Coming up, Sunday's NBA, Racillo, Game 5 tomorrow. It's all next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network, where Talk to Thrones is back on the Ringerverse feed, which is now on YouTube as well. Youtube. Com/@ringerverse. Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and Mally Rubin are breaking down every episode of House of the Dragon. You can hear it, you can watch it right after the show ends on Max, you can just jump on over and watch our three break it down. We've been doing this show since 2016. It was Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald when we had Game of Thrones, and we were breaking it down on the HBO Max app. How about that? It was on HBO, too, I think. This is year eight for us with Talk to Thrones. So glad to have back. Don't forget to subscribe to that Ringerverse YouTube channel because we got a lot of good stuff on there. House of Horrors on there. We have the Midnight Boys on there. They're trying a whole bunch of stuff, which is also what we're trying to do in the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, where the new episode of the Rewatchables, which is going to be Tuesday night.

Just FYI, we're doing The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds, the one from 1974, the first great modern sports movie. We've been circling this one for a long, long time. It's officially 70 Sports Movies Month. That is going up Tuesday night, and you'll be able to watch that on Ringer Movies as well. The reason it's going up Tuesday night is because I'm also going to have a podcast after our Monday's Game 5, Win or Lose. I'm going to it. It's in Boston. We'll see if they can close it out. If not, we're potty either way. There you go. Coming up on this podcast, Ryan Rosillo, as always, joining on Sunday. We have a lot of NBA stuff to cover. We have a really good blueprint for this podcast, so I'm excited to get to it. First, our friends from ProJip. All right, we're taping this. It is 4:30 East Coast time. Game 5, the NBA Finals is tomorrow night. Ryan Rosillo is here. Ryan, what do you think is the legacy of this podcast?

Well, it depends on if we're winning or we're losing.

What would the legacy of this episode ultimately? It's definitely B, if you had to guess? Who's the best player in this podcast? Can we both be the best player, or would just one of us have to win?

I mean, more people would probably call me a Robin, but I'd say I've also done it on my own.

You're like Jalen. It's like you're a 1A on this podcast, and not everyone maybe appreciates that. I was on a Friday show with Termine and Eddie.

I've never felt more like Kyrie in my life.

Eddie was trying to start shit with me because I gave him so much Phoenix Sun shit the last couple of years. The Celts are up three nothing, and it seems like they're going to sweep, which we'll get to in a second. Eddie's like, But does this mean Jalen's the best player? Who's the best player? Is this going to screw you guys up? I knew what he was doing, but I was also like, I can't believe these are narratives that come. If the Celtic swept, that's one of the debates that's going to come out of this. It's like, Well, now what does this mean? Is Jalen better than Jason? You asked when we were texting about this, what was the first ever legacy reassessment? That's going to be the first topic of the pot. I thought that was a great idea by you. I really put work in it. But what was your answer? Did you put some thought? What do you think it was?

Yeah, I actually put a lot of thought into this today. Then there has to be a better version to find archived articles.

There has to be something- SI Ball dying was a huge loss for all of us. I really miss it. It just sucks now.

The hardest video games online right now are reading an SI article or Bleacher Report, where you're just like, What the fuck is that? Who's that guy? Is that a level?

The Yaha. The Yaha ones, a lot of that stuff from the 2000s is gone, too. The ESPN page 2 stuff and a lot of the ESPN NBA stuff is impossible. Yeah, I'm with you.

To get back to the original point of asking the question is, I love Windhorst, okay? I love Windhorst, and I think Windhorst, when I think about people that will say aggressive stuff about players, the way he lit into Luka after game three, which was pretty aggressive, right? But when you don't do it all the time and you have the credibility of Windhorst, it'll always make me go like, Okay, whoa. There's even things he said in his takedown of Luca that I thought were totally accurate and fair, but it was aggressive.

It's earn Venom because he doesn't play the card really ever. So when he does it, it catches your attention.

Yeah. There's certain people on TV where I'll just think, well, you do this with everything.

Yeah. This is Tuesday for you.

Yeah. You can't be an 11 on every single comment. So with Windhorse, like we said, if he's going to say it, I think it should be consumed with just... Even if you disagreed a little bit. But then I felt like it was then turning into... Well, you guys realize, Luke is the only reason they even have a whiff at this thing. It's the only reason they're here. Oklahoma City is a good team. Minnesota is a good team. For him to take those teams out and be the only really dependable guy despite the defensive inabilities from him. Then I was thinking about it, was texting with you. I go, We've been on a run of this for a while. What was it's sake for Giannis? What was it's sake for Joker? If Joker doesn't win the finals last year, I don't know if he wins the MVP this year. There's this carry-over of the constant assessment that we do with the players that I thought, Okay, let me ask Bill, because you're so good at the historic stuff, when did this change?

I think I have answers. But to go back to the Luca piece of this, I had the same reaction you did Because I agreed with 90% of what Windhorse said. I thought that was just a terrible job by Luca to foul out and to lose his composure in a must-win game. There was that play when he fell into the stands when he thought he should get the call, and then he ran back. Then he was just hand-checking Pritchard until he got fouled, until he got fouled. That was the fourth foul. Doc and I talked about that on Wednesday, and Doc said he was watching the game. He was like, Luka is going to foul out of this game. He's so frustrated, he's actually going to foul out So, yeah, that's his fault. But I'm with you. Even you look at Luca in the first half. Luca's last five first haves dating back to Game 5, Minnesota, 25 points, 10 for 16 in Game 5, Minnesota. In In this series, 17, 7, and 14 shooting, 23, 9 for 14, 17, 7 for 16, 25 in game 4, 10 for 18. He's been pretty incredible for a lot of these Celtic games, even though we talked about the defense has been bad.

Some of the composure stuff has been bad. But the reason this team fell down 3-0, you could see after he fouled out when it was just Kyrie and the roll guys. It was like, wow, where's the offense coming from? If they just shut down Kyrie, who else is even going to create a shot? So yeah, I get it. Luka's got to fix some stuff. But I thought that two days of Luka bashing, it felt pretty harsh to me. Not just the wind horse piece, but just that became the narrative. And as a Celtic fan, I got worried because I was like, Man, Luka's taking so much shit. I just feel like this is what great players do. Now he's going to raise this game. And 25 points in game four, he was the dominant guy in the four. But from a big picture legacy point. There's two ways this could go. We could go pre-Internet or we can go post-Internet, because I think there's an inflection point in the mid '90s where the internet's coming into play, and now you're getting message boards, you're getting early blog posts, you're getting early ESPN and some other places, but you're also getting 24-hour talk radio, and you're getting the rise of ESPN.

Pti doesn't show up until the early 2000s, but you're still getting local sports radio and just the infrastructure of sports 24/7 is starting to settle in, which means it's probably Karl Malone in '97 when he wins the MVP and then sucks in the finals. Then it becomes, Well, Jordan took the lead back, Well, what does this mean for Carl Malone? Were we wrong all along? That was the first modern version of that. I remember that was the first year of my Boston Sports Got Calm, writing a piece killing Carl Malone. I'm sure whatever if you were Mike and the Mad Dog, if you were whatever the EI wine or line was, I'm sure it was just a Carl Malone pile session. I feel like that's the first. Does that sound right?

It does. I wrote it down because I went all the way back to Jerry West and was trying to find different articles about how he was talked about. Because I was thinking about Jerry West, obviously, this week with him passing and just his entire thing is incredible success wrapped in all of these failures. Just a tortured human being.

An awful luck. The worst luck of any basketball star. Just some of the worst things that could have happened to a career.

To lose to the Celtics six times in the finals, three times there's game sevens. The '69 one, the Celtics aren't even supposed to be there. You're just like, all these things happening in those series. I just thought about Jerry West. I was like, imagine if Jerry West existed today, what we would do to him.

Or on the flip side, how we would the whole, none of this is his fault, and you would just blame Wilt. You would blame Elgin Baylor. You would blame Frank Selby for missing the jumper in the 1962 finals. It'd be everybody else's fault.

Yeah. There's also that because whatever happens with the winning and losing. That's the whole point. Okay, why do we keep track of any of this stuff? Why do we spend all these hours talking about these things? Well, clearly, the winning has to mean something. But it is not something that contradicts itself. I have players that I think have not won for different circumstances, and I think there are other players who have not won. It has everything to do with who they are as a player. And yet it's now baked down. I think people have become really simple whenever this stuff happens. It's like, Oh, you won? Okay, cool. You're all these things. It's like, oh, you lost? All right, then you're all these things. And you can't ever be any of those other things until we update this, and now we're just updating it constantly. So if you go to Karl Malone, I just wanted to just touch on the Jerry West part of it. And then I think there's a lot of our dads out there that would go, Wilt was incredible, but he was also a loser. There was a lot of that stuff that I just couldn't fathom.

I didn't watch the games. But in the '69 Finals, Wilt has three games where he scores 4, 8, and eight in that series.

He didn't play the last six minutes of game seven or the last five. He had this injury, and then his coach benched him. In game seven with five minutes left, and Russell was so mad that Wilt didn't come back in, that they had a falling out. He was like, How dare you rob me of my final game where we were supposed to go head to head and you're sitting on the bench because you made your coach mad. You're right. Wilt is the first legacy guy because he wins in '67, and they have one of the best years ever. They're '68 and '13. They roll through the playoffs, they beat Russell Celtics, and it's like, Wilt has arrived. Here it is. He's finally figured it out. Then the next year was that year he tried to lead the league in a sys and was so unselfish. It was actually like a disaster. He was just passing up five-foot jump hooks to try to kick it back out. Then all the loser stuff started again. But then in '72, with West, they went 33 straight. They win the title. So he shook it off.

I just think there's A bunch of New England people walking around around our age that are nodding their heads, specific to the New England thing because of the Celtics, where there's just a lot of guys going, Yeah, I had that same speech. My dad gave me the same speech that Will was a loser. Because I think history has actually been really kind to him in that with more information, maybe the impact of that information gets lost. But as a kid, you were like, What did he do? Wait, he was like this mythological creature. You're like, How How did he score that many? What happened? Then, especially if you're from New England, the dads would say he was awesome, but Russell owned him.

Well, but that was one of my... I think that was my single favorite chapter when I wrote my book about Wilt versus Russell, all the stuff digging up the anecdotes from that era, where some of the best players of that era were like, Wilt was a loser. I don't want to play with Wilt. Wilt didn't want the ball in crunch time because they were way more candid back then. We didn't know there was an internet and a screenshot Twitter. I'll tell you the first modern version of this, even though it was way pre-internet, but it was Dr. J. Because Dr. J wins the titles in the ABA. He to Philly. They're up 2-0 in the '77 Finals. Then Walton comes back and they beat him. Then they don't make the finals in '78 or '79. They make it in '80. Magic beats him. They lose in '81. They make the finals in '82. They beat the Celtics in a game seven in Boston. The Lakers freaking wax them. At that point, it was like, Well, Dr. Jay, he won those in the ABA, but not here. You could go back and read the Sports Illustrated articles.

There was a few of them that I remember leaning on when I was doing my book. Just the disappointment that Dr. J wasn't more impactful and better, especially in the late '70s. It was like, Were we sold a false bill of goods? He was awesome in his first season in '77. A bunch of highlights His knees were bothering him. But then he won the title in '83 and it stopped, and then it just flipped to Magic. Because Magic had the '84 finals when he sucked in game two, he sucked in game four, he choked in a bunch of different ways. And that was the Tragic Johnson thing, which has been written and talked about a million times. And then, of course, he shed that, and in '85, they went. So it feels like Doc Magic right around there. But the current infrastructure starts with Karl Malone. And then Shaq in 2000, It's like Shaq, same thing. Shaq's a loser. Shaq's the new wilt. Shaq's never going to win. Then he rips through everybody, wins the 2000 title. It's like, All right, enough with that narrative. Then Kobe in 2009 was the other one from that decade.

It's like, Kobe can never win without Shaq. He's selfish. It's all about him. It's one-on-one basketball. Can't win that way. It's a bad teammate. And then guess what? He won the title. There goes that narrative.

I don't remember the '70s, obviously. The '80s part of it, the Dr. J one is good, but I only understood it after the fact. They get Moses. That's one of the greatest teams of my lifetime that's just lost in the shadow of all the Celtics-Lakers stuff. But I also think the Celtics and Lakers were so dominant. I think this plays into the '90s a little bit, where I wasn't freaked out about Terry Cumming's legacy. I wasn't sitting around going, Man, this Alex English, what the hell is wrong with Adrian Dantley? I didn't care. Maybe that happened with Houston a little bit because the Twin Towers, the '86 Finals, taking out the Lakers, losing to the Celtics, and then it took Hakeim almost another decade. But you were always losing. For the most part, you were losing the Lakers and Celtics. I think from a standpoint, that's where when I looked back and read some of the stuff with Barkley in '93, that one was devastating to me just because I was a huge Barkley fan. But you were losing to Jordan. I don't remember- And Barkley was awesome in that series.

Everyone blamed Kevin Johnson because he sucked so bad in that final that it just all the venom went toward him. Barkley was really good in that final, I thought.

But we did because Jordan was scoring so much. It's very easy to forget this, but that was the first thing. I also I think regionally, the Celtics thing probably messes up my perspective just growing up around it. But it was like, Oh, yeah, this guy is cool. Cool dunks, cool sneakers. He's a loser, though. All he does is score a million points and he can't win. It took him a really long time when you look at his career. But then when everybody else is losing to him, I don't remember after the '96 finals being like, Oh, Kemp and Gary Payton are losers. I just don't remember any of that stuff. I think the Karl Malone part of it because of the MVPs That might have been the beginning of... I like the way you frame that. Like of today's structure, that was maybe the foundation for it because it definitely got worse because the Shaq stuff was real. Because when he had the quote where he said, I wanted every level except for college and the pros, people were like, are you Imagine somebody saying that.

We need the free throws, too. Remember that was like, Well, he doesn't care about free throws. Obviously, he doesn't care about winning. Can't make him free throws. There's another one because I was thinking about some of the pieces I wrote, and LeBron became the first in career legacy guy when he got drafted out of high school and was being hyped up. There was a backlash that we hadn't even seen him play. Then somehow during his rookie year, as we watched him, we were like, Oh, this guy might have it. Then it just became a constant debate about how good he was. Then we were disappointed. Then he makes the 2007 finals, beats the Pistons in that game five. It's like, Here we go. Lebron's arrived. Then he had the two disappointing '09, '10 playups in Cleveland. '09 wasn't his fault, '10 was. And then the 2011 finals. And I was thinking the 2011 finals were the first double team legacy one, the way you were laying it out. Because we had on the one hand, LeBron, oh, man, he doesn't have it. Oh, this big three, this whole situation, this is now going to be a legendary disaster, potentially.

But then Dirk, on the flip side, who we had given up on after the '06 Finals, and then the way he wins the '07 MVP in Golden beats him in round one. It was just so embarrassing for him. Then he moves into this 25 a game, don't take him seriously as a champ, all-star, good stats, that ultimately, hollow. Then an 11 has one of the great runs in the history of the playoffs and just checks off, checks off to Rant, checks off Kobe, checks off LeBron and Wade in the finals after they talk shit. The finals ends and it became a John O'Hee Broncos thing. We were We're talking about that legacy, but then there was also the LeBron legacy. I feel like that's officially cemented because now we have first take starting right around then. I think first take exists, PTI exist. All the internet stuff is in full form. All the Reddit stuff is in full form, and now we're off. Now it's legacy time.

Dirk got destroyed during that stretch. They blow the lead in '06, and then he wins MVP. The Mavs come back stronger. We think '67 and '15, and then they lose the Warriors as a 1-8 seed, and he was getting torched.

Remember, he got the MVP after he had been eliminated.

Right. It was all of these things.

Which was the most awkward.

It was something where you're like, When did it really get nasty? Plenty of these guys, as we've just alluded to going over this history, have gotten destroyed by the media. But the dark one was a special case because then you could throw in. It's like, Oh, he's just one of those big soft heroes.

Soft foreign guy, yeah.

Yeah, on top of everything else. People were really pissed at them Almost.

Not because they cared. Because he also had the thing, what was the '02, '03 play-ups? One of those two where he got hurt and they shoved him. He could have played, but they didn't want to risk his career. I think it was '03. Then Cuban, and it was a whole debate, and he could have played. It started there. Then in '06, when they blew the lead, and then '07. By the time '07 was done, people were like, Dirk Soft, can't win with Dirk. Meanwhile, the guy, what he did in 2011 was about as impressive. It's funny. This would be a fun list. Guys who took too much shit, and then the alternate side of guys who maybe in retrospect didn't get enough shit. I'm not sure if Carmelo got enough shit. Carmelo, for Carlos to be number one. Because I think Now that there's this sense, and Carmelo is a good guy. Everybody likes him. He had a really good career. He's a Hall of Famer. But if you go back, it's like, it's disappointing, too. They were 2-2 Denver Lakers, 2009. It's the best two out of three against Kobe, who had had his knee drained earlier in that series.

It's like that was a moment for Carmelo potentially to... You win two out of three against the Lakers, you win the title because you're playing in Orlando. That's the closest he ever got. Then the way he forced the trade to the Knicks, That's a good example of somebody that I think the post-career stuff is a little friendlier than maybe it could have been.

Melo is a really good one. I used to defend Melo, though. If you go through all of the playoff series losses, you go, All right, well, how many times was he losing to a team that he shouldn't lose to? I think that's the telltale sign for a lot of these players that are all NBA caliber guys, guys in the MVP conversations, the clear ones of some of these teams, where there's just ones I go, I know you're thought of as a one, and you're a one however we define it, but it's not a winning one. I think Melo probably had some of those basketball traits. But when you go back and look at all the playoff losses that he had, rarely are you looking at teams where you say, How did he lose to that team? The either team was either always better than him or they were within a few games having the same record when they actually matched up in the playoff. But Melo is a good one in there. But I like how you reference the full circle thing with Dirk, because it wasn't just even about winning after you lost. It was winning against what became everyone's least favorite team outside of Heat fans.

There was no neutrality with the Miami Heat, especially in that first year. I had friends that were pretty passive NBA fans They were like, I want nothing to do with that league. They were just personally offended by LeBron going down there with Bosh, which, again, those guys got way too much shit, historically, I would say, when you look back on it, I think there's probably a lot of people. There's no question. I include myself. I was way too mad about that. That wasn't that big of a deal. Was the fact that Dirk does it, right? Mr. Euro, Mr. Soft, cool stats, bro, lose to the Warriors, which were such a fun team, too. So anybody that had been neutral with that series is going, Oh, my God, this Warriors team's awesome. This is so much fun. I want them to beat the Mavs. And the Mavs were really getting just torched in that two-year window. And of course, a big part of it was Dirk. And I think it always acts like a question I don't know that can be answered is how different was Dirk? How different was he actually in '07 and 2011?

I think the scars from '06 and '07 actually helped him because he's talked about it since.

Sometimes when you get your teeth kicked in, it makes you a little... I feel the same way about this 24 Celtics team. Some of the stuff that happened in them over the last eight years, I think becomes helpful when you hit that mental toughness point, like what they had in game three, where they're blowing this lead in real-time. It feels like this huge collapse coming, and they gathered their breath a little bit. I don't know if they would have been able to do that two years ago. I mentioned Carmelo. It's funny. I was always a big Carmelo defender when he played. I was looking up as you were talking. I wrote a column in July 2014, and the headline was, No escape from New York. With Carmelo Anthony staying with the Knicks, will we ever find out how truly great he can be? Because my whole thing was like, I think Carmelo can be the best guy on a championship team, and he never really had the right situation. The other guy who I thought was remembered a little unfairly, and I wrote about him, too, is T-Mac, because I thought I had T-Mac in my top 75.

I thought he was great, but it was the same thing where it was like, well, he blew a 3-1 lead in round one, and he never got out of this, and he's never played in the finals. And then you just get pigeonholed in that spot. And you're right. The key point is, circumstances can sometimes play a lot of this.

I know T-Mac was good.

T-mack, of course it does. T-mack in the middle 2000s was right there with Wade and Kobe, and he just was. To me, those three are pretty even for about five, six years there.

But I don't think we're ever looking at T-Mack as a loser because one, his style of play was so much fun, and we didn't look at him as this absurd, even though their usage rates, I'm sure, are really high in some of those seasons. But we knew he was more of a playmaker. It didn't feel like he was just going to do whatever he wanted to do whenever he felt like it and wasn't really looking at the game through the lens of somebody just being like, How do I make everybody better around me? I think there's just a a lot of stuff with Timack, esthetically, that we all loved, even if you weren't a fan of the magical.

Bad injury, not too.

Yeah. I think there's more sympathy for him. But look, my guy Chris Paul, it's not going to happen, right? It's not going to happen with him being- Don't roll it out.

If the Warriors wave him before July 28th, there could be a little grab on to a contender.

Yeah, but it's different. There's a certain stage where past a certain number of years and who you are as a I actually thought he was pretty good for the Warriors, but he's not going to be playing the same role he was playing with the 21 Phoenix Suns or potentially the '22 Phoenix Suns. That probably isn't happening again. When I think back to- He was 40. Barkley. Yeah, right. Barkley gets shit on because he's still on TNT.

But I don't know. And those guys bring it up.

Right. But then when Jordan said that to Pippin about, I should have never gone to Houston and played with your sorry ass because you're a loser. I'm paraphrasing, but Pippin sharing that, that Jordan thought that of Barkley. But the '90s really felt like it was more of, well, they lost a Jordan. So what are you supposed to do with that? I don't think we got on these guys' cases as much as we do now or how willing we are to just rewrite all of it based on the outcome of some series when the player might not be any different. So we might have a new wave of when these guys age out, when Westbrook, when Harden are done. That might be the group of guys where there's just not really going to be any sympathy whatsoever despite the accolades and the Hall of Fame resumes. I wonder if we're actually starting to graduate the first generation of this group of players of the last 20 years where when they're retired- I would say it's a 2.0 generation.

I think the Dirt Kobe generation was the first generation. What's that mean? Okay. All right. I think you're right that this Harden, Westbrook, Durant, all these guys, this is definitely a generation, but I think it's the second generation. That really does feel like Dirk Kobe, that era was in there. We're going to actually take a break and then come back and talk about guys who we think could flip their legacy over the next couple of years. One second. The NBA Finals are here, and FanDuel is giving you the chance to win alongside the champions. Right now, new customers get $200 in bonus bets of the winning $5 bet, that is $200 use on same game parlay's live bets. So much more. Fanduel, they're going to boost a game four bet for me. I told them, I'm out. I'm not boosting. I'm not recommending bets. I am not jinksing the boss in Celtics in any conceivable way. I apologize. I would have had a good game five or four, but you understand. I know you understand. Even Fandil, we love each other. They understood. Anyway, you can go and you can create your own bets. There's no better place to bet all the finals action than America's number one sportsbook.

Just download the app, take a shot at the extra 200 bucks. Go to fandil. Com/bs to get started. Fandil, official sports betting partner of the NBA, you must be 21 plus, 18 plus in DC. President selects states. Gambling problem? Call 1-800 Gambler. Visit rg-help. Com. First online real money wager, only $5 for a surprise required. Bonus issued as done with drama. Bonus, bet you would to expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. All right, so, Rusillo, you texted me and you asked which guys can flip their legacy next couple of years, a. K. Kyrie. Because I do think win or lose with this finals, Kyrie has at least reestablished himself as a wiser, better version of himself that I don't think he's as good as he was in '16 or '17, but is somebody that can be one of the best players on a team that can play in the finals because we're watching it. That's something I think you and I would have thought a year ago was inconceivable. If you had to make a list of who's the next Kyrie, who's the next person to have this happen to, who would be your number one pick?

Probably, Bryson DeChambeau.

Right. As we're taping this, he's winning US Open.

It does. It's going to be hilarious. But this is exactly what's going to happen. If he wins a major this whole week in the golf world, they'd be like, he wasn't that annoying. Yeah, I was like them. It wasn't really that bad. He was misunderstood. People couldn't stand him. People couldn't stand him for years. They're going to all tell us why he was actually just misleased Heeding, and that's not really who he was. His approach was, he was trying to hack golf, and he learned from that. He has the scars. I believe in all the scar stuff. The next Kyrie. The Kyrie one, as I'm sure you would concede. It's pretty unique.

It's different. We're not going to have another Kyrie situation. It's unique.

Does it matter for Durant?

I had him down. I had six guys down. He wasn't my first choice. I thought I had Dame as the number one.

Dame is a great one. Because I don't want to just name... I just don't want to name all the good players that don't have rings. No, it feels like there has to be more to it.

It feels like there has to be more to it. This is a different combo. Yeah. Doc was on my pod on Wednesday saying how Dame was out of shape this year. I was actually surprised that he mentioned to it. Said he was a little out of shape because he knew he was going to get traded, and he was so afraid to work out that it ended up fucking up his whole season. If you're thinking about this next season with the Bucks, where Yann, I'm sure, is going to be a man on a mission because he just had bad luck with injuries now two years in a row. Dame in the greatest shape of his life. Dame not playing the Olympics, which is good. Then if you're just talking about eye of the Tiger, the Bucks have to be number one in the Eastern Conference if the Celtics actually win the title. Who is going to actually care the most about this season for a variety of reasons. Then if Dame can reestablish himself as this awesome offensive player again, which I think he was pretty up and down, I think we would both agree, and then be the Kyrie sidekick with Giannis as the Luca, then that's It's a different territory.

It could also go the other way where that doesn't happen. You end up in that Carmelo mid-2010s run where it's like, Oh, I guess this isn't going to happen. Then all of a sudden, you start bouncing around the league. I do feel like there's a fork in the road potential with him.

I like that one a lot. I really like how Doc talked about Yannis' playmaking, which I completely agree with. I think that's why Yannis gives you a chance in a where maybe somebody else is putting up huge numbers. You'd be like, Okay, but is he willing to get the other people involved? I couldn't quite figure out. It felt like Yannis was leading the charge for them to get Adrian Griffin. Then it was the other guys that were anti-Adrian Griffin, and then finally Yannis came along. I was wondering, this is a different topic, but is Yannis' ring the most important ring for an individual player of the last five five years.

The most important legacy ring?

Yeah.

You know what? I actually think it's Curry in 2022. I think as the years pass, let's say they don't win in 2022. Let's say they lose to Memphis in round two, and it's just they never get back. Then Curry gets in this weird situation where he's one of the most influential players of all time, he's the greatest shooter of all time. But he also becomes a little bit of a yeah, but guy, where it's like, 2015 finals, couldn't win the MVP. '16, couldn't get done. '17, '18, needed KD. Yeah, but. Then the 22 just took it off the table, and that was that. Now he's one of the best 12 players of all time. Giannis, I still feel like can get... I don't know if that was his last chance, I guess, is my point. For Curry, it was.

Yeah, it's definitely not Giannis' last chance.

I mean, I voted Giannis third for him to be this year. Because he could go to the Knicks. Yeah, he could go to Who knows? Who knows where he's playing three years from now? But I guarantee he's going to be impactful. I just feel like there's more swings at the pinata for him.

Sometimes, to be honest, I feel like he's actually underrated, which I know would probably sound stupid. But yeah, I think It's a bit like the Durant.

Can I give you another one? Yeah, but I understand- Layout the Durant case.

Brooklyn with Kyrie, disaster, extension, fire everybody, Okay, never mind. No, actually, trade me, but only trade me to this team. Phoenix doesn't make, and I'm not even talking about a ring, Bill. I'm talking about just a competitive Western Conference finals where we're not sure the outcome. Even if the Suns were to lose, just a hell of a lot better than what we saw with Minnesota just taking them out back.

Yeah, to the woodshed.

I don't know that you're ever going to see somebody as great as Durant have two rings where you want to use a yeah, but example.

He's going to be out of all the guys in the top 20 with He'll be the biggest yeah, but. He will. I don't know. As you know, I'm probably his biggest fan. It'll be, yeah, but you joined a 73-win team and you won two titles. That's the only reason you won. That's what he's going to get. He's going to say he doesn't care, but I think he does. I have another leg. This is a great one. It's a zag jaw. It's young. You don't think of it, right? But there's jaw. It's just a lot of, I forgot about Ja. Everyone's forgotten about Ja. They're just over here on the side. But if you look at their summer and their roster and their pieces, combined with the fact that they have the ninth pick, and hopefully, he comes back with his head on straight. I don't know. They're left out of that Western conversation. I don't know if I would leave them because there's no reason he can't at least imitate Edwards from an offensive statistics standpoint. He's not going to imitate the defense part. But could he be basically Edwards for Memphis? Yeah, I think he could.

This is somebody that I think we're all disappointed in and worried that it's going to keep going sideways, and maybe it just flips and goes the other way.

That's a great one. Thank you. I don't even feel like you had the the Zag.

Because he's young. You don't think of it like legacy young guys yet, but he's headed toward... You start rattling off the disappointing superstars who their career got fucked up in some way, and he's in pencil on that list unless he flips it.

He gives you so much fun. Yeah. In the beginning, and then you think about the record they had before everybody got hurt a couple of years ago, and you're going, Man, are they... That's what What the Timberwolves just did is what this Memphis story was supposed to be. This playoff moment where they announced to the NBA world, Okay, we're a real factor here. You got to always be thinking about Memphis and how you match up with us. Then, of course, just when it gets into the guys that you just love watching play basketball. Although I'll tell you, I'm going to worry about him the rest of his career, the way he lands.

Well, yeah, we've been talking about that for, what, four years? Yeah, but he added part- He's our number one 'oh no' guy other than Porzingas.

Yeah, but then you add in the other part, you just think, This guy's deal is what's his deal? For the longest time? He doesn't feel like the face of a franchise in the last couple of seasons. It's up to him to turn that around. But that's a good one.

Do you have one? Because I have another one.

Well, I just have the aged out group that we've already talked about.

All right, I have two more.

I think we covered it.

Is Levine good enough for the conversation?

No. Okay.

How about Paul George?

Yeah, of course he is.

I really like Paul George, and he was actually my number one guy on my list after Dame because he's had a fascinating career dating back to going toe to toe with Miami in those two Indiana heat which seem like a million years ago, but they're only 11 and 12 years ago. It's a broken leg comes back from that. Is a huge, huge, huge trade piece/ can we get this guy piece for a couple of years, which we're about to talk about in the Retradables. Has that weird OKC year. Then instead of going to the Lakers, goes to the Clippers and becomes Kauai's Jalen Brown. But then when Kauai got hurt that one year, what was that? '22. All of a sudden, George looked like he could be a 1A and be the best guy on a finals team, potentially, and almost got it done. Now he's floated into that zone. What did you call him? A coin toss guy?

Yeah, I called him Ian Harden, the coin toss brothers in the playoffs.

It's amazing. One of your best nicknames of all time, the Coin Toss Brothers. The question for me is this, Paul George, I think is heading into his, it would be his 15th season, this next one, where he's going to get one last big contract. Is that just who he is? Is he a coin toss brother? Or what if he went to Philadelphia and played with Embiid and Maxi? Or what if he went into Orlando and became the lead guy with Palo? Or whatever. What if the Lakers and Clippers flip him and he becomes a Laker and LeBron goes to the Clippers? Whatever scenario you want to give, it seems like he's going to be in a more interesting spot next year than this year, I guess, is my point. Because wherever he is on the Clippers, he's the number three star on the movie poster now because Kawhi The guy sucks up all the oxygen. Then Harden, once he got there, he sucked up a lot of the oxygen. It's like, Oh, yeah. We also have Paul George. I think he's better than that. I voted for him for our NBA last year, too, I should mention.

I was looking at this because I know we're going to talk Sixers and options and all that stuff. But I'm glad you brought up the '22 playoff run because- He was Prior to that.

It was like 30 a game, right?

Yeah. Excuse me. The '21 playoff run.

'21. That's what it was because it was still a little COVID hangover.

Right. I thought that series against Utah, a really good regular season team in Utah, I just thought it was important. That Dallas series, that Utah series, and then he still put up big numbers against the Suns, which ended up going six games. He used to be somebody that was almost laughably underperforming in the playoffs.

Which made the playoff P nickname so funny.

Yeah. There was the game, I forget, was it a playoff game against Cleveland where he Either they were in the Gatorade commercial where he hits this game winner in the Gatorade commercial, then he came back in the real game out of commercial and missed it, or it was the other way around. Then when you look at the Oklahoma City losses in the two years that he was there at 18 and 19, the game that I just was like, How do you score 34 points in game 5 and five points in game 6? How did the Thunder lose to the Jazz that year? That series means a lot to me when I think about Westbrook and then at that time with George. I think the '21 run that George was on was really important, at least for him. That's the... Maybe we're too deep in the weeds with it, but I think that's why the play It's going to be so important, too, beyond just who wins the whole thing or who loses in the finals and who's all time great and then who sucks and who's disappointing is going to be labeled all these things the rest of their lives.

But for George, just to have that moment, because at that point, the standard had been so low set by him of like, What is this guy? And after Dame hits that shot, and he's like, It's still a bad shot, and you're just not allowed to say it, even if it was right. You're just like, What the hell are you thinking about when you're out there, when you're this incredibly talented guy? So I don't know if the ring part of it mentions, but I'd say the second part of his playoff thing here has been just far better than, maybe I should say the third part, because I think the early indie chapters were actually pretty good for him when no one really expected that team to beat the heat anyway.

Kauai gets hurt in game 4, that Utah series, and including game four all the way through the Phoenix series, Paul George in those nine games was 30, 11 rebounds, 5.4 assists, Playing 41 minutes a game. He looked like one of the five, six best guys in the league. The question, I think about the Philly fit for him, which I'm not sure I'm buying it, as I talked about in previous pods. I don't buy that a guy who grew up in California who wanted for years to get back to California, who's in California, is suddenly going to be like, You know what? Sounds awesome, Philly. For great things about their fans in the East Coast. Maybe I'll try it. I'm dubious, but I also think from a basketball basketball standpoint, it would be an amazing move to play with Maxi and Embiid. Now, you're in the same situation as Embiid as you are with Kawhi, where you just have your fingers crossed every week that the guy's going to be in the court. But they need somebody like him. And in the East, which I think is wide open with the exception of Boston and whatever we see from Milwaukee, it's possible.

One more legacy guy really quick. There's a LeBron ring chase piece That I don't think he'll do, but it would be interesting if he did it because he's still good enough that it wouldn't feel like a Gary Payton on the 2006 heat type of thing. He could go to Dallas and be the third best guy in the team, maybe even second, depending on where he is physically at age 40. But he could go to Philly and play with him, beat him, actually. There's teams you could put him on where it's not 2006 Gary Payton. I just don't think he'll do it. But the question for me is, is he just done chasing rings or not? Because he has no chance when he won with the Lakers, I don't think.

It would be funny because it would be his fifth and also would be the least impactful ring, perhaps in NBA history, for a star to have his legacy changed at all. Because nobody's changing their mind on him at this point. There's too much data. I've seen it all.

No, there's one scenario. If he went to Dallas and played with Luca and Kyrie, and then Luca got hurt in the first round in LeBron's like, I guess I'm going to have to dip back into the wayback machine and then win the title anyway. It would have to be in a team where the star got hurt and he had to throw everyone on his back. That would be the scenario.

All right. I agree with that. I did not think. I still think people will be like, Well, yeah, but Luca did all the regular season work and got him to seed LeBron in his 20 games. I mean, those guys would just find a way to dump on him anyway. All right, where's Embiid in all this?

You know what's funny? I considered him briefly, and I just feel like I've given up.

You've given up?

I think I have. I think I've given up. He could win me back, but I'm just- What does that mean? I just don't think he gets it. Even seeing him on that halftime show or whatever, the pregame show, the clips, I'm just like, Oh, man. You haven't come through in one playoff series in your entire career. I don't even I think you realize that. Does he realize that? You're 30.

Where he and Ben Simmons are actually perfect teammates for lack of realization.

At some point, it might be you. How many excuses can we have? I really like Embiid, but I'd still go back to that week when he dropped the 70 on 19-year-old Wembenyama and then missed the Denver game. I'm just like, Does this guy get it? I don't know. I just don't know. He was laughing.

Well, I can't believe you said you've given up, even though I did something similar when I went on part of my take and we were just... It was a conversation that somehow started with the Tatum windows of possibilities. If Tatum wins the finals MVP, which even if the Celtics win this thing, I don't know, he would have to do some... The series would have to go longer. He would have to have some huge, huge games. So it's not. I'm not completely ruling it out, but as of today, you wouldn't feel great about Tatum's chances of finals MVP. So what the high side of that conversation could be, right? Some of the, Hey, is he actually... Is Luca actually better than this guy? It's like, Yes, Luca is better than him. Okay? I don't even care about what happens in the finals. It's ridiculous to me. Then on the low side, if Dallas win the whole thing, or what if they blew a three or something like that? What would happen with this Celtic group? I have to ask you some of those questions a little bit later in the pod. But then it became like, Okay, who are the top four?

And that's when Zack Lowe, that clip had gone around of him saying the top four are irrefutable. And my point was, until further notice, I don't... Like, Embiid is just not waved into that group for me anymore. He Just isn't. It doesn't mean I don't think he's outside of top 10 or something absurd like that. Of course not. But I'm not going to blindly think of him in the same category that I think of the other top shot creator, massive stack guys, MVP conversation guys. So I don't know if we're saying the same thing.

No, you know why you thought that? Because he's not reliable. He hasn't proven that he can be reliable season to season. He just hasn't. And now he's going to be 30. And I'm looking at the history of big dudes and what happens when you just start adding weight every year just because you're getting older and that's what happens. I don't think he's a reliable bet from a health standpoint, and I don't know if he gets it. When I say get it, I mean, hey, Embiid, you got to be in awesome shape. The more weight you carry, the more bad things can happen, and you can blame whoever, but it ultimately starts with that. I think he obviously works on his game. His offensive game, I think both of us were like, Wow, this guy, this is the best shooting big man we've ever had. He's an incredible free throw shooter. A lot of things to like. But at this point, the reason I put him on is I'd be really surprised if you flipped that narrative. I haven't seen him, and maybe he has, and I've missed it, but have you seen real reflection with him?

Like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I could have... Maybe going into next year, I have to do this, this, and this. I just haven't heard it. You hear stuff like you see him on the ESPN show where he's talking about the Celtics got lucky this year because I got hurt. So you get hurt every year.

That was a tough look. Now, were they actually debating, are the Celtics a dynasty before they even won the finals?

That was stupid in itself. I'm just wondering. That was the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

As somebody who's worked in television.

You got to win a title before we can have the dynasty combo. Just win the first one. When the first one- Was Embiid on the desk just so rattled from how terrible that segment producing was?

Maybe he was. That that's why I'm coming up with an excuse for him because Maybe he didn't realize he saw the tape after because I shouldn't have said that the Celtics were lucky when I was hurt again. He's like, But God, why did we start the Bs with the Celtics of the dynasty before they've even won this first one?

I did a Ringer top 100. We had the last vote, and I think I had Embiid ninth. I wanted to put him higher, and I just couldn't justify it.

Okay, give me the eight in front of him.

I had Jokic, Donchik, Rich, Giannis, Shea, Tatum. I had Brunson sixth. I'm not going to apologize either.

Curry, seven. You shouldn't. Just an aside on Brunson. I've been prepping now for last week, just cramming for the NBA draft and watching these small point cards and go, Well, that's really cool, but I don't know. Or, All right, that's amazing you did that, but I don't really like the way you're finishing around the rim here, and I'm not sure this is going to work or whatever. Then every time, all I do is think about Jalen Brunson and what he did this year.

He has to be 6. Curry, seventh. Didn't make the playoffs. Sorry. Edwards, eight. That was the toughest one, that Edwards-Currie-Brunson thing. Then I had Embiid, 9. Guess who had number 10?

Durant.

Victor Wembedyama. I'm just ready. I'm never making a list that again and not having him in the top 10.

I'm just not. Mba. Com should do this where they have all the MVP voters vote for the top 10 players once a month.

Well, that's what we were trying to do with the Ringer top 100. But it would be... What you just said, though, is what they should do with the MVP to make it stand out from our MBA. We should vote for 10 places. There should be like, he finished ninth in the MVP voting, should be a thing we say. I don't know why we cut it off at five.

They I like that because this is something that you brought up and you brought it up in your book. This is why this stuff matters. Is you go back and I was looking at Charles Barkley and I was trying to find these articles from '93. Just off the top of the pot. How are people talking about him? Then I go, God. He had eight top six MVP finishes. It would be cool if we had 10 slots for the MVP vote just so you could see, historically, where guys lined up. Because then when you go through Karl Malone's resume, because I started looking at Barclays MVP year against Jordan, then also the Karl Malone years and how many years he finished really high in the MVP voting. Granted, you can end up finishing lower because of just the points and the way the voting works for everything. But if there was an end-of-year definitive top 10 list based on the MVP voting, it'd be a great resource to just go back and think of this is where this guy lived for this many years of his career, as opposed to a peak two or three-year career.

Larry is the best version of that because he's like three- Shocking submission. No, he's, I think, top three for 10 years, the first 10 years of the week. Is he really? No, it's like 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3. I forget what it is, but yeah.

All right, I have it here. 4, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2. Yeah.

It's his first This is first nine years of the week. That's crazy. Nobody's going to do that again. Hey, we have a Retradable segment. It's brought to you by Workday. Get the whole band together with Workday and pair finance and HR on one platform for an epic performance with Workday AI at the core, you'll make confident decisions faster than ever, and you'll drive flawless business and finance operations with an agile platform that constantly involves to future proof your organization. Be a finance and HR Rockstar with Workday. Visit workday. Com to learn more. I didn't prep you for this. We are doing Paul George's Trade in 2017 from Indianapolis to Oklahoma City. Indianapolis acquired Dmanas Sabonis and Victor Oldepo. If you go back and read the pieces from the time, Oldepo was four years, 84 million, and people were like, It's a little pricey. Then he went there and had a couple of good years. They got Sabonis. They turned him into Eventually in Halliburton. It turns out to be a good trade for them. Not a good trade if you go back and read what happened. But the reason I bring this up, not just because we had Paul George in the legacy thing, but there's some relevance to Boston and Dallas in this whole thing, Rosillo.

One was the Celtics, if you remember, tried to get Paul George twice. They tried to get him at the 2017 Trade Deadline. If you go back and read this, it's all true. They offered the Brooklyn Pick Swap Pick as part of the package to try to get Paul George in February 2017, the pick that became Jason Tatum. Indiana shut it down. Then during the summer there, They offered Crowder, Marcus Smart, and three first, not the Brooklyn 2018 first or the Sacramento first for Paul George. Indiana said no. Indiana took that Oladipo Sabonis deal, and Boston was furious because they were like, We had a better deal. In retrospect, not a better deal, right? Three picks in their top 20s, Crowder and Smart versus Sabonis and Oladipo. Everybody shit on Pritchard for that, including me. The other piece that's interesting for the finals, Jackie McDonald in 2018 wrote this. You can Google. It was on ESPN. She had a big, giant feature about Kyrie. That's really interesting. In there, she said, One of the reasons Kyrie fell out there is because the Cavs explored a three-way deal with Phoenix in Indiana that would have shipped Irving and Fry to the Suns—this is summer 2017—and brought Eric Bledso and Paul George to Cleveland.

If you remember, Bledso was a clutch client. The Suns resisted unwilling to part with their number 4 pick, which they planned to use to draft Josh Jackson. ¡Ouch! Then she wrote, No informal offer was made, but news of the potential transaction stung Irving, whose sources close to them say, became convinced LeBron's camp, which also represents blood, so orchestrated the trade talks. So you had all these butt hurt teams. Phoenix, Cleveland's bad, Boston's bad. And it turned out in any manner, they made a great deal. This is why trades are crazy, right? Old Deep Dpons is a bonus for Paul George heading into the last year of his deal, and it turns out to be an awesome deal for Indiana.

Because if you're staring at the deal going, Okay, all I have to do is say yes to this or something that hasn't been proven yet when you're talking about the Celtics draft pick at three and the history of go through the last 10 years of just the top 10 picks. You don't even have to do the full lottery, you pick 11 through 14. Go through the top 10 and how many guys are on a second team within four years. There are certain years where you could put the work in and say, Hey, this is going to be really deep and we're going to want those kinds of guys. But what Paul George is, and based on the Celtic success this season, and ultimately, we'll see how this all finishes up here, but the emphasis on the big wing that can score, three-level score, can defend, and all that stuff, you're like, Okay, I can have one of those guys right now. Of course, you would want to do a lot of these deals. But I remember with it, just the fear that Oklahoma City was incredibly bold. But when I talked to other teams about it, it was like, what's the point?

What's the point? He's going to go to the Lake. He's not going to resign there. Then Presti ends up keeping him, which I think is one of the funniest things ever, that I'm convinced they threw a huge free agency party just so it would be awkward for him to say he was going somewhere else. Ola Deepo, who had a stretch there with the Pacers a few years ago where he was in He looked like a top 10 guy. Then on top of that was a bonus and everything else. The Thunder, I look at that trade and wonder, as much as people are saying, Oh, Prestige is going to stockpile and maybe the Matt Starr. You can't do that. But that's in his playbook, to be incredibly bold when the rest of the league thinks it doesn't make any sense. I wonder if we're going to be reminded of that again here soon.

Good tease. Thanks again to Workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR Rockstar with Workday. To learn more, visit workday. Com. Speaking of the draft, I can sense you're diving into it a little bit. You've got some Reid Sheppard thoughts.

I do have some Reid Sheppard thoughts.

Let's hear it.

Ken Well, I'm just afraid because of the Jokich, Luca, Kaitlyn Clarke, Chet Hanks, Whiteboy Summer. Is the world ready for Reid Sheppard to go number one as a 6, one and a half guard from Kentucky.

I'm just saying if that happens- The climate's not perfect for it?

I just don't know. I don't know if people are ready for this because white guys are having a moment right now, and white girls, when it comes to the hoops world. I'm just telling, he's probably one of the best shooting prospects I I've seen in 20 years of doing the draft.

Wow.

I don't know who would say that he isn't. Who would you compare him to? Well, that's where it's a little tougher. Payton Pritchard. When I looked at his synergy numbers, Bill, I'm going to share them with you here. I have to find them. As you're looking, I'll- Go ahead. I'll tell you- Phil.

Well, I asked Kyle Mann because Kyle Mann, Kentucky guy, obviously has been following him. My question was, is it crazy to think Reid Sheppard would be the greatest version ever of Payton Pritchard? I mean that as a compliment, not an insult. If you watch Payton Pritchard in the finals and just think like, what if Payton Pritchard was awesome in game five? And that was just Reid Sheppard every game. Like, undersize, feisty, a little stronger than you think. Teams keep attacking him, but he can fend it off. And then on the other end, he's just making everything. I just don't know. There's not a lot of doppelgangers, but Kyleman loves his defensive hands. He thinks offensively that could he be better than Tyler Hero? He thinks, Sounds great. It's just a really smart player who can shoot the lights out and has a good handle. That's not nothing. I'm higher on him than I was a week ago as I dived in. I'm not as high as you. You seem delighted by him.

Well, I'm cautious Mostly delighted, though, because I don't know what to do. Now, the six, one and a half, I think it's also important to point out that they stopped doing the combine measurement in shoots. Every one of these guys, over the history of all these measurements, whatever their listed height was, and then whatever ended up on esbn. Com when you pulled up their page stuff, that was always the height with shoes. So for whatever reason in this really weird development, they said, Let's just stop doing that. So basically, everybody's height was a lie. Everyone's height was a lie for every one of you right now. Like, your favorite player wasn't actually as tall as he was listed.

Wow. It's like when they changed the TV ratings out of nowhere and all of a sudden everybody was like, no, now bars and airports count. It's like, what? Everyone's having their best year ever.

That's like the reverse where I go, so wait, we're good if a guy fills out in pencil and hand writes in a radio journal, his fucking radio diary that he liked to show that's how we're good or bad. That seems to be a little outdated. Okay. So even knowing that out of the combine, like Reid Sheppard is now magically 6'3, it's a lot when you're talking about him potentially being in the mix as a number one pick. Now, the shooting stuff, my friend- But wait, it's not a lot when we do the exercise, which we now talk about every week, that you just have to pretend the top seven has been chopped out of the draft and you're taking Rich Sheppard as the eighth pick.

He just happens to be first.

Yeah. Okay. I'm glad you reminded me of the rule that we brought up. I don't mean that with any snark. It's what you have to keep doing. It's like whenever anyone signed a contract with a new TV cap, and I made the joke, like anytime there was a new contract, you're like, What? Then somebody would try to explain it to a you or me, as if we didn't already know, we're like, Hey, well, the cap goes up. Yeah, I know. The cap did go up.

That's why Evan Turner is worth $72 million.

Right. So in this, Alan Crabbed $70 million? Are you kidding? No, dude, it's totally fine. The cap went up. So no contract is bad now because the cap went up. So if you do the same thing, apply the same principle with this draft, you go, Okay, stop getting caught up in what the number one pick is supposed to look like because this year is just not going to My good friends at Synergy love the program, so shout out to them. Big part of my summer. His catch and shoot numbers, they do the percentile of where you rank based on these different shot types. So When you catch and shoot, he's 1.54 points per shot, 99th percentile. Guarded, he's in the 96th percentile. It's still at 1.3 plus. Unguarded, if you leave him open, Bill, it's fucking over. And that's something when you watch his tape, just over and over and over again. It's one thing that he gets into his dribble-jumper off the high screen. And if the lower defender isn't there to meet him immediately, you're toast. He's good at getting to the mid-range stuff. He really does play despite he and Dillingham taking turns of possessions.

When he's running the possession, it's his possession, and he looks like a point guard. He looks far more like a point guard than Stifying Castle does. If he's just open, open, like it's swung to the other side, and then he cuts and finds himself behind the three-point line, it's a layup from out there. All of these numbers, whether it's catch and shoot, dribble, jump, or guarded, unguarded, it's all between the 96th and 99th percentile of college basketball players this season. Jesus. The tape backs all of it up. I think the part that makes me more excited about him is his passing because he really has, whether it's the deep drive where the defense collapses and he kicks it back out behind him. There's some stuff there that he's born with. I really feel that way point guards. I'm not saying he's like Jason Kidd or anything, but Jason Kidd was born that way.

You know I'm with you on this theory. You don't learn how to be an awesome point guard. You have some chromosome in your soul gets you there.

Totally. There's parts where he'll get maybe the first outlet off the defensive rebound, and he would be totally within his right as a great shooter to just never want to give the ball up and try to find spot. Actually, this is one of the things I love about Scoot, so maybe I'm jinksing him here, but he's looking to get the ball up. He's this unbelievable option with all of these shooting numbers, but he's still okay making sure he's getting some other people involved.

Now, he's not going to be- So head up all the time.

Yeah.

Always looking for somebody else. Can't miss when he's wide open. Can't miss. Start with those three things. That sounds great.

Now, he gets lost in the trees at that size. Athletically, the testing stuff is hilarious because the same thing with Dalton Connect, where you're watching Dalton going, Man, this guy's got some bounce to him. And then you look at Connect's athletic testing at the combine, and all the numbers are off the charts. Sheppard, when you're watching him, you're like, Okay, how good of an athlete is he? Because you've got Dillingham on the other side of it, just a jitter bug. He's just really tough to stay in front of. Sheppard, certainly not that. But then you wonder, Okay, I wonder what Sheppard did athletically. Well, he He died for the highest max vert jump at the combine at 42 inches.

Oh, my God.

We're not talking about him and Brian James? No. Brian James was 40 and a half. Okay.

Well, let me ask you this.

Devon Carter from Providence College, I think, actually came in first, technically, and he's his own story, nine boards a game as a guard, which is just incredible.

Well, let me ask you this, because everything you just laid out, the draft, the top four is Atlanta, Washington, Houston, San Antonio. From what you just laid out, Washington, Houston, and San Antonio could all use a guy like the guy you just described. Washington, definitely. They don't have a point card. Houston, seems like somebody who could be a third guard off the bench, but eventually a Vanvillier replacement. Then San Antonio, that sounds like literally exactly what they need. Is your case, it's not inconceivable that he could go to number one because Atlanta doesn't need somebody like that because they have the two guards?

Yeah.

Yet the other three teams right after them are like, We actually want that guy, and we're afraid somebody else is going to take them, so let's just fucking move up and grab him at one.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Just off of last week where I think both of us have heard enough now for the last couple of weeks.

About clinging.

Bullshit with guys. It's just, Oh, be ready to be surprised. So just have an open mind about all this stuff. So when I'd read this week, and I'm late to it, but I was thinking about other great shooters. Jj was an incredible shooter, but he also was bigger and He was a really good athlete. You saw his development at Duke, where JJ went from somebody who provided spacing to somebody who was controlling the ball in big possessions, getting to the free throw line. So once JJ did that, I was like, Okay, wait a minute. This guy has a real chance here. He This should be a lottery pick. This isn't just some kid at Duke who's making a bunch of threes. There's way more to his overall game. Clay, when he was at Washington State, I don't think he had the ball. I don't think he used the ball the way... I don't know. I could be forgetting it. But Reid controls possessions more so than he's just somebody that provides all this shooting. But even at his worst, Bill, which is, again, not your default for your talking about potentially a number one pick when he looks like Reid Sheppard, you go, Well, we know this.

He's going to make open shots immediately. That's not ever going to go away. He already shows you the NBA range, and it's just absurd. You can just see the defenders in these SEC games when they lose track of him, and then they see the ball swung to his side, and you just like the head down like, I can't believe I let him get away from me. But there's more to it than just spacing. It's just a matter of what is the team going to allow him to do? Are they going to bring him in and be rookie point guard and be like, All right, you're in of all these possessions? When I think rim finishing for him is probably going to be a bit of a challenge despite the vertical that we talked about. That's asking a lot of somebody that size to beginning to the rim and finishing. If that never happens, and he's still somewhat limited, the shooting is so special, Bill, and it's both. It's not just catch and shoot. It's him dribbling and getting into his jumper where both of those numbers are like the best in college basketball. Why would that not translate?

Shooting is the number one thing that translates. Well, shooting and defense, because I think Castle, with the defense, he'll be fine. He will be... Worst case scenario, he's in the Derek Jones spot for an awesome playoff team someday.

There's two of them teams- Hold on. I'm glad you brought up Castle, though, because I went through and watched every one of his pick and roll ball handling possessions because I was just trying to find it. Show me the point guard playmaking side of it. I think it's 71 possessions, and he took shots on 57 of the 71.

Utah, 10. Oklahoma City at 12 would be the other ones. I think for a Reid Sheppard move up. The reason I mentioned them is because Utah has a ton of pics, and Oklahoma City has a ton of pics. This is the draft where maybe you could sneak up the three. Houston is going to be the wild card. But everything you laid out just sounds like somebody Washington should take, but probably They won't because they're just going to be too enamored by the possibility of having two French guys. This is a fun draft. I can see the pep in your step. It's just weird. It's going to go all over the map. I've embraced it.

I really have. I've embraced it. Look, I started watching Bacellus going, Man, if this guy could shoot, he might be the number one pick. First of all, if Bacellus consistently could hit three-point shots, I think he's the number one pick in this draft.

He's the Franz guy. He's a little Franz-ish, right?

Yeah.

Well, I'm not just saying that because they're both white. It It feels a bit like that. 610, 195.

Have you ever been able to do a good black-white comp?

Many, many times.

Oh, really? Share one.

Many times. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was always... I always just love having my column, trying to cross over.

It's always a good one. Bring people together.

Yeah.

Especially, we're going to need it. We're going to need stuff like that, Bill, if Reid goes number one.

Well, it's white boy summer. All right, we're going to take this to a part two because we haven't even talked about the NBA Finals yet, and we didn't play what would you do. I didn't even ask Rusillo if he's following the Karen retrial. So we're taking all of that to part two. Part one was produced by Kyle Creighton and by Steve Serruti. Thanks to Rusillo. We'll see you for part two. Must be 21 plus, 18 plus DC, and present in select states, Fandil offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gamble problem? Call 1-800 Gamble or visit fandil. Com/rg. In Colorado, DC, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont. Call 1-800 next step or text next step to 53342 in Arizona, 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat-in-connecticate, 809 with it in Indiana, 800-522-4700, or visit ksgamblinghelp. Com in Kansas. 877-770. Stop in Louisiana, mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. 800-gambling. Net in West Virginia. 850-522-4700 in Wyoming. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 1-877-8 Hope,Y or text Hope-N-Y in New.