So I love it. They didn't really have to give up too much.

I'm surprised that they didn't have to give up too much. It was Thice, Neesmith salaries and a 2023 first round pick, which is, you know, probably not going to be not going to be a lottery pick. You heard it here first. Yeah, you're getting somebody with, you were talking about steady, you know, Brogden.

I was noticing this. It seems like he's a guy that's like been around for a while in the league. This is going to be his seventh season, I believe. He came in the league at 24 years old, though. He came in like a pretty mature player to begin with. And was better, I think, than people expected. Honestly, he was a great college player, but he's just kind of translated and been steady throughout.

The main thing that I think he's going to give them is if you, put him in a position where he doesn't have to carry a heavy load. He's going to, he's like a versatile shooter. You know, he had a little bit of a dip in efficiency this past year. Maybe that would have been the result of being loaded up on a little bit. I only played like 36 games, I believe, with the Pacers, but he shot 43.7% on spot up threes, which is going to be valuable for the Celtics in the playoffs and 42.6% in transition for a team that is defensively as disruptive as the Celtics, that is going to be key. I think you said something interesting, though, about like the way you build your rosters.

You know, you can go in. It's a plus minus game. You know, we measure it in plus minus, but it is a give and take thing. And it's like the Celtics have been leaning more on take. Like they want to take away and they've needed to balance the give part of it where like they need guys that can, they've got guys that could guard.

I think you're absolutely right. Like adding another Pat Bev to this situation isn't going to help. Isn't going to solve your problems. And I guess the question is like, it's it's really a chance to sit back and reflect on how lucky they got, I think. Honestly, there just aren't many guys out there that are going to be able to be consistent, dependable shooters like that, take care of the ball. But also, I mean, he's a guy that can do some point of attack stuff for you.

He's positionally, it just seems like he's not going to break down. You know, he's a piece that's not going to hurt them and he's going to add a lot. And that's hard to come by for what they paid. Yeah, now you say breakdown. The only issue is the injuries, right? maybe that's that's that's maybe why the trade value was so low because if he's healthy then he's kind of a super role player oh yeah speaking of super role players how many draft picks would you give up for one yeah this you're talking about we we teased it and coming back like the weird

stuff this was one i was interested to kind of go into the basketball laboratory and talk with you about this um you know it's a league that i almost wonder if this is like a zagmus move and we've seen some um is this year like wizarding cape like hood that you put up here is that what was that what was that move was yeah for for for everyone it's an audio format yeah it is I just uh put my hoodie on and I think yeah I think that's exactly what's necessarily I really just want to lock in to this discussion on she's a caldron also that is bubbling I can kind of see it off camera a little bit it's hot just be careful with that um this was a weird move and I'm wondering I wanted to ask you, do you think that, let's, let's not, for people who don't know, the people who do,

I'm sure know what we're talking about, the jazz traded Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The wolves gave up just off the top of my head, Beasley, Pat Beav, Jared Vanderbilt, my, my beloved Jared Vanderbilt and just a boatload of, a boatload of picks. And Gobert and Carl Towns together. Is this like a stylistic zag? Do you think in a league that has become super spread out? Why do you think that the wolves did this just off the top? Why do you think that they did this?

Well, I think we know why they did it. They just don't think that Carl Anthony Towns can be the ring protecting force for a championship level team or even for them to get to the next level that they need to get to. I think they just think that he needs help on that end. And Tim Connolly came over from the Nuggets. and has experience building with a with a guy like carl towns and yokic probably the most there's nobody in the league like yokic don't get me wrong but if there's anybody who comes close it's probably carl towns in terms of just scintillating scoring ability playmaking size but also you know having this one weakness that can kind of consistently be exploited in the playoffs of you know just being defensively deficient to both those guys credit by the way especially towns i think yokish got his flowers for his improved defense. Town's rim protection and a really solid chunk of that Grizzly series was not bad.

Like I think we've kind of, you know, the claims of his defensive, him being a defensive liability are pretty exaggerated, in my opinion, which is at bottom kind of why I didn't love this trade. But at the same time, anytime, just like the nuggets, right, like putting out these like extremely big lines. of, you know, I think the most famous one was in the bubble where they put Bull Bull, Mason Plumley at center and Yokish technically at the guard position on the floor with Paul Millsep and Jeremy Graham, probably the biggest lineup that we've ever seen play basketball.

Anytime anything like that happens, I don't want to completely throw it at the window. And I think you think that there's a pretty strong case for this team. So I want to hear it. And, you know, I actually, I would like by the end of this conversation to have my mind change. That would be the most fun possible. Oh, my God. That's a lot of pressure. I don't know if it could change your mind.

I, I want to. I'm pretty stubborn. I want to be, I want to live in a world where this could work. And it's also, I think we all can kind of assume that we know and, and the receipts are there. We need to come back and maybe eat our crow a little bit here. I'm not, I'm not writing it off. And I think the idea here is the thing that, the thing that, makes lineups like that work is like creation and spacing. Well, you have one of those things for sure.

Carl, I think, has improved as a passer. He's obviously probably the best pure shooting actual center ever if you want to count Dirk and that, whatever. But Carl is the thing that's going to make that happen. If you can put him in positions, I guess like literally how they're going to play on the floor is more of a question, you know, the idea of like using Gobert's like rim pressure rolling and Carl's uphill gravity as a shooter, you could see how they get into positions where that could work. The question I think is elsewhere,

is the playmaking going to be there to support them in that? You know, is Anthony Edwards going to take a leap or take a big step forward and his scoring ability slash creation? That I'm a little less sure about. Offensively, what do you think about them? I mean, do you think that there's a world

where this is going to work or are they going to need to stagger it where they run some Carl and Gobert together or some Aunt and Gobert or Delo is another factor here. Do you think they have enough creation to sort of prop this up to make it work? I think you probably have the most creation

that you've had in Gobears career, right? Like you've got two really strong ball handlers and scores and Delo and Nat and you've caught Carl Anthony Town so I don't need to tell you to tell you guys about. I just think it takes a wind out of their sale on offense a little too much, though. I don't love having, you know, developing Anthony Edwards now,

his pick and roll partner becomes Rudy Gobert, who is, like, honestly, is, yeah, he's tall, and he can roll to the rim, but just doesn't really give you that much that you can do, versatility-wise. Like, it becomes, you know, with Mitchell, it became a very, like, Euro-step floater heavy sort of game, because you know what you're doing in that situation. You're just, you know, you're just going to drop back onto, you know,

on to, and, you know, like, it's just an easy decision. That's, that's kind of my, that's my qualm with Gobert, right? I think when you get deeper into the playoffs, his presence allows you to make easy decisions. If you've got Carl Anthony Towns working in the high post and or even, you know, coming up from a three point line and you've got Gobert on the floor, you kind of, you know where you're sending your help defense, right? And yeah, you know, Kat's, cat's really tall and he's a great playmaker. and I think maybe there's some, like, potential for, like, you know, the Mowb connection that we saw in Cleveland. Like, I think there's potential for some really fun stuff. And I think this team's going to win, like, 90 regular season games.

And maybe that's fine if you're Minnesota. That's another element of this, you know, like, do we really need to talk about every single team? Like, they're going to win a championship, right? Like, I'm sure Wolves fans would be happy to make it out of the first round at this point, right? So, yeah, I just don't love, I don't. I don't love it on offense. And I really don't love it. I just,

I think that that offense could just be so awesome. And this just, I don't know, it just makes them a little less dynamic. Well, the counter is that they're just going to, we talked about it giving a take situation. They could just bludgeon people.

You know, and like defensively it could be really interesting. Like, Gobert's never going to have, we'll have never played with this much athletic. is he's going to play with. Potentially, we talked a little bit about aunt. He's been, he was, came in the league as a little more of a help defender.

And then he started being a guy that was playing a little more active off the ball, going around ball screens. But he's shown that he can guard some point guards. If we're talking about a hype, it could be ugly. I mean, if we see more primary Anthony Edwards, him sort of feeling the stresses of growing as a playmaker. And then on the other end, him being asked to like lock in like guard point guards, which he has done.

I pointed out that like 20% of the time this past season he did that. You could potentially put lineups out there. Kyle Anderson is another guy who gives you like point guard sensibility at his spot and at his size. But it's a lot of wingspan. You know, Kyle Anderson, seven foot three wingspan. Jaden McDaniels is huge. You know, one of the big things about their series against the Grizzlies is that John

Morant just like turnstile drove on them repeatedly. It seems like this was sort of a response to that. I don't know. A series between them, those two teams seems like it's going to be a bloodbath. But the Grizzlies play two big guys like that together. I mean, I would say Clark is more of a true four.

What do you think the difference between like Jaron Jackson, Jr. and Brandon Clark is? Is it just the speed of the rolling from Clark and like the defensive flying around? What do you, what's the difference? Why win this work as opposed to other big guy combos?

Well, I mean, Stephen Adams got played off the floor in that series. And it was because of the Anthony Edwards pick and roll attack and because it just didn't provide a lot of options. Like I was thinking about that series and how different it would look. And I think, you know, if you just throw, if you throw Gobert and all of his winchairs into it, right?

Yeah, like the wolves probably win that series, right? But at the same time, I think let's say... Just the numbers. If you just throw the numbers in there, yeah. Yeah. Let's say you do. Right, exactly. exactly like let's say you have gobert in there now obviously with towns on the floor you're not going to prioritize the gobert edwards pick and roll right but that is essentially what killed adams in that series it was edwards pull-up game and then it just kind of goes back to the decision

making stuff for me once you have gobert in that situation okay i'm just trapping edwards every time if he's if he's if he's going to hit like the ridiculous amount of pull-up threes that he hit in game one which by the way, he didn't never hit that many again in the rest of the series. But yeah, if he's going to do that, then I kind of just know what the next call I'm making is. And then maybe it's like a different series where Adams is playable and it like just looks, you know, all these things then just start looking different because then there's just a butterfly effect of it. But that's what we're doing here today. We're just, we're talking about hypotheticals. So here's no closer to this idea than when we started.

Yeah, not really. So you think this is closer to Embed Horford than like the another thing we didn't talk about is. On offense. Yeah, you think it'll be worse. Yeah, it's like Horford provides a little more spacing. Yeah, go ahead. I'll say Horford had a pretty abysmal year with the Sixers that year. Another thing that we didn't talk about is that Chris Finch has, you know, you get the Conley part of this.

But Chris Finch has a lot of experience working with like big guys and getting them to work together. He was, you know, on that staff. I'm pretty sure I didn't check on this, but the, he was on that AD, DeMarcus cousin's staff that he found ways for them to coexist. Yeah. So was there anything that you think that they can take away from, I know, I think 80 and DMC didn't get a ton of time together, but when they did, they're pretty good. It got cut short. I mean, it's, it's, it's tough to compare. I just think that the ball skills from DeMarcus, like attacking off the dribble. I think he was probably more creative than either. one of these guys. And I just think that the offensive plummet between Gobert and either one of

these guys. It's hard to find a comparison for, honestly. I just think it's a tough situation when you are sort of kicking your future with all those picks. Let's say they get into a situation where you were talking about like an Adam situation where he gets, Gobert does get played off the floor. That's a thing. I think that that's a little overblown, honestly, because Dallas is like, you and I we're talking about this. Dallas is, or not Dallas, Utah's, uh, guards that they would play with him. They all kind of range from like six two to six four. I don't know. And they, and they were pretty bad defensively. I thought Gobert was pretty good switching out on the perimeter. And like he held up fine against, you know, in the playoffs. Yeah, to me, the issue is not

defense. It's, it's offense. But I mean, just for the sake of you making your case, uh, I guess I'm giving you the hardest possible one to make here, but just out of, you know, sheer curiosity. And I, I also love when you have like these really big lineups, play these really small lineups. But just off the top, like let's say you start in starters versus starters, well, not starters versus starters, but the, the wolf starters against the pool party lineup for the Warriors.

How would you approach that from the wolves perspective? Oh my gosh. Like if they're, I mean, it would come kind of down to like a pace discussion, wouldn't it? I mean, as much as you can, you'd want to like, you wouldn't play as few possessions. as you can against that team.

Forced the Warriors to play big. I'm trying to think of another team that successfully did that, though. I mean, the Celtics were pretty big and physical. Of course, the Warriors don't get enough credit for how physical they can play, too. They're pretty flexible on that front. You talked about like high, low game with those two. I mean, that seems like a pretty simple broad way to put it. I mean, is any kind of high, low, a consistent viable thing for them playing out of the post?

It seems like you're going to run into spacing issues. Of course, now I'm making the argument for you. It seems like you're going to run into spacing issues if you try to play out of the block with like Carl down there because Gobert is only going to slide as far as like short corner. I don't know. What do you think? How would you answer your own question there?

Yeah, I think this is where the size part of it becomes really interesting. You know, do you just kind of go in the direction of, you know, we talked about the Raptors and just try to be longer than everybody else. turn what is already a jump shooting team into even more of a jump shooting team. I think there is a way that this, you know, a cat gobert front court can work by kind of goading opponents into into bad shots and then just running from there. But I mean, I pose that question because I don't really necessarily believe it can work.

But no, really the reason I pose that question is because I think the general question of how you build around a player like cat who's got this deficiency on defense at like the position that you don't want the deficiency on defense is like you can kind of go in two different directions. Like you can go with the big room protecting guy like Rudy Gobert. But I also wonder if, you know, like how getable was Kavanaugh-Luny. Obviously the warriors would want to bring him back under any circumstance, right? But like when we're getting into the realm of throwing out our entire draft equity for a decade, I start to wonder like, you know, how maybe he was a little bit gettable.

Or even, I mean, this is, comes with like a whole other, you know, bag of worms, but even a guy like Ben Simmons, right? Like, I wonder if that's not like the better direction to go into when you have a player like cat. Yeah, because cat can a little bit more consistently space, you know, I feel like Embed spacing is nice to think about, but like cats is very consistent needs to be respected. Like as much as Joelle can hit those types of shots, I'm like, I'm a little bit like, thank God he didn't get to the room or draw a foul or hurt me with his passing in that

situation. It's going to be clunky. It's going to be weird. Like we said, we both enjoy the weird stuff. I'm going to be watching it maybe through bleeding eyeballs. I don't know, but I'm going to be fascinated really quickly before we go here. Did you have a favorite, like low key favorite edition from Free Agency, Lightning Round here? Yeah, I'm a really big fan of Bruce Brown to the Nuggets. He's a really interesting. player. He's like a six four guard turned power forward. And my like curiosity going into this offseason for him was, you know, obviously he managed to carve out this role in space with the nets because just of, you know, how many, how much gravity of those starters and shooters

created where he was able to turn into like this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, rolling big man who, you know, would just kind of thrive on the short role and make plays. I was just kind of curious if there were going to be any other teams that would be interested in that or it's like that configuration would work somewhere else. And I didn't think about the nuggets. And as soon as it happened, I was like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Like you've got the best passing big man of all time. Bruce Brown is a great cutter. He's a great defender. He can play the four. He can play the five. Um, like, I think that's a, let's, you know, it's, it's good insurance for, you know, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, he's also an interesting playmaker as well. Uh, I think he's,

you know, just like add him to the, uh, the players in that, you know, that on that team that basically just run around the constellation of Yokic and, and thrive. Right. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited about that one. That one. And they got him on the cheap, too, two years, $13 million. Uh, pretty good for, for a role player who, you know, his three point shot definitely improved it over, you know, the second half of the season. And he's a great defender and he's a good playmaker and he's smart. He's young. Yeah. I think that's an interesting point about. he sort of developed, he's sort of an inverted offense tool. Like, you know, he brings skills to a different body type that you don't typically get.

And with like, Yokic gets a lot of mileage out of those types of guys. And you would think that it would get amplified to the nth degree, the skills that he developed playing around those stars like you were talking about because he's going to be playing with a guy who's maybe the best over-the-top pass or ever. I mean, I think that's very possible. I wanted to say my addition that I liked a lot, it was a little less low-key. but Kevin, Kevin Herder, the butcher's boy, got added to the Sacramento Kings. They traded for him in that deal.

I just think that there, I said in our slack, our NBA slack that I think Herder has a lot more to give. I think he's going to give you secondary playmaking because he'll hopefully, ideally touch the ball a little bit more, give them some shooting. Sacramento is going to be another weird team. I think they're going to score. I'm not sure they're going to be able to stop anyone at any point. but if they play their most talented offensive lineups, but I thought that was an interesting addition for them. That's going to be fun this year.

I think they could be. I mean, you know, famous last words, right? But loves the bonus, a lot of playmaking on that team. I think they're good for like 45 wins shot at the plan. Yeah, they'll beat a good team on any given night. And also you got Keegan Murray lighted up in the summer league. And, you know, it's fun to overreacted things. Maybe they drafted a superstar.

I don't know. but it's going to be. Maybe you should definitely get less crap for for, you know, passing on Ivy, I think, at least as of right now. We'll see how one plays out.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, Murray's awesome. I think they're two completely different players. I hate the idea of even comparing them. Yeah, they're hard to compare.

I mean, I think it's just more long-term value. It's a conversation we can have later, and I'm sure that we will. But anyway, yeah, let's get, is there upside high?

Yes, we'll see. We'll talk about that on a future episode of Upside High. Stay tuned for that. Stay tuned for Siritt and Chris Ryan on the answer. You guys are still running on Fridays, I believe. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Nothing really big happened today, but, you know, free agency, we're going to sit tight and we're going to have a lot of whatever happens. We're going to have a lot about it on the site. Syriot, it was good to see you, good to talk to you today. I enjoyed this odd. I enjoyed this crossover event of the century that we had here. I agree. I agree. Are we the new peanut butter and jelly? I think we might. As long as we're not like goobers, you know, like that jar where they have it like pre-mixed, that's like the version. I've never seen that before. Never heard of that?

Did they not have that up your way? Maybe not. You should, you should Google that. Goobers. It's like Smokkers makes it. It's disgusting. Anyway, it was good to see. And we will catch you on the flippity flop.

See you later, guys.