The Jonathan Kuminga Stalemate Ends, and Awards Picks With Kirk Goldsberry. Plus, a Mets Corner Postmortem With Sean Fennessey.

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Coming up on a loaded Zach Low Show, we got Kurt Goldsberry to come on.

We're going to talk MVP predictions, coach of the year predictions.

We're going to go through all the news.

Jonathan Kaminga is back with the Warriors.

What do we think of the deal?

What are the trade situations that make sense for him?

Because I do think he's going to get traded.

How good are the Warriors?

Do they have one more real run left in them?

We'll see.

Where do they stack up in the Western Conference?

We got Quentin Grimes news.

We got DeAaron Fox with with a hamstring injury.

What to make of Giannis' comments at Media Day about looking around a little bit in the summer?

Kevin Durant extension.

We're talking about everything today with Kurt Goldsbury, including we make our, as I said, MVP Coach of Deer picks.

That gets us into a lot of different teams.

We also pick like under-the-radar MVP candidates.

And then Sean Fennessy.

I needed a couple days.

We needed a couple days to deal with the Mets collapse, the finality, the season being over, the Reds,

the Reds playing the Dodgers in the playoffs, and the Mets

limping into the offseason to offseason a potential change.

We're going to talk about all that on Mets Corner, sad Mets Corner.

All that is coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

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Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

It's October 1st.

October, that's the month where the NBA regular season starts, Kurt Goldsbury.

We're almost there.

Almost there.

October 1st.

I can't believe it, dude.

I think there's teams playing in Abu Dhabi or Macau very soon, and I can't wait.

Both, actually.

And restricted free agency is officially, mercifully over.

Minutes before we recorded, Quentin Grimes signed his qualifying offer.

One year, $8.7 million.

Will become an unrestricted free agent at the end of next season.

The Sixers apparently offered him four years, $40, making it an absolute no-brainer for Quentin Grimes to take the qualifying offer and signaling to me that the Sixers, who have a lot of guards and Maximum McCain, Edgecombe, just don't really care if he's on their team.

And then the headliner: our long national nightmare of podcast tours, negotiating tactics, offers bandied about in the media, 17 different iterations of this with options here and an option there, and an option for pepperoni on your pizza.

Jonathan Kaminga signs a two-year, $48 million deal with the Golden State Warriors, which is really a one-plus-one.

Year two is a team option.

Mr.

Goldsbury, what was your reaction to this trade?

I almost called it a trade.

It's going to be a trade at some point, but that's right.

It's like the second trimester of a trade.

I think that's where we're at right now.

Relief, and I think you alluded to that.

I don't think Jonathan Kaminga, with all due respect, deserved all of our summertime media attention that he received.

I blame the new CBA.

I blame the lack of money in the marketplace because this summer there was really only one team with space and they're in sort of rebuilding mode.

But yeah, like the tool restricted free agency has never been more boring, but also gotten more attention than it had this year.

So my reaction is relief.

Curious what yours was, Zach.

I think it's a win.

I think it's a fine outcome for both teams.

I think the qualifying offer was

obviously bad for Kaminga in that he would have sacrificed something like $13, $14 million in this year.

Money, I don't think he would have been able to quite make up over the next long-term deal, whoever it was with.

I think the qualifying offer is almost worse for the Warriors, who need to turn Jonathan Kaminga into something that helps their team bridge to the next era without Steph.

And now they have this $24 million salary to do it.

And the team option gives him a little more trade value in that whatever team is acquiring him at least knows if we like him, we can tack on another year at our option, extend off of that number either now or later.

It's not like we're trading for a guy who's a flight risk right away.

Puts the Warriors right under the second apron.

They were finally able to sign Horford, Melton, Payton, Seth Curry, Will Richard, somebody I'm forgetting.

The Warriors now have a basketball team.

I think, you know, look, John Tigaminga didn't get what he wanted.

He didn't get the player option in year three.

He didn't get a three-year $75 million deal.

He, in fact, got

with maybe a little bit more money the same deal he could have gotten in July before this whole rigor morolle spun out of control and became the nastiest, most public free agency negotiation in quite some time in the NBA.

And he didn't get a new team either because

the Warriors didn't get anything they wanted from the Phoenix Suns, who are apparently ready to back up the freaking Brinks trunk for Jonathan Kaminga.

And they didn't get what they wanted from Sacramento.

They did not want Malik Monk.

I actually, I think I heard Sacramento realize that by the end and tried to make some sort of alternate offer, but nothing the Warriors wanted.

The cart was out of the barn or whatever.

The toothpaste was out of the tube.

Something was out of something.

They had this Kaminga deal done.

And now the question is twofold.

Number one is,

we'll start here.

What's the Jonathan Kaminga trade?

Now, he can't be traded till January 15th.

He does not have a no-trade clause, so he can be traded at that time.

I do think there's some thought within the Warriors.

He's always been a divisive figure within the Warriors.

He's got fans and he's got, not fans.

I think there's some thought, like, hey, he's not going to start.

Like, that's gone.

We're starting Jimmy and Draymond, and we're not going to start Kaminga because those three did not play very much together and they did not play very well together when they played together.

We're starting Horford at the five.

We're going to see what that looks like.

But those dudes are old.

And like, Draymond might miss some games.

Draymond could miss games for any number of reasons, from age to injury to punching people to kicking them in the nuts.

Jimmy Butler has missed a lot of games, fell on his tailbone, and missed some playoff games.

Like there are going to be nights where he actually might need 30 minutes of Jonathan Kaminga and some scoring punch along the way.

And maybe,

maybe there's some scenario where we get to January, like this is actually kind of working.

We're excited to have the team option on him for next year.

Or it's get to January and hope that a couple of things have broken in the landscape around the NBA.

to open up the trade market for Jonathan Kaminga.

Because I got to tell you, Kirk, I went through the teams.

I'm not sure what the trade is that's going to help the Warriors because there are three different kinds of trades, one of which the Warriors fans are not going to want to hear.

Number one is Kaminga plus first-round picks that the Warriors have.

They only owe one first-round pick, and it's only a crappy piece of a first-round pick to Washington.

Kaminga plus picks gets us a guy, a real guy.

That's hard to do because A, Kaminga's value isn't that high.

B, you already have three giant salaries on your books in Curry, Butler, and Draymond, and adding a fourth one is really, really, really difficult to do.

Also, you can't take back more money in trades than you send out because you're over the first apron.

Number two is Kaminga for assets that you can add to your asset trove of picks in a young player or whatever to eventually help you get the impact guy.

Deal number three is Jonathan Kaminga becomes a salary dump mechanism where he's an expiring contract that you trade to another team for long-term salary attached to players that that team doesn't want anymore.

I don't know, man.

I don't, like, I can go through the teams.

I don't know if you see a good Jonathan Kaminga trade because I don't right now.

I didn't even go through that exercise because I'm sort of stuck at this tension that's going to happen between Steve Kerr and Jonathan Kaminga and playing time and trying to balance the idea that Steve Kerr doesn't like playing Jonathan Kaminga that much.

He's pretty much said that openly.

And then, secondly, they need to play him to audition him for said trade, right?

So they have to audition him.

He has to be part of the first three months of the season.

He has to get his minutes, but it's something that Steve Kerr has been really reticent to do.

So I'm left wondering what this is going to look like.

He doesn't really function in the flow of the offense that Steve Kerr loves to run.

So how do they even

do they do they sacrifice the way they want to play basketball to keep this audition going until, what is it, mid-January, Zach, where the trade is even allowed at this point?

So, how do we get him to be an attractive trade asset?

Well, we have to play him.

Well, Steve Kerr doesn't like to play him.

And now, Steve Kerr, with his news, I'm not going to even extend anything this year.

He's in sort of a weird spot himself.

But I'm left watching before we even get to the trade.

How do we get to the trade?

He's got to have to play Minutes to become an attractive trade asset for anybody.

Whatever teams you're going to walk me through, and I want to hear some of your ideas because I think the identity of Jonathan Kaminga in the future, some people think he can be a high-ceiling riser, and other people think he's just a nice role player.

And so, who are we sort of marketing him as?

And I think the only way that he gets playing time this year is in that role player slot.

So, I don't know if they'll be able to drive the trade value of Jonathan Kaminga up if we're in agreement that he's going to get traded in January or February.

Yeah, the Warriors are about Steph Curry,

and after that, Draymond Greene and Jimmy Butler.

And Steve Curry is already showing you he doesn't really care about anything else.

And

he's not going to give Jonathan Kaminga minutes to make the front office's job easier if he doesn't think Jonathan Kaminga has earned those minutes or fits well with how he wants to play.

Now,

I mean, he couldn't even get minutes in the playoffs in the first, he didn't play at all in the first round until people started getting injured.

And I was aghast at that because I think there's just got to be 15 to 18 minutes for Jonathan Kaminga on a team that is very, very guard heavy.

It doesn't have a lot of guys his size, but if Steve Kerr disagrees, he disagrees.

All right, I'll go through the teams, ready?

Yeah.

Phoenix.

Definitely.

Already tried.

Already tried.

Didn't work.

Sacramento.

Already tried.

Didn't work.

I think the Warriors would want Keegan Murray, and I don't think the Kings will or should give up Keegan Murray in that trade anyway.

Chicago, much rumored, not a lot of substance to it, I don't think.

And they have Boozelis and Isenge, who they just drafted at the power forward spot.

Yeah.

Miami, always on the hunt.

I don't think they're really on the hunt for Jonathan Kaminga.

I don't know that the Warriors are excited to revisit Andrew Wiggins.

I don't think Jonathan Kaminga is a great fit on a team with Bam Adebayo and Khalil Ware.

Milwaukee

heard some interest with Milwaukee.

And now Warriors fans are going, going, whoa, whoa, Milwaukee.

Does that mean?

Here we go.

Does that mean what I think it means?

No.

No.

It doesn't mean that.

And I don't even know, like, I don't think the Warriors want Kuzma.

Even though Kuzma's deal and Wiggins' deal, by the way, both line up with the Curry, Draymond, Butler deals that expire after 26-27.

Portis, I don't know, whatever.

Milwaukee doesn't have a lot of draft assets.

Phoenix has no draft assets.

All their picks that they can trade have already been swapped, so you get a crap pick.

Wizards,

don't see it.

Don't think they want to use their cap flexibility.

Don't think they want to.

I think they want to see what they got in their young players.

Brooklyn, ditto.

Had chances, didn't do it.

Utah, I don't know.

What Utah is a morass.

And again, Markinen has been a dream trade target for the Warriors.

They've tried to get him, fitting his $45 million salary now.

He was a dream trade target before they got Jimmy Butler on a $50-something million dollar salary.

It's just hard.

Toronto, just because

he's a bad fit with Scotty Barnes, like, I just don't know what the deal is.

And I think they're just going to wait and hope that something kind of pops.

Because right now, I'm having trouble seeing

any of those models of deals that I mentioned.

I just don't,

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't see it, but I think there will be a trade.

And I think it could be somebody like Toronto.

Charlotte was another team that crossed my mind.

Just a team desperate for a building block.

But the question you raise, and I think Dallas did this really well two years ago, not the Luca trade, the trades before that, building

a depth chart on the fly in the middle of the season.

I think that's the kind of transaction Golden State's going to be in the hunt for, right?

Can I get a Daniel Gafford-type player, a PJ Washington from a different team that really adds depth to my playoff roster?

Can they pull that off?

It's been done, but it's usually very difficult.

I think Dallas has the best example of that in the last couple years.

I like Golden State as constructed.

I think they're old AF, as the kids say.

Kaminga actually helps them in that department.

Is there a world where these strange bedfellows make it work?

And that's where I go back to Steve Kerr.

It's like your season kind of ended last year because Stephan Curry got a hamstring injury.

They were pretty good after the Butler trade.

They were 23-8.

They had the third best rating in the league after his debut in February,

third-best net rating, number one defense in the league over the last 31 games.

Those kinds of markers screen playoff team.

And again, the Minnesota series was a disaster in large part because Stefan, which is going to happen to a guy at Stefan's age, pulled his hamstring.

Is keeping Jonathan Kaminga and making it work

the best move in a world where you just outlined a bunch of bleak trade partners?

Well, Kaminga, regardless of Kaminga, this is the next big question is how good is this team exactly?

Because

the Van Vliet injury, which I've heard in lots of places described as, quote, a blessing in disguise for the Rockets

because Ahmed Thompson's going to get more reps on the ball and we're going to figure out what Reed Shepard is.

And I get that.

It's just not a blessing in disguise if it takes your championship equity from, let's just say, 4% to 0%.

It's just not.

You have Kevin Durant, and that's just the reality of it.

It does sort of crack the door open for,

I thought that there was this clear top three in the West of Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston.

Now the third one is to, and Minnesota right there with Houston.

Now the third one's taken a hit.

And does that elevate the Warriors,

Lakers, Clippers Clippers

group into like, now we're really one break away from the conference finals?

And if we're one break away from the conference finals, all bets are off.

And we think we can beat anybody from the East.

And the Warriors have, look,

they've rounded out their Beth, Meltons.

I said all the names.

You just rattled off the stats of how good they were with Butler.

And the interesting thing about it was.

When a team has a run like that and you want to see if it's real, the first thing you look at is opponent shooting.

Like, did they get lucky with opponents just going ice cold?

And in fact, the opposite happened.

If you look at the minutes when Curry, Butler, and Green are on the floor, they're plus 10 per 100 possessions, opponents shot the shit out of it from everywhere.

And the Warriors still had the number one defense in the league in that time, which suggests to me that it was all very real.

And in fact, if you drill down, what really changed after Jimmy Butler came?

Number one, they went from 28th in free throw rate on offense to second in the entire NBA.

Number two, they went from average to below average in forcing turnovers on defense to number one in forcing turnovers on defense.

That's Jimmy Butler's stuff.

You mentioned the record.

Now they have Al Horford.

You know,

they want to play a shooting five around Steph.

They don't want it to be Quentin Post for 20 minutes a game because he can't defend well enough.

And they don't want it to be Draymond all the time because it just wears him down playing the five.

And now they have this recipe of like Horford for 20 minutes.

Draymond will give you 10 minutes at the five.

That's 30.

We're almost to 48.

Can they actually do this?

Is there a world in which this team is in the finals again?

No, no.

Could they do this?

I mean, I thought getting to the final four of the West, which is a term I've never said until just now, but it feels like an accomplishment the way the NBA is set up right now.

The final four of the West last year, they were there.

They, I thought, had a chance in that series against Minnesota until the injury.

I think Looney's absence, they're going to feel that.

That guy's been important to their identity and plugged up some size gap weaknesses for a long time.

Al Horford, obviously, rolling the dice with him and his age.

But yeah, I believe in the indicators we've cited.

I believe in the 31-game sample at the end of last year that there's something here if they're all healthy, which all brings me back to this.

I think my position is

it's on Steve Kerr to figure out how to use Jonathan Kaminga as a young bench wild card guy who can start if somebody's not playing that night in a back-to-back.

For me, that seems like the best solution here, Zach, is Jonathan Kaminga and Steve Kerr learn to love each other, and somehow they get

something

going with him.

Because I don't know if there's a better solution than that.

Look, I like their depth too, even around Kaminga.

Like, if Melton can stay healthy, he's good.

Healed, Moody, Pajemski, you know, GP2.

I do think they've got to be careful not overloading the floor with guys who are non-shooters.

Like, Draymond and Jimmy in the starting five, that's fine.

They're too good to like really break them up.

But GP2 and Jackson Davis, you got to be careful who they play with.

You know, I've said before that I think they're in a more dire position than maybe people realize because they're the Warriors and they still have Steph and they're super fun to watch.

I've said I think the window for this team to win a championship now is closed, and how they get back there in the future is a mystery to me given the two timelines thing that was A, an accident and B, failed.

I still, despite the Van Vliet injury and this sort of brief surge of like, oh, they've got these new guys on the team,

they're just so old, man.

They're so old, and the bar in the West is so high that I just can't see them winning three playoff series.

I would love to be proven wrong.

I just don't see it.

I just don't see it.

Random question.

So now they have two Curries, right?

And I was wondering, do you think they're going to have to change?

You know how sometimes they put the first initial on the jersey?

Are they going to screw up Stephan Curry's jersey?

It's just going to be Curry 30 on the back still, right?

There's not going to be like an S lowercase T or whatever.

Well, didn't I read that Seth Steele is like, he's not guaranteed to make the team?

So we don't know that this is like a real thing that's going to happen.

But this is a great point because then you have to do S C

or S T and S E

like they did with Jeff Green and Jalen Green in the box score in Houston.

I don't see, I think, again, I've said this a million times.

There is great honor in one of the greatest players of all time, the greatest shooter of all time,

an all-time unicorn.

There's never been anyone like him in the NBA, beloved superstar, riding out his career on a good team in the Western Conference.

That's right.

That's totally fine.

I don't think the championship window is open.

And by the way, we mentioned Grimes.

I do have to say, your own Weitzman, who knows the Sixers better than anyone, did you see the story on the ringer today?

No, I didn't.

Has the Philadelphia 76ers window already closed?

Yeah, yeah,

it's over.

It closed.

And

I think I read the story.

He means the Embiid window, Embiid Paul George window.

Like, we don't even know when those dudes are playing.

It's cool that they're practicing.

Yeah.

Practice?

Talking about practice.

We're not even talking about the games.

I think the window is like,

I see Joelle's face and Daryl's face.

I just think I can't imagine a world, even in this shitty, decimated by Achilles Tairs Eastern Conference, that that team can make the finals.

Or, I mean, they haven't even made a conference final.

I don't know.

Do you have hope?

Am I missing something?

I feel like I can't even believe that headline exists.

Hope is the perfect word because I can imagine a world, to use your term, where they do, where it happens.

And Bi plays 60 games.

Paul George has a little bit of a resurgence.

Vijay Edgecombe is incredible.

Jared McCain comes back.

Tyrese Maxie's out here.

We have Grimes as the sixth man of the year, just out here trying to get.

I can imagine that world, but that's not the world I live in.

That's not the world I live in.

I've seen it for too long

with these aging types of players.

And as I said to Bill Simmons last year on his podcast, it's like, what phase of Shaquille O'Neal's career is Joel Embiid currently in?

Is he in Celtics jersey, Shaquille O'Neal, Cavs jersey,

Phoenix jersey?

It's tempting to say that that's Joel Embiid, but it certainly feels like we're at a different phase of the Embiid experience.

What are your thoughts?

Well, I think that, and that's fine.

Like, Yarone writes in the story, they could have shopped the number three pick for a win-now guy, and they didn't.

And I kept saying in the lead up to the draft, like, they have to begin planning on Tyrese Maxi's timetable and just take whoever they think the best guy is with that pick.

And that's what they did.

I just, it makes me sad to say I just can't imagine Embiid and Paul George, who's like 36, the last guy remaining from his draft class, staying healthy for an entire playoff run.

It just doesn't seem the playoffs are so grueling and they come after this other thing that's grueling that you can participate in or semi-participate in the regular season.

I just like, even Oklahoma City was worn down at the end of the playoffs, and they're the youngest, deepest team in the entire NBA.

Dude, those two contracts, the Paul George and the Joel and Bead contracts, are just like

I can't believe it was Daryl Maury who gave those contracts.

I love Daryl, but if you study analytics, if you study the game the way that I do and the way that he has, you look at aging curves, you look at availability patterns, and I don't understand why signing up for these long-term deals with these two players ever made sense for somebody like Daryl.

And it's just like,

unfortunately, in the second apron era, that's it.

When you pay those guys that amount of money, they better be great players or you're not going to win the championship.

All right.

You mentioned it in passing.

I honestly didn't realize Steve Kerr was entering the last year of his contract extension.

And he had a quote either yesterday or today.

about how, hey, whatever happens, happens.

If it's meant to be that I continue to be the coach of the Warriors, I will be.

If it's not, you know, I and others always assumed he would kind of stay on Steph's timetable, which is through next season, 26, 27.

Kind of snuck up on me in this era of coaches getting extension after extension that he's already in the last year of his deal.

I didn't realize that.

That's a big, that's a big, like, this guy is a Hall of Fame coach.

It's a big deal.

Can we wing it?

I think it's cool because, you know, people don't talk about coaches' free agency.

And, you know, he comes from two schools.

He comes from Popovich University and and then Phil Jackson Tech or whatever, Triangle Tech.

But I think that he,

Phil Jackson kind of did this stuff.

Phil Jackson would play it out to the end and go entertain offers and sit out a year.

I think

Steve Kerr deserves this.

Like, I think he'll feel an obligation to do right by Stephan Curry and the Warriors to some extent.

But I think every team in the league would love to have a look at Steve Kerr as their head head coach.

And I think if he plays this out right, he's going to have a great market if he indeed still wants to be a head coach next year to look at other opportunities.

Steve Kerr, by the way, breaking news, just said De Anthony Melton will, quote, hopefully be ready sometime in the next couple of months.

Melton will be re-evaluated four weeks from now.

So will Jared McCain, by the way.

We should have mentioned that talking about the Sixers.

If it's just four weeks for Jared McCain McCain and just a couple, a little bit like another week after that, that's a very minimal number of games.

The next couple of months could be, you know, 10, 15 games for De Anthony Melton, who's had some back issues

over the years.

So something to monitor.

Look, I haven't talked to Steve about his future.

He seems to have long gotten over.

Remember the back and neck issues that sidelined him for a while that those seemed to be in the rear view.

He's 60 years old.

I would assume he would like to keep coaching and will have opportunities in various places to do so if he indeed leaves the Warriors.

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Okay, let's bounce around some news and notes before we get to some fun award stuff.

Note number one, De'Aaron Fox may miss the beginning of the season with a hamstring issue.

Okay.

I'm not panicking.

I'm just flagging it, Kirk, because although they are stocked with young ball handlers in Castle and Harper, there's no Trey Jones.

There's no Chris Paul.

There's no veteran guy here.

I just, and they're not, they don't have a ton of shooting.

That was the question with the Spurs.

You and I have been high on the Spurs.

I'm just, I'm a little nervous, and I would like this to go away.

That's all.

It's bad.

I mean, the extension this summer, and then weeks later, we're missing opening night with a hamstring.

I think everybody in San Antonio said this is bad.

It's particularly bad, as you say, without a Trey Jones, Chris Paul character on the depth chart.

And now we're trying to get point guard minutes from Steph Castle, from Dylan Harper, obviously, and Jordan McLaughlin, maybe.

So it's dicey.

It's dicey in a Western conference where there is just unforgiving guards, it seems, every night.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, no, go ahead.

If there's a cool part of it, I think it is Dylan Harper is going to get a little bit more run early in the season.

And that's something I've been dying to watch.

I can't wait to watch Dylan Harper evolve, but he's still pretty raw.

Steph Castle getting starter minutes at the point guard will be great, too.

But

this is not how the Spurs wanted to start their first real season as a Fox Wemby two-man game.

I mean, to me, that was going to be the offensive identity of this team.

But I also don't want to overreact.

Like, if he misses a week or two of an 82-game season, we could still be really fine.

But it's not something you want when you hand somebody a $230 million deal, Zach, that week one is

DNPs thanks to a soft tissue injury, especially when that person is a guard who relies on speed.

Yeah, I was super bullish on D'Arn Fox coming into the season.

I'm still going to be bullish.

I think he's going to have a big season playing next to Wembanyama.

I think he's going to shoot it better.

I just would like to see it sooner rather than later.

Note number two, Kevin Durant said on Media Day:

The rare actual piece of news that comes out of a Media Day scrum that he intends to and will likely or certainly or whatever sign an extension with the Rockets.

I've been saying that for weeks.

I think it's a matter of time.

So I don't know if you have any reaction to that.

He can sign a two-year, $100 million, something.

I don't know what it'll be, but Kevin Durant's very good at basketball, even at his advanced NBA age.

That's a nice thing for the Rockets.

Yeah, I think he's legitimately happy to be back here in Texas.

And I think he has a good relationship with Ime Adoka.

And I could see him wanting to stay there.

I think that that's true.

And, you know, compared to one of the other news and notes, the awkwardness that can come out at Media Day when people are asked similar questions.

I think Kevin handled it great and I think it was honest.

So I think it's good news for him and the Rockets.

Speaking of Media Day awkwardness, Yanis Atantakumpo could not attend Bucks Media Day because he has COVID and is in Greece and was asked about Shams Sharania's reporting over the summer that he was

thinking about his future in Milwaukee and whether the implication being whether he wanted his future to be in Milwaukee before ultimately deciding I'm staying with the team this year.

Thanasis is back.

Let's go, baby.

Um, and he essentially said, I'm going to paraphrase, like, yeah, of course, I was thinking about my future and where I want it to be.

I want to contend for championships, and I want to be out in April, and I'm going to go places where I can do that.

And I'm sorry to all the Bucks fans who shouted fake news at Shams all summer that he was stirring the pop for no reason.

Oh, nothing's going on in the NBA.

You could must have gotten a directive from the Wizard of Oz at Disney to get some clicks, kind of do everything for the clicks.

This was not fake news.

I said it right when I got back from vacation.

I said, Sean doesn't put stuff out like that if there's not some fire behind the smoke.

And I'll just reiterate what I said then, which is

great that he's back this year.

I would love for him to be a Bucs lifer.

Maybe that happens.

Maybe it doesn't.

The rubber was never going to meet the road this summer with two guaranteed years left on his contract.

It was always going to be next summer when he's extension eligible and the Bucs throw the big deal in front of him.

And for the third or fourth time in his career, he holds the fate of the franchise in his hands, whether he signs that extension or not.

And if he doesn't, the writing's on the wall.

And every time that's happened, and he said, I've thought about it before, I thought about it four years ago, five years ago.

The Bucks have pulled a Drew Holiday or Damian Lillard and gotten his signature.

They have their work cut out for them now.

But

I thought his comments were quite sort of honest and telling.

Honest and telling, and there was also the part where he said he's mentally prepared to be traded.

And I think, you know, you can't be a superstar in the NBA in 2025 and expect to play your whole career with one team.

I mean, for every Kobe and Tim Duncan, you know, there's a Kawhi or a LeBron or Kevin Durant, and that's the era we're in.

And he's sitting here watching Luca get traded.

That said, like, I know know some people that used to coach on the Bucs pretty well.

And

there was also this quirk where Giannis is like hyper-competitive and almost proud to a fault.

They describe it's like, this is a guy who would stay in Milwaukee

just to be stubborn and prove to everybody else that he did it.

Like, there's part of him, and that's why he's Giannis.

That's why he's such a ferocious competitor on the basketball court, is that he does it the hard way.

And I think I love his game because it's just like, it's, it's, it's that stubbornness like manifest on a basketball court.

He's so physical,

but I'm not so sure he does one out of there.

Like clearly, you no one should be sure because he's never been sure.

And he's tiptoed before and

been like, no, to your point, like I'll run through a wall here in Milwaukee.

And I would say, like, bringing it back to our first story about Kaminga, it's like in an era where free agency is sort of dead, Zach,

the media is yearning for a giant transaction of some kind.

It's what we feed on.

And Giannis is a logical place.

There have been murmurs.

He's clearly the next big domino to change teams.

But in an era where free agency is dead,

are we just making a mountain out of a molehill here with this player who is very, very good and could swing,

turn a contender into a champion around the league.

Well, he made it some sort of geological formation with his comments,

whether it's an anthill or a mountain or whatever.

Speaking of which, we should also just mention that Jokic, to the surprise of no one, said, I want to be a nugget for life.

That can't be any clearer than Nicole Jokic was.

Last news and notes I want to get to.

I did think it was notable that Ty Liu

on a very strange Clippers Media Day, anointed Bradley Beale, the starter at two guard.

Then was asked, what about John Collins?

Is he going to start at the four?

And his response was, I can't remember because the Clippers just can't be normal about anything, apparently.

They can't answer a simple question normally.

But I did think, I mean, that means Chris Dunn is not going to start anymore, and they're going to go Beal, Hardin, Kawhi,

Zoo, and maybe John Collins and just go all in on offense.

Maybe Derrick Jones Jr., who guards the perimeter maybe a little better than he guards around the paint and the rim.

I was surprised that they leaned all the way in there.

They'll still stagger the minutes between those three ball handling stars quite a bit.

I'm curious to see what they do with that last spot.

Do you start John Collins or do you use John Collins off the bench with Brooke Lopez so he can be a roller in space?

Or do you just say he's the best player we have left?

Let's just go for it, put the most talent we can on the floor and see what happens.

I like this team.

It's weird given the news cycle that we've endured with Pablo Torrey finds out in the Clippers.

But when you start to look at the basketball team, yes, they're also a little old.

But dude, this is one of the deepest, most talented teams out there.

They're sort of a wild card pick to crack that top three of the West you were talking about earlier.

I love that.

But can we ask, I want to ask you about Ty Lou's memory.

So he doesn't remember about the John Collins thing on the whiteboard in his office.

That's one thing.

But he also said about Brad Beale.

I want to

help

Brad Beal rediscover his time as a really good defender in this league.

And so I went back and looked at all the

fanciest stats I could.

And I don't know if that time ever existed.

Like, I don't know if Brad Beale was ever a plus defender.

I think he entered the league in 2012.

Wizards fans, you can let us know in the comments if you remember Bradley Beal being a lockdown defender.

But that was a funny comment, too, about Beale from Ty Lou.

I want him to help him rediscover his defensive form.

I think viable

would be a fine adjective for Peak Bradley Beal defense.

I'm not worried about him.

I'm not hiding him.

He's not being picked on.

Lockdown, really good.

I'm not sure we ever got there.

It will be interesting to see how they use him because we know how this offense is going to look.

It's going to be a whole lot of James Harden with Zoo, and it's going to be a lot of Kawhi doing Kawhi things.

And Brad Beale, same like he did in Phoenix, is going to have to find his spots as attacking closeouts, using him as a ball screener, which I don't think they did enough in Phoenix.

He has become underrated.

His issue is much more availability than ability.

When he plays, he's still pretty good.

So I don't mind them saying, let's just see what we got.

Put him as a starter.

Maybe that makes him feel better.

He didn't seem to like coming off the bench briefly for Bud in Phoenix last year.

Did you see the t-shirts that Jeff Van Gundy designed, by the way?

Oh, yeah, it had a bad word, but it didn't mean what you thought it meant.

They were kind of edgy.

Get the F back, and the F word is acronymed into,

there's a word for this where it's the thing, the letters stand for things.

Only a coach could have done this.

It says, get the FUCK back, meaning transition defense being a weakness.

The F stands for floor balance.

Perfect.

Great job.

Nailed it.

The U, urgency.

Great.

One word.

Okay.

The C, consistent communication and concentration.

Okay, we're getting it, we're starting to lose it now.

We're going to, I think

either communication or concentration by itself would have been great.

The K stands for no, we lost to Denver because of transition.

I can just, I would love to have been at Jeff Van Gundy's house when he's like, all right, I got this great idea.

F, got it.

U, C, or whatever.

K.

Oh, God, I didn't think about the K.

What starts with K?

Kawhi, I don't want to call it.

I don't know.

Let me just write an entire complete sentence after the K on this shirt.

It's a great shirt for people who haven't seen it.

It is very Van Gundy, though.

I love it.

I love it.

The Clippers, I group with the Warriors.

It's just, I just think they're too old.

The Space Cowboys.

Can we call them?

Space Cowboys?

I don't know.

Too injury prone, too old, whatever.

I don't trust James Harden in a big playoff game.

But they're in that, like, all right, if Houston's not as good as we think, whatever.

But to me, Oklahoma City and Denver just stand above everybody else.

And interestingly, the odds,

Golden State is plus 1,600 to win the West behind Minnesota, the Clippers, the Rockets.

The Lakers are now third at plus 850.

They've jumped the Rockets.

They were ahead of the Wolves the whole time.

And then big jump to Nuggets, plus 480.

Thunder, plus 135.

I did like that Sam Presty sort of pushed back on the, it's a dynasty happening now

talk because, look, I mean, if you're picking, we're all going to make championship picks, right?

And the Thunder are going to be a lot of people's championship picks.

They might be mine.

It is notable that no one can repeat as a champion anymore.

It's been seven straight years.

I thought the Celtics were the best positioned team to do it.

I picked them to break the repeat streak.

Nope.

Injuries and,

you know, I don't know, some staleness, whatever sort of seeped into that team, and then the injury happened, and boom, they were done.

Oklahoma City would seem even better positioned than Boston, given their youth and depth.

I don't know, that Denver team's pretty good.

Anyway, okay.

You want to do some awards?

Heck yeah, let's do some awards.

We're going to do an exciting award and a less exciting award.

Let's start with the exciting one.

I just said, let's go out and preview the MVP.

Shake Alexander won it last year.

Who do you think will win?

What's your MVP pick for this year?

Nikola Jokic.

I am going back to

the era of Nikolai Jokic.

I think, you know, conventional wisdom says it's about a four-man race.

We had texted about this.

The top two really, I think, separate themselves because of the standings that you just alluded to.

I think it's Denver and OKC.

are two of the top teams in the West, right?

So I think the MVP coming from the top two of the West is a pretty safe bet.

I think the idea that Joker and SGA have both won the award in the last two years is relevant.

I think Joker has a better supporting cast.

And if he can get over that Oklahoma City team or even close, those crazy stats, whether you're an advanced stats guy or you're a basic stats guy, I believe Nicole Jokic will have the best statistical case by the end of this season.

And I have him edging out SGA for the MVP award in 2026.

Luca,

skinny Luca, is the sexy pick, despite the fact that LeBron is still just going to walk into 25, 8-8 every game, because that's just what he does.

I can see that.

I mean, it feels like Luca's been the sexy MVP pick for the last six years, and he hasn't won one yet.

I also picked Jokic.

He's the best player in the NBA.

His team is going to be awesome

the way the Nuggets remade their depth and changed their starting five in a way that

I think will at least be a wash and probably be more helpful on offense, given what Cam Johnson can do with the ball,

attacking close-ups, and all that.

I am interested to see what it does to their rebounding, because that was one thing Michael Porter Jr.

really contributed almost all the time.

I just think they're going to be awesome.

I think he's the best player.

Statistically, it's just unassailable, you know, that he and SGA are just going to have these stats where you're like, how am I even going to vote for for anybody else?

And I do think there's like when Embiid won, I do think there was a little bit of a like, okay, we got a one-year break from giving it to the best guy.

Okay, let's give it to the best guy again.

Now,

I gave you this other challenge.

I said,

there is a very clear top four.

Like, if all these dudes are healthy and the top four of the MVP ballot is not in some order, Jokic, SGA, Luca, and Giannis, it's going to be a surprise.

So, my challenge to you was pick your choice for the guy most likely, not just to get fifth, but the guy most likely to play himself into that group and maybe somehow supplant one of them, get more MVP votes than one of them.

Who did you pick?

I had two answers here, and I want to reveal that my first answer, who I think is the right answer, at fan dual odds right now, his odds are tied with the number four guy in the list.

So I feel like it's almost a cop-out.

So if you look at the fan dual odds, it's like Jokic, SGA,

Donchic, and then Giannis.

But if you look right now, the guy who I think has the best chance to crack that four is

Victor Wembinyama, whose odds at plus 1,200 are identical as of today to

Yannis Antikubo's odds.

I think Wemby is the best answer here, and I was a little annoyed that the betters had arrived at it, too.

I have another choice that's a dark horse in the Eastern Conference, but I think Wemby is the right answer if he's as healthy and as strong as my friends in San Antonio are saying, running open gym, owning the winners-outs of open gym, never leaving the floor because his team keeps dominating.

He's going to put up stat lines that we've never seen in the NBA, six made threes, nine blocks.

If the Spurs can be a top-five defense, that's the answer.

It's another foreign guy, but it's cracking into

that group of four of SGA, Jokic, Jonchich, and Giannis.

Is that a cop-out, Zach Lowe?

Is that the same answer you have?

No, it's not the same answer I have.

He was one of the finalists for my ultimate answer.

Look, I'm equipped with the current skills.

If you end up at the same Eastern Conference name I have, if you're going to crack these four,

like

these four guys year after year put up some of the best statistical statistical seasons in the history of the NBA.

Between SGA, Jokic, and Giannis, they have 10 of the 37 total seasons where anyone had a player efficiency rating over 30.

Like, it's just, and Luca hasn't got there yet, but he's just going to be 39 and 9.

I mean, it's just,

it's just a very hard group to get into.

And why you have to consider Wemby is, he might not average 30.

He averaged 24 last year.

He had a couple month period where he was up around 27.

27 but when you're already the the best at half the game and you're gonna just smash the league and blocks like you can get in this discussion if you average 26 27 on offense now but i do think you got to check a couple other boxes you got to put up monster numbers yeah to crack this four

you got to be a plus minus savior for your team a team that like the yokic effect of like the team is just way better when you're on the floor and they struggle when you're off the floor.

And your team has to be really, really, really good.

And I think that's what worries me about Wembanyama's case.

Is like, do the Spurs get into a point where, okay, look, I got to put him third as MVP.

I went

for that reason

more than anything else, and I think

the potential to sniff 30 points a game on a top two or three seed if things go right.

I went with Anthony Edwards for this spot over Wembanyama.

Averaged 27.5 a game last year.

Mike Conley continues to get older.

Is Rob Dillingham ready?

Alexander Walker's gone.

The scoring responsibility on him is enormous.

This team is really, really good every year, although they were a lower seed than you would need to be for him to crack this group this year.

Obviously, he's as charismatic as all hell, and the highlights speak for themselves.

There's a world in which he averages 30 a game, and so I'd have to pick.

I went with him over Wemby.

Can I guess who your Dark Horse Eastern Conference candidate was?

Yeah, think about it for a second because I want to respond to something you just said.

The reason I'm sort of bearish on both The Ant-Man, who I adore, and Luka Doncic's path here is because I firmly believe either one or both of OKC and Denver end up much higher in the standings in the West, and that both SGA and Jokic

are probably more complete players

than Luca or Ant.

So I don't know how you're going to finagle votes when some of us look at the standings, some of us look at the advanced stats, some of us look at defense and get a player who's lower on that Western Conference ladder over the hump.

If Ant-Man was in the Eastern Conference, and this will be our segue, I think he would have a much greater chance of cracking that.

Because

the reason I think it could come out of the East is there's just going to be some team that wins a lot of games, checks that box, and has a guy scoring a lot of points on a lot of nights.

So, yeah, who do you think my dark horse might be?

So, I'm going to tell you who I don't think it is.

I don't think it's Donovan Mitchell because his individual numbers took a dip last year because the team is so good and he willingly sacrificed.

And I think

that doesn't hurt him as a player, first team, second team, all NBA player.

I'm just talking like to beat one of these four dudes in MVP voting, the numbers just have to be stratospheric.

I'm going to guess it's Cade Cunningham.

Oh, no, I was.

I was sure you were going to get it right.

No, I have Jalen Brunson with the New York privilege.

If we look up here in March and the Knicks have already won 50 games and we're arguing about MVP, the loudest voice in the room is going to come out of Manhattan and all of the New York media and all the attention the Knicks will get.

And that's a plot point for our next conversation, too.

But I think if the Knicks get that one seed and there's Knicks fever and Brunson is potentially flirting with a scoring title,

and let's say they are clearly the number one, I think there's a path there for the first American American in the 2020s to win the MVP, and that to be Jalen Brunson.

I don't think he could, I don't think any of these guys can win.

I'm just thinking like, oh, this guy finished third.

How did that happen?

He was on my list.

He did play only 65 games last year.

Availability, like, that's another reason I like Ant.

Ant just plays all the time.

Great point.

I do think maybe his individual numbers come down as Mike Brown does this radical thing called playing the bench a little bit.

I don't know if you've heard of this tactic that is sweeping the NBA.

The other guys I considered were Paolo Bancaro.

I just don't think his numbers will be good enough.

Trey Young, who can put up crazy numbers on a team that I think is going to do very well.

Steph Curry.

Got to.

Cade Cunningham.

And Kevin Durant.

I don't see it for him.

So I went Ant as my best guy to

crack the code, crack the list.

But we we both agree it's it's jokic is to lose every year until he i don't know

leaves i don't know declines somehow um and i would say yeah i mean

maybe sga repeats we've given sga short shrift here for finals mvp mvp of the league put up crazy numbers did the improbable of matching jokic in the advanced numbers that jokic has lapped the field in for most of the last five years so like why not him i don't know i'm just going jokic i'll tell you why not him and i think some of it's unfair As a Spurs guy,

they're going to enjoy what the Spurs enjoyed for a while, which was, hey, you're great, but you're boring.

I don't want to talk about you.

I don't want to think about you.

I don't really love watching you.

And I'm not saying I say that, but you know, people said that about the Spurs for a long time.

And the other thing I think maybe more relevant is I think people kind of got annoyed with Shay in the playoffs and the fouls and stuff.

And I think that's going to hang on him a little bit.

We're talking about a vote now.

We're not talking about my opinion or your opinion.

We're talking about the court of the voters.

And I think

between those two things that you're kind of boring, you're in Oklahoma City,

and I don't like how you get all those points.

I think that could hurt him.

I got to be honest with you.

That was a thing.

He's a little bit of a leaner.

I'm not going to say he's a flopper.

He's a leaner.

He's a reacher and a leaner

in a way that many, many superstars are.

Yeah.

I felt like he kind of buried that under the hail of crunch time jumpers he made to win game four with the thunder season on the line in Indiana.

But I don't know.

We'll see.

Okay.

Now we're going to preview an award that is less enticing, but you could make a case for almost every candidate in the league, and that's Coach of the Year.

Which is a funny award because you could be like, well, what if the Nets win 28 games somehow?

Could Jordi Fernandez get in there?

Darko Rayakovich, he's kind of a wild card in Toronto.

I had one pick and then I flip-flopped and I went with another pick.

Your prediction, coach of the year, 2025, 2026, Kurt Goldsbury, who is it?

I'm going to go with Quinn Snyder.

I am hot.

Did you, you made a face.

Are we on the same player?

Just keep talking.

Just keep talking.

Okay.

Okay, so analytically, here's how we listen.

Here's how I want the listeners to think about this.

I'm very confident the award's coming from the Eastern Conference.

And here's why.

As we've already alluded to a couple of times, there's this conference imbalance here in the NBA this year.

Some teams are going to be able to do that.

I think you meant this century, but

it's a fair point.

But this year might even be the most tilted I remember it.

But there's going to be a three-seed or a two-seed or maybe even a one-seed in the East that somebody's going to be, oh my God, did you see them?

Like when Budenholzer won this award for the first time in Atlanta, like a season like that, where, oh, they won 60 games, the Orlando Magic.

It could be the Hawks.

It could be the Pistons.

It could be Mike Brown and the Knicks.

But ultimately, I'm giving it to Quinn.

I just feel like Ansi and the Hawks front office made some great moves.

I feel like Quinn finally has a team.

He's going to really love to coach there.

As you just alluded to, Trey Young is very motivated to be great this year.

And I think the stars are aligning there in Atlanta with their offseason, Alexander Walker, Chris Dopps.

And I think Quinn's going to flex a little bit.

So I went with Quinn Snyder, Zach.

What do you think?

I initially

went with Eric Spolstra.

Oh.

Because he's never won.

And there's this sort of groundswell of like, he's got to win.

He's maybe the best coach in the entire league.

That's a great point.

Even after the Tyler Hero injury, I think the heat are going to be better than people think.

I don't know what their over-under is right now.

Although the hero injury throws a little bit into flux.

I've said a couple of times in the last few weeks that I think they've reached an existential crisis with their offense, and they need to do something dramatic to overhaul it.

I've heard little birdies since then whispering to me that that is indeed occurring, that this team will look very different stylistically stylistically on offense than it has in the past three or four years, that they've just, they've hit the wall of what this sort of lots of mid-rangers, dribble handoffs, this and that, they've just hit the wall.

And he's Eric Spolstra.

And then I just thought, so like in the East, you can kind of, if there were a consensus top six in the East,

in some order, I think it would be Cleveland, New York, Orlando, Atlanta, Detroit, maybe the Bucs.

And then you've got whatever the hell the Sixers are.

And And I've said from the beginning, I think Miami has a chance to crack that group.

I think they're closer to that tier than they are to the next tier down.

Then I went through and like, let me see who wins coach of the year, typically.

And with very few exceptions, the person that wins coach of the year is the coach of an elite, elite team.

And I just don't think that Miami can get there.

Now, Tibbs won with a 41 and 31 team in the East with the Knicks.

That was a four seed.

Mike Brown won with a 48 and 34 Kings team, but they were a third seed.

And the Kings have been competent for so long that that felt like they had won 75 games.

So I thought history just doesn't bode well for that pick.

And then I went with Quinn Snyder in the end because I do think the Hawks have a chance to be a top four team.

I think they have some pretty high ceiling upside that if a couple of things went right for them and a couple of things went wrong for some other teams, they could be a two or even three seed.

He's a great coach, everyone acknowledges that he's a great coach, super creative.

I think if they do hit their ceiling, there will be sort of

noticeable coaching things that people can grasp onto.

Like, huh, it does seem like Trey's pushing the pace a little more and setting some off-ball screens, and there's a little bit more democracy in their offense.

And isn't that interesting?

And they found a way to protect him on defense or get him motivated.

I just think there'll be touch points for people.

I'll tell you who else.

Who else did you consider?

I had to consider Jamal Mosley and Mike Brown.

Again, I think the Knicks have a pretty nice path this year to being a great story, getting a lot of media attention,

sort of extending that love affair they've had in Manhattan for a while.

And Mike,

I have a conflict of interest.

I like Mike a lot, and I expect him to do really well there, to your point, your remark about Tibbs, who we also both like.

I just think the breath of of fresh air in New York City will love Mike Brown.

So that was one.

And then Orlando is another candidate for like, oh, we won 54 games.

Who would have thought, oh, Paolo and Franz are really clicking in.

And then Mosley starts to get that attention.

So that's why I'm pretty confident this award comes out of the east

because there will be a three or a four seed, maybe even a one or a two seed, but a three or four seed that,

whoa,

I didn't see this coming.

And that's how the award goes.

It's often like Kenny Atkinson last year.

That was it, right?

Oh, they have the best record in the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I'm just going to go rapid fire through a bunch of coaches and tell you why I didn't pick them.

Chauncey Billups, Tuamas Isolo, Mitch Johnson, Darko Ryakovich, Jordi Fernandez fall under.

Their teams just won't be good enough.

I don't think they'll win enough games.

Then you get to some interesting names.

Ime Odoka.

I feel like the Rockets have gotten gotten so good that he kind of missed his window to win.

Right.

But fair or not, I don't know.

Kenny Atkinson and Mark Dagnalt, I think people will be like, eh, boring.

We know what they are.

Doc Rivers, can he save the Giannis era?

I just think the Bucs are going to end up about where we think they're going to end up.

I don't think they're going to be a surprise on the happy side or the negative side.

Jason Kidd, can he solve this weird, big, funky post-Luka roster?

By the way, you alerted me to Anthony Davis's listed weight currently being 15 pounds heavier than any other year in his career, which seems great considering he's going to have to play power forward by his own choice and by the organization's choice instead of center.

So not awesome.

They take fitness pretty seriously in Dallas, I think.

So

I don't know how they deal with overweight stars.

Yeah, I don't know where Anthony Davis being 15 pounds heavier falls into the vision.

No, that's right.

I texted you and Bill because I went back to his Pelicans era and tracked his media day weights.

And he started at 230 as a young player and made his way to 250.

253 is where he's been listed most of his career.

But yeah, reported yesterday, 268 and looked it.

And again, no disrespect.

It's just aging bigs probably should be getting lighter if they're serious about playing the four in the modern NBA.

I think Dallas will just will be good, but not good enough that, or surprising enough for Jason Kidd.

Rick Carlisle, can he keep the Pacers afloat?

I'm actually a little lower on the Pacers than consensus, so

I don't see it.

JJ Reddick, that's a good one.

I don't see why not.

Joe Missoula, can he keep the Celtics afloat with his launch threes?

And can I find another creative efficiency to make this now limited team punch above its weight?

I'm a little lower on the Celtics than consensus, so I didn't go him.

But you could see that story, that and the Pacers won.

Oh my God, they're the four seed.

It's like when Phil had the team without Jordan and they were so good.

It's like, oh, this guy is.

There is that sort of path.

I don't think that's going to happen, but I could sort of see it in my mind's eye.

Mike Brown and David Adelman have the new car smell

going for them.

Adelman is a great choice.

I think if that happens, if they overpass, if they overtake OKC for that one slot, I could see that narrative.

And I think he'll do a great job, by the way.

Mosley is a very good choice, and I bet one of the odds on fair.

I didn't even check the odds.

He is the favorite right now on FanDuel.

So he's almost won before.

And I just feel like Orlando's rise is so expected and part of it was a personnel move in Desmond Bain that

maybe he shouldn't be favored by that much.

I don't know, but he could easily win.

I mentioned Spo, and then I just wrote down Nick Nurse's name, like if everything goes right.

And I was like, I can't, I can't do it.

So I went with Quinn Snyder as well.

We agreed on that one.

Did we miss anything in the news?

We even got to Quentin Grimes.

I wanted to ask you sort of a larger question.

I was texting you about it too.

Like, this is sort of a macro trend.

Is free agency kind of dead?

And I think one of the reasons a lot of people aren't like fired up for the season is there aren't these huge transactions where a superstar is switching teams.

If you look at the 2020, Zach Lowe, both free agency, unrestricted and restricted free agency, haven't really created a lot of drama.

And even when you read the discourse about Grimes hitting free agency next year, it's like, oh, it's a bad place for him to be.

There's not going to be a lot of money.

There's no cap room.

The second apron has changed the math.

The market for free agency is inefficient from a team side.

You overpay generally.

And the second apron has made overpaying a cardinal sin.

So my question for you,

is free agency kind of dead in the 2020s?

It's different.

It's more trades now than free agency.

And a lot of those trades, I think, will take place during the same sort of calendar window of draft and July.

But yeah, I mean, you know, we're really what we're waiting on is for like a big team, a big market team to get cap space, a team like in a glamour market.

And the Lakers could be that team in a year or two.

And that just, it takes one team like that to change everything.

Brooklyn, you know, so I'm not

certain that it's like dead, dead, dead.

And I just sort of loop trade season and free agency season altogether.

But it's definitely different.

And the apron has people

freaking out about like, we just can't blow any contracts.

We cannot afford a mistake contract.

That's what it is to me.

I feel like the apron is the three-point line.

The three-point line changed how coaches have to deal.

And I think the apron is changing how front offices have to deal.

And if you just look at the summer and review, I think this is a good time to do it, October 1st.

It's like, what are the biggest stories?

Well, we have a cap circumvention story, and we have two waving stretches that we've never seen before of a magnitude.

It's like, those are the Wogebombs of 2025.

It's not Kawhi going to the Clippers, LeBron going to the Heat, LeBron going to the Cavs, Durant going to Golden State.

I mean, that's what I'm sort of contextualizing it against is the summers of 2010.

And then you get ready for the 2016 season.

Oh, my God, I can't believe Kevin Durant's coming to the Warriors.

And that would sort of drive a lot of this kind of seasonal content.

But it's interesting to to me and sort of a trend I've been thinking about a lot is: has the apron really killed that?

But I think you're right.

If the Lakers go down the path, they might go down this season and sort of like, hey, we're a team with room.

All of a sudden, free agency is back in business.

Well, and Kevin Durant did get traded.

I mean, you said his name a few times.

He did get traded.

It wasn't free agency, but he got traded in the offseason for real stuff.

But it's definitely different.

And, you know, just even I remember like Dallas every summer would be like, maybe it's Dwight Howard, maybe it's Darren Williams.

It's like there were all these teams with cap space, and

it hasn't been the extension rules have obviously changed that.

The fact that there's a lot more vehicles for players to sign extensions and stay out of free agency.

That's kind of one of the new free agency things.

But, you know,

to your point, do the superstar, the new superstar move is to get that giant extension and also get traded.

Like, I got the most money possible, then I get traded.

And those extension deadlines, as it will with Giannis, sort of create their own drama points, too.

So we'll see.

Kurt Goldsberry, what do we got coming up from you on theringer.com?

Oh, they had me do this NBA rank thing, which is an incredible exercise, but it's very time-consuming, Zach Lowe.

So I spent a lot of time ranking players and writing blurbs.

It's a great, great exercise to get you ready for the season.

And then I got a piece next week about how the game has changed in the first 25 years of the 21st century.

Love it.

Nobody does big picture evolution at the NBA.

One more thing.

I'll tell you what I got in about 30 minutes here.

Oh, look at that.

Well, look, there are very few things that we can all agree on in this world, Kirk.

Very few.

Like, ice cream's good, that kind of thing.

Yankees are evil.

So my team's out.

Go your team.

He's wearing a red socks hat for the people who are not on YouTube.

It was an electric night in game one of the wildcard series, and I just hope for a repeat on game one.

I do enjoy living here how every Yankees postseason lost.

just one game.

Like, oh, they're on the brink of elimination.

Well, someone was going to be on the brink of elimination.

It's best of three.

You're already on the brink, really, when the series starts.

Every loss is like, Boone sucks.

This guy sucks.

Get him out of here.

I love it.

I would love, as a sad Mets fan today, I would love nothing more than for all of the news cycle here tomorrow to be like, blow the whole team up in New York.

So go, Socks.

Kurt Goldsberry, thank you, sir.

Thank you, Zach.

Have a great day.

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Carvana.

Well, Sean,

last last time we were here, you were saying the only thing you didn't want in the final weekend of the season against the Miami Marlins of Miami was for Pete Alonso

or Edwin Diaz to not commit some sort of season-changing, season-killing mistake blunder.

Not sure that really happened, but it kind of happened in the first game on Friday when Pete just failed to make two defensive plays at first base, made up for it the next day with a monster game, and then, of course, had the line drive gap double that wasn't in the final game of the season.

Expected batting average, that's a thing now.

The expected batting average on that was 780.

And now the season is over.

The Mets did not make the playoffs.

Steve Cohen has apologized.

Mike Francesa has called the team gutless bums.

Uh-huh.

Boy, did I pick a fun time to come back to Mets fandom?

Yeah,

i'm i'm sorry to you and i'm sorry to both of us for having spent so much time it's been nice to be together you know i i missed you i've missed working with you i'm so glad that we are back together um

but if if our if our reunion wrought this then i feel really bad because this was as bad as it gets in my opinion i i will make the case that this is worse than 2007 what we just witnessed um because it took so goddamn long so i i don't feel good

can't even be mad at the brewers you know i can't I can't ask the Brewers to take two out of three from the Reds.

It's not their job.

They gave us a chance on the last game of the season.

Couldn't score a run.

Couldn't get one run.

The Brewers coming back and winning that meaningless game on the last Sunday of the year, that should have been enough.

The Cincinnati Reds in their last 80 games went 40 and 40.

This was not like they chased down the Mets with an epic run at the end of the season.

They're like, they're a mediocre team, just like we are.

They're just a little bit more positively mediocre than the Mets.

And then Lindor sitting next to my daughter, she's been warning me ever since the peat line drive was caught.

She's on the couch with me saying, Dad, they're not going to come back.

It's over.

And I'm like, you got to be a little bit, like, you're too young for this.

You got to believe in stuff till the very end.

I'm like, you got to keep believing.

And then what?

Someone walks to start the ninth inning, right?

Like Mauricio, I think, walks to start the ninth inning.

Okay, we need base runners.

We need base runners.

And then she'll say things like, wouldn't it be better if you just hit a home run?

I'm like, okay, yeah, but we need base runners.

We need to score four runs right now.

There's hope.

And then her favorite player,

Francisco Lindor,

the love of her sports life.

She wears his t-shirt for pajamas now,

grounds into a double play to end the season.

It was already over.

My hopes were already gone by then.

And she turns to me and she goes, Daddy, that wasn't his fault, was it?

He kind of hit it hard like that wasn't lindor's fault right and i was like none of this is lindor's fault he had a scorching last two months of the season the crazy thing about this is soto awesome season lindor awesome season alonso awesome season nimmo career best season pristine health across the board nobody really missed any games and yet 83 and 79 no playoffs total uncertainty going in the next season i don't even know where to i mean i don't even know where to start David Cern is talking about run prevention.

Yeah, the starting pitching sucked.

That sucked.

My daughter, I think I did something wrong, Sean.

I think she's already too damaged.

No, I mean, no, you exposed her to the Mets.

That was the only thing that you did, and the Mets are a disease.

And we are looking for the cure.

We're looking, Zach, and we cannot find the cure.

Help me.

I thought Steve Cohen was the cure.

What's the cure?

Come on, man.

So she knows she's beginning to learn that players just don't stay on the same team forever.

She knows there's a chance that Pete is gone.

And she likes Pete.

Pete's great.

Had a great season defensively, kind of a desire.

More of a disaster than I thought.

He had a really low lows.

Soto, disaster defensive season.

We knew that word.

He's terrible.

Yeah.

I didn't know he was this terrible.

That play against the Cubs where he just sort of twisted around in the outfield and a routine fly ball hit like the base of the wall.

That wasn't great.

Anyway, so, and she, but she's, she's, this is what I mean by she's damaged.

Middle of the game, might have been after Pete's lineup.

She's like, you know, daddy, he kind of ruined the whole season.

And I was like, what do you mean?

He's like, when he threw that ball to Senga and Senga got hurt because it was a bad throw, the whole season kind of went south from there.

And I'm like, honestly, you could go on talk radio now.

I'm going to go to the bathroom.

You're ready.

What do you mean?

She knows all the talking points.

She nailed it.

That was the turning point.

Well, okay, so what do we do?

They just

obviously the three young guys enter next season as part of the rotation, right?

They're three locked-in stars, probably.

Maybe not.

I don't know.

I wouldn't count on Tong starting the year in the rotation.

Yeah, Tong wasn't great.

I think you can see that he obviously, he's basically had one professional season of baseball under his belt, and they were asking a lot of a 22-year-old to come up.

He's obviously got an incredible fastball, and then everything else needs work.

McLean and Sproat, assuming Sprode is not traded, and you're now hearing Sproat's name in trades already, because they think like maybe he's just like a number three or four starter and not elite, and McLean looks like a future ace.

But I, the run prevention thing, I do want to talk with you a little bit about for two reasons.

One, because of your experience as a

basketball analyst and the introduction of kind of new phraseology into sports over time.

And then, two, around the idea of like this defense that we watched all year, but especially in the last month when things seem to be getting catastrophic.

You know, that Pete's inability to make those two plays at first base, that Soto dropped flyball that turned out to be pretty critical in that Cubs game.

They kept having moments of like dramatic failure in the field that seemed to define the season, even though I wouldn't say that this year they were like the worst defensive team in the league.

In David Stearns' press conference, he's talking about run prevention, which is this combination of defensive metrics and strategy combined with pitching.

And you mentioned that their top four players all had very good two career years.

And the thing that I, one of the first things I said to you when we started doing this segment was that the front office made a misaligned decision to have these four guys in their prime and to hope that these three or four weird decisions about the starting rotation were going to work out for the best.

So now we're heading into the offseason.

And we're in the exact same position, except some of the decisions that they made in the last offseason are just going to carry over because they got to pay Frankie Montas.

Sean Maniah is still under contract.

Kodaisenga is still under contract.

These guys are all still getting paid.

I don't want to see Frankie Montas ever again.

I guess

he had Tommy Johnson.

He had Tommy Johnson, so you'll never see him again.

But he's on the payroll.

He's making $17 million next year.

You know, Kodaisenga is making $15 million.

Sean Maniah is making $20 million.

So you made all these choices that were half-assed moves hoping that you could conjure the magic of 2024.

And you could say, oh, well, they were just doing it for that year because they've got kids coming up.

But those numbers are still on the books this year.

So they're just in a really weird spot.

And they're going to have to make a lot of changes to their roster through trades to meaningfully upend where they are now.

The way they talk about Senga is like

a less extreme version of

like it sounds like Sixers fans talking about Ben Simmons five years ago.

Like, I think he can shoot threes in practice.

Like, I'm not sure what to, I'm not sure what the deal is with his free throws.

Like, is he afraid afraid to touch the ball now?

It's like, I don't know what's going on with Senga, but they talk about him like he's kind of a head case.

And I don't know what to, like, they're like, hopefully he can get back next year to like giving us something.

And I'm like, that's it.

The guy was like unhittable for two months.

It's true.

You heard Carlos Mendoza talk, I think, pretty directly about two players in the last two weeks of the season.

One was Senga, where he's basically like, this guy's not coming back.

And he, Mendoza is usually very careful about how he talks about his players.

And Mark Vientos was the other guy in the last week of of the season where he was just like, that can't happen about stuff that Vientos is doing in the field.

And I think that those are two serious candidates to be traded in the offseason.

I think there's a very good chance Senga, who's on a very friendly contract for two more years

and

is very talented.

We've seen him be exceptional, but is inconsistent and gets hurt.

And Vientos, who has 30 home run power and looks like a real major league hitter, but had a bad year.

So don't be shocked if you see either of those guys being moved for pitching talent.

I'm ready for Vientos to get traded and hit 35 home runs next year.

I'm already mentally prepared for it.

It will happen.

You mentioned run prevention and

the lexicon of sports and all of that.

Again, dumb baseball fan, haven't watched really regularly in a long time.

I never watched the Mets until the last week or two of the season and felt like this is just a bumbling defensive team.

Like there was no Volpe.

The Yankees fans just hate Volpe.

Every ball that's hit to him him is a risk.

But then you would watch

other teams.

It just felt like every game the Mets had a would-be hit that was robbed by a great defensive play.

And then you just start to think, like, maybe those aren't like robberies and like insane defensive plays.

Maybe that's just kind of what good defensive teams do.

And in the NBA, I would always say

a lot of good defense in the NBA is the absence of mistakes.

So it's hard to spot good defense sometimes because it's in the act of things not happening.

Maybe like bad defense in baseball is the absence of really good plays, plays that are not made.

And you just don't, if I'm not watching other baseball teams who make these kinds of plays regularly, I'm just not noticing

the plays that the Mets outfielders aren't making.

Sliding catches that are like one hopped instead of caught.

They just, like,

I can't, like, a couple good barehanded plays by like Beatty at third base here and there.

Lindor is super reliable.

Every time the ball's hit to him, I'm like, great.

But I just like, maybe, maybe those are just like regular baseball plays that the Mets just are not capable of.

And you mentioned that one game where they put Marte, Nemo, and Soto in the Lfield.

I was like, man, every fly ball is going to be an adventure.

So

I think

the word that matters most for what you're describing as range, you know, in the defensive metrics is the ability to cover a certain amount of ground at your individual position.

You know, Beatty is significantly more rangey at third base than Mark Vientos.

Pete Alonzo is incredibly good at scooping balls, but doesn't cover a lot of ground in terms of range and has a problem throwing the ball.

And he's probably a career DH in the next two to three years.

Mark Vientos is a DH.

Juan Soto is a DH.

These are just not defensive players.

On the other hand, you've also got center fielders you can't hit on the Mets in Tyrone Taylor and Jose Siri and sometimes Jeff McCain.

Can I never see Jose Siri again?

Was he ever supposed to be good?

I can't even, I know he was injured the whole year.

He came back and it was like

Keystone, cops level, dropped fly ball, balls good.

He looked like me in a softball game in center field, just fucking up every play, and he never got a hit.

I never saw him get on base one time.

That's a particularly painful one for David Stearns because he did hit 28 home runs, I think, for the Rays the previous season, but he hit 210.

That's a real thing that happened?

He did.

That guy hit 28 home runs in a baseball.

He struck out like 180 times and hit 210, but he did hit 28 home runs, and he played a very good center field.

He just got hurt at the beginning of the year, and the arm that they traded for him, Eric Orzi, is a reliever who had a good season in Tampa.

So we sure could have used a guy in the sixth inning named Eric Orzi, and we didn't have him.

And instead, we had 14 games from Jose Siri in which he hit 063.

That was a nightmare.

That was like, that's as bad as that could have gone.

And that led to Tyrone Taylor having to play 85 games this year.

It led to Jeff McNeil having to play center field.

It led to putting Brandon Nimmo in center field in the second most important game of the year because they had no other options offensively.

So, like, Stearns just made a lot of mistakes, man.

Like, this happens sometimes where you just, you have to make a lot of moves to improve your team.

He took a couple of bets and his bets were wrong.

You know, he made one good bet, which was Clay Holmes, right?

That was an interesting move at the time because he was

a reliever.

He stepped up big time in game 161.

He pitched great in that game.

The Mets always pitch great in game 161.

There's a long history of that.

Fans of John Mayne and Johan Santana will know what I'm talking about.

But

aside from the Clay Holmes move

and the Brooks-Rayley move bringing him back because he pitched very well, very well.

In fact, his season is now underrated, given how good he was in the second half of this year.

Stearns just made a lot of wrong calls.

And everything that he touched that turned to gold in 24 kind of went to shit in 25.

So he's got a big job in front of him to undo a lot of this stuff, man.

So you meant the two big problems with the team.

One,

you just mentioned, which is that there are at least two critical players on the team

who need to play some DH, if not, in Pete Alonso's case, become like at least halftime DH.

And there's only one DH spot.

And so that just makes team building an extremely difficult exercise because you need to have another first baseman and another outfielder.

And it's just a lot of sort of holes to fill.

so like i don't know these players that well are they are alonzo well first of all alonzo we'll see if he comes back uh i love him by the way i love everything about him i love the way he talks i've i flagged this quote about uh jonatong's big bounce back start like a couple of starts ago this is a this is an actual quote from pete alonzo like if you just made like like a fake he's from florida i realize but like a fake baseball lifer from the Midwest, they would say something like this.

Looked like right from, let me start over.

Looked like from right off the rip, since I showed up to the yard, he was pretty locked in today.

Really stoked for him.

I mean, this is like the yard.

That's just the baseball lingo 101.

And I also like, I like the idea of him staying so that the Mets' home run record becomes a real home run record worthy of their team, so that it's not embarrassing enough for Chris Russo to rant on national TV about how sad it is that the Mets dare celebrate 240-something home runs.

And he's still really good.

But are he and or Soto?

I don't know if this is like a thing in baseball,

like too proud to be one-way players.

Is playing in the field important to them as baseball players?

Some players, if they are career position players, have a hard time transitioning to DH, and Pete may have a concern about that because obviously, like it removes a level of engagement from the game if you're not out on the field.

And

first base is an important position, and I'm sure Pete has a modicum of pride.

And also, you're more valuable to a team if you play a position.

You know, DHs,

you know, with the rare Kyle Schwarber-style exception, are just not as well paid.

You know, you increase your value, literally, your war in the sport.

So that's a factor.

Soto, I think it's pretty well understood that within the next five years, he will just be the DH for the Mets.

There's no way when he's 30, he's going to be manning right field for the team.

There's just no way.

So you've got to consider that.

Like this year going into the season, their plan was they resigned Jesse Winker, a name we have not heard uttered in months, and it was going to be Jesse Winker and Starling Marte.

They were going to be the two DHs.

When in actuality, Brandon Nimmo, Marc Vientos, Juan Soto, and Pete Alonso

are all arguably basically full-time DHs in Major League Baseball right now.

And at least three of those guys are coming back to the team next year in theory.

So one of them is going to have to be the DH.

I don't think Pete's going to go convert to DH right away if he resigns.

I'm not convinced he's going to resign, but I also said that last last year, and I was wrong.

I didn't think he would be back.

I thought he was going to be able to go out and find a deal, and he could not find the deal he wanted with Scott Boris, and so he came back.

Part of the reason that that happened was because, one, a lot of teams focused on more defensive-minded first basemen who were looking for first basemen out in the world.

And two, they were concerned that the dip in production that Pete had had over the previous two seasons was going to become a trend.

Pete's numbers went up this year.

He was really good this year, especially in the first half.

He carried the team, as you and I have talked about a few times.

There's going to be a market for him and there's a chance that he's not there.

And if he doesn't, if he's not there and Ryan Clifford is the long-term first baseman for the New York Mets and Juan Soto is the long-term DH, then you actually weirdly have more flexibility in terms of building those that defensive run prevention that we're talking about.

But if Pete stays and Brandon Nimmo's got five more years on his deal and Juan Soto's got 14 more years on his deal,

how much can you change the way this team prevents runs?

And there's there's like a lot of no trade clauses.

I saw Lindor has a no-trade clause.

Nimmo has a no-trade clause.

People are just giving out no trade clauses in baseball.

This is a comment.

There's like one no trade clause in the entire NBA or something.

Yeah, which is funny too to have a no-trade clause in New York.

You don't usually see that.

I mean, maybe there's a case to be made that there's just more external financial opportunity when you're a star with the Mets or the Yankees.

So that might be a reason why people want to stay there as long as possible.

Look, some pundits are talking about even trading Lindor right now, which I would, of course, never do in a million years.

He had like a down year, and he was awesome in the last two months of the season, as you said.

But I do think that almost anything is on the table because of the position that they put themselves in with a bunch of long-term deals on the books.

Yeah, I did read some stat and some post-mortem somewhere.

I can't remember what it was.

It was like either range factor or like outs prevented per whatever innings.

And like Alonzo was 36th among 36 qualifying first basemen, and Soto was 36th among 36 qualifying outflowers.

I guess they're just really bad at defense.

They're really bad.

They do a couple, you know, like Juan Soto doesn't have a bad arm.

You know, he actually had a couple of put outs this year that were pretty impressive, but in all other areas, he's not very good, and Pete is not very good.

And we have to be honest with ourselves, we watch them a lot, and they seem fine, but they don't have that thing that we saw in that Cub series where guys were flying around in the outfield and no mistakes were made in the infield.

And there was a kind of savvy, it was like a heads-up quality, I I think, to a lot of the opponents that they played in the last two weeks of the season.

Where I was like, wow, we're not a smart team.

These guys are, these guys kind of don't know what they're doing.

They're not well coached.

And it was windy in Chicago that seemed to cause problems for people.

Yeah, any borderline, any like, it's going to take a nice play for Soto to catch this ball.

I just trained myself, like, it's going to be a single.

Like,

he's not going to catch it.

And McNeil, by the way, McNeil

kind of sucked ever since the big home run he hit against the Yankees in the summer to like swing one of those interleague games.

He kind of didn't do anything for the rest of the season, and that was like an underrated little thing.

Like, he just became a nothing.

I don't think he'll be back.

I would be stunned if he wasn't traded in the offseason.

The other problem is,

and I've got some of these baseball games on in the background.

Yesterday was filled with like the Yankees starter was amazing.

The Red Sox starter went into the eighth inning.

The Tigers obviously have the best or second-best pitcher in baseball.

He pitched a long way.

They just don't have, they just need a guy guy where you feel like every fifth day is a win.

Every fifth day is like, at the very least, if we just score a couple runs, we should win the game.

I don't know how they get that guy.

I don't know who the names are.

I don't know who they have to trade to get them.

But every great baseball team has a pitcher that you can trot out there.

And then you get to the playoffs and it's like, can he come in on short rest?

And just, I don't know if that even happens anymore.

Like when Randy Johnson and Kurt Schilling basically won the World Series by themselves, but they just don't have that player.

And I don't think, I mean, look, I'm a moron again.

I just don't think you can do any like win a World Series without that kind of pitcher.

I

generally agree with you.

I do think that the Dodgers last year challenged some of that wisdom because of the number of bullpen games that they pitched.

But yesterday was amazing, right?

Because

I agree with everything you just said.

In the Red Sox Yankee series, you had Max Freed going up against Garrett Crochet.

Max Freed was a free agent.

before this season.

Garrett Crochet was traded in this offseason.

Those are two moves that David Stearns opted not to make.

It would have cost a lot to trade for Garrett Crochet, and you know what?

It would have been worth it.

He just threw seven innings of one run ball and struck out 11 Yankees in the first game of a playoff series and probably tipped the series towards the Red Sox because of that dominance.

Max Freed was amazing this year, was a Cy Young, you know, leading candidate all year.

Tark Skubel and the Tigers, it was developed internally and is probably the best pitcher in baseball behind Paul Skeens, also developed internally after drafting.

I think Nolan McClain can be one of those guys.

I really think he has the stuff that can do it, but he's not going to be it right away.

So now they have to go get one of those guys.

And

it's going to cost prospects.

And it's going to cost not fringe prospects.

It's going to cost prospects that the front office does not want to deal.

And they have somewhere between three and six guys in their system right now that I know you can tell the team doesn't want to deal Carson Benj.

You know, they don't want to deal Jonah Tongue.

They don't want to deal those guys because they don't want to have egg on their face.

And the Mets have a long history of dealing guys who turn out to be great.

But they're going to have to if they want to acquire one of those arms because there's nobody on the free agent market right now that they're going to be able to sign.

There's no Max Freeds this year.

So

I assume you're going to be paying close attention to this.

I just cannot take another year of, all right, four and a thirds, just here comes the army of dudes out of the bullpen, and we're just going to count on them and we'll trade for this dude who's going to end up hell's bells on everyone here.

I can't even listen to the song, hell's.

I like that song, and I can't listen to it anymore.

I just, I can't, I can't have it happen again.

I just need more from the starters next year.

By the way, it reminded me, he's talking about all the guys who need to be DH.

It reminds me of my absolute peak of Mets fandom, like the peak lunacy of the brief Hundley-Piazzo overlap when they tried to turn Hundley into an outfit.

And they're like, well, really, how hard could it be to play left field?

It's like, oh, oh, that's not going to work at all.

He was pretty bad.

Yeah.

And then he was not even a Sterling defensive catcher.

So, you know,

didn't they try Piazza at first a few times here and there?

And it was like, they might just making that up.

No, I think that's right.

I mean, that's a natural conversion for an aging power-hitting catcher.

Yeah, man.

It kind of just feels like half the team might not be back next year, but also so many guys are under contract.

Like, I think they have to do some dramatic stuff because the fan base is, I mean, justifiably pissed off.

You know, like that was the, the fans showed up this this year.

They like broke attendance records.

They did the thing that Steve Cohen asked them to do before the season.

I was as locked into this year as I have been in any year, even though I knew in June I was like, shit, this is all going bad.

You could tell it was all going bad, but even still, I was committed to every single game.

And we were not rewarded for that time.

Well, but like, and I don't even know who to be mad at.

Like, Frances is out there doing the thing, these bunch of gutless bums.

I don't know.

Like, they looked like they were trying hard to me.

They didn't give up.

They looked, they were like patting each other on the back.

I just think the team wasn't, the pitching just wasn't very good.

And I don't, like, I don't think anyone

threw in the towel or quit or anything like that.

I don't think they were gutless.

I just think it was like that kind of good of a team.

I totally agree with you.

I'm not here to criticize the players.

I think they failed to perform, but I don't think they weren't trying hard.

I do think that there's some truth to the like it's probably time to kind of break up this core, you know, that the Nimmo Alonzo Lindor McNeil crew has has just been together for five years.

And

2024 was fantastic, but it was kind of miraculous because they got off to a terrible start and then turned it around and got hot.

And every other year, in the biggest moment of the season, those guys have not performed.

They've not showed up.

They've not done the thing to get them over the hump.

And there have been some pretty dramatic and frustrating conclusions to seasons.

So, and I think the team knows this now.

I think they know that they can't continue on with these guys going into their mid-30s.

So, I'm expecting them to change that.

When did the Mets become

punchline is too strong, but like they come into the league, levable losers.

They win a World Series fairly quickly.

They have a couple good teams in the 70s.

They reach another World Series.

They win an iconic World Series in 1986.

And they're, you know, like have some lean years, but late 80s are pretty good.

Yep.

90s, they rise again.

Is it really just these two recent collapses where they've just become like the jets of of baseball?

Like, when did this happen?

I don't remember being embarrassed to be a Mets fan.

I'm not that I am.

I'm actually quite proud to be back as a Mets fan, but I don't remember them being like

a punchline.

When did this happen?

I think there's three steps along the way.

Maybe technically four if you include the launch of the franchise, which was so

catastrophic, really.

There were books written about how poor they were in 63, 64, at the early stages of the career, or the franchise.

But one is

the 1990 team, the worst team money can buy, and the way that they were destroyed in the New York press.

That was like Vince Coleman titled.

So this is like Vince Coleman throws the firecracker, all that stuff.

Okay, that's coming back to me now.

So that stuff, I think, set in the New York tabloid era.

And the failure to capitalize on the insane amount of talent that they had from 1985 through 1988, the fact they only won one title,

that set them on a course.

And then 2006, for them to have not won the World Series that year is just a catastrophe.

You know, they lost to an 82-win Cardinals team that then beat an inferior Tigers team in the World Series.

They lost in that majorly dramatic fashion with Beltron leaving the bat on his shoulder.

And then 07 leads to a collapse, 08 leads to a collapse.

Those are horrendous.

Those are like, that is when they're on Sunday night baseball playing the Yankees and like every game just feels like an embarrassment.

And then the second thing is that in 2015, they were a damn good team.

They were, I thought, a a better team than that Royals team that won.

And they were leading after seven innings in three of the five games that they played in that series.

And they lost all three of those games.

And that's just loser stuff, man.

You know, like those, they should have won in 06 and 15.

And if they win those two World Series, all this shit is out the window.

Nobody's going to care.

If you've got two titles in the 21st century, you'll never hear Lol Metz.

That'll be gone forever when they win two titles.

But they didn't win those years.

They lost.

And so when you combine epic historic collapses with failures in the biggest spots imaginable, you're going to get killed in the press.

You're going to get made fun of by opposing fan bases.

You're going to have this terrible reputation.

And Cohen is doing his freaking damnedest to pull them out of this.

And I so appreciate it.

Like, I really have always wanted one of my teams to have an owner who's like, basically, I'm bleeding with you.

Like, I really want this to stop.

And he's spending a lot of goddamn money to make this happen.

And it's just not there yet, you know, and it's going to take more time.

And so I'm trying to be patient too.

I'm not giving up.

I'm not mad.

I love Pete Alonzo.

I love Francisco Indoor.

I love rooting for them.

I love being a Mets fan.

I do feel really ground down right now, though, man.

Really ground down.

I have to say,

I don't feel sad about the season or jumping back in.

I feel like elated.

I've had so much fun.

I missed caring about a team like this so much.

I love the Mets.

Like, I loved the Mets growing up.

I loved the Mets until I was 30 and kind of lost track of them.

I loved being a fan of the Little Brother team in my Metropolitan Era.

I loved having this small group of us in high school who were diehards, who were reading the

minor league baseball magazines to keep track of Pulsifer and Isringhausen, surrounded by the Yankee behemoth all around us.

I loved the blue and orange.

I saw so many games at Shea Stadium growing up.

It was so nice to go get to know City Field.

It was, and even I've said this before, like even the pain, the pain

is restorative.

The pain of being a sports fan is almost perversely fun because

it's what you're going to remember when they win.

And they're going to win at some point.

I don't know when.

I don't know when what's going to happen, but they're going to win at some point because they're just going to spend so much money that they're going to eventually win.

And that's when it'll all be worth it.

I love the blue and orange.

I've absolutely loved it.

And even as the season season was like, now I was in Europe in August just seeing the scores every morning and being like, again, again,

again.

And maybe that would change my perception.

But I just like, I had a blast.

I was, I had hope right up until, I mean, I didn't hope they were going to go on a playoff run, but when Mauricio got the lead off walk in the ninth in game 162, I was like, I'm still, I still got butterflies.

Like, this is just so much fun.

I love it.

I love the Mets.

I love the stadium.

I'm so glad I came back, despite the fact that it apparently gets added to the ledger of embarrassments.

Well, I've loved hearing about you and your daughter bonding over it.

I think that's really special.

And it's one of the best things about being a sports fan too is like my, my love for my sports teams and my love for sports comes from my dad.

And that my brother and I still talk about our teams every other day.

That is a huge point of connection for us.

And I am not,

I'm not,

I'm not upset per se with my relationship to sports, but I do feel in part because I'm a Jets fan as well, that there is something.

Seems way worse.

There's something cosmic going against me right now and going against us who root for both of those teams.

And the Jets thing is really,

I agree with what you said about the Mets, which is that they're going to win in the next 10 years.

I'll be shocked if they don't win one in the next 10 years because Cohen is on a mission and they're going to find enough, you know, they're going to overpay Scoobel when he's a free agent.

They're going to over, you know, they're going to, they're just going to accumulate enough guys and they're going to put enough money into the farm system that they're just going to will it to happen.

The Jets are like,

they are the worst franchise in North American sports, literally.

Like they are the least successful.

They have bad ownership.

They make bad hires.

They draft poorly.

They have not been to the playoffs in 16 years.

They're 0-4 right now.

They are bad, man.

Like they are a joke.

And that one is tough.

So when the Mets disappoint.

while I'm living with the Jets thing, it's much worse.

I was really secretly hoping, you know, I'm coming to New York tomorrow.

Deep down, I was like, you know what?

Maybe they win.

Maybe they sweep the Marlins and

I'm going to a playoff game.

You know what I mean?

And that didn't happen.

So it hurt a little bit more knowing that I wasn't going to get anything from the Jets.

But I am still very much committed to this Mets crew, this team of players, the leadership, the ownership,

my fandom, the fact that they're building a gigantic $4 billion casino with a bridge that's going to lead people to generate extraordinary revenue that's going to hopefully help pay for more good players.

You know, I'm all for those things happening in the area.

A lot is going on with the Mets that is, in theory, positive.

Yeah, I mean, if I wore a Mets shirt today and my friends who are all Yankees fans or fans of other teams and they relocated here would poke fun at me.

Like, oh, another year, another year, Mets year.

Yankees in the playoffs.

You know, you're playing the Red Sox today.

We'll see what happens.

And I don't care.

I wouldn't trade the Mets for any other team, and I certainly wouldn't trade them for the Yankees.

Sean Fennessy, it's been fun doing Mets Corner.

It's not dead.

Mets Corner.

We're not abandoning Mets Corner.

I think we're just going to have to take a hiatus unless something crazy happens.

But we'll reconvene.

There's always fun baseball things to talk about.

It's been a blast.

Thank you for your time and indulging my inanity about this silly team that we root for.

You are the greatest.

Thanks for indulging my grousing and negativity.

I appreciate you always.

And let's go, Mets.

There you go.

All right.

Thank you all for listening.

Thank you all for watching.

We'll be back next week, barring some insane news in the next couple of days.

We'll be back next Monday on the Zach Lowe Show.

Thanks to Jesse and Jonathan on production.

Again, thanks to all of you for listening and or watching the Zach Lowe Show.

We will see you next week.

NBA season is creeping up on us.

Let's go.

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