The Zach Lowe Show - Dame Returns to Portland, CP3 and Smart Head to LA, Plus More With Rob Mahoney

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Dame is back with the Blazers (1:25). Rob and Zach discuss how it happened, how he fits with this team, and the romanticism of it all. There’s yet another reunion with Chris Paul in L.A. (26:27)—a look back at his career and a look forward at this year’s Clippers squad. Across town, the Lakers also make a move and sign Marcus Smart (39:03). How do Rob and Zach think he’ll fit in purple and gold? Then, Zach addresses the Cam Thomas criticism and discourse (52:53), before taking a deep dive on the Memphis Grizzlies (1:01:09) to close out the show. Host: Zach Lowe Guest: Rob Mahoney Producers: Jesse Aron, Jonathan Frias Get started today at HubSpot.com/AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Look, it can be hard showing how much you love someone, but if you can't say how you feel, just say, let's get some food or, hey, takeouts on me. And if you really love them, pick Panda Express for delicious, authentically cooked American Chinese cuisine, whether it's game night or date night. Nothing says, I love you like orange chicken, honey walnut, trim, kung-pow chicken, and black pepper sirloin steak. Have you eaten yet? Order now, or is it a Panda Express near you? All right, coming up, we got an absolutely loaded Zach Locio. Somehow, it's July 21st and we still have a lot to talk about. Damian Lillard, going back to the Blazers. Romance, baby. Love it. What does it mean for the Blazers? This season, not much. What does it

mean for next season? Maybe a lot. What do the Blazers project that? What is this team? Is Scoot Henderson even going to start. Rob Mahoney is here to dig into all of that. Chris Paul, back to the clippers, broke while we were on the air. I was kind of prepared for it. So we talked about that. Deep dive into the Memphis Grizzlies. That's our random deep dive team of the day. The Lakers and Marcus Smart and LeBron and Luca, there's always something going on with the Lakers. We're going to get into that too. Could Marcus Smart start? Should he ever start? Who would come off the bench in that event? What about Jake LaRavia? Should he start? Who would come off the bench in that event? Deep dives into all of these situations. Jonas Valanchunis confirms his commitment to the Nuggets.

We talk about that. Just in absence, there's lots of news. Chris Paul's back with the Clippers. Man, Lob City, all those memories. And how does he fit into a team that has like 11 legit, good rotation players now and some pretty high ambitions? I think there's a role for him there. And it's going to be very interesting to see how that reunion goes. Lots of the NBA is not stopping, which is good for us on the Zach Lowe Show. Rob Mahoney, the best in the business, coming to break it all down. for us on The Zach Lowe Show. Hope you enjoy it. New! The Zach Lowe Show back from Las Vegas. I survived. Rob Mahoney, you also survived. How are you?

I'm doing well. I had what I would say is a gentleman's stay in Las Vegas. A lot of early nights, a lot of discretion. You know, I was really trying to get through it out there, power through, but how would you say your time in the desert was overall, Zach? Definitely in my most mature Las Vegas stay. I was in bed by 1230 every night. This is what I'm talking about. I'm boring and old. Right as I was leaving Las Vegas, I was in the airport. I'm not going to lie, Rob.

I was in the airport sipping on a Mikalob Ultra. That's what I had chosen at the airport bar. Just trying to carve up out there? Yeah, I just got a hot tip that Damien Lillard was perhaps about to reunite with the Blazers. I tweeted that there was, quote, mutual interest. That's as far as I was kind of permitted to go. And then about eight minutes later, the deal was done. three years, $42 million, a player option in year three.

I thought Dame made out great in the deal. I mean, he gets to rehab in Portland this year around his family, access to the Blazers facility, get paid $14 million. Then he gets to play for the Blazers for that amount of money. And then if he's playing amazing and is like 90% of Dame, he can opt right back into free agency. If the Blazers aren't ready by then for a real run at something, he can go somewhere where maybe there is a chance to make a real run at something.

Obviously we must start though with just the romanticism of this. Like this guy is a franchise icon. Two walk-off playoff series winning shots. I mean all-time iconic stuff. One against the Rockets and the bye-bye against Russ and PG and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Never made it to the finals. Did make it to the conference finals. I've said many times, don't poo-poo that.

Don't poo-poo that conference finals run in 2019. Yeah, they got a little lucky. Matchups broke right. making the conference finals is hard. You know who hasn't made the conference finals? The Sixers with Joel Embed. It's not easy to make the conference finals. And they play in the freaking east.

The Blazers play in the West. Now it's a whole different team in Portland than it was when Dame left on not great terms. He wanted to go to Miami. They didn't trade him to Miami. There was a war of spin after the trade, if you recall. Very different versions of the story came out. What not different versions, just different details were perhaps emphasized. And the wave and stretch with Milwaukee happened, and right away they were in contact.

And fences were mended to the degree they needed to be mended. I think time had eased some of the wounds already. Scoot Henderson was clued into what was going on to make sure he was cool with it. And what I've been told is he was super enthusiastic about it, like not threatened at all. There was this undercurrent of, oh, man, if I'm scoot, I'm going to be angry. Like, I'm going to be back on the bench. And this is like, dude, the guy's out for a year. year.

Scoot's going to have all the runway in the world. And then we'll see. Can they play together? Who starts? Who comes off the bench? Whatever. Like, we'll all figure that out later. In the meantime, like, you get to learn, one person with the Blazers told me,

Scoot gets to learn from now one of the best offensive point guards of all time, one of the best defensive point guards of all time and has a Hall of Fame point guard as his head coach in Chauncey Billups. That's a pretty good combo. This tickled me, Rob. It tickled me right in the spot. My new renewed match. fandom spot of like, I want Pete Alonzo to play with the Mets forever. I don't care about money.

I don't care about Steve Cohen's money. I don't care about the cap mechanics and whatever. I just want that guy on the Mets forever. And Damian Lillard belongs with the Portland Trailblazers. What was your reaction to this? I had a similar reaction. I would say I was trying to access what it is about Dame that inspires this kind of like sentimentality, this kind of romanticism. there's just like a magic to the way he plays and some of it is those playoff moments that you talked about. Some of it is this like intangible quality that he has when he walks into a room or specifically into a locker room. Like there's a lot made of leadership in the NBA and some of it is real and some of it is fake. Like that's a guy who I genuinely believe is a great leader.

That's a guy who I genuinely believe other players follow and has a tangible effect on an organization just by being a part of it. And that makes him a really easy player to root for. the way he played and has played throughout his career makes him really easy to root for. And so how can you not be a little sentimental about a reunion like this? We've seen plenty of them, players circling back. You alluded to kind of the complications with this one, which is not just kind of having to resolve some of those feelings that were hurt by getting traded in the first place, but by this exact general manager who is now resigning him, it's not like there's been a

turnover of the administration. But he gets the no trade clause. He gets the I've been hurt before clause, just in case things go a little sour again. So I'm happy for Dame. I'm happy for Portland. And what better place to rehab than the place you've already lived and called home for 11 years? No trade clause. Much less risky for the Blazers when Damien Lillard is on a three-year deal,

two plus one, making $40 million less than Bradley Beale was making in Phoenix. This was, I mean, you talked about the contract structure with that like two-year and then the player option, kind of similar on much lower stakes to what Kyrie resigned for with the Mavericks as well. Like this is kind of the rehab special, I guess, is like, see how healthy you can get in a year. Then hopefully you'll have that second season to play through. And then afterwards, everybody gets to reevaluate. You mentioned Dame as a leader.

One of my favorite stories I ever wrote at anywhere for ESPN was when I went to Portland for like a week in the fall of 2018. Because I wanted to start thinking about they had gotten absolutely. destroyed in the playoffs the year before by the Pelicans. Drew Holiday, now Dame's teammate, ate Dame for lunch. The Pelicans just killed the Blazers. And Portland did essentially nothing significant. They didn't fire Terry Stotz. They almost did. They didn't trade C.J. McCollum. They didn't really almost ever do that until they did and they didn't get much back for him. They didn't really shake much up at all. They kind of stood pat with their team. They didn't have tons of options, but mostly like a team like that that has kind of gotten where it's gotten

in the playoffs and then gets to the very first step of the play. and gets ejected with such alacrity by the Pelicans, something happens. And then nothing happened. And they got off to a good start. And I had all these details in the story about how Paul Allen, the late Paul Allen had addressed the team after the Pelican sweep in the locker room and kind of implied that like this was not okay and left people thinking change is coming and then change didn't come.

And what I heard most of all in that week in Portland was stories about Damien Lillard that changed, that deepened my appreciation of him as like a leader and a culture setter. And one of the smallest ones that I heard was just, I can't remember who told me this, but like they all talked to me about Dame was one player was sort of whispering to his locker mate griping about like, man, I'm not playing enough, like coach isn't playing me enough. And Dame overheard it and just came over and was like, hey, just FYI, we don't do that here. Like there's no room for that here. You can be unhappy about your playing time,

but we're not doing this whispering stuff where fissures start opening up within the team. And I asked him about the Pelican series and how a team survives, how a team stays together, how it doesn't divide pointing fingers, playing the blame game, like you stunk in that series,

you stunk in that series. And he just talked about how like, I grew up in a family where if we were all assigned to clean the house and like you didn't do your job, but I did. and my cousin did and this guy did. No, it's on all of us. We all didn't do our job. And I ended the story with, he has this quote at the end. Good things come to good people, even if you get swept somewhere along the way. This is what goes through my mind. I'm going to be in my 11th year or

something here in Portland. I'm going to stick with it and we're going to make the finals. And then I said in Portland and he said, yes, in Portland. And he says, and if that never happens, he says, I've treated people the right way. I put in the work. And because of that, if it doesn't happen, and live with it. All I've enjoyed the ride. It's worth it. And I just came out of all that being like, what a freaking stud this guy is as a culture center.

And I'm honestly like, I'm not sure he ever wanted ever like 100% was comfortable getting out of Portland. I don't know that he was ever like so adamant that he had to get out of there. Obviously he did. He went to Milwaukee. It didn't work. But now he's back. And he's not going to play this year.

And then you've got to figure. out sort of what the team is when he comes back and how he fits. And I think like to me this is no harm, no foul. Like I don't, they have a lot of guards, but I don't see any harm and seeing if this homegrown hero can give you something that you don't have for a team that's going to be challenged offensively kind of as it is without him. Yeah. I don't see any like this to me is not just sort of some feel good whatever fluff story. He could help their team in two years. And I think all that is because of everything we're talking about, which is when we're when we're describing Dame's leadership and his approach and how he thinks about the game.

Like, this is a guy who gets it and who understands his role in an ecosystem. And I think part of that, like, you mentioned the way he grew up. It's also the way he came into the league where not to, you know, catch Lamarcus Aldridge with a stray, but I think there was a degree of which a young Dame coming up was a little like, felt like he was on the outside looking in in some ways with the Lamarcus Aldrich Blazers. And it was like, he's talked about that before about like, he wishes there had been like more of connection there early in his career and he tried to do the opposite, you know, as he became a star. And so who better now, who would have more perspective now as far as somebody who could come in

as an injured player who's not going to be contributing for a year and still help guys understand their role in things, who could still help bring guys under his wing, who can help scoot, who could help Shaden Sharp, who can help. There's so many players on the Blazers who could, who could help, who could be helped by Damian Lillard just being around or by following some of the things that have worked so well for him. And so you're right about the offense. I don't know where it's going to come from short term.

If he's able to give them anything long term, that's great. But Quiet as kept, this is a hell of a defensive team that I'm looking forward to watching. And I anticipate greatly how Dame would be able to incorporate into that a year or two from now. You just said the words Lamar Gis Aldridge. And I'm not going to go back through the whole transaction history of how the Blazers kind of got stuck in the mud with Dame to the point that he wanted to extricate himself, at some part of him at least wanted to extricate himself. But you remember that last year, LaMarcus Aldridge was in Portland. They kind of became this like almost like a proto Pacers where out of nowhere this combination of players adds up to more than the sum of their parts.

And you're like, is this like a potential contender with Robin Lopez and Nick Batum and West Matthews? And they traded. And Lamarcus was about to hit free agency. And there are a lot of rumblings who's going to leave and specifically that he was going to go to San Antonio. Yeah. And they make one last run. it and trade a lottery protected 2016 first round pick

to Denver for Aaron Afalo to like round out the bench. Lottery protected specifically in the event that Lamarcus Aldridge leaves, we're probably going to bottom out, we're protecting our picks so that we can go pivot into a quick rebuild, get a high lottery pick the next year and go forward.

Lamarcus Aldridge leaves. They end up, before that, they lose in the first round because West Matthew stares is Achilles and the whole season goes sideways. Lamarcus Aldridge leaves. And the team is so good and Dame is so good so fast that they make the playoffs the next year and give up that pick. Just a little footnote in history. You mentioned the defense. I think this team's going to be really interesting this year. I was looking up their fan duel odds. They're the second lowest

odds, second worst odds to win the West. Obviously they're not going to win the West, but I'm surprised they're like below New Orleans, Phoenix. I think this team's going to be decent. And I think they're going to hang their hat on defense, offensive rebounding, toughness, transition play, and they're going to have to. They just don't have a lot of shooting. And I don't even know who they're going to start, Rob. They have seven potential starters.

The only three I would put in Penn are Denny Obdia, Tumani Kamara. Got to be. And Donovan Klingan. I think those two, I think Kamara and Abdiah, they like the sort of tweener, wings, tenacity, defense.

Avdia made a mega leap last year. Kling in the sort of default starting center. I'm putting Rob Williams just over to the side. I'm assuming he's just, I don't know. And you're putting Young Hansen in your dreams? Or where are you keeping him close? Back up center, baby. Back up center. He's walking right into minutes.

There's no question. And to me, just put a pin in that. But the center position is one of the more, is maybe the most interesting long term question for this team. Let's say they get better around their center. is faster than expected. Dame comes back. Is the Kling and Yang duo good enough,

or do they need to find a more win-now center? But those two guard spots in the starting five, or the two remaining spots in the starting five, you got Scoot, Shaden, Drew Holiday, and Jeremy Grant, still here. Still there? Like, the Jeremy Grant trade was to try to entice Damien Liller to stay. Damien Liller left.

Jeremy Grant's still here. Hopefully this renews Jeremy Grant's spirit, because when he does not play with Spirit, he might not get a rebound for like two weeks. Who would you start out of those four guys along with the Kamara Abdiya Klingen group? I think I would start Jeremy Grant for a little bit of spacing, a little bit of shooting.

Again, you're just like really hard-pressed with the rest of this roster. And I would probably start Drew, I think. With all due respect to Scoot, his own shot came along pretty well last season. I was really impressed with some of the progress we saw from Scoot. but I kind of wonder if you, like, why would you make this deal for Drew Holiday to bring him off the bench?

Unless it was explicitly to clear way for scoos. So I guess I can understand the logic. I would start Drew personally. This seems like a team that's looking to push forward, maybe not maximally, but at least pretty aggressively. And overall, what was already this really good defense last season and this high effort defense, just added Drew Holiday, as you mentioned, one of the best defensive point guards of all time, got Matisse Thibble back late in the season. We'll see if he's a part of this team in any meaning.

way. I would say cleared out their spaciest backline defender in DeAndre Aiton and whatever you may think of Donovan Klingin and Rob Williams. Like those guys are legit rim protectors who actually make a difference around the basket a little bit. And clear out their worst defender, I would say, in the rotation in Anthony Simons as well. So it's like this this team could be even better defensively. I think they are going to hang their hat on that end. They're going to have to scrap points. And that's where like holding Jeremy Grant close is a dangerous and perhaps fully. endeavor, but I do hold him close in this exact instance because I just genuinely don't know who else is going to score. Yeah, it's, it's half court offense is going to be a struggle.

And it would, it would depress me. The thought of both Henderson and Sharp coming off the bench, I mean, I guess it's no harm, no foul. They're going to play a lot regardless. And it allows them to sort of ease into games without too much responsibility, particularly for Shaden on defense. And Shaded, by way, extension eligible. We'll see if and when that has. happens. I kind of want Scoot to get a runway. I might start Scoot and Drew Holiday. I think they like the idea of starting Drew because he's Drew and because it allows him to play a little bit of a lower usage role on offense similar to what he played in Boston, although the threes ain't going to be as open as they were in Boston. But I was looking at some of the tracking data.

If you can sort the tracking data for three-point shooting by, like, average distance, the closest defender is away from the shooter, i.e. how open you are. Kamara, scoot, Drew are all like toward the top of the league and like most open three. So take their percentages a little bit with the grand assault. But I don't know, man. That's an interesting puzzle to solve. Then off to bench, you got Yang. You got, you know, two of the guards, whoever.

and I think Thibel will play, and it's going to be an interesting team. But offense is going to be an issue. They're going to be fun to watch. I just want to say the Obdia trade is going to be really fun to examine and continue to reexamine because they traded two first round picks for Denny Obdia. One became Bub Carrington. The other is some convoluted, let me see, I have it. It's like the second best of Milwaukee, Boston, and Portland in 2029.

Chances are that's somewhere between 10 and 18. Like, so it could be too low lottery picks, whatever. And I got a lot of pushback from the more sort of, how do I say this? Like analytics, forward thinking, team building philosophy, people. You mean, like, you just, when you're as bad as Portland, you just don't make a trade where you're giving up draft assets for a player who's just okay to good in Denny Obdia. And I remember thinking, like, I think Denny Avdiya is pretty good. and he's young and he's on an insanely valuable contract. And I like gently argued with these people of like,

is it like why can't they just get a good young player? And I feel really great about that trade now. Like Bob Carrington could blow up this year, whatever. We'll see where that pick lands. But that dude is just good. He's good at pretty much. If the shooting last year was real, that was always the missing piece for him. He would not shoot.

Like he'd be open and record scratch it. And he shot it better last year. Like got to the line a ton, played with a new level of, confidence and aggression. That dude just like, you could have a really interesting debate about who is the best player on the Blazers right now. I think, I think it might be,

is it Denny Avdia? It might be Denny Avdia. I think that kind of thinking, granted, I get it. If you are a bad team, you don't want to be trading away a bunch of draft assets, make sense on paper.

I'm not going to argue with the premise. Deni Avdia was good as a wizard. Like that last season in Washington, he was really defending already. He was what, 22 years old then? It's not like you're trading for a guy who's 30. He was doing the X thing. Remember, he would get to stop and do the X thing? I was like, why did he drop that? I want more of that in the NBA. Get personalized gestures. We got to bring it back. Look, this team is going to have

no shortage of defensive intensity and identity and personality. Like, we got to start bringing some of that stuff back. But I think all the precursors were there that this is a guy on a team that isn't going anywhere in Washington, but there's something in his game that really, really pops. the shooting was already starting to come along. The defense had already come along. The playmaking and the feel have already been there. I never have any problem with teams trading for guys who can guard and who understand how to read the game. Like, I will trust the rest to work itself out.

Even guys you can't shoot that well. Like, I will trade for that guy and bet that his shooting can get a little better over time than almost any other skill set, to be honest with you. Sharp is the most interesting guy maybe. 18 and a half points a game last year. I don't think you'd find that many people in the league. who were super excited about how he got those 18 and a half points a game last year, down to 31% on threes. And I interviewed him before the season for a piece of never ran.

And he kind of joked with me about how he really could not shoot growing up. Like he couldn't shoot. He was like, owned up. He was like, I was just a bad shooter. And so like it's going to take a while. He just turned 22 years old like a month and a half ago. He shot 56% on twos last year. He's big.

And I think with age and experience, he'll learn how to use his size and his power a little bit. The passing is just okay, you know, two, two point eight assists a game, not great. Okay, might be kind. Stretching it. Yeah. And defensively, he was just not present enough last year to the point that Chauncey Billups not only demoted him to the bench, but called him out for this is the reason you are being demoted to the bench. And it, it perked him up a bit, but not quite enough. I hope it perks him up a little more this year because there's a, there's an interesting player in here. and I believe in his potential as a score. Like the guy can absolutely fly.

He's got a great first step. The jumper looks okay to me. Like if it ever comes along, it's not like he's taking just wide open threes and shooting 31%. He's taking some contested ones. I don't know. What's your shade and sharp outlook? I feel like you're probably a little more pessimistic than I am about him.

I do have a hard time with score first wings who don't have like the all around elements of their game altogether yet. And maybe that is just him being young. Maybe as you said, like he'll eventually get there because he's probably the, I mean, he's got to be the most electric blazer easily. Like makes plays that are on, in the 99th percentile of athleticism in the NBA,

does incredible shit on the court all the time. I love to watch that stuff. I do see the tunnel vision a little bit. I do worry about like what his best role is. Like he's not quite at that level of scoring where you feel super confident, just like giving him the ball and getting out of the way. And so then he falls into a range of like, okay, he's pretty good at this stuff, but not very good at these other supplementary skills.

Like, is he a, he has like the approach of a first star, like a go-to score in a lot of ways, but maybe the actual scoring and efficiency of like a second or third best player on a team. And that disconnect scares me, to be honest with you with some players. I want to believe in him. He's still super young. It's so early. The one thing that really gives me pause, I will say, in addition to some of these like smaller caveats is, you know, we were talking about this recently about a different player,

but like who are the guys who learn how to be physical? Who are the guys who learn how to use their size? It was Josh Giddy that we were talking about. That's exactly who it was. And Shade Sharp has a little bit of that too, where he is so clearly, like, should be able to drive into and bounce over basically anyone in his path and will stop short on a lot of different actions. It's like, how do you get a guy like him over that hump? That's something I'm always a little concerned with. So it's interesting you say that because for the piece that never ran, and now it's a year ago, I watched a lot of film.

of him and you see it again glimpses are not real until they become more than glimpses. Glimpses are just glimpses. They don't really matter until they become a more regular part of the game. But if you watch 300 Shade and Sharp drives or something like that, you will see 20 glimpses where he kind of looks like Jason Tatum. And I don't mean to comp them as players because Jason Tatum's a first team all NBA player and Shaden Sharp is very far from that and will probably never be. be a first team all NBA player. I mean, certainly the odds are against anybody being that.

But just in terms of the size, the like sort of start and stop in the midrange until I get where I want to go and an occasional shoulder to get me one step closer, he doesn't play that way. Like I said, glimpses, but there were a few drives in there. Like, oh, that kind of reminds me a little bit of Jason. Like, not as, not as powerful as Jalen Brown to use another Celtic who really likes to get into you and move you backwards. But something was there. and I just am curious to see if that's something can come out a little bit more. Any final thoughts on the Blazers?

Who have, by the way, a lot of draft assets going forward too, we should say. I mean, I would also say Chauncey Billups, quietly a much improved coach, a guy who I think took a little time figuring out, like, what are the rotations, how do you balance all this stuff? Like, there's a learning curve for coaches too, and I thought has really come on in helping this team find its backbone and really its identity as an extension of that.

Agreed, and Chauncy has taken a lot of heat in Portland, from the sort of segment of fans who think every coach just needs to be fired at all times has obviously had, you know, the losing is what it is, but he comes in at the end of the Dame era where the Dame era is kind of petering out, then it's a rebuild. It's like hard to prove yourself as a coach

where A, your team is frankly not designed to win for some of your tenure. And B, is fluctuating to a degree that you can't really get a read on who should play when. And Chauncees was like, I've had Chauncee on this podcast. Chanty was a former colleague. I've talked to Chauncey a lot about basketball. If you think Chauncey doesn't know what he's talking about, I hate to break it to you.

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Okay, we have some breaking news, Rob. Oh. I might have been prepared for this with notes about Chris Paul's fit with the clippers. Another point guard reunion, this one perhaps even weightier than Dame going back to Portland. I'm not sure about that. Chris Paul's place in history is a little loftier than Danes, but Chris Paul is signing back with the Los Angeles Clippers.

after a sojourn away from the franchise that he helped build into Lobb City, that he helped take pretty far into the playoffs, but not that far really, second round on those sort of beloved snake-bitten what-if teams with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan and now head coach JJ Redick and a rotating cast of Doc Rivers' favorites on the wing missing three-pointers. Signing back with the Clippers, joining Bradley Beale for whom he was traded. That's a nice little fun subplot here. Another one of those with Damon Drew Holiday, too.

No. And after, you know, the time away in Houston where they take the Warriors to the absolute limit in 2018. And before that was, you know, then then Oklahoma City and then all the other, you know, Chris has been in Phoenix and went to the finals in Phoenix and got so, so close to the crowning moment of his career. And then no. And then it's been a little bit of a journey since then. Back with the Clippers. I mean, look, man, the history here is this is like, this is the era of. of Clippers basketball, despite the fact that they have made it further in one season post-Cris-Paul than they ever did with Chris Paul. This is when they landed on the map. This is when they

transitioned from a joke to a real franchise. This is when Donald Sterling was kicked out of the league. This is also when the Clippers suffered two absolutely epic collapses in 2014 against the Thunder and 2015 against the Rockets that undid what was, frankly, a championship caliber team. Maybe, I don't know. If they were, they lost it in those series. And 2014 against the Thunder in game five is the lowest moment of Chris Paul's career in game five. They blow a seven point lead in 49 seconds to the Thunder in the fourth quarter, highlighted by a Chris Paul turnover on an attempted, I'm smarter than you. I'm outthinking the game. Heave to try to draw a three-shot foul when he just could have gotten fouled and made two free throws. Then he fouls Russell Westbrook on a three-shot foul and then he commits a turnover on the last position of the game.

this is cool man like chris gets it's known that chris wants to be near his family's families families in l a this feels like the last step for him finishing with the clippers retiring as a clipper he's one of my favorite players of all time as persnickety as he can be as much as i have said that there is almost no worse watch in the NBA than a chris paul team in the bonus it's just an endless reel of rip-throughs and flopping and flailing i love chris paul unabashedly the dude is short and not that athletic anymore and has continued to make winning plays everywhere he goes. He started 82 games last year for the San Antonio Spurs. I don't think he's going to start for the Clippers.

Rob, this just happened. Gut reaction. Chris Paul's a Clipper again. I'm feeling the reunion vibes again. I'm also looking at this Clippers roster and there's just so many guys here. Yet again, the Clippers have reshuffled and yet they still have just like so many viable rotation players. I too am a Chris Paul guy. I, too, I'm an unabashed supporter.

I mean, what is more like catnip for an NBA media person than the player who thrives based on a meticulous level of control and also is... Maniacal. The dude got a technical foul on another team for an untucked jersey. But is also hoisted by his own partart. You know, he's also hoisted by his own jersey in so many instances. It is Shakespearean. That 2004 Thunder, 2014 Thunder game is like a Shakespearean tragedy of,

of Chris Paul being unraveled by his own ambition and smarts. That's the Shakespearean tragedy. The Rocket Series is the Shakespearean farce, where Cory Brewer and Josh Smith are ending your season with threes. It's tough to watch, but sometimes you've got to watch that happen to yourself. I love this. Honestly, I was trying to find, like, what is the most,

like, what's the best basketball fit for Chris Paul at this stage in his career? I don't think this is the best basketball fit necessarily. I think there's teams that could have used Chris Paul more than the Clippers. though they certainly can. And as you mentioned, there's more to it than this of just like, where do you want to end your career? Where do you want to be in relation to your family, like across the country? A lot of appeal and going back to the clippers in the first place.

So I'm kind of like coming around on this idea late, but I really like it, to be honest with you. That rocket series. Oh, my God. I behoove people. Behoove, Rob. Youngens. People who aren't, who don't know. Yeah.

Go back and watch some tape of like, 2007-2008 Chris Paul with New Orleans. That dude was so athletic and so fast. He would do stuff that Chris Paul hasn't been able to do for 10 years. And then his knees started having issues. You know how hard it is to be as small as Chris Paul is? And he's small. And be statistically, which he is, despite the fact that I just cited an unbelievably epic

brain fart that lasted 49 seconds of an NBA playoff game. one of the greatest clutch players in the history of basketball. That's just what the stats say in terms of last second shots, shots in the last minute of games. It's all there. I all wrote about it. To be that short and be able to do that when you're being guarded by guys much bigger than you or you're the smallest guy on the court is very, very hard.

You said something interesting. How the clippers can use Chris Paul. They have 11 legit rotation guys now. So how can they use Chris Paul? Where do you see him fitting in on this team? Well, they had a painful need for just like somebody who could do a little bit more orchestration than Chris Dunn is qualified to do. And you really felt it like in this kind of stickiest moments of the playoffs that like they just need like one more person who can actually handle one more person who can handle the logistics of this team. I mean, yet another reunion with Chris Paul and James Hardin, which is fascinating in its own way.

I think he is mostly useful as as that. Like the guy who's coming in off the bench to help run run things in a way that we just saw you don't necessarily want. Bradley Beal doing on a full-time basis that, you know, bless him, Bogdan Bogdanovich is just getting buried further and further in the depth chart, I guess, behind these qualified guards who are being brought in to kind of upstage him. I think that's kind of his best function with this team, is like helping organize a team that on offense has not been very organized. The tradeoff for that, and I think the tradeoff for all these moves, like the Clippers are brought in a lot of really good players, who I like a lot. In doing so, they're also diluting what makes. What makes a lot of

made them a 50-win team last season, which was their defense. And by bringing Chris Paul, that means Chris Dunn's a little less important. That helps you on offense. It trades off on defense. By bringing in Brad Beale, you have the same effect. Derek Jones Jr., I think, will inevitably take a little bit of a haircut in terms of his role and rotation importance. And Vita Zubots is locked in. He's super important to this team.

But those three guys triangulated one of the best defenses in the league, give or take, however healthy Kauai Leonard was at a given point in time. two of those guys are now dramatically less important than they used to be. And like, what does that do to the identity of this team? What does that do to the shape of the clippers? What kind of team are they going to be? I honestly have no idea. They're probably more balanced and maybe better off for it, but they're not quite what they were. It's going to be a fun puzzle for Tai Liu because, you know, they spent a lot of the last, almost all of last seasons, starting both Chris Dunn and Derek Jones Jr.

For exactly the reason that you said, not just their defensive ability, but the fact that Kauai did not have to over. exert himself on defense in the regular season. And then the deeper they got into, well, they didn't get deep in the playoffs, the deeper they got into the series that they played before game seven happened and what always happens in game seven happened. They just realized we can't play Chris Dunn and Derek Jones Jr. at the same time. They're not guarding either guy. And Derek Jones was all right and Chris Dunn was eh.

And so they bring in Bradley Beal and the guy you didn't mention John Collins. Yes. And there's a school of thought among Clippers fans that they should just start both of those guys. start Bradley Beal and John Collins. And so it would be Beal Harden, Leonard Collins, Zubots. And I think John Collins actually has become like almost wildly underrated. Like I think he's a pretty capable defender if you keep things simple for him and kind of a versatile defender positionally too. But that is a sea change in your identity if you start that lineup.

I just wonder if the puzzle works that they can start one of those two defensive guys, done and Jones, and bring one of Beal and Collins off the back. bench still. I'm interested in that. But I think you nailed it with Chris Ball. To me, he's, again, I mentioned 11 guys, you know, Dunn, the guys I just start, Dunn, Hardin, Leonard, Jones, Zubots, Beal, Collins, Batum, Bogdanovich, Chris Paul, and Brooke Lopez, a genius signing backup center. That's 11 guys. to me Chris Paul is like

A, I think you nailed it with sort of babysitting the offense when Hardin is on the bench Just like if it's not organized enough And Bradley Beal and or Kauai Leonard Need just a guy to get you into stuff That's Chris Paul To me he's also like If Chris Dunn is just proving unplayable

We have an easier solution to that now If Bogdan Bogdanovich continues to show his age We have another guy to plug in Like there's going to be even in the playoffs 15, 18 Chris Paul minutes for the Clippers. And I just think, again, no harm, no foul. I don't know. To me, the bar is just so high with the thunder and the nuggets and the rockets and the rockets

just for next year. I don't have the Clippers. The Clippers to me are in this group of like fourth at best and hoping for a break and someone to take an injury in the playoffs. Are you higher on them than that? Am I too low on them? I think that makes sense, but they've put themselves firmly in that mix. I mean, they probably were already kind of there by default, but to me, this does at least

gesture at resolving some of those playoff issues you talked about, where there were, there were too many either or offense, defense decisions they had to make. And if, if John Collins alone can hold up some on both sides of the ball in that way, he's worth, I mean, worth that deal, worth the exchange, worth the sort of like transaction chain of, you know, I assume part of the reason they give up Norm Powell in the first place, is they assume they're getting Bradley Beale or knew they were getting Bradley Beal. And so there's just like an overall cohesive picture that makes them sense in terms of what they're trying to do to their roster. Yeah.

And there's no like if you're on paper, fourth, fifth, whatever in the West and you do need a break in the playoffs. Guess what? Teams get those breaks all the time. And all you can do is put yourself in position to take advantage of them. And they're a better team today than they were last season. When they were arguably on paper the second best team in the West for like 25. games. I never bought that as a like a lasting thing.

I picked the nuggets to beat them in the playoffs, but they were that good. I mean, they were very, very good. Teams do get those breaks. Do the Clippers ever get those breaks? Is this a team that has ever historically had that sort? And maybe that means they're overdue. Maybe that means it's coming.

Yeah. Chris Paul didn't get those breaks either. He does not. But Lob City, you know, I don't know what the incorporation status of Lob City is, but it might be kind of back. You know, you got John Collins, you got Derek Jones Jr. Avita Zubots is like not really jumping, but it is a lob, technically speaking. He'll catch the lob land and jump again. I don't know if that that's like lob suburbs or like lob exurbs or something. That's infrastructure, baby. I think that's

innovation. You know, we're really advancing what the lob agenda can be. By the way, I should have mentioned this with the Blazers. I mentioned the bar being high for the thunder. What the Blazers are going to face and every team in the West is facing. It kind of goes without saying, but you have to say it every podcast. We're going to maybe talk about the Grizzlies later and they're in-between status. If you're a West team that has a five-year time horizon, you're just looking at Oklahoma City

and the storm that's brewing in San Antonio and it's like, how, how, just how, can you, if we're Memphis, can we just please be the team that gets moved to the east if there's expansion? Because what are we supposed to do with these two teams? Speaking of the West, the other big thing that happened over the weekend,

and LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers signed Marcus Smart off a buyout from Washington. Marcus Smart has barely played basketball for the last two years and not look great when doing it. Pencil in Marcus Smart for me, Rob, how does he fit with the Lakers? How much does this help the Lakers who jumped into what last time I checked a three-way tie for the fourth best odds to win the West with Minnesota and the clippers. Is it behind those three that I mentioned? And it's a big gap. But, you know, again, this is the team that has Luka.

man. It has Luca. We just saw Luca two years ago go to the finals, like a team went to the finals on his back. So tell me about Marcus Smart. I just another like why not signing, to be honest with you, like a good third guard who can play with Luca or with Austin Reeves or with both, depending on how you want to, you know, shape up your rotation. I see it as like kind of like a mulligan on Gabe Vincent in a lot of ways. You know, you're kind of gesturing at the same sort of guard, but Marcus Smart more accomplished. The difference, I really have like two. sticking points to the extent that they exist. This is a buyout signing.

Again, why not if you're the Lakers? Take a chance on Marcus. I really hope one of our sticking points is the same, but please give me the two. Sticking point number one, I mean, you mentioned the last two years, we haven't seen a lot of Marcus Smart. I mean, the last five years, we haven't seen a lot of Marcus Smart. Like, he's been pretty consistently injured for year over, year, over year,

now. And I would say what the Lakers need in this type of player the most is a volume defender. right they need somebody who's getting you through an 82 game season i like that concept volume defender i like sometimes you need it like you need a guy who's going to eat minutes and eat like i mean lucca and austin reeves are not guarding threats on the perimeter that are of like any high order unless absolutely necessary and so it would be great if you had someone to play with them or behind them who can take on some of that responsibility is mark or smart that guy anymore i honestly don't know he picks up a lot of random injuries it's not even like a through line i don't think where there's like a

chronic issue. It's just like this and that over the course of his entire career, basically. I would say that's caveat number one. Caviot number two, what they need most is somebody who can guard guards. Can Marcus Smart at this stage in his career guard guards? Like I would say he might be better suited for guard like playing up and guarding threes than opposing point cards at this point. What about what about force? I mean, let's keep it going. Well, no, but on a team where LeBron, you know, there are going to be lineups where LeBron is nominally the four. Right. Like, but you might, if the opposing four is the best player on the team, you're not going to want LeBron in that assignment necessarily.

You're not going to want Luca in that assignment, even though he can guard fours too. Marcus Smart has guarded up a lot in his career, fours, five, whatever the year he won defense player of the year. By the way, not my defense player of the year. I'm raising my hand. I did not vote. Marcus Smart did not make my ballot that year.

So he was like a strong fourth and first team all defense for me. But, you know, that guarding fours has some value to the Lakers. But yeah, guarding guards, there's, you know, I saw someone report yesterday, I forget who maybe, I think it was Mark Stein actually, that he's in, that he's really been paying attention to his conditioning and he's in great shape. Like, yeah, that would be getting quicker and skinnier around screens would be helpful. Yes. I mean, just quicker you can only do so much, granted at this point in his screen. He's always been a stockier, bigger bodied guard, right? Who has some of this flexibility to his game.

And what was once like a quirk, that matchup flexibility, the ability to put him on guys as big as threes and fours, I think they're going to be able to leverage some of that, and it was nice once upon a time. Now it's kind of like his default way of life. And that, again, is valuable to the Lakers, but the idea of him chasing around opposing point guards, especially the ones that you're going to want him to match up against in the West,

that's a tall order for Marcus Smart at this stage. What's your second sticking point? I would say that's kind of one, too. The health, like availability. and can he actually guard the players that they really need him to be able to guard. Can I give you a third sticking point? I would love it. Jordan Goodwin was good last year.

And they had to waive him to get Marcus Smart, who's played like 40 games in the last two years. There is a universe, and I'm not saying that we're going to live in this universe. The Lakers certainly don't want to, where Jordan Goodwin is as good next season as Marcus Smart. He was good. Before the playoffs, there was this wonderful story by Dan Wojke about the banshees that called them the banshee culture with the lakers and jordan goodwin and jared vanderbilt who's still here setting the tone on defense just by screaming around on defense and then of course they could barely play in the playoffs but you know be that as it may jordan goodwin was actually like a real contributor to

their team who if you talk to their coaches would be like oh you know who the guy are just sneaky love on our team is jordan goodwill he's gone yeah and like a tru jordan goodwin is exactly the kind of player i'm talking about like a hounding stopper who you could trust with this kind of responsibility over as many minutes as you can deign to play him, and you can fit him in on offense and all of those things. Don't have that guy anymore. I guess Jared Vanderbilt, if you want to play him big minutes, which they clearly don't.

The Lakers roster is in an odd spot. And they, not unlike the Clippers, have their own offense defense tradeoffs in a lot of different ways that they're going to have to manage. But Jordan Goodwin doesn't have his size and to be the volume defender that you talked about with Marcus. And Vanderbilt, look, like, he's going to have moments in the regular season.

where he's guarding the opposing point guard and hounding him and all of this. And like the Lakers still aren't quite sure if and maybe the lean is no when it really matters, can we play him next to a center who's a non-shooter? The answer has largely been no. Now they obviously have a much better center than they did after the Anthony Davis-Luca trade last year in DeAndre Aitin who can shoot mid-range numbers at a pretty elite level, frankly. But if Vando can only play in small ball lineups where he and LeBron are kind of co-centers or where he and LeBron and

Rui are tri-centers or whatever, then there's only so many minutes to go around for him. But let me ask you. There's also been, I would say, little whispers, mutterings, murmurings of, you know what, the Lakers are kind of invested in the idea of Maxi Klieba being a meaningful part of this rotation as a backup somewhere along the line. And look, your belief in Maxi Kleba's actual shooting, I think is really an eye of the beholder thing and maybe more of a theoretical thing than an actual one, at least since the Mazen to the conference

finals with him years and years ago. I was going to say, the Luca Kleba 1-5 pick and roll back in 2020 was killing people. Was the thing once upon a time. Is it still a thing remains to be seen? And if he's a real backup five for them and maybe supplants, you know, Jackson Hayes for a good chunk of those minutes, as it seems like JJ Redick is just waiting for the chance. to do. Like, you know, I don't think Jackson Hayes is a JJ Redick player by any definition.

Maybe Maxie Kleba is more of one. And if that's the case, maybe there's more room for Vando. Maybe that shooting could open something up for him. I'll say this about Maxi Kleba. Incredible beard. Just immaculate beard. Let me ask you a radical Lakers question. Between Marcus Smart, let's assume Marcus Smart.

We get like good Marcus. Like the old Marcus Smart is gone, but like good, reliable, Marcus Smart, she's 35% on spot-up 3s. That's one thing Marcus Smart can do because he did it in Boston. Set ball screens and make plays out of that, which is useful when you have LeBron and Luca on your team. Let's say you get decent Marcus Smart and good Jake Laravia, who is, I think, an underrated signing for them.

Is there a world where one of Austin Reeves or Rui Hachamura comes off the bench? Wow. I think Reeves, he might be. too good to do it, but the balance of the team would benefit if he did. I don't want to, you know. That's why I asked. I don't want to invoke the name Manu Genoblee, but there's a reason. No, no, no, no.

I'm not saying there's any comparison between them. I'm just saying, like, there's a reason why that balance worked for the spurs and why very few teams have been able to convince players of any star-adjacent caliber to do it. Or they'll do it but reluctantly, or they'll do it but grumblingly. like it's it's a heart pill for a lot of guys to swallow would the lakers be better if austin rie in a contract year by the way and yes uh i think it would help them i don't think it will happen ruy is maybe like a more realistic example but i don't know that that might be asking too much of of lucca and lebron and austin guarding you know presumably two through four or

one three and four like that that's a lot for those guys to prop up defensively ruy um I kind of agree with everything you said. Like I think Austin Reeves is probably ascended past this discussion. And it would be a tough. I mean, JJ would do it. I mean, if he thought it was the right move and I don't know if JJ does. He would do it. He wouldn't care.

He would be able to massage it one way or another. But this guy, like Austin Reeves looks like an all-star potentially. And would not surprise me if he made an all-star team in the next three, four years, depending on how the Lakers build. Rui is just like, last two years, with the Lakers. Now, again, the first year was, no, but not even limited sample size. The last two years, 42% from three, 41% from three, size and versatility on defense to a decent level. Like, that's just the guy kind of won around in the starting lineup, like a 6-8 guy

who can shoot 40% from three, has a little bit of a post-up game if you put small guys on him. I just think it's a question that's worth asking. Like, when you think about what is the best version of this team, it requires both smart and Laravia to hit at a pretty high level to make it a discussion worthy of really happening. But Rui is a particularly interesting one to me because all the attention has been on Austin Reeves free agency after the season, how it makes no sense for him to extend. Rui is also extension eligible and an unrestricted free agent after this season

if there is no deal struck. And the Lakers have been pretty open about we're prioritizing cap space going forward. You know, even if LeBron leaves. after the season. And obviously the LeBron drama continues to hover around. But let's just say he plays the season and then either retires or leaves in free agency or whatever. And it is an expiring contract as Brian Winhorst has referred to him. The Lakers view him quote as an expiring contract.

That's what Brian said. If you put in reasonable contracts or cap holds for Reeves and Hachamura, the cap space picture like already gets pretty tight if Luca is. extends. Luca cannot extend until August 2nd. I would expect Luca to extend because I don't see why he wouldn't. Mark Stein reported he was pretty active recruiting Marcus Smart. That's interesting.

But I'm just saying like Rue is an interesting pivot point player, good player versus cap space dilemma that all these teams face eventually. I don't know, man. I think the Lakers are good. Yeah. I think they had, I think they had a good summer on balance. I'm on record as saying I think the Aiton thing will work pretty well. it's again it's just hard for me given lebron's age as the second best player on the team

it's just it's not reasonable for me to expect he's going to make it through the whole season intact and full full velocity in the playoffs those three teams at the top are just really good man just really really good i think it's hard to expect lebron a guy who just had an all-n-v a caliber season an actual all-nbba season to do that again all regular season and still be the guy they need him to be to advance as far in the playoffs as they might like. It's just too much to ask at this stage. And that's where you need Luca to look more like his pre-injury self. That's where you need Austin Reeves to take a step forward.

That's where you need some of these like very pragmatic opportunistic signings, whether it's Aiton or Smart or La Ravia, to really, really cash in a meaningful way. And if a couple of those things do, they're going to be in the mix, generally speaking. But I see them more as in the Clippers mix than I do in the Nuggets, Rockets, Thunder mix. Agreed. Again, nothing wrong with that in the Western Conference. Not a bit. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Build for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate,

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eBay, things people love. A couple of news. Let's take a quick newsy detour. Three newsy items. Derek Queen out for three months with some sort of injury that I already forgot about. It's not going great for the Pelicans. I don't know if we need to go beyond that. Jalen Williams with a thunder.

I mentioned last week that Chet's contract was a straight 25% max across the board. Haven't seen this reported elsewhere. A couple people who have seen the Jalen Williams contract have described it to me like this. It has the escalators for all the all NBA defense player, the year MVP stuff. These people have told me here's how the escalators work. And this to me is like a fair representation of how I would like a lot of these to go. Third team all NBA, you bump up from 25 to 26%. Second team all NBA, you bump up from 25 to 27%.

All other things, first team all NBA in the major individual awards, the full 30% max. I've always said that third team all NBA should be treated as a different thing. That's one way of doing it. And by the way, it, again, to repeat this, I think it's BS right off the bat that GILA Williams even has to re-earn the 30% bump. He just made all NBA in his third year. He should automatically get the, the whatever bump is necessary for him. He shouldn't have to negotiate it, but he did. And this is a fair, it's a fair negotiation. Third bit of news. All right, Rob, you got to be Judge Judy now. Yeah.

Camp Thomas was mean to me online. He certainly was. Would you say you were mean to him? So, okay, so background. Let me bring up the tweet now. I like Camp Thomas. I have nothing against Camp Thomas. So an aggregator, as they are want to do, aggregates this. Zach Lowe on Camp Thomas.

The consensus on Camp Thomas. the consensus on Cam Thomas, if there is one, and he's got some fans and he's got some mega detractors, but the consensus is kind of like empties calorie ball hog. That was 30 seconds in what was a 12-minute deep dive into Cam Thomas's game. And even there, I say, if there is one, it's that. I'm sorry to report that that's true. And then Cam Thomas responded by saying, the consensus, fuck you and the consensus, Zach Lowe. B.A. I like the consensus getting some

strays there. This is most likely the same consensus teams who can't guard me and send double teams from the jump ball. Why are we double team a guy who's not that good? I don't know in quotes. Make it make sense, please. Look, restrictive free agency sucks, first of all.

It sucks that all these guys are stuck in this purgatory. It would be the greatest triumph the players union could ever have to eliminate restricted free agency. I don't know. It would take such a give back somewhere else that I don't know if they'll ever be able to do it. But one thing I will never do, Rob, do you remember those old Sports Illustrated columns or it's like anonymous scout speaks about guys in the NBA? I did these for the magazine sometimes, did the interviews. It's a, it's a wild

ride. Well, and it always, I never liked them because it was just an outlet for these scouts to say nasty things about players. Yes. And I would always think to myself, why don't you, not you, Rob Bohoney, like you writer guy, like you have a brain. What do you think about the players? Why should you not have to win about the players? So one thing I will always do is I cite the consensus and I say if there is one, he's got some fans, he's got some mega detractors. I will then offer my own opinion.

And if Cam Thomas had listened to the subsequent 12 minutes, I don't think he did, but I don't know. He would have heard me deep dive into his game and talk about career high and assists. certain kind of passes that he's gotten meaningfully better at. Nick Claxton Lobbs, little dump-offs and stuff like that. I have said consistently for two years of Cam Thomas' dialogue that the guy can straight up get buckets and there is a place for him in the NBA. To me, that place is most likely sixth-man scoring burst guy, which is what I said in that

12-minute segment, Nikaius Duncan on that segment when it got numbers about how good the Cam Thomas Nick Claxton pick and roll was. And then I talked about how a lot of his passes are kind of like I'm in jail, last resort passes, and what does he look like as an off ball player? I'm not sure that anyone really knows that yet, or we've seen a lot of evidence of it. My only rebuttal would be like it was a fair, I thought. And no one else in national media is going into 200 Cam Thomas pick and rolls before a podcast to really dissect it. And I offered my own opinion. He probably still doesn't like my own opinion.

but my own opinion was probably best is sixth seventh man score, not sure he has the vision or whatever mindset. And frankly, like, I do think sometimes he plays like a ball hug and that's okay because he can score and he's on a terrible team. But I don't think anything I said was unfair. And I'm, you know, I just felt like I needed to say, I need to address.

I don't like to do this. Like Mark Cuban once said, fuck you, Zach Lowe on national television. Because like, you don't, Do you remember why this was? I don't even remember what the cause was. What instigated it? It was during the pandemic, like 2020, 2020,

maybe we're coming out of a little bit. I said on a podcast with Tim McMahon that Luca Danchich might be the biggest whiner in the NBA with officials. And he pushed back on that. I feel like I was vindicated on that one. And no one actually thought I was wrong. And I feel like I'm okay on Cam Thomas. I'm comfortable with 100% of what is.

And you get all these responses like, oh, he cooked you. He cooked you. I'm like, I feel pretty good. I did my laps in the pool yesterday. I had a nice weekend. Like, I didn't really affect my life. I'm comfortable with everything I said about Camp Thomas. End of story.

You're hitting Camp Thomas with the LeBron-esque. You got to wake up and have the same life again tomorrow kind of routine. That's the way you're going? No, no, I just wish these things, like the aggregation is just part of the deal. And I've learned to just like, there's, it's like twice a week you'll have these things happen. And an agent will call and whatever we'll call. and I'll just have to be like, can you just listen to the actual thing?

Because, yeah, I said what's being aggregated. Yeah. But if you're going to be mad at me, just listen to the actual thing. I think if you listen to the actual thing, it's all pretty fair. And I've just generally been like, I've argued with GMs privately who,

now this is a year or two ago, a year ago maybe, who would be like, yeah, we just don't think the guy's good. I'd be like, I should think Camp Thomas is kind of good. Like, I've argued on his behalf. So I don't know.

I'm comfortable with everything I said. I take none of it back. I thought it was fair. The warts are there. The good things are there. I'm interested to see where he ends up. Yes. I thought you and the guys were both very fair,

especially about the progress and the playmaking and like some of the ways in which his game is advancing, if not maybe as fast or as comprehensively as you might want. I also thought Cam kind of cooked himself a little bit by saying, how could you say this about a guy who gets double teamed all the time? There's a reason you're getting double teamed. And it's not just because there aren't a lot of scorers on the Brooklyn Nets. It's because they don't think you're, you're going to pass the ball. And I don't think you're going to pass the ball. I, you know what,

aggregate this, if you will. I, Rob Mahoney, don't think that you're going to pass the ball, Cam Thomas. I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't see that part of his game coming along as, like, I don't think he's ever going to be someone who eagerly moves the ball, who eagerly participates in a comprehensive offense. That doesn't mean there's not a role for him. It means that if you are a team that even had a chance at hypothetical cap space, you're not going to detonate your roster to sign Cam Thomas as a restricted free agent. It means if you're the Brooklyn Nets, a team that I would say needs

first option go-to scoring as much as any team in the league. How about the history of the league? They're in the running, and here they are not exactly tripping over themselves to sign Cam Thomas to a star-type contract, which I would guess he envisions himself

as that kind of player. And like, a lot of this is sort of the paradox of the NBA, which is the odds of making it to the league are so astronomically small. The only way you mean, make it is by believing yourself in the way that Cam Thomas believes in himself. And then once you get there, the only way you stick around for the vast majority of players is by having an incredible amount of self-awareness.

I don't think that Cam Thomas has a ton of self-awareness as a player. I think he's a guy who's a clearly skilled score who can manufacture buckets with the best of them. And I'm here to tell you in the 2025 NBA, that's not always enough. And it's certainly not enough to get you paid consistently all the time to the degree that you might like. And look, I'll just put a bowl. on this way saying this. If anyone's still mad about this, I just listened to the 12 minutes I did

the other day because I stand, I'm comfortable with everything I said there. End of story. Restricted free agency really does suck. It does. And I'm not sure what the solution is to it, but Giddy, Kaminga, Thomas, Grimes, you know, wouldn't surprise me if a couple of them took one plus one kind of deals just to get back into free agency if there is more cap space projected for next season, which there is, because they are at risk of being frankly underpaid because there's just nobody out, nobody left to pay them. Okay. Oh, actually, I mean, before we move on, I don't know what your merch budget is, but if you wanted to mock up some shirts that say like fuck Zach Lowe and fuck the consensus, I would probably buy one.

Fuck the consensus. There's got to be an album that's called fuck the consensus by some indie band. Oh, that's rage against the machine if I've ever heard it. Yeah. Okay, random deep dive team of the day. You proposed the Memphis Grizzlies as our random deep dive team of the day. I mentioned before like every other team in the West with a somewhat long time horizon. They are dealing with the current behemoth in Oklahoma City and the Wemba Njama storm in San Antonio. They traded Desmond Bain for four first round picks, effectively two of which they used to move up to draft Cedric Howard at number 11. That trade evinced a sort of reality check of like, we're not ready now, but we still have John Moran. we still have Jaron Jackson Jr.

who they since renegotiated and extended. And if you have both of those guys making $100 million between them, a Jaws extension eligible right now, by the way, I haven't heard a peep about anything there. If as long as you have those guys on your team, making $100 million between them, you are by definition trying to win on some timetable. Not this year's timetable,

but your statement to the league is, we think this infrastructure is enough that with coward being really good and or a trade coming in down the line with these assets that we just acquired for Bain, we think we can butt back in to that picture where we were before all of this went sideways. And my question to you is, can they? And how do they do that? I think they can down the line to some extent. Here's the larger philosophical question. I guess the plan now is just to cross your fingers, pray for rain. and believe in John Morant, like to believe that this guy is the guy. I think it's been harder to rely on Jha as a star than almost any other star in the league over the last couple years between the absences, the suspensions, the injuries, some of the quirks of his game and the walls he runs into as like a playoff performer.

All that stuff is so real. And yet you see him on the court and you want to believe in that player and you see the galvanizing effect he has on basically everyone around him and you remember how powerful that can be. I don't blame the grizzly. for believing in that. But they have a long way to go in terms of figuring out, like, how to use those assets, what they have and some of the guys they just brought in, like, how much does KCP have left? That's a thing we can debate with a finer tooth comb if you'd like.

Is Ty Jerome, the guy we saw in the regular season, hit every single contested shot? Or is he the guy we saw in the playoffs not do that over and over again? And to what extent, is that a meaningful part of this team or not? I just think there's so many variables with them. And we know who the teams are in the West who are clearly going for it. and we know who the teams are on the West who are clearly not. And somewhere in the middle is a team that won 48 games and traded away a really good player in Desmond Bain

and might also still be a good winning team just because they have all this stuff, because they have a lot of good players, and they have John, Jaron Jackson, and maybe that's enough to at least kind of get yourself into the category. It really all, like, sometimes it's just simple, right? And, like, the answer here is very simple. If John Morant is never going to be a top 10 to 12 player again,

They're never going to, it's just not going to happen with this team. Like, they're not going to be able to sniff the Oklahoma City, San Antonio stuff. And there's other teams in the West they're going to rise up to unless things go wrong in those places, which they very well could. Yeah. Jaron Jackson Jr. is really good. There's probably a little bit more room for improvement, but it feels like he's just kind of maximizing what he can do offensively. He's not the smoothest offensive player with the ball, but he gets things done. Yeah.

I love him as a driver, to be honest with you. Like physical. Yeah. The range of what he can do. the dribble, I think is pretty unique among like the bigs in the landscape right now. Quirky makes a lot of floaters and half hooks and all that stuff. But if Morant is, you know, the 35th best player in the NBA, the vision of this team is kind of dead on arrival. If he's not, then there's something here.

Currently they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10th best odds to win the West next year, which feels to me about right behind the spurs, actually, which I'm, wow. I like that because I'm bullish on the spurs. I talked about this last week with Moad DeKille. I think the spurs are a sneaky like leap. Not sneaky. I think the leap could come faster and bigger than maybe expected. And yeah, I just, you know, you project the starting five.

Jah, KCP, Jalen Wells, Jaron Jackson, Jr. And you want to put in Zach Edy. He's injured and he's going to miss time to start season. That's kind of a big deal that Zach Eadie's injured. The bench is pretty good. You still got Scotty Pippa Jr. you mentioned Ty Jerome. Coward's going to get a chance to play right away.

Santiago Al-Dama is just straight up good. Love him. And maybe he fills in as a starter for EDI, and they shift Jaron Jackson Jr. To the five, or they start Brandon Clark, who's always good. And then the deep bench you got your Vince Williams, G.G. Jackson, Conchard, Jock Landale.

Like, all these dudes can play, and they still have these extra assets from Orlando. And by the way, if they do miss the playoffs this year, there's a likelihood they will have two lottery picks because they have their own pick, and then they have this swap-a-doodle-doo where they get like it's like Orlando, Washington, and Phoenix are all involved. And when you suss it out, if all of those teams play to expectations, it's very likely Memphis gets Phoenix's pick. Phoenix, I think, is a likely lottery team too.

That's something. Two bites at the lottery apple is something. But I think it's a good team. It's a deep team. I just, it's murky to me. Unless Coward just hits bigger and faster than people think on the Jodger and Timetail. But it's certainly an Indian. interesting team that's going to be feisty and tough defensively. No appetite here for bottoming out

right now. And I just don't, it's hard for me to see the vision going forward. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different versions of playing that middle path, right? There's the version that got the Pacers to the NBA finals, for example, of betting on young players you really believe in, and believing in like the gradual coalescing of a supporting cast, of making kind of the big opportunistic swing for a galaxy acum when it comes available. And then there's this version. which is just like we knew, for one, I think the John Morant, Desmond Bain, Jaron, Jaron, Jackson, trio had genuinely run its course in a lot of ways. And we had seen too clearly and too plainly what the limitations of that team were going to be.

This gives you a chance to be a slightly different kind of team. It's still a John Morant, Jaron, Jaron Jackson team. I'm trying to get around to the idea that John Morant can be that sort of player again. I would say I've generally been a bit of a skeptic on him over the last 24 months or so for some pretty well-founded reasons. in my opinion. But what he does is electric. And what he does is something that's like really inimitable

and really hard to capture again through another kind of player. You can't just trade John Morant for another parallel star and be like, okay, we're just as good of a team. Okay, we're just as good of a driving force of our offense. Like, it's a hard thing to find.

And so I understand the instinct to hold on to that and to give it one more chance to refresh around the edges and see if that makes any meaningful difference. They're not there yet. And this means, Middle stage is kind of the one I'm fascinated by just to see which pieces stick and which ones don't.

And, you know, if you're going to pivot, it's like, I don't know how tradable Jaws right now anyway. Like for a deal that's going to make sense for the Grizzlies. Jaron Jackson Jr. are $35 million this year. 50-ish, 49, 50, 52, player option 53. Cap's going to go up. it's it's it's we'll see how much it actually goes up obviously the NBA's recent projections a little more pessimistic it's not a it's it's fine it's gonna be you know Spotrack has it projected somewhere between 29 and 30 28% of the cap like that's fine

it's it's not easy to trade any contract at that level um but jaren jackson junior is really good I had him on my all NBA teams the third team this year a lot I think he missed and he did miss just barely I thought he should have made it but you know eye the beholder type thing. It's a good team. I just don't know, you know, I don't know enough about Coward to really project him other than he was the biggest riser

in the last three months of the draft process. But I don't have any problem with the team deciding we're going to kind of tread water in the good space and wait to see if we can knock into the great space. It's just harder to not drown in the West than it is in the East. The West is presently constructed. Like you could tread water and be a 44 win team

that misses the play in. Like, that's a possible thing. I think they're probably going to be, yeah, in contention for the play in as much as anything, anything more than that seems awfully ambitious, given everything that they're going to have to fight through in the West. The wild cards here are not just Cedric Howard, but like,

we've been just kind of waiting on Gigi Jackson. And in some ways waiting on Vince Williams. And both of them have run into a bunch of injuries, a bunch of it, like just quirks in terms of the development. They have not quite paid off. If either of them has a breakthrough, where all of a sudden they are a more meaningful, like locked in rotation player,

then maybe you start to see the shape of something. And I like Jalen Wells a lot. Like I think he's a player who's going to make sense for them long term, would make sense for basically any team and was hurt at the end of last season. So getting him back as a meaningful thing. But not a meaningful thing in the way that's going to catapult you to the level we've been talking about with some of these other like hyper competitive West teams or just like more talented West teams,

frankly, than where the Grizzlies are now. Yeah. Jailen Wells is also interesting because Grizzlies will not be able to have cap space a year from now. there's a world in which they have cap space in the summer of 2027, but it's it's kind of tight and it requires like declining Santiago Al-Dama's option, declining a bunch of other options. And in there somewhere is a Jalen Wells extension,

a Jalen Wells extension where they kind of decline a team option and extend them out there. So interesting. Yeah, I mean Memphis, you know, you mentioned playing. I think, you know, somewhere in that range, that's seven to ten is right. I think you are betting that one of these older teams, like something befalls someone in the Lakers, Warriors, Clippers trio. But I think all three of those, well, the Warriors have done nothing and we know why they've done nothing. They've got stuff in a holding pattern.

But the L.A. teams have done well to round out their depth to sort of give them a little bit of ballast against some bad injury luck. And then, you know, we'll see what happened. right below the Grizzlies is a, the Grizzlies are plus 5,000 to win the West. Then there's a jump to plus 13,000 and the Sacramento Kings below them. Dallas is in there too. And like Dallas is,

Dallas is right below the Warriors. And I haven't talked, we haven't talked much about them. Cooper Flag is going to be awesome. But like that's, that's a team that could go a lot of different directions next year with Kyrie out for quite a long time. They're a hard team for me to peg.

They're your, you know, team. I have to think about them a little more. I don't know if that projection is optimistic, not optimistic. They've got AD, obviously. It's a strange brew there right now. Incredibly strange brew, incredibly susceptible to injury, not just Kyrie's,

but Clay and AD's ability to hang and be healthy is obviously beyond critical. And so stacking that, along with Cooper flags need to be good immediately for this to be a good competitive team, like you're just compounding variables. in a way that I think makes them as very exciting and I'm very eager to see it play out in real time. But also they're hard to not just like literally bet on, but to wrap your head around what the shape of that team is going to be, how they're going to play. Who's going to handle the ball for one? Like are you running Cooper Flag as a ball handler a lot? Are you trusting DeAngelo Russell and Dante Exxon with those responsibilities?

Like there's there's a lot to figure out. And for a team in the Mavericks position who just made a franchise altering trade, I think you would hope that they had more already figured out. But I'm going to enjoy watching it. That's for sure. One last bit of semi-breaking news, and I say semi-breaking because it's kind of expected, but Danatasarbonus, who's a very acclaimed European journalist covering the NBA over there, spoke with Yonis Valenciunis about what's going out with the Nuggets and Panathanaikos. I want to make clear, this is Valentunis, I want to make clear, I want to clear the air

about my playing situation next season now that Denver has made their decision to keep me. The idea of playing for Panathanaikos closer to home was very exciting to me, but that will have to wait. I am fully committed to honoring my contract with the Nuggets this season and will give it my all to compete for a championship. So that is done. I expected it to be done. That sounds pretty done to me. And a small but important win for the Nuggets who now finally have an actual identity to lean upon when Yokic is on the bench. I thought their summer was pretty much an A plus summer.

And between them and the Rockets both separated themselves to me as like, I mean, the Denver was already. as long as you have Yolkich and a decent team, you're already a preeminent challenger at Oklahoma City. They cemented that. I thought they had an awesome summer and just wanted to note that the JV thing seems to be about done. Yeah, if between JV and Bruce Brown and one of like the Strother Pickett Hunter Tyson group

like solidifies in any meaningful way, now you've really got something. I think they have enough sort of swings at those last rotation spots where you could see them leveling up through that alone. Rob Mahoney, where can we find you this week? What do we got going on? Hopefully, like, lounging on my couch doing nothing. That's what we're hoping for.

That's the ideal. We're easing into that stage, Zach. Well, I'm going to Europe in 10 days. Might take her microphone with me just in case, just in case something happens. But I got 10 more days until the annual Euro sojourn. But I will be obviously alert and aware of what is happening in the NBA. This will be our last podcast together before I return from said sojourn. it's been wonderful having you on and getting you into the rotation and being colleagues.

It was great seeing you in Vegas. Likewise. At an undisclosed hotel location. Rob Mahoney, you're the best. Thank you, sir. Thanks. I appreciate it. All right, that's it for today.

Absolutely loaded show. Rob, awesome. As always, I hope to see him soon. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Thank you for Jesse and Jonathan on production. I will see you Thursday as scheduled unless something crazy happens for a new show. We'll do Metz Corner again, baby.

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