Reaction to the Kawhi Leonard Story, Contract Updates, and Most Improved Player Predictions With Kirk Goldsberry

Welcome in to the Zach Lowe Show on a Thursday morning.

And just when you think the NBA has been dormant, nothing's been happening.

Do I have to watch Euro basket more closely and dig into the X's and O's?

Bam!

The news starts in a flood.

And we got Kurt Goldsbury, worked for the Spurs back in the day, back in the Kawhi Leonard era, notably, to talk about a burgeoning potential scandal with the LA Clippers thanks to Pablo Torrey's podcast.

Pablo Torre finds out, did the Clippers circumvent the cap directly, indirectly at all in inducing Kawhi Leonard to stay with the Clippers in 2021 and 2022 and beyond?

We're going to dive into the nitty-gritty of that.

I've been on the phone with owners and lawyers and GMs and people all over the league.

I've been reading the CBA, scouring the NBA Constitution, trying to figure out what, if anything, could happen to the Clippers here.

Could it be nothing?

Could it be severe?

The Clippers are denying.

all charges of circumvention.

We're going to dive into that.

PJ Washington's extension.

My friend to me, Cam Thomas, signed his qualifying offer.

Is that good for him?

Bad for him?

Good for the Nets?

Bad for the Nets?

Does it mean anything for the Kaminga Grimes giddy trio still hanging out?

We'll talk most improved player.

We'll talk all-star format changing again.

If you can't keep track of what the all-star game is now, I don't blame you.

I can't.

Last year was a complete catastrophe.

All of that coming up now on the Zach Low Show.

This episode of the Zach Lowe Show is presented by HubSpot.

Using only 20% of your business data is like going from a starting five to a starting one.

Good luck with that.

But that's how most businesses operate today: using only 20% of their data, unless you have HubSpot, where all the data hidden in emails, call logs, and chat messages turns into insights to grow your business because having all the data makes all the difference.

Learn more at hubspot.com.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

It's Thursday morning.

And just when you thought the NBA was dead, Kurt Goldsberry, it's not dead anymore.

Kurt Goldsberry, what team did you work for when you worked in the NBA?

The San Antonio Spurs, a small market team down here in Texas, Zach.

Any notable young stars on that team where it kind of went haywire for you while you were there?

We got, of course, DeJounte Murray.

Is that the player you're thinking of?

Derek White?

Good players.

Oh, Kawhi Leonard.

Kawhi Leonard.

Kawhi Leonard.

That might be the guy you're thinking of.

I'm sure that your phone was blowing up yesterday with your old Spurs contacts and many other contacts around the league.

I was on the phone all day with

every possible cross-sectional league, agents, owners, GMs, on and on and on, about what Pablo Torre dropped on his podcast yesterday.

Pablo Torre finds out.

It is a must-listen more than any episode that I've ever talked about or heard about or referenced.

I would encourage you to listen or if you like to watch episodes on YouTube, what's up, YouTube people?

I don't understand you, but I appreciate your consumption.

This one, you got to listen to in full because it details

the possibility that the Clippers circumvented the salary cap

in order to facilitate Kawhi Leonard receiving an extra $28 million from what turned out to be a sham scam company that purported to plant trees and do other things to offset carbon emissions, a company in which Steve Vollmer had invested in, and then then that company, Aspiration, invested as a

massive sponsor with the Clippers.

And the timeline is, should we just do the timeline first, Kirk, just to get the facts?

Let's do the timeline.

Kawhi Leonard, here's the full timeline.

Kawhi Leonard signs with the LA Clippers in July 2019 after winning a title with the Raptors.

And Kirk, you know as well as I do, I mean, I went back and read the reporting that Brian Winhorst and I did in July 2019.

It was talked about all over the league that his uncle, Dennis Robertson, acting as his representative, not a certified agent, but acting as his sort of like liaison or whatever.

Kawhi actually has an agent, a real agent,

was asking every team that was negotiating for Kawhi, which was Raptors, Lakers, Clippers notably, for preposterously illegal things,

plane access, equity stakes, you name it, extra sponsorship deals.

Can you guarantee them up front?

The Raptors were outraged.

I mean, outraged.

I've never seen,

they weren't rolling their eyes and saying, woe is us.

They were angry about it.

In July 2019, later, a few weeks later, the NBA's Board of Governors meets in Las Vegas and announces

harsher anti-tampering and mostly anti-tampering rules because that was the summer also where deals were leaking early.

People were upset about it.

The league was going to give Adam Silver more authority to punish tampering, discussing deals with free agents before you're allowed to, before the starting gun goes off.

Simultaneous with that,

Adam was talking at his press conference about these murmurs that family members, he just said family members, were asking for stuff out of the bounds of the CBA and that if the league ever found that, that is the quote cardinal sin.

Brian Winhorse and I did a story around that time about Rick Buchanan, who's the league's, I think, deputy counselor, I don't remember his exact title then or now, saying to the board of governors assembled in Las Vegas,

I don't remember the exact quote, but it was,

servers and cell phones.

Like, do you want us in your buildings taking servers and cell phones to investigate all of these kinds of allegations?

Because that's what we're talking about here.

And the NBA indeed announced rule changes that included the ability to randomly audit five teams a year for their communications with agents and other entities around the league.

It's unclear to me how strictly, if at all, those audits actually happened, but that's July 2019.

Fast forward to the Clippers win some playoff series.

August 2021, Kawhi with with the tour and ACL signs a contract extension with the Clippers four years, not the short-term one, not the long-term one.

Some people sort of looked askance at that.

I did not.

I thought that was like, whatever.

It was a max deal.

September 21, a month later, Ballmer invests $50 million in Aspiration, this non-profit that whatever it is that turned out to be a scam.

A month later, like weeks later, a week or two later, Aspiration announces that it will strike a $300 million deal with the Clippers to be one of the big sponsors of the team as it moves into into Inuitome.

Their names on the back of the courtside seats, et cetera.

So Ballmer is investing them.

They're investing in him.

The Clippers and this company are now intermingled.

A month later, November 2021, Kawhi Leonard mysteriously forms an LLC called KL2 Aspire,

similar to Aspiration.

Different part of speech.

My grammar's a little rusty, Kurt, but different part of speech.

Let's see.

Five months after that, April 2022, Kawhi and Aspiration strike a four-year $28 million deal, sponsorship deal, in which the company will pay Kawhi Leonard to do nothing, it turns out, to do absolutely nothing, according to Pablo Tori's reporting.

By the way, just attach according to Pablo Torrey's reporting to all this because he broke the story.

He's got the documents.

He did the work.

Yep.

Not unprecedented, as you would know, for

a company that sponsors a team to then strike a deal with one of those team's players.

The team can't do anything, I don't think, but introduce the two parties.

They can't facilitate, they can't promise, they can't negotiate, they can't do anything like that, but that's not uncommon.

The deal also includes a clause that says if Kawhi is ever not on the Clippers, the deal is then dead.

That's not unprecedented either, because you could imagine a scenario where a player on a team strikes a deal with one of the team sponsors, gets traded to another team.

That team is sponsored by a rival of that company, right?

But this is a company that plants trees.

I don't know about the rival tree planting company that everyone is worried about, but let's just posit that it's plausible that Aspiration could say, We only struck this deal with you, Kawhi Leonard, because you're on the Clippers.

We sponsor the Clippers.

Our interests are aligned.

Our deal with you, because of all the things that you're going to do for us, which turned out to be nothing, helps our broader deal with the Clippers.

This all comes out because Aspiration turns out to be a scam, goes bankrupt.

The list of creditors is in the bankruptcy file.

Somebody finds it, flags KL2 Aspire, and tells Pablo Torre, gives him all these documents.

And

before I stop the monologue here,

he also has one employee of the company,

voice modulation, face disguised, interviewed in the podcast, who says, we were told.

that the purpose of this no-show deal in which there are no posts no instagram likes no effort by kawaii to do anything to earn this money which, by the way, $28 million is a lot of money

for what is essentially a social media deal.

It's a huge amount of money.

He's the biggest endorsee of this entire scam company, although he does nothing.

What was I even saying?

I already forgot where I was going with the $28 million.

Oh,

yeah, I forgot, but that's where we are.

I mean, that's, I don't even remember where we were.

I mean, we're a little bit in, that was mid-season form right there, Zach.

Great timeline.

What a story.

Four years, $28 million.

A couple of things that I thought were really interesting that you didn't hit on.

Robert Downey Jr.

was also a highly paid endorser of this, but there is video evidence.

And again, shout out to Pablo and his investigation.

I learned so much from that broadcast.

Again, encourage people to consume that.

But they did a good job.

So Robert Downey Jr., also on this roster of endorsers, but he did work.

I forgot what I was.

can I just remember

the guy with the voice modulation says this was, we were told, not I know, not I have an email, not I have documentation, we were told this LOL payment, he talks about LOL to Kawhi, was quote, to circumvent the salary cap.

And Pablo says I have six more company employees who aren't on

interviewed or whatever, who confirmed that that was the alleged reason that they were told and now are telling him.

But anyway, anyway, please go ahead.

Robert Dunney Jr.

So, yeah, I think,

long story short, this is the biggest potential cap circumvention story of our lifetime in the NBA.

Everybody's talking, I'm sure you heard the name Joe Smith like I did yesterday for the first time in years,

harkening back to a deal in Minnesota that I barely remember, to be honest.

But I think the idea that you would get paid

four years and $28 million

to never do anything

is a big red flag.

And I think your timeline did another excellent thing there, Zach, which is there's breadcrumbs with this dude, Dennis Robertson,

that connect back to my time in San Antonio, that 2019 championship and contract negotiation with Toronto, all the investigations,

including a pre-existing NBA investigation into that free agency.

I left that out in my timeline.

The NBA investigated this idea that the Clippers had promised him something outside the bounds of

the CBA and cleared everybody involved at that time.

Yeah, so here's where we're at.

I think

one of the executives I talked to said, hey, man, there's a lot of coincidences here, right?

Maybe too many coincidences.

And you lined a lot of them up, and I added the previous investigation into this Clippers-Kawhi-Leonard relationship as that.

The other thing is we don't know enough right now.

And so when you talk to people around the league, you'll get a mix of, man, this is a potential bombshell, but they're all saying potential.

We don't know enough.

I think one of the things that's going to happen, Zach, and I'm eager to hear you talk about this, is there's a board of governors meeting, coincidentally timed for next week.

Six days from now, baby, at an undisclosed location in New York City, you know who's got two thumbs and who's going to be front, row, center?

This guy right here.

So I know you talked to, you know, two or three of the members of the sort of most famous condo association in basketball, the board of governors.

They're all convening in New York, Zach.

And my question for you, and I'm sure your listeners can't wait to hear you say,

what have you heard about what might be said there next week and how that's going to influence the direction of what's next in this case?

Okay, so a couple of things.

There was this sort of chuckling when this first came out about how, well, you know, how many owners

just want this to go away because of skeletons that might be in their closet?

I have not heard, I mean, I've heard some of that chuckling, but overwhelmingly, the response I've gotten from all over the league is

the league has to dig really deep on this, take it seriously, and lay the hammer down if the punishment fits the crime, if they find stuff that is worth laying the hammer down.

And I've even had people who are like, I've already seen enough for them to do something

to the Clippers, not Joe Smith something, which was five first-round picks and suspensions for Glenn Taylor and Kevin McKilla.

I think it went down to three first-round picks in the end.

But I mean, I'll just read a text I got just before we came on from a league executive.

Most people I've talked to think the Clippers need to explain this now.

They have the job to prove their innocence at this point.

The NBA doesn't need a text message or an email.

It's now on the Clippers in Kawhi to explain this away more than, quote, we didn't know and these are bad guys about the company.

The onus is now on the Clippers.

The majority of people are

somewhere between outraged and

monitoring the situation.

Now,

the Clippers are denying everything and released a statement, a long statement last night to me and others in which they said, I mean, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

It's extremely long.

But

neither the Clippers nor Steve Ballmer circumvented the salary cap.

The notion that Steve invested in Aspiration in order to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard is absurd.

Steve invested because Aspiration's co-founders presented themselves as committed to doing right by their customers while protecting the environment.

The phrase that came into my head right away when this story broke was plausible deniability.

And the Clippers are going to say that they have plausible deniability.

That Steve Ballmer invested in a company, that he had no idea that there was this separate sponsorship arrangement with Kawhi Leonard.

He didn't direct it, that there will be no email, no documentation, no phone call, nothing on the record in which anybody from the Clippers, Steve Ballmer or anybody else, tells this company or confirms with this company that this deal is a sham deal meant to give Kawhi Leonard extra money.

And that gives them, quote, plausible deniability.

It reminds me of like back when there were rules in college basketball.

And I don't really care that there are no rules anymore, but it would always like teams would always get penalized or programs would always get penalized.

And the head coach would always have plausible deniability.

Like, oh, but it was this assistant and this runner.

And, like, I had going all the way back to John Wood.

And like, oh, I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

I also thought, by the way, what was the woman's name?

Remember Anna Delvey?

The famous scammer in New York who like just bilked all of these rich people out of huge amounts of money and lived at hotels for like five years before she got caught.

It's like, if my life goes sideways, Kirk,

is it this easy to just trick rich people into giving me enormous amounts of money and I could just live high on the hog for 10 years?

Is it worth it?

Like, I'll live in penthouses.

I'll trick how are they doing this?

Can we just start scamming people?

Apparently, that's one of the Clippers' defenses: is we got

or Steve Ballmer got taken here, right?

The plausible deniability thing is the key element right now.

And one, one person I just talked to today said, hey, we need to know what the relationship between Steve Ballmer and aspiration really is or was.

Was he, did he have a board seat?

Did he have control?

What did he know and when did he know it about this Kawhi Leonard deal?

And another person told me, and again, I go back to this concept of paying market value for services, which you bring up college basketball.

That's a big deal right now in college sports because every NIL deal in theory this year is going to have to pass sort of a bullshit test.

Like, oh, you got $4 million to endorse like a fried chicken restaurant or a pizza chain.

Like, does that pass the smell test?

That's still a concept that's relevant for Kawhi Leonard.

Here, you got $28 million to do what?

And the thing in that contract, A, there was a provision that said he didn't have to do it if he didn't believe in the cause,

which got him out of doing it, I guess.

By the way, was there even a, this is what I mean by, can I just start scamming rich people?

It's unclear if this company ever did anything.

Yeah.

Anything.

The short answer is you can't scan.

I don't know if you've been following the news recently, but there's this is like you can scam people out of money.

Like it's a big thing in our country.

I got to stop doing this.

Enough of these billionaires.

Let me take some money for them to do nothing.

If he had done three ads, if he had done that Robert Downey Jr.

thing and just like had a black and white sort of short video where he's walking through a Santa Cruz redwood forest or whatever and like looking out over the

coastline.

If it's like, oh, he got $28 million for that.

Good for him.

The fact that it's $28 million, not divided by one or two appearances, divided by zero is a problem.

$28 million divided, he didn't do anything.

He didn't have fair market value for his services.

That's going to be an issue with this deal.

And I think...

Those are the two things.

What did Steve Ballmer know and when did he know it?

Question number one for the investigation.

And

is this $28 million endorsement deal?

Because you're right.

Like, I think Damian Lillard had a a deal with BioFreeze when they were the Blazers jersey patch sponsor.

This is not unusual.

But Damien probably did do some actual endorsement work for that money.

And that's the thing that sticks out here.

He's like, he didn't do anything.

That's the no-show job part of this story.

If he had just showed up a few times and done what he was asked to do, this story doesn't have the legs that it has.

But he didn't.

And I think that's at the core of this.

So as they investigate it, it's how much did Steve Ballmer have his hands on the steering wheel at aspiration?

And how in the hell can you justify this $28 million endorsement deal for an NBA player that didn't do anything for the money?

I will tell you that, you know, as outraged as people are and how

quickly the social media landscape just sort of turned this into like, oh, the Clippers are guilty, ha ha.

You know, sports lawyers and legal experts that I know are obviously obviously more cautious.

Michael McCann, who we've both known for a long time, he's a sports law professor, tweeted this.

I talked to him a little bit offline yesterday, but he tweeted, the Clippers' Kawhi Leonard rumored circumvention of the cap might be harder to prove than the T-Wolves Joe Smith one, where both sides agreed he'd take less money in one contract for more money in a future one.

By the way, that was documented.

They had hard evidence that that existed.

Stupid Timberwolves.

This one, Michael McCann continues, involves an endorsement, which means a third party, more people, etc.

Mark Cuban immediately sort of leapt in to Steve Ballmer's defense, essentially saying, like, there's no way Steve Ballmer would be this dumb as to put a paper trail out there.

And of course, that gets to the issue of plausible deniability.

I'm actually just like, this is such a gray area, and I'm not a lawyer.

I'm actually interested to see really how this plays out because in the NBA Constitution, which I reread parts of yesterday, Adam Silver has like broad unilateral power to just dock teams money and draft picks for any conduct detrimental to the league, basically.

But more pertinent to that, I think, is

for the nerds out there.

You want to go to the CBA, which is almost 700 pages long.

You want to go to Article 13, Section 2, which is cap circumvention.

Cap circumvention is different than tampering.

Cap circumvention is worse than tampering.

Tampering has been penalized with little slaps on the wrist.

The Knicks, who did everything under the sun to tamper with Jalen Brunson, got docked one second-round pick.

The Sixers got docked two second-round picks for negotiating early with P.J.

Tucker on a specific deal.

Like, who cares?

Like, you think the Knicks care about their 2025 second-round pick?

You think Rick Brunson cares about that?

No.

So, in the Capsur Convention part of the CBA, they talk about how you cannot have any unauthorized agreements, i.e., ways to give a player extra money.

Then there's a clause at the end, and I'll read it to you verbatim.

A violation of section 2A or 2B, which are the unauthorized agreement sections, a violation of Section 2A or 2B above may be proven

by direct or circumstantial evidence, including but not limited to evidence that a player contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationably be explained in the absence of conduct violative of Section 2A or 2B.

Long story short, like

you can prove this.

The league is allowed to prove this with circumstantial evidence that goes beyond just what's in a player's contract.

You could find people around the league right now who will tell you there's enough in Pablo's podcast already to hit that bar and punish the Clippers somewhere between what the Joe Smith punishment was and what these baby tampering charges are.

I don't know if that's true.

I am not a lawyer.

I read that and I see circumstantial evidence and I know because I've talked to them, if I'm an owner that's mad about this, if I'm a a GM that's mad about this, I point right to that clause and say, they already hit that bar.

I don't know if they do, but if they do, that's already a problem, right?

Yeah, that's

great.

Research, and I asked a couple of people I talked to, including one longtime executive, I was like, hey, people are saying, oh, everybody does this.

Again, to go back to college basketball when McDonald's all-Americans were sort of always known to be paid or whatever.

And his response was, no, people are scared as hell of this rule, and we don't do this.

Like, this is not an everybody does it situation.

And some people are saying, oh, you know, everybody does it.

Some people do it.

I'm not naive about that, but people, the clause you just read and the relatively low bar that they have to get over to inflict those punishments that you just cited and great work on that, Zach Lowe.

Has people scared.

It's effectively scared the other competitors in the league from

breaking this exact rule.

Again,

I don't know if the conduct that's just in the podcast, which we're all assuming to be accurate and it has not been refuted in any part to this point.

I don't know if that conduct hits that bar.

It seems to me that it's at least an interesting argument that the NBA's legal department has to get in there and discuss and demand more stuff and get whatever they can from the Clippers.

Now, in that same section about cap circumvention, there's a longer term that I'm going to read you.

You ready?

Yeah.

It shall constitute a violation, blah, blah, blah, for a team or a team affiliate, and I don't know what that is.

I don't know what that's defined as, a team affiliate, but it's a term that's all over this.

To enter into an agreement or understanding with any sponsor or business partner or third party under which such sponsor, business partner, or third party pays or agrees to pay compensation for basketball services, even if such compensation is ostensibly designated as being for non-basketball services, to a player under contract to a team.

Now, it goes on.

Such an agreement with a sponsor or business partner or third party may be inferred

where such compensation from the sponsor or business partner or third party is substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player.

I ran that clause by some lawyers and they said it's unclear by the wording of it if the team or the team affiliate has to direct, like organize, orchestrate that deal that is above fair market value.

Like there's no question that the deal is above fair market value.

He did nothing and he got $28 million.

The terminology about team or team affiliates,

do they have to direct it?

to be in violation of that clause.

That's something that even lawyers are like, we got to dig into that a little bit more.

But again, like,

there's enough here for the league, the league cannot let this go.

They have to look deeply into this.

And they're like, that circumstantial evidence thing, like, there's enough here where

there are people around the league who are like, the Clippers are going to be in trouble if this pans out.

And by the way, there was some chortling about, oh, draft picks.

They can't take draft picks away from the Clippers.

The Clippers don't have to, but they do.

The Clippers have actually very carefully gotten retaken control of some of their future draft picks after 2029.

I think they're pretty much free and clear.

If the league ever strip them of one or more of those picks beyond that, they are fucked.

Like their whole organizational plan is we're riding out what has been a failure on some scale at least of a mega trade and that resulted in the Thunder winning a championship.

We're riding it out.

We're going to be still in Los Angeles.

We have this incredible arena where the all-star game is this year, by the way.

And we're going to be a free agent destination.

Bill has already floated this idea that they're maybe waiting on Giannis like they were waiting on Kawhi when Lawrence Frank was like going to Raptors games half the season that year.

And we're going to have draft picks.

We're going to be ready, armed, and ready to go.

You take away whatever munition they have in terms of trade stuff.

Like, that's a disaster for this team.

One other fascinating point.

that people keep bringing up to me is about the rules itself.

And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the second apron and the new CBA.

This is not irrelevant here.

A lot of people are thinking, like, the second apron itself is a response to the hyper wealth at the top of the NBA organization, uh, ownership ladder.

Two teams.

Two teams.

Workers Clippers.

Yeah.

So the Clippers, as you just mentioned, Steve Ballmer is by far the wealthiest owner in the NBA.

Some people said he could buy every other team in the league if he wanted to.

He's reportedly worth $175 billion, according to Pablo's reporting.

But that extreme wealth is already a threat to everybody in the league.

And the second apron, as I said, is the first time the league has really imposed team-building penalties for overspending because there's this one hyper-wealthy outlier at the top of the ladder that can outspend everybody.

I say that because I think the context of the other 29 or 26 relatively poor ownership groups have been threatened by this dude and this extreme wealth for a long time.

So much so that the current CBA that has deformed team building in the league was kind of targeted at that.

And the Intuit Dome is part of that.

Like this guy has flexed his muscles already.

He's paid the tax, built the best new arena in the league.

They're going to host the all-star game.

I say all of that because that's the board of governors environment we're walking into.

It's not some random team that did this.

It's the team that has the most money.

And I think the other 29 owners are incentivized to be like, guys, we're all going to raise hell here because this guy has tools that we don't have with his capital.

And so I think that's really relevant here, too, that it was the LA Clippers that did this.

And anybody that knows, that's been to Induit has seen how incredible that that place is.

So my belief is after canvassing the league, that the Uncle Dennis part of it all and the Steve Ballmer part of it all don't help the Clippers case with the sort of jury that they're trying to win over, the other 29 people.

And I think that's really relevant because Adam, it doesn't really matter what you and I think.

It doesn't really matter what Adam Silver thinks independently.

He's going to be told by his bosses, so to speak, the other owners, to do certain things, to look into this.

And I land exactly where you land, Zach Lowe.

Those voices are going to demand a very thorough investigation and a very serious investigation into that.

Not only those voices,

the public outcry is going to continue, at least among the NBA Cognicenti.

Like at that Board of Governors press conference, I'll bet you 90% of it is just questions about the Clippers.

I don't know what else is going to hold all-star formats, rule changes, restricted free agency being dead, the second apron.

It's all going to be about the Clippers.

Like it's not going to go away.

Now, let me read the rest of another key section of the Clippers statement that they released last night there is nothing unusual or untoward about team sponsors doing endorsement deals with players on the same team we talked about that earlier facts neither steve nor the clippers organization had any oversight of kawaii's independent endorsement agreement with aspiration to say otherwise is flat out wrong so That's the plausible deniability part.

Like, we just didn't know.

We didn't know, and you're not going to find out that we knew if we knew, which we didn't.

And so, I think the most likely scenario is this ends up in a very strange gray area where there is no super smoking gun.

And you can say they're already like, whatever, there is no hard smoking flaming gun, right?

That the Clippers can cling, hold on to this level of deniability.

And yet, there's so much smoke and circumstantial evidence that

it just can't be nothing, that the league will have to make a decision of what do we do in a scenario where there is no smoking gun.

We don't, let's just say, let's just posit the league doesn't consider the fact that the deal goes away if Kawhi is not on the clippers a smoking gun.

Some people would say that it is.

The league, I don't think that will meet that threshold.

Not that a smoking gun is like an actual legal threshold.

Let's just say that $28 million to do nothing is not enough of a smoking gun.

That we just blame this stupid company for making a stupid deal and not forcing Kawhi Leonard to do anything with it.

Let's just say that doesn't meet it.

Then they're not, then we could get in a scenario where there is no smoking gun, where there is no direct Joe Smith level.

We now have this thing with which we can hammer you to the degree that all the owners want to hammer you with five first-round picks, three first-round picks, and just completely screw your franchise going forward.

But there's this public outcry, there's this

owner outcry, and there's just this incredible trail of strange

things that are difficult to, like, how many things can you explain by just saying, well, it was a scam.

Well, it was a scam.

Well, it was a scam.

Well, they're idiots.

Well, they're idiots.

And I just would be fascinated to see if that's the gray area we end up in after whatever investigation the NBA does,

what the punishment, if any, is.

Because if it's nothing or if it's like a second round pick,

even just based on what we know today from Pablo's podcast, podcast, assuming all that is accurate, the ownership group is not going to be satisfied with that.

It's a dangerous precedent, right?

If another owner is like, oh, it's a second rounder to circumvent the cap.

And even if it's a sort of

that gray area you're talking about, I can get one of my billionaire friends to throw an endorsement deal at my max level player and I can invest in their business and

we can do this.

That's a very slippery slope and a dangerous precedent for a league that needs a transparent

salary cap and regulations

to operate the way it wants to.

That's a very slippery slope.

So you're exactly right.

What we know right now, that's a pretty dangerous precedent.

If a company that's, come on, somehow connected to your organization is giving $28 million for nothing,

that's dangerous.

And if they don't punish them, as you say, what's stopping Josiah from doing something like that?

If another hyper-rich guy buys into the expansion teams or another team, Mark Walter owns the Lakers, he's watching this, like, oh,

I can get another guy at a lower number if I just take care of him on the back end with this sort of sketchy NIL kind of deal.

And that's really dangerous because the league requires for it to work the way it wants to work

is transparency and honesty within the guardrails of CBA?

And what we're seeing here is apparently somebody going around that.

And my final point on this, Zach Lowe, is like,

is this true?

Is this a true thing that they did this?

It appears that's where, if I had to conclude today, which I don't, I would say, yeah, this appears to be.

Is it provable?

And that's where Mr.

McCann comes back into the conversation.

That's unfortunately the threshold.

Like, they have to prove it.

And despite the language in the CBA or the Constitution that you were just referencing,

they do have to prove something.

They do have to demonstrate proof.

You can't just fine or take pictures.

They have to demonstrate proof to hit them with the Joe Smith level punishment.

The gray area to me is how much further proof do they have to demonstrate to do something?

And as we're talking,

a GM just texted me a Boston Sports Journal story exclusive that just came out, purporting, and I'm just skimming it now, but the headline is purporting to find that

Leonard's Kawhi's deal with aspiration could have been actually worth more than $28 million.

According to, I'm reading the story now.

I have not vetted it.

This is happening literally as we are doing this podcast.

According to a high-level source, Leonard also cut a side deal with Aspiration to receive an additional $20 million in company stock.

Now, that stock is probably vaporizing into nothing, but

you know, and again, side deal, just that could just be Uncle Dennis, right?

Like with no knowledge of the Clippers.

But,

and there's more details in this story about higher-ups at Boston Sports Journal, by the way, higher-ups at Aspiration, what they knew, what they didn't do, what small level of diligence, if any, they did with this deal.

I have to read it when we're done with this, but just this trickling out is

there's going to be more of this as all of us around the league make calls and try to figure out what's going on here.

It's an absolutely,

it's a huge, huge, whatever happens, it is at this moment a huge story.

One of the biggest non-basketball stories that has happened in the last five to ten years in the NBA, potentially anyway.

Everyone is talking about it.

Everyone wants to know more about it.

And,

you know,

this isn't like pro clutching by these other teams.

Like, oh, like they're all sort of doing the same stuff and like, you you know, they're just trying to villainize the Clippers.

There's like real anger here.

Like, there's a whole, there's real anger of like, there are rules, and this isn't like, oh, the player used the owner's vacation house in Malibu for a few days, or the player used a private jet for a week.

Or I even heard stories of like a team paying for agents' hotel rooms during playoff series of agents who represent players on their team.

This isn't any of that.

This is $28 million, and there's a line somewhere where these teams are like, we either have rules or we don't.

And if these rules are broken in any sort of brazen way, like the rage is not going away.

The integrity of the league is on the line.

That is a direct quote I got on the phone from an executive yesterday.

The integrity of the league is on the line.

So, I mean, that's the kind of conversation this is.

Where it lands, I don't know, but it is, you framed it exactly right.

It's the biggest story of the offseason,

and it's the biggest story heading into what I would consider to be a crucible moment for Adam Silver, this Board of Governors conference next week.

And there is a press availability after that.

Is that right, Zach?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So that's like must watch YouTube or TV if it's going to be on television live.

I'm going to be in the room.

What are you going to ask?

What's your question?

What do you think I'm going to ask?

Well, I got to think about specific questions.

And like, so when you go to these press conferences, like, if you're not the first one, I'm never the first one with the hand up.

They're a very eager people.

Like, give me the mic, give me the mic.

So then you, like, you have your questions, and then, like, well, that guy took that one, that guy took that one.

Then, if you're not aggressive, by the time you get to you, you're like, yeah, so

our YouTube friends, let me say to our YouTube friends, leave your questions for Zach in the comments.

Let us know.

But it is an interesting thing.

Like, when you go to these and you have one question to ask to adam like what would your question be it's an it's an interesting moment for you i i think it would be something like

i i'd have to word it more carefully like because you just get this quick window to do it and i want to be as precise as possible but it would be and by the way everyone cheats and it's like three-part question for you and the third part is like completely unrelated to the other ones but it would be something to the effect of

Is there enough evidence that you've already seen to levy some kind of punishment?

And regardless of it, part B, regardless of part A,

what more are you looking for specifically?

It'd be something like that.

By the way, not for nothing.

The dude plays half the games.

You know how many clip series, the playoff series, the Clippers have won in six seasons since they signed Kawhi and Paul George?

Three?

Three playoff series in six seasons.

He missed

the last two games of one of those, the last two wins of one of those against Utah.

By the way, some Utah fan in my mention said, they need to, we should have made the conference finals.

They need to retroactively put the jazz from 2021 in the conference finals.

Yeah, no, you guys are up 2-0 and you couldn't guard fucking Terrence Mann in the corner.

Okay, enough whining out of you.

But three playoff series in six years.

You know how many of the Thunder won last year in one year alone?

Four because they won the championship.

Well, they had all those draft picks that I think, you know,

as a Spurs fan, I I think the Thunder should be forced to give back some of their draft picks.

I think that's part of this punishment.

Don't you think, Are you?

The Thunder and Sam Presti needs to get careful, careful.

People are going to think you're serious.

No, I'm kidding.

I guess true.

I'm kidding.

Sam Presti, they won for.

But like going back to the Spurs thing, and when the Uncle Dennis name first entered the ether of the Zach Lowe show

or our world, it's 2017, 2018, 2019.

At that time, the Super Max deal was sort of the new big thing.

And we were really taking it seriously whether or not we should extend Kawhi Leonard in part because of the thing you just said.

Like he's not reliable.

And that's part of why it went sideways with Uncle Dennis in San Antonio.

He wasn't into that nuance or that.

Should we really go five years at the absolute biggest number for this guy who's just missed a huge chunk of time?

I mean,

that's a real part of why it went sideways in San Antonio and a real part of how Uncle Dennis became the face of the Kawhi Leonard sort of experience, at least as it relates to this kind of stuff.

And it's just an interesting thing.

And I think it was Stephen A.

He was like, well, this isn't his first no-show job.

So, yeah, I think his ability.

It was a little harsh.

A little harsh.

I mean, the guy's had real injuries.

And by the way, part of the Kawhi experience is like,

why does everything have to be so mysterious?

Like, he tears his ACL in the playoffs, playoffs, and there's like, well, he could come back for game seven.

He could come.

Oh, he turns out he tore his ACL.

It's like, why does everything have to be

how much leeway are you going to give this guy over and over again when he just plays half the games?

Well, some of that's they insist on their own medical attention, and it's not team, it's not connected to the team and the PR wing of the team.

And it's mysterious for the team itself in some cases.

And that's the way they've chosen to sort of execute the second half of his career.

All right, before we wrap up,

again,

like we should at least note

the possibility that the NBA finds the Clippers did nothing wrong, right?

That this is all pure just happenstance, that this stupid company acted independently, that someone in the company unilaterally struck this deal with Kawhi because he's a Clippers fan, because he's a Kawhi's fan, because Uncle Dennis wined and dined him, and the Clippers knew nothing about it.

That's not implausible to me.

Nor is the other extreme.

We are living currently in a gray area where there's circumstantial evidence that something strange has happened.

And what direction it goes from here is going to be really interesting.

What direction it absolutely cannot go from here is the league half-asses an investigation.

That cannot happen.

The league has to go full bore as if this is...

I mean, it's not Sterling Sarver level in terms of like morals and ethical violations and just reprehensible views that have no place in society.

But as a basketball story, it is extremely serious.

It needs to be treated extremely seriously by the NBA.

Any concluding thoughts?

Anything we left out?

I mean, again, incredible investigative reporting.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

It's a truly unprecedented moment for the NBA.

And I'll end with this statement.

The integrity of the league is on the line.

Unbelievable.

This episode is brought to you by Samsung.

The new Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the ultimate sleek bar phone you're used to that expands to do so much more.

Z Fold 7 unfolds into a widescreen BAM that allows you to view up to three windows at once.

Holy smokes.

So you can bounce between games, text, notes, and it's powerful.

No lag, just smooth multitasking.

Diehard fans, this phone is a game changer.

Galaxy Z Fold 7, learn more at Samsung.com.

Display measurements are diagonal and actual viewable area is less due to rounded corners and camera hole punch.

All right, what else we we got to talk about?

Cam Thomas signed the qualifying offer today.

Any thoughts?

My friend, Cam Thomas, my friend.

I got no ill will to Cam Thomas.

I actually think the league has over-corrected on Cam Thomas and his Ilka players, as evidenced by the fact that there was limited to no market for him and in restricted free agency.

Shams Trania is reporting that the Nets, let me get it here,

were offering two years and $30 million with a team option for the second season.

So let's just call it one year 14

or one year and 9.5 million that with incentives up to 11 million while waiving his de facto no trade clause that he would have got.

His qualifying offer is one year, 6 million.

So Cam Thomas, by signing this, cost himself somewhere between $5 and $8 million in this single season, betting, and not incorrectly, I don't think, that there will be more cap space next summer.

He's not going to give, you know what, if it's Utah or Washington or some crap team that throws $20 million a year at him.

He's going to take it and he can maybe make that up.

Could go south, but I don't blame him betting on himself.

There just wasn't a market above this for him.

And he cut, you know, what he cut the deal he cut.

And like, I think he was always the most likely one to bet on himself of the four guys, Kaminga, Giddy, Grimes.

And him.

I remember predicting in Vegas on a podcast that I said my prediction would be something like two years, 25 million.

So I wasn't that far far off.

But anyway, any thoughts on Cam Thomas?

Yeah, definitely.

I think my first sort of macro level take is

restricted free agency as a tool needs to be reevaluated.

It's not doing what people thought it would do.

We have these dudes hanging out in the air.

Cam didn't get the money he thought.

There was no market.

There were no offer sheets.

How many offer sheets do we see this summer?

One, zero?

None are coming to mind.

Yeah, it's what are we doing with restricted free agency?

It seemed to be extremely restricted this time around.

And we still have some of these guys hanging out in the air, other vets waiting to sign reportedly in Golden State, assuming Kaminga makes a similar choice here.

But Cam is going to be fascinating to watch.

And I think you had your sort of third rail moment with him this summer.

It's an honor to talk about Cam Thomas on the Zach Lowe show this summer because of what you guys had going back and forth on social media.

The dude is.

No, There was no fourth.

There was no back.

I just said I don't do that social media stuff with players.

Well, podcasts aren't social media.

I don't know.

Let me know in the comments if you think podcasts are.

Dude, so Cam Thomas going to shoot 30 times a game.

Brooklyn, he's going to be auditioning for a deal in a way that I can't remember another player auditioning in this contract year.

So that's those are my thoughts.

I don't think Brooklyn's going to be very good.

I think he's going to get a lot of counting stats.

And the question is, and it's sort of hanging over Trey Young right now, too, are players like this, and this was the heart, and jokes aside, this was the heart of your thing with Cam Thomas earlier this year.

Players like this aren't as valuable as they used to be.

We're at a place in the NBA where those kinds of scorers are being held up to sort of a more strict rubric than they used to be.

And that's where, like, does Trey Young really affect winning?

Does Zach Levine, these are two hanging in the air.

And I think Cam Thomas fits in that group.

And I think that's really the question.

Is this dude worth what he thinks he's worth?

Because the answer right now is no.

So I think Trey Young is a completely different player than Cam Thomas and like way, way better just because of his passing and playmaking.

I'm going to put him separately.

Levine is a better player, but you're you're getting closer.

Because I didn't camp.

Look, I'm not going to do the thing, relitigate the whole thing.

He improved as a playmaker last year.

The dude can legit get buckets, and I think he needs to be a little bit more efficient at the rim and on threes, but he's a legit bucket getter with like a lot of skills, and I don't think it's crazy for him to be like, am I that much worse than name this shooting guard that you are theoretical shooting guard making $30 million a year?

I wouldn't pay him $30 million a year.

I already have said that he's got some fans in the league.

He's got some detractors in the league.

And this is where this all nets out.

You mentioned 30 shots a game.

It actually is going to be interesting because they just drafted five dudes, all of whom are playmakers of various ilks, or at least four of them are.

And they want to see what those guys can do.

And I don't know how that fits with Cam Thomas taking 30 shots a game.

But, you know, look, he was always the most likely guy up.

And I bet, I'll bet you he at least breaks even.

with this sort of trade-off of what he sacrificed this year versus the future.

I don't think this is going to be some like death knell for him.

Yeah, I'm just saying the market for these guys with impressive box score numbers, obviously Cam and Trey are very different players, but I just think there's a reformation here, Zach, in the second apron era, where dollars and pennies are tighter than ever in the market, which is why these restricted free agents didn't get any offer sheets.

There's a reevaluation of an age-old question.

Does this guy who I'm about to pay 30 or 20, does he make my team better?

Does he make the players around him better?

And I think it's fair to look at Cam Thomas's game and say, yeah, I mean, that's a real question with his game.

I think he's super talented, like you said.

He's a bucket-getter,

but you know, I'm not surprised this is where it landed.

Okay, item number three: PJ Washington signs the much anticipated four-year $90 million extension based on 140% of his salary this season with the Mavericks.

That pays him 20, 21, 23, and 24 and a half

through 2030.

I like PJ Washington.

I think he's a good player.

He is 27 years old.

This takes him right through his prime.

I think he's a nice jack of all trades who can do a little bit of everything at the right kinds of positions.

He might not start this year for the Mavericks.

You know, I penciled in very tentatively D-Low as the Kyrie placeholder, Clay, Cooper Flag, Anthony Davis, and Lively or Gafford, whoever they decide to start, I would hope Lively.

And that puts P.J.

Washington in a bench role.

I think he then becomes a candidate for six man of the year.

He's going to play a ton of minutes at a ton of different positions, including like in maybe super big lineups with him and flag and Davis and Lively.

I just think he's a really good player.

This is what you pay for good players.

It's going to be, you know, a piddling, not piddling, but, you know, 10, not 12, 13% of the cap or something.

That's completely fine if he ends up being a really solid six-man.

Nico Harrison's GM legacy is obviously colored by some recent events, I think in February of 2025.

But when he built that defense, he built the plane in the air the previous season by getting PJ and Gafford.

I mean, it was a stroke of genius.

I mean, really hard to improve a team at the deadline.

And he did just that.

I think PJ proved.

that he like Gafford, he was a nice prospect on a pretty bad team.

And I think he's shown in big moments in Dallas that he's a winning player.

And I agree.

I think the Mavericks are one of the most fascinating teams coming into this season for a variety of reasons.

And I think they're pretty good, honestly.

I don't put them in the top part of the West.

Don't get me wrong.

But if everybody's healthy, that's a pretty good group of dudes.

And PJ's physical and fits right in.

That front court is so big, so athletic.

It's an interesting team.

Well, let's just play it out for a few minutes because I do think they're one of the wild cards of the NBA.

And the wildest wild card is like, is Kyrie going to play at all this year?

Because if he's not, then they're just whatever.

You know, they're a play-in team at best.

Not at best.

They're a play-in team.

If he plays toward the end of the year, maybe they get interesting unless it's one of these things where he tours ACL.

It's going to be next year where he's really Kyrie again.

But let's just play it out.

D'Lo Clay flag AD in one of the centers.

And on bench, do you then have

like,

you know, I don't know who the backup point guard is going to be.

It could be Brandon Williams.

It could be Jaden Hardy as a pseudo point guard.

It could be Exim as a pseudo point guard.

It could be Ryan Nemhard on a two-way.

I don't know.

Max Christie, then you got a bunch of like Danaji Marshall, Caleb Martin, PJ Washington, the other backup center.

They can slide AD to the five, which I think they're going to have to do maybe more than AD wants to do.

It's a big team.

It's an interesting team.

Obviously, a lot of it depends on like how much is Cooper Flag ready to run an offense because in the point guard void that I'm talking about, he's going to be asked to fill a lot of it.

I'm like wildly high on Cooper Flag and his ability to do that.

I think that's a solid team.

The interesting thing about the PJ Washington is like they're very sneakily expensive.

They're going to be right up against the second apron as of now next season and maybe the season after that, depending on AD's extension, which is going to be a big story a year from now or six, eight months from now, whatever.

It's a good team.

I don't know if I, you know, the roadmap for title contention in the next three years for them is plausible, but very tough considering the level of opposition, I think.

Glaring hole at the point guard spot.

I didn't like the Russell play.

I know they had a gap to fill, like, see why they did it, but that's where they're weak in a league where the guard position is so important now.

But man, one of the best front courts.

I, too, am very high on Cooper Flag.

I did a deep dive feature on him right before the draft.

Got to meet him up in Maine.

It was great.

But but some of his playmaking at duke some of the the his abilities to read and react he's not a typical three-man he can make those kinds of plays that said he's 18 zach so how much can we really expect from him as a playmaker is a fair question at this exact stage of his career and then you look at the story of the western conference for me it starts with oklahoma city They're on a different tier.

Then you have teams like Denver, Houston.

It's just going to be hard for a team with any flaws to to really crack like a Kevin Durant, Eme Adoka, Ahmed Thompson, Houston team, or that Oklahoma City tier, obviously, and Nikola Jokic still in his prime with a sort of a re-supporting a supporting cast that's sort of reassembled around him.

So I just think they're going to be in there somewhere between four or seven, somewhere in there, if everybody's healthy.

Four is way too high for me, considering you haven't even gotten to Lakers, Wolves, and whatever the the Clippers are going to be

because they were lined up to be a pretty solid team in that range and still are.

I mean, there's like nothing drastic is going to happen, I don't think, to like the present of the Clippers or like Steve Ballmer's ownership or anything like that, even in the worst case scenarios for them.

This is really a next year question for me, for Dallas.

If they get fully healthy, Kyrie,

one of these young guys pops a little bit,

something befalls the Nuggets, the Rockets, as things do.

You know, injuries happen.

Guys don't develop as you'd expect.

Does the window crack open soon enough?

This flag good enough soon enough for the AD Kyrie timeline.

It's a very interesting team with a high upside.

It's just a lot of things have to hit, but it's considering you just traded Luka Donchich, they're actually in quite a good spot.

Item number three, Sean Strania reporting that the all-star game is being switched again, Kurt Goldsbury.

It's going to be a round-robin tournament consisting of three eight-player teams, so that's 24 all-stars, same number as there have been for ever and ever, two USA teams, so 16 American All-Stars, and one world team, eight international all-stars.

That is obviously, you know, the USA versus world conceit 12 on 12 was a tough ask of the union because it was going to be American players were going to get squeezed out

in favor of international players who were were not as good just to get to the 12.

This is a way to do that.

There were other ways to do that.

This may be the last best hope.

I don't know why it needs to be around Robin.

I'd rather just have it be two teams.

There are ways to do that without squeezing the American players.

But USA versus the world may be our last best hope for a competitive all-star game.

I don't know why it has to be around Robin.

TBD on how that works.

I'd like to see the Elimending come back.

No one has explained to me why they took that out of the all-star game because it was pretty pretty awesome.

But this is USA versus the world feels like it's either going to be this or just a return to East versus West.

And I don't know how you get the players to really get juiced up to compete in that scenario, but at least I know why one team is comprised of these players and the other team is comprised of these players.

This is our last best hope, I think, for a competitive all-star game.

Like competitive, like everyone tries for a certain amount of games of time in the game.

Yeah, I agree.

I I think it's, I'm pessimistic.

I loved the all-star game as a kid.

It was my favorite thing on the whole calendar.

I loved it.

I just think in a league pass era where we can see anybody in a social media era, it's sort of taken some of that mystique away from getting to see these guys play together.

Obviously, they're not playing very hard.

The NHL stuff has been awesome where they've done like the Four Nations kind of thing.

And, you know, you get that nationality.

But really, my question is, is like a Serbian guy and a Canadian guy really going to

want to join forces to beat the American guys?

That's an interesting question, but I like it.

I think, like you said, it's better than nothing.

And I'm interested to see what happens.

One of my sort of procedural questions, though, Zach, is

what if there's 12 deserving international all-stars?

What if there's a couple of breakout guys?

What if Zachary Richet and Wemby and they all level up at the same time?

It's like, how are they going to to sort of fit the eight?

How is it?

Let's make it 15 versus 15 and just call it a day.

And if we have to expand it, like, that's why the round robin thing, I mean, last year was such a disaster that I could not watch it.

I mean, I literally had, because of all the breaks between games, and here comes this TikToker is going to do some stuff for 45 minutes in between the two games.

I just, it was, and that's what makes like, I don't blame the players for half-assing it.

There's no, there's minimal financial financial incentive compared to their salaries for them to play hard.

There's injury risk.

And the NBA and their sponsors run them ragged the entire weekend.

It's one event after another, after another, after another, to the point that it's not about the game.

It's not about the all-star game itself.

So I'm for anything interesting.

I have an idea.

Okay.

We get aspiration

to pay the winners of the all-star game $28 million.

Just an idea.

Throwing it out there.

Maybe we can can set up an LLC now,

take some funding, do some rounds of funding, save the all-star game, LLC, and take some funding and just rent out a suite at the West End in New York like Anna Delvey did and just live or the W rather.

We'll get Robert Downey Jr.

to walk solemnly through a redwood forest and talk about the decay of the all-star competitions.

Think of the top five international guys, SGA, Luca, Jokic, Giannis, Wemby.

Like, oh my god I probably forgot somebody like just just just filling out like right off the top of your head it's like okay like all the last MVPs

are are here it's gonna be fun well the other thing is there was a study I think hoops I did I want to get it right that looked at like international basketball participation by all-stars of different nationalities over the last 20 years.

And to no surprise to people like you and me, the European dudes who are out there playing Eurobasket right now always seem to sign up for their national teams, whether you're Giannis or Luca or Jokic.

They want to be there.

Man, I wish I was at Eurobasket right now.

It's one of the best events in basketball, period.

The American guys just don't have that appetite.

So I wonder just like if there's a general more competitive aspect to the world team that sort of tracks that participation stat

that that report showed up.

So, you know,

not to mention we have an American MVP in the NBA since James Harden last decade.

My pick would go right now, blind pick to the international team to win that.

I mean, it's hard not to pick them.

I will say the U.S.

guys want to go to the Olympics, and the Olympics last year was incredible.

I think 2028 is going to be off the charts, incredible in LA.

But yeah, I mean, look.

My other all-star takes is like everyone hates on the dunk contest.

I still like it.

Yeah, there's going to be some duds, and yes, it would be great if the stars play.

It's just fun.

Three-point shootout is like perfect.

It's perfect.

Even the little green sprite ball, I think it's sprite or starry, whatever.

I think it's starry.

Apologies to starry.

I don't know what you taste like or what the difference is between sprite and starry, but sorry.

With a long-distance one, I like that.

I like picking your money ball rack.

Like, all the tweaks have been fine.

The skills challenge can, I actually don't even mind the skills challenge.

I like that Chris Paul tried to cheat last year or like

Wemby.

That was disgraceful, honestly, as a spur.

That was disgraceful.

I wave my old man finger at them for doing that.

That was not okay in my book.

It was entertaining.

If you're going to cut one, it's the skills challenge.

But I don't mind it.

And I want the half-court shootout, shooting stars thing, the swing cash Chris Boss Memorial Challenge.

I want that to come back.

That was fun.

That was cool.

Yeah, that was cool.

I like the unrivaled, the women's league that's doing these one-on-one things.

I think that's pretty cool.

I don't think NBA players would do it, but it would be cool to have a one-on-one competition.

Well, that goes without saying.

I mean, the one-on-one dream, which currently is like,

who was feuding about like Brandon Jennings and someone were feuding about who would win one-on-one?

It was like, if we can get the actual NBA current players to care about that, that would be a blast, but that ain't going to happen.

No.

Unless the money was huge.

Okay, last item.

As we get closer to the season, I'm going to do little awards things here or there just for fun.

And I said, let's pick most improved player.

Let's do just like a shallow dive on most improved player.

Predict who's going to win.

And I said, I want you to divide the players into three tiers and pick

one guy from each tier.

My tiers were this.

The obvious candidates, like the sorts of guys who always win this award and are the odds-on favorites on FanDuel.

The under-the-radar candidates, so the guy, that's tier two.

So the guys that are like even below those guys, but you know, like might have a kind of interesting season.

And then tier three,

you get these cases every now and then for like an established star player.

Like there were pushes for Luca five years ago or MB'd four years ago, like stars who, stars who become super duper stars.

People will say, well, that's the hardest leap to make.

So I said, pick a guy in each of those tiers, and I will let you lead off.

Let's start with the obvious guys.

Kirk Goldsberry's obvious all-NBA guy or most improved player guy.

Ahmed Thompson, the ascendant star and the electric

highlight man in Houston.

Ahmed Thompson.

He'll turn 23 this year.

I think a couple things compel me.

He's currently number four in the odds on fan duel.

So he's not chalk, but I like it for two reasons.

One, I loved what I saw from him last year.

I'm not alone in that.

But two, now the Rockets are on national TV all the time.

I am high on the Houston Rockets for being like a two seed in the West, somewhere in there.

So I think there'll be a lot more exposure.

And I think he'll have about 12 dunks this year that show up in our social media feeds.

And we all say, holy shit.

So I think he's.

He's 12 dunks in like 20 blocks.

Yeah,

and steals.

So he was, he got votes for Defensive Player of the Year.

He made all defense.

So like Dyson Daniels, like he is a problem on that end of the court.

And Dyson won it last year, and I thought deservedly so.

But I think Ahmed's going to have a bigger light on him in Houston, and I think his highlights in a league that's like driven by stars and highlights like that, I love his chances to get some notice on this category this year, Zach.

What a fortuitous pick by Kurt Goldsbury.

Obviously, Ahmed Thompson is on my long list of guys.

Yeah.

My only hesitation was, did too much of the leap happen last season?

But I think there's a lot more of a leap to come, particularly on offense.

I love to pick.

I say, what a fun coincidence because I picked Asar Thompson from the Detroit Pistons

as my most improved player for the year.

Because I think, you know, having missed last season a lot with the blood clot issue,

the all-around game he has flashed playing off Jalen Duran, playing off Cade, playing off, I think they improved their shooting.

Well, their shooting is probably neutral from last year, but just the defense, the cutting, the passing, I think he'll lean, he'll find more opportunities like Ahmed did in Houston to just the power drives into and over people.

I think a small medium scoring leap is coming.

So I went with Asar Thompson over a host of a host of candidates.

I like that.

Tier two, you're under the radar, sneaky, do you have one pick?

Well, it's under the radar in the sense that it's not near the top of the odds pool, but I'm shocked.

I'm curious.

You might be mad at me or you might think, oh, yeah, that's perfect.

That's Jalen Johnson from the Atlanta Hawks, who, like Asar Thompson, missed a lot of time last year in the midst of sort of a breakout.

And you talk to nerds around the league.

He's becoming the most impactful player in Atlanta, statistically speaking.

And he's obviously younger than Trey Young.

He's 23.

I think he's a two-way player

who...

Like my first pick, Ahmed Thompson, Jalen, I think they're going to get a lot more attention in Atlanta this year.

I'm pretty high on them, like a lot of people.

And I think it'll be a lot of people's introduction to the all-around player.

I mean, one of the great rebounders, one of the period young, great rebounders in the league, particularly at his position, gets assists, plays defense, scores relatively efficiently for a young player.

So I don't know, Zach, does that count as under the radar?

Is that too chalk?

Somewhere in between.

He's on my list, but I mean, I love Jalen Johnson, uh, he was one of my most intriguing players for last season in a column that never ran for events that do not need to be discussed

anymore.

Um,

I think he's kind of outgrown this award in that I think he would have been a candidate, if not the favorite, in each of the last two seasons, uh, had he hit the games criteria, which he did not in 23, 24, or 24, 25.

I, I went deep, like, I went to like

like my under-the-radar guys were deep.

I thought about like Terrence Shannon Jr.

level deep.

He was great.

Ultimately, I went with Isaiah Jackson from the Indiana Pacers, who missed almost all of last season with an Achilles tear, who now gets a chance to fill an enormous void at center with Miles Turner gone.

And,

you know, James Wiseman's also going to be after the same injury.

I don't know if he's going to start.

I suspect he'll get the first crack at the starting spot.

And the dude's just going to like, you know, there's no Halliburton to feed him easy shots after easy shots.

Like Nemhart is a big, is one of the FanDuel favorites for this because of the Halliburton void.

Matherin is one of the favorites for this because of the Halliburton Void.

I feel like those guys are, like, Matherin.

scoring more is very predictable.

Nemhart doing more is very predictable.

I think if Isaiah Jack, if we wake up in January and Isaiah Jackson's averaging like 14 and 8 and a block and a half a game, people are going to be like, wait, what happened?

So he was my deep, my, my under-the-radar guy.

But that's a brilliant way to look at it.

And I talked to our friends at FanDuel about this briefly.

And of their top 10 guys, there's two Pacers, two Pistons, two Blazers, and two Bulls.

Who's the other Piston besides Asar?

Who is the other?

It's Jaden Ivey, I think.

See, I would put Duran over Ivey

for this.

I had Durren on my list, actually.

I'm a huge Jalen Duran guy.

Bigger Trajan Landing,

Trajan fan, because I love what they've done there overall, changed the the culture.

But there's two pistons already on that list.

I agree.

Jalen Durland, anybody who's seen him in person knows that he just is the most physical, imposing, big.

Who's the favorite?

Was it Denny Abdia?

I think it's Nemhard, Indiana's Nemhard.

And

again, the formula is you're losing.

You're plus

losing stats.

Plus 1,200.

And I think the Pacers will be good.

I think Carlisle will figure something out.

And I think the odds reflect that.

I'm not saying they're going to be great, and maybe they even aren't good.

But I think the logic there is that Matherin and Nemhart obviously have some stats to absorb, and that's what people will start to see.

How many more points are you scoring than you did last year?

Oh, I didn't know you could score 25 a game.

But I also think it's interesting.

There's two Pistons, two Blazers, and two Bowls in that list.

By the way, my backup pick for the tier one

obvious candidate type was Scoot Henderson, just to throw him out there too.

Henderson Island.

All right, now the most interesting one.

The tier three

star to something above star.

These guys don't end up winning, but I guarantee you we're going to get to March and someone is going to be like, maybe Victor Wembanyama should be most improved player.

Like that's something like that is going to be a thing.

It always is.

So who was your guy?

Well, you're right.

And if you look back at the history of the award, there's a bunch of big names on there.

Siakam, Ingram Randall, John Morant, Tyrus Maxi recently, my name, Yannis Santa Tacumbo, if you want to go back 10 years.

Um, Derek White, I think

I love that aforementioned, I love Derek.

I biased, we were we drafted Derek in San Antonio when I was there, but dude, there's stats there.

It's the same logic as the Nemhard logic.

Somebody's got a score for for Jalen, um,

or Jason Tatum's absent, obviously.

So I think Derek is going to be a focal point in a way that he hasn't been.

And I think he's going to show out, and I think he's efficient, and I think he'll score, he'll continue to play defense the way we expect him to.

Um, but there's gonna be nights where it's like, oh my god, Derek White at 33 points, dude!

Like, oh, and he made 61% of his shots.

Like, I could see that happening.

So, what did you say, Zach?

I love that

I love Derek White,

He was not on my list.

Here were the stars that I debated.

And again, these are not my picks.

It's just this fun tier.

Wemby.

Because, I mean, who the hell knows?

Like, Wemby shoots 40% from three.

Like, all bets are off.

Paolo Bancaro.

Yep.

Franz Wagner.

And ultimately, I went with Chet Holmgren.

Ah, he was my second choice, choice, actually.

Scoring dipped last year from 16.5 to 15 a game.

Only played 32 games due to injury.

And I just think

this is the year where it's going to be spread your wings offensively.

Like, Shea won the MVP, you won the title, the defense we know is going to be there.

And you just see flashes of a more broad offensive game other than roll for dunks, which he can do, and shoot threes, which he can do in the regular season.

It hasn't translated super well to the playoffs.

I just think we're going to see a development of his off-the-bounce game, which is there already, but like the pump and go game, maybe some more, like, oh, you think you can put a guard on me?

Like, we're going to actually dig into that a little bit in the regular season.

Show me what you can do against those switches so that we're ready for it in the playoffs.

And if we wake up and Shet's averaging 19 instead of 15 and just showing the breadth of a skill set that I think is lurking underneath what we've seen, I think that would be an interesting, an interesting case.

He's on the verge of being one of the most impactful players in the NBA because of what he does defensively.

And I think his rim protection numbers are among the best in the league already, and that's such a valuable skill.

But in a context of an offense that is stacked, he's going to get efficient scoring numbers.

And I could see it.

He's still young.

Coming off that injury, he's probably going to be more confident this year.

I love that pick.

He was second or third.

I didn't rank him on my list for this category.

Bancaro was the other one I debated between just because I'm super high on him.

There's a level of like sort of analytically based skepticism about him that I somewhat understand and somewhat don't understand.

And I think if he busts out of that sort of glass ceiling this year, he could be, I mean, this guy doesn't fit any of these categories, but I'm just going to mention him because I mentioned the Thunder.

Kason Wallace is a really interesting player to me.

And, you know, again, in a year, I think where the Thunder are going to say, we accomplished something, let's sort of dip our toes into other waters.

Like, I think there's stuff lurking under there, too, that he can do offensively.

Defensively, he's a menace.

Like, I just, that's a guy I'm very interested to see if he gets a little bit more leash on offense.

What more is there?

Random story.

One of my students here at the University of Texas

undergraduate played college or played high school basketball against Kayson Wallace.

So that made me feel very old, just as an aside, an undergraduate student.

I was like, yeah, and I was like, oh, yeah, the guy in the the finals, he's the same age as my students.

But he's great.

Does he get the stats?

Ultimately, when you look at the winners of the award,

there's stats to be had.

And I think that's why Nemhar is so high or these Blazers guys with Simons out now.

What we're seeing in the Vegas world is like

who...

You know, that's why I picked Derek White.

There's a black hole on the stat sheet that needs filled.

And I think that happened in Portland with Simons leaving.

I think it happens in Indiana with the Halliburton injury.

So it does case on who is very exciting to me as a player.

And

I just don't know if he gets there statistically.

Fair enough.

Kurt Goldsberry, it's wonderful to see you back in the saddle.

It's always great to catch up.

Insight, second to none.

You just wrote something two days ago.

It's not you.

It's the rise of the NBA situation ship on theringer.com, a website you might have heard of.

Anything else planned for preseason stuff?

We're just going to get back.

We're just going to get rolling together.

Yeah, you'll see it in a couple of weeks.

I'll be back on here.

I love it.

Kirk, it's great to see you, buddy.

Thanks for your time.

And, you know, we'll see what happens in the next week or so leading up to the Board of Governors.

Hey, start scripting that question now.

Start scripting your question, Zach.

Thanks, buddy.

Woo!

That was a lot.

Thanks to Kirk Goldsbury, as always, for coming on and sharing his unique perspective.

Thanks to Jonathan, Jesse, and Cerudi on production.

We will see you next week on the Zach Lowe Show.

Who knows what's going to happen over the weekend?

Board of Governors is next week in New York.

Holy smokes, you think that's going to be interesting?

See you next week on the Zach Lowe Show.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching.