Will Cain Country - More Drama For Draymond Green and Everything You Need To Know About The NBA Playoffs  (ft. Andy Bailey)

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

On this edition of The Will Cain Show’s Friday sports episode, Will is joined by NBA Writer at Bleacher Report, Andy Bailey to break down Draymond Green's latest antics, every series of the NBA Conference Semifinals in both the East and West, and who will be left standing at the end.   Will and Bailey also discuss if it's time to start adding Nikola Jokić to Mount Rushmores of the NBA's greatest players of all time, and if Jokić or Giannis Antetokounmpo may leave their respective teams in the near future.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit td.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. ways in trouble. Is it because the league thinks he's an angry black man? Plus, breaking down every series of the NBA playoffs. It is the Will Kane Show normally streaming live every Monday through Thursday at 12 o'clock Eastern time at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook. Just hit subscribe at Apple or on Spotify. Hopefully as you have, as you've now, streamed this episode of Canaan Sports, our Friday edition of The Will Kane Show focused exclusively on sports. Today we dive deep on the NBA. We haven't talked much to NBA,

so I actually found this conversation fascinating, and I went a full hour with Bleacher reports Andy Bailey. We talked about the ridiculousness of Tremon Green. We talked about an all-time top five list of the NBA, and does it now include Nicola Yolkich? We talked about whether or not Yantis Ante Cumpo or Yokich will ever leave their teams, and we broke down every series of the NBA conference semifinals. Here is Bleacher Reports, Andy Bailey. NBA writer for Bleacher Report. Andy Bailey is with us here on the Will Kane show.

What's up, Andy? Not much, Will. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. You bet. So we're in the conference semifinals of the NBA playoffs, roughly about the time that I start paying attention a little more. I do pay attention to the first round, but you start narrowing the team.

You start narrowing the interest. And I want to walk through each of the conference semifinals matchups with you. But I want to start with, I guess, what is the most notable and controversial thing today that will most likely lead every episode of first take and the national conversation for at least a day or two, and that is Draymond Green and the Golden State Warriors. So last night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Draymond Green draws a foul on Nas Reed. He does something that is very Draymond Green, and we have seen it on multiple occasions.

and that's this sort of intentional to mint to look unintentional right at the face and head of Nas Reed. And he gets an intentional flagrant. And for those of us watching us on YouTube or Facebook, they can see for themselves the actions of Draymond Green. And I think that's important because you have to see it while Draymond Green characterizes it afterwards for you. And so here's what Draymond Green had to say about him drawing this flagrant foul. Listen, we're a great family, and I'm great at basketball. I'm great at what I do to keep the agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry black man. It's crazy.

I'm sick of it. It's ridiculous. All right, there you go. He's tired of being characterized as the angry black man. Your thoughts, Andy Bailey. Well, my first thought, and I posted this on Twitter, when I saw the video, I wonder if he's ever even seen all the clips of himself. There's, I just genuinely don't believe there's a racial component to this.

There's a Draymond Green component, and that's it. The way you characterized his intentional, though meant to look unintentional flails, I think is a good way to put it. He had one in, I think it might have even been game one of this series, too. It happens regularly. There are already, like, super cuts of him flying all over Twitter today and probably last night, too, of all the skirmishes he's been in. I mean, he put Rudy Gober in a chokehold for crying out loud, like, a year or two ago. He smacked Yus of Nurkich in the face.

He stomped on Domina Sabonis's chest. He kicked Stephen Adams in the groin. I mean, it's just, like, one thing after another with him. and to try and, like, divert, to me, this is just an effort to divert from the real story, which is he can't control himself on the basketball court. And it's obviously going to be a part of his legacy. I don't necessarily think he even needs to run from it. I think it might be smarter for him to say, yeah, I'm extremely emotional.

A lot of what he said in that clip is true. He's very good at basketball. He seems a lot of times on his podcast. and other public comments, he does seem like a relatively intelligent guy. He should just say, I lose my mind because I'm so hyper-competitive. And maybe he will embrace that in his post-playing days. I mean, there's a lot of guys from history who had similar reputations. And I don't think it, like, really smears their legacy in any way.

Like, I still love Rashid Wallace, even though he was, like, good for a technical every other game, it felt like. Some of these guys are just hyper-emotional, hyper-competitive. It's part of the game. And I think he would be better served just saying, yeah, I kind of lose it sometimes. Well, I'm going to tell you why I think he can't own it and why he wouldn't make that part of, you're right, it's going to be part of his legacy, by why he wouldn't own that part of his legacy. But I want to start with asking you a question, who do you think is? I mean, you brought up Rashid Wallace, but who do you think are the guys that you see Draymond Green,

similarities to in history? Well, I guess he is unique. Rashid Wallace would be one. I think Patrick Beverly is another one who comes to mind, who's kind of a habitual light stepper. Bruce Bowen is another one. It's a lot of these guys who are like Tony Allen. It's a lot of these guys who developed a reputation

for being a gritty, defense-first guy, ultra-physical. And I think there's value to that. I mean, obviously it's had value for the Warriors. They've won four championships. with this guy and his defense has been a huge part of it. But if we were to have gradations of it, obviously I think Draymond's at the top. I mean, I think he's even exceeded Rashid Wallace

at this point. I mean, he's essentially a powder cake on the basketball court. And the other thing about this discussion that just came to me, he's not being targeted or victimized by the league in any way. If anything, it's the opposite. Like that play that you described last night. When he flips out on the refs afterward, the leeway that he gets, especially after he gets a first technical foul, is insane. I mean, he is allowed to berate refs and cuss them out in a way that really nobody else's league is. I was thinking about this last night. I think the only guy who might be close on that scale is like if LeBron flipped out on the refs, would they give him a ton of leeway to avoid throwing him out?

it's just amazing to me what he is allowed to get away with with officials even even with all the calls that he also gets well i think andy i think the most flattering historical comp that i can come up with is dennis rodman and i think it's still flattering to draymond green and i'm going to tell you why most of those other guys that you mentioned bruce bowen a very aggressive one could argue cheap defender. Rashid Wallace, very temperamental, very aggressive. But Dremont is doing a thing that honestly it reminds me of having two boys. And I don't know how many brothers and sisters that you have, Andy.

But it's like... I had a suspicion that you had, you had a lot of siblings. And then you've got your two sons. But it reminds me of my two sons fighting in this way. And I had a brother, I had two brothers and a sister. And if your parents aren't around, you're kind of free to unleash as much aggressiveness as you want. But if your parents are in the vicinity, then you hold back in this cheap and thinly veiled way. And people watching on YouTube or Facebook can see the clip right now of what he did to Nas read.

My point is what he's doing is juvenile. He is being aggressive. He is flailing. He is the guy who's initiating an outside-the-bounds hit, but he's holding back a tiny bit as though he's trying not to be caught. He's not a full-on swing, right? It's not even a full-on stomp. It's a half-e-stomp, right?

He doesn't, like, extend his leg all the way down and really try to hurt. What was it, Nerkich that he stomped on? I can't remember who is. That one was Sub-O-N-S-Bon-S. Okay, it was Sub-Bonis. It was a Havsie stomp. This is a havesy elbow to the face of Nas Reid, but it's still intentional. He still is.

What you'll notice is he doesn't bend his arm. And I know that I'm sort of breaking down frame by frame what he did, but I actually see so much consistency in what he's done that it's easy to analyze. He leaves a straight arm flail. You know what I mean? As though it's somehow viable. No, Mom. I wasn't hitting him.

No, Mom. I was just reacting. It's like everything is so immature. sure and yet outside the bounds and aggressive and because of that it's embarrassing Andy like if you're Rashid you can say what you said man I'm super emotional and I lose my temper right and I get aggressive if you're Draymond what do you say um I'm what I'm like a nine year old who's going after my 11 year old brother when you're watching us and I don't want to get a spanking so I do it like this to leave that little tiny bit of doubt in your head about whether I meant it

but you've done it for the dozenth time. I don't know, man. I actually think it's embarrassing for Dremont in a way that it's not embarrassing for Rashid. So he can't own it. And it's so, at this point, as the parent, it's so far beyond something that's viable. Like, get out of here, man.

You're simultaneously cheap and honestly kind of a liar. Like, it's a liar move to do. Like, if your kid did this, you'd be like, tell the truth. You know what I mean? You'd be like, come on. And you'd simultaneously think less of him for not going all the way, nor telling the truth.

You know, you just reminded me my kids were playing. This was actually my daughter. My kids were playing Minecraft the other day, and I'm sitting five feet away from her, and I watched her hit my son on the arm because he was messing with something, and she just swore up and down that she didn't hit him. So it sounds a lot like what you're describing.

And I love the Dennis Rodman cop. That's another one that makes a lot of sense for Draymond. I'm just a phenomenal defender. Yeah. He did a little of this cheap. See, I think I can get away with this type of stuff here and there. But he was, for him, his reputation is wrapped up in so many other things, including his incredible basketball abilities. Yeah.

All the off court stuff as well, his fashion statements, everything. It's like, that's just like one small piece of the legacy of Rodman. Yeah. And maybe what's unique about Draymond is there are, there are just. elements we can take from each of these guys that we named to kind of get to the Draymond hole. And the only, I guess the only like, I don't even know if I call it a defense of Dremont, but maybe the defense of my earlier point is, I know the, like, he's not going to own being childish, nor, you know, I wouldn't recommend that.

But the alternative to owning, like, he can at least, I think, sell the fact that he's just super emotional and gets super caught up in the games because the alternative is what he did last night or that's one of the alternatives and that's a that's just a terrible alternative um it just it almost never looks good to make yourself out to be a victim in some case especially when you he's a highly decorated player um championships all-star teams um the leeway that i mentioned earlier like there there's just no conceivable world in which he is the victim that he tried to make himself out to beat last night. And he's going to have to figure out some kind of a different tact or he's just

going to be a punchline. And that's the thing. That's right. He's becoming a punchline. And again, the call to race is a little bit like the childish kid who is like, you only, you only always put me in time out because you hate me. You like him better. Whatever.

But this is even more insidious because this is like. This is, and you're free to respond, but this is how I feel about this. I actually think this gets pretty symbolic of every claim of racism. Not every claim, but most claims of racism. And that is, you absolve yourself of your personal conduct by suggesting that you're part of a grander prejudice. And everyone involved in this interaction, not all of Drayman's interactions, because you listed off a moment ago Stephen Adams and Nirkich and Sabonis. Those are white guys.

But it's the NBA. The vast majority people involved in these situations are black. guys and Nas Reid is a black guy right so we're talking about an interaction between two people and you are suggesting that because your behavior was punished it's because you're black and you have the league has bought into this angry black man narrative about you but I often say this it's like the thing about calls to racism at all times is it lets you it gives you a hall pass on your own personal behavior you know no the you know you cut that person person off and they're angry. It's not that they're angry because you're black. It's because

they're angry because you're an and that's the thing. You have only your own personality characteristics. We all do that supersede race and you don't get to say, ah, my behavior has no impact on the situation because everybody else all they see is an angry black man. It's just it's a rip cord you've tried to pull in the conversation that everyone's worn out on at this point. And B is just totally false. You're an individual, Dremont. You've got personality characteristics. And we've analyzed it over time. And your behavior, your unique individual behavior is what is to be indicted. Yeah, I think relative to Dremont, that's absolutely true. He is an individual. He's making these choices, whether fully conscious of them or not,

over and over and over again. It has nothing to do with his race. And the reaction to it has nothing to do with his race. Anybody could do this in the NBA. I mean, if this was the history and the pattern with any other player, they would be analyzed just the same way. I'm certain of that. They certainly would be by me. We have an example.

A less famous example. We have an example. Wasn't this same thing? Very similar in the childish ways I'm talking about, Grayson Allen, white player. And everybody looked at the stuff that Grace and Allen did and was like, he did the same thing where it's like haves the aggressive yeah yeah yeah right yeah i think that's a great um analogy i you know another one that popped into my head is people um freaked out when uh yokets towards the end of one of the series that he got eliminated swiped down real

hard on cameron pain on the suns there was a big reaction to that um you know i'm sure i could comb through NBA history and find plenty of examples of people from all over the world who step over the line and the reaction is going to be similar every time. The only thing that's different with Draymond is he steps over the line like every other week. So of course it's going to be a slightly different analysis. More of the Will Kane show right after this. I'm Janisteen. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now. at Fox News Podcast.com.

Listen to the all-new Brett Bear podcast, featuring Common Ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Bear favorites, like his All-Star panel, and much more. Available now at Fox Newspodcasts.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Will Kane show. I want to step into the conference in my finals now,

and you brought up a player just going to allow us to do that. You know I've talked about him last time. And Nicole Yolkich, and I know you're, massive fan of yokech i don't you may not be as big a fan as steve nash i saw steve nash recently it's in the past month on a podcast talking about we need to begin and i don't think that we will and i do think places like first take will not and i do think that we i do think there's a worthy conversation about whether or not that has anything to do with race or maybe the fact that he's a foreigner with um an unfamiliar sounding name but we need to begin the conversation of where yokech ranks all

time like we're talking about a guy approaching what top five player all time in NBA history and that sounds like an outlandish take on first take but Steve Nash made that point like I think Nash said we're talking about arriving at the point of the Mount Rushmore of basketball and it's probably hard to do that when LeBron is active and he's most certainly probably in that Mount Rushmore category. So can you have two Mount Rushmore's at the same time? But yes, it looks like we probably do with Nicole Iokic. Yeah.

He's, I mean, I've almost run out of ways to describe how dominant and effective he's been for at least the last half decade. If you're just looking at a pure number statistical analysis, his last half decade is literally unprecedented. Box plus minus is one of my favorite catch-all metrics, and I think most people's introduction to catch-alls is baseball, and I think a lot of people know about wins above replacement in baseball. And so box plus-minus is a similar endeavor in basketball,

and he's already the all-time leader in that stat. And if you want to check out the, effectiveness of box plus minus or you know how much you want to trust it the other guys in the top three are lebron james and michael jordan so that checks out pretty well uh his his box plus minus over the last five seasons each of them is like i think like five of the top 10 individual seasons of all time he just averaged a triple double this season and for the most part i don't think this has been true so far this post season but for the most part his numbers usually get better in the post season. He becomes more effective. He becomes more aggressive. He's just so unique in the

fact that he is, he's your team's point guard. He's your team's best rebounder. He's your team's best scorer. When he wants to ratchet it up on defense, he can be a defensive anchor. That's also the knock on him a lot of times in the regular season is he kind of gets lax on defense. But yeah, we're absolutely talking about a guy who could be knocking on the door of the top five. Now this this conversation is always so heavily dependent on ring count and people have different opinions on why that is or even if that should be the case. I personally believe that in today's NBA when it's a lot more difficult to win a single ring, maybe there's some way that we wait a modern ring a little bit differently than we do one in the 60s when there

was only 10 teams in the league or 19, whatever it was. So I think if he just stays at one, which is which is the likely mathematical outcome. People are going to hold that against him. If he gets two or three, I think it's pretty hard to keep him out of the top five. I mean, there's literally nobody else who's basically a walking 30-point triple double with Stefan Curry-like scoring efficiency.

There's truly been no one like him to this point. So if he does, and if he is approaching that top five, what are we talking about in your mind? I mean, we could rattle off the obvious ones like Jordan, LeBron, I think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is historically still underrated. He's not often enough included in these conversations. After those three, then you have sort of the Bill Russell, Wilk Chamberlain, Kobe Bryant conversation.

But I would actually say because the major argument for Bill Russell is the rings, but you make a great point about what it was to win the rings back then. but this is the debate I think Yokic is in he's in that conversation with the guys we just named Russell Wilt

Kobe and I like Kobe a lot but I think in opposite of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar history is overrating Kobe at this point in where he ranks in the Pantheon and I think

Yokic should start being considered yeah well I wrote for Bleacher Report back In 2019, I did the top 50 players of all time, and it's still one of our highest traffic pieces we've ever had. It's still one of our top things that comes up on Google searches. And I've pretty much got my top 10 memorized. It hasn't, I only recently have started thinking about changing it.

And my top three was the same as yours. It's Jordan, LeBron, and Kareem. At the time, I had Magic 4th and Larry Bird 5th, Shaquille O'Neal 6th, Tim Duncan's 7th. I think I had Bill Russell, 8th, Will Chamberlain 9th, and Stefan Curry 10th. And that was one of the controversial points at the time. I mean, that was six years ago. And I already had Curry in the top 10.

And people were livid that I had Kobe Bryant outside the top 10. I had a guy who probably made a thousand different Twitter accounts to harass me over that, just over and over and over. So I'm aligning with you on a lot of that stuff real well. I think Kareem is underrated. I think Kobe is maybe slightly overrated by a lot of people. And if I were just to do a strictly numbers comparison, which is something that I do often,

if you just, again, if you just take the last half decade of stats from Nicole Yolkich and you put them up against the best five-year run of any of those guys, I guarantee Yokic is going to come out on top in a blind pull against all of them, including LeBron and Michael Jordan. That's how good he's been. Now, I wouldn't put him over those guys, and I probably wouldn't put him over Kareem, because I think rings have to count to, you know, a certain extent.

I think legacy has to count to an extent. I think longevity has to count to an extent. Yes. And Yokic is only 30. So he's got more time to add to a lot of this stuff. But if you're just talking about all-time best peaks, he's already arguably number one. And if you've got that, you've got to. key into that top five discussion.

I'm glad you named a few others because I think history is also going to underrate Steph Curry and he is an all-time great, no doubt about it, who revolutionized the game of basketball. We're going to talk about the series specifically. Let's talk, in fact, while we're on the Nuggets about what you think of. It's one in one right now with the Thunder. The Thunder, I think, are everybody's favorite to win the NBA title this year. What have you seen in the first two games to either give you hope and inspiration for Yokic

or affirm, if you do, everyone's opinion at the thunder of the team to beat in the NBA? Yeah, I think the series has mostly just affirmed the fact that I think OKC is going to win it all. I picked OKC in six when the series started, but even that felt like it might just being a little too much of a homer for Yokic. And then they won game one, which actually did surprise me a little bit. maybe changed my perception slightly of the series. And then they lost by 43 in game two. And I think those two outcomes are kind of the extremes.

I don't think Denver is as bad as a 43 point loss to the thunder. But I don't think the thunder are as bad as their second half collapse in game one. So the truth about this series is probably somewhere in the middle of those two results, which still favors OKC. I would not be shocked if they went into Denver and won both of those games. I did pick Denver in six, so them winning one in Denver also wouldn't stun me, but I, you know, I was just talking to some family members about this yesterday. I don't feel like Denver has quite the same home court advantage that they did in like the Carmelo years or the Chauncey Billups years. That used to be a place like everybody was terrified of the altitude.

You could have the other team gasped by halfway through the third quarter. And I just don't think that's quite the case anymore. And I think OKC, a bunch of young super athletic, super long guys aren't going to be terribly affected by the altitude. I think they'll be fine in Denver and will at least get the split and then probably win in five or six. So this is a very Mike Greenberg, ESPN conversation to unfold, but I was listening to Local Sports Radio yesterday and it popped into my head. And so I talk about it out loud. OKC, if they get over the hump, and there's a long way to go, winning the conference semifinals, winning the conference finals, winning the NBA championship.

Those are all big levels to go step up through. But if they're capable of doing that, I mean, it does feel like you could be on the verge of something that's a multi-year run for OKC because they're so young, because they're so stacked, because they have so many assets to continue building, by the way. I think they're still, aren't they still loaded up on draft picks? Like, what they've done in OKC is set up.

And in some point, they'll have contract issues, with some of these players, but they've got these assets to backlog it to provide insurance policies that if you lose a guy, hopefully you draft a guy, OKC's here to stay is the point. They're going to be a problem. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think title windows generally speaking close faster in the NBA than we anticipate. I think that's happened over and over and over. Just look at the nuggets and the bucks for recent history.

they go from winning a title to looking like very, very long shots within a couple of years. There's obvious differences between them and OKC. Several of OKC's best players haven't even started their second contracts yet. The other thing that makes it difficult to have a long, sustainable title window in today's NBA is the current collective bargaining agreement just makes it nightmarishly difficult to keep good teams together. once chet home grant and jalen williams get their second contracts kicked in they're going to get super expensive the luxury tax penalties are crazy these new apron penalties that just came in for this season are crazy so it's long-winded way of saying it's very difficult to extend a window and to keep a very very good team together but o kc has been phenomenal at drafting over the years they've got a mountain of of future draft picks from all over the league that they can use to either get players.

You can have a ton of different swings of the draft or you can put them in trades. And I do think at the very least, they can keep SGA Williams Chet and that could develop into like an all time good big three. I mean, they are spectacular together already. And they have a really, really good coach who has put this brew of athleticism in length

switchability together in such as, I mean, I've never seen, I just switched gears very abruptly, but their general manager is also brilliant. I've never seen a team built so perfectly, not only the roster, but the backlog of picks that you mentioned. And something that I just keep thinking about, let's say they do happen to flame out at some point between now and the finals. They have, I think, intentionally signed some players just to be used in Star Treads. like Isaiah Hartenstein is a great player, but to have him on a 30 million per year salary tells me they at least have the thought, if things don't go well, we can pair him with a couple promising young guys. And we could put together the best offer for Yanosana to Kumpo this summer if we really want to. I mean, they're just, they're so stacked.

It's crazy. And they could, you know, they could put Hartenstein in contracts and like some small fraction of their. draft thing to go get Kevin Durant. I don't, you know, I don't think that would be a great idea. But the point is that they can go get pretty much anyone if they want to or need to. It's crazy. Let's take a quick break. In just a moment, we'll be back on the Will Kane show. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at the quiz. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz.

Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me. Kennedy, make sure to check out my podcast. Kennedy saves the world. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at Fox Newspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Welcome back to the Wilcane show. I want to talk about the other three series, but you bring up something that I kind of wanted

to talk to you about. It goes back to Yoko. She brought up Yonis. Luca Donchich being traded, I think, changes the way we've all viewed the NBA, quite honestly like i think i think it's actually it's such an earthquake not just for dallas but an earthquake for the entire NBA what i was curious about and i think we have to keep the luka thing in mind as we talk about this is maybe because they're all international players i group this together but the idea that yokic and yannis are lifers in milwaukee and denver do you think that's

he talked about yokech being 30 and when you said that i thought about is he a nugget the entirety of the next let's call it 10 years of his career he's probably not he's probably not another decade doesn't keep himself in great shape and i don't think he loves basketball like that like i don't think he has an interest in playing forever that's not to indict his motivations he's just shown to be a guy that's like i don't know i got some other things i'm into horses whatever uh going back home i don't think he wants to be an american he's kind of said that he wants to go back home so maybe some other motivation step in for yokech yeah maybe some other um motivation step in for Yokish.

But my point is, do you think you brought up a Yonis trade? Do you think Yonis and Yokic move? That's what I'm getting at. Do you think they move in their career? I don't think Yokic does because there's never even been any hint that he would think about that. As far as the length of his career, I think he loves basketball, but he has publicly said there are other things that he loves more, like his family.

So yeah, I also don't see him going till 40. I see him maybe signing one more massive contract, and that could be it. And that contract will, in all likelihood, be with Denver. Janus has at least put some breadcrumbs out there over the last few years. And I think most of the reporting over the last couple of weeks suggests he's not going to be traded this summer. But that could be a smokescreen. We see plenty of smoke screens and NBA player movement talks. You know, he talked about if Milwaukee didn't get him enough help,

it might have even just been a year ago. He might not finish his career there. And now they are, we just talked about how OKC has this crazy runway for the next several years. Milwaukee may have the most terrifying dead end of any team. They have no draft assets. Their second best player just ruptured his Achilles. and is in his mid-30s. Janus is in the back half of his prime.

There's no meaningful path to them getting better soon. So if he wants to compete for a title, he might have to be traded. So even if it doesn't happen this summer, I would lean towards, just because players change teams so much these days, I would lean towards Janus playing for at least one more team in his career. And then I was hoping to talk about the Luca trade with you, because I know that you're a Texas guy. I think he probably would have spent his entire career in Dallas based on a lot of

I mean, we can't completely foresee the future for a guy who was 25 at the time of the deal. But based on everything that we've heard and read since that trade, it sounds like he was very committed to staying in Dallas and bringing a championship there and the emotion that he showed when he went back to Dallas was crazy. and that that trade i can't imagine anything in the right i mean to this point in my career it's been the most shocking incomprehensible move that i've ever seen and i can't imagine anything surpassing it going forward so he was he was removed from this conversation um completely not of his own accord man i did a podcast yesterday guy named joe pagliarulo he goes by joe pags he does

a political podcast but he asked me about this you know i'm i'm i'm born and raised an hour outside of Dallas. I live in Dallas now. It's not an overstatement to say the city is still completely heartbroken. I mean, it is completely heartbroken. And I don't think it's mendable. I don't think it's mendable. I said this after the trade and I stand by it. I don't think a championship mends it. I really don't. If Nico Harrison is proven correct and Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis pair up to win a championship, it's not going to fix what what it means to have traded Luca Donchich. actually kind of wanted to talk about that with you as well without getting too far away from

the playoffs, but I'm going to vomit up a bunch of thoughts and just see what you think. I mean, we've talked about this ad nauseum, but the storyline has advanced, and you're a contrarian thinker, so I was curious where you would be, but, so I think if we're throwing all of these factors into a bucket, we're still going to end up at the same place, which is this is insane, trading lucidum. Yeah, yeah. But I guess I'm getting more interested in the broader conversation. And that is this.

Okay. There was a moment when I thought, whoa, it was regular season. And it was the end of the regular season where I thought, Luca and LeBron, oh my gosh, is like, you know, this is going to be a thing that it blows up in Nico Harrison's face beyond the PR nightmare, basketball-wise, immediately, like immediately are they going to make a run? And then they get to the playoffs. And let's say that Nico is slightly vindicated in that.

The flaws of the pairing of Luca and LeBron were made clear immediately in the playoffs, right? That wasn't a flaw for Luca in Dallas, because what's clear, I think, is Luca's an imperfect player, a great player, but an imperfect player. And he's best when he has big men like Derek Lively who can run and Ali-Uk when he's going to the basket and play defense behind him. And he doesn't have that in L.A. And that's going to be the secret for the future of L.A. can you find that guy? And if you can find that guy or guys, then you got something here

that can be a championship contender with Luca. So we saw the ceiling of what the Lakers are immediately. And I think Nico probably breathed a sigh of relief. I bet he did, you know? Yeah. And I actually think Nico has a little bit of a point in that, and it's not about Luca, what I saw in a very, very limited window,

maybe even just three quarters of basketball. of Kyrie and Anthony Davis and the supporting cast in Dallas, it kind of made sense. You saw a cohesion there that's like, ooh, that'd be a tough team to beat. Like, that's a tough team to beat. And I think specifically in the playoffs, which is different than the regular season,

I think that would be a pretty tough team. So you could argue, Nico could sit there on paper and go, whoa, you know, this is interesting. That could make, give a, I don't know, I guess a two-year run for the title. We know the problems. The problem is Anthony Davis is injury-prone.

we immediately saw that. We saw the problem of immediately overloading Kyrie because he's 30-something and he got injured. And we may never see Nico's on-paper vision for the Maver's. We may never ever see it. It may never, literally, Kyrie could leave as a free agent. And even if we do, it's the second half of next year. What I'm getting at in vomiting all these thoughts up is, in the end, Nico is still absurdly wrong on every level, basketball and PR, right? but I just wondered if after all of that storyline

that's advanced over the next two months since the Luca trade, you had any thoughts that might surprise me or no, fire Nico. Yeah, probably one more thought, Andy, before the trade, before the trade, it's interesting how one person's reputation can do a 180 in one night. Like, Nico was actually considered one of the best GMs in the NBA.

Like the PJ Washington trade and all that. everybody was like Nico Harrison one of the best GMs in the NBA now he's universally reviled is the biggest joke in the NBA yeah and it almost seems like there's just a ticking clock until he is fired I'm I'm surprised that Patrick Dumont hasn't thrown him under the bus already and I think Patrick Dumont deserves a ton of blame too not only for the trade but the PR nightmare that has transpired ever since then I mean if I was them I would I would say it's that guy's fault. He's fired and we're going to move on with somebody else. They haven't done that, obviously. A lot to unpack there. I think that, yeah, you could see a vision of, I mean,

what did they play together? Like a half with Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving both available. And yeah, if they were, if they were both healthy, that's a very tough team to beat. The problem is, and you mentioned this, they gave themselves maybe like a two-year window with that group. Davis and Kyrie are both already into their 30s, both injury prone. Anthony Davis gets a lot more flack for that reputationalally, but Kyrie Irving has been through a lot of recoveries too

over the course of his career. Like, you were almost guaranteed to have one or either of those guys hurt multiple times over the next couple of years. So that was one problem. Luca Donchitz was 25 at the time the deal was made. So a window with him was always going to be like seven or eight years, that the roster was perfectly tailored to him. A lot of those moves that Nico made that were good

were moves that were tailored to a ball-dominant creator, like Luca Donchis, not tailored to Anthony Davis. Davis's history is the number one guy is not good. When he was the Alpha in New Orleans, they never had playoff success or deep playoff runs. He didn't start, he didn't win his championship until he was a number two. Kairi won his championship as a number two. If you look across NBA history, so many championships, most of them are won by teams that have

dominant offensive engines, which is what Luca is. I mean, there's just so many things after another that in the moment didn't make sense to me. And every time Dallas went out, whether it was Nico or Dumont or whoever, Every time they sent someone out publicly to try to explain it, it just sounded dumber and dumber every time. And yeah, I'm sure he breathed the sigh of relief when the Lakers, frankly, didn't look good in the first round of the playoffs.

And there are things that you can nitpick with Luca. Like, when you go back and watch highlight reels of his rookie season, and he's like 40 pounds lighter probably and dunking on people, you can kind of see, well, yeah, I mean, I can see how that might annoy an organization that he can't keep himself in pristine shape as a professional basketball player. And, yeah, his defense looks really bad sometimes in a lot of the low light reels. But the justifications for the trade continue to just be so overwhelmed by the nonsense, I guess, for lack of a better word. It, you know, when it first happened, my initial reaction was, this has got to be the worst trade of all time. And I have since softened on that a little bit because, and I mentioned this and we were talking about the all time ladder with Yokic, so much of our analysis is dependent on championships.

And so there's a chance that Luca never wins a ring in L.A. And in that case, it's probably not the worst trade of all time. But I do think it's the most incomprehensible trade of all time. I'm comfortable giving it that title because everything that we've mentioned, plus the fact that they only negotiated with one team, they only got one pick for him, it is never going to make sense to me, no matter how many times they try to spin it. And like I said, every time they do try to spin it,

it somehow gets worse. Like, I can't believe that outside of, like, the league mandated press availabilities, they would ever send Nico Harrison out because every time he goes out, it's a disaster. All right. Speaking of that ladder, at least the immediate ladder, let's talk about, let's stay in the West and do the Wolves Warriors. It got less interesting because of Steph's injury. And I think at this point, the run of the Warriors was interesting. It's like, wow, there's a little more gas in the tank of this thing, you know,

and Jimmy Butler's there now. But Steph's hurt, and I think it's my expectation. I don't know about yours, but the wolves will probably now begin to dominate that series. And what the conversation everybody's having now, it's interesting because, by the way, there was some rumors that the Mavericks did call the wolves about Anthony Edwards. Yeah, for the bucks. And whether or not that was real or not. not, I don't know, but it's looking like if the Mavericks did call. And I love Luca.

Like, I'm biased. I love Luca. And if you'd asked me in December, would you trade Luca for Anthony Edwards? The answer would be hell no. I would not trade Anthony Edwards for Luca Donchich. But if the wolves did say, hell no in the other direction, they're being vindicated right now because people are talking about Anthony Edwards arriving now at the place of a top five player in the current NBA. yeah i think anthony edwards is phenomenal especially in the postseason um he's one of those guys that some kind of a flip switches in the playoffs and he finds another gear um the one thing about him is i feel like we've been saying anthony edwards is arriving for like the last two or three years

and then every subsequent regular season i'm not i'm not quite sure he's made good on it um i I still think there's maybe a little bit of development. Go ahead. Don't see that puts a lot of pressure on this particular playoff run. Because I agree with you. When the Mavericks and Wolves met last year in the playoffs, you know, that's why I would have said, no way am I trading Luca for Anthony Edwards.

Edwards didn't pull through in the clutch for the wolves against the Mavericks as recently as last year. And I think you're right. If he doesn't do it this year, that's a legitimate question about him as really being a top five player in the NBA. So he has to do it this year, you know, and I would expect he does it against the Warriors. and then he's going to run into the Thunder Buzzsaw, and we'll see.

And the other thing about this, like the top, the current top five discussion is just so challenging for anybody who's on the outside is the guys who are in are just unbelievable. Like the amount of talent in the NBA right now is certainly unlike anything I've covered in the time that I've been doing this. And certainly unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime, like the time. like the top five right now was all all time great players i would think s jay will probably eventually be considered an all time great but it's him yokech yonis lucca um who am i missing i feel like lebron i mean maybe he's closer to the top five than i realize as i start to rattle off names would you rather have anthony edwards or sGA right now probably sGA i i feel like he's a little bit more consistent offensively.

He is like a metronome of offensive production. You put them on the floor, you know you're getting 30 points, five assists, one or two steals, really good scoring efficiency. Tons of free throws, which drives me nuts as a fan of the game. I can't stand it, but it's like the most efficient play type that there is. It's kind of a knock on Anthony Edwards, like stylistically, I prefer the guys who aren't embellishing contact and who are trying to, you know, finish above the rim like he does, but just from like a Ross, you know, statistical perspective, the foul baiting

helps. And so, yeah, I think SGA is pretty comfortably over Edwards right now. Having said that, I mean, he's physically unlike anybody else in the league. I mean, he's he's got like the Jordan body and athletic gifts, there's certainly a lot to him that would suggest he can get into that top five. It's just such a difficult conversation. Another one who comes to mind is maybe probably, maybe probably could still be hanging on to his top five spot as Stefan Curry, but of course he's 37 now and he's out with a hamstring injury. And that's probably the kind thing we can see relatively often for him going forward when you're in your late 30s playing in the NBA. You're just going to get hurt a lot. So long-winded way of saying, I'm not sure Anthony

Edwards is top five yet, but he's certainly knocking on the door. And if they win, I mean, they're going to win this series, almost certainly. If they beat OKC, the conversation changes quite of it. I would just be pretty surprised if that happened. So reading between the lines for the Western Conference, I hear you with an Oklahoma City, Timberwolves, Western Conference Finals, and OKC going to the NBA Finals. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, it's not very spicy take, but I, you know, I think that's probably how it's going to sort out. More of the Will Kane Show, right after this.

Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise 6.5 million visit go dot fox forward slash tx flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy host of the trade gouty podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. Welcome back to the Will Cain Show.

All right, let's go to the east where the one player I think you probably did leave out of the top five that other people would certainly include is Jason Tatum with the Boston Celtics. You're right. And the Celtics are down O2 to the New York Knicks. By the way, that brings up an interesting conversation

about where Jalen Brunson is. Another guy, the Mavericks, allowed to go away. Imagine the Mavericks with Luca Donchich and Jalen Brunson. But, I mean, Brunson's so gritty. That's such a cliched term, but it is what he is. just makes things happen.

But really the story of this series right now is, I mean, while the Knicks have been good, it is like, whoa, look at the Celtics, they can't shoot. They can't shoot threes and they can't shoot twos. Of course they can, though. That's the thing. Yeah. I mean, this is a team that won the championship

firing up record numbers of threes and making them. So the question in any playoff series, really honestly, for any sport that doesn't work the way football does, so in other words there's a seven game series or seven game hockey series is when do you revert to the mean right like okay this is a statistical aberration for the celtics the pendulum has to swing there's no real reason for this porzingis is hurt but that doesn't make it that's not why so like you just keep waiting you even do it in the game i do it in a game okay we shot we shot 25% in the first quarter oop it's been a quarter and a half that means we're going to have a massive third quarter and fourth quarter hopefully because it's what happens the statistics bear out over a larger sample size. Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody would be surprised if Boston rattled off four straight wins and walked into the conference finals. That probably wouldn't surprise me.

At the same time, it's really hard to win four out of five games in the playoffs, which is what they have to do now. And so just my analytical objective mind tells me that's too big of a hill to overcome, with a team that's pretty talented on the other side with Brunson and Towns and Bridges has been great defensively in this series and Anobie's really good defensively. So I could probably pick New York while also saying, I mean, this is a very middle of the road take,

but I'll pick New York while saying I wouldn't be surprised if Boston pulled the comeback. And after, I think it was after game two, I was tasked with writing, you know, who's to blame or what is to blame for these late game collapses that Boston has had. The three-point shooting is an obvious one. Porzing is not quite being right, which you mentioned I also listed.

But what's interesting about that is over his two years in Boston, their point differential has actually been slightly better when he's off the court, which stunned me because I do think that he adds some elements to them. Like the floor spacing from a big man, the pressure point in the middle that, I mean, when he gets the ball inside, I think defense has collapsed at least a little bit and give those shooters outside a little more space. He's obviously a rim protector. So not having him at full strength is a big deal.

But I think the biggest thing is just the fact that Jason Tatum has not been top five player Jason Tatum in this series. Right. And you would think that that'll swing at some point because I agree he is in that top five, I think pretty definitively. He's almost an annual first team all NBA selection at this point. He's going to have a big game. I certainly don't think Boston's going to get swept or anything. there will be some kind of a swing back to the mean, like you mentioned. Again, I'm probably going to pick New York just because a two-o-hole is so difficult to dig out of.

Yeah. I mean, I- You didn't have them at the beginning of the series. You're saying where we sit today with them up to it. And I might have even picked Boston in like five or six. So I was way off on that one. But yeah, as we stand today, it's just, it's really hard to dig out of a two-oh hole, even if you're the reigning champions and you just shattered the record for threes in a season.

And a lot of numbers say, I mean, I think they might even still be the betting favorite to win the series, which is kind of crazy. Oh, really? Last time I checked, and it was very slight. They have significantly better odds to win the title than the Knicks do, which I think is fascinating too. But, yeah, another red hot take for you. I'm taking the team that's up too well in that one. We'll see if you do it twice Because the other Eastern Conference series

Is also 2O Pacers over Cavs Cavs come into the playoffs Like the Celtics Overwhelming favorites Based upon their regular season However, this Cavs team As opposed to the Celtics

Isn't playoff tested And this roster isn't really Playoff tested And so that's an interesting thing always Like regular season basketball teams Don't all of a sudden you see massive flaws And just as a quick callback Rudy Gobert regular season basketball teams

are always really good and then he gets exposed and it hurts his team in the playoffs and it isn't happening yet which is kind of interesting now Luca's not in the playoffs and he takes particular joy in destroying

he's not in playoffs anymore and I mean I know they did play each other but he targets Gobert and like makes team he literally makes teams reconsider should we have him on our roster when it comes to Gobert But the larger point being playoff rosters are different than regular season rosters.

I don't know if that's a takeaway for the Cavs right now. I don't know why they're having such trouble other than the Pacers and Tyrese Halliburton in particular are out of their minds. Like Halliburton is like Miko Rantan with the Dallas Stars right now. It's like you've put the team on your back and you single-handedly are driving them through the series. That seems to be the case with the Pacers and Halliburton. Yeah. I got to circle back now, though. Rudy Gobert, a phenomenal regular season player and has had some trouble with small ball lineups in the playoffs. I actually think the bigger problem for him is that he typically hasn't been able to punish teams on the other end. Like if a team goes small and is guarding you a seven foot two player with somebody who's like six six, you should be able to dominate, which he finally did in game five against the Lakers. And I almost, there were sometimes in that series where I thought Luca was maybe targeting him almost to the Lakers detriment. Like he, he wanted that matchup so bad.

And he wanted that switch so bad over and over and over. And he wasn't necessarily making him pay for it this time. Having said that, there are obvious limitations to go bare in the playoffs. Even in, geez, I can't even remember if it was game two or game one at this point against Golden State. Like, just his inability to catch the ball cleanly has. been a problem for him in a lot of playoff matchups. Now on to the pacer's and the calves. The calves have beyond whatever difference there may be between them as a regular season team and a playoff team, they have problems in the injury report. None of these guys are

hurt for like long term. Like they aren't injuries that are going to keep them out of games for a lot like Stephen Curry. But even if Darius Garland and Evan Mobley and DeAndre Hunter all come back for the games in Indiana, if they're 85 or 90% of their typical selves, that could be a big deal. And, you know, that's huge. I think Donovan Mitchell is a proven and tested playoff performer, and he did all he could in that last game with 48 points

to help them get the win. Ultimately, I think what this series is about is what you mentioned. Tyree Saliburton is another one of these guys that just finds another gear when the game ratchets up in intensity and leverage. And he's just, he's a phenomenal Dutch player. I just, I think it's so funny. I don't know if he saw this, but maybe a week or two ago. And I can't remember what outlet it was either.

I want to say maybe the athletic or something. The players voted Tyrese Halliburton, the most overrated player in the league, like by a pretty comfortable margin. Really? And so all, all that tells me is that he's just not liked by his. peers. Because if anything, the guy is underrated. You know, I do this thing throughout the regular season where every, maybe like once a week, I'll take all the catch-all metrics from around the internet and I'll sort everybody in the league by the average of their ranks and those metrics

to just get like kind of a feel of what do all these different things say? For the uninitiated, there's a ton of different outlets that try to major basketball contributions with a single number and they all they all do it slightly differently so I kind of want to get like you know an average of what they all say and by the end of the season Tyrese Halliburton was fifth in the league in that exercise which suggests he just had a phenomenal season he's I think we're basically witnessing at least production wise like the reincarnation of Chris Paul I mean they play a lot differently but just the numbers that he puts up I mean he's he's he's pretty much a 20 and 10 guy consistently. He's a great shooter. I saw some staff that he's like

10 of 11 on go-ahead shots in the final seconds over the last couple years or something. I mean, it was insane. And somebody even put together a highlight reel showing them all. That's just like beyond statistical anomaly. This guy is unbelievable in the playoffs. And, you know, surprise, surprise, I'm going to pick another team that's up 2-0 to win the series. But in but in this case, I'm, I'm more comfortable with it. One, because of the injury thing, to your point. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's huge. But I think the other thing is just Halliburton.

He's, he's been ridiculous. I mean, they made the conference finals when nobody expected him to last year. Now they're gaining momentum at just the right point again. It's not all him. Like, Pascal C. Atkins had a good year. I think Miles Turner's an interesting three and D guy. They've got these super physical defenders in Nemhart and me, Smith. So there's a lot going on there.

But they have a legitimate superstar in Halliburton, and he may not be seen as that by a lot of people yet, but that's absolutely what he is. What are you going to do, Andy, in a Pacer's Knicks Eastern Conference Finals? Oh, man. I feel like we've seen that play out before, right? In like the 90s, maybe. The Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing era. Yeah, that's the 90s. I think I would, geez, that's hard.

I'm going to pick the Knicks just for like the big market's sake and we're going to have a NICS okay I mean think about the five alarm fire in the league office if it was the Pacers and the thunder in the NBA finals oh my gosh it would be a five alarm fire they would be freaking out I'll take the NICs I think they just have a slightly higher ceiling than the Pacers but that would be a very very tightly matched conference finals with I think some really good games. And then what? Then Thunder.

Thunder over NICS? Yeah. Yeah. It's just so, I mean, they just had, in regular season numbers, we just went over this, don't necessarily indicate what's going to happen in the playoffs. But they just broke the record for single season point differential. They broke the record for most double digit wins. They broke the record for most 15 point wins.

They have like five all defense candidates. They have the eventual MVP. I've just never seen anything come together this quickly and this perfectly, as it has for the Thunder. And I think it's going to result in the championship, even in 2025, when it's super hard to win those. I feel relatively confident they're going to go all the way. All right, Bleacher Report, NBA writer, Andy Bailey here on The Wheelgate Show. Fascinating, long, and I appreciate that, but we covered a lot of background, a lot of bases, and I appreciate your time. Andy Bailey, check him out.

Thank you, man. Thanks for having me, Will. Appreciate it. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation again with Andy Bailey. Check him out at Bleacher Report. We'll see you again next time. Listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast.

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