The Ringer NBA Show - Steph Curry Is Super-Back, Drake vs. Perk, and New Wrinkles in the Kawhi Saga | Sources Say (Ep. 260)

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

The Ringer’s Juliet Litman and Chris Ryan are joined by Shea Serrano to discuss the Raptors’ LeBron-sized curse (2:20) and the return of Stephen Curry (13:00) before launching into the beefs surrounding the NBA playoffs (14:28). Then they examine the current state of the rift between Kawhi Leonard and the San Antonio Spurs (25:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to talk MBA and we're going to talk NBA, but first, another kind of beef. The David Chang Show, a great chef, is now part of the Ringer podcast network. Episode two is coming this week and episode one is already live. He's talking about what it's like to start a restaurant. He and Bill Simmons go back and forth and there's so much more to come on that feed. It'll be many people you've heard of, many people you haven't. And I highly recommend listening.

Chang is one of the most creative and interesting people and culture right now. So check it out. And while you're online, on your phone. Who knows? Bown up on the NBA draft. It's coming. The draft lottery is in two weeks. The draft itself is in just a month, basically. And it's time to learn who you want for your team. Listen, we can't all get the number one pick. You know, we can't all have Luca Donchich. We can't have DeAndre Aten. But this is a pretty stacked class. I think it's going out of the radar. So let our guys, Jonathan Charks, Kevin O'Connor, Danny Chow tell you who you should want.

Go to MBADraft.org.com. Check it out. We've got scouting reports. We got mob. coming. We've got a lot planned for you. So again, it's MBAdraft.thringer.com. And you'll learn so much about who you want for your team. Okay. And now it's time for sources say. We won. Yeah. They suck. Yeah. We here. Hello. What's that sound? It's time for an emergency sources say. I'm Chris Ryan. I'm Julia Littman. And we're joined by Shea Serrano. Shee, what up? I'm Shay Serrano. I guess this is a modified. It's a modified sources say today, right, Juliet? It's modified because there's just a barn burner coming out of the state of Texas. We really wanted to talk to Shea about the lone star state of Kauai Leonard.

Because yesterday on ESPN, there was a big report on the state of Kauai with the Spurs kind of going through the entire crazy season with his injury, with his relationship to Greg Popovich and the team with his many. agents and managers and doctors and where those doctors also work. And we're going to get into all that. But first, I think we should probably talk a little bit about Tuesday nights game between the Raptors and the Cavs, at least. What a heartbreak. It was a classic of a sort. Of a sort.

Yeah. It felt like being transported to the year 2014, basically. Yeah. Or really any year of the past three years. They bring out kind of the worst in each other in a way that it's not like they behave badly, but they actually, like, reduce each other to their basest instincts. And for the Cavs, that's, like, relying heavily on LeBron James, and for the Raptors, that's choking. Shea, what did you think of the game last night?

I thought it was very, very sad and also very appropriate. As soon as the game started, the Raptors went up by, like, 14, but they didn't go up by 24. You go, like, oh, this is going to end very, very badly for the Raptors. And then it was, you know, eight in the fourth quarter, five in the fourth quarter, three in the fourth quarter, and the calves missed ten shots in a row. And this is, here we go. I've seen this movie before. That's exactly what it felt like. And then it happened.

It's such a bummer when it's happening with Jeff Green, though, and like not Kyrie. Yeah. When you rely, I mean, it was like a good, like, team effort last night. I guess, I guess Ty Lou's biggest contribution was the DNP for Larry Nance. Yeah. I mean, it's strange now that we're, it is very 2014 in that. like, Tyloos' chess move is Tristan Thompson. And that's about it.

It's like, are you going to play Tristan? When will you play Tristan? Oh, Tristan's working. Now you're a genius. And the narrative coming out of the game was that this was the game that LeBron's teammates won, but they still needed him. He still had like 27, didn't he? Yeah, and they shot 48% with him on the floor and 15%

and they shot 15% when he was off the floor. So this idea that like somehow this was the Jeff Green, Tristan Thompson, Kyle Corver game is kind of, a little bit off. Yeah, absolutely. And also, Corver's actually pretty good.

I wouldn't say contributions are huge, but you feel a Corver 3 acutely these days, maybe because there's so a few other contributions being given.

Shea, there's this thing in basketball sometimes I like to watch, especially with the star players, and it doesn't even have to be because of physical confrontations, but it's basically this idea of having a bodyguard on the floor.

And I definitely think that Tristan is LeBron's bodyguard. He sets better screens. He's way more effective when they're running that, like LeBron stands on one side of the floor and everybody else stands on the other side of the floor. He's such a good offensive rebounder

that that's like what, you don't need like some good like average shooter out there. You need Tristan and two or three other good shooters with LeBron because Tristan can actually like out rebound Valchunis one on one. What did you think of Tristan last night? Because he's obviously been a much maligned figure both in popular culture and in the NBA these last couple months.

I am very, as far as basketball only, I'm very pro Tristan Thompson. You can always tell when he's going to try hard in the game. Like if there's a point in the first or second quarter where he commits an over-the-back foul trying to get a rebound, then you know he's fucking here for business tonight. And that's exactly what happened last night. He's diving all over the place.

So you commit an offensive foul. You go like, all right, Tristan is in this game. So there's a chance here. But yeah, I'm pro-Tristan. He looks just enough like Michael B. Jordan that I can't get away from him. deeply offensive to Juliet. That's really offensive.

Also, when I look at Jason Tatum, I see Michael B. That's the closest comp for me. I just want to say Tristan Thompson can't afford to take any game off because Kim Kardashian was the emissary sent by Team Kardashian to like officially comment on the Chloe situation. And she went on Ellen this week and was just like, they just talked about like how heartbroken they all were. And Kim was like, yeah, it was fucked up.

So the official statement from Team Kardashian is like, we're out on Tristan. This is fucked up. But in case you all wondering, Chloe. is still in Cleveland. She's just trying to like catch a breath, enjoy her daughter and like see what's next. But Tristan Thompson is like playing for his fame right now. It's not only about being getting out of basketball. It's about remaining relevant because if LeBron leaves, Chloe leaves and Tristan's just stuck in Cleveland. Like what does he have? I feel like Tristan Thompson's pretty close to getting into the James Jones class. I wouldn't be surprised if like wherever LeBron goes next,

he orchestrates a deal for Tristan. I don't know. I don't know if it runs that deep. you think he's skeptical about him Kevin loves not setting screens like that Tristan seems to get more powerful He's like a video game character It gets more powerful With every screen he sets And whatever is going on out there

He basically Would just jump inside of Jonas's head last night In the fourth quarter But here's the thing about James Jones And Mike Miller They never had a tabloid scandal You know? You can keep them around

Yeah Because they're not like They're not taking away any shine And they're also not causing problems Like Mike Miller's just like quiet like, yeah, I'll play one game in the finals. I'm good. Here's my shoe team.

You got it. That's not the Tristan Thompson M.O. I guess that's true. Shea, do you think that some teams can be cursed? Do you think that this is like, no matter how good the Raptors are in the regular season, no matter how they change their offense, no matter how much people are like, damn, Demar Rosen really took the leap. Like, you have to have him in the top five for MVP.

No matter what, all of that, they are cursed. They can't beat LeBron. Dwayne Casey can't coach them. this team be on this point? I think teams can be cursed. Yes, 100%. That's got to be true. But also, I feel like the curses are never set in diamond or concrete or whatever

hard thing you want to pick out of it. You just need one person to be like, you know what, fuck this curse. I'm going to do it. That's all you need is what. And I say that because I saw a similar thing happen in the early 2000 with the Lakers and the Spurs. and the Lakers just shit all over the spurs every year. And it was so bad.

And everybody in San Antonio felt like if we get matched up against the Lakers, we can't win. We just can't beat them. There's something there that won't let us beat them. And then in 2003, that was the year Tim Duncan was like, you know what? I've had enough of this losing. And he just went fucking nuts against everybody. And they even did a thing where whenever Tim would start to get loose, they would put a shack on him.

And they did that. And he still just was just, destroying everybody. That's all you needed was that one guy to do that. Everybody else just sort of follow behind. All you need is one time for DeMar de Rosen to just give a hard foul to LeBron or hit a shot and like do a thing with his hands or scream or something to let everybody else know we're just follow behind this guy. We'll all be afraid, but he's not afraid we'll follow behind him. That's all you need is one guy. And I wanted so desperately for DeMar to do it last night and he just wouldn't do it and it was breaking my heart. Part of the problem though is that the Raptors

seemed to think that Fred Van Vleet was supposed to be doing it. He got a lot of big time looks. Yeah, considering the fact that he clearly only has one functional shoulder, I might want to revise that who's the game-winning shot taker thing. DeMore, I don't know if DeMor has it in him. Like, I honestly don't. Have you ever seen a number one Steve so shook by a trap, like a trapping defense? It was just like, it was just kind of crazy.

They were like, I don't know. I guess this is also the first time anyone seen the Cavs play defense in months. Yeah. So that was a little. jarring as well. There's this whole thing with the Raptors about the usage of Jonas and whether or not he's a fourth quarter player, and especially in the playoffs past,

Dwayne Casey has gone away from him, and they've played a little bit smaller. In their Wizard series, and especially last night, Jonas had a great kind of, he had a great third quarter, I think, and he was just really, I think he had like 11 points or something like that in the third quarter.

And then as soon as Tristan came back in on him, he shut him down, but Dwayne Casey didn't adjust at all. Is there anything do you think Dwayne Casey can do in game two to split this and to hope to go into Cleveland with any hope of winning this series, Shay?

I don't think there's any game strategy that you can do right now. I don't think, I think we're past that point. Because the Raptors should have won that game. The game plan they had last night was great. It was perfect. They should have won that game by 13 points.

And yet, they just didn't. They go I think at one point they were like they missed 15 out of 16 shots. Yes. From the fourth quarter to overtime. Something crazy like that. Including like seven layups. Seven like within, you know, inside the protected area.

Yeah. And a couple, we have three shots at it. Yonis missed three in a row. Yeah. And so all you need, if you just don't go 15 out of 16 misses, just do 14 out of 16 and you win the game. You know what I'm saying? Like the game plan was fine. They just panic.

and there's, I don't know how you fix panic besides somebody just going like, I'm not going to panic. I think the most telling shot in the whole game of probably the whole series of everything was at the end of the fourth quarter when they're all sort of batting the ball at the rim trying to get it in. The first shot goes and DeMarre gets the rebound and there's still clearly several seconds left but he doesn't come down with it. He doesn't try to drill.

He doesn't do anything. he just sort of like when you're playing 21 and he tried to tip the ball back in like he just threw it back up there really quickly like he just wanted it out of his hands as fast as possible yeah that to me was you know what I'm saying that was like this is not good yeah and this is going to be a hard series for tomorrow because if they if they clog the pain on him and sort of take away his like faux Kobe layup moves it's going to really be incumbent upon him to make his own offense somehow some other way now I think that one thing that we're going to a lot of, and I don't know about you guys, but

I usually don't really pay much attention to the refereeing. I find it to just be like it either all evens out in the end or it's fixed, but either way I can't do anything about it. But it did seem like the raptors were really unhappy with the foul calls last night. LeBron not getting a tech for shoving Van Vlead is pretty ridiculous.

Yeah. That was a great. Because Van Blyde did get attack on that. But you should go into the game being like, okay, I'm not allowed to take more than two steps and LeBron's not going to get a tech. You know? Yeah. Broz's got like five texts in his career.

That's true. But I will say that's like just an egregious like star gets the call. Yeah. Because like who is Fred Van Vleet like in the history of the NBA? Well, apparently he's the game winning shot taker for the Toronto Raptors. I don't know if you saw the memo. I just feel bad for Dway and Casey. This is like a, that was like a real Casey meltdown.

Yeah. Yeah. That was like a real Haralabob game. Yeah. Where it's like I didn't even look at Haralabob's Twitter, but I'm sure it's just like filling out Dwayne Casey's LinkedIn page for him. Dwayne Casey retired bitch. Yeah. She did you get a chance to watch The Warrior?

Of course, I watch every basketball game all the time. Yeah, I watch every basketball team game too. It's been a long season. Steph Curry back. Steph Curry back. Steph Curry is super back. He's not just a regular back. Steph Curry is super back.

I don't understand how you missed every week and come back and just start bombing 30-footers, like nothing. I was like in the M.B. I was like in his general vicinity. I was like, fuck, he's going to get hurt again. Like every time M. B. falls. You're just like, shit, his career's over. Because there was some really hard fouls on layups. And there was a couple of breakaways

where I felt like Steph was like, okay, Andre Aguadala, you're turning to jamming in there because I'm not going up against I'm not letting Solomon Hill suplex me when I hit the... They definitely were going for him. Drew Holiday was like, fuck this Steph Curry guy, it's my game. He's like incredible. What a

fun subplot of this playoffs. The other thing was Draymond had that incredible block on Anthony Davis, which I think is kind of being under celebrated. Yeah. But I was also like, is Draymond back? Like he was back to like 2016, Luzi the Finals, Dremont, getting into fights and also playing really well.

Yeah. The bad news for the Pelicans is that the Warriors didn't shoot particularly well. Clay was five or 20. Yeah. So they score 121. They win by five. It was pretty close, but it never felt like it was that close. Yeah.

It was more like, oh, the Warriors aren't playing well, but at least Steph's back. So like this is a good game for them. Let's talk about from the two games, we had two incredible. sort of off-court or on court but quasi-off-court drama moments in the Raptors Cavs game

two emissaries from each team Kendrick Perkins and Drake got into it after the game quick question about Perk yeah how the fuck did they get him a Tom Brown suit that quickly

he was dressed in the gray suit I wouldn't be surprised if they took his measurements quite a bit earlier if that was like on the table that they're going to get Perkin Whose job do you think it is to get the measurements of all the players for their away game suits? Kobe Alman.

Just sent Kobe to do it. Sorry, back to Perkin. No, yeah. So apparently with the perk thing, Perk said he was talking trash to Sir Jabaka. And then Drake got involved. And it spilled out until after the game where Drake was like following Perkins and Perkins was still talking like pretty aggressive trash. And then all I saw at the end was Drake's like, Mongolian prison guard unit

who he has doing his security surrounding him and making sure nothing popped off and talking to Raptors or Cavs security about it and then after the game it was basically just like Kendrick was just like I told him to sit down and watch the game and Drake has been getting into it with players throughout the playoffs he told Kelly Ubrae he was a bum

he told John Wall that the Raptors are going to win by 20 he sits courtside talks trash I'm pretty into it do you think he's just drinking peanut colladas or do you think he's a sober trash talker, Shea? He's a sober trash talker. Okay. For sure. For sure. I like this beef. I'm into it. I like it too. Also, another thing about Perk, maybe he's there to teach Tristan how to be the enforcer

and how to be the goon because that's really what Perk is for this team right now. And Tristan could take it if he wants to stay around the Bronn, be a little bit more like Perk. I think that's a good observation. If we see Tristan just lay someone out in the next three games, then I think you're exactly right there. Do you think Tristan would lay Drake out? You would just go up to Drake and level a bone-shattering screen on him? They should do the thing like in the football movies when the quarterback says like, oh, we need to stop the clock, but I also want to get this guy on the sideline

who's been running his mouth and he throws a football at him. They should do that, but with Drake and the basketball, and that would be the best thing to happen in the playoffs for me. My observation about this is I actually have more respect for Drake because of all of this. Interesting. I wasn't asked if this was a good move. Because I think it's actually a bad move.

This should be his coronation. He has like the number one and number two song in the country and Kanye is self-destructing in front of our very eyes. Like there's no competition for Drake right now. He should be being like he should be getting crowned right now. Yeah. But you can tell he's a true sports fan because he acts like an idiot. It's true.

It's like he's so overwhelmed. He has everything going for him right now. The God's plan video is basically just like, come on. guy is just perfect. Yeah. And then all he does is call Kelly Ubrey a bum and get into a, like, screaming match with Kendry Perkins. That's what sports fans do.

They can't control their emotions. Says the Philly fan over here. That's what I'm saying is like, I actually really feel for him because you're so vulnerable. If you truly care about a team. And Drake is, we always make fun of Drake because it's like, oh, Drake likes Kentucky. And then Drake likes this, like, you know. But he obviously really loves the Raptors to the point where he is unable to not embarrass himself while he cheers.

And that's the sign of true sports. That's also why people love Drake is because he will be vulnerable at the times when he shouldn't be. Like he will hit you with like the best slogan for both Instagram and to the person you don't really want to be hooking up with. And then also be a total like goober on the sidelines. That is like the magic of Drake. He makes that possible. Good fan or bad fan, Shay? Drake is the best fan.

And you know, for all of the reasons that you that you all are pointing out, like there's no there's no other avenue in life right now. where he can be embarrassed. Like he's the best when it comes to making good rap songs that everybody's going to love. He's the best at doing like a little fun, quick cameos as far as rappers go. But in basketball,

when he's just on the sidelines, he's opening himself up to a Reg Miller-Spike Lee situation where a thing happens in a game and they just, and they just trash strike for it. Like he's allowing that to happen. And yeah, I think that's great.

Like that's what you need from a person who's rooting for your team is you need for them to risk some stuff for you to feel like they're in it with you. I think another really smart move by him in terms of being like the NBA's first fan is never having a high profile guest with him. Never. Not having

like Rihanna. No. Not having like I don't know. You know who else did that? Who? Jack Nicholson. Yeah. Never. I'm here for the game. You're here for the game. You're here for the game and you're here for yourself. And I'm here to yell at the opposing players and scream at rest. This is not date night. This is not a hang.

I'm here for hoops. Yeah, he might wear like a Star Trek windbreaker and everybody's like, oh, Star Trek, Windbreaker. He's not here for the memes, though. He's here to scream at refs. Seriously. Like, it would be a great place to debut a girlfriend if you were like someone else. But no. No, he only has room for diesel-ass jail yard bodyguards because that's who he needs to protect himself from the opposing team.

He doesn't even bring it like his best friends. Like, one's the time 40 went with him to a game. I don't know. Where's Noah? I mean, they're just like, spinning. all this time together, but not at Raptors games. The other beef from last night was a three-way beef that

actually extended to multiple platforms. On the court, it was Draymond Green versus Rejon Rondo at halftime, really getting into it, not shoving or anything, but deeply cursing each other out. And then as it was cutting away at halftime in the TNT show, Charles Barkley

said, I wish someone would punch him in the face. I would punch his ass in the face, referring to Drayman. And after the game, Dremon was like Charles Barkley's see me a million times if he wants to approach me. You can approach me. This is one of those bar fights. I used to work, I didn't work like security, but I would like check IDs at this nightclub. Where? At the Middle East in Boston. Oh my God. How old were you? Uh, like 20. I was gonna say were you even of age. Yeah, I was. I mean, you don't have to be 21 to check IDs. Sure.

Uh, I think I was 21. But the guys there, like, there would be some fights at, like, on nights, there would be some fights where like they would like almost enjoy getting involved because it was like very easy to break up. And then there would be some fights where they were just kind of like, you just kind of got to let one of these guys beat the shit out of the other. Okay, because if you get involved, you're just going to get hurt. That's how I feel about Barclay with Draymond. Barkley's TV now, but back in the Philly days, like, Barclay like through a dude through a window, I think. Like, Barkley used to get into it. And I don't know about, you know, like, I just think, like the Draymond Barkley thing. I have no idea what the

roots are of that and why Barclay wouldn't like Draymond because in some ways he's very much like Barclay. Totally. So what do you? think about this one, Shea? I think shoot, you said a lot of words right there. I think that the reason that Barclay doesn't like Draymond

is because he's exactly like Barclay was as the player when it comes to the sort of running your mouth and letting everybody know how you feel. Of course, those two guys are not going to get along. Like, that's just the way, you know, the negative and the negative don't match up on the magnet, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Push apart. Same thing here. As far as who would win, of course, right now it's got to be Dre just because he's still playing. And also he's got his mom on Twitter running after everybody as well. So give me give me Dre in this fight.

Mary Babers Green, or Green Babers, Instagram or Twitter accounts, one of the one of the shining beacons of NBA Twitter. If you're not following her I don't know. What do you think Rondo was saying to him? I don't know. I don't think I can imagine any conversation.

How are you? How are things? How are you? You know. How's your shoulder? This is a great series for Draymond because he's got Rondo, who is going to push back against them and sort of they're both going to draw at each other. He needs that. But he also is matched up against Anthony Davis, and Draymond is always at his best when he's the guy that everybody is expecting to get sort of run over.

Which is why with that block that Juliet mentioned, when AD drove in, Draymond jumps up, blocks it, and then Nick Young hits a three on the other end of the court four seconds later, Like that was a perfect Dremont moment right there. That's exactly what you want from Dremont and that's what he's going to do this whole series. It's great.

I also really enjoyed his jacket last night at the post-game presser. I don't know if he saw it. But it was like a varsity jacket that was like leather sleeves and I think suede like body. It was really good. I'm really into the series.

I wanted to ask you guys how far you think wraps, cabs will go? Six or seven. Four. Four! There's no way it goes six or seven. Okay.

Wow. There's no way. I think that they win one in Cleveland. Crazy. Oh, wait, wait. I thought you said, I thought we were talking about Warriors. Oh, no, Raps Cavs.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that one's going to go on six. That was going to go on six. I believe in AD. I'm going to go with five. Five for Raps for Warriors. They wouldn't win one in New Orleans. Yeah, I think so, too.

And that would be really cool. I know everyone loves Pop in the in-game interview. Give me Alvin Gentry all the time. He's just great personality. He's rising my, my. Coach Powering. Quinn Snyder is definitely the scariest one. Because Quinn Snyder takes the question super seriously,

but looks like Dracula. I have a lot of thoughts about Quinn Snyder that I'm not ready to share on the mic yet. Okay. So we'll have to even say that later day. I just like, I have a lot of thoughts about Quinn Snyder and so many questions. Are you a Quinn Snyder fan, Shay?

Yes. because he looks you know what Quinn Steiner looks like and I don't know if this is offensive or not but he looks like

in the movies when there's an abusive dad that's what he looks like to me I think that and that's an interesting character I think he's in season abusive dad

out of season most relaxed most interesting man in the world Dosaki's commercial because we saw him at Summer League wearing a deep

V-neck black t-shirt and so tan amazing tan and like tons of like friendship and prayer bead bracelets and I was just like

let's get this guy on The Bachelor right now. Yeah. Let's go for, like, he's married. No, he's divorced. I don't know if he's remarried, but he was married to Larry Brown's daughter. Oh, right. And I think he was excommunity for basketball for a while.

I like any guy who when he, I like any guy who when he starts yelling his hair comes in his face. Yeah, me too. That's a good. He could be the first coach to have to wear a hair band. Oh, my God. We got even Luis Scola some tips on how to manage your hair. We've waited too long.

Let's talk about the Kauai Leonard scandal. Yesterday. It's not new, obviously. It's been torturing Shay for months. Yesterday, a new article from Michael Wright and Ramona Shelburne came out quite lengthy. A lot of interesting tidbits. And it does not make things with team Kauai, or as Coach Pop says, Kauai's group, seem particularly rosy. How are you, what's your, let's do an emotional heat check.

How are you feeling about this, Shays Serrano? After reading that story, I feel very, very, very, very the worst it's felt. I was able to talk myself up into reading that story. I was able to talk myself into it being just just Kauai is not used to handling these kinds of situations. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know the best, like, course of action. So he's just not going to do anything as far as any sort of public statement. But then the story came out and I go like, oh, he's leaving.

He's obviously leaving. This is all bad. So I thought the medical stuff was interesting that there's like a dispute about like sort of like how his muscle has been rehabilitated. Yeah. I thought that the article was specifically trying to imply that he's consorting with doctors that have other affiliations by mentioning that the Mount Sinai doctor is affiliated with the Sixers. And I thought that was like a little bit misleading because doctors have a lot of affiliations. Sure.

That's like part of being a doctor is like you're affiliated at this hospital. You're affiliated with this team. Of course it's not like you don't, I don't think that the Spurs are probably happy that he's talking to a Sixers doctor. But it's not like he's like going to Brian Calangelo for a second opinion. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I thought that was. was, while not great, also a little misleading and kind of like trying to imply something about

his future, it gets a little diceier when we dig into the great Uncle Dennis, some might call him great, some might not, and sort of how Kauai is being managed. And I think that there's been a lot of like confusion around what pot means when he says Kauai's group. And now we know that a lot, it's two men, one of whom is Uncle Dennis, Dennis Robertson, who is his maternal uncle. and Kauai is really close with ever since his father passed away. And I think you can certainly understand why he would trust a family member and someone who stepped in at a time when he really needed a, you know, needed like a parent figure or whatever.

But then it gets a little wonky when you find out that Kauai is with an agency that seems to be not that vibrant or thriving impact sports. And there's a quote in here saying it's like undergoing a rebrand. And many of its clients, or Kauai at least, have invested in real estate in, well, his uncle, it's under his uncle's name, they've invested in six apartments on Madison Avenue in Harlem and New York. And so that is kind of confusing.

And there's just a lot of questions about, like, who, what is this organization? And they've been subjected to other litigation already from other players and whatnot. And it just doesn't seem like, I actually not the most damning piece of this is that they wanted to be involved with clutch sports and wanted to have like an LRMR. A joint thing, yeah. And the clutch was like, no, thank you.

Right. That's kind of weird. Right. I actually think that would be a, you would think in a vacuum, that would be a good partnership for LeBron. Anyway, this Uncle Dennis wrinkle makes things a little bit more complicated for the spurs, right, Shay? Yeah, it makes it, the more people you have in a person's ear,

the trickier it gets because now you've got to convince three people now instead of just Kauai. You know, you've got to convince Uncle Dennis. You've got to convince his agent, Francoe. You've got to convince Kauai as well. And then we're just adding more more pieces. There's more names that get brought in, the mercury it gets. And the worst is much to feel.

This to me feels like when you are, you know what TV shows? I like the judge shows like Judge Mathis, Judge Joe Brown, these sorts of shows. This feels like when there's a person there and they show up and it seems like this case is very clearly, here's what happened. And then they just keep on saying more and more names and more and more things happen, and then you just realize this whole side is a wreck,

so I can't rule for them. That's what it feels like to me when I'm learning all of this stuff. It feels like everything around Kauai right now is too turbulent to feel comfortable, and it's bad. The reason why I think this would have been going differently if Kauai had been with an agent, so one of the things that's sort of troubling here

is that it doesn't sound like impact, has that many other NMA clients. Is that correct? Correct. The other ones, they had Torrine Prince who left and Will Barton, Damian Lillard's best friend, who also left. So when you have an agent who has many clients throughout the league, that agent is incentivized to keep relationships with certain, with teams on a good, good standing. Because who knows when Agent X, let's say he, so Kauai's agent is agent X. And he's dealing with Greg Popovich and R.C. Buford. And if everything goes wrong with Kauai, but he has two other. players on the Spurs and maybe a free agent coming up that the Spurs might be interested in and he's

going to represent some kid that the Spurs might draft. It's in his best interests to keep things cordial because they want to continue to do business with Kauai and outside of Kauai. If the only person this person is representing is Kauai, then they can go for broke right here. They might be thinking this is it. This is like Kauai's prime. We want him to have the biggest possible Nike deal or shoe deal or whatever. And we want to put him in the the biggest possible media market to get as many endorsement contracts as possible. This is it. This is the money earning season.

And they may feel like that's not going to be the case in San Antonio. The other thing that jumped out at me about the article, Shay, and as a longtime Spurs fan, I wanted to hear you talk about it, is it seems like one of the major problems within the Spurs locker room maybe could be that Manu and Tony kind of expected Kauai to step up and be the next generation of like Spurs' life. for foundational star who teaches the younger Spurs how to do things.

And the fact that Tony Parker has repeatedly kind of gone to bat for the Spurs medical team and talked about how like he came back from his quad injury in nine months because the Spurs medical team is so good. And they seem a little bit more

like disappointed about this whole thing. Speaks a lot about like just kind of how much this through the whole franchise for a loop. Yeah, again, it's all bad. But we have been, they've been telling us for the last, I don't know, three years, four years or so, Kauai is the one who's stepping in and taking over the, we had David, we had Tim and now we have Kauai. Like that's the path of arrows that we've been led to believe it's happening.

So everybody was expecting it to happen. And it just, it's all falling apart and you're watching to fall apart. and to have not only Tony Parker takes shots at you in the media, which go through any part of his career, even when he had all this crazy stuff happening, or even when he was dating a movie star or TV star, that just never happened, but you've got that. You've got Pop all of a sudden who never,

he's like the last person you would ever expect to take a shot at somebody, and he's very obviously taking shots at Kauai and Kauai's team. Like it's just, this is all new stuff for me. As a Sixers fan, you're probably used to this, Christopher. Oh, yeah. All of this, there's violence in your airplane shaking around. Yeah. But for me, I'm terrified.

This is my first flight where the plane shake, and I am convinced 100% we're going to crash into a mouth. Well, we'll see if Captain Pop can level it out. Shea, thank you so much for joining us today on the Ringer NBA show, a modified source to say. We'll be back tomorrow night with group chat after Six-Sixer Celtics and Cavs Raps game two. keep listening. Ringer NBA show is going pretty much all the time all week long

will be with you. Until next time for Juliet and for Shea. See you later.