YES 'CERS!! Last Night’s Crazy Comeback With Chris Mannix. Plus, Some Intriguing Offseason Teams With John Hollinger.

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Coming up on the Zach Lowe show.

I think that game happened.

Knicks Pacers.

Was that a fever dream?

I think I was there.

All my sights and sounds from the game, analysis of the game, what happens going forward, and then my old buddy John Hollinger, we start talking some interesting offseason teams, fake trades, moments of tension that are coming up in July.

Can't wait.

All coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

Oh my God.

I don't even know what happened.

Chris Mannix from Sports Illustrated, you were three seats away from me on press row, and then you were gone, like so many other of our brethren, gone to get a head start on getting to the locker room and getting down the slow elevators at MSG, probably around the time I'm going to guess, where Jalen Brunson made a layup with 58.1 seconds left to put the Knicks up by nine

points.

And then I don't really know what happened.

I woke up at home.

I got home somehow.

Aaron Neesmith hit a thousand threes.

Tyrese Halliburton hit an absolutely iconic shot that everyone thought was a three, except Kenny the Jet Smith, apparently.

And it was a two.

And even Tyrese Halliburton thought it was a three.

And he wouldn't have made the choke sign if he thought it was a two.

And he told me after the game, he was a little chagrined.

And I was like, well, at that point, you better win the goddamn game at overtime.

He's like, yeah, I know.

And the Pacers do it again.

The win probability chart Pacers do it again.

The Knicks

collapse.

The Pacers come back.

I'm the only one.

Me and Mike Vorkhanoff from the Athletic are the only ones left on press row.

And I turn to him and I swear to God, he'll verify it.

When Ananobi goes to the line, up, what are they up?

One?

I don't even like up one at the end of the game.

I turn him.

I say he's not going to make both.

He's going to make one out of two.

Halliburton sprints up and makes that shot.

They win in overtime.

And that ain't even, well, it is the craziest part, but there's more craziness in overtime.

Chris Manix, have you recovered?

Do you like, do you believe, like, do you believe what you witnessed?

That's the craziest game I've ever been to.

So, first off, I've got to lean all the way into

the fact that I did leave early, right?

Like, and it wasn't.

You didn't leave the arena.

You just left the press row.

Yeah, because when, as you know, like when you leave the garden press seats, you've got to go through like the concourse.

You've got to go down.

I went down an escalator and I assumed it would be madness going down the escalator if I left right at the final buzzer.

So I didn't just leave with 58 seconds left, Zach.

I left with two minutes and 51 seconds left.

Like when there was a 14-point lead, 119-105, Jalen Brunson stepped back three.

I'm like, I got the play-by-play up.

I have to have it up.

I was gone.

I was gone.

I was out the door.

And it gets worse.

Like, when I was making my way down the escalator, I made an Instagram video praising Knicks fans for not leaving early.

Like most arenas, you see fans with a double-digit lead with a couple of minutes left

and they're trying to beat the traffic.

Not these Knicks fans.

They're dedicated.

I actually took like video of the vacant hallway that I was in, the vacant escalators that I was on.

I was so complimentary of Knicks fans in that moment.

So I get down to the pressure and it's like an eight-point game.

at that point.

But like we'll unpack this, but like my reaction, like the Niece Smith stuff was some of the most incredible stuff that I've ever seen to the point where, like, as I'm processing it, in real time, when I'm writing, I'm like texting members of the Celtics coaching staff from like the two years Aaron Neesmith was there.

And I'm like, what did you guys miss?

Like, what?

Did you think this guy could happen?

How did you not play him over Romeo Lankford all those minutes?

Like, I'm going at guys from Brad Stevens' staff.

I'm going at guys from Ime Udoka's staff.

Like, just asking them how it's possible that this guy that couldn't get any burn his first couple of years in Boston

all of a sudden is looking like game six clay in game one of the game.

Yeah, he wasn't even game six clay.

Like he fell over, like he was falling over on half the threes.

He made five threes in like what seemed like 10 seconds.

So here's my version of that story.

I was, look, I've been wrong about a lot of stuff as we always are, right?

I was famously on Aaron Neesmith Island when he was in Boston to the point that in the first Boston Heat series of this post-bubble era, like 22, I don't remember what year it was.

He wasn't playing.

He got in like one game and blocked Tyler Hero at the rim and blah, blah, blah.

I was in Miami for a game, and he was standing with his agent, Mike Lindemann, after the game.

And Mike was like, hey, come introduce yourself.

Mike knew that I had been on Aaron Neesmith Island.

I talked about it on my podcast that he needed to play more.

I didn't understand why he was never playing.

Not a greater guy chance.

And he weighs me.

I was like, you got to introduce yourself to Aaron.

So he's like, Aaron, this is the guy who's been saying that you should be playing.

I walk into the locker room last night.

I haven't talked to Aaron Niesmith in like three years.

And I go to prepare to introduce myself to him.

Like, hey, Aaron, I'm Zach.

And he's like, dude, my man, Aaron Neesmith Island.

Like someone sent me a podcast clip again of you saying it.

He remembered exactly who I was.

And I'm like, this is like, this is the, and he's just on his phone, just checking messages.

If I had done that.

If I had done that in that game, in a game of that nature, in a game that that should have been over, not just when we're talking about it being over, but it felt over when the Knicks went on a gigantic run with Brunson on the bench with 5,000.

OGN and Obi-You had a spectacular game right up until he didn't, on defense, put the game seemingly in safe hands.

If I had done that,

I would have already been at the bar across the street.

chugging beers and talking all my shit to every i probably would have gotten murdered by a mob of knicks fans aaron nispus is just on his phone like hey what's up i remember you checking.

I couldn't believe it.

It was, it was wild.

And, like, I woke up this morning because, you know, most of these coaches are on vacation or in bed or whatever.

And I woke up this morning to like a flurry of responses, some of which were like, you know, shut the hell up.

Like, what do you, we didn't, we didn't know back then.

But some was like, this guy, one coach texted me back and was like, this guy was a bowling ball on defense who tried harder than everybody else on the team, but just couldn't put it all together.

Somehow, over the last three years in Indiana, look, and in fairness, he was like a 30-ish percent three-point shooter in Boston.

I think the last year was 20-something

and evolved into a 40-plus percent three-point shooter in Indiana.

It's just, it's remarkable.

He is, I don't know where you put him up there, but in terms of two-way players, he's one of the best two-way players right now.

You know, certainly left in the playoffs, maybe on a short list in the game, but just unbelievable.

Well, he still doesn't really do much like creatively off the dribble or or anything, which is one reason why Brunson is on him.

And I still think the Pacers can probably use him more as a screener and other ways to hunt Brunson, but we're not going to talk about strategy quite yet.

Here are some of the things that happened to me.

Yes, just some of the scenes from a day where if this had been a movie and I was watching this game on press row, some director would have done a cool trick where like my teenage face flickers on the screen in replacing in replacement with my adult face because like I can't believe I'm watching 30 years later, 25 years later, the Pacers Knicks is like my coming of age as an NBA fan.

And all these years later, I'm watching another classic in Madison Square Garden and another Pacer,

two pacers, really, Neesmith and then Halliburton putting together an insane run of shots culminating in a misapplied choke sign.

And by the way, I'm not going to say who, but I had one basketball luminary this morning educating me on what

aura farming is.

Did you know about this?

Tyrese Halbert?

I did not know what that was until he said.

And this person who I will not name was like, do you know this?

My niece told me what this was.

I'm like, I have no idea.

But he said that.

I'm like, I don't.

Okay.

So my day began with some meetings at the Pacers Hotel with some with some people with the Pacers.

And they're just, we're talking about the comebacks against Milwaukee and Cleveland.

And all of them are like, yeah, our team's just weird.

This is what we do.

Like, none of it surprises enough.

Literally, they're like, if we get down again like that, we're not going to be surprised if we do it again.

And then, like, whatever.

Then I walk out to go to the arena.

And, like, fans do, fans have discovered where the Pacers are staying.

Usually, that scene is like it's Pacers fans awaiting their favorite players, or neutral fans just want to see NBA players getting on the bus.

I walk out.

There was a couple players in front of me getting on the bus on the way to the arena, and it's Knicks fans being like, Nixon six, what's up, whatever, Nixon.

And I'm like, oh my God.

After the game, one front office pacers executive, who I will not name, wanted to show me how sweaty he was underneath his blazer from the tension of the game.

I was like, I don't want to see it.

Another Pacers front office employee who was watching the game in the locker room admitted to me that when Tyrese hit the shot, not only did he think it was a three, he was so convinced it was a three, he ran from the locker room out into the tunnel, screaming profanities that they had won the game and then was like, oh, oh, it's a two.

I mean, just the scenes are

insane.

Just, I can't even believe what I saw.

I don't know.

And this is a game where it's like,

these are not the tropes that I usually buy into, but when you combine that the Pacers just do this over and over again with the fact that the Pacers play a fast, random, relentless style.

Like I had someone with the Cavs tell me this week.

I honestly think we were not prepared and not prepared like there was a fault in coaching preparation.

It's just their sheer relentlessness, I think, caught us off guard.

Combined with the level of gut punch that was on your home floor, I am actually interested to see, like, what is the Knicks' response to this?

What is the Knicks' response if they're up by 10 with two minutes to go in game two?

Because you were there.

Well, you weren't, you weren't still out there.

But like when the crowd was hushing, like shh, when Kat went to the line and Ananobi went to to the line.

And the people in the crowd were making the shh sound for everyone to be quiet so audibly that I was like, this is making me nervous and I'm not the one shooting the free throws.

That nervousness is going to be dialed up by like a hundredfold.

I don't know how the Knicks respond to this.

I can't wait to see.

It was such a perfect storm of awfulness for the Knicks over those last 10 minutes because like up until you know, start of the

fourth quarter, the story after two and a half three minutes is how the pacers blew a golden opportunity to win the game jalen brunson goes out with five fouls dumb fifth foul on tj mcconnell he goes out of the game you start wondering where is that offense going to come from oh giananobi rips off five points the knicks commit two or the pacers commit two stupid fouls on three-pointers that's the story right there and then just everything that could possibly go wrong after that goes wrong like josh hart falls falls down defending Nee Smith.

Jalen Brunson commits uncharacteristic turnovers.

Mikhail Bridges made some bad defensive plays.

The two split free throws with Ananobi and Carl Towns.

Like everything that could have gone wrong for the Knicks went wrong.

I mean, I'd like to think that they can put this behind them because they're as mentally tough a team as I've seen.

in the postseason.

Like they've got some dogs in that group, guys that have been through a lot.

And this year alone, like Bridges, what he's gone through in this year, Kat, what he's gone through over the last year.

I'd like to think that they're mentally tough enough to come back from this.

But I also think that they might not be as good as the Pacers.

I mean, the Pacers, that unconventional style, playing 10, 11 guys, pressing like a college team.

Like, it's weird, but it works.

And I look at this, I look at this matchup and, you know,

I just, if I could pick the better team in this moment, I would still pick Indiana to be the better team.

So I don't know, man, that's a long way of saying, like, I think

they're going to be able to mentally bounce back, but this just might be a really bad matchup for them overall.

There was a lot of talk about,

I saw a lot of talk and heard a lot of talk.

I've re-watched the end of the game like seven times.

In the car home to Connecticut, I re-watched it like four times, and my brain was still breaking.

There was a lot of talk about how the Knicks went into prevent mode on offense and how that cost them.

And I actually don't really think that that is all that important.

There were two possessions when they went into pre-vent mode.

Well, they took time off the clock every time, but not every time, actually.

The two possessions I think people were talking about are

Brunson misses a step back three over Ben Shepard after killing the clock.

It's a good look.

And he had just made that exact same shot the previous possession.

The second one was 141 left to go.

It's still 119, 111.

Kat misses a catch and shoot three at the end of the shot clock.

Great look.

Like Brunson drew a double team, kicked to Hart, who swung it to the cat.

Great look.

If you want to say they're in the bonus and they're up by whatever and they should be trying to get twos or get to the line, okay, sure.

Like Brunson did try to get twos and get to the line.

He got almost triple teamed and was left to kick the ball out.

Those are good shots.

Other than that, They actually almost went too fast on some of these.

Like Brunson got a layup with 58 seconds left.

I may just blew by Shepard to put him up by nine.

The next possession, they broke the press.

Cat laid the ball up in without wasting any time, really, hardly at all.

Put them back up by eight.

The next possession after that is when it all starts to go haywire, when again they go fast and Brunson hits Ananobi under the rim with a pass that bounces a little high.

Ananobi drops it.

There's the challenge on the Siakam loose ball.

Like,

I don't think pre-vent offense had much to do with it.

The Knicks lost the game on defense.

They lost the game because their defense on those Neesmith threes, the switches were late.

The communication was bad.

They frankly looked like a team that was fatigued.

They lost the game on defense again in overtime when

Ananobi did not box out Siakam on a critical rebound and Tyrese Halliburton scored on a reset when Andrew Nemhart back cut Josh Hart for the go-ahead layup and then he deflects the ball out of bounds.

You can go back and look at those Neesmith threes.

The defense just isn't there.

There's just way way too much space part of that i think is the knicks i don't know if they were laxed but like it was almost as if they didn't know what are we switching are we not switching part of that is you i think you have to credit the pacers they play so fast and so randomly that things are just happening before you even know that they're happening and as an example like Siakam to Nie Smith on like little pitch plays

accounted for two of those threes in the last minute.

Siakam is sprinting the ball up the floor, drives right at Ananobi, one of them, drives right at Ananobi, gets Ananobi backpedaling.

Siakam stops on a dime, sets a screen, and pitches the ball to Neesmith in one motion.

Ananobi is so far into the paint because he was defending a screeching, fast Siakam drive that he can't get back out there on the other side of the screen.

Siakam looks like Draymond Green in some of those threes, doing the exact same stuff.

And the communication was there, but credit the Pacers.

Another one was they run up the floor.

I don't even remember which one this was.

They run up the floor.

And I think it was

204 left in the game.

They're down by 11 at this point.

They sprint up the floor and run a Halliburton Ben Shepard pick and roll with like 20 on the shot clock.

And I guarantee you, the Knicks were not ready for a Ben Shepard.

Ben Shepherd was even in the game until like three minutes before.

Ben Shepard slips the screen, catches a pass on the move, kicks it to Neesmith.

And it's like, what just happened, Ben Shepard?

Like, I think the Pacers deserve a lot of credit for foisting those breakdowns on the Knicks.

And at the same time, after like the second Neesmith three, you've got to be like, we got to tighten up.

What is our coverage on this stuff?

What are we doing?

And the Knicks' defense just was not good enough in regulation.

And at the end of overtime, that's where, to me, they lost the game.

And the Pacers deserve a lot of credit for that, too.

I think, yes.

And I think that this was a game that Rick Carlisle coached circles around Tom Thibodeau.

I thought this was a really good Rick Carlisle coaching game.

And I'll give you a couple of things that stood out to me in addition to what you said there.

One, it's subtle, but like the use of challenges in this game turned out to be really important.

Like Tibbs wasted his challenge early on an idiotic challenge.

Like

the play on Brunson that they lost the challenge.

I honestly don't even remember.

It was an offensive foul, Brunson on Neesmith, where Brunson gave kind of a shoulder shrug.

And you can see it on the first replay where he's extending his arm.

Even though it's close, when you do the arm extend, no referee is going to overturn that.

That was a waste.

They lost the challenge.

Couldn't use any of the rest of the game.

The Pacers used two challenges at the very end that turned out to be huge, huge challenges.

There was the foul call on Siakam on Ananobi, which they got right.

He got the ball first on there.

There was the out-of-bounds play that if either one of those goes against Indiana, that game's over.

They don't win that game.

They needed both of those calls to go their way.

The other one, I still, and I was in the Tibbs press conference.

I didn't get a chance to, I think he was asked about it, but kind of gave a grunt for an answer.

But the decision not to foul Obi Toppin at the end of overtime when Toppin had a kind of a straight line to the basket there for that dunk to put him up three.

Well, they did foul him.

He got fouled twice and they didn't call it.

Well, I mean, they didn't, like, when he made the catch, they didn't aggressively go for him in that moment.

Like, and I was, and I'm like you, like, I was texting like a bunch of different assistants in real time.

And I think what Tibbs was trying to do early was to

get one trap in with 14 seconds left, you know, get, see if he can get a steal and then go for it.

But that blew up in their face enormously.

Like, getting that dunk,

you know, that was, you know, that wasn't the game, but that was a decisive play at the end of overtime.

And I give Rick Carla a lot of credit for all the things you were talking about that he drew up and confused the Knicks on with those open looks they got at the end of the fourth quarter.

And like the use of challenges, like I think about this stuff all the time with challenges.

Like I coaches that use their challenge early in games, I don't get it.

Like you need to save all your weaponry for end of fourth quarter and potential overtime.

Like occasionally, yeah, if you get a third foul on the superstar, you got to keep him in the game.

Then I understand using a challenge.

But Tibbs wasted his challenge early on a nothing offensive foul call on Jalen Brunson.

And Rick Carlisle had two of his in the bag, used them, and that helped the Pacers win the game.

It's incredible that the top and dunk on which the Knicks don't foul intentionally, but do foul him at the rim, like blatantly.

Oh, yeah.

Grab the game.

And he should get an and one.

And if he makes the free throw, it's a four-point game and it's over.

And he doesn't get a free throw.

And then Rick Carlisle does not foul up three.

And the Knicks get two great looks given the situation at the basket, Brunson and then Towns, and miss both of them.

The top and non-call into those missed threes is like the 18th craziest thing that happened in the game.

In most games, that's the craziest thing that happens.

And that was like not even in the top 10.

Wild.

Wow.

We haven't even talked about the most underrated crazy sequence of the game.

And boy, am I looking forward to the last two-minute report?

Because despite all this, despite the collapse in regulation, despite all of it, the Knicks go up four in overtime

about two minutes in.

Andrew Nebhart draws Cat on a switch, beats him off the dribble.

Help comes.

He bounces it to Miles Turner at the foul line.

Miles Turner just drops the ball, drops the ball down four.

Jalen Brunson run out layup.

And damned if I am not 100% sure, Miles Turner blocks it at the backboard.

Is it a goaltend?

Is it not a goaltend?

TNT only showed one angle of it.

And I know for a fact that they are now looking at every angle that they have to see for the last two-minute report what it should have been.

I don't know what it's going to say.

Have you re-watched it?

Yeah, I thought it was a clear goaltend.

If you had to force me to bet money, I'm betting money it was a goaltend.

Almost nobody was even talking about the play after the game.

And then, so the Knicks could go up six.

Instead, Nemhard hits a three in transition to cut it to one.

That might be the single most important moment of the entire game.

I'm going to bet the last two-minute report says it was a missed goaltend.

They can't review it.

The refs can review it voluntarily if they call a goaltend.

If they call nothing, they can't review it.

If they call nothing, there's nothing to challenge.

If the Knicks had a challenge, which they didn't,

I just think that is a like that frozen moment is going to get lost.

And now, the Bitter Knicks fans, it won't get lost with them.

That happens so fast.

And the NebHart 3 comes, and I'm like, what?

It was one of those moments where you're watching.

You're like, wait, what just happened?

Can we stop for a second?

What the hell just happened?

What a swing well this is why the the reflex of officials in those moments is to call the goal 10 because then they can review it and make sure that they got it right like you said when they don't call the goal 10 there's no choice like there was some confusion i saw watching it back on the tnt broadcast the tnt broadcast thought the stoppage of play was reviewing the goal 10 when in reality they were watching the line like the referees they can stop the play to look and see if the nem hard shot if his foot was on the line or not in those situations that's what they were reviewing.

Yeah,

when I talk to referees and people in the NBA about that particular call, they'll tell me like, you know, if it's close, they're going to try to call the goaltend so they can go back and review it and see if it was an actual goaltender or a legal play.

That was

another game changer in that moment because Nemhart did come down, change the momentum once again.

Like I said, it was a perfect storm, man.

Like everything went right for the Indiana Pacers and everything went wrong for the New York Knicks.

There are a couple other things I just want to say about the feeling of the game and the feeling of these Pacers who are beginning, even among hardcore basketball analytically-minded people,

beginning to give off a vibe of like, is this just a destiny season?

Like, is this just, is this just going to keep going like this?

Um,

number

one, uh, the Halliburton shot.

It bounces so high that it's off the television screen.

You can't see the ball for like a split second.

That's how high it goes.

And it bounces

back down

and perfectly through the center of the rim.

Like you could not script a cleaner path through the net.

And I was, we were all standing at that point.

And maybe it's because we're all trained by the Kawhi shot in 2019.

When that thing hit the rim and went up, there was not one ounce of my soul who was ready to book it as a miss.

I'm like, like, I am watching this like a hawk the whole way through.

And the other thing I'm watching like a hawk, these fucking pacers, excuse me,

not excuse my language.

These fucking pacers have me watching for free throw lane violations like I'm a goddamn tennis line judge.

Like every free throw late in the game, I'm like zeroed in on all the guys.

Is there a lane violation?

Who's boxing out who?

It's just these games are just insane.

This is the craziest one of three, but all three, I mean, they tweeted something.

I got to find the tweet.

There's a, the record, they're like, they have three of the four wins in NBA history out of thousands and thousands and thousands of games where you're down X with X left and you win the game.

It's down seven with less than a minute to go.

Their record is like four and 1,640.

And the Pacers have three of those wins in this postseason.

And I think that they're the first team out of like 900 and something to be down like 14 with under two minutes left in the playoffs and still win a game.

Like they are, the team of Destiny stuff is, is legitimate because they are, they're doing things that really nobody has ever seen before up until this point.

I mean, that moment, I'm with you, like, because I left and I was sitting there in the press room with, and I'm going to throw these people under the bus with Howard Beck, with Rachel Nichols, with Dan Devine, a whole bunch of people, Michael Pina, all gathered around the table.

Everyone left.

I was like Travolta in pulp fiction looking around for someone to talk to.

You're the last man standing, dude.

But we're watching it.

Like you said, on TV, the ball goes up and it's up in the air.

And the crowd reaction is like a split second ahead of the TV.

So we can hear the crowd roar for a second, you know, a brief second thinking it's a miss, then go, oh, and the air come out of them as the ball drops in the hoop.

And then, I mean, just to have, just to have Halliburton, who you know was waiting for the opportunity to do that choke sign.

I don't know how long he's been waiting, months, years, his whole life since he watched winning time back in 2010.

But he's been waiting for this kind of opportunity to do that.

And to do that with Reggie like 15 feet away and Reggie on the broadcast go just laughing, laughing.

He had no words.

He just laughed.

He had no words.

He just starts laughing to do it in that moment.

I mean, you could not have scripted outside of his toe, you know, being Kevin Durant's size and just barely missing the edge of that three-point line.

You couldn't have scripted it any better.

So

let's also take a second to remark on the fact that

down two, Halliburton drove into the lane, saw Mitchell Robinson, and did just a straight-up U-turn.

Just like, you know what?

Fuck this.

I'm going for three.

Just a straight up, direct, 100, 360 degree U-turn backwards.

Like, you don't see NBA players just go backwards a lot?

And it was like, I'm just shooting a three.

And I, there was no part of me that thought it was a two.

I thought it was a three in real time from way up in my perch i was like this is the most unbelievable shot i've ever seen i didn't even see him do the choke sign because um

because i i'm too far up to see it and look i guess there was like rick carlisle pseudo defended him for using the choke sign and said tyrese has earned the right to the like

does anyone is anyone mad that he used the choke sign it's he was led into that he was led into that that answer i think somebody asked him about which i think is idiotic like who cares like that's what you you do.

I mean, everybody celebrates African.

Like, does anybody get mad when Jalen Brunson does the face thing after he makes a big shot?

Like, big deal.

Can we also let Tyrese's father back into the games?

Because if the Pacers are going to be doing this and he's, and Tyrese, his son, is going to be making shots like this, let him back into the game.

Let him back into the games.

I should have been going at Giannis.

It was a little embarrassing.

Let him back in the games.

No, I go the other way on that one.

I mean, he could have started another Malice in the Palace right there.

Like, imagine Giannis doesn't have a little more self-control and just punches.

And I assume he knew that was Halliburton's dad in that moment, but if he didn't, he could have dropped him like, you know, Jermaine O'Neill dropped.

Your cold logic is probably correct.

Before we move on to what comes next,

any other memories from this game or things that stood out from the game itself?

Or before we move on from game one and look a little bit ahead to game two, is there anything you else you want to say about this game?

I think we covered it.

I mean, I would add to, like, you brought it up right there, the

incredibleness

of Halliburton with seven and change seconds left, dribbling the length of the floor, getting past Bridges, who made a bad defensive play on that, tried to go for that reach around there.

Seeing Mitchell Robinson in real time deciding in a split second that he wasn't going to take this shot, backing up and shooting kind of a one-footer.

Like it was, it wasn't like this set shot that he took beyond the three-point.

Like it was a wild shot.

In fact, like, you know, every coach will tell you that was a bad decision that Tyrese Halliburton made.

Like, you see Mitchell Robinson go to the basket, try to create contract tactics, try to get an easy bucket or go to the free throw line.

He chooses to do a 180, wheel around, and go back behind the three-point line.

That was absolutely wild.

One of the wildest decisions that I've seen in these playoffs.

We do have to talk about, I agree.

We do have to talk about one more thing, which is

Tibbs' decision to foul up three, starting with 12.1 seconds left in the game.

Um, it's it's a three-point game after Kat misses a second free throw.

Timeout, Pacers inbound the ball, and I'm sitting there like, Are they going to foul?

Is it too early to foul?

I'm generally like eight seconds is my borderline.

Dagnolt got hammered for this, including by me in game one of the Thunder Nuggets series.

Um, and with 12.1 seconds left, they start to play the foul game.

Neesmith makes two out of three.

Um, then they inbound the ball, and an obi gets fouled with seven seconds left and uh and and there we go um then tyrese makes his shot was that too early for you what did you think of that yeah i thought it was too early um

and

who was it og that made the commit to the foul like he went for it right away yes like he went for the foul so that was clearly the instructions coming out of the huddle.

I would have liked to have seen OG kind of, once he got Neesmith in front of him, square him up there, let him kind of pivot let him move around obviously you've got to it's a tough

it's a tough play to make there because you've got to be careful not to follow on the three-point shot so in in a sense he he got it right because he got him early before niecemith went up into the shooting motion but that was way too much time left in the clock it allowed way too much to happen over the next two possessions yeah i i thought it was too early i i think in hindsight You want to let him dribble four, five, six times, get it down to seven, eight seconds, and then you pick up the foul.

That costs the Knicks for sure.

Also, like, not even in the top 20 of crazy things that happened during that entire sequence,

when the Pacers fouled Kat intentionally, the Knicks almost threw the inbounds pass away.

And then before the Pacers fouled Ananobi intentionally, Jalen Brunson almost threw it away trying to save it off of a Pacers person in a double team.

And it hit nobody and bounced high in the air right to Ananobi.

And you're like,

what is happening?

That ball was like just bouncing around for like three seconds when Brunson threw it.

He tried to whack it off him out of bounds and it just bounced in the middle of the court until finally see a white jersey come up and grab it.

Like there were so many wild sequences that went on in that game.

All right.

I'm going to contradict myself a little bit and say this.

I didn't mind the decision to foul up three.

And I can hear the Thunder fans saying, well, I don't understand.

Why did you mind Dagnall doing it with a little bit more time, but not much more time?

A couple of reasons.

Number one, the Nuggets are a horrible three-point shooting team, and the Pacers are an incredible shot-making team from everywhere on the floor.

And I'm absolutely terrified of them getting a game-tying three, even at home.

I'm not saying I loved the decision, but I understood and didn't mind it.

Number two, part of the criticism I had of Dagnall was the second foul-up three with like 10 seconds left.

Jokic was stuck on the bench with no way to get back into the game.

That was my primary beef with that one.

I understood it.

I don't love fouling up three.

That I, I mean, I was surprised the Pacers didn't foul up three late in the game, and it almost cost them.

But anyway, okay.

Like, I guess we got to talk about game two because the series is still going on.

What are you going to look for in game two other than how the Knicks come out?

Is there any adjustments?

Is there anything you have in mind?

Uh,

I don't know if you need to adjust too much or do anything eradical.

I mean, Brunson had an outstanding game, Towns had had a strong game.

OG didn't play well.

78 combined points for those two guys.

78 combined points.

Your stars showed up.

OG was inconsistent for three quarters, but he made those big buckets in the fourth.

I don't know.

I mean,

big picture, like, I don't overreact to the outcome of that game.

Like, I just, I'd get my team mentally.

past it and say, look, we did a lot of things right in this game.

We had a big opportunity with the kind of lead that we had in that moment.

We just gagged it away with uncharacteristically bad plays.

I mean, you think about it,

not just any team, Zach, that has

a 14-point lead.

A team with Jalen Brunson on it has a 14-point lead with two minutes left.

That's the last team in the NBA right now that you would expect to blow a lead like that.

I don't overreact to too much in this moment.

You obviously want to shift some coverages there.

You can't let Nee Smith get off like that.

You know, I think TJ McConnell on Jalen Brunson is a mistake.

That didn't really work very much in game one

for the Pacers anyway.

So maybe you try to take advantage of that more if they go back to that well.

But otherwise, I just think you try to put it past you mentally and go into game two with the same mindset.

Yeah, both teams, I mean, it was an offense.

The offensive ratings are off the charts.

These are two teams whose offenses are better than their defenses.

And for the first time, really, in the whole playoffs playoffs, almost, the Knicks' offense looked pretty comfortable against the Pacers' defense.

I thought both teams hunted.

It was almost like a mirror image kind of series where, you know,

each offense is going to hunt the opposing point guard fairly relentlessly.

The Knicks hunting Halliburton, the Pacers hunting Brunson.

I actually think the Knicks could probably hunt Halliburton a little bit.

I've got an adjustment.

I just thought of that.

Of course,

the adjustment is like, I think you were about to go there, but so sorry.

But the hunting Halliburton would be one adjustment I would make if I was New York.

That was one that kept coming up in some of my text messages over the course of the game.

And look, the Pacers, they're able to

avoid that hunt a lot by pressing, like by forcing the Knicks to get into offense late.

It takes away some of the ability to kind of look for those matchups.

Plus, I think Brunson kind of likes going up against the Nemharts.

I think he kind of likes that matchup.

But if I'm New York, I've got to try to take advantage of Halliburton.

Because every time he wound up in a bad matchup against Brunson or against Kat,

he either fouled or looked bad on it.

He's just not defensively capable of

playing on that level.

So that would be one.

Finding Halliburton more on the floor, hunting him, maybe getting him into foul trouble, I would try to go for that more.

So here are some numbers according to the tracking data.

Halliburton was defending the screener on the pick and roll nine times.

and defending the ball handler on a pick and roll only five times.

Now they obviously have him hiding on Hart and Bridges, and which of those he's hiding on is critical.

It was more towards Hart at the end of the game, which prevents Miles Turner from guarding Hart, which is an adjustment I keep waiting on for one of them to crack on who's guarding the center.

But we'll get there.

So that's 14 combined pick and rolls defended.

I actually think that that undersells the degree to which the Knicks went at Halliburton because I think they're missing some screens.

But also like when he was on Bridges, They posted up Bridges a few times.

They ran some off-ball actions with Brunson and Bridges that kind of flummoxed the Pacers and got some good scores on cuts and all that.

Brunson had to defend 23 pick and rolls as the screener defender and 12 more as the ball handler defender.

So that's 35 compared to 14 for Halliburton.

And as you said, like, it's not just Halliburton.

Like, Brunson really likes the Nem Hart matchup and is hunting that one too.

So, but I, I, so I think that's indicative of like the Knicks could dial that up a little bit.

But again, offense wasn't the problem.

Um,

the who cracks first on the pick and pop center thing is another sort of mirror image matchup.

Just like in the regular season matchups, for the most part, Miles Turner guarded Kat and Kat guarded Miles Turner.

And, you know, the teams are still negotiating how do we want to handle pick and pop jump shots.

For the most part, they didn't really do anything dramatic.

There was a few late switches here or there.

There was a few times where the Pacers would send.

a third guy flying into town's vision or the Knicks would send a third guy flying into Turner's vision.

I think both teams would be on the lookout for that.

Both teams set a lot of those picks like super high on the floor, like a lot of half-court picks to try to get the defense backpedaling and confused.

But I still think at some point, one of these teams is going to crack, and the Knicks are going to put Towns on Siakam, or Towns on Neesmith, or the Pacers are going to put Turner on Hart, which again is more complicated because that means Halliburton's got to guard somewhere else.

I think the offenses are going to, like, what I'm fascinated by which team breaks first in that regard.

And the last thing,

Robinson Towns, just 12, just seven minutes together in the game, plus 12 and seven minutes.

I understand that Tibbs is probably like,

we cannot put ourselves at a speed deficit against this team, but Robinson is such a monster on the glass against a team that is absolutely paranoid about its rebounding.

I wonder, again, like more Robinson Towns comes at the expense of one of their core players.

I felt that was like not quite enough of that.

I would agree with that.

I kept looking at the rebounding numbers in real time during the game, expecting them to be, there'd be a bigger gap.

They were closer than I thought they were, but it did feel like every time Robinson and Towns was on the floor, there was second chance opportunities.

They were just clogging up the middle.

They were creating a lot of problems.

for Indiana on that glass.

I would go back to that a little bit more.

I mean, Mitchell Robinson had been such a difference maker for them in the playoffs.

Like, what was he in the Boston series?

Like, plus 40-something in that series?

Like, he was awesome there.

And I think the more minutes you can give him, I think would be the better.

Look, the Knicks, they don't want, regardless of who's on the floor, they don't want to get into a fast-paced game with Indiana.

Like, they want to slow the game down one way or the other.

So if you can find a way to keep Robinson and Towns out there for longer minutes and not get the doors blown off you in transition, I would do it because I think Robinson is going to lead to so many more second chance opportunities than the Knicks.

They just eat the Pacers lunch on those second chance opportunities.

Yeah, I mean, just the offensive rebounding is a major area of concern for the Pacers.

The Knicks had 13, I think, last night, which they will live with

if that's what it ends up being.

I always want more Siakam involvement when it gets into the half court.

He looked very comfortable posting up Bridges and Hart, and they can get those switches.

Anybody but Ananobi, basically, he looked super comfortable.

I go at Brunson, whatever inverted pick and rolls, whatever.

I always like that when the Pacers do that.

And, you know, there are some other little things here or there, but this is an offensive-oriented series.

It was an offensive-oriented first game.

And

it's just,

I expected a long series.

I expected a crazy series.

I expected a dramatic series.

I did not expect that.

That was,

we may, we may never see a game.

I may never see a game in person like that again.

And I was like acutely aware of it during the game.

You know, one of the notes I made during game one, and we've seen this a little bit last year as well.

But like, do you, when you watch Siakam and Ananobi go on each other, do you feel like you're seeing like a Toronto practice?

Like, they both seem to know where the other one's trying to go.

And there's a couple of times, I think Siakam had a couple of deflections when Ananobi was going to the rim.

I think Ananobi had one good play on there.

Like, they just seem to know each other so well that it's kind of a wash on those matchups when they go one-on-one.

There is, as Toronto fans know all too well, a fun Toronto Raptors what-if coursing through these entire playoffs.

I mean, even Van Vleet having some big games for the Rockets.

And it, you know, look, the Raptors kind of bailed out of that team.

In some ways, maybe prematurely.

In some ways, I thought they waited a little too long once they made the decision and the trade return wasn't as strong as it was.

There's an interesting discussion to be had about did they get a little over-exuberant about, A, over-exuberant about building everything around Scotty Barnes right away, and B,

over-paranoid about the next contracts for the NNOB, Siakam, Van Vliet group, because those guys are all very good players.

Maybe you can't keep three of them, and if you keep two of them, what's the point?

Like, where are we going?

You could explain it all away.

And if next year goes much better than expected for the Raptors and they're healthy and quickly has a big year, et cetera, like this will all be forgotten about.

But Raptors fans, this is a tough watch right now for Raptors fans.

It's a lot of a lot of good memories slash like

longing nostalgia.

Any parting thoughts, Chris Mannix?

Have you recovered yet?

Or do you feel like you're going to need a nap today?

What do we got?

All I can say two things.

One,

I don't care what the score is in game two.

I'll be sitting right beside you up there on the chase bridge.

I'm not getting out of my seat in game two.

And that, like, I've been trying to think of like what I would compare that comeback to of things that I've seen.

And all I can go back to is the day, my, my old ballboy days with the Celtics back in 2002 when the Celtics nets, I think it was game three of that conference semifinals or finals, when the Celtics made that 21-point run to come back and have the greatest fourth quarter comeback at that point in NBA playoff history.

That's the only thing I can compare it to.

It was such a...

Such an improbable, wild scene to witness firsthand, sort of firsthand from a TV in the press room.

Well, look, I mean, I could compare it to Milwaukee, Indiana, round one, Cleveland, Indiana, round two, but I wasn't at either of those games.

It's funny because, you know, even my dad texted me and he said, like, that has to be the most exciting game that you've ever been to.

And it was almost so bizarre that it wasn't as exciting as you would think it was until the moment when it became really exciting.

And by that, I mean, like, forget the stakes for a second.

Like, Warriors, Warriors, Cavs, game seven, the score was so close for so long.

And

this, that, every single moment was tense for a long time.

This, the score was so lopsided and with such little time left that the first couple of B Smith threes, you're like, oh, that's weird.

Like, that's happening.

Okay, what's what's going on here?

And like your excitement had to catch up to the actual excitement level of the game.

Like it wasn't, I wasn't like feeling super tense until maybe the free throws with Kat at the line.

I was like, all right, now this is real.

It was just a bizarre set of emotions for me as just guy on press row, let alone someone fucking playing in the game.

Oh, my God.

Here's the last question I would ask you.

And we debated this in the press room.

Should the group of us have gone back to our seats at the start of overtime?

Could you have or should you have?

Should we have?

We could have.

We could have walked right back up.

No,

I think it's one of those decisions, like,

you know once you've made it you've made it you can't break up with a girl and then two days later be like hey i think i i think i made a mistake can you take me back i think because then you're gonna miss too much it's gonna take too long to get up there you got to just watch the game okay chris manix si.com read him listen to him on open floor a lot if you like boxing he's your guy too i don't really follow boxing but every once in a while i pepper you with the question thanks for your time buddy and uh i'll see you next time anytime zach

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All right.

Let's bring in a man that I have.

referred to before as the best to ever do it, the most important basketball analyst of the modern era.

John Hollinger of the Athletic, my old friend, my old colleague.

I'm not going to lie to you, John.

The assignment today was: let's each pick three teams that general classification was we sped by them a little too fast after they got eliminated.

We threw them out of the playoff car, left them on the side of the road, didn't really think so hard about their play, their postseason, offseason dilemmas.

And I want to go back now that we only have one game

and revisit.

And then the Knicks Pacers game happened.

And I can't lie to you.

My brain is somewhere in the bowels of Madison Square Garden so if I suggest to you that the Kings should look into trading Jason Thompson for a protected first round pick or something like that just just bear with me because it's been it's been a hell of a 24 hours my friend how are you doing I'm doing great I'm still recovering from that game as well oh my god okay

I'm going to make the first draft pick in our offseason because I'm greedy and I want to make sure we get to this team and I'm not sure that you picked them.

Okay.

So again, the idea is teams that were eliminated play in or play offs, and we just forgot about them.

And we want to give them a little attention because they have some interesting dilemmas.

My first pick is the Sacramento Kings.

Ooh, okay.

They have,

you know, they,

ironic that we're bringing them up today after Tyrese Halliburton hits yet another iconic shot, because you might remember, John, the Kings used to have.

an abundance of point guards

once upon a time a plethora of point guards Now they have kind of none, depending on how you classify Malik Monk and Keon Ellis and Devin Carter, the guy that they drafted and who barely got into rotation after injury.

They have Domanis Sabonis looking around like,

so do I play for like the Bulls now?

Or is this the Kings?

What's going on?

Do I want to be here with all these years left on my contract?

They have a couple free agents.

They have a Keon Ellis team option decision.

They have a Zach Levine plays for the Kings.

Did you forget that Zach Levine now plays for the Kings?

Because I kind of did.

Extension decision.

They just fired their coach mid-season, hired a new coach.

Total front office turnover.

Scott Perry is involved.

All of a sudden, Vladi Devach might be involved.

Jeremy Lamb is just lurking somewhere.

What is this team doing?

What are they going to do?

What's interesting to you about my Sacramento Kings?

Yeah, my Sacramento Kings.

It's funny because they had this like three-year window of competence where they were like a real team.

And then they were like, no, no, no,

let's go back to being the old Kings.

Let's, you know,

bring back all the people from the 2002 Kings to run the team and

bring back Scott Perry, who's, you know, it was Scott Perry with Vlade.

And then I don't think they could have

done the press conference to bring back Vlad as the GM.

So instead, he's just like on the side whispering in Vivek's ear, right?

Vivek is

an interesting NBA character.

Always keeps you on your toes in

How long do you think?

Do you think their search for Scott Perry as GM or whatever his title is was longer than the Bulls' search for Fred Hoiberg as coach all those years ago?

Like, do you think they scoured the Japanese league for the best up-and-coming front office executives before landing on Scott Perry?

They certainly

were not

scouring Europe for promising Finnish coaches, let's say.

That was not part of their plan.

Ooh,

a Grizz reference from my old Grizz buddy.

Okay, so

here's where we are.

The Kings, you're better at the cap stuff than I am.

And also, again, my brain is somewhere up in the air with the basketball on Tyrese Halliburton's last shot last night in regulation.

The Kings are somewhere around $20 million below the luxury tax with nine guys under contract.

So probably a little bit less than that.

They've got a deal with Keon Ellis.

They've got some free agents, Trey Lyles, Laravia, who they're very limited in re-signing.

They owe their pick to Atlanta.

They owe a 31 swap to the Spurs, but they have a 27 pick unprotected from the Spurs and a 31 pick unprotected from Minnesota, which was the real gem of the DeAiron Fox trade.

The second point guard out the door.

And they have Sabonis on the books now through 2027, 2028 at almost $50 million that year.

I just like what

they have the Keegan Murray extension decision.

That's going to be a big number, whatever it ends up being.

Should they?

I mean, like, it's always a big number, right?

Like, big is, I don't know how big, but is it going to be if you had to go over under

29 and a half million starting salary?

What are you going to predict?

Uh, I think it should be under.

I'm not saying should, I'm saying, what is it going to be?

I,

I still go.

I still go.

I, I don't know.

Should he be making what Devin Vessel gets?

I mean, I don't, I mean, he's, he was, I think, the biggest casualty of the DeRosan acquisition.

And I had, I've had multiple front office executives from other teams over the last year be like,

you know, again, he's a little bit of a polarizing player, but be like, you know, I think that guy's good.

And he's just kind of lost now there.

He doesn't have a clear role offensively.

He's less involved with the Sabonis two-man game than he was even a year ago.

But I just think like guys get paid, big lottery picks who are successful and he's been relatively successful at three-point shot up and down.

They just generally get high numbers.

But I'm just more like,

what's the pathway for this team to actually be, I mean, in a Western conference, it just gets better and better every year.

Like, I just don't, I don't even know what this, it had an identity.

The beam team had an identity.

The identity was like maybe going to top out with the first-round playoff win at some point.

I will go to my basketball analysis grave.

saying that they would have won that series against Golden State if Fox's finger had been healthy toward the end of the series, but it wasn't and they lost.

But it was at least something, something that could attract fans, something that people could enjoy.

Now I just don't even know what the team is other than like the Bulls 2.0 except Sabonis instead of Wucevich.

And that may change.

Maybe that'll be the last part of it.

Well, I have a bunch of fake Sabonis trades teeth up.

Should we do it?

I mean, but like before we do that.

I mean,

the whole question of their direction is like

they're the old Charlotte team that was chasing the eighth seed every year.

I mean, that to me is what that to me is what they are now

because they don't want to tank, but they're not actually good.

They're just going to keep throwing stuff at the wall.

And like, you know, this, again, better than I do, but if they re-sign Murray for a big, an even decent number, if they bring back Keon Ellis, you know, let's say 10 a year, Keon Ellis is good.

Like, I think he should have played more last year.

Yeah.

And you factor in their draft pick next season.

Um,

and, you know, if they use like the MLE in any of these offseasons, or they re-sign Lyles or whatever, like, they're going to be butting up against the tax in 26, 27.

Like, and that's like a typical thing you see with all these teams who are kind of mediocre and wandering purgatory.

And you do their caption, you're like, my God, they're going to be like.

right at the tax in two years.

And like, nobody wants to be that for a team that's, I mean, you just compared them to the Charlotte Hornets chasing the eighth seed.

that's that made my stomach hurt i mean is am i wrong like the the kemba so what do you do

put your front office hat on what do you do with this team if you're scott perry what what is i mean if you're scott perry and you're given carte blanche which you won't be because of vivek but like if you like what should they actually do

I do think you have to figure out if there's a market for Sabonis.

I think you're probably going to find out pretty quickly that there's not, especially because that, I mean, that renegotiate and extend was so over-exuberant on him.

I think that was one of their original sins.

You know, they have him on the book now, even this year at 43.6.

And even though Sabona says he's a valuable player, he's made all-star teams.

He's very durable.

But I just don't know that he's a flavor that a lot of other front offices like as far as actually building the team around.

There's a few guys like that that we're going to end up talking about, I think.

And so

you're almost stuck then trying to make the best out of this year,

I think.

I mean, you do have a little bit of float below the tax line.

It's tough having a backup center making 10 now with Valent Schunas.

That clogs things up too.

I mean, can you get something for DeRosen at this point?

I'm not.

I'm not really sure what his market is either.

He's kind of the same type of thing.

Same thing with Levine.

Like they have these guys that kind of other teams aren't super excited about having.

No, you're a cap genius and I'm a cap

just okay mediocrity guy.

Levine is at 47.5 million next year and has a player option for 49 in 26, 27.

I believe, and he is extension eligible.

Now, I believe they could do something and go to him like, hey, could you opt out and could you like decline the the player option, go down?

Yeah, we'll extend you long term.

But I'm just not sure what the price is where I want to be in the Zach Levine business for the next four or five years.

At, you know, again, if the number drops, it'll be 25% of the cap, something.

But like, I just don't know where that is taking me and how actually movable that is.

So I'm like, I would kind of lean towards, I'm just going to play it out with Levine and see how the year goes.

I would lean that way too.

I, because that would, yeah, you could, you make your life a little easier in 26, 27 if you say have him opt out of that year and sign for like three for 35 or something.

But

then you have him for those extra years also.

And I'm just not sure what you're getting.

He's getting into his 30s then.

So it's,

I mean, he's good and he had a nice bounce back year and his shooting numbers rocketed back up to where they were.

It just, because of the defense and because of the playmaking limitations, it just never seemed like he's good and he deserved to make the all-star team or two that he made in the east the least, but I just, it just never seems to lead anywhere all of that interesting.

I, I agree with you.

He, he actually, I mean, he did, especially like right after the trade, he did play pretty well.

But you,

yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to commit to that long term, especially when you're counting on him to be your, your second best player, I guess.

And Sabonis is your best best player?

Like,

should I just do my fake Sabonis trades now?

Yeah, let's go.

I really enjoyed this.

It was a great time.

Okay.

I'm going to save a couple of them for later because they touch on other teams.

I'm just going to preemptively say this.

Any Sabonis to Chicago for Vucevic and stuff, the league should step in and ban it.

It should not be allowed.

The teams should not be allowed to trade for each other.

The Kings should not be allowed to have Vucevic, DeRosin, and Levine on the same team.

It should be banned.

It should be vetoed, whatever the proper terminology is.

And I actually think that's the trade that makes the most theoretical sense.

The Bulls get to grab, like, oh my God, he's an all-star win now.

He's made all NBA.

Win-now team.

The Kings get salary relief.

Wucevich's deal is expiring.

They get a stretch file.

No, we're just going to know it's a.

The Lithuanian connection, too, Zach.

That's true.

Or initially,

Buzelis Sabonis.

I'm just, I'm getting out in front of it, and it should be banned.

This was my one realistic Sabonis trade.

That was the one you had?

Yes.

All right.

Can I give you just an absolutely insane who says no to steal from my boss?

Okay.

And I know who says no is actually one of the players involved in this theoretical trade that I'm making up that may or may not even be legal.

Who says no

straight up,

Kevin Durant for DeMontis Sabonis?

Oh, that's spicy.

Yeah, Durant.

Just think, just think, it, just think, Durant would threaten to retire.

Durant will say, hell no.

Durant will threaten to retire.

But like, I can see the Suns fans being like, well, that sucks.

We traded 19 million first-round picks and Bridges and Cam Johnson for Durant.

Cool.

You're not getting that back, right?

You have no center of any consequence.

You hated every center you had on the team.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I don't think they would ever do it because of what you said about Sabonis and how he kind of pinned you into upper crust mediocrity.

But I do think it's not a crazy theoretical.

I mean, it is crazy.

And I tell you what's not crazy is a three-way trade where Sabonis ends up in Phoenix, Durant ends up someplace else, and Sacramento gets stuff.

This is why I have, this is why I have you on because you're just thinking a step ahead of me.

Okay.

Can I give you my favorite Sabonis destination and one that I think is actually somewhat realistic?

Okay.

And it's poetic.

There are copious Sabonis to Portland trades that are workable, make sense, send Phoenix a center.

I think you know who it might be.

It's funny.

No, no, not

Sabonis for DeAndre.

Well, but we can do Time Lord.

We can throw a Time Lord in there if we need to.

I think, I mean, I guess it's a bridge burned with Aiton, but I mean, I know it's a bridge burned with Aiton.

But Sabonis back to Portland.

Sabonis makes sense in Portland.

His dad played there.

That would be kind of a fun one, but I don't necessarily know that there's a realistic roadmap to it.

I tried with New Orleans.

They're just too funky.

I can't get there with New Orleans.

So I don't know what Port Kings at the end of the day.

The Portland one would be interesting if it didn't involve Aiden going back to Phoenix because I do think the Blazers

want to try to win this year.

The other thing, it does jam up their cap at a time when their guys are starting to come up to get paid.

So that makes things a little tricky for them, too.

When you have Shaden Sharp coming up for an extension, you have Anthony Simons' contract running out.

What are they going to do with him?

So

a couple situations to work on there.

If there was a way for them to move off of Jeremy Grant at the same time or in another deal that happened

kind of in the same timing, I think that would get really interesting.

Yeah, Aiton, Aiton,

I said Bridge Burned.

I don't know why I said that.

That's not relevant.

But Aiton, Aiton to SAC

for Sabonis actually kind of makes sense.

I don't know if it makes sense for Sacramento, but I don't mind that one.

You can throw Tybal and Picks.

There's a lot of ingredients you can throw around, but I don't know that there's any realistic appetite for that.

I think it's a good one.

Yeah, I just,

for SAC, they probably see that as too much of a reset, unless they were getting Simons in it too.

But then the Blazers need to figure out if they believe in Scoot enough to just make him a full-time starter.

Yeah, I think there's something there.

But you're right.

The extras would probably kill it.

The extras that Sacramento would want for

an all-star all NBA level player.

And then you would try to get, like, is Portland going to try to get cute and throw Jeremy Grant in there somehow for salary relief?

But I like that one.

Okay, you pick a team.

That's what I just, I feel bad for the Kings.

That's all I am am with the Kings.

You pick a team.

All right.

Here's one we definitely drove right past.

Clippers.

I did

almost no real prep other than my day-to-day living in this world prep on the Clippers.

So I'm fascinated by what you see as the central questions for the Clippers.

You take it away.

James Harden, player option,

right?

Made the all-star team.

Only on the books for 36 next year.

So

what do you do there?

You actually are under the tax for the moment,

but you don't have a ton of flexibility.

You were kind of proven to be good to a point with the roster you had,

not really capable

of making huge improvement unless you just bone somebody in a trade, right?

They did a great job to get this team back to the point.

I think all of us thought the Clippers Clippers would win like 35 games this year.

I was dead wrong about their

defense.

They nailed all the role player signings.

Like great job.

I think they were looking at being a player at free agency for 26.

And now Kawhi comes back and plays and looks sort of like the old Kawhi.

And it makes you wonder.

You have a Norm Powell extension question.

Had a great year, but he's in his 30s.

He makes 20 this year.

What do you really want to do there?

So the most they can give him him is the 140% of that, right?

Yeah, so they could bump him up to 28

in the 26, 27 season, which is probably,

I mean, fair for what he did.

It's fair, but my hunch would be

my hunch, this is just an educated hunch, but maybe you disagree because Norm had a great year.

Like there was a whole Norm Powell should make the all-star team thing, which I didn't have him on my all-star team, but he was great, borderline candidate.

My hunch is they would value the flexibility, the cap flexibility more than norm at that, at that number, but I could be wrong.

I tend to agree with you.

Or do you sell high on him?

And that the most provocative thing is, is now the time to cash in your Kawhi Leonard chips?

You know,

maybe a year ago on my old podcast, I had fake Kawhi Leonard trades, and some of them were good, and some of them made sense.

And a lot of the, I remember one was involving Minnesota, and obviously the landscape there has changed

dramatically.

You know,

I just don't know that any other team has any faith that Kawhi Leonard will be healthy enough and healthy enough when it matters.

And he was healthy late this season,

good to very good in the great to very good to just good at the end of the playoffs.

I just don't know that there's going to be a trade there that appetizes the Clippers' interest unless it's unless the Clippers are just doing it for like kind of what they did with Paul George, where it's like, we're willing to just sort of take a mini step back.

And they didn't end up taking a step back, but like, we think we can thread the needle of salary relief plus not as big of a step back as you think we're going to take.

Yeah, I think,

I think it's hard.

I think they probably, even if they made the calls, I think they would find out, like you said, that people are so spooked by his injury history that you're just not going to get a whole lot.

I mean, even the, I mean, even look at what the Spurs got when Kawhi was awesome, right?

Because people were worried about his his knees.

So

I think that's definitely an issue.

But then, so what are you doing then?

Are you pushing it out to say, well, maybe we'll be a cap player in 27 instead?

Can you get James Harden to just sign for two years,

even if you give him a

good number, probably a raise off his 36, maybe go a little bit into the tax this year?

Leave the norm thing kind of hanging.

There's some interesting questions here.

And then they still need to do a little bit of work, I think, on the back end of the roster this offseason, get a real backup five, right?

Ben Simmons didn't cut it for you.

My favorite thing was

the percentage of NBA people shrinks with every transaction, but it's there's still like a solid plurality of NBA people who talk themselves into the Ben Simmons thing on a YouTube.

I don't know if they like Ben Simmons, like he's bringing the ball up, he's spraying it out.

And I keep saying, I'll believe it when I see it.

And sure enough, in the playoffs, it's like, where's Ben Simmons?

Oh, he's not, he doesn't, he's doesn't play anymore.

Um,

Clippers are interesting.

You know,

I never bought their the second best team in the West kind of buzz.

I picked the Nuggets in seven in the first round, but they were really, really good.

And,

you know,

like, I don't know if they could have beaten Minnesota in a playoff series with Minnesota fully healthy like this let alone oklahoma city my guess is they just run it back in some you know speaking of

speaking of things we ran past i would be curious to get your take on this one of the more

i don't know if it was strange it was just like huh trades of the trade deadline was the bogdanovich terrence man trade where the clippers also got three second round picks in that trade now bogey's contract i believe runs a little no man's no it doesn't man had the bad contract yeah Well, the bad is stronger, just longer, right?

What did you think of that trade?

That was a strange.

Yeah, Mann's contract is $60 million guaranteed in 2028.

Bogey's is team option 26.

Team option is 26.

Yeah.

So significantly shorter.

Yeah.

The Clippers signed Mann to that extension, regretted it pretty quickly, and then were able to get off of it and get assets.

I think the Hawks overreacted to how bad Bogdanovich looked in the first half of last season.

I mean, he wasn't feeling great physically, And like, he was, he was really struggling.

Like, there's no, there's no other way to slice it.

Ed, he looked better physically at the end of the year with the Clippers.

It was even like getting offensive rebounds in the Denver Series.

And I actually talked to him in L.A.

He's like, yeah, I feel a lot better.

And so...

I think the, yeah, that was a great trade by the Clippers to get off of

a mistake.

I think man can do some things for Atlanta.

Like he's a good shooter if he has his feet set in the corner.

He can play some D, play with some energy, but the Hawks, the way they're set up right now, they need more creation than he can give them.

And so he's, he wasn't that productive for them.

And he's still got three more years at 15 and a half.

Can we move on to my next team then?

Because that's a nice transition point.

To my next, we just sped by them.

Hey, who's on the team again, team?

The Atlanta Hawks.

Speaking of trades that worked out,

the second DeJounte Murray trade

was like salvation for the Hawks.

Now, they're still out.

The next three drafts, the Spurs still control, including this one

from the first DeJounte Murray trade, which was a mistake.

But the fact that they dug out of it and got, I believe they have a 27 Spurs pick.

No, though they owe the 27.

Sorry, they have a 27 New Orleans or Milwaukee pick, and they have the Lakers pick this year.

And of course, they have Dyson Daniels, who's up for an extension, coming off most improved player.

Um,

without that trade, they're like dead in the water.

I like, and then they fire the GM who made the trade, which is like, I still don't really understand what happened there.

Uh, well, it was because he basically made the initial trade, too, even though Travis Schlenk had the theoretically had the conch that did he, or did the owners make that trade?

It was a combination of the two, basically.

So, yeah, that was kind of where everything went.

They have Clinton Capella, unrestricted free agent.

I'm expecting him to not be on the team next year.

Correct.

Karis Lavert, unrestricted free agent.

I'm expecting him to be back on the team next year.

Correct.

Larry Nance, unrestricted free agent.

I would lean on him being back on the team next year as the backup five to Akangua, who kind of sneakily like broke out in the second half of the season because he'll come cheaper than Capella.

Maybe I think

they want to bring Nance back.

Yes, um,

they liked having him in the locker room, they liked having him as a kind of fifth big.

Um, I'm not sure if they're bringing him back as a rotation guy.

A, I mean, he can't stay healthy enough to be a true rotation guy.

B, they need another big five on that team.

I mean, a conu

akongu was

good in a lot of ways, um, but he's 6'8.

Anytime he's matched up against Towns or one of these big fives, he just kind of gets overwhelmed.

Like they need somebody with true center size on that team.

I agree, and I don't know who that's going to be.

They do have a decent,

even after re-signing, presumably a couple of these guys,

they still will have a decent amount of space below the tax, I think, to get that done.

They also have the same dilemma that

maybe a higher-end version of it that the Kings have with Levine, which is the Trey Young extension dilemma.

Trey Young has a player option for 26, 27 at 49 million.

And

I don't really know what to do with that.

Like, Trey Young is very, very good.

I think Trey Young's actually become underrated.

I think he's really good, a great passer, obviously has massive limitations as a defensive player.

You know, look, over the years, there's been a lot of buzz of do people like playing with Trey Young?

Is he still, is he too ball dominant?

Is he like monopolizing the offense to hunt for assists?

It's like, yeah, he gets a lot of assists, but at the expense of ball movement and cutting and like everyone touching it, he's like the anti-Halliburton in that sense.

Like they get the same amount of assists, but in very dramatically different ways.

And last year, he did just veer a little bit into not a new style, but like enough of getting off the ball, sometimes actually moving off the ball, not just standing near half court.

I think I said on some podcast about a month or two ago, he set more ball screens this season than he did in all of his prior seasons put together, according to tracking data.

Ran more pick and roll, unconventional pick and roll combinations that fit their personnel.

Jalen Johnson, who we should probably talk about as a breakout star-ish player before he got hurt.

Dyson Daniels, inverted pick and rolls, all of it, and just like shifted the Hawks offense just enough to like it's a little different.

Guys are a little more involved, it's a little more unpredictable.

We can sit here and make up fake Trey Young trades,

and I don't know that there will be any great ones.

But I'm going to say this, John Hollinger.

If I'm the GM and I'm not,

first of all, I would be fired immediately, which seems to be the MO, just keep firing people.

Second,

I think I'm keeping it together.

Unless I get a really good offer.

Now, I don't know what the the extension numbers should be, but this team is pretty good.

And the East is so bad that if they kept this team together,

is there a world where they're like the three seed next year?

Yeah, at 42 and 40.

Yeah.

No, I mean, in the East, you could, this could, I mean, if their starting lineup is Trey Young, Dyson Daniels, Reese, Jalen Johnson, Okangu.

That lineup played 16 minutes together last year, by the way.

16.

Okay.

And they have like a decent enough bench with Niang and Mann.

And, you know, they need a backup point guard and a backup five.

I don't know what the Kobe Buffett experience is going to be.

So there are some holes there.

I don't know.

Like, I don't know that I'm going to get an offer for Trey Young that's good enough for me to just be like anything but, hey, like, I think we're pretty good.

Let's keep it together.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think the only Trey Young trade that's going to be out there is like an exchange of problems, like the triangular Trey Young for Lamello Ball for John Morant trade.

You know, something like that.

Bam, vetoed, vetoed by me, commissioner me

i i

you know there had been whispers about san antonio obviously that's not happening anymore

i i don't have a great landing spot for him like could the kings could

they're they're on my list uh so here the kings and the hawks i should have said this during the kings section with subonis

they have these pieces that are just, you know, they're good and they're expensive and no one is super satisfied on either end of it.

But, like, if the Kings trade Sabonis, they need a center, they need to get a center somewhere along the way.

If the Hawks trade Trey Young, they have no point guard left on the team other than Kobe Lufkin.

They need a point guard, and so you have to consider that when you're making up your fake trades, you can't just trade Trey Young for like a bunch of stuff and no point guards, unless you're just tanking and you don't even control your pick to tank.

So, exactly.

In considering that,

um,

there is like a Trey Young from Malik Monk plus DeRosen plus draft assets that at least like I can say Malik Monk is kind of a point guard.

And that's why the Sabonis eight and one kind of made sense to me too.

But

what was your Sacramento?

Like this is two of my crazy, my unpredictable, whatever interesting teams trading with each other, which I thought a lot about.

Yeah.

So Trey Young for Sabonis was the thing I was thinking about.

I thought about Sabonis to Atlanta too to pair with Trey Young, but that's again, it's a very expensive duo that I don't know is going to lead you you anywhere.

But Trey Young for Sabonis.

Okay.

Trey Young with Sabonis would be interesting if the Kings were willing to take a step back.

Right?

Yeah.

What about?

I mean, the obvious ones are Orlando, but I just, that feels like a bigger swing stylistically than the Magic, as starved for offense as they are, are going to be willing to make.

It's less about the talent and even less about the price tag.

Although, a lot of, like, if you're going to have Bancaro and Wagner on Max as a third guy at that level, teams are very reticent to put three of those guys together.

But even stylistically, like, that's almost too big of a swing.

I agree with that.

I tried Miami, you know, with like Rogier and Wiggins and Hakez, and it just becomes unwieldy salary-wise and, you know, apron/slash tax-wise.

I tried Brooklyn with like Claxton and D'Angelo Russell, but it doesn't, just, this doesn't make any sense.

Um, does that, I don't think that I don't think that's what Brooklyn wants to be yet.

Unless Brooklyn had another max guy coming in, you know, if Brooklyn was like getting Giannis and wanted another guy with him or something, yeah.

I mean, that crossed my mind, but that's, you know, just put a pin in it, I guess.

There was some Utah buzz at the Combine, and I think that was bogus.

Uh, you could do like a Sexton Collins draft equity stuff for Utah.

If Utah is just like, oh my God, gut punch, we're picking up.

You're trading John Collins back to Atlanta on the same contract that they tried so hard to get rid of.

And the theory going around was, well, Utah just got this gut punch in the lottery.

They're just looking at another year of being like 14th or whatever in the toughest conference by far.

At what point do they just have to do something, whatever it is, to pair someone with Marketing?

And maybe this is the one that makes sense.

I didn't get the sense that the Jazz were going to be super interested in that.

So I don't know.

I'm out.

That's it for me.

Yeah.

So then you get to, do you extend him

or do you play out the year?

I think you probably

try to get the extension done, but can you do it for less than the max?

That's that's the real question.

Well, that's one to your point.

Like,

and this does not apply to Levine because he's on his third team or whatever and is just not quite the same caliber of player as Trae Young.

That's one, like, if you don't get the extension done, it's not a great sign for the relationship between player and team.

You know, this is a franchise player.

This is a guy you traded Luca for.

This is a guy who led you to the conference finals.

He's beloved in Atlanta.

Everyone does the ice tray shiver thing.

If you don't get that done,

that at least sort of changes the dynamic with Trae Young and the Hawks, don't you think?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It becomes everyone's looking at their watch then.

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Rated R under 17, not admitted without parent.

You want to pick one of your teams?

I only had one team left, and we have talked about them a bit on this podcast, so I don't need to talk.

Yeah, I think Trey is a great segue into the Orlando Magic.

Go do it.

I love it.

Everyone knows, like, I have a soft spot for the weirdo.

offensively challenged Orlando Magic.

Because they

I find it so interesting that they did the Suggs extension the way they did to essentially make themselves a tax team this coming year to try to reduce the hit in the out years when they have Wagner and presumably Boncaro on max deals.

I'm sure there's going to be super max language in Boncaro's extension, so that could end up being even more expensive.

They have four players with team options.

They probably

will decline all four, four, I'm guessing.

And that would be a good idea.

To clarify for everyone, that is Mo Wagner, 11 million, Gary Harris, 7.5 million, Corey Joseph, 3.5 million.

The last two Caleb Houston and Caleb Houston, but Gary Harris and Corey Joseph, like preposterously important in their admittedly injury-ravaged playoff rotation.

And Caleb Houston at 2.2.

So you think they decline all of them?

Actually, they might pick up that option on Joseph because he was he ended up he very quietly

had a really dramatic comeback year, ended up starting for them in the playoffs and kind of deserved to be out there.

Has really kind of reignited his career.

It's kind of a fascinating story that's kind of gone under the radar.

I think what they have to do is try to, they've talked about bringing in some older guys.

I think they're going to cut bait on some of these young guys who haven't worked out as much.

Like, can you trade Cole Anthony and Jet Howard?

That's $18 million in salary.

And like, trade for Anthony Simons, maybe, if you throw in a pick or something and kind of

get a real shot creator

into your offense that way.

Like, I think they understand now they need somebody who could, a point guard who can touch the paint and not have all the shot creation fall on Paolo and Franz.

You think they understand that now?

You think the point has been hammered home to them after

you would hope so.

A thousand straight years of bad offense?

I think that's even more important than the shooting.

So then the question becomes, I mean, Simons is on a good contract at 20 something million for a couple more years, right?

He's got one year after this one, I think.

Is that right?

Yeah, something like that.

I don't know.

I'm not looking at it.

He's expiring this coming season.

Okay, so then one year left at 27.7.

So you probably need to get an extension done in the same transaction.

And so then then you just come into the prop, not problem, but you know, whatever his extension number is, it's not going to be small.

It's not going to be the max, but it's not going to be small.

I mean, Simons is a good player, but like, maybe it's Suggsy, maybe it's a little less than Suggs, maybe it's whatever.

Maybe it's exactly what it makes now.

Simons plus Suggs plus Bancaro plus Wagner, the last two on presumably Max and in Bancaro's case, maybe Super Max-ish deals.

It's a lot of money.

It's four guys making a lot of money,

which is the Suggs Suggs contract is so interesting to me because every time Orlando comes up in like a fake star trade, people say, Well, you can't have Suggs plus Wagner plus Van Carroll plus another super duper expensive guy.

And in my head, I'm like, I kind of think Suggs goes out in all of those trades.

I think that contract is

there partly because Jalen Suggs is awesome when he's available, but also because it's a little bit handy in trades.

I wouldn't assume that Jalen Suggs is on the magic for the next like 10 years.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Sort of, he's, he's sort of there, Jalen, Jalen Green, like a

that does two things at once at that number.

I could see that.

I mean, the thing you did mention, they also have that Wendell Carter extension kicking in, where his salary goes from 10.8 to 18 on the extension.

So that's a tricky one now, too, where they may have

overreached a little on that.

They still have Goga's salary for two more years, which is a nice deal, but it's like if he's not going to play in the playoffs and they're going to be this top-heavy, you can't really have a guy making eight who doesn't play.

So, they that's called the that's called the Zeke Najee effect.

Oh,

do not do not taint Goga that way.

No, sorry, I'm just talking about eight million and doesn't play for a team that's suddenly expensive is hurtful, yes, yes, and uh, and then they

um now they still have all their picks, like they could still do something

big, right?

If they if they wanted to.

I don't know if they have the appetite for it still.

I think they still envision themselves as being a team with Paolo and Franz as the two best players.

But

they, you know, like if they wanted to get in on Giannis, they could they certainly could, right?

If they wanted to do something big like that, again, I don't sense the appetite for that, but they could be a player if they wish to.

Another team that I believe owns

all their picks that we're not going to talk about because I made this as you had to have been in the playoffs or the play-in,

but is kind of cousins to Orlando because of the Jeff Weltman relationship.

I just, I don't know that the Raptors will do anything all that interesting this offseason because they made their big-ish move with the Brandon Ingram trade.

I do think there's a somewhat of an urgency there with an ownership transfer and some some other stuff going on to hit the gas a little bit and try to win games next year and not have another season.

And obviously, injuries totally killed their season and were the reason why they shot themselves in the foot for the last six weeks playing bizarro rotations and essentially losing games on purpose.

But I don't know, just have my eye on them.

Okay, my last team was Cleveland.

Who was your last team?

My last team was

Memphis.

I don't want to talk about Memphis.

I've talked enough about Memphis.

The Cads, I just,

again, we zoomed by them because they lost.

It was not great.

They were banged up.

They lost a heartbreaker in game two and never quite recovered from that against Indiana.

We all know they're expensive.

We all know they have four core guys.

We all know

that

kind of sustaining a team at that level of money is going to be interesting.

So they're even more expensive than I realized.

They are

way over the second apron.

Yeah.

Not way over, but like non-trivial amount over the second apron without re-signing Ty Jerome or Sam Merrill.

And

I don't know that Ty Jerome is even going to be able to come back on a tenable deal.

I think they would like to get Merrill back.

They have a Struce extension conversation they could have if they wanted to and a Dean Wade extension conversation and a DeAndre Hunter extension conversation.

I don't know if they want to do any of those things.

Yeah.

You know, Dan Gilbert spends a ton of money.

They could try to dump a Coro who turns into a pumpkin every playoffs.

I don't know what the price of that would be for a team that already owes all of its draft picks through 2029.

Exactly.

And,

you know, I have a couple of things to say on this.

Number one,

Mobley winning Defensive Player of the Year and/or all NBA and bumping his contract up to 30% of the cap.

Like, it's a huge, huge, huge deal for them.

Yeah.

And it just brings me back to

I continue to prop, I proposed this first in 2018 in a column when

it was very clear that teams were going to, some teams in some situations were going to run away from the Supermax, even with homegrown guys that they drafted, or that if they wanted to keep them, they did so knowing that the contract was going to be a damaging, bad contract.

I continue to think that for at least, at least, and we could think, I need to think it through more, but for you draft a guy

and particularly in the apron era, you draft a guy and he makes the Supermax on your team.

So he's not been traded,

whether it's 30% of the cap for a guy at Mobile Stage or 35% of the cap later ahead of when you would normally get it.

I think there's got to be some tax apron cap relief for that contract.

Now, I don't know exactly, maybe it doesn't count to the tax.

Maybe somehow it doesn't count to the the apron.

I've proposed things like, you know, maybe you get like an extra little mini mid-level exception.

I don't know what the right answer is, but it just feels wrong to me that Evan Mobley making all-NBA and winning defensive player of the year is anything but a massive victory for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It's just something they should be rooting for.

It's something every team that has a player like this should be rooting for.

And now they're just like in this apron jail.

where they can't do anything, right?

They can't, it's like they can't aggregate salaries.

They can't take back more in a trade.

And they're left to at least, I don't know what they're going to do.

I don't think they want to do anything.

I think they love their four players.

I think that's actually smart not to overreact to a second round beating when your roster was a little bit banged up, but, you know, there was trouble.

There was some troubling stuff that happened in that series.

I think acting rashly is

probably a mistake, but

like.

Jared Allen's extension has even kicked in yet when he goes from like 20 million to 30 million in a couple of years.

And Garland, Mitchell, Alan Mobley is just going to be really expensive.

I just,

you know, sit here and if you had to rank, go ahead.

You're allowed to negotiate on these Super Max deals.

Right?

And Mobley's Mobley's third season wasn't amazing.

It wasn't so amazing that it was like, we have to give him everything.

Now,

this is the moral hazard argument that I've heard.

The CADS did set up his contract to only give him 27.5% of the max if he made 13 team all NBA.

They just left the language in for 30% if he made if he won defensive player of the year, which he ended up doing because Victor got hurt.

And he's going to make, I bet he makes second team all NBA, which is being announced later this week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

they did do at least do a little bit to try to protect themselves.

there.

But the other thing they did, to your point, they got under the tax this year at the trade deadline so that they could be expensive the next two years.

I think that was part of their plan, and that they have a two-year window.

You look at the run on Hunters' deal in particular, where he makes 23 and 25.

You're not taking that on unless you had a plan to be expensive.

So, you have two-year run with him, two-year run with Struss at 16.

Okoro is also timed on the same thing, although

they got to figure out how to dump that salary.

I think.

I mean, you can't have 11 million in money that's non-performing in the playoffs on a roster this expensive, especially if you want to bring back Jerome, bring back Merrill.

That's going to involve some hard choices.

Do they have to move off a Dean Wade, maybe,

you know, who's like a movable 6.6?

Or do they have to

also shot poorly in the playoffs?

Yeah.

Or do they have to, you know, do they have to see if Jalen Tyson can move up in the world and take some of those Merrill or Jerome minutes?

That's where it gets tricky.

Because, yeah, because the only other way to trade yourself out of this realistically is to move Garland.

Right.

And I think that feels a little too

big.

I think one of the things that really hurt them in that series was that Garland wasn't 100%.

And so

Mitchell had to be kind of the point guard, which is not really the thing that he is.

And

that hurt them.

And I think you look at that series, there was...

There was definitely shot variants that didn't help them, particularly in game one.

And then the injury issues that hit them, not having mobley hunter or uh garland for game two which they still should have won if not for a horrific collapse at the end so

i i think you're correct i think they they try to run it back live with being really expensive and they've given themselves kind of this two-year window

and then they figure it out but in the meantime

All they're left with is minimums, working the edges, and then they got to see if there's a dumping ground for Okora somewhere.

Maybe you run it back with Okoro and try to dump him at the trade deadline.

You know, you're going to be the advantage of dumping him before the season is that it takes a second apron out of play.

But if you're not going to, if you're not going to be aggregating money or doing the other stuff, then it doesn't matter.

You can trade him during the season.

We went through all the fake Trae Young trades, right?

And I think a lot of the same destinations would apply to Darius Garland, only with more urgency.

Like if I'm Orlando,

that's the guy I'm calling about, and I'm thinking about putting a lot of chips in.

Yes.

Yes.

Now, to your point,

you know, Cleveland in that deal, fake theoretical deal, okay, to be clear, taking back Suggs doesn't really do much for their salary relief and also thrusts Donovan Mitchell into a position where he really is like the sole creator of offense from the perimeter.

Now, I think they'll continue to hand more and more of the offense to Mobley as he gets more experience, but that's a lot on Donovan Mitchell.

And it already feels like in the playoffs every year, it becomes like Donovan Mitchell against the world

for the Cavs.

I would rank, like, if you're going to rank who are they of their core four, who are they most likely to trade in the next two years?

I still think it goes one Allen, two Garland, and then it's just a Grand Canyon-size chasm to the other guys.

I just don't, I don't see them moving Mitchell or Mobley, barring something insane happening.

Even the bill floated the Mobley for Giannis

fake trade, which is illegal by cap rules on its own merits.

It's an interesting one.

It is interesting if you could find a way to actually do it.

I think you could.

You'd have to dump Hunter somewhere in a separate deal, like to Brooklyn or something, and then you could do it.

But

I think Cleveland would even be risk-averse doing that as great as Giannis is.

That's just my read.

If they were going to do something, it would probably involve Allen just because it's three straight playoffs where you just couldn't count on him.

And,

you know, he had the weird rib injury last year.

He turned into a pumpkin against Mitchell Robinson in 23.

And then this year, he just

didn't give him much

in a matchup against a not like hugely imposing Pacers front court where you think he could have eaten a little more.

Now, some of that maybe was that he missed Garland.

You know, he does, he does, he doesn't depend on self-created shots.

So, not having Garland creating for him, I think, did

hurt.

And he's still at an awesome number for one more year at 20 million.

So, like, you can say, okay, you got to move Jared Allen, but what are you realistically getting back that fits in that salary slot?

That's what gets tricky.

But I wonder, as time goes on, Mobley fills out, becomes probably more of a full-time five.

Are you better off trading Jared Allen for somebody who's 6'8?

Well, and again, like the salary, the salary constraints come into play here.

It's both salary constraints and like you won 64 games.

Any trade that is a step back is going to be a very hard pill to swallow.

And I say that because, you know, we know that there's one team.

that is going to be on the hunt for a rim-running center and has like contracts to trade and a draft pick and a swap to trade that they already traded for Mark Williams.

And that's the Lakers.

But I just don't like, what am I taking back in that trade that is interesting to me if I'm Cleveland from like a win-now perspective?

Like the swap and the pick are interesting to me, but like, you know, Maxie Kleba plus Gabe Vincent, I can't even do that.

That's more, that's more money than Jared Allen makes.

Maxie Kleba plus Connect plus another salary is like, or like Gabe Vincent plus Connect.

Or like, I'm not getting

Reeves.

I'm not getting Finney Smith.

And if I'm the Laker, like Hachimura is good.

Hot Shimura is a success story for the Lakers.

They got him on the cheap.

He's a really good player.

I've, you know, I understand that I have this

urgent need for rim protection and a lob threat and all that, but I, I don't,

I don't love Rui plus assets, like plus real draft equity assets for Jared Allen.

And

I don't know.

I mean, there'll be other teams, but they're the obvious one that's going to, that is going, the Lakers are going to get a center come hell or high water i don't know who it's going to be yeah but jared allen is the archetype of a player that i would be looking at if i were them yeah 100 and the lakers issue is that because they only have like five players that

that they can actually trust in a playoff game they can't they they really can't put one of them in a trade for another player Like they just need more real basketball players.

It was so obvious in the Minnesota series, especially, where it's like, wow, the Lakers have three guys who would crack Minnesota's top eight.

So

I think because of that, yeah,

any Laker deal, it has to be like Kleba, Vincent, something like that, Vanderbilt, like that, that has to be the outbound money.

And then they put the picks in to incentivize the trade to get their...

to get their rim runner.

And Kinect, baby.

Remember a month into the season when Kinect was the toast of the town?

oh what a mistake all these 16 other teams made and yeah they're like here the 1700 word inside the story of how the lakers stole dalton connect and then the playoffs come around is like wait is he on the team wait they did wait he practiced for charlotte but he came back right he's still on the team wonder how that practice that's what i want i want the oral history of dalton connect's one practice with the charlotte hornets that's what i want um john wallinger I believe he could only was allowed to witness the practice and could not actually participate in it since the trade.

All right, so I still want the story.

Was he on his phone?

Was he actually paying attention?

What was the conversation with Charles Lee like?

Were they, were they already, was Charles Lee on the whiteboard like J.J.

Reddick was at the draft?

Who's like, oh, I'm so excited I was on the whiteboard during the draft drawing up plays for Dalton Connect that Dalton Kinect turns out won't even remember and I'll have to take him out of the game because he doesn't know what to do.

John Hollinger writes for the athletic.

Everything you write is immediately, I'm dropping whatever I'm doing to read it.

It's the best basketball writing that exists.

Two kinds.

Hollinger Duncan, Nate Duncan podcast once a week.

Once a week, right?

Yes.

I don't say it facetiously, the best to ever do it.

It's great to see you.

It was great to see you at the combine.

You are wearing your commanders gear.

You're just, you're all about the commanders.

It's, it's all happening for you.

And

I will see you.

I'll see you at the finals, probably, right?

Yes, sir.

Let's grab a brewski at the finals.

John Hollinger, everybody.

All right.

That's it for the Zach Lowe Show.

It's Thursday morning.

We will be back on Monday morning.

The Pacers probably will have overcome a 25-point deficit in the last 90 seconds of a game by then, so God only knows what's going to happen over the weekend.

But we will see you on Monday.

And thanks today to on the production crew, Jesse, Chris, Bobby, and Oscar.

See you all on Monday.

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