The Ringer NBA Show - The Cleveland Cavaliers Keep Rolling, Joel Embiid Returns, Plus the NBA Cup Starts Tonight!

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

The second NBA Cup begins Tuesday. However, are there concerns that the tournament could lead to injuries down the line (13:00)? Also, what is the ultimate significance to the NBA Cup? What is the league trying to accomplish and what’s in it for the fans (20:38)? Who has and what have been the biggest surprises for the NBA season thus far (30:31)? Plus, Raja tells a great Kobe story. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Howard Beck and Raja Bell Producer: Clifford Augustin Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody. Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby. I can't wait to link with you twice a week every Tuesday and Friday right here on the mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league. Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction. We've got you covered right here. So follow us, subscribe and hit us with those five-star ratings on Spotify or wherever you get you. your podcast. And also don't forget to follow us on social media. That's at Ringer NBA. And check out the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of

podcasting read in the Ringer NBA YouTube channel. What up? It's the Real Ones. Our Beck senior writer for The Ringer. He is Raja Bell. And today is Tuesday, November 12th, which means Raja. I could feel the excitement already. I can see it in your face. I can feel it in the air around me. the buzz, the electricity. It's the NBA Cup. The renamed NBA Cup. No hyphins, no multyllabic, stupid words strung together.

Just NBA Cup. It's simple. I'm going to give them props for that part. But yes, NBA Cup starts tonight, Raja. Can you feel the electricity? No. I was going to, I mean, listen, man, for pod sake, I was going to launch into some shit, but the reality is no.

I don't feel it. Is it back in Vegas this year? So, yeah, the semis and the championships. ship will be in Vegas again. The group games. Are we there? This year? I have heard nothing. Okay.

So I will just say, and I don't, I don't think I will be regardless because, quick aside, family trip, you remember, you recall, my daughter started her college experience abroad. Yes. My wife and are going to fly out there in early December to help move her out of the dorms at the end of the semester. And then we're going to spend a few days traveling ourselves. Very cool.

Taking a little early season break there right around the time of the NBA Cup. That may or may not be coincidence. It's coincidence. I don't mind that I'm missing the Cup. We'll put it that way. We'll get into that. In any case, you know, before we get to the Cup, I just actually a quick plug here about social media because when we get into the Cup, I'll get into the fact that I did a lot of polling of the fans on both Twitter and Blue Sky. And this is not a commercial plug.

This is just me letting people know if you're looking for an alternate place to discuss the NBA right now because Twitter is, you know, Twitter. Blue Sky is thriving right now. Oh, dude. I have like. What is it, Howard? I mean, I'm glad you're doing this because my next question was what is Blue Sky, dude? So basically think of it. It looks a lot like Twitter.

It feels like Twitter of 2012. Like back when Twitter was new and fun. and vibrant and there wasn't a shit ton of bots and oh, I don't know, Nazis, actual Nazis, which seems to be a problem with the other site right now. It's, so it's easy to sign up. It's, it's BSkY.app, APP, so BSKY.com. The reason I'm plugging it, again, they're not sponsoring or anything else. I'm just letting people know, because a lot of people have had concerns, as I have, with the, the Twitter environment. And over the last week alone,

my followers on Blue Sky have more than tripled. There's a lot of NBA media have flocked there. A lot of NBA fans are there. It's a much better experience. And engagement is higher, frankly. So people do whatever you want to do, not here to tell anybody how to live their lives or their social media lives. Let me draw that down, Blue Sky.

NBA Blue Sky is thriving right now. And so if you want to come up, find me over there. I'm going to be spending less time on Twitter and more time on Blue Sky moving forward myself. And Raj is jotting it down. So he'll be there before too. I didn't even know about Twitter in 2012. Probably better. Probably better that you didn't. But it was more fun back then. I can tell you that. So the NBA Cup, the NBA Cup. This is year two. And to the NBA's credit, I think this, this succeeded in a lot of different ways last year, Raja.

People were interested, they were curious, they were talking about it. And part of the whole point of the exercise is there's not a lot of stakes in the early part of the NBA season. And we are living during a time when the regular season keeps getting downplayed by players, by teams, by medical staffs. And the league is really trying to reverse that. So anything that energizes the early part of the season is fine. it's good.

We'll get into why I still am not completely sold on the NBA Cup. But I do think they created extra buzz last year. I think starting tonight with a good slate of games, right? Like they've got, this is just, you know, to the league's benefit by happenstance. Joelle and Beads making his debut tonight against the Knicks. But still, a Sixers Knicks game would have had electricity regardless. Good scheduling by the league to make that an NBA Cup game. Clay Thompson is playing.

playing in San Francisco tonight, his homecoming, good scheduling by the league to make that an NBA Cup game. Some fans will now ascribe all the wrong reasons to why there was a lot of like excitement tonight and say like, oh, it's the Cup. No, it's not the Cup. Clay was always going to play a game back in San Francisco against his former team and it was always going to be interesting because of it. And Sixers, Knicks was going to be interesting regardless. And Bid coming back was so let's not get carried away. But I do think the NBA has done a smart job. this. I just, I don't know how much, I don't know how much momentum it's got overall, Raja. And that's what I'm most curious about. Year one was the novelty. Colorful courts.

Those are back. They're a little different this year. But, um, but still, colorful courts, different stakes, something else to talk about. There's not a lot of downside is the thing. I may not be sold on it. You may not be all that thrilled, but like, there's no real downs. Yeah, I mean, whether it winds up being like, like a Euro League, like, you know, I don't know, Premier League type of celebrated Cup event a decade from now. I don't know, Howard. But I'm with you.

I mean, for a lot of reasons, like, look, you know, you give any real competitor something to compete for. And I kind of said this last year. I mean, why not? Like, if someone's going to win it and we're playing the games anyway, you know, most guys that are at that level or girls that are at that level in any profession, like, look it, let's try to win it. Right. So like, you know, you're going to get some competitive games. The financials don't hurt at all. And I've said like, LeBron probably, you know, doesn't necessarily

need 500K. And someone would be like, yo, what's 500K to LeBron? It's 500K. Right? Like, like, say he doesn't need it in his portfolio, like mom, grandma, like anyone, right? So like, you're giving people incentive in a way that, especially for mid-guides or young people on the roster, you know, those guys, 7, 8, 9, 10 on your roster, like, you know, that's a lot of bread in those circumstances for people to really go out and compete. And so incentivize it in a way that gets them playing. Like, you got a cup. They're going to play for it. I actually like the courts. I'm the dude who likes the alternate unies and stuff like that and in NFL and college football and stuff like that. So I kind of enjoyed the courts. So it was kind of like,

Cool. I don't know where it goes, though. Like, I don't know if it becomes like a, you know, something that we're, that this next generation of NBA fans is just head over heels in love with. I can't speak to that. I think part of the difficulty for me, Raja, especially in this early part, right? So just to review the format, they go with group games, right? Everybody's, you know, every team is in a group. It was like four teams per group or whatever. And so you play group games first, right? So that's every Tuesday and first. Friday for the next four weeks, and every team will have played four group games by the end of it, right? So part of the issue I have is like, if the idea is that there are stakes, there's extra stakes, there's something else that guys are playing for. These games are different. They're special.

Will you see the court and you know, oh, right, NBA Cup? This is, this is not just a regular game. This counts in the regular standings, but it also counts in the cup stand. Okay, cool. You can register that in your head. But each of these games does not have any more. gravity than it would otherwise have. You win the first cup game that you play. Cool, you're 1 and 0, but you still may not make the knockout rounds, right? You got to, you, you're going to wait for another week before you play another cup game. And then, so there's no momentum to it.

There's no cohesion there because the group play games are spread out over four weeks. And at the end of it, you look up and you go, oh, oh, yeah, my team made the knockout round. Eight teams moved to the knockout round, by the way. And so I think it's hard to feel like, I'm, I guess this is because we're so programmed as, as, uh, U.S. sports fans. It's about playoffs, right? In the playoffs, you know exactly what's going on. If it's a single elimination sport, it's single elimination. If it's the NBA, it's best of seven.

And you, you understand every game what the weight of it is. These group play games, I don't feel like have any extra weight to them. And then eight teams moved to the knockout. round with single elimination games. That's on December 10th and 11th. So those games, okay, cool. That's those, at that stage, you know there's some suspense. There's some drama.

It's winner go home or winner go back to the regular season schedule that you were playing anyway, which again, because it's all simultaneous, it's not like, it's not winner go home. It's, you lose and then you, you still play games. And so it's, it's just hard for me to feel like these, these, these, these games have that gravity until you get to knock out round and then the semis and championship. And now it's like, okay, there's something very clear at stake. There's only X teams in the running. And there's a trophy. There's the cup. And at that point, I think it does amp up a little bit because once you get that

close to the prize, whatever it may be, the extra money, not bad, the cup itself, fine, a banner that you will raise at gunpoint because Adam Silver told you to. Um, fine. But until we get there, I don't know that the next few weeks feel different to me. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of that is how we're raised as fans, because, you know, if you are raised in that European soccer mold, like, you know exactly when those games are. You know exactly what they mean. And you're able to kind of, you're able to kind of separate between just the flow of the regular season and when it really matters because it's even just a cup pool play game. You know what I mean? You've been you've been born into that. Like you're, it registers with you in a way that it doesn't necessarily register with us. And the same with the athlete itself.

Um, you know, like those guys, they were brought up as fans of the sport. And so they have their, they're in doctrine in to kind of understand and how that works throughout the course of a season. I would, I would just say again as it, as it relates to to like, let's say your, your knockout round or, or your pool play round. Um, I would be really interested. I mean, it's been a long time since I was in a front office. I'd be really interested just to hear the conversations around a locker room.

Because, again, I'd just say, like, I know the money has exploded in a way with the revenue sharing and whatnot, where 500K to someone that's making, I don't know, $60 million to put some extra games. I don't know what that means to them. I wouldn't even speculate. But I know when someone would have said that to me in a locker room. and, you know, I was a starter for a lot of my career. Like, you know, I was, it wasn't like I was always the 12th man on a roster. If you had told me 500K was on the line, you know, early in the season, I don't give a damn win.

Those games were played. I'd be walking around that locker room like, yo, let's go, my boys. Everybody wake up. Big one tonight. And so, you know, I'd be interested. I have no, you know, I'm not around it, but. But that's, so, Roger, it's an interesting aspect of this, right? Like players want to win regardless, right?

You roll the ball out, you're trying to win, period. Coaches, same. Brought offices have to have the big picture in mind. Sure. And really interesting, this was an observation just by Mike Borkenov, my buddy over at the athletic. He posted this to Blue Sky, by the way. He might have put it on Twitter, too, but I saw it on Blue Sky. What is it, Blue Sky, Blue Sky, B-Sky.A-P-P-P-P-S-K-Y.

So he just noted that GMs, are starting to talk about the cup in a different way. So Calvin Booth, Nuggets GM. This was a quote from like a month or so ago. And he was pointing to the to the in-season tournament as a reason that they were unable to repeat. He says, quote, repeating is the hardest thing to do in sports. This is Calvin Booth talking.

It brings on a lot of different pressures and tensions. And I think fatigue, quite frankly, from the start of the season. I don't think the in-season tournament helps that. It brought out a lot of people's competitive spirits. I think we used a lot of energy. in the first part of the season, trying to win games. I think it was a great experience for us. We just have an even greater appreciation, blah, blah, blah.

But so Calvin Booth pointing to the in season tournament as something that they invested a lot of energy in and maybe regret after the fact. And then Vorkanov goes on to note in this post that Sam Presti, of course, runs the Thunder, Kobe Altman, of course, runs the Cavaliers, that they've both noted that the density of the schedule now to accommodate the cup,

they've wondered aloud if that's played a control. contributing factor in injuries. And, you know, look, that's one of those things that's, you know, it's unprovable. We're always trying to figure out why are there more injuries, fewer injuries, rash of it. My God, the injuries right now, Rajah, like, it's, it's a, it's a disaster right now on the injury front. So you've got a couple GMs who are wondering if the tournament is contributing to that because the way it has changed the rest of the schedule and the density of the schedule, Calvin Booth, saying maybe people put too much energy into it. And then we saw the Los Angeles Lakers won the cup, raised a banner,

and then fizzled out the rest of the way, got smoked at the first round of the playoffs, fired their coach. Darwin Ham, first ever coach to win the in-season tournament to the NBA Cup and be fired. So it's, it's, there's not necessarily competitive carryover, or it's not indicative of what will happen in the spring,

but it might be indicative of how you play the rest of season, if some of these jams are right, that it might be taking something out of you? Yeah, I mean, like, Cal Booth. Shout out to Cal Booth, we go way back and the job he's done there. But there's something to, there is something to be said for that. I think when you come into a season as a player, a coach, you know, even an organization, you know, there are segments of the season. And I don't know that you do it willingly as players or knowingly, sorry, as players.

You kind of, you have it mapped out as, as an organizational hole with like Howard, let's say he's coming off of an injury and the stages that we want to get him through a rehab, minute restriction, stretching those minutes, rounding into form around said date. Like we might have an idea and a prescription for what that looks like in the front office and with the medical team, but players really don't. It's an organic thing, the way you kind of, you know, round. into shape and then hit your stride as a team. And anyone who listens, like I'll say from time to time about teams that hop out early

in the season, yeah, I worry that they hit their stride too early, right? And you don't really know that that's happening, but it's hard to sustain great levels of anything, you know, for real extended periods of time. Now, some people can capture it for three or four years. Some people can capture it for a couple months. Like, you know, somebody might just get hot and going to the playoffs and, you know, they're moving. but you never know what your window of time looks like

in terms of how great you're going to be for that time. So starting the process kind of unorganically, if you will, with the incentivized cup and the money in a way that gets those engines revving a little too early and has people in a competitive mode that's usually reserved for June, May, this early in the season. There might be something to do that.

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I could certainly see a case for why they may be on to something. And I think especially for teams that have June in mind when they start the season, right? If you're the Cavaliers right now, undefeated at 12 and 0, shout out to the Cavs, my gosh. If you're the Cavaliers, if you're the Celtics, you know, Knicks and Sixers have kind of gotten off to slower starts, but those are teams that are still view themselves as deep playoff teams. If you're any of those teams, if you're the Thunder,

if you are, you know, Dallas is struggling a little out of the gate, but Dallas expects to be there in the spring. Any of these teams, Denver, you know, Minnesota, I have to think, Raja, that as a front office, as an organization, if somebody says, listen, we can prioritize the next few weeks to win the NBA Cup, or we can do what we had already set out to do. We want to load manage this player. We want to curtail this guy's minutes.

Or the Warriors, hey, like the Warriors are not doing this, I think, for, well, they're doing it probably for a lot of reasons, but the Warriors are, you know, doing the 11-man rotation, right? If you're starting off the season trying to just figure out your identity or trying to save Steph at the front end so that he's healthy at the back end, right? The Sixers got dinged in part when they got fined because of, you know, admitting out front that, hey, we want Joel healthy in the spring. So we're going to load manage him throughout the season. But these are things the NBA teams do now. And as an organization, I don't think you change that to try to win the NBA Cup. Because at the end of it all, of course, the Larry O'Brien Trophy, the NBA championship, even making the second round if you've never made the second round, you know, or haven't made it recently,

or making the conference finals if you haven't recently. Like, whatever your goals are for the season are built around April, May, and June. And if you think that the way you deploy your players and minutes and workload in November, December is going to do anything to impact the spring, you're going to prioritize the spring. And so, like, I'll be curious. Those are the hard things to pick up on in real time, but I'll be curious to see if different teams at different parts of the NBA stratosphere approach this slightly different. Yeah, I can't add anything to that. it will always be about winning a championship and GMs and owners, they'll do whatever they can position themselves and their teams for the best opportunity to do that. I have a question,

I mean, forgive me, but have we had, is there any language contractually with the cup in regards to people sitting out or anything like that? That's a good question. So last year they instituted the PPP, the player participation policy, which, you know, man. mandated all kinds of stuff in terms of playing and national games and the way you report injuries and all this. I don't think there was no cup specifics. I don't think there was anything specific to the cup. I hope I'm not wrong in that. I don't think so other than games that are national games are already a priority for the league and already have some special kind of requirements around them. Okay. But I don't think there's anything specific to the cup. This brings me to a thought

I had, Roger, just kind of a not a revelation. My thoughts sort of crystallizes this week as I was thinking about the cup of starting again, the distance between how I feel about it and how a lot of fans feel about it. And again, I did do a poll online, which I'll get to in a second. If you're an NBA fan, right, Grizzlies fan, Pacer's fan, whoever, you're rooting for your team to win regardless, right? You're going to root for them to win all 82 games. And if there's a little bit of extra stakes involved and this makes a little more fun, cool. something new to root for. I view the game through the lens of what's newsworthy because I'm a reporter and I have no rooting interest and I have no emotional attachment to anything. I am dead

inside. And so I think the gap between the way I look at this and the way some fans do is that it's given fans an extra reason to root and be interested and it's another just added jolt in the early part of the season. And for me, I'm looking at it through the lens of like, what does it matter. Like I said this many times last year at this time. Why does this matter? And I don't, 10 years from now, if the cup is still going, I don't think that the mere fact that we've had 10 of them will give it extra gravity. It's never going to matter the way that the NBA championship does. And of course, it can't. But I don't know that matters at all. I think it's forgotten the second it's over. The Lakers forgot it the second it was over and you move on with the rest of the season

and trade speculation and trade deadline stuff and injuries and coach firings and all the other stuff, it just, it gets lost. It's, it's obliterated. But I think the gap between me and the way I think some fans feel about it is like, there is nothing extra to interest me from a news standpoint, because I don't think there's this actual objective significance to what's happening over the next four weeks. And whoever wins this might well miss the playoffs. Like the NBA got lucky last year. LeBron and the Lakers were in the championship, won the championship in Las Vegas, which is basically the extension of L.A. for market purposes. It's Laker. That's Laker nation still. And they benefited from it. Like what's going to happen in December? I'm very curious, Raja, very curious to see what happens

if the finals of the NBA Cup is like Nets versus Grizzlies. No disrespect to either of them. But they just, you know, I mean, the Grizzlies at least have, you know, Jomaran and a lot of talent. But if it's like, how about like nets rockets, right? The nets are overachieving right now. They're fun. They're scrappy. They're feisty. The rockets have some talent, but not top 10 level move the needle on TV talent.

That could be a good game. Is it going to move the needle for ratings? So I don't know. I've rambled a lot there. No, it's okay. But I think you are right in that the cup lives in the space you just described. And I don't see any, I don't see any real upward mobility. for it to move out of that space, I could see, I could see an avenue towards, you know,

the opposite reaction to that. If, if we come out of the hypothetical, it costs us the championship world of what GMs are talking about and you suffer some kind of catastrophic, catastrophic injury in it, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, so, you know, I, I, I, I, I don't see it creeping into our fan culture in the way in 10 years that it has in FIFA or or any of your major soccer, you know, leagues overseas. I just don't see it happening like that. I could see the flip side of it though if people start to really go down and people are injured and it. You can really draw a correlation between the chase for the in-season cup and your inability to stay healthy for the playoffs. It would be hard to do, but I could make that case. It's funny too because I think

like, fandom is partially about bragging rights, right? You know, if your team is good, right? Like, it's all about, yeah, my team's better than yours. My team just hung a banner. Laker fans were not puffing their chests out last December about winning the end season. I'm sorry. Like, again, it's forgotten three seconds after it's over. And it does not, you know, offset any of the other disappointments for Laker fans last season.

Now, if the Nets say won the NBA Cup a month from now and the Nets are expecting, we're expected to be just a tanking team this season. Look, they're still going to be more excited about if they finally lose the way they're supposed to. They'll be more excited about getting Cooper flag or a high pick next June than they will be about winning the NBA Cup. Like, it's just, I don't see that the bragging rights part of it is really there either. So as I mentioned, I wanted to get the fans sense of this going into year two of the NBA

Cup. So I posted a poll on Twitter. I posted a query on Blue Sky just to get a sense of it. And the results in both platforms were very, very similar. So I'll just read the Twitter percentages here. So I did this. I had four categories. You could pick one of four responses in terms of how excited you were about the NBA Cup.

The most excited was the Breen Double Bang. And that was 9% of respondents said Breen double bang. So that's 9% are very excited. A little less excited, just it's cool slash fun. Got 42%. Meh was the third option. Like, you just kind of don't, it's just a shrug. It's a shrug emoji.

That was 35%. And then make it stop the most negative response. Got 14%. So 9% brain double bang, 42% for its cooler fun. 35% meh, 14% make it stop. That sounds about right, Rajah. Like most people are somewhere in the middle, somewhere between they kind of like it or they're kind of indifferent to it.

There are not a lot of people who think it should go away, and there's not a lot of people who think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen. So that sounds about right. It's me. Yeah. You'd be met. You would have picked option three. I would have absolutely.

The shrug emoji. Yeah. I'd have been, I'd have been between three and I'd have been three and a half. A lot of people were either two to three to three or three to four like they were trying to hedge it. Yeah. So, but I, you know, a lot of really interesting. Remarks from people here too.

Again, most of these remarks came from the responses on Blue Sky. Logan, not our Logan, but another Logan. Shout out to our Logan. We miss him. Logan said a lukewarm three, meaning the MET option, the pool games just being random regular season games that matter slightly more takes away a little from me. If you're going to do a tournament, why not just block off a few weeks, play all games at the same time, and really foster a tournament energy.

I agree with them. From a fan perspective, there's also not much of an award. I genuinely don't care if LeBron gets an extra $500,000 this year, giving home court advantage for your conference in the finals, or the 31st pick in the draft for the winner, something like that could help with that. So again, we heard a lot of this last year too, right, where fans were like, well, what's it for me? Like, you know, what are you rooting for? You're rooting for your favorite players to win a little bit more money?

They're doing pretty well. So it's, I get all that. Jeff Zezerson, sorry if I'm mispronouncing that, Jeff, all the reasons in season tournaments work in soccer do not exist in the NBA. This is nothing more than a TV gimmick, and I'd be in favor of ending it. So there was one of the more negative ones. Somebody whose name I will not try to pronounce, but their handle was E-U-A-N, said, at least it gives people something to talk about that's not awards, which is the most tedious

NBA discourse. So fair point, early in the season, we need something else to talk about other than who's leading the MVP race three games in. Got some complaints about the colorful courts. you know, Portland fan. Quincy says it's a net positive. I'm in Portland and relatively casual, so they'll probably be the most compelling games this season.

But then he notes the cognitive dissonance between the need to make this part of the basketball season or make this part of the season more compelling while also leaving a place all the systemic incentives to put an intentionally bad product on the floor. I think he means like player rest is too omnipresent for me. So I get that. So like it's, you know, I got the full range of,

emotions here. And we'll see. It starts tonight. Any last thoughts on the cup, Raja? Meh. Big old shrug emoji from Raja. Real Ons is presented by Fanduel. If you're in need of a midweek boost,

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for some of the following trends to either hold or go away. I wanted to just throw a few surprises at you. Surprises by, I think, most standards at least. We're at about like the 10% point of the season. Teams have played 9 to 12 games, so let's say 10 to 15% of this. Here are five things that really, I think, are surprising, at least based on where we thought we were

a couple weeks ago, Raja. So the Cavaliers, I mentioned, 12 and 0, best record in the league. The Warriors are 8 and 2, just a half game behind the Thunder for first in the West. The sons are 8 and 2, although they've lost Kevin Durant for a bit here. The Nuggets are 7 and 3 with five straight wins, and it's not that we should be surprised by the Nuggets being good, but considering where they were a couple weeks ago, I don't think we saw this kind of quick revival and some of their young guys are starting to pop.

And then the other one is the Nets. They're 5 and 6. This is a team that along with the Wizards were supposed to be the two premier tanking teams in the NBA designed to fail, but the Nets instead are playing their asses off for Jody Fernandez. Cam Thomas apparently is going to make all NBA first team. And they're five and six tied with Orlando for fourth in the east. A half game out of third. Of all of those, Raja, is there one of those that you think is the least surprising and or the most surprising? Um, yeah, that's a good one.

Least surprising, um, for me, probably the Phoenix Suns. Uh, I, I thought, I thought they would be good. They were one of those picks we made in our preseason, uh, you know, and you kind of joked that it wasn't that wild of a take for that. And, but, and that's, that was fair. But like, I, I thought that, um, you know, given the pieces, uh, point guard, better supporting cast around the edges, like, I, I could see that. one. So that's not really surprising for me. I probably shouldn't be surprised by the

Cavs being 12 and 0, but I think that one, that one would be my most surprising one. Yeah. No, I think that it, I think that is the most surprising. Um, I think we all thought the cabs would be good. I picked Kenny Atkinson as my preseason coach of the year. Mm-hmm. And thought, okay, maybe he'll unlock some things, very offensive-minded guy. And sometimes you just need a different approach, all that stuff, but 12 and 0. Um, um, Best record league by far. Now, this is not to throw cold water under it at all, because 12 and 0 is 12 and regardless.

They have had a bit of a soft schedule if you look at the strength of schedule stuff. The only teams that they've beaten that are over 500 as of right now are the Lakers and the Warriors, and they smoked the Warriors. They've beaten the Knicks and the Magic and the Bucks who are all supposed to be good teams that aren't right now or just struggling to varying degrees. They're at Philly tomorrow, the Cavaliers. And Bede will not play on the second night. of the back-to-back, so I'm not sure how much of a test it is, but that one's interesting.

And then next Tuesday, a week from the day, I believe another NBA Cup night, Cavs at Boston. So that's one to circle, right? Like, that's, like, it's not that I'm not sold. The talent was always there. I was skeptical by all of the redundancies and fit issues, but Garland has taken a leap. He looks really good. Mowgli's kind of taken a leap. They're getting great stuff out of the bench, a bunch of mostly like no names.

like Ty Jerome is suddenly like a really important player and it's really impressive. Cavaliers have the number one offense in terms of efficiency right now. They're number nine in defensive efficiency and they are third in net rating at plus 11.4 per 100. That's elite, man. That's elite. That's elite. Yeah. Yeah, that's elite.

And as far as the schedule goes, I just would say, you know, how many teams are elite? Like when you're saying, well, we haven't really played anyone yet, how many teams out there are elite? Like you mentioned Boston, right? Right. So if we're going to put ourselves in those games where like those are going to be big tests for us, but we're rolling everyone else, so be it. We're still elite.

Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Part of being elite is crushing bad teams consistently, right? That's right. So like, that's pretty cool. And again, I thought they would be good. kudos to you for for for the Kenny Ackinson call but like I didn't I didn't see them coming out of the gates like that even even great teams will stumble you know once in a blue moon it gets a bad

team out of the gate yeah no it's it's it's really impressive it's I hate getting ahead of ourselves to do the okay yeah but are they good enough to beat the Celtics and you know best seven series in the spring like yeah but that's where this is going to lead right like if they if they sustain this and certainly when they're when they meet up a week from tonight That's what we're going to be thinking about. Are the Cavs the biggest threat to the defending champions in Boston? That's the first big talking point, I think, of the season when it comes to looking ahead to the championship. Because the other teams that were supposed to be in that conversation, Knicks, Sixers, Bucks are all kind of dragon.

Yeah, man. So, I actually, I'm going to correct myself. The Cavs are the most surprising in a way, but really, really, really? Really, I think it's almost the nets of the most surprising. It's a really nondescript lineup. Ben Simmons is playing pretty well, you know, reviving his career after a couple of really rough years. Let's see if he can get through the whole season healthy. Let's hope he does.

Cam Thomas, as I mentioned, is just the guy is just a scoring machine. He's a scoring machine, man. Bill Simmons is funny. Bill Simmons, like me, has been a skeptic of Cam. but Bill Simmons, unlike me, has now left, he's like off of the criticism. He jumped ship. Yeah, I want to say it's not Cam Thomas Island because it's the opposite of Cam Thomas Island. I guess I'm still on the island where we are skeptical of Cam Thomas.

I don't know. Maybe it's a boat instead of a ship. Bill's basically on board now. He's an interesting one, man, because like Steve, when Nash was still there, I had a lot of conversations with him about Cam. And I don't think they actually saw eye to eye on how he would. he would fit into the NBA and Brooklyn as a whole. And what I'd say to that is like, you know, Steve didn't necessarily have to be all the way wrong in terms of what he could have been

had he accepted, you know, the challenges of doing other things on the court. But kudos to the kid for saying, man, fuck it. I am what I am. And I can do it on this level at a high level. And so, hey. And by the way, it wasn't just Steve. Like, you know, Jacques Vaughn and Cam Thomas also had like, like every coach in Brooklyn so far has had the same thing,

which is like Cam is an incredible score. He's a tough shot maker. He can get a shot off anywhere. Cam needs to do other things. He needs to pass. He needs to defend. He needs to be a little bit more judicious. It's all like,

it's all the same critiques. Right. Well, here's a, Jordy's a perfect kind of coach for that group. I spent some time with him in, in Cleveland. And he went down and he ran the, and he coached the G-League team for a while. And he's got great energy.

and he's got a great feel and he's the perfect kind of coach for that that that that style of team um and cam quite frankly is the perfect um scoring kind of player for that kind of team and i don't mean this in any you know disrespectful way or or or or trying to paint him in any in any life but i talk about this all the time there there are a certain amount of points they got to get scored in NBA games like they're they're going to get scored um shots have to be shot um minutes have to be played. And there are guys that are professional scores that are capable of stepping into those voids and putting up big numbers. The question becomes whether you can do that on the level of team that makes you a star or a superstar. And, you know, that would be the question for

Cam, Brooklyn and just the recipe moving forward. Is this fun? And we can do this. Obviously, you can get buckets or, you know, a lot of times, like, a guy like that might wind up as he gets older and more established. Like, you're the sixth man on a really, really good team that comes in and just lights it up. Do you understand what I'm saying? And I'm not, I'm not saying he's one or the other, but that's the question when you start saying, okay, well, we're five and six now. Let's project this, you know, and say we're, I don't know, you know, 22 and 18. And now we're, we're starting to consider some things like, what does this look like? moving forward. We have some decisions to make. And I don't have the answers for that.

So it leads me to this, though, Raja. You've worked for teams. You've spent a lot of time in the league. And you know how we in general, right, NBA fans, NBA media and also for office, talk about building, right? When you are in a rebuild, which the Nets absolutely are, you have to decide what the best way forward is, right? There's what's called the middle build, which is like, hey, we'll just be really competitive and then guys will want to come here. And that's sort of the Nets were under Kenny Ackinson, you know, several years ago. And they overachieved year after year. They had to because they didn't have control of their own picks. And that made them competitive and attractive to Durant and Kyrie. We know how that went. But still, that was a successful

version of the middle build, right? There's the tear down, which is what we thought the Nets were doing. But here they are. It's early. But they're a game under 500. Five and, what was it? What I say? Five and six. Cam Thomas playing his butt off. Ben Simmons revived. Nick Claxton, you know, banged up a little bit to start, but again, looking pretty good. They've got a bunch of interesting pieces. And so put yourself in Sean Marks's shoes right now. It's the Cooper flag draft. It's a, you did get your pick back from the rockets.

You made, you did all this maneuvering to get a bunch of picks, traded Mikhail Bridges, You swapped out some picks to get some of your picks back from Houston. You do have control over your draft now. It is in your benefit to be bad this time, unlike the last time that they were rebuilding. So what do you do? Like, are, like, should you be working the phones, like trying to offload Dennis Schrooter as soon as possible? Another guy who, by the way, has been played really well for them. Like, you've got a bunch of interesting players that together collectively are probably not a

playoff or play in team ultimately. but I don't know, might be. The East is really weird right now. Do you hold on? Do you start selling off parts to ensure that you have a better pick in June? Oh, man. That's a, that's, for, for me, I'm a sell, sell, sell.

You know, I get the best chance I got it at getting the guy I want to get. Where Sean Marks is, some of that would depend, you know, it definitely depends on, you know, relationship, job security, you know, what he's being told behind closed doors, X, Y, and Z. Like, you know, when you're like Pat Riley with the heat, they never, they never do that, right? Like, they're just, they're just content, like, scrapping it out and getting in as an eight, nine, or in the playing. Like, they're never going to show that, that fan base down

here or culturally subscribe to like, hey, man, I'm going to not give us the best chance to win and just be competitive. So, um, I don't know. I don't know. If I'm, if I'm, if I'm on the sell. I'd be interested in, you know, I'd be interested to see what they do. What about you? No, I think it's sell. I think to an extent, some of this is going to probably peter out on its own, right? You have a lot of teams that are just struggling early in the season, especially in the East. Those teams will start to get it together and that will help balance this out. I mean, look, the East right now, Cavs 12 and O, Celtics, 9 and 2, and then the paces are in third at 5 and 5, and everybody from there on down is just somewhere in this big yucky middle where no one, like,

one can quite get it together. And there's, you know, injuries are playing a role here, right? You know, Orlando's missing bankero. And so I think some of this Raja may take care of itself where the nets are probably overachieving and probably won't sustain this anyway. But I do think that there was clear alignment in the organization in the offseason, right? Joe Si, the owner, gave Sean Mark's permission to sell off McHale Bridges for a ton of draft picks. And, and, And they weren't good anyway, but that was the clear sign that they were okay with a rebuild as opposed to a middle build. And where they are right now, they're they're, they're too good for their own good. Yeah, well, that's my answer. That's my answer. And thank you for making making it clear for me. Like I should have known that myself. But yeah, once we we've done that, like that's the answer where, you know, Josai and and Sean are. So yeah, it's a sell. Sorry. Yeah. And I'm not even, I'm not even risking us being too good for me to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. Yeah. And, you know, look, we think of trade season informally as starting in mid-December, which is when a lot of guys signed over the summer are eligible to be traded.

A lot can happen between now and then. I do think that the flip side is when you're playing this well and now the fans are getting intrigued and it's fun, it's hard to decide to go backwards in the middle of it all, right? So if this continues, it presents a little bit of a quandary just in terms of like ticket sales and energy in the arena and whatever else. But I think you stick to your guns. You stick to the plan. And the plan was be really bad this year, get a high pick, come away with Cooper Flag or Ace Bailey or whoever, and start to rebuild that way as opposed to overachieving with a bunch of guys who still are never going to be good enough to win a playoff series.

Yeah. So. All right. We have producer Cliff back with us, producer Kerm. Once again, I don't know. Is he ducking this? Smoke? What is he doing? I don't know, Roger. We just, Kerm has just, he's abandoned us. Let me find out. Curr. You know what? I'm a defendant, Kerm. He's a busy, man.

He is busy. As we all producers here, man. So shout out to my guy, Kerm. He just doing the oop on this. So I'm just filling in for the goat, man. So producer Cliff is back still without English or other foreign accents, unfortunately. But it is a Monday. And we do have a mailbag. Eventually, I might get to it, man. Maybe if I knock it down the notch, eventually I might get to it. Work on it to your downtime, Cliff. Just practice in front of the mirror. I got you. Watch some good British dramas or something, you know, like the crown. I don't know. I got you. I'm a try. I'm try. All right. First question, this is to Rajah. What is your favorite Mike Dantoni story from the

son's best? Corey. Oh, favorite Mike DeAntony story. Oh, man. Yeah, that's a good question. I guess this is going to come off a little cheesy, but Mike, I've been on record as saying Mike meant a lot to me in terms of not just my on-court kind of production, but I guess it goes hand in hand with like the way I felt as a player, my confidence and all of those things. And so, you know, probably my favorite story of his was there were two. One was the first time I met him, I was sitting down with him, Calangelo, David Griffin. And, you know, he said to me, I forget what the number was, but it was like 300 threes or something like that. And he basic, and I had shot like 50 total that year in Utah. And he said to me, hey, we got 300 threes. You won't have to shoot them all. And I was like, what?

And he's, and I kind of laughed and I kept eating. And he was like, no, I'm serious. Like we have 300 vacated threes between Q and Joe Johnson and we're going to need you to shoot them all. And that started, you know, his, his. demonstration of believing in what I could do from the three-point line in a way that no one had before. And then the second would have been fast forwarding maybe after a year and a half, we were in Oklahoma. I think I was like one for 10 from three or something like that. It was just a terrible shooting night. And I kind of, you know, hesitated at going one for 12 or whatever it

was. And he came up to me in the locker after the game. I was kind of dejected and feeling shitty. And he said to me, man, he said, like, don't ever pass up at three. he was like, I have all the confidence in the world. He said, you're a 40% three-point shooter. You go 0 for 10 tonight. Chances are you're 8 for 10 or whatever it is, you know, the next time you step out on the court. We happen to be playing the Lakers the next night.

And I think I went 8 for 10 from 3 in L.A. And so we're like 7 for 10, something, 7 for 9, something like that. But those were my favorite Mike stories because, you know, I had kind of been beaten up as an offensive player psychologically early in my career. and it would always creep in, you know, from time to time if I let it. And Mike just helped me beat that and keep that away, you know? Like, he had a great ability to just make you feel really confident in yourself by demonstrating his confidence in you.

That's what's up, man. I need to hear some more AI stories from you, too. I got a lot of those. Not all the way for air, though. Not safe for work, right? That's a problem. That's a problem. The list of stories Roger actually has from his playing days,

far exceeds the number of stories that he can actually say on the air. That's true. Hey, Roger, I heard about that Fridays too, man. Yeah, that was the city have, man. All right, second question, Benedict. This is on... Wait, wait, wait, wait, I will.

Can I tell you? I'll tell one AI. I'll tell one A.I. I'll tell one A lot. All right. Probably on a 10 day. I get a seat right next. I think I sat next to Speedy Claxton on the plane

and Chuck and those dudes would gamble him, blue, Tyrone Hill, they would play Burey over there, you know, at the table. And I kind of watched the Buree game out of the corner of my eye. And Chuck didn't have like a bag or anything with him. He had a pillowcase from one of the hotels we have been in. And it was like 40K plus in the bag. Yeah, 40 bands in a pillowcase?

In a pillowcase. So I remember getting off the plane and immediately calling my dad and being like, Dad, I just saw Alan and I. versus win my Lexus and carry it off the plane in a pillowcase. It was one of the wildest, it was one of the wildest things I've seen on a plane in terms of financial, you know, money changing hands to this day. Real quick, is it true that he never traveled with a bag? Yeah, no, yes.

I mean, I want to think, like Gary Moe was his, was, I think it's his uncle. I don't know if they were technically related, but like that was his guy. And they had a bag, but I'm pretty sure Chuck. would get like a new sweatsuit, a new white, a big white tea and some new rebox from whatever the local foot locker was like on every trip. Oh, okay. So it's probably free anyway. No luggage.

No actual luggage. I mean, I don't know. We didn't carry our own luggage anyway. So like there would be no way for me to really. But I don't recall dropping any off at his door and that was my job as a rookie. Wow. I want to just quickly note because it's hit me as as Rajah was telling the story for our younger listeners.

When, when Roger mentions Chuck, that's because AI's. name was Bubba Chuck. And so I think that could confuse some of the younger listeners who weren't around back in the day. That is true. All right. Second question. This is on Benedict Mathuron.

Shout out to Benedict Mathuron. Mathuron set a new career high with 38 points on 13 of 18 field goals, including seven to nine from three point as the Pacers beat the Nix 132 to 121 on Sunday. Everyone likes to point out that Indy played a lot of injured teams en route to the Eastern conference finals. but Ben was unavailable for the entire run. How does his presence affect what the Pacers can bring into a seven-game series and what kind of trajectory is he ongoing forward from Jacob?

Go to town, Howard. Fair point to our Pacer fan listener there, fair point about the Pacers and just kind of the narrative around them that, yeah, they had an easier path, but also they were missing a really big, important piece in Mathrim. That's all fair. I mean, I think, you know, this is the first full season with Siakum there, and therefore first full season with Seacum and Mathron and Turner and Halliburton.

And like, it's, they're a young team that's still trying to find themselves. So like, I'm not, I'm not too caught up and like, well, did they overachieve last year? They kind of did. It was kind of cool. By the way, quick, quick point I meant to make during the NBA Cup discussion. If there's one of the things I can point to as a positive of the NBA Cup, despite being somewhat of a skeptic of it, it's that the Pacers gave them a stage as a young team to have games with stakes. And I do think that like if you're a young team not if you're the championship contenders but if you're a young team that has not had high stakes games and pressure games that benefited the Pacers last year and we may see a different version of it in the cup this year um mathron's obviously really good

mathers making like half of his threes right now um he's he's shooting lights out he's got just a feistiness to him too an aggression right now that i really love to see you can see that that um i don't know whether it's make it up for lost time or just kind of like putting himself back on the map and in the discussion. All pluses. I think the thing with the Pacers, too, is I don't know that anyone expects them to be a contender in the East. And when you look at what the talent level is on the Cavs, on the Celtics, the Pacers aren't there, but they've got a bunch of really good players. So if you don't have a Jason Tatum, if you don't have a Joelle Embedde, if you don't have a Donovan Mitchell, like, you know, or Mitchell and Garland and Mobley and out, like having a collection

of players who collectively are all just really, really good might be another way, right? We are in a time of extreme parity, and there's different ways to win at a high level now. One of them is just have a bunch of dudes. And I think the Pacers are kind of that model right now. Like, Seacum and Halliburton both are all-MBA caliber, but they're not going to be all-MBA every year. They're not perennial. They're not going to be probably in, you know, MVP discussions.

But you get those two plus a man. Mathrin plus Turner plus a good bench, you know, now you're, now you're in business. All right. You ready for the last one, fellas? Yep. All right. Hello. I've heard Charles Barkley say that any good team needs a crazy teammate to make them great.

Do you guys agree with this? I follow Celtics and I don't think any of their players are crazy. Actually, I think Missoula is slightly off his rocker, but he's their coach. Does he count? Thanks, Anthony. Raja, our resident authority on crazy. I do. Yeah, I do too. I mean, I think there are exceptions to every rule for sure. So, like, you can be so talented and so good that that maybe you don't have a true guy that sticks out to you like that. Your coach in some cases, like if he wears that type of mentality and that's been kind of drilled into your team in that way, that it's kind of rubbed off on everyone just a little bit. I think you're okay. But I do think, I do think having someone on a team, in an enforcer type of role at times.

A lot of times is important. You know, just for protection at times, for your stars, you know, having a guy that people know will come in and there will be ramifications for you if you continue to cross the line with the team star. Obviously, the style of play, you know, relegates, you know, some of those guys, like, useless in other ways. You used to be able to keep that big six, nine big body rebounder doesn't do much else to, you know, but they're not just walking around on every roster now. But I do think having someone, and it doesn't always have to be a big, but having someone out there that's not with the bullshit, like, I think it's important.

I've always felt it was important. Now it helps if that guy's a player too, but I do think it's important. So I was thinking about this, Raja, and I kind of brought into the definition. And it was less about crazy than it was about like a little bit of feisty, which that would be, that would be guys like you, right? A little bit of unpredictability, like not crazy, but just like I'm not sure what might happen with this guy if I push him too hard again, could be you. Or like Rick Fox, who I covered early in my career in L.A.

Like Rick was a guy. Like Shaq didn't need protection, but he didn't need an enforcer type out there. But like Rick Fox was a guy who was going to get into guys and mix it up with guys. was the one who I think opponents sometimes worried about being just just slightly off kilter and might start some shit. Well, he did. Yeah, he did need protection. He didn't need like protection from being beat up, but he needed protection from the ejection

that came with the bullshit that would get started if if someone came after him, right? Let somebody else do it. Yeah, let someone else do that work for you. And I think so there's that model of it. There's Dennis Rodman, which is definitely more toward the, you know, off kilter category. a Dylan Brooks, like for all of the faults, you kind of like, like Dylan Brooks is the guy, the proverbial, you don't want him, you hate him when he's the opponent,

but you kind of love him on your team, although he might drive you a little crazier, you know, with shots, selection, other stuff. But like Pat Beverly, we've seen him infuse a certain feistiness to teams that he's been on because he's, you just never know with him and he runs his mouth a lot. Again, that can cut both ways, but he brings a different element.

Dremont is another one where it's like, you can't imagine the warriors without, him because where, where, like, they were a nice guy team overall. Dremont brought the nasty as, as pop would put it. So, um, I think it's just more having a guy with a little bit of edge, a little bit of unpredictability. Some great. Some physicality. Yeah, some grit. Um, but not necessarily I would just tell this story again, Howard. I'll tell this story again. Um, last time I was a free agent, Kobe Bryant God rest of soul called me

I picked up the phone It was in the street in Long Island We had a long conversation And one of the last things he said to me On the phone call was anybody who can close line me In a playoff game I need them on my team But he said to me So like I'm not saying that to Tudor Horne or anything like that

But that's what Kobe was telling you about I don't know if it was about my skill set or anything like that It could have been But he literally said what I just said about the moment, the act, how wild it was, and it still was really crazy. But he was like, I want that on my team. Yeah. That makes absolute sense to me, too.

And I do think, like, that's like stars and especially stars of that era, probably still stars now that the game is a little different, but appreciated guys like you who, like, again, he didn't like you what he had to play against you when you're defending him and you're getting into him and you guys had some memorable scraps. but it's like you appreciate that. It's like Kobe and Matt Barnes, same kind of thing, right? That's right. So, good stuff.

Good questions. All right, great mailbag. If you want us to answer your question next Monday, Real Onesmailbag at gmail.com. Real onesmailbag at gmail.com. Real onesmail bag at gmail.com. Boom. Look at that.

I got through it without tripping. We will be back Friday with a guest. I've got some thoughts in mind. Haven't quite scheduled them yet. But, uh, Raja. We'll see you then. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Cliff. Thank you, everyone for listening. We'll be a Friday. Must be 21 plus in present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gambler or visit RG-Helpshelp.com.

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