The Ringer NBA Show - LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards, Development and Fixes | Upside High

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Jonathan Tjarks and J. Kyle Mann return from Vegas and are ready to discuss up-and-coming prospects! First up is LaMelo Ball, and they weigh in on what one of the most famous young players working today can do to improve and make his mark (01:39). Then it's on to Anthony Edwards and how his ball dominance can be an asset as well as something to adapt to (25:01). Hosts: J. Kyle Mann & Jonathan Tjarks Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ring Your Wrestling show is getting you closer to all things pro wrestling. The Masked Show with David and Kaz drops every Thursday on the feed, along with the new show hosted by pro wrestling superfan Evan Mack called MacMania. Plus, hear instant reactions to all the biggest WWE pay-per-view events with their post-paperview shows. Check out The Ring Your Wrestling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Folks, basketball is very good, and it is a beautiful day to talk about basketball. Any day that I'm talking about basketball with my co-host, Jonathan Charks, is a beautiful Say, Charks, how you doing, buddy?

I'm doing well. I think it's better. Now we're back over Zoom. It's probably a better dynamic for both of us instead of being in IRL in real life. You're big on the IRL abbreviation, I noticed. You know, you're big on like the text abbreviations.

I didn't take you for one of those like heavy millennial, digital-minded people because you're off social media. What's the deal with that? Well, I am still a millennial though. We do the best we can, but we are who we are, right? We are internet creatures. Ain't that the truth.

So Charks and I just got back from Vegas. Actually, I mean, time flies. I've been back for a week. I was still my wife. But we went out to the G League Showcase. If you were listening last week, we were out there for that, milling around in Vegas watching a lot of the, which was totally disrupted by the COVID call-ups, as we saw.

The NBA has been really irregular, really strange right now with all the players going into protocols, those numbers. I don't have them in front of me. But it's a lot. We've all seen it. And it was interesting to see those guys kind of come up. This week, we want to be. us focus, we're going to come back and talk more about some of the headline names from the last

couple of years. Two players who were in the same draft. I think they were, there was some sort of, there were a lot of mixed bag. I don't think that there was sort of a unanimous camp for either one of these guys, I would say. The first guy that we want to kind of jump in and talk about here is lamella ball. Lamela ball, one of the most famous basketball players for his age group, really of like the social media era, would you say he's the most famous basketball player? Is that possible? Like along with like Zion?

I mean, him or Zion, yeah, probably. You know, Lamello is on the radar really early. Mainly because of his big brother, he sort of looked like a Muppet with that big floppy hair that he had when he was at Chino Hills. When you first found out about him, did you kind of go through a similar process that I did where there were sort of like these levels

of starting to take him more and more seriously as we went. How did you feel about Lamello during his high school days during that like YouTube mixtape era that seemed to last for a long time? I mean, it seemed like we knew him for so long before he was actually playing serious, organized basketball. Talk about like what your early impressions were of him, like leading up to where we are now. Well, I got to give a shout out to our old ringer colleague, Danny Chow. So he wrote a big takeaway piece. It actually launched the ringer. He went and talked to the ball, all the ball brothers. Lamello was like in seven grade at the time. So I had heard, I mean, obviously you heard about him because he's a middle schooler.

I didn't know what to make of it, really. I was interested by what they were doing, the family. And I always thought, you know me, I'm big believer in younger brothers and playing up. And so it's always like, okay, Lamello is playing up from like the age of 10, basically. He's always playing its better competition. He's always testing himself. Iron sharpens iron. So I try to stay out of the celebrity stuff. And I was just like, you know, this could be a player to watch in a couple years because Lanz was really good, obviously. And if Lonzo's good, then LaMello had a chance to be better. Yeah, it's an interesting thing where I feel like he was, you know, you had like the 90-point game. You've got him pointing at the spot on the floor from God knows how far away that was,

that famous picture. You know the one I'm talking about where he calls his shot. I think some of that stuff just sort of overshadowed who he was as a player, but if you look between the lines, it was like, you're right, about the playing up, the things like that. He had developed those skills. And you see a lot of those things sort of crystallizing in who he is now as a player. A lot of that sort of odd, we've talked about this on the Ringer University show last year, that that odd sample that he had as a younger player made him extremely experimental, made him extremely creative. I was kind of coming into the draft, though, fast forwarding, you, where did you have him on your, on your big board, like in terms of how did you see him going into the league and how did he sort of

surpass your expectations. I had an aunt won Lamello, too, and I think that was definitely wrong. I mean, I'm an really good player. We'll talk about him later in the show, but I think pretty clearly now Lamello's the best player in that draft, and he's exceeded, I was pretty high on him, and he's exceeded my expectations for sure. I wasn't sure how his scoring would translate. I wasn't sure, because the passing was obvious.

You could watch him for five minutes and say, this guy's an elite passer. He can run a team. because he had this weird combination where he'd make these crazy passes, but his turnovers were always very low in spite of the absolutely insane passes he would attempt. That was very encouraging.

It was always just a matter of, is this guy going to score enough? Is the jump shot real? Can he score around the rim? Will that make up for, will that allow him to maximize his passing ability? Kind of like we talked about with Josh Giddy last week, if you're a great passer and you can't score

at a certain point that, like, contradicts and it kind of holds you back in spite of your passing. Well, I think in these two years in the NBA, we've seen us, he can score well enough. He can get his buckets and move the ball around and make things happen. Yeah, I think that well enough is kind of the range where the conversation about him like going forward, where does he go from here? How does he evolve, get better? Like, where does his production kind of bloom and blossom? You're right, like, scoring wise right now, he's right at about 20 points per game, eight assists per game. The shooting is an interesting thing because the free throw percentage, I think, is really interesting thing. He's shooting 91.6%

from the line, getting to the line as a whole other kind of conversation. I want to kind of break this down into the areas of concern that we had for him going forward and how he sort of addressed those. You're right about the passing. Those things were always there. I was looking last night. He's agree or disagree with me on this. I think that he might be, Him and Yokic, he and Yokic might be the most elite, like over-the-top placement passers in the world? I was just thinking this morning he is a Yokic-level passer, but he's much, much faster, obviously. But I would say they're the best two passes in the league, I think, pretty clearly. Oh, you think overall they are the best two.

I guess you put LeBron in there, too, but those are the top three passers in the league. Harden. But so here's a thing I think, what I think separates Lamello and Yokic from the other guys. So if you look at, like, the tracking numbers, and Lamello and Yokich are both. both in the top five in touches, but neither is very high in time of possession. So Yokic holds the ball for 4.1 minutes the game. Lamello's at 6.

And you compare Hardens at 9.2, Lukas at 9.4, Trey Young's at 8.6. What's that saying is, is Lamello and Yokic give the rock up. Like they're passing a ton and they're not holding the ball. They're letting everybody else get involved.

It's kind of like the count. counter to the whole heliocentric thing, your Hardin, Luca, Tre Young, LeBron to a lesser extent. They're more of a reaction to that and saying, we're going to hold the ball, but we're also going to get rid of it really, really fast. We're not going to just dribble the ball into the ground.

We're going to let everybody else eat too. Yeah, I think you're spot on right there because there are like these like macro kind of conversations in the NBA about like how to play. What's the best way to play? Because we've seen, I have a friend who always says there are a lot of ways to skin a cat with NBA.

First off, that's a weird thing to say. Like, poor cats. Come on. Who are skinning these cats? I don't know. Let's drop that phrase. That's a weird one. Drop that from your Lexicon, folks.

No, I think over time, we've seen different versions of this. We've seen, like, feed the ball to shack, you know, like players who are, like, touch-dominate, who keep the ball a lot. But you kind of have to be an efficient score to play that way, to justify playing that way. Otherwise, you're just going to have a bad offense. But then we've also seen examples of, like, low touch time, high creativity players, like the birds, the magics, the guys that don't have to pound the ball, but they, like, provide a lot of creativity and problem solving, and you still

have, like, fluidity in your moving the ball. And I think the low touch time thing is a great point. We're talking about with touch time. And to me, I live in Dallas. Luke is my guy. But I don't think there's any question, if you're a player, you'd rather play with Lamello. I think he is way more fun to play with because he's got like a Hardin Luca, their teams never run really. They're actually pretty slow-paced teams because those guys want to control everything. They want to walk it up, make the most efficient play every single time. And that works really, really well, but I think it's really hard to play with guys like that. And I think you look at Hardin Luca LeBron, they've had a lot of teammates who have not really

liked playing with them, right? Like Hardin has had the shift every two years, Hardin basically had to drop his co-star because co-star said, I don't want to play like this anymore. Obviously, Luca and KP has a whole different conversation. LeBron has had three or four different teams. I think it just gets old. When you have one guy doing everything, the other guys just don't have as much fun. And I guess to bring it all around, Lamello to me is the most fun player to watch in the league because I think fundamentally, what is basketball about? To me, it's moving the ball and playing as fast as you possibly can. And that's what Lamello does every single night. And to me, that's the way. That's the way.

the game should be played. That is the point of this whole thing, my opinion. You're teeing this up perfectly because I wanted to ask you about, you and I had a conversation actually taking it way back. We had a conversation with KOC a year ago where you and KOC came pretty strong saying that you felt pretty strongly that like even then like Lamello over John at the time, I know that like ruffled some feathers. I don't feel like that's a very controversial thing to say at all. But then you said something to me recently about we were just having a conversation about like the six or so. You wanted to throw Shay in this group,

but I thought he was maybe a little more scoring dominant. Like he leaned scoring a little more heavily, like these score playmakers. Luca Lamello, Cade, Trey Morant. I told you, like, I asked you, where would Lamello sit among those? Where do you think he sits among those five, at least? Where would you put him if you're building a team?

I think first, for now, I would take Cade off this list. I don't think it's really fair to rank Cade against each other guys. because he's proven nothing in the NBA yet. All these other guys, they've got a lot of skins on the wall. Cade, I think, has to be in his own. We've got to wait and see a bit with Cade. So if you go to those four,

I'm always going to lean towards size. Like, end of the day, give me the 6'4-8 guy of the 6'4-2 guy. From there, I think Luca's a better player than Lamello. Let me be clear about that. I mean, Luca is great.

Dallas guy, obviously. I'm a little biased. that said, I might take Lamello 1 just because it's easier to play with him. I might, I don't know. I think most likely Luca will have a better career.

I think that may, we'll see. I just think Lamello, guys are going to want to play with Lamello. I don't know if there's a long list of guys like, dang, I want to watch Luca hold the ball for 40 minutes complain to the refs and just jack-up shots.

I don't, like, but I think with Lamello, I think everyone, the league wants to play with Lamello. I think what you're, the point you're making here is like ball dominant scoring versus like guys that have more fluidity play like different styles like a good example of this is lamella ball attempts and

makes more catch-and-shoot reload relocated threes per 100 possessions than any of those guys so meaning like i think that passing skill sets to are like role dependent sometimes for some guys like luca hasn't really as much as i love him and as much as i would i still have him number one. But I think the argument for having a guy like a guy like Lamello higher is that A, he will fluidly go on and off the ball like I was saying and can score on and off the ball as willing to do it. His passing isn't as dependent on like I have to have the ball in my hands. I don't have to be throwing a home run immediately every single time. And I think that like, I think that Luca and Morant and Trey are that way. I just, I don't know that I totally fall

with like the Kade thing. I personally think Kate is going to get there. I'm a Kade believer still. But I think what you're right about, like it's hard to compare about like the scene versus the unseen. We just, we haven't had the opportunity. We also haven't had the opportunity to see Lamello in this kind of situation.

So I was going to tee that up to ask you if I'm a team. Like the Hornets right now are in the position to, to make the playoffs. That could shift depending on some things, how they go the rest of the year, up or down with their schedule. How do you slow lamello down, though? What do you think the wall is?

Because if you look at like a Luca, if you look at Trey, obviously with the hide has been an issue, Luca has proven that he can like pick a team apart in the playoffs. How do you think teams would slow lamello down? How do you neutralize his impact if you can? That's an interesting question.

And I think that's what makes him such an interesting player is because he's such a passer. It's kind of like Yoko. too, you can't double him. I think he want to make Lamello's score, ultimately. I think that's the way I would go with it. And that was the thing with Yokic too in the playoffs earlier in his career. It was, we're not going to double.

We want to make you get 40 and hold everybody else down because your passing is really your superpower. And I don't know that Yokic obviously took that next step and became a dominant score, too. I think if I was a team in a playoff series, I would try to single up Lomelo's. Mello, keep him in the half court, and say, you've got to beat us as a score. I think that would be the move for me. And I think to go back to what we're saying about the way he plays, what really clicked for me is I was doing a piece on Miles Bridges earlier this season. And I was looking at his game log. And what jumped out to me was all of his highest field goal attempt games.

So looking at it right now, he's had six games of 21 shots or more. And five of the those games, he's shot above 50%. What that's saying is, when Miles Bridges has it going, Lamello gets him the ball. And I think that's really what separates him from almost anyone, these young point guards, is the ability to read the game. And that just lets your teammates play so free. Because if you watch Bridges, he takes a lot of shots, but he's not jacking up shots. He knows if he's hot, if he has the mismatch, the ball's going to find him. And that just makes it easier to play basketball when you know this guy is reading the floor, getting me the ball when I need it. And when I need the ball, I'm going to have it to score. And I think that's what LaMello does

already, is that ability to read the game, that basketball IQ. He's really a savant. He really is. His feel and his touch are just, they're on another level. He's really a developmental kind of anomaly in like how he came up, as we've said. But he, it shows. And I think he's a really interesting thing here is that you put him into your offense and you're automatically going to get connectivity because like you were saying, he isn't score dominant, but he has demonstrated that he can score. I think the shooting has kind of come around. Like we said, 38.6% from three this year. He's, he gets it off the glass. He's like absolutely lethal in transition. I think he's probably with Yolkich again, like probably the best hit-ahead passer in the world. We've seen that 100,000 times already.

that you sent me the one where he caught the ball under the basket and is literally leaning back on his back foot and throws just a, well, it wasn't a dart, he just dropped it over the top. He throws it across the court, falling out of bounds, right to another guy, but to Bridges, actually. And that's something that has sort of a psychological impact on your team. If you have a guy like that on your team, you're going to run.

That's kind of the impact of that. And another stat is that I found that I thought was really interesting, He's number one in the NBA and pick and roll passouts. So that just means he is consistently making the right read. And he never ever looks, you know, he never looks challenged. Like, he never looks stressed. That's the thing. But I think kind of the question going forward for Lamello is, I think you're right.

I think once we start to see him like in a playoff scenario, how our team's going to defend him? I don't know that he's like, leans heavily on anything enough where you could totally take him away. You can play a couple different ways, and he can still provide the things that he provides. But I think going forward for Charlotte, what do you think the missing piece for them is? That's always kind of the way we wrap this with these prospects. It seems like, I mean, defensively, they're pretty bad. They're 30th in the league in defensive rating. They play really fast.

When you kind of go and look at the way they play, it's like they play pretty well offensively to play so fast, but they just get murdered and transitioned defensively. And what do you think? I mean, I've heard a lot of people talk about like Miles Turner. Do you think a Miles Turner trade could work for them? I would love that. I think you don't have to rush it. Lamello's only in year two.

You don't need to go all in right now. There's no need for that. I mean, you can compare him to Trey and Jha. Like, that's year three, year four, Luca. Like, he's only year two. If he makes the playoffs this year, it's a huge win. Because they were the 10th seed last year. They came off the bench a lot of last season.

So it's fine. But I do think ultimately the five spot, you need some kind of the other 30th in defense. A Miles Turner would be great. I think a Christian would. They've got the right pieces. What I really love, I just think Lamello, to me, what makes Lamello so exciting is not just him as Bridges. I think that could be the chance to be a really great one-two combination.

They complement each other so well. I think that's the foundation of a great team for a lot. long time. Because you compare Lamello and Bridges to like Jalen and Jason or Simmons and Embed. Those two guys, they don't make each other better, right? Like Jalen and Jason are doing their own things. And the best version of Jason Tatum and the best version of Jalen Brown can't really coexist because they're both in the same spots on the floor.

They both want the ball. But the best version of Lamello and Bridges are actually perfect for each other. I think that's the big thing if I'm Charlotte. I've got this foundation for the next 10 years of this elite wing, elite point guard. We're going to play super fast. Bridges can score. Doesn't need the ball. Lamello can pass, doesn't need the ball.

I think that when you have your top two pieces, when they align like that, everything else falls into place. What do you think about this? Miles Turner and Karris Lavert for Gordon Hayward and PJ plus the 2022 first What do you think about that? The full bill who says no? I don't know that I need Lavert on this team.

Levert's a ball dominant guy. I think Turner is the guy you want because she can spread the floor, defend. He can get out and run still too, but I don't think you'd need an extra ball dominant guy like Levert. I'd much rather see Book Knight.

I think Book Knight's got a chance to be really good player too. Obviously my guy, Kai Jones, not playing much, and that might be too far down the road. But I think at the very least, you want to develop Book Night into that sixth-man score a role. He's had good size to play off Lamello also. I think ultimately upgrade the Terry Rosie's spot.

Definitely. Lamello, he's just an unreal talent. It's been really surreal to kind of watch him blossom. But like we said, like he fails fast. He has a short memory. And sometimes I have a hard time knowing whether or not that's like he's just too reckless. You know, there's like an overlap there where it's like he is pretty wild with his decision making. Are they going to get into a play?

Some of that might just be this is going to take time. Like you were saying, it's in terms of the roster building, like, hey, let's not rush. Why we're not in a hurry. This is year two. But I think comparing him with the other guys that are like comparable sort of score playmaker types, it's interesting to think like what would a lamello look like if he had been on that Hawks team, like his ability to go on and off ball, his ability to be super creative. What would that have meant for the Hawks?

Because I feel like the Hawks kind of ran into trouble where Trey plays one way, you know? You know, the door's wide open for Charlotte to put together a team because these pieces are really difficult to get. Yeah, and I think like what you're saying with the Hawks, like if you read, oh, so Siritt Sohi went to the Hawks and training camp for us. They're a great feature on it. Go back and read that. And you can just feel all the young players talking about how they wanted more opportunities. You can already just feel the discontent. And because, yeah, Tray monopolizes the ball.

So a Cam Reddish, a DeAndre Hunter, a Kevin Herder, they're all kind of forcing things somewhat this year before they got hurt because they're all trying to do more because they have one guy with the ball in his hands a lot. Same thing in Dallas, right? When you have a guy who holds the ball, everyone else has to almost like fight harder to get the shots they get.

They don't play as free. I guess also to go back, how'd you have Lamello for the draft? Not even ask you. Where'd you have them? I thought, I had him won. I thought he, I understood it was, it was similar to Aiton where I understood the thinking behind taking. You know, there's some of these guys that are like these archetypes where it's like this big seven foot or this super athletic wing.

And it's like that we'll talk about in a minute. We're going to talk more about Anthony Edwards. But I understood why, but I personally thought that he was the most talented player in the draft. And the more I watched him, I mean, it was kind of eye-opening. I did two videos on him over the course of like 10 months. And yeah, I mean, it was super eye-opening to really lean in and watch him. And be like, there's definitely something here. Okay, this is going to seem silly, but hopefully this makes sense.

So I've been like on a real Wild West kick lately, reading a lot of books about the Wild West. I read this. Yeah, great, by the way. Lonesome Dove is awesome. So I read this book. It's called the Comanche Empire, which is awesome too. And it's like breaking down the whole Comanche civilization. And there was just really long segment about like Comanchee war bands.

And like what a Comanchee war band is like they have their winter. They winter and village. Then when the spring comes, it's like all the young guys, they get their horses. We're going to go rip it and run. We're going to go raid the west, raid Mexico, raid the east. Like we're going to have five or six guys on horses. We're going to move as a team. We have one leader.

And we just go. And I'm reading that. I'm like, this is what basketball ultimately is. Right? Like basketball is like stretching this civilizational urge, you know, because the Comanches were like robbing and killing. We don't want to do that anymore. But the same basic idea is the same where football is much more of a like an industrialized mass communication, like a mass movement, mobilized big groups of people like an assembly line.

Basketball is way more fundamental. It's one more primitive. Let's get three or four guys. Let's rip and run. Let's just go. And it's like Lamello to me is the ultimate leader of a war band. Like he makes everybody else involved. He's a great leader. And who wouldn't want to be on his team. Like, we're going to make things happen. It's going to be fun. Let's go. This is, Galaxy Brain Charks is a wonderful thing that I don't feel like I've gotten to see enough. You just like out met a galaxy brain metaphor. You blew my mind with that one. You're always teasing me about my metaphors. That was, uh, so did you, were you sitting here reading this and you just had this Eureka moment? Like, this is basketball. Wow. A hundred percent. Yeah, 100%.

Is Lamello the leader that team, though? That's what I'm wondering. Or is he more of a lead by example type and like somebody else leads the team. So, of the way, you know, Yokic, I don't know that he or Luca. You've always talked about Luca isn't necessarily the leader of that team. Is he, from what you've observed, do you think Limo's a leader? He's a leader on the court. I don't know. He's so young.

Off the court, maybe not, but definitely on the court. Like, the thing goes through him. Before we go on to talk about Anthony Edwards, the Ant Man, we're going to take a quick break. So a player that's kind of on the other end of the developmental spectrum in terms of, like, how he came to the league. I feel like Anthony Edwards is kind of opposite of Lamello in a way in terms of like feel. Like coming into the league, I feel like Anthony over time has these like immense physical tools. And that's kind of what got him here, you know? And not that Lamello doesn't have those, but their challenges are kind of different.

Do you see what I'm saying, like where I'm going with that? Like where they came from to where they are and where they're going to be going. I feel like Lamello is like really, really far ahead of Anthony in terms of feel. How do you feel about that statement? Yeah, I mean, they're very different players. They're very different paths ahead of them for sure. I think that's fair to say, yeah. I think Lamello is clearly the more in terms of basketball IQ and feel for the games.

Anthony Edwards is much more just getting buckets. Like I'm bigger and faster than you and I can also shoot and I can just score at will, basically. That's kind of how he plays right now. Yeah. So over the course of the year last year, It was kind of an odd year for Minnesota in terms of they had a coaching change. Some of the numbers are a little weird if you go in there and you want to read into that. I know not everybody wants to do that, but I think that Ant's rookie year was good.

He kind of picked up momentum as we went. I always have a hard time with like people really, one of the like cornerstone like, well, actually responses to any kind of work is when people do the like after the All-Star break. Do you ever get that from people? they're like, well, actually, after the All-Star break, I'm always like, yeah, but after the All-Star break is also a time where teams like start resting. They start, it's kind of like what we're seeing right now in the NBA in December where it's like there's a lot of guys coming up and getting chances. But Minnesota over the course of the year kind of started to put some momentum together. Ant started to kind of figure it out. I know Chris Finch came in and started giving Carl a different role.

Same kind of deal that we did with Lamello here. What was your early impressions of Ant did here? he succeed? Did he surpass them? What were your impressions of his first year coming up to where we are now? Well, I think you hit on the main thing is when Finch came in. And if you look at the numbers, once Finch became the head coach, he really pushed Ant to a bigger role. Because right now, aunt needs the ball. And if he doesn't have it, he's just kind of out there sometimes. Like he needs, to he engaged in the game, he needs to activate his scoring. He can't just be a spot up guy. And I think Finch recognized that, empowered him a bit, and his number started going up pretty fast once Finch took over.

And I think that is carried over into this new season. I think the first question with Edwards, he's a weird player in a lot of ways because he's not a point guard. But he's not a traditional two guard either. Because for me, when I think traditional two guard, I think Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, a guy who can play on and off the ball who runs around screens, catches and shoots. but that's not really Ants game, right? He's a ball dominant guard who's not a playmaker. So I think the first question for me is, what kind of player is Ant anyways?

What kind of school does he fall under in terms of type of player? I think you're hitting on what the kind of developmental questions are going to be for him going forward. Like, who he is personally, the big challenges for me when I was profiling him his rookie year and income. The problems for him have been kind of the same. They've remained the same. And it hasn't been that long, so these things haven't resolved themselves.

But he's a pretty insistent ball-dominant player, like you said. But coming along with that is that's okay if you want to be ball-dominant. If you're like, and he's one of those like, I'm a tough shot-maker type players. Like he really, that's his DNA as a player is like he really leans on tough shot-making. And his separation, obviously, we've seen all this stuff about his athleticism. It's otherworldly. It's like off the charts. But he's not a super, this is something I brought up in my.

rookie report on him last year is that he was like a pretty historically bad dribble pull-up shooter last year, 27.56% in 2021. And one of the higher volume players for his age, that was one of the lower numbers in quite some time. This year, it's up a little bit to 30% on those shots. So you've got a guy who ideally would be like getting to the room with this athleticism, drawn a lot of fouls. But he's on this this track of he probably should be like a primary initiator with like his skill set, but the passing and the stuff isn't totally there. And we're kind of seeing those things come along slowly. He's just very, very streaky. If you go and you look at, he'll have these eruptions. It's hard to argue with people about Anthony Edwards because he'll give you these insane performances

where like he'll score 48 points and go seven for 13 from three because he's so streaky. But then you look at his box scores and it's like there's a bunch of games where he goes like two for eight two for seven you know that kind of is more consistently who he is I think the question that you asked is just kind of hovering in the air like I honestly don't know if can he be this type of player and get to where he wants to go like which is going to come first the playmaking or the efficient scoring like or does he need both I think what you're getting at is kind of the same thing that jalen green has when you're that athletic and you can shoot that well, you can always get a shot. It's just hard to train yourself to not take bad shots

when you can make bad shots. But you don't want to make your living taking bad shots because eventually in the NBA, it'll catch up to you. And that's for a lot of the hyper athletic scores who come into the league. They kind of have to learn how to get the best shot because they can always get a shot. And right, the most important skill in the NBA is getting a shot, but you still have to know when to take it, when it's from the flow of the offense. And the number that jumped out to me when I'm looking at Ant. So when he plays with the Angelo Russell this year, they're plus 11. When he plays without DeAngelo Russell, they're minus eight.

And there's a pretty clear connection because when DeAngelo Russell's not on the floor, the Timberwolves don't really have a backup point guard. What they usually do is they take DeAngelo out and then they'll play Cat and Ant together. And those two guys are kind of like de facto point guards with Malik Beasley in there. And there's not really a guy who's moving the ball and sitting everybody else up. And so in those non-Dien's low minutes, Ann has got a massive usage rating. His assist rate goes up a little bit, but so do his turnovers. Because it's just he's not ready to run the offense himself.

So my guess, my suspicion is, is the efficient scoring has to come first. He kind of has to figure out the scoring element. And then eventually, we're talking years. They forget he's only like 21, right? His prime is seven years away. I think the hope is when he's in his prime that he will be more of a playmaker. But I think if you're Minnesota,

it's just let's get this guy scoring more efficiently because he's a score right now. So if you're going to take a lot of shots, take good ones and make them. But I'm thinking about Ant, I kind of put him in like the Donovan Mitchell, Victor Oladipo category. So these are guys who are super athletic two guards

that came into the league, not really as point guards. And there is a very, very slow build to move towards more of a point guard role over time. I think Mitchell would be the goal. That to me is the guy if I'm Minnesota, I want Ant to play more like is Donna from Mitchell. I was researching this. A lot of people have kind of, I think you make really good points. It's funny that we were talking about scoot is a guy on a similar kind of a track, a really hyper athlete. And you're absolutely right that like that that like a line between making good

decisions because if you have the power, it's so true. If you have. have the power to get your shot. We've seen this so much over the years in different, like, hyper athletic wings. If you have the power to get your shot whenever you want, it's just so difficult. Like, it's such a slow build. So, like, when people hear me, like, knock his inefficiencies, know that I'm acknowledging that, like, this is a, this cake is going to be in the oven for a long time. And, like, the, because to grow those skill sets, when I said he's coming from an opposite spot as Lamello, Lamello just started from moment one doing these things. And aunt has, has been like a multi-sport athlete, primarily football, which he 100% could be like an all-pro NFL

player, I'm sure, level of athlete he is. He's trying to build these things that are going to take reps. They're going to take exposure. It's going to be messy. The player that came up that I thought was interesting was a benchmark for him that I think could work is DeMar de Rosen, is a player who came into the league, crazy athlete, but has slowly over time become like a really balanced and efficient, like he's a lethal ISO score, as we know, but he's slowly kind of become an efficient. I think it kind of crested in San Antonio, we really started to see, you know, him making sort of secondary reads and things like that. Like, when you watch Ant Play, it's just interesting to me that you can watch him attack.

He'll like attack, attack, attack, attack, and then he'll be like, ah, nothing's there and he'll kick it. It's like, he'll throw it to somebody who is, like, not in rhythm. And the difference between him and Lamello is Lamello will be like attack, attack, attack in Rhythm Pass. But ants kind of like slowly kind of coming along in that sense. He's a score first player, supposed to pass first player ultimately, right? As you're getting at. Sure. Yeah.

And you just want to get closer to balance as you can. And it's like that kind of takes, that just takes a lot of time. The difference there, I think, is like, Damar showed shooting efficiency a little earlier than Ant has. What do you think about this? Like, the point you made about like Delo, I think is a good one too. When I look at the dynamic, ultimately this is about cat and ant. Like, do we have something here?

Rob Mahoney wrote a really good piece about Minnesota going forward. It's like they have a lineup out there that's really interesting of, that's working of DeLo, Pat Beverly, Aunt Carl Anthony Towns and my main man, Jared Vanderbilt, that is working, but it's like expanding beyond that because like the moment they sub, like they bring in Jade McDaniels, the defense is still good, but the offense falls out, falls off. So we're trying to kind of build and go forward.

the dynamic between cat and aunt kind of reminds me of like a reverse version of like Aiton Booker, you know? You've got this guy that, and you need like a connective piece. Like ideally it's Russell. But over time, it's kind of like, I feel myself in like the pit of my stomach

just worrying about like, is the ceiling of this Minnesota thing really like deep playoff run? Like, do you think that they are on a, track with these two or is this ultimately going to have to break up at some point? It's a fair question. There's a lot that gets into it. And I think a lot of that conversation is around cat more than ant right now. This is Kat's team. I don't think we're quite seeing the best version of Kat. And that is like a super complicated thing that I think we can get into maybe as the year goes on. So I got to give a shout out to my guy, Dane War. If you listen to

this podcast, you probably know about his, he covers the wolves, has his own daily pod. And he was sending me some numbers. And yeah, check out his pot. It's awesome. If you're a wolf's fan, check out his pot. It is fantastic. And I think for me, when I look at the Minnesota and he sent me these numbers, it's like there are some simple fixes. So when Delo, Kat, and Edwards are in, they're dominant. And then when Delo's playing with the second unit, they're doing okay. What's killing them right now are these minutes where Ant and Cat are playing without Delo. And if you look at their numbers, there's one player in a very small sample size who those players play really well with. And here's it's a deep cut, but bear with me, it's Jordan

McLaughlin, their back, their third string point guard. And it kind of makes perfect sense, right? Because A and cat aren't point guards, their great scores, they need a point guard. To me, like, for Minnesota, the obvious fix is to play a backup point guard when the angel is not in the game. So the offense is always running. And it's like, yeah, with McLaughlin, you give up a lot on defense, but he's maximizing your two best scores. And the hope is Ant and Kat can play better on defense. Their defense has been better this year.

And I think that's for me is when I'm Minnesota. To go back to the Ant conversation, I'm playing him with a point guard, and then I'm telling him, I need you to be efficient, I need you to defend. You've got the physical tools. There's no question about that. Ant should be a three or four position defender.

and a lot of it is just paying attention off the ball, locking it on defense. And I think that is the low hanging of fruit for ant. Efficient scoring, play defense, play with the point guard. I think of those things happen, I think Minnesota takes a step forward. For sure. I think those lineup tweaks.

I think the defensive thing is another thing that I had written down here. Like those are the three things. Like the inefficient scoring, expanding his decision-making, I think these are the three big bullet points. And then his like attentiveness and effort defensively. I'm still seeing some things off ball where he'll just kind of fixate on the play that's happening in front of him. Yeah, it's Russell Westwood disease for sure. Ugh, don't put that name in the air with it.

I'll give him credit. The shift that kind of hurt Russ was when he changed his personality of like, he was like, okay, I am a high volume offensive guy. And we're literally still seeing quotes from him showing that he is in that mindset even today, that that's like the only way he can provide value. and at this point is not killing you with like wastefulness. So I think you stay here. You don't expand and like pursue more of that like just kind of bad shot offense.

I'll give Delo credit. I was I was giving Delo a lot of crap for just kind of being in the way for them developmentally. I think you're 100% right. They need his sort of like point guard tendencies for their offense to stay fluid. I definitely like that. But yeah, and just like keep your head above water. He has improved in his efficiency across the board. He's not giving up more than he's taking,

but it's just kind of like hold the line so that we can develop and continue to grow. When do you think a realistic expectation for him? Do you see Ant being an All-Star in the next three years? How soon do you think we could see him in the All-Star game? That ultimately come down to the Timberwills. I think it's so easy to cut up an All-Star discussion. When if you go really look at it, all-stars are given out based on team success, right? So Ant's going to be the second all-star because Kat is going to be your first all-star.

He's your leading score. He's your best player. So for Ant to be an all-star in this setup, Minnesota's got to be a top four, top-five team. And the West is down this year. I mean, it's not that far off. And I think for Minnesota, what the most encouraging part is so they change your defense up. They're using Kat more aggressively. He's not playing the drop as much.

And at the very least now, they're defending under like 15. the league with all the COVID stuff. They're defending at an average level, which is always a big concern about their team. And then when you have in, I think for, I'm most encouraged if I'm Minnesota is that when Aunt Delo and Kat are playing,

they're plus 13.6. So when your best players are winning when they're on the floor, that tells you this team isn't too far off. There's just tweaks from here, right? If your best three players fit together, you can figure out the rest of it. That shouldn't be that hard.

Yeah. And if you're absolutely right about like the West, being down. Right now, they're at the ninth spot, 15 and 17. They could, I mean, the thing about them is, like, if they can just kind of keep it together, I could see them getting in because the teams that are below them, like the spurs, the Blazers, the Kings, the Thunder, the Pelicans, rockets. I don't really see those teams, like, turning it on and going on crazy runs. I mean, the Blazers, maybe, but I don't really expect that. So they're in a, they're in a position here to kind to get into, like, one of those scrappy kind of playoff series where they can, like, get ahead of

schedule, you know, in our minds. I love some of the defensive lineups they put on the floor. I know this is kind of like take a drink because I'm getting ready to praise Vanderbilt again, but he's just a monster out there. Like they've really done a good job. Like I do think that like the Pat Bev Vando combo, they take the primary assignments kind of at their position so that the other guys don't, don't have to. Like they're creating more possessions for these guys who are like more offensively minded. It's a weird team from night to night. They can be. be really fun to watch. They can be a little, like, frustrating to watch. But the wolves are interesting going forward. It's going to be interesting to see what kind of piece they add.

Sharks, are you working on anything? You want to promote anything? What's on your mind, NBA-wise? I just did a big Chet Holmwood piece came out today. So I'm really excited about Chet. I'll be fun to get into him as the year goes on. Can you spoil for us? I mean, where is he on your board? Is he at the top? Have you watched anybody enough to make a decision there? I'll say this. Before I did a deep dive on Chet, I was unsure about him. Now I think I like him a ton. But I still got to do deep dives on Paolo and Jabari and these other guys for I really want to say anything. But I will say, I think Chet's a guy. The more you study him, the more you're impressed. And I think what I get into in the piece is he's not really getting to show what he can do at Gonzaga,

due to all kinds of situations based on their team. So he's really shining in a very small role. but the what he's doing, and it's hard with Chet because it's a new thing. And whenever there's a new kind of player, your instant reaction is, well, I can't work because we've never seen it before. But to me, that's the most exciting kind of player that it's new.

So I think Chet's going to be very polarizing. It's going to be a super fun conversation this year, but I'm a believer. I'm definitely a Chet believer. Wow, all right. That's quite the endorsement. Because last year, I'm just saying, Charks was right about the biggest

the biggest big guy in the draft. Subscribe to this feed. You know, you know where to find Charks' work on the ringer.com. You know where to find my videos if you haven't seen him there on YouTube. I was going to say, what about you, Kyle?

What are you working on? What are your videos? Teased us, tease the audience. I have a few lines in the water here. I got a ball movement thing I've been working on for a little bit. I'm going to be starting doing a rookie notebook. I'm pretty sure here coming up

and studying Jabari Smith right now to the big forward from all. So a lot of stuff coming. Yeah, subscribe to our feed on Spotify, preferably. Check back in with us next week, and we will see you next time.