Coming up, the last big NBA podcast of the summer with Rosillo. Next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network, where we are putting up two rewatchables episodes a week in July and in parts of August as well. On Thursdays, we're running the old Rewatchables 1999 series episodes that we never got to run on the feed. So we ran Austin Powers two last week. I think we're running for love of the game this week. And then on Monday nights, brand new rewatchables episodes. We have Twister coming on Monday night. Yeah, really good one. One of the first great modern summer movies. Me, Van Lathan, Chris Ryan will be doing that one. And you can watch all of the rewatchable stuff on our Ringer movies YouTube channel as well. We actually found, I think, like 20 old video episodes that we never actually put up on YouTube. We'll be putting those up over the course of the summer as well. My schedule for this podcast is about to get a little wonky. I think I'm going to be every other Sunday, and that's it for the next few weeks. So I'm just warning you now, probably not coming back for two Sundays, and that's going to be the schedule really until the third week of August.

I am going to make a dramatic return for Olympic basketball quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals for that week. So we'll have a full schedule that week. But for the most part, this is usually when I slow down because, you know, basically from the tail end of August all the way through the top of July, we're going football and basketball and everything else constantly. So this is when I usually unwind. Also have to do a lot of football homework. Gotta catch up with some of our great ringer NFL people. Gotta catch up with house and Raheem and JJ and Dubundo on our Ringer gambling podcast. So in the meantime, you can check out the ringer.com. you can check out all of our great ringer podcast network pods, sports, culture, reality tv, tech, Hollywood. We have it all. Go check it out. And you won't miss me. Plus, we'll be in the rewatchable, so you'll get to hear my voice every once in a while. Coming up, Ryan Rossella for the last time this summer, talking a lot of hoops. First, our friends from projethe. All right, taping this Sunday afternoon, Rosillo is here. It's our last basketball podcast of the season.

Rosillo, are you sad? I know you're sad already that the Bahamas have been knocked out of Olympic qualifying. I know that was tough for you, but this is our last one.

I taped it. You ruined it. I didn't know.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

I meant to tell you. Don't tell me the final score.

Yeah, they lost an OT, so that was it. All right, lots to hit. We're going to try to zoom through as much of this as we can. DeRozan trade it to Sacramento. We'll start there. That was the last big, I think, move of the summer. Perfect timing for us. Happen over the weekend. Time to set up. Kings get Derozan. Spurs somehow get a 2031 Sacramento first swap to take Harrison Barnes for two years, and the Bulls get Duarte in 2 seconds and basically usher in the we are tanking era. What does this do for the ceiling of the Kings for you?

They had such great health luck two years ago. It's a bit like, not to say it's the same as Oklahoma City, but when you saw Oklahoma City throughout the season this year, they're like, how much different is the ceiling? Okay. And Oklahoma City very well could have probably come out of the west. A couple breaks here or there. I don't think it's absurd to think that. Would you agree with that?

100%? I think it's like three rebounds, two missed threes, and the play in the corner where somehow they end up shave fouling PJ Washington, this is a tough one.

Okay. So I think we're on the same page with that one. But one of the questions that we had about them, Washington, is this their peak? Are they playing at like a peak version of themselves in the regular season? And maybe some other teams aren't usually. It's what the older teams. I think that's probably how we looked at Sacramento two years ago, and I'd still worry about them in the sense of how are they going to do against other big teams? Like that New Orleans thing was a very real thing physically. They were just not big enough to handle them. But I like the Rosen years ago when he signed that deal with the Bulls. I think a lot of us had questions, and here we are now where I don't really have any questions and it's three years later. He has the perfect mentality for it. I think him playing off the ball with Kobe White, developing the image of the worst part of the Rosen is that he doesn't shoot threes and he needs to be on the ball and all these different things. I think whoever he is in life, it translates into who he is as a basketball player.

So adding another piece like that and raising your talent level, even if it doesn't change the hierarchy of the west, is a win for the Kings.

Yeah. And they're probably on the clock with Fox about a year from now. He had, like some sort of cryptic quote a couple of weeks ago, so they, it seemed like they were going to do something. I think they kicked the tires of marketing, couldn't get them. I don't remember a situation like DeRozan with basketball in a while where it feels like somebody's second half of their career was better than the first half of their career. Cause usually that's not the case. Like, for the last three years in the Bulls, granted, not high stakes, but he was 25.5 a game, shooting 50% field goals. There was, there was a moment like when he was on the spurs where he seemed like this dinosaur to some old basketball era for, you know, the pre curry era, basically. And he fixed that. I was, I think he always plays hard. Anytime they played the Celtics, I was always like, ah, DeRozan's good, man. He's just a good guy to have on your team. He's good at the end of games. Now they have these two guys that did in the games who are super comfortable trying to get baskets, and they're going to be not good defensively, but that was kind of the case anyway, right?

Like, DeRozan's not going to help them defensively, but they weren't good defensively to begin with. So I don't know, they're doubling down on something they're good at. It's almost like a football team. That's like, we got another pass rusher. Well, that was the one thing you're good at, pass rushing. Yeah, but now we're really good at pass rushing. Yeah, but we can still throw deep on you. So they have holes, but I like their team more. I don't like the pick swap. That's one of those where it's like so far from now. I don't know why they had to give up anything to get to Rosenze. That's the part I didn't understand. He didn't really have a market. Chicago want to get rid of him anyway.

Well, it's the Barnes part of it. So then where's the Barnes landing spot? It's not in Chicago. So that's why you end up paying.

Let's talk about that, though. Why wasn't in Chicago? Why did the spurs get a pick swap out of this and not the Bulls? Oh, wait, I have the answer. For you, the Bulls are cheap. They don't want to pay the luxury tax, so they end up with Duarte and two second round picks so they don't have to take the Barnes contract. And the spurs are like, we'll take it. And the spurs get this swap out of it. The bulls being cheap, and I've complained about this a million times, but the Bulls being cheap, it just makes no sense to me. It's the third biggest market in America. New York is the biggest, LA is the second biggest, Chicago is the third biggest. Why are they avoiding luxury tax in a year? I would love to have that pick swap seven years from now with a Sacramento team that is always either disappointing or kind of in the mix, but not really. I'd love to have their pick.

Hey, give me. You're not wrong about Chicago, by the way, but I think they're probably looking at it as what's the point of even committing this money, even for a pick swap seven years from now? Why are we committing this money when the whole thing, I don't know if a mess is too hard of word for the bulls, because you could say, well, direction lists and say, well, now it's a transitional period. It just is. I don't understand the Patrick Williams contract at all.

Five for 90 for Patrick Williams. You didn't like that one?

That was one of the ones I went, I know the cap's going up, but I was thinking that would be.

A good game show if it was like Patrick Williams five for nine or five for 90 and you had to guess which, which contract it was. I would have had to think about it. I would have been like, ah, they probably gave him five for 90, but I would have paused for a second.

That was like the Evan Turner deal when Portland signed Evan Turner. And I forget who tweeted it out was like, if you had said, what did Evan Turner get in free agency? And the person was like, I would have guessed like five for 30. And then he's like, it would have taken me a year to incrementally keep.

Adding numbers until I got to the.

Right number to get that Alan Crabb number. So wait, I want to ask you about DeRozan a little bit more because I think you hit on something there. Where did he reinvent himself? Or did we just end up liking him so much more because of all the big shots that he hit with Chicago? Like Chicago before Lonzo got hurt. They had that nice record two years ago. It was this really fun run. I remember sitting at home one night watching them play on a Saturday night in Chicago and place was going nuts. I was like, this team should be awesome. This team should. Like, every team has its ebbs and flows, but when the Bulls are awesome, it's fun for the league. And I think we all ended up just appreciating DeRozan, even though if it felt like it was pointless in the long term. Part of, like, playing into June, I.

Think, you know, he worked on some stuff off the court that he's been pretty candid about, and it seemed like it helped him, confidence wise. Cause I actually deep dived him. Cause it was somebody I had. I obviously had been in our lives for the last 15 years. I hadn't really put, like, a shitload of thought into. Cause he hasn't. You know, he had those Toronto teams in the mid 2010s that just every year they would go against LeBron or whoever and just all of a sudden they were gone. And then he's in the Kawhi trade, and then just kind of float around putting up great stats. Like he's, you know, only 29 guys have 25,000 points right now. The next two guys are going to do it are DeRozan and Curry. Like, this is in the 80 year history of the league.

The other crazy part about his development, too, is that ten years into the league, he starts to become a playmaker where he was just long two isolation guy and he was really talented. I remember coming out of school when you were looking at him in the draft, going at that size and that shot making, I'm surprised he's not thought of as a little bit better of a prospect. But because the shooting wasn't there, then maybe the shooting shifted already, turned into guys like this just being overlooked. But he was clearly incredibly talented. You're totally right about the Toronto thing because it just felt like, okay, you guys are stuck. And both he and Lowry had in the series just. Oh, yeah.

Over and over again, that became the rap. It's like, this guy's not good when it actually matters. And then somehow in the last four or five years, he's flipped that to where he was one of the finalists for clutch player of the year. This was not the guy from Toronto.

So, yeah, I think the stuff that you talked about, too, with him off the court, that he. He's just someone I would never worry about if I were front office or coaching staff. Now at this point, especially that he's 34 and like, hey, we can plug this guy right in. Like, Fox is going to get all of his possessions. Monk's going to get his possessions. Keegan is a perfect complement to all this stuff. So a bit like what we've talked about with the Celtics, but I don't think it started with them. Maybe I push back with you on a little bit with the warriors being interchangeable and guys that can all make decisions with the ball in their hands. Ironically, that Toronto team in 19 that I reference all the time, I was like, man, they got a lot of guys who are really good with the ball in their hands. If these are your options, you're not getting the bigger name free agent. They had the financial constraints because they paid other players. I dont know this, but my guess would be okay if were adding DeRozan. We are now better. It doesnt solve the problem of whats in front of us in the west.

Theres other guys higher on the wish list, but this was a real obtainable thing. And all theyre really doing is plugging the Harrison Barnes minutes with DeRozan where DeRozans overall numbers are going to go down just because the opportunities for shots. But Barnes could play in games where you didnt even notice. I mean, thats just kind of how ill think of Harrison Barnes, a talented guy who like, sometimes like, oh, hes been playing for the last 20 minutes.

Right, and was not a good, and was not a good defensive player either. I think that was the other piece with him, is what he was in theory, wasn't what he actually was on the Kings anymore at this point of his career. So it's not like their defense is getting worse because Barnes is leaving. So they're probably maybe the same on that end, but better offensively. And I don't know, they, and they're still one trade away now. I think they're going to have, man, you look at their, their crunch time, they're just going to have a lot of trouble against certain teams, right. They don't have really anybody in their roster who I think can defend a wing at a high level that I feel awesome about. I don't really feel awesome about Sabonis against big centers, but they're going to try to outscore people and they're in a slightly better spot than they were. And, you know, after the top four, the west is kind of wide open, which we can talk about. We, we got to talk about the San Antonio piece of this, too. Um, quickly on DeRozano two second team, ombas one third team six all stars.

He's one of the four guys left from that zero nine draft. Curry, drew Holiday, Harden and DeRozan who are all at a really high level, which is unusual. Cause you go one draft later with Paul George, and he's the only guy left from that draft who's still contributing. You could make a case. He's the fifth best two guard in the league, right.

Make the case. Wow, I hadn't thought of this.

Yeah, well, it's funny, because when you start listing the two guards, you run out of the list fast. Right. If, let's say Luca is a two guard, is that fair?

No.

What, what position? I know. We always do this. What position is he?

He's a point guard.

So he's a point guard. All right, well, then he's off the table. Edwards is a two guard.

Yes.

Booker is a two guard.

Well, yeah, he is, but we want to talk about somebody else play. But you're right. You're right. Yeah.

Is James Harden a point guard or.

A two guard at this point? I mean, I think he's a point guard.

Yeah, it's probably a point guard. Is Drew holiday a point guard or a two guard?

See, that one would feel like people would want. Right, but, like, Tatum was the point guard in the playoffs, right.

He was the point forward. So that. That's my point, is like, DeRozan is probably the third best pure shooting guard in the league. And if you want to get a little less technical with the definition of shooting guard, you can squeeze Luca in there and Harden and a couple others, but there's just not a lot of these guys, is my point. You know, you look around and it's like, man, can CJ. Is, is Deroza better than CJ McComb? Yeah, his, you know, could Jordan Hawkins be good someday? Sure. But when you just look, look around the teams and try to find good two guards, there's not, not a slew of them, unless you want to Paul George.

But that's, this all becomes part of, like, well, Paul George isn't going to be a two guard now, but I like Jalen Brown Mitchell. Yeah.

Kind of a point guard. Right? Is he a two? He has the ball a lot.

He does.

I mean, one of the cool things about the Rosen is he can get his 20, doesn't need the ball that much. We got to switch to San Antonio, though. So they're, they're just, we, we shit on teams all the time, and we wonder about their strategies all the time. And I still would have loved that they took Dillingham and put him on that team. But not taking Dillingham and trading that and creating cap space and then being able to trade Devontae Graham led to them being able to do this deal with the Barnes contract and just grab all these pick swaps in the future. They have eleven first and five swap years down the road and just a lot of flexibility to build around somebody who's going to be the best player in the league in two years and three years in four years whenever that happens. We have not seen a team successfully pull this strategy off this well because we were used to, like when it was LeBron and in the mid two thousands, Cleveland was just in this chess game of trying to find assets to him because they were so scared he was going to leave, really, from 2005 on, there was just always the fear he was going to abandon them.

They always trying to get win now, win now, win now. Santana is doing the opposite.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, that's why you need your guy to be a partner in it, especially at that stage of their career. And every deal with Cleveland was, can we win today? Even though we're probably putting ourselves in a worse position long term. So you're right, it is the opposite.

But it's also like Luca was. Luca was pretty win now ish Edwards. Edwards who I don't know if we realized that he was going to be in that LeBron Luca conversation when he was 20, but they were win nous with that. It's pretty rare to see somebody, and I think they could do this because they won titles in the past, so they're a little less panic. And Wendy is so bought into that team. I still would have loved to have Dillingham on this team, but I see the long road on. I got to give it up to him. They're also going to be pretty good this year, weirdly, right? If Chris Paul and even somebody like Barnes, like Barnes is somebody who could be in a rotation and castle, I think, is going to play right away. And sohanda, you know, they. They might be like a 40, 41, 42 win team just because of how good Wendby is, and then they're going to have all these picks and all these possibilities. So it's kind of cool how it played out for them.

Normally I would just push back on that because, like, did you just list those seven guys? Are you serious? In the west, they're going to be 500. But every Wembonyama thing that you see, you just go, yeah, maybe like, I just won't be in a position of pushing back on. On what he could actually be. But you brought up something in that the long view of this was San Antonio because it was really crazy, even as it was happening in his rookie season. I think you brought it up. I think, I know. I saw it on tv shows where it's like, well, he's so far ahead of what you would expect. I mean, even with all the hyperbole and the way we talked about in the draft, I'd still say his first year even blew away the expectations.

I agree.

And then it becomes, now you're on a new timeline. Are you as an organization on a timeline of impatience? Because even if you were lucky enough to have one of these picks, then immediately you realize, okay, our franchise is going to be entirely different ten years from now, what are the deals that youre saying yes to that you would say no to if that young player took until year three to show? I still think the good deals are the good deals and the bad deals are the bad deals. And that when you become impatient or when youre forced into some kind of timeline, that's what gets back to that Cleveland run, which I think is really smart of you to bring up because I remember as it was all happening, you're like, okay, so now you're bringing in Ben Wallace because of this, or like Larry Hughes.

There was, there was a big agent signings and then it became Domino's after that with Wallace and Antwan Jameson. Shaq just kept going.

It was expiring contract that was expensive for an okay player, for another player that was maybe like just a smidge better. But then their contract situation, which is even worse, Erbie acts another one. Drew Gooden is another one, if you go look at it. So does it mean that like, obviously the spurs are not going to do it that way. This doesn't seem to be the plan whatsoever. There's probably somebody that could use their cap space on saying, hey, look, look at this number two or three option. That's a lot better. I love the Chris Paul signing and everything, but it always feels like we missed the mark on what is available for a team to do. And really when you're saying, okay, well, you actually have to start making changes a little bit quicker, well, does that mean you're supposed to do a deal you normally wouldn't want to do and does that actually help you long term or does it just seem like you've done something so you're appeasing this star and it really comes down to wimbin Yam and his personality for it.

Yeah, well, they completed phase one for me, which was like, can you can you put some solid, real players around him, please, including a point guard who can get him the ball and better wings and at least have a competent basketball team and not have him playing with g leaguers. So they fixed that. There's a marketing possibility here that I actually think, you know, and we're, and we're watching league pass and I actually wonder if people realize how good marketing is because he's been kind of buried on these Utah teams. But one of the things that's amazing to me about him is I just really liked him at the end of games. I thought he got good shots. I thought he was super confident. I thought he was good enough that they actually kind of had to make the team weaker because, you know, to inadvertently he was hurting their draft pick because they were so good at the end of the games, mainly because of him and sometimes Clarkson. And I wonder, like, if San Antonio made a real run at him without giving up a lot of the 2025 26 stuff, which I think those are the two drafts that you just can't, you can't get out of because of AJ and 26 and flag in 25.

But I do wonder, like, wait, could they pay 100, $0.10 in the dollar for him and had a real guy at the end of these games and just seeing what it looks like. I'm sure they talked about it and they're probably better off doing what they did, but it's pretty enticing to have a guy like that floating around there, don't you think?

Yeah, because he does feel like it makes a lot of sense. And I don't like the, everybody has to be 20 to 22 years old if you're rebuilding team.

He's 27.

Yeah. And his jump. I mean, you want to talk about somebody else who's reinvented themselves, and sometimes it's just about more opportunity, but the true shooting percentage has gone up. He's got the ball more, but the assist stuff is, has gone up. And he's so I don't, I don't know that people don't realize how good he is because I think last year was the wake up call to everybody. Like, whoa. Think of it. He was the pick. Excuse me. He was part of the Donovan Mitchell trade. Ok, we'll take marketing, too, which I think is a big thing to look at with Ainge's history, where, I mean, other than the Nets deal that they did a decade ago, that led to Gerald Wallace's contract, which the Nets were more than happy to move on from, but he got Colin Sexton in a deal. He got Kessler in a deal. You know, he gets marketing in this deal. So some of these other teams that I've seen just reports of, like, interest in marketing. You go, okay, well, is there a young player in one of these other deals that Ainge would go, okay, you know, give me that guy?

Because, like, at that point, marketing, it felt like, eh, all right, whatever, Sexton, I think the same thing. Okay. Not a terrible contract. Scored a ton of points with Cleveland when the team was terrible and he had the ball the entire time. So I don't know if he'll do the same thing again or if he'll feel, meaning Ange and zanuck more pressured into doing something before they get off to a good start again in Utah because marketing has been so good.

Yeah, maybe their plan is December, January, February is when you do it. The reason I'm not hardy, so good.

They should fire him.

Maybe tell him that he has to pretend he has pneumonia for two months. The reason, I wonder if people know how good he is, because my reaction, and I think your reaction, too, and a couple other people that I know who really give a shit about this stuff are all like, why do they want to trade marketing? Why don't just sign them and keep them? The guy's like a legitimate keeper and a pretty unique offensive player. I don't know, like, what kind of timetable is Utah on that? They're like, yeah, we need more picks, more stuff. To me, that's some sort of keeper. But the more I think about it, I think Danny just wants to be in these drafts in the biggest possible way. These next two. I think he's looking at those two drafts as like, if I can get one of those guys with all the other stuff I have, I'm in the same spot the spurs are in with Wendy. I mean, have you watched some of the AJ stuff?

No.

For next year's draft of him yet. Can you make that a summer project? There's something different about him.

How about a fall project?

A fall project? There's something slightly different about him with how fast his reaction time is to stuff that's almost a little creepy. Like he, he has these baseline moves where he, he pretends he's going to go toward kind of the foul line, but then just goes by somebody on the baseline, but does it in a way that you're kind of like, it almost looks like a, like CGI'd. You gotta check him out at some point. Just put on your calendar for like 90, 90 minutes. But I think him and I think flag next year is really screwing up these teams. So anyway, San Antonio, I get it. Chicago, I don't get it. Sacramento. You know, this is what happens when you're in the middle. We're going to take a quick break because I want to talk about the real reason Sacramento did this, which it feels like after OKC. Denver, Minnesota, Dallas. That fifth spot is wide open. So let's dive into that after the break. All right, Rosylla, I'm going to give you Phoenix, Memphis, New Orleans, Sacramento, Houston, Golden State and the two LA teams. And I'm going to give you a wide open number five spot in the west.

Out of all of those teams, which one do you like the most? Phoenix. Memphis, New Orleans, Sacramento, Houston, Golden State, Lakers, clippers.

Phoenix was a six seed and it was still a mess. So I would probably take Phoenix.

So you would default to. Even though everything went wrong last year, they were still in a 50 win range. They're going to be better this year. Coach Bud, I don't know if he's an upgrade over Vogel, but maybe for what they have, he will be. Yeah, I had, I had them or Memphis as mine, too. And then I was wondering, am I overrating Memphis?

No.

Because there's a lot of stock and jaw coming back and being ja from three years ago, which, and who knows if that guy's coming back.

I'd be shocked if he didn't look like jaw. Okay.

That's why, that's why I factored it in. But it's. The thing is, we don't know for sure.

Wouldn't Memphis was my first. When you initially asked me this question earlier today, I just went through it. I was like, okay, it's going to be Memphis. And then I went, okay, but think about how much time we spent talking about Phoenix. Now granted, Durant played 75 games, Booker played 68, Beal played 53. Sound like I'm the biggest beal guy, but I don't know if Bud is a huge upgrade over Vogel. So I think you're right on that one.

But why are you the captain of the. I'm not the biggest dot, dot, dot guy. Be. Might be the captain. Or is it towns? Towns is the captain. Actually, Bill's a. Bill's the starter.

Well, look, I mean, Beals last playoff game, dude, you're just like, what, what is going on here? But are the Memphis thing. I bet more people would say Memphis because before this whole thing fell apart for a million different reasons, they were what, the two seed for a good chunk of two years ago I wrote.

Down all the teams because I was like, I just want to make sure I have everybody who's on everyone's team. Maybe I'm missing something. Memphis potentially is starting Jaron Jackson, Clark, Bane, smart and ja. As they're starting five. They still have Vince Williams and Zaire Williams, Gigi Jackson. They're going to have Edie, they're going to have Contra. They have Laravia, probably they have Laravia. I'm throwing them in. I don't know. I actually like their team more than Phoenix's team, but Jazz, the big x factor. Phoenix brought O'Neal back, they're bringing Nurkic back. Unfortunately, they got, they signed Plumlee, Grayson, Allen. We'll see if Dunn can play for them. Roddy's on that team now. And they got Monty Morris, who seems to just bounce around the league now, but I think we all kind of like him. But the counties turnover, well, that's the thing. Why does he always bounce around when everybody's like, you know, I really like, you know, smart signing considering the constraints they had.

I was like, are they going to have a Monty Morris day in Arizona? I couldn't believe considering. Because when you started to realize the second apron stuff and how screwed they were and the Royce O'Neill bird trap situation of like the agent could basically name a number and go, you have to resign him because you're not replacing anything like that. I thought the Monty Morris part of it was huge. So maybe I'm still rounding up a bit on the Suns and those three guys.

I think it's the right pick. I think it's those two as the next two. But I will say if jaw is back to being JA from three years ago, Memphis will be the fifth best team and maybe even better than that.

They went 51 and 31 two years ago.

Yeah. Cause even if you look on Fanduel, they have the Western Conference odds. OKC's plus 350, Dallas plus 420, Denver's plus 420. Minnesota is 450. The Lakers are next at 18 to one, which is ridiculous. We'll get to them. Suns 20 to one and Memphis 20 to one and then New Orleans is 20 to one, which is the next thing we should talk about. But the Lakers, they're always going to have more money on them because they're a public team. New Orleans still does not have a center and they still have Brandon Ingram. And it's like, well, they'll just trade Brandon Ingram and go get a center and we do this on the pod sometimes. Look, man, there's 30 teams in the league go to the trade machine. Find me the Brandon Ingram trade. Find me the team that wants him. With one year left in his deal, that's super excited. That has 20 to 22 shots available for him and that has a center to give for him. And I could not find the team. And I'm the Picasso of the trade machine. I couldn't find one team and the one I was trying to talk myself into was the warriors.

But that went so bad with Team USA and current those guys. I just don't think the warriors are traded for Brandon Ingram. I don't see it and I can't find another team. Can you, can you think of another team? I think he's going to be stuck there and I think they'll be stuck without a center.

Would you trade Jared Allen for Ingram?

I would not. I just wouldn't.

I know the past, we in the past have you just going to add a center? You can add a center and then you started like looking around.

They're out there.

Yeah, they're kind of, not now. I used to always think that they were. And I think that's why you saw the Valence Yunus deal. It's why you saw the Batase deal and Mo Wagner deal, where it's like, maybe these guys are really valuable later on.

Fucking wiseman got signed by Indiana.

Hey, you don't need to tell me.

Claxton got $100 million. Yeah, I think everybody has reached a point where nobody wants to be left without a center. So it turns into your fantasy league where people are spending $8 on a tight end because they don't want to have like, the number two tight end on the bills as they're starting tight end. I just feel like with them, they're starting five. Zion, Ingram, Murphy, McCollum, Desante, Murray. And then they have Jones and Hawkins and Alvarado, a couple other, you know, they lost Nance, who they were able to play as a small ball five. I just don't know what the move is. So to me, I think they're clearly below Phoenix and New Orleans, and you could make a case. Sacramento should probably be above New Orleans. Now, both of us are scared of, if you're going to downgrade New Orleans, you're leaving yourself up to the hey. Zion is going to come in and just kick everyone's ass for six months. So there's that factor. But I could see that team being more unhappy than happy. Lot of, a lot of guys who need the ball on that team now. Murray's not exactly I'll stand over here and you guys do stuff guy, you know, and if, if they're stuck with Ingram, now you have Zion and Ingram and Murray, plus you have McCollum.

I don't know if I like all those guys together. Do you?

No. I can't imagine one more trade. Well, I just don't know who the center is. It's Missy right now, the Baylor kid, so that can't be the plan. And there's all these dudes over the years that we've all liked in the draft, and at least I have. And Dyson Daniels, I would still hold out a little bit of hope for him, but he's going to be playing off the ball or he'll just be the backup to Trey's minutes all the time. But you'd love to figure out a way for him to be able to close because of his decision making, his smarts, the defensive ability and all that kind of stuff. But he just got lost in the shuffle. Some health stuff as well. So I get the Murray deal because it didn't feel like they gave up a ton, and I didn't mind it either. No. And his contract on top of everything else, but for somebody that's supposed to be better defensively, he wasn't that last year in Atlanta. Like, it wasn't all on Trey. There were times, and I've mentioned it before, but there was this game, it was just brutal. And I stayed to watch Quinn Snyder do the post game, and it was just like our perimeter, right?

And he was pointed about it, and he was. He was just calling out the perimeter guys, like, what are you doing now? When you're having a bad time in general, you usually aren't playing defense to the level that you should be. Just basketball. And I think that's probably part of the Dejante part of it as well. And the crazy thing that you brought up is, like, with all these guys that need the ball, CJ Ingram, because I do like Ingram's passing and then Murray on top of it all, and I still, again, I still like the trade. But your best weapon, your best weapon is still Zion on the ball. And just, just destroying people, that's still the best thing that they can do. And you hope that the shooting around him complements it all. So, yeah, it feels like there's another Ingram trade, but Ingram for a center, and Ingram probably across the board is too dinged now at this point.

Well, especially with the one year left in the deal, my guess is it'll be Portland will be the team, because Portland is the one team that has too many centers right now and really no direction at all. You think if Rob Williams comes back and he's healthy, they've eaten, and then they signed. They drafted Klingon. So on paper, it's like, oh, it'll just be Ingram for, you know, Jerry.

Are you gonna say it?

Jeremy Grant and Rob, and maybe New Orleans throws it. I don't know. Something like that. But then I'm like, if I'm Portland, why do I want Brandon Ingram? What am I gonna do with him? I need an. I need another shooter. I just. I could not find the Ingram team. And if anyone could find the Ingram team, God bless you, because I couldn't do it. And even, like, Detroit, who? I would have said, oh, Detroit's the Ingram team. They spent 52 million on Tobias for two years. They signed Malik Beasley. Right? They did. They got one other swing band scoring guy. Like, they're. It just seems like they've moved in a direction where they're not getting them because Washington wants to be bad, so they don't want Brandon Ingram, say. So there's seven teams that want to be bad. So Ingram doesn't help any of those teams because all he's going to do is raise your ceiling. And those teams don't want their ceiling raised. So you're just, like, almost immediately in that, uh, you know, that Atlanta kind of area. But they already traded with Atlanta anyway, so that's New Orleans, Sacramento we talked about.

No, but I just want to follow up on one thing, though, because Aiden is. You go, okay, well, now, what? With a. Right, it seems like it would make a ton of sense with the Pelicans. Yes. And it still might.

I just don't know what the. What the trade is because it's not like Portland's gonna be like, oh, cool, we'll take CJ McCollum back. And I don't know why they would want Ingram, right?

Why would they want him, right?

Unless they could also get off the Jeremy grant money. Houston is just. And we've talked about them a couple weeks ago, but just a delight. On paper. I just love their roster. Are we sure they're not going to be good next year? Because in my head, they're a year away. But I kept staring at the roster going, like, man, what if they're just good this year? You know? Because, again, I feel like there's this spot open in that. Like, there's a spot right next to Phoenix and Memphis, and somebody's going to grab it. So maybe it's them. Golden State. I liked every move they made in the summer. I liked all of them. I don't. I don't know who their second best player is. I don't think from a ceiling standpoint, they have a lot of, like, elite players. Really. It's Curry and Draymond and that's it. But they have all these tradable deals now, right? They have all these ways they can go in December once you can start being able to trade the free agents. And I kind of like what they did. You like what they did?

Yeah. Considering everything and moving on from whatever the number was going to be, to re sign Clay, knowing that they were just resetting the deck financially, because I don't care who you are, if you're an owner and you're like, we don't have any chance of winning title, so why am I, why am I keeping all this money around again? Like, it's really easy to say it when you feel like you're in contention and probably even a couple of years past your last title, but going into 24, 25, I don't know that there's any owner that's going to look at his roster going, I have no chance. Yeah, yeah. Let's keep paying everybody in all attacks. So, considering they're resetting it financially for themselves, and you can make arguments about who D'Anthony Melton is at this point versus who Clay is. No, buddy. Healed a bit. Hit or miss. I think in that playoff series against the Knicks, there were just too many times. You're like, what? What is up with you? Like, you got to shoot the ball. Then he had that huge game where he erupted. But considering how they had to do so much stuff on the margins for them, I liked it all.

But to your Houston point, they're 41 and 41 last year, you'd expect all those players to be a little bit better. I don't know if the non shingoon thing is real, because do you pay some price, some Jalen Green price when shingoon is back, which it looked like clogging their paint.

Yeah, we both noticed it.

Yeah. And when all you had to do was like, look at the numbers and somebody in Jalen Green, we were like, okay, he's really athletic, but like, what is he really going to be? I look at, I go into this year feeling better and feeling differently about what he could potentially be as opposed to the beginning of his career. We're just like, all right. I know, I know. Some nights it's sick, but does he really even know what he's doing on top of all these other things that you expect to improve. So it just, it gets really hard. One through ten, one through twelve of, of shuffling those teams out. Like, the Lakers aren't going to miss the one through ten. The warriors with Curry, they're going to miss one through ten.

Right now. I had the Lakers and quippers under all those teams and people would be like, oh, you're just saying that. Like last year, my big fanduel bet was the over for the Lakers wins. I call it like I see it. The Lakers did not get better in any way. They had the exact same team they had last year and LeBron is a year older and they have a brand new coach who's never coached before. And then this Bronny James thing is going to be a weird wrinkle of the season. I don't think it's going to be a positive, and it's cool that he's going to be able to play with his son, but it's going to be a major distraction this whole season. It just is. And the odds of this team really looking rocky in December and being a panic trade candidate, I would think they're, they're one of my number ones. I mean, how about this? So LeBron, who we had to go through the charade of it was going to take way less to get a fridge. And I can't believe people reported on that story with a straight face, ends up with he took a little less to get them under the apron.

But thank God he did that, because the first report was that it was 104 million, it was going to put him above the second apron going into the season. And you're thinking there's no way, there's no way, the optics alone, that you wouldn't shave a few million off, especially.

Making 2 million a year.

So he didn't do that.

Well, what he did do, and I've never seen this before, and if anyone can explain this, I would love to know what the explanation is. No trade clause. But there's a 15% trade kicker. How does that make sense? They can't trade them, but it's a 15% trade kicker. If they do trade them, what, what is that?

I don't know.

I don't know either.

Can he waive the no trade clause?

I just raised my suspicion for some. I just thought it was. I've never seen.

Are you saying.

Well, it was like, yeah. A wink wink? Yeah. If we have to trade you in January, then you'll get paid, you'll get that money back and then some. I just don't understand it. And then I was looking at like, all right, what's their panic trade in December? It's like they, I don't even know what the panic trade is because nobody wants, like D'Angelo Russell at 18 million a year, right? Nobody wants Gabe Vincent at eleven. You'd be like, oh, we'll package our picks to our contracts together with a couple picks and say, I don't know if anyone wants that because then they're stuck with the contracts. And the only guy I can look at that made sense to me was Levine, who his stock crater to the point that Golden State was offered Levine for Chris Paul, who they were going to wave and Wiggins. And they were like, we're good. No thanks. So Levine basically has anti trade value now, and I don't, other than him and Deandre Ayton, who out, who else would the Lakers even get?

Levine's contract? And his injury history tells you everything you need to know about the market. So that makes sense that you're attaching something to that for someone to take that on. But with the amount of time left on that deal, it's not even really like the salary dump. It's like, now you have to deal with this thing.

Three years, 150 left, which makes it.

Impossible to trade, right. The other thing that you're hinting at here is, why is there a trade kicker? I didn't see that part of it. I saw the no trade part because when it was happening and I thought, are they actually, because the initial report suggested that they were going to be just over, like the second apron. Just over it. I was like, there's no way. There's no way they can go into it. And then it would be really weird if LeBron becomes passive aggressive about the lack of activity before the trade deadline. It's like, well, dude, we're, we're stuck. We're stuck on this one.

They haven't even started the season and guys have already been in trade rumors with them, right? It was like, we're going to get Quay Thompson. It would have been a sign of trade with D'Angelo Russell. Well, I wonder if LeBron knew about that one. And now the season started, it's like, hey, D'Angelo, good to see you again. How was your summer? It's like, oh, yeah, I tried to trade you for the 9th time, the.

Report was, and Clay apparently had dinner down here at the Bottle inn with the Dallas contingency. Yeah, I know. Once I read the story. I was like right down the street. Get takeout from there all the time. And the report was that the Lakers are willing to go higher than even what Dallas did and that Clay was like, look, I can see how I fit in with Dallas immediately. Even though I think there's some Dallas questions about your perimeter defense. If you're closing with Clay, Kyrie and Luca, you think, yeah, I love, I love.

Because Clay can't guard anyone anymore. That was, that was what was so funny about the Lakers scenario. It's like, okay, good. Another guy who doesn't play defense, he'll fit right in as everybody's going by, all these dudes. I don't like what the Lakers have done at all. And really the only, what else were.

They going to do after the ad and the LeBron extension? Yeah, I don't think they did.

I mean, 100 plus million for two guys. But basically they need Vanderbilt to be healthy and they need connect to be good, to at least be like a 9th man who can play and shoot. And they kind of need Gabe Vincent to be who he was two years ago. So there's three big can this happens. They're not inconceivable, but other than that, I don't think they're getting that Davis durability season again, do you? Durable. I mean, and we'll talk about Paul George and the Sixers after the break. But are they getting that Paul George durability season again? Not sure.

No. I mean, the better bet would be that you're not going to get the same level of durability from him because it was basically unprecedented for him at this stage of his career considering how, how much he's been hurt in the past. But it was an awesome season. I think you'll see more Reeves on the ball. I think you'll see him initiating more stuff. I think that's what Reddick is probably looking at because I think in the beginning Ham didn't quite understand Reeves benching him would tip me off to that.

Well, how about in the playoffs? When the first playoffs a year ago when that was like their best asset against Denver. And then ham just, he just wouldn't get the ball in the fourth quarter. Remember how much trouble Denver had matching up against Reeves that first playoff series? And then you're right. Like that last year he, ham didn't get him at all. I get the criticisms of Ham because I didn't think he did a great job last year.

But to your original like conspiracy pillpoint of the LeBron part of it. It's just not very. Cause I think anything's on the table when you're theorizing what could happen. Could LeBron say, all right, I played with my son on the same floor, but we're not winning it. But who's, who's trading enough assets back for a $50 million price tag on a player? Even if everybody wanted LeBron, I don't know. So I don't.

And then the Clippers, it's like, no, they're going to be better with Batum and Derek Jones and the Paul George minutes now they're going to emphasize defenses. Like, they're definitely not going to be better guys. I have, Clipper fans in my life are like, now it's more of a team. Now it's like, just stop. Paul George was really good last year. And Kawhi, I have no idea if Kawhi is playing in the Team USA scrimmage tomorrow, much less 80 more games. To me, the quippers, I have them last out of all those teams. Zubatz, batum, kawhi, Derek Jones and harden, and then Mann, powell, chris Dunn, coffey, bomba. That feels like a lottery team to me. That's like 120 game kawhi. Injury, and you're in the lottery. Yeah, west is too good.

The fact they got both those guys all NBA level and then kawhi is just not available for him in the first round. I think anything was possible for that team if they were healthy in the west. I really do. I mean, that last year, that, yeah, that run was incredible. I still think that win against Boston was the single most impressive game I'd seen from a team all season long. Like, I put that game up against every other game that I watched this entire year where they kicked their ass and they were all locked in and I went, this is, this is real. Which is also why I could have understood, despite some of the cost stuff that we're talking about and how much, we've all been just referencing the second apron here for weeks where if they had just said, oh, we'll just run it back, like, at least this gives us a chance because of what we saw before, even if the same thing with the Sixers and the Paul George part of it now, like Anthony Davis, as you just mentioned, some teams are just better health bets, and the Clippers still would have been a bad health bet.

And you're right. If they don't have Kawhi, I think Harden will put up some huge numbers. By the way, did you get any sense on who they were bidding against on that harden deal? Or was that just, hey, this is kind of your status in the league. And since that felt like a wink.

Wink from nine months ago. Yeah. Who was going over 30 on him. But we said that last year with Kawhi and Dallas, like sometimes they. There were no other. I'm not Kawaii Kyrie. There were no other Kyrie bidders last summer and Dallas still had to pay it. So I think it's just the way it goes. The thing for me with the Clippers and the Lakers is I think it's more conceivable to me that both teams miss the playoffs than make it, which is a pretty crazy place to be when you think like six years ago when the Davis trade and Kawhi and Paul George go to the Clippers, like, oh, my God, battle La. Here we go. And now I look at it and it's like, maybe that would be a fun fandom bet. Do you think both LA teams could miss the playoffs this year, meaning not be one of the, one of the eight playoff teams? I think it's. So that would be.

I'm just going off of last year's standings. That would be OKC. Denver, Minnesota in, Clippers out, Dallas in, Phoenix in. So that's five.

And then you're putting this basically taking somebody's spot.

Sacramento stays in the top ten. Memphis takes somebody's spot in, New Orleans, maybe Houston.

I mean, Houston could also be one of those. We actually have too many guys who think they're hot shit, and this has been kind of a weirdly unhappy season. Eme is mad at everybody. I could see that version of their season two, but I do like, plain.

Enough, I like eme in that spot. As opposed to a younger dude who's never been a head coach before with a young team where he'll just be like, juggle everybody. I don't care about your rookie extension. Like, here are the eight guys.

Yeah, well, out of all those odds, I think Memphis, Memphis at 20 to one seems like the best odds. All right, we'll take a break and we got to talk about Philly and Paul George. So Philly signs Paul George. We were expecting it for a while. What I wasn't expecting was them getting Caleb Martin, and it's unclear what happened with his agent and people on the Miami side. The Miami media machine is mad. Apparently he turned down five for 65 and thought he could get more. And not sure what happened. Maybe he didn't want to stay, but it was a tough beat for heat culture. Anyway, they get Caleb Martin, and now you can at least see what the eight man rotation is. Embiid, Paul George, Caleb Martin, Oubre Maxi, Eric Gordon, McCain Drummond, and free agent veteran minimum x as the nine man rotation plus picks to trade. If they want to get more people this winter, did this change your feeling on them as a possible eastern finals representative?

Change? Well, I mean, once it's all said and done, it's a complete home run of, of a free agent run. When you look at an off season and what everybody hopes your team will do, they actually did it. And most teams can't pull this off. And just by Paul George not getting that fourth year for the Clippers, it changed everything. It turned Maury into, this guy might lose his job and have to deal with Embiid to the best off season of any front office guy in the league.

What do you think was plan B? If Paul George, the Clippers just gave him the fourth year, or if Golden State, if that trade, you know, and Draymond was mad that Golden State, that the Clippers didn't take the Golden State package. Why would they take that package? Why do the Clippers have to take $50 million in players back from Paul George? Well, I didn't understand the point of that.

Well, I mean, it was Draymond making the point.

I know, but it was just like, you're mad. They got to do right by Paul George, so they have to go to the second apron to do right by him. That's.

Yeah, right. Or, or that the Clippers are, like, awesome. Now we have Wiggins, we have Chris.

Paul at $30 million.

Yeah. Cool.

Thanks.

Yeah, they're real contenders. They have a chance. If you're gonna play the health card against me, I can't win. I can't win in that argument. But that they were able to. Just the, the fragility of genius and failure in other fields, maybe it's a, a little easier to map out and reach that ultimate position of being that admired for your ability to do whatever it is that you do in your line of work, but for more, everything comes together just because the Clippers decided to do something that teams don't do historically, where they go, we're not giving you the fourth year to somebody like Paul George, which I totally understand. Like, I can't get mad at the Clippers for keeping Paul George from four years. I can't get mad at them not wanting to go to the fourth year. But that puts everything else in emotion, where now, all of a sudden, the rest of these guys like Caleb Martin's like okay, now I do want to go there. Like that makes sense for me to go to some kind of contender. So it's a good point. I don't know what, I don't know what could be criticized about the Sixers offseason because so many teams mapped this stuff out more than a year in advance knowing they still have a very slim chance of pulling this off and they did it.

Heres where you could kill the Clippers for the Paul George thing. And by the way, I wouldve been terrified to give him a four year, 200 plus million dollar deal when hes already been in the league for 14 years. Hes a metal rod in his leg. Hes had a bunch of injuries. Weve seen that go sideways and theres no going back. I mean even you think I was looking back at the, I was looking through DeRozans playoffs in that first year when the Nets, when piercing Garnett, Darren Williams and Joe Johnson and they played seven gamer Nets Raptors, right? And the Raptors end up losing by one. Lowry gets blocked at the buzzer and I was like, man, I just, I don't remember the series at all. And I'm looking at the box scores and KG plays like 20 minutes a game that first year for the Nets and he's basically done, remember? And it was like when they traded for him, it's like they're getting Paul Pierce and KG and it's like KG showed up at Brooklyn. It was a wrap. He was a corpse. He could barely move anymore. And I just wonder with Paul George, like this is what happens.

You have a ton of miles, you have some injuries and then all of a sudden it goes sideways. So I get it from the clipper standpoint and yet they don't have their pick for the, for all four of these years. They don't. They have to swap it in 25. It's going to either Philly or OKC in 26. They're swapping in 27 with OKC and their 28 is going to Philly. So if I don't have my picks for any of those four years, I'm just signing Paul George for the four and then maybe you can trade him in December or whatever. But I just wouldn't lose the asset. I would not turn him into Jones and batoon for 20 million. I mean I know about the second apron. I get all the things, but I think it's really likely they're in the lottery this year and that's a disaster. There's going to be no way for them to get better. So it was an amazing stroke of luck for Philly. No different than when the Celtics did that Tatum Brown picks trade, not realizing that Prokarov, within two years was going to be like, I'm out.

I'm not spending money anymore. Now all of a sudden you have their picks. Like, Darrow was pretty lucky that all of a sudden ballmer, for whatever reason, just looked at the chessboard and was like, I'm out. I'm not spending money like this anymore. But yet he doesn't have any of his picks. If I'd been in the room with him, I would have been like, yo, Steve, let's do the whiteboard. You don't have 25, 26, 20. We don't have picks any of these years. Like, how are we going to get good players? But maybe they think they can get free agents a year from now. I don't know. That's what I want.

No, that's a great point because it's the first thing that I wondered was, do they have a read on somebody down the line? Because everybody just keeps repeating, oh, well, they're moving into that new building. They can't do this. It's like, well, just because you're moving to a new building, this would be like, hey, let's have a title contending roster because it's a new building. It's like, all right. Yeah, because I wasn't thinking that before I found out about the new building. So let's start focusing on that now. But when we were just talking about the Clippers not that long ago in the pod, I can't imagine what it's like for Ballmer and that new ownership seasoning of it looked amazing to be able to add Kawhi and Paul George. But ultimately, this is what we're left with. What, three playoff round wins? Like, nobody. If you would set the over under on how many total series they're going to win, be like, hey, by the way, you're only going to win three playoff rounds the entire time these guys are here. So based on what you would have thought, the joy of actually pulling this off, pulling in two top ten, top 15 players of the time, the best version of Kawhi, arguably, like one of the best players in the league.

Even when you know the injury history, you're like, okay, this is a no brainer. I mean, it's just crazy that you throw in a Shea Gildrich Alexander that becomes an MVP candidate on top of all the picks on everything else.

Some of these other picks turns into Jalen Williams. Just the best two guys that.

Okay, it's Ernie, right? It's Ernie really bad. So knowing like you could argue, well, it's a sunk cost, so don't resign Paul George, because of all those picks. I still think other teams would have gone to your point. Well, we already used all these picks on this guy. So let's just, let's just keep them around because let's say, let's say there's a health luck situation with Kawhi and Paul George, which I know no buddy running a team would want to say like, oh, cool plan. Health luck with two guys with notorious health track records. We're just going to have health luck again at the end of this year. But you know what, it's still probably better. And then in the fourth year, which I think is a really important thing is, okay, you don't want to pay them in that fourth year, then just dump them on somebody else. Dump them on somebody else.

Dump them six months into the contract. The more I look at it, I'm just like, I'm signing them and figuring out later that's where I would have landed. I'm not losing the asset and I'm looking now as you're talking, they're not going to have cap until the really the 27th season anyway. The next two years. They're not going to be able to sign a big free agent. I just think the best way to have people lose interest in your new building is to not have picks and to give up top five picks the next couple of years potentially okay, but.

We touched on something. We didn't really flush it out because I don't have an answer to it. Do they think that with the new building and everything and clearing the decks earlier means that they have the inside track on somebody? But then again, think about all the times we've heard about, oh, this guy's going to want out. This guy's going to want to leave. Like when New York was staffing its team with guys that had these routes to Booker and Carl Anthony Towns and Donovan Mitchell, and it was like, they're going to have all these guys and when they become free agents, like that was always the big gossipy thing and then it just doesn't happen. It's a really, like, even if you got a hint at down the road, if you had more flexibility that it's really hard to predict those things and the actual times that it happens based on those two plus year rumors that we'll hear about some player, things change. So quickly. Like the Donovan Mitchell one's a perfect example. Everybody was just repeating the same stuff over and over again, but then all of a sudden, the Knicks can't fit them because, and they don't really need them, the Knicks.

I think when the Nets don't want.

Them, well, then the Nets are terrible. So then why does Mitchell want to go there? So now the shift of the league turns into, well, you know what? Maybe I'll just do the three year extension here in Cleveland. I'm getting my money. I'm still young enough. And then at ten years in, in 2027, I think the projections are a max contract worth like $370 million. So that's not bad news for Donovan Mitchell.

Donovan Mitchell be fine. Under the Racillo rule, he can always just demand a trade in eight months. If he doesn't like Cleveland that much. I'll tell you this, the moment Kawhi gets hurt next year, which odds are he will, and now that is the James Harden show. With just people standing around watching James Harden. Guess who's not going to be in the building for that? Me.

Fantasy draft, though. No fantasy. Little fantasy flyer out completely. I can't wait.

Anything worse than driving to Inwood and watching James Harden have a 40.42% usage rate as Derek Jones is standing here and Nick Batoon like, get me out. I'm not.

I might do it. I might go by myself. Smuggling my own six pack. No, just like smuggling a six pack of cores light and just start crack and be like, just see it one more time in its entirety because it's going to be awesome.

It could go so sideways. It's crazy. I feel bad for the Clipper fans. Clippers have the ones that they've had for a while. They have good fans and it just not great. But with the philly side of things, and I did this last week with Wilds and I wasn't quite hard enough. There's something.

Let it out, let it out. Let's hear it.

I was in Acapulco once with my mom and my stepdad and Jeff Gallo, the best man. My wedding in the late eighties, and we got lost. It was pre navigation systems, had the maps, and we're just driving around and we get really lost and we're going down this one road and it's dark and we're like, well, we should go down there. Maybe that's going to lead to a street. And my mom, all of a sudden she's like, no, we can't go down that road. Something about the road going that way, it just freaked her out. She was like, no, turn around. Let's just go back. I don't want to go down that road. She didn't like something. It's kind of how I feel about Paul George in Philly, and I'm still sorting my feelings out. There's something about the fit of the player and the fan base that I just need to work through mentally because it seems like the kind of guy who's going to drive them crazy. And yet I completely agree. They should have done the deal, signed him. It made a ton of sense. I'm not down on it, but there's something about him in Philly that makes me nervous.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's praise for pulling it off with also the caution of it 34 years old. Like, if we're doing the health clippers, the Anthony Davis stuff that we already touched on, and Philly's a real contender. Like, the whole point of this is they actually have a real contending team, the one through nine, to put it all together. But, yeah, he's not perfect.

You called him one of the coin toss brothers last year. Yeah, I voted for him 13. That's one of many reasons why I think Philly had to do what they did. They had to get him. Well, they had to do 100% endorse it.

We didn't even talk like, what are the other options? DeRozan at 20 plus million and then can you figure out a way to get he and KCP under the same thing? And then you're like, hey, this, this is what we did. We're much better now.

And you're like, I mean, let's talk that out. If, if I gave you Dory DeRozan and KCP or door b, Paul George for what Philly has withdev Embiid, who's pretty ball dominant when he's healthy, and Maxie, who's likes having the ball, would you be better off with the Rosen KCP combo? It's a good basketball argument. Darrell was always going, trying to get Paul George. That's who he is. He wants three stars. There was no question. And theoretically, the three of them fit really well together. But I mean, that Philly fan base is fucking tough, Mandez. It just is. They have the toughest fan base. That is the toughest place to play in the NBA. And their fans will both get mad when they hear that, but they know it's true. It's the toughest place to play out of all the teams, and they're not going to put up with the Paul George the first time there's a TNT Thursday game against Boston and he goes one for seven with four points and they're just not going to let, it's not the right team for that. So I just hope he knows that going in to well, I don't know.

That anyone can know until they've actually experienced it. Like, he can think he knows it, but those moments are going to happen. But during the regular season, it's not going to matter until it's the playoffs. And if those guys are all healthy, they have a really good shot. Now. I still think the most important thing to combat that is to make Embiid have to chase around a stretch five, which is why if they had gotten through and faced the Celtics and Embiid had been healthier. Well, I can only go based on the version of what we saw in beat, who was putting up huge numbers, but also just still looked physically impacted by where he was at at that point of the season.

Not protect the boards either.

No. Watching him the way he played against the Knicks, if he had had a chase przingus around, it was going to be a wrap. He might have gotten his points, but it was going to be brutal for him to chase him around. So the Knicks don't have that with Mitchell Robinson. They're going to have their own depth issue at center, like some of these other teams that we're talking about. But you still can't go like, well, hey, I also want depth at center on top of bringing bridges to throw with us all those other guys and resigning OG the assets he gave up. So it's still a great offseason for them, even if we can get really, really greedy with the way that we grade some of those things. So even though there's part of me that if you think of like the DeRozan health part of it. But it's funny because like, I even think about Denver and everybody's trashing them right now and I go, you know, KCP at 20 plus million at this age, and then also he's the fifth option and he could have zero points in a playoff game and you might not even notice, like, he wasn't good in the playoffs.

No, for him. So you're like, should I give that guy 60? But then the two of those guys, I just think it's about the high highest end shot making ability. And Paul George, even with how good DeRozan has been, I think the idea of Paul George is that he's a higher level than than even DeRozan. It's right.

I agree with you because you made the key point before. The fact that they got Paul George maybe opens the door for them to then get Caleb Barton and to get somebody at a discount, they have. When you think like the Knicks, who I. We both loved what they did this summer. Still. I still have some Knicks questions where Randall fits in all this.

I don't know what they're going to.

Do about the center position. Seems like a relevant question. Who's going to finish games for them? Last year they had such great chemistry and they had such a distinct identity when Randall went out. And now they have really good players and all of them are going to want to finish games and I guess Randall is going to have to play center for them. They're really going to miss Arnstein. They know they're going to miss him. And I think he's going to be just about impossible to replicate. And the Celtics, who are not going to Porzingis for two and a half months, like that's best case scenario, he might be gone half the year. They're just gonna be a different team coming off a title. It's always a little weird the year.

After, so I can't believe Horford continues to play at this age.

Horford's gonna be legitimately 38, you know, coming off 100 game season. So if I'm Philly and if I'm Orlando, I'm like, hey, man, we could. If we could stay healthy and get our shit together like that, we could be a one or a two seed here because Celts are. Celts are not going to be the same team next year for the regular season that they were. And I don't think the Knicks are. I think the Knicks got better, but also have some holes that I want to see play out. And I don't know if they're getting that Brunson season again. As much as I love Brunson, I have him as the 6th best. Why not top hundred? I don't know. He's just small guards. I've just seen small guards have, like that one guy. Maybe I'm scarred from the Isaiah Thomas season when he was just incredible, and then that was it. It was, it was kind of a, you know, just small guards with that kind of usage rate always make me nervous from an injury standpoint.

He's 28 in August. I think even if, look, it was an absurd year from him, but he's like another one of those guys. It's just like hesitant limitation guy. Like, I can't I've already done it too many times with him. There's. There's no way. And maybe it's not the overall look, the overall stats are probably not going to be the same, but it's more a fact. Like, does he look like he's as great of a shot maker in those huge moments? I mean, he's kind of answered every possible question you could have about this guy, considering all the injury stuff. So bridges going to get a few more shots? Oh, geez. Probably going to want a few more shots. Mitchell Robinson wanted a lot of shots, but he's not going to get any of them. Just as an aside to the younger listeners right now. Or maybe the younger content people out there stop fucking posting pictures of centers going between their legs in an empty gym hitting NBA threes doesn't mean anything. It's like me airbrushing myself next to, like, Christina Hendrix. Like, it's not real. It doesn't. No. Cause I don't even know how to use Adobe.

But I'm just saying, like, every offseason we see all these bigs because they never get to shoot these shots in the game. They don't get to dribble long enough. And there's a reason why. Because in game, it's not a real thing. And there's all these other guys around them that are just way better at it. So the basketball, as they've aged, as they've become basketball adults, some other adult who's a coach goes, hey, cool stuff, bro. You're not doing any of that here. Because it's actually not a great idea to have Mitchell Robinson isoing with a high, high ball screen and then showing off this handle that nobody's actually trying to do.

You're seven one. We're not letting your shoe pull up threes.

Yeah. Now if you could make them like Wemby, then it's on. But it's just constant. Every off season I see these videos posted of these huge centers and it's like, man, so and so is in his bag this summer. I can't wait to see this. It's like, no, I'm going to tell you right now what it's going to look like. It's not going to look like any of that. Somebody, he's never going to have those plays.

Everybody knows that. I love those. Social clips of so and so was a problem. Like the junior rider was a problem. I love those. Somebody sent me one of it was Shaq's jump shot was a problem. And it was all these clips of Shaq making like 20 footers and threes and it was like people don't realize Shaq could shoot from. It was like one of those. It's like Shaq never took those. We all watched Shaq all those times. It was like a miracle if we took 125 footer in a month. But his, I gotta say, his shot did look pretty good. Like I did make what was there.

Wasn't there a new one? Go ahead. I'll get to this because I know you're talking about Shaq.

Well, I was just like, time machine Shaq. If you just took Shaq from 1992 and just put him now and he was shooting more jumpers, just what would that look like? It did got me thinking a little bit, but he was so unstoppable around the basket, it would have been stupid to have him shoot 20 footers for any reason.

But anyway, wasn't there a. Did you have a Quincy AC was a problem post recently?

I think I did, yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at this summer. I'm going to be on the lookout for some. All right. So if I gave you Boston, Philly, New York, Milwaukee, Orlando as a five right now in July, July 7, shouldn't.

Cleveland be the six? Shouldn't the Pacers be in there?

I don't know. You tell me. Who do you have? Would you have the Celtics as the guaranteed one seed? And if you don't, who would you put in that spot?

I don't know how you. But I don't know if there is because I would imagine that within be this year. Okay. And knowing how all these playoff series have ended and Paul George's history, I wouldn't care about my seat at all. If I'm Philly. I'm just not going to. Hey, you already won the MVP. They load it up like this year has to be about everybody being as healthy, being ready.

April midget, right? Yeah, because the Philly case would be. Look how good they were when Embiid played last year. Look at their record now. We've made the team better around him. And if we can get 67 games out of him, could we go 53 and 14 in those 67 games based on the track record of how good we've been when he played.

Is Embiid the best passer out of this group?

Well, if you're picking holes, the lack of passing and then the rebounding thing is going to be a real issue for them. They were bad as, as a rebounding team last year. You know, they had a. They were 20th and then their opponents were 8th, rebounding against them. Then the playoffs, the Knicks were like four to five above them, game by game. And in general, they just, I thought that was a real issue for them. So who that? Caleb Barton, Paul George, Maxi. Like all these dudes they've added, they don't really have anybody who box out, so and so. They'll be able to switch on D, though. Wait, we have to talk about it. Sounds like you're slightly higher on Philly than I am.

It would be dismissive to go. They have no chance. I don't. Is anybody saying that or no? Okay. I don't know. I don't know if I'm higher on them because I don't think anybody should be picking any other team to have the one seed other than Boston, even with the center questions and the non przingus start to the season. Because those four guys, that one through four, like who's one through four? Is even close to that right now.

Yeah, I'm with you. The defending entitle always makes me nervous. Can we talk about, you want to go Franz extension or Scottie Barnes extension or both?

I think they're both. I think it's a both topic. I did a lot of work on this, so.

Oh, you did? I figured I did not like either extension at all. And for two reasons. One is I don't think those guys are Max players. And two, I don't understand the point of doing it a year early when we just saw Philly with Maxie be like, hold on, man. We're giving you the contract. Just wait a year. It gives us more flexibility a year from now, signings the whole thing. And also, like, deep down, if it doesn't go awesome, it's kind of easier as a trade asset. Barnes, I just don't get at all. They're basically saying this is the face of our franchise and we've just not seen them win with them. Franz, we can talk about. But the fronds. I honestly was stunned because I just.

So you're more stunned by Franz than Scottie Barnes?

I was. I was stunned by Franz. I would have waited a year, seen if he could shoot threes better and just seen what improved in year four. The fact that they did it a year earlier, I just didn't get it.

Most do it a year early when it feels like this is the Max guy.

So the maximum or Edwards or. Yeah, but Franz Wagner averaging 19 and five, that, that's where I maybe draw.

The line and people could say that with Maxie, but Maxi took another jump beyond. I mean, of all the things that more he's done here, Maxi being that as the 21st pick is like, that's just an incredible win to add somebody who's a flirtation, all NBA guy, maybe moving forward. I mean, I know the guard position is stacked or whatever, but, like, I voted him as a starter for the all star team. You know, I didn't. I mean, even. Even the best version of Max would be like, oh, yeah, a couple of years into this, this is the kind of neighborhood that he's going to be in. I mean, that's incredible. So, normally, I don't know what the maxi number would have been, but they were smart to hold off on the whole thing. And I agree. Like, it. It would seem to just allow you a little bit more flexibility, but it feels like there are certain players that are anointed that you just know that you're giving them the max number. And it's the same thing with Alonzo ball deal where he does it, what, a year early for the five years and 204 million or something like that.

The other. Yeah, I said Lonzo, my bad. The other problem with the positive, but.

With Paolo, you do it like I like. It's like, yeah, I get it.

Palo is a no brainer.

The moment you could do it, tatum, you do it. Edwards, you do it. I just don't think when you get to the Barnes Franz level, I'm going to do it when it's the right year to do it. Why am I doing it a year early?

Scotty has a better argument for it than Franz does. But let's go over a couple of things here. All right? Yeah. Lamella was five years, 204 million. That was last year. So this number is five years, 225 million for Barnes. The problem is that the agents want to report it as five years, 270 million, and that's if they were to be all NBA MVP or defensive player of the year, which Barnes actually like. There's. There's a case to be made that if he keeps improving, that maybe he ends up in a third team all NBA, certainly more so than Franz at this point. So the 270 number is the first number that you see on both of these players. You're going like, what the hell? Like, look at it. Yeah, right. It's 225. So if it's Barnes making 10 million this year, because it's the fourth year of the rookie deal, which is the second club option, there's no options on Scottie's deal. And the way this works is that we know that the max players 30% of the cap. The super max is 35%. Well, on these rookie max extensions, it's 25% of the captain.

So if the cap continues to go from 140, where its at now, to what would be the fifth year of Scottie Barnes deal, and I just did like average 10 million a year up in cap probably goes up more than that. Its $190 million. So youre still only paying just over 25% of your cap number to that player. So as absurd as the numbers may be for Barnes, when the extension kicks in at 384-2455 well, 48 and then 51,000,029. 30. Okay, it's, it's not, we have to remind ourselves, it's not 51 million of the $140 million cap. It's 51 million of the $190 million cap. And that's the cap where basically every team's going to be way over the cap in the first place. So if you feel like the player has a chance to be the face of the franchise, which may say more about the rest of the Raptors roster, where I did the numbers on that, like this year with Brown, RJ Barrett, and quickly, it's going to be like 78 million with those players. And then when Brown's off the books and it's RJ, quickly, and then Barnes, it's like 100 million or 90,000,090.

I think it's 99 million for those three players. You're going, man, you might be paying the wrong three players, so.

Oh, you think?

Yes, I do. It's why I brought it up. It's why I brought it up. But this falls into that category of transactions that happen in the league that I know you despise, and it's the, hey, make sure you take care of our guy. Do it a year ahead of time. Let's not bullshit this. Nobody ever seems to want to say, hey, we really like you, Scotty Barnes, you're awesome, but you're not a max guy yet, or even better with Franz. So why don't we do like five years, 180, for whatever reason, which I think has more to do with the relationships and the front offices and the long term playing with all this stuff. And sometimes the team's fear of pissing off their guy and not going like.

This is the Celtics with Jalen was a good example of this. The first contract they gave, not the second one, right. They signed him a year early, they took care of him, but they got kind of a pretty good deal on it. And as the years passed, Jay Lenozzi has a deal on it, right? Whoever his agent was who made the deal, you have the other agents going, you realize that deal is way too low. You realize you made a huge mistake, right? So now it's in his head, I'm underpaid. This sucks. And I think that's one of the many reasons why they were like, you know what? We're not going to haggle with Jalen, whether it's 285, 290, or 300. Like, let's pay him. The guy deserves it. I think that the case against everything you laid out is what Philly did with Maxie last year. Because they're like, yeah, we're going to take care of you. Just keep getting better. Give us a year. Just trust us. And I don't know why, like, Toronto couldn't have done that with Scottie Burns.

Because they weren't going to have the kind of cap space that Philly was projecting. Like, this entire 24 summer for Maury was about preserving this cap space. It's why they didn't do anything. That's why they didn't take back.

Like, we left that. We left that playoff series last year wondering, like. Like, what's up with Franz? Like, what if. If Franz just never learns how to shoot threes, what the hell is he.

Yeah.

Could he be a top three guy on, like, a real title team if he can't make threes? I don't know.

I just think the Maxi thing is. You're right. But it was so specific to what their cap situation was going to be that if Philly didn't have the cap room or weren't, they weren't planning it out the way they were, where they didn't take anything back with Hardin's deal, that was going to linger like he was clearing the decks, hoping that apologia would be available. And it worked. Maybe with that part of it where Max's representation can understand, hey, we're going to be doing this because we're better. We're going to take care of you. We're going to give you the max deal, but the cap hold is going to be so much smaller. Don't take the extension now. And where Barnes and Franz are, like, look, Orlando spent their cap space. They spent their cap space on KCP and resigning their own guys. Toronto has all of these guys that they've traded for that they decided to pay.

I feel like we've had this same combo every summer. And the question is always asked, and my answer is always the same because the question is always, well, what are you going to do? But you got to sign these guys, right? And it's like, well, okay, we asked that with Zach Levine. Now, this isn't like, Zach Levine level, because they. They had a year that could either be this year or next year when they did the extension. But the Zach Levino and Bradley Beale are the two best examples of what are we going to do? You got to sign them, right? It's like, well, do you think Chicago would do the Zach Levine thing over again? Like, it was way too much money for him, and now they can't trade him. And I just feel like I'm not 100% sure Franz can live up to this contract. I like him. I think he's a good player. I had him on my top 100 list. I had him as, like, the 68th best player in the league. But I just look at somebody like Austin Reeves, who we felt like took less than he was worth when he did that Lakers deal last year.

There's some sort of middle ground between. Reeves didn't get enough. But I feel like those Franz Barnes contracts are just too high. I just don't get it.

Well, Reeves was in a tougher spot because of where he was drafted, and his contract wasn't structured in the beginning the same way a guy like a lottery pick like Franz is, where it's very clear, like, this is what you're going to make. These are the two club options you go to. Fifth year restricted. It just doesn't seem to happen. So there has to be a reason why it doesn't happen. There's a reason why teams don't want to mess with their lottery pick the same way the timberwolves did with Kevin Love, where they tried to be cute.

About it, but we didn't like that. Neither of us like that when it happened, because it was like, well, especially with Kevin love, because. What are you guys doing? Fucking sign up? Yeah, that's a little different. Franz. I'm not sure his area. All right, well, we'll agree to disagree. We're gonna take one more break, and then I gotta figure out from you what's happening with the Miami Heat. All right, we talked about how the Lakers are exactly the same as they were last year. So are the Miami Heat. Usually they have the big, splashy move, the. I didn't see that one coming. And it really feels like ever since that dame trade fell apart, I don't know where this team is now. I don't think they're in the. You met, we mentioned six east teams that we like more than them in the previous segment, to me, they look like a playing team. There's also some variants, like if they get another Jimmy Butler only plays 50 to 54 games type of season, maybe they're like a nine seed and I don't really know what they're up to. What are they up to?

Rosalo even left out. I mean, it's really funny. If you go on one of the depth chart sites that I look at, it hasn't been updated. They have three starters listed.

Seriously?

Yeah. I mean, it's stupid. It just made me laugh when I was looking at it. Nobody wants hero's contract. Believe it or not, Tyler Herro is not as good as Tyrese Maxi. Some people argued last year that Maxey was not as good as hero. Somebody's going to want to come there. And we've made heat culture jokes for years. I stopped making them after 23. At least I tried to, but just because you have this great organization, their development track records are incredible. You know, they do really good stuff. Like think about how many years all these different players like on the margins were like that guy's going to be good, right? Like how did, how did that happen? But like who, what did they do wrong? Like I think there's a difference between they did something wrong and there was just literally nothing available to them and I don't think anything was available to them. And they were in a tough salary spot. They just weren't going to have the flexibility on top of everything else unless somebody demanded, that's where I'm going. And they thought they had that last year with Lillard and it didn't work.

Their starting lineup right now would be Bamdez, Jovic, butler hero and Rozier with Robinson and Hawkez where Alec Berks love Josh Richardson. Thats their bench. Robinson isnt expiring. Hes at like 19 million. So hes a little tradable. But the real problem is what you mentioned with hero. If he doesnt have kind of trade value, it even seemed like he might have last year. Thats a killer. And I wonder are they a potential Brandon Ingram team with Hero? And is that like a three teamer where maybe this is the team that rolls the dice on Brandon Ingram and hopes to he culture him? There's the butler thing is, I don't think anybody knows where that's heading, but that I was trying to think like there's so much talent on the league now and there's so many good to mediocre, to decent teams that we're going to get to December and there's going to be three teams who are just super unhappy that need to make a move. And I wonder if maybe that's Miami's destiny. Destiny? Is this a December? Uh oh. Miami's up to stuff, but other than that, I can't see what they're doing because there's no way they're a top six team in the east right now.

I don't see it.

No, no chance.

We need them behind Sienna, too. So they're pacers.

Don't get talked about at all. I mean, Cleveland, Orlando, the Pacers, they still should be talked about here a little bit.

I mean, we haven't talked about the Bucks really either. So there's just no scenario where they're in the top seven. And then the Bucks who ended up getting Delon Wright, which I like, but other than that, seems like they're just bringing everybody back and hoping on Dame having a big recovery season. So I don't know. The league is super deep. You look at these teams, you're like, wow, that's a nine seed. And you look at Miami and they have Bam and Jimmy Butler, and I don't feel like they're potentially a top eight playoff team. We'll see what happens with them. What are you, you know, can we.

Stay on this, though? I want to stay because it was something that you said without me, and you basically were saying this version of the NBA isn't as exciting. And granted, you're going to get a ton of grief because it felt like you were already worried about the tax implications of all the Celtics contracts and that with these new restrictions, if I'm hearing you right, that now the league has too much parity and then that turned into the NFL, you think being more fun than the NBA. So I wanted. I wanted to stay on that with you because we haven't even talked about it off the air.

Yeah. The thing that, the thing that I said last week was, I don't like that teams that do everything right somehow still get penalized by it. That's the part I don't get. Like, if you draft your own stars, if you make smart trades, you still get screwed. And I. The thing, and I guess Zach, because I was texting with Zach about it, apparently he wrote a piece in 2018 about how to take care of franchise guys with the luxury tax. And, you know, if you have curry for 15 years, should curry count full boat on your luxury tax or should he count 70%? I just wish the league rewarded teams for continuity, which they just don't. They don't care. I think they, I think this is what they want. I think they love when it's like crazy June, crazy July, crazy February, people hopping around. I think the agents like it. I think the money gets dispersed in a different way and everybody's spending it, and I don't like it as much. Like, I think what we had, and this is what I said the other day, like what we had when Clay's leaving the wars, it was a big deal, partly because he played there for 13 years and him and Curry and Draymond lasted together that long.

And that's what we're giving up. With this new apron stuff, I don't think it's possible to keep teams. What is OKC gonna do four years from now? Like, let's say they have like a really nice run here with Chet and with SGa and with Jalen Williams and some of their young guys, they're not going to be able to keep that together. So that's just the league we've, we've stumbled into is just these short bursts of having a team that's good for three, four, maybe five years. But if you really stumble into something great, you can't keep it. And I don't think that's right.

Yeah, but you're suggesting that if it's really something great that it could have staying power for longer than five years. And I don't really know that we've had a ton of examples of anything lasting longer. Maybe the player on the team, like a magic or two.

Threesomes or. Threesomes. Yeah, it's two people or three. And then the supporting cast changes around them. So Golden State had the three guys that managed to stay together. Boston has Tatum and Brown now heading into year eight and year nine together. OKC will potentially have their guys hanging together for a while, but that's. You're really talking about a nucleus that's a little smaller, like the Celtics.

It's.

It's really about Tatum and Brown. Right. Ultimately that'll be what makes that special. Everybody else will kind of move in and out of their orbit, but it's those two guys that'll be what? Less. And I'm worried they're not going to be able to keep that.

But the league probably has more parity. We have six straight different champs. League has more parity than the NFL does right now.

True. Well, the NFL, there's more what, six quarterbacks? I feel like your defensive turning me. I think the NFL has more parity than the NBA. You don't think like the NBA, the NFL has the ability to have.

I don't think it does. I don't think it does.

The NFL has the ability to have, like, the packers just jump seven wins in a year. The NBA doesn't have that.

Yeah. It's because the turnover is usually more than anything else.

Yeah.

I think sometimes I'll. I used to fall for it, like a new coach could come in and everything, and it's like, okay, well, last year there were minus twelve in turnovers and this year they were plus ten. Then we acted like they were a completely different team. I mean, that's kind of what that thing is. Part of it is you're sitting there going, how is this team that was up 21 to three trying to hold off this team that's down eight points at the very end? It's like, oh, because there were a couple turnovers. I don't know that it means the product. There's less possessions and all this stuff. But when I. When I watched what you were talking about, it wasn't that I was like, you're totally wrong. I think we actually have to see how the second apron plays out here a little bit. And we're in a stretch of parity with basketball, which is, I thought, what people didn't like about basketball, where there weren't enough teams, it was just the same teams over and over again. Especially when you go through the teens of LeBron with the Heat and then Cleveland up against the Golden State machine.

Like, that was. That was a criticism, even though more people watched it. The criticism was how. What's the point? The season hasn't even started yet. It's going to be Golden State and Cleveland, the NBA Finals. And for the most part, that's what we got for a really long stretch. So now that we're not, we're going to have that happen a lot less likely in theory, because I still think some of this stuff plays out. And you're like, hey, wow, that's crazy. The guys that are the five best players in the league are still winning all the titles. How different is it, really? It feels like there's more parity.

I know, but I think you're missing the point of, like, what I cared about. Yeah. Cause you talk about like, yeah, Mahomes, borough in the NFL, there's what, six, seven teams that we kind of know are going to be in the mix every year. As long as the supporting cast is good, but they're all attached to specific cities and they don't leave the cities in the NFL. Right. Like Brady was with the Patriots for 20 years. Even Dak Prescott's been in Dallas for ten Mahomes is going to be in the Chiefs his whole career. Joe Burrow is going to be in the Bengals his whole career. You go on down the line, the infrastructure is really the quarterback and the franchise and maybe the coach, too. In the NBA, I think what's shifting is are we going to have that quarterback kind of possibilities with the rosters? Whereas the Celtics, Tatum and Brown together are the quarterbacks with the warriors. It was Curry and Quay forever were kind of the quarterback of that. Milwaukee was Giannis and whatever infrastructure you could put around him. But Giannis is probably going to be the next one who wants to leave.

I like when the guys stay in the same cities. To me, thats the most important thing. If you have a best guy that youve rooted for forever, I dont think you should have to be worried the guy is going to take off. It should be a situation where that guy and whoever, like his best teammate was or whatever, then that should be what you get to watch for more than four or five years. And I think the NBA is now risking that in a real way with the second apron stuff. They're just going to make the. You think that Jalen Brown is going to be on the Celtics in four years? Like, I really don't know, which seems insane. Those guys should retire together, what, 13 years in?

Yeah. The likelihood is not going to be on the Celtics anymore, but. Right, but if it's Tatum and Brown, maybe that's the way, like you just said it. So I'm not presenting this to you as if you didn't think of it because, yeah, back to your original point, it was why penalize. This is almost more about an Oklahoma city discussion than it is even a Celtics discussion at this point. But that's kind of when I brought.

It in, the Celtics discussion.

I know, I was just having fun with you on that, but that's what it turned into.

What about Yoko Jimuri? That's another one. Right.

But Jokic and Murray will always be able to work out. The problem is they paid Aaron Gordon so much money. They paid Michael Porter Junior. You want to talk about doing a deal like sight unseen, especially with the injury red flags, even though, look, when you get a title, nobody's really going to care about it all that much. It's still probably going to be the two guys. It may just be eliminating the third guy or the assumption you can always add the third guy and the third star. Things I don't think you are. I don't think you are. If you have two really good guys.

Are they going to stay together?

I hope not. You know what else, though, with the second apron and the analogy I've used in the past is like, there's a reason why there's like, when you're younger, it's good for you to have a credit limit, even if you could probably afford have it be a little bit higher, is that you're just going to end up spending to the credit limit, especially when you're younger, at least for me, when you're stupid and you're just, you know, whatever. You're not exactly hosting squawk box. So the owners do the second apron thing to make sure that happens, even though, like, what, 14 of the last 16 title winners or taxpayers. Howard Beck did a really nice piece on the ringer that I encourage people to check out with all this stuff because even the players association, as they were talking about the second apron, it's like, wait, isn't this kind of like limiting some of the freewheeling spenders that you have here? And the players association rep in the piece even said, it's basically like two to three teams every year that would even have gone over the second apron. So it's not like it's limiting everything.

And then on top of the thing that's always important to remind all of us is that whatever you think the second apron does in limiting spending and costing players money, it doesn't really, because it's all part of the 51 49% split and that there actually already is, in theory, a hard cap. The players are making 51% of all basketball related income. It's just what it is. Now, I do think that this is a player empowerment pivot on top of everything else, because as this continues to play out and there's going to be the guy that's a great player that's like, I want to go there, figure it out. They'll have a rulebook for those teams that are flirting with the second apron that go, we actually can't do it. We didn't want to do it before, but we had to. Now I don't know that we can actually do it. There's no freedom. The freedom of movement is limited in the way that we've seen in the past. So sure, it saves the owners, the taxpayers a ton of money compared to what they were doing before, because they're just going to be so incentivized to stay under it.

But I think the player movement has a big part of it, which, yeah, would penalize OKC if they had five guys. But I don't know that the Celtics are a really good example. Like, it's so rare that they could have five guys like this all be this good at the same time, all making this much money.

Well, that's true, but I think with the, like, let's look at San Antonio, right? Let's say Castle is really good. Let's say they nailed that pick. He ends up being the best guy in the draft. And let's say they get some awesome guy in the 2026 draft. Let's say they get. They stumble into AJ. Now they have wempy and castle and AJ. And then, I don't know, Sohan becomes Scottie Pippen. Now you have the four guys. I don't see how you keep the four guys together. Now, the reason I was thinking about that defraying the cost of a franchise player is because. Because that's something the NFL should probably have, too. And I've made the case for that, too with them. Like, if you have Mahomes and you've had Mahomes for ten years, should he count against the salary cap in exactly the same way? This is what happened with Brady, with New England forever, where he had to take discounts. Remember the last five, six, seven years where he took less money so they would allegedly feel the better team and they kind of fucked about it. But I don't know, I just, I like rewarding teams for ingenuity and continuity.

And if we can't do that, I just think this is what the league's going to become. Wherever every. Just guys bouncing around and maybe one guy is attached to a team and that's it. In football it's different because you have, if you have one of the six, seven quarterbacks, they usually don't go anywhere, right? Like Matt Stafford. Switch teams, cousins switch team. Like it. Now I'm already dropping down the cousins level, but if you have like one of the OG guys, those guys usually don't switch teams. They stay there forever and that becomes the continuity.

But based on the thing you just laid out with spurs, like, what if they nail it? Okay, so what are they gonna have? Like four all stars? Four consistent all stars, all at the same time? It doesn't really even happen. The fourth guy wouldn't even have enough options to even be able to put up the numbers that go back to.

The eighties, Celtics and Lakers. How would those teams have stayed together? Like everyone, roman sizes. All those teams that they would have had to get rid of McHale and probably Danny age by like 1987, the Lakers, there's no chance they would have been able to keep worthy and Kareem and Magic and Byron Scott. Like, that team doesn't exist. So I just, I hope people understand that that's where we're moving. You might get like for one year or two years, like with the Celtics situation where you have like the five or six guys, but they're not going to have that a year from now. Like that. This is the last year for this group together. Right. So they have a chance to go back to back, but then after that they'll have to trade Porzingis or they'll have to trade Drew holiday and maybe they'll even have to make two trades, not one, just to try to get under this second apron so it can cost them like 450 million to have the team.

You think if they repeated with those guys under contract, with the holiday extension done. And the thing that scared me about the prozingus trade wasn't so much who he was and what the number was, it was that they had to do the extension for him to pick up player option because that was all part.

Of this year and next year, right?

Yeah, but it still was. But next year, three year commitment. Yeah, it's a three year commitment to somebody like Brzingas with the injury history. So then you've got the Tatum deal that's going to surpass the brown deal. That was historic and all these things. But if they were to win again or say, like losing the NBA Finals or something and everybody feels healthy and everybody likes what they're doing, you think they're just going to break it up to avoid being a second apron, second time offender and have their first round draft pick move to the back of the first round. Can you even like, what are you really doing?

It's not just that, it's that repeater tax, right? It would be the lineup, the whole rotation a year from now, I think would cost like $450 of the tax or $450 million with the tax. I just. Crazy amount of money.

The traffic part of it's irrelevant because if you're that good anyway, all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, we went from 29th to 30th.

Like, well, what do you think they should have done? No, the second apron. Do you like this new system?

If my goal was I really, when I, when we first talked about it and then we, I admit it, I have to. Sometimes it's like the bridges Nick's Houston trades altogether and just trying to map out all the draft picks being like, do I have this right yet? Or do I have this wrong? Is it five or is it six? When there's new changes like this at CBA, like, I have to go over it a few times before I really realize it. And then I got to read, like, other people to see if there's stuff that I'm missing. And then I usually sent Bobby marks 100 texts. Of course the owners have to have something in place to prevent themselves from themselves. Because one of my favorite things ever, when that hockey lockout happened in zero four, and I was buddies with a bunch of guys that I'd gone to school with that played, a and I just was like, what's going on? And, like, one of them just said we were just hanging out. He's like, hey, if it's that big of an issue, stop paying us.

And it's the NBA 20 years ago, same thing. They couldn't stop themselves.

Yeah, it's a really simple thing, but, like, if I were a player, I'm going, so what am I? I'm supposed to give you back? The hockey guys get destroyed in that thing. They had to give back, like, 25% of their contracts lost the season. They had, like, look at the Maple Leafs team spending, and then what the first cap was versus. Versus what the Maple Leafs were actually versus what they were actually spending in the past. You're like, you're making that team that was spending that much and combined payroll go down to this number to have everybody else be able to catch up with them. And if you're a player, you're going, so you guys can't help yourselves, but it's our fucking fault. So, like, I philosophically just believe in that. I just. I believe in the player side of that. But the players are. Excuse me, the owners can't help themselves, so they have to put all these mechanisms in place. But I just think that the freedom of movement for the Suns, the Suns are going to be this. This test of scaring the shit out of all these other teams.

Well, that was basically. So you look back at Golden State a couple years ago, which is the reason I think we have the second apron to begin with, because what was that time? They would, they spend like, 350 million on their roster, and they just kept adding stuff, taking on contracts, and people.

Were pissed off about it over four years. Lakeup and ballmer Smith. And this is Bobby Marx's number. 950 million combined over four seasons.

And that's why we have this rule now because of those two types. People are like, what the fuck, man? How are we supposed to compete with this? You're just hemorrhaging money and you don't care.

But you like the warriors, though, being able to keep everybody well, they did.

What they did, what it took to win the 22 title, and it worked. I just feel like I don't ever want to get to a situation where we're redoing basically with the new rules. What just happened with Clay and Draymond and Curry, and Clay's gone in like 2018, right? And you don't even get 20, even though the last few years of the Clay experience wasn't that much fun. But I look at what's going to happen with Boston. I just really worry that Tatum and Brown are going to retire as Celtics. Maybe one of them will. But with these new rules, it almost seems inconceivable both will, which I don't think is good for basketball. You know, and if they can't figure out any sort of wrinkles to take, to have teams take care of guys they drafted, smart things they did. I don't really understand what we're doing, but I would say that about football, too.

But we also had the same thing with OKC when it was Hardin, Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka. Now, they made a mistake. They could have wrote it out another year. They didn't really get back enough when they did the Hardin trade. Harden also was somebody we didn't realize was going to become this impactful as a one for a team because his role was diminished and, you know, good for him. Like, there was a number that they offered him. No, they cheaped out.

They came down like six and a half million bucks.

It has happened before. I still. I just feel like maybe you're overreacting to it a little bit in that if you have two special players, you're going to be able to keep the two guys together. And I think the Celtics are a really rare case of, like, roster construction because. Go ahead.

No, I worried. Denver is the flip side of that.

Though, that Denver's Boston two years from now together.

But if you make any mistake now, like you mentioned, the porter contract, once you have the two guys, if you make any mistake around those two guys, you almost can't recover. Now, Jokic Murray. Instead of playing with Caldwell Pope, they have to keep their fingers crossed that Peyton Watson can hit a corner. Three in round two. That's the part I don't like. I had one more question for you, and I really want your honest opinion on this. Do you think Cerude is going to root for Germany or the USA and the world basketball, the Olympics.

Well, he is a soccer guy. Yeah, he is a soccer guy. You never know. Like, I always feel like, see, this isn't fair because I shouldn't say this about all soccer fans. Cause I don't believe this, although I've really enjoyed soccer. But then after watching Uruguay in USA and then watching Spain, Germany, I was like, this feels like two different sports. I don't know. Maybe that's just my untrained eye. Enjoyed the shootout last night. But the earliest soccer people, when I used to hate soccer and make fun of soccer, and I was in Neanderthal like everybody else that didn't like soccer, I always felt like my guys that were big soccer fans were, like, borderline communists, and they'd be the kind of guy that would, like, root for another country in the Olympics. So I've since softened my stance that because soccer's just too popular now, there's plenty of guys that I know that are just not likely to become communists that like international soccer, they'll get up for Premier League.

More mainstream. I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. It's more mainstream now. So if you'd asked me this 20 years ago, I'd say, yeah, Serti is probably rooting for somebody else.

No, but I'm talking about the basketball.

Yeah, I know, I know.

The Wagner brothers playing the Americans, let's say in the quarterfinals, if France hits.

A game winner against Team USA, he's not going to be upset. Bring him in.

Come on in. Just give us the answer.

Oh, boy. Well, I mean, they won the World cup last time around. Franz was the best player on the german team, and now everybody thinks Franz sucks, so I guess.

Don't do that. Don't be like that.

No, I think there's a lot of France. Who do you think is like, stay with us on this one, Siri, who took the most damage in the last, like, two months? The perception of them.

Is Franz on the magic or just in the NBA?

Just in the NBA. It's like Franz. All NBA first team perception damage.

I think this is where, like, the white euro thing, we're not totally over it. It's like, oh, look at that. You know, it's Franz. I knew he wasn't good because he doesn't look incredible when you watch him play. He's like a savvy guy that gets to the rim and does a lot of nice things. But I think, you know, there's a lot of people who are waiting for big, actually. He's not that good. And I think the playoffs, although people conveniently forget game four where he was awesome, yet 34 points was incredible.

Conveniently a terrible game.

Seven, he didn't have a great shooting season. I would argue that. I would. It's not an argument. I would tell you that basically every other part of his game got better last year. Just three point shooting was down. So, you know, shot mid thirties for most of his career. Michigan, Germany, first two years in Orlando and junior bad three point shooting year last year, junior, even junior high. Great shooter, you know. So I don't know. I'm comfortable with my Franz. Take Phil.

Are you comfortable with the Franz Max?

So what's the. Let's play this out so he gets to. So they don't give it to him this summer. Yeah, he plays it out next year.

Yeah.

And you have to pay him the exact same contract. And if he gets to restrict your free agency and somebody actually makes him an offer, they're not going to max him out either. Like, I just think teams are going to get desperate to add a guy like that. He's really good and he's 22 years old. So it could blow up in their face. But this is the first time in twelve years that the magic of had like something tangible to be like, these are our guys. And why you would mess with that. Now if Ron's is like, hey man, I want the, I want the max and I want it this summer or next summer. Why not keep the good vibes going? And I see what you, I see what you're saying. Like it's the same exact thing next summer. Why not just wait? But if he has a terrible season this year, then you're, I don't know, you're almost like, then what happens? Then you have to talk about making a move. I don't know. I think let the guy, he's your guy, back him and then hopefully he takes another leap next year.

Well, but that doesn't answer the question of who are you going to root for if Germany plays the US and.

This is not one of those guys. I'm not one of those guys that, I mean it's like the, what is the New Jersey Italians that root for Italy in the World cup over the, over America? I'm not one of those guys. Come on. I root for the US first. I know I will be rooting for France. And I do root for Italy whenever they don't play the US in soccer. But come on now. Red, white and blue. Let's go.

All right. That's good to hear, especially after what happened with, with the soccer team. I think we need to avenge some piece of the basketball. I was looking at the Cannon halter out. Is he out?

No, no, no. Well, there's supposed to be a decision this week. Who knows, man?

Edie's not playing for Canada, which I was kind of bummed out about because I thought that would have been a fun wrinkle. But Canada, I looked at all the rosters. It'd be really tough for America not to win this. I'm trying to figure out. There would have to be some sort of ego alpha dog weirdness on the team, I think, for them not to.

Is it? And how about that?

Well, that's the thing ant says that thing today about. They know I'm the number one option. I was like, okay, here we go. This could get interesting. I guarantee Embiid thinks he should probably get the ball at the end of games. LeBron is where to have the ball in his hands in big situations, and then it's gonna, I think it's gonna be a hard team to coach. You have all these, you have older players, you have players in their primes, you have players on the way up trying to prove something. And they didn't do the thing this year when they put the two at the end of the bench who clearly aren't playing like all of these. Like, Halbert is probably the 12th man on this team. Now, Halbert was in the Eastern Conference finals, you know, so I don't, I think it's going to be a hard one. Then you have the Kawhi piece of it. There's not a ton of defense once you get past the Tatum Edwards, Drew Bam Davis Kawhi if you want to have the defensive lineup. So I don't know. I don't know how it's going to play out.

Why smiling?

Well, because he said, I'm worried about the defense. Then you just went through the guys.

I went through six guys, but six guys that probably aren't. A half of those guys aren't playing at the end of games. Like they're. Bam's not gonna play crunch time.

Kawhi. I don't know at this point what he will be able to consistently give you. Maybe he'll be terrific. I don't know. But if there was one guy, they're just gonna, I'd imagine they're just gonna defer to the older guys. Has it always been, is this the best example of like an absolute changing of the guard roster?

Well, they had a 92 I guess, like, maybe zero eight would be the other example. But even then, Kobe was in his prime. Yeah, this is, I guess because the guys are so much older now.

Yeah.

Where you have. Lebron is almost 40 and Durant, you have guys from drafts that happened 20 years ago and 17 years ago. Mike, here's my starting lineup. Tell me if you guys agree with this. Edwards and Curry is the back court, embiid is the center, and I think Durant starts because he has that long Olympics thing. And then the next question for me is, is it Tatum or is it LeBron starting? And I can't imagine LeBron not starting to start. Tatum's not going to start. He just won the title. He's in his prime and he's like the perfect international player. But I don't think he starts. I think Durant and LeBron start over him. So it's embiid Durant, Lebron, Edwards, curry. Or does Kawhi get the Edwards spot and they go, Embiid, Durant, LeBron, Kawhi, Curry, and they don't have a two guard. What do you think, Saruti?

If I'm the Clippers and Kawhi starts for USA Basketball, like, that's. I'm gonna be pretty bummed.

You're infuriated.

That's. That's not awesome. You lose Paul George and then, you know, watch Kawhi have an awesome Olympics and then gets hurt again next year. That's not what you want to see. So I don't know. I. I wouldn't start Kawhi unless he's just unbelievable in camp and we don't know. But, yeah, I think. I think Curry, Edwards, I don't. There's no way Lebron is the first guy on the team and the five. I just.

There's no way Lebron has to start. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. And like, you know, it's not an anti Tatum thing, but, yeah, that's.

Lebron's going to start, first of all.

Brown's going to start and I think Durant's going to start. Just. That's going to happen. Right?

You know what I loved about the pictures? You know when we first saw the Durant picture next to Bosch and you're like, wait a minute, somebody's height is a lie because Durant was that much taller than Bosch. We saw him lined up. Did you see the picture of Tatum next to bam. Tatum's huge.

So I'm glad you noticed this, because I noticed this in person. I think Tatum's 610 now.

I do, too.

I noticed this at the finals, going to the games, watching him stand next to different people, and I'm like, there's, it feels like he was closer to 611 than six nine. Like he might be like, is he still growing?

You think he's huge. I'm kidding about the is he still growing? Thing. But whenever these guys are lined up next to each other, I'll look for it. Like, who? Because, you know, you think of Bam positioning. It's not like Bam's listed height is wrong, because there's a picture of Gobert and Wemby the other day.

Yeah.

Where wendy's a full head taller than.

Somebody's lying.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's because Wemby is the first player I've ever heard prior to the draft that the agents actually were hoping to figure out a way to lie about his height going the other way. Like, nobody's ever wanted to be shorter ever in the history of the lead up of the NBA draft. But there are people like, he's actually like, seven five, but they want him to be like seven three. And then when he's next, Kareem lied.

And Bill Walton lied. Kareem was like seven four and a half. And I think he used to say he was seven two and Walton was absolutely at least seven foot two.

Wasn't Porzingis in that category, too? I feel like Porzingis. It was, like, kind of getting weird there at the top.

What is seven three?

Yeah, he's a legit. He might even be, like, a whiff taller than seven.

You're giving him seven three and a half, are you?

Yeah, I would, but Tatum, there's no way Tatum's not 610. And I was. Rant was the other one. I feel like Durant might be like.

I think Durant's like seven one two. Yeah, yeah, seven seven eight.

Yeah, yeah. Like a seven and three eight, something like that. But he's 7ft or over. I don't think he's seven one.

Bam's listed at six nine. So as a center.

Like six eight.

Yeah. There's a good chance he's probably not.

See, I didn't, I didn't look at the Tatum Bam part and go, bam's lying. I just thought, I can't believe how big Tatum looks next to him and that he's at least 610 at least. And it also, when I saw him going up against Gaffer at the post, and it's not like Gafford is listed at, like, 611. Is Gafford listed at 610? That was the beauty of like, Tatum. And I'm just going to forever be pissed off about Jalen Brown getting both conference finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP because it's not something that I'm upset that Jalen Brown has. Just seeing what Steph had to deal with and all the bullshit post 2015 until he finally got here seven years later, when in fact, like, Curry was the guy that was making all this stuff happen. For Tatum to be playing point guard for as much as he was, and then also defending centers throughout the playoffs and like, he was the most important player even with the bad shooting stretches he had in the finals. But the first impression with the Finals part of it was just going to be such in favor of Jalen, which is, which is fine.

But watching him physically and then seeing that picture, you're like, are we talking about like a 610 guy that's playing point guard in the NBA Finals? It's defending centers. Is Tam underrated, Bill?

Well, this is what we talked about. Another level is whether there was another level, another stop for him. I always feel like it's the physicality that's the next piece for him.

And not taking.

That eight to twelve range would.

I will say really quickly, if you're, if you're putting together the five that like, just on paper you think works the best together, I think you can make an argument. Tatum over KD is actually the right basketball move. Right?

All right, so let's do this as an exercise. Your five guys, if it was just like, who are the, who are the best five guys we have to close games with that you would trust the most. Cause to me, Tatum has to be over Durant cause of his two way ability at this point and the fact that he's younger. I just think he has to be. And he beat the random plasters two years ago. I just think he's a better player at this point. I would go embiid.

Are you sure? Yeah. End of games.

Well, depending on who the, if it was a team that it was just clearly it would be easy buckets for him.

Uruguay. Yeah, yeah. He's probably not going to pass, but.

If we're going for best possible team that could play defense and resemble a finals team, then Ad has to be the center, right? So you just changed Tatum at five.

I'd go small.

You go small?

Yeah, I wouldn't play a center. I wouldn't play any of those guys.

So would you go Tatum Durant, Lebron Edwards, curry or Tatum Durant? Booker Edwards. Curry or Tatum Durant, Drew Edwards, curry.

Drew is not going to make this closing five in any.

They're going to need him in these Olympics, though, because.

I understand, but there's going to be a.

There's going to be a team where there's going to be some fucking little guy going nuts and Drew's going to be the guy who's going to have to guard him.

You're going to like, sure. I kind of agree. Like, it'd be really fun to just watch five ball handlers out there and see what happens. But there's also going to be a matchup in international play where there's just going to be horrified of Embiid. They're not going to be able to do anything with him.

That's why I think it's an ad. I like the tatum. Tatum is like the perfect, like, small ball stretch. International five.

Has your mood entirely changed as we've just theorized on what Tatum might be? You have a pep. You're closing strong. I'm glad you're closing.

I'm glad that you noticed that he grew, I do think Embiid as this crazy weapon. We haven't had this since Shaq in like, 1996. Like, certain teams were just like, b is just way bigger than everyone in your team. He's just going to score every time now for the next, like, five plays will be fun to watch, right?

I mean, you're sitting there going like, I don't know if Mitchell Robinson can do it on his own. I'm worried about the Celtics frontline depth, Horford getting a little bit early. I'm worried about Belgium, although, I don't know, off the top of my head with my luck to be like, actually Belgium has this really awesome, huge guy.

Yeah, there's.

It might not even be in the Olympics. I don't know.

Yeah, it's a weird team. I wish they had, like, one more role guy, but in general, one more Canada. Like Lebron, Olenek, Brooks, Dort Murray. SGA closing. Or is Nemhardt in there for you?

Which pacers Easter conference finals. Nemhardt.

Four guards.

I would clear it out for Nemhart. Let him run it ISO Isaiah Thomas style the entire game. I think it's important to point this out because of Canada, but I wasn't really paying attention to the rosters until this assignment, and it felt like a lot of people were going like, dude, Canada. And I was like, man, that is a nice roster. When you go roster spot for roster spot against the us team.

Yes.

There's still a significant, significant gap the.

Go bear Wemby France combo. Ain't nothing. Did he have the crowd behind him? That's going to be that. We're going to need Joe Ombid in that game. I mean, the funny thing about this is that might end up being, like, the biggest game Joel Embiid's played so far.

Oh, man.

Other than maybe the 2019 Toronto game, I guess game seven, Boston, but that almost doesn't count because they lost. But can you imagine if that became Embiid's great moment? Like, laying the smackdown against Wemby and Gobert in the semifinals against France. In France. Like, Embiid's answered all our questions.

That's Ryan's favorite thing.

That.

That'll be the first bullet point on his hall of fame, uh, credential. Like, you know, killed it in the 2024 Olympics.

35 points against France in the semis.

Would Nando Decolo. Excuse me. Nando Decolo, would he be on Canada's roster?

He's on the french roster.

Yeah, but he. Would he make Canada's roster? Probably not.

I'll tell you this. There's a really interesting crunch time decision with him and Frank Nidlinka. We'll see what France does.

See, I screwed up Tikola's name. That's Nilikina. He's been out of the league so long. All right, try to third.

My guy Fournier still in the mix.

Fornier got a fight with Schroeder the other night.

Yeah.

Cool, dude. When Germany and France throw out the records with the history of those two countries, you want to talk fucking invasions? Like, wait, are we being invaded now? Don't worry about it.

Serbia's won away from having a really fun team because they have Jokic and Jovic. They have Bogdanovich, the Atlanta Bogdanovich. And they have mech, who I actually kind of liked last year, but they don't. Poco would.

And they also have the other jokic. They have both.

Double. They have Poco on that team, too, potentially, anyway. And then Australia is going to be Rosello's favorite team with Jacques Landau, Dyson Daniels, Dante Axum, Josh Green, and Josh Giddy. And then Ingalls and Patty Mills. Coming off the bench, will magna Jack McVeigh. You're kind of team. All right, we got to wrap it up.

It should really quickly. It's just sad that Yugoslavia still is not in the mix because we could have gotten a Jokic Don ch. Two man game going, but, you know, politics, all that stuff.

Yeah. Didn't know you're such a fan of oppression, dude.

All right, we got to wrap it up, Priscilla.

That is too bad.

What was our most fun season together? Doing the pod. It wasn't. Probably not this one, because the playoffs weren't very good.

Not this one.

What was our best? 119?

19.

Yeah, 19 was great night.

We had Game of Thrones going.

Yeah.

We were ordering takeout food. We had the kawhi jumper in the corner. And then I went to two of the finals games. Warriors lost both of them.

Yeah, there was a lot of warriors drama. The rant got hurt, came back, got hurt again. Yeah, that was.

I went up to the NBA countdown desk, and I said, hey, you guys are doing a great job. Don't believe anybody. Don't believe all the negativity around. They all got whacked. I. Seriously, I wasn't bullshitting. I was like, you guys are doing a good job. Don't worry about all this negativity and the rumors and the operatives, the people angling for your chairs. Don't worry about it. Cleaned house.

Sorry, Rosilla. Good to see you. Enjoy the summer. He's still got his podcast going. Saruti, you can. You can listen to on the ringer gambling show, doing some. Some soccer stuff. I've watched a lot of the euros. The euros have been good.

They have been, yeah.

You know, I watched Brazil. Uruguay. No, Uruguay. Who'd. Uruguay. You're guys.

Yeah, Brazil.

Brazil.

Not a great game.

Yeah.

Not a group game.

The Copa is definitely a level below.

The euro. Stuff is awesome. Okay. Yeah. That is my. The first time. I finally dug into it years ago, and I was stuck in the hotel in Bristol. I. I was like, I'm not watching this. And there was nothing on, and I go, let me. Let's just give it a shot. The. The euro stuff is. I don't know what's going on. I usually don't have time for it. That's my. I'm just giving you my full endorsement of it. I enjoy it.

I love it, too.

It's.

Great job.

No gatekeeping here.

It feels like it. Like, you know, the World Cup's obviously the biggest, but it feels like it's commanded that two week window in the same kind of way, even though the stakes are slightly smaller. But it's super fun on. It's been fun to gamble on, too.

Yeah, I've enjoyed it.

Yeah, there's been some nice ones. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Mike Wargon. Thanks to Steve Ceruti. They produced this one. Thanks to Rosillo for a great stretch in 2024. Thanks to everybody for listening. Don't forget about a new rewatchables coming on Monday night. Twister. That's happening. And then I should be back in two Sundays, so I'll see you then. Enjoy July. When we saw that, I don't have you with him on the wayside on the front side.

I don't have whoever close.