The Ringer NBA Show - The Rebuilding State of the NBA | Group Chat

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

The Lakers lose a shocker to the Nets, only their second defeat in 13 games (1:04). We then discuss what rebuilding looks like for the league and its teams these days (10:12). Plus: another segment of Line ’Em Up, where Tjarks analyzes the lineups we are seeing on the floor (33:17). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Jonathan Tjarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, this is Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Make sure to check out the latest edition to the Ringer lineup, Music Exists. Each week, Chris Ryan and Chuck Closterman ask and answer questions about their love of music while exploring the role of concerts, locations, fandom, criticism, genre, lyrics, and much, much more. You can listen to new episodes of Music Exists and follow along every week for free on Spotify. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to today's episode of the Ringer MBA show. It's group chat. Me and Sharks are going to talk.

about rebuilding franchises and the Lakers and the Mavericks and how they're tweaking the rotations as they head towards the postseason. Before we get into today's show, just wanted to encourage you to follow at Ringer MBA on Twitter. It's a great, great account to follow along to get all the updates on NBA news, everything the Ringer's writing about

and follow along games at night with some great social coverage. Without any further ado, let's get into today's episode of Ringer MBA. Basketball is very good. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NBA show. It's group chat. It's Chris Ryan. I'm joined today by Jonathan Charks in a mini group chat. We are here. It's Wednesday, March 11th.

And we're going to get into a bunch of NBA news, some talk about NBA rebuilding projects and also some line them up from Charks talking about some rotation stuff. But first Charks, what's going on with you, man? Well, I guess, I think I've said it on Twitter. But for the pod people, I'm actually having my first kid and we're scheduled to be induced next Thursday. Chris stops, Charks coming into the world. He's going to be tall. I'm pretty excited. I'm 6'4.

My wife's 511, so we're going to have a big boy. What if your kid is like 5-6? What are you going to do? Teaching baseball, I guess. I don't know. That's right. To give him a little buzzer to put on his chest so that he can read pitches like Altuve.

I like that. I am thinking make him left-handed. That's the key. Left-handed tickets always make money. So yeah, we have what was not a remarkable slate of games last night. So we're going to do a couple of different big. picture things today, mostly talking about some of the rebuilding projects going on in the NBA right now, because I feel like that's been a little bit in the ether. People have been talking

about it, and Charks had some really interesting things to say about that. We're also going to talk a bit about the Mavs and Lakers specifically in relation to the way Rick Carlisle, Frank Vogel, are kind of plotting out their rotations as we hit the home stretch and head into the postseason. Charks, I guess we have to sort of start a little bit here with a coronavirus update. Obviously, neither Charks nor I are at all qualified to comment on this. I'll just pass along the news in case you are listening to this NBA podcast, but have not seen any NBA headlines. The Board of Governors is going to have a call today to discuss the league's response to the situation. Woj put out a report last night on ESPN.

We won't get too deep into this because I think it's a pretty quickly moving, evolving situation, and it could probably change by the time you hear this. But Woj said that the NBA is considering a number of measures, including playing games behind closed doors, moving games to cities that have not suffered a coronavirus outbreak or suspending operations altogether. You know, this is something that's affecting almost every industry in the world right now. Clearly, in Europe right now, we're seeing cancellation or suspension of games in Italy. They're playing Champions League games behind closed doors. It's likely or it seems likely that that will happen in the Premier League. with soccer and as we get into the States here,

we could see some of the same stuff. Charges, I don't know if you have any comment on this stuff. I mean, it's really scary. You see what's happened like in Italy, how fast it escalated from, hey, we're just going to play games, South fans to like the whole country's shutting down. And I mean, here in the States,

even the ringer.com is being changed, Chris. You're working from home today. We are working from home today. Yeah, you know, we'll update folks as we get updates from the NBA. If anything changes over the course of the pod, we'll jump in. but that's pretty much all there is to say about that.

We'll see how they enact some new changes there. I mean, like, obviously they've already put some new policies into effect in regards to media access to the teams. And there was a bunch of stuff on Twitter yesterday of people standing like eight or nine feet away from LeBron James. But, yeah, I mean, it's a scary situation. We hope everybody just stay safe out there and follows best practices. We can get into some of the action from last night.

I don't want to belabor it too much. the Lakers finally lost a game. They lost 104, 102, I guess you would call them a resurgent Brooklyn Nets. L.A. is now 8 and 2 in their last 10, and they were coming off of perhaps their most impressive stretch of games of the season. There's a few Lakers things I want to point out, but I think we can wait to talk about them and line them up. Charks, three in a row for the Nets, I was just wondering, what kind of end of the season do you think Jacques Vaughn needs to have to keep the Nets job for next season? Yeah, I don't know. This seems like a classic new coach bounce.

One thing I have noticed, whenever a coach gets fired, the next two or three games, like the new team always plays better, it seems like. And for whatever reason, that kind of lights a fire under people. And really, if Jock Vaughn wants to be the coach next season, it doesn't matter what it's on the core. I just talk to Kyrie and KD and just chop it up, really. Yeah, I mean, I think that you see this a lot. This happens at almost every sport where there's just like that new voice in the locker

room changes things. But to be fair, the Nets are doing this on the road against some relatively impressive teams, obviously the Lakers being the biggest one of those. Did you catch any of the game last night to see what Vaughn might be doing differently aside from giving DeAndre Jordan bigger looks? I mean, to me, like you're asking

what's the best time to keep his job? That's doing that. Like, Jock Vaughn's got to know, like, okay, this is a political job now. This is not about, like, maximizing lineups. I've got to keep my best players happy. And if that means playing the less talented player, But it does.

Yeah, I'm kind of curious about Zach Lowe and Kevin Arnivitz had a conversation about the Kenny Atkinson. I don't know if you call it a firing or decoupling or whatever you want to call that happened to him in the Nets. And they were talking about the sheer number of coaching jobs that might be open come this offseason. And it's interesting to see in both Brooklyn and Cleveland, you know, at least in Cleveland, they've actually made a real commitment to a J.B. Bickerstaff by giving him a four-year deal.

and in Brooklyn, you have to wonder whether or not a decent showing in the playoffs against, as a seven seed for Brooklyn,

submits Vaughn at least for another year or so in BK. The funny thing about it is like we'll talk about us in the Lakers. And I was watching those Lakers games last week

against the Clippers and the bucks and your watch team it's like, oh, this is the same team as the Cavs a couple years ago. They play the exact same way. They maximize their lineups.

They hunt LeBron with mismatches. And then, At the highest levels, it just really feels like the best player is the coach, essentially. So whoever the Nets pick or don't pick, they're depending on Kevin Durant being able to read the lineups, evaluate talent, and identify misbatches, right? So it almost doesn't matter who the guy is. If Katie thinks DeHenra Jordan is better than Jared Allen, that's a big problem for the Nets because your best player, your coach, your GM is not eviling talent very well.

Do you think of Duran as that kind of player? Do you think of Duran as that kind of floor general guy? I think he's going to have to be. I think that's why I left Golden State is because he wanted to have what LeBron has, to have total control of a franchise. And, you know, when you have that control, it's a lot of responsibility.

It's not an easy to do. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a situation where, you know, I mean, obviously, Durant's one of the best players I've ever seen in my life. And, you know, at his peak during the playoffs last year, he was arguably the best player in the league at that moment before he got hurt, especially, you know, those first few games of that Houston's season,

series. But you do, I don't ever think of him as a, you stand over here type of guy. You know, for his, for his communicative as he is on various social media platforms and in a variety of different ways, when I watch his teams, I don't think of him as the conductor of the orchestra. So it'll be fascinating to see how that works out next year as he comes back from an Achilles. And it'll be fascinating to see how that meshes with Kyrie, who I think has had a real on-off relationship with being a leader, obviously. Yeah, I mean, you have to think if you're the Nets, you have to hope that Kyrie saw how I went in Boston

with him as the guy and decided I'd better find another version of LeBron to play with if I want to win again. You have to hope that was a thought process by going up with KD. Yeah, absolutely. In other games last night, Boston beat the Pacers with another 30 from Tatum. The Rockets stopped their slide,

beating Minnesota and Hardin scored 37 and fully just snapped awake after slumping over the last week. I think the most interesting game for our purposes, though, today, Sharks, was the one that might have been the least interesting to a national audience, which was Chicago's five-point win over Cleveland.

I checked out most of this game last night, and these are two teams that aren't going anywhere anytime soon, obviously. But I guess the question that we're talking about today is how long do they have to be comfortably what they are, which is rebuilding clubs. Now, Chicago obviously came into the season

hoping that their young core, that they would mature into a kind of low playoff seed. I think a lot of... I know a few people around the office. We're talking about the Bulls as like a seven or eight seed, and we're really excited about Carter, Levine, Mark and him playing together, and we're pretty high on Kobe White.

They've been ravaged by injuries this season. I think only four of their guys have played 60 or more games this season, but, you know, they obviously have some institutional issues as well, as well as some fit issues. And there's been talk around the Bulls organization that this will finally signal the end of the Gar-Pax administration and that they will bring in a basketball ops person to run personnel ultimately, although that comes with like a grain of salt because you still have

the Rysdorf's, you still have, you still have form and impacts and probably staying within the organization. it starts to veer towards a Nixian kind of territory in terms of who's making what decision. But, Charks, why don't you talk to me a little bit about why you wanted to chat about this today in the first place? Because in the Eastern Conference,

there's a few teams that I think have a little bit of breathing room. They have some time to kind of discover where they're going as franchises, maybe some fan bases that are passive. Put it that way. I don't know if I would call Bulls fans passive, but whether it's resigned probably i would say resigned that's probably a better way to put it but in the western conference there's no such breathing room because you've got pretty much every

single team even if they're having an off year this year expecting to be competitive postseason bound teams next year give me your kind of like 30,000 foot view of the state of rebuilding in the NBA right now before we get in some these specific circumstances yeah so what struck me about it is so right now it's March. We're kind of getting into March madness. Everyone around the league is kind of moving up, shaking up their draft boards, getting a feel for this class. And as I was kind of evaluating guys, and I'm looking at some players and I'm thinking, okay, like this guy is probably two or three years away from being good NBA player. He has a lot of potential, but he needs some time. And I'm trying to like find fits for these guys who are projects. And it's like,

there's no time anymore. Yeah, we talk about the Western Conference. So like the team's not in the playoffs. Not in the playoffs right now. It's Portland, New Orleans. Sacramento, San Antonio, Phoenix, Minnesota, Golden State. All of those teams expect to make the playoffs next season. Yeah. Either they're like the Portland or Golden State who are down there's because of injuries or their teams who have been bad for a really long time like Minnesota or Phoenix or Sacramento and they're desperate to make the playoffs.

And I don't know if they can sell their fans on another bad season, right? They're like, we got to win next year no matter what. And so then what do you do with a 19-year-old kid who's not ready to play at a high level in the NBA? How does that help your team now? And how can you afford to be patient when you have to win next season? No, I was just going to say, especially for a bunch of the teams you just mentioned, they're going to be in that late lottery mid-first round zone where those kids you're talking about are probably going to be available, right?

Yeah. And like, if you look at Minnesota, so their rookie this year, Jared Culver, he's got some talent, he's a 6-6-swing, has to work on his jumper. But next year, year two, is a big year for his development. But next year, they're trying to make the playoffs. They have Kat and DiAngelo Russell. They tried their first round pick for DeAngelo Russell. Is there going to be time for Jared Culver to miss jumpers?

Probably not. He could be not playing next season. And then your lottery pick, if you're counting on long term, his development is just sunk because he's not playing. Right. And that's a kind of example of, I think that this whole season for Minnesota has been, on one hand, probably ultimately, unofficially about keeping Carl Anthony Towns happy.

This is a team that's seen to franchise forwards leave in the last 30 years and Garnett and Love and go on to win championships. So I don't think that they want to see another franchise forward walk out the door and join a super team and win a ring somewhere. But at the same time, that urgency that they've created around that Carl Anthony Town situation

or the urgency that they're reacting to around the Carl Anthony Town situation, which ultimately is just like kind of a bunch of gossip and some of it not even really reportable or verifiable. And now all of a sudden you've got a situation where this team went from,

hey, we love your young core that we're going to develop. We kind of came out of the Tibbs era where we had the Jimmy Butler's and the Derek Roses around and now we're going to go fully into the youth movement. And then in mid-season here,

they tried to correct the sins of the offseason of not being able to get Russell and they got off of Covington and now they have like half of the nuggets on their team and they're kind of like a mismatch of players and situations and you know you wonder about whether or not Ryan Saunders who seems to be well liked

among his players but I don't know if he's getting the results he needs to get to keep his job and you've got Gerson Roses in there who you're kind of wondering what vision does he have for the team and how much of that is dictated by what towns wants. Yeah, and it just feels like the window to rebuild is smaller than ever. You look at Atlanta. So they kind of did their own version in the process.

They're in year three of that. And you follow the coverage of their team. They're desperate to win now. They even said next year we have to make the playoffs. They're making win now trades to get Capella. Even if he doesn't feel with the rest of their young players because they just got to win because Trey Young is good now and we can't afford to lose. And it just seems like these days with the way, you know, the media.

is and the spotlight on teams, I think maybe you get two years to rebuild where no one's going to pressure you, but then that window is over. And then that's like, and so you're looking, okay, if I draft three players, year one, year two, year three, and each them needs two years to develop, that's like five years right there. Right. Right. And it just adds up really fast. No, I know. And it's like with Atlanta, it's pretty fascinating because I wonder whether or not Atlanta looks around at a Memphis and gets spooked. If they're like, so the gris are almost certainly going to make the eight seed in a much tougher conference.

And they are going into it with much, I think probably, I think the grizzlies had lower expectations heading into this season than the hawks did, if you ask me. But the hawks, meanwhile, are dwelling around the eastern conference basement. While the grizzlies are one of the feel good stories of the season, do you think that that kind of window shopping affects team expectations when you look around and you say, wait a second. So Taylor Jenkins comes in and John Morant and Jaron and Jaron Jackson are like now a foundational core of a playoff team. But we've got Trey Young and all these other guys that we've drafted over the last two years and we can't get anywhere close to 30 wins here.

Well, I think, yeah, Memphis is a perfect example of just how hard it is because what they've done is they've just aced every single move they made. So I was like, I didn't talk about this couple of weeks ago looking at their success this year. And they had Jolly, have Jaron. And they're getting great play from Brandon Clark, the number 21 pick and D. Anthony Melton, who they got for nothing in a trade. And they're getting like, they're maximizing every single piece. And if you don't do that with the young team, you're going nowhere really fast. And that feels like it's not even just about acing your top picks. It's about acing all your picks. Right. Right. And it's also about having everybody from coaching staff, front office, ownership, and players, kind of on the same timeline, right?

Because earlier in the season, I think we started to hear the first rumblings out of Atlanta that Trey Young was like, I need help. I need, you know, I basically expect a higher caliber teammate without explicitly saying that. I think when they were really, really going through it. And that seems to have maybe accelerated Atlanta's feeling like they needed to bring in some more guys and didn't just want to run out, Herder and DeAndre Hunter and Cam Reddish every day. Although each one of those guys

at various points maybe has had, I'm not so sure about DeAndre Hunter, but I mean, I saw, I know I saw a nice reddish night sometime in the last month. I don't know. I know those were probably few and far between. Do you feel like the Hawks

were victims of the kind of good momentum that they had coming out of last season where they won a few games in the second half there? Yeah, and it's what you're talking about with alignment. It's every month, I guess the organization,

it goes to your, players. You have to have a GM who can sell it to all your players to sell the vision. And then there's so much trust involved, right? So if you're saying, okay, our team is going to be Trey Young, Collins, Herder, Hunter, Reddish, well, Hunter and Reddish are like, Reddish is like 19, Hunter's 21. They're two years away. So you're essentially like punting a season and a half from to develop. But what if they're not actually that good? I like Hunter and Reddish, sure. But what if they're not? Then you're just totally cooked. So you're making these gambles on 19-year to develop in two years in a best case scenario.

Then if you miss them one of those 19 year olds, it gets ugly really fast. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because, like, I think that the process happened, and you could make an argument that they actually didn't land the process plane quite correctly, looking at what happened to the Sixers this season. But it's pretty profound to go from, I mean, I guess, I think Sixers fans like myself, who were probably ultimately fine. intellectually with the Doug Collins era,

especially when it was a competitive one, had to really wrap their minds around the extent of, the extent to which this team was just going to be actively getting their asses handed to them on a night-to-night basis with guys you'd never heard of in order to get to the, not just like, oh, we have some good guys on this team now, but the Embed-Simmons-level player. And that's not even accounting for the fact that the Sixers blew

two other top three picks, Fultz and Okophor. So it's a really complicated thing to ask a fan base to do. And I think that's when you get into what is the relationship between a city and a fan base and the team? Because like you said, Bulls fans kind of resigned. I think they all kind of live in the Rheinsdorf ecosystem there and are kind of like, this is what it is. But for a team, for a place like Detroit, for instance,

who seems stuck in a kind of competent but not quite exciting zone. What do you see as their expectations going forward? Obviously, they got off of Drummond and Jackson. They still have Blake, but, you know, have basically been the Christian Wood Show, as you so beautiful about recently. My guy. Like, do you think the Pistons have like the kind of breathing room that a Hawks team would love to have? Well, they have the breathing room for now.

that's the thing. So they maybe have it for a year or two where the fans will be patient. There won't be too many expectations. And the hard thing is, even if they bottom out with the process in Philly, they got, how many top three picks they get like four? That's not going to happen anymore with the way the lot of the odds are evened out most likely. It's just truly a crapshoot who gets those top three picks. So now you could be bottoming out like the Bulls did and getting the number of seven pick for four straight years. Either you're getting really lucky in the draft or you are in a lot of trouble. Right.

And it just doesn't seem like in the years in years past, it just doesn't seem like the Detroit's, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, the Detroit's and the Chicago's can really get into the mix for all NBA level free agents. You have to develop them in house basically. And that just goes back to really hitting it in the draft. Really, I mean, getting lucky and then hitting that window, development. developing guys without too much expectations. I mean, the more you think about it, it's like, I understand now. So when I first started to come to a decade ago, I was all about tear it down,

start over, build from scratch. And the more you talk to people on the league, you see why nobody wants to rebuild. Because once you start rebuilding, there's no guarantee it ends ever. Well, then your job is gone. Like, once you go down, it's always going to go downhill and uphill, right? And the longer you do it, it's like, man, let's just stay competitive. Like the spurs. Pop, Pop is like, there's just no way I'm doing this. I'm not going to rebuild for five years and my career is over anyways. I'm fighting this out. I don't even care.

Right. Right. I mean, you look at, I think a team like the Pelicans, they have a generational talent in Zion, an all-star caliber player in Brandon Ingram, and they seem to have like revived Lonzo Ball as like a potential star in the NBA. So they have to feel good about what's happening there, provided they can stay healthy. They also have some veterans in the mix. can be really creative going forward.

So I feel pretty good about them. I think the team that I'm kind of curious about, you know, you mentioned the Spurs. I'm sort of curious about the Blazers if they miss the playoffs this season. What do you think a team like that that does have one of the most passionate fan bases

in the league, they does have two all-stars on their roster. If they are like, hey, in the best case scenario, we'd catch a good seating break and some injury look, and we get to the Western Conference finals. Worst case scenario,

we're on the outside looking into the postseason. Yeah, you could chalk all of this up to Nurkich and Collins being out this season. I don't know if I would. For a team like that that's stuck in the middle, but has much greater expectations, what do you see for them? Like, is that a rebuild project? Or do you think that that's one of your,

hey, let's revamp it on the fly kind of deals? No, I mean, it's probably talked about. If you have Damien Lillard at 31, I think he's 30 now, whatever level he was playing at before he got hurt, you're just going all in every year and you're trying to fight a stay above water. There's no rebuilding going on because you know how rare it is to have a player like that at that level.

I would expect them to trade their pick this year, it'd be my guess. They're trying to win. And just get back in it and try and try and get competitive for next year, even though it's probably going to be among the most competitive Western conferences that you and I have seen in our time watching basketball. Yeah, and Portland's interesting too

because what they've tried to do is they've been like really quiet retooling on the fly and trying to find young guys late and develop them over time. So really, to me, Portland's stealing next season is how good is Zach Collins, how good is Anthony Simons? Zach Collins missed all this year. Anthony Simons are playing a lot of a sixth man. And these are gambols they made three and four years ago by next year.

And like those decisions that you make way in the past kind of determine your future because you're waiting on young guys to get good to develop. you know, Simon was a high schooler, Collins was a freshman at Gonzagel when they went pro. Right. So it's like those decisions they made three years ago will probably impact their ceiling now. And that's just the,

it's so hard to be good in the NBA and be in that level of team if you're not the Lakers or the clip urging has grabbed superstars. You know, it's interesting when you, when you and I were talking briefly yesterday about this conversation topic, I did probably, you know,

a couple hours of research on some of the teams that we were going to be talking about. And, you know, from a national perspective, and as this season sort of starts to get closer and closer to the playoffs, you naturally just start gravitating towards games that involve two playoffs teams or games that involve guys who are going to be kind of dictating what's going to happen to the playoffs. So you're watching a lot of Lakers, you're watching a lot of bucks,

you're watching a lot of clippers, what have you. So I haven't sought out games with a lot of these teams. I was reading a bunch about how things were going for some of these guys. And it's interesting to see sometimes, you know, a team like Phoenix, who's 26 and 39, and I think in that Western conference, they've had some injury problems. They lost Aiton for a big chunk of the early part of the season. You know, I don't know whether or not you would call their record about where you expected for them, but Phoenix is clearly drifting towards where Minnesota was in terms of like they have this

really good player, Booker, who they are trying to keep happy and keep engaged in the project as he enters this era of his career where a lot of guys start to make noise about wanting to move on to another team. But then you look over in the Houston Conference and you've got a team like Charlotte who are a few games, you know, a few games worse than Phoenix in the standings

in the record department. But Charlotte seems to have, and correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of really good buzz, for lack of a better term, around their team, around what they're doing with the assets that they have. So it's kind of interesting about how, you know, you could be a worse team and have a better,

sort of a better cue rating than not. You know what I mean? I actually caught them. They came to Dallas a couple of weeks like in January. And they just stomped the Mavs. And they were running this lineup out and they would play Booker, Bridges, Ubrae, Aten. And those four guys together were just killing teams. And it was like, oh, wow, it took Phoenix four and a half years to find a role man for Booker and then two good three and D wings and Ubrain bridges. It was like, okay, they finally have a good young core. And I was about an article about it because the start of the season, they're winning games like Aaron Baines and Rubio.

And that's not sustainable long term. It's like, okay, we have Booker, we have this young core around him. And then what happens, Ubrae tears his knee like a couple weeks later. And now the season shot again. And it's like, man, they had to get everything lined up so well to build this core around Devin Booker. and now they're down to like their last shot. I think realistically next year, if they don't win, they're probably going to lose Booker

to start all over again. And it's like, man, it took them, I think I would say three years to build around Booker, to build a good team around him. They finally have it. And then one of their key pieces goes down in Ubre. And now it's like we're back to right where we started. And now next year it's like all or nothing.

Next year they should have all their young players back. They'll have Booker, Bridges, Ubrey, Aiton. maybe Cam John's six four in a year two. And if that team doesn't coalesce next year, it's over. Like, the whole era is probably over at that point. Right. That's how, like, they had to get so, they missed so many things along the way. They finally figured it out.

And then a guy gets hurt and the whole thing is shot. Who do you think are some other all or nothing teams heading into next season from either conference? I think, I mean, the obvious one is Minnesota because they have their young franchise guy on an extension who's kind of come, who's like looking down. the road to where this team is going to be in a couple of years. And they don't have their pick next year either. So with Towns and Russell, they kind of have to get it going next year.

And then I think in Sacramento, too, with Deeran Fox. It feels like they've been kind of searching for a team around De Aaron Fox for two years. This whole badly thing hasn't worked out. He's been hurt all of this season. They don't know what they have in him. They benched Buddy Healed for Bogdanovich. So, like, they just gave Buddy Healed $100 million and then benched him. Right.

And it feels like if they don't feel like, if they don't feel like, they don't find the right mix around Vox, he'll get kind of restless too. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like that it's like with Sacramento, it's always like an embarrassment of poor riches where they just have like too many guys at the same level. And there's not like any kind of hierarchical idea about who they should be working on and who they should be developing there. And then, you know, you get that that buddy deal. And then it's like all of a sudden now buddy is like a really expensive backup. It just doesn't make any sense. what they're doing. And, you know, that's a team where I'm just like a really creative front

office free of ownership, you know, meddling could probably do a lot of interesting things with that roster at this point. I'm sure somebody out there would be like, we'll take a shot at Bagley. But you have to think that like there's just so many unwritten stories about like, well, this is why this person got drafted or this is why this person got re-uped and this is why this guy gets more looks than that guy. And in the meantime, they do have like a bunch of veterans sitting around on the bench, which, when they do. do play up the competency level of the team, if not the ceiling. Yeah, my guess is ultimately in Sacramento.

They're going to look back at that top three pick, that one chance they had. Yeah, and obviously Luke is there, but even if you don't ignore Luca, and taking Bagley over Jaron Jackson, I think that right there might have sealed two franchises for the next five years. But that's it. You're coming at that from the perspective that, and this is a really big debate raging right now in the NBA, because I think after the Nets got rid of, Atkinson, it was sort of viewed as this repudiation of culture.

You know, like, we hear that as a buzzword a lot where it's like, you know, you build a culture within a team and you fit guys into that culture and you can maximize their potential if it's everybody is rowing in the same direction. And Brooklyn seemed to be following that path. And then by getting rid of Atkinson, you know, the unofficial narrative is, well, they had that when they needed it for a team full of Dinwidis and Karis Leverts and Jared Allen's, but now that it's Kyrie and Durant, they need a star whisperer

who's going to know when to assert himself and know when to step back. But with, you know, that Jaron Jackson versus Bagley pick, obviously they're not the same player, but you feel like if Jaron Jackson goes to the Grizzlies, the Grizzlies are exponentially, or rather the kings,

the kings are in an exponentially better situation than before? I think so because of the way he fits with D.A. If you're playing Jaron Jackson, that opens the floor for Deer and Fox get to the rim. And he's much better defensively than Bagley. It's like those kind of fits with your best, the way your best players fit together.

And the culture thing, I think ultimately, culture is what your best players say it is. So, yeah, the Nets had a good culture last year because their best players were bought into the system they ran. Well,

now their best players are different. They got a new culture. So before we stop this, we get out of this topic and get into line them up, I did want to ask you about the germ of this whole conversation, which was you looking at some draft stuff. When you were looking at that, who are the kind of guys that you were imagining as the 19, 20-year-olds,

who would need a couple of years? But if they go into the right situation, if they hit the right culture, that they might be some really interesting NBA players. Okay. So, yeah, I think I'm doing an article next week, depending on if I'm still working, about some of the guys in this draft. So Jaden McDaniels, he's a freshman at Washington. He's 6-9-2003 man. who can really shoot pretty smart player, but is like crazy skinny. And I think as you're looking at, you know, teams in the draft, everybody wants length,

athleticism, shooting ability. But it's just so hard to find those guys in the draft. And the guys who have it like McDaniels are probably two, three years away because this guy is 19 years old. He's going to have to gain probably 15, 20 pounds to be functional at the NBA level because he's so skinny. Kind of like Brandon Ingram, that kind of thing. Okay.

So you draft a guy like that. And it's like, okay, if I want to find a six-foot-nine guy who can shoot and defend, I got to even let that guy grow for multiple years before it's any good. Huh. Okay. Well, we'll keep an eye on this class, and especially in relation to these different rebuilding projects. We're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with line them up and talk about the way the Lakers and Mavericks are fine-tuning the rotations as we head towards the postseason. Okay, we're back. Charks and me, it's group chat. It's Wednesday. Charks, why don't we talk a little bit? Let's do some line them up.

this is you've done one of these so far on group chat. This will be your second one. It could be your last one until the postseason, but all great things have small beginnings. You know? Basically, one of Charks' expertise is understanding the ways in which

coaches deploy their lineups in which they fine tune their rotations. And, you know, when you read Charks' writing, you can see that he has like this amazing sort of ability to capture lineups as ecosystems and how different players affect those ecosystems. So one of the things we wanted to do was chat a little bit about some of these playoff teams coming into the postseason to give you guys a better understanding of the way they're playing as coaches probably think about shrinking their rotations down to

seven, eight players. Charks, let's start with your hometown homies, the Dallas Mavericks, who lost last night on the road against San Antonio. They have the top rated offense in the league last I checked and the 17th ranked defense. But tell me about the injury that changed this Maverick season. Yeah, I think he's a guy that nationally probably isn't recognized for how important he was his team. It was Dwight Powell. So he was their starting big man for most of the year.

He was the role man their offense. He'd catch, you know, he'd set screens for Luca, roll of the rim, catch lobs. And that role is a huge part of what the maps did. He tore as an Achilles in late January. And I think the team, it kind of changed the whole structure of the team. It took Carlisle a while to find the right lineups. But what he's done over the last month and a half is he's moved Porzingis to the five. And he's playing smaller, faster lineups around him.

And it really feels like Porzingis is starting to find his stride. Unfortunately, he had two really tough games in the last two. But whatever, I think the trend still holds. So in the last two months, Porzingis has played 340 minutes at center. And the team was plus 15. And like Porzingis, the thing with him that started the season was he wasn't rolling to the basket much on two and the pick and roll. But that's because there was another big man on the floor.

He had nowhere to go. He's not even now a great role man, but at least using him as a screener makes them more involved in the offense. He's scoring more. He seems more confident. And the Mazz, what they've done, instead of playing Dwight Powell in a bigger lineup, they're playing Porzingis with Luca at point guard. And then Seth Curry is playing now on the starting lineup.

He's been great for them. Since the injury to Powell, Curry is averaging 17 points on 55% shooting. I think he's almost like 60% from three. He's just not missing. Right. Do you feel like, you know, we're going to talk about the Lakers in a minute, but I wonder whether or not there is a degree to which, was this always going to be the plan for Carlisle to eventually bring Porzingis along to the point where physically durability-wise, he could play five in the postseason, but they just didn't want to put him through that the entire season as he was coming off his injuries? I mean, watching them play now in these smaller lineups, it does kind of feel like that.

And really, it's like the whole league. It feels there's so many teams where they have a placeholder five to kind of kill time in the regular season, to keep your stars from going too many miles in their body. But when it really comes down to it, you're not going to pay Porzingas $160 million to spot up of somebody else's pick and roll. He's going to be involved in the offense. And like he's going to be rolling to the basket popping out with Luca. And it just does feel like that was always the end game for them.

and Powell's injury kind of pushed it along. Right. For the Mavericks, what do you see is there like sort of Achilles heel? Do you think of it more in terms of their team defense, or do you think that the prospect of Porzingis having the kind of night that he had last night against Lamarcus Aldridge and various Spurs Biggs

is the unknown factor, where it's like you want to see him scoring 26, getting double digits boards, patrolling the paint, being that shot blocking force that he can be, but you never know when you're going to get a nine-point game out of him. Is that a bigger concern or is it just can these guys actually stop anyone? Yeah, I would say it's the latter.

So the line at the Madamax is really going with, and Seth Curry's been out at the last few games, it's Curry, Donchich, Hardaway, Finney Smith, Porzingas. And that leaves Dorian Finney Smith and Tim Hardaway guarding bigger wings. Can those two guys hold up? And I mean, I guess they're going to have to guard LeBron and Kauai. You're going to have to have either Tim Hardaway at 6-7 of 200 pounds or Dorian Finney Smith at 6-8-2-15

guarding these massive wings one-on-one in the post, not picking roles and whatever. And it feels like that's the missing piece for the Mavericks long-term. It's fine, that big athletic wing because you're not going to ask Luca to do it, obviously, or Porzingas.

But you've got to find somebody who's going to guard LeBron or Kauai or there's always a ceiling on your team in the West. Right. Like essentially like a Covington-style player, right? Yeah, it feels like that's the guy they need, they need to find somehow. Yeah.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about the Lakers because I know for this particular conversation, what you want to talk about is the concept that I always wondered whether or not this was kind of, this was fake news to some extent, but the idea of showing your hand earlier in the season, essentially like whether or not coaches leave tricks in their bags, keep lineups behind closed doors, don't want to let anybody see like this is what it looks like when we try to run this out there.

But you feel like the Lakers sort of showed their hand against the bucks and the clippers. Yeah, and it goes back to the time about the poor Zingis where they've been just not playing Davis at the 5 very much. They're always keeping either Javel or Dwight Howard in the game. And it's the same kind of thing. Like Javel and Dwight Howard, they don't space the floor. They have to be the role men. And it kind of forces Davis into a smaller role.

But you know in the playoffs, you're going to go smaller. They're going to play Davis at the 5, LeBron, at the 4 when their wings around them. And that's what we saw at the end of those Bucks Clippers games. Like these are lineups to Lakers have been holding reserve all season. like, okay, this is the actual team we're going to see in the playoffs. Sure. We're going to see a smaller team. And then the other big thing was, like, holding reserve was LeBron played defense again.

Like, LeBron guarded Janice and Kauai, which hasn't happened in years, it feels like. Yeah, you can really feel MVP conversation aside, you can really tell that LeBron is pouring it on this season. And that, like, whatever, he's going to leave everything on the floor. Not that he doesn't in years past, but obviously kind of was out for the second half of last season. I haven't seen him playing like this in a couple of years, really. Like, I mean, obviously in the postseason with Cleveland, you would see a different kind of player, but watching not only how Kiti is in physically

and taking these challenges, like guarding the opposing team's best player, like you're talking about with Janice and Kauai, but he also seems to be really working in harmony with Vogel. I guess that's what I would say. I mean, what do you think of LeBron as player coach? right now. Yeah, it really feels like LeBron has got the team where he wants it. And Vogel is working with him. So LeBron, in that Clippers game, right, every time with Lou Williams on the floor,

they're using Lou Williams as man to screen for LeBron. And it was, oh, this did of Steph Curry two years ago in the finals, right? It's the exact same thing. And LeBron is kind of, he's taking control of a team when he needs to. Like, it does feel like LeBron knows the moves that have to happen for this team to win. And he's kind of waiting reserved for it to happen. And the defense, it's the same thing. Like, everyone always said, oh, like, LeBron is playing at the same level, but as the day when he was in his prime, but, like, prime LeBron would just take guys out of the playoff series.

Do you remember that Derek Rose series? It was almost a decade ago now. When LeBron guarded Rose at the end of the conference finals, like four straight games. Yeah. And it's like that ability is what separated LeBron from everybody else. Like, he could dominate on offense and dominate on defense. And if he can get back to that, if he can guard Kauai and Janus, I think that gives the Lakers so many more options is if he's willing to, if he's willing to, if he's, if he's,

has the energy at year 17, which is amazing. Janus is a decade younger than him. It's crazy LeBronk can guard this guy. Do you think that there's anything, I'm not trying to concern troll, but unsustainable, dangerous, flawed in the way that the Lakers kind of are playing spin the wheel on who the third guy on any given night is going to be on a nightly basis, whether it's Danny Green, whether it's KCP, Avery Bradley went off against the Clippers. they've got Morris.

You get Caruso spark plug minutes at the end of games a lot. Does it matter that Vogel has to basically play poker every night and find the right hand? Or do you think going into the playoffs, he would rather know this is the third guy. This is the third guy both in terms of if LeBron is off the floor, which seems to be the critical moments of each Lakers game or the moments that LeBron spends off the floor. This is the guy who can stop the bleeding when that happens. Yeah, and then you wonder, is he going to go the full 48 again? Like he used to do.

It's hard to imagine that year 17, LeBron can play 48 minutes, but maybe he has to. And I always kind of thought Kuzma would be the guy who'd benefit from going smaller. It felt like, okay, if you have Davis to 5, LeBron at the 4, here's natural spot for Kuzma. He can kind of get more minutes, get into rhythm. But it's not really happening. It seems like Markief Morris, they trust him more than Kuzma. And he's playing down the end of game before in Kuzma. is. I was a little surprised at that, but that's also a LeBron's style, right? LeBron's also one

those vets over the young guys. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he always, and that was especially the case in Cleveland. And then obviously it was the case when he got to L.A. had the chance to sort of raise this group of pups and Ingram and Ball and Hart and everybody and was just like I'd prefer to have Anthony Davis, which I can't blame him, but still, you know, that we're not going to see LeBron James as like passing the torch to a very young generation of players. So the only other thing I guess we could chat about that just sort of came across the wires we've been talking is news that Ben Simmons is going to remain on ice because of this nerve impingement and his back and will be re-evaluated in three weeks, which takes us perilously close to the playoffs. Look, I mean, without any inside information, without any understanding of the human body, I would say that back injuries are really tricky and it just doesn't sound like this is getting appreciably better anytime soon. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah. The way it happened, too, because he misses a game with the back injury, they bring him back and he re-injures it again five minutes later. That's really, Trubb, because that tells you they thought it was okay and then it wasn't instantly. So whatever's going on with his back, I don't know. At this point, do you think he's going to plan the playoffs? I don't know.

And I think one thing that's a huge debate among Sixers fans right now and Sixers Watchers is that this is a franchise that showed an overabundance, perhaps, or at least an abundance of caution with their players in terms of their health over the first few years of the process, holding guys out, minutes, limits, you know, if you hurt yourself significantly, there is no rush to get you back in. I also think that ultimately, when you get to a back injury, it's a pretty specific thing where you just can't mess around with that. You know, you're talking about a career-altering thing if he aggravates this or whatever.

Look at Dwight Howard. Yeah, I'm personally kind of like, I would love to see Ben Simmons in the playoffs, but I'm accepting the reality in which you probably won't. I'm also curious to see it, MB without Simmons team. What that would really look like

is a Joelle Embed-focused team with shooters around him. How far could it go? What could he do? I don't know. I'd be curious to see. Okay. Well, we'll keep an eye on that.

Charks, if you're with us next week, we can't wait to talk to you. If not, congratulations. Until then, we'll have mismatch tomorrow and your regularly scheduled Ringer NBA show will keep going on for as long as we have games to talk about and probably even if we don't. So talk to you next time, guys. Basketball is very good. Basketball is very good.