Speaker 1: Welcome in. What'll drive with the Great Emergency Pod is
Speaker 1: what these are called. And let me tell you how
Speaker 1: my night went last night. So my dad is in
Speaker 1: out of town, in from Kansas City, kind of a
Speaker 1: last minute trip because it is my niece's birthday, so
Speaker 1: he came in town to see her, and my wife
Speaker 1: and I took him out to dinner last night. And
Speaker 1: so my dad and I don't get together that often,
Speaker 1: but if we do get together, it's gonna be an
Speaker 1: incredibly long dinner and a lot of wine. So that
Speaker 1: was a three hour dinner my dad, my wife, and
Speaker 1: I and then afterwards my dad heads back to my
Speaker 1: sisters and my wife says, you know, we haven't gone
Speaker 1: out like gone out, gone out like we used to
Speaker 1: in quite some time. I was a bottle of wine
Speaker 1: in I'm not driving. I'm like, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So we end up going going downtown in New York
Speaker 1: a couple different spots. And while we are in a
Speaker 1: way too loud, far too many people, so much younger
Speaker 1: than me, as I am the old guy in the club,
Speaker 1: I look at my phone and I read this breaking
Speaker 1: The Dallas Mavericks are trading Luka Doncic, Maxi, Kliba, and
Speaker 1: Markkeith Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis,
Speaker 1: Max Christi and a twenty twenty nine first round pick.
Speaker 1: Sources tell ESPN from Sham Sharania, and I have the
Speaker 1: reaction that I think, literally everyone has, Oh dude, got hacked.
Speaker 1: Definitely not real, impossible that it could be real. He
Speaker 1: then follows it up with yes, this is real and
Speaker 1: has the full trade. But again that means nothing to
Speaker 1: me because if if you got hacked, if you got hacked,
Speaker 1: the same person has control of your account. You then tweeting, yes,
Speaker 1: this is real. I send the tweet to people who
Speaker 1: would be directly involved in such a thing, and before
Speaker 1: I even get a response, the main ESPN account tweets it.
Speaker 1: And my reaction at that moment is like everyone else's
Speaker 1: holy shit, what just happened? Is this the biggest trade
Speaker 1: in NBA history? Maybe, but maybe not. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be too prisoner of the moment. He I mean,
Speaker 1: Kareem Abdul Jabbar was traded in the peak of his prime,
Speaker 1: in a decade when he was winning six league MVPs,
Speaker 1: So that's a pretty big one. That Shaquille O'Neill obviously
Speaker 1: changed teams. We've had, We've had Apex, predator stars changed teams.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's the biggest trading in
Speaker 1: NBA history. It is the most shocking there is nothing.
Speaker 1: And when I say shocking, not just to the audience,
Speaker 1: to the league. Other teams didn't know, other agents didn't know,
Speaker 1: other players didn't know. There is no context for what
Speaker 1: we just saw, Luca entering not even yet officially really
Speaker 1: technically in his prime, even though it sure feels like
Speaker 1: he's been in his prime since his second year in
Speaker 1: the league. But age wise, you're prime in the league
Speaker 1: supposed to be twenty seven to thirty one, Luca at
Speaker 1: twenty five being traded without a trade demand, a preemptive
Speaker 1: strike by Dallas, and Dallas's return being a great player
Speaker 1: in Anthony Davis. But again, if prime is twenty seven
Speaker 1: to thirty one, a thirty one year old Anthony Davis,
Speaker 1: and it is just mind blown. So I then tweeted
Speaker 1: about it. I went on IG Live from the club
Speaker 1: that might have been a that could have been a
Speaker 1: terrible mistake, and end up going quite well. And then
Speaker 1: something happened on my phone where it's not even it's
Speaker 1: not even saved, it's not even posted. You had to
Speaker 1: be one of those few thousand people watching me live,
Speaker 1: and I don't even know if you could hear me
Speaker 1: or else. That's lost to the ether. So here's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. It's not gonna be the normal hour
Speaker 1: long pod. Never done. I think I've maybe done one
Speaker 1: other emergency pod. I don't know. Lakers perspective, Luca's perspective,
Speaker 1: Lebron's perspective, the MAVs perspective, and Anthony Davis's perspective. Those
Speaker 1: are the five angles. We're gonna attack each one individually.
Speaker 1: We are going to start with the Lakers. I do
Speaker 1: not know. So what does it mean for the Lakers
Speaker 1: right now this moment. I'm not sure the Lakers actually
Speaker 1: for this year got demonstrably better, and I know that
Speaker 1: sounds insane. They're going to have one of, if not
Speaker 1: the best offense in basketball. That's going to happen. Now.
Speaker 1: You now have two of the best generators of offense
Speaker 1: in NBA history in Lebron James who's still and he
Speaker 1: showed it to you last night against a good Knicks
Speaker 1: team on the road without ad old Man still got
Speaker 1: it thirty three, twelve and eleven, just because Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: in the garden, so I'm gonna rev up to still
Speaker 1: being able to get to whatever my apex is right now,
Speaker 1: I can get there in the biggest spot. You then
Speaker 1: add to him a guy who is, with no disrespect
Speaker 1: to SGA, a top three player. So offensively, the Lakers
Speaker 1: are going to be extraordinary. Defensively, they were already bad
Speaker 1: and they lost their only room protection and so for
Speaker 1: this year, I don't you know, I know their championship
Speaker 1: ods went from like fifty to one to twenty to one.
Speaker 1: Everything I know about the history of the NBA says
Speaker 1: you can't be as bad as they're going to be
Speaker 1: defensively and have a real shot at the championship. But honestly,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. That's not the point of this trade.
Speaker 1: The point of this trade if you're the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Lakers is you now are set for the next half decade,
Speaker 1: and that's being conservative. If Luca likes it there, you're
Speaker 1: set for the next decade. You have there Again, there
Speaker 1: are three guys that are just better than every player
Speaker 1: in the league. Jokic, Jannis and Luca and now you
Speaker 1: have one of them. And now when we zoom out
Speaker 1: for the last half decade for the Lakers, they flipped
Speaker 1: Josh Hart, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and what ends up
Speaker 1: being four first round picks for a championship in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and Luke ad Ancic the Anthony Davis trade got
Speaker 1: you a championship, and then Anthony Davis plus one more
Speaker 1: first round pick got you Luk Adncic and the Lakers
Speaker 1: probably aren't done. The Lakers have to go get a
Speaker 1: big They just have to. Jack Hayes is not like
Speaker 1: if they're actually going to try to compete this year,
Speaker 1: but even if they don't, it's simply one of the
Speaker 1: biggest coups in the history of basketball. And there are
Speaker 1: so many ways to try to build a perennial contender
Speaker 1: in the NBA. You can do what Okahoma City did,
Speaker 1: which is draft exceptionally, take your shot, cast your chips
Speaker 1: out at the right time, rebuild picks, picks picks, draft
Speaker 1: exceptionally again, and then have your contender make a savvy trade.
Speaker 1: See something in SGA the rest of the league doesn't
Speaker 1: quite see. That's one method. Another method is what the
Speaker 1: Spurs you're trying to do literally, hit the draft lottery,
Speaker 1: get a generational talent, hope he wants to be there.
Speaker 1: Another method is the Knicks what they've tried to do.
Speaker 1: See something in a player in Jalen Brunson the rest
Speaker 1: of the league doesn't quite see. Go get him, see
Speaker 1: him ascend, be judicious with your draft picks, and then
Speaker 1: go all in. There's all these smart, long term ways
Speaker 1: to build a contender. The other way is just be
Speaker 1: the fucking Lakers and seemingly be mismanaged for a half decade,
Speaker 1: and then Lebron James is like, I want to play
Speaker 1: for you and get him, and then he helps you
Speaker 1: get Anthony Davis, and then a half decade later, the
Speaker 1: Dallas Mavericks call you and say they call you and say,
Speaker 1: can I interest you in Luka Ancic, to which you say, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. Now the MAVs side of this is far uglier,
Speaker 1: and the MAVs are going to try to spin evidently
Speaker 1: that they were worried about how in shape Luca was
Speaker 1: and they were worried about giving him the Supermax. If
Speaker 1: Luca's not worth the Supermax, then then no one is.
Speaker 1: Whenever we talk about the best players in the league.
Speaker 1: The other thing you got to remember is, even if
Speaker 1: you want to include Shae in that top three and
Speaker 1: call it a top four in something that is true,
Speaker 1: but no one ever believes when you tell them Shae
Speaker 1: older than Luca. Luca's twenty five, Shay's twenty six. Obviously,
Speaker 1: yokichinyanis considerably older than both of them. So if you're
Speaker 1: the MAVs, you didn't hold an auction, you didn't get
Speaker 1: a bounty, you got one first round pick, no swaps,
Speaker 1: you didn't get Dalton connect, you didn't get Austin Rivers.
Speaker 1: Now again, I'm not downplaying who Anthony Davis is. Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis is a great player, but he is six years
Speaker 1: older and he is not Luka Nacik. And you're doing
Speaker 1: it on the heels of Luca. Take the last three
Speaker 1: years in Dallas. Luca carries you to the conference finals,
Speaker 1: then you have a disaster year, and then he carries
Speaker 1: you to the NBA Finals. You pull off a risky
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving trade and it works, and to now have
Speaker 1: f And here's the other thing for Dallas. They in
Speaker 1: the Kyrie trade and the other trades they've made, they've
Speaker 1: traded a lot of their future draft so not to
Speaker 1: get two in the weeds. But I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: right now. Think on real GM twenty twenty seven, their
Speaker 1: first round pick to Charlotte. Twenty twenty eight, their first
Speaker 1: round pick can be swapped with Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's
Speaker 1: gonna be really good, so I would imagine that's a
Speaker 1: swap that'll take place twenty twenty nine, their first round
Speaker 1: pick to either Houston or Brooklyn. That's a complicated one,
Speaker 1: but they don't have it. Twenty thirty, they swap picks
Speaker 1: with san Antonio. So twenty when did it start? Twenty
Speaker 1: twenty seven to twenty thirty, you don't have your own
Speaker 1: draft pick. You either don't have a first or you're
Speaker 1: swapping with san Antonio, who by twenty thirty should be awesome,
Speaker 1: or Oklahoma City, who in twenty twenty eight will be awesome.
Speaker 1: And now you're leaning on is Kyrie thirty two now
Speaker 1: a thirty two turning thirty three next month, Kyrie Irving
Speaker 1: and a thirty one year old Anthony Davis, who again
Speaker 1: is a great player, and he turns thirty two next
Speaker 1: month as well. And what you don't have is a
Speaker 1: bunch of these other future picks to replenish all the
Speaker 1: picks you traded away trying to win now with Luca.
Speaker 1: I don't understand this from the MAVs perspective at all.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how you don't hold an auction. All
Speaker 1: the reporting surrounding this is that Luca did not demand this,
Speaker 1: that they were And again, I'm sure people are gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that he mainlined sweet tea or
Speaker 1: that he's out of shape. Who gives a shit? He
Speaker 1: was just in the NBA finals. He's one of the
Speaker 1: greatest offensive players in modern NBA history. And how does
Speaker 1: this land for Kyrie? How does this land for Anthony Davis?
Speaker 1: Has to be I mean not just shocked, but devastated.
Speaker 1: And I do not believe anyone arguing will actually for
Speaker 1: this year the MAVs got better, No, they didn't. Luca
Speaker 1: in the playoffs is one of the most prolific players
Speaker 1: in the last thirty years offensively, and you'd be like,
Speaker 1: what about the defense. I don't know, man, they were
Speaker 1: in the finals last year. Luca's career in the playoffs again,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty twenty thirty one, ten to nine. The entirety
Speaker 1: of that series was with Koir Paul George Gardingham. He's
Speaker 1: twenty years old or I guess the let me make sure,
Speaker 1: would he have turned Okay, No, he's twenty one. He
Speaker 1: turned twenty one before those playoffs, So twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: again with Koir Paul George guarding him the whole time
Speaker 1: in the playoffs thirty six, eight and ten, he's twenty
Speaker 1: two years old. Then he carries them to the conference finals,
Speaker 1: going through a Phoenix team that everyone loved. He's thirty two,
Speaker 1: ten and six. And then last year he carries them
Speaker 1: to the NBA Finals forty one minutes per game, twenty nine,
Speaker 1: not ten and eight. And you traded him. You traded
Speaker 1: him for a player six years older than him who's
Speaker 1: not quite as good, Max Christi, and won first round pick.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the Lakers first round pick in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine not going to be that valuable. You
Speaker 1: know why, because Luca is on the team. All right,
Speaker 1: what does this mean for Lebron again? There will be
Speaker 1: It's inevitable. It hasn't yet happened. I tweeted that it
Speaker 1: was gonna last night, that it would happen by Monday,
Speaker 1: and I imagine it will by Monday, there will be
Speaker 1: folks on your television screens explaining how Lebron orchestrated this,
Speaker 1: or Lebron ran a d out of town or that
Speaker 1: is I can tell you with I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's first hand sourcing, but it's close. That's nonsense. And
Speaker 1: again I'm not certain I this makes the Lakers such
Speaker 1: a different team this year. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: it helps Lebron this season from a odds to win
Speaker 1: the championship standpoint. What does allow for is Lucas Lebron's
Speaker 1: favorite player in the league. There is a great clip
Speaker 1: Lebron on the Pod with the road Trip and Pod
Speaker 1: Richard Jefferson in Channing Fry and I think it's Ali
Speaker 1: Clifton years ago where he says Luca was the first
Speaker 1: and only player he's ever tried to sign to be
Speaker 1: a Lebron athlete on his shoe line. But Jordan got it,
Speaker 1: and he talked about how much he loves Luca's game,
Speaker 1: and Lucas talked forever about how he's modeled his kind
Speaker 1: of game after Lebron's. Those two guys playing together on
Speaker 1: the back the very back end of Lebron's career is
Speaker 1: going to be absolutely remarkable to see. Now, is it
Speaker 1: possible this year that they realize, well, their skills are
Speaker 1: kind of redundant and we need to figure out how
Speaker 1: we're going to card wings and this pairing, while fun
Speaker 1: from a winning four playoff series perspective, not great. And therefore,
Speaker 1: next offseason, for what everyone assumes next year will be
Speaker 1: Lebron's final year, that the Lakers and Lebron talk and
Speaker 1: figure out do you want to finish here? Should you
Speaker 1: finish here? Or is there that Steph Lebron pairing that
Speaker 1: everyone's been hinting about for years? Is there a way
Speaker 1: to make that happen? Sure, that might be on the board.
Speaker 1: But seeing these two basketball savants, true geniuses play together
Speaker 1: in what is probably at least the second to last
Speaker 1: year of Lebron's career and maybe the last year of
Speaker 1: his career just from a pure basketball fan standpoint, is
Speaker 1: going to be unbelievable. What does it mean for Luca?
Speaker 1: And here is I think the most important piece of this.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should have led with it, it's the most important piece.
Speaker 1: I think this is the single greatest thing that could
Speaker 1: ever happen to luka Anci's the basketball player. He is
Speaker 1: going to see first hand the level of professionalism taking
Speaker 1: care of your body that it takes to reach his
Speaker 1: full potential. And what Luca's full potential is. His full
Speaker 1: potential is one of the ten greatest players of all time.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. And even without reaching his full potential,
Speaker 1: he's going to be one of the twenty five greatest
Speaker 1: players of all time. He's going to be a multiple
Speaker 1: time MVP. But if he can glean a bit from
Speaker 1: lebron On, because the off the court stuff, the way
Speaker 1: to really stay in shape, and again, Luca played in
Speaker 1: the Olympics, Luca plays. I'm sure Luca's argument is, guys,
Speaker 1: I play as much basketball as as humanly possible. Leave
Speaker 1: me alone if I you know, enjoy hookah and you know,
Speaker 1: some fatty acids. But he's dealt with a few injuries.
Speaker 1: He obviously can wear down a bit, and so learning
Speaker 1: from lebron On that changes the trajectory of his career.
Speaker 1: And I can't listen this for me. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is my all time favorite player ever in Lebron now
Speaker 1: playing on the same team with my second favorite player
Speaker 1: in the league in Luca it's it's the greatest player
Speaker 1: of all time and my larger old Slovenian son together.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. I still can't believe it. I
Speaker 1: also like, again, what does it mean basketball wise? Because
Speaker 1: at the end of games, both Luca and still even
Speaker 1: forty years old, there aren't three guys in the world
Speaker 1: who you'd rather have ball in their hand, final five
Speaker 1: minutes of a playoff game dictating everything, Three guys you'd
Speaker 1: rather have more than Lebron. But if there are, one
Speaker 1: of them's Luca and so I don't know how they're
Speaker 1: gonna sort that out, but that's one of them good problems.
Speaker 1: And again defensively, the Lakers, I have to imagine they're
Speaker 1: going to make another move. And they're also now have
Speaker 1: no size. It's a weird team. But Luca's on the Lakers.
Speaker 1: And then then we go to Anthony Davis quickly. I
Speaker 1: I think this sucks for AD. I think that Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis has done everything right. He did do everything he
Speaker 1: could to take care of his body. We saw it
Speaker 1: paid dividends last year. I think he thought I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a Laker forever and now get shipped to
Speaker 1: Dallas with that weird new ownership situation. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say, based on this trade, a front office
Speaker 1: that seems to be out of their minds, and I
Speaker 1: I now that people don't understand what kind of a
Speaker 1: special player it takes to get all the great basketball
Speaker 1: stuff out of Kyrie and not have to worry about
Speaker 1: the other stuff. It's to Kyrie's credit, it has really
Speaker 1: gone away since he went to Dallas. I wonder how
Speaker 1: this lands. Man. Kyrie is a thoughtful guy and the
Speaker 1: shock wave of man, this team just knifed Luca, and
Speaker 1: knife is the wrong word because Lucas probably happy, but
Speaker 1: preemptively traded Luca. I don't know how that impacts Kyrie.
Speaker 1: So I say all that to say this, I would
Speaker 1: be shocked if the MAVs win a playoff series this year. Shocked,
Speaker 1: And that's not listen. I love Ad I think he's
Speaker 1: an excellent player, but right now they're sitting there at
Speaker 1: the eighth seed, ads injured. I I just cannot believe
Speaker 1: the Mavericks did this. And I cannot believe you traded
Speaker 1: Luka Doncic under the you know, cover of night. You
Speaker 1: didn't come away with young players one hundred draft picks
Speaker 1: and a full franchise reboot. Instead, you got an awesome
Speaker 1: future Hall of Famer that's about to be thirty two
Speaker 1: and one first round pick. It is like, what would now?
Speaker 1: Maybe the answer is not as much as you think,
Speaker 1: because he wasn't gonna re sign, But what would the
Speaker 1: Spurs have given you to be able to pair Wimby
Speaker 1: and Luca? Also? Was it not? Was this trade not
Speaker 1: gonna be there in six months after? You get one
Speaker 1: more playoff run again out of a guy who just
Speaker 1: took you to the NBA Finals. I I am beyond stunt,
Speaker 1: and I guess I don't know that I want to
Speaker 1: give Rob Bolinka credit because I don't think that guy's
Speaker 1: been very good at this job at all. But you
Speaker 1: just got Luke ad Ancic. You still have picks to trade,
Speaker 1: you still have swaps you can make, you still have
Speaker 1: Austin Reeves, you still have Dalton connect there's you can
Speaker 1: make moves. And the Lakers are sitting there coming off
Speaker 1: a great win when Lebron looked awesome. That like, here's
Speaker 1: the thing about it, and again it's one game, I understand.
Speaker 1: But the Lakers played Saturday night in Madison Square Garden
Speaker 1: against the Knicks without Anthony Davis and one. So that
Speaker 1: Lakers team that when Lebron gets to that level, is
Speaker 1: really good offensively, really good. Just added Luke a Ancic,
Speaker 1: And I'm just staring right now at the standings, like
Speaker 1: thinking what other teams would have just said take everything.
Speaker 1: So Oklahoma City obviously has all the picks in the world,
Speaker 1: but they're happy with where they're at, and you know
Speaker 1: they so that probably wouldn't make sense. Houston's got a
Speaker 1: lot of Pickslake, would Houston have given you Jalen Green
Speaker 1: a million picks, others like Dylan Brooks or whatever other
Speaker 1: salaries to make it work and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have Shngoon and Luca and Thompson. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe this is all Dallas got, and I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone in the league can and the Lakers now, it's
Speaker 1: really unbelievable. If you're a Laker fan, if you're a
Speaker 1: MAVs fan, I don't even if you're a man. Kids
Speaker 1: that are MAVs fans, If I don't know what the
Speaker 1: parents do this morning, explain to them that this happened.
Speaker 1: Just devastation. But if you're a Lakers fan. I don't
Speaker 1: care how old you are, you have been able. You
Speaker 1: have had on your team one of the ten greatest
Speaker 1: players of all time without interruption from the mid seventies
Speaker 1: until Kobe's retirement. I guess the early well there was two.
Speaker 1: You know what, let me do a different way. There
Speaker 1: have been with basically from the start of the league
Speaker 1: to now, whether it was West and Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Shaq,
Speaker 1: Kobe Lebron and now Luca. We can go sixty five
Speaker 1: years and there were if I added up all the seasons,
Speaker 1: maybe ten total the early seventies, the mid nineties and
Speaker 1: post Kobe pri Lebron ten twelve years total. You did
Speaker 1: not have one of the historic again ten greatest players
Speaker 1: of all time at or near the peak of his
Speaker 1: powers on your team. And now Lucas not that yet,
Speaker 1: but I think he's going to be and he's gonna
Speaker 1: do it in the Lakers Jersey. Good for them, man.
Speaker 1: And if you're the MAVs, I mean a year ago
Speaker 1: you have twenty four year old Luka, doncic An owner
Speaker 1: and Mark Cuban. That's awesome, getting ready to go to
Speaker 1: the finals. Cuban's gone, Luca's gone, you're now fighting to,
Speaker 1: you know, get out of the play in which you're
Speaker 1: not going to do. And your team's built around round
Speaker 1: a soon to be thirty two year old and as
Speaker 1: soon to be thirty three year old who have both
Speaker 1: dealt with injury issues, and you don't have your picks
Speaker 1: in twenty seven to twenty eight, twenty nine, or thirty
Speaker 1: and you have one extra pick, the Lakers twenty twenty
Speaker 1: nine pick, which again is not going to be that
Speaker 1: valuable because they now have Luke Anncic. What is the Lakers'
Speaker 1: next game at the Clippers February fourth, Luke is obviously
Speaker 1: injured home for Golden State Thursday. This is I mean,
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to see that first Luke in Lebron game,
Speaker 1: their first national TV game, assuming Luke is not playing
Speaker 1: this week Saturday February twenty second, Saturday Night on ABC
Speaker 1: against the Nuggets, and then Tuesday circle this one Today,
Speaker 1: February twenty fifth, on TNT, the Lakers host the Dallas Mavericks. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So there it is. I'm I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys can tell, I'm still a little stunned, but I
Speaker 1: cannot wait to watch Luke and Lebron play together. And
Speaker 1: again I joke on the TV show I have a
Speaker 1: fake news hat. The hat is fake, the news is real.
Speaker 1: Lebron was almost as shocked by this as you guys were.
Speaker 1: And again, I don't know that if the only goal,
Speaker 1: like from Lebron's perspective, is like win a title this year,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much closer this makes the Lakers
Speaker 1: this year. But for the Lakers as a team, it's
Speaker 1: one of the greatest cups in NBA history. See you
Speaker 1: guys on Tuesday for a regular schedule show. It was
Speaker 1: what trick