Beal to L.A., the Spurs' Future, and More With Mo Dakhil, Plus Sean Fennessey Returns for Mets Corner

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All right, coming up on the Zach Lowe show, we got a loaded show today.

There's a lot of stuff happening in NBA.

Mo Takil, regular guest, former video coordinator for multiple NBA teams, just a guy who knows what's going on in the game, is here to talk about Bradley Beal to the Clippers.

Why did the Suns buy him out?

What are the Suns doing?

Where are the Suns going?

We're going to talk about Paul George.

Oh, just stuck in a little surgery news.

All right.

Things continue to go great for the Sixers.

Massive ESPN.com story about Joel and B.

We'll talk about some revelations in there.

We'll hit restricted free agency again.

I've been in Vegas all week gathering up little morsels of intel on what's going to happen with Jonathan Kamingo.

What are the offers out there for Cam Thomas and Josh Giddy?

And then we're going to deep dive.

We're continuing our random deep dives into teams that are sort of just interesting, whatever.

We're going to do on one ledger, the Spurs.

Are they going to be better than people even think?

Are they a potential mega leap team?

What's their rotation look like?

And then a team that was so qualified for the WTF team podcast that we just left them aside for their own segment.

It's Pelicans time, baby.

All coming up on the Zach Lowe Show with Mo Tequila and then Mets Corner, second edition with Sean Fantasy.

All-star game is done.

Second half of the season is starting.

I ask a lot of dumb questions.

We talk about Mr.

Mett and other mascots.

It's a great time coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show live from Las Vegas, Nevada.

I was in seven casinos in one day yesterday.

It's time for me to leave, but we have a lot of NBA news to discuss.

Mo Takil, how are you?

I'm doing well.

I wasn't in as many casinos as you were yesterday, but I was in a few myself, and I'm ready to go.

Seven is a lot.

A lot of Ubers.

Good times were had by all.

Mischief.

Some mischief, not too much mischief.

The big news yesterday, the Bradley Beal wave and stretch finally happened.

Enough was chopped off for the Suns to be able to legally wave and stretch Bradley Beal.

Now they they will have 19 million plus of dead money on their cap for five years, but they get under the tax, saving Matt Ishbia

untold millions, like 100 plus million of dollars just in the next season.

And Bradley Beal signs a one-plus one with the Los Angeles Clippers.

This is expected.

I had already talked about it.

I had already projected his role on the team.

And the one plus one gives Beal the opportunity to re-enter free agency a year from now and recoup the money he is giving back.

Obviously, look, they've turned Norm Powell effectively into two players.

Bradley Beale, who replaces Norm Powell, almost, I mean, different styles of players, but similar in the big picture, and John Collins, a very new style of player

for the Clippers, a guy who can play the four and the five.

Not sure how often he'll really be able to play the five, but with Brooke Lopez spacing the floor, he can be a rim runner.

James Harden, I think, was a big part of them getting John Collins.

He wanted another rim runner.

They got him a rim runner.

Look, man, this is where the Clippers are.

They're a very good team.

I think they did well this offseason.

I don't know how you would project their rotation.

They could do a number of different things, but I would just pencil in right now a Harden, Dunn, Derrick Jones Jr., Kawhi Leonard, Evitsu Zubats starting five.

Sure, you could start Bradley Beal.

You could start John Collins.

You could start both Bradley Beal and John Collins.

I just think the Clippers' default should be regular season.

Let's keep to our defensive identity that we had with Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr.

Let's minimize the amount of time Kawhi has to really exert himself as a stopper.

And if we get to the playoffs, and again, it proves untenable to play Dunn and Jones Jr.

at the same time, we got a lot of different cards to play.

Off the bench, I mean, look, they're going to stagger minutes with all this, but I mean, their five-man bench unit is now Beale.

Bogdan, Bogdanovich, whatever he has left to give, Batum, Collins, Lopez.

After that, everyone's a question mark, but that's a pretty strong top 10.

What do you think of this team?

I love it.

I think, you know, they, as you said, they did really well.

I think that the beauty of it, Zach, when you're talking about like the lineups that what they could possibly start is something they haven't had is they are now going to have the ability to kind of have positional sort of versatility, right?

Lineup versatilities.

They can go big now.

They can go small.

They could do so many different things in the way that they play.

I think it's going to be really important for them.

And that's what I loved about the the John Collins pickup.

That's what I love about picking up the whole

Bradley Beal replacing Norman Powell.

I think it puts them in a good position where they get to play around a little bit more and work through a whole bunch of other things.

I love what they've done this summer.

The only caveat is, I go, this is still a relatively old team.

They got John Collins.

They get a little bit younger, but they're still an old team.

There's still going to be some questions.

Look, Norman Powell's not the perfect Powell replacement just because games played, you you know, and there's going to be, you know, situations where Powell is going to miss a lot of games.

And you kind of have to sort of pencil.

I'm, excuse me, not Powell.

Beal's going to miss a lot of games.

And you kind of have to pencil some of that stuff in and be aware of like, this is something that's going to happen.

And you have to understand that.

But I think they're in a good position.

And I would almost say I'd start John Collins

and put Kawhi at the three.

Like, this is going to probably be something you want to do in the playoffs.

I think you might as well try to get as many reps as possible as you can across the board with those guys.

I'd bring Beale off the bench.

I think having that firepower off the bench is a nice little boost for them.

And I think that's the way I would kind of look at it if I were the Clippers.

That would be, that's the lineup.

I wrote lineups, you know, kind of coming into this, preparing for the show.

And that's what I had.

I think they should start Collins at the four, go with Zubach at the five, and then just kind of play it out from there.

And look, like, I got into some playful arguments with our boss here, Bill Simmons, about John Collins.

He does not share my John Collins optimism.

I get it.

He has sometimes been a spacey player on defense.

Shooting has been up and down.

IQ feel when the floor is in motion and he has the ball, a little shaky.

I get it.

I just think he's good.

I think he's a good player.

I think the three-point shooting is pretty real and pretty stable for him.

He shot it very well in Utah last year.

The rim running is, it's like, that's, you know, that's just plug and play for James Harden.

That's easy.

He's going to get dunks rolling to the rim.

He's become better defensively with a little versatility.

Like, I'm not sure how much I trust him at the highest, highest levels, but he's become an okay to decent defender who can switch and do some things on the perimeter.

So I wouldn't mind starting him.

And I think that fit is going to work.

And I still go back to like,

look, everybody laughs at the Hawks conference finals run from 2021 as sort of fake and whatever.

One thing that wasn't fake in that run was John Collins accessed a level of grit and toughness that he had not shown previously in his career, where he seemed most interested in like high-flying highlights, scoring, and all that.

He defended pretty well, dug in on the glass, got rebounds cut for baskets, like did the dirty work stuff that if he can re-access that part of his game, I think he fits really well for the Clippers.

And Beal,

look, the Phoenix thing was a disaster.

Yeah.

His effort level and just general sort of,

there was just something like saggy and eh about how he looked in Phoenix.

And that's all got to perk up now.

Like all the bad feelings left behind.

All the like,

I am who I am in this league.

I'm a starter.

I'm a 25-plus point of game scorer.

That's over.

You got to, whatever role you get, and I agree with you, I would bring him off the bench.

And I bet that's what they're planning to do.

And I bet they've discussed this with Bradley Beal already.

And he's making a salary now that is is fitting of a bench player

like whatever the role is you just got to do it really hard like i when he went to the suns i was like one of the things i like about his fit there was in his last year with the wizards he set more ball screens that year than he had set like his entire career lean into that a little bit if they're going to put the smallest defender on you be a screener get switches get mismatches dig in a little bit on defense like dig the freak in on defense and i think he will.

And I like he's still, I keep saying this, like he's not like a chump.

He averaged 17 points a game last year on almost 50, 40, 90 shooting.

He's going to really,

Norm Powell had some hamstring stuff at the end of last season, did not play well in the playoffs.

I think this is going to be a smooth fit for Bradley Beal.

I think this is a, these are really good moves for the Clippers.

Yeah, and I think when you look at the Beale situation in Phoenix, I think one of the problems in Phoenix was that they they wanted him to kind of be a point guard.

And that's simply not how you want to play Bradley Beal.

Like, I don't think, yes, he can play make, he could do all that stuff, but that wasn't his game.

Like, that's not, you know, when I say like, you need a point guard, that's not who I go running to in terms of Bradley Beal.

It's a guy that can kind of do it from time to time.

And I think that whole situation sort of soured everybody.

And he, you know, they almost felt it.

coming.

And as you said,

Saggy is a good way of kind of describing it, where it never felt like everybody was kind of fully committed to the the plan and body.

And at the end of that series against Minnesota, where they got waxed in a sweep, and Bradley Beal just sort of like committed like three or four horrible turnovers in the last game.

It was like, it was almost like they quit in that series and just, and then quit on the whole concept of their team going forward.

Right.

And I think that's sort of the problems that you have.

I think now, look, this is a situation.

And this is the more important thing.

Bradley Beal picked this situation.

He had other suitors out there.

There were teams that would have been interested in signing him to the similar deal.

The Bucks for sure.

Absolutely.

And this is the situation where you pick this.

You know, now, like, you have to commit now to being the guy they need you to be.

This isn't about you.

This isn't, you know, your ego or anything like that.

And I think that's the thing.

The numbers is the thing that everybody's kind of forgetting about.

Being almost a 50, 40, 90 shooter, you know, is

like that's who Bradley Beal is.

Like, that's somebody that you can can expect to come in and drop in, you know, regularly around 15 points a night, 18 points.

You know, there's going to be nights where he's going to erupt and have 30, you know, and I think that's something that's going to really help the Clippers across the board.

Like, I'm excited for this pickup for them.

I think this is something that really is going to be an interesting sort of move for them.

But he has to commit.

And, like you said, this is the other thing, too.

He wants to have a bigger contract next year.

It's a one-plus one.

He wants to opt out next year.

You got to prove it, man.

You got to prove that this is a, you're the guy and that the Phoenix situation was more of an aberration.

And I think that's got to be the thing that he's looking forward to coming into the season.

All of this said,

all of this said, it's all very nice for the Clippers.

And they're set up, by the way, sneakily well set up for the future.

Now,

even next summer, they could get max cap space because of the Hardin contract was a really interesting compromise where he gets a player option for $46 million.

That's his option, but it's guaranteed for only 13 million.

So the Clippers can get out of it if they see an opportunity.

They're starting to get out of draft pick hell, although they owe Philly a couple draft assets from the hard end trade.

And then after that, after Kawhi's deal expires, they're free and clear to do whatever they want.

All this said,

I don't think I just

Oklahoma City is obviously better than they are.

I think Denver is better than them.

I think Houston's better than them.

I think Minnesota has a higher floor than they do simply because of youth, health, and availability.

And already then, you're down to fifth in the West.

Do I trust Kawhi to stay healthy for an entire season?

Absolutely not.

And you're just hoping that the missed games, that he's ready for the playoffs and can stay healthy in the playoffs, which has been rare as a Clipper.

Harden, do I trust Harden in a big game?

I do not.

And I don't see how anybody really could.

I worry a little bit about what their defense looks like.

If you take out one or both of Dunn and Jones, do they have enough?

Does Batum, who's as heady a player as there is in the league, have enough?

Does John Collins level up on that end enough to be as versatile as they need him to be to not overburden Kawhi?

I think this is a really good team.

I think they could do damage in the playoffs.

I mean, they almost beat Denver in the first round.

You could argue they should have beaten Denver in the first round.

I think they lost any claim of should have with the way they shit the bed in game seven.

But, you know, there was the Aaron Gordon, Duncan, all that.

It's a good team.

I just, those, those teams above them are just so good and, and

have less injury risk, less age risk.

Like, I think

it's a good team.

I just, I have a hard time seeing it in the finals or maybe the conference finals.

I don't, I don't know.

Yeah, that's the hard part with it.

And that's, again, that's sort of the problem for a lot of teams in the West, right?

Like, that's just how good the top of the West is going to be next year, you know, assuming everything goes according to plan for all of those teams.

I think that's the challenge for the Clippers, you know, with what you're looking at.

Like, I don't expect Kawhi to play a full season.

You know, you can pencil him in for like 60-something games, you know, and a lot of that's going to be just kind of load management and keeping him fresh and things like that.

And I, I think they're in a situation where...

I would say they just, they have a chance, right?

Like there's, there's the situation where like things can line up properly.

That's true.

Like another team takes an injury.

That's instead of the Clippers taking an injury, another team takes an injury.

Yeah.

And, you know, you could kind of see how this sort of plays out where the, and we're projecting way far, but like playoff matchups kind of, you know, the way the seeding sets up.

It's like, oh, we don't have to play.

You know, we don't have to go through an Oklahoma City-Denver

thing to get to the finals.

You know, it could kind of match up in a way where in the right situation, they'll be primed to where they want to go next.

You know, they, despite losing, you know, in the first round last year and forcing game seven, and like you said, shitting the bet in game seven, they showed a lot of stuff in that series where you're like, okay, cool.

And I trust Ty Liu is one of the best coaches in the NBA.

I think Jeff Van Gundy has done a phenomenal job with their defense, you know, as an assistant there and putting it all together.

Like, I kind of just want to see what they're going to cook up now going into next season because, like, I know those guys are in the lab already.

You know, we know Jeff's already on it.

He's already kind of focused on what he's going going to do and he's going to push these guys.

And Ty's not going to let some of these guys sort of just skate in that situation.

And hey, if John Collins isn't going to bring it defensively, they'll throw Batum in there.

You know, I'm not against even from time to time.

If they want to go double big with Zoo and Lopez, I think that's going to work.

You know, I think we're going to see a lot of interesting things from them.

Interesting.

Go Houston, Houston style.

Yeah, just, you know, like with Lopez's ability to shoot the three ball, it kind of opens things up there.

I think there's a lot of stuff that they can kind of cook up.

I think there's a lot of different things they could do.

And I think that's, for me, that's my favorite thing with the team is having multiple versions of yourself.

And I think that's something that I think I hope they experiment with a lot is during the regular season.

And I think, you know, we'll see how it lines up in the playoffs.

But

they put themselves in a position to have a chance.

And I think that's the most important thing.

Yeah, and we didn't, I, you know, I think I mentioned those four teams.

I think Wolves is an argument.

You know, are they as good as the Wolves?

I just think the Wolves are a safer bet to win 50 games or 49.

They only won 49 last year.

And then you have Lakers and Warriors.

I would probably think the Clippers are maybe a hair better than those teams, but they're all kind of in the same bucket to me.

On the other side of this, the Phoenix Suns, they save a lot of money.

Wonderful.

They're now under the tax and set to be

under one or both aprons next year, maybe unlocking a little bit more sort of team building flexibility.

I believe they can unfreeze a frozen pick.

And there were a lot of jokes running through the Vegas casinos and dinners and meetings I had last night about like, I think they should want their pick to be frozen.

They shouldn't trade any more picks.

Don't trade any more picks.

Keep it frozen.

Keep it on ice.

I just look at this team and I'm like, I don't, I mean, I don't know.

Like, I don't know what the,

you know, Beale's gone.

I think they did about as well as they could for Durant by getting Booker.

I'm not Booker, Booker, Jalen Green, Brooks.

I meant Brooks, not Marshawn Brooks either, Dylan Brooks, and the pick that became Malowatch.

I think that's about as good as they were going to do for KD.

And you look at the team, and I, just for fun, I projected out a rotation for them.

I started in my fake rotation.

I just went with Booker, Green, because I think they're just going to give him a shot to see.

I don't think they're going to bring him off the bench.

They're going to see what he can be as sort of a co-point guard.

I don't know.

Still, there's no point guard on this team.

Those two, Brooks, I put Ryan Dunn in the starting five because why not?

And then Mark Williams.

And then off the bench, I can stagger Jalen Green so I can let him run the show.

I got Grace now and Royce O'Neill.

Igidoro kind of has to play the four now.

And then Malowatch, Rashir Fleming could get in there.

Both the Clippers and the Suns have been rumored.

Chris Paul teams, we should have mentioned that, but the Clippers is like another guy.

I mean, I look at that and I'm like, I mean, I don't know.

What is that?

I mean, if Sacramento is worse than expected, if Dallas is worse than expected and Kyrie Kyrie can't come back, if Portland is worse than expected, if the Spurs are worse than expected, if the Warriors and the Lakers take injuries, if the Grizzlies are worse than expected, I just, I don't look at that.

I mean, that is like, I don't see playoffs for that roster we just started.

I have no idea how they're building a coherent defense out of it.

I don't know where they're going.

And those, like, Grayson Allen and Royce O'Neal, those contracts run three years.

They have player options for 27, 28, which is complicating, Mo.

Phoenix has dabbled.

They've dabbled.

They've had discussions about Jonathan Kaminga.

They are the latest team to sort of like, hey, if he's available for whatever,

and they just, what are they trading for him that interests the Warriors?

I think is what they run into.

The Warriors don't want those types of contracts for Kaminga.

I don't know that those guys moved a needle, but they have registered interest.

I just don't know what the money would be for Kaminga and how they would even do it before you even get into base year compensation.

I don't know.

I mean, Suns, okay, job digging out of

the grave of that fake big three that they built, but Booker signs the extension.

I already talked about that.

I understand he's a legacy player.

You got to reward legacy players.

He's not going to be like ancient.

He's going to be 31, 32, 33 when those years kick in.

I don't know, man.

It's

there's interesting stuff here.

I just don't know where it's going.

And they don't control any of their picks until 2032.

I mean, it's kind of bleak in that sense when you talk about like they don't own any of their picks till 2032, right?

And like that's what they're trying to unfreeze so that they can probably move picks down the road and i think that's kind of the you know when you look at it going like i just don't know what the plan is like nothing frustrates me more than not fully understanding or seeing the vision that these teams have and this one just seems like one of those other teams that are somewhat rudderless and i it's kind of like cool we have booker we have our star awesome we have absolutely no way to build around him and you're right like the kd trade that was the best they could do i don't actually think like

that was actually even almost better than I thought they could have done.

And I think that was, you know, a win for them in a, in a large degree.

The thing for me with the Beal wave and stretch, and now it's $20 million on your books for the next five years.

And I know when the cap goes up, it's a percentage.

You know, it doesn't hurt as much, but $20 million can get you a player.

Man, it hurts.

It just hurts.

It's a $20 million player that's never going to play, right?

It's, you know, whatever, I forget what the annual salary is for Booker over the five years, but add 20 million to it each year because that's basically what it is.

Because it's an empty vessel at this point.

Like, it's never going to be able to get used.

At least when Milwaukee did it, and there's always these comparisons, you saw Milwaukee go, we have to do this so we can get Miles Turner, whatever anybody thinks of the signings and all that stuff.

But at least it turned into a player, you know, in that degree.

This isn't turning into a player.

This is turning into tax relief for an owner, you know, and eventually, you know, know, all the stuff that it releases and sort of what the CBA does crushing you when you're in these repeater tags, second apron for so long, and all that stuff.

But none of that helps them, not this year.

It doesn't really help them next year.

Like, I don't see a situation where I look at that going, like, cool, they had to do this because, you know, two years from now, they could be a team.

Like, I just don't know where they're at.

And then, having watched Malowatch here in Vegas, like, you know, I, he's, he's raw.

Like, it's not like, like, I, I like him.

I like the pick.

You had to pick him at 10.

I think he's an interesting prospect, but he's raw.

Like, it's going to take a while for that to develop.

So, unless that hits the accelerator on the development curve, like that's going to be a while before you see a lot of fruit from that.

So, now there's a lot of stuff you're looking at.

This team just has so many

pieces that I also don't know how they fit together and how they work together.

Like, I just have a lot of just questions with them.

And

I feel bad for Phoenix.

I like Mark Williams, too i i i like i i i don't mind him at all um i like the bet on him um

and they do have a pick coming in 2027 but it's a bad pick it's the worst of cleveland minnesota utah um

which they got in exchange for they traded their 2031 first round pick to utah for unprotected for a bunch of little picks that they have used most of yeah i like i like mark williams malowatch will see dunn igodoro like are either of those guys starters i don't know dunn maybe has a little bit of a chance Obviously, started last year, but I mean, like, starter, starter on a good team.

Jalen Green,

you know, I think they actually

are going to see.

Like, everyone assumed, including me, that they would trade him post-Durant trade.

I think they're going to give him a shot to see what he is and how he fits with Booker.

All right, we'll see.

Enough, sons.

I'll do a deep dive on them another day.

By the way, I mentioned Kaminga.

These four restricted free agents,

Giddy, Cam Thomas, Kaminga, Grimes.

I mean, mean, they're just stuck.

Like, I don't, I don't, there is not much movement.

I don't think I've been talking to everyone in Vegas about it

on any of their situations.

If you asked me to ballpark what those deals are going to look like,

I would say Giddy four years.

I mean, this is just me like

just

throwing ideas out into the wind.

I'll say giddy like four years, 90.

And I'll tell you that Patrick Williams contract, which is five years, 90.

I'll say, then I'll say Giddy like four years, 95, 90, 90, and a dollar.

Like, he's not taking, he shouldn't take a dollar less than 90.

Right.

I don't think he's getting like the $30 million thing that he wanted.

I think it'll be, let's say, four years, 100 would be an even 25.

I'll take a slight under on that.

Cam Thomas, I'm going to say

two years, 24.

Maybe a player option on it.

Just a blind guess.

Kaminga, no clue.

Grimes, I'll say two plus one at 17 a year or something like that.

But there's, they're just like, these things are stuck.

Uh, other news item: Paul George apparently had surgery and will be ready for training camp.

It's going awesome for the Sixers, who I talked about on Monday's show and did a whole projection for them, in which I forgot to mention Justin Edwards, who I like, and Jabari Walker, who I really like, among their bench sort of question marks.

But man, oh man,

the hits just keep on coming.

You know, I did their starting five

on that podcast.

I think Edgecombe may actually have a better chance to start than I had thought when I did that podcast over.

I had penciled in Kelly Ubre.

And McCain, I think, will come off the bench if Grimes is re-signed, but they'll play all those guards together.

They'll play PG at the foursome,

maybe a lot.

They don't really have a four unless you really love Jabari Walker.

And I do, but maybe not that much.

I like Watford, like they've got some good backup, interesting backup fours.

I love Watford way more than anybody should.

He's just a fun, he's just a fun player.

I like watching him play basketball.

I don't know, man.

Like, I know the East stinks, but Cleveland doesn't stink.

New York doesn't stink.

Orlando doesn't stink.

The Hawks don't stink.

The Celtics will be competitive.

The Bucks will be competitive.

Like, I just,

I don't know.

And I don't know, man.

I just don't.

I already said it.

Like, I just don't see.

We can sit here and hope for the miracles.

Miracles are called miracles because they almost never happen.

And

I just don't see where this team.

I just feel like they're just in a holding pattern until the MB'd Paul George contracts cycle out.

Yeah, and that's a brutal place to be in that situation.

Just a quick side note here at Summer League.

During one of the Hawk Summer League games, somebody was cacawing, and I almost was like, is Zach here?

Like,

there was a moment there where

somebody was going nuts.

The kakaw movement is going strong.

The Hawks are coming.

They're excited.

They got poor Zingis.

They fleeced the Pelicans.

It's all happening for the Hawks.

It's all good.

But going back to Philly, which, you know, it's so frustrating to kind of just figure out by accident, they're almost a two-timel line team.

in a weird kind of way, right?

With the injuries with Paul George, with Embede, it's kind of like and you've said this a bunch

and with the front office nailing a low first round pick for maxi a low first round pick for mccain and stealing grimes and a second round pick from the mavericks like those are a plus level transactions like they nailed it like honestly like if you just if you took away injury stuff we would be talking about you know, like, this is amazing, the way the front office has kind of put this whole team together.

But when we look at the

reality of it with the injuries, with Paul George, Paul George having another surgery, you know, the situation with Embiid's health, like it is kind of a two-timeline team.

How much time do you devote to developing these younger guys and making sure, you know, do we focus?

And you've said this a bunch, like it has to be Tyrese Maxie's timeline more than Joelle Embiid's.

And, you know, how much do you kind of focus on all of that stuff?

But at the same time, you have so much money and time invested in Embiid, like it's a difficult situation to be be in and to thread that kind of needle.

It's they have talent on their roster, but we just don't know what we're going to get from Embiid.

Are we going to get

30 games?

Are we going to get 60 games?

Like, we just don't know.

Anything more than 65, I'd be shocked, you know, and I just think you have to kind of put him on that Kawhi trajectory of load management-wise and sort of handling everything.

And I just feel like they're in such a difficult position.

I love McCain.

You know, I loved watching.

He was unbelievable.

And then he tears his meniscus.

You know, Maxie, you know, gets injured during the season and misses a bunch of time.

You know, that allows Grimes, you know, he steps up in March.

You know, how, how real is the Grimes thing?

You know, and also how much of that is a product of no Paul George, no Embiid.

You know, we needed him to kind of go out there.

Like, what is he when he's going to be the fourth option?

How does he handle that?

How does he move into that sort of area?

You know, it's going to be a very difficult team to kind of manage.

And I think it's a real difficult one for Nick Nurse to kind of coach because there's so many different things, moving parts that like everybody kind of has a different deal and situation.

How do you mold that into one thing where it's a cohesive force moving forward?

Paul George is 35 years old.

You can say that these are cleanups, minor surgeries.

He's had some shoulder stuff.

Like none of it is super like connected across the same kinetic chain all the time.

But knees are knees, age is age.

And the more of these things that befall him,

the more likely it becomes that he's just never going to be an all-star caliber player again.

I'm not going to close the door on that completely because he was so good in his last couple years for the Clippers, but

the timeline is what it is for him.

And as far as Embiid goes, ESPN

wrote an inc they had an incredible story about Embiid yesterday.

A reporter whose name I'm blanking on right now spent clearly a lot of time with Embiid.

It's the best window into his mindset mindset that I can ever remember reading and how

just he's dealt with a lot.

He's dealt with a lot of issues mentally, physically, dating to the start of his career where he could not play because of injury and what that did to him.

And he finally kind of goes on record in this story about

not always taking his rehab seriously, ghosting the team.

The relationship with the team in like 2015, 2016 is described in the story as, quote, toxic.

And And part of it was, I encourage people to read the story, but he talks about how he knew his foot wasn't healing correctly and he didn't think the team was listening to him and how that changed his relationship with some of the people on the team.

And most sort of pressingly, Mo,

the stuff about the Knicks series two years ago where they lose in six games and he was a ghost in the fourth quarter, didn't want the ball.

I talked a lot about it.

We all knew he was coming back from injury.

Did not know he had Bell's palsy until the end of that series.

But he talks about how injured he was in that series.

Batum talks about looking at his knee on the record.

Batum's on the record in the story.

Look, I look at Joel Zina and I'm like, I don't know if this guy should be playing.

And he played through it anyway.

And it's kind of alarming how injured he was and astonishing how well he could score while being so injured.

And I just have reached a point with Embiid where I just, everything I read about him is just making me sad because the player he became after he even won the MVP was the player that was, that averaged more than a point a minute, that put up 70 against the Spurs, had regular 50-point games where it's like, there's just no answer.

There's nothing he can't do.

He's explosive with finesse and touch and just, again, majestic, majestic.

And it just seems now.

utterly implausible that he will ever be able.

I mean, again, they've never even gotten to the conference finals, right?

To get to the finals, you're talking 20-something playoff games, absolute highest level of competition, highest level of intensity.

Every other day, once you get past the first round, extended minutes for the best players if they can do it.

It just seems now to the point of total implausibility to me that Joelle Embiid, no matter what happens in the entire regular season, will be able to get through a run like that healthy.

And I just, I hope it happens.

I love Embiid.

He's come on this podcast twice.

He's absolutely unbelievable to watch.

And if that is, if that proves correct, that that's not a plausible thing,

it just, it's just a holding pattern.

I don't know how else to put it.

And the second timeline is set up pretty well, and that's great.

I just,

you know, I don't know.

It's brutal and it's an unbelievable story.

Yeah, I encourage everyone to go on ESPN and read that story.

It was a really, it's long.

You're going to have to set aside 45 minutes for it in half an hour.

It's, it's an incredible window into his mentality and what he's been through.

Right.

And I, I, I'm going to butcher the author's name.

I just looked it up while we were talking.

It was Dotin

Atkinyoy.

I, I, I'm sorry if I, uh, if I've butchered your name, I, I, I apologize, but it was unbelievable.

The in-depth detail of just the amount of trust issues that Embiid sort of has had.

And some of these cases, rightfully so, right?

Like he's telling the Sixers staff, my foot's not right, my foot's not right.

And then, you know, them just thinking he's, it's, he's wrong.

And then for it to come out, you know, that, that it's like, oh, you know, no, he has to have another surgery and miss a second year.

I think that sort of created this situation for him to have a lack of trust, you know, across the board.

And he's very, he's almost very suspicious of new people.

He's very, you know, not trusting.

He keeps a tight circle.

This is a good thing.

There's an anecdote in in the story that I absolutely was jaw-dropping to me where he talks about leaving cash exposed in his apartment as people are coming in and out because there's, you know, there's staff members coming in, Sixers people, chefs, therapists, massage therapists, you know, all that kind of stuff, physical therapists.

And he's doing it by his own admission to see.

if any of the cash goes missing because so that he knows who is not trustworthy in his life.

I mean, that is like,

that's some fucked up shit, man.

Like, that is high level.

Like, of just gotcha moments, you know, and sort of just trying to keep an eye on it.

And him just saying, like, I don't necessarily confront the people.

I just know that I can't trust them.

And that's sort of, you know, the whole kind of imbeed run is this is a matter of trying to earn his trust.

And it's not just, I think, when you earn his trust, you have to keep earning it across the way.

Like there's, there's almost,

it seems, and this is something I'm taking from the story, and maybe I'm wrong, but it almost seems like you're one misstep with him and you're almost immediately out of the circle and there's no real wiggle room or gray area.

Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be in that situation.

But there's a level of frustration for him.

in that ability of just feeling like alone and can't trust anybody.

And at the same time, you know, everybody kind of questioning his

injuries constantly.

I mean, I don't think people just fully understand.

Like, he had Bell's palsy and was playing NBA games.

Like, not being able to move your face, close your

eyelid is a weird thing.

You know, I had a friend that went through it and it's insane.

You can't sleep.

It's a very awkward situation.

with all that.

And I think you're just doing that.

Forget all the other stuff, but the amount of facial injuries he's had, like freak injuries, right?

Getting an elbow in the face and,

you know,

a broken orbital bone, you know, the Toronto series.

I know it happened once before where I think he ran into Ben Simmons' shoulder

and cracked it.

Like five facial injuries through his career, not just in the NBA, but across his whole playing career.

Like these are the like weird things happened to him to a degree, you know, and Zach,

I was crushed with the story of the dog.

Yeah,

I don't want to give away too many details, but there's a dog story in there too that will tug at your heartstrings.

Go read it.

It's worth it.

But it was just impressive.

The story is impressive, but I think the deal within beat is just like, it's tough, man.

And when you talk about the playoff intensity and can he do that for 20 games, we just watched a final series go seven, and that was brutal.

We watched the first round series with the Nuggets and the Clippers.

That was brutal.

And that's with days off, but both of those teams were exhausted.

Denver, OKC, another seven-game series.

That was exhausting.

You know, I just think like when you're- Even like Boston, Orlando, the way Orlando just beats the hell out of you on defense, like that's a five-game series, and the Celtics felt that one going forward.

Like, it's just hard.

Yeah, it's the physical nature of the playoffs, and it ramps up, the intensity, all that stuff ramps up so much.

Like, you have to have doubts of, can he do it?

There's no way not to.

And the unfair part about all this is like, we're going to have these doubts until he proves it.

That means he has to to make it through the season, get to April, and then prove it in April, May, and possibly June that he can do it.

He has to prove us wrong in that sense.

Probably unfair to a degree that we don't give it the benefit of the doubt, but that's just the way this works.

Look, here's the bottom line:

the description of what he played through in the Knicks series, combined with him essentially just not playing last year, like a very minimal amount of games.

That injury in Golden State in 23, 24, when Kaminga fell on his knee, feels more and more like the one that was the turning point, at least as of today.

I hope it you turns back the other way.

But yeah,

we'll see on the Sixers.

The Paul George thing is like caught everybody in Vegas by surprise because it's like, wait, when did this happen?

What happened?

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Okay, let's do a couple of mini-deep dives on some teams that we haven't talked much about

as basketball teams anyway in the offseason.

I want to start with the Spurs.

To review, the Spurs

acquired D'Aaron Fox at the trade deadline for not much, have not extended him.

Yet he's eligible for an extension on August 2nd.

Signed Luke Cornette as a backup center, traded Malachi Branham and Blake Wesley for Kelly O'Linnick.

You know, we'll see if that matters for either team.

Kelly Olinick just has not been healthy and available enough the last couple of years.

He adds an interesting theoretical dimension that can fit next to any of the Spurs big men.

But we'll see.

And of course, they drafted Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant in the draft.

I would project their starting five this way, Mr.

DeKille.

Fox, Castle, reigning rookie of the year.

Devin Vessell, I'm going to pencil in Harrison Barnes just for the spacing shooting and Wembanyama.

That leaves me on the bench.

I can obviously stagger.

I think they should and will stagger Fox and Wemby, who only played five games together, by the way.

We didn't really even get to see it.

But, you know, if you want to do a full five-man bench, you go Harper, Bryant, Keldon Johnson, Jeremy Sohan, who could start in the Harrison Barnes spot?

Maybe we'll see.

And then Cornette, you throw Kolinik.

Kolinik can play the five, or he can play with either of their fives.

I expect to see all those looks.

You got Champagne still.

Julian Champagne is there.

I think they'll play minutes with Castle, Harper, and Fox all together.

It's a really interesting team.

A little bit light on three-point shooting in that starting five.

They need Vassell to really stay healthy and kind of put more of the pieces of his game together.

His contract, which is quite a long one, looms is a very interesting variable for them, as does Keldon Johnson, who's, I believe, an unrestricted free agent after this season.

One, just financially, Johnson, Sohan, Vessell

loom is interesting trade pieces going forward for the Spurs, either to get more flexibility or more talent.

I think Vassell is the one they would like to hit the most because they just need an A-plus shooter on their team.

I look at that, I zoom out of that rotation.

I recall how incredible Wemby is, and he's cleared to play.

He told the French media this week that he's cleared to play and how quick the ascension could be for him.

How little we saw of Fox with Wembanyama.

Fox was underwhelming as a Spur,

but we didn't get to see much of it.

And then he had injury issues too.

I don't know what their over-under is.

I didn't even check.

It's too early.

I would peg the Spurs as a, don't be surprised if they outperform expectations and there's a bigger leap as a team here than people expect.

And they butt into that like Clippers, Warriors, Lakers conversation.

I look at this team.

I know they got some issues.

I know they're young.

I know there's a lot of youth here.

That makes me nervous.

Like relying on Harper, Bryant, they don't have to rely on those guys a ton if they don't want to.

I'm bullish on the Spurs outperforming expectations.

Where do you fall?

No, I'm actually in the same place as you are with that.

You did not rehearse this.

I had no idea.

I thought you might say, oh, Zach, you're getting ahead of your skis.

You're always too optimistic about these young teams, youth stinks, et cetera, et cetera.

No, but I think it's an important thing where I think this is them saying we have to take a

leap here.

Like, I think the organization themselves are tired of being a lottery team and are trying to kind of take that step forward with what they have.

Obviously, the miracle of them getting the second pick, you know, the draft lottery was wild for them.

I love Harper, by the way.

I don't care that they've got to figure out how these ball-dominant social shooting guards all fit.

Like, I just give me the talent, the length, the versatility.

I just, like, I don't know if the three of them will work.

I don't know whatever, but

I love that they just made the talent play.

And I think the important aspect of it, too, though, is I think this team is going to be really good defensively is my feel for it.

I feel like Castle's a hawk on defense i think you're going to get a i mean a wemby if he's healthy having that i love the cornet signing i was like cornet's good and the contract have you seen the contract it's like partially guaranteed with team options on the back it's crazy good contract essentially it's essentially a two-year deal fully guaranteed and then after that it becomes partials and i think that puts them in again the flexibility that they've kind of created for themselves in that but i think wemby and coronet could play together you know the the the theory of Olinik, if he's healthy and can be that guy, helps them with what they do.

Yes, they're light on shooting, but I think they're going to be pretty solid defensively.

I know Fox has to be better on the defensive end.

We have to see how Harper is defensively with the way he kind of, once he starts getting in NBA games.

But I think they're going to be a fun up and down team.

And that's going to be the more important thing is they have to be a tempo team.

They're going to have to play fast because I think they have the guys to play fast.

And playing fast doesn't necessarily mean just scoring a ton in transition, but getting the ball up the court quickly, getting into your sets with 20 seconds left on the clock.

Like this is the thing I think teams need to take away from the Indiana Pacers playoff run was them being able to get into their offense quicker.

opened up so many opportunities for them on offense where it allows you to get into two different actions.

You know, you run something, you don't get it the first time, you're able to flip to the next action and not be so against the shot clock with that.

I think that's going to be a thing there.

And I think one thing that everybody's kind of sleeping on, and I haven't heard a lot of people talking about,

but Mitch Johnson having a full offseason to be the head coach and figure out a plan.

Like, listen, the guy was thrown into the fire right off the bat, you know, in November.

And then it's kind of like figuring it out on the fly.

He has, you know, Brett Brown with him, kind of helping him.

Matt Nielsen has

a whole staff that I think is solid.

And I think it's just having a whole offseason to put out your plan.

And I, people don't understand how important the offseason is for coaching staffs.

You know, and you have your whole, you know,

you recharge, but you're also planning and looking at things and kind of exploring things and having conversations.

Then in September, most teams go on, most coaching staffs go on a coach's retreat and literally sit in a conference room somewhere for, you know, a week and start kind of talking rotations lineups uh what type of stuff we should run how we should look defensively and what do we need to do and and how do we project guys and things like that i think these are going to be all the things that are going to help this organization and this team you know as they they transition you know in into this and i think they're going to be a really interesting team i i i have them in that lakers

Golden State, Clippers sort of area.

I could see them being a top six team in the playoffs and not needing the play-in.

Like, that's their, that's their, their goal should be trying to be that.

But I think this is going to be the year where we finally get some postseason Wemby.

I mean,

look, if I'm hanging my hat on three, if I'm a Spurs optimist for next season only, let's look at next season in a vacuum,

and I'm an optimist, which I obviously am currently, it's July 17th.

We'll see, you know, there's still some dust to be settled.

I'm banking on three things.

I'm banking on a lot of things, but boil it down to three.

Number one, Wen Benyama is absolutely incredible.

He's a top 10 player already.

I don't even know how fast the development could happen and where he will rank after next season if he stays healthy.

It's frightening.

Number two, I think Fox is going to be hungry.

I think

he wanted to go to San Antonio.

I expect him to get a deal done this summer.

So he'll feel secure and wanted, no mystery, no nothing.

He's heard the the noise about how he was maybe not quite as good as they expected when they got him and very limited minutes with Wembañama and all that.

I think he's going to be hungry to prove that, you know, clutch player.

I don't know if he was ever clutch player of the year, but he was in the running for that, all that stuff.

I think he was.

And I think, number three, they are going to be a hard-playing, deep team

every single game, which has a lot of value in the regular season over 82 games.

Youth and effort can go a long way if you have enough talent.

And then zooming further out than that,

they are just loaded for bear with assets if and when they need to do something.

They have extra stuff from Atlanta.

They have a swap top one protected with Boston.

We'll see how that comes into play.

They have a swap in 2030 with Dallas and or Minnesota.

They have a 2031 swap with the freaking Kings.

Any draft.

And by the way, one of the talks of Vegas, we're going to get to another depressing team in a second, is just like, what happened to the Kings?

Just a complete disaster across the board.

And they have a top, they have an unprotected swap with the Kings that they got for facilitating the DeMar de Rosen trade from Chicago to Sacramento.

And I think they were very smart to sort of moonwalk out of the Durant stuff this summer.

I just think they concluded, we're going to be pretty good.

I don't know that we're ready to win a title.

He's 37, whatever years old, not the guy to cash in the assets.

I think if the Giannis thing ever happens, I have no idea.

Obviously, he was happy with the Miles Turner thing.

We'll see.

I think that's one they have a meeting for, even though the Giannis Wemby fit is maybe stylistically imperfect, but it's also just fucking incredible.

But they just are, they have cap flexibility.

That's why I look at those.

I mentioned Sohan, Johnson, Vessel as, you know, if all those guys would come back on big contracts, it cramps them a little bit financially.

But we'll see.

i just they're set up really really well and i think they're gonna be good this year and i just let's get a freaking full webinama season like let's let's see what let's see what he's got because i my expectations are impossibly high yeah and i think you know when you if you can get the full web and yama season

we're talking defensive player of the year type caliber stuff i think we're talking about seeing stuff he was he's so fun to watch we're talking he's on mvp ballots like he's a top five mvp kind of player he's so fun to watch in the sense of just every night there's something where it's just like this dude shouldn't like this is crazy like you're you're sitting there in awe over and over again and i love the point you make though about just they have still so much they they can do like the beauty of where they're at and even with the contracts they're kind of giving out where it's only two year and partials and and and they're they're setting themselves up nicely for the future they can adjust if they need to.

They can put themselves in situations where they can be in any conversation.

I'm not a big fan of them maybe necessarily trading for Giannis, but you're right in that every team's going to have a meeting.

Zach, you guys at the Ringer would have to have a meeting if Giannis demands a trade and figure out if you could trade for Giannis.

Like there's got to be, like everybody's going to have a meeting for Giannis in that situation and have that conversation of what can we do for that.

But I think they are so set up nicely.

for the future, but I think this year has to be the start of, okay, we got to stop talking about them theoretically, what it looks like.

You know, they have to start getting the postseason experience.

They have to start getting that stuff.

I was not happy in the first two years of Wemby when everybody was like, they need to be

trying to be contenders right now.

I think you have to allow this to grow.

But I think this is the growing up year.

This is the year where there'll be a lot of nights where I'm going to be like, that's a growing up game.

And that's a game where that's a grown-up, that's growing up wins is what I kind of like to talk about it.

Growth wins are going to be the things I'm watching for for this team next year.

And I think they're set up pretty nicely for that.

I think this is going to be a really fun Spurs year, knock on wood, if everybody could stay healthy.

I think they've threaded the needle really well.

Now, obviously,

they have gotten an incredible run of lottery luck between Wen Benyama, Castle, and Harper to thread that needle.

And Bryant, who we haven't talked about much, they're super excited about him as a contributor.

I think they've threaded the needle very well.

And we'll see where they go from here if they ever conclude they need to get a third guy with a third all-star guy guy with Fox and Wemby, or if Wemby is just so good, it doesn't matter.

Okay, flip side, Mo.

A lot of chortling around the league since the draft about the Pelicans and the trade they made to move up and get Derrick Queen at 13, surrendering an unprotected pick that is the best of...

New Orleans or Milwaukee in 2026, where the top of the draft is supposed to be loaded.

They will end up, the Pelicans, if I'm reading the draft stuff right and I checked with people with neither of those picks.

The Bucs get the second best one of them.

A lot of chortling.

I do think it's a crazy trade.

I've talked about it enough.

It was time to actually look at like, all right, what is this team?

What's the team on the court?

Because they are highly, highly incentivized not to suck in a conference that is so loaded that it's pretty easy to suck by accident.

Are you ready to project the New Orleans Pelicans of 2025, 26?

I'm ready to go.

I'm ready to go, Zach.

And this is the exact opposite of the Spurs, in my view.

I projected their starting lineup to look like this.

Jordan Poole.

Again, people have to remember DeJounte Murray tours Achilles last year and is out for quite a while.

It was Achilles, right?

Not ACL?

Was it ACL?

Of course it was Achilles.

It was Achilles.

I'll Google.

Jordan Poole.

Herb Jones, great contract extension, by the way.

If you're going to laugh at the Pelicans, you got to give them credit.

Three years, 60-something player option in year three is not ideal, I don't think, but that's a good contract for a very good player.

Jordan Poole, Herb Jones, Trey Murphy III, Zion Williamson, Yves Misi, I put as the starting five.

Bench

has got some guys.

Fears, they just drafted.

Hawkins hasn't quite been the shooter-shooter that they thought they were going to get, but sometimes looks like it.

Sadiq Bay, they picked up in the pool trade.

Queen,

obviously, got to play Queen, got to play these rookies.

And then Looney, they signed.

I'm not super sure why, but they did.

And Makovich is a backup center.

Like, those are all guys.

I'm sure we'll see Queen and Zion together at the four and the five.

I think the draft trade was so crazy that it immediately shoved the prior transaction with Washington into the dustbin of history.

I still don't really know why Jordan Poole is on their team and why they traded C.J.

McCollum for Jordan Poole, who has one more year left on his contract and is,

I don't know, maybe not quite as good as C.J.

McCollum.

I mean, CJ's older and gets hurt sometimes, but I didn't really get that one.

I look at that team.

I don't know when Murray will come back, what condition he'll be in.

Obviously, no one ever, Zion, you just have to project,

what's an optimistic projection?

50 games, 55 games?

Yes.

Optimistic.

Optimistic.

A pessimistic projection is 10 games.

I love Murphy.

I love Jones.

Rookies are generally bad in the NBA.

Rookie guards are especially generally bad in the NBA.

Queen is a kind of a more heady-polished type of rookie, but rookies are rookies.

I mean, I look at this team.

Defense obviously is going to be a major question.

Like, that starting five is not going to be a good defensive lineup despite having Herb Jones in it and the Swiss Army knife that he is.

It's been an interesting talking point talking about that trade with people all week because you will find people who are like, it's not going to be as bad as you think.

The math, mathematical likelihood is that the pick they end up giving up is like 11, 12, 13.

And people say, remember, remember, Zach, you compeded on your podcast to when the Kings salary dumped a bunch of stuff to the Sixers all those years ago.

to sign Rondo and Bell and Elliot.

And it was like an absolutely ludicrous transaction.

They dumped a swap or a pick or both on the Sixers, and everyone was like, oh my God, the sky is falling.

It ended up being like the 13th pick or something.

People compeded to

the Suns trading Philadelphia, an unprotected Miami Heat pick to draft Mikhail Bridges

or to get Mikhail Bridges in the draft.

And that pick was a golden chip in the NBA.

And oh my God,

what a great valuation by the Sixers, a great bit of math.

And I think Zaire Smith was on the other end of that trade.

Ended up being, you know, middling first-round pick.

And

I get that.

I look at that Pelicans' roster.

I look at Zion's health history, and I'm like, man, like, yeah, I get how the Bucks, I get how you can tell me, like, the Bucs with Giannis, if he doesn't demand a trade, and God forbid for the Pelicans that he does.

But if he doesn't, and he stays healthy, I get that their floor is really high because he's a top three to four player at worst in the NBA.

I get it.

His teams are going to win games.

Let's say that that best case scenario happens for the Bucs.

That Pelicans team, man, it is not hard for them to end up as the 14th best team in the Western Conference.

Like, it is not,

there are not a lot of ifs that have to go the wrong way or the unlikely way for them to be just a straight-up bad team in a conference where bad teams get the brains beaten out of them every game.

And if you're 14th in the West,

13th if Phoenix is really bad, whatever, I don't know.

Only Utah is there on the the bottom.

Like, you're walking in,

I don't know, six best lottery odds that you're giving up to the Hawks.

And if anything happens to the Bucs, the Hawks have this dream scenario of like, we got two shots at the lottery.

Like, I just don't see it.

There's exciting players here.

And Zion, when he's healthy, has been incredible,

including that play-in game against the Lakers.

If I were a Pelicans fan, I would be absolutely terrified at how this season would go.

It's a brutal season for the Pelicans in that sense.

Like when you trade that pick, you're under the expectation of like, wait, we're going to try to win.

But this isn't a roster that you look at that can win.

Like, I think just by

even if they're fully healthy, like I don't look at this team going like, okay,

they're going to be

fighting for top six.

Like, I don't look at them in the same way I would look at the Spurs with where they're set up.

They have so many question marks across the board.

I'm with you.

I did not understand the pool trade.

You know, just the pure fact of paying Poole an extra year.

On top of it, if I feel like I want to go draft Jeremiah Fears, I would love to have CJ McCollum to kind of sort of mentor him a little bit over the next, you know, couple seasons while we have CJ.

I think that's the thing where I find it difficult.

When you have Poole, that's going to probably slow down Fears' development because he's not going to get as many minutes in that sense.

And I liked what I saw from Fears and Queen in

the,

and everybody forgive me, it's summer league, so it's always tough.

But I caught a half of the Portland Pelicans game the other night, and I liked what I saw from Queen and Fears, but I also feel like that ain't enough.

That's a Summer League game that's really inconsequential.

You know, we have to see what it looks like in the NBA and what's Zion going to be healthy.

I like Misi, but really, like, when you look at that starting lineup, fully healthy, that's still not cracking cracking a top 10 in the West.

And I feel like that's the situation that they need.

They need a cataclysm to happen to the older teams in the West.

They just need everything to go wrong for the Warriors.

I mean, the Lakers aren't, their best player is not old, but

they need a Grizzlies disaster.

They just need a lot of stuff.

I mean, the Kings are going to probably suffer a disaster, but that's the Kings.

Hashtag Kings.

But

they're just set up so poorly.

And then to give this pick up and be unprotected, you know, even if it's the 10th pick, even if it's the 11th pick, that's another opportunity for you to get better as a team, you know, and that's something that like you could have used.

That pick would have had a whole lot more value almost at the deadline, you know, if you, if you, if you package it with other things.

I think it puts them in a different situation.

And I just find themselves like, again,

you're in a situation you can't take because of your pick, but you're not good enough to be a playoff team.

Like, I look at them and I, this is one of those teams where I just don't understand what they're doing.

I'm not, I know Poole had a good season in Washington last year.

I know he was good.

But I'm not like running around going, like, that's a great pickup for them.

The DeJounte Murray, it was an Achilles tear late January.

So at the earliest, he's coming back, what, mid-season?

And even then, that's a long time to get back in that as like a shot season for him.

Like, I just, I would always err on, you know, it's the next season

when I maybe start to look like, you know, the old DeJounte Murray, who didn't really fit well in New Orleans to begin with.

Yeah.

And so you're just kind of like the whole team building aspect of this squad.

I just look at them and I just go like, man, like, this thing is going nowhere.

And it's going nowhere quickly.

And I find themselves in a difficult position.

And it's frustrating, you know, to watch.

We don't know what we're going to get from Zion.

Like,

Jones and Murphy are my two favorite players to watch on that team.

Jose Alvarado coming in at the end because he always does something pesky and annoying.

But again, even with Alvarado there, you know, like, is he going to get as many minutes with Fears out there?

You can't play the two of them together.

That's so small, you know, and it puts you in a difficult position.

I just think they're in a very weird setup

and what they're going to be.

And then they've then put themselves in a situation where it's going to set them back with this pick.

The fact that Lana had to keep calling rumored, I guess, the story.

I don't know.

I think that may have been slightly exaggerated, but I do something happened like that.

Yeah, but like just the fact that it was, I'm, there's everybody was shocked it was unprotected.

I was waiting when the trade came out, going, like, eventually somebody's going to say, no, no, that picks on, that picks top five protected or whatever.

And the fact that it never came, I was just sitting there going, like, what's going on?

It's been a fun, an interesting thing that's been, I've talked about with a couple people

this week is

they really liked fears.

I mean, obviously they loved Queen.

Like the whole league knew that they were after Queen.

They also loved Fears.

And an interesting counterfactual that's been presented to me was, what if Fears had been taken

in the top six?

Now, we don't know who among the Kinnipo, Trey Johnson, Ace Bailey group falls down in that scenario.

But I've had a couple people say to me, like, I think they would have just taken Queen at seven.

That's how much they liked him.

And they just thought they had to seize the Fierce pick.

And I'm like, that would have just been better for them than what happened.

Taking Queen at seven and keeping the 23rd pick would have been better than what had happened.

But, you know, it's just,

it's, uh, it's hard to, it's hard to wrap your head around.

Um, it's just, I mean,

and they don't even have a path to like cap major cap flexibility or cap room at at least until the summer of 2028 unless,

unless they have that Zion crazy non-guaranteed contract, unless they basically waive him, which is like not a great scenario if that's where you are with Zion

in a year, in two years.

You know, his deal kind of guarantees every summer as you go,

as Bobby Marks has reported a lot of.

And they get like Ingram was on the team.

And, you know, Ingram is not everyone's cup of tea.

Does he aid you in high-level winning I don't know I've always said about Ingram

when you look at the stats and you watch the games

there's something that's not translating from those stats to winning and I think a lot of it is defense some of it is playmaking some of it is shot selection but he's still a good player who by the way people

I might be over-indexing on six playoff games, but he like balled out against the Suns in his one real shot in the playoffs.

i'm not counting the thunder series where he came back from injury and they're wildly overmatched and they didn't get like really

anything for him and

i don't know man it is it is what it is that ingram trade though was i think a loss for both teams when you look at the the extension the raptors gave ingram

right after trading for him too so i think it's a uh a a tough one there but i just when i look at them like you're right the herb jones extension a plus Like, that's a win.

That's a win.

That's a great extension.

I thought that was awesome.

But again,

everything else after that is just disastrous.

And I don't know what they think they have in this team.

Like, I don't know what they're,

I would love to be a fly on the wall of Troy Weaver and Joe Dumar's discussions of what they expect this team to be.

I'd like to be a talking fly and be like, don't do it.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

But I just want to know what's like that's the thing because like when I think about them 14 13 maybe 12th in the in the Western Conference like I don't look at them as competing for a playing spot like I look at Portland differently as a team that's gonna should compete for a playing spot Portland should be better than New Orleans no contest not even not even close right like when you talked about it has to be cataclysmic across several teams to have multiple you know disaster seasons for them to even be thinking playing.

And again, when you do that, now you're in the situation of like, okay, we're in the lottery and we've just saw teams jump in the lottery over and over again.

Like, you're just putting yourself in this weird position.

I'm worried about the future of the Pelicans.

By the way, Portland's an episode for another day because they're a really interesting team.

Yang has looked good.

in Vegas.

And the more I talk to people, and this is not revisionist history, the more I'm very, very confident he was going to get taken in the first round somewhere by somebody,

whether it was a team that was in the first round or a team that was looking at getting into the first round.

But that's an episode for the Mo Takil.

What do we got?

We got the double dribble podcast with Jared Dubin, my buddy.

You're still on Twitch doing the Twitch stuff.

What else can we promote?

I have a couple articles up on Bleacher Report.

One, the five teams I think that improved the most this offseason.

And on the flip side, the five teams I think that got worse in the offseason.

So I think there's

the way you could look at it is, you know, go check those things out,

those two articles.

And then I'm coming back, Zach, with a whole bunch of videos.

I'm going to be making videos next season.

I've kind of focused a bunch on Twitch, but now we're coming back.

We're going to be doing more.

I'm going to do more YouTubes, TikToks, whatnot.

And of course, check out the Double Dribble podcast with Jared.

We're having a lot of fun.

Mo DeKille, I say it every time.

Former video coordinator for the Spurs and the Clippers.

If you want to know what's happening in the game, which you should want to know if you're a basketball fan, Mo is one of the guys you got to follow.

Thank you, Mo.

Now it is time for everyone's favorite segment.

Mets Corner with Sean Fantasy.

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This episode is brought to you by Viore.

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It's time for segment two of Mets Corner.

Sean Fantasy, can we steal the Meet the Mets theme song?

Would they give us the IP for that?

We need something to introduce Mets Corner.

I'll sing it right now if you want.

Go for it, please.

Meet the Mets, greet the Mets.

Come on down and see the Mets.

That's as much singing as you're getting from me for the rest of this segment.

That was very good.

And in fact, it confirmed that I would have gotten some of the lyrics wrong had i even tried

down or out come on out and see the mets come on down and see them i can't remember is there some point where it goes east side west

okay yeah okay uh so all-star break is ongoing ending uh mets are a half game out of the phillies for first place would we qualify this as a successful first 90 games or whatever it is yeah i think given the fact that three-fifths of their rotation was more or less unavailable through a big bulk of the first half and the fact that the offense has been in the bottom five with runners and scoring position.

Yeah, being half game out of first place with the trade deadline looming, I feel pretty good.

How do you feel?

So dumb baseball questions, which is the theme of this segment.

Three-fifths of the rotation.

Who are the three and how big is it?

Are they using a six-man rotation at full strength?

Who are the three?

Manaya, Montas, and who else?

Well, Manaya, Montis, and Kodai Sango all missed time.

Plus, during that period where they were having incredible starting pitching, Griffin Canning got hurt tylor mcgill got hurt uh paul blackburn got hurt those three guys i just mentioned seemingly are not coming back this year maybe tylore mcgill will but it doesn't seem like the other guys are going to be back so when you add up the missed time for literally every single non-david peterson and clay homes starter i don't know it's amazing they survived i was i had a lot of questions about this starting rotation before the season even started the fact that we're here with this rotation and all the injury problems that they've had, things are going great.

Do we go six-man rotation?

Is that what happens now in baseball?

Well, the Mets do the last few years because of Kodai Senga's unusual routine, which they sort of poured it over from Japan because the six-man is more common in Japan and the time off is more common in Japan.

So in order to get him as right as possible, they try to have one or two swing starters in their rotation at all times.

What they'll do now,

now they've got Senge and Minaya and Mantas and Peterson and Holmes all healthy.

Who would be the sixth?

I don't yet know.

I think that might be answered in the next couple of weeks.

I got to say, having done no research on how many people make the all-star team, who the other candidates were for the all-star team, like the exact opposite of how I make my NBA all-star teams, I was very happy that Peterson made it.

And do you know why I was very happy that Peterson made it, Sean Fenny?

Why?

Get off my freaking lawn.

You know what he does?

He pitches deep into games.

He's pitching in the seventh inning sometimes, even the eighth inning.

And they took him out one game against the Orioles in the eighth after he allowed one hit and the whole freaking team fell apart.

Ryan Stanick, I understand he's, I guess, a popular Met.

I guess he's popular.

I've had enough.

I've had enough.

He just turned into WFAN.

What happened?

This was the Zach Lowe show.

Get a haircut.

Get a haircut and get some people out, Ryan Stanick.

No, we're not the Yankees.

We don't tell people to cut their hair.

Ryan Stanek is unreliable.

There's just no other way to put it.

He's unreliable.

He does throw 99 miles an hour.

And when he strikes a guy out to end an inning and screams to the sky, I do get excited.

And I think his show of passion.

I've never seen much of that.

I'd like to see more of that.

He just, it's a coin flip with him.

50% of the time, he's the most electrifying setup guy in the league.

The other 50% of the time, he should be sent straight to the dump.

Speaking of F-A-N, have you yet seen Francesa's eight-minute rant about the Superman movie?

Of course I have.

It's been sent to me by roughly 100 people.

I grew up obsessed with Mike and the Mad Dog.

I still love Mike to this day.

Can't say I agree with a single thing he said about Superman, but I appreciated that he put the time in to watch it.

I was really excited for the Superman movie.

I just like that he wears his old school ideals on his sleeve.

Like, I just want Lois Lane to be a damsel in distress.

Okay.

Like,

can we just have Superman saving Lois Lane?

That's all I want.

Stay in the kitchen, Lois Lane.

What are you doing?

Okay, so...

Successful season, six-man rotated.

Tell me about Manaya and Mantis.

What do I need to know about, particularly Manaya, who I just have not seen?

I know he came out of the bullpen and took a loss, but pitched quite well the other day, three innings.

What are my expectations for Sean Minaya?

Well, a big thing happened last year, which is that he was sort of the Clay Holmes of 2024 for the Mets in that there was an expectation of a little bit of a risk.

He had been coming off of a year in which he had served as a reliever for the Giants for the first time in his career.

And it was confusing, the idea of giving him the guaranteed money that they gave him.

But he, about a quarter of the way through the season, changed his mechanics and started trying to pitch exactly like Chris Sale, who is now in the Braves, was on the White Sox for many years, one of the best pitchers of the last 15 years in major leagues.

So he changed his arm angle and this sort of three-quarter delivery, this almost sidearm delivery that Sale uses, Manaya started using last year.

And that led to him being one of the single best pitchers in the national league in the second half of 2024.

One of the big reasons why they went on this magical run is he was so darn great.

He seemed to tire at the end of last year a little bit in the playoffs.

The beginning of this year, there were a lot of high hopes.

He reassigns a three-year $75 million contract.

Fans were very happy to have him back.

He's also a great, kind of very likable character.

And then he got an oblique strain and he had missed time all the way up until that three innings that we saw him pitch.

He is, you know, he's a guy in his early 30s who relies on a combination of three or four pitches.

He is an unlikely ace or number two, I would say, given his career profile.

But when he is on, he is nasty.

So I'm really hopeful.

Now, he and the problem is that he and Kodai Senger are kind of the same pitcher.

They're both kind of like when he is on, he is nasty.

If they're off,

it can get a little messy a little quickly.

So I'm relieved to have him back.

I just like, I like rooting for him.

He's a big like rally cap guy.

He's a, he's very like with the team.

Yeah.

He's really like got a lot of personality.

So I'm happy.

I'm really happy to see him pitch and see how he slots into this team.

If I were a baseball player, like I would be, I would be that guy on the team.

I would be doing like the hot foots from the 86 Mets.

Like there's just so much downtime.

Like if I were a relief pitcher, our bullpen would be a party.

We would have a lot of rituals.

We'd be doing crazy stuff all the time.

That's what I love.

The downtime is what makes baseball baseball.

Okay, now I'm rooting for him.

I'm excited.

All-star, Pete Delonzo hit a home run.

You alerted me to this.

I did not watch the all-star game.

And Edwin Diaz blew a save.

I've already said I trust Edwin Diaz already more than any closer the Mets have had in my life.

And I'm glad he got the blown save out of the way.

And you told me it was not his fault.

I didn't see the highlights.

So Edwin Diaz did come into the game in the bottom of the ninth

in an all-star game to close it out.

But he came in, I think, with runners on

maybe, I think maybe the bases loaded or runners on first and second.

And he was relieving Ranger Suarez, the very talented Philadelphia Phillies pitcher who is not a reliever.

I don't know why Edwin Diaz did not start that inning.

He probably should have.

But when he came in, he got an out, and then he gave up an infield hit.

And the infield hit, which we all know, you know, they're real hits, but they feel kind of bogus.

They don't feel like they really are the pitcher's fault.

So he gave up an infield hit, and that led to a run scoring, which then led to the blow and save because he allowed that run to score.

But that was the only hit he gave up.

That was the only damage that was done.

And that led to a tie game.

Now, that's significant because if they had, if he had closed out the game there, or if Ranger Suarez had closed out the game, I think Pete Alonso is probably your all-star game MVP because he hit a three-run home run.

Because Edwin Diaz blew that game, and really Ranger Suarez blew that game.

We went to a swing off.

And they'd never done that before in the Major League Baseball All-Star game.

Pete Alonzo was going to participate in the swing off.

However, Kyle Schwarber, who hit in front of him in the swing-off on the Philadelphia Phillies, went three for three in that swing-off, thus eliminating the need for Pete to hit it all, which meant that Kyle Schwarber instantaneously became the all-star MVP and Pete was left waiting in the batters box.

What is a swing-off?

I don't really know.

I mean, it's basically like a mini-home run derby to determine.

It's sort of like if they did a free throw contest to end the NBA All-Star game, you know, is like, or three-point contest, maybe more appropriately, but there was just like live BP and guys got to try to hit home runs.

So we, we, the, we've already changed the rules for regular season extra innings where you start with a runner at second.

It's just too much work to do that in the all-star game for the 10th, 11th inning.

We can't even, we can't do that.

We got to just have this fake thing.

I can't pretend to be an expert in the extra innings history in the MLB All-Star game, but I do understand the idea of not wanting guys to get hurt.

So not wanting to play like a 14-inning game.

So, you know, what do you do there?

Well, I'll tell you what else grinds my gears here.

This, every team's got to have an all-star thing.

How long have they been doing that?

A long time, and I hate it.

I think it's a lot of fun.

This is how out of touch I am.

I checked out around the time they tried to do the thing where the winner of the all-star game gets home field in the World Series.

Wasn't that a thing at one point?

Is that still a thing?

No way.

They kept that?

I think so.

I think so.

I could be wrong.

I think that's still the case.

I think the NL will have home field advantage.

Okay, so if that's true.

If I'm wrong, people can yell at me online.

Yeah, people, maybe our producers can look that up.

But like, if that's true, that's crazy.

Like, crazy.

And I don't, I don't, no, that's not still correct, Jesse says.

Our producer, Jesse, says that's no longer the case.

Great job, Major League Baseball correcting an obviously dumb thing.

When did they change it?

They probably changed it nine years ago, and I just didn't know.

When, so, and this, this, every team's got to have an all-star thing is, has been long, long in the making.

At least five years, maybe even this close, maybe even close to 10 years that they've been doing it this way.

Now, obviously, the reason for it is because the voting bases in smaller markets means that a lot of bigger stars in smaller markets are not going to get voted in necessarily you've also obviously um got the case where

big groupings of the best players are on big market teams such as the mets so for example this year juan soto did not make the all-star team and he's and he's apparently has a large financial bonus and was uncouth enough to mention that he would like to have gotten his large financial bonus and this was the thing that people were mad about him mentioning somehow, like the hot takes were flying, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a component of the fact that the contract he signed in the offseason was so extraordinarily large and historic that people were like, can you stop talking about money?

You have more money than anyone will ever need.

However, him being quote unquote snubbed is complete nonsense.

I mean, it is ridiculous.

He is so obviously one of the best hitters in baseball.

And also, secondarily, but maybe more importantly, one of the biggest stars in baseball.

So the idea of not sending him in favor of like Kyle Stowers, who's a good player, but who is not even having as good of a season as Juan Soto is just to check a box for a player to be there.

I just think it's like he's on what team?

Kyle Stowers, I believe, is on the Marlins now, traded in the offseason.

And the Marlins still do the thing where they try to win like once every five years and then they try to lose the rest of the time and they stink and nobody goes to the games.

That's like still the Marlins' arc.

That is still their arc, correct?

Because some things don't change.

Oh, speaking of Kyle Schwarber,

like

the Phillies-Mets rivalry was not really a thing when I was a hardcore Mets fan.

The Phillies, I rooted for the 93 Phillies.

Was it 93 when they made the World Series with John Crook and Lenny Dykstra?

Like, I liked the Darren Dalton, all the long hair.

Joe Carter year.

Yeah.

Whatever year that was, I rooted for them.

And the Braves were always the big NL rivalry.

Cardinals, when I was a kid, Phillies were sort of like, I almost felt like...

I kind of liked that team

right down the highway.

Philly's a cool city.

Like the colors, like the fanatic.

Is this not like a blood feud after the playoffs last year?

Do we hate each other now?

Well, I think it really all changed

during the,

well,

it's correlated to a couple of things.

One is that the Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley era of that team,

I think if they weren't blood rivals,

they were a more successful team than the Mets in that time because they did go on to win a World Series.

Jimmy Rollins famously won an MVP that is one of the more contested MVPs in National League history, statistically speaking, because there were other players who you could say had better years.

One of them was David Wright that year, who was a Met, and will come up again in this conversation, I'm sure.

And the other thing is that Utley has really become like a villain.

You know, he's quite infamously injured Ruben Tejada in a significant game some years ago, and is just despised by me and many other Mets fans.

So those teams,

I think, were the seed of a rivalry that has now been

percolating in the last few years that culminated, I think, in last year's

NLDS matchup where the Mets beat the Phillies, even though the Phillies were the winners of the NL East that season.

So, you know, Philly is a tough town.

Oh, yeah.

And New York is a tough town.

And it's ironic for me because literally three of my five closest friends are from Philadelphia.

And so we basically did not speak to one another during the Mets Philly series.

We didn't talk shit.

Love it.

But we didn't, we literally did not communicate.

These are people I see every other day.

And

that's interesting.

But, you know, baseball is important.

That was, I assume CR is one of those people.

CR is one of those people.

That was my life during the Subway series surrounded by Yankee fans.

I was like, I just, I can't, especially when the Mets went down 2-0 and it was like the writing was on the wall.

I was like, I don't.

I don't want to hear anything from you.

Like, give me like a month grace period before you bring this up.

I didn't, I didn't rub in the NLDS victory into those guys' faces for what it's worth.

I feel actually quite good about that because I'm not a very good, I'm a kind of a sore winner.

But

in this case, I felt a dash of maturity.

Now, I'm sure I will hear from them when they listen to this podcast and say that's not true.

You were a dick.

But I tried to be considerate.

Now, I do, as an NBA mascot aficionado, I should be more educated about baseball brethren.

In fact, one of my, I used to go to a lot of Oakland A's games for reasons I won't get into here.

And, and one of them was Stomper the Elephant's birthday party.

And so there were a lot lot of mascots there.

So I got to know Lou Seal, the Seal from the San Francisco Giants and some other mascots.

But I would venture to say, consensus, Mr.

Mett and the Philly Fanatic, two of the top five mascots in Major League Baseball, or do people hate on Mr.

Mett?

Is he considered corny?

I love Mr.

Mett.

I like that Mrs.

Mett is now heavily involved.

She's a peer.

But I don't know the other mascots.

Well, Mr.

Mett was in the news recently.

I don't know if you saw this.

Oh, boy.

It's never good when a mascot's in the news.

There was a Lumineers concert at City Field.

You familiar with the Lumineers?

I am.

I know people who attended that concert.

They sing a kind of peppy folk music.

Not my favorite kind of music.

And I think that the lead singer attempted to throw a tambourine to Mr.

Mett during this concert, who was attending because, of course, it was at City Field.

Yeah.

And Mr.

Mett wiped out.

in a very public fashion.

Okay.

It's fine.

This was captured on video and he was roundly laughed at in a lol Mets fashion.

So yeah, I think Mr.

Met is like the subject of many a meme, which does make him more famous.

I think he's an okay mascot.

I'm not sure about the

physiognomy, really, how that works when your head is a baseball.

What is he really is something that's never really been answered for me.

Is he a baseball-headed human?

Is he

an anthropomorphized baseball that grew appendages?

How does the relationship with Mrs.

Met work?

I think there's a lot of unexplored lore in Mr.

Met.

The Fanatic, additionally,

what is he?

What's that?

It doesn't matter.

He's amazing.

He's a top mascot in all of sports.

Okay.

He now has a cut.

I guess Gritty is his cousin.

I don't know.

I don't know if that's someone told me that they're cousins.

So now I need to really research the mascot.

I like Mr.

Mett.

I find him charming.

I like Mrs.

Met.

Okay,

David Wright.

So David Wright's career coincides almost exactly with the era where I just lost touch with the Mets and wrote that piece with Grantland about, you know, the heartbreak of seeing them in the World Series and not being in it.

Even

what is the year they lose to the Cardinals?

Is that 2005?

Beltran strikes out looking?

Or no.

06?

Something around there.

I watched that game, but I was like, I don't even know who's on the team anymore.

I'm aware, obviously, that David Wright is a many-time all-star third baseman, filling a position that was kind of infamously a revolving door between Howard Johnson and David Wright.

It is David Wright weekend weekend this weekend at Citi Field.

I may go to the game on Sunday with my family.

So John.

He's getting his number retired and they're celebrating him.

You wrote a piece for Granlin about when he re-signed for a massive contract at like age 32 and promptly he had like one all-star year after that and then fell off the map very quickly as you portended in that piece.

What is his place in Mets history?

How do we feel about him now all these years later as he's getting, he seems to just be universally beloved?

What does he symbolize for the Mets?

Like, what do you feeling as we hit this weekend?

I think for a long stretch of time, he was the embodiment of

decency and homegrown greatness, which the Mets

from the 90s into the 2000s just did not have a ton of experience with.

They were, you know, kind of a laughing stock of a franchise at that time.

And then he, along with Jose Reyes, became the embodiment of a very brief but exciting little window of competitiveness in 05, 06, 07, 08.

07 and 08 ended terribly, but he was very, was steadfastly

above average too great through that period of time.

Always just seemed like a really decent kind of guy, kind of

represented, I think, what you want from most athletes, sort of like fourth rate with the media, always available, always accountable.

played really hard.

He wasn't like the greatest athlete in the world.

And I would say was ultimately an average third baseman, but a very good hitter,

you know, a guy with like a career, 380 on base percentage.

And I think what he ultimately represents is sort of the Mets is Don Mattingly.

Don Mattingly was a great player for the Yankees, not a Hall of Famer, you know, just shy in some ways, in part because he had a bad back.

And so he did not get to kind of play through his mid-30s the way that so many Hall of Famers get to and to kind of compile the stats to reach the milestones that necessitate getting into the hall.

And D-Wright is like the same guy.

You know, he really has this precipitous drop-off where he plays 112 games in 13, 134 games in 14, and then 38 and 37 in the following seasons.

And then he's basically done.

And so by 34 years old, he's done with baseball.

To that point, his counting stats are pretty darn good.

He basically hit 250 home runs and had 1,000 RBIs.

And, you know, he had an 870 OPS.

Like, he's on track to be a Hall of Fame third baseman.

If he gets to like 400 home runs and 1,500 RBIs, pretty easy to see him get there.

He never quite got there, but I think he was just a very likable guy and obviously like a genuine leader.

And

so I think it's really nice.

This has been a kind of a signature move of the Cohen era of ownership where they're acknowledging their past in a way that shows how proud.

the team is of its players, which is something that the Wilpons were terrible at.

But, you know, Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry, you know, entering the ring of honor last year and now David getting this is all very exciting.

It is a very relevant thing to discuss, though, because we do have our own David Wright on the Mets right now.

Pete Alonso

is our David Wright right now, and he's the same age that Wright was when Wright signed that contract that I wrote about in 12.

And what I wrote about was that this is really hard to watch a player that you have seen.

I have seen him since he became a professional.

play baseball and loved watching him play and watched him contribute to teams that have just not quite gotten over the hump the same way that David Wright's team never quite got over the hump.

And now he's going to be a free agent coming off of his best season, much as Wright was coming off of a stretch of seasons where he got that contract.

And you look at it and you're like, a not super athletic 30, 31-year-old who wants a hundred plus million dollar guaranteed contract entering his mid-30s.

This seems like a bad idea.

And yet,

it's basically like, was the David Wright contract a good idea is an interesting question because it was insofar as we're going to have this day on Sunday where we're going to celebrate this great time in Mets fandom.

And that would not have happened if he had left and signed with the Astros.

But,

you know, that contract was an albatross around the Wilpon's neck for six years where he played a grand total of like one and a half seasons.

So it's a, it's a, it's a pickle, and it's interesting that it is resonating at this time where they're retiring his number and, you know, saluting him as a captain just as we are about to have the same experience with Pete.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, no.

And I thought even about Soto because, because, you know, 15 years, I know he's got an opt-out or is there mutual opt-out after five years or something like that.

But, you know, I was, I remember the pool hose contract and how instantaneously it was like, oh, he's going to be making how much when he's 40 something years old.

But again,

I'm a neophyte here.

So

no salary cap at baseball.

Luxury tax, yes, right?

So,

and Cohen is like balmer baseball, basically.

So, you know, maybe not quite.

I don't know how rich he is.

he's extremely rich um

can we not just sort of eat a cost for in exchange for emotional satisfaction if it if the if the cost is just money and not team building or is the tax so punitive that it will indeed affect team building even if your owner is a mega billionaire it's a really good question i'm not the world's number one expert on this but i can highlight a couple of things that clarify sort of like what the what baseball's second apron is so the tax has

multi-tiered the same way that the NBA does.

And once you get over a certain threshold, you're essentially paying 90 cents against every dollar that you spend, which is extremely punitive.

Yeah, no one's paying that.

Steve Cohen has paid it and is trying to avoid paying it in perpetuity.

So in addition to that, one thing that happens that is pretty dramatic is if you spend at a certain threshold over a period of time, your draft pick drops from the number that you would have normally picked out.

I think last year the Mets would have picked roughly at 24 or this year rather.

And instead they picked at 34.

So you lose 10 spots in your draft.

The same thing happens in basketball.

You go down to the 2000s.

That happens maybe anyway?

Yeah, you go down to

over the second apron, I can't remember exactly how many times in X amount of years, your pick gets, first it gets frozen, so you can't trade it, and then you get moved down to 30th, no matter where you are, you are 30th.

Oh, interesting.

I didn't know that.

Has anyone suffered that penalty yet?

No one has gotten moved yet.

Some teams are on track to get moved.

A number of picks have been frozen, but you can unfreeze them if you get out of the second apron going forward.

You get control of your pick again to trade it.

Oh, that's so interesting.

I, you know, the Mets, I think, have, this is two years in a row now.

They've, their pick has dropped down.

Now, on the one hand, that's not such a big deal because they can spend so much on free agents.

On the other hand, David Stearns, their general manager, historically likes to build through the draft.

So how do you build through the draft when you're constantly picking 35 and 40?

It's pretty hard to do.

Plus, in baseball, you get a bonus bonus pool where you only have a certain amount of money you can spend on the draft.

And sometimes you have what's called paying over slot, which means you pay a guy more than the position that they're drafted in.

But if you have a limited number of funds, it's harder to pay over slot to get premium for a guy who is quote-unquote slipping in the draft due to his price.

So the way that the draft is gamed, and I can't believe I still remember how all this works.

Wow, that was impressive.

The way that the draft operates is extremely unusual relative to the NBA and the NFL.

So spending a lot of money means you have to maneuver.

So if you have Lon Soto assigned to this deal and then you sign Pete Alonso to a long-term deal, and then let's say Edwin Diaz opts out at the end of this season because he hasn't opted out.

I don't think they would ever re-sign him to an enormous $100 million contract, but let's just say that they did.

All of a sudden, you're kind of in the baseball cap hell for three or four years.

And I don't think Steve Cohen wants to do that.

And I know David Stearns doesn't want to do that.

Wait a second.

I'm at risk of losing the only Mets closer I've ever trusted in my lifetime right away.

Like this, this could just be a fling for me and it's over.

It's in play, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Oh, my God.

That's what you wish for.

You might get two terrible Edwin Diaz years if he opts in.

Yeah, well, look, my expectations are not high anyway for Nets closers.

Are you feeling good?

Are you feeling like you're making a good choice by signing up for the rest of this season?

There's like it's actually been good for my soul.

Like, I

feel better across it.

It helps that my daughter's into it a lot.

Um, but it just feels,

I think, these, I think

just personally,

Ron Adams, who is, who's like the dean of NBA Assistant Coaches, has been with the Warriors forever.

I've known him for a long time.

And he once told me like six, seven, eight years ago, he was like, Zach, just one word of advice.

Just don't get too NBA tunnel visioned in your life.

Have other interests.

Read The New Yorker all the time.

Read books about Middle East history.

Like exercise every part of your brain.

And I took that to heart.

And at the same time, the job becomes so all-consuming that I didn't not, I didn't do a good enough job following that advice.

And that's both, and I still read every New Yorker and I do, I do have, I read books, like actual books, but not enough and not, definitely not enough what Eddie SPN went, it just became a hamster wheel that I could not get off of.

You have a kid too.

I feel like the kid, when you have young kids, that changes that too.

Yeah, of course.

You lose a lot of time.

What you gain, you gain a a wonderful thing but you lose a lot of sort of leisure time and but i i think i think um

having

something to be emotionally invested in versus just like oh we have our tv shows that we sit and watch at the end of the day like having something an outlet for like a pure happy or not even just happy because it could be sad too but like a more pure emotional experience has actually been like mentally healthy for me win lose like you know they blow the lead to the orioles and i get pissed and i'm mad at ryan stanek and all that.

Like it feels kind of good, bizarrely.

I know exactly what you mean.

I am, I have the same potential issue of tunnel vision with, for a long time it was with work and now it's increasingly with movies too, because it's such a big part of what I do.

But

I'm fond of saying that horror movies are still something that I really care about because they really get me to feel something deeply.

Like they drive a kind of primal emotion that is a little bit harder for me to access at this stage of my life.

And sports does the same thing.

So my version of the Mets is just watching sports.

Watching the Mets is my version of that already.

I'm a little bit more of a psycho fan than you are as you took some time off.

But I,

even when I'm mad or sad, I kind of like that I'm still getting deep into those feelings.

So I relate.

Well, just like in the last month, they had a horrible stretch where they lost 13 to 16.

Then they beat the Yankees two out of three.

And like, I just.

I hate the Yankees with every ounce of my soul and always will.

And any series you take from them, I feel very good.

And one of those games, McNeil, who I really like, by the way, McNeil, um hits a game winning home run like the bottom of the eighth and then they have the oreoles comeback where they're down six to two in the eighth and their best players come through with big hit after big hit and i just forgot how it's a dumb regular season game like game 87 of 162.

it just feels awesome like when you see the best guys come through in the best ways and a big comeback it just felt so good okay last question what do we need at the trade deadline give me like a couple names that i need to do like baseball reference searches on or what do we need what do we got to get What do we have?

Are we like, are we like the Clippers where we're out all our first-round picks or the Suns?

Like, the Clippers actually are not out all their first-round picks, but the Suns are.

Are we like, is that a thing in baseball where you just have nothing left to trade?

The Mets have a lot to trade right now.

The Mets, I think, according to,

I want to say it was Baseball Prospectus, have four of the top 50 prospects in all of baseball right now, and their fifth highest prospect is 51.

So, man, let's go.

That's a lot.

Now, this is happening.

It's not too crazy.

Like,

let's keep some of these guys.

This is the challenge, though.

The challenge specifically is that the timing of this team is a little bit off because Pete Alonzo, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimho, Jeff McNeil, Juan Soto are in their prime.

Those guys are third.

Well, Soto's 26, but those guys are 30, 31, 32.

They're having good seasons.

They're ready to win now.

The pitching is pretty good.

Not great.

They do not have a Zach Wheeler.

They do not have a top of the rotation ace who can win you two games in a five-game series.

So you could say we would love to get one of those guys.

Those guys are never available.

The bullpen is extremely leaky, as I'm sure you've learned.

This is a very, they have to get two bullpen arms.

That is no doubt happening.

They probably could use another bat because Jesse Winker just got hurt again.

So you've got Winker and Starling Marte, both basically primary DHs on

the IR right now.

So

what do you do?

Do you trade away?

You can't trade away Jonah Tong and Nolan McLean and Brandon Sprode.

These are the three most exciting pitching prospects the Mets have had, maybe since the 2015 era of Matt Harvey and Noah Sindergaard and ultimately Jacob DeGrom.

But if you don't trade those guys, you're not going to get high-end talent.

I think David Stern's greatest skill is acquiring on the edges, is acquiring guys who are undervalued.

and who maybe don't have the clear counting stats that we would be excited about as fans, but that do things that teams need.

So yeah, you could look at the center field prospects that are out there, the Luis Robert Jr.s, the Cedric Mullinses, who are having like down years relative to their skills and say try to grab those guys with one kind of B-tier prospect.

Or you could say, let's stick with Tyrone Taylor.

Let's hope Jose Siri comes back to play center field.

And definitely not trade Carson Benge, the outfield prospect that they drafted last year, who's just cutting it up in AA right now and is probably going to be a starter on the Mets in 2027.

What do you do?

This is why they have those jobs, and I don't.

You know, there are players out there, but who they are is the big question.

So I don't know who any of these players are.

I know I read about Jonathan yesterday because I subscribed to a Mets sub stack and I was like, oh, this guy sounds really exciting.

So he's that exciting.

I don't want to trade any of these exciting guys.

I'm willing to go get a couple of bullpen guys, fringe upgrades.

Like, I want sustainable greatness.

And if one of those guys or two of those guys pops into like an all-star, I would feel deep deep regret, particularly

you just meant, like, I don't know how playoff baseball is now

with the number of innings that starters pitch, but I, you know, in my peak fandom, you couldn't win.

It was very hard to win the World Series without, like, the Diamondbacks won the World Series with two starting pitchers pitching basically like almost every meaningful inning.

I mean, I'm exaggerating, but Schilling and Johnson just like single-handedly won a World Series for the Diamondbacks.

And, you know, you'd have guys like, all right, we're going to start.

This guy's going to start one, four and seven like that's that's half the series basically

it doesn't really happen like that anymore i cite zach wheeler because he's really kind of one of the last real

white hat blazing gun type randy johnson-esque figures in the sport where he'll throw eight innings of three hit ball in a playoff game and you just kind of got to hope you can get to the closer but There's not a lot of guys like that, so it's more of a crapshoot.

I mean, the Dodgers won the World Series throwing bullpen games.

I mean, they had so many injuries injuries to their starters last year, and they still managed to find a way.

Now, the thing that they had was a plethora of arms.

Their guys who at the start of the season were 10th, 11th, 12th on the depth chart were throwing meaningful innings for them and succeeding.

So that's, I think, stockpiling is an approach that the Mets may take.

They may try to take on a lot of arms.

They've already cycled through, I think, more pitchers this season than they did all of last season because of the injuries that they've had.

Stearns is constantly sifting through sand for diamonds in the rough.

And I think that's what he'll be doing this trade deadline too.

Sean Fennessy, thank you for joining another Mets Corner.

It's the most fun I've had doing podcasts like in a long time.

It's just, it's so, it's so much fun.

Thank you for indulging me, educating me.

And we'll see how the second half of the season starts.

Buckle up, I guess.

You're indulging me, Zach.

Thank you.

Let's go, Mets.

Let's do it.

All right, that's it for the Zach Close show.

Thanks to Mo.

Thanks to Sean.

Let's Go Mets, thanks to Jesse, Jonathan, and Brian making all of this work behind the scenes and lighting up the social channels.

We'll be back next week on Monday as planned, barring news.

You never know.

You never know.

But the plan is Monday morning, Zach Lowe's show.

Right back on schedule.

Thanks, everyone, for listening or watching.

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