The 2025 Made-Up NBA Awards, Plus Duke’s Collapse With Ryen Russillo

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Don't forget about One Shine Podcast as well. They had a live reaction to the Final Four last night, which Rissella and I are about to talk about a little bit.
And then coming up right after the Monday night title game, you can get that as well. Coming up on this podcast, we did it last year.
We did the made-up NBA awards with one week to go in this season. I had a great time.
So we're bringing the gimmick back. Me and Russo, we're also going to talk about Duke

and

just a colossal collapse

last night that we have to discuss. So that's

all coming next. First, our friends from

Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this at 1030 Pacific time.
We're going to do the made upup NBA awards for the 24-25 season in a second. Wanted to talk about the final four last night, specifically an unbelievable, unfathomable Duke collapse, Rusillo.
One of the all-timers. Something that brought me back to where we were in college sports in the 80s when shit like that seemed to happen way more often.
Just watching when did you start wondering oh my god are they gonna blow this because for me it was when uh when they got the steal it was the 77 76 was the first time i was like oh my god they might actually lose this i still can't believe they lost it the next day that i'm sitting here uh i know you and i both bet it and i don't bet a ton of games but when the line come out and I had watched, you know, look, I'm certainly far from an expert on college basketball, but I just thought based on the size advantage that Duke had and three lottery picks, you know, like, okay, four isn't that bad of a number. And the whole game, I'm like, you should have bet more.
You should have bet more. Like, you were so right about this, you know.
And anybody that, you know, gambles enough, you just have games where you go, wow, I saw this the worst possible way and immediately know you're fucked. On this one, I sat there the whole time being like, I'm so smart.
I'm so smart. I would say there was two moments that hinted at what was going to happen.
That barrage of threes at the end of the first half kept Houston in it. They feel good.
Despite being outplayed in the first 20 minutes, they went at halftime feeling good about themselves. Not that this team necessarily needed the confidence boost, but being the dogs, but they're a super aggressive team with a lot of confidence.
And then really, I think Cryer and those guys, like the two guards just hitting threes, you're like, how is this game not 20? How is it not 25 points? And then I think once you saw that Sion James just could not he was not comfortable inbounding the ball and they kept going to this the same flashing thing to the corner where they were running the inbounds catch to the corner yeah which you're taught in like seventh grade not to do that yeah don't get trapped in the corner is the number one thing for the inbounds pass the number two is is just don't throw it up for grabs under your own basket. And they somehow did both.
Yeah, I guess I was shocked. And some people even said, like, after James hit his head, but it was very clear he was freaking out trying to inbounds it.
And Shire was just fine with it, I guess. And then it actually happens, and then you have the foul on Cooper.
But look, this team was up. They gave up a 9-0 run with 35 seconds.
They didn't hit a field goal for like the last, what, 10? Yeah, they had a drought that felt like a half hour with all the challenges and all the reviews and all the other things. First of all, there was a play in this game.
I'll be interested to see if you've seen it, because I can't remember ever seeing somebody try to strip the inbounds passer before and getting a technical. I feel like that might've made history for me.
It probably happened at some point in my life, but I don't remember. But that happens.
And I thought, oh, that's got to be two techs in the ball. It was only one tech.
So they go up six, but they have the ball. And then from that moment on, the game just completely fell apart for them.
And they had, there was bad defensive stuff. Like flag got beat for a layup.
They gave up that three when they were up six, when all they did was basically just, you know, a little, a lazy high screen and both guys jumped on the one guy and all of a sudden somebody else was wide open. They gave up the inbounds pass steal, wide open three guy comes flying in from the weak side and dunks it.
And then, you know, the guards on Duke were terrible. And I really think like, if you go in big picture, the fact that you're trying to win a title, but you don't really have that one, I got a guy's guard.
It really seems like that blows up in games like that you're playing a big football stadium there's a crazy pressure um and then your spinkers start to get a little tight and you kind of need that one guy who's like I got it I got it I got this and they didn't have anybody no the guards killed them um and it was yeah it's one field goal that Cooper three were the last 10 and a half minutes so like that's really the headline. We can talk about a call or inbounding.
It's like, how does Duke go 10 and a half minutes with only one made field goal throughout of it? I think there's also different discussions. They don't double Cooper on the last play.
If he hits that shot, does everybody go, hey, Houston, how do you play that straight up when you know that the ball's going to him? That didn't hurt him. There was also the debate of after the technical free throw by knipple houston played it straight up and my thing is always at home it's it's kids although you know some of the guys a little bit older now but i would foul i would delay the game out as much as possible because i would expect the younger guys to just miss free throws and houston plays it straight up which i think you know we could debate it and granted people And granted, people will just play the results and say, Hey, it's smart now.
But in that moment, maybe Samson's going, Hey, these guys have been tight for a half an hour, right? So let's not foul them. Let's let them run the clock out.
They're going to run it down. They're not going to get a great look.
And if we play them straight up, you know, at this point, like maybe it's better than, cause they would have been down six. If down six if they if they foul who knows he makes it two then it's probably over but to decide to play them straight up which goes against everything I'm saying but maybe even in the moment it's like why some of these coaching philosophies don't apply to every single game because things are playing out differently Houston look in the Tennessee game most teams I think would have blown that lead to Tennessee because Tennessee of these teams, when you watch that first half against Kentucky, where you go, oh my God, this is overwhelming.
The energy, the effort, how hard these guys play. And Houston's the same thing.
And Houston's like, fine, you guys want to do this with us? We'll do it. So I don't want to, like, look, my least favorite thing ever is when the topic in the pre-show meeting is did Duke blow it or did Houston win it? And it's just stupid.
It's TV shows do it all the time. Duke clearly blew this, but it's also ignoring the fact that this is who Houston is.
This is a team that was down six with 10 seconds to go against Kansas and forces double overtime game. So they believe it all the time.
And so I want to credit them for that, but I still cannot believe that a team like Duke that's this good, that this talented, couldn't figure out the inbounding thing because James was rattled those last four or five. Houston, relentless, made a couple of big shots, made a couple of big defensive plays, like Black and Knipple when they were down six on that layup was, you know, Duke had the opposite play on the other end and they fouled the guy.
I was thinking about the big picture thing for me, obviously flag. Nobody's going to remember this game in five years.
Nobody's going to hold it against him. No, I mean for like for the flag NBA arc when he's like playing on Charlotte or whatever age 24, he's in the playoffs.
Nobody's going to be like, Hey, remember that time in the semifinals? Honestly, I think it's going to hang on him. I think the people are going to ask him about this game for the rest of his life.
Like, I don't know. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, this is awful, man.
This is all time. Like, I know what you're saying.
Like, oh, I remember in the tournament, whatever. I think this was so big on this stage for a Duke team that so many people dislike.
But yet here he is. i'm watching him in this game going i don't know where the flaws where's the flaw right the more you watched him and i know he sucked in the last two minutes out of did he suck well he did he gave up a couple big defensive plays gave up a big rebound he had the foul that over the back which was thought, one of the worst foul calls in a while.

But what I was going to say was... I pushed back on that he sucked in the last couple of minutes.

Well, he sucked in the last two minutes.

He did.

Sucked in the last two minutes.

They gave up an absolute slaughter of a run, and he was a big part of it.

Defensively, he was in multiple plays where his guy either beat him to the basket or he gave up a wide-open three on that switch.

That was his fault. 7-7-71, 100% his fault on that.
Gave up the weak side rebound. I'm just saying it wasn't like I'm not sending, he's not sending that two minutes to the Hall of Fame committee and be like, here's my case.
It was bad. But the whole team was bad.
If you were scouting him, you would be in the room going like. No, I'll let him flag.
I thought he was the best guy on that team by far. But what I was going to say is that last shot, it's so funny how that fork in the road moment of like, he gets the shot he wants.
I thought it was going to go in and he front rimmed it. But if it goes in, now it's like this completely different conversation right they skip they survived

the scare and he has like his Larry Bird Carmelo moment and oh my god and he finishes with 29 points and he said it for a thing and instead you're looking back like ah that was really rough I thought he got tight I thought the whole team got super tight Proctor um looked like he didn't want to dribble anymore by the end of the game but that's the thing these guys are flags, 18. These guys are all kids.
That's what always makes me nervous. When I watch college sports, I feel so bad that these guys are so young at the stage they're at, you know, which is the kind of spotlight and tension and pressure.
I don't think, I think you're wrong though. I don't think it's going to hang on flag in the same way.
I thought he was really good for almost the entirety of the game. Are we saying two different things, though? Because I don't, I mean, yeah, I don't know that you're going to be having Kevin Harlan on a Thursday night TNT broadcast four nights from now going, well, 30 from Cooper, but they blew that game to Houston.
The scale, the C-Web timeout game was clearly like, we'll be remembering this, right? When he called the timeout that they didn't have at the end of that thing. That was like, oh shit, this one's going to fall.
I also think college basketball meant more when that happened. It did.
But in this case, I don't know. I just thought his team really stunk.
And I watched Duke a bunch of times this year. That stretch in the second half I thought was by far the worst I've seen them.
It's kind of inexplicable that they couldn't score for that long. I didn't really understand anything they were doing either.
No, I guess I'm still shocked that you thought he sucked the last two minutes. I'm going to have to go back and watch the tape again.
You have to watch it. I think giving up a rebound or getting caught in rotation and somebody hitting a three, that's basketball.
I don't know that it means... Well, how about this? What did you do good in the last two minutes? Because I watched it a couple of times today and I was like, ah.
You watched it a couple of times? I did. There was a YouTube clip and I watched the last two minutes a couple of times because I was so fascinated by it.
When you have these things that fall apart, it's almost like game 6-86 where you're watching each pitch and you're like, oh, that could have ended the game. Ah, that could have ended the game.
And that Duke thing was the same thing. There was 10 plays in 90 seconds where you're like, ah, if they get that one, they win.
If they get the rebound, they win. I don't know.
I guess, look, I think they ran down the clock too long on the knipple miss i think that proctor missed the free throw i think seon couldn't inbound the basketball and then he turned it over i think the three that made it um the sharp three that made it 67 64 that's a free for all and you know it's it's kind of like wait a minute the sharp three i think maybe I'm thinking about the other three there's another three in here off the tip where it's a complete free-for-all and i don't even know how like anybody you know it's kind of like one of those offensive rebound threes where you're just like everybody's so scattered the whole time um i was surprised did rick buecher try to argue that flag was fouled on the on the rebound i i couldn't he was kind of saying we don't know what is i think he went with a mystery third arm defense classic rick buecher but i haven't seen the rick buecher you could see his hand and i didn't want to like you know how it is when you're tweeting out stuff and you go well did you not factor in sri lanka's gdp in the tariff then you're like okay um, look, they screwed up so many different times. It's not about that call, but I can't believe an official in that moment is like, I think I'm kind of ready to call something on this box out.
Like I think I'm ready. It was the way Houston was pressing on those inbounds passes and how physical they were.
You could have called a bunch of stuff that way either. And they weren't.
And then flags getting boxed out going backwards. And I thought the guy took his right arm and kind of hooked Flagg from behind a little bit from at least one of the angles.
Either way, it's just not a foul. Now, Houston got the ball anyway.
But the issue for me is like, make them have to make a shot to win the game. Don't bail them out with some chintzy call that the guy was like, it seemed like he was just dying to call.
He was calling it as they were still like, as flag was tipping the ball. I just didn't, I didn't get it.
Uh, at that time in the game, I thought it was pretty inexcusable. So from a flag standpoint, you don't think there's any way he goes back.
Right. Cause that's another narrative.
I don't see why he would like start the clock, start the clock on your max extension. I don't know why would you wait another year to do it.
Yeah, that's what's always left out when it's like, well, look at the rookie scale stuff for the NBA guys and look at what you could make and who knows what the NIL stuff. But I always think the NIL stuff, although lucrative, can be really misleading.
Like contracts that just get announced, like a lot of NFL stuff. It's like Russell Wilson, 21 and a half million or 10.
So I think the NIL stuff- Like Stefan Diggs, 69 million for three. Yeah, right.
That's a really good one. It's really 20 for one plus some bonuses.
It's exactly your point. The agent, the family, everybody else is like, start the clock for the rookie max extension.

In four years, he can sign

a max when he's 22 years old.

I don't know why you would delay that

for any reason. He's also ready

to play in the league. It's not like one of those

situations where,

you know, and watching him a lot, it's been interesting.

ESPN ran a comps thing about him,

and I'm not positive there's a specific comp.

There's pieces of different guys. There's some stuff he does that reminds me of Tatum, even though they're completely different players.
But like body size, the fact that he can impact the game, the Tatum version now, in all these different ways. But then there's pieces of other dudes.
I just think if I were him, I'm coming in. There's a weird scenario, though, where he could potentially wait to see who gets the pick.
Can he pull out by the lottery happens mid-May and I think he can pull out the end of May, something like that? It used to be this thing where the NBA withdrawal date was so much later than the NCAA one. And it was done on purpose because the coaches would just vote on it and say, we want to know ahead of time.
And then I think they changed it where either it's the same date or it aligns. I think the unknown part of it, like if it were a franchise where you go, absolutely not.
I want nothing to do with this. Maybe, but you have new ownership in Charlotte.
You have a winger running things with the Wizards. So there's at least things that you feel like, hey, the guy's making these decisions.
It's different than what it was before. So even though these teams aren't exactly.
So if you hated one of those scenarios that much, would you actually delay it for NIL money that still would probably be close to what your rookie scale would be as a first? Again, I don't know. Also, he might not be the number one pick next year because there's a couple dudes in next year's draft that everybody loves.
You know you're the number one pick now. Yeah, so Cerruti says the lottery is May 15th.
He'd have a month to look at it. We have not had a scenario where somebody tried to power play the top pick or one of the top picks in a while.
Like Danny Ferry famously did it when I was in college because he didn't want to go to the Clippers and ended up shoving his way to the Cavs. Steve Francis basically did it.
He got drafted, was unhappy about it, had one of the funniest NBA draft reactions probably ever where he's just like, just seemed like he was being tortured that he went to Vancouver, put the hat on, just kept looking up and then finally pushed the trade to Houston. It really hasn't happened since then.
And I actually wonder why it doesn't happen more often, because we've been in this player empowerment era for 15 years now. But we haven't had a rookie come in and say, no, I actually don't want to go to Charlotte.
So you can either trade the pick to somebody I want to go to, or I'm just going to go back to Duke. And I think he has real leverage now with the NIL to at least pretend he might want to do that.
The problem for that theory is I don't think there's like a truly horrible team to go to this year in the NBA. Do you? Like even Charlotte, like, is that a bad situation? Like they have a new front office, new owner.
Everybody likes Charles Lee. They have some assets.

That's not a disaster.

Washington's not a disaster.

I don't see a team where I'd be like,

oh man, I feel so bad for him.

He went there.

No, I mean, I was looking at it this morning where I was like, which team,

if we're just being honest,

be like, they don't deserve him.

Like how you used to get mad when Cleveland,

you just said Philly?

Philly. Philly is the answer.
It's the only answer. They don't deserve him.
Like how you used to get mad when Cleveland, you just said Philly?

Philly.

Philly is the answer.

It's the only answer.

They don't deserve him.

Yeah.

You're stumbling into it based on bad organizational stuff.

Yeah, don't say sorry. They played the season wrong

and would somehow get compensated with that.

It would be nuts.

Yeah, because you did a Cleveland rant.

I think it was the third time they had won the lottery

and you were on TV for the draft.

Yeah, the Cleveland fans got mad at me.

That was absurd.

But I got your point.

It's like, come on.

Three times in five years,

the same team's going to win the number one pick?

What are we doing?

Like, what are we doing?

Philly, I think if you're talking about

what would be the most interesting basketball situation for him,

the Philly one would be, at least on paper, the most interesting. I don't know if it would be the best for him because now he's on the Embiid.
Are you playing or you're not playing clock? He's on the Paul George, whatever the hell's going on there, but at least he'd have good guards. But I think Washington would be the most fun for him just as a basketball fan, just because of the weird pieces they have.
And I think he would fit in with the guys they have and, you know, be, be some sort of connector. The most positive thing that you can say about him is that he's actually not going to need the ball to impact games immediately.
So whenever you think about a draft pick that could be the face of your franchise, I mean, cause if we're talking like best case scenarios and him being of golden hearing about and even though there was a chance i think there was conversation beginning of the year of like could the rutgers guys surpass him and then the year plays out and you're just like okay well there's obviously everybody's on the same page now there's no question that he's the number one guy but he your tatum thing at least now i think actually because you're like, hey, Tatum's playing point guard for this team.

And Flagg initiates so much of their offense.

Yeah.

But he also, one of the things I loved about Paolo is that Paolo could have taken every shot and been justified when Duke was in those tight games.

But Paolo still wanted to set up other people.

He had what I think is like shot make star quality shot making stuff.

But yet a deferential thing that actually works well with other talented players where I think young guys have to get to a point where like, hey, you just can't like cool scoring, bro, but you can't just do all of this on yourself and ignore everything else that's going around you. Cooper could not take shots and impact the game.
His passing is insane. His instincts are great.
His footwork, all the athleticism, the body control, and the shooting ended up being even better, I think, than people thought this year. So he's really like a plug-and-play guy.
I guess the only knock would be almost like the Wimbanyama thing where you go, okay, in five years is Wimbanyama like figuring out a way to score on his own in the Western Conference Finals. And I think clearly, you know, that's like being really hard on Wimbanyama.
And I think with Cooper, because if you're going to be one of these, there's not 10 guys in the league that probably fit this standard. I don't know how many you think there are, but okay.
We have a real dude. We're actually like in this, not, Hey, every year we have a chance to win a title, but we're at least like, we look like a conference finals team.
Cause that's the hope when you get one of these guys and is he somebody that can score in all those busted up possessions and that would be maybe the only thing where you go ceiling wise like he projects to maybe do that but that's what will make the difference yeah there's some tough advanced metrics with him with like the perimeter shots like that 15 to 20 feet range you saw it last night he missed it but the thing is he's 18 he's a year younger than he. I'm just like, if you're just looking, go back and look at Tatum tape when he was at Duke or first year Celtics.
He had a couple of things he could do. And other than that, he was like a baby deer in the woods trying to figure everything out.
And Flagg is, in what I see from an all-around game, is closer to the Tatum now than that Tatum in 2018. But I don't really know if he has a comp.
I don't think he's the same kind of natural scorer, but there's so many other awesome things he does. I can't wait to see him in the league.
And the bummer for him is just from a big picture standpoint, he had a chance to have this start to finish college season that just would have been mentioned with Davis in 2012 and Carmelo and some of the great seasons. Now that's pulled away.
I don't think this loss sticks to him though. It really felt like a team collapsed to me.
Yeah, that shot, they'll replay it. But big picture, here's a first take segment for you.
Is it better to lose or win a game like this?

If you're trying to become a great NBA player someday,

do you need like,

do you need the,

the agony,

the thing to go back to during the summer,

the pain of that one loss and be like,

I never want to have that feeling again.

In some ways you could argue that's actually probably better.

Bird always said like getting his ass kicked by magic in the final game was

actually a really good thing for him.

It gave him like a whole other level of,

Thank you. as you could argue, that's actually probably better.
Bird always said getting his ass kicked by Magic in the final game was actually a really good thing for him. It gave him a whole other level of drive.
So I don't know. There's a dumb silver lining.
Could have been too easy if they won right away. Are you saying MJ and Magic, could they have been better had they lost their title games? If MJ had missed that shot, maybe he wins eight titles.
Maybe he never plays baseball again. We're saying two different things, though.
We're saying two different things on the Cooper, how this sticks to him. I'm looking at it as he's going to be at the gas station in Maine when he's 60.
And some guy is going to come up to him and say, I can't believe you lost that game. As if he hasn't heard it his entire life.
When I was watching him, and I think, I don't know if I was reading the list correctly, but when Shire had him in the timeout and they were getting ready to inbound, I think he said, it's your time, right? Like, go make it happen. Yeah.
And how different. Now, granted, they still have to be Florida, which is a really good college basketball team, so maybe we're assuming a lot.
But he's going to be reminded of this probably every day in some fashion for the rest of his life, and it's going to be brutal. And you're right.
I think the thing that we're separate on is that it's not going to stick to him as if it's a knock on who he is as a player. He has this great NBA career.
None of this is really going to matter. Plenty of guys have lost.
They've lost. But this was just such a dramatic loss to blow it this way and to have somebody.
When was the last time we had a college basketball loss like this? This was like old school. Is this the Memphis, Kansas one when they don't make their free throws? Yeah, that's a good one.
That was 2008, right? That was like 17 years ago. Just doesn't happen the same way.
Wait, one more thing on the NCAA. You talked about the Florida guy last week and how much you liked him.
Yeah. And then you watched him last night and he just looks like he's doing a Jamal Murray impersonation.
And I guess now he's crept into the first round. And I don't really know the knocks.
He's not as tall as Murray is. And he's older.
He's 22, which they always seem to penalize guys with. But he's been impressive enough that I'm now rooting to see him go to a decent team in the draft, maybe a team where he could play.
I'm talking about Clayton. But I've just been

really, really, really blown away by his shot making and how he seems to have a sense for

when his team needs him to do something. If he's on Duke last night, Duke doesn't lose the game.
So where do you see him? I know you only started doing the draft stuff, but just where do you see him in that whole context? Does this even matter when these teams are looking at this in June? Older, not jump off the screen, batchy athleticism. So I think that's where I look back at some of the mocks and there was one in the beginning of this month where he wasn't even a second round pick.
Right. And that's where, again, late to this, but the Tennessee SEC tournament game, I was like, holy shit.
And then he's basically been that the entire time we talked about the Texas Tech shot. But uh but what he can do i'm not comparing him to steph okay but what makes steph a great shooter is that steph can have a bad foundation that steph can change the release of it even though it all kind of comes back you know it's almost like a dirk thing if you looked at dirk's foundation you would never say hey do what that guy's doing but everything was always adjusted for whatever the release was going to be so there's some guys that are just catch and shoot they can never move they develop the muscle memory enough that if they catch and shoot in a certain spot they put up like a really good number but i don't know that it makes you a well-rounded shooter and what we see with clayton is that he can be that that corner three that he hit from the left side or excuse me it was the right side so right.
He's adjusting all of his like arm and release point to get away from the contest. And then it's natural.
He also had a drive in the left side where he had read it and he knew what was going to happen and he knew he was going to get fouled. So he's preparing himself to even throw the ball up at the rim.
And it wasn't even an and one, but there's just stuff with him that even if he's not off the page, you know, or I should say off the charts athletically compared to some of the other guys, he seems to keep getting past everybody the entire time. And there's some players when you're doing the draft, you're like, I don't know if he's like the most dynamic or the most quick.
And it's like, okay, but he just keeps, he just keeps getting past everybody every single time and his pace and his, his comfort in the biggest moments. I haven't done it, but I but I guess I'd have a hard time believing that there's 30 guys that go ahead of him even at the age I would add the way he finishes after he bounces into somebody on a drive and still finishes with touch that's the thing that reminds me of Murray the most.
Like when Murray's really going,

he has this ability to kind of bounce off dudes

and finish anyway.

I think he's really impressive.

And I was mad.

I had the Auburn-Duke parlay last night,

which then I had to chase with Duke Clippers.

So it was a double loss for me last night.

But I just thought Auburn was better.

And then as you're watching him take over the second half, you're like, why the the fuck did i bet against this guy this guy thinks he's the best guy in this tournament i'm not i'm not doing that again all right we got to get the only just to add to it though because i've been doing it now where like on fan duel i hedged it with a florida houston florida over houston plus 750 title yeah so i was like i love Duke. I love them in this game.
And then you're sitting there going, I still don't feel like I was wrong. There's plenty of games where you're like, I'm just wrong on this one.
So yeah, I got a little title game insurance, so we'll see how it goes. But doubting Houston is a dangerous sport right now.
The most important question I'm going to ask you before we go to the break. Do you think stripping the inbounds passer should be worth more than one technical? No, I'm fine with it.
You think it should be? I think it should be a two-tech. It's just such a crazy thing to do.
I just think it should add an extra tech to it for how stupid it. And then that guy came back and made some big plays.
He wasn't fazed at all. All right, we got to get to the made up NBA awards.
We're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.
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Void where prohibited. All right, welcome to a special part of the show, which is brought to you today by Audi with their all new fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron.
So we're going to do made up NBA awards in a second, but just quick check-in because we got four games left. The biggest thing that's at stake right now is this Defensive Player of the Year award, which Draymond has, there's like a good media campaign for him right now.
Rob Mahoney and I talked about it a little bit on Thursday and both of us thought, didn't really see it. But Draymond's the favorite basically based off this last 25 games stretch.
A large favorite too, right? Yeah. Basically based off this post-Jimmy Butler trade stretch that seems to ignore the rest of the season.
I'm not voting for him. I'm either voting for Moby or Dort because I just thought those guys were better.
I want to look at it. I'm not going to decide today.
But did you have Draymond all of a sudden as the defensive player of the year or are you leaning somewhere else? I'm not. I think it's the hardest award to vote on, to be honest with you.
With no Wendy? Well, yeah.

I mean, he was just going to win it.

But there's a lot of stuff that Draymond does do that is really important

that may not show up.

His switchability, that stuff's crazy.

There's some clutch defense with him, too.

He'll make the single biggest play in the fourth quarter defensively. A little stuff like that.
Defensive player of the year, clearly watching all year, I have thoughts, but I definitely make the rounds with coaches, assistant coaches. The love for Dort and who he is and what he's tasked with and then the numbers when you start looking at some of the matchup stuff, which at times I think can be packaged to be a little misleading.
But it's a Dort Mobley thing for me right now. But I'm going to make the calls and figure it out.
But I just think it's such a hard thing to vote for. Well, the all-new fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron,

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Do not drive while distracted. All right, made up awards time.
So we did this last year. I had a fantastic time.
We're doing it again. Have a bunch of awards.
I couldn't remember last year if I sent you all the nominees. I don't think I did.
I think I just sent you the awards and left you on your own to come up with a winner, but I have nominees for each category. So we're going to rip through them.
And the first one is Unicorn of the Year, which when Benyama won last year, we created it for him. He got hurt.
I don't think, would you say he's eligible? I mean, he could basically win every year. I'd like to come up with a new name for this, right? Can we we zag a little yeah i mean unicorn is like who was the og unicorn will chamberlain yeah hey i saw something the other day they're trying to say you could bench 500 pounds did you find that in any of your research that would be really impressive 500 pounds is a lot a lot especially with long arms really strong guy nominees i have wimby again amen thompson lebron at age 40 dyson daniels or zach edie for unicorn of the year we could just vote for wimby again no chet didn't play enough not eligible what do you need 35 games you can put chet in there make the case If they have a playoff run and he plays as well as I think he's going to play, there's going to be some real Chet conversations.
I don't know if they get as absurd as DeAndre Ayton potentially being a top 15 player in the Suns finals run of a few years ago. That seems inaccurate with further information.
But the rim protection numbers, the fact that he can play five out, the fact that he goes coast to coast the other night against Detroit and then finishes... Three-point shooting.
Yeah. So, I...
I just... Hey, just tell them the world, prepare yourself for some big-time Chet projections if OKC pulls this off?

I like the Chet one.

If we can't give it to Wemby, I think Chet is a good backup choice because I've never really seen another player like him.

So I think you're right.

I wanted to give this to Ahmed Thompson, but I feel like he's been in the vicinity of other

guys we watch.

But I still feel like to have enough athletic ability that people go to see you play basketball

and you seem like a better athlete than anyone at a basketball game with all the best athletes

Thank you. To have enough athletic ability that people go to see you play basketball and you seem like a better athlete than anyone at a basketball game with all the best athletes feels unicorn-y.
So at least he's a medalist. So we'll give it to him.
Okay. Just an aside, a man's like four of these for me.
And then I had to figure out how to whittle it down. So I don't think a man's a bad choice.
I would say Michael Phelps in the summer Olympics one year,

just grabbing medals.

Yeah.

Yeah. Although I do think if you had basketball where it was like,

Hey,

we'll play one on one,

two on two,

three on three,

five on five,

and then we'll play horse.

And then it's like Jordan had seven golds.

So some of the swimming and gymnastics gold medal count,

I think is unfair to the team guys,

but we can get into that later.

Although this curling thing with China is nuts.

I'll see for next year. I always thought the team, like the basketball, basketball team medal just should have been bigger.
I think when you're just talking about some of those individual swimming race ones, maybe a smaller one, and then the basketball, I always thought should look like a Flava Flav

type of medal.

Next category, the 2011 Blake Griffin Award for most unexpected delight.

Once again, a Matt Thompson.

Here he is, along with Kate Cunningham,

rejuvenated Jimmy Butler on Golden State,

Austin Reeves,

or anyone else you want to mention?

Any other nominees?

Nope, because you already said the guy

that I was going to use in this one.

Who is it? Who's your winner?

A man.

All right.

Thank you. going to be using this one.
Who is it? Who's your winner? I'm in. Alright.
Is it going to be like a Meryl Streep situation here? No, because I'm giving mine to Austin Reeves. That's a good one.
I can't believe how good he is offensively to the point where he's on a team with LeBron and Luka.

And not only does his coach think it's a good idea to run stuff through Austin Reeves,

but LeBron and Luka are like,

we should run stuff through Austin Reeves.

Like that's the level he's at.

I think he's a potential 25 point a game scorer

at some point in his career.

There's pieces of different guys from over the years.

And I'm going to do the comparing a white guy

to a white guy thing,

but there's a lot of Jeff Hornacek

Thank you. career.
There's pieces of different guys from over the years, and I'm going to do the comparing a white guy to a white guy thing, but there's a lot of Jeff Hornacek. There's some Paul Westfall, but his ability to get to the basket, create shots for other guys, take huge threes in big moments.
I think other teams are really afraid of him offensively. I've been really impressed.
I was not expecting it. And so it's either him or Thompson to me.
Do we save Amen for some of the other ones? Because I think the Reeves part of it is you're not saying it's unexpected because we already knew he was pretty good. But now this is like the Jalen Brown arc where you have to keep adjusting the ceiling every time.
Yeah. I just didn't, I never thought like I was like them.
I never thought like this guy might be a four time all-star. Like I was never in my head.
It was always like, Oh, this guy's a really nice piece for LeBron. Like he really turned out to be a good player.
Somebody should pay him. Now it's like, Jesus Christ, this guy, this is a real offensive star.
Do you remember the Spurs thing, not offering him a contract? Oh, shut up. I didn't tell you this category because we already have the winner, but it's a new category for next year.
The Luka Doncic trade award for most cataclysmic NBA moment of the season goes to Luka trade.

So we just have to write that one down for next year.

There's no way.

There's no way.

I mean,

you can sit there and say plenty of unexpected things happen.

How about Cuban now doing the tour?

Oh,

he's coming up later.

Oh,

all right.

I got him later.

Category.

All right.

Um,

the 1986 Bill Walton award for biggest impact under 20 minutes,

a game guy.

Thank you. later category all right um the 1986 bill walton award for biggest impact under 20 minutes a game guy nominees ty jerome over solo podcast guest 19.7 minutes a game this year 12.2 points a game luke cornett on the celtics putting up basically like a 6-6 in 15 minutes obi Toppin, 10 and four.

37% from three.

Leads the league in field goal percentage around the rim. And then just

for fuck's sake, Ben Simmons on the Clippers.

I'm going to throw him in too for when

he comes in and does whatever

Ben Simmons does for 15 minutes.

Who do you have for the Bill Walton Award?

Ty Jerome. The metrics for

a player like him are incredible. It's also real when you watch it.
So, I mean, his win shares per 48 is over like .2. So it's a really good number, which sometimes that number doesn't even show up to reflect how well.
But when you start kind of getting into that area for a player, especially what he's asked to do, I think it's Jerome. And I think he's had some really big moments for them.
I just really felt like there was a few weeks there where it was just like, so this guy's just never going to miss any shots and do everything right. It's one of the best under 20 minute seasons in a while.
You know, he's basically coming in for two nine minute stretches each half and that's it. You don't see him again.
And he comes in, and he's impactful the whole time.

I'm with you.

What does he make this summer, you think?

See a $15 to $16 million guy?

God.

Not a shitload of calf space floating around.

No, but not a great free agent field either.

Yeah.

Veteran guy.

He's going to be in some big games in the playoffs. I think you could see like a 50 for three, one of those type of deals from somebody.
Yeah. Because you're still asking like, you're going, is he going to be our starting point guard? Like, is he playing 36 minutes a night out there? Well, could he get one of those Struis contracts?

When Struis went to Cleveland, what was it, 464?

And they were like, we just need an awesome role player

who can make some shots and play swing.

And maybe he starts, maybe he comes off the bench,

but we need him.

Very excited for the next category.

The Monty Williams Award for Worst Coach of the Year. This used to be named the Vinny Del Nego Award until whatever Monty did last year, which was the most egregious bad coaching I think we've ever had this century, at least.
Nominees, Coach Bud on the Phoenix Suns, Nick Nurse on the Sixers. I'm throwing Doug Christie in here as a nominee

based on the last 15 Kings games

and just whatever the hell

is going on with that team.

They're 4-11 in their last 15,

not trying to tank.

Anybody else you would put in

as a nominee here?

How is Nurse on here?

I just put him on

from the first two months

of the season.

I needed nominees.

I'm going to zag on you. Okay.
Toronto, Ryukovic. Okay.
Now, not because he did a bad job, but because he did an amazing job. This is the worst tanking in a bad way.
Like if the goal were to tank, they were eight and 31. They were unbelievably defensively there for like two plus months.
They won too many games. So he was, I'm not saying he's a bad coach, but he did the worst job of executing because the team played so hard.
And I think the Raptors were number two against the spread. And depending on what number you got this summer, they're going to end up being an over team.
Unless they throw away the last four games, I think is our only chance. They play too hard.
So I'm not even comparing them to Monte Williams, but I'm zagging a bit on the nomination of like, hey, why are you getting these? There are certain nights with their lineups where I'd go, what the hell is, and then they'd win again. I'm going to pick Coach Bud because Phoenix seems the most uninspired night to night with the most guys that really don't seem like they gave a shit about what happens in the game I thought Bradley Beal's performance in the Celtics game the other night was one of the most reprehensible things I've seen in a while and I really hope if anyone missed it go watch some of his minutes in game.
And if you want to see somebody just completely mail it in, it was, it was awful. Did you see it? It was awful.
Yeah. He's, I mean, there shouldn't even be any other nominees for another award a little bit later.
I imagine we're aligned on that. Well, I had the 2015 Brad Stevens award for most untankable coach.
And I had your Toronto guy, Jordy Fernandez, Will Hardy, and Chauncey Billups. Action-packed category.
So you'd go the Toronto guy for that one too? Yeah. Yeah.
I didn't know that was a category, so I wouldn't have done that to you. No, no.
I think he can win both. Has anyone ever done that before? A double.
I have Jordy. They're just like trying to trade dudes,

get guys off the team to make them worse.

And that team over and over again,

it's the same thing as Toronto.

Everyone plays hard.

He's a really good in-game coach and he's just stolen games left and right.

So kudos to him.

Speaking of Chauncey Billups,

the late 1990s Chauncey Billups Award

for best reason never to sell your stock.

Our guy, Scoot Henderson. That's it.
There's no other nominees. Scoot Henderson.
I was talking to a team this morning about this and their quote. So it's not coming from me, but was that this, we need to have more patience with guards.
The way you have to think the game now with the number of defenses that you're seeing, it's almost like quarterbacking now. Like, hey, are they in zone? Is the safety coming down? Is all this different stuff? Like, there's just so much variation for what you're having to face.
And I think Cade Cunningham is a great example of this. Like, you saw the physical talent.
You imagine he was going to be able to shoot it well. Then at that size, the passing that we saw

from Oklahoma State, it's like,

this just isn't going to work out. Now, granted, he had

some really alarming numbers finishing

at the rim or his inability to finish at the rim,

but you saw clearly

and it helped them having spacing too.

Once he started figuring things out a little bit,

there might be a lesson in there

for some of these lottery pick guards

that look lost early on. Maybe there's a scoot lesson in there for some of these lottery pick guards that look lost early on.

Maybe there's a

scoot lesson in there as well.

I'm going to go backwards

to two guys I specifically mentioned

remember for this because this might

have always been a lesson and we just forgot.

Kevin Johnson

on Cleveland.

I remember going to a

Cavs-Celtics game and watching

him just look like a deer in the headlights.

I went with my dad

Thank you. on Cleveland.
I remember going to a Cavs Celtics game and watching him just look like a deer in the headlights. I went with my dad and we were like, wow, that guy seemed like a bust.
And then they traded him for Larry Nance and he was awesome. And then Billups on Boston.
I was going to those games. Now, Patino was yelling at everybody.
He lost his confidence. They traded him after 50 games.
And then he bounced around. He went to Denver.
He went to Toronto. He bounced around before he finally landed on Minnesota when he rejuvenated his career.
But I would just never give up on a high pick after a year or two if I was a team that drafted them. quarterbacks a little different.
We've had some quarterbacks where it's like, I mean, when did we know Josh Rosen?

Like the second play of his career where he's just like, ah, that guy's, it's a wrap.

I was not.

I wasn't that quick on Josh Rosen.

You weren't?

You stayed in?

How long did you stay?

Longer.

Because I think it was a game against, I forget if it was SC or maybe it was Arizona where I thought he was reading the blitz perfectly and hitting the tight end. So yeah, I fell for it.
Terrell Brandon, maybe part of this group. That's a good one.
Yeah. Even somebody like Brian Shaw, who was really up and down and then turned into an awesome role player for a couple different playoff teams.
Yeah. I like your quarterback point guard thing.
The Freeman Williams Award for biggest black hole. This isn't as fun as last year when Cam Thomas was just the obvious winner.
I went with LaMelo, which you made the case for on your pod a couple months ago. But even though he's 21.3 field goal attempts a game in 32 minutes, so he's basically taking two shots every three minutes.
He's got a 36 usage rate and the team doesn't win. So I don't feel great about it, but I thought he was the best option.
Who'd you have?

yeah because there's some an alarm like alarming shot numbers that we've gone over where it was the most shots i think per 100 processions since kobe in 2006 and it's like okay but

i mean there was even discussions then of like, okay, Kobe's amazing, but is this awesome? You know, and again, like, how dare you even bring it up? And then you mentioned the team around him and all that kind of stuff. Even if I feel like everybody would guess, but like, hey, Priscilla's just going to jump on this Lomelo thing because of that stuff that you're already talking about.
He's such a good passer that I don't think the black hole thing applies to him. Like I have to be, I have to watch you and think you never want to pass.
You just don't want to. And I think Lomelo actually wants to pass a ton.
I mean, there's a sneaky part of this circling back to the start of the pod where we're talking about Cooper and where he could go. Like, can him on lobs from lamello like what yeah you know is there a version of this lamello thing where it works where he scales down the shot attempts a little he has some better players like you know again i'm i'm probably i sound like i'm in the marketing room with the front office of the hornets going as they try to shop them right right yeah we have we have so We didn't want to give them them.
Right, right. Yeah, we have, we have, we're selling a lot of jerseys.

We didn't want to give them up.

Right,

right.

A couple,

a couple options for you here.

Yeah.

Delano Banton from Portland.

I was like,

that guy doesn't like passing.

That's a really good one.

He really doesn't.

But then his assist percentage number

on the advanced stuff was so much higher than I thought it would be. I was like, all right, that's a really good one he really doesn't but then his assist percentage number on the advanced stuff was so much higher than i thought it would be i was like all right that's that's not the numbers don't back up the eyes on that but i'm just telling you that guy's not he's thinking shoot first yeah if you've watched if you've watched enough portland which you know some of us like watching portland play uh so then i looked at top 15 in field goal attempts not game, just raw field goal attempt total.
I did the same. Jalen Green's fourth.
He's taking the fourth most shots this season in the league. Is that true? Yeah, Jalen was awesome the other night against OKC.
Yeah, he's been good last month. I've been impressed.
They need him. But if you go by the 1,394 shots, that's again 1,394 shots this year.
So shots this year so i looked at it was like all right who let's say top 15 shot attempt guys total on the season yeah the only one he's the only one under 300 assists the rosen is the only one close to him at 316 and jalen's at like 260 something now you could also say hey scale it out to 16 field goal attempts and then Jaron Jackson Jr., who I love. But then I go, okay, but nobody's giving it to Jaron Jackson Jr.
saying, all right, now set up the offense. Maybe we don't have a black hole.
Maybe the word's defunct. I looked at the research numbers.
It was high volume. I was surprised.
But what are you asked to do? But when you start getting into like 7% assist ratio, like Jordan Clarkson had some years, you're like, man, not a lot of playmaking there. So some of it feels a little bit like, okay, but once the ball is passed to me, what are you more meaning you and I, like what do you mor morons expect me to do? Like, you realize how I fit into our offense? Like, I'm not getting the ball to set it back up.
So I think it has to be on somebody who you're still expecting to maybe make a few plays here and there. Cam Thomas' stats are basically almost exactly the same as last year.
So he's probably the winner, even though I felt way better watching him this year than I did last year.. Yeah, we don't really have the.
That's why even like Lamella, I was like, I don't know. Maybe we leave this to funk this year.
What's we got some media awards coming up. So let's take a break before we get to this.
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All right. This is one of the big categories.
This is like in the Oscars when all of a sudden they're doing like, you know, best supporting actor. Like, whoa, we're doing this now.
It's the Perk Thinks Jokic Pads His Stats Award for worst sports media take of the year about basketball. I'm sure you have a couple of nominees written down too.
I wrote down four. Perk, saying Steph shouldn't be an all-star.
All of Colin Coward's Tatum takes, like all of them, for five straight months, which I went on his show two weeks ago and made fun of him for. Marcus Morris has been debuting some Jokic stuff lately that I really want to talk about.

And then Gilbert Arena saying

Bronny would be top five for rookie of the year

if he played 36 minutes a game.

Was an actual Gilbert Arena's take.

Is that...

If you were playing 36 minutes a game,

I feel like any rookie playing 36 minutes a game

is probably in the running for rookie of the year.

Any other ones that jumped out for you? I think about the Perk Jokic Westbrook video once a week. The stat pad? Yeah, it's been years.
It's been years and I can't stop thinking about it. Every time he talks about Jokic,

I can't unwind it.

Cause I know what he was doing.

And there was,

there was a video of like,

it was kind of like the thinking emoji face.

And I kept thinking like of all the times that I'll,

I'll admit the disconnect of me never playing in any game that ever mattered in this sport that I'm in love with. And it's basically my career.
And then somebody who did play is capable of suggesting that because one guy gets triple doubles, it's the same as the other guy getting triple doubles. I just, it makes my head explode.
Okay. I can't, I still don't have an answer as to how it even happened.
So Perk's been on a bit of a heater. He had SGA in the defensive player of the year conversation the other night when they were talking MVP.
And it was like, yeah, it was like, why is SGA not being mentioned for defensive player of the year? And I thought like, well, because it's March and we know that he isn't. And he's actually, if Wallace isn't on the floor, like the one guy, not to say that he's a bad defensive player, but he's not even like one of the three or four best defensive players on his own team.
Although he's gotten defensive, all defensive team votes. I think it was a couple of years ago.
He's a good defensive player. But yeah, he's on the same team with Dort and Caruso and Wallace.
Right. So that made me like I had a relapse on the Jokic-Westbrook thing when I was watching that.
And so then I saw the Marcus Morris stuff with Jokic. And I was like, you know, first take's probably sitting there going, is there anybody that we can find that's kind of in the mix, played playing maybe we can figure out if he fits in to what we're doing but like back different background than Jokic like is there anybody available who could come on and just shit on Jokic a little bit was there anybody that Jokic shoved from behind really hard and knocked him out for 20 games right it's his brother but is there anybody is there anybody that would like fit into what we're doing here and it's like i've got the guy i've got the guy and he went they must have been high-fiving him being like you fit in perfectly to so you think that was in the meeting he he test drove it and they're like that's great you should say that Could you say not top 50? Uh, that was really good.
Because when I saw the clip, it was like, no way. Marcus Morris kind of shit on Jokic a little.
All right. Next category is the most shameless LeBron related media moment of the year.
And unfortunately there were too many this year with, with people in the media. And we're just going to skip this award, including a couple last week that I was just stupefied by.
Let's move on. The Virginia Beach Kings Award for most contrived story on a slow news day.
I'll give you the nominees. This is, I think, another action-packed great category.
Stephen A. versus LeBron for 10 days.
The story that Minnesota at the deadline came really close to getting Kevin Durant, even though they're on the 13th apron and it's physically impossible for them to make any sort of trade that would have allowed it. I enjoyed that.
Anything, any story that involves an ex-player in a podcast taking a shot at a current player, throwing that in there. Any story that made it seem like Joel Embiid was now ramping up to play, throwing that in there.
And then my favorite, Paul George has paused his podcast to concentrate on the 76ers season I had no notes, I thought that was a tour de force Some blame me Some blame you for that? What else do you have for most contrived story on a slow news day? I'm going to blame myself for this one but I wrote out a Tumani Kamara open that I didn't do on my pod. That you didn't do? You were going to do a Kamara open? Yeah.
Wow, that was a tough headline. Yeah.
I probably would have led with the guest on the tweet of that episode. Kamara.
Underrated? Do you need help spiritually? My favorite contrived story is the Durant trade, though. That was my favorite.
I can't believe Minnesota was floating that out like there was ever a chance in a million years they had a chance to get Kevin Durant when all the rules make it literally impossible. You know what? Off of that, though, I think we could bring it back to the Luka thing that we haven't even brought up yet is that when it happened all we were doing with whatever contacts you had was like did you know he was available and i was like no no did you hear this no no he wasn't he wasn't or whatever and then it like took a couple of weeks anything no calls it took a couple weeks for us to be fed the idea that he was offered for ant and that he was offered for yannis and then it became again it depends on who you believe because i don't know that any of this stuff was officially reported but the sense you got from it i think you and i would agree so i'm assuming a bit here where it was like yeah a team called us about a trade but they didn, but they didn't say he was available.

They said, what would it take to get Giannis?

And we were like, what are you talking about?

Yeah.

Oh, another big award.

The McKeskey Award for Best American White Guy.

Previous winners included Chet Holmgren, Tyler Hero, Kevin Love, and Mike Miller.

So this is a prestigious one. Mike Miller actually was close to having the white belt here.
He had it. He won it.
Somewhere in the mid-2000s. He grabbed it.
I'm not saying it's wrong. Sometimes it's a weak field.
This year, it's a strong field. Chet Holmgren, Tyler Hero, Austin Reeves.
We'll throw Pritchard in there just to have four candidates. But this is probably the best category we've had.
Now Holmgren's missed a punch of time. So I'm going to penalize him and make it between Hero and Reeves.
And I got to say, I think it's Reeves. It's Holmgren if we don't care that he missed the games because he's the best out of those guys.
But I think if you're going by this season, it's Reeves. Right, but just to review, Jokic, Caitlyn Clark, American White Guys, Trump, Cooper Flag, White Lotus.
Been a big year. Flag was a hit last night um so you agree that it's it's reefs or would you go home grid on 30 games god this was a really tough cat i think there was a time where we were wondering if mcdermott was the answer we had bad years for for this.
That's why I just gave you that timeline. What's been going on? Let's see.
I'll go Chet Sealing, but if you want to ding him for not playing, what, he's at 29 games and Reeves has had to really carry the team. You're right.
Chet's the best out of those guys. We don't have the all-NBA rules where it's 55 games or more.
We're just going best white guy. He's the best white guy.
Dennis Rodman Award for best ongoing distraction. Nominees.
Embiid. What's going on with his knee? Is he going to play today? Uh-oh.
Setback. Oh, he's ramping up.
Ah, setback. Oh, he's ramping up.
Zion. Is he playing? He, he's hurt.
Whoa, he had 38 points and 17 rebounds last night. Oh, where is he? He's not there anymore.
John Morant. Jimmy Butler in Miami.
Not the Jimmy Butler and Golden State. Jimmy Butler in Miami.
And then last one, here's where I'm going to put our guy Mark Cuban for his, it's not my fault, mediator. Um,

after probably two weeks of getting hammered by everyone in Dallas,

why did you trade Luka Doncic?

And so I'm explaining that they didn't.

He finally felt the need to give multiple interviews,

uh,

rubbing salt into the,

uh,

open wound,

the Luka trade.

So who do you have for this best ongoing distraction?

Biggest.

There's such a recency bias with awards.

I think Jimmy Butler needs to be recognized here.

I think you're right.

It started in the playoffs last year.

Yep.

I think you're right.

Plus, watching how great of a teammate and contributor

and the way the Golden State guys are talking about him,

how amazing he is.

And he can score nine points and have five rebounds and still impact the game

in these 19 ways.

And Steph loves him.

Draymond loves him.

Kurt loves him.

I think it's the right answer.

He was slow though,

in that Lakers game.

And it was something that maybe I wouldn't notice as much if I wasn't there,

but he,

he basically took off like, I think the first 14 minutes. It was strange.
I think he's played a lot of minutes the last 25 games in a way that hasn't really happened in a while. I've noticed a little bit of the same thing, that it seems like he's a little bit dead-leg know, they're in the grind now.
They're trying to get a top three, top four seed. I don't think they have any choice.
I was surprised he played on Friday night, but I think these guys, you know, at this point, it's such a dramatic difference to be three or four versus falling down. Eight is the scary one.
Nobody wants to be eight. People will play these guys and back-to-backs, whatever.

Nobody wants to be eight.

So that's it.

Oh, the Jim Coughlin Award.

For you thinking better than me.

Last year, this was won

by the LeBron JJ pod.

I guess we could give it

to the Nash LeBron pod this year

to mind the game.

I don't know if you had

any other candidates. I've learned to love Shaq.
I didn't really appreciate him when I was younger. I guess I did from a basketball sense, but I was never necessarily rooting for him.
I think at that point, once he was at the Lakers, I was certainly more into my Commonwealth phase. It wasn't likely that I was going to root for him.
So I've learned to love him. He feels incredibly sincere.
You know, somebody that's a public figure, his honesty, the way he's talked about stuff. But I mean, just, I'd say you think you're better than me would be Shaq against anyone that's currently playing.
Like he just can't help himself. And we'll have these games that are just incredible performances.
And then somehow the conversation just pivots back to that they couldn't guard him. And if I were a producer, I'd go, dude, you have figured it out.
You're great on this show. It was a really tough show to come into.
You know, in the beginning I thought with Shaq that it was bad. Yeah.
Is this going to work? Is he looking at those other two guys being like, I was a better player than you, so I should be a bigger star than you. But it's like, hey, Charles is just the star of the show.
And then everybody kind of plays off of that. And for whatever reason, like it almost feels so important that they developed him.
Like he's done a great job developing himself on television, developing himself on television, everybody behind the scenes. Like it's really important that he's there.
And I would say to him, if I were on the show, I'd be like, just be cautious

of playing the same note

over and over again,

especially when you have

a night in the NBA

that should be celebrated.

It's a good note.

Oh, this is a great one.

The Andre Blatch Award

for most immediately

regrettable extension.

And somehow we had

six nominees,

including Joel Embiid.

I'm throwing Laurie Markkinen in.

Jamal Murray, throwing him in.

Brandon Ingram happened during the season.

Patrick Williams and Scotty Barnes.

The answer is obviously Joel Embiid,

but it's just fun that we had six nominees.

And Markkinen, I shoehorned a couple in there

that probably weren't that regrettable,

but it is Joel Embiid is our answer.

I'm saving Ingram for something else. That's totally fine.
Markkinen, I'm surprised you would nominate, although it's a bit alarming, but I think that team had just so many on-ball guys that were young and they were like, we want to lose anyway, so we're not going to worry about it. The Patrick Williams one, Sneaky deserves a lot of credit here.
Five for 90. Yeah, and he's just he had a dunk at it the other night, and I was like, this is awesome.
They're also down 30, I think, to Oklahoma City within minutes of the game, but the Embiid and the Embiid timeline of it is really why there shouldn't be anybody else receiving votes for this one. Would you consider changing the name next year from Andre Blatch to Joel Embiid Award if Embiid doesn't come back next year? Or did Andre, having an extension that got Amnesty and making NBA history that way, should that just cement the award for him forever I have a really soft spot for Andre Blatch okay like we used to talk about him all the time with Van Pelt and I did Wizards Daily because if you go back to those Blatch years that group and then I followed Blatch years that was your first book yeah I didn't get I mean I still have to pay the advance back but they had a thing where they would be on the road and like i think one guy on the team complained about having to pay a cover charge going to a club like they were just constantly sharing with you everything you could assume about like where their heads were at that season and early internet too and the early social media internet which made more fun.
Blatch's profile pic was incredible.

So I followed him immediately.

And then every now and then he would just drop these gems.

And then they'd had a bad losing streak again.

And I felt bad for him because he was just walking around trying to figure it out.

It was late at night.

The other thing, I don't know if this could ever be a category.

I don't know if it's a segment, but it could be horniest guy on Twitter.

Because I'll tell you, with the for you feed, look, if you see somebody cute, you might look on a profile picture.

Right.

And then next thing you know, you're like, hey, this guy likes cute girls, which I think makes makes, you know, checks a lot of boxes for a lot of American males out there.

So then you'll see like a picture and you'll go, Oh, this guy follows her.

And then if I'm being honest,

I've kept track of it a little bit.

Oh,

I'll go.

There's a few dudes that are not afraid to hit that follow button.

And it just does circle back to the wizard.

So I would like to have you keep it Andre Blatch forever,

just because I like talking about him.

I miss him.

He made a great case.

Great passer for his size.

Ball handling.

I'm him. He made a great case.
Great passer for his size.

Ball handling.

The 2025 Ewing Theory Award.

For star most likely to be Ewing

Theory next season.

I have John Morant, Zion, and

Booker as my three candidates.

Booker eligible. Never won a title.

It's got to be Jha.

I agree.

Although Jha had the

game winner the other night.

And

had some Memphis

fans

puffing their chest out a little bit about it. Yeah, I don't...
They beat Detroit. We'll see.
He's your guy. I understand.
We've been through this before, okay? We know how it works. He's your guy.
He's giving you a lot of special moments. So you're going to defend his guy.
But I would say to the Memphis fans that are confused on why Ja would be fined versus other players doing the same salute. Like, all you have to do is go through the timeline and all the stuff and the jalen rose interview and all the things that he had to go through which again he brought on himself and it's fine like i'm not watching him going oh i don't like this guy because all this shit in the past but it's fairly common sense that you end up being punished based on how often you kind of fall into this category.

It's like some of the Draymond stuff. He gets punished for a different level of scrutiny because of the past behavior.
Welcome to life. The Lou Brown Award out of nowhere team that surprised us the most.
Detroit, Portland, and Houston, I think are the three. And I would have to say, as great as the Portland-Houston out of nowhere seasons were, it has to be Detroit.
That team was all-time rock bottom last year and turned into a really fun league pass team. They're going to be a six seed, probably playing the Knicks in round one.
There's going to be at least one awesome near fight in that thing. Cade turned into a real guy.
And for me, it's Detroit. Who is it for you so detroit's the only team in a full season to triple their win total so 14 and 68 last year and i probably said too many times last season going as bad as they are how are they worse than washington roster wise like this team has so many other things that i like about it versus what the wizards had and they still ended up finishing behind them, which speaks to the Monty thing,

which you may never get a chance to change that award because it's not just going to be on record.

It is about a dude who took a job

who apparently had no interest in learning about his own players.

It's a comical season.

And they're still taking shots at him a year later.

Anyone associated with that team is still pretty bummed out about how he approached the job last season. Yeah.
For a variety of ways. There's a technical thing historically on tripling your win total because the Bobcats in 2012 finished at 7-59 and then went 21-61 the next year.
But remember, that was a shorter season. So they had less games to play, less chances.
There's not a Bob... Are you going to do a Bobcats documentary or would that be straight to...
Is anybody going to do that? Have you been pitching that? Probably a one-parter. Seems right.
Let's take one more break and then we have some good awards left. This episode is brought to you by Visit Myrtle Beach.
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All right, one of our big categories,

the ML car trying to trade

for a retired Michael Jordan award

for goofiest but possibly real off-season subplot.

I have five what-ifs for you.

This is for the summer.

What if the Lakers shopped Luka?

What if KD opted out and signed for a vet minimum

to chase a title?

What if Lamello, Zion, and Ja

were in the same three-team trade? What if Paul George demanded a trade? And what if Phoenix said, fuck this and just stretch Bradley Beal? Those are my five nominees for goofiest, but possibly real off-season subplot. Without knowing the nominees, I had Beal and that you're dealing with somebody who seems totally happy just going i don't care yeah and that's dangerous send the checks every two weeks but what is it do you think there's any scenario where he goes all right like i know you don't want me to be here and you guys brought me off the bench for this stretch and this hasn't been a good season.
I mean, I don't know. I mean, what's the market for him on top of everything else? Does that fix their problems? Probably not because he's at this point.
There's only one way to do it at this point. And it's happened a couple of times in the history of the the NBA I remember Reggie Theus was a good one

I can't remember if he was on the Bulls

or the Kings but he just got benched

and they just didn't play him and they basically tried

to break him. That cap situation

was way different back then than it is now

but that's Phoenix's last

resort is to just not play him anymore

and you know

be like alright we'll keep paying you but you're just not going to

play basketball. So

I think it might get to Game of Chicken. He might be okay with it, though.
That's the problem. Whatever I watched in that Boston game, I was really startled by it.
I hadn't seen anything remotely approached that in a while. In the social media era, it doesn't really happen.
By the way, when he also was out for that stretch, there was this kind of tease Phoenix moment where they were, I liked the way they were playing again for like 10 days or something like that. And then they got killed and Durant got hurt and the moment was over.
So Phoenix stretching Bradley Beal, which nobody's been stretched with two years and $100 million left on their deal, but as a way to get under the second apron and just basically take the hit for the next five years. It's not inconceivable.
The Zaza Pakuli Award for the one rule that absolutely needs to be changed. What did you have for this? Off-arm drives from the offensive player.
It player it's you know this isn't my big rant like last year uh where i just kind of lost my mind on that podcast but i think we're all better for it but this is just there's certain players kind of the pj washington where you guys are hitting the hole like a running back and they have that forearm locked out davion davion mitchell had one the other night where he drove and hit a defender so hard and then got the shot up, and there was a little bit of contact coming back towards him, and Davion looked at the refs like, are you guys kidding me? He touched me. And you're like, dude, you're mad? You off-armed this guy.
So I think there's a little cleaning up that has to be done on how aggressive the off arm is of the ball handler on drives.

I like it.

I have two runner-up and then my number one.

I'll make the annual plea.

Please don't let coaches challenge block charges anymore.

Let's just say the call is the call and we just move on.

I never want to watch another replay of a review of a block charge.

I don't think guys should be

able to have to eat

the field goal attempt on a half-court shot.

I just get rid of that. Make it a

team shot the same way they have team

rebounds because then I think

it would inspire more people to try

to take half-court or three-court shots.

How about this? If you care about

your field goal percentage that much

that you end up 7-15 instead of 7-16, don't ask for the fucking ball on the inbounds. How about one of the guys who doesn't care? That's what drives me crazy.
So now you're going to pretend that you didn't get the shot off in time because you didn't want to hurt your field goal percentage. Stop getting the ball on the inbounds.
Let the other guys that don't care and understand as absurd as the shot is that they're not more worried about a couple percentage points I also think we should have 20 second instant replay challenges where within 20 seconds it's like you think no and we just flip it and keep the game going versus like the five minutes but here's my big one and you know what I almost had this last year and I think it's gotten worse this year and I really hate it. And I don't know where the end game is, but the rolling the ball and the inbounds pass.
So the clock starts, but the shot clock doesn't start. And this whole game of like the ball is just going to roll and we're going to kill time.
And then somebody's like, all right, fine. I'm going to run.
First of all, somebody's going to get injured on this at some point. Somebody's going to dive into somebody else's legs and somebody's going to lose their knee.

I just think it's so fucking stupid.

You roll the ball and the shot clock should start and the game clock should start.

I don't know why they do it this way.

And I would change this.

So that's my passion for this year, Rosilla.

Yeah, I'm cool with that.

I don't know that we're ever going to get shorter reviews.

We might pretend we are.

Well, 20-second quickie reviews.

I left this award open for you, the Ben Simmons Award for Best Ben Simmons Moment. I figured you'd have something and you could just go.
Yeah, he had a push shot the other night. It was a couple of weeks ago where it was pretty ugly coming out, but then it went in.
And then based on the confidence from that first one going in, he had hit back-to-back shots within a few minutes of each other, which I think has to be one of the highest output moments we've had in a rotation. I thought it was that until last night playing Dallas, Anthony Davis is on the left side.

He has a primary defender on him.

Simmons is the low man.

And Simmons rotated a double, Anthony Davis, and then communicated in a way that you don't see where it was almost like, hey, you see Davis over there? This is like while the clock is going. I'm going to now go over here and double team him.
So you've got to slide over if somebody cuts behind me. And everybody's like, great, that's awesome.
And then Davis ran. So I thought it was great communication even if it felt a little slower than what I'm used to.
Well, so you went positive Ben Simmons moments. Yeah.

I was going to go for the

preseason media

day for the Nets

when he said how he's going to be a leader

this year for the team.

I had that.

Buyout watch

was fun. Then they bought him out.

The 2010 Baron Davis

Award for single best

mail-in.

This is the I think, the toughest category we've had so far because you could make a small case for Paul George on the Sixers most years, but not this year. Jimmy Butler on Miami and Bradley Beal just the whole season.
And it is like bird magic in the mid eighties. We could argue about this for days.
I personally think it's Butler on Miami because he was willfully trying to force their hand to get traded and doing all kinds of things. But I also can't shake Beal and I don't want to have co-winners.
So I'm going to, I'm going to let you pick. Yeah.
I mean, if you're just going Jimmy, but like any great drama, he's got that kind of redemptive arc right now, as annoying as that may be. And I would expect Miami fans should be annoying.
I guess it's hard to pretend that you're in, but I'll never understand lacing him up, going to play basketball, and then going, I don't care if I look bad. I can't imagine having that inside of you where you would go, well, that guy scored on me because I don't care.
Or I didn't try to help us win because I don't care. And I'm just not really going to play that hard.
I've already made my money or whatever. Like you'd think some of that stuff, like at least with all the bullshit that Durant has gone through where some

of it I think is unfair, some of it is certainly fair, and he's brought it on himself, so I'm not absolving of blame here, but it's been a pretty soap opera-ish second half of Durant's career. But there's never been a moment where I've seen him going through all of his stuff where I haven't, like, I've never questioned how much he wanted to play basketball.
I think once he finally gets out there, he wants to beat you the entire time. And look, there's 450, 500-plus players over the course of a season.
There's going to be a couple guys that actually don't really love basketball and don't really care. But I can't imagine actually being really good.
Beal's an incredibly talented player. We all know how good Jimmy can be.
It'll forever blow my mind that somebody has that ability, and maybe that's just a disconnect of them looking at it as a job, and I'm still just in love with the game, going like, I don't care if I look bad in front of all these people that came to see me tonight because I'm getting paid and I don't care. So my tiebreaker would be Beal because...
Yeah, I think that's the right answer. Because at least Butler, something really seemingly catastrophic happened with him and Pat Riley.
And there's some sort of breach, whoever was right, whoever was wrong, that made it impossible for Butler to play even at a decent level for them anymore. He was just broken in Miami.
I don't know what Beal's excuse is. And look, the metrics are the worst he's been at since his third year in the league.
The last time he's played, I think more than 60 games is 2018-19. So even when the trade was made and we understand how talented he is, because I remember I had said, like, if you go through this, this guy's missing like 20, 2525% of the season and there was some pushback because I was using total games on the shortened seasons it's like okay but you're still you're making an excuse for a guy that doesn't seem like he's available enough he just doesn't on top of everything else which again you know if you're Phoenix with the effort that you get from him on certain nights, you'd almost rather him not be available.
We got to rip through a couple of awards here. The Shane Battier Award for Sloan Conference Statner Darling DuJour.
This just happened, that big article on Jokic's defense and him kicking passes and how he's had the most kicked passes in this decade and more kick passes.

This whole thing about Jokic,

like the, actually his defense.

By the way, I've always felt this way.

I think when you take like the best players,

I still feel like, I felt this way about Steph.

I felt this way about Bird and Magic once upon a time.

Even though Magic would get torched by small guards,

but those guys were always, they're always in steals. They were always like could read what the other team was doing.
They were always good coming out of time. Even though Magic would get torched by small guards, but those guys were always in steals.
They were always could read what the other team was doing. They were always good coming out of timeouts on defense.
But I like this whole Jokic thing. And then the other candidate for this is Jokic's on-off stuff is just the most incredible it's ever been.
I mean, when he plays, they have a 125.4 rating or something like that, which would be the best ever. And when he doesn't play, they're 30th in the league on offense.
So they're either best all time or worst in the league, depending on whether he plays or not. There's so many good advanced stats that I swear, I think there's going to be some late Yokic momentum for MVP next week, even though it seems like Shea has it locked up.
I think the stats are so crazy. And I don't want to spoil next week's pod.
The stats are so crazy. And the season has been so unbelievable.
Fandle has Shea at like minus a thousand or something like that. I don't know if it's over yet.
That's all I'm going to say. Sounds like somebody's leaning Jokic.
Nobody's leaning anywhere. The David Kahn Award for Worst GM Performance.

So my big question is,

does this now become the Nico Harrison Award?

Did he do enough to supplant David Kahn?

Who took Johnny Flynn and Ricky Rubio over Steph Curry,

among 17 other terrible things he did.

Okay.

Nico was good last year.

Okay.

So just one bad night?

Pretty bad one.

This isn't I can't believe I called her.

It's like I can't believe I married

a cocktail waitress in Thailand.

Yeah.

Well, nominees.

Nico Harrison,

Sacramento firing Mike Brown and then

panic trading De'Aaron Fox,

New Orleans throwing Dyson

Daniels into the Murray trade,

Miami's entire handling

of the Jimmy Butler deal,

or Denver being

$5 million under the second apron and not

having a bench. Those would

be my David Conner word, worst front front office nominees but the answer is nico harrison uh but i at least think you should bring up messiah because messiah is oh with all the extensions great let's add him right so messiah sight unseen with ingram gave him three years 120 million guaranteed and you could say he hasn't played a game for him yet and sight, he knows what he's doing. Look at the free agent thing that we teased earlier.
Maybe there's a number out there for Ingram that's higher than we could imagine, which is usually the lesson that we hear, or I should say experience, every time we start going like, oh, why is that guy going to make that much money? And then he gets signed to it. But it's Scotty Barnes, Ingram, quickly, R.J.
Barrett, and P purdle next year for a combined 156.4 million it's a seven seed at best i don't know i mean look what if they get their players back and play them maybe with dark who knows i mean they've they've outperformed everything you could possibly imagine in the second half of the year.

So maybe they're just developing all the guys.

Maybe they'll be the deepest team

in the league next year.

It's just an expensive five.

I'd love to know.

Expensive five for that five.

I'd love to know why Denver

didn't do a little bit more this year.

I don't understand how their bench is this bad.

When you are being blessed with

the best offensive player since god knows when no not top 20 but pretty good yeah not top 20 but close yeah i mean i just i just want to shout them out you have this amazing asset you have to spend when you have an asset like that and they're not doing it and they own other teams it's not getting getting up the money. It's very strange to me.
You know what though is this might be the,

I drafted these guys.

I brought in Pickett.

I brought in Watson.

You know,

I brought in Swather,

you know,

just trust me.

I know what I'm doing.

Well,

I don't think you do.

Cause I think a lot of people would want to play Denver in the playoffs.

The way this is shaken out.

Denver and Memphis are the two teams. I think people fine playing.
As great as Jokic is. It'll be funny if they get bounced out.
I'm just advanced scouting Jokic. There was a fly in front of me for those watching on the clip.
I'm advanced scouting it because if he loses in the first round, then it's going to be like, can we get Marcus Morris back in here? Can we have him? He's outside the building. I would say them and Memphis are the two best candidates for the 4-0 sweep in round one.
If we were going to have a shocking, I can't believe that team got swept, I would have Denver and Memphis. The Vitaly Potompo Award for Worst Deadline Trade,

named after the time Rick Pitino during a strike season,

gave up an unprotected first-round pick

for Vitaly Potompo that turned out

they could have either taken Sean Marion or Andre Miller,

and they didn't get either

because they got a backup center.

So I don't love Miami dumping Dennis Schroeder

for no reason when they got him in that deal

when they clearly kind of want to be a playoff team,

I guess.

But at the Mark Williams trade,

Thank you. I don't love Miami dumping Dennis Schroeder for no reason when they got him in that deal, when they clearly kind of want to be a playoff team, I guess.
But at the Mark Williams trade, when you have Luka and you have this chance in the West for the Lakers to do that trade and then to back out of it and then just kind of get nothing, and now it's unquestionably going to haunt them in the playoffs that they don't have a center. I have to nominate that.
Deadline is the trade is the Mark Williams cancellation trade. That's what I have.
I don't know what's going to happen with LA here. I don't know what's going to happen in the West, okay? Other than I think OKC is going to beat all of these teams.
And I'd be really, really surprised if they're not representing the West. I think they're that good.
Me as well. And they have all of these options and it's hard to find a flaw with

them. We saw one Friday night.

What would you say that is?

The double big lineup. They had some

issues. They kind of got pounded

on the boards in a way that I was like, oh,

okay.

Fly in the ointment.

All right. Credit to Emei

too for the double big patience. Adams was good in that game.
You watched that game? Adams was like, they were like impactful in that game. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know.
That wasn't nothing. But no, I came back in after a tough day on the seas and then watched it late.
And it's sometimes you're better watching it when you know what happened. Yeah.
Because now you're it with anticipation you're just watching trying to figure out what was going on and you know i think there'll be sometimes like this is being really really critical of an awesome team historically here yeah but there'll be some like case and wallace minutes where you go well is that and then i'm like what are you what are you mad about all eight guys not being off the charts? Impossible to deal with on both ends of the floor. Because I think last year, as we were ramping up for the playoffs, like right around this time last year, we were talking Celtics and you just laid it all out.
Like whatever your issues are. And I think we both had them with some of the late offensive stuff.
There's still games with the Celtics offense. I'm like, is this still really good? And then it's like last 15 second in offense.
And it's like, yeah, it is. It is that good.
At some point math becomes math. Right.
OKC's math is outrageous. I'd like Drew Holiday to have the ball in his hands more often on some of these threes, but that's just what they're going to do.
And so even if there's a night where I don't really love it and then you go check the numbers again and be like, hey you just you have to love it. Move on.
Accept it. You laid out the stat profile historically, point differential, all this stuff.
What OKC is doing right now puts them at least on a regular season list of one of the all time special teams. Are you the same place with them now that you were with Boston last year where it was a bit of a wake up of like, hey, whatever you think of this team, they're awesome and headed to the playoffs and should be the clear favorite and we should stop questioning it just because it feels new with them.
I think they're the clear favorite in the West. The only difference with them in Boston is Boston at least had had a bunch of guys who had been in a bunch of big games and big situations.
And OKC has- I shouldn't even say it's new. You're right.
No, but that's the only thing you're going to

nitpick on if you're going to nitpick

OKC. It's like, well, we just have to kind of

see it. They got to win four straight

rounds. They're going to be playing some of the best players

in the league and some of the best players of all time.

And let's see. But the math

is saying it would be a complete

aberration if they didn't make the finals.

Like something really, really, truly

fluky would have happened. And then

when they play Boston, we've

seen those games and they had

Thank you. aberration if they didn't make the finals.
Like something really, really, truly fluky would have happened. And then when they play Boston, we've seen those games and they had really two fourth quarters where they really stuck it to Boston.
So, yeah, if you're betting your life, OKC's the pick. I don't think there's any question.
But who knows? I did that Houston game gave me a little hope or like, oh, I wonder if we'll see this in the playoffs. I wonder if teams are going to try to bang them around.
Let's do the Team Moran Award for Best Most Polarizing NBA Family Member, which I think was obviously Bronny this year just because of all the content he generated. We don't need to cover all the other family members.
This one I'm really excited about because this is really where you shine. And I'll be interested to see how many guys we have in the same list.
The Reggie Lewis, I don't know. I just like this guy award.
For a young guy who doesn't play much, but you just kind of like. Last year, Kamara was on our list for this.
I have the following nominees. And feel free to throw in anybody else.
The two Nets guys, Keon Johnson, Jalen Wilson. Those guys just fucking play hard every game.
Every time I watch the Nets, I'm like, Jesus Christ, these guys really give a shit. Bryce Sensabaugh on Utah.
I don't know how much Utah you've watched, but the catch and shoot numbers are crazy. He's clearly going to be a nine-man rotation guy for a good team at some point in his career.
We've talked about Ron Holland before. I still like Walker on the Pacers.
I don't know why, and I can't explain it. Guy Santos on the Warriors.
The plus minus is crazy for him, and he also seems very comfortable playing like Hall of Fame players. And then I'll throw in AJ Johnson just because Zach mentioned him on the pod last week about how he's looked a little frisky on the Wizards.
Who do you have? Anybody else I didn't mention? There's a few frisky Wizards. Oh, yeah.
Including Bub Carrington, who was my first choice for this at 32 the other night he is 20 in july and he's getting shots up now man he's getting those shots up he's 20 in july yeah oh my lord he's 6'4 yeah i sent a text to somebody with the wizards remember they had that like fun Knicks game months ago. Yeah.
I sent a text and said, Hey,

you know,

I know like you're not on everybody's radar, but I happened to catch like three games in a 10-day span or whatever. I was like, you guys are playing really hard.
And it was just a, thanks for watching. I don't know if I shared that with you.
Sometimes I'm repeating myself here a bit. I don't think you shared that one with him maybe I shared it off the air so you got Bub, Bub's your number one? yeah and I'm going to give a little love like his rotational stuff could be out of the mix here now as Minnesota probably feels better about what they're doing but Jalen Clark having a moment with this team where it's like hey Dillingham's going to get the first minutes and I think it's a little too chaotic for him that they're not going to trust him in some tight spots here.

Terrence Shannon not getting minutes when it felt like he was probably one of the more plug-and-play rotational guys that could come in

and get you some buckets because of what he had done in college

and he's older and all that kind of stuff.

But there have been some defensive things with Jalen Clark with Minnesota

where I'm like, all right, this dude is ready Like he's not remotely intimidated by any of this stuff. So I don't know what he projects to be the three point shooting numbers.
You know, it's not like it's a high volume, but they're, they're pretty good. And he just competes like crazy.
And he, he kind of almost jumped the other guys that you would have more expectations for, uh, at certain times this season. I almost almost threw Shireman on this.
Not enough of the sample size, but there's been a couple moments where you're like, oh, it's not nothing here. Carol Dawson, word for most unabashed tank job.
Philly's 3-22 in their last 25 and actively trying not to win games. So i think they're the winner shout out to utah but they did it you know look we can't even make fun of philly because you're sitting there and you're looking at the okc pick and you when this conversation started ramping up it's like they have the seventh or eighth worst record in the nba and this is the part where i again there's certain things with daryl that i totally respect it's like well if we, if we're doing it, we're doing it.
We're not screwing around. We're shutting down

nobody's here. And they were

19-27 at that point. And if

now on this 4-28 stretch,

I mean, Quinton Grimes cost them a couple

games in there. This could have been

like a 2-30 stretch. This could have been a layup, yeah.

Dwight Howard, sorry, dude. I can't

help it. I just don't like watching you play

basketball, Ward.

Julius Randall seems like a nice guy. I just don't really enjoy watching him play basketball.
He's my pick. He's been playing better lately than he's played on Minnesota all year, but I just don't really enjoy it.
I'll be honest. 15, 16, 17 years of DeMar DeRozan at this point, I think I'm good.
Oh, you don't... See, I actually find myself coming back.
I just feel like I'm okay with it. I'm okay with the experience.
And, uh... Kyle Kuzma's another one that I think I'm good.
I just think I'm fine. I'm fine there.
Who do you have for this award? I just wonder what it was like when Sacramento was like, hey, DeRozan. I can't believe you even offered up DeRozan because I think his closing fourth quarter, like getting to his stuff, when he got Mobley twice in that game, when they beat him, when the Cavs had that weird road trip stretch.
I get it. Great.
The team's going to go 40 and 42 again. Yeah, but there was like the Dwight howard stuff is so funny because dwight howard is really good yeah he was really good but then it was like hey i need to be taking all the shots at the end of the games it's like what did you work on this summer yeah like if i get fouled i'm gonna make one of two uh yeah zach levine i just want to know what it was like for derosen when they were like hey guess, hey, guess what? We got Zach Levine again.
You played with him, right? Yeah, you got some good chemistry. I played with him.
Thanks for the 30 points, dude. It's tough.
Levine had the rollercoaster ride. It was like a stock this year because I thought he was good on the Bulls and then he left and the bulls were way more fun to watch right away, which probably wasn't good for him either.
Look, I'm telling you, I could do 30 minutes on this, but there are guys that aren't my favorite. And I come to that conclusion after a lot of watching and noticing things.
And I don't think that it's a coincidence to some of the dudes that I haven't been a huge fan of. Guys that I'm talking about that are talented, that usually can score and put up some big, big numbers.
But, you know, you look at all the Lakers stuff this year and you go, what's different? Like, hey, Diaz and Russell isn't out there for 30 plus minutes a night. And the second Levine's out of there, even with his ability and the scoring numbers and all this stuff, you're like, what's different about Chicago? Like, well, you know, even with his numbers, like you're removing all the other little things that are just, he never seemed to click for him.
And so those are the players that I, I just won't argue about. Sometimes you're one trade away.

Sometimes you're one injury away.

Ray Allen, 2010 playoffs,

trick-or-treat award goes to a team or a player.

I'm going Houston Rockets for this because I've changed my mind on them

17 times during the season.

And I'll probably change it

a couple more times as we go.

But I went from thinking,

this is the team you want to play in the playoffs to... I don't know.
They kind of freaked me out in that OKC game. And in general, they've held this two spot.
And I kept waiting for them to fall to pack. And they had that little losing streak.
It's never perfect. I don't love their offense in the last six, seven, eight minutes.
But they play hard and they're really tough. And there's certain matchups where they just overpacked.

I mean, they out-rebounded OKC by 15 rebounds the other night.

Granted, the game meant nothing to OKC.

But I don't know what to make of them in the playoffs.

This might be it.

There might be no gear at all.

It might just be bad shots down the stretch

and they lose the series 4-1 where they led into all five.

Or maybe there's something more there. I don't't know i don't know what to make them of clippers for me because good one cool kawaii looked great again last night getting his stuff going left pull up can't do anything with it you know an off the break kind of transition three where you just can see that he's totally locked in to what he wants to be.
Zoo has been a beast. If you get Zoo against the wrong team, meaning the wrong team for the other side, because there's just a few teams here that want to play small.
I don't know if, I don't think the Lakers want to play Jackson Hayes a ton of minutes. I don't think that's breaking news.
So they'd rather go small, but when they're playing against Golden State, and I don't know that I'm i'm right about this but you're like are you playing into their hands a little bit by playing small and then them being like the answer is yes they're like we're please you we can play draymond at the five thank you yeah so this is wonderful so then when i think about like houston having the double big thing which changes a lot of like how you think about their closing group depending on the big guys they're going up against like the clippers with the way zoo is playing yeah and i know that it's it's a coin toss for harden and all the playoff stuff although i think i kind of joked with you like you think he'd be due just to kind of have like a nice little like run but i feel like his pace does not adjust to the pace that you need it to be and that's why he has the problems that he's had but there's there's a scenario where there's a first round matchup for them and i'm going oh my god like is there a path here is there a path to what if they played okc in round one imagine i've seen them play twice in person i was like shit this would be an awesome series. And they have a couple of things they bring to the table that aren't great for OKC.
Now there's some things OKC brings to the table that are horrible for the Clippers, but it's, my point is that's not a typical one, eight matchup. That's not the Cleveland Cavaliers playing Orlando, no Jalen Suggs in round one.
Like that's a hard series. You're going to have to win.
Do you think do you think like it wouldn't be a national media thing because nobody would really care but considering how all in they went on the Kawhi stuff and how he's hasn't been healthy at the end of the playoffs or the end of the year for a bunch of seasons in a row the Paul George part of it and then what you've given up and then watching SGA become yeah I mean there's just a lot of shit here where you go, man. Imagine.
Imagine if they had some moment of like a 2-2 series in the Western Conference Finals where you go, you know, those guys, Lawrence Frank and the crew, the strategy was the right strategy and it couldn't have gone, but yet is there this redemptive arc where they repaired it on the fly and let Paul George just walk because they knew better than anybody else, although they still did offer the three years? Is there some part of this where we're being brought into game five and somebody's written a Wright Thompson essay? Oh, on the Torture Clippers? Yeah. Well, if you go to the last 25 games, which is a huge sample size they're 5th in net rating and when Kawhi plays and looks like the way he's looked really for a few weeks now I just wouldn't want to see that team and honestly I wouldn't want to see Minnesota either if I'm OKC we both think they're going to make the finals, but it just sucks that those are two possible

1-8 matchups.

Like you play,

you're going to win 68, 69 games

and that's your prize.

We only have a couple of words left.

We can rip through this.

The white chocolate was a problem award.

For 2025 guy whose season was much better

in 40 second Twitter highlights. I'll give you Ja, Zion, Lamello, Jordan Poole, or Russell Westbrook.
Who do you have? The turn by Nuggets fans on Westbrook here is amazing. It'd feel like that game...
I mean, that's another team that might fall to 7-8. That game was a catastrophic loss.
Like to waste that level of where Jokic got to that game and to have it 19 times and then blow it, and they haven't won since. Look, he's fine as your ninth guy and as your guy.
We're resting all the starters. Russ, can you just go out there and do everything and put up a 32-10-10 and let us hang around? I just don't know how you play him in crunch time in some of these games.
It's too much of a wild card. It's too risky, right? The risk exceeds the reward.
Can't do it. You've Jokic and Murray and Gordon and Porter and Braun.
That's it. Rush should never play in crunch time for them in a playoff game.
This is what I've thought the entire time. Because Westbrook has been more accepting of this role with them than at any other point.
But there may have been, even for somebody as stubborn as he is with his approach to basketball, maybe even he had a realization of going,

I need to change this a little bit.

And when you're playing in the same minutes,

the same lineup as Jokic,

you can see him almost in a hurry to get him the ball back

that could lead to some of those other problems.

But on the year,

considering how bad they needed somebody

to play these kind of minutes,

a guy that was never really going to question

his own value,

the ego of a player that you kind of need

as a foundation to even play in this league,

Thank you. a guy that was never really going to like question his own value uh the ego of a player that you kind of need as a foundation to even play in this league they needed like it's been a win because of how limited their options were it's like okay well we're going to get this guy cheap because he's been on six teams here in a very short amount of time uh because he hasn't fit in and maybe he hasn't accepted what he needed to be so i think there was an acceptance part from Westbrook here that was admirable, but I think anybody that kind of knew where his limitations were, you were like, is he actually going to close? And I'm with you.
And it's not just the

mistakes in that Minnesota game. There's just a lot of times where you're like, what's the spacing

going to look like? Is that going to screw up some of the other stuff they're going to do?

I also think there's something with Westbrook too, depending on the matchup,

I think it's going to look like? Is that going to screw up some of the other stuff they're going to do?

I also think there's something with Westbrook too,

depending on the matchup,

like it's going to be,

if I get to play the Lakers,

I'm going to prove to them that they're morons. If I get to play against the Clippers,

I'm going to,

there's a revenge factor with like four of these teams.

How many minutes do you think he's played this year?

Are you asking me total minutes? Total minutes. How many do you think he played? I don't know off the top of my head.
I mean, he's played. What would your guess be? I'll just tell you.
2,002 minutes heading into tonight's game. He's played 2,000 minutes.
That's crazy. They paid nothing for him.
So for that,

it's a win. The loss is

when he's actually involved in

the plot, when they're desperately trying

to not fall into that

6-7-8 range. And they had a pretty good foothold

for the three spot. And now it's looking

pretty grim. No, he's been really

important throughout this season

because of their lack of options. And so

it has worked out. But the hesitation i always had with it was let's see what happens here in the playoffs because i think this could be the kind of thing where the game log now who knows maybe it could be game and score and foul trouble all that kind of stuff but like if we're talking real close games the first round for denver yeah he's not out there in the last eight minutes you look at some of those game logs and it's like, okay, 19 minutes, 15 minutes, and you're like, uh-oh.
So who's your white chocolate was a problem guy? I would say if you took Isaiah Stewart clips from today and then ran them and said that this was the 90s we're like, then everybody would just say, oh, Steph would have just had 12. Oh, he would have been killed.
That's good. I like that.
My least favorite con. The Stewart pulling down Giannis from behind play is indefensible.
That's fucking nasty, man. Especially the top five guy in the week.
All right, three awards left. The Travolta and Pulp Fiction comeback of the year.
Jimmy Butler. The Lakers as a franchise.
Or Scoot Henderson. Who do you have? Scoot.
Okay, me too. Well, this is it.
The second most prestigious award we have. It's the 2025 Shamit Face Award.
This is your award. I know you put a lot of time and thought and effort into this, so who do you have? Concanipple.
On Duke yeah oh so you're going prospects yeah i've already graded it out what do you what do you like about it i don't know what age that the red cheeks thing goes away he's awesome by the way i think i like he's even better than maybe we realize maybe get him the ball a few more times last night but you get older everybody looks younger there's a weird thing that happens i don't know what it is with the science of it but if you look at like fraternity composites when you're in college all of the guys from the old pictures look like you're like how come that guy was 40 and he was in college and you're like that's just dudes looked older and then when you're older and then you're watching college hoops like every year guys just look younger and younger and younger so I don't think he's on the Mount Rushmore of Duke face I think that's early Cherokee Parks maybe a little Quinn Snyder in there maybe Grayson Allen maybe Danny Ferry so I don't know if Knipple can make that, but there's just a face.

And it's not the same thing as Shamit Face, but I'm just projecting him maybe to be there one day.

And it doesn't even mean that you can be good looking and have Shamit Face.

You'd say no when you see it.

Yeah.

Last award, the 2024 League Pass MVP Award.

Most reliably entertaining guy day after day for six months. My winner is Nikoli Jokic.
It's really the only winner, but I would offer up Ant if I had to offer up somebody else. As like an alternative, like independent spirit awards kind of winner? If you can't have Jokic, they go with Ant.
Even the Sixers closed the other night. It was awesome.
The shots that he was hitting in the double overtime win against Denver. I don't know what it is about the threes when they matter the most.
It's almost like a pitcher who cranks, and it's not what he's doing, but it's like the shot goes in with more velocity than it's supposed to on the ones that really matter. There's a, there's a crispness to his shot and his athleticism and the way that it goes in.
That's visually appealing. You know, it's funny you mentioned this because it's, it's not a rational confidence because he's rational and confident, but I do think like if it's 1-8 and it's OKC Minnesota, I think out of anybody in the league, he's the one who would go into that series going, I don't care what the record is.
I'm better than everybody on that team and like really genuinely, truly believe it, which has been really fun to watch. And he's had some great last three minutes of the game, kind of turning it up a notch stuff that,

how old is he now?

23?

I don't know.

I think he's 23.

Yeah.

It's,

that's a good one.

But Jokic,

this Jokic season,

and it doesn't look like he's going to win the MVP,

but holy shit,

man.

Just there,

there's been 10 games from him this year that you're just like, I just can't believe somebody's doing this. When you go look at the Wiltshire stats on basketball reference, I'm like, oh my God.
It wasn't just a 50-point a game here. There was this other season he had 44 a game.
What was that like to watch that? Not that Jokic is putting up points like that, but just the day-to-day. It honestly feels like any box score is conceivable.
He's had box scores where there's no way anyone in basketball could ever have this. He's had five of those this year.
But then when you watch just how he does everything for them, he's their only real rebounder. He runs the offense.
He scores all their stuff in crunch time.

He sets up everybody else.

Everything he does, it's just, I've never seen anything like it day to day.

We didn't have league pass in the 80s

for the great players of that era.

And we only got to watch Jordan when he was on

TNT.

We didn't get to watch this night after night.

This is fucking crazy.

I'm seeing, I look, sounds like somebody's leaning Jokic. I'm not leaning anywhere yet.
I'm keeping an open mind to the last week of the season. It's really tough for me not to vote for somebody who's going to win 68 games and have one of the great guard seasons in the history of the position offensively.
Especially when I try to value the winning piece. If he's going to win 20 more games than Denver.
But the more I stare at this, that 60-10 game broke my brain. That was unbelievable.
Have you ever seen somebody just get the ball 25 feet from the basket and the other team knew what he was going to do and he would still back around and just get like a three-foot skyhook like what the fuck with i know they're missing some guys in minnesota but i just thought that game was just nuts wasn't just the points it was how he was getting the points and how easily he was doing everything it was nuts to watch that's where whenever i hear anybody just knocking him it i lose my mind because you go he's in control of everything that's happening like everything that's happening and then the understanding i forget what the number was i don't know if it was hardened to zubat for number one but it was like who has the most field goals that are assisted or something like christian brown is number two in the nba yeah. Christian Brown, clearly because Denver hasn't done a good job with his roster, maximizing it maybe the way others should.
I also wonder like if Jokic were different, would there have already been some other star player that went through AAU with Jokic and goes, hey, you know, I'm going to come up there and play with Denver because this is it's getting alarming because of the rings rule for Jokic where it like are we going to be allowed to appreciate him i know we've already touched on some of this other stuff but he's he's just orchestrating all of it that's happening and he doesn't want to shoot 30 times he doesn't want to pull up from three as much as he did it almost feels like nash where nash would have these games you're like how are you not shooting more like's going on? And it's just the way he's wired to play basketball is still somebody that

wants all of it to kind of connect and work together.

And that's why I can't fathom why guys who played can watch these games and

then find a way to shit on it.

But you know,

whatever.

I mean,

this kind of normal now with the former player stuff,

but yeah,

look really good.

Not top 20,

22 to 20. Yeah.
I mean, look, really good, not top 20.

22 to 20.

Yeah.

I mean,

that Bob Pettit range.

Yeah,

probably,

you know,

DeBusher.

All right.

Those are our made-up NBA awards

for 2025.

Congrats to all the winners

and the nominees.

Yeah. Next time I see you will be Sunday night.
We will know the playoff matchups. We will do some all NBA stuff.
We might have to go, uh, might even have to go two parts, but I can't remember that like looking at the West innings and some games are happening right now as we talk, but this West innings, the volatility of these last, uh, seven days is going to be bonkers to watch.

Anyway, good to see you, Russillo.

Yeah, we got Lakers Thunder here.

Are you watching the studio yet on Apple?

I'm three in.

It's great.

You love it.

Okay.

I love it. How many of you watch?

All three.

You should get Rogan on.

Seth or Joe?

Is Joe watching it? I don't know. it I don't know Joe's watching it you got Lotus predictions for tonight before we go Duke dad boy did that meme play out pretty well it's pretty predictable I don't know somebody's gonna jerk off somebody that'd be amazing they went back to the well a double double jerk uh all right i'll see you in a week see you all right that's it for the podcast thanks to rusillo thanks to kyle gahau as well thanks to saruti and don't forget white lotus tonight on the prestige tv podcast and you can watch it live on the Ringer Dash TV right after that show ends and don't forget we put up a rewatchable it's the

same it's up we put it up three days early so that's what we got going I'm going to be back

on this podcast on Tuesday and I'll see you then. Must be 21 plus in president select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus in president DC.
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