Luka’s Emotional Night in Dallas: Scenes From Last Night’s Lakers-Mavs Game With Marc Stein. Plus, More NBA Awards With Kirk Goldsberry.

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What's up, everybody?

Coming up on the Zach Lowe Show, we got Mark Stein reflecting on a crazy and emotional night in Dallas with Luka's Antris Return.

And then Kurt Goldsberry, my old buddy, helps me pick some more of the NBA awards.

Hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show on a Thursday morning coming off a wild and

absolutely memorable Wednesday night in the NBA.

We had

beware the Spurs, the late season Spurs, just like they did to the Nuggets last year in a catastrophic loss for Denver that cost them the number one seed and upended their entire playoff run.

The Warriors drop an inexplicable home game to the Spurs.

Going from, hey, we might get the four seed to, uh-oh, we might be in the play-in if we don't get some breaks along the way.

The Suns farted their way out of a fartastic season in Phoenix.

Kevin Durant didn't even play.

He's not eligible for all NBA.

But we have to start with the main event in Dallas, the return of Luka Doncic.

And we are joined by the Hall of Famer, the one and only Steinlein on Substack, podcast for DLLS Sports, one of the greats of all time, my friend Mark Stein.

How are you?

Zach Lowe.

Great to see you, my friend.

I am the least morning person you know, but when the Zach Lowe bat signal hits the phone, you got to figure out

how to show up.

So it's great to be with you, man.

Great to see you and great to be with you.

What a moment last night in Dallas.

A worst case scenario for Nico Harrison and the Mavericks, where

the entire crowd is cheering for Luca.

Luca is, in a way that actually surprised me.

I assume they were showing it on the Jumbotron

when they showed the video of showing his reaction.

He looked legitimately hurt.

I mean, vulnerable and hurt and just naked for the world to see.

Like, like all every part of someone who did not want ever to leave Dallas and was indeed ready to buy a house, as you've you've written in your newsletter, which everybody should subscribe to, and sign on the dotted line for $70 million a year when the Supermax inevitably hit his agents, Bill Duffy's email box.

And

then he goes out and drops 45 points on the Dallas Mavericks while Anthony Davis sort of lopes around looking a little stiff, a little slow, and as he has since he got to Dallas, taking a lot of mid-range jumpers because he's playing a lot of four as we're in year year 10 of somehow still arguing what Anthony Davis' best position is.

All along, the fire Nico chants are raining from all over the arena, so loud and so admissible that even the most polite, positive person in the NBA, Mike Breen, calling the game on ESPN, is forced to acknowledge them multiple times.

Mr.

Stein, you were there.

I saw you in your usual perch there, sitting right behind Rob Polinka, sitting right behind Bill Duffy.

Just, I mean, we saw the game on TV.

So I saw the game on TV.

So I got, I have the scenes that were broadcast to me.

What are you going to remember from that night that you got from sitting in that seat and walking around that arena that I couldn't have got from watching on TV?

What's going to stick out to you?

Just how different it was from any of these occasions of what we expect because, you know, this always happens, right?

Like there are transactions in the offseason, schedule comes out in August.

And what do we do?

We, you know, we circle the return games for, you know, player X switches team.

When's the first time he's going to play his old team?

But like this, Luca coming back to Dallas, it is his city.

The whole world saw it last night.

The levels to which he is loved.

The one certainty we knew last night was.

that he was going to be showered with love, but it was even more love than I was anticipating.

And you said the whole first quarter, I think he had 14 in the first quarter, but honestly, I spent as much time in the first quarter on my phone watching all the clips because, you know, I'm, I'm to the far right of the Lakers bench.

And it was on the jumbo trump, but it's like, I kept, I just could not stop watching the emotion and how hard it hit him.

And I had heard beforehand that, you know, He knew he was going to be emotional, but I think he was even more emotional than he expected.

And yeah, I mean, Trey Young said it as well as anyone.

You watch that

and you know he didn't want to leave.

He did not want to be traded.

He thought he was going to be a Mav for his whole career and

has a level of connection to the city and that franchise that, you know, he's, I think he's still processing the shock of that all being broken.

But then once he got past the emotion, just a maestro

performance of surgical excellence.

I mean, just

he was brilliant.

Yeah, and

to your point about the shock, I'm sure also hurt.

Like a franchise rejected him.

Yeah.

Another for the Hawks already rejected him once.

The Kings rejected him.

The Suns rejected him, but that's all in the rear view before we knew exactly for 100% certainty what this dude is.

The team that knew him best.

rejected him and

sent him packing.

And then, I mean, mean, you know, they've gotten a lot of crap for smearing him and talking bad about him.

I empathize the teeniest degree with them because when you make a trade like this, well, first of all, the easiest thing to do is just not make it.

So you don't have to put yourself in a position in which you have to explain why you made it.

But once you have decided to make it, you then have to explain the inexplicable.

And I'm not really sure how they were supposed to do that without

sort of poking at his warts a little bit from their perspective warts, because if you could, you could say, like, well, we just think Anthony Davis is a great player.

That doesn't explain why you traded away Luka Doncic.

So I empathize a little bit, but you know, look, the negativity is out there.

He's heard it.

He's felt it.

And he was hurt.

Like, that was a pained human being watching that video and blubbering on national television for the entire world to see.

And then he came out and just did what he always does.

Like, if there's one sure thing in the NBA, it's that this dude is going to show up in big moments.

He might miss some shots.

He might not have the most efficient game like in the finals.

He might whine at the referees like he did in game three of the finals as the Celtics got some free fast break points that really annoyed Nico Harrison, I think.

But he is always going to show up and play well and have the courage to take the big shots.

And this game, this game, he played beyond well.

And I actually thought it was striking.

Not a lot of sneering toward the Mavs, or maybe there was some that

I had seen, but there was more.

He was more demonstrative in Los Angeles.

It looked to me that he was in Dallas.

Like, there was not a lot of chest puffing and, you know, kind of rubbing it in the Mav's face, or maybe I missed it.

Was there?

No, I totally agree.

That's, that was exactly, that was another one of the big takeaways that just he was, I think a lot of people expected this outward fury from him.

And, you know, we saw just a hint of it in the game in Los Angeles when he, you know,

yelled in the bench area, but there really wasn't that.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like he was very composed

and measured and surgical in the way he just shredded their defense.

I mean, he forced the Mavs

to play a lot less of the two-big approach in the second half because 31 points by halftime, six threes.

I mean, you know as well as anyone, when Luca's making his three, forget about it.

Like he is pretty much unguardable and just, there was a little bit of chirping.

I remember at Max Christie and, you know, after one late three on a step back, but yeah, I mean, he was not, you know, when he walked off the court, when you know

JJ Reddick left him out there after a timeout, that was awesome, by the way.

I mean, awesome.

Beautiful choreography from JJ.

One thing about JJ,

he's a showman.

He knows how to be a showman.

And so, you know, Luca takes the foul, gets to walk off.

and you know gets his standing ovation he did have to pass where nico harrison was in the tunnel i i would love to know if he did spot Nico Harrison, if, you know, as he was clapping, was there any, you know, only he knows.

But yeah, I mean, there was just no, he didn't, he didn't do it with, you know,

we remember him just, you know, draining the three over goal bear and screaming at, you know, screaming all the way back down court.

You know, there wasn't any of that.

And then he just, he soaked up the love.

31 points in the first half.

LeBron took over in the fourth and he let it happen.

And then he got to tack on that crazy reverse layup, put the game away, put a beautiful bow on it, walk off, get his standing ovation.

And then after he's taken out, the loudest fire Nico chance of the night.

So, I mean, he pretty much

got to,

you know, play out a script that he would have loved had somebody told him how it was going to go beforehand.

I honestly, I feel bad for Nico Harrison's family.

Like, he has kids who have to, like, go to school and deal with this on a day-to-day basis.

Did you talk to him at all?

Did he talk to you?

I mean, obviously, he hasn't done anything on the record, but is he even entertaining backroom conversations?

You know, there have been games where he has been out pre-game and, you know, for just chit-chat.

The only formal interaction with him was the press conference in Cleveland the morning after the trade.

He was in the tunnel the whole game where he always is, but

the fire Nico chants last night were on a level we have not heard.

I mean, four seconds into the game, Lakers go to the line and it starts literally 11.56 on the clock and it's starting.

Yeah, I don't, I don't remember,

you know, I've talked to people around it.

Like,

this isn't going to stop anytime soon.

The volume of it will not be as high as it was last night.

But as long as Luca is awesome, as long as the Lakers are awesome, as long as the Mavericks are kind of middling and they have a better team than this in them, obviously, their best perimeter player is injured and will be injured for much of next season.

And they have a chance this offseason to retool a little bit about what they have.

And their entire roster, including all their centers, have also been injured for much of the Anthony Davis era, such as it is in era.

But as long as the Mavericks are, let's just say, worse than the Lakers, and Luca is amazing, this level of negativity and

fan distrust of the franchise, I don't think is really going anywhere.

And I can't remember anything like this.

This level of

we're not even sure as fans, are we cheering for the team?

We're unhappy.

We want this guy fired.

I don't remember anything like this short of like when a franchise relocates.

I can't find a precedent for this.

Can you?

Yeah, no, it's funny.

I remember early on in this whole saga, Ryan Rossillo brought up Seattle moving.

And

that might be

the best comparison because

in so many of these cases, again, you know, I was a Laker beat writer when Shaquille O'Neal left the Magic Kingdom to come to Hollywood.

I was obviously there when Kevin Durant played in Oklahoma City the first time.

I wasn't actually there.

when LeBron played in Cleveland first time with Miami, but I was covering the league.

But in all these cases, you know, the player always chooses it.

You know, we just, we don't see a team choose this path.

And, you know, my turn, I've been calling it the 77 stages of grief.

And obviously that's because Luca's number is 77, but it's also meant to convey what you just said.

This isn't, there's no closure last night.

This is not over.

It's such a long path back to get to a point where the Mavs are going to be celebrated and embraced.

And I don't know how long it's going to take.

And I don't know what it's going to take, but

the playoffs are coming up here.

The Mavericks have, you know, the Mavericks will be in the play-in.

Do they win one play-in game?

Do they win two?

Do they maybe sneak into the first, you know, they're not beating Oklahoma City without Kyrie Irving.

So let's say in the best case scenario, they win a couple of play-in games.

They're not getting past the first round.

Mavericks fans have to watch Luca now go to the playoffs with the Lakers.

What happens when he has a game like last night in the playoffs?

What happens if the Lakers make a run in these playoffs?

I mean, there is just so much.

I hate to say it because obviously I live in Dallas and I'm surrounded by Mavericks fans.

I'm surrounded by people who love this guy.

I've got a teenager in my own house who is an unabashed Luca Dontich fan.

It's not fun to watch.

what Mavericks fans are going through because

the only trade I can somewhat compare it to, and this is again, a very personal thing: my first year covering the league when Atlanta traded Dominique.

Now, Dominique was much older, 11 years in Atlanta at that point, in his 30s, but Dominique Wilkins was the Hawks, and he was traded to the Clippers in similar fashion without warning when the Hawks were leading the East.

I do think there are some parallels there.

And again, I'm bringing my own biases to this because I covered that firsthand and I cover this firsthand, but there is no, there's, there's no comp.

There, just, there is no comp for this

from your perch

last night you're sitting right behind team luca it's obviously loud but polinka's there i i don't remember the last time i've saw i've seen a gm sit in that kind of seat at a game they gave they really rolled out the red carpet

well there's one you know um Lara Beth Seeger is all was was between Rob Palinka and

she's business manager, right?

Chief brand officer, business manager, and maybe the most influential member of Team Luca.

So obviously she's been in Dallas for a long time, worked very closely with Dirk Nowitzki, worked with Mike Medono.

She's worked very closely with the Cowboys.

And, you know, she, when Mark Cuban was in charge, she was essentially treated as part of the organization.

So I think it's safe to say that it was, you know, her influence that landed them there.

But yeah, I mean, they are right in front of me.

Team Luca's right in front of me.

His dad is across the court.

And yeah, I mean, it's again, there's so many, there was a lot to take in, man.

It was a lot.

Did you talk to them at all?

Did you overhear anything from their conversation?

They did not hide their clapping, cheering.

There's enough distance.

There's a, you know, there's kind of like a main road, main thoroughfare between us.

So you're not close enough to.

you're not close enough.

Are you suggesting I would eavesdrop on their conversation?

Yes.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable assertion from you.

Yeah, no, if I could have, I would have, but I was not, I wasn't that close.

Did

I did see Rob Palinka before the game.

And yeah, I, you know, I, I, the Lakers in general, just anyone you encounter, and after the game, especially, I ran, I spoke to so many people with the Lakers.

A, they were just in awe of the way Luca got past the emotion and then delivered a performance like that, but they're pinching themselves.

They know what they got.

They have a 10-year runway now that they didn't have two months ago.

I mean,

they know.

I was in L.A.

two, three weeks ago when they played the Nuggets.

It was a game that the Nuggets sat everybody.

And I was with a lot of the Lakers heavy hitters before the game.

And

they're like giddy.

They're like teenagers.

They cannot even believe.

the good fortune that has fallen into their lap.

They've fallen into their laps.

They had to work for it and nurture the deal and make sure it didn't fall apart.

I don't mean to imply that they did no work for it, but

they can't believe their luck and their good fortune to have this player on their team.

Did you see any?

Uh,

was security active last night?

Did you see any?

I mean, obviously, the fire Nico chance, the signs, I saw signs, I saw shirts.

They, they, they, did they just take a you know what, this is a night we're just gonna let it fly?

Yeah, because look, I have not been at every home game, and I was actually um one of the games where there were a lot of fan ejections.

I actually wasn't at that one in person, so I I didn't get to experience that first half.

But yeah, you knew last night was going to be a thing where it was arena-wide.

It's one thing when there's two, three, four, five individual fans that, you know, could be, you know, spotted and, you know, I guess dealt with.

But, you know, last night

was, you know,

they weren't going to do anything.

They couldn't do anything.

You know, again, Nico Harrison is in the tunnel between the two benches.

He obviously, that's where he's been watching every game with security.

You know,

outside the arena, there was a lot of security when I got there early.

And, you know, there's like the canine unit.

You don't necessarily, you don't see that on a typical regular season game.

But look, this is a heartbroken fan base.

And

they like.

you

know, you have to live here to understand how beloved Luca is as a player.

And, you know, Disney wouldn't have taken this script.

Like, Dirk Nowitsky plays 21 seasons, the NBA record.

The last season of his career is Luca's first season.

They, he literally passed the torch.

Like,

that does, it just never happens like that.

And Luca,

he's like Dirk's little brother and loved to that level.

And then there's the younger generation of fans, like my son, who didn't get to see Dirk.

I mean, Luca is their Dirk.

I remember the first game the Mavs played

after the trade, and I just parked my car.

And the first thing I saw was a family of four,

two young children jumping out of the back seat, and they're both wearing Luca jerseys, and Luca's not there anymore.

And it's like, you realize every kid in this city, Luca is their favorite player.

I mean, there is no cowboy that comes close to him.

Like, it's just, it's

pain, man.

It's pain.

You've written a lot about the pain.

You've written a lot about the gradual erosion of the Luka Donczich

support system within the Mavericks organization,

including Mark Cuban selling the team and ultimately losing control of the team and Casey Smith, the head trainers,

unceremonious departure, and many other little, little, little drops of like, ooh, ooh, ooh.

I haven't seen as much about, and I'm curious if you have any intel.

There hasn't been a lot about what was the level of debate within,

if at all, within the organization?

Because there was this narrative that, well, nobody knew.

Even Jason Kidd didn't know until the midnight hour.

Mark Cuban was obviously on the outside, was told at the last minute.

Was it actually this unilateral, or

was there an opportunity for anyone within the organization to push back and say, hey, whoa?

I mean, other than Patrick Dumont at the end?

I've heard that there was

some level of pushback.

Me too.

That's why I'm asking.

Within the Nico Harrison cabinet, but none of it strong enough to stop this.

And,

you know, one of the things I wrote about, you know, at the start of this week, Sunday and Monday, I put out, you know, a two-part, I've written like six deep dives on the trade already.

And, you know,

I don't think.

every single one of my readers love it.

I'm sure there is some level of fatigue, but it's like my, my answer to that is this is the craziest trade in nba history and i'm uniquely placed to cover it i'm going to keep covering it like i i think any nba fan is fascinated by the dynamics here because again you never see a 25 year old generational talent who is not asking to be traded get traded so i do think there was some level of debate within those walls.

The exact extent, I can't sit here and tell you that I know exactly.

but

one of the big things I wrote about in Sunday's piece was

Nico Harrison, in a very short time after the sale, he amassed just an amazing amount of power and control.

Mark Cuban said he was going to have basketball control.

There was, I'm sure you were skeptical when you heard that.

Everybody.

There was tons of skepticism around the league.

But there's a difference between, you know, okay, so maybe

you don't believe that, but I never imagined that he would be pushed completely to the side where Patrick Dumont doesn't even run this past him.

And to me, Patrick Dumont has, he bears a huge responsibility in this because basically this is the trade Nico wanted.

And Patrick Dumont approved it with no NBA network to run this past anyone.

He did not, they didn't tell Cuban beforehand.

He didn't even ask Dirk Nowitzki.

Like to me, pick up the phone and at least you, you do have a relationship with Dirk if you're Patrick Dumont.

But that was Patrick Dumont's NBA network after a year was Cuban and Dirk.

And that's pretty much it.

Ask Dirk Nowitzki.

You know, get a second opinion from somewhere.

I think all NBA owners have a level of counsel, you know, outside of their own walls.

Like it's just.

Again, I've been writing and talking about nothing else for two months and change, and I remain as in disbelief as anyone.

He's just, I'm not going to sit here and say he has no flaws, but

with a talent like that, whatever the flaws and issues are, you run out every single ground ball trying to fix it.

Did the Mavs do that?

I don't think they can make that claim.

No, you know how I know they didn't because he plays for the Lakers now.

Yeah.

Look, I think.

We're two months distant from this now.

There was the whirlwind of crazy conspiracy theories that filled this void of a rational explanation.

Those have fallen by the wayside.

And I think

all along I've said this, I think the simplest explanation is the actual explanation, which is Nico Harrison just didn't think Luka Doncic was his kind of superstar.

He wasn't a Kobe Bryant kind of superstar.

He didn't fit his mold of how a superstar is supposed to conduct himself on and off the court to the standard, the incredibly high standard that flowed down from Nico Harrison's relationship with Kobe Bryant.

And

there are two ands.

And number one is and was about to cycle onto the biggest contract in the history of the NBA, which only the Mavericks could offer him.

That was their own sort of golden handcuffs.

And he was injured.

And the injury perhaps made the Mavericks think: we have a window right now with Kyrie Irving.

We're not sure that this guy is going to be healthy enough to fulfill that window.

Let's trade him for a superstar who fits that window and

like win, try to win immediately.

Now, I have already said

that doesn't pass my personal smell test because

Luka Doncic is better than Anthony Davis.

You were just in the NBA finals with Luka Doncic winning Western Conference Finals MVP.

You were just in the conference finals two seasons ago with Luka Doncic as the best player on a completely inferior team to the one that made the finals last year, which you brought the entirety of essentially back for this year.

And yes, when they were healthy at the beginning of the year, this part of the season is the one that has just been lost to history because so much has happened and they weren't healthy that often.

They looked every bit the kind of team ready to give it an honest run back and defend their Western Conference championship.

They looked awesome when they were healthy with Kyrie and Luca and everything that they had amassed in PJ Washington and Gafford and all of that.

And then they just sort of lit it on fire.

And the idea that, so I reject the idea that even in the short term, this would have increased their championship equity.

I totally disagree.

And even if you posit that it's the same-ish,

the reduction in your long-term championship equity is so catastrophic and leaves you so vulnerable to a short-term wave of injuries, which has now happened and vaporized this season and maybe vaporized next season.

That I still can't believe this trade happened.

And that said,

and this gets back to the specific return that they sought out.

You can find people, and you know this as well as I do, you can find people around the league on other teams, smart people, smart front office people, smart scouts, who will say, even now, even in the light of day, even with the 45-point performance in bed, will say,

it's not crazy that Nico Harrison decided, I'm not sure that we want to be in the business of paying Luka Doncic $70 million a year.

Like, let's see what we can get for him.

What's really crazy, what the real issue that these people have, and this is the crux of it, is

just not shopping him around the league and seeing what the real return could be.

What are the Nets going to give us?

What are the Rockets going to give us?

What are these?

Can we get nine first-round picks?

Now, I wouldn't, I don't even have gone that far.

Like, I just wouldn't trade Luca Dante.

That would be my hot take on being a GM.

Just I wouldn't trade him.

But you can find people who would say, entertaining, it's not crazy given his off-court habits and this and that.

But the return is just what it is.

And now they're just left.

This is a morose fan base now.

And I do think we can spin it forward.

And like, there's a good team in here when Kyrie Irving, if and when Kyrie Irving returns healthy, they're big, they're nasty, they're talented.

They have potentially three first-round picks to trade.

Their pick this draft, the Lakers pick they got for Luca and their 2031 pick, they also owe some draft assets we can talk about.

Where do you think they go from here?

Like, is it, how do you, I don't even, like, Kyrie has a player option next season he could opt in and extend he could opt out and sign a long-term deal pj washington's extension eligible there's going to be kevin durant talk i'm not sure how realistic that is especially given the unknown of is kyrie coming back next season what condition is he going to be in where is what where do we go from here mark i i

the kevin durant interest to me has been described as overstated i've heard him i don't know that they're really trying to build a three-star construction so

I think they want a healthy Kyrie and a healthy AD to be the two-star foundation.

But look, you covered a lot of ground there.

And it's like

they had options that they didn't take.

I actually understood if Anthony Davis is the guy you want.

and you feel like you have to keep this secret and you don't want to shop him because you're worried that you're going to lose Luca if nothing happens, you know, if the trade falls through and now you you have an unhappy superstar.

I actually understood that part, but if you're going to deal with the Lakers,

if you're only going to deal with the Lakers, you have to get everything they have.

And if the Lakers say, we can't give you Austin Reeves for whatever reason, we can't give you both our first round picks for whatever reason, then you have to hang up the phone and believe.

If you guys had a close enough relationship to keep this thing secret to this point, the Lakers wouldn't have wanted it to come out that they had these talks.

If the trade falls apart, they have to glue it back together with Anthony Davis.

They would have been just as incentivized to keep the fact that this was ever discussed secret.

Genie Buss spoke at length on the Rich Eisen show about how we had to keep this thing secret because it can destroy your team if it gets out.

So, the Mavericks could have walked away when the Lakers didn't give them everything.

But, more to your point, give him the Super Max.

If you want to trade him,

sign him to the Super Max and then hold your auction.

And then he is signed forever.

Every team in the league would then inquire, bid, see if they can get involved.

And

teams wouldn't have the

flight risk is gone.

You know, we've seen it.

We've seen Damian Lillard and Kevin Durant.

You know, Kevin Durant after major injury.

We've seen Lillard on a Supermax.

what he you know all the all the talk was well he what if he what if he has breakdowns like embi'd what if he has an injury history like Kawhi Leonard?

You know, look at the other examples.

At the worst, sign him to the Supermax and then trade him from a position of strength.

I think that's, to me,

that would, if you're determined to do this, that's the move.

But obviously,

I'm with you.

Like, you just, he's too good to trade.

Like, we're reaching to try to make, he is too young and too good to trade.

And if there are issues, if there are problems, try harder to fix them.

Do not trade him.

What do you think happens with Kyrie Irving this summer contractually?

I mean, the injury obviously makes it much more complicated.

Without the injury, I mean, he had a massive amount of leverage.

And I think he still has quite a bit of leverage because as you saw, I mean, you know.

AD's performance, I think we do have to factor in that the Lakers doubled him pretty strongly.

And he's returning from injury still.

And

the Mavs, the Mavs have no guard play.

Like last night, Spencer Dinwiddie, who's led them in minutes this season, that was not the plan for Spencer Dinwiddie to lead this team in minutes.

He leads them in minutes played.

Last time I looked, I mean, it might have changed, I guess, in the last two, three days, but at last check.

They took Spencer Dinwiddie out of the starting lineup.

Najee Marshall was their only source of playmaking.

They have no guards.

Like as we're taping this, this is the magical date of April 10th when the Mavs finally get to convert Brandon Williams from a two-way

standard conduct.

That kid's got some juice, man.

He's been great.

He's been fantastic.

And, you know,

they are, they can't wait to get him back because, you know, he ran out of games.

He played too many games on his two-way.

So they had no playmaking whatsoever last night.

I mean,

their big worry last night going into the game, beyond the fact that what is Luca going to do to us in this revenge scenario is can we get the ball to AD?

Can we get the ball across half court and make an entry pass to him?

I mean, with the personnel they have right now, so look, they desperately need Kyrie Irving.

I think he's going to be re-signed.

You know, is it, you know, what the deal looks like?

It's too early in the day to project that, but Kyrie Irving's been very happy in Dallas.

And,

you know, I don't, I can't sit here and say I have a, you know, a 100% solid pulse on it, but everything we've seen from Kyrie Irving suggests that he wants to be here, wants to stay.

And I mean, they badly need him.

I mean, they badly miss him.

I guess, you know, you could ask the what if, if Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis were healthy post-trade,

how much lower, how much would the noise be reduced because they would still be a competitive team?

I mean, that's the other thing is the trade is the trade.

Separate from that, there have been so many injuries and so many own goals, just so many mistakes in terms of messaging what they've done.

Like it's just been one disaster after another.

And that's, that's what led to last night, where you hear, you know, fans rooting for a guy on the other team and fire Nico chance every every dead ball.

Well, look, if If they had done nothing and a similar wave of injuries had struck this theoretical intact Mavericks team,

you could have just said, you know, look, shit happens.

Lucas 25, 26.

We got a long runway here.

Trade happens.

And as I've said many times, same wave of injuries happens.

And

you look at the age of the team and the age of the players.

They're not ancient, but they're not 25 and 26.

And you're like,

We can't afford to lose a season like this, and we can't afford to lose next season.

The clock is ticking and ticking very loudly.

I've heard a little bit of the same pushback on Durant, just the idea that we'd have to think pretty hard about boxing ourselves into three huge salaries like that, given how many players we'd have to trade to make it work, how many guys like Peter

are extension eligible.

They also,

you know, look, how many of your future firsts do you actually want to trade?

Because you're already out your 29 pick from the Kyrie deal.

You're already out a 28 swap to Oklahoma City, which helped you get the pick that you traded for Gafford.

You're already out a 27 top two protected pick, which was to Charlotte for PJ Washington.

And so you're vulnerable.

You're vulnerable to like.

Don't forget that 2030 swap with San Antonio

in the Grant Williams.

That's the thing.

They can't start over because, yes, they do have three first-round picks, but from 27 to 30, they don't control their pick.

And you can't start over.

You know who was the insurance against the worst case Brooklyn Net scenario?

Luka Doncic, who is now serving as that same exact insurance currency for the Lakers, who showed in the Mark Williams trade that never was.

Yeah, we're going to be aggressive throwing out our future draft picks because we feel safe and insulated from a worst-case disaster like the Brooklyn Nets had with Boston because we have Luka Doncic on our team.

And now it's just crazy.

Any parting thoughts on this?

Well, and you said it too, you know, that they were 14 and three before Luka got hurt on Christmas.

And

this is the best team they've ever put around him.

And it's like,

we just, we, we, you know, we

made, they made the finals.

They made the finals.

Nothing about that run was fluky, by the way.

I didn't come through any of those series being like, oh, they just got some breaks.

They got the right matchup.

Luck.

This guy got injured.

That guy.

They beat those teams.

They beat them.

They ran into the best team in the NBA.

They did not play particularly well.

Kyrie also did not play particularly well in that series.

Game three is the game that luca fouled out and was barking at the refs the whole game it's the game wendy went on that night and trashed him on national tv and said he's this bad habits and this and that that's all like you still were in the finals you lost to the celtics and you're and and you're taking that much significance from it i i just

can we talk about and that's the thing the celtics

The Celtics are dynamic offensively and defensively.

Like the Mavs,

they beat 350-win teams to get there.

And that's another thing that, you know, they became a good defense last year after the trades.

They were good enough defensively, but

super dynamic offensively in this new construction where, you know, one of the justifications for the trade was defense wins championships.

You know, AD wants to play with a center.

Well, here in Dallas, he's got either lively or Gafford.

This team's going to be a defensive monster.

But who's winning in today's NBA if you're not dynamic offensively?

You have to be dynamic at that end as well.

And

I mean, the Mavs have a long way to go to get back to dynamic offensively without 77.

Well, look, I mean, again, a lineup of like Kyrie Clay, who's probably looking around like, what happened?

How did I end up?

How did I end up here?

And the Warriors are awesome.

The Warriors lost the Spurs, but the Warriors are awesome.

Okay.

Kyrie, Clay, PJ, Washington, Davis, Lively.

one of the one one of the things though is that like their three-point shooting rate has gone way down since the trade like

that's something else they have to address obviously they need playmaking they need guards and they need kyrie but who's winning in this league without three-point shooting i mean and

outside of clay

they're missing that right now too i mean so they have so many structural issues to address.

Any quick thoughts on the Nuggets situation?

I know you wrote a little bit about it yesterday.

I did a podcast about it, but they won their first game last night against the Kings.

They were, by their standards, flying around on defense.

And again, I think the messaging is real.

The Nuggets concluded this was not worth it.

I mean,

I've talked all already about the Cold War between Calvin Booth and Michael Malone, which was really not even cold.

It was pretty scorching hot and how that had filtered down within the organization.

But I think separate from that,

I think the brain there concluded.

Like Michael Malone's message just isn't resonating anymore.

And we have to turn this around now or we're going to waste this particular season.

And we still think it's actually salvageable.

What do you think is going on there?

Well, I'm a history nerd, as you know.

So I'm just fascinated by the timing aspect of it.

Because, look, Josh Cronky has basically come out and said

we had decided we were firing both Michael Malone and Calvin Booth at season end.

So they're doing it now in the hope that, okay, three games left in the season.

Can this spark some sort of salvage the season urgency from the players?

Because the season's, the season's gone.

I mean, you know, they, Yokich is playing the best basketball of his life, but there are so many other issues and holes around him.

Even he cannot cover all the issues, you know, fix all the ills and offset all the issues that this team has.

But it's just,

I did the research on this.

Kirthika Uthia Kumar in Toronto, just an incredible researcher.

She helped me with it because, you know, there's not, there isn't great,

you just don't have great databases for coaching stuff in the NBA.

So she had to do a lot of this research manually and found like

before Taylor Jenkins, no team in NBA history,

no team in NBA history with a winning record had fired its coach with less than 10 games to go

technically ever.

Now, there is an asterisk here.

Larry Brown leaving the Nets in 83 was treated as a resignation.

And it actually didn't come up in the initial research because when you read about it in the New York Times article from 40 plus years ago, or you check on basketball reference, it's listed as a resignation.

But basically, the Nets in 83 fired Larry Brown at the end of the season because he had secretly negotiated to go to Kansas.

It was, you you know, he had plotted his move to Kansas, was going back to college, and so they fired him with six games to go.

That's it.

Taylor Jenkins, the first coach fired since then by a winning team with nine games to go.

And now Denver does it with three games to go.

And they fire both Malone and Calvin Booth.

And it's just, you never see this.

We never see this in the NBA teams with winning records making coaching changes this late in the season.

So it just, it's, it's a really, really, you know, that's a whole nother podcast in itself.

And we have, we have some breaking news about this from your old buddy Chris Haynes, your old podcast partner.

Yeah.

Josh Cronke will serve as interim president of Basque Operations with assistance from front office personnel in Ben Tenzer and Tommy Balchettis.

Ben Tenzer, for people who don't know, has been the Nuggets cap guy, among other things, for a long, long time.

And Tommy's been their assistant GM for a long, long time.

They're inner circle Nuggets people.

There will be a thorough GM search is expected in the offseason, Chris Haynes says.

Also says that Cronky met with the team prior to shootaround on Wednesday.

I heard separately that there was a players-only meeting at some point after the decision had been made for the players to sort of talk through everything.

So we'll see, but that's where we are

with the Nuggets.

Just a wild.

I mean, we're supposed to say that

nothing can shock you after the Luka trade, and that is mostly true.

But coaching changes this late in the game, I do think,

are pretty damn stunning.

Mark Stein,

where can people find you and subscribe?

I'm a subscriber, but I subscribed so long ago, I just clicked the button at some point and paid you money.

How can people do this?

So I appreciate that.

So my sub stack, the Stein Line, I've got Jake Fisher writing twice a week for me as well.

So six, seven times a week, sign up at the Stein Line and you will get NBA, Intel, analysis, history, power rankings, all kinds kinds of stuff right to your inbox.

And then with the Great All City Network, I'm podding six times a week with DLS and all the other channels in the network, the All NBA show with Adam Mades.

So

lots going on.

Six times a week.

My God.

Yeah, man.

We got, you know, five.

There's my five math shows a week, and then I got to jump on all NBA.

And it's amazing, though.

Every, you know, there are five cities in the network: Philly, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, Dallas.

All these teams have just met with just chaos this season and torture.

And, you know, every fan, you know, Philly, they think, you know, their fans think this was the worst season ever.

Phoenix, this was the worst season ever.

Dallas, this was the worst season ever.

Denver just saw its coach and GM fired with three games to go.

It is

wild times, man.

It might be a long time before we see a three-team nexus of hell

anywhere near what Philly, Phoenix, and Dallas have experienced this season relative to expectations.

Chicago, hey,

won the player.

Player, look it up.

Won the player, Josh Kitty.

Yeah, Josh Kitty, look, I mean, I didn't hate that trade for them as much as everybody else did.

And I actually, I remember saying, like, there's going to be a month where he's averaging 20, 10, and 10.

And people are going, oh.

Okay, look, I get what they're doing here.

I don't know how far it ultimately leads, but he's playing with a new ferocity and physicality that has really unlocked a lot of their game.

They're fun to watch, and they ran, well, the Heat made a rally last night, but they ran the Heat almost out of the building for parts of that game in the play-in bowl and moved the game ahead of the Heat.

So we'll see how that works out.

Markstein,

great to see you, buddy.

I'll see you soon somewhere along the NBA trail.

Look forward to it, my friend.

Always good to reconnect.

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All right, time for part two.

Now that Leukamania is done with for now, and joining me is an old friend, so old.

We go back to my days at SI.com.

He's got the Grantland hoodie on today.

The other KG, Kurt Goldsbury, how are you, sir?

I am well.

This is a fantastic honor and one of the best podcast appearances of my career, Zach.

I couldn't be happier that we're working together for a third time.

And I think this is a good time to tell people publicly.

I don't know if people know how instrumental you were in those SI days of getting my work out there.

And then once you landed at Grantland, helping me get a shot at Grantland.

So thank you for that.

And it's great to have you back, buddy.

The hoodie both makes me happy and sad because it took me a long time to get the Grantland hoodie since

I was the East Coast Grantland representative.

So when there was merchandise in L.A., I just didn't get it.

And I finally got it, and I was sitting around a fire pit like a year and a half ago, and I could see, there might have been alcohol involved.

I could see an ember floating at me.

And

it was like in the movies,

slow motion.

No!

I tried to leap out of the way, and I couldn't get there.

And now there's a little hole in like the chest of my Grantland hoodie that I just don't know what to do with.

It's hard.

It's not like they're making any more of those.

Yeah, I wish I had taken better care of some of the other stuff.

The Grantland Quarterlies, I foolishly lost those.

I mean, hand up.

What an idiot.

But yeah, dude, at least we got what we got, okay?

And we're old, like you said.

Take what we can get.

And again, shout out to the podfather for putting us together once again.

This is great.

All right, it's awards time.

I already went through my tentative all-NBA, MVP, although I still need to finalize those.

I thought I would do some fun ones with you.

We're going to do the rookies, six-man, and coach.

Are you ready, Mr.

Goldsberry?

I am totally ready, Zach Lowe.

I put a lot of thought into my all-rookie teams.

Second team all-rookie, as always,

some deep cuts in second-team all-rookie.

However, I'm very happy with where I ended.

I'm satisfied with where I ended up.

It does make me sad that we have the same amount of teams for rookies, and there's obviously a very limited pool of rookies.

It's first-year players.

That's it.

I think there's only, I have my basketball reference search.

Only 26 rookies played over 800 minutes, I think is what I have this year.

So, like, you know, not that many players.

And also, to all defense teams for all the defenders in the entire NBA.

And like, I'm sorry, Tumani Kamara and Derek White and maybe Bam Autobio.

Like I can't, if there were a third team, I would love to honor some of you,

but I can't.

But I'm very happy with my all-rookie teams.

We have not reviewed these with each other.

I'm going to predict we go nine out of 10.

And we have the same first team and one difference on the second team.

And I have no idea which it is.

So I want you to kick it off.

Give me your first team all-rookie, and at the end of this, we will do rookie of the year.

Yeah, I'm going to go in a sequence that's going to throw off our rookie of the year discussion.

I don't want to give it away by saying some name first.

So I'm going to go Sar

Wells

Edie Resachet Castle.

First team all-rookie.

Right off the bat, I was incorrect.

We are not five for five on the first team.

Who do you think you have on your first team that I do not have on my first team?

Because we are four out of five.

Sar.

Sar.

Alex Sarr is on my second team.

Can you guess who I have in his place?

And I did not even think about it that hard.

Khalil Ware.

Yes.

Okay, so at least we're on the same page there.

So we both have Castle, Wells, Risachet, Edie.

I feel really good with Khalil Ware.

He is number two in player efficiency rating, nine points a game, shooting 63% on twos.

Obviously,

his efficiency edge over Saar is cataclysmically large and due in large part to his role and his team.

He is, however, outshooting Saar on threes, which I think matters.

And I just feel like he's been better and he's played in real meaningful games.

But make the case for Alexander Saar, who is on my second team all-rookie.

And I'm going to say nice things about him eventually.

I promise, Wiz fans, if there are any of you left other than Joe House, I promise I will say some nice things.

Yeah, I like this kid.

I think Tsar is going to be

a great player in this league for a long time.

I think the Wizards should be happy with him.

I'm not mad at the Kalelware take.

That was the one I struggled with.

You can make an argument that a player playing on a team like Washington should be sort of docked because there are stats to be had.

What do we call it?

Good player, bad team guy.

For sure.

I just think, you know,

he is what we thought he was.

This is a good rookie year for one of the top players in the draft, a weak draft.

And I think that he is set up for long-term success at his position.

And I don't know what else he could have really done in that environment this year

to get noticed.

But Zach, I'm not mad.

In fact,

yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

I'm not mad, but I have SAR there.

I have SAR there.

13 points a game.

That's second among rookies.

40% 40% shooting, you are willing to forgive because he's taking so many threes.

31% on threes is like bad, but it's actually not that bad considering he's a rookie, he's a center, and he plays for a team that's intentionally trying to lose basketball games.

And

here's like you, like all the advanced stats are going to hate rookies like Sarr who take a lot of shots on bad teams.

They're just going to, they're going to look bad.

He has passed every eye test to me as a rookie, and particularly on a team where he's got mostly young players in Jordan Poole setting him up on offense and

frankly, like leaving him out to dry sometimes on defense.

As a rim protector, look, he's not great.

No one should expect him to be great right out of the bat, but I've seen enough in terms of his speed, his agility, his timing to like, okay, that's going to be there.

The jump shot looks fine to me for a seven-foot rookie to shoot 31% from three on high volume on a team that doesn't really bend the opposing defense so much, I like that.

You know what else I like?

Two and a half assists a game

as a rookie center on a bad team.

Like the DHO game from the elbows, he's picking out cutters.

He can bring the ball up and transition some.

I mean, you don't want to overdo that, but you know, he can do it.

The all-around skill is there.

And if you want to reward him with first team, now I don't think top three in rookie of the year, I could get there, but if you want to reward him first team and say, look, the efficiency stats are what they are.

the shooting stats are what they are, look at the roster around him.

I can't really get mad at that because, again, he has passed the eye test to me.

I think

this is going to end up being a good draft pick for the Washington Wizards.

He was sort of viewed as a both consensus top three pick and a like, ooh, this could go really badly if it busts pick.

This is not going to be a bust.

Alex Starr is going to be a good player.

Yeah, and one other thing, he is a full year younger than Khalel Ware, and I wouldn't factor that into voting, but I would factor that into the analysis of the player.

You know,

the rookie awards are for rookies.

It doesn't matter if you're 19 or 22 or whatever.

So I'm not saying that.

But at his age, these numbers are equally encouraging.

And essentially, he'll be the same age as Khalel.

next year in his sophomore year.

And I think that's really relevant because I expect him to be a much better shooter like a lot of these young players you alluded to.

And if they can get some better playmaking and some better offensive threats and gravity on that team,

I could see a lot of his numbers going up.

And the passing I had circled too, I think classic sort of European big.

That's an area to grow to.

I like this player and I like this pick.

No disrespect to Khalil Ware.

That's the exact place on this list that I struggled to.

Honestly, the most important question for the Wizards this entire season, well, the most important one is, how does the lottery end?

The second most important one is, do we come out of the season feeling like we have a stretch five, that we can be a team built in the vision of five-out offense with rim protection on defense and even playmaking at the 5-2?

And the answer, I think, is yes.

Going forward, you can assume that.

And that's a huge win for the Wiz.

Before we get to the second team, do you have any other Wizards rookies on your second team?

Did either of the two candidates make your cut?

Yes.

Oh, wow, we're going to be way different than

I anticipated because I had neither Bub Carrington nor

Keyshawn George on my second team.

You had Bub?

You gave Bub the volume award?

Yeah.

I gave Bub, again, again, he probably benefits.

And one of the things that is weird with the rules, with the games, and some of this stuff is like the Wizards have space to showcase these rookies.

And some of the teams, some of these guys are penalized for getting drafted on more competent teams with deeper rosters.

Ultimately, I landed with Bub Carrington on my second team.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

It's tough out there, dude.

This draft, this draft, there's not a lot of differentiators.

Last year, I was looking back, who do we have?

Wemby, Brandon Miller, Chet?

I mean, it's a different group, dude.

Well, and it, it's...

Second team, I mean, you could talk me into 18 guys almost.

It's like, like I have a, I have an almost others receiving votes list that's quite long, but I'm going to talk about who my missed cuts were.

So I did not have Keyshawn George or Bub Carrington on my second team.

So just take, let's just go through your second team now.

So Carrington, Ware, who are the other three?

Call your Missy Klingon.

Wow,

we're not.

Dude, I don't know why you expected this to coalesce.

This is chaos on this list.

I was just really happy with my team.

Now you have me.

Don't keep our new listeners waiting.

Well, okay, so you have, hold on.

You have Ware, Carrington, Isaiah Collier from the Jazz.

Yeah, Missy.

Donovan Klingen and Eves Missy.

Yeah.

Okay, we're actually not that far off.

My second team is Eves Missy from the Pelicans, Donovan Klingen, who I think is going to be a controversial choice, which we can talk about why.

I have Matas Buzelis from the Bulls, Saar, and I went with the other jazz rookie, Kyle Filipowski, over Collier.

And I realize Collier has become kind of a choice du jour.

He leads all rookies in assists.

He is definitely on an upward trajectory.

The first two months of the season were just a haze of turnovers in every possible direction of every variety.

And he's kind of settled in now.

The assisted turnover ratio is trending the right way.

He's averaging almost 10 points a game.

The shooting numbers, he's up to 50% on twos, 24.9% on threes.

Like,

I don't hate it.

The advanced stats are massively negative on him, primarily because he has the highest turnover rate among rookies by a mile.

I went Philipowski, who's played 400 fewer minutes.

I get it.

Same amount of points.

I just like...

50% shooting, 60% on twos, 35.5% on threes.

And for his position, he's as good of a passer as Collier, probably.

Maybe not quite, but two assists a game, and he's a very good facilitator if you watch the games.

You know, his minutes, like Collier's gotten the more consistent minutes, and Filipowski's minutes and position have fluctuated a lot.

I just think he's been pretty interesting, and I went with him over Collier.

I have a feeling Collier will make it.

I assume it's just the playmaking and the size and stoutness that got Collier on there for you.

Yeah, I like this future better.

I think he's been a little more explosive at times.

I think he's more congruent with the way the league is.

Some of his highlight plays have stuck out to me, but it's really hard to evaluate these players in these environments.

Again, I think one of the biggest problems in the NBA right now, we would agree, is this competitive thing

at the end of seasons and in some cases throughout the season.

And for me, it's really hard to evaluate players in an ecosystem where teams may or not be putting their best foot forward.

It's really, I think,

relevant to the Memphis players who deserve credit for playing meaningful minutes as rookies in really meaningful games.

I think it's a case we'll talk about.

I think both Jalen Wells and Zach Eady have straight-up rookie of the year cases to be made.

And I've had a lot of people in the league, I've polled them, who the hell should I vote for for rookie of the year?

I don't have a vote, to be clear, but who should I pick?

A lot of them picked Wells, and not surprisingly.

And by the way, we're coming off a horrific fall last night that Jalen Wells took against the Hornets.

The photos from the hospital look like he got, I mean, he broke his wrist, I think.

Just get well, Jalen Wells.

That was very, very scary.

One of the scariest falls I've seen in pro basketball in my life.

A terrifying moment.

Prayers up to him and his family.

But out of respect, those Grizzlies characters, they had to play meaningful minutes against Western Conference opponents, and they're trying to win basketball games.

And I wish I didn't have to say this, but when we're talking about players from the Jazz or the Wizards, it's simply not the same conversation.

How do you evaluate players in this environment?

And I think like Wells is a great example, defending.

you know, really good players on the other team very well in meaningful moments.

Like Zach Eady coming out there, getting big rebounds, making big plays in big moments.

I think Rishoche has a little bit of that claim too.

So ultimately, I really struggle with the second team all-rookie because it stacks with candidates from these environments, Zach.

Let's go through my honorable mentions, and I'm going to focus on the ones I feel guiltiest about.

I really like Keyshawn George for the Wizards.

I think he's got a chance to be a good role player in the NBA.

Maybe I should just pigeonhole him as a role player, but you know what I'm getting at.

It's a sort of 3D-ish template.

32% on threes, I'd like to see a little better, but I like the instinctual nature of his game.

I like the way he plays.

Ron Holland.

You know, the minutes just haven't been there.

1,200 minutes on a team that's obviously trying to win and winning.

And, you know, sometimes he's really on the fringes of the rotation, but trending the right way toward the end of the season.

And you know one thing when he gets in the game.

He's going to defend.

You're laughing because

you think I'm going to say an altercation goes up.

The likelihood of an altercation goes up by 14%.

Maybe, maybe, maybe 17%.

I don't know.

You know, he's going to defend his ass off, and he's a playmaker on defense.

He will take the ball from people.

He'll challenge people at the rim.

He changes the energy of the game in a good way for the Pistons.

He gets him out and running.

I just, I haven't seen quite enough, and the three-point shot is like a complete zero for him at this point.

But I like him.

We should mention that Jared McCain would have changed this entire discussion if he'd been healthy.

I like Justin Edwards.

I think he's come on nicely for the Sixers, Sixers, but it's just, again,

it was a lot of it late in the season.

Jamal Shedd was maybe

my toughest other omission for the Raptors.

He's played pretty well for them, particularly defensively.

He's a good passer.

He's a hound on defense.

I just, you know, couldn't get past, it's just 1,300 minutes on a...

tanking team is just not that I'd like to see more minutes from a player of that ilk those are my those are my I felt somewhat bad.

It's amazing that after all the hype, after all the, oh man, all those 16 teams, what idiots they are, Dalton Connect fell into our lap.

All the victory lap stories in the media that came out a month into the season, Dalton Connect's not going to sniff this conversation.

Maybe he will sniff this conversation just by pure Lakers exceptionalism.

Good things just happen to Lakers, but he didn't really factor into my

thought process at all.

He's on the fringes of the rotation, sometimes out of it, no.

I looked at him for the second team.

I mean, again, with the standard of did you play meaningful basketball in your rookie year?

I don't think that's

too high of a bar.

But unfortunately for this conversation, it's a real sort of litmus test for some of these dudes.

And Dalton obviously had a bizarre incident in February that derailed whatever he thought was happening in his rookie season, where he sent to Charlotte temporarily and then returned.

But I think Dalton has to be in there.

Again, he's played meaningful minutes for a playoff team.

He's on my list.

He's on my, like, also receiving votes slash not my vote list.

Those are all my, those are the people I feel guiltiest about, along with, I guess, Bub a little bit.

I like Bub Carrington.

I think Bub Carrington,

the defense is going to get there.

34% from three.

I feel bad for him not picking him.

He's going to be good.

I like him.

Klingen, justify the Klingen selection, which I also made.

I feel like he has one thing he does really well, and it's really important in the game of basketball.

And I think his rim protection is

noteworthy.

And again, he's not first team, but Portland had

flashes of competence throughout the season, and he was a part of that.

He can rebound the basketball, he's a presence, uh, but ultimately, it's block shots and rim protection, Zach, with this dude.

Uh, and I think that's a really valuable skill in the NBA right now, and Portland should be excited they got it.

That's exactly my reasoning.

I'm not sure about a lot of things with a lot of these guys, I'm not sure what Donovan Klingen's really going to amount to.

I mean, the lack of foot speed is

alarming in some matchups,

But he does one thing already really well, and it's protect the basket.

Teams are shooting 49% at the rim when he's the closest defenders.

That's like gobert, like peak gober level rim deterrence.

The Blazers defense is 110 points per 100 possessions when Klingen's on the floor, 115 when he's off the floor.

He's number two among rookies in both offensive and defensive rebounding.

And if I'm sure of that, he gets on the second team.

That's all I need to hear to get get him on the second team.

Buzelis, I'm curious.

Others receiving votes.

I know Bill Simmons is, if he's listening to this, he's screaming that neither of us had him on this team.

No, I have him.

I have him.

He's on my second team.

So you do have him.

All right.

Well, shout out.

I think he's a great player.

I think the Bulls.

I wish that we saw a little more of this version of the Bulls without Levine

because I think he had, if he had a full season

with that environment, I think he would have easily made second team on my list, maybe even first team.

But I think he's a great young player, and I think, you know, probably the 11th guy on my list,

if I had to say that.

Poor Matis, 11th guy.

Eight and a half points a game, trending the right way.

And for me, what does it is 35% on threes, 54% on twos.

And

I like some of the spice I'm starting to see in his game.

And I'm not just talking about the highlight dunks

and the emphatic nature of those highlights, the cross-up on Luca famously a couple weeks ago that got Bill very excited.

They're starting to give him the ball a little bit in pick and roll.

Not much, but a little bit.

And he's got a little craft to that part of his game.

Some hesitation, some pass fakes.

He's got a nice floater.

And he will also, like, he had a play against Mark Williams the other night on the pick and roll where he drove.

Mark Williams was the help defender.

defender put his shoulder into Mark Williams who's a big dude former Laker Mark Williams knocked him out of the way and laid the ball in and you'll see that in the Boozellus you know shot reel quite a bit is he he'll use his shoulder to create space like that and that's important because I think if the Bulls

in year one had some question about him it was is he ready for the physicality of the NBA is he tough enough for this and Billy Donovan's been really hard on him.

There's been a lot of games where you'll see him make a mistake and Billy will yank him right out of the game.

And you can see teammates on the bench kind of trying to pick Buzelis up and make sure, you know, hey, look, this happens.

You're a rookie, like, get back out there.

Defensively, he's got a ways to go.

Like most rookies, he's a really good cutter,

knows when to cut.

Like, if he's in the corner and Vuch is picking and popping and his guy stunts toward Vucavic,

he's darting across that baseline for dunks.

He knows how to relocate into open space.

I just, he does a lot of, he does a lot of things pretty well, similar to Risa Shea, actually.

Like, Risa Shea just does a lot of stuff, a lot of smart stuff really well for a rookie and has shot it like Buzelis, 35% from three

on a decent team.

The Hawks are still decent.

The Bulls are decent.

Successful seasons for both of those guys.

Okay, without further ado, what would your rookie of the year ballot be?

Well, you know that I worked for the San Antonio Spurs for a while, and

this should come as no surprise that I believe

Stephen Castle is the rookie of the year, and then Reese

is a close second,

and then I would probably have Wells third.

But I

think this is an interesting race.

As you alluded to earlier, this was another player's award to lose, something that we're going to talk about again here in a minute.

This went to

when was it December?

We saw an injury change this race

when

McCain got hurt and had surgery and was ruled out.

That was a great story for the Sixers and a great story for the rookie class.

But since then, I think this has been a hard question to answer in a way that

it's been up in the air.

But I went with Castle.

I think he's done the most

different stuff.

He's been really impressive to me in two different roles, sort of as a two-guard and as a point guard, as a starter, as a bench player.

There is a fair knock on this young man, which is shooting,

which is not unusual for a rookie player.

Everything else, though, Zach, is pretty strong.

And if you go watch him in person, he is one of these dudes who is just so physical and so competitive.

He just...

He just gives the Spurs another dude.

He's a good defender.

He's a great finisher.

He had 14 assists in a game last month against Philly.

Good pick and roll player.

He can play ISO.

He's the most complete player here.

Now, there's a case for Reese, and you might make it,

but I like the completeness and the versatility of Stefan Castle,

and that's my case for him.

So here's the anti-Castle case.

Shooting 42%.

Yeah.

28% on threes.

His advanced stats

are meh compared to the other two or three or four candidates that you're looking at.

And all of that amounts to, again, I'm making intentionally the case against him.

He's compiled,

he's not that dissimilar from a SAR type who has compiled counting stats because he has the highest usage rate among this group on a bad team.

That has been a bad team since Wembanyama went out, basically, has not been dialed in all the way toward winning.

That's the case against him.

And there's validity to it, I guess.

I mean, the shooting numbers are what they are.

And I can hear the Collier fans and the Saar fans say, How could you anoint this guy while making those kind of nitpicky things about our guys?

I would also pick Castle for Rookie of the Year.

And part of it is: look, he is shooting 50% on twos.

And I've just like, I've seen enough.

I've seen enough playmaking from him

as the lead guard on a team that's like,

you know, at this stage of the season, I'm running pick and roll with Bismack Biambo and like

very old Chris Paul is standing over here and like Vissel's kind of been up and down.

I liked him.

Selby's been up and down and the bench is eh.

And like I've seen enough playmaking shops from from him, the pocket passes, the, like, he'll do the thing where he turns the corner, and the defense expects him to make the cross-court pass to the corner shooter, and he'll skip that guy in the chain and go to the next guy in the chain, the wing shooter, and the defense will be like, whoa, where'd that pass come from?

Like, he's got, and he gets off the ball early.

When he sees a shooter open, like, he doesn't overhold the ball.

He doesn't hold it too long.

He'll get, like, I've seen enough passing from him.

I'm like, okay,

that, that's a real player there.

Defensively, you talk to scouts and coaches, like, what kind of defender is he at this point?

You'll get varying answers all up and down the spectrum.

I think he's been pretty solid for a rookie.

He's obviously got

the physical ability to be an elite defender someday, and I hope he becomes one.

Does he have lapses?

Sure, he's a rookie.

He's a rookie playing on a rebuilding team and getting to do anything he wants with the ball.

I think overall he's been pretty good on defense for a rookie.

You throw in the playmaking, the two-point shooting.

I've just kind of seen enough that in this field, even with the statistical warts, what I've seen at the best moments is enough for him to beat this underwhelming field of rookies for rookie of the year.

I think the rest of my ballot, I think I got to reward Jalen Wells with the two-spot for just like you said, yeah, nothing spectacular, but he's a double-digit scorer, 35% three-point shooter, and he's guarding the best guy, the best perimeter guy almost every game on a playoff team.

Hopefully for the Memphis Grizzlies, they do end up being a playoff team.

And then the third spot, you could talk me into Edie, you could talk me into where, you can talk me into Risache.

I just have a soft spot for do-it-all, jack of all trades, wings.

So I would probably throw Risache in there.

He's more matchup proof than Edie, who is really surging toward the end of the year and has taken to Tuamas Isolo's schemes on both ends of the floor really well.

You could talk me into anybody.

I'd go Risochet, but that's my case for Castle.

The stats nerds are not going to pick Castle.

It's actually reminding me of when the stats nerds were like,

Walker Kessler over Paolo Bancaro.

Look at the advanced stats, blah, blah.

I'm like, yeah, okay, I get it.

You know,

one guy has to do a lot for a bad team, and the advanced stats are in the efficiency stats are never going to really love that.

But I like what I've seen enough.

And by the way, let's be clear about this.

This is a rookie of the year discussion.

Zoom out a little bit.

I cannot say this loudly enough.

I fucking love Castle.

I think Castle is going to be really, really good.

I think the Spurs have a real player there to put next to Wembanyama and absolutely hit that draft pick out of the park.

Set aside all that stuff about warts and ball dominance and blah, blah, blah.

His defense is this or that.

I love Castle.

I think he's going to be awesome all in.

Yeah, and when you talk to the Spurs, they don't talk about stats with him.

They talk about presence in the locker room, the intangibles, the competitiveness.

And that's not a common thing in this league right now.

And so I think the player is more than the stats.

But that said, if I'm picking as a stat nerd between Reese

and Castle, I'm picking Castle.

We didn't even mention his rebounding.

There's some Josh Hart-like rebounding numbers here.

It's a good point.

It's a good point.

SARS rebounding, by the way, that's an area I should have mentioned.

Got to get tougher there.

But yeah, Castle for a guard is a great rebounder.

Yeah, Yeah, there's games where he has double-digit rebounds, and he is not one of the bigger guys on the floor.

He is a physical force.

And I think there was a Mike Monroe piece in the athletic that I'd call out because I think it was Mitch Johnson.

It's like they have very little doubt that the man, the young man, is everything he does, he works so hard that the shooting's going to come.

The shooting's going to come.

It's like, it's such a hard piece of the NBA for the young players to get, but his work ethic is there.

It's like a, it's sort of like a Lou Dort thing.

Like, if he can just get this, man, he's going to have a very, very long, good, valuable career.

And there's confidence at the Spurs that he's definitely got the work ethic to get that shooting piece fixed.

His shot actually looks pretty good to me.

I was surprised when I checked for his latest three-point shooting numbers that it's that it's that bad because he's part of it.

He's taking he's taking and he's allowed to take and he has to take a lot of tough shots.

He's taking pull-up threes, he's taking pull-up threes when guys go over screens.

Obviously, guys go under screens against him, and he's going to have to either get his jump shot to the point where that becomes untenable, like Tony Parker did back in the day for the Spurs, or continue to master all the tricks of the trade for guys who have to deal with that kind of defense on a night-to-night basis, which is go back and forth around the same screen that gets set lower and lower as you go, fake towards the screen, go the other way.

And he's got a lot of that already in his game.

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Okay, six man of the year.

Short list of candidates.

Can I give you my short list of candidates?

Yeah, you can give me your short list of candidates.

I boiled down, I have five finalists.

And then I realized one of my finalists is not eligible, so I have four finalists.

My five finalists were Peyton Pritchard, Ty Jerome, not eligible, 20-minute a game rule.

Goodbye, Ty Jerome.

Great season.

Thanks for participating.

You get zero awards.

Malik Beasley.

DeAndre Hunter is the rare change teams candidate and Nas Reid.

There are lots of other candidates that I could mention.

Those were my, I boiled it down to those guys.

Agree, disagree, give me your top three, wherever you want to start.

Again, the sixth man of the year playing 20 minutes a game is like, what are we doing?

Like, that's going to eliminate a lot of potential candidates for years to come.

But same with most improved player, by the way.

I double-checked.

I was like, is he also not eligible for most improved player?

From playing like not any minutes at all to, well, he didn't play enough games of 20.

Like, he would get my, well, he wouldn't get, Dyson Daniels would get my vote.

He might be out.

He'd probably be on my ballot, but he's not eligible.

Quick tangent.

Did you watch the Celtics Knicks game last night?

Just the highlights.

I watched Lakers Thunder, Magic Hawks, and I'm about to watch the fourth quarter of Bucks Wolves because I really need to see what the hell happened in that game.

Interesting, I know, collapse

that we're doing at Duke Blue Devil's Imitation there, I think.

But look, if you look at Jalen Brown's game logs over the last week,

speaking of the player participation rules and these thresholds,

Jalen is suddenly playing 21 minutes a game.

Well,

he's been pretty open about dealing with the sore knee.

Yep.

And I hate to break it to Jalen Brown.

I don't think he's going to make all NBA if he gets to 65 games.

So if your knee is really sore and that's why you're doing it, and I'm not saying that's why he is.

I don't know that that's true or not true, whatever.

I don't think it's going to, I don't think you're making it, buddy.

Yeah.

And he didn't look good out there.

And like they have a real title defense here.

And if that knee is flaring up, like maybe it's time to make sure the knee's ready for the postseason.

I'll let them run their team.

But I just saw that and I thought that you would think that it's interesting is there's there's clearly some gaming of this system that affects these awards, whether it's all NBA, six man of the year.

And in some cases, it's having really positive effects.

In other cases, like this Jalen Brown thing, I think he should probably be shut down They're the two seed.

These games don't really matter.

Well, we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon.

The Suns have three games left.

I believe one of them is actually tonight.

Durant is at 62 games.

The Suns have now reached a point where they're almost hopeless to even make the 10th seed because I think everything has to go wrong for Dallas.

Everything has to go right for them.

Be interesting to see if KD suits up at all the rest of the year.

There you go.

All right, give me your sixth man man of the year ballot.

I have

a DeAndre Hunter two-team thing.

I think he has to be on there at number three.

Okay.

Oh, you're going to reverse order?

I like this.

Yeah.

I learned this from social media.

Keep the audience on the platform a little bit longer.

Number two is very hard, but I'm going to go with Peyton Pritchard because Malik Beasley deserves to be six man of the year in a league that insists on three-point shooting being so valuable.

This is simply one of the best three-point shooting seasons we've ever seen from a player not named Stephan Curry.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, I have some facts to back it up.

He's having one of the best catch and shoot seasons we had in the player tracking era.

He's made over 300 threes and is converting over 40%.

It's a season that

compares favorably to almost any Clay Thompson season.

I think there's one Thompson season I'd put above this season.

So the Pistons have a Clay Thompson-like shooter coming off the bench.

He leads the entire league in both catch and shoot threes, attempted and made, and among the top 50 in that category, ranks sixth in efficiency.

All told, he's made 305 total threes.

Only two players in NBA history, Zach, have made more than 305 threes in a season.

Stephen Curry and James Harden.

Clay has never made 305.

So when I look at that and I look at what's happened in Detroit and I did this other exercise, because Peyton Pritchard, I went back and forth.

If I took Pritchard off of the Celtics and I took Beasley off of the Pistons,

I think the effect of the Beasley removal would be catastrophic for the Pistons.

And I think the removing of Peyton Pritchard is not necessarily catastrophic for the Boston Celtics.

What gave that away, the fact that the Celtics won the the championship last year?

Like half of Team USA plays for the Celtics?

Look, it's all fair.

And I've been singing Malik Beasley's praises all year.

I debated between these two as well for the top spot.

I think they are one and two

in whatever order you want.

I actually ended up at Peyton Pritchard in the end.

Now, you're right that he is less essential to the success of the Boston Celtics than Malik Beasley is to the incredible success of the Detroit Pistons.

They need his shooting and his scoring badly, and boy, has he supplied it every single night.

He's second among my group of five finalists.

Well, really for 16 points a game.

DeAndre Hunter actually leads them all in scoring at 17 a game.

Peyton Pritchard checks in at 14 a game.

Obviously, they play actually the same amount of minutes.

Again, a less essential player because the team around around him, Peyton Pritchard, is just way better.

I do think people within the Celtics would tell you

he's been among their most important players just in the sense of allowing them to rest pretty much every other important part of their rotation as often and whenever they want because they know, hey, just feed this dude more minutes, more touches, whatever.

He's hungry for it.

He'll do fine.

We can sit Jalen Brown here, Drew Holiday there.

And particularly at the beginning of the season, and when they were down poor Zingis for quite a while in the middle of the season toward the end of it, I think that was important for them.

Obviously, Horford, like every rotation player needs to sit, and this guy can just sop up minutes across the board.

Why him over Beasley?

I don't care.

Like, I really don't care.

You want to?

I love Bali Beasley.

I don't care.

I guess what I would say is this:

the three-point shooting difference is actually not that large.

Peyton Pritchard is taking about 10 threes per 36 minutes and shooting 40, 41%.

Beasley's at 12 per 36 minutes, shooting 42%, 41% rather.

Edge Beasley, but not enormous.

And I just think Pritchard is better at everything else.

He's a better passer, and it's not close, twice as many assists.

He's a better rebounder, and it's not close.

And you can scoff at that.

Celtics, people who watch the Celtics know he is one of the best offensive rebounders on the team and just has this way of squirreling in there and getting them extra possessions.

He's a better defensive player

than Beasley.

And I just feel like

I just think he's a better basketball player a little bit than Malik Beasley.

And so I'm going to give him the nod.

And for third, I've actually been surprised how little Nas Reed's name has come up.

Can you have voter fatigue in the sixth man of the year race after a guy wins it one time?

Like if you're not going to be able to do it.

Mono should have won it.

Mono should have won it like 14 times in a row.

So yes, you can.

So Nas Reed just like, ho, hum.

Hey, anyone want to check me out?

14 points, six rebounds, two and a half assists a game.

I'm shooting 46%, 38 on threes i make every single lineup work julius randall's hurt no problem i'm in rudy gobert's hurt no problem i'm in every big man combination they have with nas reed nas reed and randall nas reed and gobert they all work and they work because he's just good

at every part of offense

so he gets my third spot um and i i don't think he's got enough love and that's tough luck for deandre hunter who i don't really have

i think it's someone's just got to come fourth and Ty Jerome gets the.

Anyone else you want to shout out?

Any special six men in your life?

Well, I mean, Ty Jerome has to be on there, and if it weren't for these thresholds, it would be a compelling case.

Unfortunately, I think DeAndre Hunter sort of steals some of that thunder.

But Ty Jerome has to get some attention this year for something.

Kenny Atkinson saw something there.

You know, who really saw something there?

Kobe Altman.

That was a Kobe Altman.

Ty Jerome is his guy, and he believed in him.

And I always liked Ty Jerome, and I remember texting Warriors people about it.

Like, I kind of like Ty Jerome.

Why don't you play Ty Jerome more?

But this level of sauce and sauciness and just like, hey, is it cool if I'm just the best player on the team for 18 straight minutes?

I did not see that coming.

Yeah, he plays 20 minutes and he raises hell

and he makes plays.

So I would like to do this.

So I'm looking at, he's averaging 19.8 minutes per game.

And so that makes him ineligible for sixth man of the year.

It's not the average being 19.8, although that is part of it.

You have to play at least 20 minutes in a game X amount of times.

I can't remember exactly how many times it is, but it might be 65 times, but he's not going to get there averaging 19.8 minutes a game.

Just an awesome season.

I don't remember anyone making so many floaters on the way down off the wrong foot from strange angles that you're just like, oh, this is never.

He's now gotten carried away.

Oh, okay.

It went in again.

Congratulations, Sajerome.

You win nothing.

Coach of the year.

Oof, this is the one where I think we're going to have the most interesting discussion.

I see a Mount Rushmore of deserving candidates.

I see

four heads carved into the Dakota stone.

Can you guess who they are?

I bet you can.

I bet you can, Zach.

Only four.

Well, yeah.

Well, I understand.

You're whittling it down.

I couldn't whittle it past five.

Like, I whittled, I whittled, like, I whittled, J.J.

Reddick, you got whittled over here.

You're out.

But I couldn't get past five without really, like, whittling my own thumb off.

So if you have four, I'm going to guess that those four are among my five.

And if those, I'm going to guess that those four are Kenny Atkinson,

JB Bickerstaff,

Mark Dagnold,

and Eme Odoka.

You got it.

And if I had to guess your fifth, I think I would guess JJ.

Nope.

Nope.

The Los Angeles Clippers

47 and 32 as we're recording this with an outside shot to win 50 games in a year in which many idiots, including this dude right here with his big idiot face and his big idiot nose, wrote them off as dead on arrival as anything resembling a strong playoff team.

They resemble a terrifying playoff team right now.

They held it together without Kawhi Leonard for half the season.

They found a way to maximize Derek Jones Jr., Evitsa Zubats, Chris Dunn, Nick Batum is still here.

Bogdan Bogdanovich, you fit right in.

And

the faith they had in Norm Powell and the way they used him on offense as a finisher in different kinds of ways off pin downs,

in transition, all that stuff.

And just the readiness night to night, the defensive game plan, Jeff Van Gundy, shout out, coach, we love you.

I'm going to have a hard time keeping him off my ballot to the point that I might have to bump Dagnalt out for absolutely zero good reason.

Like, I voted for him last year.

He won last year.

They're going to lap the field and wins this year.

They haven't been healthy.

It's not like they've been rolling out this incredibly healthy team all year.

They've been soft pedaling Caruso, keeping him out of games now and then.

I just feel like the two guys that have to be on it are Atkinson and Bickerstaff.

I just think they're first-year guys.

It's easy to see their impact.

They've completely transformed their teams.

I would probably vote for Atkinson, just sort of of air on the side of which team has won more games.

But that third spot

between Dagnolt, Lou, Yudoka, like, what am I supposed to do?

I can't pick, I can't snub those guys.

Yeah, I'm with you.

And before we start saying somebody shouldn't be on the list, I think we would agree that this is the deepest roster of candidates for three spots on the ballot than we've ever seen, potentially, at least for me.

Like, Ty Lou deserves recognition.

And by the way, I think he's a better playoff coach than about anybody.

And so look out for the Clippers.

Let me make the case for a Doka, dude.

I can't wait to hear it because I love watching that team play in his image.

And when I looked at the betting odds as sort of a guide, I was shocked that

this dude did not appear in the list of top favorites.

And that makes me want to make the case.

Yeah, I'm looking at odds that don't include him in the top three or top four.

And this is a guy who came to Houston less than two years ago.

Okay, so April 2023.

The Rockets have just finished a 22 and 60 season.

People like you and me are like, are they going to be able to develop all these guys?

What do we have here?

And less than two years later, we have one of the strongest identities in the NBA.

And

they are squarely the two seed in a brutal Western Conference.

Squarely the two seed without an all-star.

Am I right?

No all-stars?

Shengun.

Shengun, man.

So no real superstars.

I'm sorry to Shengun.

He is one of my favorites, but

didn't get that.

I think that Emei Adoka has affected a culture

and an environment and the vibe more than any coach in the 2020s.

I think he has completely changed the culture in Houston.

A team, again, that was 22 and 60.

They got to 500 last year and now the two seed.

And they are one of the toughest, most annoying teams to play in the NBA.

And he has his fingerprints all over that thing.

And so I think, you know, J.B.

Bickerstaff, great year.

Kenny Atkinson, great year.

I just want to see Adoka's name mentioned with those guys a little bit more than I'm seeing it, Zach.

I don't, I mean, again, I have no disagreement.

It's almost like a two-year award for him.

Like, the jump was bigger last year and he didn't win.

The jump in the seedings is is gigantic this year.

In win total, it's not going to be super gigantic.

But in that conference, and look, I was on the phone all day yesterday with coaches and front office people polling them on Defensive Player of the Year, which I'm going to ask you about in a second.

And all those conversations, you get into a million tangents.

And a couple of different times talking about the Western Conference playoff race.

particularly after the Denver stuff broke yesterday about who's going to finish in the play and what seed is this, blah, blah, blah.

I heard even a couple people like, yeah, you know, getting that seventh spot and facing houston like that's not a bad consolation prize for someone i'm like cool like you want to deal with that team for seven games you might beat them four to three you're going to come out bruised and battered and just amen thompson alone is going to make you feel pain for two straight weeks like good like yeah their half court offense a little hit or miss a little uneven they are absolutely zero fun to play against and they play super hard they're fearless and their coach will talk shit to you throughout the game which is absolutely delightful.

Calling the guys out for crying.

Calling generational superstars out for crying.

He's one for crying.

Did we get that every time?

Like, I would love to see that matchup in the playoffs now, but I would love to, like,

they have beef with everybody now, the Rockets.

Yeah, and I love that.

And I think it's fair to say it's a two-year award.

Ultimately,

Kenny Atkinson deserves this award

for me.

So it's Atkinson, Udoka, Bickerstaff for me.

Kenny Atkinson, 10 years ago, Steve Kerr takes over for Mark Jackson, installs a motion offense and changes the NBA forever, changes the fate of the Golden State Warriors forever.

I'm not saying Kenny did that 10 years later in Cleveland, but really some strong parallels.

Cleveland was not a terrible team last year.

They have a lot of talent.

They had a marvelous backcourt.

And he's been able to unlock some stuff.

with the new offense.

And, you know, they're the number one team in the Eastern Conference.

And not a lot of of us would have predicted that.

I think I did Simmons before the season.

I said, I think, you know, Cleveland has a real good shot at being number two.

Well, I didn't predict this.

And so I think Kenny deserves this award for having a great season.

But it's crazy to me that Dagnall isn't even on this list of three and they're going to win close to 70 games.

So it's just, again, I keep coming back to how deep this candidacy pool is.

And I'm not mad at anybody who disagrees with my top three or even top four in any order.

That's how great this is.

Yeah, a lot has been written about Kenny Atkinson and his staff installing this funky motion offense of cutting, cutting from the corner, cutting from the corner across the baseline, filling space here, filling space there.

And the best tribute to it is really how many teams have copied it throughout the season.

I mean, more than half the league.

You'll watch games and you'll see, oh, there's the Cleveland cut.

There's the Cleveland cutting.

It crescendoed throughout the year where it half the, and they actually started running it, I think, a little bit less because teams were starting to get onto it and they wanted to sprinkle it in.

But

he's made great use of the bench.

He's made great use of, he's just balanced lineups with like a quarrel comes in, well, he's going to come in with the shooter.

Wade comes in, he's going to come in with this kind of player.

They've really

staggered the lineups correctly.

But the smartest thing he did and his staff did above all else was resisting the idea that the way to weaponize Evan Mobley 2.0, the way to help Evan Mobley take the leap, was just to make him shoot more threes, spot up and shoot more threes.

They said, yeah, sure, you can do that.

Like, you should probably take a couple more a game and we think you'll shoot them better.

But the bread and butter of your game is still going to be inside.

It's going to be, even if it's outside too inside, it's going to be physicality, playmaking, using your perimeter skills to unlock your interior skills.

And yeah, the spacing is going to get clunky.

We're going to find a way to make it work without turning you into a stretch four who shoots a million threes because that's not where you're best

and that would have been the low-hanging fruit the tempting thing to do and they did not do that in fact they almost went the other way like how about you get more forceful more physical and it helped unlock the best evin mobley uh speaking of which i put you on the spot i told i said earlier this week that i'm unsure about defensive player of the year and that i was leaning mobly um who would you pick draymond

now i talked to our friends at fan duel because this has been one of a, it's just been a crazy saga.

I'm not a big gambler, but I like to look at odds throughout the season as a way to sort of track the sentiment of these awards.

And Victor Wembanyama on February 20th was a runaway favorite to win this award.

At that time, Draymond Green was 86-1 to win defensive player.

That's not that long ago.

That's seven weeks ago.

He began to publicly campaign.

Two weeks later, he's 28 to 1 Zach.

Three weeks later, he's 5 to 1.

A month later, he's the favorite.

So what happened, dude?

It coincides with the Butler trade.

Obviously, the Wemby injury is the biggest event that we can look back at and how this race changed.

But two other things, I think,

happened that are really relevant.

The Warriors go on a terror.

They go on a highly visible terror.

He's running his mouth.

Their defense looks like, again, like a top-five defense, and he is clearly the biggest reason for that.

He is clearly the biggest reason for that.

And that's a point I'll come back to.

Lou Dort's come up.

Jaron Jackson has fallen off quite a bit because of the Taylor Jenkins stuff and that team sliding.

And so it does come down to Green and Mobley.

My question for you, my guy.

Is Evan Mobley even the best defensive player on his own team?

Yes, I think he is.

But I will say,

this happened to me last year, too, when I was thinking about Evan Mobley for Defensive Player of the Year, and I don't even remember who I voted for.

I think I voted for Golbert in the end.

I just have this feeling in my gut when I watch the Cavs that he's really good, but he's not the best defensive player in the NBA.

And it's the same feeling I have watching Lou Dort.

I love Lou Dort, although, boy, the Lakers are so miserable with Lou Dort.

They hate Lou Dort so much, flopping around the floor.

They're complaining.

They're asking for flop.

I love it.

I just don't think Lou Dort's the best defensive player in the NBA.

Wembanyama aside, like

we all know Wembanyama is better, but like even without him in consideration, I think they're really good.

They're a first-team all-defense level players.

I just don't watch Evan Mobile and get the feeling like, boy, oh boy, just impenetrable.

Draymond, when he's on,

gives me that feeling.

Yeah.

And

I will say, in all the coaches and scouts I pulled yesterday, his name came up the most.

His name came up the most, often attached to the word reluctant or reluctantly.

Like I would have to reluctantly say Draymond because everyone is tired of his campaigning.

And the simplest and most convincing take I got from somebody, multiple somebodies actually, was just this.

To your point about is Evan Mobley the best defender on Cleveland, and I know who you're getting at, is that Draymond has to play center for the Warriors, and there's nobody else in their starting lineup who can even be a facsimile of that.

And Draymond is not even a center-sized player, but he has all the responsibilities of a center with no one else to give him a break or foist those off onto.

He doesn't really play with Looney much anymore.

And

with that alignment, the Warriors are one of the best defensive teams in the league.

That's pretty persuasive to me.

And now I'm leaning back toward Raymond

after consulting with a lot of the experts.

Because, again, in my gut, I wanted to vote Mobly last year, and I just could not get there.

Because every once in a while, I'd watch somebody like Bancaro just kind of beat him up a little bit,

a bigger, stronger, bulkier guy move him off his spot a little bit.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I just, I want that feeling of like, man, there's just nothing I can do with this guy.

And I just can't quite get there with Mobile.

And I love Evan Mopley.

He's in pen on second team all-NBA for me.

I actually still think he should be a candidate for the last first-team all-NBA spot, that fifth spot that keeps sort of toggling around between Mitchell and Ant and Curry.

And I haven't heard Mobley's name there much at all.

For me,

he's in that group.

That's how highly I think of him.

But that's an all-around award.

This is a defense-only award.

And I just don't think Evan Mobley is the best defense player of the NBA, even aside Wembanyama.

There's a great tweet by Jay Croucher out there that my friend sent me, and it goes through like six of the nerdiest models for defense like one number metrics these things are flawed but all six of them have Draymond in the top ten these are things like Estimate a plus minus Raptor the LeBron

Evan Mobley is not in the top 10 in any of those and then if you drill down even further on you know

play types, rim protection stats, Draymond really outperforms Mobley across the board with the exception of rebounding, I think, which is naturally hard to do when you're a very undersized player.

So I think you then layer on sort of the defensive leadership piece that he provides the Golden State Warriors.

Again, if he left the team, if he's hurt, this defense falls apart.

It falls apart.

So I landed on Draymond.

The name that I haven't heard enough of in the Lou Dort class is Ahmed Thompson.

He's first team all defense for me.

He's on my first team all defense.

So is is Evan Mobley, by the way?

I can hear the Cavs fans.

What is all this anti-Evan Mo?

I love Evan Moble.

I'm the original Evan Mobley stockholder, never sold.

First team all defense.

Ahmed Thompson is first team all defense.

And he is first team.

Holy shit, what the hell just happened in the game?

Right, right, right, right.

You don't have to go far back this week to find examples of him, you know,

making Steph Curry look terrible, which is not easy to do.

And I think when you look at some of these advanced metrics, Ahmed Thompson is the name name that deserves to be included in this discussion with Lou Dort as that kind of guy, the very physical muscular perimeter defender, the athlete defender.

I think I agree with the people who say this award almost all the time should go to a front court player just because that's where the influence of defenders really is.

I also want to say that I love Evan Moble.

I could see him winning this award multiple times in his career.

I think he's a very deserving candidate.

Geez, how many season-ending injuries do you think Wembanyama is going to have?

No, that's true.

Still, there's fatigue, dude.

We talked about this.

There is fatigue.

There's a list of superstars that should have eight of the same trophy that have three or four.

That's true, fair.

But yeah, you're right.

Hey, as a Spurs guy, I think Wemby should have this award locked up for a while.

Nothing against Mobley.

I just think what Draymond brings to the table, both through the nerdy stats and as a leader of that group, and enables them to play lineups

in a play style because of his versatility on defense.

So that's where I landed.

Kurt Goldsbury, it's a pleasure to hang.

Hopefully, I'll see you in the playoffs, at the finals, at the draft combine, somewhere as I get back on the road a little bit in the NBA ecosystem.

Thank you for joining the Zach Low Show.

That's what it's called now, if you didn't know.

KG, thank you, sir.

Thank you, Zach.

Great to have you back.

All right, that's a wrap on another episode of the Zach Low Show.

Thanks for listening.

By next week, by Monday, we'll have some idea of what the playoff matchups are going to be.

Some of them, at least, the play-in games will be all set.

We'll have some exciting guests coming on to talk about that stuff, including the boss man might show up.

So thanks again.

See you next week.

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