Jaren Jackson Jr. Out Indefinitely and a Look at the Tanking Crisis

coming up on the Zach Lowe show. We got Fred cats from the athletic and the cats and shoot podcast here. A lot of news, including some news that broke during the podcast about suspensions and all star selections that I don't really understand, but Hey, whatever team C go team C, whichever team C, whichever team that is. And we got Tatum news this week. We got Embiid news this week. We got a brawl and suspensions that came out of the brawl. And Jaron Jackson Jr., this morning it was announced he's going to miss the rest of the season. But it seems like a tanky move and is, you know, at least not inconvenient for the tanking. And that's going to get us into a discussion about, look, we all know the tanking is happening. We all know this is as bad as it's ever been and as widespread as it's ever been. We've all discussed some of the proposals about how to at least calm it, ease it, band-aid it here and there. We just start asking the question, is it time to at least thinking, to at least start thinking about something more radical, stuff that has just never sat right in my soul before, but stuff that it might actually be time to start thinking about more radical fixes to how the NBA works and how the NBA ecosystem works. So we talk about all that, plus more new players in new places, how people are fitting in. Vucevic, Harden, Dillingham, Ivy, McCain, on and on and on, new guys in new places. and the nuggets are in a little bit of a slide. Do we care? I don't know. That's all coming up on the Zach Lowe Show with Fred Katz. This episode of the Zach Lowe Show is brought to you by State Farm. Life's better when you've got the right help. Think of that perfect pass that sets everything up smooth, effortless, just what your team needed. That's the kind of assist State Farm offers. Whether it's online or in person, State Farm's your teammate. When you need help making your next play, State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show. All-Star is here. Fred Katz is here. There's a lot of stuff going on in the NBA. Are you ready to go through it, Mr. Katz? I've never been so ready in my life. Wow. Let's do it. All right. News. We're going to fly through some news. I have not recorded since the brawl, the Pistons-Hornets brawl, one of the wildest fights we've had in the NBA for a long time. I recorded that day, watched that game that night. I was like, man, I'm glad I picked this game because, A, this is an awesome, super intense game between a team that's been the number one seed basically all year in the East and a team that is now officially in the play-in tournament and coming up the standings like a rocket to Charlotte Hornets. And then the brawl happened. And Moussa Diabate did not like that Jalen Duren was eating his lunch and overpowering him and scoring over and over again. A little head-to-head action, a little Moussa. Moussa maybe accelerated the headbutt a little bit. Jalen Duren with the mush, and the mush is always going to provoke something. And then all hell broke loose, and we have now suspensions have come down. Jalen Duren got the least amount of games, two games. Miles Bridges, four games. Moussa Diabate, Moose Antlers, four games. Isaiah Stewart stormed off the bench like a WWE wrestler coming in for the save from the back, just sprinting up the aisle to the ring. Seven games, given his prior, long prior record of encounters and fights and such. Does this seem fair to you? What were your takeaways from the brawl? Have you discovered anything in the Zaprooter footage that was funny to you or anything notable, Fred Katz? I thought Moussa Diabate's just endless pursuit was unbelievable. Like, in a league where everybody says nobody wants to fight, that actually kind of seemed like a brawl where multiple people wanted to fight. Like, Isaiah Stewart obviously wanted to fight. And Moussa Diabate, it's like, you know how he's on the boards where he's just like, I'm going to keep continuing to pursue this rebound no matter what? That's what he was like in that brawl. He was just fighting through everybody in order to try to go at Jalen Duren. And Jalen Duren is a big dude and a tough dude. But Jalen Duren was not participating. He was like, oh, no, I'm backing away. Which is why he got only two games, despite the fact that the mush took it from a headbutt, which may have been diffusible in that moment, to what happened. Yeah, I mean, if it was just like, I wouldn't call it a headbutt. I would call it more of like that's one of those situations where context is everything. Like if you just saw a picture of that, you wouldn't know if it was a headbutt or a loving embrace. You would have no idea. But because of the context, we're like, it's a headbutt. But it wasn't really a headbutt. Antler to antler. That's exactly right. That's why he is. It's not because his first name is Musa. It's because he attacks people the same way that he would if he had antlers. That's exactly right. I wouldn't say it was a headbutt. It was a forehead-to-forehead confrontation, which is, I will say, a thing I've never really understood. I've never been so angry at somebody to where I'm like, you know what, I'm going to press my forehead against yours. That's never happened with me. But if it stopped it there, it's probably either nothing or double-text and everybody moves on and warnings are issued and then you can go forward. Yeah, once you push a guy in the face, it's going to start some stuff. It's totally going to start some stuff. And it's also like the fact that it escalated from there is also why Duren gets two games. Whereas like if he just pushes them and then Diabate doesn't really react for whatever reason and everybody moves on, Duren's probably ejected. And maybe there aren't even suspensions coming out of it because it didn't escalate into something wild. I mean, with Isaiah Stewart, I get it. One thing I'll say I get is I understand that Isaiah Stewart feels a loyalty to protect his teammates. He and Duran are incredibly close. Those guys are like brothers. I wrote a feature about it about a month ago. I spent a lot of time with the Pistons and wrote a feature about the competitive culture that those guys have instilled and really gone out of their way to try to embrace and how the Pistons as a team try to compete against each other in things that have nothing to do with basketball. You know, a month and a half ago or so, J.B. Biggersaff, when they had lost to Utah, and then they lost to the Clippers before we kind of realized, oh, no, the Clippers are on this run. And they lost those two games, and J.B. Biggersaff, instead of having some sort of intense practice where you could think he could have coached Carter to it, instead he went the opposite direction. He canceled practice. He took the team to the campus at UCLA because they were still in Los Angeles and had them play a game of soccer against each other, even though a bunch of guys... I thought you were going to say Fight Club. Just we went full Fight Club. That was after. That was later. I wouldn't be able to get that because the first rule of Pistons Fight Club is that nobody tells the reporters about Fight Club. Also, Ron Holland not being involved in the brawl at all and was not active for that game, I don't think, is one of, like, if you had told me a wild brawl was going to break out in a Pistons game, obviously I would have believed it. If you had told me that Ron Holland would have no role at all, I would have been like, well, you're just making this up. Yeah, they left stuff on the table. Like, there's something there. But, like, they want to get competitive. They just played them in a game of soccer, and apparently that game got relentlessly competitive. They do a beach volleyball tournament every summer, Tobias Harris organizes, and they get unbelievably competitive, apparently, with, like, the whole organization, like the PR staff plays. And apparently the trash talk to the PR staff is just insane and stuff that nobody will really repeat. And so I understand that it's great that a young team can foster that sort of culture. That's awesome. When you have guys who get competition and care about competition to that level, to where they're competitive about everything, it's a great way to start an awesome culture. At the same time, there has got to be some way to where Isaiah Stewart can play the way that he plays, keep the mentality that he has, and not do stuff like this anymore. He's costing his team. He's too good of a player for this now. He's too good. I'm glad that that storyline that you just mentioned is going to go away because I saw Richard Jefferson was saying, you know, the good and bad of this kind of intensity and you're playing for a championship, this could hurt your team. I actually was worried that they were really going to hammer him with 15, 20 games, like something that could actually mess with your chemistry. Seven games, A is fair. That's a super long suspension for a fight. Track record taken into account and everything. And already one of them is over, and Detroit blew out Toronto on the road. Paul Reed messed around, almost got a 5-by-5 game and exploding for 20-something points, almost like flirted with 5-by-5 territory. So they're going to be fine. That's going to be fine. I think this is all pretty fair. Durin co-instigated it and definitely instigated it to the next level and then was like, I didn't think we were going to do all of this and didn't do much else after that. Diabate went bananas. And that's when, as much as we're making light of this, and by the way, there's actually a moment where I think it's a security guard for the Hornets. I'm not sure if it's the Hornets or the Pistons. Almost has a Van Gundy moment where he dives on the floor to try to tackle Diabate by the legs and misses and just sort of belly flops onto the court. Almost a Van Gundy moment occurred. But Diabate goes bananas. And as much as we're making light of this, it went into the first row. And when that happened, I was watching it live. When that happened, I thought, oh boy, like this is about four feet from getting really, really bad. And the NBA has like a zero tolerance for that. And they should have a zero tolerance because those courtside fans are not ready for these giant, powerful, athletic dudes to be throwing elbows in their faces. Bridges, just a jackass the entire time. Just was all ready to go. Started pursuing Durin the whole time like he was going to do anything. Then he kept pursuing Durin at half court. Just like, chill, man. You're not involved. It's between these two guys. Let them settle. That's it. And then Beef Stew, you just can't do it. And he charges it, Miles Bridges, at seven games. I think this is all fair. And by the way, lost in all this, super heated game. Crowd is now at full throttle the rest of the game. And Detroit pulls out, pulls away, and pulls out a road win. Detroit is 18-7 on the road. That's the second best road record in the league. Oklahoma City is 20-7, so tied in the lost column. They've had a bunch of these games with frothy crowds and intense atmospheres in Boston, in Houston, in Cleveland. and these are the ones that just pop into my head, where they pull out these wins, that's another mark of a real, legit contender. When you win road games like this, I thought that was a little bit lost in the fracas. And that's all I have to say. I love it. I love the intensity. You just got to stay away from the crowd. And if Moussa doesn't take this to the crowd, I think this is a minor one or two game suspension. And he takes it to the crowd, and Miles Bridges keeps going, and Stu keeps going, and here we are. But I'm fine with where we ended up. They had another one, too, where they had a large lead against Denver this week, and Denver comes back, and they hold on there. No Jokic. Was that no Jokic? Yeah, that was Jokic. Jokic had a bunch of turnovers in that game. Oh, that was the 109-107 game. Yeah, we're going to get to Denver. Denver 2-4 in their last six games. Not exactly rolling since Jokic came back. We'll talk about whether we care, whether it's important, whether it's the doldrums, et cetera. news item number two Jason Tatum full five on five practice with the main Celtics now right they're not the Red Claws anymore look everyone is doing everything very responsibly the Celtics are not pushing him to come back people around him are not pushing him to come back he's just going to hit the checkpoints as they go as they're scheduled and when everyone is comfortable when all those checkpoints are hit when five on five contact is hit when he feels comfortable and ready and they feel that everything's copacetic. It looks like he's coming back this season. I think they don't make the Vucevic for Simon. Maybe they do anyway, but I think to me that trade was made indicative of Tatum probably coming back. We can sacrifice a perimeter player for a big man who fits how we play. There's some anxiety about, well, Jalen Brown's been the guy this season and just like what a season he's having. The team is playing incredibly well, has a style of play that they've sort of adapted to without Tatum. They're 35-19. They have the number two offense in the NBA, and they are now third in net rating in the entire NBA behind Oklahoma City and Detroit. They are, in my opinion, the single best and most surprising story of the season. I took the under on the Celtics. I've already eaten all the crow, taken all the humiliation for that. I've taken it privately from people at the Celtics. Just come at me. I didn't see it coming. guilty as charged. I don't even think Joe Mazzula thought we'd get here and they'd be 35-19, number two offense, number three net rating. It's crazy. We know Tatum is not going to be himself when he comes back. That's just the reality of recovering from an injury like this, even if you are in your prime and a top six to eight at worst superstar in the NBA. You're not going to be yourself for the first month, two months, six months. It's going to be a little bit. And so So you hear this like, is this going to disrupt the team a little bit? Is this something to worry about? What is your reaction to that particular anxiety? I understand where it's coming from. I think if we listed the players in like Tatum's tier and above, even if you name a player who's significantly better than Tatum, Jokic, best player in the league, Jokic coming back would disrupt your ecosystem because just stylistically, you're going to have to run things through Jokic because you can do things nobody else can do. I think amongst like top 10 players, top 12 players, I think there's an argument to be made that Tatum is like the least disruptive superstar from a skill set perspective of any of those guys. First of all, to his credit, and sometimes words are just words, but right now words are all we have. And the few times he's spoken publicly, he seems very self-aware of this, which is the first step. You know, the first step is being able to say Jalen Brown has been awesome. This team has a clear identity and something that's working. And I need to find a way to fit into that instead of hijacking that. So the self-awareness being there, at least for a public consumption, that I think would be incredibly encouraging from the Celtics perspective. And secondly, I've never thought, even though Jason Tatum is a guy who's going to handle the ball a lot, he's going to run his pick and rolls, he's going to take a ton of step back threes, all that kind of stuff. He's always someone to me who's done that kind of stuff, not because I think he needs to. He just does it because that's the best way for teams to win, because he's awesome. I think he has the skill set. First of all, I doubt if he comes back, I doubt he's just going to be playing like 36 minutes a game. I think he'll probably be in a limited role too. So with that comes an acceptance that you're kind of in a limited role from a doing stuff standpoint. He's a smart player. He's always defended. He's always been like a make the right play kind of guy, or at least has had the intentions of making the right play. I could totally see him coming back and just being like the best role player in the NBA. Like take away all of Jason Tatum's really difficult shots, all the grenades he has to put up because he's the savior late in the shot clock because there's four seconds left. He receives the ball and he's got to create something. The times where he's got to take a step back three out of a pick and roll against an awesome defender guarding him or whatever else. And just kind of even the playing field for him to where now he's kind of more off ball, more spot ups, kind of easier shots, good team defender. I mean, that's still, even if it is not all NBA Jason Tatum, if he's willing to accept it, that might be the best. I mean, there's a chance for it to be the best role player in the NBA. If he is anything, even if he's 80% of himself, that's the best role player in the NBA. So it's a huge, I think it's a huge addition. And I'm less worried about the ego stuff with him than I would be for most guys, because it just seems out of character and out of style for him to come and be like, I'm going to hijack this thing. He just doesn't usually operate that way. Yeah. And the Celtics have, I don't mean this in a bad way. They have a pretty simple style on offense. Within underneath this sort of simple overarching structure, there's a lot of complexity in how they run their pick and roll schemes, how they all that. But it's perfect spacing. We run everything hard. We have a variety of ways we run pick and roll, whether it's Jalen Brown hunting smaller guys, whether it's a Spain pick and roll. Derek White is the Spain master of just doing all sorts of unpredictable stuff out of that action. And like Tatum can get his shots within all of that, even with Jalen Brown remaining sort of the alpha of the offense, which I think for this season is the way that it probably has to be. And it's also an offense that as beautiful as it is when it's working and as wonderful as the spacing is, they also take a lot of long twos. And that's by design. Those are shots where Jalen Brown or even Derek White often has a favorable matchup. They are shots that are taken in lieu of going all the way to the rim. and they are low risk of turnover kind of shots. And the Celtics' number one skill on offense is getting the ball on the rim. And maybe not number one skill, but a very important part of their offense. And Tatum can still take some of those shots, particularly over smaller guys on switches. Like, look, there will be some disruption. There always is. There will be a moment where Jalen Brown is used to having the ball late in the game and Jason Tatum suddenly has the ball late in the game. and that's going to feel weird for a minute. But I think that's all going to be fine. And the last thing I'll say about the Celtics is even Bill has been somewhat resistant to the idea that the Celtics could make the finals as is without Tatum. And I get that. They've had pretty pristine health. They have very little margin of error with any of their top three or four guys missing any amount of game time. But the evidence just keeps piling up that this team is as good as any team in the East and can make the finals as is, particularly with Vooch now taking Garza's minutes. That's a clear upgrade. It is interesting they're bringing Peyton Pritchard off the bench already, and even if that means starting Shireman and Hauser, which is what they did last night, and won big lineups. That's interesting, but it seems to be working. And I don't think Tatum messes with that. I think he's only additive to that. So fingers crossed this all goes well. And we move on to the next news item. Yeah, the other, can I add one thing, Zach? Sure. The other part of it, too, is you talk about the Celtics taking a lot of long twos and a lot of threes. They never get to the rim. And like you said, that's by design. But what you want in a playoff series and maybe in four playoff series is a little more dimensionality. And what Tatum gives you, even if he's not 100% of what he was, is that where Jalen Brown is the guy who's going to drive to the rim if anyone's going to do it. And if not, it's Peyton Pritchard. And Brown is like the one guy with size who will actually drive to the rim and try to finish at the rim. And what Tatum gives you at the very least, even if he's not in a condition to where he's just going to square a guy up and just drive to the hoop or even run a pick and roll and drive to the hoop is one thing the Celtics can be very good at with the way their offense is set up is just catch and goes. So somebody gets the middle, they kick out for a three, and a lot of the time that three goes up. But Tatum also has the option of driving in those scenarios. And with his size and his skill level and his strength, he gives them a different element in those scenarios that they don't have with anybody there. It gives them a little more, dimension to their offense. It doesn't change anything with how their system has to go. It just changes what the proper read is within that system. And the more proper reads you can have within that system, then the better off you can be in a situation in the playoffs against a good defense where they're going to try to cut off as many options that are viable for you. And so that's an important thing he brings them to because right now Brown is like their only driver with size. I would love to have Missoula back on my podcast at some point and ask him about getting to the rim. And he and I have debated a little bit about this over the years. Like, I'm not even convinced Joe Mazzullo thinks getting to the rim in the half court is even a good thing. Like, especially when you can take so many threes and bend the mat that way. Because, I mean, I know that he understands that a miss at the rim is one of the most damaging things that can happen to your defense. Because your guy who misses is falling out of balance. The floor is all out of balance. and there was a moment last night, I don't know if you saw the Bulls-Celtics game last night, which was a poo-poo game, the Bulls stink. Hugo Gonzalez was in the game, and he had come in only like two minutes before, and they ran a split action, which the Celtics are very good at, particularly when they have a shooting center, which they now have in Vucevic, a better one than Garza. And Gonzalez got it, cutting to the rim, and thought he had an alley to get to the rim, and I thought he did too. Went up for a layup. I think Buzelas contested it at the rim. Gonzalez missed. I think it was even a dead ball. Like it didn't even hurt Boston's defense. And Missoula took him out of the game. And I remember thinking as I'm watching, didn't he just come in like two minutes ago? That's a quick sub. And Drew Carter on the play-by-play sort of speculated, like, I wonder if Joe's upset that Hugo took that to the rim instead of kicking it out for three. And I went back to watch the replay. I was like, man, I'm not upset about him going to the rim there, although there are shooters over. I just thought that was interesting. Okay. News item number three. Joel Embiid re-evaluated and will miss re-evaluated after the All-Star break knee soreness there does not seem to be a lot of concern coming out of Philly that you know just normal level of Embiid concern I'm always on high alert for this I have nothing to add to this except that Embiid's resurgence has been if the Celtics are the best and happiest surprise story of the season and Phoenix is number two Embiid is right up there in the top three. And Philly is wheezing into the all-star break a little bit. Edgecombe has kind of hit a little bit of a wall and he'll come out of it fine. But like this team is now only a game up on the seventh seed, lost three out of four. They need Joel Embiid to get anywhere near where they want to go. I still don't buy them as a threat to make the finals for exactly this reason, but Fingers crossed. Item number four. It's kind of slim under the radar that Adam Silver named Brandon Ingram the injury replacement for Steph Curry, I think. Different conferences, same home country. That's how we're doing this now. I don't know if he's on Team Stripes or Team Stars or Team whatever. Can't wait for the all-star round robin thing. Can't wait. It's going to be. By the way, I hope they try. I hope Wemby – I don't care what the fucking structure is, and I don't think the structure is going to be the reason they try. I think the only reason they would try is money that's not enough to make them try. Or if a couple of guys like Wemby says he's going to try. Like there are guys that have the power to lift everyone around them. But Durant – I saw Durant last night kind of chuckling at this idea, and he pointed to Doncic and Jokic and said, have they ever really tried in the All-Star game? and he's exactly correct. No one has taken this less seriously than Jokic over the last five years. That guy just comes in the game, walks around, throws some passes, and walks out. Now, look, Brandon Ingram is a very good basketball player. He's better at basketball than I will ever be at anything in my life. He's averaging 22 points, six rebounds, four assists a game, 47% shooting, 52% on twos, 37% on threes. Raptors are a good story. I kind of think this slid under the radar. This is a borderline shocking choice to replace Steph Curry. I don't think Brandon Ingram should have been the choice. Here is a list of players I would have taken over Brandon Ingram. James Harden. Inexplicable that he's taken. I guess he got traded. I don't know what happened, why that would happen. Julius Randle. Only thing that he's not doing better than Brandon Ingram is shooting threes. He's 32.5%. He's just better than Brandon Ingram. I thought we all knew this. I don't really understand what's happening. Bam Adebayo, even in a down offensive year, just winning player. I'm taking him 10 times out of 10. Now we get into the ones where the minutes make it a little bit of a dicier case. Evan Mobley, Michael Porter Jr. Has Brandon Ingram contributed more in his 1,800 minutes than those guys have in 1,400? Maybe, probably by a little bit. I just think those guys, particularly Porter Jr., have been better, and I would have picked them despite they're both injured right now. I would throw Derek White in there despite his crappy shooting I just think the dude is a freaking winner and does and by the way he almost the anti Ingram at least this season in that Ingram plus numbers are blah like the Raptors have been better with him off the floor, I think. Derek White could shoot four of 20, and the Celtics are winning his minutes every single night because of everything else he does on both ends of the floor. I think Con Canipple probably deserves it over Brandon Ingram, if I'm being completely honest. I don't quite understand how we landed. like Brandon was great 22 points is a lot of points it's more than Bam it's more than Khan it's more than Mobley I just it's kind of just like I guess we just were all just slid under the radar amid all this news I was like borderline shocked that this was the choice me too can I add one more to your incredibly comprehensive list and to be clear I'm not saying that he should be an all-star but like I actually would have him above Ingram De'Aaron Fox yeah De'Aaron Fox is having a really good year for San Antonio and is really part of a three-headed monster of guards that is fueling that team. That is a really, really good team. And if you want to reward winning, as many do with the All-Star game, I think it's a great way to reward winning. He has been a total winner this year, I think. And again, I know how Toronto fans are. It's a city that's near and dear to my heart. Oh, they're going to kill you. They're nuts in the best possible way. I'm not furious about it. He's having a very good season. If this was a 30-man all-star roster, I wouldn't even be mentioning this. I just think it's not the right choice, and that doesn't mean Brandon Ingram stinks. It just means I think James Harden's better than Brandon Ingram. Julius Randle's better than Brandon Ingram. Sorry. And we got Bo Bichette. How about that? Okay, two more quick news items, and then we're going to take a break. Harden and Randle are the two. Those are the two. Randall struggled the last couple of weeks. He hasn't been as good. He had 41 points last night. That's how pissed off he was. That's true. That's true. Randall, he had his big comeback last night. But he had been struggling a little bit more those previous couple of weeks and kind of, you know, just the defense had been off and the facilitating hadn't been as good. But in general this year, he's better at both of those things than Brandon Ingram. Definitely. Has totally cut down his turnovers this year. Been a huge thing. Has been a very good one-on-one player for a team without a conventional point guard. Has been a very good down-low scorer. Has been a total bully ball player. And, you know, James Harden is actually having a great scoring season than is James Harden. Look, I was cheering for you guys in the World Series. That's all I got for you. Love the Raptor. Two other quick news items. Dylan Brooks got a 16-technical foul last night in a Phoenix loss, so he will face a one-game suspension unless one of them is rescinded. Congratulations. on that. I do think interesting question, Fred Katz, that's looming in Phoenix who is now seventh behind the Lakers team that no matter how bad they play and how many guys are out, just refuses to seed top six position. Credit to them, I guess. Jalen Green's back. Grayson Allen was back, now is not in and presumably be back soon. They face a pretty interesting question of who starts on their team because their go-to starting five for the season has been Gillespie, Booker, Royce O'Neal, Dylan Brooks, Mark Williams. Jalen Green was brought there to start. Grayson Allen has started. I think both are fine coming off the bench. I like the idea of staggering Booker and Green anyway. Gillespie has been a rock for them. He, again, is playing the last couple of weeks like a player who's never played this many minutes under this much stress in his career and has faded a bit. I just think that's an interesting thing to monitor. And yeah, go ahead. Oh, no. There has been conversation there about what happens when Jalen Green comes back. Because Jalen Green is one of those guys, unbelievably talented. But he is somebody who's disruptive to your ecosystem if you're going to try to kind of figure him out. And right now, Phoenix has this thing that is working for them. And they honestly could, from a skill set, use an extra guy who could create a shot. Because right now with Dylan Brooks or with Devin Booker off the court, the offense tends to just kind of go to Dylan Brooks. And it can be a lot. Dylan Brooks got off to an incredible start in one-on-one play this year. You know, what literally was like the fifth or sixth most efficient ISO scorer in the league amongst high-volume guys as of about a month ago. In the last month, his numbers have kind of come down. They actually haven't been bad, but he's been about league average in that sense. and we're seeing Dylan Brooks just kind of be more Dylan Brooks which is a good player but not the guy who you want to run your whole offense through for like six minutes at the end of the first quarter and into the second he also is I think has the second lowest passing rate out of isolations out of any player in the league and his shot selection when Booker isn't there just totally changes it just turns into mid-range stuff and I think they could use that extra scorer to just be able to like they could use that bucket getter. That'll help them. I'm very interested to see how they play it because when Booker is on the court, they found this really, really nice groove offensively. And they obviously have an incredibly tough-minded defense that just plays harder than everybody. They're really good at the possession game. They're really good at forcing turnovers. They're really good at scheming offensive rebounds. They're very good at creating extra scoring chances. And I don't think they want to Get away from that. So my guess is they are going to try to find a way to have Jalen Green fit in, as opposed to trying to fit Jalen Green in or fit the team around Jalen Green, I should say. Well, as LeBron once famously said, you know, you've got to fit in instead of fitting out. By the way, just announced by the Bucs as we're doing this that Giannis is going to miss the All-Star game officially. Not a surprise given the timetable he gave himself upon injury. I think because the world team already has enough players That Adam Silver does not need to name a replacement for Giannis I see 10 players on the world team right now With Carl Towns representing the Dominican Republic and not the US The fact that I have to have this discussion is crazy Like this is what we're doing But a world team, you know I guess the world team will issue a press release later about whether they're going to replace him. Last news item. This is not really a news item. This is just Zach's pet thing that I'm obsessed with to an unhealthy degree. Bam Adebayo and Kalil Ware. Plus 35 in 25 minutes over Miami's last two games. After Eric Spolstra mothballed that pairing for quite a while, said some not very kind things about Kalil Ware. Kalil Ware said some confused and somewhat annoyed things back, and we got like there was mild Kaminga-ish vibes coming out of that. I'm not sure if Colel Ware's family and friends were eating too much food from the family room in Miami, but there was some vibes. And then it's now back to he's starting and playing with Bam. Look, it's just Utah and New Orleans. They lost the Utah game even though Utah themselves tried to lose the game. It's always something I'm monitoring for the long-term import it holds to Miami, promising. Kalil Wirr shooting threes pretty well. They're playing well off each other. And I'm just telling you right now, I'm sorry to say to Bill Simmons, who's always afraid of the Heat, hates talking about the Heat, hates when the Heat discover anything good. Kaz Yacuchunas might be something. He's shooting 45% on threes. Now he's getting picked on on defense a lot. Guys are hunting him on defense, shooting 45% on threes. And the Heat just have not had a passer like this in quite some time. He's throwing overhead passes to the corner, crazy stuff, sometimes too crazy. it's just not my monitoring category and with that we have one last bit of news to talk about which we will do after the break this episode is brought to you by ebay on ebay behind every car in part is a story waiting to be shared i read about this guy about a nearly scrapped 2020 porsche cayman okay he rebuilt the whole thing all of parts he found on ebay i couldn't do that maybe you can and now That came and is out tearing up the track. From Toyotas to Aston Martins, eBay has thousands of cars and the largest online selection of vehicle parts and accessories. eBay, things people love. The most notable bit of news from today, Fred Katz, the Jazz announced Jaron Jackson Jr. will be out for the season, potentially for the season, with something called pigmented villonodular synovitis in his knee. That amounts to a growth. I'm just going to read what it says on this medical university website I'm looking at. It's a painful health issue that happens when the soft tissue lining of a joint grows out of control. It is not life-threatening, but it can get worse over time and interfere with your ability to move the joint freely. It can lead to arthritis and all sorts of other stuff. And, of course, the cackling has begun. It is abbreviated PVNS. Did I text somebody that PVNS actually stands for player violating a nasty strategy? Yes, I did. Like, i.e., Jaron Jackson Jr. is too good for the jazz who won a tank. All tongue-in-cheek, this is what I was told today by multiple people, that they indeed discovered this growth in his knee during the medical imaging that one does when one is traded. They discovered it right away. They consulted several opinions, multiple opinions at least, and all the opinions, along with Jaron Jackson Jr.'s agents and his team, decided that the best course of action was to have it removed now before it grew further and threatened to cause pain. He was not feeling any pain, but the bigger it gets, the more likely you are to feel pain. So this isn't a fake thing. He's actually going to have surgery. Something is going to be removed. And he actually could have had it earlier. They didn't announce that they had found this. I was told he really wanted to play a few games and just sort of feel out the jazz. And I thought he had fit pretty well with the jazz. He and Markkinen are, I think, plus 13 and 49 minutes together. They now will be probably the only 49 minutes. We will see them the whole season, although I'm not going to slam the door shut completely from what I've heard on Triple J returning maybe at the end of the season. But probably not. I would say. I thought he had fit quite well, and he wanted to play. He played, and now they are shutting him down for a bit. And, of course, this brings us to the story du jour in the NBA, which is all the tankery going on and what is to be done about it. Are you excited to talk about this, Fred? I'm thrilled. First of all, anything. This is so exciting. It's such a great thing for the NBA that this is the conversation. I heard Team Stripes is thinking about shutting some guys down ahead of Game B. They might be. I mean, is that the one LeBron is on? Because he did DMP rest the All-Star game last year. Winner Game B faces Winner Game C. Then there should be a loser's bracket where someone has to play a junior. Okay. Let's see. Before we talk about this, Jaron Jackson Jr., three games, I think, with Utah, right? Three? Yes. I think this is very exciting. I mentioned the plus minus. It's fine. He and Markkinen can both face up, can both work off the dribble. The Jazz clearly right away were like, you have freedom, Jaron Jackson Jr., to bring the ball up, go one-on-one from the perimeter, run inverted pick and rolls. We haven't even seen them with Kanta George yet. Obviously, haven't seen them with Walker Kessler, who will take Nurkic's spot in the super big starting five. The only, I mean, like, you can run a lot of the stuff they run for Markkinen, all the off-ball screening stuff. If you can run that for Jaron Jackson Jr., he's experienced doing all that stuff. Defensively, I think he and Walker Kessler make for a fearsome pairing. They should be a good rebounding team. The only note I have, the only note about Jackson specifically after those three games was, marking and guarding wings is going to be interesting because obviously he's big enough to do it. He's long enough to do it. He's smart enough to do it. quickness in some matchups, like even Wiggins in the Miami game was able to generate a lot of space for step-back jumpers, hesitation dribbles and blow-bys. And the Jazz know that, and I think they're counting on the size you have to challenge shots, Lowry Markin, and from disadvantaged angles, and the size we have under the rim is going to make up for that and will be a good rebounding team too, which Jaron Jackson Jr. is not a good rebounder, so we need to support him in that sense. That's the only in 49 glorious minutes that we will all, I think we'll all remember them. I think there'll maybe be a 30 for 30 one day about it. That's the only note I really have. I thought the Jaron Jackson Jr. Fair was exciting. And Will Hardy is the right coach to concoct ways for him and Jaron Jackson Jr. To play off of each other and a traditional center on offense. Yeah, for sure. Jackson also on the other side, like if you play him at the five, this has always been the case. He is just way more foul prone. and that's something that you just don't want coming up because he's such a dynamic defender when he's not in foul trouble, but the fouling is just kind of what separates him from hitting another level because it just happens way too often. And when you play him with the five, he just fouls too much. It happens all the time. You see the foul rates just skyrocket. There was a play when they played Miami, when they accidentally beat Miami after benching everybody. And at the very beginning of the game, must have been like the third or fourth possession of the game. It was just sideline out of bounds. They just inbounded it to Jaron Jackson. And Jackson brought it up as if he was the point guard. Goes into a pick and roll with Nurkic. Like penetrates the lane. Kicks to Markkinen, who is cutting from the corner. And Markkinen like finishes a layup. Now, I will say, it is very difficult to decipher whether the Jazz are doing something because they're like, oh, this could be interesting, let's try it, or whether the Jazz are doing something because they're like, you know, this is pretty good for the tank. Why don't we let the 4-5 run the offense? It's very difficult to decipher it. But it was like, damn, that looks like they've been playing together for a little while. Yeah, I liked it. I liked what I saw. That was a really nice little string, like moving with chemistry, understanding where you're going to go. And the one thing with the Jazz, and we can make all the jokes about the tank, and I promise you I will, is they, when they weren't dead set on losing in the way that they are dead set on losing right now, they were really fun to watch because of their offensive style. They set more off-ball screens than any other team in the league. They were all about cutting and movement. Markkanen is almost like, he's not the level of shooter that Klay Thompson was. But in terms of the way that they move, they use him, he's like that. He's the best off-ball mover of any big man in the NBA. Yeah, I've called him big man Steph Curry before. And that's obviously an exaggeration because there is no Steph Curry of any size or whatever. But he is the closest thing in that Steph might only average five assists a game. Let's say Draymond usually leads the team in assists. he just doesn't get assists the way like number one options typically get assists. Lowry Markin averages like two assists a game. That number should be higher. The Jazz would be better if he were a little bit more intuitive of a passer. But his off-ball movement is essentially the equivalent of passing for him. Yeah, he's a playmaker without the basketball because what happens is he will so often, and you know what he does also is he'll direct guys too. So he'll notice like stuff is going to happen as he comes around the screen And he'll direct guys on the other side of the court to do stuff every once in a while, too, because he really sees the whole floor almost like he's quarterbacking without the basketball. It's really it's really interesting. And because they play that way, because Will Hardy is really creative with screens, with these on ball screens, off ball screens, I'm sure they're going to implement all of that stuff into the guys they have, especially if they're going to play this big, especially if they're going to play with Markman and with Jan Jackson. We're talking down the line. I'm with Jaron Jackson and a conventional center, Walker Kessler or whomever else it might be, and then Keontae George and then whoever else you're going to throw in there. Like, if you're going to play that big, you need to be creative with your off-ball movement. You need to be creative with your pace. You need to be diligent in how quickly you get into your offense. You're going to have to find these interesting ways. Like, you can't play that big and not run the inverted pick and rolls, you know? You got to mix that kind of stuff in when you're going to play that big. and I thought there was interesting stuff there. Like they accidentally won, but they did accidentally win. It's arguably harder to accidentally win than it is to win on purpose. By the way, speaking of Will Hardy, it's going to be underrated. Maybe we'll feature it in the 30 for 30 on the 49 minutes Jaron Jackson Jr. and Lauer Markin played together this year. His response when somebody asked him how close he was to bringing Mark and Enoch Jackson back in the game, and he just looked dead-eyed in the camera. I wasn't. It will never get the play of take that for data and all the classic coach rants, but what his eyes and his facial expression said about what he has to do for yet another season and what is happening to his career win-loss record. Now, his pocketbook, his wallet, his life, his career is all great, but just like 82 games of this shit over and over again, just, he was like, I'm not even entertaining this question. I'm not going to pretend to even, I'm not going to give you a polite answer. It wasn't close. You figure out why. Okay. Here we go. We got news, Zach. Should I Yeah, what we got. De'Aaron Fox is replacing Giannis in the All-Star game. You know, like, sure. I mean, I don't understand. I just, I guess I just don't understand how the All-Star, so what team is De'Aaron Fox playing for? Not the international team. No. So they replaced an international player with an American. He's probably playing. There's one of the American teams team, whatever the red one is with, with not LeBron, that team only has eight players. So now they're probably going to have nine players. So they're going to be three, nine person teams. Now everyone's going to have nine teams, 27 all-stars. It was supposed to be, it was supposed to be three, eight player. Who did James Harden hurt? I don't understand what's happening with James Harden. No Harden's wild. How many guys are going to get injured before Adam Silver remembers that James Harden is in the league? Maybe Harden was on and then he asked out before Silver could announce it. Let me bring up De'Aaron Fox's numbers. He's been fine. I would describe him as fine for the season. He is averaging 19 and 6, 48% shooting, 35% on threes, 56% on two. That's good. He's had a very good season. And he's he has really done a nice job, I think, recalibrating his game to be like, I'm still the lead guard, but I'm not the lead guy. And sometimes I'm not even going to be the lead guard if Castle has a rolling or Harper has a rolling or I'm going to be the co-lead guard. I think it's sort of just like a much smaller scale Donovan Mitchell last season kind of adjustment of like he's not as good as Donovan Mitchell. And he like so him sacrificing is not nearly as big of a thing, but he has sort of willingly sacrificed for the good of the team. the team and I don't mind him getting rewarded for it. I still wouldn't have picked him for this spot either. Maybe I just don't know anything. Okay. It's time to actually do the main thing. Now, as Pat Riley said, keep the main thing, the main thing. And we're going to talk about tanking. Cause we're talking about Jaron Jackson, Jr. And the jazz. And we're talking about notably the Spurs who tank to get Victor Wimbaniama on their team. And that worked out quite well for them. I want to give credit to this person. I think it was James Hansen who covers the jazz for the SB nation blog for the Jazz tweeted something at me after my show with Mo on Monday about how, wow, it was weird. It was weird to hear Zach and Mo clutch all their pearls about Utah and the disgrace that is Utah. And boy, Utah fans, settle down. No one is singling you out. Every tanking discussion that exists also talks about the Wizards and Zubats and the Pacers and the Mavericks and the Grizzlies and the Bulls and the Nets. And like, no one is singling you out. Yes, it's the weirdest. It's the weirdest to see like games half tanked, second half tanked. But no one is singling you up. But James Hansen said something like the irony of them clutching their pearls over the jazz and then praising the Bulls for finally picking a direction, i.e. praising the Bulls for bottoming out or trying to bottom out or indicating that perhaps they are bottoming out. And I would say James a little bit missed the point because, no, I certainly was not praising the Bulls for picking a direction. I was actually criticizing the Bulls for trades that I didn't like, for giving up players that I thought, particularly in Desumnew's case, could be a long-term part of their team for, you know, paltry-ish returns. I don't mind the shot at Rob Dillingham and all that stuff. If anything, I would go all the way back and say the Bulls bet on the wrong guy. Their biggest bet was on the wrong guy, Nicole Ljuchovic, and giving up the pick that became Franz Wagner was sort of the original sin of everything that has gone wrong with the Bulls over the last five years. But there is some truth to what he's saying, which is that, you know, there are always going to be bad teams in the NBA and bad teams need hope. And that is why the reverse order draft exists. That's why the lottery version or the reverse order draft exists to give bad teams hope for the future to redistribute the talent so that the teams who need it have the best chance at getting it. And although I don't think that this particular comparison really holds up to scrutiny. And by the way, the Bulls tried to, and I want to go back to the Bulls for a second, because when they realized that this iteration was not going to get them anywhere above 39 wins, they didn't just have to tank. They could have pivoted in any number of directions, including a direction to try to incrementally get better. If they had realized early enough or come to grips with it early enough, who knows what they could have done. In fact, they kind of tried by trading Caruso for Giddy, although that got them younger. That was very much a like we want to keep winning move. So it's not bottoming out isn't the only direction when you are a mediocre team. You can go up. You just have to be super proactive and super out in front of it in ways that this Bulls front office has never been. Anyway, back to hope. So the tanking crisis is here like it's never been before. And it has me thinking a lot about how are they going to fix this? And the NBA, I still think they have a core belief that there needs to be some tie between your place in the standings and where you pick in the draft, that they cannot completely eliminate the hope that the draft provides the bottom feeding teams. And I've been thinking about that because, you know, 12 years ago at Grantland, RIP, I wrote about a proposal called The Wheel, created by Mike Zarin, who's, I don't know what his title is with the Celtics now. He used to be the assistant GM. He's probably the GM now because everyone's title is bumped up. And the idea of the wheel was every team over 30 years cycles through all 30 draft slots in a not random order, but in an order that is meant to imitate randomness, i.e. there's no chance you're going to pick 30, 27, 24 in three consecutive years. I think if I remember right, reading from my story back in 2013, every team would be guaranteed a top six pick at least every five seasons and at least one top 12 pick every four years. But you would just cycle through them. So you would know 29 years in advance where you're picking 29 years from now. And the idea was we are going to completely sever the connection between your place in the standings and where you draft. That's the only way to eliminate tanking. Everything else is a bandaid over here that opens up a hole over here. It's like plugging a dam. This was Mike's basic idea. Just completely sever the relationship between record and tanking, but do it in such a way where teams still bounce all around the draft instead of we're going to do something totally radical, like give the champions the first pick in the draft and go down from there. At the core of that is two things. number one um it it does sort of chip away at the hope factor like if your team sucks and your next two picks are 15 and 9 or 22 and 16 that's a pretty tough place to be for your fans and at the core of any proposal like this has to be an acceptance that at some point the best team will get the best player in the draft you have to be okay with that outcome in order to support a proposal that completely severs draft order from team record. And I don't think the NBA or their owners are anywhere near there, which is why I expect all of this tanking to lead to sort of band-aid mini solutions. And before we get back to the wheel, can we talk about some band-aid mini solutions that we might see Fred Katz? Please. I've talked about all these, so I don't want to belabor them, but I think we're going to see something done with pick protections, limiting them to one to four to lottery only because a quarter of this tanking two of the teams are tanking blatantly for top eight protected picks the Jazz vis the Thunder and the Wizards vis the Knicks I think we could see some momentum behind a proposal that we've talked about on this show before. That's like the lottery order is based on your record until March 1st. And then after that, you get credit for wins. Partial, not the same amount of, you know, quote credit. There's a point system where your losses through March 1st get you the bulk of your lottery odds. But after that date, you get credit for winning to alleviate this late season take. I think that's got a little momentum around the league. I would like to give playoff teams, at least teams that lose in the first round, a little bit of love in the lottery because basically the wins after March 1st proposal would chip away at the most blatant tanking because teams, the NBA flattened the lottery odds to make it less advantageous to be awful, and teams are still trying to be awful. It hasn't completely dissuaded teams from being awful, and at the same time, it has kind of encouraged teams, Chicago and Memphis notably right now, to tank their way into like the 10th, 9th, or 8th lottery spot because it increased the value of those. So maybe those two changes together, giving playoff teams a little love in the lottery and the March 1st solution can sort of chip away at some of this and then you throw in the protections and blah, blah, blah. Here's all I know. That's what I think is going to happen because I think the NBA and the owners are just too conscious of hope, of bad teams need help, of all of that, to actually do anything radical. So I think there's going to be all these little mini fixes. And maybe that's fine. Like, I thought the lottery odds being flattened was a step in the right direction. But all I know is this, Fred Katz. Every, every, all the evidence we have, every mini step like this has mini counters to it. And all teams are just going to find different ways to game the system or to try to game the odds in their favor. And, you know, I thought Tom Ziller proposed a great idea, which is why not have the lottery determine all 14 lottery picks instead of the top four, and then you go down from there. Let's keep the odds, but give everyone a shot at every kind of pick so teams can fall and rise a little bit more dramatically. I think all those are interesting and could maybe help a little bit here and there. Maybe they'll help more than I think. But just ultimately, every change that's made, it's like the teams find ways to exploit whatever weaknesses they can find in the system. Yeah, I mean, the motto for all of this stuff is unintended consequences. Constantly. I mean, I can tell you what some of them are off the top of my head right now. Let's say the NBA does it where a lottery odds lock in March 1st. You know what's going to happen? Teams are just going to tank egregiously at the start of the season instead of the end. They're going to say, oh, we're not going to be good, so we got to make sure to get our tank in now. You're not going to see the scenario like where Utah maybe tries to compete for the first couple months of the season, and then turns it over and is like, we're going to tank hard the second half of the season. They're just right off the bat going to be like, this is what we're doing from the jump. And then March 1st, they might be like, oh, now we can play Markkinen and play our guys and play them there because now the winning will help. And then you're going to end up with weird scenarios. It's also going to end up with weird scenarios, too, where like, you know, guy gets hurt for the first half of the season. Guy comes back from injury, is ready to go in January. They hold them out for an extra two months, bring them back on March 1st so they maximize their losing before March 1st and minimize and maximize their winning after March 1st. Like, it's still going to happen in those scenarios. You know what I think is the easiest thing for the NBA to do? Enforce the rules they already have. Section D of the play intern. Section D. I'm going to read it right now, all right? player partition policy, participation policy, which the league passed for the 23-24 season, which we've heard so much about. You can't rest stars in nationally televised games, all that stuff. Section D. It's like everyone forgot about Section D. Entitled shutdowns. Teams must refrain from any long-term shutdown or near shutdown, whereby a star player ceases participating in games or begins to play a materially reduced role in circumstances affecting the integrity of the game that is phrased intentionally ambitious ambiguously that is phrased in a way to where it does not say shuts them down for the entire season it does not say shuts guys down for particular games but minimizes their minutes in games it doesn't it doesn't even limit it to star players right like that that's what the wizard or not the wizard that's what some teams could lean on is like, well, these guys don't qualify. When the nets, it's particularly embarrassing when teams close to each other and the standings play each other and every pacer is injured but every king is also injured and every net is also injured. Well, none of these guys fall under the player participation policy of star players missing national TV games, but you're saying they fall under this, it appears. It appears. It seems so, and the reason why that's there, I mean, the inspiration for that was because of what the Thunder did with Al Horford, where a lot of people had a visceral reaction to that. happening. And now that kind of stuff is happening all over the league. And it doesn't say that a shutdown has to be for the entire season. But the league talks about how they are able to investigate with an independent doctor, check out a guy's medicals, check out a guy's health, and then they're able to see if a rest situation is real or a rest situation is not real. See if a team lied on the injury report or didn't lie on the injury report. We see teams lying about stuff on injury reports all the time. Like, I just Broke news with James Edwards last week that Deuce McBride, I mean, this is not one of the serious ones, and this is not a tanking situation, but Deuce McBride underwent surgery for a sports hernia, and he had missed the previous five games because of left ankle injury management. And he played four of those games he missed, came after he underwent the MRI for the sports hernia he eventually had the surgery on. And it was nowhere on the injury report. And the Knicks had said there was no new injury. He was dealing with his ankle. And like, especially if you're going to lean into gambling. And I honestly, I hate the gambling stuff. I hate it. But you got to acknowledge it in these scenarios. This was written before all the gambling stuff happened. They're talking about integrity of the game. That's even more important now. Because if you've got a situation where guys are going to sit the fourth quarter no matter what, and you're going to intentionally try to lose, first of all, even if you're not doing anything illegal, it leads yourself susceptible to a situation where somebody ends up leaking information to somebody who places a large bet. You're just increasing the chances that you get another Terry Rozier type situation. You're increasing the chances of that because this information that is being held secretive is now not happening. Or the Chauncey Billups and Orlando magic situations that are outlined in that same indictment of information coming out like, hey, I think we're sitting everybody tonight or we're sitting these guys tonight. Right. A hundred percent. You just leave yourself susceptible to those sorts of situations. What the NBA does not need is another off the court scandal of that magnitude. And it leaves yourself very open to those sorts of things. And when you're talking about integrity of the game, all sports has is integrity of the game. Like, I hate to sound like some sort of old school, old school purist, but like the reason why sports are attractive is because it's one of the few things in society that we can really look at is like that is a pure meritocracy. Whoever is going to score more is going to win. And there's a difference between like breaking it down and rebuilding and trending towards a rebuild. and in the 48 minutes of competition affecting the 48 minutes of competition. Like it's different when it affects when the coaches are in on it as opposed to just the front office and just the roster building moves. Here's what's always – I want to – because of this, because we can all agree right now that a third of the games suck in the NBA, right? That's easy to say, and it's easy to shout the word integrity of the game, blah, blah. I'm more interested in talking through this sort of thought experiment of trying to fix this. And so I've always struggled with in this debate about changing the lottery rules, changing the draft rules, having no draft at all, whatever people's solutions are. A couple of not necessarily conflicting realities, but realities that don't necessarily sort of fit nicely together. Number one is no matter what you do, there's always going to be teams that are bad, right? Like that's no matter how – like Adam Silver once told me for a story I wrote about Don Grantland, you and I could take the player cards of all 450 players in this league and put them on the table. We could try to design a league with the greatest possible parity, and it would be very difficult. There would still be teams that would be hard-pressed to have a high chance at winning, a.k.a. there would still be bad teams. And the natural life cycle of teams is teams get old, teams get worse, teams cycle out their old players, They bring in young players. They start building the next iteration of their team and get worse in the process. That's like a very natural thing in sports that's hard to legislate out. On the other hand, the NBA is extremely unusual compared to all other sports in that one player makes just an enormous difference in your team. And if you chip away at a bad team's ability, and particularly a small market team's ability, remember it was Oklahoma City who led the revolt against lottery reform when it first started in sort of the anti-Hinke phase of the NBA's lottery revolution. Because the idea was small market teams can't win in free agency. We might not even be able to win as much in pre-agency, at least with the best, best guys. The Jazz just kind of won in pre-agency with Jaron Jackson Jr. or whatever. Not really. He's under contract for a million years, but you get my point. Because superstars are not going to want to come here when they can go to Los Angeles and New York direct their way to various kinds of places. We need a tool to be able to get those players, and the draft is our best tool to do it. And it's hard to sort of parse all of that when you start thinking about, do you really want a system that has no attachment between record and where you pick in the draft? And I'm not sure that I do, but I am sure that I'm ready to sort of have all the NBA power brokers actually think about it more seriously because what's to say the league right now is not acceptable. Some of the proposals that we just talked about, I even had one come in from an academic guy today, which I thought was interesting. I'd never heard before. What if you instituted a line, a win number, where if you didn't reach that win number, you could not pick above the play-in teams? Like if you didn't win 20 games, no matter what, you are picking after the play-in teams but before the playoff teams. That's interesting. All these pools are interesting. Evidence suggests the teams will game them one way or another because the payoff is so potentially so high. So I'm starting to think about like, what does it actually look like if we implemented something like the wheel where teams just, you know, where you're picking. And let's leave aside how it affects trades, like trading picks, trading future picks. That's a whole complicated bottle of wax that we can leave aside for another day. because you do have to just be okay with, like, at some point, the Thunder are going to get the number one pick in the draft. Like, frankly, the Thunder could get the number one pick in the draft this year via the Clippers, so it's already kind of possible. But you have to be okay with the system actually burping that out to you, that the 2017 Warriors, it's their turn on the wheel to pick second in the draft. Do you actually want that? I've always been like, yeah, that doesn't seem good. But maybe the negative of that is not as negative as I thought. And I don't know. I'm just talking through. Can we talk it through? Yeah, we can talk it through. I mean, look, I think it makes trades honestly more interesting because you know what pick you're getting in the draft if you make a trade. Like you can look at the wheel and if you receive a team's 20-29 first round pick, you know, okay, they pick fourth that year or they pick 17th that year. And there's not as much. guessing. You're guessing in terms of maybe what that draft class is going to be, but there's not that risk of like, oh, no, this pick ended up being 29 and we thought it was going to be seven. You know, it takes that off the table. So I think it kind of makes trades a little bit more interesting. It makes team building a little bit more interesting. I'm not necessarily against that. I mean, I am viscerally uncomfortable with the idea of like the first three picks go to great teams and the three worst teams are picking 28th, 20th. Yeah, you can't do it, but I'm like, but, but I'm viscerally uncomfortable, viscerally. Like I, like I haven't thought about it. I'm just, it's in my soul and I need to think about it more. And so here are some of the ideas floating around my head is I rethink the wheel concept. Number one, maybe hope is, is maybe hope is being oversold as a strategy a little bit. because maybe, and this is not original, many people have studied this, maybe tanking isn't as effective a means of team building anyway as people think it is because for every Wembenyama at number one, you get a Riz Hushay at number one. There's a lot of luck that has to go in it. And just in the last week, Fred Katz, three of the top, I think, 18 picks in the 2022 draft, including two of the top 11, Jeremy Sohan and Usman Jang, were just traded and waived. So like it's a pretty inexact science drafting, even even sometimes at the top connected to that. Maybe it's not as maybe it's not as hard as we've made it out to be to go from mediocre or sub like 29 wins bad to just good. Maybe we should actually. And again, I'm not saying I believe this wholeheartedly. I still kind of my soul and my gut still thinks there needs to be a semi reverse order concept to the draft. to semi-give the bad teams better chances of landing the best talent for the health of the league. But maybe it's not as hard as we're making it out to be to go from mediocre to good. And maybe if you incentivize teams to do that, they would actually get better at it, and we'd have more teams fighting to win 48 games every year. Maybe that's the case. And maybe there are things you can do along with a wheel-like solution severing the connection between record and draft order that can help mitigate that sort of loss of hope for bad teams? Would you like me to get into some of those? Sure. Let's hear it. What if, for instance, you eliminated restricted free agency, which is something I wrote about in 2013 as I went back and covered the wheel? And the idea would be, okay, you know what? It might make it harder for the small market teams or the sad sack teams or some combination of both to get access to the very best players through the draft. And let's posit that maybe they don't get as much access to those players through free agency. Well, if that's the case and some big market teams luck into the best players in a couple of drafts, without restricted free agency, those players hit the open market after four seasons instead of after seven or eight seasons and everyone can have at them including well-run small market teams or at least the big market teams are at risk of losing them connected to that this is just something that popped through my head the other day can we increase rookie scale salaries so that if a great team does luck into the number one pick the financial penalty is so severe to them that they almost have to make a trade out of their best players right away. I don't love that because I don't love forcing teams to break up. So can I throw something out there? But I also think that that could mesh with another proposal that I've made before, like six or seven years ago, of if you draft a player who becomes a 35% max player, you get some tax relief or cap relief for re-signing your own drafted player to a max or super max contract for this exact reason to try and keep teams together so maybe these things can work in concert whereas if you actually built your team through the draft with your own players and you're great and you draft number one and the rookie scale salary is much higher than it is now you can actually keep that group together because you've built your team that way these are just ideas floating through my head as I try to conceptualize what this looks like. So they did increase the rookie scale salaries pretty dramatically in this most recent CBA. And I'll tell you what, right now, Kings have the worst record in the league right now, right? They've lost 14 games in a row. Yes, yes. They just got destroyed by Utah. They are the, can we just simulate the rest of the season? Like, I can't do it anymore. They're going to have to take on a first overall pick salary if they get the first overall pick, which is great. I'm sure they want the first overall pick. But you realize that $12 million salary might drive them into the tax. Like they're going to have like tax concerns for next year. So they're going to have to waive DeMar DeRozan and eat his $10 million. And maybe they'll have to stretch his $10 million. They're not going to have access to the MLE as is. So it's like they've got all this stuff they've got to do because of that large salary coming in. Now, that is not a team having to make – that's the opposite of difficult types of decisions that I think you were talking about. These are like all really treacherous decisions for Sacramento, but it is something that with a raised rookie scale. Can I ask you two proposals to get your reactions on them? The first one is what if they go back to the original lottery form? 14, the 14 non-playoff teams, make it into the lottery, and even odds for all 14 teams. I mean, I think that's, conceptually, I get why people would favor that. And again, you'd have to be okay with the 14th team winning the lottery. And that could be not just a good team. It could be a great team that happened to have a down year because of an injury or whatever. The fear with that would be you'd have teams tanking out of the playoffs and the play-in to get into the lottery, which is why I think no matter what you do, I like the idea of the first-round losers getting some love in the lottery so that you can incentivize teams to make the playoffs. So Pat Williams, the late great Pat Williams, who was the founder of the Orlando Magic. Not the five-year, $90 million number four pick that plays for the Bulls. No, Pat Williams, one of the great storytellers in the history of the NBA. Pat Williams ran the Magic for a long time, starting from their inception. And in the early 90s, the Magic win the Shaq lottery. And that was when it was even lottery odds across. And Pat Williams represented them on the dais. And David Stern reads off the Magic win the lottery. And Pat Williams goes over and he shakes David Stern's hands. And he's very excited. He won the lottery. He said he brought a, like, every type of good luck charm you could have. He said he brought a rabbit's foot. He brought a million other things just like to maximize the good luck. next year he goes and he doesn't bring any good luck charms because he says i'm not and pat told me this story long ago but he says he doesn't bring any good luck charms because he's like there's no way we're winning the lottery two years in a row so we'll just see what happens next year magic win the lottery this is the chris weber draft magic win the lottery again pat says from pat's retelling of the story pat pat said that david stern when he shook his hand He said it was the hardest handshake that he has ever felt in his entire life. He felt like he broke every bone in his body. He was so furious that the Magic had won a second consecutive lottery. And he was like, that handshake was when I knew we were going to get rid of even lottery odds right across the board. I loved the way that he used to tell that story. But that's why the NBA got rid of those even lottery odds, because that happened. And then they were like, oh, this is no good. I'm actually ready to leave this discussion behind because we're going to be talking about it for months and months as the competition committee talks about it and all that. This is just the reality that people have to come to grips with. If you actually want to eradicate tanking, eradicate it, you have to basically snip the connection between record and draft order. You have to be okay with the best team getting Victor Wemanyama. That might be a once every 25 years occurrence, but it will happen and you have to be all right with it. And again, it could happen this year with the Thunder, not with Wimbanyama, but, you know, with some luck, who knows? The Thunder could get the Bansa or something on their team. If you're OK with that, then that's fine. Like you're in favor of completely smashing the system and I'm still sort of thinking my way through it. the NBA I don't think is ever going to get there at least in the near future because they do believe that the draft has to redistribute talent in some way and that's why I think what will ultimately happen here is they'll chip away at it and try to throw this fix at it and this little fix at it and maybe it'll help and maybe it'll help enough that removing protections or like limiting protections and trades and all this can snuff out what we are having right now this egregiousness. And maybe that's enough because, again, the natural life cycle of teams is that they get good and then they get bad and then they need help. And I've been a believer in that my whole sports fandom life. I just think it's time to at least think through this kind of alternative universe that the wheel and other things talk about. What do you think about eliminating the draft altogether? I recognize it's not going to happen, but just as a thought exercise. Everyone goes into free agency, You save up cap room. You sign guys with MLEs. You sign guys with BAE. You sign guys. This is the good. Kevin Arnovitz's idea from 15 years ago was if you really want to eliminate tanking, this is one possible way to do it. And it was at that time when he proposed it and Henry Abbott at True Hoop would write about stuff like this. It was just so radical that I just sort of rejected it out of hand. It's like there's just this isn't how sports work. Sports work where the worst teams get help. and maybe the worst teams would still get help under a system like that because they'd have the most cap space or whatever to offer DeBansa or Peterson if Peterson plays more college basketball, whatever. But it also just has a ton of ripple effects for how you build your team, how you're going to time your cap sheet for this prospect who's 15 years old right now. What does that mean for a good team? So anyway, let's take a break and go rapid fire through some more fun basketball stuff. But I do think it's time to have a little more serious discussion about more radical proposals. OK, take a break and we'll talk about some new fits. All right, let's pivot to more fun stuff and talk about some new players fitting in post trade deadline. I already did this a little bit with Mo, but now we got more games, more data, more stuff. And this NBA moment is brought to you by State Farm. So real quickly, Fred, Cavs undefeated with James Harden, beat the pants off the Wizards. It's been pretty seamless to me. I talked a lot about this with Mo, so we don't need to go into it. It's been everything about James Harden's game and how it would mesh with Donovan Mitchell's game and Jared Allen's game and Sam Merrill's game. Sam Merrill hit 9 million three-pointers last night. It's been everything they could have hoped for. I graded an A-plus so far. It's been great. Pick and roll chemistry with Jared Allen looks as expected. They're like perfect pick and roll chemistry, guys. He looks really, really good. And the Cavs all of a sudden look super formidable. They're just piling up good wins right now. 12-2 in their last 14 games. They are fifth in offense, 13th in defense for the season. There is a whole conversation happening. Are they now the favorites in the East? I'm not going to go there yet. I know what's happened to this team in the playoffs. I know what's happened to James Harden in the playoffs. Detroit exists. The Knicks exist. The Celtics exist. But I will say co-favorites isn't too strong. Number two favorites maybe. I think Detroit deserves a little bit of the benefit of the doubt at this point. The reason we're still at CavsCon 4 and not all the way down to CavsCon 5 is that we have seen this movie before where Jared Allen goes crazy when Evan Mobley is hurt. and then when Evan Mobley comes back, it's not a lack of synergy between them because the numbers for the Cavs have always been good with those two on the floor. It's that they just can't quite get both of them singing together, and I just would like to see that. Plus, with Wade Hurt, Mobley Hurt, and Strews Hurt, they're just playing a ton of small guards. And all those guys that fit well, Keon Ellis has been good, Schroeder's been good, Porter Jr. is just always producing stuff. Even when he misses all his shots, he gets steals and assists some random block shots and rebounds. But we're at Cavs count four. Vucevic to the Celtics. Talked about this a little bit before. This is a team very well versed in having a shooting center after years of Forford and Porzingis And they had one in Garza but now they can sort of lean into a lot of the offense they used to run with Horford through Vucevic. He's passing well, he's making his threes. And to me, again, it's been a pretty seamless fit. Teams are going to go at him defensively. It's actually been interesting to watch Boston. Sometimes they'll have him in an extreme drop and sometimes they'll have him up at the level of the screen. They're sort of experimenting. with how they want to use Vuc. But to me, this was almost, I mean, no harm, no foul is strong because Simons was playing well for Boston. But this was always going to help their team. And just like last night against the Bulls, Vuc at the five, so no Kata, nobody clogging up the lane. They have Jalen Brown sprint up from the left corner around a Vucic screen at the top of the arc. The whole paint is clear. There's no switch. Peyton Pritchard hits him with the pass. It's just a red carpet. to the rim. They have a lot of this stuff scripted in their books from when Horford was there. It's been fine to me so far. Yeah. And I'll tell you one element that he adds, which if it goes well and he's able to stay on the floor and really help, he's going to help them in this facet a lot, which is he's easily the best box out guy that they have now. And that was something they needed. And if they want to make noise in the playoffs, they're going to either have to go up against Detroit, which means they're going to have to go up against all those ginormous dudes, Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart. It's one of the best rebounding teams in the league. Or they're going to have to stop Mitchell Robinson. And Joe Mazzula is obsessed with Mitchell Robinson. I love that regular season Joe Mazzula, he doesn't care. He's going hack a Mitch. Like, it's just, he's doing it. He doesn't care if that, like, Towns is on fire and this means Towns is coming back in the game. He's just getting Mitchell Robinson out of the game. Joe Mazzula is the only coach in the league who consistently, his team will not be in the bonus. and he will intentionally foul his team into the bonus to hack Mitchell Robinson just to try to get him off the floor. It is like the greatest sign of respect. He did that in a playoff game, and he's done it in the regular season. Like, he obsesses over trying to keep Mitchell Robinson off the court, and nobody keeps Mitchell Robinson off the boards. It's insane. It's literally historic what he's doing on the offensive boards, but they need someone in those moments who can just be a freaking body. and it's nice that Vucevic can sometimes exploit switches in the post and like again I never get excited about a nine foot lefty Vuce jump hook I think the hit rate on those is the efficiency on those is a little bit overblown because when it goes in it looks great and old school and it sort of tickles all the all the old school synapses in our bodies for those of us who are over 40 and remember post-ups like that he never gets to the free throw line and he only makes like 48 percent of those shots, so it's not great. But we mentioned Tatum before. Tatum and Horford had this beautiful partnership in these perimeter actions where there was one in particular that I loved when Horford would set a pin down, what looked like a pin down for Tatum to curl off and take a three. And Tatum would curl right back and U-turn and set a pin down for Horford. And Horford would shoot threes out of it. That's what I mean by Tatum could just slide right into some of what they do with Vucevic. The wild card for Vucevic is this. And this is always going to be the playoff tester When they get to go time, when they face a great defense, Vuc shot 40% on threes last year, 38% this year. The years before that were 29, 34, 31, and then a 40, then a 33, 36, 31. The tester for me with Vucic is our team's going to react to him shooting above the break threes because those are the only threes he's getting. He's a screen setter. He pops out to the top of the arc. Last night, the Bulls reacted. They sent a third defender flying into his line of sight, which opened up his passes. and opened up cuts and all that. I think the smart teams are going to be like, we're cool with just helping and recovering two-on-two to that, and we're going to make you make a few before we do anything adjustment-wise and draw more attention to you. And I'm just, when the playoffs come, I'm curious how that equation goes for him. Yeah, well, what drives with that, Zach, is like if you look any year, you look at the list of shooters who are the most commonly closed out on. in the NBA, Vucevic is always at or near the top. He's always one of the most commonly closed out on shooters. So what does that mean? If guys are constantly closing out on him, that means they weren't covering him previously. It also means he's one of the more sagged off of or helped off of shooters. He's right in that in-between where we're going to sag off of you, but we're also going to rush to close out on you. But it also means that the level of shooter that he is, even if he's shooting 38, 40 percent, is not necessarily conducive. It's not necessarily congruent with the level of spacer that he is. Often those two things line up. Doesn't always. But the level of spacer he is isn't quite the level of the level of shooter that he is. Guys will help off of him and that kind of stuff. And the good teams tend to do it. So I'm with you. Breaking news. And we're going to get to the Knicks anyway, because the Jose Alvarado show has made its way to the Mecca. The Knicks are signing Jeremy Sohan Fred this is your backyard This is Not going to be a two way deal I would imagine This is like a legit They got an open roster spot They have 14 Rest of the season deal I guess why not I don't expect him to play real minutes For the Knicks but Why not I guess I don't really have any other reaction to it Except he's a smart passer, cutter, screener, good defender whose limitations as a shooter have just, like, he can't play with Mitchell Robinson and Josh Hart together. But maybe there is a world in which it's five, it's four out with Towns and Sohan is the inverted center. I mean, I think that we're getting way ahead of our skis and I would view this as a development play, but that's me. Yeah, I think that's probably true. They looked into him on the trade market. I don't think there was like real traction there or anything like that. I think it was more like as part of their Yabusele talks and trying to get off of Yabusele, they spoke to the Spurs about him in like a not totally serious way. So there was interest there. I mean, the one thing that he's good at is he can be a good quick decisions guy. If he's going well, he's good. Like I'm going to set the screen and I'm going to make the quick decision as a secondary ball handler. I'm going to make the quick decision in a short roll. And the Knicks could use guys like that. I don't think he'll really be a part of their rotation. I guess I could see him getting like the Muhammad Diora minutes. Diora has been good lately. Diora has been good lately. I mean, he was really good against Philly again last night. He's had a couple of really big games. He's been hitting his threes when he's open. They've been using him against, I mean, the other day in Boston, Mike Brown just put him on Jalen Brown. Like he's guarded Jalen Brown and did like a good job guarding Jalen Brown. uh he's it's i wasn't expecting this from him in his rookie season but he's pretty interesting but like you know that role if i'm not going to sit here also and say that diawara has that role on total lockdown and it's ready to go uh it's just another body it's a it's a 15th guy they opened up a little bit room under the hard cap when they made the alvarado trade and and uh you know they were going to sign someone and it makes sense speaking of alvarado new fit new place eight threes and five steals last night in the Knicks easy win over Philadelphia. That's about as Jose Alvarado apex game as there could ever be. He's a great fit. He's a very good backup point guard. They've played him with Brunson in every game that he's played so far. And, you know, that partnership is small but workable. Obviously, they need somebody of his ilk with Deuce McBridehurt. and maybe this is a hedge against like when guys come back from injury right before the playoffs, it sometimes is a tough reintegration process to go from zero to 100 for Deuce McBride. And so I don't know what happens. Like Deuce was awesome this season. Awesome. Like shooting the shit out of the ball, defense hard, does everything you'd want from a guard coming off the bench. I don't know what happens if he comes back to that form, how, you know, you can play both of them and just never play Kolek and never play Clarkson and neither of those guys can seem to earn consistent trust. Shamit seems to have earned that more than those guys. So the Knicks have a lot of guards. That's fine. Alvarado has been everything you could have ever asked him or dreamed of him being for the Knicks. And as long as McBride is out, like perfect plug-and-play fit. Yeah, really good plug-and-play fit. I think, assuming McBride is McBride and that he's back in time for the playoffs, which right now there hopefully will be, I think McBride is still going to play that similar sort of role, but the reality is that McBride, even though he's the size of a point guard, he's more a point guard in stature than he is in skill set. He's a two guard. He's an off-ball option. Yeah, he's an off-ball option. He can attack a closeout. He can take it up in transition, and he's fast, but he's not really a creator. He's not going to run many pick-and-rolls for you. He's really just like a small wing. He's going to be really feisty, guarding the ball defensively and all that. He's going to play super hard. He's going to shoot insanely well on catch and shoot. He's going to shoot insanely well off the dribble. He's got a step back now, which has been so good. But that's how he's going to be. And what they wanted was an extra ball handler to basically just give them a better version of what Tyler Kolek was giving them. And Alvarado was that. He also helps with their point of attack defense, which has been an issue. He is a point of attack defense by himself. 100%. And I will add that one other thing that he gives them is that before he went off, and by the way, he did that line back in 19 minutes. Like it was 26 points and eight for 13 on threes. He didn't take any twos. Eight for 13 from three with five steals in 19 minutes. And it all came after he came into the game, and Trenton Watford had a hard foul on Mitchell Robinson. I saw it. Jose Alvarado was like, you want to do this? You want to do it? Let's go. Uh-huh. And and it I mean, look, the first thing that comes to your mind is like. Draymond Green having a hard like tripping cat earlier this year and nobody on the team really doing anything. And it's like Mike Brown hugging Draymond Green and then Mike Brown hugging Draymond Green being a whole thing. And like they don't have very confrontational people in that locker room. Like, it's just like a lot of well-to-do, laid-back dudes. And Jose Alvarado doing that when he has been there for six minutes. And then, by the way, he had missed like eight straight threes before that moment. And then he got the tech for standing up to Watford. And then he had eight threes. It were like a 15-minute span of playing time and was just chucking them. He had a moment in that game against Philly, Zach, where he did the hide in the corner, sneak from behind, steal the ball in transition thing. Sure, GTA. Then stole it, came back. It was like a 40-point game at this point. Stole it, came back down, shot a three from the wing immediately, missed the three. Philly got the rebound, made an inbounds pass, made an outlet pass, and then he stole the outlet pass and then assisted a three to Diawara. And I'm like, damn, like two steals in literally three seconds. It was. It's just a little injection of energy that I don't think the Knicks get it from some of their guys. But the fact that they can now get it from Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson and now him like Matt Moore. had a really said it the best that when they traded for Alvarado he said Alvarado Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson is like the ultimate trio of I'm just going to completely fuck up a playoff series and drive opposing fans mad the whole time. It's like the ultimate trio of those sorts of guys so it's a very interesting element for them and I don't know if he's going to Average 50 points per 36 minutes, but it looks good so far. He's acclimating himself quite well. I'm glad to hear it and see it because I feel emotionally invested in the Knicks, having picked them to make the finals and felt good about that pick for exactly zero seconds the entire season, but have not felt good about anyone else in the East, good enough about them anyway to re-pick. Maybe Detroit is flirting with that, but I'm sticking with the Knicks for no reason. real quickly two other teams I'm going to be watching for fit reasons and other reasons I think the Bulls are like weirdly interesting now that they have this mishmash of just second draft second chance guys and I'm particularly zeroed in on Dillingham and Jaden Ivy and what you just said about Deuce McBride like Jaden Ivy felt a little lost in Detroit as a guy who came into the league as a alpha on offense a guy who runs the show and ultimately it was decided for him that, A, we have a guy who's just better than you, and B, your decision-making is a little wonky, and we don't quite trust it, and so you're going to be more of an off-guard guy when you share the floor with Cade, and to his credit, Jaden Ivey turned himself into a very good three-point shooter, and now he goes to the Bulls with a million small guards, Sexton, Dillingham, Simons, on and on and on, and he's not getting to run the offense there hardly at all, and it just looks more and more like he's going to be a bigger, Deuce McBride, more dynamic. I'm just saying what you said about him in that he plays more off the ball on offense and needs to defend the smallest player on the other team on defense. So you need to pair him with a big lead ball handler. That just seems what he's going to be. And Dillingham, it's just one of the craziest watches in the league because he'll make a play where you're like, oh my God, last night against Boston, they trapped him on the pick and roll. He split it, darted into the lane. Derek White meets him at the rim. Two hands verticality. Derek White, the best shot blocking guard in the league, the best shot blocking guard since Dwayne Wade. Dillingham just goes right through him for a layup. And then I'll have other plays where he rejects the screen, has Vucevic slow, Nikola Vucevic, clearly beat and doesn't have the confidence to either take a jump shot, which he rarely has the confidence to do when he should. And not only that, U-turns it out and continues to play like a guy who feels like the hook is coming for him at any minute, but he's getting, the Bulls have decided, we're giving you the on-ball reps and not Ivy. That's interesting in and of itself, and I just, I'm going to be watching every Dillingham minute for the rest of the season to see if there's anything to be squeezed out of that. Ivy's an incredibly fascinating situation, because Ivy went from a spot where it was almost like, exactly, and he was in a spot where, I'm going to say mostly because of injuries, the team's timeline around him sped up faster than his timeline could. When at one point they were on the same timeline. And then obviously he had a weird experience with Monty Williams in that disaster of a season and Monty was playing Killian Hayes and whatnot. And it's like, there are all these external factors that you could say for why this guy who is talented maybe fell behind the rest of the team. Now, I'm not saying that he got completely screwed and that he'd be a star or something like that if handled differently. But I do think there's a world where like, like he's the exact kind of second draft guy who I'm like, I would bet on. Like I could see that being him being the ultimate change of environment kind of guy. And if I'm him and what I care about is my upcoming free agency, is there a better team? Even if you're not running the offense, it's a better team to go to than the Bulls. All this cap space. if you go out and you play well and you're a pros pro like you might be able to and you you might be able to get something there the bulls have all this cap room like i had so many agents who had guys who were upcoming free agents and might get traded say to me like oh just oh my god gets traded to the bulls like there were so many teams who were hoping their guys got traded to the bulls because of the bulls financial situation coming up where they have so much money to spend and we'll see how they're going to do it. And so he's in like a good mate. And look, he went from a team that's awesome to a team that is very far from awesome. And I'm sure that's not the best, but that's a good situation to send a guy to. And it's a very interesting situation to follow heading into the summer. He was a fifth pick in the draft not that long ago. And last year was doing a really good job for Detroit until he got hurt and it ended the year was doing a good job as an off ball shooter. The three-point shooting is almost proven, like almost rock solid. Totally. The on ball stuff just hasn't, in terms of his passing, decision making, which is really hard to be the guy on an NBA team with the game being so fast and so athletic. He just hasn't been there. So it just makes you feel like what kind of player is he going to be. Dillingham, just sort of because of his size and his quickness, they have to give him all these reps and he's hunted on defense all the time, but he will do two things every game. And in transition, he's like a demon because he's so fast. And I also think he doesn't have time to think in transition. He just doesn't have to read the defense. He doesn't have to worry about, am I supposed to take a pull-up three or two here? I'm not so feeling great about my jump shot. He just goes, and he looks very effective. So I'm just interested. The polls last night at one point against Boston in a hopeless Pack-Our-Bags-For-Cancun the all-star break game. At one point, not too long, but long enough, they had, I think, Sexton, Ivy, Simons, Dillingham, and Yabusele was their lineup. So four small guards and a 6-7 center. And I was just thinking, Billy Donovan must be sitting here like, I'm glad I get extended every year because this is hopeless. Last thing, and then we got to go. Denver, two and four in its last six games. Jokic comes back, doesn't solve everything altogether Unconvincing win against the Zombie Grizz last night in Denver Came down to the wire My worry level is minimal Other than Gordon and Watson are both hurt And they are as a result playing extremely small Most of this little mini skid is because their defense has been bad Their offense has been great, particularly when Jokic is on the floor And if you look at why their defense has been bad opponent jump shooters are on fire so you chalk that up to at least somewhat just a random run of bad luck they're playing better teams and one of the reasons they did so well without Jokic was their schedule was mostly bad teams and they did what they should do which is beat bad teams schedule is often just like the determinative thing in any streak of any kind that surprises you their turnovers are up since Jokic came back and it's not all on him but he's been a little sloppier than usual. This is a team that normally does not turn the ball over at all, and that's hurting their defense. I'm not worried at all. They're fine. It's just, with Gordon and Watson out, they feel small. In a way, that's magnified the Aaron Gordon wild card to me. Even when Watson plays in his back, and he'll be back in X amount of weeks, I think they said four weeks, he trends... His best defensive skill is guarding smaller, quicker players, not big apex predator. He's fine at that, but Gordon guards up in size better than he guards down in size, and they just feel a little small and a little less stout without Aaron Gordon, even with Watson there. Right now, they're just playing four guards all the time, but I'm unworried is my verdict. And by the way, not only am I unworried, this is my home, my condo on the beach of Strother Straits has finally started to ascend in value because Julian Strother is doing stuff that seems replicable. He's hitting his floaters. He's hitting his threes. He's making mistakes on defense. But, you know, he also makes some plays on defense. I'm telling you, I've been holding on to this property on Strother Straits for years. I might have to sell now. I'll tell you what. So close games really determine so much of what we say about this stuff. Like we said they played so well without Jokic, and don't get me wrong, they did. Their point differential wasn't crazy without Jokic. It might have been. It was like right around even or something like that. And you look at the games that they've lost recently. First of all, they're like all to really good teams. And second of all, it's like they lost to Cleveland by two. They lost to the Knicks in double overtime. They lost to Detroit by three. They lost to Oklahoma City. Like those are their last four losses. At the same time, despite the guys who are out, you'd like to see them go two and two against that level of competition, even if every loss is by two points. Yeah, I will add to your point and say that their defense is about 10 points per 100 possessions better when Aaron Gordon is on the court. And some of that is due to shooting variance. Teams are shooting a bad percentage from three when he's out there. And I'm sure he doesn't affect it to the degree the three point numbers say it does. but passes the eye test of how much better they are defensively when they have his level of wind defense. No Peyton Watson is important. And so Jokic, since he came back, has had 31 turnovers. Like, you mentioned the turnovers. I'm like, he's had 31 turnovers. He had nine turnovers against Memphis. Memphis was, like, just grabbing the ball from him. And unusually, like, he usually hears you and sees you coming from the – he's, like, he's got eyes in the back of his head. But guys like Omax Prosper and Mayshack and other guys legit surprised him. It just took the ball from him. Yeah, so I went through his 31 turnovers that he's had since he came back. And in a completely unscientific way, I just deemed – I watched the plays. And then I deemed like, okay, did this happen because of a forced turnover or was it just an unforced turnover? And the types of unforced turnovers I have where he made a sloppy pass, he had a sloppy handle where he just lost the ball. He tried to, uh, you know, draw a foul and the foul wasn't called and he just lost the ball on the way up, uh, in a legal screen, which there were two of, or he tried like a super ambitious Jokic pass and it just didn't work, which is going to happen sometimes when you've got Jokic. And those are the unforced ones. 22 out of the 31, I deemed unforced. The other ones were because he got double teamed and actually got frazzled by the double team. There were five of those. There were three plays where guys knocked away his dribble. A lot of them were against Detroit. A lot of the forced ones were against either Detroit or Oklahoma City, which are literally the two best forcing turnovers teams in the league. I will also add Denver is in a uniquely bad place to have its star get into a turnover slump. And the reason why isn't just because they never really turn it over. it's because defensively they force no turnovers. They force none. So they go so far in the red that that's when you lose the close games because the other team gets five more shots than you. And that's the difference in the game. I think they're 30th in turnover forcing rate. Yeah, they are. They are. And they have like a 12% turnover rate on defense, which is last in the league. And you can survive on that, but they're not a good offensive rebounding team. They're a good defensive rebounding team, but they're not a good offensive rebounding team. They don't really crash and they don't force turnovers. So what you have to do is you have to not turn the wall over. And when Jokic has nine turnovers against Memphis, it is going to cut things way too close for comfort. And when you do that against the team like Oklahoma city, the forces, a lot of turnovers doesn't turn it over a lot themselves. You do it against a team like Detroit who will turn it over, but forces turnovers on the other side and gets a ton of offensive rebounds. And there's a good defensive rebounding team. You're going to give up extra scoring chances, and that's the most common way you lose these close games. You want to see who won a close game? It's usually just who had more scoring chances. That's what decides it so often. All that said, dog days, all-star break, guys coming in and out of the lineup. I'm not worried. I still think this team is the equal of Oklahoma City. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's my point. Asterix, asterix, Aaron Gordon. Jokic is just doing un-Jokic stuff, which isn't going to keep up, and when it matters, you won't do that stuff, and the Nuggets will be the Nuggets. Aaron Gordon, asterisk. All right, Fred Katz, Athletic, covers the whole league, A++, Cats and Shoot podcast, which hopefully I will be on soon as a guest. He's the best. Thank you for your time, buddy. Thanks for having me. All right, that's it for the Zach Lowe Show today. Thanks to Fred Katz from The Athletic for his insight. Thanks to Mike, Billy, and Jonathan on production. As always, thanks to you all for listening to and or watching the Zach Lowe Show. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Talk to you soon. Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 1-877-770-7867.