The 2026 Take-athon, Part 1 | Real Ones

what's poppin logan murdoch here live from spotify studios here in los angeles here for the first ever take-a-thon with myself howard motherfucking beck and tyler parker where we each have a take about every single all-star and we have our buddy jimmy adenaran give the best take and make bestow the best champion. We're about to do that next on Real Ones. Up next, Victoria, play the theme music. What's poppin'? Hello, everyone. I'm Logan Murdoch, and I would like to welcome you to the first ever take-a-thon presented by Real Ones, where we give the boldest take possible on all of your favorite all-stars. I am your host, obviously, and I am joined by my distinguished panel, Howard motherfucking Beck, and an honorary real one of the day, Mr. Tyler Parker. How are you guys doing, man? Doing great. You and I are in the same room, which is a rarity in itself. We're in the same room with the great Tyler Parker, which is just raising this whole thing to a whole other level. Very excited about this. Tyler's made some turns on the real ones when I was subbing for you. you know i like i like i freelance a little bit when you're gone i just like i just start bringing on random people like you're tyler parker cool yeah we had we had fun with without you but it's it's good to have us all here it's fine no it's an honor to join one of my favorite shows uh always happy to talk ball and yeah let's get some takes off i am a little intimidated by the fact that we are in this hallowed studio space where the the house of our tapes so shout out to mal and joe like this is like i almost put on the uh the knight's helmet out there that would have been Cool. If you would have came in with the knight's helmet, that would have kind of taken the show. It takes it harder when you got a knight's helmet. Yeah, battle ready in that. Yeah, yeah. All right. So just a little ground rules. We've been tasked to analyze a group of players based on the separate teams, the team stars, the team stripes, and team world. Each pick will be heavily scrutinized by a resident take expert, Jomir Deneron, who is going to be in here at some point. and he will, at the end of all of this, give out the prestigious Take Champion Award for the best takes. I had no idea there was a championship on the line. It might be. It might be. I'm taking a lot of stuff back home, as you can see. We have a lot of players and not a lot of time, but the biggest thing out of all of this is we're just here to have fun, Howard Beck. We're just here to have fun. I'm all about fun. Don't take the take too seriously or do it. Just make it entertaining. Without further ado, take a look at the first player and it is anthony edwards this is your take man i get to break the glass here okay all right anthony edwards anthony edwards has the best accessory in the league okay the number five sweatband on the left calf yes this is the most this is the best accessory to me it's not too loud but it's unique it says look this is who i am this is what i'm about yeah I I I there the other I'm a big fan of Aaron Gordon's headband whenever he's in the mix obviously there's a lot of sleeves a lot of tights going around yeah which you're all fine and good but when it I really appreciate a leg band and I like how committed he's been to it for such a long time you know that is a throwback back to back in the like the mid 2000s where a lot of guys were that we got away from that as a basketball culture with the sweatband on the leg but what I love about it is he has a sweatband on one leg but he has the flow joe um tight on the other legs to keep that leg warm and then he has the armband here yeah we got away from armbands for a long time and we got the we had the uh the wrist iverson band for a long time and i'm glad that we're getting back to sweatband because they're very vital i feel like the armband especially is it's a very brave choice to do it on the outside of the elbow because it to me it's gonna it's gonna restrict it's gonna i'm gonna feel it here when i'm going up for a jumper you know what i mean it's gonna it's gonna constrict and i don't like that but i i appreciate edwards because there's clearly a science yeah to what he's doing or maybe not which makes it actually even if it's all aesthetics honestly even better but like yeah the league got weird about it though in the early 2000s that's what happened like iverson did his arm sleeve which shout out to tyloo for then emulating the arm sleeve in practices when they were getting ready for the finals in 2001 he like not only was playing the part of iverson at practice he did the sleeve to emulate but then like people started doing like full on uh leg sleeves and arms and the next thing you know instead of wearing like the standard nba uniform which is like you know shorts and jersey it looked like you were just wearing full body armor and the league would got all weird about it like no this is not regulation or whatever but that was back during the day too where like everybody had to wear the same colored shoes you had to be coordinated now it's like it's so much more interesting now right where everybody's got like just go to full todd gibson yeah you know right Just the sleeves right here, the Pat Ewing sleeves, the Iverson sleeves, just cover the whole body. Listen, if the NBA is going to allow for 72 different fucking uniforms in the course of a season for every team anyway, you've got no standing as a league to tell guys you can't wear various accoutrement. Absolutely. What's your favorite wristbands and headbands? What are you guys like? You haven't played pickup in a while, but what did you wear? I liked the wristbands. I like to, you know, like what I love back in the day, because wristbands were actually utility, right? Like it was actually like, this is why we use them now. We just put them everywhere. They started because they actually helped. I think I didn't have I didn't have one. I tried to experiment with a wristband here every now and again. My dad had an old Air Jordan one that he did from like late 80s, like with the flight logo with or with the wing logo, you know? Yeah. And I was like all about it. But every time I would wear it early in the first quarter, I would start to feel like it was bothering me, and then I'd always take it off. I had the Iverson headband, like the Reebok Iverson headband, and I would wear it over the ears. But then Derek Fisher used to wear it covering the ears. Yeah, he really pinned him back with that. Yeah, yeah. And then I would wear him around my neck a la Suggs. NBA is hating on that, too, because that was a good look. Yeah, NBA, let Suggs eat. Let him cook. Yeah, what the fuck are we doing? We don't want to hinder bravery and invention. And the sweatband. I heard nobody. Arenas are cold, bro. Arenas are really cold places. Let's warm the neck. Yeah. I tried to do a leg sleeve for a little bit too. Or like a leg sweatband on the leg. Like same kind of, honestly, similar to what Edwards did. But it just never felt like me. You know what I mean? And man, I'm a boring boy. Let's normalize again, just getting swaggy for a pickup game. It doesn't matter at all. And that you're probably going to be trashing. Let's just normalize. I'm into that. Okay. That was a good first player. Great first take, buddy. Hey, thank you so much. Next player, please. Oh, we're getting spicy. Giannis Adetokounmpo. That's a Howard take. I got a lot of thoughts about Giannis. We have emptied out a lot of that. I didn't know we had any more thoughts about Giannis. I didn't know it was possible. I had to get a little more creative here because we have talked so much about him, about trade demands and non-trade demands and his passive aggressiveness and all this stuff. And I stepped back for a second and I thought about it, and this is where I landed for our NBA All-Star Take-A-Thon, which is no matter what happens next, trade, not trade, more drama, whatever it is, I think he's already the greatest buck of all time over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar than Lou Alcindor. The greatest person to ever place a book? Did Kareem get in bed with the betting company? Maybe not the most ethical, but the best. The new Kalshi swerve by him does. It's color in some things. I can't distinguish Kalshi from Kashi, like the little rice cereal stuff. One is probably better than the other. Greatest buck. This is not about ethics or morals or anything else, Logan. This is not even about whatever. He's not the most moral buck, the best, ladies and gentlemen. Just the best buck. Listen, Kareem, of course, all-time legend, should be in every GOAT conversation. But Kareem spent six seasons with the Bucs. He won one championship, two finals appearances. Giannis won championship, only one finals appearance. And Kareem did have three of his MVPs in that span, Giannis two. But Giannis has already been there for 13 seasons. Giannis is the longest tenured all-time great to play for that franchise and it had been a very long time half century since they'd won a championship until Giannis brought them back to that and I think what's happening now is as we all start getting into the weeds of you know Giannis's trade slash non-trade demand it's it's kind of coloring our views of him right now because he's kind of annoying a lot of people he's pissing people off but I think we need to take a step back and recall what he has done and where he has come from. Kareem got there almost as a fully formed star. Giannis got there as like this skinny teenager with no promise of anything. And he's delivered way beyond what anybody could have expected. He embraced Milwaukee and he, for all of what's happening now in what is eventually going to be a divorce sometime this off season, almost certainly. He gave them a lot of really great years of really great basketball and put a small market, cold weather city back on the NBA map. There's no small thing. It's tough on this one, right? Kareem did have better individual circumstances and a better individual career in Milwaukee. But we got to have a little bit more nuance as to why he left Milwaukee, right? I mean, he had gotten up into some politics at that point and it didn't necessarily jive well with the community in Milwaukee. He also had a few of his own trade demands to get out of Milwaukee as well. Right. So they're even on that score too. Yeah. And, you know, who knows where Milwaukee goes? I mean, who knows where Giannis ends up being? He might, I don't know if he's going to be a Laker. I don't think so. But like, it's weird how those two, they're connected even more than we give credit for. But I don't. And I'm not saying he's better than Kareem. No, no, no. He had a better career. But how much of that? I got to admit, I got to take Howard's word on this because, I mean, I wasn't alive. Stop it. I tried to have something profound. What happens when I try to go into a profound rebuttal, I just couldn't do it because I really don't have anything to stand up. This is why I need to put on the armor. He actually watched Kareem in Milwaukee play. No I did not Who would be who would be is the only other player that would even be in the conversation would be Oscar right Yeah That got to be it Why is he better than Oscar as a Milwaukee butt I didn't even have to consider Oscar within this because Oscar's going to be the notch below Kareem, isn't he? Yeah, he is. No, he is. It's like we've got like a reverse transition. Who's going to be – is your argument – and I'm not going – I can go back and forth. I don't really have a rebuttal because, again, I'm 12. still right now but how much are you considering the story of both players as a means to talking about their impact on that community right because I feel like you're you're you're you're conflating also the story of Giannis in Milwaukee as a part of his story of being the best right because right out of the gate if you look at Kareem stats going into there were bananas and And that also speaks to the time in which he played, right? His stats rival Wilt Chamberlain of that time in a way that Giannis' stats just, even at his peak, don't even touch Kareem's. So that would, I guess, be my rebuttal during that time. Are you saying it because of the relationship that Milwaukee has with Giannis based on how long he's been there? Or the play in which those two played for each other? like played in that community this is this is basically a what did you mean to that team during your time with that franchise okay so that there's a difference between most loved and best right yeah but i just said the greatest buck and that is that doesn't mean he was better than him overall it doesn't mean he's got more hardware because he doesn't it doesn't mean he's got more of the other accolades he doesn't and and when all is said and done janice is not going to touch kareem on in in the pantheon in the all-time in in bill's pyramid like yannis will be really high but he's not going to be in kareem's tier that's fine for the period of time that each of these guys anchored this franchise what did they each mean to it what did they and what did they leave behind at the moment that yannis leaves there will be a lot of those same bad feelings that we see every time we we see a version of this lebron kd everybody and and those other time will heal that though i mean like last time the bucks were in the finals but i think it's important at a time like this when we're about to see the backlash because of the parting to remember what he has meant to them i think he would be based on what you're saying right now because i i don't i think when you look at the stats and i don't have them right in front of me at this very moment but like it doesn't even compare the stats it's it's apples and oranges from janice to what kareem was at that time right um but i would say what you're trying to say it feels like one is the more beloved figure than the other i don't even mean beloved i just mean imprint okay okay and that's and that's the time argument so yeah okay one of the points that you made that that strikes me as significant is how much of a like doormat the bucks were whenever he got there like you know they were they were far removed from some of the cream from yeah well that's yeah they were far but but like it's it's harder to be competitive in the league now i think than it was then back like there's just there's more teams and um i think it's harder to be competitive in milwaukee now than it would have been then whenever there's just like like we say fewer teams on the board and players maybe haven't like embraced free agency in the way that they have now and been able to move in the way that they can now the so bringing them from you know the bottom to what he did in the current modern NBA it has to count for something so you know there were 17 teams in the league when the Bucks win the championship with Kareem there's 30 now obviously so it's a different landscape you only had to win two rounds to get to the finals back then too so there's like the you know everything is different and it's always hard to compare errors because of those like just fundamental differences but also back then though kareem you know and maybe was the first to do this i want out and i wanted to go to new york or la i want a big market that's like the norm now right which is why it's even all the more important and impactful that janice has spent 13 seasons with a small market, cold weather team at a time when superstars do not go to these places. And if they do go because they get drafted there, they're getting out the first chance they get most of the time. Right. He has been, you know, loyalty is overdone, but he's been more loyal the most. And everything has limits. And his limit is, you know, I'm 31 and I need to win more championships and it's not going to happen here, which is reasonable. To be fair, he was saying that like 26, 25. As soon as he became Giannis, he was like, OK, if we're not winning a championship, what are we doing? And like he said that with a tiny gang, Gouli, you know, he said that behind the scenes after his first conference finals flame out. You know, he kind of has. I feel like with Giannis, it's a there's two things pulling at him. It's the loyalty aspect. You know, this this community of Milwaukee embraced me. I owe this to them because they embraced me, a young kid from Greece, a young Nigerian kid from Greece who had to figure out how to just live a life and grow up in a certain place. And then also what is expected of a star and a talent of his caliber. And I think those have always kind of pulled at each other. um and it's it's it's going to be interesting for a guy who moves on how if he does win a championship somewhere uh how much that is going to fulfill him because milwaukee means so much to him as both a player and a person um so you know we'll see what what happens i think one thing that like is pretty inarguable is that if we're looking at most important bucks i think fanasis is in the top five. I mean, he is. I think you have to consider, I think, I think he, he, he deserves his day. Is he behind Michael Redd? Michael Redd, Big Dog, Thanasis, they're kind of all the same, you know? So it, uh, it's, it's, it's hard, but you know, I just, I want to make sure we give him a shout out because, uh, you know, his contributions have been enormous. I think that is a sign that we need to go to the next player. What's the next player? Okay. Jalen Johnson. This should be fast. Tyler Parker. What's your Jalen Johnson? I think Jalen Johnson's the most complete offensive player in the East right now. Ooh, wow. Most complete. I think he's averaging 23, 11, and 8. He's shooting 50% from the field. He's shooting 35% from threes on like almost five attempts a game as a big. I mean, he's like taking off from a step inside the free throw line and dunking on Nick Claxton. Like this is, I think that he can do more on the offensive end, sort of across the spectrum than anybody else in the East. Are you taking an account injuries right now? Is Tatum, is Tatum, is Tatum injured? I think Tatum would be more, would, would, yeah, yeah. Tatum's definitely got an argument to be more complete, but he's hurt right now. Are you, wait, does this mean you're also like, if you had to build a team from scratch exercise, You're taking Jalen Johnson over Jalen Brown or Cade? I'm not taking Jalen Johnson over Jalen. I'm definitely not taking him over Cade, which that will come up later. And I'm not taking him over Jalen Brown, but I'm just talking about as an offensive engine. Somebody who can do a whole lot with the ball in his hands. I think he's the most complete offensive player. Yeah, let's see what Jomi thinks about that. Let's get to the next one. That's crazy. I like that, though. That's bold. That was bold. Let's get saucy, Logan. Let's take some chances. Oh, while you say that, Jalen Brown. I think we're going to come. I think we're about to have another impasse between Jalen Brown and Austin Selfies going forward. There's a little sprinkles and tea leaves that he is really, really excited about being the lead guy. And I know there's always been stuff behind the scenes of him having some level of frustration, not necessarily with with Tatum, but what the partnership means for him individually. And he's kind of like he's kind of said some quotes over the last couple of months where it's like, huh, is he going to be OK when Tatum comes back? Well, he had that quote right where he's like, I mean, I got it right here. He says, I feel like I've sacrificed over the years in order for us to be a championship caliber team. And I think now we're getting to see a little bit what exactly I was capable of and what I was sacrificing. I think before maybe it wasn't so obvious, but I think now being at the helm of things, thus being the second seed in the East, he kind of likes this, you know? But I do believe this has always been a friction of Jalen Brown in Boston that he isn't thought of in the way that he thinks of he is. And I think this great season he has is validating. and once you get the taste of being a number one option and having the success it's really hard to come back and tatum has been the chosen son in boston from the moment he got into uh the city and jalen has had to work for it to get to this point there i feel like there's going to be a friction and i don't think the saga is over i mean jalen did win finals mvp when they won the championship and conference finals mvp so it's not like he hasn't had his moment to shine and to get recognition for his abilities to be kind of the lead guy. And it was, you know, maybe by a couple percentage points within a couple of series. Right. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's always still been about like it's Tatum's team. And then we also have this guy, Jalen Brown, who's this amazing co-star and like nobody wants to be the Robin to the Batman. Right. And that was always the tension behind the scenes anyway. It was like, well, are these guys going to stay together? And it wasn't because everybody's saying they don't get along or don't like each other. It was more just like Jalen Brown thinks he can do more. And he's just shown us to his credit, the guy has walked the walk. He has proven everything that he projected about himself. He can be a number one. So now it's just a matter of like, can they be co-number ones? But also like, I don't think we have to worry about that or they don't have to worry about that in the near term because when Tatum comes back, assuming he is coming back in the next days to weeks here, he's coming back as a guy coming off an Achilles after less than a year and he's going to need to lean on Jalen Brown. So for the duration of at least this season and this postseason, I don't think there's any there's no reason for there to be tension because they need Jalen Brown to be the guy carrying the load for next season. Maybe maybe Logan's going to have a point. Who knows? We'll see. I'll just end the segment on a quote that Jalen gave me in 2023 when I asked him point blank how long he wants to play with Tatum. I just enjoy the time that you have now. If it your whole career it your whole career If it not it not Obviously some of the greatest people greatest players of all time finished their career with their organization didn finish their career with the organization Michael Jordan retired a wizard As much as we like to like it here enjoy being here you see where life takes you You see how the process goes All you really have to focus on is what in front of you Jalen Brown to the Wizards, done. That's what they want. Next player, Luka Doncic. Oh, yeah. One of my favorite topics. So, been kind of a jagged ride so far in L.A., right? So this is not so silly about Luka as a Laker. the totality of his career so far with the Mavericks, right? One finals appearance, not so great of a finals performance. And then we're in this really interesting moment here where the Lakers have a lot of major decisions this summer and all of them need to revolve around Luka, right? And I keep thinking about what this is going to mean, what this next phase of his career is going to mean. And I keep coming back to, aside from all the things that the Lakers need to do for him and around him, that the greatest threat to Luka's overall legacy when we start getting to like he's like you know mid-career now right with seven eight years in the greatest threat to luca is luca um it's a great take he he's he every year there's some little like you know luca's really trying to rein himself in coaches start praising him for doing a good job of not chewing out the rest all the time dude is still fucking complaining about every single call on every single possession he went on a whole uh media run about how he lost weight and is going to play defense. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But there you go. Still chewing out the refs all the time for every call and every non-call and everything else. Still too consumed with that. He's the biggest whiner in the league by far. The biggest whiner among stars by far. And maybe the biggest whiner among stars that I've seen in 30 years of covering this league. I think he has surpassed Tim Duncan at this stage. I think that he is going to be shielded by all of that because the fact is he has the leverage over the Lakers right now. And he has the built in excuse that, Hey man, you guys, you, at least at this point, you haven't built a team to my liking and enough for me to win a title at this point. And they continue to not do that. All the stuff you say is kind of irrelevant in the narrative space. Well, he'll, he can shield himself from it in the short term, if that's the case. And especially if they screw up this summer, which like they, they cannot afford to screw up the summer because he won't stay. I think if that's the, that's the case contract or no contract, as we've seen, you can always force your way out. But the things that have been the major knocks on him are throughout his career. Mid-career are still the major knocks on him. Defense, whining, conditioning. And by the way, he has the highest usage rate, career usage rate in the history of the NBA at 35. Higher usage rate than Michael Jordan for his entire career. Higher usage rate than Iverson, Kobe, anyone. And that comes with responsibility. It also comes with a, hmm, maybe you do too much. And so, uh, he's not shown an ability to change and he's, he's really shown kind of an unwillingness to, and there's, it, it, it is always a red flag when a player does have glaring weaknesses like he does on defense. And you don't even see a ton of effort put forward on that end to try to mask some of the, you know, lateral quickness issues that he's got. right? Like there are some, some things are, you know, physical limitations, but it, there's a lot of matador out there from him. And it's, that has always been my biggest thing with him is because he does, he will talk about how, yes, I do say too much to the refs. I got to get better at that. I got to come in and better shape, that sort of thing. But when it, the same things our issues every single year, there is a problem. He's incredible, but there is a problem. He's incredible. And the way he carries himself on the court really grates on people. Alright, who's next? Carl Towns. It says Howard, but that is actually me. We made a trade. We made a trade. After the game he had last night, I don't know how good of a take this is going to be, but I'm just going to roll with it. I think Carl Towns would have been better served staying in Minnesota. And I'm talking about no, I'm not talking about the contract situation. I'm not talking about the apron. I'm talking about sheer his responsibility of what he was asked to do. He is asked to be a lot of times a number two on a next team on given nights, especially from a scoring perspective. And I don't think that should be his role. I think that he should be maybe a number three or number four option. And when you need 50 points, he can provide it. but sometimes he kind of fouls out of games and you need a Nas Reed to kind of hold down the fort. I think he might've been better served staying in Minnesota. I know all the cap situations. I know everything, but I think that his career he had, obviously it was great for him to go home. It was great for all, all of the, from a personal standpoint, but I think from a game standpoint and being able to help a team, I think he's kind of miscast. Wouldn't he have still been the second best player on the wolves though? yes in theory sure but i'm saying like if he did the things that he does late in stretches of games he has a little bit more of a buffer maybe i mean that marriage with gobert did not inspire a ton of confidence in that i i hear it was a take that i needed to have you know what i mean also you know it wasn't quite the armband take but it was just like you know hey that's what i thought when I watched at 11, I was like, huh? He didn't at 11 o'clock at night. The next thing is not going smooth. It's not going great. Yeah. He didn't choose to go there. He got traded. He wasn't mad at it. He wasn't mad at it. No, it was, it was very much like a homecoming he embraced, but he also like, like we were talking about with, with Giannis, where there might be mixed feelings because Giannis really had, did embrace Milwaukee. Carl Anthony Towns really put in some deep roots in Minneapolis to his credit. And then John Krasinski, the athletic wrote really beautifully about this at the time of the trade and since then and so great piece he wrote after the trade right after the trade yeah and i think but towns very much loved the homecoming everybody all the new york area guys love the idea of the homecoming and it almost never works out quite the way you you hope well on one hand he's excited about it he's he's happy about the homecoming but like the homecoming to new york also brings a crazy amount of stress from a press standpoint that he has been on the bad end of and i think that's another reason why i think it would be cool because i think a lot of this his struggles right now in new york is the fact that he is reading about himself every day in the paper and they are relentless in minnesota if he was doing this which he was like that's carl's house sure it i mean he does he has had a little jalen brown in him where he talks about how much he's sacrificing and i don't think that's ever a good thing for any No, you got to have to do the thing and not brag about doing the thing. If a player is feeling the need to be like, hey, yeah, but look at how selfless I'm being, right? Like, that's not what you need. Yeah. All right. Who's next? Tyrese and Maxie. Okay. All right. This is the most exciting offensive player in the league now. Behind Steph? Even above Steph. Above Steph, huh? He's faster than Steph is now. Tyrese has also started to incorporate these deep, deep threes. more exciting than wimby i think so that was that was my first shit i saw wimby last night he was fucking crazy you are out of your mind last night you are out of your mind last night you are out of your mind i think tyrese maxey is balling and i know cliff is gonna watch this and say tyler's right but he is the biggest fucking philly homer that we have on this program um i think you're out of mind cliff what's up man i agree with you uh chris ryan i know you agree with him as well yes wimby is amazing but wimby there's there is a um there is some element with wimby of like well yeah you better be amazing you're seven seven you better be doing this wild shit you're seven seven you you have a someone just says like a time we're giving you a ticket to one game the entire season you're gonna say tyree's maxi one player you get to see or one team you get to see and you're gonna pick maxi over wimby well no i mean look defense was championships. I think Nico taught us that. No, no, no. I don't mean by winning. I mean, for entertainment purposes. Right. No, I, I would rather watch, I would want to watch Maxie play against a great defensive team like the Spurs. I'd rather watch him play against the Thunder because I'm a homer, but like, I think that Maxie now has the full end to end stuff, the hyper speed, like all the acrobatics around the rim and he's starting to take these shots from like new jersey and this is who else is taking shots from new jersey when they're in philly wimbenyama okay i can't do this not like maxi yeah yeah joey will give us a score at the end it's a wild take can we um next next player jesus pascal siakam howard pascal you're great he's great great great player um this is this i don't mean i don't mean for our lack of collective enthusiasm here to be any reflection upon pascal siakam he's a really really really good co-star he might be the ideal co-star and i think if i have a take on pascal siakam that is that is about as strong as i can get he is he is the best prototypical number two in the nba right now possibly the question is he doesn't he doesn't need he's not a jaylen brown is going to say i need to he's like he's because in town saying look how much a sacrifice he helped kawaii with a championship he got he helped tyrese get to the finals thing is this though the question is when tyrese comes back he's fine no i'm not no no that's not what i'm saying if tyrese doesn't come back as the number one that they need and pascal has to be put into that number one spot yeah they're done that's when they're done that's when they're cooked oh but he is he is the ideal if tyrese is tyrese again when he comes back we all hope he is. Pascal goes right back to being this incredible number two who can just do a lot of everything, guard multiple positions. He's wonderful. All right. Who's next? Brandon Ingram. Shout out Gorilla. He was a late ad. It's, you know, blame Adam Silver. Brandon Ingram. Um, finally gets to live up to the promise that we, you know, that Jomi thought he was going to be when he got drafted. You know, I'm just happy to see him healthy. I'm happy to see him. Shout out to Alex McKechnie for getting him healthy. Shout out to, I don't even have a take, but shout out to Brandon Ingram for outlasting Ben Simmons and proving to everyone and himself that he was the better player all along. Outlasted everybody in that AD trade, right? He did. Including AD somehow. Alright, next player. Scotty Barnes. Oh, this is going to be fun. Alright, when Scotty Barnes plays well, people should call him Scott Bones. Why? I think it's a better, more elevated name for a guy who's starting to play a mature physical brand of ball. I think that he should, I think, cause right now, if you go to basketball reference, his one nickname he got a Scotty B That a snooze to me It is That is I think Scott bones There something like Hey did you guys watch Scott Bones play the other night Yeah Shout out to him Logan did you watch Scott Bones the other night He was killing He was good against the Cavs. Yeah, I know. Also, I think he's the ideal number two. I think he's, no, I swear. I don't think he's the number one, but I think if Johnny Barnes is your number two, you're fucking cooking with his. He'd be amazing. He'd be an amazing Pascal Siakam. It'd be amazing. Hey, let's just, you know what? Let's just trade Pascal Siakam. Let's do a reverse trade. I like Scotty Barnes a lot. And I think he, I'm glad that I think he's the type of player that when the people around him are better, he, you, you get to appreciate the gifts that he's got more. He fills in a lot of blanks that a team can have in fun ways. All right. Who's next? Jamal Murray Howard. Ah, so Jamal Murray, congrats. Finally an all-star, the longest tenured, like rhetorical best player to not be an all-star. He took the Damian Lillard award for the most tenured guy who didn't get all-stars. Great that he's there. We can stop calling him underrated now. And by the way, honestly, if we're being honest, he never really was underrated. He was properly rated. He was properly rated. Here's the other thing, man. In fact, we veered so far to the other side because, oh, he didn't get it. He got snubbed again or he got injured again, whatever, that he became almost like, I don't want to say overrated, but we got too fat. I hate the rating system. You are who the hell you are at any given moment. Okay. You are who you are. Here's the thing. This is not a knock on Jamal Murray, who's a very, very good player and a worthy all-star this year. But like, he's never been among the top scorers at point guard or the top assist guys at point guard or the top defenders at point guard. He's having a fantastic season this year. He's the all-star of man politics got in the way. Yeah, it was, it was, it was playing me. You know how politics are. But like, here's the guys who were always ahead of him in the all-star pecking order, the Western Conference over like since 2020, Steph Curry, James Harden, Luca, Chris Paul, Westbrook, Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, Devin Booker. You know what? Now that you say that list, Howard, I think Murray should have got in. I disagree. Like there's like Mike Conley in 2021. I think that was the year Murray's ACL was somewhere in that range. Actually, that might've been the year before he got hurt. but still John Morant, DeJounte Murray gets in after, uh, Jamal has the ACL, but like SGA, Darren Fox, like who among these guys was he like clearly better than even if he had stayed healthy in a season. So forget it. Just stop the underrated thing. It's he finally got all-star. He's worthy. He got a ring. He's got a ring. He got, he got way more money than all of us. Except for maybe the rest of it. Um, yeah, you're properly rated, bro. There you go. Next norm pal. Damn. Um, okay my norm pal take is more of a generalized take which is don't disparate solid as a as a means of a compliment because one day solid can be great okay we need a lot more solids in this world okay all right we need a lot more like the fact that the clippers just let them go for for nothing it was just a travesty and that's another thing that we talked about we ranted on the last podcasts of real ones of like if you have good dudes in your building don't let them go for nothing can i just add on this because it's funny somebody hit me on blue sky a couple weeks ago i think it was because of the clippers having given up right and it's like oh man maybe they should have just held on to him especially when early in the season when they were really struggling they're you know they're okay now with with collins and it got and it got me thinking and i pulled up his basketball reference page do you realize that every team that has traded norm powell was worse off for it. 2015, traded by the Bucs with a first that became OG Ananobi to the Raptors for Gravis Vasquez. Horrific trade by the Milwaukee Bucs. 2021, traded by the Raptors to the Trailblazers for Rodney Hood and Gary Trent Jr. 2022, traded by the Blazers with Robert Covington to the Clippers for Eric Blitz, O'Keehan Johnson, Justice Winslow, and a second-round pick. That's really rough. Every single one of these the team trading norman powell was worse off for it so shout out to norman powell put norman powell in miami which is like the perfect place for um just be a be solid not salad next one oh kade cunningham all right when yannis is hurt he's the best player in the east now that's not even that's the most complete but you mean the guy that is leading the best uh the best team in the east is the is that is that not hot enough i mean not piping hot it's him and jalen brown yeah i don't know i don't know maybe jalen johnson's in there too i mean he might be let's say but no i mean to me it's like either it's it's it's it's the two the two other jaylens it's either jalen brunson or jalen brown right now if it's not him in terms of like non-yanus dudes in the east yeah but i think what he's done this year i mean he's been nuts in fourth quarters nuts in the clutch when's the last time we had a a superstar with a good fro like just like unapologetically good fro i feel like it's fantastic has it been um i don't know stretch from nba street maybe that's it stretch looked great he looked great i mean it's hard to maintain a a lot of hair but shout out to cunningham for doing it bro he's out here moisturize you know shout out bro you know we need a star with a lot of hair ben wallace was the last one yeah maybe so k's established a culture though like there's like he's got like a way of being that has permeated throughout the whole team also that that's also an argument to when you do have a culture setting player that you have to also have the culture setting people around him yeah like the gm langdon is uh trajan langdon has been amazing you need that if you need to do right by your star player by putting the pieces around him and k got a lot of shit early in his career because he did a lot of losing but now that he is has the uh the infrastructure around him it's been great yeah You got to have serious bona fides if you're going to like come out of those Monty Williams years with your with like your soul still intact. And I don't know who was getting a bag, though. You know, shout out to him. Somebody got a 72 million. Did you do that? I think that's bags. Let me do that. Let me get that that money to just sit. Sit down. Next next player. Kevin Durant. I don't I don't know that this is a particularly hot trade. Maybe it's just more just an observation. I just think it's fundamentally true. I think Kevin Durant is the most underappreciated star of this era or maybe of any era. And it has to do with the decisions he made, right? Okay, thank you. He is. We have the Oklahoma City representative sitting next to me. So the fact that he left OKC to go to Golden State, the fact that he decided to leave Golden State to go to Brooklyn and force his way from Brooklyn to Phoenix. And then, you know, was that Phoenix or KD or both that are responsible for him landing in Houston? when kd moves to sixth on the all-time scoring list uh a week or so ago passing dirk novitsky i felt like this wasn't as as celebrated or as it wasn't as as big of a moment as it should have been and there's a lot of different things that go into that and some of this is self-made by by kd but i i to me it's a little bit of a tragic aspect of his career that because you don't have one place that you firmly planted you don't have any one fan base that's going to seriously like cheer for you and and and give you all the adulation for like oh my god this is a major career milestone like the only guys ahead of him now in all-time career scoring are lebron kareem carl malone kobe and mj crazy fucking incredible and we've always known this right we've known for years he is one of the greatest if not the greatest like pure scorer of all time however you want to define that he's been incredible obviously two-time mvp of the finals two-time champion regular season mvp um but it still feels like people do not embrace or or respect him enough and i think it is because he bounced around and that's a consequence of doing that but nevertheless i feel like his standing should be higher because lebron bounced around and he's considered the greatest he didn't bounce around like duran no but he bounced around with a plan is all right the difference is this one lebron's got four rings instead of two so like the like you can you can there's a lot more nuance with kb's career you could you can lebron won rings at multiple places you can paper over a lot of stuff if you win a ring everywhere you go um it's that kd like lebron's choices lebron said i got to go to miami to win championships and he and he won too and then he's like i got to leave miami to go to cleveland because i can't win anymore here and again he won and then he went to la and he won and i think yeah winning in each of those spots helps but also he left pretty cleanly every time he never liked except for the first time but it was it was a little dirty it he left as a free agent he didn't force a trade he didn't promise anything no but he left the decision was was was pretty dirty there was a lot about it that did not go over well it wasn't it was also dirty from the cleveland side bro because again listen you ain't that's it was weird to burn someone's shirts it's just even okc sorry buddy to burn katie's jersey and burnt like that was very stupid that i think more often than not that stuff is done by performative dorks that are hungry for clicks but it doesn't really represent the entirety of the fan base like i don't think but cleveland no i think it did for cleveland because they were that was before the clout chasing era they were just out here i i wrote something about like the the uh anniversary of the decision earlier this year and i went back and looked to see how many jersey burning videos there actually were and there were there was like the one that always gets played all the time that they did in the parking lot outside of a cleveland bar like right after it happened and they start throwing the witness shirts on top of the burning jersey and everything like that some weird like racial undertones oh well big time right i mean these dudes are wearing like aripostle polos you know bro they look like they like towards rally like a frat house vomited them out their ass you know what i mean like it just doesn't because somebody left to go to another anyways it was it was horrific but i will just say this to put a pin on this one um lebron goes back to cleveland and all is forgotten all is forgiven and now he goes back as a conquering hero the lakers will always love him for putting them back on the map and miami will always love him for the two championships there whereas with kd there are the warriors championships which he will always be celebrated for but everywhere else that he left they do not have the same adulation for him as like lebron is still loved in all these places that he was at and has been i think Also, LeBron actually made an effort to be loved in a way KD has it. But we're pushing time right now. But I'll end on this. I think he is super underappreciated. I agree that he hasn't done himself any favors, but I think it's inarguable that he's way underappreciated. The ultimate NBA ringer, Kevin Durant. All right. And that is part one of this series. we will see you guys tomorrow for part 2 where we crown our champion of the take that's next thanks for watching