NBA Latest, Training Camp Reports, and Favorite Non-Finals Teams With Chris Ryan

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All right, coming up after this on the Zach Lowe show, special midweek edition.

I don't know what happened at all.

Some stuff in Media Day happened.

We're going to talk about Mitchell Robinson possibly starting for the Knicks.

Anthony Edwards post-game.

A little bit more on Fred Van Vliet and why the Rockets may or may not do anything.

to address this issue and why maybe they should.

I don't know.

We'll see.

Chris Ryan, first-time guest.

He talks a little bit about the Sixers.

Where is he on his beloved Sixers?

It's very hard to pin down where one should be on the most irrational NBA franchise of the last 15 years.

And then a fun gimmick.

We decided to do a draft.

We don't do a lot of drafts on the Zach Losh, but there's not much going on in the NBA.

We did a draft, but we did a nerd draft.

We did it my way.

Favorite teams, no criteria, just teams you loved from the last 15 years in the NBA.

Single season teams, only criteria, they didn't make the finals.

You could pick a really funny, bad Wiz team.

You could pick a really beautiful Spurs team.

You could pick whatever teams you want.

We drafted five each.

We have a lot of honorable mentions.

We have a little in-memorium.

Made a whole show of it.

Chris was awesome.

We picked a lot of similar teams, but a lot of different teams too.

So it was a real fun segment.

Hope you enjoy it.

Coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

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Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

Chris Ryan is here.

We're going to spend about, I don't know, 90 minutes talking about the Sixers and how if everything clicks into place, this could be the year.

Chris, how are you?

I'm doing well.

I'm in the best shape of my life.

I mean, 15 pounds of muscle?

Yeah.

Whatever Embiid's on, I'm on.

I'm really happy to be here, Zach.

I'm glad we could reach across the NL East aisle and create content together.

As I've said to you and Sean, who doesn't understand, I have no animus toward the Philadelphia Phillies.

All my animus is still aimed at the Braves, the Yankees, and the St.

Louis Cardinals.

I missed Chase Utley apparently going hockey goon on a Mets player.

I don't know what you're referring to.

We We have a fun gimmick that we're going to do, but before we get there, we've got to bounce around the league a little bit because there's been some news.

Always news on Media Day.

And as you know, Chris, anything that is said on Media Day, you need to take with complete and utter earnestness because it's for sure true and definitely going to remain true for the rest of the season.

And definitely, you should just take it very seriously.

But the first thing is I want to do a little bit more on Fred Van Vliet tearing his ACL.

I talked about it with Bill yesterday.

We went through all the trade possibilities.

I'm not really going to dive too much into that.

Right now,

from what I've heard, the Rockets are going to do nothing.

And they're going to do nothing for a couple of reasons.

Number one, they can't really do anything until December 15th when all the free agents that signed in the summer can be traded, including like half of their roster.

And they're not going to do anything because they're going to give the ball to Ahmed Thompson and Reed Shepard.

They might even start Reed Shepard.

I don't know.

And just see what they have in those guys and kind of bet that they're still going to be a really good team.

And connected to that, and I'm interested to hear what you think of this.

If they're a little worse than they expected to be, like to me, this injury was an absolute gut punch because it took a team, it took a team that had a real championship equity, whatever percentage chance you had to like actually win the championship.

They had some small but meaningful equity.

And I think now they have none.

I think they might say, well, if that ends up being the case, like maybe we don't really care about that because we're going to learn a lot about our young guys.

Yes, we traded for Kevin Durant, but like we're not a prisoner to Kevin Durant's timetable because the rest of our roster, other than Van Vliet, is all young up and coming guys.

We've got future draft picks.

I'm not sure I 100% buy that, but what do you just think of this whole situation?

I think it sucks, but what do you think of this whole situation?

I think it sucks, too.

I do have...

funnily enough, Rockets fans in my life, and I feel really bad for them because it's obviously put together to have the two timelines work out in a really elegant way with Durant and Van Vliet and a veteran kind of core and then having this young emergent generation of players.

And Sangoon is apparently, according to all his teammates in Europe, the greatest center who ever lived.

So I was very excited to see what they put together this season.

I did have a question for you about all of this, which is that if this had happened in the last game of the playoffs for the Rockets and

Fred had blown out his knee in that game, do you think Durant goes to the Rockets?

It's a great question.

Like,

do you think Durant is in any way kind of like, ah, I could be a Timberwolf right now?

I'm going to say, I'm going to say still yes, because I just think Kevin Durant's one of those guys who's like, A, he's from Texas, B, or he's not from Texas.

He went to college in Texas.

He's from the DMV.

But, and just like, I can, I can make it work.

Like, if this is where I want to be, like, we're like a Fred, I'm not a Fred Van Vliet away from making it work.

Now, I think they're, I really do think this takes their championship equity close to zero.

And if they don't care about that, that's fine.

That's in part because, yeah, they're going to give Ahmed Thompson the ball a lot.

I love Ahmed Thompson.

I could not possibly be higher on him.

He's a freak of nature as an athlete.

He is a high IQ player.

He is one of the best defensive players in the league.

He's a good passer.

He's going to get a lot of on-ball reps.

That's cool.

That's a huge jump from the role he had last year.

Reed Shepard, we're going to find out.

Number three pick.

They love him.

It's awesome.

He can shoot pull-up threes from pretty much anywhere within 30 feet.

He's a good passer.

He plays really hard.

Didn't play last year.

So those those are two guys that have now radically different roles for a team that

struggled to score in the half-court anyway.

Now, they added Kevin Durant.

That's just a walking good half-court offense.

Shangoon's better than he was a year ago.

I just don't think

they can win three playoff series in the West without a, like a traditional point guard with proven championship experience.

They should not want to overwork Kevin Durant in the regular season as like a salve for this, as temporary salve, for the salve, salve, however you say that.

And

it's also just like Oklahoma City is just that good.

Denver is just that good.

If those teams are healthy, just this injury to me takes Houston from could beat one of those teams, if not two, in a playoff series, if everything goes right to like can't beat one or two of those teams in a playoff series.

And maybe they don't care.

That's fine.

If they do care, they certainly could make a trade.

And Bill and I went through a lot of the possibilities yesterday.

Some of those trades would have to involve Fred Van Vliet, who, by the way, I don't know that I've heard people say this.

He has like a de facto no-trade clause because he's on a one-plus-one player option deal.

And he's got the same kind of no-trade clause that anyone who, you know, if you get traded, your bird rights are whatever.

You resigned a one-year contract with the team that you were on.

They, you know, a lot of the smaller trades would have to involve Tari Eason, who I think I'm very high on.

I think they're very high on.

Can't break up the Terror Twins.

No, can't do it.

And like someone pitched me today, someone in the league pitched me, would you do Tari Eason for Deuce McBride and some second-round picks?

I was like, I might just be like way too high on Tari Eason.

Even if the Knicks could do that because of their apron issues, I'm not into that.

Here's the silver lining.

Here's the bright side way of looking at this.

This happened at the right time.

This happened before camp.

This happened before the trade deadline.

This did not happen in late March when you had established everything you could establish about your your team and you were getting ready for the playoffs.

They're going to be able to find out everything they need to find out about Shepard as a primary ball handler, about Thompson's playmaking capabilities.

And they have enough stuff lying around that if they need to adjust or if they need to make a swing, they can maybe take advantage of teams that are not doing well next season and might be looking to sell assets.

So I think that it really sucks for Fred Van Vlee and it sucks for the Rockets.

But if something like this is going to happen, as a Sixers fan, let me assure you, it's better to happen preseason than it is to happen in late March.

I mean, I was listening to my old buddies at the Hoop Collective today, and Tim Bonsimps was saying, they're still going to be in the mix.

They're going to be in the mix.

I'm like, yeah, they're going to be in the mix.

They're really good.

Houston is really, really good with Kevin Durant.

If you turn Fred Van Vliet into nothing and it's just like promote Reed Shepard and then promote Aaron Holiday behind him and maybe get more of the deep out of the deep bench guys than you expect, they're still going to be really good.

In the mix is cool.

I don't think they can win the championship.

They were not going to be my pick to win the championship or even win the the West, but they had some meaningful chance to do those things.

And now I just think if Fred Van Vliet turns into like zero during the season, I don't think that they do.

And if they don't care about that because of all this long lens stuff we're talking about, that's fine.

Kevin Durant is also about to turn 37 next week.

And so I just think there's some dissonance there of like, oh, we'll be fine long term, blah, blah, blah.

Like, okay.

I just, it sucks for Fred Van Vliet who's an awesome dude and an awesome player.

And for now, I don't think they are doing anything.

Any other thoughts on this?

No, I'll just be curious to see how Durant handles the early season adversity or, you know, just not exactly what he was planning on getting when he walked into Houston.

And is this more of a like, my blade is for hire, Kevin Durant?

Or is it like, no, you know, this is my last stand.

I want to make a push.

I'll be a leader.

I'll keep the guys' spirits high.

We'll figure this out.

The other thing I do want to bring up is, you know, one of the names I mentioned yesterday, just spitballing with Bill completely, was Emmanuel Quickley, who I think is underrated and fits a team like Houston.

And I just, I mentioned how long and expensive his contract is and how little he's played the last couple of years, or particularly last year.

And, you know, this is a team that's going to be up against like all the aprons as is.

And adding a $32.5 million point guard is problematic in that sense.

So you have salary concerns, too, which is why Bill brought up all like the

sort of cheaper Peyton Pritchard, TJ McConnell group that he brought up.

It'd be interesting to see if they do.

I almost wonder, like, are you more likely to do something

aggressive trade-wise for a guard if you are playing below expectations or playing above expectations?

I almost think it's above.

I almost think if you're playing above expectations, you might be more apt to like, okay, maybe we should do something.

Yes, it's like we realize what we have here.

Thompson and Singer have made leaps.

We have to go for it.

Okay, topic number two.

Shams, breathlessly on NBA Today yesterday talked about how he's spoken with people close to Anthony Edwards.

And Anthony Edwards is set to unveil a post-up game this season as his big off-season innovation,

which would be huge.

If that sounds familiar to anybody who listens to this podcast, it's because in the fall of 2022, three years ago, Anthony Edwards was in my most intriguing players column at ESPN, and he and I talked on the phone about developing a post-up game and how he was in the lab that summer.

He said, Let me see what he said to me.

My post-ups will be a lot better.

I'm working on it now.

That's all I can say.

That's three years ago.

Since then, essentially nothing has happened.

And by the way, that's fine.

He was 21 or 22 when he told me that coming off a playoff series they lost when it would have been useful, I think, for him to have been able to take John Morant down into the post and like exploit him.

And that's why I asked him about that.

And I think it's completely normal that he would say something like that at 21, 22, 20, whatever he was, put in some of the work.

And then, as the team changes around him and expectations change, we don't really see the fruits of that work by now when he's, what, 24, 25, whatever he is.

And maybe now we will.

And it would really help them because I keep saying Minnesota is awesome.

They're a threat.

Back-to-back conference finals, they always feel like half a playmaker and or half a shooter short to me.

I've pitched the idea that they're a good fit for a big for guard kind of trade.

I pitched like a Nas Reed for Tyler Hero concept.

I don't even know if I believe in it.

I don't know if either team would do it.

Minnesota fans acted like I said that they should trade Kevin Garnett for like Tyus Jones, beloved Minnesotan, or something like that.

I just think that would be an interesting

arrow in the quiver for a a team that needs a couple more playmaking levers.

So I hope it's true.

I'm just saying, like,

it's not new that he's talking about this.

I like the idea that Anthony Edwards' post-game is to basketball what George R.R.

Martin's last Game of Thrones book is.

He's just working on it.

He's just dialing it up.

He's going to do it.

Do you think that this augers any

tactical change shift, both from Chris Finch, but also within the NBA in general?

We've heard a lot about the return to the mid-range.

If you can do it right, it's an incredible weapon incredible tool there's obviously the never-ending old heads new generation war about taking too many threes and i mean is this it could you see more players adapting a high post mid-range game sure uh but like

as long as it's for the right shots like yes you need to hit some of those kinds of fadeaway shots turnarounds the stuff that shams was talking about on nba today the kobe shots um you also just like need to get he needs to get better at just hitting pull-up twos off the dribble.

He's a 39% mid-range shooter.

That's not good enough for his volume.

I would like to see it more deployed in the way that I was talking about before, which is like, you know, you run inverted pick and rolls targeting the small guy on the other team.

You get a switch, you go into the post, you draw the defense, and you start working from there.

That's the playmaking dimension that I'm talking about.

And interestingly, like his post-ops actually went down last year.

And I think that's a function of the swap of Kat for Randall because Kat can space and Randall is like a post-up guy himself.

So even just fitting it in around Randall and Golbert is going to be tricky.

But if it's Randall and Reed or Reed and Golbert, you have a little more space to work with.

It's something I'd like to see.

So kudos to Anthony Adwords.

By the way, just turned 24 like 50 days ago.

He's 24 in 50 days.

Obscene how good that dude is.

I just always love a late summer, early fall PR push around a new individual development goal.

Like, you know, I think LeBron sort of started that out of making that like a public thing every summer of like what he had added to his game.

I love

trips to akeem camp.

I love them all.

Yeah, you know what?

I don't love,

I don't need to see the video in the car where you zoom in on the dashboard and it's like 4.55.

Hashtag going to work.

Like, cool.

You're up at 4.55 in the morning.

Awesome.

You know who's not up at 4.55 in the morning?

Me, because I prioritize my sleep and I get some sleep.

So congratulations, you're up at 4.55.

I think that's fucking crazy.

Go back to bed.

Oh, player development.

I mentioned Ant's post-ups being down.

One of the reasons was he shot a shit ton more threes last year.

Player development.

Okay, topic number three.

Jason Tatum is on a media blitz, and he keeps prying the door open to coming back this season from an Achilles tear.

This has been mumbled about behind closed doors almost since the surgery that took place the night of the injury, I believe.

Gee, who's the mumbler in chief on this one?

Is it our boss?

Well, no, he's not doing it behind closed doors.

I'm just saying, it's like been whispered about.

Um, Bill even mentioned his birthday, Tatum's birthday, which is in March at some point yesterday, as a as a timestamp.

Truly is an amazing thinker.

Uh,

I look,

I hope Jason Tatum is like one of the like all-time recent vintage gamers.

Like, he just wants to play.

He was in the middle of one of the best games of his career when this injury happened in game four against the Knicks.

A game the Knicks were going to win anyway, probably.

Um,

gotten better and and better and better, a legit two-way superstar in the league.

I hope his recovery is going really well.

It would be awesome if he could come back this year.

I just, I'm both with him and Kyrie and even Fred Van Vliet.

I'm in just like, I'm penciling him in as a zero until I see otherwise.

Because in Tatum's case, if he comes back...

Let's say the Celtics are like 35 and 35, pushing for a play-in spot or what top six spot, whatever.

A, all the history says he's not going to be Jason Tatum right away.

It might take until next season for him to be Jason Tatum.

So do you want X percent of Jason Tatum coming back from an Achilles injury in the highest intensity games of the year, whether it's end of season, play and tournament, or whatever?

Like, I don't know that that's,

I got, I've just got to see it first.

That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, do you want Jason Tatum on a minutes cap?

Do you want Jason Tatum can't play back-to-backs?

Like,

I think respectfully these guys should take a year off.

I understand the urgency, and I understand, especially when you're driven in, especially when you went out the way he went out, you want to get back on the court and start to get your NBA career back together.

But like, we did this with Aaron Rodgers.

I am certain that medical science will advance enough at some point where like maybe an Achilles injury is something that you can get back before a full season out.

But

I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig.

And I just feel like.

Let Jalen Brown cook and see what you come up with.

But I don't see him coming back in late March or his birthday or whatever he and Simmons have cooked up.

I don't really know if that makes sense to me.

I thought you said Ben Simmons for a second.

I have one NYX item to get to, but before we get to that,

I need to know how you are approaching this six-year season because

the continuum of like semi-rational approaches to a franchise that has been irrational for like 15 straight years, the craziest stretch that I can remember for any NBA team.

You could rationally, like at least semi-rationally, be clinging to the hope that like this is the year.

Embiid's skinny.

PG's going to be healthy.

Probably resigned Grimes.

McCain's back, et cetera, et cetera.

You could semi-rationally think that.

Or you could semi-rationally be like, I don't even want to pay attention to this team.

until they pivot away from this core and go back to tanking or whatever.

I'm done.

It's over.

Wake me up when it's this whole front, when it's Maxie and McCain and like some other young guys and draft picks.

Where are you?

Right in the middle.

The end of last season, it was probably as out on the Sixers experience as I had been

in

my later part of my, the second half of my life.

But there is something about the

collective sort of personality of these young guards that they have that I would watch no matter what their record is.

And I just hope I get to see these dudes cook.

I hope I get to see Edgecombe tomahawk on somebody.

I love the Maxi experience.

I forgot about Edgecombe.

Can't wait for McCain to come back and get a full season under his belt.

And I am now in a place where PG and Embiid are gravy.

Like what they can give us.

I love everything I've seen from Embiid being skinny, not talking very much in the last couple of weeks or so.

Everything seems to be pointing in the right direction.

And it's kind of Embiid's last stand.

So I'm here for it.

I'm here to watch it.

Embiid's last stand, 50.

And also, there's a little bit of like with this Eastern Conference, it's like, why not us?

No how a burton is.

There it is.

So you got there.

You got to this end of the continuum right there.

Yeah.

Yes.

But it's more because of other teams

suffering than it is because the Sixers have made some sort of great leap.

I like that you called it Embiid's last stand when he has a $67 million player option four years from now.

I met Matt more in an emotional narrative sense, not financially.

I just

can't do it anymore.

I just can't.

All right, the Knicks item was this.

Mike, I mentioned this last week.

I said I've heard that there's a decent chance Mitchell Robinson is going to start over Josh Hart.

The Knicks are going to start double big in Towns and Mitchell Robinson.

They haven't confirmed that.

They haven't unconfirmed it.

There's photos leaking out of practice of Mitchell Robinson in the starters jerseys and Josh Hart in the bench jerseys.

Does this scare you at all as

a rival of the Knicks?

What do you you think of this move pivoting away from one of the Nova guys to go double big?

It doesn't scare me.

What's up with Josh Hart's hand, though?

Yeah, the finger splint.

He announced I'm going to have to wear a splint this year.

It's look like that's it's not great.

He's going to play through it.

I don't remember exactly when it happened, but it's like, look, this is, we have two reminders, one very serious in Fred Van Vliet and one not, I guess, not as serious in Josh Hart's case.

That just like a lot of this just comes down to you got to be healthy or you got to suck it up and play through some stuff stuff if you want to win a championship.

Yeah, I have no idea really the details of it.

The wire report that I read about it was kind of vague about what actually happened to the hand in the first place and what went wrong with him during the rehabilitation process that he injured it and now needs to wear a splint and he's going to wait till next summer to get it fixed again.

But it is very nixy that he's already got a debilitating injury that he's going to tough out and we haven't even gotten to camp yet.

Hearts finger aside,

I kind of like this for the Knicks.

I think it is,

it worked in the playoffs when Mitchell Robinson rebounded everything and gave them some rim protection that Kat can't give them.

I think it's their best shot at having a championship-worthy defense as long as they don't overwork Mitchell Robinson and they have the depth to not do that.

But I like seeing what the double big lineup looks like.

The risk for Kat is it's something he's done before.

He's going to have to guard power forwards and wings a lot of the times, and he's actually okay one-on-one, like he guarded durant in the playoffs with the wolves and he did that well um when he starts to have to move around and help and communicate it can get a little dicey the knicks toyed against the pacers when they did went double big with putting um with putting cat on siak with putting uh cat on miles turner and inverting the matchups and putting mitchell robinson on siakum i don't i just don't want cat on the main guy setting picks for the other team you can attack him no matter where he is have his guy screen no matter what but like i just would like him off the main screen setter, even if he's like, you know, a shooting five or whatever.

And I think it's a good pathway to like offensive innovation for them.

It's going to force them to innovate a little bit.

You don't want Cat to be just a spot-up guy around Mitchell Robinson's screen and then diving, turning him into a turn him into a handoff hub, you know, run pick and roll on one side, then kick it and run pick and roll with Kat on the other side.

They're going to get good offensive rebounding.

I like it.

I think it's worth trying.

I think it makes the Knicks ceiling higher.

End of Nick's thing.

We got some updates on Quentin Grimes just now from Shams Chirani at ESPN.

Stalemate, Chris Ryan, may not be going to Abu Dhabi.

Are they going to Abu Dhabi?

Is that where they're going?

They are going to Abu Dhabi.

Yeah.

Stalemate's still with Grimes and Kaminga.

According to Shams, I haven't heard anything different.

Like, okay, any reaction to this?

No.

Guard depth is not one of the Sixers' problems.

I like Quentin Grimes a lot.

I don't understand why this is taking longer than some corporate mergers take.

I think it would be great to have Quentin Grimes.

I don't really understand what the problem is or where the huge Quentin Grimes market is that I'm not noticing.

A little bit more on the Knicks.

Josh Hart, not a quintessential sixth man, but the Knicks, I don't think that matters because Jordan Clarkson is there as like a quintessential now eighth man.

And just the way they stagger minutes between Brunson and Cat and Bridges, they got enough offense on the bench.

I like that part about it.

I just like it.

I think it's worth trying.

I think it's worth trying, and I think it's their best chance at a decent defense.

Okay.

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now we get to the fun part you ready sure

it's gimmick time um

you know bill bill encouraged me like think of a good gimmick nothing's happened in nba and i thought well that's a good nerd gimmick for me because i'm i'm an nba nerd and i thought let's do a draft because every gimmick is basically a draft and let's draft from like lebron signing with the heat is kind of like a line of demarcation in nba history everything after that is different from everything that came before.

And you have to put a line somewhere else.

You're just, it's going to take over your life.

So from 2010, 11 until the present day, I said, let's draft our five each.

We'll do five picks each.

Our favorite teams, individual single-season teams, to not make the NBA finals.

That's the only rule.

You can pick bad teams, good teams.

You can pick the same franchise multiple times.

Just has to be a single season NBA team that you loved that didn't make the finals.

And you could love them for any reason.

Style of play, characters, lovable losers, insanely incompetent losers, whatever it is that you want, you can love them for that reason.

It could be your favorite team.

Whatever the reason is, that's the reason.

Are you ready?

We did a lot of research for this.

This is a great time.

This is a fascinating exercise just to specify it's not make the finals or it's not win the finals.

I have not make the finals.

Not make the finals.

I have plenty of teams for both.

Okay, so.

I'm giving you the number one pick in the also.

We're going to call it the fun also ran draft.

Can I just say two things?

one one is that this conveniently almost lines up with our history of working together back at grantland like it's it's about a season or two before um and it also portrayed something that i did not know i have which is a

kind of unacknowledged west coast bias when it comes to the nba and i think partially because uh big media has been telling me that the western conference is is a bloodbath this year it's going to be there's so many great teams in the western conference so a lot of the teams i went back i almost weighted more heavily because they were in the west i wanted to find more eastern conference teams but i've been living in la for the majority of this era and so i did find it kind of informing my my choices and my my my my picks and i guess i'll start with what i would imagine is one of the chalkier choices here which is the 2012-13 oklahoma city thunder which is the season after Harden, which is one of the other non-LeBron seminal moments in our professional lives, Harden getting traded to the Rockets.

The Thunder went 60 and 22, despite that.

KD averaged 28,

won the MVP.

They drew Harden and the Rockets in the first round.

And in the second game, Westbrook goes down in game two of that Rockets series.

They win that in six, but lost to the Grizz in the following series.

There's something about

even though this team would kick around, obviously, for the next couple of seasons, there's something about that what-if and that

Russell Westbrook injury.

You know, by this point, they obviously were going through the carousel of Kevin Martin and Dabo and a little bit of Karan Butler and Sprinkling in there, and

all these random guys that Presty would draft who were actually pretty decent, but just never were able to make up for that thing that Hardin gave the team.

But

this is probably,

I would say, even my, I preferred this team over the 16 team that so sadly like went down to the Warriors.

Yeah, all those Oklahoma City teams are on my long list of candidates, and one may be drafted by me, but you haven't named it yet.

It just felt like this was a super fun team.

Durant wins the MVP.

He gives the famous speech.

Kevin Martin actually finishes fourth in sixth man of the year.

And I guess I'm just tinged by the Pat Bev-Russ collision in the first round when Russ is going to call a timeout and Pat Bev tries to to steal the ball, if I'm remembering it right.

And it just kind of ruined the rest of the playoffs for the Thunder.

They lose to the Grizzlies in five games.

I think that's when the Oklahoma put the Mr.

Unreliable headline

with Kevin Durant, and he didn't like that so much, if I'm remembering that right.

Off the top of my head.

They were a fun team.

The reason I didn't pick them is like, I need, they were the most fun to me when they were making their rapid ascent and when they had Hardin in the bench roll where he was just this, like, what is this guy?

He's coming off the bench and putting up these like crazy advanced numbers, but he's still coming off the bench.

When they were like the lovable young team who was way ahead of the curve, and then Hardin leaves and there's just this void, and they're filling it with, and there's injuries and all the playoff runs.

I couldn't find.

I didn't have this team that high on my list.

I did have one other Thunder team, but you had to have multiple Thunder teams should be in a draft like this.

Yeah.

And I think that that's

a franchise where the ceiling we projected was dynasty.

So when you walk out of there with neither of those guys having an Oklahoma City Championship,

it's pretty wild to think back on.

And it's even wilder to consider the fact that they just won it.

I'll tell you another Thunder team I actually considered wild, the 2019-20 Bubble Thunder team with Chris Paul, Dennis Schruder.

They had a guard hydrant

that almost came within like a hardened shot block of upsetting the Rockets in the first round of the playoffs.

Just a weird, strange team.

Chris Paul came and went.

It was just a fun, that was a fun team.

They were not in my draft.

I love a we're just going to start the three-point guards or we're just going to start the three.

Yeah, I love like the Bulls did that a couple years ago.

I feel like

it's a really fun wrinkle.

Now, one of the reasons I gave you the number one pick in the draft was I knew you were not going to take my favorite, my number one pick.

I'm actually surprised you can't guess what my number one pick is.

It's an Eastern Conference team, and it's so obvious.

It's such an obvious me pick that I barely even thought about it.

The 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks, when all four of their five starters made the all-star team, including

whatever.

When the full starting five with Damari Carroll was named the NBA Player of the Month or Player of the Week, I can't remember which one it was.

And they just sort of became, Daryl Maury actually publicly came out and said during the playoffs, which which didn't go well for the Heat or for the Hawks, that

what I'm trying to see, they're 60 and 22, and they slumped toward the end of the season.

A slump that they, when they had the number one seed wrapped up, that some of their players are like, we kind of let our habits slip and it costs us in the playoffs.

But Daryl Murray came out and said, like, it would be good for the NBA if the Hawks made the finals, which was his, which would have had to have gone through LeBron.

And that was what made them, first of all, the ball movement was just crazy.

The plays that Quinn Snyder was cooking up to get Kyle Corver open was just like the most complex ballet of basketball that I had seen to that point.

Mill Sap in Horford is like this fun, super fast, blitz, pick, and rolls, good passing, good shooting everywhere.

Jeff Teague, current elite podcaster, just doing Jeff Teague stuff, and Bud making faces on the bench.

No, it was Bud, but Quinn Snyder was cooking up a lot of the plays

for Kyle.

Just a delightful team to watch.

And also became this stand-in for like, can you actually do it without a top like can you beat LeBron in the aggregate?

Can you beat LeBron?

And it turned out no, not only could you not beat him, you cannot win a single game off him in a playoff series in the conference finals.

And that losing like that

sort of

started like an existential crisis within the Hawks.

Like, is this all?

I was reading a story I wrote for Grantland after their playoff loss where they're kind of all like, man, I hope we're just not wasting our time.

Like, we're really trying here.

Like, of course, we'd love to get a top seven player or top eight player.

We don't have one.

Like, are we just supposed to give up?

And they're kind of like asking themselves this question.

Um, they didn't do great in the playoffs, by the way.

The Nets took them to six in the first round.

The Wiz took them to six in the conference semis when John Wall missed half the series with a wrist injury.

They needed a Horford putback to win game five and almost the buzzer to go up 3-2 when they were down one.

It was not like a great playoff run either.

Like, the playoffs were not kind to them, which also made them more interesting to me.

Like, does all this cute stuff just not work as well in the playoffs when defenses are geared up?

But it was a rollicking journey for the 60-win Atlanta Hawks.

So they are my number one pick.

All right, you get the third pick.

I was always going to pick a Sixers team.

I think the choice of Sixers team might surprise some people, which is the 17-18 team, aka the feds team.

This is the season before Jimmy Butler arrived, so 18-19 would probably be a little bit more popular.

They got closer.

And I think that

this sort of marked the end of one era of the process.

Sixers then going into all-star shopping to finding a guy to play next to Embiid.

So starting basically the pattern of Butler, Horford,

Tobias, Harden, now Paul George.

But this was the homegrown.

the homegrown team.

This was feds for people who don't know was the nickname bestowed to Fultz and Bede, Dario and Simmons, which was going to be this core.

You also had Robert Covington, J.J.

Reddick,

TJ, Ilyasovo, Belanelli.

It was just a really fun Brett Brown team.

Foltz only plays 14 games this rookie season, although the Sixers wind up when he comes back just absolutely Sixersing out because he breaks Joel Embed's orbital bone.

And then the Sixers win the last 16 games.

I was going to say that's the year they go crazy with just a bunch of shooting around Simmons.

Ben Simmons turns into Magic Johnson, and Fultz Foltz ends the season with a triple-double against the Bucs.

And then the playoffs happen, and the playoffs were not, you know, they were kind of a classic Sixers playoff, which is like, I think, a

rock fight with the Nets or the Raptors in the first round, and then a second-round exit to the, I believe, the Celtics this season.

Heat in the first round.

Celtics in the second round where Marcus Morris for the Celtics made the 3-0 gesturing and Pete's face.

I was at that game.

That's the confetti falls when they think Belanelli's hit the game-winning three, but it's actually foot-on-the-line game tying two.

We're going to overtime.

I believe they ended up winning that game anyway.

I think I just had a mild heart attack when you said that.

I forgot about that.

That's a really interesting pick.

This is the road not traveled for this team because there's a version of it where they say, Damn, like we have a great young team that's growing together with some good veterans like JJ.

And what if we run it back and just tweak a little bit around the edges and hope that Simmons and Embiid continue to get better.

But already there was this kind of obsession: like, can Joel and Ben share the court?

Can you do something?

Can you play if there's not that much shooting?

Because you've got two guys who are a little bit negative.

This is before Embiid kind of like developed an outside shot.

So, yeah, I think that there is a version of the Sixers that are not unlike the Thunder from five years before that tried to pluck away at the, with the sort of core that they had drafted, but instead they started going a little bit more hog wild, shopping for all-stars.

I don't know.

This was my favorite team, though.

It's a great pick.

It was not even on my radar.

The Sixers teams that were on my radar were the 18-19 team when Butler comes in mid-season, and that's obviously the Kawhi shot in game seven team.

Better team by far.

But

it was a very good team.

It complicated Simmons' sort of place within the franchise in a way that turned out to be irrevocable.

But it was interesting.

And Brett Brown, sits right.

By the way, at the end of this, I'm going to do sort of like an immemorium.

Just remember some guys.

Guys,

this guy was not on my list, but I haven't thought of Timothy Luawu Cabaro in like five years.

I just remember I could only hit some corner threes.

Like, if I could only hit some corner threes.

And the other team I had was,

I think it was the 11-12 Sixers, which was like Iguadala and like the night shift guys off the bottom.

Oh, man, that was my first, like, one of my first big Grantland pieces was that Doug Collins team and that series against the Celtics.

Uncut gems.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, they started 16 and 6, and I remember going to some of those games to be like,

they might have something here with this crew.

It was a fun team.

That was also back in the day of Bill Simmons potting every seven weeks and mentioning, Evan Turner just does stuff.

I like it.

Evan Turner, still an NBA character.

All right, that means the fourth pick in the draft goes to me, and this is when it was going to get tough because I knew the Hawks were going to be untouched.

Did you even have the 14-15 Hawks like I did?

I did, just because of it.

That's just personal aesthetics.

But I acknowledge their greatness.

So now I have a bunch of Western Conference teams that I'm going to choose from.

Several of them are from the individual 2012-13 season, which is just a lot of people.

There's several Western Conference teams from the 2012-13 season, so it gets interesting here.

So I am going to take the 2012-13 Golden State Warriors,

which was the rise finally of Steph Curry.

Steph's first truly great season in the NBA.

It's Draymond's rookie season.

It's Bogut's second year with the team.

And it is the proof of concept year for me.

Like, I'm looking at Steph's stats.

Steph averages 23 a game in 78 games after never cracking 18.6 before.

He finishes 11th in MVP voting.

It's the year that they beat Denver in the first round.

Denver was another team I considered the one of the themes of this is like a lot of these teams come, at least on my list, when a star leaves and you have to get creative filling the void of that star.

So that's the post-Carmelo nuggets they beat.

And then they lose to the Spurs in just an like in I'm talking in the moment that series felt like a welcome to serious NBA contention Golden State Warriors.

They lose in six.

Game one's a miracle double overtime comeback.

Genobley hits a three with one second left and double overtime to win the game for the Spurs.

The Warriors gut punch loss come back win game two in San Antonio it's 2-2 war Curry hurts his ankle and play through plays through it Bogut hurts his ankle and plays through it so bad to the point that Bob Myers told me years later we weren't sure that they were going to be able to play game seven if we got it to game seven but it was just that the crystallization of

this this is when I started calling Curry the glitch in the system because he came up against Tim freaking Duncan, one of the greatest defensive players of all time, and he came up against a mostly traditional pick and roll defense, but as polished as any of traditional pick and roll defense could be, and he just lit it on fire.

And you could see the Spurs being like, we don't know what to do with this.

Yeah.

It's a Mark Jackson offense, so it wasn't super creative.

It was a little ISO heavy, etc.

Clay's sort of finding his footing as what is his role in the league.

Draymond's a rookie, but just Steph himself.

You could see the Spurs being like, uh-oh.

And I've talked to Spurs coaches about it.

The uh-oh was like very, very real.

So that was the sort of, I like these young teams figuring themselves out.

That was a very high team on my list.

You set me up for the perfect alley because I'm going to go 12, 13 nuggets.

Okay, I love it.

This is, like you said, Masai's rebuild after Mello, right?

And

you've got Iguadala there.

We'll get to him.

We have Ty Lawson, Professor

Miller.

Yeah, Dr.

Deundre Miller, Ph.D., Il Will Chandler, and Corey Brewer plus Mozgov.

And I think this is Fournier's rookie season in the NBA.

I can't remember.

I think it is.

And this team, Zach,

imploded down the stretch like an all-time George Carl implosion with Carl later asserting that Andre Eguadalo was a double agent

for the Warriors and that he was working with Mark Jackson and would then sign with the Warriors in the subsequent season.

Gallo got hurt in April.

This team was what they killed him.

It was an all-time league pass team.

And you would just watch every night and you're like, is Ty Lawson like a top 10 player?

Like, trust me when I tell you that if you were up at night watching Nuggets games that season, there were nights you believed that.

And

it was really, it all ended when Gallo gets hurt in April.

And then the next season, it's gone.

Carl gets fired.

Iggy goes to Golden State,

unlocking a dynasty for them in some ways.

And it's it's just a team that never was.

But I always love, this is kind of my version of your Hawks team.

Maybe not as successful in the regular season, but so fun to watch.

And really, you're just like,

I just don't know how they're going to do it on any given night, but they keep doing it.

Farid's got 16 boards.

It's only the third quarter.

Peak, peak manimal.

People probably laughed when you said Ty Lawson, top 10 player.

He finished 12th in MVP voting that year.

He used to have a country.

Yeah.

I mean, Andre Miller is just,

I mean, look, an old school post guard who, a point guard who never exercises and or just he roller skates.

That's his exercising and posts up and beats the hell out of people, throws lob passes to guys who just run and dunk like Fareed and JaVail McGee.

Yes.

It's catnip for me.

They played super fast.

They had a unique like dribble drive offense modeled on a college offense because they just didn't have enough shooting, but they had tons of speed.

And they're like, how can we take advantage of this?

And this is now you're, I'm remembering this.

This was the year I remember noticing JaVail McGee standing out of bounds on purpose on offense as a way of creating spacing for lineups that didn't have spacing.

And the league actually either changed a rule or had to remind George Carl that you're actually not allowed to stand out of bounds on purpose.

That's how creative this team had to get.

They were super fun.

That's a great pick.

All right.

Thank you so much.

I'm now on, it's now me six months.

When's the last time Ty Lawson's been mentioned on one of your podcasts?

It's been too long.

It has been too long.

It's been, that's all I'll say.

It's been too long.

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I'm trying to think if I should go just like

classic

or a little off the beaten path.

I'm going to go classic.

I'm going to take the 2011-2012 San Antonio Spurs, who went 50 and 16.

They acquired Boris Diao in the middle of the season after he was bought out from the Bobcats, the pathetic-ass Bobcats.

And just something about Diao's passing and wine drinking and

just general demeanor just caught magic in San Antonio.

Kawhi was in, I believe, his second year.

No, he's a rookie.

He's a rookie in that year.

And they end up the season going 21-2 in the last 23 games in the regular season, sweep their first two playoff series, take the first two games from Oklahoma City in the conference finals.

They are on a 20-game winning streak at that point in the conference finals.

And then this is what part of part of what makes them lovable to me.

The Thunder just punch them in the mouth four times in a row and are like basically saying to them, all your like passing and ball movement and KG veteranness, that's cool.

We got a bunch of young dudes who play really hard.

We're just going to jump over you and run past you and dunk the ball in your face, deal with that.

Harden in his last big moment as the Thunder player hits a shot to basically hits a three, step back three to basically clinch the conference finals and send the Spurs into like despair.

Existential crisis, right?

Yeah.

Like, just like, do like everyone remembers the Ray Allen shot and the despair after that in 2013.

This was the despair of like, we're starting to really perfect the way we play, and we just got punched in the mouth by this Thunder team that's too young and too energetic for us.

And the ghosts of that series live on in 2014 in the conference finals when they face off again, and Ibaka misses the first two games of that series, comes back, the Thunder even it up.

And I can tell you for sure, the Spurs at 2-2 in that series are like, are these guys going to do that to us again in a year where we're out for vengeance from the Ray Allen shot from the 2013 finals?

And then they overcome that team.

But I think that Spurs team was a really underrated, fun Spurs team.

Danny Green's first real year in the league.

It's like just a lot of fun stuff with that team.

That's a great pick.

I remember that series.

I remember there was stuff happening in that series with Ibaka that was just like,

there's no fix for this.

He can just cover most of a court in two strides and shut down stuff.

It was unreal.

Well, that's why Kawhi was such a massive moment for the Spurs, as we all know, you know, finals MVP and then another one in Toronto.

But he was like the answer to our cool, like Tony Parker, Tim Dunker, Manu, Diao, splitter, ball movement, no one can jump over a phone book kind of stuff.

Like, it can only get us so far.

We need like a dude who can go toe-to-toe with all those dudes.

And that was that was Kawhi.

And of course, they

take the ball movement stuff to a whole new level in 2014.

But there had to be a Spurs team on this list.

I just had to put a Spurs team on.

Yeah.

I will do a team that I think I don't know that I have a ton of like personal affection for as much as I just

feel bad for them, and that's the 13-14 Indiana Pacers.

Interesting.

Yeah, this is the kind of the epitome or the apex of the Hill, Lantz, PG, David West, Roy Herbert.

We are built to beat LeBron.

Like, we have to, like, everything about this is about making sure that we are in our best situation to play against LeBron at the end of a season.

They start the season 11 and 1.

I think it was like, if I remember correctly, like there was a lot of like, it's the Pacers conference to lose talk.

It's too bad that they didn't, I think that that team needed, it was Danny Granger.

He wound up, obviously, his career kind of fell apart because of injuries, but there was something that that team lacked to get over the hump, aside from just running into one of the greatest one or two players in the history of the league at his

arguably his prime.

I have a soft stop spot for teams teams that bust their ass in the regular season, and I thought they did that.

And look, they just ran into a buzzsaw.

I debated which of those Pacers teams

should be my pick, if any.

And since you picked one, I'm not going to pick

any of them.

But I landed on the 1213 Pacers that also lost

to the Heat in the conference finals.

That's the series when Paul George dunks over, who did he dunk over?

I think Birdman, and LeBron high-fives him at half court in the middle of the game.

It was like this classic, like, all right, you're one of us now.

Like, you're one of the real guys now.

The 13-14 team,

they started out on fire, and then they kind of petered out toward the end of the regular season in a way that had people wondering, like, is something wrong with this team?

And then, if you remember, that's the first round series, the 1-8 series against the Hawks, where the Hawks just put Pero Antich at center, spread the floor completely,

And basically like end Roy Hibbert as like a reliable player.

That's right.

And take take the Pacers to seven in a 1-8 series.

And it was like a six-game series against Miami in the conference finals, but not one you ever thought they were going to win.

I ended up preferring the 12-13 team because they felt like they roll faster towards the conference finals?

Okay.

Well, they just felt more like...

They felt newer, I guess.

And I was at a lot of their games.

They played the Knicks in the conference semis, the the Mellow team, which is also on my list, the 1213 Knicks with Mellow that won 54 games, and they beat them at six.

Those teams were fun because they just

happened suddenly.

Like suddenly the starting five makes sense.

They add David West.

Lance Stevenson develops.

Wait, this team, they were like the, they were not supposed to be what they were.

The Bulls were supposed to be them.

Like the Derrick Rose injury changed the Eastern Conference and opened up this void and they filled it and they like, they kind of pushed Miami's buttons.

Like they were physical, they were nasty, they beat the shit out of their, like, Shane Baday used to tell me, playing small ball four against David West like sucks.

He just beats me up the entire game.

And Lance is annoying LeBron.

It's a good pick.

It's a good pick, this 13-14 Pacers.

Another franchise that had to be there.

All right.

Anything else on them?

No, that's it.

So that's, I've got four now.

You have made, I guess,

I thought that was the seventh pick in the draft.

Yeah, so four.

Yeah, I have eight and ten.

All right, this is a deep cut.

I have a deep love and will always have a deep love for the 2014-15 Portland Trailblazers.

I had them all my life.

This is the team where Wes Matthews tears his Achilles

like two-thirds of the way through the season, and it just punches a hole in their team, and they're never the same.

And they lose to the Grizzlies in the first round, and LaMarcus Aldrich, who was also dealing with an ankle injury, leaves in free agency for the Spurs.

CJ McCollum basically doesn't play the entire year, and and then in the playoffs out of desperation emerges as like, okay, this guy's interesting.

And I love this team.

This is Batum

and Dame

and Robin Lopez and LaMarcus Aldridge.

And it was this team that

just caught a little bit of magic and became greater than the sum of its parts and

sort of like looked like, could they actually win the championship?

And they were really fun to watch.

They could do a lot.

Like LA's mid-range game was so old school and smooth.

They could play a lot of different ways.

They made a trade for Aaron Afollo to bolster their bench halfway through the season.

I just thought they were really fun.

Terry Stotts' motion offense was fun.

They were just this fun, everything suddenly locked into place and made you think, like, oh,

could they actually be a real thing?

And then it all unraveled in a way that was very sort of like the pathos of that team was very deep.

Yeah.

And the Blazers have a kind of injury bug franchise-wide that hangs over some of their best teams and their greatest prospects.

Yeah, this is four years after,

you know,

if you opened up this draft to just like your favorite single-season teams of this entire era of finals or whatever,

I bet the 2011 Mavericks champions would be at the top of people's list.

And, you know, this is 2015 Blazers, so four years before the famous Brandon Roy game happens against Dallas in that playoff run where he just comes out of nowhere and goes bananas to tie the the series with like old school Brandon Roy stuff after all the knee issues that ruined his career.

And he basically was the last big thing he did.

And it was one of the old-time holy shit moments from our NBA careers, I think.

I'm going to go for my final pick here

at nine.

I'm going to go a little bit wild card.

So a lot of my time spent at Grantland.

I worked with my buddy Andrew Sharp, who is a huge Zards fan.

So I wanted to pick a Wizards team.

I'm calling this Ernie Grunfield's masterpiece, the 16-17 Wizards, under Scott Brooks.

So this is two Scott Brooks teams.

I'm so mad.

This is the Wall Beal Porter Jr.

Gortat team that was just like,

man, if you were ever going to believe in Wall and Beale, this was the year.

And this is also.

They were pretty close.

They had a bunch of guys on the bench, Brandon Jennings, Thomas Saturansky, Jan Mahini.

Oh my God, Brandon.

I have no memory of Brandon Jennings.

Yeah, Marcus Thornton was on this team.

This features one of the game six that Wall has against the Celtics in the conference semis when he hits the three over Avery Bradley.

There's like three seconds left.

Time runs out and Wall jumps up on the scorers table inside the phone booth.

One of my favorite moments in recent NBA history.

And look, man, how can you not be romantic about basketball?

Watching John Wall and Bradley Beal actually play together.

I think they both played more than 70 games each this season.

And this was as good as it got from me.

They were 49, 33.

Maybe that doesn't scream Larry O'Brien, but I think John Wall did scream that when he jumped up on the scorers table.

Wasn't this, was this the year the Celtics and the Wizards traded back and forth dressing in black?

Yes, the funeral game.

Love a good funeral game,

particularly from teams who were like, neither of you guys is going to win the championship.

Yeah, but this was, and there was also the Isaiah Thomas Celtics team.

So it wasn't like an indestructible Celtics team.

It was in the realm of possibility that the Wizards could have won that series.

No, for sure.

It's the Kelly O'Linnick game in game seven.

I remember exactly where I was during that game.

I was in Oakland watching that game at a bar with a Warriors coach, and we were like, what is happening in this game?

Is this like what the Eastern Conference is?

It's Isaiah Thomas and Kelly O'Linnick against John Wall.

Very fun team.

By the way, I had two Celtics teams on my list.

This team and the 17-18 team that gets to the conference finals with like Scary Terry, Edwards hurt, Kyrie's hurt, Tatum's dunking on LeBron as a rookie.

I had three Wizards teams in contention,

and I was actually thinking of picking one of them with my last pick, but now I won't.

This team,

the 14-15 team that we already talked about, took the Hawks to game six.

That's Paul Pierce called game.

That's that year.

That was awesome.

I remember that.

Yeah.

And just for shits and giggles, 2010-11 Wiz.

Wait, is it 11?

Let me check my notes.

I think it's 11-12, actually.

Yeah, 11-12 whiz

is peak comedy whiz.

It's Nick Young before he gets traded to the Clippers.

It's JaVail.

It's Andre Blatch,

Jordan Crawford.

It's the year Ted Leonces wrote the since deleted blog post about how Jordan Crawford, Andre Blatch, and John Wall were the new big three in Lego.

I think I still have that saved to PDF if anybody needs it.

Deleted.

It's the year that Nick, because of the lockout, Nick Young and JaVail McGee did the cinnamon challenge.

It's the year that there was the viral clip of JaVail running the wrong way on the court and like running off the TV screen and the entire team being like, dude, can you come?

Like, can you come back?

We still have the ball.

And then he comes running back.

It's just, they sucked, but they sucked in some of the stuff.

Look how happy the wizards make us, though.

You know?

Three different teams in contention, so I won't pick them.

All right, I've already picked the Spurs team, so apologies to the 2016-17 Spurs, the final real Kawhi team, the Zaza steps on his foot team.

Apologies to the 2019-2020 Raptors team post-Kawhai.

They sort of milked the beautiful game for all it's worth.

Apologies to

the 2010-11 Thunder team.

That was going to be my Thunder team that rises through to make the Western Conference finals and loses to the Mavs.

They're not quite the Thunder yet, but they're like, that's the big leap year.

Apologies to the 2010-11 Bulls, the Derrick Rose MVP year.

Carlos Boozer comes to the Bulls.

Kyle Corver and Tibbs, they all come to the Bulls together.

Apologies.

Did you have the 18-19 Bucs?

No, I did not.

I liked that team.

That was the Brogdon Hill backcourt, Giannis going just absolute beast mode.

Yeah, they got mowed over by the Raptors.

Although they were up 2-0

and go double overtime in game three in Toronto.

And you're like, this could happen.

And it didn't.

And they lost four in a row, I believe.

Yes.

Apologies to

the 2010-11 Clippers, Blake Griffins rookie year.

Oh, yeah, we don't have a Lob City team.

Pre-Lob City.

It's pre-lob city.

No, no, Lob City.

The Lob City teams were like

almost,

I'm trying to think of what the right word is.

They were like almost mechanical in their basketball brilliance.

Like they were, despite the highlight dunks, they were never that like super fun to watch.

I also

had so much affection.

I was living in LA then and going to a fair amount of Clippers at that time because Grantland was right by what was then Staples.

And I just really, I mean, I don't think we have a grit and grind team here, do we?

We're about to have a grit and grind team.

I'm glad I could lay it out because

I remember sort of like very silently like

cheering for Memphis at like in person at some of those games.

I'm picking them mostly because because all these teams are relatively equal in my heart.

And so we haven't mentioned them.

We've mentioned a lot of the other franchises before.

I'm going to pick the 2012-13 Memphis Grizzlies who make the conference finals and get swept by the Spurs.

It's the year Gasol wins Defensive Player of the Year.

They had the number two defense in the league that year.

They do benefit from the Russ, the aforementioned Russ injury in the second round of the playoffs.

And it's just, they were just, I mean, how could you not lie?

Like Tony Allen, first team, first team all defense, first team all defense.

Zebo just beating a hell out of people.

Tayshawn Prince came back to the Grizzlies that year in the Rudy Gay trade.

They sent Rudy Gay out.

They got a bunch of good players, including Ed Davis, who really helped their team.

Mike Conley, how can you not love Mike Conley?

They were the basketball nerds team for two or three years.

And just like an unbelievable stat, I was looking at their playoff stats as I was thinking about whether I would pick them or not.

In the playoffs,

this is not 12 years ago.

It's not like 40 years ago.

In the playoffs, their average threes per game 4.8 makes 14.8 attempts like that was a real that was a real nba team that made the conference finals 12 years ago 4.8 threes a game and their defensive rating was like in the 80s right uh in the regular season it was 99 something i don't know what it was in the playoffs um

just like how and but they just they were a great passing team gasol from the gasol was like jokic light before jokic just as a passer like the creativity he had the bowling ball pass, you would throw like underhand, almost roll the ball sometimes.

Just a delightful team.

They had to be a grit and grind team.

Did we not have a post-bubble team?

Uh,

I guess we didn't.

It's interesting.

Reverse recency bias.

Do you, I mean, I'll just very quickly read.

I have a very long list.

You want me to read some?

You hit off a bunch of mine, but go ahead.

Beam team kings.

Yes.

Suns 2022 that lose to Dallas, the meltdown against Dallas team.

The jazz with Gobert and Mitchell never did it for me.

What about T-Wolves Gobert?

The first push to the conference finals?

No.

I had a Ruby All Love.

The best Ruby All Love team was on my Ruby O'Love Pekovich.

That was on my list somewhere.

But not, you're right.

Not a lot of post-bubble teams.

Trying to think.

I'm trying to see if there's any other interesting teams I wanted to mention.

We got most of them.

The 13, 14 Bobcats we were talking about before we got on the air.

Kemba and Big Al.

Big Al making the all-NBA team with just one post-up bucket.

Kemba bringing the big East back down to Charlotte.

No,

I think we hit them all.

We're one year out of the 9-10 Phoenix team that made the conference finals and lost to the Lakers on Kobe's air ball that was put back by Powell, I think.

That was one of my favorite teams.

I have have a bunch of other teams that I just made a very long list and crossed a lot out that don't, I don't know, just didn't really speak to me.

That's my list.

Yeah, I mean, it's like, it wasn't a favorite, but they are one of the probably better teams to not make a finals is the

team that, the Clippers team that basically had to go through the Sterling saga.

They're on my list, yeah.

And

I don't have anybody else very special.

We didn't really mention the Rockets.

I have the 17, 18 Rockets.

I have them on my long list.

They won 65 games, took the Warriors to seven.

CPs hurt at the end of the series.

They missed 27 straight threes.

They get dinged points because they were never the most dynamic team because Hardin was just such like a slow-it-down chess master.

And then also the next year where Darrell Moray releases his referee dossier,

the detailed report about how the refs really cost him the game and this and that.

Like, you get docked points for that.

That was fun.

This is a very fun exercise.

I couldn't go on and on.

Can we do all All right.

In the course of doing this, I just kept finding guys

who I just had forgotten about.

So I prepared my In Memoriam.

Can we put a little bit of light jazz or mournful classical over this maybe?

For the video, we got to do something.

This is my in, and I really worked hard to limit it to just these names because just like you know, not everyone can get in.

But there's always the joke about how, you know, guys get together at a sports car, just start the sports bar, just naming and do it.

Let's name some guys.

So I was like, let's name some guys in Memoriam, Forgotten NBA guys.

I hope that they're all alive.

I think they are.

In no particular order, so there's no hammer here.

Like, Bill always talks about the hammer, although I kind of accidentally do have a hammer.

Josh Harrelson,

Ivan Johnson,

your boy Lavoy Allen,

Alan Anderson,

Sunday Ada Gaines,

Jeff Ayers/slash Pendergraff

slash not not hyphen yeah former nay Pendergraaff yeah um

John Lure

Larry Sanders oh Larry Alonzo G

Chris Douglas Roberts you had to have been a guy that I actually had to like know and write about or think about like it couldn't have been that fringy CDR is great on the Memphis Tigers yeah Jamario moon

Luke Babbitt

Andrew Gaudelock,

Mikey Moore,

Francisco Garcia,

Marcus Thornton,

Jeff Adrian,

Gustavo Ion,

Chris Copeland,

Johan Petro,

David Anderson, we're almost done.

John Salmons,

Chris Wilcox, Luke Luke Harangotti,

Kyle O'Quinn.

Remember Kyle O'Quinn?

I sure do.

It's a mid-ranger.

He's a good passer.

Good beard.

Von Wafer.

Lester Hudson.

And Anthony Randolph.

Anthony Randolph is absolutely the hammer.

He is the stuff dreams are made of.

I can't tell you how many of those dudes I was also trying to remember where they played college ball.

Because that would have been a time when I remembered all of that.

I believe Lavoy Allen was a Temple Owl.

So go out.

Yeah, I was going to say villain over a Temple.

He's somewhere affiliate, and then he plays for the Outl Sixers.

Great list, Zach.

Yeah, look, I worked hard on it.

I had to call it.

There's some guys who, you know, maybe next year.

Yeah.

You know.

All right, Chris Ryan, what do we got coming up?

I know you're recording some stuff tomorrow.

What do we got?

Doing the watch.

We'll be talking about the finale of Alien Earth and the new season of Slow Horses.

And then I'm doing the big picture with Sean and Amanda and talking about one battle after another.

You've seen it?

I have now.

I'm going to night.

I'm so jealous.

Everyone is like, I read Vineland over the summer in preparation for this PTA movie, and

everyone is like, it's even better than you would expect.

You're like Zach Lowe's Book Club.

What are you just reading novels for without turning them into content?

Well, I guess.

Vineland, I couldn't even do a podcast about Vineland.

It's not even possible.

Potting about books is tougher than it looks.

Me and Andy did Lonesome Dove.

We had a great time, but it's been difficult to pick another one.

All right.

Chris Ryan, thank you, sir.

I'll see you soon in New York, actually.

I'll see you soon.

That's it for today's episode of the Zach Lowe Show.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for everything.

We will be back sooner than later.

Thank you to Chris Ryan.

Thank you to Jesse and John.

And thanks again, everyone, for listening and watching the Zach Lowe Show.

See you soon.