The Ringer NBA Show - Kyrie Irving’s Unfortunate Injury. Plus, LeBron, Luka, and Lakers Keep Rising in the Standings. | Real Ones

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Logan Murdock, Howard Beck, and Raja Bell start the pod with the unfortunate season-ending injury news for All-Star guard Kyrie Irving (0:21). Irving’s injury adds to the long list of Mavs players that have been sidelined throughout the season, including Anthony Davis (who was traded for Luka Doncic). Just how catastrophic has this season been for the Mavs? On the flip side, the Lakers have been rolling and are 16-4 in their last 20 games. LeBron and Luka seem to fit perfectly together and Howard believes this still isn't the best version of Luka. How terrified should the Western Conference teams be (23:18)? Hit the mailbag! [e-mail] Hosts: Logan Murdock, Howard Beck, and Raja Bell Producer/Audio: Clifford Augustin Video Producer: Victoria Valencia Social: Keith Fujimoto  Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's popping? Bruins. Mug and Murdoch here. Roger Bell there. Hardback is a motherfucker pet. Cliff on the boards. Victoria on the video. I think last week we had a sad episode talking about whatever we were talking about last week.

I think this is also going to start up as a sad episode because, damn it, Kyrie Irving is injured. And he got, he injured his knee last night's game. and you know I saw it on the Instagram where you know he I thought it was like a Kobe moment right they got he got held up and got picked up to the to the free throw line initially it was called a knee sprain woke up this morning it is a torn ACL Howard after everything of the Mavericks have gone through on a scale of one to 95 how down bad are they here on March 4th

9.07 a.m. Pacific time. They've shattered the scales. They've shattered every measure measuring tool. I don't even know how you measure like just anguish and woe and misfortune in this league. But they've broken the damn scale. It's almost, if it weren't so sad to be almost comical, like we've reached like fictional TV script that doesn't seem plausible. proportions? Like, it's gotten to the point where it's like, oh, oh, that's cute. You're going to make it like a whole like curse thing where you traded your franchise star and now all these terrible things

are going to just befall you. Guys are just going to fall down left and right. Anthony Davis is going to play an amazing quarter and then he's going to be injured and out for weeks. And then, you know, Gafford's going to go down. PJ Washington is going to. Oh, and then Kyrie's going to blow it as ACL. Like if you wrote it down this way, you wouldn't believe it. It's sad. It's awful. It's weird because if you believe in this kind of thing, it does feel kind of carmic, but that's kind of mean to even say. I feel like it's brutal, though.

It's absolutely brutal. And yeah, not for nothing. If all these things had happened and you had kept Luca, you still have a chance of being a viable team. But now this season is toast and next season could be toast because it's an ACL. And that's nine to 12 months usually. Like, Kyrie maybe is back in the middle of next season, maybe. But who's running?

all of next season too. There's a chance he could miss all of next season. There's a chance he could also miss all of next season. He's turning 33 this month, Kyrie. So like there's there's no silver lining here, fellas. Like this is a disaster. How are you feeling, Roy? Um, I mean, Howard just kind of summed it up. It's just a, you know, first of all, I feel terrible for, for Kyrie. He was, he was, uh, having a fantastic season, you know, individually. Not, not just as a player, but, you know, coming off of what had happened in Brooklyn and and to some degree Boston, I think he's just done a tremendous job of proving to people that, you know, that didn't necessarily have to define him as a leader, as a teammate, as a pro. And I was happy to see it all come together for him in terms of the

play, the person, the leader. I was excited for the season that he was having. So on a human level just knowing him and the family like it hurts that that that one sucks um for the franchise the fans um you know that's just what else could go wrong i guess at this point um you know you hate to say that because inevitably something can but like you it's it's just a terrible spot i feel bad for nico too um you know whether you agree or disagree with with the move and I think we all agreed that you could have gotten more assets if you decided you had to make the move like um you know you're you're not going to get a chance to see what his vision was for any significant amount of time right and and that little bit of time that we did see it for those

couple quarters it you know whether you could sustain that or not it's besides the point but it looked pretty fucking cool for those couple quarters and you just don't get to so for everyone involved i just feel really bad it's terrible it's terrible to see it last night you brought up nico harrison and that was like the second person that came came to mind when I saw this injury rock. Like, first and foremost, Kyrie, like that, the first emotion is damn, this sucks. But the whole point of this trade, in Nico Harrison's words, was, we will be a viable contender for the next two years. That pretty much is shattered, right?

That timeline is pretty much, I don't know what they do this all season, but you have a high-salered guy in Kyrie. how do you even revamp this roster to not even contend but just stay above water at this point they do have Anthony Davis right who is a great player but is also injury prone and also hasn't I think when he's led a team I forgot his the highest record he's had but it wasn't like they were a number one the pelicans were ever a number one seed while he was the number one guy

and that was what the peak of his beginning of the peak of his powers Like, what is next for the Mavericks to stay above water? I mean, not to belabor the point, the discussion that we had after the trade was made in the first place, but this was exactly the risk. Anthony Davis is 32, 31. He's turning 32 a week from today. Anthony Davis is 32 a week from today. Kyrie, as I said, is turning 33 later this month. That's your window. However long those guys, can still be elite players as your window. And Anthony Davis was certainly playing at an elite level this season. Kyrie Irving was certainly playing at an elite level this season. But these are the risks of stars in their early to mid-30s, especially guys who like

Kyrie and Anthony Davis both had, you know, very detailed injury histories before this. This was the risk. It was baked in all along. And you did shorten your window because Luca gives you a 10-year window or more. And Kyrie and Anthony's, Anthony Davis give you like a two to three year window, which Nico himself kind of alluded to. I didn't like that reasoning at the time and I don't like it now. And it's, it's, you know, it just looks worse every week, right? Man, I don't even know what his math skills were like on that one, man. He said, you know what? I'm going to just, instead of a 10 year window, I'd rather have a two year window. It doesn't

make any sense. It makes no zero. There's nothing about it that made sense. I mean, we've, we've belabored that one to death. But real quick. So Kyrie's got a player option for next season, which if he's healthy and coming off like an all-M-A caliber season, maybe he's opting out and then, you know, getting Dallas to resign him to, you know, three, four, five-year max deal or something. Something close. That's what he would have asked for anyway, I'm sure.

Hurt, ACL out for most or all of next season. Are they still doing that? Or is he just picking up his option at 44 million, playing it out and then see where things stand? Dallas is in the worst possible situation here because by trading Luca and placing the ball literally, figuratively and everything else in Kyrie's hands, you have tied your fate to him. If Kyrie can't play again, that's not the case. But if he couldn't play again or if he walked away, you're screwed. So you really have to pay him all, you know, the most that he that he is eligible for or asks for. But now it's in the context of an ACL recovery and at age 33. And by the time he returns, he's 34.

Are you? I do, I just, I do want to say something. I do think he's back by December of next year, though. Like I think December? December? December, huh? December, January. Like, yeah.

Well, when Clay got it, when Clay got to his ACL, that was in June. And I will give the caveat that it was COVID, but they weren't expecting him back until the following season after they got hurt. And that was what? So what are we? What is, what is January of next year from now? that's where we in March, three, nine months? Nine, nine-ish. Yeah, I think, I think that's the early side. Yeah, I think what they do with ACLs. I think you see him in late December, January next year. Guys are back. Roger, you're right. Guys are back faster now than they were 10 years ago from ACLs. That doesn't mean he's himself, mind you. Like, I, right. It's often like you can be back, but you're not yourself until like a year and a half, two years, which is why, and I know this is going way back. But even like the part of the whole Derek Rose saga with Chicago back in the day, was. And, was like, yeah, I could play right now, but I don't want to play until I'm able to be me.

Even that was a decade ago, though, wasn't it? Over, over, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, I just want to say, because like, I'm in the world of like, you know, I see a lot of young kids get, like having these unfortunate injuries and stuff like that. And it's pretty remarkable how quick these little jokers are back. They can. But Kyrie's 33 in a couple of weeks. So it's a little different.

Like, I think you're going to err on the conservative side. If it's nine to 12 months, I think you're probably air on the conservative. his side. I mean, we're all going to be talking about our case. And Kyrie's had knee issues beforehand, right? I mean, we're all not done. Yeah. But he's at, he's had knee issues before. I'd have to go back and look at 15. Yeah. Yeah, I was with them. I was taking Dr. Andrews on to see about it. And, and yeah, man, like, yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I did, I mean, like,

it, it's, it's, it's, it's not nearly the death sentence to a career. It's, that it, that it, that it, that it, that it, that it, is, yeah. For sure. But he's 33. And he's, and he's, and this time next year he will be on the verge of being 34 and coming off of ACL. Like, how close to the old Kyrie is he at that point? So I, Roger, regardless of, of how quickly he may recover, age is a concern and they're going to, like, they're going to need and they're completely capped out, they're going to need somebody else to run the offense through starting opening night of next season. Like, they've got no flexibility to do that. Maybe they flip Gafford for somebody, but like, you lost all your room for error when you traded the third best player on the planet.

for Anthony Davis and lost a ton of playmaking and scoring with it. So they boxed themselves in, and now the worst case scenario has hit, where the one guy who could still create is now out for the rest of this season and at least part of, if not all of next season. I mean, I don't know where you go from here. Like, I do not envy them in the least. I thought the Phoenix Suns were possibly the most screwed team in the league of the disappointing high-priced teams with expectations. But man, I think the Mavericks just leapfrog them. Yeah.

And then just for clarity, Kyrie fractured his kneecap in the 2015 NBA finals. Also left? On the same left, on the same left knee. Just brutal. And also, this is coming on the heels on the same day that the Dallas Mavericks announced that they were hiking ticket prices for season tickets, but 8% to, to fund a certain technology. You talk about just a cascade of just one,

you just how to fuck over a fan base. But two, just having like zero, what's the word here? Very, very disappointed. Zero self-awareness in how you are as an organization where you stand with your fan base after you already just traded a generational star. now that you're going to hike up ticket prices for a fan base that is already pissed off.

And another thing, like it's not like the Mavericks are, they've done a lot to become one of the franchises in the Dallas area. But they're not the Cowboys, right? Like they haven't won a World Series in the last three years, right? So they're still trying to market themselves to that fan base even after all these years. Howard, what the fuck is the ownership doing? right now? What's going on here? What the hell? You know what the most offensive part of the season ticket? I'm getting hives of like John Fisher right now. Like I'm just getting just like real, real, real triggered right now when I see what's going on with the map. The really offensive part of this.

In addition to, yeah, we traded a generational star. By the way, we need you to pay 8% more for your season tickets. I love this explanation. The Mavericks say that this is from the AP story. Shout out to the AP. The Mavericks say that despite the price adjustments, full season ticket holders will continue to save 15 to 23% compared to projected secondary market prices. Are you fucking kidding me? It's actually a cost savings, guys. We're raising the price, but it's actually a cost savings because if you bought it on Stubhub, it'll be more. Like, what kind of rationale is that? What kind of shitty sales pitch or, uh, you know, you actually cut it into my margins, bro. You're not actually, what are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. It's,

it's just, do they not know math in the Mavericks organization? What the hell? We're talking about two, two year windows to 10 year windows? and now we're talking about this with ticket prizes? It's insulting. It's just, it's absolutely insulting to their fan base, which they've already insulted multiple times over. I still do not buy into any of the silly conspiracy theories, the major league adaptations in which this is all just some plot to move them to Vegas.

That's not happening, folks. Just stop it. They are, however, doing everything possible to make themselves look like this. Your third eye isn't open like me and Rogers, bro. You've got a hat on. It's covering your third. and I. Just stop.

It's not that. They're just completely inept as an ownership group. Absolutely positively inept. Tone deaf, clueless. Possibly more than than any ownership group I've seen in a long time, or at least since Donald Sterling was banished to hell. Jeez. Yeah.

What? I was on a reader right now. You don't want to eat it. But would you see this type of? stuff, Roger. Like, when you see, you know, the fan-based stuff, the trading away stuff, the, you've been on the organizational side of things, right? And I, as a educated observer, when I see this type of stuff, I just see rock bottom on the horizon for the Mavs and maybe a year and a half-ish. I don't see, like, you don't see basketball people making basketball moves and basketball decisions.

what do you think the immediate future is of this team? Should you be concerned if you're a Mavericks fan? Sorry to my Mavericks fan. We poured out a little liquor for you guys. But like, what do you see on the horizon for this team? I mean, I think you have to be concerned if you're a Mavericks fan, right? Like everything that's happened as of late should give you a good reason to be concerned. What they look like, I don't know.

I don't fucking know. Like they, you know, the key with ownership, you know, as I found when you're coming into something new is to not think that because you were great at making money in some other business that you have everything figured out when you come to a new business, right? And I think that would, you asked anybody who had succeeded in multiple, multiple business endeavors, they'd probably tell you there's a lot to learn as they go to each one, right? And I say that to say that, you know, that ownership group has to find itself some people that can be real sounding boards and real, real voices of reason and real,

you know, mentors, if you will, to them. Because there are just ways that you do things in the league and they're ways that you don't. And, you know, I feel bad for them. There was going to be a rollout of this price increase at some point. You know, on the heels, you just got to be a little bit more buttoned up about strategically how you're going to do shit like that. You know, you know you got that on the horizon. The Luca deal presents itself. Like all of these things can't be factored and taken into account.

independently. It all goes into one big, like, think tank, and we've got to, like, play everything off of each other, and how are we going to roll all of this out to a fan base? And they're clearly struggling to do that. They could not control the Kyrie thing. That's unfortunate. But to Howard's point, you know, that is a risk that you were taking when you decided that you were going to let a guy with as much runway as Luca has go for two relatively often injured dudes being the face of your relatively short window moving forward. But they ultimately didn't control the the injury and the rollout of the ticket price increase. Like that was just really unfortunate that it happened on the same day.

But they have work to do. And you got like Mark Cuban, I don't know how, you know, Mark's a friend of mine. I don't know how involved he is. I don't know how much they heed his advice or how much they seek his advice or anything like that. But they need someone in camp that has real MBA experience at the, general managing, even ownership level, to come in and consult and be something that they can lean on in times of having to make these kind of decisions and maneuvers because they just don't

have it figured out yet. What's the likelihood of that happening, Howard, of them actually finding basketball people and writing the ship? Because they do have good players, right? They can, they do. Or is my premonition a little like on the nose? Like, do you, do you have faith that they will figure it out even through out all of these. just catastrophic last month and a half for them. There's a lot of this new owner syndrome thing, right? So Matt Ishpia with Phoenix, right? That's the more traditional new owner syndrome where it's, I'm going to spend my way

to success, I'm going to be hyper aggressive, and then it backfires. And that's what's happened in Phoenix, right? And we've seen versions of that over time. In fact, there was even a light version of that with Cuban way back when, in the early 2000s when he first took over in Dallas. the Adelson family, Patrick Dumont with with Dallas, it's it's a different kind of of face plant here where it's it's not overaggression. It's it's just not very smart aggression. It's not like they didn't just go out and try to outspend everybody. They didn't go out and

trade all their draft assets to get Kevin Durant or something like they they just empowered their front office or empowered their GM to make a catastrophic decision and then a lot of bad luck has befallen them along the way. The season ticket price thing, like, that's your, that's on you as owners or as a business or on the people that you have put in power to make those decisions. If anything, you keep your ticket price is flat or you discount them slightly for next season and you send a nice note to your season ticket holders going, hey, we know there's been some concerns. We've got a plan, blah, blah, blah, try to reassure them. meet them in the middle somewhere, but at least I can acknowledge their, their anguish at the

Luca trade without naming it and, and cut ticket prices or leave them the same. But raising them and then pretending like it's justified at ignoring all the other shit that just happened, specifically the Luca deal, is insane. I don't know, like, yes, they should absolutely be talking to Mark Cuban if they're not already about how to do this better, because Cuban had his mistakes along the way. Mark will be the first person to admit that, and he has over the years. But he learned from those mistakes, by and large, and did a pretty good job of running that team, at least on the basketball side. So, yeah, they should be talking to him.

And they have smart people in that front office, including Nico, but Nico's trade was a huge mistake, and there's no getting around that. And, you know, do you need other advisors? That can get complicated, right? you don't want to undermine Nico. Like if you want to undermine him, we'll then replace him. So it's a tough balancing act bringing in like the quote unquote consultant types, you know, ex-NBA executives to be like your sounding board without it feeling like you're undermining.

Jerry West did that very well in with the Golden State Warriors and then with the clippers. So you can do that. You can find some elder statesman type who's been around the block, who you trust, who knows their way around the league and who's got more experience than maybe you're still newish. GM, that's one way to do it. But that wouldn't have headed off this season ticket fiasco. That's a whole other problem. That's not even a basketball ops off problem.

Yeah. And I want to be clear. Like I'm not, I'm talking about it at the, at the, at the level of discussion above Nico, right? Like we can, we can talk about Nico and, you know, the trade and whatnot. But I'm just talking about organizationally, like not the basketball ops side. You know, I'm talking about the business side of it. And I don't, and I don't, you know, I don't.

I don't know who would be out there to do that, but that's where I was coming from with it. More so on the, hey, how do you run this business, you know, from our perspective before we get to Nico's decision making and whether we're going to authorize something or not? Like that has to become their first order of business, right? Because that's what you're talking about with the tickets and the fans and so on and so forth.

Then we can get to like Nico and basketball ops and stuff. You brought up Mark Cuban, Howard, which is a good person to bring up. But I think over the last, we're just playing inside baseball here over the last few months since, you know, he's ceded ownership. It doesn't seem like he's getting much input in the decision making as it stands, right? Like, it doesn't seem like his voice is that big now in the Mavericks organization, considering the last few moves that have happened. I'm not sure his voice is there at all. Mark Stein had reported this on his substack within the last couple of months where Cuban basically said outright, yeah. expected because remember all the reporting was Cuban was still going to be if not alternate governor,

then he was at least going to have a large say in basketball ops and was going to be a certain presence there, was still going to be very involved. And Cuban told Stein, I don't have the quotes in front of me, but basically said like, yeah, that's what I expected, but no, that hasn't happened. That's not the case. So Mark is still very present. You see him at games. You still see him sitting court side or nearby. He's still a minority owner, but it's pretty clear, like, he is not involved in the day to day at all or very minimally. And I think that's a mistake. Whatever you might think of Mark Cuban, it's absolutely mistake to immediately push him to the side and say, no, we got this. You guys know nothing about the NBA or how to run an NBA team. And it's showing

every day. It's tough. It's tough scene. All right, let's take a quick break, and we're going to talk about the team on the other side of this mega trade. A few weeks later. And we are back. Me and Roger for the moment, Howard is fucking with his SD card. He didn't check it before the pod. Was not prepared at all. It's crazy.

So we're going to talk about the Lakers really quickly because they are 16 and 4 over their last 20 games, completely undermining Howard's prediction that they would be ass. in the back stretch of the season. What have you seen from the Lakers thus far? And like, what does it say about the trade and honestly just how Luca has ingratiated himself into the Lakers fabric? And how great LeBron is playing. It's a big question, but I know there's a lot of answer to that. There's a lot to unpack here.

First of all, I'll apologize to the Lakers as well. While on one hand at our live show, I did have them when we did like the Dark Horse candidates. like in the crowd was kind of like was like what when i said the lakers it was a bay crowd they was hating to be fair yeah i'll take a little bit of credit for that but i also did not say i said i didn't howard howard actually said they could be a good defensive team because i remember this conversation um and i said oh you're not going to put lucca donches out there and lebron and have two relatively poor defenders at this stage is in their career and be a better defensive team and i was wrong like they they have been really good defensively um and let's be

clear this started before Luca got there. Like, they were defending. And that was kind of why, like, I didn't agree with when Howard said that because I thought you were taking out pieces and putting in something that traditionally, at least historically, had not been a very good defender. But they have been really, really good defensively. And it's not just personnel driven. It's schematically.

So you've got to give JJ Redick a lot of credit. You've got to give the players a lot of credit for buying in. but they're not afraid to, you know, scramble around, double you, like they know that they're soft interior-wise and size-wise, so they make up for it with a lot of a lot of game planning. But to do that, you've got to get the buy-in. Obviously, you have to be able to play at a certain level physically. LeBron, I'm just to say this shit right now.

Like, he could be the fucking MVP this year. Fucking wild. Did you see that graphic where it said, like, he was having the same stats that he did at when he was what, 26 or in the 2020, 2012 season. It basically have the same stats as how he is at 40. Yeah, I didn't see it, but right before we came on, I was looking up his, you know, I had to do it. I had to do it. I was like, man, what the, like what?

You know, and I was just looking at it. And, you know, you're talking about, I mean, these aren't career numbers, especially with the scoring, but they're all right up there. And the fact that, the fact that, you know, he's got that team playing, you know, and then let's get to the Luca of it. him and Luca are starting to work together.

Like they're starting to figure it out. Luca's legs are starting to come back. You know, he's starting to figure his way around that offense. You know, LeBron's realizing that, you know, yes, I can stand in the corner sometimes when Luca has the ball, but I can also, this frees me up to get out in transition and run in a way that, you know, I quite frankly haven't been able to do all the time

because of the personnel that's been on my team. And then Luca's able to advance it and get him out in transition. And so you're seeing two highly intelligent basketball players kind of figuring it out. JJ Reddick deserves a lot of credit. The rest of that team for the buy-in, the support. I mean, they're playing good basketball. I would not want to play them in the Western Conference right now. If you said to me, if you said to me Oklahoma City Lakers, I'm taking Oklahoma City.

But there's a part of me that would tell you I could definitely see the Lakers when they're playing well and playing like this. And that's, you know, that's the question for me is, you know, this is a pretty good sample size now of them, you know, defending and looking like this. But like that's, that's the way they would have to play to be the threat that they could potentially be. And I just have to apologize because I, yeah, I didn't see them defending at this level, quite frankly. And I thought it might be a little bit more difficult for Luca and LeBron to figure that out. And there were a few games there, but they seemed to be getting it together. And defensively, I'm fucking blown away. Like, I really am.

You talk about defense. And I think one of the things you didn't say, what you alluded to is the defense prior to the trade was centered around Anthony fucking Davis, which is who was one of the best, if not the best low post defender in the league, right? A defensive anchor. How hard is it to switch your defense mid-season when you take a guy out like that and it doesn't seem like you miss a beat because you have to adjust. What does that say about JJ Reddick?

Because I think he needs the flowers. Yeah. Incredible. Thank you for like elaborating. But that's, that is what I'm saying. Like, that's incredibly difficult.

And why JJ, JJ Reddick gets the flowers and why I said, you know, is equal to how, how good some of they are, some of them are individually. Schematically, they are great.

Like, you know, when you have AD, you don't have to live in a world where you're in a double situation all the time. scrambling out. Like you you don't necessarily have to worry about being a pack to paint. Like we're going to make you shoot a bunch of threes. Like you could you could get away with letting people into the interior a little bit more because you got the eraser back there. But the way they're the way they're made up now like those are things that you have to account for. Like you know,

we're going to listen guys and we get certain matchups and we got it big like you know you have you have two choices as I see it with the bigs that can dominate you on the block. You either let them go for theirs and you cut off all the other, you know, avenues to, to guys getting 15 to 20 that would support the post player going off. Or if he's so brilliant and capable of beating you himself, you double him and you start to scramble around and try to run people off the shots. And I've seen them do both. Like they just, they're really flexible with the game plan. JJ's not afraid to throw shit at the wall and those dudes are executing it. Also, another thing that was very underrated was Jared Vanderbilt coming into the lineup right before this.

He's been injured for like, seems like his whole Lakers career. But he's a great defender, especially somebody that can switch, that can guard the pick and roll. Like how they're icing screens is just, I'm in my bag when I'm watching them, Roger. Like they're doing really, really well. Like when you look at the personnel afterwards, you see a Jackson Hayes and you're like, I don't know. I don't know if this is going to work low postwise. They're playing their asses off and it's been great. Howard, are you back?

Wait, hold on. Hold on. Wait. You're back, Howard. Do you have anything to say for yourself to Los Angeles right now? Look at you putting on your Laker cape. My God. My God. My concern, which clearly the Lakers had too, was you traded the anchor of your defense and you have no other bigs. They clearly had the same concern because they promptly traded for Mark Williams, who they then promptly untraded for. not having an anchor big, not having rim protection, not having size, like those things all should doom you in the short term. And I, you know, my thing with the Lakers when we talked about this a few weeks back was, and after the trade was simply, I don't see how they can actually be viable this season. Like great that they got Luca, fantastic, but you got more work to do. That's still the case. And this offseason, they will clearly be going out and trying to find a viable starting center who's an upgrade from Jackson. What they've done in the meantime is incredible.

Raja did a really great job of explaining it. I'm still not sure how they're pulling it off, Raja. And I'm still curious to see how that holds up for the next month and a half and then into the playoffs. I'm really curious to see whether you can pull this off. I know they beat the Nuggets in a one-off on a Saturday night a week and a half ago or whenever it was. Can you beat the Nuggets four out of seven without any size? Can you beat the Oklahoma City Thunder four out of seven when they've got Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren out there. Like they're, they're doing it right now. I don't know if it's smoking mirrors

or just, you know, busting their asses, which they clearly are. But LeBron's still 40 and Lucas still, for the course of his career, a net negative as a defender. It's amazing what they've done. Credit to them for that and credit to JJ Reddick for scheming them in a way that that has made this possible. Is it sustainable? I think that's still a fair question. But that's the, you know, that's, that is the question, right? Like the question is, because. because they don't have the margin for error to not be as good as they are or as good as they have been defensively and for LeBron and or Luca to not be playing great. Like they just, you know what I mean? Like those things have to sync up for them to have the type of legs as a playoff team that that, that, that the Laker fan might, might want them to have.

You know what I mean? And it's fair to wonder if that's sustainable. It's very fair to wonder that. That's, you know, that's the question. Um, yeah, I don't, it's crazy. It's crazy to watch because Howard, you're, you're right and you're right, like LeBron's 40 and you're right. And Luca's a net negative as a defender throughout his career. You're right.

And then there's still part of me. I look at their lineup. And while they're not huge around the rim, they're really long and really versatile. Um, they, you know what I mean? Like they're just big bodies flying around out there. Like they, you know, it's an, it's an interesting thing. Got to give a lot of credit, but not a ton of margin for error. with whether they are, you know, going to be really good defensively and have a chance to win a game or not.

Howard, you are a voter, and we talked about this offline prepot, and you vote on Coach of the Year. What is JJ Reddick in that race, right? Obviously, it's a two-horse race with J.B. Bickerstaff and Kenny Atkinson. But JJ seems to be creeping up into that conversation. I'm not sure if he's going to win it, but he's definitely making a really, really good case. right now down the stretch of the season. He's making an incredible case. And I don't think anybody considered, you know, obviously at the beginning of the season, it's, you know, is he even going to be a good head coach? We don't know. He's never coached before. And then, you know, he's, you know, he's obviously really smart about the game and everything else. But like putting that into practice is a different thing. And then, you know, they were kind of

having the kind of season that you expected, right? Some, some ups and downs and whatever along the way. I don't think up until the last few weeks that you would have even thought about JJ in that conversation. But he's in it now. I still think this is probably a two-person race between Bickerstaff and Kenny Atkinson, which is just wild, considering that Atkinson replaced Bickerstaff in Cleveland. But it's like those are the two most impregnant. That's the thing. Coach of the year tends to be the who overachieved or over or surprised us the fans in media the most, like who who exceeded expectations by the most. It's not necessarily who had the best record or who did the best overall job. It's, It's a lot of it happens to be, and I admit this as a voter, it's a lot of like, oh, crap, like, you guys weren't supposed to be this good.

I guess you did something right. And then you get into the details of it, obviously. It's not as quite reductive as that. But JJ's in the conversation. I don't know if he'll crack the top two, but he'll probably be thrown on a lot of ballots. And again, as I say that it's March 4th and we've still got, you know, five, six weeks of games to go here. Let's see them sustain this. If they do, and they finish top two, three, four in the West with you know, a defense that's, as of right now, like, if you do the last 15 games, I think they're number one defensive efficiency, which is incredible. Yeah, JJ deserves a ton of credit and is going to get some love for coach of the year. Again, not going to win it, I don't think, but he'll be on a lot of ballots. I'm going to say this again. I don't care where they finish.

And the West is, the West, when you're looking at the West, you're talking about, you know, 21 losses, 22 losses, 23 losses, 24 losses, right? So there's like, it's so tight. From second to fifth, like there's that could change on any given night. Yeah. I don't care where they finish if, and this is a if, right? Like to the point we're making it, if they defend at a, at a reasonable level, top third in the league level, and you get into series and you have Luca Donchish, who's healthy and LeBron James playing at, at the level LeBron James is playing at,

it is a very, very scary thing to play against because you have, two dudes that will just go above any X's and O's that you as the opposing coach can throw at them and beyond the physical ability to go above the X's and O's, those two have the cerebral ability to look at what you're doing, dissect it. Like not every great player does that. You know what I mean? Like they're great players that can just physically go above your X's and O's as an opposing coach and get 40. Not everyone is equipped with the mental aptitude and the basketball. basketball IQ to be able to look at what you're doing on the fly, diagnose it, have an answer for it, and then orchestrate his own chess pieces around the board that night to beat it, and both of

them can do that. That's scary. Dragonfly Jones, he's a great guy on Twitter. Shout out of the Jicken Jones podcast. He said this thing that I always, that was really smart about LeBron, and I think it applies to Lupin. There are rare players where they are just one-man universes and one-man types of offenses that can get you to a certain place just by them being on the floor. LeBron has clearly been one of those guys over the last decade. But then you have Luca as well. And I'm thinking about Howard the 2022 playoff run that the Mavericks had.

And the roster that he dragged to the conference finals, albeit he did have Jalen Brunson, but Jalen Brunson wasn't this version of Jalen Brunson. And I look at this Lager's roster, swap Jalen Brunson for LeBron James. right and you have Austin Reeves who's I think doesn't get enough credit for also adjusting his game to play alongside this group

there was a big question on if he was going to play how well he was going to play without the ball in his hands all the time he's played pretty well that's what talks me into the Lakers doing it going on a run is that you have two guys that put the fear of God in you at any given postseason possession and that's

very anecdotally right you know we'll have to see what happens. But like when the chips are down and it's a game five and the series has died two, two, I'm scared to death of Luca Dachens. And I'm definitely scared to death of LeBron James. They have both of them on the same team. And I think that's what I said at the trade deadline. Like I didn't know what this team was going to be.

But I'd know I'd be, if there were two guys that I think could figure it out and I'd be scared to death of, Luca Dons is and LeBron James. And I think that's just where we are right now. We don't know what the future holds. but that's what we know now is we're scared as hell as both of those people. Luke is not even playing it as best yet. No, right. That's, I mean, to me, that's actually the scary part.

You know, the shooting's starting to come around. His turnovers are still a little high. Like, he's still feeling his way because it's the first time he's ever played in a universe that is not completely centered around him. And the Lakers are still figuring that out too. Like, you know, when are we LeBron-centric? when are we Lucascentric? The fact is one of those guys can be on the court for all 48 minutes of every game.

And that is just like the most insane luxury that you could possibly have. Two of the all-time great player, score, creator types, both of whom are like basically jumbo point guards, right? You know, 6, 8 and whatever. Like, it's almost unfair. And the only thing that offsets it, or was going to theoretically offset it was, yeah, but they'll be, you know, they'll have a hard time defending because those guys aren't great defenders and they don't have any sizes. All the other stuff we just went through. And that stuff isn't even a holding up. So it is scary. Like I say, I do want to, I still have my doubts about whether they could beat Oklahoma or Denver four out of seven in a series.

But at the same time, if I'm Denver or Oklahoma, I sure as hell don't want to face the Lakers. 100% without wow. I don't, I don't want to be looking across the court at those two guys. and Austin Reeves has been playing at an incredible level himself to the point where Laker fans that I follow on social media are talking about, you know, only, I'm not even sure if it's semi facetiously. There may be no facetiousness whatsoever in talking about a big three. Maybe you should slow down a little bit. What's his Laker fans who did that? It was LeBron who posted it on Instagram about the new big three in Los Angeles. He did that.

It was the Laker blog boy. But you know what? If I play devil's asses. advocate real quick on that. Like, you know, obviously I agree with everything you just said. And I was, you said something about OKC as I was watching them play the Rockets last night as undermanned as the Rockets. The rockets rolled out. Rockets play their asses off. They played their asses off. That style, this would be, this would be the pushback and could be the Achilles Hill of the Lakers in the playoff, not a guarantee, but if I was going to play devil's advocate with that, right? That,

though they play so physical, the amount of offensive rebounds and just scraps for second chances at balls and tips and hustles and dives on the floor to go get them. I mean, that, like, those teams could chop the legs out of a team like the Lakers over the course of a long series because it's so physical.

Like, they could be so punitive on the offensive glass if you can't control your defensive board. Like those type of things, if they could get at you in that way over the course of a series, could have, you know, it might not be as easy as like, hey, man, like we're above average defensive team and I have these two guys because they could do things to you physically that you might not be able to match up with, i.e., like, you know, both of those teams were just, I think one at 15, 14.

They were just taking turns like volleyball and the ball off of the offensive board last night. It was kind of crazy. I was just thinking about that when you said OKC because there are multiple plays where, where, you know, Chet and Hartenstein are playing off of each other and one misses and the other one's there to clean it up and they're so long and big. That would just be the kind of pushback.

All right. It's time for Cliff to come up in here. It is a Tuesday. So that means we have a motherfucking mailbag. Cliff, how does it feel to be in a torture chamber? Do you have any advice for the Mavericks fans? Listen, man, just weather the storm, bear it through it.

Y'all be all right. Give it a couple years. And Nico we trust, right? Cliff, how often are you, how often you run the odds on Tankathon for your Sixers right now to finish? Bro, we just did it. We just did it yesterday.

We just did it yesterday. They got the number two pick the second time we ran it. So maybe Ace Bailey might come to Philly. You never know. Hopefully we capture the flag, get worse. They got a couple games. Future's looking bright already. It's looking bright, man.

I love it. I love it. Speaking of a team I really hate, the Cavs and the Celtics, right? What's up, fellas? Love the Pob, smarter, happier, and better informed after each episode. What does it get a sense of positional or strategic matchups you think will determine the outcome of a potential playoff matchup between my Cavs and the damn Celtics?

Do the Cavs need one of Hunter or Wade to play out of their mind to win a series against Boston? Thanks Mustafa, Excel Casson. Yeah. Someone's going to have to play out of their mind. Like, you're going to need Donovan Mitchell to be Donovan Mitchell. And then he's going to need at least two other people to, really go crazy in that series, provided everybody else is doing what they normally do. Like, they ran them down the other night.

Like, that was a crazy, they couldn't be guarded. And you're going to have to have moments like that where Garland is doing that and Donovan Mitchell is doing that. And then you're going to need support from your role guys. Like, it happens every year in the playoffs, especially when you play a championship level team. Like, your role guys are going to have to step up and have big series in a way that, you that maybe their role guys didn't,

and that sometimes is the difference in the series. Stars usually do what they do in the playoffs, my boys. Like I say this all the time. Stars usually show up, especially on teams that are championship level teams. Stars are going to do what they do, who gets more support from the other dudes. Every time I think about this series that we're expecting,

probably the conference finals, Cavs Celtics, that's what we're expecting. Every time I think about it this way, the Cavs entire offense runs through Mitchell and Garland, who have been phenomenal, both all NBA caliber guards, undersized as they are, but those guys do a lot of damage.

Everything begins with them. And the Celtics can throw at you. Drew Holiday, Derek White, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, maybe even a little Al Hartford. I want to go too far with that. But they've got so many guys they can switch onto the guards

and so many guys who can legitimately cover them that I wonder you know, how the Cavs offense will withstand it for a best of seven series. And like that's, to me, that's the whole thing. There'll be other matchups along the way that are interesting. And, you know, it's a Roger's point about like, who has a breakout guy, like, you know,

you get the Ty Jerome game, you know, the Dean Wade game, whatever. Somebody bursts out on a given night. But I, everything is about the star back court. And I just think that the Celtics are uniquely suited with their personnel to make life difficult for those guys. And on the flip side of it, I don't know that the calves have as many answers to try to slow down Brown and Tatum. I agree. Next question. That's all you got, Logan? I agree. I agree. I agree with two basketball experts. What are you going from? The hell.

All right. This is from Will Plaza. This is completely biased because Alan Arras is my favorite player. He says, I'm 40. My favorite player growing up was AI. His game was entertaining. His style was unique. The way he carried himself. He knew he was the shit. Crossed Over MJ. Who was 2025 AI? or who gets the closest. Another question just came to my mind. Has there been an AI type player since him? I mean, I guess the answer is Jha? Just in terms of, like, people loving his on-court game,

having controversies off the floor, kind of being like, and I'm just, I'm just making an argument. I don't think there's necessarily like an AI person, but if you're going to say somebody that's close to it, I would say him. But like, Jaya doesn't play every game. I think that he had an opportunity to have that. that kind of cult-like following.

But I think it's kind of, over the last few years, it's kind of waned. So I think that you see like bits and pieces of AI. I think there's some AI and Anthony Edwards. But I think the closest would have been Jha. I'm going to defer to the one guy on this podcast who played with Alan Iverson. Yeah, I don't. That's a very tough question.

I don't know. I mean, because you could come at it from so many angles, right? Like if you're, you're purely talking about the whole AI experience. which was kind of polarizing at first as a player and then, you know, beloved and, and, um, you know, at times having some shit going on off the floor, like we could get into that. If you're talking about purely as like a bucket on the court player competitor fierce, like gnaw his own arm off to get a win, um, you know, I, and so I don't have a great comp. Like I, what I would say, I won't answer that question because I don't know and I don't want,

I can't do it justice. I don't think that there's been. or will be a player that does what AI did. That makes sense. Like, because of all the things that I just talked about, like you can attack him from so many different angles as, you know, as a basketball historian, I don't know that anybody kind of fits the bill. As I want to do it purely as a player on the court.

You're talking about, you know, a size profile, you know, a style of play that, that kind of defies that profile because he did so much in the paint and around the rim and just off the bounce and he was on the floor all the time. And even there, I mean, shit. You know, I don't know. I don't know, man.

He was so unique. That dude was so unique as a player, man. Like, obviously I played 12, 13 years and I never saw anything like it. I don't know. I don't have a great answer for that. Plus he was only six feet and like generously listed at six feet at like 165.

Soking wet at one. How tall was he really, Roger? For real. How tall you think Iverson was? Yeah, he's six foot. Like, he's six foot. Like, I mean, he could have been a shave. He could have been a hair under that.

If you told me he was 5.11 and three quarters, I wouldn't trip. If you told me he was six foot and a half inch? No. One, like, okay. Okay. That's it. All right. But he was slight.

Like he was wiry strong and super athletic, but he was not a big body. Yeah, that's why the jaw comparison is hard. Because like, jaw's longer. He's a couple inches taller. He's got a little more weight on, a little muscle on him. Like, it's, yeah, I'm with you, Roger. I don't know that there's a great comparison or has been. All right, we got a Blazers question.

Nobody shows the Blazers any love. This is from Tyler Roy Hart. Hi, I have a few questions from the perspective of a Blazers fan. The recent team's success is clearly due largely to sustained intensity, effort, and defense. These are the things that Billups said he was trying to create. Seems to me like he deserves a lot of credit. Then, do you agree? And really, how do you tell with,

coaches from the outside. It seems like accurately judging coaches aside from very worst, the very best is really hard. I want to give Chauncey due credit, but it's hard to say how much that is. While this has been a lot of fun, and I do think this team has raised both its ceiling and floor, it's hard to see what the path forward to an even higher ceiling might be. One involving deep playoff runs without taking recent success for granted. Andre, the hell out of it. What kind of offseason next steps make sense? Isn't this team in danger of getting stuck in that dreaded NBA lower middle? Aiton and Grant aren't worth all that much right? I'm having to have a lot. I'm happy to have a team worth rooting for, a feisty little upset machine, but it seems like a hard

foundation to build on. But maybe I'm missing something. Thanks, Tyler. Good question, Tyler. You want to answer that, Roger? Roger just wanted to praise him for having a really good question. It's a great question. Yeah, that's his analysis. That's hard enough to answer that. Man, just enjoy it, bro. I mean, if you get a good draft pick or something, it'll work out. But I think the barometer of a good team at the stages are at, that they play hard, right? That they do the things that they're supposed to.

They're building good habits. They're building a culture. That's all you want to do right now. Like, it takes a little bit of luck to be great in this league. But in the meantime, man, like, just enjoy the process. Roger, did I do a good job with that? I think you actually did. Man, I thought you were going to say some stupid shit, but you actually,

you actually did hit the nail on the head a little bit there with especially from a coaching perspective with Billups when you have a team like that that doesn't have championship aspirations yet and you're building you just want to make sure that the message stays fresh that guys are still playing for him and that usually manifests itself and guys going out there playing hard and you seeming to have a really sound culture and stuff like that so great job Logan congrats to Logan for exceeding Raj's low expectations. Yeah, absolutely. You're now coach of the year.

Do I get like a fourth place vote for coach of the year? Anything Howard? No, Logan, I agree with you. Like it's only been two years, less than two years since they shipped out Dame, right? Like that was a traumatic moment at a huge inflection point for the franchise and for the fans. And it takes a while usually to build back up. So there's that. And you don't find.

Dame Lillards every day. And so, you know, will Shaden Sharp or Scoot Henderson or somebody else who's either there now or coming soon emerge as the next Dame, somebody who you can, you know, really love, get behind and rallies the city, takes you on some deep playoff runs? Like, who knows? So yeah, like, enjoy the ride for now because you're seeing them taking great steps. I do think, like, the existential question is like, do you have somebody you can actually build around? And the answer is probably no. Like, they're probably still looking for that guy. but in the meantime, they've got some really good, talented, interesting young players who are playing their butts off. Chonzie's doing a nice job. His job security certainly had been,

doubts have been raised over the last year or so. So, you know, props to them for being patient as a franchise and letting this group grow a little bit. Eventually, you've got to decide, you've got to pick a direction and figure out who actually is your foundation. But again, it's been less than two years since you traded your franchise star. You don't have to make that decision today. Well, now it's time for a little segment we like to call real one of the, no, I'm just playing Roger. Roger got to go. We will see you guys on Friday. Talk to you all soon. All this shit's, my.