The Ringer NBA Show - Panic! at the Deadline: A Knicks Collapse, the Adrift Warriors, and More.

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Justin, Rob, and J. Kyle Mann discuss three teams that could be under some stress heading into the deadline. (00:00) Intro (6:46) Knicks (31:50) FanDuel ad break (32:41) Warriors (50:04) Cavaliers Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and J. Kyle Mann Producers: Victoria Valencia and Isaiah Blakely Production Supervision: Ben Cruz and Conor Nevins Additional Production Support: John Richter and Chris Wohlers Social: Isaiah Blakely and Keith Fujimoto The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to group chat. I am Justin Verrier. And joining me, Rob Mahoney, Jay Kyle, man. Right before we got on here, we learned that this is becoming a bit of a pump pod. Because it's not just me who's cramming those dumbbells. It seems like Kyle, you're also getting that working while you're working. When you do as much sedentary watching or just, you know, you got to find it's a lot of eating up time. And it's like, I'll spend a lot of time with my feet up.

and I would be like, you just, you know, we were talking about it the other day. As you get a few more laps on the odometer, you're just like, I need to make the best use of my time. I have tinkered with exercising while I watch, which is tricky, which is tricky. I know some people will ride the bike. Rob, you were saying you can't do anything while you watch. I've attempted it. I just like, I don't have the focus to do that many things at once. And in this case, those things are simply move multiple limbs while watching a basketball game.

I'm not even capable of that. Yeah, I think it depends on how closely you watch. If you're looking for, like, minute details and, like, really dig it in. Yeah, that would be tough to do anything else. But most of the time, we're just monitoring. And as I monitor, I actually used to put a yoga mat right in front of my TV and just, like, at least stretch. At least get some mobility in there. See, that feels manageable to me.

What Kyle's describing, I'm imagining Kyle, you know, dumbbell in one arm, hand on, hand on the lap, top scrolling synergy with the other. Just like peak performance. You can curl while you watch. I would say you could even lightly walk while you watch. The other thing, because I tweeted out a video the other night, because I'm monitoring college and NBA. I had some questions about like,

there is a point where you watch so many games that you're watching no games. I do think it can be, I don't know how you all handle that. It's like a balance of like three or four, and then I'll focus sound up on one, you know, because just like darting around you end up consuming nothing at some point. this is the cool lifestyle that would be sure everyone out there is like

these are the glamorous situations you get into where you feel bad about even getting a little pumping while you're watching a game. Yeah, we got it all figured out. Perfect work-life balance. You know, live in the dream, Justin. I have noticed, Rob, that you're just flashing those guns right now. I know that temperature allows for it

in glorious Los Angeles, but look at that. Those sleeves are getting shorter by the pod. I can assure you it is simply a camera framing issue. and as soon as we can tighten this thing up, I would really like to. I think there's just way too much arm happening in my shot, generally speaking. But we're living with it for now.

Depending on who you ask, not enough for them. It seems like the people are enjoying it. I'm not going to begrudge anybody. They're extra joy from the pod. Whatever, man. Whatever, you know, like we said before we started, we don't kink shame on this pod. However, you enjoy your pods.

Go ahead. Pro kink basketball podcast. Maybe the only pro kink basketball podcast. I don't know. I don't know if you've listened to Zach Lowe recently. He's into some stuff. All right. On today's podcast, we're going to get into three separate panic teams. Some panicking a little bit more than others. Unfortunately, it's taken me a while to

determine which teams are panicking when because I can no longer log into my Twitter account. So I'm behind like at least an hour on most NBA news. I remember seeing Jimmy Butler go down. We're going to talk about the Warriors a little later. But it took until the following morning, until I learned that he had torn his ACL. I'm just like, I feel like I'm in 1999 here where I'm open up to the morning paper in order to figure out what's going on. See, I just thought you were offering deals on laptops.

I was going to text you and say. Is it laptops now? Because it started off as crypto coaching. I just, yeah, I thought that one was actually you. I thought the laptops were fake. This is where we're really trying to split the hairs. Which of them was more believable? Just in crypto.

coaching clear clear obvious one yeah who at the rigger is most likely to offer like a deal on laptop i could see tyler doing that oh sure trying to think yeah selling him out of the back of a van and a walmart parking lot like his dog i could do it his dodge truck or whatever it is yeah i just i don't know what happened i clicked the link i was trying to help out a fellow colleague don't click the link well here's the thing it was tailored specifically not only to the person who who like DM'd me, but also like to like this certain situation that would get me to click on it.

It was like, hey, I'm up for this like hosting thing. Yada, can you go and vote for me? And I was like, sure, I'll help a brother out.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be just like malware or whatever is going on. I can't get back into my Twitter account. I've tried furiously to email like tech support. They won't give a shit. I actually had to email my license photo over to them. So this could keep getting worse.

Did Nicky Grazer DMU? Justin and you were flattered and you thought, oh, is that what happened? I wish. I wish. I just can't believe you willingly were like, yeah, hey, Twitter slash X, here's a copy of my driver's license. That seems like a great idea. I got to double down. I say no to everything. I'm a member of no club. No reward systems, nothing at stores. I don't do it. They don't even ask anymore. My local one.

Okay. Anti-rewards is crazy. But almost as crazy as Justin, you going out of your way to do a nice thing for a fellow media member. Don't do that. I know that all the time. Why help a friend out? This is what I'm saying. I hope you don't take the wrong lesson away from this. I hope this doesn't, you know, pull you deeper into your shell.

No, if anything, it's definitely going to do that because I remember when I used to respond to people's emails, it just got worse over time where people would ask more and more. So I stopped responding to any cold emails. This is going to be the same thing where I just shut off the entire world. I'm just going to live in my bubble, just pumping while I, I watch games, and that's going to be it. I guess that's one way to live. I'm not anti-rewards on, like, airline stuff.

I want to be clear. If it's like grocery level type stuff, I just want to, because I know people are going to say something. Because they sell your information. That's just like, I don't participate in stuff like that. Not all of us live the bougie lifestyle you do, Kyle, where you can just flaunt. I don't need your coupon savings at the grocery store.

It's not what it's a trade-off. I'd rather, I'd trade the coupon savings for the bullshit. I just don't. I'm very anti-I'm staying out of the bullshit. That's my thing. That's fair. I love a coupon, by the way. Hell yeah.

I get those email to me as well. It's the one good email that I'll ever engage with. All right. Today's pod. Panic teams. Got to start first and foremost with the New York Knickerbockers. Hard to miss their panic because it's practically been happening since the middle of December.

Lost nine or the past 11. Lost four straight as we're recording this Wednesday morning. So practically since New Year's Eve, Rob, they've been a pretty shit team. I guess the question. is this the real Knicks or is it the earlier version where it seemed like not only were they good, it seemed that there was a promising start to something more than they were even last season. Yeah, the first month of the season or so, I thought their ball movement, even though it had a learning curve to it, seemed like there was real purpose there, right?

They were driving and kicking. There was just like a lot of layered action. It was exactly kind of what we all thought we were signing up for with the Mike Brown portion of this experience with the Knicks. That is just like fallen away. And there's just like a listlessness to the way. they play on offense right now, where the defense has been in disaster zone levels for a long time. Players on the team are calling it, like, actively embarrassing on a regular basis. Things are quite bad.

But to me, the damning part is like even just watching from a feel perspective, I don't have a lot of faith that the offense is going to be able to bail it out as consistently as they need it to to be one of the best teams in the league, one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. It's just, it's not clicking at that level right now. And if Jalen Brunson isn't doing absolutely her. Herculean shit, they often just kind of fall apart. And even sometimes when he does, they still fall apart. Do you think at the core of this, it's just the duality of,

or just the duo of Brunson and Kat just is problematic. And there's, it's, it's not duality. It's the polarity. It's like the two batteries just, like they don't produce energy. Like it's just their pointed, ends pointed at the same. Because Brunson, like we know, prefers to score, a little smaller. Then you get Kat, I just feel like his pick and pop activity hasn't been quite the same. same efficiencies at the rim, efficiencies from three are down.

And I just kind of wonder, is that, does it start there? And then when you stack those wings who aren't particularly great playmakers themselves, they're okay, but does it kind of create this offensive stagnation that is a little, since it's such a not natural fit, it's just really difficult to overcome? Because that's kind of what I see when I watch them. You talk about they were really trying to go out of their way to move the ball. Yeah. But you're just settling back into the just like the resignation of like this doesn't feel supernatural.

It's not easy like over time. Is that? What do you all think about that? I think the big concern is a lot of the things that you could nitpick that have led to these recent results. Remind me a lot of the struggles from last year just on a much higher scale. Like it's a much more extreme result than we got at times last year because for a while, that team didn't click until the end. And even in the playoffs, you could gripe about like, well, they probably could have lost that Detroit series. It wasn't really the long stride.

We've got this all figured out and we're going to conquer the world sort of approach that I think we all expected when they put that team together. It's not really an athletic team. The defensive issues are always going to be there, not a ton of ball handling. But as Rob was alluding to, the offense can at times be electric and at times last year. It was certainly that. There's still overall this season very good on offense. But I think the problem is twofold. One, if the offense can't be absolute elite with the bullet,

if Brunson cannot save them in a lot of those crunch time situations, then the bottom falls out pretty quickly. I also think you're hearing a lot about chemistry concerns and just not being on the right page. Perhaps that's just the compounding effect of playing with Kat over a full season. Perhaps that's just the fact that they leaned on Tibs, not only for structure, but perhaps to get them in line whenever they would kind of fall off.

And so I think it's a lot of things. That could be the construction of the team first and foremost, but also maybe they just needed Tibbs, if only because he provided something that they're not getting elsewhere. Maybe it's not a Brown question, Rob. Maybe it's just the fact that it's an absence of Tibbs or what he brought in terms of just the cohesion. I think it's totally possible.

And just like the focus and the determination and the commitment to their principles, like Tom Tibdo teams do all of those things quite well. Mike Brown teams sometimes do, sometimes don't. Moreover, with this collection of players, you're right, this is a longer standing problem that went deep into last season and just never quite got resolved. I think as much of anything, it just got papered over by the team coalescing a little bit, getting guys like Mitchell Robinson back in the mix that kind of made up for some of their deficiencies.

And now they're just in a place where, like, Kyle, I'm so fascinated by this question that you posed about, like, kind of what is almost like the original sin of this team? Is it like that polarity issue? Is it the incompatibility on offense? Is it the incompatibility on defense? It's like with a team like the Knicks, do you hang their troubles on them not being elite at the thing they're supposed to be elite at or being so flawed on defense,

not quite by design, but by allowance? And that being the thing that kind of upsets the Apple card and upsets the balance of the team. I think I ultimately come down in agreement on like the offense being the fundamental issue here. The defense is by far their worst side of the ball. But I don't think any of us expect. this to be a shutdown defensive team.

They were always going to be the kind of group that could paper things together, have enough wing defense, have enough activity to sort of get by. They don't have that right now. But the real problem is they don't have any of the juice that's supposed to carry them. And when you're not good at the things you're supposed to be good at, like that to me is the far bigger problem. Yeah, I guess the question is how much of it is in the original construction of the team because not only did they sacrifice depth, which immediately became more paramount across

the league. But the fact that like their core players, which they're paying so much to and are counting on to be so important for them, just aren't. They're not going to fit seamlessly together. You really do kind of sacrifice the main advantage, the kind of entire thrust of trading for four star players. If you want to conclude OG and bridges into that mix, we can kind of quibble over that. And so you really need those guys to be playing at a certain level. And not all of them are, Bridges is actually kind of settled into, I think, a nice little role there. Probably never will get to the Nets version of him or whatever level up version that we thought we would get to.

But OG has been good at times. The shot isn't there. But I think Kat is the main guy that people are pointing to in part because, like, if he's not going to bring it offensively, we talked about this last spot when we talked about our All-Star Reserves, like, what else is he doing? There was actually this really interesting clip from Carmel Anthony. They were talking about it on NBC. I don't know if you guys saw this.

But I guess he was at a game. Cat airballed it in the fourth. And Mello said something to him. Like, you know, just like, let it go. Just go to the next play. And Kat responded to him. And Mello was like, dude, you shouldn't be talking to me. You should be locked in.

And if anything, that was a telltale sign to him, Carmelo, that Kat was like just not in it. Like, he was not in the flow of the game. He was a lot of things to get. I hear what you're saying. Like, yeah, because kind of sounds like, how dare you respond to the thing I said to you? It's a symptom.

It's a symptom. It's not a disease. And there are a lot of symptoms here, I think, that are not so great. And this was part of my argument for the cat where I had some reticence to put Kat with that group of players, with the All-Star group of players. Because overall, from three, Cat is just a guy. When you look at the types of shots that he likes to take, you know, I was going back this morning and being like, am I losing my mind about the type?

Like, he really, really likes to take pick and pop shots where he's taking, like, one step. But he's not somebody who, like, boogies a ton off, you know, granted how many seven-footers, six-ele guys do in the league, Not many. Those guys don't really exist. But at the rim, it's really curious, too, because this is the lowest rim efficiency he's had since. He wasn't even this inefficient as a rookie.

And I was like, is it concentrated to certain types of teams? And I have noticed that, you know, first of all, I want to say that, you know, we were texting about how the Mavericks basically were the danger Will Robinson moment, really, where it was like, okay, this isn't just like, we're kind of wandering dog days type thing. This is a real problem. I'm like the Mavs came in and just immoralized them with their energy and just their want to. And Cat is, when he's driving to the basket, I think he's facing problems, whether it is physically he's not right or when he's driving into contact, I was noticing against big guys that can really move. He's just hitting these weird dead ends that end with him taking these weird shots.

Now against somebody like Dwight Powell, his solution for that was to repeatedly kick Dwight Powell in the nuts. I don't know if you guys saw that footage. But then he also was starting to have more problems against teams with really solid help dig concepts. Like, I wrote down Orlando, Boston, Miami. Those were teams that were just, he looks more uncomfortable, I feel like, than he ever has. And I don't know what that's a result of. Is it just that he is physically different or is that the Knicks and their spacing are different? I'm not sure.

I mean, I think some of it is the flow for sure. Anytime you're talking about Biggs and how comfortable they are inside, especially, it's where are they getting the ball and how? Are they getting momentum going to the basket? Are they getting free dumpoffs around the rim? There's just like none of that in New York's offense right now. And Kat can create some things for himself. But he's also been the kind of player for a long time who, if you don't carve out avenues for him,

he can disappear offensively for like five straight minutes other than maybe he'll commit like an offensive foul. Or maybe he'll come up with a couple of rebounds or second chance opportunities. But he's such a weird talent to place. And this is part of the problem in Minnesota. It's been kind of part of the ongoing problem in New York. you have to make him a priority if you want him to be one. And Jalen Brunson, for all his great strengths as a player, doesn't necessarily read the game that way.

Like Jalen Brunson, understandably, is like the top priority of the Knicks offense. And from that, you would hope that there's like a natural outflow and growth, but it just hasn't been there in any kind of stable way all season. Yeah, they had a players-only meeting after that Dallas game. They also had a players-only huddle, it seemed like, at times, which is like a new little wrinkle of this. They couldn't even wait until they got back into the locker room

in order to try to rally the troops. It didn't work. I also think an important part of this is just the tension provided by the stakes of trading for Kat more than it is like even just trading. Because Dolan is out there talking at WFAN being like, we're going to make the finals. We're actually probably going to win it all.

And so I think all of these things combined, I do have to wonder if the rubber is going to meet the road at the trade deadline because the results are so extreme. They're so loud, especially in New York. And it got loud during that Mavericks came to the point where Spike Lee, as he was going into halftime, was literally like, what the fuck is going on to the broadcast booth? I think you have to start considering options here. I guess the problem overall, though, is like, how do you trade Kat, who is presumably the one you would want to move when he's the one struggling the most and thus would be less appealing to everyone you would want to trade him to? Yes.

and is already kind of a complex fit for all the reasons we described. Like the problems he presents for the Knicks are going to be problems he presents for any other team he goes to, which is why I'm often to, I think, bigger permutations of this. Like if there's a McHale Bridges trade that makes sense, I'm a little low to trade OG because I think the kind of player he is is just immensely valuable, especially in the postseason. But if there's a way to shake this up that would make the team make more sense, I'm open to it at this point.

Like the Knicks, I think, needs something pretty dramatic. They need a jolt because right now they look like a team that kind of just stepped on the court together and has never played together before that doesn't really know their systems, at least allegedly what their systems are on either side of the ball. And often just can't be bothered to do basically anything that they're supposed to be doing. If all three of those things are true, something is kind of broken within this group. And I'm willing to entertain almost any possibility that doesn't involve Jalen Brunson to get them some life again. Pino wants to trade Brunson. We talked about this the other day. He said, and I think if he goes public with that take,

he won't be able to leave his apartment in Brooklyn or wherever it is. Simply not. No, I just think there's an interesting thing that goes on with roster construction where, you know, we have 30 teams in the league. We're all aiming for the same thing. And there are some players that we get lured into the idea of like, what are they capable of carrying on a given team? You know, it's like, are they capable of being the center of that team?

It's like, yeah, that's good. And we all feel great about that and we have some fun. but it's like winning at the highest level, obviously, is a different thing. And just when I look at Brunson, as much fun as I have and is incredible the things that he does at his height and he's able to, Rob, you said, making something out of nothing on Bill's Pod. Absolutely true. Like Chris Paul levels of incredible stuff that's going on with him. But he's more of a score. And I think you, I heard somebody, I think it might have been Jason Hart when he was coaching the Ignite.

That's a nerdy, deep cut. Sorry. But he was talking about how Scoot Henderson was a points guard and he needed him to be more of a point guard. point five guard. And I really think that Brunson, I know that's like a, that's a cringy snicker. It's such coach bullshit. Like I applaud it, but it is, but it's true. No, that's true. It is, it's a funny, it's a funny thing, but it is like Brunson to me is a points guard. And I think when you talk about the conditionality that, if that's even a word, the conditions that need to exist around somebody like Brunson to get to the highest level, it's hard enough to build a championship

level team around a six one guy. Like, that's really difficult. And then you add in the conditions that cat needs, I just wonder if it's too many conditions at some point. Like, because I don't really, would we agree that, I think the East in general, I think that they're all just sort of like,

you know, falling over themselves for the right to lose to whoever the Western Conference champion is, I'll eat my words if I'm wrong, but they don't have a championship ceiling, do they? What are we doing? They probably need to make a move,

honestly, if that's what they want to do. Well, if we were to rank, like, the problems here, like one through three or whatever it is, Like, what's number one? Is it chemistry between these guys that, like, they just fix that. All of a sudden, they could hit a certain stride that they did last year, which is good enough to get to the second round or the East Finals? Is it Kat specifically?

Is it whatever Mike Brown is trying, isn't reaching them? Like, Rob, what's number one on that list? I think number one is that almost no player on this roster right now is actively making another player or combination of players better. better. Like, there just isn't that synergy. It's not even, like, the chemistry is part of it, but I think it also feels- Except Tyler Kolek, you know, being the rising tide that lifts all boats. I just think there is, there's the chemistry part within that. Then there is like the compatibility of their skill sets. Like, all of that, to me, falls under the same umbrella, which is just like,

how do you get back to the greater than the sum of your parts kind of feeling that has guided and propelled the best Nix teams? And really these playoff runs of the last couple of couple years. Would you agree, Kyle? That's like number one. Or you're like, actually, this is a cat problem. They moved him for something more easy to fit around those three other guys. This would actually work a little better. It's all just so interconnected. I mean, the cat, I can't separate them just to me, the basketball stuff and the chemistry stuff. I mean, I've had people, this is, I don't know how comfortable you all are, like purely speculating about chemistry. We don't, we don't have any fucking clue. We're not in there. I don't know, Kyle, but if you, they're having players only

meetings. Like, this one we can speculate about. We know they are. We know we can see that. I'm just saying, and Carl is an interesting personality. He's not terribly dissimilar from D'Andre Aiton. I just feel like Aiton's a little bit more leaning back and Carl's a little more leaning forward. He's just a little more uppity, I think.

They're similar kind of guys. They're just kind of up and down. I think Carl's more skilled, obviously. But I just think if you look at them, there's an interesting thing going on where, like, we praise the Nova Nicks thing at the core of their team as the power. And it's also like, if things started to go south, you could easily also see where there's like this fortified thing at the center that like, is it penetrable in a way for, for in a chemistry way. Like, you know, granted they traded Dante. I'm purely speculating.

I'm just, it all seems interconnected. And when you have chemistry sort of tension, I mean, there have been really good teams that have, you know, when the day the season's over, they're like, I never want to see you again. I'm sure that happens on teams. But when things start to go south, it's are just not going great. Yeah. You all were arguing about their losses had been to decent teams. it's like, did they get credit for that? Like, they should be beating some of these teams.

So I don't, I don't know. I'm just, I'm spinning my wheels with the Knicks where I'm like, it's hard to believe in them. And it's hard to really believe that they're going to dig out of this to anything more than just like, well, that was a good run, you know? Yeah. Well, I feel like we need to cut to Dante DeVincenzo and Julius Randall right now, who are just at like TGI Fridays just like cheersing their chicken fingers or whatever right now

because they have made out like gangbusters in this. looks like a, he might make an all-star if there are enough injuries there. DeVincenzo has played well this season. I just, I have to look back on that trade rob and wonder like, is there any rationale to trading for cat? Have you had hindsight right now?

Would you still do that? I think more likely than not you would say no. If you knew everything you know now, it's obviously a harder sell, right? I want to say a couple things. One, I agree with you that the wolves, generally speaking, are in a great place. They also just got their asses worked by the jazz last night.

So maybe they're not cheersing right at this exact moment, or at least maybe it's a different kind of cheering. But it's more boneless wings as opposed to chicken fingers. Oh, yeah, it's definitely a boneless wing kind of a king. Boneless wing is the consolation wing. If you win, you get the actual wings. If not, you have to settle for boneless. But I like boneless wings.

Well, then I guess you like losing, Kyle. I don't know what to tell you. I think with Kat, it's not like the Knicks didn't know. what they were getting into. They knew why he was available, which is he has this incredibly huge contract that can be hefty and a little prohibitive and complicated to work around.

They had seen who he was as a member of the wolves. The Julius Randall they traded was not the player he's been over the last, especially a year. Absolutely not. Different dude. Totally different dude. And I say that to give credit to Randall

for the way he's just like reformed a lot of his game, focused a lot of its like looser parts. He's just become an incredibly driven one-on-one creator and score, a great playmaker for that team. He's been the best version and the ideal version of Julius Randall for the Wolves in so many ways. Granted, trading two good players for one, especially when that one can be as frustrating as cat, that's where it gets tough.

And I think that's where, like, it was a trade of very, like, huge talents, but also huge headaches. And in that respect, the wolves have had far fewer headaches from the Randall Di Vincenzo part of their deal than the N, Knicks have with Kat. So, like, that feels like a trade one for the wolves, at least an imbalance of a kind. But I don't know. Like, the Knicks have had playoff success, too.

I don't mean to write off everything that they've done. It's just everything that they are right now. It feels precarious in a way that I wish it didn't. Yeah, I think for a lot of that trade, it was probably the opportunity cost was so low because it was Kat for two guys who they could afford to lose at that point. right. I think you're right about Randall. I also worried that Randall trying to glom on to the version of the team that had kind of formed without him or kind of tangential to him was probably, and he probably wasn't going to give up whatever authority he had in that

locker room considering what he did before Brunson and some of those other guys got in there. So that was always naughty. Devencenzzo was a good player, but not a type of player you can live without. But it just didn't cost them much to do it. And so I got it at the time for that reason. And also there was like some weird, like technical issues where they're about to hit the second eight or come close enough to the second April where they couldn't do it because they needed like the two way guys or their their training camp guys. So like for whatever, they didn't pay much. The problem I always had was in concert with the Bridges trade. Right. But the problem was the Bridges trade was even less of a price because it was just draft picks that they're not going to need because they're they're totally fine.

They're going to be in the low 20s. And so like, well, they would need them if they wanted to trade for Janus or wanted to make a different kind of deal. Right. Like that's the opportunity cost. you're punting that flexibility. Although, I don't know, if you're trading for Yonis, if you're the bucks right now, would you rather McHale Bridges or a couple of picks in the 20s

with the possibility of getting into the teens? I don't know. I mean, I think the problem is trading all those picks closes a lot of doors that you needed to at least be a jar, right? That you needed to at least have the option to, like, make those calls and kick tires. And the next don't have a lot of that. Like, we can throw them into the trade machine

as much as we want and talk about like, oh, maybe the panic has risen to a level now where they would trade, like, they'll make a sweetheart offer for someone like Janus, but I don't even know what that looks like at this point. Yeah, I think Janus is going to be the obvious, like, we need to go and build our future around this possibility. I don't know why the Knicks would do that,

considering that they've done that for decades and it hasn't worked out, but like more power to you. If anything, I do wonder if they could turn Cat first and foremost, maybe bridges into two players and basically revert to the version that they were before, where at the very least they had an identity. And like they found some version of it in last year's playoffs, but they were at their best when they were frothing at the mouth.

And they were just dogs who would like go on the floor. That's why I think Hart, for instance, Kyle is such an important player for them. It's because he really does embody, I think, the best of their, like what they were about. If you could turn cat into like two rotation players, I might do it at this point. I think I'm at that point. Oh, man. At that point, who's your starting five? Do you just go Mitchell in the starting lineup or Mitchell Robinson and who's your, who's your five?

Or you hope one of those guys is a five. Like, I like the idea. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kind of like the idea of AD with them. Like, I thought that was at least interesting. But I don't know. Where do you go with the five if that's the case? Do you try to bolster yourself defensively or what do you think? Yeah, I think Mitchell Robinson is fine.

I also think like identifying Hartnstein at the time and like bringing them in the back end? Like, clearly the front office isn't bad at player identification. And so, like, maybe lean on that a little bit more as opposed to tracing these bigger names, which really, like, hasn't worked out for them all that well. If we're talking original sins of this team, in addition to the cat trade, losing Isaiah Hartnstein has turned out to be a pretty huge deal for them, not just because he's a really good player and exactly the kind of, like, work a day, low maintenance,

big that they could really use at times. but it just feels like over the last three years or so, they have just shaved off bits of who they are, bits of their identity, bits of the team that they were trying to be. And you're right, Justin, they chased big names. They made the deal for Kat and made a huge talent play in the process. They tried to supplement it with, you know, wings who could theoretically make up for some of his defensive deficiencies.

It's just you didn't ever make up for the part. Like, you never compensated for what was making you whole in the first place, right? Like the core of what the Knicks. were has changed dramatically. And I don't know that anyone involved in kind of the culture and the making of that team is fully reckoned with that fact. So on the list of things wrong with

the Knicks, I think we've brought up a lot of good suggestions here. I think number one with the bullet, cup curse. They're just cursed. They won the cup and any team that wins the cup is curse for an entire season. So do you think this is a curse of like, how dare you try hard for a couple weeks in these games?

and thus are too tired to compete afterwards, or is there something like supernatural happening here? Like you go to Las Vegas and you come back changed. I think it's that. Like, I think David Stern is like, why have you ruined my product? You're just trying to reach for this like soccer style thing that wasn't what we were about.

Yeah. We're about forcing guys into suits and doing what they're told. How dare you try to think differently? What if... Now you're going to be punished. But see, what if the problem is not that they won the, cup. It's that they won it and didn't hang the banner for the cup. Mm. Mm. Yeah. You're proud of yourself. They didn't honor the process and the achievement.

And in doing so, the basketball gods have struck them down and said, you know what? If you're not about this, we don't want to be about you. You got the rare double mm from Justin and I there. That was a points awarded for you there. Rob. Honestly, the harmonizing on it was beautiful. Like you guys, you guys were basically the beach boys. You want to work on our tones here? I think it was beautiful. We'll get it. One, two. Yeah. All right, why don't we take a break when we come back?

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Gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler, or visit RG-Helph.com. Call 1-88-789-7-7-7 or visit C-CPG. dot org slash chat in Connecticut. Things are pretty bleak in Golden State right now, not only for one Jimmy Butler individually, but as a team and in particular,

Steph Curry, whose future, the waning twilight of his career looks pretty dark right now, but I want to start on a high note. So last night, as they were getting absolutely lamb-baseded

by the Raptors, a glimmer of hope appeared two minutes to go in the game. And that little ray of light was Malavay Leons who came off the bench and played two minutes. Missed a shot, got a rebound.

Wasn't minus three. But he's back. Not his fault. That's right. How are you feeling about this? Yeah. Him getting sporadic minutes in these games had been kind of a good thing

because the Warriors had been winning and that's great if you can get Malifalians on the floor in the closing minutes. Wonderful for everyone involved. I also hope you guys saw Ben Cruz sent me when he was first brought into the Warriors and he did its introductory press conference, he went around and personally introduced himself

to every single person in the room because he's a gentleman, in addition to a great warrior already. So what are we have to worry about? Yes, they lost Jimmy Butler, you know, a great one-on-one creator, a versatile defender, a star in his own right, one of the most important players on the team.

But they have Malify Leon's just waiting in the wings to assume I would think all of that responsibility and more. Really, you know, if the season's going to fall apart, at least, yeah, like you said, we can lean back on a warrior of friendship and networking, quite frankly, because all those people probably had no clue who he was. So that was a genuine. And, you know, Leon's is one of those sicko G-League heroes. I saw a lot of in the deepest sicko recesses of Twitter, a lot of celebrating that he was getting his chance.

A lot of OKC Blue season ticket holders pumping their fists being happy. Yeah, the greater kind of warriors, to put a pin in something, I guess, that is fairly obvious, I guess anybody who's watching is, this is more of a going, we can't really, we can criticize where the Warriors were as a basketball team currently. I think it was moving in a positive direction.

This is more of a dirge at this point about lamenting the death of possibility at this point, basically, right? Well, I think the dirge, the volume on that is turned up because they had been kind of putting something together. Like, they had weirdly been one of the most effective offenses in the league

over the last 10 games or so. Let's go. What do we do if not crank dirges up to 11 on this pot? Like that really is our energy. And unfortunately, we have to do it to Golden State. Because I really just don't know what you do without Jimmy Butler. Like this is a piece that could not afford to lose in so many ways. And we can talk about all the downstream impacts of that.

But for now, it just like takes all of the wind out of the sales of a team that really looks like it was coming together. So 12 and 4 over their past 16. right before last night. So that's since December 20th. So it's a good little stretch of games. I think we talked about how some of the veterans that they've been waiting for, Melton in particular, Horford finally like rounding into something and playing consistently, definitely stabilized in a way that I think we all kind of hoped would. Unfortunately, yeah, I just don't know how they go on with Butler. And I also don't know how you find a solution with Butler's contract. If you wanted to be really cutthroat about it,

maybe trade him and use him as salary ballast to go do something. something, but he makes $54 million this year, makes $57 next year. Yeah. I just don't know who's willingly open to that unless you're giving back a bunch of just nonsense and just spare parts that I don't think really changes anything for them this year. And so, Kyle, I think you're right. Like, I think Steph Curry's what seemed to be like at the very least, like a good, hearty try and making the most of these last kind of years become super complicated, if not

like, perhaps buried in the way that, like, LeBarrie. Braun kind of has been where he's just like, he's trying his best, he's playing these games, he's putting forward to good performances, but the context around him just isn't capable of providing him enough. Yeah, I mean, it's like which would you prefer? People, it's like we, we on the one hand laud the Danny Aange mentality that he learned from Red Auerbach not being ruthless and not trading those Celtic stars when they were starting to age. He was like, I learned my lesson and we kind of praised that. But I really think there is, I know Zach says this all the time. I think that there is a lot to be respected and honored about just kind of dying on the battlefield.

Like Rob and I joke about that we're going to do in pickup. I just think the fact that they've really tried and it's sort of fizzling out, it's like, it just kind of seems, I'm sure they'll do something. I know that, you know, Dunleavy had the bar of the century with the, you know, if you're going to make a demand, there needs to be a demand kind of thing there. Maybe they just, you know, try one more time into the breach with Jonathan Comingga and hope that he had something. I think I would just try to swing at somebody. They might as well, right? I mean, we've come this far.

They're not just going to ride it out and be sad sacks and be like, well, we don't have a chance. I think the fact that they were willing to make that move for Butler shows that they're willing to do whatever they can to honor this good luck and good fortune that they've had and this loyalty that they've had with Steph Curry. So if it was me, I would just try to find somebody one big, one last swing, one last fight, find somebody that values comminga. I don't know who that is at this point, though,

because we were even joking about the Nets being like, yeah, we're good. Who is it? I don't even know. I mean, that's really the trouble with that whole situation. And you could view these next couple weeks as a runway into the trade deadline for Jonathan Comingo where he's going to have to play. Like, just by default,

he's going to have to be a factor in this team. I just don't know that he's going to prove anything to anybody that he hasn't already proven to them one way or another. Like, who is he going to be over the next couple weeks that he hasn't already been? Well, I thought last night was telling. So he had 20 points and 21 minutes and actually turned it on just as he was starting to get going. And it is funny because the entire rest of the team was playing as if the Charlie Brown cloud was just looming over everything they did. There was just like no pep to anything.

But then Kaminga gets off the bench and he is ready to fucking fly. He played with more want to and effort than I've seen from him in a while. And we've talked about like what would be the ideal situation for Kaminga, right? in order to, at the very least, provide a showcase to be the type of player he thinks he can be. And I think it is a team with nothing to play for. And I think, unfortunately, that might just be the Warriors at this point. I've been rewatching Mad Men recently. And do you know when they have to go to McCann and Peggy Olson, like, has the meeting with the headhunter?

And she's like, what's out there for me? Like, where can he go? And the guy's like, McCann, Erickson, where she was going to go. I kind of think that's the situation for Cominga. His best case scenario is to slide into these minutes, force Kerr to play him because he has to. He needs players and just do the best you can. And hopefully they can move together

and go through all this shit again in the offseason. Yeah, I think, I mean, he is, look, the one guy on the team who is well positioned to do more than he was being asked to do because he was being asked to do literally nothing, right, to not even contribute to their, like, on-court goings. So, yeah, putting in Jonathan Cominga, like that, there's some headroom there.

The issue with losing Jimmy Bull, more broadly, like, for one, you lose one of the most direct ways this team has to create offense, which is Jimmy Butler getting to the free throw line. Outside of that, everything they do is really hard and takes a lot of orchestration and a lot of effort and a lot out of Steph Curry and asking Brandon Pajemski to do more creation, like, that's not really what he's suited for right now. Asking DeAnthony Melton to level up as a creator, again, not really what he's been brought here to do at all.

And so when you look across the supporting cast, even the guys who've been playing well, and those guys have been playing quite well over the last month or so. Buddy Heald has kind of popped back into the rotation. Maybe he can give them some scoring, if nothing else. But there's nothing there that can compensate for Jimmy Butler. And Jonathan Cominga can absorb minutes. He will put up points in a way.

Will it feel, I don't know, at all, like, holistic with everything else the Warriors are doing? History tells us probably not. But the time for the Warriors to be the best complete version of themselves, is over. It is done. It is buried. It is sealed away with Jimmy Butler's surgery on this ACL. That's not coming back. And so I would hope that there's an opportunity for him. I just, we know Jonathan Kaminga too well to believe in this too much and to believe that it's going to go anywhere, all that meaning for Golden State. I still hope for the best for them and for everybody involved. Because you're right, like anytime you see a player as legendary as Steph who's done everything that he has and often done it so thanklessly,

even for a player who is as revered as he is, you hate to see seasons go sideways in this way. I don't want to be too maudlin, but it does feel like a bit of an end for what could have been a nice little kick here to the Steph Curry end of his career. We'll see. He can make miracles happen. He might make something out of this.

I don't want to put it past him. We'll see next year. We'll see how quickly Butler comes back. He'll be on expiring at that point. Maybe there's something to do on top of that. But I'll be honest, I started to even just think back, on like where the problem was.

Ultimately, I think the two timeline thing has been well documented, how much of a disaster has been. Yeah. But I do wonder going for Butler specifically was a signal that they acted too late in order to make the decision to turn toward the present as opposed to trying to like walk the line. And it's just sad like because they had an opportunity. It's like I look back in all their high draft picks like,

not only do these players like they're pretty okay. They're actually not a lot of misses beyond Wiseman. It's really just like players who just didn't become what they needed them to be or perhaps were projecting them to be. But to not spin them into anything of high value, it's not surprising that even with Butler, they were middling because they've kind of like stayed in the middle of both of these two sort of approaches. It makes you wonder if there was the vision in the front office among like in the seed of the, we're talking about the original sin.

And I think that this entire era, we're mourning it. We're like, you know, this is just, we're doing this way later than we would have done just because I think this is sort of an extinction burst, basically, of a thing that was going to go extinct. I don't know if you've ever heard people talk about that, but I think that it was over, you know, we really technically was over in terms of contention in 22. It was a miracle. It was amazing that they did that, despite the fact that I've always contended this, that I think personally they betrayed their core philosophy with those two picks when they had the

chance to do the dual timeline thing when they picked Coominga and Wiseman. Those were not. I even, somebody who's probably going to be like, stop, you know, get out of your head out of your own ass here. But like, I wrote in the draft god, I was like, if the warriors get haliburt and the rest of the league is screwed because it was so. And if it was obvious to me, I just think that there was, they must have either thought we can make these guys sort of like come in and fall in line with our philosophy of high feel, low touch time, just high processing. Comingo was very, very raw in terms of his processing of basketball and Wiseman was too. And I think that that is the thing that we can point to.

And the fact that they delayed it and they finally owned up and took a really was a chance, taking Jimmy Butler, I think. It was going to pay off. But I think you could trace it all back to that moment. That was the thing that killed the two-timeline thing in a way that it didn't for the spurs and a way that it didn't for the other teams that were in this situation, in my opinion. Well, it didn't, but in a different way it did. Like almost every dynasty ends the same way.

And it's with a team that has produced a ton of magic, thinking that they can pull one more rabbit out of the hat to save them. And sometimes that looks like drafting a player who's outside of your normal skill set and personality type and zone. Sometimes it's signing that guy as a free agent. Sometimes it's believing that the guy on your bench who you've been waiting on will suddenly develop into the thing you would need him to be at the exact right time. It's almost hard to blame Golden State for thinking they could do that because they did it in so many different ways. over the years. Like they made, they made all that magic happen

because Steph is that kind of superstar and because the core that they had built and the defense they had built was formidable enough to help basically anyone they could throw out. Like, they turned Javelle McGee into a champion. You know, like, why would you think

you can turn James Wiseman into a player? Hold on, no, no. Wait, where do you think the magic's happening because the core of what was working with that was great scouting. It was the Myers-Shlink. It was the, they had the core of an idea and they got lucky with Raymond.

but they scouted Clay. Clay was great. I think all the other guys are like supplementary. I think the scouting of the core things that were going to propel it forward is... Yeah. That was a crazy assumption, in my opinion. I'm not saying they got lucky. I'm saying once you put Steph Curry and Clay Thompson

and Draymond Green and Andre Aguadala on a court together, all of a sudden you start thinking rightly and understandably so, we could just put anybody with these guys maybe, and they'll be able to figure it out. They'll be able to get a Jonathan Cumminga in the right frame of mind to be an effective member of this group. And it just never really panned out. Like, I think the original sin for them is that what they had was so effective.

It inspired so much belief that ultimately they ended up getting like a little bit over their skis in terms of the kinds of players they were targeting. Yeah, drafting Wiseman over lamella ball, a player they seem to like, just like, that's the tradeoff right there where it seemed like they fetishized the potential dimension that they never had. but to glom on to what they had. Weisman didn't work for a lot of reasons, but just like that, even that idea that we could bring in these

like raw visceral athletes, like a comminga, and just apply him to our contacts, just never worked. And you saw that lean back to what they were when they drafted guys like Pajemski and others who are a little bit more of a fit there. But I think the Kyle's overall point,

there is talent here. So the young core overall, Wiseman at two was a huge bus. Kaminga at 7, though, I think there's still perhaps something there. I don't think the book is closed there. We'll see. Pool at 28 was a great poll. What you think

about pool. Like he's still an NBA player. He's still making a lot of money in this. Moody at 14. Fine. 14th pick. Pajemski at 19 is actually not terrible. So there's talent here. It's just like they kind of vacillated in between about the

approach. And I don't think that helped. And I think it has to speak to like Kerr's own rearing of some of these guys and how strong and like kind of dug in he was at a certain point about making sure that those guys played the way that he wanted them to play. Yeah. I think the mistake that they made wasn't necessarily the belief that those guys could jump in and jump on to something that had a core foundation, like the Iggy Clay, you know, Draymon, Steph thing. The mistake was to assume that once those

guys, it's sort of like the Ninja Turtle splinter meme where you see what, you know, splinters, splinters young are old and, you know, has the youngens. And then when it flip-flops, that they're going to be ready. I think the mistake that they made was assuming that once the core started to age out of being the central thing about what works, that those guys would evolve into the thing that could be the core of the new thing. I think that was the mistake. I personally never, ever understood it. But they did, you know, whatever, here we are.

I will say as I was looking back on some of these teams, the 22-23 Warriors, so in addition to like a lot of these young guys we're talking about and a lot of the core figures from the 22 title team, Had Dante DiVincenzo on a one plus one make contract. Never going to keep him because he outplayed what he got and got a bigger deal for the mix. But he created his stuff. Curry with basically changing his career as a shooter, like completely revolutionized the way he thought about shooting and his actual emotion, I believe. We definitely could use him.

Tide Jerome and Ryan Rollins on kind of make good contracts. Kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, we're going to talk about the calves in a little bit. Like just having Tide Jerome matters a lot. And like if they just had a lot of these guys in the back as opposed to like perhaps some of these other guys, things could be different. Yeah, I think those are the tough ones, right? The birds in the hand who just wrong place, wrong time, whatever it was for those kinds of players.

But you would think like Golden State would have room for a guy like Ryan Rollins, right? That they would have room, obviously, like Dante fit in what they were trying to run and what they were trying to play. It was more just like a practical consideration they couldn't keep him. They just needed a couple of those sorts of transactions to hit in a way that they didn't. But the culture of the Jimmy Butler stuff is even if they had, would it have changed all that much? Like if this injury still happened at this time, would this team be any,

like, would their fate look any meaningfully different? Or if Andrew Wiggins just didn't disappear after having one of the greatest runs in the playoffs? Didn't entirely disappear. He just became like a muted contributor, you know? He literally disappeared for a while. Okay, sorry.

He did literally disappear. There was a pretty odd situation. He did literally disappear. He did literally disappear. Then he came back and was just like, like a guy. He's just fine. It's just the weirdest career.

One of the strangest careers, dude. Like, God, to go from where he started, where people were like, is this the next, like, Scotty Pippen, whatever. And then, you know, it's like, uh, maybe not. And then spike up with the Warriors. Yeah. All right. Let's take one more break.

And when we come back, we'll talk about his former team. All right. The Cleveland Cavaliers. Justin, I just want to say, calling the Cavaliers, Andrew Wiggins' former team. It's a beautiful bit of business you just did. inspired work. Yeah, I identify him as a cav. Classic cab?

That's what he's going to go into the, not the whole thing. He's going in. Yeah. With just the hall of remembering some guys, he was a cavil. I mean, the hall of remembering some guys for the Cavaliers in particular,

the Sasha Pavlovich's, you know, they just, I feel like so many random guys rolled through the LeBron era that are worthy of remembrance. Oh, yeah. The LeBron's specific wing of remembering some guys is just like,

is his historic because he always got like a guy in his eighth year who had had a moment elsewhere, but you knew him from that other thing, but then he played 10 minutes. And Wiggins is kind of a part of it. If not for actually playing with LeBron, then functionally getting traded by LeBron in a Sports Illustrated first person article. So, you know, crazy things happen. There's some fan out there. I was, you know, one of the coveted memorabilia finds of all time is the Rashid Wallace, Atlanta Hawks jersey, and there's like three or four of them that exist.

There's somebody out there that thought Wiggins was going and had like a jersey made that exists out there, I'm sure. So I'm sure that's a, we need to do an eBay dive after that to see. Or just mail me one. I'll wear it on the next pot. Yeah, if you know the whereabouts of an Andrew Wiggins' Cavs jersey, email us or ringer group chat at gmail.com. Like, we would love to, if nothing else, just kind of salute you on this pod.

Somebody was fired up about that Kansas tape and was like, here we go, the Andrew Wiggins era. I wonder if it even has like his actual number or if it's just that like number one because that's what he held up on the dais. Very possible. But the current calves, it seemed like things were turning at the very least, nine and four or excuse me, nine and six over the past 15 games got absolutely walloped by the thunder, which, you know, it happens to a team. Yeah. I think, yeah, I just, Garland's back out again. I just, I find it hard to conjure up hope that we're going to get the full, like,

everybody's back and we're back in business baby sort of thing that would, at the very least, always existed in the back of your mind because they've had so many injuries thus far. And perhaps there's still exist in the back of the front office's mind because some of the numbers with the core four robber still very good. It's just like they never play together. And on top of that, like trying to jerry rig a bench around this has been very difficult. I've been a little heartened by their play lately outside, of course, getting wombed by the thunder. But some of this is like, look, their defense isn't where you want it to be and hasn't really been all season, if we're being honest about it.

Offensively, for most of the year, they've been a three-point engine team that was not really able to hit threes because most nights, as you alluded to JV, they've been missing like several of their best shooters at any given point in time. Like, it's not just Garland in and out of the lineup. so many guys on the supporting cast have missed like 10 plus games. And so then all of a sudden, the shots that you would want to be going to Sam Merrill are going to DeAndre Hunter. And the returns on those things are just dramatically different. And so the more that they were getting guys into the mix and they were starting to hit threes a little more again, it felt like it just kind of was lifting their offense and all the pieces were falling into place in a way that made sense. It's just so tough with all the stuff that's been happening with Garland.

And he's been playing better at least when he's been on the floor, which is a huge shift for them. but they just need bodies. Like, they just need, like, Max Struz, who has not played all year. They need Garland to be a steady, reliable part of the rotation, and he picks up injuries kind of seemingly all the time at this point. I don't know who they are without all of their component parts. At the same time, I don't know that they're going to be in a position to do something radical or dramatic because of that evidence you suggested, which a lot of it says maybe you're close enough, right?

Like, maybe in this Eastern Conference, it's not so crazy to think that you're completely, outside of any race of any meaning. Yeah, I think it's a combination of things like you're saying, the availability that we haven't quite, you know, it hasn't totally come to fruition. Our idea of these guys, you know, consistently playing together because of the injury concerns. When I watch them, I see a sort of a convergence of a few factors of. They've whiffed on some of their bigger, you know, ambitious moves to bolster the supporting

cast like you were talking about with Hunter, with, you know, on paper, we all were like, maybe a little naive to think that Lonzo Ball would be ready to go or any modicum of of his former self. He's one of the least efficient shooters in the league. And when you have a guy with his skill set, if there's no threat to score, you just kind of get this old guy and pick up who's like, I can pass it.

You know, it's like, it's just not, but no one respects you, you know, that kind of a thing. Not that I have personal experience with that at all. But, no, I just, that, that really hurts. And then the combination of the two small guard thing, that's a whole other conversation. Evan Mobley's challenges offensively, him and Jared Allen fitting together.

But the other thing that I've noticed is really high turnover percentages among the guys who were also expected to take some of the weight off of Donovan Mitchell. So you get either we get Hercules Donovan Mitchell who's making tough shots, doing incredible things, or we get Jalen Tyson. We get Craig Porter. We get DeAndre Hunter. Just not great. Point five, you know, we're talking about the point five things. Just guys who aren't great off the bounce kind of decision makers. And that really kills your synergy in your offense, I think.

I think that's all fair, but also I just literally don't know where this team would be without Jalen Tyson this season. Like, he's one of the only role players who has been consistently there and available and good. And those are in such short supply right now for Cleveland. Well, you're talking about the bottom dropping out. I'm talking to, yes, that's true, but I'm just saying that it's all down near the bottom of it. Yeah. Yeah, so Jalen Tyson, 47% from three, his per 36, 17.8.7 rebounds a game. I've seen a lot of comps to Josh Hart. And I guess I can see it to a certain extent

because he is a rebounding guard. Hart probably one of the best in modern basketball at doing that. But the fact that he has the shot to go along with it is like something that Hart has dreamed of his entire career. Kyle, what are you seeing from him and maybe what you saw from him going into the league overall? Like, did you expect something like this? Is Hart like a good comp?

Are you seeing somebody else? I don't know if I have a good comp, but I mean, he had a lot of fans coming into that draft and coming to the league, and people who have kind of steadfastly believed in him. So, I mean, I'm not surprised that he's been productive. I just don't know that he would probably be better served if some of these other gambles are just, you know,

things, these moves that they've made, like the Lonzo, like the Andre Hunter. I just think if the overall consistency and stasis of this team is where it should be, I don't know that he would be at burden to do some of those things. So, yeah, I mean, I like to, Tyson. I just think that he's doing all that he can do. He's not the source of, like you were saying, Rob, I don't think that he's the guy that you single out and criticize because it's not his fault. It's a combination of all those other things that we mentioned before. Yeah, and him being put into this role, it's a classic case of like, okay, if you're seventh guy now has to be your fifth guy, what does that mean for your new seventh guy? And just the Cavs depth chart hasn't really been able to accommodate all of that with everyone missing time, with Jared Allen in and out, with Darius Garland in and out, with. again, like up and down the supporting cast, everybody missing games and the compounding interest on those sorts of things. I just feel like it's really taking a toll on everybody on Donovan Mitchell clearly. I hope that there's still room for them to be good enough.

And I think, look, the Cavs invite the bigger question, which is the East feels a little open, with all due respect to the Pistons, who are great, but also haven't won a playoff series yet. So we kind of need to see them become the Playoff Titan before we believe it implicitly. and if the east is open, where is the line? Like, where is the line of team that believes that they are good enough to make some kind of noise? And I think the calves can fairly argue they are above that line. Does that mean that they should really shake things up at the deadline to make yet another dramatic move to try to supplement this supporting cast? I just don't really see that in them.

This feels like a pretty risk-averse moment where they're just going to try to get everybody in one piece and get into the postseason and hope for the best. maybe like add one more bench guy could help this group in some way. But I get why if they do operate this way, they would think why not us? If the magic are talking themselves into being a competitive playoff team, why wouldn't the Cavs be in a similar competitive regard? Yeah, I think you guys are circling kind of the main frustration with the Cavs overall. It's not just the injuries. It's just the fact that the injuries and the fact that they don't have their full complement

of guys seems to affect them so greatly. when we've been sold on the strength of like the core form. They're spending so much money on some of these guys where it's like, oh, all of a sudden their eighth man isn't there. We're in complete disarray. It reminds me a lot of like the old school warriors where it's like we have seven Hall of Famers all playing at the peak of their powers. But if we just don't have 10 minutes of Namaja B. Elisa, we're completely off because it's all

about like the depth and like all the flow and everything like that. It's like, yeah, it's troublesome that they don't have struts or are. Merrill or some of these other shooters out there. But it's just like, the fact that they've stumbled into Tyson is the type of thing that like teams just don't get, right? Like the fact that they unearthed that in the midst of all this is kind of a boon, but we're saying that's still not enough because they don't have the depth. I get it on like in terms of functionally that like they need that sort of stuff in order

to work. But I think it speaks to the overall difficulties in the construction of the team, one, and two, just sort of the individual disappointments, not only with Garland and his like his fit and just like just being iffy and her all the time, but also have it mobily. I think we should talk about is just taking a step back offensively, which is super disappointing considering the long battle we've had with him starting and stopping this kind of trajectory that everyone's been hoping he's been on.

I just watch them sometimes. And I just ultimately default to the fact that if you're going to be that big, and not only is he just like big in terms of like stature, but like he got bigger this off season. He was like number one on the muscle watch list. It's just like a real big for what sort of mind. Behind Rob on this part. Okay.

That's right. Like, he was definitely pumping while watching some games and then beyond that because he seems to have the physicality that everyone expected him to eventually get to. And like, maybe that would turn the page for him. It's a real, like, what are you using it for when it seems like smaller wings? He doesn't just like attack with aggression. The same way that I look at Tyson, like that guy's all balls to the walls. It's just like if he had that spirit in Mobley, that alone would make a lot of difference

for him offensively. Yeah, they're just not a balls to the wall team. Other than Donovan Mitchell, who clearly has that in him and can go all out. Which is crazy because they should be. If you look at this on paper, like, that's what they should be. This team is just like, they dizzy you with their speed, their team speed because that's, am I wrong? I mean, I don't know. I'm looking at it on paper.

Well, they're torn between being a team that should be able to dizzy you with their collective speed and one that also kind of wants to play big sometimes and one that also wants. It's like, it does feel like they're trying to be a few too many things at once in spots. and they don't have all of their healthy bodies to even attempt to be all those things at once. And so they've been forced into this very makeshift place. So just like, okay, whatever ideals we had for, like, the flexibility to play all these different ways are kind of out the window,

what is the improvised version of the best roster we can throw out there? And that team is just kind of like, okay. And until that changes with getting more bodies in the mix, with getting more active players, I just don't see any reason to think that they're going to be anything else. but that to me primes them to be one of these teams that sees their big deadline addition to just be like getting everybody back. It's really hard to carve out an identity for this team,

which is tough because they brought practically everybody back, including Hunter, who they made the big swing for last year. I typically find that identities of the type of thing that matter more in the regular season just to trudge through and just like, I don't know, something to stabilize you through the gauntlet of an 82 game season. The problem is waiting in the playoffs. isn't so much like a different situation

where you would hope that like they would just have so much talent that if it's just healthy enough they could just steamroll teams for that. Maybe the East is different this year in that opening that Rob alluded to would provide them a little bit more of a margin that they've had in the past.

There's not the Pacers just waiting there to just blitz the hell out of them. On the other hand, the playoffs have been the biggest concern. We came into this season saying we won't know anything about this team until the playoffs. We're not even at that point. We're already in the existential crisis phase.

So I'm worried. I don't think teams just like click into place like right before the playoffs and just automatically make the finals. I just don't know what it is. It's really hard to put your finger on ultimately. Yeah, but that's why it's like there's this low simmering panic

that's happening with the Cavs seemingly at all times. It's not the kind of panic that jolts you up in the night and makes you make dramatic changes to your life. It's just that voice in the back of your head that's like, what if we're not good enough? What if this is all there is? You know, and I think it's a tough realization for a team that has been hoping and praying that this core four with enough help would be able to figure it out. Maybe they won't even get that chance.

Maybe every Cav season is doomed to end in like, this guy has an injury is out, this guy has an injury that's nagging and is not fully himself. The shooters aren't hitting in the way that we need them to. And it's just kind of always sort of fizzle. And again, it's just like a bummer of a way for a team construction to peter out. But it does kind of feel like we're headed that direction again. Rob, when was the last time you got up in the middle of the night and splash some cold water on your face and you're just like, I'm not who I want to be. That sounded really vivid and personal to you. I don't know. I'm just guessing. Kyle, every night of my life. I don't know what to tell you. We're just, why I bother with one existential crisis.

Yeah. If you just keep going through the existential crisis, you'll find that over time it will become more comfortable to you. I was going to guess it was the size of the sign you have back there. You're like, I don't need a 3xl. I need a 7x. Well, I saw yours and I was like, I simply can't have Justin with a bigger sign than me. You know, I got to come correct. Mine is a sign envy. It's all hell. I saw it on the video and I was like, wow, you could barely even make out what that is. It kind of looks like a vinyl.

I was like, did you, yeah, did you put, did you make a group chat final? Incredible. One of the pods on there. All right. Why don't we wrap it there? Thank you to Isaiah Blakely back on production. Thank you to Victoria Valencia. Thank you to Ben Cruz.

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