The Ringer NBA Show - Sophomore Check-in | Ringer NBA University

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Kevin O’Connor, Jonathan Tjarks, and J. Kyle Mann check in on the development of five second-year players. Then they give a brief overview of potential no. 1 draft pick Cade Cunningham (1:00:33). Lastly, KOC is joined by Basketball News writer Nekias Duncan to discuss Bam Adebayo and some other interesting young payers on the Miami Heat (1:10:06). Zion Williamson (3:11) Michael Porter Jr. (17:51) Cam Reddish and De'Andre Hunter (31:14) Darius Garland (39:52) Hosts: Kevin O’Connor, Jonathan Tjarks, and J. Kyle Mann Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, this is Kevin O'Connor on today's episode of Ringer NBA University. Jonathan Charks, Jay Kyle, Mann, and I conduct a sophomore check-in to discuss a bunch of second-year guys like Zion, Darius Garland, Michael Porter, Jr., and some others. We got into a whole lot else, too. And then I brought on one of my favorite NBA writers, Nikias Duncan, to break down Bamatabio's rapid descent to stardom. And before we begin, I also just want to send love to the family and friends of Seku Smith from NBA TV. Seku passed away this week at only age 48 to COVID-19. And Seku was a good man who helped people wanting to make a career out of sports journalism, just like he did.

And that positivity always, always, always showed through on TV. And, you know, the outpouring of love and support from everyone in the NBA community, players, you know, coaches and colleagues that work in media, I think it really shows that the legacy you leave and how you'll be remembered is about how you treat other people. more than anything else. It's about how you treat others and Seiku traded people with kindness and respect. And I find that to be something to admire. And now let's talk basketball. Basketball is very good. Welcome to Ringer NBA University. My name is Kevin O'Connor, joined as always by Jonathan Charks and Jay Kyle.

Man, how are you guys doing today? Doing superb. I'm doing well. I'm still reeling from finding out that Kyle is the oldest person on the pod. I was sure I was the old head, but it is. not the case. Maybe, you know, youth is all just kind of, uh, it's a state of mind, isn't it? Is that true? Would we agree with that? I think it's true. I'm 30. I feel younger and more vibrant than ever right now. Feels great. See, I disagree. Youth is a state of body. I'm 33 and I feel my 33 years. But Kyle, you are the old head here. You can show us, show us the way a little bit. Well, you were lecturing me the other day. What were you lecturing me about, about like, just in brief your old age? You were getting mad because they had, they're calling like some 41 dad music.

And you were like, no. Somebody called, I don't know, John, I don't know if you've listened to this band, but somebody called Grizzly Bear. They called them Dad Rock. And I was just like, man, come on. That hurt me. That stung. The thing that always kind of blew my mind is when I started hearing like Pearl Jam on

Classic Rock radio stations, it's like Pearl Jam, but they're the nice. 90s. It's not classic rock. That's 60s and 70s. But hey, that's the passage of time. And that's what's good about this show. We talk about the young guys in the NBA. Look at that segue. It's all about the passage of time.

And on today's episode, we are going to talk about a young player who's actually not so young. Chris Boucher in his fourth year, but it's 28 years old. We're going to talk about him. We're going to hit on Cade Cunningham, potential number one pick in the draft. And later on, I'm going to bring on to Caius Duncan

to the us to heat young guys, but first, let's assess five NBA sophomores. There's situations and use that as jumping off points for a bunch of stuff happening around the league. Kyle, you start us off with our first second year NBA player. Well, I think that a good, you know, jumping off point when you're talking about sophomores in the NBA is a fella that we all know by one name, one of the most famous young players in the world, Zion Williamson.

So something interesting about Zion is, you know, he's, you know, he's. He's been in the public conversation since, gosh, I mean, he was a sophomore in high school. When did his, like, Instagram stuff start to pop up? I feel like it was like 2016, 2017, somewhere in there. I think sophomore junior year around there. It's been a while. He's been in our mind's eye. So, yeah, so we've been watching him really closely.

I mean, one of the most astonishing athletes. We know all that stuff. A lot of the scouting stuff has been talked about over and over and over again. So now we're just at a point of, I feel like narrative. wise in the broad sense when we're talking about Zion, some doubt kind of entered the water for the first time in the past year, year and a half for a variety of reasons. But checking in on him, I was, I guess some of the questions that I have about Zion really revolve around that doubt, like where it's coming from. And it's been sort of centered around effort. This year, you know,

he's he's sort of working himself back into shape. And I think something that people don't really talk about enough is the fact that Zion's only played 38 total NBA games now, which, you know, in a normal season, if he's playing, if he's healthy, it would be the halfway point in his acclamation to the NBA game. But it's also been very start and stop. So he's only played five more games than he did at Duke at this point in his NBA career. Which is pretty wild. I didn't even realize it was that extreme.

In Zion himself. pretty recently. You know, I put out a story about the Pelicans and Zion on Monday this week. And, you know, looking through quotes, he said at one point this season, he's like, I only played 30 games. I'm still learning. I'm still trying to absorb everything. And you know what? Like to his point and to yours, Kyle, he's still a young guy here. And I feel like because he's so dominant so soon on the offensive end of the floor, averaging 23 points, shooting near 60% of the floor dominance around the rim with some of the star flashing. as he's had. It's raised expectations very, very quickly. But with that said, though, Kyle,

you mentioned the concerns about effort. That is very real because effort wasn't a concern for him when he was at Duke. Yeah, yeah. This kind of brings up, you know, I read your article, KSC about the, and everybody should go read it about, you know, New Orleans, what the kind of big picture situation for them is moving forward. What should they do with this huge, you know, cash of assets that they have? And, you know, draft picks in the next few drafts. But something that Stan Van Gundy talked about, and it kind of got my wheels spinning, is just this defensive disposition and this mindset that he really wants Brandon Ingram and Zion

to have. You know, in the past, I have had a few moments where I don't agree or disagree with this. When I was watching Zion at Duke, I thought to myself, this is a guy that could be a defensive player of the year in the NBA. What do you all think about that? I felt the same way. How about you, Charks? Well, I mean, don't you remember when he got drafted, Griffin was saying we kind of want Zion to be our Draymond Green.

Like that was kind of like the narrative he put out there. Like, oh, you have a lot of offensive players who want him to really kind of lock in on defense. And that's been the real surprising thing is, yeah, he was a great defensive player in college. And it is not translated like at all. And it's a, I guess, I mean, with young big men, I think, I read about this last week, like young big men generally don't play much defense. I think especially if you're a young big man with a big, offensive role. It's just really hard to lock in on both ends of the floor. But

until Zion plays defense, right, there's a pretty firm ceiling on this team. He always had some issues in college when it came to like reading the floor at times, you know, but like a lot of young bigs have that. It was forgivable. But he made up for it with obviously his otherworldly athleticism and

with, you know, effort. He played his butt off in college. And that's really the difference here between college and NBA. And I have a hard time to understand. how that collapse, how that fall off with effort happens so rapidly, except for when you look at injuries and perhaps a subtle decline in athleticism or a willingness to or unwillingness to put in as much effort on the defense event

because you're saving yourself for offense. Well, do you remember that the block on DeAndre Hunter, right? That was kind of like the most famous play he had in college, that block three. And it's like, I don't know if you can move that well now or if, even try to, but I don't remember him blocking me threes in the NBA so far. Yeah, yeah. He hasn't. And I think some of the more specific things, and what New Orleans is trying to do, I think, when you take a step back and look at this, is really difficult. Now, A, he hasn't played that much. It's been very start and stop. I guess you kind of have to

ask, like, how much, how important are in-game reps? Like, how much does war kind of educate the senses to quote that guy from, say, private Ryan? Like, how much do you need to be in there when bullets are flying to really learn the NBA game. Like, how much should we forgive him, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And like, because when you watch Zion, he's, he, he has just really bad, like, off ball posture. Like, when you watch really good defenders off ball, like, whenever there's, you know, a pick and roll happening on the left, the guy on the right that has to zone up on the guy

that's on the wing and the guy in the corner, they usually have this sort of, they keep their body moving so that they don't, they don't stand totally still. and Zion does that all the time. If he's in a drop situation, he'll stand totally still and overhelp on one. He's just not really good at like keeping that the like positional wagering is kind of what I call it, going at all times where he's trying to read what's going to happen, which ends up him like lazy closeouts, which lead to, there have been a bunch of situations.

I think you maybe put one in your article, KOC, of him closing out really lazily on a shooter or and then getting beat. and creating a straight line drive, which then puts Stephen Adams in a situation to have to pick his man up, and then the offensive glass is wide open. So things like that happen just all the time. Kyle, you had something you texted us about, you know, to when you think about Zion, it reminds you of something.

Can you share that with the listeners? Well, I was just thinking about Zion compared to Thanos, if we were looking at him and we were like, okay, if Zion is going to take this, And this may be something we work on or I work on is the developmental gauntlet. Like how, what can he do to be a well-rounded player? And I was like, he obviously has the power and the speed. So he has the power and the time stones.

I know this is totally. These are infinity stones. Yeah. Are you familiar with the infinity stones? I have not seen the movies. I know that's going to make a lot of people angry. It doesn't make any sense, really. You've been at home for a year.

And you're a nerd. It's not that long a movie. I don't know, man. It just kind of lost me. You got to stay relevant with the culture. The movie came out during a very busy year in life. So that's my excuse. Ultimately, I don't know how many I got to watch.

I got to catch up, though. I promise maybe in two weeks. Next show. Two weeks? I'll watch them all. You're not going to be able to. Just watch an end game. They'll catch you up pretty fast.

Don't just encourage that behavior. No, watch them all. So with these infinity stones, you're saying Zion is missing some of them. to be a complete player. That's what you're saying. Basically, he depends a whole lot on his power and his speed. Like, I think his speed is very underrated. Like, if you watch Zion make, like, I mean, a lot of his game is predicated on catching in the high post and his ability to just nuclear annihilate people with his speed and that first move.

Like, he'll either, he loves to rip through to the left. And I made a video about this in the spring. And it's funny because so little basketball has happened for Zion that a lot of this stuff. is still true, except I think he's moving a little better now. We can get to that. But he's so quick with his high post moves, which are usually just rip-throughs and he can just beat everybody. Any big in the league, most of them aren't fast enough to stay with him. And then the ones who are strong enough, or the ones that are fast enough, aren't strong enough. So he gets the rim, and he's just super efficient. But that's really where a lot of his game is centered right now.

But, you know, if you went through and you were like, okay, the soul stone, we need, you know, the soul element. All the stones. Like, what are each of them? Power, time, space. He's not a shooter right now. He needs to add the space. Okay. The soul stone.

The reality. Yeah. So he needs to start taking defense personally. That's what I put next to that. The reality stone for, well, let's do the mind stone. He seems like a good teammate. He needs to learn the NBA game better schematically so that he can process and give better effort. because sometimes those two can kind of hurt each other.

Then the other thing, and this is something I think we need to talk about. And this is important for the Pelicans going forward is the reality stone, which is like the reality of the pelicans. How are they optimizing him correctly? What do you all think about that? I think first off, with this whole analogy, it's just a little, it doesn't make any sense because Thanos is the most well-rounded villain probably ever. Like he had no holes in his villain game, right? With or without the stones, though. He does one thing

and goes to him and dunks on fools. Like, Thanos could do everything. So I just, I find that a little, a little much right now. Is it better?

Is it better? Is it better? Is it better than my Tyrese Halliburton bed analogy? Well, you gotta have a new one today, K.

I don't have one up my sleeve right now. But Kyle, to your point about reality with the Pelicans, that's basically what, you know, I talked to Griffin about

for that article was about building this team out right now. He acknowledged that they don't have enough shooting right now. This conversation happened in mid-December when things looked good for the pelicans. They are having a nice preseason. Ingram and Zion, we're looking great. And at the time, he's like, let's hold our horses here. Like, let's not get ahead of ourselves. So we have a long way to go. Shooting needs to be better. You know, we talked about building this thing out at every position having shooting around Zion. Right now they don't. They have Eric Bledsoe and Lonzo ball starting in the back court with

Stephen Adams at center around Ingrams-Irman's eye. They don't have enough shooting. That's what I wanted to ask you about. So there was a report that came out yesterday from Shams that they're officially shopping Lonzo. What was your sense talking to Griffin about Lonzo, how he thought he fit into this whole team? Or did he feel like he was a foundational piece ever? We did not talk about Lonzo.

Okay. Which maybe says it right there, right, all by itself, right? That he wasn't kind of talked about. But ultimately, I mean, by saying, him, by him saying, we need more shooting. That's also kind of a way of saying, like, Lonzo, who will be a, agent this coming off season will probably not be part of the future unless he becomes a knockdown shooter, which he hasn't. His shot has really fallen off ever since they went to the bubble. And he had a hot streak during the season last year before the hiatus. And that's about it. Other than that,

he's been streaky, inconsistent, unreliable. And I look at Lonzo as somebody that I'd love to see him in an uptempo offense. Damien Gundy has slowed things down in New Orleans, which is another part of the reality you're talking about, Kyle, where is that. Is the system here, never mind the roster, it goes without saying they need more shooting. Like someday, like you got to find a big who can shoot threes. They need their Brooke Lopez. They need their Kevin Love. They need their guy who can shoot three.

He's a Miles Turner instead of Adams. They need shooting in the back court. But is the system slowing things down to Zion, does that play into Zion's strengths? Or is Van Gundy going the wrong way here with slowing things down, Kyle? Well, I've thought a lot about this lately, just coincidentally, and thinking about the Sixers, actually, and I have a Sixers video coming this coming week. And I went through and kind of just looked at historically teams that, because whenever we look at teams, teams sort of have their own macro development, independent of, like, players development. Sometimes one's driven by the other. But we always have this temptation to say that, you know, like basketball is getting more spread out.

It's faster. So everybody needs to just be getting faster and adding as much shooting. and playing with as much pace as possible. That's not always totally true. I don't think that you necessarily have to philosophically be committed to being fast all the time and playing fast. I think the important thing is just flexibility in your approach because I went back and looked at like every team that won a title in the last 10 years.

And if you look at the Lakers, like the Lakers are at the bottom of the league. They were in the middle of the pack in terms of pace, which tells me that you kind of need to go either way. So I don't totally know. I think you just need to put players around him to up your schematic flexibility. And you do that by adding players that are flexible. And that is ball skills, shooting that can get to the rim that can sort of. Because when you put guys like Stephen Adams, like you said, Lonzo, Eric Bledso,

you automatically are sort of handcuffing your ceiling from the jump, in my opinion. I would say, too, like if you're not going to play fast, you'd better have shooting, right? Because if you play fast, you can transition, they can't pack the pain on you. But if you're going to, like, walk the ball up the floor and not be able to shoot, how are you ever going to score it? It doesn't even make sense. We'll talk about this with Kentucky and Cal later in sharks. But yeah, go ahead, guys. So was I kind of put a bow on him right here.

It seems like the consensus here is between us. Don't panic. Don't overreact here with the offensive fit in how things are flowing there. That's about roster construction, which works itself out long term. defense, that's something to monitor. He has a couple, there are a couple things I would want to add on there too. I still think that Zion needs to do, he's had the ball in his hands in transition 20% more this year. So he has, last year they were not putting the ball in his hands in open space because he was, he was a little out of shape.

He was kind of getting used to his body, some of the body mechanics changes they did. I also think that he needs to get some more craft in his game so that he can start to get himself on that track of aging gracefully. as a player because right now it's just so dependent on overpowering people, which is fine, but he just needs to be, you know, I think that needs to be some part of his development. Let's move on to another player who has had some injury issues in the past, but also has no trouble creating space for their own shot. That's Michael Porter Jr., only 22 years old, averaging 18 points on 48% from 3. This season with the Nuggets also has seven rebounds per game and playing better defense than

he has in the past. Charks earlier this week, we saw Michael Porter Jr. score 30 points against your Dallas Mavericks. What's your assessment of Porter's game right now? I mean, it's impressive. The thing that when you watch Michael Porter play, it's like six foot 10 guy who can shoot threes like he can shoot. And it's the ability to score so quickly.

And like, how do you even guard a guy that tall with a quick release? And I know he was a good shooter, but he looked at Clay Thompson shooter where he just doesn't miss open threes. I think he's shooting like, what, 42% for his career in the NBA on three-pointers. It's really, really high. Yeah, I mean, he's the type of guy that has that, and he's had this quality all the way through his development. It's, what I'd be curious to ask you about is its impact on other things. But, you know, Porter is a shot creator.

Like, he can get his shot any time he wants. And I think that can kind of be bad for him in some situations. But, I mean, he has, like, no dribble ISO game. on in his development, which is something you don't see a ton from guys like him. But what do you all think about him is like, what do you think the next step for him is, though, as a, like, to move from, okay, this is a guy who has one really sharp tool. What do you think his next tool is that he needs to develop? I mean, is that sharp tool shooting that you're referring to, just to clarify real quick.

Shot creation, I think is his one very sharp tool. He can just raise up over anybody. Well, with shot creation, that's the interesting part within this season, you know, according to Synergy Sports, the majority of his shot attempts and made baskets come off of spot-up opportunities when he's catching and shooting or attacking off a closeout, off of cuts to the rim or in transition. There's only been a handful of baskets he's scored off of actual isolations, you know, where he's pounding the ball away and creating or in pick and roll. I believe he's only around four pick and rolls this season. So with him, his best skill, the shot creation aspect, has not manifested in those quote unquote traditional shot creation plays, ISOs and pick and rolls. So Kyle, when it comes to what you're referring to there, what are your thoughts on his development in a situation that's emphasizing playing off ball and then you get an opportunity to create rather than like you're bringing the ball up the core, you're running the offense. Is this a good thing for him to develop in a situation like this?

For right now, yes, because I definitely, he is one of these guys that is like, we talked about like Poku and Hero having confidence. Michael Porter Jr. is the most confident guy. I tease him sometimes on Twitter about thinking he's always open because he is always open. Like he could shoot whenever he wants. But the thing is, I think that it's sort of hurt to answer your question, KOC. I mean, he couldn't be in a better position for his appetite for shots and his motor to go get shots as a cutter. Like I think he's a decent. cutter. He's a good finisher. I mean, he's long as hell. I don't know what his wingspan is, but I mean, he's a legit 610, 611. To be playing with Yokich, though, I think is the perfect situation for somebody of his appetite. Now, with Murray, that's a different story. But, yeah, that's kind of what I think about it right now. Yeah, Kyle, did go off your finishing, he's shooting 74% at the rim right now. It's wild. And yeah, I think it really is perfect.

because we talked about last time about opportunity cost. There's really not much of them with Michael Porter. He just plays in the offense and he's so big that when he gets the ball, he can shoot it. I look at it kind of like, I feel like Yokic is like Pat and Mahomes and Porter's just like Travis Kelsey, right? He's just kind of always open. He cuts to open spots, gets his shot. Like how many guys in the NBA could score like 25 points while barely touching the ball?

I think that is a really valuable skill, especially in Denver with Yolka. kind of holding the ball so much. Porter Jr. is kind of their X factor. And they need more defense right now. They've been better as of late. And Porter, Jr., I've been impressed that he's stepped up on defense. He's had some moments of being a lockdown guy. He still can be laxadaisal at time or miss some backdoor cuts.

The focus there needs to be there more often. But I'm impressed with his development from year one to year two when he went from a liability to someone who's solid. with Porter Jr. Do you feel like now in his second year, 22 years old, that you feel comfortable that this is who he is

and this isn't just like a hot shooting start to the season. Is this the Porter Jr. that's here to stay? I mean, that's a good question. He's only played 62 games. And I guess this is his third season technically. Yeah, draft a three years ago, but this is rookie year.

I mean, the way he shoots it, you kind of believe it's just like the eye test of it. It's like, okay, I test and the numbers kind of back it up. I think worth pointing out with Porter. So he missed about three weeks with COVID. And now he's backing up Will Barton. And just that relationship between him and Michael Malone, it seems like there's always a little bit of tension where if you listen to Malone's press conferences, I feel like he's sub-tweeting Porter like half the time talking about it doesn't matter who starts, but who finishes. Like, we're about defense. And I just kind of feel like there's

a real push pull where it's like, I get what you're saying, but I'm Michael Porter. And I get bucket. So that's great that you're saying the stuff, but I kind of do what I need to do on the floor. Yeah, what I was, that's a funny, like, continuation. I just find, like, hyper-confident guys like that really amusing. Like, I just find Porter's confidence. It's, it's, you have to have that, honestly, to get to the top. Like, you have to be able to overshoot, you know, where, you, where, you know what I mean. So, but it's funny that that's a continuation of some of the, like, sort of tension.

And he, he's a player that is probably more talented than, then you would expect to get where they got him. I think it was like 14th. I think they got him in 18. You know, and he had been sort of in the RSC near the top of his class. But there had been,

there has been no indication to me throughout his development that this is like fool's gold at all. This is who he is. He makes shots at a high level. My thing was, you know, it has really,

he really has that one sharp tool, but it has kind of hindered his ability to, he's very wobbly off the balance in traffic. He doesn't see the whole floor really well. He's good at like kind of simple reads. But he, when I was kind of watching their game tape last season from the bubble, he very, very, he was an erratic decision maker. He's kind of stiff as a finisher. He has a lot of that that tool is so sharp that I think he's kind of, he's leaned on it really heavy. And he needs to develop in some of those other areas, in my opinion. So with Denver, they had trade talks for

James Hardin. Obviously, they did not get Hardin, but they were. involved in talks and the assumption around the league is that they'll go hard after bradley beale for a trade the wizards are three and ten they're really struggling westbrook i mean it's tough to watch him right now so you know beale could become available at one point so let's play a game of deal or no deal but with a twist beale or no bill i'm gonna play the role of wizard's channel manager tommy shepherd and tell you what i want for beale and you guys are denver and tell me beale or no Can you say Tommy one more time? Tommy Shepard.

Okay. That was good. He's figured that one out, Kyle. All right. So here's the trade offer. I'm the Wizards. And it's a three way with Houston. Because I want this to be a good deal for you, okay?

The Nuggets get Bradley Beal and PJ Tucker. The Rockets get salary filler and three second round draft picks. The Wizards get Michael Porter Jr., R.J. Hampton, Gary Harris, and three future first round draft picks in 20, 21, 25. in 2027. Beal or no bill. That was my Howie Mandel impression. It probably wasn't that great, but tried to capture the tone.

No, that was good. You got a lot of conviction with it. That's the main thing. You really sold. I'm here for it. You go for it. That's the key. So what do you guys think about that from Denver's perspective?

Is there logic in taking a deal like that to accelerate what you are today, adding a Beal 27 years old, fits the timeline with Yokic and Murray, and bolstering your championship. Hope is like how should Denver be valuing Michael Porter Jr. Here when they're trying to win a championship but also are still pretty young. See, my thought with that is, is not so much, I could see them trading Porter eventually. And Beals obviously great. But to me, if you're going to trade Porter, you have to trade him for a Jeremy Grant type.

Like you're going to have to beat LeBron James in the playoffs, Kauai Leonard, possibly Kevin Durant, Yonis, a Jason Tatum maybe. You're getting PJ Tucker, Charks. Take the $6.4. Take the bill. Charks, take the Bills. He's a 6.4 center. To me, I want, like, if I'm trading Porter, I want a big 6-9 wing who can guard three positions.

That's the piece they need, I think. So you're not taking that if you're Denver Charks. No? No, not because of Bealot being awesome, but because of the team fit. Okay. How about you, Kyle? Are you taking that deal? I don't think that it solves, you know,

I think we are a little short-sighted sometimes in our excitement to see, you know, of these stars play together. Like, I mean, it would be unbelievably fun to watch Murray and Beal orbit Yokets. Like, I would watch every night. Yeah. But, but, and like we've talked about, that is a template that works, like that, that get big that can pass.

And I mean, Yokic is the ultimate example of that. I think that there are challenges like Charks was talking about. You have to live in the, you have to kind of acknowledge the reality stone that you need in the Western Conference, which is LeBron and AD together. and if you don't have the defense and the rebounding to contend with them, which right now they don't. And like Denver, Denver was one of the worst, like, spot up defensive teams in the league last year, mainly because they had a hard time guarding, you know, dribble penetration. And we saw what that looked like without Gary Harris in the bubble.

When he finally came back, it got a lot better. But we're seeing that kind of flare up again now. So I don't know that I would really love to watch it. But I do agree with sharks that I don't know that it addresses. your issues if you're if you're Denver. It's fun as it would be. Keep in mind, I'm playing the role of Tommy Shepard here. You guys are nuts. You just said it right there, Kyle. You said it right there having Bradley Beal and Jamal Murray orbiting around Yokic, one of the best players in the game right now, an MVP

candidate, if not the leader for MVP at the moment. If you have Bradley Bill, you're averaging a 34 point per game score. Let's not act like this guy is still averaging 22 and playing off a John Wall. Beal becomes your one B behind Yokic and Murray then slides into his ideal role as your third guy. Which by the way, does he want to do that? Does Murray want to slide to a third role? I don't know. I think he would and here's why because Jamal Murray, the way he's improved his really, like he's always played hard. He's always really hustled. He's become a better defensive player. And I think that at least shows a willingness to play without the ball or play hard doing things that you may not actually want to do when you're a score through and through.

And plus, he's playing with Yokic who runs that offense. He's already playing off of him. And maybe he would get, you know, not quite as many shots. But I still think he would ride Murray on those days he's hot. And then he could take the back seat on days he's not. And if he's not going to be unselfish for the chance to win a championship, then I'm not sure I'd want that guy on my team. But I think Murray is that guy.

Well, so, COC, like realistically, though, you think that team could beat the Lakers? Murray. I mean, it certainly increases your chances of being the Lakers. Will you beat the Lakers? I don't know. But like, should you not go for it? Should you not go for it? I think going for it is training Porter for somebody else.

Like, give me like a Pascal Seyakum type. Give me like someone like Ananoby, Ben Simmons even, someone who can guard LeBron. Can you imagine Nick Nurse dealing with Michael Porter Jr? That would be a really fun boot camp for him. That would be pretty comedy. All those guys you just listed sharks. Again, me playing the rule, Tommy Shepard, you're not getting Ben Simmons. They're not trading it from Michael Porter, Jr.

I'm not sure you're even going to get Pascal C. Ackham from Michael Porter, Jr. I don't know. He's been like up and down this season. They're kind of struggling at a five. We'll talk about them later, actually. I think you guys of Denver Valley and Michael Porter Jr. Much more, much, much, much more than I do. But I don't know that it's about, I don't even know that it's about valuing Michael Porter, Jr.

I just think it's about what you need. Like, I mean, I'm fine with moving him. PJ Tucker? I suggested it in the bubble. PJ Tucker? He's a great defensive fighter, man. He can play next to Yokic. Quit trying to sell me on PJ Tucker.

I'm just saying. If Denver has that deal, they should think strong, strongly about taking that. Let's move on to your guys that you're going to talk about. Yeah, I'm going to talk about the two Atlanta Hawks wings, the Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish. They're in year two of their careers. I wrote about the Andre Hunter this morning at the Ringer. and he's really taken a massive step forward. I'm a little surprised.

I thought he was a good prospect, but I did not see him averaging 18 points a game in year two. And he's been, I would say, just as big as Trey Young to the Hawks' like relative success these season. Like DeAndre Hunter is doing everything for them. He's playing the three. He's spacing the floor. He's getting him secondary scoring, secondary ball handling.

He guards all five positions. And I feel like he's suddenly become one of the better young wings in the league pretty quickly. Yeah, I think he's definitely surpassed. It's interesting that you think that he that he's played just as much of a role. I mean, like when you, when you have an offensive whiz like Trey Young, I mean, he's, he's going to sort of, he is a rising tide as a playmaker and as a score. But he's definitely, I mean, the Hawks with their injuries to their new players, it's been kind of funny how rollercoastery their narrative has been in the early going to the season. Because I feel like every one of their new acquisitions has gotten injured, right, or close to it. Danilo Bogd did and Rhonda

Alvin out for a long period of time, yeah. So, yeah, so we still haven't totally seen this, you know, this Death Star at full power yet, but... I don't know about Death Star Destroyer. Like, this is a Star Destroyer. That'd be enough for this season. They're a very intriguing offensive team, though,

just because of their interchangeability, though, you know, and their guys that can, they can shoot and, uh, it's, it's an interesting roster for sure. So with the Andre Hunter, his improvements on the offensive end, charts you alluded to those. He's been better than Cam Reddish. Granted he's two years older than Cam. Cam Reddish averaging 12 points per game this season. Only 36% from the field, only 30% from three.

It's been a struggle for him to start the season, just like it was for him during his rookie year to start the season. He finished strong as a rookie, but he's really regressed back. With Hunter, what has he done to really surpass Reddish? Reddish was the guy who came in people thought he would be, you know, an offensive, you know, spark plug for you. But Hunter's, what is he done. really become that guy who can do a little bit on the ball with you, shooting 38% from three, two assists per game. How has his game developed since college when he was more of like a safe defense, defense first pick?

I would say the main thing is ball handling because if you look at their lineups, it's usually him at the three with John Collins at the four and Clint Capelle at the five. So that's two big men. And that's really hard if you're a three and you can't handle the ball really well because you're not getting much ball handling from your two bigs. And Deioners just gotten so much better at that at being a secondary creator.

Because I always kind of saw him more as a Harrison Barnes type who like he can play the four, uses strength against bigger players. But he's been a legit three this season. And I think that, and you compare him to Cam. Yeah, like, yeah, KOC. Cam, you can tell is much younger.

Because Cam right now, when Cam goes to the basket, you don't know what's going to happen, really. Like the kind of shots that are come out of that are going to be, it's like he's shooting 35, for a reason based on his shot selection. He's been like that for a while, too. I mean, I don't know.

I haven't paid a ton of attention in his, like, he used to have a really hard time driving through contact. Like, he would just sort of like get really inefficient once he took a bump. But yeah, that's kind of been an ongoing theme with him for a while. Charks, you wrote today on the ringer are the Hawks finally on the other side of their rebuilds? It's a playoff or bus season in Atlanta. The good news is that Trey Young has found a running mate and the franchise might be ready

to turn the corner. They've won four out of their five last games, you know, ahead of publishing this piece today on the Ringer. In what ways has Atlanta developed this current season after their really rough start or people were, you know, talking negatively about Trey Young and about that team and how bad it was performing? What's changed mid years? It really, like, a lot due to just DeAndre Hunter popping? I think so, yeah. Like, I look at like a rebuild.

And here's my metaphor for the day. It's kind of like when you, like, a rocket and you have like the check engine light. And you have to have like three or four lights lighting up at the same time for it to go. And for a while there, it was just triung by himself, right? And now you have DeAndre Hunter lighting up too. And I think that gives you that forward momentum. And what I was thinking about like, because I feel like Cam is more talented than DeAndre ultimately, but you might be waiting two more years for Cam really developed because

he's still only 21. And I was thinking like, when you're rebuilding a guy like DeAndre Hunter who is already 23 is actually really valuable. Sometimes in the draft, they'll be like, oh, an older player less upside. But if, like, Travis Slank didn't draft the Andre Hunter, he's probably going to get fired, right? Like, at a certain point,

you have to draft an older, more established player to get your rebuild moving in the right direction. If you have too many projects, you're going to project to the end of the, out of the league, basically. Or the trade for Clint Capella. Last officer.

Yeah, that was big, too. He just had a triple double with blocks. Yeah. It's insane what he's doing lately. Yeah, Capella's a really good fit with Ray Young because he can run, jump, and dunk. And I mean, if you can do that, you're going to succeed in an offense.

And I would say the surprise is that John Collins and Capella have worked too, more or less. Like, they actually have a pretty good net writing together, which I don't think people saw coming. So with Cameronish, we mentioned his struggles right now. You said it could be a little while until we see him be a consistent player charts. Is there anything that he has shown in his first season in a month

so far this year that has made you believe Like, this is a guy that, you know, just be patient. Like, what are the flashes that he's shown that do make you feel a little bit encouraged that he will eventually figure it out? I think the main thing is his on-ball defense at his size. He's legit 6-8-6-9 and just his fluidity when he guards. He really can get down in a stance. He moves really, really well.

So that part of the game was already there for him. So like you said, last year, COC at the end of the season, when he has a good shooting night, you're like, oh, my God, this six-foot-nine guy can guard three positions. Annie's shooting well. Like this is a very valuable player. It's just right now the shooting and ball handling is not always there on a night to night basis.

Who do you think a good comp for him is in terms of his ceiling, Cam Reddish? That's a good question. I mean, yeah, I'm looking at the start. Who are the most popular pre-draft comps? Because you talk in size of handling people. Always compare them to Paul George. Yeah, that's one. I mean, another guy who is kind of falling into this like framework is Zaire Williams,

the guy playing for Stanford. Very similar body types. People said some ridiculous stuff. People were like Tracy McGrady. It's like, oh, God. I mean, maybe in terms of like the raw tools, but... And people just get carried away. You know, I kind of am going to talk about this a little bit with my next player that I'm

going to talk about, but the comp wise, I don't know. Reddish, Reddish is an interesting guy. I mean, is he dissimilar from like a Danny Green? Like, I don't think he'll ever shoot it that well. He's six foot eight. That's the thing. It's hard to find six foot eight two guards. Bigger green.

Six seven, six, or is he that tall? No, green's more like six five, six six six. Like he's an average size. Camerunish is six eight, two hundred and 18 pounds. And Danny Green is six foot six, two hundred and 15 pounds. So a little bit of a bigger Danny Green is what you're suggesting right there. Yeah. That sounds overwhelming if you're a Hawks fan.

That sounds underwhelming. It's what makes it so hard to comp him is like, when you talk about six, eight two guards, usually there's like stars. because like six-eight guys normally can't play two. That's what makes him such an interesting player. Yeah, and I don't, I think, I think the reason my mind sort of beeline to Green is like you get a guy like Danny Green who like really good transition half-court defender can shoot at some, but not really, when you think of him, you don't think of like fluid half-port off-the-bounce

creator. And I guess that's sort of the mold, the template, like a bigger version of that, I guess. But the comps, you know, I had in the ringers 2019 NBA draft guide were Paul George. Richard Lewis and bigger Ben McLemore. So you're thinking along the same lines with that last one about a bigger guy than the actual comp. But at the KOC, I would say like that's a valuable, valuable player. Oh, I agree. Don't be not excited about a bigger Ben McElmore.

That'd be fantastic. I 100% agree. And like when I say, underwhelming from a Hawks fan perspective only because of where you got him in the drafts. But ultimately, what Atlanta's building with this group makes sense around Tray Young and undersized point guard. You have long, lengthy defenders and Hunter and Red. rim running bigs like the roster construct what travis slink is doing there in

Atlanta makes a lot of sense where it might be a little bit iffy is with the guys that you wanted to talk about next Kyle so I'm going to talk next about Darius Garland from Brentwood Tennessee the Brentwood pistol as I used to call him he he has kind of as he's been the quieter half of the sex land combo you know a lot has been made of Colin Sexton's huge start going after kd going to you know just really going at the nets um garland is for people who don't know a ton about his game he's sort of a primarily like a dribble shooter at about six foot one yesterday was his birthday actually happy birthday deris happy birthday darius yeah there you go listen to an rnbbya show maybe maybe not maybe i don't know so pretty much what you have is a guy

who is a quick shooter who is is really trying to adjust to growing the playmaking side of his game. And also another area that, like, he's a really good shooter. The thing about Garland is that he's always been really quick off the bounce to get to his shot with the ball in his hands. But if you go and start kind of looking at some of the efficiency numbers, it's like he's a really strong catch and shoot player right now. But he needed to add some weight from year one to year two.

He has from something I saw he had gained, he'd put on like 15 to 18 pounds. But I was going through and I was kind of looking at smaller score first guards in the NBA, you know, what it takes to kind of get there. And it's like to be a really effective smaller scoring guards when you start thinking about guys like Kimba Walker, if you want to get to the highest place, you know, Kimba Walker, you know, Kyrie, people like that, like Dame Lillard's probably like 6-2, 6-3, right? All those guys have added a proclivity for creating. contact and so not like being surprised by contact or avoiding contact, but embracing it and using

it as part of your game. And I feel like that is a big challenge for Darius Garland right now in terms of his finishing. He's sort of an erratic finisher. He avoids contact. He's really good with his floaters in the middle of the floor. Like he's a guy if you run him off the line, he can get in the middle and kind of shoot that high. Mark Jackson tear-droppy floater. But yeah, defensively, it's going to be a big challenge for him as well. But have you guys watched much of him? What are your early impressions? I like him a lot.

I mean, everything you said 100%, you know, agreed. Ditto to that. With him, ultimately, like you said, the big thing that sticks out is six foot one. And that's also what Colin Sexton is, a six foot one point card. Sexton is better right now. Has had some monster games this week has, you know, regressed a little bit with some down performances. But obviously impressive development from him.

And what it seems like you might be getting at is the fit with those two long term with Cleveland. I don't think right now it says I'm poor and you're just getting good players in. That's it. You're developing these young guys and seeing what sticks, what's worth keeping. But long term, it seems what you're getting at, Kyle, is whether Sexland and Garland is actually going to be something that the Cleveland Cavaliers can stick with long term. Do you see in today's league where you have more jumbo-sized playmakers that can help run off? defenses. You have a lot of lengthy defenders around them. Can a team make it work with two small, tiny guards like that? Or at some point, you know, when it comes to playoff aspirations and

wanting to go deep into the postseason, does one of those guys need to go at some point? And, you know, how do you see the Cleveland Cavalers navigating this from a team building perspective? Do you have any thoughts on that, Charks? Yeah, I think, Kyle, what you said was really good about physicality. And that's why I noticed watching Darius as well. It kind of reminds me of DeAngelo Russell. And that sometimes I just feel like Darius settles for shots, doesn't want to get to the rim,

and doesn't really finish in traffic. And I just wonder how much of that is going to change based on his body type. And that gets back to like having two smaller perimeter oriented guards. I'm not a huge fan of that. Obviously, it can work with like Dame and CJ. But yeah, it's just like,

I feel like if you're trying to be Dame and CJ, Jay, those guys' skill level is just so, so high. That's a really high bar to clear. And I wonder if you're choosing between them, I don't know. I worry about the physicality a lot because that's what stood out to me watching them just this morning before I did this podcast.

Yeah, definitely. And I think for him, you know, coming out of college, coming out of his, you know, truncated season at Vanderbilt, my comp for him was, I said Jason Terry was sort of a similar guy. that he could aspire to be like, you know,

and because he's, for me, the thing that will have to level up for him to expand into a different sort of expectation, echelon based on what you were saying, charts, is that, yeah,

he's going to have to get to the point where he can, A, create a lot consistently. B, he's going to have to become a really, really efficient relocating shooter, like, and he's going to have to become a guy

that can, you can run off screens. Like catch and shoot, like I said, he's great. But for right now, Now, you know, I just don't know that you can lean heavily on him in your grander plan. To me, he seems like a guy that you kind of unleash in the later part of your rotation and let him do what he does because the other parts of his game.

And defensively, he's going to be targeted. Probably for most of his career, he's always going to be targeted just because of his size. We talk about the long term of Cleveland, but, you know, forget the future. Right now, the Cavs are just fun. This is a straight up fun team to watch. a lot of good talent on their roster. It's a weird mix with Andre Drummond. They're probably not going to be part of their future, but you got Jared Allen. They just got that in the three-way trade involving the Nets getting hardened. They got obviously alongside him, Isaac O'Coro, who we talked

about last week on the show, who's been really stellar for them, Colin Sexton's development. With what Cleveland's building here, quickly it feels like they kind of have something coming along with this mix. Where are you at right now with Cleveland? And how do you compare their core to some of the other young cores? We already talked about Atlanta in New Orleans charts. How does Cleveland, you know,

stack up compared to some of these other young teams? That's a good question. I think that's what it comes down to, right? As you're thinking about the Eastern Conference. And then I think about, I think the Hawks are a great comparison point because they both start at the same time rebuilding. They both are built around a smaller guard.

And you look at Atlanta versus Cleveland, Atlanta's really emphasized, length around Tray Young, whereas Cleveland's kind of doubled down around Sexton and Garland with smaller players. So that to me, but I think ultimately you're right. Like for now, though, you've got a team that's in the playoff fund, which has been a long, long time. I would say I put Atlanta above Cleveland. It's more probably comparing Cleveland to like Chicago and Charlotte. I'm not even really sure. That's a good question. I think you're right. I think they're more with the Charlotte Chicago group.

And their early schedule injected a lot of optimism, which by all means, I want Cleveland fans to be excited. It's fun to have a young team. You know, their early schedule, they picked up some wins against teams that were sort of rebooting their continuity. You know, they're going to be moving into tougher parts of their schedule. So we'll see how much of this sort of regresses to the middle. But I think long term, they do have questions that are inevitable in terms of their fit. I really, I really never liked the Sexton Garland thing from the jump. I didn't really understand the thinking behind.

You don't like Sexland, Kyle? Do you not like fun? Kyle, for you, it's more garter. It's more garton than Sexland for you. Yeah, yes. It's more of that. But I definitely think that, you know, I love that, like you said, I love to Jared Allen pick up. That was, that was incredible.

That was huge. Yeah. That was a win. What a great deal they got for him. It's kind of funny, you know, Cavaliers fans, I've seen some tweets. They're, they already are ready to move on from Andre Drummond. They want to see Jared Drummond. They want to see Jared.

and Allen in that starting line out, rim running, defensive intensity. That's what they want already. It's kind of crazy. Drummond averaging 19 points, 15 rebounds, three assists, two blocks per game, and Cavs fans, just like Pistons fans, just like every other team in the league when the Pistons are trying to trade and we're like, eh, I'm ready to move on from you.

And ultimately, I think Cleveland will, you know, feel like they have a better fit once Drummond is gone, either this offseason or this season with a trade. Who could use Drummond in a diminished role, do you think? Who do you think? There's two teams and one of them, Charks, I look forward to seeing your reaction. I've heard these two teams like Drummond,

the Raptors and the Mavericks. Very interesting. Sharks does not look happy. They got a lot of big men already in Dallas, but Toronto makes sense to me. Toronto makes sense. We'll talk about Toronto in a second, but their center isn't bad.

Yeah, when I heard Dallas, I was like, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but Toronto does. So let's talk about Toronto through the lens of Chris Boucher, who's been awesome coming off of their bench this season, averaging 14.6 rebounds, two blocks on a lot of amazing highlight real quality blocks and 24 minutes per game. Boucher, he's 28. So he technically is not a guy we'd talk about a lot on this pod,

but almost, he's like, uh, yeah, almost. He's like, uh, he's more like a Billy Madison. Yeah, he's like to for our, for our, A Roddy Dangerfield back to school. Only still young in his career. That's because he got a late start playing basketball.

Actually has a pretty remarkable backstory. He grew up in St. Lucia before moving to Montreal at a young age and grew up and poverty and dropped out of high school at age 16. And he actually never played organized basketball until 20 when an academy in Canada gave him an opportunity. And he finished high school, went off to college, played at New Mexico Junior College, Northwest Community College before landing at the University of Oregon

and then the NBA. He's won two rings, one with the Warriors, one with the Raptors, and one G League MVP, G League defensive player earlier. And now here he is. Yeah,

I mean, he's had a full career already, but now he's actually playing regular minutes with Toronto and is super, super impressive coming off their bench. Kyle, where are we out with Chris Boucher?

Is this for real? I mean, is there even more on tapped up side here? What do you like about his game? What I like about it and what I think is remarkable is that he does simple things just really well. I mean, he's six, nine, and he has like a seven four, seven five wingspan. Very long. Yes, very, very long.

His arms block out the sun. He has just an insane length and lateral mobility. But what always comes back to me is this sort of crossover between, you know, Nick Nurse and the Raptor staff getting these guys that have a certain sort of like growth plate on their development and taking them to a place where they fit in like defined parameters within what the Raptors do. And we saw this, you know, Seacom had sort of a similar thing. Like he, he had kind of loosely, casually played his whole life. He was a little older in college, a little older as a rookie. And Boucher, I think, is somebody who showed some signs of shooting. Like his, his like, what's his true shooting

percentage right now. It's like 67.1. But he's also shooting threes, which is crazy. And you don't really get that type of rim protection from a guy with that efficiency on offense that also can hit threes. Like it's really wild. But if you look at his shot chart and what he, in his production, it's very defined. So I feel like Nick Nurse is putting him and that staff is, or putting him in a really good position to do simple things really well. And he's responded. Shooting 45% from three on four attempts per game. That's nuts. That is nuts. And some of the block shots he's had is when like he's

on one side of the paint and then runs all the way to the opposite corner behind the three point line of blocks a shot. It's outrageous some of the stuff he's doing on the court. He's really helped Toronto because they started the year wanting to play Aaron Baines at the five and that has not worked

at all. Kind of to replace Gasol and Abaka. They've kind of been like patch working a five-man rotation and Bouchet's been their best five by mile. Yeah, Boucher's only taken nine total shots that weren't at the rim or threes. And that's out of 157 shots in 17 games. Wow. That is nuts. I think something that's interesting and this is a frontier of development scouting that I know people are aware of and they watch for because we see teams like the spurs and the raptors look for these guys that grew up, you know, building up

the necessary sort of like basketball processing skills like in terms of like footwork, watching a game unfold. And this is all kind of like sports psychology type stuff. But, you know, he played some soccer growing up, I read. And then he comes to basketball at a later stage. And I'm interested to hear what you guys think about this, this philosophy of like when guys with physical tools like Chris Boucher get to the NBA, they've been set up to succeed, maybe a little bit slower and create this like

illusion that they're like popping out of nowhere when really they're just building habits instead of, I'm curious about this process of like tearing down bad habits as opposed to just building good ones. Like what do you guys think about that in terms of like how we look for young players? I mean, with him, broad a question. Well, no, I mean, with him, you mentioned the long wing span, the athleticism, the heart and intensity and effort he plays played with at Oregon when we really, that's when he got scouted the most for NBA purposes. All those ingredients were there. There was a rawness to his game, but the athleticism in the mind, the effort and the approach to the game was there too. I don't think, sometimes I think the mental aspect can be harder to change.

It's like we talked about earlier with Zion. I don't know what shifted with him to go from a high effort to a low effort player on the defensive end of the floor, but with Boucher effort was never a question. And from the NBA perspective, I think there's a reason why we've seen multiple smart organizations, get them, the Warriors and the Raptors. Raptors, their player development is amongst the best in the entire league. So to your point, Kyle, it's like, here's this raw player that hasn't played a lot of organized basketball. As I've played more soccer and hockey growing up that he did basketball. And now he is in a situation where they are focusing and developing skills, improving shooting mechanics, getting consistent shooting mechanics, how to read the floor

on defense, where to be on the floor and so on and so forth. And guys like that, a lot of the time they don't pop, but I feel like the real skeleton key to success in the league is the mind. And Boucher has always seemed to have that mindset on the court. That has allowed the Raptors and the Warriors to help him develop along. You know, it kind of reminds me,

one thing this college coach told me the other day, I was like, that's really interesting. And he said, so he's a, I guess, mid-major coach. He said, the key to winning in college is to get old and stay old, which is like really counterintuitive, but he's like, look, man,

I'm not getting these Kentucky. Duke players, I've got to get like 22-year-olds who can win for me right now. I think that's a very underrated. Boucher's 28. And I think that really helps him on his mind. Like, he's ready to develop quicker because he's older. Like if you want to develop a 19-year-old, he better be really, really, really freaking good. But if you're going to have like a seventh, eighth man, give me an older guy to accept a smaller role, a little more like physically developed. Like Boucher, he's obviously a very skinny guy. So I think for him, any extra bit of strength will help him a lot as he's little older. And that part to me is huge. Like, if I'm getting a role player,

give me an older one over a younger one, I guess, long story short. Yeah. And I think that you're more likely to go through the process that I described. I feel like your track to get better, like in Siakam, I think is an example of this. Your track to get better is more possible at an older age if you're just building better habits as opposed to tearing them down. Like some of the guys that have built up these playing a certain way. It's just really hard for them to reprogram themselves. And I was really curious about what you guys think about. San Antonio and Toronto both have these proven cultures

that enable this type of thing to happen. Like, do we think that Boucher, he didn't pop in Golden State, but do we think that Boucher, if he had gone to the Kings or the Blazers, like would it have played out the exact same way? No. What is it about the rations? I have some ideas, but what is it about the rafters or the spurs that these players, these types of players have more of a chance to have an impact?

I think there are certain teams that I used to work for a sports psychology company with my friend Eric Weiss called Sports Applitude and they work with teams. And when I used to work with them, this was long before the ringer, you know, there are certain teams that have a hard time translating and clarifying what they want players. to do and how they want them to do it. And there are certain organizations that have a, just there are tremendous at clearly defining roles and responsibilities, whether it's what they do on the court or what they do and they're focusing on in the gym

and the practice court. I just talked about this with Bill Simmons on his pod yesterday. I mentioned with Janice, did the bucks and his own, you know, trainers in circle make a mistake, focusing all these hours, all of these hours, on improving your free throw shot and improving your three point shot instead of mastering the low post so he can dive down to the rim and put a move on a guy and actually have a low post game and you know did they did the day i don't know yannis obviously has developed significantly

into a two-time MVP a defensive player of the year no complaints obviously but that's just an example to a greater degree and that's also true for guys on the back end of your roster some teams invest their resources in the top end guys and a Chris Bruchet doesn't get a lot of attention. And there are some organizations like the Raptors that invest just as much in those guys on the back end of their bench and in their G league as other teams do with their first round draft picks,

their lottery picks. And I think that's the difference, Kyle, that Toronto is maybe the best at in the entire league or if not the best is one of the best. Yeah, and I don't think that you can do that. Like, not every team can do that because I think in order to, like, have, like, a philosophy that's, like, that you can implement from top to bottom like that, I feel like, and I think we've probably talked about this on other pods before, but I think that you have to have, like, organizational stability to the point where, like, Nick Nurse, we were joking about him, like, what would happen if Michael Porter Jr. played for Nick Nurse, like, you want to talk about, like, he doesn't tiptoe around anybody. It's not like he's a, like, a jerk, but it's like, he is brutally honest. And, like, Popovich is the same way. And it's like he knows that his job. is secure so he can go out there and challenge guys in maybe more creative or ways that other guys can't because they're worried about their job. And it's like, and another thing too is I think

that a commonality between those two teams is like continuity of guys who understand that accountability and it's established. Like you talk about like New Orleans, they're trying to establish that and import that. Like, Charks, I know you and I have talked a lot about like whether you can import that. It's like with Toronto, they have Kyle Lowry, who's like the ultimate example of this. They've had all these different veterans who have come in. And that's why it's like, that's why we do this yearly thing of like, man, I don't think Toronto's any good. End of the year.

We're like, damn, Toronto's pretty good again this year. I don't know. I feel like that's the other part of it. It's sort of the organization. Like what you're saying, it's like to a certain degree success begets success. And that's why it's always dangerous to like truly go full process. Because it's just a really, really hard thing to do to get back to where you were even. And if you draft a superstar, if you have no culture around him,

what's really going to happen in the long run? And that's part of it too. And I play with Nurse and Poppe. Yeah, they're championship coaches. They can say a lot more than a first year coach. That's also true. And ultimately with a lot of guys, situation is critical to what a player's success will end up being,

situation, environment, surrounding pieces. That all plays a role. Let's move on to draft class here to wrap up this side of the podcast. I'm talking about one guy who I don't know if situation, is really going to matter a whole lot with his success. And that is the potential number one pick in the 2021 NBA draft. That's Oklahoma State point guard, Cade Cunningham. Kyle, you recently made a full video breakdown of Cade.

And you had a great song in there. Cade. Can you give us a little? That was good. Texas screen it works you over. Tell us about Cade. The whole video wasn't about Cade, but I did talk about him quite a bit. And I have talked about him in the past, but in video form. But Kate is, for anybody who hasn't

seen Kate Cunningham, think of a guy who is about the size of Brandon Roy. And he's, to me, he sort of is like, what would a Roy type? It's not a direct comp, but what would a Roy type look like feeding off of the way basketball has evolved in the last few years in like the hardened era of these guys? They're like high usage, you know, a lot of pick and roll reps. You can kind of center a whole offense around him. He's really built, like I said, he's a really great pick and roll player, really methodical. He's similar stylistically to Luca. I think he's a much better defender at a younger age and a team defender than Luca. But he's not as like flat. He's that type of player, but I wouldn't say that he's as flashy or as experimental or creative of a pass or his guys like Trey Young or

Luca. And yeah, there's way more to it, but I'm sure Charks would like to weigh into. Go ahead, buddy. I mean, the thing about K, that's impressive to me is when you break these guys down, there really are no holes in his game, right? He can create, he can shoot, he can guard, he can rebound, he can create for others. That's not, I think that's what you're saying KOC, kind of about like, it doesn't really matter where he goes, because he can really plug in anywhere. very versatile player. Like it's just, I can't think of many guys I've scouted where it's like, man, this guy can do everything at least pretty well on the court.

There's no area where it's like he's got to get better at to be in the NBA. Like Kyle said, he's not a Luca level, passer, playmaker, but he's very, very good. And he's very, very unselfish. I have six foot eight, 220 pounds already physically. You know, he's already ready to plug into the NBA and deal with the physicality of the game. Because he, you know, he already dictates speed and he already controls, you know, time and pace on the court in ways that you don't see from a lot of young players. I think, you know, we talked about this a lot last week in regards to Tyree Talibor and with his control and command of the game at a young age.

And Kate Cunningham does that at a higher level, of course, because of a skill level, that's a shooter and a shot creator and his size and body on the court. I feel like he's going to be one of those guys who comes into the NBA right away and is good, right away as a rookie. For sure. No doubt about it. And, you know, ultimately, whether he goes number one or number two, that'll be determined on whether what team ends up picking number one. Do they want a big like Evan Mobley, who we discussed in our first episode of Ringar, NBA University two weeks ago, or Kate Cunningham, more of a playmaking presence. With him, I am curious, though, you know, the shooting right now, he's shooting 39% from three and 82% from the, free throw a line. He was somebody who

entering college, there were a little bit of questions of like whether he was a great shooter or just an average shooter. He's been pretty great so far. Tarks, how much are you buying the shot? Or does it really, is it not something you're not too worried about right now considering he's still

just a teenager and that's something that should develop over time? Where are you at with his jumper and how that impacts his overall game on the offensive end? I mean, I think jumpers always matter. Especially the way the game has played these days. So, like, if it wasn't there, I'd be really concerned. But he's making enough shots now. And I guess the guy I've kind of compared him to, first of all, it's hard to compare a guy

a six, eight point forward because, like, pretty soon it's like, well, is he Luca or LeBron? Because there's just not very many six foot eight point forwards in the NBA, right? The guy I've been thinking as, I'm sure you think about this, is he like a Jimmy Butler type? That's kind of my thought for him right now as like a six eight guy who can guard, defend. but maybe just not that elite level score of a LeBron Luca. He's on another planet in terms of like command of playmaking command of like, I always say that like Kate is like an offensive motherboard type. Like he's the type that you come in and he is your context.

Like he's like Luca in that way that he's like, okay, you can, I think he's the best prospect since Luca, like in my opinion, overall total top to bottom. I mean, people have challenged the shooting. I think that he's an underrated. I've said some of these things so many times, but he's an underrated team defender, and I think that that makes him a little different than guys like Hardin and Luca.

Like he's a very clever off-ball defender, really good hands, really good, like has really good on-time on-target hands. We talk about that with passing a lot, but on defense he's like this. I think he's the type of guy that he's going to be an offensive engine, like we were saying,

and he's going to be really good, And he's confident as a shooter. Okay, Kyle, my question for that, though, by offensive engine. I feel like Luca, he can score 35 points whenever he wants, right? If you're off, like you're talking about an elite offensive engine, that's part of it. And that's maybe my one question about Cade is can he explode offensive like that consistently? That's a good question. And I think that that is the real overarching, arching question with him is he doesn't lean scoring as much as Luca or Harden.

in terms of, because I think those guys all fit the same template. But he's a guy that you could run, like he could be a high level pick and roll player from day one and his ability to score. He's improved on that as in the past like 18 months in my opinion. But I think you're absolutely right. I think that that's the area that is going to sort of dictate whether or not he is like a super superstar or just a very good NBA player. Can you see him developing that? You mentioned the last 18 months, Kyle. Does that suggest that perhaps that that trajectory is really starting to go off for him

and that we will see that if the game demands that, if his team demands that from him? Yeah, I mean, I don't, it's funny because I know you look at, you look at some of these guys like, like Luke, like James Harden. Lucas, you know, raw just counting stats when he was in the, in the Euro League and League ACB, they weren't insane, but they were like little his, you kind of just have to read between the lines and look for a player's appetite to score. I don't see that as much with Cade. Like, I don't see a guy who's just like,

I'm going to humiliate you and get 30 tonight. He's very much more like, I'm fine managing the game. Yeah, he's like, he's a make-the-right play guy. He's always making the right play, and maybe he's not always taking the shot. Yeah, and in order to sort of, there's a yin-yang, push and pull kind of a thing there,

and it kind of spells out in the gravity of the floor, it's like the big thing. And I remember Dave Yeager made a comment about, like, the better Luca shoots it, the faster he's going to get. And I thought a lot about that. And I was like, you kind of do at some point have to be this level of scoring threat to enable these other parts of your game. Because if you don't shoot it, teams play you differently, and the windows are different.

But if you score, like the big thing about Luca that's so impossible to defend is that he can score so he can manipulate those windows to be bigger and thus his playmaking is better. Does that make sense? 100%. And I think worth pointing out. A, this shows you how great Kate is or like comparing him to Luca constantly. And B, it's like, yeah, this level of player at 18,

like Luca and LeBron at 18 were like already some of the best players in the world. It's just like the bar is so high to be one of the best players in the league now. It's a shame that we're not going to get to see Oklahoma State in March Madness because they have the one-year tournament band. But, you know, we're still going to get to see a lot of Kay the rest of the season. And I'm loving, loving, loving, his development. You guys have a big college game coming up

this week, don't you? Yep, yep, yep, we do. Jarks, I mean, what would you say to sort of tease the big longhorn wildcat matchup? Well, you know, a basketball school like Texas, right? We got to let this, a football school like Kentucky. Yeah,

we have roll reversal, yeah. It is kind of funny. I would be surprised if Kentucky beats Texas. That's my thing, because they can't score. They're a good defensive team. Isaiah Jackson reminds me of Chris I just wanted to throw that in there. Are you guys going to make a friendly wager for this game? Heck, no, I'll lose.

Why would I do that? I'll just say, like, please, I'll give you great odds, Kyle, on this game. You have a point spread? Point spread in there? You know, I often feel like when people ask me about Kentucky basketball, I feel like Phil Conner's and Groundhog Day when that lady asked him about the weather and he just unloads on her. You ever seen that part?

And he's just like, blah, blah. And then he gets at the end of it, he goes, oh, did you not want to talk about the weather? That's how it is when people ask me about Kentucky basketball. I'm like, yeah, there's a million things for me to complain about right now. But it's a terrible season. I'm trying to just wash it from my mouth and move on. Well, we'll see how that game goes this week. I'm looking forward to talking with you guys again in two weeks for the next episode of Ringer NBA University.

Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, charts. Hey, good stuff. Thanks. And now time for Nikias Duncan. And now we bring on Nikias Duncan, NBA writer from Basketball News.com and the co-host of one of my new favorite basketball podcast, the Dunker Spot, which comes out every Monday with your co-host, James Jr. Nikaias, how you doing today? I am doing fantastic, man.

Happy to be here. How are you? I'm doing really, really well, man. So I wanted you to be my first guest on Ringer NBA University because, you know, like, I only started following you a couple of months ago on Twitter. I think it was during the bubble, maybe early August. I saw you tweeting about the heat. And it was a really smart breakdown. I'm like, and then from following your stuff, I find out you're insightful and passionate

about every team in the league, not just the heat. You show empathy for other people and players. You work hard. And you tweet what's on your mind about the game, even if it's something that goes against the grain. So I got to tell you, man, you know, you were tweeting about this over the weekend. I think right now you are one of the best out there covering the NBA right now. This is high phrase coming for you, man. I really appreciate it.

So let's talk basketball, man. And let's start with the heat last Saturday at 10.19 p.m. Eastern on a night, bam out of bio, scored 41 points on 14 of 20 from the field with nine assists and five rebounds. You tweeted this. we're rapidly approaching the time to call Bam, a top 10 guy. I have a question about that tweet. So you got a mixed response to it. A lot of people agreed. A lot of people are like, you're crazy.

I'm with you. So I have Bam currently ranked 18th best in the NBA. And with the trajectory he's on, top 10 status feels attainable. So what type of development are we seeing from Bam that made you tweet that? I think it's the shot creation. But more than anything, it's the willingness. to create his own shot, because I think that's really what's been holding him back. He's had good intermediate touch, basically his entire NBA career.

And this is really the first year that he's leaned into taking more of those mid-range jumpers. With teams constantly dropping deep against him because they don't think he can score or they don't think he will try to score, him being willing to take those mid-ranked shots are huge. Because now you can't drop against him because he can just knock down elbow jumpers whenever he wants to. And if you're dropping against him, he's always a threat to kind of flow. to drill handouts with Tyler Hero or Duncan Robinson, that pairing remains elite. So his ability to attack those gaps

opens up things for him and everyone else on the floor. Because you play tighter up on him, then that's where the ball handling the first step, the underrated craft that he has, he's really good at drawing files. That's where all of that kicks in for him. And elsewhere, if you're playing that tight coverage, then he does force a rotation that opens up things for Miami shooters.

And a staple of air exposure, no matter what is roster, no matter what his roster is, is generating open catch and shoot opportunities. So, Bam, being able to do that from the fire spot just opens up things on a level for the heat. You know,

it's like last season and in recent seasons, we've seen him as a guy who's in a dribble handoffs, especially with Duncan Robinson and Tyler Hero, and his ability to facilitate from the high posts and from the elbows and from the wing or behind the three point line is significant. He can do it in the open floor as well. This season,

like you said, we're seeing the jumper. We saw little flashes of it in the past, but the frequency he's shooting at now is much higher and he's doing it way more off the dribble, shooting over 40% from deep mid range, and he's shooting over 80% from the free throw line too. And that, to me, is another indicator

of an actual improved jump shot. So, you know, from him, did he do anything with his mechanics to improve his shot? Or, like, what makes you confident in the progress of his perimeter jumper? I think the form itself has always been relatively smooth. I get, like, for me,

the thing has just been, willingness for him. Like, we've seen these flashes in random spots. Even the three-pointers that he's hitting his career, they've all been like end-of-quarter stuff, and the form doesn't break down at all. It's all incredibly fluid. It's all incredibly compact.

The touch shines through. He's always had like a nice little push-out, a nice floater in that, you know, seven to 10-foot range. So it's just aggressiveness for him, taking the shots in rhythm and not thinking about it. And that's really been the boom for him. I remember there was a play last month.

I think it was Heat Bucks where BAM was defended by Janus. I think of the right side of the court. And BAM went from a right to left crossover, attack the paint. And they had a right foot, right handed extension layup against Janus. And, you know, like we said, we've seen flashes from Bann before. But his handle and how tight it is and his ability to throw in hesitations, crossovers, change of pace. like what type of player are we going to see if bam at some point in his career is able to stretch that shot not from mid-range but to behind the arc someday like what player are we going to see we will definitely see a top-ten player at that point to your point there we go but no like if you add in you know you have the high post-passing you have the intermediate shooting you have the finishing as a role man just have to have to have six synergy up right now. He's 25 or 28 on shots. He finishes as a row man, which is absurd.

Yeah. When you add that in with a three-point shot, what can you really do? Like, you can't drop against him. You can't put smaller guys against him. I mean, the Nets, I talked about this a little bit on the pod. The Nets actually made the right decision to go Jeff Green against BAM because DeAndre Jordan just wouldn't be able to hang with him. And he's just kind of conceding the shots that BAM's comfortable with it. And BAM just matched him. And, you know, the size difference isn't that start

to where BAM should be mashing a guy like Jeff Braybty did. So he's such a mismatch, basically whenever he steps on the court. So leaning into that aggression, also stretching his game out to a three-point line, that just makes him even more of a threat off the ball. He can set random flare screens for guys he doesn't have it or, you know, someone drives and kicks into him.

If he can knock down corner threes, that's just another thing you have to worry about. You know what he does as a high post pass, and you know what he does a dribble handoff. You know what he does as a role, man. you know what he provides defensively, he just would easily be one of the best two-way players in the sport. He feels complete.

And, you know, this season, he's averaging over 20 points, shooting over 60% from the field, leading the heat in rebounds, assists, and blocks per game. And I feel like with Bam, we've seen him go to a finals. You know, we've seen him have some epic moments. We saw the block against Jason Tatum to win a game. We've seen him have those career-defining moments, right? But one of the important things to keep in mind with Bam is that he's only 23 years old.

This is only the fourth season of his career. Al Horford was 20. Yeah, it's crazy. Al Horford was 29 when he started shooting threes. Brooke Lopez was 28 when he started shooting three. So there's a lot of time for Bam to extend his range from, you know, floater range like we saw in the past, as you mentioned, to mid range, like we're seeing right now, to behind the arc.

The difference between Bam and those guys, Horford and Lopez is that Bam is a super talented ball handler for a player his size. He's already the offensive hub of the heat. And so, you know, if he does add that, right now, where do you see his handle ranking amongst other big guys in the league? Because I feel like if it's not at least as good, it's arguably better than a lot of the guys, his size span being six and nine. So if you put that package together, to your point, we're rapidly approaching the point to call him a top 10 guy, I have a hard time, you know, even I have him ranked 18th right now, I have a hard time not put.

him higher because I feel like there's there's even more that they can get out of him at this moment if they really wanted to. Like that's the scary part. There's such low-hanging fruit for him. And he's already good at just about everything. And if he just kind of reaches for that low-hanging fruit, he's going to shoot up. And I guess one of the bright sides of the heat being as decimated as they have been with injuries and COVID and things like that, it's also kind of accelerated a timeline for him to

realize that he has to be this aggressive. after the Nets game, he said so in the post-game, press it. Like, I have to be aggressive earlier. And if he really takes that to heart and we see a more aggressive fan from the start of the games, good luck trying to defend the heat,

especially when they get the full strength. And you know what? You wrote a story on basketball news.com pretty recently about Tyler Hero's titled, Tyler Hero isn't a point card, but that's where he belongs for now. And there was a section in that that I think hits exactly the point you just mentioned there.

You wrote, quote, Hero isn't a point card, but that's exactly why it's important for him to get these reps now. Allowing a guy is important to the heat's long-term goals as hero to stretch the limits of his game is more important than a gaudy regular season net rating. That paragraph there nails the point that you were just making about bam. Like the benefit of these injuries is he can do more with the ball on his hands. The benefit of playing hero more with the ball in his hands gets him those reps. And that's exactly what heat culture is, right?

It's balancing, competing on the court with player development. They have always heavily invested in both. And that's what gets you guys like Bam and Hero who get better and get better quickly. And with Hero, his progress this season and his role has sort of been a bit overshadowed by Bam becoming the player that he is. What type of progress or improvements have you seen Hero make this season, whether it was between the end of the season in March and the bubble or between the bubble and the start of this season right now? I think the big thing for him is that he's been more decisive. He has this craft in pick and roll. I'm not going to say he's not lucidotice, so I want to make that clear.

But in terms of the way that they want to win and pick a roll, it's a lot of hesitation, there's a lot of deceleration, it's getting the guy off balance and then kind of setting up a pull-up or step back. So they want to win in similar ways, is the point of that comparison. So he showcased that in points last year. he's doing a better job of kind of reading space against drop coverage knowing when to snake the pig knowing when to go into those pull-up jumpers when to take an extra dribble to really force a rotation and then that opens up a passing windows for him but i think the big thing for him is just reading the game

quicker and making quicker decisions because he has the skill to win in a myriad of ways this season he's shooting 60% of drives to the rim up from 47% during the playoffs 47% as well during the regular season and obviously a small sample size at this point. It'd been January, not even a full month into the season. But, you know, you mentioned the craft scoring around the rim. He's very raw in college in that way. But his level of improvement, you know, with a guy like him, the feel and the touch, the ability to have those tough crafty finishes around the rim,

a lot of it is like exactly what you're saying. It's about the ability to get to the basket. Have you seen him improve his handle it all from a technical standard? point or a lot of it is just like getting used to the speed of the game, the physicality of the game. I would say it's the latter. The handle is still not where it needs to be for him to be a consistent lead handler. I think that's also why I love that Miami kind of threw him to the wolves earlier in the season.

Like he started the season off against Orlando. He gets Mark Hill Fultz. He gets the Pelicans and Lonzo ball on the Christmas Day matchup. He gets Drew Holiday in back-to-back games after that. So all four of those guys pressured his handle and he struggled at. times when they did so. He's still very reliant on high ball screens just to kind of help him get a head start. But once he has that head start, he has a better feel of what to do from there. So I would like to see the handle Titan. I think that's just going to come with more reps and more

experienced against those high caliber perimeter defenders. So Hero, here's name is obviously been mentioned in a lot of, you know, trade conversations. And, you know, some heat fans would like to see him go for it hard. And obviously that then it happens. Some heat fans would like to see him go for it. be a lot of heat fans would want to hold on tight with Tyler Harrow and keep him around for a long time. What level do you think he can reach on the offensive on the floor? We mentioned his handle on some of the weaknesses there. Does he have that in a combination of burst and skill to be a guy who can be somebody who's an end game option and a more consistent basis without needing a screen without needing that pick and roll? Like what level do you see here are reaching

in his prime? I want to see more improving what the handle, obviously. I think he has an all-star ceiling. I think his touch is so good. And I will go back to the first Sixers game for this year, when again, they were just kind of decimated by injuries slash COVID. And he started mismatch hunting against Dakota Matthias. I think I'm saying that right.

and he's just hitting him with these crossovers and these sidestep threes, and they were contested, but he was making them without much difficulty. So on one hand, it's impressive that he has that level of shot making when it gets it rolling. On the other hand, it did require him to hunt by far the weakest defendant on the court, and he still wasn't generating a lot of separation. So in terms of a late game option, I think you're still going to want to give him a head start. and if you haven't got like bam out of body with a screen for you, then that definitely puts you.

That's what you want. So from there, if he's able to get a bit of a head start, then again, he's improved at getting to the rim and finishing at the rim. The pull-up jumper is there from mid-range or from three. And if he does force a switch, he has shown the ability to knock down tough shots. So I do think he can get there. I just want to see more of a handle before I'm comfortable with him having that role consistent.

he's idolized Devin Booker. He talked about this before he was drafted. He loves Devin Booker. And clearly like they, you know, they're similar. You know, they're similar in the way that they approach the game and the way that they play, especially when Booker was that young. Can you see him reaching that level? Devin Booker's level right now, like the 12ish, 13th best, maybe 15th best player in the NBA. Is that potential there for him or, or in all likelihood, is hero more of like a Booker light? I feel like he's a little. bit of a Booker light. I think the size difference, even though Booker isn't huge, but that kind of helps on the margins against some of the stuff that getting to the limit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those little advantages matter against the higher

level competition. Like, Devin Booker can create shots against just by anyone. Like, he has a higher release point. He's just a little bit bigger. He's able to get the inside shoulder and that opens up driving lanes a little bit easier than a guy like hero. So, I don't know if he gets white.

there. But I do think he can get to maybe the tier right under Devin Booker. So maybe not a top 15 guy. Maybe he can become a top 25, top 30 guy. And still, if you get that with the 13th pick or 14th pick, whichever one it was, you take that 10 out of 10 times. That's a big W for sure. And we're recording this Monday afternoon before Miami plays Brooklyn again.

On Saturday night, the heat lost by only four points without Jimmy Baller, who's been out recently. they're under 500 right now, but, you know, with BAM's development, like we're talking about, with Tyler Hero getting better, once Butler's back, it feels like this team is going to be a lot better than a below 500 team for sure. Ultimately, the question of what the heat is, and that's my question for you, are the Miami Heat great enough right now to get to the finals again as presently constructed? I think they could. It's just, it's a very low percentage bet right now. I think it's still a situation to where they would be a if everything breaks right team.

And I think they're a move away from firmly putting themselves in that Milwaukee slash Brooklyn slash Boston tier. So I think they're moving away from being comfortable. But still, they do still match up pretty well with Milwaukee. They still match up pretty well with Boston. At full strength, if they match up okay with Brooklyn, I would worry about the mismatch hunting aspect from them. I mean, you can have an Avery Bradley on a kair. where you can throw a Jimmy Butler on to James Harden. And if you want to, you can throw a bam on the Cameron Durant

and make those guys work. It's just who guards Joe Harris at that point, those kind of matchups. But so there are worlds where I can see the heat beating those contenders, but I don't feel as good about them as I do about those other teams. That makes sense. I'm with you there. I think, you know, if things break right, right?

You know, like you need a little luck along the way anytime. You know, even if you're the favorite, you need a little bit of luck and good fortune to get all the way. to the finals and win it at all. But ultimately, they do feel like a team that's one move away from being, you know, a clear favorite or if not, clear favorites, you know, one of the obvious favorites. And, you know, Bradley Beale is going to be the next name that people talk about. The Wizards stink right now.

Russell Westbrook, it's, you know, I've never been the biggest Westbrook fan, but it's honestly kind of tough to watch him right now. He just looks like a total shell of his former self. Their coach said after the game that, you know, Russ is healthy, but not a hundred 100% basketball healthy. I mean, it just, it doesn't look great. So for the Wizards, it feels like we're on a path where Beal could be available. Is Beal with a hero in a deal the type of thing that the heat should be going for here?

Or how do you envision that next move, you know, for them to become that team that we're talking about? That can actually, you know, hoist Larry O'Brien Trophy at end of the season. It depends on how serious the heat are about contending for a title this season. I think if you're just looking at it with a three or five-year view, then sure, make the deal for Bradley Bill if it's available right now. But I think if you're just taking this view, especially in the season as weird as this one, I think solidifying the four is a more pressing lead

than trying to go in for the star swing at guard. So I would prefer to see Miami try to swing a trade for a PJ Tucker or a Thaddy is young rather than kind of push all their young chips to the table for Bradley Bill, who would obviously help like Bill's a top 20 guy in league easily. But I don't know if that's Miami's primary issue. So I would, I think that's

a move that they try to explore this off season once they see what happens with their cap space since so many of the top guys have already resigned or whatever. It's a tough, it's a tough, you know, way for them to balance because ultimately you have Jimmy Butler and Bam at a bio two top 15, 20 guys and you want to capitalize

on that. But you also don't want to do something that compromises your future. And with the Miami Heat, it's more than just BAM. It's more than just hero. They have some other good young players in their team as well. Precious are true of who they drafted in the first round this year. What are your early impressions of his game? I like his field.

I think my favorite thing about watching Precious is watching him operate as the role man, because he already has a good grasp of when to set a hard screen, what kind of angle to set that screen at. And just watching him transfer from screen to the roller, he flips his hips very well, flips him very quickly. choose up space. So that's been fun to watch. Yeah, he is a fantastic athlete.

So he has a nose for the ball on the offensively. He really competes defensively. He has struggled to kind of track more complex actions off the ball. So space your bays and give him the trouble. He is only six nine. So once he was matched up with Joelle and B, he just kind of swallowed him up. But, I mean, that's just a thing you expect.

Ultimately, I've been pretty pleased with what I've seen for him so far. So Spolster said recently that he wants to keep things simple for Achua. You mentioned how sometimes when he's off ball, he loses track of his man. I would assume, you know, Spolster doesn't get into the nitty gritty on a lot of time. But I would assume that's why he doesn't want Bam and Achua sharing the floor too much. He wants to keep things simple for Atchua. But do you, what's the future look like with those two guys on the court at the same time with their level of flexibility, their level of versatility on that end of the floor? how do you see those two guys fitting together once a chua is ready for that level of responsibility

once he is ready i think that's going to i think that's largely going to fall on bam's development oddly enough because like the easy thing to talk about is the lack of spacing between those two neither of those guys are three-point shooters but i do think you could kind of invert the floor with bam because of the passing ability that he provides from the high post and you can just you can have him operating at the high post it's like a dribble handoff hub or whatever you can have I mean, you can have pressures in the dunker spot, and you have shooters around those too. So I think there is a way to make that work.

But you would need more shooting improvement from BAM, spread it out a little bit more, or you need BAM to be a slightly better decision maker. I say he is a fantastic big man passer, but maybe a fine playmaker because he does try to thread the needle on some tight window throws that just aren't there and don't have upside if they are made.

So he still has some things to work out in terms of decision-making and when to kind of force it and when not to. If either of those two things improved, then I think the offensive fit is a lot better than people would give it credit for on paper. And the defensive versatility kind of speaks for itself. Like those guys are both very mobile and can switch out onto the perimeter. So you can kind of limit off-ball actions for other teams as well with that kind of talent. It'd be fun to watch those two guys.

I mean, we talk about like needing Yonis stoppers. Those two guys could potentially both fill that void together and, you know, take turns doing it like that's the that's the great thing like you can play bam right now 35 minutes per game and then plug in at you over only 13 minutes right you can plug him in there and have them do similar things as bam granted it's not at the high higher at that level but you can still offer a similar construct to grow into and you know another guy that they have an uber athletic player that i know you like you've mentioned them on the podcast is k z oh man tell tell me tell me about your love for kzi akpala

He's just a fun dude. He's just a lanky guy that can make plays in open space. He's just fun to watch. The first real flash we got from Casey last year came in a meaningless game against the Sacramento Kings. He threw him out there at the top of their zone. And he just wrecked them for like five minutes straight. Just playing in the passing lanes, digging and recovering. You got a couple of steals, got some breakaways.

So there's your early upside. There's your early reason to play Casey out of Paula. He is a ranging wing that can make plays. He can defend a multitude of positions already. We don't really know what he is offensively yet. He did flash some shooting in college. He's looked fine in the corners. Hasn't look very good elsewhere.

He has upside as a driver, but kind of similar to Bam, there's an aggression issue there. I don't know if it's just him trying to stay out of the way and not made mistakes, but he isn't forcing the issue as much as I would anticipate. doesn't attack close outs particularly aggressively, which is odd because of his frame. So he needs to find himself offensively,

do a better job of making quick decisions. Defensively, he does get lost off ball a little bit. The on ball flashes are there, but once you get into kind of defending screening actions and things like that, he can't get lost a little bit. I would assume that's why Spoh is a little hesitant to play on big men's right now.

But this is a weird season, man. everyone's out. Like just give him the reps. Let him get better. That's just that's kind of what I've been shouting about on the podcast. Like he isn't there yet, but that's why you need to play him. Like let speed up the curve. I like Casey. He was a guy, you know, at Stanford, very raw. Everything you're saying about, you know, like sometimes, you know, attack and close has lacks the aggression. He doesn't have a great feel off the dribble necessarily at with his handle. Defensively, you see the versatility, six nine, seven two wingspan. Like he can be super switchable on that end of the floor.

A good long-term piece, someone that you like to have on your bench that could easily pop. You mentioned that he needs to find himself offensively. Let's move on to our next guy, a guy who has always known himself offensively. And that's Zach Levine. On a recent episode of the Dunker Spot,

you mentioned how impressed you are by Levine's progress this season with the Bulls. He's averaging 27.6 assists, six rebounds with excellent efficiency as a score. And I think he's playing more attentive defense than he has in the ball. pass. It feels like he's been in the league forever, but he only turns 26 this March. So with Levine, in what ways have you seen him improve this season that has you so impressed?

The biggest, like, we know what he brings as a score, like incredibly smooth handle, can get to the room what he wants, explosive leaper, very good pull-up shooter. Honestly, one of the more underrated deep pull-up shooters that we have in the league. I don't think people, you know, he's not to the Steph Dane level, but like the tier below that, he's kind of there. He's good. So he has all of that stuff.

But what has kind of held him back in my eyes as being a legitimate number one option has been the passive. He has had some pretty blatant examples of tunnel vision throughout his career. Like some of that is the scheme, whatever you want to call what Jim Boylan was running. Some of that was, you know. Well, Jim Boylan and the Bulls, They emphasize pushups and suicides.

That's the statistics that they tracked more than anything else. That's what Boylan loved. Yeah. Good thing for them. They have a real coaching staff there right now. There we go. There we go. Thank goodness for Billy Donovan.

But like some of that was coaching. Some of that was the roster around him in terms of just talent or injuries. But a lot of that was just Levine, like very one-track minded as a score. But this year, not only has he continued his progress in making basic reads, we're now starting to see more flashes of legit eye manipulation. He's not just turning the corner on the screen, the defense rotates and then he makes the kickout. It's, I'm going to go this way

because I know this guy in the weak side is going to move here if I do this. So then I can kind of force that second guy behind him who has to rotate into a tough decision and I can make that pass from there. So the fact that he is now starting to skip steps in pick and roll, that's scary because of the many ways that he can score authentically. to pay attention to him there and now he's starting to think the game. So it's just really making it difficult to defend Zach Levine at this point. He's, you know, I've knocked Zach Levine a lot

throughout his career for some real horrific defense at certain points of his career. But I'm going to say this season, he's been solid at least. And I think he had one of the best defensive games of his career last Friday against Charlotte. He had some really good moments on the defensive end of the court where he's just locked in. He's more locked in. And that's encouraging. to see. And the offense, he's always been a guy who's, you know, score, score, score, score, score, and then a pass. But it feels like you mentioned the eye manipulation. That's the difference. That's the number one difference with him. He's not

just a guy that's reacting to what the defense is doing. He's creating moments for himself or for his teammates. And you mentioned on the pod with Steve Jones, the Dunker Spot, how you know with Levine he's on a losing team right now and he's been a lot of bad situations throughout his entire career but you know listening to your conversation with him i can't help but wonder like what you mentioned comparing him to donovan mitchell like what happens if those two swap places like if you plop Levine into utah where they have a rim running center who protects the room at the highest level in ruddy gopere where they have a secondary shot creator in mike conley they have a joe ingalls

they have a boyon bogdanovish they have a whole bunch of guys in that team that around a guy who can get buckets for you and Mitchell. But if you plug Levine into that, I feel like Levine's at the point where he's ready to contribute to a contender right now, like today, if they trade places. Absolutely. Like, I think the fit would be pretty seamless,

like him and Dr. McChle both win in similar ways. And Levine is a little bit bigger. But I think the, where it gets tough is defensively, because I think when both guys are engaged, Mitchell just kind of flashes a little higher. Yeah. than Levine does.

So I think that's where you kind of split hands between which guy is better. But offensively, like, I do think Levine takes that offense to another level just because he can operate in a lot of the same ways that Mitchell does. I think the passing, if it's not on par,

it may be a little bit better right now. And Levine just brings a little bit more as a consistent score. So I think that's a fun conversation to have between those two because not both of those guys are playing at a high level right now. No doubt about it.

Mitchell this past week has been outstanding to watch. And obviously we've seen these highs from him in the past, including in the bubble. But, you know, these two guys continuously get better. I think, I forget exactly, but I believe you said on the pod, you wish Mitchell was 5% better. Right now we're getting like 25% better. Yeah.

And whatever that part was recorded a couple weeks ago. With these two guys, that the difference, like you said, the eye manipulation that we see from the would be in, with Mitchell, that's really the next step is as a passer continuing to get better. And by the way, like, he was a guy thrown into a situation where he had to handle the rock at a much higher level than anybody could have anticipated from a young player, you know, drafted outside the top 10. And he has gotten a lot better than what he was in college, his two years, playing for the Cardinals.

So, you know, with him, I think it's important to no development isn't linear. and that he he's a guy I liked in the draft, but he's further ahead of where I thought he would be. He's probably better right now than I ever thought he would be. He's a really great player, top 25 guy. And Levine, you mentioned how comparable those guys are. I don't think many people would consider Levine a top 25 or 30 guy right now, but that's because of the situation that he's in.

Do you think he's actually genuinely at that level right now, or is it unfair to put a guy like Levine, you know, in the top 25, top 30 conversation, until you actually see it for real in a winning environment. Because it is different, and the game does demand different, you know,

things from an individual player. Like, he won't be able to score in the way that he does right now in Chicago, surrounded by better talent. Yeah, I think there's something to be said about, like, the playoff resume. Like, we just haven't seen much Levine in that level.

Donovan Mitchell's been in the playoffs every year of his career. So he's been the focus of playoff defense. And we've seen the highs, you know, as recent as last season. We've seen the lows. We've seen what happened, you know, in a couple of Houston series, the way he could knock down shots and it got ugly very quickly. So I do want to see Levine in that setting.

As you mentioned, the defensive energy has definitely improved this year. I want to see how long that lasts over this kind of regular season. And if the Bulls are able to get into a play-in setting or make the playoffs, then I want to see what that looks like. I want to see if with the heightened attention, he gets on offense, when we see a lapse in defensive energy because of that. So I want to see it there, but I think just in terms of the pure talent, like him and Mitchell are right there together.

And if you have one in the top 30, you have to have the other than the top 30 or, you know, 31 or 32, something like that. Levine, you know, being, you know, the guy that we're talking about here, his name has come up a little bit in conversations I've had with execs in recent weeks where people like, well, what about Levine? What about Levine? Go for him. And, you know, including back to last offseason, people started

talking about him because he does become a free agent in 2022. The Bulls, that team overall, they're kind of a weird mix. You know, you have a new regime here with the front office, a new head coach. And a lot of the times when those new hires are made, they get rid of, you know, what the past regime's acquired. What do you think about where the Bulls are right now with like the Larry Markanins and Wendell Carter's and Kobe White's and everybody they have in that team? What does this mix look like to you?

And if Levine is a keeper in that group, are there any other guys on this roster you consider as part of the core long term? They have an interesting collection of young talent that I like in a vacuum, but I'm still trying to figure out what the fit is. Like I've liked the flashes that I've seen from Patrick Williams. The pull-up jumper is money,

which is not a thing that I anticipated him to have this early. I love his pull-up so much. It's so smooth. So, yes. He's like coming off the bench at Florida, state and then go becoming a starter and looking pretty good. I mean, it's really cool to see that level of development happen so quickly for him. It's been great.

So I like Patrick Williams. I like Lori Markner in the brachium, and he has been pretty darn good this year. Nice to see him step back. It's nice to see an offensive coach realize that he can do more things than pick and pop. So that's fun. Yeah. I love Window Carter, Jr. Daniel Gafford has really provided some fire as a role man off the bench.

but it's just like even with that list, that's a lot of front court guys and they can't all stay. I think Patrick Williams' best spot is at the four. I still don't really know what Laurie Mark in his best position is. And Patrick Williams, while the pull-up jumper is reliable, the three-point shooting is still a bit of a question.

So that kind of goes into the fit with him and Wendell Carter. Like one of those two guys needs to shoot. Wendell was shooting a lot more frequently, like in the preseason early this season from three, hasn't looked great. Like the willingness is. good. I really hate that his shooting development was kind of stunted last year.

But, you know, you think about those things. Like, I like Kobe White, but if it's a Kobe White and Zach Levine back court, I like the passing progress I've seen from Levine, but that still isn't enough. Not a lead guy still. Unless you really implement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do feel like there needs to be

some sort of table setter there. I don't know. Both of those guys fit. So I do think there's going to be some consolidation at some point. for Chicago. I would think so, too. I'd expect them to be active, whether it's eventually moving Levine or even moving white, but ultimately, like, I think the one clear keeper on the team is Patrick Williams. Other than that, including Levine, I could see that front office moving pieces around, depending on what's available. Levine could be a keeper or a piece to move. And, like, they're one of those teams. They're not a great team right now. They're a fun young team to watch,

but from like a movement standpoint. I look forward to seeing how they build with these guys because like you said, in a vacuum, a lot of them are going to contribute towards winning, no matter where they play in the league. It's just a matter of getting the fit right with them. What team did you root for growing up? Miami.

Miami, okay. You grew up in South Carolina, right? Yes. So you became a heat fan. How did you become, what year did you become a heat fan? It would have been 05. So Dwayne Wade years, of course. Those are some fun, fun.

Miami Heat teams. It was a great time for my youth team. Very infuriating for my friends that wanted to play me in video games at that time. Are your friends Charlotte fans growing up? And you were the one Heat fan? Or were people fans of different teams? People were fans of different teams. Like, I was the one Heat fan.

But my best friend is a Laker fan. Honestly, probably the most diehard Laker fan I know, which is odd. He grew up together in South Carolina. He goes, he's young. to be and goes deeper back in Laker history than just by anybody I know which is incredible. I wish I had like an encyclopedia brain.

My brain just doesn't work like that. I can't remember things like that. Yeah, I'm kind of jealous, man. This is why I watch as much as I do. Like I can't commit it like that. How'd you get your start writing? It was, honestly, just looking for an outlet to talk about it.

I started out on Facebook. Actually, I was helping run an NBA page called NBA Talk. I got my start there posting free agency news. At the time, everyone, all these NBA pages were trying to be like the first one to get free agent signings and trains and things like that. So everyone's waiting for ESPN. I had a Twitter account that I barely used, but nobody knew who Woj was at that point.

He was at Yahoo. So like, I was the guy like, how was he getting this news like 45 minutes before Mark's nine? So that's how they were like, oh, let's get this guy on the page. But from there, I actually started breaking down. signings and I started doing like final series previews which wasn't seen on Facebook at that point and from there I built a decent following I started tweeting more at that point kind of built the following from Twitter there and that's just kind of led to a lot of freelance opportunities and building relationships that way and now here I am with basketball news

finally full time it's so cool man like I had read that you started on Facebook before and I realized you know like you said it was like just starting out with like sharing breaking news and like you said, Woge in the early 2010s. He was big on, you know, Twitter still. But like on Facebook, it wasn't necessarily a multi-media on every platform, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. And then you started doing more on those pages. Like, when did you first realize and was it on Facebook?

You're like, hey, like maybe I should try to make a career out of this. Like, when did that moment of realization happen? It was on Facebook because I just did not anticipate developing. the following that I did. Like, I very quickly became, like, it was an admin system there. So we had, like, seven or eight different people running the page. But, like, I quickly realized that my post were getting the most comments and likes and getting shared and stuff like that.

And I go to Twitter and more people started following me and I was relatively unknown. I said, like, my high school friends and stuff like that. And I'm just like, well, I love basketball. I love writing. Like, I'm not going to make the NBA as a player. So I want to stay connected in some way. So I just kind of kept pecking away at it. And I've had a lot of help and a lot of advice along the delay.

And it's just kind of helped me foster my voice, foster my writing. You know, kind of made that shift from breaking down transactions to getting into the exes and those of it because I just started falling more in love with basketball. And later, I just kind of realized that that lane isn't super saturated. So I was able to kind of make my name in that way as well. and I've just kind of been building on that. I mean, that's why, like I said, at the top, I first recognized about that with your work

as your level of analysis and the approach you take. And you have insights that other people aren't talking about. And I think when it comes to even like overall career stuff, like you saying like with Facebook, you recognize that there wasn't something there, you tried to fill that void. You know, even starting the podcast with Steve Jones, you know, that's constantly expanding what you do.

I respect that, man. Like, I think that's a good quality. Like, no matter what, field of work somebody works in or no matter what it is that they aspire to do it's trying to find something that's missing in the market and trying to provide it and you know in my own way i try doing that with the draft guide the NBA draft guide i started doing back in 2014 when i was you know freelancing for a bunch of different places and i think you know a lot of young people listen to the show and i think that's you know what people ask like what do you how what do you do you do to get

to you know to that stage of your career or whatever you no matter what it is i think that's one of the key things. And, you know, it's really cool to see you, you know, now at basketball news.com creating the podcast of Steve Jones, which, by the way, like, Pod's really good already. You know, you guys are like three or four episodes in it. Like, your chemistry is only going to get better over time. Like, I'm excited to see that develop. I like listening to it, man. It's great.

I appreciate it, man. It is, it is a blessing to be able to talk to Steve every week. Like, I feel like I'm pretty good at, like, picking things up on what's happening on the court. But just watch his Twitter feed during the game one day. like he will see a play will happen like 15 seconds later he has the clip and he's pointing out like four or five different things that's happening instantaneously and i'm just like i am not close to being at that level and i kind of made a thread you know talking about the pod and how it's kind of growing up and stuff like that and one of the things i pointed out was like i tried to make sure that i'm never the smartest person at what i'm doing like i want to i want to read smart people i want to listen to smart people i want to attach myself to smart people so I can constantly grow. One of the reasons why I brought you on. Oh, yeah.

I'm just like, Steve is just so much better at this stuff than I am. It has so much for experience. Again, the former assistant coach, former video coordinator in the league. So, like, being able to gain insight from him, that helps my work. When he points out something that I miss, now I know to look for it. And that just kind of helps me grow. I've got to implement that to my own work. So it's been fun.

Steve's great. He's one of my favorite Twitter follows as well. Always insightful. So, Nakayas, can you tell the listeners where they can find your work? You can find my written work at basketball news.com. You can find the podcast, The Dunker Spot, on basically any podcast platform, Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, wherever. You can follow me on Twitter at Nikias, MBA, most original name on Twitter. Let's have some fun.

Rhymed. It rhymes with Tobias. It does rhyme with Tobias. Nakas, thank you so much for joining me today, man. This is fun. Thank you for having me, man. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Ringer NBA University, and thank you, D'Isaia Blakely, for producing it.

Please do us a favor. Give the Ringer NBA show a five-star rating and a comment if you're listening on Apple, or please share the podcast with your friends and subscribe to the Ringer NBA show wherever you get your podcast. You can hear me every Tuesday and Friday on the Chris Vernon on the mismatch, which now has its own podcast feed. Appreciate you listening to all of our NBA shows. Hope you have a fun rest of your day. Thank you.