The Ringer NBA Show - We Know What You Did (to Your Roster) Last Summer | Group Chat

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

No Justin today, so Rob and J. Kyle Mann are here to look back at some of the biggest moves from the summer and, if given the chance, would they still make the transaction? (0:00:00) Intro (4:42) Desmond Bane trade (23:21) Kevin Durant trade (36:49) Signing Myles Turner (48:05) Michael Porter Jr. trade (1:01:54) Saddiq Bey trade Hosts: Rob Mahoney, and J. Kyle Mann Producers: Victoria Valencia and Isaiah Blakely Production Supervision: Ben Cruz and Conor Nevins Additional Production Support: John Richter and Chris Wohlers Social: Isaiah Blakely and Keith Fujimoto The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to group chat. I'm Rob Mahoney. That's Kyle Mann. Kyle, we're without Justin today, who we should say is, you know, dealing with a T-shirt Canon related injury. Do you want to send out any messages to our guy? I was asking him. I was like it was suspicious, you know, that I don't know, what was what was laced on that

T-shirt? What kind of, you know, respiratory illness maybe that was, they were taking him out. They heard some of his complaints about tanking. Follow the data is all I'm saying. I'm not trying to be too conspiratorial. we'll get an episode of wait a second about it. What do you feel? You feeling as conspiratorial about it as I am?

I think we need to know who was on the other end of that T-shirt canon. You know, we need to know who pulled the trigger. We've got to check the footage. We've got to check the logs. We've got to check the security tape. I think there's a lot to uncover here. Yeah. Yeah.

But as anyone can probably tell, we are glad to have NBA basketball back tonight. Getting back into the flow of things certainly feels good at this stage of the season. Kyle, I get a little antsy during these. breaks, even like a couple days off, I don't quite know what to do with myself. Are you feeling juiced and jazzed about the return of actual basketball into our lives again? Well, I just kind of come away from this feeling sorry for you as I often do, Rob, where I have college basketball, like a nice, comfy, just comforter that I can lay back on whenever I want to

because college has been awesome this year. And there's great games. There was no break. I was over here just enjoying the wares. I thought you were going to flex with like, you your full and complete life outside of basketball. But no, it's just you have other degenerate sports to dive into in the meantime. I have other things to dive into. You know, I just started reading The Stand by Stephen King, but enjoying that. So, yeah, I'm a dynamic person. I try to be when I can.

Well, has it occupied a lot of your time to deal with? I know you lent Lamello, your Camo Hummer, and we saw everything that happened with that. Like, has been dealing with the insurance problems on an issue for you? that Hummer, somebody compiled a series, like a highlight reel of Lamello pulling out of the Hornets parking garage, which just, I don't know if there was one person doing it at the same time every, like, noticing that, because Lamello ran over the foot, right? That was the first incident at the garage. I don't know if you were hearing about that.

But someone had the presence of mind to continue to record him every time he pulled out of the garage. And I was just really, Lamello, I don't think it's talked about enough how Lamello's, vibe is distinctly Jared Leto as the Joker. All of his aesthetic, like, it's no other iteration of the Joker. It's Jared Leto. He's neck tat damaged or is it forehead tat damaged? I can't remember what Leto has going on. I'm not saying he went up to Steve Clifford and said, I'm not going to kill you. I'm just going to hurt you really bad with a couple of like shock pads, but I'm not going to rule it out. But I'm just saying every car that he had pulling out of the garage was 100% Jared Letto Joker. There was like a, there was like a bright purple, metallic Bentley, you know, in this most

recent one, all matter of Ferraris. I don't know how to get into paint jobs or whether he leases them or whatever. It's a fascinating world, but I'm sure he makes enough money to own nice cars, but that's the thing. What else is a young man in Charlotte supposed to spend his money on? I don't know, man, but the Hummer, the Hummer was, I didn't know if people still did custom hummers. It was a nice breath of fresh air. I thought we were out of the custom Hummer era, But maybe we're not. Well, everything that's old is new again. You know, all the trends are circling back.

All the old news is new news. And today on the podcast, I think we're going to lean into that a little bit because we're going to be looking back ourselves at some of the biggest slash most notable, slash, in some cases, weirdest moves of last summer and see how they've aged. See how, you know, Kyle, we're feeling about them now and whether they would still kind of pass muster in terms of our own logic. Are you feeling up for a look back? I'm always down to look back as somebody that, you know, we both,

laugh a lot about people our age, our impulse. The Freudian impulse, Rob, to sort of look back. We're not looking back as far here, but we definitely want to kind of just do some relitigation of these moves, right, to see, you know, we know what you did last summer and we're going to say, you know, just kind of discuss whether there's regret or there's just steadfast continued belief with these moves. Well, we are, as you say, Kyle, large children living in younger versions of ourselves. We're also navel gazers by default. So I think we're particularly equipped for this. I want to start with one of the biggest move

just by volume in terms of the amount of assets that went out the door. And that's the Orlando Magic's trade for Desmond Bain, what Jeff you'll recall, involved giving up the number 16 pick in last summer's draft that ended up being Yang Hansen flipped to Portland, plus three more unprotected first,

a pick swap, Contavius Caldwell Pope and Cole Anthony to get back Bain. How are you feeling about that particular move? And would you still do it, knowing everything we know now from Orlando's perspective. Well, first of all, I mean, I think you have to start at what was, you know, what were the stakes here, what were the terms, and Young Hanson, I mean, we can just say MVP level player.

I think we can just start there, right? I mean, if Justin's not here, someone has to say it. We got to throw some change in the jar for Justin. KCP, obviously they saw him as a depreciating guy who, I don't know, do you remember whenever that, whenever Denver sent, you know, what was? Was he free agent or was that a flip? He was a free agent, yeah. Whenever he left Denver to go to Orlando,

you heard some murmurs from some outspoken Nuggets fans because nobody's watching their team, a team as closely as the people nightly on League Pass. And I did see some people being like, I hear everybody talking about KCP, but the idea of KCP is not the KCP now. And they were on that sent early. You know, we get to Orlando, for whatever reason.

I think some of this can spin into is Orlando sort of a pit, a Bermuda triangle for basketball value because it's kind of starting to feel that way based on the way the team is built. Cole Anthony, another guy that just has bounced around. It ended up getting waived by the Bucks, who we'll talk more about. And then, yeah,

so I guess let's just where do you want to say, you want to do just like the basketball fit? Start wherever you want to with Desmond May. What was your first impression how we, and then leading to where we are now? I certainly thought that this would work great. And we talked about it at the time in our preseason

predictions and all that. Like, I was pretty high on the magic and this version of this team. And I think even knowing what we know now, that architecture was worth like a good, honest try, hoping that everyone could stay healthy. Clearly, they have not. Getting the kind of shooter they've never had in Bain, who started slow, but has finally been kind of picking up and finding his stroke again and leveled out into a pretty interesting place for this team overall.

The magic aren't good. They're having kind of a disaster season, I think, in a lot of respects. But to me, Desmond Bain isn't really the problem. there. And so then the question is just kind of like the value proposition, right? Like, how do you feel about getting a good player in the door that isn't fixing your team and giving up all of these picks in order to do it? And I'm okay with that bargain still, even still, even with everything that's happened. And we can go into kind of like the future of the magic and what that might hold. But to me, Desmond Bain is an interesting part of this team and an interesting part of a magic

team that, say, doesn't have one of Palo Bencaro or Franz Wagner on it that takes a radically different shape that if we're all being honest with ourselves, gets a lot less weird and a lot more conventional and having a very straightforward two guard who does two guard things, seems like something that version of the magic could honestly use. Yeah, there's a symptom disease thing going on here where, you know, I think that they were attacking. They brought him in and I don't think that Bain has necessarily cured the disease.

What I was going to ask you, which is, I think, a little bit more deeper with their stars, which has been well documented. You know, people have wondered about bronze and Paulo together, Apollo by himself. Any iteration of their stars is like, is it going to work? Can it be calibrated? I was kind of wondering too, though, like, you know, thinking back to the summer, what types of, we were thinking about the hypothetical magic from the standpoint, from the summer

where we were sitting, we're like, this is what it's going to look like. What kind of shots did you think, just like thinking about it on the court, what it was going to, envisioning what it was going to look like? What kind of shots did you think he was going to bring to their offense and how did you think it was going to change? because just speaking for myself, I think some of the miscalibration for me in the way I was thinking about Desmond Bain

was kind of maybe thinking about 2021, 2022 Desmond Bain, where it was more of him flying off of downscreens or coming off of double, you know, staggards, moving, you know, flares, whatever it was, more offball movement catch and shoot type stuff, which to me, I thought, you know, okay, that would add some,

a wrinkle to Orlando that would make them more, difficult to deal with, but I kind of don't feel like that's a fair representation of who he has become in terms of how he is used as a player. No, and I thought it would be a combination of some of that sort of offball movement that you're describing. And also like a decent dose of on ball, pick and roll, kind of facilitating second side playmaking for them, which they have needed to be clear. It was kind of like a way to square both of their biggest limitations. Like they needed the shooter, but they also needed someone who could handle the ball who was a threat to pull up. Why not Desmond Bain? And that's how you talk yourself into.

giving up all these picks in the first place. But not only are they not running all that kind of action to set him up for catch and shoots or off of curls, he's also just like become the kind of ever so slightly hesitant shooter. And some of this is, I think, maybe because he was struggling a little bit out of the gate to really convert from deep. But like, I was hoping he would have the kind of season where just because of the way that teams pack the pain against the magic, he would be averaging nine or ten three-point attempts at game.

That he would be like, I mean, we're in a totally. totally different universe. We've gone the other way. Why is that? Do you think? Is it just their stagnation? It's interesting. Yeah, I think some of it,

if we want to talk about the off ball stuff, it's one thing when you have off ball movement with screens, where the screener is then a threat to cut and roll. But because of the way that the pain is always so jammed up, you kind of can just shade harder towards Bain and take away some of those opportunities and live with everything else that you're giving up for like Mo Wagner, whoever's setting that screen, Wendell Carter.

some of it is just he has to be willing to take it more. And that's easier said than done, right? Like when your offense is already kind of sloppy, already stuck in the mud, asking a guy to pull the trigger early on what is even in a best case scenario, like a 38, 39% proposition, there's always like a mental part for even great shooters

that's saying like, eh, maybe not now. We need to reset into our offense. Oh, we need to look for something simpler. There's never anything simple for the magic. And so the idea of taking, a long shot higher risk opportunity for someone like Desmond Bain. I'm just not sure he's comfortable doing that in the way that even a shooter of his caliber should be comfortable doing that.

What was the last successful team that had this kind of a lack of, I was just thinking about dribble shooters on this team. There's some catchage of you guys that are respectable. I mean, De Silva's gotten to the point where he's pretty respectable. Trying to think of other guys on the floor. Richardson is, but he doesn't really play enough. Bain is they don't really. really the only dribble shooter really that's capable on the teams.

When you're talking about packing the paint. Sugs a little bit, I think. Sugs some. I mean, he has to be low 30s, though. I can't imagine that he's. And I'm just trying to think of the last, like, successful team. In order to do that, I come back to this a lot just because of the horse, you know, John Hammond kind of that school thought, how interesting and how parallel those two builds have been.

It's like you kind of have to have, you have to have a real. really, really special rim pressure talent at the center of that, like to the point where Janus just could manufacture wide open threes for that roster build in a way that, I think another problem, too, is that the brain of this whole build has kind of, I don't know if pulled out as the right way to put it, but it just hasn't been in stasis enough, you know, Franz has been out of the lineup who's been hurt, you know, where we hear Magic fans just being like, well, before, you know, all the criticism comes with that asteris, which is availability.

And the other thing, too, is just the palo not being palo. It's just kind of like, Bain has come in to be the supporting actor when the leading man isn't kind of there to anchor all the scenes, right? And I kind of think that that's been the biggest thing that's undermined the magic going the direction that we thought that they might go this year. I think it's an enormous part of it. If you're going to have this funcia construction, you need a lot of runway to figure it out. And having all those guys in and out of the mix, Suggs included, and Franz, we should say, is not. just been out, but him rushing back and trying to return from that ankle injury, it seems like exacerbated the situation a little bit. Now he's due to be re-evaluated in another three weeks,

and that's reevaluated in three weeks, not to say he's going to be back by then. We might not see him, you know, until right before the playoffs, if that. And so, and that's if the magic make the playoffs. They just have not had an opportunity for any of this stuff to settle. And we're saying that now year over year, over year, with multiples of these guys getting hurt almost every season in combinations, it just hasn't really banned out the way that anybody wanted. And you're right, as a result, like, they haven't had a chance to develop as a cohesive group. They've developed some individual, like Franz is a better player now than he was two years ago. But is he better at playing off of Paolo Bancaro now than he was two years ago? Is Paolo better in operating in these tight

quarters that the magic create for him on an every night basis? I wouldn't say that he is. And so when you don't have the chance to actually grow together, this is what happens to you. There's versions of the team that have, let's say, Bain and Frans out there together that work, and Bain and Paolo out there together that work. And certainly when you have Suggs involved, when Anthony Black is taking a leap, like all those guys can be incorporated in various

ways, but all told, this is a mess of a roster. It doesn't really make sense in terms of competing in a modern way. And the big exception in terms of what you were talking about, Kyle, was like, how do you build a team that's successful without off the dribble shooters?

The one shining example right now is the Detroit Pistons who basically have one, maybe two of those guys, if you want to include like Tobias Harris in that mix a little bit. But they do it because they're an elite defensive team. And the magic have been uninspired at best on defense over the course of this year, have just completely lost the edge that they used to play with. And so if that's going to be the reality of who you are on that side of the ball, you have to have some benefit from playing this big.

And right now we just don't see any of it. And Bain is just kind of like lost in the mix of trying to accent or augment something that isn't really there to begin with. I was going to ask you what their offensive identity is because I don't feel like that's clear at all. And whenever you lack an offensive identity, I think that that purposelessness can just get guys feeling like

they're expending a lot of energy that is going nowhere. It just feels like futile to a point. And whenever you're doing that, it's asking a human being to do that over time. It's just something that is, you're going to end up having this loss of return in overtime where guys are just like, we work so hard to just be an inefficient basketball team.

And then you're asking them to be like, all right, well, our defensive identity, it's just is going to be the thing that drives it. I kind of feel like that has been the circle, cycle, cycle, whatever it is of a frustration for the magic to cause them to spin wheels. I don't know ultimately where this is going. It just kind of feels like this is going to hit a point where they're making a tough decision to have some kind of surgery on this to choose a level of survival

that they're willing to live with, right? Because it's hard to feel optimistic about the direction that it's going with. They're two stars, which I feel like is not Bain's fault, but it's at the center of it. Yeah, I think especially if you're going into this season, as a lot of us myself were included, thinking of Bain as, if not like a finishing piece,

at least one that will bring the room together a little bit, hasn't happened. Now requires, I think, something more dramatic to probably happen this summer. I don't even know if we're going to see the healthy magic

get a chance in these postseason at all to prove literally anything about the build of the team at this point. And if that's the case, the picks do seem steep. I, like, granted,

I still think I would do it. I still think that version of the team deserved a shot. They haven't been healthy enough to actually put that into action on the court, but I'm cool with it because Bain can roll over

and continue to be a factor for the team. If that weren't the case, if he only made sense for a Paolo Franz combination team, then yeah, like that sunk cost would be pretty brutal at this point. But they really do need to figure out a style.

And whatever that style is, I feel confident that Desmond Bain, who's like at this point putting up 24 and 4 on reasonable percentages and we know what kind of shooter he can be, we know what kind of secondary creator he can be, that's just a useful guy to have a round as you pivot, frankly.

Like, that's a good piece to pencil in while you figure out what your team looks like without Paulo or without Franz or however they want to reimagine this thing. Yeah. You're mentioning the Pistons is an interesting comparison because is the difference

that you just kind of have to have an elite, heliocentric type guy? Or just someone who sees the floor like Kate does. They don't have that playmaker. They have a lot of guys who can kind of pass, but nobody who can really pass. Yeah, and the threat to score for that passer too is a big thing too

because it's just like Paulo and Faso Franz both have these sort of caveats that I think undermine how effective it is, and especially when you put them out there together and they're just kind of taking turns. It's like Kate is just on another level in that sense. So I don't know. Can you be, I think what we're seeing basically is we're seeing a Helio sort of idea of a team that doesn't have quite the, it's not optimized to work.

Yeah. I mean, to me the spinning wheels is captured in the fact that like if, if you look into the the mileage tracking data, which take it with a great grain of salt, like it's very contextual in terms of what that stuff actually means. You looked up there to their mileage tracking data?

Well, the one that I keep an eye on because of the spinning of wheels is like how much is Paolo moving on offense? And he covers as much ground on offense as basically any non-movement shooter in the league. He has to constantly, being called up to screen, being called up to screen,

being called to cut. You have the ball now. You have to half drive into a, a kickout. He's in a lot of action and a lot of stuff is happening. Some of that is because every magic possession seems to go 23 seconds into the shot clock. So like just by the numbers, they're going to be spending a lot of time on offense. But it just speaks to the level of churn that's happening here, where there isn't a helio level of simplicity, but there is a helio level of tradeoff in terms of the flow of the offense. Like it never feels like all of the pieces

are connected. And so you have all of the downsides of that style of offense without the real payoffs of having, the visionary creator at the helm. I thought we were seeing into the process of Rob Mahoney on the stats that you track. Because I have my kind of like places I go to look for certain indicators. If I think that they're there, one of the ones that I think, which for as much criticism, I think, like, for as young as Powell is,

I feel bad for him quite honestly with you. Because if you go and look at the things that people are saying about him, which is that, you know, pounding the ball, sticking on it, taking bad shots, things like that. I do think that he's made an effort because if you go and you look at touch time, that's one of the things whenever you hear those criticisms about a player I go and look for, which is him staying on the ball, lingering on the ball, and then points per possession or points per touch. So I was looking at guys past a certain volume. I think it was like 65 touches per game and guys who had the ball in their hands for at least two and a half seconds. And Palo is not in the basement with some of the like uglier names on that list. Like he's doing, he's made an effort to change. Granted he's not elite.

So I don't know. It seems like maybe they have a lot to figure out. It's a mess, man. I honestly don't know if I have the answer. They do have a lot to figure out. How do you want to rubber stamp this thing? Would you at this point, knowing everything we know now, give up the number 16 pick, three unprotected first, a pick swap, KCP, and Cole Anthony for Desmond Bain?

Are we doing that today still? What were the ears on the unprotected first? So the magic are giving up their pick this year, 2026, also they're 2028. their 2021 swap, which I believe is top two protected, and their 2030 pick. So, I mean, it's really their near-term draft future. What's the dark timeline here? What do you think? I mean, let's say, is there a pivot?

I think that's the biggest fear, right? If you're an Orlando fan, that there is no clean pivot, if we're assuming that they're going to do some kind of a pivot, I think you and I kind of agree that there's probably some kind of, some kind of the surgery is going to have to happen to make this work. Or maybe not. But what's the darkest timeline do you think for those picks where they're standing right now? Well, I think we're living the darkest timeline just about in terms of their play this season. This is as dark as it could get, you think? I mean, I guess technically it can always get worse.

Modern times have taught us that. But I think the good news is Powell and Franz in particular, but also Jalen Suggs, also Anthony Black, like however radically you want to think about this roster, those are good, attractive players to a lot of teams. They might not get you the precise return you want in exactly the way you want it. But I do think if they decided to move on from any of those guys, that they would get something pretty nice in terms of reshaping their team, in terms of getting back to or kind of moving on to a more conventional place. So I think it can get dark clearly in terms of any time you're leveraged out that far into the future with picks.

But this team is still set up to be pretty good for the near-term future. And so long as that is the case. as they continue to make moves, like to me, maybe the worst timeline is the one in which they do absolutely nothing at all and take no lesson at all from this season. Like, they need dramatic change. And I am saying that as somebody who, like, I'm one of the last people on this boat, you know, like I was, I was hoping and praying that this team would turn it around and they just have not. So I think we need to see something to justify their continued existence otherwise need to see something pretty significant shift in the construction of it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. It's interesting because you're talking about that that's what ends up happening with some of these teams. It's like I don't, I like a lot of these individual pieces. And I'm sure there are some really coveting eyes out there in the NBA, hoping that they get, you know, loosen up and start shopping at Jalen Suggs or a, or a Franz or an Anthony Black because in a different context, those guys could be really, really high impact players. So I don't think the magic are sunk by any means. No.

It's just, it might, there might be a painful step at some point to get where they want to go. Well, while we're talking painful steps, and maybe some painful internal dynamics, depending on your view of the validity of various burner-related rumors, I want to talk to you about Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets. Let's flash back.

It was like a massive seven-team trade where the Rockets gave up Dylan Brooks, Jalen Green, the number 10 pick, which became Malawatch, and five second round picks for Kevin Durant. Not an overwhelming haul, I don't think, by any means, Kyle. Do you have any second thought, any doubt whatsoever from what we've seen of the Kevin Durant era in Houston that would lead you to believe the Rockets should or should not have done this?

For a productive Kevin Durant in the air, in the tier of productivity and efficiency that he's in right now at this stage of his life, has there ever been a better price for Kevin Durant as Kevin Durant? Not even really dipping in any sense. He's still one of the most lethal, every which way you want to slice it. Yep. coming off of ball screens, catch and shoot, coming off of pin downs, no dribble isolation, still one of the best isolation scores in the world.

Has there been a better price at any point for Kevin Durant? I can't imagine that there has been. Not for him or any player like him to the extent that anyone's ever been like him. I think the, Dylan Brooks is having a really great season, a badass season, I think by many respects. We knew what the Dylan Brooks version of the Rockets look like.

And if you want to even include it, the Jalen Green version of the Rockets look like. They ran headfirst into a wall and needed something to really get them over the top offensively and to shoot over the top offensively. Kevin Durant was like a perfect prescription for a lot of their problems. And so I'm just not too loathe to give up anything,

any individual asset or player that the Rockets gave up and even collectively like a pile of second round picks and won first and Dylan Brooks and Jalen Green, who they were trying to trade anyway, feels imminently reasonable to me. And I say that even knowing all of the stuff that comes with Kevin Durant, all of the inevitable lull,

the inevitable body language concerns. And now we find ourselves into this weird burner controversy. And I want to say, I have no idea if the stuff that's floating around online is actually Kevin Durant. I have seen nothing even approaching proof that this is Kevin Durant, other than some people saying,

doesn't it seem like it could be based on the fact that he is like a legendary shit poster and thus plausibly could be also an anonymous? a Mishit poster. And this is the one part of the Kevin Duran experience that can't be priced in when you're thinking about picks and players is when he comes to your team reliably, he's going to do exactly what you said, Kyle, which is he's going to be one of the most locked in isolation, one-on-one creators and scores that we've ever seen.

Also, the volume around your team is going to crank up. And it's going to be something predictable. It's going to be something unpredictable. He's just a guy who courts and I think enjoys in some respects. like a certain level of adversarial controversy. I don't think he particularly wanted this. And frankly, the way he's dealt with it is wildly perplexing. Allegedly.

Yeah, allegedly. Well, it was brought to him. And he couldn't even bring himself to deny the fact that it was him in the first place. Have you ever had something happen where I guess this is exactly the same? But have you ever had someone get caught? It just reminds me of, I'm more thinking of like accidental tax. like someone sent like a text to the wrong number or the wrong group chat. Have you ever had that and then like confronted somebody about it or like like the aftermath?

I'll throw that to you first because I have one that happened to a group of my friends. Oh my gosh. It's a real peril, especially when you have the exact kind of melted brains that we have where it's like I'm texting about somebody and I accidentally text it directly to them because my brain's like, oh, I'm talking about Kyle. I should totally text Kyle. I've double, yeah, I've had that happen where, you know, I've had a lot of like shit talking lessons in my life where I've paired that, you know, shit talking, I feel like is a young man's game that I've tried to age out of. Don't do it anymore. There's really mostly just downside, you know, especially in writing. But, no, I mean, I've had that happen where like I'll double and triple check just to make sure, even if I'm saying something even mildly critical about something. No, I had like a group chat for one of my pickup groups one time. And this friend of our. sent it wasn't shit talking but he sent a text to the group chat that was very explicitly sexual oh no like saying like very much like somebody sexting someone else you had ray allen in your group chat it was i want to blank blank blank blank blank and we we all you know separately are

just yeah you know a thousand exclamation points and when we um confronted this person about it we were like, hey, what was that about? He just basically did the like shoulder shrug. Didn't deny it or anything? How could you? Yeah, well, we had suspicions about what the nature of the text. We don't have to go into that. But anyway, no, it is kind of funny.

I don't know. Also, your friend is doing a lot of work here, Kyle. I got to say, we get it, guy. No, I'm just like thinking about Kevin Durant, the Kevin Durant experience at this point. I mean, you think about the Hall. you think about the return, you think about the rockets and their set of conditions. I mean, I know for a fact that that was when they saw the cost for Kevin Durant,

they were like, we have to do this. I mean, I have pretty good confidence on that one. And not that it really took a source for that, but is the downside at this point, just the extracurricular stuff that comes with Kevin? Because the roster itself, it's similar to the Bain thing. It's like Kevin isn't really, he's being overburdened, I think, for where he is in his career, for what their challenges are. They don't have Fred Bambly.

Reed hasn't leveled up into the playmaker. I don't know necessarily that they expected him to be one. Shingoon has his concerns. Is the extracurricular stuff the only kind of downside at this point? I think it's the extracurricular stuff. I think it's the heightened expectations of the team, which depending on how you look at it are either an upside or a downside, but it does hold someone like Jabari Smith Jr.,

the subject of many of Kevin Durant's alleged messages to a certain standard. Right? If he's not good right now, if he's not exactly what the Rockets need him to be, there's a spotlight on him in a different way, just because you have brought in a superstar who is ready and able to win right now. So it just, you're asking different things of Amen Thompson and Tari Isan,

and even Op. And Shangun, who has evolved and stepped up in an all-star level season. But the ask is different when you're just competing at supposedly at a very high championship-worthy level right now. And I think some of the frustrations for me in watching the Rockets have been, they haven't shown a lot of growth

in addressing some of their biggest limitations on offense over the course of this season. And they haven't made any moves to address those things, and now the deadline is behind us. And so what did they expect to happen here? You know, like, that to me is part of the weight of bringing in someone like Duran. It's not Katie's fault that he's so good

he now makes your team have the thought that they should be a contender, but it is part of the reality of having him. puts a little more pressure. This isn't the young guys who are scrappy against Goldenstein. This is like, okay, we brought in, arguably the best score of all time. You said growth.

I mean, do you think that this spins into kind of a conversation? I know we could go on for a long time about how. But, I mean, I was talking with somebody about Amin Thompson and, you know, his value, Zach and I talked a lot about him versus Brandon Miller. I was kind of like, that's closer for me than I even really thought of. He hit me with that in the moment. I was like, I mean, I still might lean Miller a little bit, mainly because of this, though.

You're talking about the growth. You're talking about the Rockets, where they're going to go, the strain of them being a team that can create offense consistently. We know they can guard. We know all those things. It's like,

do you ever see him in Thompson being like the core of an offense? Do you ever see him being like the primary driving force behind a productive offense? Because I initially believed in that when he came into the league. I was like, I could see this. Yeah. I'm increasingly less confident about that.

I don't think he's ever going to be a, you know, it's affected the way I think about his ceiling. I think. I think that's totally fair. On the one hand, 23 years old, so I was a ton of basketball ahead of him.

And we've seen guys, especially primary ball handlers, you know, make jumps when they figure out some particular aspect of the game. Like, if he becomes not even the best shooter in the world, but has the sort of like

mid-range awakening that like a Dejante Murray had in the middle of his career. Mid-ranged awakening. I love this. Okay. But that's kind of what he needs. And so much of with him,

to his reputation. Like, there are guys who don't hit any of their pull-up shots, but because they are thought of as scores, are guarded more seriously than I meant Thompson is on the ball. Whereas right now, you can give him a cushion. You can give him space. And he's pretty good at, like, you know, finding little gaps and angles and wiggling his way through.

And he's so explosive and just good enough with the floater in particular to kind of keep you honest. But is he ever going to drive a championship-level offense doing that kind of stuff? I think we would need to see a lot more than he's flashed far to say the least. And I don't even think like the foundations of that game are there right now. To me, he's so much more interesting as the wild card component of an unconventional team. And that depends on your appetite to build around a player like that and construct your offense around them and how much you want the ball in his hands versus him cutting and facilitating and,

you know, finding other ways to contribute by just doing the things that no one else on the court can do. I think it's, I think the most likely or possible outcome for him that he can aim for is just sort of a supercharged Iguodala body type. Yeah. I kind of feel like that's the most likely. But even Iguadaala was more of a capable competent shooter. I don't have the numbers. But you have that point guard sensibility, I think, in a crazy body type that could maybe cash.

I mean, I know some of those really big threes that Iguodala hit in those finals. I was kind of like watching it. I don't know, his shot looks like it's like wiggling in the air as it's coming down. I feel like that's probably the optimal version of him, the most successful archetype for an almond Thompson. I would think. And that's one of the most successful winning archetypes, basically, of all time. Like, it's not, you know, it's not, it's not a top 10 pantheon player.

And Amman Thompson has a world of talent that I think anyone who loves basketball would love to see him tap into an explore. But if that results in him just being a consummate winner in the way that Andre Aguadolad turned out to be, that's a great outcome for his career. It's one that's shaped a little differently and that the Rockets would have to plan accordingly to find if he's, not going to be your Steph Curry, who is going to be your Steph Curry, like who is going to be the driver of your offense, if not him? For now, it's Kevin Durant. And going into the future, I think it probably still will be Kevin Durant. There's like a two sides of my brain thing that happens with Katie, where it's like, he's 37. You can't bank on this version of this guy showing up forever. But also he kind of has shown up forever at this point. And so he is in that LeBron

class of like, they're just going to fall off when they fall off. And that might not be when you expect, and they've already defied every expectation and every age curve to this point, I think Katie, at minimum, has another really high-level year in him. And beyond that, everything is kind of gravy. And I guess that's where the rockets find themselves, is whatever Amman Thompson's curve is, whatever Alperin-Shangoon's curve is, Kevin Durant is here to be the world's, like, best and glitziest training wheels possible. If training wheels, that also, you know, the wheels get a little squeaky now and again,

that's just kind of part of the process. Yeah, he was brought in to sort of be the, all right, our clunky possession, I'm the easy button that we can push. I don't know that he was necessarily brought in to be the load-bearing wall for the house. Like, I mean, ideally, these guys were going to make these leaps. I don't know. Hopefully we'll see it. Hopefully we'll see them in make that jump. I don't know that we're going to really see much.

I think Jabari is just kind of been Tupperware for, I think this is who Jabari is for the next however many years. Yeah, which, you know, okay, that's fine. But yeah, at the end of the day, if we're talking about wood versus wooden, I told for the internet that I think you all will enjoy this, I got to share with Rob the wood. We don't know what country of origin it's from, the guy being wrestled down and saying wood. I don't think this is like a shameful wood at all.

I think this is, I would do it again if I were the Rockets. I think it makes sense. There's just kind of all the other pieces. I don't think that it's his fault that those things are kind of working out the way that we thought they might. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I just, I kind of wish the Rockets

had a better sense of who they were and wanted to be post Fred Van Fleet injury. Like that was the vision of the team that they wanted. But once he's out for the season, I wish they would have leaned into the Woodmore. I wish they would have leaned into the Kevin Durant era a little more than they have. But we'll see how they do.

You know, there's still a little bit of regular season left for them. I guess Ime Udoka theoretically could get this team playing a slightly different way, though that's not really his want typically, would do, again, 99 times out of 100. Where it leads them, I guess we'll find out. One that I suspect we both would not do, Kyle. I would like to talk to you about Miles Turner and the Milwaukee Bucks, and specifically the Bucks stretched Damian Lillard to sign Turner to $107 million contract over four years. this was, honestly,

like for as much as we talk about Luca and the kind of like bomb that went off with that particular trade, and it was unprecedented. This is also unprecedented in its way. This is one of the most shocking moves in NBA history because no one has leveraged the stretch in quite this fashion.

Is there any logic to you that would lead you to want the bucks to do this exact thing again, knowing what we know now? I don't really, the Lillard situation, you said it's unprecedented. It's like,

I'm of a few minds about this where I'm like, I don't blame. You want the Bucks to do everything. The worst situation that you can have with when you have a superstar like the Yannis is a team not laying it all on the line. The Bucks have repeatedly. And, you know, maybe their judgment about how they've managed their assets and the way that they've gone about it. You know, the Drew thing, the Dane thing.

It was a big swing. And if you have a superstar like a Yannis, you want a team that is willing to big swings. The stretching him out, though, it's unprecedented because it was just kind of unprecedented bad luck. You know, he got a guy, Dame who's still competitive. Granted, the Dame Janus tandem,

even though the Achilles injury did derail it, it didn't really, it was never really fully rolling. It didn't derail it. It nuked it. Any chance that it had of survival was gone at that point. But let's say the injury doesn't happen. I mean, there were some issues

there. It's like, you know, Dame is leaning pretty heavily towards scoring and ball screen. I think that's what people were kind of envisioning. These two guys playing two men together. Just imagine the utopia, the basketball utopia that's going to spring up around that. Janus, not really, that's not the life that he lives. Janus likes to have the ball in his hand. So those guys together were just kind of like, you know, it wasn't flowing together.

So, but in terms of the move itself, I mean, I guess you kind of look at the stakes there and you just wonder, like, is Miles, the ultimate question, is Miles the thing that comes after a move like that? You know, what, because I think that was a surprising because you hear the, oh my God, like headline, Dame Lillard stressed, and you're like, okay, well, for what? And then you're like, Miles Turner. I don't know, it reminds, it's just kind of,

it's a fairly anticlimactic next space from, from a move like that, right? I mean, what would have been the best answer to you? Well, I think it just was a radical level of risk to take on. for a player who's like best case scenario is like, okay, that was okay, right? That was a pretty good addition, right? The best case, blue-it-sky version of Miles Turner with this team is he is helpful to the Milwaukee Bucks.

But he was never going to be a star for them. And part of the problem with this construction, with waving and stretching dame in the first place, is you now have not just the Turner contract in and of itself, which, as we says, four years, $107 million, a decent amount of money for Miles Turner. but now you are basically paying me the equivalent of a max of like a superstar slot salary

because of how much money you ate to get rid of Dame in the first place. Not a reasonable expectation to put on Miles Turner. No. And here's the thing is like, I'm with you that you want to see, especially if you are a Bucks fan, you want to see the team move heaven and earth,

do everything possible to keep yonis, to make the team as competitive as it can be while he is here willing to sign up to play for the Bucks. you also don't get to pick who is on the market when you are at your most desperate right? Like when that moment comes

this is who's a free agent this is who teams are willing to trade if you look back at the free agent class in particular, it's not like there are a bunch of just like shining examples of exactly the kinds of players the bucks needed.

That said, you do get to choose at what point you stop being desperate. And I don't know that Yon is staying with the bucks. We don't need to like fully relitigate and relitigate and relitigate the Yonah stuff as we have done over and over this season.

But I don't know that it's done a lot of good for anybody involved for him to stick around as long as he has. And so if the options are, maybe accept the fate that is coming and get ahead of it as opposed to overspending on Miles Turner, who has been fine in the way that Miles Turner is traditionally fine,

I think I would still default to the former. As much as I would want to see the Bucks try to keep this thing together as long as it could, I think it was already done. I mean, you can kind of see some of the thinking in terms of they lose Brooke Lopez. The idea of a stretch big who's also a rim protector next to Yonis, that makes sense. You think about Miles. I do want to qualify on that too.

Like Miles this season is hitting as many threes as Brooke did in his most productive bucks seasons. And Yonis, two Miles Turner is like one of his most successful passing combination so far. So it's like it's not like this isn't working to an extent. And when those guys play together, the Bucks have been a really good. team. But Janus has not been around to play together with Miles Turner that much. Yeah, to continue in what you're saying there, I mean, I looked it up Janus and Turner on the floor together in about 590 minutes pushing 600. They're plus 9.2 on the floor together. So that idea in a vacuum of them as a combo. And then, you know, talking about him shooting

threes, too, Miles has shot the ball pretty well. He nearly 40% at a decent volume on pick and pops. and you know and then but the problem is he's not the sort of like pliable piece the issue has been guards throughout the buck's tenure i mean like yonis has been good enough to sort of like paste over those things the fact that you have him he takes up some of the ball handler reps drew was drew was good enough the defensive stuff you know their identity i think it it leveled out the net result was them as a dominant defensive team who could score the ball middleton did a lot of handling there too. But the issue is who else is handling the ball now? You've got Turner, you've got Yonis out there. The most common five-man lineup with Yonis and with Miles is

Ryan Ronald, Ryan Rollins, Kevin Porter Jr. and AJ Green. That's just not good enough. And I think that's at the end of the day, I mean, that's been the ultimate thing is that they got this piece in place, but they just haven't been able to put the, they haven't been able to surround those two with, with the appropriate talent. And that's the tough part of this. And that's the tough part of If the context had been slightly different, if the Bucks had a little more in-house in terms of ball handling already, then I think you could feel better

about the Miles Turner edition. I think the tough part to swallow, if you're a Bucks fan in particular, is like, this is the good phase of this, right? The part where Yannis is on the team and Miles Turner is supporting Janus, like that's the good part. It's also tough to buy in on this idea

of what the Bucks did originally because Miles Turner without Yonis, either for a rebuilding team or like a re-emorting team, or like a reimagined, very middling team is not a very exciting prospect. That's not a particularly useful version of Miles to have around. And so this is going to get worse over time.

The longer this goes on, if and when Janus moves on from Milwaukee, I would feel, and I would honestly be more willing to entertain the idea of like, I would do this again if Janus were more, or not if Janus, if Miles Turner were more like a Desmond Bain kind of piece, right, in the sense that we were talking about.

Like, he could be an important part of the next version of the bucks. I just don't really see that for miles at all. And that's where it becomes the toughest pull of all to swallow is you took all this risk. You paid all this money. You stretched dame. You used your opportunity cost on miles in particular to get to this exact place. And it's going to go downhill from here.

Yeah. I mean, look at it from, I mean, we were talking about it kind of is tough to imagine from all sides. I mean, if you're the Pacers, do you do this again? Because it was a little inexplicable coming off of a finals run where you're were like, well, we can straight up run this back. Odd choice, really, from Miles's standpoint. Was he going to be able to get the same amount of money from Indiana? I guess that's the question.

Is it just a money question? Because the Pacers projected to kind of come back and be what they are this year, that would be kind of my question at the core of it is like, was it just Miles wasn't going to come back regardless? Was it the Pacers weren't willing to pay him? I'm fuzzy on remembering what the motivating force was there. So Miles is getting $25 million this season, and it goes up and up from there. The reporting at the time was that the Pacer's offers didn't even hit 20 a season,

and they were an even shorter deal with this. And Turner eventually ended up getting a player option with the Bucks too, so he has even more control, even more money. And that's like not an insignificant sum of cash that he will total over the four years of this deal. That said, I think with the Pacers, he had a chance to be a part of a really special ongoing team that is already remembered fondly and I think will be remembered fondly with continued playoff success.

As it stands, he's already kind of been upstaged by the fact that they have acquired a better center. And who's to say what's ahead for Indiana? Like, that was a very charmed run that they just went on.

You can't take anything as a guarantee that they're going to get back to the finals. But I think the Aviza Zubat's era is going to go pretty well for them. And that's maybe the hardest part of this in its entirety is I'm with you that like these paychecks

have not always been there for Miles Turner. I don't blame him for jumping up the opportunity. Plus, the chance to play with Yannis, whatever that may look like for however long that is, it's not nothing. At the same time, you were a part of something that's really, really hard to replicate.

And that if you are, Miles, you've been waiting your entire career in Indiana to this point to find, and you finally got it. And yes, maybe the Pacers were short-changing you in negotiations. Also, you didn't exactly cover yourself in glory in the finals. And you had moments in the playoffs that exposed some of your limitations. for what that model of the team would be.

So it's hard to blame anyone who takes the paycheck. I just kind of wish it had turned out differently for basically everybody. Yeah, I mean, the just kumbaya basketball fan of me wishes, we could have seen them just run it back. But honestly, I feel like the Pacers probably offered him a more realistic vision of what his value actually is because you're talking about the end of the season. You know, all those numbers are great. These pick and pop numbers I'm talking about are great.

But if you can't make them in that situation, man, if he makes a few more of those open pick and pop threes that he had against OKC, might be looking at a different timeline here, honestly. And I kind of, and I feel like the fact that the buck's overpaid, I don't blame him for going for the money, but I kind of feel like the Pacers did the appropriate thing. I don't begrudge them for offering. I don't think that they made some hand-wringing mistake,

because I think that's probably closer to what his value is, honestly. It's probably true. I think we would like to believe that we are the version of Miles Turner that would go back to the Pacers, but in our heart of hearts, a lot of us are probably the Miles Turner who signs up to play for the bucks

for $25 to $30 million a year. Who can really blame him for that? One that I'm very curious how we'll land on, though, is I want to revisit the Nuggets Trade of Michael Porter Jr. for Cam Johnson,

and we should say the 232 first round unprotected pick that the Nuggets also gave up in that deal. We've talked a lot about Michael Porter Jr. on this pod

and our appreciation of the season he's having. Has that swayed you, Kyle, in your understanding of this trade and whether the Nuggets should have done this or if given the opportunity, would do it again? I was trying to think back at a time in my life, for a time in my life, when I had, when I had like a product or something that had a ton of features

that were exciting. And I was like, oh, this thing has so many capabilities. But it was a little more expensive. And really within the wheelhouse of the things that I do, music was like the only thing that I could think. It sounds like a Zoom to me, to be honest with you. Did you say that knowing I was a Zoom guy? Were you a Zoom guy?

Oh, yeah. Zoom's great. This is one of history's great blunders, is that I'm a Zoom apologist all day long. The Zoom was fantastic. It had a huge screen. Did you ever hold a Zoom in your hands, Rob? You know, I never did. Maybe that was my problem.

It had a 16 by 9 screen and it had like 720 video. I could put movies on there. It was, the Zoom was fantastic. Why not use one now? Yeah, me and, me and Rocket from Hitcherker's got in the galaxy and the only two Zoom believers out there still. Mine was brown too. Anyway,

I was trying to think, though, about like something, it's basically what Denver did. They were like, okay, we know, because it's, the retrospect of here of this is really difficult because you go and you see MPJ, you know, blossom and he spread his feathers out.

And we see a lot more brilliant colors that were not necessary in Denver. You know, Yokic was just like, no, I need this simple version of this. And it's a lot cheaper too. If you look at, you know, this year and next year, MPJ, he's making $38 million this year, and he's going to make $40 million next year. And then the looming thing is that, you know,

he's going to be an unrestricted free agent. What is that number going to look like? Cam Johnson, we're looking at what MPJ provided for Denver, and we're like, okay, you know, you're coming off of screens, you're a cutter. They're similar in size. Cam is a little older than him. I don't think he's as athletic a finisher as Porter is in space.

He's not as much of a like, I'm not open. I can make a tough shot. I think that's a separator between them. But they probably were banking on like, okay, Cam's a smart player. These were the conversations that we were having around when this happened. We were like, we were probably a little too hard on Porter, I think, in terms of what he was capable of. Because people were like, you know, Cam's, Cam's so clever. He's going to just, he's going to do things that MPJ didn't.

I think we may be over-indexed a little bit on that in terms of like you don't know what you had until it was gone. a thing. Granted, I never had Porter. But I just think... But we got to eat grow on it all the same. People were a little hard on Porter, I think, when he left there. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the default thinking at the time is not just oh, this is a move that saves

all the salary that you're talking about, where Cam Johnson's making like a little more than half of what Porter makes over the next two years. It was thinking about these two guys as players and talking about them as if they were equivalent when they're not. And some of that is, I think you nailed it in the difficulty of the shot making.

and the difference between this is a guy who can nail open threes, and this is a guy who creates open threes out of semi-contested situations in Porter, and everything he's become in addition to that with the Nets. And this is my big variable in thinking about this trade in particular is, is this version of Michael Porter Jr., would it have even been possible with the nuggets with the season that they've had? Because there's been a lot of opportunity for Denver because everyone has gotten hurt. Right.

Aaron Goren's been out for a significant amount of time. Yokic has obviously missed a significant amount of time. Christian Brown has been out of the lineup for long stretches and now is just kind of like working his way back in. Peyton Watson in addition, if Michael Porter Jr. had been there and had been able to soak up that usage on those nights in those lineups where like Jamal Murray was having to do so much as it was,

would we have seen flashes of this guy, do you think? Or is there something about the circumstances of playing a role on a higher stakes team that makes it hard to just like pop out when the moment calls for it? I think his self-belief made it, you know, the imminent threat of him just expanding into the sort of de facto primary option in any given situation. MPJ's confidence is so high. He just, any moment where Yolkich wasn't there to fill that space or Murray wasn't like Porter was going to do it, I think the surprising thing has just been, I think we all kind of expected it to expand too much and just be out of control and consume everything. sort of the way I'm trying to think of like an invasive species

like kudzu is really bad and you guys have kudzu down in Texas tell me about kudzu what's going on with kudzu I feel like any Asian species or African species when we're just soft over here I feel like any species that comes from Asia or Africa have you never noticed this like snakehead fish

I'm not the boddnist you are you know boa constrictors killer kudzu I'm just like I don't know I'm just thinking of things that can't be chak A plant or an animal? It's a plant. Okay. I just want to make total clear

what we are talking about here. What kind of plant is it? It's like a vine. It just covers everything in a way that it's invasive. It gets out of control. This is yet another one where I know people are going to back me up. I believe you. If you get Kudzu grown in your yard or whatever it is, hit us up.

I think there are two states of being, which is you either don't know about Kudzu or your whole life is dominated by Kudu. Like those are really the only ways to exist. And we're all barreling towards the latter one, I think, from what it's pretty scary shit, Rob. But I think we were all afraid that Porter was going to be basketball kudzu. And he was just going to like fill it up in a way where we're just like, what, we can't even, what are we running? MPJ shooting again? He's not, I think we all kind of expected him to occupy the space in a negative way.

And he's been really, really efficient in a way. Granted, you know, that that UFA contract is coming up here. They didn't have a choice, man. They weren't going to be able to pay all that. the people that they needed to pay at the end of the day. So I think it makes sense. You think they could have paid him, like, the amount of money that he's going to want after next season?

I mean, the bottom line is NBA owners and team governors could basically do what they set their wallets to in a lot of cases. And so if the variable is, like, are you willing to pay for it? That's a very different question for the cronkeys. You know, like, that mustache is not going to wax itself. We got all this mustache wax we got to pay for, man. It's expensive. Apparently, it's very important there.

you're right that this is kind of what they were staring down is the version of the nuggets that existed and are you willing to pay the highest dollar for it and are you willing to pay for all the potential and talent that Michael Porter Jr. has that say at Cam Johnson who's a very good player can't quite tap into. Like is that worth getting even deeper into the tax, deeper into the aprons. And the route that they've chosen instead was we're going to pair back. We're not even going to be an apron team this year. Like we're just going to be a normal over the cap team in terms of the way we operate. And we're going to preserve flexibility

for the sake of improving the team in other ways. It's not even really the short term, like, here's Tim Hardaway Jr., here's Jonas Valencian. That's not really what it's about. It seemed like the idea was to make further moves down the line. And the move that it seems like they're going to have to make instead is Peyton Watson is now like so prohibitively good that you cannot let that guy walk out the door.

And all of the flexibility that I think was aspirational in trading Michael Porter Jr., in the first place, to me, has to be used to resign Peyton Watson. That is the no-brainer outcome at this point. And so then you're really looking at this version of Peyton that we've seen on the court this season plus Cam Johnson as kind of a tradeoff for Michael Porter Jr. But even then, those two guys are going to probably be more expensive in concert

than MPJ would have been. That's interesting because while I was thinking back about Porter, I mean, I think we've seen the championship version of Michael Porter Jr. I don't know that his... We literally have seen it. Well, no, I mean, I'm just saying I think that's the only version. I don't think there's another version of him. And you think about, is Cam going to be there long term?

I mean, probably not. But if we're looking at Peyton Watson, I'm with you, he's revealed himself to be, you know, Calvin Booth talked a big game about him sort of replicating what Tim Conley did, popped off. And I think he was right. He ended up being right about that one. So, no, that's, that's, that's. kind of where I am. And you look at like the availability has been interesting. I know we've like fretted a whole lot. Cam's only played 10 fewer games, 400 fewer minutes. And he just came back. So I know the temptation is to feel like with the injuries is to and to look at your ex. Their glow up and how good everything's gone over there. Ultimately, I think the flexibility of Cam and Peyton is going to be a little more tenable than what, you know,

dumping tons of money into the future Michael Porter Jr. And banking on whether or not there's another championship version of him, I think they made the right move. I was curious to think to ask you, though, you said it's 2030 that pick for, do we still think Yokic is out there and, you know, hobbling around, you know, playing an MVP level in 2030? What's that pick going to look like?

So it's actually 2032, to which I say, there's almost no chance that Yok could just hobbling out there, not just in an MVP level, but at an active NBA level, I think I would be shocked if he's still running it out there at that point. Do we think Yokic, if we could convince him to play longer,

do you think Adam Silver would be willing to let him play in a horse drawn cart? Do you think that he would agree to that? Could we figure something out? Like some rubber shoes for the horse? Yeah. You can play another five years, Nikola.

You can play in a cart. I would sign up for that. I think that'd be great. At least to get up and down the court. You know, It's just like on the sideline and he has to run over to it to get back in transition every time. Mush and all of a sudden you're back. Like I think it could work for everybody or at minimum when he's like grandfathered in literally to an All-Star game that he probably doesn't deserve to be in at that point in the way that all of our legends are.

Like let him play in the horse-drawn carriage in the All-Star game. Yeah. It reminds me of donkey basketball. That was like a that was like a, I know I keep, sorry, but I could see Yokish. Kyle, what is donkey basketball? This can't be real. This is a total, Google this one. This was like a 90s fundraiser thing where people would ride donkeys.

I think animal cruelty has probably Pita has rightfully put an end to that. But people would ride donkeys. People probably were hurt and deserved it, I would imagine. Did you find it? I'm finding pictures. Like we are talking literal donkeys in little. It appears they do have little shoes on. Yeah.

On indoor basketball courts. I have derailed us so much. I'm sorry. I mean, have you? Because I think this is what our podcast should be. be about. Why do more people, including me, not know about donkey basketball? I remember it as a fundraiser when I was a kid. And I remember like, you know, the black and white picture in the local paper, the Spencer Magnet, where I grew up. But yeah, and I remember

seeing it and being like, that's the most insane thing I've ever seen in my life. And it just gets more insane as time goes by. But anyway, I would, I would pay extra money to see Yokic ride around in a cart and, you know, fling a skip pass. I wouldn't put it past him. Yeah, at this point, I think we got to skip the card. And he just has to go, horseback on a very small miniature pony. And could work great for everyone in 2032. I hope we're all still here at that point. I think what's most fascinating to me about this overall situation with the trade exchange is

like if we had had this conversation in mid-December, I think the answer might be very different. I think by then I would say maybe they really should have kept Michael Porter, Jr. And it's been the emergence of Peyton Watson that's changed the math. Because otherwise, if they had kept Michael Porter Jr. and given Christian Brown his $125 million extension, then there would have been

like an either-or scenario with one of those guys anyway, I would think if you want to resign Watson. And maybe if you have Michael Porter Jr., Peyton Watson doesn't have this kind of season, ultimately, right? So there's like, there is an opportunity cost with that stuff too where that's part of the trade-off.

So as it is, I think I still rubber stamp that I would do this if I were the nuggets given everything that we know. Would. December Robb, I think would have been on the other side of this thing. Yeah. I'm with you.

Let's hit one more. I think we hit the bigies here. I mean, we have some funny ones here that we were sort of joking about doing the Lakers signing Aiton. I feel like I'm going to go ahead and just say that stay with the theme of regret for the Aton arc. Do you have any quick comments on that one? I think that one I actually would do again just because the non-Aton version of the Lakers is one in which Jackson Hayes is playing way, way too much. And Maxie Kleva wasn't even available for a start of the season. So I think the key is he is disappointed in the way that he always disappoints in every one of his stops.

But sometimes you just sign guys knowing that their job is to like get us through 35 games of the season in one piece before everything just falls to shit. And that's kind of what it's been for DeAndre Aid. Would their situation have been materially better if they just didn't sign him? No. I think, yeah, the options were pretty, considering what it's, took to get him and what he was going to offer. They could have traded for Nick Richards, I guess. That's kind of the alternatives we're talking about.

Yeah, and don't, don't smirch Nick Richards. Do we want to do Poole for McCollum? That was the other one we had written down here. Go ahead. Clear out. ISO. Go, Rob. Well, we simply can't talk about the Derek Queen trade.

That one's been asked and answered too many times off the board as far as these reconsiderations go. This one, though, when the Pelicans traded C.J. McCollum and technically Kelly Olinick for Jordan Poole and C. Sadiq Bay. Another one that's just ripe for reevaluation as the season has gone on because inexplicably, improbably,

probably, Kyle, Sadiq Bay has become the best player involved in this trade. So everything we thought we knew about like, oh, why would you possibly trade C.J. McCollum, who is a better player than Jordan Poole on an expiring contract for Jordan Poole has turned

into, did they just pull off the fleecing of the century by getting Sadiq Bay, who's on one of the most affordable deals in the entire league right now? Dumars Weaver, they just, you know, for all the grief, they know ball, man, they know real hoopers. And they saw Sadiq Bay sitting there who at times look like one of the most miserable people in the league. I mean, he came in as this archetype of, okay, this guy is a six foot eight spot up shooter can knock it down, multipositional, go playing defense. And then he just, I don't know. He went into this valley of misery where he disappeared.

Didn't he for a while there? We were just like, God, is this, we were wrong about this. I guess they just saw, maybe, I mean, well, did Weaver initially draft Bay in Detroit? I believe so. I didn't do that conspiracy board. So maybe that could be a thing. I mean, I'm joking about it, but honestly, that might be what happened. He was like, I know this asset and took a risk on it and ended up being right.

The only thing better than having someone believe in you, the way that Troy Weaver clearly believes in Siddeke Bay is them turning out to be right about you all along and you just thrive and pop together. And this is where this situation. becomes complicated too, though, because for any other team, in any other circumstance, getting Sadiq Bay is an unqualified win, right? Just like, that's a good player that you weren't expecting to have traded, brought in as like an almost an afterthought of this deal, at least in the way that it was considered at the time, on a great contract. But their team is so bad. And Sadiq Bae doesn't change how bad they are. And he's going to be due for a lot more money at the end of next season at the conclusion of that very affordable contract. And so

if the Pelicans were the kind of team that would jump on those opportunities and say trade Sadiq Bay to a contender next year at the deadline, if I believed honestly that they would do that, this was a great turn of events for them. If not, isn't it just continuing their path

into that valley of sadness that you talked about the Sadiq Bay was in except franchise wide they are now in a valley of sadness and will continue to be whether Sadiq Bay is with them or not? The Pelicans, you and I are pretty,

producer Isaiah Blakely, we're talking about this off air. The pelicans are one of the... It doesn't make sense that they would be in such a valley of sadness because it's the biggest disparity between you turn them on. And Isaiah said this, and I agree with him. You turn on the pelicans on a nightly basis, and you look at the individual pieces. It's like it's similar to the magic, but like they seem to have more pieces

that should work together. It should be better. And it doesn't work where, you know, you look and you're like, wow, Trey Murphy. Yeah, like him. Zion at times looks like one of the... the most unstoppable players in the league. You're looking at Derek Queen. You're looking at Jeremiah Fears.

You're looking at the resurgence of Sadiq Bay on and on and on and on. And we were joking about this that like it's the most inexplicable. This should work and it doesn't thing. And it got me got us talking about like movies with good cast. Now granted, I'm not comparing Zion Williams into like a Brad Pitt or whatever it is. Like some of these level actors. But we were we were trying to come up and this is where we want to toss this to the group chat listeners out there.

If you're willing to do this, let us know of casts that on paper were like, okay, this is going to be, this should work. This will be good. And then it just doesn't. And we were kind of rattling off. I mean, the counselor was one in 2013. Cormick McCarthy's story. You know, you got Bradford, Michael Fosbender.

You got Javier Bardem returning. You got Penelope Cruz. All the pieces are there. You could. Did you have one that you were going to throw out like a movie with a cast that should work? Well, the historical one, although it was like a famous. just absolutely cursed production, Bonfire of the Vanities,

with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, the Morgan Freeman. That should be a historical all-time banger, and it's just an absolute mess. The recent one, though, that I thought, like, this movie is not just well-cast, but so for me, and it just, like, is completely flat.

Is this movie, see how they run? Are you familiar with See How They Run, Kyle? I didn't see that one. How recent is that? Who's in it? Just a couple of years back, murder mystery starring a buddy cop

Sam Rockwell, Sersher Ronan. And I'm like, okay, that is as tailored to me and promising as a movie could possibly be. In support, you have Adrian Brody, you have David Ayelow, you have Harris Dickinson, an early Harris Dickinson performance.

And let me tell you, this movie is just preposterously juiceless. I don't understand how it happened, but clearly the Pelicans took some notes. Yeah, man, Sam Rockwell, I like it, preposterously, juiceless. I enjoy that. That's a good one.

Maybe that's the title for this episode. I hope not. I hope not, too. Hit us up. But it's not right for us to compare this Pelicans cast to. I don't know. I don't want to give them too much credit, but it should work and it doesn't. It's tough.

At minimum, it's a lot of players that we kind of like individually that don't really work together and don't really make sense together. And not only have they not clicked in a way that would lead to meaningful basketball, there's just no element of their team that is additive to the other parts of it. And so that's where I look at someone like Sadieke Bay, who is doing great in a very small vacuum for the Pelicans and has been just an amazing go-to score in a way that I never thought we would ever see him be.

And I wonder to what end that would be the case. So do you think, if you are the Wizards, do you regret trading Sadieq Bay in this kind of move? If you are the Pelicans, is there a part of you that, like, did this fully win you over the idea of like, I have to take two years of Jordan Poole, but I get two years of Sadiek Bay?

You must really, really love Sadiq Bay if you're the Pelicans to take the chance with pool. I mean, the fact that they have fears now is complicating the pool. The whole pool thing, sit it to the side. I think that the big regret here has to be with Washington that they just didn't properly value Bay. Of course, granted, how could they have seen, they wouldn't have traded him, I don't think, if they knew they were going to have this version. How could you? This version of Bay helps their personnel that they have in a way.

I don't know. This one just feels like I don't really know who there is to blame on this one. Other than the, Am I wrong? I don't know. This is probably the toughest one we've talked about because it's like, am I moving heaven and earth against Sadiq Bay? I just kind of think you throw your hands up at the end of the day.

If you're the wisdom, like, we missed on that one. And I think if you're the pelicans, like if I were running the pelicans, I would do this trade. If the pelicans are running the pelicans, I'm not sure that I would. And so some of that is because I don't trust them to capitalize

on everything that Sadiq Bay is and could be in the trade market. And frankly, this is a team that's like low-key, quite expensive already. And C.J. McCollum's contract expiring versus Jordan Poole's just sitting there, collecting D&P CDs. That's a pretty meaningful difference for this group. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess that hits it.

I mean, are we ever going to have another chance to talk about retro Rick on this show? Rob. Do you want to talk about retro Rick on this show? I would just think people should kind of get an insight into some. some of the, I send Rob links to this nostalgic channel where this guy basically hunts video games. It's the shout out retro Rick. You think that guy's an NBA fan? This would be like one of the all-time, like random ass.

Yeah. I fully believe that he owns as many people do in that line of work, like a vintage Grant Hill Sprite t-shirt in the same way that you and I would want it. Oh, I want that. I mean, those videos that you're sending me, though, are the like video game equivalent of naming some guys. It's just like, let's find this old Super Nintendo cartridge that for no discernible

reason is now $450 and thus has become my own personal holy grail. 450 would be a walk in the park. I watched the one where he was trying to find that one NES cartridge and he was like it's $50,000 and then he thought

about it. He sincerely thought about it. I was like, I can't go into why it was anyway. You know what? On the rubber stamping, would not. Would not spend $50,000 on a whole video game. I'll put that to it's Julian's college fund. So anyway, no, shout out retro Rick. Shout out to retro Rick.

Shout out to you, Kyle. Shout out to our guy, Justin Barrier, who we hope will be back with us for the next podcast on Monday. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely. Thank you to Victoria Valencia. Thank you to Ben Cruz. Come on back next time

and we will be talking more about the NBA. I think more in the present tense for next week, but we cannot help but live in the past now and again. See you next time.