The Bill Simmons Podcast

Wemby Gets Revenge, Morey’s Out, and a Trade-Fueled Mega-Mailbag With Kirk Goldsberry and David Jacoby

124 min
May 13, 202618 days ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Bill Simmons, Kirk Goldsberry, and David Jacoby recap the Spurs' Game 5 playoff victory over Minnesota, discuss the implications of Daryl Morey's firing from the 76ers, and conduct an extensive mailbag covering NBA trades, draft strategy, and player evaluations across the league.

Insights
  • Young NBA teams are reaching peak performance faster than historical precedent suggests, with 20-year-old Dylan Harper already impacting playoff games at an elite level comparable to year 3-4 Kobe
  • The Spurs' depth and young core (Wembanyama, Castle, Harper) may represent the most talented young trio in the league, positioning them as long-term threats despite conventional wisdom about young teams needing time
  • Daryl Morey's firing reflects the salary cap constraints of the second apron era, where aging star contracts (Paul George, Joel Embiid) handcuff teams more severely than in previous decades
  • The NBA lottery broadcast format fails to match the gravity of its moments, requiring fundamental restructuring with longer reveals, GM representation, and contextual analysis between picks
  • Kevin Durant's legacy has been clouded by his recent career trajectory, obscuring how dominant his 2010-2016 peak was when he was arguably the second or third-best player of that decade
Trends
Accelerated player development timelines challenging traditional NBA progression modelsSecond apron salary cap creating structural disadvantages for teams with aging star rostersYoung core depth becoming more valuable than individual star power in modern playoff basketballBroadcast format evolution needed for marquee NBA events to match entertainment value of contentSmall market teams (OKC, San Antonio) gaining competitive advantage through draft capital accumulationGuard-heavy rosters with multiple scoring options outperforming traditional big-man dependent teamsDefensive versatility and switchability becoming prerequisite for playoff successPhysical playoff defense against young stars (Wembanyama) testing referee consistency and foul call standardsFree agency becoming less relevant; draft picks and internal development driving contention windowsNarrative recency bias affecting historical player legacy and Hall of Fame discussions
Topics
NBA Playoff Performance AnalysisYoung Player Development and Ceiling ProjectionsSalary Cap Management and Second Apron ConstraintsDraft Strategy and Lottery System ReformTrade Speculation and Roster ConstructionDefensive Schemes Against Elite CentersBroadcast Format and Sports Media ProductionPlayer Legacy and Historical ComparisonsCoaching Impact on Young TeamsPlayoff Seeding and Matchup AnalysisFree Agency vs. Draft Capital Trade-offsInjury Impact on Championship WindowsReferee Consistency in Playoff GamesSmall Market Team CompetitivenessPlayer Personality and Fan Engagement
Companies
FanDuel
Sports betting platform offering same-game parlays, live betting, and profit boosts for NBA playoff games
The Ringer
Media company housing Bill Simmons' podcast network and The Rewatchables film discussion series
Netflix
Streaming service hosting comedy films discussed on The Rewatchables including Tropic Thunder and Borat
Uber Eats
Food delivery service offering last-minute gifting options for various occasions
New Era
Official NBA cap manufacturer featuring Hardwood Classics collection of vintage team logos
People
Kirk Goldsberry
Co-host discussing Spurs-Timberwolves series, young player development, and conducting mailbag segment
David Jacoby
Co-host on mailbag segment providing analysis on trades, draft strategy, and player evaluations
Victor Wembanyama
Young center discussed as potential best player in the world with elite defensive impact and scoring ability
Dylan Harper
20-year-old guard impacting playoff games at elite level, compared favorably to young Kobe and SGA
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Discussed as potential best guard in league and ceiling comparison for Dylan Harper's development
Daryl Morey
Fired as Sixers GM after first-round sweep; career analyzed regarding contract decisions and legacy
Joel Embiid
Discussed regarding contract constraints, playoff performance, and potential trade scenarios
Stefan Castle
Young guard part of Spurs' elite young core, praised for two-way play and development trajectory
Anthony Edwards
Discussed regarding playoff performance, potential trade scenarios, and Atlanta connection
Kevin Durant
Legacy discussion regarding 2010-2016 peak being underrated due to recent career trajectory
Sam Presti
Praised for draft strategy and organizational discipline in building young core without public commentary
Joe House
Discussed as most famous Wizards fan and potential lottery representative for Washington
Jalen Duren
Analyzed regarding playoff underperformance and upcoming max contract decision for Pistons
Derrick Rose
Legacy discussion regarding MVP award, Hall of Fame eligibility, and injury impact on career
Tim Duncan
Historical comparison for SGA regarding personality and fan engagement despite elite play
Quotes
"Harper's potentially a second banana. I think it's realistic to think this is a guy who could be as good as those guys, that he could be a first team all NBA guy and a really impact awesome second banana."
Bill SimmonsEarly segment
"Twenty year olds aren't supposed to do this in the NBA playoffs, right, Bill?"
Kirk GoldsberrySpurs-Timberwolves discussion
"If OKC and San Antonio play next round, I think this is the best series in eight years. I'm not talking about entertainment value. I'm talking about talent, ceiling of the teams and the matchups."
Bill SimmonsMid-segment analysis
"The gravity of these moments is monumental. We just talked about the spurs and the broadcast doesn't respect how important this is or how electrifying it is for these fan bases."
Kirk GoldsberryLottery discussion
"I think four might be a little low. Let's go 10. You're a lot of potty."
Kirk GoldsberryBrain fart discussion
Full Transcript
The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables. On Monday night, we did Tropic Thunder as part of Comedy Month, which we tried to tie into Netflix as a joke. All these movies are on Netflix, by the way. So we did Tropic Thunder Monday. That was me, Chris Ryan, Van Lathen, and first timer, Joel Anderson. I'm pretty sure next week is going to be Borat. So I'm just giving you a heads up. That's also on Netflix. They have a bunch of great comedies in general, including a bunch of comedies that we've already done on rewatchables, like 48 Hours, Mrs. Dalfire, and Long Cape Pauley, and Ghostbusters, on and on and on. So go check that out. Coming up on this podcast, Kirk Goldsbury and I are going to recap an impressive Spurs Game 5 win over Minnesota. I have some big picture thoughts about this game that aren't even tied to Game 5. So we'll hit that. We're going to talk about Darryl Mora getting ousted out of Philly. And then we're going to go back in time because Kirk and Dave Jacobi and I did a mailbag on a whole bunch of NBA stuff, and it's really fun. So it's all next. We're going to take a break, hit Pearl Jam, and then Kirk. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall. It's been a wild playoff run. Not over yet. Just to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan. Fandall, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays during NBA postseason, build the same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout, or try live betting and jump into the action right after tip-off, whatever you want. That's the whole point of live betting. Download the Fandall Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBO or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat, Connecticut. All right. This segment is brought to you by Ferrero. We are going to talk about game five, Spurs, Timberwolves in San Antonio, the return of Wemby after game, kicked out of game four. Kirk Goldsberry is here. He's going to be with us throughout the podcast because we're doing a mailbag with Chacoby later. I'll just tell you my basketball fan take coming out of this game because I really thought Minnesota had a genuine chance to win this series and who knows, they might win six and seven. As a basketball fan, you're starting to really see the ceiling potential of where this first thing could go, right? Big spotlight, big games, more pressure now. It's like who's going to fade from this? Who's going to jump up? You're seeing some of their guys Harper specifically where it's like, oh shit, this might be happening sooner than we thought, which is great because I've talked about this a million times. I like when we have great teams. That's what I grew up on. That's what I grew up on in the 80s and 90s. I like to see awesome teams. So basketball fan bill is like, this is cool. Spurs, Thunder, this is going to be great. Celtics fan bill and what are we going to talk about for eight months a year bill is kind of like, are we headed toward a world where we might be fucked here with this? Okay. So you say the ten year thing? It's just going to be levitating above us for the next six, seven years. Like talk me off the cliff. Well, it's not a cliff where I'm sitting here in central Texas. Yeah, you like it. But yeah, dude, there was a moment at the end of the third quarter where I could see why Bill Simmons, the sports guy, would feel that way specifically with Dylan Harper, attacking the rim, finishing with his left hand, hitting layups high off the glass over Rudy Gaubert's outstretched arms. Physicality, rebounds and traffic. I mean, it was the whole thing. Yeah. Stefan Castle guarding Julius Randall, making Moles fans completely lose their mind with a Randall stat line that I'm sure we'll talk about. But yeah, these three dudes and no disrespect to Carter Bryant, De'Aaron Fox, but when we're talking about the brightest futures in the NBA, I think the San Antonio Spurs now have the best young trio in the league by far with Wemby, Castle and Harper, dude. And I don't know which Castle or Harper is going to be better. But yeah, what are we talking about? We're talking about a 22 year old Victor Wemby and Yama, a 21 year old Stefan Castle Bill and a 20 year old Dylan Harper making huge plays in a second round playoff series. The Harper thing is crazy. We knew it was good. We've been talking about it all year in the playoffs. The stuff he's doing is like year three slash year four, Kobe, where he's just coming in and changing the flow of these games. Yeah. Like he, he shouldn't be doing this yet. Like Kobe came into the league right out of high school and, you know, had that really rocky first series. It, he didn't really start to look like kick-ass Kobe. I don't think until midway through year two, which is where Harper is now because he's spending year in college. But for point cards, this should take longer. You shouldn't look this comfortable. You shouldn't be a two way player already. You shouldn't be coming to games and swinging games like he's doing. And I was texting somebody about this. Like to me, I don't say this lightly, like having Harper and Wemby back to back. And I feel like I'm disrespecting Castle, but I think he's going to be third in this. We saw this when the Celtics added Mikhail and Adberg. We saw this when the Celtic, when the Lakers added worthy after they had magic. And we saw it when the Bulls had MJ and then they were able to get pipping. I think Harper's potentially is a second banana. I think it's realistic to think this is a guy who could be as good as those guys, that he could be a first team, all NBA guy and a really impact. Awesome. Second banana. You're watching in a real time, everything we have learned about basketball. These teams happen faster than they thought. These young guys come up faster than you think. And he's I loved him already. I can't believe the shit he's doing in these playoff games. Yeah, it's it's the son of Ron Harper. These moments where he feels the contact on the lane line and a lot of guards of any age would either go to the floater or like look for a kick out. But he's like, oh, I'm going to lower my shoulder now and then go to this incredible finishing package I have through contact a lot of times. And it's just but yeah, he has the best footwork, the best feel for the game of any young young guard in the paint. There's times where I think Bill, he really reminds me of Shea, where he is just the smartest scoring guard inside the three point line of any young player I've seen. But he was spectacular tonight, and it's particularly in the third quarter. And one of the things that's when it was become a game in the third quarter and I felt like, oh, here we go. This is going to be an awesome game. We both love Luke Cornette. Yeah. But it's a roller coaster. It's like when LeBron came out for those Cav team and you're just like, oh, my God, are we going to survive the non LeBron minutes? We just watched the lead go away. Oh, we had that in the second quarter in this game. And it looked like to your point, it was going to happen again in the third. And at that moment where Dylan Harper really made a few plays on both ends of the court, that just grew the lead back to a comfortable margin. I'm glad you brought up Shea. I think that's a really good comparison. And it's because of the patience in the footwork. That's it. He has patience already, which you should not have when you're 20. And he had the footwork coming in. That was one of the things that made him special. I've talked about before I was going to those clipper games when Shea was a rookie. Harper's just way ahead of where Shea was. We all like Shea. We thought Shea was going to be really good. I thought he was going to be like this glue guy, athletic defensive guard. There was some offense there, you know, but clearly like a winning player. Harper's like, I don't honestly don't know what the ceiling is for him. I think as long as the SJ has the best guard in the league title now, and he's going to have it for the next couple of years, and Edwards is right underneath him. But I think Harper at some point in his life will wear that crown unless he gets hurt. Well, that's what I would say. The ceiling is Shea. And I say that with a great amount of respect. I agree with you. He's one of the best guards we've seen in a very long time. But when we're talking about the ceiling of this dude, that's where I would say it. And to your point, like the Oklahoma City Thunder would not have SGA if he was this good at Dylan Harper's age. There's no way you would get off this guy. So I think, look, that's the ceiling. SGA is one of the best players in the world, if not the best player in the world. But Dylan is, I mean, you're the historian of basketball. Twenty year olds aren't supposed to do this in the NBA playoffs, right, Bill? I was thinking about the first Michael's Ricky year, the South Six won the title and he was a six man. They had Maxwell, they had Bird, they had Robert Parrish. Like it was a really deep team and he would come in sometimes and he would swing games because he had some low post stuff, but he had the defense. And there were times, especially in the Philly series that year, when he came in and his defense definitely affected the game and you're like, oh, this guy's pretty special. Like there's really something there. Michael was like at least two years older than Dylan Harper. I'd be like, if Dylan Harper after his junior year was doing this, and that's the part, I know these guys, you know, that I know they mature faster now and I know, I get it. Like, we shouldn't be surprised when somebody's 20 and impacting a series like this. But you talk about later in a mailbag, we were talking about De'Aaron Fox in a later segment and like, you have Fox, you think Fox is going to be a bridge for a couple of years until you can get to these guys. And it's like, do you need a bridge? Like, what's Harper going to be like next year with a year under his belt? You know? Yeah, that's where I thread the needle. You do need the bridge and I applaud the move to get De'Aaron Fox. But this is the best case scenario where you have the depth right now, which was huge tonight. It's been huge in this series. But you start to look out two years, three years down the road. You start to say, maybe we have too many great guards and we don't have enough strength up front next to Wemby. Somebody to play with Nasri and Jane McDaniels, man, they're playing their hearts out. And that's where the spurs look a little thin to me. It reminds me of the Thunder pre-Hartonstein, where they're a little bit soft in the middle sometimes. That's a good comparison. Yeah, so Carter Bryan played 12 minutes today and Keldon Johnson played 22. It was great. And that's kind of that's kind of their their patchwork size next to Wemby. They don't really necessarily. I actually think Carter Bryan is going to end up being that guy. So the piece like I was thinking about in context with the with the Timberwolves, who after game one, I thought there was a real case like, wow, this is two straight conference finals for them. San Antonio is young, not quite ready yet. And I really felt like it was a 50-50 series after game one. The odds didn't reflect that. And now I'm looking at Minnesota. You know, they got their asses kicked in. What did they finish shooting? Thirty, thirty eight point six, twenty seven point three season average. I mean, there are series average. They're shooting under 40 percent. And a lot of trouble. Well, a lot of trouble against the defensive pressure sometimes. And the one thing I was worried about with them even early in this series was like, man, they're kind of relying on Mike Conley here. I don't know, old guys in a series. And then you look at tonight, what was he? Sixteen minutes, five points minus six. But it's this is Mike Conley kudos to you. You're playing at this advanced age, but you see the young guys in the athleticism and the speed that these guards are at. This is the San Antonio advantage when they can just put any combination of all the young guards or, you know, if they put Vacelle out there or whatever. Really, the only team that has the kind of firepower to withstand it is probably OKC. Yeah, I'm really glad you said that. There was a moment where our man, Stefan Castle, goes out with his third foul. Eight minutes left in the second quarter. Yeah. And then you just see that depth coming in so important. You see, you know, everybody from Carter Bryant to Harrison Barnes, Dylan Harper, Kelton Johnson, played the best game of the series. But this is a deep team. I think Spurs played 10 guys before garbage time. And really the the the Wolves are a thin eight there, Bill. Yeah, they're like a seven. Yeah. And that's because, I mean, Dante DiVincenzo. And what I wanted to ask you about is the Ant-Man is not the Ant-Man right now. He's he's one of my favorite players to watch on the planet. He, I believe, had fewer field goal attempts than I.O. DeSunmu. That is that's not a great stat. He is not attacking. He didn't have that swagger as much today. Well, they're going every other going every other day. Probably not great for him. There's a three day break. So they don't play until Friday. Yeah, could potentially help him. It's really going to help my Conley. They they got to figure out the Randall thing. He didn't shoot. He didn't shoot well again today. There's another guy that we didn't talk about yet. I'm really proud of us, Victor Wembanyama. Oh, yeah, he the French guy, right? The one of the French guy. I don't know if you saw the beginning, but he scored a lot of points early before they took him out. Yeah. He had 16 points in like six minutes. And it was a good. Fuck everybody. I'm still mad. I got kicked out of game four. I owe you guys. He finished with what? Twenty seven, 17 and five, three blocks. He's plus 24, 32 minutes. Yeah. So you have that piece, too. Well, here's the thing that Spurs fans love. So he lays an egg in game one. OK, Minnesota comes to San Antonio steals game one. And he was he played like shit by his standards. And so you're sitting here in game two, people like you are like, oh, my God, can Minnesota win this series? And the whole time, Victor is prepping to come out. And he comes out in game two and the Wolves don't score for whatever. How many minutes and he was awesome. And then obviously in game four, he gets kicked out with the elbow deservedly, by the way, as much of Spurs homers I am. How was he going to come out in the biggest game of his NBA career? And he came out again on fire and just dominated the first eight minutes of this game with what was he as 16 and 11 in the first quarter. Yeah. Are you kidding? Yeah. And if I'm OKC thinking about the next series, you know, what am I getting from J Dubb? I need I need all my horses for this next series. And I don't see Antonio. The question with them was, well, history league says that that that nobody, nobody under 25 can lead a team no title without having a taste of it first. No young team just that get thrown in the playoff fire can survive that first year. And there I just feel like all bets are off, especially with how Castle is playing. But on the OKC side, they're not 100 percent healthy. San Antonio, you know, knock on wood. San Antonio feels like they're running on all injury cylinders. But with the with the Minnesota piece, pretty devastating. Like, yeah, you're in set. You win seven playoff series over the last three years. You kind of had a team built. The league has these little three, four year windows with the way the tax works that you can maybe OKC and San Antonio would be a little bit of the outliers because of their young guys. But for the most part, three, four years, that's what we just saw with the Celtics. You try to catch lightning in a bottle for one of those years. Celtics caught it in 2024. They had holiday. They had poor Zingas and they're just able to, you know, everything kind of aligns and they're spending a ton of money. If you're Minnesota, you just basically went all in. You got rid of all your picks. You're playing a San Antonio team that this is the worst version of the team you're going to play for the rest of the decade. Right. You had bad luck with Defoncenzo and you and ants. Not 100 percent, but he's not 80 percent. He's somewhere in between there. Go Bears going to be a year older. You're not going to have Conley. You're not going to really have a way to get better. This was kind of it. And I don't know if I'm Tim Conley and I guess I'm not going to the Dallas job because they gave it to Missy, but I don't know what my move is at that point other than dangling Randall everywhere. I like their position a little bit more than you. I think that I would say Ant-Man still 23. Divin Chen, they remember this is a team without Ant and Divin Chenzo that beat Joker in a game six. I like their core. I could talk myself. I think Finch is a really good coach. This is, you know, this is where I wonder if our standards are too high for too many teams. Like they made the final four of the last two years. They have one of the best young players in the league. Can they get through with McDaniels, Ant-Man, Go Bear, Naz? I kind of like that core bill. And I don't know. We'll see the one thing that I think you and I will agree on is it's very annoying to have Alex Rodriguez in the conversation because normally I have. Right, you gotta agree against that. Yeah. Yeah, I love these guys and I want them to do well. But I was like, yeah, I wonder what A-Rod wants to do. That just sucks for me as a Red Sox guy. Well, it's interesting that you, I mean, I agree with you. They made the final four, two years in a row. They went, they knocked out Denver. I think they've done a nice job going toe to toe with with San Antonio in the series, might go seven for all we know. And then, you know, it's not over. Who knows with young guys in a game seven. I was just thinking holistically. The goal is to win the title. Yeah. And you have aunt, who is one of the best five or six guys in the league. And you have this veteran team around him. You have a real identity and you have defense and all kinds of things. And it's tough, man. These windows close fast. You just never know. Like we don't know. Go Bear, Go Bear, I think has defied the aging stuff to some degree. Cause usually we see these centers start to get a little. Mummy is in a little gamey right around now. And I don't feel like a hundred percent he has, but the bigger thing to me is there's not a lot of moves and you're in this arms race with these two teams that. You know, KC is 13 first routers over the next six years, not to mention all the other shit they have not to mention a J. Mitchell emerging as like the breakout star of the playoffs that we weren't expecting. So, um, I don't know. I'd be really bummed if I'm a wolf span, cause then never even made the finals. Yeah. I kept wondering like, man, I don't know the math. The salary cap is not my expertise, but like keeping Nikhil Alexander Walker last year, they could have used him in this series. Obviously their offense is struggling. He's such a good player in Atlanta. Oh, he would have cost him like a hundred million dollars a year if they kept them. Like the way the tax is, they're paying like three times as much for him. Yeah. So they, but yeah, that's like you're alluding to it. Like the, the new CBA makes it nearly impossible to keep a contender together for five years, unless they're all rookie scale guys, which is what the best teams in the West have done with RC Buford, Brian Wright and, and Sam Presti's work in Oklahoma city. So yeah, I, I don't know. I think Ant-Man's still going up. I think you have a lot to be happy about Minnesota, but yeah, I think anybody in the West to your earlier point is staring at these two juggernauts now at the top of the standings, you know, like what are we going to do? And by the way, we're not breaking new news. This has been a storyline the entire season. It's just feeling more real to me because I think Minnesota is really good. Right. They got their asses kicked in the second half of that game today where it was like, Jesus, you know, and the home team is supposed to win a game five. I get it. But let me ask you this. San Antonio is getting better to me, which is the part that would scare me if I'm Minnesota, they're getting better every day. Yeah. Here's my question for you. If Minnesota hypothetically in the Eastern conference is a three or a four seat this year, that team to go into the conference finals, right? Yeah, I, I would say, well, the Knicks are on this heater right now, but I, I think they're built pretty similarly with, you know, two teams that are, they have a little bit of a window. I think the Knicks are a little bit of a lightning in a bottle, like the 24, 25 Celtics are where the way their roster set up, it's only going to get more expensive, whether they're going to have the appetite to keep paying for it. We'll see towns as contract goes up, bridges is extension, I think kicks in next year if it didn't already kick in, but it just gets pricey to keep Mitchell Robinson is going to be a free agent. Let's see. You're going to be like, you do have these windows and I think the Knicks talent competitive wise, a guy going against the guy, best guy in the other team, like they have the pieces to at least throw some haymakers, but I would have said that about Minnesota too. Yeah. I like Minnesota's position a little bit more than you. I think they're hoping expansion happens and they moved to the Eastern conference because all of a sudden their prognosis looks a little bit better, right? Yeah. Let me ask you this. I wrote this down. Of course, I'm going to ask you this here. My only guest and it's just the two of us. Um, if we do get okay, see San Antonio next round. Hmm. I think this is the best series in eight years. Okay. I like this. Yeah. I'm fired up. Yeah. Just, and now you can say, oh, there's been a lot of good series. I'm not talking about entertainment value. I'm talking about talent, ceiling of the teams and the matchups that I went through all the, all the, we've had a lot of entertaining series. I think you have to go back to 2018 when the Rockets played the Warriors, the series Chris Paul ended up getting her in and the, and the Warriors were going from back to back. I think that's the last one with this kind of level of two teams that are basically mid sixties, wins teams, maybe even better that have a lot of guys at the peak of their powers or on their way up. And, uh, and last eight years, we haven't had a series like that with the 2017 finals. Um, and we had 2016 Golden State versus O.K.C. and then Golden State versus Cleveland. I think those were probably the, the three best series of the last, four best series of the last 10 years. Um, and talent wise, next round would be on the level of San Antonio finishes. And it also, for, for the, the old guys like us, it's like, oh, this does feel start to feel like a power struggle that's more than a year long. It feels like it's going to be like this for a while. Like a, a Pistons bowl situation or a Nick's bowls thing, where it's just, uh, we've had, there's, there's thousands of those examples. But yeah, if that happens, Bill, like Wemby and Shay, to me, they're the two best players in the world right now. Uh, and is that crazy? Right? No, it's, it's, I'm just, I'm just giving up. No, no, no, no, Joker. I think he had his run. I think he's out of it now. Yeah. Just some of the defensive stats we're seeing from Wemby, the fact that the Minnesota where Timberwolves are shooting like 37% when he's on the floor in five games, um, is, is, is his defensive impact is so incredible. Um, but yeah, I think there's two of the best players in the world, best young cores in the league, great coaches, great organizations. I think you're right to look at it like that. Well, it's one, one, one other thing of a classic malleability too with lineups. Teams that can throw different looks at you, depending on what the situation is. Both teams can go smaller. They could play three guards. They could play three guards, a shooter in a center. They can go bigger too. To some degree. Uh, okay. See, probably can do that a little bit better. Cause as we said, San Antonio feels like there may be one, one bigger guy short. And then there's this roughing up Wemby thing, which, you know, it's funny, like that I didn't get a chance to talk about the game where the elbowed Nas and, you know, it's slow mo, slow mo makes everything look worse, but it did seem like he sized them up for a second. But it was also 15, not to defend Wemby, but it was 15 small to medium things that led to him being mad enough to whip an elbow at somebody. Yeah. Because you could tell the whole series of Minnesota is like, let's keep, let's keep banging on this guy. Let's keep fucking with them. Let's keep knocking them down. Like just stay physical, stay physical. I'm old enough to remember when this was the strategy against Kareem. Kareem, Kareem punched like five guys, including he broke his hand punching Ken Benson and breaking a Ken Benson job. But Kareem, you could go find him on YouTube. Kareem knocked down or knocked out multiple guys because he would just get fed up. Shaq was the other one we had with Shaq. I think only maybe he tried to punch Brad Miller. There was a few others. Right. Shaq, they would always pull his shoulders. And you couldn't do the same stuff you did to Wemby. It was more like you tried to like kind of wear him down, almost like a boxer when you keep clenching a boxer. And he would get frustrated too. Wemby's going to have to deal with this his whole career. Minnesota is testing him. OKC has guys that will do it too. This is why you have Lou Dort. And I remember when I worked at the Spurs, we used to complain about the contact allowances are so different for interior players than for guards. Even back then, last decade, it was it was crazy to watch like Dreymont, Double Arm Bar, Lamarcus, for instance, or Tim and just like, OK, that's cool. But I think it's really interesting to compare the whistles of guards who attack versus a Wemby like you cannot lay a finger on an attacking guard in this league. But the things that they're doing in Minnesota, by the way, this is great. This is very intelligent game plan. Do it until they call it. They did it today a couple of times. Yeah. They, McDaniel, shoved them out of bounds on the on the play and they missed that. They teed up Nas for something they had been doing. And again, like this isn't Sour Grapes. Do it until they call it. They hadn't been calling, especially in game four. But to me, it just really makes me think about how different the whistle is for different kinds of players. And Wemby gets fouled a lot more than get called. And that is as old as the history of the game to an extent. But it's really frustrating in a time where our guards are getting so many tickey-tac calls to watch Victor get pushed around like that. Yeah, I don't like it either. Shaq, you talked to listen to a podcast with anyone who played against Shaq. And there's like, yeah, we fouled the shit out of them. We're going to call everything he's three hundred and eighty pounds. Like what else are we going to do? Or else he just would have dunked every time. I'll be interested to see. A. Friday night, I think they dial up all that stuff with Wemby. And you have the Minnesota crowd. You have Ant on the three days rest. Yeah. You have a Timberwolves team. They're on the brink in a lot of different ways because it's not going to get any better next year, right? The West is going to be Denver will load up in some way. Utah is going to be out of nowhere contender. The Lakers are going to try to, you know, improve the team. Dallas is going to be better. And I'd say the West is just going to be better all the way around. And it's going to be hard to cement being the third best team. What happens if Houston gets better? You know, you just don't. What happens if Yonis gets straight to one of his teams? You just don't. The Clippers are getting the number five pick. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Impressive Wemby game. I'm just blown away by the Spurs. Like to watch young guys play like this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. This is something that should be two years from now happening. And it's just like it's sped up. It's like listening to podcasts at 1.5 speed or something. They're hitting these check marks. I like the Harper thing just breaks my brain. Point cards don't do that at age 20. They're not supposed to have control of playoff games for eight, nine minutes. So anyway, before we go, Darrell Moray got fired today. Oh, our friend, the Philadelphia 76ers general manager, friend of mine for a long time. I've always tried to stay, you know, always weird to talk about, but I always tried to be neutral. If they did stuff, I didn't like it. I would say it if they did stuff, I like that. So you knew there's going to be a fall guy after a pretty embarrassing sweep to the Knicks where you had 70, 80 percent Knicks fans in the last two games. And there's a couple of different things you could probably point to. The Embied extension, the McCain trade seemed for some reason to be the catalyst for people to really turn on him. And a good example of like, Sam Presti has it right by never saying anything. Darrell talks, you know, sometimes to his own detriment and made the sell high comment with McCain. The irony is he traded McCain because they clearly told him to get into the luxury tax. Right. So there's a couple of moves you can make, maybe trade Grimes. I don't know if Grimes had any value to trade Grimes without taking a contract back, which is hard. And in the McCain case, they got picks and other stuff. And McCain was kind of buried behind two guards, but that became the catalyst. So when I look at the job that he did in Philly, which was really up and down, like some some really big hits and some some misses, too. I guess my question, are they in a better or worse place than when he took over? Because he was able to get them out of the Ben Simmons thing. He was able to trade hard and get some pretty decent picks from the Quippers back. I mean, I think one of them is unprotected in 28 or 29. VJ Edgecomb, they pulled that off or they now have Maxi and Edgecomb as like the centerpiece. Yeah. What they're doing. So to me, this isn't like, oh, my God, this guy fucked our team up. But at the same time, I wasn't surprised at all. So why wasn't I surprised? Yeah, I think your worst contracts draft, which we'll talk about a little bit later, is the number one reason. When you look at what you guys had determined, the one and two worst contracts in the entire association right now, Daryl did those deals. He did it with Paul George and he did it with Joel and Bede. And what do they have in common? These are guys on the wrong side of their prime. And he is committed to paying them ridiculous amounts of money in the second apron era. So that's what's that's what's it. If they only had one of those deals, you'd be like, oh, my God, they have a really good team building opportunity here to get over. But they're handcuffed. I mean, if Paul George is going to be healthy or Joel and Bede is going to be healthy, but you and I have seen this for too long to know that's just not going to happen. So that's ultimately what it is. I don't think it's like a disgraceful firing. I just think this thing they needed to refresh it. I think Daryl will get another job. Yeah. But ultimately, if I had to hang it on something, Bill, I would say those two contracts, the Paul George and Joel and Bede, that's what got it done. I would add a third one. And this would have been controversial, but I also, you know, I was used to joke that Daryl has no motion and any of this stuff. Like he's just going to do with what the analytic move is at all times. Like that's the McCain trade. There was no motion tied to that trade. Like if if you and I were his conciliaries and he was about to make that trade, we would say, yo, man, Philly fans really like this guy. Yeah. And if you do this and he goes and plays well in OKC, they're going to be fucking pissed. And this is Philadelphia. Like, I don't know. Like figure out another way to get into the luxury tax, right? But he's he's analytics. That's just the way he paused ahead. I said this at the time. The move was to trade and Bede when before the Knicks got towns, when the Knicks were clearly desperately trying to, you know, that all these picks have made an impact and they had a real relationship with Embiid, they had worldwide West and they had Leon Rose, who were like, those those are Embiid's guys. Leon Rose was that was his agency, you know, and I think out of anyone, they valued him the most. And you just had Embiid coming off these two seasons where he played the most games he'd ever played and it was like 66 and 63. His stock was never going to be higher. The history of centers and guys that size is usually going to start doing this. And I just think he could have gotten a fucking motherload from Philly. Now, with the fans have been happy about it. I don't know. Yeah. But I think in retrospect, hard to say, but in retrospect, the move is like, I am selling high, not on Jared McCain, but on Joe Embiid right now. Yeah, that's probably right. And one more thing on the McCain thing, I always like to laugh at, like, if if Sam Presti is very interested in one of your guys. Hang up. Yeah, go back and be like, Oh, what, what am I, what are we doing? Like that's our best player or whatever. Right. Don't trade with that guy. He'd trade with him. When Pat Riley was in his prime or R.C. Buford in his absolute prime and they were on the phone, people would be afraid to deal with them because they they had such respect for these guys basketball opinions. What do you why would they want that guy? Oh, yeah, hang up the phone, Bill. The Brewers are like this, too. The Red Sox have traded for him two years in a row with the Brewers. They basically have Sam Presti in the baseball and got fleeced each time. So yeah, so for Darryl, this is a 20 year run for him, right? He got hired by the Rockets in 06, took over the team in 07, had the whole Rockets run, came really close, had some bad luck, especially Chris Paul getting hurt is a great injury. What if we have injury, what ifs every year? That's a really good one because they game seven at home. They were toe to toe with the Warriors. The Warriors were a little run down at that point from 15, 16, 17, 18. They were vulnerable. The team chemistry was going a little sideways. And I think and then they missed all those threes in game seven. That was the closest he got there. And then in Philly, never really felt like that team was ever going to actually make the finals. I never felt like they were. You know, it felt like he sort of walked away from that moriball. I'm going to push the edge of the calculator over further than anybody else. And it felt like this Philly era, Mori, was more conventional, just signing the superstars and maybe even antithetical to some of the analytics movements, including like, hey, dude, have you ever seen an aging curve? Like don't overpay guys in their thirties. That's that's not something we should be doing. So, you know, it never really felt like a Daryl culture had set up in Philadelphia. Like you're alluding to these legendary teams with Harden and Dan Tony in Houston that sort of changed the sport pill forever. And people say, Steph, and I agree with that, but that it was Steph shooting them. And it was Mike and Daryl building that whole team around the three point shot that changed this league forever. Also, the spending isn't a small thing either, right? Yeah. You know, the Knicks are spending right now. That's one of the reasons they have a really good team that been aggressive. Golden State during the whole run spent a ton of money to try, you know, try to put together good teams. The Celtics famously spent so much money that the dinner check came this season. They had to make all these trades or else they would have had to pay, you know, 300 million in luxury tax. Philly's not done that. They have not spent Philly and honestly, Philly and I don't think Denver really has either. They've been two teams that had, you know, two of the best players of this decade, but always were pretty responsible with how they spent. I don't know if that would have made a difference with Philly, but it did make a difference with little stuff like the McCain trade. My last thing is my first games were at the spectrum in Philly in the 80s with Barclay and Dr. J when they they overlapped. And I was really stunned by the the number of Knicks fans in the building in Philadelphia. And I wonder if that played into it. And I wonder, could you imagine that ever happening in Boston or in Madison Square Garden? It was kind of crazy, right? Philly, I think, has a stronger backbone than that. What are your thoughts? I never, if you go back to the Dr. J era and even go back, you can go back and YouTube, watch some of their home games. Not like huge crowds. I always thought when I was growing up, I always felt like they were a flyer, flyer city more than anything. Like that was like their team and Philly's obviously Eagles. And I always felt like the Sixers were fourth, even though they had Dr. J for this great run. Felt like it started to flip a little bit in the 80s, especially after they won the title. And then when we got to the 90s, you know, they had a really bad run there. They trade Barclay. And I just think that's an Eagles town first. And, you know, I don't know if the Philadelphia 76ers ever got there. I also the process was pretty weird, man. Yeah, like if we're going to do like a deep dive on, huh, how do you end up with 80% next fans at a home playoff game? Maybe you got to look backwards at what did the process really accomplish? Because you're you're losing four years of fans. You have a chance, young fans trying to side on a team. That's like, should I like the Sixers? Well, they intentionally lose every year. I'm going to like the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry instead. So I don't know. I'm sure there's a million different reasons for it. But I always felt like they were not like never really the main team in Philadelphia. I think that's safe to say. Yeah, maybe that's it is. And I was just surprised to see that. And again, you watch these environments in Minnesota or in San Antonio tonight. And it's like, man, these these crowds are electric. There's no way you're getting, you know, 30% of the lower bowl for the visiting team and these arenas, but in Philadelphia, which I think is a pretty good sports town. It's just crazy. Yeah, it's a weird one. Well, we'll see what they're I'm sure. It's going to be tough this year because I don't know how many jobs are available, but I'm sure he'll be lurking in some way. And I don't see him ever. He could be a great podcast host. Who knows? So as his friend, I would almost recommend he didn't do that because I feel like that would get him into even more trouble. But he would be amazing because he doesn't always have the self edit button. No, he doesn't have the filter. No, he'll just. So I don't know if I'd want him to have a podcast, but anyway. And so end of an era with Philly, we'll see. We talk later in the mailbag about is there doesn't be to even have trade value. How do you even handle that situation? Whole bunch of good stuff coming. Me, Kirk, Dave, Jacobi doing a big ass mailbag next. Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by Fandall. We are in full swing with the NBA playoffs. Every game, every possession, every swing, every Zag, all of it matters. Hey, all customers on Fandall get a profit boost tonight. So when the moment hits, your win hits bigger. Fandall give you better payouts on same game parlays, all NBA playoffs. Long. I'm going to take a swing on Twitter and the Cleveland Detroit game. The last time I did it was Saturday, which I hit with with the calves and with a bunch of Mitchell point overs. I had a bunch of different bets. I think all of them won except for the 36 points it up. I'm going to do another one for game five. Leaning toward taking the pistons at home, just because I think this is really proven itself as a home team wins every game series. And until that doesn't happen. I like pistons. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, make the playoffs pay off with Fandall official sports betting partner, the NBA. I like chair. I like during to have a comeback game and game five. Maybe that'll be in there. Head to Fandall.com slash BSD. It started Fandall. Play your game. Twenty one plus select states are 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming restrictions, PIC terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Game problem. Call 1-800-GAMBO or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat. Connecticut. Uber Eats makes last minute gifting easy, whether it's Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduation, whatever you blink, they're here. But just because it's snuck up on you doesn't mean your gift has to feel like it. The Uber Eats gift hub has something for everyone. Flowers, perfume, champagne, even their favorite takeout order. It could show up as little as 25 minutes, even if you just remembered five minutes ago. The best part, you can add a video message and a personal note. So it actually feels like you planned it all along. Order on Uber Eats today. Must be 21 or older to purchase alcohol. Product availability varies per region. See app for details. All right, we are moving back in time. It's Mailbag. Me, Kurt Goldsbury, Dave Jacoby, we are recording this late after late morning Pacific time. So if anything happens in the next eight hours before the Timberlake Spurs game, we're not going to apologize. We're all together in the 2014 finals in Austin, Texas. When the Spurs, Tim Duncan, it was the last gasp of the Duncan era, trying to pull off one last title. We were at a barbecue. We shot, shot all kinds of stuff. We went out. It was great. Jacob, did you ever think the Spurs would be this relevant again? I felt like the last hurrah for them when we were there. I do. I did think they would be this relevant again, because it's just very spursy and of them to do this, you know, like there's only been a few dark Spurs years and they're dark, but you know, a lot of, a lot of sunlight in San Antonio. I believe we also had Prince Jaylene with us, if you remember correctly. We had Prince Jaylene. We reunited some of the Fab Five. Jacko joined the Fab Five in the Chris Weber spot. It was emotional stuff. Kirk, did you think the Spurs, I mean, granted, they, they nailed the lottery three years in a row with three pretty obvious picks that I don't think they should get that much credit for, but three top four picks in a row. And then they were back in another back, but we worried that they were just going to become small market New Orleans for the next 30 years. I wouldn't go that far. I knew they would be back, but you're exactly right. Going one, four and two in consecutive drafts. If the Spurs get that opportunity, they deserve the respect here. They were going to get that right. And not only did they get those picks right, those were great one, four and two. Obviously Wemby castles, a great four pick. And man, Dylan Harper is a great two pick. I think that the bigger story is like, I think that one, four, two run the Spurs just got to get them back to relevance is one of the big reasons we have new lottery rules. Well, especially they were helped out that three teams passed on castle. We'll see others. They never really helped them. I thought I should go first. I have a bunch of mailbag emails for us. We're going to start with the lottery. And this is because it just happened. I don't know if you guys saw it, but the lottery happened. But watch the one. I did. Mike says on Monday's pod, you correctly pointed out how awkward and weird the half hour lottery telecast is. What about how lame the team representatives are when they're on camera? They just sit there stony faced. They barely even seem happy when the results are good. I am a 49 year old lifelong wizards, bullets fan. I've been rooting for a team that has not won 50 games since I was two. My son and I felt like we're going to throw up during the lottery. We got in the top forward bouncing up and down. We won. We screamed so loud, our dog left the room. What if instead of putting executives or former players in these seats, we get super fans? Wouldn't that be more entertaining? Jacobi, who would you put in the seats as representatives? This is easy. You've come to the right place as a, you know, to put in my producer hat on here. You, you treat it like a reality television show. So you cast the people that are best for television because the executives and the ex players, they've all been there, done that. They're sort of like when you, when you sit in the press seats at the game, you're not supposed to like cheer or like drink beer. It's boring. Like I'm going full reality television style and we're getting the craziest, most boisterous fans. They're going to lose their minds when their team does something good or bad happens to them. We're auditioning it. Like it's like American Idol season three. You agree with that, Kerr? Yeah, dude, the gravity of that moment, the telecast just doesn't match it. The cadence happens too fast. It's like, Oh my God, what just happened? Like total, total craziness can happen. And like you said on the other podcast, like there's 15 minutes of nothing. And then they don't, and it's not like I want the American Idol pregnant pause after pregnant pause when somebody gets voted out or whatever. But dude, they don't, the gravity of the moment isn't respected on the, on the broadcast. And I do think it would be fun to put Joe House and have Joe House with a six pack of beer and just let him get going. And let's, let's see what happens when, and they should have confetti fall. But ultimately my thesis is this, Bill, and you hit it on Sunday. The gravity of these moments is monumental. We just talked about the spurs and the broadcast doesn't respect how important this is or how electrifying it is for these fan bases. Yeah, they seem very determined just to show us that everybody who's about to be picked as a parent and they're all excited to be there. And wherever I go, we've got like just the most generic, terrible interviews possible. And then we get, we meet all the representatives. I don't know why it's not like we interview any of them. We just kind of see them for a second. I had no connection with them. Conn Cunnipals, like why am I here? I had, so Jacobi, I had three ways this could go. And the, the, the fan thing, which Mike mentioned as well. So you have super fans, you have a contest. You basically cast the fan. You could even turn that into some sort of reality show where it's like, here's how we landed on the wizard's fan. Cause the thing is we're all talking about who's going to win the lottery and tanking and all this shit for seven months. And then we just kind of rip through this lottery show in 10 minutes. Like it's like a walk of shame for the league. They're just trying to get away with it. So celebrities, celebrity, uh, I'm sorry, actual fans who want a contest. Then celebrity super fans as a second model where you do have like your Joe house, you have, you know, you go to the Atlanta Hawks, like pick anybody from the Atlantic music Atlanta music scene, right? Gucci main could just be there as the Hawks representative. And he just go through and then it's like, we have an hour show and we talk to each representative. Here's my third idea. And I'm going back to the basics. And I think this is actually the best idea. I think the GM should have to be there as the reps. I think this should be part of the job. And the reason I mentioned this is you have Kevin Pritchard there who's just done this all time hit or miss trade, where now it's a 50, 50 chance to either be in the top four or you lose the pick to the clippers. What's better drama than that? Like we, the famous, the famous clip was Jerry West with the, with the Grizzlies LeBron one, right? Where it's like, if he gets the first pick, he gets LeBron second pick, nothing. It comes up Grizzlies are second and it just cuts to him. And it looks like he's the guy in scanners whose heads about to explode. So Jacob's, why can't it just be the GM's like, Hey guys, if you're going to be a GM of a team, you're at the fucking ladder and you're going to be the representative when we get to see your reactions. And this is just how it's going to go. And you have the GM's and the super fans sit side by side. So like the Super fan just can just like turn his head and look at Pritchard and be like, look at what you've done. Why? You did this. Yeah. And just, I think Kirk hit something too is like the rhythm of it needs to dramatically change. Yeah. Because like, let's, let's every reveal, let's discuss. You know what I mean? Like let's discuss every reveal because it does, like sometimes my brain isn't fast enough to like figure out all of the, the imaginations of what it means that that team is in that spot. The host always misses one. I think Malika missed in the moment that Brooklyn lost her pick for like five seconds. Well, Nagandi, remember Nagandi last year with the Sixers pick. Right. He was completely screwed. Well, that leads to the next question from Alex and Charlottesville. He said, now that we're going to have this new lottery system with the increased volatility, how would you redesign the 30 minute telecast? How do we space out the reveals? Could we draw a 61 in front of the audience? So the NHL did this the last two years. My dad, probably the biggest fan of the NHL draft lottery, like really genuinely loves it. And this year, the Bruins, if the Maple Leafs fell from five to six, the Bruins got their pick, but they revealed that the picks in the, in the correct order from one down and the Maple Leafs won the lottery. And he said, even though it sucked for the Bruins, it was amazing. So I think it could be an hour. I think you reveal the picks, you reveal the first pick first, and then you go backwards, you know, through the top four or whatever we have with these lateries, and I think it's the actual GM's. And you just do it that way. And then you have like 20 minutes after where you can explain to the audience all the ramifications. Why not, Kirk? Why can't we do it this way? No, that's the way it should be. And it should be somebody like you and Zach and Bobby Marx reminding us what this means for the Dallas Mavericks or what this means for all of these teams. So would you stop after each pick for like two minutes? Yeah, I would. Okay. I mean, and Jacobi's the TV producer here. So I'd turn it to him. Jacobi, why can't we just have a full minute or two? Just be like, what does this mean for the Mavs? Let's reset where they are. Is what, what are the TV people thinking? I mean, yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I just said before. And another thing is, is I, I want to take it all in. I want to soak it in. It happens so fast. Right, you need time. Because we pay such close attention to this league that like even I am like racing up to keep up with the pace of the thing. Why? Why are you doing that to me? Like make it more dramatic and make it me fully understand exactly what all of this means. It would be funny if the Oscars did it this way and they did like a this three hour show. And then the last like two minutes, they just raced through the best five categories, best picture or winner, one battle. Best after. So last year when it was, it was, it came down to the, the Spurs and the Mavs last year, right? And it was like, holy shit, are the Spurs going to get Cooper flag? Like, right, you need to take like five minutes just to. That needed to be like five minutes, dude. Like, oh my God, this is incredible for the state of Texas. First of all, but man, if, if the, if it's going to be Wemby and Cooper flag, yeah, like let's have five minutes there. Yeah. All right. We all agree. Derek from Indianapolis wants to know, as a lifelong Pacers fan, I have to ask, did the Pacers sell their soul for all the insane playoff comebacks in 2025? Because since then game four of the 2025 finals became the Scott Foster experience. Game seven ended with Hal Burton's Achilles. Hal Burton became the only empty place to get shingles and put on weight and is on all the, has to recover from that too. And they lost their top four pick and it went number five to the clippers. Most fan bases lose the Pacers specializing cosmic level timing. What was exchanged exactly for those comeback wins? Jacobi, do you, do you believe in the sell your soul theory, the Hal Burton shot going up in the air? Like, do you, do you think the Karmic forces have to like bounce each other out? Um, I have good news and bad news for Derek. Um, the bad news is absolutely yes. I mean, like absolutely yes. The shingles thing and the weight thing because of the medication and they, this big trade for Zubac, who was like great two years ago, but this year clip for Zubac was not like tearing it up and then lose the pick. But the good news for Derek is he'll be the super fan representing the Pacers. Yeah, your job. You're in. What do you think Kirk, do you believe in this stuff? Uh, no, that's not my job, but I think they need to be thankful. They have Tyrese Halliburton guys that you have one of the best point cards in the league. This guy is offensive efficiency in a can. He had one of the more electric playoff runs we've seen last year. We just need to get that guy's foot and ankle right. Uh, and they'll be right back where I think they should be near the top of the east next year, Derek. So that's kind of near where I landed. Last year was an amazing ride for Pacer fans. Like it didn't get better than that. I can't think of a more fun playoff run where they became the most memorable thing about the playoffs, even though they didn't win the finals, which never happens. Right. You think about the 25 finals. I think of the Pacers before I think about anything else that happened. So wasn't terrible. They still have Tyrese and Siakam. They have Zubac, Nemhard, Niece Smith, Toppin, TJ, Jarris Walker, Shepard. They have all their first except one. And they were losing mylec Ternary their way last year. So I don't, you know, um, the free agent centers this year weren't that good. Maybe Hartenstein's in there. Robert Williams, Nirkic, maybe DeAndre Haten. So you could argue they needed Zubac's. Um, the counter though, to that Zubac's trade. And the part that never made sense to me would happen is why did you have to do it in February? Because if you get the fifth, even if you get the fifth pick or the sixth pick, I still feel like the Quippers are going to be like, yeah, you're going to trade us that for Zubac's. Let's do it. That the risk didn't match the reward because I don't like making trades that are still going to be sitting there a few months later. They just could have traded Toppin's contract and something smaller and the number five pick for Zubac's and not giving up the other first round or that was in there. So I just, I never thought the risk matched the reward. And I thought Jacob's, I thought even they could have put like a, like a thing like, well, if this becomes the fifth or sixth pick in this draft, then we get our 29 first back or something. Cause I like Zubac's, but it just doesn't match what the reward was. I don't think. Well, I don't want to like be two second guessy after the coin flip went heads instead of tails, you know what I mean? But I do want to say that I do like Zubac's as well. I thought they're like him and Hardin were a great duo a couple years ago. But when I think about the Pacers team and that electric run that you're talking about, what do they do? Like they get out and run. Like they don't want you to set up your defense. Like they don't want to be in the half court. So I see a lot of like Zubac's getting the rebound, throw you it out and then it's kind of standing under his own basket. Go ahead guys. Like, go ahead guys, you guys take care of this. I'll be here. Well, the other thing Kirk is you do a trade like this and it's 50, 50 odds, right? If they get the pick, Prichard's a hero. You don't get the pick. Now your fans are kind of looking side out at you, but now you put Zubac in a tough spot too, who's a really good player. I voted for him 13 mom BA a year ago. Um, but now you look at him and you just watch him during games and you're just thinking about if like, if Keaton Wogler is awesome for the Quippers, right? Um, you're just constantly thinking about that as you see Zubac. The other thing I didn't like about the trade was before the trade deadline, you do it and we thought there was a top four. And then we still knew after that the draft was good, but we knew there were four guys and that's probably how the Pacers assessed it. But where you're not factoring in is who's going to make a leap in February and March in college basketball. And what happened was Wogler and A cuff made a little bit of a leap. So they're not in the top four, but they're really good value at five or six. And that's why I just would have waited. I feel like this trade would have been there in May, Kirk. Yeah, I wouldn't have, I, as somebody who worked for a small market team, like you're just taught like, don't trade your first round picks, especially when you're near the top, like just don't do it. Like we're not, we're not playing in the free agency game. Free agency is largely dead anyway for everybody. So like these draft picks, you have to be very, very sort of protective of if you're in a market like Indiana, especially they're not paying the luxury tax. Yeah. Right. So when they made the deal guys, it was like a Russian roulette moment. It was such an incredible moment. Like for that lottery, again, go back to the broadcast. Like that was a moment where the producers needed to be like, we need to give this the gravity it deserves after it happens. Right. Either the Clippers fans are going to go crazy or the Pacers fans are going to go crazy. Um, and it just, again, it ain't blew through it, but man, I would not have done the trade just as a small market guy. Don't give up a lottery pick if you're the Indiana Pacers. Mike Rohr emails us about this. Um, he's, he said how in the podcast Sunday, I didn't see a conspiracy for the Pacers, like the Pacers not getting a pick actually didn't. Conspiracy bill was not triggered by that. Mike Rohr says there was a conspiracy potentially and he doesn't have a dog in the fight. He said the Knicks are set up to be good next few years. So are the Celtics, maybe even the Sixers, three big markets. Do you think the NBA really wanted small market indie to get better and spoil the East party when they have small market juggernauts in Oklahoma city and San Antonio, could they've had a third one? That's all I've got. That's the conspiracy. I don't know, Jacobi, I kind of like it. I'm not buying it. Okay. I appreciate the effort. The parties that the Sixers are like set up to be good for the next three years. Like really? Like the job, making a hundred million dollars. Yeah, we'll be about that later. All right. I have respected that. I tried Dan from Tucson says, uh, I'm sure you must feel conflicted with, with Jalen Duren after the playoffs so far, a beast of regular season. Many voted for him for all NBA, including, uh, I voted second team. What'd you vote for him? Goldsbury, you second team. Jalen Duren second team. Clearly. Yeah. I see him in the East. Yeah. And then he says, and the other hand, he's been off on the playoffs, getting punked by Wendell Carter and now the Cavaliers restricted for age in the summer. What would you do as the Pistons GM? Would he get a max offer from other teams? Do you match it for your trade, sign and trade? Please help. Pod father, I'm a Pistons fan in crisis. Well, you're, I think you're going to make the conference finals. So, uh, calm down a little, Dan from Tucson, but, um, it's a really weird one. He game for, um, that might have been his worst playoff game at all, the bad playoff games. And what was interesting was Mowgli really, I thought Mowgli was awesome in game four. I thought he really, you could feel him in the game, which has always been my disappointment with Mowgli. It's like, sometimes I'm not sure you're even out there. And yet game four, you felt him the whole game. I guess the problem for the Pistons is, is during such an obvious Lakers offer sheet guy, Kirk, if they're going to have cap space and you could keep Reeves, obviously have Luca and then Durin and make that your three, like, I'm just doing that. I'm overpaying them. And then I can feel like I can do around the fringes. I think he could also be a quippers offer sheet guy too, but I think somebody's going to offer him at least 40 plus a year, regardless of how he looked in the playoffs, right? Yeah. And then they're going to match it because you're the Detroit Pistons. You don't get Jalen Durin date. Jalen Durin is 22 years old. Yeah. It's his first real, I guess they had a deep playoff run last year, but it has been disappointing bill. 20 and 11 in the regular season, clearly all NBA caliber by my standards, but he's dropped down to essentially 11 point a game, eight rebound a game guy. And in the Orlando series, look like the second best big man in the series. Right. Wendell Carter, that's not good. But yeah, again, you're the Detroit Pistons. We're not getting cute. We are going to make the conference finals. I hope if we, if we finish the series out and he's a big part of their success and their plan going forward. So you're just doing it. You don't even care. Okay. What do you think, Jim? What's the other, what's the other play? You, you have to do it. I want to give him a credit to my mismatch co-host, Verna, because he flagged this like two months ago. He was like, you're in a spot where you're going to have to pay Jalen Durin. And he, you know, you're going to dedicate so much of your percentage of your salary cap to him. And like maybe he doesn't deserve it. And maybe him underperforming in these playoffs is actually helpful to the Pistons, but I would be concerned about this. Um, where I, I, I don't know if I'm ready to just sign Jalen Durin to the max. I'm like, I'm Caden Durin forever, especially after what I saw in the playoffs. Right. It's tough because we've seen teams get in just incredible trouble with this. I kind of feel like Memphis with Jaren Jackson was a little similar, right? I don't feel like he's the guy that should be making close to Max money or Max money. And, and it kind of bore out the worst one ever was Bradley Beal. But we see with this max stuff, especially with the way they change the caps, you know, the way the cap works, you basically only get two of these. So they're going to have to do it. And they're just going to have to hope that he had a bad playoffs. He's 22. And the pressure of the contract that was looming kind of scattered his brain a little bit because I'm watching him and it's like, this is not the guy I watched in the regular season. The guy in the regular season was so confident, so physical, was so good around the basket. And this guy feels like he's second guessing everything he's doing. So, you know, I can, I can, it's understandable if you're 22 and you have 230, 40 million dollars waiting for you, you're trying to win a title and you're just, you put too much pressure on yourself. So really tough lunch at Cubs. I don't know. Do you remember when Cade was out? Like he was, he stepped up, he was getting 30 point games and stuff. That's what I really believed in Jalen Dern. But I'm watching the game last night. I'm like, I kind of like B-Ball Paul in that spot. You know what I mean? I'll take B-Ball Paul. Seriously, like watching the game, I was like, that guy jumps off the screen. Like if I can, if I can, if I'm watching a playoff game and I'm like, I'd rather have B-Ball Paul out there than my Max Guy, that's concerning for me. We got an email. I didn't even put it in the document, but is B-Ball Paul the best third string center of all time? Can you research this? And I was like, I'm definitely not researching that, but if anyone has any thoughts on the greatest third string centers of all time, please, please send them. Gabe from Orange County. I got this a few times. I'll give a credit to Gabe first. He was talking about how I suggested Oklahoma City FC as a Thunder Nick name because they flopped like a soccer team. And he doesn't understand why that's not just OKFC. And he, he, he's saying he'd even buy a hat. What do you think, Jacob's? OKFC? Wait a minute. Hold on a second. Multiple people wrote you about this. Well, because they were saying I screwed up. They're saying you screwed it up. It's not Oklahoma City FC. It should just be OKFC. OKCFC is like, there's a, there's a team here. NYCFC, it rolls off the tongue much better than OKFC. So you go OKCFC. Yes. OKCFC. Not just OKFC. We have an NYCFC here. Maxime Morales is my favorite player. OKCFC, Golds Bear, no. That's a lot, but it does not give the fried chicken that OKFC does. It gives a lot of fried chicken right there. OKFC, that makes House hungry. Like there's a lot of good. It sounds like you want some lemon pepper. Lot of good benefits. All right. This is a good one from Andrew Ball. He said, I know you tend to avoid draft what-ifs, but that the Warriors 2020 and 2021 drafts change the trajectory of the leak. There's not a lot of precedent for a team as good as the Warriors getting three lottery picks and a two year span. And they pretty much whiffed on all three. What if they hit on multiple picks or traded them for real town? So I've talked about some of this before about Wiseman or Lamello. It's COVID draft. They can't work out any of those guys. There's no March Madness. Understandable. They could have jumped back maybe and traded for Tyrese, but they claimed that nobody wanted to trade up. But even if you look back at, they have talked to Trayda to trading up to two and they go back to seven and instead of Detroit taking Killian Hayes, they get Lamello and then the Warriors take Halbern, whatever. That's a lot of what-if stuff. 2021 is more simple. It's basically they took coming over France and they took Moody over Trey Murphy. It's pretty crazy, A, that they went over three and then B, that they won the 22 title. Anyway, the part that I was interested in, guys, the trades that they missed out on with those picks that they had just done like the Lebron Cleveland thing, have been like, fuck it, we're trading these picks. Let's get a player. The best players traded from November 2020 because we were post COVID through March 2021, drew holiday six days after the draft. So that Wiggins would have had to be in it, but maybe you could have said, we'll give you the number two pick and Wiggins for drew holiday. I don't know if that Portland would have, I'm not, I'm sorry, New Orleans would have thought that was a better one. Hard into the nets at March 2021. I don't think that would have been a fit. Vucovic March 2021, there's no way the Warriors would have given as much as Chicago stupidly did. Here's the one that jumped out at me though, guys. Aaron Gordon, March 2021, pre-trade deadline. Basically, it's like Gary Harris, another, you know, who is that guy? RJ Hampton. And then a first. The Warriors could have traded like the number seven in Ubright for Aaron Gordon and had Aaron Gordon from heading into the 21 playoffs on versus, I don't know, France. That's Jacob's. That's like not a, not a small what if, right? Aaron Gordon turned out to be like this huge playoff guy. He would have been perfect for them. It's a fun what if, but like, again, like it's easy to say now. I know. That's a fun to build back. At the time, I was like, James Wiseman is the perfect fit for the Warriors. And then I was like, this is going to go great. He can shoot. He's big. He can defend. I was like, this is an absolute, exactly what they need at the time. But what if you traded the Kaminga pick for Aaron Gordon? Listen, I mean, Aaron, I mean, you know, they, they would have obviously gone on a much better run. And also the whole like two timelines thing, Aaron Gordon fits perfectly with, you know, the timeline that was winning the championships. It would have, that would have been amazing. I think that was the mistake, Kirk. Like, well, no, just because Curry's not a guy who's going to demand stuff. You, you were at the Spurs when Tim Duncan was there at the tail end. Same thing. When you have no pressure from your star to do anything, you could try to do that dumb two, two timelines thing. And meanwhile, looking back, it's like clearly the move would have been Aaron Gordon, I think. Yeah. And look at the 2020 drafts and you alluded to this was a complete, you know, cluster F, whatever, like nobody could see anybody. So you almost gave a pass on wise men. I do think the next one is the more interesting one to look at for what they did and what a team in their position should have done, like put to doing Kaminga and Moody. I appreciate what they tried to do there. They missed on better players below Moody, especially I think Shangoon is in there. He was. And yeah, you said Trey, I'm looking again. Jaylin Johnson is in there. Cool. Like that team would have been much better if they drafted Jaylin Johnson, but they didn't. And the draft is really hard. But yeah, I think it is probably in retrospect, you put a bunch of 30 year olds next to Steph for the one last run. But yeah, that's a hard one. The bigger issue to me is for whatever reason in that cluster of years, which is like a year and year plus, there weren't like a bunch of amazing guys to go to get you, Coups. Bill, so if you're going to go back in time and change time, I don't know, you're familiar with the like the films of time travel films, have you ever seen any of those? You have to remember that, you know, that there's if you put Gordon on the Warriors, what does that do for your guy, Yokech? Right. And what does that do for the 22 finals? Yeah, it's it becomes a back to the future thing. It screws up a lot of stuff. Gordon was a pretty polarizing. He was a pretty polarizing trade asset though, because. Because people are like, what is it? Is he is this somebody that would be happy being like a complimentary player? Does he want to be the guy? I was a little similar to what a good all was. All right, you Coups, this one specifically for you. It's from Jake, Jake and Illinois. This happened like three weeks ago. I noted it. Did you see the Laker playoff game with an approximately four month old baby sitting courtside next to Lakers bench on its mother's lap? What the fuck? What are these parents thinking? Do people not understand what a six foot eight, 240 pound person hitting you at full speed feels like and the damage it can do to a baby? Who intervenes here? Who's at fault? It's pure insanity. Should the sports are way in? I'm on the record always. I don't think anyone under like five should be courtside at a game. I've seen you see it. I don't know. Once a week, you see somebody go flying to the stands. I think it's irresponsible. I would never. I brought my eight year old daughter to a WNBA game in 2013. I think I felt a little safer on that one, but I just wouldn't in a million years bring a four month old baby anywhere near courtside. Jacobi, you have seven kids. How many kids do you have now? I know it's not a new one. I've eight now. That baby was essentially like an expensive handbag for that family. It's an accessory. Like that baby, one of my big things is like if a baby is not going to remember it, we're not going to Disney World. If the baby's not going to remember it, we're not throwing you a one year old birthday party. Like until you can remember things, you don't experience things. Also put that baby to bed. It's nighttime. Like what are we doing? It's like they are just bringing the baby to be like, look at my baby like it was a hundred thousand dollar watch or something. It's like that's a fashion accessory. A look at me. I'm a Laker fan in the front row thing. And like I don't know the safety of the baby is whatever, but for me, it's more just like, this is stupid. Well, you obviously, the other thing would be like, oh, I took the baby because we couldn't find a babysitter. You're sitting courtside. I'm pretty sure you could afford a babysitter Kirk. I don't know where you stand on this one. Well, yeah, it is dangerous down there. I mean, you watch this Wolf Spur series like dude, there will be at least drinks spilled, if not human being spilled over there during these games. I think that is a sound. It reminds me the exit row seating on an airplane. If you bring a kid on an airplane, you can't try to get to that Delta exit row. That's not happening. Good point. It seems, yeah, it's in baseball too. It's like they have net everywhere. It's like, maybe we should be thinking about this, especially with kids under like three or four years old, right? Yeah. Cause there's two different ways you could have the person just flying in full speed, like doing the Roman Reigns spear on you basically trying to get a loose ball. You also get the person who tries to dive over the courtside, but then they kick their leg. And you get like the whiplash kick in the head. Either one of them not good for a four month old baby. I just, I thought that was crazy. I think that should be an automatic loser seats. Remember the Austin Reigns pass last night? He just, he just, I think it was a left-handed just through the ball right in the front row, and it hits this guy's drink and explodes the drink. Like if that's a baby instead of a drink, like huge implications there. Yeah, that would be bad. Austin Reigns go to, what do you go to jail if he did that to a baby, Jacoby? No, the parents go to jail. Oh yeah. We're going to take a break and come back with some Joe L.M.B. questions. Oh yeah. I'll play off as long as I have been sifting through the slate and putting my favorite bets and parlays from Fandals Sportsbook on my Twitter feed, tweeting them out, trying to get it as close to the game as possible. I share my favorite parlay along with possible add-ons we hit on Friday with the Cavaliers and a bunch of different Mitchell point totals, just putting it out aggressive if you wanted to get. For Game 5 Pistons Cavs, the home team has won every game in this series. I think it continues. This is a perfect game for Durin. I actually like the rebounds for him. I think this is the biggest game in his career, especially with restricted frayage coming. And I like the Pistons in that game. So I'll have some sort of bet for that. Futures, Nick's funder for the finals is even odds right now. It's probably the last time that will be the case for the rest of the playoff. So if you're interested in that, Brunson, I think for the finals MVP is 8-1, which if you like the next, I think they're 6-1 in the finals. Just take the Brunson finals of P. Anyway, when I bet, I bet with Fandal, a brand I trust. Easy to build NBA bets of all types on Fandal. And I know I'm getting great odds, payouts on my parlays, boosts every day. And I'll get my winnings instantly. Fandal, join me. Play your game. All right, Joel Embiid emailed from Frank Ferrell. He said, the Sixers unexpectedly beating the Celtics won't beat enough goodwill that all my friend chats after the absolute Nick thrashing subtly shifted from, the Sixers should swallow Embiid's money just to move on psychologically, to the Sixers should trade Joel for peanuts to give him a shot somewhere else. What insane career has he had? My question, does winning an MVP automatically get you an automatic place in your Hall of Fame pyramid? If so, who is the lowest MVP in the pyramid? It has to be between Embiid, Derrick Rose, and Westbrook. Well, I have Embiid and Russ in my pyramid. I have their level two guys. I have Embiid, low 70s, and I have Russ in the 60s. I do not have Derrick Rose in the pyramid, and I don't even really think it's debatable. Like you go through his career, it's basically the 2011 season when he won the MVP and made First Team OMBA. It was the only First Team OMBA he won. And I just don't think it's enough to be one of the best 100 guys in the history of the week. When I was researching this though, in 2021, he finished ninth in the MVP voting. Are you guys aware of this? There was a fan vote which he won, and he got 10 points and finished ninth in the top 10 for MVP. Jacob says, Rose, the top 100 all-time guy for you, how do you assess his career? It's a weird one. This is much more your lane, Bill. I don't know if you know this. I don't keep up moving, running, because of the power ranking of top 100 players of all time. That's the thing is, Pete Derrick Rose is top 100, but the peak just didn't last that long. It's a very sharp point at the top of the mountain. For me, I look at it more or less like counting stats and stuff. It's just like how he, like, you know, we talk about like roll gravity and gravity on the court. Just like grab fan gravity towards Chicago. Just attention, you know, Barbershop discussion. Derrick Rose sort of conquered that and led that. It had a little bit of like an Iverson coolness factor in a different way. Remember when he didn't dance at the All-Star game? He was just like, he was sort of like cool in a different way than Iverson was, but at the same, in a comparable level. Like he sort of had like a culture implications too. He was incredible in person. I just think to me, Kirk, he's in the, he's in that group of just awesome guys with a career. They either had bad luck with injuries or bad luck with something else. And he's like first ballot for whatever that group is. But I don't think that career was there for, you know, but it wasn't there for a reason. Like his body broke in the NBA playing this way with these guards doing what they're doing now, this often they're going to break their knees and it sucks. And I don't want to penalize guys like that who are clearly all NBA level players. MVP caliber players. And if I'm ever going to be in charge of MVP or Hall of Fame consideration, like Derek Rose is going. Like I love what Jacobi said, culturally, he's important to the sport and its fans. You can point to it season in Chicago. Like he is more significant than a lot of people that are currently honored in that museum. So that's a different combo. And I agree with that. I think if you win the MVP, you're in the Hall of Fame. Yeah. Which is a little different than the pyramid because there's a little higher, like the top 100 guys ever, but Hall of Fame, I think MVP's are in. You're the best player in the best league for one year. That's probably, that's probably enough. I would say. Wait, can I ask you an unbeat question? Yeah. How did you react after on the heels of the Celtic series, watching Joelle do what he did against the Knicks? I mean, I wasn't surprised. Were you guys, it felt like he could, he had a good week in him. Right. Remember, I was in, I was with you in LA and Chris Ryan was like, we should sit him out game one. No, before game one, he was, see, I was saying like, we should maybe even sit him for both games. We all saw it coming, right? No, it's, it's Jacob's. It's like a pitcher that maybe has an 85 pitch start every six days. And you just have to kind of craft the rotation around it. But what's, I thought, honestly, I thought the same thing happened to LeBron in the round two, like just going every other day when you're 41 years old. That's just, you know, there's certain things the schedule is unforgiving. I don't think Embiid was dramatically different between the Celtics and Knicks series. I thought the Knicks did a much better job of working him. Well, that's also true. Yeah, I agree. You know, like, You mean putting him in pick and pops all the time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Defending space. Sometimes if I'm a fat guy covering me and pick up us, run from one side of the court to the other, like, you should have just done that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the Knicks had better guys to throw at him too than I think the Celtics did. And also the Knicks are just playing out of their runs. Like that, that seven game run they had with all the blowouts, it was about as good as you're going to do in the playoffs. So yeah. Eight game run, eight game run. You end up with the Celtics team that Seven. Seven. You end up with the Celtics team that's trying to figure out what they are on the fly. And then you go into this Knicks team that kind of figured it out. And that the Towns thing, did you, Chicobs, did you watch Towns? And we're like, why don't they use them at the top? He could be like Bill Walton, because I don't remember you saying that to me. No. No. He has, like, over his Knicks tenure, he has a ton of like really fun highlight passes, sort of like behind the back out of the post stuff or like, you know, like some, like sort of Yokochi, like someone makes a back cut and he threads the needle. So he's shown that ability in flashes, but not with this kind of quantity. I did not say, you know, we should do make them the fulcrum of the offerings at the nail. Let's do that. They definitely, Kirk wanted to be a little more or a little less Brunson centric. I think would have been the criticism. And it was like, you know, kudos to them for figuring out 85 games into the season. But it was a really good wrinkle. Like once, once they figured out how to not be so reliant on Brunson, it was like the whole team took off. Well, it helps when Kat stays on the floor. True. I'm going to say some really nice things about him. But man, some of these fouls, it's like, dude, don't be that stupid. You're too good for that. But yeah, I think Fred Katz on Zach Lowe's show yesterday had a great stat that the Towns' touches per 100 are way up in these playoffs compared to the regular season. Just another analytical piece of evidence that you guys are exactly right. They are, they are relying on him to be a centerpiece of this offense and a passer in a way that we hadn't seen. And credit to Mike Brown here too. Like this guy took a high stakes job and this Nick's run is featuring a lot of depth and a new look Towns. And to your point, Bill, yeah, a little bit less Brunson hero ball kind of stuff. You know, you know what this reminds me of? Jacob's a guy by the name of Dave Jacoby pick up or pick up basketball days. Just keep them involved. Water the plant. If Jacoby's running the floor, reward him for running the floor, giving them the ball. If you go a little half court, run a little pick and pop with Jacoby's every lesson of the mouth. Get some little pouty sometimes. Get some little pouty. Yeah, you know what? Let's start rebounding more and start running the floor more. You just kind of water the plant. A couple of things about Katz, you're completely right, is the offensive involvement creates defensive involvement. Like they're related. His defense has been much, much better. And also, like, you know, you guys aren't on like Nick's Reddit and like all my Nick's group chats and everything, but like the whole story of the season, it was like November. He's like, I don't know my role in the offense. It's not clear yet. And then it was like January. He's like, I just don't understand my role in the offense. And it was like a month ago. Like I was, he's like, I still don't really fully understand my role in the offense. And it's like, well, I'm glad we figured that out in game four of the first round of the playoffs. You finally figured out your role in the offense. And listen, some things take time. One more and bead one. This one's a little more interesting. Just from Ted, that was all he gave. No, Tom. The bear early rumors are that Darrell will be out in Philly. I'll believe it when I see it. Can we do a deep drive and dive into possible trades for Embiid? My dream trade would be Embiid for KD. That's not happening. Does Embiid make sense for anyone jazz, Kings, Peolkins? Please tell me there's some option. All right. He's got three years, 200 million almost left. This is the only four teams I could possibly come up with. The pellets come straight up for Zion. Peolkins just roll the dice. Hope he gets healthy. I don't see them doing that, especially they're not exactly a lavish organization. So I'm going to say no on that, Kirk. Yeah, it's a no for me dog. Wait, wait, wait. Just shaking his head sadly. One context question. You guys do the worst contracts draft, you and Woes and House. Where did Embiid land this year? Do you remember? We was, I think Paul George won in bead two or might have been reverse. Yeah. Good context. And then they did the Celtics. Next team, I know they did. Next team I have the Sacramento Kings just for Levines expiring just under the guise of it's the Kings who knows what they're capable of. Vavek's like, we have Joel Embiid. Yeah. Can never rule out. He can never rule out. Can't be ruled out. Stauskas. Can't be ruled out. It's a good masterpiece. Stauskas. Look at our team on paper. We traded up one spot to get Darius A. Kuff. We have Joel and B. We're back, baby. They'd be their fans should revolt if they do that. Golden State just for Jimmy Butler. So Jimmy Butler expiring, coming off knee surgery. Golden State with the 11th pick. They convinced LeBron to come. They have Curry already, Andre Monde, and they just, they do the expendables thing that I've been joking about. I don't think Golden State should do that. I'm just going to mention it. Chacoby's making a small smile. I'm just thinking, can we get Mike Conley involved somehow? Al Horford. All right. This last one I kind of talked myself into the Brooklyn Nets who don't have their first round pick next year. Could we just do and beat for two years of Claxton and Mann who make 39 million and 36 million combined the next two years? Just a straight salary dump. Throw in a year of clowning to make the contracts work. And if you're Brooklyn, now I have an interesting guy. Instead of the Liberty just blowing away my team every year where there's way more Liberty fans, sold out crowds and people. It's really like Barclays is like a Liberty's arena, not a Nets arena. Now I have Embiid. I still have salary space, maybe to go get a free agent or maybe to make a honest trade with all my other picks or trade for whoever. And I'm at least more interesting and I just hope he stays healthy. Chacoby's looks like he smelled a terrible fart. No, this is the only one that makes sort of any sense. And I don't know why Philly would be motivated to do this. We're just going to get off the salary a little bit. But I was smiling a bit because the difference between Nets and Liberty games is that they are absolutely wild. It's like your birthday at like 25 and 55. Seriously. Like it's so much fun. It's so funny. It's the same arena in the Liberty games. It's completely different vibes. If you're the Nets, you can't say basketball doesn't work in Brooklyn because the Liberty, it's as good as like half of the NBA games. It's awesome. So would you do that if you're the Nets Kirk? No, no GM and my friend Sean Marks from my time at this first. No GM should be trading for Joel and B at this phase of his career with these. There's about a money that is owed. I anticipate if I had to put the over under on number of games, Joel and B will suit up for next year. I would put it at 43 and a half bill. Are you taking the over the under? Well, the question is when does he play the 43 and a half because he came back for that Celtic series and had three games, three good games at him. And that was enough to kill the Celtic. I don't know. I, if I was a team that had no hope and I had to spend the money anyway, they found the Nets. What else am I going to do? Right? I have, I have salary. I, I, I'm completely irrelevant and I don't have my pick. Like I've got to take a swing at something. Well, okay. But like, I think that's a job move. You know, like if you're trying to sell tickets and just put some energy inside your building, like if you have John Morant or Joel and B, which one? How about both? Can I offer you both? John Morant and Joel and B. Okay, what can go wrong? What's that? Next question from Danny, another one, name her Simmons. Did you ever explain why you thought Jalen Williams played in game two of the Lakers series when you didn't? Please tell, please don't tell me you're cutting corners, not watching sports and turning into Rick Riley. What happened? Rick Riley shot. Well, you want to talk about this. You put this, you put this in the rundown, you copied and pasted it. You wanted to address it. I'm happy to talk about it. Here's my thing. So we're taping right after that game two. There's two games. I'm putting together, I want to do, because I have Letterman on the show after and I'm trying to put together 25 minutes of thoughts as I'm doing it. I'm going full speed and then we tape it live right after the game. And it's like speed chess that I'm old and I'm going around. I'm trying to figure out the minutes and I'm doing everything. I'm trying to get to the next thing and I look at the box score and I'm like, J, and I just kind of brain farted. This is my second brain fart. I'm telling you, it's like, obviously, Jacobi, you're on some of the text threads with me. I'm watching all the games. I wish I could bring my wife on to be like, hey, some people are wondering if you're watching playoff basketball. Because she'd be like, yeah, I can tell you there because I fucking hate you during the first two rounds of the playoffs every year because all you do is watch basketball. The thing is, I think I'm allowed four of these a year. And then if I get to five, maybe a series, maybe I have to talk to the family. Because my other one this year was Seattle thinking the Seahawks never won the Super Bowl, which I said, even though I know, not only do I know they won the Super Bowl, but then the next year they would try to go back to back against the Pats. I was there for that. So I think I'm allowed, because I'm old now, I'm in my mid fifties. I think I'm allowed one just inexplicable brain fart a quarter and everyone's just got to deal with it. And if I get, if I'm at 10 at the end of the year, let's have a real combo. But I think four is okay, right, Kirk? Yeah. And dude, I blame our friend Jaylen Rose. I mean, if it weren't for him, then we wouldn't have this crazy situation. And having two guys named Jaylen Williams on the same basketball team, I come on. It was a tricky situation for all of us. It was a double brain fart because I looked at the minutes. I forgot there were two Jaylen Williams and I forgot that the good Jaylen Williams was scratch for game two. He was wearing a pink leather jacket. It doesn't really help your games. He's in a pink leather jacket that cut to him a lot. Like I'm not, I'm your friend and I love you. But like, you know, it is there is one side of the floor. But I literally, you know, I take last night between 1.30 and 2.30 in the morning after watching five hours of basketball. I'm sure I messed up. I literally just interrupted you to say that the Knicks are on an eight game run and I'm a Nick Van instead of a seven game run. I was like, Bill, no, eight. Like that happened four minutes ago. Like it's just sort of the way it is. But here as someone who's been in this industry a long time, Bill, you're handling this wrong. Your talent, this is where you throw your producers under the bus. No, I've never did that. This is my fault. I've been doing this a long time. Your talent now, Bill. You can't be level headed. You have to have the big ego that my producers are supposed to correct that. That's why they're there. They should be sure to edit that out. Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. That's the talent play. Now, I'll fuck up. Listen, I'm going to have one a quarter and that's it. Podcast is free. This is just what we're dealing with now. Bill, as you're constantly in the area, I have to say this. I think four might be a little low. No, I'm going to my goal is four. Yes, I think you're going to set the bar a little bit lower for yourself there, buddy. Let's go 10. Yeah, let's go 10. You're a lot of potty. I think I can pull up fourth. This was my one for the quarter. Now I'm not going to have another one out of quarter. Josh from DC says he's been a big fan of the podcast since the Picture Me Rowland days. What a classic year that was when Picture Me Rowland was the theme. Thanks to House's Mother Day karma. The Wizards are finally interesting and we have two passive contention. One is just draft AJ. Two is trade down the spot. Get some stuff for Utah. What would you do is to trade machine Maccasso? So I already answered this on Sunday. I don't always feel this way with the draft. I feel like sometimes you got to like dig in. I like this guy the most. Kirk, this is such a weird draft. Yeah. I'm honestly happy with any of these four guys. And I don't know if there's any real way to say one of them is going to be the most awesome. I think AJ is probably the safest. Peterson is the highest ceiling, but I'd also be happy with the other two. And if I could move back one spot and pick up real assets, I would just in this draft, I would do it. So what would you do? Yeah. Yeah. I'm Peterson Curious at the number one spot. I'm also like- Peterson Curious. Yeah. I'm Peterson Curious. I want to come out and just say that I love Darren Peterson. You're rousing Kobe. I think all of the analytics guys in the NBA that I like to represent here from time to time are Cam Boozer enthusiasts. And so the eye test is DeBonsa. There's Peterson. But so I think the bell check move here is to go to three and just take all, I'll take whoever's left. Oh wow. Move down two spots. If I can get something, if, who's there? Memphis. Sorry, I haven't said the drill. Memphis is three. Chicago's four. Yeah. If Memphis would give me anything valuable because they feel strongly or, yeah, I don't know if I'd go to four bill, but I do think there is some jockeying potential for people at one and two to think about just a a little bit backward like your buddy Danny Ainge did. So famously to get to that Tatum over Foltzera. I think that's a good parallel. That was another drafter. I was like, I kind of like all of these guys and they moved back, got an extra pick that ended up not even being a good. It turns out that was a big, big effing deal for the Boston Celtics to do that. So Washington has to be playing with that concept. Jacob, so what would you do? Would you just be like, I like this guy. I'm taking him one. Don't, don't offer me any trades or would you sniff around? Yeah, I think you can only as a GM, you're worried about your job and making the wrong move. I think you can only make the wrong move by trading up in this draft because all four of me, it feels a little bit like the MVP. Like if you have SGA, you can make a great case. If you have Yoko, you can make a great case. If you have Wimby, you can make a great case. Right. So it's like all four of these guys are different players and, but they have sort of like, they're all equal to me as prospects. So if I'm, if I give up assets to move up and end up with the fourth best guy of the four, there's egg on my face. Yeah. Shane wants to know, when you brought up the Wizards in the lottery, Karma Draft, Nick Wright immediately brought up Joe House's name and it made me wonder if Joe House is the most famous Wizards fan at this point. Can we get a celebrity Wizards fan ranking? And then he asked, this was written last week, can House represent the Wizards at the draft lottery? So I asked the Washington fans, I know, here's the, here's the list of famous Wizards fans. You tell me where House ranks, Wale, Dave Batista, Wolf Blitzer, and Teopo, the tennis player. Maybe Scott Van Pelt. I don't know if he's a Wizards fan or not. I know he's a Maryland guy. I assume maybe he likes the Wizards. Honestly, that was all I could find. So I don't know. Andrew Sharp. Andrew Sharp's in there. Okay. Would you have House fifth or would you bump him above any of those I mentioned? Jacob's. I'm biased here. You know, but I will say that Wale was the only one I actively knew was a Wizards fan. Everyone else was news to me. And not like Teopo's out there, you know, like doing post-match interviews about Trey Johnson. Kirk? I feel like House is in the top five. I think he's number one. I'll take a strong stance here. I think Joe House, in part because of his platform here with us at the ringer, is clearly the most famous Wizards fan. Like when people think Wizards fan, they think Joe House. And I think- He tried to do the Dougie on the podcast Sunday. He got so excited, the camera burned out. Like he's a real fan. He's had some camera issues. We'll give him that. But I think the Wolf Blitzer one, Screw Wolf Blitzer, that guy doesn't get him off the list. Never seen him with Wizards one. No, he doesn't like basketball. I don't want to live in a world where that guy is no worthy. Can we split the baby and have a house-wallet partnership? I think they would make a good- Yeah, I like that. Maybe we'll give them a podcast. Zachary Gilbert in Westport, Connecticut writes in, he's 12 years old. And he says, I'm sending this on my dad's email with his permission. My father is a longtime listener of yours. Put me on the podcast, which I love. I always get excited when new one comes out. How come whenever you talk about Kevin Durand, the Warriors, you don't mention that he played with the greatest shooter ever and a top five shooter ever that made life so much easier for him, went on and on about the rant? So it's interesting. And Ethan Strauss actually wrote about this last week on his sub-stack about longevity rot, which there's different versions of this when just when either somebody stays around too long. And I've talked about this a bunch and I haven't talked about in my book about how the memories of somebody near the end can somehow taint the actual memories of their peak. And then you could, you see it with TV too, with like Barkley being on TV all the time versus Carl Malone not being on TV and the other stuff that's up with Carl Malone. And now it feels like Barkley's career was more significant than Malone when that was in the case when it's happening. I think KD the last 10 years really overshadowed how good those last seven OKC years were when from 2010 to 16, he won the MVP, runner up three times, five straight first teams, made the 12 finals, won 10 playoff series. He's either the second or third best guy of the 2010s. I'd have him third behind Curry. I think it's LeBron Curry and KD. 2015 was hurt. 2013 playoffs, Russ got hurt. Harden trade in 2012, screwed things up for them too. And then the only thing you can really ding them on is the last three games of the 16 playoffs against Golden State because they, I thought they had a better team. The Golden State was dragging a little bit. I thought they could have finished him. Jacob, do you feel like all the Durant stuff from the last 10 years is now starting to kind of cloud people's memories of how fucking good Durant was? Yes, I believe it's a little unfair. Like if you look at his former teammate James Harden, who has famously sort of like underperformed in big spots, there's not a lot of those with Kevin Durant. There's injuries and like weird Kyrie Irving stuff and that took down that team and like bad vibes and Phoenix. It just sort of seems like it is his fault, but simultaneously he's still performing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, if his career just ends with the Achilles injury, right? Let's just say it's over. He doesn't come back. We would still talk about him reverentially for what he did for those 13 years Kirk. So I don't, I do think it has clouded how good he was in his peak. Yeah. Let's not forget he tore his Achilles tendon. Like you just said, like holy crap. Like Dominique was my favorite player growing up. It ended him. Like he technically still played after that, but it was over. Kevin has done a marvelous job, I think extending his relevance into what is he, 37. Yeah. And he's the best scorer in my opinion. The NBA has seen since Michael Jordan. You can tell me it's Kobe. I'm not going to get too mad at you, but it's like, this dude is by far one of the best scorers in the league's history. He's doing it at a high level at 37. That's a Houston team who had a disappointing run in the post-season. The vibes are not immaculate, but let's not forget Freddie Van Fleet was not there. Stephen Adams is not there. Durant got hurt. Yeah. I'm sitting here on the 40 acres at the University of Texas. I'm not going to say anything negative about Kevin Durant, but I will say it is better to burn out than it is to fade away. And sometimes that long tail at the end of an artist or an athlete's career can sort of damage how you look back at the prime. Yeah. I would highly encourage, who wrote that email? That was young Zachary. I would highly encourage you to go on the YouTubes and go check out some Durant from, check out the USA basketball stuff and what was it? 2011 at Turkey. Check out the Rucker Park. Check out the 2012 playoffs, him running through, then beating the Clippers. Like Durant was unbelievable. The day you were born, he probably had 40. Right. I mean, he's definitely second or third best part of the 90s. I would put him third, but I also have him ahead of Hardin. Another career thing for manager B, he said, one of the greatest takes in recent BS, Laura, was that Hardin was the guard Carl Malone. Just for record, that was Zach Lowe's take, not mine. I was jealous of it. After watching the Thunder finish up the Lakers, I watched the SGA very vanilla walkoff interview. And I thought, does anyone actually list SGA as their favorite player? Will he be remembered as guard Tim Duncan, both dominant, but with no fans? I thought that was character assassination. People loved Tim Duncan. I loved Tim Duncan. I ride for Tim Duncan. It is interesting though, Chacobes, like, have you met a diehard SGA guy? Did you meet anyone who's like, my favorite guy is SGA? I'm wearing the SGA jersey. This is my dude. Okay. I'll answer that question in a second, but first I want to address something. Like, Bill, you're one of the biggest Tim Duncan fans in the world. Kurt, you are biased by the spurs. He was boring. Like, you know what I mean? Let's just freeze over this. What do you mean? Tim Duncan was awesome. He was boring. His personality didn't exist, and his game was to turn around and hit it off the window. You know what I mean? He was a dialing basketball player, won a lot of championships, but it's not exactly like he was Anthony Edwards in the post-game interviews and whatever. One of the four greatest teammates of all time. I do not know anyone who's like, I love SGA. I don't see any SGA jerseys anywhere. You see the other mega stars in New York City. I do want to say this though. I am enjoying some of his personality flares outside of his outfits. I have the answers. I just need to see the test. He started to have these sort of like, they kind of feel pre-canned, but some good post-game stuff that's kind of like this calm cool that I'm starting to dig. He's not like personalityless, like your guy's his favorite guy, Tim Duncan. You mean pre-canned, like Noah Eagle breaking out the Cavalange. It's a Cavalange. That was quite a while ago. It was a Cavalange though, to be fair. That was a crazy third quarter. Kirk, do you know any diehard SGA fans? No, I think that's the more interesting part of this question. I think the comp to Tim is just wildly unprofessional for a mailbag question. SGA, it is really interesting. This is like Jacoby's wheelhouse and your wheelhouse too. It's like, yeah, his approval rating outside of his home market seems to be the lowest we've seen for a player who is that dominant since we've been doing this, right guys? Like if I'm in New York or if I'm in LA and I start talking about SGA, I kind of know what the person across the table is going to start to say. I think that is sort of the more interesting part here. I think it's actually great for him that he belongs to OKC and everybody else is kind of poking holes and it makes OKC want to love him more and we're probably in an OK spot with it. And now it's time for embracing the era brought to you by New Era, the official cap of the NBA. Take a trip back through some of the most iconic court-defining moments with the New Era NBA Hardwood Classics collection, which is awesome. Let's be honest, it's hard to top those legendary 90s logos. Perfect time. We had figured out that the 80s were a little over the top. We're getting a little more creative in the 90s. You can feel the influences of culture back then and speaking of the 90s. So I think the most underrated star of the 90s, I'm biased here, but I think it was Reggie Lewis of the Boston Celtics who was really coming on as an asset who was the only two guard of that generation really to go toe to toe with Jordan when they played and was awesome in the in the 92 playoffs. They lose to the Celtics lose to the Cavs and 7, but it was a real breakout thing for them. He was just really good and there were a lot of good players in the early 90s. So, you know, when you look at the all NBAs and stuff, really hard because you're getting bumped by guys who were Hall of Famers. But I feel like he was either the second or the third best two guard of that generation. He tragically, he went down the 93 playoffs and passed away that summer in the prime of his career. And you look at the guys, the two guards from that era, Mitch Richmond, Reggie Miller, and Drasim Petrovic who also tragically passed away. Reggie was right up there with all of them. And I thought it was just better than Reggie Miller. So, I always think about when the 90s, there's a lot of guys that, oh man, Kenny Anderson, Derek Coleman, like you go through and there's some guys that never reached their potential and then Reggie is at a whole other level. But I really think he could have had a fun 90s if it had just kept going with him. Anyway, the Celtic stuff from the early 90s is pretty cool too. Take a step back in time. Check out the new era NBA Hardwoods collection available in a wide range of silhouettes, including the iconic fitted 5950 or adjustables like the 940 of frame and 970 and some great Hardwood classics apparel as well. Visit newericap.com slash ringer to shop now. Use one time code ringer and you get 20% off your first order. Go check it out. Zach from Chicago, he just says, I know you're really from the Celtics. I'm really from the Nuggets. What about Jim Aumery for Jalen Brown straight up? Kind of interesting. No. You would do that for the Celtics? I'm not doing that for the Celtics. Kirk, I like Jalen's defense. Jamal doesn't have the defense. I don't think they're going to, I don't think they're going to mess with it. No. What do you think though, Bill? Yeah, what happened to you, Bill? The guy goes on a Twitch and all of a sudden he was like your favorite player of all time like 10 minutes ago. Now you're like, oh, that Twitch stream makes me want to trade a virtual Muff Murray. It's a no for me, but I did go down a 10 minute rabbit hole thinking about, oh, we could replace Jalen's minutes with Hugo and Shireman and Walsh. Now we'd have these three guards and Tatum and offensively would be so much more interesting. I did entertain it for a second. That leads us to, this was your big assignment. Here's the email. Go on the record right now, predict four NBA trades, but do it like that. And the four would be separated as boring, biological, conventional, major and somewhat surprising. And holy shit, I can't believe that guy got traded. And that email is from me. I wrote it. I would never fake a mailbag email. I could have just said it's from Larry in Indiana, but I wrote that one because I want to do it. I'll give you the three ones I had. And then I gave you the assignment for the whole shit trade. So boring, but logical. The Warriors get Anthony Davis. The wizards get butlers expiring and like a lottery protected first and 27. And we just call it a day. That trade makes a lot of sense to me. If the wizards can get one more asset, they're going to obviously take either DeBancer or Peterson. They're not going to be good this year. I don't think they want to see what they have. Could they get one small asset for Davis? He's probably not going to be happy there. And then the golden state, if you can then get LeBron, now I have Davis, LeBron, Draymond, Curry, and Kigtai. The boring, but logical Kirk, would you agree with that? Yeah, that's boring, but I don't think 80s very happy there. And I could see that trying to just get away from it. And there has been interest right from golden state to sort of reestablish having a traditional big beyond just Draymond. So I could see that one boring, but logical. Jacob's? I don't really understand why Washington is doing this. We're just taking on Butler and like what asset are you getting back? Like I think top seven protected first. Don't you think you can get a better package for AD than Butler in some sort of pick? Well, he's unhappy and he keeps getting hurt and he's in his 30s now. And he makes a lot of money. So that those are the things you're worried about. All right, conventional. This would be the honest trade. I think the latter had talked about it on Sunday. Yanis and the Celtics, I think became way more realistic after how the lottery played out. So there's a world where you can get Portland gets Jaylen Brown. The Celtics get Yanis and they also get Kuzma in their trade exception thing. And then Milwaukee gets Grant's contract, Scoot Henderson and a slew of firsts, including all their Milwaukee stuff that they could get back. And that ends up being the trade. It seems pretty conventional. Out of those three Kirk, who is like, I'm out. I don't want to do this. I'm worried about Portland. What do you think about Portland's just general? I don't know what they're doing. They're sort of any rational player in the marketplace, right? What are your thoughts on what they're trying to accomplish? Well, if I'm Portland Jacob's and I have Denny and I have Jaylen Brown and I have Klingon and I have Kamara and you know, maybe I don't have to give up all the assets I have from Milwaukee. Dave Lillard. I have Dame coming back. Shaden Sharp coming back. So that's probably the one if we're talking about three teamers. That's the only way. The other way with Yanis and Jaylen would just be the two of them. Okay. Major and somewhat surprising, this idea came from a listener, Jack and Orlando. I really liked this one. I was jealous of it. Orlando gets Jamal Murray and Cam Johnson's expiring. Denver gets Frons and Suggs. It's a straight two for two. Frons and Suggs for Murray and Cam Johnson. It's a pretty good trade. I like that for both teams. I like that, dude. And Cam Johnson. Yeah, put it in. Call silver. Because Yolkich could basically be the point guard for Denver anyway. And Suggs could be the guard, the other team's point guards and bring the ball up. And then Frons with Gordon and Joker. Now my defense is better. And then Frons unleashed without Paolo. And then Orlando figures out the guard situation and splits up Frons and Murray. I don't know. I thought that was really good. Okay. But let's not breeze past that. That's pretty good. It's a pretty good trade. That makes the NBA better right away. Yeah. Yeah. Like somewhere there's like an intern that works in the front office and is like, hey, you listen to the BS pop. I was going to do a tweak and be like, well, Orlando's got to throw in Anthony Black or Denver probably. And I was like, I don't see a tweak. I think that's a really fair two for two. And eventually I have to save a little Orlando money. The shooting problem that Orlando has, like there's a defense problem. I'm Frons is an exactly lockdown defender. But there's a defense problem in Denver. There's a shooting problem in Orlando. We both want to shake things up. That works. All right. I asked you for a holy shit trade. You go first, Jacobi. What is it? So that the concept is not we'll never have the Luca trade again, but a trade that would make people go, oh my God. So what is it? So I just want to say that this is I'm not saying this is going to happen. I'm not predicting this. But it is like all great things. It starts with Joe House, right? Washington has the number one pick in a great draft. That's a huge asset, but they're open for business. Also, our colleague and friend Rich Paul has been working the phones. And he's been pulling some strings behind the scenes on behalf of his clients. Yeah. And Washington has found a dance partner. They send the number one pick and Anthony Davis and next year's number one pick. Because if you acquire Anthony Davis because of some weird voodoo magic, you also get the next number one pick. It follows. Yeah. That's in the trade. Okay. You trade that package, number one pick and Anthony Davis and the voodoo spell for Cooper flag, Kyrie Irving and the number nine pick. And here's why it makes sense. There's a Ujiri did not draft flag. He doesn't see the vision. He's going to have the number one pick. He can start with this guy. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's absolute chaos in the streets of Dallas, like rioting. It's got a face paint. He's got a flag. A helicopter has to land on top of the Mavs office for a smith and Ujiri to get in to get away to safety. Jerry Jones is involved. It's just chaos. The National Guard has to come in. And then somehow Mark Cuban just ends up negotiating a piece between the fans of the Mavericks and the city. That's a great one. Yeah. I mean, them trading Cooper flag, I think could lead to a civil war in the United States. It just, it would be like the front, the Archduke Ferdinand of America. I don't know how Dallas would start rioting. God only knows what happens next. Kirk, what do you got? Well, this one hurts. And since we're back in time, it's just tough, but I'm going to stick my neck out here and be like, the spurs are going to trade deer and fox. And I think they are going to get a another younger wing strong player. I haven't worked out the full details. I didn't do my homework as much as Jacobi did. But what I've seen in these playoffs and in this Minnesota series, and again, I might be speaking so stupidly now for those who have time traveled with me. But I really think what I've seen in these playoffs is like, why do we have deer and fox on this team? We have Dylan Harper. We have Stefan Castle. We have Victor Wembenyama. We have a clear need to get stronger on the wings and in our front court. Can we find somebody like Toronto or Houston that can give us some depth and some strength to fight with these types of Minnesota guys? So I haven't done the full homework, but that's my holy shit. The spurs are going all in with this young core moment. That would be interesting. Tough one for De'Aaron Fox. Attaches himself to Wembe and it lasts a year and a half. I know it is, but I mean, I also love the year idea. Like the other one I had runner up is the Jalen Williams, the one who's currently hurt with his hamstring and Chet Holmgren, one of those guys for the similar reasons. Like a lot of us, these young cores, they have to get ahead of the second apron. They have to do stuff like that. So, you know, J.A. Donde says real trades, travel in silence and we never saw the Luca thing coming. So I think there are the holy shit moments are like, oh my God, I couldn't believe that that could happen. Right. Like Jalen Williams just getting traded straight up for the third pick. Like, oh, I told you on the text. Yeah, like that, like that, that's a great one. But I told you on the text, Jacobi's going to have a better one. And I was right. Well, I mean, I forgot the ending. It ended up with Joe House in a bathtub full of Arby's roast beef with Cooper flag picture of Cooper flag. Yeah. I'm dialing it up a notch from your holy shits. What about aunt to Atlanta? Oh, T Wolves get Jalen Johnson, they get 823 and 26. They got there's Atlanta has a bucks New Orleans worst pick in 27. The worst one of those two, they have some other stuff first swaps. What if Kirk, have you, how long do you think it's going to actually last in Minnesota? If you guess, where's Anthony from? And like this is where's Anthony from Jacobi? Do you have any ideas on that? Do you know how long people in the media have been trying to send basketball players back home? It's always do it's as well. He's from the KD's from the DMV. We always do this. I'm just saying this point in time right now is when Atlanta has the best possible, we're going to overwhelm you with an Anthony Edwards offer moment. And I was trying to think of like every year there's a holy shit one. And usually we have some semblance of it. And then sometimes we don't. And if like the series ended badly, you know, we have the new owners in place who knows. And what if he's just like, send me to Atlanta. And then the other piece of it is Aunt in Atlanta. I can't even imagine what that would be. Like they'd never, not since Dominique had a guy in the brief Michael Vic moment, but putting aunt in there would just be one of, I love their crowd. Like it would just be crazy. So that I think that's my, he's a perfect Atlanta representative, right? Jacoby, like the, the, because you go to a Hawks game, they are unique, they are fun, but they are sort of flat in a sense. Like they don't, it feels like he would be the perfect guy to change the vibes in Atlanta. And I know for a fact that that organization for years has circled him, like a lot of teams do with certain players that they're suitors for years in advance, being like, that's a guy. I think he might want to come to live here because he is from there. And I, I don't know, but I like it. And I could see it from Atlanta's perspective. Now, will, will Tim Connelly agree with me? Probably not. But if you also, if you're Anthony, you look at the starting five you're currently playing with, and the starting five you would be playing with Atlanta, like you're dramatic downgrade. Yeah. The only way that trades happening is if Anthony Edward says, you're trading me. Yeah. No, we don't want to. No. Chris Finch have a fist fight on the court. You're actually going to trade me. The other one I was thinking for a holy shit was if San Antonio just said, fuck it. We'll put Dylan Harper on the table. We'll, we'll put every pick we have and just make a run at trying to put Wim, Wimby and Aunt on the same team, which would be, I don't know how the alpha piece of that would work because Wimby's definitely an alpha. But that's it from holy shit ones. I went to everybody and it was the only holy shit guy that really jumped out of me. Oh no, there's one, there's one I was building that was a holy shit guy. LeBron convinces the Lakers to trade Luca. That's pretty, it seems like Luca is really embedded in there. Yeah. It's out there. I had, I had that to Jacobi's, but I had Luca in my notes. It just feels too much. The other one is like, what if Denver's like, we're never getting over San Antonio and O.K.C. With straight yogurt now? I guess that's that would be the other holy shit guy. We couldn't get past Minnesota. Yeah. We couldn't get past Minnesota without Aunt in this game six. So that, that'd be the one where it's like, well, this is the Herschel Walker play for, for the future of the Denver Nuggets organization. There's one more. I went through the ring 100 and I had my holy, my holy shit glasses on and my little detector and I was going through each guy. I was like, and the only other one was Tatum, because I think that would list at the proper holy shit where the something's like, you know what? Jaylin was right. This actually is this team. We're trading Jayston Tatum. We've been like, holy shit. They're trading Tatum. That's, that's the other, I think Aunt and Jayston Tatum in that order are the two holy shit guys. Everybody else you could believe like that. I'm a Mitchell getting traded. I'd believe it. Like, you know, you go on through the league, Booker, shocking, but not really the other bigger names. They're never going to move. You know what I mean? Like Luca, SGA, Wimby, Flag, like these guys aren't really going to move, but I could, I could see the Celtics trading one of the Jays. And Joker getting traded. The risk would be, he would just be like, all right, I'm going to go raise some horses now in Serbia. I'll see you guys later. And you never even get to play one game with them. That's it for the mail bag. I took you guys up too much, but that was fun. Holy shit stuff. All right. So our holy shit trade rankings, Aunt one, Tatum two, Luca three. No, Luca already got traded. Luca, Luca, I'm not playing Luca on there. He got traded though. He's never, ever going to happen. He's in Los Angeles. No. Got hurt. Yeah. All right, Chico. So we can hear in the mismatch. Goldsbury, thanks for being on two different segments of my pod today. That was great. My pleasure. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk and Jacobi. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be back here on Thursday. No game on Thursday night, actually. So I'm going to be back on Thursday. I'll have some sort of fun podcast for you. And don't forget new rewatchables, Tropic Thunder is up and you have six days to watch Borat, just in case we do it on the rewatchables next Monday. So I will see you on Thursday.哎哎哎哎哎 in affiliation with Kansas start casino or 18 plus and president in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming, opt in required bonus issued as non-drop-up profit boost tokens, restrictions apply, including any token expiration max wage or amount C terms that sportsbook. That founder.com game problem called one hundred gambler one 800 by reset call eight eight eight seventy nine seven seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG.org slash chat and Connecticut or MD gambling help.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghoplinema.org or call 800 327 5050 for 24 seven sport Massachusetts or call 877 8 hope and why or text hope and why in New York for Louisiana. Call 877 770 7867.