The Ringer NBA Show - NBA Potluck | Group Chat

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Justin, Rob, and Wos bring their plates and hot takes to the table this week to celebrate Thanksgiving and the first quarter of the NBA season. Each of the guys brings one team, player, and hot take to the table that they would like to discuss, including the Timberwolves, DeMar DeRozan, and whether James Harden is still a max player. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Production Assistant: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's good, everybody? I'm John G. Stremski, host to New York, New York with JJ, the first podcast on the ringer in Spotify, dedicated to you, the New York Sports fan. We've got episode three nights a week, plus bonus episodes whenever news breaks. So make sure you follow the show on Spotify. Welcome to Group Chat. This is the special edition, the Thanksgiving edition of Group Chat. We're doing a little potluck action. Big Was, Rob Mahoney, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me on this festive occasion. The greatest holiday of the year. Inarguable. Is it? Hands down. Hands down. It's not even close. It's completely centered around food and comfort.

I don't know what more you could possibly want. Food, comfort, family. You know, yeah, it's the best. I mean, I might argue that those are aspects of every holiday. And what we have with Thanksgiving is just dinner. Is it anything special in addition to that? I mean, Christmas is not about family. It's about, you know, consumerism and price gouging and $700 flights to New York or maybe

I'm just talking about my own personal problems and not the problems of Christmas itself. I just want to show up and eat or make my food and eat without the pressure of having to buy other people gifts. That's what I want. Okay, that's fair. I love this galitarian ball finds energy style of holiday tidings. we have here to open up here. So this is good. All right. So this is the potluck. We've done this once before a couple years ago, but the schick here is that everybody is bringing to the metaphorical

table. One team they want to discuss, one player, and then one take. Let's start with the team portion. And let's start Waz with your man on the New York streets, just POV on the New York Knickerbockers. Things have been a little dicey lately, but they did win last night. So we're are you and everything? Where do you want to start with them? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, guys. After a five and one start, I'm basically convinced that the Knicks are a playing team. They're six in the conference right now. There's at least four teams behind them that I think are going to leapfrog them. Sixers, bucks, obviously, the Hawks. And I think I'm missing one more in there who I think is going to leapfrog them.

But, like, you know, they're 10 and 8 right now. They're about to play Brooklyn, the Hawks. They got a crazy schedule coming up. They're about to be something like 10 and 12. I just, you know, they're playing as well as they can, right? I think they upgraded their talent in the offseason. They're a more well-rounded offensive unit this year. But the defensive magic has kind of run out.

their 17th in the defensive efficiency right now. That's not going to cut it for a group that relies upon Julius Randall for consistent high-end offense. I just see it as a playing team. I know Knicks fans, because I know a lot of them, we're expecting a lot more, especially after the way they came out the gate. But I'm not seeing it for them. And, you know, much has been made about the start. lineup just stinking up to join in recent weeks.

I think that'll improve itself with minor tweaks. RJ's in a horrible shooting slump, which, again, another thing I think will even itself out. I don't think he's going to shoot 31% from three all season. I just think the Knicks are, you know, a run of the Mill Eastern Conference team. They'll fight for that 10th seed and move on. Let's talk about the disparity, though, because this is the big talking point for probably about a week now here. Basically, the plus minus and eyeballs, quite frankly, have shown that the bench is a huge plus. The starting lineup is a huge negative. Rob, is there any like specific thing

going on there that's leading to that? Is this specific players? Or is this just, I don't know, what's going on there? Well, I think this is where those two conversations come together that was outlined. There's the defense not holding up this season. There's the starters not holding up this season. These are one in the same in a lot of ways. And it's a case where, you know, guys like us are on podcasts or writing articles about how, oh, this offense first team needs to level out, get more defense, this defense first team needs to get more scores. It kind of feels like they zagged a little too hard in their starting lineup toward trying to get offensive talent, but they haven't actually gotten the benefit of that offensive talent.

Kamba has not delivered in the way that he needs to, which puts a lot of pressure on Evan Forney all of a sudden. So if those guys aren't scoring for you, we know they're not defending for you. And that's where that opening five against the best players in the NBA just has not been able to stop anybody. Well, here's my question, because Kemba among all of the starting players, has been the biggest negative. He's a minus 12.4 net rating. I think it's worst among all of the regulars on the Knicks. Is it as simple as just demoting Kemba either to the bench or maybe even to just like spot duty, maybe to third point guard duty? Because it's not like they don't have options. Derek Rose didn't play last night

against the Lakers, but he does have a stabilizing effect for this team. Can he be in the starting lineup and then can Emmanuel quickly come off the bench or can quickly start and Rose still come off the bench? I don't know. I feel like there's still a move here before we can say that this unit

as a whole, all five parts of this, is the problem. I think there might be a move here with a different coach, but Tim's, he likes his old guys. He's going to play the proven vets. He's not going to start

Emmanuel quickly over Kimber Walker. It'll be a cold day in hell before that happened, right? And so, I don't think the fixes are there, and then of course there's his just devotion to always playing a traditional big man, right?

Like, you're never going to get Randall at the five. So maybe if Randall was playing around a lot more spacing, him not making those really tough shots that he made all of last season wouldn't be such a problem. But I don't see Tibbs changing the way that he plays. They're going to play two bigs at all times, and they're going to play the vets.

The only caveat to that is that the only thing that Tom Tibido loves more than a veteran is a veteran named Derek Rose. Exactly what I was going to say. Quickly, I mean, we can judge, just based off last season, how long it took for quickly to even get consistent minutes? Right. Which was a little crazy. Crazy considering.

And they brought in Derek Rose as competition for those minutes mid-season. So I could see Rose getting that promotion at some point, but I think this is where it gets a little sticky, politically speaking. With a veteran guy, with a proven guy, 20 games into a season, I think it would be a hard sell to pull that plug, unless you're ready to just cut bait on that relationship. But I think they're going to need Kamba in some capacity. And I think they're going to need to play a wait and see, a longer game to see if maybe something with this starting lineup can come together. Yeah, and Kemba did leave money on the table, got out of his deal with the Thunder specifically to come to the Knicks. He signed a relatively bargain deal. So I wonder if there was some sort of agreement made.

But I guess it's a good window to talk about the other guys in this starting unit because, as Was kind of alluded to, R.J. Barrett has just been brutal. It seemed like he was ready to turn the corner. He had like three really good games where it seemed like. 35 against the pelicans. That was nice. We found out that maybe it was just like the competition there because over his past nine, he's shooting about 30% from the floor on still decent volume on 13 shots a game. So he's still getting fed, but he's just not shooting well enough.

Do we think like, I don't know, do we think that there's something up with his shot? Do we think like it was just fools gold, this like the flashes we've seen for him, this season and maybe even last season? What do we think? I mean, you follow guys that are. covering the team like our guy, Fred Katz, over at the athletic. And Fred's just like, look, he's taking the same shots. He's just not making it. So it feels like that's something that's going to correct itself.

I don't think he's this horrible a shooter. But, you know, we had him sort of taking the quote-unquote leap, even though, you know, people in our jobs make that mistake with a lot of players, basically every single year, every week, damn there, we make that mistake of being like, has such a such turn the corner yet? And it's like, no, it was like two games against the Pelicans and the Thunder.

And, you know, he looked like a freaking world beater. I'm not too worried about Barrett, right? Like, by all indications, he's somebody who thinks the game, who works his ass off on his game. I think he's going to get too serviceable in all those shooting numbers. I liked what I've seen out of topping in spots, right, this season.

He's clearly way better than he was last year, if not, you know, some obvious starting level NBA power forward. I think they still got some stuff. And what we've been saying is that they're counting on being able to trade for a star. And some of their young guys are supposed to be the enticing pieces. I think those pieces are still enticing enough. The foundation is still there. But yeah, the next four games, just because I mentioned it, Phoenix at home, at Atlanta, at Brooklyn, home against the Bulls.

That's four straight losses the way I'm seeing it. This really does feel like the most whelming team in the league. Like they are a middling performance. Most nights you catch them, whether it's the starters who are underperforming, whether it's the right guys getting the wrong amount of minutes. and something that just kind of feels off to me is the Julius Randall experience in the sense that he's starting to play more and more like an all-NBA player

and I don't mean that as a compliment. Like he's taking it upon himself to will them out of situations that he's just not capable of doing and this is a team that needs to rely on the backbone of its defense that needs its ball movement, that needs its spacing. I mean, it was nice to see him hit so many step-back fallaway jumpers last season

in desperate situations, but that's not what I would be banking my franchise on. You know what? That reminds me of Rob. Every time I get on a dance floor, I think I'm Puff Daddy, but the results, they don't match up at all.

But your first team all dance in your head. In my head, yeah, absolutely. What kind of moves do you got, man? Are we talking chicken wing or butterfly? A lot of what Puff does is a lot of the shoulders. stuff head bobbing. It's a lot. A lot of footwork. It's a lot. People can look up on the internet. A lot of moves of puff dancing. I don't generally reach those high marks, but God damn it, I try. I want to see the game tape of this. Yeah, you know what? It's funny

with the Knicks because all of this sounds very critical. But when I think about it in the big picture, right way it's supposed to be. Yeah, it just seems like the expectation changes, but the team didn't appreciably change the talent or whatever is going on here. It just seemed like 10 games over 500 last year, the one game over 500 this year. It doesn't

if you were to pull back and look at the names on the stats sheet as we did going into last season and say, I don't know. It just seems like this is a little bit more about expectations influencing how we're perceiving this. Yeah, and we can't have it both ways, right?

We can't say the Knicks need to practice patience and don't do the Knicks thing and sign some washed up dude at a ridiculous number thinking that it's going to, you know, catapult you to the seventh seed. Like they haven't done that. So we can't kill them for being patient when in the past we crushed them for these ridiculous quote unquote win now moves that never ever panned out. It's okay for them to be a playing team. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

And especially if you kind of bide your time, wait in. see. And one of these teams above you is going to get a major injury, is going to have some tough luck, going to hit a long road trip where they go three and six. I think it's fine for a team in the next position to play that and wait for those possibilities because there aren't a lot of long game options to develop here other than Barrett. I guess you could lean on top in in that regard. But I kind of think he probably will wind up being more or less the type of player he's been, just more effective, you know, like an energy big versus some guy you're really counting on on a night-by-night basis.

So you really are, you need to stabilize in this range and figure out, like, what is our path going forward with this group, with Randall, with kind of what we've outlined here. I think there's something workable. It just may not be like top three seed workable. Yeah, I guess that's the reason for pessimism is when you think about what the next step is here, like what is their pathway to being an upper echelon East team? And often the conversation ultimately becomes about how do you trade for a star. And like, I just, it become, it's a thing that happens with every team, but I think it's

going to happen more so with the Knicks, just because it's what Knicks fans do. And this is what the New York media does. It seems like, was, correct me if I'm wrong, the temperature is still like, oh, well, we're happy to have competitive basketball, but I do wonder if the flip gets switched chairs soon, and sooner than, than most teams, because it's New York. It's funny how it works with Nick fans, like, no matter how many times they get bopped over the head with a baseball bat from this team, they get back up and, you know, they keep on trucking. After last season, which was a surprise, right? Like, nobody thought they were going to be somebody's fourth seed.

Nobody thought that. Cinderella run. Obviously, they get their heads bashed in the first round by a far superiorly talented Hawks team. they come out the gates again, five and one. They upgraded the roster in the offseason. So it was like, all right, here we go again. We're right back in the mix for the four and the five seasons. It's like, nah, you're not.

And I think I've gotten that sense from the Knicks fans. Obviously, this is all anecdotal. But the Knicks fans in my life, their expectations is being like, I don't know why I let them do this to me, right? Like, get your hopes up. And ultimately, this is a mediocre squad. and they're playing to their abilities. Justin, do you want to walk us

into another fan base that has been bopped on the head repeatedly year after year? I know. What a perfect segue here. Speaking of uncertain futures, also, the Sacramento Kings, who have just recently fired coach Luke Walton, he was 68 and 93 over his two plus seasons there, which is among the better records in King's history,

which really says it all there. Alvin Gentry steps in for the millionth in order to take over a team with with no real hope for the future, although I think he's still clinging to hope that he can get that job full time. We'll see. I mean, where do we even begin here? This team is a mess. And it's weird.

It's that like we've gotten to the point now where every, it's really hard to knock a team for just like doing objectively stupid things. I think the league as a whole has become smarter, like in part because I wonder if like social media is just like shamed enough, uh, high level executives or owners to like do things a certain. way. And so, like, it very rarely do you have a team like the Kings where the owner is clearly pushing for playoffs, playoffs, playoffs, when the roster says otherwise. I guess the pistons of the

Stan Van Gundy era were of a similar type, but the Kings are, it just seems like they're living in different worlds where they're just not embracing reality. And I don't know where to go here, because even though they've done the tear it down, we've brought in all these high draft picks, I don't see a star on this roster and I don't see a pathway necessarily trading those guys for a star so it's kind of a mess. I think you're right that teams are making fewer

dumb moves, like objectively dumb moves than they used to. But the tradeoff for that is you get teams like the Kings who just got kind of mired in their own inaction. Like if you want to fire Luke Walton and I think there was grounds to do that, do it in the offseason. Do it at a time where you can actually reset your team.

Or if you don't want to fire Luke Walton, make some roster moves because last season this was the worst defense in NBA history. So if you're not going to change your coach and you're not going to change your roster save for drafting Davy on Mitchell basically, bringing in a couple fringe role players, what are we expecting to be different here?

And so when you get stuck in that framework, that's dumb. That's inexplicable. Like that's indefensible in terms of if that's what you think of your team that we should be so much better this season that we're going to justify firing our coach midway why I just don't understand how that stuff all checks out with each other. Then of course there's the Marvin Bagley of it all.

And the guy who, sorry Kings fans, you drafted over Luca Donchich. Okay. The treatment of that guy, not to say that he deserves some special treatment, but I don't understand how you love a guy enough to draft him over Luca Donchich. and, you know, three years later, you're basically treating him like the stepchild of the organization. Like, that doesn't make any sense.

It's to me that speaks to a leadership problem. And that goes all the way to the top. Vivek Renadivay has no idea what the fuck he's doing. He's been an awful owner. And, you know, I love the synergy of the Kings firing their millionth coach and Alvin Gentry getting his millionth

interim coaching job. It's like just beautiful asymmetry right there. If I'm using asymmetry right, I'm sure people on Twitter will let me know. It's actually surprising that Gentry had never had a king stint

before. Like he's done a world tour of all of the worst franchises, Detroit, the Pelicans, the Clippers. But here he is. He's really like completing the set. Yeah,

just think they're rudder lists at the top. I just think Vivek and Vladay have mismanaged this at every single level. Even just Luke Walton as a hire in and of itself, right? Like this thirsty, oh, we want to be just like the Warriors shit that they always doing. It's just like, bro, Luke Walton is not why the Warriors are the Warriors. They're the Warriors because they drafted Clay Thompson, Steph Curry, and Traymond Green, my man. Like, it's ridiculous. The gentry part of this is pretty funny too.

I don't know if you guys saw Sam Amick's report on this stuff, but he pretty much suggested outright that Gentry took this job because Luke Walton was probably going to get fired. Yeah. It's a veteran move. I mean, you've got to respect it. He's been a long, a very long time, and that's the type of move of someone who knows how to keep getting those jobs,

even though it doesn't seem like someone's going to hire him outright. I mean, here's the big question. Let's say that, let's just assume that the goal of making the play in is even something they should aspire to. Is this the type of team that can with the right leadership or the right vibes check here from our friend Alvin Gentry can do that? Because I look at the roster and I'm just befuddled because on the one hand they have so many guards, most of whom can't really play together because the mixing and the matching just doesn't work. And I think the even bigger question is Deer and Fox because they're paying him now on a max contract like he is, the star of this team. And if anything, he's taking a step back this year. And I don't know if there's a pathway to him ever taking the leap that he needs to in order to really make sense of what's going

on there. I'm a bit of a Fox truther, which, you know, I got to admit my own bias. I watched him come in the Staples and just fish fillet, Kauai Leonard and Paul George one time where they couldn't stay in front of him. He was finishing over Zubodge. He was. He had the flow to work in. He had the step back. It was just like, wow. He's fun. He's a blur.

You know what I mean? Like, it's like, this is the guy that everybody thought he could potentially be, but he's never put together these consistent runs. I think he's shooting close to a career low from three right now, which again, as you mentioned, Justin is a regression. I'm still a fan of the talent. He might be one of these guys who has just changed his scenery now, you know, at a certain point you spend enough time in Sacramento and the stink gets on you, right?

And I think this is pervasive league-wide. There's an idea that Sacramento is a toxic place. Agents don't want to send their players there. Players see it as a backwater mismanaged situation. I remember, man, I remember talking to an NBA player once and Massi Ujiri came up and he was like, I can't stand that motherfucker. And I said, why? He's like, he ruined my damn career.

I was like, what did he do? Like, you know, I'm thinking, I don't know, like he did something fucked up. He was like, he traded me to Sacramento. I was like, wow. So, like, it kind of shows you how people view the kings. Like, it's just a horror show. Well, I mean, what do we think about Fox specifically? Do we think, like, he's the type of talent, Rob?

that could overcome the toxicity, the swamp out there in Sacramento? Well, I mean, I don't think the Kings necessarily were operating under the assumption that Deere and Fox is a superstar prospect. He's just kind of the best prospect they have. He could be a star, he could be an all-star level player. Maybe you luck out and he's even better than that. But he was a guy you roll the dice with because he has that talent. He has that speed and that ability to read the floor.

He has the ability to shift gears. there's a lot of interesting stuff going on with this game that if you're a team like the Kings, you should absolutely want to invest in and see if he can be that guy for you. That said, you know, Charks wrote about this this week and zeroed in on something interesting with Fox,

which is I think part of the problem is the sense that he's like not enough of a threat with the ball to be a dominant offensive player. And he doesn't really have enough of an off ball game to not be a dominant offensive player. And that puts him in such an awkward space. And you see a lot of guards fall into this. And over the course of their careers, some grow out of it, some don't.

Some find ways to be better cutters or spot shooters or whatever it is. We'll have to see with Fox. I think a change of scenery could be good, but there's only so much you can fix when you're not shooting well. You don't have the ability to impact the game when you don't have the ball. That's a tough combination to sell for a potential, like, contending type team. Yeah, and that's why it was questionable at best to draft two guards in a row after you've made this big commitment to Dair and Fox, just because it seems like they've compounded the problem where now he's not touching the ball

as much as he did in the past. And while Terry's Halliburton seems like he's probably at his best in an ancillary role, like being more of a connector or a glue guy, but he seems like almost scared to shoot at times, even though he is a good shooter. And so I don't know, that doesn't seem like an ideal fit

because you want someone playing off of Fox to be able to knock down those shots off of kickouts. But if it's buddy healed, who can hit those kickouts, then all of a sudden you're giving away too much on the defense. and as we covered before, that's a problem. And if you want to correct that and you want to put more defense on the court with Davy on Mitchell, well, there's another guy who needs the ball on his hand still developing as an offensive player.

And so it's just where are the solutions here? And then to get into like the whole roster, like, where are the wings in order to help solve this solution? They had to put more Harkless back into the starting lineup against the Sixers. And it's just like, oh, like, there's just a lot of like compounding issues. And it seems like it's going to take like a couple years even to sort this mess out. And it's just like, I don't know. I don't see a clear path to doing this. I guess one thing we should talk about is whether or not they can maybe aggregate some of these guys and swing a trade.

But like, obviously Ben Simmons is the prime candidate for that. But if you're the Sixers and you watch Tyrese Maxie Cook and in particular Cook the Kings the other night, how much better is like even a Fox plus, let's say, a buddy healed than having a guy like Maxie who's on a rookie contract and is already burgeoning in his own right? Can we talk about that Sixers game for, just one second. I just want to read to you the starting five for the Philadelphia 76ers in a game in which they beat the Kings. Tyrese

bench player behind Ben Simmons, under ideal circumstances anyway. Kirkon Korkmaz, bench player behind Seth Curry, Matisse Thyple, bench player behind Danny Green, George Nying, bench player behind Tobias Harris, Andre Drummond,

bench player behind Joelle and B. Five reserves. The one game... He was literally the bench unit. Yeah. Literally the bench unit. unit, the game immediately after your coach is fired, and they come in and roast you. I don't know that it could be more damning than that. The crazy thing about that game was they were up for most of the

game, and then in the fourth quarter, they just completely fell flat. It was like they forgot how to play basketball, and I'm just like, what is going on here? That's a checked out team. By the way, Matisse Tybal, he's a starter level player. Come on, don't do the Haitian like that. I'm not saying,

it's embarrassing. But he doesn't start for them. Yeah, he doesn't start. No, but that's That's kind of the point. And then if you're the Kings, you know, Ben Simmons and his people saying there's only three teams in California, you want to trade for that guy? I don't know. At least he's under contract, man. That's what they really need. They need guys under contract because that's the only way they're going to stay put for a while. Maybe Damien Lillard, who knows? All right, let's move along here to a team that I think, Rob, we haven't talked about this before, but I think this is going to be a more optimistic one, the Minnesota Timberwolves,

who are heading high on a four game win streak? Is that a really? Right? Somehow, some way. So, Timberwolves are winners of four straight. And I would say, you know, the king, really they are the king's greatest competition for that last play in spot. It's fucking sad.

Yeah, but continue. And what I wanted to talk about with the wolves specifically is their defense. Up to seventh and defensive rating, really within a few tenths of a point of being like in the top five, which is incredible with this group of personnel. They play really small.

A lot of guys in this rotation who are like six four smaller. Carl Towns, who is not anybody's idea of an all-defensive center, and yet they've made it work. And some of that is just because they've completely reworked their scheme in the middle of this season. They were coming out, as they have many years previously, with Towns in like a pretty hard drop.

And now they have him, they're basically taking the Yokic approach with Towns, which is we're going to bring him up to the level of the screen, we're going to be more aggressive, we're going to scramble. And it's really working pretty well for them in a way that I think you have to at least reconsider what they could be. And that's what this stretch has been. It's been a nice clarification of where the wolf stand in the Western Conference order. They've lost all these good teams.

They've beat all these bad teams. I think we're getting a good sense of kind of where they fall in the middle of things. Yeah, and I know people like to roll their eyes at Patrick Beverly and whatever his impact might be on a given team. I think he really helps them in, one, the physicality, toughness department, right? Like, I get that he's 5'11 and, you know, 160 pounds. But he just brings an intensity to what they're trying to do that, let's just face it, Carl Towns has been a lot of amazing things. Intense and physical and defensive-minded is not one of those things.

So I think in a lineup day that bears it out with Beverly in there. They're just a much better team more well-rounded. And I'm so happy that they are playing more. more aggressively on defense because Carl Towns is some plotting dude. Like, he has pretty decent foot speed for his position. He should be able to meet the ball handler in the screen and roll at the level, right? And be able to scramble back behind that and be a decent and enough deterrent at the rim that guys aren't just cascading to the damn basket.

Like, it's a freaking conga line. You know what I mean? So it's borderline of miracle that their top 10 in D. defense right now. I think the offenses, they have so much offensive talent, like there's going to be a way for that to find itself. Obviously, one of the easy fixes

that we've all seen on the internet, Carl Towns needs to shoot more. I just think that they're in a good spot. I think we were pretty bullish on them before the season started, so I'm not surprised that they're playing this well. Yeah, in a lot of ways,

Pat Bev is kind of like the NSFW version of what Jimmy Butler was supposed to do for this team. Like, he's not outright questioning Carl Towns's manhood, like, on a daily basis, but he is providing, like, the defensive acumen and also just, like, the great and the toughness that I think this team needs. It's a really interesting decision because they have these three offensive, I guess I'll say stars, although I don't know if DeAngel or even Edwards are at that point right now, but

offensive dynamos, whatever you want to say. And then just popped in two just, like, junk it up defenders in him in Beverly and Vanderbilt, and it's a really interesting decision. It's paid dividends. I don't know how long it's going to work, especially as the schedule gets a little tougher. I should mention the four-game win streak was against the King, Spurs, Grizzlies, and Pelicans, which like doesn't

get any more sharmine than that. But, you know, it's working for now. I think, to Waz's point about the offense, they're 18th in offense, which is really surprising considering the three guys that they have running that offense. I just look out there, I'm like, man, I really wish DeAngo Russell was literally anybody else, because this team with

Edwards and just the way he attacks so damn hard, like mini Russell Westbrook, just more like with positivity as opposed to like just anger for every human on earth. Plus Carl Towns is just a magnetic, awesome combination. And then Russell just kind of gets in the way of that a lot of time. They could spin him into some sort of like three and D wing type. I think this team would make a lot more sense. When Edwards has settled in really well too,

where he's finding that balance between, as you're saying, attacking really hard, but also letting Towns cook, letting Russell do some stuff. Like he's gotten rid of the two or three possessions, or at least whittled them down from earlier in the season where everyone on the court was kind of rolling their eyes a little bit at him going ISO,

which is important. And I think part of the reason, to your point, Justin, how they've plugged in these dirty work guys into the starting lineup and it's worked, it's not just the starting lineup. Like, when those three guys are on the floor, as long as there's some combination of Beverly, McDaniels, Vanderbilt, and Beasley, in any combination, basically, it's working.

That's a great sign for the core of that team. Now, it doesn't say great things about the depth of this team that when you go to any two of their, again, quote-unquote, stars, things tend to fall apart a little bit, or God forbid, one of them, things really fall apart. But the fact that when their best players are on the floor, they're a competitive good team. That's a great place for this franchise to be.

Yeah, and I just love watching the Edwards play. Totally. When he has it going, when the step back is going, and he's rising from like 26 feet and just splashing threes and defenses have to react to that. And like you said, the reckless abandon that he goes to the rim is crazy. And I think he's just getting better at figuring out just where the creases are, where the vulnerabilities are and attacking those, just doing more probing, more patience. He's clearly taking a step. Obviously, it hasn't reflected in like, all right, he's freaking Kobe Bryant now. But he's moving in the right direction.

And I think letting him take more ownership of what the offense needs to be can only bode well for them in the future. I know every athlete says that they just need to be aggressive in order to fix all of their problems with Edwards. That seems like it's actually the case is whenever he's aggressive, like good things happen. All right, let's flip now to our players we have here. We did our teams. Now we're bringing our players out. Let's call this the main course, shall we? Rob, do you want to start here with your guy, DeMarre D'Rosen?

Yeah. I want to talk about one thing specifically with De Rosen, because he's having an unbelievable season. We could go in a lot of different directions. But to me, the value of his kind of pit stop with the spurs is the difference between settling and knowing your spots. he was a guy in Toronto who took a lot of tough shots, took a lot of long twos.

I don't want to relitigate the entire analytics debate that has now spanned hundreds of years. So I don't really want to get into that so much. But the difference between him taking long twos in Toronto and setting guys up to work specifically to get to basically the free throw line area is just night and day. Like he can get to those shots whenever he wants because he has the handle for it.

He has an A-plus setup game for a wing in terms of getting a defender moving one away, then throwing them into a screen, then going at a time or in a direction they don't expect to get to his spots, to get into those zones on the floor where he is just hyper-efficient. Like, he is so good in that intermediate range.

And if you can, as any player, trim out some of that fat of taking the longer, longer contested twos and get into that space, it can just completely transform who you are as a player. And I feel like that's, if anything, that's kind of the value of ever playing for Greg Popovich

in the Spurs is that as a franchise and a coaching staff that will make it very clear to you what your spots are, where you are strongest on the floor, and they can help get you there. And I don't think we see this version of Demar without the Spurs version of Demar. It's been really cool to watch him. One, and again, it's easy to say this because the Bulls are winning, right? Like they're winning at a clip that most people probably didn't expect them to. but I like that Levine seems to be invested

in DeRosin killing people. That's my favorite part about it is like as ball dominant as DeMara has been. Levine is fine with it and he's fine with picking his spots. Man, there was a game last week I was watching where

Levine made like three straight threes off of pin downs where they just set the down screen he sprints to the freaking three point line catches and fires Right? Like that doesn't take him getting the ball, probing the defense, picking roll, figuring out where the help is coming from. He's just straight up getting a hard screen, sprinting to a spot and firing.

And I love the ecosystem and the way that it's working. I think there was definitely a worry. I was one of those people that was like, is Levine going to be cool with a different shot distribution than was last year as far as his role in the all? offense, how much he touches it. It's the opposite. It seems like he's embracing it and is even better for it. And it allows him to be fresher down the stretch of the games

when he might be called upon to do that kind of on ball, you know, ball dominant stuff. Yeah, I think the thing that we missed in their offseason acquisitions is just how ball movement friendly all of the guys that they brought in were. When you say we,

I'm on the other side of the we, right? Were you positive on the Bulls' off-season editions? We need to check the tape, but I feel like I was pretty, again, pardon the pun, but bullish on this whole situation. Listen, I was over the moon about Lonzo and Caruso because obviously I'm part of that hive. The DeMar thing, I was like, this feels like a funny move, but I like DeMarr.

I always have, right? Like, if somebody can make tough shots, there's value for that in an NBA offense. It might not, you know, if that's the only thing you got, it might not take you far, but within the right context, that's super valuable. Right. I guess I'll use eye statements here. I assumed that De Rosen, considering the playmaking progress he'd made in San Antonio,

that he would need the ball more than he has, and Levine would need the ball, and there would be a lot of clashes there. But when you look around this roster, there's just like a lot of willing passers, and they're really good about sharing it to the point where Sir Rite Soie wrote about Marauda Rosen on our site today. And she had a stat about how he, DROZN is getting assisted more than at any point in his career or at any point

in a very long time. And I think, that just speaks to just like the energy on this team and how everyone is getting fed. And I think, I think it's worked out. I think the other thing that's really interesting about this is how, I don't know if Rosen has really like completely revamped his game. Like he definitely is shooting more threes, like I'll spot up in the corner more.

Like there's a little more of that. But it seems like they've just found a way to make that an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage. And you're starting to see this across the league where like after a couple years of this programmatic just layoffs and threes, maybe that like advantage doesn't exist anymore or at the very least, Rob, you wrote about this last postseason with Chris Middleton and Kevin Durant. Offenses are finding ways to empower mid-range shooters to where that's like that's an option again. If you shoot it well enough, they're going to keep feeding you those shots.

And I also wonder if like maybe this the next switch has to be on defense where it's like defenses are structured to take away the rim and the three point line nowadays and they're giving those shots and maybe they need to find something a little bit more blended. Does that check out at all? Totally. And I think it speaks to what you were saying about DeRosen not exactly

transforming his game. He's just kind of refined it in a way that helps him get to the spots even more effectively. It's just so tough to take away. And that's the reason why the Bulls have been so good in so many late, close games so far this season. That's just an impossible thing for a lot of guys to guard, especially as more

more wings, and even some fours, frankly, are running smaller and smaller. They may be athletic enough to contest Amar, but they may not be strong enough to take the bumps from him along the way, to be right there when he raises up. It's just a tough combination of attributes

to guard, and I think Waz nailed it when it's not just about Damar, it's about him in context. Do you have enough stuff going on around him just like with Middleton? If Chris Middleton's playing with Janus, the Chris Middleton thing works. Oh, so valuable. If you were asking Chris Middleton to be the alpha and omega of your offense,

it seems like a recipe to be the 10th place team in your conference. So this works. And they haven't even had Vuccivic for a lot of these games, but this combination of just the playmaking you've been talking about, Justin, the passing mentality of the team in addition to what they get from Levine, it's just such a nice blend. And I think we need to get comfortable right now. It's November 24th with the idea that DeRosen and Levine, I think there's a pretty good chance they end up both making all NBA teams this year. I think they're on that kind of trajectory.

And there's enough injuries and down seasons where I think there's going to be a window for them. Speaking of down seasons. I was going to say, speaking of programmatic approaches, was, do you want to talk about our next guy on this list? Yeah, it's James Hardin.

And I know this is going to sound aggressive, but I think he's going to rule the day that he turned down that max extension. I just don't think he's a max guy. And it's not just the physical stuff. It's all of the, you know, the tax evasion that he's been doing throughout the course of his year, finding all the tax loopholes in order to cheat the government out of, you know, building roads and stuff. But that's a different podcast.

That's a different podcast. But no, but seriously, all of his shit is no longer being called. The leg kickout, gone. The off ball captain hook where the hand that he's not dribbling with, he freaking grabs the guy's arm and then exaggerates contact, not getting called. The joint that he would do where he would show you the ball, then basically lift up both of his arms in a motion so that while your arm was just standing there, he banged his arms into yours, not getting called. anymore. And then you add that to how diminished he is physically, just off of injury, age, wear and tear, the natural stuff that happens to wing players who are very reliant upon their first step and how easily they can dribble past guys. And I'm sorry, that's a recipe for

James Harden not being as effective as he used to be. And you see it happening in the regular season and his numbers are way worse. You know, I saw a stat out there. James Harden, 40% of his attempts last year were at the cup or at the free throw line. That's down to 31. So that means he's just taking stepbacks. It's not like he's taking assisted twos and threes.

Like, this guy's taking off the dribble shots 70% of the time now. That flips the math on his head in the way that this is like, This is not as useful a guy as he used to be. This is not, you know, back when Darryorne was, Darryl Morey was trolling us and saying that James Hardin is the greatest offensive player in NBA history. He ain't that, right? Like, it's over for that.

And then the playoffs, this shit's going to be worse. He's going to get even less calls, right? Like, he's going to be even more relying upon stepbacks with guys all in his shirt. I just think he's going to regret not taking him. that deal. I still think he's probably a De Rosen type, Chris Paul type of deal, but he's not guaranteed full mags, full year

type of guy at the rate that he's playing right now. See, that I don't know. I think we're all on board that he's diminished this season in a pretty big way and in a very noticeable way. Let's use eye statements, Rob. Sorry, I definitely feel that way. But the difference between an MVP, like maybe a top two or three players.

Harden last year. Harden last year. And where he is now, I think there was enough room between those things for him to still be a max guy. Like when you think about the other players who've gotten max contracts because of circumstance primarily, isn't Tobias Harris functionally on like a max or near max contract? So I think he's going to end up getting one way or another. Now, that proposition is going to look very different

when you're paying him $50 million a season to be that guy. You may not feel great about that anymore. Well, what Tobias Harris had that Hardin might not is leverage because Tobias was going to hit the open market at a time where there was a bunch of suitors. And this offseason, there are scant few teams that actually have cap space. It's like the Orlando's teams like that that are scraping the bottom.

So he's really, if he really wants full max money, the only threat he could do that with is with a team that he ostensibly was trying to get out of with the Houston Rock. It's like a middle tier team. And while a lot of players of Hardin's caliber forced trades in these sorts of situations, I wonder if he would run into the same sort of situation

in another team. Like if you're the Philadelphia 76ers, like a team that I could think of as like maybe wanting to take a risk that like they can, that he still has something of the old Hardin in him, are you going to pay him for five years and saddle yourself to a 33-year-old GM

Harden and an injured-ass, Joelle Embed is your core? Well, I think he does have a fair bit of, you know, really a giant mound of leverage, and its name is Kyrie Irving. Like, what are the Nets going to do if they don't, if they don't resign James Hardin? And again, unless he's an abject disaster, like if it's very clear, he can't be anywhere near the player he has been, then they might have to go back to the drawing board and figure out who the other star is they could pursue in free agency or trade. But short of that, I think he's got them in a place where he's going to end up getting

some pretty real money from the nets one way or the other. Well, Rob, here's the thing. James Hardin at his peak against playoff defenses has been nobody's version of, you know, a Messiah. So this dude right now against the bucks in the playoffs, that's going to get ugly for him. I'm sorry. He is going to look really bad, right?

Because it's, you know, 20 games in, like the point of emphasis, they're doing it. They're straight up, like, not calling these fouls anymore. And Hardin hasn't adjusted his game. And again, physically, he can't just overwhelm in the way that he used to be where this guy was so quick and strong, too. Like, he still got the strength, you know. He's still a pretty hefty guy. But he doesn't have. that lightning first step anymore. And I wonder if it's going to be there.

That's been the noticeable thing, too, about the free throw drawing as we think about what James Hardin is going to be in the playoffs. The few nights he's had, like, big free throw performances, they've come against the magic, they've come against the calves, they've come against the pelicans, they've come against the Pacers who are kind of mediocre. He's not having any of these games, really. Maybe accepting, I think he had 11 free throws against the Warriors. That's about as many drawn fouls as he's been able to get against good teams. Yeah, and just circling back to the leverage point of it, I guess the biggest leverage is basically being like, well, draft somebody because you don't have any draft picks. You're completely

pot committed to this core of Kyrie Hardin, Durant, for better or worse, which I guess, like, if you think about it from the other side of things, like, this is looking particularly good for the Houston Rockets, man. Like, I don't know, I've said this before. Like, I don't know if they knew something about his medicals. Uh, I don't know. I've said this before. Like, I don't know if they knew something about his medicals. I don't know if they just assumed that he could depreciate more quickly because of his off-the-core activities or what it was. But man, this could be as bad as it got in a darkest timeline situation. And a very real timeline as it got for the Nets of Old. I mean, like, five years ago. For the record, the Nets are still first place in the East right now.

Just want to put that out there. But it doesn't, I mean, it's interesting that they're now in a race between James Hardin's potential decline versus can, as a public and as a nation, we end the pandemic soon enough that Kyrie Irving can get back on the court. Like those two lines, there's an intersection point somewhere. Right. All right. Let's flip to mind now here. I have someone on the other end of the Star Spectrum.

That is Kate Cunningham, who is just starting his career. In particular, I want to talk about him because he struggled at first. I think he was something like one for 21 from three, and all of a sudden you had people coming out of the woodwork saying like, oh, maybe he's a bus, etc., etc. I think it was exacerbated by just like how awesome Evan Mobley has looked. And so there was like the clear like,

oh, you missed. And I think people were starting to get PTSD of Lamello and James Wiseman over Lamello, et cetera, et cetera. You know, he's coming off a game last night against the heat as we're recording this where he didn't look particularly good. I think all of his shooting numbers were bad. I think he was one for seven

from three again. But I watch him and he looks so goddamn solid. Like, he just makes a lot of smart plays. He's very calm. He's very observant. And he just seems like the type of guy. If we're going to, like, we're going to, like, celebrate Evan Mowgli for his two-way play and just his headiness and, like, all that stuff. I mean, Cade has that stuff to the point where, like, if Mowgli is going to be out for longer than they say, which is like, what?

About a month, I think is the original timeline. It's possible that Cade could vault both him and Scotty Barnes into the rookie of the year conversation pretty quickly here. Yeah, I watched that game last night. The Pistons dropped 74 points in the first half. And Cade looks so comfortable against man-to-man coverages, right? Like, the way that teams want to play pick and roll defensively, like the way that teams are already playing him, like he's so good at spotting the opening and getting it out quick

because he's pretty big for his position and his vision is there. The heat switched to a zone defense in the second half and basically confused the shit out of everybody on Detroit. Use that to come back and then Tyler Hero started playing like he was Michael Jordan and, you know, that was it. But what I noticed was the zone made Kaye hesitant, right?

Like he was questioning what his first move, what his first read should be. And he had a couple of just bad turnover passes against what we think is probably one of the two or three best defensive teams in the league. So that doesn't really bother me at all. Like the idea that Kate Cunningham couldn't eventually figure out how to play against zone defenses, that'd be ridiculous. I'm like, Justin, I think his feel and understanding of the game is just at a ridiculous level for somebody who's like 10 games into his NBA career. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. So I'm bullish on the guy.

I think his jump shot is obviously going to come around. Only thing that, you know, to concern troll, I just want to see him be more aggressive. Just be more willing to take guys one-on-one to post up smaller guys to like look for a shot more. That's all. I think that could be a career-long conversation. I think we're going to be talking for a long time

about Cancade, impose his will in these specific situations. Is that something he's willing to do as a player? Maybe, maybe not. But as far as the initial reaction out of the gate to his quote-unquote struggles, it always rang a little hollow to me because he seemed like exactly the player he was advertised as, which is a guy who doesn't have standout athleticism, who's going to have to get by on skill and guile and patience and his ability to read the

floor. And he was already showing all those things. It was just a matter of kind of getting up to speed with the game. I think that's where we've seen him kind of progress as the season has gone. But I think your opinion of him will probably vary a little bit night to night because so far he's kind of oscillated and he's walking that line between being a savvy, calming presence on the game and being so subtle in some other games that his presence feels a little bit too invisible to be a superstar type guy.

So I can understand some of the skepticism in that regard. Yeah, and to your earlier point about just like the, the jump off the page of let us have him and how he doesn't have that. That was like my one thing that I was a little if we want a concern troll about. Like it isn't the shot. It's more like breaking guys off the dribble in order to get to the cup. Like is he going to have that like just explosive first step? Is he going to have the shiftiness in order to get by guys? There's one play where Bam switched on to him and Bam didn't feel like all that. I mean, Bam's one of the best defenders in the league, but like he didn't feel all that worry that that Cade was trying

to get by him. The flip side of that, of course, is just like how physical Cade already is. and DeWaz's earlier point, like, he's huge. And it shows on both ends of the court. One, like, he, another play, he went up against Bam in order to get a layup. And he was just, like, completely unmoved by this, like, complete boulder of a human. And you also see, like, the length that he has on the defensive end and how much he could disrupt things. He got a little bit, uh, to swipe happy in this game against the heat where I think he had four falls, like, midway through the third and had to sit for a long time.

Um, but, like, he just has tools, man. I just, I just like the package. And, like, I wouldn't be surprised if, the more people are exposed to him, one, they get to see the nuance and the beauty of, like, some of the things that he's doing. And two, as time goes on, he starts to put up big numbers.

He had a triple double the other night. Those type of games that get him more at the forefront of the rookie of year conversation. By the way, the stuff that we're talking about that he might be deficient in, it's like 0.001% of NBA players excel at, right? I think we watched Luca in the first round last year

where he was consistently for like 80% of the game, getting past Clipper defenders, even when they switched different guys or they pressed up on him, he was getting to the rack and getting past guys off the dribble. Then sometimes later in the fourth quarter, you know, they throw Kauai on them

and it wasn't happening. And we think Luca Donchich is literally stamped for the Hall of Fame, right? So these things that this guy might be deficient at, We're talking about the greatest players in the world, not being world class at it. I think if he can master all the things that are already strengths and, you know, Detroit's front office can put together the kind of pieces that complement what he does. You know, that takes it to a different level. Because it's stuff like when you think about Steph, again, another guy who is all world in everything that he does.

does. Having somebody as complimentary as Draymond Green means everything, right? It means when they do that hard double, there's a guy who not only understand what Steph is going to do off the ball when he gives it up, but like can attack four and three, right? And make the right decision consistently. And be somebody who can guard fives on the other end. You know, like, it's about getting the complimentary guys that make your strengths amplified. So I'm in Taked right now. And that's really what the Pistons don't have right now. And one of the reasons why him not being aggressive

in certain situations feels so stark because it's like when you're playing next to Sadiq Bay and Isaiah Stewart and Jeremy Grant, like I think these guys could or already do fill roles pretty adequately, but they're not. Beefs too. They're not. Are you saying he's a little aggressive?

I refuse to disparage Isaiah Stewart. Good player. But yeah, none of those guys are anyone's idea of an assertive NBA star. And so if Kate isn't that and he's tabbed as that by default by being a number one pick, that's kind of where that conversation comes from. But we haven't seen the end of that. We haven't seen the end of the Luca comparisons to Waz's point in part just because that combination of size and shiftiness, that's the whole thing.

And he doesn't even have the shot to play off of. yet in the way that Luca does. Everything Luca creates is based off the threat of the step back and the threat of the floater. Kate isn't operating with those tools yet, and he's still getting past guys. So I think that bodes really well for what he could ultimately be. Speaking of supporting cast in Detroit,

I'm flirting with a take that Frank Jackson is actually better than Killian Hayes. Not the most flirtatious thing I've ever heard. A lot of them. Save it for your mismatched guest appearance. Put that before KOC directly. I don't want to rebuff that. I will say Frank Jackson,

rocking a stupendous porn mustache right now. It's really good. The work of art. That's a good place to pivot here to our last, our dessert portion of the evening, to our takes. Waz, you want to lead us off?

I have a feeling that you might have something ready to go here. Westbrook, man. Get him out of here. Send him to the bench. I'm sorry. He's just like he has made, absolutely no attempt to do something different than he's always done. Like none whatsoever.

And I get that LeBron has missed 11 games already at this point, which is a crazy amount of games to have missed. And so I get that he's probably had to do a lot of the bad rust stuff. But I'm just like, look, if you're going to be this dude who only does, this specific thing, the Lakers might as well just move him to the bench unit and bringing a dude who is more complimentary to what Braun and AD are doing. Say for that, like, it's not going to work, right? Like, he's so sloppy with his passes.

The fact that him and AD have literally no synergy in pick and roll, they have no chemistry, There's no juice. There's no pop to their pick and roll actions. That's a red flag to me. And so if he's just going to do his, you know, head down, dribble, dribble, dribble, only pass when absolutely necessary, turn the ball over. You know, the other day I said Russ's passes were less accurate than Ryan Leaf. Like, if he's going to be that dude, he needs to do that against lesser players

in bench units because right now it's just plain ugly. I have a follow-up. Who is the player on the Lakers roster who is more complimentary to what LeBron and AD are doing?

Who is your dream replacement in the starting lineup for us? I think literally anybody if you want to put if you want to put Ellington, if you want to put Monk, if you want to put whoever, you want to,

like, everybody is more complimentary if you just be, like, all, Bron, you're going to do the lion's share of the ball handling now, right? Like, I know Bron like got sick and tired of doing the point guard thing, the very first season where they had AD, but it worked. That's the thing. Like, it worked. They were like, you know, 50 and 20 is something ridiculous like that before the bubble

happened. I get it. He's older. He's sustained more injuries. but this whole letting Russell Westbrook be the engine of what they're doing

it's totally not working not working at all I think it raises the question of even if they don't do any of this in the regular season maybe they just want to ride it out with Russ to save LeBron's legs to we're going to be a lower Western Conference seed maybe we'll be in the playing again whatever we're going to deal with it

the question for me is when it comes down to it in the playoffs and a team is just exposing Westbrook and really attacking that matchup and really exploiting him, does Frank Vogel have the political capital to not play him for a fourth quarter, to not play him to close a game? Is that even a thing that's on the table as a possibility? Absolutely not. But can I rebutt quickly the regular season part of it all? Because it seems to be like established just inside information. There are enough Lakers, like insiders saying this that it's like a candidate at this point, that the reason why they went after Ross was specifically to say,

Dave LeBron during the regular season to get them to the point where they would have home court advantage or just like have their legs in order to be better in the playoffs to avoid what happened last year. If that was the thinking, why would you target Russell Westbrook, who is off injured and over the past two seasons, a particularly slow starter to the point where he admitted after this Knicks game that I tend to ramp up over the course of the season? And like, while they couldn't predict that LeBron would have his injuries early on, like, why would you even get him of all people to serve that role? Like every time I watch the Lakers game,

I'm just like, isn't, wouldn't it help just to have depth to get through the regular season? Look at what the Wizards are doing with most of that depth. They are just racking up regular season wins. And if you just had bodies around Anthony Davis and like, I just wonder if this team would not be better off for it. And like, obviously the buddy healed, uh, alternate timeline is well established as well. But like it seems like, speaking of D'Mart Rosen, he was talking pretty recently about how he expected to go to the Lakers before the Lakers signed Russell Westbrook or traded for Russell Westbrook

and completely got rid of that and he ended up with the Bulls. Like let's think of an alternate timeline where instead of Russ, the Lakers have buddy healed and potentially Demarder Rosen and Kyle Kuzma and KCP and Montrez-Harrul,

any of these guys that ended up keeping. That's a really freaking good team. It's a really great team in the regular season in order to rack up wins, which is specifically what you're trying to do here. It makes no sense. that's the that's the saddest part of the Rust thing

it's like the buddy heel deal was there out in the atmosphere everybody was like yeah that's probably going to happen and I think the exchange was going to be maybe KCP it was like it's like KCP and Coos or something or Coos and Montresor yeah it wasn't some incredible halls

so they would have still retained some level of perimeter defense like people have talked a lot of shit about Carl Kuzma throughout the course of the years. But he made himself into a lunch pail, gritty player, like, grinded on defense, switched out on fours, guarded perimeter wing type of guys, spot up from three, like, you know, the exact type of person you need next to LeBron James, right? So, KCP, same kind of thing, obviously not as big as Kuzma.

But the same deal, like, I shoot, I guard the hell. lot of people, I'm very complimentary to LeBron. So you get to keep a few of those kinds of guys add more elite shooting, which opens up things for LeBron and AD's pick and roll game. No brainers. And then for possession soaking, you bring in Damar DeRosen, who's like, actually good at this? This is depressing.

All right, let's maybe pivot to somehow maybe a more depressing sort of situation because my take here is that I think the Houston Rockets might be the worst team of all time. They are currently one in 16. They have a sub-100 winning percentage. They only have to get over 100 in order to beat the Mighty Charlotte Bobcats of the 2011-2012 season. They finish 7 and 59 with. a 109 win percentage. But I can only see this situation getting worse

before it gets better because one Stephen Silas, apparently according to reports today, is on the hot seat, which could just force a change of coaching and maybe just disrupt everything and just bring everything, make everything worse. Absolutely insane.

Absolutely insane that he would be fired. Well, just that he would be held accountable for anything that's happening over the last two seasons, as if he was the one who pushed James Harden out the door or he was the one who put together a roster of a bunch of 19 and 20-year-olds that at least by my eye

is doing exactly what the Rockets want them to do, which is go through the hard knocks of development in a really sloppy way and lose lots of games. I guess the counter to that is, was he hired specifically to coach a developmental team or was he hired by the previous regime before Stone took over

in order to make sense of a hardened well? Westbrook team. And so I could see as the GM there being like, I actually just want my own guy. And if this guy isn't doing a good job, this is my motivation to get him fired. So that would be my counter to that. But the other part of the other part of this is I also wonder for how long the veterans who are playing the lion's share of the minutes on this team are going to continue to do so. Because as we've seen throughout the history of time, throughout basketball, as the results start to get worse, the vets play less. they get injured or they get traded to flip for more assets. And so there's a timeline here, like a very quick one. This could happen very soon,

where the young guys play more and make more mistakes and the results get worse. So, like, I think there's a very clear pathway to this being the worst team of all time. That is my take. How long do you think it'll take before the Rockets win their second game? That's a great question.

Do you have the schedule up here? Let's pull this up real quick. Oh, God. Okay, so next up, they have the... the Bulls and then the Hornets, I think we can chalk those up as losses. But then they have a nice little home and home against the Oklahoma City Thunder. How do we feel about their chances there? I mean, right now the Thunder are better.

Oh, they are so much better, so much better. They've lost to the Thunder a couple days ago, too. So, I mean, it's not a surefire win. They do have the magic who I think net rating-wise are almost as bad as the rocket. So if they're going to get a couple wins here, they're going to really stack the standings, their wind column in the standings. I think this would be the time. Yeah, if they can't get a win between now and December 5th,

which again is two games against Oklahoma City, then they have Orlando and New Orleans. If they can't win one of those, we could be staring down like a one and 25 star pretty soon. Which, you know, which will bring me to something that I've been grinding an axe on the internet for the last like five days about the John Wall situation. Justin just said this is the worst team probably. in the history of the NBA.

So how can you tell me that John Wall can't play for this team? It just doesn't make any sense. And all these fucking dorks on the internet talking about, well, he's being played 40 million not to do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, guys, like, y'all don't understand the optics of this shit. When players show up somewhere, they're expected to try. Like, let's use Ben Simmons, for example, who we've killed. rightfully so on his show.

He shows up to camp and he's hot dogging it and just not giving any effort. Doc Rivers is like, get the hell out of my practice, whatever. If he shows up to a game and does exactly the same thing, we say rightfully, we'd say, yo, what the hell are you doing? You're not holding up your end of the bargain. We're not going to want to hear, well, this is what's in the best interest of me and my future of sabotaging things. ending up on another team. We say, yo, show some professionalism.

We tell people that we're coming here to try to win every single game. That's what we tell players to try to do. So Houston Rockets, you're going to stink anyway. Why is Adam Silver allowing them essentially to do what the player equivalent would be to show up to a game and not try? Like, that shit is unacceptable. Like, you can't tell me John Wall can't get minutes. on this team.

That's why nobody gives a shit about our regular season. That's why nobody could be bothered to watch any of these fucking regular season games because the commissioner's office have allowed people to cheapen the product, to bastardize this shit and make it be like, nobody should give a fuck about this. That's why John Wall doesn't have to play. Ultimately, this doesn't matter. We're not trying to win.

We don't care. We don't give a fuck how it looks. We don't care about the optics. and that's what teams do. Like people telling me like, well, John Wall's not entitled to playing time.

Duh, I know that. But you can't watch this team and credibly tell me that he can't play for them. Get minutes over DJ Augustin. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Remember when Anthony Davis

was forced to play in New Orleans? Like, what happened over the past two years where now it's like completely acceptable? But guess what? He kind of wasn't, though. They did some really funky thing with, they were doing Anthony Davis, all-MBA player, clear All-Star, fringe MVP candidate is now playing 20 minutes a game.

Well, because I think the conspiracy theory was the league leaned on New Orleans to at least get him in the game. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know what happened. Maybe they just like a little church course. When you guys decided you didn't want to trade him because you were hard rocks, you can't just have this little middle ground here. Right. That was the point of trying to force a trade.

It's like, all right, if you have any integrity, you have to play me thereby ruining your draft picks. But again, everybody has to participate in if I'm here, if I'm showing up, if I'm a team, I play my best players. If I'm a player, I play as hard as I can. Like, why is this so hard to understand? Well, especially in this case, I think there's a pretty strong argument, having seen the alternative, that playing John Wall is a good developmental choice for the Rockets. Like a guy who can give them structure, who can run offense, a guy who knows how to play NBA basketball,

that seems super helpful in this context. Yeah, seems like that would help a bunch of young guys who know nothing about playing quality NBA basketball, but, you know, stats and ping pong balls and, you know, game in the system. People seem to think this shit is admirable on the internet, but whatever. $44.3 million

John Wall is making for sitting on his ass. That's not a dream. I don't know what it is, man. It's all I want to do with my life. Invest in some Bitcoin with that money. Rob, do you want to go with your take? So the more I think about it,

the more I'm coming around to the idea that the most important developmental project in the NBA is whether Bam out of bio can ever get comfortable taking intermediate shots. Like, if he can ever score at all, between three and 15 feet, or really outside of three feet,

I think it could completely change the face and the scope and the competitive field of the NBA, because when you look at the heat, that's a team that if Bam is really good, like superstar level good, they could be contenders for a really long time. And if he's anything short of that, I think they're going to feel pretty old pretty quickly,

between Lowry and Butler and PJ Tucker and all these veterans on which they've come to rely, that just has me zeroing in so much on every time Bam gets the ball at the free throw line and the defense is sagging off of him, what is he going to do? What can he do? Especially because this season, the answer is miss 70% of his shots from 3 to 10 feet. That's not going to cut it after he showed some promise in that regard last season. And so I have my eye on the heat long term as one of the teams that could be a contender for the next five years if Bam is really good. and if not, maybe we'll have to

have some hard conversations about them by year two or three of that timetable. And he's got to want to take them. I feel like, bam... Huge part of it. He takes so much pride in being the guy that does all the little things right and plays with a huge motor.

I think he takes so much pride in that aspect of the non-glamarized portions of the game that he doesn't take as much pride as shit like 16-footers. Like, that's going to make your team way big. better. And somebody needs to sort of, you know, drill that into him. Like, yo, you willingly taking these 14 footers, 12 footers, 16 footers, these intermediary shots is going to take your team to the freaking moon. And that's going to be the next step for him.

Well, especially now that we've seen, the heat have kind of moved away from the bam at the elbow hub offense. They're running a lot of other different stuff now. His assists have plummeted as a result of that. I think he's basically averaging half of what he usually does. He needs to find other ways to express offensive value. And it's a little beneath him in some ways, but having like a little Tristan Thompson-esque push shot when he's rolling down the lane,

I think that's important. I think that's like unreasonably important to the future of the heat is whether he can develop that shot. Is this a take? Is it not a take? It's kind of a temporary take. It's a little on the miles side.

Skip Bayless would be disgusted by you right now, bro. How you get out of like the DeMarterson conversations months later is because you just stuff so much nuance in the bird here that you don't really step out on a ledge. Well, for the record and for safety reasons, never stuff your bird. Always cook your stuffing separately. Very important. Don't be spreading misinformation on this podcast, Justin. Speak for yourself.

I must keep stuff with my birds. All right. Let's end it there. Thank you for Big Kerm, Jonathan Kermon, production. for filling in this week. Happy Thanksgiving for one and all. And we will be back next week. We'll see you.