The Ringer NBA Show - Klay and Donovan Explode! Plus, Buyers and Sellers Heading Into the NBA Trade Deadline | The Answer

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Seerat and Kyle celebrate the first pod of the New Year by discussing Klay Thompson's 54-point barrage against the Hawks and Donovan Mitchell's jaw-dropping 71-point performance in the Cavs win over the Bulls on Monday night. After the break they examine some of the NBA teams looking to either improve or possibly start a brand-new process before the upcoming trade deadline—notably, the Raptors, Bulls, and Mavs (25:39). They end the pod by talking about the state of the Cleveland Cavaliers and what moves they can make to improve on their newfound success (48:51). Hosts: J. Kyle Mann and Seerat Sohi Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Production Supervision: Benjamin Cruz and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mac Jones is ripped. Matt Patricia's calling plays. The Celtics are title favorites. And The Ringer has a new Boston show. I'm Brian Barrett, host of Off the Pike, the show covering all things Boston sports. I'll have shows multiple times a week covering your favorite teams and with your favorite ringer and local guests. Plus, maybe Bill will stop by to rant about the socks. Follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett now on Spotify.

Folks basketball is so, so, so, so, so very good in the year of 2023. It continues to be true, the year of our Lord. Ano Domini, however you pronounce that, I don't know. This is the answer. My name is Jake Kallman. I'm joined every week by the brilliant poet laureate of Edmonton. Sirot Sohi, aka NAV. Don't call her nav.

I'm just needling her when I say that. Siritt, how are you doing in this brand new year? Do you feel recharged, refreshed, you know? Are you just striding, exploding into this new year confidently? I'm ready for a fresh start this year. I'm doing the resolution thing for the first time in a war. while. I used to kind of not really believe in those things, but hey, just moving to a new apartment. So it seems like a good time to maybe, maybe have some new habits, you know, all that stuff.

But we'll see, we'll see how long it lasts, you know, is if maybe this is going to be like a January thing or maybe we'll make some long-term changes. Is this a resolution you want to keep to yourself? Or is it like, is it something that you are willing to, like, inspire people to, you know, join you in your journey? What's the situation? Yeah. You know, I know people are always always looking at me for inspiration. So I try to dole it out. You know, I'm generally a pretty private person. But in this case, you know, just for the people,

some really unique stuff trying to wake up a little earlier. I know no one, like that, that's pretty new. No one's really ever thought about that one before, especially at the start of a new year, going to the gym a little bit more, trying to be more consistent as a human being. But really, you know, I'm turning 29 in a month. It's going to be my last year in my 20s.

And there's just some areas where I still feel a little immature. Sure. And maybe that, you know, maybe 30s and new 40 and that stuff just lasts forever. But there's, I'd like to tighten the screws in some areas, you know, live a less chaotic life. I don't see why you don't just lean into it. I don't know. I think, I think if you're on the other side of it and you're beholden, like I'm, you know, happily beholden, you know, wife, son. I like my life. But, you know, when you're, when you're kind of doing your own thing and you, you don't really have to be beholden anybody. I don't see. I guess, but getting up is good. getting up and making the best of your time. You know, we're writers. I don't know, but I don't know.

Different people work well. I was going to ask you, something came across my purview today that annoyed me. I was trying to work at a coffee shop nearby where I dropped my son off for school. Dude on a headset talking loudly on a call, I think those people should be thrown in jail. That's one thing that I just wanted to say. I wanted to complain about that up on the top of our show. Like, you know, we understand that you know some cryptos. Do terminology, buddy.

Are you a work in public person just before we move on to the content here? I'm curious about that. Yeah, I love one of coffee shops and working. That is annoying, and I feel like it's something that's become increasingly common since a lot of people transition to work from home in a more permanent way. So you'll go somewhere else to work, and then people will start taking meetings at the coffee shop, and that can be fine as long as you're not too too loud about it. But if you're just going to be screaming, the one thing that's really funny about L.A.

is that like, especially in my apartment complex, I just moved to a new place and it's like, you know, the sound carries a lot. And people will just be screaming. And I'll never know why it is. But in my last place, there was a guy who's clearly like, you know, some sort of executive who just reams out every single person who makes any single mistake at all,

which I found to actually be quite common. So this dude just screaming in his apartment. And now, like, he obviously doesn't have any peace, but, like, now none of us can either because he thinks that something that's going on in his life is far more important than it actually is. Yeah. And that's something I've noticed here. It happens quite a bit. You should slide a note under an anonymous note under his door and be like, hey, man, like, you need to find some peace. You're not motivating your team.

You know, maybe the Nick Nurse approach of humiliating people isn't working, you know, which is relevant a little bit to what we're talking. about. There was some big, you know, talking about New Year. I think that the NBA, we had an awesome performance, a single game, individual performance from Luca to end the year with his, with his massive 60-something point game for the MAZ against the Knicks that we talked about, the Bill and I talked about on the BSB. But there were a couple really big performances last night in the NBA that I thought were noteworthy. The first one is Clay Thompson, the Mellow King erupted for 52 on the Hawks last night in an overtime win for the Warriors. That was the season high for him in three-point attempts. He went 10 for 21. Only took two

free throws in that game. I was looking back on like the Gamefinder on Stadhead. Only five players in history have scored over 50 points on two or fewer free throws. And they're all jump shooters. Clay did it again in 2018 with the Bulls. Steph did it in 2016 against the Magic had a huge game. Jamal Murray in 2021 and Dana Barros way back in 1995. So all shooters. Did you get a chance to watch the Mellow King do his thing last night and go off against the Hawks? Dan Arrows is a deep cut.

Yeah, it was, I have to say, Kyle, I was watching it after the facts. And I was really shocked by the ease of some of these shots, especially as he got on more and more of a heater. Like, Clay was just sort of walking into these. Even at the start of the game, it was a little bit like, hey guys. I don't know this, this is Clay Thompson. Like, if you're going to switch on the screen, you might want to get up there. And that was everyone on the Hawks, by the way, from like, Anyaka O'Kong, who, you know, you would expect to do a little bit better to Tray Young, to even, you know,

even Murray, even Deonté Murray was just not doing a great job on him, which is really, really weird because he was brought in for defense and he's an excellent defender. And he's kind of the type of guy that you'd assume would be lab designed to make sure that There's a hand up very, you know, just very close to Clay Thompson's face. But there was just not a lot of resistance from the Hawks. And while it was an incredible Clay performance and I'm happy that he's, you know, getting, getting closer to the guy that he used to be, it's always lovely to see Clay play, play well. It was almost more of an indictment of the Hawks defense than anything else.

Yeah, I think the points you made about their defensive just sort of the cohesion and like the, you know, Defending as a team requires a lot of, like, duty to your teammates, a lot of extra little effort to, like, because there's overlap between jobs. No man is an island unless you're guarding literally on an island in an ISO situation. And last night, you know, well, we know. Clay is a guy that comes off of screens and that calls for a lot of communication. It calls for a lot of coordination between, like, how are we defending this? You get up and get over the screen. I'm going to meet him at the level. We know that Clay is a rhythm shooter. a rhythm score. And it was amazing. And you're right, like one by one. It was like you just go down the line. Like DeAndre Hunter wasn't getting close enough, wasn't doing his work early. Deonté, you know, Deonté Murray, he and Trey had horrible communication and offball screens.

It came from a variety of areas. We saw like off ball cuts. We saw pin downs. We saw like flex screens where he'd pop to the ball and shoot. I know we're going to talk more about Atlanta in the future. But, you know, granted, the war. Warriors did give up a lot of points, too. The game went to overtime, but it was just kind of amazing.

I don't know. It seems like Atlanta's kind of ripe for a change coming up. The body language is just not good. Yeah, the vibes are really off. And it's really weird because this is probably the best collection of defenders that you could put around for a young. And it just hasn't really seemed to make much of a difference. It's just kind of strange. Like, they started off the season.

Their defense was actually better than their offense. their offense hadn't quite figured it out yet. It was a lot of my turn, your turn with Deonté Murray and Tray Young. And now the defense has also fallen off a cliff again. And it feels like this has been the story with the Hawksville last pretty much since they went to the playoffs and made that great run. They just can't string together a collective effort on defense for 48 minutes. And they're just super inconsistent. And they don't, you know, to your point, they just don't seem to want to play for each other.

this team has just had really questionable chemistry for a really long time and now you know there was the whole thing between Nate McMillan and Trey young and that shoot around whether he was going to play or not and there's always been noise around Trey young just you know how his teammates feel about him whether they like playing with him or not and just the play style in general like the level at which he dominates the ball and you know it doesn't yeah it just doesn't really allow room for other people to breathe it seems like it's catching up to them it seems like regardless of the pieces that you put around him, there has to be a shift in either his mentality or maybe just a shift in general. I don't know if that means a move right away.

Like obviously, John Collins has been on the trade block for pretty much as long as he has been in a hawks uniform. Or maybe it's a coaching change. There was a report in the athletic that Nate McMillan actually is almost considered designing. And so far, you know, his relationship with Andre Field seems like it's positive. But at the same time, like if you look at the Hawks, I don't know that you can see that, you can watch them and think there's anything genuinely positive going on there. Yeah. Talking about like the chemistry thing, when you watch a team like that doesn't communicate

well, I was joking with KOC the other day that like, I've kind of developed an eye for teams that don't get along. But one of the, because I always played on teams that were bad. You know, energy attracts energy, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just saying that like they, that's definitely where it comes from. It's like you, you do that little work because you believe that at the end of the of the day that like everyone else is doing it for you also there's like there's sort of um there's

there's an economy of accountability i think among your teammates and it's like but you feel like you owe it to them because you know that like the process is going to produce a product at the end and you just don't get that vibe from them and you know boggdonovitch has been rough this year defensively i mean clay took him to the room a couple times in rough fashion uh or it just he made it look easy uh and Clay's not exactly a bully around the rim. And the other thing with Trey, too, like offensively, if you watch him move, one of the things that he does that really drives me nuts

is like when he is not a part of a play on the weak side, his idea of spacing the floor is he'll, or like creating off ball kind of tension is he'll just kind of like drift into like the 30 foot range. Have you ever seen him do this? And it's like you're kind of helping. If you've watched the Hawks, you've seen him do this. Yeah, it's like you're kind of helping,

but you're really not. Like if you would just move and it's, I don't know, I just feel like we're just wringing our hands. And then you watch guys go elsewhere and thrive playing in different, you know, different settings like Herder. It's just, it's sort of a confounding thing to watch. You also kind of have the thing where it makes you wonder what's the end point for this experiment. And I know we'll probably talk more about this in future episodes. But at what point do they kind of zoom out and go like, hey, man, this whole era was very promising. You know, they blitzed a poorly, you know, a team that had a huge weakness in the Knicks back, you know, in 2020 with Julius Randall.

And then they, they also, you know, they surprised the Sixers in that same playoffs with their kind of wobbly. The Sixers are always kind of wobbly that team and they exploited them. It just makes you wonder if that's going to be looked back on as sort of like an aberration and an overall experiment that didn't really work, you know? Yeah, I think a big part of that run was just the ridiculous shot today. were making, the comebacks that they had. I think it almost taught them wrong lessons. And I think if you look at their system, like, Herder is a great

example of this, right? Like, Herder is now a system that really prizes movement in passing amongst, you know, pretty much every player on that team, and he's really thriving. And I think that it's really suited for role players to play well in, whereas the Atlanta system is really superstar-oriented.

And there's ways that you can get around that, but I think that I always tend to favor a more role player oriented system that also, you know, plays to the strengths of the superstars because the superstars are going to figure it out. Yeah. They're going to find a way to make it happen for themselves no matter what, right? But the way the Hawks play, it's like,

Trey and Murray play such a pick and roll heavy game that it puts everyone else in that same position to when I don't necessarily know that that's like the best use of a DeAndre Hunter type of player, you know? Like maybe some diversification, the offense could go on. long way for them, just getting a little bit more stuff going towards the paint that it doesn't necessarily have to be just a lob thrown towards John Collins and stuff too. Like that's another player whose offensive game is really stagnated in this new system who's sacrificing probably more than ever.

And to what end, right? Like if the wins aren't going to rack up, then the guys aren't going to keep doing it. Like that's kind of the bottom line here. Like maybe there's a version of this team where if they have a couple more wins, then they buy in a little bit more and they play a little harder on defense. they're a little harder and they're a little bit more okay with the shots that Trey is taking, but it's just not the case right now. So you got to look at it and say, okay, what exactly is broken and how do you fix it?

Yeah, yeah. I think you summed it up earlier that just the vibes. Vives matter. I know that that's sort of an unquantifiable thing at some point, but the vibes are just kind of not good. Oh, yeah, I texted you did before this? And I was like, I was like, hey, yeah, they just don't have any heart. And you're like, well, did you see that on cleaning the glass? Well, they just, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it performs.

and just kind of be that selfless sort of like duty to your teammates and things like that. That's where those things start to kind of eke out and, you know, the resolve of the team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Speaking in good vibes, I mean, the vibes in Cleveland are much better. And last night, Donovan Mitchell had a historically and historically, I always grammatically make that mistake, but they had an incredible game. Last night, he scored 71 points. Only got three points in the first quarter.

I thought that was pretty fascinating. he scored 71. Yeah, last night he went, but he went 20 for 25 from the line, basically went off. Did you notice anything? What did you love about that Donovan Mitchell performance last night? I'd say probably just a variation in the ways that he got buckets. It was a really fun performance,

and it's been a really fun year for Mitchell. He has really just, like, he's kind of mastered all of the different parts of his game that he's been trying to diversify for the last few. years, pretty much since he's been in the league, he's been a guy that you'd look at and say he has a potential to be an elite three-level score, but the process of getting there is a lot more difficult than it looks. And I just, I think he's really, the thing that I love about this Mitchell year and Mitchell in general is just how much his career exemplifies winding

road of development. It's like, it's just not linear. And I think that he's a great example of that if you look at his percentages from pretty much everywhere on the floor this year, they've, they've increased Now, some of that is probably, he's probably on a bit of a heater for the three point line, right? But he's shooting a career high, 69% from the rim. And his first four years in the league, that number, like, it started at 61, and it actually went up and down for a while. And a lot of his numbers have done that, you know, his made range accuracy, his field goal percentage just generally.

He's taken a lot of efficiency dips in his career. And I think that it's lent itself to a lot of moments of either fans of other teams, bowling and just saying he's like a, you know, like a discount, I don't know, Jordan Clarkson or something like that to just questions about what his overall ceiling was. But the reality is, like, when you're trying to build a lot of difficult skills into your game, it just takes a long time for it's all come together. And this is a season where it's all come together for him and all of the pain of like the misstep back threes and like the off foot floaters and all that stuff is actually, it's finally coming to fruition. And I just, I love to.

Donovan Mitchell. I've written a bunch of stories about him and like throughout his career, like from his rookie. He got to Utah and they were like, okay, this guy is way better than we thought he was. We can give him a lot more to chew on. Then they gave him a lot to chew on. Like the first two months of his career, they gave him like a finishing package that had 11 different moves on it, which is not typically something that you do with with rookies, but he was just able to take in all that information. And, you know, he kind of did that with every facet of his game. And now it's just, it's really, really paying off. And yeah, it's just awesome to see. Yeah, I enjoyed how, you know, in our outline, you know, you were talking about his

development and the long and winding road and how it can be, you know, nonlinear at times. And you posted this article in here. And I was like, oh, that looks cool. Let me click on this article. Let me see. Yeah, it's an article you wrote. I love how you're just pushing your own art. You're pushing your own work in our outlines. And I also want people to know that Syriot is a messy, you know, I come in here and I have this very clean, the fonts are the right sizes, things are bolded in the right places, so you know where, what's where. And Syri comes in here and she's messing with font sizes. She's using different typefaces. It just, you've made a mess of my really clean outline. And I'd really like you to explain yourself

briefly if you could. So are you saying that earlier in this conversation, you said I should just let things ride and not necessarily worry about my New Year's resolutions and all that stuff. Because all I was, hey, I just want to live a less chaotic life. I want to be a little bit more organized. So, Kyle, what do you actually think? I just think we have like a Felix and Oscar thing going on here with the cleanliness of our work here. I just think your outlines kind of look like the riddler. Like, you know, I just feel like your outlines kind of look like a serial killer did it. It's like all different, you know, it's just, it's just very busy. But it's fine. And I think the point, Going back to Donovan Mitchell, I'm giving her shit, folks.

You know, it's fun to tease here it if you haven't figured that out by now. But Mitchell, I think you hit it. I mean, he's a three-level score. And like last night they were spamming the pick-and-roll in a way, you know, Chicago threw multiple defenders at him. It didn't seem to matter. Last night, he did 42 direct pick-and-rolls, which was in the 99th percentile for single-game performances this year.

They just hit him over and over again. He really had the whole kind of repertoire working. And we knew that he was like a good, deep pull-up shooter. We knew that he had developed that. He perennially is up in the stratosphere with the steffs of the world. You know, he just, he's a consistently good shooter in that sense. And it's interesting just to see that his value was maybe, I don't know, sort of the malaise of the Utah situation caused a lot of like weird value assessments for players who moved on. You know, the Gobert thing was kind of the opposite into the spectrum where Minnesota clearly maybe

overvalued him. And Cleveland, Michael Pina in an article he wrote, our guy wrote for the ringer wrote that you don't typically get a score in their prime at this age at age 25. And Cleveland did. And I think that he's a really good, he's a really good fit for what Cleveland wants to do. I feel like his sort of like dynamism with Garland specifically is great because he's the number one score. And I don't feel like it's been a big deal that he's coming to Cleveland and assume that mantle.

I feel like his leanings. work for what Cleveland wants to do and sets the other guys up to do what they want to do. Yeah, I remember feeling like they gave up a lot for him, and I was kind of, I was a little bit iffy on how I felt about the trit. I felt like Cleveland had one of the best young cores in the league. They actually still do. They were number two in the ringers young core rankings,

and that was after the Mitchell trade. So they're still pretty young, but I just remember feeling like, ah, this is a little soon. Like, they just had this incredible year. You don't really know what happens with young teams. There can be a lot of regression. They gave up, I mean, they gave up a ton. They gave up three unprotected first round picks.

They gave up Marketing. They gave up Colin Sexton. And right now it looks like that's really, really paying off. The chemistry on that team is great. And what they have is all the markers of contention. They have a top 10 offense. They have the best defense in the league. They have the number two net rating.

Excellent room protection. They have multiple creators. and now I'm sort of wondering, you know, should they double down? This is kind of what we want to talk about. We should tease this. We should tease this for our next segment, I think. Yeah. Now that we've gotten through all of the incredible performances that happened last night,

which, by the way, the NBA is on a heater right now. Oh, baby. Yes, it is. It's incredible. You can't go, like, you can't go one night without something historic happening. Like, we haven't even, I feel like we barely even talked about Luke on this podcast. Obviously, we've had on the site, we've had some pretty. great coverage of him. So that's

part of the reason why, but there's just so much fun stuff happening in the league right now. But yeah, this is kind of with the trade deadline approaching. This is kind of what we wanted to talk about today is, you know, teams that are trying to sort of assess where they are. There are a lot of teams this year that

they are in different positions in what they actually expected to be at, you know, we're hitting the midpoint of the season now. And that can kind of change your decision making going into the trade deadline, going into pretty much any decision, right? You have to look at it from the perspective of what are our goals and how far are we from them and how feasible is that too. I think that's a big part of this

conversation as well is, you know, what's actually available? Like, it can be a lot harder to change course than it actually seems. It's really easy to say, hey, like, we're not very good. We need to tank or we're really good. We need to actually, you know, keep going in this direction and see if we can actually make a run for it all. In the Eastern Conference especially, that's a very, difficult assessment to make of yourself. I think it's just completely loaded. You know, there's just, you know, the nets are, the nets look like they're kind of the favorites now.

And, you know, if you want to argue against that, I won't be mad at you because the Celtics are right there. And I think like the, the bucks, you know, despite whatever happens a regular season, I'm not going to ever count them out by the time the playoffs come around. So it's just, it's absolutely loaded in the east. But the cabs I look at, I'm like, Do you want to start making the move to see if you can get in on the game this season?

Well, let's put a pin in that. We'll hit that after in our next segment. We want to talk, you summed it up nicely. I think that there are some teams that are close. I think we should evaluate their level of self-awareness in our opinion. And we're going to do that on a few different teams. And then figure out who could be key buyers and key sellers at the deadline and parse out some of the details of that.

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1-800-2-2-470-700 in Wyoming or visit 1-800gambler.net in West Virginia. So every year around this time, I feel like there is this interesting conversation about the haves and the have-nots. and teams, it's always interesting to sort of like parse which teams, where they are, how they think of themselves, whether or not that's realistic, and teams that are kind of in the middle or like near the, in between the top in the middle, should they make a move? There are various, there's a variety of teams like that this year, but I feel like there's sort of a glut of teams who are in a position to, you know, Not necessarily rebuild, but pivot, you know? And I feel like the Toronto Raptors are a really interesting team. This is a team that you have had perennially a lot of exposure to. I feel like you're really dialed in as a Canadian, as a great white North's person.

The Raptors, how would you have assessed where they are? Are they close? Are they super far away? How are you feeling about the Toronto Raptors right now, Cyr? I think this has been a pretty revolutionary season. in a not so good way, right? You know, in a not so good way in the short term, but I think in the long term,

it probably gives them some information that will be useful to them. They've obviously really struggled out of the gate. We're all kind of hoping for a jump, and it hasn't happened for a number of reasons. They've dealt with some injuries, but, you know, even with Siakum back, they're 11 and 16 with Seacum in the lineup.

Last night, they got Precious and Chua back. They got Fred Van Vee back, and they actually played what was, one of the most, they lost to the Pacers, but I think they played one of their more promising games of the season, just in terms of balance and defensive effort and all those things, which have been really lacking with the Raptors this season, which is really strange. It's, you know, the Raptors are a team that I think for the last two years, you've looked at them and said, well, you don't really want to go in there and play them.

They're going to be physical. They're going to run on you in transition. They're going to defend. They're just going to be difficult. Nick Nurse is going to throw out 40 different defensive schemes in one game. There's just going to be like a box in one in the third quarter for what seems like no apparent reason. But, you know, just finding a way to shut down the stars for the most part. And they make you find ways to beat you that get you out of your comfort zone.

That's what the Raptors have been for, you know, the last little while. And this season has just been a complete turn away from that. You know, it's just been really weird to see them be a low effort team despite having, the same personnel that they've had for a while. That could be fatigue. They've been playing a play style that, you know, I think they have their four guys in the NBA that are, you know, the top 25 in distance traveled.

And, you know, that's going to catch up to you at a certain point. But I think that overall, you look at their core, Pascal, OG, Scotty, despite, you know, he's having the sophomore stump, which we'll talk about at some point, that's your three. and I don't think that they're a team that necessarily needs to go away from either of those guys, but I would look at them and say, okay, this is a really promising court,

but they could use a little bit more of an injection of talent right now. Now, West Goldberg wrote a really good feature for the ringer on the Miami Heat, and it gets into the pitfalls of one of the same things that the Raptors are actually known for. Being the being a team that might not necessarily have the most top end team, talent, but is really good at development. And ultimately, you know, what they lack in talent, they'll make up for in defensive effort, in intelligence, and just kind of beating you on the margins. But the thing is, their margin for error is really, really razor sin as a result of that.

And now they're in this place where they don't really know, they are in the zone of we are trying to contend, but they don't know if they have enough. And I think if the rat, even if the Raptors won, you know, know, if they turn it around, they end up winning 50 games or something this season, which is kind of out of the realm of possibility at this point. But even if they do turn it around somewhat, this season has given me enough to chew on that I start thinking, okay, doesn't make sense for them to, you know, retool and do, you know, kind of redo the whole Tampa tank.

And that's kind of, you know, Messiah just, you know, he's one of, one of those, he's a guy who's known for the things that he says. but, you know, just like playing for what was the thing that he said. So I don't think that he's going to be like dying to get the Raptors as a playing game. But at the same time, it's a really, I think, tedious time for the Raptors to be trying to make a lot of deals too. Because there just isn't a lot out there that I think is going to move the needle for their, for their, you know, their future and their present, which is, I think, the direction they should be thinking it right now. Yeah, I think their situation poses a lot of questions that are, that are important. I mean, I described to you, I said, I preface that I'm not a car player at all,

but I was like, it kind of feels like the Raptors are like sitting at like 15 or 16 and trying to decide whether or not to hit because they're kind of close. They have a lot of quality NBA players. I mean, the questions about like, why aren't they defending as much? Are they worn down? I mean, you hear people talk a lot about like what NBA players are willing to do. There's almost like a college atmosphere in terms of like the defensive activity and like the style of play and things like that the sum, you know, they were overachieving, in my opinion, based on they built this weird roster. They were really active. They were super switchable. But at the end of the game, at the end of the day, you can annoy people and act as sort of like a gatekeeper for whether or not teams are

for real or not, but that does not mean that there is a difference. There's another level to do you have the superstars, and that's kind of what this is all about, to achieve at the highest level. And it's like the NBA is all about the methods of doing that. And there's, if you look at like a team like this that has something that works, I think that eventually it probably would have even back out based on the guys that they had out, based on Scotty's regression from year one to two. I feel like that would kind of, I feel like that's going to level out. And then they're getting precious back. You know, you get Fred Van Baleed into a situation that's optimized for him so that he can play better. I do think that they have a team that

sort of makes sense, but it's like missing that final piece. It's missing that superstar piece. And you can talk about like whether or not a team works all you want and optimize it. But at the end of the day, you were talking about how Brooklyn is now the favorite. It's like, okay, that's kind of demoralizing when you think about like the Boston's put together this incredible team that works well. And then all of a sudden, Brooklyn can decide to get their shit together and they're going to be the favorite in the east. That's kind of frustrating. Yeah, I mean, if you make the, if you want to take the blackjack analogy even further, the Raptors have a 15 or a 16 and the dealer's got a king, right?

Yeah. Like this is the Eastern Conference we're talking about. The chance that even if you, it's not a bad hand, you know, you don't really love hitting on it, but you kind of have to. Yeah. You're probably not going to come out, like, come out winning on that end of it. But, you know, if you hit, you're still, the chances of you, you know, blown up your hand are also pretty high.

Like, it's just, it's not really, in this short term, it's not really an enviable position to be in. Now, it's a weird thing for the Raptors, depending on which direction they decide to go. Because I think if they want to salvage the season right now, the issue is pretty clear. It's this, you know, the all-wing experiment, which has been fun, and I think it's probably given them their core,

has its drawbacks. And right now it's drawback is that, you know, the Raptors just don't get a lot of going towards the rim, and they just have really bad rim protection as well. They just don't have a true center. And this is where all of the sort of moving parts of the NBA become really fascinating as well, because on the other end,

you have a team like the Indiana Pacers, which is kind of on the opposite spectrum of the Raptors, where we were really expecting them to lose and for them to finally trade Miles Turner and find a deal for Buddy Heald and just embrace the tank, go for Wembe, and just continue to build this young core that they have. but the thing is they're playing really well right now and, you know, Shams reported about 10 days ago

that Miles Turner is in extension talks with the Pacers. So that takes a guy that I think the rappers were interested in that would have, you know, fit in and fix a lot of their problems, would have also spaced the floor for them, would have probably, you know, juice up their half-court offense as well as improve their defense. Maybe he's a little harder to get now. I imagine he's not completely off the table.

but at the same time, it's just going to be a little bit more difficult to get him now than it was probably two months ago. So maybe they can go in the direction of going for like a Moamba type or bringing Yaakov-Purtle back if they don't want to put too many assets in. And one thing I kind of like is a James Wiseman flyer. I think he could be interesting in that developmental system. And maybe actually be a guy, that might be ideal because I don't think James Wiseman is contributing to wins right now. Safe assumption. Yeah, I know. I like to, you know, I like to bring the heaters here. But at the same time, he could be a guy that fits into the future and also fits into the current rotation.

That could be a direction that they decide to go in, but it all depends on what else is available. And at the same time, I also kind of want to kind of look at it and think, hey, why not just change direction midseason? It's really easy to say, okay, the raptor should just tank. And it's also probably easy to say that about a team like the Pacers, too. but with the Ractors, it's like, you know, you got a bunch of guys that really want to prove something. O'Gionadobe came into the season saying, I want to win defensive player of the year.

Siakum has incentives on his contract with he makes an all-NBA team that is going to increase his contract. So if you want to go the tanking route, then you probably start, like you need to have a hard conversation with Pascal Seaccom. And on the Pacers front, it's the sort of other end of it where there might not be actual tangible contract things going on.

But at the same time, watching the game yesterday, you got a player like Buddy Heald who is just adding new elements to his game. His dribble drive game has improved. He's finishing better with his left. And you got Ty Halliburton,

who's made another leap. And you know, you got Matherin who doesn't really matter what's going on near the rim, but he's going to go to it. And now he's building on that too. That type of momentum, you don't necessarily always want to, you know,

curb it just because of the sake of playing the math and trying to get another guy. So it's really hard. It's really easy for us to do this in like a 2K version and say, okay, the Raptors, clearly not going to make the playoffs. Let's just shut everything down. And the Pacers while they're having a great season,

it probably makes more sense for them to take a step back and try to accumulate more talent too. And to actually, like, you know, to avoid being the situation the Raptors are in right now, to avoid being the situation that we're here in right now. But these things they grow organically and it's it's kind of it's just difficult to uh to just retool on the fly like that yeah you're talking about the raptors issues right now they're like you know in the

offensive and offensively and defensively these things tend to mirror each other you know if you're not good at pressure in the ball you're probably not going to have great dribble penetration because both of those things are kind of encompassed in one player and for them that the you know the interior guy now precious helps with some of this stuff but uh the raptors are tied for 23rd in the league in pick and roll points per game at five and a half. And they are 26 in the NBA in points per possession on that front. They're 29th and spot up points per possession at 0.973 and 27th in uncontested three. So basically you kind of get the, you're tracing the outline of like the spine of a functioning

offense, basically. There's a lack of downhill pressure that's creating, that's leading to a, lack of like open shots and I think that penalizes everyone. I think that that puts everybody in a tough situation. Now, see, Akum, I think you just get put in a situation where you're probably going to have to curate your core a little bit because, and the point I was going to make earlier that I didn't quite make is just that how often, and this is the problem with being in the middle is because how often is a superstar imported into a team that is functioning and takes them to the next level. Now, the Raptors have done this before. Lightning struck when they were able to

pry Kauai Leonard away from the Spurs. And that was an awesome fortuitous situation. The Warriors were able to add KD, which I kind of don't even count that situation. I just don't, I feel like importing a superstar like that, usually through free agency, I don't feel like you're going to be able to, it would take too big of a bite out of their team to trade for somebody like that, I feel like. But I guess the question that it kind of suggests here is that how much how much do we we kind of have to gauge our belief in these three guys as superstars pascal has sort of he's really really developed and gotten a ton better as like a creator as a shooter as a downhill force scottie i don't know about offensively do you do we really which which of these guys is the the most primed candidate to be like

the number one option on like a like a real contending team in your opinion can they keep all of them? Or is there one of them that they could afford to punt? Now, these are three forwards, kind of similar in size, switchable. They do similar things. Is there one of them that they could maybe parlay into a scenario that could help them in the short term? What do you think? I think Pascal is probably the guy that you'd look at and say as close as to being a superstar. He's on that line. I think it depends on how you look at it. I think if the rappers are playing better than they are right now, I think we're having more conversations about the leap that Pascal is made. He's a great playmaker, you know, excellent going on going one-on-one.

He is doing pretty much everything for the Raptors right now, and it just hasn't been enough. And I think that just speaks to how everyone else is playing on the team, right? I don't think it necessarily speaks to Pascal. Now, when it comes to those guys together, yes, it fits similar size profiles and everything. But at the same time, I think that they just fulfill different roles on the court. I think Scotty is more of your, you know, playmaking, cerebral feel the game type of guy that's going to like pour in his buckets when he's supposed to. And I think, you know, he's had a weird season too where he's kind of been trying to add new stuff to his game, getting away from maybe the stuff that really makes him good.

But him and Seacum, you know, last year and when Scotty is sort of, you know, playing that aggressive going to the rim game, they have great chemistry because they're both really good playmakers and they're both really unselfish guys that make quick decisions. And an OG on the other hand is more of your traditional 3-3-and-D, you know, spot-up, you know, drive off the spot-up type of guy as well. So I don't think that there's skill sets necessarily, you know, get in the way of each other. I think if anything, if there's a guy that I'm looking at and saying that I might want to deal him, it's Fred Van Vleet.

Now, there was a better time to trade Fred Van Vleet. It's not right now. He's gone from pretty much All-Star to probably being like the lowest his trade value has been. in a while. But when I look at this team, I think the other thing it's missing outside of rim protection is just natural playmaking. Now, Fred is awesome.

He is a great leader. He is great in a locker room. He holds everybody accountable. He's a good score and all that stuff. But at the same time, like, when you talk about, you know, the 27th you said in pick and roll scoring, well, that's, that's Freddie getting into the lane and just never looking up once he gets into the pain.

just not being a pick and roll playmaker, just not really being a table setting type of player, which is, I think, what this team needs, because right now, like, their isolation frequency is way, way too high for, for, you know, their relative skill sets on that side of the ball. They just don't have a lot of cohesion. They need somebody who is going to, you know,

not necessarily be as worried about his own scoring load, which, you know, to, you know, to Freddie's credit, is something he's had to do for this team, right? He's had to kind of be that guy that puts a team on his back and tries to, you know, just will a bunch of points together, even if it might not be the most efficient thing. But they're kind of transitioning to a new place right now. I think they need someone a little bit more cerebral. Is there someone that you have in mind?

I mean, I feel like we both kind of, we talked about maybe potentially if they did move. It's fun to think about OG moving to a contender. It's fun to think about OG moving to the calves. It's fun to think about OG moving to the Grizzlies. I know in our ring or group trap, we've had discussions about, if the Grizzlies and the Raptors did connect for a trade, which would be a better fit, O.G. or Seacum. I just, I'm kind of trying to think,

I don't honestly know that there is a pivot move for them that makes sense because you hit it on the head when you talked about, the NBA is all about the status quo. Like, you can build a really cute roster that functions together, but if they come up against superstars, the elite, it's like at the top of the league you're looking at, like, in the next few years, you've got to be thinking this way. You got to be thinking about the fact that like Tatum and Jim Brown are going to be together for a while.

The Katie, Kyrie combo is probably going to be around for probably two or three more years. Katie's getting a little older. I don't want to put a cap on what he can do at what age. And then you think about there's MB, there's Yonis. You go down the line. Where are they going to get the superstar punch? Is that playmaking going to be enough to sort of act as a facsimile or like a substitution for that? Do they need to get a superstar or how are they going to get one?

That's kind of the question that I'm wondering. Or is there somebody that you think is a great fit that could elevate them in the short term? Well, I mean, if we're going to circle around them not trading for Kevin Durrat, that feels a little bit like what we're doing right now. But I think if there's, if there's anybody that could kind of help them probably be a piece long term and short term, it's maybe Alex Caruso on the Bulls. and they're another team that is in not necessarily the exact same place as the rafters are because I think with the Bulls it's actually quite clear what they should be doing.

I think they should basically be having a fire sale. And I think he would be someone who makes a lot of sense on that team. He fits the identity. He's one of the best defensive players in the NBA. He's a great playmaker. He gets off the ball quickly. And I think he could just kind of be a glue guy type of guy for them, right? that all sort of is contingent on what the Bulls think of themselves though and if they do start thinking about themselves as a team that needs to retool it well then it becomes interesting for everybody in the league right yeah I mean and the Bulls what's interesting is it did kind of seem like they had acquired you were talking about like kind of superstar level now neither of these guys are in like that top top tier of superstar I don't know it's kind of demoralizing when you just look at like the class system of the NBA

and just think that, like, you can, the Bulls built this team with these two solid ISO, solid pick and roll scores, guys who had gotten a whole lot better with the ball in their hands, and it still wasn't going to be enough. Now, we kind of talked about Levine is somebody 27 years old. He's locked in a $37 million deal for the next five years. He sort of had the knee issues and things like that. I feel there have been murmurs about him moving. Who do you think, who do you think, who do you think,

has more value right now, DeMara de Rosen or Zach Levine? I would say just because of Levine's age, it's probably him. He's only 27 years old. And he's locked into a $37 million contract for the next five years. I don't know how you're going to be feeling about it on the tail end of that. But I think if you're going to be given a lot of assets up, you're going to take the 27 year old that's locked up. Now, Demar, 33, doesn't have as much money on his contracts, two years left on that deal. I think maybe it depends on the team and what that team's long-term plans are.

If they want to be making this a free agency splash, you don't want to be locked into a future for too too long, then maybe DeMarre makes a little bit more sense. I think DeMar is also more getable for those reasons. Like, you know, even with the Pascal stuff, right? Like, yeah, you can hypothetically trade Pascal to any team, but $37 million makes it difficult to, you know, find a lot of guys that are going to,

or a lot of teams that are going to, you know, be able to just, put the contracts together without taking too much out of, you know, their own rotations. And I think it's the same deal with Levine because I don't think ultimately Levine is like good enough to really justify, you know, cobbling together a whole bunch of assets like that for it. Like, tomorrow, to me, for that reason, it's probably more likely to get traded. You seem like you were pretty enticed by the idea of Levine. And you can tell me whether or not you think this is kind of the ideal situation for him. As sort of like a second banana offensive focused, maybe not the pressure on him to,

be like a primary playmaker type. You seem pretty enticed by the idea of the Dallas thing, which seems like low probability, right? Yeah, Dallas is the tough spot, right? Yeah. So Dallas is one of these teams that I think they were going into the season

thinking they can't be a buyer because they just don't have anything to offer up to other teams. But now Luka is in the midst of this season that you just, you know, I think I was just rationalizing, honestly, Kyle. I think I was rationalizing. because...

That's healthy. I don't see anything wrong. Yeah. No, for sure, for sure. New Year. Is Lucas in the midst of just a God mode season that you cannot afford to waste?

And the Mavericks, yes, Spencer Dinwiddie is playing better. Yes, Christian Wood is a good addition when he is getting minutes and being utilized. They have figured some things out. They have great role players. But at the same time,

they don't have that top-end guy that is going to take enough of a load off. of Luca for them to, in my opinion, make an important splash in the playoffs. They just need more and they can't get it. You know, I've just, I've been trying to look for the, I just, they can't get a deal that doesn't bite too much into the rotation. Like one of the ones that you mentioned was Stinwitty and, and, uh, T.H.J going for Levine.

Why would the Bulls do that? That's, that's you just trying to, yeah. Not too, right? Like, if they're going to go into a rebuild mode, they're not going to want to get, grab those guys. But at the same time, like that also just cuts way too much into what. Dallas is doing as well. They're just in a tough spot.

And it's me personally just, I'm in a lot of pain watching it. So I wanted to throw them in there. But I think you're ultimately right. There's just not a lot for them to do. Something I wanted to tack on to this, like an important detail in this is this is a unique year where at the top of the draft, there are around around like five-ish guys, four or five-ish guys that I think are strong bets that they could become primary guys. obviously Women Yama, Scoot Henderson, Nick Smith, the Thompson twins, Brandon Miller, and I would even throw in Cam Whitmore as another guy. So that's kind of got to be factoring into your thinking if you're like wanting to maybe free fall

and go towards the bottom. But I feel like those guys, the teams that are in that sweepstakes at the bottom, that's kind of solidifying. It'd be hard to enter into that. A team that is close is Cleveland. And we were talking about whether or not they should, they're close enough. to the point where we got to start to ask the question, are they capable? I think right now they're what the fourth seed? Are they projecting it's the fourth seed in the east? You were talking

about their 17 and 8 in conference, 26 and 14 over all seven and three in their last 10. Do you think that Cleveland should double down? How close are they? Is there something, what do you think is a piece that they should be potentially on the lookout for for Cleveland, to maybe, because they're pretty good. I mean, I think in the short term, I think that it's worth, they clearly made an aggressive mood to accelerate their timeline at going and getting Donovan Mitchell, who has looked phenomenal. Should they double down?

And if so, what do you think is the missing piece for Cleveland? I think this one's almost a no-brainer, just because of how easy it would be to go get that piece. Now, I think you and I might disagree here, but I think they're a J. Cratter away. Really? They just need that fifth piece. They need to.

Bring him home. Yeah. They need it. By the way, Kevin Love said that Donovan Mitchell's performance was the best game he's ever seen. Oh. He's, yeah.

I mean, I'm sure he was saying. He knows what he's saying there. That's interesting. I mean, come on. That's 2018 game one. I don't really know that anything's ever going to top that.

Now, scoring-wise, maybe if you put a gun, Kevin Love's head, he would clarify a little bit there. Oh, my God. Yeah. That was actually,

I was at that game. It was absolutely incredible. Just being there also when J.R. Smith did what he did. it was actually, it gave me a little bit more of sympathy for the situation, because I think when you're watching on TV, you know, like, you see everything, right? You see the time situation and the sport, but that building was just such chaos and pandemonium that, like, when JR pulled out for a second and didn't take that shot, I was almost like,

oh, yes, that is the right thing to do because you're just like, you kind of, like, we all kind of look at other people's actions. Yeah. And we're like, oh, yeah, that probably, that probably made sense. right? When you're in a moment like that, it's just kind of, it feels different. But yeah, that was an incredible game, probably one of the best performances I've ever seen, maybe the best. Wish I could have been at that one. I'm sad that I missed it. That's a life memory that you're going to have there. I'm jealous. What's your favorite performance that you've seen live?

Oh, man. Oof, that's a good question. I mean, like, in terms of, like, I knew it was going to be special. I mean, that when Banyama, like, came in Vegas, but it was an inconsequential game, you know? I'm trying to think, I saw LeBron's second or third game in the league at, it was then, at the time, it was Conceco Fieldhouse. He had like 27 points. I think the Cavs won on like a Sagana Jop tip in. Like at the end of it. I mean, it was a weird Cleveland team, but a pretty decent Indiana team. I don't know that I've witnessed like an incredible, an incredible like game that meant something, you know. I've kind of had. those pass me by honestly yeah but you've gotten some portrait of the artist as a young man type of performance sure yeah though yeah it was it was special on that front like i was glad to get to see i was glad to get to see that but other than that no i really got to see any like significant performances not not like the one you get to see okay 2023 we're gonna manifest that for you right after me he's your best right um anyway but yes the cleveland clap cavalieres i i just think they are

They were really close. And I think more than anything else, I just think that the piece is really obvious. They need that fifth guy, right? And while they lay in wait for maybe the actual fifth guy to materialize himself, like obviously trade for someone like OG Ananoi is a bit of a fantasy. You know, we talked about maybe a Jared Jack and O.G. Anobie Swap. I don't think either team would end up doing it just because of the value. I don't think they would take Jarrett Jack for O.G. Onenobi.

I think you probably have to throw in more. Than Jared Jack? Yeah, I think, I don't know. Jared Jack, he's a little older now. I don't think that they're going to want, you mean Jared Allen. Oh, my God. I kept trying to lob it at your friend. Oh, my God.

Jared Allard. No, I don't think they're going to take Jared. Jack, Bro. I don't know. Any of Jared Allen, yes. I don't think they're going to, I don't think they're going to take Jared Allen either. On that note, I think the Raptors are just a little, they're still a little too good to start thinking about. get letting go of those guys. But eventually you hope a guy like that

materializes for them that really makes sense with their core. But in the meantime, I think that there's guys out there that you can get a little bit on the cheap that just fill out that fifth spot. And because of just how little they get from it right now, I think it just makes, like, it's one of those small moves that can make a really big difference and you don't necessarily have to give up a lot for it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, you're talking about Jay Crowder as, I think, he fits as a stout perimeter defender sort of in that PJ Tucker mold of somebody that can

body big, somebody that can bother perimeter scores. You know, he's not going to be like a mistake eraser, but they have two of those guys who are heavily switchable can be like a tough assignment type of player. I think that he fits what they want to do to sort of supplement, add to the Okoro. I think Akoro, maybe you don't want to lean too heavily on him. Maybe you could depend on Jay Crowder's shooting, which is kind of a dicey proposition in and of itself. But he does kind of make sense for them in that sense, in the sense of defensively what they need to do. Because I feel like their offensive identity is pretty set.

You know, they're 30th in the league in pace. So I'm not totally worried about them being one of these like freewheeling young teams that comes into the playoffs and is forced into a half-court game. Like they have a solid half-court game. They have talented guys and sort of a, a similar. that works, honestly. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's all the more reason that they should just go for it, right?

Like, I think, you know, sometimes teams, you can definitely move too early, right? Like, that's possible. But I think also sometimes teams, like I would almost even point to Memphis last season. Now, they weren't necessarily ready, right? But then I think as the posties more on,

you know, the rotation got a little bit thinned out and you're sort of like, you're looking at guys that you don't necessarily want to look to in the playoffs to make something happen for you. Now, they still saw themselves, is like in a developmental moment for their timeline.

And I think it's worked out for them. They're obviously, they're better this year. And I think that they could actually be a team that maybe now it's time for them to consolidate, too. But my only point is that you just don't want to, you don't want to be ahead of your timeline and then end up in the playoffs thinking like, oh, maybe we should have given up that second rounder for Jay Crowder because he could be really useful right now. Yeah, it could force you into making decisions that you can be sort of a prisoner in the moment. I think we've kind of seen that with the Hawks, like we were talking about.

talking about, like, I think if you get a misleading kind of a variety of factors that can cause you to end up at that place, but if you end up in a situation where you're, you're, you overestimate where you are as a franchise, it can, it can set you back years. I mean, it could cause you to make mistakes and move pieces. But I think we're kind of an agreement that like, just to sum it all up, like, I feel like the uniqueness of that trio of forwards, I definitely think I would hang on to it as fun as it is to think about, you know, those guys, the raptors and their little talent pool, both. stirring these other teams in the league and maybe getting them over the hump.

But anyway, it's going to be interesting to watch as the trade deadline comes up. Anything else that you want to plug? What are you working on right now? Is anything you want to plug for we get going? I've got no plugs, won't you? I've got a project coming. I won't say what it is. I'll just keep it at bay right now.

But a lot of cool stuff going on at the ringer as we update our top 100 that's coming. And as all the NBA pods kind of rant back up, Seard, I'm excited to talk more NBA with you as 2023 unfolds, right? Yeah, I mean, look, the chaos is just going to, chaos is a ladder, right? And it's going to descend pretty much

until the trade deadline. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Yes, exactly, exactly. All right, well, thanks to Chris Sutton-Hornet-Legg for producing this episode, and we'll catch you next week.