The Ringer NBA Show - Potential First-time All-Stars and Basketball Diversity | Ringer NBA University

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

KOC and J. Kyle Mann start by discussing the play of some young stars in Tuesday night’s games (2:30). Then they talk about four guys who could become first-time All-Stars and what their potential is moving forward (38:20). After that, KOC is joined by Yahoo Sports writer Seerat Sohi to discuss the Los Angeles Lakers' young guys (1:12:48) and her piece on basketball diversity. Hosts: Kevin O’Connor and J. Kyle Mann Guests: Seerat Sohi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, this is Kevin O'Connor. We have a great episode of Ringer NBA University coming up. Today, Jay Kyle Mann and I discuss potential first-time All-Stars, as well as some of the great games we saw on Tuesday night with some really fun performances. And then you'll hear my conversation with Sir at Soe from Yahoo Sports about the Lakers' young guys before we get into how the game currently has so many diverse styles with different team philosophies and players' skills of different shapes and size. It's a fun combo.

These next two hours are filled with some awesome. awesome, awesome basketball conversation that I genuinely loved having. So I hope you do too. It's all coming up next. Basketball is very good. Welcome to Ringer NBA University. I'm Kevin O'Connor here today. As always is the ringers Jay Kyle, man.

What's up, Kyle? How you doing? I'm doing pretty terrific, man. Just chilling. It's freezing cold here. A lot of ice on the ground. How are you doing? What's going on?

Pretty well, man. It's been snowy in Brockton, Massachusetts. in the surrounding areas and recent days. Not great shoveling. I did not miss doing that when I was in L.A. up until early last year. But, you know, it's nice to make a side. Got a big driveway down there?

That's not that big of a driveway. It's like a one, two car driveway. But you're doing a lot of shoveling. Doing a lot of shoveling. Doing a lot of shoveling. We had sprinkles last night. So after we record, I'll go take care of that. And if you are listening to Ringer NBA University for the first time,

This is the NBA show's newest podcast, and it focuses on the league's younger players, rookies, sophomores, and their team situations. And normally, Kyle, you and me are joined by Jonathan Charks, but Charks is off this week. But I'm looking forward to chat with you, man. This will be a fun show. Yeah. And if you're listening to this while you're snow shoveling, tweet at us and let us know that because there's really, there's nothing worse than getting all bundled up to shovel in the

freezing cold and then getting sweaty and stuff like that. So hopefully we can make that better for you. Yeah, absolutely. Listen to pods. Well, maybe that's what I should do today, Kyle. And later on, and during this podcast, you'll hear my conversation with Sir at Sohee,

which was really, really fun talking about the Lakers, young guys, her idea of basketball, diversity, and how the game currently has so many diverse styles with team philosophies and player skills. But first,

Kyle, I have a lot to discuss with you. Yes, you do. We have potential first time all stars and some really, really, really great games last night. So let's start there and run through some of last night's action.

Kyle, we do our pod every other week. So the last time we spoke, we talked about the Pelicans. They were five and ten at the time, losers of eight of their last nine games. St. Van Gundy was ripping Zion and Ingram's defensive effort publicly. But that seems to be turning things around. Times have changed with New Orleans. They've won six of eight games,

including a 29. point win over the rocket's last night. They're 11 and 12 in just three games back from the four seed right now. So in the last two weeks, especially in recent days, Kyle, what has shifted so quickly for the New Orleans Pelicans to really turn their season around? Well, like you said, the effort has been a lot better. One of the key things that you and I were talking about, though, that's interesting is there has seen, there has been a sort of a surge in Zion's activity on ball, specifically in picking. and roll situations. Have you, have you been watching paying close attention to that?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, with Zion, it's interesting. Van Gundy early in the season wasn't using Zion a whole lot as a pick and roll ball handler. Only 1.8 pick and rolls run by Zion over the first 18, first 15 games. And over the last seven, we've seen that shift quite a lot. It's more than double now. Zion is running 4.3 pick and rolls per game. And that's that as via Synergy sports, his assist are up from 1.9 to 5.1. And part of the assist numbers is just the fact that his teammates are shooting the lights out. Like Lonzo Ball has found his shot. Everybody in the team is really shooting well.

But the main thing that's interesting to me is part of the, you know, besides the defensive effort aspect is just the fact that we've seen Zion's usage change to give him the ball on the perimeter. Do you see this sticking for him? Is this going to be part of his game moving forward? into the distant future. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there's been a definite noticeable, like,

difference in his physical lower body. I talk about this over and over again, but lower body flexibility is really, really important in basketball these days because the game is more lateral and left to right side to side line to sideline. And if you watch Zion, I think, you know, one is just getting acclimated to the pressure of the NBA,

not seeing the games, not seeing the game in like twos and threes, but more threes and fours, like, you just get more accustomed to the help in the NBA because it's smarter. So that's one reason I think that Zion was really a liability in open traffic and open court last year because of that, but also because of the physicality. He was a little, you know, like we've talked about physically, they are trying to work with him to rework some things, I think. And he just looks like more spry, for lack of a better word. Like, I sent you a clip over text of he got in a downhill situation between, you know, mid court and the foul line.

And he, he got low to the ground and exploded. And I haven't seen him do that since Duke, honestly. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's kind of funny because with Zion, I had a conversation with David Griffin in December for a story, you know, I published that same week that what we talked about the Pelican struggles. And Griff had this really, really great quote with me where he, talked about just the fact that, you know, Zion is not a center. He's a point guard. So I feel like we've seen that happen this last week or so. I'd like to play that clip right here of Griff talking. He's physically so overwhelming in the paint that you just think he's a freak of nature power forward and that's all he is. Or in the case of what we did last year,

he's a center, which he absolutely isn't. He played point guard basically his entire life before he got to Duke. His stepfather raised him with a ball in his hand to make decisions like a point guard. He measured himself by his ability to make people better. This isn't a kid who grew up putting himself on the post trying to learn the dream shake. This was a guy who wanted to be a facilitating playmaker with a ball in his hand facing the basket. So one of the big things that I noticed with Zion coming out, one of the things that I thought would be key in his impact, is the versatility of his impact. I would always jokingly call him the symbiote because I felt like he could go into any situation and bond with what they do and he have role malleability.

You were talking just the fact that we're having a conversation about a six-foot-six guy who's 280 pounds, at least. We're talking about what. Take a step back for a second and think about we're talking about whether he's a point or a sinner. That is insane. I think sometimes we get desensitized to how, like, how much of a superhero Zion is in that sense. And I think that a big thing about Zion is he's so fast that he can, I was thinking about when we were talking about this earlier, I was thinking about that clip from Game of Thrones where Varus says to, have you seen Game of Thrones? Of course. I'm not seeing Avengers, but I have seen Game of Thrones.

We keep doing this. The nerd syllabus is just growing. I saw someone I tweet that at us. So, Baris says to Tyrion that a smaller man can cast a huge shadow. Well, that is exactly what Zion can do in space because of how fast he is. Like, he's so explosive that, you know, he gets everybody on their heels. And then he effectively plays, like, as a six-foot-six guy, he effectively plays like he's, like, he's, like, 6-11, 7-beat tall. And then you've got these bigs that can't keep up with them laterally.

I noticed in the pick and rolls a lot that they're pretty much. The pick and rolls, they run a lot with small guards setting the screens for Zion. Occasionally big, big pick and rolls with Stephen Adams, but for sure smaller guards. Yeah, it makes sense. You're just kind of flipping the, you're inverting, you know, sort of the flow of it, which makes a lot of sense. But, you know, I've noticed a lot of them are right, either right side or high middle pick and rolls with Zion. You don't see him running a lot to the left because he's not a really,

I think the sharing is a part of what we want to talk about really quick with Zion too. I mean, what have you noticed about him as a playmaker that jumps out? I mean, with Zion, I feel like there's always been playmaking instincts. He's always had some level of vision. And with New Orleans or even just in the NBA overall, going back to his rookie season, I think so much of it was opportunity. Griff kind of hit it on that clip. And, you know, he talked about it even more, you know, throughout our conversation where, you know, he was used as a post player as a rookie. And as Griff said, you know, to me, that that's like one of the things he came least ready to do. You know, that's not the way he viewed himself as a player.

That's not what he grew up doing. And that was one of the key factors why I wanted to even talk to him because when I previously spoke to Griffin in July, he's like, this is what we need to do for Zion. This is what the vision needs to be. And when I spoke to him in December, I thought we'd see that out of the gate. I thought we would see Zion come out night one, running pick and rolls, bringing the ball at the floor. And for whatever reason, it did take until midseason for that to happen. But I feel like the ability has been there.

Any Pelicans fan who watches every game has known that Zion can make really good passes off the move, finding shooters, finding a guy who's cutting to the rim. So to Pelicans fans, I don't think they're surprised. But to everybody else who might be watching that isn't, you know, really honing in on college basketball or only sees the highlights of Zion. It might come as a shocker, but ultimately this is part of his game. And I think over the course of time with him, we're going to see Zion, you said the word sharing.

We're going to see a blend of him being used all over the basketball court, especially because of some of the other guys in that roster like Keira Lewis, their rookie point guard who was really started to get minutes lately, explosive, quick player who really, really pressures the rim. I mean, if Kira Lewis can become somebody who you can lean on in a half-court situation, I get really excited about the idea of

seeing what the Pelicans and Stan Van Gundy could build out with that offense with having Zion as a screener for him or as a ball handler in the pick and roll at times. Like, there's so many ways to interchange these pieces, which is why, like, despite those early struggles, this is why

this past week or so with the Pelicans, why there's so much reason to be excited for the next 10 years, the talent level is ridiculous there. Yeah, and sometimes when things are ill-fitting or they're out of place that can affect people's motivation level, A, because they're adjusting to something that they're not totally comfortable with or, you never know, there are a variety of reasons. And then when people get in their comfort zone, there are just a lot of things that can mask, you know, a level of effort. And you're talking about playmaking that I think is something that's interesting about Zion is just that I have something that I call like the pick and roll

pyramid. I'm still fleshing this out, but there are different types. There are different levels of it. And I might do a video about this someday, but, you know, there's the basic level one, which is, you know, I take a screen, I can go score or, and then the second one is, okay, I can score or I can make a basic read out of this. I think that, and then third is like, I can either score or make a basic read or manipulate the help that's around me. So, and so those are the three levels, like, Luca, Hardin, LeBron, those types of people are like level three, you know, I think Morant's getting there. We'll talk about him in a little bit, I know. But I think Zion is like a strong two right now. And for him, in my opinion is we were talking about playing on the right side,

playing in the middle. You want him going to his left hand and being able to just, I've noticed that the most effective thing that he's doing is just making early simple passes. They got so many shots because the initial response to his gravity and pull is enough to create open shots. And he doesn't have to Zion is a guy who like really moves when he gets in the middle of the floor. It's it's hard to like slow the whole game down like Quicksilver and X-Men and like pick that scene where he like slows it all down. It's like picking stuff out. It's hard to do that. For Zion, I think it's making simple basic reads right now is working and you know, it's a good foundation for him to keep going. No doubt about it. I think he used the word there,

gravity for Zion. When he turns that corner, everybody needs to help because he's just going to barrel through defenders in order to get to the basket. It's similar with like a Rudy Gobert when he is setting a screen in the pick and roll and he dives towards the rim. Defenders need to collapse to prevent a lob. It's different types of players have different types of gravity. And one player who had a great game last night who has a perimeter base gravity is Stefan Curry. He was fantastic again.

The Warriors beat the Spurs by 23. One day after the Spurs beat the Warriors by five points, they had a little baseball series back in front. I'm really liking those. Are you liking the baseball series? Yeah, they're fun. They're interesting. I think it's just on a micro level, it's interesting to see teams play each other

because we don't get that a ton during the regular season. Usually when teams play each other on a one-off night, it's hard to contextualize the data and sort of like schematically what's going on because teams, when they play each other repetitively, will often like tip their hand in terms of like what they're going to do adjustment-wise because that's one of the biggest things that I think goes under, overlooked in the NBA is how sophisticated some of these teams are about their adjustments in the playoffs. So when you see them play each other in close, you know, iterations like this.

Back to back, home and alms, all that. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's a huge difference, but it is just interesting to see the adjustments that would happen night to night. And it's just another piece of the puzzle more to talk about. For sure. And I mean, I think with the Golden State Warriors right now, they have some guys out, Looney's out, Wiseman is out. And again, because Ringer NBA University he focuses on younger players. I have to ask you this question, Kyle. I have to know. Are you loving the Juan Tuscano Anderson experience just as much as me?

His hustle is amazing. I love watching this. Twitter basically is on fire whenever he is in the game. It's like so fun. He's just one of those people. Like I feel like NBA Twitter just chooses people to champion. And he is definitely one and a fantastic name. I was thinking you were you were saying ringer you could we call it like ringoo?

Ringer. No, that doesn't work at all. We need that a short enough ringer and. B.A. University, Ringer U or NBA you, or just the U, even though, you know, Miami fans might not be happy about that. I like the U personally. It's got a good flow. We'll earn that. We'll have to earn that.

We'll learn it over the course of time. But with the Warriors and the Spurs, you know, San Antonio has been really interesting this year. They're 14 and 11. They're to succeed in the West right now. They are really, really exceeding expectations, including my own, Demarta Rosen, rightfully getting a lot of attention for his production. We've talked about him on a bunch of our shows

on the NBA show feed and the mismatch. But I really feel like their young core isn't getting enough love with the way San Antonio has produced. What has stood out to you with the Spurs this season, Kyle? I mean, they have a collection. This is really fascinating. I think the reason it's getting,

we do this thing where we kind of compress or we fail to, we do this with a lot of different types of players, but like the collection of, wings that the spurs have, I think, maybe get underplayed. There are a variety of reasons that I think are relevant to this discussion that I think we're going to have real quick here. But, you know, they have Devin Vassell. Is it Vassell or Vassel? I think it's Vesel.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's already, people should go check him out. If you're a fan of, like, team defenders, he is so mature. He's defends. People should check him out of your fan of team defenders. If you're a so hyper specific. If you're a megador. But that's me. That's my vibe. I love team defense. Yeah, we talked about like positional wagering. I said that the other day, and somebody pointed that out to me. Yes, like Vesel is very mature on that level. There were a couple different times. These are the little kinds of things that you can kind of start to love. But like, there were a few times during that, that Warriors game where they beat them the other night where Vassel just being in the right place at the right time. Yes. The war did Draymond from doing his like secondary playmaking thing that he does, his like fulcrum elbow. moves because he would rotate into the path of where the pass would be. And he actually freaked

Dremont out a few times, I noticed. Because Dreyman's usually the guy in the perfect spot at the perfect moment, said, who's this guy right here? He's on luck corner. Yeah, exactly. He surprised him with that a few times. But I love Vassel. And his shot obviously didn't take the, take the route that people freaked out about on Twitter. His shot has looked good. Oh, yeah. For what it's worth with Devin Fissel before the draft. So he shot over 40% from three at Florida State over two seasons there. But then there was a rookie pre-draft video of him working out where he's like hoisting the ball from like the side or like behind his head.

It's like, uh-oh. Someone screwed up as mechanics, but he's he looks like he's shooting the ball just as well as he was in college. Everything's fine there. I mean, Vesel, you know, Spurs drafted him in the lottery. There's some talk about maybe he could go in the top seven, top eight. But you know, with him, there's a foundation for him to be a 3-and-D player. And that's kind of a theme with a lot of these young spurs. Kelvin Johnson, who I know you love a lot and want to hit on.

There's a foundation with him with defense and aggression and getting to the rim. With DeJante Murray, we saw in that game on Monday night where he just went off shooting the ball, what he could be with a jump shot. But even without a jump shot, DeJante Murray is still one of the game's best guard defenders, not the best defender at the guard position. He is still a guy who can playmake for you. The Spurs, like Derek White, high IQ player, good playmaker, all of these young Spurs guys on their roster have a foundation to build upon. And Vassell and, you know, all of them seem to kind to kind of capture that. It's about how far they can go as players. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

And like, it's, it's funny that you were talking about like the three and D thing. It's, it's funny that we're very quick to put that label on guys. And it almost is your McKale Bridges thing got me thinking about that. I mean, what do you like it? Yeah, I was just going to say really quickly, like, what do you think? Like, how do they compare? What is, what is Vassell's ceiling as compared to a guy like Bridges? Do you think that they, how do they line up against each other in terms of that label specifically? You know, with Bridges, it was really interesting because he thinks the three and D label is unfair in the sense that the D might make. makes sense. Like D stands for defense. Like that's what you do. You defend. Defense means a lot of things.

When he when he's it's like with three, well, three is not just, you know, shooting threes and spotting up. He's like, what I do is I cut to the rim. I'm migrating off ball, relocating, I'm setting off ball screens. I'm cutting off of the catch or slashing off of the catch. I'm cutting off ball. I'm doing all these different things on offense that is more than just standing up in the corner. I feel like the 3-and-D term really, really became popularized with, you know, a guy like who was Bowen with the Spurs. And with him, I'm not sure to even apply.

But then it became something relevant for a PJ Tucker. Well, I do think it makes sense. Like when you're playing with James Hardin and he's running pick and roll and ISO after ISO after ISO and you're standing in the corner, it makes some sense. But with Bridges, he does more than that on the offensive end. And he's shown flashes of doing more off the dribble. And with Vassell, that was sort of the appeal for me personally with him in the draft. I think at Florida State, his freshman year, I believe he had only two jumpers off the dribble.

Yeah. And then as a sophomore, that number shot up to over 30. And he just looked more fluid off the dribble, looked like a guy that can create his own shot a little bit. And that potential is still in there. It may not be realized for some amount of years. But with San Antonio, they're the type of team where you bet on them to get everything they can out of the talent that they have. And we've seen that progress from Vassell, from Murray, from Johnson.

Those two guys have already made progress in recent years. Yeah, yeah. And I think that there's sort of a progression that we can get to here. We said we didn't want to spend too much time on the Spurs, but it's too, it's just too good. The Spurs are too good not to talk about. Well, really quick, I know we had a lot of, we had some Spurs fans and said they wanted to hear about Kelton. I want to talk about Kelton just briefly.

I love Kelvin Johnson. Talking about Kelton Johnson for an hour, Kyle. So it's kind of been, uh, and that was. is how they got canceled. This is the story. Now, Kelden Johnson, you know,

as a guy who lives in Kentucky, grew up for Kentucky, I've, and watch, you know, who they sign and things like that. Kid played for Oak Hill Academy when they signed,

when Kentucky initially signed him. And this has kind of been an up and down, you know, process that I've had with him. I was really excited because Kelton Johnson is like an intense competitor.

I thought, you know, a physical driver. All these things are still true. Comes to Kentucky and kind of gets relegated into a situation where he's off ball, not really, you know, just a catch and shoot player who's slashing occasionally. We move on and he kind of showed some weaknesses in wards in terms of

being a decision maker in the middle of floor. He wasn't a really flexible improviser around the basket in terms of directional, you know, using both sides of the rim. So what was interesting to me is I kind of, so I came down on him a little bit. I was just like, well, maybe he's just, he wasn't quite the athlete. I thought he was. He's not a guy that like with pressure on. him. He's going to get up and finish above the rim, things like that. So he goes to the Spurs. I was like, okay, because the Spurs have that kind of credibility. They pick them and you go, well, they know what they're doing. The Grizzlies are getting at this point too. So he goes there, and they, he has an odd trajectory here because he spends the whole year off the main roster.

I mean, he gets a couple little glimpses here where he comes up and sees the sun with the main, with the main Spurs roster. But really, he comes on the radar for most people in the bubble. So he comes on, he starts playing really well. And I went back and I was tracing just kind of what they did with him. Now, when you went back and watched the early days of the G League, his early games at the G League, his shot has always been sort of a not a totally fluid thing. He had a lot of elbow and arm in his shot and he would sort of, there was a lot of push to it. You know, he wasn't getting that sort of smooth curve. And I shared this in our doc, and I'll try to share it on Twitter, this got, this data analyst guy, Mike Bowie, I think his name's Bowie.

B'oi, I don't know how he's right. Impredictable.com. Yes, Impredictable.com. He did a great thing where he was charting the flow of really good shooters. And if you look at them, they almost have sort of like a curve on the end that's very smooth. And that's just about what that says to me is about like smoothing the energy transfer between, you know, when you catch the ball to the end when you shoot it. And you look at a guy like Steph Curry, it's very fluid. Well, Kelvin was a little more like abrupt.

And if you watched him early in the Chee League and what I'm getting to, you know, here is that it looks a lot better. And I really strongly suspect that I know they have Chip England down there. I don't know how much he worked with the younger guys. But yeah, his shot looks better. And they were playing him in the G League as a pick and roll guy. So I think that that was a really good experience for him. And something that I wanted to ask you about was,

do you think it's interesting for guys who need to improve in that sense? They need to improve in the sense that like reps for like decision making, things like that. That's what Kelden really needed to do. And in college, they're weighing that against we need to win basketball games. So do you think that like that is something that enters the mind of a prospect when they have those types of challenges?

Like, what do you think about that? I think for a younger player and you're entering the league, it's kind of a lottery. Literally. You don't know where you're going to go into. You don't know what type of situation you're going to find yourself in. You don't know what to expect. And I'm not even sure that a player is,

necessarily thinking about something like that because you don't know like Keldon Johnson with his jumper I mean we'll see how how it sustains over the course of time right now this season he's shooting 32% from three but for his NBA career shooting 38% from three overall big up you know upgrade from what he was at Kentucky and you can see it physically too like you said but there's no guarantee you're going to end up with chip England there's no guarantee that you're going to end up with a franchise that is going to invest in you in the G league the spurs have done that at a remarkable level.

They've used the G-League for guys like the Jante Murray. He played 15 games of the Austin Spurs as a rookie. They used it with Derek White. They use it with Kelden Johnson. They've used it with a whole bunch of guys. Even Bertons, now with the Wizards. They used it with him. You don't know what situation you're going to fall into as a young player.

You could fall into a situation like the Orlando Magic where you're behind Ken Birch on the bench if you're Mo Obama being drafted with a sixth pick. You could be behind Nikola Vucevich, who really blossoms into a guy, putting up borderline all-star numbers. So I'm not sure if this really answers your question, but I feel like for a player, you just don't know what you're going into, and that's why,

you know, situation and opportunity play such an intertwined role with each other with what these players end up being. Like if a player fails or a player succeeds, it can't solely be due to the player. It's so much around them. And even like veteran influences in the locker room, coaching, you know,

there's so many factors go into the big, you know, pie of like what you need, what ingredients you need to make this as good as it possibly can be. Is that, you know what I mean? Yes, that does make sense. And something that ties on to that and how I would wrap up talking about Kelton is that, like, he is a dogged worker. You've heard people talk about him just being a dog. I've witnessed this firsthand. Like, I went and watched, I got to see them play against Mega BMax, which is like a pretty renowned, like, European Draft Factory.

Nicole Yokech played. This was one of his at Kentucky? Yes. You know, Yokic played for them. They've had it. They've had a number TLC played for them. They've had a number of, that was my way of punting pronunciation there, TLC. So they blow B Max out. So after the game we're sitting there and I'm just sitting there on my laptop typing. Nobody is in the gym. I mean, like five people are in the gym. They're starting to tear it down. Kelton Johnson comes out in basketball shorts and dress socks with a manager and he shoots for an hour, just by himself, works on his shot. This is a guy. He just, he has that representation. He has that representation. He has that. And talking to people around that program, that's who he is. And I think the Spurs got a good one. And I think it's really good that he didn't get overdrafted, like you were talking about. It ended up working out really well for him. Absolutely.

Going number 20 to San Antonio is kind of a blessing in disguise for him to be in that situation. And, you know, we talked a little bit about role and opportunity. I feel like one guy who really captures that is Jeremy Grant, who is on the Pistons this season after leaving the Nuggets. last night the Pistons beat the KD less Nets 122 to 112. This season, Detroit is 6 and 18. But there's six wins, Kyle, have come against the Celtics, Suns, Heat, Sixers, Lakers, and Nets. Jeremy Grant at 32 points last night now, averaging 24.3 on the season, more than double.

This 12 point game per game average last season, shooting nearly 48% from 3 on 6.5 a 10th. Kyle, what are the Pistons going to get Jeremy Grant some help? I don't know. I was thinking about the spurs and how it's like they have all these wings. And I was thinking about like, you know, when you're in school, if somebody hands, this will segue to it. But somebody asks you if you want to stick a gum, you're like, hell yeah, I want to stick a gum.

Yeah, that's like the way it is. I never said yes to that question. I never liked gum. I never really chewed gum. What? Anyway, I'm just going to move past that. Continue. But yeah, so the spurs were like, hey, a bunch of great wings.

Yes, every single time. because that's the way the modern NBA is. God, am I weird. You just had a... KEOC. He doesn't like... Doesn't like gum, folks. That's our headline, I feel like. So with the pistons, it's the opposite.

Yeah, you ask the pistons if they want a forward or a center. They're like, hell, yeah, I want a forward in the center. And they got a bunch of them. Anyway, Grant was the biggest... Grant was the biggest... He's one of the biggest stories of the season. And I guess kind of the implications. of how real this is.

I think we as NBA followers and fans, fanatics, whatever, enthusiasts, officinados, when we watch this, we kind of wait for confirmation of it to kind of go past, like a not to offend Knicks fans, but sort of a insanity type of, you know,

era. It's like players can have really intense eras where they do really well and then teams can, teams figure out how to play, things like that. For Grant, it's been a matter of,

he's just not Yokach's puppet anymore. man. If you look, if you look at his usage this year over, over last year, all of the on-ball stats are up. I mean, he's, he's not spotting up as much. That sounds 7%. He's running 9% more pick and rolls per game. Let me give you the raw numbers for this, Kyle. Yeah, give him, give it. Last season, Grant was the pick-and-roll ball handler for 266 total possessions already this season, 68. Last season, he had 32 isolations. This season, already 62. He's had more, handoffs, more screens, and it's a different player. This is a brand new player. Yeah, that's a, that's, those are good numbers. And like the isolation is really interesting too. These things just

didn't happen. I mean, when he was playing, the cutting is interesting too, because he was way more of an offball active cutter because if you're playing with the Okits, that's who you are. I mean, and that's okay. Like the nuggets were, you know, they're, we're a good offensive team. If you have a talent like Yokic, you use him in that way. But what's interesting is the efficiency, even isolation. If you had told me when he was at Syracuse or when the process era sixers drafted Jeremy Grant, if you told me he would be getting like 1.081 points per possession, which is good.

I mean, that's the 78th percentile in the league on isolation. If you told me that he was going to be doing that in isolation, on heavy load and upping his efficiency. Like you were talking about how, well, really, his efficiency just hasn't moved. He scaled up, and that's what's most impressive about this. The pistons aren't great. I don't think that he's much of a nuanced, you know,

seeing the chessboard decision maker, but he's scoring the ball efficiently, and it's incredible. It's wild, and I'm buying it. I mean, you mentioned what he was at Syracuse. This was not Jeremy Grant.

This is a different human being, it feels like. And that's a credit to him. And for working on its handle, the handle looks tighter than ever before. He looks very smooth and fluid and comfortable. He had some pull-ups last time against the Nets, as he has all season. long where it's like if you watch just Jeremy Grant this season, if this is your first time

ever watching him, you'd think this guy would be doing this his entire career. Like he came into the league as like a top 15, their top 10 pick. Like that's what he looks like right now. And you know, at only 26 years old, you know, he's a borderline all star. I'm not sure he'll make it because of how bad the pistons are overall. But I think that's a good way to tease that later in this podcast will talk about potential first time all stars. And you know, Jeremy Grant is a Good example of a guy who he bet on himself and I'm buying the improvement. He's showing that he can do more than that. Yeah.

If he isn't gotten a tattoo that says bet on yourself by now, I would think that he should just go get one. That should be his mantra. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, good for him, man. And for the Nuggets, it's if they had been able to keep him, maybe we'd be seeing more than we saw last season.

Maybe this would have happened there too. You know, we say it's because of the new situation, but it is possible. maybe instead of average of 12 points, we would have seen 18 points per game, 19 points per game. But obviously things would have been far different. Michael Porter Jr. is starting there in Denver. And we talked about him recently. But I do want to talk about real quickly, the best team in basketball, we can't not talk about the Utah Jazz, especially because jazz fans absolutely hate me. What'd you do to get hated?

I had them sixth in my power hangs on my day. Too low if we're talking about recent performance, clearly. Maybe not too low. salty salt lake, huh? It is a, it's a salty lake up there. I don't blame them. They're just shredding teams. They're 20 and 5. They're the only team in the NBA with a top four offensive and defensive rating. They've been awesome and they are undoubtedly in the championship conversation. I do want to, because this is Ringer NBA University, hit on one of their younger guys real quickly. And that's Donovan Mitchell, who hasn't had a season despite Utah's success that matches bubble performance. But I feel. feel like that, you know, elite level bubble performance has artificially raised expectations. He is still gotten better, I think, this season. We're seeing him take more spot-up threes instead of pull-up twos. We're seeing him play a more efficient game.

He's firing some cross-court passes. I mentioned earlier. When Rudy Gaubert dives to the rim, defenders come over and help. He has gotten so good at immediately, immediately finding a corner three-periodes. point shooter to force the defense into rotation or just get an immediate shot attempt like you said with zion mitchell to me i mean this guy dude still so young in his career for him to get so much better so quickly what are the limits to his game like compared to like what we've seen him improved from already after leaving louisville after just two years well i still don't think he has

what it takes but you don't have what it takes to get to that next level i said it on purpose I wanted you to hear it. Thank you, Shakal, O'Neill. Hey, Shaq? What are you doing here? That was a pretty good impression. Can you do the whole pot of that? Oh, yeah.

I love your game, man, but I don't think you have what it takes. I still can't believe that, man. I want another championship so bad. It hurts. That's the old icy hot commercial from when I was younger. Anyway, so, no, I mean, like,

give you an idea of where Donovan, Donovan's growth, and even in the first year and a half after he left Louisville, it was remarkable. And I think that there's been a shift to, from, you know, I guess he was 20, 2016, 17. He, I think we've seen a shift in terms of like dribble shooters being primary facilitators in the NBA because the game has become so spread out.

To give you an idea of that, and I said three point, you know, attempts go through the roof. It's good to have an athletic to someone that can create and flip their gravity. I didn't think that Donovan was a one. I didn't think he was a facilitator when he was coming out of Louisville. To give you an idea, I thought, I was like, this is a guy that's going to play with another lead guard. His growth as a passer is phenomenal. I mean, like, I'll watch him play sometimes, and it's like we were talking about,

like with the German Grant thing, you keep waiting for like some kind of regression, but I don't think that it's going to happen. And I think that, like, he has, he just has that sort of growth mindset that he and he had that professionalism when he came into the league. And it just keeps getting better every year. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, he's, and he's really, really gotten good at shooting. that dribble pull up with rear

pressure on him, which is a really important shot in today's NBA. Like if you're in a pick and roll, you know, you want to try, you want to be able to make that shot and it's very difficult because to pull up that quickly and to have somebody it just takes a lot of mental discipline and he has it. And yeah,

I mean, he's been wildly impressive. He had some major daggers last night. I have a jazz video coming out for The Void on Thursday. So that'll be out tomorrow if you're listening today on Wednesday. And Yeah, I mean, it just gets into Utah and what has made them the best team in the NBA so far this season. And like, you know, looking ahead, what does this mean for their playoff hopes?

I think jazz fans will enjoy that, uh, despite my power ranking with them. I was going to say, are you trying to, you trying to suck up and win a bat? You know, it's funny. We throw a video together here. It's so funny because like over the weekend, you know, I, we do the videos with Sean, you and Dylan Berkey on the video team. And, and we decided like on Friday to do, we'll do like a jazz, Mike, Conley Mitchell video next week. Talk about all their strengths.

But this is a good setup, man. Utah's got a tough schedule moving forward. I look forward to seeing how they perform over the coming weeks. They've got a lot of tough games. Kyle, what do you have coming up for videos? What's coming for you? You know damn well what I have coming up.

I have a video that actually is going to come out here just in a little bit relative to what we're recording this. I did a video about Joe L.M.B. About his phenomenal. You want to talk about growth. We don't have to go way into this, but Joelle Embedde's growth is borderline unparalleled. I mean, he is seven feet tall and really skilled, so he had a lot of the things prepped to sort of, you know, be ready to accept some of that growth. And he was in a good position.

But I talk about him and I talk about where he can go from here and how he's grown and what the Sixers, their challenges could be in terms of fit and flexibility. And yeah, watch that and tell me what you think. Get me up. Definitely check that out on the Ringers YouTube page. And then the void will be out on Thursday. We get some good NBA videos, Kyle. We'll be back after the break to talk about potential first-time All-Stars. So with NBA All-Star voting happening now, Kyle,

we wanted to discuss some potential first-time All-Stars. Kyle and I are going to choose two players who at least deserve consideration as reserve as a way to check in on them because they're on a lot of spots. There's 12 in each conference this year. There's a lot of locks, veterans, big names you know, the Steph Currys of the world, the Joel Embed, those guys are in. but there are some younger players and their teams that we do need to talk about, Kyle. Yes, yes.

And some of these, you know, I think their likelihoods very wildly, I would say. This is sort of taking the temperature on their development, like how maybe how far away they are, things like that, because I don't want to commit it to, I don't want to commit it exactly like I think this guy should be. Absolutely. You mentioned how some guys might be further off, Kyle, but there are some players who are surging. And let's start off with Deerrin Fox and the Sacramento Kings. They had a really entertaining game last night against the Philadelphia 786ers, which they lost. But, you know, Fox right now is only 23 years old, and he's averaging 23 points with 7 assists.

But I don't feel like the season averages really capture what we've seen lately. Over 13 games to start the year, Fox was averaging 19 points and 5 assists on just 15 shots per game, which is pretty close to his career averages. But then something changed when he dropped 43 points against the Pelicans three weeks ago. because ever since that game, the Kings and Luke Walton, like they're just riding Fox and they're thriving. Since then,

Fox is averaging 29 points with eight assists on 22 shots per game with a 33% usage. So sack loss to the Sixers last night, but Fox still had a big game, still feels like he's becoming a guy who's taking a leap right now. Whether he'll be an All-Star or not, I'm not sure,

but he does feel like this is the year we're seeing a leap from Fox. Yeah, definitely. It's funny that, like, I feel like you and I specifically have been very up and down on Fox at times. Yeah, we have. Including when we talked about Halliburne a couple weeks back. Yes, yes. I think the ultimate question for him, it seems like he just shows more and more.

Like, I hear a lot of people who talk about a lot of, like, ex-coaches and people like that comment a lot about how different things just seem to surface and bubble out of his game as we go along. And Fox is a really bright, I want to call him a kid. He's just a bright guy, really, really similar to Mitchell, a guy who's really, really intense about his improvement. The real question, you know, the Sixers are kind of a tough matchup for them in terms of slowing it down.

I know the King's got a lot of criticism for a while based on the fact that they weren't playing fast, which is kind of the way that they're set up to play right now. And Fox, like we've talked about, his rim pressure creates so many different things. And then when you pair that, I was going to kind of segue into what kind of flexibility kind of going forward. That's going to be whether or not he's an all-star, he could be an all-star and still have some of the same kind of questions. Once the sort of flow, the game-to-game flow shifts from regular season. And kind of what I meant by that when I was talking earlier about is like when you see a guy like Fox on like a nightly basis, you're not going to totally be as prepared for him as you would if you saw him several nights in a row.

So like Fox is always going to have, and there are a lot of guys who have like one really sharp thing that they're good at that they can punish teams on a nightly basis like that. Like Janus is like that, Hardin's like that, Lucas like that, if you're not totally ready to play that style. I guess what I'm curious about is do you think that with whatever adjustments they've made with the addition of Halliburton, however their scheme is switched around, do you think that they're going to have the flexibility to sort of grow into that next phase? It's possible. I mean, this sort of touches on our previous conversation about Halliburton and his ability to just naturally play with and without the ball and excel in both of those situations. And with Aaron Fox, the question is still going to be the same. What level can he reach as a shooter in this season, just for what it's worth, just to put the numbers out there. He's shooting 36% on 5.2 3s per game. That's up from 33% on two point attempts over his first three seasons. but he's been a guy that has always, including when he was at Kentucky, always looked like a fluid shooter. His shot has always looked fine, but the numbers have always varied greatly of always being inconsistent. He's always been a low free throw shooter, shooting a nice 69% this year, close to a 71% career average.

Very nice. Very nice. Incredibly nice. You just floated, but. He was sorry, go ahead. But, you know, with the Aaron Fox, I still do have questions about what level his jumper reaches. But I will say this, Kyle. It's hard not to watch him this season and then compare the way he looks now to past seasons when it comes to off the dribble. The way he is taking stepback jumpers with fluidity and suddenness, there's a quickness to his movements. We're in the past, it was as if he's still learning it.

It feels like he gets it now when it comes to shooting off the dribble. So I'm very, very encouraged with what we see from him. And I do think there's also an element here of, you know, sometimes, you know, fit can't always be perfect. Fit always can't be ideal when you're building out your roster. Not all teams can be the Utah Jazz where the pieces just fit. Not all teams can be the Lakers where all guys are accepting and embracing their roles. With the Kings, I think these guys are accepting their roles. for sure. We're seeing that with the chemistry that they're developing in the court and how

they're coexisting and sharing the rock. But fit wise, it might be possible that Fox may never be a like a consistent knockdown guy where he sometimes he might be a little bit of a liability off ball if it's a cold shooting night. But I think he's good enough where he can play with those other high level players and still be a guy who's an all-star consideration many, many seasons into the future. I mean, he's got incrementally better every single season at little, things, a little bit better at shooting, a little bit better at finishing, a little bit better at the floater. Every year we're seeing progress. And it's important to keep in mind, he's still only 23. What's he going to be in three, four years, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his rim finishing is way up this

season. He's up at the top of the league for guards. I mean, it's finishing, you know, 70%, which is bonkers. I think something that's really tough for guards of his ilk is that as they're coming up is if you are that fast and you're used to being that dominant with your speed, you kind of, as you level up into like more schematic sophistication, you have to start negotiating your speed with a game that is quick, but not always breakneck fast. And you see this a lot from guys like John Wall, you know, Chris Paul never really had this problem because he always had terrific pace. I think that's why we're seeing him last and age as gracefully as he has because he had just, he kind of reminds, I was thinking about him in like John Stockton, are really similar, just incredible

economy in their game of movement. But with Fox, that was something that I always saw with him, particularly, you know, when he was here at Kentucky, he would get going so fast because he could torch people at all times. And I think just sort of transitioning that, pardon the pun, transitioning that that mindset can be a challenge for younger players. You don't see it as much with another guy that we're going to talk about here in a moment because he has similar fluidity and pace, John Morant. I'll go ahead and just say it. But talk about timing. So let's transition. Let's talk about him right now.

John Morant is the next guy who is a guy who hasn't had as much trouble. with that like we were talking about he's he's got a lot more he's got great pace great feel great fluidity um i wanted to pitch a nickname because i was on i was on john morant's basketball reference page and i noticed you know i've heard people say jaw dropper it's like i don't know man is this a 1999 hip-hop album i don't know it just seems like uh it seems like somebody that would be on like master p's label and anyway i'm not saying there's anything's wrong it just the name is just kind of clunky to me quite work anyway. There's plenty of good names on his level, but don't come at me over that. So with John Morant, I was thinking he just has this really like, his movements are so quick and

just fluid. And I was thinking about him. I was like, whenever, sometimes he'll have beaten you in this way that is just so graceful. What about like, I was thinking he kind of has a way that he knifes in the middle of the floor. I was like, what about the knife? What do you think about that? Jah, the knife, the knife? The knife? Does that work? Yeah, I don't say Jha, the knife. Just say he's the knife. The knife.

I don't love it. You don't love it? Okay. That's okay. It's okay. I don't want Jada be knife guy. He's not, listen, no, it's more ninja. You know, he, he's one of those guys when he goes by, you look down and you're

like, oh, he actually just like slipped my throat just now. He's just really quick like that. So anyway, John Moran. I mean, the more you talk about it, Kyle, the more I like it. But I don't know. I feel like Nick, I've always been somebody that calls people by their first name when I meet them. Like some people go by their last name. I always go by people's first names.

And I've been told sometimes they'll call me, you know, whatever their last name, call me Smith. Yeah. But like I've never been a nickname guy. Or a gum guy or a college guy or an guy or an Avengers guy or a soda guy. If we want to get into more things that I've never really taken a liking to. But the description of. knife. Yes. Makes a lot of sense for them because he does knife through defenses. He does. What makes him a borderline all start this season, Kyle? Because I think there are going to be going to be people,

going to be people listening to this podcast that look at his numbers. And they're going to say, I don't know. I mean, like they're pretty much identical to what they were as a rookie, pretty similar in points per game and efficiency. I mean, in fact, like his efficiency is slightly down. And as of late since coming back with the injury, his numbers have dipped some. So maybe All-Star isn't, you know, in his future here this season. But I do think you're right to bring him up as a potential All-Star because it feels like he's made some subtle improvements in ways that aren't reflected in the box score. Yes, definitely.

I mean, a common thing we talked about like is negotiating the speed. And like from a rant, he had the ability to turn the corner whenever he wanted to in the pick and roll in college and early on. So for him to adjust, one of the big things is that he is a slider. build guy. Like, you know, he's about six, three. I don't mean, I don't remember how much he weighed, but he was thin for his position coming in as an athlete. And for him, you know, you would notice that he would kind of get picked on off ball a lot. Like I noticed even it was happening some with the rafters recently where, you know, you could bump him and create separation because

that's what the NBA is all about. Like how much, how many like seconds can we shave off here or there to get open looks? And his physicality was hurting him on both ends in that sense. And, and And he's talked about this in the off season. He and I are alike like this. And in the last year, we added weight. Now, his weight is functional. My weight, you know, functional and not really any good way. But, no, he added strength.

Repulsion, maybe. No, Moran added some strength. And I think that that's showing up in his deliberateness in the pick and roll. His turnover percentages are down. whenever he gets in the middle of the floor. He's really improved in terms of his efficiency on that front. So another area here is just learning to use screens better. He didn't totally do that well all the time.

He would sort of telegraph where he was going. He's getting better at creating misdirection and using the angle better. It's like you talked about the pick and roll pyramid, right? He's starting to tap into that third tier that you outlined earlier. He flirts with the third tier. Thank you for remembering that, KOSI. I appreciate that. I like it.

It's a good concept. waiting for re-screens, another thing that he's getting a lot better at. You know, he's just one of the easy ways to pick on him was to make him playing a crowd because he wasn't a big, he couldn't use his physicality as much. He's challenging rim protectors more at the rim and taking bumps. Just adding functional strength has been a big thing for him. I think that the, I think the three-point shooting is going to even out. But in terms of like becoming an All-Star, I think that he's on the track.

We can kind of talk about what our expectations were for that. before and maybe how that's changed a little bit. He's already one of the most popular players in the league, and that's going to work in his advantage. I know that's sort of extra info. He was 15th in Jersey sales last year. That's remarkable, man. Even above Zion.

And then also he was fourth last time I checked in the voting. So, I mean, it's very possible, and he has addressed some of his concerns with more, you know, to come. Ultimately, I mean, he'll be a guy that the coaches would choose as a reserve. I mean, we'll see how that pans. One of the quick thing I wanted to hit with Jha is his defense. I feel like effort levels and impact is much greater in the NBA than it was at Murray State and at the college level. In what ways has he evolved there?

Well, you know, you and I were talking about I was going to just out a really quick thing that I said about Zion in my draft video that I did for him a couple years ago. One of the things I said was, one of the things I thought was going to prevent him from being an All-Star was I was asking the question, can he function without dominating the ball be as defensive zero? and a spotty shooter all at the same time and remain a positive impact. Well, I didn't think that he could carry an offense. He has. Defensively, though, he kind of duped me, honestly, because I would watch him defensively in college,

and his effort was terrible at times. Yeah. He would wander around, like, in the center field and give just inconsistent effort. So he jumps to the NBA. Effort immediately levels up. So my question for you was, we see something similar with Lamella.

you know, Lamello had really horrible defensive effort for a lot of his career. He was arguably the worst defensive player in the NBL this past year. He comes in now, he's not a great defender, but his effort has been a lot better. It's been, it's been incredible. And what do we do with these guys? That's the question. How can we see this coming? Are there any markers or do we, are we just forced to be in this position of, you know, depending

on tea leaves in terms of. what kind of defender a guy is going to be. When you say depending on tea leaves, I think that means information and intel. And if you're a team personality tests, and whatever intel that you can get about the player and what's happening between the ears. Because like you mentioned Lamello,

whether it was Jahu, you know, in my NBA draft got I have a note in there under the minuses, motor and focus wane when defending off ball, leading to backdoor cuts and open shooters. Is it due to heavy offensive role? or is it a lack of interest? Well, it may have just been, you know, conditioning thing. It might have been the fact that he did have that extremely high offensive load at Murray State.

The highest in the country. Absolutely. And it turns out in an NBA setting, he can turn up on that end. And because he has that mind, he has that within him. And he activated it. And I feel like we've seen that to a really great extreme with somebody like Ben Simmons, who just did not care at LSU. He did not try.

That's the other example. Yeah. I mean, that was the number one knock about Ben Simmons coming out of LSU besides the fact that he shoots with the wrong hand was the defensive effort. So with Simmons, he's become one of the game's most brilliant defensive players. And that is due to what he had within. How do you project that? How do you predict that? I feel like it ties so much back to what we talked about earlier. It's the fact that so much is due to situation and opportunity and how a player interacts with. that environment. Like if you are a team where you feel like you can bring in a player and you have the pieces around him with coaches, with trainers, with surrounding personnel, and if you have the right intel that you feel good about from talking to his coaches, his trainers, his teachers, his friends, his family, and himself, I think with all that information, you could put together a picture to feel good about the player. I mean, I'll say this in regards to Lamello. I had a great conversation with Mirren Fader, who now works here at the ringer, who previously did multiple.

Yeah, she did great features when she used to be a BR about Lamello. And I talked to her about him. I was like, why does Lamello not try on defense? Like, like, what is it about him? Like, are there any personality indicators that he will be able to, you know, do that at a higher level in the NBA? Is there anything from him that makes you believe in him? And she just, you know, said, like, he is somebody who's never really been

coached. He's somebody who is a hard worker and wants to do great and it's just figuring things out. He's a young guy who's matured a lot in the time that I've known him, she said, which probably have Miron on some time to talk about Lamello's development. But ultimately, like, you know, Lamello's had some issues on defense with the Hornets, his rookie season. But overall, I'm highly impressed by his impact and his activity, the energy that he's bringing. In addition to the fact that he is clearly, as we've talked about on other pods, improve some fundamental skill areas of his game, especially as a shooter with his shot selection.

He really, like Mirren told me, you know, before the draft, he's a sponge who wants to get better. So if you're an NBA team, you need to get as much intel like that as you can about a player. If you're talking about somebody who can go from a bad defender into a good one, which kind of leads to the next player that I want to talk about here, and that's Jalen Brown,

because everything we're talking about applies to him in a different way. With Jalen Brown, there's never any question about his effort level in terms of, you know, him being a good person, whatever, like Jalen checked all those boxes. What the question was with him was really in terms of skill level. On the offensive floor at Cal, he was a clunky robotic ball handler who oftentimes didn't really know, look like he knew what he wanted to do. He also played with two bigs there. Ivan Rab and other bigs insert into that lineup that clogged spacing.

And that made it difficult to assess Jalen Brown. But the guy that we've seen this NBA season averaging 26 points per game, shooting 42% from three, doing a lot off the dribble for the Celtics. I mean, Tatum is the number one young player there. But Jalen Brown has entered the point of his career where I don't think he's too far behind. And I ask you the same question, Kyle, when it comes to somebody like Jalen Brown, who was, let's just be honest, like a robotic playmaker, a robotic ball handler in college, knowledge, how can you possibly project the fact that somebody like that is going to become such a fluid, natural-looking shock creator like he is today?

That's tough. I mean, that is really tough because one of the common denominators among these guys who have made these leaps is the fact that they are really engaging active participants in their development, interested in their development, not leaning heavily on things that have worked in the past. adaptability is huge. I mean, like, if you look at Jalen Brown, go back and watch, I made a video. I retweeted this recently where I was watching a lot of his footage from 17 and 18. And he just basically was a total liability off the dribble. Like he would just forget, wouldn't take the ball with him. And if you watch him now, you know, in terms of like ascending from liability to I can hold my own and then from I can hold my own to I'm dictating the action.

Those are, those are cavernous leaps. Those are really, really difficult. So for him to, like, level up again is a whole other conversation. But he has definitely gone from,

I mean, you look at his numbers, he's carrying the biggest assist load of his career. It's up, it's up, the next highest one was 9.6. He's at 17.7. And he's doing,

he's hitting the lowest turnover percentage of his career. So, you know, creating his, his, His parameters were very, very simple early on in his time in Boston. It was like catching shoot off pin downs, off curls, things like that, wide open threes, straight line drives to the basket. His flexibility and inability to improvise.

You saw this a lot in the playoffs last year, too. He's aggressive. He's confident. And as we know, you know, Jalen's a brilliant guy, really, really, really intelligent guy. And I think that that's something that teams look for a lot these days. It certainly seems like it, you know. You know, with Jalen, I can't. I talked about this with Chris Vernon on the mismatch pretty recently about like his mantra is faith,

consistency, hard work pays off. That's his Twitter handle, his Instagram handle, it's everything, you know, for a professional athlete, you know, so much of branding, you know, to not change to add Jalen Brown. I think it says a lot about the importance of what that means to him. And it just watching his development throughout his career and especially the season, I've found myself thinking back to some of the conversations that I've had with people prior to the draft about him because again, this touches on, again, the challenges with Intel. With Jalen Brown, there were people around the league who said stuff like he's like a wannabe hipster.

Like he's a wannabe intellectual. Like people said stuff like that about him. Oh, I'm not even going to go there. The judgment was really like, it was awful some of the things that you heard about him. And it's like, or maybe he's a teenager that has a desire to learn and grow and understand the world. Maybe that's what it is. Like what are we, you know, psycho analyzing, like his choices of having like,

you know, gray scale Instagram photos, you know, like that's me like sometimes you can do it a little too much. And it's, it was like really kind of gross at times. If it's some layering up to the point where it's like a distraction, you're off court like idea of yourself. Like, I mean, like, you could argue that Kyrie has gotten himself in trouble on that front a few times. But like, but Jaylen, but Kyrie is still really good player. But yeah, that that is absolutely. bizarre to me. It's very bizarre. And so like I just remember conversations at the time like that.

It's like I mean, I understand like maybe basketball is not the most important thing in somebody's life, but it is one of the most important things. And he clearly works at it and loves it and wants to be as good as he can be. To me, those are the qualities that stood out most. But anyway, I bring that up to say this because you said something just there about like the curiosity and the desire to not just do what you did before, but find new things to do that help you improve. I feel like that same mindset that Jaylon Brown has had, has grown him into like obviously an incredible leader. We've seen everything he's done this past year with Social Justice with the NBPA and taking a more predominant role in that. We've seen that as a human being. And we've also seen that on the basketball court

as well. It has manifested for him in all different areas of his life. And I can't help but look at Jalen Brown and think it's kind of cheesy to say, but like, I feel like he's a perfect role model for a lot of young players, you know, a lot of young kids, even if you don't care about playing basketball, like, no matter what you do, I feel like Jalen Brown is a role model with the example that he sets with the work, with the curiosity and the openness and the willingness to help other people. I don't know, I love Jalen Brown. And to me, like, he's a no question all star this season. Like, he's the one lock I think we have of the guys we're going to.

going to discuss here. But I mean, I love that guy's game man. And it's just so cool to see what he's turned into considering some of the things that were said about him and considering, you know, some of the question marks people had going in. It's just really awesome to see. Yeah. And it's interesting that we had a time where, you know, when I was talking about the video I made in 2018, the, I think it was like second or third episode of the leap that I did about Jalen. I was looking at him and Tatum together. And I was just thinking, this has the potential at the time. I was reading into it a little bit. This has the potential to be the most promising wing duo

since like, you know, I remember Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady was similar. You know, both of those guys had a little bit higher. But if you flip-flopped it, I mean, I just thought that they had the potential. And then I kind of came off that for a time. He and Tatum are just a really phenomenal tandem. And what a nice bit of patience that's paid off for Boston in that sense.

And it's remarkable. I wasn't totally sure that he could become an all-stom. But like you said, I agree. He's deserving and a good guy. And I'm happy for him. Yeah. Jalen Brown on the Celtics, they need Kimbo Walker to get back to being the Kimbo Walker we saw in Charlotte or else.

I'm not so sure about their playoff hopes. They need Kemba to get back. Kyle, who do you have next for our last of our four potential first time All-Stars? I was going to say Jalen's about to graduate from Ringer U. I think he's pretty close, man. Pretty close. Well, I have to have the ceremony if he makes the All-Star team.

We have a plan for that. So the next guy that is on the list. here and like we were talking about varying distances away from being an all-star is Miles Turner of the Indiana Pacers. Miles Turner differs from from DeMont to Sabonis, a guy who has kind of become paired with Miles, I feel like in some senses, in a lot of senses actually. A guy who when he came out of high school, you know, I can reach back to his development, kind of quickly talk about that. He was a guy that showed some glimpses that made people say, wow, this guy could be a high upside play. He's the type of guy who is giving you rim protection.

Our minds raced in terms of like what he could be. Goes to Texas has sort of a ho-hum year. Not a bad year, but not a spectacular year. It was a ho-hum year. I mean, it wasn't bad. It was just kind of not what we thought. So he didn't dominate kind of the way we thought. And I think some of that has played out. With Miles, it's been a little bit of a negotiation and it's sort of a compression of expectation. He's not as bad, I think, as in disappointing. He kind of falls off people's radar a lot, I think. This season, I think that this switch to Nate Bjorkren has been good for him in terms of, you know, Bjork Grin, I think, is similar to Nick Nurse and that he is really good at trimming the fat

in terms of, talked about role parameters, things like that. For Miles, he's shooting less of those sort of, like, wasteful mid-range shots. He's kind of dialed his game into a lot more consistency and volume at the rim and switching to just taking a step back and shooting more threes, which he's very capable of. He's not a guy that's ever going to be, like, I think, like a shot creator in that sense in the way that some fives are like nobody's like Carl Towns. But, you know, I don't ever see Miles Turner being that type of guy, but he's more than capable in transition, like catching and moving a little bit from three coming off a handoff, shooting a three. but he something that I think is interesting about Miles too is that I pulled this I pulled this stat up so in the past we've only had 12 seasons in NBA history where a player has maintained a block percentage of at least five and shot over 35% from three that's only happened 12 times and Turner's done that twice already

and I think that he's going to do it again if his efficiency gets back up from three so basically what you get as a guy who, you know, I think that Sabonis kind of moved in and sort of took over the focus in terms of like role at the five in terms of being like what they thought Turner could be in terms of like a facilitator. You can run offense through him. Turner's giving you rim protection and good three point shooting, which is a rare thing. So I still think he's a valuable all defensive team caliber defense. Yes, yes. I mean, he's a fantastic defender. And I don't know, what do you think like kind of the, it's segues to it. Demontas was an all-star. he's graduated from your MBA, you.

What do you think that it would take from Miles Turner to graduate, to get on the dean's list and move on to his next pasture? I mean, I think it takes the fact that there's, you know, in the east, probably less of those top-end locks that we're talking about in the Western Conference, maybe need to add another big on the back end of the roster. If we're talking about him this season, if we're talking long-term,

I think it's still continued offensive development, becoming not just a 34, 35% three-point shooter, but a 39, 40% guy. And he's made a little bit of progress this year off the dribble, attacking the basket from the three-point line rather than the mid-range, like we saw more often with past Indian offense. I think that's helped him a bit off the dribble as well and open up that area of his game. It's continued development because the defense is already there. The defensive ability is already at a high level.

And aside from, you know, past instances where, he's gotten bullied a bit by Joel Embed. It's hard to do better on defense at the center spot at Miles Turner. There are better defenders obviously, but he's a high level guy on that end of the floor. And you know, I think this also touches

on the theme of their general theme here. What we're talking about is situation. He's in a situation here where there's you're not going to ask a lot of Miles Turner from him because you have Sabonis, who's the offensive hub, because you have Malcolm Brogden, who's a terrific playmaker, the guy you trust

to bring the ball up of the floor and initiate possessions and often finish possessions too. So never mind Karas Levert, hopefully he can get back at some point soon. But with Miles Turner, he may be a guy who is never an All-Star unless he pops offensively some season. But he's certainly an All-Star caliber guy because of his defense. I'm not quite sure that I see All-Star for him in the coming years with this construct, with this roster type that we have in Indiana. but that should not discount the fact that he has made progress in some subtle ways. And he's also become just a really tremendous defensive player.

Yeah. And I think some of the caps that we put on, you know, what we call what we refer to. The whole all-star conversation is really contingent on catch-all stats that are really driven by things that. Things that we value. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's going to be really hard for miles to scale up in some of those areas because it's funny. You mentioned Embed, if you're that size.

and you don't really have the balance and the control of power. One of the big things I talk about in the Embed video is that the miraculous way that he's able to blend the face-up game and getting to the rim when you're at that size because Turner is much more of a stiff-hipped, big, traditional big guy. He's mobile for like, he would be mobile like 20 years ago for a center, but now it's kind of like, there are a lot more quick guys. So for him to get to the rim and be efficient playing in the mid-range and produce his own offense, he's just not efficient or crafty enough, I think, to do that in a way that would produce the stats he would need, I think, to be an all-star. But he's still a highly valuable player.

Kyle, who are some honorable mentions that we did not bring up here? Well, you flew by one of them, I thought was one of the big reasons for the jazz is that Mike Conley's sort of acclamation to the old veteran. Got to give a nod to the vet. A professor emeritus at Ringer & B. Mike Conley, man. I love Mike Conley. It's so good to see him getting back to playing the game. They did for a lot of years in Memphis.

I think there's, you know, C.J. McCollum, had he not gotten hurt, would have been in it, too, if we're talking veterans. There's a lot of younger guys. I mean, I want to have a pod where we talk more in depth about Knicks. Julius Randall, his development. Zach Levine, what he's become this year with the Chicago Bull. he's another good one too. How about even like Shea Gildeson Alexander?

What he's doing with the Thunder. Oh yeah, I love Shay. She's a fantastic player and just getting better all the time. You want to talk about leveling up quickly. He's another guy, relentless worker. Really, really nice, convenient thing for the Thunder to be rebuilding the way they are and to have a player like him growing simultaneously side by side. Really excited for Shea.

to him. Christian would too if he didn't get hurt. Christian would another guy. There's a lot of, there's a lot of good young players right now, Kyle. There's a lot. There is. There are a lot of good players.

And what I was going to say with the Moran thing that I forgot to talk about was just that what an interesting little last like few years period we've had here where all these really fascinating, colorful, creative players have entered the league. And it's just, I honestly think we're on a path to having more and more players like that. I think the NBA is just going to be on, is on a track to have more and more guys like that. And it's just, it's an exciting time. It really is. I feel like some of the young prospects we've talked about in recent weeks, we talked about Evan Mobley with Charks.

We talked about Kate Cunningham. Next episode in two weeks, we'll talk about Jane Lynn Suggs from Gonzaga. There's a lot of guys in this year's draft class that are just going to inject more creative energy into the NBA. And I don't know, dude. Like, I feel like it is such a fun time to watch the game. basketball. I'm loving the game right now. It's it's we're lucky to be alive watching the NBA. What a time. It feels like one of those hours. Yep. Yeah. Kyle, I'm having a lot of fun doing this pod with you too, man. This is a good time. How sentimental and how sweet. Thank you, KOC. I'm

enjoying it as well. Very hopped up on coffee. But yeah, yeah, I'm excited too. It's been so fun doing this and I look forward to doing more of them as a season continues to develop. So earlier this week, I had a conversation with Syriot Sohe that you'll hear next. Searin and I had a great, great conversation about the Lakers young guys, how the game is a lot of different diverse styles with both teams and players. I thought it was a really interesting conversation. Then we had a little bit of a fun life talk at the end, too. I love the conversation with her and hope you do too.

That'll be up next after this break. And now we bring on Siritt Sohi, who is one of my favorite people and also someone doing excellent work covering the NBA for Yahoo Sports. Sirit, what's up? How's it going, Kevin? I'm going really, really great. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. I'm excited to talk basketball with you. So let's do it. Let's talk basketball. Last week on Yahoo, you wrote about the Lakers, which we haven't discussed yet. We haven't mentioned the Lakers yet on Ringer and B.A. University. So I thought it would be great to have you on to discuss their younger supporting cast and their place in the title race. And I want to start off with Talen Horton Tucker, who was the 11th man entering the season for the Lakers. But he's carved out a regular rotation role already by taking minutes from veterans like West. Matthews and Marquith Morris.

So, Syrett, with THT, what has he shown on the court for him to earn this opportunity so quickly at just 20 years old? Yeah, I always forget that he's just 20. I think he just turned 22. He was, like, I think in December, but

a lot, really. Taylor Norton Tucker was also, I think we talked about this, but that the article I wrote about the Dremont generation and, you know, series of players coming into the league, like really not leading their height as much and compensating with their wingspan, with their length, with their width.

Taylor-Horton-Tucker is exactly that guy, like you wrote in your article. He's got like the biggest wingspan and is the heaviest player at his height. And that's actually just really valuable right now. Like it allows you to switch. He's actually like doing a lot more on offense too, though. He has, he's like really long arms. He can actually just finish any shot. I find that whenever he gets into the paint

it's like a little bit of a deception there with like his defenders put their arms up he's like oh no I can I'm actually I have quite more length than you than you think I do he just like kind of finishes over them he's fun to watch but he's just he's kind of just like a do it all guy like I really I'm actually really curious to see

what he turns into because like in high school he was a scorer he was a star in high school right and now he's come in he's way more of a defensive presence but he totally has the touch So I don't know. Like I kind of wonder where he'll end up leaning or if he'll actually like have more potential, be more of a two-way player. You mentioned how in high school and in college too, he was one of the knocks on him.

And the reason why he failed to the second round is the decision-making aspect, some shot selection issues. And, you know, with him, that's changed a lot for him. You mentioned his weirdness around the rim and the unpredictability. I mean, he's got that perky, jerky style that kind of reminds me of some of those scores in the 90s and 2000s, where it feels like the way he looks on the court aesthetically, he's going to pull up in jack mid-range jumpers, but he actually plays an analytics happy game. He shoots 55% of his shot attempts at the rim,

28% of his shot attempts come from behind the arc. That's according to cleaning the glass. And THT just doesn't really use mid-range that much compared to how his game looks. It's mostly layups, threes, or he's looking to make a pass for his teammates. And he's a really willing passer. That's where he's improved a lot. He feels like, to me, a throwback with all these modern influences to excel in the game today.

I'd be curious, Kevin. I haven't done the Horton-Sucker, like personality deep dive or anything like that. Did he have to have a come-to-Jesus moment with himself at all? Because who he is right now, like playing a role, like, I understand all NBA players have to do this to some extent. Like they go in from being the, like they were the man and then they have to really do all the dirty work. he had to do that on such a dramatic level and change so much. Like, was there just a realization on his part? I feel like he's one of those guys where situation and opportunity have been perfect for him

in the sense that let's say he had went to a situation where he's allowed to do whatever he want. Maybe he's not building good habits as a passer. He's been really good distributing the ball for the Lakers. Maybe he's taking some lower quality shots. Maybe he's not going full throttle on defense. I mean, he's had some possessions this season, especially what comes to mind what he did against Jamal Murray last month. He locked him up on one possession, forced an air ball, the next play.

Murray crossed him over, but you mentioned Horton Tucker's length. He just stretched out and just docked the ball away from him and the intensity, the effort level. He's in a situation where he has to do that to get on the court. He has to play smart. And, you know, there's a lot of people around the league who say, oh, Horton Tucker, he's, people want to be talking about him if he wasn't on the Lakers. He's averaging seven points a game, not playing a lot. People only care because he's on the Lakers.

So I have a question for you. What is it about his development? You mentioned his long term upside that makes him such an important young player, not just because he's a Laker, but because of what he could potentially be like, what do you see him to make him an important player long term? He just has like the most unique basketball dimensions I've ever seen. honestly.

It reminds me a little bit of Charles Barkley. He worked out with Draymond Green this summer. When you say Charles Barclay, you mean like body, not elite upside, Hall of Fame upside. You just mean like body wise. I mean his body. Yeah. I mean his body.

Just like Taylor, Taylin is not quite as much of a round mound as this truck was. But he definitely has, he has similar dimensions. And like to me, I love, we talked about this before the show. like basketball diversity is really interesting when you take a player that wouldn't typically be able to to stay on the court or would, you know, be considered to do different things than he's doing and they come in and they're finding kind of new ways to contribute. I always like that.

And yeah, we might be, we might not talk about him as much if he was on a different team. But like, fine. Like that is what it is. But that doesn't mean that we can't appreciate a player like him right now. Like the reason that a player like Jemond Green, for example, even, got the love that he got was because he was a warrior he was on like the greatest team of all time and he was such an amazing vessel for them and still contribute so much to what they do and by focusing on a player like that we learned a ton about basketball like yeah it is it it's it is

probably a failure of analysis that we don't do this with every every team and like find their goo guy or find like you know really pay attention to the players that are making a difference despite not really like stuffing the stat sheet but that does that. doesn't like, it's like pointing out the hypocrisy there doesn't mean that we should just not do it ever. Like it's a good opportunity to say, hey, okay, like this guy is, what is it about this guy? How is he contributing even though like he might not necessarily fit into a typical mold of what a star looks like or what a high level prospect looks like? And it's not like some of those other guys don't get talked about. You mentioned Lou Dort in your article.

I did a Lou Dort video with Oklahoma City with the smallest market teams who are not winning or making the playoffs this year. It's like Kelden Johnson on the Spurs. I feel like has gotten a good amount of attention. Zach Lowe had him in his 10 things I like and didn't like. I've had him in some pieces. I feel like a lot of these kind of quirky, weirder, younger players are getting a lot of their deserved attention because of just how funky they are.

And yet how many of them they're all in the game right now. It's a good time for the game with all these types of players. Yeah, totally. I think just because you're not getting talked about on first take, doesn't mean that you're not being talked about. Maybe you don't want that. They want Skip's opinion. They want to hear Stephen A talk about it.

No, like they should. I think like just reorient your identity. Be like, you know what? I'm cool with like these these basketball hipsters talking about me. That just means that I'm doing something a little bit different. I don't think, I don't think they're going to take that tack. I think, you know, probably they want to be talked about on TV. But, you know, fingers fraud, maybe.

I don't know. Who knows? And in your article, you also alluded to some of the, of the other guys. You mentioned basketball diversity. You wrote about how the Lakers have the NBA's most diverse ecosystem because of their ability to play different ways. They can play big with Harold and Marcus Sol at the five with AD where they can play smaller and speedier. And they just have multiple guys, a lot of different people who can attack from anywhere. And that's especially thanks to somebody like Dennis Schrooter. And I don't want to talk a lot about Schroeder and Harold because they're

27 and on this pod we're typically focusing on younger guys. But I do want to ask, With Schroeder, how have you seen his play actually impact the way the Lakers operate on the court, especially with LeBron? LeBron's touching the ball far less, I feel like. His assist dropped from a career high last year, just back to around a 7 mark, which is pretty much where it's been his entire career. He hasn't, you know, he hasn't had quite a high of usage this year. A lot, like, he's just playing off the ball a lot.

And a lot of this is actually due to Mark Gassol, too, who is far too old to be discussed on this podcast. So it'll be the last time I mentioned him. But just like having, I'll be the one to break that rule if I mentioned Gassol. Yeah, more, more, Marcus Loll can be mentioned anywhere.

He's a lovely human being. But yeah, so like just having other people there to run, pick and roll on both ends, like, you know, having LeBron be a spot up guy, not even having him being the roller on those possessions. Like, Trotter and,

and AD, running pick and roll is just such an impossible thing for a team that likes to switch a lot, which a lot of teams like to do, like no matter what you do against the Schroeder AD pick and roll, like you're pretty much going to be giving something up because AD can roll, he can pop. Schroeder is so fast that like if you don't switch, he's just going to turn the corner on you. You're going to have to help. That's where I think you can, that's probably the formula because Schroeder can get a little bit sticky with the ball for sure.

like he'll try to finish some shots that he probably shouldn't he's not like I think he's trying to balance it out because like I feel like he knows he's on the Lakers right he's like I can't quite do some of the things that I used to do which is probably like we talked about with Horton Tucker like a good development in his game that I think like I think kind of minimizes his mistakes Harrison Fagan also wrote a good article about him as well for for SB Nation's Lakers site because like one of the things I noticed was that stroker voter is plus minus wasn't that good. And he wrote about how a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that he isn't, like he isn't, he isn't coming, coming out and they go to crap, obviously, like the Lakers employ lineups that are good all the time. And when, you know, Caruso is the other point guard, it's not like you're going to see a drop off anything. Caruso's, you know, going to make things a little bit better.

He also just does, like he's also like, he's got a little bit like the Rondo, Avery Bradley thing on, on defense. where I think he cheats just enough that you lose some of what you get from him just being so solid all the time. So I would, yeah, I would check that out, but it's interesting to watch him thrive because he's just really using his quickness. Like that's the biggest deal that he has over a lot of the guys that guard him. And it felt like that was over. Like pre-draft, I'm sure you can speak to this more. There was no appellate.

site for small guards in this draft at all. And I think a lot of that is just the fact that bigger guards are available now. Like you're seeing like Lamello Ball, for example, like six, seven playmaker, what more would you want in the NBA than a six seven playmaker? So I totally get it. Like a lot of those small guy skills are being reappropriated by guys that just have much better bodies for the NBA. Your guy, Killian Hayes, is another example of that.

Hopefully you can get healthy. Yeah. Hopefully. So yeah, you understand why it's happening. But a guy like Trader is a reminder that like still when those guys like when you have guys that have like the skills or like the ability at that 90th percentile, which I think Schroeder does with his speed. Like they can find value on the court as long as you put them in a situation where they can succeed. And right now against against a league that switches a lot like Schroeder can pretty much exploit any match. You know, the funny thing with him is you mentioned pre-draft.

The common comparison for him was Rondo. and that ends up being the guy he replaces on a championship team. And there's some similarities in terms of body and length and all that and some of the movements on the court. Like Schroeder really did develop into a different type of player with more playmaking or more scoring than playmaking than Rondo, especially now at the stage of Rondo's career. But with Schroeder early in his career in Atlanta, the big thing that I was disappointed about was the lack of defense because that's what I thought he would be really good at in the NBA. but what he turned into the last two years in Oklahoma City and this year with the Lakers,

I'm loving what he brings on defense. I mean, did you see the hustle play that he had last week where he dove for the wall twice? Oh my, like that play was incredible. Yeah, and then two games, like two games in a row, he guards Kempel Walker and he guards Tray Young. Trey Young, who by the way, nobody on the Lakers could stop. Like every, every single thing that they tried,

even using Schroeder and traps wasn't good because Trey can get out of a trap. And then all of a sudden, like you're, then you're not taking advantage of the fact that Schroeder's a really good one-on-one defender, right? He was able to do that, which, like, you know, like those small guards are taking advantage of the same thing that he's taking advantage of. But he doesn't allow them to do it because, you know, unlike Trey Young, for example, Schroeder is now defending. Obviously, it's a lot of years and maturation on, on, on, on, on, on Trey. But, you know, like, you can kind of see, like, what is so frustrating about the way that Trey doesn't defend because the guys he's guarding, like, once once you give a point guard to step,

you're done, especially if you don't have guys behind him, which, you know, the Hawks are still kind of developing that. Clit Capella has been great, though. Love his rebounding, love his energy. Capella's been fun to watch. And, you know, you mentioned what Schroeder offers as a playmaker. We're talking about Horton Tucker only 20 years old. And I feel like these younger guys and what they can do with the ball in their hands, that's what's helping enable LeBron to adapt at age 36 and maintain MVP level performance. And by the way, I mean, just on the top of the topic of age. I can't get over the fact that LeBron is 36, still an MVP contender, still contending for championships. We just witnessed on Sunday. Tom Brady won his seventh

Super Bowl at age 43. There's so many great athletes right now that are old. Roger Federer, Serena Williams, both 39 years old. Great athletes are sustaining success for longer. Brady, Brady didn't win his fourth championship until he was 37 years old. So LeBron's four, I mean, he still has a lot a time to catch up to Jordan 6. And with LeBron, I was just thinking on Sunday night, LeBron, LeBron has won at all or made deep runs with some

teams that had major weak links on their roster. And right now watching the Lakers, I don't feel like LeBron has ever had a team that has performed, that has resembled what he has always been with winning

characteristics in an elite work ethic. It feels like the team has taken on his personality. And I sense that same type of mindset from top to bottom on this entire Lakers roster. Do you see what I mean with that with this team compared to his past championship teams? Oh, totally. Yeah.

But I think a lot of that credit just goes to those players in the first place. I don't think LeBron came in and by osmosis, you know, gave them his impute upon his work ethic. He didn't bless them with his brain. like Vogel is such a like Vogel is just like a like a businessman coach you know like he's just

he when he talks to the media he's trying to get in and out he's just always like going back to growth mindset and stuff like he's staying on on topic he's never really trying to be a celebrity which I think is like important when you're coaching LeBron Davis is Davis you know he came in being himself but a lot of these guys on the Lakers right now

like they allow both Davis and LeBron to like not have have to do the things that they usually do. Like a lot of what Gassol, sorry, mentioned him twice, is doing this. Like, he's replicating LeBron skills, right? Like, he's passing really well. We talked about that one path he made where, like,

he saw that LeBron was getting a lot of gravity against the hawks. So he was like... The one in the article, right? I tweeted you about that one. I pretend to run a pick and roll with you so that the hawks will come even closer. Like, I think it was hurter that was like, you know, between the corner and the middle. And then as soon as it was like, oh, they're going to run a dribble handoff,

the soul just whipped the ball to the corner. Like that is, that is like, I think, the level of intelligence that LeBron wanted to play with when he was like, hey, I could use some smarter teammates. I don't know. I don't know J.R. Smith. Like, I don't know why you just did that. Like, that's exactly what I think he was looking for.

And, like, a lot of these guys, like, you're not going to want, Gassol's not going to be able to finish a lot of games in the playoffs. Neither is Schroeder, but a lot of them can approximate the things that LeBron does every day so that by the time it comes for him, him to have to take over. I think he's going to be fresher than hopefully ever.

I mean, obviously, he's still coming in with, like, only a 70-day break. I think it was 71. So it'll be interesting to see how it looks. But right now, like, the roster is not even, not only is smart, but it's like, it's really built to, uh, to not have to have LeBron or AD do too much work. Like, I remember the first game of the season, like, it was Lakers versus Clippers. and they weren't exactly, you know, like the Lakers weren't exactly there.

They just got their rings and they were like, okay, cool. Like the Clippers were the ones that were mad. And it showed in that game. But the thing that became really clear, really fast at the Lakers was like, Anthony Davis is not trying to have an MVP season. He's not trying to be in the paint and like, you know, lead the team in touches.

Although he might lead the team in paint touches. I don't know. But he's just, he's not trying to be destroyer of worlds right now. Like he's cool with like taking three, he's facing up and like not necessarily just punishing teams for for not having anybody that can defend him, which is still true. But that makes sense to me.

Like why take that beating? And they're still playing really, really well. Yeah. And you're seeing guys like Kuzma as well change their game a little bit. Draymond Green tweeted over the weekend how Kuzma is now playing winning basketball and has made amazing growth in that area. And by the way, I mean, Draymond is 100% right about them about Kuzma. I mean, he's averaging a career low in points.

and shots per game, but he's taking higher percentage chances. And defensively, I don't think Kuzma has ever been better and ever been more consistent. He's locked in off ball. He's focused off ball. And there's the game against the Hawks that you mentioned earlier where people couldn't stop him. But Kuzma did have some really, really good possessions against Trey in that game and just putting constant pressure on him. And, you know, for a while, I wondered if Kuzma would be better off as trade bait for the Lakers.

But then he signed that three-year extension to make 30. 13 million annually, probably less than he would have gotten if he had hit free agency. And so now I'm starting to think the way he's performed the season really taking on that winning player role, I feel like he's a keeper who took that deal and is now becoming the best version of what he needs, what the team needs him to be to win it all. What are your thoughts on, you know, Kuzma's development and how he's played? I feel like he's really, he's become the opposite of what I think people were. afraid he'd become. And that didn't just start this season. I think he was making defensive

progress throughout like all of last season. Then the bubble, like he was really great defensively, even though he didn't play a lot and he wasn't necessarily suited to a lot of the matchups that he was taking you on, but he could give you spot minutes. And he was more importantly, he was willing to do that. Like he wasn't really caught up in the, in like the fact that he's obviously scoring less. Like the framework of the team has changed so much what he's been. around like he's not really concerned with uh with putting up numbers uh i was talking to so draymond's trainer uh kuzma worked out with draymond and his trainer this summer which if you look at the things he's doing in his game right now actually makes a ton of sense and uh his trainer told me that

the first thing that kuzma said when he walked into the gym after the bubble was like hey man do you see my defense in the bubble like you saw my defense in the bubble right like it just kind of shows you, like there's been a bit of a mind-shed shift from him, like, an acceptance that that is exactly, like, who he's going to have to be. And, and that he can do it. Like, I think a lot of these players that are really good at one thing, they're reticent to adjust because they feel that, like, that's not who I am. So how am I supposed to do that? And Kuzma has, like, completely made a turn in terms of, like, what the type of player that he is. I just, I just love hearing, like, every time I watch him now, I, like, I think about him saying that because it's,

like, yeah, there's been, there's been a very, very clear shift in his mindset. I mean, so much of everything and with performance and is approach to the game, it's your mindset. It's like, it's the dumbest thing to say. But even with video games, you know, like if I'm playing war zone with my friends, it's constant communication. I'm trying to take on that mentality. When I'm playing like NHL with my friends and I'm playing as a defenseman, I try to take on a mindset of being like Draymond Green. I try to take as much pleasure and pride and getting a stop poking the puck away as I do. do when I make a great pass for a goal.

And it's just about mindset. And I feel like Kuzma has taken that on. I feel like this entire team has. I mean, you mentioned Harold and Gasol, too, who we're not allowed to talk about. Those guys, at some point, they're going to have to sacrifice because you're going to see the Lakers go with 80 at the five. And let's pivot into something else that I want to talk about here. And that's Biggs in the NBA.

And to get us into that, I have a pop quiz question. for you, Sarah. There's a quiz. A quiz, yes, a pop quiz. I hate to us. Okay, all right. Let's put, um... Why did I do a podcast called University?

Let's put 10 seconds on the clock. Okay, oh, good. Lots of time. Over a six-year stretch from the 0-9-10 season through the 14-15 season, how many different players listed as 6 foot 11 or taller averaged at least. three point five assists until 15 0910 through 1450

we need an answer sir it zero probably honestly zero the answer is three joeem noah and marcosole did it three times powell gosol did it twice again we're not supposed to talk about marcusole Kevin come on but the reason why I mentioned that is because in the six years since then from 1516 through this

current season so far our 12 have done it. We have some guys doing it this season for at least a second time. Janus, Yokic Simmons, Sabonis, and Towns. And then you have others who have done it at least once. Busevich, Nurkich, Bede, Mason Plumley, Noah did it. And of course, Powell and Marcosol or the others. And that doesn't even factor in some of the shorter centers in the league today,

like Ban out of bio. Point being, people spent a couple of years there saying the big man is a dead position. Gasol felt like a relic of a past error. But what he really was was a sign of what was to come with more bigs who can make plays from the perimeter. We have so many bigs right now who are passers, who are perimeter scorers, who are bring the ball up the court, who are two-way guys. And that's made for a league that has so much variety. And when you were on the answer with Chris Ryan a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned this a little bit earlier in our conversation, too. You phrased it, basketball diversity.

With all these different styles, can you explain what you mean by that basketball diversity? Well, I just like, I like the idea of the fact that, you know, a guy like Froeder can exist on the court with a guy like Anthony Davis that we still, we haven't gotten to this place with basketball that, you know, everyone's a six, seven defender slash shooter, three and D guy, at least out of the role players. But I think what we're seeing in the NBA is just a lot of skill reappropriation. Like the game is obviously changing a lot, but I think that the mistake that was made earlier was like the idea that, okay, now the game. is changing certain players are just going to go extinct. And obviously for the guys, for some guys that happened to be the case, like some guys that were really like already who they were, like Roy Hibber, I think is the most famous example of somebody who went from being one of the most valuable players in the league to

basically being unplayable in a few years. But for the most part, like you can adjust. And I think that is like something that we lose sight of sometimes when when things change. And the NBA, things change all the time. But there's also an offseason. And like, it's all like, we're the only people. people seeing that things are changing, like these players that want to stay in the league are like, oh, damn, like what I was doing last year isn't quite as valuable or like maybe I need to

extend my range. One of the most interesting things to me has been the fact that big men have been able to extend their rage. That was something that wasn't even supposed to happen. It was like, oh, they have, the geometry doesn't work because they're too tall or their hands are too big. And it's like, no, you got to just, look, just try the thing. Not everyone's going to be able to do it, but if you think that it's because of your body, then it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like big men are now taking small guys skills. And also, like, guards are posting up more.

Like, the league has become completely inverted. Setting screens to standing in the dunker spot, you're having small guys do that. It's wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, guys, and like, especially small guys that can't shoot as well, like guys that need to cut more. Like, you know, Eric Ledzo comes to example as a guy who's kind of like within the

pelican system, like, if he doesn't cut at the, exact right moment. Things don't really necessarily work out for them. But he is somebody who can do that. Like it's enough to keep him on the floor. He's like a bigger guy as well. So, you know, it's just to me, I think, A, I like seeing that. I love seeing players do new things, find new wrinkles in the game. And be just like, just because somebody is in a particular size doesn't mean that you need to write them off. And I'm sure this is like, Kevin, as you cover the draft, I'm sure this is something you think about all the time. Like, how much are you supposed to focus on dimension? and versus how much are you supposed to think about things like things that you don't really

figure out until later. Like one of the things I realized recording the Draymond piece was that, you know, we talked a lot about intelligence with a lot of these guys. Like they are able to process enough information to be able to switch, which means that they have to know the tendencies of all five positions, for example. That's not something that you used to have to be able to do. So you have to be really smart in the modern NBA. Like you have to like, you know, we see these things like, you know, Draymond calls out plays

or LeBron has photographic memory. Like, well, if you want to be an elite defensive player, that's almost a necessity, especially if you're undersized, especially if you have to, like, anticipate and be in places before other people are, right? Like, that is something that you have to be able to do. But the thing is, like, you don't know who's that smart until they get on your team. That is the one thing that every single coach, every single scout said about every single one of the guys that I talked about.

And you also, you hear it with, like, for example, you heard about Rondo, anytime he got to a new place. Obviously, LeBron, there are so many things that you just can't know. And a lot of that is just like what's what's in between your head and like what's your mindset. And are you going to be able to improve upon certain skills? Like what's your, you know, what's your hand out? Like what's your like what's your motor? Like how much, you know, how much can you how quickly can you improve? Like will you go into train something one day? Just all intangible stuff. Exactly. Exactly. Like all this stuff is like we're starting to measure it. But we haven't quite gotten there.

And so I think at this point, like your dimensions and your athleticism are still a little bit overvalued. So who were some of those other players in your article for the listeners who may not have ready? And we should put the link to it in the description of the podcast as well. Oh, yeah. You should totally put the link to it in the description of the podcast. I think that would be wonderful. Get you some clicks. Yeah.

I know Xavier Tillman was in there, right? Xavier Tillman was in there. Your boy, Lou Doort, your boy, Draymond Green. we should just like collaborate for this article. Clearly I have a type of basketball player. As do I. As do I. Draymond Green was like the inspiration for it.

I was thinking about players that that were able to find a place in the NBA because of him. And the article came to be because I was watching, I was watching the Rockets play, the Thunder and the Bubble. And there was this moment where Stephen Adams, a couple possessions in a road couldn't close out on PJ Tucker. And PJ Tucker was doing just fine on him in the other end. Like you're not really going to post up Stephen Adams. Like as long as, you know, you're positioning yourself well into pick and roll.

Like he can't think he's athletic and he's big, but you're not going to like throw it away above PJ Tucker. Like it's not the Lakers where you can just go lob sitting on a team like that, right? So they had to take him out of the game. And they took him out of the game for Lou Dort. Now all of a sudden Lou Dort is six four guy playing center. And for Stephen Adams, it's like, you would think he'd be happy. Like, oh, the Warriors aren't in the playoffs this year. Like, I'm home free, right?

And it's like, no, man, like the league has changed. Like, you have somebody squeezing you out on both ends. Like, you have your own teammate that can play your position. And you have PJ Tucker on the other end, 6-5 Center. And when the Rockets made that trade in February, last February, everybody was like, oh, my God, this is so revolutionary, which it was. But then it gets pushed on immediately because the team needed to adjust to it.

And to me, like, that evolution, like, really started with Dremont because that was, like, the first, like, when the Warriors did that, it was like, oh, you can switch and screen and just be fine and have this playmaker who's really skilled and, you know, reappropriate a lot of center skills. Like, I think reappropriation is just, like, the theme of the NBA right now. Like, can you get guys to, can you, can you do something that you, that your team doesn't have necessarily is, is pretty much, like, one of the bigger questions in the NBA. To your point, it's sort of like the shape and size of the player doesn't really matter all too much right now. You can be big and be a so-called point guard. You can be small and set screens and stand in the dunker spot like we talked about earlier. And you mentioned earlier the idea of in the past it was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of these big players. You're big. So be near the rim.

Don't handle the ball. Don't shoot. I feel like with the drafts, for players who are currently in the league while this shift happened, It just took a little bit of time for those guys to adjust a Brooke Lopez, a Marka Sol, or even like someone like a Dwayne Deadman adding a three-pointer to their team, even though he's a free agent right now. But and for younger players, those younger guys, I think they just grew up doing that. They grew up practicing those skills. And that's why we're seeing a complete title wave of them entering the league. I mean, there's so many young guys.

Like we didn't even mention a Jaron Jackson Jr. on the Grizzlies who hasn't played. Yeah, he was ready made as a knocked down shooter coming off screens and handing. We have all these guys that are big that have so-called small skills. And I feel like that I don't know if there's any going back from where the league is right now. I don't think this is just a wave of skilled bigs, still skilled big players. I think this is just the way the game is going to be moving forward. Yeah. If there was anything in that article that kind of gave me a guidepost in terms of what I should be looking for in terms of the future,

It was Jay Wright. He said playing small for them at Villanova was an experiment. You just want to see how big you can be while being skilled. So you still want size. But the skill part of it is much more important than it used to be. And like you mentioned Brooke Lopez. I think any young player that feels like they can't shoot should look to Brooke Lopez as evidence. Like he was 28 when he developed his three-point shot from being a guy that never shot.

He was a post-up guy. He was a seven-footer. And he turned into a dead-eye shooter. Like he's not, he probably isn't as consistent as I think people think he is with his shot. But like he does space the floor and he allows the buck to have two seven-footers on the floor at the same time, which is huge for your defense, right? So, like, being able to do that late in your career to me is just, like, it's evidence of the fact that you're not really necessarily tied to the player that you were or, you know, it doesn't have to be that, like, this change is sweeping across the league and now I'm done. Like, there were guys who figured this stuff out later in their careers. You mentioned this is a quick, you know, a little aside here.

But with Lopez, it's interesting about what defenses are now doing to these bigs shooting three. threes, what's happening against the bucks a little bit this season is we're seeing smaller guys defending Brooke Lopez because they know they're not going to post him up. They're not going to feed Lopez the ball on the post. And I wonder if maybe over the course of the season, we'll see Milwaukee making a little bit of adjustment there and try to, you know, beat up on those smaller players by using Lopez doing what originally made him a really good player in the league. Syred, is there a downside to all these threes?

You know, one thing that I thought was interesting was watching Watching the Mavericks with Cape Peaback Because the same thing happens to him And I think the part that's difficult is once a guy switches on you It's hard to get from like the popping location To a post-up location seamlessly within the same possession Without killing a bunch of a clock And that's like that's just the advantage that defenses are going to have

until somebody figures out a way to do that. And some teams do do a good job of it. I think the Lakers do a pretty good job of it when, when Anthony Davis gets a switch on him. But the thing with AD too is that he can also just face up against a smaller guy and use his length to get around him. Like he doesn't necessarily have to be in the post. KP's probably like,

Prisig is probably his best example just because he's not a great post player. But like the Maverts do try it, right? Like when he gets posted onto a guy that's smaller than him or switch onto a guy that's smaller than him, they will try to post him up. and it doesn't necessarily work out that well, A, because KP settled a lot, but also just because it's really hard

to reconfigure the court like that when you're going from like, you know, you're hoping to run a pick and pick and roll and dribble drive and stuff and just have Luka execute and KPB, either a decoy or he's going to shoot. It's just a very different way of being on the floor, like just the logistical quandary that you deal with with there is difficult.

And yeah, like, so a lot of, these guys just don't have that that skill set anymore, but it kind of goes back to the point of like, hey, just because you don't have it doesn't mean you can't. Yeah, you know, I feel like we also do have the dominant bigs. Like we haven't been doing what he's doing. We have Yokic doing everything he is from the high post. He can go down to the low post and dominate there too. There are great post bigs in the league that are so good that they are worthy of getting those touches when it comes to the scope of scoring efficiency and what a play can be worth from the best players that a certain skill. And KP is not like what the level he needs to be. But, you know, when it comes

to threes, I feel like people talk about, you know, how many threes there are all the time and how so many teams are shooting threes. But I don't, I mean, with the idea of basketball diversity, I still think there's a wide range of how teams are getting those shots. It's not like every team is playing like the Mori ball rockets and they're running pick and roll every possession and isolations and then kickouts for threes. Like you're seeing some teams run motion. You're seeing some teams run a lot of pick and roll. There's all these different styles. And ultimately, like, you know, if you look at three point rate this season, I believe

the number one team, Utah is like at 44%. The number 30 team is at like, at 26% of their total shots or threes. That 18% difference is identical 10 years ago. It's just it was like 29% for the number one team and 11% for the 30th place team. So it's just really those baseline spot up jumpers or deep. deep spot up, two point jumpers have just been replaced by threes. And those are, those are role players doing that. The star players are still using the mid-range.

They're still posting up if you're in a bead. You're still pulling up if you're a Kauai Leonard. And, you know, that's what makes the game so lovely for me right now. You have all these different types of styles of players and different styles of teams to get those shots. And even on defense, too, you have some teams that switch a ton of screens, like the Hornets, the Nets, the Celtics do it a lot too. Then you have teams that don't with the bucks and the pelicans

and the bulls don't too much either. So I feel like stylistically right now, I can't remember a time in my life where I felt like there was just so much variety in the way the players perform and how the teams actually construct their system. Do you feel like the game's in a great place right now too? I actually do. Because it's interesting the way people talk about,

oh, like all anybody does is shoot three is now. I don't think that it used to be that people were like, all anybody does in the NBA is scoring the paint. Like, oh, the eight is all the same. I'm like, well, they get there in different ways, man. Like, I don't think that was a conversation. Stop shooting all these deep, deep, mid-range jumpers. Ridiculous.

Stop dunking, everyone. Like, why is everyone the NBA just dunking all the time? I'm sick of watching this. But, you know, one thing I'd actually be curious about is one thing that does annoy me with the amount of threes that have taken is, like, the amount of superstars that shouldn't be shooting if any threes that are taking them. Like, I'm curious to get your thoughts on, like, the younger guys.

Like, Muka and Trey, obviously, the ones to get hammered for it the most. But it's really, like, it's across the league. Step back, step back threes. Like, how do you think, do you think that there's too many of them? Do you think that there's enough? Is it something where just because they're not making them now, maybe they will down the line and it's worth it? Like, what are your thoughts on that?

I think it's about balance and feel in the moment. For me, I don't really mind when I see, Luca or Hardin or some of these great players or even guys that are a level below them taking pull-op threes. To me, it's so much about situation and timing. What we do see and that this bothers me is when you have like a three-on-one in transition and everybody goes out behind the line and nobody's going to the basket for, you know, like a little give-and-go back and forth to get a layup.

The layup is still the highest percentage shot in the game. It's what you should be looking for. Yeah. But you are seeing teams sometimes willingly trade those opportunities for pullups and transition, which great. I mean, like a lot of time they go in. If you're a 33 plus percent shooter, it can be worth more than an interior shot, except when the paint is open. And those are the situations more so than the stars. Because I think, you know, whether it's a Tatum or even a Jalen Brown on the Celtics or, you know, whoever it might be.

A Joel Embed even has been awesome on pull-up jumpers the season. And he's not just a post-up guy back to the basket. He's facing up a lot. These guys, the star players are still using the mid-range, especially later in the clock, later in games. But Tatum's actually good at it. I think that's like, that's a distinction that we don't really make a lot.

I almost wonder if, you know, like there's a bit of a cult of efficiency around the three where like these superstar players can just justify taking them because it's like, hey, it's a three-pointed time. and I'm a superstar. And it's like, hey, like, I didn't take a midranger, so it's still a pretty good shot. And ultimately, like, if you look at the numbers, it's still not even a low efficiency three is not a bad shot.

But I also feel like, like, you mentioned feel, right? I think there are times in games I see you guys just pull up for that shot. And their feet aren't quite right. And there's time on the clock. And you can tell they're not quite in rhythm, but they're like, hey, I'm going to take this shot. And I think about this because you brought up Tatum. Tatum has the best step back but work that I've seen in a young player in the league.

Like the amount of separation that he gets, like where his feet are, just he's on balance. He can kind of do it from like every place on the floor. And he has size too. Like he's going to shoot over most guys as well. Like I think he can shoot that shot with enough confidence to know that it's probably like he's probably at least going to get himself. in the position that he wants to get himself into before he takes that shot. I don't think that's necessarily true for a lot of guys, though. Sure.

I mean, you know, there's other younger guys like a Brandon Ingram who are figuring things out. And they also have to deal with a lack of spacing at times, too, though the Pelicans have been a little bit better this last week. And, you know, I get what you're saying there. But for me, like, it doesn't really bother me quite personally quite as much. It's just about sometimes those open court transition opportunities. but ultimately still though like with the amount of different players that play different styles some are jacking up a ton of three some are still like hawai living in the mid range there's just so many

different types of players and i feel like on every team there's at least one guy even when the team is bad or it's like okay i could watch something pretty fun tonight if i turn on turn on this game and it doesn't really matter what game it is are you having fun watching the league this year absolutely absolutely absolutely one thing that is actually like really difficult watching the league this year is like there are 13 games on every single night it feels like I'm just like what do I do because I then I don't like I'm sure you do this too where you look at it before and you kind of pair it down you try to game it out like okay this this will be an interesting game I'll watch this game then you'll realize like 530 is like it'll be 5 o'clock I'm on the mountain time so it's like

when the first game starts and then 530 there's like an equally interesting game and I'm like it's kind of staggered but this might be a bit of an issue tonight and like by the time night's over. I feel like I've watched a chunk of like every game but not retained a single thing because I'm like, oh, there's so much stuff going on. I don't really know what to do. But sometimes also sometimes it you know what I actually, I don't know if you saw this tweet. World Wide Wob tweeted this idea of staggering out games. Yeah. Do that tomorrow. Do that tomorrow. So for those second half of the schedule. It's not out yet. They can still make the change. You haven't made it yet. You haven't made it yet.

But basically like his point was that like there is no equivalent of, like NFL red zone for the NBA, but there's so many games on every night. And the beauty of league fast, like, for the people who, like, are really like basketball heads, but we, like, what we rave about, what we're raving about, essentially right now is the fact that, like, you can kind of go from, like, there are nights in the NBA where you can just skip from, like, seven-minute crunch time to other seven-minute crunch time to other seven-minute crunch time. But it doesn't always line up that well.

And I feel like because of the amount of games there are, it's, like, lining up worse than ever. So his idea was, like, instead of starting games at the exact, same time like start one game at like five start one at like five 11 then like five 17 or whatever and so on so that they don't really match up now I I want I imagine that advertisers would love that because we would know exactly where to switch the channel to immediately after after a team went to a time out or something but I think that would just make the league so much more fun to watch also the league needs a red zone it does version of them like there should just be a channel where somebody is like curating the best league guys experience because like one of the other

things that that you find yourself running into is like I don't like checking Twitter during games I almost I almost completely stopped this year but I also find that like I'll be watching basketball then I'll check later or whatever or like just be online and like something amazing happened that I didn't even see so red zone red zone I mean we I think the lack of an NBA The restricted area. That makes it seem like it's not accessible on TV. You know what? We'll talk.

I'll let them come up. They can come up with a good one. If they need a Scott Hanson, you know, to host, I'm definitely open to that for an NBA Red Zone. But yeah, that's a must. I like it. Shooter shoot. Let's go.

They can call it shoot a shoot. But no, I feel like with the NBA right now, they got to have that. There's just too many good games on. There's too many good. players. The league is so deep with fun teams, fun players. And you gotta make it happen. I think that's a broadcast rights thing too. It's easier for the NFL to do that. They have the 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock

games with CBS and Fox. And that's it. With the NBA, you have 30 teams with their own markets and their own TV contracts. Granted, some are Fox Sports, summer, NBC sports. It's so common. But I think it would be harder to figure out. But maybe next TV deal, something like that could be really cool. They've got to make it happen. So just to move on here. their last episode with Nikaius Dunkin.

I asked him to close the show some get-to-know-you kind of questions and got a good response to doing that. So I have a few of those for you as well, Sierra. Let's get-knows-know- each other. Basic question to ask Nakaias the same thing. Which team did you root for growing up? I grew for the Bulls. But growing up, we're going fast in this with a turn growing up.

I didn't really watch basketball when I was growing up. I played a lot. And then as soon as I wasn't really able to play as well, which was like, I think, I I think when I was 17 or 16, I got hurt a lot, and it was just kind of open to me. Like, I wasn't, there were certain, you know, like, you can do something and then you can't do it anymore. Just stops being as fun. There was a while where that was the case for me. And I really got into watching basketball in that time and just posting on forums a ton.

And I just, I love the Bulls at that time. So that was a team I root for, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was growing up rooting for them, you know. I see. Yeah. So you're from Edmonton, Canada, home of the Oilers. hockey town, hockey country. You mentioned playing basketball up until 16 or 17. What led you to

loving playing basketball and then watching basketball? What was it about the sport? It was just cool. Just cool, man. You look cool when you do it. That wasn't very cool. Were you throwing behind the back passes? I was rebelling against my

parents, a little bit, my family a little bit. Everyone I know played soccer growing up. Okay. And I liked it, but it got to a place, too, where I felt like, like, I felt like my dad was trying to, like, live vicariously through me a little bit. And that wasn't that cool. So I was like, you know what? They're like, we had this, like, me and him had this, like, flow up on, on the field where he was just, I was good.

I was good. And, like, he was like, no, you're not good enough. And I was just like, it was like, one of those things were like, and it wasn't, like, in a negative way. My dad is, like, awesome. But, like, it was, you know, obviously, like, he was like, he just wanted me to be better at it. He wanted me to, like, you know, put more detail into certain. things. And I was like, soccer's fun. I'm fast. I'm great. Like, you just didn't love it. You just didn't love it, though. I didn't love it. And I also just didn't like, I didn't care to like

practice and like become like an amazing player the way like, you know, he wanted to be an amazing soccer player and he was never able to like fulfill those dreams. So he was like, you know, like, I think, I think there was a little bit of that going on, right? And I got to a play. We had this blow up and I just like ran home and I was like, I'm never playing soccer again, like all this stuff. I mean to play some sport because I like sports. Yeah, like there was just, like at recess one day, I just decided to pick up a basketball and I realized it was much harder than I thought it was.

And but from that point on, it was just like it was an easy thing to practice. It's easy to play by yourself and only child and I spend a lot of time by myself in general. So it kind of helped in that regard as well. Like it's just something that you can do alone and like continue to get better at. So it's fun. I was an only child too.

And you know, growing up, it's like we had the basketball hoop and the driveway and the driveway and front yard. I'd be home, you know, just shooting around, clanking a lot of shots off the rim. My dad would come home. We'd play horse sometimes. And, you know, it's just easy to do with yourself or one or two people. There's so many little games you can play knockout. Yeah. Or you know, 21, whatever it is. It's a fun, easy game to play. And you mentioned you kind of stopped playing, you know, in leagues at 16 or 17. So you were close to college at that point. Did you know that you wanted to be a journalist or a writer going into college?

Oh, no, I had no idea. Okay. Like, not even a little bit. What were you trying to do? I went from, like, I wanted to be, I wanted to be, like, an engineer. And then I wanted to, like, be a lawyer. And I was, like, I had no idea. I was just kind of like I was trying to figure it out.

Like, I felt like I needed to figure it out. Which, God, I'd go back and be like, it doesn't matter at all. But, yeah, I didn't really realize since I was in universities, that could be, like, a thing that, I did. I was just not having a great time. And I just realized I needed to change some things. And I was like, man, like, I'm kind of just, I'm addicted to to not working, you know. Like, I need to do something that that allows me to be creative and have fun. And I think, I think ultimately like the thing, if I had stuck to doing some of the other things I was doing, I probably would have figured that out,

too. Like, you just kind of realize that you just need to engage your brain in a way that is creative. You can do that with a number of things. But at the time, basketball and writing were, like, the two only things that I really, like, did that with. So combining them made a ton of sense because I was just having a lot of fun doing it. And I just got on Twitter at, like, you know, I was in university back with Twitter was a fun place to be. And met a lot of other people that were doing the same thing. It's cool. I think for me, I went to college and didn't really know what I wanted to do.

I was a, had no major my freshman year, then chose psychology. I love psychologists too. I still think I would be happy working in that field. In some ways, I've gotten that fix through, like, working for a sports psychology company with my buddy Eric Weiss at Sports Aptitude for a couple years before the ringer. And, you know, doing some of the profiles I've done over the years, interviewing people, talking to people. I still get that enjoyment that I think I would have working in that field. But ultimately, like, you know, beyond thankful.

We'll talk about this a bunch on the mismatch over the years with Chris Vernon and just how thankful I am to do what I do. which, you know, I like asking how people came across doing this. I feel like there are some people who like go to Syracuse. They're like, I want to be a journalist. You know, that was not me. It was the total opposite. I always love sports, but didn't really know how to get into it. You know, then you get an internship and, you know, you're, you make a blog or a Twitter handle.

Like you were originally at Damien Trillard. That's how some people may know you. I was. How high were you when you came up with that Damian Trillard? Probably not. Probably not very high, honestly. It's a good handle. It is a good handle.

It is a good handle. I miss it. It was a fun time. I feel like when I talk to people now, they're just like, why did you change it? I definitely feel a little bit like that. It was, I think I just, I think, I can't remember how it came up, honestly. I don't remember the origin story of my identity. I mean, it's way better than.

than some of my handles I've had over the years. I believe one of my... What was your like NBA forum handle? I mean, I've had... Celtics related? Yeah, probably Celtics related to just basic, like, my name and my birthday. I know on AIM at one point,

I had the username just Tom Brady is God. Definitely not as original or as creative as you. But factual. Yeah. Definitely factual. Yeah, I mean, you were right. And lastly, before we get out of here, You've been tweeting a lot about music lately, especially John Mayer and some blues guitar,

like Kingfish Ingram. And I know you play guitar too. I've posted some videos of myself playing. When are we getting to get to see? Have you? I did Time by Pink Floyd, Little Wing by Jimmy Hendrix. Time by Pink Floyd is my favorite one. I love that.

But when are we going to get to see a shredding sear-it video series? Look, I don't know if I have like what it takes to match up with Kevin O'Clapton, honestly. I feel like I'm just staying in my lane over here. No, I was actually with guitar. It's interesting. I played a lot when I was younger, and I did I play for a really long time. And my skills actually plateaued very quickly.

Like, I'm not, I'm not that good of a guitar player, even though I've done it for a long time. So I will probably not post anything. But it's just, it's just a lot of fun to play, and I've enjoyed getting back into it because it actually just reminds me of being a kid. Because it's something I did when I was young, And it's something that, like, I have no level of, like, productivity is attached to it.

There's nothing that even, like, the thing that's, like, cool about doing what we do, but also difficult about doing what we do at times is that, like, you can kind of turn everything at work. Like, and, like, the way that my brain works is, like, I can find, I can read a book and find a way to, you know, like, make it seem like I have to read this book to write this feature or something. Or, like, you know, tie a storyline in a TV show to something that's going on at work. Like, it's hard to actually disconnect. And playing guitar just has nothing to do with anything in my life. That isn't that. So it's fun in that way.

Like, it's just a really, really nice escape. And, like, you know, like, we've talked about, like, how our brains are, like, the non-visualization fans. I've always loved music. Like, it's, it's just like, it's just a great escape. So I'm just, I'm just happy to be playing again. Maybe one day I'll post something. But right now I'm just showing.

I noticed also that like when I was playing when I was younger, like I just didn't have the tools to like actually get better. Now there's so much stuff online that like, you know, it's maybe like all that stuff flat stuff that because I just wasn't doing the right things as well. So it's been kind of fun to explore all that stuff as well. It's kind of funny because, you know, Instagram is where a lot of people message me directly with questions about basketball

or just comments about life and all that. And I get so many questions about people saying, hey, Kevin, what was the site you mentioned that you learned? guitar from. I get that like at least once every couple weeks. And it was just been guitar.com. This guy from Europe, he just in Sandorco, he just does the best, easiest simple breakdowns of like the basics of guitar, like your typical chords, how to switch between like a C and an A minor and all that. And he does it just an easy to understand way. And I learned from him, you know,

growing up. I didn't on you two before. Yeah. He's great. The songs does basic lessons. So I always point people to him to get past the plateau because you're fully capable. I mean, you can be like Kyle Kuzma. You can get past some of your consistencies on defense and get better between moving around the fretboard. You're capable, sir. Come on. You some Justin Samica. I will. I will extend my range. Yeah, you can do it. One last question. What's the best live concert you've ever been to do? Kanye was. Kanye. Knois. Everybody's been to that tour. Yeah. Life of Pablo. It was just, it was just unlike any concert I've ever seen in my life. Like, the way that it was an immersive experience

and like you're kind of like chasing around like you see like the people that were like that was a concert that had like the like Kanye was performing you know from like you know 10 feet of bubbles right like people would be like under the stage yeah um like just seeing people like under it like just washing and stuff and just like I don't know it was more immersive

than any concert that I've ever been to it was just an experience that I don't think that like can be really replicated. Also, just because of the way that people adore Kanye. Like, I like Kanye. But the people who, like, really like Kanye, really like Kanye. They've had a hard time the last few years. We won't get into that.

But it was just really interesting to see, like, just a way that people react to him. And his music's great. And that album is great. That album is so underrated. It's like one of his best albums about just, like, what being alive is like, Like some of the little insights that he has into celebrity and stuff. Like it was just much, it was a, it was a, I think, I think history is hopefully, hopefully there will be like a revisionist history on that, on the album where it actually gets like

a little bit more acclaimed because I feel like it's, it's kind of been forgotten in like the Kanye universe just because it was like, it was a bridge between like, you know, Kanye is, you know, like in his prime to Kanye right now. But it's a great album. But as far as like, that was more because of like the experience of it. As far as just like purely like listening to the music goes, I don't know. Like this one also like isn't quite as, it's not about the music because he was just, he was so far from like being able to do the things that he used to do. But seeing Bob Dylan, it's just an experience.

I was glad I was able to do just because like, don't know how much longer you're going to be able to do that. first of all. That's like me seeing BB King. I saw BB King a couple years back, like maybe 10, 15 years ago with my dad. And, you know, he sits down on the stage the whole time. There's a lot of, did a lot of talking. But like, it was just amazing to be in the presence of a true legend like that who's

been doing it for a long time. Like, man, like just talking about concerts. I miss concerts. I miss live sporting events. I miss waiting like at Lollapalooza for hours to get close to the stage for Arcade Fire. I miss, you know, I'm. I've thankful I have so many great memories going to see Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. I saw him do Dark Side of the Moon tour, the Wall, the Us and Them tour.

I saw the Wall too. The Wall was really cool. Man, the Wall was just, it's more, there was more than a show. That was a whole production with the stage and building the wall, tear to downs. Like the floating, like the floating pig and like the back of the stage and everything. That was a really cool concert. Unbelievable. I can't wait until more of those times are back.

Yeah. Post- Pandemic World. Gonna hit up some concerts and sporting events. yeah yeah absolutely um the one thing i will i just want to like recommend something for anybody who like the music conversation i'll post this on twitter uh the b b b b king video that i sent you with john mayor just the way that john mayor looks at b b b king and just like wants nothing more in the world but like his acceptance and like it's genuinely like he's first he starts off the video like joking around b b b b king and he's he's he's complimenting him too and he's he's complimenting him too and

much for B.B. King's liking. And Bibi's like, I might just get off his stage if you keep it up. And like, John laughs, but like part of him is like, damn it, stop, stop it, John, stop it. And then he just like starts playing. Like you can tell there's like a split second of like, dude, don't blow this. And it's really, it was really interesting because you don't see like, John Mayer is like not a person that you're used to seeing nervous, right? So it was always confident. That reminds me of the, the, Yeah, it was just a completely different version of Juan Mayer. It means with one of his aisles, it's sort of like the old Elm in session with Albert King and Steve Ray Vaughn.

And, you know, those guys are just playing together. And there's a couple little clips on the album where I think one of them is called like pep talk or, you know, advice, something like that. And it's just Albert King talking to Stevie Ray Vaughn about like, you're good. You're really, really good, Stevie. But you can get even better. And it's that type of mindset and that drive, no matter what it's. is that someone does. John Mayer's guitar is improved since the days of your body as a Wonderland as a guitarist. Steve Ray Vaughn before his, you know, unfortunate, untimely death got better as

guitarists. Just like Kyle Kuzva, Talen Horn Tucker, and all these big men extending their range. Yeah, it's like me and my dad on the soccer field, you know? It's the exact thing. You got it off and picked up something else. Sir, it's been great chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having each other. Isaiah, that was a really nice pod. I love that combo with Syrit. She was good, dude. No, absolutely.

It felt like a fully encompassing. We went through a lot of topics and it was really good. She's excellent. Yeah, man, we went deep. I feel like we recorded that on Monday with Sear. She mentioned the idea of like an NBA Red Zone. This is the name that came to mind for me. NBA fast break.

Because it's like you're not taking breaks. If there is a break, it's a fast one. It's an NBA term. NBA fast break. break that works i feel like i've heard of that from somewhere but i'm not sure where but that definitely works if that's not been used before that works i've been thinking about this too like that has like way overdue yeah because i have the same problem with league passes i'm like gosh there's like three games that are down this stretch and i'm like i don't know always which one to pick and then

you miss something so no kidding i mean it's hard even like i know league pass it's great on on the desktop you know version you can have multiple games playing at once but it i it's not the same as having the full screen experience. And I don't know, dude, I hope that happens. I don't know about Kyle, dude. What was your favorite part in that conversation with him? I love talking with Kyle. That dude's so funny.

I think my favorite part, or at least part, I found, like, most intriguing was probably talking about the Spursian Corps. I just find them, I found them even last year. I just very intriguing with Dejante and Derek White's development. And I'm still waiting on, I'm a big fan of Lonnie Walker. We didn't talk about him. Yeah, and he just hasn't quite, like, I thought he was a steal when the Spurs drafts did him, and he just hasn't quite found the consistency that I'm looking for

because I feel like I see him flashes, and then he's one for 10, and I'm like, it's there. I know it's there. I just need him to find the consistency. And I, like Kyle mentioned, like Spurs draft guys, I trust them. And so I think Lonnie will end up developing similar to how a lot of their other guys have shown up. Because Kelton's fantastic. I mean, I think his, he's got a little higher this thing than I originally anticipated because he's got a little more handle than I expected.

They played the subjects and like he had a crossover on Jaylon Brown to the basket. I was like, there aren't a lot of guys who cross Jalen Brown up and get to the rim. And he's impressive. He's really impressive. He's so aggressive getting to the basket. Isaiah, you've been with us at the Ringer producing podcast since last year. What time did you start with us? June 1, I started.

June 1, 2020. Smack in the middle of the pandemic. Yes, yes, yes. Isaiah, I look forward to post-pandemic like we were talking about what's here, just being able to see human beings in person. We've ever met, you know, I don't think we've met in person, have we? Or did we meet in person? I don't know.

We did meet in person once before. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, for the draft show. For the draft show also. For the draft show in 2019 when you were interned? Yeah, yes, sir, yes, sir. So that's when we met in person before, but that feels like a lifetime ago for me. Yes.

Me as well. Me as well. It really does, man. I look forward to live games and live concerts. It's going to be a good time. Well, thank you, Isaiah, for producing Ringer NBA University. I'm really excited to be doing more of these with you in the future and building this thing out. It's been fun with Kyle and Charks.

And thanks again to Seared for coming onto the show today. And thank you for listening to Ringer NBA University. I have a couple quick favors to ask. If you enjoy the show and listen to it on Apple, please leave a five-star review and a written comment. And no matter where you listen, please follow this podcast feed and let a friend know about it who also loves the NBA. Maybe you guys can, you know, enjoy it together. And lastly, and most importantly, be good to others. Thank you for listening.

Have a fun day. Basketball is very good. Basketball is very good.