Best NBA Summer Arguments With Zach Lowe

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The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we have a new rewatchables coming on Monday.

Just did one.

We did Species on Monday.

Me, Chris Ryan, Ban Lathan, an incredible CR performance.

He's been on fire all summer.

You can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.

Really, really funny podcast.

Fantasy football season.

We're in range now.

Week one of the NFL season kicks off really six Thursdays from now.

So we're in range.

We have the Ringer Fantasy Football Show, which I think is the best fantasy football podcast.

Craig Koralbeck, Danny Kelly, Danny Heifitz.

And

you can watch that as a podcast, as a video podcast.

You can watch them on YouTube because we have a fantasy football YouTube channel.

And you can check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Guide that we did, which

we keep adding to and adding different things.

So we will have you ready for fantasy football.

Those guys will be coming on at some point here.

You can see in the background, so I have a new set that we have not decorated yet.

I put some stuff up in the background that's not even on the wall.

It's like leaning against stuff, but you can see, do my finger, there's 1972 NBA tops on cut.

There's my book poster with the Hall of Fame thing.

You can see Bird of Magic's feet up there,

the Fenway sign, my my guy crocking the tubs michael myers kind of watching us from the background uh this set's going to be awesome and it's something that uh we've spent some time on and over the course of the summer on this podcast and the rewatchables like i'm going to start having guests again like i just i never wanted to have guests in the same way that I was doing in the end of 2010s on Zoom.

I don't really like the experience of interviewing somebody on a Zoom.

So we're going to have studio here.

We're building some others stuff in Hollywood that we're excited about.

And just in general, like,

you know, this has been almost a 14-year odyssey with video stuff for us, dating back to Grantland and me and Dave Jacobi doing all the audio video stuff we did.

We built a studio, an electrical closet.

All of a sudden, we're having big guests in there.

We're doing the Bill and Jalen

NBA play

season series.

And,

you know, we've always been in the mix with video stuff.

COVID really knocked us back.

And,

you know, all of a sudden, video podcasts,

the bar started getting raised.

They started looking better.

I had a terrible camera on my ThinkPad.

Sorry.

But I think all of our stuff's going to continue to look better as we go through the rest of 2025, including this podcast.

I'm excited to explore the studio space, literally.

Coming up, Zach Lowe.

We're talking NBA because we just had a lot of stuff to talk about, even though it's like the doldrums of July.

A lot of topics, really fun podcast.

And we're going to take a break, bring in Pro Jam, and then Zach Lowe.

All right, Zach Lowe's here.

We're taping this on a Wednesday morning.

Good to see you, Zach.

This is you're about to disappear.

This is when you're like a couple weeks away from we just don't see you for like a month and you you you decompose from the NBA season and then you regenerate and you grow again when we get to mid-September.

I don't really have as many excuses to have to decompress this year considering I was not employed for two-thirds of it, but I'm going to decompress nonetheless.

I will say I'm going to be podcast podcast ready in Europe because you just, you don't, you don't know anymore with the NBA.

There's always been a, there's been more and more.

Every year, there's a big story that hovers or that comes out of nowhere.

So I'm ready just in case something comes out of nowhere.

I like that I accidentally said decompose instead of decompress.

I've already had, we're one minute in and I'm already screwing up words.

You were in Vegas.

Your summer league playing, I love, you just, you go and you don't actually go to any summer league games.

You just, you're just there to gossip and have coffees and cocktails and occasionally a meet dinner and you're just gathering information.

This is something, what was the first year we talked about this, the 2012 all-star break or whatever when we sent you and I was like, don't go to anything.

Just talk to as many people as you can.

Now you've embraced that.

It's become a life philosophy and you're just gathering things and you don't know when they're going to pop up.

Are they going to pop up in a podcast?

They might not,

but you're just gathering info.

What was the number one thing people were talking about that you felt like was not being talked about in the mainstream?

Oh, not talked about in the mainstream, okay?

So, I had a made the number one topic is very mainstream.

What's that?

Well, it's LeBron, that was like the number one topic of conversation by far, but let's go, let's, let's go not mainstream, underground, underground, let's go early early 90s indie rock.

I would say, I mean, this has been talked about, but I would say

expansion, Europe, what's happening?

Why do they seem to be slow playing it all of a sudden?

Is this like, what is the timetable now?

I guess that was like the nerdy NBA topic of discussion.

Yeah, and it trickled out a little bit.

It's, it's really funny how it's changed, right?

Where it just seemed like a lock, it was going to happen for the last few years.

And I think

silver wanted it to happen.

I think there was a consortium of owners that wanted to happen.

And this media deal was so big, I just think there's owners that don't want to give up money anymore.

And it makes sense because because however they rig it,

you're still giving up, it goes from 130th to 132

or 132nd

for the media thing.

So you're giving up equity, you're giving up value.

So then the question would be, well, what am I getting to give up that value?

And before, when the franchise values were lower, it's like, well, then each of you will get this extra thing.

We'll buy out that equity up front.

But now if you're paying six, seven, eight million dollars or billion dollars, whatever it is for an expansion team,

why Why would I then also want to sweeten the pot for every owner with to buy their media rights too, or not get media rights for myself?

I think it's a real problem.

And I think there's a bunch, I talked about this two months ago.

James Dolan was the biggest one against it.

He's just against everything that Adam Silver.

So I was gonna say, what would James Dolan be for?

Like,

how can we get a yes vote from the Knicks in a board of governors meeting?

What, what, do you have any intel on what happened that made him such an adversary to Adam Silver over the the last five years?

Like, how did this develop?

I think it started with displeasure over revenue sharing, being one of the big market teams that has to pay so much into it.

And then it dovetailed into like

he just got this B in his mind that the NBA league office is like way too big.

It wastes money.

Why are all these, who are all these people that are coming to my games at Madison Square Garden with their VIP passes?

Who are like, why?

Why does it, why is it so bloated?

He became one of those like almost like a fiscal conservative about the league office but to your point about expansion like that was the topic of like people were trying to figure out the sides like who who is the anti-crowd in the board of governors and i still don't really have a lot of great answers to that other than dolin is part of the anti-crowd but i i don't know if it's a an anti-crowd as much as it is people are trying to do their version of the same math problem in terms of like what's the expansion fee that i get versus the the national tv revenue that i lose versus the valuation of my team versus my timetable of potentially selling my team.

Does it net out a big plus, a big minus?

I think everyone,

it's not like that complex of a math problem.

I was talking to one owner about this while I was out there.

He was like, it's not that complicated.

You just have to do your projections your way and figure out what works for you.

This was a pro expansion owner who's kind of like, can we just, can we get a move on with this?

But, you know, it was, it was a strange, it was a strange board of governors press conference in that sense.

Well, and there's, there's some situations where there's some franchises that maybe could move to a different city and be more successful.

And that's the other piece of this, like specifically New Orleans.

And I don't mean to start panic on New Orleans basketball.

I'm also not sure there's enough of a fan base in place to even care that much.

But

that lease at the Smoothie King lease expires, I think, in 2029.

This is an experiment that has not worked for 50 plus years in New Orleans with professional basketball.

And if, like, if you and I owned a team and they asked us what we thought, and I'm like, like, well, we definitely have enough players to go to 32 teams.

That doesn't mean we should.

We're making so much money from the media rights.

I'm not even sure what you could give me back that would make it worth it.

There's a couple cities that could potentially

a team I think could thrive.

I think Seattle, you know, we've been saying that since before you and I worked together.

Vegas is definitely interesting and Mexico City is the other one they're all excited about, right?

So you have those three.

You also have Nashville, which I think some of the other leagues jumped into and grabbed that market before the NBA did.

But I look at a situation like New Orleans.

I don't know what that team is worth in its current state.

I don't know what it's worth with like playing in the smoothie king, playing in a market that clearly has not responded to basketball in the same way as these other markets.

And it's like if somebody bought them and just moved them to Seattle and paid everybody relocation fees, and then you didn't have to split your meteor rights.

That seems like where this is headed.

And I think there's,

I'm just going to say it, I think there's some buzz starting that way that this New Orleans thing maybe is the situation.

Is there any other franchise that you would think could potentially be a relocation threat, or

is that the only one?

I have not heard anything about any other relocation threat.

But there's a couple of subtopics that based on what you're saying, let's put a pin in the New Orleans thing because I want to come back to that.

I just felt I was at the Board of Governors press conference

and I just felt it was notable to me how often, and it was like three or four times Adam Silver went out of his way to say, so our whole NBA Europe thing is separate from expansion, but kind of also connected to expansion.

You said some version of that, like three or four times.

Like it's not, it's not, it's not an either or, but they are connected in some way.

And it just like, it made me think, is this thing like even further along than we realize?

Is it, is it a little bit of an either either?

Or is it like we want it, we're now prioritizing this other thing abroad, like

accumulating these teams in these cities and trying to make this thing profitable, make it real?

Is that now on the front burner versus expansion?

I just found that notable how often he sort of preempted, like no one asked him about it.

He just preemptively brought it up several times.

Well, and that's important because

he is one of the more purposeful press conference people that we have.

And if he's, if he's putting little buttons out there, you just have to trust, all right, there's real intent behind this.

I think Europe is a huge opportunity for them.

And I think they know it.

When you're talking about the player pool, which, man, when you go back to the, we've talked about this before with the mid-2000s, how rough it was from

a talent standpoint.

Some of the people that made all-star games.

You know, some like you go back to read some of my old trade value columns.

Some of the people who were like number 31, you're like, whoa, that guy.

And now the league is just so much deeper.

And I wonder, like, part of the reason you don't do expansion here is because you're thinking, well, maybe if we have some sort of Europe thing,

maybe we need a little more talent that way combined.

The Europe talent combined with some Americans, some people that in their early 30s, like you see, like the Austin Rivers types of players just seem to leave the league like a year too early now, you know, because there's just teams who would just rather take a chance on a second rounder.

I think Europe's a big opportunity for them.

And the seasons are a little different.

The time of the day is different.

It's just more basketball.

It's more things to offer.

My question with that is,

could they just try to buy a league?

I don't even know how this works.

Could you just try to buy the Euro league or

buy the

connecting properties?

I know the teams make up it, but I don't know how you get in without directly challenging the league that already exists.

Oh, I think you're directly challenging the league that already exists.

You're going after it.

I don't know.

I don't know the mechanics of acquiring a league.

Like we're getting a little out of my depth on this issue,

but I do know that like take,

they know the cities.

Like they've identified some cities.

Like if we're going to do this, we're going to be in that city.

And that city already has a landmark basketball team, right?

How, what is the arrangement between the NBA and Real Madrid?

If Real Madrid becomes part of this, whatever new league, semi-existing league, whatever it is, well, Real Madrid is part of a larger sports club that has basketball, that has soccer and all this other stuff.

So what does the partnership look like?

What does the finances look like?

I think that's,

but existing teams like that, I think, are part of the conversation too.

I don't know the economics of it.

He just brought it up a lot of times.

And I do think they just look at it as a very simple, like, We don't think these teams as they're currently existing are making nearly enough money.

We think we can come in, we're better at it, and we'll just make a lot of money.

Well, so maybe it's a situation where they come in, they almost merge with the league, and they buy smaller stakes of each team, and the teams sell off like you know, one-third.

So, I don't know.

We don't, we don't have enough intel on that.

But the important thing is, both of us feel like something is

something is amiss, that that expansion seems to have cooled off,

and that the Europe thing seems like it's

kind of raising importance.

So, what's your New Orleans piece to this?

So, a couple, this is topic one that I wanted to put a pin in.

This is right up your alley because it just goes into, you've been having a field day with the return of the dumb teams, right?

And so, you're much meaner about it than I am.

But I love it, and I'm really, it's been one of the highlights of my summer.

I'm so glad the dumb teams are back.

It's great.

There's just the amount of buzz that's still like every dinner I had, every coffee I had, every cocktail I had, there was some version of like, you know, everyone goes over the off-season moves, what you like, what you didn't like.

Every single one had a version of like, man, that Pelicans Hawks trade, like what happened there?

Like, how, how crazy was that?

And then it dovetailed into

it got like the NBA news cycle can be just, there's so much going on, particularly if, if the playoffs are also going on at the same time as some news events, you just sort of fast forward through stuff.

There was a lot of like, so let's just hold up for a second.

New Orleans and Sacramento just hired new GMs, Joe Dunar, Joe Dumars and Scott Perry, just like, no, did a search happen?

They just wanted those specific guys.

How did they land on those specific guys?

If I'm a fan, like there was no interview process.

Was there, like, what happened?

Like, they just got these jobs out of nowhere.

There was a lot of that talk, too.

Yeah.

And people that have been retrades, I think Dumars made it seem like he had multiple teams coming after him, which just goes, Dumar's a nice guy, but the way that the last couple years of the Pistons thing ended,

you almost can't do worse.

I mean, you know, if you just go hold my beer, you can actually do worse.

You can do much worse.

But the moves he made, he built that 2004 title team and had a really nice mid-2000s.

And then there was like a seven-year run where it's like, what are you doing?

He also turned a lot over to Troy Weaver, who I just think was terrible in Detroit.

Like, you go back to

all the Detroit Detroit stuff and you're getting points for drafting Cape Cunningham first.

It's like, cool.

Pretty sure, pretty sure my son could have done that.

But for the most part, the Durham trade, I guess, was okay.

That was on his watch.

But

most of the young core belongs to Troy Weaver.

Now, Isaiah Stewart.

I saw Thompson, I believe, was a Troy Weaver pick.

Was Monty Williams a Troy Weaver pick?

That didn't go great either.

It was all the other stuff around the Young Corps that was, if you talk to people who had sort of trade talks with Detroit during that time, it was all the other stuff that was kind of a mess.

Just like the amount of voices, Arne Tellum, Troy Weaver, the owner, Tom Gores, like who's actually in charge here?

And then the players they put around the Young Corps, the lack of shooting did not put them in a position to succeed.

But I think it is worth noting that like the Young Corps, you're right.

You don't get points for getting a number one pick right.

Like that's just kind of what you should do.

And Cade Cunningham's awesome.

But it is worth noting that he, that is a Troy Weaver core for the most part.

Trajan Langdon has done awesome to supplement it and to continue to grow it.

But yeah, there was just a lot of talk of like so this summer.

Yeah, well, I we're going to disagree on that, but um, I

thought Detroit went backwards.

I disagree with you completely.

I don't understand what.

Well, like, so, so

on a on a basic level, Schroeder out to the Kings on just a wild contract.

Um, Schroeder out, Beasley out, and maybe like out for a while, if not like for longer than a while.

Beasley literally out.

Out.

Yeah.

Hardaway out in Jaden Ivey, who I think people forget is like coming back to take.

But they had him anyway, though.

But he was a hurt all last year.

So that's why you got Schroeder last year, is that they had this void on the team because this other guy was hurt.

He's back, Lavert in, Robinson in.

I think they're just better.

And I think they're better because their young guys are going to continue to get better.

And I specifically look at like Asar Thompson, give him a full season.

Something is going to pop there.

Like, I think he's got a chance to level like two levels up in one season.

Like, I think their supported cast is better.

I just think they're better.

That's, but that's all stuff that could happen.

Anyway, I'm not a Levert guy.

I've never been a Lavert guy.

I don't want to get aggregated like you did with Cam Thomas last week.

I can't wait to talk about that.

I'm just like Cleveland.

Cleveland's like

trying to win a title.

They're winning games with them and they're like, We're good.

I think he's a little ball stoppy.

I don't like the fit with Detroit.

And I think, listen, it's not their fault what happened with Beasley, but Beasley was really important to what they did last year.

I thought he was their second best player.

You know, worst case scenario, their third best player behind Duran.

But

I just thought he really mattered for them, especially at the end of the games.

And now you're replacing that with Karis Lavert and you're keeping your fingers crossed with Ivy.

And Duncan Robinson is good.

And, you know, look, in the the

easy, though, like, like, Miami seem, but here's the thing.

And, you know, I enjoy those shooter ball movement guys.

And I think there's certain teams who would have been really good for Miami.

Seemed like they were in or out on him 13 different times over the course of the year.

He made a lot of money.

I couldn't keep track.

They paid him a lot of money.

So, like, is so Malik Beasley had a great year last year, high on our six man of the year ballots for both of us.

I think you voted.

You voted for him.

Yeah, I did.

I thought he deserved it.

14 points a game in the playoffs, 37% from the field, 34% on threes, never gets to the line, complete defensive liability.

Does he know that the scandal's coming?

Is one of my questions with that?

I don't think that thing just came out of nowhere right after the, like, I feel like that was brewing for a couple months.

Yeah, at some point, it's hanging over his head.

I'm just saying, like, is Duncan Robinson, whose contract is like partially guaranteed after the first year, like, I think he can do a different version of what Malik Beasley did for their team.

And I think, if anything, the playoffs showed in the regular season, I think they were over-reliant on Malik Beasley.

And the playoffs, the game changes, the offense gets better, it gets more predatory against it.

Now, Duncan Robinson is going to get hunted just like Malik.

I think I'm on Detroit's better next year.

How many games did they win?

I don't know.

They were in the mid-40s.

I think 48.

I think, I don't know what the win total will be.

I think they're going to be a better team next year.

I like the identity they had in the second half of the season, the the playoffs with those tough veterans, right?

Built around Cade and rebounding and a real attitude.

And I don't know.

We'll see, I guess.

Did they lose any of that?

What toughness and rebounding and defense did they lose?

I thought Beasley was kind of a badass for them.

I really did.

I thought he had a real swagger and attitude.

And he was the guy they went to over and over again late.

And I thought Cade, Cade, it's obviously going to come from.

Cade over anyone else.

The big thing for them last year is that they rejuvenated Cade as, you know, an A-list asset, which I just was.

Were you ever like wavering on him?

I was never off Kate Cunningham.

I just think it was Brasillo.

I was, I was a little nervous.

I could not believe, and I said this often, how quickly people went on the, well, you know, he doesn't get to the line.

He doesn't get to the rim.

He doesn't finish well at the rim.

Like he's going to be, it reminded me of the dialogue, which turned out to be kind of right.

On like, I remember Andrew Wiggins' rookie year, I think it was 538, 538, ran a piece about like, statistically, he's one of the worst number one picks of all time as a rookie and like this doesn't project well for him.

And I was like, wow, it seems like kind of premature.

And it turned out like he is not a great number one pick.

It felt like the K dialogue was starting to trend that way.

And I was like, I just, I like, I watched this guy play and he's got something.

He's got the sort of in-between game and the vision and the strength that you need and like put some real guys around him.

But we're getting off topic with Detroit and Troy Weaver.

I never gave up on him.

I got worried.

But I always look at those situations where you think, and this happens in football too.

It's the situation.

If the situation is awful,

as I've gotten older, I've learned like you have to trust that that's the most important factor if somebody's not looking good.

You almost have to value the situation.

over the talent if the talent is there.

Anyway, we got off topic.

New Orleans.

New Orleans, and then

just the amount of like

collective league-wide, almost sorrow about what has happened to the Kings in two years, like how they went from the feel-good story of the NBA to like, nobody even really wants to talk about them.

They're like mediocre and boring and directionless in a way that other teams even are like, man, that's just, it's kind of depressing over there.

You know, it's just,

it's funny.

They just became the Kings again.

Yeah.

They weren't the Kings anymore.

And it felt like, oh my God, the Kings aren't the Kings anymore.

They're actually like a real basketball team.

And then that died within 18 months.

And just like the word Vivek was said over many dinners and drinks, like it, that it just, it's still kind of a mess internally.

And it just, that, you know, phrases like he can't get out of his own way, he can't help himself, you know, that's that kind of phraseology came up a lot.

Like, because what's been the constant between the Beam team and now and all the crappy teams before the Beam team, post-Maloof, it's, it's the ownership group.

When that Halliburton trade happened, I can't remember.

Were you apoplectic or you're like, I can kind of see it?

Where did you land when it happened?

I was surprised.

I wouldn't have done it.

I remember being on TV with JJ Reddick when he called it,

it was like franchise mismanagement or something even more stringent than that.

And I was like, that feels a little harsh given that Sabonis has a real track record of helping teams win and is a very good player.

So I was surprised.

And

I remember even saying like a year later, it was like, oh, what?

This was a win-win trade for both teams.

This is a win-win trade.

I was like, it's not.

Like, Indiana won the trade.

Like, the Kings just didn't lose it as badly as some people thought they were going to lose it.

And now it's like, what, what happened here?

Like, how did we get here?

I know.

I hated it.

It was one of the few times I went all in.

I'm like,

I'm putting this in pen.

I hate this.

I would not trade Hall Burton.

I always thought Fox was the one.

If you're going to make a move, that would have been the one I did.

The Spurs thing, you know, we talked about it a little before the, before Summer League, but, you know, they probably have a year here with Fox where you can bring Dylan Harper off the bench.

I watched, I watched one of his Summer League games.

I mean, he can't shoot, but he's just such a crazy athlete.

And he's just clearly going to be a guy.

I don't know if it's going to be year three, year four, like how long it's going to take, but there's going to be a point where it's his team.

And you can just see, like, he's one of those guys who's had the ball his whole life.

He's not going to be, oh, like Halliburton had that rare ability to just be able to play off people and not have the ball at the time.

I don't think Dylan Harper is going to be like that.

So they probably have a year here with Fox where they can bring Harper off the bench and be like, we're going to ease you in.

Maybe there'll be a game where Fox is hurt for a week, you become the guy for a week.

But

the weird part of it, though, is Fox doesn't have the massive extension yet, right?

August 2nd, he becomes eligible to sign it, I believe.

And I do expect something will be done.

Because they did the wink-wink, right?

But when they did the trade, it was kind of understood that they would take care of him.

Well, I mean, he went out of his way to say there was only one, there was no list.

San Antonio was the list.

I wanted to be in San Antonio.

That was the team on my trade demand list.

And whether it was wink-wink or not, I mean, you don't do trades like that without some understanding of what it's going to be when you hit.

extension time.

Well, your guy, Rich Paul, talked about that recently.

He talked about, he was bragging about the Brandon Ingram extension.

And he was like, we felt like the

free agency money wasn't going to be there.

We had to get him traded so he could make the money.

And by the way, he was right because

this who had zero chance of making $40 million a year if he was a free agent, Brandon Ingram.

So, yeah, with the Fox piece, I'm sure they have the Wink Wink extension.

I'm sure it's going to happen.

But I also, do you think he's going to be on that team in two years?

Because I don't.

Though two and a half years, like three years?

There's going to be a moment where they just give the car case to Harper, and that's going to be that because I think he has a chance to be that special.

I'm not in a rush to make these kinds of decisions.

Fox and Wemby played five games together last year.

I think you want to see it.

Well, not only that, like I'm like higher on the 2025, 26 Spurs than most people are.

I think there's a chance for a big, big leap from them.

I know they have some shooting issues.

Can I join you on that island?

It's not an island.

Like, anyone's welcome, but like, I don't know what their odds are over under or any of that.

I haven't looked at it.

Yeah, it's maybe an archaeological.

Arca Palaga.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

I think there's a chance for a much bigger, for the very simple reason of those guys barely played together.

One of them has the potential to be the best player in the NBA at some point in his career.

And I like some of the, I like a lot of the moves they made.

And, you know, we'll see how much the rookies can actually help.

But something is cooking there.

And I'm not in a hurry to like, I understand the theory of we can win now with Fox.

And then when the young guys are ready, we can flip Fox for stuff that fits Wembanyama's timeline more.

Like, it's not like Fox is old.

Like, I'm not in a hurry to make any of these choices.

Well, I think it was Eddie Johnson who said this on my podcast about how Sabonis and Fox with the lob stuff where they're both lefties was just weird.

And he's like, watch what happens when Fox is with Wemby because he's going to go left and he's throwing to a guy who's right-handed.

It's going to be different on those on those high screens.

I was like, all right, that sounds wildly interesting.

I'm with you on the Spurs.

I've already looked at their over-under.

Do you want to guess what it is?

Because I looked at it after Wemby said, I'm clear, I'm fine, I'm healthy, I'll be ready for the season.

What do you think their win total is?

41 and a half.

43 and a half.

I'm over.

I'm not even thinking about it.

I'm going over 43 and a half.

I know it's the wet.

I know they're wet.

They're young.

It's the West.

Everybody's good except Utah, blah, blah.

I'm going over 43 and a half.

Me as well.

And I think that that's probably this year's Orlando if you're going to make a, or, or this year's Detroit, like the team that just kind of jumps into the high 40s because they have a bunch of young guys and they always can throw dudes out.

They also,

I kind of like Kelly O'Linoch.

If he's your 10th man,

if you, if you have this weird Kelly O'Linoch, Luke Cornette, you're relying on, like, that's, I'd rather have that than Zach Collins.

Oh, there's, Cornette's good.

I mean, just flat out good.

Olinick has been one of these, like, every team that gets him from Utah to Toronto to now San Antonio.

I have the same reaction, which is like, I love having a shooting, passing, big guy around young guards and young wings.

I just feel like it helps everybody.

And then he just never plays.

And so it's just this sort of like theoretically

theoretically helpful ingredients.

I do like with him and Wemby.

I do too.

I like the idea of Kelly Olinik.

That's it's just an idea until it becomes not a reality.

One One of the things I love about them, incredible trade machine team.

They have all different types of tradable contracts.

You compare them together.

They have a bunch of cool picks.

And,

you know, that's one of those when we get to December, January, February.

That's one of those teams.

If they're good, if they start out like 20 and 12 and Wemby looks like he's an MVP candidate, that's a team that could shift pretty quickly.

Let's take a break and then we have some other stuff to hit.

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All right.

So we have more tales from Summer League stuff.

The biggest thing that I think became a basketball argument was everything the Clippers did.

And let's go.

Let's do that.

And then we can hit some Summer League stuff later.

I was less excited about it than others while also admitting that

everything they did was just

cost effective, low risk.

You have moves everywhere.

You're just adding contracts that you could easily swap out or trade or package together if anything weird happens.

Everybody's made jokes about how old this team is, how they put together the 2017 All-Star game.

There's a million ways this could go.

I'll start here.

They're post-all-star.

They were fourth in net rating.

I think they should have beaten Denver in five or six, and they didn't because of what happened in game one and what happened in game four, especially.

But I think they were, I don't know if they were better than Denver, but they easily could have taken that series and it didn't go their way.

And a couple plays happened, but they were right there with the team that then went seven against OKC.

You could make a case they were one of the four best teams in the league last year.

That's the most clippery thing ever is

to give them a trophy for almost beating the team that almost beat Oklahoma City.

It's a gayner that's going up.

We almost beat the team that almost beat OKC.

They're putting that up in the arena.

Game one, yeah, they blew it.

Game four, Aaron Gordon, you were there.

Like, all cool.

Denver won another game, and then they had to, they were the champs.

But then they had a game to win the whole series in Denver, and they shit the beds so badly that it's just like it's a black mark on the entire season.

I'm sorry.

And that's my bigger picture point.

We could talk about, oh, yeah, they're better.

They're deeper.

There's still a team that's built around James Harden.

And I don't know if you're a Clipper fan, if you work for the Clippers, if you coach the Clippers, if you're the GM of the Clippers, if you own the Clippers.

I don't know how you fall asleep at night feeling great about that after what happened in game seven and what's happened over the course of his entire career.

I actually went back

and watched because I was like, I feel like that was so bad.

I need to, maybe I'm, maybe enough time has passed that I'm misremembering something.

And maybe it wasn't that bad.

It was that bad.

He was so bad.

He wasn't, he was doing the thing where he doesn't look at the rim at all.

You knew him immediately.

This segment could be recorded.

I know it could be every day.

Five different segments.

When I'm dead, they'll just CGI it.

He was so bad.

That I don't know how like you're reading these stories about, oh yeah, he was recruiting Bradley Beal for a half hour.

It's like, what was the recruiting pitch?

Don't, hey, we had a really good thing last year.

Could you do me a favor and not watch game seven?

Can you watch like game five?

Hey, and Bradley Beale's like, hey, what happened in game seven?

It's like, I don't know.

Then we're just caught like

this is a team built around James Hardin.

And fundamentally, you cannot win four playoff rounds with James Harden.

How old is he now?

36.

And he's shown us who he is year after year for his entire career.

And I just, I can't get excited about it.

I'm I'm sorry.

Well, it's also built around Kawhi Leonard, and four playoff rounds is a lot for a player who has battled injuries for his entire Clippers tenure.

And he had a great

second half, whatever, 50 games of last season.

When you say battled injuries, do you mean he played 266 games in six years and 37 last year?

Is that battling or is that drowning?

It's a toe-to-toe battle between Kawhi and the injuries.

It's neck and neck.

Look,

let me just make a couple of cases for the Clippers, okay?

Number one, I don't think anyone with the Clippers has any illusions about what they are right now.

I think they probably think we are a really, really good team that slots in fourth in the West at best.

And if you're talking about everyone's healthy, let's go.

It's Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston, and then maybe the Clippers, probably the Clippers, whatever word you want to use.

But I think for a regular season, I think you can make a case they could slot in in the top three because of the depth and the fact that even if these guys aren't going to play reliably, they still have so many guys.

They might have the depth to be good.

And I'm talking to like you were the president of the Clippers are the second best team in the West Island for the last 40 games of last year.

That was your

call.

Yeah, and you know what happened?

I know

hurricane hardened hit the island.

And I had no electricity for a month and a half.

Out go here are the here are the rotation players that they even semi-rotation players that are benefiting.

They're definitely better.

Okay.

No, go ahead.

Can I just do it?

I'm with you.

Go do your thing.

Ben Simmons.

Ben Simmons.

Not even signed yet.

What was your favorite moment of Ben Simmons Clippers tenure?

The one day where everybody talked themselves into thinking that maybe this is the telecom, like, went to the rim one time.

My favorite was I was at the game with Mike Toland, and we were joking about how when he crossed the big circle logo at mid-court, it became like an electric fence for him where he had to get rid of the ball before he got to the three-point line.

And I nicknamed him the new logo because the logo like triggered, it didn't matter who it was or whether the person was open.

He had to pass it.

He did not want to have the ball within 25 feet of the basket.

And I think it might be one of the reasons he's not signed yet.

Yeah.

Out goes Ben Simmons, Norm Powell, Amir Coffee, Drew Eubanks, Jordan Miller.

In comes Brooke Lopez, Bradley Beale, John Collins, Chris Paul.

They're undeniably like better than the team that was last year.

They have 11 guys who can really play.

They're going to need all 11 to get through the regular season.

And I think the idea of the team is like, look, we know the issues with our top two guys, Hardin's playing big games, Kawhi's availability, et cetera.

We know how good those other three teams are.

All we can do with the resources that we have and the money we've committed to these two older veterans at the center of our team is put ourselves in the best position possible to pounce.

If the matchups break right, if a team takes an injury that's in the top three, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then maybe we're in the conference finals again.

And once they're there, that's all they can do.

I don't think they're going into the season like, oh, yeah, we hit it out of the park.

We're a championship favorite.

I think they know exactly what they are.

Over-under on Fandu is 49 and a half.

That's right.

That seems about right, honestly.

I'm not against any of the moves on paper except one, which we'll get to in a second.

The Collins one,

I just think

they weren't going to give Norm Powell an extension, and I think he was going to get really sour.

And I think they were worried about chemistry and happiness with that, right?

So you flip him into Collins, who hasn't been on a good team since 1995.

Oh, stop.

No, I'm just saying, like, he's

like,

he's in a contract year, and he's on his first good team since that one Hawks team that made a run.

It's funny.

He's become a weirdly polarizing player because there's some really good nerd arguments for him.

You and I

very much disagree on John Collins.

Well, so the highlight of his...

You're out.

Not out.

Just the highlight of his career was that Philly series.

He was good in that Philly series.

I thought he felt like he was becoming a real playoff guy.

And then if my memory serves me correct, they then played Miami and he was abysmal.

And, you know, I just think with what they have with Zubatz and Kawhi, who I think Kawhi is a four at this point in his career, you could play him at the three, but I just think he's a four.

And you're putting Collins with Zubats and Kawhi.

That doesn't make sense to me in the way basketball is played in 2025.

But I do think for the versus Powell, who I think they had a lot of guards, they were worried about him being unhappy.

The trade makes sense.

It's an expiring.

They can flip it.

Like, I'm down with the trade.

I'm not down with John Collins being a huge part of a team that wins four straight playoff rounds.

Where I get off the buses with Beale, I still am waiting.

I've been waiting all summer.

I'm waiting for somebody to explain what actually happened with him in Phoenix.

Because even my friend Eddie Johnson, I tweeted something, we went back and forth on Twitter.

And every time we do that, then somebody will aggregate it.

Like we're mad at each other.

Like Eddie's my friend.

But Eddie's like, no, no, he was good here.

He was, everybody liked him here.

And he, he, he was a good son.

It just didn't work out.

It's like, what does that mean?

Because I saw the sons in person, and the entire team looked miserable, including Bradley Beal.

Nobody was happy with how he played the entire time he was there.

Part of the issue seemed to be that he didn't like being a role player who didn't have the ball all the time.

Now he's going to be a role player in the Clippers.

And I just don't understand why people think this is going to be an awesome situation with him and the Clippers.

I don't get it.

So explain it to me.

Why is he going to be happier in the Clippers than he was with Phoenix?

Well,

they got him for cheap, right?

So it's a difference between $50 million and $5 million.

That's kind of a big deal.

And he did average like 17 a game and shot it well and can be a secondary ball handler.

And I think if you're asking him to do that on a team where he's whatever in the hierarchy and not part of a big three and maybe he comes off the bench, they're talking like he's going to start.

I'm not convinced that that's.

They're talking like they're going to rely on him and he's going to have the ball a lot.

I would not rely on him to have the ball.

I mean, I would rely on him to have the ball in this sense: harden Zubats, pick and roll, bend the defense, kick to Bradley Beal, attack a closeout, or take a second screen from Zubots

when the defense is already moving.

And that's cool.

Like, I don't know that there's any idea that we're like, all right, give the ball to Brad Beal and get out of the way.

I don't think that's going to be part of the offense for the Clippers unless people are injured or there's just a whole bench mob in the game.

I was like,

what's the opportunity cost for them?

They got him for essentially nothing in NBA terms.

He's still a 17-point a game scorer, still shot 40% on threes, still can handle the ball.

And look, I think you're right about Phoenix.

There was just a malaise over the whole team.

I think his effort level wasn't good enough, not nearly good enough.

And it's going to have to be better, obviously, on a team.

Why wasn't it good enough?

Nobody's been able to explain that part.

They changed the coach every year.

He knew he was going to play with Durant and Booker.

And he knew he wasn't.

When he gets traded, he waives his no trade clause to go to Phoenix, a team that already had Kevin Duran and Devin Booker.

What did he think was going to happen with the shots and the usage rate?

Did he think it was going to be awesome for him?

Those guys averaged like 60 points a game in the playoffs.

What did he think was going to happen?

I would hope that he understood he'd be the third option, but I will say this.

You just got through saying about Cade, like you always got to remember that the circumstances really matter.

Like they do change the coach every year in Phoenix.

They've kind of become a punchline for their spending, which focused on Bradley Beale, the sort of ridicule that he took.

And like, you're the body language, doctor.

How was Kevin Durant's body language from like, you know, game 10 on last season?

Like, the whole team, the whole team just seemed like checked out.

But why did that happen?

This is my point, though.

I still don't understand what happened in Phoenix and why that team was so unhappy for two years.

Right.

And why, and why they fell as short as they did.

And then,

you know, it's like, no, no, it was good with Durant.

it's it was great we're sending him off wasn't his fault was wasn't devin booker's fault here's 75 million a year even though we won 35 games with you last year and it wasn't bradley beal's fault either he was a great son well whose fault was it because that was the unhappiest team all of us watched last year and i don't know if you're carving up the blame pie who has the biggest slice in the blame pie i still can't figure it out um the rest of the rounds like there was more stuff going on behind the scenes than we're finding out about and i'm still waiting for like the now they tell us story and nobody wrote it.

No, I mean,

somebody, there's got to be something somebody wrote that was interesting.

Like, they all, clearly, the, the big, the closest thing was the, the whole very weird, like Bud telling Devin Booker, hey, man, you got to like talk less in huddles.

Like that, that, that was, that was a weird one, um, but I'm not sure that can break a team like that.

Maybe they just never recovered from just getting absolutely humiliated by Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs two seasons ago in a sweep in which that ended with Bradley Beal just like falling over and losing the ball three times in the like in the last six minutes.

Bradley Beal was so bad

in that end of that playoff series.

And it's one of those things that we just time passes and you just kind of forget.

We've never really seen Bradley Beal except for the, what was that, the 2017 Wizards, which I thought even though he didn't, I think he had some up and down shooting stuff, I felt like he really competed.

I don't see a guy that competes in the same way anymore.

And to just expect him to turn that on because he's in a contract year, that's the other piece of this.

So, Bradley Bale is somehow going to make more money out of this.

And Dame Lillard, same thing for different reasons.

And I feel bad for Dame, but Dame somehow tore his Achilles and somehow made more money out of it.

The league is in this weird situation where they have this second apron that penalizes everybody and penalizes all these smart teams.

And if you draft well and you sign well, but then it has this other mechanism where you can kind of either get hurt or tank your situation or just not play well.

And it can somehow work out, we will make more money.

Because the part of the narrative was, well, Bradley Beal does well in the Clippers.

He'll be the biggest free agent a year from now.

It's like he was already making 53 million a year.

That wasn't enough incentive for him.

And that's somebody I'd want to bet on.

I mean,

am I being a dick?

Like, I feel like I'm in the minority on this.

Who were the Clippers getting with a $5.5 million salary slot that's better than Bradley Beal?

Nobody.

He was 17 points a game, 39% threes, but I would be really worried about.

So that's it.

I have this chemistry thing where I already have the whatever, the heart in just never knowing whether I can trust him in a game.

I have Beale where I have no idea.

He wasn't happy as a relegated role player in Phoenix, but now he's going to be happy with that.

I don't know whether I can trust Kawhi.

It's a team that now has a clear two-year window, right?

And I can't wait to talk about that piece of it.

You're bringing CP in basically ceremonial, he'll play 40 games during the regular season.

You might have a playoff moment.

But I would just have real concerns about what happened to Bial and Phoenix and whether

what that meant because he wasn't happy that last year in Washington either.

We haven't seen the guy be happy in the 2020s.

And meanwhile, he's been making crazy money.

I just, I don't get it.

I so I need it explained to me.

And on top of it, like his agent and the son's, you know, president or whatever they're father and son

i'm aware and the best you could do is oh bradley cut the exact amount of money he's going to get from the clippers and it's going to save matt ishby all this money it's like why didn't he have to give up more money to leave a situation he hated and if you're phoenix why didn't you wait until february to do this If you're going to buy him out, you're not going to get any relief out of it.

And the luxury tax does, all that shit doesn't kick until February.

Why not wait and try to have a staring contest with them can i can i

just unleash a mild take right now speaking of phoenix i'm so ready for it this reminded me there are a lot of things we have to ban in nba discourse like nobody's talking about that guy we need to ban that that guy's a problem here's what we need to ban i sat down yesterday and for some goddamn reason i decided i'm gonna watch the entire 11 and a half minute video that the Phoenix Suns just posted inside our draft room, day one of the draft.

No more, no more, bann them.

They should be 45.

I kept waiting, minute eight.

Maybe there'll be something interesting that happens in the video.

And it's just a bunch of dudes wearing the same ugly ass sons polo, high fiving about how the guy they wanted might fall to them.

And then it's just phone calls where Brian Gregory is like, hey, man, let's come here in Phoenix and work hard.

You want to work hard?

And Malowatz being like, yep, I'm going to work hard.

All right, let me give you over to Jordan Knott.

Jordan Knott's going to say something to you.

Enjoy this night with your family.

enjoy this night with your family and then come here to phoenix and work hard yes sir i'm gonna come here to phoenix enough and then there's a whiteboard that's blurred out just no more videos of everyone being like yeah all right

look at our polos no more has anybody ever not been excited when they drafted somebody in the top 15 where's the draft room footage of the people like oh

nothing yeah where's the draft room footage of the kings calling in the papayanis pick you know and and they have to call that's what i want to see because the Suns, I believe, had to make that pick for the Kings.

I want to see Ryan McDonough on the phone being like, Yeah, they want Papayanis, man.

I don't, I don't know what to tell you.

That's who they're telling me to pick.

Papayanis, the guy from Greece.

That's the guy we want.

11 minutes of crap, man.

I'm sorry.

Just nothing interesting happened in the whole video.

Don't watch it.

Great rant.

Couldn't agree more.

So, old guy champions,

if you think James Harden at age 36 is going to miraculously change who he is in playoff games old guy champions the two doppelgangers would be the 98 bulls and the 2011 mavericks 2011 mavericks dirk was 32 marion 33 kid 38 terry 33 chandler 28 paja forgot he played 18 minutes a game on that team i don't remember any of the minutes and then uh he was 33 and berea was the youngest guy at 26.

the difference is

well the difference is the league is much better now and you're going against this okayc team where basically all the guys in the team are born after michael jordan's last bulls game except for like caruso i think that that team though is and remains a team that gets brought up the gold standards for but for this reason of of like they're the just stay just give yourself the punchers chance as many times as you can as a good and maybe not great team and maybe one year it all comes into place and i think that's just that's the game the clippers are playing is like, that's the team.

Well, here's the game the Clippers are actually playing.

Because if you put, if you gave them Truth Serum.

Oh, let's go.

Yeah, let's go.

Let's do it.

If you gave them Truth Serum and you said, do you think you could actually win the title?

Like, come on.

You'd be like, all right, we have like a Haymaker Punchers chance.

But okay, seeing that.

That's what I've been saying this whole podcast.

I think that's what they think.

But what they've really done here is cleared the books for the summer of 2027.

And the Norm Powell piece was a big part of this.

He was going to be unhappy if they didn't give him an extension.

They didn't want to give him an extension.

Well, why?

He was almost an all-star last year.

Didn't play well in the playoffs.

That's not enough of a reason.

Ballmer is a guy that has always spent and added and paid money, and he's never been afraid of the future.

And now this is a team that's clearly, we are on short term here.

We're on two years.

Well, why?

It's because Giannis is a free agent in the summer of of 2027 and

i don't this is like the you know there's some maybe some tv networks that dabble and specialize in this just throwing out names and teams i think there's this is a real thing i think the bucks are terrified of it um i think it's a big reason why the milestoner thing happened because the bucks knew they were on a two-year window with with yannis and that he has a player option and they're trying to do as much as they can to make it so that if anyone's winking at them

that they'll at least have enough of a foundation to try to keep them.

The one thing with Giannis is he's already won the title, right?

That's, it's when you've already won, it's a different level of mentality because now you're weighing, I've already won, I could start and finish my career in Milwaukee.

By all accounts, loves Milwaukee.

But I think if you're the Clippers

and short term, you can compete with a punchers chance for a title, but long term, you have 20 million on your books in the summer of 27.

You just have Zubots.

That's it.

You can basically build a new team, and they're in the best position.

Bomber doesn't care about money.

Have you been in the practice facility and that

their thing is like a fucking palace?

Like, you go there and you're like, this is a team that spends

every possible asset, dollar, whatever, to impress the people that play for it.

And I think that's their endgame is that summer of 2027.

Short term, let's try to win long term, Giannis.

And that's how they're thinking.

So

a couple of things.

Lawrence Frank does not wink subtly.

He winks like Costanza's got the grapefruit pulp in his eye in Seinfeld.

Remember the Kawhi recruitment when he was just like at Toronto games?

And now it might be different with Giannis as a player option, but like there ain't nothing subtle about how the Clippers operate.

Number two, they're also in position, if need be, to get max cap space a year from now because Hardin's contract is partially guaranteed.

It's a weird thing where he got the player option and they got, I think it's only 13 million out of 40, whatever million guaranteed.

And then they have team options on like a million guys.

Bogdanovich team option, Lopez team option, Batum team option.

Like they could clear out $50 million of space from their books without even trying.

So they're flexible on a couple of different levels, but sure, I mean, everybody knows the timetable of Giannis's contract.

Everybody sees how desperate the Bucs are.

And, you know, I haven't closed the books.

It's, I don't think anybody has closed the books.

I'm like, do we, do we, do we know that Giannis is like, okay,

I'm done thinking about anything else now?

I don't, I don't know that.

Yeah, but he, by all accounts, he's fine in Milwaukee.

And

the team's going to be pretty good.

I mean, they actually had a really good offseason when you consider like what that the second best player on the team who made 50 plus million dollars was going to miss the entire season.

And you would have said, this team has no chance to look competitive.

The Cole Anthony thing was a big deal.

Like they got him to be able to get somebody like that for nothing.

He's a rotation guy.

They kept Trent for nothing.

He's a rotation guy.

You know, they, they've added together a team that in a week conference, with the best player in the conference, at least is now in the game.

And I think with more of a puncher's chance than maybe the Clippers.

Interesting.

I actually, I don't disagree with you.

I went through all the East rosters the other day and I'm like, the Bucs are actually a little better than I think they are.

They have a little more depth and a little more day-to-day.

And I do think they can patch together some lineups that I like.

I don't mind a couple of their young guys.

They have some shooting already.

And I agree with you.

Like he's shown us over and over again, he would prefer to stay in Milwaukee.

It actually reminds me of, ironically, Dame in Portland, who just like walked up and walked back, walked up and walked back.

And like now that he's back,

is publicly saying, like, I kind of,

maybe I shouldn't have ever left.

And

Giannis kind of reminds me of that.

Yeah, you did a good job with Mahoney talking about the

on the pod you did with Mahoney this week about uh the culture that Dame put in Portland and how he was all in and all in and all in.

And I think what changed that was the Scoot Henderson pick and just getting it, getting a top three pick and taking a future point guard.

And I just think that changed how they thought about it, which is why I brought up San Antonio earlier.

Sometimes you can get lucky in the draft and it can just completely change what you thought your plans were for a roster.

And in that case, I think, you know, I would have been really interested if he hadn't gotten hurt to see how they would have handled Dame this summer and whether they would have

would have

tried to peddle him because he ended up the second half of the season before he got hurt.

I thought he was pretty good.

All right, so we're just, we planted our flag on keep an eye on this Giannis Clippers thing.

Not saying we invented it, but

I wanted wanted to quickly mention,

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So, one other thing happened since the last time you and I talked basketball, and it's the Miami Heat, the zombie heat.

I'm not saying they're in the cornfield starting to eat human beings again, but there were a couple of small things they did over the course of the summer where it's like, I just thought that team was done and maybe should think about trading Bam and just blowing it up and starting over.

There's just kind of a

roster flexibility slash identity forming.

And I didn't know if you were intrigued by it.

So are you intrigued by it?

You have this.

I don't know if you have some telepathy abilities.

Like I remember a couple of months ago, you said, you know, what teams do you have your eye on as like potentially frisky teams in the offseason?

I mentioned one.

You were like, that's the one I want to talk about.

So, tomorrow, I'm having, we're doing a podcast, the Zach Lowe show.

We're going to put the Eastern Conference teams into tiers of teams, which is what I like to do just for fun.

And I'm looking at the fan duel odds.

One, two, three, four.

Miami is 10th

to

win the East.

I'm not saying Miami is going to win the East.

That's not a conversation.

I'm just saying the odds are what they are.

Indiana is plus 2,300.

They're 9th.

Then there's a jump all the way to plus 4,100.

That's Miami.

And then plus 4,600 is the Raptors.

And I keep looking at the teams above Miami, Indiana, Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia, that group.

And I'm like, I don't think Miami's worse than those teams.

Like, I understand that Miami, that all of those teams save Indiana with Halliburton hurt, and maybe even Indiana with Siakam, have a player who's much better than anyone on Miami.

I don't say Siakam is much better than Biam.

He's probably a little better all around, but Boston's still got Jalen Brown.

Philly's got whoever is healthy.

Milwaukee has an MVP candidate.

I kind of think the Heat are in that group.

And I was talking to a couple of front office guys earlier this morning before we hopped on this podcast, almost trying to get them to talk me out of my heat optimism.

And one of them tried to.

One of them kind of shared.

I'm not saying this is like a great team, but if you told me the Heat went 45 and 37 and snuck into the sixth seed or whatever, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think it's a better team than Vegas is giving them credit for.

I bet their over-under is like 38 and a half or something like that.

Yeah, 38 and a half.

It's too low.

And I actually think,

I know it's insane.

I actually think like 48 wins could be in play

with

how bad the East is going to be from a star power standpoint.

You're just not going against stars night after night.

You're going against, like, you might play Philly, there's no Embiid.

You're going to play Boston.

There's no Tatum.

You go on down the line.

The East games are just not going gonna be as hard as they were last year

so literally 20 minutes before we hopped on this podcast i was talking to an executive on another eastern conference team saying like am i like am i crazy to think miami could win could be like 46 and 36 and be the fifth or sixth seed like is that am i like like am i missing something about the composition of the east like what am i missing because i seem to be wildly off on miami and he kind of was like yeah 46 seems a little much but i i literally just said this to somebody 30 minutes ago i said 46 you said 48 48 seems a little high to me 46 it's 10 games over 500 like that's a good team i don't know if that's a little over my skis but i'm with you i don't know how you see how he's on a contract here we already know he's gonna he's a 19 point game

point a game scorer they have wiggins for a full year they have hero they have adebio They got Fontechio, who I just like.

I'm sorry.

I'm always going to think on the right team, that guy can succeed.

There's There's just certain guys like on the wrong team, I get it, but on a team where guys know what they're doing, I'm just in on him.

Jovich, everybody else likes.

I don't like him as much.

Like Rasilla likes him.

I like Jovich.

I haven't really seen it yet, but I know you're, of course, you like him.

He's got the itch.

I got to be welcome.

You got an itch for the itches.

Yeah.

Believe me,

all the people in Croatia that we visit with when we're there,

they know my awards ballot.

And if I've shunned the wrong bulk and I hear hear about it.

Jake is if he ever learns how to shoot.

Yakashonis, I still feel like is going to, I'm still in.

And then they have Highsmith, who I've always liked.

I don't know.

I just don't mind their team.

There's a Rogier piece.

There's two ways it could go good and one way it can go awful.

The two ways it can go good is he's in a contract year.

Maybe he comes back, he gets cleared, and he's actually good again.

This was a guy who was like a 24-point a game scorer two years ago.

They gave up a first-round pick for.

The second way it could go good for them wouldn't be good for Rogier.

What if it turns out he gets suspended for the year?

Like, does he come off the cap?

How does that work?

We haven't had that happen before.

Does he disappear from the cap?

It feels like if anyone would ever luck out from something like this, I was talking to my friend Mike Scher, who hates the Heath the most.

And I was like, you realize if Rogier gets suspended for a year, the league will somehow figure out a way that that just magically comes off Miami's cap.

And he's like, you've ruined my day.

I like that you guys are still

the Miami scars are I just want them to die.

Yeah, I just want that, I want heat culture to just be dead and it never dies.

But

the third way it would go,

I think the bad version of this is that's just a giant 26.6 thing.

26.6 million.

He's not playing, but you also can't trade him because he gets suspended and it's just like this cap albatross for a year is the one bad way this would play out so who knows um i'm penciling him in as out of the rotation when i'm when i'm i think that's fair no no no i just just in terms of my projection of the heat because i want to make sure my optimism i want to make sure my optimism is not based on the whatever small percent chance that the terrier thing totally turns around i'm not expecting that to happen like it's been unit's unbelievable how much of a zero he's been for Miami.

Like it's, it's one of the most under the radar shocking, like from, from semi-productive slash productive to like, like, can't even get on the floor in the playoffs for a team that's losing by 50.

The off-court stuff, I think, murdered his season last year.

There's no way you can come back from that, especially if you think potentially really bad things are happening.

But he was really good on Charlotte.

Crunched on scorer.

Yeah, he was, he he was becoming a guy that you had to start talking about as

kind of like what happened with Norm Powell last year, where he wasn't an all-star, but you actually had to throw his name into

the conversation for it.

Anyway, one of the things I like about what they did, and I like the Mitchell signing too, I've always never gave up on that dude, feeling good about my condo on that island.

But they have a flexible roster for trades, right?

Like Powell is still in expiring.

Fontechio is an expiring.

Heisman's in expiring.

Wiggins has a player option for next year at 30.

It's not bad.

It's a situation that looks a little LeBron-y.

I'm just going to say it.

If we were going to go,

all right.

Somebody came from a time machine and said in January or February, LeBron James will be traded.

And you had to pick a team, I think Miami would be one of the teams I would think about.

Okay, two things.

And I already, I already,

okay, two things.

Number one,

they're only in the whole one first-round pick, and I believe they could trade up to three if they do it right.

Number two, 27 pick goes to Charlotte for the aforementioned Terry Roger disaster trade.

Number two, I know no one has time to listen to every episode of the Zach Lowe Show,

let alone someone as busy as you.

Last week in Vegas,

I said, I did a segment on LeBron because everyone's talking about LeBron.

And I said, look, I've already done all the, all the, like, I've already gone through all the teams everybody's gone through, the Clevelands, the Dallas, the Warriors, the Knicks, and on and on.

I said, the one team I forgot to bring up when I was doing it is like, there's actually kind of a heat reunion trade that isn't crazy on paper for either team, if it ever came to that.

What I neglected to mention on that podcast and should have, blame the Vegas haze that I was in, is it ended very badly.

Like there were hard feelings in Miami when he left and the manner in which he left.

And Riley doesn't strike me as someone who gets over hard feelings particularly easily.

Now, winning and a superstar, papers over a lot.

I don't disagree with you.

Like, I don't,

LeBron's on the Lakers.

I've heard there's, it's kind of gotten quiet now after it was the talk of Summer League.

There doesn't seem to be like a clean solution either way.

Everyone's saying we should expect him to be on the Lakers.

That's my expectation.

But I agree with you.

Like on paper, there's a heat trade that is not crazy for either team.

Wiggins and Powell for unhappy LeBron in January and maybe some sort of pick swap, and maybe that's all it is.

As crazy as that sounds.

I think for the Lakers, Ware has got to be in it.

Like, just because I've gone out of my way to say I've got to get a rim runner that compare with Luca, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm trading arguably the greatest player of all time.

I got to hit the trade well.

And I think he'd be the piece that they'd have to get.

Well, the only thing,

if there would be real urgency to trade him, you know, he would have to start acting passive aggressively.

And

we've just never seen him do that over the course of his career.

I'm just going to let that

hang in the air there.

There's just been no evidence over the course of his career that he could use the regular season as a tool to try to make a transaction happen that he would be in favor of.

Do I think he wants to do that at the end of his life.

I can't think of any examples.

But do you think he'd want to taint the last X years of his career with his son on the team by doing that?

Trying to think.

Yeah, I can't really come up with any seasons where that happened.

Listen, they waived clutch client Jordan Goodwin

to sign Marcus Smart.

After he was recruited by Luka Donchich, and I was like, they're now antagonizing the LeBron side.

Like,

this is flat out antagonizing.

They can say what they want, but

think about the hold that Klutch and LeBron had over the Lakers for those first seven years to the point that they drafted his son, who had played 10 minutes a game in college.

And now it's gone full circle where it's all Luca, Luka, Luka, Luca.

Luca recruited.

I mean, you and Mahoney did, I thought you did the perfect breakdown of the Marcus Smart thing.

To expect him to guard anyone with speed who's a guard at this point of his career, good luck.

He also can't really shoot threes and is the kind of guy that's just a bad fit with a, with a LeBron Luca team.

I didn't like the move at all.

I would have rather had Jordan Goodwin, like for real.

I don't think Marcus Smart with Luca and LeBron and Austin Reeves makes sense to me at all because I need somebody who can actually guard all of the awesome guards that are in the NBA.

And guess what?

I still don't have the person after I did this marcus smart move i have the person who can guard bigger dudes who can be like let's throw him against yannis which by the way which matters it matters because lebron doesn't want to do that kind of bang and luca only wants to do it against the guy who's a non-threat they rui can do it but they need someone else and look marcus smart not

he's not a great three-point shooter but he's an oh he's a good enough catch and shoot three-point shooter on open looks which i think he's betting you're betting on the up like we know what jordan goodwin is i like jordan goodwin i said there's a universe where he's better than marcus Smart next year.

I think if you're the Lakers, you have to bet on, you just have to make a big bet that

we're a long shot to win the West to even make it plausible.

We've got to hit home runs on some things that on the fringes.

And like, this is a chance at that.

You're never going to hit a Jordan Goodwin home run.

He just, his body seems like it broke down to me.

I love Marcus Smart.

He was a great Celtic.

There's an interesting, would they retire his number case that I think if the season, if you have a season season three years from now that's going terribly, you could see it happen.

Um, he never won a title with them, but was one of the most beloved role player Celtics ever in my lifetime.

Um, I don't

think, did you see that?

I don't think his body can handle a nine-month season anymore.

Did you see that he said he expects to get booed in Boston?

No, never.

I mean, I saw, look, I saw it on, I saw it on Twitter.

I suspect everything is fake.

It didn't look fake to me.

It didn't look like an AI-generated quote.

But my reaction was like, dude, it's going to be a standing ovation.

It doesn't matter if you're on the Lakers.

People are going to go crazy for him when he comes back.

I have penciled in August 20th.

I put in my Apple calendar.

You see an Apple calendar?

I have a Google calendar.

I use an Apple calendar.

I penciled August 20th in for the day that I'm going to try to talk myself into DeAndre Aton on the Lakers.

I already did it.

I'm done.

I did it.

I got through it in early July.

Like you're officially like you've talked yourself into the scenarios?

I would say my thesis statement for DeAndre Ayton working is just this.

I think it's going to go better than expected.

That's as far.

I think it's going to work as well as the Lakers could reasonably hope it works.

I think he's going to have a decent offensive season and a decent defensive season.

I think if you're expecting him to be amazing, it's not going to work.

I think he's going to roll more.

I think he's going to play with a little more force.

He's an elite mid-range dumpshoter.

And I think any big man worth his salt who's embarrassed by being bought out by the freaking Blazers, and you could spin it like, oh, no, that's what I wanted.

I wanted to play on the winning team.

Whatever.

The Blazers were super excited to clear the way for their young centers.

And I want to talk about that before we get off.

I think he's good.

Luca and LeBron are going to make him look good.

He's going to be a productive offensive player the way he was in Phoenix.

And I think he's going to be, if your expectations are mocking him as dominating, and I'm a max contract guy, and I've done my share of mocking and mocking him for getting to the foul line once every two weeks, that's one of my go-to Aiton lines.

I think he's going to be better than that.

I think he's going to be a serviceable starting center for the Los Angeles Lakers to help their team.

Did you ever see the clip from the movie Scanners when the guy's head blew up?

I don't even know what that movie is.

It's a horror movie that came out in the early 80s, and it was by David Crotenberg.

And it had this famous scene where this guy's head exploded.

And it's one of the best best special effects scenes of the 70s, 80s, 90s.

The guy

and his head like explodes.

I think it's in play for J.J.

Reddick this year with Aiton.

With the combo of Aiton and passive-aggressive LeBron and Marcus Smart trying to guard point guards, this feels like it could, and Luca trying to play defense.

Like there are pieces of this where you could talk yourself into the Laker season going really good.

And there's a case for them to be a three-seed.

I also think there's cases.

They were just a three-seed.

I know.

And it could totally happen again.

I think there's also a case that J.J.

Reddick's head could explode in the sideline because of Aiton

when

you've watched him play basketball.

I have.

I say it both ways.

I do think, though, this is the type of team that could honestly kill J.J.

Reddit.

I'll just put it, I'm going DeAndre Ayton, 16 and 8, solid bounce back season.

That's the name.

16 and 8.

He does get rebounds.

You know, it's like, it's like Barkley's whole thing about you can't get three rebounds a quarter when he gets mad that like Jaron Jackson has five rebounds a game.

Aiden does get rebounds.

He'll grab them.

Luca seems like he's in better shape, but who knows?

We'll find out.

And the LeBron situation is just going to be really, really weird.

They have a lot of expirings and a lot of ways to make the roster better.

It seems like Luca's going to sign next month, which I think, you know, nobody's going to be surprised by.

I believe that's August 2nd as well.

All right.

So

February 15th what team is lebron on

safe bet is still the lakers right i mean like i i haven't heard enough

i haven't heard enough

actionable realistic stuff to go anything but lakers if you're telling me lakers versus field i think that's i'd still probably go lakers a little bit but until i hear something because

why would they ever buy him out

I don't think he has it in him to act out the way Jimmy Butler did to get out of his situations, passive aggressive, maybe, but I think you can live with that.

And I don't know that he wants to do that at the end of his career with his son on the team.

Even, even that level, like 2018 Cavs level, eye-rolling, passive-aggressive.

We've never been in a situation with a player as great as him before, where the focal point of the franchise he's on shifted to another guy.

I'm really interested to see where, like, I'm talking like the best parts of the world.

What's your

answer to the question?

What team is he on February 15th?

Dallas?

No, because I don't think there's any scenario where the Lakers buy him out.

He would have to really, really, to your point,

he would have to really push the envelope in a way that I just think it would be crazy for him to do.

Like he's a role model.

People love LeBron.

He's going to be a dick to try to get traded.

He'll do the passive aggressive stuff, but he's not going to do the outward.

He's not going to tank during games.

He's never going to do any of that stuff.

No.

I honestly would say Miami.

I don't know why.

I'm so sorry.

It's just like a weird gut feeling.

It's just, and I don't think the Riley stuff, yeah, it ended awful with them in Miami.

I don't think this stuff matters.

He went back to Cleveland after the Comic Sans letter and all that, all the shit that went on.

If it's the right move for both sides, and if Miami can look at it and go, holy shit, like we could actually win the East if we turn Wiggins and whatever else into LeBron.

And I don't know.

I encourage people, go back, listen to the Zach Low Show from last week.

I talked about it.

I was like, Hiro, Bam, LeBron, something.

Like, it wouldn't be like a terrible Eastern Conference.

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I know you may have other things to get to, but there are a couple other Summer League things I wanted that are

in your wheelhouse, much more than mine.

A summer league topic that came up quite a bit, given Yang Hansen's play, is

why is there like no buzz about who's going to buy the Portland Trailblazers?

So I ask you, you have a lot of ownership sources.

You're always good on this stuff.

Like, why is there, there's, there's like, even people within the Blazers that I talked to are like, I don't know, like, we haven't heard anything.

Like, what's going on?

This team is like allegedly in the beginning processes of being for sale.

It's an NBA team.

What's happening?

I heard there's a guy, and I heard it's going to go over four are the only two things I've heard.

Who's not going over three and a half or four at this point?

Well, but I think the consensus is it's going to be in the mid-threes, but I think it goes over four.

Let me ask you a question because there's, there's just not a lot of teams available.

This is, it's Portland.

It's maybe make a power play for New Orleans over overpay for New Orleans and then move them to seattle vegas and then other than that unless unless the rhinesdorf shock everybody and just sell the team for seven million what what other team is there let me ask you this i know you're you can't say who the guy is if you even know who the guy is but is it is it is it someone who already knows I'm not getting Vegas and I'm not getting Seattle if and when those things happen.

Is it somebody in that pool potentially?

Because

I think it is.

That wasn't the name i heard that i'm not going to say okay um the vegas one was really fun because there were so many groups for it i was ready for the game of thrones between all the groups and each group had like a famous person in it i was just very excited to see how that was going to play out but now if we're not going to have expansion um

you know if somebody hired me as a conciliary for all this stuff i would just be like just go after new orleans What is that's the move?

I know you've talked about it before, but now we've seen them play summer league.

Some time has passed since the draft.

What does Conspiracy Bill think of the Yang Hansen pick and the conspiracy theories that it was all a ploy, partly a ploy, let's say, to increase the valuation of the franchise?

So that was a Summer League combo, right?

That the combo of Dame,

because the Dame thing was nuts.

Like they paid $14 million this year not to play.

And I know it's great to have him back, but

it's just, I think the combo of those two things I thought was notable.

And the fact that you took Yang Hansen at 16 when you probably could have gotten him in the mid-late 20s, but you were so desperate to get him, you didn't want to fuck around.

Conspiracy Bill was activated.

There's no question.

Yeah.

Well, I think there's a lot of Chinese money in play, you know, like that.

We've just seen it with some of the players we've had in the league.

So, yeah,

I marked it.

Okay.

What was your other thing?

No, that's it.

I think that between that and Strahinya Jokic just lighting up Summer League all over the place, the big, scary Jokic brother appearing everywhere and scaring everybody.

I think, oh, the other one, the other one, there was a lot of like,

late in my Summer League visit, a lot of like, wait, what?

When did Paul George get injured again?

When did the surgery happen with Paul George?

I thought I just saw him walking around a casino somewhere.

Why did they announce it now?

What's happening with the Paul George injury?

What's there?

And just a lot of like, Sixers, what are you going to do?

Did the Embiid piece come out that was on ESPN.com when you were in Vegas?

It came out the last day I was there.

I left that afternoon.

I have no comment on the Embiid piece.

What does that mean?

I just have no comment on it.

You did

no comment

when a representative for Simmons was reached and said no comment,

you had a rant before

you did your little thing.

I have my little stupid rant.

I'm going to give to you for 40 seconds.

I don't understand.

So, Washington trades for Marcus Smart

and they get,

they trade expirings and they trade a 20, 25 second rounder for Marcus Smart, who's making like 20 million and then 20 million the next year.

But they got a first round pick, too, right?

They get Memphis's 2025 first, which at the time seemed like it was was going to be in the 20s and then memphis fell apart and it ended up being the 18th pick so on then they traded 18 for 21 and two seconds and they took will riley and then they bought out marcus smart for 6.8 million dollars

so basically

and we've seen teams do this a bunch

I guess that's the market for a non-lottery first-round pick.

You're paying whatever is left for the guy in the previous year, but you have the expiring, so it offsets.

But then the next year, you're paying.

So they basically paid $7 million

and their second rounder

to get the 18th pick in the draft.

Does that sound like the right price?

Because this happens all the time.

We're like, oh, yeah, but they got that pick.

It's like, is that the right price for a non-lottery first rounder?

And conversely, should they make a rule that teams can just pay whatever they want for somebody else's first rounder?

Like just no cap at all?

Like if the, if the Lakers wanted to pay $35 million

for Memphis's 18th pick, they could just do it.

Why do we have a cap on it?

Would teams actually pay?

What are the values of picks?

I just, it got my brain percolating.

I don't know if you have any thoughts.

So, people have studied trades over X amount of years.

And, like, what is what is the average financial valuation of a first-round pick?

Like, how much did the Nets just pay for the Nuggets 2032 first-round pick, right?

Right.

More than $7 million in a second-round pick for sure.

And I think those studies would probably conclude, again, you're hitting me with this off the top of my head, that that's actually kind of a cheap price to pay for the 18th pick, that that's probably a good deal cash-wise for the Whizzers.

Because the guy's making like three and a half, four million a year, and it's locked in,

has the chance to have upside of to be a real guy.

So it's like the four plus the seven that you paid.

So it's almost like getting a mid-level free agent.

I think it just the like on average, what do teams pay for a first-round pick and salary dumps, right?

How much dead salary does it take for me to get a lottery protected first-round pick?

I'm guessing that's a pretty cheap price overall for Washington to get that pick.

Your second idea broke my brain a little bit.

Obviously, there is a cap on the amount of cash in trades that you could use in a calendar at NBA year.

You're saying, should that cap just not apply to draft pick only trades?

Should we just, and then you just come into a thing like,

what is the price for your humiliation as a team?

Like, how much do you have to pay me to be able to go to my fans

and take the heat of like, yeah, sorry, we just sold the, I know you guys were like super excited about all the mock drafts and who we were going to take at 17.

And like, we actually need a player.

The Lakers just paid us $75 million.

How can we say, what's the price for your humiliation as a franchise owner

because it's humiliating it's humiliating to just it would be humiliating to go to your fans and be like yeah you know but look i mean i'm richer we're richer like the practice facility might be nicer

yeah but in soccer or as they call it in the uh in the european areas football

um

They have these transfer fees, right?

You develop some awesome player.

You have like Con Knipple, and he's the rookie of the year in year one.

It's like, wow, this guy's the next Clay Thompson.

And then the Lakers just buy him a year later for a $150 million transfer fee.

And people are used to that in soccer.

I think the CBA to me, the older I get, the more I stare at how they think about it, is all about just checks and balances with the owners against themselves in two ways.

One, to make sure that you don't end up becoming like Ishbia.

Like without the second apron, Ishbia, you're almost saving Ishbia from yourself.

It would be like if

I fed my dogs at four o'clock today and I just put all the dog food on the floor, my idiot dog Murph would eat all the dog food, right?

If you, if I put 20 pounds of dog food on the floor, he would eat all 20 pounds and then he would have diarrhea for like a week and a half.

That's kind of what the second apron is for a mad Ishbia.

What's the diarrhea in this metaphor?

Is it the stretch?

Is it the wave that you're talking about?

Yeah, it's the Bradley B.O.

seven pick swaps and 19 second round picks.

But so it's checks and balances on the one end.

And then the other end is that humiliation thing you mentioned, where

they don't want to give the smaller market owners either the chance to be humiliated because, like, OKC, Jalen Williams, they build him up and then he just leaves because they can't afford what the Lakers or Miami paid.

But then you also have to put owners in the position where they would just sell off shit, like they were selling off things in their attic or, you know, their car.

Honestly, I didn't hear anything you said after diarrhea.

I just, I just, I just, I just lost, I just like lost.

Checks about, well, I mean, this is the same thing.

Like, oh, wait, hold on, hold on.

I have a news flash.

The Clippers have just traded for 20 pounds of Murph's diarrhea.

It's going to be fine, though.

It's solidified.

It's hard.

I remember when they shortened contracts, right?

And like, that was the whole argument.

It's like, well, we got to save these owners from themselves.

Otherwise, it'll be like another seven-year, $120 million David Lee contract.

Like, it's like that, the saving the owners from the Steppe-In rule is about saving owners from themselves.

It's always checks and balances, and it gets more and more complicated with every, like, good luck reading some of the fucking pick swaps on Real GM.

Like, I don't know, can someone just tell me who gets what pick?

I don't understand.

This pick in the second and fourth.

Do you have a document?

I have a document.

I created a document that I rely on because it's so confusing.

I actually had to write all of it down with all the MAC in it.

I'm going to send it to you.

It's my little summer gift.

Are you upset that when we brought you to the ringer that we didn't do a recruiting trip?

We didn't have people calling you like Luka Donchich called Marcus Smart.

Should I have done that?

Yeah, I think you should have all come to my house.

And, you know, we should have done that.

Like, seven of you should have appeared at my front door with food and wine.

Like I know you's hyped, could have read.

Apparently, Joe House called Zach Lowe today, and they were on the phone for a half hour talking about how great the ringer is.

Drunk house or sober house?

Drunk house.

Or like drunk in an ambulance house?

Like

being carried out of a Chinese food restaurant house.

Here's my last thing, and then we'll go.

Bleach reported that top 100, whatever the point in Kobe was 11th, and everyone went crazy.

Yeah, I haven't looked at it.

That's the only thing I know about the whole list, by the way, is what you just said.

Kobe's 11th.

It's basically for the ninth spot, 9th, 10, 11, and 12, I guess.

It's Curry, Kobe, Jerry West, and Jokic.

And people, I'm not going to make the case today.

I'm not going to put you in the spot.

You've done no research, but

it's basically a Curry versus Kobe versus West argument.

And I thought it's interesting because people are just so stupid when they talk about the history of the NBA and it drives me crazy.

I don't even know why it bothers me.

But people are like, Kobe, 11th, that's nuts.

It's like, okay, well, make your list.

But it's the Curry versus Kobe versus West is so fascinating to me because it's these three different generations of guards.

And I think you could honestly make a case for any of them.

I think Curry's case, I thought Curry was going to pass Kobe.

and actually had him proactively in my pyramid ahead of Kobe.

But now I'm looking at the end of Curry's career.

And I think, I just think that's going to be an awesome historical argument as we get further and further away from it.

Because Curry's whole thing about how he's only made four first team all NBAs, that's like a like Kobe was first team all NBA like for freaking a decade and a half, it felt like.

But Kobe only won one MVP.

Curry has the four titles, Kobe has five.

Curry never got to play with anyone like Shaq, but he did get to play with Durant.

So he had the two Durant years, but Kobe had the three Shaq years.

And it's just a good battle.

And I think it's a more interesting argument than social media gave it credit for because it's one of them for that ninth spot, I feel like.

I'd have to go down and do it.

But having done it before,

like 11th doesn't feel wrong on its face.

And if you started to list the 10 guys above him, I bet it would be pretty, like at the very least, I mean, there's like seven that are just, they have to.

I'll give you the list just so people know.

Like, MJ, LeBron, Russell, Kareem, Magic, Bird, Duncan, and Wilt.

So eight guys.

It's really hard.

It's really hard to make.

Those eight guys have to be the eight in some way.

By the way, I am glad we've reached a point.

Not like you talked about Curry Kobe being a fun historical argument.

For a while, the go-to one was Duncan Kobe.

And I would always be like,

I love Kobe.

Like, it's not like Duncan, Duncan is a top whatever.

Like, Duncan's Duncan's above Kobe and has to be

yeah and you know the older we get we're gonna have to defend that one more and more but we were both there and it's just he has to be I mean Duncan you just won 50 plus games if he was on your team there was no F's ends or buts he made everyone better and I just he's now become the most underrated him and Hakeem I think are the two most underrated historical guys ever And there's some other guys.

Where's Shaq on the list?

I have.

Future report list.

I think Shaq might have been higher than 11.

I can't remember.

But Shaq's one that, as the years have passed, I think he's actually, his stuff has kind of gained steam.

Yeah.

I think Shaq has been largely underrated until the last few years, historically.

Like, there was just nothing you could do with Shaq.

It was just like

you had no defense for him other than Fallon.

Well, there's now Jokic is in that conversation, too.

And there's just a really fun Jokic, Shaq, Hakeem, Moses.

There's this whole tier of centers.

That would be fun to argue about it too.

But we should, I was thinking we should do a special podcast at one point where we just go Curry versus Kobe versus West and try to figure out once and for all.

Because West is the most, out of all those guys from the first 25 years

or first 30 years, I really think West is the one you could put in a time machine.

You could have just put him into basketball now and he would have been completely fine.

Even somebody like Russell, who is the greatest winner in the history of the league, they're still like, all right, he was 6'9, 210 pounds.

Like, like, I at at least want to see, couldn't really shoot.

I at least would have wanted to see how dominant he could have been compared to how dominant he was when he played.

West is like just fucking plug and play for 80 years in the league.

There's nobody like him, you know?

So anyway, we should do that at some point.

He's one of my favorite.

He's one of my, what, one of my favorite players of all time.

I've read every book about Jerry West.

I've gotten to talk to him on the phone and meet him, which is obviously an honor.

I think he's just like, I've said before, like when they, when people do who's the greatest Laker of all time, it's like, well, Magic, Kobe,

Kareem should get some love.

I'm like, I don't know, like Jerry West gets no love in this argument.

The guy's like a lifetime Laker,

all-time great player, great at every part of basketball, and made the finals a million times and

got the nickname Mr.

Clutch.

despite losing in the finals every goddamn year to the Celtics.

He was still so good.

Imagine that.

Imagine now you lose in the finals.

Everyone just makes fun of you.

Oh, you got no rings, no rings.

That dude was so good that he got the nickname Mr.

Clutch losing in the NBA Finals every year.

Right.

He won the 69 finals MVP.

He had Havicek inconsolable after he won the 69 title, being like, I feel so bad for Jerry West because he like literally did everything.

The one thing that he didn't have was he never won an MVP.

But I did this in my book.

He should have won the 1970 MVP.

It's like actually kind of crazy that he didn't.

So I feel like that's an honorary MPP.

Can I ask you one, just it's an unfair follow-up to this, but

it's another summer league conversation I had with one guy.

What's the ceiling on Jokic's all-time ranking?

How many more years

can he be at the level he's been at for the last five, in your opinion?

I mean, I don't see why it's not at least five more.

So if he does five more, I think he has to

be on that magic bird level

for connection to the teammates, success every year.

Probably needs,

you know,

it's funny.

The ring culture.

It's the most important thing.

But the ring culture thing has become stupid because it's like, guess what?

You know what matters?

Winning the title.

Because you were the best guy when you played in a season.

It's the best way we can figure out who the best guy was.

I'm sorry.

That still matters.

So I was listening long overdue, listening to the Steve Nash LeBron Mind the Game podcast about when the Rings Culture thing came up because I wanted to hear, I wanted to hear exactly what they said, full context.

I didn't want to hear the sound bite.

I didn't want to see the aggregation headline.

I want to hear what they said about ring culture, what LeBron said specifically.

And I texted Steve afterwards and I was like, man, I wish I had been in the room because I had like a lot of takes that I could have pushed back onto this.

But like, the other thing I said was: if Jokic wins one title and and that's it, he's going to be the ultimate sort of barometer for this because

the statistics are going to say he's a top whatever single-digit player of all time.

And how do we talk about him with only one ring?

Is it going to be like a Jerry West situation where we just sort of like, well, he's just that great?

But if he just gets stuck at one and he's, let's say he wins another MVP, he's a four-time MVP with one championship, and these statistics don't even make any sense.

How are we going to talk about him?

It's too early for that.

But, you know, I had, yeah, it's just, he's going to be an interesting test case.

Denver's got a shot to win it all this year for sure, probably the next year after that.

I think the big thing to remember when you talk about this stuff is what era was the guy in and how good was the league, how competitive it was, right?

Because when you talk about like the bird magic, magic, Magic was in the West that just they didn't have a lot of competition because of what happened to the Mavericks, what happened to the Rockets.

Um, any sort of big rival that was coming kind of got vanquished, and they were just in the finals year after year.

I sound like a Celtic fan, talking about the Lakers, but the Celtics were in that conference against Philly and then Milwaukee and then Detroit.

And we probably had five really good teams, and they kind of split all the rings up right between four teams.

I think now, when I look at the Jokic thing, I just think it's, I think it would be harder to do that.

I think winning

a guy winning three rings now in the 2020s with the especially the second apron stuff and i think it's would be even in a weird way more impressive because everybody's better at putting together a team and we also have more high-end talent right yannis has only won one title two lebron's won

he won in 16 and he won in 20 so he's won two in the last 10 years curry's won

He's won four, but that, I mean, that team was a historical fluke with what happened with the Durant ad,

right?

Upgrading from Barnes to Durant, we'll never we'll never see anything like that in our lifetime.

And I just wonder, like, is it just everybody's going to win one or two now going forward, unless OKC can figure out how to be dominant, right?

That maybe they're a historical fluke.

I don't know, but don't you just feel like we have too many good players for somebody and the sport's too hard to play.

These injury variables, like I, that's another piece, like, just to stay healthy

almost feels like you need more luck than ever.

You agree?

Yeah, I mean, you look at just who's won all the multiple rings in the last

look at who's won all the multiple rings in like the last 15 years or whatever.

It's like whatever teams LeBron on and the Warriors with their four in a short span of time, two of which were with Durant and an all-time, one-time only cap swag.

And then you have the Spurs who won, you know, five over an enormous period of time, which is in its own, you know, there's only one guy that was on.

And that's a perfect example.

They won five and really could have won seven, but you go back and look at some of those teams and those teams just wouldn't have won titles in the league that we have now.

You, you couldn't have won a team, you could have won a title in 2003 with Duncan in his prime, but then Robinson in a back brace, super duper young Tony Parker in rumors that they're trying to get Jason Cade instead of him.

Manu is not even close to Manu yet.

You go through, it's like, how did that team even win the title?

It was just the league was way, way, way weaker.

And it just was, you know, like people from that era probably pushed back on it, but it just was.

Like, go look at some of the teams we've had this decade.

The teams are, you know, I think way deeper.

Even a team like Indiana, which was unconventional,

they had real depth.

Like, think about that 2012 Celtics team.

that was playing Michael Pietras and Brandon Bass.

I was going to say Brandon Bass mid-range jumpers.

Or the 2010 Celtex that was relying on Rasheed Wallace for 36 minutes in game seven of the finals.

Like nobody had depth like we have now.

So I just think it's going to be way harder.

Brandon Bass was guarding LeBron in game seven of the 2012 conference finals like on purpose.

I kind of like Brandon Bass.

I thought like he's one of those guys that just where the league went, he was one of the casualties that kind of six foot six out

15 foot kind of post-up game didn't have three.

Yeah, he was one of those.

Anyway, I could talk about this all day.

Sack low, you got podcast tomorrow.

You're breaking out in the east.

I didn't look.

What is the Celtics over-under, by the way?

I'm nervous.

Ooh, 43 and a half.

Seems high.

That's not out though.

Yeah, we're going to break down the east, and we're going to have another.

JJ's coming out for Mets Corner.

Mets Corner is taking off.

Everyone's favorite baseball segment.

You didn't go to

David Wright Day, did you?

No,

I was planning to, and then we had to change our plans.

I was going to be at the Sunday game, so it wasn't going to be, it was David Wright weekend.

It was going to be the end of David Wright weekend, but I did not end up going.

We have tickets.

We're going to Old Timers Day in mid-September for sure when they're bringing back.

They're doing Team Shea versus Team City Field

in mid-September.

So hopefully the team is still in contention at that point.

I'm not sure.

All right.

Thanks to Zach Lowe.

Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well.

I'm going to be back on Sunday with another podcast.

And then we have a very fun rewatchables on

Monday.

There's rumors you might be on a rewatchables in August before you disappear.

I sent you a list of

candidates.

That's for sure.

All right.

Good to see you, Zach Lowe.

Have fun, guys.

I don't have

a few years with him.

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