We’re Going to Game 7!! GAME 7, BABY! Howard Beck on the NBA Finals' Deciding Game, Plus J. Kyle Mann Previews the Draft.

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All right,

coming up on the Zach Low Show, it's Friday.

I'm both groggy and wired because in 56 hours or so, we are getting the greatest thing in sports, game seven of the NBA Finals.

The Indiana Pacers did it again.

Another magical win and a magical run, and everything comes down to one game.

Howard Beck and I break it all down.

What happened in game six?

What adjustments are going to come in game seven?

The stakes for both teams.

It's here.

It's awesome.

Y'all love it.

It's going to be great.

And then because we have to, because other things are going on in the NBA, we're going to talk Lakers sale, which I think is actually really interesting.

Kyle Mann's going to pop on to talk about the draft and Ace Bailey ghosting everybody, which I think is a delightfully funny storyline and just sort of the mystery of this NBA draft after pick number two, which appears to be set for San Antonio.

But it's mostly game seven.

It's mostly just me yelling and screaming about how excited I am about game seven and what's going to happen in game seven.

The NBA Finals, man.

What a series coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

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Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

What

up

Beck?

No preamble, just straight to it.

I love it.

I love it.

If I had any strength and energy left in my arms, I too would do the triumphant Zach Lowe thing.

But my arms are tired.

I am tired.

Everything is tired.

How are you, Zach?

I am so excited.

I am beyond excited.

The Pacers blew out Oklahoma City, a skittish, nervous,

creaky.

You could feel the pressure.

The trophies in the house.

Champagne's in the house.

Oklahoma City Thunder team that was talked up for three days.

The dynasty's here.

First of many.

Here's how they planned it.

Let's dump all our stories.

Here's how it all originates from their shard Lewis trade exception.

A crowning moment.

And the Pacers are like, nah, you guys aren't ready.

You guys aren't mentally ready for this game.

Tyrese Halliburton's physically ready enough to be in this game.

We are going seven with a finals that has been excruciatingly tense at times, weird at times, super competitive at times, not that competitive at other times.

Through six games, the total score is Oklahoma City plus seven.

Both defenses have dominated the day.

The offensive ratings for the series are about 25th regular season level offenses.

And here we are.

It all comes down to one game in Oklahoma City.

The whole entire NBA season comes down to one game.

And I kept, I said this with Bill last night after the game.

It's a reminder.

you can sit here and look out

four or five years.

Oh, Chet's going to make a max, Chet, you know, by the way, Chet shooting, uh,

Chet averaging 11 points a game on 35% shooting, 12% on threes for the finals.

Jay Dubb's gonna make a max, deservingly so.

He's in the contention for finals MVP if they win.

And oh my God, they have all these young players and picks and Topic and all the flexibility to navigate the aprons, all the aprons that there are.

Winning one is hard.

Winning one is hard.

Even for a team set up like the Thunder, which is completely unprecedented combination of good now and set up for tomorrow, nothing is guaranteed.

Nothing.

Not one single championship is guaranteed.

One is hard.

The Boston Celtics were the most well-set up team since the breakup with the Warriors to bust the no-repeat streak.

Championship favorites to start the year.

Everyone kind of assumed, yeah, they'll get it together.

Lost in the second round of the playoffs.

Best player injured out for a year.

Nothing is guaranteed.

Those are the stakes for Oklahoma City.

68 wins.

All this basketball reference searching I did, Howard, their place in history, margin of victory, 68 wins with this record, 16 playoff wins with this record.

What clubs are they in?

You're in one club right now.

You're in the game seven club.

That's all that matters.

3-3 is the only record that matters.

And for Indiana, what's at stake is simply this.

A chance to be the most unusual, unexpected NBA champion in the history of the sport.

A chance to stamp yourself as not only an all-time team as a champion, but an all-time team.

We will all talk about this team forever as long as we live and talk about basketball.

We will do that anyway because of the heroics it took to get here, because of the unusual way this team was built through trades and savvy draft picks.

And, you know,

their starting lineup I've talked about before is all-NBA player, sometimes all-star, sometimes not all-star.

Second-round pick, first-round pick who busted out in Boston, potential perennial trade rumor guide center.

It's not anything like a traditional NBA champion.

They don't play anything like anybody else in the sport.

And that stylistic uniqueness has put them on the precipice of the most unexpected championship in the history of the NBA.

If they pull it off,

it will be just the most extraordinary story.

Those are the stakes, man.

And it all comes down to two and a half hours.

That's it.

Someone's going to shoot 10 of 12 and be a hero.

Someone's going to shoot two of 11 with six turnovers and be an anti-hero.

Some unexpected, someone might score 40 like J-Dubb did.

Like everything's on the table.

One game.

That's it.

I could not possibly be more excited.

It's incredible.

And the funny thing is, and you laid out some of this already.

This entire postseason, especially where it regards the Pacers, has been about the unexpected.

They They weren't supposed to be here.

They weren't even necessarily supposed to be in the Eastern Conference finals.

One uncanny shot after another from Tyrese Halliburton, one uncanny comeback after another from the Pacers, and suddenly they're here.

And it's like, well, though, that was a nice story.

We're all like rhetorically patting the Pacers on the head for what a wonderful story they've constructed.

This underdog team that nobody saw coming that somehow marched its way to the finals in a year where Jason Tatum blew out his Achilles and the Knicks knocked out the Celtics and the Cavs just weren't ready and whatever else the hell happened before this.

They were a nice story.

Let's be honest.

We were talking about them as a nice story, not as potential champions.

We all had Thunder in five.

Some more generous souls probably had Thunder in six.

I think I saw some of those out there.

I think I might have seen a Pacers in seven somewhere.

There are a couple floating around.

Yeah, right?

Kudos to those people because even if they don't win it, it's on the table and we did not expect to be there.

So yeah,

listen, man, I did not expect to be

late last night canceling my flight home to New York with almost literal tears in my eyes because I, you know,

at the end of the day, it's always about me first, Zach.

You know this.

I wanted to go home.

I love a game seven.

I am thrilled to get to witness another one in person and to cover it there in Oklahoma on Sunday.

But I really wanted to go home.

I had some flight kerfuffle stuff going on with trying to book to get to Oklahoma because I am adamantly anti-NBA charter.

There's a media charter, and I don't go on it.

I torture myself with terrible connections.

Got to get the miles, baby.

I got to get the miles.

And I'm also just a control freak who wants to fly.

I mean, if I were on the NBA charter, you and I would not be potting right now.

So there's also the practical aspect.

But the Pacers are absolutely fucking incredible.

They are unkillable.

Everybody's already trotted out, you know, Freddy Krueger, Mike Myers.

Like, we're going to run out of like 80s horror villains who cannot be killed to compare them to because they just won't go away.

And there's some aspect of this where I was not even all that surprised last night, Zach.

I was a little surprised at how jittery the Thunder kind of seemed.

And I think Shay was the only one who really copped to it in the post-game interviews, at least in the room.

I don't know about the locker room.

I didn't get there.

But

there's something to that.

Like, both these teams are young, you know, and outside of Siakam and Caruso, there was no real experience at this level.

This is different when you get here.

There's a reason why it's hard.

There's a reason why we talk about the finals being different.

And you and I have covered a shit ton of these.

This is, I think, my 23rd NBA finals.

Especially on the closeout night of the finals or a potential closeout night, the energy in the arena is different.

You just feel it in your bones.

It is a nervous, anxious,

just tension in the air.

And I have nothing at stake.

You have nothing at stake.

None of us in the media and a lot of people working for the NBA, no one has anything at stake.

Only those two teams do.

But I was having this conversation with one of our friends in NBA PR pregame last night.

Like, you just, you just, you feel it.

Like, I'm nervous.

Why am I nervous?

I have nothing at stake here other than I need to write a semi-coherent story at three in the morning, which I think I accomplished.

My editor Matt Dollinger will be the ultimate judge.

It's probably up on the ringer.com right now.

But it's different, and you feel it, and it's impossible not to.

And when the players deny it, the coaches deny it, whatever,

I don't believe it.

And Shea did cop to it at least slightly in his post-game.

The Thunder

were rattled last night.

You could see it almost from the opening minutes of the game when they committed turnovers and offensive fouls.

It felt like Shea came out

a little bit reckless and nervous, which is a bad combination of things.

Trying to win the game by himself and just driving into nothingness and hoisting up bad shots and driving into crowds and hurling out bad turnovers.

He finished with eight turnovers.

J-Dubb with,

I thought otherwise played a good first half, but two of the worst turnovers you will see.

The McConnell steal, the McConnell, just the McConnell that led to an Obi Toppin three.

Obi Toppin shout out leading scorer of the game for the Pacers.

And then the famous, now famous, you know, didn't see Tyrese Halliburton coming from behind, lazy, kick-a-head pass, steal, Pascal, Siakam, facial, crowd going crazy, game over, essentially.

They just didn't play well.

Chet didn't play well.

And the Pacers played awesome.

And here's what I expect for game seven.

They're usually nasty, grimy, close games.

I don't think the Pacers will ever get out a character that will ever get rattled like the Thunder were last night.

I think the Thunder will obviously play better there at home.

The Pacers just play, man.

They play their game.

They come out and they play their way.

It's a great thing about having this unique style of just the ball flies, bodies fly, and we just keep down nine with a minute left.

We just keep playing overtime.

We just keep playing.

They just play their way.

And

the reason I think they have a chance to win game said, well, obviously they have a chance, but I don't think they have that kind of out.

They might have a bad shooting game.

They might have a couple of uncharacteristic turnovers, a couple bad defense, like Miles Turner at the point of attack might have a shaky pick and roll defense game against Shea.

I don't think Shea went at him and the Indiana Bigs quite enough in the pick and roll last night in game six.

But they're going to play their style and they're going to play their way and they're going to play with a certain freedom and confidence that they bring every moment.

And Oklahoma City did not play with freedom or sort of steadiness last night in game six.

The Pacers are going to be the Pacers.

Yeah.

It's a funny thing, right?

Like this,

the Pacers already don't conform, as we've discussed.

They don't conform to any of our usual ideas of what an NBA contender looks like, plays like, feels like, right?

And

again, the uncanniness of them even being here.

But to go a step further and to just kind of

play off what you just said about their style,

we have these conventions or these construction, these constructs in our head about what an NBA champion looks like, and it's always based on the stars, right?

Why were the Thunder favored in the first place?

Oh, there's talent depth and everything.

Oh, but also, like, Shay's the MVP, and Shay J-Dub Chet is a better star, you know, a three-star alignment than Tyreese.

They have Pascal.

They have two guys who look like prototypical get-buckets guys, and the Pacers have kind of one in Siakam, who's not considered like right.

So

we move in and out of hero ball praise, hero ball criticism over the course of the last 20, 25 years, right?

You know, Michael Jordan kind of sets this standard, and then Kobe picks it up, and then all these different guys.

And we want these high usage, can manufacture scoring out of thin air, break it down to defense, all of this, right?

That's what we're used to.

That's why we end up favoring the Thunder.

That's why we overlook a team like the Pacers that is more this ensemble.

Oh, how cute.

They win off of ball movement and player movement.

And

to your point,

they don't get out of character because nobody on that team is foolish enough

to think that I can win this on my own or to get baited into it or to just get psyched into it or to simply feel the pressure that I have to do this because that's not how they win in the first place.

And it's not to say that anybody, that a Pacer has never been guilty of a hero ball possession or attempt

but

to your point that is exactly it they're not going to they may get outplayed they may get out talented but they're not going to lose based on trying to do something that is outside of them or i got to take over the game right now they don't have a takeover guy and maybe that will end up being their detriment in game seven in crunch time when it comes time for like shay to just manufacture or jadem to manufacture out of thin air that's why you want to have those guys in this league and why traditionally they're so valuable.

But the Pacers, as you said, they just do what they do and it's awesome.

And their offense is a lot of fun to watch.

I did a piece last week with Mike D'Antoni where I talked to him about them being kind of a distant cousin of his seven seconds or less offense.

It's a beautiful game.

The thing that is the Thunders' identity is their defense, obviously.

And

they came out, like I said, skittish,

nervous.

And I actually thought they would come out, at least on defense, the other way.

I thought they would come out in an absolute hellacious frenzy on defense and just like risk some fouls, risk some bad gambles, risk some, but we are going to fly.

We are going to play the first five minutes of this game with such incredible speed and force that we are going to put you on our heels.

And it might backfire on a couple of possessions.

It might pick up a couple cheap fouls, whatever.

We are going to be in your jersey.

We're going to to be flying for every pass.

We're going to be pressuring you everywhere.

And they didn't play with that force.

I thought they would just come out and like default to, we can smell it.

We are here and we are going to take it with our defense right now.

And I do expect them to play that way at home in game seven, which is going to be, by the way, Pacers, okay, I'm cherry pick.

I'm playing a little bit with numbers here, Howard Beck, okay?

I wonder if a team has ever won the finals, and I should have looked this up and I didn't because I just found it right now, without anyone averaging 20 points a game in the finals.

The Pacers have nobody averaging 20 points a game in the finals.

Now, Pascal Siakham is averaging 19.8 points a game.

So, again, I'm playing around a little bit with statistical minutia.

They have eight players, eight averaging double-digit points per game in the series, and nobody averaging 20 or more.

I wonder if anyone's ever won the finals with nobody scoring 20 points a game in the finals.

That's an incredible, um, incredible thing.

Um, all right, let's dig into the game and what to look for in game game seven.

I had a suspicion, by the way, for a team that might fit it, and I'm wrong.

I thought maybe the 04 Pistons, but

Rip Hamilton and Chauncey both averaged 21.

I thought there are some teams that come to mind, even like the 80, the bad boy Pistons were slight, were pretty egalitarian as a scoring team as well.

And defense first, I thought of them, but again, you can go look it up if you want.

I'm not looking it up.

I'm too lazy.

Someone will look it up.

This is people whose job it is, or stats people will look it up.

You know, it's possible that the whole thing is just turnovers, that the whole series, all of game seven, is just turnovers.

And when the Pacers control the ball and don't commit turnovers, they have a real chance to win the game.

When Oklahoma City, well, they won game one despite 9 million turnovers, so I guess this doesn't apply.

But when Oklahoma City can snatch the ball and get out and running and get the easy points that they frankly need because their half-court offense is a little bit stuck in the mud, then Oklahoma City becomes an 80-20 favorite or whatever to win the game.

And the Pacers controlled the ball last night.

I don't know how many, they had single-digit turnovers before the game, before the third quarter was over and the game ended.

They had almost no turnovers.

I mean, essentially, like by thunder standards, none, like six or seven or something like that.

And, you know, I was looking back this morning to just be like, how did they do that?

How do you play against this team and not commit any turnovers like that?

And I just think, A, the Pacers are a low turnover team to begin with.

That's their magic.

Their magic is we move the ball a lot and we play super fast and we do not turn it over.

It's a very rare thing to play that way and not turn it over.

And the one thing I noted, I noted it after game last night, and it stood out to me again this morning.

I thought they were very careful with their hit-ahead passes, whereas Oklahoma City was reckless and it came back to bite them.

And I thought they were very choosy.

with their post-entry passes.

Like they looked off Siakam a couple of times when he had a a mismatch or a guard on him because they were just like, you know what?

This is a high-risk pass against these guys, and we know you have a good matchup.

Let's try something else from the outside in, dribbling, pick and roll, whatever, that's not a high-risk entry pass.

And I thought that was really smart.

And linked to that, because the two sides of the floor bleed into each other, and Oklahoma City gets offense from its defense, gets points from its steals.

You know, the stat to me of the series is the defensive ratings of both teams, the fact that both defenses have won against both offenses.

And

Indiana has found a way to just

bottle up Oklahoma City, confuse them, and trap them into this half-court game that when Indiana wins, nets out to, and I don't know exactly how they're doing it.

I re-watched some of the stuff today.

I don't know, I don't have the magic formula, but the net product for Oklahoma City's offense is no threes,

no assists, no passing, and just bad offensive ratings.

So, do you want me to give you some stats that really stand out?

Can't wait.

Oklahoma City's played 104 games this season, regular season and playoffs.

Here's where the six games of this series rank in passes per game, just passes in the game that Oklahoma City threw.

Out of 104, listeners, remember that number, 104.

87,

88,

93,

102, 103, 104.

They are just not getting passing opportunities.

Their assist rate for the series, they have assisted the Thunder on 46% of their baskets.

NBA.com stats go back to 1996, 1997.

No team has ever finished their regular season with an assist rate that low.

Only 28.5% of their shots, excluding garbage time, have been threes in this series.

That would have ranked last in the regular season by a healthy margin.

So last in threes, last in assists, last in assist rate, last in passing.

The Pacers are doing something defensively, or maybe also not doing certain things defensively, that is just glitching Oklahoma City's offense in the same way every time the formula works.

No threes, no passing, no pace, no assists.

It's like, it's, it's just like, it's incredible what they're doing.

What was their assist rate in the regular season or in the previous rounds?

Do you have that up?

Because now I'm really curious how far off the Thunder are even from their own identity, even though they're a team that can do a lot of ISO or solo stuff.

In the regular season, they're not a high-passing team.

They were 26

with an assist rate of 60%.

So like the last place assist rate was Houston at 55%.

They're almost 10 percentage points below Houston's league worst assist rate.

And

I just think that's, again, I have, we can talk about how theories about how I think Indiana is doing this, but it's just a fascinating that the same,

a Pacers win.

or even a close game or a good Pacers game in this series, Oklahoma City's offensive output looks the same pretty much every time.

And the simplest way is the ingredient number one is you don't get steals.

And we can go into the more of what Indiana's defense is doing, but just the consistency of that kind of outcome is really startling.

Yeah, I mean,

some of this we kind of knew coming in or even through a couple of games that there was just going to be a massive contrast stylistically between the teams, but I did not, I would not have guessed that they were that far off even from their own

regular season identity or model.

And I don't, there's nothing I've seen that's leapt out through six games where it's like, this is how the pacers are doing this to them.

Are the thunder doing this to themselves?

Is it simply the variety of

looks that they've had thrown at Shea?

And it's thrown, like, where does it begin?

You want me to give you, I have seven bullet points.

You want me to go

some bullet points?

Phenomenal.

Hit me.

Number one, you just nailed it.

They have the Thunder off balance and uncertain about who is going to come from where and what's going to happen.

And last night, Rick Carlisle toggled the double team Shea switch to on.

Like Shea dribbles to his pet spot on the left side of the baseline.

We're going to have somebody swarming him from behind.

And it caught the Thunder off guard, the aggressiveness of it.

There was one play late in the game when it was already decided when Jalen Williams, who was two passes away from the double, made a really nice cut down the slot that got somebody else in open three.

And you could see the Thunder sort of brainstorming, okay, now we know this is coming.

Here's a certain way we can counter it.

But Rick Carlisle might toggle that switch back to half on, half off for game seven.

So off balance, number one.

Number two,

they've just been better executing their scheme.

Like, think of the first two or three games of the series.

There were so many jailbreaks where Shay would run a pick and roll against with Hartenstein or Holmgren setting the screen, and Shea would split the double or split the hedge or whatever, and it would be five on three, and Indiana would have to scramble out of that.

Those have shrunk closer to zero, and when they do happen, Indiana's execution on them has been a lot better with guys just sort of peeling off that wave, toggling rotations and all that.

They just nailed the rotations last night every time there was an emergency.

Number three.

Indiana switching a little bit more just to keep them in the mud.

And in the last couple of games, we've seen some Siakam switching onto Shea, which is a matchup they tried to avoid earlier in the series.

And Siakam has done well against Shea.

Siakam also guarded J-Dub a bit last night to mess around with the matchups a little bit, put a little more force on J-Dub.

There's a sacrifice on offense for Indiana in doing that.

He doesn't have a cross-match like he did when he was guarding Dort, and there would be chaos with Pascal running the floor.

Jalen Williams is guarding him.

That's what Oklahoma City wants, but the sacrifice has been worth it.

And then I think

it's just been really interesting that Indiana has played no zone in this series because once Denver went zone against the Thunder and it kind of worked for a while, I started looking at tracking numbers.

It's like, well, Minnesota didn't play much zone this season, but they played a lot against the Thunder in the regular season.

You know, Rick Carlisle, you know, won a championship thanks in part to a zone defense.

He's got it in their playbook.

And they haven't played it at all.

Two, three, four possessions, whatever, just

not and not high-stakes possessions.

And if you ask,

A, because they don't have to, their defense is working, but B, I'll bet you if you talk to their coaches,

the reason would be, A, Oklahoma City got a lot of reps against Denver, against his own, against Denver, and like, curse Denver, you ruined this for us.

We can't do this because you did it so often.

And B,

the one thing a zone does is it makes you pass.

It makes you fill spaces and it makes you pass.

And Oklahoma City has those reads, like Hardenstein flashes to the foul line, Lob the Chet.

It makes you move the ball.

And they don't want to invite Oklahoma City to move the ball.

They don't want to invite you to fill open spaces and pass.

I think that's all of that is part of what Indiana is doing to Oklahoma City.

And then Oklahoma City, as a result, leans into some of their worst habits on offense, which is zero pass possessions where they don't work anything, don't work any offense at all.

don't work mismatches the right way, don't hunt the right way.

Shea just settles for step back threes, which are fine.

He's the MVP.

And their offense just sort of is coaxed into this bait of

one or zero pass possessions.

It's been a masterpiece of coaching, schematics, and execution.

And the consistency of the result, no threes, no passes, no assists, tells me that this is very intentional on the part of the Pacers and their coaching staff, and it's working.

It's almost as psychological as it is schematic, right?

Like you have,

you've kind of messed with their heads on this.

And you and I have seen like a lot of these series, things tip on, you know, getting like, you know, like for the Pacers last night, Neesmith

gets hot, hits a couple of back-to-back hits back-to-back threes.

I think they're late in the second quarter as they're starting to like really kind of gain momentum.

Like you haven't seen, when was the last time like Isaiah Joe, I think, hit a shot last night?

I don't know the box score in front of me, but you need like an Isaiah Joe game or an Aaron Wiggins game or somebody else from the gallery with the Thunder to kind of get a rhythm and get hot.

And that doesn't happen when the ball's not moving because role players need ball movement.

Role players need the stars to get things initiated.

And so it's, it, they,

it's, I don't know.

Like, so

game seven,

everything at stake.

How do they flip the switch to just say, okay, we're, you know what, we're going to be a better ball movement team tonight against the same Pacers scheme.

You'd like some ideas?

Because I've got some.

You probably have somewhere between seven and nine bullet points.

No, I just have some stupid and obvious ideas.

Number one, they only put Tyrese Halliburton in eight pick and rolls last night as the screener defender.

He's on Dort.

He's hiding on Dort.

They had some success earlier in the game when they did that.

But for comparison's sake, there were games against the Cavs in the, in what round was that?

The second round seven weeks ago, where Halliburton was put into 25 and 30 pick and rolls as the defender of the screener.

This dude is hobbling on a calf strain.

By the way,

can we stop on the calf strain for a second?

Was there any moment last night where you thought, man, that dude's got a calf strain, and I don't know if he's going to make it through the game or he's going to be

not make it through the game, but there were moments where I thought, yeah, there were moments when I thought it.

Yeah.

A couple early on where

Denny Goodwill from Yahoo was sitting next to me, and we were talking about like, ooh, ooh, there was a couple moments, and then I completely forgot about the fact that he was hurt at all.

And whether that's a little bit of like, was there gamesmanship on the part of Halliburton and the Pacers?

I mean, I think it was all very, exactly.

So I think it was all very legit.

But, and 72 hours is a lot between games.

And I did think even in the time span, like there's enough time here for round-the-clock treatment, whatever else.

We don't know what the degree of the sprain is, all this other stuff.

Halliburton certainly, when invited to take the bait, said, yeah, if it were the regular season, I'd be out for a week or two.

That might have been gamesmanship.

I don't know.

Like,

there's definitely some ambiguity there.

But I will say, once we were through about the first quarter, maybe even sooner than that, I did not think about Halliburton as an injured player out there, and he's diving for a loose ball and he's, you know, flying out of bounds.

And by the way, you know, like one of the early indicators to me was like just how much harder they were charging.

Like this is such a coachism thing about like, oh, 50-50 balls and force and da-da-da-da-da.

They just looked faster to every loose ball and just were just coming harder at everything.

Well, they had to win the game.

They had to win the game.

The Thunder did not have to win win the game last night, and that cannot be overlooked.

Yeah, sorry.

Massive interruption by me of

a couple drives that he started in the first half and he pulled back from where I thought he had an advantage and could have kept going.

And those were the ones that sort of alerted me to like, okay, maybe he's not.

I mean, he's not 100%.

And I also thought he struck the exact perfect balance of like, I'm still massively impactful off the ball.

And I have this other guy over here, Nemhard, or sometimes Matherin, although he didn't play much, Siakam, who can run the the offense.

And I still think, by the way, there's a little bit more room for Siakam, Halliburton pick and rolls both ways

in game seven.

But I can be a decoy, but I'm a moving decoy.

I'm over here spacing the floor, and then I can take the ball, even as like Nemhart pick and roll on one side, swing it to Halliburton, pick and roll on the other side.

Like, I thought he struck the perfect balance of that, but I think the Thunder did not go at him nearly enough defensively when Indiana was on defense.

I also just think like there was a possession when Shea took a no pass three.

And it was an okay step back, but like he's the MVP.

He's going to get shots like that.

But it started with him bringing the ball up and Holmgren went to set a screen for him and Holmgren had Obi Toppin on him.

Shea can roast Obi Toppin and Shea like waved him away.

Was like, it's cool.

I got just like, get the bigs.

You've gotten good traction when you've gotten Toppin and Turner.

And if they play Bradley and Bryant, Bryant's been relegated to the end of the bench now.

When you've got them high on the floor, default to that instead of waving away and defaulting to, I'm an incredible one-on-one player.

Like, you can do both, but I would like the default to be like, let's get like, and Chet, roll to the rim, roll hard to the rim, mix in some rolls because they don't care much about your pick and pop threes.

They're just going to let you shoot them, maybe stunted you a couple times, mix in some hard rolls.

But the broader thing with the Thunder, and I talked about this last night a bit,

what makes me nervous for them in game seven is that

it still doesn't feel like they know who to play and when.

Like, do we even know who they're going to start in game seven?

There are, like, if you, who do you think leads the Thunder in plus minus for the series?

Take a stab at it.

This player is plus 31 in a series where the Thunder are winning by seven.

Lou Dort.

Nope.

Lou Dort is minus 16.

Oh, geez.

I was pulling.

I hate that.

That phrasing is wrong.

Lou Dort is is not minus 16.

The Thunder are minus 16 in Lou Dort.

Yes, the analytics people are very happy with you right now.

Yay.

Thanks, guys.

Hardenstein.

Hardenstein is minus five in 115 minutes.

I'm getting closer.

Look at me go.

Aaron Wiggins.

Aaron Wiggins is a very strong plus 22 in 88 minutes.

The leader is Kenrich Williams at plus 31

in 50 minutes.

But that's the fourth quarter last night.

But still, he's been pretty good when he's played.

And if you ask me, who are the Thunder going to start?

The double big lineup's been all right.

The double big lineup, Chet and Hardenstein are plus eight in 33 paltry minutes through six games.

That's five, six minutes a game.

Will they go back to the Kaysen Wallace starting five lineup in place of Hartenstein?

That lineup did not play last night.

For the first time in the finals, that lineup saw zero seconds of court time.

That lineup is plus 10 in the series, plus 32 in 66 minutes for the playoffs.

Did not play in game five.

Do they start that again?

They love this Caruso lineup.

I call it their A lineup, which is their

Caruso for Hartenstein in the starting five.

They've started that in the second half

a couple of times, including last night.

I love that lineup.

It's minus 13 in the series and minus nine in 90 minutes in the playoffs.

It just hasn't kind of clicked.

I liked that they tried

Wallace and Caruso together with Shea and J-Dub and Chet.

So that same kind of A lineup, but no Dort because Dort was slumping last night.

Wallace and Caruso are minus 32 together in 57 minutes of the series.

I thought, frankly, that we would see more five out from them in this series.

Not a ton, but like six, seven, eight minutes.

I thought it would be a regular part of their rotation in this series based on how they like to match up with Siakam.

And we just haven't seen it.

And I wonder if maybe that's a look they can go to if in game seven to just sort of get maximum speed.

If Chet's not going to put pressure on the rim offensively and Hartenstein's going to play 16 minutes a game and be just okay, I think he's been all right.

Maybe try that.

I mean, these are all cockamame ideas from an idiot.

They have an incredible coaching staff who's going to,

but it just...

It makes me nervous.

Like, I want to get to get the Pacers know exactly plus or minus five Matherin minutes and five Shepard minutes and Tony Bradley minutes.

There's never been one second where it's like, who are the Pacers going to start in this half?

They start the same lineup every game.

They have a pretty consistent rotation.

It makes me a little nervous that the Thunder, and I think in part because Holmgrid and Hardenstein both missed significant time this season, don't feel quite like they know what to do with their rotation in the series.

They got one game left.

That's it.

I don't recall.

a final series where, I mean, obviously,

we haven't gone to seven in quite a while anyway, and you need to go deep in a series sometimes for some of these things to manifest.

But I don't recall having so much ambiguity on either side of, you know, of a series

where you're kind of wondering game to game, where, you know, at the beginning of the series, it was kind of like, oh, is he making a mistake and going away from double bigs?

And

then it's kind of like moving in and out of it, and we're going to do it here and there.

And

it just seems like

is that

a lack of faith, conviction?

Is that a, we've just seen some things that, you know, maybe you and I are not privy to that alarmed us.

And so now we have to, we're going to just keep adjusting on the fly.

Is it,

I, Mark Dagnall's a damn good coach.

He's obviously got about 30 years less experience than Carlisle, and I may be underestimating that gap.

But I don't want to place it on that.

I don't want to place this on him, but I do think it's alarming,

as you say, that they're going into a game seven.

And who knows what the starting lineup is.

I don't think it's been a great series for him.

I think he's a great coach.

I don't think it's been a great series for him.

I think game six was a bad game.

Indiana played a great game, and Oklahoma City played a bad game.

And I thought a disorganized game.

And I don't, it's just hard to know when you're not in the muck of it.

You have this idea that a coach can like call a timeout and just be like, settle down, do this.

And in this series, I've said this before, like a lot of Oklahoma cities, they come out of a timeout and they run a scripted play with like fancy back screening action and split actions and stuff that looks nothing like their offense in the run of the game.

And that's a very clear signal to me that the coach sees, the staff sees an offense that is a little bit stuck and is like, let's break out some stuff that forces us to move.

And last night, even like, they used Shay as a back screener a couple of times to see if the defense is going to switch, how they're going to react that.

He got called for an illegal screen on one of them.

And the sort of default plan is, well, if the switch doesn't work or the screen doesn't get us an easy cut, what it's going to do is catapult him into a catch at the nail, a catch at the foul line where he doesn't have to dribble into it and he can work in isolation from there.

And I think sprinkling in more of that is, but that's a message to me that the coaches see that the offense is stuck a little bit.

And I think they need to like exercise even a little bit more dominion over it maybe in the half court in game seven.

Can I give you a couple of

any other quick notes you want to make?

I got some other quick notes, just things to watch.

Um, because of Halliburton's injury

and because McConnell has been so incredible, um,

we saw in game six Indiana risk some actual high-stakes minutes with both Halliburton and Siakam on the bench.

It's rare for them to do that, and Oklahoma City was not really able to win, was not able to to win those minutes.

I looked at the plus-minus.

Just something I'm flagging.

How can Indiana manufacture offense in those minutes?

It's really been McConnell and a little bit of Obi Toppin.

Even like Obi Toppin, I got to give him a lot of credit.

He's not a post-up player.

He's not a back-to-the-basket player.

When he's gotten little guards on him on switches in the series, he has

sealed and controlled the paint.

And when they swarm him,

he's not getting stripped of the ball really all that often.

He's He's maintaining his pivot foot, maintaining control of the ball, letting the air clear around him and putting the ball up in the basket.

And has incredible touch, by the way.

I keep being impressed just by how

deft his touch is around the basket.

Free, free from the New York Knicks.

Free.

Just another free trade that the Pacers were like, we'll take him.

Sure.

And now he's like.

Two second rounders, right?

I think it was two second rounders.

Free.

Whatever it was, it was free.

It was a salary dump.

And the Pacers were like, this guy fits how we play.

Let's take him.

A couple other things.

One of the reasons I'm interested just in the double big thing and who the Pacers start or who the Thunders start,

whether they stick double big, put Wallace in, put Caruso in, do something wild and like put Isaiah Joe or Kenrich Williams in for the first four minutes of the game.

Who the hell knows?

The double big thing has been fine.

They're plus eight.

I like what it does for their offense.

It sort of unlocks a little bit more screening and passing and action in their offense.

And we saw last night Chet missed the Aleop from Hartenstein, like just bonked it.

But one downstream effect of it is they put Hartenstein on Siakam because they do not want Chet on Siakam.

Chet guards Miles Turner.

And the Pacers are very predatory now and very smart.

When they get that matchup, oh, you're putting your biggest guy on Pascal.

We now feel comfortable attacking that.

We're going right to Halliburton Siakam pick and rolls.

And he'll roll into the short roll area and make plays and Miles Turner will space the floor.

I think they could go the other way and run inverted pick and rolls.

They also had one play where Pascal brought the ball up with Hartenstein on him.

Hartenstein was backpedaling, and Pascal was like, Oh, I'm just way faster than you.

I'm going to dribble at you while you're backpedaling.

Your balance isn't there.

And I'm either going to finish at the rim or, and this is what happened, you're going to send help.

And Neesmith cuts behind the help and gets an and one floater out of it.

They've just found ways to poke at that Siakam Hartenstein matchup in very smart ways.

And that's sort of like one of, do you start the double bigs or not?

Because if you do, you are inviting that matchup, unless you switch it up, which maybe they'll do.

Oklahoma City has been switching more defensively, which I think largely helped them in games four and five.

Chet got burned a couple of times by Nemhart, but they were tough shots in game six.

Just one little thing about that.

I don't mind that for Oklahoma City.

I was happy that they started doing it.

The Pacers have started hurting them on the offensive glass on the back end of those switches, which leave a guard on Miles Turner or a guard on Bradley or whatever.

And they've started to feast a little bit on the offensive glass.

These are just little things I'm looking for in a game that really, it just could come down to turnovers.

The whole thing could just be turnovers because the crossover between Oklahoma City's defense and its offense is so profound and so important for eliminating the stranglehold that the Pacers are able to put on their half-court offense for a lot of the game.

It could just be turnovers.

That could be the whole game.

The whole championship, the whole thing.

Howard, it's game seven.

Someone's becoming a legend.

Pascal Siakam could become a two-time NBA champion.

Tyrese Halliburton could ascend to a whole different conversation.

Shea could become an MVP, maybe a finals MVP, an NBA champion, the 30-point scorer at the age of whatever he is.

Finals MVP is also like up for grabs in this game, up for grabs.

If you care about it, it's there for the taking.

Since you brought it up, because it's been in the back of my head, so

you've been to your share finals.

You know how this goes.

When we all finally trudge out of the press room, stories hopefully filed, we go to what we call media hospitality.

This is what the NBA puts on at the media hotel in whichever city

there's food, there's booze,

and we sit there and decompress and have stupid conversations.

Somebody...

I won't, I'll leave him anonymous.

One of our colleagues from another organization brought this up at Media Hospitality.

And I've I've still been thinking about it

this morning because it's an interesting thought.

And it doesn't happen often because we don't get to game seven often, which is this.

Is MVP of the finals?

And we have to think about this, right?

Those of us who may or may not be voting, we have to think about this ahead of time.

You need to have a thought going in.

You don't want to be just like three minutes to go and suddenly you have to.

They're coming to you with the ballot before the game is over if it's semi-decided.

So it's, it's, you were doing this on the fly.

And actually, just a quick side note to my side note.

When we do postseason awards, we agonize over this stuff, right?

For weeks and sometimes even months, because you usually know you're going to be a voter.

And even if you're not, maybe you're doing a column on it or podcast on it, whatever.

And so you have weeks and months to dive into numbers and analysis and all this stuff and talk to scouts and coaches and everything else.

The NBA Finals MVP, which is a fairly big deal.

Instead of 100 voters, it's 11.

And it is on the fly.

And there's no time to dig into anything because

you don't know when it's coming.

You know when there's there's a closeout.

So, to that point, the question that was posed last night was: this:

Is the finals MVP on Sunday simply the player on the winning team who had the best game in game seven?

Or is it the totality of the series?

Because this could lead you down a lot of different paths, and including like a hypothetical,

what if Aaron Neesmith goes for 35 in game seven, and that's the decisive

factor?

Does that obliterate everything that Pascal Siakim or Tyrese Halliburton did?

Or if it were the Aaron Wiggins 35-point game, does that overcome whatever Shay and Jadob did in the prior six game?

Like, is game seven, is the finals MVP come down to just who had the best game seven to deliver the title?

Because it's an interesting discussion.

I think it likely comes down.

Game seven has that kind of weight, right?

Like, that's what you're saying, because this game is so single, singly singular.

It's so singular in its importance that playing well in this game, playing great in this game, is like playing great in the entire series by itself.

Because the series is tied, right?

Like, if everything comes down to one game,

there's a case to be made that the finals MPP is the guy who won that game, not won quote-unquote the series, because everything is where the ledger is

even.

I think what's more likely is it comes down to

who plays the best if there's a decisive best

among four four players?

Jalen Williams, SGA, Pascal Siakam, and Tyrese Halliburton.

I think any of those four could win finals MVP.

Like

if the series ended right now, I think Siakam would win for Indiana and SGA would win for Oklahoma City.

But if Tyrese Halliburton just conjures up 28 and 14 with no turnovers, or Jalen Williams scores 40 again or 35 and Shea has like a whole hum 23 and whatever in the Thunderwind, up for grabs.

Okay, before we move on to news, I will make a prediction.

You can make a prediction.

Would you like to make a prediction?

Sure, why not?

You've talked me into these before.

I'm going to say Oklahoma City wins by four.

Oklahoma City wins a very close and heart-wrenching game seven at home.

I think it's going to be a game.

I think Indiana could 100% win the game.

I just think home court, ferocious defense,

a little leeway from the refs on physicality on defense favors Oklahoma City by just the TCS margins.

Oklahoma City by one,

one,

one, ten, one oh, six, Oklahoma City.

I think it's just slightly bigger than that.

I do think it's Oklahoma, and I think it's probably like four with four minutes to go, and then there's like a closing kick with like four paced, you know, pacer turnovers forced by, you know, Alex Caruso being annoying and handsy and stuff, and they're just taken off the other way, and it ends up being more like

an eight or 10-point game that we will afterwards say it was a lot closer than the final score indicated.

But I do think it's Oklahoma.

That crowd, so we've been bouncing between these two cities.

I don't go to every arena anymore,

thankfully, because I got off the hamster wheel a long time ago.

I cannot imagine there is a louder arena than Oklahoma.

I can't remember if I said this the last time I was in the pod or not.

It's absolutely fucking ear splitting.

And the Pacers crowd last night was absolutely awesome as well.

It's just a different level of my head is going to explode when we're in Oklahoma.

And I think they will somehow ratchet that up another notch on Sunday.

And those things matter.

Like the atmosphere matters.

It gets to you.

Yes, I think it's Oklahoma.

And I think we will come out of this series

just with obviously with a profound new respect for the Pacers, who they are, what they have built themselves into, what they may yet still become, because it's a pretty young team overall and a lot of runway left there.

Just as we keep talking about, will the Thunder have, you know, as we prematurely veer into dynasty discussions and da-da-da-da-da, and how many more of these could they do?

Like, they're really young, and

everything in the world ahead of them, second aprons and stuff notwithstanding, but the Pacers have a version of that too.

And

I have no idea really what to expect.

I will make the prediction I just made, but I honestly don't even know what to expect in Sunday.

8 p.m.

Sunday, one game for the entire thing.

And then I get to go home.

And then I get to fly home.

And just a reminder, again,

winning one is hard.

Nothing is guaranteed in the NBA.

That's what's at stake on Sunday.

One game for the entire thing.

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Okay, news near and dear to your previous life as a Lakers beat reporter.

Biggest news of the week, the Lakers.

The Bus family has sold the controlling interest in the Lakers to Mark Walter, TWG/slash Dodgers guy, and and a valuation for the stake that he bought, which he already owned, he slash they already owned like 26, 27% of the team of $10 billion billion dollars.

I'm glad you corrected the finger to the pinky there.

I think this is, you know, there was a lot of poop, not poo-pooing, but like, oh, wow, rich guys getting rich numbers to buy rich teams and rich people getting more money.

And the Lakers are still the Lakers.

I think there's like a lot of interesting tentacles to this that just, I think it's really interesting.

What's interesting to you about it?

I was, I was stunned like everybody else, knocked off my chair.

Uh, shout out to the Lakers for finding a way to steal headlines in the middle of the finals for the second straight year.

Our buddy Michael Pina had a funny item on it the other day.

This is what, but this is like, again, I understand.

Look, nobody loves the basketball.

The purity happens.

I'm the, I love the purity of basketball.

I'm digging into X's and O's, and the finals are like the be all, end, all to me.

I say all the time, this is what we do this for.

I saw tweets last night about like, no one should talk about trades or the draft or anything for the next 72 hours.

Look, I'm sorry that the NBA organizes its calendar in such a way that the draft is like tomorrow and the NBA finals are still going.

Sorry, like Desmond Bain got traded.

Kevin, it just is what it is.

The Lakers got sold.

Okay, I was not stunned by the number, but keep going.

The world doesn't stop.

No, people, like be grown-ups.

The world doesn't stop for the finals.

Other things will happen.

And yeah, it is unfortunate.

And maybe the competition committee should be once again revisiting the idea of putting the draft after free agency because the same NBA staff, who, by the way, do an incredible job of putting on all of these things, are going to go straight from a game seven Sunday night to having the same exact people zipping their butts back to New York to go put on the draft.

And now, over two days, because we, for whatever reason, decided we needed to televise round two on its own night, give me a fucking break.

So

I covered the Lakers, as you mentioned, for seven years.

I knew Jerry Buss just vaguely, because by the time I started covering them, he was more in the shadows.

He was not making the rounds.

He wasn't as out front anymore.

I got to know Jeannie even before she had taken over and have known her a long time since.

And

the nostalgia part of this, and it's more than nostalgia, right?

There is, you know,

we always say, like, one of the most underrated things in NBA success or failure is ownership.

Witness Matt Ishbia in Phoenix or any number of others you can point to

positively or negatively.

It matters, but it also matters because the bus family has had this franchise for a long time.

So there's a nostalgia factor.

I do think the nostalgia factor is a little overplayed in the sense that, you know, Jerry Buss passed away and I think it was 2013.

So it's been Genie for the last 12 years or so, and it's different.

What we think of the Lakers during the bus reign is mostly due to what Jerrybus built starting in the late 70s.

And Genie has done, I think, a fantastic fantastic job of taking over and also, I think, espousing and embodying a lot of what her father stood for.

And she cites him often.

And so it matters when it's somebody else coming in with perhaps a different ethos.

I think it matters too that whether it was Jerry Buss, especially during

his heyday, before he, you know, in his older, you know, later years kind of pulled back.

or genie they've been accountable owners they've been out front like like the media knows them the fans know them and know their voices and know what they're about.

They stand behind whatever decisions, good or bad.

And I think that matters too.

And Mark Walters?

Walker?

Walter, excuse me.

Mark Walter, from everything I've, from what little I've read, you know, I'm in the middle of the finals, so obviously I haven't done any deep dives here, but like he seems like more of the typical like billionaire hermit type who you're never going to hear from.

And so I wonder, I, you know, is, is Genie truly going to be the face of this still for a while here, as they've said.

I am always skeptical, especially after we saw what happened with Mark Cuban in Dallas.

Skeptical that the previous owner can still be the point person, the figurehead, and also the lead governor.

We'll see, but I think

it's mattered that the Bus family has been very

face forward and accountable through all the decades, and that will change.

The flip side of it, Zach, is this:

we have often referred to the Lakers' ownership under the bus family, and this can cut both ways positively and negatively, as the as like one of the last mom and pop shops of the NBA.

I knew that I was going to say, let me guess what phrase you're about to use.

You're filling out your bingo card on the side.

I can see mom and pop shop.

Click.

And that cuts both ways.

Quick, quick anecdote here.

I leave the Laker beat and leave LA in 2004.

I I go to New York to go cover the Knicks for the Times.

My first trip back, I see Mitch Kupcheck in the press room.

I go up, say, Hi, Mitch, how are you doing?

Mitch Kupcheck, of course, originally from Long Island, very familiar with all things New York.

And he looks at me and he says, I'm going to do a very bad Mitch Kupcheck impression.

Are you ready?

You look like a New Yorker, Howard.

This is after I've been gone for all of a few months.

I look like a New Yorker.

And I'm like, how is that, Mitch?

He goes, You pale.

Thank you, Mitch.

He asked how it's how it's going and i say well you know it's really interesting i said covering the nicks you know the knicks are a piece of madison square garden madison square garden at the time at that time is still part of cable vision so there's all these layers this pr person reports up to the to the garden pr person who reports up to the cable vision pr person and there's all these layers and i said they've just got this massive corporate structure that is really hard to get your head around and you know i i said i don't i like that their flowchart must be like this massive just grid i said whereas with your flowchart it would have just been you know Genie to, or excuse me, at that time, Jerrybus to you or to Jerry West.

And then there's a coach, whatever.

And like, it's pretty simple.

It's pretty, pretty flat flowchart.

And he goes,

back to Bad Mitch Cupcheck impression.

Howard, I've been working for this organization for 35 years.

I've never seen a flowchart.

Thus ends my Bad Mitch Cupcheck impressions with apologies to Mitch Kupcheck and the entire Kupcheck family.

They didn't have a flowchart.

I'm almost certain they did not actually have a flow.

I don't think Mitch was being facetious,

which is just to say that it is a very streamlined organization but sometimes to their detriment you have probably heard as I have over the many years about whether they were fully staffed in the front office or in their analytics department they were not they were like they didn't have synergy they didn't have synergy sports like when the other 29 teams had it they weren't paying for it they they have been lean they pay their players they've always been known to pay their players phil jackson was the first coach that they really paid when he first got there in 99 they had been known to not necessarily go all out to pay coaches.

There were tensions between Jerry West and Jerry Buss over Jerry West's compensation way back when I first got on the beat.

They have lost good employees over the years in various capacities

because of it.

I will never forget the moment that they waived Brian Shaw in 2003-ish, 2002-ish,

because Brian Shaw was making, like, I think $2 million, and they could waive.

It was a non-guarantee, they could waive him and sign him back for $1 million and duck what was then the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax, which now seems like nothing, but they didn't want to pay the luxury tax.

And

so, anyway,

they have cut corners over the years.

They have run it like a mom-and-pop shop.

It is the only source of income for their family.

That will not be the case under

Mark Walter.

Yes.

No S.

And And here's why that matters.

Because there were snickering about, well, I mean, the Lakers just get stars.

They're Los Angeles.

They have this built-in market advantage.

Stars fall into their lap.

Whoop-de-doo.

They're going to spend more on analytics and scouting and whatever, all this stuff on the fringes.

Does it really matter when they already have these built-in advantages?

And there will be years when...

they whiff on the fringes and they still make bad draft picks, although they've drafted very well in the second round or whatever.

They're bad free agency signing.

In

the big, big picture, over 20 years, 30 years, if you staff up like that and you get smarter people, better people, more expensive people, more expensive technology, you will in the aggregate make better decisions on the non-star roster spots.

And we are watching a finals right now.

where Indiana built a lot of its team by making smart decisions on non-star roster spots, where the Thunder are giving rotation minutes, huge rotation minutes to Alex Caruso, who they had in their G League, Kaysen Wallace, who was a whatever first-round pick, mid-first-round pick.

Hartenstein, backup center that they poached from the Knicks when he was a starting center.

It's like on and on and on.

This stuff matters.

And if the Lakers should get smarter as an organization, not that they're not smart now, but more smarter, more smarter.

SMRT, as Homer Simpson once said, is better.

Here's another reason why it matters.

Yeah.

So the Buzz Family Trust, they had to vote.

The six siblings had to vote whether to approve this sale.

The vote, I think, was, I've heard, was four four to two.

Two people voted against it.

And I think it matters that one of these old school NBA owner groups is going to be

at some point shoved outward to the fringes of the most marquee organization in the league.

Now, they retained reportedly 17% of the team.

It has to be over 15%.

If any of the buses, aka Genie, is going to serve as a governor of the Lakers going forward.

You must own, and I guess the trust

counts, even though it's a collective thing, 15% or more to serve as a governor.

And I know that, you know, it was, quote, guaranteed, I think was the language that was used in one of the reports that she will be a governor and running the team and making decisions for X amount of years.

I just would say I'll believe that when I see it, because I don't know what's actually guaranteed.

I haven't seen the deal in writing.

I just

get like, I'll believe it when I see it.

And this whole bus sibling thing became a mess in the end.

And now they're moving on.

And look, I mean, if I were Rob Palinka, he just got extended.

That's great.

Like,

I would be a little nervous.

I would be a little nervous, but Magic Johnson's lurking is like on the fringes of that Dodgers group.

There's a lot of changes that could come from this.

And the last thing I'll say is the price is the price.

The more expensive these things get, and every team is like the Hornets or the Wizards are like a 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion team now.

Like every team is hugely expensive.

You're just running out of humans who can afford majority stakes in these teams, and that's going to open the door for more funds, more kind of funds, all kinds of different ownership.

So I think it matters.

I think it matters in a lot of different, you know, a lot of different ways.

And the Palinka Magic Johnson thing was very high on my list of,

you know, mental bullet points on this too.

You know,

Genie obviously has an affinity for Rob Polenka because of Kobe

and a trust in him because of Kobe.

And I have said many times over the years, and you and I, I think, have had these conversations too, where it's like, I think one of the mistakes owners can get into is hiring people because they like them or because they trust them, because they know them, as opposed to going out and really canvassing.

Now, Rob Polenka has a championship.

Nobody can take that away from him.

Rob Polenka was, I'm just going to say, was there when LeBron James chose the Lakers

and then executed a trade for Anthony Davis, in which I think he gave up way too much.

And he was there for Nico Harrison to send him Luka Doncich and did a fine job in those negotiations as well.

But whatever, weird-ass trade historically.

As long as Jeannie Buss is still in charge, and if she is truly still running the show after this transaction is complete, maybe Rob Polinka is there for the foreseeable future.

If I were a new owner coming in, I would would be looking at everything.

And yeah, the Magic Johnson thing lurks because Magic Johnson is part of the Dodger ownership group that Mark Walter

is the head of.

And so,

I mean,

I don't know that Magic returning to the Lakers is a great idea by anybody's hand.

It didn't work out so well the first time.

And I think there's still probably a lot of lingering stuff between Magic and Rob.

But I am curious to see what this does for the to or for the Laker organization.

I think that it is there is a Lakers exceptionalism that is very real and it is it is internalized by people who have been there a long time.

That's Genie and a lot of others there.

And I think a fresh set of eyes and ideas and

practices coming in could modernize them in a way that could make them even harder for the league to deal with.

I mean, the new cap is practically a hard cap and so the Lakers will not have advantages that they had for decades.

It's not baseball.

Yeah, it's not baseball.

But

you talk about winning on the margins,

having a fully staffed analytics department and sports science department and more development coaches and whatever, better use of the G-League, all of these things that you can do.

If you want to invest, all the places that the salary cap does not affect, all the other places that you can spend money that a truly wealthy new ownership group that's forward-thinking might do, whereas the Bus family did not, it could make a lot of difference for them.

Okay, last thing, we're just going to do this rapid fire.

No explanation, no elaboration.

I said, let's pick our three biggest off-season storylines that are not Gannis or not KD.

And I wonder if we'll overlap it.

You could go any direction if you want.

You go first.

Number one, off-season storyline.

No elaboration.

Just say it and we'll let it hang in the air for the next episode.

Who in the West, if anyone, tend to throw in the thunder?

And I threw that question.

I typed that question yesterday before last night happened because I obviously expected a different outcome.

Ain't no one sitting on the throne right now.

My number one.

What, if anything, can the Denver Nuggets do to rearrange their team in the offseason?

Extensions, new coach, repeater attacks looming, Michael Porter Jr.

I think it's an underplayed storyline.

They may not be able to do anything, but that's number one for me.

Number two, for you.

And your first question might be the answer to my first question, for all we know.

They could dethrone OKC.

Are the Rockets, parentheses, and or Spurs content to just kind of slow roll things with their nice, young, talented teams?

Or is it time, or will they, this summer, make a big swing?

Okay, my number two is similar, and I'm going to exclude those teams because they are at least loosely tied to the Durant Giannis nexus of whatever, mostly Durant now.

My number two is

who is going to unexpectedly come off the top rope with a hey, the league's wide open.

Why don't we take a swing kind of move?

I'm looking at you, Pistons.

I'm looking at you, Hawks.

I'm looking at you, Clippers.

I'm looking at you, Warriors, and Jonathan Kaminga, and I'm looking at you, Heat, and I'm looking at you, any other team that I can think of, the Raptors or something.

That's my number two, because I think someone's going to do something like, whoa,

okay, number three.

Yeah.

Number three,

are the Celtics really okay with a quote-unquote gap year, especially considering, as you just mentioned, a seemingly wide open league and a wide open East?

And just how much change are we going to see?

Are they really going to peel off more than one core piece?

Are they really just like mailing it in next?

Because I don't think they are.

My gut would tell me that they're not.

And I think that there are different directions they could go.

Well, in a happy bit.

of synergy.

Number three on my list is where does the Celtics luxury attack shrapnel end up?

Because they are going to peel away pieces.

They just have to.

There is no reason for them to be over the tax by a gazillion dollars next year and all that stuff.

And the focus for me is on Drew Holiday.

And I think there are even, I've heard that there have been at least very broad discussions.

of three-team Durant-related trades where Drew Holiday is, I mean, I think these could just be conjured by Phoenix in hopes of getting a deal done more or less, where Drew Holiday moves somewhere.

He's just like he was the shrapnel and the, you know, the dame trade and ended up in Boston.

Like, I, I'm just interested.

So those are my three.

We'll have a lot of time to talk about the offseason when the offseason starts.

For now, Howard Beck,

we got 48 plus eight, 56 hours from right now.

Game seven of the NBA finals, the first one in nine years.

Wow.

The most intense sporting experience I've ever been a spectator for slash part of was that game seven in Golden State.

I think you and I were sitting next to each other for that game, weren't we?

I don't even know.

I've told the story for, like, I was, I had my laptop closed the whole game.

I was, it was so intense.

And my, I don't know who I was sitting next to, except Terry Pluto was to my left.

I do remember that.

But my vivid memory will always be I could see the chase down block happening right in front of me.

I was slightly to the left of half court, slightly to that side of half court.

And while the game was still going on in the excruciating four minutes where there were no stoppages, I leapt from my seat, almost like

tripped and smashed my laptop on the floor because the monitor three seats down was like five seconds behind the game.

And I had to see immediately, did he actually get that before it hit the glass?

And he did.

And then I ran back and probably spilled a drink or something on it.

56 hours.

It's here, man.

I can't believe it.

The Indiana Pacers, regardless of what happens, thank you for giving us some magic.

This is real sports magic.

What happened to the Indiana Pacers is real sports magic.

And we get to experience it one last time against the Thunder, the heavy favorites, the 68-win juggernauts on Sunday.

I can't freaking wait.

I'm going to spend a big chunk of that time doing laundry, Zach, and then flying my butt back to Oklahoma

for the third time.

I can't wait either.

It's going to be an absolute blast.

I have no idea what to expect.

I don't know.

I'm still trying to figure out how we got here.

I think what I wrote last night was something about the idea of just like

nothing,

most of this does not make sense or it does not follow any script or any logic that we could have anticipated.

And that's why it's awesome.

Hallel Burton's shot in Madison Square Garden is still stuck in midair somewhere in the eyes of the basketball gods.

Howard Beck,

we will talk soon.

Thank you for your time.

I'm very little sleep.

Enjoy the media hospitality.

Don't enjoy it too much.

I'll see you soon.

See you soon, sir.

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Ball over everything.

Okay, look, the unfortunate slash fortunate reality of the NBA calendar is that as much as I want to focus all of my energy and every ounce of my soul on the NBA finals and game freaking seven, the draft is in five days.

And so the entire league is doing another side of business.

Jay, Kyle, man, we're going to to talk about the draft.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing fantastic.

Excited about the draft.

Ready to get it going.

It's been a fun draft week.

And, you know, during the finals, there's all these off days where all I have time to do is meet people and call people.

And it's been, this is a fun one.

I don't remember a draft with so much

just kind of drama and mystery and mostly related to Ace Bailey this week.

Has it been fun for you?

Yeah, it's funny because you go through these cycles of

the, you do a lot of the work at the early part of it, you're trying to get people to tie, and you know, you kind of feel like the person trying to talk about the movie, that's like Jim Gaffkin bit trying to talk about a movie that came out like 20 years ago or something.

Just people are not ready to talk about the prospects because they haven't seen them yet.

So, you're kind of just tilling that earth quietly until this time of the year where all the watching hopefully is done.

I know if on the people who are jumping in are doing a lot of cramming, but for me, um, yeah, this is where the Intel part of it really ramps up.

So, it's it's a lot more of the this person likes this person and who might try to dangle this person, person a lot of the leverage plays but you get the sense from from uh the people who you know cover the cap and things like that that this event is going to be a unique fulcrum for teams to make moves where they otherwise might not be able to well we already saw one leading up to the draft the big desmond bain trade which i talked about earlier in the week and the kd thing is kding around uh okay Your mock draft got updated earlier this week, I think, or maybe about a week ago.

I can't remember exactly when.

Everyone's updating their mocks and remocks.

we feel pretty good about cooper flag at one that's done uh

it's it's kind of locking in dylan harper at two despite the fit concerns with fox and whatever like the duplicativeness it's it's he's just the bet like

i keep asking people is there just no argument for any other playover dylan harper is he just that much better than the next guys at three four five six and the answer is almost universally yeah the spurs should just take him and it seems like the spurs are going to just take him and figure it out later which is the smart move for a team that's sort of still building towards where they're going to get.

And then the fun starts.

The Philadelphia 76ers pick at three, and no one has any idea what the hell is happening from picks like three to nine in the first round of the NBA draft.

It's just a grab bag of Con Knipple.

He seems to be rising.

Trey Johnson seems to be rising.

You have him third to Philly in the mock draft.

Ace Bailey, maybe is falling, maybe won't fall so far, is canceling workouts left and right.

I want to live my life like Ace Bailey, where I just schedule appointments and then I'm like, hey, are you at the restaurant?

Hey, sorry, I'm not coming.

Can you pick up the check?

Did you order a bottle of wine?

I'm not coming.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Cancel my hotel.

Oh, non-refundable.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Can you pick me and pay me $40 million over the next four years?

Okay, cool.

Yeah, if I behave like, yeah, it's the whole Prince thing, right?

You know, we all love Prince for how big of an asshole and how weird he was, but it was like, at the end of the day, the product's going to be on the table.

With Ace, you know, for me, if I behave that way, they'd be like, all right, buddy, fuck you.

See you later.

I like picturing Daryl Maury and Elton Brand at a restaurant, just like quietly.

Can we have some more?

Is there, can we have some more bread while we wait, please?

The light, like clinking of glasses and their silence as they're just sitting there.

Yeah.

Sir, I don't think you're your party coming because this, we need this table.

Okay.

So you have Philly taking Trey Johnson, and I have heard

that he's just killing workouts, that people are coming away with like, oh my God.

I mean, we knew this guy could shoot, but this guy can really freaking shoot.

Is that, I mean, you have him there.

Obviously, this is all tentative.

No one knows what's going to happen, but he seems to be a name that I just hear more good stuff about as we come closer to the draft.

Yeah, I mean, in the basketball sense, they could just straight up take him there.

It's interesting that the three guys who are sort of in this little mush after Dylan and Cooper all kind of have similar traits with the movement shooting, and they all have pretty decent size.

You know, Ace obviously is the biggest of the three.

Khan has a little bit of a different body type.

I know you and I talked about him initially, about how strange his body type is for being a movement shooter, that he also has that get.

I made a video that I put on social the other day about

it was fire, as the kids say.

As a Khan Kinnipple fanboy, I was like, Yeah, give me, give me more of the Khan highlights.

Yeah, the two-footedness.

But throughout the cycle with Khan, we we can speak to the differences between them broadly later here.

But I mean, he just has more, I think, on ball upside.

I've maintained that throughout he even showed it.

Duke, he showed it at times.

We talked about that in that video.

But with Trey,

Trey just has the dribble to shoot thing is something that I think people underestimate.

The synergy between being able to harness, you know, Steph obviously is the master of this.

I know that, you know, down at Miami's, I'm blanking on his name.

Their shooting coach has done a lot about the ability to just kind of harness your movement off the dribble and shoot effortlessly.

And if you watch Trey, he's a very smooth mover and he just

Rob Fodor, that's his name.

But Trey, I've seen people compare him on.

Some of my buddies on draft Twitter were saying that he has some like late Ray Allen kind of things going on in his game.

I'm always very careful with the Ray.

Zach, I know we, you know,

I watched Ray Allen as a kid in the 90s.

If you're going to say Ray Allen,

you have to name the vintage.

But you shouldn't comp Cedric Howard to a hybrid of Kawhi Leonard and Magic Johnson.

That might be like a little premature.

I always try to be careful with that because you'll read some mock drafts or draft guides and like late into the 20s, you'll see they'll be like, at the 20th pick, this guy's like Andre Iguedala.

It's just like, if he's like Iguedala, he's probably higher than 20.

But yeah, I mean, Trey just has that.

What I was going to say is people comparing him to Ray Allen.

I'm always careful about that.

I'm like, just late stage Ray Allen.

He doesn't quite have the off-the-bounce, get-to-the-basket thing.

And that's the main concern with him: he's a little, he's a little wispy.

When he takes contact, he can kind of die on screens.

He's got kind of a higher center of gravity, but boy, you could unleash him tomorrow on a good team and he's going to make shots.

Like, it's just, he's an elite movement shooter.

And I think that's something he has even over Khan: his quickness laterally and dribble to shoot motion is the top of this class.

So, just to review for people, Philly at three, Charlotte at four, Utah at five, Washington at six, Pelicans at seven, Brooklyn at eight.

That three through eight is just, I don't even think the teams in there really know what's happening or who's going to fall to them or who's going to be there, which, which mitigates against, I think, slightly at least any like, there's been all this trade up, trade down.

I don't know why I would trade up unless I were on the clock and I absolutely knew for sure that the only way I can get this particular guy that I really, really like better than these other guys, if there is even a guy that I really like this much better than the other guys, this is the only way I can get there is by moving up two spots.

Right now, these teams are like, I don't know, I like this guy.

He might be there at six.

I have no idea what's going on.

And then it just feels like Toronto at nine is waiting to catch whoever is left there that they like the best.

And then Houston at 10 with the Phoenix picket.

Obviously, that's going to be in play in a lot of different scenarios.

Ace Bailey is the headliner of the week.

You have him going fourth to Charlotte.

Jonathan Gavoni, my old buddy ADSPN, has him going sixth to Washington.

He has worked out for nobody, correct?

As I understand it, yeah, nobody.

He's the pivot point, though.

You're talking about like, would I trade up or down?

I know I have, you know, in the basketball sense, I've had Trey move up there because of some of the good positive stuff that I heard about him interview-wise.

There were worries about him at Texas, and he's like I've said here and there, he's acquitted himself on those things.

But Ace, I think if you

if we try to decode his behavior, which you know, you do that at your own peril for any person who is that age, um, I'm always really careful.

I try to be, I've learned to be, um, I hope, but I mean, with Ace,

it does seem like there's some force on the outer reaches of the galaxy whispering to him, like, hey, we can give you the, there's a Palpatine voice, whether it's Joe Dumars or whatever.

Um, he's talked a lot about the developmental runway that he needs and he wants, you know, and that has been one of my worries with Philly is, is he going to have what he wants in that sense?

And are you going to be drafting a problem if that's what he's going to be after and he's going to be role stubborn in that sense?

Brooklyn and New Orleans seem to me like candidates to give him what he wants in that sense because they were slated to pick there.

Obviously, we had a really wild lottery.

Maybe he got it in his mind that that's where he was going to go and get what he wanted.

Long story short, if I were Philly, I would just take Ace.

If I know that they want that, specifically, I think our problems could align here.

If it's New Orleans that thinks they can give him the space that they want, awesome.

We want Herb Jones.

Our agendas are in sync here because either way, I think the asset is something that they need to take here.

If just in that example alone, if you're New Orleans and that scenario unfolds, you have to like Ace Bailey so much more than whoever is there at three, whether it's Edgecomb, Johnson, Fears, on and on and on.

Like Herb Jones is really, really good and his contract is insanely good.

Like, you have to, I just haven't heard any emphatic proof that this team, whatever team likes this guy in this space so much more than everybody else that they're willing to pay that level of premium.

Now, your point on Philly, just taking Ace Bailey,

if there's one GM who doesn't give a flying FUCK about whether you visited with him or left him eat and bread at the restaurant, it's Daryl Morey.

If he thinks you're the best guy, He's going to take you.

The other thing about Philly and all this trade down, trade, wherever, trade sideways is whatever they do in this draft i will fall off my chair if they don't end up with a very high pick in the draft all of this like trade down whatever they are not i i would be very surprised if they did anything that trades them out of the draft for veteran help because they are very much operating it seems on a

which i think is logical we cannot run our team anymore on Joelle Embiid's timeline.

We have to run our team on Tyrese Maxi's timeline, on Jared McCaden's timeline, on who's ever we take in this draft timeline.

So if we trade this pick, we're still going to have a pick somewhere in the top six, seven, whatever of the draft.

The Ace Bailey stuff is, you mentioned voices from the universe.

There are theories roiling around front offices that Ace Bailey has been promised by somebody in the six, seven, eight range.

That's Washington, New Orleans, Brooklyn, and even rumblings, not not rumblings, conspiracy theories, like conspiracy bill level conspiracy theories, that there has been, in fact, a secret workout with one of those teams at some undisclosed location like Area 51 for workouts or something.

I have no idea if any of that's true.

When you posit that question to people who would know if it were true, there's just sort of like muffled laughter and silence, and like, let's go on to the next topic.

I have no idea what that means.

You mentioned Brooklyn at eight.

I mean, based on everything I've heard, and this is all, this is disinformation season, I would be surprised if he got by the Washington, New Orleans

double pick at six and seven, but maybe nothing should surprise me.

I don't know.

I've heard six, seven is kind of the line there, but he's just interesting because if you look at his player type and you listen to what they're saying, they want runway, they want reps.

This is a guy who is not a proven ball handler yet.

I thought Brooklyn was interesting because in my mind, I was like, is Adam Harrington still there because you got the Dirt KD thing?

I was like, that would be perfect, but he's not there anymore.

Nope.

Maybe you should get him to be one of his trainers.

But if you look at just his challenges, what's that going to look like?

Is it that he wants to be,

he obviously wants the ball in his hands.

Is that going to be him operating in the slot?

I don't think it's going to be that.

I think it's going to be he expects to be running ball screens.

So it's like, what team is he going to be doing that with?

New Orleans is going to, I mean, you got the Zion thing.

I just can't see a scenario where there's gonna be runway for him to do that, if there's gonna be enough studio space for him to kind of move around.

So, I don't know who's probably Brooklyn, it is possible.

That's the one that just makes the most sense to me because I've said this over and over again in our guide: they're just a formless void.

I have no clue what direction they're going, what they're gonna, where they're gonna end up.

But I just, what he wants doesn't really, I'm not seeing it.

So, if they draft Ace Bailey and they re-sign Cam Thomas,

do they need four basketballs to play at one time?

If Ace Bailey wants this sort of like star driven runway that,

by the way, I've heard the same thing.

I've heard, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, actually, that he wants a place where he's going to get to stretch his wings a little bit and test himself, and that's not Philly.

And then you have, you know, you and I were talking about this offline yesterday, like that Charlotte, Utah double at 4-5.

You have agents who look at those situations like wildly differently.

You have some agents who are like, I don't know if I want to have my guy guy next to Lamello Ball.

Like, I just don't know if that's a good, a good fit for us.

And yet new ownership, new front office, that franchise is kind of doing everything else right.

And I'm still kind of a Lamello Ball semi-believer, but me too.

That's good to know, Zach.

I was like holding my breath because I was like, I kind of like LaMello.

I've always defended him, man.

I think he can get off the ball like a super processor.

He just needs the right teammates to do it.

Sorry, I interrupted you.

No, no, that's okay.

And you, but you have, you definitely have some caution there.

And then Utah,

people don't quite know what to make of it because you would think an Ace Bailey would look at that and say, well, that's a place where I'm going to have runway.

Like, they're going to give me the ball, but it's also a place where there's Keontae George and until further notice, Colin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson and Isaiah Collier and all these guys who handle the ball.

And yet it's sort of a morass of unproven prospects.

And it's also Utah.

And so there are some people who are like, that's not a great situation.

This is just an interesting mix of teams.

And then the New Orleans situation, obviously is just a cluster of epic proportions.

It's just an interesting mix of teams that representatives and rival front office executives, and they just kind of don't know what to make of like, are these good fits, bad fits?

They're just weird.

It's a bunch of weird situations before you even get to Washington, which is just like, hey, come in here and we're like the full-on rebuild.

Take the ball, like whatever you want to do.

The tech boom out in Salt Lake City, not moving people's needles, that doesn't excite anybody.

I don't know.

There's some investment opportunities.

Talk Ace into it on that front.

But yeah, I mean, the Wizards

really needed to get higher in this draft, and it was a huge setback for them not to get up there because

I think they have been hitting on their picks.

Like, I like Bub Carrington, Bilal Kulbali, I think, is going to work at some point, whether or not he becomes a playmaker.

Parisian Pippin, I've called him.

Of course, if he's not a playmaker, I can't call him that anymore.

Alex Sarr, I mean, he's interesting.

I was skeptical.

Yeah,

I just think

if

they could have a scenario where a tray falls to them, that would be incredible for them.

But

they're in need of like a separating skill to sort of like make it all make sense.

But Utah, same thing.

You know, you mentioned

the problem with those guards that you listed out there.

It's like Keontae.

Keontae can pass the ball here and flourishes.

Colin Sexton, Jordan Clarkson.

It's all these guys have a similar tilt to their game.

And if you think about adding an ace to that, I wanted to assist to usage is one of my favorite stats, and I kind kind of use it to kind of gauge feel in a lot of cases.

There are exceptions.

His was really, really low.

He was in the sixth percentile of all college basketball.

So ace,

when it went into ace, it was not coming back out.

He was shooting the fucking ball.

So it's

the other, the counter to that is that he really can shoot the ball.

He's an incredibly gifted shot creator.

So if you're somebody in that, you know, five to 10 range, you probably would be,

you know,

elated if you could get a chance to get a hands on a talent like that.

So I think the just the difference in the mock drafts that I trust and like the most is so revealing.

Like you have the Wizards taking Derek Queen at six and you have Malowatch falling all the way to 12 at Chicago where the consent, not consensus, where there's been all this, well, if he's there for Toronto, Toronto's going to take him at nine, but he's not going to be there.

What went into the thinking on the Queen, Malowatch, sixth and 12?

Because those are, that's interesting, and it's definitely different.

You have the Raptors taking Carter Bryant, which, by the way, I've heard a lot of of Carter Bryant talk in the last week, too.

I don't know much about him.

I know he didn't play much in college, but he has a, he's a type.

He's a type that people like.

Yeah, I mean, the, the queen and the Malowatch picks were the ones I heard the most about.

I can tell you that.

Oh, yeah.

What'd you hear?

Like from NBA people?

No, just the fans.

I mean, they, I think the

talking about the wizards getting a piece that could help them make sense, I guess what you're kind of looking at there is, you know, Queen, I think, has the upside to be a hub.

I guess you kind of, you know, you bring spatial questions into your, into your organization that, you know, could be tough to solve.

But I think if we're going to operate on the logic that we just had, where it's like, you know, Washington needs something to sort of give them a roadmap, as I always say, Queen is somebody that could do that.

I know that people were a little bit.

pinching their nose at his combine measurements, but my counter to that has always just been, have you been paying attention the whole time?

This guy isn't that type of guy.

He's not going to, he's not, you're not going to look at a spreadsheet and be like, there's the guy we want.

Derek Queen's not that that type of player because he just hasn't tangibles and he has an IQ about him

that is going to help him make sense there.

Malwatch, I mean, it's pretty unlikely he drops that far.

You hear a lot of things.

The Raptors have been sort of tied to him from the beginning, and I still kind of expect that to happen.

I expect the draft to be a little more chalky than some of the hotter takes I had in my most recent one.

The Wizards, you know, it's interesting, though, the way you frame that.

Something that would make the Wizards make sense.

Like, I don't think they're going to take Derrick Queen,

but they also have

so many young guys.

And I like Keyshawn George as well.

Like, I think they did a nice job in the draft last year.

And I like Kulabali.

Parisian Pippen.

I love Scotty Pippin so much that it's like

there's been a lot of

Pippin.

Pippen.

I didn't mind, by the way, I didn't mind the J.

Dub Pippen stuff.

Bill was like let's go easy on the j dub pippin stuff like i think that dude is that good and i like that pippin said like i i he like i think he should be a better offensive player than scotty pippin was like at his peak maybe not quite the playmaker but a better scorer but anyway that's neither here nor there the wizards at six like ace bailey is the big swing guy and and possibly like the big miss guy and you just wonder like in theory they should be a team that takes the big swing Like, David's like, what do they have to lose?

What they have to lose is, is like, you could just take, you could get a, there are guys who are more likely to just be like a B-level NBA starter, rotation player, and they could also use that.

So I'm just interested to see what kind of risk appetite their front office has, because it's not a no-brainer to me that their risk appetite is just moonshot, moonshot, moonshot.

I don't know what they're going to do, but I think that Derrick Queen, in a way you framed it, is actually a really good way into like, how should they be thinking or how will they be thinking about this pick?

Yeah, I just see a bunch of, um, I see a bunch of parts that need some kind of, um, you know, adhesive agent in between it to kind of pull it together.

Um, yeah, the ace, the ace thing with with uh, with Jordan Poole dancing next to him, I could see some problems going with that.

The thing for me is just you need to have a conscientiousness about yourself whenever you're talking about your own development, I think.

And you can get derailed a little bit with your ambition to do this or that.

Granted, there are all these financial incentives tied to those things in the NBA.

So they're kind of inextricable at some point.

Guys want the ball because they want the accolades.

They want to make the most money to get the biggest contracts.

But sometimes I think you need to be kind of safe from yourself in a way.

And I think that

Michael Porter Jr.

has been brought up a lot.

And I think the fact that his challenges just sort of hitched to Jokic in such a great way that I think it's helped him have a great career.

And I kind of think that Ace needs to have that mindset.

It doesn't mean that the doors are closed to those other kind of avenues, but I don't know.

I always think that that, did you watch 100-foot wave?

Did you watch that documentary at all, the HBO thing?

Well, to climb some of these bigger waves, some of these surfers who can't quite get to the heights that they want to get to, they need a jet ski to tow them and sort of slingshot them onto the high part of the wave.

And there are some players that just don't have the ball skills to get themselves to those heights.

And I think Michael Porter Jr.

is one of those guys.

And I always think that he needs Nicole Jokic to tow him up onto the wave to get to the high points that he couldn't get to by himself on a team by himself because he's not efficient enough to do it.

So I just think

if you listen to some players, Baron Jay is another guy that gets talked about a lot in this draft, the French kid who's very, who measured enormous.

Yeah, tell me about him because

I've...

His name has come up in conversations.

I mean, just like as guys, hey, watch for this guy.

He's the best shot blocker in the draft.

He might be moving up a little bit.

He might be a little better than people think.

Tell me about him.

He's, you know, he's very young.

He started playing basketball in the last five years, I believe.

People,

I haven't confirmed this, but people think he grew two inches in the past year based on what we had heard in the past.

And now he measured enormous, 6'11 barefoot, as I said, 7'4 and a half, I think, wingspan.

He's very raw and very young, but if you watch his basic, you know, defensive instincts, he's always having an impact on the play.

And from what I've gleaned from people who are close to his, you know, workouts and developments and things like that, he's he's a sponge.

Like he's a bright kid, doesn't doesn't have any kind of, you just run into issues sometimes where guys have this ambition to be like, I'm going to be, I'm going to be a three-point shooter.

Those things are great, but they can also, you're never, maybe you're never going to quite get there.

And your pursuit of that is going to cause issues.

Whereas you look at it like a Mitchell Robinson, Mitchell Robinson is just like, I'm just going to generate possessions.

I'm going to get the ball.

I'm going to be a lob threat.

I'm simple, but I'm effective.

And I think Baron Jay has a chance.

And I hear some of the teams in the OKC, San Antonio, even Atlanta range really like him.

He could climb that high.

So So Aaron Gordon is my poster guy for this entire

idea of ambition versus reality versus fit.

And obviously he's also landed next to Nicole Jokic, who makes the best fit out of everybody.

But,

you know, I think it's very natural for a player who's been a star their whole life with the ball to want to come in the NBA and do the same thing.

And so I never faulted Aaron Gordon when he was in Orlando for being like, I'm the best guy on the team in my mind.

Give me the ball.

Like, who am I going to pass it to here?

Who's better than me?

I didn't even fault like Frank Vogel when he was the coach went on the record with me and said, We're going to run some Paul George offense through Aaron Gordon.

And I was like, Oh, I don't think that's going to work.

But the one thing that I think that ambition overlooks and that Aaron Gordon has figured out, and I would, I would, I was talking about this four years before you went to Denver: is

look,

the money and the glory will come to you if you just put up 16, 6, and 5 and play elite defense on a winning team.

Like that, all the stuff that you think can only, OGN and Obi is another example of this.

All the stuff that you think you can only get when you have the ball on your hands all the time.

Now, there's ego stuff and that's, that's unattached to any objective measure like money or stats or anything.

And maybe that's all you care about.

But

glory, fame, and money will come to you if you just tap into your inner Draymond Green.

You don't have to average 25 points.

Now, Draymond's a genius.

He's a one and one.

There is no Draymond Green archetype.

He's a unicorn in his passing vision and size and defense.

And Aaron Gordon got championships, fame, huge amounts of money when he became the guy that he should become.

OG Ananobi is making like $40 million a year and is probably in his mind like, I still kind of don't have the ball enough.

Is this really happy?

Yeah, it's like, dude, you have the, you're in New York.

People are chanting your name everywhere you go and you're you're making $40 million a year.

That's my only thing with the ambition, guys.

Ego is one thing.

Testing your skills is one thing.

I respect that.

But just know that all the other stuff, the accolades is coming around the corner if you win playing a more quote-unquote limited style.

Yeah.

Cutters aren't going to get Nike commercials, right?

I mean, that's just kind of, but it's just having the, having the self-awareness.

And how do you, how do you put yourself in the position to have, to, to, to get that?

Or, you know, good people around you.

I think Knipple is a good example of a kid who absolutely can do some on-ball stuff, but you know, you watched, there was never any, he expanded when Duke needed him to do it, but you didn't see any problem.

You didn't see any kind of dissonance between him and Cooper that was that was an issue for them because he understood and he had people around him that understood basketball.

And you just got to get that stuff in your ear early on.

Whereas, you know, there are some cases where guys just don't adjust well to that.

I appreciate that you're protective of the flames of some of these comps with the, you know, Scotty Pippen and Draymond.

It's absolutely true.

I mean, Draymond, with Murray Boyles, people are, this is a guy that I think you would like, Zach.

I don't know how much.

Well, I've watched tape on him because enough people have said, like, this is an interesting dude, switchy, good IQ, long, can block shots, can pass, all that's all that's, but like, the, the, like, what is he, 6'6, 6'7?

Like, he's, he's that range, right?

Yeah, yeah, he's, he's a smaller guy, but he's just a, he thinks the defensive side of the ball, offensive too, but he has some issues that we can hit on.

But, I mean, defensively, he just, he sees the game, the chessboard in real time, anticipates things.

And I called him the detonator in a video I made where I was just, he just disrupts and he sees what's coming and he's, he's frustrating for it.

And I'm going to, I'm going to just bury the lead here.

I'm going to spoil it, but I'm going to mock him to OKC just because the offensive challenges that he has, you know, he likes to play inside the arc.

He's a maybe sometimes I'll shoot it if I'm open three-point shooter.

Didn't shoot many of them, didn't make the ones that he took.

um but he is clever around the rim he's a good screener he's a very good passer like he he's one of those uh bill and i always talk about the uh the the kodak brains who see the play who see the floor but just before they catch it and know where it needs to go instantly he's that type of passer so i if somebody could give him the space there's a word again runway to figure those things out i think he he's defensively smart enough and impactful enough to to be an nba player well look anytime there's like a next draymond green or draymond green like player in the draft grant williams is the first example that just popped into my head right now.

It's like, people have to understand, like,

this dude is a historically great passer for his size and body type on the move in space.

Like, if you're just a B passer, you're just already out of being the next Draymond Green.

This dude is a historically great defensive player, the best defensive player of his era.

an unprecedented almost combination of switchability and at his peak rim protection and size to jostle with the biggest guys.

Like, if you're just

B at anticipation and reading the offense and B at rotating to protect the rim, like you're not in the conversation.

Like, the difference between B and historically great is just, and so, like, a guy like Grant Williams, like, it's cool, he can do stuff.

And, like, Mobo in Toronto had that similar build.

We talked about this.

Like, it's cool.

He can do stuff.

It's just so far away.

By the way, OKC,

OKC has 15 guys under contract already next year.

Now, two of those guys are team options in AJ Mitchell and Big Jalen Williams.

You can only have 15 guys before you start going to two ways.

It's like, I don't know how this is going to shake out if they're going to try to convince someone to take a two-way or whatever, but this is like the third consecutive year where OKC is going to have to just lose guys in some may have to just lose guys.

And who is going to get plucked away from them?

Just get before you go, give me another guy we haven't talked about, or another rumbling we haven't talked about, or just something that's been in your brain that's like, yeah, it's kind of interesting.

Off the beaten path.

We haven't even said Edgecomb's name.

Yeah, Edgecombe.

Everything I hear about Edgecombe in terms of his makeup as

his personality as a player is that he's going to be willing.

I like his fit in Charlotte.

Everything that I hear is positive that they like him over there.

The thing with Ace and Charlotte, I'm not trying to get back.

Just for comparison, for Vijay's sake,

I think that Vijay would fit really well between Miller and Lamello.

I think that you can keep those big playmaking, wing-sized handlers on the floor and then have somebody that can cross-switch and guard at the point of attack and make open shots.

And he's a pretty good passer in the seams, in the creases, wherever, where he's going to be catching the ball.

And then, if you like the things that you start to see, you can start to have conversations about the next phase.

Like, okay, we like this.

Now we can kind of, you know, adjust.

So if they get him, I think that would be a big win for Charlotte.

I think there is ambition for him within his camp Edgecombe of, oh, he can do a lot with the ball.

Like, we want him to be in a place where we'd think he can be, you know,

a lead ball handler.

And all these places,

Philly and Charlotte, he will not get to do that right off the bat.

But everything I've heard about him and seen about him and heard about him from teams, he's the one guy.

Like, I will be really surprised if he's on the board after four.

He just seems like a tailor-made fit for any of these teams.

All the intel on him as a character, person, whatever is really good.

Like, I would be,

I mean, again, it's all a mess.

I would be surprised if he's there at five.

I think if you do the high, middle, low outcome thing and you say, all right, let's say that Harper's career plays out a hundred times, I'd be clear.

I love Dylan Harper.

I think he's going to be a great player.

But if you say, okay, maybe if he never quite solves the inefficiency thing, let's say he's not an efficient dribble pull-up shooter ever in his career.

Maybe the passing doesn't quite go from really good good to great at any point.

And he's just a nice secondary, tertiary player on like a playoff team.

And then let's say that Vij does become an elite defender.

VJ does become an elite floor spacer.

And

his high outcome, even if he's not a star, is that he's somebody that's a two-way player on like a title level team.

Yeah, there's a, there's a world where, you know, 10 years from now, we're talking about this.

We're like VJ, he's one of those guys that we could be like, man, that was just a winning player right in front of our faces.

And we, and we kind of didn't give him enough credit.

I mean, that's possible.

It's very possible.

It's going to be a fun draft.

Fun two-day event now.

We got two days of this.

Do you think it should be two days?

I feel like we should go back.

I love the chaos of night one.

I don't know.

People are getting groggy.

It's just like, what's going on?

Because they're not, the, the second round's not even in the same.

The players aren't coming up.

I was joking with Tate Fraser.

I was like, it's in like a Marriott ballroom.

I don't, look, can we, do you like two nights?

I like one night.

I want to go back.

You know, I, the NBA has had a lot of ideas and they've walked back a lot of those ideas when they've realized, like, okay, this thing didn't work.

Remember the NBA awards show?

They were going to make like the NBA Oscars and that was like, okay,

tried that one.

Got enough data on that.

Yeah.

Last year, you had the Bronnie thing, which was going to carry you through the second round.

And Flip fell to the second round.

So there was a little drama there.

I don't know.

Like,

it's not like the draft is long

when it's one night.

It's 60 picks.

It's over by midnight or 12:30.

Now you get a little more time for second-round picks, a little more time to make trades.

I don't hate it.

I just never, but we'll see if the interest level sustains

for TV viewership in the second round this year.

I'm a little skeptical, but I don't mind it.

All right.

Anything else you want to get to?

Any other guy you want to shout out for 30 seconds or anything like that?

I mean, I don't know who you've seen.

I mean, I can just kind of comment on the guys I'm higher on or lower than Daniel.

Yeah, just say name.

Just say higher on this guy, lower on this guy.

Go.

I'm lower on Noah Singay than Consensus.

I'm a little more worried about his ambitions to do the things that we were talking about.

That's kind of why I did a poll where people were like, what are you talking about?

Asenge over Barringer all day.

Could live to be wrong on that one.

I think that Walter Clayton Jr.

is a great fit with the Miami Heat.

I was talking with you about that.

I think that that would be an awesome pick for them.

Could come in and just be.

I don't know that he'll.

Defensively, it could be a little bit of an issue playing him with hero, but you could stagger them and he could give you a little late rotation pop, probably from moment one.

And then let's see, I love Noah Penda.

Will Riley is going to be an interesting guy to see how people read into his game because he was a reclass.

Yeah, I mean, Thomas Sorber probably going to be going to LKC or the Spurs.

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

Anybody else are you curious about?

I'm trying to.

No, no, I'm not sure.

We threw each other a lot.

I'm ready.

I think this is going to be a fun draft.

I've had time to actually look at the players.

Everyone's coming to New York, my neck of the woods next week.

All the lottery guys, the green room guys are coming with their agents and it's going to be crawling with fun people to talk to.

So I will be skulking around various hotel lobbies in the city for a couple of days talking to people.

It's going to be fun.

Kyle Mann, are you going to update one more time before the draft?

What's the plan?

Finishing it up right now.

Yep.

Got a new one

coming soon.

ASAP.

Ringer.com, a new mock draft.

Kyle Mann does this better than anybody.

Thank you for your time.

Love the Lithuania hoops t-shirt and it's great to see you, my man.

You too.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

That's it for the Zach Lowe Show today.

We think it's Friday.

Kevin Durant still hasn't gotten traded yet.

We'll maybe be back if he's traded over the weekend.

Who knows?

And then there is game seven of the NBA Finals on Sunday.

We'll be back on Monday at some point to talk about that.

Thank you to Jesse, Chris, and Isaiah on production.

You guys are awesome.

And we will see you next week, maybe this weekend, maybe next week with a new NBA champion.

Who the hell knows on the Zach Lowe Show?

Thanks for listening, everybody.

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