Dame Returns to Portland, CP3 and Smart Head to LA, Plus More With Rob Mahoney

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All right, coming up, we've got an absolutely loaded Zach Low Show.

Somehow it's July 21st.

We still have a lot to talk about.

Damian Lillard going back to the Blazers.

Romance, baby.

Love it.

What does it mean for the Blazers this season?

Not much.

What does it mean for next season?

Maybe a lot.

What did the Blazers project at?

What is this team?

Is Scoot Henderson even going to start?

Rob Mahoney is here to dig into all of that.

Chris Paul back to the Clippers broke while we were on the air.

I was kind of prepared for it, so we talked about that.

Deep dive into the Memphis Grizzlies.

That's our random deep dive team of the day.

The Lakers and Marcus Smart and LeBron and Luca.

There's always something going on with the Lakers.

We're going to get into that too.

Could Marcus Smart start?

Should he ever start?

Who would come off the bench in that event?

What about Jake LaRavia?

Should he start?

Who would come off the bench in that event?

Deep dives into all of these situations.

Jonas Fallonchunis confirms his commitment to the Nuggets.

We talk about that.

Justin Apps is lots of news.

Chris Paul's back with the Clippers.

Man, Lob City, all those memories.

And how does he fit into a team that has like 11 legit, good rotation players now and some pretty high ambitions?

I think there's a role for him there and it's going to be very interesting to see how that reunion goes lots of stuff the nba is not stopping which is good for us on the zach low show rob mahoney the best in the business coming to break it all down for us on the zach low show hope you enjoy it

welcome to the Zach Low Show back from Las Vegas.

I survived.

Rob Mahoney, you also survived.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

I had what I would say is a gentleman's gentleman's stay in Las Vegas.

A lot of early nights, a lot of discretion.

You know, I was really trying to get through it out there, power through.

But how would you say your time in the desert was overall, Zach?

Definitely my most mature Las Vegas stay.

I was in bed by 12.30 every night.

This is what I'm talking about.

I'm boring and old.

Right as I was leaving Las Vegas, I was in the airport.

Not going to lie, Rob.

I was in the airport sipping on a Michelob Ultra.

That's what I had chosen at the airport bar.

Just trying to to carve up out there?

Yeah, I just got a hot tip that Damian Lillard was perhaps about to reunite with the Blazers.

I tweeted that there was, quote, mutual interest.

That's as far as I was kind of permitted to go.

And then about eight minutes later, the deal was done.

Three years, $42 million, a player option in year three.

I thought Dame made out great in the deal.

I mean, he gets to rehab in Portland this year around his family, access to the Blazers facility, get paid $14 million.

Then he gets to play for the Blazers for that amount of money.

And then if he's playing amazing and is like 90% of name, he can opt right back into free agency.

If the Blazers aren't ready by then for a real run at something, he can go somewhere where maybe there is a chance to make a real run at something.

Obviously, we must start, though, with just the romanticism of this.

Like, this guy is a franchise icon.

Two walk-off playoff series winning shots.

I mean, all-time iconic stuff.

One against the Rockets and the bye-bye against Russ and PG and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Never made it to the finals.

Did make it to the conference finals.

I've said many times, don't poo-poo that.

Don't poo-poo that conference finals run in 2019.

Yeah, they got a little lucky.

Matchups broke right.

Making the conference finals is hard.

You know who hasn't made the conference finals?

The Sixers with Joel and Biet.

It's not easy to make the conference finals.

And they play in the freaking East.

The Blazers play in the West.

Now, it's a whole different team in Portland than it was when Dame left on not great terms.

He wanted to go to Miami.

They didn't trade him to Miami.

There was a war of spin after the trade, if you recall.

Very different versions of the story came out.

Well, not different versions, just different details were perhaps emphasized.

And the wave and stretch with Milwaukee happened.

And right away they were in contact.

And fences were mended to the degree they needed to be mended.

I think time had eased.

some of the wounds already.

Scoot Henderson was clued into what was going on to make sure he was cool with it.

And what I've been told is he was super enthusiastic about it, like not threatened at all.

There was this undercurrent of, oh man, if I'm scooted, I'm going to be angry.

Like I'm going to be back on the bench.

And this is like, dude, the guy's out for a year.

Scoot's going to have all the runway in the world.

And then we'll see.

Can they play together?

Who starts?

Who comes off the bench?

Whatever.

Like, we'll all figure that out later.

In the meantime, like, you get to learn.

One person with the Blazers told me, Scoot gets to learn from now one of the best offensive point guards of all time, one of the best defensive point guards of all time, and has a Hall of Fame point guard as his head coach in Chauncey Billups.

That's a pretty good combo.

This tickled me, Rob.

It tickled me right in the spot, my new renewed Mets fandom spot of like, I want Pete Alonzo to play with the Mets forever.

I don't care about money.

I don't care about Steve Cohen's money.

I don't care about the cap mechanics and whatever.

I just want that guy on the Mets forever.

And Damian Lillard belongs with the Portland Trailblazers.

What was your reaction to this?

I had a similar reaction.

I would say I was trying to access what it is about Dame that inspires this kind of like sentimentality, this kind of romanticism.

There's just like a magic to the way he plays, and some of it is those playoff moments that you talked about.

Some of it is this like intangible quality that he has when he walks into a room or specifically into a locker room.

Like there, there's a lot made of leadership in the NBA and some of it is real and some of it is fake.

Like, that's a guy who I genuinely believe is a great leader.

That's a guy who I genuinely believe other players follow and has a tangible effect on an organization just by being a part of it.

And that makes him a really easy player to root for.

And the way he played and has played throughout his career makes him really easy to root for.

And so, how can you not be a little sentimental about a reunion like this?

We've seen plenty of them, players circling back.

You alluded to kind of the complications with this one, which is not just kind of having to resolve some of those feelings that were hurt by getting traded in the first place, but by this exact general manager who is now re-signing him.

It's not like there's been a turnover of the administration,

but he gets the no trade clause.

He gets the I've been hurt before clause, just in case things go a little sour again.

So I'm happy for Dame.

I'm happy for Portland.

And what better place to rehab than the place you've already lived and called home for 11 years?

No trade clause.

Much less risky for the Blazers when Damian Lillard designed a three-year deal, two plus one, making $40 million less than Bradley Beal was making in Phoenix.

This was, I mean, you talked about the contract contract structure with that like two-year and then the player option, kind of similar on much lower stakes to what Kyrie re-signed for with the Mavericks as well.

Like, this is kind of the rehab special, I guess, is like,

see how healthy you can get in a year.

Then, hopefully, you'll have that second season to play through.

And then, afterwards, everybody gets to reevaluate.

You mentioned Dame as a leader.

One of my favorite stories I ever wrote anywhere for ESPN was when I went to Portland for like a week in the fall of 2018 because

I wanted to start thinking about

they had gotten absolutely destroyed in the playoffs the year before by the Pelicans.

Drew Holiday, now Dame's teammate, ate Dame for lunch.

The Pelicans just killed the Blazers.

And Portland did essentially nothing significant.

They didn't fire Terry Stotts.

They almost did.

They didn't trade C.J.

McCollum.

They didn't really almost ever do that until they did and they didn't get much back for him.

They didn't really shake much up at all.

They kind of stood pat with their team.

They didn't have tons of options, but mostly like a team like that, that has kind of gotten where it's gotten in the playoffs and then gets to the very first step of the playoffs and gets ejected with such alacrity by the Pelicans, something happens.

And then nothing happened.

And they got off to a good start.

And I had all these details in the story about how Paul Allen, the late Paul Allen, had addressed the team after the Pelican sweep in the locker room and kind of implied that, like, this was not okay and left people thinking change is coming.

And and then change didn't come and what i heard most of all in that week in portland was stories about damian lillard that changed that that deepened my appreciation of him as like a leader and a culture setter and one of the smallest ones that i heard was

just i can't remember who told me this but like they all talked to me about dame was

one player was sort of whispering to his locker mate, griping about like, man, I'm not playing enough.

Like, coach isn't playing me enough.

And Dame overheard it and just came over and was like, hey, just FYI, we don't do that here.

Like, there's no room for that here.

You can be unhappy about your playing time, but we're not doing this whispering stuff where fishers start opening up within the team.

And I asked him about the Pelican series and how a team survives,

how a team stays together, how it doesn't divide pointing fingers, playing the blame game like you stunk in that series, you stunk in that series.

And he just talked about how, like, I grew up in a family where if if we were all assigned to clean the house and like you didn't do your job but i did and my cousin did and this guy did that no it's on all of us we all didn't do our job and he ended i ended the story with um he has this quote at the end good things come to good people even if you get swept somewhere along the way this is what goes through my mind I'm going to be in my 11th year or something here in Portland.

I'm going to stick with it and we're going to make the finals.

And then I said, in Portland?

And he said, yes, in Portland.

And he says,

and if that never happens, he says, I've treated people the right way.

I put in the work.

And because of that, if it doesn't happen, I can live with it.

I'll have enjoyed the ride.

It's worth it.

And I just came out of all that being like, what a freaking stud this guy is as a culture setter.

And I'm honestly like, I'm not sure he ever wanted, ever like 100% was comfortable getting out of Portland.

I don't know that he was ever

like so adamant that he had to get out of there.

Obviously, he did.

He went to Milwaukee.

It didn't work, but now he's back and he's not going to play this year.

And then you got to figure out sort of what the team is when he comes back and how he fits.

And I think, like, to me, this is no harm, no foul.

Like, I don't, I don't, they have a lot of guards, but I don't see any harm in seeing if this homegrown hero can give you something that you don't have for a team that's going to be challenged offensively kind of as it is without him.

Yeah.

I don't see any, like, this to me is not just sort of some feel-good, whatever fluff story.

He could help their team in two years.

and i think all that is because of everything we're talking about which is when we're when we're describing dame's leadership and his approach and how he thinks about the game like this is a guy who gets it and who understands his role in an ecosystem and i think part of that like you mentioned the way he grew up it's also the way he came into the league where not to you know catch Lamarcus Aldridge with a stray, but I think there was a degree of which a young Dame coming up was a little like, felt like he was on the outside looking in in some ways with the LaMarcus Aldridge Blazers.

And was like, he's talked about that before, about like, he wishes there had been like more of a connection there early in his career.

And he tried to do the opposite, you know, as he became a star.

And so, who better now, who would have more perspective now, as far as somebody who could come in as an injured player who's not going to be contributing for a year and still help guys understand their role in things, who could still help bring guys under his wing, who can help Scoot, who can help Shaden Sharp, who can help, there's so many players on the Blazers who could, who could help, who could be helped by Damian Lillard just being around or by following some of the things that have worked so well for him.

And so you're right about the offense.

I don't know where it's going to come from short term.

If he's able to give them anything long term, that's great.

But quiet as Kepp, this is a hell of a defensive team that I'm looking forward to watching.

And I anticipate greatly how Dame would be able to incorporate into that a year or two from now.

You just said the words LaMarcus Aldridge, and I'm not going to go back through the whole transaction history of how the Blazers kind of got stuck in the mud with Dame to the point that he wanted to extricate himself.

Some part of him at least wanted to extricate himself.

But you remember that last year LaMarcus Aldridge was in Portland.

They kind of became this like, almost like a proto-pacers where out of nowhere, this combination of players adds up to more than the sum of their, their parts.

And you're like, is this, is this like a potential contender with Robin Lopez and Nick Batum and Wes Matthews?

And they traded and LaMarcus was.

about to hit free agency and there are a lot of rumblings he was going to leave and specifically that he was going to go to san antonio yeah and they make make one last run at it and trade a lottery-protected 2016 first-round pick to Denver for Aaron to follow to like round out the bench.

Lottery protected specifically in the event that Lamarcus Aldridge leaves.

We're probably going to bottom out.

We're protecting our pick so that we can go pivot into a quick rebuild, get a high lottery pick the next year, and go forward.

LaMarcus Aldridge leaves.

They end up, before that, they lose in the first round because Wes Matthews tears his Achilles and the whole season goes sideways.

LaMarcus Aldridge leaves, and the team is so good and Dame is so good so fast that they make the playoffs the next year and give up that pick.

Just a little footnote in history.

You mentioned the defense.

I think this team's going to be really interesting this year.

I was looking up their fan duel odds.

They're the second lowest odds, second worst odds to win the West.

Obviously, they're not going to win the West, but I'm surprised they're like below New Orleans, Phoenix.

I think this team's going to be decent.

And I think they're going to hang their hat on on defense offensive rebounding toughness transition play because they're going to have to they just don't have a lot of shooting um and i don't even know who they're going to start rob they have seven potential starters the only three i would put in pen

are denny ovdia

tumani kamara gotta be and donovan klingen i think those two i think kamara and ovdia they like the sort of tweener wings, tenacity, defense.

Avdia made a mega leap last year.

Klingen is sort of default starting center.

I'm just, I'm, I'm putting Rob Williams just over to the side.

I'm, I'm assuming he's just, I don't know.

And you're putting Yang Hansen in your dreams, or where are you going to be?

Oh, backup center, baby.

Backup center.

He's walking right into minutes.

There's a lot of time.

What a time to be alive.

And to me, just put a pin in that, but the center position is one of the more, is maybe the most interesting long-term question for this team is: let's say they get better around their centers faster than expected.

Dame comes back.

Is the Kling and Yang

duo good enough, or do they need to find a more wind now center?

But those two guard spots in the starting five, or the two remaining spots in the starting five, you got Scoot, Shaden, Drew Holiday, and Jeremy Grant still here.

Still there.

Like the Jeremy Grant trade was to try to entice Damian Lillard to stay.

Damon Lillard left.

Jeremy Grant's still here.

Hopefully, this renews Jeremy Grant's spirit because when he does not play with spirit, he might not get a rebound for like two weeks.

Who would you start out of those four guys along with the Kamara, Abdia, Klingen group?

I think I would start Jeremy Grant for a little bit of spacing, a little bit of shooting.

Like, again, you're just like really hard-pressed with the rest of this roster.

And I would probably start Drew, I think.

With all due respect to Scoot, who his own shot came along pretty well last season.

I was really impressed with some of the progress we saw from Scoot, but I kind of wonder if you, like, why would you make this deal for Drew Holiday to bring him off the bench?

Um, unless it was explicitly to clear away for Scoot.

So, I guess I can understand the logic.

I would start Drew personally.

This seems like a team that's looking to push forward, maybe not maximally, but at least pretty aggressively.

And overall, what was already this really good defense last season and this high-effort defense just added Drew Holiday, as you mentioned, one of the best defensive point guards of all time, got Matisse Thiebel back late in the season.

We'll see if he's a part of this team in any meaningful way.

I would say cleared out their spaciest line defender in DeAndre Ayton.

And whatever you may think of Donovan Klingen and Rob Williams, like those guys are legit rim protectors who actually make a difference around the basket a little bit.

And cleared out their worst defender, I would say, in the rotation in Anthony Simons as well.

So it's like this, this team could be even better defensively.

I think they are going to hang their hat on that end.

They're going to have to scrap points.

And that's where, like,

holding Jeremy Grant close is a dangerous and perhaps foolish endeavor.

But I do hold him close in this exact instance because I just genuinely don't know who else is going to score.

Yeah, it's half court offense is going to be a struggle, and

it would depress me.

The thought of both Henderson and Sharp coming off the bench,

I mean, I guess it's no harm, no foul.

They're going to play a lot regardless, and it allows them to sort of ease into games without too much responsibility, particularly for Shaden on defense.

And Shaden, by the way, extension, eligible.

We'll see if and when that happens.

I kind of want Scoot to get a runway.

I might start Scoot and Drew Holiday.

I think they like the idea of starting Drew because he's Drew and because it allows him to play a little bit of a lower usage role on offense, similar to what he played in Boston.

Although the threes ain't going to be as open as they were in Boston.

By the way, I was looking at some of the tracking data.

If you can sort the tracking data for three-point shooting by average distance the closest defender is away from the shooter, i.e., how open you are.

Kamara, Scoot, Drew are all like toward the top of the league and like most open threes.

So take their percentages a little bit with the Grand Assault.

But I don't know, man, that's an interesting puzzle to solve.

And off the bench, you got Yang, you got, you know, two of the guards, whoever, and I think Thibault will play.

And it's going to be an interesting team.

But offense is going to be an issue.

They're going to be fun to watch.

I just want to say

the Avdia trade is going to be really fun to examine and continue to re-examine because they traded uh two first-round picks for dennyavdia

um

one became bub carrington the other is some convoluted let me see i have it's like the second best of milwaukee boston and portland in 2029

chances are that's somewhere between 10 and 18.

like so it could be two low lottery picks whatever

and i got a lot of pushback from the more sort of

how do I say this, like analytics-y, forward-thinking, team-building philosophy people.

I mean, like, you just, when you're as bad as Portland, you just don't make a trade where you're giving up draft assets for a player who's just okay to good in Denny Avdia.

And I remember thinking, like, I think Denny Avdia is pretty good, and he's young, and he's on an insanely valuable contract.

And I, or I, like, gently argued with these people of like, is it like, why can't they just get a good young player?

And I feel really great about that trade now.

Like,

Bub Carrington could blow up this year or whatever.

We'll see where that pick lands.

But that dude is just good.

He's good at pretty much if the shooting last year was real, that was always the missing piece for him.

He would, he would not shoot.

Like, he'd be open and record scratch it.

And he shot it better last year, like, got to the line a ton, played with a new level of confidence and aggression.

That dude, just like, you could have a really interesting debate about who is the best player on the Blazers right now.

I think it might be, is it Denny Avdia?

It might be Denny Avdia.

I think that kind of thinking, granted, I get it.

If you are a bad team, you don't want to be trading away a bunch of draft assets.

Makes sense on paper.

I'm not going to argue with the premise.

Denny Avdia was good as a wizard.

Like that last season in Washington, he was really defending already.

He was, what, 22 years old then?

It's not like you're trading for a guy who's not doing it.

He's doing anything.

Remember, he would get stopped and do the X thing.

I was like, why did he drop that?

I want more of that in the NBA.

Personalized gestures.

We got to bring it back.

Look, this team is going to have no shortage of of defensive intensity and identity and personality like we got to start bringing some of that stuff back but i think all the precursors were there that this is a guy on a team that isn't going anywhere in washington but there's something in his game that really really pops the shooting was already starting to come along the defense had already come along the playmaking and the feel have already been there I never have any problem with teams trading for guys who can guard and who understand how to read the game.

Like, I will trust the rest to work itself out.

Even guys who can't shoot that well.

Like, I will trade for that guy and bet that his shooting can get a little better over time than almost any other skill set, to be honest with you.

Sharp is the most interesting guy, maybe.

18 and a half points a game last year.

I don't think you'd find that many people in the league who were super excited about how he got those 18 and a half points a game last year.

Down to 31% on threes.

And I interviewed him before the season for a piece that never ran, and he kind of joked with me about how he really could not shoot growing up.

Like, he couldn't shoot.

He was like, owned up.

He's like, I was just a bad shooter.

And so, like, it's going to take a while.

He just turned 22 years old, like, a month and a half ago.

He shot 56% on twos last year.

He's big, and I think with age and experience, he'll learn how to use his size and his power a little bit.

The passing is just okay, you know,

2.8 assists a game, not great.

Okay, might be kind.

Stretching it.

Yeah.

And defensively, he was just not present enough last year to the point that Chauncey Billups not only demoted him to the bench, but called him out for this is the reason you are being demoted to the bench.

And it perked him up a bit, but not quite enough.

I hope it perks him up a little more this year because there's an interesting player in here.

And

I believe in his potential as a scorer.

Like the guy can absolutely fly.

He's got a great first step.

The jumper looks okay to me.

Like if it ever comes along, it's not like he's taking just wide open threes and shooting 31%.

He's taking some contested ones.

I don't know.

What's your Shaden Sharp outlook?

I feel like you're probably a little more pessimistic than I am about him.

I do have a hard time with score first wings who don't have the all-around elements of their game all together yet.

And maybe that is just him being young.

Maybe, as you said, he'll eventually get there because he's probably the, I mean, he's got to be the most electric blazer easily.

Like, makes plays that are in the 99th percentile of athleticism in the NBA, does incredible shit on the court all the time.

I love to watch that stuff.

I do see the tunnel vision a little bit.

I do worry about like what his best role is.

Like, he's not quite at that level of scoring where you feel super confident, just like giving him the ball and getting out of the way.

And so then he falls into a range of like, okay, he's pretty good at this stuff, but not very good at these other supplementary skills.

Like, is he a, he has like the approach of a first star, like a go-to score in a lot of ways, but maybe the actual scoring and efficiency of like a second or third best player on a team.

And that disconnects like scares me to be honest with you with some players.

I want to believe in him.

He's still super young.

It's so early.

The one thing that really gives me pause, I will say, in addition to some of these like smaller caveats, is

we were talking about this recently about a different player, but like, who are the guys who learn how to be physical?

Who are the guys who learn how to use their size?

It was Josh Giddy that we were talking about.

That's exactly who it was.

And Shane Sharp has a little bit of that too, where he is so clearly like should be able to drive into and bounce over basically anyone in his path and will stop short on a lot of different actions.

And it's like, how do you, how do you get a guy like him over that hump?

That's something I'm always a little concerned with.

So, it's interesting you say that because for the piece that never ran, and now it's a year ago, I watched a lot of film of him, and you see it again.

Glimpses are not real until they become more than glimpses.

Glimpses are just glimpses, they don't really matter until they become a more regular part of the game.

But if you watch 300 Shade and Sharp drives or something like that, you will see 20

glimpses where he kind of looks like Jason Tatum.

And I don't mean to comp them as players because Jason Tatum's a first-team all NBA player and Shaden Sharp is very far from that and will probably never be a first-team all-NBA player.

I mean, certainly the odds are against anybody being that.

But just in terms of the size, the like sort of start and stop in the mid-range until I get where I want to go and an occasional shoulder to get me one step closer, he doesn't play that way.

Like I said, glimpses, but there were a few drives in there.

Like, oh, that kind of reminds me a little bit of Jason.

Like, not as powerful as Jalen Brown to use another Celtic who really likes to get into you and move you backwards.

But something was there.

And I just, I'm curious to see if that something can come out a little bit more.

Any final thoughts on the Blazers?

Who have, by the way, a lot of draft assets going forward, too, we should say.

I mean, I would also say Chauncey Billips, quietly a much improved coach, a guy who I think took a little time figuring out like, what are the rotations?

How do you balance all this stuff?

Like, there's a learning curve for coaches, too.

And I thought has really come on in helping this team find its backbone and really its identity as an extension of that.

Agreed.

And Chauncey has taken a lot of heat in Portland from, you know, the sort of segment of fans who think every coach just needs to be fired at all times.

Has obviously had, you know, the losing is what it is, but he comes in at the end of the dame era where the dame era is kind of petering out.

Then it's a rebuild.

It's like hard to prove yourself as a coach where A, your team is frankly not designed to win for some of your tenure, and B, is fluctuating to a degree that you can't really get a read on who should play when.

And Chauncey's like, I've had Chauncey on this podcast.

Chauncey was a former colleague.

I've talked to Chauncey a lot about basketball.

If you think Chauncey like doesn't know what he's talking about, I hate to break it to you.

The dude is like five levels ahead of where you think he is.

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Okay, we have some breaking news, Rob.

Oh.

I might have been prepared for this with notes about Chris Paul's fit with the clippers.

Another point guard reunion.

This one, perhaps, even weightier than Dame going back to Portland.

I'm not sure about that.

Chris Paul's place in history is a little loftier than Dame's, but Chris Paul is signing back with the Los Angeles Clippers after a sojourn away from the franchise that he helped build into Lob City, that he helped take pretty far into the playoffs, but not that far, really.

Maybe second round on those sort of beloved, snake-bitten, what-if teams with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan and now head coach J.J.

Reddick and a rotating cast of Doc Rivers' favorites on the wing missing three-pointers?

Signing back with the Clippers, joining Bradley Beale, for whom he was traded.

That's a nice little fun subplot here.

Another one of those with Damon Drew Holiday, too.

I know.

And after, you know, the time away in Houston, where they

take the Warriors to the absolute limit in 2018.

And before that was, you know, then Oklahoma City.

And then

all the other, you know, Chris has been in Phoenix and went to the finals in Phoenix and and got so, so close to the crowning moment of his career.

And then no.

And then it's been a little bit of a journey since then.

Back with the Clippers.

I mean, look, man, the history here is this is like, this is the era of Clippers basketball, despite the fact that they have made it.

further in one season post-Chris Paul than they ever did with Chris Paul.

This is when they landed on the map.

This is when they transitioned from a joke to a real franchise.

This is when Donald Sterling was kicked out of the league.

This is also when the Clippers suffered two absolutely epic collapses in 2014 against the Thunder and 2015 against the Rockets that undid what was, frankly, a championship caliber team.

Maybe, I don't know.

If they were, they lost it in those series.

And 2014 against the Thunder in game five is the lowest moment of Chris Paul's career.

In game five,

they blow a seven-point lead in 49 seconds to the Thunder in the fourth quarter, highlighted by a Chris Paul turnover on an attempted, I'm smarter than you, I'm out thinking the game, heave to try try to draw a three-shot foul when he just could have gotten fouled and made two free throws.

Then he fouls Russell Westbrook on a three-shot foul, and then he commits a turnover on the last possession of the game.

This is cool, man.

Like, Chris gets to, it's known that Chris wants to be near his family.

His family's in L.A.

This feels like the last step for him, finishing with the Clippers, retiring as a Clipper.

He's one of my favorite players of all time, as persnickety as he can be.

As much as I have said that there is almost no worse watch in the NBA than a Chris Paul team in the bonus.

It's just an endless reel of rip-throughs and flopping and flailing.

I love Chris Paul unabashedly.

The dude is short and not that athletic anymore and has continued to make winning plays everywhere he goes.

He started 82 games last year for the San Antonio Spurs.

I don't think he's going to start for the Clippers.

Rob, this just happened.

Gut reaction.

Chris Paul's a Clipper again.

I'm feeling the reunion vibes again.

I'm also looking at this Clippers roster, and there's just so many guys here.

Yet again, the Clippers have reshuffled, and yet they still have just like so many viable rotation players.

I too am a Chris Paul guy.

I too am an unabashed supporter.

I mean,

what is more like catnip for an NBA media person than the player who gets who thrives based on a meticulous level of control and also maniacal.

The dude got a technical foul on another team for an untucked jersey.

But is also hoisted by his own petard.

You know, he's also hoisted by his own jersey in some ways.

It is Shakespearean.

That 2004 Thunder, 2014 Thunder game is like a Shakespearean tragedy of Chris Paul being unraveled by his own ambition and smarts.

That's the Shakespearean tragedy.

The Rocket series is the Shakespearean farce where Corey Brewer and Josh Smith are ending your season with threes.

Like, that's it's tough to watch, but sometimes you got to watch that happen to yourself.

I love this.

Honestly, I hadn't, I was trying to find like what is the most, like what's what's the best basketball fit for Chris Paul at this stage in his career?

I don't think this is the best basketball fit necessarily.

I think there's teams that could have used Chris Paul more than the Clippers, though they certainly can.

And as you mentioned, there's more to it than this: of just like, where do you want to end your career?

Where do you want to be in relation to your family, like across the country?

A lot of appeal in going back to the Clippers in the first place.

So I'm kind of like coming around on this idea late, but I really like it, to be honest with you.

That Rocket series.

Oh my God.

I I behoove people.

Behoove, Rob,

youngins,

people

who don't know.

Yeah.

Go back and watch some tape of like 2007, 2008, Chris Paul with New Orleans.

That dude was so athletic and so fast.

Like he would do stuff that Chris Paul hasn't been able to do for 10 years.

And then his knees started having issues.

You know how hard it is to be as small as Chris Paul is, and he's small, and be statistically, which he is, despite the fact that I just cited an unbelievably epic brain fart that lasted 49 seconds of an NBA playoff game, one of the greatest clutch players in the history of basketball.

That's just what the stats say in terms of last-second shots, shots in the last minute of games.

It's all there.

I all wrote about it.

To be that short and be able to do that when you're being guarded by guys much bigger than you, and you're the smallest guy on the court, is very, very hard.

You said something interesting.

How the Clippers can use Chris Paul.

They have 11 legit rotation guys now.

So how can they use Chris Paul?

Where do you see him fitting in on this team?

Well, they had a painful need for just like somebody who could do a little bit more orchestration than Chris Dunn is qualified to do.

And you really felt it like in this kind of stickiest moments of the playoffs that like they just need like one more person who can actually handle one more person who can handle the logistics of this team.

I mean yet another reunion with Chris Paul and James Harden, which is fascinating in its own way.

I think he is mostly useful as that.

Like the guy who's coming in off the bench to help run things in a way that we just saw you don't necessarily want Bradley Beal doing on a full-time basis that, you know, bless him, Bogged on Bogdanovich is just getting buried further and further in the depth chart, I guess, behind these qualified guards who are being brought in to kind of upstage him.

I think that's kind of his best function with this team is like helping organize a team that on offense has not been very organized.

The trade-off for that, and I think the trade-off for all these moves, like the Clippers have brought in a lot of really good players who I like a lot.

In doing so, they're also diluting

what made them a 50-win team last season, which was their defense.

And by bringing Chris Paul, that means Chris Dunn's a little less important.

That helps you on offense.

It trades off on defense.

By bringing in Brad Beal, you have the same effect.

Derek Jones Jr., I think, will inevitably take a little bit of a haircut in terms of his role and rotation importance.

And Vita Zubatz is like locked in.

He's super important to this team.

But those three guys triangulated one of the best defenses in the league, give or take, however healthy Kawhi Leonard was at a given point in time.

Two of those guys are now dramatically less important than they used to be.

And like, what does that do to the identity of this team?

What does that do to the shape of the Clippers?

What kind of team are they going to be?

I honestly have no idea.

They're probably more balanced and maybe better off for it, but they're not quite what they were.

It's going to be...

a fun puzzle for Ty Lu because, you know, they spent a lot of the last, almost all of last season, starting both Chris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr.

for exactly the reason that you said, not just their defensive ability, but the fact that Kawhi did not have to overexert himself on defense in the regular season.

And then the deeper they got into, well, they didn't get deep in the playoffs, the deeper they got into the series that they played before game seven happened and what always happens in game seven happened.

They just realized we can't play Chris Dunne and Derrick Jones Jr.

at the same time.

They're not guarding either guy.

And Derrick Jones was all right and Chris Dunn was eh.

And so they bring in Bradley Beal and the guy you didn't mention, John Collins.

Yes.

and there's a school of thought among Clippers fans that they should just start both of those guys, start Bradley Beal and John Collins.

And so, it would be Beal Hardin, Leonard, Collins, Zubatz.

And I think John Collins actually has become like almost wildly underrated.

Like, I think he's a pretty capable defender if you keep things simple for him and kind of a versatile defender positionally, too.

But that is a sea change in your identity if you start that lineup.

I just wonder if the puzzle works that they can start one of those two defensive guys, Dunn and Jones, and bring one of Beal and Collins off the bench still.

I'm interested in that.

But I think you nailed it with Chris Paul.

To me, he's again, I mentioned 11 guys.

You know,

Dunn,

the guys I just started.

Dunn, Hardin, Leonard,

Jones, Zubatz, Beal,

Collins, Batum, Bogdanovich, Chris Paul, and Brooke Lopez, a genius signing backup center.

That's 11 guys.

To me, Chris Paul is like, A, I think you nailed it with sort of babysitting the offense when Hardin is on the bench.

Just like if it's not organized enough and Bradley Beal and or Kawhi Leonard need just a guy to get you into stuff, that's Chris Paul.

To me, he's also like, if Chris Dunn is just proving unplayable, we have an easier solution to that now.

If Bogdan Bogdanovich continues to show his age, we have another guy to plug in.

Like, there's going to be, even in the playoffs, 15, 18 Chris Paul minutes for the Clippers.

And I just think, again, no harm, no foul.

I don't know.

To me, the bar is just so high with the Thunder and the Nuggets and the Rockets just for next year.

I don't have the Clippers.

The Clippers, to me, are in this group of like fourth at best and hoping for a break and someone to take an injury in the playoffs.

Are you higher on them than that am I too low on them I think that makes it makes sense but they've they've put themselves firmly in that mix I mean they probably were already kind of there by default but to me this does at least gesture at resolving some of those playoff issues you talked about where there were there were too many either or offense defense decisions they had to make and if if John Collins alone can hold up some on both sides of the ball in that way he's worth I mean, worth that deal, worth the exchange, worth the sort of like transaction chain of, you know, I assume part of the reason they give up Norm Powell in the first place is they assumed they're getting Bradley Beal or knew they were getting Bradley Beal, and so there's just like an overall cohesive picture that makes some sense in terms of what they're trying to do to their roster.

Yeah, and there's no, like, if you're on paper fourth, fifth, whatever in the West, and you do need a break in the playoffs, guess what?

Teams get those breaks all the time, and all you can do is put yourself in position to take advantage of them.

And they're a better team today than they were last season when they were

arguably on paper the second best team in in the West for like 25 games.

I never bought that as a like a lasting thing.

I picked the nuggets to beat them in the playoffs, but they were that good.

I mean, they were very, very good.

Teams do get those breaks.

Do the Clippers ever get those breaks?

Is this a team that has ever historically had that sort of thing?

And maybe that means they're overdue.

Maybe that means it's coming.

Yeah.

Chris Paul doesn't get those breaks either.

He does not.

But Lob City, you know, I don't know what the incorporation status of Lob City is, but it might be kind of back you know you got john collins you got derrick jones jr avita zubats is like not really jumping but it is a lob technically speaking he'll he'll he'll catch the lob land and jump again i don't know if that that's like lob suburbs or like lob exurbs or something that's infrastructure baby i think that's innovation you know we're really advancing what the lob agenda can be

By the way, I should have mentioned this with the Blazers.

I mentioned the bar being high for the Thunder.

What the Blazers are going to face and every team in the West is facing.

It kind of goes without saying, but you have to say it every podcast.

We're going to maybe talk about the Grizzlies later and their in-between status.

If you're a West team that has a five-year time horizon, you're just looking at Oklahoma City and the storm that's brewing in San Antonio.

And it's like, how,

how,

just how can you, if we're Memphis, can we just please be the team that gets moved to the east if there's expansion?

Because what are we supposed to do with these two teams?

Speaking of the West, the other big thing that happened over the weekend, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers signed Marcus Smart off a buyout from Washington.

Marcus Smart has barely played basketball for the last two years and not looked great when doing it.

Pencil in Marcus Smart for me, Rob.

How does he fit with the Lakers?

How much does this help the Lakers who jumped into what last time I checked a three-way tie for the fourth best odds to win the West with Minnesota?

and the Clippers and behind those three that I mentioned.

And it's a big gap.

But, you know, again, this team that has Luca, man, it has Luca.

We just saw Luca two years ago go to the finals, like a team went to the finals on his back.

So tell me about Marcus Smart.

And just another, like, why not signing, to be honest with you?

Like, a good third guard who can play with Luca or with Austin Reeves or with both, depending on how you want to, you know, shape up your rotation.

I think, I see it as like kind of like a mulligan on Gabe Vincent in a lot of ways.

You know, you're kind of gesturing at the same sort of guard, but Marcus Smart more accomplished.

The difference, I really have like two sticking points to the extent that they exist.

Like, this is a buyout signing.

Like, why, again, why not if you're the Lakers?

Take a chance at Marcus Smart.

I really hope one of our sticking points is the same, but please, please give me the two.

Sticking point number one.

I mean, you mentioned the last two years, we haven't seen a lot of Marcus Smart.

I mean, the last five years, we haven't seen a lot of Marcus Smart.

Like, he's been pretty consistently injured for year over year over year now.

And I would say what the Lakers need in this type of player the most is a volume defender, right?

They need somebody who's getting you through an 82

concept, volume defender.

Sometimes you need it.

Like you need a guy who's going to eat minutes and eat, like, I mean, Luca and Austin Reeves are not guarding threats on the perimeter that are of like any high order unless absolutely necessary.

And so it would be great if you had someone to play with them or behind them who can take on some of that responsibility.

Is Marcus Smart that guy anymore?

I honestly don't know.

He picks up a lot of random injuries.

It's not even like a through line, I don't think, where there's like a chronic issue.

It's just like this and that over the course of his entire career, basically.

i would say that's caveat number one caveat number two what they need most is somebody who can guard guards uh can marcus smart at this stage in his career guard guards like i would say he might be better suited for guard like playing up and guarding threes than opposing point guards at this point what about what about fours i mean

let's keep it going well no but on a team where lebron

you know there are going to be lineups where lebron is nominally the four yes right like um but you might if if the opposing four is the best player on the team you're not going to want lebron in that assignment necessarily you're not going to want luca in that assignment even though he can guard fours too marcus smart has guarded up a lot in his career fours fives over the year he won defensive player of the year by the way not my defensive player of the year i'm i'm raising my hand it's like i did not vote marcus smart did not make my ballot that year so he was like a strong fourth and first team all defense for me um

but you know that guarding fours has some value to the lakers but yeah guarding guards

there's you know i saw someone report yesterday for i forget who, maybe, I think it was Mark Stein actually, that he's in, that he's really been paying attention to his conditioning and he's in great shape.

Like, yeah, that would be getting quicker and skinnier around screens would be helpful.

Yes.

I mean, just

quicker, you can only do so much, granted, at this point in his career.

And he's always been a stockier, bigger-bodied guard, right?

Who has some of this flexibility to his game?

And what was once like a quirk, that matchup flexibility, the ability to put him on guys as big as threes and fours, I think they're going to be able to leverage some of that.

And it was nice once upon a time.

Now it's kind of like his default way of life.

And that, again, is valuable to the Lakers, but the idea of him chasing around opposing point guards, especially the ones that you're going to want him to match up against in the West, that's a tall order for Marcus Smart at this stage.

What's your second sticking point?

I would say that's kind of one, too.

The health, like availability, and can he actually guard?

the players that they really need him to be able to guard.

Can I give you the third sticking point?

I would love it.

Jordan Goodwin was good last year,

and they had to waive him to get Marcus Smart, who's played like 40 games in the last two years.

There is a universe, and I'm not saying that we're going to live in this universe.

The Lakers certainly don't want to, where Jordan Goodwin is as good next season as Marcus Smart.

He was good.

Before the playoffs, there was this wonderful story by Dan Woikey about the Banshees, they called them, the Banshee culture with the Lakers and Jordan Goodwin and Jared Vanderbilt, who's still here setting the tone on defense just by screaming around on defense.

And then, of course, they could barely play in the playoffs.

But, you know, be that as it may, Jordan Goodwin was actually like a real contributor to their team, who, if you talk to their coaches, would be like, oh, you know who the guy I just sneaky love on our team is Jordan Goodwin.

He's gone.

Yeah.

And like a Jordan Goodwin is exactly the kind of player I'm talking about, like a hounding stopper who you could trust with this kind of responsibility over as many minutes as you can deign to play him.

And

you can fit him in on offense and all of those things.

Don't have that guy anymore.

Not, I guess, Jared Vanderbilt, if you want to play him big minutes, which they clearly don't.

Like, it's the Lakers' roster is in an odd spot.

And they, they, not unlike the Cliffbers, have their own offense, defense trade-offs in a lot of different ways that they're going to have to manage.

But Jordan Goodwin doesn't have his size and to be the volume defender

that you talked about with Marcus.

And Vanderbilt, look, like,

he's going to have moments in the regular season where

he's guarding the opposing point guard and hounding him and all of this.

And like, the Lakers still aren't quite sure if,

and maybe

the lean is no when it really matters, can we play him next to a center who's a non-shooter?

The answer has largely been no.

Now they obviously have a much better center than they did after the Anthony Davis Luca trade last year and DeAndre Ayton, who can shoot mid-range numbers at a pretty elite level, frankly.

But if Vando can only play in small ball lineups where he and LeBron are kind of co-centers or where he and LeBron and Rui are tri-centers or whatever, then there's only so many minutes to go around for him.

But

let me know.

There's also been, I would say, little whispers, mutterings, murmurings of, you know what, the Lakers are kind of invested in the idea of Maxie Kliba being a meaningful part of this rotation as a backup somewhere along the line.

And look,

your belief in Maxie Kliba's actual shooting, I think is really an eye of the beholder thing, and maybe more of a theoretical thing than an actual one, at least since the Mavs went to the conference finals with him years ago.

I was going to say, the Luca Kliba 1-5 pick and roll back in 2022 was killing people.

Was a thing once upon a time.

Is it still a thing?

Remains to be seen.

And

if he's a real backup five for them and maybe supplants, you know, Jackson Hayes for a good chunk of those minutes, as it seems like JJ Reddick is

just waiting for the chance to do.

Like, you know, I don't think Jackson Hayes is a JJ Reddick player by any definition.

Maybe Maxi Kliba is more of one.

And if that's the case, maybe there's more room for Vando.

Maybe that shooting could open something up for him.

I'll say this about Maxi Kliba:

incredible beard.

Just immaculate beard.

Let me ask you a radical Lakers question.

Between Marcus Smart, let's assume Marcus Smart, we get like

good Marcus, like the old Marcus Smart is gone, but like good, reliable Marcus Smart.

She's 35% on spot up threes, sets ball.

That's one thing Marcus Smart can do because he did it in Boston is set ball screens and make plays out of that, which is useful when you have LeBron and Luca on your team.

Let's say you get like decent Marcus Smart

and good Jake Loravia, who is, I think, an underrated signing for them.

Is there a world where

one of Austin Reeves or Rui Hachimura comes off the bench?

Wow.

I think Reeves,

he might be too good to do it, but the balance of the team would benefit if he did.

Like, I don't want to, you know, that's why I asked.

I don't want to invoke the name Manu Ginobly, but there's a reason.

No, no, no, no, no i'm not saying there's any comparison between them i'm just saying like there's a reason why that balance worked for the spurs and why very few teams have been able to convince players of any star adjacent caliber to do it or when or they'll do it but reluctantly or they'll do it but grumblingly like it's it's a hard pill for a lot of guys to swallow would the lakers be better if austin reeves was coming out in a contract in a contract year by the way and yes uh i think it would help them i don't think it will happen rui is maybe like a more realistic example example, but

I don't know.

That might be asking too much of Luca and LeBron and Austin guarding, you know, presumably two through four or one, three, and four.

Like, that's a lot for those guys to prop up defensively.

Rui, um,

I kind of agree with everything you said.

Like, I think Austin Reeves has probably ascended past this discussion, um, and it would be a tough, I mean, JJ would do it.

I mean, if he thought it was the right move, and I don't know if JJ does, he would do it.

He wouldn't care.

He would be able to massage it one way or another.

But this guy, like Austin Reeves,

looks like an all-star potentially.

And would not surprise me if he made an all-star team in the next three, four years, depending on how the Lakers build.

Rui is just like last two years with the Lakers.

Now, again, the first year was, no, not even limited sample size.

The last two years, 42% from three, 41% from three.

Size and versatility on defense to a decent level.

Like, that's just a guy I kind of want around in the starting lineup.

Like, a 6'8 guy who can shoot 40% from three has a little bit of a post-up game if you put small guys on him.

I just think it's a question that's worth asking.

Like, when you think about what is the best version of this team, it requires both Smart and Laravia to hit at a pretty high level to make it a discussion worthy of really happening.

But Rui is a particularly interesting one to me

because, you know, all the attention has been on Austin Reeves' free agency after the season, how it makes no sense for him to extend.

Ruby is also extension eligible and an unrestricted free agent after the season if there is no deal struck.

And the Lakers have been pretty open about we're prioritizing cap space going forward.

You know, even if LeBron leaves

after the season, and obviously the LeBron drama continues to hover around.

But let's just say he plays the season and then either retires or leaves in free agency or whatever.

And it is an expiring contract, as Brian Woodhorse has referred to him.

The Lakers view him quote as an expiring contract, that's what Brian said.

If you put in reasonable contracts or cap holds for Reeves and Hachimura, the cap space picture like already gets pretty tight if Luca extends.

Luca cannot extend until August 2nd.

I would expect Luca to extend because I don't see why he wouldn't.

Mark Stein reported he was pretty active recruiting Marcus Smart.

That's interesting.

But I'm just saying, like, Rue is an interesting pivot point player, good player versus cap space dilemma that all these teams face eventually.

I don't know, man.

I think the Lakers are good.

Yeah.

I think they had a good summer on balance.

I'm on record as saying I think the Ayton thing will work pretty well.

It's again, it's just hard for me, given LeBron's age as the second best player on the team.

It's just, it's not reasonable for me to expect he's going to make it through the whole season like intact and full full velocity in the playoffs.

Those three teams at the top are just really good, man.

Just really, really good.

I think it's hard to expect LeBron, a guy who just had an all-NBA caliber season,

an actual all-NBA season, to do that again all regular season and still be the guy they need him to be to advance as far in the playoffs as they might like.

It's just too much to ask at this stage.

And that's where you need Luca to look more like his pre-injury self.

That's where you need Austin Reeves to take

a step forward.

That's where you need some of these very pragmatic, opportunistic signings, whether it's Aiton or Smart or Laravia, to really, really cash in a meaningful way.

And if a couple of those things do, they're going to be in the mix, generally speaking.

But I see them more as in the Clippers mix than I do in the Nuggets, Rockets, Thunder mix.

Agreed.

Again,

nothing wrong with that in the Western Conference.

Not a bit.

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Couple of news.

Let's take a quick newsy detour.

Three newsy items.

Derek Queen out for three months with some sort of injury that I already forgot about.

Just

it's not going great for the Pelicans.

I don't know if we need to go beyond that.

Jalen Williams with a thunder.

I mentioned last week that Chet's contract was a straight 25% max across the board.

Haven't seen this reported elsewhere.

A couple people who have seen the Jalen Williams contract have described it to me like this.

It has the escalators for all the all NBA, Defense Player of the Year, MVP stuff.

These people have told me, here's how the escalators work.

And this, to me, is like

a fair representation of how I would like a lot of these to go.

Third team, all NBA, you bump up from 25 to 26%.

Second team all-NBA, you bump up from 25 to 27%.

All other things, first team, all-NBA, and the major individual awards, the full 30% max.

I've always said that third team all-NBA should be treated as a different thing.

That's one way of doing it and by the way i it to again to repeat this i think it's bs right off the bat that jalen williams even has to re-earn the 30 bump he just made all nba in his third year he should automatically get the the whatever bump is necessary for him he shouldn't have to negotiate but he did and this is a fair it's a fair negotiation third bit of news

All right, Rob, you got to be Judge Judy now.

Yeah.

Cam Thomas was mean to me online.

He certainly was.

Would you say you were mean to him?

So, so, okay, so background.

Let me bring up the tweet now.

I like Cam Thomas.

I have nothing against Cam Thomas.

So an aggregator, as they are wont to do,

aggregates this.

Zach Lowe on Cam Thomas.

The consensus on Cam Thomas, if there is one, and he's got some fans and he's got some mega detractors, but the consensus is kind of like empties calorie ball hog.

That was 30 seconds in what was a 12-minute deep dive into Cam Thomas's game.

And even there, I say, if there is one, it's that.

I'm sorry to report that that's true.

And then Cam Thomas responded by saying, the consensus, fuck you and the consensus, Zach Lowe NBA.

I like the consensus getting some strays there.

This is most likely the same consensus teams who can't can't guard me and send double teams from the jump ball.

Why are we double teaming a guy who's not that good?

I don't know in quotes.

Make it make sense, please.

Look, restricted free agency sucks, first of all.

Like, it sucks that all these guys are stuck in this purgatory.

It would be the greatest triumph the players union could ever have to eliminate restricted free agency.

I don't know.

It would take such a give back somewhere else that I don't know if they'll ever be able to do it.

But

one thing I will never do, Rob, do you remember those old Sports Illustrated columns where it's like anonymous scout speaks about guys in the NBA?

I did these for the magazine sometimes, did the interviews.

It's a wild ride.

Well, and it always, I never liked them because

it was just an outlet for these scouts to say nasty things about players.

Yes.

And I would always think to myself,

why don't you, not you, Rob Mahoney, like you, writer guy, like you have a brain.

What do you think about the players?

Why should you not have to win about the players?

So, one thing I will always do is I cite the consensus and I say if there is one, he's got some fans, he's got some mega detractors.

I will then offer my own opinion.

And if Cam Thomas had listened to the subsequent 12 minutes,

I don't think he did, but I don't know.

He would have heard me deep dive into his game and talk about career high and assists, certain kinds of passes that he's gotten meaningfully better at, Nick Claxton Lobbs, little dump-offs, and stuff like that.

i have said consistently for two years of cam thomas dialogue that the guy can straight up get buckets and there is a place for him in the nba to me that place is most likely sixth man scoring burst guy which is what i said in that 12-minute segment nakaias duncan on that segment went got numbers about how good the cam thomas nick claxton pick and roll was And then I talked about how a lot of his passes are kind of like I'm in jail last resort passes and what does he look like as an off-ball player?

I'm not sure that anyone really knows that yet, or we've seen a lot of evidence of it.

My only rebuttal would be like,

it was a fair, I thought, and what no one else in national media is going into 200 Cam Thomas pick and rolls before a podcast to really dissect it.

And I offer my own opinion.

He probably still doesn't like my own opinion, but my own opinion was.

Probably best is six, seventh man scorer.

Not sure he has the vision or whatever mindset.

And frankly like

i do think sometimes he plays like a ball hog and that's okay because he can score and he's on a terrible team but i don't think anything i said was unfair and i'm you know i just i just felt like i needed to say i needed to to address i don't like to do this like mark cuban once said fuck you zach low on national television because like you don't do you remember why this was i don't even remember what the what the cause was what what it was it was it was during the pandemic like 2020 2021 maybe we're coming out of it a little bit i said on a podcast with Tim McMahon that Luka Doncich might be the biggest whiner in the NBA with officials, and he pushed back on that.

I feel like I was vindicated on that one, and no one actually thought I was wrong.

And I feel like I'm okay on Cam Thomas.

I'm comfortable with 100% of what is, and you get all these responses, like, oh, he cooked you.

He cooked you.

And I'm like, I feel pretty good.

Like, I did my laps in the pool yesterday.

I had a nice weekend.

Like, it didn't really affect my life.

I'm comfortable with everything I've said about Cam Thomas.

End of story.

You're hitting Cam Thomas with the LeBron-esque, you got to wake up and have the same life again tomorrow kind of kind of routine.

That's the way you're going.

No, I just, I just wish these things, like the aggregation is just part of the deal.

And I've learned to just like, there's, I, I, I, it's like twice a week, you'll have these things happen and an agent will call and whatever will call.

And I'll just have to be like, just, can you just listen?

to the actual thing because yeah i said what's being aggregated yeah but if you're gonna like be mad at me just listen to the actual thing.

I think if you listen to the actual thing, it's all pretty fair.

And I've just generally been like, I've argued with GMs privately

who,

now this is a year or two ago, a year ago, maybe, who would be like, yeah, we just don't think the guy's good.

I'd be like, I actually think Camp Thomas is kind of good.

Like, I've argued on his behalf.

So I don't know.

Just, I'm comfortable with everything I said.

I take none of it back.

I thought it was fair.

The warts are there.

The good things are there.

I'm interested to see where he ends up.

Yes.

I thought you and Nikai's were both very fair, especially about the progress and the playmaking and like some of the ways in which his game is advancing, if not maybe as fast or as comprehensively as you might want.

I also thought Cam kind of cooked himself a little bit by saying,

how could you say this about a guy who gets double teamed all the time?

There's a reason you're getting double teamed.

And it's not just because there aren't a lot of scorers on the Brooklyn Nets.

It's because they don't think you're going to pass the ball.

And I don't think you're going to pass the ball.

You know what?

Aggregate this, if you will.

I, Rob Mahoney, don't think that you're going to pass the ball, Cam Thomas.

I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I don't see that part of his game coming along as like i don't think he's ever going to be someone who eagerly moves the ball who eagerly participates in a comprehensive offense that doesn't mean there's not a role for him it means that if you are a team that even had a chance at hypothetical cap space you're not going to detonate your roster to sign Cam Thomas as a restricted free agent.

It means if you're the Brooklyn Nets, a team that I would say needs first option go-to scoring as much as any team in the league.

How about the history of the league?

They're in the running, and here they are not exactly tripping over themselves to sign Cam Thomas to a star-type contract, which I would guess he envisions himself as that kind of player.

And like a lot of this is sort of the paradox of the NBA, which is the odds of making it to the league are so astronomically small.

The only way you make it is by believing yourself in the way that Cam Thomas believes in himself.

And then once you get there, the only way you stick around for the vast majority of players is by having an incredible amount of self-awareness.

I don't think that Cam Thomas has a ton of self-awareness as a player.

I think he's a guy who's a clearly skilled scorer, who can manufacture buckets with the best of them.

And I'm here to tell you, in the 2025 NBA, that's not always enough.

And it's certainly not enough to get you paid consistently all the time to the degree that you might like.

And look,

I'll just put a bow on this by saying this.

If anyone's still mad about this, I just listen to the 12 minutes I did the other day because I'm comfortable with everything I said there.

End of story.

Restricted free agency really does suck.

It does.

And I'm not sure what the solution is to it, but Giddy, Kaminga, Thomas, Grimes, you know, wouldn't surprise me if a couple of them took one plus one kind of deals just to get back into free agency if there is more cap space projected for next season, which there is, because they are at risk of being, frankly, underpaid because there's just nobody out, nobody left to pay them.

Okay.

Oh, actually, I mean, before we move on, I don't know what your merch budget is, but if you wanted to mock up some shirts that say like, fuck Zack Lowe and fuck the consensus, I would probably buy one.

fuck the consensus there's got to be an album that's called fuck the consensus by some indie band oh that's rage against the machine if I've ever heard it yeah okay random deep dive team of the day you proposed the Memphis Grizzlies I did as our random deep dive team of the day I mentioned before like every other team in the West with a somewhat long time horizon they are dealing with the current behemoth in Oklahoma City and the Wembanyama storm in San Antonio they traded Desmond Bain for four first-round picks effectively two of of which they used to move up to

draft Cedric Howard at number 11.

That trade evinced a sort of reality check of like, we're not ready now,

but we still have John Morant.

We still have Jaron Jackson Jr., who they since renegotiated and extended.

And if you have both of those guys making $100 million between them, Jaw's extension eligible right now, by the way, I haven't heard a peep about anything there.

If, as long as you have those guys on your team making $100 million million between them, you are by definition trying to win on some timetable.

Not this year's timetable, but

your statement to the league is: we think this infrastructure is enough that with Coward being really good and or a trade coming in down the line with these assets that we just acquired for Bain, we think we can butt back in to that picture where we were before all of this went sideways.

And my question to you is, can they and how do they do that?

I think they can down the line to some extent.

Here's the larger philosophical question.

I guess the plan now is just to cross your fingers, pray for Rain, and believe in John Morant.

Like to believe that this guy is the guy.

I think it's been harder to rely on Ja as a star than almost any other star in the league over the last couple of years between the absences, the suspensions, the injuries, some of the quirks of his game and the walls he runs into as like a playoff performer.

All that stuff is so real.

And yet you see him on the court and you want to believe in that player and you see the galvanizing effect he has on basically everyone around him and you remember how powerful that can be.

I don't blame the Grizzlies for believing in that, but they have a long way to go in terms of figuring out like how to use those assets, what they have in some of the guys they just brought in.

Like how much does KCP have left?

That's a thing we can debate with a Finder Tooth Comb if you'd like.

Is Ty Jerome the guy we saw in the regular season hit every single contested shot?

Or is he the guy we saw in the playoffs not do that over and over again?

And to what extent is that a meaningful part of this team or not?

I just think there's so many variables with them.

And we know who the teams are in the West who are clearly going for it.

And we know who the teams are in the West who are clearly not.

And somewhere in the middle is a team that won 48 games and traded away a really good player in Desmond Bain and might also still be a good winning team just because they have all this stuff, because they have a lot of good players and they have John Jaron Jackson.

And maybe that's enough to at least kind of get yourself into the category.

It really all, like, sometimes it's just simple, right?

And, like, the answer here is very simple.

If John Morant is never going to be a top 10 to 12 player again, they're never going to, it's just not going to happen with this team.

Like,

they're not going to be able to sniff the Oklahoma City, San Antonio stuff.

And there's other teams in the West that are going to rise up too, unless things go wrong in those places, which they very well could.

Jaron Jackson Jr.

is really good.

There's probably a little bit more room for improvement, but it feels like he's just kind of maximizing what he can do offensively.

He's not the smoothest offensive player with the ball, but he gets things done.

Yeah.

I love him as a driver, to be honest with you.

Yeah.

The range of what he can do off the dribble, I think, is pretty unique among the bigs in the landscape right now.

Quirky makes a lot of floaters and half hooks and all that stuff.

But if Morant is,

you know, the 35th best player in the NBA,

the vision of this team is kind of dead on arrival.

If he's not, then there's something here.

Currently, they are one, two three four five six seven eight nine tenth best odds to win the west next year which feels to me about right behind the spurs actually which i'm wow i like that because i'm bullish on the spurs i talked about this last week with mode to kill i think the spurs are a sneaky like leap not sneaky i think the leap could come faster and bigger than maybe expected um

and yeah i just you know

You project a starting five, Ja, KCP, Jalen Wells, Jaron Jackson Jr., and you want want to put in Zach Edie.

He's injured, and he's going to miss time to start the season.

That's kind of a big deal that Zach Eady's injured.

The bench is pretty good.

You still got Scotty Pippen Jr.

You mentioned Ty Jerome.

Coward's going to get a chance to play right away.

Santi Aldama is just straight up good.

Love him.

And maybe he fills in as a starter for Edie and they shift Jaron Jackson Jr.

to the five, or they start Brandon Clark, who's always good.

And then the deep bench, you got your Vince Williams, Gigi Jackson, Conchar, Jock Landell.

Like all these dudes can play, and they still have these extra assets from Orlando.

And by the way, if they do miss the playoffs this year,

there's a likelihood they will have two lottery picks because they have their own pick and then they have this swap a doodle-doo where they get like it's like Orlando, Washington, and Phoenix are all involved.

And when you suss it out, if all of those teams play to expectations, it's very likely Memphis gets Phoenix's pick.

Phoenix, I think, is a likely lottery team too.

That's something.

Two bites at the lottery, Apollo is something, but I think it's a good, it's a good team.

It's a deep team.

I just, it's murky to me, unless Coward just just hits bigger and faster than people think on the Jod Jaron timetable.

But it's certainly an interesting team that's going to be feisty and tough defensively.

No appetite here for bottoming out right now.

And I just don't, it's hard for me to see the vision going forward.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different versions of playing that middle path, right?

There's the version that got the pacers to the NBA Finals, for example, of betting on young players you really believe in and believing in like the gradual coalescing of a supporting cast of making kind of the big opportunistic swing for a Galaxy Academy when it comes available.

And then there's this version, which is just like we knew, for one, I think the John Morant, Desmond Bain, Jaron Jackson trio had genuinely run its course in a lot of ways.

And we had seen too clearly and too plainly what the limitations of that team were going to be.

This gives you a chance to be a slightly different kind of team.

It's still a John Morant, Jaron Jackson team.

I'm trying to get around to the idea that John Morant can be that sort of player again.

I would say I've generally been a bit of a skeptic on him over the last 24 months or so for some pretty well-founded reasons, in my opinion.

But

what he does is electric, and what he does is something that's like really inimitable and really hard to capture again through another kind of player.

You can't just trade John Morant for another parallel star and be like, okay, we're just as good of a team.

Okay, we're just as good of a, we have just as good of a driving force of our offense.

Like, it's a hard thing to find.

And so I understand the instinct to hold on to that and to give it one more chance to refresh around the edges and see if that makes any meaningful difference.

They're not there yet, and this middle stage is kind of the one I'm fascinated by just to see which pieces stick and which ones don't.

And, you know,

if you're going to pivot,

it's like I don't know how tradable Jaw is right now, anyway.

Like, also, Joe, that's going to make sense for the Grizzlies.

Jaron Jackson Jr., $35 million this year,

50-ish, 49, 50, 52, player option, 53.

Cap's going to go up.

We'll see how much it actually goes up.

Obviously, the NBA's recent projection is a little more pessimistic.

It's fine.

It's going to be, you know, Spotrak has it projected somewhere between 29 and 30, 28% of the cap.

Like, that's fine.

It's not easy to trade any contract at that level.

But Jaron Jackson Jr.

is really good.

I had him on my all-NBA team, the third team this year.

I think he missed, and he did miss.

Just barely.

I thought he should have made it, but you know, I have the Beholder type thing.

It's a good team.

I just don't know, you know, I don't know enough about Coward

to really project him other than he was the biggest riser in the last three months of the draft process.

But I don't have any problem with the team deciding we're going to kind of tread water in the good space and wait to see if we can knock into the great space.

It's just harder to not drown in the West than it is in the East.

The West is presently constructed.

Like, you could tread water water and be a 44 win team that misses the play-in like it that's that's a possible thing i think they're probably gonna be yeah in contention for the play-in as much as anything anything more than that seems awfully ambitious given everything that they're gonna have to fight through in the west the the wild cards here are not just cedric coward but like we've been just kind of waiting on gigi jackson and in some ways waiting on vince williams and both of them have run into a bunch of injuries a bunch of it like just quirks in terms of their development they have not quite paid off if either of them has a breakthrough where all of a sudden they are a more meaningful, like locked-in rotation player, then maybe you start to see the shape of something.

And I like Jalen Wells a lot.

Like I think he's a player who's going to make sense for them long term, would make sense for basically any team and was hurt at the end of last season.

So getting him back is a meaningful thing, but not a meaningful thing in the way that's going to catapult you to the level we've been talking about with some of these other like hyper competitive West teams or just like more talented West teams, frankly, than where the Grizzlies are now.

Yeah, Jalen Wells is also interesting because Grizzlies will not be be able to have cap space a year from now.

There's a world in which they have cap space in the summer of 2027, but it's kind of tight and it requires like declining Santi Aldama's option, declining a bunch of other options.

And in there somewhere is a Jalen Wills extension, a Jalen Wells extension where they kind of decline a team option and extend them out there.

So interesting.

Yeah, I mean, Memphis, you know,

you mentioned playing.

I think, you know, somewhere in that range, that's 7 to 10 is right.

I think you are betting that one of these older teams, like something befalls someone in the Lakers, Warriors, Clippers trio.

Sure.

But I think all three of those, well, the Warriors have done nothing, and we know why they've done nothing.

They've got stuff in a holding pattern.

But the LA teams have done well to round out their depth to sort of give them a little bit of ballast against some bad injury luck.

And then, you know, we'll see what happens.

Right below the Grizzlies is a the Grizzlies are plus 5 000 to win the west then there's a jump to plus 13 000 and the sacramento kings below them dallas is in there too and like dallas is dallas is right below the warriors

and i haven't talked we haven't talked much about them cooper flag is going to be awesome but like that's that's a team that could go a lot of different directions next year with kyrie out for quite a long time.

They're a hard team for me to peg.

They're your former hometown team.

I, I have to think about them a little more.

I don't know if that projection is optimistic, not optimistic.

They've got AD, obviously.

It's a strange, it's a strange brew there right now.

Incredibly strange brew, incredibly susceptible to injury, not just Kyrie's, but like Clay and AD's ability to hang and be healthy is obviously beyond critical.

And so stacking that along with Cooper flags need to be good immediately for this to be a good competitive team.

Like, you're just compounding variables in a way that I think makes the Maz very exciting, and I'm very eager to see it play out in real time But also they're hard to not just like literally bet on but to wrap your head around What the shape of that team is gonna be how they're gonna play who's gonna handle the ball for one like are you are you running Cooper flag as a ball handler a lot?

Are you trusting D'Angelo Russell and Dante Exhum with those responsibilities?

Like there's there's a lot to figure out and for a team in the Mavericks position who just made a franchise altering trade, I think you would hope that they had more already figured out, but I'm going to enjoy watching it.

That's for sure.

One last bit of semi-breaking news, and I say semi-breaking because it's kind of expected, but Donatas Urbonis, who's a very acclaimed European journalist covering the NBA over there, spoke with Jonas Valentunis about what's going on with the Nuggets and

Panathenaikos.

I want to make clear, this is Valentunis, I want to make clear, I want to clear the air about my playing situation next season now that Denver has made their decision to keep me.

The idea of playing for Penathenaikos closer to home was very exciting to me, but that will have to wait.

I am fully committed to honoring my contract with the Nuggets this season and will give it my all to compete for a championship.

So that is done.

I expected it to be done.

That sounds pretty done to me.

And a small but important win for the Nuggets, who now finally have an actual identity to lean upon when Jokic is on the bench.

I thought their summer was pretty much an A-plus summer.

And between them and the them and the Rockets both separated themselves to me as like, I mean, the Denver was already,

as long as you have Jokic and a decent team, you're already a preeminent challenger at Oklahoma City.

They cemented that.

I thought they had an awesome summer and just wanted to note that the JV thing seems to be about done.

Yeah, if between JV and Bruce Brown and one of like the Strother, Pickett, Hunter, Tyson group like solidifies in any meaningful way, now you've really got something.

I think they have enough sort of swings at those last rotation spots where you could see them leveling up through that alone.

Rob Mahoney, where can we find you this week?

What do we got going on?

Hopefully on on like lounging on my couch doing nothing.

That's what we're hoping for.

That's the ideal.

We're easing into that stage, Zach.

Well, I'm going to Europe in 10 days.

Mike take her microphone with me just in case, just in case something happens.

But I got 10 more days until the annual

Euro sojourn, but I will be obviously alert and aware of what is happening in the NBA.

This will be our last podcast together before I return from said sojourn.

It's been wonderful having you on and getting you into the rotation and being colleagues.

It was great seeing you in Vegas

at an undisclosed hotel location.

Rob Mahoney, you're the best.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

All right, that's it for today.

Absolutely loaded show.

Rob, awesome.

As always, I hope to see him soon.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for Jesse and Jonathan on production.

I will see you Thursday.

As scheduled, unless something crazy happens for a new show.

We'll do Mets Corner again, baby.

Let's go, Mets.

See you guys.

Thank you.

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