Speaker 1: You're tuned into Heat Check with trist Quick.
Speaker 2: On this episode of the Heat Check, We've got an
Speaker 2: interview with Yahoo senior NBA reporter and friend of show,
Speaker 2: Jake Fisher. He gives us some really good info on
Speaker 2: how the trade deadline went down, how the nets KD
Speaker 2: Kyrie Harden arrow will be looked at over time, why
Speaker 2: the Toronto Raptors were never going to make a move
Speaker 2: at the deadline except for to be a buyer.
Speaker 3: Who is going to tank moving.
Speaker 2: Forward this NBA season, and much much more like to
Speaker 2: get into Nick, So do me a favor and drop
Speaker 2: that generic ass beat.
Speaker 3: Let's just felt like the trade deadline as a whole,
Speaker 3: because I felt like, to a degree it was like
Speaker 3: one of the more dramatic trade deadlines, and then outside
Speaker 3: of the two real pieces of shot and all, there
Speaker 3: wasn't really anything of note.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's kind of what we with inside
Speaker 4: information were kind of saying for a while, right that,
Speaker 4: like there wasn't a lot of like starting level players
Speaker 4: that were actually going to move teams. And then the
Speaker 4: Kyrie Urbing thing obviously throw a giant monkey wrench in
Speaker 4: the entire trade landscape. But just like with Kevin Durant
Speaker 4: requesting the trade like an hour before free agency started.
Speaker 4: Like those two situations kind of happened in a vacuum
Speaker 4: outside of everything else, Like forre agency started at six
Speaker 4: o'clock on June thirtieth, even though KD, you know, asked out,
Speaker 4: and you know, the wheels still spun, the world still
Speaker 4: moved on. And like the fact that Kyrie's trade happened
Speaker 4: to Dallas, like he requested them on Friday, so it
Speaker 4: was six days before the deadline, and then he was
Speaker 4: already dealt by Sunday. I mean, the reporting has been
Speaker 4: pretty clear since that KD requested his deal out of
Speaker 4: Brooklyn on Monday, but the Nets, they weren't willing to
Speaker 4: discuss it with anybody. He wanted to go to Phoenix.
Speaker 4: He's wanted to go to Phoenix all along. So the
Speaker 4: other twenty eight teams kind of operated as we were expecting,
Speaker 4: which was pretty much Toronto dangling players and having a
Speaker 4: lot of calls around the league. But they didn't make
Speaker 4: any selling type moves. They were interested in Naka Purtle,
Speaker 4: like we had known about since you last trade deadline
Speaker 4: when they were registering interest there.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of activity.
Speaker 4: I mean I wrote today, yeaho's seventy one second round
Speaker 4: picks got traded between January first and the deadline. The
Speaker 4: other past four years, the most was thirty two second
Speaker 4: round picks traded because there just weren't a lot of
Speaker 4: players out there that were actually worthy of first round picks.
Speaker 4: And I think that's illustrative of the level of talent
Speaker 4: that was actually on the market.
Speaker 3: To when did it become clear to everybody was in
Speaker 3: the know that Phoenix was like the only place.
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't know for certain until the deal happened,
Speaker 4: but when Kyrie's stuff dropped on Friday, everyone around the
Speaker 4: league said, well, just just like just like my Twitter feed,
Speaker 4: just like yours, the timeline was going off, what does
Speaker 4: this mean for KD?
Speaker 1: Is KD next?
Speaker 4: And the impression that everyone got, and especially by everyone,
Speaker 4: I mean like rival teams inquiring and especially after Brooklyn's
Speaker 4: return for Kyrie was Spencer Dinwiddie, Dori and Phinney Smith
Speaker 4: first and a couple of seconds, I believe that was
Speaker 4: a win now move, right like that was a move
Speaker 4: just like they did throughout the summer with going and
Speaker 4: get Royce O'Neil and resigning Claxton, TJ. Warren and other
Speaker 4: things to try to build a contender around KD. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, the thought was still prevalent of well, if
Speaker 4: he does if I mean he's he's changed his mind
Speaker 4: left and right.
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of been his mo.
Speaker 4: So the thought kind of prevailed, well, he could still
Speaker 4: do that before Thursday, he could decide it turns out
Speaker 4: he did it on Monday, right, And at that point
Speaker 4: in time, it was a holdover thing that everyone around
Speaker 4: the situation believed that if he was leaving Brooklyn, and
Speaker 4: even why he requested a trade originally from Brooklyn was
Speaker 4: the thought that that Phoenix could happen, that Phoenix was there,
Speaker 4: he could play with Devin Booker, Chris Paul. So it
Speaker 4: just kind of felt like an inevitability if this came around.
Speaker 4: I mean, Memphis definitely lobbed an offer. Let's say, I
Speaker 4: don't know the specifics, but I know it was definitely
Speaker 4: all their picks and they're willing to trade anybody not
Speaker 4: named John Dylan Brooks and Jared Jackson Junior. But he
Speaker 4: wanted to go to Phoenix and that was the only
Speaker 4: thing that was going to happen. So I didn't know,
Speaker 4: like I said, until you know when's did it. When
Speaker 4: the trade went down, it was like I mean, I
Speaker 4: remember saying on the radio on Tuesday night in Philly
Speaker 4: at WIP and my family because I'm from the area,
Speaker 4: was like listening to my brother, so like, oh, like
Speaker 4: you called Katie the Phoenix on Tuesday night, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I just like I had an understanding if he was
Speaker 4: going to get moved, the overwhelming likelihood was to the Sun,
Speaker 4: so that's where he wanted to go.
Speaker 3: And then the second thing that you mentioned earlier too,
Speaker 3: was like that Toronto was just going to dangle everyone.
Speaker 3: How close do you think they actually were to ever
Speaker 3: selling the parts that they were dangling.
Speaker 4: So I don't have that definitive answer, but what I
Speaker 4: can say is that they were telling rival teams. And
Speaker 4: only the reason I don't have that definitive answers I'm
Speaker 4: on the phone right and like you're hearing stuff. At
Speaker 4: the end of the day, the job is to tell
Speaker 4: the public what you believe to be true based off of.
Speaker 1: The information that you hear.
Speaker 4: A lot of times you're hearing, you know, falsehoods or
Speaker 4: things that are a little bit misleading. To try to
Speaker 4: paint a certain picture, and it's your job to or
Speaker 4: it's my job to try to sift through all that
Speaker 4: and come and bring like the clearest picture I can.
Speaker 4: Right So with that, like Toronto was telling other teams
Speaker 4: starting at the showcase, like, we don't know what we're
Speaker 4: gonna do. We're gonna take out until the final minutes
Speaker 4: of the deadline. We're gonna have this long like eight
Speaker 4: game road trip or whatever it was, six games something
Speaker 4: like that, all throughout the West Coast before they came
Speaker 4: back that Sunday night before the deadline, and they were
Speaker 4: gonna regroup on Monday and figure out what the direction
Speaker 4: they wanted to go and sure Fred van Vliet's contract
Speaker 4: he could be a free agent this summer if he
Speaker 4: opts out. Gary Trent can opt out. Ojiananobi's guaranteed to
Speaker 4: be unrestricted for agent in twenty four because he can't
Speaker 4: buy CBA limitations get more than one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: percent salary increase, which is well below his market value,
Speaker 4: being that he's eighteen ninety million that our player right now.
Speaker 1: But they were telling.
Speaker 4: Teams like, we don't know what we're gonna do, And
Speaker 4: they were telling teams we might be buyers. So to me,
Speaker 4: like I'm looking at reading all these te leaves and
Speaker 4: operating at the thirty first front office and trying to
Speaker 4: figure out what these teams are going to do because
Speaker 4: they don't know what they're gonna do. All that stuff
Speaker 4: I just said to you never signaled a team that
Speaker 4: was really going to sell. And it signaled a team
Speaker 4: just like they did with Kyle Larry in twenty one,
Speaker 4: they were going to talk and talk and see what
Speaker 4: the market was looking like and then probably the result
Speaker 4: would really come in the summer. So that at a
Speaker 4: certain point was really what I expected to be the case.
Speaker 4: I didn't know, I didn't like, I didn't wake up
Speaker 4: on Thursday confident, but I fully believed that they were
Speaker 4: going to go after Yaka Perle and the rest was
Speaker 4: kind of undetermined. And it seems like even though there's
Speaker 4: a finality to it right now, I mean it's late
Speaker 4: February already, like juven's pretty close. So we'll see what
Speaker 4: happens come this offseason, especially if they don't continue to
Speaker 4: rise up the East. They're still I mean, there are
Speaker 4: ways away from getting out of the play in tournament,
Speaker 4: which is you know, obviously not where they want to
Speaker 4: be when they've got all these guys will who are
Speaker 4: up for thirty million dollars paydays coming up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I thought that that to myself. I
Speaker 3: was sitting in the lawn in Arizona and right before this,
Speaker 3: you know, on Super Bowl Week, and I was like,
Speaker 3: do we really actually believe these guys are gonna do anything?
Speaker 3: Like I they really gonna move og Ananoby when he's
Speaker 3: under team control for another Yearine change Like it just doesn't.
Speaker 3: It never felt like a MASSI move, like a full
Speaker 3: fire sale, you know what I mean. So I think
Speaker 3: you're I think you're right. It is interesting that they
Speaker 3: didn't do anything really at all except for you know,
Speaker 3: purchase Yaga Purtle former play.
Speaker 4: In fairness like they can say no one met her
Speaker 4: asking Christ like the Pacers offered three first right the
Speaker 4: Pacers picks, I believe, one's almost Cleveland, one's Milwaukee, Like
Speaker 4: those aren't those aren't great first round picks that they're
Speaker 4: their late twenties. The Grizzlies offering a bunch of picks.
Speaker 4: The Grizzlies are gonna they're projecting to be a top
Speaker 4: five record team in the league, like they have been
Speaker 4: for the next half decade, like how pick is.
Speaker 1: Going to be?
Speaker 4: So I can understand, you know that the Rappers thinking, well,
Speaker 4: we did a good job of drawing up this interest
Speaker 4: to get the quantity of first rounders, but the quality
Speaker 4: isn't what we're looking for. That could be a fair
Speaker 4: counter argument. But I don't know, three first round picks,
Speaker 4: no matter where they land for a player that I
Speaker 4: don't know. I don't know if OGM was ever going
Speaker 4: to be more than what he is in Toronto. That's also,
Speaker 4: you know, why would a team give up so so,
Speaker 4: so much more than what we just stated because they
Speaker 4: wanted to pick from everything I've heard the Rappers wanted
Speaker 4: to picks and players and the player when that that's
Speaker 4: let's say it's Memphis or in Indiana, but Memphis probably
Speaker 4: it's greater stakes for them being that they're they're at
Speaker 4: the top of this, uh you know echelon here? Are
Speaker 4: they going to just willingly mortgage all that stuff?
Speaker 1: To be right?
Speaker 4: In the situation Toronto is where he can be an
Speaker 4: unrestricted for agent with no guarantees to re sign in
Speaker 4: twenty four that's a lot that's a big price to pay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not that much cheaper than say, like
Speaker 3: a Donovan Mitchell or you know, it's it's more than
Speaker 3: a Kyrie Irving at this stage, it's just slightly cheaper
Speaker 3: than Kevin Durant. Just feels like the drop off from
Speaker 3: like a A list player to let's be honest, like
Speaker 3: probably a B minus player, but a really good wing defender.
Speaker 3: It's like Toronto's very Danny Angish when it comes to
Speaker 3: getting what they want. So, I guess, how do you
Speaker 3: think the trades actually fit into the rest of the season, Like,
Speaker 3: do you think anything really makes an impact outside of
Speaker 3: Katie and Kyrie to their respective destinations.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the Clippers got better and they're
Speaker 4: going to end up being just a talkable team until
Speaker 4: their season ends because Kwi and Paul George are so
Speaker 4: good when healthy and active, and that has not been
Speaker 4: the case consistently, right, and people love to talk about
Speaker 4: they're the big poster argument against you know, load management
Speaker 4: and whatnot. But and this is also like the fourth
Speaker 4: year of this expensive iteration. And you know, they were
Speaker 4: across the aisle of the k D Kyrie experiment in Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: like those tandems came together the exact same offseason in
Speaker 4: July twenty nineteen, So like one potential super team dynasty
Speaker 4: already crumbled, Like is the time running out on this
Speaker 4: iteration in LA where there was already talk around the
Speaker 4: league back when they made that Western Conference Finals run
Speaker 4: against the Suns in twenty twenty one of like if
Speaker 4: they didn't make it that far, what was going to
Speaker 4: happen up top?
Speaker 1: Like there's I'm not I'm not here to.
Speaker 4: Say that, Like I know definitively that there's hot seats
Speaker 4: in LA, but like this conventional wisdom would suggest he
Speaker 4: paid all this money to put together this you know contender,
Speaker 4: that maybe they don't make it to the Western Conference
Speaker 4: Finals more than once in a four year window like
Speaker 4: that be below expectations, Right, So they got better with
Speaker 4: Eric Gordon and Mason Plumley, And I really do like
Speaker 4: Bones Island. I know there's been some you know, personality
Speaker 4: stuff that's come up in Denver, but I mean he's
Speaker 4: a damn good players in the second year of the
Speaker 4: rookie deal.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good, you know gamble.
Speaker 4: I think from LA, the Nuggets got better with Thomas
Speaker 4: Bryant and Reddy Jackson's the nice buyout signing Golden State,
Speaker 4: getting Gary Payton the second back, Like I don't think
Speaker 4: he's a world changer, but you at least turn James Wiseman,
Speaker 4: who's was not going to play for them this year,
Speaker 4: into someone who was a really valuable or tation piece
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 1: I mean the Lakers got a lot better.
Speaker 4: Obviously they're starting five to pull the doors off the
Speaker 4: Pelicans without Zion, but the other night, so I mean,
Speaker 4: the whole conference, I think outside of Portland really got better.
Speaker 4: Your Blazers, like they didn't exactly buy to move.
Speaker 1: This thing forward here, Trista, what what's going on?
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like it. No, they got it for
Speaker 3: Trump pick that is only lottery protected, so that will
Speaker 3: convey I think this year they're gonna need to figure
Speaker 3: something out, right like Jeremy Grant, whether he ends up
Speaker 3: getting a deal done this summer, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: saw something earlier today that I forget who was writing it,
Speaker 3: that in order to keep Dame really supported that most
Speaker 3: likely they would have to sign, or they would most
Speaker 3: likely have to trade Anthony Simon's and Shade and Sharp,
Speaker 3: which I very much disagree about trading Shade and Sharp
Speaker 3: but it just doesn't feel like their philosophy is much
Speaker 3: different than neiel' shase was outside of just finding more
Speaker 3: athletic dudes. I think Neil Shan would have been fine
Speaker 3: with Cam Reddish, Like I think neil'sha would have been
Speaker 3: fine with Jeremy Grant, Like maybe he doesn't, maybe he
Speaker 3: doesn't draft Shade and Sharp, maybe he ends up with
Speaker 3: like I don't know, some white guy from Gonzaga that's
Speaker 3: not Chet Holmgren, but like, I don't know that this
Speaker 3: is a defensive first team really, and to me, it
Speaker 3: doesn't feel like they're doing Dame any favors. Mhm