The Ringer NBA Show - Is Andre Drummond Getting a Raw Deal? And Which Middling Teams Should Buy or Sell | Group Chat

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Justin, Rob, and Tjarks discuss the ripple effects of Anthony Davis's recent calf strain (02:00), and the Spurs and Hornets dealing with COVID-19. They also talk about the Cavaliers sending Andre Drummond home as they look to trade him, as well as Draymond Green's comments on the NBA's treatment of players (11:00). Later, they look at some possible buyers and sellers of trade deadline season, including the Raptors, Hawks, Bulls, Rockets, and Kings (26:00) Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Jonathan Tjarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Group Chat the Ringer's weekly MBA group discussion where the digital cats always sell for top dollar. I am Justin Verrier. Joining me today back from DMP Old. It is Jonathan Chars. What's up, my friend? It's nice to be back. You know, little known fact. Bloggers have health and safety protocols too. It's true. Most of them involve cheese doodles. I'll let you figure out how they are deployed. Also joining me, Rob Mahoney. What's up, guys? So we're working through some technical issues here. It is a snowy situation in Dallas, snowmageddon, where there's upward of what, an inch, two inch going on?

Yeah, this is a national crisis for sure. Snow on the ground in North Texas. There you go. And so Rob is currently videoing in from his phone on the subway fresh take phone hotline. So if there are any technical difficulties here, that is why. but we will get into some news that's been piling up a very busy president's day on Monday so we could talk about Anthony Davis, his injury, Blake Griffin, and Andre Drummond, stuff like that. And then in the back half of the podcast, we're going to get into some teams

who may or may not be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. We will get into that right after this. So Anthony Davis plays his first game back after a two-game absence because of this Achilles tendonosis issue. And it did not go well for him because he had to vacate that game after bumping into Nicola Yokic. And then it turns out he has to miss now two to three weeks at least. This one seems a little hard to peg down here because I don't know how severe this injury is.

It sounds like based on everything from the Lakers side of things, Lakers or Ports, etc., that they might let this one just play out and give Davis all the time he needs. but it's a little bit scary for a variety of obvious reasons. But, Charks, you wrote about this today on the site. For you, what's the big takeaway from this? My immediate thought when I saw him go down on Sunday was just like how fragile these things are. In hindsight, we're always like, oh, the Warriors, the Shack Kobe Lakers. But it's just one injury and the whole thing can just collapse in a second, right?

Like the Lakers have been the favorite all season. We've all talked about it to death how great they've been. But then you've got, oh, yeah, you've got your. two best players. One of them is 36, leads the league in minutes. One of them has pretty much never been healthy his whole career. And they just came off the bubble. And they're playing this crazy compressed season that's going to go to late July. And you're like, yeah, this is, I mean, it's hard to repeat. And especially, like, there's just a lot of things stacked against them. Forgetting this, this own injury, which is very serious in and of itself, obviously.

Right. Yeah. So the practical implications here, because we don't really know what's going on with Davis, like how severe the injury is. But, I mean, the big thing is the Lakers might not get the one seed. And so that will trickle down to maybe matchups. The top of the West is looking particularly feisty this year with the jazz and the clippers. And so they might get the worst of, let's say, the Warriors or Denver if they fall into or they stay into the bottom four of the West playoff. And then the other thing is the MVP race.

I think, like, in a weird way, this is. a win for LeBron because he no longer has to split the votes and it's all going to be the LeBron tour. So I don't know, Rob, what do you think here? Does one of these things stick out to you? Well, in terms of the one seed, I wonder if this is the kind of year where that just matters much less than other years. For one thing, a LeBron team doesn't need the one seat. We've seen that empirically. But also this year where you're not really guaranteed a significant home court advantage. Your fans may or may not be in the building by then. And then there's also the randomness of what's going on throughout the league of teams that are unexpectedly incomplete because of the COVID

protocols, teams that have had injuries because of the rush season who are going to be in that seven, eight or play in range who could be much better than you would expect a team in that range to be. So I don't know that losing out of the one seat is such a huge thing just because I don't think it was that big of an advantage of the season to begin with. But the worry I think is, I mean, for one, any Achilles or calf-related injury makes you nervous, especially with a player like Anthony Davis, who, as Charks Lilloo, too, has been injured throughout his career, structured his contract as he did because he knew he had been injured throughout his career. Like, this is a fact of life with him. And also balancing, you know, we want to play that as slow as we possibly can to make sure

he's healthy for the playoffs, but then not overtax LeBron at the same time. Yeah, I mean, he did have tendinopathy, I believe, in his other knee. back in 2016. He underwent. I know this off the top of my head because I've written it so many times

an ultrasonic debridement of his left kneecap which kept him out of the Olympics one year. And yeah, I think I'm a little suspicious because of the way he did his contract

because he said out loud like, yeah, I get injured and so maybe I need some long-term security and there's just like a little bit, there's enough vagueness over the situation

where it's like it's tend to know but this most recent one was a calf strain where he like re-aggravated the tendinosis and then even like the definition of tendinosis or the diagnosis is a little bit hard to really like suss out. And so I guess I'm just worried this is something bigger that they're trying to slow play and give him time to heal from but perhaps could be worse down the road. I don't know. I mean, I think just logically it's a massive red flag when a guy is out for an injury comes back and then immediately re-injures the same part of his body.

Like, it doesn't take, to connect the dots there, it doesn't take much. I just don't want to gloss over Dr. Varyer in session here. We have a debridement specialist on the call. Ultrasonic debridement of the left kneecap. Anthony Davis will be 35 and Justin will be referencing his years as a big writer and all the many injuries he has had experienced with. I've said this before. I have 10,000 hours in Anthony Davis.

injury newsers. This is my only specialty in life. But yeah, I guess and while it could be good for LeBron's MVP case, I guess if you're straining LeBron more in the regular season in order to get more wins in order to, at the very least, stay two or three you would expect, like

maybe he shows some fatigue in the playoffs, although I mean, it's really hard to assume that of LeBron at this point. But we'll keep monitoring that one. Another story that kind of percolated today on two Tuesday more. The spurs are out of action for a little while. Our latest example of COVID impacting this NBA season. They have four players to test positive. And it's causing for now at least three postponements of their games. And then it gets into like Charlotte, I guess, is on watch here and also Detroit. Rob, what do you think here? This is just another example of, you know, another team being out of commission for, you know, a stretch of the same.

season. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of those stories that has just continued to roll, not COVID in general, but this specific saga. And you can see the chain of events kind of unfurling here where the Spurs have four positive cases right now. They just played the Hornets on Sunday. The Hornets played the Timberwolves on Friday. And initially, two members of the Hornets, Cody and Caleb Martin, were supposed to be out for that game. The team was prevented from entering the arena because they didn't have conclusive results on the latest round of tests when they came in, they found out PJ Washington also needed to be pulled from that game, which understandably spooked Carl Anthony Towns a little bit, who was on the other side, Towns who,

if you're not familiar with his personal story, has felt the effects of COVID as closely and as personally as really any NBA player out there went to his coach and Ryan Saunders and basically asked him, are you sure we should play this game? And if you weren't following this story in real time, I'd recommend you go read John Krasinski's story at the athletic detailing it. But I mean, my reaction to this stuff is the same as it's been periodically throughout the year, which is, what are we doing here? And there's also like the practical element of it where, especially we know, you see, oh, a guy, I'll be out two weeks.

And then you can't, especially with COVID, you can't expect him to come back right away at 100%, right? There's still more time to get his win back to kind of get himself comfortable back and playing sports again. And so like the Spurs, this could be like a month-long derailment of a fairly promising season. they're having. And we saw it in Dallas. We've seen in Miami. We've seen it in Boston where once you get knocked off the kilter with this, where three or four guys get out, it's very, very hard to get it back going again. Yeah. The Spurs, all of a sudden, this sprightly young, athletic team, and all of a sudden they get derailed by something like this. I mean, it's sad

to say, but I'm just kind of numb to this at this point. It just seems like this is the way they're going to go about things, and there's really not much we could do. I mean, to join the chorus of other people wondering why we're playing an All-Star game, that seems like the shining example of like, we're just going to power through this and then figure things out later for better or worse. And in a large amount of cases, it seems like it's going to be for the worst.

But I don't know, as long as they're going to play these games, I guess this is what we're up against where we have to be on podcast, wondering how COVID absences are going to affect a first round playoff series. But there we are. Also in the news yesterday, this is probably the thing that dominated Monday, but it seemed like every overpriced big man who actually isn't a good basketball player was told to go home. In particular, Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond. Let's start with Drummond here just because Draymond Green made this an even bigger story than it already was yesterday with his comments about the situation.

So Drummond basically is out of the lineup. He was told to sit while the team prioritizes Jared Allen. and looks for a way to trade him. Green last night was basically called out the double standard of the situation talking about, you can go look at the clip if you haven't seen it already. I assume if you're listening to this podcast, you probably already heard it. But the gist of it was everybody kind of shits on James Hardin for wanting out of his situation, but it's fine for a team to sit a player that it wants to trade.

Rob, what do you think about Green's comments there? I think a lot of things. I mean, first, I mostly agree with Dramon's perspective in terms of the double standard. I think it is a slightly more complicated than that, but I get where he's coming from. And my primary takeaway from it is this, which is the idea that teams can trade players is insane. And it's just one of those insanities we have internalized and accepted as part of life. But it's always been insane. And it's interesting that there's this parallel with Blake Griffin going on with Drummond at the same time,

because Griffin is a prime example of the insanity of the trade market in general because the clippers begged him to stay. They held a mock retirement ceremony just to try to get him to resign as a free agent and then traded him within months. And it's like, we can talk all day about player empowerment

and how players have more authority to kind of go where they want to go and choose where they want to play. Blake never signed up to play for the Pistons. And now he's been there for three years. And so when teams, wield the power of the trade the way they do. And I think Draymond got into some of this with not only the fact that players are traded,

but the way in which that news trickles out to them, with Harrison Barnes getting pulled off the court before a game, with DeMarcus Cousins being informed during a press conference at All-Star that he'd been traded. I think that gets into a slightly different issue in terms of the information pipeline resulting from a trade. But just the fact that these guys can be dealt in the way that Blake was, for example, nullifies the power of their free agency. That's the one thing that players get to decide, really, is where.

they want to go when they're free agents and a team can flip them just like that. Yeah, I mean, it's funny when you talk to NBA players, especially older ones. And they'll always at some point say, oh, the NBA is a business. I learned the NBA as a business when X happened, when Y happened, whether it's like two years in, three years in, seven years in, at some point they're just hit full on with like, yeah, we are just commodities being bought and sold across the country. And it's pretty crazy. I think for Drummond especially, it just sucks because.

He's 27. He's in the prime of his career. He's probably having the best season in terms of impacting winning. And just like that, it's like, not only are you like going to get benched for a younger player, we're just not going to play you anymore. And the deadline is in a month. And we'll talk about this later. But I don't see a trade just happening tomorrow for Andre Drummond.

Like this is going to be a long process to find a suitor if it even happens. So he's going to be like the prime of his career shelved for a month and a half. That is pretty messed up. Yeah, I agree with 90 to 95% of what Dremont is saying here. I think I would quibble slightly in that it seems like Drummond's value has been a little overstated. Like, yes, individually, he's having a great statistical season. But I recommend, I don't know what user did it, but on Reddit, on NBA Reddit, there is a clip of all of the bad decisions Andre Drummond makes, particularly on offense when he's like trying to post up or he's trying to face up against someone.

or he's like trying to shoot floaters and whatnot. And he just like, he hasn't been very good, even though he probably has been better than he has in recent years. And so on a certain level, this is actually just, this is a decision based on basketball where they want to prioritize another player and Drummond just isn't living up to that. He's not actually doing his job.

And there's also reporting that indicates like he hasn't been cooperative with J.B. Bickr staff and all this other stuff. So there is another level to this on top of what Draymond's saying where it's like, maybe he's just like not actually benefiting the team. Well, he could still be the backup center though. Like, yeah, it compares Jared Allen, but that's mean he can't play at all.

Sure. That's what Draymond's getting at. But wouldn't Draymond probably say the same thing? He was saying that Andre Drummond was being embarrassed by the Cavs, that it was embarrassing what was happening to him, isn't demoting him to the bench kind of a similar tactic? If that's kind of how you feel about the end result? Yeah, and I also wonder, there was an ESPN story that came out just documenting this.

I wonder how much that part of it, Drummond, not playing at all, is a negotiation with the agent, right? Because maybe the agent's like, oh, he's 27. He can sign another contract for a decent amount of money in the offseason. If you're just going to demote him, just don't play him at all. You're going to get him injured and make it even worse. And so that element, I don't really know. There's still a lot we don't know about the situation. But I guess in practical terms, Drummond is on the market.

He's playing on a 29 million expiring contract this year. There's some scuttle butt that maybe the Raptors were interested, but then it was quickly shot down by one of their beat riders being like, well, they were actually just having an exploratory conversation. Charks, do you see any team that would make sense for Drummond in a trade? That's the thing is, I mean, because let's not forget, he was in the trade last year at Detroit, and they really couldn't find a trade partner form until Cleveland came in at the last minute.

It's just at his salary point. You look at Andre Drummond, this guy is probably a 25-minute night and game starting center, part of a center platoon for a good team. And that's just, I mean, $30 million, it just doesn't really make sense to value that. I can't even really see his fit for him at that salary spot. Well, let's talk about the Raptors piece of that

because I think they're instructive from that point of view. And if you look around the league, I don't know that there are that many teams that would consider Drummond to be a definitive upgrade over what they already have at center. I think we're maybe talking about five teams and maybe a couple more if you want to include some of the teams that have really young centers they're investing in. But they don't really, they wouldn't really be interested in what Drummond's bring to the table because they're invested in those young players. Like the magic in Moamba. Exactly like the magic and Moamba. So it's a pretty limited market to begin with. But one of those teams would be the Raptors.

They've had center problems all season. As Darrell Blackport with PBP stats pointed out, Drummond's actually younger than Chris Boucher, which is instructed to remember. That's insane. So they're a team that theoretically could use a guy like Drummond. But then you get into the mechanics. I think Blake Murphy laid this out really well

in terms of the mechanics and the difficulty of the Raptors pulling off that kind of deal. The Raptors are a team that's hard cap to begin with, huge complication in terms of pulling off trades to add salary. But also with the way their team is set up, unless you're trading like Kyle Lowry in this deal, which I think would require a much more elaborate three or four team set up to make that happen,

you're really talking about one of two different constructions. Either you're trading Norm Powell, who's been really good for them this season, and three other rotation players. So a four-for-one trade. Or you're trading five guys that are not Norm Powell. and then you have to all of a sudden scramble to sign a bunch of minimum guys from your G-League team

or wherever you want to pull that talent from. Those mechanics are really tricky and they get very expensive for a team in the Raptors position. I think we underestimate sometimes a guy like Drummond becomes available, we all want to talk about it, we all want to find a new home for him.

Guys with $30 million contracts don't get traded often for a reason. It's just tough to aggregate this much salary without blowing up your team. That's why to me what it jumped out was, oh, if they're going to bench him a month for the trade line, maybe they would actually buy him out. And then if he gets bought out, that's a whole different conversation.

And then it's like, wow, what if he just slid on a drummond onto the nets? Right? That's just, that to me is like the glaring red light. If he gets bought out, he becomes like a minimum salary guy. Now let's have a starting center. Now we're talking business. Yeah, it's funny that the Raptors don't have the contracts to trade for them. They're almost too good at their jobs that they can't like add an Andre Drummond here.

And you see teams like the Celtics try to add just floating salaries in order to trade them eventually. They have that big trade exception. Tristan Thompson, there was like Scuttle Butt that maybe they signed that in part because he would have had like a $9 million contract which is enough to feed into

maybe a package down the road. And it's like you just can't make the math work here. So yeah, I agree. It just doesn't really make sense for a team to trade for him. But I think on the bio market, he could be attractive guys. because I do feel like if Drummond just stops playing like Andre Drummond and he's just like an athletic big man who has a purpose, who rolls, who rebounds, who tries to deter shots at the rims, he could be a pretty effective player.

And like the Raptors, he would be great there, the nets would be great there, maybe like Dallas. I just want to underline if Drummond stops playing like Andre Drummond's. I mean, I'm forever scarred by that video that I watched of him as he just tries to be. be basically like primary or Blake Griffin, just like trying to break guys off the dribble. I don't know like why he does this, but he's done it throughout his entire career. If he just like realizes that he's a massively, he's a massive man won and just massively athletic, he would be like just so much more useful. Well, there's something to be said for like, okay, when he's no longer getting paid 30 million

a year, like psychologically or in the way he's perceived as well. I remember when Dwight Howard, like instantly after that big contract ended and he became can't make a minimum salary player. It was like, oh, yeah, Dwight's actually kind of useful in a smaller role. Oh, there what do you know? It is worth clearing up, though, that I think Drummond came out to start the season pretty locked in. Like, I think especially defensively, like, he was doing his job.

He was doing pretty well for a Cavs team that was relying on that kind of effort. I don't know if there's a clear line, but I would say over the last few weeks or so, his investment has been noticeably different. So I don't know what the cause of that is. I don't know what the chicken and egg of all this would be. Well, when they took for Jared Allen, right? Yeah. That was an aggressive move.

I will say that for Drummond. They basically just traded for his successor out of nowhere. And you also have Javel McGee there. And they're like trying their best to make these things work by playing these guys in the same lineups. And it's just, it's a mess. Yeah, Larry Nance got injured. And they tried like Drummond Allen lineups. And that, I mean, obviously was not going to work for any amount of time.

Love is supposed to come back within like a week, which will probably actually be a monster. But like that's another big man they have to throw in there. So yeah, it seems like he's, he's had for the buyout market, most likely. And that's probably the fate of one Blake Griffin, although, man, the piston was had to eat a lot of money here. So he is owed from this point forward, 37 million this season and 39 next season. Bobby Mark said a tweet that even if he gives back $20 million, which is among the most a player has given back all time.

The Pistons would still owe $32 million this season and $24 next season. They could stretch that second year over like three years, which I think would be an $8 million hit. And as we know, the Pistons love to stretch contracts, but it's still a lot of money just to be like, don't show up here. Like, why not just bench him? Well, I could be mistaken, but I think there's actually some limitations on how much salary they can stretch relative to the salary cap.

And I think stretching Blake might cross that threshold. So even that might not be an option for the stretch-happy Detroit Pistons. I guess the question is, is there a team out there that could, A, absorb that salary or come up with the salaries in order to make the math work and be, like, find a place for it? Can you think of any teams? From looking at the league, my answer would be no. I want to believe that there's a role out there where Blake can learn to be a good player

in a different kind of way. But what would that even look like if he really can't move all that well in his current form and his shot has left him which was kind of the impetus for the transformation of his game and in theory the move into

what could be the latter stages of his career and preserving value and again offering something to a team in a different way. it's tough because I will always think of him as the guy in that 2015 playoff run who basically ran point for the Clippers, a player who could really change the makeup of a team around him and what he could do. That guy is gone.

And it's not just the athleticism, it's the bully ball stuff, it's really the entirety of his game. Because if you look at what he's been this season and being turned into really a stretch big, you have to imagine that's kind of the role he would fill if he were to drop with a contender or something, and he hasn't filled it very well. Yeah, you would hope he could maybe find like a Carmelo-like role in Portland, where maybe he's more locked in on a contending team. He's not playing as many. I mean, he's playing 31 minutes a game. That's like on its face just crazy given his physical condition. So maybe if you cut that in half like 15 minutes, don't play him back to backs, bring him off the bench with a good point guard on a minimum contract. Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe if you line up all of those things together, you might get a solid playmaking second unit big man. I think that would be the goal. Well, shout out to Mello while we're at it, who's having a killer season with the Blazers been particularly great of late. I mean, I hadn't thought of that model, but maybe that's kind of the line that makes sense for Blake. Yeah, what a turnaround for Mello.

Now, he's the shining example of the veteran who's fitting in. It just shows you that you can always change, guys. Can Blake, like, run a second unit offense, you know? I guess the question is just like, what are you doing on defense? Because you probably have to cover him at this point. You're probably still going to want him to cover a big, but he can't rim protect. You can't really keep up with guys on the perimeter.

And now he can't shoot. And so we're really all we're saying is that he's a good passer. I mean, the shot's got to come. Maybe he can get that back and load lesser minutes. If he can't shoot, then he's going to be out of the lead. the shot's going to have to come back. So he shot 36% in that All-Star year he had, what, two years ago now? I guess the question is, is there enough evidence that suggests that that's who he is?

I mean, he's definitely firing away, and he's not going to the rim, so he's definitely going to take those shots. I do wonder if he is that shooter or if that was just the aberration. A sentence just popped into my head I never thought I would ever think, which is, is Blake Griffin the poor man's Kyle Anderson? Wow. Okay. Okay. All right. I can see it. I see where you're going with that. What a sad thing to think, though. Man, this is where we've come. And that's good, right? That's a good thing? I don't even know. I mean, Kyle Anderson is good. Is being a poor man, it's Kyle Anderson good? That's a little touch and go. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about some teams who might actually swing some trades at the deadline or they may not. So the rest of the podcasting world is talking about all-stars.

We are going to zag this week, my friends, and we're going to go and dig back into the trade deadline. It's a month away, but we're still excited about it. As we documented it, what, two weeks ago, Rob and I did. The deadline is going to be interesting because there are so many teams who are theoretically in the mix for this play in tournament. But there are a few teams right in that meaty center

where they could, if they wanted to, push forward, make sure they get into the playoffs or take advantage of what seems to be a buyer's market and start selling off. So we've got a couple teams here. Let's start with the team that we kind of just talked around a little bit in the Drummond

discussion, the Toronto Raptors. I don't really know what to do with them. They're eighth in the east right now. Playing a little better of late, but clearly not the same team that we've come to know. Rob, what do you think about the Raptors? Do you think they're

future here this season is better off as buyers or as sellers? You know, I'm not above a little sentimentality when it comes to a player like Kyle Lowry and letting him right off into the sunset. But for a team like the Raptors who I think has operated pretty preemptively in terms of the big decision points in their franchise's trajectory, this feels like if you're going to make a move, this is the time to make it. You know, Kyle's on an expiring contract. The Raptors are not the team they've been.

And frankly, Kyle Lowry, still an excellent player, has not had the same magic to his game that he's had over the last couple years, I think is kind of entering a different phase of his career. I don't want to see them trade him, but it just feels like a natural pivot point to set up whatever the next era of Raptors basketball is going to be. Yeah, I mean, Van Vleet has played better this year. Maybe it's time to let him kind of run the offense as the number one point guard. I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's weird because the East is so compressed this year that like one win streak and they're back in the top four or five. They do have a top 10 net rating, which to me suggests that like they could be better than they played thus far. And the one thing in their favor is it seems like the spot that they probably need an upgrade is center.

And it seems like that's the easiest spot to fill. As we just documented, like you could probably get Andre Drummond on the buyout market in about a month. And I wonder if they're just willing to part with a second round pick or multiple second round picks. They could bring in a useful player, really soak up the minutes that Aaron Baines is getting, and have a competent team to really push forward with that wouldn't require just completely blowing it up. They probably need an upgrade there, you think? I would say definitely. Unless you want to just go 48 minutes of Chris Boucher.

I wouldn't hate it. I know that. I know that that's your lane, though, Justin. We'll let you keep here as the number one Boucher. fan. I actually had a thought about that. I'm going to put you all think about this. What about Al Horford? He's having kind of a rebound season in Oklahoma City, and he fits that stretch five mold they are missing in Gasol and Abaka. And I think, like, you've clearly seen, if you're going to make Pascal Seaccombe, like a great player, he has to have a stretch five. That's the piece

that unlocks the rest of his game. So to me, like, if I was trading for a center, I wouldn't want a guy like drummoos in a clog the lane for Pascal. I want a Horford who's taking a career high. I look at five and a half three is a game in Oklahoma City. Now you play him, he pretty much slides perfect into that Gasolabaka role. The problem, of course, that he's 34 on a fairly massive contract. But if I was thinking about winning now for Toronto, that might be interesting player to a target. Yeah, I would never stand in the way of a team trading for Al Horford. Like, philosophically, that's just where I am. But at the same, same time, I think Toronto is in a place where they really need to be serving both roads at once,

even if they are trying to win now. I think back to Houston, for example, with Christian Wood, where it was, okay, say on a long shot, we are able to convince James Harden to stay, Christian Wood pairs really well with him. But if he leaves, Christian Wood is kind of our big of the future. It's tough to find those kinds of bigs that can be young enough to grow with Fred Van Vlead, Nogh, and O. G. Anobi, and Pascal Stiacom, but could also be good enough to win now. and help you, like, that's a pretty limited pool of players. But that's the thread that they're trying to walk here. Right.

And the other issue is El Horford makes $28 million this year. And so you're in a similar situation that the rappers would be with Drummond, where you could give them Baines as an expiring contract, but you would have to find other minimum guys in order to roll up up in order to meet that number. It's tough, man. I don't know. I think the question here with this team is just, like,

do you if you can't find a buyer for Lowry that gives you the price that you want, do you just trade him and just start anew? Or would you bring him back again and just kind of keep going forward with what you have, just to have some semblance of competency or whatever above competency would be? I mean, it's never a bad idea to bring him back. Just with the institutional knowledge, the competitiveness, Lowry is the kind of player who can fit, even in an aging skill set, can fit with any kind of team really well.

wouldn't mind if they just want to keep him around because he's a really good player and he means a lot to the franchise. I just think if you are looking to transition into something, he's the piece that allows you to theoretically do that. Yeah, I think the other question would be like, is this a team that wants to trade first round picks? One, and two, like, are they going to still value cap space or is that a Janus thing? Were they thinking, oh, we have this unique opportunity to sign a superstar because of all kinds of other factors? and now that's no longer in play, do they decide, hey, we're actually a small,

we're actually a Canadian team that's not everyone's looking for your agency. Do we just go after salaries and not worry as much about keeping the space? Technically, they're a Florida team. That's true. Well, as residents of the OG and Anobi hive, is there a vision of the Raptors future

that looks competent and solid and could move toward contention with just this group they have, with a Fred Van Vleet, Pascal Seacom and a transformed, elevated OG and Anonobi? Is that a team that can work on a contending level in the future? Interesting question.

Seems like a good team. I don't know if it's a great team. I've had a thought about this for a while. I've been thinking, like, I'm not sure how it would work mechanically, but either Seacom or O.G to Denver for Michael Porter. I feel like Porter's a guy. That could really balance.

skill sets where you have like the great multi-dimensional defensive wing and your superstar score and then Denver gets the multi-defense multi-dimensional defense one they've lost. I think that kind of construct would might make sense down the road. In terms of Michael Porter destinations, I think that's one of the best ones I've heard so far. Wow. Congrats sharks. Although like on Denver's end, does that really satisfy what they need?

It seems like they're holding on to Michael Porter Jr. as the Trump card and all of these trade discussions. So I do wonder if, like, getting a Seacom or an OG is enough for them when you have Bradley Beal just sitting there just, like, grimacing on the bench and you just think about what if we just get? Yeah, we actually talked about this a lot on the last Ringer University pod. And like, there was actually me and KFCR went on for a while about it. Is that new? Because he was convinced, oh, we need more superstars. And I was like, no, no, you've got to have guys who can defend the perimeter. You've already got Yokich and Murray. And that's a whole different conversation.

Jeremy Grant is gone, Charks. Just let it go. Never. They can never go back. All right, let's move on here. Another team in the East

who is underperforming. Unfortunately, I don't really know what to do with this team. There doesn't seem to be a lot of easy options, in part because one, John Collins,

is in this weird purgatory state where the Hawks, the team we're talking about now, they need him because they don't have a lot of health

players on a given night. But on the other hand, it sounds like he doesn't want to stay there a long term. They weren't able to come to an agreement on an extension before the deadline before the season. And the Hawks are out there. There's a Shams Sharania report basically saying that they would only trade him for a high first round lottery type of draft pick. On the other hand, though, sounds like he wants the max in restricted free agency. I don't know if the Hawks are going to want to pay that or even match that in order to trade. eventually. So they're in a weird situation here. Charks, what do you think is the best

path for the Hawks with Collins? It's a fascinating question because based on what you were saying, and actually, COC had reported that they are in playoff or bust mode, that if they don't make the playoffs, they're all getting fired, which maybe, that's why I was surprised to see Shams's report come out that actually Collins might be available in a trade, because I'd be more of a long-term discussion. Also, if you're interested in the Hawks, their GM was on Ryan Rissillo's podcast yesterday. So that's worth checking out, too, Travis Link. So I thought you were going to bring up Bringer University again. I'm bringing up all the pods, Justin. There you go. Well, this, I think this is a roster that's built to make a move.

Like, whether you want to consider it by herself, there's just too many rotation players here to satisfy everybody. And that's been true even with Bogdan Bogdanovich. out of the lineup for so long, with Danila Galanari in and out, like, you're going to have to consolidate this at some point. And with the direction of the franchise and their priorities, that seems like more of a buy move than a sell move. Like, you're not trading these guys for draft picks. You're consolidating them for hopefully, hopefully, you know, two good rotation players for one,

even better one or something to that effect. So it's, I don't know what that looks like because I'm kind of more on the keep John Collins angle of this. I think he's been pretty good this season. I think he's taken meaningful strides forward defensively, which is what they need. they just have some weird chemistry is not the right word but there's a little something funky going on

with their kind of focus and motivation in games. They're not closing very well. They've had issues just kind of competing. I don't know who to place the blame for that at the feet of, but they're a team that could certainly use some clarity in terms of their rotation, could just certainly use getting all their guys back to see

what it is they have because I don't know that they know right now. Rob, I'm actually a question for you based on that whole line of thought And I think, like, if you look at their long-term salary structure, so Collins is up this summer, Kevin Herder is up for an extension, Trey Young's up for an extension. So if you look at like the way their team is put together, would you prefer to have a team that went Young, Reddish, Herder, and then Hunter at the 4? So like a smaller, more wing-heavy team or Collins-Hunter Reddish-Young and you take out one of the shooters and Herder. Well, I think Capella has been really good. I'm saying he of the five

That's not even part of the section Oh you're locking that in So it's Collins, basically it's Collins at the four Or Hunter at the four And if it's Hunter at the four You have Herder in there If it's Collins at the four you don't I feel good having Collins at the four

Hunter at the three And I think Hunter has been Hunter has been versatile enough this season I mean he was very good Before his injury Yeah You know And that's kind of what makes me pause

Before making any dramatic shift to this Before we get to see What it really looks like Because Bogdanovich and Hunter and young, like, there's enough here that should work. And I kind of want to give it time to see, to come to fruition to see if it can. Okongwu, we haven't even brought up. Absolutely.

Theoretically in the rotation, hasn't been able to get a lot of minutes. My question for you guys is, so Quincopella is basically just completely overhauled this defense. They've been pretty competent with him on the floor. In the playoffs, do we think that that, if they even make it to the playoffs, I assume they'll make it to at least the play in game. Do we think that will stand up? Because I think to your question, sharks, I wonder if they'll be, how long they'll be able to

leave him on the court there and whether or not he'll be able to have the same impact in a playoff game versus regular season game. I would say, though, like, you can't skip steps if you're Atlanta. Like, you've got to get to the playoffs first. Before you start worrying about matchups. I mean, right now, they're what, like the 10th seed? Because they've had lost a couple games in a row.

Like, let's get to the playoffs consistently for like two or three years. And then we can figure out, oh, how do all these guys match up against elite teams? But if you start playing the matchup game when you're the 12th seed, it's like, what are we really doing here? Yeah, yeah. I also thought it's interesting that when you were talking about the core of what the lineup would look like,

we didn't mention the guys who they brought in in order to buoy this entire thing. Like, Gallo is out here playing as many games as he's missed. I don't really know what his role is for that team long term. I love Bogdan. I just don't know if he fits into a closing lineup with the guy. that you mentioned. It's just, it's just a lot going on here and they need to figure out the situation quickly. So we'll keep track of that one. Another team, perhaps in the too many guys category, the Houston Rockets, who after a furious start post-hardened trade where we talked about their

defense and how good Christian Wood is, kind of in a similar situation where the injuries have started to take the toll and they've now lost six in a row and they're looking at the bottom of the Western Conference. Charks, what do you think about the Rockets here? Do you see them as a team that maybe just powers through some of these injuries or they decide to pack it in and maybe play for the future a little bit more? This feels like a seller to me. I'm curious what y'all think. I just never really thought that John Wall, Victor Oladipo would work. It seems like two guys who really need the ball, streaky shooters, injury prone. Go to both have, O'Dipo's going to want a big contract in the off season. I just never really saw that as a lot. I just never really saw that as a

long-term backcourt. So to me, that was always a transition trade for the next trade. But I'm curious what you all thought about that. I mean, the big issue with the Rockets right now is that they have no incentive to be bad this season because they owe a pick swap to the Oklahoma City Thunder that I believe is only top four protected, which is pretty dicey. You'd really have to tank it hard in order to ensure that you'd get into that top four of the draft and you end up giving them a fifth Pith or six pick, it becomes a little iffy there. I guess they're in a similar situation that the Nets used to be, where I almost wonder if you have to operate as if that draft pick is sunk cost and you have to make the best deal in front

of you. And if you get a good return for Ola Depot, that gives you future value, maybe gives you a couple more picks or gives you a young player, then fine. But you can kind of assess the board and take what the defense gives you, essentially. I mean, they seem like one of these teams that's almost splitting the difference between buying and selling. Because I think, organizationally speaking, they want and need to be competitive. But it's not like PJ Tucker is a long-term piece here. It's not like Eric Gordon has to be a member of this core.

I think when you're talking about the future of the Rockets, what you're really looking at is John Wall, who's, I think, been pretty good this season. Christian Wood, once he gets back from injury, J. Sean Tate. and maybe or maybe not Victor Olipo, depending on if they want to pay to resign him in the offseason. So if that's the core of your team, that's not good enough to be, okay, now we're set,

now we can move forward, now we can contend for the playoffs. They need more than that. They certainly need more foundational pieces than that. How they go about getting those, I mean, I think Tucker and Gordon and those kinds of players are probably your path to doing it.

I just don't know if it's going to be that compelling to teams that are in more of a contending position to trade for those guys. When you're talking about like first round picks, I mean, I think you can definitely get seconds. You can get some potentially rotation level players, but are you getting starter level players? Are you getting playoff level guys?

I don't know about that. I want to plug for Eric Gordon. I think this is a guy who could actually help a lot of teams. And I think he's probably known best now for his contract, which is like pretty big. He got a great extension for himself, props to his agent. But he's only 32. I mean, if you go back to some of those Warriors Rocket series,

there were games where he was the best player on the floor, where he was locking up Stefan Clay, draining threes, being a secondary ball handler. I mean, this is a guy. This year, he's like, this people percentage is back up. I mean, he's hurt a lot, but man, he can guard two or three positions. He can really shoot it. He can score. I think he's a guy in a different system.

He play with Hardin for so long that people kind of have him pegged as a spot-up shooter, but he's a multi-dimensional player. Like, I would love for a team like Boston who go after Eric Gordon. I think he could really help for them. And then if you're Houston, maybe you get a first-round pick for it, someone like Romeo Langford, some young guy to kind of gamble on. I like that. I agree that Gordon is really underrated.

He's basically become that kind of three-and-d dynamo that we probably all wanted him to be for so long in New Orleans. But he just kept dealing with those injuries. I do wonder what his value is because of those injuries, because this isn't just like a one or two-year thing. This is pretty much his entire career now where something always comes up and sidelines him for 17. games. But just big picture with the Rockets, I found that their trade of Oladipo for LaVird, that element of that big, Hardin trade to be particularly instructive because they said,

we do not want this young player. Perhaps it was just like they didn't like Laverton, that's that. But they specifically took back an expiring contract. Maybe they want to re-sign Ola-Dipo. They think he fits into that core here, but I think more likely than not, they wanted the flexibility. And so if you do not see Ola-Dipo, is part of your long-term solution. I wonder if they just Rashid Wallace him and with the Hawks and just flip him forward in order to, if you're not going to keep him,

just get anything for him and just go that way. That makes the most sense to me, but I honestly don't really know what they're thinking is. I think the tough part of that strategy, if that was their strategy, is Oladipo health-wise, is a tough guy to bank on to be healthy by the deadline. And we've seen that this season where, you know,

he's had his moments, but just had such a tough role of dice in terms of some of these injuries and limiting him and taking him out of the lineup, if you're a team that's going to be, you know, in a contending position, betting on, let's get that one more guy. Let's get one guy to fill out our lineup or come off our bench or whatever you envision that being. Betting on the guy who's been this often injured is a pretty tough sell. Yeah, I think if you're the Rockets, the big picture is you're just got to keep stacking picks because you're out so many picks and you just got to like keep grinding away. Maybe you can trade Daniel House for a pick, Tucker, all these guys and just get some picks. So like when you're rebuilding over the next

four years, you actually have some young players to add in as opposed to not having any of your own picks. And that's just like a matter of attrition, like a constant pick, pick, pick, pick, but you got lost back. Right. All right. Let's slip to a team that probably has too many young guys and really hasn't found out the type of team that they are as a result of that. The Chicago Bulls 11 and 15th or 9th in the east, Zach Levine, all of a sudden everyone's flipped on him. He's probably going to make the All-Star team. It sounds like if the bloggers out there had their wish, he would.

But we'll see what the coaches pick. But then you have all these other guys on this team where I'm not quite sure what to do with. So they have the old guard where you have Otto Porter Jr. making a ton of money. you have Thad Young who's playing kind of above his head lately. And then you have like some of the young guys where you have this front court of Wendell Carter Jr. You have Lori Marketing. Is that the future there?

Especially with Patrick Williams there. Is he playing the three? Is he playing the four? And so there's a lot of stuff with this team. And I don't really know how to make sense with it. I think the biggest question on the board, they have to ask themselves, especially as Zach Levine enters a contract year next year, is, Rob, do you think

that the future for this team is Zach Levine as like the number one all-star guy? Well, first, do you think you can just take shots at Thad Young on this podcast? Thank you. He's fine. Do you think that's fine?

Do you think that's the kind of thing we're just going to sit back and take? In terms of Zach Levine, I think the trouble with Levine is within the genre of the kind of player he is, right? This is a guy who's going to be pretty limited on defense, and we're really banking on his offense and his shooting. I don't know how much better he can be than this.

Like, he's been awesome, one of the best, most versatile shooters in the NBA this season. Just a complete dynamo as a score, you know, finishing really well, attacking in a way that he wasn't earlier in his career, playing ball in terms of trying to get other guys involved. You know, he's not a super intuitive playmaker, but I think he's doing what he needs to do on that end. And if this is the result of close to a best case scenario, Zach Levine, I think that's indicative of what a team with him as a first option can be. So for me, I don't think the solution is to trade living. I think it's so much about how do we get another guy here who can compliment him, who can do some of the stuff he can't, who can anchor our defense potentially,

or who can help kind of run and organize our offense in a way that doesn't always come naturally to him. I got to say, I was a little shocked when I saw it on the sheet, Justin. we're talking about, oh, should they trade Levine? And it's like, they've been so bad for three years growing with Levine, letting him play through his mistakes. He's still only 25. Now he's become a good player. And now you're going to trade him.

And so you can be bad for four more years? Like, was that what Arturis said in the meeting with the owners? I know you've been terrible for forever. But if you hire me, we'll be terrible forever again. And then maybe in five years, we can be as good as we are now. Like, that's my plan. Well, I think this is the last time they'll probably ever have leverage in a situation there.

His value probably is at his absolute peak. And when we flip to the off season, the next time they'll be able to trade him, now the ball is in his court, he'll probably have a little bit more say over what team you trade him to just because he'll say, like, well, I'll sign here, but not there. And so this is really kind of the choke point where they need to make some semblance of a decision. And I do tend to agree with what you guys are saying. I would like to see this team a little bit more set up in order to feed off of him rather than these disparate parts where it's like market is good sometimes and then Carter's good now sometimes and like white is okay, I think.

And then Patrick Williams is like 12 years old and I don't really know what to do with them. So it is weird to say, but I do wonder if like Levine isn't the problem. It's actually the contacts around him. We've come full circle. I would be closer to trading everyone who isn't Patrick Williams than I would be to trading Zach Levine. You know, the market in Carter, Kobe White group, I don't know what the market is for those guys. I get if they want to, you know, take their time and see what they have, especially with Carter. You know, he's a guy who's been really uprooted by his periodic injuries and hasn't had time to develop any momentum to his career. So I would get if they want to hold on and wait and see with him. But with the rest of these guys,

I mean, I think they can be good players. I think they certainly have really good nights. They're just a little too uneven if we're talking about who we're building. What is giving our franchise the stability it needs to complement this incredible score who's kind of going off for us on every night or every other night basis in Levine? I think worth pointing out, too, so with Chicago and Atlanta, this is the downs. It's very easy to say, you know, blow it up, built through the draft, et cetera, et cetera. But then you get into the meat and potatoes of building through the draft.

So Chicago got the number seven pick three straight years. They had no lottery luck, which with the way the odds are straightened out now, could be happening for a lot of teams, right? You're just sitting at six every year, sitting at seven. And I wouldn't say they've made a lot of bad draft picks, right? Like I think Mark and Carter White, they're all NBA players. They're all stick in the league. But man, it's just hard to rebuild when you're not getting those top three picks.

And that's purely a luck thing getting those top three picks. And you're kind of where Chicago ends up being where you have like four or five young guys who are kind of good. You don't know what you have really. You've been bad for four years. And it's like maybe if we're lucky we can get the 50 wins and three more. It's just a hard road to rebuild in the NBA. And this is why teams don't want to do this. This is why the Raptors or the Spurs don't pull the plug because they know once you start down that road, getting back up is not easy.

It's in fact, very, very hard. Well, especially with the Bulls, you know, they've done pretty well in terms of the veteran guys they've brought in. You know, Garrett Temple, Thad Young, Tomas Atteransky, they've all had pretty good seasons. And you, you know, you nail some of those moves. The pieces around the Young Corps should fit. They give you nice, nice savvy, good kind of intuitive play, good feel stuff, and just don't have those tent pole talents. And, I mean, that's the ball game. That's what makes you a below 500 team.

That's the problem with the OKC plan. is that if you're going to tank and build your team through the draft, you have to draft three MVP's and another, like, fringe All-Star guy and Stephen Adams. It's just, it is very hard. Well, but I think that brings us to a question of, like, what they have in these guys. My biggest question is marketing, because he had such a, like, incredible rookie season, and then the injury started, and then he kind of just fell off the face of the earth. Like, what is his future?

Is he a type of guy you could stick next to, I don't know, a Zion in the front court and like maybe you just play him as like some sort of like pseudo Ryan Anderson type or like do you need like a rim protector to allow him to be like some version of of three point shooting dirk. I think he's a player you almost need a more reactive point guard to pair with because if you don't have a guy who can make next level passes who can really preempt stuff and see it before it's happening, then he becomes just a spot up guy. And I think that feeds into kind of his worst instincts as a player, which is to just be a spacer. But when teams start putting smaller and smaller guys on him and start chasing him off the line, I think the most encouraging games for Markin are the ones where he's mixing it up inside, where they put a guard on him and he's cutting and he's getting layups. He's getting these dump-offs.

He's getting duckins. Like that's, that needs to be part of his game. And you don't get that unless you have somebody who's really reading the action at a high level. And frankly, a higher level in terms of. playmaking than what Levine and Kobe White are doing. Yeah, I think that ties back to the whole tent pole thing where yeah, if you had this elite playmaking guard or wing, all of a sudden, everybody else slide into natural roles where Levine's the number two. Kobe White's a sixth man who gets buckets. Marketing maybe is like a Kelly Olinic who just gets buckets off the bench, right?

And everything just flows naturally. Without that tent pole number one guy, and you're all just kind of figuring out on the fly. There's no one organizing the action. There's nobody like creating e-hots or anybody else. Everyone just got to eat on their own. That's just a hard way to live in the NBA. Yep. And to your earlier point, there were one spot away from Lamello who could have been that exact player that we're all talking about. It's so much of his luck. It's tough. All right, last team here, the Sacramento Kings, who just got absolutely blitz last night by the Nets. I was doing this outline as I had this game on in the background. And it was a competitive game. I'm like, oh, Kings, pretty feisty.

Maybe they're buyers. And then when I look up, the Nets are basically flirting with a record for a amount of made three-pointers and just completely wipe the floor with them. It's kind of the same old situation with the Kings here. Have some young guys, some of whom are good. Some of them are Marvin Bagley. I don't know, man. You better hope Team Bagley about listening to this podcast, Justin.

You'll get some strongly word of tweets. I could assure you, Team Bagley is not listening to this podcast. It's probably fair. Do you see any easy solutions here? They have a couple guys that if they wanted to like toe the line and just kind of go forward with, they can maybe trade a Bialitza who's not really in the rotation. They can get rid of Roshan Holmes, though all of a sudden, like, he's an important part of this whole franchise.

I don't know. What do you do here if you're the Kings? See, to me, I'm looking at this Kings roster and I'm looking at like they're you know, plus minus. I think they're one player away from being in that top 10, which would be incredible for Sacramento. So when Rashon Holmes is playing a starting center, they're plus point five. So, you know, they're an average team. When Rashon Holmes comes out of the game, they're minus 12. And I mean, we all love Rashon Holmes, but that shouldn't be happening. That tells you they've got a glaring, glaring hole at backup five. If they get like a Javille

McGee, to me, that's something like, let's make a small move to get a solid back. up center, solidify this team, and we have enough good young perimeter players to make a run on it. And if you're Sacramento, it's been so long. I think there are buyers, like, small, yeah, Bielitsa for Jamal McGee, something like that, something real small. They're in a tough spot because I think so much of my instinct with this team would be, I'm not precious about anyone on this roster who isn't Deeran Fox or Tyrese Halliburton. You know, anything else, we're open for business, we'll talk moves, we'll figure it out. But with the franchise's history, and with how close they are now

to at least a play in birth, if not an outright playoff seed. I don't know that you can do that. I don't know that you can make that kind of. It's one of those things that in the context of the history of the team just would not really make sense. So with where they are,

I'm in alignment with sharks on this. I think they're probably closer to a buyer than seller, with the exception of guys like Bealitsa, who, to be honest, I'm not even sure what his situation is because I remember reading that he was out of the rotation for personal reasons, but it seems like he also is just getting D&P CDs, which may or may not be related. I don't know what the correlation or the relationship to that is.

And then he's also had some minor injuries. So I don't know what his availability is other than to say the kings don't appear to want to play him on most nights. And so, you know, I would think he would be very much available. Everyone else seems to be kind of a part of their plan for now, like it or not, you know, as far as a guy like Marvin Bagley, for example. example, or Harrison Barnes, who's had a really good season, and I think it would help a lot of teams. But if you're in the king's position, how could you trade a guy like Barnes who's been that important to your team? Yeah, there's always two conversations going simultaneously with the

Kings. Like, what do they need to do in order to break into the playoffs, and what do they need to do long term in order to make sense of these things? And the bigger picture conversation is probably the more interesting one, just because, like, I feel like they're just back at square one with this three-guard lineup that they've assembled, where they got. rid of Bogdan, let him walk for basically nothing. And now Tyrese Halliburton is just like on a rocket ship to the moon. And all of a sudden, I wonder next season you start off, is he going to be happy coming off the bench? And what does that mean for Buddy Healed? And probably the bigger question, why is Rishon Holmes out playing Marvin Bagley? Like, are we ready to cut bait on Bagley? I think

that's like a really interesting conversation because it's funny watching Kings games from the other team's broadcast because everyone's always like, oh man, so talented, yada, yada, yada. And then, like, he just, like, doinks it off the side

of the, like, the backboard and it's just like, God, like, it just, I don't know what his role is because it doesn't seem like this small ball five thing is really going to work for him, but that means he's a four

and then he's chasing guys around the perimeter. And I don't know, man. I really don't know what to do with this team. Well, first, let's give Rishon Holmes's due because, you know, a couple months ago, I remember on this podcast,

we were talking about, hey, man, it kind of seems like all of these teams could use Aaron Baines. You know, a tough defending center who can hit some threes. It turns out every team could use Rishon Holmes. Like, he could plug into so many different systems. He's been so good for Sacramento. You know, I don't want to write him off as just a Marvin Bagley comparison point. Like, he's been a good player in his own right.

It is interesting that we do say that center is the easiest position to fill, but it is tough to get guys like Holmes who just like do their job, do the dirty work and like go about their business. because there's this wide gap between the guys who have a ton of upside are really like high prospect, maybe you spend a high draft pick on, and then you have the bottom of the barrel guys. Like, Javelle McGee has made a career for what now, like five years, just being a minimum contract who will do all the things you want from him. And so it is a little bit more trickier than perhaps we give a credit for him.

Yeah, I would say it's, I would put it like center. There's always a lot of centers out there. but if you don't get one of them, it's really, really bad. Like this year, Minnesota is that team where when Kat went out, it was like, oh, they literally have no chance

to win these games because they're playing Ed Davis who can't play anymore, Nas Reid. It's like, yeah, this team is just going to lose every single night. And that's when you don't have

any centers of what happens. And yeah, the Bagley thing, it's always been the question about Bagley's going back to his days of Duke was like, how do you fit him onto a good team? because when you have a big man who cannot shoot and cannot protect the rim,

it's just very complicated to put them together. And I think what makes it harder with Bagley is, okay, theoretically, yes, we'll get like a stretch five, a Miles Turner to play with Bagley. But then if your best player is De Aaron Fox, you're going to play two big men who want to walk the ball up the court and play inside out with Deerrin Fox. Like the fit just never made sense. And yeah, I think, you know, I mean, looking back on it,

that it's been. talk to death, obviously, this point about the Bagley pick. So we'll just let that one go. I think Halliburton, like, you were saying, Justin, totally be happy about coming off the bench. Halliburton is so good, he shouldn't be coming off the bench. Like, he should be playing 35 minutes a night. Like, it's just, he's just that good already. I just want to say my heart is full right now. You know, shout out to big men everywhere and the passion defense we are making for them. At least, you know, replacement level big men on this podcast. Would Lori Marky didn't make more sense on this team than Marvin Bagley?

Yeah. Because he got least space to floor and you could cover from on defense. I mean, because that's the rule. It's like if you're a big man, you've either got to protect him or space the floor. If you can't do either, it's just this complicated. Are you in matchmaker mode right now? Yeah, well, I'm just thinking all out here. I mean, it probably would never happen just considering how high Bagley was drafted

and who he was drafted over. but value-wise just based on who the players are and who we think they're going to be. Also, fun fact, Bagley and Carter did not get along at Duke. So Carter was there first. Bagley comes in later, takes the spot, and then Carter was always kind of feeling like, this was supposed to be my team.

It became Bagley's team. And that's been a thing. And so he looks at interviews and talks about it all the time. One other thing I wouldn't want to burden the Kings with, Larry Marketing is going to be a free agent next off season. I personally would not want to be the person who has to figure out what Larry Marketing is worth or to

overpay to match some offer from Balloon Team X who comes out of the woodwork to try to get him. Right. You're going to make those conversions, the euros. It's the whole thing. All right. Let's end it there. We will be back next week. Same time, same place.

Maybe talking about All-Stars. I think we probably at some point have to talk about the guys who make that team. But counter-counter-programming. That's what we do here. When everyone's talking about trades, we're going to talk about All-Star.

Until then, we'll talk to you.