The Ringer NBA Show - Tanking Reform, Playoff Sleepers, and Anthony Davis's Brilliance With Bill Simmons | Heat Check (Ep. 218)

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons brings on Haralabos Voulgaris and Jason Concepcion to discuss the trends of the modern NBA (3:09), the merits of advanced metrics (13:48), and how to fix tanking (34:17). Then they are joined by Justin Verrier to debate who belongs in the All-NBA first team (46:37), how much coaching matters (58:32), and the future of the post-trade-deadline Cleveland Cavaliers (69:14). Link — The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor on Takeaways From the Sloan Conference Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Ringer MBA show on the Ringer podcast network is brought to you by ZipRecruiter, the 2018 presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast. Hey, that's my podcast. 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Little known fact, the Cavs use ZipRecruiter for their two trades. All right, not sure. I made that up. But their powerful technology distributes your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards that identifies. guys. Wow, I'm so excited about ZipRecruiter. My voice broke. Then identifies the right people with the right

experience and invites them to apply to your job. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Want to tell you about a couple podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. We launched the recapables. First one went up today. A awards slash recap of season one of Atlanta. We did that because every Thursday night, right after Atlanta ends, if you like that show, and I'm guessing there's a little bit of ringer NBA show Atlanta overlap. And you should, if you're not watching Atlanta, I don't know what's wrong with you. I really don't. I don't know what's wrong with you as a human being. But we did season one awards right now on the recapables, Allison Herman, Michael Peters, and host Amanda Dobbins. And then on Thursday night, right after Atlanta ends on FX, we put the podcast up.

It's like a little postgame show, 18 minutes, breaks down everything that happened, a couple awards, and then we're out. Let them be your buddies that you just watched Atlanta with. We have billions coming up and Westworld are the second and third shows we'll be doing. There's a lot of rumors that me and Mallory Rubin might be hosting the Billions one. I do love billions. So anyway, check that out. Check out the Bill Simmons podcast today. Talked about Rhonda Rousey, WW versus UFC and the 2013 Oscars. What would happen if they had a five-year waiting period before they gave out those awards? We did that today on the BS podcast. Check that out. Don't forget, ring our NBA show every day now. to be cranking. Tuesday, KOC and Verno. Wednesday, sources say, some interviews, some other

stuff. We're going to try to get something going every day on Wednesdays. Thursday's group chat hosted by Chris Ryan with a rotating cast of ringer staffers, which is also going to be running as a video as well. And then Fridays, draft class, Kevin O'Connor, Jonathan Jarks, sometimes Danny Chow when he's not eating burritos in East LA. They'll be breaking down. What's promising to be one of the weirdest lotteries we've ever had. There's a bunch of blue chippers. There's a bunch of wild cards. Who knows where Michael Porter goes?

Trey Young's in a swoon right now. Does he follow the top seven? All these teams are tanking, which we're going to talk about with Heral Bob Valgaris in a second because he's coming on. But that's on Fridays. I think this is a great feed. It's an honor to be on here.

I'm so glad I invited myself. Let's do it. He's check. You knew that was coming. It's heat check time. Bob Volgaris is here. A longtime BS report guest and now a BS podcast guest. And now a ring around Bay Show.

Jason Gisipson. Back from Boston. You were there for the Sloan Conference. Have you been on the Sloan Conference, Bob? Yeah. I went once, spoke once. I was supposed to do the basketball panel last year, but I had to cancel at the last minute. I think I'm on the shit list.

I don't think I'll ever get. You're on the shit list? I'm canceled twice. I've been on panels twice. Yeah. It's an important flex. What was the big buzz this year, Jason? The big buzz was Sam Hinky in the house and just talking about tanking, talking about the state of the way.

There's a lot of like, how did we get to this point with the modern NBA? There was a panel with Nash and Badiah talking about like the, and Daryl Mory talking about the way the suns changed the league. Yeah. There was a panel with Sam Hinky talking about the process. So it's a lot of like, how did we get here? Yeah. Well, so the two things. And Obama.

I should, which nobody's allowed to talk about. We're not allowed to talk about it. I didn't want to hit a ball. Two things that you care about. One is the ladder form, which we'll talk about in a second. The other was like the Nash Suns changing basketball and faster pace and more threes. All stuff you were tweeting about since we've had Twitter.

And now everyone's playing basketball this way. And you are on the high end of the spectrum, Bob, of you love this. Like you love what the rockets are doing. You love the volume of threes. I am... I liked it when nobody was doing it. I was like, why don't people do this? Now that everyone's doing it, I don't try.

like it's so much. Oh, good. So you're souring on. A little bit. It's just not as, I mean, it's just not as fun to watch basketball anymore. It's just drive, kick, swing, three-point shot. That's how I feel. Yeah, it is a little monotonous when, and especially when you don't have the level of talent,

like a team like the Rockets has and you just watch guys who are like 35% shooters. 35 would be great. Yeah, 34, 33, like taking six threes a game. Yeah. The variance, so like you can be down 18 now in the NBA. in the third quarter with 14 minutes left and come back. Are they playing 14 minute quarters nowadays? No, I'm just saying like two minutes left in third quarter.

And in the old days, it's like that team's up 18, they're not coming back. And now it's like, that team could hit four threes in a row and they're down six. And we still have a whole quarter to go. So that part's been a little more interesting. It's a lot more swingy for sure. But for the most part, I'm with you. I just, I get bored by it sometimes. I really have trouble watching the Rockets.

And they have two of the best 12 guys in the league. And I just, I don't know how many more times I can just watch Hardin with four guys standing around him doing crazy James Hardin stuff. What makes the Rockets especially objectionable to watch is that they don't just launch a lot of threes, but they also do like what the rockets, the old Rocks, remember they had before the illegal defense and the zone rules, the Rockets used to take Cotino Mobley and Cee Francis, and they would basically have four guys stand all the way on the other side, and you weren't allowed to leave them. Right. And they would do that, and so they had the ISO rules.

That's what the Rockets do now. They do that with Hardin and Chris Paul. And the part that's kind of interesting is they don't just do that, but they also like get so many, I call him Drabrony fouls where it's like a player puts his hand out now. The ball gets swinging up through it. And so it's just really kind of painful to watch. Last night's game against Denver was super painful to watch. And on top of it, they probably have the worst home crowd of any good basketball team.

And you know what's funny? Zach and I talked about this. We did a podcast last month. And I was expecting the Houston fans to be pissed off about it. But they were like, yeah, our crowd sucks. Well, I think the thing that people would say is the traffic in Houston is really bad and weird. Like in rain and all of a sudden there's a random flood. and you can't get anywhere.

That said, yeah, it is strange to watch their games and be like, why aren't there more people there in the second quarter? Well, where's the noise? Yeah. Well, it's like, James Hardin just said a 35-foot three to end the quarter. They had a good game against Golden State where they did have a crowd and it was noticeable what it was. But from a gambling standpoint, are you, you're not gambling.

You're out. No, I'm doing other stuff now. If you were gambling, yeah, we're not. And that didn't seem very definitive. No, I just am. other stuff now. From a gambling standpoint, all the variants,

would it be harder to gamble the way the basketball's played now? I think a little bit, yeah. So I read something that said that there's actually, the variance hasn't increased with the number of three-point shots,

I guess, because the consistency of the shooting is pretty consistent in terms of, like you don't have a lot of players that are 25% shooting threes. You have players are all in the 40s. I find that it just makes it just not as, it just,

there's not as many match-up contests anymore. You used to have match-up contests where you'd see, like, you'd have, like, Hakeem playing against someone. How does he match up against them? Like, how are they going to match up? So you'd have guys that never played, like Jason Collins would never play then because they're playing Shaq. So that's why I like watching the Sixers, because you have Embed and they're just an interesting team.

It's a lot different. I don't need to see a bunch of, like, rim-running fives and a bunch of unathletic fours who can just shoot threes over and over and over again and stretch the defense. I find that to be really kind of monotonous after a while. That's what's kind of sad about, like, the decline of the gris, the grit-and-grislies. and DeMarcus cousins getting injured for the season. You're just not seeing these kind of weird teams anymore, teams that switch it up, like grit and grind grizzlies, like the fact that they were able to compete for as long as they did,

taking the air completely out of the ball and not shooting threes and having a negative point differential is incredible. Right. And it's something we will probably never see again. And now you watch, I mean, they're not the grit and grind grizzlies anymore, but now you watch Marcus Hall and Marcus Hall is always outside the three point line, the top of the three point line. And it's just kind of ridiculous to me.

Like, I'm a big rebounding lunatic. Like, I don't understand why teams just, some teams had success not going after offensive rebounds and getting back in transitions at the, the Doc River, Celtics were the first teams. But they did that kind of in spite. They were successful in spite of that. It wasn't as if that's what really led them

to having a great defense. They had great defender, like defensive schemes. They were the first ones to overload the ball side. It wasn't because they were getting back in transition. And you see these teams who are playing other teams who just never run or in situations where there's never going to be not, like, let's say you have the second to last shot of the quarter. And now you take a shot and your guys are hustling back to get back.

And that team is never going to get a fast break because they want to hold the ball for the last shot. So why would you not crash the boards then? But you have teams that just aren't smart enough to really realize, oh, there's situational times when maybe we should rebound. Maybe like when we're losing by seven with two minutes left in the game, we should crash the boards instead of trying to get back in transition. But they don't do that. Shane Betty had an interesting anecdote during the modern basketball panel with Nash and Jack McCallum, And are you saying that once the suns really started to get going, Van Gunny was like, okay, we're not going to crash the offensive boards anymore.

And Badiere was like, this is how I get my points. I'm not a great score. The way I get my points is I just run in and try and make something happen. So that was like a big change for him when teams really started to not value offensive rebounds as much. And just be like, okay, someone's got to get back. I still feel like there's a place for them. The Celtics last the game in the Quippers before the All-Star break. And the Quippers were just killing them on the boards.

and they couldn't keep them off. And when you see it like that, you're like, oh. The Clippers never go after offensive rerones, but they did in the one game against Golden State that they won in Golden State where Lou Williams had 50 points. Montrez-Harrell just went nuts on the glass. Yeah.

And so, yeah, there is opportunities for it, for sure. And the reason why I bring it up is like, why would you want your center, Mark Casol, like marginalized out on the three-point line? I get why it brings the other son out. Now it creates driving lanes, but if you don't even have guys who can drive, what is the point of having these driving lanes?

So, yeah, there is a point. That's why Kevin loved the way the Cavs used him seemed like one of the great ways of anyone this decade. This guy who's unbelievable around the rim, great instincts on rebounding, and you have him 25 feet for the basket. It's like, this is the best thing he does. Yeah, DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis

are the two biggest examples of it to me because you have Anthony Davis who will just get anything around him. He's just like a vacuum. And you have him sitting there learning how to shoot. I remember when Alvin Gentry became the head coach and he's like, the first thing we need to do have Anthony Davis learn how to shoot threes.

And it's like, no, not really. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's kind of silly. I was talking with some people from the Cavs front office, just about the league. And we were talking about Okaford, how it's almost tragic that that guy, if that guy had come around in the 80s, he'd be like a four-time all-star that averaged like 20 and six, and people would be like, oh, he's great. But he literally just missed the era of the low post player.

Now he's got to lose weight He's got to figure out how to extend his range And here's a guy who's been told his whole life This is how you succeed with your body type In the professional leagues He's also like terrible that defense Yeah that doesn't rebound So I was like

And the same time you watch those games from the 80s and 90s Guys running half speed It's not like that could have been ameliorated by the place I've always been a if you have one elite skill There's a place for you in the NBA guy Yeah And now I'm wavering on that No I think I look at like

Yeah you definitely more than one but like Yeah you definitely more than one But in the old days, it's like, that guy does this and he's really good at it. So he's going to play 20 minutes a game. Like the Celtics, you've been killing the Greg Monroe signing. That's the worst ever. I thought he was going to be really good for them because they needed somebody to run the second unit offensive. And then, and I don't want to write it off yet because I'm a Celtics fan and I don't want to admit defeat.

But he's just playing a different sport than they are. And he's out there and everything's slower and he does know how to switch. He's just really bad on it. It's a disaster. So far. When they played the Knicks and he made you forget how bad a defender, Ennis Canter is in the pick and roll. Like you just read, oh, yeah, Enis Canter can defend the pick and roll better than Greg Monroe. You're like, what's going on here?

Because Enis Canter was one of the worst pick and roll defenders in the league in the last 10 years. But Canner, you and I were arguing about this last year. That's a guy who has specific skills, right? An elite rebounder. Yeah, he's a great offensive rebound. Good offense rebounder and good around the basket against guys who aren't great defenders. And I never understood why OKC just quit on him last year. when their other players weren't that good.

Well, they quit on him. At least he brings something. Well, they quit on him because he's getting guard anyone. Yeah, I know they're tortuous. And teams identify the fact that you could just pick and roll him to death. That's the thing about Canter. Like, if you're trying to win 41 to 45 games, you can get away with Annes Cantor. You know, if you're trying to be like a middling.

Now you're trying to win 28 to 30 games. If you're trying to be a middling team to a 500 team, sure, Ennis Canter, fine. Sure. But if you're trying to actually make hay in the playoffs, teams are just going to pick. Well, there's a clip of Billy Donovan mouthing, like, we can't play can't. That was devastating. Yeah, that was bad. It was funny because, like, if you would have been on my Twitter 10 minutes prior,

he would have realized that they can't play Canada in the series. So one thing Kevin O'Connor wrote for us today in The Ringer about, and this is something he and I had been talking about a lot over the last few weeks about good stats, bad stats, whether we've gone too far now with some of the advanced stuff and some of the stuff that's out there that people are writing entire columns about or doing entire podcast about like RPM and defensive rating and thinking like

that's somebody's defensive rating when actually it's just the team's defensive rating when they're on the fore. Well, RPM takes into account the level of players who are with you and also that you're playing against. So it's not just when you're on the court, it's also when you're on the court.

Let's say if you play all your minutes with LeBron James, your RPM's going to come down because LeBron's going to play all your minutes against LeBron James, your RPM should go up because you're playing. But these are still gimmicky stats, though. Like I think teams look at them,

but I don't think they're just, judging players by some of these advanced stuff that we have. When all there was was play-by-play data. Like really, when all that's all there was, there wasn't the camera tracking data, it was just play-by-play data. RPM, not necessarily RPM, but adjusted plus minus, which was started by Wayne Winston and Sagan, I think,

or something like that. Those were the best, like, delineers of who are players who are really good on defense. That was a pretty good predictor of that. A pretty good predictor. Yeah, like the best that was out there. But not necessarily lights out. But it's better than what anything else.

was out there. Now the fact is now we have camera tracking data. You can look and see like very specifically who was guarding whom when what type of play it was. Was he involved in the play? You can really look at a lot more data than maybe it's minimized a little bit. But before the camera tracking era, I would say that adjusted plus minus was pretty good. So you like some of this stuff because I don't, I think it's fine. I look looking at. I don't take it seriously. Well, the thing that's interesting about it is is that it will wildly fluctuate as a season goes on because the amount of data you have and the way it's regularized based on who you're playing and who's on the court. It can be, and just you're around the court and the three point shot goes in

and that will maybe after you've gone past a certain level of, let's say, going from like a reference set to actually being, your stats are now being used. It can wildly vary. So. But you need like hundreds of games to really get into. Yeah, you need hundreds of games. Exactly. And you're going to see like a lot of like weird things like Evan Eshmeyer's a great player and that's another Maverick. went and signed him for like all this money because because he was a big adjusted plus minus guy. But he also probably was just fluky. That happens. Well, and sometimes you're going against like the second unit.

That can mean, sure. Sometimes the shots just go in and when you're on the court and you're not doing anything. That just happens. Like we've reached a point with basketball on the internet where it's like the end of November and people are writing these long, complicated pieces based on these really small sample sizes where the fluctuation. I don't even know. How you capture it?

Do you remember the articles that were written about the Orlando Magic and how Frank Oh, yeah, because they were half for, and they shot like 53% from three in the first two weeks of the season? Yeah, we had the ringers, Kevin Clark in our slack, who's the only Magic fan, any of us know. And he's just like, this is not sustainable. We're making all of our shots. I think we need to also, like, delineate between offensive stats, which I think are pretty good. Yeah, I agree. But, and defensive stats, which are, I don't think there's anybody out there that would tell you that there's one defensive stat that you could,

used to really predict anything. And I'm not saying that it's great. I'm just saying it's a lot better than looking at just like raw plus minus for instance. I still love the eye test. I still think it matters. And even like at the all-star game, we were talking when we were walking in, like I really enjoyed that

all-star game. And I like seeing all the guys out there. And it's funny to just be at a game like that and know who really knows how to play basketball. Like Al Horford, who has been maligned. You know, his stats aren't, he's making $30 million years. Stats aren't as great as you would think.

But he does a lot of little stuff, and you see him even into the All-Star game where everyone's running around with chicken with their head cut off. And then there's certain guys who are just like, I know how to play basketball. I've been doing this my whole life. I know how to go here.

Oh, this guy, I'll switch over. And I still wonder if we have stats that can totally capture that. It's hard. The problem with the eye test is and why I like something like adjusted plus minus or any type of metric is that the computer is just always on.

It's watching everything. It's watching every minute of every play. It keeps track of something. It may not be keeping track of what you would if you personally watch it yourself, but try watching every game

and every possession and paying attention like using the eye test. So you miss a lot. So the cool thing about having stats like that is it can identify a player like Evan Eschmire and you can go back now

and you can go back and watch his minutes and be like, oh yeah, this is garbage. Yeah. But or you could, or you... Shout to Evan Eshmeyer wherever he is right. Wherever he is right now. It might be someone else.

Former Maps, former Mapp's great Evan Eshmeyer, wherever you are. Jinnakovane was another one, right? That was an early advanced. Yeah, there was. But the problem with the eye test is you get signings like Eddie Curry. Like someone watched him playing with the Sonics or not Jerome James.

Jerome James. That was literally one play. That was actually three games. That was probably an eye test. I was writing my column for a page two joking about the terrible contract that was coming that Isaiah Thomas was going to give it to him. Remember he got hot in the playoffs? He was like, oh, God, Isaiah.

I hope he doesn't see this. But there's been other guys like that too, though. That have gotten super hot. like who's the player who played for the Pacers. Probably a fine player, but he's been injured. Austin Crozier. No, no. He was one in the finals.

He was the other one. He hit a bunch of three-point shots. And then I believe, versus the Raptors, he hit a bunch of three-point shots. Solomon Hill? Yeah, Solomon Hill. So, I mean, if you looked at his numbers throughout the year and you're like, this guy's not a good three-point shooter. But if you watch that series, he'd look great.

Or like, you know, Paul George has shot O-For-12 in the previous game, or O-Fer-9. There's just a lot of, like, random, as random and as random and his, the samples are really small in something like using like a justice plus minus. The same is Drew of eye test for depending on when you decide to watch. The worst case is Doc Rivers, who for three years, sorry Isaac, for three years, only signed guys who played a good game against him. Cresting with the Byron Mullen signing, which Byron Mollins had like two good games in his

entire career, both against Doc Rivers. Doc Rivers like, yeah, he's going to be the stretch five we need. It's like, no, he's actually not. But yeah, it was four years of that. And they threw away the CP Blake Dynasty. I think, like, you know, what you want is you want the eye test and you want the numbers to align on some kind of ruling. Yeah. I think when those two things are in conflict, that's when you have some really, that's when you should dig in further.

I think Andrew Wiggins is a guy who coming out of college, everyone was saying he's going to be an elite defender, elite defender, elite defender. And then you started to dig into the advanced numbers and it showed that he was not a defender, like even a good defender maybe. and that's when you run into some interesting cases, just like that. Andrew Wiggins, like, why is this happening? He looks, everything, he's got the length, he's got the athleticism, he seems like he should be a good defender,

and then you kind of dig into it, and you're like, okay, maybe not. It's interesting to look back at, you know, the last 25 years of basketball, because I've been, like, thinking about if I wrote a sequel to my book, what would it look like? And the biggest thing that changed the last 10 years is how we evaluate players,

because before we have, had these more primitive numbers. And by the way, I still love a basketball box score. I still think you can learn more from a basketball box score than any other box score. But you look back at some of the things we thought we knew. And now you have the context of like possession, the possession rate, how many shots you can get off in a game and things like that. I knew some of that stuff. Like I was trying to figure out the 60s.

I knew the 60s were weird. I knew like Wilt's 50 a game and Oscar. There were just so many field goals a game. But if you go back and see what I wrote, I basically just did field goals a game. We didn't have like adjusted pace, any of that stuff. And I think like the 90s and the 2000s are a really interesting reevaluation time. Like somebody like Kobe who took just a shitload of shots. If you look at his advanced metrics, they're good, obviously, because he was a superstar,

not quite as good as we remember. Whereas somebody like T-MAC, it actually swung more toward T-MAC's favor. I don't know. I'm ready to rethink some of this stuff. Yeah, the cool thing about the reason why it's something like adjusted plus minus, for instance, first of all, you need a lot of data.

And by the time you have a lot of data, it's not like the players are static individuals. Things change. So by the time you have enough data on a player, they sometimes get better, they sometimes get worse. And so you're never, ever going to actually fully capture it. So especially nowadays where the players are improving so much,

It's rare that you see a player not come back, especially like a very good player, not come back with something new in his toolkit at the start of a season. And I think social media is good for constantly pointing out how bad you are at something. I think it's changed James Hart's career. I think 20 years ago. Oh, for sure. He just sort of sucked on defense this whole life. Now he kind of sucks on defense, but he tries at least.

What is a good, Bob, I'm interested in this. Like, what is a, we always talk about small samples and what would you say is an adequate sample size, whether it be minutes or games or whatever, to really evaluate a guy, a guy's either career or how he's playing at the time. Yeah, it's tricky. So it also depends on what specifically you're trying to evaluate. So are you trying to evaluate if he's a good defender?

You probably need not very many plays. You're trying to evaluate his efficacy as a three-point shooter. You probably need more shots. So it is tricky. It varies a lot. I would think you need at least half a season of, let's say, 25 to 30 minutes a game to really get an idea of how good a player is.

But the problem of that is that usually when you have a new player, like a year one player is going to be vastly different than the same player in year two. So it's almost as though your numbers are always going to be lagging a huge amount of time. One of the things I don't like about this stuff is so much of it depends on who you're playing with. And like if you're playing with Steve Nash in the 2000s,

offensively you're just going to be better. Like Sean Marion was not as good of a player as the stats made him seem because he's playing with Steve Nash. Like I don't know. There's no way to calculate what that's worth. In theory that... I love Sean Marion, by the way. I'm just saying, like, he won the lottery for those four years with Steve Nash.

In theory, that's, like, what adjusted plus myias is supposed to capture. Because it's supposed to take all the minutes he play with Steve Nash, put them in a bucket, get an evaluation for that. Now when you're playing minutes without Steve Nash, how did you perform? And then the numbers can vary wildly. But I don't think that's fair because you're bringing in a backup point guard who's completely the opposite of Steve Nash. It's like you're taking the maestro versus like...

Yeah, you're taking... Earl Watson or somebody. Like, there's no way to... Yeah. Although you kind of liked her Watson. I liked it. He's a really interesting. He was a bad example.

Maybe. I don't know what bad, Howard Isley, whatever. Howard Isley would be a good one. And I think with Philly, that's why it's some of the stuff. Embed is definitely an impact defensive guys. Ambite is amazing. But at the same time, when he's not in the game, it's such a drop-off that I don't know what to make with the disparity of those two things. Like, he's definitely a monster.

Right. But it's not like they have anyone off their bench. whoever they bring in is is going to be just the biggest drop off of all time. The other problem with that is like, so let's say you do a really good job of evaluating when you're playing with Embed, when you're playing without Mbid, right? That's like the idea of just one of the minds. But now like you're going to play with Mbid, it's a close game. And now it's a blowout because they're winning and now you're playing without

Mbid. That's a different game of basketball. So like now you have to account for is a game even real or is it like a 24 point game with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter where no one's really trying and those are your minutes. So you have to weed those minutes out. And then you have to look at, there's just a bunch of different things you can look at that, which is why they'll never be like a great one-all-catch-all number.

Or you could just watch the Sixers and be like, boy, they're better with Joe O&B. Sure. Wow, he really does a lot. Let's take quick break. Let's take a break to talk about Belvedere. Oh, Belvedere. Produced in one of the world's longest running distilleries, Belvedere vodka is the world's finest, all-natural vodka crafted by a collective of master distiller's.

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Enjoy a delicious cocktail with Belvedere vodka today. And remember to always drink responsibly. Is Joelle Ambide, in your opinion, the most underrated star in basketball right now? Because you've been- You've been tweeting about him a lot. I don't know if he's the most underrated. I don't know.

I think, like, right now, Chris Paul's pretty underrated in terms of- Chris Paul underrated again. He's back. He didn't make the All-Star game. Well, he missed like 19 games. But the team is 30 and one. Yeah, that seems like a relevant stat.

See, I like stats like that. We're 30 and one when all our guys are. Not even all, just three. Just Capella, Hardin, and Paul. So I feel like he's not really getting enough credit. He's been ridiculously good. Yeah. So maybe him, I'm not sure.

By the way, Simmons is underrated too. Ben Simmons. Like, yeah, Ben Simmons is. I think I'm also underrated. Yeah, you are. I think both Simmons is underrated. Bill and his son, Ben, are both underrated. Well, the best thing that happened to him was not making the All-Star team.

Sure. Because I thought he was kind of on autopy a little bit. And then that happened, he's like, boom. Best thing to happen to him is he has no jump shot. So it's like he has to do so much more to be good. Like, if he ever did develop a jumpout or if he could shoot, I don't think he would be nearly as good. So you think this is Jason Kidd?

Wow. It's almost like when a guy breaks, you know, you're in high school and a guy breaks his arm, his right hand. And now he gets good at his left hand because he has to. He's got nothing else to do. This is, by the way, this was Jason Kidd for eight, nine, ten years when he couldn't shoot, but he made up for it with all the other stuff he did. But it'll be interesting to see him in the playoffs when,

teams just attack that. They're just going to lay five feet off of them. He's going to be five feet off. That doesn't work, though. Does it not work? No, it doesn't work because it works when you have a guy who can't drive and back down. Andre Robertson's here. He wants to say he disagrees agree.

Well, it works with that because Andre Robinson is never going to back someone down or take someone one-on-one. When you give someone like Ben Simmons five feet of space to accelerate and go by you, he goes right by you. And it also makes it easier to pass. He did that with against, I remember the Lakers thought this is like a great strategy versus Rondo, where they would just lay off them. And Ronald's just sitting there just picking, the guys are coming, especially they're running floppy sets, guys are just coming off the screens.

And now he's got like five feet to just sit there, no pressure to make as many passes. Run is a good example. He figured out how to impact the game and it's like, I'm just going to go on the baseline. And Ronald was a beast in the post who could just back you down.

Now you have to send someone at, now you're double team, now he's kicking the ball. They added Bellanelli who can shoot also. We've always liked Bellanelli. He's okay. I was kind of hoping the Celtics will get him. He's had a couple of really interesting

statistical seasons over the last couple of years. Remember him at Summer League that one year when he was a rookie where he shot like 60% from 3 or something? I don't thought he was like the greatest three-point shooter balls. He's definitely one of the best. I don't give a shit. I'm not nervous. I don't care how many people are watching this playoff game guys. He just come in and be like, I'm Marka Bell and Ellie.

The history of Italian players in the NBA is a interesting one to say the least. But even Bargna, who I think is malign now is a complete bust. I don't think he was a complete bust. He was a complete bust. No, he averaged 20 a game when you. Remember, he played with a little oomph, though. He was terrible. He was terrible.

He was so maligned and he started to feel like really bad about it. He was really terrible. I just think anyone who averages 20 points a game in an NBA season cannot be considered a complete bust. That was only his first season though, wasn't it? 20 points a game. Gallinari is the one that I'd like, if not for the injuries, who I'd... Yeah, Gallinari had it gone.

They always looked like they just like rolled out of Ben. They're about to make it. Like, he just came to the social club and they were they got to make you a cappuccino or something like that. Yeah. Reminds because my dad usually has a social club. love growing up, like a place where people played cards. It wasn't Italian, but it was a lot of times there. And there's a guy who worked for him. And his job was just to basically, you know,

make food or make coffee. And he always looked like he just rolled out of bed. That's a Marco Bellanelli looks like me. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. He's kind of showed up to the game. Teyadoch would have been a good Italian. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, he looks like that at Teodosich. He looks like that all the time. Yeah. Right across the Adriatic there. Yeah. Hey, if you, if you were the Philly GM, what type of player would you sign to put with Simmons and Embed because they're going to have a ton of

cap space this summer who would be your perfect third wheel for that team what would you do? I mean, I don't know, it depends.

I mean, they should, I would, that's a team I would like LeBron to go to. Like everyone's, well, where's the Friday?

It's the logical LeBron choice. I don't think he will, but I would say that that would be the most successful. So you know, I'm not sure what they'll do. I feel like they think

they need to get shooting around them. Like, that's why they're kind of, they signed Redick to that contract. But that's done in a year. I mean, that's done at the end of the year.

Yeah. When you're 23. What if they had LeBron and Paul George, as I theorized in my column, my brother? Over. It's over for sure. If M. Bedeed stays on the court. Yeah. I mean, that would be a great team.

The Warriors are going to, that little scrawny little group of warriors. What do you think of that theory, Jason? Because I think if LeBron, like, looking at all the moves that he might have, that's the move that has the highest ceiling. Because if Mbid stays on the court, they actually could go. head to head. It's fascinating. I just think LeBron, everything we know about him and what we've seen, he likes guys

that are just a little more tested than the group. Yeah, and older. He wants to, he wants to roll of his crew. Well, Ben Simmons isn't his clutch crew. True. But even though LeBron technically doesn't own any stake in clutch. Right. It's just his good buddy. The NBA has a best of the way. I can't see him going to Philadelphia.

I can't see him going to Philadelphia. I think if he goes anywhere, he's going to go to Houston. Really? See, I don't, I don't see that one at all. Why? Got a little wine crew. I think it makes them look weak. I think it makes them look weak. Yeah, I don't think LeBron cares about.

You don't think he noticed the Kevin Durant thing? You don't think he noticed all the shit Kevin Durant took? Maybe, but he also noticed that when they faced them in the finals that they barely won one game versus them. I don't think it matters. Rings is like kind of where this whole thing goes right now. Like, oh, we won a championship and do whatever it takes. I feel like you have half the league not trying.

And the other half the league kind of, or I guess maybe like two or three teams who were actually able to compete. I mean, who can compete this year? That's, yeah. It's his golden state and Houston. And that's it. Yeah. You're hurting my feelings because I have my heart set on the Gordon Hayward come back.

Yeah, that's insanity. I mean, even if he was healthy and 100%, that's not a very good team. That's just like a, that's a coach. That's like a Geppetto coach. He's like pulling all the little, he's like pulling all the little strings and he's making everyone look good better than they are, but that's not sustainable. How about all the guys that left Boston? Sure.

It's a long list of people who miss Brad Stevens. We're like, wow, I really enjoyed my time with Brad Stevens. The real life sucks. I mean, Isaiah Thomas suffered an injury. But the fact that he was able to, I mean, he completing the playoffs, got completely exposed. But that he was able to go past the Wizards. And with that. We should have lost that series in like five games.

Yeah, that was a. That was your boy, Scotty Brooks. It was unbelievable. Kelly Ubre three minutes in game seven. My dad and I were like, this is amazing. I can't believe he's playing Kelly Ubrey. We wanted to hug Scott Brooks at the end of that game. How about putting, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I guess whatever,

but he had Jan Maheimie playing big minutes when Olinick was a center. I love that as well. Olinck was the center. Just like watching the threes go over his head. Like, dang, I'm waiting for him to come down here. Well, either, you know, who's competing right now, who can compete is kind of part of the tanking conversation because the incentive structure of the NBA right now is either create a super team or tank.

There's no, there's very little room for like a middle path in the NBA right now. I just want to say that this has been the case since, I mean, the 07 Celtics, I put, you tweeted about this yesterday, I put a box score of the Celtics versus the bucks in like April 07, which to me was like tanking perfection, the guys on the court, like Earl Boynkin's playing 40 minutes. Doc Rivers would be full court pressing when they were in the penalty with nine minutes off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You remember this.

You were gambling that year. Paul Pierce was completely healthy. They kept them on the bench. So this is going on forever. But I do think, like, you made a really interesting point about if they do have legalized gambling, sure.

And the NBA gets a cut from that. And you have seven or eight teams basically throwing games. Owners saying we're trying to. Or Dallas admitting they're doing it. Like, how do you gamble on that? It's weird. It's interesting.

Like, yeah, I don't, the integrity fee is, is, what exactly, what, what, are you trying to prevent people from fixing games by actually, like, colluding with gamblers? Or are you just trying to prevent teams from fixing games because they're trying to lose so they can draft a better player? Like, imagine boxing in MMA if it was like, yeah, UFCs tonight, two of the fighters are probably going to tank. Here are the odds. Well, this happens in like Olympics and World Cup matches, maybe not World Cup, but Olympics for sure, matches where teams want to lose to get into the other side of the draw. Yeah.

And there's been situations where teams have gotten, or countries have gotten into a lot of trouble because they've purposely lost in order to get to the other side of the draw, to have a more advantageous draw. And I feel like that's kind of not, you know, people aren't really doing that, but they're just losing on purpose. Well, you remember the Mark Manson game? That was the most disgusting example. Do you think that could be a documentary?

Mark Watson shooting five threes. Yeah, in overtime game too. The other one was there was a, there was one where I believe Golden State played, I think. Harrison Barnes. They played, yeah, they played six players the entire game. But I wrote about this in my book that the team that

The team that created tanking was Houston during one of the Samson-Ladjuan years where they played dead. Elvin Hayes on the team who was just washed at that point. He was like 40. And they had like a double overtime game and he played every minute. And they were just like, Elvin, take us home. Elvis is like in a wheelchair. Part of the, part of the reason we're so focused on tanking now is there's just much more attention on the league, one.

And I understand. Every game is televised. The audience at large has a better understanding. of the game than ever. The random fan understands the tanking, the incentive structure of the NBA promotes tanking. They understand this works. They've seen it work, right?

I mean, they've seen Philly climb out of the cellar, have a bunch of great young players. They understand that this works. And also, there's very few dumb executives anymore. Or there's fewest that's been in a while. Listen, there's some executives who would love to argue with that. I agree with that. But if you look at the teams that are playing well, like these are all.

smart guys and they're all doing the same kind of thing. So you're saying we reached peak tanking. I don't think, I think it's that they realize they can't compete and they don't want to look stupid. And so now it's, okay, why would we try? Let me just go the other route and see what, and try to lose on purpose. Knicks fans are roasting the Knicks for not tanking more aggressively right now. I like, it's crazy.

I think Jason's right. Peak tanking combined with a sophistication with the fan bases combined with it worked with Philly. I think what's changed now, because I think we've had this for almost 35 years at this point, what's changed now is how early teams are doing it. It's absurd. It feels like Dallas has been doing it all year. They weren't like, hey, let's see if we can make a run.

And in February, we'll flip. But the point, I think the big part is, like, media kind of drives a narrative what people are really paying, what people pay attention to. Back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you would just read a newspaper and you'd read about the games. You wouldn't know that these teams are losing. Games might have been, maybe you had it. We wouldn't know it 11 years ago. Like, when the Celtics were doing that. stuff. I was writing about it, but it wasn't social media every day talking about it.

Now it's just, there's so many people writing and talking about the NBA all the time, in real time, in most cases, on Twitter. And so people pay more attention, so it snowballs. And the league has a big problem. It's not just that the teams, I mean, there was back in the day, the Shaq Kobe days, that was like the team that really was probably the only team that could win as well. And so they would play like the New Jersey Nets and the finals and it was a joke. And so there was a situation where you had a super team that was much better than the rest of the league and it didn't seem as bad. But the problem then is that it was a team that kind of happened on its own. It wasn't as though players conspired to create this super team. One team, one guy left,

you know, Kevin Durant leaves Oklahoma City after they lose in seven games. So it's more like, now the players themselves have some more power to form these teams. Yeah. And the executives are trying to combat that by trying to rebuild and have control by having the younger players on the contracts. That's really the only way to acquire a superstar short of being part of like this little cadre of players who are trying to create super teams together. Tell Jason your theory. of what they should do with rookies. Not just rookies. I think that, so I think that there shouldn't be a draft.

So no draft. No draft. ESPN's already devastated. They're like, we love the draft. We have seven million people. Not just no draft. The hard cap that can't be exceeded in any way. Can't exceed it by $1. Not by $1.

And every player, there is no max contract. So you have $100 million for your cap. And if you want to sign LeBron to 85 and try to fill out the rest of your roster with 15, God bless you. And I feel like that. How would the Knicks screw this up, Jason? Porzingis gets $100 million and then all minimums? They would absolutely figure out a way to do it.

Yeah, it's $115 million for Porzingis, and then he gets hurt like he did this season. So you could conceivably, with the amount of money they're spending on salaries, because the cap's like what, like 103 or something, but it's really way more than that. Like OKC's spending $130. Yeah, so whatever the cap is, the hard number is.

So we could say it's $120 hard cap and you can't go one dime over it. Correct. I mean, short of something radical that really tears up the, the structure of the NBA, I don't know how you do anything about tanking. Like really,

the league's solution to tanking right now is, just don't talk about it. Don't admit it. And that's always been their solution is like, just don't admit that this is what's happening. So let's say if you didn't want to do that. You still don't want to have the,

you know, everyone's a free agent or rookies, whatever. So what you probably should do is, is you could do the wheel thing that Mike Zerrand did or every team rotates a draft position. But I feel like that's a little too nerdy, even for like for me

and I'm a pretty big nerd. I feel like that's a little bit too nerdy, like the wheel. people wouldn't understand what's going on. What do you mean? We don't have the number one pick for three years. What is going on?

And then you'd have players, college players, who could actually decide when to come out not to based on who. That's going to happen at some point. Yeah. So what I think they should do

is the seventh and eighth teams and all the teams don't make the playoffs have an equal chance at a lottery pick. And it's all a lottery and it's a draft. It's just a complete random selection.

Why can't we do it so that if you're in the top four, you don't get to be in the top four again for three years? I don't like that either. I think that... But why reward a team like Phoenix that's just been a shit show for five straight years.

Why don't they get to be in the lottery again? But they're still going to have teams that are going to tank one year because now they know there's three years that were in the bottom. They got their picks and now let's tank. This is our year to tank. So I think just having it so that you shouldn't be, originally, why do you need to be rewarded? The idea before was that, okay,

we had to equally distribute the talent among the league. But that's not happening. It doesn't matter. The bad teams are still bad. They're always going to be bad. The rookie contracts, it's not like a rookie can't leave after a second contract anyways and go someplace else. All it does is really allow you to have control over a pro for a,

short period of time. It's not like you have them forever. It's not going to revitalize your franchise. And it just sets your fan base back, like aside from Philadelphia who really, really loved what was going on with the process. They're weirdos. They're weirdos. They're weirdos. Let me just say one thing. Like the dude who tattooed the Sam Hinky thing. Sloan is an extremely stayed and serious affair. The only person they got applause when they were introduced before, you know, like as the people were coming out for the panels, is Sam Hinky. And this is like, you know, Steve Nash is there.

Chris Bosch is there. Sam Hinky got applause when he came out. It was wild. Yeah. Sam Hinky is like, is like nerd Vana. Yes. He's it. He's, I used to call Daryl Dork Elvis.

I don't know what Sam Hinky is. He's like Dork Jim Morrison. He really is. And what's funny is he didn't, if he had totally committed to whatever that plan, was, then he also should take Adianis over MCW. I mean, the thing about, yeah, they didn't draft perfectly well. It's not like he was like this great. And Okaphor.

No one does. No one does. They should have taken Porzegis. Because if you're just going full high ceiling, high variation. The greatest thing that he did was he realized is that this is a lottery. And there's really no distance to having as many tickets as possible. Right. His trades were great.

It was like very Belichick-ass. He kept adding assets. He knew what he knew in the sense that nobody can evaluate these. 18 to 20 year old players perfectly. So you just want as many shots as possible. The problem of what he did was he, he alienated the media, which is what you don't want to do by not wanting to talk. And he, the other GMs and Adam Silver got mad.

And the agents. And he, it was kind of smart because, like, as a gambler, I feel like if you know something, you don't want to tell everyone about what you know. And so he was really quiet about what his theories were in terms of he didn't do a lot of publicity. And that's really smart. But having that type of job is such of like, that's why you have so many former agents getting into it now.

Because it's like a, it's like a smarmy handshake, wink, wink type of business. You need to have like relationships. You need to all these other things. You can't just be the guy in the back with a bunch of spreadsheets. Seeing him at Sloan, like in his element, working the hallways, talking to people at the panels. I think that was, that was a big mistake. He's not talking to me anymore. He's very engaging.

Yeah, he's a good guy. Big time. Yeah, he's not like this. You have this picture of him, I think, from the process and the fact that he was so quiet as this person who's this really nerdy guy and he's not. No. He's very engaging, very charming guy. Like, fun to listen to him talk.

He just should have talked to the press more. Last thing quickly. And then we're bringing Justin Vera in. If they did the, Zach wrote about a modified playing, playing thing. I had the whole thing where everybody was in it that I've been writing about for since whenever. This one was just seven versus 10, eight versus nine in each conference. so basically four playoff games for those four teams

and then everyone else is in the lottery. If we did it that way, it would lead to 10 teams that were basically the lottery teams that aren't involved in the playoffs in any way. I think it's 10. What if we just had a lottery for it? What if you did the playing games

and then you had a lottery for those 10? Everybody gets an equal chance. You can't be in the top three twice. Well, I don't even think you can be in the top three twice because it's just random. I feel like that's fine. I don't think there should be any. So you wouldn't put any restrictions.

No, because why would you ever tank to avoid getting in the playoffs if you just had like a one in 10 chance of getting it? Because I think the incentive of, I think fans will get mad if their team could have made that playing game. I don't know, actually. Maybe fans are too smart now. If you're a Knicks fan and Porzengis was healthy and you could get the 10 seed to be in this playing game and potentially get your ass kicked by Toronto. Well, this is the better one is the West where you're going to play the Golden State Borders in the first round. It's like, do you really want to play Golden State? Fuck those guys.

I think they're beatable. I mean, that's a thing, like, especially in the West, like, three and down, you're just like, I want to get in the lottery. Like, what's the point? What's the point? You know what the point is? Competition. That's the point of the game. Being a freaking man for once.

You play to win the games. Remember what was that? What do you do this for? You play to win the game. Come on. That's not true in the NBA anymore. They don't have the you play to win the game anymore. It's like, oh, we need to get more draft slots.

Jason, thank you. Bringing Justin in right after this break. one more break to tell you about NBA desktop with Jason Concepcion who was on this podcast. We put this up usually Friday mornings. In my opinion, it is everything I want from an internet show. It feels like it's made for the internet. It's not a TV show that looks like a TV show but got thrown on the internet. This is an internet show I would compare it to talk soup crossed with the NBA.

Jason rips through all the storylines that we care about at the ringer, stuff like, you know, locker room fights, some disresum. respectful dunk, some sort of Twitter dis, somebody in the ringer's slack who had the hottest take of all time. He brings staffers and brings random people in. And we just rip through the league in seven minutes. It's really cool. The audience has grown for this. The feedback's been fantastic. You can find it on the ringer's YouTube page. You can find it on Facebook watch. You can find it on our Twitter at Ringer. And it's good stuff. Check it out. I promise you will like this. Or your money back, even though it's free. I promise.

necessarily will like it. NBA desktop hosted by Jason Getsupson. A lot of rumors that we're going to two episodes a week soon if it doesn't kill Jason Gallagher first. It might. We feed him a lot of coffee. He's the one who produces NBA desktop. Shout out to him. NBA desktop. Check it up. All right, Justin Barry is here for the ringer.com.

Bob's still here. Justin covered Davis for a couple years in New Orleans. New Orleans' season ended when Boogie Cousins went down with the Achilles injury. Or so we thought because New Orleans is still hanging around. And Davis has been unbelievable. And we are reaching this point now where, you know, I love history.

I loved when I wrote my book, The First Team All-MBA, stuff like that. I don't want to have the MVP race conversation yet. But I love, you know, First Team All-MBA is a reflection of, right, who are the five guys that mattered the most? Now, this year we have for First Team All-MBA, the front court, which get three spots. Davis, LeBron, Durant, Janus. pretty fascinating. Now you could conceivably push

Janus to a guard. I don't see any scenario where Davis is not one of the top five players in the league right now. And what he's doing, like what I watched last night and what I've seen in some of these other games, I'm like, holy shit,

is he the best player in the league? So what do you think first, Justin? It really kind of depends on what we're categorizing him as and that's the whole problem with all NBA, is that they still kind of push guys into positions. They still have a center slot.

I hate that. Yeah, I don't really get it. And with all-star, It's the same thing. We're all talking about how the NBA's positionalist now. And I don't see why the way we honor these guys is just so stringent and so structured. So you get rid of the positions completely. Yeah, I would say just top five guys.

I still like to have my fake team. Like I like having a point guard. And I like having somebody who can protect the rim in this conceivable basketball situation. And then I think the other three spots are wide open. But you could argue that Janus could be the rim protector. Oh, yeah. In whatever situation, Davis certainly could. Why would LeBron be in the top five in that?

Like, why would you put him over those guys? That's the question. I wouldn't. I'm not sure. I wouldn't. Not this year. I mean, he's great. This is the conversation I wanted to have because when you talk about LeBron and you don't

say he's the greatest player in the league, there's a certain segment of the NBA internet that is just completely. I mean, he probably is the greatest. Well, I think his ceiling's the highest. It's a regular season award and his team hasn't necessarily performed that well. And he's had games or he just hasn't played that well. He checked out for a couple weeks. He's been good lately. 40 minutes a game for 10 years now.

It's like absolutely ridiculous. It's like 15 years. Yeah. I don't, I don't think defensively, I never thought he was like the best player in the league defensively or anything. But when he wanted to be, he could be impactful. And I mean, in the playoffs he is for sure. Yeah, in the playoffs he is.

But during the regular season, he is just not impactful. No, because he's smart. He understands the race. He knows what's going on. He's trying to pace himself. He's not trying to win every minute of every game. And I mean, the guy never gets injured. There's a reason for that.

He's probably a freak. And also, he pastes himself very well. Well, like, he sprained his ankle like three weeks ago in one of those national TV games. And he was like, wow, that was really bad. And then he just came back like that minutes later. His ankle regenerated. It's so fun in the sidelines. What's your top five right now?

Where does Davis rank? Yeah, I would probably put him in the top five. I mean, the question, the real question is just whether you want Janus or you want LeBron in that conversation. So you think Davis, Durant, Hardin? who are missing? Steph. Curry.

Steph who will have enough games by the end of the year to have an Ombia, I would say. Yeah, and then Embed, maybe if we're saying it needs to be a traditional center, the case for Davis last year is he played more center than power forward. Now this year, because he played so many minutes with Boogie, he was theoretically the power forward. And then you get into the whole Dicey conversation, well, what is a power for? What is the center in that lineup anyway? He hates playing the center. Yeah, absolutely.

which is why they're starting a Mecca O'Khafore sometimes next to him. And they signed him for the rest of the season. Who knew he was still in shape? I was at my junior prom in 2004 when they beat Duke to make it to the championship game against Georgia Tech. He got drafted the same year as he was like the people can decide doing him or Dwight. That was one of my darkest page two archive moments. I weren't sure. I was team Okafore.

Yeah, same. I get in trouble. I might come around. You might end up winning that one. He might win that one in the long run. But the new more ones. defensive thing is interesting too. I think it comes down to defense and winning and you look at AD since boogie's been down, the defense has been very good. They're playing at a really high pace

and they're barely sticking in some of these games. I wonder if there's a course correction coming for AD specifically. You look at the team. It's very reminiscent of 2014-15 when his rise kind of began, whereas basically you have shooters and you have enough around him to almost feature him and let him be the best guy in the court, top five guy in the court, with LeBron, as you mentioned, the defense isn't there. And Janus, even though the Bucks' defense isn't great,

he's still probably the best defender on that team, maybe Bledsoe? No, he's the best defender. So, and he really unlocks them, and you expect in the playoffs, he's going to play more five. Yep. Or one of the things I like about the stretch run,

first of all, the seeds are in doubt, which will be fun, like, especially the home court, stuff like that. But also, like, I don't feel like any of the award stuff settled. I think Cardin is,

I hate talking about the MVP until we get to like 12, 15 games left. But I think Hardens in pole position right now. But the door is still open for somebody to go off down the stretch air and go nuts. And there's like five different candidates. What I'm seeing from Davis, I was thought it would be impossible to really fully keep track of this stat in the right way. But I wish it existed anyway. Just games where somebody just destroys the other team. It should have like its own name.

game. And Davis has had like 15 of those this year where he's just like, oh, Anthony Davis had 45 points, 17 rebounds, five blocks and made the last three shots of the game. There should be some stat that captures that because I swear he would have, he would be leading the league in whatever that stat is, right? Oh yeah, 100%. Him and Yanis, I think. Janus has had just games where it's like, holy fucking shit. What, Jesus Christ, how do you stop this guy? Yeah. LeBron, since the trades has had, he'll have quarters like that, but I think he's too smart now. He knows he doesn't have to, it's usually younger guys who have those games where they're like, I'm in Charlotte. I've always, I like Larry Johnson when I was a kid. I'm going to destroy them.

Right. In 80s, what, 24? We forget in the big unicorn race that he was kind of the original guy, but he's still just as young as any of these guys. He needs to get a real head coach and get to like a team with like well that's why one of the reasons i want to bring jeston in so jeston was there i mean top three worst ownership right and now the ownership in the hospital but i mean even the last couple years he was really getting on an age and it was kind of this team they owned just because they own the football team it was just a hot mess they they did some of the dumbest contracts we've seen this decade like when they re-signed omir ashek i'm just like the fuck are you guys doing like that guys just get out of that. And then some of the role players they overpaid. And you watch them now,

it's unfair because boogies out. But at the same time, like, when Etouin Moore is your fourth best guy in the court, like you've had some roster negligence. Sure. You know, and if I was him, at some point, you got to look around and go, what am I doing? Nobody knows that I'm one of the best players in basketball. Yeah, completely, it's like he's completely hidden. No one talks about him at all. What he's doing is absolutely ridiculous. And nobody pays attention because their games are always boring. But what's weird is people pay attention to Janus, who's, it's not like Janus is in like a fantastically better situation.

He's new. Yeah, it's new. And Davis had like some injuries, so you kind of forget about him a little bit. Right. And there was, in the beginning of the season, there's a little buzz when the injuries really, he had two more. He goes out almost every other game with something. I get like an alert like Anthony Davis is left.

Well, and it became like, well, what is this guy? I remember I was on the ringer NBA show a few months ago and I was like, I love the Celtics team. I don't want to roll. I don't want to spend our entire future rolling the dice and hoping Anthony Davis can stay in the court for four years. But now when you watch him these last two months, I'm like, oh, I'm an India. We should totally do everything we can to treat for Anthony Davis. He's a lot bigger. Like even than last year and the year before, he's completely, he's bulked up for sure.

Yeah, he's a center, whether he will admit it or not. Especially in today's NBA. Right. And you look at what they've pieced around him just since Boogie went down. And it's basically, they're more conventional, so I think their ceiling is lower. I don't think like, and the Warriors would be. be afraid of them in a playoff series because they don't have cousins to kind of throw in that wrinkle. I think they might have been a little afraid of them if cousins was cousins, right?

Yeah. But right now, they're basically just a really good small ball team where Niko kind of stretches the floor next to Davis and they can put up 120 on every night. And that's basically what they've been doing. Rondo's actually played really well for that team. Yeah. At times. Yeah. He's been for what he for what we thought his career was. Right. Well, I was, I mean, he's in crunch time. He makes like like yesterday he made the key player of the game, which won't really show up on the box score, but they missed a shot and he was like in traffic and batted it back. It was like a classic, like stupid roundup player that works. Definitely do shoot better when they receive a pass from him. Maybe not like a huge amount,

but enough where it's noticeable because he, like I watch someone like him throw passes and it's right in the pocket every time or Chris Paul does that too, Harden does that. And then you watch some other point guards who just, they just, I mean, Kyrie's like that. Like, watch Kyrie throw a pass to someone. He's just learning how to make the cross-court skip pass. I think Stevens has been working. The guy has to reach down to his kneecaps to get the ball or reach up to his shoulders. It just never gets the guy in rhythm. The guy comes off the turn, like comes off a curl and now he's going to wait a split

second to get the pass before he gets there. It's just there's never, there is a big difference between that. And yeah, Rondo's like the ultimate assist tour, but he also passes really. He's the ultimate assist. Drew has benefited a lot from that. Drew's been fantastic. He's getting the right. He's getting the ball right in the pocket every time, right when he comes off,

right when he's perfectly in motion. It doesn't have to stop. They should trade him right now. I guess they can. They have to wait. If you played four straight injury in three months, I would be trading him. I watched Bird and McHale. The NBA TV is doing these weird interviews with, they put these people who used to play

together and they have these sit downs to mix results so far. Bird and McHale, oh, God, it could have been so much better, but there was a great part where they were talking about passing. And McHale was talking about how Bird, when they played. together, he always knew exactly where to give Mikhail the ball. And he was like, you'd give me, like, sometimes the pass would be so I was already spinning around for my shot and the ball would be there. And then, and Byrd started talking about it. It's like, yeah, you know, Chief liked it over here and does this like two minutes soliloquy. And I was watching that thinking, like, I wish Kyrie

would watch this. Yeah. I wish Kyrie knew where Jason Tatum really loved the ball. Because I'm not positive he knows. Yeah. But yeah. What they have, I think it just works. And it speaks to like the combination that they kind of, the one thing they got right, even though they paid a premium for it, was the pair AD with a point card like Drew. I think last year, even though Drew missed a few games earlier in the season because of his wife's situation,

they were above, or like a slightly above 500 team with those two guys on the floor. I think that's essentially what you're getting now. I think they got the Meritage trade right. Yeah. I like that trade. And they got rid of a bad contract, gave up a first-arm pick, but I think they're going to make the play. and I don't know, I just like him.

I think he's good. I think he's good at basketball. I don't think he's an all-star, but even a game yesterday, I think he went like one for eight, but he's still like, he's in the mix, he's doing stuff,

and he's a guy you can go to war with in a playoff game. This team definitely looks more like an Alvin Gentry team. Now you can argue, like, whether or not that's the best thing for what they do and for- not one of your favorites.

I mean, I don't know. He's, I think, I liked him in 2010. I thought he did a good job with the Nash teams. Although we could have been coached those Nash teams. Yeah, I think like he's just an example of someone who has some, has had some success having an offensive system,

but that system hasn't necessarily succeeded without a really good point guard. You had a tweet about five coaches matter. Five coaches are terrible and all the other 20 are in the middle, which I completely agreed with. Yeah. I don't even know if I have five coaches that matter. I might have four. Yeah, I only mentioned.

So, well, I have four. Well, my five would be five. So like everyone likes pop. So Pops, Spoh, Stevens, Rick Carlisle, and I can remember who the other one. Not Steve Kerr? He's not a bad coach, but... Shats fired. I mean, Luke Walton led that team to like 20-somethings in a row or something like that.

Yeah, that did hurt to Steve Kerr. But Steve Kerr installed his... I just got the idea that like a coach... So like, you know, they didn't really realize that they could run like a Durant Curry pick and roll. Like, until like a very... Maybe you could say they were high waiting that... They're waiting for like... So the right time they're like unleash it on.

But I think that's bullshit. Teams don't do that. Teams aren't really hiding things for the playoffs. I liked how they moved it to the side. Sure. They did add some wrinkles as the playoffs on the on. I mean, Kurt's probably a great coach. He just hasn't had to show he's a great coach because he's got like an all-time great team.

And look, the first year he coached the team, he took him to the finals and won. So yeah, he probably is in there. Rick Carlisle, his greatest coaching job is right now where that team actually is trying. That team plays really well for 42 minutes and then makes the two or three plays it needs to lose. I don't know that the coach is actually trying. Like, I actually, I get what everyone's saying, but like, I don't know, I watch that team play and there are, there's some nights when, like, Kyle Collinsworth is playing and there's all these weird players who are playing. But there's other nights where you can see, like, they are irritated and he's coaching and they're trying to win. Like, I don't know if it came because after, you know, the fine from the owner, I'm not sure exactly if that's what it was.

Because I don't really, I'm not necessarily watching all of their games, like, with, like, fervored intensity or whatever. But, yeah, I don't know. Is there anyone overachieving to you, whether than. Spoe, who seems to overachieve every year? Coaching-wise? Yeah. Casey? Like, they've done a good job this year, for sure.

They've changed the way they play. They've gone from, like, heavy ISOs to really trying to move the ball a little bit more. They've developed an amazing bench. The fact, they're like one of the only, they remind me a lot of the Spurs team that won the second time versus Miami. We didn't like Dwayne Casey for a while. Think about these coaches is they get, they're just like players. I feel like I have to tweet some tweets from 2012. But they get better.

They do. They improve. For the ones who don't improve. Dr. Rivers is a great example. He was terrible the first few years. Yeah. And he got better. Yeah.

So they do get better. I mean, they're human beings. They learn stuff. But like, I don't know. There's just some coaches where I just feel they don't really, you know, they're not, like Jason Kidd just wasn't aware of like what he was doing. Like they're just some basic math. Like, oh, like we're down.

Like, they, he told the player that unintentionally missed a free throw because he didn't want to, they were up three and they didn't want to like foul him on a four point. play like on the next possession. Just like stuff like that. Like that actually said that. Yeah, it sounded like he was trying to get fired when he did that. When your own player calls you out for getting math wrong, I think that's the time. You have to start questioning your coach.

I also didn't, the way they ran their defense stuff was really strange. It was ridiculous. It was just like nobody else in the league was doing it, which is probably a bad sign. That's the type of thing that works for a while until teams look at the film and be like, oh, I mean, if we just make one extra pass, we get a wide open corner three-point shot every time. Okay, let's try that. And then they still did it over and over and over again. And they would do things like blitzball handlers who hadn't really had no business you would ever blitz them because they can't shoot.

And now they're just, oh, now it's passing to a guy who actually can shoot wide open from three. They just did a bunch of stuff that was really dumb. Any sleepers for you right now? Playoff wise? Anyone that you're eyeing, your eyeballing? Where are we on the jazz? See, I don't like the way they play either. I don't think that they are maximizing.

So they lucked into the idea of playing small when Goberra went out and stretching the floor and playing fast and moving. the ball and then Gobert came back and then they went right back to playing. Oh, they started staggering him a little more, but they went back to starting favors. And then they have a super ridiculous athletic front line in terms of when they do play those two guys. They play like this really, really. So they played the perfect examples. They played Portland one game in Portland, came back in one because they switched up their defense and started like blitzing the pick and roll. And it just completely fummoxed Lillard and McCollum.

They couldn't do anything. And then they played them again after the break. And they went back to playing this really passive vanilla soft defense where Gobert just lays all the way back into the lane. And now he'd come off the screen and just like just shoot a three. Lover comes off the screen and shoots a three. And I just feel like that's just bad coaching. I feel as though you did something that worked.

Are you not aware that you did something that worked? That's why you came back and won the game. So Quinn's in the middle 20. It's hard. These guys are doing a lot of stuff. I feel like maybe it's just hard to be an NBA coach. But to me, that was like a glaring example. like, okay, did you not watch what was working for you last time?

Every game is important, so you can't say that they're just like taking a few games off. They're trying to make the playoffs. Every game is important. They do a lot of weird things like, I don't know, they do a lot of weird things in terms of like when they play Derebko and when they don't play Derepco. Swedish Bird. Yeah. It's just a weird. They don't, they have those two big guys and they never crash the glass ever.

It's like, okay, I'm going to play go bare in favors. I'm just going to have them just high-tail it back on defense every time. What's the point? why play them at all then? My two teams in the East I've been monitoring Washington. They're going to fuck it up, though. Well, that's the thing.

You're going to have Scott Brooks in the playoffs trying to figure something out and Mahini will come rolling out versus Kelly Langella. Well, that was thinking you saw on Thursday night and he had Mahoney guarding LeBron. It's like, what are you doing? Every time this is going to be a foul.

Why are you doing this? It's unbelievable. It's really unbelievable. But I think Beal has a level that he might be able to go up in the playoffs. He's had moments. I find myself watching the way. is because I really like watching Beal.

Yeah, he's an awesome player. And if it's like four minutes left, I just like seeing what he's going to do. He's just this old school two guard that can shoot from 25 and get to the room what he wants. I think the wall injury has more to do with just the fact that Beal is getting more touches and the ball more. I think it's become. That it is because O. Wall is this player who's because Wall does create a lot for that team, but it's just a lot more efficient when Beal is out there. How about this?

I like having both of them. Yeah. I think depending on the matchup, you can get in the lane. I think Ubrae is a fucking gamer, man. And Porter's, if Porter's, you're in good shape. Everyone's trying to get wings in today's NBA, and they seem to have grown two of them. So that's like, so he's a terrible end game coach, but he's said he's a terrible endgame coach, but he quite clearly develops talent quite well. Yeah.

And so that's a part of coaching. He did in Oklahoma City too. Yeah, so that's a part of coaching. It's interesting. But when you watch the games, you're like, what is going on? Why is he playing these players? Satteransky. And Satteransky.

He could be my point card. I said that as he could be my part card any day. So that team, I'm watching them in the East because I just think there's another level they might be able to jump to, especially of walking them back. East is fun. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm not giving up on OKC.

All the signs say give up on them. As an elite team? Just as somebody that could do some damage in the playoffs potentially, I still think like, depends on what they match up. Adams, Paul George, Westbrook, 40 minutes a game, rest between every playoff game for one day,

And then they just need like, just competency from like four other spots. I'm not even asking for like to kick ass. I'm not asking Carmelo to go off in the playoffs, but just be competent. Make a couple open shots. If they could take away a bunch of their really, really bad twos that they take, where they're just early for no reason and Mello takes them. George stopped taking him a little bit. Westbrook takes them all the time.

I think Mello kills them. I tweeted about a little this weekend. I think he's having a horrendous year. It really looks like a guy who's on his way out of the league. And the stats back it up. I'm terrified of playoff Mello because he's the type of guy who probably thinks that he's going to take the reins and make a shot. Terrified that kill-kill OKC, you're terrified.

Yeah, if I'm an OKC fan, I'm terrified that he's on my side. So if depending on where they match up on the, like, they should be one of the last four teams left in the West. But what if they're the eight seed? What if gold state has to play them in round one? Then they won't be obviously, yeah. But if they can get a situation where they're playing any team of Golden State or Houston.

I don't think goals they want to play them. No. They always throw them off. They have bad matchups, even though I know they blew them out on Saturday, but they blew them out because their bench played well for one of the few times in the last couple months, and they played good defense. But, you know, they don't really have an inner guard Westbrook. Adams goes to town on them.

And Paul George is the best option you're going to have to at least make Durant work for shots. Same with Robeson, too. Both those guys can really, they have a couple guys. That's why I like Houston a lot, though, because Houston can throw Embalamute, Tucker, or Reefat. Risa. Tucker is a good one. They have Paul. They have Paul to guard Curry. They have Riza to guard Curry. They have just so many different options that they can just throw at Golden State. And then they're going to do things that are smart. They're going to... The only thing that concerns me a little bit with Houston is what the success they're having is this ISO stuff that they're doing, which is really successful with switches. And I feel like against Golden State, getting a switch and getting Draymond Green or getting Kevin Durant and trying to ISO them isn't quite... Yeah. quite as good as it would be versus other teams. But the other part of the flip side of that is that if you can now,

if they get like a few Mark Davis playoff series or Mark Davis as the referee and call a foul every single time because he always calling fouls for Hardin, if you get a couple of those where now Durant's in a switch and he's guarding Hardin. Now Durant picks up some fouls or Draymond Green picks up some fouls. They have no depth in the front line. I feel like, and especially if the pace is high and there's a lot of possession, there's more opportunities for fouls, I feel like Houston could beat them. I think Mark Davis is my number one flip on the Celtics game at 4.3.

30 West Coast time and like see the refs. I'm like, oh, fuck, Mark Davis. I'm not even saying he's a bad ref. He just really, can I say it? He just loves calling the shit on the perimeter. Mark Davis is, he's the logical successor to Joey Crawford. You guys are here to watch me tonight? Salvatore is a real one.

No, but Joey Crawford was like, hey, welcome everybody. Welcome 20,000 fans. I'm going to put on a referee show for you. It's like, we want to watch the players. We don't want to watch you, Joey Crawford. I don't think Mark Davis is like that. I just think he has taken the points of emphasis. where we got to really call it tight on the perimeter

to make sure we give the player space when they come down on a jump shot. He calls that very carefully. The points of emphasis of being a shitty ref. Trying too hard. Yeah. I am not. I mean, did you watched the game last night against Denver?

I did. It was ridiculous. It was absolutely ridiculous. Every jump shot was a shooting foul. Mark Davis hates fun. Last thing, and then we're going to go. Cleveland, did you like the trades? Did you understand the internet

after they won two straight games? to people like, they fix the calves. Kobe Altman, get his Hall of Fame plaque ready. It's like, can we wait like 10 games before we send Kobe Altman to the Hall fame? What do you think of the trades? I mean, the traits were good. Okay.

Yeah. You would have taken on that much more money and giving up a first. What does it matter? The team either has a chance to win a title or has a chance to keep LeBron. Are those the two trades you would have made? I don't know what else they could have done.

So it's tricky to say. I think getting rid of Isaiah Thomas was like not like paramount. Yeah, they would have poisoned them if they couldn't have traded them. They wanted to get rid of them so bad. And so they had to get rid of Isaiah, clearly. He was terrible on the court for them.

And then he was, you know, holding press conferences after every game. I think they had to get rid of Dwayne Wade too. And Wade was bad too for them. Wade is now murdering the Miami season. So, but look at this. So they, they, it's whatever. The fact that they signed those three players or got those three players, especially Wade, Jeff Green in the off season and thought like,

okay, these are the guys we're going to pair with LeBron. So you couldn't think of worse play. players to pair with LeBron. And also, like, Wade, I really think hurt J.R. Smith. I don't think it's a coincidence that J.R. Smith started trying again the moment Dwayne Wade left. I don't know anything about that. Because he went into a funk the moment they signed Dwayne Wade, he was like in a four-week

spiral. Yeah. The biggest trade was to get those guys reactivated. They traded for early season LeBron. And like to the, for the most part, he's been playing like that. But these guys are league average guys. And you're just assuming kind of like with Anthony Davis to tie this back to the first thing. I would not have done the George Hale trade.

I just don't. I like the Rodney Hood trade. I like the Rodney Hood trade a lot. If he can, you like the Rodney Hood part of the trade. Yes. Not George Hill, though. I think the George Hill part is okay just because they finally have a point guard who can play some defense, which they need. Like, they need to have a point guard who can play defense.

They have a point guard. It can go one for nine in big games for them. Yeah, he can do that too. Nance is the most interesting guy that they trade for. Because he's like, he makes sense as a small ball five next to LeBron. Yeah. I like that trade because I like Nance and Clarkson as a once a week, he check guy. And you get Isaiah Thomas off the team.

What's great about that trait is that you have like a bunch of players who look at LeBron with awe. Yeah. And it makes them want to play. Like you just look at that bench and they're all just watching LeBron like my dog looks at me. Like they're just like, wow, we get to play with LeBron. And so it creates like this energy. It makes LeBron want to play harder. It makes them want to play harder.

They're having fun. So I do think that way I didn't fix the team. It definitely gave them a chance to actually like have something special, some locker room camaraderie where people are really trying. or they're happy to be there. So I do feel like, I don't know what other options they had, but the fact that they were able to get rid of Wade and Isaiah Thomas, like you said, and add a couple people who really seem like

not just they want to be there, but they're ecstatic to be there. That's how the Lakers will look at LeBron next year. He's getting a preview of that. Sure. And then poor Miami got stuck with Wade. I don't think they had seen the game tapes. I watched the game the other day.

He took the last shot of the game. Did you see that? It's ridiculous. It was like, It's an ice late way to take the game winning shot. What's going out here? I don't know what they're trying. trying to do. I don't know if they're trying to lose now as well, but it seems like it's so weird.

They're not just letting him take the last shot in game. They're like running the offense and they're like, wow, his passing's really, really, it's like, Duane Wade should be in the celebrity game. They shouldn't be in real games anymore. All for that moment on Instagram where he came and had the introduction off the bench that one, his first came back. That was amazing. And honestly, like, I felt something from that, but that's what they're paying for now. Yeah. Listen, I love Dwayne Wade. The 06 finals is unassailable. His 09 season was one of the great. greatest seasons in the history of the two-guards position. Incredible 10-year run, but it's been over for like two years.

Yeah. And you cannot win if that guy is one of your crunch time dudes. But what's weird is I liked Miami's team, and it feels like he might swing their season. They had this weird team of just like you never knew who the heat check guy was going to be, but everybody played hard and they played matchups really well. And there's no good matchup for Dwayne Wade. Yeah. I just don't see it.

I mean, the door was open for Detroit. I mean, Miami's lost what? I think like eight of their past 10 or something crazy. I think he's going to kill them and they're going to miss the playoffs. Yeah, but I just saw Detroit lose to Charlotte. It got blown off the floor by Charlotte yesterday. It hasn't won a game. Detroit hasn't won a game where they haven't played a team in the back-to-back.

But isn't there another team that could sneak in there? Charlotte is right after Detroit, I believe. Yeah. So like there's four teams in these that are kind of fun to watch. And you kind of watch and play like Washington's one of them, Toronto's one of them, Cleveland, Boston. I don't think there's anymore. Is there anymore?

I thought it was Detroit, Miami. There's two spots. Detroit, Miami, Philly, and then there was a 14. Philly's definitely making the playoffs. Yeah, they're fun to watch. I don't know if they're definitely making it. They got blown out of last game. I had one of my worst over under bets ever about what Joe Hasse is still pissed about it.

We did under for Philly 42 and a half. Oh. That's high though. It was too high and we were like, and Bede's not playing 55 games. Get the fuck out of here. And he's already at like 46. What are they like 30? They're like 29.

games under... 29 and 16 or something. We need an Embed pulled hamstring like pretty soon if we're going to hit that. Because when he's not out there, they could lose every game. But yeah, I don't know. Isaac, will you look up the standings? Because we're forgetting somebody.

So the six seat is Milwaukee, 7, Philly, 8, Miami, Detroit, and Charlotte. New York's tanking. So Charlotte's the one that really blew this. Because I think they have talent. They got... Do they, though? Well, I was obviously wrong.

I went into the season thinking they have all these weird pieces that I kind of like. They signed Dwight, which is going to be good. Like they never watched them play in the playoffs. The Dwight Bolivirus. Just why would they sign Dwight Howard, play them that many minutes? Did you think he was the MVP that year? I think Zach, that was Zach's 2010 vote or 2011, the Derivores year. Yeah, over Rose, I would have picked Dwight that year.

I just couldn't do it. I couldn't ever get there at Dwight. I didn't want to live in the world where he was the most valuable player of a basketball season. I never believed. He was big with the stat heads, I think, that year. It was also a weird year. Probably all those MVP should have gone to LeBron, most likely. But he was like a show.

I don't know. I'm still fine with the Derek Rose MVP. I have no idea how that team won 62 games. The problem with that season was it was all the defense, and Rose was like the only offense they had. So it wasn't like, he wasn't the best part of them. Like they won based on defense, and he was their worst offender.

Rose's legacy now is being hurt by these last few years, and people forget, like, him and Westbrook were equals athletically and from a going to a basket standpoint, it was basically like if Westbrook had gotten hurt six years ago and Westbrook never happened from that point on. I think Rose would have been as good as Westbrook. Some of the best highlight dunks,

when you look back at those old clips, he's amazing. The way he just like springs up out of nowhere, it's fantastic. I remember there's a couple games where they went head to head and it was just like watching, you know, like Wild Cane Dome when these two great animals end up fighting. You're like, I don't know who's going to win this one. It was like these two guys,

who are at this other level of athleticism, just banging each other. It was great to have you on. Justin, thank you. Isaac, it was a pleasure. Thanks, Isaac. Thanks to ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Don't forget about the recapables and the Ringer podcast network.

Don't forget about NBA desktop with Jason Getsuone. And don't forget, we have new shows every day this week, I think, right, Isaac? Yeah. All right.