The Ringer NBA Show - Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul Emergency Podcast | The Ringer NBA Show

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets just shook the league—again—by swapping Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul. We convene to discuss the ramifications for these two teams and the rest of the league. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Justin Verrier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. After you finish the episode, make sure to check out a brand new episode of our live music series on YouTube called The Ringer Room. Each month, we feature a new up-and-coming musical artist to play a live set in The Ringer. So far, we've featured artists like Cautious Clay, Mount Joy, and Earth Gang, and we just posted our episode for July showcasing Charlie Bliss. You can check out those videos at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Basketball is very good. The Warriors are still the best team in the league Kyrie will be a great locker room guy in Brooklyn.

R.J. Barrett's ceiling is a sixth man. Basketball is very good. Hello and welcome to an emergency ringer NBA show. That's the only kind of ringer NBA show we do, baby. I am Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Justin Vary or across the table for me. We have never left this office. We've been here.

This is like the hatch in Lost. Another day, another block. the Oklahoma City Thunder have agreed to trade Russell Westbrook to the Houston Rockets for Chris Paul. First round picks in 2024 and 26. Pick swaps in 2021 and 2025. The Thunder, according to Woge, are playing a long game unseen in recent NBA history. Seven additional first round picks lined up through 2026 plus four pick swaps via deals for Paul George and the acquisition of Chris Paul.

Russell Westbrook ends what I believe is an 11 season tenure in Oklahoma City. He was the last of their big three of James Harden, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, long promise to deliver Oklahoma City a title. He now rejoins his old teammate James Hardin, who is maybe the cardinal sin of the Sam Presti administration, trading him away from Houston before he started to ascend. And now he goes down to Houston. Darrell Mori has broken up the Chris Paul,

James Harden experiment. There's so many different ways to look at this, Justin. What's your initial takeaway? Trader Mori is back. I saw him the other night. This is like heat. I just had coffee with Mori a half an hour ago.

Could you sense the glimmer in his eye? Dude, no. Really? And that's the thing is that like, Mori is like, I can't claim to no Darrell Mori at all. Yeah. Like, is he a take owner fan? Yes.

He loves desktop. The only conversation I've ever had with him. He loves desktop. But Darrell was like, he seemed done. Yeah. He seemed like he was like, guess what? We're really good. That's when he catches you.

And guess what? We like our chances. Look at the Carmelo. Look at this. Like, we like our team. And it's like, are we looking for ways to improve on the margins? Of course, we're always looking for ways to get better. We knew something was coming with Houston.

But we thought maybe they got played out of this angle. Like, they got played out of the rebuild angle. what do you think this means for the Rockets? Do you like this team more with Westbrook than Paul? I do because we just went through the playoffs where Chris Paul looked, if not cooked, then on the verge of cooked, perhaps he was seared. I'm getting into cooking this offseason

where I was trying to before 30 other trades happened. So I know a lot about the different methods. And now you just eat chicken nuggets and stare at Twitter. Perhaps Chris Paul is in the sous-vied before you sear it. That's where he is right now. So he's on the way to cooked. I think there are a lot of angles here. I think it ultimately just puts them back in the same setup they were last year

with a younger version of Paul who just plays slightly different. He's going to, what's funny is even though Paul is older and it seemed like he clashed more with Hardin, all the reports based on that we've heard this summer suggest that. He's the opposite in that he's younger. I think he'll be a tougher fit. but he gets along with Harden better, so I don't know where I fall in the middle on all that.

Yeah, look, I mean, Darryl Morey got off of a headstrong point guard who likes the ball in his hands. So now he's all set. It's not like that's what he's... Russell Westbrook is going to change the way the Rockets play. I mean, because quite simply, he cannot do what they did last year.

He is not going to stay in the corner and wait for a pass, obviously. And he's just not a good three-point shooter. He's one of my favorite basketball players. I can't wait to see him on, on the rockets. But it's going to take a reimagining of what the rockets are by Mike Dantonie. Kind of brings up the whole Dantone question again now because on one hand, you could see this offense being incredibly explosive. So they're starting five presumably will be Westbrook and

Hardin, Gordon, Tucker, and Capella. Still pretty good. That's sick. That's really good. I think that's good. What I've been saying throughout this entire fiasco that Houston has been undergoing, almost like in the background while 30. other things happen throughout the league, is that the window is still kind of there for them. They were the one team

that could push the Warriors in a way that no other team could. I mean, clearly the Raptors did, but it was just a diminished version of the Wars. Warriors at full strength got their biggest competition. Their biggest scare came from Houston. Absolutely.

Yeah. And that was a team built to beat the Warriors. And I think that that actually came up at the live podcast at Bill's pod in Vegas. I think Rasolo, maybe Bill maybe it was house, ask Daryl, you built this team

specifically, explicitly to play against Golden State. What do you do now that Golden State's not there anymore? And Daryl was kind of like, yeah, you know, like we still like our chance. I mean, he gave a pretty generic answer. Is this a team that's built to beat the Clippers? That's a great question because last week, I wrote a thing about how big might come back this season,

specifically because the Warriors' death lineup wasn't out there to scare teams off, basically to run off every quality center in the league. And so from one perspective, you would say that perhaps the rocket's biggest advantage, the fact that they can match up with the Warriors, is gone. On the other hand, now they can play Clint Capella more. And if you want to still go small, if you want to be the Warriors' death lineup or the closest thing to it, now you're the last Trump card in the league.

So essentially, they're just falling back on what they have. That's why I was so encouraged if they just kind of figure things out, If they could just get their shit together and just make what worked last season work again, this could all still work. Obviously, the element of Russell Westbrook throws a wrench in it. Well, is it a wrench or is it, does it grease the wheel? I mean, this is the thing is like, I like how experimental he got here. I like that he felt like, again, the moves of other teams raised his risk profile. But in some ways, I don't know that this is raising the risk profile.

I think this is a safer bet. First of all, it's hard in insurance in terms of you have somebody who can bear a lot of the weight. Paul couldn't do that. Paul was, you were going to be ramping down his minutes in the regular season. They were staggering James Paul and Chris, James Hardin and Chris Paul a lot. You were moving them away from one another. They obviously had some issues, at least reportedly. Darrell was very pointed about saying like a lot of that stuff was fake news.

But they were being almost separated. Like there were two teams in some ways. And then there was one team that would play. in the most crucial moments of the, of the season, that Paul and Hardin would both co-captain. Westbrook allows you to do a lot of different things here. You can see him playing with Hardin. Obviously, they're friends.

This was according to Woge. This was Presti and Westbrook's agent worked on getting him to his preferred destination, which is apparently Houston. They dial back the clock a little bit. Yeah, he's going to put up a lot of bricks. Like, there's a chance. But I don't think Westbrook's ever had a guy like this to play with since Durant

because even though PG is one of the top six or seven guys in the league, his whole thing was like, I defer to Russ. His whole thing was like, it's Russ's team. I'm happy to have this be Russ's team. Maybe that was one of the crucial reasons

why he felt like it was okay to leave. So the Thunder made a finals in 2012 playing a heavy isolation system between Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant. Right. I was one of the people back then suggesting that Hardin was a better fit with Durant because of the things you just said about Russ,

the fact that he isn't as good about getting everyone else involved. He can't really play off the ball as well. But that still was good enough to make a finals in a West that didn't have a dominant force like the Warriors. And they were the team at a certain point that ran off the Spurs because they were just so young and athletic and they had everything that they needed.

Why can't that work again? Right. And what if this change of scenery this shakeup does bring back I would even say some pre-MVP Russ, maybe not athletically, maybe he's never going to be able to

get after it the way he did in his MVP run where he was, sincerely was like tearing league up single-handedly and empowering what was a pretty bad Thunder team one of like the great hero ball seasons we've ever seen.

What if this like change of a scenario makes him realize like, okay, like this is, not necessarily like the house that Russ built. I have to fit in here a little bit. I have to, I have to work around. This is probably, I mean, it's by far better than any team he's had since Duran left. Probably. I think that Thunder team had the potential to be good as long as Paul George was still playing like an MVP. Like for a while, we thought that team could work, but it was entirely reliant on George, which I think is interesting as we pivot to Houston. Because I think what's got

lost in the shuffle here as we focus in on Russ and the fact that PG just opted out of wanting to play with him is the fact that he really kind of suppressed whatever ego, whatever thing we assume with Russ in order to give Paul George a clear path to be the guy last year. Like, he did everything you would ask of him. Like perhaps in terms of gameplay, he still has ways to go and we could talk about that. But he has shown last year that maybe he's more humble than we accept. expect, and he's more willing to be deferential to a guy like Paul George and now perhaps Harden, we already has a preexisting relationship with.

Yeah, and I think that it's also worth noting that the rocket system, which we, I think, loosely defined as Mori ball, which is just threes and layups, trying to work the margins, get to the free throw line a lot. The part of those, part of those tenets, Russ can do. Russ can draw a lot of contact. Russ, if put in a certain system, might actually be a really effective Mori ball player. I think people's eyes will be bleeding, watching him pulling up above the break threes as he comes down the court and looking off James Hardin. But I don't know that they could have gotten back to where they were if they relied on Hardin as heavily as they did last season.

Nor did Hardin, by some accounts, want that to happen again. Yeah, and that's the flip side of it, right? Hardin made some vague comments right after the All-Star break that he, was willing to play differently either. I think the rockets will probably be better when those two are split up, when the Hardin and point guard are split up. Yeah. Was Paul last year, it's now going to be Westbrook, just because Westbrook, as a solo act, potentially against second units, which is incredible, he could cause destruction. Yeah. When they play together, that's going to be the concern here. I think the assumption is as soon as Westbrook gets into the rocket system, he's going to start jacking more threes,

because that's what people do. Right. Right. I think you might, we should assume that, but why can't he do the opposite? If the Rockets just lean into the most efficient version of a player, perhaps they can convince Rust to stop taking three.

What if he should- That's the real Mori ball, baby. Am I already at Galaxy Blank right here? Yeah. We're like 10 minutes in. I looked at, I looked this up. So Rush shot 29% from three last year. I did this in a podcast this morning,

which is all of a sudden really did it. He took, I believe, six threes a game. There are only two players to do that since peak Kobe. One was Russ last year. The other was Isaiah Thomas the year before. Okay. Bad Isaiah Thomas with the calves with the Lakers. Okay.

I think there's overwhelming evidence to suggest that this will not work. And if the fact that he just got traded and his best teammate that he did everything to work, work in also didn't want to play with him. If he still doesn't realize that he needs to not do that, then there's no salvaging the situation. But why can't the Rockets who are

the best at bringing the best out of certain players? Yeah, look, like we've seen them take somebody like Eric Gordon, who I think people thought was like a chronically injured also ran Ben's shooting guard. He's like a borderline all-star.

Even Ryan Anderson, the year that they got both of those guys. Ryan Anderson, was just kind of misutilized in New Orleans. All of a sudden, he's jacking threes, and he was a fine player for that one or two seasons. And, you know, the development of a guy like Clint Capella, the sort of putting PJ Tucker in a position to be who he is now, they do a really good job getting the most out of guys, like you're saying.

There's also the thought that Daryl being Daryl, if things don't click, if things don't work out, maybe he finds, maybe that's when Ross gets dealt to Miami. you know, next year or something like that. He's a much more valuable asset than Chris Paul is. Interesting. So you're thinking next year already. So you're thinking that DeAngelo Russell.

I'd say if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And then you can talk to Miami about like, do you still want Westbrook? If Westbrook can get through this season without getting his knee scoped and destroying Houston, if they're like the third or fourth seed and they go out and like a late second round brave battle with the clippers or something, I think that you could make the argument that Westbrook will have, like, redeemed some of his value, right? And if you're Mori and you're like, okay, I've tried a couple of different ways of doing this hardened thing and now I have to like sell high on Russ, then maybe you get, there's a market for him

at next season. And let me make one more pro-Russ argument, which over the past week or so since we knew that this was an inevitable outcome, the fact that he was going to get traded, I found myself looking at Russ and seeing more of the good than the bad that we is essentially how we've looked at him for so long, he will be, if we're going in the tuck wagon lineup, so PJ Tucker, a couple wings, and James Hardin. Okay. And Chris Ball, right?

If he's the worst three-point shooter on the floor and he's your ball handler and James Hardin is playing off of you, isn't that the best utilization of Russell Westbrook? Isn't part of why he wasn't successful as a solo act, the fact that the Thunder couldn't surround him with enough three-point shooters? Right. I like your theory. So what's the flip side of that? The flip side of that is that Daryl is emphasizing, as he was explicit about and he's always been pretty explicit about, stars matter in this league and you figure out everything else.

Yeah. Really only matters the five guys you're putting out there in the most important times of the season. And then what happens is you get to a place where you've brought in, you had Chris Paul there, it didn't work out. Now you bring in Russell Westbrook, you're hoping that the personal relationship with Hardin evens out whatever Westbrook's worst impulse. are, worst impulses are, and that he'll fit into this system that Dan Tony is pretty, I mean, there's no mystery. Dan Tony is not like a huge, like, I'll rejigger the system. Like, it is the system.

He built it more around Harden this season. But do you think that Westbrook just doesn't do the things that the Rockets need? Yeah. I mean, clearly the whole worrying about things later blew up in their face. But at the same time, they were a Chris Paul injury away from beating the worst. Warriors. So it did, to a certain degree, work. And perhaps if you're looking at what went wrong here, it's, yeah, Chris Paul is a little bit older, but it's also a personality fit. And now maybe there are things between Hardin and Russ that we don't know about. I don't know.

I don't know if they're just older and they're used to playing separate ways and it'll be different than it was when the Thunder buddies were together, when the Brodies were all doing the cool glasses and everything. I don't know. Bobby, don't ever cut that out. You can't. You can't do it. But aren't they weeding that issue out

by getting two really good friends together who want to play together? It would be nice for Houston to have a kumbaya season. I still think it works. I mean, the downside of it. You don't think it works. No, I think it will work.

I still think what Houston has works in this environment that we have in the league. Seven game series of the Clippers. Does it work? That's an interesting point. I think I like the Clippers top two.

Yeah. I really like this Rockets 5. I don't know where we are with Capella. Who guards Capella? Harold. Maybe. I think Capella's better. I think verticality,

like his whole thing is vertical spacing, right? Yeah. I think he can catch lob dunks on Harold if he's able to be physical enough with him. I mean, it's also like, are we going to get, what are the bad things about Russ, the stat chasing,

the like Stephen Adams tapping a ball to him that he gets? Like, that's not going to happen anymore. also, as some people have pointed out, like, while Hardin has always gotten roasted for the lack of dazical defense, there's some evidence to suggest that Russ takes plenty of plays off defense. The defensive side is they're going to take a hit. Okay. So they're going to have to make up for that on offense.

Russ has all the tools, maybe not the kind of awareness that he would need, but he has the tools if he just engages on defense, he could still be a good defender. He's very physical. He's a big body. He's essentially what they've built their defense around, which is the, fire plug sort of players who are stout, and thus you could switch them on to various players. Do you like this team more than the Lakers? I do.

That's a great question. I think maybe. I also think that who can guard Anthony Davis could take a league. Also with all of these guys, especially with this Rockets team, health, health, health, this is a gamble. Sure. I think it's a worthwhile game. I also think it would behoove Russ to move off the ball a little bit, which he hasn't done in the past. So, I don't know, this is clearly glass half full on Russ

because he hasn't been willing to do this for years. Yeah. But I do think, like, if he's just motivated. That's the problem with guys like this where it just comes down to motivation. If you just try a little bit more, it all works. He's just so freaking athletic. And he creates so much gravity just by sheer force of will and physicality and speed and all these various things.

And I think if he's just willing to suppress his rustness, like, I think it works. The Ringer put up a poll at least a few minutes ago. They put up a poll that's asked who won the Westbrook CP3 trade. It's 50-50.

It's 740. It's like the Queen's DA election of Ringer trades. That was for Bobby. Okay. Was it? Should we talk about the thunder? Let's talk about Chris Paul

and then talk about the thunder. Okay. I have a feeling that Chris Paul is going to get redirected here. Would you have to wait what's the rule and how long, how many times a guy can get moved

and within a certain period of time? Well, if they don't officially strike the trade, they could rope in a third team in order to move him as part of a three-team trade. Okay. That's on the table. I wonder, so obviously, like, with Woj reporting that,

uh, Russ, this was his preferred destination. I cannot quite imagine that this is Paul's preferred destination. So maybe there's a buyout or maybe there's something coming where Paul could go join the Lakers or something like that.

That'd be fun. In some capacity. But yeah, this is pretty wild. To imagine this being the end of this guy's career. And this guy has been so close, well, maybe he has been so close and that's been the problem. But he's been close,

been close to getting to the finals. And he obviously felt like he forced his way out of the Clippers. He gets traded to Houston. Houston gives up a lot in return. that bounty they paid, the Clippers for Chris Paul helped the Clippers get Paul George. Yeah. Which is just kind of like, it's really wild to think about we've been doing these pods.

We've been doing these pieces about all these free agency moves and these trades. And what you're seeing is like how something that happened five years ago affects what happens today in ways that we never could have possibly imagined. And now Chris Paul is a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, at least for now. Yeah. And that supporting cast could perhaps be the difference between the clippers being, the best team and just another one of these good teams, right? That could be the difference between the Rockets winning the West and the Clippers winning

the West. Oddly enough, Chris Paul has set up both the Rockets and the Clippers, but this is probably just devastating for him. I doubt he wants to stay there. I mean, he spent his two first seasons in the league in Oklahoma City. Right, because Katrina, right? Because New Orleans was displaced by Katrina. Other than the fact that maybe he watched the swap Clippers stories with Shaggillard.

Gildress Alexander, I have, like, there's no reason to stay with that team. I can't imagine he's not asking out. The funders project here is, I mean, Chris Paul has one of the most difficult to stomach contracts in the league, which is sad because he's one of these supermax guys who got, is he a supermax? Just a full max. Yeah, full max. But he's, he is really, they got 45 million coming towards him at a year when it was hard. it's hard to imagine him being productive, right?

Yeah, and it's sad. I mean, we came to L.A. around the same time when Chris Paul just got here, and he was such an incredible player. Yeah. Just the way that he managed the game, the littlest, smallest details he was just so excellent at. It ultimately proved to be his undoing.

I mean, you said this before. He's a really good player, and even though he's older, he should age relatively well. I mean, well, should say the older, older or smaller point guards perhaps don't age that well,

but he can still shoot. Yeah. Worse, he can still defend. Worst case he was going to be a useful player, but ultimately it seems like the clash between him and Hardin

just wasn't able, they weren't able to get over it. Or maybe Morrie just looked at the new West and was just like, I can't go back with this team. I mean, he didn't say that on Saturday night, but maybe that's what he was thinking.

I'll ask you this, because Charks is talking about this in our Slack a little bit, does a team of Chris Paul SGA, Danilo Gallinari, and Stephen Adams make the playoffs in the West. It might. The West is pretty deep next year. To the point where we were talking about before this even happened, the Spurs not making the playoffs in the West.

And I think the Spurs are better than last year. Right. I think the West is going to be a slobber knocker. And... A slobber knocker? Yeah, it's a wrestling term. I've never heard that before. No?

No. Jim Ross? No. You weren't watching The Rock? doing the people's eyebrows a couple years ago? I would say no, but I mean, they would be fine. I just don't know how you get through a season with Chris Paul in this state. So Sam Presti has eight first round draft picks.

It's a lot of first round draft picks. What's you going to do with them? I don't, I mean, like, there's the possibility that something happens. There's an injury rash in Miami and Jimmy Butler doesn't work out. The Clippers somehow implode, Kauai gets hurt, something. Those picks are not going to be that valuable. The Houston picks, at least for like the time being, like I know that these are mostly kicking in

in the next couple of years outside of what's going to happen over this season or two. And, you know, anything is possible in the NBA. The entire landscape of the league has changed. Are the eight picks that he has like the best he could do? I think they probably are. Are they actually as valuable as people are making them out to be? Or is it more just like, oh my God,

Presti did it. He rebuilt on the fly. I don't know if actually there's a lot to do with a bunch of picks between 15 and 30. Yeah, it's a great conversation. We often see the volume. Maybe they figure we bought him out and we go for Wiseman or whoever is like the next guy. It's possible. It did seem before this happened by trading Jeremy Grant, they had waived the white flag. You could have perhaps put together a team around Gallo and Russ and Stephen Adams and just kind of gone with it. Get under the tax and just play out the season.

Maybe Russ just didn't want to leave, whatever. But clearly after Grant left, it showed that they were going to rebuild, which is what led Russ to want out and all this other stuff. Clearly, they're going to go full tear down. If they could trade Stephen Adams, trade them, who else is out there? You want to get off Robertson's deal?

At this point, you probably don't, if you can find a number, home for Chris Ball. You don't need to. Well, I think that that's going to be a really interesting conversation because I think that Presti, at least once Durant left, resisted the idea of rebuilding. And they did what they could to remain competitive in that Oladipo season. Then they were able to swing a miracle trade of Old Depot and Subonis for George. And I don't think that that team ever quite clicked and the health never really worked

out in their favor, especially this past season when George barely could lift his arms above his shoulders. Right. I don't know. I don't know. It's going to be hard to maintain. It's going to be really interesting to see Oklahoma City as not a playoff contender because we've never seen that market.

We haven't seen that market at least since like 2010. Probably not since their first or second season because they made the playoffs earlier than we thought. And then they pushed the league. They had a huge leap with the trio, with the Brodies. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be weird. But I mean, this comes for every team.

I think you raise an interesting point is like what is the value of future picks, essentially. I think the Houston picks probably aren't going to be all that great. It seems like Houston is one of the teams that manages to stay relevant regardless of what the era is,

what's up against them. This is probably the heaviest future tax that Mori has ever have to pay. But if you're Darrell, like... No, I get it. I get it. But honestly, like, if you're Darrell Mori and you're one of the most widely respected front office guys in the league,

if this doesn't work out, it's not like you're going to be you're not going to be on local Houston sports radio doing a show. He can get a job anytime you want. Right. I think this is a worthwhile investment. Right.

So that's future GM guys problem. I guess the best way to put it is all of these teams around the NBA are playing for the now. Oklahoma City is one of two or three teams playing for later. Who are the other ones? The pelicans. Yeah, but the pelicans are like dialed up right now. You know what I mean?

Like maybe that's just Summer League fumes or whatever. but if you're looking at the Pelicans, like, you got to feel pretty good about what they've got. Yeah, I mean, it's going to come down to ultimately how good Lonzo is, how good Ingram is and all these guys. They still have assets on top of that, but basically the Thunder got picks instead of already drafted players. I don't know what's better.

I actually, I don't know. I think Lonzo is probably in a kind of make or break situation. Ingram is to a certain extent as well. And those guys are all going to cost a fair amount of money. And the one thing that Oklahoma City has in their favor, because they're thinking so much longer than every team, and because the Clippers were so desperate to maximize this two-year window, is all these picks are unprotected.

And they're timed in a way, which we didn't realize until we learned about Kauai's contract, they're timed in a way that after two years, which is all that Kauai is guaranteed with the Clippers before he has an option for another year, that next season, when they can get that pick, is the first year they could potentially not have Kauai. This could be a net situation very quickly.

Yeah. And they've actually set it up in a way where they're the Celtics and they have three different nets. Yeah. They really only need one of these teams to be the nets. They only need Miami, L.A. or Houston to kind of fall apart. I think there's virtually no situation in which all of these draft picks don't lead to one star. Sure. There's just so many lottery.

tickets, and even if they are lottery tickets, like, the odds are that you'll probably stumble on somebody, and they are good at drafting. Dwarfs what Hinky did. Right. Yeah. This is like an insane haul for this. And let's compare this to what the Pelicans got again for Anthony Davis. I think those are the Clippers trade and the Lakers trade are obvious comps. I think the best player in those deals that got traded, the young players, is Shea. Yeah. Would you rather not have Shea than Ingram? Oh, that's a great question. At the very least, they're comparable, and they got way more in terms of future draft assets. I mean, they got the Clippers draft for the next, for five straight years.

And they're being honest with themselves. They're like, we're not going to attract Kauai ever to come here. We can trade for Rappal George, but we don't even have the first start to entice that guy to stay. We have to start over in a real fundamental way, in a real way. So I guess you're right. They really are playing a game of one when you look at it like that. And if we're saying that Oklahoma City, if this is going to be, be the first year where they don't really have an identity.

Can the future just be the identity? If you're just saying, like, well, we have the best war chest in the entire. Well, they immediately become the draft geek, not hipster NBA, but like the draft geek team. Sure. Everybody is going to be looking at this team for the next seven years, just being like, who could they, how many of these picks can they package to get the one number one or could get the two?

And like, you know, Kevin's written about this a bunch of, a bunch of times on the ringer and it's a hobby horse for him, but this idea that could the draft start changing and you could see teams trading down a la NFL draft and getting multiple picks for the top end of the draft. The double draft is coming, so we don't know how that's going to change things. We don't know what the influx of high schoolers into the NBA will do. I mean, you know, I think that's a much higher margin for error on top draft picks. You could see guys in the teens that are actually top five talents falling out of the. top five because people are enticed by getting a guy at 18 before his first year of college.

I don't know. I mean, I have no idea what the ripple effects of that could be. Yeah, and Presti in recent years hasn't done a good job in the lower rounds of the draft. He seems to just have this type of this super athletic wing who just can't shoot. And they're hoping that the athleticism is enough and the activity is enough. And then eventually maybe they'll be able to shoot. It just hasn't worked. But in the top half of the draft, he's done pretty freaking well. Yeah.

I mean, when he's been up in the prime seats, he's really gotten some pretty good looks at it. People forget, quickly, that Russell Westbrook wasn't a sure thing when they drafted him. Right. James Hardin at three. Hashimsa beat went ahead of him. No, I know. I mean, I remember when they drafted Hardin, I was kind of like, oh, he's kind of like the roly-poly swing guy from Arizona State. Like, not that I'm like Chad Ford.

I'm just saying, like, it wasn't like he leapt off the screen and you're like, wow, just got yourself a future MVP. Even Stephen Adams. That was the saving grace of what was a pretty poor package otherwise. You got a Baca too. He got a Baca. Yeah. He's done really well at it. He's going to have to prove it again. Well, he's got a pretty fun job over the next couple of years because he gets to pick all these guys. You think Billy Donovan stays? That's a great question. If you're an NBA coach who was brought in to take the thunder to the promise land, and now you are looking at a team where SGA is essentially like your best player. Are you calling colleges and saying I'm available?

Are you... Or he just bought himself job security. We've been saying for about a year or two now. Like, is he get the brown gig? Yeah, like, what does Billy Donovan, the guy for this team? Does he have the chops? Can he speak to Russell Westbrook in the way that he needs to? Maybe, and the Thunder have been super loyal to coaches.

They've only had two in the KD. Russ era. And so maybe he just sticks around to see, this through. It's not a... I mean, there are only 30 of these gigs, right? Yeah. This isn't the worst one because you do have Shea and you do have a future. Unlike, even like in Orlando, where you're just trying to make the best of a situation just to get into the playoffs. You know, I mean, we're doing this live right now. I, we're kind of like a bit into it. We've talked about the Rockets and how they match up with the Lakers and the Clippers. We've talked about Paul and the kind of bittersweet. Honestly, twilight of his career.

I think there's a chance that Paul could find himself on a contender. I'm kind of interested to see what Presti does with that because he's in cutthroat season. So making Chris Paul happy is not at the top of his priority list. Maybe he also says to him, look, you get to be essentially the associate head coach here and tell all these guys what to do and show them how to play in the NBA

and you go out and you will be a god in Oklahoma City if this works out. And that might be a pitch that he makes. It's because it's going to be, I don't even know what the math starts at when you talk about what would you can you buy chris paul out they if their their whole concern is getting under the cap i mean in theory you could stretch him too although i believe he has three years left on his deal which would mean i believe nine years of the deal being on their books

which i don't think even a team that's playing for the future one so like something the deal with something a decade later that lual dang situation that the lakers are in now where they need cap space and all of a sudden five million is getting paid to Louis Al Dang still. I imagine they'll just trade him to wherever he wants. I can't imagine they have any leverage because essentially they traded for him as a cap number and there's no way I would assume that he wants to stay in that situation. So how can they go even to a Miami and be like, ah, you got to give us justice, one's old. They're like, no, just just cut him. We'll deal with him then. Right. One tweet that was shared in our Slack,

which is really funny to think about as we talk a little bit about how these things that we don't think about and time as being league-changing moments or league-changing transactions wind up mattering. I got him, Cody Sherritt tweeted, Damien Lillard, nuked an entire franchise with 137-foot shot.

Seriously. If Paul George gets a hand on that or if that, you know what I mean? If the thunder get past the blazers, who knows what happens? Yeah. Who knows? Yeah, I mean, that situation, independent of anything that happened as a result of it, with the team, with George, with this trade now, it showed Russell Westbrook that this is what a modern point guard is and that you have to change your game.

If so, there's so much, to keep going back to this, there's so much evidence to suggest to Russ, you have to change your game. Well, this is the cool thing is that there are a couple, there are a couple of possible juggernauts out there. but there's a lot of a lot of unknown. Even with, it's not even about parody as much as it's, can LeBron and A.D. carry a substandard rest of the Lakers. Paul George, Kauai Leonard, and the sort of bad news bears of the clippers,

like, is that really the NBA favorites? What is Russ going to do in a new situation with a new coach where he's not God, where he's playing with the guy who won the MVP, probably should have won the MVP the year he won it and won it the year after him, if I remember correctly. Right, I forgot about that. It's, it's, it's like a, that's a whole new situation.

You've got this weird splash cousins with DeAngelo and Steph and Dremond in Golden State waiting for Clay to get better. We've got this Brooklyn team that is a two-year project at least. I mean, there's so much unknown in the NBA right now. It's not even like, I don't even know how to, how to, like, capture it all. There's so many questions facing these teams. It's fun. It's fun in a way that it hasn't been in the past two to three years, pretty much since Kevin Durant decided to go to Golden State. It's really become a league of two-star teams, which is weird. Because they want three. Because most guys want to do three. We've been psyching ourselves into this idea that since the big three heat formed that it's a three-star league. And I guess history even conforms to that. If you look back at all the very good teams, you could usually pick out three really good players. Now we're in this weird situation

where it's just two guys and the teams that fill around them the best could perhaps be the ones that win. And that's the thing is that I think that this is a case for... This is a case against the Lakers and it's something that we've talked about a few times. But yes, they went all in

if they had gotten Kauai that could have been like a 63 win team. You know, I mean like there's no doubt that they should have pursued Kauai. But in retrospect, you now wonder if that's a team with Anthony Davis, LeBron James, and three of the guys that we had brought up a hundred times before that, a bo-ion, a Pat Bev, you know, Garrett Temple,

whoever the guys you want to, like, fill that team out with, are they now the favorites in the West if they had just done a better job building out the rest of that roster? Yeah, I mean, for this year only, for this next season, I think LeBron and AD will probably be the best duo. Right. If LeBron comes back and he's still like, the guy we knew and not the guy from last season in his first Lakers season, that combination

fits so well together and neither player has played with another player like the one they're going to. Yeah, and this is the thing, Justin's talking about this idea that we've gone from big threes to big twos, but the crucial thing here is it's big twos on short deals. It's big twos that can mix and match. It's Kauai's there for two plus one matched up with Georgia's free agency. If things go wrong in Clippers, they can go their separate ways, they can do whatever. LeBron has three years left on his deal.

AD is going to be a free agent next year. We assume he'll re-sign, but anything's possible. You know, in some ways, the rockets are the ones that are locked into their team, but Darryl Morey has shown if something's not working, he will not be the last guy at the party holding the bag. I believe the Nets might be on the longest deals. I could be wrong, but I believe both Kyrie and Katie signed three plus ones. Yeah.

But in the midst of that... But it's really just a two, because... KD's not even going to be back until the second year of that. Right. And you don't know what time and space, Kyrie Irving is in any given moment. So there's probably going to be a lot to figure out there. We have a ton to figure out.

We'll wrap it up there, I think. Is that okay with you, Bobby? Is that okay with the video guys? We really appreciate you guys taking the time out to watch us and to listen to us. These things never happen when we expect them. But when they do, they pretty much change everything. We'll have lots more on the ringer.com.

I know we have winners and losers and John and Roger and KOC. Everybody's going to be writing about this over the course in the next couple of days. And we're really going to be taking stock of the league for the next six weeks. And then next thing you know, they're going to be back at it at preseason. So no time off, but that's okay. We love it. For Justin Very, I'm Chris Ryan. Thanks for listening. Basketball is very good.

Basketball is very good.