The 2025 NBA Trade Value List With Ryen Russillo

Coming up, I'm going to bat around a 2025 NBA trade value list with Ryan Rosillo. It's fun.
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Rusillo came on. We started taping this late morning on Tuesday.
I'm trying to figure out my annual trade value list that we're going to run on ringer.com. So I brought in Rusillo as my conciliary.

As we're taping,

Shams Sharania breaks the news

that Sacramento is now ready to explore

De'Aaron Fox trades,

which of course we did not talk about,

even though this trade value podcast

is almost two hours long.

I'll let you guess where Fox was in the rankings,

but let's just say he was in the top 25. For trades, Miami, maybe.
I think Butler has to be in it and a bunch of picks and God only knows what else. Or maybe it's built around Tyler Heron picks, but Miami jumped out to me as a possibility.
Brooklyn, if they want to trade some of their big stuff. And the only thing that doesn't make sense with them is they're trying to tank this year.
But it just seems like the kind of foundational guy for them. San Antonio definitely has the pieces to try to get him, throw some picks in.
They can make the contracts work and then try to pair him with Wemby. And then Houston, which we talk about in this podcast you're about to hear, which I think Houston's going to be afraid to do a major move, but they certainly have the pieces if they want to go get Fox, which I've been talking about for six weeks.
If they wanted to turn Van Vliet and a bunch of their picks and maybe Cam Whitmore to make the contracts work and just try to go all in and get him and add him to the team. It would be risky because they're playing really well right now.
But those were the ones that jumped out. Other than that, I don't really see a fit, but I guess we'll see.
So Darren Fox on Trade Block, you're about to listen to the trade value breakdown for 2025. This is where we're going to sort out the final list.

Rosillo is here.

It's all next.

First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this late Tuesday morning Pacific time.
Ryan Rosillo is here. It's been a while for us.
Once we get through football season, we're going to be doing Sunday nights again, talking hoops and a whole bunch of other stuff. But I'm bringing you in right now, Rosillo, as the trade value list conciliary.
A thing that I have now been doing for 25 years, a quarter of a century, the trade values list, which is not a rankings. It's a trade asset list.
Trying to figure out who the biggest trade asset in the NBA is. But before we do that, what side are you on in Jimmy Butler versus Miami? Do we have to pick a side? Yeah, I think we do.
Is this one of those things where you just have to go one side or the other? Yeah. I like to have an open mind about a lot of things.
But I think deep down, my core, I know I probably already know which direction I'm going. But he just wanted the contract that he's not getting.
So what, I mean, unless there was a promise. I mean, everybody knows Harden's not my favorite guy, but I kind of sided with Harden on the end of the Philly thing.
Cause why would he have taken the pay cut? Why would he have done everything he had done? And then it's like, and I know Philly's going to say nothing was ever agreed upon. You're totally wrong.
All right, that's fine. But he did something that didn't really make a ton of sense at the time to allow flexibility.
Then he didn't get a deal. So in that one, I was like, well, even though I'm not definitive either way, I can understand him being upset with this one.
I mean, have you heard anything that you believe? That's probably the important second part. Have you heard anything that you believe that would let you think that Miami would have been in a hurry to extend somebody like Butler, who's 35 and misses a lot of games? And had a contract for this year and a player option for next year.
I think that's the unusual part about it, is that there was real years on the book left. I really feel like I want to pick a side, but I kind of see both sides.
What's Butler's side? Give me the anti-Miami Heat side. I think Butler's side is his relationship has been bad with the Heat for a couple years.
And he took them to the finals in 2000 and 2023. And I think at some point he felt like, you know, I brought you guys here.
You guys tried to embarrass me in the press conference last year. You won't talk about an extension.
You obviously don't care if I'm here two years from now. So what's the point of this? With that said, I don't think he's handled it well either.
You know, I think a lot of us, including me and you, have been in, you know, some pretty hairy professional situations where you ended up not liking people you worked with or the employer you had. And at some point, you still have to kind of do your job.
And I think that's where it's tough to side with him. On the Miami side, Riley just seems like he's tried to antagonize him and alpha dog him in a bunch of different ways, in ways that if you knew anything about Jimmy Butler, it's like you get on this road and there's no going back.
So I see both sides. But I will say this, they've torpedoed his trade value at this point.
I mean, I think you could just get him now for two expirings and they're like, good, take them because they're so worried he's going to opt into next year. The start of the season, I was thinking Houston should do Amen Thompson and Van Vliet and let's go all in and try.
I mean, we'll talk about Amen Thompson later, but to think like that, that was maybe an argument at the beginning of of the season versus where we are now, where it's like, ah, would Detroit give up Tobias Harris and Tim Hardaway for Butler? And that's it. I don't know.
Tobias is playing pretty well. Like that's where we're at with this Butler thing, which is insane.
You might be right about that. And I think there's, there's a bunch of different things there that I like.
Um, I've never been special enough, uh, to compare myself with Jimmy Butler. Right.
Like I, and I'm not, I'm not saying this cause whatever our dynamic is, but your career, like I think at times you have been special enough to probably get away with. We don't have to, I'm not comparing ourselves to him in that way.
I'm just comparing like what it's like to work for somebody when you're really frustrated with them. And he's way more frustrated.
I think that either either of us have ever been with anyone we worked with. Like, he's doing shit, but he's doing stuff that, he's doing stuff that, you know, that just seems like he's trying to sabotage everything.
Well, right. When the first quote came out, when this thing first got picked up, it was like, Jimmy hasn't even started yet which i was like yeah because we know the deal um yeah you know i think a lot of this stuff is like personal equity where like tim duncan ever had a problem with anything i think we'd all immediately take tim duncan's side like yeah just go whoa like tim duncan's upset about something and with butler even though i think there's a there's a version of the chicago events where i would understand I thought the Wiggins Towns thing at the time was funny because I don't think he was wrong.
Philadelphia decided to go with the young guys. So every exit, there's some drama.
But with this, there's another part of this that is just the reality of what's happening. This new CBA, when we first talked about it, you're like, man, this kind of looks like a hard cap.
This looks like there's really limited flexibility.

I think another motivation behind some of this was that, Hey, guess what? If you have a four-year extension about to kick in and you want to ask for a trade and you want to ask for a trade to like one team, that's already pretty good. We're going to set up something that not only curbs spending, which is the primary motivation behind this we're also going to like make it really hard for you guys to decide like sorry i'm just out of here now and you have to do this and i think that a lot of star players good point it's becoming a wake-up call and when you're 35 and you miss a lot of games and your personal history is that it ends up in some sort of bullshit thing that's a distraction for the basketball team.

No kidding, there's not a great market for him.

Well, you'd think like in the old days,

I want to go to Phoenix.

All right, how are we?

Exactly.

They spent three weeks.

Now it's like, yeah, you're not going to Phoenix.

Guess what?

We're not taking Bradley Beal.

We're not.

There's no scenario where we take him.

Nobody else is taking him. And on top of the Bradley Beal, there's no trade clause.
So Phoenix is out. Stop saying you want to go there.
I think it's at the spite point where they just send him this last thing that happened this week. Now it just seems like they don't even care.
They just want to get him out of there and try to move on. I think it's gotten that bad.
So he kind of doing this on another team. Yeah.
I don't know why they'd want to be in the Jimmy Butler business. I think I can't dispute the fact of like whatever the trade market was for him versus now it's, it's diminished.
Cause you're like, here we go again. And it's all fresh.
And when it's actually happening and then you have to sit in their front office and your ownership and your coaches and go like, like I like the Memphis basketball part of it. But then when you hear the quote being like, don't send him to Memphis, like anywhere but Memphis.
So if you're Memphis and you're like, hey, we're pretty good. We're not great, but we're pretty good.
So yeah, he raises our top five ceiling, which I think a lot of teams just do. Like, hey, if these are the five guys are rolling out there to close the playoff game, this is better than the five we have right now.
It makes sense. But if you're like, what if he opts in at 50 million and then he's 36 and we don't give him an extension so even though i there's not there's only one team right there's well you have to be desperate to do this and like taking pushing the detroit society and teams that'll be like oh it'd be fun if they got jimmy butler golden state's the only team that's actually desperate Golden State is at an actual crossroads as a franchise, as an organization for the decade.
They're just not good enough. And the stat that they're 1-20 heading into the fourth quarter when they're not winning, to me, that's like, we got to go one way or the other, guys.
Are we going to try to get better and do some sort of crazy all-in trade? Or are we going to start going the other way and start trading off people and just tanking this season and throwing it away? And do we go that way? But right now they're in some middle ground. And that's where if you and I are in the Warriors office with the Lake Ops and the GM and they're like, what do you guys think? At some point, I'd be like, look, man, I think when Jimmy gets traded, he's going to be really good.
I think he's going to be possessed and you might get an awesome year out of him. And this is the only way you could flip your destiny as a franchise.
You might be able to get this guy for 12 cents on the dollar. And in a playoff series, nobody's going to want to see him.
Do you two years from now, do you care? Two years from now, you're going nowhere anyway. So that's the one team I think I could see.
And there's trades. They have a bunch of contracts.
Wiggins would have to be in it. But that's the only one I see.
I just would be scared to death if I'm Dunleavy and I'm Lakeup and I'm going, okay, so we bring him in. Everything you said made sense.
But his agent's like, okay, so what do you think about tacking on those two years for him? It's a no. And so if it's a no- The bigger question, is that just gone now based on how this year has gone? Like, hey, his agent's Bernie Lee, who's a very nice guy.
Hey, Bernie, Jimmy's in every two years contract at this point. That's just the way it is.
There's nobody in the league that's going to go for for him based on the behavior. That's that's what he's forfeited on the bright side.

If he's still really good every two years, he'll get an awesome contract.

I think he's in that James Harden kind of zone now where it's like if he was 32, he doesn't play enough for me.

It's a no. And you're right about the basketball part of it, whether it's them, whether it's Memphis, because it does raise your suit.

But if I have to sit there and be honest with the people that are in charge of my employment, right? If you're working in the front office side of this, answering to your owner and going, yeah, let's just trust that it's going to work out with his track record. I wouldn't feel good about saying yes to that.
I would just go like, look, it'd be one thing if he was younger and you go, hey, maybe the West isn't, and it isn't as deep or doesn't feel as deep halfway through the season as we thought it would be this summer.

OKC still looks like a monster.

I mean, we can run through every team and I could tell you concerns I have about all the contenders, but it would have to be more of like a guarantee of what's possible.

And even adding him doesn't like, what does it actually guarantee about what Golden State

can do in the playoffs?

The only reason you do it is because you love Curry.

You feel like you owe it to him to at least be competitive for a couple rounds. And this is a way to honor that.
That's it. You're not winning four straight playoff rounds with or without Jimmy Butler.
I don't think. Let me throw something at you here because you mentioned it with the Riley thing.
And they felt really betrayed by Riley being upset when Butler was basically like, if I was playing, we'd beat Boston. We beat the next, by the way, they weren't beating that Boston team last year or last playoffs.
No chance. So it was kind of a crazy thing.
And then I think about like Riley's age. He's the same age as my dad.
I'm like, imagine if my dad had to do a press conference about a player. I'm so glad you brought this up.
Riley's old. Like, he's acting erratically, which he's like 80 80 year olds are erratic I went to go see Gillis and Bill Burr last night for the fire benefit and Gillis had this whole routine of like you know Biden didn't really get enough credit like imagine imagine if you had someone in your family who was 84 who had to like go out there and speak to the world.
Right. It actually could have been that much worse.
Now, look, Riley, at no point do I think like what's going on with this guy, but he deserves like Riley's done enough in his basketball life to have this stance. And then when I think about like how other teams operate and everybody operates in absolute fear where they have to when their best player goes off, they have to find some way through PR to craft some way that they're supportive.
But it's like, so what, so what happened? What if Riley had said nothing? The bottom line is if they didn't give him the contract extension, they'd probably be in the exact same place. So like, you can tell me that it was insulting or that that was the thing that I don't, when he didn't get the extension, when he felt like he was owed this, like like why because you went to the finals two years ago which was like really fluky and what five years ago last year which is and he doesn't play he doesn't play enough and look when he was playing this year you could see you're like what's going on with him like before this even got like publicly bad and it's like so you want the the extension, but you're going to mail it in for stretches.
Yeah. I almost feel like he's coasting until the trade.
And when he gets traded to wherever he's going to unleash holy hell. That's why the Detroit option is so fascinating to me for him because that's a, that's a team that would actually need him.
That's a team that just wants to be good, relevant in some way. And that's a team that has a really, really good player, you know, and they bring some things to the table.
They're pretty well coached. Um, he raises their ceiling in a way that I think is intriguing.
They're not going to win the title with them. And I think that's why whoever is trading for him is not a team that he can win the title with.
And I think that's another reality of this. Like Denver is not trading for him.
Even if Miami was like, all right, fine, we'll take Porter and we'll take Zeke Nagy for four years. You can have Butler.
I don't know if that changes Denver's ceiling. Like, they're gonna have enough outside shooting problems, you know? If they were playing worse, I might think about it, but I actually really like the way they're playing, even though they lost last night.
We'll see what happens. You're totally ruling out Phoenix.
I don't think anyone wants Beal. And even if they wanted Beal, I don't know if he would agree to go to the trade.
But I watched the game last night. I just don't think Beal's good.
He's fine. He's a rotation guy.
But for $50 million a year, that's the worst contract in the league. And he doesn't play every time.
I think there's a reason Phoenix has tried to move away from that big three model with him. And I think there's a reason everybody is like, yeah, no thanks.
Cool. Oh, I get Bradley Beal this year and the next two.
No thanks. Everyone throws Chicago and could he go to Milwaukee? Why would Milwaukee want Bradley Beal? They're going to have him and Dame at the same time trying to play defense? That's crazy.
I just can't find a team for him either. I guess I just wonder why Phoenix would flip the unprotected 2031 for these other pieces without some inclination of what's possible for him before the deadline.
Unless it was just, hey, we're all in now. Like when you have Durant, you're all in.
So is Beal better than mid-level players? Yes. He's really low on what the actual acquisition cost is.
Can I stop you for a second? That trade was horrible. That was the all time we took a $2 bill and turned it into three quarters and a dime because it gives us more flexibility.
That's a team that they're at the blackjack table losing hand after hand going, give me more. I'm going to double now.
Can I borrow your chips? The actual Phoenix trade, you're acting like Phoenix is a rational team that puts thought into the shit they do. That trade was idiotic.
I'm not trading that pitch. Well, because they have nothing and they're already all in with this group, I think the argument is that, well, what are we doing? We're going to hold on to assets in 2031.
We have to find any possible way to upgrade this group because once you did the Durant trade, this is how you

were operating. Yeah, but at that point, you're Tim Daly's character in The Sopranos, the screenwriter

who's on the 48-hour gambling binge just getting killed. And he's like, just give me 25 grand more.

I'm going to win this back. That's Phoenix and Ishmael right now.
Just give me, let's split the

picks up. We'll have some flexibility.
We'll try to win this back. It's like, this ship has sailed.

You're not doing anything and you're not getting Jimmy Butler for what you have. And if

Thank you. just give me, let's split the picks up.
We'll have some flexibility. We'll try to win this back.
It's like, this ship has sailed. You're not doing anything and you're not getting Jimmy Butler for what you have.
And if anyone takes Bradley Beal and allows you to get Jimmy Butler, I can't imagine a team in the league that's dumb enough. Maybe I'll be wrong.
Maybe they'll cut this clip out and be like, I don't see why anybody would want Bradley Beal. $50 million this year, $50 million the next, in the second apron era, who wants that? I'd be fascinated to know like what he would actually waive his no trade clause for, because this is somebody who actually didn't go to Washington the entire time they lost.
Like we kept waiting for that to happen. And then I remember hearing like he's probably just going to wait until he can get that five-year extension with them is the incumbent team.
And he is okay with just kind of being there.

And then I wonder if Beal goes,

you think I'm upset about coming off the bench?

You think I'm upset about taking 13 shots a game?

Yeah.

I like,

I like it here.

I like Phoenix.

My family likes Phoenix.

Yeah.

You can't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can't humiliate me.

I'm good.

I was, I stayed with the wizards for years on purpose. You think this bugs me? I just called my accountant.
I just can't believe how much money I'm going to make the rest of the year. I'm fine.
Let's take a break. We got to talk trade, buddy.
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So the trade value rules really quickly. It's not, this is not a top hundred list.
This has to do with age of the players, salaries mattering, contract length, happiness, and degrees, right? So it's, if you're talking about, um, one player that's 35 versus an up and coming star, that's 23 as crazy. I'm in Thompson's a good example.
Yeah, Amon Thompson for Kevin Durant, if it was just this year,

maybe you'd want Kevin Durant

for the playoff run. But big picture

as an asset for your team,

for age, rookie contract, the whole

thing, you'd want Amon Thompson.

You'd want to be in the business of him for the

next 15 years. So that's a good way to

think about it. It's also a great

name, just to interrupt quickly, because after last night, I was like, will he have a man in his top 10? Well, here's the thing. So I've been working on this list for two weeks and there was a version of it a couple of days ago where I had him 20 and I emailed it to a friend of mine and I was like, does anything jump out? And he's like, Jesus, you have Thompson that high? And I'm like, I actually do.
I don't know if you've watched the last four weeks, but what's happening here is really, really, really crazy. The athleticism, the defense, the rebounding, the fact that he's starting to figure out how to create his own shot, how to beat guys off the dribble.
He didn't win the game in Boston last night. What happened in Boston last night wasn't like, oh my God, what a great game.
He's been moving this way for five weeks and he's the best ass on that team and it's not close. I think he's an automatic hang-up if you call Houston now.
They're like, what? No, we're not trading him. They hang up.
This is a compliment but imagine when he's good. Right.
Imagine when he canrees right and I don't know if he's he's going to be like somebody you're really worried about but there are things that he's doing like he was even the last again you're right it wasn't just about last night against Boston you're looking at these rebounding numbers but also and I like it even though it doesn't look great like they're letting him get into kind of a pull up jumper and it doesn't look very good, but I like that they're allowing him or they would want him to make those mistakes because you're never going to develop any of that stuff. You're never going to become the best version of yourself, the most well-rounded if you're afraid to do that stuff in game, like it's the old Ben Simmons thing where it's like cool videos, bro, but you don't do any of those things that you show us in practice.
Cause you just've eliminated those from your arsenal because you're just not comfortable and i love to see young players especially somebody who's raw as him and when you did the draft work on him you're like man he's such an insane athlete and this is why people draft guys like this and then they get yeah being like oh they just drafted the athlete and you're like yeah but this is this is the version of like the best case scenario of like if this guy ever figures it out with his gifts and the fact that he's a 1% athlete, I want him making some of those mistakes. I want him pulling up off the dribble and maybe taking an ugly jumper right now because the only way it's ever going to get better is when he's confident enough to actually apply some of this stuff in game.
So when you sent me the list this morning, it was the first name I was looking for because... Because the question is, how high should he be? Right, right.
You called him a 1% athlete? I think he's like a 0.1% athlete. I think...
You're the best to ever do it. I don't know how you...
No, I'm just like, I don't... I just think athletically, he's on some rare plane that only a few guys I've seen have been at.
When we're talking about Young Kawhi, Young Pippen, Westbrook, Derek Rose those early years, MJ obviously. It's a very small list, and he's on it.
And you saw some of the stuff he was doing on both ends last night. Even Tatum going by him and getting lay, you know, layups or shots he want.
Thompson's always almost there. Like he almost blocks it.
Like he really have to work to get by him. I just love watching him play.
And I think the thing that is probably so hard to figure out when he, where was he? Overtime elite? Yeah. How do you figure out the competitiveness piece for a kid who's like 17 playing in some goofy league, right?

The thing that's great about him

is how relentlessly competitive he is.

Like, I just, I'm such a huge fan.

And for whatever reason, Jabari got hurt.

They went a little smaller with him.

It unlocks something.

And now if I were them, I wouldn't trade for anybody.

You know, they're a two seed.

They've had some big wins this week.

I wouldn't mess with this. Just let's see how far we can go.
Let's keep pushing Thompson a little bit. Let's nudge and see really what's there, short-term, long-term.
And next year, we'll figure it out, or this summer, right? I think that's the move. Because the wins they had this week, you really have to start thinking, but what if they did this? Could they make the finals? We've seen teams out of nowhere and we've argued about this in the past.
If you have a chance to make the finals, how far do you go? In this case, I'd probably wait because I think all their flexibility comes this summer once they can trade those Shangoon and Jayla Green deals. And so you want to know heading into the summer what to do.
The other thing about this trademark, it is just a hit list of guys I'm not a huge fan of. It really is.
That's rumor. It's the Rusillo All-Stars.
So Jimmy's the only one. If I knew he was bought in, I go, okay, let's do this's, let's do this.
And you can figure out like where he fits in.

Cause as much as they need Van Vliet,

you worry a little bit about loading up on a small primary guy throughout the

course of the playoffs. Um, you know, Brooks is so important to them,

especially what he does defensively.

And then Jalen is kind of like an every other night guy.

And I thought you're giving him that. Yeah, I know.
I think he's a once a week guy. Okay.
That's right now. Cause, cause as great as we are, like as much fun as a man is and what he could potentially be.
I still have a hard time believing you're like running something for him with the ball in his hands to like get you the bucket late. I don't know that he's there yet.
They did it yesterday. Four seconds left.
They ran the play for him and they were like, just beat Jalen Brown off the dribble and just do some crazy athlete thing. And even as he's like what you said earlier, it's almost like the baby deer on ice thing sometimes with him in offense where it's like he's moving so fast he can't even control it but he still got the shot off he broke Jalen's ankles um it's the most fascinating development of the year for me as like when we're talking about uh I'm not surprised Wemby ascended the way he did I'm not surprised SGA is having the year he is neither of us are surprised by anything with the Cav This is Thompson becoming like a top 20 trade asset.
I did not have that on my bingo card. I like the Cavs.
I didn't think they were going to get off to like a 73 win pace. Yeah, it's starting to fade a little bit finally.
When you're shooting 50-40-90 or 50-40-80 for three months, I'm not going to go, I won't do all like the honorable mentions, second apron casualties. Can't believe they missed the top 80.
Toughest omissions. But I did send you the list.
And the toughest omissions for me, I'll just rip them quickly. Reed Shepard, Jaden McDaniels, Anthony Black, Klingon, Matherin, Dillingham, Beef Stew, who stew who i love at four years 60 but couldn't put him on tara eason sohan uh thompson's brother peyton pritchard mark williams and nemhart is there anybody that jumped out on that list you're like oh man they should have made the trade value no because i think any of these lists like the first thing i did when i got it was like don't go i can't believe you did this because whenever you have to do these lists like good luck like whenever even though when i did the top 100 that i then threw away so i wasn't able to submit it for ringer.com like i had such a hard time with 11 through 30 yeah because i'd go like do i really think this guy is like a top 20 player? And you go like, okay, we'll

come up with the 20 names ahead of him.

And that's the weird part of the league ranking

stuff. And granted, this is different because of age and contract

and all that kind of stuff. But I just

the name start to add up

pretty quickly.

I think maybe Matherin just

because I've loved

what he's been able to do in

big spots offensively.

And I like how competitive he is.

Oh, dude.

He's a real alpha.

Like, there's no way he hasn't had conversations with buddies

where one of his buddies is like,

yo, this should be your team, not Halliburton.

He's like, I know.

Just waiting.

Just waiting for it to become my team.

Right.

Like, would you rather have Kobe White or Matherin?

I mean, on your list, you'd rather have Kobe White. Yeah, because I like his contract, and he puts up numbers and stats, and he plays hard.
But it's a good argument. All right, I'll bold Matherin.
Maybe there's somebody working about. I like Tari better than some of the names that you have in the top 85, but...
Well, wait, hold that thought because I have to explain. This year is a top 85.
It's unusual. There were years in the mid-2000s when it was a top 40, and I was barely getting to 40, like barely, like squeezing, shoehorning names in to try to get to 40.
This year, I really probably could have done a top 100.

The league is so deep.

You don't really realize it

until you're making a list like this.

So the top 85, the highest group is Group O,

quality assets, and just going from 85 to 75.

Nikola Vucevic, who on the right night

could have 40 points.

DeJounte Murray, Kaminga, Jalen Wells, Herb Jones, Jared McCain, Walker Kessler, Kobe White, Jabari Smith, DeAndre Hunter has a good contract, and Cam Johnson, number 75. So that's the first group.
And your question, Eason was a tough one for me too because I really like him and I didn't know if I was overrating him or not. Yeah, I can see like, hey, what is he? And that's kind of the stuff we're talking about here with Thompson, where I tend to, I don't want to say overvalue, because I don't think I'm wrong about it, but I'm going to value the guys with the ball in their hands that can get me multiple possessions.
Like, hey, Cade, Cade Cunningham for me is somebody where you go hey fix this fix us right now yeah and clearly it's different with Detroit now that they've actually invested in spacing around him but we'll get to Cade when we get to him but like that's always going to be kind of like my default setting of can you get me a bucket or can you stop the other team from getting a bucket or really like it's

that simple because that's where i still have some defense guys on this list that i'm like i really value the defense but i don't think it's a 50 50 split i don't think it's 60 40 thanks for doing splits with me you know i know percentages and splits it might be 61 39 the more i think yeah See, what is wrong with you?

59, 41.

Giving us flat numbers like that.

Sounds expensive. percentages and splits.
It might be 61-39 the more I think about it. See, what's wrong with you? It's early.
Giving us flat numbers like that? I was expecting like 63.5. So in this quality assets list, the hardest one for me, whether to include him or not, was DeJounte Murray, who's got a fatter contract and whose teams never seem to do well.
And I don't know whether it's his fault or not, but at some point, if you're going to hit your 30s and this just keeps happening where every team you're on is either disappointing or underachieving and you're one of the main guys, I have to look at you. But that's one.
And then Kamingo was the other one just because he's a free agent next year. And I think that complicates the asset piece because if you trade for him, you also have to pay him.
I put Jalen Wells in there because he's playing big minutes for this Memphis team and he's guarding the best guy in the other team every game. And at some point that's got to matter.
They're winning with him. He always has the toughest defensive assignment.
And I think for a team relying on two rookies like that with Edie too, it's really unusual to see a team that's good relying on guys who it's their first year in the league in significant roles. Like, hey, Edie, come in and we're going to run offense through you and protect the rim.
It's unusual. Anyway, I really like Wells, so I want to put them on there.
All right, next group. This group is called Before the Second Apron Shit.
I absolutely would have hung up but what are you thinking so this is six guys number 74 Porzingis Aaron Gordon Damian Lillard Zach Levine Drew Holiday and Pascal Siakam all the big contracts that you would have felt better about two three years ago is Dame too Dame too high, too low, or just right for you? This feels low, even if he hasn't been my favorite throughout all this. And I do wonder, too, like when we were talking about the heat at the very top, like what if Dame had gone there and it was the same situation with Butler? Because if Butler's not getting the contract, would Dame be going? I just wonder if Dame at any point is going, this actually worked out better for me, despite the fact that Milwaukee, probably more based on health than anything, has been disappointing when you bring in somebody like Dame to pair with Giannis with this.
The Gordon one is tough, man, because Gordon with Denver is worth so much more to them than as soon as Gordon

is away from Jokic, he's

just not going to be the same kind

of player. So his contract,

this is year one,

he had an extension, so it's basically five years

and 150. So it's

pricey, it's not crazy.

And he plays

really well with Jokic.

So I think that makes his value

higher just because

it's just

Thank you. crazy right so he plays really well with yokich so i think that makes his value higher just because you know it's it's just to yokich is at such a crucial point of his career and he's such an important player not just for this generation but just historically like i just know aaron gordon's good with him so i'm not trading him you know it would really have to take something for me to give up give him up so when you label this second apron thing which i think you're absolutely right about like perzingis and drew and you wonder like after this version of the celtics if there's a second apron transaction that happens there with boston depending on the season you mean in july you mean emphatically yes you mean you mean next month don't't you think Gordon's a no because of basketball first and contract second,

if at all?

Yeah, I don't.

I just think he plays too well with Jokic.

And as long as you have Jokic,

you have a chance to win the title.

That contract's not prohibitive.

The Murray contract's probably a little more problematic.

You know, although he's been really good

the last couple of weeks.

And I think we're all a little happier

with what we're seeing.

But I would be more worried about that

because you can't miss on the $50 million

Thank you. you know if although he's been really good the last couple weeks and i think we're all a little happier with what we're seeing but i would be more worried about that because you can't miss on the 50 million dollar contract you can overpay a little bit on the guys making 30 levine should be behind him is my point levine should be behind gordon okay do you like levine i do i i'm stunned it's another shocking thing that's happened this season.
Because I've watched him multiple times be the best guy in the court in games against really good teams. And it wasn't like once.
We're talking seven, eight, nine times where it's just he's really hard to defend and he's playing, I think, as well offensively as he's ever played. And I just, I value the offense.
He's a 25 points a game guy that can go toe to toe with whoever at the end of a game. You know, it's not nothing.
Like, I would rather have him than Dame at this point. Because I can find point guards.
I think it's much harder to find these swings that can create a shot. Like if Golden State somehow got Zach Labine,

and I don't think it would take a ton,

he would be so huge for them

because they have no other guy who can create a shot other than Steph.

And how many times can you run Steph in a semi-circle

and set him picks and do little hand?

Like they have nothing else.

They have nobody else until Kaminga comes back.

So you're not wrong about that. I mean mean the drop off from primary score to secondary like shot creation guy for Golden State is so significant and that's why you know granted yes I love Steph but when he has like bad games they'll be this group it's usually like LeBron weirdos you're like oh how come Steph never like I don't really love that content of like somebody who's just done it the right way has won multiple rings first ballot everything it's like can you guys shit on him for a couple weeks you're like you know what i don't want to and i'm not going to like he missed some shots but what he is tasked with to solve their problems offensively as the only guy you know other than the shrewder acquisition and i know like you could and that which is not my face right you could throw it right back to my face and be like i thought you just started this podcast talking about you like bucket getters and you're absolutely right like there's moments with levine where he looks like the most offensively talented player on the court but there are just too many plays as a seasoned levine watcher there are too many plays in there that I think everybody misses where you're like, what were you doing here? Who are you helping do this? Why didn't you get back on defense here? And they're constant.
He's flawed. I will fully admit he's flawed.
No, there's a lot with him. It's the 71 trade asset.
It seems fair. I could just do it.
I know. I thought about doing a version like something on my podcast where it was going to be one name one game where i just watch one player the entire time like that julius randall heat game where i just go you know i'm going to re-watch this and just watch randall yeah and it was when you really focus in the guy that you're like how come this guy always has numbers and how come his teams are never that never that good? And how come like he's so skilled? Like what else is happening around this? And you go, well, that's not good.
And that's not good. And that's, and I talk about this stuff all the time with certain players.
And I think Levine's the epitome of that. Jalen's had a couple of tough ones.
Jalen Brown has had a couple of tough ones this year in that respect. Like if you just watch him where me not helping on the maxi inbounds? He'll end up with the stats.
But if you watch the game, he'll have games where he just does 20 things you don't like. And you could make a YouTube clip.
I just think he's had a really rough season compared to what happened last year, where he really, I think, won a lot of us over as this guy has taken a step up. And I feel like this year, he's gone back to where he was two years ago.
And there's just really, especially watching them in person two nights in a row, he's been really messy this year. And I'm waiting for it to not be the case anymore.
And I'm just not seeing it. But at least we know at the highest level, he's delivered.
Well, that's the thing. So you're hoping april the it doesn't become messy anymore and it's back but i'm just saying the regular season's been messy but there are some scorers when i think about their playoff resume and be like so you've been doing this how many years and there's nothing significant there's not a moment for me to look at and like look i'm with you there's there's stuff with jalen brown and this year the shooting and but you know when when you're that young like we've argued about Murray when players who are like have had something really good in their past have these like I even was stubborn about Kelden Johnson I'm like is he's just going to be terrible now he's going to be terrible and I feel like he turned the corner a little bit this season um so even though the jalen stuff i would agree with you has been frustrating at least we've seen that before like what what are you throwing at me with levine you'd be like remember remember this series he well he doesn't have it but i do think if you're going to complain about the rules not you but just in general the second apron how hard it is to do trades.
The one good thing that's happened with all this is it's forced guys like Levine to be like, I guess I'm stuck here. I'm just going to have to play well.
And he's had for what he is, I think he's achieved whatever his talent ceiling is. I think he's achieved that.
I also think now that Lonzo's kind of bad, like Lonzo's getting thrown in these trade rumors. He's an expiring contract, 20 million.
If you watch the Bulls, I'm not positive I would even trade Lonzo. I kind of like the Bulls.
I'm not even sure they should do anything. Wait.
I don't know. I don't feel like any of their, any, they're not going to actually get anything for any of their players.
So it's like, well, why am I doing anything? I'll just make the play-in and try to upset somebody. It doesn't seem like any of their players are properly valued.
It's like, I wouldn't just give away Vucevic. Oh, thanks.
You're giving me two twos for Vucevic? I'm not doing that. I'm not giving away Levine and taking back a bad contract.
I'll trade Levine. I'll get Bradley Beal back.
Why would I do that? Why would I give away Lonzo? I like watching Lonzo. They owe their pick this year though.
So they have to get into the lottery. Then go higher and just lose your pick outside the lottery.
Let's take a break and then a really fun next category. This episode is brought to you by Verbo,

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Terms and conditions apply. Next category, possible studs on rookie deals going from number 68 to 62.

Koulibaly, Sar, Messi.

Did you expect this from him?

I didn't expect this.

I mean, he looks incredible.

And he's so confident, too.

There's no hesitation on him, his aggressiveness.

I feel bad for the Pelicans front office. They're 12 and 35.
And I like nine of their players. They have done such a good job through the draft.
And their main guys aren't healthy. So it's not a mystery.
I have him at 66, Ware at 65, a stunning turn of events for him. And I was guilty of saying it too.
It's like, oh man, imagine if Miami had taken Kinect or Jared McCain and then Ware the last few weeks has looked like the kind of young big at a cheap price that anyone would want. Risa Shea, I'm never selling my stock on him.

Kaysan Wallace at 63,

and then Derek Lively at 62.

Those are our possible studs on rookie deals.

And for trade value purposes,

having those guys,

if those guys can play a rotation role

and you're paying 4 million, 3 million, 6 million,

that's where you want to be.

Next group.

Nope, he's worth way more to us want to be. Next group.
Nope.

He's worth way more to us

than to you.

Number 61,

Devin Vassell.

Now this trade value

starts to get fun

right around here.

Number 60,

Zubats.

Wasn't prepared for him

to be that high in the list,

but I don't know

how many Clipper games

I have to watch

where he's the best center

in the game.

His contract is

three for 58. Too high, too low, or right range for him? I love Zoo.
Okay. I think he fights his ass off all the time.
There's some good rim protection stuff in there as well. I think he's a big part of why they win.
I don't know if anybody will do this because I'm not going to do it, but I'd love to know the success rate of pocket passes because I think a few guys did it a couple years ago and then everybody decided that when the big rolled and the two stayed with them, they were like, I'm going to do this sick look away bounce pass and then it's going to hit somebody's feet or it's never going to work. I think the success rate on this pocket pass that every player is obsessed with off of two staying with them is so low.
But a lot of times too,, they're screwing the big by trying to even throw it to these guys. And Zoo, for the bigs that are out there, I'm like, you sure? I know what the play calls for and that you think this is the right move, but can the guy actually catch it? I'm a big Zoo fan, man.
So I thought this was fine. Instead of a pocket pass, I would call it the tibia pass.

It always ends up somewhere between the guy's feet and his knee.

And the guy's seven feet tall.

It's like, I'm pretty sure he's not going to be able to take that pass.

I don't even know if guys look. I don't even know if guys look.

Like, hey, do you see limbs in the way of the pass?

Yeah.

Well, then don't make it.

It's like, nah, dude.

Two stayed with me.

Have to throw the pocket pass every time. Zoo number 60.
James Harden, number 59. The deliverer of said pocket pass.
Yeah. So two Clippers in the top 60.
Next three I'm going to put in a row. Number 58, Scottie Barnes.
Number 57, Trey Young. Number 56, Jamal Murray.
Big contracts. Contracts you had to do.
I don't think the team feels awesome about the contracts, but it's like those no recourse contracts. How would you rank those three? I have them.
Murray, Heddy Young, and Barnes. Is that the right order for you? It feels like if Paolo's eight, Scottie Barnes shouldn't be 59 or 58.
All right. So one of the many reasons I'm glad you're here.
I don't see the Scottie Barnes thing like some others, and I might be too down on him, but I do think when you're the best guy in a team and the team doesn't win at some point, some of that's got to be on you because I like, I think the Toronto team is actually pretty interesting if you watch them. They have guys all over the place.
Even like Agbaji, it's like a 45% three-point shooter. He's like their ninth man.
Like they have skilled players. I don't understand why they're not better.

So anyway, you could talk me into him being 38

or you could have talked me into being here.

And I aired on, I haven't really seen him

be an impact guy on a winning team.

Trey Young, at least, has been an impact guy

on a winning team.

Jamal Murray won a title.

Tyler Hero, who's number 55,

and I think he's been a more efficient, better offensive player than all those other guys. I just would rather have Tyler Hero at three for 93 than pay the max for Scottie Barnes.
Well, look, this is probably the wrong time to be ranking Scottie Barnes because it's getting worse. The efficiency stuff continues to decline over a four-year stretch he's back under 30 from three i think you always knew that he was a weird player but in a good way because he could do so many different things but yeah you know back to like the primary scoring thing like i don't think he was ever going to be like a cade and even though paulo like people would get on him with his efficiency stuff, especially last year, like that was the big Paolo Scottie Barnes argument last year.
It's like, yeah, but are you watching the shots that Paolo is tasked with taking? Right. All these other guys are out.
Please factor that in. Right.
Like watch and see how difficult some of the shots are for this dude, because he's, he's left with the ball to bail them out of every one of these possessions. So I think if you did like a four-year thing of Scottie, and again, it's your list, so I don't want to sit here and go through 10 straight guys and go too low, too low, too low.
No, this is one of the ones I really wanted to hash out. He's averaging 28 and six this season.
He's shooting 27% from three. And I guess my fear for him, and this would actually be a good outcome for his career, but there was that Iguodala stretch in Philly when he was miscast as the lead guy who's like, I'm going to be the guy who cares our offense at the end of games.
And I'm our number one guy. And guess what? The team never won.
And then once that got repositioned as like,

no, I'm actually an awesome, overqualified number three guy or number four guy.

And I'm going to guard the best guy in the other team.

And I'm going to learn how to hit three points.

And I'm just like completely additive.

And then he found his destiny.

I wonder if that's Scotty Barnes.

I wonder if he's just miscast right now

is we're going to run our offense through Scotty Barnes. I don't think you're're gonna win games if you're running the offense through him at least the player is now uh yeah but the thing is i think is is playmaking is actually pretty good but it's it's just we talked about toronto this summer it's like look at who they're paying look how much they're paying all these guys there's nights where i like rj barrett but it feels like everybody's a slot up too high on a priority list for a basketball team.
It's like a movie where they couldn't find the guy to put on the poster. And it's a bunch of character actors and role players.
And it's like, ah, I don't know. Kind of wish we had Nick Cage in this one.
If you were Lawrence Frank in Toronto called and offered Scotty Barnes or Norm Powell, you're not saying no. As a straight up deal, though, like Scottie's making.
Well, I don't mid 40s, but that's part of the trade by thing. Norm's making 17 million a year, averaging 24 points a game.
So you have to factor in the salary. Do I want to pay Scottie Barnes 45 or Norm Powell? 17, whatever the numbers are.
That's what that's where this gets hard. Because if I'm paying Scottie the number I'm paying him, I only have money to pay two, two and a half guys that much money.
So now I'm all in. He's got to be one of my best two guys on the team trying to win the title.
And I don't know if he's that guy yet. Do you think Miami would say no to Scottie Barnes or Tyler Hero? I do.
Really? When you factor in the salaries, yeah. If I'd rather pay Tyler Hero $30 million.
But you might be right. That's why we're doing this.
My fear is that because the numbers are down the way that they are. And you know what? Even if we didn't like toronto which we both didn't like toronto this summer and the record bears out but you're right like there are some nights with them or i'll go oh like rj's having a big night and be like oh this is why they wanted purtle back you know but they've they've also had a really disjured like they haven't had much consistency for long stretches this season of having a bunch of guys be available, too.
Do you think the Celtics would trade Derek White for Scottie Burns? If Ainge were there, yeah, because Ainge would just go, give me the potential talent ceiling. But you're taking on like $15 million extra a year.
Yeah, well, now we're talking second. Now you're second.
But that's second aprons a part of this though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a different trade.

You see,

I don't think there's any way here's whenever we're doing this exercise,

right?

Yeah.

If right now is like the only time in the last couple of years that we would

say Miami would turn down Scotty Barnes for Tyler hero.

Is that when we're making a mistake?

Okay.

I I'm going to move him down and I'm going to put him in a new spot.

Thank you. we would say Miami would turn down Scotty Barnes for Tyler Hero.
Is that when we're making a mistake? Okay. I'm going to move him down and I'm going to put him in a new spot.
And yet I actually have a better category. You talked me into it.
I'll move him up 10 spots and I might be wrong. I will fully admit I might be too glass half empty.
There's a couple guys in the league I'm a little too glass half empty on. You want to run the numbers on it.
It just, I was like, man. And maybe it's because I've been so used to the Palo-Scottie argument.
Like, they're 50 slots apart on this one. And it's not like I want Scottie over Palo, but I was like, damn.
Well, Palo's another one that I wasn't sure of the right rank for him. All right, so we'll go 59 Harden, 58 Trey Young, 57 Jamal Murray, 56 Hero, and then 55 Isaiah Hartenstein, who is just a winning player on a good contract.

And I value what he does.

When he's out there, his team plays better.

And I just feel like they wouldn't trade him. I think he has an incredible amount of value for them.
And, uh, and that's that. Is Trey too low? Which way would you put them higher into the forties or would you put them backwards? Cause he's got a lot of intrinsic value to the Hawks and to the franchise as like their guy.
And they built a pretty nice set of assets around him that complement what he does. You know, but I'm not sure what his trade value would be around the league.
Well, it wasn't very good this summer. It certainly wasn't.
There was a big piece on The Athletic that spoke directly to that. I know that like, it's two guys that have caught the brunt of shit from Atlanta.
I wouldn't even just say it's fans is like media members. It was like, Trey was their guy.
And then you're like, okay, did you see this piece where they basically said we need to be completely different with you? Yeah. That's your matter.
Right. And so you've seen it, you've seen it um you know whether it's deandre being better in his role and jalen taking on um such a huge part of the offense like i think it was a little alarming that it took this many years for them to say hey trey you know what'd be really cool is when you have the ball throw it up ahead to see if there's an opportunity to attack like kind of like that halfway transition you got You got four of them.
You can use them at any time. It's not just in the half court.
That line, you can give them the ball before you cross that line. No shit.
And so look, all that stuff was in there and they were like, they need to reevaluate what this is. I mean, it's not like he's taken 12 shots a game as opposed to 20.
He's only down like a couple of the assist numbers are huge there's also another piece like i'm sorry that i'm just reading it and i was sort of just laughing as i read all these quotes it was like you know i don't need to just hang on to the basketball and wait for the assist play i can pass it to someone else who then can move the ball around a little bit oh it's like that was You think so, Dr. Boogie nights quote right so um i you know we both sneaky liked this roster for a while and i like it even more i guess i'll never understand the okongu thing of like what every time i would watch like so clint's still the better option there and then they made that change yeah every three weeks a kongu looks like Bill Russell in like 1963.
It's got to mean something. Yeah, and I guess...
I wanted to put him in this list and I couldn't find a spot for him. Now we're kind of doing the Hawks.
He's in the top 85. Hey, next group.
Okay. This is a one-person group.
It's called, Sorry I Can't Answer Your Call. I'm taking a long, sad walk.
Please leave message after the beep. And that is number 54, Joel Embiid.
I have no idea what Joel Embiid's trade bet. You could tell me that Philly has to attach picks to trade him.
You could tell me people would offer picks for him. I have no idea.
You could tell me anything. I would believe it.
And you don't know either. I don't, but I, I wasn't mad about it.
I didn't go. This is outrageous.
He doesn't play basketball. No.
And I remember like last year when it was, I think it was, we already talked about it. We did the Denver show and I mentioned the Zach Lowe part of it.
I wasn't being critical of Zach, but it was just this accepted thing because of who him beat it. Ben, he'd won the the MVP that it was like he was in the top five.
And I don't think you just automatically lose your

spot when you're not healthy and maybe even if

you miss a year. But with

him, I don't know

what you do with him. I'd love to know what the

contract negotiation was, like why they

were in such a hurry to extend him. And it certainly

took him, what, 12 seconds to go

done. 12? I think it

was four.

I would, if I want to sound a little like can i docusign that right now can you just send that to me right now i got a docusign i have it open don't send a docusign i'll drive to you i'll bring my own sharpie i uh i don't know what his value is man i just don't know that I'd want to be in business because why is it supposed to get better?

And for all the shit that he's taking right now from missing games and the Denver history

he's brought back up,

I'd ask the people that are mad at him for not,

did you watch when he was playing?

And like, you can come at me with the box score

and all that stuff.

The guy doesn't move.

Just go watch the Golden State game.

If you're wondering why.

And he got his numbers.

And he got his numbers.

So you'll say, oh no, what are you guys talking about? And it's like, man, there's more. Watch the Golden State game.
And he got his numbers. He got his numbers, so you'll say, oh, no, what are you guys talking about? No, watch the Golden State game.
Just watch my defense. If he's going to move that badly, my point is I don't even blame him for not playing.
He was clearly marginalized when he was out there, and now people are mad that he's not playing anymore. I kind of look at that stretch of going, well, if that's how bad it was going to look, then he actually needs to.
It's frustrating as it is for everybody. He needs to be missing games to not look like that anymore because that's not going to work either.
It was handled horrendously by the team. It was handled horrendously by Embiid.
And it's gotten worse the whole season. And I know a bunch of Sixers fans, all of them are in that zone of just like, why aren't you just telling us what's going on? Why the secrecy? Why are you hiding things? Why is this so murky at all times? It just sucks the life out of the franchise, the fans.
But then say you don't know. Because they tried to say in the beginning of the season, they tried to make it seem like, oh, he's doing some knee management stuff.
And he clearly is not going to be able

to play three games in a row.

And if he does,

you know, the other thing,

when he plays well

and they're like strategically picking these games

where it's like,

hey, Charlotte tonight, you want to play?

Yeah, Charlotte.

Great.

All right.

Let me give that a whirl.

But I don't think,

does anybody think he's going to be able

to play four straight playoff rounds?

I don't know why. Do you think he can three? Do you think he played two? What's going to be better about this two months from now? I don't even know how you would project to be like, yeah, no, it'll, it'll, it'll just be fine.
Um, the Olympics was clearly a huge priority to him. And I think part of it was, you're not going to win a title, like, you know, win a gold.
And, you know, he's had some big moments for him. But for somebody who just doesn't ever seem to be right, like, was that the best use of your time? Also, we've been basketball fans for a long time.
We've seen some things. And the direction this has gone, we just have a mental history of other guys where we've watched this kind of arc or lack of an arc.
And it's like, C-Web, no, once the micro fracture surgery goes through, it's it'll be fine. He should be, you know, the only one I can remember where the guy was gone and it seemed bleak and then he came back and was really good was Amari Stoudemire.
Especially in the 2010 season, that first stretch with the Knicks in 2011, where it seemed like he had hit that point where you just could never rely on him again. And then he did rally back.
Embiid's carrying, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 extra pounds and more inches and everything. And I just think Yao Ming was another one.

Yeah, his feet aren't good.

And then all of a sudden he was just out of basketball.

I think with these tall guys,

when it goes in this direction,

the history of the league says it keeps going in that direction.

Samson was another one in the late 80s.

Got traded to Golden State.

Oh, this will go great.

Oh, new team.

And his knees are better.

And he was out of the league in three years.

So the fact that he's just not playing basketball that much is historically a horrible sign um next do you think there's a trade real quick though do you did you think of any trade that you would go this could actually be some because i don't even know how you would start the conversation no the the i think i mentioned this on a pot a couple weeks ago it's an all-time bullet dodge by the Knicks because I do think they would have gone all in for him last summer. And instead, they went down this Bridges Towns path instead, which turned out to be a way better thing.
But I think they would have given up the goods for him. I don't know if there's another team, though.
I don't think there's a... You'd have to have a huge salary that goes the other way.
It would have to be a pretty desperate team.

And it would honestly be irresponsible to,

to trade for him with the contract he has when you don't know if he can play

or not.

I wouldn't do that if I was an owner.

Would you trade Bill for him?

So Bill three years left this year and the next two,

but I get out of the Embiid business? I mean, would Ishbia do that? Of course. But that doesn't solve my Philly problem because I'm taking on another bad contract.
I'd rather just keep my fingers crossed with Embiid. Next group, very valuable assets on very good contracts.
Number 53, Nas Reed, who's making $12 million a year. He's one of the best contracts of the league.
Lou Dort, another one who makes nothing. Norm Powell, Austin Reeves, who really should have listened to us when we were telling him to sign with the Spurs.
Derek White, Jared Allen. The Spurs didn't listen.
Spurs didn't listen. Next group is valuable assets on not as good contracts.
Moved Scotty Barnes here to 47, thanks to his agent Ryan Russillo. Shangoon at 46.
Markkinen at 45. OG and Inobi at 44.
I just don't love the contracts, but love the player. Markkinen is the one that I think has been the weirdest one this season because his stats aren't the same.
You're paying him as a franchise guy who can... Last year, he was winning games and beating teams, having best player in the floor games.
Hasn't really been the same this year, but I also wonder if he's just on cruise control because they're tanking. Any thoughts? Yeah, I'm a little worried because it kind of gets back to that thing of like, well, if you've shown us some really high-level stuff, then I expect that you're going to get back to it a little bit.
And he's 28. I would say there's some Keontae George possessions where everybody else is watching that I don't love.
And then Sexton is talented enough to get his. So now do they have like all these other dudes in hell and they bring in Sensabaugh and they bring, like there's just a lot of guys like it's go time.
And is Lowry collateral because it feels like there's less opportunities for him to initiate or is that something that people have figured out with him um yeah who's the point who's his buddy who's the point guard on this team who's looking out for him and getting good shots I'm gonna say nobody yeah I don't be the case I don't like I still think that there's value for him and but it did i think it's a fair point in that last year it didn't matter what whatever is con whatever to the last dollar we can pay this guy is what he deserves and what he would get paid and everybody else would be happy to give him that in a free agent world and this season maybe makes you think of him as more expensive. Well, and also, it's two guys Golden State went after last year and didn't get him and Paul George.
And for what they would have had to give up for Markkinen, maybe you're relieved a little bit of your Golden State. It would have been a ton of draft picks.
You're giving up Wiggins. You're putting Kaminga in there.
And for what you've seen from Markkinen this year, not that he's not a good player, but I just don't know what's your destiny if you're Golden State. If you're built around Curry and Markkinen, I don't know where that takes you.
You're not in any different of a spot than Phoenix's. Group H, always the toughest guy to figure out.
This group's called, you realize he has no trade clause and he's 40, right? It's LeBron James. I don't, they're not trading him.
I don't think anyone's trading for him and it's a useless exercise to talk about him. All right.
Next group. Let me save you some time.
Fuck no. Really fun group here.
Number 42. Castle.
41. Trey Murphy.
40. Josh Hart.
39, Dyson Daniels. 38, Desmond Bain.
37, Darius Garland. 36, Jalen Suggs.
We're getting into some real trade assets now. I'm fine to admit that I'm overrating Castle if you think I am.
I just really like him. I'm all in.
I have a house on Castle Island already. I'm in.
I'm completely in on that guy. And the question would be, should he be that much higher than the other guys in the draft? In my opinion, yes.
I think he's going to be a guy who could be a top three guy on a title team. And I think he's a really nice person for the Wemby experience as we travel through it for the next seven, eight years.
That's a guy who can win titles with them. So I might overwrite him.
No, I don't think it's because here's an example that I would use. Like when we went back and looked at like Kaminga, right? You had Kaminga 83 and you had toughest omission, Tar Eason.
I would look at like, okay, I've seen the ups and downs of the Kaminga thing for multiple seasons. So the idea that it's just going to turn this corner into something like really steady and that he could be a number two scoring option on an okay team.
For 30 million a year? Yeah, that's now starting to feel like a bit of a reach with Kaminga, where with Tari Eason, even though it's raw or whatever, he's out there just wreaking havoc on basketball games. And because I haven't really gotten to see the full form version of Tari Eason, he would still be more valuable to me just based on the unknown.
And then we know this game enough that the unknown always trumps the known. And that's why Castle is a hang-up, even if it's not the best version.
Because whenever we see somebody young that's this good, like, what if he can do this? What if he can do this? I don't know if he's ever going to be able to shoot it consistently, but I do know this. The guy two years removed from high school and he goes at like 30 year old dudes like they stole from him he looks to fucking kill guys so that mentality and all of that like having a dude out there that is completely unafraid this early like there's plenty of young guys you're like okay he's just uncomfortable and he needs to kind of get through this.
There's none of that with him. So even if the full arsenal of like all the offensive polish of even a guy like Vassell, I have no problem with him being this high because teams don't trade guys like that.
I agree. I'm really interested to see what happens with them next two months and with San Antonio in general, because I actually think their record's lower than maybe it should be.

We all went under on them.

Or I went under on them.

Maybe you went over on them

before the season.

No, I'm pretty sure I went over

because it was such a massive jump.

I think, did you go over?

No, I went under.

I went under.

Just because I thought

the West was too good

and I didn't see the path

for them to be in the high 30s.

But they're in a lot of these games and Wemby's terrifying. And if Castle gets better down the stretch, who knows? Trey Murphy, I'm putting in 41 because I liked last year for him.
I think they fucked him this year with the contract extension. Couldn't really work out all summer.
Didn't know if he was getting it. Then he gets it.
got hurt. But if you've watched him the last couple of weeks,

that's just the kind of guy you want on your team.

I think we would have seen this earlier from him too,

one with health and just more opportunity.

It's starting to feel undeniable with him.

And now I kind of just don't want some of these guys to get in his way

because I think there's an awesome version of him

that's just waiting to happen here.

And I love him. If we ran a team, we'd be calling Griffin every 48 hours.
You're like, I don't know, maybe too many guys. What about Murphy? Josh Hart, I was shocked that I had him this high.
But the guy plays 42 minutes a game, has crazy stats, and he's indispensable on a top five team. And he's on a good contract.
So I had to put him there. Daniels, we both love.
Bane, Garland, Suggs. No arguments on any of those.
This next group, it's three people. It's called, if you tell Shams, I'll deny it to the death, but I'm absolutely unequivocally 100% listening.
Number 35, Zion Williamson. Number 34, LaMilla Ball.
And number 33, Bam Adebayo. I think Bam would be the surprise in that one, but I'm just prepared for anything with Miami.
I don't know what they do, whether they blow it up. Who knows? Like, is Miami hanging up if you're like, we're here to talk about Bam? I just don't think they are.
I think everyone on their team's available. I might hang up on you and end the pod right now for having Bam in a group with Zion and Lomelo.
Listen, I'm sorry.

I could also put him in the next group.

Just put him in another group.

He shouldn't be in that group with those two guys.

Okay.

I'm going to move him down just to keep you happy.

It's so disrespectful to Bam.

Same ranking, number 33.

Yeah, that's fine.

But he's in the next group, which is called Sorry, We're Pot Committed Here.

Okay. Zion and that's fine.
But he's in the next group, which is called Sorry, We're Pot Committed Here. Okay.

Zion and LaMelo.

I would trade for

Zion. I would totally talk myself

into he's in the worst

possible franchise with the worst

trainers and a weird fan base

and a bad city for him. If we just

bring him here. Yeah, it was the weird fan

base. That's what he did.
I'm saying if you're talking yourself into, oh, if we could just get him, we can mold him. He's the kind of guy that gets GMs fired where you're like, no, no, we got to do this because once we get him and then three months later, he pulls a hamstring and he puts on 20 pounds and you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to lose my job.
Why did I do this?

That's him.

I agree that I think there's a second team market for him just based on history.

This is like Darko and Orlando giving up a lottery pick for him.

It's like, well, this guy went really high.

Do you remember this?

I do, but wow, I didn't know it was that bad.

No, it isn't because Zion's done more than Darko ever did. I was thinking it was more like the Chris Webber, Mitch Richman type of trade where you're like, oh, you're giving us Mitch Richman, even though he's 33? Fine.
That's a better one based on production because the Zion thing was really good last year. And it's kind of like a little bit like the Embiid thing in that you go, well, if the market is this bad for this guy that I know I probably shouldn't be in business with, I'm still not going to trade him now.
And then I think on the other side of it, not that this lasted very long, but the idea that because of the contract, like would they waive him? You go, no, no, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
There's a market. There's still a market based on like the second team going, like if it were Pierce and Antoine Walker, you would be calling in to EEI being like, we should get Zion.
Like that's the kind of structure of a team where you go, they don't really have that much hope. And like, I'm going to be excited.
It's going to be cool to have Zion in my favorite team's uniform. But that could be Golden State right now.
When we're talking about like Hail Mary, we have to do something crazy moves. Saying fuck it and going after Zion, that qualifies.
Because if you strike oil with it, it's an amazing trade. If all the good things from the trade happen, it's the best trade anyone can make this decade.
And yet, it's probably way more likely all the other stuff would happen. It's one of the toughest trade assets in a long time.
Okay. but in a vacuum, like if you were running a team and let's...
I wouldn't trade for him. Okay, but if somebody said you have to have one, like your owner calls, hey, I just bought the team.
It's Bezos. Bezos is like, we need to make a statement here early, Bill.
Finally going to give you GM job. We're also going to to have behind the scenes.
You think hard knocks is all access. We're going to be waking up with you.
24-hour VR. Right.
You need to trade for one of the two, Lamello or Zion. I'd trade for Lamello.
Lamello, that's another one where you can, he's a get coaches and GMs fired guy. His destiny, I've made this joke many times, but his destiny might end up being an awesome basketball reference page and Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, one minute clips of this guy was a problem and that might be it.
But you watch him on certain nights and he just seems completely unstoppable and like he can make any shot and you could get seduced by it. If it was him versus Zion, at least I know he's probably a better bet to play.
yeah which isn't even a great bet i thought the all-star voting thing was really interesting and

then when i went to look at how it was happening when you sorted his position for available people to vote on he's the first option because he was leading everybody in scoring so i was like i wonder if that would happen i gotta give tim mcmahon credit on this one because he was on with wind horse and bond temps and he was like well his style of play has been in preparation of the all-star game so he's a perfect fit if he's named a starter he ended up not being a starter he should have been a starter based on what Mitchell Garland Brunson and all these guys have done I think between the two here's the issue wasn't just the BAM issue I think that Zion and LMelo should be behind Group G. I think they should just be behind it.
Because if somebody offered you... So with LeBron.
Right between LeBron and those other guys. Right.
Because even though you can't trade Trey Murphy for Zion, if Trey Murphy were offered for Zion, the team says, yeah, we'll turn the page on this. So the Pelicans call the Spurs and they say, we'll give you Zion for Castle.
And the Spurs say, no way. The smart answer is no way.
Okay. I think you're right.
That's a good, see, this is why you're a great trade value conciliary. That's a good note.
I'm like mad dog. That's a good job by you, Ryan.
That's just a great job right there. SVP and Rossello.
She put me to sleep. It was such a sad day in my career.
I was in the car driving home. He said that? Yeah, he said it on the air.
Mad dog shit on Van Pelt and I. And I was like, I would leave i'd be driving the gym i would listen to little gottlieb i check out what the dog was doing and dog was like that's my favorite show huh yeah let me just sleep huh yeah there's no energy on that show and i was just like fuck i was gonna do another eagles rejoin scottsdale i was pissed yeah the good thing The good thing is you let slights like that, you just forget about them overnight.
Don't think about them again. Yeah.
Like it never happened. We're going to take one more break and do the top 33.
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All right, 33 guys left.

This is Group E.

Sorry, we're pot committed here.

Roussela demanded Bam be put in this group

and can't get away from Zaya to Lamella. So Bam thanks you.
He's 33. Mikael Bridges, Kyrie Irving, Jalen Brown, who was in the teens, I think, three months ago and I think has dropped.
And we can talk about that in a second. Franz Wagner, Kevin Durant, and then Sabonis.
And there's a couple of the contracts here. Jalen Brown, four years left, 236.

Kevin Durant, two years, 106.

That's this year, next year.

Sabonis, four for 186.

A little pricey.

But what do you think of that order?

Adebayo, Bridges, Irving Brown, Wagner, Durant,

and then number 27, Sabonis. Is that the right group for Durant? It is.
Nudge them up. I think it is.
Age and team performance. But, you know, if Durant were offered to the Pacers or Halliburton, would they just go, yep, no problem, and we'll just have Nembhardt initiate everything? I don't think the Pacers do it.
It's too hard to find a guy who's like, I love being Indiana signature guy. I think it would take a lot for them to trade him.
You see Durant may just not be into it later on. All right, that's fine.
I love this group because I think this is where it really starts getting hard. This is where all the years, all the tape for you, Bill, is showing up.
Because Ky Kyrie this is maybe the highest he's been in a long time listen I'm a second chance guy I'm a third chance guy and I'm even a fourth chance guy um Kyrie not one of my not one of my favorites for a long time and uh he really won me over the last couple years he fine he. He's a late bloomer, but, uh,

I don't know.

I think this is the right area for him because if he's your second best

player,

you can make the NBA finals.

We saw that in June.

Yeah.

Mic'd up,

just leadership pouring into your ears.

Coherent press conferences.

Hasn't done really anything goofy in about a year and a half,

two years.

Thank you. coherent press conferences.
Hasn't done really anything goofy in about a year and a half?

Two years?

Right?

Well, yeah, I think we're coming up on

two years of him being traded.

Two-year anniversary?

That would have been a good anniversary

for you as Penn to celebrate.

It'd be a good 30 for 30.

You know, the Jalen thing for Durant,

do you think Boston says no?

I think they,

I think they'd have to,

well,

that's why I had Durant 28 and Brown 30,

because I think if you're Boston and you have the chance to get out of the

last two years of Jalen's contract and replace him with somebody that would

keep you as competitive as you are right now,

you'd at least have to have meetings about it. If you're Phoenix, why am I doing that? I'm already all the way in with this KD Booker thing.
I can't really deviate from that at this point. It just feels low for Jalen.
And I think because of this year, he's getting dinged too much. So you put him in the 20s yeah but see but i like the group that he's in because sabonis is incredibly like like the stats with him every single time i don't even know that i blame the guy from turkey for voting him for mvp um i know he wasn't from greece or something like that like he might have just pulled up and gone like, look at this plus minus shit.
Like, are you kidding?

Like that has to be the MVP.

15 rebounds a game.

Yeah.

The Jalen thing,

four years for two 36 in the last two years in the sixties,

when we're in a second apron league now,

it's just,

it's,

it's really hard to pay your second best player,

that contract.

I think that's why he has to be dink.

It's not totally his fault.

Okay.

But like we were doing it before. And so what was the Jalen deal? Five years what? Five years almost.
I mean, it was like 280, 285, something like that. Now we're four years left at 236.
So it's just a crazy number. Because we were talking OG and Anobi.
We didn't really get into it like there's part of me that will always think like you got to pay og and an ob five years to 12 fully guaranteed and give him a player option on the last year and you know statistically there's some stuff with him you're like how does but when you watch him you appreciate him a little bit more certainly when he's been more available which I think has been a fair knock on him in the past there, but you're right. Like it's still 75 million light of what you're paying Jalen.
Yeah. He's 49.2 this year, 53, 57, 61, 64 in the 28, 29 season.
That's alarming for anybody. Right, but the cap's going to go up at $65 million, as crazy as that number is.
It's $65 million for him at 32. He's going to age well.
And at that point, it's under 32% of the actual cap hit. I hope he ages well.
I don't like the fact that he's fucking jacked. I think he needs to unjack by about seven pounds of muscle after seeing him in person for two days.
I was alarmed by how jacked he was. He looked like he should be with Jesse Ventura and Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers in the Predator movie.
That's like how jacked he was. I just don't like that's small forward.

Is Kevin Willis first team

all time?

Oh, yeah.

Looks like he could

play right now.

Like I love

that's always the

Fred Lynn thing

when he stops by

Nesson.

Yeah.

It's just

it's mandatory.

Yeah.

Mandatory that

anybody that ages

well, he can be

104.

You'd be like,

I probably get you

six innings right now.

Right. You just have to be skinny.
It's just if you're skinny, they say it. And a tan.
Oh, you don't have a pop belly. You're tan.
You can play right now. Group D.
Seven guys. Budding franchise guys.
Tyrese Maxey, 26. Halliburton.
Gulp. Carl Anthony Towns, number 24, John Morant, Brandon Miller, Brandon Miller, Jalen Johnson, and Chet Holmgren, who would have been higher, but he's had two major injuries already and he's like 22.
And I had to ding him. Healthy Chet Holmgren, I think would be higher.
Anyone on that list jump out to you in the wrong way or the right way? Towns has been great for them. Completely won the trade.
Still going to be a little bit worried about what the defensive alignment stuff might be, but when they're rolling offensively, it's just an awesome one through five. The contract for Towns, 49.2, 53.1, 57, 61.
I mean, he looks even better, too. But he's been awesome.
And there's no way he's not a top 30 trade asset. Where he is exactly, I don't know.
Nope. I don't think when, you know, as we get to the rest of the list that I've seen here, so there was nothing.
I mean, I always could pick at anything. I guess I'm just kind of wondering, like, what is Jha right? Well, that was the one.
Is Ja too high on this list? And should he be backwards? Just because Ja doesn't play a lot. And it's like these one-off, then he plays two, then he's off one, then he's off three, then he's playing three more.
It just seems like he's not available a lot and it makes me nervous if that's my franchise guy.

Because it's true.

When Tatum doesn't play,

I'm like, what happened to Tatum?

He's not playing?

I just assume he's going to play every game.

With Ja, it's like,

whoa, Ja played a month in a row?

Really?

He's missed 19 games this year.

He played nine games last year

and we know last year was a mess for But they've been 19 games that he missed that have been spread out. They're sprinkled out like two, three, one, four.
He's definitely a – because Memphis is on whatever priority. It's easily a top 10 team for me now because I'm just falling in love with Jaron Jackson in a new way.
I always appreciated him, but now this year I get excited

to see, I wonder how they're going to use him.

I love Jaron Jackson, so there you go.

And you're right.

There's nights where I go,

oh, shit, Jaws isn't playing again tonight.

And so when you look at his style of play,

and I know he's talked about,

I'm just not going to be doing the same type of stuff,

that he's in the second year of a five-year deal

for $197.2 million. But it makes that two major incidents.
Don't forget to include that part. Yeah.
This is a lot like some of these other guys that we talk about, whether it's Trey's value to Atlanta specifically, Lomelo's value to Charlotte, New Orleans going, look, if Zion's not worth anything on the trade market, we might as well just ride this out again and see that if he's healthy, because the best version of him, like we can be a team that, you know, I don't know if dangerous is the wrong word here, but you understand like at least like a, a path of, if we have all of our guys and we can get frustrated, we can get impatient, but so many of these teams just kind of default to patience that Jaws, Jaws, probably a hangup on almost 90% on almost 90%. There's probably a few guys ahead of him that are hang-ups, but I also can see people making an argument that at 23, he's too high because of availability.
If Memphis called Philly and said, we'll trade you John Moran for Tyrese Maxey straight up right now, I don't think Philly does it. Which tells me I probably should add John behind Tyrese Maxey.
Yeah, and Maxey has missed a little time this year, but those are the two that I put next to each other. The contract's the same.
Maxey's only on the first year, but it's five years 204, like I said, versus five years 197.

Maxie

played 60 games last year,

70 games a year before that. He's played

37 to 44 this year.

His shooting numbers are down,

but really that to me is a product

of him going, okay, Embiid's out

and I'm just going to force the issue

and he's taking a million shots. He's taking more bad

shots than they normally would.

So I don't look at his declining shooting this year as this alarming thing.

I think it was just...

He's been good lately too.

The shot difficulty.

Yeah, so...

So maybe it's Halliburton 26,

Ja 25, Maxey 24, Towns 23.

I think that's the order.

Because I think Maxey is a little more of a hangup

than Ja is from Memphis

just because of the lack of availability

and some of the stuff that's happened.

Are you okay with Brandon Miller

I'm sorry. Maxie is a little more of a hang up than Jai's from Memphis just because of the lack of availability and some of the stuff that's happened.
Are you okay with Brandon Miller at 22? I mean, I could ding you because of the hand surgery, but based on everything you've read about it is that it's pretty straightforward. And Jalen Johnson, 21, you're good with.
Yeah, I love Jalen Johnson. Yeah, me too.
Okay, next group. next group three guys group c only if they made us do it number 19 de'aaron fox number 18 steph curry number 17 devin booker you heard me correctly steph curry number eight is 18 here's the case i think you and i are probably among the two biggest step Curry fans in the media.
Seth is probably third. Three years, 178 million is the number.
He's 36. And if he's the best player in a pretty average team, in the old days, that meant the team would have been good to maybe really good.
Now it means pretty average. That's what we've seen.
I don't think he's at a completely different point in his career, but he's at a slightly different point in his career. This version of Steph Curry right now would not have won the 2022 finals.
I think there's been a slight, slight, slight aging with him. But I also don't think they would ever trade him unless he went into the office and said, you guys have to trade me.
It's time. So it's a tough one.
When he had the opportunity to talk about the trade market, he did the exact opposite. Did the exact opposite.
Bobby Marks brought it up when we had him on not that long ago. And it's like, this is what you want.
This is what you want in the face of your franchise. This is the person that looks at kind of this lifetime professional relationship of like, hey, what's the best way for me to handle this versus the worst way? And the worst way would be like Anthony Davis clearly did it because he learned it from watching LeBron.
Yeah. The passive aggressive trade request.
Our roster is not good enough. Yeah.
We need a big man. You have like five big men on your roster.
And I just don't think, I just think it's a ridiculous way to like operate as if the front office is sitting around and be like, Hey, do you guys want to be worse or better? Like, I don't know. What about you? Like, what do you want to do today? I don't know.
Let's get lunch. And then we'll think about it.
And then it's like, Oh no, the player said he wants us to get better. All right.
Well, that, that does it. Yeah.
Let's get fine. We weren't, we weren't going to do it.
We actually wanted to be average, but now, and usually that means you're forcing the front office. If you have leverage, if you have an upcoming contract, you have all these things, you're probably forcing the front office and ownership into doing something they don't think is the best thing to do long-term.
And you know, LeBron's never cared about any of the draft picks anyway. So I think Davis is just basically saying the same stuff as him.
So Steph. Yeah, there are no lines.
I don't know. Nothing's impossible, but I don't know if that day is ever going to come.
I only think the only thing that would make sense to me would be Charlotte. If he wanted to finish his career there.
But that's just, you're punting on everything. And I do think some people feel like relationships are really important and that they would rather spend the rest of their career understanding the impact of like, I was on the same team that drafted me.
We won titles together. I ended up retiring with some of the people I played with.
I think he cares about that. So it's stupid to even have him on a list like this.
Booker was an interesting one because I have him 17th. I don't have him in either of the top two groups.
You could make a case that he should be, but I just haven't liked that. That team seems super disjointed and unhappy for three straight years and he's the best guy on it.
And at point it you know he's 28 uh I just couldn't get there but I'm also willing to be talked into nudging him up if you think we should I just think he should be up man I'm a huge Booker fan and I think it's been a bit like some of the stuff that we've seen I think there's certain guys from an efficient standpoint we just talked about it Maxie, where I can handle the efficiency being dinged a little when I feel like you are tasked with having to get your team out of so many bad possessions. And when I watch them, I think he's still the guy I trust the most on that team.
So if that... Let's run through it.
You think of Jalen Williams. Well, the Jalen Williams contract thing with OKC, I'm going to lose because of the flexibility.
Well, let's go through it. Group B, we can go through each guy and you tell me if any of them would trade this guy for Devin Booker.
So I'll move Booker up to group B. So he's 17.
Number 16, Jalen Williams. I don't think they, I think they would rather have Williams on the contract he's on younger.

His age is time to SGA

and Chet and some of the draft picks

they have. I just think they would rather have Jalen Williams

and Booker, as weird as that sounds

from a basketball standpoint. It's also

a team that doesn't really make trades ever.

So you good with that?

Yeah, the contract, I can't

win it.

I'd rather have Booker just from the

Thank you. so you're good with that yeah the contract I can't win it I'd rather have Booker just sort of a basketball player I'd rather have Booker play next to SGA right now than Jalen Williams I don't even know how anybody would debate that hurts me on defense a little bit right Jalen Jay Williams doing, you know, between him and Dort, that's part, I think, what makes their defense so special is they're, everybody on that team can switch in all these good ways.
There's high-end defenders. Like, SGA's probably the worst defender out of their crunch time guys.
Yeah, I mean, he's a bad defender. When you look at who, they'll either attack, the other team will attack Wallace if it's a size thing or yeah they'll go at sga because it's like the best of the options you know so you can avoid door or caruso or even wiggins who i think is one of my favorite like underrated players in the entire league yeah yeah that's why it's so unfun to talk about okc trades because it was like i like all these guys over the trade like oh we got to improve the wiggins.
Do you? I'd rather see what I have with Wiggins. And all these guys like playing with each other, which you got to value.
It's really hard to make a trade if you have chemistry like they have. I wouldn't touch it.
You know? Thompson at 15. It's a really fun basketball trade.
Thompson for Booker. I'd be terrified to trade Thompson at this point.
I just couldn't do it. Just from what we've seen in the last five weeks, to me, it's an automatic hangout.
I just can't do it. I don't know what's there.
Like there's like, the ceiling is opening up and there's like real Kawhi potential. Now there's Pippen potential.
Now there's potential for all-time guys when you watch him. This is beyond just, oh, man, that guy's really good.
We're at another level of it now. And everyone can see it.
You could see it last night with the Celtics game. He was the best guy in the game.
He's in a game with Brooks hits 10 threes, Tatum's in the game, Jalen Brown's in the game, was the most impactful guy in the game so I wouldn't I would not trade him I would trade him for Booker you would I would I think this is where see I mean we we raved about him at the beginning so I don't think anybody's in it but he's 19 percent from three for his career Kawhi was 38 percent his rookie year I think he was 38% his second year too. But how many years was Kawhi in college? At least three, right? Yeah.
Yeah. So Thompson's at the stage right now where basically Kawhi was a rookie in the Spurs.
I look at Booker as a top 10 bucket getter and we've seen it in the playoffs. We've seen it deeper in the playoffs.

He's 28 years old

and he's a motherfucker

in the best possible way

and not in a way that like

distracts him from the task at hand

at the game,

but I don't think he's afraid of anybody.

I think when his level of like

shot creation and scoring

in huge moments

is there's not 10 players in the league that are better than him at that. You know, I'll move him to 16.
I'll move Thompson to 17. And I'll move Jalen Williams to 15.
My only fear with Thompson is this was, it's like, remember that five weeks when Thompson was like, looked like the greatest prospect of any swingman in 10 years. And then,

uh, and then he shot 9% from three in March. So I'm not, I'm just going to be careful.
I don't want to put too much pressure on him. Right.
But it's kind of the weight of like, how often would we have ever said no to Booker for a men Thompson? And it's like, uh, every day except for the last 12. Yeah, it's fair.

14, Cade Cunningham.

Congrats, by the way.

I know you've been accepting kudos and plaudits for the last couple months.

You never gave up.

You were, I think, driving the Cade bandwagon.

It's been really special this year,

and his team's not good.

They have some fun role players.

They have some fun veterans,

but the amount of responsibility he has game to game, this is the argument with LaMelo ball. The LaMelo ball defenders would say, well, his team's not good.
Well, Kate's team's not good either. And that team is going toe to toe night after night and has a chance to be a pretty fun playing team.
I like watching them and he's been really special. So he's number 14 for me.
To carry this offense back to the first part of this, to be able to do this, I still would like to know over under, if I set it at five and a half, number of games Monty Williams has watched are the Pistons taking the over or the under? Way under. I think he's on an island somewhere.
You don't think he's watched six Pistons games? Just out of curiosity, you don't think he's checked in twice a month? They should be an ABC sitcom where he has to live with Killian Hayes. It's just the two of them in some beach house in Aruba.
Just ordering the staff around. It's like below deck to 2023 Pistons.
Monty Williams and Killian Hayes. Evan Mobley, number 13.
Big win for me. You had your victory lap with Kate Cunningham.
Huge victory lap for me with Evan Mobley. I never gave up.
I kind of gave up a little bit. And then Jaron Jackson, number 12.

Would you... You would say no.

Let's see, this becomes a...

I can't trade.

A Cavs thing.

I'd rather have the size than the guard.

If I have somebody who can anchor a championship defense,

I'm just picking that.

If all things are equal.

Like we've seen...

There's games when Mobley hasn't played

where the Cavs look just completely different.

You know?

And I don't know.

I don't know. I'm really impressed.
But Jackson, who you mentioned earlier, that's been the stunner for me. And this is a big win for Chris Vernon, who was always like, you guys were always shooting your wad about Mobley.
What about Jaron Jackson, who has better numbers every year and has been in more playoff games? Jaron Jackson's been awesome. And there's a, there's a fuck you to him this year that I really like.
Like I, that he had that Wemby game this year where he's like, fuck this guy. I don't like this guy.
I'm going to go at him. Uh, he's had a few of those this year.
I know the shooting number wasn't great. it's the only dude that I've seen be like to your point fuck him I haven't seen that since Scoot in that international game our guy we're not dead with Scoot I don't know they come over to my house and be like, is he sleeping? Anyway, Moby 13, Jaron Jackson 12.
I think that's the right order. I'm glad.
I'm glad. I was afraid.
I was afraid you were going to do Jaron Jackson in the 20s because you get in his case with the foul trouble and the rebounding. No, he's had an awesome year.
When you think about what he can do offensively and the different ways that you can use him, I've never been as big a fan of him as I am right now. I voted him as an all-star starter, and I know that wasn't popular.
Did you? No way. No, I ended up voting for Durant, but I stared at it.
I did Wemby, Jokic, and I looked at Durant and Jaron Jackson for like a half hour. And I really wanted to vote for Jaron Jackson.
And I just was like, ah, it's the all-star game. It's KD.
You know, he's the vet. And I just, it's not his fault that his team is run in the worst possible way.
But I really wanted to do it. I actually wish I had done it.
I think you made the right call. Well, very few media members agreed with me, but there were still, like when the votes came out, I was like, am I going to be the only one that did this? And I think there were seven of us.
I wish you had texted me because you could have talked me into it in like 20 seconds. I was that on the fence.
But, you know, we're all impressionable to a point too. And it just, I caught more and more of him during this.
And then you back up and you look at the numbers and you think about what he does defensively and all these different things. And I was like, I think it's close enough.
And, um, you know, standings isn't necessarily my tiebreaker. And I think that'll not be a tiebreaker when it comes to the MVP vote, if we stay on the same path.
Uh, and I, you know, I think And I think the Durant, like the default and LeBron and all that kind of stuff, like, hey, it's the all-star game. It's about the stars and that's who fans want to see.
I wouldn't get mad about anybody doing that if it's close, right? Yeah, if it's close. Yeah.
The LeBron on off-court numbers when we had to do the vote, it was just there's no way you could vote for him he's like a minus minus eight something like that um I think it's I think it's a little well I did it this morning it's yeah it's minus 4.6 no it's it's it's gotten better because they're playing better um when we when we had to do the vote though it wasn't great so Jaron Jackson's played 45 of 47 games for the Grizzlies, which is awesome. And he's having his best season all the way.
He's 23 and six. He's easily their most indispensable player and they're really good.
So kudos to him. I have Davis 11.
You saw the last couple of games, like he really big boy Boston the game last night. You know, he's, if he's playing the right shitty team, you really do feel like he could be a 40-20 guy.
He's been really good. A week ago, I was wondering if they should trade him to Golden State.
Now Golden State's gone one way and the Lakers feel like they have some momentum. The Finney-Smith thing really helped them.
It feels like they finally have enough guys to at least guard perimeter guys decently now. They don't't have to play connect as much so Reeves can be like the one guy

you can kind of hunt, but that's it.

Vincent's playing better. And then

LeBron's had a little more energy on

defense. Just a little, tiny

bit. But

I'm a little more hopeful for them than I was

a week ago. A week ago, I was like, this team's done.

They have no chance. Super

impressed with them in person when they house the Celtics.

I know people can point to the Celtics

was at five and seven,

but I just hate

how everybody just throws. Anytime

any team loses, you're just like, oh, back to back,

look at this stretch, and I

understand it, but the Lakers

control that game from the jump, and it's

very clear. And bullied them, too.

They knocked them around.

I thought they were really physical

in a way that was

Thank you. something to eat because it was late but i think d'angelo russell just being removed from all of the possibilities and all the possessions and all the stuff that he does that may not show up like oh look at the shooting numbers like oh look at this and he has a better net rating than lebron all these different things it's like yeah man but it just there's just times where you know like what the hell is he doing right now and so their best spacing closing group was their worst defensive perimeter group yeah they were kind of stuck and i think removing that removes some of the stuff with them being stuck and i you know it's weird with them because i kind of like them but i also think like the standard is that when they're not a true title contender they get so dismissed and they were just, oh, they stink.
It's like, they don't stink.

Like, there's seven guys there that I kind of like.

But then I have to think about who am I picking them against in the playoffs in the first round,

and that becomes more challenging.

They're at least a bitch in the round one.

That's where they've at least taken this season.

The Celtic game, whatever.

The Celtics had weird coaching in that game.

There was a weird energy. They'd played the OT game the night before.
The Warriors game was the one that really impressed me because I thought the Warriors needed the game. They wanted the game as national TV.
I wasn't sold on the Lakers at all, but they did the same thing they did to Boston. And the Thursday, it was like, oh, shit.
This team's big. Davis is really engaged.
LeBron seems like he kind of is starting to like the roster a little bit.

And I really think Reeves, who killed the Celtics,

has turned into a very fun offensive player.

And Redick's not afraid to run shit through him and marginalize LeBron for a couple, you know, half a quarter.

In crunch time, like if Reeves has the right matchup, they'll go to him, they'll actually use him, which they weren't doing last year. The other hope is that, you know, LeBron defensively is going to be a different version of himself in the playoffs.
Yeah, I mean, it's terrible right now. And it has been, I mean, there's just so many moments you can look at and be like, well, if he has to move, like it'll be times where he'll, he'll help to where the help doesn't need to be there, but at least it looks like he's defending somebody.
And it's like, okay, but now you just, you just messed up the entire rotation of the stuff. And I get it.
Like he's 40 years old. And that's why there was that weird stretch, like 10 games in or something where they were winning games and he was playing out of his mind and his intensity.
I was like, what, what is this? Like, are you going to try to keep up this kind of pace? Like, this doesn't make any sense. So that actually is a positive in that.
I wonder, you know, you gear it up, you have a little bit more of a break during the playoffs. If you can see a more engaged version of him, where defensively he's just trying to survive the season, play as many games as he can, you know, help them be kind of a mid seed team in team in the West.
I still think some of their best offensive possessions is when he's initiating it because it would make sense because he's so smart and he's still so good. Well, especially transitions, the other thing, his transition stuff is still great.
You know, like his ability to read at half court, oh, there's only two guys there, I'm just going to go through them and I'm bigger than them and I'm going to get a layup. In the passing, he still has all this stuff.
Think about it, though. How much easier it is to move when you know where you're moving as opposed to having to move in relationship to the other person moving where you have no idea where they're going.
So when he knows everything that he's doing, it's still incredibly impressive. And so that window of when he played that hard, even though I was like, man, this dude is like, it was a bunch of games in a row.
I was like, he's really going for it. I wonder if that's actually something to look at.
We're like, okay, well, at least that had happened at some point this season, even from that time on. Yeah, I guess it's been a little bit better lately, but there was a stretch.
We'll see. The Lakers have been up and down, but they're in a nice little spot right now.
Davis, so this Untouchables group, Group B, Davis 11, Jalen Brunson 10, Donovan Mitchell 9. And Mitchell's had, I just love the year he's had.
And they're not playing huge minutes. He's really deferred and just seems like he's been an awesome teammate this year.
And I think he's the biggest reason they're winning. Last group.
So this is a big argument coming out of the gate. This last group, completely and utterly untouchable.
And I had Paolo number eight. And I struggled with that more than I think any other name in the list, whether he should be in this final group or be in the group that we just went through.
And I couldn't shake those first couple games before he got hurt this season, how young he is and how I just wouldn't trade him. I just wouldn't be able to do it.
To me, he's a completely, utterly untouchable, but is he too high? don't think so okay and i'm glad it's that stretch it's that stretch last year i think he's another guy that you have to factor in who was available around him orlando statistically so bad offensively and that also speaks to losing franz for that long on top of losing paulo yeah so i think there's a lot of people that could try to throw and he's had some dud of games you know some of the shooting numbers since he's come back it does i don't i wouldn't say he's 100 i'm gonna i'll worry about that in march what i love about him is that i know he can fill it up but he also wants everybody to be involved and that's why i loved him at duke It's why I've always argued for him is that, you know,

the difference between,

like Jalen Green can't see the way

Paolo sees the game.

And that's why I'm a Paolo fan.

Would you have him above or below

Anthony Edwards,

who I have at number seven?

I'd have him behind him.

Me too.

Well, Anthony Edwards is our number seven.

Taking some shit this year. Little bit of a backlash season.
You knew it was coming. You knew the backlash season was happening.
It was going to start with the Olympics. I'm a fan duel.
Yeah, but it was going to have one of the Olympics leading up to it. After his run through the playoffs, he was like, I'm the number one option.
It's like, or. Yeah.
Or you're going to be watching. It's part of the process.
How do you handle adversity?

How do you handle annoying media questions

about adversity? How do you handle

tough losses? We're fine.

Tatum, number six.

Giannis,

number five.

Giannis is better?

Stop. Sorry.

You're going to be so happy right now. Giannis is better than Tatum.
Tatum is better. Stop.
Sorry. You're going to think that you're going to be so happy right now.

Giannis is better than Tatum.

Tatum is the better value.

Okay. Make the case.

Tatum plays all the time.

They're about the same age, right?

No.

Tatum's

what he turned?

Tatum's 26.

So Giannis is... same age right no tatum's uh what he turned 20 tatum's 26 so janice is two years older than him no janice turned 30 in december tatum oh shit janice is 30 yeah tatum turns 27 in march

so when you sent that i was i was thinking maybe you were doing that on purpose because people were going to give you shit for the Tatum part of it. I didn't think that at all.
I thought Giannis was 28. There has not been a day.
Even the great ones make mistakes. There's not been a day where I thought Tatum was better than Giannis, although this year.
No, you're getting four extra years. And I'll tell you, like Tatum this year, man, I think he's incredible.
I know the numbers may not scream it at you if you're not paying attention, but to see what he is doing to some of these defenses and what they're trying to do to him. And like Houston last night, the entire thing was blitz him, double him, and he was still turning the corner on some of these traps and it wasn't like he was scoring every single time but there's in there's there's not something like that it just goes oh wow look at this jump look at the shooting number look at the scoring because the shooting for the team is down which is another part of the celtics thing this is the best tatum's ever played i've never um you know much like i was talking about with j Jaron Jackson, this is the best I've ever felt about Tatum and the fact the age thing here is I think he actually should be ranked ahead of Youngs.
Two things. Responsibility.
It's among the toughest in the league what he does every night. Durability.
It's surprising when he doesn't play. And I you saw, and I saw those back-to-back LA games in person, both teams' strategy was just beat the shit out of Tatum.
Make him work. Don't let him get to his, if he's going to get to his spot, make him have to shove his way there.
Always have a guy behind him. Always chip him.
Like he's almost treated like the Pats treated Marshall Falk in that Super Bowl. Everybody's, every smart team's game plan is push them, nudge them, shove them, just make it hard for him for four quarters.
Or like Ben Coates in the end zone. Or my guy Ben Coates getting tackled by four Dolphins at the same time.
But he just keeps coming back. And if there's a one disappointing thing with me, with him, it's just like when you play like the Cl Clippers backups that's the kind of game this year where SGA is like I'm gonna have 55 don't worry everybody can take the night off and Tatum's missing that one kind of up look out I'm scorched earth tonight but that's it that if you're gonna nitpick that's really the only nitpick where it's like ah tonight's the night where Tatum just scores 47 and we kill whoever we're playing He's just not that kind of player, but I think it's it.
If you're going to nitpick, that's really the only nitpick. Where it's like, ah, tonight's the night where Tatum just scores 47 and we kill whoever we're playing.
He's just not that kind of player, but I think it's okay. He gets everybody involved.
And this is the best he's ever played, we agree. I can't put him ahead of Luka Doncic at four.
No, that's fine. Although there's an availability thing going on there where it's not.
That's why he dropped. Like Luke has never been number one in the rankings and it probably might not ever happen because of the durability thing with him.
Whereas like Shay is number three. I have Jokic too.
And then for the first time, a new number one, we've only had, I think 10, 11, 12 number ones ever. Uh, Victor Yama.

Oh yeah.

Not Richard.

Uh,

Wemby number one.

I think he has to be as great.

Yoko just having one of the great offensive seasons in the history of the league and is the best teammate since bird and magic and Curry.

And,

uh,

if you want to win a title,

he'd be the first pick,

but I don't know from a trade asset standpoint,

the Spurs aren't even like,

It's a hang up. So he's number one.
They're like, no, we were calling about a three-way with Critchie. Oh, they caught you back.
So are you good with that yeah okay i i don't know where this yokage thing is going to end up all time because like this this stretch is like so ridiculous and that's why when we were in denver i meant this like i hope he gets another one so that the simpletons are allowed to accept him into a higher tier and i know that sounds like shitty for me to say but i just get so tired of like when i look at how people rank stuff like do you really want to be this simple you just want to count stuff yeah like that's all it ever is to you is that this guy was good because of this and this guy was bad because of that then what's the point of watching any of this stuff happened a lot with college football I thought this year too and I really hope like Jokic gets the one that allows him to be talked about in the way that he deserves to be talked about because of what this stretch is would you put the finals MVP above or below resurrecting Westbrook's career as the greatest feat of his career if you had to rank them one two Westbrook Westbrook I was thinking about this the other day and I don't know if this is going to work but like Westbrook's your buddy from home that just you know has it dialed in and everybody knows the routine you know the girls probably maybe liked him when he was in high school or whatever but then if you bring him to like LA and you've been living in LA for a few years and you should be like hey look dude just so you know like it's a little harder out here yeah yeah and they're going to be competing with like different dudes and like it's up to you to accept the fact that like you're not going to get into some places and people are going to big time you and that if you recognize a guy from a tv show and you tell him that you're a big fan he's not going to talk to you and he's walk away. And like, they're just going to smell the non LA on you and you'll have to adjust.
And some people leave and never come back because they hated their experience. And I think Westbrook showed up to Denver being like, I do get it.
Like I do, my hometown stuff might not work. I find Westbrook in this run funny because he can be almost too deferential where he'll like want to get it back to Jokic in a spot where it's not even like a great catch for Jokic because Westbrook doesn't want to do all the things that he's been criticized for doing in the past.
Now, I still think there's a version of this with the spacing with Gordon and Westbrook to close like a playoff game. Like, yeah, I'm allowing like, is that actually going to happen? But they needed him.
They needed him. He was cheap cheap he was and he's giving them like value minutes he gives them durability minutes and stats they needed all three but right i think dainty chat wrote a great piece for the ringer about this last week it's the most unlikely connection of any two players we've had in a while and for me like you know an obvious giant Jokic fan, this is the stuff that made Bird and Magic so special.
They could resuscitate guys. Magic did this with Bob McAdoo.
Bird did this with Walton in 86, and even bit players like Siechding and whoever, Gerald Henderson. But the fact that Jokic took Westbrook, who not only was not an asset, but this might've been the only team in the league that would have signed him.
And somebody were like, oh my God, how's this going to work? Holy shit. And then turns him and they have this like real ESP thing now.
And Jokic loves him. I think that's, I think that's such like a feather in his cap, just historically, that he can basically play with any player in the league and make them better, which is like the highest level of basketball you can reach.
Westbrook's really appreciated though. He's appreciated more by players than he is by those of us that don't play because I think they look at what he did at his peak and there is a respect for him that we probably don't understand as much but you also realize with Westbrook like which version are we getting because the LA thing with the Lakers was a disaster and I think he resented so much of the dynamic there which I can even see his his point of view on that he was disrespected, marginalized, and not used correctly, and then blamed for everything and thrown into every single trade rumor possible.
So yeah, he wasn't a huge fan. True, but I mean, it's not like his style of play was going to lead to, oh, this doesn't work.
Once again, the players expect to be GMs, or sometimes I'm like, do you not watch league pass? How do you not understand how this is going to clog up some of the things that you'll want to do? Like, but it doesn't explain the Clippers thing last year, how bad he was. No, because when it seemed like his career was over, right? The Dallas playoff series, when he decided to like prioritize, just being like pissed off at everybody and taking himself out and like huge spots where you're like, are you doing right now he's a pissed maniac yeah right it's like you can do like you getting us any buckets or anything oh no so now we can't even trust you to be out there so you know you would think that it'd be easy for somebody to go hey look all you have to do with yokich is just cut man be be ready and.
And when you think he doesn't see you,

he actually still sees you.

So just cut.

And then it turned out Westbrook was one of the better cutters in the league.

Like, who knew?

I've been watching him since 2008.

And all of a sudden,

he's like this supernatural first step cut,

almost like a wide receiver

coming off the line of scrimmage.

And Yoko finds him every time.

I still will worry, though, because there's times where you can see, like in a game, or if he has an open look from three in the corner, and I know the corner numbers are really good, right? But if he clanks it in a big spot, like the next time he may get that catch in the same look, you can see him just not want to. I've seen that happen.
So I don't know if there's numbers that will tell me that it's true, not true, but I've seen him where it's just clear as day. Okay.
He doesn't want to pull the trigger on this. And I don't know if it's like, Hey, I just brick the last one.
And this is a big spot. I don't know if it's him being deferential of like, Hey, let me get it back to Jokic.
I wonder with the Jokic Murray two man game in a playoff series, when you have Gordon, where you have that spacing decision that Minnesota always messes with where it's like, hey, put Rudy on Gordon because that way Rudy can freelance off of him. That gives Nas the Jokic matchup that Cat did so well with last year.
Can you run the two-man game if Gordon and Westbrook are both on the other side? And are you going to start dealing with some real spacing issues? And will teams get used to it after two weeks of games where they're like, oh, all right,

game four.

Now I understand what they're doing.

That's the only thing that when I watch it, I go, you know, I wonder what that'll look like then.

But up until this point, it's been to your point for a team that we were like, where's

the depth?

Just his energy.

And even like a diminished version of Westbrook athletically when he starts going and he realizes he's going to get the ball back because Jokic is just that good yeah it motivates you to be be like involved in all of this stuff like hey if I keep cutting I get just all these easy baskets because I'm still so much quicker even though it's later in his career I can't believe we just spent three minutes talking about Russell Westbrook,

but it was totally worth it because it speaks to Jokic,

like the fact that...

Look at what we did today.

I said Trey Young was too low.

I took Harden's side and something.

I was incredibly, incredibly concerned

about that Denver team.

And now I think they're fine.

And they'll be there in the end.

We'll see if they can get a buyout guy

or just one other piece. Maybe they can dump Zeke Nagy and have some trade flexibility.
Anyway, Group A, Paolo number eight, Anthony Edwards, Giannis, six, Tatum five, Doncic, SGA, Jokic, and our new number one, Victor Wimbanyama, who probably at some point this season

is going to have like a 40, 20, 12 block game

with like seven assists.

He'll have some box score

that we've never seen before,

but we've seen 30 Jokic box scores

I think I've never seen before this year.

All right, that was fun.

This is going to go up on TheRinger.com

later in the week, the official list.

My conciliary, Rusillo, thank you so much for doing this. You have two more podcasts this week for you, right? Yeah.
Wednesday and then a loaded football show on Friday. Loaded? Loaded.
Loaded. Okay.
Great to see you, Rosillo. Thank you.
All right. That's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Rosillo.

Thanks to Kyle and Gahal and Saruti.

As always, I will be back with another podcast on Thursday.

Don't forget, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.

You can watch the new rewatchables we did before sunrise.

That is on the Ring of Movies YouTube channel.

And I'll see you on Thursday.

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