Part 1: The Legacy Episode, the Next Kyrie, and White Boy Summer With Ryen Russillo
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All right, we're taping this. It is 4.30 East Coast time. Game five of the NBA Finals is tomorrow night. Ryan Rosillo is here. Ryan, what do you think is the legacy of this podcast? Well, it depends on if we're winning or we're losing. What would the legacy of this episode ultimately be, if you had to guess? Who's the best player on this podcast? Can we both be the best player, or does one of us have to win?

I mean, more people would probably call me a Robin, but I'd say like, I've also done it on my own. You're like Jalen. It's like, it's like you're a one a on this podcast and not, not everyone maybe appreciates that. Um, I was on a Friday show with Termini and Eddie and I've never felt more like Kyrie in my life. Eddie, Eddie was trying to, to, to start shit with me cause I gave him so much Phoenix sun shit the last couple of years.

And the salts are up three, nothing. And it seems like they're going to sweep, which we'll get to in a second. And Eddie's like, but does this mean Jalen's the best player? Who's the best player? Is this going to screw you guys up? And I knew what he was doing, but I was also like, I can't believe these are narratives that come like if the Celtics swept,

That's one of the debates that's gonna come out of this. It's like, well, now what does this mean? Is Jalen better than Jason? And so you asked when we were texting about this, what was the first ever legacy reassessment? So that's gonna be the first topic of the pod. I thought that was a great idea by you. And I really put work in it, but what was your answer? Did you put some thought? What do you think it was?

Yeah, I actually put a lot of thought into this today. And then there has to be a better version to find archived articles. There has to be something. SI ball dying was a huge loss for all of us. I would, I really miss it. It just sucks now. The hardest video games online right now are reading an SI article or Bleacher Report.

where you're just like what the is that like who's that guy is that a lot like the other ones a lot of the stuff from the 2000s has gone to the espn page two stuff and a lot of the espn mba stuff is impossible yeah i'm with you so to get back to the original point of asking the question is like i love windhorst okay i love wind horse and i think windhorst when i think about people that

will say aggressive stuff about players the way he lit into Luka after game three, which was...

Pretty aggressive, right? But when you don't do it all the time and you have the credibility of Windhorse, it'll always make me go like, okay, whoa. Like that was, and there's even things he said in his takedown of Luka that I thought were totally accurate and fair, but it was, it was aggressive. It's earned venom because he doesn't play the card really ever. So when he does it, it catches your attention. Yeah. Like there's certain people on TV where I'll just think,

Well, you do this with everything. Yeah, this is Tuesday for you. Yeah, you can't be an 11 on every single comment. So with Windhorse, like we said, if he's going to say it, I think it should be consumed with just... Even if you disagreed a little bit. But then I felt like it was kind of then turning into...

Well, you guys realize Luke is the only reason they even have a whiff at this thing. It's the only reason they're here. Oklahoma City is a good team. Minnesota is a good team. And for him to take those teams out and be the only really dependable guy, despite the defensive...

you know, inabilities from him. So then I was, I was thinking about it, was texting with you. I go, we've been on a run of this for a while. Like what was at stake for Giannis? What was at stake for Joker? Like if Joker doesn't win the finals last year, I don't know if he wins the MVP this year. And there's this carryover of like the constant assessment that we do with the players that I thought, okay, let me ask Bill, because you're so good at the historic stuff. When did this change?

I think I have answers, but to go back to the Luca piece of this, I had the same reaction you did because I agreed with 90% of what Windhorse said. I thought that was just a terrible job by Luca to foul out and to kind of lose his composure in a must-win game. And there was that play when he fell into the stands and

When he thought he should get the call and then he was just hand. And then he was just hand checking Pritchard until he got fouled until he gets fouled. It was the fourth foul. And doc and I talked about that on Wednesday and doc said he was watching the game. He's like, Luke is going to foul out of this game. He's, he's so frustrated. He's actually going to foul out now. So yeah, that's his fault. But I'm with you. Like, you know, even you look at the Luca and the first half Lucas last five first halves dating back to game five, Minnesota.

25 points, 10 for 16 in game five, Minnesota. In this series, 17, 7 and 14 shooting. 23, 9 for 14, 17, 7 for 16, 25 in game four, 10 for 18.

he's been pretty incredible for a lot of these Celtic games, even though I, yeah, we talked about the defense has been bad. Some of the composure stuff has been bad, but the reason this team fell down three, nothing you could see after he fouled out when it was just Kyrie and the roll guys. And it was like, wow, where's the offense coming from? If they just shut down Kyrie, who else is even going to create a shot? So yeah, I get it. Luca's got to fix some stuff, but I thought that two days of Luca bashing,

It felt pretty harsh to me, not just the wind horse piece, but just that became the narrative. And as a Celtic fan, I got worried because I was like, man, Lucas taking so much shit. I just feel like he's like, this is what great players do. They're going to now he's going to raise this game and, you know, 25 points in game four. He was the dominant guy on the floor. So but from a big picture legacy point. So there's two ways this could go.

We could go pre-internet or we can go post-internet because I think there's an inflection point in the mid-90s where the internet's coming into play and now you're getting message boards, you're getting early blog posts, you're getting early ESPN and some other places. But you're also getting 24-hour talk radio and you're getting the rise of ESPN. PTI doesn't show up till the early 2000s, but you're still getting local sports radio and just

The infrastructure of sports 24-7 is starting to settle in, which means it's probably Karl Malone in 97 when he wins the MVP and then sucks in the finals.

And then it becomes, well, Jordan took the lead back. Well, what does this mean for Carl Malone? Were we wrong all along? And that was the first modern version of that. I remember that was the first year of my Boston sports guy calm writing like a piece killing Carl Malone. So, and I'm sure whatever, if you were like Mike and the mad dog, if you were whatever the EI whiner line was, I'm sure it was just a Carl Malone pile session. So I feel like that's the first, does that sound right?

It does. I wrote it down because like I went all the way back to Jerry West and was trying to find like different articles about how he was talked about because I was thinking about Jerry West, obviously, this week with him passing and just like his entire thing is incredible success wrapped in all of these failures. I mean, just a tortured human being. An awful luck. The worst luck of any basketball star. Just some of the worst things that could have happened to a career.

To lose to the Celtics six times in the finals, three times there's game sevens. The 69 one, the Celtics aren't even supposed to be there. And you're just like all these things happening in the series. Like I just thought about Jerry West was like, imagine if Jerry West existed today, like what we would do to him.

And I always flip side, how we would do the whole, none of this is his fault. And you would just blame will you blame Elgin Baylor? You would blame Frank Selby for missing the jumper in the 1962 finals. It'd be everybody else's fault.

Yeah, there's also that. Whatever happens with the winning and losing, that's the whole point. Why do we keep track of any of this stuff? Why do we spend all these hours talking about these things? Well, clearly the winning has to mean something, but it is not something that contradicts itself. I have players that I think have not won for different circumstances, and I think there are other players who have not won, and it has everything to do with who they are as a player. And yet it's now baked down. I think people have become really simple.

Whenever this stuff happens, it's like, oh, you won? Okay, cool. You're all these things. It's like, oh, you lost? All right, then you're all these things. And you can't ever be any of those other things until we update this. And now we're just updating it constantly. So if you go to Carl Malone, I just wanted to just touch on the Jerry West part of it. And then I think there's a lot of our dads out there that would go, Wilt was incredible, but he was also a loser.

Okay. There was a lot of that stuff that I just couldn't fathom. I didn't watch the games, but in the 69 finals, Will has, has three games where he scores four, eight and eight. He didn't play the last six minutes of game seven or the last five. He had this injury and then his coach benched him in game seven with five minutes left. And Russell was so mad that Wilt didn't come back in that they had, they had a falling out.

He was like, how dare you rob me of my final game where we were supposed to go head to head and you're sitting on the bench because you made your coach mad. You're right. Wilt's the first legacy guy because he wins in 67 and they have one of the best years ever. And they're like 68 and 13. They roll through the playoffs. They beat Russell Celtics. And it's like Wilt has arrived. Here it is. He's finally figured it out. And then the next year was that year he tried to lead the league in assists and

and was like so unselfish. It was like actually like a disaster. He was just like passing up five foot jump hooks to try to kick it back out. And then all the loser stuff started again. But then in 72 with Wes, they went 33 straight. They win the title. So he kind of shook it off. I just think there's a bunch of New England people walking around around our age that are nodding their heads.

specific to the New England thing because of the Celtics where there's just a lot of guys going, yeah, I had that same speech. My dad gave me the same speech that Will was a loser. Right, because Will is, I think history's actually been really kind to him in that

With more information, maybe the impact of that information gets lost. But as a kid, you were like, what did he do? Like, wait, he was like this mythological creature. You're like, what? Yeah. How how did he? Well, how did he score that many? Like what happened? And then if especially if you're from New England, the dads would say he was awesome. But Russell owned him.

Well, but that was one of my, I think that was my single favorite chapter when I wrote my book about Will versus Russell. All the stuff digging up the anecdotes from that era were like some of the best players of that era were like, Wilt was a loser. I wouldn't want to play with Wilt. Wilt didn't want the ball in crunch time because they were way more candid back then. We didn't know there was an internet and a screenshot Twitter era. I'll tell you the first modern version of

of this that even though it was way pre-internet, but it was Dr. J because Dr. J wins the titles in the ABA. He comes to Philly. They're up two nothing in the 77 finals. Then Walton comes back and they beat him. And then they don't make the finals in 78 or 79. They make it in 80 magic beats him.

They lose in 81. They make the finals in 82. They beat the Celtics in a game seven in Boston. The Lakers freaking wax them. Right. And at that point it was like, well, Dr. J, I mean, he won those in the ABA, but not here. And you could go back and read the sports illustrated articles. And there was a few of them that I remember leaning on when I was doing my book and just the disappointment that Dr. J wasn't,

more impactful and better, especially in the late seventies. It was like, was it where we sold a false bill of goods? He was awesome in his first season in 77, a bunch of highlights, his knees were bothering him, but then he won the title in 83 and it stopped. And then it just flipped to magic because magic had the 84 finals when he, he sucked in game two, he sucked in game four, he choked in a bunch of different ways. And he, and that was the tragic Johnson thing.

which has been written and talked about a million times. And then, of course, he shed that and in 85, they win. So it feels like Doc Magic right around there. But the current infrastructure starts with Karl Malone. And then Shaq in 2000.

Okay. Same thing. Shaq's a loser. Shaq's Shaq's the new will. Shaq's never going to win. And then he rips through everybody wins the 2000 title. It's like, all right, enough with that narrative. And then Kobe in 2009 was the other one from that decade. It's like Kobe can never win without Shaq. He's selfish. It's all about him. It's one-on-one basketball. Can't win that way. It's a bad teammate. And then guess what? You win the title. There goes that narrative.

I don't remember the 70s, obviously. The 80s part of it, the Dr. J one is good, but I only understood it after the fact. And they get Moses. That's one of the greatest teams of my lifetime. That's just lost in the shadow of all the Celtics-Lakers stuff. But I also think the Celtics and Lakers were so dominant. And I think this plays into the 90s a little bit where I wasn't freaked out about Terry Cummings' legacy.

I wasn't sitting around going, man, this Alex English. What's wrong with Adrian Dantley? I just, I didn't care. And maybe that happened with Houston a little bit because the Twin Towers, the 86 finals, taking out the Lakers, losing to the Celtics. And then it took Hakeem almost another decade. But you were always losing, for the most part, you were losing the Lakers and Celtics. And I think from a player standpoint, that's where, when I look back,

back and read some of the stuff with Barkley in 93. Like, that one was devastating to me just because I was a huge Barkley fan. But you were losing to Jordan. Like, I don't remember... And Barkley was awesome in that series. That was... Everyone blamed Kevin Johnson because he sucked so bad in that finals that it just... All the venom went toward him. Barkley was really good in that finals, I thought. But we did because Jordan was scoring so much. I mean, people...

It's very easy to forget this, but that was like the first thing. And I also think regionally, the Celtics thing probably messes up my perspective just growing up around it. But it was like, oh yeah, this guy, cool dunks, cool sneakers. You know, he's a loser though. All he does is score a million points and he can't win. And it took him a really long time when you look at his career. But then when everybody else is losing to him, I don't remember that after the 96 finals being like, oh, Kemp and Gary Payton are losers. Like I just, I just don't,

remember any of that stuff. So I think the Carl Malone part of it because of the MVPs, that might have been the beginning of, I like the way you frame that. Like of today's structure, that was maybe the foundation for it. Because it definitely got worse. Because the Shaq stuff was real. Because when he had the quote where he said, I'd won at every level except for college and the pros, people were so, like, are you, imagine somebody saying that. We had the free throws too. Remember? That was like, well, he doesn't care about free throws. Obviously he doesn't care about winning. Can't make any free throws. Yeah.

There's another one because I was thinking about some of the pieces I wrote and LeBron became the first entire career legacy guy. Right. When he when he got drafted out of high school.

and was being hyped up. And there was a backlash that we hadn't even seen him play. And then somehow during his rookie year, as we watched him, like, oh, this guy might have it. And then it just became a constant debate about how good he was. Then we were disappointed. Then he beats, makes the 2007 finals, beats the Pistons in that game five. It's like, here we go. LeBron's arrived. Then he had the two disappointing 09-10 playoffs in Cleveland. 09 wasn't his fault. 10 was.

And then the 2011 finals. And I was thinking the 2011 finals were the first double team legacy one, like the way you were laying it out. Cause we had on the one hand, LeBron, uh,

Oh man, he doesn't have it. Oh, this big three, this whole situation, this is now going to be a legendary disaster potentially. But then Dirk on the flip side, who we had kind of given up on after the 06 finals. And then the way he wins the 07 MVP and Golden State beats him in round one. It was just so embarrassing for him. And then he kind of moves into this 25 a game. Don't take him seriously as a champ.

Um, all-star kind of good stats that ultimately kind of, kind of hollow. And then an 11 has one of the great runs in the history of the playoffs and just checks off, checks off to rant, checks off Kobe, uh, checks off LeBron and Wade in the finals after they talk shit and the finals ends and it became a John Elway Broncos thing.

So we were talking about that legacy, but then there was also the LeBron legacy. So I feel like that's like officially cemented because now we have first take starting right around then. I think first take exists. PTI exists. All the internet stuff is in full form. Uh, all the Reddit stuff is in full form and now we're off. And now that now it's legacy time. Dirk got destroyed during that stretch. So they blow the lead. Um,

in 06, and then he wins MVP. The Mavs come back stronger, we think, 67-15, and then they lose the Warriors as a 1-8 seed, and he was getting torched. But remember, he got the MVP after he had been eliminated. Right. Which was the most awkward. It was something where you're like, when did it really get nasty? Yeah.

Plenty of these guys, as we've just alluded to going over this history, have gotten destroyed by the media. But the Dirk one was a special case because then you could throw in, it's like, oh, he's just kind of one of those big soft euros. Soft foreign guy, yeah. Yeah, on top of everything else. And people were really...

like pissed at them almost not because he also had the thing. What was that? Oh, two or three playoffs. One of those two where he got hurt and they shelved them. He could have played, but they didn't want to risk his career. I think it was Oh three. Um, and then Cuban and it was a whole debate and he could have played. And so it kind of started there. And then in Oh six, when they blew the weed and then Oh seven by the, by the time Oh seven was done, people like Dirk soft, uh,

Can't win with Dirk. Meanwhile, the guy, what he did in 2011 was about as impressive. It's funny. This would be a fun list. Guys who took too much shit. And then the alternate side of guys who maybe in retrospect didn't get enough shit. Like I'm not sure Carmelo got enough shit. Carmelo, for Carmelo to be number one. Cause I think now, now that there's this sense and Carmelo's a good guy. Everybody likes him. He had a really good career as a hall of famer.

But if you go back, it's like, ah, it's kind of disappointing too. Like they were two, two Denver Lakers, 2009, right? It's the best two out of three against Kobe who had had his knee drained earlier in that series. And it's like, that was a moment for Carmelo potentially to, you win two out of three against the Lakers. You win the title because you're playing Orlando and that's the closest he ever got. And, and,

You know, then the way he forced the trade to the Knicks. Like, that's a good example of somebody that I think the post-career stuff is a little friendlier than maybe it could have been. Melo's a really good one. I used to defend Melo, though. If you go through all of the playoff series losses, you go...

all right, well, how many times was he losing to a team that he shouldn't lose to? Like, I think that's like the telltale sign for a lot of these players that are all NBA caliber guys, guys in the MVP conversations, the clear ones of some of these teams where there's just ones where I go, I know you're thought of as a one and you're a one, however we define it, but it's not a winning one. And I think Melo probably had some of those basketball traits. But when you go back and look at all the playoff losses that he had,

rarely are you looking at teams where you'd say, oh, how did he lose to that team? Like the team was either always better than him or they were within a few games having the same record when they actually matched up in the playoffs. But Melo's a good one in there. But I like how you kind of referenced the full circle thing with Dirk because it wasn't just even about winning after you lost. It was winning against what became everyone's

least favorite team outside of heat fans there was no neutrality with the miami heat especially in that first year i had friends that were pretty passive nba fans that were like i want nothing to do with that league they were just personally offended by lebron going down there with bosh which again those guys got way too much shit historically i would say when you look back on it i think there's probably a lot of people there's no question i include myself hey

I was way too mad about that. That wasn't that big of a deal. But the fact that Dirk does it, right? Mr. Euro, Mr. Soft, cool stats, bro. Lose to the Warriors, which were such a fun team, too. So, like, anybody that had been neutral with that series is going, oh, my God, this Warriors team's awesome. This is so much fun. Like, I want them to beat the Mavs. And the Mavs were really getting just torched in that two-year window. And, of course, a big part of it was Dirk. And I think it always kind of acts like a question I don't know that can be answered is how different was Dirk?

Like how different was he actually in 07 and 2011? I think the scars from 06 and 07 actually helped him because he's talked about it since. Like sometimes when you get your teeth kicked in

It makes you a little, I feel the same way about this 24 Celtics team. Like some of the stuff that happened to them over the last eight years, I think becomes helpful when you hit that mental toughness point, like what they had in game three, where they're blowing this lead in real time. It feels like this huge collapse coming and they kind of,

gathered their breath a little bit. I don't know if they would have been able to do that two years ago. I mentioned Carmelo. It's funny. I was always a big Carmelo defender when he played. I was looking up as you were talking. I wrote a column in July 2014 and the headline was no escape from New York with Carmelo Anthony staying with the Knicks. Will we ever find out how truly great he can be? Because my whole thing was like, I think Carmelo can be the best guy on a championship team. And he never really had the right situation. The other guy who I thought was

I remembered a little unfairly. I wrote about him too, his TMAC. Cause I thought, I thought I had TMAC in like my top 75. I thought he was great, but it was the same thing where it was like, well, he blew a three, one lead in round one and he never got out of this. And he's never, you know, never played in a finals. And then you just kind of get pigeonholed in that spot. And you're right. Like the key point is circumstances can sometimes play a lot of this.

I know TMAC was great. Of course it does. Yeah. TMAC in the middle of 2000s was right there with Wade and Kobe and he just was. To me, like those three are pretty even for about five, six years there. But I don't think we're ever looking at TMAC as a loser because one, his style of play was so much fun.

And we didn't look at him as this absurd, even though their usage rates, I'm sure, are really high in some of those seasons, but we knew he was more of a playmaker. It didn't feel like he was just going to do whatever he wanted to do whenever he felt like it and wasn't really looking at the game through the lens of somebody just being like, how do I make everybody better around me? So I think there's just a lot of stuff with TMAC aesthetically that we all loved, like even if you weren't a fan of the magical. And bad injury left too. Yeah, so I think there's more sympathy there

for him. But I, like, look, my guy, Chris Paul, it's, it's not going to happen, right? It's not going to happen with him. Don't rule it out. If they, if the Warriors, if the Warriors wave them before July 28th, there could be a little grab on, grab on to a contender. It's different. There's a certain, there's a certain stage where past a certain number of years and who you are as a player, I actually thought he was pretty good for the Warriors, but he's not going to be

playing the same kind of role he was playing with the 21 Phoenix Suns or potentially the 22 Phoenix Suns like that probably isn't happening again. So when I think back to was 40 Barkley. Yeah, right. Barkley gets shit on because he's still on TNT. But I don't guys bring it up.

Right. But then when Jordan said that to Pippen about, I should have never gone to Houston and played with your sorry ass because you're a loser, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but Pippen sharing that, that Jordan thought that of Barkley, but the nineties really felt like it was more of, well, they lost to Jordan. So what are you supposed to do with that? I don't,

I don't think we got on these guys cases as much as we do now or how willing we are to just rewrite all of it based on the outcome of some series when the player might not be any different. So we might have a new wave of like when these guys age out, when Westbrook, when Harden are done, like that might be the group of guys where there's just not really going to be any kind of sympathy whatsoever, despite the accolades and the hall of fame resumes. So I don't,

I wonder if we're actually starting to graduate the first generation of this group of players of the last 20 years where when they're retired. I would say it's a 2.0 generation. I think the Dirk Kobe generation was the first generation. What's that mean? Okay. I think you're right that this Harden, Westbrook, Durant, all these guys, this is definitely a generation, but I think it's kind of the second generation. That really does feel like Dirk Kobe generation.

That era was in there. We're going to actually take a break and then come back and talk about guys who we think could flip their legacy over the next couple of years. One second. The NBA finals are here and FanDuel is giving you the chance to win alongside the champions right now. New customers get $200 in bonus bets of the winning $5 bet. That is $200 to use on same game parlays, live bets. So much more. You know, FanDuel, they're going to boost a game four bet for me. And I told them I'm out.

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slash BS. There's no safe, like simply safe. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Between your kids, work, and with football coming up, I know how difficult it can be to find time for yourself. I'm a big power walk guy. That's my special private time, walking around, listening to pods, doing phone calls, just getting my legs moving. And it's just like my time. Even when life gets busy, it's important to make time for a little self-care. In fact, that's when you need it the most. But if you need some help,

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Bill Simmons. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. With the Olympics this summer, things are only going to get more heated. Cool off with a pack of Michelob Ultra, a superior light beer. I love the Olympics. I love the track and field, but my favorite, hands down, is the basketball, especially now that all the other countries have gotten so good. I watch all the basketball.

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next couple of years, aka Kyrie. Because I do think win or lose with this finals, Kyrie has at least reestablished himself as a wiser, better version of himself that I don't think he's as good as he was in 16 or 17, but is somebody that can be one of the best players on a team that can play in the finals because we're watching it. And that's something I think you and I would have thought

a year ago was inconceivable. So if you had to make a list of who's the next Kyrie, who's the next person for this to have this happen to, who would be your number one pick? Probably Bryson DeChambeau. Right, as we're taping this, he's winning the US Open. And the crowd's rooting for him. But this is exactly what's going to happen. If he wins a major...

this whole week in the golf world, they'd be like, ah, he wasn't that annoying. Yeah. It wasn't really that bad. He just, you know, he was misunderstood. Right. People couldn't stand him. People couldn't stand him for years. And they're going to all tell us why it was actually just kind of like misleading. And that's not really who he was. And his approach was, he was trying to hack golf and he learned from that. He has the scars. I believe in all the scar stuff. Uh,

The next Kyrie, the Kyrie one is I'm sure you would concede. It's pretty unique. Yeah. We're not going to have another Kyrie situation. It's unique. Does it matter for Durant? I had him down. I had six guys down. He wasn't my first choice. I thought I had Dame as the number one. Dame's a great one.

Because I don't want to just name, I just don't want to name like all the good players that don't have rings. No, it feels like there has to be more to it. Yeah. So Doc was on my pod on Wednesday saying how Dame was out of shape this year. I was actually surprised he mentioned to it, said he was a little out of shape because he was, he knew he was going to get traded and he was so afraid to work out that it ended up fucking up his whole season. So if you're thinking about this next season with the Bucs,

where Giannis, I'm sure, is going to be a man on a mission because he just has had bad luck with injuries now two years in a row. Dame in like the greatest shape of his life. Dame not playing the Olympics, which is good. And then, you know, if you're just talking about Eye of the Tiger, the Bucs have to be number one in the Eastern Conference if the Celtics actually win the title. Like who is going to actually care the most about this season for a variety of reasons. And then if Dame can reestablish himself as this

awesome offensive player again, which I think he was pretty up and down. I think we would both agree and then be kind of the Kyrie sidekick with, with Giannis as the Luca, you know, then that's, it's a different territory. You know, it could also go the other way where it, that doesn't happen.

And you end up in that Carmelo mid-2010s run where it's like, oh, I guess this isn't going to happen. And then all of a sudden you start bouncing around the league. So I do feel like there's a fork in the road potential with him. I like that one a lot. I really like how Doc talked about Giannis' playmaking, which I completely agree with. And I think that's why Giannis gives you a chance.

in a way where maybe somebody else is putting up huge numbers. You'd be like, okay, but is he willing to get the other people involved? And I couldn't quite figure out, like, it felt like Giannis was kind of leading the charge for them to get Adrian Griffin. And then it was the other guys that were anti Adrian Griffin. And then finally, like Giannis kind of came along and I was wondering, this is a different topic, but,

Is Giannis' ring the most important ring for an individual player of the last five years? The most important legacy ring? Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I actually think it's Curry in 2022. I think as the years pass, let's say they don't win in 2022. They just, let's say they lose to Memphis in round two and it's just, they never get back.

And then Curry gets in this weird situation where he's one of the most influential players of all time. He's the greatest shooter of all time. But he also becomes a little bit of a yeah, but guy where it's like 2015 finals couldn't win the MVP. 16 couldn't get done. 17, 18 needed KD. Yeah, but. And then the 22 just took it off the table. And that was that. Now he's one of the best 12 players of all time. Giannis, I still feel like can get like, I don't know if, I don't know if that was his last chance, I guess is my point for Curry. It was.

yeah it's definitely not Giannis' last chance I mean I voted Giannis because he could go to the Knicks like there's yeah he could go to who knows who knows where he's playing three years from now but I guarantee he's going to be impactful I just feel like there's more swings at the pinata for him sometimes Giannis I feel like he's actually like underrated which I know probably sounds stupid but yeah I think you're it's a bit like Durant lay out the Durant case if it's

So Brooklyn with Kyrie disaster extension, fire everybody. Okay, nevermind. No, actually trade me, but only trade me to this team. And Phoenix doesn't make, and I'm not even talking about a ring bill. I'm talking about like a, just a competitive Western conference finals where we're not sure the outcome. And even if the sons were to lose just a hell of a lot better than what we saw with Minnesota, just taking them.

out back that I don't know that you're ever going to see somebody as great as Durant have two rings where you want to use a yeah, but example, he's going to be out of the, all the guys in the top 20 with rings, he'll be the biggest. Yeah, but he will. I don't know. As you know, I'm probably his biggest fan. Um, it'll be, yeah, but you joined a 73 win team and you won two titles. And that's the only reason you want. That's it. That's what he's going to get. And he's going to say he doesn't care, but I think he does. Um,

I have another leg. This is a great one. It's a zag jaw. It's young. You don't think of it, right? It's like, but there's jobs. It's just a lot of, I've kind of forgot about jaw. Everyone's forgotten about jaw. They're just kind of over here on the side. But if you look at their summer and their roster and their pieces combined with the fact that they have the ninth pick and hopefully he comes back with his head on straight,

I don't know. They're left out of that Western conversation. I don't know if I would leave him out because there's no reason he can't at least imitate Edwards from an offensive statistics standpoint. He's not going to imitate the defense part, but could he match? Could he be basically Edwards for Memphis? Yeah, I think he could. So, and this is somebody that I think we're all disappointed in and worried that it's going to keep going sideways and maybe it just flips and goes the other way.

That's a great one. Thank you. I don't even feel like you had to give it the, uh, the zag. Well, cause he's young. You don't think of it like legacy young guys yet, but you know, he's headed toward like you start rattling off the disappointing superstars who their career got fucked up in some way. And he's in pencil on that list unless he flips it. He gives you so much fun. Yeah. And in the beginning, and then you think about the record they had before everybody got hurt

a couple years ago, and you're going, man, are they, like, that's what the Timberwolves just did is what this Memphis story was supposed to be. This playoff moment where they announced to the NBA world, okay, like, we're a real factor here. You got to always be thinking about Memphis and how you match up with us. And then, of course, just when it gets into, like, the favorite, the guys that you just love watching play basketball. Although, I'll tell you, I'm going to worry about him the rest of his career, the way he lands.

Well, yeah, we've been talking about that for, what, four years? Yeah. He's our number one oh-no guy other than Porzingis. Yeah, but then you add in the other part and you just think, this guy's deal is, what's his deal? Yeah. For the longest time. So he doesn't feel like the face of a franchise in the last couple seasons. It's up to him to kind of turn that around. But that's a good one. Do you have one? Because I have another one.

Well, I just have the aged out group that we've already talked about. All right. I have two more. I think we covered it. Is Levine good enough for the conversation? No. Okay. How about Paul George? Yeah, of course he is. So I really like Paul George and he was actually my number one guy on my list after Dame because...

He's had a fascinating career dating back to going toe to toe with Miami and those two Indiana heat finals, which seemed like a million years ago, but they're only 11 and 12 years ago. It's a broken leg comes back from that is a huge, huge, huge trade piece slash. Can we get this guy piece for a couple of years, which we're about to talk about in the retreadables, um, has that weird. Okay. So you're, and then instead of going to the Lakers goes to the Clippers and becomes kind of Kawhi's, uh,

Jalen Brown. But then when Kawhi got hurt that one year, what was that? 22. And all of a sudden, Paul George looked like he could be a 1A and be the best guy on a finals team potentially and almost got it done. And now he's kind of floated into that zone. What did you call him? A coin toss guy?

Yeah, I called he and Harden the coin toss brothers in the playoffs. It's amazing. One of your best nicknames of all time, the coin toss brothers. So the question for me is this, Paul George, I think is heading into his, it would be his 15th season, this next one where he's going to get one last big contract. And is that just who he is? Is he a coin toss brother? Or what if he went to Philadelphia and played with Embiid and Maxie? Or what if he went into Orlando and became the lead guy with Palo or

You know, wherever, what if the Lakers and Clippers flip him and he becomes a Laker and LeBron goes to the Clippers, like whatever scenario you want to give, it seems like he's going to be in a more interesting spot next year than this year, I guess is my point. Cause whatever he's, wherever he is on the Clippers, he's the number three star in the movie poster now because Kawhi sucks up all the oxygen and then Harden, once he got there, he sucked up a lot of the action and it's like, oh yeah. And we also have Paul George and he, I think he's better than that.

I voted for him for all NBA last year too. I should mention. I was looking at this because I know we're going to talk Sixers and options and all that stuff, but I'm glad you brought up the 22 playoff run because he was like 30 a game, right? Yeah. Excuse me. The 21 playoff run. 21. That's what it was. Cause it was still a little COVID hangover. Right. I thought that series against Utah, a really good regular season team in Utah. I just thought it was,

important that dallas series that utah series and then he still put up big numbers um against the suns which ended up going six games and he used to be somebody that was almost laughably underperforming in the playoffs where which made the playoff p nickname so funny yeah i mean there was the game i forget was it a playoff game against cleveland where

He, either they were in the Gatorade commercial where he hits this game winner in the Gatorade commercial. Then he came back in the real game out of commercial and missed it. Or it was the other way around. And then when you look at the Oklahoma City losses in the two years that he was there at 18 and 19 of the game that I just was like, how do you score 34 points in game play?

and five points in game six. Like, how did the Thunder lose to the Jazz that year? Like, that is a, that series means a lot to me when I think about Westbrook and then at that time with George. So I think the 21 run that George was on was really important, at least for him. And that's kind of the

Maybe we're too deep in the weeds with it, but I think that's why the playoffs can be so important to beyond just who wins the whole thing or who loses in the finals and who's all time great and who sucks and who's disappointing is going to be labeled all these things the rest of their lives. But for George just to have that moment, because at that point, the standards had been so low set by him of like, what is this guy?

And after Dame hits that shot, he's like, it's still a bad shot. And you're just not allowed to say it, even if it was right. You're just like, what the hell are you thinking about when you're out there, when you're in this incredibly talented guy? So I don't know if the ring part of it mentions, but I'd say the second part of his playoff thing here has been just far better than maybe I should say the third part, because I think the early indie chapters were actually pretty good for him.

when no one really expected that team to beat the Heat anyway. So Kawhi gets hurt in game four of that Utah series, and including game four all the way through the Phoenix series. Paul George in those nine games was 30, 11 rebounds, 5.4 assists, playing 41 minutes a game. I mean, he looked like one of the five, six best guys in the league. So the question, like I think about the Philly fit for him, which I'm not sure I'm buying it.

As I talked about in previous pods, I just don't, I don't buy that a guy who grew up in California who wanted for years to get back to California, who's in California, is suddenly going to be like, you know what sounds awesome? Philly. Heard great things about their fans in the East Coast. Maybe I'll try it. I just, I'm dubious, but I also think from a basketball standpoint, it would be an amazing move to play with Maxie and Embiid. Now you're in the same situation with Embiid as you are with Kawhi, where you just have your fingers crossed every week that the guy's going to be in the court. But they need...

somebody like him and in the East, which I think is wide open with the exception of Boston and whatever we see from Milwaukee, like it's possible. One more legacy guy really quick. Um, there's a LeBron ring chase piece that I don't think he'll do, but it would be interesting if he did it.

Cause he's still good enough that it wouldn't feel like a Gary Payton on the 2006 heat type of thing. Right. He could go to Dallas and be the third best guy on the team. Maybe even second, depending on where he is physically at age 40, but he could go to Philly and play with him, beat him actually. Like there's teams you could put him on where it's like, it's not 2006 Gary Payton. I just don't think he'll do it, but.

You know, the question for me is, is he just done chasing rings or not? Because he has no chance winning one with the Lakers, I don't think. It would be funny because it would be his fifth and also would be the least impactful ring, perhaps in NBA history, for a star to have his legacy changed at all. Because nobody's changing their mind on him.

at this point. There's too much data. I've seen it all. No, there's one scenario. If he went to Dallas and played with Luka and Kyrie and then Luka got hurt in the first round and LeBron's like, I guess I'm going to have to dip back into the way back machine and then won the title anyway. It would have to be on a team where the star got hurt

And he had to throw it around his back. That would be the scenario. All right. I agree with that. I did not think. I still think people would be like, well, yeah, but Luka did all the regular season work and got him the seed. LeBron missed 20 games. Yeah, they would. I mean, those guys would just find a way to dump on him anyway. All right. Where's Embiid in all this? You know what's funny? I considered him briefly and I just feel like I've given up. You've given up? Whoa. I think I have. I think I've given up.

He can win me back, but I'm just, I just don't think he gets it. Like even seeing him on that halftime show or whatever, the pregame show, the clips, I'm just like, oh man, like you haven't come through in one playoff series in your entire career. And I don't even think you realize that, right? Does he realize that you're 30? Or he and Ben Simmons actually perfect teammates for lack of realization. Like at some point it might be you.

You know, how many excuses can we have up? I really like Embiid, but I still go back to that week when he dropped the 70 on 19 year old Wim Benyama and then missed the Denver game. And I'm just like, does this guy get it? I don't know. I just don't know. You're laughing. Well, I can't believe you said you've given up, even though I did something similar when I went on part of my take and we were just kind of, it was a conversation that somehow started with like the Tatum,

of possibilities, right? Yeah. If Tatum wins the finals MVP, which even if the Celtics win this thing, I don't know. He would have to do some, the series would have to go longer. He would have to have some huge, huge games. So it's not.

I'm not completely ruling it out, but as of today, you wouldn't feel great about Tatum's chances of finals MVP. And so what the high side of that conversation could be, right? Some of the, hey, is he actually, is Luka actually better than this guy? And it's like, yes, Luka is better than him, okay? I don't even care about what happens in the finals. Like, it's ridiculous to me. Then on the low side, if Dallas were to win the whole thing, or what if they blew a three-lead or something like that? Like, what would happen to this Celtics group? I have to ask you some of those questions a little bit later in the pod.

But then it became like, okay, well, who are the top four? And that's when Zach Lowe, that clip had gone around of him saying the top four are irrefutable. And my point was, until further notice, Embiid is just not waived into that group for me anymore. He just isn't. It doesn't mean I don't think he's outside of the top 10 or something absurd like that. Of course not. But I'm not going to blindly think of him

in the same category that I think of the other top shot creator, massive stack guys, MVP conversation guys. So I don't know if we're saying the same thing. No, you know why you thought that? Because he's not reliable. He hasn't proven that he can be reliable season to season. He just hasn't. And now he's going to be 30. And I'm looking at the history of big dudes and what happens when you just start adding weight every year just because you're getting older and that's what happens. I don't think he's a reliable bet from a health standpoint.

And I don't know if he gets it. And when I say get it, I mean, hey, Embiid, like you got to be in awesome shape, right? The more weight you carry, the more bad things can happen and you can blame whoever. But it ultimately starts with that. I think he obviously works on his game, his offensive game. I think both of us were like, wow, this guy, this is the best shooting big man we've ever had. He's an incredible free throw shooter.

A lot of things to like, but at this point, the reason I put him on is I'd be really surprised if you flip that narrative. I haven't seen him. And maybe he has, and I've missed it. But have you seen like real reflection with him? Like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I could have, maybe going into next year, I have to do this, this, and this.

I just haven't heard it. You hear stuff like you see him on the ESPN show where he's talking about the Celtics got lucky this year because I got hurt. So you get hurt every year. That was a tough look. Now, were they actually debating? Are the Celtics a dynasty before they won the finals? Stupid in itself. Yeah, I'm just wondering the dumbest thing I've ever seen is somebody who's worked in television. We got to win a title before we can have the dynasty combo.

Just win the first one. Win the first one. Was Embiid on the desk just so rattled from how terrible that segment producing was? Maybe he was. That's why I'm coming up with an excuse for him because maybe he didn't realize he saw the tape after because I shouldn't have said that the Celtics were lucky when I was hurt again. He's like, but God, why did we start the Bs without the Celtics of Dynasty before they've even won this first one? I did a binger. Maybe.

I did a ringer top hundred. We had the last vote and I think I had Embiid ninth and I wanted to put him higher and I just couldn't justify it. Okay. Give me the eight in front of them. I had Jokic, Donchik, Giannis, Shea, Tatum. I had Brunson sixth. I'm not going to apologize either.

Curry 7th. You shouldn't. Just an aside on Brunson. I've been prepping now for the last week, just cramming for the NBA draft and watching these small point guards and go, well, that's really cool, but I don't know. Or, all right, that's amazing you did that, but I don't really like the way you're finishing around the rim here, and I'm not sure this is going to work or whatever. And then every time, all I do is think about Jalen Brunson and what he did this year. He has to be 6th. Curry 7th.

Didn't make the playoffs. Like, sorry. Edwards eight. That was the toughest one that Edwards Curry Brunson thing. And then I had Embiid nine. Guess who I had number 10? Durant. Victor Wimbledyama. I'm just ready. I'm just, I'm never making a list like that again and not having him in the top 10. I'm just not. NBA.com should do this where they have all the MVP voters vote for like the top 10 players once a month.

Well, that's kind of what we were trying to do with the ringer top hundred, but it'd be, what you just said though, is what they should do with the MVP to stay and make it stand out from all NBA. We should vote for 10 places. There should be like, he finished ninth in the MVP voting should be a thing we say. I don't know why we cut it off at five. I like that because this is something that you've brought up and you brought it up in your book and,

This is why this stuff matters is you go back and like I was looking at Charles Barkley and I was trying to find these articles from 93 like how off the top of the pot, like how are people talking about him? And then I go, my God, like he had eight top six MVP finishes. Right. And it would be kind of cool if we had 10 slots for the MVP vote. Just so you could see like historically where guys are.

lined up because then when you go through carl malone's resume because i started looking at like barclay's mvp year against jordan then also the carl malone years and like how many years he finished really high in the mvp voting

and granted you can end up finishing lower because of just the points and the way the voting works or everything. But if there was like an end of year definitive top 10 list based on the MVP voting, it'd be a great resource to just kind of go back and think of like, this is where this guy lived for this many years of his career as opposed to like a peak two or three year season career. Larry Bird is the best version of that because he's like,

Shocking, shocking submission. No, he's, I think, top three for the first 10 years of the league. Is he really? No, it's like 3-2-3-2-1-1-1-2-3. I forget what it is, but yeah. All right, I have it here. 4-2-2-2-1-1-1-3-2. Yeah, that's his first...

It's his first nine years of the week. Like that's crazy. Nobody's going to do that again. Hey, we have a Retratable segment. It's brought to you by Workday. Get the whole band together with Workday and pair finance and HR on one platform for an epic performance. With Workday AI at the core, you'll make confident decisions faster than ever and you'll drive flawless business and finance operations with an agile platform

That constantly evolves to future-proof your organization. Be a finance and HR rockstar with Workday. Visit workday.com to learn more. I didn't prep you for this. We are doing Paul George's trade in 2017 from Indianapolis to Oklahoma City. Indianapolis acquired Dmanis Sabonis and Victor Oladipo.

And if you go back and read the pieces from the time, old Depot was like four years, 84 million. And people were like, ah, it's a little pricey. And then he went there and had a couple of good years. They get some bonus. They turn him into, um, eventually in a Halliburton turns out to be a good trade for them. Not a good trade. If you go back and read what happened, but the reason I bring this up, not just because we had Paul George in the legacy thing, but there's some relevance to Boston and Dallas in this whole thing. One was, um,

The Celtics, if you remember, tried to get Paul George twice. They tried to get him at the 2017 trade deadline. And if you go back and read this, it's all true. They offered the Brooklyn pick swap pick as part of the package to try to get Paul George in February, 2017. The pick that became Jason Tatum, Indiana shut it down. Then during the summer there, they offered Crowder, Marcus Smart, and three firsts.

not the Brooklyn 2018 first or the Sacramento first for Paul George. Indiana said no. Indiana took that Oladipo-Cebonis deal and Boston was furious because they were like, we had a better deal. In retrospect, not a better deal, right? Three picks in their top 20s, Crowder and Smart versus Cebonis and Oladipo.

So everybody shit on Pritchard for that, including me. The other piece that's interesting for the finals, Jackie McMullen in 2018 wrote this. You can Google it. It was on ESPN. She wrote a big, giant feature about Kyrie that's really interesting. And in there, she said one of the reasons Kyrie fell out there is because the Cavs explored a three-way deal with Phoenix and Indiana that would have shipped Irving and Fry to the Suns. This is summer 2017. And brought Eric Bledsoe and Paul George to Cleveland. If you remember, Bledsoe was a clutch client.

The Suns resisted, unwilling to part with their number four pick, which they plan to use to draft Josh Jackson. Ouch. And then she wrote, no formal offer was made, but news of the potential transaction stung Irving, whose sources close to him say became convinced that LeBron's camp, which also represents Bledsoe, orchestrated the trade talks. So you had all these butthurt teams, Phoenix, Cleveland's bad, Boston's bad, and it turned out Indiana made a great deal.

This is why trades are crazy, right? Old deep bonus to bonus for Paul George heading into the last year of his deal. And it turns out to be an awesome deal for Indiana. Because if you're staring at the deal going, okay, all I have to do is say yes to this or something that hasn't been proven yet when you're talking about the Celtics draft pick at three and the history of like, go through the last 10 years of just the top 10 picks. You don't even have to do the full lottery picks 11 through 14. Go through the top 10 and how many guys are on a second team like within four years.

And there are certain years where you could put the work in and say, hey, this is going to be really deep and we're going to want those kinds of guys. But like what Paul George is and based on the Celtics success this season, and ultimately we'll see how this all finishes up here. But the emphasis on the big wing that can score three level score, can defend and all that stuff. You're like, OK, I can have one of those guys right now. So, of course, you would want to do a lot of these deals. But I remember with it just the fear that Oklahoma City was incredibly bold, but when

when I talked to other teams about it, it was like, what's the point? He's going to go to the Lakers. Right. He's not going to resign there. And then Presti ends up keeping him, which I think is one of the funniest things ever that I'm convinced they threw a huge free agency party just so it would be awkward for him to say he was going somewhere else. Yeah. And Oladipo, who had a stretch there with the Pacers a few years ago where he was like... He looked like a top 10 guy. Right.

And then on top of that was the bonus and everything else. So the Thunder, I look at that trade and wonder, like as much as people are saying, oh, Prestige is going to stockpile and maybe the next Mad Star, you can't do that. But I mean, that's in his playbook to be incredibly bold when the rest of the league thinks it doesn't make any sense. And I wonder if we're going to be reminded of that again here soon. Yeah.

Good tease. Thanks again to Workday for sponsoring this segment. Be a finance and HR rock star with Workday. To learn more, visit Workday.com. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. Flex your ruggedness in the Nissan Pathfinder Rock Creek. Power your epic adventures with 3.5 liter V6 engine, 295 horsepower. Take on those big bad trails on these big bad tires, 18 inch beadlock style wheels with all terrain tires to be exact.

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to learn more. Great app, by the way. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. I'm sure by now you've all gotten back into your Sunday routines, but they could be even better. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get the most live NFL games all in one place, every game, every Sunday. And you can even watch up to four different games at once.

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You've got some Reed Shepard thoughts. I do have some Reed Shepard thoughts. Let's hear it. Ken, well, I'm just afraid because of the Jokic, Luca, Caitlin Clark, Chet Hanks, white boy summer, is the world ready for Reed Shepard to go number one as a six, one and a half guard from Kentucky? Like, I'm just saying, if that happens. The climate's not perfect for it? I just don't know.

I don't know if people are ready for this because white guys are having a moment right now and white gals when it comes to the hoops world. So I'm just telling he's probably one of the best shooting prospects I've seen in 20 years of doing the draft. Wow. I don't know who would say that he isn't. Well, that's where it's a little tougher. Peyton Pritchard. When I looked at his synergy numbers, Bill, I'm going to share them with you here. I have to find them.

As you're looking, I'll... Go ahead. Yeah, Phil. Well, I asked Kyle Mann because Kyle Mann, Kentucky guy, obviously has been following him. And so my question was...

Is it crazy to think Reed Shepard would be the greatest version ever of Peyton Pritchard? Which is, I mean that as a compliment, not an insult. Like if you watch Peyton Pritchard in the finals and just think like, what if Peyton Pritchard was awesome in game five? And that was just Reed Shepard every game, right? Like undersized, feisty, little stronger than anything. Teams keep attacking him, but he can fend it off. And then on the other end, he's just making everything. I just don't know. There's not a lot of doppelgangers out there

Um, but Kyle Mann loves his, loves his defensive hands. Um, he thinks offensively that could he be better than Tyler Hero? He thinks sounds great. Um, and it's just really a really smart player who can shoot the lights out and has a good handle. That's not nothing. I'm, I'm higher on him than I was a week ago as I dive in. I'm not as high as you, you seem like delighted by him.

Well, I'm cautiously delighted, though, because I don't know what to do. Now, the six one and a half, I think it's also important to point out that they stopped doing the combine measurement in shoes. So every one of these guys over the history of all these measurements, whatever their listed height was, and then whatever ended up on ESPN.com when you pulled up their page stuff, that was always the height with shoes. So for whatever reason, in this really weird development process,

they said, let's just stop doing that. So basically like everybody's height was a lie. Everyone's height was a lie for every one of you right now. Like your favorite player wasn't actually as tall as he was listed. Wow. It's like when they changed the TV ratings out of nowhere and all of a sudden everybody is like, no, now bars and airports count. It's like, what? Everyone's having their best year ever. That's like the reverse where I'd go.

So wait, we're good if a guy fills out in pencil and hand writes in a radio journal his fucking radio diary that he liked to show. That's how we're good or bad. Yeah. That seems to be a little outdated. Okay. So even knowing that out of the combine, like Reed Shepard is now magically 6'3". Yeah. It's a lot when you're talking about him potentially being in the mix.

As a number one pick now, the shooting stuff, but, but wait, it's not a lot when we do the exercise, which we now talk about every week that you just have to pretend the top seven has been chopped out of the draft and you're taking rich shepherd as the eighth pick. He just happens to be first.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad you reminded me of the rule that we brought up. And I don't mean that with any snark. It's what you have to keep doing. It's like whenever anyone signed a contract with a new TV cap and I made the joke, like anytime there was a new contract, you're like, what?

And then somebody would try to explain it to like a you or me as if we didn't already know. Like, hey, well, you know, the cap goes up. Like, yeah, I know. I know. The cap did go up. That's why. And that's why Evan Turner's worth $72 million. Right. So in this Alan Crabb, $70 million. Are you kidding? No, no, dude. It's totally fine. The cap went up. Yeah. So no contract is bad now because the cap went up. So if you...

Do the same thing. Apply the same principle with this draft. You go, okay, stop getting caught up in like what the number one pick is supposed to look like because this year is just not going to happen. My good friends at Synergy love the program. So shout out to them. Big part of my summer.

His catch and shoot numbers, they do the percentile of like where you rank based on these different shot types. So on catch and shoot, he's 1.54 points per shot, 99th percentile. Guarded, he's in the 96th percentile. It's still at 1.3 plus. Unguarded, if you leave him open, Bill, it's fucking over.

And that's something when you watch his tape just over and over and over again, it's one thing that he gets into his dribble jumper off the high screen. And if the, if the lower defender isn't there to meet him immediately, you're toast.

He's good at getting to the mid-range stuff. He really does play, like, despite he and Dillingham taking turns with possessions, like, when he's running the possession, it's his possession, and he looks like a point guard. He looks far more like a point guard than Stephane Castle does. All right? Yeah. And if he's just open, open, like, it's swung to the other side, and then he cuts and finds himself behind the three-point line, it's a layup from out there. And...

All of these numbers, whether it's catch and shoot, dribble, jump, or guarded, unguarded, it's all between the 96th and 99th percentile of college basketball players this season. Jesus. And the tape backs all of it up. And I think the part that makes me more excited about him is his passing.

Because he really has, whether it's the deep drive where the defense collapses and he kicks it back out behind him. Like there's some stuff there that he's born with. Like I really feel that way about point guards. And I'm not saying he's like Jason Kidd or anything, but Jason Kidd was born that way. You know I'm with you on this theory. You don't like learn how to be an awesome point guard. You have some sort of chromosome in your soul gets you there.

Totally. And there's parts where he'll get maybe the first outlet off the defensive rebound, and he would be totally within his right as a great shooter to just never want to give the ball up and try to find that spot. And actually, this is one of the things I love about Scoots, and maybe I'm jinxing him here, but he's looking to get the ball up. You know, he doesn't... It's not like... He's...

He's this unbelievable option with all of these shooting numbers, but he's still okay making sure he's getting some other people involved. Now, he's not going to beat you up. So head up all the time. Yeah. Always looking for somebody else. Can't miss when he's wide open. Can't miss. Start with those three things. That sounds great. Yep. Now...

He gets lost in the trees at that size. Athletically, the testing stuff is hilarious because the same thing with Dalton Kinnick, where you're watching Dalton going, man, this guy's got some bounce to him. And then you look at Kinnick's athletic testing at the combine, and all the numbers are off the charts. Shepard, when you're watching him, you're like, okay, how good of an athlete is he? Because you've got Dillingham on the other side of it, just a jitterbug. He's just really tough to stay in front of. And Shepard's certainly not that.

But then you wonder, like, okay, I wonder what Shepard did athletically. Well, he tied for the highest max vert jump at the combine at 42 inches. Oh, my God. So we're not talking about him and Brownie James. No. Brownie James was 40 and a half. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. Devin Carter from Providence College, I think, actually came in first technically, and he's his own coach.

nine boards a game as a guard, which is just incredible. Well, let me ask you this, because everything you just laid out, the draft, the top four is Atlanta, Washington, Houston, San Antonio. From what you just laid out, Washington, Houston, and San Antonio could all use a guy like the guy you just described. Washington, definitely, they don't have a point guard. Houston seems like somebody who could be a third guard off the bench, but eventually a van Vliet replacement. And then San Antonio, that sounds like literally exactly what they need.

So is your case, it's not inconceivable that he could go to number one because Atlanta doesn't need somebody like that because they have the two guards. Yeah. And yet the other three teams right after them are like, we actually want that guy. And we're afraid somebody else is going to take them. So let's just fucking move up and grab them at one.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And just kind of off of last week where I think both of us have heard enough now for the last couple of weeks and just about clinging bullshit, bullshit with guys. It's just, Oh, you know, be ready to be surprised. So just have an open mind about all this stuff. So when I'd watched read this week and I'm late to it, but,

I was thinking about other great shooters. Like JJ was an incredible shooter, but he also was bigger and he was a really good athlete. And you saw his development at Duke where JJ went from somebody who provided spacing to somebody who was controlling the ball in big possessions, getting to the free throw line. And so once JJ did that, I was like, okay, wait a minute. This guy has like a real chance here. Like he should be a lottery pick. This isn't just some

kid at Duke who's making a bunch of threes. There's way more to his overall game. Clay, when he was at Washington State, I don't think he had the ball. I don't think he used the ball the way... I don't know. I could be forgetting it. But I read...

controls possessions more so than he's just somebody that provides all this kind of shooting. But even at his worst, Bill, which is, again, not your default for you're talking about potentially a number one pick when he looks like Reed Shepard, you go, well, we know this. He's going to make open shots immediately. Like, that's not ever going to go away. He already shows you the NBA range, and it's...

It's just absurd. Like you can just see the defenders in these sec games when they lose track of them. And then they see the ball swung to his side and you just like the head down. Like, I can't believe I let him get away from me, but there's more to it than just spacing. It's just a matter of like, what is the team going to allow him to do? Are they going to bring him in and be rookie point guard and be like, all right, you're in charge of all these possessions. When I think rim finishing for him is probably going to be a bit of a challenge, despite the vertical that we talked about. He's just,

That's asking a lot of somebody that size to be getting to the rim and finishing. So if that never happens and he's still somewhat limited, the shooting is so special, Bill. And it's both. It's not just catch and shoot. It's him dribbling and getting into his jumper where both of those numbers are like the best in college basketball. Why would that not translate? Shooting is the number one thing that translates.

Well, shooting and defense. Because I think Castle, with the defense, he'll be fine. Right? He will be... Worst case scenario, he's in the Derek Jones spot for an awesome playoff team someday. There's two other teams... Hold on. I'm glad you brought up Castle, though, because I went through and watched every one of his pick-and-roll ball handling possessions because I was just trying to find it. Like, show me...

Show me the point guard playmaking side of it. I think it's 71 possessions and he took shots on 57 of the 71. Utah at 10, Oklahoma City at 12 would be the other ones. I think for a Reed Shepard move up. And the reason I mentioned that is because Utah has a ton of picks and Oklahoma City has a ton of picks. And this is the draft where maybe you could sneak up to three. Houston's going to be the wild card, but

Everything you laid out just sounds like somebody Washington should take, but probably won't because they're just going to be too enamored by the possibility of having two French guys. This is a fun draft. I can see the pep in your step. It's just weird. It's going to go all over the map. I've embraced it. I really have. I've embraced it. Look, I started watching Bezelis going, man, if this guy could shoot...

Like he might be the number one pick. If, first of all, if Bezellis like consistently could hit three point shots, I think he's the number one pick in this draft. He's the Franz, the Franz guy. He's a little Franz-ish, right? Yeah. Uh, well, I'm not just saying that because they're both white. Feels, feels a bit like that. 6'10", 195. Have you ever, have you ever been able to do a good black white comp?

Many, many times. Oh, really? Share one. Many times. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was always, I always used to love having that in my column, like trying to cross over.

So it's a good one. Bring people together. Yeah. Especially we're going to need it. We're going to need stuff like that. Bill, if Reed goes number one. Well, it's white boy summer. All right. We're going to take this to a part two because we haven't even talked about the NBA finals yet and we didn't play. What, what would you do? And, and I didn't even ask for solo if he's following the Karen retrial. So we're taking all of that to part two. Part one was produced by Kyle Creighton and by Steve. So Rudy, thanks for so we'll see you for part two.

I'm going to sit there on a waist. I'm going to sit here.

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