How Can Teams Get Over the Hump? Plus, New Clippers Details With Rob Mahoney, and Mets Corner With Sean Fennessey

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All right, coming up after this on the Zach Lowe show, Rob Bahoney.

is back in the house.

First time in a couple months we've had Rob on.

He's the best.

We're going to talk about teams that need to get over the hump or want to get over the hump in the NBA.

And every team has kind of a different hump, but we're going to hit the teams sort of that's trying to break through to the top, top, top echelon, starring the Cavs, the Wolves.

We'll hit Lakers, Warriors, Clippers, Knicks.

Conference finals last year, and they made a coaching change.

The Bucs, they're still around with Giannis.

We're going to hit all those teams and more.

We'll talk a little bit about Kawhi and Pablo Torrey's latest revelations on that front today and the spat he's in with Mark Cuban, a friendly spat, but a spat nonetheless.

And then it's Mets corner time, baby.

Mets are playing the San Diego Padres right now as I'm reading this.

It's six to one.

Can we take two out of three from the Padres?

Is this team actually going to sneak into the playoffs?

Sean Fennessy is back.

I'll talk about my experience at the alumni game at City Field over the weekend.

Look ahead to the rest of the season with the Mets.

Talk a lot of baseball.

Why not?

I love baseball.

That's all coming up after this on the Zach Lowe Show.

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Welcome to the Zach Lowe's Show.

Rob Mahoney is back.

I haven't talked to you officially on this podcast since before I went on vacation.

How you doing?

I'm doing great, Zach.

I have embarked on a new business venture.

Can I interest you in some carbon credits?

Sure.

I mean, I have a lot of trees in my backyard.

Could you always use more trees?

Shade is good.

Do you come plant them yourself?

I will.

I'm willing to do the manual labor.

We'll discuss the pricing offline, but I just think there's a good opportunity here for you.

I have a no manual labor policy.

I'm too old.

I'm too stubborn.

I find it very frustrating.

It's a point of contention

in my marriage.

My wife finds satisfaction out of putting furniture together and doing stuff.

And I'm just like, I did not, I found no satisfaction out of any of this.

I had like my three hours back, please.

What is the line for you?

What is the most labor you are willing to do?

It's a great question.

Vacuuming?

Can we use vacuuming?

Sure.

That's about it.

I do find satisfaction in vacuuming because I pretend that I'm over, if it's carpet, I pretend that I'm doing a baseball field with all the lines and the patterns.

Okay, Rob, the conceit, which is really your idea more than mine because I didn't know what to do.

Let's pick some teams.

You call them over-the-hump teams, teams that have been close or getting closer or approaching franchise turning points.

Tell us how this team can take the next step.

We're going to go rapid fire through a bunch of teams.

We're going to talk about Kawhi because one of the teams is the Clippers.

We'll get to Kawhi.

I want to start with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Disappointing second-round exit amid lots and lots of injuries and lots and lots of Tyrese Halliburton doing crazy stuff.

Best team in the regular season, other than Oklahoma City, last year.

First in offense, eighth in defense, bringing back much of the same core.

Max Struss is hurt.

Darius Garland is still a little bit hurt.

We'll probably miss time to start the season.

Lonzo Ball is involved.

I will preface it by just saying this:

I'm optimistic about this team.

I

felt no panic upon their

summarily fast elimination at the hands of the Pacers machine.

I think this quartet of all-stars, and they've all been all-stars, deserves another year together and another chance to be healthy at the right time.

I will also say, I don't think other than a four-game demolition of the remains of the Miami Heat, I mean, talk about a 1-2-3 Cancun.

That was like 1-2-3 Cancun at halftime of game one.

Other than that series, I haven't been particularly impressed with the Cavaliers Cavaliers in the playoffs.

Now they've had health issues across both of these playoff runs the last couple of years.

And this is my long way of saying, I think this is the proof of concept here for this iteration of the team.

I think if we get to the end of this year and this team loses, God forbid, in the second round in this pathetic conference, or loses in a dispiriting way in the conference finals, I just,

I think

more aggressive maneuverings will at least be sniffed around by the front office.

So what do you think of the Cavs?

What does this team need to get better at to get through the wall?

I think they were right to keep it together for this long.

Obviously, there has been constant hand-wringing, trade rumoring about should they break up that four?

Is it worth at least kicking the tires on some other options?

I think it's fine to investigate that stuff, but good teams deserve the chance to find their moment.

And this could be their moment, right?

Like, I think the most compelling reason they could get over the hump is just that the east field has thinned out so much.

And in particular, you know, a Pacers team they could not stop.

Like, that was their biggest problem in that series, just could not stop that kind of movement.

Now, they probably don't have to worry about them in the same way.

A Celtics team that was basically the measuring stick for them all last season don't have to worry about them in the same way.

Feed us your small guards, Cleveland.

Feed us your small guards.

Well, that's gone.

And less and until Jason Tatum comes back faster than expected, which, you know, I'll believe it when I see it, kind of.

And those, look, those guards could get tested in totally different ways against the Knicks, against the Magic, against kind of the new layout of what the East looks like.

But just by virtue of taking some contenders off the board, they are very well positioned to find their moment in time where everything, again, the development clicks, the timing clicks, hopefully the health clicks.

They need some stuff to go right, but they are, I mean, maybe the humpingest of all the over-the-hump teams.

Like they are right there at the wall and need to figure out some way to scale it.

And yet they have not advanced this core, at least as far in the playoffs as the next team in the East that we'll talk about at some point, the Knicks, the other sort of team standing atop astride the East.

By the way, teams we're not going to talk about today out of the interest of time, the Denver Nuggets, because they've already won a championship.

I think they get into the championship contender

inner circle.

We don't need to talk about how.

Houston, I want to get to in more detail, obviously made a huge off-season acquisition that changes their entire team.

I noticed in your outlining of

East threats, contenders, dangerous teams, you did not kakaw.

You did not mention the Hawks.

Not yet.

You did not do a deep dive on Trey Young's 12-minute soliloquy against Patrick Beverly, a feud that I was just made aware of 10 minutes ago.

I need to dive into this.

Like, you can't be in my shoes.

You can't guard me.

Patrick Beverly went to Trey Young.

Trey Young made fun of him for celebrating a play-in win, jumping on the scores table.

I need to, this is a great feud.

I didn't know Trey Young had this kind of like, I didn't know Trey Young had, he has a podcast, apparently.

I got to dive into this.

Look, I'm going to have you over for the home and home Zach.

We're going to go on the Prestige TV pod because, I mean, that's art to me.

You know, Trey Young going through the full full dissection of a feud that no one knew existed.

This is this is the substance of what we really need to get into.

Can I we have Cam Thomas on so he and I can continue feuding in a different arena?

Speaking of prestige TV, I told you I had a hot TV take for you.

Can you just drop it now before we get back to the Cavs?

Cabs fans are like, really?

TV in the middle of this?

I watched the Emmys.

On Sunday, just I was doing research for a podcast, had the Emmys on in the background.

I got to say, I've gotten a lot of pushback on this, and I don't mean to besmirch anyone who worked really hard.

I watched this show.

I mostly kind of enjoyed it.

I kind of don't get the studio.

I don't get why it's this whole thing.

I didn't think it was particularly funny other than Brian Cranston dancing around like a drunken puppet.

It was actually the first time I've ever watched anything ever that she has been in and found Catherine Hahn not funny.

Catherine Hahn is like

a genius and an icon and like one of my favorite people in the entire celebrity business.

What am I missing?

I don't get it.

I'm not here to sell you on the idea that it's the funniest or most clever thing ever made.

And it is a little bit more smirking funny than it is ha ha funny, which I think can be a tough sell in and of itself.

But the reason it won Emmys is self-evident.

It is the world's largest pat on the back to the institution that creates the show about the show.

So what else would you expect to happen under those circumstances?

I guess it's my version.

I've compared it in text with, I was texting Joanna about this.

It's kind of like the bear, but for Hollywood, in that I don't think manic screaming at a turbo pace is a substitute for actually being funny.

It's just, I, okay, Cleveland.

Um, so that's my hot take, the studio people, you can yell at me.

Um,

uh, Cleveland, what was I we're talking about the calves.

Oh, so like, what do they need to do?

So, like, what do they need to do?

Is what, is there anything missing?

I mean, I would point to maybe a.

I think the okay, the power categories are where they fall a little bit short.

They don't get to the line all that often.

They're not a great rebounding team, despite playing two big men.

Especially contested rebounding.

Like, when it really gets physical, I think both Mobley and Allen are still susceptible to that.

They're not a great transition team, which is weird considering the athleticism and speed of particularly Donovan Mitchell, but also their bigs.

I think that's one area where Lonzo Ball, who they swiped for Isaac Okoro, could really help them.

Yep.

Continuity should help.

You know, did the league kind of figure out the cute cutting offense that they installed for a lot of the season?

I think that that stuff all kind of gets semi-figured out by the playoffs.

It's ironic to me that

the power categories are where they're a little bit still growing.

And this is, we're now, they've still come a long way from when the Knicks just bullied them off the floor in the first round of the first a couple of years ago.

It's ironic that that's where they fall short.

And yet, I think the biggest existential question around the franchise is: do they reach a point ever at which they just go all in with evan mobley starting center and figure out a way to move jared allen for other stuff i think it's too early for that i don't think they have enough size like in the wing area reliable so i mean deandre hunter's fine to go that route i think it would hurt their defense i think their offense with those two guys on the floor was like awesome the entire season.

So I'm not, I don't feel any urgent need for that kind of change, but we could get to the end of this season and feel differently about.

I also need to see like how much can Evan Mobley broaden out his game because if the answer is like infinitely then keep give me Jared Allen's shot blocking and all that stuff I think that part of it in particular in terms of the offense which is not their biggest problem but is still kind of a problem I think especially if you take kind of the two-year view right if you zoom out and say what is it that held the calves back in the 2024 playoffs what is it held them back in the 2025 playoffs they're kind of different answers because they did grow a lot but one of the one of the constants is when push comes to shove when the injuries come they are still so donovan Mitchell reliant.

They also became, over the course of last year, so system reliant.

All of that cutting, all that motion you alluded to, like they had such a pedal to the medal year in terms of effort and execution.

I don't think they ever really had that moment in the regular season where they had to figure out what to do outside their flow.

Like they could always get to a third or fourth option within the way they wanted to play that was pretty successful.

And so I think the important thing for their 82 games this year is

taking their foot off the gas a little bit, getting into problem-solving mode a little bit, getting into like, this is suboptimal offense tonight, but we need Evan Moble to figure out how to be a more formidable one-on-one scorer just for these moments where he's going to have to be that.

And it's not going to be heavy lifting.

It's not going to be high usage.

I almost think of him, this is a weird comp given his stature as a player, but when Golden State beat the Celtics in the finals, like the Andrew Wiggins break glass in case of emergency ISO stuff.

It's like, can Evan Mobley just do that?

Can he get to like a mid-post turnaround consistently enough that it's going to fuel our ability to play the way we want to play?

And I think he should be able to.

He showed

a mean streak last year that he hadn't shown before, just moving dudes out of the way and dunking on them.

He should be able to do that against mismatches.

He should be able to get more comfortable.

I do think, though, that if they fall short this year,

everything on the roster then Mitchell and Mobley becomes

not on the table, but like, we'll make some calls for this elite player or that elite player.

And this all depends on how the season unfolds in places like Milwaukee and Utah and Phoenix and other places that I'm just naming off the top of my head.

Okay, anything else on the Cavs?

Just on the Lonzo front, like he is such a great theoretical addition because of the style things that you talked about, Zach.

He fits the pace that they want to play with, not in terms of like up and down tempo, but kind of through action tempo.

That he can be a perfect flow guy and a chaos chaos-creating defender, that's exciting to me.

Like, who can they get into the rotation that's going to be a meaningful defensive difference that can muck up some of the stuff that's been bothering them in rotation?

Lonzo could be that guy.

He also could be hurt for the majority of the year or all of the year, and we never see him barely at all.

Like, that's a very real part of who he is as a player at this point.

But I will take the theoretical Lonzo over the known quantity but functionally irrelevant Isaac Okoro minutes that they were getting.

And the Bulls were like, wait, another wing who can't play in the playoffs?

Give us Isaac Okoro.

We'll add him to our collection of guys.

Just an embarrassment of a kind of riches for Chicago.

Okay.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are hump team number two.

Two straight 4-1 losses in the conference finals.

When you get that far two years in a row, you merit attention on a high, high level.

And I actually don't think they're getting enough attention.

You know, the last time I checked the conference odds in the West, they were fifth behind the Lakers, which felt disrespectful to me for a team that just destroyed the Lakers in the playoffs.

And yeah, Luca was a little banged up.

LeBron was a little banged up.

Spoiler alert, LeBron's 41 years old at the end of the season.

We'll see how banged up or not banged up he is.

They were top 10 on both ends of the floor.

That's a rare thing to be and usually sort of qualifies you as a title contender.

They have a young ascendant superstar in Anthony Edwards who gets a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better every year.

They figured out the Julius Randall part of the equation or Julius Randall figured out his part of the equation.

Other than how to pass to Rudy Gobert for Lobbs.

It's just like you could do a hell of a, it got a little better after, remember when Rudy took the three-second violation in Toronto?

It's just like, you're not going to pass to me, dude.

I'll just like stand here.

They lost Nikhil Alexander Walker, but Terren Shannon Jr.

and Rob Dillingham should need work and or need to be ready.

This might be the most interesting team in the league to me going into the season because

they're not really mentioned in the inner circle of contenders.

You'll even find people who are like, well, would they have even beat the Warriors last year if Steph hadn't gotten hurt?

I picked them to win that series before Steph got hurt.

I think they're on par with any of those teams in the West below Oklahoma City who just sort of dispatched them 4-1.

But, you know, if you make the conference finals two years in a row, you've accomplished a lot, beat Denver the year before.

That was a huge feat.

But there's like, no one seems to take them seriously as a team, not take them seriously, but like

getting over the hump feels like a place where the nba's collective consciousness can't get to why is that what does this team need to do to get to take the next step i think the fundamental reason is that they are the same team but slightly worse in terms of personnel right like losing nikhil is a blow to a team that really relied on his defense and his place in the rotation and yes maybe they're going to get that from taron shannon maybe they're going to get better rob dillingham minutes maybe they're going to get better jalen clark minutes like three prospects who i am interested in and invested in.

Where that makes me nervous is when your whole prospect as a team, because they had to invest so much to retain Julius and Nas in particular, comes down to our young guys have to get better.

If that doesn't work, what it means is Anthony Edwards has to be better.

And I don't like the way that distills pressure on a guy who is already carrying so much.

Like their continuity is going to benefit them in some ways.

It's also going to hold them back in some ways.

And so when we compare them to the rest of the West, you have a historically successful Oklahoma City team that's going to be even better, presumably because of their youth.

You have a Denver team that was maybe a body or two short that got a body or two, and I think will benefit greatly from that.

And a Houston team that needed exactly one thing on offense, and it was a half court killer, and they got the half-court killer.

So where is it that Minnesota's, like, how do they make up ground to get to the point that they could break down Oklahoma City's defense in a playoff series?

I don't think the answer is Terrence Shannon.

I don't think the answer is Rob Dillingham.

I think the answer is a lot of people looking at Ant and saying, saying, can you be a Luca-level playmaker for game after game after game and series after series after series?

And that's a lot to put on a guy.

Yeah, if I had to, look, I agree.

They slide in fourth for me in the West behind the three teams that you mentioned, but I don't think they're like, I mean, they have a track record against Denver now that cannot be dismissed.

Houston is still pretty young around KD and Van Vliet.

I think Shengu now sort of qualifies as a grizzled veteran.

After the Euro basket, put him in.

But not far from those teams.

But I think if I had to boil it down, I think they always seem like one shooter short of like an optimal playoff lineup.

And part of that is like Jaden McDaniels, I think,

shot it well in the playoffs, shot it okay in the regular season.

Didn't stop the Thunder from putting Chet Holmgrin on him and being like, okay, like do your stuff.

And then the double big thing with Randall and Gobert, like Randall's an okay shooter at the four.

He shot the three pretty well at the second second half of last year, but like no one is going to fear that guy.

And then to your point, it's not so much that they're one playmaker short, it's that

Ant is a good young playmaker, not a great one.

And he shot 39% from the mid-range last year.

He likes to take, he took fewer of those shots, more threes, but like he's not elite elite in that range yet.

And then, you know, Randall is a good playmaker, but not a great playmaker at the four, sort of a predictable one at times.

Right.

And then you run into like JD McDaniels is a closeout guy, Gobert is a finisher, Mike Conley, like, how much is there left?

They just feel like a couple of ingredients short of the kind of offense that's going to be able to score against the very, very best defenses.

And really, the problem that they have more than anything else is like Oklahoma City is just unsolvable on defense.

And every team in the West is just looking at this defense like,

what are we supposed to do?

And they just feel a little bit short of offensive creativity and vision.

And like, even

just like matchup recognition sometimes eludes them.

Like, oh, Julius Randall has a guard on him.

Maybe we should pass him the ball.

Ant can sometimes get a little inactive off the ball.

And when he's active off the ball, he's a demon.

He's like unstoppable.

Turnovers, like sloppy, ugly-ass turnovers,

they're just prone to like puzzling four-minute stretches that you can't have against good defenses.

And all that stuff has like trickle-down effects, too, right?

If Mike Conley looks 37 years old, and I mean, that's just going to happen.

It already has started to happen in various ways.

But if he is 10% less of a player than he was last season, that means Ant has to do more.

That means Rob Dillingham has to do more.

And if Ant is doing more, he is moving less offball.

He's also guarding worse offball on the other side, which is always kind of a bit of a limitation and a liability for him.

I just don't like the way all that is consolidating, and all of this is to say that the Wolves, to me, feel like a team that has spent and invested a lot in maintaining a proven successful Western Conference finalist team, but they are participating in an arms race in a conference that is getting more and more terrifying by the minute.

And that's even outside of Oklahoma City.

So there is the problem in how do you break down the thunder.

And then there are all the other problems that you now have to contend with that the Wolves didn't really have to last season, that they were able to either cut through or breeze through or work around that now they have to take more seriously.

And I'm just not quite sure that they have it there unless you get the huge Terrence Shannon breakout, unless you get Rob Dillingham, you know, surpassing what his physical limitations may be in terms of his size.

Like, he's going to have to prove a lot.

All those guys are going to have to prove a lot.

Yeah, they like,

you know, when Conley is not, when Conley looks old,

their tendency, and we saw them do this, was like kind of play DiVincenzo in his spot with the starters.

And so Ant becomes the point guard.

It's like, again, not just not, you got a great shooter in there, but not enough playmaking.

Shannon, we'll see what he can do as a shooter.

Dillingham, Dillingham has the straight line speed that we're talking talking about.

They also just feel like

they have these three big men who all make a lot of money, a Nasri, Julius Randle, and Rudy Gobert.

So they're naturally incentivized to play two of them at the same time.

The Reed-Randall combo is going to struggle on defense without Gobert.

And it just, like, I'm always intrigued by how they look when they slide McDaniels to the four.

and play one of the bigs, specifically Gobert for defense.

They're just like not quite constructed to do that very often.

And they don't, I just, but I would, it's a look like Chris Finch seems to want to flirt with doing a little more, but they can't really do it.

But they also can't defend well enough when Gobert is on the bench and the other two bigs aren't.

There's just like a lot of puzzle pieces that just they fit well enough to get you so far, but

we'll see.

I don't know.

Getting to the finals in the west of the tall order, sorry.

Brutal.

And I mean, what you're describing is basically Anton McDaniels are the pieces that are absolutely locked in.

And on both sides of them, you have logistical concerns.

Maybe all those concerns kind of break right and you get enough of the variables to overwhelm teams that theoretically should beat you to get to the conference finals again.

It's just tough to do it over and over.

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I'm going to let you pick the next team.

Have at it.

Why don't we go with

the Detroit Pistons?

Wow.

Okay, so let's be clear.

This is a different hump.

Different.

This isn't the end hump.

There's a whole taxonomy of humps.

This is like Wednesday.

We're trying to get past Wednesday,

go have a beer at the bar on Wednesday night.

Feel like two-thirds or 60% of the work week is behind us

for the Pistons.

You know what?

You just go.

Like, why did you pick the, why are we talking about the Pistons?

Look, they have a youth and an untapped potential that puts them in a totally different category than the teams we've been talking about.

They could take a jump and they could clear the hump easily just with Asar Asar Thompson and Jalen Duran basically, and you're getting Jaden Ivey back as well.

That combination could just be enough to take them to the next level in and of itself.

That said, all of the youth they have, all the potential they have, is also what makes them one of the most interesting trade candidates in the league.

And there is a way where you don't clear the hump by exercising your potential.

Maybe you just take a leisurely stroll around it by trading for somebody, you know, say theoretically, a really good and like potentially available stretch for who everyone happens to be talking about right now.

So, I'm glad you brought this up.

First of all, if Detroit does nothing, like there's no trade, there's no big move, there's no all-in move.

I was advocating for them to look at Durant.

Like, that's how excited I am about this team.

Um, I still think they're better than they were last year.

I was surprised, I've debated this with Bill.

Bill is very concerned about the shooting they lost in Hardaway and Beasley and Dennis Schroeder, who just adds spunk to every team he's on and adds Jordan-level contributions to Germany.

I think Ivy back for Schroeder, Karis Lavert, and Duncan Robinson in for the two shooters.

More experience, both playoff experience that these guys got in a knockdown drag out fight against the Knicks, and just experience experience for a guy like Asar Thompson, who missed half of last season.

They're just going to get better by osmosis.

Jalen Duran is like 21 years old still.

And he's a tank who can, he's a tank who can jump to the ceiling of the arena.

If he learns more of the fundamentals of NBA defense, that to me might be the biggest pivot point of this entire team.

They were better on defense in the regular season with Durren on the bench and in the playoffs with Durren on the bench.

That can't be if they're going to get where they need to go.

And I'm a believer that on will and talent, he's going to become at least like an average center defender who can wreak havoc on the glass and on offense, facilitate a little bit from the elbow.

Ivy coming back is big.

Like status quo, I don't know that that means they win a playoff series.

I don't know that they're a top four seed because the East is going to have five, six, seven decent to very good teams.

For sure.

But I think they're just qualitatively better.

Now, the player that you are talking about is to me, the more I just look at the league landscape and zoom out and talk to people, this is talk to people season for me.

Just make phone calls, take my power walks, talk to everybody.

I just can't imagine a scenario.

I guess I can.

It's the NBA.

Anything's possible.

Uncle Dennis exists.

I can't imagine a scenario where Lowry Markinen is on the jazz in a year.

I just, he just has to be looking around at this team and be like, what?

What happened?

Who are these people?

See,

this is the team I'm on now.

I can imagine it.

I just hope we don't live in that universe.

You know,

I hope we don't live in the world where he is just dragging along with the jazz for multiple consecutive seasons at this point.

And there's also a world in which Utah blew this situation by

or by not trading trading him.

And then he kind of forced their hand a little bit by not signing a deal until a date at which he was not tradable last season.

But the deal is huge, 46 million this year through 2029, where it's 53.5 million.

And he missed half of last season with some injuries, with some tankery, with some whatever.

And it has the rest of the league being like, I mean, I have like 10 teams on my list.

I've talked to a lot of people.

Everybody loves Larry Marketing.

He's an easy fit anywhere.

They don't love the contract.

And they're just like, we got to see him sort of play his way back into that level of value.

Eurobasket helped.

You were just destroying people in Eurobasket.

But the Detroit Pistons might be my favorite Lowry Marketing team.

And you can tee it up.

Tobias Harris is going to be a free agent after this year.

Jaden Ivey, here's a young guard to add to your collection of young guards who may or may not amount to a ton in the NBA, but he's exciting.

Throw in some picks.

Done.

We got it.

Perfect fit with Cade.

Doesn't need the ball all the time.

Can do stuff with the ball.

I love it.

I think Detroit will, would be interested if this ever comes to bear.

Do you think Ivy is enough as a pillar of a deal for Lowry Markinen?

If it is Ivy and picks, but not

Asar, not Holland, not Durin.

Well, I mean, I think Holland is the next guy that if you're Detroit and you're desperate to make it happen,

you do, because they just couldn't decide what to do with him last year.

He's young.

He can't shoot.

Asar Thompson can't really shoot.

And so they might be incompatible, the two of them, long term.

It just might be the reality of it.

Well, and against the Knicks, and again, Asar missed half of last season, so it was really trial by fire for him.

He's guarding Jalen Brunson.

But against the Knicks, they often defaulted to Cade, two guards, Tobias Harris, and a center, just like neither Asar Thompson nor Ron Holland.

They couldn't decide who Tobias Harris's backup should be.

It should be Tobias Harris.

It should be Asar Thompson, really, in staggering minutes.

Asar Thompson is going to start.

I'm just talking about staggering minutes.

But then you look at the jazz.

It's like, what do they have?

What are any of these people?

What is Ace Bailey?

We don't know.

Taylor Hendrix, I liked him.

He got hurt.

Cody Williams, is he like Johnny Davis 2.0?

I don't know.

Keontae George is okay.

He came off the bench.

Flip is fine.

Isaiah Collier, we'll see.

What do they want?

But can I just rapid fire give you my list of marketing teams?

Hit me.

In loose order, I really like this.

Detroit,

Where do I want to go next?

Miami.

Portland?

Oh, yeah.

Jeremy Grant, Time Lord, and some picks.

Now they owe Chicago a pick, and there's some tax that Miami's got some tax issues I should mention.

They're right, right at the tax.

Portland owe Chicago a pick.

They'd have to finagle a little bit.

Toronto?

I like that.

And it's just a matter of, like, is Utah willing to eat a couple of years of Brandon Ingram's salary?

It could be R.J.

Barrett, but then you got to add in more players.

It gets a little wonky.

I think San Antonio and Houston are both like, we need to figure out what we have, slash if we can get a bigger fish.

Yeah.

I think with Lowry and Wemby, there is like some duplicative skill set there that I think helps.

And it's like, if you get Lowry, he's a good player and also an underrated driver and dunker and finisher in his own right.

So it's not like he's only a perimeter player, but I would want something different with Wemby if I'm picking dream pairings.

Golden State has come up before.

They've got a big issue to sort out with Kaminga, and what does that do to their ability to even make trades, base year compensation, etc.

I think Minnesota would be an awesome fit.

Sure.

If we could turn Randall and DiVincenzo and something, but they're out a lot of picks.

They're over the first apron, so they can't take back more money.

Why?

I have Sacramento on, and every time, like Levine and some draft picks, trading with the Kings, great idea.

I just, it literally says ZL plus picks Y on my notes.

Like, why?

To what end is any of this happening?

Poor Kings.

What if Cleveland tried to get him back?

We're giving up on the, not giving up, but like, we're going to move Jared Allen.

But then it has to be a three-team trade.

I don't, like,

Walker Kessler's already there.

Those are my marketing teams.

team oh memphis memphis yes um it has to be a three-for-one deal i think they want to see how good aldama is and not to say that he's going to make it like be anywhere near what marketing is but it's just an opportunity cost kind of thing like if he's a decent player

Do we save our chips for a different kind of third big salary having just punted out of having three big salaries with Bain, by the way?

Those are my teams.

I think Markin's getting traded this year.

I think it's the, and with teams like Memphis and Aldama, it's not just the chips in terms of making the trade happen, but that salary slot that you now have to account for.

And it's, I think with Lowry, he does fit almost everywhere, as you alluded to, but the fit has to be basically perfect to justify the level of investment that it will probably take to pry him loose from Utah at this point and to justify the amount of money he will be making for on your cap sheet.

And like, that's why Detroit is interesting to me.

And that, and honestly, when you brought up Minnesota, why they're interesting to me too, as teams that

have, you know, it's one thing to have a stretch four and what that opens up for your primary playmaker.

We've already seen it with Cade.

Like, you give Cade a little bit of space, you give him any shooting whatsoever, and he will drive a winning team.

But what happens when that stretch four isn't Tobias Harris, who's barely being guarded by opposing defenses at times, and instead is a versatile movement shooter, a guy who can do things off the dribble, who can attack from the weak side, who has actual like range to his game beyond just catching and shooting or just setting up on the low block.

That's the exciting kind of component that I think elevates beyond, you know, whatever you think Cade's limitations are athletically or whatever you think Anthony Edwards' limitations might be in terms of his ability to read the floor.

Like the passes are a lot easier when Lowry Markinen is blurring around a screen and all of a sudden you can just hit him for something easy.

And this team had a turnover problem last year.

Cade had a turnover problem last year.

I mean, there was one.

Every year was, I think it was game one against the Knicks.

It was just like they gave a game away with just one bizarre turnover after another.

It was one of those games in New York.

They could not shoot straight last year, 22nd in

three-point attempts and 20th or something like that in percentage.

They fouled the bejesus out of everyone.

Now, that is part of their just, we're just going to beat you up and try to fight you a lot, like

literally fight you.

So I don't mind it.

It's a mindset.

It's a vibe.

They bought into it.

They're intimidating.

They're physical.

But a lot of that is young guy stuff that will be fixed with age.

But yeah.

But by the way, just I will take and have taken since his rookie year all the Cade Cunningham stock.

I'll take it all.

Did not shoot the three well in the playoffs.

I thought he was passing up threes by the end of that Knicks series.

So that's an issue he's going to have to get over.

But I'll take it all and I'll take all the Asar Thompson stock, all of it.

He's my pick for most improved player.

So yeah, Detroit, we'll see.

You can pick the next team.

You can keep it rolling.

Why don't we roll to

how about the Knicks?

Let's hit the other kind of Eastern Conference relative powerhouse.

I talked about the Knicks offense quite a bit the other day with Mo DeKiel.

Ironic, since they were fifth in offense last year, I think

it should look different.

They've signed a million guys to training camp contracts,

but the core personnel is largely going to be the same.

Everything I said about Cleveland is times 10 for the Knicks because it's New York, because of their history, because of their baggage.

This is the most pressure this team has ever been under since Patrick Ewing, the highest expectations for any Knicks team in a single season since Patrick Ewing.

If you

right now asked me to pick a Knicks Cavs conference finals, let's say everybody's healthy, this is the conference finals, I think I would pick the Knicks.

Just there's something about their toughness and their physicality that I just like in that matchup.

But they haven't gotten over the hump.

No.

So tell me how they get over the hump.

I think there's two things.

One, you already touched on with Mo in great detail, which is just like not running yourself into the hump over and over in terms of what you're running on offense.

The diversification that you guys were talking about, I think, is particularly important.

And hiring Mike Brown is a nod to that kind of diversification and that kind of motion.

And it's not just about is Jalen Brunson off the ball enough.

It's the intention of putting Jalen Brunson off the ball and the opposing team and everyone on the floor understanding that there are actually other options here.

We are not just waiting for Brunson to clear through his like Iverson cut so that we can get it to him.

Like it needs to be actually deliberate and built with options so that you can you can flex out Mikhail Bridges, that you can hit OG Ananobi, that you can put these other guys in position positions to succeed.

All that stuff is important.

And I think gets to the real bigger point, which is this was the most played lineup in terms of the core five Knicks, you know, Sans, Mitchell, Robinson, of any team in the league, of any five-man combination in the league.

And they did not particularly look like it.

They did not look like a team that like had all of the inroads and familiarity and all the built-in chemistry of a group that played together as much as they did.

And so, I'm like, can their core five, whatever that looks like, can their five best players actually play like more than the sum of their parts?

Where what should have been a great five-man unit, I thought was like a pretty good five-man unit.

And with the bench that they had, that wasn't tenable.

With the bench they have now, I think it'll be even easier.

But can they hit higher highs with their best five guys on the floor?

I think they can.

I'm a believer in that lineup.

I think it should be better than it was last year.

I believe it got outscored for the season

and definitely did in the playoffs.

That said, I'm not sure they're going to start that lineup to open the season.

There's something to be said there, I think, for starting games big with Robinson and Kat and downsizing from there.

Robinson was a monster last year when he was healthy.

I don't feel like

super.

Well, it makes me nervous how much I'm counting on Mitchell Robinson in my brain to have the Knicks hit their ceiling as just like a two-way team.

But like, so this team was an average defensive team last year.

Towns is a below-average defender no matter where you put him.

Yes.

I don't necessarily think the Knicks were creative enough trying to put him in like the way that people would

hide bigs on non-threatening wings in the corner or anything like that.

But like, how would you try to make this defense closer to the eighth best defense in the league with carl anthony towns besides just play mitchell robinson more well there's play mitchell robinson more there's also like allow yourself a little bit more flexibility in the second unit where it's not just cat by default at the five you're playing yabusalesome as a small ball five in a way that if the opportunity in the matchup lends itself to that that might be your best look so being open to some of those possibilities like being a little less dogmatic about the rotation i think goes a long way with this stuff to be honest with you um but some of that might factor into that continuity continuity as well, like as far as getting those five-man units to play better.

Like Mikhail Bridges did not look like the Mikhail Bridges we know defensively.

And maybe that is because he had a huge life change with this trade, had a huge situation and circumstantial change.

He's trying to get used to it.

Kat's trying to get used to it.

Those are two guys who have proven they can be better defensively than they were to different degrees.

And maybe it is just a matter of like getting them around each other and OG and Mitchell Robinson in particular on a consistent enough basis.

But also, it's not just Kat.

They have to figure out how to protect Jalen Brunson, too.

And Jalen Brunson needs to figure out how to protect himself a lot more.

All fair.

I don't even know.

I don't know what you do with Kat.

I just think he's going to be.

If he's at the center of your defense, I just think

there's only so much you can do.

In Sacramento, they would toy with having Sabonis really attack picket rolls high on the floor to make up for the fact that he wasn't a rim protector.

Kat just is for a guy who's an incredible athlete and at times quite graceful on offense, he's just like Frankenstein sometimes.

Like every step is so heavy, it feels like it's going to drill a hole into the court.

But I think Robinson's big.

I think they're going to be very careful with him and manage his minutes as they should.

I think you're on point about Yapuselli.

Everyone's penciling him as the backup four, and I think he is the backup four.

I think we'll see him play some center because why the hell not?

He can do everything.

He's like a cinder block.

Also, we saw Mike Brown do it.

Like Trey Lyles turned out to be a really important backup big for the Kings.

I'm going to miss Trey Lyles, who's signed in Europe somewhere.

Can't believe there's not a place for Trey Lyles in the NBA.

Only in our hearts, you know.

Yeah.

I think the Knicks,

I like their team.

I like their offseason.

I'm just interested in sort of what tweaks on both ends of the floor we see because even against the Pistons, like when they would drag Cat into that pick and roll, and sometimes they would run like screen-the-screener plays where they'd hit him with the screen on the way.

He was just out of the play.

It was just like Jalen Duran, Assar Thompson, dunk.

Okay, who do you want to go to next?

We're going fast.

I like this.

Yeah, who else we got?

How about the Milwaukee Bucks?

I think the team that befuddles me the most in terms of

where they even are relative to the hump anymore, what their roster is going to look like.

I am zooming out of Milwaukee and I am seeing that...

Amir Coffee is immediately one of the most balanced wings on their roster.

And I say that as both a compliment and a bit of an indictment.

Like, I don't know what to make of this team and where they are right now, other than to say, if you have Giannis, you're going to win a lot of games.

And the baseline structure of this team, even post-remodel, I think is still going to be pretty good, to be honest with you.

If Giannis is healthy, they're going to be pretty good.

They were the best three-point shooting team in the league last season by percentage.

They only took an average amount.

And I think step one is just take more threes.

And Miles Turner will, well, I don't, he should help with that.

He's a little bit more of a quick release than Brooke Lopez, who's just sort of like

slow heave from the stomach to the release point.

And more variety than Brooke, too, I think.

Especially as Brooke has gotten older, there are fewer of the rumbling drives against closeouts.

And I think one of Miles's, like what has made him the player that he is that would deserve this kind of contract is the way that he's diversified what he can do within the offense and kind of the spots he can attack from and get to.

It's not perfect as we saw in the NBA Finals, but it's a little more varied than Brooke at this point.

I mean, I don't even know who the starting lineup for this team is other than Giannis

and Miles Turner, and I guess Kuzma by default that has to start.

Probably.

It could be any combination of Kevin Porter Jr., Ryan Hollins, Gary Trent, A.J.

Green.

I think Cole Anthony will come off the bench.

Portis will come off the bench.

Do you like the idea of playing Giannis, Portis, and Turner all together?

Like, if we have no faith in our perimeter rotation, is that a way to go?

Or have we reached the point where Giannis has lost a quarter of the step defending perimeter guys, that that becomes more a more challenging, like we've seen them do that before with like Giannis Portis-Lopez kind of lineups.

Is that too slow now?

I didn't love it even then.

I mean, I've never really loved Giannis guarding wings.

It was the kind of thing that theoretically made a lot of sense, but even when he was, you know, defensive player of the year caliber, he just never was locked in in the same way.

And I don't think he's wired to guard on-ball wings in that capacity.

A face-up big, a face-up four, absolutely.

But it would make me a little bit too nervous.

I'm glad you brought them up, though, because

like they were 10th in offense and 12th in defense last year.

Dame missed 20-something games and then obviously got hurt in the playoffs.

They make this trade for Kuzma in the regular season.

Kuzma busts out completely.

He cannot be any worse than he was.

It's awful.

They still have Giannis.

I think we'll see more point Giannis this season.

You put shooting around him, you know,

regardless of what you think of how insane it was to

wave and stretch Dame and then sign Miles Turner with cap space, they did turn a roster spot that was going to give them zero production this season for somebody who will give them good production and fit well with Giannis.

I just don't,

and again, like, who's scared of Cleveland and the Knicks in the East?

You know,

some people, maybe they should be.

I just don't see enough here.

I just fundamentally can't get by.

The perimeter rotation is just not good enough to compete at the highest, highest level.

And I don't even know what they're supposed to do about that.

God knows they don't have much left to trade, if anything.

Well, especially because it's a lot of guys who have been given those chances in other places and failed for exactly the reason that the Bucs now need them to succeed.

Like Cole Anthony, for everything that he brings you in terms of energy, is just so targetable because of his size.

And he will work hard and he will foul hard, but there's just only so much you can do.

And that's to, you know, that's assuming that his offense is clicking.

That's assuming that he is being the bucket getter that he's kind of designed to be.

Torian Prince, the Bucs have been banking on him to be a reliable playoff guy.

And we've seen other teams.

make that same kind of error in judgment where he's just too limited.

He just can get played off the floor.

Yes, he's going to be a good percentage shooter, but that's kind of about it.

And he shows you the limitations of what percentage shooting can do.

Gary Harris, I love eight years ago.

These are guys like Prince and Harris, like I have their whole depth chart written out.

They're just at the very bottom in the area of like, if dudes are injured, these guys will play.

Like I just can't.

Like Torian Prince was good until, and then he vanished.

Like he was good and then he vanished.

And even if you look at their profile, it's like, what weak points can they improve upon?

They were dead last in offensive rebounding last year.

That's a Doc Rivers thing, right?

They didn't take a ton of threes, but they didn't take like a low amount of threes.

They didn't force any turnovers.

That's a Doc Rivers thing.

They gave up a lot of threes and packed the paint, and they actually executed that strategy pretty well.

Like, I just don't see,

they're not a young team, really.

Like, they have some young, interesting-ish players, but I don't know.

They're not young.

I just don't see like areas where, oh, that's an easily correctable thing.

That's a low-hanging fruit they can pluck.

I just don't think they have enough.

And I said this.

Look, I know they signed Thanassus, the most untradeable player in the NBA.

Thanassis Atentakumpo, don't even bother calling.

The Bucks are not taking calls, they're not making calls, they're not even taking calls on Thanassis.

And I said this a couple weeks ago.

Like, and I know Sean's reported Giannis will spend the season in Milwaukee after the Thanassis thing.

I just don't think the book is closed on this story, and I'm sorry to Bucks fans to say that.

Like, if they lose in the first round or have a disappointing season, or Giannis leaks around and is like, this team is just not good enough and has no path to being good enough.

I don't think this story is over.

Any closing Bucks thoughts?

Just that if that is true, I mean, it certainly complicates the math on all the Miles Turner Dame stuff to begin with.

And I waffle back and forth on all of that, and you talked about the mechanics.

So does Giannis.

Understandably.

And it's one of those things where I both support a team in Milwaukee's position having the short-term outlook to say we need to do everything possible to do right by the guy who has been here, who has been the pillar of our franchise, who is, you know, is the greatest buck in, or, you know, one of the greatest bucks in history, and certainly in modern Bucks history.

And yet, when you move heaven and earth to do it, sometimes you're left with absolutely nothing underneath you to catch you when the one thing goes wrong.

And I mean, that might be what it takes for Giannis, right?

Maybe it is one rotation player has a season-ending injury, and he's looking around, and all of a sudden, all those guys we were just talking about, the Gary Harris's and the Torian Prince,

Torian Princes are now playing 30-plus minutes as a matter of necessity, and that could be the finishing blow.

That could be kind of the end of this particular pipe dream.

Look,

healthy, and there can be healthy debate amongst NBA fans and media over the whole newsbreaking industry and why things are tweeted when they're tweeted and all of that.

I don't know Shams at all.

We've talked five times, said hello at games.

He's not putting that stuff out there without anything behind it.

I can 100% guarantee you that.

Number two, and this is what I indicated a couple weeks ago, the the reason why I'm not closing the book on this is simply the calendar.

At the end of this season, like the Bucks this summer, if the rubber had met the road and it didn't, could have just looked at Giannis and said, dude, you have two years guaranteed left on your contract.

We're not trading you.

Like, too bad.

Well, after this season, he's got one and he's extension eligible.

And you can better believe the Bucks are going to offer him everything they can offer him.

And if he doesn't take it, then you've hit a fork in the road.

Now, if he takes it,

that's awesome.

Like, Giannis would be probably a Buck Lifer, and they'd be betting on

all of these teams in the East will crash down.

We'll have some time.

We'll recoup some draft assets.

Maybe we'll rise up around a guy who's only 30, 31 years old right now.

I think that's, like, not completely unreasonable.

They're certainly in the right conference to dream big.

And so we'll see what happens.

Okay.

Pick one of the L.A.

teams.

Let's go Clippers first.

Clippers.

Clippers.

You want to plant some seeds about the Clippers issue?

Just a couple, couple, you know?

I'm just trying to, you know, negate the impact of all the bad things I'm doing in the world by just putting enough trees out there to really counterweight all of it.

So

I would like to talk about the Clippers.

I would like to talk about a roster that I'm kind of like

very impressed by on like a 10 deep, 12 deep kind of level, and yet I'm not sure solved any of the fundamental problems that were holding that team back.

Better at some things?

Is it better enough to solve the like inherent offense, defense, tension, and substitution that was sort of pulling that team apart from the inside?

I honestly don't know.

Let's talk about the Clippers as a basketball team.

Let's even pretend they'll have the ability to make as many trades or as few trades as they want in this calendar season.

Yeah.

Before we talk about the other stuff,

fifth best net rating in the league last year.

were plus a gazillion when they had Kawhi and Harden and Zubats on the floor, their three most important returning players.

Essentially, it turned Norm Powell into Bradley Beal and John Collins.

John Collins is a new kind of player for them.

They haven't had somebody like this.

Somebody that Hardin specifically pushed for, from what I was told.

Chris Paul's back.

All the bench guys and role players are basically still here: Bogdanovich, Batum, Dunn, Jones Jr., two of whom the last two started last year and were critical to their sort of defense first identity.

Took the Nuggets to seven.

Some would argue, should have won the series.

There's obviously the Aaron Gordon miracle in game four.

There's a blow in game one.

I would argue should, the word should gets erased from your justifiably used vocabulary when you poop all over the floor in game seven, like James Harden teams always poop over the floor in game seven.

Tough.

No, you should not have won because you had a chance to win and we saw what happened.

This is a good team.

I'm kind of with you in that, like, you name all the players.

It's like there's a lot.

There's like 11 deep in quality.

Like Brooke Lopez is here as a backup center.

I like him.

If he gets hurt, we can play John Collins as a backup center.

Nick Batum is always helpful.

It's like he's just like doing something helpful all the time.

They might have the best second line on paper of any team in the NBA.

Brad Beale rejuvenated.

Maybe he'll try a little harder.

You know, set some ball screens like we saw him do in his last year in Washington and a little bit in Phoenix.

Like lean into that part of his game, lead the second unit.

You got, you know, maybe you start one of Chris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr.

to just like right, you know, balance offense, defense.

Bogdan Bogdanovich never really settled in with the Clippers.

Now he will.

And yet I look at this team and I'm like, too old,

too many questions.

Yes.

Too injury prone.

Bogdan Bogdanovich is already injured from Eurobasket.

I just like the they're good.

Good is just not good enough when those top three teams in the West look the way they do.

And I said this with Bill.

Bill was shitting all over the Clippers when they got Chris Paul and Brad Beale.

Said, I can't believe anyone's talking about this team there.

It also ran.

I said, I don't think they think,

I don't think they conceive of themselves internally as anything but a good team who's going to need to catch a bunch of breaks to

beat maybe two of those top three teams in the playoffs.

I think that's fine as they pivot to the next iteration of their team when they get cap space and all that stuff.

I just like, the names are cool.

Kawhi is going to miss a whole bunch of games, setting aside the Kawhi mess that's going on right now.

Harden is getting older every year, and it's more of a struggle for him to get his own every year.

He's still an incredible fulcrum of an offensive passer, but like the self-created scoring gets a little harder every year.

Beal's old.

Beal is like, it's been a long time.

It's been a long time.

Chris Paul's almost 40.

Chris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr.,

when things got really tough, they couldn't play as much because nobody was guarding them.

I don't know, man.

I just, I don't even know what they, like, what do they need to do?

What do they need to do better to get over this hump?

I think a lot of it, weirdly, for all the names you just listed, and those are Hall of Famers in there, those are former all-stars in there, those are former MVPs in there.

I think John Collins is the most important player they brought in.

And a lot of that is because his game is a little bit more balanced than some of these other guys, and because he doesn't make you pick and choose in the way that, say, Derrick Jones Jr.

does.

Like, if you're going to start, like, I would start Chris Dunn if I were them.

I would still start Chris Dunn with James, bring CP and and Beal and Bogdanovich in some capacity off the bench, and start John Collins and Kawhi to whatever extent Kawhi is available.

Like, that makes sense to me.

And that way, you get the second unit ball handling from guys like Beal and CP and Bogdan, but you don't have like you know,

you have a kind of a designated guard defender with Dunn with the starters, which you wouldn't have otherwise with any of those other guys in the mix.

Like, CP and Harden together are targets.

Bogdan with any of those guys is a target.

Brad Bealt, maybe maybe to a slightly lesser degree, but also a target.

Like you need some line of defense to make Zoo's life a little bit easier on the backside.

And if that's not going to come from kind of a catch-all defender like Derrick Jones Jr., and I don't think it should, Collins is like a really natural guy to fit into that starting lineup and give them things that they just have never had before in terms of the total combination of skills.

I think John Collins is like wildly underrated.

In part because he's just been languishing for a while on teams that are not relevant.

Slash, he was sitting out last season with what I presume were fake injuries to help the Jazz tank for, what did they end up picking the fifth pick in the draft?

Congratulations.

Let's try it again this year.

I think he's an underrated defender when he leans into that part of his game.

I think the shooting is real.

I like the idea of starting him.

Like, let's roll with it.

Now, he and Zoo together.

Kind of like to do the same stuff on offense.

Like, he becomes less of a rim runner in that role, but I, which is, if there's an argument for bringing him off the bench, that's it more than anything else.

Sure, but I like

I think he'll be good for them.

I wonder how much we'll see the Beal, Harden, Kawhi, Collins, Zubats lineup.

Like, if Beal gives them enough, is that a lineup they can close games with?

Um,

I just don't, you know, and Chris Dunn was incredible last year.

And if you look, they forced a ton of turnovers.

That was like all Chris Dunn.

Like, when he was off the floor, their turnover rate plummeted.

Much like the Lakers, by the way,

we will see

they were third in defense last year.

Yes.

They allowed a lot of threes and allowed an extremely low percentage, shooting percentage on threes and mid-range shots.

We'll see how much of that was real and how much of that was a little bit of luck.

It's a good team.

I just don't.

I don't know.

All right, we've got to talk about Kawhi.

You want to talk about Kawhi?

Yeah, let's do it.

You were out, out sick for a lot of this Kawhi stuff.

Were you listening to it?

Were you digesting it?

I was listening to it, but it's

in a COVID fever dream.

I'm not sure what parts of it were real or which parts of it I imagined.

Were the Clippers really so careless as to funnel basically to the dollar amounts into what Kawhi and Dennis were ultimately paid?

Sorry, KL2 Industries was ultimately paid.

Are the smoking guns as prevalent as I remember them being in my COVID haze?

So

I said last week when Pablo Torre released an episode in which it was revealed that Dennis Wong, the only other partner of Steve Ballmer and the Clippers,

invested through his own investment vehicle.

Yes.

I can't even remember how much there's been.

I think it's $1.99999 million or something like that.

Befitting a $1.75 million payment.

Into aspiration.

By the way, we need to get some aspiration swag.

I think we need to get some aspiration swag.

I like that.

That would be like a code among NBA fans.

If you see somebody wearing an aspiration geel, that guy's a diamond.

I said last week week the

plausible deniability defense that the Clippers were predictably going to build and which Steve Ballmer built in his, I thought, ill-conceived interview with Ramona Shelburne was crumbling brick by brick.

Now, Pablo released another episode today in which he outlined a whole bunch of other financial deals between the Clippers/slash Ballmer and Aspiration, in which the Clippers are buying enormous amounts in carbon credits and other making other kinds of investments and and point totaling like $118 million over X amount of months, according to Pablo.

And he's got documents, he's got the bank statements and all that.

At the same time that other investors are like running from this company because they sense that something is amiss.

And at the same time that they're scrambling to pay their soon-to-be creditors, including Kawhi Leonard, who we all know by now has a no-show

endorsement deal with Aspiration, for which he did nothing, a deal that was never announced.

I'm not going to get into the whole back and forth between Mark Cuban and Pablo Torre because it's getting into areas of finance and business that, frankly, I just don't understand well enough to comment on.

Cuban is still defending Balmer, still saying this is all plausible to me as a businessman who has invested all over the place.

Still plausible to me when you learn that Aspiration was selling this idea that they were going to make it rich in a merger that everybody was maybe counting on to get them rich when they held stakes in equity or whatever in Aspiration, whatever the right terminology is.

It just

it's just, it still just smells.

It smells to me.

Like I said last week, it smells.

And I was a couple, but here's what I just want to make clear that I don't think has really been discussed that much.

Number one, there was a whole bunch of guffawing today that Sportico, like my guy, Michael,

Michael McCann writes for them,

legal analyst who's been on this podcast, reported that there's not an expected resolution to this investigation that the league has commissioned a law firm to do before All-Star, which is at Intuit.

And everyone's like, oh, of course, of course.

There was never going to be a resolution faster than that.

This is going to take a long time.

I said it last week.

It's going to take a long time.

Number two, I think the process is interesting because

a lot has been made, including by me, of the CBA language about circumstantial evidence and

the like about cap circumvention.

And the CBA, as you know, is between the league and the players' union.

It's there to protect the players and their relationship with the league and

govern that relationship.

And in there, it states that

the Clippers can only be punished through the CBA, through the CAP circumvention clause within the CBA, if a system arbitrator concludes that they committed cap circumvention.

And the Clippers would have the right to appeal that conclusion as well.

And only then can Adam Silver exercise the broad powers that he talks about having to strip the Clippers of draft picks, whatever, to Joe Smith them or something short of Joe Smith.

And so

I've talked to some lawyers around all this in the last weeks.

What's the actual order of events here?

There's this investigation.

Does it get handed to Adam?

Does it get handed right to an arbitrator that the union and the league pick together?

And the order of events is this.

Wachtel Lipton does its investigation, the thing that's going to take past the all-star break, probably, according to Sportico.

They hand this big pile of documents to Adam Silver.

Here's the investigation.

Here's what we found.

Adam Silver can do one of three things.

Conclude that not enough happened for him to pursue a case and just drop it.

Yep.

Immediately say, we are alleging CAP circumvention, and now we have to go to an arbiter who's going to determine whether this occurred or not.

And if he says yes,

I can then penalize you.

If he says no, according to the CBA, if the arbitrator he or she says no,

then they can't, the elite cannot penalize the Clippers at all.

They're off scot-free.

There's a third avenue that they can go to, which is Adam says, the league says, we're convinced through the investigation that you committed capsule convention, Clippers.

Can we not go, Clippers and union, because the union is a party in this through the CBA.

Can we not go to arbitration?

Here's what we think is an acceptable punishment.

Do you agree?

Do you agree?

If so, we don't have to even go to the arbitrator and have him rule.

That requires the union to sign off on it, that requires the Clippers to sign off on it.

So, what I was interested in, that's the process.

What I was interested in is there's also this clause in the NBA Constitution that says the commissioner shall, wherever there is a rule for which no penalty is specifically fixed, have the authority to fix such penalty as, in the Commissioner's judgment, shall be in the best interest of the association.

Where a situation arises which is not covered in the Constitution and the bylaws, the commissioner shall have the authority to make such a decision, including the imposition of all these penalties.

I ask people, like, does that mean he can just do whatever he wants?

Even if, like, if the arbitrator says there's no circumvention, can he then go to the Constitution and say, well, we're punishing the Clippers anyway?

And, and, and, and do that?

Can he do that even before

the investigation concludes or whatever he wants?

Can he do whatever he wants?

I don't, I still kind of don't know the answer to that question.

The players union would certainly say no, and they would say no because because of the CBA, and because even if the league would go to the union and say, hey, we're not even going to punish Kawhi.

We're not going to avoid his contract.

We're not going to do anything to Kawhi.

We're just going to hammer the clippers because of what we see here.

The union would say, well, we still have an interest in that because you're...

you're creating a chilling effect on how our players can sign with sponsors and how they can be introduced to sponsors and all of that.

So I don't know the exact answers to that question and like what document trucks another document.

I do know that there's that plea bargain scenario that I outlined, um, and that's why I still believe that this dichotomy of it's either going to be a Joe Smith-level punishment or nothing is a false dichotomy.

I think there could be and maybe will be a punishment somewhere in between them.

But look, the more Pablo reports, the more it's like you can explain this away by saying this is just an investment that Steve Ballmer made because he's the Clippers made because they're passionate about the environment or they wanted this payout and you can explain it away this way.

It just becomes it's just the bricks are falling one by one.

But that's the process.

I just wanted to learn the process.

That's the process.

See, I don't even see it as the bricks falling one by one so much as the bricks are being laid one by one.

Like all of those pieces of evidence, while circumstantial in and of themselves, if you create enough circumstantial evidence, you create a box around the plausibility of what the Clippers could possibly have been doing.

And right, if the range of reasonable, explainable behavior is so small and so tiny, and the Clippers in particular feel that closing in, that's where you get into some of those plea bargain scenarios.

And that's the scenario I was interested in.

Let's say they get an arbitrator who has an extremely narrow definition of what cap circumvention is and says, I'm sorry, you didn't prove cap circumvention.

You only proved that there's a bunch of suspicious investments going back and forth, not cap circumvention, not that these blah, blah, blah.

Are they just off in that?

Like, are the Clippers just off scot-free in that scenario?

If the arbitrator rules that,

by the letter of the CBA, I think they are.

By By the letter of this broad clause in the Constitution, could Adam say, well, this is actually a scenario that was not contemplated by the CBA.

If it's not CAP circumvention, technically, we still believe it's just a freaking mess of

sloppy slash ill-conceived slash irresponsible, whatever you want to say,

lack of due diligence, the institutional control thing that has been thrown around like the NCAA language used to have.

We still think there should be a punishment.

It should be this.

That's an area where I need more legal experts to weigh in if he can do that.

Anyway, that's the process.

Enough Clippers.

None of us believe in the Clippers as championship contenders.

Go ahead.

I think one last thing on that front, which is, yes, there's the inherent tension between the union and that kind of conversation and how that would create the chilling effect you talked about.

There's also the fact that over time, like so far, Mark Cuban, as you said, has been very vocal and on the record in a, I would say, like billionaires forming ranks kind of defense, at least is how it reads to me in a lot of senses.

But Steve Palmer is like an overwhelmingly wealthy NBA governor and owner.

Not everyone has the ability to play the same game that he does in terms of the other ownership groups within the league.

At what point in the investigation, if any, does the line tip with some of these other organizations, these other teams, some of these other ownership groups, where they are no longer broadly supportive in an ownership sense, but actively contributing to the investigation in other ways, actively seeking harsher punishments, both for a competitive entity that they're working against in the Clippers, and also

the idea of the league's wealthiest owner circumventing it and basically creating a major league baseball-type competitive environment.

Look, I mean, I haven't met, I mean, I don't sound like I know all 30 owners.

I can just call them and get their opinions.

I mean, let's get Josiah on the line.

Let's just call him up.

Let's get him on the Zoom.

Let's see how he feels about it.

So, there's also a competitive industry.

Like, hurting the Clippers is good for the other 29 teams.

So, there's some self-interest involved.

I just, like, the basketball people are all furious.

Like, every front office office person and coach I've talked to is just absolutely furious and wants and wants blood.

I still haven't met like Hollinger's been writing about this and he's right.

There was this notion at the start of this that like, well, the owners aren't going to want to go after Ballmer because they've got skeletons in their closet.

It's just going to be, I have not run into any of that sentiment.

I haven't met every owner.

I haven't talked to every owner.

I have not met, not every owner is like, got the pitchforks and the torches for Ballmer, but I have not met anyone who's like, yeah, let's just forget about this.

Everyone is like, we've got to figure out what happened here.

It ranges from on one end of the continuum, we've got to figure out what happened here, and on the other end, let's joe smith these dudes already based on circumstantial evidence.

It's like, there's no one that's just like, eh, this is all like running the mill.

Well, I think for those other owners, it befits it, like, behooves them to hold the pitchfork and to say, let's like, let's lay down the law in a case like this.

But then, when it comes time to use the pitchfork, I think that's a very different conversation.

As of what we know now, and based on what's going on with pablo who's got all these employees feeding him stuff week after week and how much this law firm is going to uncover just by being a law firm with a million lawyers billing a million dollars an hour to the nba and just getting piles of money to do it we're going to learn a lot more than what we know now we know i don't put a percentage on it we know some low percentage of the actual like facts of the matter that are going to come out um

Depending on what that

finds, I am fascinated by a scenario in which Balmer's like, no, no we're not settling take it to arbitration and what what if the clippers win the arbitration is it just over by the letter of the cba it looks like it's just over

i i i mean i guess we would have to see then if does adam try to wield the constitution as a document of of power over the cba i don't know if that's possible i think they'd get some pushback from the union but anyway um you want to talk about the lakers or the warriors as our last hump team let's go to the lakers let's just keep it in lie all right so i i talked a lot about the lakers offense with Mo,

and I said, like, I'm not worried about the offense.

They have Luka Doncha, she's in shape, skinny Luka.

It's going to be amazing.

How can this team build a competitive enough defense to win three playoff series in this conference?

I mean, forget having a prayer against Oklahoma City, but winning.

They have played Oklahoma City pretty tough, but what's the path to a competent Lakers defense?

I think they have to find a way.

So post-Luka trade, their most successful defensive stretches were playing small and rangy on the wings, flying around, like hyper, hyper active.

And that is kind of what it took to hold the roster together defensively.

Like if they were not engaged in flying around with maximum effort, you could see it start to fall apart in rotation.

That's really hard to hold up over the course of the full season, and they're going to need to just like be better on an individual basis.

They're going to need to find ways to kind of back end some of that stuff.

I also think, though,

in terms of the ways that Marcus Smart could help them in terms of the ways that Jake Laravia could help them like those are two guys who are pretty active in playing the lanes who can force turnovers for a team that for all of that activity I just talked about the Lakers did not force a lot of turnovers they did not actually generate a lot going the other way in that capacity and so if they're able to even juice that margin a little bit I think that could really help them they're just With DeAndre Aiden at the five, they're not going to be the most reliable rim protecting team.

With the way that their perimeter rotation is laid out, especially if Austin Reeves is starting, as I would presume he would, and playing huge minutes, as he should.

I don't know that they're going to be like the best perimeter stopping team in the world.

But what they can do is be really active and disruptive in kind of a communal sense.

And to me, that's where it's like, okay, Marcus Mart's hands are now really important, even if he isn't the like go-to stopper that he's been historically earlier in his career.

Yeah, a team with Luca, LeBron, and Reeves is just not going to force turnovers.

It's just, it's just not going to happen.

They're both old in LeBron's case, and although smart and generally in the right place, defenders, not exactly like handsy physical, kind of like we're expending all our effort to get in passing lanes kind of defenders.

And Aiton is okay.

So I don't know if the turnovers are curable.

They were also a bad rebounding team last year, and I don't know

like Aiton for AD, essentially, I don't know how much that helps.

Playing a real center the whole game would help.

You mentioned, you know, the stretch of defense that nobody really knew what to make of when they got Luca and they lost the Defensive Player of the Year candidate in that trade.

And suddenly they were like the second best defense for eight weeks or something like that.

And nobody knew what to make of it.

And you're right that they kind of played this hyper-aggressive, pack the paint, fly around.

And

the narrative that came out of it was they're one of these teams that's leaving the right shooters open.

That's a classic debate, right?

And their jump shooting, opponent jump shooting was ice cold for the entire season, and especially in that stretch.

If you you go to the tracking data, I think they had the second biggest behind Oklahoma City, a negative good for defense differential between expected field goal percentage and actual field goal percentage.

Mid-rangers, threes, you name it, team shot below expectations.

I'm a believer that you can actually control some of that as a defense.

I'm not one of these sort of

noise.

No, I don't think it's all just randomness.

The Celtics have been good at this for almost a decade.

A preposterous amount of time.

That one, I truly don't understand.

But a lot of this came to your point about active defenders.

I think Finney Smith was a big part of their team.

I think playing small was a big part of it.

And they switched more ball screens last year than any team in the entire NBA.

That's crazy.

That's number one.

And I don't see how they're really built to do that with a sort of traditional drop back center in Ayton.

And, you know, Reeves is an undersized, not undersized, but he's just, you know, you don't want Reeves guarding like Julius Randall on a whole bunch of mismatches in the post.

We actually saw what happens when Reeves guards Julius Randall and a bunch of mismatches in the post.

So I don't,

JJ is going to have to, I think, reinvent a little bit how they played defensively, and I'm interested to see how that works out.

But what, like, that's the question is what reinvention is there?

With the players that they have, if you're not switching, if you try to play a more traditional funneling defense,

DeAndre Aiden is not up for that.

At least I don't believe that he's up for that.

And so then what are your alternatives?

If you're not not being hyper-aggressive and switching DeAndre Aton era before it starts, I'm giving up on DeAndre Ayton defensive stopper before it starts.

Can he finish some lobs?

Can he be an effective player in other ways?

We will see.

And I think to some degree, yes.

I don't know that he's going to be bailing out their defense.

Yeah, I think the model for this team becoming a legit, like, okay, like

second round, they're going to at least push Denver or whatever

like top five offense, 12th in defense, and just rain fire on you from a three.

And with Luca, their three-point rate went up, their rim rate went up, their transition game got unlocked a little bit, and he's just that good.

I just,

the team around them is good.

Like, I like La Ravia.

I like the idea of smart.

You know, I just, they're in the wrong conference.

I don't know what else to say.

Like, there's honor.

I said this about the Warriors, who we're not going to get to because we're running out of time, and they only have like half a team right now we've also been more active than them to be fair yeah there is honor toward the end of these great guys these legendary careers of lebron and steph and durant you know durant's on a higher echelon team i think than the than the um lakers or warriors uh

there's honor in being a good team in the western conference and like going out on your sword so to speak and just not having enough like there's honor in that that's fine that's it that's the most likely outcome that's always been the most likely outcome for steph curry i'll just put you on the spot let's do warriors in like two minutes okay let's just say kaminga is back

god that situation is like borderline toxic uh horford is there and they start him at center which i think would be their plan yeah melton is there to come off the bench gp2 comes off the bench uh seth curry deep bench and so their lineup is you know like you could steph Jimmy, Draymond, Horford, pick one of the guards.

I'll just put Pajemski in there as the fifth guy.

And then you have Heald off the bench and GP2 and Jackson Davis.

And you can play Draymond at the five.

And we know what their net rating and their record was when they had Steph, Jimmy, and Draymond.

Does this team have a shot at punching above its weight and like making a real run?

I think I would feel better about their ability to punch above their weight with those core guys if I felt better about the long-term full season ability of those role players and specifically their ability to stay healthy too.

You will not find a bigger DeAnthony Milton advocate than me, but even I have to just kind of throw up my hands and admit that like he's just not available enough to consistently make a difference for these kinds of teams.

And so, look, it's never going to be fun to play against Steph.

It's never going to be fun to play against Jimmy and Draymond.

They're going to be a tough out if those guys are healthy, no matter the circumstances, no matter the supporting cast.

What it's going to take from them and Al Horford to get to the playoffs with good seating in the Western Conference.

terrifies me a little bit.

Like the attrition of the full season on them specifically, given how flighty some of these role players can be, how injured some of these other role players can be, and with Steve Kerr, too, which ones he is kind of trusting at a given point in time and which ones are excised from the rotation.

It's just a lot to put on Steph in particular at this stage and Jimmy by extension in terms of the creation he's going to have to do for the team.

I couldn't agree more.

I've already said, I think unfortunately, the window has closed on this team as a championship contender, and the path to getting back there is murkier and less encouraging than it ever has post-Steph ever has been.

And really, the biggest problem all these teams have is the best player in the world plays in Denver and has a team that makes more sense around him this year than last year.

And the MVP plays in Oklahoma City for a team that's so deep, so young, still on the cum in a lot of ways, and so goddamn good and ferocious that I actually spent like 45 minutes earlier this week trying to figure out if they could win 70 games,

if they could actually try to win 73 games.

And I look back at the Warriors season and the Bulls season of the 73 and 72 wins respectively and like conference strength and like

is the West just too good for any team to win that many games this team that won 68 games last year with Chet missing like half the season and Hartenstein missing half the season.

That's how good they are.

I don't think so because I just think the West is too good and once you win a title, it's natural to just, you know, like play the long game.

They also, they don't strike me as a team that's like,

they actually strike me as a team that is like out for blood every single night in a way that makes that discussion at least worth the 45 minutes I put into it I can already imagine Sam Presty as part of his preseason drag out press conference on Media Day talking about like the you know the mental downstream effects of shifting down in that exact way and how it's counter like how it runs counter to everything that the thunder are about and I kind of believe that like Constitutionally, they are not a shift down organization.

They are one that picks their spot, sure, and maybe there's like a kind of prudence that would make sense in that capacity.

That said, like, they take what's in front of them.

Like, they're an opportunistic team, too.

And when you're that good, you have the opportunity to win every fucking game.

And so, why not just win every fucking game?

What I keep coming back to, I did with Goldsbury just for fun, like most improved player.

prediction thing and I'm going to do it for all the awards as we get closer.

And we've had three tiers.

We had like the classic candidates, the completely out of left field candidates, and the kind of established all-star level candidates who there's always a case for like, should Luke, like five years ago, Luke should be the most super player.

And mine was Chet Holmgren.

He's like, what if Chet Holmgren is only like 40% as good as he's going to get on offense and like 30% of that jump comes this year?

Like that's like absolutely terrifying and not implausible.

No, he'll have a stretch during these seasons where it's like for 10 games, he times his spin move a little bit better.

And it's like, oh my God, like this is all of a sudden an absolutely terrifying wrinkle within their offense.

And it doesn't always stick.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

But just like the tiniest mechanical changes for him or timing changes or like bits of veteran savvy he's acquiring make profound differences in a way that I think should scare pretty much everybody.

All right, Rob Mahoney, you guys know where to find him.

He's all over the TV podcast.

He dabbles in the NBA now and now and then for you know he's group chat.

He's writing and

I appreciate your time.

And now it's time, Rob,

for everyone's favorite segment.

We got Sean Fennesy coming on from Mets Corner, baby.

This episode is brought to you by Warner Brothers Pictures.

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Ball over everything.

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Mets Corner.

Sean Fentesy, there was a time not long ago

when winning three out of four baseball games for the New York Mets would not have seemed like a miracle.

When a two-game winning streak would not have prompted my favorite Mets newsletter, Mets Fix, to send their email with the subject line.

Are we getting hot at the right time?

Two games in a row is hot, but here we are, three out of four.

Jonah Tong shut down the Padres today.

Mets took two out of three from San Diego.

We got three against the Nationals.

Also, Rand's coming in.

We'll probably get swept by them.

Marlins to end the season, Cubs in between.

It's been a wild ride.

It's been a while since

it's just been

a strange season.

How are you feeling?

Any regrets about this decision that you've made?

Because this has been a rocky summer, my friend.

I'll tell you why I have no regrets.

Number one,

my daughter, all in, beyond, although we're going to talk, she's got to work on her team-level fandom a little bit, but just loves Francisco Lindor so much.

We were at Alumni Day, which is what they call old-timers day now.

I guess the old-timers don't like to be called old-timers.

Yeah, that's

yeah, it's woke now.

We've gone woke.

We were at City Field for about five hours, hours and she didn't want to leave.

Loved every second of it.

Thing number two, Juan Soto has just exceeded the hype, not just

from a production standpoint.

Our first ever Mets corner, I said that one of my friends, he's a huge baseball fan, huge Cubs fan, by the way.

We're bracing for this series coming up and we're bracing for the possibility of a playoff matchup.

Knock on wood.

Nothing is guaranteed, by the way.

The Mets could lose the rest of the games.

I wouldn't be surprised.

He said to me, every at-bat is like theater, and it's just so true.

Like, he's the

ball misses by this much, and it's called a strike.

It misses the box by this much, and it's called a strike.

And he's talking to the ump, like, you sure?

Because I think it missed by this much.

It's like, God damn, he's right.

And then, did you see last night how close he came to tying up that game in the ninth?

There have been a series of moments like this.

You know, we still haven't had our Juan Soto moment.

You know that, right?

Like, we have not had our, we're losing in the bottom of the ninth,

and he hits a home run that gives us a walk-off win.

He has not had that moment, even though he is having what I think is pretty easily a top 10 offensive season in New York Mets history in his first season.

He's had an amazing second half.

So I thought we were going to have an Alonzo walk-off at Alumni Day down 3-2 to the Rangers.

And he's at the plate and the crowd is chanting, Pete Alonzo.

Which they do for one guy.

That's it for him.

And he didn't do it at that time, but the next day he hits the walk-off three-run homer against Texas to end an eight-game winning streak.

Who knows?

Maybe we'll come back turning point in the season, but Soto is unbelievable.

By the way, I should mention on alumni day,

a lot of guys just trotting around out there.

Some guys don't look great.

A couple pitchers, Turk Wendell and Rick Reed, I think maybe threw a little too hard and had to ask out of the game.

Like, I don't know if I'm ready for this.

Ray Ordonez had a scoop on a scorching one-hopper to third.

He was playing third.

And it's like, this guy is, I don't know how old he is.

He still looks like Ray Ordon is incredible.

He was slick.

I saw that play.

I didn't watch all of the alumni game, but I did see the highlights of Ray.

You know,

all glove, no bad, right?

But that glove was such a special glove.

And the other reason I'm happy I came back is this is what it is: the agony, the pain.

You feel alive.

Like, you just, it's just, it's not just the hate for guys like Ryan Helsley, who, God love him, I hope he's doing all right.

It's just like

every game feeling like this is the end, maybe this is the beginning, maybe they found themselves.

This is what it's like, and I missed it.

A part of my soul has come back to life, and here we are.

I don't even know.

I mean, like, look, can you imagine?

Kodai Senga is in the minors.

And Mendoza today said, if we make the playoffs, I'm not even sure he's going to be on the roster.

Maniah's in the bullpen.

Looked good the other day.

Piggybacking.

How long has piggybacking been a term, by the way?

A couple of years has been a phrase.

There's a part of me that wonders if this is going to become more and more popular because of the dearth of pitchers who can give you any length, which you've been talking about since you started following baseball again, about how nobody goes more than six innings anymore.

Code I Senge, maybe stay in the minors.

Maybe we don't need you.

I don't know that I ever would have imagined we could have said that before the season, but unbelievable.

We have three beautiful babies now.

They have three beautiful boys in our life.

They're changing our life right now.

McLean looks awesome.

Sproat looks very good.

Sproat pitched the game I was at, and they took him out after six innings.

And in the sixth inning, all the outs were loud.

And I remember thinking, I wonder if he's, and apparently I wasn't looking at the velocity.

I was a couple drinks in at that point.

I wasn't looking at the velocity, and apparently the velocity was starting to come down.

And Tong had the bounce back today.

Eight strikeouts, no earned runs.

Yeah, and Peterson's been struggling.

But like, I don't even,

I don't,

We'll see.

You know, like, they control their own destiny.

The best thing they have going for them is that the Reds, the Diamondbacks, and the Giants are not very good,

nor are the Mets.

This team shouldn't be in this position.

Like,

the manager is saying it after every game that they have way too much talent to be in this position in the first place.

I have never felt so justified in my opinion about a team before the season as I have been this year.

It's not a good feeling,

but

every

even modest fan fan knew going in, Zach,

the decision-making on the pitching staff was weird, and it didn't make sense, and it was misaligned with all of the bats being in their prime, and Pete being on a one-year deal, and feeling like we got to make the absolute most of this this year.

And even though they started off so well, we knew there was going to be a regression.

There was a huge regression, and they had injuries, and then they had even more regression.

But these three beautiful beautiful boys came along, you know, and they're saving my life every day.

Nolan McClain looks like freaking Randy Johnson right now.

I mean, it's the movement on the sweeper is freakish, and it's giving me life.

I got to say, I was really, really close to throwing in the towel a couple weeks ago.

I was like, this is as bad as it gets.

Losing like a six-game lead in the third wild card slot to a team with one-third your payroll, this is psychotically bad.

But you know what?

A couple of impressive starts from a couple of 24-year-olds, and I'm back on.

Look, that's the fun part.

Every day, they play every day almost, you know, six days, seven days a week.

Every day gives you a chance for new life.

The lows have been so low where it's just like, I just, maybe this is normal for okay baseball teams to lose like a thousand games in a row and then win a thousand games in a row and then lose a thousand more in a row.

And you're like, are they ever going to, we're a win.

I mean, I was at alumni game.

They're up 2-0.

The bullpen guys are coming in.

And it's 3-2.

Like, you blink, and it's 3-2 Rangers.

Like, are they just never going to win?

Is this just how it's going to be?

They're never going to win again.

It's just completely hopeless.

Diaz was my last, the last vestige of the team that I was like, this is all else fails.

This dude will hold a one-run lead.

Boom, boom, boom.

He doesn't hold the one.

I'm like, I don't know what to believe anymore.

I can't recall a trade deadline that's gone worse than the one that David Stearns had.

And

I mean, it's really bad.

Like, you cover the NBA.

You know about trades.

Like, this is rough.

I guess Tyler Rodgers has been pretty good.

You could hang your hat on that.

He's been pretty

good.

He's been solid.

And his ERA is still sub-2.

Let me tell you about Cedric Mullins.

Oh, my God.

My daughter hates Cedric Mullins so much.

Sports hate.

Sports hate.

She calls him the strikeout king.

We'll be watching the game, and she'll be paying it, doing her homework, look up and be like, oh, strikeout king's up.

Strikeout king, watching him strike out and i mean he's she's reached the point where he could be up with the bases loaded and the mets down two and she'll be rooting for him to get out because she doesn't want him around anymore i'll be like you have to understand he him doing well is helpful for the team she's like i don't even care and so i asked her i said she's here right now i said do you want to come on mets corner and give your cedric get your Cedric Mullens takes off?

And she was like, well, would that be on TV?

And I said, no.

She said, would that be on like YouTube?

And I said, yeah.

And then she goes, she had this moment of like realizing what daddy does for a living.

She's like, but then Cedric might see it.

He might see me saying bad stuff about him.

I was like, yeah, welcome to my life.

She's absolutely right.

That's how it works.

You know, just ask,

I don't know, any of the myriad NBA players who've clapped back at you on social media for

annoying comments.

How about Alonzo?

Four games in a row of the home run.

What a monster year.

Just a delightful season, other than the one bad throw to Singa.

I was a little nervous in late August, early September, where I felt like he was retreating, receding in some way.

But he has a flair for the dramatic, and he always has.

And it's nice to see that the turnaround is happening simultaneous to him turning it back on.

They are going to need him if they're going to do anything.

It's so hard to know what expectation to have, right?

Because as you said, they could definitely just fall out and lose seven of their next nine and not make the playoffs.

And that would be a catastrophe.

Or

they could win seven of their next nine, be the hottest team heading into the playoffs, beat the Dodgers, Phillies, and Brewers, and go to the World Series.

Either of those things is plausible to me.

This is a weird sport.

So the last one doesn't seem plausible to me, given how inconsistent.

Peterson to me has been the bellwether.

Once he, he was the rock.

Like he was like, at the very least, I'm going to get six innings, four runs.

Like, that's the floor.

A bad Peterson start is going to get me into the seventh, three, four runs at worst.

Now that he, I can't count on him to do that.

I hate Manny Bachado, by the way.

I don't know.

I don't know what.

Every time that guy comes up against the Mets, he does something well.

So, yeah, the Mets closed.

Washington, three games, Cubs, Marlins.

Diamondbacks have a tough schedule.

I haven't checked the Red schedule.

You know, like,

I

have no delusions about like, oh, the schedule looks easy.

The Mets should go six and three or seven and two.

And if they do that, they're in.

No illusions at all.

Nothing would surprise three and six, four and five.

My only hope at this point, the only expectation and hope I have is just get in.

And if you get in and fall on your face, fine.

Weird stuff happens in the playoffs.

You've kind of fallen on your face since being 45 and 24 anyway.

Just save me the humiliation of having the second highest payroll in baseball and not being able to hold off these mediocrities that Diamondbacks Diamondbacks traded people at the trade deadline and are accidentally almost catching the Mets for the third wildcard spot.

And if you get in, I agree.

Things are possible.

Like they could win a series.

They have enough talent.

Their offense is like

fourth, fifth, sixth at OPS.

Like it's legit.

It's good.

If the young guys pitch well, fine.

I don't expect them to do much damage.

I just want them to get in and give me a moment.

Give me a moment to remember what playoff baseball feels like as a fan who really cares about it.

I mean, preach, you're speaking my language.

I feel like winning two of three from the Padres at this stage of the season is very encouraging.

In 2022, the Mets led the NL East for a long stretch of time, and I believe it was in August, the Braves overtook them.

Might have even been in September.

And the Mets got sunk down to a wild card slot, and they played the Padres in a first-round series, and they got embarrassed.

And that season, which was such a positive and exciting season and was like the first real Steve Cohen season as owner, they just got punked out.

And it was after that season that I started saying something that I think I've probably said on your show and that I think about all the time, which is, I don't know about this core.

I don't know about Nimmo, Alonzo, McNeil, Lindor, and now for the last three years, it's been Starling Marte.

Those have been the guys who have been on the team.

And you can include David Peterson in this.

You can include Edwin Diaz in this.

but these guys who've been all been together for five, six years, they have a habit, with the exception of last year, of spitting the bit in big moments in embarrassing ways, of really making us feel the way we have felt so many times in the last 30 years.

And a week and a half ago, I was like, break up the core.

We're trading Nimmo in the offseason.

We're trading McNeil in the offseason.

Maybe we let Pete walk.

Maybe we think of this as this is Juan Soto's team.

We've got three or four really exciting position prospects that we got to get excited about who can fill in the gaps.

Beatty is a full-time player to me.

Vientos is a full-time DH.

Like, let's think about the future.

And in the span of four games, I'm like, we have to bring everyone back.

This team is very important to me.

These guys will always be in my heart.

And I feel insane.

That's how I feel.

Well, Pete Alonzo has been, I mean, you've lived with Pete Alonso for seven years.

I've lived with him for one, and

I would be hurt if he left.

But, you know, I think the team is good.

If these three pitchers are real, and like real, I mean, I don't mean they're all going to be all-stars next year.

If they're just like three good starting pitchers,

the offense, I think, is pretty legit.

Beatty will get better.

Vientos will get better.

The other guys are what they are.

If they can get anything from center field, Mullins is a free agent.

I don't even know.

If they can get anything from center field, like Alvarez seems like a decent hitting catcher if he could stop getting hit by pitches.

He commits catchers' interference also, like way more than I remember that being a thing.

Just get your hands.

It's like he's like Chris Paul.

Maybe Chris Paul's fingers are all mangled up from just trying to get steals all the time.

Get your hands out of the way.

It's because he's trying to snatch breaking balls so he can frame the pitch.

That's why it keeps happening.

I do like how he, this goes into being a fan of just you notice all the quirks of the players.

He's moving around a lot behind the play.

He'll stand up, be like,

and he'll be making gestures.

And in my stupid fan brain, I'm like, look at him communicate.

What a great communicator that guy is.

I like him.

Yeah, no,

I like these guys.

This is just about fun for me.

I have no illusions that they're going to do any damage this year, but it's nice to, it's been nice to see.

Maybe we look back at that Alonzo walkoff as if they lose that game, the season is over, and now they won that game.

They'll at least salvage something out of this.

They seem to be like a happy bunch.

They keep saying that after every game.

Like, no, there's no finger pointing.

No one's down in the dumps.

No one's like giving up hope.

This isn't a one, two, three Cancun.

Like, we're just like a bad team, and I guess it was all a fluke.

They seem to be just like,

I think we're kind of good.

Like, if we just keep playing, maybe we're good.

If they fall out, which I don't think that they will at this point, but if they fall out of the playoffs, there will no doubt be an epic now they tell us, as Brian Curtis likes to say, where we learn about whatever the chemistry is in the clubhouse or what who doesn't.

That happens in baseball, too.

It does.

And it will happen because there's so many high-profile players on this team.

But if they lose in the first or second round of the playoffs and fight valiantly and you get six shutout innings from Nolan McLean, and you just say, you know what, let's look to the future.

We got a future ace.

We've got some exciting young guys.

Let's see what we can do in 26.

So in basketball, the now they tell us,

the teams are smaller.

The stars are of outsized importance.

The coach

to me seems like a much more lightning rod figure in the NBA than managers are in baseball.

So what is a now they tell us like in baseball?

Is it like, is it these two players didn't get along or this player didn't want to be like the same stuff?

Yeah, baseball is very click-ish, right?

You can see that the Mets even are very click-ish, right?

There was that comment that Juan Soto made about starling Marte being the leader of the team, which was quite odd.

He can't, he talks about Marte like this

once a week.

Even my daughter is asking, like, are they,

she'll ask, like, are they best friends?

And I'm like, I don't, I don't know.

But he's 10 years older than him.

I think he's really like a mentor figure to a lot of those guys and

is a real, like, is a really solid veteran and seems like a good guy.

But, you know, to anybody who watches the Mets, the leaders of the Mets are Francisco Landor and Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo.

Those are the leaders of the team.

They've been with the team a really long time and they hold critical roles on the team.

So, you know, you see stuff like that.

You're like, that's weird.

That doesn't sound right.

So you'd find out what's at the bottom of that maybe in a now they tell us.

Or you find out that actually someone, you know, Sean Manaya was more injured than we realized, and he needs to get Tommy John again, or they were, you know, holding, you know, stuff like that will come to the fore.

The other thing, too, is I did want to ask you about Carlos Mendoza and how you're feeling because he has had a knack in the last month or two of pushing the wrong button at the exact wrong time.

And

this is the exact opposite of how I felt about him last year.

Where last year I was like, this guy was born to do it.

This is

Jim Leland all over again.

Like, it's incredible, his tactical skill with knowing when to bring in what reliever, when to pinch hit, when to change up the lineup.

And this year, I feel like he's snake bit or something because he is constantly doing things that backfire in-game.

And that's really his role is in-game decision-making.

So he's another person who, if things went awry, you could see, oh, well, Mendoza, there's questions about him in the front office, and maybe he isn't the guy.

And two years ago, when he was hired, they wanted Craig Counsel and they couldn't get Craig Counsel to take the job and he was the second choice.

I don't know, I'm just speculating.

How are you feeling about Mendoza?

Well, first of all, I always thought Craig Counsel was annoying in

the vein of David Eckstein and all like the scrappy infielders who work real hard.

I'm glad they didn't go with Craig Counsel.

I don't, he is, I'm sure he's quite a nice, a good manager.

He was with the Brewers for a while.

I don't know.

He was, he's with the Cubs now.

He's the Cubs manager, and the Cubs are having a good season.

Good for him.

I spent 15 15 years trying to learn how to credit and demerit NBA coaches.

And, you know, there's a whole school of thought that we overrate coaches in terms of their influence on wins and losses.

So I am way out of my depth trying to figure out if he's making bad decisions with the bullpen, what even goes into those decisions.

I'm sure there's just reams and reams of data, this hitter versus this set of, but he did for a while reach the Costanza stage where it's like, whatever guy you think should get up in the bullpen, your brain should then go, like, like, you know what, that's probably wrong.

Let me get that guy up in the bullpen instead.

Starting really when he took out Peterson.

I don't remember who they were playing, but remember Peterson was cruising and he took them out in like the seventh or the eighth and they blew the game.

Yeah,

it's been that kind of year.

There was something else I wanted to say about the team that now I'm forgetting, but

it was a great alumni day was great.

My daughter got to raise the apple between games.

She got to go in the control room and press the button where the apple goes up with

her friend Matilda.

Goodness.

That was great.

What a W for Matilda.

Jeez.

I mean, I've never been to the alumni game, actually.

It's so weird being a fan of the team in Los Angeles.

And I'm coming to New York at the beginning of October, and it kind of seems like the Mets are going to be playing the Dodgers in L.A.

when I'm in New York.

And now I'm just furious.

We'll see.

We'll see.

I mean, we'll see.

Nothing is guaranteed yet.

Oh, but Marte, he had a great, this is what I was going to say.

It's been watching this sport through the eyes of a 10-year-old who had no knowledge of it until six months ago.

So Marte, they were playing the Phillies recently.

They weren't so much playing the Phillies as they were getting walked over by the Phillies.

They were Glass Joe for the Phillies for a week.

And there was a moment where Marte, the cameras caught Marte.

shouting across at a friend, I guess, in the Phillies dugout.

And they were like gesturing to each other and having a conversation from across the field.

And my daughter was like, wait, are they, you can talk to the other team?

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, this is only something that could happen in baseball.

It's so slow.

There's so much downtime.

She's like, but are they friends?

They must be friends.

I'm like, I don't know.

Maybe they played together at some point.

And she's fascinated just by the dynamics of

teammates.

She always wants to know who, like, who's Lindor's best friend on the team?

Who do they hang out with?

And when they were off the other day, she said, Are they playing today?

I said, No, they have the day off.

She's like, So, what do they do on a day off?

Do they all get together and hang out?

I'm like, I don't, I don't,

but that's such a, that's such a great question for a kid to ask because I was like that as a kid.

I imagined they're all best friends.

They all get together and like play wiffle ball or something on off days.

And

this is how I imagined it.

And it's not at all like that.

That's fun.

I mean, yeah, you and I don't get to hang out as much as I'd like.

We work together and that's great.

I wish we could hang out more, but you know, sometimes when you work together, you work, you do your thing, and then you go on to your other thing.

Also, when you're a member of a professional sports team, as you know, that's like a transient lifestyle.

You could be on another team in six minutes.

You could be in another city tomorrow.

You're always traveling.

So it's actually quite adorable.

And I can't wait till my daughter can misunderstand.

It reminded me of Fever Pitch, which I've read the book and seen the film adaptation, which is they turn it from soccer to the Red Sox.

And there's a scene where the Red Sox are down 3-0 to the Yankees in the ALCS.

And I don't, Jimmy Fallon is the protagonist in this movie, I think.

And he and a friend sees Veritech and a couple of other players out to dinner at a restaurant chatting as if things are normal, even smiling.

And they're apoplectic because in their minds, down 3-0, they're all together being angry and strategizing about the Yankees or something on the off night.

And he's just like, you're just out to dinner talking like a normal person.

This is a crisis.

Speaking of which, I thought you were like this.

It's the scoreboard watching with the Reds and the Diamondbacks and the Giants, Giants, which is very depressing to have to be like, well, the Mets lost today.

Oh, good, the Reds lost.

It's a sad thing to do.

Reminded me, we used to, baseball was such a big deal in my house growing up.

We had what we called perfect low family days.

So, my dad is from New Hampshire.

He's a Red Sox fan.

I grew up a Mets fan because he told me not to be a Red Sox fan.

My mom grew up in Pittsburgh.

She was a big Pirates fan.

Roberto Clemente was her favorite player of all time.

And so that was the outline.

So a perfect low family day was Pirates win, Red Sox win, Mets win, Yankees lose.

It had to be all four on the same day to qualify as a perfect day.

It was more rare than you'd think, but now I'm remembering that because it's like Mets win, Reds lose, Diamondbacks lose.

That's the new perfect day for me.

I will tell you, up until 2004, that is a cursed trilogy of fandom.

I mean, Pirates, Red Sox, Mets, circa 2003 was a nightmare town.

That's really rough.

She still remembers

Sid Bream and the Braves and

Braves Pirates.

The

Pirates had a moment before we stole Bobby Bonilla from them, which is still paying off for us to this day.

Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, and Andy Van Slyke, a legendary trio.

Doug Draback, those were great teams, those Pirates teams.

I think, by the way, very cool, speaking of Bonds, the 40, 30, 100 thing

that Soto has done with 40 homers, 30.

Where are the steals are like, I don't even understand what's happening.

He had another steal today, I think, and 100 walks and now 100 RBIs.

That's crazy.

I can't be a hypocrite about this because I felt that this was kind of BS when Otani stole 50 bases last year because they've changed the rules and it's easier to steal bases now.

And so, these guys who are these really, you know, Otani and Soto are really sophisticated baseball players and they both work really hard.

And they are like LeBron.

Remember when LeBron every summer was like, I'm adding a new thing to my game.

Now it's my post-game.

Now it's my, you know, there was always like a new dynamic.

And he had to conquer, he had to conquer Roy Hibbert.

That's

verticality, I remember.

And Soto added base stealing to his repertoire repertoire this year.

But you can, there was a moment a week ago where he stole third base in a game that they were down six runs in the ninth inning, and it was optically not good.

You know, that just looked like a guy stat piling, which you don't want when you're in the middle of a five-game losing streak.

That being said,

his numbers are insane.

Like, we can't take this for granted as Mets fans, dude.

There's not a lot of seasons where guys hit 40 home runs and get on base like 45% of the time.

It's crazy.

I complained about this to Waz.

He also

was a little too enthusiastic when he hit a solo home run when the Mets were down like 9-1 to the Phillies in the ninth inning.

I was like, I don't know if I need to see the whole

theatrics for that one, which is why I'm so interested in him because from afar, I'm still a little, like, I love watching him.

He's incredible.

As I'm doing my jersey evaluation, like, what jersey should I buy?

Oh, you haven't made a call yet?

No, but the only call I made is it's going to be a gray road jersey.

And I'm leaning Soto.

But he does seem both like the celebration when they're losing by a lot i don't love he does seem like a reluctant participant in all the silly histrionics that i love so much like the little thing they do after every which every team has this every team has a thing they do after a hit i thought it was a mets thing and every team i watch has this one team had one of these things i mean i don't i guess every he seems to think it's all stupid um which i i don't know how to feel about that do you want to have a celebration for mets corner every time we finish a segment like will there be like a gesture we can do?

You know, like

a Hulk Hogan style.

Like, did you hear that?

I think given the way that this season has gone, we should take a shot or something and get prepared.

I don't know, man.

I mean, we may literally want to take one on the air two weeks from now.

Like, it could get worse.

All right.

On that note, any further thoughts on the team you want to get off before we dismiss each other for the day?

I appreciate being back on the show and being able to talk about my pain.

And I'm really glad it was at this time because I have a tendency to embarrass myself when it comes to my teams.

You know, like I really, I'm in a lot of pain.

And it's been like decades now where things have not gone right for the teams I root for.

And I've made a bit of a thing of it here at the Ringer.

And that was as low as I felt when they lost the seventh game in a row.

I was like, man, this is fucking cursed that even Steve Cohen, who's worth more money than God, can't get this right with this franchise.

What the heck is going on?

But today,

five shot out innings from my beautiful baby boy, Jonah Tong.

We're back, buddy.

You never know.

You never know in sports.

That's why we keep watching.

You never know what's going to happen.

Sean Fennecy, we'll have you back on Mets Corner soon.

Let's go, Mets.

Keep writing the ship.

Thanks, Zach.

All right.

That's it for the Zach Low Show today.

Thanks to Rob Mahoney for bringing the heat on the NBA.

Thanks to Sean Fennessy for joining Mets Corner.

Thanks to you for listening and watching wherever you get your podcast.

Thanks to Jesse, Jonathan, and Cerudi on production.

We'll be back next week.

Two new episodes of the Zach Low Show coming Monday.

We'll have a special guest on Monday.

I'll leave that a secret for now.

Thanks to everyone for listening and watching the Zach Lowe Show.