The NBA Summer Movement Preview With Ryen Russillo
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And we're going to talk to Ryan Rosillo in one second because basketball threatening to heat up. I can't say it's red hot right now. It's pretty lukewarm, but there's been a lot of fascinating subplots and things to look for as we headed to July. So we're still coming up next. We're gonna take a break, get into Pearl jam and then Rosillo. This episode is presented by state farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. I've been saying this for years. And when it comes to insurance, state farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home car,

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5.30 p.m. Pacific time on a Sunday night. You know, in years past, and we've been doing this since I think 2018 range, and there was always something, either a massive event, or like something we didn't expect right around like in that 36-hour stretch before July 1st. I don't think the Jabari Smith extension has really qualified for me. I don't know if you feel differently. Uh,

It's just nothing's really happening yet. And yet there are all these moving pieces right now. And I was just going to throw a bunch of stuff that I'm fascinated by so far since the finals have ended. I'll start here. Okay. I really like everything Houston's doing.

It's getting a 10 out of a 10 approval rating from me from the Durantrade, which we've already talked about. They signed Jabari Smith today to a five-year $122 million extension. They renegotiated with Van Vliet, got him at $25 million for two years each year. And I just like the roster they put together. It makes sense to me. I'm not sure they need to do anything else. And I think they're a real threat.

in the West now and they have stability and assets. I think they have flexibility to do more stuff in December, January, February if they need to. And I think they're in the mix. I really do. What is your take on the Rockets? Love what they've done. I think we've kind of touched on just a bunch of the things, even going back to like last year where, you know,

They were one of the rare teams that spends a top pick on Jalen Green and then just doesn't give him the full max because he scored a million points. You know, they structured that deal in a way where it was like, we like you, but we're still not sure. And so I think that showed you the rare. I want to get into some of these other deals where it feels like the overriding sentiment the last couple of days has just been teams doing players favors. But.

they've been really just smart and calculated about it all. Like when the Van Vliet signing happened, you looked at the total numbers. You're like, well, that's nuts. And it's like, what are they going to do with that player option? Well, or excuse me, the team option. So they declined the team option because it didn't really make a ton of sense. If Van Vliet was going to make 45 million for one year, they do the new deal two years, 25 million. So that's a win for them. Probably a little more stability. Kind of a win for him too, right? Because they were going to decline the option and now he's out in the open market and not looking at 45 million anyway.

$25 million would have been the range. Yeah, and even then it was going to be tough to find a landing spot because everybody sits here. Every article you read, it's like, other than Brooklyn, other than Brooklyn, other than Brooklyn. So some of these numbers. But even the Jabari deal, it's five for $122 million. But seriously, he's probably kind of like in a make or break season. But $20 plus million a year for him at this age, knowing that if it doesn't work out, you can trade him. And then I was looking at, this is where it can get a little confusing on like if they do this or they do that. And they had to get

with some of the restructuring of how they were working their books. But I think they can still use a full non-taxpayer mid-level if they want to get greedy. They kept for 14.1. Yeah. So they've positioned themselves really well. They'll probably do the Durant extension, I'd imagine, which is always going to be a little scary. But hell, I was even like thinking, man, if I'm another team and Jay Sean Tate is available, I loved him when he got minutes and then they find a way to keep him. So, yeah.

I'm incredibly impressed. So I don't even know other than what Steven Adams, three years, 39 million. Is there anything to really go like, Whoa, I mean, yeah, it was like, if it had been three years, 30, I would have been like, nice deal. 39. I was like, ah, a wee bit rich, but you know, splitting hairs. They're number four on the, uh, on fiendles champion odds right now. Nine to one. Okay. See, he's the favorite. Cleveland is six to one. Knicks are nine to one and the Rockets are nine to one. And I think that's, I think that's fair. I, Minnesota is, uh,

14 to one, which I thought Minnesota and Houston would have similar odds, but the better is like Houston a little more than Minnesota. I mean, and that's the second story that we have to hit that ties in Houston and also ties into the big picture of all of this. They keep Nas Reed, which I thought was impossible in February. And I didn't realize what was going to happen with the market. They kept Nas Reed. That contract next year starts at $21 million. Wow.

He's a $30 million player. Like in, in normal times, like basically what this new CBA has done is like when you buy a car, there's like this new car tax that you're basically paying for the moment you take the car off the lot. The, the number of that car decreases by 25%, right? You're just basically paying because you want a new car. And NBA free agency has had this forever.

where it's like, well, Nas Reed's not worth 160 million for five years. He's worth probably 120, but now you got to pay the extra 40 million to get Nas Reed. It feels like this new CBA has eliminated the new car tax and Randall is a hundred million for three years. It's not 125 for three years. The last deal that we have that I think teams are, a team would regret is that Brandon Ingram deal where Toronto trades for him and then gives him, what was it? 120 for three years.

It's just out of whack. He's not, I don't think he, I think he should be in that Randall range of three for a hundred. So we've seen a resetting and we've seen the smarter teams kind of lock down these contracts. And I think it's going to be a free for all with these free agents where that we're just a bunch of guys who were like, wait, I thought I was worth this. And it's like, no, you actually aren't. You're actually, the numbers have moved down here and that's just the reality of it. Yeah. Minnesota is a big part of this because

You had to figure with the cap trade because how big those numbers get at the back end. And then Rudy did an extension, which was less annually than what he was building towards. It was like, okay, they're probably trying to figure out a way to lock in this number that doesn't prevent total flexibility here. But did you think they would be able to keep Randall and Nas? Because I would have thought that would be impossible in February. Well, yeah.

I mean, who's going to pay Nas more than 25, 30 million a year? Nobody. Nobody has the space. Yeah. That's the thing. Maybe I didn't look at it hard enough four months ago, but I just assumed there would be the way the league works where it's like somebody creates space or there's a sign and trade or there's some suitor. It's like, whoa, Indiana's getting Nas Reid. How did that happen? It seems like that era is over. Nobody can do it.

Well, I don't know that we're going to have a year where there's one team with major cap space and then nobody else does. But I think there was also teams that were like, you know, where do I park my shit? Where do I park it? Oh, there's nowhere to park it. I mean, think about like Brooklyn. They have their five picks. It's like, what are you going to do? Offer them another first to take on a contract? Sean Marks is like, hey, boys, you know, open up the notebooks. We got six.

Is he a ball handling guard? We'll take him. And even then they took on Terrence Mann's deal. So they're...

it's just such a rarity that you really didn't have anybody, especially with the way the Detroit stuff worked out. Like at one point you thought, could Detroit get a $25 million player in there where their cap space, but then Cade gets the bump. So then that kind of eliminates that. So Nas, when I had heard the first like offering, like four years for a hundred, I just assume whatever number I hear you like tack on a little bit more to it. So when it came out, I wasn't entirely shocked. The Randall one, like I was really looking at it this morning. So I,

He goes three years for a hundred ops out of the player option, 35.8. All right. Now too often I will look at a deal and go, I hate to be in the Randall business for a hundred million dollars, or I'd hate to be like, there's too often. I say it with too many players where it's like, Hey dude, like I have to check myself and go,

Well, at some point you have to sign somebody and you can't just let assets just walk for absolutely nothing. Yeah, if it's a top 60 guy, you just got to blink and suck it up. Yeah, right. And so if you think of Randall's

Because I think there was still a little sticker shock. And that's probably just the recency bias of the last series. And you could say, well, hey, he was really good in the first two rounds. Well, was that potentially the matchups that he was going up against? I don't know. I mean, all that stuff I think is totally fair. But I went back to 2021 where Randall signed a four-year deal with the Knicks for $117 million. So it is four years, $117 million. And that's when the salary cap is at $112 million.

Well, now the salary cap's north of $150 million, and you're getting Randall for, like, you know, depending on how they stagger with 8% raises over the years, it's kind of the same contract. And this is somebody four years ago, you were wondering before he was...

Actually, excuse me. We were thinking back to last August if he was going to do a four-year $184 million extension. That was one of the things that was on the table. What if he puts up this huge... Granted, I don't know with Brunson, he was going to get the same number of touches. But three years for $100 million, even though I don't love the guy, that kind of puts him in the 70th highest paid player range. That's kind of what he costs. This is what's changed, though, where it's become a little more like movies.

The star stars are going to get even more money. Like Booker's going to get 75 million a year for two years or three years, whatever that extension is. That's where... Whatever Luca wants to wait for, too. Luca, SGA, Tatum already signed. Especially if you have some sort of Omba, you're looking at 65 million and up.

But then there's that class right below. And we're seeing like some of those Toronto contracts that neither you or I really liked. And you go back and look at some of those deals now, like what Quickly signed for, what Ingram signed for. And I just don't think, I think those guys would be $20 to $25 million guys in whatever this new version of the market is. Quickly got five years, 162, fully guaranteed.

Which was my thing with Nas Reed. It's like, if that's Quigley's price, how is Nas Reed not a $30 million a year guy? But apparently those days are over. But I looked up some of this other stuff too. Like Nick Claxton was four years, $97 million. So like you get sticker shock over Randall. And it's like, well, there's way more to Randall than what Nick Claxton is at this point. Tobias Harris, granted, it was shorter previously.

but it was two years, 52 million. Cause Detroit was like, well, we've had him in here before. Make some shots. John Collins. I mean, this deal wasn't 21. That was my favorites. Five years, 125 million fully guaranteed. Oh,

He's making 26 this year. Well, that's why Reeves turned down. What did Reeves turn down for, for 97? Cause he's going to, he's one of those guys that actually can get to the five one 50. I think everybody knew that was getting turned down. Yeah. Even the Lakers were like, we knew he was going to turn it down, but we just wanted to make them know that we were interested, but that was like a done deal. Cause it doesn't make any sense for him to do it, knowing what's coming or he's potentially eligible for, but,

Yeah, I mean, when Collins picked up his player option for 26 and a half million. Do you know how old Collins is, by the way, off the top of your head? Isn't he still in his 20s? He's 28. Yeah. He's just, he came in the league pretty early. Yeah, because if you look at the

The big free agents that are left because everybody basically got locked down and then Harden looked like he did a deal. So Kyrie's three for 119, Harden's two for 81. So for that caliber, it seems like 40 million a year. Randall, it seems a little light, but it also seems like he wanted to lock down a little long-term security. So that Randall range is like 33 to 35 million a year.

Then that Nas Reed range five for 125, that's about 25 a year. And that seems like that's where that's the hierarchy now. So if you have a guy who's not one of the best three players in your team, but it's super valuable, like Nas Reed,

It's in the 20 to 25 range. Jabari Smith, right? That's another one. I don't know if this is going to last. By the way, the cap keeps going up 10% every year. So it might, as we keep going, there's more teams with cap space next year. There's going to be a bunch of them. Maybe this will flip, but this was the reality this year. Davion Mitchell, two for 24, which just seems like a normal free agent contract any other year, but that's probably the price now for a roll guy, $10 million.

12 million, maybe shorter money. So when I look at Finney Smith opting out with the Lakers, which I thought was interesting today and really speaks to how weird the Lakers situation is right now, but I don't know, is he getting more than that? Probably not. Maybe he'll get more years, but he's looking at that 14.1 million free agent exemption, which half the teams in the league have.

And maybe you can add three years to that. It's three for 50, something like that. But in the old days, he might've gotten like four for 75, like some really dopey Max Struess. Remember that contract? I think those contracts are done. Max Struess, four for 64. That's not happening anymore.

It may happen in the way that a team is not worried about the apron. They're not worried about the tax and they go to, we don't want to lose the asset for nothing. I mean, I think you're still going to see some of that stuff happen because I think there's another part of this summer. No, no, no, no. I'm talking like down the road. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just think it's very rare that you have,

Like it was two forces fighting each other. One was one team with cap space that doesn't want to do anything with it. And then also not a ton of available free agents. So I think that there are teams that probably could have held a much harder line if they wanted to be like way harder. Happening right now. Okay. But think about the Harden deal. Like Harden has a player option at 36 and a half million. He signs for two teams.

for 81.5 million. So he gets a raise of like maybe a couple million for one year. I mean, you could envision a scenario where the Clippers go, Hey, if you opt out, you really want to go to free agency. Well, who's, who's signing you. So why don't you just pick up the player option? And granted, all this stuff has worked out ahead of time. And I'm sure they're very happy with how productive he was. He was all NBA in a way that you didn't really expect. Like this isn't about the playoff part of it. Are they happy?

Well, they gave me one and a half million, so they must feel pretty good about it. If we were at dinner with the Clippers people before they agreed to that contract and wine was going around and it's like 1030 at night at the table, do you think somebody would have been basically just like, I just got to say this. Game seven.

Are we sure we want two more years of this? Like there's no way they didn't have that conversation in the room at some point over the last four weeks. Like, are we sure we want to do this? Should we just talk about game seven again? Cause I think it's so hard to find guys in the top 50 that you just got to suck it up and you start going glass half full instead of glass half empty. But there had to have been a moment in the last four weeks, like Ty Lue, there's no way he didn't crunch that game seven tape one more time. And just like,

My God, he won't fucking look at the rim. Like we're going to do this for two more years. He won't fucking look at the rim. But they did it because their teams are so scared about not having an asset. They'd rather have the asset they're not happy with. Like, all right, we'll just get them figured out. But I don't know. They sent him in the open market. What was he going to do? Where was he going? That's my point is there are multiple examples these last couple of days where a team could have been like, all right, you want to opt out?

Like you want to raise from us and you want to throw in another player controlled second year because the 81 and a half, the first year is fully guaranteed. The second year is partially guaranteed, but it is a player option. So we can be right back to this. So he was never opting out. Worst case scenario, he's opting in and grabbing that.

making sure he gets that one thing. So that, that was always how this was going to play out. And the same thing for Randall. I think Randall was ultimately, he had topped and that's, that's the leverage the team said. Now, whether this will be the case in three years from now when the cap is way higher, right. And everybody has recalibrated their books to some degree. I don't know, but I think this is the, this is the weirdest summer since 2016 for just

Looking at either in 2016 was the opposite. People had so much cap space. They were like fucking at the strip joint at three in the morning. Just Evan Turner, Luol Deng. Like that could be like a documentary. Think about that summer. All those guys made more money than most of the free agents are going to make this summer. Yeah, right. And then the players didn't understand for the most part what was going on. And then once they realized they were like, hey, so we were told not softening the cap would be good.

for us and you know the way that story goes the people were trying to explain it to players leadership and players you know association was like absolutely not and you know i can understand it too it's like what does that mean like no we want all of our money and the money that we're just like the way it works is this is how it goes and then all of a sudden everybody's just flush with cash and you're right like the evan turner contract when that one happened i just remember thinking like well that's wrong

There's no way Evan Turner got, what was it, 70 million bucks or something? I don't even think that was the one I was the most upset about or most stunned about. I think the Noah one was the most shocking one to me because there were real signs that he might be headed toward the downside. It was like nobody had watched the previous season. Speaking of cap space, this is another story I have in my eye on Russillo.

And this has multiple tentacles to it. Detroit now is going to have cap space, it looks like, because everyone thought they're going to resign Malik Beasley. And apparently they had, it was reported that they were thinking about three years, 42 for them, for him. And that was going to take them out of free agent cap stuff, right? They're probably going to let Schroeder go. Tim Hardaway Jr., who knows? But Beasley, so Beasley was going to be their free agent. Then we get, we wake up this morning and

And he's in a gambling being investigated. Detroit is backed off of the thing. He's now in some sort of God only knows what's going to happen with that. We could talk about that piece later. But now Detroit is going to have like 17 million. And then if they can trade some contracts or, you know, get somebody to take somebody out, they could probably get to 20, maybe even 25. If somebody took Fontenaccio.

Um, and all of a sudden they're probably the biggest suitor out of all these dudes. I don't know if there's anybody left, but, uh, that could be a Finney Smith spot. I don't know. I, I think we've talked about in the past, like the East, who knows Indy Boston, you know, you Detroit could have a chance to be like a two or three seed. This is a really big decision for them who they're going to add. And there's a lot of guys that I like too. So what do they do?

Well, I mean, how many guys do you like? How many of you guys do you like that are playing in their playoff rotation that are worth a multi-year investment knowing that there's other players they're going to have to pay soon? All right, I'll give you some. I do like Alexander Walker a lot. I don't know if he's a top three guy, but we watched him play in a playoff series. I liked how he played.

I still like Ty Jerome. I'm not going to get thrown off by that weird Indiana series. I watched too many games during the season when he was just incredible. And I know you're an even bigger fan. He was just too impactful off the bench too many times. Finney Smith, Yavis Eli. Then it starts getting those. Those are probably the top four for me. That's why I was surprised that you said you like that many people.

There's probably a conversation about Jerome allowing Cade to be off the ball a little bit instead of just having him run high pick and roll like, you know, 90% of the game and providing spacing. Because Cade clearly, I think this one year proved, like, if you give this guy a little bit of spacing, which you could potentially lose the Beasley thing. Because, you know, Beasley's another guy, even prior to all this news, like, I don't know, I don't really want to pay you $14 million a year.

And he may have just because he shot it so well this season. So who knows? I mean, teams are always desperate. I think I would have done that. Not knowing it. Yeah, I think I thought he was really good last year. I know the playoffs, he was a little up and down, but I really liked how he played last year. I thought he was important to them. I thought he was feisty. The real Ty Jerome on Detroit. I like the feisty factor. I could see him holding back Ron Holland.

I could see him convincing Beef Stew not to charge back at the other team's huddle, but maybe also trying to agitate things too. I could see him in there. I could see Stew being like, well, now the tie's here. We have two dogs.

But Jerome can initiate the offense. He can play off of guys. Cade could play off of him a little bit. And I do think they tried to find ways to have Schroeder initiate some stuff to give Cade a break from just being the same every single time. Makes results. But it's very clear that you need to have spacing around him. So I think that's more important than them having another big guy, even if you felt at times...

It's asking a lot of Dern to just hold up the entire time against some of the bigger teams if they're going to go a little bit deeper. So, yeah, I just don't think it's really that long of a list of $14.1 million guys for the non-taxpayer mid-level. Would you rather have Ty Jerome or Malik Beasley no gambling scandal next year for the Pistons? I'm not saying this because of what happened today. I don't really trust Beasley. I think he's the guy that hits shots and then the last two minutes of the game, I don't expect him to go in. It would have been funnier if you said,

I trusted him before today. Now I don't trust him as much. I went on an amazing rabbit hole with him. I was all the way into the 2023-24 season game logs. I was looking at splits. That's the one that's being investigated. I actually think it's awful. That was reported. Look, I mean, this is not a rant about the...

innocent until proven guilty or the guilty until proven innocent way that it seems to work now where people can just be charged with stuff. And then it's just like your entire reputation is tarnished. I just think there's a lot of dudes out there that see a bad play and then they post it and everybody's so excited to be like, yep, look at that.

He didn't get back on defense. Oh, the stuff that happened after that. Yeah, that was rough. Oh, wait. So I thought that's what you said you were watching. No, I was watching the, I was just, I wasn't watching. I was looking at the game logs and trying to figure out, because they, it was reported on ESPN that they were studying January 2024. And I'm like, huh?

Let's lock in here. Went through and who knows? But it sucks because, first of all, shitty story. I feel bad for him because he played really well last year. And, you know, it doesn't seem great. When the feds get involved, not awesome. So we'll see what happens with that. But they're going to have cap space to do whatever. Yeah, and it might, you know, sometimes teams go, let's use it now.

No matter what, just make sure we use it before we lose this, and then we'll worry about the asset management part of this a little bit later. But the length of the commitment to the guys that are left over, there's only a couple names that I'd feel really comfortable about going a bunch of years with. Alexander Walker? I like him, but he's a bench player on a good team. I mean, he could close with you maybe if he gets hot. It's not the worst thing, but with the way Detroit is trending right

Right now, I'm hoping between Asar, Cade, Ivy coming back healthy, Durin, Harris when you're paying them north of $20 million a year. Still trying to figure out what you have with Holland. Kaminga? No. I'd rather pay Alexander Walker than Kaminga. So you agree with me that Ty Jerome would be the move? It makes the most sense. I can already see it. I really like it. Now, we also could be overrating him a little bit.

But he was so like he was so impactful in so many different games. And I'm sure like, you know, best case scenario, it's like, does it become a Ty Jerome Thompson debate of what they were doing even against the Knicks? It's like, well, what do we want to do? Do we want to close with defense or do we want to close with shooting? Yeah, because to this point, it's just not somebody anybody's going to close out on, never mind like a playoff game, even in the regular season. So at least Jerome, I think, brings that respect and probably clean clear up some of the stuff for Cade and what he wants to do driving.

The free agent, 14.1 million free agent spot teams. I think I have this right. Indiana, Atlanta, Philly, Milwaukee, Washington, Charlotte, Chicago, Sacramento, New Orleans, Utah, OKC, Houston, Portland, San Antonio, and Golden State if Kaminga goes. It's more than half the league. And then you have Brooklyn and Memphis have that 8.8. A couple other teams do. I don't know how many people get the 14.1. What would you do over, under on FanDuel?

How many guys get the 14.1? Would you say more than five from the list you've seen? I mean, it seems like it's too. No, it does feel like it's a low number, but you know, it's how many teams think that they're in our teams in the West going like, Hey, let's go to ownership and be like, Hey, what do you think we're going to do? We're going to win 48 games and be like, okay, now let's use our 14.1 million dollar tax. So Houston was the one, like, I don't even know if they need Finney Smith or

But Houston's the one where it feels like... But that one made me think about it. Right. Like, let's go for it here. Right? It's like, if you have Finney Smith with Tari, with Amin, and it's like, just, I don't know. That was floating around a little bit today, and I was like, oh, man, I don't even know if they need him. But if they're going for it this year... For the people listening, the UFAs, Finney Smith, Miles Turner, technically right now, but everyone thinks he's going back to Indiana, Ty Jerome, Alexander Walker,

Capella, Bruce Brown, now underrated. I don't know if you want to join me on buying some Bruce Brown is now underrated stock. Post Jokic. Okay. Yabasele. Can I answer you in a, in a 14 million? Can I pour you a glass of Yabasele? Maybe 8.8? Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, to me, like anything under 10 is like, and you can play, you can be a rotation guy. Luke Kennard? Yeah. Where's the range for him there?

8.8? The thing is, if you go, hey, we'll give you four for 40, and then every agent's just going to say, we can get 14. And then with as many teams as you just listed, good luck being the GM that's going to call the bluff on a guy that you actually want. So you're probably just going to pay him the 14. I think I've said this to you, but my dream Luke Canard team is Denver. Putting him with Jokic, I think would be really fun. Schroeder, who I think is probably not a 14 guy, but might be an 8.8.

Man, this one hurts. Luke Cornett, I think teams like him. I don't think this is going to go well for the Celtics. I thought there was going to be a way that they were going to bring back Luke Cornett and Horford, and I don't see it. So far, everything is working out for him, so I'm not going to rule out anything. What do you mean? I still can't believe that they were able to dump Drew's contract and get back Anthony Simons, and I still can't believe that it's another fan base that holds out hope that Porzingis is going to be healthy.

I said it was a borderline miracle on my Thursday pod that they shared $28 million with those two guys. It was incredible how it turned out. I was getting texts like, yo, what's up with Brad? Is he like a fucking wizard? How did he do this? I still like KP, but to cut $22 million, I thought was a miracle. Can you expand on why you like Przingis?

I think for what Atlanta gave up, like whatever, it's one year. It's a one year flyer in him. When he played last year, he was really, really good. I have no idea what happened to him in the playoffs. Nobody's been able to answer it. And we've all agreed never to talk about it again. For some reason, the guy was unplayable and looked like he had like a, like a virus. I don't understand what happened. And now he's fine. He's playing for the Lafayette team. It's really weird.

when he's healthy, he's good. And the idea of what he can be is a rim protecting stretch five is still really valuable. But even when the Celtics had made that deal, even though I liked them a lot, I was like, so you had a tack on like two more years at 30 plus million for this guy. And then I still feel like Celtics fans revisit 24 being like, you know, he was huge. It's, it's kind of, it's kind of like the guy that's getting laid off.

And you're saying it like the lunch where people are getting cake or whatever. And it's like, although there's usually not a lot of cake. That's where that's where it was for you. The guy getting laid off at lunch. Yeah. But people just like pat him on the back and be like, you know, this department just doesn't

None of this would have happened without you. When the reality is, if he was that valuable, then he probably would have still been there. And it felt like that's what people were saying about Przingis in the 24 title run. I was like, well, those, that Dallas, that one Dallas game. Do you really think? He was great during this season though. Come on. He was great during the season, but I'm. He got hurt. He got hurt. Like everybody was worried that he would get hurt and he got hurt. All the time. He got hurt again. Right. And so the way I've seen the Atlanta part of the,

acquisition is like oh you know like like sure maybe and at least for them it's only one year then Celtics had to make that extra investment but it it becomes one of those transactions that's going to be remembered as a win because they won a title when they didn't need him for the title run 24 whatsoever and not having him again this year and having this version I understood why Missoula tried to play him it was clearly he was trying to get something out of him but

I actually feel like that transaction was a loss, but no one will ever remember it that way because they won a title. I think it's a win because they won a title last year sucked and then they were able to get out of the contract. So I think ultimately the fact that they were able to escape, but they escaped because it's weird. I don't I didn't do a good job of talking about this the other day. I still don't know what Brooklyn was doing.

Getting the 22nd pick and Terrence Mann, who makes a real amount of money, like $15 million. I was going through those UFAs with you. Terrence Mann was a free agent. I don't think he's getting $15 million. The other guys I was going to mention was Schroeder, Cornette, Kavon Looney, Batum, Porter, Gary Trent, Tim Hardaway, Brogdon, Chris Paul, Levert, Horford, Duncan Robinson now. You go on and on. But...

A Terrence Mann for 15 million is not exactly a bargain. And I wasn't that excited about the 22nd pick in the draft. So I don't really know what Brooklyn was doing with that. Did you understand that? When they already had all those picks to take on the money. Four fucking first rounders already. Yeah.

and especially the way people felt about this draft, I guess there's all sorts of like man, Bogdanovich net stuff that I don't understand, like collectively about the whole transaction. It's like, okay, so you didn't want to lose Bogdanovich. You were sick of him. Granted, he just sucked this past season that he was with Atlanta. Yeah. And so it's like, all right, let's get this guy out of here. So they trade him at the deadline.

And don't forget Bones Highland in that transaction. And then they take on Mann's contract. And then it's like, now we have to dump it. Granted, you know, leadership had changed and everything. So it was just a weird series of transactions. Like, why did you trade for him? Yeah. Five months ago. Atlanta basically trades Niang, Terrence Mann, and the 22nd pick.

to take a real flyer on Porzingis with some flexibility to do some other stuff. I still kind of like it. This episode is brought to you by Vrbo Private Vacation Rentals. Vrbo, you can save over $200 on select homes when you stay for a week or more. Say, if you wanted to go catch a couple baseball games in Boston, take some time off work, fly into Beantown, watch the Sox play. After that, you can do anything. You can go book a Vrbo in Cape Cod for a week. The world is your oyster or your lobster roll.

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there's six RFAs and it seems like Grimes is going back to the Sixers for in that 14 to 60 million range. Yeah. It seems like a pretty big number. I was surprised he had like one big month for them. We've got to watch him for the last four or five years. And it just seemed a little aggressive. Didn't you think, I thought it would have been like around 10, unless they thought he, there was some team that was just going to sign him if they didn't give the money.

Yeah, I think sometimes, too, it's like anybody like you're only making so much. They go, well, he you know, he's going to make that much after the fact. And I've always kind of liked him a little bit, even going back to those next years. And then it was something else to get on Dallas's case about by getting rid of him and then bringing in the Caleb Martin contract where you're like, well, I'm part of Nico's plan. How about that guy? People starting to understand the vision because the lottery just worked out for you.

There was a vision all along. The vision was we're going to cash in on 1.8% chance to win the lottery. We've had a vision all along that we would have a miracle in May. Sixers have been busy, though, because Oubre picked up the option. Yeah, I thought you were going to report that. I was waiting to hear that from you. Well, honestly, from another reporter, he hasn't been one of my favorites, but for 8.4 for him, that's kind of a win.

But that's really, yeah, that's, that's one of the differences though, between like what's Uber's representation saying to him about like what's out there for him. And if they're coming back going, Hey, we didn't even think you'd get the 14. Then that's clearly why he's picking that up. Lonnie Walker, see Eric Gordon, you know, I mean, I don't know. There was some rumor that declining the 3.4 million means they can get a bit of lower number, bring them back. Certainly that's still in the ballpark, but the Grimes number, uh,

He was really productive, but yeah, I think we're in agreement that I was like, man, that thing's going to get north of like 15 million for him. I was surprised. I would have guessed in the tens. There's some other veterans like Russ is back. I know you're excited about that as a free agent. I can't wait. GP2 is out there. I like him. Brooke Lopez, who I did not think was good last year, but I think there's so few centers out there that he'll get one more. Where do you stand on La Ravia?

I like LaRavia. I kind of like him too. You know, as a one more shot, probably short years, maybe I'd overpay for a year to give it a, but I'd have to have like a club option on the second year maybe. And then maybe his reps are like, absolutely not. Like it depends on where he's going to go and what kind of options he's going to get. Do you have any Keon Ellis excitement? Very active player. Dean Witte, I know you're not a fan. We know where you're standing on D'Angelo Russell, who's available.

Tyus Jones did not acquit himself great in Phoenix. It really starts going downhill from the RFA's. Santi Aldama, I think, is an interesting one. And I wonder if he could slide into that 14.1 potentially for somebody trying to pull him away. I think Memphis will match. Well, they'd be psyched. They'd be thrilled if they took an offer sheet at 14.1 because I think he's a $20 million guy.

If Jabari's 20? You think he's that high? Yeah, I do. So you'd put him in the Jabari level. He's more productive than Jabari is. I actually think he's shown more than Jabari has. In my head, I am a notch lower, but maybe you're right. I don't know. Yeah, I think Aldama's actually pretty underrated. I'm not telling you that I think he's a two on a really good playoff team, but the Bain contract and that deal

Even though we had a lot of fun as soon as it had happened, it seems pretty clear that it was about flexibility for whatever is coming for Alabama, a Jaron Jackson extension, and then figuring this thing out on the fly again. And maybe if they get a rotation. There's another piece. I think they were excited about maybe they knew they had a chance to get Coward in the draft. I think they love Wells. They have all these other dudes. I think they just felt like wings by committee. We can replace Baines stats.

which I'm not against. I still don't think they should have traded him, but I get the logic. I'm not against the logic of it. I just wouldn't have traded him.

But it does feel like they're, and look, they're one of the smarter front offices. I think what they do is they go, okay, you know, this is a haul for Bain and we really like him, but we're getting in front of this and then we can clean up our books. And now we're going to have multiple chances here to fill things in around how, you know, we identify the top three guys. You know, maybe Aldama's that third, maybe he isn't. Wells is certainly more of a defensive guy. Yeah. Okay. But,

If Aldama were, there's no way he's going to sign an offer sheet for $14.1 million because the Grizzlies would be pumped. I would think their reps would already know like, hey, partner plan is getting you settled. You think he would sign that?

No, I just, I don't know anything anymore with these numbers. I don't know who I can't get a handle on it. I'd be the first one to admit it. But so the difference with that Bain trade versus how I felt about the New Orleans trade a couple of days ago, the Bain trade, I get the logic. I just personally wouldn't have done it, but I get it. And if you feel like you can replace them with the wings, like I get it. The New Orleans not putting a top five protection on that pick is

I don't get, you're never going to convince me that that was a good idea. And I know you feel the same. And I know everybody else who follows basketball, like nobody will ever understand why you played it that way. It was poorly done and that's it. And it has nothing to do with whether you think Derek Queen's good or not. He might be really good. The point is you put this crazy price on moving up 10 spots that you didn't need to do. And it is absolutely reckless and incomprehensible. And I still don't get it five days later, four days later.

I don't get it, man. Everybody's talking about it too. Still. Yeah. It's them and LeBron are the, been the two kind of stealth topics right now. But the, what the hell is New Orleans doing? And a lot of nets in there. They really did it. A lot of ball handlers. There's some, there's some, your guy Yang. I definitely feel like, uh,

I think your guy, Yang. Give me, Bill, I want a couple of minutes on him. The floor is yours. Well, here's the thing. And this goes back to your New Orleans point. So if they're really calling around trying to move up for Derek Queen and they're for Portland, can we move up to your spot? At 11. To number 11 before they trade back to 16. Can we move up to 11 because we really want Derek Queen and you can have 20, 23, whatever it was.

And you could just, and we'll give you this crazy unprotected pick. They could have taken Yang at 23, right? Nobody would have, nobody would have taken him from there before that. You really feel like he would have gone before 23? He was killing it. The combine, dude. Chances are, no. Chinese Joker? Yeah. Yeah. Cause I was getting a few of the picks like ahead of time. Yeah. And so I got, all I got was Zog.

oh my God, wait until you see 16. So the guy wasn't going to like, yeah, give it to me because he wanted me to experience it live. Do you have any chance? You have any thought in your head? Yang could go in the top 25. No, no, but I did get a few texts of like your guy. Uh,

The backdoor shit was really high level. I mean, I couldn't watch enough of it. Oh, I watched all of it. I was, I was, uh, he, I gotta admit, he wasn't on my radar going into Wednesday night, but he, he jumped into the radar. I tell you, if you watch his mixtape, you're like, how did he last until 16? You see the future of basketball. I heard that at the very least, they just feel like there's revenue from him because of the China pipeline. When you, when you have these guys on a team, you just make money from them.

You make real money and if he's good, it's a bonus. But then they obviously liked him as a player too, as a project. But if you can get this guy and keep them on your team for five years, there's real revenue that comes with that. It would help if he's good too. Hollinger does a really good job on just pointing out there's a lot of international stats that are good indicators. They're better than college stats in how they translate to what you should expect

college player becoming an NBA player. And his argument was like, Hey, look like the league he played in. He wasn't exactly killing it there. And that's a little alarming. NBA cast offs are crushing it. That,

can't even stick in the NBA and they're killing it in this league. And like, now granted he's really, really young, but for somebody that big that moved out well, that these little flashes of like, well, that was kind of cool. Like I figured, okay, this guy's definitely going to get drafted now. But I didn't, yeah, there's no way I thought it would be 16. It's so funny that he went to Portland, the team probably that you and I talk about the most that just makes no sense that should be in our lives in any way. And now like,

You know, the true thing, I still feel like there's some real benefits with the leadership stuff and the veteran stuff with him and just having like a real adult in there. And he's a beloved teammate. There's reasons beyond just trading Simons for him. That's a pretty expensive beloved teammate, man, two years from now. Listen, they're trying to change the culture. They're trying to build around a defense. They keep him last time.

Well, I mean, two years ago, they're trying to tank as part of the trade. All right. But I don't know. Yeah, I get it. Right. All right. They're tanking. The fear is I just I'd rather not pay a 37 year old guy two years from now. Thirty seven point four million for vibes. Here's the other problem is the playoffs, I think, made us all nervous with him. It wasn't awesome. If he's moving toward a slightly different phase of his career, that 37 year contract. But listen.

I thought it was a big price to pay. And I still like when we were talking about it more on the Celtics side, but I can't get on Portland. They took my guy, lobs, scoot to Yang. And then here's the thing. I don't even know. He was, he was Hanson Yang at the combine and now he's young Hanson. So who knows opening night, what his name is going to be then going to be Dave, Dave Yang. No, I'm serious. Like there's so many times with international guys, you just go through the cycle of what the fuck's this guy's name again.

So potentially we could have Scoot, Drew Holiday, Kamara, Denny, and Yang out there all at the same time. I don't know. I'll have a good time. I can't wait for the first Aiton quote when Yang's getting his minutes. Because they still have Klingon too. I assumed as teams got desperate for centers that there would actually be an Aiton market that would materialize. And I'm not going to count it out. Because...

I mean, let's, we should talk about the trade that Sexton Nurkic trade today. I thought that was a dumbfounding trade. I didn't understand that at all. Utah traded Sexton with a second round pick to get Nurkic back. And I can't tell if this means centers have become more valuable or what's going on because Phoenix tried to trade Nurkic for two months last season and nobody wanted them. And they finally had to attach some stuff to get rid of them. Sexton,

Say what you want about the dude. The guy's like a 40% three point shooter and scores 18 a game in like 28 minutes. Like he's a real guard. He's a real offensive player that would help a bunch of good teams. And Charlotte just basically took him. I didn't understand that trade at all.

The only thing I can understand is between Collier and Keontae George, who you still have hope for with Utah, and then you just feel kind of guard heavy. And Clayton Jr. is coming in. Clayton Jr., the draft pick, who was awesome, as we all know. Clearly, they don't really know what they are at this point, and we'll see what happens with Ace and all these different things. They wanted to make some room, but I would tell you, the player you're getting back,

in Nurkic versus the player that's going out and they're both expiring around 19 million and you can get on their case for having to attach a second rounder, you know, whatever. It just feels like player for player. Charlotte got the much better player. And I have an extra reason that I think that trade happened, but we have to say goodbye to...

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that I now feel like Utah, that was the trade before the trade. I really do. I, I, and you know, there's been rumors about them trading Kessler. The Lakers have wanted him for two years, but, um,

I was just in a trade machine rabbit hole trying to figure out what the next move was. And do you have any, well, there's a LeBron piece we have to talk about because there's with a, not LeBron to Utah. I don't, I don't feel like that would happen, but I think Utah is a facilitator and a three team trade with Utah and Cleveland. I just feel like I, it just sent my shit detector off. And that rarely happens with trades where I'm like, huh? I'm pretty sure Danny Ainge knows basketball. Yeah.

And I know Austin does. And they just traded Colin Sexton with a pick to get Nurkic. And I just feel like that means something else is going to happen. I was in the trade machine trying to figure it out because they could send a bunch of stuff. They could take contracts back. And the bigger question is, is LeBron going to stay with the Lakers, which is the other topic that has been a big behind the scenes thing. He did the thing today where he opted in for the $53 million deal.

had to put out through Rich Paul that he's going to be monitoring closely all the movement. I don't know what he thinks the movement's going to be because they're paying him and Luca combined $98 million. The cap's 154. They're keeping Reeves. They have $70 million more in contracts. There's not a lot of movement. They're not going to be able to trade Reeves for a center. They can't extend Reeves either. And I don't know what he thinks is going to happen with this team. And I don't,

I don't know if he's staying. And I don't know what the move is because once you opt in, you're basically saying a trade. And at that point, it's Cleveland. There's a buyout possibility, which I don't understand in a million years why they would ever do that. And I don't know how this plays out, but it feels like we're going to be talking about it for the next three weeks is my guess. When he first opted in, like the first thing I was looking at was like the Dorian Finney-Smith decision on where that would put them between a full mid-level and a taxpayer mid-level.

which is, you know, you're talking about some of the names you've already covered or maybe Brooke Lopez, you know, for the taxpayer mid-level. So when I was looking at that, I was thinking, did he really take like the full boat and now they can't bring in a full mid-level guy when they desperately need a center? Are they going to be left? With the no trade too. Right, right. And so after Finney Smith opts out,

And then I looked at it again. It looks like they're going to have the full taxpayer mid-level. So, like, the angst that I think LeBron, some of, like, the early angst was, is this going to cost the Lakers a decent center option versus here's the budget bin of centers? Because, however, now it still could get a little weird. I'm sure there's moves to be made. But I don't really know, like, why...

It's not about him taking less money because I don't know that I ever feel comfortable being like, hey, you should take less money. You should take less money. But what he can't do is be upset. You can't opt in and be upset, which we've seen over and over again in the NBA. You've chose to reenter this situation. You can't then...

You can't get mad about it. The lack of options that the team will likely have. And, you know, like Kobe got that massive extension at the time when none of us could ever believe it. And if you don't have the pieces around it and you're kind of just paying a collection of guys that aren't very good and then you're kind of stuck financially and then it's like, man, nobody wants it more than Kobe. He's like, he can want it all he wants, but there's no outs. There's no outs where any of this talent coming out. So, I mean, unless there's a Reeves deal where they feel like...

hey, we're less dominant on the perimeter or it's three guys taking turns. Maybe there's something there. It's beyond that, though, with the three guys because none of them are good defensive players. I mean, LeBron is sometimes a good defensive player, but when you're thinking about a team built around those three, we saw it in the playoffs. It's not going to work if those are your three guys, I don't think.

And especially LeBron's going to be 41 next year. This is only going to get worse. It's not going to get better. Even though I thought in the regular season, he exceeded expectations, but got hurt in the playoffs in the first round. You get older, you're just going to get hurt more often. It's the way it goes. And they're paying him and Bronny together is 55 million. You add Luca. Luca has a big extension coming. There's just no way to improve the roster. And every Laker fan I talked to says, well, you just got to trade Reeves for a center. It's like, well, who's the center?

Go through all the teams. Who are you getting? Like, are you going to be happy with like a Kong Wu? And why would Atlanta do that? Like, he's just, I, I just think they're stuck with this roster and they're stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. And it's going to lead to, um, some sort of move with them. I don't believe for a second that he doesn't want to win another title and that he doesn't care about rings. I think he does. I just don't believe it. You don't believe what part?

When he's talking about ring culture, that stuff doesn't matter. I think he wants to win the title again. He's going to try to go to a situation where he can win the title. So you think this is the precursor to him actually moving on? Because that Cleveland thing... I do. I think it's in play. I really do. Okay. All right. I'm not disputing it, but when I look at the Cleveland side of it, that's the one that I don't understand. And a third team, I know that's always our default of like, hey, to make this happen, who's going to third team this thing? But

Why would I move out Garland and Jared Allen? No, it wouldn't be. I don't think it's Garland and Jared Allen. I think it would be Jared Allen with Hunter. And you could get a third team involved and make something work with that pretty quickly. But the Garland piece is weird because I think he is out there a little bit. I think teams feel like he's attainable.

Like you're going to have to pay for him. You're not just going to steal him. But I, I don't think he's not, I wouldn't say this. I don't think he's untouchable. Um, the, the stuff about him being the Durant trade was wrong. I think that was something Phoenix wanted, not them. But I do think, you know, I, I do wonder from a Cleveland standpoint, do they worry that this is the guy who gets hunted in the playoffs? And can we change our team? If we change our team in some way, that's who we should do with, you know, where I stand on Garland, I would not trade him.

I think his two injuries, he had a fucked up toe, which could happen to anybody. And he broke his face. Like you can't say like he's injury prone. And I just think he's really good. And if I was another GM, I'd be trying to get him right now. If there was even a shadow of an opening that he might be available, like if I'm name a team, I would be like going hard after trying to get him. Well, now that Orlando did the Bain thing. Right.

I don't know what Sacramento has that's enticing at all. Chicago already traded all their guys. But even when you look at the Lakers, is there a Rui deal out there for somebody? Does Vando have any trade value at this point? Does anybody care about Gabe Vincent at $10 million for the one? So,

If this team is going to, because there was that stretch there, right? They figured out defensively, like the funniest thing about the Lakers timeline is as soon as they make the Luka trade, you're like, okay, well, this is for the future. It makes all the sense in the world. You're one of the best players in the world who cares about 25. And then they figure some stuff out, right? And then they get this great seat and you're thinking defensively.

And then people are actually talking about him. And I think it was a bit of like the overvaluing, just the Lakers part of it where everybody's picking him in that first round series against Minnesota. And then that seems like one of the most absurd things ever now in hindsight, because you're like, why did they think they're going to be able to hang with him? And Jackson Hayes is so bad that JJ just pulls the plug because like, if you're telling me that Jackson Hayes getting more minutes would have solved your problems in playoffs, then I would say that we're just going to disagree and move on from that whole thing. So,

And they were really physical with LeBron in a way that was surprising. Randall was excited when LeBron was on. Yeah. That was a weird thing to see. But that's the thing when I talk about building around those three guys. I mean, we'll see what kind of shape Luka's in next year. But if those are your three, with what we just watched from Oklahoma City, I don't think it works. And I think LeBron is smarter about basketball than just about anybody on the planet. And he has to see that.

Like his, his supercomputer brain has to look at like, all right, if these three guys are out there in crunch time for us and I'm one of them and we're playing a team like OKC, who else needs to be on our team? Well, we need like an awesome rim running center defensive shot blocker to protect all of us. Well, how the fuck are we going to get that guy?

We've already traded all of our at like that guy doesn't exist. Oh, is it going to be Kessler? That's going to be that's going to change you from being but it's so much better game to four rounds. I know, but it's still so much better. I know it's better. But also, why am I trading Kessler from Utah?

That's the other part that I don't understand. I want to get something back. Nobody has centers like that anymore. Even somebody like Klingon, I feel like, has more value. So I think you're looking at a DeAndre Ayton type of moving a bunch of contracts, attaching a pick, and trying to roll the dice with somebody like him. And is that going to get you four rounds? No. So I just think he's trying to figure this out because I just don't believe him. I think he wants to win the title again. Good luck on the Ayton thing. I do want to see it happen. It's just that...

I mean, that's such a massive, but it's 35 and a half million for him. And you could do the Kleber Vincent. Like you could throw some, you could patch some contracts together and attach an asset. Maybe. I don't know. I just want to see him go somewhere to watch that fan base, talk themselves into it. And I'll sit back and be entertained there. Like Miami would be my favorite. Can I walk you through a fake trade? I made up. Well, I probably don't have a choice, but I do want to hear it. So I think it's in your wheelhouse.

LeBron and his son go to Cleveland. What if his son is like, actually, no. Does he ever trade Vito? Utah gets Darius Garland and Rui Hachimura. The Lakers get Kessler, Lonzo Ball, Jordan Clarkson, and John Collins. And Utah has to throw a pick or two, has to sprinkle some picks around because ultimately they're getting Darius Garland, the youngest. This is your Sexton thing.

This is tied to the Sexton thing. You get Nurkic because you know you have Kessler going in this other trade. I don't know. I was excited about it. It's like Bane goes to the magic. Be like, is Jaron Jackson better with the Lakers or the Clippers? I just am on the record. I don't think Cleveland should trade Darius Garland. But I'm just saying, like, I wonder if those types of deals are being talked about. Or could you do like a Darius Garland to our team Toronto? For who? With Max Strews.

And the Lakers get Purtle and RJ Barrett. And LeBron just goes to Cleveland. Like that, the reason I'm bringing up these trades is like, if LeBron's actually leaving the Lakers, these are the type of trades that would have to happen for this to happen. And the other option would be where the Lakers buy him out and he just jumps on a team. And I don't know why they would do that in a million years.

So I think this is the whole reason I'm talking about this is I think this is going to be really hard now that he's opted in for any other outcome. Then he's just on the team doing that. I don't know. We'll see what they do. I'm monitoring it. It's like, okay, glad you're monitoring it. Like we're not going to be able to get a center. Like, do you want us to trade two unprotected first rounders for Kessler?

Like why we have the Lakers have Luka Doncic now. Why are they doing that? Like they, they're in Luka mode now for the next 10 years. How do we build around Luka? So it's really awkward. I, and I'm surprised it's not a bigger story. I think this is pretty strange. Okay. But what do you think should have happened? You think you should have taken less? Do you think they should have? Well, he has the no trade, so he's going to be able to veto anything. Do you think they should have tried to figure out what else should have happened? Well, I think that's what he wanted. I think he wanted a longer commitment. Well, I mean, come on.

He's 40 going to be 41. That's, this is why I'm talking about this. Like, I think this is a really weird situation. And on top of it, they just sold the team and they didn't give his whole side a heads up on any of it, which you can argue. How do you not get a heads up? That transaction has been talked about for two years. I get it. I'm just, I'm just telling you the stuff I've heard. So I don't know. It's a weird one. And you could feel the Lakers shifting toward Luca, which is a situation he's never been in before.

Now, granted, he's been in the league 23 years, so it's maybe time for some new situations. But I think they have a new owner. The guy paid a lot of money, and they're going to gear this thing toward Luka. And they have to figure out the LeBron piece, and I don't know how they figure it out. And maybe this will turn into like, you know what? Actually, I'm good here. Let's stay. But I think it's worth monitoring. Yeah, but the likely outcome is what?

They figure out some sort of center. We don't know which world they'll be in. They probably get the benefit. I don't know who the center is. Okay, but I doubt they're going to go into it without one again. Do you have Laker fans in your head for like, we just got to get Bam? Not in my life, but I'm aware of them. People just think like, well, we'll just get Clint Capella. It's like, okay. You seen Clint Capella the last couple of years? That would have been a huge, Clint Capella would have been

a much better option than the Jackson Hayes. Yeah, fair. Okay, so let's say... It's pretty clear that Capella's on the decline here and why Atlanta went the route that they went with Okonwu. But the likely scenario here is what? He doesn't... Does he really want to leave LA? He makes his 50-plus million. His son's still on the team. Luka comes back in better shape. You know, they're able to outscore teams. Luka's in such good shape, LeBron's reinvigorated. That's probably how...

It's probably, I would bet on that as the maybe most likely scenario. But I still think... What do you think their win total is going to be? I think there's a lot of smoke. Like 47 and a half? 48 and a half? I mean, we still got to figure out how much that is going to be. Yeah, you got to add the extra two. They always pad the... It's like the Red Sox over-under for wins. There's certain teams where they pad the over-under because they know the team has a huge fan base. So I'd say probably like 47 out of 48 and a half. Here's the thing. Luka could come show up

and look like the best shape. We're all in disbelief how good he looks. And he's one of the best five, six, seven players in the league. And maybe that's 50 wins if he's just in awesome shape playing great. We've seen guys just be so good that they're just in the 45 to 50 win range because they're on your team. And really what they need is they need a 28-minute a night center who can run all night, can run for Luka,

You don't have to necessarily be a stretch. I mean, they're not going to be able to afford the rim protecting run all night. Young guy who's also a stretch five. So that's that's not going to happen. But considering what Luca has done in the past, some of those Dallas teams and you figure offensively, you're going to be fine. They ran into the worst matchup if they had if they had faced Golden State with their lack of size.

You know, maybe Golden State's like, hey, this is great. We actually don't have to worry about the Lakers size conversely. But it's probably there's probably like two matchups there with how weird the seating was just shuffling throughout the last couple weeks of the season where something that looked like it was a benefit of the Lakers to fight to get a three seed. So I still think they're probably even with their flaws last year.

just anything that's a plus anything that JJ Redick can look down at the bench and go like, okay, well at least I feel okay with this guy for 20 minutes. And if there's nights that we want to go small and he doesn't necessarily have to play because he's not a guy that's a $20 million a year center. Cause that transaction is not gonna be able to happen.

I still think they'll be like in a decent enough spot if everybody's healthy again, that it's, it's going to feel like they're somewhat competitive and that'll probably be enough. I would think, but you seem to think that there's much more, like there's some really potential. Like you've, the reason you keep bringing this up is you think there's potential for something crazy, all like some crazy scenario. I think crazy is in play now. Um, there's also like there's regular season versus playoffs, which we talk about a lot.

Whatever happens in the regular season with whatever team they end up with versus what we know is going to be needed in the playoffs that we watch every year. And we're like, oh, yeah, defense. Oh, yeah, you need depth. They just have a lot of shit that they need to pull off. That's a big one for me.

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Watch the Sox play after that. You can do anything. Go book a Verbo in Cape Cod for a week. The world is your oyster or lobster roll or clam chowder, really, if it has shells, gills, and is indigenous to the Atlantic. It's your edible metaphor of choice. They're crustacean crazy down there. And guess what? Since you stayed longer than a week,

You saved over $200. You know what that means? More shellfish. I love shellfish. Hope you're not allergic. Next vacation, stay longer and save. Make it a Vrbo. Atlanta's $25 million trade exception, I think is fascinating because in some ways that's the best

spot for I don't know what, like whether you could that be like a DeMar DeRozan spot if Sacramento just wants to get off his deal? Could that be part of like they help out with a trade package in general? And I know people have talked about it all week. I think Atlanta is an unbelievable shape with the roster they have and the assets they have.

to put, you know, they're not at where Houston is from a close to win the title standpoint, but it's a little similar in that I just like a lot of their pieces and they have flexibility. And they don't have to, you know, they have some extension stuff coming. They're going to have to pay Trey in a year. They're going to have to pay Dyson. But for right now, they actually have the flexibility to do a couple more things. And I think they should. I think the East is, as we've talked about many times,

is sitting there to make a move. And that's a team that I think, I'm really interested to see what they do over the next 10 days. Yeah, it could be. You know, they're probably going to end up having a decent record if they get this group right. Yeah. With what's happening in the East. I do think it was funny too when you were mentioning Miles Turner. It's like, okay, this Pacers team never pays the tax, never pays the tax. Turner's going to be a free agent. It has to be north of $20 million. You know, if Randall can get $30 million,

if, if Nas gets a five-year deal. He's somewhere between those guys, right? Yeah. You have to feel like he's North of whatever the number is that puts them in the tax. And then I was like, I wonder if because Halliburton's injury, they could be like, well, you know, since we're not going to have Halliburton, like, does that turn into some weird Turner thing? But I doubt it. I highly doubt it. But yeah, I could see a scenario where the Hawks,

Every year they disappoint me with, like, I think we've spent three summers in a row going, I kind of like a lot of the pieces. You know, look at all this depth and look at all these different options that they've had. This is the most excited I've been about them. I really like, I really like the nucleus. It makes sense to me. We're going to find out once and for all about Trey Young, I think, this season. What's actually there. This is the perfect roster to have around him for the most part. Although it still feels like they're one kind of reliable score short that would...

would help him out if he didn't have it. Is Cleveland standing pat? We talked about Garland earlier. That's another one. Are they just going to be, are they going to feel like they need to do something? Or I was thinking about, especially in the 80s or 90s, when a season doesn't turn out the way you think it's going to turn.

You know, the Lakers had a couple of those seasons in the eighties where they weren't like, Oh, now we have to trade Byron Scott. We lost in round two, you know, and they're just like, no, let's stay with the infrastructure. The smartest teams kind of didn't panic. If a season didn't turn out the way they thought Cleveland, I don't know. I, I, I could, I think they should stand. I would roll it back with this team.

You're going to lose Ty Jerome. But I would just be like, you know what? The East got worse. We won 64 games. That was fucking weird. Garland was hurt. Moby missed the game. We lost a fluky, crazy Halber and buzzer beater game. Let's not overreact. Let's just run it back. But these teams in 2025 and the 2020s aren't wired that way. They always overreact. So would you overreact or you'd run it back?

No, I mean, even when they lost, I was like, you were ready to fire up the trade machine. You had two laptops open like an oils future guy. Uh, oil futures. Yeah. So if anything, I mean, after what just happened with Tatum, Halliburton, throw Dame into that mix, what's going to happen with Milwaukee? I think it'd be irresponsible to not run it back and give this group one more year together. And granted the Sam Merrill deal means Jerome's probably gone.

So Sam, happy to see my guy, Sam getting paid. I thought I got to say that was a little rich. I was surprised. It was, but I guess like, uh, it was basically Hauser money. It'd be 1 million more than drew holiday makes in three years. You really didn't like that trade. I didn't. And I like Portland too. I just thought it was really expensive. You know what we didn't do? We didn't really even finish any of the Pelican stuff. We kind of teased at it. I had that next. Let's go. All right. So, uh,

If I understand this correctly, so Joe Dumars comes in, let's go, right? Brings in Troy Weaver. Troy Weaver has spent the previous year with the Wizards as a consultant. So there were rumors before the draft, even the day of, that they were going to take Queen 7. All right? They don't. They take Fierce. But...

At that point, everybody in the NBA world knew Pelicans love Queen. They love Queen. So then Yegor goes eight for the Nets' first piece of their adventure, their five-part adventure. A bunch of picks go off the board. You've got the coward trade, so that takes out 11. Essengay for him to leave his team to come to the draft.

meant that somebody high up enough was telling you, we are going to draft you. And he's like, I'm in. I'll get a suit. So then it gets to the Derrick Queen pick. So it's like, okay, so the Pelicans clearly liked him. And boy, did they really like him. And they moved back...

Well, they move up 10 spots for the unprotected. When I first saw the trade, I know you've already touched on it. I talked about it on the first day I could do it on Thursday, but I kept waiting to think I was wrong. I was like, is there some language in this that I'm not understanding? I don't quite get. Right. Oh, it was the second of the two picks. Yeah. They keep the better one. Yeah. By the way, I think Atlanta might have done.

So we get the worst of the Milwaukee or New Orleans? Like, all right, so we're done. Right, right. And it's like, I'm going, because the other thing too is like to move up 10 spots because I don't even know if the Nets, if the Nets wanted to move from eight to six, does Washington say yes for the other four? Like, I don't know. That might be a no. Washington might not take four extra first rounders just to move back two spots. Right. Because the NBA draft, it doesn't really work that way. So you're moving back

you're moving from 23 to 13. And so then you go, okay, so Weaver did really like him. And then there's the Weaver part of it. They've already traded for Jordan pool.

where you're like, all right, you want to tell me it was just a bad roster and he got shots up and he didn't take it seriously. Like the tape isn't very good. You know, these stories, he was great in the locker room and all this different stuff. It's like, okay, but that means you're paying an extra $30 million. You get an extra $30 million a year for the CJ expiring that's sent out. You want to tell me you think CJ's on the downside of everything? Fine. But he was kind of like the whole point of him being there was the adult in the room, the guy that got it, the guy that wanted to be in New Orleans, which is pretty rare. He was on holiday in Portland.

There you go. Exactly. A little cheaper. But you trade out CJ, fine. But for Poole, who, you know, I'd rather have CJ on my team. But now Poole's an extra year at $30 million. Another Wizards guy. Okay? So you've taken a Maryland kid that you've done this unprecedented trade for because you just still can't believe it. You traded for the extra $30 million a year on Poole.

You brought in Micah, who played at Georgetown. You brought in the undrafted Hunter Dickinson, who is a DeMatha kid. There's an alarming connection of how regional this is becoming, whether it's the Wizards stuff or anybody in that area. And I got to tell you, I know Dumars, because I was looking for it. When he did the press conference, he was like, once pick seven players.

went off, like, you know, they had fears. They take him seven. Then we started calling everybody. I don't know. Do you really think that, like, does Memphis say no if they offer that unprotected in 26 because they've already done the deal with Portland? Maybe. Do you think Phoenix says no because of Malawach for a pick next year? The extra pick? They could have taken somebody at 23 in the movement. Maybe they desperately wanted... By the way, why would Brooklyn have said no at eight? I would have done that in five seconds.

Maybe because Brooklyn was like, can we use one of these picks? You know, that's, that's, I don't know. I mean, I just thought that Milwaukee, New Orleans pick was such an amazing asset because God only knows with Milwaukee and then New Orleans that, that, you know, that team's going to be, that team's going to be a mess. Uh, Chicago at 12, it would have been criminal if they turned that trade down. Like that's, everyone should be fired if they turn that, if that was offered to them and they're like, Nope, we have our guy, like you should quit.

You think Toronto would have turned it down for Murray Boyles? Well, as we found out, we don't really know who was running Toronto. They fired their guy the day after the draft. That actually happened. That was weird. Yeah. Honestly, though, I think that happens in sports more than people realize. It's like, we're going to get rid of you, but because you've already worked with this entire staff the entire year prepping for this draft night, like...

you're going to run the room, but there's probably still somebody else who, because his number two is still there. Oh, and by the way, like the guy that, that Atlanta dealt with here was Bryson who came, come over as the assistant GM who used to work with New Orleans. Right. So that makes me go like, who also probably knew that they like queen, right? He was under the hood with that. So I just, I can't,

I tried to just figure it out. What are you trying to land the point on here that you feel like that it's actually even more dysfunctional than it seemed like from afar?

I don't know why Brooklyn would turn it down. I don't know why Toronto would turn it down. I don't know why Phoenix would turn it down. I guess I can understand why Portland in the Memphis deal would have said, Hey, we already do too much work on this, but that's where GM probably goes, are you fucking serious? Hey, Portland, guess what? Or, Hey, guess what? Zach and Memphis, like we're out Chicago. It's like, Oh, we promised Essengay. Hey, you know, I mean, the guy just flew and left his team. So there's, there's maybe individual step-by-step stuff. You're like,

Yeah, this is why all of these teams turned it down. I have a hard time believing all of those teams turned down what so many people around the league are like, I can't believe they threw in the unprotected pick. Now, the reality is, as I land the plane here, is what if Queen turns out to be really good? Awesome. That doesn't matter with the trade discussion. I know, but you know what happens is that we end up only evaluating stuff historically based on the results. And this is the same as the Luka thing, not to the same magnitude, but it's like...

If things were to work out for Dallas, it's like, yeah, but still the fundamental issue is you decided not build a market for Luka Doncic. And whatever happens from that point on, that is the inexcusable part. And I think in this transaction, again, not nearly the same magnitude, but the likelihood that this unprotected pick in 26 turns out to like, you know, whatever. The odds and the way the lottery goes, like all you guys freaked out about that a year ago and it ended up being the 11th pick. And it's like, that's not good.

the point the point is is that the internal discussions at some point somebody in the room has to go hey is there a chance as much as we like queen we're moving up from 23 to 13 and hey we all like queen a lot but is there any chance of the unprotected 26 pick that we're including this like say we in the west and things don't go well and zion gets hurt and i know you already saw all this on thursday's pod but like is there a chance we're giving up like the number one could it be like

Worst case scenario, could it be the number one pick in the 26th draft? When the answer is yes, that's why so many people are freaked out. There's one other extra question to that. If we just top five protected, are they still saying yes to the deal? And the answer is yes. Yeah. We have to move back 10 spots and it's just top five protected. There's another crazy piece that I didn't even realize when I did my pot on Thursday. They traded, they got that 23rd pick.

By trading their Indiana 2026 first rounder, which they traded during the finals before Halliburton got hurt. And then Halliburton got hurt. So they're in 23 by using a pick that then became way more valuable that they didn't know that it was going to be more valuable. And Atlanta somehow ends up with Indy's first.

And then they, the bucks first or the, I mean, it's just like insane how that played out for them, which was why I was joking on Thursday that they're like spraying champagne on each other after that second trade.

Yeah, and the smart part about the Pacers thing, because we get back to the tax thing and the Turner decision, and they're probably going, hey, we like the 26 draft better. Anyway, we're already a super deep team. And even with the Turner discussion, we still have probably a couple other decisions that we have to make on something like, hey, it's awesome. We're one of the deepest teams in the league. Downside is now we have to keep figuring this thing out because we can't always keep it together. So let's just go into next year's draft. So I actually thought it was smart from the Pacers side of it. Did you, were you hurt? Atlanta has a lot of assets, though. What were we going to ask?

When the Pelicans official feed came after you, did you feel, what was that like for you that day? Laughter. Laughter? I laughed. After pain?

Did you feel like you could have been a social media guy? Seriously, if it's 21-year-old Bill, 2025, I mean, granted, you don't make it a season because you'd be too clever, but they'd be mean. I would have gotten fired. Yeah, you 100% get fired. Especially early 20s, I'm definitely getting fired. But I feel like these early 20s guys running team sites, they're your spirit animal. It's almost like you're getting mad at yourself. They retweeted...

What was it? A Shams thing? Shams on McAfee. Yeah. And it was an absurd. It was an absurd rationalization. Shams knows way more info than us both put together. But it's like, what if Queen's a Hall of Famer? Yeah. It's like, okay, fine. What if he does become a Hall of Famer? It's still a dumb trade. You still gave up too much to get Derek Queen.

It was like, yeah, what if he's a Hall of Famer? And the Pelican's feed's like, yeah, fuck off, ringer. It's not what they said. They were like, this take won't get you a podcast on the ringer, but with a pretty clear directed fuck you. I love it. And I retweeted it immediately. I love it down there. I love it down there. This hurts. It's a tough segment for me to do. What's funny is I was looking at their roster and I do kind of, I kind of like all the pieces and they make zero sense together.

Like you actually look at all the things they have and it's like, I don't know what this is. It's like, it's almost like a team you would put together in 2k. Like, I guess Jordan Hawkins was probably fired up for five seconds after they traded McCollum. Right. Like if you're Trey Murphy, how are you feeling right now? Well, thank God he's not from like Russia. You know, he's, he's from, he's from North Carolina. So, you know, like hopefully that's close enough to the, the DMV.

to keep them aligned with some of the recent decisions. Well, what's weird is the team they're putting together is a team you'd put together if you didn't care about next season and you actually secretly wanted a really high lottery pick.

It's just this whole weird collection of assets. But they don't seem to think that way at all. They seem to feel like we're going to be good next year. Yeah. And it's like they haven't noticed what conference they're in or the talent of all the other teams and also how unrealistic it would be to have a good team with the point guards they have and with Murray coming back from this injury and with how unreliable Zion is. And it's just...

Like you'll be kind of fun to watch that league pass, but you're, you're not going to be good next year. Like they can't actually think that right. The overriding message is we're going to be aggressive. It's like, all right, well done. You certainly were aggressive. Mission accomplished. Yeah, you did it. You pulled it off. Um, a couple other things. I was going to do the July desperation tears with you, but let's, let's take one more break and then we'll do that. All right. July desperation tears. Is this a real thing?

I think Milwaukee, would you have them one with how do we make this roster better? I don't believe it. I still don't believe any of the Giannis stuff about it. He's undecided. I think he's going to be back in Milwaukee, but I also think there's pressure on them to have a good roster. They're bringing back Bobby Portis. But it's a little bit of make or breaky, I think, for Giannis and the Bucs this season. If we're not going to be a contender within this season, now you have to really reevaluate it.

So I would put them number one on my desperation tiers for we have to get better right now. Is there anybody you would put ahead of them as the number one desperation team? You're treating this like the 25 draft, though, like Cooper's in his own tier. Because if you're telling me, well, Milwaukee's in their only tier. No, I'm not. I have them number one. I had a couple other possibilities. He's got to be in this conversation with Milwaukee, right? I had them down as well. I had Phoenix because of this Beal situation that they just... What do you do?

You can't buy him out. That would be idiotic. Do you hope he's going to be better? You can't trade him. Do you bury him? You'd be like, you know what? You're just not going to play basketball anymore. We're not going to play you. Getting ready for the road trip. We have you in B21 Southwest. We have you in a room with two double beds.

So I don't know what they did. They probably just suck it up this year and then it's an expiring contract, even though it's $57 million. But he still has the no trade clause. Yeah, I know. It's an expiring contract that you can't move. I think the Lakers are in there from a desperation standpoint on getting some sort of person that makes them feel different than they were last year. I'm putting Sacramento in here because I think they're just a no man's land and they're somehow back to who they were for the entire 2010s.

And they just have this weird team that doesn't make sense. And are they capable of anything? Like Zach did his little thing for us yesterday. And he was talking about, didn't think Jalen Brown was going to get traded, but he was like, you know, that Sacramento is a team I would watch for that. There is this team every summer that's just like, fuck it. It makes some crazy trade. And I think that would be my number one draft pick for that category. But would you put them in a desperation tier or no?

I don't know. They changed management again, even though I think Monty McNair did a really good job there. But now you're paying $90 million to Zach Levine and Savonis. You don't like that plan? No. I mean, I know I could get dumped on for being like, look, they traded Halliburton for Savonis. Although the Halliburton-Savonis...

That was like a 1,200-page book. It was like, oh, my God, this is the worst. Like, hey, look at this. Maybe good for both teams. Oh, my God. Like, look at Samonis. I mean, Sacramento. Everyone's happy. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, disaster. But Sacramento was judged based on Sacramento's history. And considering their history, I felt like it was actually like a really nice, stable, competitive run. They're in that game seven with the Warriors, and they smoke them in the play-in. And, you know, nobody was like looking at them going, can they make some noise here as they flirted with playoff seeding? But for that organization, it's,

That was a real improvement. And so now you look at it and you're like, man, this got bleak quick. I just don't like paying those guys that much. I guess DeRozan's the asset. He's 36 years old. And look, his number at $25 million is totally fine. It seems like he's just going to age really well. I remember the Bulls doing the first deal with him, bringing him in years and years ago. I was like, man, that was a lot for DeRozan. And it just seems like this guy, the way he plays, he still can bring something to a team. But what would be...

What's like a realistic tier of player based on the, I mean, unless you want to start talking about Keegan or Devin Carter having a market, you know, not that teams wouldn't trade for Keegan, like he's, but you got to pay him after next year. I don't think the Celtics are trading Jalen and I don't want to, but Zach did make me wonder like what kind of Sacramento crazy trade was sitting there? Like how crazy would they get?

Um, cause we've seen them do it before. Uh, I hope it doesn't happen. I would do Jalen Brown for Trey Murphy. So I did look at, I know that doesn't work, but no, you'd have to, there'd have to be a third team. There'd have to be a third team where I think Jalen goes to a third team and Trey Murphy would be in the Celtics will cut salary. There's ways to figure that out. But, um, I do think when they lopped off the $28 million, it's that kind of ended the Jalen thing.

any sort of entertaining a phone call. I think that they, they already got to their objective. I'm going to put Miami in it, in the desperation tears. We can figure out the tears after I go through all the teams. I don't know. I said this a couple of days ago. I just don't know what Miami, what are they, what are they trying to do? Like, even if they get Kamingo, which I think is a good idea. And I like Kamingo. I like their draft pick. I like to, they got at 20 on third on Wednesday night.

But I still don't know, like, they're going to pay Hero, I guess, a ton of money, which now when you're seeing some of the other money going, it's like, should he be making $15 million a year more than Julius Randle? I don't think he should. I just don't know what's going on with that team. Do you have any handle on it? Better hang Sacramento? Oh, great hang, bad hang? No, I'm just saying, like, are they Sacramento in a more desirable NBA city? That's interesting.

So if you did it, if you did a draft of let's draft guys from Miami and Sacramento, Bam goes first. Yeah. Bam goes first. Sabonis second. Yeah. I think, but Sabonis is like, you know, I think it's pretty clear against certain matchups in the playoffs. It's probably not going to go great for you. He still goes second though. Over Tyler Hero? Hero's third. Who's fourth? DeRozan's got to be fourth, right? You wouldn't have Levine over DeRozan?

It's me? Sorry, I forgot who I was asking. I'll be like, Pell Larson. You'd be like, Zach Levine's still on the board, Russillo. I'll be like, yeah, I'm aware. All right, so we'll go the Rosen-Levine 4-5. And then who's the next guy in Miami you would have? I love Jovich, but I mean, nobody should like him that much. So did Miami. They wouldn't include him in the Durant deal. I didn't think Jovich was good last year. The times I watched Miami, I just felt like,

I didn't really see it. Maybe it's lurking under there somewhere. No, look, there's guys I still hold out hope for. I mean, we spent probably too long talking about La Bravia, and as I was doing it, I was like, this could also be a huge mistake. Maybe if La Bravia stays in Sacramento, he goes higher in this draft. Malik Monk's got to go before Rozier. Does he go before Davion Mitchell? Yes. Keegan goes before Davion Mitchell? Oh, no. No.

And then it's like, we were doing this two years ago with Jaquez. He goes a lot higher. I don't know what. I mean, they were like done with him. He couldn't make a three last year. Couldn't make one in college. And that's why he lasted so long in the draft too. Then he started just being really good. So Miami is higher end Sacramento. I'm too online. Let's start there. Not news to anybody. But what happened is, and I ended up like,

getting too much of it but i always think it's funny when people are in social media and be like how come i keep getting these posts and it's like well that's the danger of the four you thread as opposed to the one that you're following yeah dip your toes over to the four you and then you start hate watching stuff and then next thing you know you're watching high school fights for half an hour you're like i don't feel like a good person right now i do and by the way i don't watch them anymore it just got to me bothered me i was worried about the future of society but people fought in high schools i mean you ever see greece i mean so this isn't new anyway

So back when there was the Embiid Jokic thing, I couldn't stop. Like I would just hate read every Sixers like guy that had, you know, a few thousand followers. And it was just always like insane Embiid arguments against Jokic. And I just couldn't get enough of it. And then all of a sudden my feed was just Sixers stuff constantly. So I finally was able to wean myself off of it years ago. And yeah.

I was all in on this heat thing. Just every guy with a couple thousand followers with a little bit of a heat page. And again, I still think it's all teenagers, but if there was ever like a, a nationwide need for editors, like that's the problem is nobody has an editor anymore. You know, I could probably use one a little bit more often.

The number of heat trades that were so preposterous and were just so fucking terrible where the heat were never giving up anything in all of them. And then it was always like, hey, 72 hours Durant, 48 hours Durant. Like, hey, we're like a day away. Durant thing's going to happen in a couple hours. And it just was like guys kept doing it over and over again. Xorus, all this stuff, Durant, Durant, Durant. Never happens. And clearly they didn't even really want them that much. They must just not have wanted them nearly as much as

How about this? Never wanted him in the first place. Yeah, right. So you're sitting here and looking at all of these options. And it's the reason I compare to Sacramento. It's just there's not a lot here to get you excited if you're like, let's do a deal unless it's Wiggins. But Wiggins, I mean, Wiggins still has a player option next year for $30 million. The other problem is their 2027 first goes to Charlotte.

So it can't be like, blow it up, rebuild, because you don't have your first a year from now. So there are no ways to make a lot of these things. I think Riley at this stage of his life is going to go, all right, reset button time. Wouldn't you say he's more in the stage of, let's get a guy and pay as many assets as we possibly can and just try to be better right now? That's what I would have thought the Durant thing would have made sense. Do you think there's Lori Markkinen?

I'm sidetracking now, but do you think there's Lori Markkinen trade possibilities now? Yeah. That's been another thing floating around right now. What's your favorite Lori Markkinen team? San Antonio. Had that as well. Vassell and Barnes. Yeah. A couple of firsts in there. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be some sort of enticing pick there. And Ainge is probably just going to, you know, that's the other thing with Ainge is he's just going to go, I'm not like, you don't think you're giving me the extra pick. We figured out the Ace Bailey thing a week ago. Was that a wee thing?

It was a you thing. I, I signed on, I jumped in the car and the passenger seat, we talked it through. We did his pedigree. We had a whole thing. It was great. It was good. It was really good. And then you talked about his high school pedigree. So it was, it was great. And now ACE is super happy to be there. It all worked out great. Um, is there a James Harden and Derek Jones for Zach Levine, anything that excites you?

No, I don't know that you could have presented anything that I'd be less excited about. Just for those that like the, as a trade. What, what was the point of that? I just don't think the, I don't think the Clippers are going to roll into October with the exact same team. I'm just not convinced. Maybe not, but like, Hey, how about me sticking up for Harden? I think you're a little dismissive of just the comfort of, Hey, look,

It's a little more expensive. We probably could have played hardball. He made all NBA last year. He's probably going to play a ton of games. He doesn't even need to be in great shape. He's going to put up numbers and it helps us, you know, at least like have something that we can depend on because he's still better than a lot of the players out there. And we'll just do that and give him a little bit of a bump. And then whatever happens, we can figure this out in 26. Like, don't you think, I mean, it's not like they give him a four-year contract.

Can I have a counter? Yeah, I want the counter. All right. So let's say I'm thinking of one of your friends that I've met, Timmy Walsh. You guys drive cross country. You and Timmy Walsh. We thought about doing it. Yeah.

Gets to Arizona and something horrible happens. Like he gets in some sort of road rage incident or like just a bad driver. By the time you get to Arizona, you're like, I'm never doing this again with this guy. I'm never going cross country with him. I think game seven was that bad for Harden.

What are you talking about? He's not even phased by these. He's got a million of these. I'm not saying he's phased by these. I'm saying if you're the Clippers and your goal is to win the title, this is all Steve Ballmer wants. He built this fucking wall that

They genuinely, and I think they're right, feel like swung three games. They studied all the fan behavior in the wall and flew those people out to Denver. Like they're all in. They're spending every dollar they possibly can. And after watching Harden in game seven, I just refuse to believe that

with this whatever window they have left with Kawhi, that they're like, well, maybe it'll be different this year. They're not getting in the car with him again, just like in my Timmy Walsh example. I just want to shout out Timmy Walsh, one of my favorite conspiracy people. I just don't think they want to get in the car with him for another road trip because they know what's going to happen when they get to Arizona. I don't think they care. They clearly don't care. It's a smart front office. They know everything that you just said.

And I don't think they thought they were going to tax him because of his history in those huge spots. But don't you think it's an asset that they're... Whatever, he's in. They now have him under contract, but this allows them to potentially do something. Right. Instead of just going... That's my take. Right. Asset management, which is a lot of what we've seen over the last couple of days. It's like, oh, that number seems a little...

high or they know like that was kind of my overriding thing i know i'm repeating myself at the very top of the podcast but like there were multiple examples of they probably could have said fine cool go to free agency you're never getting anything north of this the agent relationships the history here and then the fear of okay but now if i lose this piece and ownership is like hey cool like our our payrolls lower i mean balmer would never do that to them but

It's just, well, we can't just let a bunch of these stuff, we can't just let stuff walk and play hardball with everybody. And then if there's actually something available in November, December, January, February, now we don't even have any of those pieces. So yeah, maybe it is as simple as an asset management with just the one year, but I do think that you're overlooking a little bit of the, just from October until April, like Harden's probably going to be pretty good for us. I am so happy. I just got you to defend James Harden for like three minutes. I've done it twice in my life.

And that was the second time. Felt good. What about Westbrook? Where's he going? I don't know who's left. Why, you have a team? I can't find one. I mean, I imagine it'll be one, but. I can't find one either. Does Brooklyn just say fuck it for a year? Is there a world where Reeves gets traded into Atlanta's $25 million trade exception for players and assets? But it has to be one player that makes a huge difference. Would you do a Kongu and some picks for Reeves? Would you have a meeting?

Going, hey, we got Przingis and let's keep our fingers crossed. And Reeves is a better player than Okongwu. Yeah, he's a better player than Okongwu. He gives us a second creator than with Trey. We might be able to patch together the center position. We might be able to make a real run here. I don't know. It was the only thing I can think of with the Lakers where to get a center, I think they would have to. That's the only thing that made sense to me. By the way, please, anyone listening, please don't aggregate these trades and say,

Please do. Whatever. I'm just throwing dumb shit out. You have aggregation. Because I had a Jalen one that I'm just not going to do because I don't want it to become... Like one that I really liked. I'm just going to tell you offline. You know what? I'm depriving the people for the pod. I hope that gets aggregated. Simmons doesn't tell Rosillo Jalen Brown trade in fear of aggregation. Simmons tells Rosillo Jalen Brown trade after podcast.

And then I was thinking of available, available trade guys. Would you have George last or Beal last right now? Oh, Beal. So Beal's still number one. He's been number one for two years now. That should be some sort of wonder lick like NBA thing. Like here, here's a hypothetical. You make $50 million a year, but the team hates you and they never play you and you have a no trade clause. If that happened to you for two years, you're

and you still had like a year left in your contract, what would you want? And if you answered like, I'd be totally fine never playing and then keeping all my money. It's like, yeah, but you're still going to keep your money. Like, would you eventually get sick of this? Would there be some competitive part of you that was like, hey, I'm a pretty talented player and I don't want to go out like this. And if the guy at the combine answers, no, I'm totally fine. It'd be a deal answer. It'd be like, okay, we got to take this guy off the board. We've seen some people in the sports media world check out like that.

Oh, yes. It's, it's, I love, I love when it happens. I love getting to see it. I get so jealous. Is it tougher for you and I, I think to check out, like I've wanted to check out for years. What's your checkout date? Like age 58. Yeah. You know, whatever it is. That one last deal where you could just completely check out. Yeah. That'd be fun. I don't, I just need more of a team. Like the anchors get to check out. It's awesome.

because the scripts can be written the segments are produced they'll even have people that produce the questions for him be like hey we have this person like you know uh just make sure you ask that you know alex bregman's you know nine for his last 18 you know so i think there's you know we're trying to carry these podcasts on our own it's a little tougher like i think it'd be pretty obvious if you start to realize because this guy waking up 15 minutes before he does these now

Can I ask you for your take on the dumb team hierarchy now? Because I mentioned the dumb teams during the week on the draft. And I think it's Sacramento, New Orleans, Brooklyn, and Chicago in some order right now. That would be my four. Is there anybody I'm omitting for you? And I think the qualifier is you have to be from afar going, what the fuck are those guys doing? Because Chicago is a good example.

I don't know what that Lonzo Ball-Isaac Okoro trade was. Like, I just, that was one of those where you're just like, I just don't understand what just happened. You already have Patrick Williams. Why do you want Isaac Okoro?

Now they're different in, in theory, because of Coro, like there's some shooting numbers of people be like, Hey, and you're like, yeah, but that's not really, he's not, he's not really a shooter. Um, there's some defensive metrics per 100. Like they actually show up pretty good. What he brings. So you think they can play them together? No, no, but I can't, but I can't, I'm saying like a Coro just by himself, uh,

There's a little bit of a discussion at $10 or $11 million, but Cleveland's so deep. But not when you have Patrick Williams. No, and when you're getting rid of Lonzo, where you're like, all right, this is an expiring $10 million deal, and we're bringing back a Coral for a similar number, but then he's 11.8 next year. Everyone loves Lonzo. I read five stories last year about this is the best story in sports. Everybody loves Lonzo. Amazing teammate. I thought he was really fun to play. Oh, for... Yeah.

for the teams. So that's our, that's our five right now. I remember a GM told me a long time ago, I just need seven of these teams. And as long as we always have seven, I'll be fine. I'll always have somebody. So right now it seems like we have five. Maybe there's more coming. It's sad that the Lakers aren't on this list anymore. All right. That's really all I have, except I took Ben to UFC in Vegas yesterday. Yeah. Tell us about it. Awesome fight, huh? Main card.

Tepori is like, I just don't know. I'm too casual of a UFC fan to put him against other guys from the past, but that guy's just an animal. He's still undefeated. He moved up in weight, which sometimes can go one way or the other, more in boxing than UFC, but I mean, wow.

It just, he just has it, man. You know, the guy is at the final level when they have the knockout and they're not phased at all by it. They just kind of walk over and like, they want to like wave to Dana White. Like they just knock somebody out that they'd been training to fight for three months. And it's like, they went and got a latte. That's when you know, it's like something really crazy, but he's, he's, I think he's,

The biggest star they have right now, they haven't been able to blow him up as a star. Like he's not anywhere remotely close to Connor domestically, internationally maybe. But I think he's the guy right now. How into it has Ben? He was really bummed out last night because he likes Charles. Him and his friend Enzo really took it hard. They just like him. They didn't want to see him. They had slim expectations.

They didn't want to see what happened happen where he just got fucking his clock cleaned. They were not happy. But we have a new... Simmons family has a new guy, though. Okay. Joshua Vann. Just won us over completely. Just an incredible performance by him. Did you see that fight? It was the first fight. Did you see it last night? No, I didn't. I... I know. I took the boat out. Oh. Yeah. I took the boat out late and then...

you'll, I don't know if you'd be proud or disappointed. I actually think you're going to be disappointed, but I was like, Hey, lighter schedule, not a ton of prep. You're on this. Like I can go out for a little bit. Yeah. You know, cause I won't drink on the boat cause I got to dock that thing. I just don't want to, I don't want to ever have like,

There's been one or two bad incidents over the years with boats and alcohol that I've read about. Yeah, right. So you're kind of like, oh, you know, but then I get so even though I've done it a bunch of times now, I never want to be comfortable enough, you know, where somebody is like, oh, well, it doesn't matter, you know, because I know. Look, I'm not trying to act like some fucking prude about how I think it's the right way to think. Right, right. But anyway, so I'm like, OK, I'm running home.

And I get an invite and I was like, all right, you don't even give yourself a chance to shut down. Don't even give yourself a chance. Like you have to go out. You have to go out tonight. And I changed. I ran the shower. I looked at my bed and I went, nope.

Like the window was three minutes. There was like a three minute window where I was like, I'm doing it. I'm going out. I'm going out. That's an official sign. You're moving in a different phase of life. Yeah. But that's been happening a lot. Like there's a lot of, depending on how the week works out, cause I don't go out very often, but they'll still be like, don't become a guy who just never, ever does it. And I'll, I'll,

I'll get up and like my day will be going great. And I'm like, you know what? I'm in great mood, whatever, whatever. And then you just know like, hey, I ate. It's shutting down. I want to work out tomorrow, whatever. I don't care. I'm not missing anything. And then I just I had this like peak energy like spike where I just went, I'm going to I'm going to do this, like fight through this thing. And then, you know, you get that brine on your day at sea and it it takes it out of you, you know, by going. Yeah.

My stepdad's big boat guy. It's a lot of work. It's really like separates the men from the boys in the sense of it's not just like getting a car. Like you really, if you're going to do it, you got to do it. If it's clean, you got to. There's just some real thought and care. It's like adopting a dog. Like if you adopt a dog, it's like, I adopt a dog. It's like, okay, your life's going to be different now. This dog's always going to be around. You're always going to have to figure out what to do with it. The boat is kind of like the dog.

Yeah, at least I can. I don't feel bad leaving it. Right. Yeah. Where you don't have to be like, I'm going away. Somebody's got to watch my dog. But you still have to put in this extra time into it. Right. That I don't think people realize when they don't get it until they get a boat. Yeah, I think if it's if it's on your like you have a lake or something or the people down in Newport Beach where they have docks.

in the backyard yeah whatever right that's sick you know you don't have to hose it down immediately although it'd be nice you know you want that salt to build but when you have to go into marina and you know the check-in and all that kind of stuff and then get the thing untied and i'm i did it by myself too so there's always a little extra of just being like on it on it on it every time you have to do it so then i got really artsy though instead of watching fights i watch casablanca really you guys doing that the rewatchables because i'm ready

You're ready for Casablanca? Yeah. It's considered the greatest screenplay ever written. And listen, that sounds like an amazing idea for the summer for us. It's on the list. It's funny. It kind of lives on now in When Harry Met Sally because it has like these two big parts in When Harry Met Sally. So for like the under 40 generation, unless your parents like forced you to watch it or tell you to watch it or whatever, it came out in, what was it, 1942? Yeah.

Great recall. 1943. 1943. So that's now 83 years ago. Like think how fucking long that is. Right. And so it's like Jaws is 50 years old now. Yeah. Shout out to the vineyard. Speaking of boats. Oh, you know what? It's a big Jaws summer. I was going to call you in for Prestige TV because Amazon has the show set on Martha's Vineyard. It's a YA show, but it's just.

My daughter was out in 20 minutes, so I didn't tell you about it. But yeah, they fully vineyard. Like they went all in. Do you know the name of it? Because I forget where I was. It was kind of like one of those deals where you can't find the remote in a hotel room. So that means the channel is just not going to be changed forever. I'm looking as you're talking. There was this crime series that takes place on Martha's Vineyard. It's all shot in Canada. And I think even the actors are Canadian.

But I think the true story behind it is that it's these fictional books where all of these things take place on Martha's Vineyard because the author's father, father-in-law, uncle or something was actually a police chief in Eggertown. So I could be sort of mauling this, but I don't know if it was the same thing. So I ended up watching. I never watch that kind of stuff, but I was like, all right, I got to see what happens here. Well, my daughter's home right now, so I can't say I'm watching like,

I'm not watching a ton of stuff. I can't. Oh, it's called We Were Liars. I have not seen that. You might want to give it a test run for the Martha's Vineyard footage. I will. No, I'm in. I'm totally in. But I would tell younger people that are listening about Casablanca, like, don't give it too hard of a time on the action scene at the end. And I think Bogart, I think that's an over under a four, four and a half. Here's looking at you kids. Like you might. I don't know if you get away with that today. Two of them. Yeah. Yeah.

Like Bruce Willis has said, yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, five times in Die Hard. Yeah, they tacked it on in Die Hard 3. We just did that one. I do think about people like Bogart sometimes. When I work on rewatchables and you think about how famous these people were, like when we did movies from the 70s and Redford and Newman, they were just so, so famous. And they still are famous because there's a lot of people. But then when you go way back,

And you go to like Sir Lawrence Olivier. This is the reason I was thinking about it because he's a marathon man. We did that one. And he's one of the most famous actors in the world. Right. And he was married to Vivian Leigh, who was the lady in Gone with the Wind and was like one great stage actor was dead by like 54. And I was thinking like Vivian Leigh, probably one of the two, three biggest actresses for 20 years. Right. No longer discussed.

Not in the mix in 2025. And there's no conversations like that. There's some sort of shelf life for when you're just not discussed anymore. Right. Ava Gardner. You go like, I don't know what it is like that. Mariska Hargitay has this documentary now about Jane Mansfield, who probably not discussed unless there's documentary. But it does make you think like, all right, I'm going to die someday and then everybody's going to forget who you were.

Not you. They'll be a Hulu doc. They'll be a doc. Chris Ryan's going to be old in a rocking chair and be like, he wasn't the easiest to get along with, but it was worth it. There have been a lot of people like, Bill was Bill. But they say my name twice. You know, Bill was Bill.

Like the Maynard Ramirez corollary. So Casablanca, that's your recommendation. And it is pretty cool when you think about, all right, Bogart is this mysterious guy who's in occupied Africa, and yet there's the dueling, the Vichy, and you've got the Nazis, and he's kind of his own man. He's almost like this Han Solo type guy.

And it's Bogart who's not exactly the most dashing guy ever. And yet I was reading about him after the fact. So I was trying to figure out like if there's a biography that it was worth, I'm sure there's plenty of really good ones, but like for me to do a biography on somebody, I'm like, I don't really like doing that all that much anymore. But then the Duke of all people, John Wayne being like, that was the leading man that like I thought about when I pursued my career. Like to your point, like,

You can say, hey, man, Bogart was really famous. And I remember like the first time I saw African Queen, it was like, you know, a movie my parents wouldn't turn off or something when I was a really young kid being like, this movie sucks. But then even as a kid, I kept because, you know, we'd have any channels back then. It was just on TV. I think there were three channels. And

Even as a kid, I was like, man, this African queen's like kind of crazy. Like this is a crazy movie. And he's so good at being the perfect, like, you know, she would have never thought she'd be with him. You know, a lot of the standard kind of like rulemaking that you have in storytelling. And there is something to Casablanca that certainly, um,

you know, holds up in the sense that it wasn't just this super simple, straightforward love story of will they or won't they. And with the backdrop of him owning his cafe and everything, it was just cool. I hadn't seen it in like forever. And so, yeah, we're really funny how I wish I was. I watched Sabrina a couple months ago with Audrey Hepburn, right? That's the one they did on the vineyard with Harrison Ford. Yeah. They redid it. Yeah. This was the original one. Tons of shout outs today. Um,

That movie is just, when you watch it, like just through the context of now, but when they made it back then, it's kind of amazing. And just the premise of it, it's just like, great story, two brothers.

She was always where her family worked for this super rich family. Yeah, but it was, she always had a crush. She would have had a crush on one of the brothers. He never realized that. Was it kind of cocktail? Right. She went away. She went away to, and then came back a woman and the brother didn't realize it was her and then loved her, but he was kind of a rube. It was like, I was like, this is, they fucking nailed it with this. Every piece of it is just really smart. It's going to be a real out, uh, art house summer over here. Cause I watched Lawrence of Arabia a couple of weeks ago. Yeah.

And, you know, I don't know what's going on with me, but I was like, I'm just going to start running through all of these like all time classics. Well, they became classics for a reason. You know, it's like the Godfather and Jaws and movies like those movies are fucking incredible. That's why they became classics. Peter O'Toole, though, laying on a little thick. Dialed it up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

I want to hear that. The guys were very, very over the top. Well, there were a lot of theater guys. So yeah, I would love a Lawrence of Arabia rewatchables. I don't want to be on it. I want it to be UCR and fantasy. And I would love to hear just see our breaking down O'Toole's passion. Really going for it. Yeah. Well, I think we're, we're doing a, we did after hours that's coming to Monday. And then I think we're doing jaws too. Ironically, another vineyard shout out.

That's the next one. The vineyard's on fire right now. You don't have any Jaws 2 thoughts? I don't. Dreyfuss wouldn't do it. He wouldn't be in. Which was the terrible one? 3? Jaws 3. It was 4 3D. 3 was 3D. It was Jaws 3D. That makes more sense. There's been two eras of movies when they got really excited about 3D. That this is the next thing. Here we go, 3D. And then people were like, nah, this kind of sucks. They tried it again. Yeah.

We're wrapping up. So we're back next Sunday. Do you think, what do you think that if you had to make one prediction for the biggest thing that will happen in the seven days before we see each other again? Just give me a team. You don't have to make a prediction. Don't say Boston, please. No, I don't. I don't. I'll say Spurs. I like it. It's a good one. All right. Good to see you, Russell. See you.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Priscilla. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahal as well. Don't forget, new rewatchables coming tomorrow night after hours. And then you can watch all the stuff from this podcast on Bill Simmons' YouTube channel. And I will see you at least once more this week. Probably Wednesday, but not sure of the day yet. But you will see me one more time this week. See you then.

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