The Ringer NBA Show - Is the NBA No Country for Old Men? | The Answer

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Chris is joined by The Ringer’s Shea Serrano to look back at the LaMarcus Aldridge era of the Spurs in light of the recent news that Aldridge and the Spurs are looking to part ways (01:30). Later, Chris is joined by Justin Verrier to discuss the list of former All-Stars currently past their primes in the trade and buyout market who might be serviceable on contending teams (14:30). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Shea Serrano and Justin Verrier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Football season is never over. The Ringer NFL show has got all your football needs covered from free agency to the draft and so much more. Check out the Ringer NFL show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to The Answer. I'm your host Chris Ryan and this week's big question, is the NBA no country for old men? The biggest news out of the week is probably out of San Antonio where it sounds like Marcus Aldridge's days with the Spurs are numbered. Aldridge joins Blake Griffin, who moved from Detroit. to Brooklyn, and Kyle Lowry, who's seen his name in the rumor mill up in Toronto.

These guys are lions in winter, looking for somewhere to play in the postseason. It seems as if the biggest names that will move at the deadline or in the buyout market are going to be very expensive, aging stars looking to catch on for one last shot at a ring, or at least a shot at a ring. To talk about Aldridge, the Spurs, middle-aged one stars who could move at the deadline, I'm joined today by Shea Serrano and Justin Verrier. So let's get into this week's answer. Now I'm joined by the answer's San Antonio Bureau Chief, Shea Serrano.

Shea, what's up, man? What up, baby boy? Look, man, I know that this is a tough question to start off with, but I know that you recently moved to San Antonio, and I wanted to know how much of that was rooted in you wanting to be a part of the Lamarcus era, and how much do you now regret your move? It was 100% that I wanted to be by Lamarcus, and now I'm 100% regretting that. But wherever he goes, that's where I'm going to go to. You're just going to take the whole family on the Lamarcus mystery tour?

We're just going to keep on following him around. Go on. Now, for real, though, but describe to me the Lamarcus era in San Antonio. Like, what was it to you? So to me, the Lamarcus era was, I remember the day that they announced that he had signed to come to San Antonio. And this was after we had won the title in 14, and we knew Timmy was on the way out.

and we knew that we had Kauai ready to be the new guy and here comes to Marcus to step in and be like the second guy and so we were fired up like I think I tweeted a bunch about how they should just go ahead and start carving our name onto the championship trophy because nobody was going to be able to touch us so it was really really exciting and it was it was cool for a bit and then it felt like like he didn't quite do what we wanted him to do in the playoffs when we got there and it was like a It was like a situation where we weren't used to seeing that.

We weren't used to seeing it looked like the water had gotten too deep for someone because for so long we had watched Timmy and Tony and Pop and Manu together. For, you know, what was it? Timmy was there for 19 years. Tony, Tony got there in the early 2000s, 2002, somewhere around there. Well, we have been watching these guys for a while. Whatever, we were used to it. We were used to the playoffs starting.

And we were used to if we lost it was because we got beaten. by a better team. It never really felt like because our players didn't play how we expect them to. Yeah, for a couple of years there, especially in the mid-2010s. Like, I mean, it just definitely did feel like the only thing that could beat the Spurs was the Spurs getting injured, right? Like, there would be, you guys had a couple of seasons there where I think there was some injury luck, whether it was like Tone's hamstrings or quads or whatever. But then, like, Lamarcus was brought in and it was almost like, this is the first time that the Spurs are really splashed around in free agency like that.

You know, like they won the sweepstakes for him. And they got him to come, and like the Lakers almost embarrassed themselves in the Lomarcus pursuit. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the billboards and everything. And so he came to San Antonio. We were like, oh, this must mean everybody knows we're going to win the title.

Awesome, great. Then the playoffs happened. And I was like, well, maybe, I don't know what's going to happen here. And then the whole Kauai debacle happened. And this is what turned me around on LaMarcus. Because at first I was super in, and then the playoffs happened and I was like, I don't know if this is going to be my guy. But then the Kauai stuff happened and Lamarcus stood tall through all of it.

He was like, I'm going to be here every day. I'm going to be to the guy that the team needs me to be. And now he played his ass off like hardcore it felt like. And then from then forward it felt like anytime we lost it wasn't because Lamarcus was afraid anymore. It wasn't because the moment was too big. We just got beat, which is like we can live with that. It's not a problem. So when the Kauai stuff happened and Lamarcus stood up, we were all, or for me anyway, I was, all right, this is my guy.

I'm in. I'm a super Lamarcus fan. And it felt like that for a bit. And then, you know, this past season or so, especially these past couple of weeks, it felt like the Spurs are getting younger, clearly. And Lamarcus is not getting younger. So we're probably going to eventually separate. It was still surprising to see like all of the tweets pop up the other day that they had agreed to step aside. That's what I was going to ask you because it felt like this came a little bit out of nowhere.

The Spurs are currently in Seventh and the Western Conference. I think they are a relative feel-good story. They seem like they have this really nice mix of youthful energy with a couple of savvy vets with Demar and Rudy and Lamarcus. And so this was sort of, I know that he basically has been replaced in the starting lineup with Potal. But did you see this coming at all? No, I didn't see it. like you felt just because of the way that the storyline of the season or the storyline of the past few seasons had gone that eventually you know we're going to need to retool

everything we got all these young players who are getting better and better and better so here we go but no it still was a little bit of a surprise he had missed you know I think like eight or nine of the last 11 games and then the game right before that was when we played Brooklyn and I think he had two points only if I'm not mistaken but it was still surprising to see the tweets because now it's real. Now we know he's not going to be in that uniform anymore. And now we're just figuring out, all right, what happens

now? This is all new water for the Spurs, you know? Yeah, in a lot of ways, like Aldridge has been this big multi-year experiment for them. He was the free agent splash piece. He's been one of the few franchise players that they've had that they didn't develop internally.

You know, like they didn't bring him along, and draft him or maybe acquire him and nobody really saw him coming as a trade piece. They really set out their stall to go get him in free agency, and he was supposed to be the thing. They were to pair him with Kauai, and that was going to specifically

be their chess piece against the Warriors. And I'm curious whether or not you feel like that's a learning experience for the Spurs because now they seem to have this core of players that they have developed, that have come up under the pop system,

and whether or not, like, you think if they could have done it over again, they may not have gone for him. No, I think if you reset everything and you have the chance to get Lamarcus when you can get them during that stretch, you've got to do it. Because that's a piece that can win you a title.

If Kauai doesn't get hurt, if Zaza doesn't step under him, the Spurs when they were playing the Warriors in that series, when Kauai went down, we were up by like 20 points or something in Golden State. If we win game one, everything feels a little bit different, but it didn't happen that way.

Kauai got hurt. The spurs ended up losing. It just didn't work out. But I think you have to make that move. I would do it again. Lamarcus is too good to not go get him. Do you think that with this spurs season, probably a playoff team,

you know, do you feel like you would prefer for them to keep Lamarcus around because he is such like a season playoff? He's got so much a playoff experience. You keep him in. And then you kind of see if you can maybe pull off a first round upset.

You're probably going to play somebody like one of the LA teams or Utah, which would be a tough, tough, tall order, but maybe go out one more time like on your shield with Lamarcus rather than trade him away.

And, you know, his contract's about to expire. So they're really just looking to get a piece for him here. But what do you think about the idea of like, of seeing him go right on the precipice of the playoffs? I think that's fine because like you're saying, we're not going to win the title. We're not going to get close to the title.

We're going to get hopefully in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe we'll make some noise there. So if that's the case, LaMarcus has already been in the playoffs. We know what he can do or will do. Let's let the young guys do it. And let's find out which of these guys is ready. Like what we saw when the Spurs played Denver in the playoffs. And like a couple of the young guys stepped up.

I think it was Derek White had this like gigantic game in Denver. And everybody said, oh, he made the leap. He's ready for the playoffs now. awesome. Now we can count on this guy when this happened. Let's let the young guys get out there and see what they can do in the playoffs because that's really when you find out how

a player is built. So let's do that. Let's take DeMar and the young guys and just throw them out there and get in the fist fight. To me, I mean, aside from the Kauai trade was obviously unfortunate. It's not something that the Spurs really wanted to have happened in the first place. But once you did that and you traded Kauai

for DeRosen rather than like a boat load of picks if in fact that that offer was out there at all. It signaled to me that the Spurs wanted to keep competitive, to stay competitive while Popovich was still coaching the team. Like the window for some teams, it's like, okay, the Steph window. We got to make sure that the Warriors are competitive while we still have Steph. But for the Spurs, it seemed almost like they wanted to stay competitive for Pop's sake. Now it seems like he's almost a little reinvigorated by coaching the Murrays and the Walkers and everybody else. do you feel like that's a fair assessment?

Do you feel like he's been kind of given a little bit more springing his step by coaching these younger players? I would assume that's the case because he has to relearn a bunch of new skills or maybe not relearn, but he has to bring back a bunch of the, I'm coaching the young guy skills again. You can't just do the thing you do when you lean on the vet.

I imagine that that's a pretty fun thing to do, especially when you see it start to pay off. And then also, just the way that pop operates exists in the world, we know that he's going to try to set as nice a table as possible for whoever comes in behind him. And I think that's part of the reason he has been so gung-ho about pressing all of these young guys into positions to be successful because he wants perhaps when Becky steps into the role to be like, here you go, here's like a good space to start.

Here's like your starter kit team. Go do some cool stuff. And Becky Hammond's been coaching them in the summer league. so maybe she has like those deeper relationships with some of the younger kids and some of the deeper bench players. So it appears that Lamarcus will probably be traded by the deadline and if not he'll probably be bought out, I would imagine. There's already been speculation about where he might wind up.

There's some fan fiction about him going back to Portland, although I don't remember his exit from Portland being very amicable. It was not great. Yeah, so it's strange, it's interesting. I think he would probably fit relatively well in Portland and there would definitely be like this emotional boost from having him back. But I remember the Aldridge, the Lillard

stuff at the end of that, if I remember correctly, about who gets to be on billboards and who's the face of the franchise. That might have gotten smoothed over since then, but I don't know if they want to revisit that necessarily. And then there's been some talk about Miami being a possible destination for him, which would be, you know,

I'm sure Lamarcus goes there and gets into the best shape of his life, like automatically or whatever. Is there any place you don't want him to go? Is there a place that don't want him to go? Yeah, is there a place you just like, I cannot watch this dude play for this team. Oh, no. No, you know what?

I want him to go somewhere and I want him to be successful. I think to me, Miami would be the best one for both sides. You probably get back somebody like Olinic and his contract's about to be up. And he's playing great. And like good enough. Like let's get, let's throw him over here for a little bit and see what happens. But I don't think there's any team I don't want him to go to. I mean, you know, fuck it.

Go to the Lakers or the Nets. Like, let's do it. Let's just go over it and see what happens. I wonder whether or not, because this was another team that was in the market for him when he was a free agent a few years ago was Phoenix. Yeah, I don't know if he fits there

with what Phoenix is doing at this particular moment. The thing that you mentioned about Portland that I think is really interesting is it was bad when he left. I imagine it would be kind of cool to have him come back. You know what I'm saying? Oh, sure, yeah. Because if he comes back, that means Damien Lillard was in a room

and he was like, all right, bring him back. in which case, that's fucking cool. Like, that would be, like, a neat thing to watch. But, yeah, I don't know, man. I mean, you know, let him go where he wants. He's earned it. Has this season been, like, because this is obviously the Spurs have been more competitive

than they have been maybe in the last couple of seasons since Kauai left this year. But like we said, we probably have very limited aspirations. Their ambitions are probably pretty modest this season. But has it been, like, kind of almost freeing to just sort of watch the Spurs on a night-to-night basis without worrying too much about whether or not they're going to win the championship,

but also worrying about whether or not they're going to bottom out? That is exactly the right thing. Like that's what I've, that's the conversation I've had a number of times. It feels so much different watching this Spurs team when the goal isn't to win a championship, which is just super heavy all of the time on your shoulders. The goal now is to just like, let's just get in the playoffs and see what happened.

It feels really, really cool to like have that and be a part of that. And it also, right at this exact moment, it feels cool for it to look like, this is the first time in like two or three years when you look out on the horizon. And it looks like things are going in the right direction. It was murky before. But right now, today, the group that we have were like, oh, shit, we're doing a thing. Like, I kind of, I'm trying to like talk myself into it. Oh, I kind of remember when the Spurs started getting good again 20 years ago. Are we about to go on another extended?

Like, it feels like that. and there's really, really a fun thing to be a part of, to turn on Kins 5 in San Antonio and listen to Sean Elliott, talk up again. It's just, it's great. It's great. It feels like you're back home. Yes, that's exactly what it feels like.

Shea, thanks so much for calling it, man. I'll let you go. And yeah, we'll see where Lamarcus winds up. Let's go, baby. All right, and now I'm joined by the answer is aging gracefully bureau chief. Justin Verrier, Justin, what's up? Dip it into the buyout market for your guest now. That's what I'm trying to do is I'm just searching.

for value, you know what I mean? And you have a lot of it. I just want to help the team win, you know? I'm in that title, uh, cruising mode of my career. So we just talked to Shea a little bit about Lamarcus Aldridge and his emotional attachment or lack thereof to him in this sort of late period of Popovich. But there's a lot of pretty significant names being kicked around right now. If you find guys in their early 30s to be significant, which I think is sort of what I wanted to talk to you about today is the idea that maybe the NBA is like no country for old men, you know, and especially no country for old big men. What do you make of the names they're being offered around right now on the sort of these last week before the trade deadline or last two weeks

before the trade deadline and then the buyout market? So the prominent ones are who? It's Lamarcus. It's Blake Griffin. It's Andre Drummond. Kyle Lowry. Yeah. Well, Lowry, I would assume would be able to be traded. But let's just assume those first three. What are they all having common. They're expensive. There's big guys. Yeah, exactly. Big guys who just like are past their primer,

at the very least, their production and what skills that they still have left at this point in their careers, just don't match their contract value. And so there are really two things at play there. You have one, you have a bunch of guys who maybe the game passed them by a little bit. And maybe that's the case of Drummond. Not so much Lamarcus and Blake, Lamarcus has actually kind of becomes something of a pseudo modern big man these days. But like, Andre in particular, just like isn't playing the type of

style of big men that like most of these teams need. And the other part of it is there's just like the contracts. The contracts are too big and they don't match that value. And so there's just like huge dissonance going on, which I think is creating this weird market where those are, you know, former all-stars, not like Marquis-Morris on the biot market. Yeah, it's kind of weird though, because when we talk about, when Blake was just in the Pistons and you would discuss him, you'd just basically be like,

his legs look shot, he hasn't dunked in a while. I'm sure he's still got useful minutes in him, but you can't really rely on him. And then as soon as he gets bought out, it's just like, 2013 Blake is on the market. I mean, not really,

but like I do think that there was like a feeding frenzy of interest around where he would wind up and it very quickly became Brooklyn. And with Drummond, I kind of, I don't know necessarily that we're going to see the same thing if he gets bought out. And he's got a pretty healthy deal.

But like if they come to some sort of agreement, then there's already been talk about him going to the Lakers, which I kind of get and kind of don't get. I feel like the Lakers could probably use a little bit more shooting than they need another backup big. And you could probably get Javille back in there for a few minutes if you needed him. But what do you think of the way that the buyout market, especially,

but also this sort of mid-season trade deadline, changes our concept of what these guys, what their value is on the open market. Yeah, it's such a weird market right now just because everybody is still going for it, right? Like the magic could probably convince themselves even after losing half of their team and just, you know, like probably watching their G-League team right now be just as good as they are on the court. They could convince themselves they can get back in the mix because the standings are so congested and it takes so little in order to make the play in tournament right now, right?

Yeah, you win five of seven. You're like all of a sudden you've got a first round home game. totally totally and i mean i do wonder and i'm curious what you think about this is like part of this might just be an extension of like player empowerment because as you're seeing with lamarcus and before that was blake and drummond you're seeing these teams sit them before they even get to the point of trading them they signal that they want to trade them then it seems like the agents get involved or whatever it is and they just shut them down this is like i've never seen it play out like this before where there is almost like this grace period where if you're not going to have a long term,

you're not going to be on the team for a while. Like, you just don't play at all because the agents don't want you to get hurt because you ruin your value. And the team, I guess, just wants to be nice to the agents. It's very weird situation. I think there's also probably some team interest in you not getting hurt. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's definitely, like, with this

Drummond situation, that was, like, Cleveland started off the season. And like, I haven't been paying super close attention to them on the night-to-night basis, but I do know that they are the bogey team for the Sixers. And Drummond seemed to be a part of that. Now, when Jared Allen trade happened,

it was obviously they were going to start putting their, like, big men minutes on him. But I was kind of like a little bit surprised to see them just put drumming in cotton balls and also not have anything. They didn't have like a trade that was imminent. What you're saying, though, is interesting about the player empowerment error. I do feel like it's a little bit more like baseball right now,

where, you know, no matter what a team does in the preseason and the offseason during the free agency and putting together their rosters before the season starts, there are lots of off-ramps now. And like, that's the way it is in baseball where it's like we've just decided that we're sellers. We're going to get rid of as much money on our books. And I bet especially in the NBA this year, this as a factor. Because I think that might, I don't know if that plays a lot into what's happening with somebody like Lowry, but Tampa, I mean, let's say Tampa, Toronto, who are playing in Tampa can't have had a good financial season for themselves. You know,

I think that there's just about, it's about creating like optionality for your books and optionality for the players. But when you add in the idea of a veteran being like, look, I have one you're left on my deal or like, this isn't working out. You guys want to go young. Why not get rid of me? And then you add in the idea that, you know, a player could be two years or three years into a five-year deal and just be like, you know what, this isn't working. You should trade me. I'm kind of, it kind of does feel like we're living in a constant perpetual state of free agency. Yeah, one of it is a trickle-down effect to where players who were once stars but aren't anymore, but still see themselves in a certain light. They still want some of the niceties that perhaps like LeBron or whoever is getting in this player empowerment sort of thing.

It's funny you mentioned baseball though. Like if this was the NFL, these guys would have been cut like so long ago. And I think that's part of what's happening here. It does feel like this season more than any before. Like the whole three-point shooting revolution has been going on for a while now. but it seems like this season is where the bottom really fell out, where the chasm really happened between like the guys who play a modern style and those who don't. Kevin Arnavitz had a piece on ESPN about this.

It's basically how even like guys like Daryl Morey who pretty much like popularized this style of play where it's just all layups and threes. Like it's getting to the point where there's nothing but that. And if you do not fit in those tidy boxes, you just, it's going to be tough to play you. And for guys like Blake and Andre, they represent that middle ground, right? they were still good players, even though that their games didn't translate perfectly to the modern era. They're kind of caught in between. And the sad part about it with Blake is that he just had too many injuries. And eventually it's just like, no matter how many threes he shoots nowadays, he's just not going to be the same player.

Yeah, because if you take away his explosiveness and the potential for that, he can be as like craft as he wants from the elbow. It's just really difficult to like to kind of mirror that same sort of on court attention that, that he had when he was at his peak. I do wonder whether or not also there's a little bit of, because if you read some of the accounts of teams that have had pretty flawed seasons, whether it's like the Hawks or Pistons, I do wonder whether the preseason is for the owners

and the midseason is for the GMs. Like the owners in the preseason are like, nope, bring in Rondo and Gallo, we're going to the playoffs. And then at the midseason, the GM's like, look, man, we got to fire this coach. And we might want to get rid of it. some of these veterans so that we can like keep the young kids happy and get and just keep the wheels greased with some of these agents. And I think that the same thing is sort of happening in

Detroit where they had this weird, we're going to sign 18 power forwards. But really we're having a youth movement, but we still have Blake Griffin and Derek Rose on this team. And it's just a lot of competing influences. And then I think that the tanking won out to the point where there's now Jeremy Grant trade chatter. Yeah, I'm waiting for Jeremy Grant to ask out of Detroit. Like I want him to self-manufacture him becoming a max star, and then in the same season, just ask out, just so we could have the full experience almost like in microcosm. That feels like an NFT. I don't know what NFTs are, but whatever Jeremy Gratz doing this year for his own stock, I think it kind of has something to do with that. Can we talk a little bit about

Lowry? Sure. So this seems to be the last bastion of like sentimentality in NBA teams is the way guys like Lowry might sometimes get treated, where it's like, not only, now we should say up top there's been reporting coming out of Toronto today I believe SportsNet had it that there's not going to be a trade. Now the language of that information suggests that maybe they just don't like

the deals that they've been offered so far for Lowry and I guess you could you could buy Kyle Lowry out like maybe but like I it is interesting to me that Toronto's been like we want to make sure that Kyle Lowry lands somewhere where he wants to be

and it's a very specific kind of trademark at them because you're really only talking about the same six to eight teams in the market for 10 to 12 guys. Lowry is an interesting case because he kind of checks every box, right? They could just keep Kyle Lowry and still be pretty decent. The rappers have had a pretty exciting second half to the first half of the season where they basically rebounded from that ugly star and it looks like they're kind of, yeah, they're like the Raptors of old at this point. If they want to keep going forward with that, I don't think they're going to win the east, especially when the Sixers and the Nets

just look like World Beaters at this point. But like they could just move along and just like keep him. The problem is like, what do you want to do long term? And Lowry is, as you know, just like is going to be a free agent this off season. And so he's in this really weird middle ground

where I think he's a serviceable player. Like he's not even serviceable. I think he's really good. And I do wonder if like... Let me be clear. I would bite your hand off to have Kyle Lowry on the Sixers. Oh yeah. On the Sixers, he'd be incredible.

Like I almost wonder if there's going to be a bidding war that sparks up, if only because he's the only guy that makes sense that's like of high caliber that makes sense to trade. Like if Bradley Beale isn't on the market, I wonder if like the Nuggets, for instance, or one of these teams that need like a next piece to take the jump would like die to have Kyle Lowry and all of a sudden we're getting into like a mini arms race or something. But it's really interesting. He kind of checks all these different things because I think you're right.

I think if the Raptors are going to trade him, they probably want to trade him to a team that is going to be competitive and he can kind of like go off into the sunset because he means so much that franchise. So I don't really know where he fits here. Yeah. And so much of it, whereas the Lamarcus Aldridge thing kind of came out of nowhere for me, like where it was just like pop showed up at like a pregame availability or and was just like by the way, we're getting trade Lamarcus. The Lowry stuff has been pretty transparent. It's been pretty open. Lowry himself has commented pretty extensively about it, about like he wants to retire as a raptor, whatever happens happens. But clearly like everything is kind of being put on the table in that case.

Then there's a couple of people where I'm just like, you know, I'm not really sure where this is going. So Drummond is one. I'm not really sure where Drummond winds up. I'm not really sure if anybody would bother to offer Cleveland anything for Drummond or if that's just a straight buyout case. And then there is some sort of like a level down from those guys. I think a couple of dudes who could be available either through trade or buyout, you know,

in the next couple of weeks that some, I think, are negligible. You know, some have that kind of Ilyosov, Beli, Bella, Nellie. vibe of like could be could make a couple of shots in a in a postseason series but probably won't swing a postseason series sure what are some of the names you see out there that we haven't talked about yet that you think could be interesting guys to watch out for i mean the thunder are always going to be interesting players in this regard it seems like they spend their entire offseason positioning themselves in order to get guys in order to trade them at the deadline hoping that there would be thirsty contenders Tampa bay raise oakland is shit right here right like i wonder what

Al Horford is going to do. He has too many years on his contract to get straight bought up. But like, he's an interesting trade idea for certain teams, you know, like if the Celtics get super desperate, he's the type of guy they use that trade exception on. They have George Hill. Trevor Ries is just somewhere out on the prairie, just like probably fishing at Paul George's old spot, you know, like, so I do wonder what happens with those guys if they'll end up getting traded or they'll trickle down to the buyout market. I don't know. Autop Porter Jr. is another guy. to keep an eye on just because he just seems to be Starcross since like signing that contract with the Wizards and now he seems to be in and out of favor in Chicago. He's another guy that might

get traded for but probably won't. And so I wonder if someone scratches around there. But I mean, the guys you talked about at the top of the show are the more interesting as one to me because like it's funny because for a while the buyout market was kind of a fallacy. Like everyone was chasing after this idea of PJ Brown and like it just never matriculated. Like I was looking at our post who wrote about like buyout guys last year after the trade deadline. And it was like no, none of them actually made it to the market. And if they did, it was Isaiah Thomas and they were just like so bad that they didn't matter. We should make it clear. We, we as like basketball media, people have complete brainworms where we stay awake for like days on end trying to imagine fake trades.

And like, you know, there's been like three consequential midseason trades in like 20 years. It's like Powell, Rashid, DeKembe. Like there's a couple of like more often than not, like the NBA title is not getting swung in February or March or whatever. I mean, the Rashid thing is actually an interesting point, just because, like, Victor Oladipo, I'm starting to get, like, flashbacks to that where he went to Houston for just, like, a little bit of a siesta. And then all of a sudden, like, I don't think he's going to be there long term. The Rockets, God, I don't remember the last time they won a game.

It would make sense for them to bottom out and hope they get to keep their, what is it, top four protected pick swap with seven different teams. Like, it would make sense for him either to go somewhere via trade or, like, I don't know. Like, do you buy that guy out at the very east? Just so he could finally go to Miami? Yeah, right. He's going to go there anyway.

He spends his summer there with D. Wade just like pumping iron. So I wouldn't doubt it. Is there anybody else like the Rockets that you think are a bad week away from becoming sellers? It seems like every freaking team. Well, I was the big one is the Pelicans. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Like for like most of January, we were talking about them as being like the major players on the trade market, just because they had JJ. Lonzo wasn't hitting anything. You had all these guys who weren't necessarily working. And then all of a sudden, you install Zion Williamson as like this bowling ball point guard at the top of the key. And like things look a little bit different there. And Lonzo all of a sudden is like,

actually the guy every team needs. He is the off guard who will shoot 40% from the floor and just like not get in the way of your two superstars. And so it's like, I don't know. Things are just like crazy this season when like I imagine part of it's like the COVID and the condensed schedule where like things flip flop really quickly. to the point where right before we came on this podcast,

JJ Redick just got announced he's out for like, what, a week with an injury? Yeah, but he's going to be staying away from the team, which, like, I'm not reading anything into that, but like, I think as soon as you start seeing stays away from the team in a non-COVID way, like, you have to start thinking, like, is this the first step in getting this guy, like,

to a contender? Does JJ go back to Brooklyn? Does he go back to Philly? Does he go back to the clippers? Does he go back to some team where they might, you know, they might be able to use him? It's funny, though, it's like, I can imagine people,

calling Griffin for Lonzo and he's like, can I interest you in Eric Bledso though? All of the same qualities just 10 years older or whatever. Sure, yeah. Man, that backcourt is brutal at times watching them trying to space for Zion. Do you think that there's anything to be done? I think you've done a lot more, I mean, you're much better about cap stuff than I am and sort of the economics of the way the league works in that sense. Or at least you've spoken with Larry Coon before.

So I mean, definitely had got more experience than I do. Do you think that there's, we should start to get a little bit more creative in the league with being able to flex out a guy's contract or something like that so that when somebody basically arrives at the highest earning point of their career, they are not then automatically an albatross on their team's books? I think it's a fascinating question. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately because on the one hand, you would have, if you did that, if you were able to wipe away some of that, it would probably make

things a little easier on teams to maneuver. Like we were saying, it would be closer to football where you would just wipe it away. But then, like, I don't know, maybe you lose some of the nuance and some of the, like, the cap geekery you're talking about. And some of, like, the fun that maybe it's just me and, like, 10 other people, fine, but, like, having to be able to use these contracts to move them to other teams and, like, you have to match salaries to a certain point. It adds a little bit to the game that's different that I appreciate. And it also makes guys a little less disposable. So I think we would lose something if we just full-on. adopted the NFL style of it.

Yeah, where you could just eat dead money all the time and just be like, yeah, we'll worry about it later or like, we'll just save money with like bad receivers this year. It's funny. It's like, yeah, I thought it was, it's definitely better than it was in like the 90s and especially in the early 2000s where you just had guys on like seven year deals. And you're like, well, Al Harrington's just on our team for a decade. And that's just going to have to be like what we're going to do with this. No, I was going to say like the flip side of that is like the Blake Griffin situation.

maybe we're already getting to that point where they bought them out of a two-year deal. And they only got back, like, what was it, like, $17, $18 million. And they're going to have a bunch of dead money on their books. And so, like, it's kind of a similar situation. I wonder if, like, Russell Westbrook down the line is going to be in a certain situation, a similar situation just like that. Andre Drummond only has one year on his deal left. But if he doesn't get traded, like, you'd imagine the calves are going to eat a lot of money.

And so I think what's going to end up happening here is we're kind of laying the groundwork for what's going to happen in the next big CBA negotiations. I think one of the, the, I guess, upside for us is, like, just the public is, like, we've been spared from, like, CBA catfighting in the background because they're just trying to get the revenue in order to pay for everything that they're doing. But, like, we're probably coming up on some, like, the next big clash when it happens, like, when it stabilizes and they can get back into a room and figure this out.

And the last time this happened, we got the Supermax. And the Supermax has not worked whatsoever. So I imagine they're going to want to get rid of that. but then players still want long-term money. And so there's going to be something that happens as a result of this. I don't know what it is, but I imagine we're in for some creative execution and the ripple effects that will probably be talking about five years after that. Yeah, I really don't know what the solution is because it's like, you know, I think that

there probably will be, even if it's an overreaction, I think that there will be something on the side of the owners where they're like, we need to guard against guys starting to ask out of deals with two, three years left on them, you know, and basically demand being true. We need to guard against the trade demand. But that actually isn't a, that's not like a big enough threat to most teams that I feel like you need to legislate it. You know what I mean? Like it's also a situation where when you look at somebody like CP3, who I would have three years ago put into that group with Westbrook and Blake with he's going to be making 40 plus million dollars soon and you're just going to have to live with it. Now CP3 is like Winston

Wolf of the NBA. Like I still advocate. for this guy should like spend the last five years of his career, like going to a different team every year and completely like weaponizing them for the postseason. And he's got, he did it in Oklahoma even. He got Houston into the Western Conference Finals, goes to Oklahoma, saves them from what was supposed to be a bad season. And now is in Phoenix and has them in title talk. I guess it's really up to the guys who are making that kind of money to still be relevant basketball players. Yeah, it's such a weird thing because the biggest value in the NBA still to this day is a max player who's also like a top 10 player.

Like LeBron's max contract is actually the biggest value in the NBA because if you gave him a baseball style market, he would make 10 times that every season. And so like it's weird because teams are going to still going to go after that. Like I think Chris Paul like at one point he was looking like a complete obitraz of a contract. Yeah, good luck with him and his knees for the rest of his career. And now it's just like, dude, I would, I bet a bunch of teams are like, I wish we had gotten Chris Paul. Sure.

I would have loved to see him on the bucks still to this day. So I don't know how you kind of bet against that. Like I always go back to the Steppian rule, which like everyone knows about, but we forget is like the Steppen rule was put in place because they had to stop a dumb owner from just completely mortgaging his team. Like they had to stop owners from themselves. And they're still going to be that. There's still going to be this human error that results from whatever they come up with.

So I don't know, like outside of just being able to hit an eject button on a contract when it goes bad, like that's really what you, like, that's all you can get. But like, that completely defies the idea of long-term contracts and what a player would want in the situation, which is like long-term money. Like, Blake's actually the prime example of the flip side of this.

Like, he signed a long-term deal specifically to, like, bet against, like, if he gets hurt again, like, I would have all that's extra money, right? Like, so there are these two competing things that don't really align, and I don't know how you really align them. I think he also was just counting on comedy, becoming a huge thing in Michigan. And it just, that scene never really,

took off. Sure. Justin, thanks so much for joining me, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks to Shea and Justin. Make sure you are subscribed and following the Ringer NBA show on

Mondays. We've got real ones. On Tuesdays, there's group chat. Every other Wednesday, we got Ringer MBA University. And, of course, the answer on Fridays. You should also be subscribing and following the mismatch, as well as Bill Simmons and Ryan Rissola, who have all of your NBA needs covered.

Stay tuned. We got way more coming for you next week.