NBA Draftapalooza Part 1: A Massive Knicks Trade With Ryen Russillo
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First round NBA draft pod. But big trade last night. Knicks, Nets, Bridges are the Knicks of contender. We had so much to talk about. And some of it ties into the draft that's about to happen. So we fired up the pod. We fired it up on YouTube. We did it live. Go, you can check it out on the Bill Simmons channel. We're still on I next. Part one. I don't know if this is part one of three parts or two. We'll see what happens today. Draftapalooza starts now. First, our friends from Pro Gym.

All right, Bill Simmons here with Brian Masillo. We dumped our Sunday pod. We turned it into a Wednesday pod. We were going to go right after the draft, but we held out both hope and possibility that something wacky would happen before the draft. Something did. The Knicks have Mikael Bridges. They gave up a million kajillion picks. There are so many swaps and variations that I can't even keep track.

You and I both noticed the same thing. I just want to start here before we get into the Knicks-Nets thing. Everyone, there is a second trade with the Rockets picks and the Nets. And then last night, the narrative from Woj and Poonwar and some others was like, the Rockets are getting all these other picks and they gave Brooklyn their 2025 first back because now they have these Suns picks. They're going to go after Kevin Durant. I saw a completely different

And I was talking to people today and then you're the only other person I know who saw it the same way I did. The bridges trade doesn't happen unless they know they have the rockets trade because you can't tank and give away bridges and start your tanking error if you don't have your pick. So they're not doing the bridges trade unless they get those picks, which I haven't seen reported yet, but I am 99.9.9.9% positive that that's what happened. Do you agree?

I totally agree. Because why would you tank if you didn't have control of your picks? So even though it's a massive, like every team I talked to today, just talking about the draft and it's just across the board, massive over pick. Doesn't mean I think the Knicks are wrong and we're getting under all the bridges stuff. But when you look at all the pick parts of all the assets and everything flying around, Brooklyn getting back its 25 is incredible considering now they're going to tank. But

why would they have done the bridges trade tanking, not having control of those picks? So I think it's completely connected. I don't think there's any part of it where you're like, oh man, Houston really gave up this thing. Cause I don't know that they were giving up a thing that even existed without the bridges trade. Yeah. And the other piece of that is I think the bridges trade came together fast yesterday. Yeah.

And even though we had talked about it, we talked about it on the May 19th pod. We talked about it, yeah. Well, because I knew that the Knicks wanted to get Bridges and that's what Brunson wanted. And I think Brunson has the car keys of that team. And that was the guy. And Bede was less realistic. Giannis, less realistic. If you're just talking about what kind of team do you want to build, Bridges was the one that made the most sense. And I think the one they wanted. But once you go all in with...

everything you gave up, that's not the kind of thing that you can just talk about for a week and a half. You know, it's like, especially if you now have this rockets piece too. So you basically have, you're on the clock almost immediately. How fast, how fast can we do all of this before stuff starts to get out? So if you're the nets, you have to make sure that rockets trade is in play. If you're the rockets, you're just sitting there going, wait, what?

So we're going to give you 25 back and we're going to be 26 back.

Well, what are we getting? And the nets are like, we're going to give you all this other stuff. And by the way, if we keep bridges, here's, here's door B, we're going to go overpay for Trey young. We'll be an eight seed next year. And that 25 first that you have will be like the 14th pick. So you could have that. And then in 26, it'll be the 13th pick. And those would be the two picks you get, or we'll give you all this stuff. You can buy into that Phoenix draft and

I just, the part that I never understood last night and today is why people would have thought those future Phoenix picks are more valuable than a 25 Nets first if they don't have Mikael Bridges. It's no contest because Brooklyn is now one of the three or four worst teams in the league.

by any calculation determined to it like as far as tanks and teardowns when you start looking around the league the last couple years you had the san antonio part of it portland still was kind of flirting with what they were doing detroit wasn't trying to tank washington clearly just didn't have a roster to even compete for this year so this feels like one of the the clear like signals of a two-year tank that we haven't seen in a while well all right well

So many places to go. I know. Let's just do, I think you should do bridges. Nick's let's do Nick's first. Yeah. We'll do nets and then we'll talk about Durant. Cause there's just an incredible amount of, don't be surprised if Durant has gone this week, the sons aren't keeping Durant. I think that's a whole other piece of it. Next part first. So,

We have a 12 year Knicks-Nets rivalry starting when Prokhorov buys the Nets. And we're like, this is on. It's happening. Carmelo's on the Knicks. The Nets trade for Pearson Garnett. And it's like, here we go. Battle of New York. Not only is it now over, and it's been over for a while, and it was over once you saw that Knicks playoff run. It's like the Nets are fucking dead in the water. This is now not even, it's not even a feud. I don't know what this is. Now the Nets do this. It's like, do they move at this point? What's their move in Brooklyn?

Do you even stay in the tri-state area? Should they start looking at locations? Because this is a wrap. They just gifted the Knicks a top four contender and it's going to be years before they're good again. How are there even Nets fans left at this point? Wait, are you asking if I actually think they could move or should move or anything like that? What's the point of the Nets in Brooklyn at this point if you're going to do this? They've had a rough go. The Prokhorov stuff was...

It was just awful. And then to see Tatum and Brown, where all these picks have been flying around like crazy in the last few years. Like this is unprecedented kind of stuff. Zach Lowe had a really good piece on ESPN.com going like, if you actually look at how many times trades involving this many picks have happened, the recent history is like seven of the last eight in the recent decade. And then prior to that, it was like one time before 2011 since the merger with the ABA. So we're talking like a new world, which we're all accustomed to now because it's been going on for years.

But that was one of the first recent ones where even that took me a second. I'm like, man, what? Like all of these are unprotected or what's going to happen? And then there's all these swaps. And then you hear about the stories afterwards where, uh,

you could just hear that the Celtics side of it was like, let's just keep seeing what they do. It felt a little bit like Minnesota and Utah and go bear. It's like, let's just, let's just don't even counter, just see what happens and how much you can get. And so that is such a haunting trade that we thought that maybe there'd be like moments where teams were like, you can't do that again. And it's been the opposite, like teams don't care. So then I think when the Nets go through all that,

change owners, Prokhorov didn't really understand it. And I still, I feel like I'm on an island on this one, but if you can get KD and Kyrie, and then you add Harden to it, like Joe size, probably having moments by himself being like, what, what happened? Like, yeah, this was supposed to be a good thing. And so,

They salvage a ton of assets back, which is another kind of funny little lesson where I think teams will just say, yeah, maybe we just trade all of our picks, but I guess we can kind of get them back later on. So they salvage the KD thing. They get a couple firsts out of the Kyrie market that wasn't very strong. And now at the very least, it feels like they have a plan. So yeah, I'm not telling you they're good and clearly they're irrelevant historically against the Knicks, but does it feel at least as if there's a bit more vision than this

this purgatory that they've been in since the beginning of two summers ago. It's vision that they have kind of no choice to have this vision because once Durant and Kyrie wanted out, what are you going to do? I mean, the Durant trade, when you consider all the picks that they got from Phoenix combined with bridges. And I think we said this when we did the podcast. And Cam Johnson. Right. But we were like, man, bridges on, on his own is probably worth like three firsts. Well, it turns out he's worth five. So they get this absolutely insane haul for Durant, which is,

If you just add all the trades together, it's eight unprotected firsts and a protected first and a swap in 28 and another swap just for getting out of the Durant business when he didn't want to be there anyway. So that part worked out great. I just think big picture like...

You've ceded territory in New York now to this Knicks team that people really, really love, right? And there was only one way people were going to love this Knicks team more in New York is if they then added the fourth guy. And now they have this team that is, I kept hearing the phrase built to beat the Celtics.

The league's really good. I don't know if you want to have a team that's only built to beat the Celtics. We just watched this happen with Minnesota. It was like, they're built to beat Denver. They're built to beat Denver. It's like, okay, cool. But Luca is in the next round. Are you built to be Luca? Are you built to be, you want to have the flexibility to beat all kinds of teams. But for me, there, there's five contenders, like true real contenders. And they're, they're two of the five, right? Boston and New York.

I'd say OKC. I'd say Denver. I'd say Minnesota. And then Dallas. I have penciled in as like a five and a half. I don't know. I don't know if they have a better run than they had this year. But so it's either five or six, depending on how you feel about Dallas. Is there anyone else you would put in there? You didn't say Milwaukee, right? I think I have them behind those six right now.

I want to see what version I'm getting from Dame. And they're saying all the right things about Dame. He's going to be in the best shape of his life. I had the tiger last year was crazy. Doc said that thing on my pod. He, he didn't practice. He didn't work out all summer because he was afraid he was going to get hurt before he got traded. So it's like, I had the tiger Dame. We'll see that team's pretty old. They're talking about trading Lopez this week. I have them at least seven. Is that crazy? Yeah.

No, it feels disrespectful to Giannis and it's probably my just stubborn respect for him being able to do stuff and just being still an impossible matchup at times. But when I was thinking about them today, because I was going through this exercise this morning, I was like, how many times do you look at a team and go, okay, their window is still open four years after the title. Now they're different, but they're not entirely different. And I thought the game stuff with Doc was very revealing. I also wondered if the Heat were like,

It's actually cool. We had no idea we were going to be potentially trading for a guy that didn't work out all summer just because he wanted to stay healthy, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. You can't work out at all. You can't hit a treadmill. You can't just kind of get shots up because you're afraid of having another injury. Now, granted, he's had a lot of injuries, so are Dame and Yana going to be that much better positioned health-wise at the end of next year? I don't think it's impossible. They don't have a lot of depth. They don't have a lot of ways to make their team better.

especially with this first second apron stuff where it's just, I still don't fully understand it. I think both of us have struggled to just understand all the machinations of it. Well, every time I look at the second apron stuff and you realize like you can't do anything, it's a hard cap. That's the best way of looking at it. And that's where the Knicks have a lot of stuff that they've got to kind of navigate here, whether it's the OG deal or the Hart deal or could Randall be on the table. But we just talk about bridges in the basketball park because I do want to dig into this and like the match against the Celtics.

Is he worth this many picks? Historically, you'd say no. I don't think many teams would say that this is the greatest match of equal value going out. But we don't know what the picks are going to be worth. We know three of them are probably going to be shitty picks. The Milwaukee pick next year will be in the bottom eight of the draft. The Knicks pick will be as well. And then there's another Knicks pick that probably the Knicks will be good for the next three years.

So it seems like more picks, like it seems like a bigger value than maybe it is. Okay. Uh, and when it's framed and I saw it framed like more picks for bridges who hasn't made an all-star team in his career, then all of these other guys are going to be in the hall of fame. And when you frame it that way, you're like, okay,

That's a lot. But just the basketball part of this and the lack of flexibility and some of the second apron stuff that we're talking about, the fact that Brunson and Bridges combined are at 48 million and that's less than Bradley Beal at 50 million. That's a huge win to add this kind of piece in and why Bridges is so valuable on this low number in the 20s this year and next year.

The on-ball decision makers, guys that can create something. I thought Bridges post-Phoenix with Brooklyn last year, and I saw them live and in person. He was doing stuff offensively where there's another level to him.

And it felt like the Nets were so lost this season, it's almost as if they didn't really care. I know I've complained about the Cam Thomas shot selection in the past, and it felt like Bridges was kind of just going along for the ride. But I would say last year, after he was first traded, there was stuff there that I saw from him where I'm like, this guy can really get into his own stuff, that dribble and pull up from the midrange. So now when you look at, say you're talking about Boston, and not just designed to beat Boston, but Boston's best advantage was that every time

they had five guys on the floor except for the Xavier Tillman minutes or maybe some Pritchard minutes. And this is even with Horford instead of Porzingis and the best version clearly with Porzingis in there. That's five guys that you have to guard. There's no one that you can cheat off of. And all five guys, whether it's White, Drew, Tatum, or Brown, or even a little Porzingis or Horford can move with the ball in their hands and you trust them to get out of where the catch is to like get themselves a better angle. Certainly with White and Drew on top of everything else.

And I think back to that Toronto team in 19. Yes, they got lucky with the injuries against the Warriors. But what was really special about that team is you had multiple guys, sometimes five at the same time when they're playing Gasol, who are just terrific decision makers with the ball in their hands. So to throw Bridges in with Brunson, with Hart, or DiVincenzo, depending on what the lineup is, I don't know what's going to happen with Randall. Then you add in OG to this.

that's four guys and the wing defensive matchups to cover up for some of that Brunson stuff when he'd be hunted, say in the Easter conference finals, or if they were making the finals, I fell in love with his next team last year, just as a story. I found that playoff series against Philly to be probably the most entertained I was by maybe any of them. Um, you

You know, that's maybe saying something against Denver, Minnesota. I was entertained, but the games weren't necessarily great every single night. So if we just... It's hard to eliminate the conversation and say, hey, don't worry about the picks right now because historically it's a massive, massive price. But just looking at the Knicks and what every team should be trying to do, it's easier said than done. Like, hey, we want four or five guys with the ball in hands that are all a threat. This...

completely changes adding somebody like this, even if he's not this perennial all-star, that it makes me kind of just look at the price and go, whatever. Yeah, huge price. Love the asset. Love having Bridges. The Brunson Bridges...

Going for less than $50 million combined, at least for this year and next year, is part of the keys. You're basically, nobody has anything like that. And you think like- And you got to do it now. The Paul George, Bradley Beal, whatever you're talking about, all those guys are $48 million and up. The Celtics were even- Scotty Barnes. The Celtics were even a little bit in there before they had to deal with this Tatum extension.

You know, where they had a small window here and now that window is basically closed. They had white on a cheaper deal. This is before they extended drew and you know, now they're just going to have a super expensive team. I, uh, what I really like about this trade, I obviously I like bridges as much as you. And that this was the trade I was worried about as a Celtic fan. I was like, man, I hope they don't figure out a way to get bridges.

their team falls into place in a, in a whole different way because last year you have Hart playing 48 minutes a game, which is absurd, right? You're defense Chenzo playing all those minutes. Now those guys are probably bench guys and you just have, you're, you're basically, and I'm assuming Hartenstein isn't going to come back. I think, I think all the tea leaves are saying it's just going to be too hard and he's probably gonna get paid more from somebody else. But you know, if you just have,

You have Deuce McBride and Josh Hart and Dee Vincenzo as the first three guys off your bench. Combined with all the other stuff, combined with all the flexibility, and you can play OG against certain centers, basically anybody except for Embiid and Jokic probably. So you have...

A team that mirrors a lot of what worked with the Celtics. And this is a question I remember asking Rob Mahoney a couple weeks ago. Our team's going to try to emulate what the Celtics did and have this switchability on defense and the ability to go a little smaller and everybody can shoot. Now we see, okay, see, he gets Caruso. And then the Knicks get Bridges. And it feels like the league's kind of moving this way. So I don't know. Does this leave room for a zag now? Could somebody go the other way and be like, oh, they're doing this?

I'm going to twin towers. Like does that go eighth? Houston takes clinging today. And they're like, watch this switch on D against these two guys. Uh, but I do think this is where the league is going. I think everybody noticed what Boston did and what was working for them on both ends. And you start wondering like, maybe this is the future. If everybody can shoot at all positions, is this what you ultimately want? Switching on defense, the ability to make threes on the other side.

But I do think we've seen this before the Celtics, though. Because the Warriors, that was always the thing. They could switch all of these guys. That death lineup when they were going small before anybody was really even ready for it. That Draymond could switch on a point guards and in the centers. And Iguodala was the secret sauce of that. And they were the only ones that had Draymond. Now it feels like the league is just... There's more guys that can...

do that, I guess. Or maybe just the years of reps of playing that way, people are getting better at it. That's the only other thing I can think of. To have five threats. Yeah, it did, but

So just say it's almost like, okay, well, I want to have a backcourt like the Warriors. Right. I'm going to have two awesome shooters. Yeah, go for it, man. Nobody's holding you back. So if you look at Boston thinking, you know what I want? I want five guys that are a threat with the ball in their hands. Okay, go for it. And find a way to be able to pay them all at the same time. And luckily for Boston, they had drafted two of them. Derek White was at like a reduced cost, even though Brad Stevens would be this week had said,

And we'll see about that 29 pick. Like laughing because there's still that swap in there, which at the time people were looking at that deal when Derek White was shooting 30% from three with Boston the first year being like, oh man, that might be a little risky. And for Zingas, it's a diminished asset because of the injury history and that you had to kind of do an extension, even get him pick a player option. So I'm with you. Like, go ahead.

try to do what Boston did and at least the Knicks got another step there because Bridges with the ball in his hands once I saw it with Brooklyn is a

And he just wasn't given the opportunity. They didn't need him, especially with Chris Paul and Booker there. And Aiton was still wanting to get his touches. But there is a version of him that I think should make Knicks fans so much happier about having another guy that if the ball lands in his hands at the end of the shot clock, you still have a chance at a decent look. And that's really what the game is. I think we both think he's the second best guy on this team, though. So you're trading for a guy who's your number two. Offensively, yeah, he's better than OG.

I'm sure there's some metrics that... OG's corner threes are so absurd. Yeah, but Bridges plays every game and OG misses 20 to 30 games a year, I think is the difference. The durability with Bridges is unbelievable. I mean, he's basically...

He's a threat to start 900 games in a row. I was looking at... AC Green is like rooting for an injury. Yeah, AC's like, hey, if you're going to miss a game, you should just go out there for one minute and then foul somebody. I was looking at my ringer top 100.

where I had the Celtics with five of the top 45, right? Five, 14, 33, 39, 44. So just fundamentally, you're like, well, how can you compete with that? How do you try to steal the title from a team that has a top five guy, but also...

five of the top 50 well now you look at the knicks i had the knicks with 6 42 55 and 90 but then if you're talking if you went to like a top 125 they'd probably have six of those guys um it's 55 og yeah the point is i had brunson six and i think that's he's either six or seven depending on how you feel against him or curry and part of why i love this trade is they're just like

We're not holding our assets anymore for, oh, Embiid's unhappy. Let's go finally get our superstar. Oh, Giannis might be unhappy in Milwaukee. Oh, there's a Durant possibility. It's like we have our superstar. So now let's build around him. Let's use the picks to build. Let's get him a second, a number two guy. I don't think they were thinking that way a year ago because they didn't know Brunson was this good. They knew Brunson was really good. They didn't know he was this. But now you're treating him like he's on that Giannis Embiid level, which...

I mean, for them in a lot of ways, he is. So I thought that was interesting. A couple of things just flip for them in the right ways over the last couple of years. They're really smart. And those guys took over a month before COVID in 2020, Leon and Wes. And people were pretty dubious about what was going to happen. These aren't real basketball guys. These are agents. But I think they showed this is a relationship business. I don't know how much was true about Bridges telling the Nets like,

You're going to trade me to the Knicks. I'm signing there anyway. And if you trade me anywhere else, I'm going to tell those teams I'm not going. But that's kind of how the league works now. You pick your team. It's got to be something Cleveland's worried about right now with Mitchell, right? Mitchell's like, yeah, yeah. Give me that extension. No, no, it'll be great. Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it. And then six months later, it's like, yeah, you can trade me. And by the way, you can trade me here for this. But this is the league. It's relationships and it's leverage. And the Knicks have leveraged that as well as anyone.

And think the Knicks forever with the same approach, we're just getting laughed at all the time. Like, oh, they're going to hire all these Kentucky guys, guys that have connections to Carl Anthony Towns, to Booker. They recruited these guys. They knew him on the high school circuit. All these things are going to work out. And then when it doesn't work out, you're like, okay, well, that approach doesn't work. I think whatever...

approach you want to build your organization around. There's going to be examples of the same approach that have been successful, that have been unsuccessful. But I do agree with you that ultimately we've seen too many agents get power in foreign offices because of their massive advantage of all the relationships that they've had. And in this case, this Nova thing is crazy.

Like you want to talk about stuff you would never do? Like, Hey, the next, the next team that wins two championships in three years in college, let's just load up on all of those guys. Let's make sure we get a ton of, of Baylor kids in here. Yeah. It's just, it doesn't. What's funny though, is there's a weird chemistry with that.

like growing up together and winning together that we even saw in the playoffs once their team started to get hurt and those guys still had some sort of connection that was pretty nuts. And it's like that the way this league has changed where it's just fucking snow globe shake and then everybody's on a new team every year. If you have some sort of coherence and some sort of backbone with other players, it seems like it's a bigger advantage than ever. We had to take a quick break for the podcast.

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about trying to beat the Celtics versus trying to beat some of the other teams you'd be afraid of. If you're just looking like a three-year plan, who's in your radar for these are the three things I have to worry about as I'm trying to win the title? Because I still feel like the Jokic piece, I still have to worry about him at some point, right? I still have to worry about

Oh shit. What if, what if, uh, we end up playing Dallas in a finalist? Do I have the right guys to guard him? Who, who else is in there? Is Giannis in that conversation for you now? Not sure. I understand the question. So it sounds like you have a list. No, I was going to rephrase. Cause we mentioned like the,

With a team to beat the Celtics, right? Okay. Well, don't you also need at least a wrinkle if you end up playing Denver? Don't you also need a wrinkle if you end up playing Luca? Like you have to have like four different wrinkles to your team. I guess I'm pushing back against the theory, like the Celtics have won. Now we all have to beat. Now we all have to create teams to beat them. And it's like, I think the league's too deep now. I think you have to be pretty malleable in a whole bunch of different directions, which we saw in that Minnesota Dallas series.

Well, if it's not particular to the Celtics, first of all, everybody would want Bridges, okay? Because the exact same things that everybody's in pursuit of. Oh, wait, a guy that can switch?

a big wing who's young, who's healthy, who can also score and can play off. I can play off the ball with the ball ends up with them. He's going to be fine. So I don't even know that it's about the Celtics going, do you want a player like this? Cause it seems like everybody would want a player like this. And there you go. But whenever I look out West, when there's some of the smaller teams and contention, and it was Dallas before the gaffer trade and lively becoming a real dude that we're all excited about, uh,

I would look at some of the rebounding numbers, the same thing with OKC. I'd be like, how do you not have a big option? You may not want to play big. You may want to play five out. But now how do you not have some kind of big option that gives you a chance against some of the other bigger players in the West, whether it's a Jokic, whether it's an AD? And that's where I think Oklahoma City probably came up. Came up. I don't mean to say small, but four rebounds for rebounds. Sure. Well, that's why I bring this up, because I think they're going to lose Hartenstein.

And maybe they built a team that is going to beat the Celtics, but I don't know how they're going to replace some of the size stuff if they don't have him. Cause I don't trust Mitchell Robinson at all. I don't, I don't trust him to play for eight straight months. I know the Knicks fans like him, but I think his durability history is pretty easy to study. It's bad.

I can't wait for his IG post because he was worried about not getting shots last year. Yeah, good luck. But there's teams with size that I think are going to really give them problems. And I think where we're headed for at least next year is there's going to be some rock, paper, scissors stuff. Almost like what we saw in the Western Conference last year, blown out across the league. Because I think we're going to have between five and eight or nine really good teams that have a chance to win the title. It's almost like looking more like football.

Where everyone's in that eight-team circle that could win, and then you just kind of don't know depending on the game or the series. And I wonder, I still feel like they're too small. So if they can pull off the Hartenstein piece of this and go nine deep and just pay some crazy thing, I don't know what he would have to give up. I also am dubious that he's worth more than $18 million a year for four years. Do you think that the center market is...

better than that? Like for him and Claxton? The center options are just older, it feels like, other than Claxton. But we've been joking about it the entire time. Like as soon as you re-sign Claxton, although now, like, why are you spending all this money on Claxton? Although if you're the Nets, you also have to spend the money on somebody. But they may wait that one out a little bit. Yeah, you sign and trade them at this point. I'd be more inclined to completely let him go because you're not even pretending to be any good. Instead, he can step with a contract that you probably feel bad about as soon as you sign it. But if...

You look at the bird rights with OG and then the early bird rights with Hartenstein, the most they can offer him is four years and 72 and a half million. So that puts him at 16.2 in the first year of the deal. But you're doing that and you know you're giving Brunson a new deal two years from now. You know you're giving Bridges a new deal two years from now. And if you're going to try to keep everybody, that becomes pretty hard.

Well, are we assuming too many things here? Because one, it's like, okay, what happens with Randall? Remember that guy who is a high usage dude? I think they like him. I think he stays. I think they like him. I think they're pro. I think they're way more pro Randall than anybody else is. So anybody is trying to trade for him is like, hey, Randall, what about an expiring contract and the 25th pick in the draft? Like those kind of offers. And I think they think more highly of him than that. I think they keep him and figure it out.

And they're keeping Mitchell. And then there's a precious Achua decision that you'd have to make there. So he's probably gone. He's probably gone. He's a restricted free agent. I was looking at it this morning where...

The OG number, the max is 42.3, and the reports are that it's in the 30 to 35. But I think OG has all the leverage here because if Philadelphia is waiting this out, you know that Philadelphia is... I actually admire Daryl with this one, and it's something I want to talk about a little bit. I've been sitting here thinking about the Paul George fifth year the entire time. Probably too much, last six months. Is the Clippers...

based on what we know. They don't want to do the fourth year. I'm sure Paul George and Aaron Mintz, his agent, are thinking,

What do you mean you're not going to do the fourth year? Like everybody just does the fourth year. You worry about it later. You're Steve Ballmer. Yeah, you don't care. You re-sign Kawhi. You're going to maybe re-sign Harden and then you're not going to do a fourth year for Paul George. We'd probably agree with you that the fourth year isn't a great idea, but this is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to do the fourth year. And based on some of the trade rumors, we'll see. It seems like other teams would be willing to do that fourth year. So if you pivot it back to Daryl,

What does he care about $7 million in difference here if Paul George isn't available, if DeRozan's the only other option, if some of these other names that we've talked about in potential trades and the default setting of GMs say, I would just run it back with these guys because I don't want to lose the trade. Are we assuming too much in thinking that there's a number below whatever the maximum OG can get from Philadelphia? No, if he takes less than that $40 plus million, he's doing the Knicks a favor.

And I don't feel like favors are done like that in the National Basketball Association anymore when everybody gets traded or moved at the blink of an eye. Nobody's taking less. Is it worth just trying to think like, oh, gee, going, all right, I'm not on the Nova podcast. And I'm definitely not going to be on it now. I got rejected for them in 2014. And I don't play a ton as it is.

The word out of Toronto after he was traded was missing games in New York. And the numbers with Brunson and OG together were staggering. OG had some amazing moments in that Philly series. The defense that he played on Embiid when he had to step up and score when other guys are going down. But wait a second. Is he thinking about Tibbs? No, they're not trading. I'm just wondering if we're assuming way too much by going, oh my God, they got all these guys and then OG's just going to be penciled in and maybe that costs them Hartenstein. But

I would just see a Phillies missing out on these other guys. They're not going to, they're not going to get cute about what the number is with OG. Well, we've seen teams misfire on assuming that the last piece that they had an officially locked down yet was just definitely going to happen. So the next do the bridges and then we'll get OG and we're done. And then all of a sudden Philly comes in and bats their eyelashes at him or whoever. I just find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have done this bridges trade knowing they had OG. That's, that's pretty crazy.

They're going to trade all this stuff for bridges and then lose in an OB. I'd be worried about Philadelphia. I agree with you, but I'd be worried about Philadelphia. Be worried about a couple of teams. I have a, I have a couple more things I wanted to throw you. I think the 2024 Mavs was the culmination of this five-year run where the league is just fucked up beyond repair now. Okay. I think the league's a fucking mess.

The league is like your buddy. No, it's like your buddy from college where you see them at the 10 year reunion and by 10 o'clock on Friday night, they're just letting it go and just saying crazy shit. And you're like, oh my God, I didn't realize it got this bad. I think the league's a mess. Like compared to the NFL, in the NFL, we don't go into the off season with 25 teams going. We're one move away from winning the Super Bowl.

Right. Teams, teams have a general sense of the hierarchy, right? You have like, you know, you have your Cincinnati and your Kansas city and you have your Detroit and San Francisco, the teams that kind of know, but the Rams aren't there going, Hey, if we could just trade four first round picks for Justin Jefferson, we could make the super bowl. Like nobody really thinks that way in basketball.

And I don't know if it's because all these teams have these crazy rich owners and they're just super competitive. And this is just everything has worked out for them and all their facets of their business life. So it's going to work out here in basketball. Snap your fingers. I'm going to be a contender. But all these teams seem to hate where they are in June. And you get to June.

And 20 teams are just miserable and want to make wholesale changes, want to risk half a decade of first round picks. Phoenix loses in round one. Now everybody's available on their team potentially. Houston has like a 12 game winning streak. And now it's like, we're all in, we're ready to win the title. Here are our assets. We need picks back so we can get Booker or Durant. I just feel like the league's lost its mind. No.

None of these teams are going to win the title next year. It's going to be Boston. It's going to be OKC. It's going to be Denver. It's going to be Minnesota, maybe Milwaukee, maybe Dallas. And that's it. That's the list. Everyone else. Wait, so New York's already off the list? Didn't you have them? No, New York. I had New York in there. Yeah, I can't. It's hard. It's seven or eight teams. But like Phoenix, like it's not happening. There is no move. Golden State, not happening. Lakers, no way. Like, let's go on down the line.

You know, New Orleans. I'm sure you want to trade Brandon Ingram. Guess what? You're not going to be in the finals next year. Like, it just seems like everybody needs like to chug some reality juice. And I think that moment's over. And this is just the league now. The season ends. Everybody fucking goes nuts. Do you remember when you wrote an article as a trade deadline called the NBA, the no balls association? It's the opposite. Now what is it? I know. I was thinking about it. Now it's the, what was, what's Frank Thomas take? The, the, what does he push? The PD? Yeah.

Your lady would like it too. Yeah. Uh, eugenics. Eugenics. It's the eugenics basketball association. I saw him in an elevator. I was like, that stuff works. He's like, your lady would like it too. His teams are all nuts. It looks great. It's like, should we, what do we do with Chris Paul? If we, if we guarantee the contract, maybe we can get Jimmy Butler. Well, what's that going to do? Cool. You might be around too.

Windhorse said that Butler was happy in Miami. Oh, yeah, sure. I'm sure he is. Ray of sunshine down there. I love it, though. Isn't this what you always wanted? I think this is way more fun. I'd agree. But here's here's another thing that I think that's happened. The ownership transition, like collectively over the last 10 years. This is a very different group of people, depending on when you want to draw that line in the sand.

And I think it's always worth reminding everyone listening, everybody that loves this league. And it's even worth reminding ourselves a lot. It's like, why would they do that? Why do they do this? Like, man, the owners are pulling the strings on most of this stuff. Anyway, the other one's ultimately deciding what they're going to do and who they want to go for. And these guys don't ever like being told, yeah, we don't really have a chance or this is going to take three. Like when I hear about these rebuilds in the NBA, you're like, okay, it should take two years or so to think about Detroit. Like,

Like what year are we on with the Pistons at this point? It's like year 12. So it might just be that the lack of patience actually makes this league that much more exciting. But there also could be a rush. Lack of patience, I think, is underselling it. This is the complete insanity. I wonder too if there's teams that go, okay, we don't have this second apron problem yet. So let's just do all this shit now as this kicks in.

and we'll figure it out later. Because it kind of gets back to the fourth-year Paul George thing that I was thinking about. If you're looking at a guy who you like,

But you don't want to extend him and you're worried about his health. And you know, he's not really like Paul George to me is branded a little bit differently than who he actually is. He's still a player. If the Warriors take a chance at it, none of us are going to pick him to win the West. But I could see the Warriors going, let's just extend the Steph Curry thing. And it raises our floor a little bit more. Our one, two and three guys are more talented. Same stuff that we're talking about on Sunday night. But I was thinking about like a team like Detroit today.

And they probably don't want to use their cap space on anybody. And it's kind of the Daryl Morey thing with those, what was it, the Omar Ashik deal, the Jeremy Lin deal. And him maxing out Chris Paul with a four-year extension after Paul opted in, which could be the precursor to this Paul George stuff where you opt in and then get the extension. And you think, man, you're just signing these guys left and right. It's like, well, there's probably going to be somebody else

That'll take them, take them off my hands. And if I have to trade a pick in the late teens, early twenties, I don't even care if I got that player for the three years that I actually wanted them in the first place. And so,

with how many teams each year, like think about how many teams have cap space that are bad teams that probably don't want to use it because no one good wants to even go there in the first place. Right. And they might be looking at all of this stuff moving around going, why do I care about a fourth year when there'll be three or four teams with all this cap space that are really bad and don't even want to give anybody a three or four year contract. So they'll take my guy off my hands for a pick in the twenties. Like who cares? I think the,

The freedom and lack of planning makes this way more exciting. I'm not saying it's not exciting. I just want to point out that it's a 30 team league and only two teams can make the finals every year. And we get to June and it seems like 22 teams think they have a chance. We're like, where are the Steelers of the NBA? Where's the team that's just like, you know what? We're going to go 10 and seven every year.

And maybe one year things will fall right and we can make a jump. In the NBA, we have like basically nobody that does that except the Bulls, where the Bulls are just like, I'd love to go 42 and 40 every single year and not pay the tax. That sounds great. Or you have like the fucked up teams like the Hornets or the Pistons that just like can't stay out of their own way. So it's like they're just kind of constantly rebuilding. But then like take a look at the Sacramento Kings.

Right. There was a story the other day, there was some sort of De'Aaron Fox thing about like, he's monitoring what's going on. And I didn't know if it was true. It was one of those aggregation stories. De'Aaron Fox is monitoring what's going on in Sacramento before he thinks about signing an extension. It's like, what does De'Aaron Fox think is going to happen in Sacramento? What do you think? You're going to make the finals in two years with Sabonis and Keegan-Murray?

Like, I just, I think, I just think people forget, like, first of all, you need a top six guy in the league probably to make the finals. Right. So unless you don't, if you don't have that, probably not making it anyway. Maybe we could push it now because the league's deeper. It's maybe like top nine, top 10. But for the most part, if you don't have one of those guys, it's not happening.

Second, you need a lot of luck with your roster. You need to hit with a couple homegrown people. You need to nail a couple of either trades or frage signings. But this stuff's really hard. And everybody tries to skip all the steps now. The Rockets are the latest. The Rockets did a really good job of replenishing their assets. But

they should be thinking about like 2028, 2930, not 2025. Why? Because Emei Doka likes to win. Right. But think about their owner. It's not about Emei. It's about Fertitta. You think he wants after this post-hardened teardown that didn't work out, they get a sniff of it in the Western Conference Finals. That was six years ago. All right.

And they've done a terrific job. It's one of my favorite rosters. Great rebuild. We both love it. About being exciting. 41 and 41 ahead of schedule. Do you think that ownership group wants to hear Stone, the GM, come in saying, all right, we're like three years away from any of this, which I think is also a perfect transition into all the Phoenix Durant stuff that blew up today.

as we talked about the other part of this trade because it's exactly what you're saying is none of the guys that own these teams and I can't think who's on this list and the whole idea of like monitoring I'd love to hear a story one time be like the Sixers have decided to not monitor DeMar DeRozan's free agency. Yeah.

Okay. Unmonitored. Like an unmonitor button. The De'Aaron Fox thing meant nothing to me for every reason that you just laid out. Like, what does he think is going to happen? What is the difference between him monitoring and not monitoring the situation mean to the active, like the guys or the activity of the front office and what they're going to do with the rest of the roster? But the Houston part of this,

I think you could say, well, wait a minute. Who's Durant? You want to have that conversation? Let's have a real conversation about who Kevin Durant is right now. So what are you really adding if you're Houston? Well, you know what you're adding is you're just –

you're basically increasing your floor and now ownership can get excited and be like, Oh, we've got this future hall of famer. The guy still put up big numbers last season. He's still a terrific basketball player. Um, but if we really get into it, you could argue what's the, what's the point? Well, the point is what's the trade because Van Vliet has to be in the trade. Basically, if you looked at their salaries,

Like Durant makes almost 50 million a year and, and you know, there there's second apron, first apron, all that shit. You got to make the salaries pretty close. It's not like they can like, oh yeah, they traded Jabari Smith and Shingun for Durant. Cool. That's impossible. You don't have the contracts for it. Like Van Buit basically has to be in the trade. Yeah. Cause the rest of them are all rookie deals before the extensions, but like,

The reason Van Vliet and Dylan Brooks probably got money is one, nobody wanted to take their cap space. So then they had to pay the bad team tax on potential free agents. And I'd argue, yeah, I'd argue that,

And collectively, like the jokes, because when you see those first numbers, you're like, what are you paying Dylan Brooks that you're like, hey, no one wants their money. They know they have to overpay bad team tax. So they're going to go ahead and do it. A lot of the motivation behind that was I want to just watch five lottery guys run around next year, expend some of this cap space. And that's where I think if the Durant thing. If we owned a team, what would we do?

Because the one thing I would do is, is I would actually try to have a plan that I stuck with and not completely panic after a year. Like it seems like three fourths of these teams do like Houston, you're doing great. Don't fuck this up. Maybe even this, this Brooklyn trade that you pulled off because Brooklyn basically is like, we'd love to make this Bridges trade. We don't have our pick. Hey, we'll give you 140 cents on the dollar to get our two picks back. Houston's like, great. More picks for us.

you're not, Kevin Durant's not walking into the rockets and turning them into the 2025 champs or 2026 champs. He's 36. He peaked three years ago. He's, he's not one of the top eight guys in the league anymore. He probably, you know, seven, six and seven years ago. Right. Well, 2021, he was pretty great that last run he had. Yeah. Um, if it's Booker,

That's a totally different conversation. If Booker is on this now, it's like, okay, let's have a real talk about this because I can give you Jalen Greenback. I can give you picks back. You tell us who you want us to take at number three. Like we can, we can now work with some sort of framework, but Durant, what did Durant's a two year window?

We don't know if he's going to be good when he's 38. You just asked a really good question though, because it's just fun to even think like, what would you be like as an owner? The only thing I would ever think of is I'm just not going to make the mistake that every other new owner makes with the new owner syndrome thing. But I can see how Matt Ishbia, as successful as he's been, where you're on the phone and you hang up and you have to make a decision right there of like, hey, I can have Kevin Durant if I say yes to this. That's going to be really hard to say no to. And

At that time, you think you're getting a much different Durant. The numbers may be the same, but I think it's the same application to Houston's thought process, if that's something that they actually want to pursue. But then it gets into all sorts of reporting that's all over the place on any of the Durant stuff. I'd heard a week ago that Durant may want to be in Houston. And I can tell you this right now, based on all this stuff on TV. I talked to somebody in Phoenix State that said, we're not trading Durant. So we'll see. But does that cover...

I'm not a reporter, but does it cover me if Durant says, no, I actually do want out of here and I'm going to do this again? Does Durant care enough about the perception of him? Would he be like, dude, can I really just do this again a year and a half later? Wait, can we hold that? Because we had to take one more break for the pod. 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.

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I'm glad that you brought up this Durant thing. If I'm Durant, I almost want to say publicly, like, I don't want to be traded. I just want to stay in Phoenix. I like playing with Booker. I'd love to figure it out here. I know people are reporting that I want to go here or there. I don't, you know, I pushed to come from Brooklyn to Phoenix. Now I'm here. This is where I want to be. I don't want to be in trade rumors. I don't want to go anywhere. But he's not saying that, but he should. So if he doesn't want to go anywhere, come out and say it.

If you do want to go somewhere, come out and say that. But he just gets floated around now in these things. It's, it's, it's just tough, man. As one of the big Durant fans, I just hate what's happened to him the last couple of years where it's like, now he's not happy there. This is good. This is going to be first sentence of his NBA biography. Now it's like Kevin Durant, such a great player. One of the 20 best players of all time. But

That's what he's looking at. Cause he's, he, he hasn't been happy in a situation now really since the 2017 warriors was the last time he was completely happy in a basketball situation. So let's say he wants out, say it, just say, I want out. The reports are true. Really? Yeah. We don't think we have that very often. Hey, by the way, I do want out again. Um,

I think he cares enough because I do think he cares about the stuff and how he's perceived because he argues with strangers, which I still cannot understand. He definitely cares. He really cares about this shit. Can I give you two teams? Yeah, go ahead. Give me your two teams. I have more thoughts on it. Is there a Paul George Durant something that just solves problems on both sides? Solves? Yeah. Paul George disrespected. They didn't give me the fourth year. Ishby is like, I'll give you the fourth year.

Clippers, Durant, one of the 20 best players ever. He's on the Clippers, new arena. Durant and Kawhi, two Olympians. Is that just like solve everyone's problems and we could all move on? Solve feels like the wrong word, but I'd do it if I were the Clippers. Like, okay, I get another guy who's hurt every now and then that's better. Durant and Harden, can you guys get on maybe a FaceTime? Maybe go, can you guys meet in Vegas? Maybe play blackjack for an hour and work it all out.

I'm sure they're fine. That was about Kyrie with Hart. Yeah. With the Nets thing. So I'm sure that if you're Phoenix, is that maybe not enough for Durant because you gave up all those picks for him. I think part of the problem is, and you know, the backstory with that Durant trade where it was like all the picks plus Cam Johnson and, and James Jones didn't want to give up bridges. Right. Wasn't that it? And that, and Ishby had just came in. He's like, fine, just put in bridges. And then, and then that's how it played out. Um,

And then they gave up so much. Now it's like, you almost can't trade Durant. It's like you bought, it's like you bought some house for, you know, 40% more than the house was worth. And then you just don't want to sell it at the base price of the house. Cause like, well, I paid all that money. It's like, yeah. Cause you haven't paid for the house. Same thing with stocks. Right. Same thing with stocks. Like I'll just sell it when I'm even. Yeah. That's great. It's like, well, it's different time. Maybe, maybe, uh, it's sunk costs, but, um, Booker is the guy I'd be trying to get from them because of his age.

but it really doesn't seem like he wants to leave. Anyway, I had the, uh, at the Clippers. I think the Lakers have to be mentioned if there's a LeBron possibility, if like they ended up taking LeBron's son and that whole thing. And then golden state's the only other one. And I can't figure out how to make that work because Chris Paul would have to be in it and they can't trade it, trade him back to the sons for a year. So they would almost have to guarantee Chris Paul the deal and then wait until the year is over where they can finally trade him back. Um,

Yeah, but that's not that. Otherwise, you're talking like Draymond and Kaminga and Gary Payton and you had second apron. The salaries have to be almost exact. And then if you're the Warriors, why are you even doing all that? You're not even going to be a top six team anyway.

Well, the other funny thing about Houston having the Phoenix picks now, which was the speculation this morning going, okay, well now they can give them their picks back. Well, Brooklyn knows what they're doing with their picks. Phoenix might be thinking, we're not going to be bad. We don't plan on being bad. Right. And we don't want to trade Booker and there's not a huge Beal market. And,

So you're trading us back our picks thinking we're going to stink. We actually don't think we're going to stink. Yeah. Have you seen our owner, Matt Ishbia, who bought the team and then immediately made two massive trades? I love this stuff. This guy's going to tank? Think about the outline of like what we just described. Hey, we have your picks back. You guys are going to suck. Who says we're going to suck? Yeah. What do you mean we're going to suck?

I'll show you. Well, no, we're going to trade for Durant. We don't want to trade him. No, no, but he actually wants to be here. But there is a little final piece to that where I think we'd all agree, those of us that are really into it, as much as we love Durant, the skill, and look, there's plenty of people that don't like Durant, never going to forgive the worst thing, and I wouldn't tell that person that they're necessarily wrong. But for a guy who's considered a guy, more so than the Paul George and some of these other dudes we talk about a lot, we're...

It's been a long time now, man. I mean, Kyrie finally got over his playoff moment drought, right? We got to give it to him. Made it to the NBA Finals. Tatum kicked KD's butt in 22. So it's a 21 loss where KD was terrific. So now we're what, on 22? The 23 loss. 22 got swept by a young Tatum and a pretty young Boston team kicked their ass. 23-22.

Injuries again against Denver. It was kind of a crazy series. He and Booker put up absurd numbers. Respectable loss in six. But it felt like they at least were building something. Yeah, and I thought they'd be better this year. And they weren't.

They weren't. They just, they had that one stretch where I was ready to give up on them and they put together a really nice stretch. What was it? Nine out of 10 games or something like that. Then they had that was the big Clippers game. They had like four points in the first quarter. I mean, not, not a final of four points, but I was thinking, are these guys just dead or am I falling for that nine out of 10? Didn't they beat Minnesota near the end of the year? And it's like, maybe, maybe here they come and.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, then they get swept. So even if we'd agree, like maybe Durant isn't really the Durant you're thinking of, which I think most people would, would kind of come to that conclusion. Houston would probably see it, especially from ownership as fine, but yeah,

Instead of wondering if Jalen Green is like the real Jalen Green from the last couple months where he was apparently rumored to be involved in a trade for McHale Bridges. And I don't know if now they look at that going, hey, it's great that we didn't. You know, Jabari, who you and I hold out a little bit of stock on still, but.

If he's not, I have a lot of stock. Right. But is he, you know, is he going to be like a guy guy? Like I can really like him. Then they look at Houston's clothes without Shingun thinking as talented as he is, did that actually open it up for everybody else? I'm sure they're having the same kind of Durant conversations that we're having, but knowing, well, if we throw them into this mix, at least we kind of know who our guy is and that's better than who we've been. And that's why I think you see so many owners without patience and just saying, fuck it, let's do it.

Or is he also available in January and you just wait? So one of the things, you mentioned Shang-Goon. And I think we both heard this after he got hurt, that the Rockets who love Shang-Goon were us like, well, this will be interesting. What will it be like without Shang-Goon? And what happened? They played better without him. Jalen Green blossomed and they didn't have anybody clogging the paint offensively. And it was just a different type of team. What's this? And I always felt, and I think we even talked about it on the pod,

Would you bet on Shangoon being there in five years? Who knows, right? I'm watching as we spin forward to the draft. It is now almost one o'clock Pacific time. So the draft's in four hours. If Houston takes Klingon number three, then I think Houston is on the clock now with me for there's some second move coming. So if you take Klingon, that means you're probably shopping Shangoon at some point over the next couple of weeks or maybe even in December, January, right?

They take Klingon instead of Shepard or Castle. Castle, yeah. And they go big. Even though they already have a center, even though they already have Steven Adams, that makes me think something else is happening. So that's going to be the most fascinating pick because it feels like Richa Shea and Saar are going to be one-two, barring some sort of complete surprise. And the draft's really going to start at three. And we know, Woj was talking about it on ESPN a couple hours ago, we know all these teams like Klingon.

And they're all like circling. He's going to go three, four or five. Like there was a fan duel bet about him as a top five pick, which I just think he's going top five feet. It becomes like a quarterback situation. The draft where it's like, oh, that quarter, he met that quarterback might fall to eight. It's like, no, he's not. He's going to go in the top four because somebody will trade up and take them even if the third team doesn't want them. And I think that's going to be with Klingon. Do you think Shang-Goon gets traded? If you had to bet, is Shang-Goon a rocket in February? Would you bet yes or no?

I almost always say yes because I think people are afraid to trade young players. Yeah, you always default to the yes on that question. I think it's 50-50. I heard a rumor this week that was so bad I'm not even going to repeat it. It was like, that doesn't even make any sense. Well, you know what's interesting with the Rockets? And I think they played this correctly, but a lot of teams don't. It seems like they're not going to do the super early giant extension for Jalen Green. They're just going to like, let's roll it over and see what happens. Which anytime a team does that, it feels...

You know, it becomes a trade possibility because it's more of a, now Philly tried to do this with Maxie in a different way and Maxie really shoved it in their face. And now, you know, they're going to have to pay him. But I thought it was interesting. They didn't take care of green or say they were going to take care of green when they could have, or when they, when they're, when they're about to hit the point when they can't.

If there's a question, though, I'm all for the team's waiting. I mean, you hope you have somebody that's so good like an Anthony Edwards where you just go, okay, here's the max we can pay you and we feel great about it. And awesome. There you go. But too many times. Maybe not. Yeah. Or the Scotty Barnes number. I love Scotty Barnes, but that seems like a massive commitment to somebody that will never be a one on. I don't even want to say contending team, but like a flirtation contending team. No, he's a two. He's a two on a title team. He's not a one.

Yeah, a two's a compliment. At least a two. Because of the way he plays, unless there's another level to his scoring that unlocks all this other stuff. And I hope it works out because I really like him as a player. But I like when the teams have somebody who are like, hey, I'm not quite sure. You know what? We're not just going to give you the extension so we feel better that we took you in the draft. Yeah, earn it. By the way, and we didn't talk about this, I had the exact same reaction to the Barnes extension. I know where it's 2024 and we live in this world where

Part of the media's job has to be to just cheer when somebody gets an extension or a giant contract. Oh, good for him. That contract's crazy. It's a crazy contract. Scotty Barnes, $270 billion for five years is fucking batshit. There's no way he's worth that. Cap is going up, Bill. Don't worry about it. That's just a nutty contract. I don't agree with it.

I don't, I don't have him as like a top 50 guy in the league right now. Could he be a top 50 guys? Sure. But I would rather wanted another year to really see it before I decided to commit an actual full max five-year deal. I double take that one. It was like, can we just give you a two 50? Can you just make 50 million a year on average?

I just love those small little things. Like even with the bridges trades, like how did that second rounder get, like, when did it come down and be like, and we also get a second rounder back. Yeah, we have to, uh, hold on, hold on though. Clinging when we started talking about the draft a few weeks ago. And again, we kind of just fly in last minute. So it's not a year round thing. The clinging momentum is very weird because, uh,

Memphis, the most repeated rumor of anything that I've heard in talking about the draft is that Memphis wants Kling. That Memphis wants out of the ninth pick and that if they can get out and move up, they'd like to do it for Kling. And apparently Memphis was in on Bridges. Utah was in on Bridges. But Memphis feels like they're trying to do a bunch of different things all at the same time.

And then when you think of the workout schedule of Klingon, he didn't work out in Houston because he has the same agent as Shingun. So there's that. He didn't work out in San Antonio. I love that, by the way. Like, is that irresponsible by the agent or no? It's like when James Babydoll Dixon was representing Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel at the same time when the ABC 1230 became available. He should have taken himself out of it. Irresponsible by that guy. It's a bad agent thing. He was nice to my brother. So I don't have anything bad to say about him.

But yeah, I could totally see them taking Klingon and then we just talk about Houston trades for next week. Because there's no way you can play. Because even if we're talking about the Shingun part, so what made it better? That he wasn't out there defensively and you got to see some Jabari Smith stuff that was kind of cool. I mean, like imagine Jabari Smith becomes a stretch center. I mean, that's asking a lot. It kind of gets back to like, do you have a matchup option against some of the other big guys? And certainly you wouldn't want Jabari Smith guarding Klingon.

Anthony Davis or Jokic, okay, or whatever. The problem is there's only four of those guys, right? Like the Celtics were able to get through all the playoff rounds without seeing one of those guys. Yeah, if you don't count Mobley. Oh, Mobley had that big thing. All right, so you're back on Risa Shea, Sar, one, two? I just said too many people have said Risa Shea is going first. The thing that's crazy to me, San Antonio is sitting there

And San Antonio just fucking steps in shit and they pick the shit off their shoe. And there's like a hundred dollar bill on it. I'm like, Oh, look at that. I lucked out again. They're going to be sitting there at four with their choice of castle or shepherd. Like that's how it seems like if, if Klingon goes three and San Antonio is like, Oh my God, thank you. Thank you everybody. We either get somebody who Kyle man compared to potentially Mark price or

Or we get Casso, who's like probably Iguodala, somewhere in the Iguodala kind of range. Iguodala had more offense to this stage. Yeah, but Casso was also young. I mean, he was a year younger than when Iguodala came in the draft. Anyway, that's just great for this first. I'm ready for anything tonight. Look, Tijon Salon, the other French kid.

I have not enjoyed watching anyone in the draft as much as him. Although the other French kid, Daddy A, is really good. I can't believe people have him going like 28, 29, or 30. I just don't think there's any way he would last that long with his skill and all this stuff. But Salon...

And he might not be any good, Bill. I don't know that there's ever been a player that I've watched. I just kind of gave up this morning. I kept watching Risa Shea. I was like, I wish there was just more there. I wish there was more there with Saar. It was like, hey, this is the whole point, man. This is why two years ago people started saying, look, the top of the 24 draft is going to be rough. So I'm kind of open for anything. I don't know if Klingin is involved in some kind of trade.

or if it stays chalk, if, if nobody moves out of the picks, because Atlanta also started working out other guys like a little later in the process. And maybe it's just having access to them. And why not just get more information if you can have it? And the agent's always going to be like, all right, but it'd be like, well, the,

Are they just messing with everybody or do they want to trade out of this whole thing? But back to Salon, apparently he and Wemby are boys. So is that the eighth pick? And that's what's up on ESPN.com right now is that they have him going eighth. And the funny thing about him is you have to watch him. You have to watch a little of him before tonight. Okay. I started watching him just box out on free throws because he would try to kill people just boxing out after the second free throw.

Oh, he's one of those guys? Right. When he cuts off the ball, you'd think the coach was like, this is the most important cut you've ever made off the ball in your entire life. Except every cut is like that. He sounds like that kind of guy. When he just is out there and he can't dribble to save his life, the shot goes through the banners. Yeah. And I guess it goes in enough to give you a little bit of hope.

But he's so intense in every single thing that he does that sometimes like in my scattering report I wrote, he must have broken a ton of shit as a kid. Just around the house, his parents are probably like, here's something upstairs, break. And they just yell at him. So he's the guy to pick up that the other guys are like, dude, fucking slow down. Totally. And I kind of love him. Just slow down or I'm going to fucking punch you. Slow down.

I kind of love him, but I'm also thinking he might not be any good. They don't need to take him at eight, right? They could move back a couple spots. Dillingham seems like he's falling, which he's been hurt now for a while in the pre-draft process. He was my YouTube crush. I don't know if I told you. I talked about it yesterday with Kyle and those guys. He's become my YouTube crush.

I like how he kicks his right foot out on the, I like when people, nobody has a weird jump shot anymore, right? Everybody just shoots exactly the same. We grew up in a world where everybody's shot was different. Yeah. Whether you have some bad jump shots, but I like that. There's some flair to him that I thought, uh, was fun. What'd you think of Tate's premise of you can't take a guy in the top three who didn't want to go first?

What do you think of that premise of taking somebody that high? He was like, yeah, I don't know if I'm the best guy in the draft. Would you just gravitate toward people who are like, I am the best guy in this draft? I kind of loved it because I hadn't thought of it that way. It was smart. Yeah, but then the Trey Young factor came into it again where I think the agent with Sarge goes, if you're not even any good, you're going to get 17 and eight with Washington.

Right. So I think that's, imagine those two guys be like, hey, you're not even good, man. And you're going to put up numbers. You'll be on all second team rookie NBA. Do you see how bad the voting is for that stuff? People forget all the time. So I'm ready for anything here tonight. It'll just be funny if the full circle moment of all the Klingon momentum will just turn right back into Risa Shea and Sar 1-2. And then knowing that in three years, there's going to be a couple of players out of this whole group that are fantastic.

that we didn't see coming and we'll all feel stupid again. So can't wait. All right. We're going to come back. I don't know if we're doing it live on YouTube, but we're, we're potting. What do you think after pick 20, we'll just go and we either go live on YouTube, but definitely at least for the pod, but hopefully before batting. Okay.

Daddy-ay? Who do you mean? Daddy-ay. Oh, daddy-ay. Okay, so I'll see you tonight at some point during round one. This was produced by Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti. Thanks for watching us on YouTube, too. I had a great time. Unexpected trade. Good times. I'll see you in a few hours or so.