The Ringer NBA Show - 'Sources Say’ — NBA Gossip in the Age of Leaks (Ep. 159)

Episode Date: November 8, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Juliet Litman unpack the newest batch of drama surrounding the Cleveland Cavaliers (1:02), speculate on the Chicago Bulls’ infighting scandal between Bobby Portis and Nikola Mirotic (13:13), celebrate the most fun teams in the league (17:03), and assess the state of NBA gossip thus far in the regular season (24:21). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We want to have day suck. Yeah. We're here. It's an alarm, if you will, because it's another episode of Source to say. I'm Juliette. I'm Chris Ryan. Hi, Chris. Hi, Juliet.

We've, what, three weeks into the NBA? Yes, I believe this is the fourth week we are in the middle of. So we made it through three weeks without Gordon Hayward. But plenty of Gordon Hayward injury updates. It's being documented religiously, shall I say. It's Wednesday afternoon. Yeah. More coming to you on countdown tonight, apparently.

A sit down. A sit down, yes. Well, he's always sitting down. E. That's a good joke. It's fine. He's going to be fine. He's shooting in a chair.

We're all good with that joke. I would demand we leave it in. But let's move on to the seat of drama for the last four years, really. Since we've known each other. Since we've known each other. Yeah. The defining team of our adult relationship. The second era of LeBron James and Cleveland.

Cavs, Cavs, Cavs. Who gets fired first in your opinion? Tyron Liu or Jason Kid. You can't fire like a... Oh, Ty or Jason? Yeah. Kid, but I think they're going to give Kid a little bit more of a leash because of the blood so trade.

Okay. Is Tyron Liu in trouble? Can we just take a step back? Are we freaking out too much about teams right now? There's a lot of parity. Everybody's six and four, five and five. Or four and five if you're the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sure. But like are we getting a little bit too jumpy? Like, do you think that like talking about Jason Kid or Ty Lou's job security is premature? Maybe with Ty Lou, he's a championship.

winner? I don't think so with Jason Kidd. It's go time with Janus. Let's capitalize on this before he leaves for another team. Yeah. I know he said that when we wrote about this on the ringer last week. I know he said that he doesn't want to be in a flashy city like New York or L.A., but like, okay. I don't think they have to worry about Janus leaving. I think they have to worry about just that team being good. Sure. Let's go back to Cleveland. Sure. Yeah. Sorry. So this is what LeBron has done in the last couple days. Yeah. Last Friday, the wizards, more on them to come, claimed that the Cavs went for the number two seats. They wouldn't have to Duck in him. Wouldn't have to play the Wizards in the second round. LeBron heard that from Bradley Beale. And was like, okay, sure. I'll score 57 points tonight and embarrass you. And he had the defining performance of the young NBA season, one of the biggest fuck you performances in quite some time.

And we were like, oh, right, the calves are fine because whenever LeBron wants, he can just do something like that. And then they had some more bad losses. And LeBron did an Instagram post of the fist from Arthur. Well, we should contextualize it with two things happen. And Kyrie went off. And Boston looked incredible. They're still nine and two among the best teams in the league.

After their one seven in a row. Nine and now they've won nine in a row. Yeah. So Kyrie went off. They had a great game. Boston's the toast of the league. And this posting of the meme, which I had to watch Bob Lee ask what the meme meant to Dave McManmanman.

What was McManerman's response? He explained it. But it was just like watching people be like, it is the meme of the popular children's show, Arthur the Ardvar. And it was just like, it's just tough for a rat, man. Seriously. It's like, Bob Lee should be like doing Pentagon paper stuff, you know? Or Paradise Papers.

And he's like, what is Arthur the Ardvark? Yeah, it's tough. No shots at Bobby, though. He's the guy. So that happened. And then also the next day, fellow clutch client, Eric Bloodsoe, got traded from Phoenix to, I guess, division rival Milwaukee Bucks. Sure.

And I think that there had been some talk about, like, could the cabs be in play for the Bledso? Skeets had a theory on Twitter that LeBron knew the night for about the trade and therefore. And it was really about that. He was like mad that his team wasn't making the moves he wanted. And rightfully so. Their roster's looking a little thin. Or a little

old, yeah. Or old. A little frail. Sure. Frail stars. So we've got D. Rose with a minutes restriction. Kevin Love experiencing stomach pains and shortness of breath while getting yelled at by Ty Lou. J.R. Smith in a really cold shooting slump, the coldest has ever been. 25%.

Yes. Dwayne Wade demoted to the bench. and then complaining about the starters. The one thing I would say about the Tai Loo stuff is that there is a lot of competing narratives about whose ideas what. You know, it's like they work for a blog or something. And they're like, that was actually my idea.

It was my idea to do this. And it's like, Ty was like, oh, yeah, I've decided to move D-Wade to the bench. And D-Wade's like, I volunteered. Right. The thing is that you can tell by Juliet's energy level that, like, we've been here before. We really have.

It doesn't usually come this early. I was thinking about this. We're still in the first month of the season. What was the first, the Blatt year? The Blatt year was 14-15. And what, I mean, what was there a record? Like, weren't they like 9 and 8? Yeah, they were like 500.

Yeah. I think Royce Young tweeted about that in comparing the current thunder to that Cavs team. And the first team, right? In the first team, yes. The thing is, though, with this team, they should be better. Like, on paper, a LeBron was like, this is the deepest we've been any season, which, like, could have been true if this was their roster in 2014. It could have been true if they had Isaiah Thomas.

It could have been true if they had Tristan Thompson. It would have been true if they were getting consistent performances from J.R. Smith, and they don't have him on Shumper. I just don't think that Isaiah Thomas experiment is going to go well. If Isaiah Thomas jumping into LeBron's comments to be like, knew me to take care of something is a sign of things to come, I'm just a little bit worried about like, what page Isaiah Thompson is on versus what page LeBron's on. So do you think that Isaiah is trying to curry favor with him? I think he's like trying to curry favor with him, but also just like out of the loop. Like, is that funny?

Like, have we ever seen any of LeBron's other teammates jump into his comments? No, because usually LeBron is sub-tweeting them anyway, so they're probably just like, I'm not participating in this narrative. And like, like, we were just joking, but, like, very conspicuously, Gordon Hayward is, like, part of the Celtics,

and the Celtics are like, this is our guy. The Cavs aren't, like, waiting with baited breath for Isaiah Thomas to get back. He's been working out. He's like, he looks great. Like, I mean, I think that there's, like, he's not going to be back until, like, 2018, but still.

Right. I just don't think that will solve the problems. So here's one thing I noticed right now. This would be my ultimate outcome. I don't know if I can take an entire NBA season of the Cavs being mediocre. But clearly they beat the bucks, they beat the Wizards.

On any given night, they're capable of beating anyone. I would love it if the Cavs were like, you know what, we're going for the eighth seat to play Boston in the first round. That'd be amazing. That would be incredible. You don't want to leave it too tight. Right now they are tied for eighth in the east.

That would be phenomenal. Yeah. And I can see the Cavs winning. Yes, we do. That would be amazing. 100%. Also, LeBron is just really into, like, his personal brand right now. Like, he was shouting out Larry Markinen.

And he was like, yeah, he wore my sneakers at Arizona. And talking about scouting him in Arizona. Yeah. Yeah. And then Barry was like, yes, he wore my shoes. And then J.R. Smith, his only good shooting night was last night, Tuesday evening. And LeBron's like, yeah, he finally put on the bronze and he started shooting better. And I just feel like, going for the eighth seed would almost like help LeBron's personal

brands. Like, yeah, he really can do it all. he can make the finals from the eight. Like, that would be, that would actually, in some ways, like, be good for his narrative. So I'm surprised given, like, what's been happening that we haven't talked more about LeBron leaving next year or whether or not LeBron's uncertain future

has affected this roster. I just think it's, like, a bunch of guys who are a little too old and have a little bit of an ego and probably are like, it was a short camp. I'm not in shape. I'm not playing my best. I'll get it together. The big thing is, like, you're always trying to pick with the Cavs

is, like, who is LeBron talking about or who is the object of their ire? And it's probably Kevin Love. Probably. Because I felt like Kevin Love had a great game last night And everybody was like he needs to do that every night It wasn't like wow Kev It's just so great to play with him

It was like yeah you're supposed to be doing that Yeah That's what we pay you for It's like you had one job But here's a thing They have moved him around the most Yeah So it's not really fair

It's like Gons and I talk about this too Like put him in a position Pick what position he should be playing Right And have him do that every night It's not really his fault If it's changing all the time Too many cooks in the kitchen

Too many cooks in the kitchen That is true The only like positive of all of this There's many positive to take that back. I enjoy a Cavs drama. I enjoy Damien Lillard liking this Instagram for no reason whatsoever, like just getting involved, making sure people see his name. I did enjoy the, did Draymond respond to LeBron on Instagram? And then Draymond being like, today you guys shot and missed.

I love that he like set everybody up for failure there. Totally. One thing you just said that we haven't talked a lot about LeBron leaving is I just feel like we're still litigating the summer, like basically with every team. Yeah, you were talking about this earlier. Actually, I like this take. And so it feels a lot like we can't move forward. Like I almost feel like MBA discourse is very similar to political discourse. It's like, where were you when Jimmy Butler got treated?

Where were you when Dway got his buyout? Where were you when Donald Trump won? Like, where were you on the day of the Women's March? Right. There's so much behind us that we're still, it's like just so different than it was in years past. It's like impossible to even think about the next off season because it's a season unto itself. Sure. I mean, I guess to take your analogy then a step further, would you say that Markell Fultz's

quote unquote shoulder injury is the Donna Brazile book. Interesting. I need to parse that a little bit more. Basically, it's like it actually doesn't matter. Like we're reading too much into it. It's impact on voters. I don't know if Chris, the false thing is the whole bucket of shoulder fluid, if you will.

But are we pouring the shoulder fluid out and putting it in? I don't know. Markell's going to be fine, man. It doesn't really matter because Ben Simmons is really good. And so is Jol Embed. Yeah. Ben Simmons is like going to be an MVP candidate. I think Ben Simmons is the ringer's rookie of the year,

like unanimously beloved to the ringer. Yes. Very extremely rare for a player to be loved like that. It could be poor Zingas, except we have so much internal strife with the people who ride the hardest for him. Yeah. That it's going to hurt poor Zangis for us. But I also just know that there will be a poor Zagas scandal.

I'm positive about it. There's no chance of it. Because of his DMs? Because of his DMs. He's young. He's in New York. I'm just 100% sure. Brothers in the mix.

Brothers in the mix. Anytime you have a very strong old family member of the mix. Yeah. I mean, like look at the ball family. We already got a brother scandal for Lonzo. And also he's not playing well. stuff about like Oklefor's dad kind of, not like in a bad, bad way, but just like, he's just like

around. Like, if you had, if your son was in the NBA, you think you would be a fixture? Like, I game. You had a son and then you yeah, like, he was in the NBA. I think I would go, I would want to be like a Sonia Kari type, like really prominently in the stands cheering, but like not interfering with basketball. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. She's my

NBA mom role model. Okay. One thing about your mom, also is interesting. He'll throw himself into any fray these days. Like, literally, he commented on Bob McNair freely and openly for like a good seven minutes when that um when bob ignair had like his horrible inmates comments he at the end of a game the other night he um kept curry and durant on the court to like have like a huddle with them at the after a victory and like you said he's also throwing himself

into like all this other cavs stuff too well not intentionally we got involved and then when it was like misconstrued it's like i think that we overrate the need to comment you know like it's one thing it's about taylor swift in the election or something like that but draymond doesn't need to comment on whether or not his Instagram post was about like LeBron or not. And looking at Draymond's Instagram, I would venture to say like probably 80% of it

is not done by him because it's a lot of like him walking off a plane and saying back from back to the bay. Yeah. You know, it's like nobody would actually insta that. Right. Counterpoint, we have this LeBron scandal right now where he slid into the DMs of a model named Heidi. Is there any allegedly we have to throw in that? No, I don't think so.

Okay, page six never lies. Page six never lies. Also, she's got the screenshots. Okay. So, I mean, I think we're fine. I guess we could say allegedly to cover our bases. It's not our bases. I mean, like LeBron's bases.

I mean, we're in an age of leaks right now, you know? Okay. Snowden over there. I believe that LeBron does all of his own social media posting. Okay. So I think it kind of depends on what kind of star you are. From an Apple or a Samsung. Ooh, thanks for bringing this up.

He was on the finale of Carpool Karaoke on Apple Music with James Gordon. It begins right across the street from our office. You can see Sunset Gours. studio. And he's texting. They joke about texting Jay-Z. And you can hear the I-Message sound. You don't see his phone. They conspicuously don't show it. Yeah. But you hear the I message sound. And I was like, huh, does that mean LeBron has an iPhone? But then I was thinking maybe they put the sound in because he does have a Samsung, but they didn't want to show it because it's Apple. But they wanted like a cue that he had like sent the message. Gotcha. So that was like accidentally generic,

like the NBA group check podcast music kind of thing. I think so. I bet he does it was Samsung. The only way to truly know would be to see what the font looks. looked like in his story, like when he has like Instagram. Oh, yeah. Because it's slightly different on Android. I got to check that out. Okay. We'll hit that two weeks from now.

Yeah, so LeBron sliding into DMs, not surprising at all. Okay. Only surprising thing is being called out for it. What did he actually say to her? Is he just like great, great photo? He was like, asked her something about hunting. Oh. She had been hunting or something.

He's just curious about the one. I think he saw it in his story. He and George Hill, two big proponents of hunting. Check out George Hill's Instagram. It'll blow your mind. Heart pass. Let's move on. to another team in the Midwest.

Yeah. The Chicago Bulls. Yeah. They literally have infighting. So on the eve of the season, we were doing NBA preview Paloosa, in fact. Bobby Portis clocked Nicola Miratich broke his jaw. Mertich has been out still. Speaking of like blow by blows and like how do we not get the like full story on this yet?

I don't know. Is it so dark that they can't talk about it? I think there must be stuff that people don't want to be out there. Because all like Justin Holliday has. a quote in the Chicago sometimes sometimes like we're the only ones who know what happened in the locker room and right um it just and the bulls have been a notoriously chatty organization in terms of like tell-alls about divisions within the team so for whatever whatever how and the fact that they're like so now the thrust of this sun time's piece it's like mirage is gone yeah that all

of the players just are on porters aside and they want meritage gone right even though he's the one who had his job broken yes port's got an eight game suspension for it. And just it's really weird. It is strange that no one has leaked what happened. Yeah. It speaks to, I think, also just like the level of dysfunction at the Bulls, which was echoed in the Q&A with Jimmy Butler today. Your third favorite Q&A, you read. My third favorite Q&A of the day, third of three. Um, you have to be the first you are. The first was the Hollywood reporter interview with Shonda Rhymes and Betsy Beers. A true delight. She's my professional role model. I love Shonda. I love Shonda. Yeah. The way she conduct herself is amazing. Number two was the

Vulture Q&A, Lucas Hedges, one of the young stars of the best movie of the year, Lady Bird, and then Jimmy Butler. Yeah. Does Jimmy Butler only agree to that if it's a Q&A? That's a great question. We're coming off a huge spade of NBA at long reads that are not Q&As, and I was like, interested. Did you think Jimmy Butler had long reed fatigue?

No, but I thought maybe there's like a wariness about how you're portrayed when it's not verbatim. Especially if, I mean, he does talk about what he said to the Bulls, which was basically me or Foyberg, and they made their choice. There's a lot of this or that in Chicago, apparently. Yeah. I mean, Chicago, there's a lot of teams where I find Cleveland pretty opaque. I think there's a lot going on in Cleveland that we don't understand. You know, like whether or not LeBron had, how much of a state did LeBron have over the way this roster was constructed?

How, if any indications, has he given Dan Gilbert, Kobe Altman, Talu, Dwayne Wade, whoever, about whether he's staying past this year? What is the plan for them? Like, does he want to oversee a rebuild with this Brooklyn pick? Does he want guys shipped in, shipped out? Or is he like, I'm like, this is my personal. journey that I'm doing. So it's like there are some teams like Cleveland that you're like, oh, I don't really, it's hard for really to say what's happening there. And even guys like Windhorst will be like, well, this, that, or the other thing,

but it's not like flat out. LeBron is the shadow GM of this team. With Chicago, it seems like almost everything you read is true. Totally. And it's kind of wild that the Bulls chose Hoyberg over Butler. Yeah. It's a Star's league. And by most accounts, Jimmy Butler is a star.

Yes. So where does that, I mean, in Chicago, she's been really bad shit now. of the ugliest best team in the league in the sense that they're just a tough watch but have won what five six in a row? Yeah, they've won six in a row now. And they are playing the Warriors tonight Wednesday. No Kevin Durant. They are boring like straight up. Just five in a row and they have a negative point differential. Right. Not to get two stats heavy here. That's not what this pods for. No stats necessary. But that's like an indication of just like that's it's like a tough hang. Totally. Also like opposite of LeBron, Towns like did like a whole Instagram story about getting his own girlfriend to like respond to him. And I think people. people read that wrong. It's like, oh my God, Towns is like going after this girl. And it's like, no, that's his girlfriend.

Like, okay, that's kind of sweet. And then Wiggins, I can't tell you anything about him. I remember following him when he was the high school senior and I was like, I don't want to look this kid's prom pictures. And I've never been interested in going back to his. To the Wiggins IG? Yeah. Like, it's just like, they're just not really a fun squad.

Jeff Teague. Like, they're good. That's good, I guess. It's nice for Towns. I want the best for him. So you're not intrigued by them. What? Personality-wise?

No. I mean, basketball is, yes. I'm probably most intrigued by personality-wise right now. Wow. You can say Boston if you want. It's not really Boston. Personality-wise, I think it's the Wizards. Up and down season for them.

Up and down season. Let's just, let me review some quotes from Kelly Ubrae. Here's Kelly on what constitutes an NBA rivalry. I wouldn't say altercations, but I would say altercations. Kelly on his Halloween costume. I was like a Dalmatian slash dead rock star. We made it look good. That's all I do.

Make stuff look good. Kelly on his putback dunk. I blacked out. God took over my soul at that point. Kelly on the Sixers. I don't trust the process. I trust God. Shout out to Jojo. What does that even mean?

Pretty iconic. Yeah. It's not about whether you believe in God or the process. Are you offended? Because you're a process truster now. You're like, your dive into the Sixers, like, fandom is wild. Wild to behold. I'm really happy for you.

I can't help the fact that a passion is being. reawoken at me. It is a really nice story. It's not even reawoken. I just also like I work with a lot of New Yorkers and Boston guys and I'm starting to get a little defensive. Okay. And also, it's not like the Sixers had a lot of nice things over the last couple of years. So like the glimmer of like enjoyment that I've gotten has been like trounced by all this Markell propaganda. I can't wait for Christmas day. Sixers at Knicks. Yeah. It's actually going to be, I was like, why are the Sixers of the Knicks play on Christmas? And now that's the best. Joe versus KP. Yeah, I can't wait. I'm like really excited about it. Let's get back to the Wizards. So I'm sorry. It's okay. I didn't mean to derail us.

with my maniacal local fandom. You're such a process truster. I wasn't ready for it. The Wizards are fun because they clearly have a ceiling, but they might not know it. Yeah, they don't know. And Scotty Brooks is like really nice, but not like a good enough coach.

You're seeing the best and worse of Scotty this year where it's like he has taken yet another like raw talent and started to develop him into like a legit NBA player in Ubre. But I don't know if they are creative enough throughout the game tactically or if their rotations are great in terms of their sub-patterns and stuff where they can beat teams

when it's crunch time. They're basically relying on Wall and Beal. It's a lot like The Thunder. Yes. And John Wall has kind of been up and down and I think he might feel already banged up already. The way he plays. Yeah, he plays so aggressively.

Yeah. And he got, he hurt his shoulder. He had like a stinger or whatever. Yeah. That was a tough fall. It was against Cavs. Yeah. And he didn't play that well.

They got trounced. this week. You didn't play great. But I don't know. They're just fun. They're kind of like rabble-rousers. And I long live the funeral game. I don't know if this Celtics team would not do that, I don't think. Yeah. But we just need some rivalries. I don't like laughing at cocky people because they make things interesting. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, like, I'm never going to knock the wizards for being like the Cavs ducked us because I'm like, thank God, say something.

Don't just be like, oh, we don't care who we're playing. We're just here to compete. I think personality-wise, I'm also pretty into the Knicks. Because I'm pretty sure there'll be a poor Zinga scandal, as previously mentioned. Nila Kina is just like excitement to be on the court and like watching his eyes like wide open. He's like we saw an interview yesterday with him and Batum and he looks like a child. Yeah, he's a kid.

But like that's like really cool to watch. Like he's developing. They just seem like they've been set free. Like Kyle Quinn makes, has like four blocks and like several games already. You know what's cool about them too is that like because of all the super team stuff, I've lost my faith in the individual's ability

to like basically put a team on his back. And that's exactly what Porzinger is doing. And he's playing with Doug McDermott and Lance Thomas and Kyle O'Kwin and Tim Hardaway Jr. And Edis can't play him canter. Yeah. And so, and he is out there doing it himself. Yeah. His usage is so high.

It's like Jason wrote about him on the ringer today. It was predictably like paternal. Yeah. But we're so used to be like, well, I guess Russ can't do it by himself. But it's like, Christops is doing it by himself. For like a team that's like a game above 500. I'm not getting carried alive. It's still.

Yeah. Whatever. Actually, they start out 0 and 3, and now they've got a... They're better than the calves. They're 6 and 3, I think now. It's great. I also just want to note that Kelly Ubrek could be getting fined for his jacket that said,

fuck you on it. Didn't meet the NBA standards. What Western Conference team is like the most fun? So purely televisually, I really enjoy watching the Blazers because they play close games. They don't play very good defense. I like watching Nurkich. Anything can happen. And they have good crowds.

It's an underrated part of the NBA television experience is the crowd. I often, when I'm watching a Houston game, not shots at the Rockets per se. But shots at the Rockets. Shots at the Rockets, which I've done over the years. But even Spurs games, because they're a late returning from halftime crowd, when I'm watching an NBA game and it is a sparsely attended game, I'm like, what am I doing wrong? How come the people in the town aren't here, but I'm watching? Should I be reading a John LaCari book?

You're like, if I'm buying it, these people need to buy in too. Or I'm wrong. You know what I mean? So I don't like defense. I like a team that plays close games. and I like a big crowd. So that's why I've been watching a lot of Portland recently. Portland seems to be a hipster team.

To me, they're the Western Conference Wizards in that they have a lot of self-belief, a very hard ceiling, and some really good characters. Yeah, they do. It's true. And Nurkich on the same team is a pretty great mix. I love Nerks.

It's absolutely my favorite player. How are you feeling about Myers? He hasn't really played. He's been injured. Kind of off the Myers' quote. I've written him off. He's nothing to me anymore. Okay. So that's my Western Conference.

Most fun team. I mean, for me, it's the Lakers. Sure. Why not? Having a lot of fun with Coos. Coos. I like that also Richard Sherman was wearing Coosma, Jersey yesterday. Yeah.

Welcome to the team, Rich. Do you think he goes by Rich? I think he goes by Rick. Rick Sherman. That's what everyone calls him. Should we just do a little OKC, our passion team? Yeah, sure. It's tough right now.

They're getting grouchy, which is fine. And I think there's a lot of scrutiny. But somebody was asking Russ about his free things. throws, he missed those three at the end of those games. The Blazers. Yeah. And he just kind of like rolled his eyes. Russ is already going to be pretty antagonistic with the press no matter what. But in losing times, I think he's like a little annoyed.

It's just obvious that it's just not working right now. I don't like blaming Russ. I think that he's actually the least of their problems. Right. Many people in our office are like, look at all the players who got better since they left playing with Russ. But Charks wrote about this. It was very optimistic.

So far has not been true. But Russ is like looking to distribute. He's looking to be a team. player. He's not looking to take over the games. He does it in the last two minutes. But first of all, we don't fault LeBron for doing that. He does that. He's been doing that for the last four years. So I'm not going to fault Russ for it. And second of all, he's needed to when he's done that, because they don't have an offensive system. Their system is Russ drives, makes an acrobatic pass back out to the top of the key and whoever is there takes the three. And that's just not an

offense. No, it's really not. And I want more for them. I wanted Mello to be happy in Oklahoma. I think they will be happy. I think that was like a weird ejection against the Blazers for Mello. got back in the game with the power of Ray Felton. But I don't know. I mean, I just, I'm, I'm definitely ready to, to sound the alarm about certain teams. Sure. I'm ready to sound the alarm about the heat. I'm pretty disappointed that my guy has, Hassan White's been benched.

Yeah. Yeah. They're in trouble. Also, D.N. Waiters was, like, not at a game, and they played really badly. If you're relying on Waiters that much, it's probably a problem. Have you been satisfied with the level of drama or gossip this season? No, I haven't. Is it because it's, like, retreads of,

stories past. Here's a good example. This podcast will go on. I'm just asking, like, in general. Totally. I think there's two things. One is we started doing this kind of podcast because of Paul George when he was dating Cali River. This is a perfect metaphor for where we're at. Yeah. He was dating Callie Rivers and they broke up because he ended up having a child with another woman. Then there's like a lot of reporting around that and like that was like a real crossroads for him. I remember a really good Candace Buckner profile of Paul George like a year

after that of him trying to like kind of really rehabilitate his image and the Pacers were back in the Eastern Conference finals. Okay. So that was like the Paul George that kind of inspired the kind of gossipy nature of this podcast. I find out last week

Paul George is a second child. They all grow up. With the same woman. Yeah. They're still together. And I just was like, wow, how's beautiful? They're starting a family.

That's lovely. But that is not the kind of salacious story that drives my MBA gossipy mind. I think we're just tired of the LeBron ones too. Yeah. Also, there's just a lot of harmony in the league.

I think that's part of the super team thing is there's less, there's less room for rivalries, and one of the reasons why the East I am finding more fun than the West is because there are more teams that could have a shot because they're not as good. Yeah, like random Pacers magic mix. The Pacers could make, or in the playoff hunt after three weeks. The Hornets are, like, oh, okay, Kemba Walker is, like, really, like, wants this this year. Yeah. Like, there's sort of, like, there's more of, like, a hunger among those players because there's more of an opportunity. There's, like, less beforegone conclusion. That

Kau will come back, and the Spurs will be fine. The Thunder will rest Kevin Drain against the wolves, and it doesn't matter. The wolves will grind out enough wins to get the four or five. Like, even if OKC doesn't make it and you're like, okay, that opens up space for someone, we knew going into the season that 10 teams in the West would be in contention. I think if OKC ever turns on each other, it'll be really interesting. I think the problem, we spent the entire first part of this podcast talking about

LeBron James. And it's just like he doesn't really commit to the bit. It's like he trolls a little bit. He puts up things. He's not stupid. He knows that putting up the Arthur meme is going to insettle some people. And then he doesn't say, like, it's because I wanted blood so. Or it's because I'm mad that we keep losing

Or it's because I wish Kevin Love Like didn't go gray. Right. The biggest drama in the Eastern Conference is Kari Irving, not believing the Earth is round, which Micah wrote about. And like his like back and forth on that And then like seemingly questioning the moon landing as well.

Yeah. That's distinctly less fun than like LeBron James sliding into someone's DMs. Sure. So we support science, you know. Yeah, absolutely. The Earth is round without question. We're a round earth podcast.

I thought you were to say we're a rounder And I was like, oh, okay, cool. I don't know how to gamble or play cards, but whatever. I bet by the next five, we'll be back in the mix. The pre- Thanksgiving pod will have something to talk about. That's true. Also, I just want to say that I think all of like the top unicorns, kind of except for towns are destined for scandal.

So like that's cool by me. Like, I'm just, I'm sure there'll be like something, some kind of beef between Simmons and Embedied, like for sure. These guys are all using cybor dust now. Okay. I could still like find out about a fight between teammates, you know? That's true. That's true.

So whatever. And they're not because girls aren't using cyber dust. So maybe they're talking to each other about something that could be like construed as tampering. But Chris Ops Porzingis is not like DMing someone like, hey, can you join CyberDest so I can DM you in sketchily and disappears? Like that's not happening. So until CyberDust really takes off, sorry to Mark Cuban, I'm confident in believing that we will be getting more Instagram models airing out NBA players. And I can't wait. Okay.

Until next time. I'm Juliet Litman. I'm Chris Ryan. It's been the NBA show. Yeah.