Most Intriguing Players Next Season with Howard Beck, and All Things Mavericks With Tim Cato

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All right, coming up on a loaded episode of the Zach Lowe show, we got a lot to talk about.

We got Howard back.

We're going to draft our most intriguing players for the season.

Rapid fire.

Go through the whole league.

Who are we intrigued by?

We're going to outline the rules.

This is a column I used to write every year at ESPN.

We're bringing it back in podcast form, at least version one right now.

We're going to talk about a million teams.

We're going to talk about a cryptic LeBron James Instagram post.

Everybody loves those or a LeBron adjacent Instagram post.

Anyway, Billy Donovan.

We'll talk about the Bulls for 25 seconds.

Max, I think.

Billy Donovan got a contract extension.

Then Tim Cato of DLLS Sports.

That's Dallas Sports.

Basically, used to cover the Mavericks for the Athletic.

Now he's with them.

We're going to talk about the Mavs.

A lot of meat on the bone for the Mavs.

Yeah, the Luka trade happened.

It's not quite water under the bridge.

The water is still flowing somewhere.

We're going to talk about the remnants of the team.

How good can Cooper Flag be right away?

I'm super, duper high on Cooper Flag.

How good could the Mavs be this season with Kyrie missing part of it, all of it?

We'll see.

What about next season and the season after?

Those are the ones that really matter for the Mavs championship window, alleged championship window.

Is there a real championship window?

We're going to talk all things Dallas Mavericks.

We got Howard Beck.

We got Tim Cato coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

Hope you all enjoy it.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

What up, Beck?

Wow.

Cutting right to it.

We are all about business today.

What up, Zach?

How are you?

I'm good.

Going to Europe in four days, knocking out some podcasts before I go.

Taking my microphone just in case.

Howard Beck, today I said we're going to do our most intriguing players for the season I picked six why because I've always picked six this is a column I wrote annually dating back to maybe even sports illustrated but definitely Grantland definitely ESPN it was filed in the can ready to go when ESPN made their decision to part ways with me it never ran last year my rules for this column are as follows you can't pick rookies You can't pick second year guys.

We're all intrigued by these kinds of players.

And you can't pick established stars.

Because like, yeah, I'm intrigued by how Luca looks in shape.

Luca looks with the Lakers this year.

We're all intrigued by that.

You got to find the sweet spot.

We're going to do a rapid fire, and we're going to do a draft.

And because I'm a benevolent host, I have given you the first pick.

Howard Beck's most intriguing player of the season.

Benevolence has always been a trademark of yours, Zach.

But people say.

I do have a quick question.

Have you revealed who the most intriguing players would have been last fall?

Let me see if I can rattle it off.

Shaden Sharp, Mark Williams.

I'm already stuck.

Some other guys.

Some other guys.

Those were two of the six.

Is the Word document in your possession or your former employers?

No, I haven't.

You know what?

So you could look it up.

Let me see.

Because it's not like I've written a lot.

I'm dying to know if they actually ended up being as intriguing last season as you hoped they'd be.

Shaden Sharp and Mark Williams both.

Mark Williams became intriguing for all the wrong reasons because of a rescinded trade.

Well, I would say the right reasons, too.

Well, yes.

He was having a pretty good season up until that point.

Jalen Johnson.

Oh, good.

Great call.

Trey Murphy III.

Phenomenal call.

Shaden Sharp.

Mark Williams.

Jalen Duran.

And Keon Ellis is a nod to role players.

And I had great material from Keon Ellis.

Just fantastic.

Just great.

Great interview.

Keon Ellis was awesome.

Never ran.

Too bad.

Howard Beck, make your pick.

Enough foreplay.

How about Cam Johnson?

How about Cam Johnson?

Good.

That's a good first pick.

Tell me why.

So, the outline of him, and certainly what he was in Phoenix while playing for a team that went to the finals as one of the core players on that team, the outline of him, I think, is an improvement over Michael Porter Jr., not just financially, salary cap-wise, but as a player.

I think he's a better passer and playmaker than Michael Porter Jr.

I think he has been a better defender, certainly in Phoenix, maybe not so much in Brooklyn, but duh, it was Brooklyn.

They had nothing to play for.

That team was just in a state of constant transition.

I don't expect to see him at his best there.

I do expect to see him at his best defensively with the Nuggets.

He had the highest usage of his career last season, I believe,

in Brooklyn.

So he got to spread his wings a little more.

You have to kind of pull back a little bit then when you go into the Jokic Murray ecosystem.

But, you know, he's coming off a career high in scoring.

We know he's a great three-point shooter, 39%, I think, for his career.

And you expect that's only going to go up when you're getting wide open shots next to Nikolai Jokic.

I just think he's a clear upgrade for them.

And if the Nuggets have a chance to challenge the Thunder, part of it's going to be his arrival combined with some of the other additions.

The Nuggets do have a chance to challenge the Thunder because they still have the best player in the world who appears to be happier about his horses horses winning races than he is about anything that happens in the NBA.

What a heartwarming clip, assuming it was not AI.

I assume everything is AI now, including pregnant LeBron James apparently became a thing.

I don't know.

I don't understand.

I don't understand.

I just don't understand what's happening.

I really don't.

There are some things we should not understand and don't need to understand.

But

the argument against them having a chance is the Thunder will continue to get better, but I think the Nuggets did a great job in the offseason.

I think Cam will be an A-plus fit on offense.

I remember citing his drives per 100 possessions were like 12 or 13

compared to Michael Porter Jr., who was like three or four.

And I think that kind of symbolizes the difference in the ability to keep the machine move.

He's not as tall.

I think defensively,

it might be a little better than a wash

for the Nuggets.

I think he'll probably perk up there too.

He's less huntable one-on-one than Michael Porter Jr., although he's not going to stay in front of the quickest guys.

I will say, Michael Porter Jr.

is a better rebounder, and when he was engaged, he could offer a little bit of rim protection, rotating along the back line, that aggressive scheme that the Nuggets like to play behind Jokic.

So, but I think it'll be a good fit.

Okay, and salary-wise, it allowed them to do everything else.

My number one pick, which I guess means this is my single most intriguing player in my intriguing players, whatever for the season, is Asar Thompson from the Detroit Pistons.

Missed a lot of last season with, what did he have, a blood clot?

I think he had something.

And

I just think in general, the

physicality and intensity of that Knicks Pistons series is going to be so good for all the young players on the Pistons who live through it.

And

I think Detroit is going to be as good and probably better than they were last season.

I like their offseason.

Bill and I have argued about this.

But my number one reason for Detroit optimism is I just think Asar Thompson has a chance to be really, really good and really good sooner than people think.

Offensively, he's obviously very raw, although he's flashed some ball skills and the ability to bully smaller guys.

But number one, the Jalen Duran-Asar Thompson interior passing-cutting connection was like a real thing in the playoffs.

You send two at Cade, Kade dumps it to Duran, Duran's a good passer, Asar is a great cutter along the baseline, and Detroit sort of sets up the floor so he's on the same side with their best shooter, and And that shooter is lifting up toward the top.

And the whole side is clear for Asar Thompson.

And by the way, cutters, really good athletic cutters, have gravity

in a similar way have shooters.

If you go back and watch that Knicks series, you will catch Knicks' assistant coaches pointing to where Asar Thompson is on the baseline, being like, you are too far away from him.

You got to help.

Because if he catches this ball, he's going up.

and he's going to finish in traffic.

And that opens up stuff for the shooters behind him.

He's an insane offensive rebounder.

He got nine and a half free throws per 36 minutes in the playoffs.

Nine and a half.

He's just an absolute force of nature attacking the rim.

And I think there's a lot of levers the Pistons can pull with him if they trust him to do it.

Like if he's going to be guarded by smaller guys, put him in ball screens with Cade.

Get switches.

Same if he's going to be guarded by bigger guys.

If his defender is going to ignore him, use him here and there like the Warriors would use Draymond Green.

Have him set a handoff for a guy, for Duncan Robinson coming off a screen, for a shooter, for Cade, for whoever.

I just think he's an incredibly exciting player.

The defense, he's just going to be a monster on defense across every position.

We'll see how much on-ball or pseudo-on-ball stuff he can add.

But I'm just really intrigued by him.

And I think with a season under his belt, a playoffs under his belt.

I'm not saying like all-star or anything.

That's a long way away considering he's mostly sort of a garbage man on offense, but he's going to be really, really good really, really soon.

How about all defensive team good along with his brother?

In April, when I was doing my usual make the rounds, talk to scouts and executives and others to try to like just get some perspective on all the balloting, especially with the defensive awards, which I think are always the hardest.

One made the point to me or the assertion to me, I should say, that

And Asar Thompson was not eligible based on the games played rule.

Asar is going to be better than a men defensively, not offensively.

A men is obviously miles ahead of him, but that Asar will be the better defender.

And then it was kind of a wait, will wait, wait and see what you see when we get a full season, when we see a full season out of him.

Who am I to disagree?

But that was an assertion made that kind of stuck in my head.

And he was on my theoretical list of guys that I almost brought up for this exercise.

But also, by the way, by the way, it's because of Asar and the upside there and not only him, but many others there that I thought you and Pina maybe had the pistons a little low.

You and Bill might have too.

Also, it seems like everybody's a little hesitant to call them a top four team in the East.

I think you had them in the next tier down.

I had them fifth in the East.

Okay,

kind of in Sharpie.

Yeah.

Like it's like they're not going to be sixth or worse if they're healthy.

Yeah.

Top four, absolutely in play.

Someone takes an injury.

The Hawks, who who I'm going to get to later, perform below expectations, which is generally what the Hawks do.

Like, absolutely.

Home court advantage.

Orlando sputters on offense.

Paolo misses 20 games.

Like, top four is absolutely in play for the Pistons.

I just, one, one area where Asar is not far behind a men, and I don't like comparing the brothers, but whatever.

on offense is passing.

He's a really good passer for his role.

And if he can get slips to the basket, he's a good interior passer.

He knows where his shooters are.

He's unselfish.

Love Asar Thompson.

Okay, make your second pick.

I'm just going to stay on theme or on point here.

Jaden Ivey.

So everything, and again, you guys touched on this, I think, a little bit.

You and Bill touched on this because he's down in their offseason.

He's down in Karis Lavert, and you were making the case for this actually being a good offseason, if for no other reason than,

I mean, they did pick up Lavert and Duncan Robinson, but they get Jaden Ivey back.

Jaden Ivey, averaging 17, four, and four last season through 30 games before he broke his leg.

He was on pace for career highs in points, field goal percentage, three-point percentage, rebounds.

So there's a lot to like about the outline of Jaden Ivey and has been since the moment they drafted him.

But the reason I bring him up as a player of intrigue is because I think there are still some doubts across the league about his fit next to Cade, his fit in general, his kind of mindset when he's got the ball in his hands and how much is he going to need the ball and how much is he willing to play off the ball.

And so,

you know, they also, they lose Dennis Schroeder, who I think was an important presence, not just as a three-point shooting, but his just kind of harassing, annoying, pestering defense.

And somebody kind of needs to bring that in Schroeder's absence now.

I don't know that's Jaden Ivey's reputation, but he certainly has the athleticism and the ability to do that.

Can he...

be a reliable enough three-point shooter to be playing off the ball as much as he probably should be, needs to be.

uh,

he was shooting 40% when he went down last year.

45% on catch and shoot threes last year.

That's not sustainable, but it's, but it's a

the trend line's pointing the way you want it to point if you're a pistons.

It is, but it's also a tiny sample size.

And I'll, uh, I will always keep in mind what the analytics guys always tell us, which is that if you have a guy who's a bad three-point shooter and he has even a single full season of suddenly making a big leap, even that season is not enough to stabilize statistically.

So you just never know if that spike spike is something sustainable or for real.

But

everything breaks right and he does all these things, fits well next to Cade, everything else.

And he's coming back to, it's an interesting thing that happens with young players sometimes, especially young players that have a very high expectation of what their role will be.

When they're out and their team succeeds without them and you observe all that time.

Sometimes you come back a little bit wiser about the way to deploy your skills and you see where you fit in or where you where you can make yourself fit in as opposed to trying to do too much right so hopefully the time he's spent out has you know given him some a sense too of like what his best role is next to cade and in that lineup and if everything breaks right yeah like i this is a really good team it's funny that he didn't make my list because i like three episodes ago i called him the single most intriguing player in the eastern conference

because i do think

biggest big picture

whether he's the off guard of the future for the pistons is maybe the most important thing they have to figure out about their team.

And although he showed signs of being that kind of player next to Cade,

their numbers together were not good, have not been good, were not good last year.

I think I'm kind of throwing those out given that it was a very limited sample last year and before that, they were just a bad team.

He showed a willingness to get off the ball.

Like I remember looking at the stats a couple weeks ago.

He averaged, I'm just ballparking it.

He averaged like 45 pick and rolls per 100 possessions when Cade was off the floor and the offense gets to belong to him.

And like 12 or something when Cade was on the floor.

That's as big of a difference as you'll see in any player anywhere in the league.

And he showed a willingness to be like, yeah, I'll be the second side guy.

Cade, you run a pick and roll with Duran and I'll come off the pin down, hit me on the left side, I'll attack with my strong hand and get to the rim and do something.

And it's just, to me, the question is more about

who guards who on defense.

And I do think that Ivy has the ability to be a good defender.

And does he have enough feel to make those plays in traffic as the second sideball handler?

But I think it's interesting.

He's also extension eligible.

Okay.

My second pick in the most intriguing draft.

Kagua!

Anieka Okangwu.

Yeah, Anieka Okangwu.

Deep cut for the second pick.

But if you are a fan of the Atlanta Hawks offseason, If you had the Atlanta Hawks in a tier that you called, I called, could plausibly make the finals out of the East.

You have to get a very strong Anieca Kongu season on both ends of the floor.

I have him penciled in as the Hawks starting center.

He kind of blew up in the last couple of months of last year, scoring up, rim running up, passing up, shot some threes, 35% on corner threes, baby steps, baby steps, baby steps.

Defensively, just okay.

And he's undersized.

He's not a a force at the rim that anybody is really scared of, but he's fast.

He's switchy.

And the Hawks have fast, switchy, long defenders all around Trey Young.

And if Onyka Kongu can dial in, he made steps as a defensive rebounder last year and an offensive rebounder.

To me,

there's a level of seriousness you need as a defense to compete in the playoffs.

Galen Johnson has it.

Dyson Daniels has it.

I think Reese Shea will get there with his profile.

Trey is always going to have to be a guy who people cover for, but there's a level of

seriousness he can get to and sometimes did last year.

I'm at least trying to stay in the scheme.

Akongwu

is the keystone that's going to have to make a lot of it work.

And he showed, again, he's fast.

He's just not a huge rim deterrent, but there's something there.

And offensively,

they let him spread his wings a little bit last year.

He's a good passer in four-on-three four-on-three situations.

Like you double Trey, he knows where, where guys are.

He's going to have to learn to play around like a Trey Jalen Johnson pick and roll where Jalen Johnson gets the middle of the floor.

He's got to do more than just stand in the corners.

Nobody's going to guard him there.

Can he cut?

Can he come in for offensive rebounds?

And a lot of that comes down to, I watched a lot of film on Okangu, and the Hawks really have just like, he's a pretty good ball mover.

Daniels is a really good ball mover.

Jalen Johnson Johnson is an elite ball mover for a power forward.

Reese Shea has really good instincts as a cutter and maybe a secondary, third-level passer.

Like they have the potential for kind of a more dynamic, unpredictable offense than people give them credit for.

And it just, it's just going to be about Trey kind of buying into that kind of vision, trusting that, yeah, when I give it up, I'll get it back a lot.

This will be better for the team because there's a lot of interesting ingredients here.

I think it's just a lot of stuff, a lot of ifs have to go right.

A lot of stuff has to click into place

for them to really hit the kind of ceiling that I think they could have.

The more ifs you pile up,

the lower the odds or the worse the odds of all of them clicking right.

So I think this probably is a team like, I don't think they're going to make the finals.

I don't think they're even going to make the conference finals, but you never know.

They could definitely make the conference finals.

But a lot of it to me centers on a Kongu.

And is he like,

is he going to get super serious as a backline defender, as someone who just buys all the way in?

Where are my arms?

Are my arms in passing lanes or are they down by my side?

Because he's got good balance, good speed.

They'll play him with Porzingus quite a bit, I think, at the four.

We'll see how that works.

But I just, does he have another level in him than even he showed last year is a massive question to me.

I'm wondering.

I didn't see that one coming.

I'm wondering, too, just in the event that we get a, I don't know, reasonably healthy season from Porzingus, and I certainly hope he's over whatever that illness was that just completely sapped him.

He looked so sad.

Were you there

at the end of that series at the garden?

I don't think so.

No.

So I poked into the locker room that night and Porzingis was holding court.

It was, I think, the night they made, must have been the night they got eliminated.

And he just seemed so...

Disconsolate.

It's too strong a word, but he just was bewildered.

Like, I don't know what's going on.

I don't know what's happened to my body.

And And from everything I've heard, he's fine now.

Bumped into somebody at Summer League, and from what I'm gathering,

he's fine.

He's good.

But he's also had trouble keeping staying healthy, period.

In the event that he has a reasonably healthy season by Christoph Sporzingus standards, what is the balance there?

Because he has all the rim protection that a Kong would not have

spreads the floor.

That's the balance.

He could usurp the starting spot.

Yes.

And this pick could end up being a stupid pick by me, or

because it's Crips Porzingis and you don't want to overplay him, even if he does usurp the starting spot.

And by the way, I can't wait to see how all those dynamic screeners, cutters, ball movers who are shaky shooters look with a shooting five rounding out the lineup and Porzingis.

If that does happen, Okangu is still going to play 25 minutes a game.

He's going to share the floor with Porzingis a little while.

He's still going to be very important.

I just think he's kind of.

I think his rise in the last two months of last season went under the radar.

His whole career, other than when he briefly, not briefly, like he's guarded Giannis as well as everybody in the league.

I guess that's probably the thing he's most known for.

I think he's a pretty good player that has to be better than pretty good for the Hawks to go where they want to go.

Sure.

Yeah.

Make a pick.

Third pick.

This is your third pick?

This is my third pick.

Have we gone west yet?

I don't know.

You've lost track.

I'm not sure what you like.

You're a free man.

I'm going to go to the Bay Area because I I love the Bay Area.

I'm from the Bay Area.

It's a wonderful place.

Brandon Pajemski.

Did not even make my long list.

Not even the long list.

Here's the thing.

As I was doing this exercise that you threw at me over the weekend, and as I eliminated all the players that are ineligible for your list,

I'm trying to get players who are like intriguing and where their development or their ability to pop or their ability to fit or whatever

is going to have obviously consequences right and hopefully consequences at the highest level i don't know the warriors are going to be a contender again during the steph curry era uh i think a lot of us hope they will just because it's fun to watch steph curry deep in the playoffs and it's fun to think of the idea of steph and jimmy butler and draymond green somehow making one more run but that's not happening if the young guys don't do something

Kuminga is still, as we sit here at 1256 Eastern Standard Time, Eastern Daylight Time, on July 28th, Jonathan Kuminga is still unsigned, and we don't know if he's coming back or if he's going to be in a sign and trade.

He's probably coming back, but who knows?

Whatever.

If they were able to sign and trade him, what's coming back for him?

Is there a move to make during the season?

In the meantime,

what can they get from Moses Moody?

What can they get from Brandon Pajemski?

What can they get from

various assorted young pieces?

Because

this can't just be the Stephen Jimmy show for 82 games.

Jimmy never plays a full season.

Brandon Pajemski was good enough to kind of nudge Clay Thompson out of the lineup a couple seasons ago, and then good enough that they were comfortable in signing trading Clay and saying goodbye to that era.

He's a very good three-point shooter.

He's a decent playmaker.

He's a willing passer.

The coaches love him for his high basketball IQ, his feel for the game.

Somebody else needs to do some stuff with the ball in their hands.

And there's kind of a dearth of that in this rotation.

And if it's not him, I don't know who it is.

A full season of Jimmy there eases some of the burden on Steph, but I also imagine

they're already going to try to

stagger those guys a little bit.

So they've always got an all-star caliber playmaker type out there.

Somebody else needs to be really good with the ball in their hands and then be able to knock down shots and maybe defend a little bit.

And I think, you know, if you're looking at it through the Warriors lens that they're hoping that they get the Pajemski they saw flashes of two seasons ago and at times last season, even some moments in the playoffs, as opposed to the Pajemski who just kind of trudged his way through the first part of last season.

I think it's a good pick.

I didn't even consider him because I just don't see a universe where the Warriors are like legit inner circle contenders,

maybe for the rest of the Steph era.

Top four?

Do they have a shot at top four this season?

I mean, some things would have to go wrong in some places.

Those three top teams, I mean, Minnesota, you know what?

You have to put Minnesota in that group, too, with Denver, Houston, and Oklahoma City.

I mean, those are

really, really good teams.

I know the Warriors' record was extraordinary with Butler and Curry.

They're just getting older.

Every day they're getting older.

They will add some players.

I still think Horford is probably going there.

Anthony Melton hasn't sent anywhere yet.

I think we can, you know, there's some tea leaves to be read there.

Everybody in the Bay Areas penciling those guys in is pretty much automatic, it seems like.

And so they'll be solid, they'll be good.

And Pods is a good pick because

how much more does he have in him as

the two timelines thing falls away into a complete fallacy that never really happened, depending on what Kaminga brings back or what he brings them.

If he takes the qualifying offer or goes back under some kind of deal that's palatable to him, who knows?

Pods last year deserves a lot of credit.

He finished at 37% from three and

took five a game, basically,

which is more than he took as a rookie.

And with the exception of about a week when he looked kind of afraid to shoot or unwilling to shoot, he shot and played his way through a really horrible slump where he had to answer a lot of questions about stuff that his team's owner said about him being an all-star that he didn't say.

He probably did want said and just got said and put this sort of halo of pressure over him.

Pods is a really good basketball player.

He does a lot of things really, really well.

He averaged 12 points a game last year and 27 minutes a game

i i can he get to like 17 or 18 at some point when steph and jimmy are still

in the telltale end of being really good productive players maybe i i don't see pods popping into like a 24 point a game 21 point a game score but can you get to 17 18 take a little bit more of a load i think it's a good pick but he's a really good player um

all right my turn i know you picked scoot henderson so i'm not going to steal scoot from you you.

You can take Scoot whenever you want.

I'm going to go to a pick.

This is the first ever player to make this column or exercise twice in his career.

He made it, I think, three seasons ago as a member of the New York Knicks and is making it again as a member of the Toronto Raptors.

Emmanuel quickly, welcome back.

to the most intriguing players analysis.

You should have graduated from this by now.

However, you have played in the last two seasons 38 and 33 total games.

I'm sorry, no, 68 and 33 total games, 71 games total for the Raptors over the last two seasons.

And

for all the attention on Brandon Ingram and his extension,

you know, two years, 40, 41.

And Scotty Barnes and, oh my God, they maxed out Scotty Barnes.

He's the guy.

Did they make him the guy too fast?

In doing so, did they alienate a couple of their veterans?

Is he really that good?

Blah, blah, blah.

All legitimate, you know,

concerns.

Colin Murray Boyle is very exciting.

Jaka Pertle, just they can't get, they can't, they can't quit Yaka Pertle.

They'll just keep paying Yaka Pertle more and more money for as long as he wants to be in Toronto.

He's pretty good.

R.J.

Barrett, does he have any trade value?

Is he a throw-in?

I still think Emmanuel Quickley is the linchpin in any of this working out for the Raptors in the next two or three years.

I can see the vision.

I can see why they targeted him when they traded OG Anadobi.

He is

a good shooting point guard who can play off the ball and on the ball, but you don't want him to play on the ball all the time because he's not a good enough passer and he's not big enough.

But as a partner to Scotty Barnes, he's got the right mix of skills.

He's at 40% on catch and shoot threes.

for about the last three seasons combined.

That's a very good number.

38% on pull-up threes in the last two seasons.

That's a very good number.

The dude can shoot.

He can screen for Scotty Barnes.

Their two-man game both ways should be a powerful weapon despite the complete lack of spacing around it, which is a problem.

Defensively, he's got a dial all the way in, but he's got the tools to be pretty good.

I voted him a six-man of the year the year Brogdon won it when he was with the Knicks.

We just haven't seen, he just hasn't played enough in Toronto.

He hasn't played enough with Toronto's core guys to quell my curiosity.

I am still curious about how this fits.

I see what they were going for.

However, he makes $32.5 million

in each of the next four seasons.

It's got to work to make that contract palatable to the rest of the league if they ever want to pivot.

And I just think if this is going to amount to anything, I think Emmanuel Quickly might be

is the swing piece and the most important piece in all of it sort of clicking into place so emmanuel quickly you are back in the column please stay healthy please find the right balance in your game because i think i think it's in there and i think at least that piece of it could work if they haven't surrounded it with enough shooting then maybe it's dead on arrival anyway and this is just going to be a mediocre team not a bad team just mediocre team but i just i want to see it i still want to see it so i'm intrigued i think it's okay for a guy to be a two-time intriguing player list guy.

Like you could be intriguing at various stages of your game.

It's not like you've been demoted.

This This is not like being held back in high school and you had to repeat your sophomore year or something.

You could be good and intriguing, bad and intriguing, struggling and intriguing.

You're just intriguing.

That's a compliment.

And again, like I've said this before about the Raptors.

Their bench, first of all, their starting five is a lot of high-wattage names.

Does it work as a unit?

We're going to see.

Their bench is a lot of question marks, low-wattage names, inexperienced players like Grady Dick a lot.

Murray Boyles is going to get chances.

They're going to have such an ex, they should at least have such an extreme staggering with two of those four ball handling starters playing together with the bench, Quickly, Barrett, Ingram, Barnes.

And I just like, Quickly's got to be a huge factor in that, obviously.

I don't even know who best pairs with whom.

Do you tether Quickly and Barnes together?

Do you, I don't know what the right, what the right

sort of calculus is, but he's a very interesting player that has kind of been a little forgotten.

Yeah, I liked him a lot with the Knicks.

I liked him as a centerpiece.

There was even some argument at the time about

which of the Knicks pieces that they got was the more heartbreaking one for Knicks fans because R.J.

Barrett seemed to have kind of leveled off and IQ was like incredibly popular here.

So

I love his upside.

I think I might have had him a hair behind Brogdon on that ballot.

I can't remember for sure.

But he was phenomenal.

And yes, he's got the defensive chops and I think the defensive desire to make him a really good point of attack defender.

And I don't know what the Toronto Raptors are doing with that starting lineup at all.

But you know, it's, it seems to me like this has been kind of like the Raptors just kind of,

let's just collect whatever we can collect for the next few years and see how it pans out.

Like that's the Brandon Ingram thing, right?

Like it's just a, he's available.

We don't know where we're going.

We might as well, let's just grab talented players and see how it all pans out.

But yeah, I don't, I don't really like the fit of, of that whole lineup together.

And I would like you, you mentioned staggering.

Like, I almost feel feel like that, like, you know, this is going to be one of those teams where, like, your best bet is five minutes in.

You're, you should already be like switching up.

By the way, that's fine.

That's fine.

A lot of teams are built that way.

I don't, I think the fit is blurry, but talent can overcome fit.

There's a lot of talent.

Like, I think this, I think that five-man combo, I bet it works a little bit better than expected.

I bet they, I'll just pin a number on it right now.

I'll bet that five-man lineup is plus 2.8 per 100 possessions for the season.

I'm going to put it at plus 2.8, which doesn't sound great,

but it was minus in its over the four-man group of it without Ingram, obviously, was minus.

So maybe plus 3.2.

I'll go plus 3.2.

Optimistic.

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Who do you want to pick now?

Well, I mean, you, you, uh, I spoiled Scoot, huh?

You spoiled Scoot.

Might as well go Scoot, right?

It's a must-pick.

If there's a player that has to be in this exercise, it's Scoot Henderson.

So you can explain.

I mean, I'm going to do this

through a slightly personal-ish lens.

As you know, I've been actually teaching a class for the last week or so.

And one of the things I just talked about with the students today was

the dispassionate approach we have to take as journalists.

I have no emotional investment in the outcome of games or in anybody's careers.

But that said, we do get to know people, right?

And there are people that you like.

And I got to do one of the first real in-depth profiles of Scoot when I was at Sports Illustrated a few years ago.

And I went down and I visited him and his family in

suburban Atlanta and suburban Marietta.

And it was

wonderful, wonderful family.

And Scoot at that time, he's just come off of his junior year of high school, right?

He's skipping his senior year to go straight to the G League Ignite.

Hashtag RIP, G-League Ignite.

And this is one of those cases where I got to write a report on somebody, a top prospect at an early stage.

And I just like him.

I like Scoot Henderson as a person.

And I also saw, you know, I was in the gym for a couple of days there.

I spent a lot of time around him, the family, and you could see the alley.

He had

an NBA player's body as a 16, 17-year-old in high school.

He just looked like he was made for the NBA at that moment.

And the three-point shot shot in the gym looked phenomenal.

As you and I both know, you can see guys shooting with no defenders, and this is why workouts are sometimes, you know,

throw teams for a loop because a guy shooting in an empty gym, everybody hits all their threes.

He looked great.

He was making deep threes even.

It's been bumpy in Portland.

It's been really bumpy, but the whole franchise has been bumpy.

And now Dame is back.

And it was like, is he Dame's understudy?

Well, now Dame's gone.

Does he have the reins?

Well, you know, are they building around him?

Are they building around Shaden Sharp?

Were they building building around Anthony Simons?

There hasn't been a clear direction there.

Now Drew is there, Holiday.

Dame is back, but injured.

If nothing else,

for the next couple of years, Scooter is going to have the, and assuming nothing changes, the greatest mentorship in the world.

Like Chauncey Billops, Hall of Fame point guard.

Dame Lillard, Hall of Fame point guard.

Drew Holiday, I don't know how to judge whether he'll ever be in the Hall of Fame, but championship,

just great guard, guard.

smart, thoughtful people who really understand the game and his position at the most granular level.

He could not possibly have a better NBA education at this stage.

So without getting into the nitty-gritty details, which I'm sure you will in a second anyway, because you have them on your list too,

I think the outline of a really good player or great player is there.

And I was never willing to give up on him in part because, yeah, sometimes when you report and write on a guy, you start to feel like, all right, I have this weird sort of investment where I want to see him succeed.

And I'm very curious to see how this goes.

Look, we all know that it's about the shooting, right?

That there's only so far you can get as a lead ball handler if players are going to play 10 feet off you and duck under every screen and wall off the paint and not have to rotate from anywhere any of the shooters on the floor.

The shooting trended in the right direction across the board last year.

It's not just the threes going up to 35%.

It's going from 46% at the rim, which is ghastly, to 56 at the rim mid-range jumpers up you know about the same but like the shooting trended the right way it's not good enough it's not nearly good enough yet now there are some times where he's so physical and so fast that it doesn't matter you can go under a screen for him and he's going to beat you to the other side of it and attack the basket there are some times where the blazers know that teams are going to go under screens for him and so they kind of trick the defense into not being able to do that.

They run a decoy action and then get it to scoot.

They set the screen two, three, four times until you're stuck.

Um,

and and all of a sudden, he's in an advantageous position.

He has

this the shooting is good, if it doesn't get to a point where teams have to at least think about going over screens, his ceiling is going to be artificially capped at a decent level still because he's got a physicality, he's got like a staccato rhythm to his game that I really like.

Changing pace, changing the pace of his dribble

that confuses defenses sometimes.

You'll see him kind of put guys in jail like Chris Paul, you know, get a guy on his hip and freeze the defense and throw these lob passes and these kick out passes.

Like, he's got the vision.

He's got the physicality.

And to me, like,

you know, there's been kind of a lot of debate about,

are they going to start him next year?

Because they have Drew Holiday now.

And they have, to me, the locked-in starters are Avdia, Kamara, and Klingen.

And that leaves two spots for Drew Holiday, Shaden Sharp, Scoot Henderson, and Jeremy Jeremy Grant.

This is do the math for

two.

Honestly, man, I know Portland's got some ambitions of hanging in the play-in race and getting in the play-in race next year.

I think you got to hand the keys to Scoot.

I just think with Dame coming next year,

Simon's gone.

Sharp is obviously more of an off-ball player.

So is Drew.

So is Grant.

Well, Grant is a little bit of a hybrid, likes the ball maybe more than he should.

I just want to hand the keys to Scoot and see what it is because there's something here and I got to see what it is if I'm the Blazers.

That's all.

You can't pick a direction as a franchise until you know that you have a North Star to build around and he's he needs to be it.

And if he's not, you need to know that.

So yes, I think this is the time.

And it doesn't mean that I'm going to hand him the keys

you're now going to run 70 pick and rolls a game.

I just like I would start him, throw him in the deep end.

He played well with the Blazers starters last year.

Like the numbers were generally good when he was on the floor with their best players.

I'm interested.

I want to see it.

Okay, my next pick.

We're getting deep now.

Getting deep now.

So, I like to do deep cuts on these.

I don't want the obvious ones.

Anyone can make the obvious ones.

Anthony Black with the Orlando Magic.

That is deep.

Hey, look, man.

Lottery pick

stud athlete.

Like, absolute A-plus athlete with size at guard.

Elite defensive player already and can make plays on defense.

He can block shots.

He gets steals.

He's super athletic.

On offense,

he has a level of explosion that I almost sometimes watch him, and I'm like,

is he sort of discovering in the moment, like, oh my God, I can do this?

Because it's the same question with Scoot, the shooting.

People are going to go under screens when he doesn't have the ball, which he doesn't have the ball that much because Paolo Banquero and Franz Wagner are on his team.

He's just, no one is guarding him.

And he had some,

I mean, he had some misses from three in the playoffs last year that were like, oh my God, that missed by 10 feet.

Like, the shooting just isn't good enough.

But you go under a pick against him and he gets ahead of steam.

He'll jump and you'll meet him at the summit and you'll start falling down and he'll still be going up and he'll lay the ball and you're like, whoa, that really popped.

Like that, that was that was unfair.

And I just think, look, he's not going to start.

Is he going to close?

Who is he going to close over?

I don't know.

Like, that would require maybe moving Paolo to the five, which is an interesting look.

I'd like to see the Magic maybe dabble in.

But it's more that the Magic's bench, I love Tyus Jones.

And their backup centers, Batadze and Movagner, when he gets healthy and ready, are good players.

Isaac is just like, well, I can pencil him in for 15 minutes, max a game.

And then it's like a kind of a bunch of unproven guys.

I think for this team to really threaten to make the finals, which is what they want to do, and I think what they can do in the East, the state of the East, given what it is,

he's got to become a true sixth guy, like a true sixth starter almost.

And part of that is the shots just got to be better.

And part of that is, can he find more ways to involve himself on offenses?

Like, you're going to hide a little guy on him.

I'm going to screen for Powell.

I'm going to screen for Franz.

I'm going to be more, we're going to have a more dynamic ecosystem, not something where he's just standing around in the corner because he's not very useful there other than as a cutter and an offensive rebound, offensive rebounder.

There's something here, and I think for the magic to hit, he's got to hit and he's got to hit now.

It's time.

Great case.

Definitely intriguing.

But you,

can I, can I, uh, can I go on a slight tangent here?

Of course.

Tyus Jones off the bench.

Should Tyus Jones be starting?

No, absolutely.

No, no, no.

Zero case to Suggie.

Okay.

Desmond Bain, who are you starting over?

Suggs?

That would be the only choice, really.

I just'm not saying he should.

No, I'm already firing you as the Magic's coach.

You're fired.

All right.

Well, you know,

I've been fired from bigger things.

Actually, I've never been fired.

The lack of...

of elite playmaking on this team has has bothered me.

And I think it shows up in their surprisingly low offensive efficiency for the last couple of years.

And yes, some of that is injury related, too.

I get it.

I've just wondered if what they've really needed is the rug that pulls it all together.

And I don't know if Tys Jones is that because I thought he was going to be the rug that pulled it all together in Phoenix and that didn't really work, but that's probably not his fault.

I don't know.

I'm just spitballing here, Zach.

He's like a jute outdoor rug.

Like, you don't mind if it gets rained on.

No.

He can help off the bench.

They need an organizer badly, and I like that signing for them off the bench.

Look, I think you're just betting on A, Suggs has to stay healthy, which is always an if, and he can be a secondary playmaker.

Franz and Paolo continue to get better and better as passers.

And Bane is just, you add a moving shooter like that, and it just makes everything easier.

It makes all the reads easier.

Spaces open up and they stay open longer and they stay open wider.

I just think you're betting on all that.

I just think they need Anthony Black.

That's all.

Okay,

make one of your foot.

You got one pick left?

Two picks?

Two.

We can lop off the last one if we don't get to it because I was hesitant to throw him in here in the first place.

No, now you have to say it if you were hesitant.

The one I wasn't hesitant about, even though he's going to fall into your category that you've already kind of derided as obvious, probably.

Jalen Green.

You're hitting me right in the gut with that one.

On which level am I hitting you in the gut?

Which part of it is most painful?

It might go down.

If Jalen Green doesn't pop a little bit in Phoenix, my excitement for him as it is.

Now, look, it was always like it could be a swing and a miss, and it could be a spectacular swing and a miss, but I just kept saying, like, you don't find athletes like this.

This is a one in a hundred athlete.

Yeah,

the passing just has completely stagnated.

Defense, I thought he came along a little under EMA.

It's just the shot selection and the passing has completely stagnated.

And if he doesn't improve that kind of stuff, it's going to, my excitement for him is going to be one of my all-time worst takes.

So you're making me, I'm now upset.

Thank you.

My My bad.

I just think that to the extent that the Suns will be interesting at all, and I don't think that they're very interesting and I don't think they're going to be very good, hot take,

look, they had to trade Kevin Durant for pennies on the dollar.

They had to trade him for a lot less than what they obviously got him for, and that was always going to be the case.

But

there's still an upside of Jalen Green.

He's still young enough to be,

you know, to evolve into a better version of himself.

But there's now, there's different kinds of stakes, right?

Like the stakes got too too high in Houston for him.

So high that Eme Udoka had him benched in fourth quarters of playoff games.

He's not going to be, he doesn't need to carry a franchise in Phoenix.

He doesn't need to be part of a team that's even expected to do anything of note this coming season, except maybe buy them.

But he does need to fit with Devin Booker, or he does need to at least evolve to the point where he is a guy that either is a core piece or a guy that you can retrade to try to keep rebuilding around Devin Booker, because one day the day might might actually come that Devin Booker, despite all of his loyalty to Phoenix, might actually say, as Damian Lillard eventually did, eh, ain't really working out here.

Maybe it's time to go.

Will he come back in two years after it not working out in the new place?

Not after a hamstring, God forbid.

There needs to be some upside here.

I don't know where the upside of the Phoenix Suns is.

Malowatch.

Eh,

maybe.

So, So, Jalen Green, can he defend at a higher level?

Can he be a more efficient scorer?

Can he be a better playmaker?

Can he find a way to fit with Devin Booker, who is obviously infinitely more established and better offensive player next to him?

Can he be entrusted to close games?

I mean, it might not matter because, again, their games may not be of consequence.

But can he make the Kevin Durant trade look at least a little bit better?

And,

you know, I don't think there's a ton of writing on him succeeding there, but it's not insignificant.

My thing with Jalen Green, and I was an optimist to a fault.

I would just start almost at the very bottom, the very base level, and just I would just want him to make the simple play all the time.

Like when you turn the corner, if there's a shooter that's open over here, just hit the shooter and trust that the offense will run itself.

The playmaking just hasn't come.

The drives to the rim are just wild.

I mean, wild and out of control.

And he has the athleticism to finish some of them, but not as many as you would think.

And I just slow down.

Like, when he would just pick and roll with Shengun, I'm just going to throw the pocket pass, or we're going to play the DHO game.

Those are the moments where I was like, okay,

that's like you have a good passing center.

Play off of him.

Trust him to make the next play.

It doesn't have to be a home run every single time.

You don't have to take eight off the dribble threes a game when seven of them are contested.

Simple play, back to basics, no stakes.

I like the pick.

I'm just emotionally scarred.

My bad.

My last pick is Brandon Miller,

who only played 27 games last year.

Hard to draw much from it considering that a lot of those games came without Lamello Ball.

It's just a constant who's in, who's out, who's available, who's not available.

Shot more threes, probably good if it comes at the expense of long twos, which it did.

I loved him as a rookie.

I thought he had future all-star written all over him, and he's only on and two-way all-star too.

They gave him tough defensive assignments right off the bat as a rookie because of his length and versatility, and he kind of went for it.

He's like, I can do this.

Give me a shot at it.

The Hornets are just, we just, it's just a mystery box.

How does it all work with all these young guys and Lamello and Brandon Miller and Knipple?

And they've got a million guys.

McNeely, they just drafted.

They have no centers of consequence.

Apologies to Musa Diabate, a nice bench player like him.

We'll see what this Kalkbrenner kid can give them.

They actually like him a second-round pick.

It's just, let's just be simple about it.

This is going nowhere.

I'm talking nowhere for the next five years.

Nowhere interesting, nowhere close to interesting.

Interesting you can't even see with a telescope.

This is going nowhere if Brandon Miller isn't an all-star.

Nowhere.

And so after a lost season last year, I'm excited to see this kid come in for year three,

off-season,

get healthy, work on your game.

Maybe Lamello's healthy for most of the season.

I'm excited to see what he is because I was super excited about him as a rookie.

And this is a whole wad of nothing if he doesn't hit.

And I think he can hit.

Do you get the sense that there's an overall plan in Charlotte?

Like,

the fit between, you know, just as these pieces fall into place, lottery pick after lottery pick, do you like, can you see a clear vision there?

And I'm

the vision has been worth tanking aggressively for like high draft picks.

We're going to offload veterans.

I mean, the Mark Williams one was the tell.

It was just like, we can't, we don't want to pay this guy.

We cannot wait to get rid of him.

We'll have a trade that's rescinded, and we'll continue to try to trade him, even though the whole league knows the trade was just rescinded.

The lens is long.

That's smart.

The Lamello, I have always been higher on Lamello than ConsenSys.

I still think there's

a fulcrum, like a like they've won

when he's been on the floor.

I think they've won more games than people give them credit for.

Like they were a play-in team, which I realize is like, wow, golf clap, Eastern Conference play-in.

You get to go behind the velvet rope with the Hawks and the Heater and the Bulls every year.

But given the talent around him, that's not nothing.

But to me,

the do-it-all wing, Paul George 2.0, whatever you want to call Brandon Miller, that's the thing that ties it together, whatever vision they have there, other than we're just going to continue to have the longest lens in the room.

It all comes back to him really hitting.

And so he's a no-brainer for me.

Yeah.

No,

I'm with you there.

Before we move on, are we getting to the other news items we were going to do?

I could do it myself.

You can go leave and teach your class.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Just double-checking.

I have nothing else on your Charlotte Hornets or your Brandon Miller.

Sure gives me my last one.

You have one pick left now.

Now I'm curious to hear it.

Oh,

so

I hesitated, and it's going to be obvious why I hesitated

because the second you hear the name.

Kevin Porter Jr.

Yeah.

Kevin Porter Jr.

There are some very ugly things in Kevin Porter Jr.'s past.

I'm just going to stipulate that right off the bat.

But his talent has kept him in the league this long and with teams constantly trying to roll the dice and hoping for something better on the court um to say nothing of of the off-the-court stuff that that happened a couple years back

the reason i bring him up is because i thought the bucks were going to have a very aggressive kind of offseason um not you in one way they did in one way they did um

but i thought there'd be more zach i i really thought because we went from whatever it was february march april oh ooh, is this the summer that Yannis finally?

Ooh, is it?

We went from that to silence, no trade request, no trade demand, no hint of a trade demand, no rumblings, no rumors, no anything, no smoke.

Okay, he's staying.

He's staying for now.

Maybe he's staying, period.

And maybe he should.

But there's an implied

vote of confidence or leap of faith in the front office.

And the result of that so far has been waving and stretching Damian Lillard and signing Miles Turner to a pretty hefty contract and nothing else.

And so then you're sitting there a couple weeks ago, we're in Vegas and I'm attending the Miles Turner press conference and John Horst is sitting up there and I asked something to the effect of like, what else you got?

Is there more coming?

Because we're like, whatever,

eight, nine, 10 days into free agency at that point, but things had already kind of quieted down across the league.

And he was kind of, no, we're good.

And then I'm looking at the depth chart and I'm seeing, you know, depending on what you're referencing, where you're referencing, maybe, and I think this is before the Cole Anthony siding signing, but like Kevin Porter Jr.

is kind of penciled in a point guard.

And now

there's a version of this where like the point guard is really Giannis, right?

Back back to the Jason Kidd version of the Bucs with Giannis.

He's just, he's just point everything.

He's point Giannis.

That's fine.

I buy that.

But if that's the case and if Kevin Porter Jr.

is a serious part of this starting lineup, as it appears he may well be, Now he's got to be a decent shooter and he's got to make more smart plays with the ball in his hands when he does have it.

I don't know that everything's rising and falling with him.

I just know that the Bucs have a lot at stake right now because this is a matter of keeping faith with Giannis.

And every decision you make, every player you put next to him, from Miles Turner to Cole Anthony to Kevin Porter Jr.,

there's a lot more riding on it than just, hey, we're taking a flyer on this guy who's had a bumpy ride in the NBA.

I mean,

Kevin Porter Jr.

has been on, what, like...

Four teams already, I think, four teams in six years, but he's still just 25.

There's clearly a lot of talent there, a a lot of natural ability.

I don't know.

Can he shoot well enough from three?

Can he playmake enough?

He had a couple of nice moments against Indiana

in that first round series.

Maybe there's something there, but I'm at least curious.

One of the reasons he had a nice series against Indiana, a couple nice moments, is because the Bucs discovered pretty early in that series,

our starters around Giannis are basically unplayable.

Here comes the the bench.

And by the end of the series, Kevin Porter Jr.

was starting.

He's been good for them.

You know, Ryan Hollins has been good for them.

Jericho Sims has been good for them.

They've made something of these sort of minimum level and slightly above in the case of

Trent and Porter and

Hollins, Rollins, rather.

Ryan Hollins, Houston Rockets Broadcaster, NBA Big Mets.

Sorry about that, big fella.

Easy mistake to make.

It's just, you know, I think the Bucs are going to be like, I had them, I think they're going to be a solid team.

Maybe pencil them in at like sixth right now, seventh, fifth, somewhere in there.

I had them in the next tier below Detroit and Atlanta.

Certainly, those teams are catchable for any team with Giannis on it if he plays 70, 75 games.

Don't think they have enough juice around him at guard still, despite the Cole Anthony signing and all of that.

But

it's a pick that's focused on the right place and the right part of the Bucs roster.

That perimeter rotation around the Portis, Kuzma, Giannis, Turner, Sims.

They have a lot of playable fours and fives.

They're going to need some ones, twos, and threes.

Howard Beck, you got to go

educate young minds.

Trying.

Is this like are you going to stand on a desk?

Are you going to, you know, Dead Poets Society?

Like, what do we got?

I will say that.

What's your style?

Do you do you do, what is it?

Do you do the Socratic method?

Are you just calling on people like a law school class?

I'm trying as much as possible, partially just to make sure they're staying awake.

These are high school students.

The air conditioning is...

Are they young punks?

They are not.

I have not had a Spitwatch shot at me yet.

Nobody has.

Have any of them used AI on a writing assignment and gotten caught?

No.

Thankfully, that has not happened.

Fingers crossed that that does not happen.

They're going to do podcasts later this week.

I'm going to have them all do,

I should bring you in as like podcasting coach.

We're going to have them each do like a seven to ten minute podcast where two or three of them like take on an issue that they choose and we'll debate each other.

So that'll be fun.

That's fun.

Yeah.

No, actually, it's been a blast.

I have not shown

more podcasters.

I have not shown them Dead Poets Society, although that is one of my all-time favorite movies.

And if I have an opportunity to stand on a desk, I will.

It has not happened yet.

I have, however, shown them clips from, as recently as today, I showed them Almost Famous.

I needed to show them Lester Bangs speaking to young William Miller about do not become friends with the rock stars, because we in this business need to be dispassionate observers.

We cannot be friends with the people we cover.

We can be friendly with the people we cover.

We cannot be friends.

We cannot have an investment in them.

I can be happy to see Scoot Henderson succeed with the Trailblazers, as I very much hope he will.

But I'm not, it's not, it doesn't affect me emotionally if anybody succeeds or fails.

And that's the thing I was trying to get, whoops, the thing I was trying to get across.

So I did show them some Lester Bangs this morning, although I was

disconcerted, I will just say, disconcerted that when I asked, as I put up the clip, how many of you have seen Almost Famous and only like two hands out of 20 went up, that just, it hurt me.

It hurt me deeply.

It hurt me as deeply as me bringing up

Jalen Green to you earlier in this show.

Almost Famous came out in 2000, according to my quick Google search here.

Yeah.

These people were not born.

They were not born.

But it's a great movie.

You and I have seen movies that came out before we were born, haven't we?

Actually, movies.

I mean, yeah, right?

Like, we've seen like Casablanca and stuff.

Yeah, we weren't sitting on our stupid phones on Instagram and various YouTube shorts and stuff like these people are.

I told them there are a lot of great journalism movies.

The paper, of course, all the president's men,

Spotlight.

But I said Almost Famous.

Almost Famous, it is a rock and roll movie, but it is also a journalism movie.

And they need to see it.

Everybody needs to see it.

Young people, if you have have not seen it yet, you are hurting me to my core.

Please go watch Almost Famous.

Wow, that was quite a plea.

All right, Howard Beck, thank you for joining us.

Go transfer some of that enthusiasm to the next generation of podcasters who are going to populate this really unpopulated space on the audio landscape.

Thank you, Mr.

Beck.

We'll see you soon.

Thanks, Heck.

Take care, man.

All right.

A couple of news items to get to as Howard logs off here.

I want to talk about Billy Donovan was extended as the Chicago Bulls head coach.

A lot of angst from Bulls fans, like, why are we extending anybody from this run of extended mediocrity?

I get that.

To me, Billy Donovan's not the problem.

I actually, I think Billy Donovan is a pretty solid to very good NBA coach.

I just would like to see him for once get a team with one sustained sort of playing philosophy and group of players.

It's not his fault.

He walks into the Thunder.

He gets the last year of the Kevin Durant team that, you know, loses to the Warriors barely in 2016, and then he leaves.

And then they have to completely reset the team around Russ.

He's got the Russ team, the triple-double team.

Then Russ goes and he concocts this like three-guard lineup with Shea and Schroeder and Chris Paul.

They make the playoffs, almost win a playoff series.

And then he gets to the Bulls.

He's got the Lonzo team.

Now Lonzo's gone.

He's got the DeMar team.

Now DeMar's gone.

He's got the Levine team.

Now Levine's game.

It's just a revolving door where I still don't know what Billy Donovan actually kind of stands for as a coach, other than a couple of things.

Number one, toughness, non-negotiable for him.

He's tough on players.

He was tough on Bozelis last year.

You can see clips of Bozelis missing a box out, getting yanked out of a game, but he does it in a way that I think has earned him a lot of respect from players, agents, other coaches in terms of the culture that he sets.

And adaptability, as I mentioned, like the guy figures out how to work with what he has.

If we got to play three guards, play three guards.

If we got to do this, do this.

So I think Billy Donovan's a good coach.

He is not the problem in Chicago, as far as I know, unless he's in these personnel meetings making some of these decisions.

Good job, Billy Donovan.

He deserves an extension.

There are worse things you can do, even if it annoys your fan base by

continuing to have the same people over and over again and this feeling of staleness that overcomes the fan base if the team isn't good.

There are a lot worse things you can do than keeping a coach you know is good because as soon as you fire a coach you know is good.

And I've said this many times before, often about the Sacramento Kings, you can blink your eye and you're nine coaches in eight years trying to find another coach who you think is good or fits with your team.

Last piece of news, super agent Mishko Reznatovich, who is super famous in NBA circles, cryptic LeBron, social media post of the year, of the summer at least.

He posts a photo of LeBron himself and Maverick Carter, whose presence I think is important in the photo, in Saint-Chrope, France.

And the caption, which raised a lot of eyebrows because Mishko represents, among others, Nikola Jokic and tons and tons of other players.

He does not represent LeBron.

The caption is: the summer of 2025 is the perfect time to make big plans for the fall of 2026.

Huh?

Well, that certainly got the NBA world spinning.

Fall of 2026.

I mean, LeBron's going to be a free agent as of now, anyway, after

in the summer of 2026.

What are they planning?

What is this super agent planning on a yacht, a super yacht, actually?

It looks like a really nice yacht.

I'd like to be invited on some of these yachts

with LeBron and with Maverick Carter.

And it set NBA Twitter apparently a stir.

Where is he going?

Is he going to team up with Yokich in Denver?

And I don't know.

I would say, in the order of operations of what this post is about or how we should take it, I would say most likely, number one, just a fun post.

They like being shit disturbers.

They know this is going to disturb the shit of NBA Twitter and cause a stir.

It's fun.

We're on vacation.

Let's look at our yacht.

We look at the cushions.

The cushions look very plush.

Let's take a photo and see what happens.

Thing number two, I would just say, I don't think if there, if there's any plan that's actually being planned or talked about with whatever date you want to put on it, big plans for the fall of 2026 is what it said, 2020, whatever.

I would say I don't think I would look toward the NBA as what that plan might be about.

And that's all I'll say about that.

And then I think the third most likely thing is it's kind of about the NBA, but I don't, I would not read into any of this.

I would not read anything into this Instagram post, but I certainly would not read that LeBron is anything into LeBron's future with the Lakers or another team in the NBA as he enters his whatever 27rd season, whatever crazy number it is.

Okay, and with that, we're going to bring on Tim Cato to talk about the Dallas Mavericks.

Speaking of the Lakers, the Dallas Mavericks, a lot of meat to talk about with Tim.

He's coming on now.

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All right.

It's time to talk about a team that I haven't talked about directly too much because all the discussion has been about a trade that happened six months ago.

And it's time to actually focus on, okay.

What is in the remnants of that trade?

What is this team going to be this year with Cooper Flag?

Oh my God, the lottery.

I still, I haven't recovered from the lottery yet.

What is it going to be when Kyrie Irving returns, whenever that is?

Is Cooper Flag going to be ready in time for Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis?

Oh my God, the Mavericks.

Tim Cato from DLLS Sports.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing lovely.

I'm delighted to be here.

So we're talking Mavericks, not the Mavericks rim microphone specifically.

Just clarifying.

We're not doing those.

They're very loud.

They don't have anyone who groans anymore like Zaza Pachulia back in the day, which is almost unnerving to me, frankly.

Tim Kato used to cover the Mavericks for the athletic.

You did a great job there.

He broke a lot of important stories.

We have to start in true Mavericks fashion with a men's health article.

That's a first for the Zach Low Show or the Low Post, either one.

Luca.

Oh my God.

Luca looks in shape of three different stories in men's health about his off-court regimen this summer.

And it reminded me of, it's so dramatic.

And people need to go look at the photos.

it reminded me of when kyle lowry got in shape got like lost he was already in shape but lost a lot of weight and jj reddick tweeted something that player jj reddick tweeted something like is that kyle lowry bro that's what i thought about luka donches he's in shape now tim

a couple ways that you could look at this as an employee of the mavericks as a fan of the mavericks as someone who writes about the mavericks uh First of all, very predictable post-trade plot twist.

Oh, now, now he's got a fire lit under his ass.

You doubt me because of my conditioning, my injury, that submarine part of our season this year.

I will show you, and I'll get in the best shape of my life.

I've seen LeBron do it.

I've seen his workout regimen up close.

And this was sort of like a very predictable.

I'm not going to say nightmare scenario for Mavs fans, but like you kind of could see this coming of like, if he ever gets into shape, now it's going to do it.

You could be critical of Luca and say, dude, why did it take you getting traded and getting injured to get yourself in shape like this?

You could be critical of the Mavericks for, like, how did you not, how were you not able after all the years together, despite the success, despite the fact that Luca could look at you in the mirror and say, look at you in the face and say, hey, look, I may not be in the best shape.

We just made the finals, man.

How about that?

How could you not coax him in this direction?

Or, or you could sort of split the difference between all those and say, maybe it's the injury and the real, the first like major longish term injury of his career and not the trade that would have gotten him in this direction, whether he was in Los Angeles or Dallas.

And how does that make you feel about the trade?

I don't know how to emotionally react to this, Tim Cato.

How do you emotionally react to it?

Yeah, I'll start by saying that Luca getting in shape has never been that big of a deal to him.

Him starting a season in shape is something that he has consistently done more seasons than not.

He showed up in good shape.

to start a training camp last year and then just got hurt the day before training camp started.

And that was when when a lot of the good diet and and workout and and you know just all of the physical stuff that that is so important to him uh like is so important to how he plays on the court that's when that stuff started unraveling so i'll start by saying you know him being in shape right now and yes the photos look good he looks

he looks he looks his face looks different just he looks like a different person almost 100 so like of course it stands out to me and and of course of course it is kind of predictable that he needed you know i agree with you, you know, the injury, the recurring, you know, lake stuff that he has dealt with.

That is, that is absolutely a, you know, I think most players, once they get six, seven years into the league and they hit their first major injury, this is often a wake-up call for a mid-20 years, 20-year-old player.

But what I will say for Luca is, is the question is not how good of shape he is in right now.

It's February where he's been playing 40 minutes a night and players around him are banged up.

He's banged up.

He's got to sit for a week, you know, just some nagging injuries.

How does he react to that?

That has always been the Luca question.

That has always been what has derailed him, you know, throughout his career.

It's not been starting seasons.

It's been finishing seasons.

And, you know, both of the deeper playoff runs that Dallas made to the conference finals and finals, by the end of it, he was definitely dragging.

So, you know, if this is an overarching, you know, like permanent change for him, I absolutely will look at the trade and look at the ammo and the motivation that was given to him.

That, you know, something so unprecedented happened that you came out of podcast retirement to just film a video on Twitter.

That's how shocking it was.

Like, this doesn't happen.

Let's not talk about that.

It doesn't happen.

So, like, if that's where he gets the motivation from, if this is what changes his career,

it makes total sense to me.

But I, you know, as somebody who has chronicled a lot of Luca for a long time, you know, the questions for me come mid-season and beyond.

Maybe they should have fake traded him.

Maybe they should have actually gone to him like they were afraid to do because it would have blown up the trade and said, hey, man, look, we can't trust your conditioning, your injuries, your leg injuries.

Like, we're thinking about moving you to the Lakers.

And then it blows up.

But for D Chess, Nico Harrison is like, now you're going to be motivated for us.

Maybe that's what they should have done.

To your point, like you talk to people who have been around them as and around Luca.

It's the period like this summer, it's the period between Eurobasket and the start of the season that concerned them.

It's like he's going to be in really great shape.

What does he do after that to maintain it before the start of the season?

But look, the trade is done.

It happened.

And I still, I mean, I don't, we don't need to relitigate the trade.

I think the thing, if there's one thing

about this trade,

that is maybe under discussed, right?

We've discussed that they didn't shop him.

We discussed that there is an actual, there could be an actual justification for getting ahead of a Luca trade if you shop him.

We've discussed all that, the return and Anthony Davis and Austin Reeves and all the picks they didn't get and blah, blah, blah.

I think there's one thing that's been under discussed.

It's not even that they made the finals the year before with this player that you don't want anymore.

It's that when they were whole in last season, the first two months of last season, they looked like a contender again, like that they had carried over exactly what had led them to the finals.

And if they had been healthy with the depth that they had built up and all of that, they could have replicated that runner, at least pushed Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City not going anywhere.

I mean, the Oklahoma City-San Antonio storm from the Midwest is relevant to every Western Conference team with a medium-term window.

By the Mavericks' own public admissions, they have now a short to medium-term window that they've gone semi-all in on.

Um, so yeah, I don't know.

That's, I just feel like that, like the first 30 games of the Mav season last year doesn't get talked about a lot.

Yeah, when Luca got hurt on Christmas,

at the time, like their five-man lineup,

their starters with Lively, PJ, Clay, Kyrie, and Luca, they hadn't played together a lot at that point.

It was the best, it was the best net rating in the NBA at the point of his injury, you know, qualified for some minute total that I forget, probably like 100.

They were a good team.

They were very good.

There was definitely aspirations that they were going to get right back back to

being

one of the favorites, like top four, top five type candidate.

They had made good moves over the summer.

So that's all absolutely true.

And

I guess the other question about just the reaction to the Lucas stuff is what do Mavs fans think?

And

I can't speak for every Mavericks fandom and certainly my Mavericks fandom, which once did exist, is long, long dormant, long,

long behind me.

But

I know every fan has their own relationship to the team, but I think most Mavs fans want to cheer for this team.

They want to be happy.

They want to enjoy watching Dallas Mavericks basketball.

And right now, because of Cooper, there is excitement.

There's reason to focus on something that isn't the Luca trade.

And everything has kind of quieted down in that sense.

There's certainly still pockets of the fan base who, you know, call for Nico Harrison to be fired and

express their discontent.

But what I really wonder is that

that right now does not define the whole base.

What I wonder is if Luca, you know, comes into season looking like that, is averaging, you know, 39 and 9, 34, 9 and 9 yet again.

And Dallas, who is missing Kyrie Irving for at least half the year,

probably is going to miss AD at some point.

You know, right now, we don't even have a lot of info on, you know, the fact that he hurt his eye, had had surgery.

You know, like that's, that's not, that's not a good thing.

That's, you know, to that's not good news to drop in the summer.

uh dallas may start slow and luca may start uh start hot and i i think there is still some dormant lingering anger and frustration and and you know within this mavericks fan base that you know if that scenario plays out again to begin this year uh we're gonna we're gonna see it i i do not think it's all dead i i think it still exists out there

um

This team is all the 2025-6 team is already something of a placeholder until Kyrie Irving returns.

I don't know if that's going to be this season.

I don't know if it's going to be next season.

I don't know if it's going to be, if it's this season, how good does he look?

He's kind of tried to slow play expectations a little bit, which I think is hard.

He tore his ACL.

It's a major injury toward the, you know, mid to back half of his career.

And it's a knee that he's had surgery on twice before.

You know, and the last surgery was surgery to remove screws that got infected.

You know, this is all to his left knee.

So, yeah, absolutely, he has the right to take as long as he needs.

And, you know, in the meantime, Cooper Flag is going to get to handle the ball a lot, a lot more than he will, I think, when Kyrie is back, because the other options are like D'Angelo Russell, and we'll see who kind of gets backup guard wing ball handling minutes.

There's a bunch of candidates that inspire various levels of confidence.

And I think that's going to be good for Cooper Flag.

I loved how he looked in Summer League.

We can talk about what kind of player you envision him as, what kind of player the Mavericks envision him as.

But I just, without Kyrie, the team is just not complete.

It's not going to be a serious threat to do anything in the Western Conference.

He really kind of ties every disparate part of the team together.

Not only is he hurt, you mentioned Anthony Davis.

Derek Lively had surgery.

They expect him to be healthy for training camp.

He's a critical part of their team and part of their vision with Anthony Davis playing some, if not most, of his minutes at the four.

Let's just start with Cooper Flag.

I just,

I still can't believe they won the lottery.

I still can't believe that Nico Harrison then then just said stuff about how the vision was coming together as if the vision involved a 1.8% lightning strike from the basketball gods.

Totally.

Totally favors the bold.

Yeah,

I guess it does.

But

I plotted out their starting five like this.

You may disagree on a fifth spot.

You tell me.

You know the team better than I do.

D'Lo, just classic revolving door journeyman, hold it down for a year and then bye-bye.

Maybe he has a player option.

We'll see.

D'Lo, I still put Clay in at the two.

I just feel like he's the smoothest fit for his shooting.

Cooper Flag is a super size three.

Anthony Davis, and I'll just say, let's just say lively, you know, gets healthy in time.

Is that your starting five on paper?

Do you think there's any flux there?

I think it's the one that makes the most sense to me.

They have certainly flirted with the idea that PJ Washington and Cooper Flag would both start, that Clay would come off the bench.

You know, that's something Jason Kidd even kind of hinted at.

The mega, the mega lineup.

Yeah.

Like, Cooper's a two, I guess, in that lineup.

Yeah, which is just, which is just like that, that would be a,

you know, there would be nothing like that in the NBA if that's.

I mean, we're going to see it.

We're for sure going to see it, whether it starts or not.

For sure.

So I think that's the only real question: is, you know, PJ Washington going into a contract year has not come to terms with an extension on him.

The Mavericks have not.

Is that somebody?

I think he's not eligible until late August

for an extension.

I would bet they get something done.

I think the most it can start at is about $20 million a year.

I'm going to say on July 28th, I'm going to say I would bet on P.J.

Washington getting an extension done when he can.

I think that's fair.

But yeah, that's the real switch up or the real, what the starting lineup hinges on is, you know, which one of these veterans who obviously have reason to expect that they should be starters are you going to talk into coming off the bench is not going to be cooper uh you know ad is going to play the four you know the one thing that you can say is that ad and lively are going to miss games you know even if they're both healthy to start the regular season i think that their careers have given us the expectation the reasonable expectation that these are guys who are not going to be healthy you know if you get 60 games out of them you're pretty happy and so that is something that kind of clears up some of the front court log jam that that certainly they're working on you know i went into the summer expecting they were going to make a consolidation trade just because they got a lot of bodies And, you know, it's never bad to have depth.

But, you know, a lot of the depth right now is a bit redundant.

It is very stacked more towards the front court than the back court.

You know, you kind of look at who's going to guard point of attack, you know, who is actually breaking down, creating shots, getting, you know, beating his man and getting into the into the lane.

I think they're going to ask Cooper to do a lot of that.

Like you said, you know, I think this is going to be.

Who else is it going to be?

I mean, it's not really D'Lo's game is not a north-south.

He's not a driver anymore.

Kind of game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, I think he averaged like five, five a game, something like that.

He's, he's a shooter now at this point.

You know, he's not a driver.

Brandon Williams, I think, is actually going to be real important off the bench, backup point guard.

He showed some flashes down the stretch of just being kind of one of those, you know, jitterbug, you know, just get into the lane quick as hell.

You know, I think that's somebody who's going to pop.

But I think a lot of it is going to fall on Cooper Flag.

I think that.

you know, we just saw him in Summerlee.

He played, you know, just two games as every major prospect tends to do.

and he took 21 shots in both games how many times

to his credit he played a ton of minutes in both games yeah would you like to guess how many times he took more than 21 shots at duke i'll go zero he did one time now played 38 minutes and he took 22 shots so this would have been his second and third most attempts uh you know out of his entire freshman season this is what they asked him to do they wanted to make him uncomfortable and you know it was one thing to put the ball in his hand and have him bring it up the court but i think even more than that what they were really asking of him was, go shoot the ball, be aggressive.

Like you are the star of this team.

You're going to be a star.

You're going to fill a star-type role to start next season.

And, you know, we didn't see.

you know, the best.

We saw we like Cooper Flegg was great at Summer League.

Some of his best stuff is his off-ball offense.

You know, there wasn't a lot of time and space to do that.

He's still awesome at that.

But overall, like Dallas

is raving about his Summer League.

You know, his first game, he shot poorly.

And, you know, that's probably where we saw the limitations of, you know, just the fact that he's not an offensive creator.

He's not all the time in a get-to-a shot that isn't, you know, a 18-foot pull-up.

Sometimes that is going to be the best option, you know, the only thing that he can get against an engaged, you know, like like-size matchup defender.

But, but overall, you know,

I thought it was a...

you know, I thought it was a standout summer league.

Have the Mavs had any star players who are really good on mid-range shots, shots like in the paint with a pivot game and a pump fake game and a floater

fadeaway game?

Have they had that kind of guy at the fulcrum of a great Mavericks?

I'm not sure.

Let's put it, I'm going to come back to Cooper right in a second.

Just to round out the team, the bench, I mean, this is a team that's got a lot of guys, right?

Like, they have so many guys, they're going to have to cut people or put Ryan M.

Hurt on a two-way just to get to 15 guys.

If Brandon Williams makes the roster, which I think he should because they need his skill set,

you, I, like, you mentioned point of attack defense.

The dream scenario to me for this team, and I don't think he's ready for it, is if Max Christie earned that fifth starting spot for exactly that reason.

He gives you the best shot at a point of attack defender, but as of now, I have him penciled it off the bench.

PJ Washington, Daniel Gafford.

I think what Najee Marshall did in the last two, three months of the season when he just went bananas because someone had to score, I think he's just...

He won't ever get to do that again, but he's just a rock-solid player.

And then, like, we haven't even got to Caleb Martin.

What a disaster that contract and that trade look like right now.

Jaden Hardy is still kicking around.

Olmax,

there's a lot of guys.

And my big picture take, my 30,000-foot take is

even

projecting forward to Kyrie coming back at full Kyrienus, whether it's this season or next season.

It's a good team.

It's a little bit of a strange team.

And I just still think it's too expensive and out too many draft picks for what it's going to be in the Western Conference unless everything hits faster than people expect.

They're like right at the second apron right now.

They're projected to be right at the second apron next season.

They're out.

They don't control any of their picks until 2031.

They're going to make a salary dump trade sometime, if not two of them, sometime in the next two years.

We don't need to go through the candidates for that.

They're good.

I just don't think they're good enough to justify all, forget the trade, the investments that they've made in the near-term future.

Unless Cooper Flag becomes a star really, really fast.

And

I love Cooper Flag.

The first best thing I can say about him is that he just looks like a guy who knows how to play basketball from every position and every spot on the floor.

on both ends of the floor, offense and defense.

He knows how to move.

He knows how to create space.

he knows how to crash the boards he knows how to cut he knows how to screen he knows how to handle he knows how to chase guys over pin downs on defense he knows how to guard pick and roll ball handlers and navigate screens on the ball he knows he's already a very intuitive off-ball defender he does not over help he doesn't under help he sees his man in the ball at all times he does not make mistakes he's a just an a plus basketball player guy now You mentioned the 18-foot pull-up and the growing pains that are going to come creating his own shot.

And you saw some of that in Summerlee.

You saw him try to back down Bronnie James, and like he couldn't really move him that much in one-on-one.

Guys are going to go under screens on him and dare him to shoot jump shots.

That's just going to be a fact of his life.

And the spacing on a team that has flag, Davis, and a traditional center is going to be a little bit clunky.

Okay, fine.

A lot of teams have clunky spacing.

You find ways around it.

And you've heard people already, not already, but kind of say, like, you know, is he going to be more of an A-plus connector kind of player than a A-plus star kind of player?

And for me, right now, that's way premature.

I think this guy has a chance to be an on-ball superstar

in the vein of some of your classic on-ball superstars.

I don't want to throw names out because I don't think it's fair to throw the big names out, but you look at his size.

His passing vision is elite for his age.

He's an early passer.

He's an anticipatory passer.

He throws the pass ahead of the rotating defense or the one they don't expect.

He's what, 6'8, 6'9, something like that?

He's huge.

He has a mean streak and a bully ball game where he's going to be able to

either as screener or ball handler, run inverted pick and rolls, hunt small guys, and eventually overpower them and back them down.

He already facing up will hit you with the shoulder, move you back, throw a jump hook over you.

I'm not putting ceilings on him as like, oh, he's going to to be an A-plus connector or whatever.

I think he's got a chance to be an absolute on-ball superstar.

The question is: can it happen in time for this iteration of the team to pay off in the way it absolutely has to pay off for Nico Harrison?

What do you think of that question?

That's why, if you look at next season as a gap year, all of a sudden, like, I, it all makes sense.

Like, everything starts to click in

division.

Division clicks in?

No, like, like,

so if Cooper is going to start as like this guy getting shots, like, okay, we're going to throw you in.

We're going to give you a chance to be that star.

You're going to get reps right away.

Uh, Kyrie, there's no rush to get back.

In fact, if you don't come back next season, it's not a big deal.

There are not stakes on next season.

Uh, you know, they control their pick next season, to be clear.

If the front court is too loaded, well, just keep everybody, figure out, take a look, you know okay pj uh does or doesn't make sense like like when we play pj and cooper together are they too similar are they too redundant is this somebody want we want to move on from once you know we sign him to extension and you know uh you know secure some value and then they go shop him around or is it a situation where okay actually daniel gafford is is the obvious guy or maybe even ad you know maybe even you get to the question of would we shop ad and i don't think this front office under nico harrison would do that but if you look at next season as a gap year the clunky roster aside, the fact that Cooper is going to have some growing pains if that's what you challenge him to do right away.

It's like you're basically the code number one option or the second option.

Someone has to do it.

Someone has to dribble and run pick and rolls and like bend the defense.

And it's only going to be D'Lo here and there.

Yeah, but throw Brandon Williams if Ryan Emhardt ever gets minutes as a two-way.

By the way, I loved him in summer league.

It's not really AD's thing anymore.

You can post AD up.

You can give him the ball at the elbow and let him do some stuff.

Like, he's good at that, but it's not, that's not going to be your number one option on a real functional elite NBA offense.

Certainly not as a ball handler, even though he can do that a little bit too.

Yeah, if there's one question I have about the Maps next season, is:

does Nico Harrison believe that it's a gap year?

Or that a gap year at least is okay if Kyrie does not come back as soon?

And then subsequently, does Patrick Dumont believe that next year is a gap year?

Or once again, that the idea of a gap year is okay if Kyrie just takes time getting back.

Because,

of course, publicly, the messaging, you know, what they're saying is that they want to go win titles.

I mean, Nico Harrison made that very clear.

Nico Harrison, by making the Luka trade, added a lot of pressure onto this franchise's next couple of years.

And Cooper eases that.

But if the expectation of the franchise of

ownership, which is still trying to figure this whole thing out, clearly they were not whatsoever ready or fully understanding of what they had purchased when they bought the Mavericks.

And now that they're catching up, they're still listening, you know, they're still buying into this idea that they have a window that's open right now.

Are they okay

if that window is like next season is more about building to the next year?

Because that's the year with a fully healthy Kyrie Irving, with Cooper Flag getting all of these on-ball reps, just being a second-year player.

You know, like, like, I think that is something like he has always grown.

He has always ascended.

He has always been someone challenged himself to do more and more.

And he has got better all along the way.

So I do think second year Cooper flag, as you've said, you know, he could be the type of star that makes this whole roster finally healthy, come together, click together, make sense.

You can make whatever consolidation trades at that point that you need to.

You can shed salary.

You can figure out which of these, you know, 12 rotation quality players, or at least that's the Mavericks hope.

You can figure out like, okay, which nine of them are we keeping around this core that is Cooper and probably AD and almost certainly Kyrie Irving.

How are you, you know, like, like, what is the way to build that into an actual contender a year from now?

I just don't know if the Mavericks internally and specifically the ownership feels that way.

And if they don't, and if this does go poorly, if this is sluggish, if there's just no through-point shooting, you know, Dallas was dead last after Kyrie got hurt in the league by a long shot, very low on percentage.

You know, if this double big lineup, yes, everybody's doing double bigs.

Nobody's doing double bigs like the Mavericks, where the centers can't shoot and they can't drive.

You know, yes, AD is a vocal point, but he's more of a, you know, elbow extended high post type guy.

You know, like it is a, it is a very unique experiment and it is, it is a chance for Cooper to accelerate and be in a perfect position to both win now or have winning now expectations, but also have that chance to be a star like right away from the jump.

The question is just like, what does the team itself think of it?

You know, and if it does go poorly, I think there's a definitely a chance it goes poorly.

What's the reaction?

No, I mean, really, over the next 36 months, by the way, AD is up for an extension next summer.

That's going to be wildly interesting to see how those talks go.

But

24, 36 months, it's really just about Kyrie, AD, and flag.

Everything around that is going to have to be fungible, including how you handle the center position.

Quick detour: consolidation trades and free agency signings bring up a certain person in Los Angeles.

I haven't heard anything.

I still haven't heard anything that the Mavericks would trade five guys for LeBron James.

If he got bought out, I think they'd probably be at the front of the line to sign him for the minimum.

I have not heard a peep about the Lakers buying him out.

So, until and unless any of that changes, I'm expecting the status quo.

However, if LeBron decides to continue to play basketball after next season, he will be a free agent again.

Just feel like an obligatory LeBron mention had to be dropped in.

Anything you want to add to the obligatory LeBron mention?

I agree.

The Mavericks insist that they would not trade, you know, four players for one or four players for two.

Although, Bronny, Bronny, great in Vegas, maybe he's a rotation player.

Maybe, maybe it's four for two, you know, maybe, maybe you're bringing two guys back.

But I would agree that

I really only see LeBron as

a buyout option for Dallas in the sense that I just don't.

There's not really a trade that makes a lot of sense.

You're gutting way too much depth to do that.

And you're gutting depth that has value that you're trading for a guy who's got less than 150 games left in him in his his career.

And that's just not good for the Cooper future either.

Even if you decide, okay, this window doesn't work, it's time to fully start the Cooper Flag era.

Everything is dictated around him.

AD and Kyrie Irving, you know, player options at the end, but their contracts run until the last year of Cooper Flag's rookie deal.

You've got to reset you can make and fully base the future around Cooper if you want, even while you kind of run this experiment out.

But if you trade away, trade away, PJ Washington, Clay Thompson, you know, PJ and Gafford specifically, guys who have value, guys you could kind of reset and rebuild with, even in a couple of years from now.

I just don't think that's best for the

Cooper future that is coming.

Not to mention the struggles, aggregating, staying under the second apron, taking it a $50 plus million dollar salary, all that.

Look, I think it's possible if everyone wants it to be possible, but we'll see.

We do need to go back to the point you just made about the double big lineup.

Because it can work.

It's one of the biggest structural questions about the team.

What I like about it is obviously size on defense, rim protection, shot blocking.

You could bludgeon the offensive glass.

What I don't like about it is not necessarily like the simplistic take on they just don't have enough shooting, which they don't.

What I haven't liked about it, and what I've consistently not loved about AD as a four, despite everyone knowing that he should play the five, is

a lot of the double big lineups that work,

where both the guys are really center interior kind of players, they work.

And even you could translate that down to, you know, a guy I just talked about with Howard, like a Jalen Duran and a Saar Thompson combination, which I think can work in the long term.

It's because there's a level of speed and cutting and intuitive quick twitch passing and movement that both of them share.

And AD just doesn't play that way enough in this scenario.

He tends to just kind of float around 19 feet away from the basket as a pick and pop big as a release valve valve, or as like a triple-threat ISO guy.

And I just don't think that's going to work well enough offensively if that's what he's going to default to.

If you can

introduce a little bit more of that, and certainly like Lively in particular is a quick Twitch mover, quick Twitch passer.

They've had great interior passing sequences between them in their time shared on the floor, brief as it was.

If they can introduce a little bit more of that, and if Kyrie and Cooper, because of their ball handling and the amount of tension they can draw away from the basket, can unlock a little bit of that.

I do see a world in which they strike the right balance of offense and just bludgeoning people on defense and on the glass, but it requires a lot to click.

And I think it requires AD to just play a little bit of a different and not play a different style because he can play a lot of different styles, but he can't default to floating around the elbow.

I just don't think that's good enough.

Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot of horns, a lot of DHOs.

Like this is going to be a very handoff-driven offense in a lot of ways.

Just a couple of years after they were like the league's preeminent pick and roll team, I think that they're obviously transitioning with a very different set of personnel.

Can they run?

Are they going to get out and run?

Are they going to do that consistently?

Cooper and the centers are tailor-made for that kind of play.

Yes.

And certainly Clay Thompson as a trailer,

that's a sweet spot for him.

I think that's going to be a necessary part, like getting the tempo up,

making up for some of what they lack in spacing, because they do lack spacing.

And, you know, it's not just the spacing, but, you know, spacing pulls and stretches a defense out.

You know, driving is obviously what collapses it.

They don't have a lot of driving, certainly not from those two centers.

You know, AD is somebody who just does not, you know, he does not consistently go from 20 feet out to 10 feet in.

You know, he's more of somebody who, and when he does that, he drives for a floater.

He drives for a jumper.

Najee, you know, is somebody who drives for his own shot.

He's not really beating his defender.

He's just bodying and bumping the guy all the way to get to a a spot, but he's not really getting two people on him.

Cooper, even at his best, I think he's going to be someone who more powers through.

And so like, you know, that's why I look up and down the roster and I think about, you know, when are you going to get double teams?

When are you just going to eliminate somebody on the perimeter and force the defense to rotate to you?

You know, like D'Lo, every once in a while, Brandon Williams off the bench.

Dante Exam is still kicking around.

Yeah, I don't really think that's Cooper's game.

And so, you know, they're going to have to create a lot of offense through sets and through motion and,

you know, and kind of make up for it with the fact that this defense needs to be,

you know, top 10, maybe top five to kind of make up for the fact of, you know, everything else.

And obviously when Kyrie gets back, that changes everything.

That's why he's the most important player, you know, for this roster to work.

You know, he's the person they, you know, most important player to this vision.

But it's going to be, as we know, at least half the season.

And historically, you know, every, you can talk to anyone in the Mavericks franchise, and they will obviously just rave about Kyrie on the court, off the court.

They'll rave about him in the locker room.

Yeah, he's incredible.

But even in Dallas, historically and also in Dallas, he doesn't come back quick from injuries.

It's, it's, that is, that is one truism of his time, both in Dallas and before, is that, yeah, these things can linger on for a little bit.

So, you know, as much as like he is pushed back, uh, and the Mavericks are not like pushing a quicker timeline onto him, or certainly aren't at this point.

But, you know, you can hope.

You can hope it's January.

I just think that, and maybe it is.

Who knows?

You never know with this stuff.

But it's not something you can expect or bank on going into next season.

And I just worry.

I still worry just a little bit about everything else around them.

That two-man game between Kyrie and Flag is going to be amazing to watch when it's in full flight.

It's going to feed families.

Either way, run any who screens for who, I don't care.

It's going to be awesome.

And I think if you give Cooper just a little bit of a co-star on the creator, another guy who can really draw attention, I think his game is going to pop so fast.

And I think he will more quickly than maybe others think become a guy who can draw two to the ball himself or with a little bit of a head start.

And I just, I'm not going to put a ceiling on him yet.

I guess here's where I net out bottom line.

Even if Kyrie were healthy coming into this season,

I don't think they're as good as Oklahoma City, duh.

I don't think they're as good as Denver.

I don't think they're as good as the Rockets.

I don't think I could put them ahead of the Wolves or the Clippers, despite the Clippers being an old folks home and having major injury risks across the roster, a couple of major injury risks anyway.

And that's okay.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

You're counting on a rookie to do a lot.

The question is: next season and the season after that, can they crack that kind of elite inner circle in time?

And I think you're counting on, you know, Denver has a couple of guys leave due to finances, Durant declines or leaves the Rockets or whatever.

Like, some of these teams will not look like they do now in three years.

And Dallas ascends, but also San Antonio will ascend, another team that will ascend, whoever it is.

I think the odds are against them morphing into a contender in the next, not a contender, like a true inner circle contender in the next three seasons.

I think it's possible, but I would, it seems,

it seems to be too much too soon, but maybe that Kyrie Cooper AD nucleus is that good.

I would just, I would bet slightly against it.

Yeah, the Mavericks love to cite the evidence of that Rockets game.

It was Anthony Davis's Mavericks debut.

He got hurt at, you know, right at the end of the third quarter, but it was it it was a, it was a smashing of the Houston Rockets.

Like, like, they, you know, I think through three quarters, they were up by like 20, kind of gave up some points and the fourth struggled a little bit once AD was out of there.

You could look at the stats, and that was the worst shot quality they generated all season.

And the second best three-point percentage they shot all season, all regular season was that game.

That game they cite as evidence that this team was going to work, that the experiment, you know, was sound and solid.

It's one game, obviously.

like like i'm not taking definitive judgments away and saying you know i i look at the team overall and i certainly have some some hesitations and questions but you know like the same way that i don't look at that houston game and think that the stats mean something or the the result means something uh i i just think that you know the the fact that the offense overperformed in that game does point at some of the struggles that we're pointing out and It's just a matter like now Cooper's on the team and that certainly helps.

And as you've pointed out, that his timeline, is he going to to get to where they need him to be to add the juice that I think this team was going to be missing?

Now, now it's now it's just kind of a race to see, you know, whether these old 30-year-olds, whether they age out and whether you want to keep them around on, you know, big money contracts, big money extensions while also building with Cooper?

Or is it a situation where at some point there is a reckoning coming for this team and they do decide from an ownership level down that they need to reset and they need to just go for more of a traditional prop or you know no two timeline situation you know it's just cooper's team and fully build around him and as long as you keep everybody here i don't i don't mind that necessarily if you just go into next year and see how everything looks and you still got all the guys on the books and you can still trade them all uh they all still have value everybody in the league likes pj washington likes daniel gafford you know guys would you know teams would give up something for to go get those guys so as long as you just like kind of kick the can down the road a little bit, I think there's some merit to that.

It's just a matter of like, like, if this doesn't work, are you going to sell out even more into the older timeline, into the win now timeline?

Because Nico and so much of his reputation is, has been, you know, put, you know, he's, he's put up his, his mortgage, you know, his professional mortgage into this trade and into this vision.

So are you just going to keep doubling down on that?

Or is there a way to reset?

And again, I think that would have to come from the ownership level.

Um, so we'll see.

That downside scenario you just outlined is on one level not bad at all.

Because if you have to trade Kyrie, you'll get something for him.

If you have to trade AD, you know, we'll see what his extension if he gets one looks like, you'd get something for him.

The other guys, you'd get something for those guys.

And you already have the most important thing in a reset.

You're resetting from like you're a lap ahead of everybody else.

However, you do not control your draft pick in 2027, 2028, 2029, or 2030.

And so there's an increased risk of you're just one bad break away from a disaster coughing up a bad pick.

You do have the Lakers pick in 2029.

I guess, let me just be simple about it.

In the next three,

let's chalk this up as a gap year.

Maybe we'll be happily surprised.

And by the gap year, I don't mean they're going to be bad.

They go 44 and 38, 42 and 40, whatever it is.

They're just a good, solid team in the West.

Honor in that.

Nothing wrong with that.

I think the 26, 27 Mavericks and 27, 28 Mavericks, I have to predict right now what they're going to be.

I think they're going to be good to very good basketball teams that don't quite win enough to justify all the rig-amarole that ended up building them and all that was out the door.

And that's fine, but that's that can be okay.

And by that, I mean, is there a conference finals finals appearance coming?

I don't know.

I would bet against the finals appearance for sure at this point, but like that's not a horrible place to be considering you just traded Luka Doncic, which I still can't believe happened.

Tim Cato,

you cover this team as well as anybody, DLLS, sports.

You got a podcast, you write, subscribe to the newsletter.

What else can we say?

Yeah, all of that.

I think you nailed most of it going into a bit more of a national, kind of nationally focused thing.

It's going to be more, you know, more of all around the league, trying to find trends.

Are you going to be like Dirk showing up at Lakers games randomly, sitting in the stands?

Maybe I will.

You got to keep your eyes.

You got to to stay on your toes.

Keep your eyes open.

Tim Cato, thank you, sir.

I'll see you down the line.

Thank you, Zach.

All right, that's it for today's Zach Low Show.

Thank you to Howard.

Thank you to Tim.

Thank you to Jesse and Jonathan on production.

We'll be back later this week, Wednesday, Thursday, something.

We're going to sort out the timetable before I go on my annual European sojourn.

We're going to talk some basketball.

We're going to talk about some other stuff that's not basketball later in the week, including the red hot, at least as I tape this, New York Metropolitan Baseball Team.

Thank you, everyone, for listening and watching the Zach Lowe Show.

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