The Ringer NBA Show - The Annual NBA GM Survey Results. Plus, LeBron’s Injury and “Second Decision” | Real Ones

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Howard Beck and Raja Bell are back with another edition of Real Ones, and open the pod with Raja's notable absence on The Ringer’s list of the 21st century's best NBA names. Plus, who are the best teams in NBA history to never win a championship? Is it the 2018 Rockets team with James Harden and CP3? Could it be the early 2000’s Kings teams that ran into the Lakers, or perhaps one of Raja’s Suns teams? For the first time in his career, LeBron James will not play in the season opener due to sciatica. How will this impact the Lakers out the gate, and was LeBron’s “second decision” an error in judgement? Plus, the annual NBA GM’s survey has been released. Some of the results might surprise you. Hit the mailbag! [e-mail] The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out rg-help.com to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Howard Beck and Raja Bell Producers: Clifford Augustin Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What up? It's the real ones. Howard Beck, senior writer at the ringer with me from Miami. He just completed a historic comeback victory over the norovirus. It's Raja Bell. Raja, how are you feeling? How you, you're sitting, you're standing like you're upright. That seems all good. How are you doing, man? Yeah, I think I'm feeling very, very blessed that I wasn't, that I'm not feeling like I was a few days ago.

man, that shit was no joke. No joke. There are probably pictures of me somewhere. I don't know if these people know who they were taking pictures of. Not that it, not that it would matter to them, but like I don't know if they,

they thought it was just probably some, you know, drunk college kid laying on the side of a road at a Dunkin' Donuts in Alachua, Florida. But I was out. Like that thing, I couldn't, we had a six hour drive and I was like, fellas, I'm not going to make this shit.

Like, you're going to have to leave me in Alachua. The, uh, The real ones text chain, folks, was grizzly for a couple of days there. I was not sure we were getting Raja on today's show. I was not sure we were getting Raja functioning anytime soon. So I'm just happy to see you looking all right. Yeah. Yeah, I feel good.

I feel good now. I mean, it was, yeah. Once you're out of it, you're fine. But like, it was rough. Yeah. You know, you know. Week. Speaking of comebacks, this time next week, I believe, Logan Murdoch will be coming

back on the, okay. You remember, you remember Logan, Raja? I tried to forget him, but I, it just, just like seared into my brain, man. It's been a couple of months. We're very happy to have him back soon, getting the gang back together. We got a bunch of stuff to go through today,

but a quick shout out to the ringer.com, and for all of our listeners, if you did not see it this week, we did a quarter century week, so it was a bunch of reviews of, all like the bests and fun items of the last 25 years. Go check out Kurt Goldsbury's charts that explain the last 25 years. That went up today, Friday. Rob Mahoney, amazing piece on the five true originals, guys like Dirk and Steph.

Michael Pina did the greatest team not to make the finals. I want to come back to that in a second. Tyler Parker did the best 117 names of the last 25 years in the NBA. Names, Raja. Raja, your name sadly did not make the cut. I don't know if it was on his... His original list was like 900 possible candidates. He narrowed it down to a mere 117.

I did the five biggest sliding doors moments of the last 25 years. So folks should go check all that stuff out. Raja, how you feel about not making the best names of the last 25 years in the end of the year? I think I'll live. I think you're the only Raja. Yeah, I... That's not nothing. That's true. That's true. But I'm okay. I mean, I, I would be interested in it. What was, like, what was the winner?

The number one name, according to Tyler Parker, who's amazing writer, I love Tyler's stuff. The number one name of the last 25 years of the NBA, Von Tigo Cummings. I played with Vontigo. Like, Fontingo's not only a great name, but that's a great cat. That's a phenomenal dude. Okay. Okay. Does he break down? his criteria for like for for the rankings of names the he he he did he did break down the criteria i got it's it's a long list so i'm scrolling scrolling scrolling he'd get back to the uh the intro of this thing so i can tell you um rick fox made the list i forgot that so uh three criteria bismac bionbo bismac bionbo did make the list yes muki blaylock was number two by the way behind vontigo that's a good call like muki blaylock had to be um nicknames don't count he said for the purpose of the

of this list. So like, um, but if it's the one name that you're known for, like he calls it the Bimbo Coles provision, right? If you're only known as Bimbo Coles in the league, you qualify. Popeye Jones qualified. Mookie Blaylock qualified. But like the glove for Gary Payton doesn't qualify because that's strictly a nickname, right? Totally. So that was number one. Number two, a success doesn't matter. Wasn't about best players. It's just like strictly about your name. Yep. And he said it's first and last names. He says, and they dine. dynamic, inextricable relationship between the two. So it's basically like how it comes off your tongue, basically, right?

Like, um, so he like starts the list with Dwayne Bacon. That's, it's mostly about the bacon there, right? Tabo Cephalosha made it. Uh, Balalculabali made it. Quinn Derry Weatherspoon. Loy Vat. It's a phenomenal. It's just, it's a great list.

But that's all over the, it feels all over them. It is. But he also explained. each one. Okay. And they're just, the explanations themselves are phenomenal. Pablo Prijioni made the list.

That's a good call. That's easy. Anyway, it's awesome. It was really fun. Also fun. Michael Pina did the best team of the last 25 years not to make the finals

or win the championship. He went with the 2018 edition of the Houston Rockets. Raja, as someone who played a good chunk of the last 25 years on the earlier part of that spectrum. Do you have a team that always comes to mind as like, man, like that team, they never won at all or they didn't make the finals, but shit, that that team was awesome.

They could have easily won it. Anybody come to mind? Your son's teams, possibly? They were mentioned, I believe. Yeah. I'm trying to, yeah, that's a tough one. Who could have wanted me? I mean, I really, my son's teams, I mean, these are all going to be near and dear to

my heart, obviously, right? Like, I thought that, that, that Sacramento team that kept coming close was a really good. Yeah, so because of that, our 03 MAVs team that beat that Sacramento team and then lost to the Spurs. And then Dirk had like a knee injury in the Spur series and Steve Kerr rang like strong along all those threes. And then they wound up winning a chance. Like I, or did New Jersey win it? I think we win it that year if we don't, if we don't, if Dirk doesn't get hurt, that's one. I mean, I don't know. There are a lot of teams. Those, those Portland teams, maybe.

Yeah. So it's funny. Like my, my own personal favorite in this, like if any time this conversation comes up, best teams never to win the finals. Like the 992,000 trailblazers, they take the Lakers of Shaq and Kobe to seven games in the Western Conference finals. They have a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter at Staples Center before it all comes apart. But that team was freaking awesome, Raja. That team had basically two starting lineups. And it was like legends. And I know like some people have knocked it as like, well, they're a little older. Like, yeah, they were.

It was an older Arvita Sabonis, but that dude was still killing people. Yeah. Scotty, an older post bull, Scotty Pippen, but Scotty was still really. He was guarding everything and guarding everything. Damon Stoutemeyer, Bonsie Wells, Steve Smith, a young Germain O'Neill who can't and cracked the rotation. He stuck behind Subonis. And by the way, Rashid freaking Wallace and Brian Grant, like that team was incredible. They were just absolutely stacked. So to me, best team in the last 25 years, like, it's hard to compare, right? How do you compare that to say

the 73 win warriors that, you know, blew the three to one leave in the finals? Or the Rockets team that Pina went with or even that O2 Kings team, like another one that pushed Shaq and Kobe to the brink. And of course, you know, those are, those are series I was there for. So like, I have, I have some pretty vivid memories of just how good those teams were. And when you cover Shack and Kobe every day and then you see a team absolutely pushing them to the limit and being like this freaking close to knocking them out. Like that three Pete almost doesn't happen twice in 2000 and 2002. So anyway. Do you base it off of like how good the team was like a collection of, you know, the parts or you basing it off of like the talent level?

because like obviously the the Portland team you just talked about all that high-end like world-class talent that's just stacked they were they were really good too but like that's a lot of talent um that rockets team is interesting because like it was really top heavy with uh you know was that CP 3 and um and and james hardin right like really good role players around them like the perfect kind of combination but heavy our sons teams were interesting because i was thinking about i mean that was that was that was a Mari and Sean Marion and Steve Nash, Boris Dio was no slash, I mean, slouch. Landre Barbosa was winning six men of the year. Like, that was a lot of talent on that bad boy, too. Yeah. No, no question. I think that's the tough part about the exercise, right, is that, and it's funny, when I posted this on Blue Sky and had people responding to it, people's own opinions on who should have won that or, oh, how could you not mention this team or, you know, other suggestions that came out, everybody's got a little bit different criteria, right? Like, for some people, was just like, of course, it's the 73 win Warriors.

They won a record 73 games and they were defending champs. And they were up, we're up 3-1 in the finals. Like, of course, that's the best team not to win it all. And I can't remember if the dividing line for Pina's purposes was not even to make the finals because, you know, there's some great teams that don't even make it, like the teams that I was mentioning the Blazers and Kings from early 2000s. Your son's teams are in that category. I think it's, for me, it's like,

some combination of you look at the roster, the top to bottom rotation talent and you're just like, oh my God, like there's not a weak spot here. They've got Hall of Famers. They've got All-Stars and future All-Stars. And then how far they got before they fell out. Right. So like you're not going to say a team that always lost in the second round is the best team not to make the finals. Right. So it's I think the fact that the two teams that I was thinking about because they were knocking right on the door conference finals, game seven. To me, that speaks to it as well as like the strength of their roster. So, but yeah, I think everybody interprets it a little different. So the, the Warriors team for me, I don't know if this is fair. Because I would agree like, you know, 70 some wins and you don't win it. Like I give them the nod, except I mean, they won it like sandwiched that team with two winning teams, right? Yeah. So like I'm almost like they won it anyway.

I mean, that team won. It's not like they didn't get their due. Right. Allow me to introduce the roster of that O3 Mavs teams that I was talking about. Yeah, because I don't think, by the way, even it came up in conversations in the wake of that. Right. Real deal. Like Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzky, Michael Finley, right?

Like the big three that they had. Then then you had like Rayful of France. And that year was like, Rayful of France and what's Sean Bradley, a young Eddie Nahara. right and then they went out in free agency i believe i'm not familiar with exactly how they acquired but nick van exel and walt williams which were huge additions to like that kind of core of of three that they had um and then they had adrian griffin and myself kind of coming off the bench as a defensive piece here and there you had you had just a lot of people on that team like i was a baby but there was some three guys just in the middle of their prime and steve dirk and and and

and Michael Finley and then just really, really good kind of older veteran pros and whiz and quick. That was a really good team. Yeah. Yeah, Popeye and Popeye and

Popeye on the nameless and Avery Johnson were like, were like the vets that were our coaches kind of, right? So like there was just a lot of talent around there. Yeah. I mean, Dirk and Nash alone and Finley too, right? Like he's still there at that point.

actually relates to the piece that I wrote for the quarter century series this week, which was biggest sliding doors moments of the last 25 years. And I had to go with five. I had a gazillion, but it's hard to narrow it down. But like I think it was the last one I put in the piece was Cuban deciding not to pay Steve. Like that it's not just that it's not just that Nash leaves Dallas for Phoenix. And this is the year after the team you're talking about. It's everything that happens after that, right?

Like, does seven seconds or less happen without Nash there to run it for Dan Tony? Right. And if Steve stays in Dallas, all right, look, the Mavericks would have been great. Maybe Dirk wins a championship even earlier than he does. Maybe he makes more finals than he does. Maybe, you know, maybe Nelly Ball becomes the seven seconds or less spark that changes the league instead. But it's like the sons and Mike Dantonie and Steve Nash changed basketball. And there's so many things that.

come out of that, even setting the stage for what the Warriors would later do in their dynasty, right? It sets a template. And Steve Kerr came in at the back end as GM of the Sons, even, and, you know, Steve Kerr, Alvin Gentry. And I think there's all these different connections between all this. And basketball is just different because of the Sons. And it only happens because Dantonia Nash and the synergy that they create, right? And the system that they birth, which at the time was still drawing a ton of skepticism. So if Cuban just pays Steve, instead of worrying about his back and his health and his age and all this, like a lot of things are different.

So that was one of my sliding doors moments. Well, you attributed to like, and that's fair, you attributed to like him not paying Steve. There was a signing the year before that where he didn't pay someone that I think was more significant and actually played a huge role in him not signing Steve at the end of the day. I think it was the first domino to fall. He didn't fucking sign me. Joke totally. That's why I thought you were going with that, but it was like,

Joe. No, all jokes aside. No, all jokes aside. No, all jokes things too, you know.

That's what I mean? Who knows? You would have coached Steve back? Are you, that's right. That's right. He didn't realize how important our relationship actually. Like,

no, but, uh, so, you know, for me, too, like you're talking about the Sunsteams,

but like, all jokes aside, you know, I'm in Utah, just, kind of trying to figure out who I am as a player after that. And then Steve now, I play him one year with the jazz. And then the second year of my jazz deal, he is in Phoenix.

And I'm watching that. I'm a free agent, you know, and I, and Steve and I obviously have a relationship. So I'm talking to Steve about, oh, man, that looks, you know, that looks really fun. Like we went out and played them. You know, I had a pretty good game, which put me on DeAnonis radar. And then Steve and I have this relationship. So even my career arc, if you will. would have been completely different had had, had, had, uh, Cubs signed Steve back.

Yeah. Uh, so folks, go check all that stuff out. Like, this was a really fun week on, on the ringer and R MBA coverage with, uh, the quarter century stuff, all the stories I mentioned. Um, go check all that out. I want to get to the other thing that dropped this week, of course, was the, uh, annual MBA GM survey that my buddy, John Schumann at MBA.com does. We'll get to that in a minute.

Um, but we got to hit a couple newsy things here first. Raja. I don't necessarily want to talk about LeBron again this week, but he's almost leaving us no choice. Did you see the second decision? No. Capital S, capital D? Negative. They flash that. Well, of course you didn't. You were like lying in a street somewhere in in Florida. Multiple times, by the way. The last one was it to docket donuts. I'm sorry. It's not a laughing matter. That shit ain't fun. So Monday. Tuesday, somewhere in that range, LeBron on his social channels teases the coming of the second decision, capital S, capital D. And there's a quick preview video. And there's a guy who looks like

he's an interviewer sitting on a basketball court, just as we saw with Jim Gray back in 2010. And LeBron walking in in kind of a similar, like, patterned shirt. And you don't know what it's about. It's just this is coming tomorrow. And so everybody's like, he's announcing his retirement. He's not, whatever. And of course, of course, of course, this was never going to be about basketball. This was always going to be an advertising advertisement for something. And it turned out it was for an alcohol brand that I don't know whether or not they advertise with us. So I'm not going to give them the free plug. It was, it was annoying. My friend Candace Buckner wrote a great piece about it, a great column on it in the Washington Post. But like at this point, LeBron knows. Like,

he knows, like, we are all just on a string here. And the second he tugs it, we're all reacting. And they got a lot of mileage out of it. Tone of speculation and people wondering, like, what's, is this going to be a big news announcement or is there something else? And yeah, I'm sure a ton of people watch that video for the alcohol company. But it's like, at this stage of your career, when we know it's your retirement's coming close and everything else, I just just don't mess with people's emotions and, and, you know, it seemed unnecessary. Yeah, you know what you're doing there, LeBron, but. Yeah.

I mean, I guess, you know what I, you know what? I come to grips with like every day more and more. I'm just, this is a shame. Like, I'm just not that kind of fan anymore. Like, I'm not, I don't care what him or anybody else is really doing for that matter. I'm not tapped in like that. You know what I mean? Like, I know it sounds crazy.

Like, when the game start, I'm there. I'm watching. I want to know what's going on. But in terms of like, I didn't even know there was a decision part two. Even if I wasn't sick as a dog, I wouldn't have known that. I just don't care. Yeah. I wouldn't have cared, except it's my job to care. And look, he's going to retire sometime, right? Next week, next month, next year, a year after that, whatever. It's like it's coming. We know it's coming. But he's one of the greatest ever to play and it's going to be a big deal when he walks away. So I just the, it was just a little bit crass, I think, though, the manipulation. of everybody and for purposes of just, you know, selling some booze.

Selling anything. I don't care that it was booze, by the way. Selling tacos, selling anything. I get it just, but I mean, I guess Howard, like, and that's fair that, you know, I mean, you've got to care. Did people think he was like going to retire? Like, did people really think that was the decision that he was about to drop? I had to have some actual like text conversations with my editor just to make sure that

just in case, even though we don't believe this is going to be something, we need to be like, at least plugged in and conscious and whatever. Okay. Because something might happen. Something news really might be happening here. And yeah, that would have massive ripple effects on the league. And we would be, everybody would be writing and talking about nothing but that if that were where this was actually going to lead.

I think everybody was pretty sure it was going to end up just being an ad for something. But yeah. I mean, it, you know, look, like I say. He's the puppet master here. And I think based on just what I saw on social media for the, you know, 12 hours after that, he got the desired response. And so did the company he was plugging. So unrelated.

LeBron also has sciatica and is going to miss the start of the season for the first time in his career. He's out at least a few weeks. I think the projections are at least five games and then reevaluation, which means it could be longer. So curious to see how that affects the way the Lakers deploy their starting lineup, the rotation, how they look without him. You know, we're already like it's such a weird symbolic, unintentionally symbolic, you wrinkle here, Raja, because we're in this transition, right? Luca to seemingly LeBron's chagrin is now the center of the universe out there, not just in terms of the offense and everything else, but the planning is all around him. That was the statement by Rich Paul back in June about, hey, don't forget LeBron's here and he

has a shorter timeline. And now here it is. They're going to start the season literally without LeBron on the floor. And, you know, we're somewhere toward the beginning of the end and the handoff for good. Don't know when it's ending. That'll be the decision part three, I guess. But interesting that there's no LeBron to start the season. When you get to a certain age, you know this Howard, but athletes, you know, especially,

I mean, you can do everything that you normally do and even take more precautions as you train and lead up to a season and do everything right. Like check every box that you've checks year in and year out. And every year you add another box, you can't account for something that. that will pop up that next year. That makes sense. I mean, I know it was a convoluted way to explain it, but like something new is going to pop up that's going wrong with you.

Every year you advance in age. You don't know what it's going to be so you can't prepare for it. And LeBron's kind of to some degree experience in that because he takes care of himself as well as anybody in the league. And then you're just age is aging. It's happening. And so, you know, sciatic is interesting because it flares, right? Like you could wind up feeling pretty good.

good, miss five games, go through a string of playing really well. And oops, there went again, and now you're out. And so it'll be interesting to see if this is something that lingers. It's something that they deal with off and on the entire season. I do agree with you, the timing of it is, you know, it's really interesting because they come out of the gates playing well and looking really good. And that dynamic of LeBron versus Luca and how we're going to manage that, that that decision starts to take shape in a way that, you know, I don't think is good for LeBron. That's if they were to come out and hit the bricks rolling. If they don't look good and then, you know, he comes back and it solidifies and puts the pieces back in their normal

spots, you know, that could be, you know, a little leverage play for LeBron in camp, right? Like, listen, hey, don't forget about us. Like, we're, you know, we need it. So that's going to be interesting to see how the dynamics, you know, kind of play themselves out. But generally speaking, I mean, you have, I don't know how old LeBron is. Forgive me, what's he, 40. 40 and turning 41 December. Yeah. So for a 40 year old, man, you're going to deal with that. Like, you know, it's just a start of the season this year. But there's, you can pencil in, you know, a certain amount of missed games. That's happening.

When we project the Lakers and when we talk about the Lakers and their, you know, their potential in this moment, it's always because they have Luca and LeBron, right? right? Like you need a one-two punch in this league. And LeBron may be 40, but he was still all-MBA last season and is still a really potent player. But if you, you know, roll this forward, sciatica, maybe it lingers, as you say, maybe it flares up, as you say, maybe it leads to other stuff. One of these years, it's going to be the year where he's not at an all-MBA level anymore. It's like, it's unlikely he's going to be playing an all-MBA level and then retire. Possible, but I think unlikely. Probably what's going to happen is the slow erosion.

And then it's like, oh, okay, my body's telling me it's time. So one of these, time, one of these years, one of these seasons, it's going to be a lesser LeBron. And if it's this season, that changes everything we think about the Lakers because now it's, it's, it's Luca plus a less than L.MBA LeBron plus a, hey, Austin Reeves is pretty good, but not an all star, plus Rui Hachamora and DeAndre Aiton. And like, you know, like, I don't know, I don't know what you got at that stage. And a lot of people are projecting after that top tier of Oklahoma, Denver, Houston's down a notch because of the Fred Van Bleed injury. So it's a big mishmash, right?

It's, it's Minnesota and the Lakers and the Clippers and the Warriors and the wolves. And the Lakers place in there is still very much dependent on the fact that LeBron is regarded as an all-star to all-MBA player. And if he's not, it changes a lot. So the other thing that I think that happened this week, back to Janus. Janus essentially confirmed the essence of Sham Sharaneh is reporting over the summer, which is that Janus looked around a bit, seemingly has his eye on the Knicks. He didn't confirm that part of it. But he confirmed that he effectively confirmed everything he's already been saying for the last few years anyway, right?

Like in some ways, there's no difference here. Janus has said all along, and these have been little warning flares that Bucks fans keep trying to say, oh, you guys are making too much of this. We haven't been. We have made exactly what we should out of it, which is Janice saying, I want to win more championships. I want to be on a contender. And he's been pretty patient with it. They didn't have a great summer. They got Miles Turner and they waved and stretched dame, but like the roster is eh. And we talked about this last week. But Janus essentially said, like, yeah, listen, I'm completely committed here now, but I may change my mind in seven months.

And humans do that. And he's right and fair to say that. And I'm glad he's candid about it. but it essentially confirmed the outline of what Shams have been reporting that Bucks fans were so apoplectic about. So, yeah, we've accurately interpreted these as warning signs. Other teams around the league have been accurately interpreting it that way and have been making plans to try to poach him if he becomes available or to try to sign him outright in 2027 if he reaches free agency. So this season, I think, Raja, then becomes a bit of a referendum on where the Bucks are. Janus, like the rest of us, are looking to see, can they somehow, you know, contend with this group or make other moves along the way.

I don't know. How are you feeling about the buck's chances of making a really convincing run this season enough so to calm whatever Janus's concerns are? Well, what's... Let's start with what they got going for them, which is, you know, the Eastern Conference you got, who Cleveland, New York,

that are back relatively whole, looking like they looked last year that are kind of the top of the top of the league. You want to put the Sixers in? They're like, okay, Cliff wants to put the sixers. Producer Cliff is making a quick

reminder to us. Yeah, but there are some things there that I want to see before. I'm going to put them in there, Cliff. But I feel you. But let's just say, like, as a conference, there's outside of those two teams, like we're in wait and C mode, right?

So like, ultimately do I have, yeah, I mean, they're all in. They're good. But like, if you were to tell me you had Janus playing well and you had figured out the recipe around him, I'm not, I'm not ready to say that I would be worried about Orlando or the Hawks and stuff like that. But I don't ultimately don't believe that they're going to be the type of team that if championship robust is his mentality right now, they're going to prove to him that like they're on the cusp of doing that.

I don't believe that. Now, again, the East might shake out to be a landscape where a lot of teams have a shot at it and you don't have to be great. And in that scenario, who knows? But if you're asking me, like, if push came to shove, do I think Milwaukee is going to have the type of season that would prove to Yonis that their championship window starts now and will extend for the next couple years of his career? I don't think that's happened. They just don't have the firepower on that roster. They don't have the talent after him. Janus is still the best player in the Eastern Conference.

I don't think that's in dispute. But it's such a steep drop-off after him. And I don't know how they get there. I'd like to think that there's a whiteboard somewhere in John Horst's office where he has mapped it all out for Janus showing like, here's what we're going to have in terms of like, because they're so out draft capital too. But like eventually, you know, each year you get closer to when you get picks back with that seven-year window.

Like, hey, here's some draft picks coming. Here's what we can do with cap room. Here's guys we've got our eyes on that we think. Like, you hope there's a roadmap there that they have been spelling out to him to try to keep him, you know, content with where they are. Like, no, we can't contend this year. That's a stretch. But here's what we have planned. And look, I want to be really clear about this.

I would love to see Janice in Milwaukee the rest of his career. I think it's really important for small markets in the, I've said this so many times over the years. It is really important for small markets in the NBA to not have just proof of concept. ability to keep their guys so that it doesn't feel hopeless. And not just for Milwaukee, but if you're a fan in Memphis or Charlotte or Indianapolis or wherever, you want to believe that your team has a chance. And what we've seen over the last seven, eight years here in the NBA with this age of parity is, yeah, everybody does have a chance. Be really smart. And you can be the Oklahoma City Thunder in one of the tiniest markets in the league. This is possible. The bucks have won

a championship. The Nuggets have won a championship. Like, it's possible. It's good for the league for that to happen. It's good for the league for those stars to stay put. But I don't expect, nor do I think it's fair to expect for a guy of Janus's caliber or Yokic's or anybody else's to stay put in perpetuity just out of some sense of loyalty. I mean, it's fine. Like, it's fine, but you can't expect it all the time. If you can't win championships and you think you still have the ability to lead teams to championships, it's perfectly fair for you to look around as Janus has kind of admitted to doing. So we'll see. I mean, teams are already lining. up, there was, there have been reports that Janus has thought about the Knicks, that the Knicks and Bucks have even had, you know, some kind of preliminary conversation a while back. I don't see it happening with the Knicks. Like, they just don't have the draft capital. If you're trading Janus, you're rebuilding. So you're going to want young players and picks. You're not, I don't think you're looking for Carl Anthony Towns and OG and Anobie as the return package. You could tread water. You could, you could avoid.

bottoming out, but I don't know if that's the goal. They don't have control over their own picks. So bottoming out actually kind of sucks for them because that's just high picks going elsewhere. But I got to think the Bucks want a lot of young players and picks because that's the normal reset that teams do. I mean, we can go down this list. Like the Nets, tons of draft capital and young players, but like are the young players good enough? And once you're matching salaries, you're probably trading a lot of the guys that Yonis are going to be playing with in Brooklyn. And then he hasn't improves his position if too much is going back the other way. Rockets got a lot of picks, including some still from Phoenix and Brooklyn.

They've got players like Shangoon that you could make the centerpiece of it so they could be interesting. The Spurs have a ton of draft capital and they've got a ton of young talent. Like that one, like the Janus Wembe possibility is really fun to think about. The Thunder can make the best offer of anybody, but like why would they break up a defending champion unless they crashed and burned next spring and decided it was time to try something else. But it seems unlikely. Miami's always attractive to players, but do they have enough that the Bucks would actually want?

Clippers don't have the draft capital. It's L.A., so I'll mention them. But they don't have the draft capital or the youth. The Lakers, like, I don't know what they even have. Austin Reeves and not a lot in the pick department. I have a friend who's a really hard, like hardcore Warriors fan who's always trying to come up with ways for them to get somebody. So he was like, you know, Kaminga Pajemski, a few first round picks. I don't, I don't see that one happening either. But it'll be interesting. Like, you know,

if it's an open market, if the Bucks are, if, if, Fianas doesn't hamstring them by saying only this team or these couple of teams, if they can create competition, it's obviously going to be pretty, pretty frothy. And I think even if he wants New York, there are a lot of teams that can make better offers. Yeah, I mean, you would know that better than me. I don't really know every asset for all the teams and so and so forth. But I would just say this, Yonnas hamstring them, bro. Go ahead and hamstring them. Hamstring them, though.

Tell them where you want to go. Like, let's not even fuck around. Like, we're not, you're not shipped. Like, you know, the assets, I get it for organization. Like, that's always the interesting part for me, right? Like, are we trying to do right by Janus? Are we trying to do right by us? Are we trying to split, you know, are we trying to split it?

and everybody walks away a little unhappy, been a little happy. Like, how are we going to approach that kind of negotiation? If I'm yonness and I'm trying to win that championship, I'm hamstring of you, dog. And apologies, Cliff. There's no way he's getting to Philly. There's just no way. Cliff's having a rough morning. From what I understand, some other Philadelphia teams that play in other sports had a bad night last night.

Oh, my God. I felt so bad. What was buddy? Oh, I felt terrible. I was watching that. I thought it was terrible. If you were a Sixers fan, you'd have been puking all over, or a Philly fan, you'd be puking all over again, Raj.

Oh, my gosh. That's tough. Look, man. I'm lightweight of Philly fans. Best uniforms for me and all the pro sports, like those baby blues with the, like that. What would you call? What's that? Powder.

They called the powder blues, Raj. Powder blues are crazy, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, the depression smacked me in the face this morning while I went to the gym, but it's all good, man. You win something, you lose something, you bounce back. You know what I'm saying? That moment, like I know this is off topic, but it's the most, it's the cringiest moment

that I could ever put myself in that I could imagine. It's just that that moment where that ground ball came to him, not the error, not the error on the like, that's not even an error because it was kind of, it wasn't like a sharply hit ground ball, but it was like, if you don't catch that cleanly, that's fine. You ran on to that like knock down ball and that's an easy routine play man. You turn and go to first like every single time. What's happening in your brain to short circuit at that moment and throw that wildly to home plate? My soul hurt it.

My soul hurt for him. Like it hurts thinking about it. Like I don't know what else to say, bro. It was it hurts so bad watching him do that. Man, it was it's a young player. or Ryan Kirkring. I mean, good player, too. I think he's 24 years old,

second year in the majors. He'll bounce back. Yeah, that was a crazy, just, I mean, just to sail it too, because the catcher said, throw it to first, throw the first, you got plenty of time.

The runner was halfway down to baseline, and he's still. He's going to be fine. I didn't make it sound like he won't be. And it's not even an indictment on who he is as a player. He just short-circuited. It was crazy.

Just short-circuited. Crazy, crazy. Sorry, we became a baseball show. Yeah, sorry about that. Sorry, but that each bad. Look how healthy producer Cliffs' fandom is, though, right? He's like, ah, you know, you win some, you lose some. What's fine?

You know, I heard a little bit. I'm good. We're good. Everything's all right. My Philly people would not be happy with my viewpoint on these things. They want me to go off on this, but yeah. Were they really, were they really crucifying him? Like nobody had any empathy for the young?

I was out last night and people was, it was a lot of profanities being said, a lot of, F that guy, if this guy. You got to remember. You got to remember the Eagles were losing at the same time, too. So it was just, yeah, the TV's, you know, the TV's at the spot. I was at Eagles on one, Phillies on the other. And it was just all around just a mess, just a hot mess. It was bad.

Yeah, that's a whole not, that's a whole other story with them birds. All right. Can I just, can I just say this, H? Like, I'm sorry, I know we got to run down and shit like that. Okay. I become more and more disappointed every day with, with today's fan. I just do. You know, we don't have patience for anything anymore.

It's true. A win or a loss is an indictment on who you are as a player. Like, whether you're a success or a failure, organizationally, it's an indictment. I mean, everything, the pendulum swings so much from game to game outing to outing. It's got to be impossible to be a high-level athlete. Like, I would not want to play in this culture. It's a lot. It's crazy.

Like there's no patience for anyone to, and everyone throws around the word develop. Like even in the NBA, I'll relate it to what we're doing here, right? Like you got these young kids coming out and, you know, I saw my young in, what was the one? We talked about him on the pod, which is he was at Rutgers last year. He had a nice little outing for the jazz first game out. Oh, Ace Bailey. He had a nice out of, but he's not going to do that every single game, right? He's not going to do that every single game.

Like he's going to go through stretches where where it doesn't look great and he's trying to figure it out. And and he's searching for how he how he like responds as a pro. And increasingly we don't afford these young players the opportunity to do that in a healthy way. It just becomes like just straight like venom at them. And it's it's just I just become I've become more and more disappointed every day. Every day I'm on on something or watching a fan or even a local, you know, sometimes. like a, you know, writer on some of these things, write about like their team. And some of them are better than others. It's just disappointed, man. I'm sorry. A little rant, but. No, not at all.

Listen, I'm with you. And, you know, like, I don't want to go into a whole tangent about this myself. But like, I think about this a lot, Roger, just because I've been covering this league for this is now going to be year 29, which is hard to believe. Before that, I was, you know, I was a fan before I was a sports writer, that's how you become a sports writer because you're a fan first. For most of us, it kind of wanes or dies along the way because it's a job. And your love of the sport takes on a different kind of manifestation, right, where you're channeling it into your interest in the players and trends and all these things. And you have to love it to want to write about it and talk about it all the time for a living. But it's not the same as the passion that you have as a fan,

where you live and die with the team, where you are either super happy. or super sad or super cliff. So, so like, you're like you, you ride these waves and that's normal, right? I think what's different now and what's disturbing to me now as somebody who's a little older and who has like came up at a different time and fandom was different in the 80s and 90s, is that so much of it now, it just seems so extreme and so grievance driven. Social media is a large part of that and it's always a little dangerous for us. to put too much stock into social media being an accurate gauge of our society.

But like a lot of other places in our society, social media feels very unhinged a lot of the time and very grievance driven. And I feel like so much of fandom now, instead of it being about the joys of sports and the joys of your team winning. And yeah, sometimes there's heartbreak too. But like the heartbreak doesn't have to be anger or vitriol or, you know, and I, and and also lashing out at other teams and fans of other teams and whatever, or lashing out at those of us in the media who dared to say something negative about your team

because we happen to see some hole in their plans. Like, the vitriol and the grievance is out of control. And that is something that I've noticed over the last 10, 15 years or so. Again, it tracks with the social media era. And we are more exposed to all of that than we've ever been to how fans feel. And as somebody in the media, yeah, I get a lot more feedback than I've ever gotten real time, for that matter. but I don't think it's healthy.

I don't think sports fandom is in a good place. So yeah, I'll not a random lecture I intended when I woke up this morning, but there it is. No doubt. What's the young man's name again, man? What's the pitcher's name? His name is Orion Kirkering, Orion Kirkering. Yeah, I just hope. Hopefully he's got, I'm sure he's got Greg.

He'll be going to, yeah, he'll bounce back. Yeah, he'll bounce back. I think the, I think, you know, as crazy as the Philly fans are and. You know, I live and breed us every single day. I'm from here, you know, morning breeze here. I think people understand, like, all right, like, let's relax, let's fall back at the end of the day. You know, I mean, homie made a mistake.

It wasn't just about him. It wasn't just about the end of that game. Like you said, he's short-circuited in the moment. He probably just panicked, didn't know what to do in a moment and threw it 80 yards away from JT at the plate. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think, listen, I'm a rational-level-headed Philly fan. A lot of people aren't as rational as me, Raj.

I'll be the first to say that and admit that. But, you know, I think I think homie will bounce back and he'll be fine. And I think the people should embrace him. Yeah, that's what so. Well, here's my last thing. It got nothing to do with Philly. Just to rant, like real talk on fandom in general. Like, no one knows better that they screwed something up or they didn't do their job

or they let the team, the city, their teammates down. No one knows better than the person that did it. No one feels worse about it in most cases than the person they did it. And so, like, just know that as a fan. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're not going to, you're not going to feel worse as a fan. As bad as you feel about your team, like, losing. The person that knows they made the mistake feels even worse.

I think gambling has something to do with this too, right? Like, there's a lot of people are pissed off when they lose their bets and everything else. And they lash out of players, coaches, and stuff. All right, let's wrap up with the GM survey. That was a fun little diversion, or maybe not fun, but like an interesting one. It's a good conversation. GM survey, John Schumann, NBA.com has been doing this for many, many years. 49 questions to the GMs.

We will not hit all 49 questions. Roger, before I get to the questions that he actually asked them, I keep thinking about the questions I'd really like to see in the survey that will never be there because this is NBA.com. And so this is like official. This is a league endeavor after all. But the questions I'd like to ask GMs are things like, who's the owner you most or least want to work for, right? Oh, yeah. Because they're like, everybody will tell you that is like the most underrated

potential advantage or disadvantage in the NBA and probably other sports too, other leagues too, is ownership. Like great owners generally produce better results and bad owners generally produce pretty pretty, pretty shitty results. And if you are the GM who is beholden to that owner, your job's a lot harder and a lot more stressful. So, and there's a lot at either end of the spectrum, I think. And there's a lot who are just kind of in the murky middle. But I would love to hear GMs rate the owners. I'd love to hear them, I'd love to hear them do like best, worst contracts. Because we do that stuff

in the media all the time, right? But the GMs who actually have to deal with those contracts, trade for them, sign them, be the ones responsible for them. Like, it'd be interesting to hear them rate those. The star player you'd least want is another one I'd like to hear, right? So you just want, you want tea, dog. You out here. Oh, yeah. You out here looking.

All right, all right. The shit that they say to us when we're just like chit chatting on the sidelines pregame or just gossiping at various events over the course of the year, Summer League or whatever. That's the stuff I really want in the survey, but we'll never see it. So what would you want? What do you like if it's it's it's it's kind of like the the truth serum test right like if we could get get the yeah yeah I'm 30 GMs I mean I'd like yeah I'd like to like worst worst star to deal with um you know shit like that I mean if we're looking for gossip like I'd like to know biggest headache yeah yeah but no one would know it but like yeah but uh don't want this guy uh I don't know um yeah I don't know I don't know I was unprepared for that question but that'd be the first one that came to mind. There's there's there. There's there, there would be some good ones if we could go there. Um,

so most of like the answers are not shocking in a lot of these. Um, and the, the GMs, I think, you know, are just as, um, prone to error or bad predictions as the rest of us are, uh, but also just as prone to predictability, I think. So overwhelmingly, they picked the Thunder to win the championship again, but it's, it's how overwhelming it was that I think is actually the newsworthy part of this. Um, 80% of the GMs said the Thunder would win. in, that's 24 of the 30. And that doesn't count the fact that Sam Presti can't vote for his own team in this survey, because that's the rules of the survey. GMs can't vote for their own team or their own players. So really, it's probably 25 out of 30. In a league where no one's repeated since 2017, 18, that does strike me as a little bit interesting. Yeah, that's interesting, but I mean, I could see it. They lost nothing. They lost absolutely nothing. No. They lost nobody of note.

They're young. They got the reigning MVP, one of the best offensive players in the game, up-and-coming offensive players, the best defense in the league. There are a lot of reasons why, yes, surprising just because no one's done it. But if anyone we're going to do it, I'm out on that limb with the 25, I guess. The ringer writing staff, we've gotten our preseason or what we call our entry survey questions from our editors, which I got to file next week, including predicting, you know, all the usual stuff, including Champion. And I don't know if I'm going Oklahoma yet, but if you

asked me the question of like Oklahoma or the field, I'm taking the field just because of where the trend lines are and how hard I know it is to repeat. And it was always hard to repeat even before this era of parody. And it's even harder now. So yeah. But you think, do you think that, I mean, the reason it's harder is because it's more prohibitive to like to keep the pieces once you've won the championship. Right. So there's a lot of moving parts. I find this one's interesting because there's nothing. Like they captured it at a time. Right. The Hawkins lost pieces or the Bucks lost pieces or other, you know, the Lakers lost pieces. Like a lot of recent champions lost pieces. And you're right. They lost no one. Yeah. That's interesting. One of the other GM questions was, you know, well, who is the most promising young core? And the Thunder won that one too with 50% of the vote over.

over San Antonio with 27, Detroit and Houston each got 10%. But like if you're the favorite to win the championship and are the defending champs, and you've got the most promising young core, like most promising young core, I think most years was probably a team that did not win. It was probably the, oh, the up-and-comer, right? Not the, like the fact that they are both is just insane. Yeah, uniquely positioned. I do think, I do think, not that you ask, but I think it could look different for them, right?

Like that they're not, they might not set the pace that they set through the season. Yeah. You know, like, but, but, you know, I do think at the end of the day, they'll be standing in the paint with a real shot to do it again. I feel like one of their advantages is, is the one that's like the really squishy kind of like hard to define one, which is character. Like, I think Sam Presti has drafted a lot of guys who aren't just super talented, but have high character.

And character can mean a lot of different things. But one definition of that is how much they care about the game and about each other and about playing selflessly. And I think all those guys, like their three best players, Shay, J-Dubb and Chet Holmgren, like, there's not a single indication

that any of those guys are just in it for themselves or they're going to be like, okay, we got a championship. Now I can just go out and get mine. I'm going to go win a scoring title or whatever. She could do that anyway. Did it anyway.

But I don't see these guys as being like driven by individual goals. They seem like truly great. teammates and just, you know, they're about the right things. So that's, I don't think that's pulling them apart. I don't think complacency's pulling you apart when you're still that young. Um, because that's the other one that could seep in. I don't know what would derail them other than happenstance, injury. Injury. Bad luck, a bad call, whatever it might be. Um, or maybe the nuggets just like just eke it out and like overtime of game seven in the conference finals or

something. Like, yeah, it could be by the smallest of margins. But they probably, fairly should be favored still. And if we pick somebody else, it's going to be because we're trying not to be boring. Yeah, no doubt. I think two things I want to touch on what you said. Like the nuggets, I think, I mean, Yokic is always going to be a problem. But if you were going to get them, I think you needed to get them. I think you needed to get them when they weren't really sure that they could do it. That was last year. And then the second part of that when you said the complacency, like that that's also the brilliance of what Sam Presti has been drafting and building is like the type of guy you're talking about as a pro just as a human being isn't complacent

there's a chip on that guy's shoulder you know that guy multiplied by 10 on their roster there's chips there that whether they've won something or not they still feel like they're the guy they were seven years ago that has something to prove and when you get an you know an accumulation of those guys that are talented and can hoop but will convince themselves that they have something to prove to someone no matter what, like you're working with some good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's just, if you're looking for reasons not to pick them, it's really hard to find them. You know, if you want to go with Denver, as I am tempted to do, just based on, they've still got Nicoliochich and they had one of the best off seasons of any team in the league. They really

fortified themselves and replenish the bench finally. And I love the Cam Johnson acquisition. There are reasons to like say, okay, I think the nuggets are really interesting. It might actually be able to do it. But trying to make the case for why they are better than the Thunder now is a steeper bar. So that's tough. A couple of the teams got votes in that category. So as I said, 24 picked the Thunder to win the championship. Second place with basically two votes each were the Cavs and Thunders. Or excuse me, Cavs and Nuggets, mistyped by me.

And then only other two other teams got like basically one vote each. And that was the Knicks and the Rockets. I think somewhat surprisingly there. That might have been, I assume a lot of this was done before Van Bleet went down to. When it came to the Eastern Conference rankings, that one I was surprised by. Who do you think the GMs tilted toward by basically a two to one margin to win the East, or at least to finish at the top of the East standings? Cleveland.

Yeah. But by 63 to 30%, like over the Knicks, like I thought the Knicks would get a lot more. I thought that might have been a little bit more split. Yeah, that's fair. That's a pretty wide margin over the Knicks. Pretty wide margin. Orlando got 7% of the vote there, too, for first place, which is a really big surprise. That's two or three people voting for them.

Western Conference, it was kind of like Thunder by pretty decent margin. It went like Oklahoma, Denver, Houston, Minnesota, and then that mishmash of Warriors, Clippers, Lakers, and Dallas was the eighth spot there. In the east, it went Cleveland, New York, Orlando, Atlanta, and then Detroit and Milwaukee were effectively tied for five, six. And then Cliffs six or is at seven, Celtics at eight. Celtics, despite basically being in a re or a whatever they are, a retool, a limbo of some sort. Rookie of the year, Cooper flagged by 97%. So that was everybody except for the Mavericks who couldn't vote for their own guy. not that interesting.

Best coach Spolster wins it again. 52% of the vote. Dagnol got 34% Tailu at 7%. Anything strike you there? Did Rick Carlisle not? He didn't make, did he make the list? I think Carlisle, I'm going to pull the full results up to check.

I think Carlisle got some votes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm a Spoh. I love Spow. I mean, yeah, I love Spow. Yeah, I don't, yeah, I, I would have, I mean, Rick, Rick has been, what, Rick, is he, what, where do you show up on that list? So he got also receiving votes. So it went Spolster 52%, Dagnol, 34, Lou, 7%. And then also receiving votes were Carlisle and Nick Nurse. So they effectively got what, like a vote each or something. Um, you know, there's, there's more coach questions, right? Like best manager motivator of people, it's Spolster again at the top, but then it's not by that big of a margin. Uh, Udoka finished his second. Kerr and Missoula read after that. Tailou,

again. Carlisle was also receiving votes there. Best in-game adjustments. Tailu wins that one with 40%. Runs the best offense. Carlisle won that one by a landslide, 53%. And second was a distant second. Kenny Atkinson and Chris Finch tied at 10% each. Best defense. Where's Steve, Kurt, come in on that. Where'd Kerr come in on that? I was curious on the offense. We're at Kerr? Yeah. Tied for fourth with 7%. Okay. All right. Defense was dag. No, who was second on defense? Imi Udoka, 23%. And then Spoh, Lou, Missoula. Yeah, that's fair. I would have, I mean, if you asked, you asked me, does anything stick out? I think 50, 30, I would have probably had Carlisle with a little larger percentage there, but it's whatever.

Yeah. The best assistant coach in the NBA is actually an interesting one because it's sometimes, might give you an indication of like who's really getting consideration for future head coach jobs, right? Micah Norrie, who's with Chris Finch in Minnesota with 25% of the vote there. Mike has been around quite a while. He was with Michael Malone in Sacramento. He's been a few different places. Everybody regards Micah is really sharp.

He's had some interviews for head coaching jobs. He's definitely named to keep an eye on. The interesting thing there was that the second place finisher in that vote for Best Assistant was Jeff Van Gundy. who, you know, out of the league for so many years before, you know, latching on with, well, first the Celtics as a consultant and then Tyloos staff. It'd be interesting to see if Jeff gets another shot at head coaching or if he still wants it at this stage of his life. He seems to be really enjoying himself with the clips as, you know, essentially top assistant

there. So that's interesting because we were like we were up, we went to a Florida State Miami game last weekend with my son Ty. who was on a visit up there for FSU basketball. And someone asked me about the Gus Malzahn calling plays at Florida State, right? And they were worried about maybe losing him if that offense continued to look great to another head job. And it kind of dovetails with this with Van Gundy. My take on it was like, those guys might get to a point and be interesting to see where Van Gundy is,

where they're having fun not be in the head. Like the head becomes something where you got a lot of stuff. stuff to deal with. There's media. There's, you know, they're all kind of fires that you have to put out managerially. There's just personalities that you're dealing with in a capacity that pulls bandwidth from your ability to just be a ball coach, whatever ball you're coaching. And some of those dudes have made enough bread. They proved that they can do it at a high level and they might just feel comfortable at this point being being an offensive coordinator to Van Gundy like a second chair. I mean, I don't know that to be fact, but I wonder what some of those guys, you know?

Like, how old is Van Gundy now? Somewhere in his 60s. I don't know, his age off top of my head. I can look it up. Yeah, no, it's all good. But, like, it's a good question, whether he'd still have the itch, if the opportunity presented itself,

or if he's like, look, dude, I'm, I'm good with that. I mean, I just want coach ball. It's a lot, right? Because you're, you know, you're having to, you know, as they say, you've got to manage up and down, right? You're managing your roster, but you also got to manage your front office and those relationships and sometimes the owner.

And, you know, yes, you've got to, to deal with us in the media. Coaches have to deal with the media way more than basically anybody else. Coaches talk to us more than players do, right? Because there's only one head coach and there's, you know, 15 players. But even the superstars, even the starters, aren't talking to us every day. The coaches do. By the way, quick side note here, coaches have to talk by contract, by rule, right?

General managers do not. And so if you look across the league, there are GMs who speak fairly frequently, some who speak almost never, some who speak literally never. And there's no rule on it. The people who are the authority on how to construct a roster, who stays, who goes, who gets the big contracts, who the coach is going to be, when to fire the coach. The people who make all those decisions have no rules whatsoever governing them being accountable to the public. And if you're saying, oh, you're just, you know, talking about you guys in the media. Yeah, that's how you get accountability.

is like we go to press conferences or we have we talk to people and we ask them the questions that you the fans presumably would ask them if you had the opportunity to that's our job at least it's a big part of our job and the GMs in a lot of places are completely unaccountable or only barely so and yeah so anyway just a quick side note to the whole uh burdens of a head coach the head coach has to talk to us all the time sometimes they even have to answer for the things that really the GM should answer for, but the GM's hiding. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'd be interested.

Yeah. Not great. A couple more before we go. Best home court advantage. Two teams tied for this one. Who do you suppose that was? I'm going to say Oklahoma City Thunder. Yes.

Man, trying to go through Oklahoma City Thunder. I'd like to say Miami for weird reasons, but like not for like the actual in-game experience, but just what that talent can do to you. But give me that's a different kind of home court advantage. Give me a second. But you and I both know. Give me a second. Utah?

No. Denver. Denver. Yeah, I was good. I knew it was one of those with altitude and. Yeah. Yeah.

Plus a great team, right? And like a lot of years, like best home court advantage, it tracks with a team that's also super good. So of course, their fans are going to be loud as hell, right? So Oklahoma and Denver tie, 43% each. And the only surprise there is that the Knicks, you know, all we hear about all the time is the garden.

And like, I live here. So like, I know it. 7% picked the Knicks. So interesting, the garden's way back there. Knicks fans, if you're offended, I guess scream louder. Yeah. But you know what they have going for them in reverse? It's people wonder, like,

it's not a scary place to play because you want to perform on that stage. Like people, people dream. Like, I, I going to New York, I want to play well. You know what I mean? Like, you don't, you don't really say that when you go to Denver. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's just about the altitude affecting you and maybe the, whatever, the intensity

of the crowd. Because the garden crowd's intense, but the garden crowd will also back, at least in, in leaner years, the garden will really back great players on the other team, right? They will cheer for Kobe, right? But it's, um, I don't know. The garden is, the garden is, it felt always to me, and I can only speak for myself, like I was on Broadway or performing, right?

Like, so, like, you're going in there to put on this performance, and I never really felt like the crowd was my enemy in the garden. I'm just trying to put on a good show for the crowd. Now, I don't know that everyone felt like that. Yeah. But I never felt like that. I also felt that way about Staples, right? Right.

Right. Like, you know, I'm going there and given the opportunity, it doesn't always work out like that. Like, we're trying to put on a show. show. But like there are other places, like you're not going into Denver saying, I want to put on a show. This is the mecca. And, and they've got a great crowd and they're on your neck and their team's good. And it becomes, it becomes its own thing, right? Same with, same with Oklahoma. But I always felt like the garden, everybody wants to play well in the garden, baby. Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't even really thought about it that way. I'm glad we brought that one up. The psychology of it is,

changes when you're all about trying to like just perform and you're not actually so tuned into like the shit that they're yelling at me from the stands or whatever or how loud it is or whatever. That's interesting. A couple more toughest team to predict, meaning widest possible variety of outcomes. Cliff, you care to guess? Let me guess. The Philadelphia's 76ers. 47% pitch the sixers as the toughest team to predict a huge, huge margin over everyone else.

A bunch of others were tied at 7%, meaning they all got a couple votes each. That was Dallas, Warriors, Rockets, Clippers, Lakers, Grizzlies, Pelicans. But yeah, I think we can all agree that the Sixers have a huge potential to do a huge variety of things, not all of which Cliff will be happy about. I think they're going to outperform expectations myself, but I've been on that island for a while now. We don't need to revisit that one. No, I'm with you, Howard. I'm buying. I'm buying stock right now.

Yeah? No, I'm buying. I mean, I mean, you buy it when it's low, right? I'm buying it. I don't, yeah, I see them, I see them being better than people think they're going to be. There's a possibility. They just got to stay healthy. Small thing.

Last thing, they always end with a question, just general open-ended question about rules or other things that the GMs would like to see changed. And I think for at least a second year in a row here, the majority of their responses, and there was different responses, but they all fall into the hands. heading of CBA stuff, basically. And a lot of it is about the aprons and how harsh those are. They want breaks to be able to pay their own players that they drafted and not have it count as much against the cap so that they can keep their guys together, something you and I were just talking about. So there's a lot of that. There's always going to be, if you're a GM, there's always going

to be a little bit of hand-wringing about the state of the CBA, and especially now because it's stricter than ever. And it makes it tough for them to do their jobs. And it's tough to keep teams together. but Adam Silver loves him some parity and that's what we got. Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't know. I would agree with anything that allows you as a team to retain the talent that's homegrown

that gives you a better chance to do that. So you're rewarded for your efforts, right? Like if we're going to be out there out scouting you out, out, you know, doing our homework. We're just beating you to the punch on all of that stuff. There should be some reward and some ability that makes it easier for us to keep that together. So I'm for any of that. I've always been philosophically in favor of that, but I understand why the league is not carving out those exceptions, right?

Because what happens is the second you start to do that, then you get the warriors, right, who are going to be able to like, we drafted so well, or the thunder now, drafted so well. will max out all the guys that we drafted. They'll never hit the market. So if you're trying to make the talent dispersed across the league, when a team can hoard it, and then especially in the Warriors case where they've got such great revenue streams

that they can afford all the luxury taxes, they don't care, screw it all. The Clippers were doing that too. Like, that's how we got the second apron because the Warriors and Clippers were just off the charts in their spending. And yeah, there's different versions of that, right? Off the charts in your spending

to keep the guys that you drafted, developed, and had blossom because you were smart enough to get them, feels different than the version of it where it's, oh, I'm poaching everybody else's players. But to the league, it's all the same. What they want is talent dispersed as well as possible and nobody just outspending somebody else by tens or hundreds of millions in payroll and luxury tax.

So I get it. But yeah, I still lean toward I would like to see teams have a mechanism to keep their team together. It sucks to watch teams. be pulled apart based on things that are out of their control, right? Yeah. So I don't know, man. We'll see if the Thunder can defend their title.

We'll see if LeBron can play at an LNBA level. We'll see if Yannis can spend the whole season still in Milwaukee. And there will be plenty more to discuss by the time we do this again. One week from today with Logan Murdoch back in this chair. So if you're tired of listening to me, it's good news. you'll get at least a third less of me this time next week. Roger, great to see you, my friend. Great to see you looking good, feeling good.

Sorry, sorry for the rough weeks. Cliff, sorry for your rough week. It's been a rough week, apparently all the way around this podcast. I'll tell you what. Let me just say this. We did all my travels. We were at University of Florida and in Tallahassee. More than a few listeners.

So thank you. Nice. Multiple people. Yeah, thank you guys for listening and being tapped in. Love to hear it. Hopefully we got to do another live show sometime this season. Thanks, everybody. Thank you all for listening, and we'll be back here this time next week.

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