Breaking Down the NBA’s Latest Gambling Scandals With David Purdum. Plus, Blake Griffin and Trajan Langdon on Opening Week.

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All right, we got a packed episode of the Zack Lowe Show coming up.

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welcome to the Zach Lowe show.

Boy, this day took a turn and it took a turn into very dangerous waters for the NBA and for sports.

David Purdum from ESPN, the betting expert over there,

I would imagine your day has been pretty crazy, huh?

Pretty, pretty crazy.

We started hearing about rumors of some sort of press conference last night.

So we were trying to prepare as much, but text messages started showing up about 6.15 this morning about this.

We have two separate indictments today.

I've sat down and read them both.

Indictment number one charges a whole bunch of people, including Terry Rogier, on sort of an inside betting scheme tied to prop bets in the NBA.

You and I talked about prop bets a year or so ago about Jante Porter.

These prop bets are just an absolute menace.

And the other indictment talks about Chauncey Billup and his participation in rigged poker games that have mafia links, where he and Damon Jones, a former assistant coach for the Cavaliers and the Lakers at one point, and a former NBA player, obviously, are the quote-unquote face cards used by criminals to get unwitting victims to come play in rigged poker games rigged with all sorts of crazy technology, like card card readers,

rigged shufflers, and all of that.

And the key claim there is that allegedly, Chauncey Billips and Damon Jones know that they are part of, and in one case, organizing rigged poker games.

I don't know, man.

Where do you want to start?

There's actually more connections between the two indictments than I thought there would be when I actually sat down and read them,

including Chauncey Billips.

But where should we start?

This is your world more than mine.

I think we should start by first kind of defining the lines between what is game manipulation, like actually rigging NBA games, and what is sharing inside information.

I feel like that's an important distinction.

There are seven games that were mentioned in the indictment.

This is the sports betting indictment that resolves some sort of suspicious betting or insider betting, insider information sharing.

And three of those, two of them were the John Tay Quarter games.

He removes himself from the game after after playing only a few minutes so that his conspirators can win their bets on the under on the statistics.

And then the other one is the Terry Rosier game from March of 2023.

He was with the Hornets at the time.

He's playing the Pelicans.

According to the indictment, he revealed to one of his childhood friends that he was not going to be playing very long in this game.

He was not listed on the injury report.

As soon as that happened, all this money started coming in on the under on Rosier's props, under on his points, under on his rebounds, under on his assists.

And then, when that happened, Sportsbooks halted wagering on him at a time.

Then eventually the game came about.

He took himself out after playing around nine to 10 minutes.

So all those wagers won.

Now, the indictment revealed some new information about that, that his childhood friend and him actually met back up at Rozier's house in Charlotte about a week after that game to count the money, as it says in the indictment.

I've never sat down and counted money like that.

And so you're distinguishing that from the sharing of inside information, which is an important distinction because also in the indictment are at least, I think,

actually three or four instances of somebody,

well, let's just take them one by one.

Two of them involve tanking at the end of an NBA season.

And they're all part of the same indictment, so they all share at least some characters

in this wagering scheme.

The first one is a March 2023 Blazers game.

And it says, co-conspirator number eight told a defendant named Eric Ernest, who's a guy who comes up in both this one and the poker game one, notably, that the Trailblazers are going to be tanking, i.e.

intentionally losing, to increase their odds of getting a better pick in a draft.

And then people place bets on the Blazers not covering the spread in that game.

Co-conspirator number eight.

Okay, that makes me go back and read who co-conspirator number eight is.

He's not named in this gambling indictment.

Co-conspirator number eight, though, is identified as, quote, an individual whose identity is known to the grand jury and a resident of Oregon.

Co-conspirator number eight was an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014 and an NBA coach since at least 2021.

That sure sounds like Chauncey Billops, who is named in the poker indictment as well.

And so what we have here is Chauncey Billups telling this guy, Eric Ernest, I don't know who this dude is, but he apparently knows Terra Rogier's friends and Terra Rogier, and he also knows Chauncey Billops.

Hey, telling Chauncey, telling a friend, hey, man, just, man, I guess we're tanking tonight.

You know, maybe, maybe he's bitching about the GM or the ownership, forcing him to tank, and he's just venting to a friend, and then bets are taken on that friend on that information.

Similarly, there's an Orlando Magic game.

If I can get my sheet of paper out here, I want to read this to you verbatim.

Orlando Magic played the Cavaliers about two weeks later, April 6, 2023.

A defendant named Marvis Fairley, I don't know who that is, but he's all over in this indictment, and co-conspirator number one, who I think I can figure out who that is because it's a part-time NBA player.

That player, he's identified as a player,

knows a player on the magic, knows

a player who's described as one of the magic's regularly starting players.

Player two, an individual whose identity is known to the grand jury, blah, blah, blah.

That player, a regular starter for the Magic, tells co-conspirator number one, hey, man, we're sitting our entire starting five tonight.

We're trying to lose this game.

Co-conspirator number one tells these gamblers, bets are made.

That's the sharing of inside information.

And it's a weird, I don't know if this is, I'm out of my depth in the gambling world.

It would seem natural to me that when you work for an NBA team or play for an NBA team, you're going to have people in your life that you're going to be like, yeah, I guess I'm sitting out tonight.

Or, you know, hey, don't come to the, you know, tell your wife, hey, I'm not, it looks like I'm not playing tonight, blah, blah, blah.

But, you know, the fact that the guy that Chauncey is telling this information to that we're going to tank this game is also mentioned in connection with Rogier and is also mentioned in the poker thing is interesting to me to say the least, right?

Oh, absolutely.

And I believe he mentions that we're not going to play some of our regular players in that game as well.

That's co-conspirator number eight, who is playing career and coaching career matches up with Chauncey.

So while Chauncey was not named in that second indictment, which is more centered on sports betting, he was mentioned and named as a defendant in the poker one.

Certainly seems to be that he had some relationships with some of these guys, this gambling ring, who I've been following for about a year and a half now.

Originally started learning about them for college basketball.

And then they started popping up with some of the same accounts, placing these weird bets on the Rosie or on the Jante Porter.

So it's been something very interesting to follow.

I don't think the story is anywhere close to over.

I think we're going to get some more stuff out of college basketball pretty soon.

And it wouldn't be surprising to me if some more people in the NBA, whether current or former players, are named.

I'm going to come back to that and put a pin in that, current and former players.

But then you have this Lakers games on February 9th and January 15th, 2024.

Damon Jones is mentioned here.

Damon Jones, they talk about how he played and coached for the the Cavaliers and the Lakers.

He said during many of those years, Jones was a teammate or a coach of a prominent NBA player.

By virtue of his relationship with that player, blah, blah, blah, he had access to information.

And he tells people in his life

on February 9th, he texts, get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight.

Milwaukee's playing the Lakers before the information is out.

Player three, the prominent player, is out tonight.

Bet enough so that D.

Jones, him, can eat two.

There only can be one or two players who that is.

LeBron James did not play in that February 9th, 2023 game.

No one is implying that LeBron James has anything to do with anybody.

It's not even clear if LeBron James himself told Damon Jones, hey, I'm out tonight.

They're friends.

It's a natural thing you would.

This is the gray area that I'm talking about is like.

It's natural to have these kind of conversations with people in your life, and then you can't control where that information goes.

So what am I to do?

Like, there's just no way the NBA can employ.

You can't, the NBA can't go to people and say, you can't tell anyone in your life anything about anything anymore.

Yeah, you're right.

It's a very difficult spot, but we know that they should not be relaying it to people they know are going to bet.

Now, we don't think LeBron did that with Damon Jones, but Damon Jones clearly had some nefarious ideas here, according to that text message and

the indictment.

So what are they supposed to do?

Well, they got to be very clear and transparent on those injury reports.

Rogier in that March 2023 game, he was not listed on the game before and was telling people they would leave.

We got to make sure that that stuff is accurate and as well.

I know that's a trouble spot.

Just yesterday, we had Kat go out, say he was going to be doubtful, and then he's upgraded to questionable, and then all of a sudden he's going to play.

It's always going to be an issue, but we just have to make sure and monitor as closely as we can.

and get rid of the nefarious actors, right?

If guys are doing this, passing it along to people they know are gamblers.

First of all, they're going to get caught because now in the days of regulation, we see these these unusual betting spikes that come in hey why are people betting on jante porter you know nobody's betting on jante porter except when there's something kind of untoward going on so they're going to get caught if you're going to try to pull something off like this and just hopefully this acts as a deterrent

i am just curious about these sort of the natural leak of information right um

i i don't know what to do with that i'm going to be honest with you like an orlando magic player telling a friend, man, fuck, we're tanking tonight, man.

I was looking forward.

I wanted to score 30 tonight or whatever.

Like,

that's a natural thing.

And I can't know where that information is going.

I'm trying to think of a parallel to this in the non-sports world.

Insider training would be the obvious one, but

that's apples to oranges.

I agree, but there is a line, right?

I don't think it's this player relaying it to his friend, but once that friend takes it to known gamblers and knows that they're going to use it for their betting advantage that's a clear line right so we know that thing so maybe we don't punish the players for that but anybody that knows and takes this to a known gambler who's going to do this yeah i mean you got to get that person out of the league well jante porter is out of the league right um Terry Rogier's lawyer released a statement to Pablo Torre and others today saying essentially, like, we disagree with this.

We've cooperated, blah, blah, blah.

So we'll see what happens with Terry Rogier.

But it's very clear, like, if you are caught in the middle of this knowingly, knowingly, you're going to get banned from the league.

Chauncey Billips has been placed on leave, by the way.

Tiago Splitter is now the acting head coach of the Portland Trailblazers.

If any of the, we haven't even talked about the poker stuff yet.

If any of this stuff is substantiated, I would find it very likely that Chauncey's career in the NBA is over.

It doesn't seem recoverable to me.

By the way, I interviewed Chauncey Billips a week ago about Scoot Henderson.

Everything was completely normal, blah, blah, blah.

What was I saying?

Oh, look, look, I know

everyone's in bed with the sports gambling companies.

Like, I don't gamble on sports.

I've never placed a bet on any of these gambling platforms.

It's just not something I would do.

I'm also not naive to like who sponsors this podcast, who sponsors the Ringers podcast, who sponsors all, like, we're all, we're all complicit in some ways.

I don't know how else to just be more bald-faced about it than that, but, like.

It's just a freaking mess, man.

I don't know what the NBA has to do to clean this up.

It's one thing to say these prop bets need to be just vaporized.

Like, and we've talked about that before.

You just shouldn't be able to bet on like random role players doing X, Y, and Z in these games.

That's one thing.

It just seems like there's a mess.

There's just a larger mess here.

And this is before we get to gamblers harassing coaches and players about their performance.

And you cost me money.

That's, that's an inevitable byproduct.

I don't know there's anything you can do about that.

But man,

you said like you wouldn't be surprised if there's more names that come out.

Sure, I wouldn't.

I think that especially the ones that are running around in the poker circles, there are athletes definitely playing in these games more than just the ones that were named.

I think we'll hear about them eventually.

So it wouldn't surprise me at all.

And you're right.

I mean, it's a mess right now.

It's a mess right now.

However, would we have known about this if all this was still done in an underground sports book with the local bookmaker or with an offshore?

Probably not.

Okay.

So we have one turn one way.

We're seeing the visibility into the market.

We're able to see these things and catch these guys.

And hopefully net people will notice that now, hey, we're going to get caught if we try to do something like this.

It'll end our career.

And they don't.

The other side of it is you mentioned all the prop bets.

And Commissioner Silver is just on our network the other day talking about his concern about the prop bets.

And I am a little concerned too, because the betting menus on these prop bets are too big.

There are too many offerings.

You can move the over-under on points down or up to whichever you want to.

And they're on every player and they're on first baskets and they're on all these things.

I figure that those betting menus just open up opportunities for people to try this.

They almost incentivize you to try it.

It's not only the offerings of the bets, but it's the betting limits that they're taking on these things that are so easily to try to manipulate.

If we were to offer whatever you want, but you're only going to be able to bet 20 bucks on this and you're not going to be able to parley it.

So I think there are things that the sports betting industry can do on the same thing.

I think the sports industry has done their job here in terms of identifying it and getting these guys caught.

You're making me remember the baseball thing from a couple of months ago where I believe it was a Cleveland Guardians pitcher.

It was the bet was the first pitch will be a ball or a strike or something, and he threw the ball five feet outside.

And it's like,

and what you're saying is the Adam Silver argument has long been the sort of sunshine transparency argument of bringing this all into the light will make it policable.

And in that theory, I guess right now we'd be going through the sort of inevitable five to 10 year learning curve of, yeah, this is really policable.

People will figure out that because it's regulated and policable, you are going to get caught.

And when you get caught, you are going to be banned.

And that will have a chilling effect on anyone doing it anymore.

I guess the flip side would be it's actually now so widespread that maybe the sunshine alone is not a solution.

And maybe this is just not a five to 10 year learning curve that will be quelled, but the new reality.

I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that, but there's a lot going on, man.

Your beat is not going to be like, I mean, I don't, I mean, I don't know.

I don't even, I'm not even asking a question.

I'm just saying those are, those seems to be the two kind of prevailing schools of thought.

You know, this has been 2018 is when they legalized sports betting, right?

Before then, you would maybe get a link about the opening line for the Super Bowl on ESPN.com.

About it was probably half a year ago, there's what, six or seven headlines on the news stack for the top headlines on ESPN.com.

Four of them dealt with betting scandals.

It was like half.

And it was all these different ones that were going on.

College, NBA, Major League Baseball, NFL, you name it.

They've all been touched by these scandals.

Hopefully, it will slow down a little bit and people will learn, like you mentioned, that you are going to get caught and that you will end your career.

And in some of these cases, you're going to serve big time jail time.

But right now, it's a mess.

Turning to the poker one,

you are focused on the kind of sports betting that we're talking about right now.

Is this your world at all?

Or is that also like, you know, not that you play, but is that even something that's been like mafia-rigged poker games, infrared playing cards, all this stuff?

It just seems crazy to me, but I guess this is going on.

There's been an overlap in the poker world and the betting scandals for quite a while.

It went back to Jon jante porter a lot of people said he got in debt uh through poker but you're right some of these things that they do to manipulate these poker games automatic shufflers that they can control and then relay the information to somebody who can see all the cards and they feed it back there was a story about people wearing such tiny magnets in their ear that were transmitters that you would have to take them out uh

take the transmitters in there you'd have to take them out with a magnet you'd stick it in there and get it took to pull it out because it was so small so the sophistication of these things that are going on, it is wild.

Yeah, and just to be clear,

just to read a sentence out of the poker indictment, which is a different one and how it relates to Chauncey Phillips.

This is the one he's actually named in.

He's not named, remember, in the NBA gambling one.

He's just sort of pseudo-identified.

This is from the poker one.

For example, in furtherance of the rigged poker scheme, in or around April 2019, six years ago, several of the defendants participated in rigged games in Las Vegas, Nevada, in which they defrauded victims of at least $50,000.

By the way, there's victims here who lost six figures.

This is chump change compared to that.

The defendants, Chauncey Billips, Eric Ernest, who again is the guy who is informed that the Blazers are going to tank games and is connected to Terry Rogier and other cases.

The defendants, Chauncey Billips, Eric Ernest, Jamie Gillette, Robert Stroud, and Sophia Y organized and participated in these rigged games using a rigged shuffling machine supplied by Stroud.

So you can see a world in which Chauncey and Damon Jones and other quote, they call them quote face cards, the celebrities who are there to draw the fish into the game would argue, well, we didn't know.

We thought we were being invited to an honest program.

We like playing being poker.

We like being big shots.

The allegation is that they indeed knew everything that was going on, and we'll see if that is borne out.

But again, there are characters who appear in both of these indictments, and that was what was sort of most interesting to me.

Yeah, like I said, there's a huge overlap in the poker community in the sports betting world uh people that are professional poker players are also known as advantaged players in sports betting they're very good at uh getting the information before everybody else and putting it into the play into the market before everybody else there's always been an overlap for athletes that like playing cards they do it openly on the world series of poker you've seen guys play out there so uh again the overlap in this between poker and sports betting is going to be one to follow for sure and i think it will be the reveal some of these other names that we're waiting for.

Yeah.

And again, it's one thing if you're talking about sort of

semi, no, not semi-honest decisions by teams that just get out into the world before they get out into the public, that we're sitting players, that this player is hurt, that whatever it is.

But we can talk about tanking on a, you know, this is just yet another consequence of having a reverse order or semi-reverse order, weighted lottery, whatever, is that these kind of things can happen at the end of a season.

That's distinct from guys just manipulating their own performance

to

help betters or help themselves earn money.

That just gets it like, that gets at the integrity of sports.

And if you lose that on a larger scale, you've lost the sport, but we're not even close to there, obviously.

It's easy for me to be like, if you're in the NBA, if you're in professional sports, just don't bet on sports.

How about you just don't, just don't do it?

It's easy for me to say that because I don't bet on sports and

these people are making enormous amounts of money.

Why do they need to bet on sports?

But we've also seen that it's a very addictive and fun thing for people.

And once you get into it, I mean, I've had friends who have lost marriages to it.

Like, I've seen it up close.

It's hard to stop once you start.

And,

you know,

it is legal.

And

it's, and some of these guys do run into debt problems that they try to climb out of in in counterproductive ways, just like regular people outside of sports make mistakes to like pile mistake on top of mistake.

So it's easy for me to say that.

It should, like, I, I, like, if you play sports, if you play pro sports, you just shouldn't bet on it, but it's, it's, it's, I guess, not that simple.

And it's sort of naive of anyone like me to just sort of get on my lectern and tisk-tisk people like that.

It's hard to imagine, though.

I mean, these guys, how much did Rozier make?

$100 billion in Berlin's career?

And he was willing to do this for how muchever money they got, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars down for his share.

I mean, it is dumbfounding to me.

I will say, though, to your point about addiction, when somebody is battling addiction and not betting

responsibly within their means.

uh you're not making good decisions at that point right you're in the thralls of an addiction and it is impacting your judgment.

So you're making decisions that are just not very good ones.

And to your earlier point, you know, we're a hundred plus years into gambling,

chipping away into sports in one way or another.

And in the case of the Black Sox, sort of, you know, chipping away at the integrity of a World Series in 1919, more than 100 years ago.

So it's not like a new, new, new phenomenon, but it is the kind of thing where it's like,

if I'm Adam Silver, I want to get everyone in a room and just say like, you delete all your accounts.

You don't, you just like, you're just like bright lined.

This is just not something you need to be participating in.

Yeah, I completely agree.

You shouldn't joke about sports betting if you're playing sports.

You shouldn't place bets if you're playing sports.

You should just stay completely away from it.

But again,

that's one thing, but

telling your friend who has a friend who has a friend, you know, that your knee hurts or something is something distinct from that and

pretty innocent to me.

What am I not asking you?

What should I be asking you that we haven't touched on?

Just another wild, it feels like we're going to have a wild day like this every other year, but this is going to be,

if it's the end of a head coach and Hall of Fame player's career in the NBA, this is going to be a before and after day in the history of sports and gambling and basketball.

When we started hearing a coach was involved, I knew that this was going to be way bigger than if Terry Rogier had just been arrested on this.

We've been reporting on Terry.

It would have been a big deal.

But once we started hearing a coach, and then when you start thinking about the co-conspirator number eight that we talked about at the beginning of this, this is

a guy that is transmitting information, not only saying we're tanking, because if

you follow basketball, you follow the league, you know which teams are out of it and, you know, just playing for traffic status.

But he was relaying injury information.

And so this person had insight into guys that were not going to play before

they were listed on the injury report.

And the process was relay it to a gambler.

Now, think about

you could say he may not have known.

He was just relaying it to a friend.

Now, this friend happens to be mentioned in the poker indictment as well, but let's give the ultimate benefit of that.

I'll say he's just gossiping to a friend.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, it doesn't look good.

Have I been derelict in not asking something else about any of this?

Again, the poker is the one that Chauncey has been arrested and charged with.

The other stuff,

he's not charged with anything.

It just is mentioned that someone matching his description told a guy with connections to the gambling world that the Blazers were tanking that particular.

That's correct.

No, I think you did a good job.

I just want to re-emphasize that I believe there is a clear distinction that should be made between sharing of inside information that allows better and then actual players participating in schemes to go out there and manipulate their performance.

I think that's a big, big deal.

And right now, we've only seen that in two instances, three games total, two players, where the rest of the stuff, what seems to be sharing of inside information.

All right, David Perdum, you've got a lot to do today.

Thank you for making a little time for us at the Zach Lowe Show.

We'll see you down the road.

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All right, first change of pace.

We're going to talk about basketball that was played on the basketball court.

Blake Griffin is here, six-time all-star.

I'm going to say it, future NBA Hall of Famer, rookie of the year, current Amazon analyst, guru.

I don't know what you are, what your title is, but I look forward to this great crew you've got going on Amazon.

And thanks for coming on, buddy.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

Glad to be on.

Last time I saw you, we were reliving one of the lowest moments of your career.

Yeah, man.

Watching Game Game 6 of the 2015 Western Conference semifinals here.

We won't talk about that, though.

That was a tough one for you.

That was fun.

I imagine when you asked me to come on the pod, I was like, hey, we're just going to talk about you getting traded to Detroit.

That's just going to be the topic for today.

We were going to go a little longer today.

Then there was some big breaking news.

So let's just,

I thought a simple way to just, you and I have been binging all the games, as many games as we can.

There were a million last night.

We're recording this Thursday afternoon.

A good way to get off some of our early season first impressions, overreactions, whatever, would be let's just, now that we've had a game to watch almost every team, let's pick our top six in each conference.

I haven't done that actually in order, and then we'll just sort of riff a little bit.

So we're going to start with the Superior Conference, the one you spent most of your career in the Western Conference.

Blake Griffin's top six, we don't have to go through the play-in to get into the playoffs in the Western Conference.

Let's go.

I've got the pretty obvious Oklahoma City Thunder.

I mean, I think they got better last year from last year just by the simple fact that they have experience of a deep, the deepest playoff run you could possibly have.

Chet looked good, Kaysen Wallace looked good, they didn't have J-Dub.

Like, they just have guys that you're just like, yeah, they got it, you know, and barring injuries that I think they're

the heavy favorite.

So let's go Oklahoma City.

Do you want to go rapid fire here?

Yeah, just go rapid fire.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Oklahoma City, I got Denver.

I got

Houston, Minnesota, Warriors, Clippers.

Okay, we have the same six in a different order.

I will

mine.

Say yours again.

It was...

Oklahoma City.

Okay.

Denver.

Houston, Minnesota, Warriors, Clippers.

Okay.

I have Oklahoma City number one.

It's a no-brainer.

And I don't think they actually look great against Houston

in the first game.

They look like a team who needed their second best offensive player.

But everything that I saw from Chet was everything I expected to see from Chet in what is basically his second season or the third season, rather, making a leap like that.

Kayson Wallace, I've mentioned many times, is like a sleeper, most improved player candidate for me, and just awesome game all around.

Denver, number two.

They're another no-brainer for me.

I just think they levitate above the rest of these teams.

I went Warriors number three.

Wow, really?

I thought they looked awesome against the Lakers, who neither of us have pointedly.

By the way, Draymond, congratulations.

I was at the Knicks Cavs game last night, and someone who was there was like, did Draymond, has anyone looked up whether that was the quickest in-season technical foul from a player who was not even in the game?

That has to be the record for quickest bench guy getting a tech.

Oh, bench guy 100%.

Were we six minutes in?

About six minutes in.

I don't even know what he was mad.

I think he was, he was right.

Whatever he was mad about was right, and the technical free throw was missed, and he went all ball on light.

Okay, I just thought they looked awesome for Minnesota.

Starting DiVincenzo over Conley is a move I hinted at on this podcast last week.

Um, Conley playing only 13 minutes and looking eh, kind of concerned me a little bit.

DiVincenzo

kind of concerned me a little bit, but I like Jalen Clark.

I like Terrence Shannon.

They're just rock solid.

They go in at four.

Houston, let's talk about you had them third.

I have them fifth.

And then I have the Clippers sixth.

And boy, will we talk about that?

What did you see from Houston in an opening game loss at Oklahoma City that encouraged you, worried you, whatever the right,

what did you notice?

I'm going to start with worried me.

They're just lack of ball handling.

I thought Oklahoma City.

The good news is there's probably not another team that can pressure you as much as Oklahoma City.

The bad news is you have to beat Oklahoma City if you want to win a championship.

So, like, they're going to have to see them in the playoffs.

Now, that's not going to be a continuous problem, is the ball handling in the regular season as much as it is against Oklahoma City.

So, I was kind of hoping to see Reed Shepard, you know, get some good minutes, be able to handle the ball.

Defensively, it looked a little rough out there at times.

Uh, I love a Min Thompson, absolutely love him.

Um, and Singun is a joy to watch.

So, just the fact that, like, those three got those two with Kevin Durant,

Nad and Jabari, like you have a really solid team.

You have a great coach.

And that's kind of what I'm banging on.

And

they played a

tough game.

So I was encouraged by some things.

The glaring lack of ball handling, I think, is going to come up to bite them if they don't find somebody to fill that void.

Look, I was pushing back from second one on this idea that Fred Van Vleet's injury was, quote, a blessing in disguise for them.

I just didn't buy it despite how excited I am for Ahmed Thompson and for Reed Shepard, who

defensively, he can make plays.

He is hand on the ball.

You can strips and even shot blocks, but in space was a little rough.

Shen Goon, just a little fun step for you.

Shen Goon ran 15 pick and rolls in that game as the ball handler.

Something you know a lot about, inverted pick and rolls, Blake Griffin.

That's amazing.

15.

His previous career high, his previous high in any of the last two seasons was five.

So that was a C change, and I think indicative of how much they needed him to do stuff.

Amen looked awesome, and I wonder if they win that game, if he can stay in it, and he instead had that, whatever, that lower body injury he had to come out.

And they would, when they were clearing the floor for him, and they would have Adams come up at, like, Amen would have the ball in the right wing.

Adams would come up to set an off-ball screen for KD way high on the floor to clear everybody out.

Like, they couldn't do anything with Ahmed Thompson.

He was scoring at will, but it just looked a little rough.

Offensive rating was bad.

Durant's workload worried me.

And that was one of the things I said right when Van Vliet got hurt going against the Blessing in Disguise thing: there's going to be a temptation to overwork Kevin Durant in the first 30 games of the season, and they cannot do that.

Can Adams keep this up?

I mean, what a story.

He's like sprinting coast to coast on rim runs, getting every offensive bread.

This guy looked broken a year and a half ago.

Can he keep it up?

They do miss miss Finney Smith.

It's just a little clunky.

Tari Eason looked skittish and just indecisive.

But I still think they're just a rough, everyone three to eight and maybe they have probably three days.

He's going to be pretty bunched up, maybe three to nine.

So like it's three, four, five, whatever.

I just think Houston is pretty rock solid.

Should we talk about

the clips?

Wait, sorry.

You had Houston fifth?

No.

Okay.

Okay.

I had Minnesota fourth, Houston, fifth.

You had Minnesota fourth and Golden State fifth.

So we just flipped Houston and Golden State.

And we both had the Clippers sixth.

Okay.

Extremely problematic opening game from the Clippers getting boat raced by Utah.

Yeah.

Discouraging opening game for the Lakers

and a holy shit opening game for Victor Wembanyama.

And I'm like, I'm a week away from vaulting the Spurs into the top six over the Clippers.

And

I mean, I don't just talk about Wembanyama.

That's all.

I really just want to hear you talk about Wembanyama because that game, that was everything anyone could have asked for out of him on both ends of the floor.

When I started seeing clips of Wembanyama and then I saw like really like a highlight package of him when he was still overseas.

I remember this was like around 2023.

You know, he was whatever.

It was coming up my last year in the NBA.

I remember seeing like some real highlights.

It was like, Victor Wimonyama is going to enter the draft.

Called my agent, I was like, I think it's time.

I think we hang it up.

I think it's been a good run.

I mean, this guy, like, listen, we can, and everybody does.

We can go on about his height, his handle, his shot blocking, his touch, his shooting ability.

Like, everybody talks about that.

Everybody sees it.

Last night was a perfect display of some of the otherworldly things he does.

I think what was almost just as impressive, if not more, is his mentality.

Like this kid seems so focused.

He's going and working out with monks in the offseason.

He's spending time with Elijah Mon.

He's spending time with KG.

Every interview you see of him is thoughtful.

It's like his focus on like who he wants to be and how great he wants to be is

by far first and foremost in his life.

I can't think of another superstar or somebody with this potential that has this type of focus and drive.

So

that's just like my big wimby piece.

On top of that, like he has made strides.

Like, and

two years from now, when his hips get even stronger, when he gets a little bit more to his like upper body frame, now some of these spin moves that he's doing, you know, he's spinning and he's still getting up there.

He's still finishing over or slinging out a pass.

I feel like in two years, three years, I was talking about this with Steve Nash last night, like those are just going to all be dunks.

Like his, his ceiling, he's already so good in his ceiling.

I don't know where it is.

The handle last night was noticeably not just tighter, but like faster.

Like the Pitter Pat speed dribble, he had that coast-to-coast lefty in and out dribble, blow by Anthony Davis, not some chump, and dunk.

He had the like dance with the ball.

He did the chef.

He did the chef thing after he fell over and hit the three.

And then that post-up against PJ Washington when he upfaked him and then went up and under for the reverse.

My favorite part of that was he got PJ Washington thinking a little.

He got he got PJ, he got in his head before he even got the ball by faking the old like Shaq, or used to even do this sometimes, spin back for the lob.

Zion does it sometimes.

Like he faked a spin to the baseline for the lob, and PJ bit on it.

And from that, from that moment on, Victor had him in his bag.

And then he had one dunk against the Mavs were playing zone, and he got the ball at like the right elbow, took one dribble, two steps, and

went up to dunk.

And you could see him be like, Am I going to hit my head on the backboard?

Have I gotten too far underneath?

It was just an absolutely imbonker's performance across the board.

There was also a dunk last night where he was like, he was on the way down for a long time and still just dunked you.

I can't remember what.

I think it was a rip.

it was a rip left, and he kind of just went up and he's so far away.

And

it's great.

It's just weird to see like somebody go to their peak and then three seconds later, they're still, they're still, they still have the ability to dunk it.

I, uh, I agree.

His handle, to me, tight is just like, it's the speed and the, and the control, right?

Like before he had a good handle, but it felt loose, you know what I mean?

And people weren't necessarily ripping him, but his handle was all within

here,

you know, instead of his arms are so long putting it out here.

I thought he was

unbelievable last night.

And obviously, like there was some highlight plays, but man, that kid, the Spurs also have a really light first 15 games, 17 games.

I think 15 of their 17 are against

possibly non-playoff teams.

So that kind of gives, that's another reason I would like be so close to putting them in the top six because I just think they're going to have some runway to really work some things out and, you know, take off with a, with a really good, with a really good record this season.

Yeah, listeners will know I have been way higher on the Spurs than consensus since July when they, when they sort of wrapped their offseason,

drafted Harper, who I thought looked pretty damn good last night.

I think more, I don't think Dallas was aggressive enough daring all the Spurs perimeter guys other than Vassell to just shoot.

And I think other teams will take a little bit of a bigger step back against Harper and against Castle, who also looked like Castle is so explosive.

He's one of those guys who gets the ball and goes up

in space and goes up to the rim.

And it feels like he's still going up.

Just like

he just keeps going up, and the defender is like falling backwards.

When he picked D'Lo, that was not a great D'Lo moment.

And

I do think their lack of shooting is sometimes going to be problematic, but they played super fast last night.

They ran their cuts super fast.

They screened super fast.

Harper got a nice

slot cut basket, which is going to be important for him playing off the ball, finding a way to punish teams who kind of don't respect his three off the ball.

Same with Castle.

I just really like the way they play.

We didn't even see

the Fox Wimby pick and roll.

No.

Fox even increases that speed.

And I agree that the three-point shooting

will be an issue at times, but man, when you have somebody like Wimby,

are you ever out of a game?

Well, that's been my it's like the guy's just going to be so good

like

i i just i i'm very close to just jumping them into the top six already um

and i think fox is obviously going to help them so hand in play cornet

cornet is a game changer for them having a legit backup center who can also play a little bit with wimbunyama which we saw last night that's a big big deal he was really good for them Huge.

He's been great.

I'm a big Cornette fan.

He's just a guy, knows his role, plays exactly.

You know, there was those moments when you see him catch

at the elbow and they're back completely off.

And he's not even thinking about it.

He's like, nope, I'm just going to go to that next thing, go find that DHL screen role.

He's doing,

he will play his exact role, which I think is perfect next to Wemby.

And the fact that Wemby is 7-6 and Luke Cornette 7-1 and they can play together is terrifying.

Yeah, I mean, the defensive stuff, it just, it goes without saying.

And he looks even more confident in his positioning and the way he can really scare people when they come to the lane, but just by stunting at them and getting back to his guy, he disrupted a couple of lobs last night.

Like, Flag had one that he just no shot.

First impressions of the Dallas Mavericks and Cooper Flag.

I so, to be honest, I didn't get to watch a ton of that game.

I was kind of watching.

We had this Amazon dinner last night, so we were kind of watching on our phones, just

kind of in awe.

I just thought they just looked flat.

I thought defensively they looked like they were discombobulated.

It's funny, Sean Sweeney going from

Dallas to San Antonio.

I was talking to him the other week, and he was just talking about sort of implementing sort of that same thing.

It truly looked like Dallas lost their defense, their main defensive coach, and it looked like he went right to San Antonio.

I thought their defensive schemes were just, they were just off.

Again,

flag, first game.

I think he's great.

I love his preseason stuff.

I love his ceiling, but

San Antonio was just, they just, they outworked him in every, every aspect.

I was

slightly

on Dallas when it came down to it before the season.

I did Bill's.

I mean, it's a funny day to say it, but it's on the public record.

There's no way for me to avoid the language.

I did Bill's over-under podcast

last week, and Dallas's line was either 41.5 half or 40 and a half.

And I took the under

and there were two reasons I took the under.

Big picture, if the season goes sideways, they seem like a let's veer toward the top of the draft kind of team, but that's big picture.

Little picture was everything I saw last night.

I was just worried their offense was going to be a little like, eh, a little stuck in the mud, a little clunky playing these huge lineups with Flag, Davis, and Lively, who I love, or Gafford, who didn't play, or Powell, who inexplicably played a lot until he wasn't playing anymore.

And that's kind of like it just, there wasn't a lot of without Kyrie

and without a point guard in the starting lineup, and then with D'Lo

not really playing very well, to be kind, as a backup to the point that they then go to Brandon Williams and Jaden Hardy.

It just kind of seemed directionless.

And defenders are going to go under on Flag.

They're going to switch on Flag both sides directions.

Like, we don't think you can bully our guards.

We think you're going to settle for fadeaways.

He did in the first half.

In the second, he beat up Champeny on a couple post-ups.

I thought that was encouraging.

And we don't think you can beat our centers off the dribble if we take a step away from you and dare you to shoot.

And that all kind of bore out in the first game.

It's only one game.

It's a long season.

There's 81 left, but they just kind of looked like, oh, wow, they need Kyrie or somebody like that even more than anticipated.

Yeah, I think that was, I think that offensively, that was like glaring.

To me, they're one of those teams in sort of the same way, like Philly, where it's just like

they could win 41 games.

They could win 20 games.

Health depending.

I mean, Clay, eight, we know how much AD is in and out of the lineup.

Kyrie depends on when he comes back.

I think you're right.

If things go bad,

it could get bad quickly.

Well,

I just meant that like just...

The season has to go very badly for that tanking scenario to come into play.

And I just took the under, but barely.

I they're going to be a solid team with a good defense.

I just was a little worried about the offense.

We only have seen the Lakers play once.

It was a loss to the Warriors, who, again, I thought looked awesome.

Perfect Jonathan Kamenga game.

Everything the Warriors.

I was actually surprised they started him and Draymana Butler all together.

Those three barely played together last season because of the spacing concerns that Steve Kerr talks about all the time.

Defended well, unselfish playmaking.

Didn't force too many like 17, 18 footers off the dribble.

We'll talk a little bit more about him later.

Kind of a flat performance by the Lakers in a game that Luca was awesome.

Reeves ended up with a pretty good stat line.

No one else did much of anything.

I don't know.

What'd you see?

From the Lakers, I just, my biggest question is, I just don't know how you guard

the backcourt with...

having to play Austin Reeves and Luca 34 plus minutes a game.

That was their Achilles heel last year.

I mean, rebounding was like Achilles heel.

The Aiton experiment, I just will see how long, see how long that goes for.

I thought they were incredibly flat.

The one great thing, Luca looked great.

He looked in good shape.

He was active defensively.

Not saying he played the best defense, but he was active.

He had a couple of steals, even had a block.

When they hunted him one-on-one, he looked good against Stanford.

Yes, exactly.

I was also encouraged by how he looked in the second quarter, in the fourth quarter.

Like, he still looked like he was a little bit fresh.

I know it's game one, um, but largely disappointed in most of it.

I think Austin Reeves

scored maybe 13 in the fourth quarter or something like that.

And 11 of them were probably in the last six minutes.

So, you know, you look at the box score and you see he has, I think, 26, and you're like, oh, he had a pretty good game.

But

it was too little, too late at that point.

But I'm with you.

I thought the Warriors looked great.

I thought

they're just the Warrior.

I mean,

they just have the same formula.

Steph and Draymond, just people come in and they just keep it rolling.

And it seemed to me like they were just like, hey, like, we're going to guard, we're going to put Kaminga on Luca, and nobody else is going to, nobody else is going to get anything.

They were trading, you know, Luca's mid-range

for threes, and it just, I mean, you saw the result.

I saw you said a nice thing about Kaminga a couple of days ago on Run It Back, I think, with Lou Will and Parsons and Beatle, and I can't remember who else.

Boogie, oh, yeah, boogie.

Um,

I've always been like a Kaminga is good guy.

I understand the flaws, I understand the limitations.

I do too.

And the thing I've always said is, like, he,

because he plays for the Warriors, who have this totally unique style, passing, cutting, movement, selflessness, he sticks out a little bit.

And as a result of sticking out, he kind of gets typecast as a a selfish scorer.

And sometimes he plays that way, but I've always said, like, if you actually watch him play, he's trying to do Warrior stuff.

Like, he's trying to do the quick pitch and pitch back to Steph.

He's trying to do the like pass and go run instead of screen.

It's not his natural game, but he's making an effort at it.

And there was one play in that game against the Lakers.

He got the ball in the right corner, deep in like coffin corner behind the three-point arc.

And I thought he was going to like dance with it and just say, you know, this possession is not going anywhere.

I'm going to make it go somewhere.

I'm Jonathan Kaminga.

And he did for like a dribble, and then he saw Draymond at the top of the arc, and he whipped this pass off to Draymond, and he did it because he knew Draymond was going to hand the ball to Steph, and that's exactly what happened.

I think Steph hit a three, and then he had another like simple just drive and kick to Pajemski for a three where I was sure he was going to shoot it.

But that first pass to Draymond is

indicative of an understanding of, I'm just, I'm not just passing to Draymond.

I'm kind of passing to Steph.

This is like a hockey assist to Steph because of the way we play.

I just thought he played a great game.

The Lakers, I thought Smart looked all right.

Like, for a guy who hasn't played much last year, I thought he moved okay.

I thought Rui looked okay.

Ayton, not enough.

La Ravia, not enough.

I don't know.

It's just hard in the West, man.

I think the Lakers are good.

I just think without LeBron, do they have enough juice against these other great teams?

That's why they're not in either of our top sixes.

And my God, the Vegas love the Clippers.

I like the Clippers on paper.

They They looked fucking horrible last night against the Jazz.

Yeah, I mean,

one thing about the Lakers, the LeBron not starting the season scares me and not knowing a lot about where he's at.

The Aiton thing,

he's got to roll.

He has to roll and roll hard two, three times early in the game.

Then he can maybe do his little thing.

If you're trying to give him throw him a bone and let him get those little short rolls, like it feels like he wants to do, I think

it just feels like he's just always kind of in the wrong place.

He's got like that next gear to go to where, you know, he's a, he's a true, he doesn't have to be a 25 and 15 guy.

He just needs to be a 12 and 12 and make the right play guy.

And it will, it will go so far for Luca, it will go so far for the Lakers, their defense, everything.

So that was, that was a little bit disappointing.

I don't know that I was expecting like a huge turnaround from the Aiden that we've seen over the years, but that's just kind of what I saw.

Go ahead.

Sorry, Clippers.

I didn't really get to watch that game last night.

I was sort of following along, but it just looked like everything was going in for Utah.

I mean, I don't know.

You tell me.

Well, they just looked old and slow, which is really what they are.

And they were missing one key bench guy, Bogdanovich.

But look,

I thought both the Warriors and the Clippers would have strong regular seasons.

I think the Warriors are a little better than the Clippers.

But

I shut the title window pretty tightly for both.

And again, it's a long season.

The Warriors, I think, are even a little better than I thought they were.

Butler just looks awesome.

But it's just when everyone is that old on your team and in some cases, like Hawaii injury prone, it's hard for me to believe.

Like Oklahoma City, as young and deep as they are, was running on fumes at the end of a four playoff series.

Like, they could barely gut it through to the end, and maybe they don't even win if Halliburton doesn't get injured.

Both of those teams are just so ancient in terms of their key rotation guys that it's hard for me to see them getting all the way to the end.

But the Clippers looked very old and very slow, and maybe I was a little too pessimistic about the Warriors because they just are a machine that keeps on trucking.

The Lakers, they just looked a little vanilla, a little predictable to me.

And then I'm just monitoring Memphis at the bottom of this discussion because, you know, as long as Morant and Jackson are healthy, despite all the injuries behind them, Jerome and Pippen Jr.

and Edie and Clark, they tend to win a fair amount of games.

I didn't see their game last night against who they played, the Pelicans, but

yeah, so that's where we are in the West.

Want to go East?

Yeah, let's do it.

Top six in the East.

I'll let you go first.

Just say your top six in order and we'll see how much we agree or disagree.

Top six.

I'm going to still go Cleveland one.

I'm going to go Knicks two.

Orlando three.

I didn't.

I'm going to go Detroit,

Atlanta, Milwaukee.

We have the same six teams again in a different order.

Cleveland,

New York.

I was at that game last night.

Such a bummer when you get so amped for an opening game and so many dudes are out.

Yeah.

Orlando,

I saw their game against Miami last night.

Just another fall from a head loss for Miami, who just made a whole season of them last year, somehow opened the season, looking good.

Like, I was watching the game.

This is how I work.

Like, I was at Knicks Cavs, and during commercials and halftime, and everything, I was watching Heat Magic on, like, from behind.

I'm like, all right,

I'm so glad I was high on the heat.

A little higher than consensus on the heat.

The heater looking good.

Norm Powell's jetting around.

Heater doing interesting stuff on offense.

Knicks game ends.

I go down to the locker room.

There's like seven minutes left in the heat magic game.

Heater up like nine.

I get down there.

I'm talking to people.

I run into a Cleveland front office guy.

And I was like, hey,

see any score sign?

Anything interesting?

He's like, yeah, Miami blew that one, huh?

And I was like, what?

God damn it.

So Orlando, Atlanta.

Look, I'm not going to talk about the Hawks.

Hawks, you're on notice after one game.

I spent the entire offseason telling everyone how excited I was for you for

the third of the last four years.

You can't even, you get run off their own freaking home floor by the Toronto Raptors who look great.

That's awesome.

Atlanta, you are on notice.

You're on notice.

You've done it to me before, but you're sticking at number four here.

Milwaukee five, Detroit, six for me.

A little concerned, Detroit took only 24-3s against Chicago in their first game.

So we have the same top six.

Look, Cleveland looked a little clunky last night.

A lot of Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell just like, all right, we got to create some stuff from nothing.

New York missing heart and Robinson looked decent in winning that game.

Definitely, did you see that game?

I did.

I watched most of that game.

Did you sense that New York was playing differently on offense?

Early on, it seemed like they were trying to make a concerted effort to play a little differently offensively.

My biggest thing for them was like,

are we going to get...

just spread the wealth.

Are we just going to get the ball

out of Jalen's hands?

I was looking to see Kat used as like a hub a little bit more.

Like Kat can pass the ball a little bit.

You know, he sort of

loses his way from time to time, but he can sort of be that Sabonis-ish role where you just don't the ball and like let some stuff happen off ball, set some screens, rib screens, whatever it is.

And then, hey, if nothing comes of it, like let him go to work or let him toss out

pick and roll, pick and pop, whatever it is.

I thought they did, I thought they looked pretty good, especially considering heart is out and I think heart is very important for them.

I'm interested because we've been hearing a lot about the Kat Robinson lineup.

I'm really interested to see how that lineup plays out.

But I was, I mean, in Cleveland without Garland, without Struce, without Hunter, like, I don't.

They have such a solid roster.

Like of the guys that are playing, like, oh, Lonzo looks solid, didn't score the ball that much, but he just looked like he had his pop back.

Wade is always helpful.

Merrill is always helpful.

Played crunch time for them last night.

Yeah, I'm not going to worry about the Cavs missing all those guys.

There was some optimism.

I heard some optimism about Garland.

Garland is tracking well, let's say, based on what I heard last night.

The Knicks, I saw germs,

germs of what they want to play.

They played fast, which was unusual for them.

And clearly, like, whoever gets the rebound, OG, you want to go coast to coast, grab and go.

Brunson set more screens than usual.

Bridges got more pick and roll reps than usual.

The cat piece is interesting because you mentioned Robinson didn't play.

They start Huck Porty, who's kind of like Robinson Light in terms of what he does on offense.

And it was interesting to see Kat.

Kat's always got that thing where he did it in Minnesota.

Like, I got to fit in around a rim running center.

And he's got the jumper to be able to do it, obviously, but he likes to be a little bit more involved than that.

But the germs were there of a just were not.

Like Brunson had

one or two cuts along the baseline.

One, he missed a floater.

The other, I can't remember what happened, where he cut and he cut hard.

He cut to score and not just to jog around to get the ball.

My other hot take from last night among these top sixes, if these Cleveland injuries linger,

Orlando could get the number one seed in the East.

It's in play for Orlando.

I don't think they will because I don't trust their offense enough.

But I thought against a pretty spunky Miami team, I I thought they looked good last night.

Bane is just everything.

The Banes bit was even more seamless than I thought.

He got to handle it a lot.

He set a lot of back screens to kind of get their cutting game going, try to hunt some smaller defenders, which was something they weren't able to do much last year.

Suggs only played 17 minutes.

I thought he looked pretty good.

De Silva looked good.

I like Tristan DeSilvo.

I think he's a good little player.

I just think they're going to win a lot of regular season games.

Yeah, I do too.

I mean, I also think

Browns Wagner, I mean,

the shot was concerning last year.

It looks better in Euro.

He had a great Euro summer.

I mean,

from the looks of it last night, he's more comfortable.

Like, he's sort of gotten that thing out of his head.

I don't know if I have Orlando getting the one seed.

I'd love to see them for an extended period of time play faster.

That group of guys being the slowest paced in the NBA last year is mind-boggling to me.

I do think Bain fixes a lot of those issues.

It fixes some issues for them, but I do love their roster.

I love their team.

I love their coach.

Like I said, you're right.

It does kind of come down to Cleveland's injuries

and how quickly they can get guys back in.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect them to be the number one seed.

I picked them to be a third or I think third.

That was where I said just now.

I'm just saying, like, New York and Cleveland have some kinks to work out, and I feel like Orlando doesn't really, um, and, and can kind of get off to a little bit of a head start.

Um,

little note on Miami.

Uh, I mentioned a couple of times, hinted at that they were tinkering with some stuff on offense because their coaching staff was well aware, like, this offense has kind of hit the wall.

We just don't produce a lot of good shots at the rim.

It's a lot of mid-range jumpers.

It's it's just like full of motion and cuts and handoffs, and it doesn't really go anywhere.

It's east-west, east-west.

And that there were, I said, I had little birdies telling me they're tinkering.

Last year was kind of like a gap year pre-getting into media for you.

I don't know.

Did you watch Memphis a lot last year?

I didn't watch Memphis much last year, no.

So they had this, they started the season with this much ballyhoot offense, kind of the brainchild of Noah LaRoche, an assistant coach, where like, we're not going to run any pick and roll.

And we're going to spread the floor.

And we're going to run a lot of like ISO, kind of like a dribble drive offense.

Like we're just going to drop, someone's going to drive.

And everyone's going to spin around around and like, you know, like clear the floor and cut and minimize pick and rolls.

And Miami, from what I heard, it has, has sort of looked at that, talked to some of the people involved in it, and I had heard like they're trying to incorporate it.

And so last night I'm like, yeah, it kind of looks like a less extreme version of that.

And sure enough, Miami ran 29 pick and rolls last night.

Their season low last season was 41.

So like a number that would have been their season low by far.

Just something,

they didn't win, but their offense looked okay.

Just something I'm monitoring.

So, those are our top six.

Detroit was a little discouraging.

Atlanta is in timeout for me.

We have to talk about Philly.

Vij Edgecombe,

holy smokes.

I didn't get to watch that game.

I went back and watched all of his possessions

this morning.

For them to win a game on the road where Embiid is almost like a no-show by his standards would not have seemed possible to me.

And Maxie and Edgecombe combined for 74 points.

I don't know if you got a chance to see VJ at all, but he was awesome.

Yeah, I was sort of going back and forth between the Knicks game and the Celtics game because we have Nick's, we have Nick's Celtics tomorrow.

So I was trying to watch a little bit of both.

But

by the way, Edgecomb would have had, he would have 36.

He smoked two, two free throws.

It almost cost him.

Almost cost him.

I mean, that was, that was, um,

it was just, it was great to see Edgecombe just just come out.

Like, we hardly see rookies come out with that much poise and deliver.

Um,

it's just Philly, man.

Like, they could win, they could win 20 games, and they could win.

It was kind of like I was talking about Dallas, but like,

I don't, I don't know where to put them.

My concern is Joelle's knees.

Um, at times last night, it's looked like he wasn't confident in his body.

And that's a, I mean, I know that feeling.

I know that moment of like,

oh, yeah, the break, because the brakes are the first thing that go.

And it's like, oh, I can still physically kind of do these moves.

The problem is, I can't pop to like the next move.

I can't stop and shoot.

I can't stop and spin.

I can't do those things that look like he wasn't confident in his body.

And that, that's a huge concern for me.

Now, Maxie and Medgecombe and

McCain, when he comes back, these guys can go get you some games.

I just don't.

I just don't see them.

Don't see them doing that.

Top six is not a high bar in the East

in the junior varsity.

And so they're on my list and they have been of like,

as you said, there's just no way to project them.

The variance is just so high, given Embiid's health issues.

Paul George hasn't even played.

But

I, you know,

I had Bill on my podcast like a month ago, and one of the, just for fun, we picked Team USA 2028 because Eurobasket had just happened, and

it was on the mine.

There was nothing else going on.

And my toughest cut for that team was Maxi because I just loved his speed and the open floor would be a really good fit for USA basketball.

They just don't like to take small guards.

But it was, it was my sort of way of just pinning in my mind.

He kind of got off to a slow start last year and didn't make the all-star team, didn't make the all-NBA team.

I still think there's an ascension that's happening with him.

And

last night, I mean, it's going to be overshadowed by Edgecombe, just 40 points, seven of nine on threes.

I've got my eye on Maxi for an all-NBA third-team kind of leap happening this season.

And Edgecombe,

just the poise he played with, his ability to rise up in the mid-range, like just over Derrick White.

I'm just going to get to my spot, Pogo stick, go up.

They let him run the offense with Maxie and Embiid off the floor.

And I just like, I'm just, Maxie, Edgecombe, Grimes, they played 19 minutes together plus 17.

So that's interesting to me.

I'm just flagging it.

You know, Boston's going to be competitive.

Indiana is going to be competitive.

Toronto looks like they're going to be competitive.

You know, like, we'll see.

There's some, like, Detroit look like a team that has some things to prove.

Atlanta, you know, I'm not talking about them, but

Milwaukee's guard play really is

a real question for me.

Obviously, I think Giannis is going to have a phenomenal year.

I think he's just going to go score stirths.

I think, you know,

Turner being there, I think, is great.

I'm just a little bit worried about Milwaukee's guard play.

Atlanta,

like

everybody was talking about they made some great moves this offseason.

I agree.

I think bringing in those guys, they're just one of those teams that it feels like they have no direction.

Like it just doesn't, they don't, they, and

I think part of that, like this year, a big thing for Trey is going to be like, hey, can you get all these guys together who

may or may not fit and just keep moving everybody forward.

Last night was like a perfect example of like kind of just what I think of Atlanta in my head.

It's just like, I don't know, I don't know what their identity is.

What do they want to play like?

What type of team do they want to be?

What type of roster are they going to build?

Every year, it's just kind of a little bit different.

They're getting some nice pieces, but I just need direction.

Well, and what you're really talking about big picture with them is Trey Young.

And

they're either going to find the right direction with Trey Young, like the way he likes to play is going to blend in a little bit more seamlessly with the all-around skill of the guys around him.

And they're going to find that identity.

They're going to land in the right spot.

And we'll know 30, 40 games in.

And in that case, I think there's an extension to be had or a new contract to be had with Atlanta.

If we get halfway through and it feels like there's not a tug of war, just a little bit of stylistic dissonance between how Trey has played in the past and maybe prefers to play versus how Quinn Snyder wants to play, how Jalen Johnson and Arisa Shea and

Kongwu and the other young guys they have on the team want to play with the draft picks they have come in.

And I think that's just an interesting dichotomy there, and maybe it goes the other direction.

I've been optimistic.

It's been one game.

I'm not getting off my Hawks bandwagon yet, but I was not encouraging.

By the way, just going back to the West for a second,

I saw Stephen A.

today said the Spurs could make the conference finals this year if Wemby keeps playing like this.

And people are going to laugh at that and say it's ridiculous.

Like,

I think that's a little much, but three to eight, three to nine in the West is going to be pretty compressed.

And what Wemby did last night was just, it was terrifying.

Well, it's crazy.

I mean, he was making some crazy shots, but I think

impact-wise, like defensively, like there's going to be some, there's going to be some insane nine-block games, eight-block games.

There's going to be like his...

I thought he was fantastic last night.

I think he can play better,

which is crazy to say.

I mean, offensively, I think he did, he was fantastic, but I think he can still play even better.

And that's not even a knock on how he played last night.

I just, like I said earlier, I don't know where his ceiling is.

Um, all right, I asked you a trivia, not a trivia question, just a fun question

before we did this.

Pick your

most important non-all-star in the championship picture this season.

Most important non-all-star X-Factor.

And by non-all-star, I mean hasn't made it and is unlikely to make it so i banned you from picking chet holmgren amen thompson guys who just haven't made it because they're younger they've been injured like a legit this guy has never made it probably won't ever make it but for whatever reason he is massively important to the championship picture

my non-all-star pick is cameron johnson i think same pick same pick same pick i was i'll go aaron gordon because you picked cam johnson but the cam johnson was my pick so

a lot of everybody's talking about Atlanta, their offseason, Nikhil Walker, Chris Dapps, you know, all the, all the guys they

added.

To me, Cam Johnson going to Denver, Bruce Brown going back to Denver, like they

really, like they are the team that got better the most because it put them in such a good spot to contend for a championship again.

They took Oklahoma City.

I mean, yeah, they took Oklahoma City seven games.

Like they were right there.

And Cameron Johnson is, I, to me, exactly what they need.

And he's the type of guy who benefits greatly from Nicole Jokic.

He's my pick, too,

because

I think Michael Porter Jr.

was a great fit with Jokic also, and they won a championship.

So obviously he was.

I think because of all the warts in his game, inconsistent on defense,

podcast game off the rails all summer,

he's kind of gotten dismissed a little bit as, like, oh, this is a no-brainer upgrade for the Nuggets.

And I said right when it happened, the biggest upgrade is Cam Johnson's ability to keep the offense moving off the dribble, to attack a closeout, make the next play.

Michael Porter Jr.

was just not comfortable enough with his handle to be able to do that.

But

on the flip side, he's 6'10 with a Durant-like three-point shot that he can get off over anybody.

And Cam Johnson's a little smaller than that, needs a little more space than that at times.

So he's got to really leverage.

And

I'm not sure he's a defensive upgrade over Michael Porter Jr.

He probably is in space, but he's not on the glass.

Michael Porter Jr.

is a better rebounder.

He's a little bit bigger.

He can make some plays at the rim.

All of which is to say.

Cam Johnson keeping the machine moving and making 40 plus percent on his three.

He can't be like a 37% three-point shooter.

He's got to be knocked down.

Like I want his catch and shoot three percentage this year to be like 44%.

And he's really got to have like career best doing stuff off the dribble, off of closeouts to make this a no-brainer upgrade.

And if he does that, it is going to be a no-brainer upgrade.

And their offense is going to be extremely hard to stop.

The cliche answer would be Jamal Murray because it's always Jamal Murray.

But I just feel like he's kind of an honorary all-star because we talk so much about how he's never made an all-star team.

He kind of doesn't count for this.

Yeah, I agree.

I was, when I was going through the list, Jamal didn't make much sense.

I kind of did the the same thing with Aaron Gordon.

I mean, I think he's been so good for them.

But to me,

it's Cam Johnson.

For all the reasons you've said,

I just really like a guy who you just know exactly what you're going to get from him.

In terms of

the style of play,

I think he's going to greatly benefit from playing with Jokic.

Did you make a finals pick yet on any of your many platforms or not?

I did the whole media, sir.

I had, I actually, I went on a limb and I said, not with the West, I had Oklahoma City.

I wanted to possibly say Denver, but I have Oklahoma City and I, and I went with the Knicks.

Me too.

Same finals.

I went to Oklahoma City over Knicks.

But I just, just one game in, it's amazing.

And we're not even one, we haven't even seen, like, there's like eight teams I haven't played in or something.

We haven't seen Denver.

We haven't seen, yeah.

We haven't seen Denver,

but just one game in, it's like, oh, yeah, there's so much.

It's like unwrapping presence.

It's like, oh, my God, this toy looks like this.

And there's so much we don't know.

All right, Blake Griffin, when are we going to start seeing you?

Like, when does the full blast Amazon schedule start for you?

We start tomorrow, October 24th.

That'll be our first game.

We got Knicks, Celtics.

We got

Minnesota.

We got Lakers.

So yeah, I'll be on every Friday.

And then we will start switching to some Thursday nights when Thursday night football ends.

So, yeah,

we're going.

It's going to be a very

great crew in studio.

You guys are going to be awesome.

Thanks for giving us a little bit of your time at the end of your media circus.

Now, the media circus is over, and you just get to do the media.

Blake Griffin, everybody, thank you, sir.

Thanks for having me, man.

Appreciate it.

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All right, let's bring in the general manager, the president of basketball operations.

I don't know what anyone's title is anymore, of one of the hot young teams in the league.

A lot of expectations for the first time for the Detroit Pistons, Trajan Langdon.

How are you, sir?

I'm good, sir.

Good morning.

Thanks for having me.

It's a big year for the Pistons.

I almost said the Alaskan Assassin, Trajan Langdon, but I read that you don't like that nickname.

Is that true?

I wouldn't say I don't like it.

I actually think it's a cool nickname.

It definitely is flattering.

I wouldn't say I don't like it.

Yeah, I think it speaks to what I used to do at Duke and even did in Europe.

But no, I enjoy it.

I just don't go around calling myself that.

Don't minimize the Europe stuff.

You're one of the greatest Euro league players of all time.

And you have said, I've read a lot of interviews you did.

to prepare for this.

You know, people ask you a lot, like, oh, do you regret that the NBA didn't work out?

Three short years you went to Europe?

And you've said all along, like, absolutely not.

And

now that you're back in the NBA and have been in the front offices for quite a long time do you still feel that way do you feel that way even strong more strongly

you know I think the way that I see the world and see the game now um in my day-to-day life of being an executive and a just a human being I think I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my nine years playing in Europe and just how you're able to see the world different cultures different people and just kind of reframe what basketball really is in the context of life.

So I'm glad I had those.

I made some amazing friends, had some amazing experiences experiences that I wouldn't have had if I would have stayed the state side.

I know you played for Cheska Moscow for several seasons, obviously.

What was your, and I read somewhere like you were a little trepidatious about living in Russia.

It's quite sort of a mysterious place to you.

What was your like, what was your welcome to Russia moment?

Were you greeted with vodka at the airport?

Were you, I mean, what was the like, okay, I'm here.

This is just how it's going to be.

So I went back and forth with my agent at the time, and

I had actually signed a contract in the ABA at the time to go play for the Orange County crush.

And the money just kept going up like every two days with the offer in Moscow.

And finally, I turned it down twice.

And finally, my agents called me and berated me on the phone.

He said, you're making a huge mistake.

So I called them back.

I said, okay, take the deal.

And they said, okay, they want you on a plane in six hours.

I said, no, absolutely not.

They said, they're flying you straight to Kazan to play a big league game.

And I was like, nope, I need to come and have at least one or two practices.

So

my welcome to Moscow moment, although it wasn't Moscow, was getting into my apartment and realizing that I didn't have a bed and I had to sleep on a sofa for the first two months.

Okay.

Yeah.

But the Moscow itself was so big, so expansive that people were.

took a second to get used to but um russians are just hard exterior soft interior so it takes you a time to get through that exterior but great people that I enjoyed getting to know in my time there.

Is it true that you were once gifted a Soviet rifle and do you still have it?

So, yes.

We won the EuroLeague title in 06, and the gift from the Kremlin to all of that, all of us, was

a rifle.

It was a replica, but it was also told that it's just blocked.

So if you had somebody go manipulate it, it could turn into a full-fledged working rifle again.

So I could not put it on the plane, nor I could put it, nor could I have it shipped.

So it is still in Russia.

That's probably a better, based on what you just said, probably better left behind.

You're about my age.

I just turned 48.

You're a little younger than I am.

But we grew up 80s NBA, Lakers, Celtics, then Pistons, Bulls.

First of all,

who were you a fan of in Alaska?

Alaska, were they Sonics fans?

Were they totally agnostic about the NBA?

Did everyone just pick, like, oh, the Hawks are on national TV or the Bulls are on national TV?

Did you have a team?

I had a team, but it had nothing to do with location.

Like you said, the two, you know, they had NBA on NBC, obviously, on the weekends,

or was it CBS?

I think it was CBS, actually, weekend in basketball, the game of the week.

And then TBS and WGN were the two stations we got.

So obviously watched a lot of Cubs baseball and Braves baseball, but then Hawks basketball, Chicago Bulls basketball.

And the games of the week were always the Lakers or the Celtics.

So those are the teams I watched.

Loved the way that the Lakers played, the way that they got up and down.

Obviously, I loved Magic.

I loved Michael.

Just watched Michael all the time.

Obviously, being in WGN, I don't think I missed a game if I could have watched it.

But the guy that I locked, that I kind of locked in on seeing he's different was Michael Cooper.

Just great defensively on the ball, locked guys up, and then just played a role.

And obviously that was a day when not many threes were made and the whole crowd chanted Coop when he hit a corner three.

So I thought that was cool.

Did you hate the bad boys like everybody else outside of Detroit did?

And I mean that affectionately.

Like that, they loved to be hated.

That was their thing.

I respected, like, I'm one of the few guys who kind kind of respected when they walked off the floor against the Bulls before the series was over.

I thought that was a badass move.

Did you hate the bad boys and Bill Lampier and Dennis Rodman and Rick Mahorn?

There was some animosity to them just because they were just decking people.

And there was part of me that said, that's not real basketball.

In high school, we played a physical brand of basketball, and I had a huge head coach.

It was 6'5 ⁇ , 230 that loved playing a physical brand, rough basketball.

So I highly respected it, although I felt at times it was too much and over the top.

I understood where they were coming from and they were competing.

Yeah, at times I was like, ooh, that's probably a little bit much and shouldn't be fighting in the game of basketball.

But what the hell did I know at that age?

They were competing and trying to win a championship.

Who do you think was more universally hated, the Bad Boys?

Or Duke in the early to mid-90s with Wojo slapping the floor?

I don't think it's close.

I think it's Duke.

I think we,

I wouldn't, I wouldn't say Wojo, although we would walk into arenas on the road and they would, I would, I'd make sure I'd walk out with them because they would boo him and I knew they weren't booing me.

So that felt good.

But I tried to give him some support too, just to be there.

But like when we went back to Maryland and played at Cold Fuel House and going to UVA, I mean, the booze he would get were just, it would fill up an arena.

So, but he reveled in it.

We reveled in it.

But like they, yeah,

they, they, most of North Carolina doesn't like duke like a lot of people don't understand that that's a unc state so around the u.s we're probably loved more than unc but we're we're enemies in our own state uh did you ever slap the floor on defense did that ever trickle down to you

i mean wojo and i came in together so he was always slapping the floor um we were freshmen together so

maybe once or twice, but I was just more like, let's strap up and guard.

That just was kind of who i was and how i played i was pretty non-emotional battier told me uh you were like supposed to show him around campus on his recruiting visit or something and basically just ghosted him like he got to campus and you're like all right here's duke i gotta go to i gotta i gotta maintain my 4-0 gpa have fun

yeah i wasn't a great i wasn't a great um

person to have that weekend um i had some stuff going on uh shane was great but i did i do admit that i did ghost him i wasn't the best host in the world for him, but he came a couple of times.

And obviously, we're, I loved having him as a teammate for the two years that we were together.

Yes, it's a hilarious story.

He will never let me down.

I mean, I, yeah, that's probably better than you know, uh, other recruiting stories I've heard that and like badly in the opposite way.

Like, I, there was too much imbibed, and I woke up in a room I didn't recognize, covered in my own urine kind of thing.

Um, from another question,

I may be speaking from personal experience.

This is going to sound like a joke question, but it's not.

Dovetailing on the bad boys thing.

Have you ever sat down with Isaiah Stewart and Ron Holland and been like, hey, look, I respect the fight and the tenacity, but like maybe dial it back a little bit on the fighting and the technicals?

Not both of them together.

Individually, I have.

And it's more just talking about the techs and what can happen if there's more in a lead to suspensions.

And

I know you're doing it for the right reasons.

And let's talk about this a little bit.

And how can we dial it back?

But look, I know they have the best intentions.

They're competing or they're having the backs of their teammates.

Sometimes it's hard to dial guys up.

You rather have guys already dialed up and have to dial them back than opposite.

It's really hard to dial, you know, even keeled, low energy guys.

It's hard to get those guys going.

So give me a guy that's going to get after it, compete at the highest level, and we'll work on getting it to a level where you don't get that many techs to impact the team.

But I'm all for these guys being physical, impactful, having the back of their teammates, as long as it's in the, you know, in the right boundaries.

You, you came in to Detroit into the top role right before the 2024 draft.

Like you picked Ron Holland, right?

Correct.

What did you see in him?

and what are your hopes for him in year two?

Yeah, I think a lot of the things that we look at,

you know, eyes, ears, numbers, things like that,

when you look at film, you watch him live.

I got to see him live before he hurt his wrist out with Deek Knight.

size for position, and then you hear about how much he loves the game,

how much he studies the game, how much he works on the game, how coachable he is.

But you're always going to hear varying opinions opinions throughout the draft process.

There's going to be some workouts or maybe you hear, oh, he had a bad workout.

He couldn't make a shot.

Pro day, he couldn't make a shot.

But then you start dialing in, listening to interviews.

We got a chance to interview him in Chicago before I got there.

I was actually with, still with New Orleans during Chicago pre-draft.

So I got to listen to the audio of Ron.

And I did a whole lot of digging on his personality.

And that was huge for me.

When we're trying to establish an identity, it's have somebody come in who's willing to work, who's a high-character young man, sighs for position, has a chance to be a big-time defender.

And we all felt that the shot could be fixed.

So I think adding all those things in, we just felt he had a chance to be a pretty good NBA basketball player.

And I know he's going to reach a ceiling because he works, he listens,

and he loves the game of basketball.

Do you have a go-to

off-the-beaten path interview question or technique for the combine?

I don't really.

I think we like to let the interview flow a little bit,

ask a couple of questions about who the person is, what drives them, how they got to the seat today.

And usually we allow them to steer the conversation.

It usually gets to a place where they reveal something about themselves.

If we need to find out a couple of things here and there, we can grab it out of the interview.

But I think the biggest thing for us is trying to let that person feel comfortable being themselves.

A lot of these guys come in and they're all, they've all gone through the process of being,

they know what's coming, right?

And we want to get them out of the rose rote answers of, oh, I did hear this.

This is what I should say.

No, no, no.

Say what you want to say, feel comfortable in here.

And it's hard getting them to that spot because they're doing six to eight of these a day and they're doing 15 over a three-day span.

So

they've all been prepped, but we want to get them to relax and have a good time.

Do you ever put them in front of a whiteboard?

I had one team in particular, but I'm sure sure other teams do it, that will say to guys when they come to the facility, say we draft you,

place yourself within our starting five and like diagram a play that you'd be in and what you would do in the play.

Do you ever do something like that?

Yeah, we'll, we'll do it in Chicago.

We'll have a whiteboard, especially more for guard play than any other position, draw up their favorite play, what they want to get out of it.

Um,

and then, you know, sometimes it's do they draw it up for them or do they draw it up for somebody else on the team, right?

And you you get that insight into how they think.

And then, yeah, we'll do some things

in terms of like retention, right?

I think a lot of teams do.

Like, here's a play.

Let's go through the workout, draw the play up at the end

of the workout, right?

See if they can do that or run the play out on the court that we drew up 30 minutes ago.

So, yeah, try to do some of those things, but really, what does that give you?

I don't know, 0.5% of the entire picture of what you're trying, the data points to draft a certain player, but try to make it fun, try to make it interesting

and get as many data points to make you feel comfortable or figure out that this isn't the guy as you can in that month's process.

By the way, not for nothing, but at least one team that picked above you in that draft had the lottery at the ping-pong balls or the picks flipped a different way, would have taken Holland ahead of you.

I know that for sure.

So I'm interested to see what he does this season because, you know, it's just young guy on a good team.

There's a big role for him potentially off the bench, right?

Like you need like backup, forward, backup wing minutes.

Yeah, I think,

you know, Zach, he's been in the gym a lot, as all of our guys have.

And I think a lot of people saw what he did in the few games in Vegas and Summer League where he was the leader of that team, took a step playing both ends of the floor, showed some things he can do at all three levels.

And we're hoping that transitions

into the regular season as well.

But

he's got a chance to be a good player in this league for for a long time.

Did you get anywhere close on extensions with Jaden Ivey or Jalen Duran?

You know,

I will speak to the overall picture of extensions and how these things can be difficult at times.

I think players and their representatives come in, and I think

they try to work with the team, but at the end of the day, their responsibility is to get their client the biggest, the most money that they can.

And our job is to put together a roster that hopefully can be competitive

for years and years, right?

So I think in extension scenarios, you can have two people in two different places

in terms of what they're looking at doing.

And hopefully those.

hopefully those places can intersect to get something done.

And sometimes they don't.

Sometimes it's just like, we're in one place, we're in another place.

We can get somewhat close.

I would say discussions kept being had.

Let's put it that way.

But I think both, we just felt, okay, let's revisit it.

Let's don't make this thing too

contentious.

So I think talks were good.

They were professional.

And I think.

Myself, JD, and JI were all in a good place heading into the season.

Does a last-minute plot twist like Jaden feeling pain in his knee and then needing surgery right before the season, does that affect extension talks at all?

Um,

no, because I don't think that that was not something that we feel is a big deal.

Like it, it, that, to me, it did not.

Um, I think from the outside, it might see that it could, um, but to me, it didn't.

Um, can you obviously if it's something if it's something more severe, maybe it's that's but that's not something severe at all.

Now that the procedure is over and you probably have a little bit of a better sense of it, can you I know I was reading that it was it's it's right knee, he felt discomfort.

It was, I think you guys said in a statement related to the broken left leg he had last year.

Not related.

Not related, not related.

Not related.

Not related.

Can you provide any clarity on what exactly the surgery did or was?

And is there any updated timetable?

It's just, it was a cleanup

of some cartilage that kind of was just some loose particles in there that was causing some discomfort.

So cleaned it up.

I think he's feeling better already.

He's walking.

He's starting his rehab.

We're going to make sure he's good to go.

I think that will go pretty easily.

It was very, very simple.

It was nothing.

He was literally in the surgery room for 15 minutes.

uh, and he, oh, yeah, it was quick.

Um, my daughter's elbow surgery lasted longer than that.

A couple of weeks ago, she busted up her elbow.

Jeez,

yeah, and these, and these guys are, I mean, they're just ridiculous athletes, and he was in really good shape.

He had a great summer, and so he's going to get back off this quick.

I mean, it's not like he hasn't been training, um, so you know, but we won't rush him.

You know, our biggest thing with him is let's make sure you get back healthy and we keep you back.

Obviously, it's it's not easy coming back off of the ankle injury he had that was

freakish back on January 2nd.

He's worked his butt off and then he has to have this and go back to it, but he's had a phenomenal mindset with this.

He's going to attack it and he'll be back soon.

I would say you asked for a timetable.

It's, you know, we're going to reevaluate in four, and I think it's unfair for me to say anything different than that.

You got to reevaluate.

That's what reevaluating means.

What was your vantage point for the Josh Hart uncalled foul on Tim Hardaway Jr.

at the end of game four in the first round?

Are you in the stands?

And

what is the aftermath of that game?

Because that's your first, as the top guy.

That's your first like hot house playoff.

Oh, yeah.

Refs maybe did you wrong?

How's the team going to respond?

What do you want to project as the leader?

What is that whole sequence like for you?

Obviously, a huge game for us because we wanted not only to keep the series tied.

I think it would have tied the series up, but

the fans were so good at going down the stretch for us in the last few months.

And during the playoffs, I mean, that place was rocking.

We wanted to win one home game for the fans, right?

That would have been not only for our players, but for the fans and for the city.

We were competing at a super high level, and I think we put ourselves in a place to win a game.

And sometimes that's all you can ask.

And

obviously, so where we sit is basically straight diagonal across the court from the play.

And so I got a pretty good vantage point.

And obviously, they're going to show the replay 100 times.

From where the ref was, that was a tough vantage point to see because it was kind of blocked.

So in our talks and understandings with the league, we understood

why he made the call that he made.

Was it difficult for us to swallow and move on?

It was, but I think you just have to.

And I think our JB staff and our guys did a tremendous job of moving on and going on to New York and get game five.

But

it was tough in the moment.

Obviously, you go in the locker room, guys are pissed, and they're yelling.

And

how does this happen to us?

And is there any repercussions?

And you just got to calm guys down.

It's part of the game.

Times goes your way sometimes.

Sometimes it doesn't.

What is one, so the playoffs, obviously, different game than a regular season, different level of intensity, different level of game planning.

What is one positive, concrete takeaway you had from the team's first playoff experience roster-wise?

Like I learned this good thing about the roster and one negative, or we've got to get better at that, or we've got to address that need that you learned from the playoffs.

I think our resilience was a thing as a team that really stood out.

Like

lose the first game, come back, win the second game, and lose the first game in a fashion that I think we felt, you know, they went on a run and I think it was like something ridiculous, like 21 to 2 or 21 to 3 fourth quarter run when we're basically felt like we were in control going into that fourth quarter.

It's just a couple of possessions, right?

All of a sudden they get a couple easy runs, crowd gets into it when the crowd was dead.

And then we just didn't know how to respond in game.

One day later, two days later, our guys respond, come out like nothing happened.

Like no memory of it, come out and win a tough game, hit big shots down the stretch.

I think it's just, that's a big one that I learned about being resilient.

Another one I learned is sometimes you let your guard down in game too, like you relax a little bit when you feel you're in control.

And a lot of times that just comes from you because you haven't been in that situation where you understand.

Now is the time.

And sometimes there's just a time in the game when you're like, now is game winning time.

And it might not be two minutes left.

It might be eight minutes left in the game.

and that's what new york did to us in game one they said now's the time we're down 10 we're going to hit them punch them in the mouth and see how they respond um

i think we i learned too that pretty good passing team like we're unselfish we moved the ball um the way that jb and staff got our guys ready we bought into that and i think we executed at a pretty high level um in in terms of game plan on both ends of the floor which is cool to watch because that actually doesn't always happen especially when the stakes are high and um anxiety and nerves hit.

But I thought we did a really good job executing our game plan.

I think then I think the one thing that happens too in that series is you just get fatigued.

You have 82 games, and if you haven't ever been through it emotionally, physically, you don't understand the fatigue that goes into those games because one, it's how physical the games are, but two, how much emotion is put into the games.

I mean, you are aghast after those games because it's so emotional.

And now, how do you recover in a 48-hour time span?

It sounds like it's a long time.

It's not when you're emotionally spent.

And then you have friends and family around and you're entertaining them, whether you're on the road or at home.

So it's trying to block out the noise, focus on that when you've never done it before.

And I think now, when

our guys and our team and a lot of because we have a lot of continuity, understand what's coming, I think it allows you to prep better.

Yeah, you mentioned the passing.

And one thing I've said before is one of my takeaways was something about this Cade Duran, Asar Thompson trio, it's got its

got its weaknesses shooting-wise, youth, all of that, but something about that group works with

Jalen Duran screening for Cade, catching the ball in space, Asar cutting.

I was like, all right, that's interesting.

I can see that and crystallize that, and then you can build off of that.

Which is my way of saying, I picked Asar Thompson to win most improved player this year, and I'm very excited about him.

What should I be excited about?

And

do you know kind of what I'm talking about, that shell of those three guys?

Like there's something there with that group.

Yeah, I think they are, they're connected in a way where they look for each other, which I think is cool.

I don't know where that came from.

I think it's just being together.

And honestly, I think going through the season that they went to the year before when it's like, let's try to figure this thing out.

We're losing 28 games in a row.

I think there is a

galvanizing moment with winning a lot.

And there's a galvanizing moment at times, especially with young players with hard times, right?

They have to pull together and have each other's back.

And I think that's what happened with that team the year before, especially going into the following year, is

they do have each other's back and went through some tough times that I can't even understand the things that they were going through in terms of that losing streak and only winning 14 games.

But they're incredibly unselfish.

They come to work every day.

They try to make each other better, but they try to make one another better.

And like you said,

that combo of three guys,

they can be difficult to guard on given nights.

And like you said, yep,

shooting sometimes can be an issue.

But I think defensively, those three have a chance to be pretty good too.

And obviously, like you talked about, AT,

having a whole summer, a whole training camp, feeling good.

I think

his teammates and our staff trust him with the ball a little bit more.

So I think that's what you're going to see at the ability to play make or set the table a little bit more than he did previously in the past and get the rebound and go because he can do some things out in the open floor, especially.

You have played zero regular season games as we are recording this.

And I know you cannot talk about any specific players around the league and you won't want to talk about any of your players.

So I will ask it as vaguely as possible.

Will you be open to the idea of putting some chips in in a win-now trade if the right scenarios present themselves?

Or are you just like, we're just going to build what we got and see what this is?

Yeah, I was actually asked that at an event that I spoke at the other day.

It's a great question.

There is no way I would have ever thought that I'd be a buyer at the trade deadline last year, right?

There's no way until two weeks before the trade deadline that I told my staff, okay, let's go get a guy that can help us.

I didn't know that Dennis was going to be the one, but we were looking to see which would be the best fit for us at the time.

If that opportunity presents itself, I think, yeah, we have to look at everything all the time to make us better.

And so, does that mean we're going to be super aggressive?

Does that mean we add on the margins?

Does it mean we put all our chips in?

I don't know right now.

I do want to continue to see our young core grow and understand

who they can be and who we can be with them as the pieces.

And I think if you,

in our eyes, if you pull the trigger too early, then maybe you don't understand who they are and some of their growth gets kind of,

it gets, it gets hurt because maybe somebody gets in their way.

Somebody's playing 38 minutes when those minutes weren't eaten before.

So

we analyze that stuff a lot and we'll continue to assess our team and our players as the season goes along and understand if that's the right path or not.

Okay, two fun ones to wrap up.

I had forgotten or never knew that you were a high-level baseball player, high enough to get drafted and accumulate some minor league stats.

Give me

bad ones,

bad minor league stats.

Hey, look, you know who else had bad minor league stats?

Michael Jordan.

All right.

And so it's like,

it's hard.

Hitting a round ball with a round bat, one of the hardest things.

Do you have a player comp for like peak Trajan Langdon baseball?

And who was your, were you, was it Braves, Cubs?

Was it a similar thing?

Like, who did you root for?

Or who do you root for now?

I guess you could say the Tigers now.

I'd probably have to.

Yeah, player comp is a tough one for me.

Um, just because I look, I pitched, probably pitching in high school was my best position that I was able to dominate, but I just didn't throw hard enough to be drafted.

I topped out at 86.

Um, but when Kevin Towers,

I threw a lot of junk.

Cut, I threw a cutter, I threw a curveball, I threw a knuckleball.

Wow, I threw a circle change.

Yeah, I threw a lot of stuff.

I probably had five pitches I threw, but I just didn't throw hard enough.

And in Alaska, you can strike out a lot of people, I guess, without throwing too hard as long as you have the junk.

But

a couple scouts came.

Kevin Towers with the Padres came in a game that I hit two home runs, one left center, one dead center.

And they drafted me as a third baseman because they liked my bat and they liked my height and wing span at the corner.

And I'd never played at the hot corner before.

So that was, yeah, playing the hot corner and not seeing it in minor, minor, I mean, in little league ball or high school ball.

And then you see it and, yeah, it's a completely different monster how fast that ball gets on you at third base.

But

no, I enjoyed it.

It humbled me tremendously playing every day, staying at days inn, staying at holiday inns, getting $12 meal money on the road.

I think my first, my monthly check, my first year was about $450 a month.

So it definitely was humbling coming from Duke basketball and going to play minor league baseball.

And I played one year in Spokane, one summer in Spokane and two summers in Idaho Falls.

So learned a lot of lessons,

but also understood that you have to love the game of baseball to play it at that level.

I mean, it is, it's a lot.

It's a lot of time.

And it's every day.

Did any of I didn't look at your full minor league rosters?

Did anyone make it?

Were there any big leaders that you played with?

One stands out.

His name was Matt Clement.

He was a pitcher

from Pittsburgh.

Yeah, played for the Cubs.

Yeah, he was my teammate in Idaho Falls, and we still stay in touch.

He is a high school coach in the Pittsburgh area.

Wow.

Basketball coach, by the way.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, he was a basketball player.

87 and 86 career record, 4.47 ERA.

That's a nice Major League Baseball career.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

Hell of a pitcher.

It's It's October 22nd.

Somebody, and I truly don't remember who off the top of my head, said,

Trajan really likes Halloween.

Is that true?

Like,

what are we talking about?

Are we talking about like your house is crazy, your yard is crazy?

What's happening on Halloween?

Ah, okay.

Somebody gave you a little insight.

So two years ago, my wife and I did a party at our place in New Orleans just off a cuff.

Like, let's do something for the organization, invite all staff and have a party.

Didn't know where it was going to go and just people loved it.

They obviously it was New Orleans, so they brought their best costumes and it just fit the city.

You know, the city of New Orleans, they like to party.

Anything they can find to have a good time, they're going to find it in a positive way.

And so we've kept that tradition and did it again last year.

We do it at our house.

Last year was fun and people really brought it.

I didn't know what would happen in Birmingham, Michigan.

And the whole staff, they brought it, they had a good time.

So we're going to continue the tradition and do it again this year.

Different themes, but try to have fun with it.

Let everybody get outside of themselves, show up with whatever costume you want, whatever face paint you want.

And there was a couple of people that showed up that I did not recognize who they were for about a half hour.

Yeah, best costume.

Best costume of the whole thing.

Who did you give it an award away for this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

A couple of different awards.

I think first, second, third.

And we had a staff member who dressed up as an escaped convict,

but with

like almost like a zombie escape

convict outfit,

full

makeup,

full hairdo.

It was ridiculous.

And I didn't know who the person was for probably 15 minutes.

Amazing.

So hopefully we'll have the same this year, have some fun.

We have to squeeze it in in the middle of a three and four.

So we'll see how that goes.

Inconvenient.

Do you have a costume plan or can you divulge it or are you gonna see you gotta surprise people i guess

surprise people definitely surprise people the um

the theme is great gatsby nice so yeah so we'll see uh who does some things within that theme and and and and stands out in different ways i wanted to be mr met this year because i i've renamed my mets fandom and there is a mr met costume you can buy with a gigantic baseball head and it was north of 400 and my wife very gently, was like, I think that's a little bit ridiculous for something you're never going to use again.

And then a friend was like, You could just make a paper-mâché thing, like a big head.

I was like, I'm just, I'm not doing no chance.

So, I love Halloween, but uh, good luck with the great Gatsby team.

All right,

you got to go.

You got your, you got game one today against the Chicago Bulls, old school Central Division rivalry.

Um, thanks for some time.

Good luck, and uh, I will see you around the block.

Thanks, Zach.

Glad we've made this happen, and thanks for having me on.

All right.

That's it for

kind of a loaded Zach Lowe show today.

A lot going on.

My head is spinning, as you can probably tell.

Thanks to David Perdum of ESPN.

Thanks to Blake Griffin of Amazon.

Thanks to Trajan Langdon of the Detroit Pistons.

Sorry, you left your opener after we taped Trajan, but hopefully better times are ahead.

Thanks to Jesse, Jonathan, and Mike on production.

Thanks to all of you for listening and or watching the Zach Lowe show.

We will be back next week on Monday as the NBA season really gets going.

We'll have a lot to talk about, a whole weekend of watching teams for the second and third time.

Thanks, everybody.

See you next week.

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