The Ringer NBA Show - Wemby Out for Season, the Good and Bad of All-Star Weekend, and Is Expansion a Risky Idea for the NBA? | Real Ones

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Logan, Raja, and Howard start off with the news that Victor Wembanyama will be ruled out for the remainder of the season (01:16). Then, Howard goes on a legendary rant about aggregators (09:07), their personal experience at All-Star Weekend (25:11), and their thoughts on the new format as well as the event as a whole (32:39). After, they discuss Luka’s underused role with the Lakers so far (48:59), before getting into whether or not expansion is really the best idea for the NBA (54:37). Hit the mailbag!: [e-mail] The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Logan Murdock, Raja Bell, and Howard Beck Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Production Supervision: Ben Cruz Social: Keith Fujimoto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons letting you know that we are covering the White Lotus on the Prestige TV podcast and the Ringer TV YouTube channel every Sunday night this season with Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson. Also, on Wednesdays, Rob Mahoney and I will be sort of diving deep into theories and listener questions. So you can watch that on the Ringer YouTube channel and also on the Spotify app. Subscribe to the Prestige podcast feed. Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel. And don't forget, you can also watch these podcasts on Spotify. Spotify. White Lotus. Let's go. Spopin. Real ones. Logan Murdoch here.

Roger Bell there. Our back in the motherfucking cut. It's a Friday edition. I know. I know. I know. We had to have the whole gang back together because, hey, we have to recap All-Star. Before we recap All-Star, we're going to talk about Victor Women Yamma. We're going to talk a little expansion. We might talk about some other things that have yet to be determined that me and Howard have talked about a little bit. We don't know if we have enough time to talk about or if it's pertinent.

enough. But first thing, let's talk about Victor Wibbeniama, because on the illustrious punchline stage, we all talked about how the Spurs were shoe in to get into the playing. I think those were Howard Beck's exact words, the exact quote from Howard Beck. There may be exaggeration. There's tape there, Howard. It was something along the lines of that. You were putting a lot of confidence behind the Spurs to make it to the playoffs or make it to the plan. And a lot of it had to do with Victor Womenyama. A few days later, it has announced that he is out for the rest of the season with, I forgot the medical term of this, but it's essentially a blood clot in his shoulder, I believe, right?

That is going to prohibit him from playing the rest of the season. I don't have anything else to say other than this sucks, Howard. This really sucks. Yeah, deep vein thrombosis is their fancy-ass term, DVT. The scary part of this when I first saw it was just that Chris Bosch had a version of this that ended his career. Everything, all the reporting so far is like, this is not that. The prognosis is good. But you've got to be on blood thinners for a few months when you've got a blood clot.

And when you're on blood thinners, it's not a great idea to be in a contact sport. That can cause some other dangers. So that's the reason it's the rest of the season, essentially. Like the time span you need to be on blood thinners to get rid of the clot basically wipes out the rest of the regular season. But all the reporting is that he's going to be fine. So that's good. At least we know that Victor Wenbanyama who's going to be should be a generational superstar. He already so far has looked like one in his year and a half in the league.

He's going to be fine. The spurs will be fine. But yeah, near term, this sucks. I mean, yes, on the punchline stage in San Francisco last Saturday, I did. did possibly say that the spurs were going, were, did I say a lock, a shoe, and I don't know what I said. I thought they'd make the play in. And I think this pretty much wipes out any possibility. That's of immediate benefit, by the way, to the sons who are right ahead of the spurs, both of them chasing the playing. That's a benefit to Kings and the Mavericks, two teams that I thought were in danger of falling out of the play in.

I thought about a few other strands here. One is that, is this, is this the last tutorship? he'll get from Chris Paul because is Chris Paul even going to play another season? I don't I don't know. Maybe this is the end of the Chris Paul mentorship of a Wemagnama. The Deer and Fox partnership, which just began like two weeks ago, is kind of short-circuited early. They got years to figure that out, but there's that. And the other thing is that his season ends with 46 games played.

So Wembe Niyama will not be defensive player of the year. He will not be all NBA. He will not be all defensive team. These are all minor things. but it's all relevant and mostly this just kind of sucks for not just the Spurs but for the league

and for anybody who's an NBA fan Wembe is awesome and I can't wait to see him back also another thing where I get to Rajah like potentially any chance that he would have not to play under Popovic this season right or been beyond we don't know what's going on

with Pop right now I know that's the that's kind of the elephant in the room in San Antonio and in the league at large you ask people around the league and it's like pop's coming back maybe he's not i don't know right it's just this this this shadow that's casted over that organization it's a lot of questions san antonio raja what are your oh and another thing um we said all those things about the sons the sons lost in san antonio last night 120 to 109 um so yeah it's not looking great for your

sons roger but back to women yama what what what are your thoughts on the injury and the sadness comes with it. Yeah, well, it was our unnecessary dig at the suns. Let's just get that out. Like, those just don't. No, right. It's not your sons. You know anything to do with it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, whenever there's, whenever there's health-related issues, like the first thought goes to just the human being, not the basketball player. Like, you, you know, you want him to be okay. You want his help to get taken care of in a way that, that there's no guessing games being being played there as to whether or not he should come back. Like, we want everything to be good. And so that's always where I'm going to go.

Initially, obviously, you know, for the player, for the league, for the, for the, for the, for the franchise, like, that's a huge hit. And I immediately go to like, you know, after all of that, like how many, you know, I was disappointed to see them win last night. Like, I think they're like seven teams that would would have a better chance. Like, how many ping pong balls can we get? Like, correct me if I'm wrong. But like, the last time the Spurs ran into two generational type of talents was when when like David Robinson went down for a while and they got, they fucked up and found a way to get like Tim. Duncan. That's where like my immediate mind went. Like, all right, he's out. Um, what I got? Like, 23 wins right now. So I started like looking around in the bottom of that east is pretty

bad. But like that's where my mind went. Like what could there be a silver lining to that if he comes back and everything is for the rest of the season? That's why. I mean, that's where my mind went. I'm not, I'm not, you know, I know San Antonio isn't necessarily the type of team. They came out last night and beat, beat the suns. And so that's not where their minds at. But you ask what my thoughts were on that. That's kind of where I went. Yeah. They're 10th. They're 10th in the lottery rankings

right now. So if they do you know, if they if they really struggle without Wemby for the next couple of months, which seems likely, I don't know. Yeah, they could end up there's so many bad teams right now. There's so many. And they're going to get worse.

Like this is the time when bad teams just say fuck it. You know? Yeah. Well, the West too. What am I saying? The East, the West. Yeah, they're, yeah, there's 13-year teams out there. Yeah, I mean, but listen, the Spurs have a chance to be somewhere in the top for the lottery rankings. The top maybe seven or eight, I don't think they're breaking the top six. They don't have a tough rating schedule for the rest of the way.

But teams also leap up. Teams leap up from eight or nine to the top three. It happens. And that's what the lottery is about. So the lottery ads are flatter these days, so it's possible. Yeah. Wow. Roger already, you know, I didn't know tank it was in your bloodstream, brother.

I didn't know that you. No, no, I'm not advocating for the tank. I'm just saying, like you, you know, when, look, I mean, when we're looking to make. The guy who said, anytime I'm on a basketball court, you need to win. Lemonades, lemonade out of lemons here, dude. Like, that's a real thing. You got 23 wins. Like, you're in a, you know, that's where my mind went.

I don't know what the draft looks like. I know some of the names that were at the top. Like, I don't, I don't, I'm not like a draft expert, but that's where my mind went, right? his mind went towards seeing Cooper flag and Victor Wimonyama together Wow Yeah

It sucks man I don't have any There's no more An analysis that you can give It's horrible And so also for the fan Me and Howard Watch

Victor Wimaniama Just go balls to the wall And All Star And just The only one's trying out there We'll talk about that in a minute But it just sucks Because it was really fun to watch

And play bro, the lob from Yolkits to Wembe, Raja, I really wish you could have got a credential so you could see that. Well, you wouldn't have been there anyway. You went back home on Sunday, but... Roger was long gone. Roger was long gone. Let's recap this show.

Okay? Let's recap this show, man. I had such a blast. I'm still on a high from me. You can check the video version of the pod on YouTube. I put the link in on my ex and my Instagram.

And, you know, it was just really fun. And, you know, it's really fun, the funnest thing, the funniest thing, Maraja? No. Our guy, Howard Beck, despite his best efforts, and I say that in quotation marks, best efforts, not to get aggregated. Became a storyline onto himself this week. Yeah. You didn't put that out there. You didn't put that out there, Howard?

I thought you came home, like, had a change her heart, and I thought you put that out there. Had a nice cup of Joe. This was like, you know what, fuck it. sitting around by the fire. Like, you know what? Looking over Brooklyn, Greater Manhattan. Just said, you know what?

Fuck it. I'll just quote myself from our text chain. Mother fucking aggregators. Good Lord. I will say this to our friends at Legion Hoops, whatever the hell of Legion Hoops is. At least they had the decency to, the full quote. I will give them that. They transcribed it. As far as I can tell, they transcribed it

accurately. I don't listen to myself back on the pod. So I'm not going to say word for word, but it looks like word for word. They actually did. They have the whole quote, which in which I use the phrase, speaking of another GM from another team, that somebody out of the blue, those were my exact word, somebody out of the blue said keep an eye on jaw this summer. And I said, I'm just saying it's one of those things I'm keeping an eye on if they were to flame out early. So there's all kinds of conditional language here, out of the blue, if they were to flame out early. I'm keeping an eye on. And again, Legion Hoops, to their credit, despite being a trash-ass aggregator, at least got the full quote in the tweet. So this is partially a Legion Hoops and an aggregator issue,

but this is, in this case, mostly a really dumb people on social media issue. Because what happens is that quote, that tweet, and listen, they make it dramatic. Legion Hoops puts, report in all caps, report. NBA executive believes Grizzlies could potentially look to move, John Moritz this summer per Howard Beck. And so they make it sound more dramatic and breaking newsish than it really is. But then people run wild. So if you're one of the people who ran wild with this on Twitter, this is on you. This is on your dumbasses for taking a quote with a ton of conditional language that's just saying, hey, a GM just said keep an eye on this. And you're now turning it into John Morant's going to be on the trade block or John Morant wants out or the Grizzies are looking to trade them. None of which I said, none of which I implied. I just said, I'm keeping an eye on it

because another GM said keep an eye on it. A very benign statement, which in the context of our podcast, and this was what we putted for an hour and a half on that stage last Saturday, this was in like probably minute 73 or something of a long pod. Aside for it. Aside for it. of a couple of ooze maybe in the crowd. Like, this was not considered any big deal when I said it or by the audience. And by the way, really important thing to note in this media environment we're in, if not for aggregation accounts that put this out there and dramatize it, nobody even notices this, right?

Like, we have great listeners. We have a ton of listeners. But nobody else was going to like, oh, my gosh, did you hear this thing that Howard Beck said about John Morant on the real ones pod? No, that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen without. a dumbass aggregation account trying to dramatize it for their own purposes to get clicks and followers on a media platform, a social media platform that I myself, by the way, do not use any longer.

So I'm still on it. I still can see all of the responses and all the reaction and all the hysteria. But I'm not participating in it. Didn't want it. And like this is just such a sad statement about this. state of our media ecosystem and also the lack of sophistication and intelligence by a lot of social media users. And yeah, I'm insulting every single one of you who ran wild with this. Phenomenal rant. Sorry, not sorry.

Phenomenal rant. Phenomenal rant. Not sorry. I didn't even know what was that. Was that big of the thing? I didn't even know that. I will say this real quick. I am sorry and I even said it quickly in the midst of our pod last Saturday right after I threw this out there, I said, sorry, Zach Climman. Zach Climman being the general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies. Zach Climman, who, by the way, one of the best team execs in the NBA, they've done an incredible job in Memphis. And I've known Zach a long time, long before he was ever a GM.

I do feel bad for Zach because this reached such a frenzy that somebody in Memphis media felt the need to actually ask Zach Climman about it. I'm not criticizing the reporter for doing so. I get it. I've been a beat writer in a town. in a city on a team, 16 years of having any number of things come out that you then have to go to the GM

or the team and ask them about. I don't think Zach needed to respond to this personally. I don't think we needed a quote out there that says he's not trading him. I think it extended the story by an extra day or two and made it seem even more dramatic than it was and it shouldn't have been in the first place. But yeah, I am sorry, Zach,

that you felt the need to have to respond to this at all because the thing I actually said, said was not worth anybody having this reaction to either on social media or at the team level. But it's the world we're in, folks. Goodness gracious. Listen, that's exhausting. I had no idea. I had no idea that was even going on, man.

That's why nobody should be on that platform. Oh, my God. I would just say, though, that sitting at dinner by myself in San Francisco, thanks for leaving me guys to go to Saturday. night, I'll start. While I sat there, I did call my wife and say, do you know what Howard just said on our pod? You did not. No, I just. Asshole. Oh, my God. No, I didn't even know. Yeah, I didn't even know. I thought you were really clear and really delicate about how you, how you said that and very clear about the context in which you said that. I had no idea that it turned into the thing that you're saying it turned

into that's crazy. Lolo has a question. And I don't even want to, I'm gonna call, I'm a polarizing play devil's advocate really quickly. And it's not even something that I necessarily believe, but I just feel like this question should be asked. And the words of somewhat on the wire that I forgot, the old days is the old days, right?

It's no longer like how we, when we were, when you were coming up, Howard and like in the beginning stages of what I was coming up, right? Like aggregation is here. It is here. And I look up just a player just to look up their stats, and I see 17 different rumors every time when I look up the news of such player, right? It is here.

It's not going anywhere, whether it's an aggregation site, like the one that you mentioned, or it is the blog that takes this quote and writes a whole diatribe about the quote that you said, or just, you know, any number of things that aggregate something that we say on our platform. How do we find some responsibility in that, right? Because it's not leaving. It's not changing. It's not going to go anywhere.

I think the character you were paraphrasing was Cuddy, and I think it's when he says the game done changed. Whoa. Whoa. Oh, shit. The best part of my day. Wow. Wow.

The tanning of Howard Beck is involved. full effect. Oh, my God. Oh, shit. I'm not even touching that. You don't like aggregation, Howard? You don't touch that too? Go ahead.

Another thing, and this is another thing I would say about aggregation, Howard. When I was growing up in this business, I fucking prayed that anything that I wrote got aggregated. Why? Because I wanted to get my, my, uh, I wanted to get my name. out there. I wanted to make sure that like people saw me and I'm not going to say like it was 100% evil and even part of me and this one thought like damn somebody's listening to our pot and we're going to get a few more downloads on this thing. Right? I'm not going to lie. So I like I do feel you because like I've been my citizen misquoted and so when I have like a big

story or a big quote or something a lot of those people especially with the new um character limit will purposely omit my name from the tweet which is annoying right so on some level like

I was like damn ruins is popping right now you know like we're out here doing it we're out here being a news cycle right it's never like that's how I feel felt but on the other hand it is irresponsible so I do feel like there is a medium

that we need to get to where everybody's happy because I guess is what I'm saying. Listen, if I thought there were any like, you know, like, if I thought there were any benefit to the podcast, at least that would be some sort of silver lining, right? But I don't think there is. I don't think even having my name.

First of all, it didn't say that I said this on the podcast. It just attributed it to me, period. The podcast was not mentioned. So I don't think it's helping our listenership. And even if it were, I would feel dirty about that because I don't, that's not the way I want our podcast or any of my work to be recognized. Not for stuff like that. Dude, I wrote like nearly 4,000 words about expansion.

We may get to it later in the pod. I wrote a huge piece about like, is expansion even a good idea? Will there be talent dilution? I talked to a gazillion people. I spent weeks on this. I busted my ass all All Star Weekend to finish this story up, whatever. I would rather people talk about the 4,000 word well-researched, and I think well-written, put together story that I did that I'm proud of,

than about some stupid throwaway line in the middle of a 90-minute live show before which we had two tequila shots. Like, there's fantastic tequila shots, by the way. Shout out to the punch line. Shout out to the punchline. Like, there's the stuff we do that matters and then there's the stuff that is just discussion, right? I'm not saying the podcast doesn't matter. But like, there are levels to how I value the things I do and how I want it recognized.

Now, also, by the way, if I had an actual scoop, this was not a quote unquote scoop. This was not cap all caps report. if I had somebody telling me, do not aggregate this. This is a hypothetical people. A hypothetical is when we talk about something that may or may not happen, and we're just using as an example, do not aggregate. If I had talked to a bunch of people who said,

absolutely, positively, player X is getting traded this summer. And I reported that, and it got aggregated. And we got a bunch of attention for it. Cool. Great. I did a bunch of reporting that mattered, that was substantive. that's not the same as me saying, hey, guys, after Luca got traded, I talked to a bunch of GMs, and I asked like, who's next? Who else are you keeping an eye on stars that might move? Because that's the name of the NBA in this era,

is who's getting moved next? Who are front offices scheming for? Who do they have an eye on? Who are they saving all their trade assets for? Those are questions we ask. And somebody out of the blue, as I said, mentioned Jha, and I mentioned it. That's not the same as a report. That's not the same as saying, you know, multiple sources say this thing is going to happen. It's just, it's scuttlebutt. And the inability of people to separate the scuttle butt from a quote unquote report or from, you know, potential actual news is the real problem here. But Logan, like, you make a good point. This is the ecosystem we're in. And I and everybody else have to be mindful of it. That is why we say things like don't aggregate this sometimes sometimes tongue and cheek sometimes very seriously does it

mean that i should not put scuttle butt out there that i shouldn't mention something in the 72nd minute of a 90 minute podcast because that something that i i pass along to our listeners simply as hey here's something i heard this is interesting do i have to now worry about that that going viral and and making the grizzlies uncomfortable and making that climate i have to respond to it like yeah that part of it sucks but it also sucks to have to think that we should not be able to discuss things openly on the pod for fear of it being distorted or exaggerated and turned into something else. Like that part sucks. But yeah, I will think twice about saying that next time.

But our listeners want to hear the intel as we hear it, even if something doesn't come to pass. By the way, in the past, I've mentioned like, Teams have their eye on Janus. We've had multiple cycles of this. We're in another one of those cycles, by the way. I think I even mentioned Janus last weekend, and they didn't. They didn't say that one. People don't care about the Janus rumors because it's like it's the same one every.

Exactly. The John name was new. But the Janus thing is almost, you know, every couple of years we're in a new Janus, keep an eye on cycle. I said it about Jimmy Butler last year. It took a while. That happened. I've said it about Donovan Mitchell a couple years ago.

Eventually that happened. I'm not saying like I'm a fucking genius. I'm saying like when we talk to GMs around the league and assistant GMs and others, they sometimes will say, you know, hey, this is what we're hearing or this is what we're keeping in our eye on. And part of our job is to then convey that to our listeners. Also, like the new cycle is fluid too. Yeah. The new cycle is very fluid.

Like there's been, I'm not even going to say the player's name because, you know, like I'm learning from Howard mistake. I was funny. I heard a player was like getting traded maybe a year and a half ago, right? And like this summer, they're getting traded. It didn't happen to this deadline. Because why? If a team has, I'm just saying an hypothetical, a team has urges to trade a player, maybe the deal wasn't there, you know, right?

Like maybe the, it just, the timing didn't work out. And that's just one example of how fluid things can go, right, from one time to another. But, oh, before we get to like our actual All-Star things, because I want to see what Roger did. Can I put one quick finishing note on the John rant thing? Yes, please. Because you mentioned the platform on which it was viral. You know where it was not viral? It was not viral on Blue Sky. There wasn't a single mention of this John Morant non-story. Cut the check for Howard, please. Just give him a percentage. I would take a T-shirt. Is there a

blue sky t-shirt? They got this pretty blue butterfly as kind of like their logo. I would love by that. No, seriously, though, because there are no aggregation accounts on Blue Sky. There's a lot less nonsense on Blue Sky. This did not become a story. on blue sky. It was only a story on the platform formerly known as Twitter because of the aggregation accounts and because of how much nonsense and bad faith actors there are there. Just noting. Just noting. It's not a plug. It's a lifestyle. True. Howard, did you get any like, did anybody call you? Like, what the fuck? Did you get any block numbers calling you? About that? Yeah. No, not a single call. Not a single text.

Ooh. Wow. Take with that what you will, listeners. No, no. Roja. What up? The Piper of San Francisco. We didn't even see. We saw you and then we didn't. I wish you got a credential so we could all hang and watch the boring ass duck contest and three-point shootout together.

Maybe we could have caught up. But we didn't. You just disappeared. You walked into the, me and Howard got an Uber and then you walked into the distance never to be seeing again. What the hell did you do in San Francisco? What was your experience like coming on the West Coast? I would have enjoyed you all's company probably. I would not have liked being in the building for that.

For any of those events, I don't, that's just not my cup of tea. Where did I go? I walked with your mom for a minute. Like, we shared a stroll until we parted ways. And then there was like a parade. Was it the Chinese New Year? New Year? The Lunar New Year?

Yeah. And so I was in what looked like Chinatown at that point, right? Am I crazy? No, I think that's around. That was right there. That was right there. Yeah. I think I was there.

And that was pretty cool. Like everybody was out. You know, they were, they were parades coming through there. It was popping. It was popping. So I decided because of that, like the Uber, it was like, I don't know, a 20-minute walk and like a 25-minute Uber ride, right? Which I got fucked up in that. We got fucked up with that decision-making.

I'm like, I'm going to walk. But what I didn't factor in was how the whole walk was uphill. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you that, Roger. I told you that it's not all walks are created equal. Well, yeah, but like from where we were standing, like at the bottom, it looked like really like a slight, you know, it was so slight that I couldn't tell. But then I made that left and I'm like, oh, shit.

And so, like, it was a pretty, pretty beefy walk. I had to walk back to the hotel. But I had found a lot of cool sites to see and stuff like that. And then, yeah, I mean, I didn't get to see much of San Fran, dog. Like, that's why I don't like those weekends because there's so much shit going on. You don't, like. Did you hit a restaurant? Do you want to plug a restaurant that you went to?

That was good. No, not particularly. It wasn't very good. Oh, okay. Sorry. I tried. I just want to say, I was trying to be a good friend to, like, show him a place. And he was like, you know what?

I just fucking walk. I just fucking walk. Yeah, it was, well, because, look, because of the congestion, again, I would have usually, like, looked up somewhere that I really wanted to try that was in a city, but, like, you couldn't get to anything. So, so then I was like, I'll just go to something close to the hotel. I was kind of fried anyway. And, uh, yeah, it just.

did it. That didn't work out great. I just want to say your uncle is the coolest man of all time that I've ever seen. He had like some snakeskin boots on like a Gucci belt. It's like a Gucci jet. He just like goochied out, but like, very classy. That's my Uncle Dave, man. Uncle Dave is a real one for real. He can't fly.

They don't make him like him no more. Well, they wanted to take me to dinner, but they were going back. They were going to dinner like back across the bridge. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going off. I'm not going back that way. I'm too close to the hotel. I can't go back that way. We and Howard got,

we made the mistake that you were going to make. We took the, we took an Uber, tried to take an Uber to chase from, from the punch line. When a mutie was right there. And I, and I said like,

hey, let's just go take a mutiny. Well, that was the plan. That's what you told you. That's what you guys told me. And we lied to ourselves. We're like,

you know, we're going to fucking Uber, fuck it. Or he's going to Uber. Changed it up at the last minute. Well, the problem is that Uber lies, right? Yeah. All the like car sharing apps fucking lie.

It's like, your ride is two minutes away and it'll take you 15 minutes to get there. And it was like, no, our car was like 15 minutes away and the ride took an hour. And we should have known. I think the only thing it cost us, Logan, I think the only thing we really missed was Chris Paul trying to cheat at the skills competition. Because by the time we got there, not that I would have watched anyway, because that's always been. the worst of the Saturday night events and the one that's easiest to skip but it was until later like a buddy

mine who had been around some NBA people he's like hey man I was just around a bunch of NBA people they're really pissed about what Chris Paul did I go what what Chris Paul do it's like he tried to game the fucking skills competition like oh you gotta be kidding me that's kind of on brand though for yeah I was on Taylor and I was like this is

if anybody was going to do it be Chris to try to you know you know what did throw me a little bit though sorry to interrupt you it's been a while since I've lived on that coast is just, you know, I'm looking at time trying to figure out when I need to get back to the room to kind of catch the three-point shootout in the done competition

and not factoring in at all that I'm not looking at like 8 o'clock Eastern. So do you know what I mean? I was like five. I have it right there. So I missed all that too. I walked in right as a three-point like competition started and I'm like, oh shit, it's already on.

You know what you did, Miss, Roger? Shout on to Auntie on the corner over there on 3rd Street, a few blocks away from Chase, that was selling Hennessy and John Julio shots. Yeah, I mean,

because I was already two sheets to the win. You were, and then he had a, bro, Roger was out of your dog. Roger was having so much fun during the show. He got, he regurgently, and I say this with quotes,

air quotes, begrudgingly took two shots of tequila, and then was like, before we went to go hang out with the fans, Let me get a beer. We get a fucking beer. So, Riza was cool with all the homies.

Razzett was cool with all the homies that came to the show. Here's the back. Remember I was on the pot on? Was it two weeks ago? And I couldn't stop coughing. Like, I had, like, the flu and all that. So, like, I rolled that right into, like, I'm going to stop drinking for a little while.

Like, I'm just going to stop my, like, nightly wine or whatever I have. And so I was, like, two and a half weeks pretty dry. and then then obviously I roll up on you two and I rebuffed the first attempt at getting the shot but the peer pressure was so much that And also seeing Howard nervous in the corner Yeah, I relented and once I had the two I was like fucking Frank the tank in old school

Like once it touches your lips it's so good And we were just rolling We're ready to go all the homies loved you All the homies are not from the Korea loved you Roger It was good times That was an incredible day Can we just say that was an incredible day? Can we just say that was an incredible day.

Everybody who came out, thank you again. It was just so cool having our listeners right there in front of us. I've been describing it this way, right? Like, Logan and I have written a gazillion stories. We've all three of us have all done all these podcasts. We've all done all this stuff. And you do it kind of in a vacuum. Here we are sitting looking at each other over Riverside on a computer screen.

It's being recorded. Our buddy Eddie Ocampo is getting it all done. He'll send it out there into the world. And then, and that's it. this is not a transactional relationship you have with your listeners. Occasionally they hit you on social media or email or whatever. But having an audience there with immediate feedback and then us finishing and doing a meet and greet outside and so many people coming up sticking around for like 45 minutes an hour

afterward, take photos with us, ask for autographs. I've never signed so many autographs in my life. I didn't even know that I could. Howard was very good at signing autographs. I didn't even know that that was an autograph. Dude, I don't even remember. how to sign my signature. We don't do sign checks anymore, right? Like, um, but that was awesome. Like it's, I mean, clearly huge ego boost. Thank you folks for that. I, my self-esteem needs it.

But it's just, it's just really gratifying that people care that much about what we do, that they pay good money to come out on a Saturday and hang out with us, that they want to stand in line and meet us afterward. Like that, that's just, it's incredibly cool and incredibly gratifying. So thank you again to everybody who came out. Before we get to the next segment, grades on All-Star. I want to start. We had the, me and Howard had the lovely honor to sit next to Michael Pena during the festivities on Sunday. And I got a preview of just every podcast that Michael Pena and Howard Beck have ever done. They do that shit in real life.

They argue in real life. Logan sitting between us. Peter and I go ahead. Like, we don't agree on basically like any, like, if the sky is blew up. I don't care. I really don't give a fuck. I know, but we're having to argue across you. Logan was pretty amused.

But, like, dude, if the sky's blue and I go, yeah, really nice day, Pino, be like shaking his head, what are you talking about? This guy's not a nice day? What are you talking? I don't even know. Are we even watching the same sky? Yeah. Yeah, Logan got it live.

I got that live. But the funny part was, I don't know, because I didn't read the story yet, but I saw that the winner in his, at his, uh, and Michael Paine is, winner loser column on the ringer as you guys should all read them. I'll read after this. Basically, he had winner new All-Star Weekend format. And then by the end, you could see him just

mullinged his decision and just and Howard defending his decision his decision to defend the new All-Star format because God damn, that was a long time. Roger, I'm really glad you, if you watched it at all, had to watch that from the Korea, bro.

It was just drawn out. The game itself was cool. Like, it was fine. But the nostalgia, I mean, I'm gonna just say it, bro. Like, that shit was weak compared to, like, just even a game. I wouldn't have been cool to just watch an actual game.

Then the three times. And you had Kevin Hart in there saying lame-ass jokes. And I don't want him to hear this because we'll get aggregated. He'll roast shit out of me. You're, hey, welcome back to aggregation on me. I know, I know. But like, it got to the point where even Shay was like, please just let us play basketball. Because you could hear his jokes in the stands and they were stopping the game so he could get jokes off.

And then they had the Turner like marathon of a tribute, which I am okay with because I love Turner. I mean, I have been an employee of Turner. Howard has been an employee of Turner. Like, we're all for the Turner stuff. But like in the middle of a random time out, they went for like, a 30 minute stretch of just we're going to pat ourselves on the back. And then also, from the outside, it took so long to get anywhere in the city during that time. I was so happy to see you motherfucker just up out of the bay, bro.

I'm not going to lie to you. I was really happy to see, like, just the influx of people go home because it was just, it was really hard to maneuver in the city. I don't know if it's, if San Francisco in this format is made for All-Star. I'm just going to say that. And it was really tough to get around. No city is made for that. Every city I've been to, and I actually applauded San Fran a little bit because my experience

coming in there, being able to get the Uber and the rides that were coming into San Fran and going back to the airport were very, they were unusually uncongested for an All-Star weekend. But like once you got down in it, once you get in the heart of the city, like no city is really made made for that like that's the biggest turnoff for me about all-star weekend is logistically if you're not staying in the hotel that's like adjacent to where you need to be like how long is it taking to get to anything and that's a I mean for some people that's not a thing for me it's a thing I would watching the all-star I sent out I tweeted um one of my rare tweets that doesn't include

like retweeting one of my kids stuff is uh I said something about the the all the all-star game itself. I actually, when they let them play, when it was when they were hooping, I saw a much, much different product in terms of competition across the board. Now, I know, I know that Wemby might have been like the leader, because Wemby was out there like, like he was dog tired after that game because nobody else was trying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he also found out he had blood clots afterward, but he said that it actually had like, that's part of the reporting is that he'd been feeling some fatigue. So that'll tell you something too. Yeah, that's, that's wild. But like, he was hooping, but everyone, like there were efforts being made that you don't ever, you don't see them.

I mean, you rarely see them in All-Star games. So I thought that they had actually kind of, they were a little bit on to something in terms of, of the format. Now, what I couldn't tell was whether or not, like these were just guys saying, hey, we're choosing to play harder in this or if it was the actual format that kind of was the, you know, the reason that they felt the need to do that. but I think anyone watching that would say, hey, guys were competing in a way that you don't normally see.

Having said that, the production that was the whole weekend and all of the shit around all the competitions and all of the dead time watching it was brutal. And it was like, it was brutal. And like everybody they put on the mic, look, I couldn't tell if people in the arena were cheering and stuff like that because if they are,

I think you need to include that. in the broadcast because it just came off like dry and stale and it was just that shit was hard to watch. Howard, didn't you say that like, because it's only like my real first real All-Star experience. I went to Salt Lake, but I went all-Math or Sunday morning.

But like there wasn't that much energy and chase all weekend at all. No. And it wasn't sold out. Like there were still a lot of empty seats for the All-Star game itself and for the Saturday festivities. No, dude, Saturday night. Remember, there was the first thing I said to you. We settled in our seats in time for like three-point competition and dunk contest. And I kept looking around thinking like it's going to fill up at some point.

And it's hard to remember year to year. So stipulate that. But that looked like in my memory, I couldn't remember a time when there were that many empty seats at All-Star weekend. And that was specifically Saturday night. Sunday filled in a little bit better than Saturday. But Saturday, there was a ton of empty seats. and no life in that arena. Now, when Mack McClung jumped over a car,

and anytime Mac McLung did anything, there was some energy. There was certainly some energy. I hate to say it. I hate to say it because please eject Mr. Beast into the sun. But when the Mr. Beast thing happened, and the guy made the three finally, by the way, Dame was absolutely like missing those shots for purpose.

Can we just acknowledge that? But when the guy finally hit the shot to win $100,000, yeah, the crowd went nuts for that. But the energy in the building over, all over the weekend. I didn't think was that great. That's not an indictment of San Francisco or the Bay Area crowd. That is every All-Star weekend, every All-Star weekend, the arena is kind of dead compared to normal games, partially because it's just All-Star weekend and partially because

it's a lot of like just corporate people. It's not, you know, the hardcore NBA fans. So like you can't expect a ton of energy. But I'm glad Rajah said it because I feel like I'm on an island here. The tournament Sunday, the format worked to an extent. Was it torpedoed by? too much Kevin Hart and Mr. Beast and a prolonged TNT tribute that could have been done between games or before the game instead of during a game? Like, so much of the production, you know, apologies to my friends and Tarter, but like so much of the production of the weekend was working against the events themselves and just, just robbing it of all of the momentum and the energy.

And that part sucks. And I think a lot of the complaints I heard from people after the weekend had at least as much or more to do with like the timing and production and other stuff than about the events themselves. And the thing is like the first two games in the tournament, the championship game got bogged down because of that long TNT tribute. But the first two games, like there was definitely more energy. There were guys were definitely trying harder. And I think having a target score works. I think not having a 48 minute slog prolonged over three hours actually can work. And if they just got a lot of the fluff out of there, it could go full. faster too. And like take what you take what you saw on Sunday and just streamline it a little bit.

And you'd have something. I think. And then also, my bad. My bad. Those games, the way, I don't know how you do it because I know there's so much of a slot that you have to fill in terms of time on a broadcast and people have paid for it and they're advertising. I get it. Right. So I don't have the answer. Like I'm, that's not my field of expertise. But as far as the product, the games, that should have been run to some degree like a like a pickup scenario where you know you're hooping and then the next two teams are coming on we're doing like 10 minute warm up my dude next two teams are coming on and then we're playing and then if you want to do something in between like the the the two like you know semi-final games if you will or the first round of games and you want to you want to sandwich like

i don't know 45 minutes in there do that i don't care then let them come back out and warm up for 15 minutes and then just let them rock for the final game. But like, you don't need that much time in between games. Even if you wanted to run it, if guys are playing to 40, if you wanted to run the two games and then go right into the third game, like dudes would be, dudes would be fine for that. That's easy money with 15 minutes. Also, there was no buy-in from, you know, LeBron James, the biggest star, which, oh, that sucked. That sucked. That was a gut-rich. That press conference was so gut-wrenching, man. Like, just on a lot of levels

for him to just casually say, yeah, I'm not playing right now. I'm not going to play this game. And then you have Anthony Edwards. Where the hell did he go? We're asking about what happened when Amos and Thompson, how he appeared. How did Anthony Edwards disappear?

Right? You have your biggest star, and then you have your biggest up-and-coming guy. One of the guys on record who was saying, I am going to play hard in this format. And then he just disappears. He gets his flowers. He gets announced,

and then we don't even see him. That also was bogged down a lot of things because also people were really excited to see both of those guys play. Also, we missed an opportunity to see LeBron, Steph, and KD play on the same team, which robbed the fans of this thing. And then you see LeBron play a back-to-back right after win. Yeah, that's tough. That's the tough look. Like, come on, man. So I'm saying you care about the fans and then you do some shit like that.

By the way, listen, he's 40 years old. He's got a bazillion miles on. He's played more than anybody in the history of the game. So I get it if you want to preserve yourself for the back-to-back that your team has come coming. And a back-to-back, by the way, that was only necessary because the LA Wildfires had canceled that game or postpone that game with the Hornets. So they had to plug it in on Wednesday night. Normally, there are no games on Wednesday night after All-Star weekend. I would say that's fine with all that, but LeBron could have still made like a cameo at least.

Put your jersey on. Don't be in street clothes. Kobe broke his fucking his finger in, oh, eight, I think it was. and he did one possession, suited up, did all the things, did one possession, threw a pass with his left hand and was like, okay, I'm out just for the fans. Like, you could do that.

He could have at least made the cameo so that we get that moment with him and Steph and KD, right? Get one possession where all three of those guys touch the ball, set each other up for an alley-up or something, right? Like, that could have been fun, and it might have been the last time we had, or last chance we had to see those three guys together.

Yeah, yeah, I thought that was a miss. And I just, you know, generally speaking, well, I know we've said this before. It's a tough look. And again, enjoyed that, like at least without, without factoring in the, all the dead air time and all of that. I kind of, I kind of liked watching them compete a little bit. It's just not a great look for the NBA when Mack McClunk is like the biggest story coming out. And I love Mack McClunk.

Like, I support that shit 100%. Like, I'm all for it. And I'm, I'm looking at these dudes in the NBA talk about I heard some guys on TV the other day talking about NBA dudes need to get involved. And there's some dudes out there that would give him a run for his money, but don't get that shit twisted. Like, those don't, those dunks he's doing are going to stand up against anybody that's competing against him. Um, yeah, bro. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Zach Levine. No, there's some, there's some boys that can really go and they'll give him a run for their money. But his imagination was crazy during those things, man. Like, that shit was, that shit was nuts. I'm sorry. Like, it's just not a great look with the, the NBA. The story is a G-League guy. It's just

not great. When, when we start talking about, like, what, what we saw over the weekend and where it leads next, like for next year. Okay, maybe they can build off the tournament format, streamline it like I was saying, and maybe that still works, right? Like, maybe they've, maybe they're onto something there. But on the Saturday stuff, the dunk contest, like you, the dunk contest has been on life support and Mack McClung is, is like the artificial lung, man. He's the one keeping it alive the last three years in a row. He's not going to do it a fourth time, I don't think. I don't want to speak for Mac McClung. I don't know, but nobody does it four years in a row. So without him, without effectively a G-League player winning it three years in a row, where's the dunk contest?

What else have? Stefan Castle had some good ones. But nothing that you were going to say like, that was an all-timer. And nobody else did anything memorable. So where does that leave the contest for next year? Unless John Morant, who tweeted saying, I'm going to, maybe I'll do it now. And then Yonah said, well, if you do it, I'll do it. Like, put your money where your mouth is, guys.

Don't nobody want to see. Don't know what I want to see Jan. I said, no, don't competition. Why not? Stop. But yeah. You're tall? Too tall, too, like, two gangl.

That's not going to, that's not going to look great. I know, we like the shorter guys, Dunk. And that's, that's true. Like, but, but dude, just having some star power in it, right? Like, having, having two marquee names, and if they do it, then maybe other guys decide to jump in, too, Raja. Like, I just, we, we need to get some sizzle back in this thing. It's partially about the creativity of the dunks. And it's partially about having some, some names back in it.

Instead of a G-League player, two rookies, and a second. year guy, you know, none of whom are really household names. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree with that.

I just, Janice is going to be so kind of gangly out there. Like, I don't know there. But, but if you had Jha, if you had Zach Levine, who I saw put something back out there,

like, if you had like Anthony Edwards, like, you know, those are guys that are, yeah, you know, they fit the side profile and they, and they're so athletic

and they're so above the rim that that would be crazy. The only thing I would say, um, about the Mac thing is, most guys don't do it four years in a row because like their mainstay NBA stars. It's not even an average a point per game.

Yeah, so like that's his bread and butter in a way that like, sure. He might break the mold and be like, yo, man, I'm trying to win my fourth in a row, you know? Yeah. Let's talk about one other thing. We're going to do the Real onesmailbag at gmail.com, real onesmailbag at gmail.com.

Real onesmail back at gmail.com. Next week. That's going to happen next week. So, but I do want to talk about real quick before we got to go. Expansion in the NBA. Expansion week at the Ringer. There's been a lot of great pieces. We look like Katie Bates' piece on expansion.

There was a good piece from... Peanut had one. Zach Kram had one. I was going to say Zach Kram. I was going to say Zach Kramm, because that was the one that really stuck out to me. How to Make a Successful Expansion Team. Pena had one as well.

Time out. Danny Chow had one on Roger's Charlotte Bobcats. What's up, Roger? Because I thought for sure we were going to come in here talking about the Charlotte Bobcats. Like we was going to talk about the Lakers coming out and losing to the Charlotte Hornet's like

I thought, I thought for sure. I thought there was no chance we were going to come on here and talk about that. But, and I don't, I mean, I'm just saying, I don't know. One of the complaints that we get is that we talk about the Lakers too much.

And we don't talk about the Bobcats enough. Yeah, we don't talk about the Bobcats. Well, there you go. All right. No, I'm just right, go ahead. I just want to throw a little like, you know, I think that's, I'm just fascinated with that, bro.

Like, how are you going to have a man over there? You go trade for the man. If you trade it, if you, how about this? How about this? If you traded for Luca to do what Luca is doing. Now, albeit he's out of shape and he's injured again, right? But like, let's say he was in shape and that's the vision that the Lakers have for what they're going to look like as a team. If that's what you traded for him to do, then you did not win that trade.

If you're going to have him standing over there watching and just being like a once in a while, like I'll go get mine after somebody else. Like if that's not who he is. No. That's not what made him so brilliant in Dallas. And I'm taking nothing away from the player because I know what he can do. But if you're going to, if you think that it's going to be he go, I go, he go, I go. And Luke is just going to stand over there and be like, use sometimes.

Like that's not. Then you did not. Like it's, well, it's just not what everyone made it out to be. I guess would be my point, right? Like everyone was like landslide. But if you're going to marginalize. him by standing him over there, then then you can't sell me on that. Aggregate that.

No, but that's, yeah, I don't give a fuck if you aggregated. I'm telling you, if he's not going to have a ball in his hands, and look, this was always going to be a problem, right? As I saw it, like, who was going to have the ball? At what point in the careers are we at? But he is not, look, some people are too good to be used in a stand in the corner role. I was just good enough to be used in a stand in the corner role.

that dude is one of the best players in the world with the ball in his hands. If you're not going to use him as such, then what are you doing? Yeah. Hey, Howard, anytime that you should just take Rogers' approach to getting aggregated. I don't give a fuck.

I don't give a fuck. I don't care. Look at me. Aggregate that shit. I don't give a fuck. Nah, but I really mean that. That's a crazy thing for me watching them play. I just think that we have to, so people over All Star Week, and one of the things that somebody

noted to me was just like how shell-shocked Luca looked, not just in his press conference, but even in the first couple of games of the Lakers, he just, he didn't look like him. And yeah, a couple months off or six weeks off, whatever, with the injury, not in shape, partially because the injury, partially because he's Luca, trying to figure out how to revolve around the satellite, you know, being a satellite around LeBron. Like LeBron, everybody has to adjust to LeBron. Now, LeBron at 40, it should be different, but we talked about this. Like, LeBron and Wade had to figure each other out when they first started playing together. Maybe Lucas still in that phase of trying to figure out how to do this.

I mean, listen, the truth is, Raja, like, they didn't trade for him to win a championship this year. They traded for him because, one, the Mavericks decided to stupidly give him away. But two, you've got him for the next 10 years, and LeBron's not going to be here for most of that. So, but yeah, like, I, you know, as you guys know, like, I might. my first reaction to the trade was like, I think both teams in the short term are worse because they've got holes to fill and just a lot of adjustments to make.

No, and that's a very good point. But like I guess we're operating what I'm discounted is like if you get an opportunity to take a swing at something like Luca, you might even acknowledge that right now this is going to be very difficult, but we just can't miss on an opportunity to get him. So we'll just, and maybe it was something like that.

But like I, you know, I just, the inner workings of something like that, when you're trying to bring a piece like that over to your team, if we lived in a world, like this is a psychology experiment, it always is with me. Like I'm watching. If this is a world in which we're ready to pass that baton to Luca,

you would see that. You would see them being like, take the ball. Go, you go, you go. Even if he was bad, they'd be like, yo, go, keep going, keep going, keep going. You don't see that. So then, so now I'm like, all right. But LeBron looks better than he.

He has looked. Like he said, like, no, no, no, no. There's our weekend off. But like, but also saying, like, man, fuck y'all. Like, this is my shit. Yeah. And I feel like there might be a power struggle on the horizon. We and Howard and you have also talked about this about the power struggle on the horizon between LeBron and this, whatever version of Lakers is on the horizon.

Right. Like, he got to prove some shit, too. Like, it's not his team in the way that he thought it was anymore. They're going towards the future. And he's like, fuck that. I will be rejuvenated too. No, but that's what I'm saying, but like right now, like, I mean, the team, the organization can make whatever deal they want.

If that ball is still in a 40-year-old LeBron James Hand all the time and he's doing what he's doing at 40 years old, which is incredible too, it's not as easy as Sam like we're going, you just have a, you just got like a little bit of a sticky situation on your hands because a bit of a conundrum. Again, I've been on teams. You get a new piece. That piece is supposed to be an all-world type of, like, give him the ball. We know how Luca plays.

Like, we've all seen how Luca plays. Nobody on the Lakers is naive to how Luca plays. Like, if you're really, like, you want to give him and get him into that flow as quick as possible. Like, you're not going to reinvent the wheel with him by, like, changing his game at this point. And I just find that fascinating. Like, it's really early.

And I know there are a lot of factors involved with his health. like his his his his shape and all those things that have to work themselves out like and so it'd probably be fine but it's been fascinated to watch and play a couple games and see the way they're using him all right we probably got sorry go ahead sorry seven to ten more minutes about expansion roger um Howard had a great piece about expansion the 4,000 word piece that he referenced it may not have gotten aggregated at the level of your whatever you said on the punchline. But it did lead Tom Ziller's newsletter, which

I mean, geez. I'll take that any day of the week. Damn it. The streets love it. Who's Tom Zeller? Who the fuck is Renee Zill Wedger? Tom Ziller has a good morning. It's basketball. One of the preeminent basketball newsletters of the country. Okay.

Okay. Good. Good. No disrespect. Tom. I wasn't trying to be funny. I just don't, you know. Oh, so good. But anyway, Howard's piece. that went against the pros and the cons of expansion in the league, brought up some really good points, some great data points, about why expansion may not be that good for the league. We do have an abundance of talent, but if we add two more extra teams that could dilute such talent,

I don't want to say too much. Howard, explain the story. So, first of all, everybody, go to the ringer.com, go check out all the expansion, week stuff because we had a bunch of awesome stories. And the group chat guys on this very same NBA show channel, they did a mock draft yesterday. That's up now where they attempted to be the expansion teams. And I haven't listened to the results yet. I'm going to do that later today, but I'm going to assume that if you listen to it, you're going to hear it and you're going to wince

and you're going to think like, oh, that's a new team, that starting five, that roster, that lineup. All due respect to Rajabelle and his bobcats, in the day. But it's, like, this is the thing. It's tough. So the story I did, my feeling all along has been with expansion, like, okay, I get it. There's more talent than there's ever been, right? The game is international.

A quarter of the NBA is from outside the U.S. There is more talent than ever, but does there enough talent to support two new teams? And by one way of looking at this, and I enlisted Taylor Snar, he is the man behind, the brains behind, dunks and threes.com. great website go check that out dunks in threes three is spelled out he has an all in one advanced stat called e pm estimated plus minus and it factors in a lot of stuff and all the analytics folks around the league will tell you like epm among the publicly available stats that's like the gold standard so we used epm we looked at like 24 years with the data

are the number of superstars and like this is where it gets into a little bit of like definition and i have the beholder stuff like who qualifies as a superstar even strategic versus a just plain old star versus just significant contributor in a rotation. Was I star or superstar? I don't recall where you landed in the EPM rankings, Raja. Thanks, thanks. I'll go find it. I'll go find it.

But the bottom line was this. The number of superstars over the last 24 years has not significantly increased. The number of stars, the tier below superstar, has not significantly increased. where we've seen the most growth. And again, this is by one measure. Your results may vary. You want to use P.E.R. Or wind shares or some other statistical models.

You might find something different. But I think broadly speaking, this captured what we've seen, which is that there's a huge expansion in the number of tier three players, which is what we called significant contributors. These are like starters, high rotation guys. They're very, very good players. They help you win games, but they can't carry a team by themselves. They're not stars and they're not super stars. Yeah, they're just really good plug and play role dudes.

And so, yes, there is more talent than ever, but it's at the, it's at the tier three level, not the tier one or two level, the superstar or star level. So you add two new teams, that's two more teams that don't have a guy to build around. And so if you look at what we are right now, you could say the Nets and Wizards are tanking, they are, but the fact that they can offload talent for the purposes of being bad, and it hasn't significantly improved a number of other teams, the Jazz have Lowry marketing and they're still terrible. The Portland Trailblazers have a bunch of recent lottery picks are still terrible.

Like, you've got a bunch of teams that are already kind of dead in the water. The Charlotte Hornets with Lamello, like all these teams, you're telling me you're going to add 30 to 36 counting two-way players, new guys, and that's not going to dilute the product. So that was the attempt I made in this story was like, how much dilution is there? Can we, can the league add two teams and still have the quality of the product be good? good enough. And I think the jury's out on that. And I don't know if the league has done its own study on this. They wouldn't tell me, no matter how many times I badgered them to ask, have you studied dilution? And they're saying it's because it's premature. We're not, we're not at that

point yet. And one of the things I found out along the way here and talking to a number of people is expansion is not exactly on the horizon. It's probably at least a couple years out. And it may, like, we may not, if there are two new teams. And I think it's, there's still an if. It's, we're not going to see them until 2028 to 2030, somewhere in that, in that range. So it's going to be a while, and that's why the league's telling us it's premature. I may or may not have used the term premature expansionation in an email to my editor. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, I would, I don't know. Yeah, stars are, look, stars are superstars, I'm sorry, superstars and stars, I guess I should say, are like, I've said this a million

times on the pot. I'll just say it over and over again. Like, while they are really hard to come by, while your average NBA, like, you know how, you know how much I like Gilly to King, right? You know how much I like Gilly the King. The kid, yes. He's got his thing that was the King now, like on, like on whatever. But like so, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, Gilly the kid. But any, he had something up there where he was like saying and I couldn't tell whether he was. Howard, do you know who Gilly the King is? I may or may not be Googling.

Gilly. He knows what he is. He knows who Cuddy is. You don't know who Gilly to King is. Gilly considers himself a Hooper, right? Like, he's a Philly guy. And he had something on, like, his Insta the other day about, about, like, what NBA players he would, he would bust their ass, right? Which is, like, pure comedy because, like, that falls into what I say all the time, which is, like, people have no idea how good that tier three player Howard is talking about is.

Or even, I don't know if there was a tier four, even your tier four player to someone who, who, who, who has never played at that level. You have no real understanding of how good that guy is. So even amongst that, finding stars and superstars are rare. Like, you're almost born into that. Like, real talk.

Like, it's really difficult. It doesn't matter what I would have ever done, how hard I trained, how much I dedicated myself. I was never going to be that. Like, there was just not the upside in me for that. Like, I wasn't blessed to ever be that. So they were only making,

so many of those dudes that have the potential to be that if they do everything they're supposed to do to maximize that potential. Does that make sense? Yeah. Right? So, like, to your point, Howard, like, those don't, they're not just falling off a trees. Mofos can work as hard as they want to work.

It could be six, nine, can do everything right, and you're just not that dude. You're not Kevin Durant. And one of the things that, like, to add to Roger's point, and now that Howard spoke about beautifully, which is, it's not just a bill that makes someone a superstar, right? Like, there's, I forgot the analogy that you used, but you said, player X is selling out arenas,

as opposed to Rudy Gobert, who's a really good player, but it's like you're not going to go pay money to go see him, right? Like, you're, I don't care what happens. If Anthony Edwards is in town, I'm going to go pay to go see him play, you know? Like, that's,

that's the, you know, an example, right? That's what a superstar is. He's someone that generates revenue, and there's only a couple of guys like that in the league. Few guys, maybe like 10. Basketball nerds will be like, you know, rhapsodizing about Alprin Shangoon. And for good reason, he's a really good player. But if Alpern Shangun is your best player, one, you're a playoff team maybe, but you're not,

you're not a contender. But also, like, are you paying money to see Alperin Shangoon? All respect. Like, he's a really good player. But like, Lamello Ball is really fun to watch. I don't know how much the Charlotte Hornets are selling out because they're terrible anyway. There are players who are fun to watch. There are players who move the needle in terms of.

just being entertaining and worth the price of admission on their own, but they may or may not be able to carry a team. And so, and when you have a star, what do you do? You go try to find a second star and maybe a third star if you can afford them. There's only X amount per season. There's only so many stars. And so every star that you have on one team is another team that has possibly zero, if there are two or three on one team. And so that's the thing. Like, it's a fixed sum. Like, it's a zero-sum game. And I don't, I don't, I get, I get like the money part of this. These franchises are going to sell for a gazillion dollars.

You're going to be in new markets. That's more fans, more merchandise sold, more people tuning in, maybe buying League Pass. All that makes sense. But I don't know the quality of the product. My instincts are, and I think this story shows, like there's a, there's definitely a risk to the quality of the product if you expand by two teams. I want to go back to the star thing because that's interesting to me.

Like, yeah, there's like a, no, there is an element of marketability and, and, you know, being able to sell out an arena that I think you have to meet a winning criteria to do that because you reference like Lamello, Howard. You know, if you're winning, if that's producing wins and, and you have this marketability and this and this kind of swag about you, you might not have to necessarily win championships. be a superstar. Like, you can exist in the superstar realm just by being really, really good and you've got a good enough team combined with your marketability and all the other shit you have going on. And then you reference Singgoon, like a guy like that who might not have, you know, I don't know the, I don't know him, but like the charisma at the mic, the flare and all of that stuff, they can work their way to superstar and but they have to win chips. Like you've got to be, you got to take those talents like the Tim Duncan, right? Like Tim didn't have any.

of that really. But Tim was pretty like that, you know, he was a chill dude, like didn't love to do a lot of press, like wasn't out, like, you know, wasn't into the fashion and shit like that. But he was a bad mofo to win a bunch of championships. And that can make you a superstar too. But I think, so I think it's, I think it's interesting to like, you could get there different ways, right? But like, to your point, you have to meet a winning criteria, like, at least have viable teams. Doesn't necessarily have to mean you have to produce the championship over and over again. you have the marketability and all the other kind of factors that go into being a superstar.

If you don't, you better be winning championships. You know what is the winning criteria? This fucking podcast. And that's how I got to wrap it up because I got to dip. It's been another edition of Real Ones. Real ones, Melbach at Gmail.com. Real ones Mel back at Gmail.com. Real ones mailback at Gmail.com.

I am Logan Murdoch. That is Roger Bell. That is also Howard Motherfucking Beck, produced by Eddie. We'll see you on Tuesday. Tap in. all the shits. Bye. Let's be 21 years and older, 18 years and older in D.C. and President in select states,

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