Full NBA Trade Deadline Reaction

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing on Thursday evening after the NBA trade deadline. Joining us from New York City is Tim Bontos. Oh, everybody. Joining us from Dallas, Texas, where they saved money and got some first round picks is Band McMahon. Howdy, partners. Might not be plural on the first round picks. We'll see how that plays out with the top 20 protected one, but it was a great day for the Mavericks yesterday. Saved a ton of money. I know everybody loves that. A little flexibility, some draft capital, and the bucks and grizzlies, both won, baby. Yes. All right. Well, we're going to start off with what I think was one of the most fascinating trades of the deadline and certainly of deadline day. And that is, and I know that you might be surprised we're starting with this, but I can't stop thinking about it. The Vitzia Zubach being traded from the LA Clippers to the Indiana Pacers. Now, why would we start with that trade? Well, here's why. So obviously the Clippers are, I was told not to use the word rebuild, but I don't know what you want to call it, whatever you want. Retooling for sure. There were 17 and four. James Harden all of a sudden is declared out for personal reasons. He was in Arizona. He's got connections there. I don't know. There's a lot of different reasons, guys. Guys get to personal. Yeah, personally, he wanted to get traded. Then they came back to LA and James wasn't there. And next thing you know, James Harden was a calf. Okay. So then a couple of days later, Vitzia Zubach's out for personal reasons. Had a good reason though, the birth of his child. Congratulations, you're getting sent to Indiana. By the way, that's a tough hand to be dealt. It's a tough business. You've got a relative newborn. He's getting old. He's getting big and old, but bond temps. But you know, imagine having to move or leave your wife. If I was making $20 million a year, K-Bon would deal with me moving. I can tell you that right now. She'd probably tell me to move tomorrow if I was making $20 million. Give me that check. She would outsource your duties. Yes, she would. She would just, she'd go buy herself a Chanel bag and wait till I could come on between games. Okay. Anyway, so Zubach was out for good reason, but he gets traded on deadline day. And so the Pacers, good piece of business. Zubach has two years and about 40 million left on his contract. Borderline all NBA. Hey, I'll say this. If you did just that all star, make predictions. This boost his future all star chance is going west to east of him. All NBA is a stretch, but he's a solid starting center. Let's go back to that podcast and talk about how I was on the Clippers that night. Oh my God. Listen, if you take that 17 and four stretch, you look brilliant. Yeah. So this is the replacement for Miles Turner. And I got to say on that just little piece of business, it's a quality replacement for Miles Turner talking about, you know, he doesn't stretch the floor, but we're talking about one of the best defensive bigs in the league and he's on a good contract and showed with James Harden that he can be a really productive pick and roll partner, despite not being necessarily a vertical threat, the big time screen. Yeah. Good field. I mean, it's a really, really like he's an upgrade over Miles Turner. I like Zubach a lot. I definitely think he's a better player than Miles Turner. I am curious about his fit with the way the Pacers play because of his lack of shooting and look like Zubach isn't the last is going up and down the court, but like the Pacers are flying up and down. It's not necessarily the style I would expect him to play. But look, we know Indiana is not going to go in the tax. He's got a very good deal making around $20 million in the next couple of years. That's a big part of why they paid this very hefty price to get him is that he fit within their books. It's why, you know, we kept talking about Daniel Gafford as an option, right? Same reason. Like he is a player that fits both from a positional need and a contractual standpoint. They weren't going to keep Ben Mather in so I get why they moved on from him. But this draft pick situation. Okay. Let's get to that. Is fascinating. So when I heard the trade live on TV, I was like, okay, what's really Shams reported just one side of it. And our phones, I'm sure all of our phones blew up like, what's the other side of it? What's the other side of it? And so Shams like literally read on TV live on air. He got the info. Well, and for background, after the clippers had seemingly made him available, the expectation was it was going to need to be at least two firsts to get him out of the clippers. That was what people in the league were expecting. Right. So okay. So I wasn't really thrilled with the clippers trading him, as you can imagine. And I said so. And then there's two firsts. I was like, okay, well, they got their price. And then I heard the details. And this is what we're building up to. So 2029 unprotected first. Okay. Unprotected firsts are tough. Unprotected firsts for players that are sub all stars are tougher. But okay, it happens. Second pick. It's protected. Oh, okay. That makes sense. What year? 2026. Wait, they're bad this year. That's an interesting, I almost thought that Shams misread it, because he was literally doing it live off of his phone. He goes 2029. I go, okay. And 2026. I was like, no, man, it can't be, can't be their pick 2026. I mean, they've got the number three pick right now. It can't be their pick. And he goes top four protected. And I was like, oh, and 10 through 30. So basically, the clippers will get the pick this year. If the pick falls between five and nine, if it's one through four or 10 or above, the Pacers keep it. I've only seen one other trade like this, which was like in 2008 or nine, Kyle Lowry getting traded to Toronto is when he first went to Toronto, I think, from Houston, where it was sort of like protected in this way. Yeah, it was a little bit later than that. But that was the protection. It ended up being the Stephen Adams pick. Okay. So BonTemp, you were all over this immediately. And your thoughts on this aspect of it? Well, I mean, it's a fascinating situation because you've got the Pacers who, you know, as Big Band is hinted at several times this year, have a coach in Rick Carlisle who, you know, is, I don't know if he's, I don't remember if he's their president or not, but he's obviously heavily involved in their leadership with their basketball operation with Kevin Prichard and with Chad Buchanan, their longtime front office. And they have been very clearly trying to take advantage of this gap year and be as bad as possible and take advantage of what's a loaded draft. So they right now are sitting in third place in the reverse lottery standings. As we're about to go through, there are a metric ton of teams that are going to be trying to lose every game possible over the next couple of months. So I find the Pacer situation right now to be fascinating because they have a very clear choice in front of them. One of those choices is to try to remain in the worst couple spots in the league and try to have roughly a 50% chance of either losing their pick at all at five or staying in the top four and getting Darren Peterson, AJ DeBant, Seth Cameron, Boozer, Caleb Wilson, insert, you know, the other stud in this draft. Whoever they have is those top four. Whoever they want to get, right, with the fourth pick. The other option they have, which I think is a viable option, is to try to get to 10. Now you sit here and say, well, the Pacers are in third. How are they going to get to 10? Well, let me just tell you, there's a lot of God awful teams and there's a lot of God awful teams are going to be trying to lose every game. You've got the Wizards, you've got the Nets, you've got the Jazz, you've got, you've got the Pelicans who remain awful. You've got the Kings who are awful. You've got the Bulls who we're going to get to in a bit who now we're going to try to lose. You've got the Mavericks, you've got the Grizzlies, you've got the Clippers themselves who aren't going to be very good. And that's before we see what happens with Coli Leonard. Yeah, the Clippers are not tanking, but they're not going to be flying. They're not going to be good. So I think there's a real chance that if the Pacers decide to, they could get to 10. And the reason why getting to 10 matters is if they get to 10 in the lottery standings, they guarantee themselves of keeping their pick this year, one way or the other. And just last year, we saw the Mavericks go from 11 to 1 and get Cooper Flag. The year before, two years before we saw the Hawks go from 10 to 1. And I'm just, listen, I'm not saying they're going to do that. I've asked a lot of people in the league about this the last couple hours. And some people think it makes sense to try to go to 10. Some people think it makes sense to stay at the top, but I don't think it's a certain answer either way. And it's why this is fascinating, because typically you wouldn't have a chance to get from 3 to 10. But if they just try to win with Zubat and Andrew Nemhardt and Aaron Niezman to Pascal Siakam, I think they'll get to 10 because there's going to be wins to be had over the next couple of months. I just think that is a short-sighted, silly way to go about things. I can't imagine they'd take that route, especially they played the Jazz the other night. They had a hard fought, and I mean, they fought to lose a hard fought loss in a game which they started. Jairus Walker, Jay Huff, Ben Shepherd, Cam Jones, and Johnny Furphy. That's the, well, two things. One, that's before they made this trade. And two, what you're saying is fair, but let me ask you a question. Why is the pick protected at 10 and beyond? Why would you bother? Why would you bother to pick, because you could just say- Why would they do that? Why would they do that? Because again, if you want to- Did the Pacers, did the Clippers insist on that protection? One through four is obviously the Pacers. Did the Clippers insist on the 10 protection? I don't know. By the way, if it doesn't, did we say this, if it doesn't convey, if it's not 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, it goes- It comes to 20, 31 first, unprotected. But look, man, I just, it would be so short-sighted, and I just can't imagine they would do this if you're the Pacers to, you're over halfway through being awful, an awful season, in a gap year without Tyrese Halliburton. You have the exact number, if you're a bottom three team, you've got a 52.1% chance of being top four. Let me go over the percentages real quick here. So right now, let's say the lottery was today, and they're their third worst record. 52% chance of being top four, aka keeping their pick, 48%. So it's slightly better than a coin toss to keep their pick. Correct. If they were to fall to the 10th, okay, they would have an 11% chance of getting into the top four, and 100% chance of keeping their pick. And also, just the other part of this is in the rea- And like, I understand your position, McMahon. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer, but to your point, I would love to know who put this backstop in on the 10th pick. Was it the Pacers or was it the Clippers? Because that's an interesting thing to know to your point. And the other part of it to me is, if you're the Pacers, and you have this team that's trying to win now, like you've got Pascal Siakam, you've got Vytsizubac, you've got Tyrese, like they're trying to win next year. Would you rather give up the pick this year in theory, or would you rather get, whether it's, would you rather guarantee yourself getting one more high-level player to go with this group for the next few years and have them part of this team? The short answer, and it's not a direct answer, but the short answer is I would rather do everything possible to take advantage of an unfortunate situation where you have a chance to add a bona fide star alongside Tyrese Halliburton, Pascal Siakam, and now Vytsizubac. Now, I will say this, as you said, it was well known that the Pacers were in the hunt for pre-agency big man, right? You mentioned Gafford. They were also, they had extended conversations with the Utah Jazz about Walker Kessler, and that would have been a classic, like, the flip type of move. Kessler's out the rest of the season. They did not, they did offer, my understanding is they did offer multiple picks for Kessler. It was not this, the picks weren't this sweet. Imagine the Jazz giving up those, the half of there, could they, their pick stop A protected. Imagine the Jazz saying four through eight, we get it, eight through nine through 30. Yeah, and I don't know exactly what the picks were. I don't even know exactly how firm of an offer there was or wasn't. My understanding is it wasn't these, it wasn't this exact pick. It wasn't quite this attractive, but it does reinforce the Jazz's desire to keep Walker Kessler despite the fact that they are far, far, far apart on what they perceive is that I'd be on the next. Also, the other thing is Zubac is under contract, a favorable contract, and Kessler wants to get paid big this summer, which is why I would guess that this same deal was not on the table for Walker Kessler because I would assume Pacers would not be as comfortable with paying Walker Kessler the number it might take to get him. Whereas they know they're going to be able to afford getting a Vizsuzubac on this deal, which is why I would guess it wasn't the exact same offer if I had to guess. Yeah, it was not. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. You need a scorecard to keep track of the lottery. We're going to give it to you real quick here. Okay, the number one pick right now is Sacramento. They've lost 10 straight games. And they're playing their young guys in crunch time to develop them. Good decision. All right, number two right now is New Orleans, which pick goes to Atlanta via pick swap. Certainly not tanking, just they stink. Unprotected pick swap. So that's okay. So you know that. No, unprotected pick. Unprotected pick. Right. The better of them or the bucks and the bucks get the other one. I apologize. Unprotected pick. Number three, Indiana. And we just went over it. One through four, it's theirs. Five through nine is Clippers. 10 or above, it's theirs. Number four, Brooklyn. Nice and clean with the asterisks. It was originally traded to Indiana or to Houston. They got it back, but now it's clean. Brooklyn gets to pick no matter where they are. Number five, or number, I should say tied for number four, Washington, who just traded for Anthony Davis and recently traded for Trey Young. Washington currently with 13 wins and tied for fourth. Their pick is top eight protected. If it falls nine or higher, it goes to the Knicks. Which is why I wonder if we're going to see Anthony Davis play in red, white and blue this year. What about D'Angelo Russell, another former All-Star that he's traded for? Correct. Do you believe D'Angelo Russell will be picking up that $6 million player option? The Maverick certainly did. That's why I was in the deal. All right. Sixth, Utah. As we've heard, 16 wins, three games back of, or three games ahead, whatever back ahead of Washington depends on your look. Utah's picked top eight protected. Otherwise, it goes to the Thunder if it's nine or above. We have talked about that a lot. Seven, Dallas, 19 wins, three games back of Utah. They're trying to go up. They're trying to climb. I don't know how aggressive they're going to be, McMahon. It is their pick cleanly. And as we've gone over many times, the only pick that they have of their own clean until 2031. Number eight, with 20 wins, Memphis, who has traded two of their three best players in the last, what, seven months, including Jaren Jackson this week. And fought off some serious intrigue about John. Number nine, Milwaukee, 20 wins, tied with Memphis. Actually, I guess they're tied for eight. We will see what happens with Yanis now because one of the things that came was reporting. They came out, frat of Milwaukee today when Yanis wasn't traded was that he'd like to play. The other day, Doc Rivers was on countdown before our day of game on Sunday. I asked him and he said, Yanis is going to play. Hey, you know what? I just heard celebration in Memphis. I just heard celebration in Dallas. I just heard celebration out of Salt Lake City. That sounds like a great plan for those teams. They can't wait. They're four and four and five. I think they won Wednesday. And so I think they're five and 14 without them and they're 500 when he plays. Okay, 11th. And I should point or 10th, I should say point out, unfortunately for Portland, who was on a nice winning streak, they've lost six games in a row. They came out east and they've gotten knocked back to earth. They're in 10th. Their pick, by the way, is lottery protected to the Bulls. Right now, it wouldn't be conveying. So, you know, just thought, those were talking about the Bulls a little later. In the last, in this misery over the last few weeks, that pick has gone from, you know, baby conveying to the Bulls to not conveying, but you should keep an eye on it. All right. Charlotte, they've won seven in a row. They're on their way up, traded for Kobe White. They seem to be trying to at least make the play in. So maybe this sounds an issue, but I think they're a playoff theme this year. Okay. Well, their pick is free and clear. They own it, haven't traded it. Congrats to them. 12th pick, LA Clippers. Oh boy. No, it's the way. Who's that going to? Okay. Well, 23 wins right now. Okay. And that is tied for, or that is tied for 12. Okay. Portland, Charlotte and the Clippers all have 23 wins. And if the Clippers finished the worst out of those, they'd be ninth and have a 10th. They'd be 10th. They'd have a 11% chance of going to the top four. If Portland or if Milwaukee gets the honest back and starts to play 500 basketball again, it's not all the round possibility that you could see the Clippers if they don't continue to win, which I would say is going to be hard. They're going to potentially hand a top 10 pick over to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Oh, Chicago at 13. Chicago's got a chance of two picks up here, but this pick is clean and clear and they have it. Well, and they finally, after all these years of all roads leading to 39, literally one minute. Oh, go, go. 14th pick right now is the Atlanta Hawks, which goes unprotected to the Spurs. So as of right now, and like, you know, we'll see what happens with Atlanta, but as of right now, if the lottery was tonight, the Thunder would have a 7% chance of being in the top four. The Spurs would have a 2% chance of being in the top four. And goodness knows what that Clippers pick might be in a couple of months. Okay. So just keep in mind if you can, all of that shenanigans and how much things are going to be fascinating, especially on lottery night themselves. And so many tanking teams as buyers before the trade deadline was a wild twist, but go on. By the way, I've had some people give me some ideas for what I'm calling the flip, which is what Utah, Brooklyn and Washington are trying to do. Maybe Dallas to a certain extent too. They'll bring back Kyrie, but you know, get as low of, you know, as good of a pick as possible, but also prepared to immediately get better. Dallas for sure is trying to, yeah. Yes. Our friend at ESPN radio, he does a morning show on ESPN, Evan Cohen, he is calling this the trade ahead line for Washington and, you know, Utah making trade of heads. It's not bad, but I need just, I need, I need to, the concept of trying to go from a lottery team that's tanking to a team that could like make the playoffs. I need to, I just came up with one. How about sit and soar? No, I like to sit and then you soar up the stand. I don't like the flip, but I'm going with it. All right. Okay. Well, you asked for suggestions. I don't even know how many trades the Chicago Bulls. You can sit and do something else. Right. I don't even know how many trades the Chicago Bulls made in the last three days. I know that they acquired nine second round picks, and then at one point they had 10 guards on their roster. They ended up acquiring two sort of undersized big men, Nick Richards and Gerson Yabasele, but the Bulls are like, why? I actually don't know what the Bulls are doing. Tim Bon Temps, can you explain to me what the Bulls just did at the trade deadline? No. I am, I am so, our tourist clinician had a presser today and, and for the second year in a row at the trade deadline said, we don't want to be in the middle. This guy five years ago said, yeah, you don't want to be aiming for 10th place in the standings. That's not what you're trying to do. He then traded for Nick Vucevich, has spent the last five years sitting in the play-in tournament, literally in the middle of the standings outside of the glorious six weeks where the Lanza Ball team played above its head and had a pretty good record in the East and then plummeted and won one playoff game in the first round. It is embarrassing situation that Chicago Bulls are in. 18 months ago, they had Kobe White and I had a sumu on their roster on cheap deals, good players on cheap deals, the kind of players that can get you maybe multiple first round picks, at least one first round pick, real players, the real assets that you can build around going forward and maybe not be in the middle. What did the Bulls do? They didn't trade them. They kept them on their roster until the very end of their contracts before the trade deadline and what did they trade them for? A handful of second round picks. One second round picks have never been less useful in the entire history of the NBA and the Bulls traded for a bushelful of picks and have a team that makes no sense to, in theory, start to lose now when they're 10th place in the Eastern Conference and probably can't get higher than 10th place in the lottery. Now our tourists is getting up here saying, oh, we have a plan. We're trying to, we're sick of being in the middle. We want to actually try to build something. You don't want to build anything. There's no plan. There's no plan for anything at all. This is absolutely unbelievable. Nikola Vucevich has been on their roster for five years, got this insane extension three years ago and the whole time, team has been on a treadmill to nowhere the whole time. It's absolutely unbelievable. The Bulls, by the way, were in position to make the trade the Atlanta Hawks did and get this pick. That might be the number one pick in the draft. Did the Bulls make that trade? No. I'd loved a year from our tourists. Why the hell they didn't make that trade? Where was the plan then? They drafted one spot ahead of Atlanta when they... They sure did. And they drafted Noah Senke, who might be a good player, but heard his shoulder earlier this year. He's out for the season. Like the idea that this team has some grand plan to get out of the position they're in is lunacy to me. And it's just, it's unbelievable that they have chosen now as a time to make all these trades. By the way, they had all of these expiring contracts that could have taken on money for assets. They didn't even do that. They just swapped out expiring contracts for expiring contracts the last couple of days. Like the one guy that took on was Rob Dillingham, who, I mean, speaking of Minnesota, yes, Minnesota got Iodosumu for four seconds. You know, they could have maybe had Iodosumu and Kobe White for the price that the Bulls did it for at the way things are going. So I look, I just, it's just insane that we're sitting here with our tourists at this point in the cycle and we're having the... Like I just literally went and looked it up a year ago. I looked up Jamal's story from February 6th a year ago after they moved on from Zach Laveen. There's more to come. We're committed to being a sustainable competitive team. We're not okay with being in the middle. Curating a team that competes at the high level, it could compete for a championship has been our goal. Today, what did our tourists say? We're, quote, not satisfied with being in the middle. Quote, being in the middle is not what we want to do. We've seen for the past, we've seen that for the past four years and we want to change that. I mean, what are we doing here? Relax, dude. Hey, I'm looking at the ESPN standings. We have, we have three little sections for each conference. There's the top six on the line. There's playing in a line. And then there's the bottom five. And I do think the Bulls are going to be able to get out of the middle. I think they're going to just swap spots there. Sharad is going to zoom right past them. They'll be right there in 11th place. So they're getting out of the middle. They sure are. They sure are. This is, this might, I think one of my favorite moments of the last few days in the Bulls. So they traded for Anthony Simons guard. They traded for Colin Sexton, another combo guard, traded for Jayden Ivy, combo guard, traded for Rob Dillingham, point guard. Combo guard, just a tiny one. Combo guard. It's my favorite. And then they signed Mack McClung to a two-way contract. At least the layup lines are going to be cool. No question about that. What did Mack McClung say? That's the most entertaining part of the game. Mack McClung is like having a really good season. He's not finally, he's not dunking in the dunk contest. I mean, he's obviously a tremendous dunker, but you know, whatever. Congrats to him for his 11 dunk contest titles. Mack McClung, he's like averaging 28 points or something for the Windy City Bulls. He finally gets the call. Mack, get on the Kennedy, come down to United Center. You are getting that two-way contract. He's like, God, another, this is going to be great. He's, he's riding down there his phone. He's, he's, he's, he's ninth or tenth on the, on the depth chart. No, he's not. He's starting at Power Ford. It sounds like to me. Hey, I just, it's just insane. We can, we can hammer away at the Bulls buffoonery and, and that's a nevergreen topic. Did they do any three-way trades out in the last day or two? Cause they're, I'll say they do always finish just a spot ahead of SAC when they do the three-way trades with the Kings. But anyways, we zipped, we went straight into Tankathon and there's a lot of meat there, but Wendy, we did, we zipped right past a fascinating predicament situation that the Clippers are in. Like the Clippers, and I credit their front office for saying, you know what? Yes, we owe our pick this year and an unprotected swap makes sure both to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but that's a sunken cost. And basically, you know, they've made like, they've made moves that are making them worse right away, but clearly they think it's, there's going to be long-term benefit, whether they give up the first pick or the 12th pick, the trade's done. But what does all this maneuvering mean for the guy who everything has revolved around with the Clippers for the last several years? You know, Kwy Leonard this summer is going to go into the last year of his deal with a $50 million salary with a roster that's been kind of stripped down around, I mean, not kind of. Like Paul George has been gone. James Harden gone. Zubat, the next best player gone. What do we think in there? Well, that certainly was something that my phone was asking from League folks when they did the Zubat trade. Would they entertain trading Kwy Leonard? Now, that's a very complicated trade. And since they basically just decided to trade hard in Zubat in the last few days, I can see why we didn't see any of that. But he's having a very good year. And as you said, as one year left, if their goal is to truly acquire as many assets as they can, I think because especially his contract is short that you wouldn't be taking, I think it's something that teams will consider as the summer approaches. Yeah, I would be curious to see what kind of market there would be. Honestly, I'd be a little bit surprised if they don't at least get a feel for that. They've never considered a Kwy trade before. Obviously, they got him and he's been the silent face of that franchise since he arrived. Everything's revolved around him. But I would also say the Clippers front office has a pretty extensive track record of making emotionless decisions when the time comes. Well, and I've done some preliminary just asking of people like, hey, would you have interest in Kwy? And it's always been met with some trepidation about what that would look like and what his interest level would be in being outside of Los Angeles. And look, the other thing we haven't talked about with the Clippers that we have to mention is the sort of damocles it's hanging over the franchise's head with this investigation into potential souricap circumvention and the what does hanging over their head? Just it just relax. It just means that they're going to they're going to have the potential to get in trouble in the coming weeks. And what is that punishment potentially going to look like? I've never heard that word before. Damocles? St. Bonaventure that he took mythology. It didn't learn about it in North Texas. I'll send you some literature. The Clippers have to that the subject of the Clippers potentially facing ramifications from that investigation is hanging over the whole franchise at the moment. And, you know, when this last came up with the Joe Smith situation 25 years ago, there were suspensions for the owner and the lead executive and there were five first round picks lost. So if something is found in this investigation, what's the punishment going to be like that that hangs over all this stuff that's going on with the team? I don't know what's going to happen. I will just say that and I'm not even sure that the Joe Smith thing 25 years ago is something that will be referred. I know it's it's the easy default because it's the only, you know, comparable thing. Joe Smith's contract was nullified, but he wasn't punished. I mean, this contract was nullified, but like he wasn't suspended. Just I'm not saying that way. I don't know what's going on in this investigation. I'm just saying like, you know, just for the record. Well, I just meant I wouldn't even say Kawhi was getting in trouble per se, but I just meant with the picks and everything else. Like, yeah, well, that's the other thing like no one knows what it's going to be if anything happens. If the Clippers get caught and like found guilty, like if they indeed find, you know, incriminating evidence and they punish them with draft picks, would they take the picks that they own from another team? What if they lose the fifth pick on the draft this year? Well, what if they only take their picks and they don't take picks that were acquired from another team? Yeah. And if they only take their picks, then it's going to be a while before the Clippers could even, you know, benefit from being bad. And they're still in a situation where while obviously they made, especially the Zubat's trade, like the Harden trade, okay, he didn't request a trade, whatever. Obviously, there was some pressure there. So they, you know, they did what they had to do there and got a recent All-Star Guard in return, whatever. But the Zubat's trade is something that makes them significantly worse right now, despite the fact that they owe their pick and their in a swap next year. But at the same time, like if they had their own pick, and I think you would say, hey, of course they should try to trade Kauai this summer. Of course they should try to get some value. Part of the value would be bottoming out and benefiting from their own pick, but they're not in that situation. And, you know, after they get done paying off, after they get done paying off, okay, see, they've got to pay off Philly, right? They go picking a swap to Philly in 28 and 29. So it's still going to be, you know, a traditional rebuild is not an option for the Clippers for a while. All right. Well, to be continued, that whole trade was super fascinating. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. All right. So those are some trades that actually went down. We talk about some trades that didn't go down. So Yannis didn't get traded. The Bucks, we mentioned their draft scenario. I will wait and see what happened. You know, Yannis is injured. He is on, you know, he is not on the inactive list because of any reason. He's on the inactive list. He's on the injury list, really. And he's had multiple calf injuries over the last two seasons, I think four. It is not unreasonable for the Bucks to protect him regardless of their... If he plays again this season, multiple people should be fired on the spot. It'd be incredibly stupid. Again, what if he says he wants to play? If he plays this season, multiple people should be fired on the spot. I'll just say that I know that Yannis announced that he was out four to six weeks. Doc Rivers said there was no timetable and the Bucks did not put out a formal injury report. They just put him as on the injury list. But what needs to happen, what needs to happen is the Bucks need to sit down with Yannis and say the following. Look, you and we have the same goals here in that you have said publicly, you want to be here if we have a championship level team. The best chance for us to potentially have a championship level team with you on the team is to maximize our draft pick in this year's draft, which could be as high as the second pick in a loaded draft. You have had four lower leg injuries in the past 18 months. You just played through one a month ago. We understand you want to play. The season is not going anywhere. You need to prioritize your health for the next two months and get yourself healthy and ready for next season. And we need to prioritize seeing our younger players and trying to maximize this draft pick. And then we can sit down in the summer and look at the situation and have a real discussion about whether you really want to be here, whether you really want to be elsewhere, and what the best situation is for everybody involved. But what's unquestionably true is the best situation for everybody involved is for you to get healthy and for us to get our draft pick as healthy as it can be. That's the conversation that has to happen. I think they should just record that and just play it for them. I mean, that's what has to happen. Only bad things can come out of Yannis returning this year. Either they screw up their lottery positioning or he suffers an injury that's going to damage his value, but nothing good can come out of it. But he will be fulfilled playing basketball. That's a good thing. Oh, cool. Well, I tell you what, kissing Yannis' butt over the last several years sure has put him in a great spot. All right. Another trade that did not happen was Ja Morant. There was some rumors out there about what it was going to take. And really, I just think right now, Ja Morant's value is just incredibly low. And I'm not so sure it was... Well, I'm not going to make a speculation. It's negative. It's negative. It just is. And what do you mean by negative? What does that mean? What I mean by negative is I believe the Grizzlies would have to attach an asset to him. They'd have to attach at least a pick to him. Trey Young's value was neutral, expiring. We went in this season, early in the season, discussion. There was the three guards. It was Trey, who ended up getting traded for expiring in whatever you want to call it, Kisper, you know, okay, young player. There was Ja, who they could not generate any sort of a market for. And I don't know. I don't know that teams told the Grizzlies we'll be interested if you attach a pick. I just know like I talked to a team that they were linked to and they said they'd have to attach assets for us to even think about it. I heard that as well. Lamello is the other one. And to Lamello's credit, Lamello is playing very good basketball. And at this point, I don't even think it's about restoring his trade value. And I think it's more about, hey, Charlotte's got something good going on. And like, there's no reason to be looking to move on from him at this point. That's a credit to him. And it's a credit to Charles Lee and the group that got in Charlotte. But for Ja, the party in Memphis is over. Ja is like the last guest and he just doesn't have a ride out of there. But for either he's going to be sleeping on your couch or you got to get him a ride and they didn't get him a ride. So he's going to be on your couch farting and burping for a while. Sounds like a command junior year. Which one? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the way out of that. I think if Ja's contract was a year shorter, he's got two years and 87 on it. If his contract was a year shorter, I mean, you know, the funny thing is like, as I've been talking about Ja for the last couple of weeks, months, whatever, the analysts who are here at ESPN, who I work with, you know, who just think very highly of Ja's game, guys like Iman Shumpert, Danny Green, Kendrick Perkins, they just are stunned that there's no value for Ja. Like Shump was like, when I sat on TV, like I didn't think he had much value. Shump was like, he couldn't believe it. He just thought I was just talking about somebody else. And even Perk, I mean, Perk, you know, understands, but like, he's just can't believe how far he's fallen because there, you know, he was a player that other players were just in awe of and they respected his fearlessness, you know, which has diminished, whether that's due to motivation or whether that's due to, you know, he's alluded several times to he gets hurt a lot when he attacks and the rest aren't protecting him. But, you know, he's not available a lot for a wide variety of reasons. He gets hurt a lot and he does stuff off the court from time to time that means he can't play. And that there's a lot of baggage and a lot of risk. This year, he got suspended for, you know, being out with his coach. One of the questions about Ja around the league was, is his athleticism declining? Because, you know, you look at all like the rim attacking numbers, all that stuff that just plummeted. Or, you know, was he kind of quiet, had he quiet quit on? Was he just a lack of motivation? I will say the two games he played before we got hurt again, you know, it came back and in London, he looked pretty athletic in that one. Played, I don't remember where they're playing, played the next game in Memphis and had like two or three ridiculous chase down blocks. One of them was he heard his elbow on. He's still that sort of athlete. But like that question's been answered. But again, it's blinking, you might miss it because he's out again. Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is the guy is a small guard who can't shoot and doesn't guard anyone. And like, the way the league is gone, he, that is a hard archetype to square. And you factor in everything else on top of it. And yeah, it's not a surprise. There's not a lot of value in him around the league. Like there was a lot of talk about Miami having interest. I don't think Miami really had any interest. I don't think there was any interest. I mean, I'll just go to Shams's tweet. There were no, what do you say, serious offers? No formal offers. There was a lot of intrigue about it. Let me read the actual tweet. The actual tweet was, John Merritt remain with the Grizzlies pass today's trade deadline. Multiple teams were intrigued by Merritt's talent, but none were willing to make a serious offer, sources said. Like that's, I mean, we spent the last month going, who are the job teams? And it was like, maybe Sacramento will do it to save some money. Like there wasn't, there wasn't really anybody. And look, this was not a lack of effort on the Grizzlies part on Zach Climent's part. And he got, he got a great price for Desmond Bain. Boom, did it. He got a great price for Jared Jackson Jr. Boom, did it. He tried to get a great price for jaw. And I believe at the end, he would have taken a bag of peanuts for him. But there's not a taker. So now, so now, well, come on back, John. Everything's good. Well, I don't, I look, the answer is he rebuilds his value by being great. I know that's what you said before, big man. It's Lamello ball. Like there's a path to him looking like a good NBA player again, which look a year ago, I thought at the beginning of season, Lamello was the guy who would take the chance out of those three guys for a variety of reasons, but there were plenty of people around the league were like, I don't want to deal with the Melloball. I don't want to have him. I don't think he's that good. And well, I kept hearing not a, not a serious player. So unserious. Whatever the reason, right? There was not, his value was low and he's played really well. The Hornets have played really well and he has a much different standing, even if it's not like, you know, he's not like become prime Derek Rose and the eyes of people in the league, but like he has played really well, has driven winning and his, his standing in the league is much better as a result of that. And if John Morant box in and plays well for the Grizzlies for some period of time, his value will change. If it remains what it's been with him going in out of the lineup and getting hurt and all the stuff that's gone on, then it will stay the same. And at some point, it will just be a matter of when this partnership comes to an end. Yeah. And there's other complications. Number one, you don't want them to play well for the rest of the season because you're trying to tank for the rest of the season to get another star who can replace him as the face of the franchise. Cause I like Cedric Howard. He's not a face of the franchise. I like Zackeety. He's not a face of the franchise and there's, you know, obvious major durability issues there. So Jha taking a while to make sure this elbow gets right, makes sense for the Grizzlies. And then the other thing, you know, they smooched Jha's behind for years and we've, we've talked about all that. But then when you go from just, hey, how can we support you and like making excuses and enabling and all that stuff for years. And then you try to come down hard and discipline and he knows you don't want them. He knows you tried to dump them. There's already friction with the coach. Like the relationships with the front office clearly are complicated to say the least. You know, he's, he's going to, if he's still on that roster next season, it's going to be a very difficult situation. If he can't just swallow his pride and be a pro, be as professional as possible with the intent of getting the hell out of there as soon as possible. Cause the only way he can get out, out of there at ASAP is to be a pro and to be productive. Oh, Minnesota. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Because the other day when Minnesota dumped salary, we were like, what are they going to do, especially at the guard position? They take IO in there. They use four second round picks to, as the freight, you know, IO is having a very good year for the Bulls. He's averaging 15 points, which I think is a career high. He's shooting 45% from three. And, you know, he does fit somewhat next to aunt. I mean, you know, the player that they had in that role was a Nikhil Alexander Walker, who they, you know, they just sort of drew the line on them, their spending with, with what they've, with what they owe the rest of their roster. They chose Naz read over him. And, you know, I've had people around the league suggest to me that that in hindsight was a poor choice. Well, they're, they've now paid, they're now going to have to pay to, to keep them now. IO is extension eligible. I believe can he be, can he sign now? I think he might be able to sign now. But I think Bobby said that, but he's unrestricted. That's one of the reasons why the Bulls traded him. Yeah. And in a vacuum, getting four seconds for IO for the Bulls as an expiring deal was good business. Like, but it's, you know, it just goes to the rest of it. We're like, where was this two years ago? And he could have like really reset this thing and actually rebuilt. But look, I get, I get what Minnesota did here to a degree. I would still say that they just saved a ton of money on Mike Conley and they could have used that salary slot to get something else that helped them to. And yes, they're going to get Mike Conley back, but okay, you saved a bunch of money and did this first round pig swap to get rid of Mike Conley to bring him back. And then you give up four seconds when you don't have a lot of assets in general to get IO. And are they going to pay IO to stay on the team when they're already popping up against the luxury tax line with like eight players? I don't know. Maybe. The other thing that they did was they dumped Rob Dillingham, which Tim Conley has done a phenomenal job in Minnesota. He did a great job in Denver. He's a great executive. The Rob Dillingham decision that they made to jump into the lottery to give up helped me out. Was it a 2030 pick and 2031 swap? I think the swaps top one, top one, protected the picks unprotected to San Antonio. That was a major swing and a massive whiff. Dillingham was a complete bust for them. I mean, they have four points and two assists per game and fell out of the rotation. And it's not just that he was, it's one thing to bust on your own pick. It's another thing to bust when you give up the future draft capital they did, which is the future draft capital they had and knowing that's your big swing. Cause then look, he's tried to get creative. He made a big play for Kevin Durant. It's hard to do that when you don't have draft capital. Same thing with Yonis this year. Like, I'm not saying if you have that, uh, to pick the other spurs and the swap, I'm not saying that they'd get, that they would have KD or that they'd have Yonis, but you at least, they don't really have chances to make that kind of clearly they need a co-star alongside and they don't have the ammo to do that in large part because they took the big swing on Rob Dillingham. That was just a massive whiff. The wolves are in a spot where how they finish the season is going to have significant consequences on what the team is going to look like next year. So, um, they were under the gun a little bit here to make a deal to acquire some help they did. So by the way, Mike Conley already did his buyout. He's free and we'll see where he ends up. I wish I could tell you how much, where he's going. He's going to, he's going to end up back in Minnesota. I mean, because he got traded twice, he can, he can resign with the wolves and I'll be very surprised. Mike Conley's not back in Minnesota. Well, I also haven't talked to Conley after the last time he's traded Minnesota. Family guy does not enjoy the did season relocation. Yeah, it makes a lot of it. The way it was sequenced out and makes a lot of sense for him to go back there and look like I do like I.O. in a vacuum for the wolves. I do think it was another guard the bulls traded for briefly, by the way, we, we, we didn't count that one, but yes, I in I.O. will, will help them. I think though it goes back to the same question. We've seen the wolves shed a lot of money over the past couple of weeks and or a couple of days, I should say, and are they going to really pay the number to get I.O. re-signed this summer? I think that's an open question. And if they don't, they're, you know, they're going to be that much more hamstrung with how to build out their roster. By the way, this, so this is a loophole that's being exploited that I don't think has been exploited before. You know, we had a rash in the 2000s of players getting traded and getting bought out and returning to their teams. And so they, the league put a stop to it. It said, if you got traded, you couldn't re-sign with your team for a year. But if you could trade it again, then you could. I mean, you know, we're not talking about a guy who's going to, you know, be a massive difference maker, no offense to Mike, he's a great guy, but it's kind of a loophole they're jumping through there. I just thought I would, you know. Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting, I mean, it's, I mean, it's, it's a little quirk. I don't think, you know, so many guys are going to get traded twice like that, but unfortunately, it's probably like the, you know, might be a guy toward the end of his career and under those circumstances. So the Knicks made it what I thought was an interesting move today. And then there's sort of the other end of it. You reported on this, Bon Temps live on television. They picked up a guard of who was very big fan favorite, but they had a setback as well. Yeah, I got Jose Alvarado, New York native from the Pelicans. And then on top of it, Deuce McBride is a key reserve off the bench for them. Kind of missed some time with the core muscle injury. Unclear when he'll be back, probably going to miss a good chunk of time. Made a little more sense. I mean, they've had interest in Jose for a while, but it had a little, made a little more sense why they would have given up a couple of seconds to get them in the deal today, given they're not going to be without Deuce for a while. I will be interested to see if when Deuce gets back, Alvarado plays over Tyler Colick, who has had a nice emergence this year as a second year guard. And frankly, I think it might be better than Jose, but it'll be a fun story having him back in New York. And I do think, you know, his ability to push the tempo to play, you know, press full court, kind of get some steals, get the crowd revved up. Like I do think classic energy player. Yes. I do think for the next couple of months, especially with Deuce injured, he will be a, he will be a boost, but, um, and he also replaced Gershwin Yabasele in the rotation. Another guy who wound up in Chicago, um, interestingly, I believe it's turning down his player option for next season to get a chance to play and to have a shot to play with the bulls. And I mean, who knows, maybe I'll end up going back to Europe if he doesn't have something in the NBA next season. But, but yeah, for, for a Nix team that was looking to do something, obviously for a while tournament, Alvarado overall makes sense for where the Nix are at. You know, the Nix feel pretty good about where they are, especially with eight game win streak. And they had a high energy victory at the garden over the nuggets on Wednesday night. Um, putting some plates and pretty good D. Yoko, she's not a hundred percent right now, obviously, but still got to give credit where it's due. Uh, the Nix played some good defense on them and especially Mitch Robinson, who played 45 minutes and was pretty good in the game. So I think, uh, I think you'll just going to be, you know, think about Yoko shot. He was one of 13 on three pointers and that's a very Yoko thing to do because a lot of guys, when they got to be one of 10 would be like, uh, but Yoko, he does not care. He almost made a crazy shot. He almost made a crazy shot. So when the game, uh, rimmed out of three that would have won it. Um, but yeah, no, I looked at Nix have turned things around eight in a row. They got a huge game Friday night, uh, in Detroit against the, um, against the, uh, uh, against the Pistons battle top two teams in the Eastern Conference season. Um, think it'll be the first game Kevin Herderon played for Detroit. So be interested to see his role there with the Pistons, but, um, yeah, it, uh, you know, Nix, a lot of talk about the Nix over the last several weeks about where they're going to make a big splash, where they're going to get, you know, be really being the honest mix or whatever. And where they going to trade cat, right? Which I only thought they were ever going to do any honest trade. Hey, how about cat, you know, has been accused of not being the toughest guy at times? How about cat? I got a huge gap for, he banged heads with Spencer Jones from the Nuggets. By the way, won the fight. Spencer Jones got knocked out. Yeah. I saw, I think cat was hiding a little, uh, catch up packet there. Uh, is that what you think? Cause he tweeted out the photo of the gash on his Instagram. He wanted to make sure everybody, but it was, it was ugly, but Spencer Jones got a concussion. Like, you know, they stopped the fight for him. He's, that's as much blood as I've seen an NBA game in a little bit. It was a nasty cut, but he gets stitched up, then comes back out and then fouled out, but he had 24 and 12. Listen, hey, you know, of course, he found out he gave the man, you know, he only had one eye. I couldn't see that. I'm just saying, like, you know, let it be known that cat played through blood. Like he was, you don't, this has them. He's had a good stretch. Are we just, we're just going to zip past you on us just like to be continued in the summer with more memes and, you know, passive aggressiveness and disingenuousness. And the only thing I will say about the honest thing is by now people have probably seen this video of, um, the tweet that the tweet that you honest put out, which if, if for some reason you didn't see it, I'll just, I'll just read it for you. So the honest, the honest put out this tweet that said, legend stone chase, they attract with a hundred emoji and a sunglasses face emoji. And it was the, I'm not bleeping, leave and clip. And if somebody in the league said to me this afternoon, they said, well, it should be stated that in the video, in the movie, the guy left. It might be like, to be honest, probably is not aware of that, I would guess. I haven't seen it. I gotta, I gotta figure out time to watch it. I'd love to watch that movie tonight. It is, it is worth pointing out that the guy does leave in the movie eventually. So, hey, you know what, you know, who else eventually left after a long, drawn out saga that I'm really looking forward to discussing? Jonathan Kaminga. Freem. Yeah, he's like he escaped from Alcatraz. Jonathan Kaminga, boy. Oh, oh my God. Do you think he paid his own airfare just to get out of there early and get to Atlanta? Man, well, listen, I wish him the best of luck in Atlanta. I gotta actually analyze what his role is going to be there. I haven't quite figured it out. It should be said too. It's worth pointing out that of the 10 best teams in the league by record. So the Thunder, Pistons, the Spurs, the Knicks, the Celtics, the Nuggets, the Rockets, the Wolves, the Lakers, and the Suns. Only one team, the Thunder, used the first round pick to get better. And they've got a million of them. And they've got a million of them. And I believe what Phoenix got out of the tax, Denver got out of the tax, Boston, after a lot of gymnastics, got out of the tax without ever giving up a first round pick this year. I will say this. The Mavericks getting off 100, I don't know, how much was it? 70 million? What was it, McMahon? Dude, it's like, just next year, just between AD, Jaden Hardy, and Dan's Russell, it's 70 million dollars. And like literally, when you include their luxury tax bill, they about slashed their payroll in half. All right. So that was good. But how about the Boston Celtics, who at one point had a half a bill on the books for this year, half a billion, 500 million dollars in tax and salary, and got out of the tax in our in third place or second place, I don't even know where. Without even giving up a pick, it's pretty impressive. Does that right? They're going to pick? How to first round pick? I mean, maybe a second, but no first round picks for sure. Wow. It's pretty impressive work. Hey, hey, hey, the Mavericks got two first round picks, kind of sorta. You're right. Well, I was just going to say, it's just an interesting trade deadline in that basically all the movement was by bad teams and the teams at the top either ducked the tax. I mean, Minnesota got better with IO, but they also saved a bunch of money. You know, the Lakers got Lucanard, like he's a fine bench player. No, but the big buyers are the bad teams. Yes. Like all the teams at the top are essentially the same. Again, Nick Vucevich, like backup center. The Cavs were the most aggressive contender, and it was because they've been the most underachieving. That's fair. Yes. I want to be one of the most underachieving contenders. I guess the Clippers were an underachieving contender too, but they were selling, so it's not quite the same. I mean, I would, yeah. I mean, but yeah, that's the of the teams in the top 10, you know, several of them got out of the tax and most of them didn't get better. It's just an interesting state of where the, this trade deadline was. It made it, made kind of a weird beak where all these bad teams stocked up on players who are there for next season, not this season. All right. Well, that'll do it. Thank you very much to Devon, Mark, Tucker, and our man, Jackson, who announced that he'd rather go 0 of 30 than go 0 of 9, because if you went 0 of 9, that means you stopped shooting. I've played pickup basketball, Jackson. I can confirm that. That is a Syracuse attitude, if I've ever. I will also say real quick before we go, because I meant to say it's 4 and I forgot, sorry. When he's tired. Oh, I'm also tired. By the way, you're like, your, like your voice is, why was worried your voice wasn't going to hold out? You need to take the weekend. That's the, that's my hope. But I just wanted to shout out Brian Keefe, the coach of the Wizards who before tonight's game gave kudos to the Wizards, beat writers from the Washington Post that have covered the team the past several years because my former paper is run by Feckless Cowards and they made some very bad decisions, in my opinion, this week, as in the opinion of many other people to decimate the newsroom and in part dismantle the post legendary sports section in newspaper history, arguably at the Washington Post Sports Section, which I was very honored to be a member of for a short time. And I just thought that was cool if Brian Keefe to do that. And in a week where it's been pretty rough for people who were at the post either now or in the past, that was a nice little moment for him. And it would have been nice, I would say, for the Washington Post to have local sports coverage on Wednesday afternoon when after a few hours after they say their sports department is irrelevant, franchise trades for one of the 75 best players in the issue of the sport might have been a good idea to cover that. But what do I know? Just a, just a guy. Man, I wasn't good enough to get hired at the Washington Post like Bontas. No, but Cleveland Plain Dealer, I tell you what, Washington Post is great. Douse more news back when I was there, when those APSC triple crowns just on an annual basis. So I'll give you the arguably the best. The DMN was a hell of a hit track record too. I'll give you that. McMahon, re-litigating that. All right. Thank you to McMahon. Thank you to Bontems. Thank you for watching. Let's see who collectives we'll talk to you next week. Adios amigos.