Speaker 1: Welcome to the Jason timp Podcast. Thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for taking time out of your day to come
Speaker 1: hang out and talk some hoops with Tommy and I.
Speaker 1: All hell is breaking loose in the n b A.
Speaker 1: Tommy and I had all of these notes drawn up
Speaker 1: and all these big plans for all these things we
Speaker 1: were going to talk about, and uh, now I think
Speaker 1: there's an outside chance we might not touch on any
Speaker 1: of that stuff and we might be stuck on on
Speaker 1: this trade the whole time. Tommy, how you doing, man?
Speaker 1: Good man? Thanks for having me on as always. Uh,
Speaker 1: this league right, hashtag this league. This is what the
Speaker 1: NBA is at this point. Um what I mean, what
Speaker 1: just happened? What we were about to literally about to
Speaker 1: go on, and then all this stuff happened. So let's
Speaker 1: scrap all of it. Let's just talk trade. Let's talk
Speaker 1: with the NBA. Light landscape looks like Now. I'm excited, man,
Speaker 1: Holy cow. Yeah. So we I was headed into a
Speaker 1: dentists appointment and I was messaging with Tommy and I
Speaker 1: said that, uh, that we were hoping that the trade
Speaker 1: news would come down before before we went live, but
Speaker 1: that we would operate under the assumption that Philly would
Speaker 1: get him. Um, that wasn't just reported because it was
Speaker 1: reported was reported by mark Stein that they were in
Speaker 1: first place, but we were all also operating under that
Speaker 1: assumption as a result of just common sense. When you
Speaker 1: would sit there and think about what the situations that
Speaker 1: each team presented as trade options, it made so much
Speaker 1: more sense to go after Ben Simmons if you were Houston,
Speaker 1: because Ben's because Ben Simmons has been playing so well.
Speaker 1: And there was some loose reporting from mark Stein that
Speaker 1: Ben Simmons was on the table, uh namely him and
Speaker 1: Tyrese Maxie, and that they would attempt to get a
Speaker 1: third team involved to ditch Tyrese Maxie in that trade
Speaker 1: so that they could keep some death. But Ben Simmons
Speaker 1: was on the table, and I mean, my first impression
Speaker 1: from this, from the from the start is that clearly
Speaker 1: Philly took him off the table. That's my only take away.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you thought when you saw that. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if Philly took him off the table.
Speaker 1: I heard that. I saw that Houston was asking for
Speaker 1: Thyble as well, which obviously wouldn't have stopped me from
Speaker 1: doing the deal. If if I'm philly, Um, it would
Speaker 1: have made reworking the roster harder around and being harder,
Speaker 1: but you do it either way. I mean with with
Speaker 1: the actual with what the actual trade was. Maybe they
Speaker 1: did take him off the table because the Nets only
Speaker 1: gave up LeVert and Jared Allen basically from what I'm reading,
Speaker 1: So let me quickly read the four The Rockets get
Speaker 1: Victor Oladipo, Dante Exim Rodeons Courus, three Brooklyn first rounders,
Speaker 1: one Milwaukee first in two that's unprotected for Brooklyn first
Speaker 1: round pick swaps, and twenty seven. The Nets get James Harden,
Speaker 1: the Pacers get Harris LeVert and his second rounder, and
Speaker 1: the Calves get Jared Allen and Torrian Prince. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I find there to be
Speaker 1: interesting because, first of all, um, I'm surprised Houston didn't
Speaker 1: want Jared Allen. Um just just as a matter of depth,
Speaker 1: I think they got absolutely bullied at the center position yesterday.
Speaker 1: And I think he's just honestly a better player than
Speaker 1: DeMarcus Cousins right now, and that would have been an
Speaker 1: interesting player to try to get out of that the
Speaker 1: olo depot thing and he's just not as good as
Speaker 1: a player as as Ben Simmons is. So I just
Speaker 1: my my basic common sense points me in the direction
Speaker 1: that Ben Simmons was taken off the table, probably at
Speaker 1: the last minute as Houston was being a little bit
Speaker 1: unreasonable with their demands, and then Philly probably just pulled
Speaker 1: back from the table altogether, and then Brooklyn just hopped
Speaker 1: in and got this thing done easily possible. But we
Speaker 1: might be overlooking the fact that Pertida probably wanted to
Speaker 1: duct the tax because they're getting I mean, they have
Speaker 1: fans in the arena right now, but it's like capacity
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. He probably wanted to duct the
Speaker 1: tax and Oladipo is on an expiring UM. They don't
Speaker 1: have to resign him if they don't want to. This
Speaker 1: way they can get under the tax there. He's not
Speaker 1: worried about his money. UM. They don't still have the
Speaker 1: hard money on the books and they're not taking on
Speaker 1: however many years Simmons has left, which is like four
Speaker 1: or five, but like thirty male plus a year UM,
Speaker 1: so this might be purely a financial move UM while
Speaker 1: also getting some few a ton of future first round
Speaker 1: picks to build for the future. Right off the COVID
Speaker 1: years and you know, keep your revenue stream going and
Speaker 1: then see what happens in the future. So I mean
Speaker 1: it could have been that too. They just didn't want
Speaker 1: all the extra years of Simmons and they wanted Oladipo's
Speaker 1: expiring contract. That's insane though, right like well like in
Speaker 1: the world like I because if there's any report at it,
Speaker 1: Pertia is looking at it as a money may organization.
Speaker 1: He doesn't care about winning games. He might all the
Speaker 1: whip services that he does, but I don't think he
Speaker 1: actually does. He's just trying to survive COVID. Half his
Speaker 1: restaurants have gone under, like the guys in Finding hurting financially.
Speaker 1: He had to go to Trump for a loan to
Speaker 1: stay up flow like, so I think it's more financial
Speaker 1: than anything else. But that's why, I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have gotten the team in the first place.
Speaker 1: The team never should have been sold to him in
Speaker 1: the first place. So it's I mean, it's a mistake
Speaker 1: by the NBA dating back two years and now we're
Speaker 1: saying the river cousins of it. Does this guy even
Speaker 1: like basketball like that? That that's my question. Honestly because
Speaker 1: like because like he's thinking it too for like too
Speaker 1: much of a cutthroat perspective here, because like I'm I
Speaker 1: would be sitting here, like, dude, I got Ben Simmons
Speaker 1: and John Wall and I got Christian Wood and like
Speaker 1: and and p J. Tucker and I've got like that's something.
Speaker 1: That's that's something. It's a fun team. At least it's
Speaker 1: a very fun team. Yeah, and Simmons is a really
Speaker 1: good player who if he ever decides to dedicate himself
Speaker 1: to actually learning how to shoot a basketball, he'll be
Speaker 1: a great player. So yeah, I think the more that
Speaker 1: I think about it, and I saw a couple of
Speaker 1: people say this on what are I really think it
Speaker 1: was purely a financial move, you know, financial move, get
Speaker 1: under the tax now they're not paying the taxes here
Speaker 1: much less worried about the financial future of the team,
Speaker 1: and they got a bunch of first round picks. So
Speaker 1: I think that was probably the thought process from Houston standpoint,
Speaker 1: But from a purely basketball standpoint, it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Let's so I want to get to I want to
Speaker 1: spend a bunch of time talking about what Brooklyn looks like,
Speaker 1: but I want to quickly touch on this Philly situation
Speaker 1: because I joked about this with you before in our
Speaker 1: last part. I think it was one week ago or
Speaker 1: two weeks ago. I I was worried that Philly was
Speaker 1: playing so well that they were going to play themselves
Speaker 1: out of a James Harden trade, talking them into a
Speaker 1: situation where they would think that they were fine without him,
Speaker 1: And I do believe that that's what happened. And now
Speaker 1: the one silver lining they're the one thing that that
Speaker 1: Darryl Morey might be clinging to is that Joe l
Speaker 1: Emp has been awesome, and he was awesome again last night.
Speaker 1: He was hitting one legged fadeaways, he was hitting a
Speaker 1: variety of dribble pull ups against multiple contesting in congested defense.
Speaker 1: He looked like the kind of guy that might be
Speaker 1: able to solve Ben Simmons's problems. So it maybe literally
Speaker 1: that simple, but I still think that they that they
Speaker 1: kind of, through the success that they had in these
Speaker 1: opening weeks, played themselves into talking themselves into thinking that
Speaker 1: they didn't need James Harden, and I think that could
Speaker 1: end up being a mistake in the long run. It
Speaker 1: easily could be. But indeed, right now he's he just
Speaker 1: turned twenty six, so he's entering his prime. Twelve and
Speaker 1: three assist, two blocks of game one and a half steels,
Speaker 1: shooting thirty eight from the from three eight six from
Speaker 1: the line, had forty five What did he have the
Speaker 1: other night? This is great podcasting, just reading off numbers.
Speaker 1: Had forty five sixteen five and five steals and a
Speaker 1: block the other night last night, So he is playing
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible right now. I'd say he's probably the front
Speaker 1: runner for m VP, maybe more. He is banking. Our
Speaker 1: best player is finally hitting his prime, and we think
Speaker 1: he is good enough to be the best player on
Speaker 1: a championship team. And we don't need James Harden. We
Speaker 1: don't want to mortgage our future for James Harden, um
Speaker 1: because hard at the end of the day, Harden is incredible,
Speaker 1: right I've said that many times. Um. I think my
Speaker 1: thoughts on Harden are well known. But he is in
Speaker 1: his thirties and Simmons is in his early twenties, and
Speaker 1: if he can just kind of figure out how to
Speaker 1: be a better player in the half court and that
Speaker 1: better utilize his skill set moving forward in the half court,
Speaker 1: he can easily do the second best player on a
Speaker 1: championship team. So more he's betting on the future. He's
Speaker 1: betting on a team that has looked really good through
Speaker 1: the first eleven or so games of this even even
Speaker 1: with all the COVID protocol stuff they're going through right now.
Speaker 1: Um and and a potential matchup with the Lakers, EMBIID
Speaker 1: typically gives a d a lot of problems. Right There's
Speaker 1: obviously still the Lebron James factor on the other side
Speaker 1: for the Lakers, marcusol At that too, that too, but
Speaker 1: EMBIAD has typically given a deal a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: So maybe they're just banking on and be being the
Speaker 1: best big man in that series by a wide margin,
Speaker 1: um if possible, and then him carrying them to a title.
Speaker 1: So and Ben Simmons may very well be the best
Speaker 1: possible guy to guard Kevin Durant Earl Lebron James, which
Speaker 1: is what you're gonna nectably have to do to win
Speaker 1: a title anyway, and it could literally be that simple.
Speaker 1: I do trust that Darryl Morriy has thought about all
Speaker 1: this stuff. I think that, you know, I think my
Speaker 1: thing has always been that I trust James Harden for
Speaker 1: as long as you can focus him into the things
Speaker 1: that he's good at. And one of the biggest reasons
Speaker 1: why I think they nearly won the title in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen is because of the fact that that Rockets
Speaker 1: defense and Chris Paul, Chris Paul and his alpha dog
Speaker 1: mentality and his his versatility offensively allowed allowed James Harden's
Speaker 1: weaknesses to kind of be put on the back burner
Speaker 1: and they nearly won the title. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: been my philosophy with the with the the idea of
Speaker 1: putting him in Philadelphia was you put him with even
Speaker 1: if you lose Ben Simmons. You're putting in with with Eyeball,
Speaker 1: You're putting in with Tobias Harris, You're putting in with
Speaker 1: Joel Embiad. You're putting in with a lot of really
Speaker 1: good defensive players that that that would allow him to
Speaker 1: kind of mimic the two eighteen Rockets kind of situation,
Speaker 1: and you have Joe l and b that A's this
Speaker 1: whole other layer of offensive versatility. It's a much cleaner um,
Speaker 1: it's a much cleaner basketball fit, uh side by side
Speaker 1: with alongside James Harden. There's a lot of different things
Speaker 1: there that just made sense to me. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they talked themselves out of it. And I'm sure it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. It could even be a culture thing. It
Speaker 1: could literally just be that they don't like Darryl Moray
Speaker 1: knows all that is to know about James Harden, and
Speaker 1: he just didn't want to deal with it anymore. It
Speaker 1: could literally do that simple. It could be. It absolutely
Speaker 1: could be. And and the one thing I had point
Speaker 1: to relative to Rockets is that the biggest thing I
Speaker 1: think that Chris Paul did for James Harden was he
Speaker 1: could just control the flow of the game, right He
Speaker 1: he basically knew when the time was to get hard
Speaker 1: in the ball and when it wasn't his time. Paul
Speaker 1: could literally he still does it with Phoenix. He he's
Speaker 1: kind of changed Phoenix's outlook just in terms of how
Speaker 1: they play that the style that they play, because he
Speaker 1: is so good at controlling tempo and dictating possessions um
Speaker 1: and I don't know, as great as Embat is, that's
Speaker 1: not really his strength, right, So if you're counting on
Speaker 1: Harden to dictate the majority possessions, we know how that
Speaker 1: story ends every single time and playoff flame outs. So
Speaker 1: maybe morey with the like you're saying, the breadth of
Speaker 1: information he has about hard and he just in terms
Speaker 1: of culture fit and then terms of how that guy
Speaker 1: plays down the stretch and playoff games. Maybe he just
Speaker 1: didn't trust and he said, let's just go all in
Speaker 1: on the future. We build something really nice here. And
Speaker 1: they still do have some flexibility moving forward, and they
Speaker 1: have some good young guys on the roster, including Maxie
Speaker 1: and Tibo, who definitely would have went out the door
Speaker 1: in that deal. Maybe they're just betting on that because
Speaker 1: those guys actually fit the time line even maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit better than Harden does. Like I said, and
Speaker 1: he just turned twenty six. He's been around for so
Speaker 1: long that you think he's a little bit older. He
Speaker 1: literally turned twenty six a couple of weeks ago. I think.
Speaker 1: So the guy's got if he stays healthy. That's always
Speaker 1: a big caveat with him. If he stays healthy, he's
Speaker 1: probably got five, six, seven more years. Is one of
Speaker 1: the best players in the league. UM, and I'd rather
Speaker 1: beat on that than maybe shortening the window and um
Speaker 1: going all in on Hardened, because Harden has proven to
Speaker 1: me that he can be the best player on a
Speaker 1: championship team, and I wouldn't even necessarily think he'd be
Speaker 1: the best player. It's it's it's more just like think
Speaker 1: of it this way. When James Harden was with the
Speaker 1: best teammate he ever had, which I mean after leaving
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, it was in two thousand and eight team
Speaker 1: with Chris Paul, who was probably right around the tenth
Speaker 1: best player in the league at that point, and he
Speaker 1: was around in elite defense, and he nearly won a
Speaker 1: title and beat nearly beat a really talented team in
Speaker 1: that Warrior team. And now you'd be talking about pairing
Speaker 1: him with more of like a top five player. I
Speaker 1: had him beat outside the top ten before the season,
Speaker 1: but they had a lot to do with his poor
Speaker 1: showing last year. He's just a better guy now than
Speaker 1: he was then. He's in better shape. You can tell
Speaker 1: he's moving quicker, he's got a bet, he's got his
Speaker 1: touch is peeking, and there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff there that kind of puts him in
Speaker 1: that conversation so that they've got to him in the
Speaker 1: room too. He needed a different voice in the room
Speaker 1: to going from Brett Brown and Dock I think helped
Speaker 1: a lot of huge difference, huge difference and like, and
Speaker 1: so I think that there's no question that staying on
Speaker 1: the Ben Simmons path is better for them, you know,
Speaker 1: five years from now. I'm just a big believer in
Speaker 1: pushing your chips in the middle if you want to win.
Speaker 1: And that's just kind of that was my ideology with
Speaker 1: it all along. But I do think that we should
Speaker 1: talk about Brooklyn primarily because they are the one the
Speaker 1: team that infinitely becomes more interesting as a result of this.
Speaker 1: So the last part that I want to hit on
Speaker 1: with Philly, I think maybe what we're seeing here is
Speaker 1: Mariy learning his lessons in a way, right, because Morey
Speaker 1: was the biggest proponent, especially kind of early. Of doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Acquire as many stars as possible and then just figure
Speaker 1: it out. Figure the rest of the roster out. Chemistry
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, it does, None of that stuff matters as
Speaker 1: long as you have superstars. I think five six years ago,
Speaker 1: Maury Apps gets this deal done and he doesn't even
Speaker 1: worry about it. He said, we'll figure the rest out later. Now,
Speaker 1: after losing to the Warriors four or five times, after
Speaker 1: losing to the Lakers last year, a team with great chemistry,
Speaker 1: even though they came together quickly. Maybe he's kind of
Speaker 1: learned his lesson and said, you know what, maybe there
Speaker 1: is something to this continuity thing to guys liking each
Speaker 1: other in the locker room, which Billy seems to have
Speaker 1: at least improved on, you know, compared to years past
Speaker 1: this year. So like I'm saying, maybe more he has
Speaker 1: learned a lesson and he's um he's better for it,
Speaker 1: because the guy absolutely is one of the best talent
Speaker 1: acquires in the entire league. The missing piece has always
Speaker 1: been does he actually believe in real team chemistry stuff,
Speaker 1: which maybe he does now so and it could literally
Speaker 1: be that he likes what he's seeing with him being
Speaker 1: and and and so uh so. Looking at the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Nets roster at this point, so you've you've now ditched
Speaker 1: two of your primary ball handlers, uh one in an
Speaker 1: unfortunate fashion. Spencer didn't what he partially tearing his A
Speaker 1: C L. But now you you've given away caress Vert.
Speaker 1: So you're you're basically built on three ball handlers and
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving, who may or may not show up and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that later. Kevin Durant and and James Harden.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, there really aren't a whole lot of
Speaker 1: guys who know how to put the ball on the
Speaker 1: floor and make plays. Joe Harris is okay. I actually
Speaker 1: like him a little bit better off the ball in
Speaker 1: terms of cutting and slashing and attacking closeouts than I
Speaker 1: do as a guy who can really like make complicated
Speaker 1: decisions off the dribble, So that automatically becomes a little
Speaker 1: bit of a shortcoming there and then the This is
Speaker 1: the most interesting part of this trade to me, by
Speaker 1: losing Jared Allen, and it's very clear that that it
Speaker 1: kind of seems like he was a throw in because
Speaker 1: I don't really understand why Cleveland would want him because
Speaker 1: they already have two centers. So I just it may
Speaker 1: literally be, and this is another insane element to this,
Speaker 1: It may literally be that somehow DeAndre Jordan, in conversations
Speaker 1: with Kevin Durant, went to management and asked Jared Allen
Speaker 1: to be shipped out of town because I refused to
Speaker 1: believe that Jared Allen in the Cleveland Cavaliers wanting him
Speaker 1: as a third center with JaVale McGee and Andre Drummond
Speaker 1: was the breaking point for this trade. I just refused
Speaker 1: to believe it because as clear Houston didn't want him,
Speaker 1: it's clear Indiana didn't want him, and so in in
Speaker 1: Cleveland's role in this trade was so minimal. I really
Speaker 1: really don't understand why he was given up except for
Speaker 1: ego purposes having to do with with DeAndre Jordan's. I
Speaker 1: hadn't even thought of that angle, like, at least not
Speaker 1: in depth, the DeAndre Jordan angle. But Alan has been
Speaker 1: playing well recently, like when when George wasn't playing, there
Speaker 1: was a noticeable difference and how much better their defense
Speaker 1: was with Alan on the floor. So I guess it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that that happened. But the Brooklyn is essentially
Speaker 1: hunting defense in every meaningful way now and just saying
Speaker 1: we are going to be, I guess, the greatest offensive
Speaker 1: team of all time. We have three of the greatest
Speaker 1: isolation scores ever, and we're just gonna bank on them
Speaker 1: being to outscore being able to outscore you every single night.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, you, being a Lebron fan,
Speaker 1: you kind of know how this goes in a way
Speaker 1: when you have three ball dominant guys on the same team.
Speaker 1: One of those guys always get short changed. With Miami,
Speaker 1: it was Chris Bosh. With Cleveland, it was Kevin Love.
Speaker 1: And those are two guys who were easily twenty point
Speaker 1: per game scores before they joined forces with Lebron, and
Speaker 1: then after just because of how basketball works and how
Speaker 1: many possessions there are in a game and how many
Speaker 1: touches you can afford to how many players, they both
Speaker 1: got worked into more ancillery roles in the offense. So
Speaker 1: the basketball fit is just kind of bizarre to me.
Speaker 1: You have three guys who were really two guys who
Speaker 1: meet the ball. With Harden and Kyrie, Katie can definitely
Speaker 1: play more off the ball, but it seems like part
Speaker 1: of the reason why he went to Brooklyn as he
Speaker 1: was tired of playing in Steve's curve system where he
Speaker 1: didn't have the ball all the time. So I don't see. Well,
Speaker 1: the talent is obvious there. You have three of the
Speaker 1: fifteen best players in the league. You have three of
Speaker 1: the best isolation scores. Ever, I don't see the basketball thing.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit in our preseason,
Speaker 1: but I just don't see how this works on the floor.
Speaker 1: And maybe they all, you know, put aside their differences
Speaker 1: and decide they're all going to buy in and play
Speaker 1: really hard and it's all gonna be flowers and rainbows.
Speaker 1: But I just don't see it happening on the floor.
Speaker 1: And I would think that you're with me on this um,
Speaker 1: but maybe you have a totally different view. So well,
Speaker 1: you and I have talked to in the previous podcasts
Speaker 1: about how we thought that there was somewhat of an
Speaker 1: offensive ceiling where you where you start to see diminishing returns. Basically,
Speaker 1: just like the whole point of an offensive possession in
Speaker 1: the NBA is to generate a quality shot, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to generate a quality shot in two
Speaker 1: different ways. One by running some sort of offensive set
Speaker 1: that gets a player in a catch and shoot situation
Speaker 1: or a cutting situation, and two to have a really
Speaker 1: really talented offensive player break down the defense leading to
Speaker 1: an open shot for someone else in a in a
Speaker 1: less a less structured what if that makes sense? Those
Speaker 1: are basically the two ways to generate offense, and I
Speaker 1: mean there are there obviously other ways, but those are
Speaker 1: the two core ways. And so as long as you
Speaker 1: have guys who can make plays off a catch and
Speaker 1: shoot situations, which the Nets already had. And as long
Speaker 1: as you have guys who who can create offense off
Speaker 1: the dribble when things break down, which the Nets also
Speaker 1: already had, there's there becomes a point where there's diminishing returns. Now,
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant are both really good spot
Speaker 1: up shooters. James Harden should be, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: he's more content to rest when he doesn't have the
Speaker 1: ball as opposed to kind of putting himself in a
Speaker 1: position or you can be a threat. So the idea
Speaker 1: is is when James Harden has the ball and Kyrie
Speaker 1: Irving and Kevin Durant are on the floor, they become
Speaker 1: really really good spot up threats. And and so there
Speaker 1: is some basketball sense there. But my question has always
Speaker 1: been when you're when you're framing that out, like what
Speaker 1: what rate do you think Kevin Durant is gonna hit
Speaker 1: a wide open jump shot? He might hit it at
Speaker 1: like fort right, like wide open butt naked shot on
Speaker 1: the wing. What is Torry and Prince gonna hit a
Speaker 1: wide open, butt naked shot on the wing at maybe
Speaker 1: thirty five, you know, maybe thirty eight? Like the difference
Speaker 1: in a completely wide open shot for those players is
Speaker 1: a diminishing return compared to asking them to create something
Speaker 1: off the dribble, you know what I mean. It would
Speaker 1: be because there's just no player in the league other
Speaker 1: than like in other than guys like Steph or Ray
Speaker 1: Allen or Kyle Korver that are just hitting seventy of
Speaker 1: their wide open catching shoot jump shots. So the bottom
Speaker 1: line is there's a diminishing return offensively. The way that
Speaker 1: their team was structured and the reason why it looked
Speaker 1: kind of interesting at times was, uh, they had this
Speaker 1: really good shot blocking center and Jared Allen. They had
Speaker 1: a lot of really really good offensive players. Their offense
Speaker 1: was really fluid, and they had they were they were
Speaker 1: able to generate offenses against elite defenses. But there were
Speaker 1: moments and Kevin Durant would engage himself defensively and they
Speaker 1: would look like this awesome to a team. That was
Speaker 1: their winning formula, and they let that slip a lot
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks, which is why their record
Speaker 1: isn't supid impressive, And it has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with what they did on the defensive end, but their
Speaker 1: offense is still great. I just don't really I I
Speaker 1: don't understand the the the risk to reward factor with
Speaker 1: James Harden as it pertains to improving what they were
Speaker 1: already doing on the offensive end of the floor and
Speaker 1: somehow improving their defense, which at this point, like I
Speaker 1: don't see any situation where they don't become a worst
Speaker 1: defensive team. At this point, you've got to lean on
Speaker 1: DeAndre Jordan's now for a lot, for a long time.
Speaker 1: You've got to lean on him a lot. They do
Speaker 1: not have a lot of depth at that position without
Speaker 1: him and and Torre and Prince is basically their only
Speaker 1: off ball wing, you know, not counting Kevin Durant, so
Speaker 1: I the roster all of a sudden is like extremely
Speaker 1: top heavy, like extremely top heavy. The offense was never
Speaker 1: going to be the issue in a playoff series. We've
Speaker 1: talked about this was never going to be the issue.
Speaker 1: The issue is gonna be can they get enough stops?
Speaker 1: Because they were going to score enough, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if they're getting stops. They're getting stops, they're gonna score
Speaker 1: a ton because they're coming at you in transition and
Speaker 1: now you're you're mismatched and they're they're playing however they want.
Speaker 1: But in theory if if all three of those guys decided,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm actually gonna play a brand of
Speaker 1: team basketball, it would be beautiful and I think it
Speaker 1: could work really well. But the reality is, none of
Speaker 1: those guys have ever really bought into that for an
Speaker 1: extended period of time, Durant being probably doing it for
Speaker 1: the longest time when he did it for probably a
Speaker 1: year and a half with Golden State. But besides that,
Speaker 1: none of these guys, at least in recent memory, have
Speaker 1: really bought into playing like a team heavy concept of basketball.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, man, I just don't. I don't
Speaker 1: see how it makes them that much better, because, like
Speaker 1: you're alluding to, the the offense was already really, really,
Speaker 1: really good. The issue was always going to be can
Speaker 1: they get enough stops to beat I mean, eventually in
Speaker 1: the finals, I guess the Lakers, And that just I mean,
Speaker 1: that looks a lot worse than it did an hour ago,
Speaker 1: and quietly quietly, the Lakers are tied for first place
Speaker 1: in the NBA overall defense that I think like one
Speaker 1: oh four point seven points per Hunter prossessions per Hunter
Speaker 1: possessions or something like that. But literally, literally the team
Speaker 1: they have to and inevitably get through to win the title.
Speaker 1: Is currently the top six defense and is defending at
Speaker 1: the top of the league level despite kind of showing
Speaker 1: inconsistent effort night in and night out. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where like you're you're looking
Speaker 1: at this titan on the other side of the the
Speaker 1: n b A that's doing things the right way in
Speaker 1: a proven winning fashion, and you just built your team around.
Speaker 1: And there's an interesting personality thing going on with the
Speaker 1: Nets too that is kind of being glossed over. So
Speaker 1: these are these are the three stars for the Brooklyn Nets. Now,
Speaker 1: I've got one who's literally on a sabbatical, who believes
Speaker 1: the earth is flat and may or may not want
Speaker 1: to retire because he doesn't seem to really enjoy playing
Speaker 1: basketball that much anymore. I've got two who is legitimately
Speaker 1: like fat and and has been blatantly giving up on
Speaker 1: his Papa Smurf. He looked like popa Smurf last night
Speaker 1: during warmups when he's wearing that blue jumpsuit. He literally
Speaker 1: looked like Papa Smurf. Somebody called him. He called him
Speaker 1: Santa Claus on Twitter. The other day. I was dying laughing.
Speaker 1: The the it's you've got a fat man who quit
Speaker 1: on his team to force a trade in our third
Speaker 1: to get in shape at least at least he's got
Speaker 1: to lose ten pounds like easily minimum, and and so
Speaker 1: and then and then our third guy, the the the
Speaker 1: leader of the group, the one who has his ship
Speaker 1: most together, is literally a guy who just left a
Speaker 1: winning situation because the dynamic mess with his ego. Like
Speaker 1: that's the that's the reality. Like he would still be
Speaker 1: in Golden State if he was wired in a way
Speaker 1: that didn't after in how much he cared about his
Speaker 1: imprint on the winning situation. So you can imagine how
Speaker 1: it might affect him if all of a sudden, James
Speaker 1: Harden comes in and is averaging thirty five points a game.
Speaker 1: You can you know, it's like it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where like you've got a really you basically have
Speaker 1: a Molotov cocktail of personalities on this team, and and
Speaker 1: there are so many different ways it could go south,
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking about this. My one of my
Speaker 1: main talking points with you today was supposed to be
Speaker 1: based on the premise that he'd go to Philly. Was
Speaker 1: supposed to be that. I that I thought this was
Speaker 1: a legitimate championship contender on the same level as the Lakers.
Speaker 1: That was the way I felt about James Harden and
Speaker 1: Philly with that defense, with the give and take that
Speaker 1: Harden MB could have, with the leap that Embiat is taking,
Speaker 1: and with the proven method of James Harden in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, with an elite defense and a really good
Speaker 1: co star, and literally even that locker room, the Philly
Speaker 1: has great veteran leadership in that locker room. Now they
Speaker 1: have kind of put their foot down on Harden when
Speaker 1: he's being an idiot right like, and he would be
Speaker 1: the only one basically because then and Beads, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think and Bead for all of his flaws, he's
Speaker 1: definitely an alph and he's definitely a guy who wants
Speaker 1: to win. I don't think anybody ever really questions that,
Speaker 1: and so and I just I literally thought that that
Speaker 1: team was a bigger threat. And and I'm so much
Speaker 1: less worried as someone who's not rooting for them. I'm
Speaker 1: so much less worried about Brooklyn now even than I
Speaker 1: was before, because there was always a scenario where even
Speaker 1: if they b s through the season, that Kevin Durant
Speaker 1: would engage himself defensively in the postseason, and so would
Speaker 1: Jared Allen, and so would Joe Harris, and maybe Kyrie
Speaker 1: gets to his two thousand and sixteen levels and suddenly
Speaker 1: they become a threat that is off the table. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. They just don't have the
Speaker 1: physicality that they would need to really bring that option
Speaker 1: to the table, and and like and and so you're
Speaker 1: you're you're in this awkward situation where like they have
Speaker 1: to they have a mid level exception that they haven't
Speaker 1: used yet five point seven million. They have a disabled
Speaker 1: player exception that they haven't used yet, which is I
Speaker 1: think right around the same amount, like five point seven million,
Speaker 1: But there's really no players left to use on use
Speaker 1: it for. You can't trade a player into that exception
Speaker 1: because you just blew every single draft pick you've got
Speaker 1: for the next seven years on this trade. So you
Speaker 1: you're in a situation where you really can't do anything
Speaker 1: until next summer. And even then, all you can do
Speaker 1: is sign a player with the mid level exception and
Speaker 1: hopefully find some veteran minimum guys. All the good veteran
Speaker 1: minimum guys are gone right now, they will be the
Speaker 1: premier buyout destination. That's one thing, but there is there
Speaker 1: is kind of and and I. And the reason why
Speaker 1: they'll be the premier buyout destination is, as you and
Speaker 1: I have discussed, these guys want to play, they want minutes.
Speaker 1: So even though they may rather go to l A
Speaker 1: for various reasons, they'll probably go to Brooklyn because Brooklyn
Speaker 1: is gonna be like, we need basketball players. We gave
Speaker 1: up all our basketball players. We need basketball players, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things where they will
Speaker 1: be having to build the rest of this roster with
Speaker 1: fringe level NBA talent, and that could end up being
Speaker 1: something that limits them moving forward, like permanently. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: is guarding Joel and beating the playoff series for them?
Speaker 1: Guest DeAndre Jordan's But DeAndre Jordan is the tendency to foul,
Speaker 1: and Joel Embiad is one of the best centers in
Speaker 1: the world at drawing fouls. Maybe they're gonna put Jeff
Speaker 1: Green on him, Yeah, good luck, And Kevin Durant would
Speaker 1: just he put him under the basket like everything. Beat
Speaker 1: is a big dude, like Anthony Davis has turned to
Speaker 1: do a big guy and and be kind of towers
Speaker 1: over him, like beating one of the biggest dudes I've
Speaker 1: ever seen any moves really well. But I think what
Speaker 1: all this shows, um this hardened trade, at least from
Speaker 1: a Brooklyn perspective, It's shows how hard it is to
Speaker 1: build a team correctly in the NBA now, because superstars
Speaker 1: have become so powerful, right and you're almost kind of
Speaker 1: always bending at their will. That building a team quote
Speaker 1: unquote the correct way, you know, basically getting two superstars
Speaker 1: and putting hard working role players around them. That's not
Speaker 1: what a lot of stars want at this point. They
Speaker 1: actually want to build the super team when that hasn't
Speaker 1: actually shown to be the most proven method of winning championships.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the quick fix. It's the easiest way
Speaker 1: to say on paper, Oh, we got the best team,
Speaker 1: let's just roll the balls out and go play basketball
Speaker 1: and hope the talent wins it. But I mean, how
Speaker 1: many teams like that have actually won championships. The teams
Speaker 1: that did the third star, they've always had to play
Speaker 1: the bullet and become more of a role guy. We
Speaker 1: saw it with Chris Bosh Chris Boss has talked about
Speaker 1: openly so many times how tough it was for him
Speaker 1: to say, Oh, I was this twenty four and twelve
Speaker 1: guy who's one of the best players in the NBA.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the top ten guys in the league.
Speaker 1: He goes to Miami with Lebron and Wade and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, he's basically a glorified role player's shooting
Speaker 1: spot up jump shots and he's dirty work guy on defense.
Speaker 1: So I mean, who is that guy going to be
Speaker 1: for the Brooklyn Nets? You know? And Sean Marks has
Speaker 1: really done a tremendous job turning that franchise around from
Speaker 1: the Bailey King era where they had basically forfeited all
Speaker 1: their picks for old Kevin Garnett and Paul Peers and
Speaker 1: they had no assets left. They brought in a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys that made them an enticing option for free agents,
Speaker 1: and then Kyrie and Kevin Durant got there and they
Speaker 1: scrapped everything that made that team a super enticing place
Speaker 1: for free agents. Point being, I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: long topic of player of empowerment here that I don't
Speaker 1: really want to get into, but I think it's really
Speaker 1: just it is so difficult to build a team correctly
Speaker 1: if you're superstars aren't actually bought into the way to
Speaker 1: build it. Because they have so much power, they can
Speaker 1: just demand a trade. That's basically what Harden just did.
Speaker 1: He said I want out because I'm not happy with
Speaker 1: the situation, and then Houston traded him, you know, six
Speaker 1: weeks after saying, oh, we're gonna stick it out, We're
Speaker 1: gonna keep him here as long as possible, things are
Speaker 1: gonna get uncomfortable, and then six weeks later he's out
Speaker 1: the door. So yeah, it's just it's a really weird
Speaker 1: situation and one that I would not want to be
Speaker 1: a part of as a coach or a management or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's just a mess. Strictly speaking about
Speaker 1: James Harden in his attitude, Like, we do kind of
Speaker 1: have a a positive track record of players being disgruntled
Speaker 1: in one situation and then suddenly appearing engaged in being
Speaker 1: a totally different player once they get moved. So a
Speaker 1: couple of really quick examples. Lebron in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: team everybody remembers that being one of the best seasons
Speaker 1: of Lebron's career, but right before the trade deadline. There
Speaker 1: was like a ten game stretch there where he was
Speaker 1: bad and and it wasn't quite James Harden quit on
Speaker 1: the team bad, but it was kind of like openly
Speaker 1: pouting on the court bad. Did you make a trade
Speaker 1: or I'm just gonna tank the season exactly. He basically
Speaker 1: was pressuring the front office into making trades of Isaiah
Speaker 1: Thomas and Jake Carter and some of some of these
Speaker 1: other guys. Jimmy Butler in Minnesota famously pitched a massive
Speaker 1: hissy fit and then went to Philly and was one
Speaker 1: of the best players on the floor in the UH
Speaker 1: in that series with the Raptors. There there are all
Speaker 1: these examples of players in NBA history disgruntled, acting out,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly just getting reinvigorated by a new situation.
Speaker 1: So I am not worried at all about James Harden's play.
Speaker 1: It's we're just basketball fit. And then also when they
Speaker 1: start losing, which I think they will a lot as
Speaker 1: a result of some of the flaws in their roster construction,
Speaker 1: how are they going to handle it as a group
Speaker 1: When you've got Kyrie the sabbatical guy, and you've got
Speaker 1: James Hard and the fat man who likes to quit
Speaker 1: on his team. And Kevin Durant, the guy who made
Speaker 1: his most recent free agent decision based on his ego.
Speaker 1: So those are all things that I think will be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how they how they break down. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: about the the championship contender thing that you were discussing,
Speaker 1: which I think you brought up a really interesting point.
Speaker 1: You know, the Miami Heat uh one a title, won
Speaker 1: two titles, and everyone thinks it has to do with
Speaker 1: this idea of the Big three. And don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: it was very It was a very talented team, but
Speaker 1: they won pretty much because of unbelievable defense and they're
Speaker 1: being a really clear hierarchy that resulted in Lebron kind
Speaker 1: of being a solo star and Dwayne Wade and Chris
Speaker 1: Bosh being like subsidiary stars. That's why it worked. And
Speaker 1: then you get to the Golden State Warriors, which were
Speaker 1: they They won in in two thousand fifteen in a
Speaker 1: model where they basically had two stars, Clay Thompson and
Speaker 1: Steph Draymond Green was a dirty work guy, but they
Speaker 1: defended extremely well. Two thousand sixteen, Kevin Love went off
Speaker 1: the reservation mentally, he was gone, like Draymond Green completely
Speaker 1: erased that man's confidence and he was a shell of himself.
Speaker 1: And it was basically Kyrie and Lebron and a team
Speaker 1: that was really defending. Then you go to the two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen two thousand eighteen Warrior teams, which were historical
Speaker 1: outliers in terms of overall talent, so there's no point
Speaker 1: in even really looking at him defense though, point I agree,
Speaker 1: But then you get to two thousand nineteen and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got Kawhi Leonard in Pascal Siaka with this awesome
Speaker 1: give and take and then a really good defense, and
Speaker 1: then it's like Kyle Lowry, well short change Kyle Roll
Speaker 1: Lowry never that's my guy, and you're that's a good point.
Speaker 1: But again there was there was this really clear hierarchy
Speaker 1: where there was one guy that ended up with the
Speaker 1: ball every time, and then you end up with this
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty Lakers team exact same thing to bona
Speaker 1: fide Superstars, unbelievable elite defense. And even in the Superstars,
Speaker 1: there's a clear hierarchy in the way that they differ
Speaker 1: to each other, like they have mutual respect, but it's
Speaker 1: like Lebron's running the show down the stretch of these games.
Speaker 1: And that's where it gets a little That's where it
Speaker 1: gets a little bit more complicated for this Brooklyn Nets
Speaker 1: team because they're missing a lot of things in that regard.
Speaker 1: They do not have the defensive presidents that they need.
Speaker 1: They do not that they don't have the defensive will
Speaker 1: and just the willingness to put in that work. And
Speaker 1: then also they've got three stars, none of which have
Speaker 1: ever shown a willingness to take a subsidiary role, and
Speaker 1: none of it which really look like guys who would
Speaker 1: be willing to be like, here, you do it. At
Speaker 1: the end of games, they're gonna be there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little tug a war there. So every thing that
Speaker 1: we've learned about NBA history, you know, has pointed to
Speaker 1: us that there's a specific way to win, and it's
Speaker 1: what there's a when there's a really clear hierarchy and
Speaker 1: a really elite defense. And our our friend Bobby on
Speaker 1: Twitter always talks about how the two fifteen Warriors taught
Speaker 1: us the wrong lesson. Well, I could go a step
Speaker 1: further there and say that the two thousand twelve, two
Speaker 1: thirteen heat taught us the wrong lesson because they taught
Speaker 1: us that this idea that you want to get together
Speaker 1: with your buddies that are stars and you want to win.
Speaker 1: But the reality is you need a really clear cut
Speaker 1: hierarchy and you need guys who do the dirty work.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to defend an extremely high
Speaker 1: level and that guy who's your number one, everybody needs
Speaker 1: to defer to him and he needs to be the
Speaker 1: best player on the floor and a lot of in
Speaker 1: every one of these playoff series or you're just not
Speaker 1: gonna win. And that's kind of like the the only
Speaker 1: real pathway to win. And we I think we learned
Speaker 1: the wrong lesson, like I said earlier, absolutely and and
Speaker 1: even to point to the seventeen and eighteen Warriors, who
Speaker 1: were historical outliers talent wise. Part of the reason why
Speaker 1: it worked offensively is because Stephan Clake and morph into
Speaker 1: two of the best off ball players of all time. Right,
Speaker 1: so you can give the ball to Kevin Durant and
Speaker 1: Stephan Quay are number one, are gonna be mad and
Speaker 1: number two they are so good at playing off ball
Speaker 1: that you can make it work at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. And as great as Kyrie and Kadi could
Speaker 1: be off ball, they aren't those guys. They just don't
Speaker 1: move like that like that, It's not in their wiring
Speaker 1: to constantly be moving off ball and kind of just
Speaker 1: give hard in the space that he needs to work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, from a basketball standpoint, I just really don't
Speaker 1: see how it works. They have so their next two
Speaker 1: games where they play the nixt tonight so hard and
Speaker 1: won't be available for that, then they play Orlando on Saturday.
Speaker 1: The way I'm looking at this Brooklyn team moving forward,
Speaker 1: especially if Kyrie comes back, They're gonna beat the crap
Speaker 1: out of bad teams just from a talent standpoint, but
Speaker 1: I think they're really going to struggle against the good teams,
Speaker 1: especially ones that defend. Um. They play the Books right
Speaker 1: after the Magic on Monday. Um So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll see how that looks. We'll see if Kyrie
Speaker 1: is even playing basketball at that point. I don't think
Speaker 1: he will be yet. I thank you, still out for
Speaker 1: like at least another seven days. Um. So, maybe it'll
Speaker 1: actually look okay with just Harden and k D because
Speaker 1: they there will be some type of pecking order in hierarchy.
Speaker 1: There's just two guys that need the ball, so it
Speaker 1: might actually look kind of queen. But once Kyrie comes
Speaker 1: back into the mix, I mean, if that even happens, um,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna get pretty ugly pretty quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's so you look at their closing lineup, which
Speaker 1: is gonna be basically Kyrie, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Joe
Speaker 1: Harris and DeAndre Jordan's and maybe there's a version of
Speaker 1: that where they can go small and uh and and
Speaker 1: and bringing uh Torrian Prince or somebody like that. Jeff
Speaker 1: Jeff Green, clear he seems to be the one that
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant trust the most as well. I think it'll
Speaker 1: be there. It'll be their big three. It'll be Harrison
Speaker 1: Green because they can tell themselves that Durant's enough to
Speaker 1: protect the rim and they should be able to get
Speaker 1: enough rebounds because I guess Harden's physical too, and so
Speaker 1: it is Green. But either way, it's it's a weird lineup,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of shooting in that lineup.
Speaker 1: James Jeff Green is a very inconsistent shooter, but he
Speaker 1: also kind of has this weird history of making big
Speaker 1: shots and playoff games, So there's that. Part two. The
Speaker 1: question is like, if you can theoretically get Kevin Durant
Speaker 1: to defend at his peak, and you can theoretically get
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving to defend the way he did in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, and you can theoretically get James Harden to
Speaker 1: defend the way he did in two thousand eighteen, which
Speaker 1: is literally just not completely be in that negative. If
Speaker 1: you can get those things, there's a version of this
Speaker 1: story where it goes, well, my question would just be,
Speaker 1: you know, given the fact that the best indicator of
Speaker 1: future performances past performance, what evidence have we seen that
Speaker 1: shows us that these guys are gonna be willing to
Speaker 1: reach those levels again? Especially when you consider the fact that,
Speaker 1: like you know, Kevin Durant has always in his head
Speaker 1: fought this internal battle about whether or not he wants
Speaker 1: to to devote his energy on the defensive end. What
Speaker 1: about adding a player as talented as James Harden is
Speaker 1: gonna wake that up even more. If anything, it's gonna
Speaker 1: get worse because he's going to trick himself into thinking, well,
Speaker 1: now I really don't have to do this because we
Speaker 1: just have all this talent I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: there are versions of this story where it goes well,
Speaker 1: but I feel like there are many more versions of
Speaker 1: this story where it doesn't go well. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: but you basically be banking on is the outlier seasons
Speaker 1: in their career, not the norm, right, So you would
Speaker 1: bank on that all of them tapping into something that
Speaker 1: they had in seasons where um, they actually committed to
Speaker 1: the defensive end, and they all work really hard and
Speaker 1: they all kind of I guess respect one another for
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, and they really they truly
Speaker 1: commit to winning a championship, which would mean they're playing
Speaker 1: hard defensively and giving maximum effort most nights. Um, it
Speaker 1: can be done. I think the talent is there defensively,
Speaker 1: Like Kyrie is a fairly good defender when he wants
Speaker 1: to be. Durant is one of the better defenders in
Speaker 1: the NBA when he wants to be, and hardened for
Speaker 1: all of his warts. Is actually a pretty sturdy guy
Speaker 1: in the post, like he could speak. Yeah, he can
Speaker 1: easily guard fours and five if they need him to,
Speaker 1: especially if if he is doing less on offense. That
Speaker 1: would be the real key that they all realize Okay,
Speaker 1: I actually don't have to do as much now. Um,
Speaker 1: I can relax a little bit more on offense, and
Speaker 1: I can work a little bit harder on defense because
Speaker 1: I have these other two guys who I know can
Speaker 1: create a shot at any moment in time. Right, So
Speaker 1: it would be all of them trusting each other and
Speaker 1: all of them being willing to take a step back
Speaker 1: and and commit to winning basketball. But almost everything in
Speaker 1: their careers, I told us that is not really the
Speaker 1: route they go. Um, and it just, I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like ky reason I had space to do
Speaker 1: that at all. I could be wrong. I could be
Speaker 1: totally all this teammates seem to love him, right all
Speaker 1: in occasions from Kyrie's teammates for the most part, are
Speaker 1: that they actually really like the guys, at least in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: So I could be totally off base here. Um, but
Speaker 1: the last week has not looked great. So this is
Speaker 1: a perfect time to segue into the Kyrie thing. And
Speaker 1: you bring up an interesting point because I think there's
Speaker 1: a huge difference between likability as it pertains to you know,
Speaker 1: what they think of him as a man and what
Speaker 1: they think of him as as a teammate, and you know,
Speaker 1: this has been the hardest part that I've had. You know, like,
Speaker 1: there's no doubting the fact that that Kyrie Irving is
Speaker 1: an artist, and that's the way you've used himself. He've
Speaker 1: used himself as an artist on the basketball floor, on
Speaker 1: the basketball court. Who's performing for us? That's the way
Speaker 1: you've used it, um. But there is a harsh reality
Speaker 1: to it that, uh, that it's also a job, you know,
Speaker 1: and when you are trying to run an operation like
Speaker 1: a basketball team, especially when you have championship aspirations. This
Speaker 1: is not you know, the Oklahoma City Thunder where it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're coming to work here and we're kind of building culture,
Speaker 1: but really we're building for ten years from now. With
Speaker 1: all these draft picks that we have. It's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Like Kevin Durant left to come win a title, Like
Speaker 1: Steve Nash took this job because he wanted to try
Speaker 1: to win a title, like a lot of these guys,
Speaker 1: like you know, uh, a lot of these guys are
Speaker 1: going to be looking at the situation and coming to
Speaker 1: work every day with the goal of winning a title.
Speaker 1: And there's as you and I both know, as teams
Speaker 1: as guys who have rooted for recent champions, like, there's
Speaker 1: a process as to that every day, there's an effort
Speaker 1: level and a consistent focus that you have to bring.
Speaker 1: There's continuity, There's all of these There's chemistry is a
Speaker 1: huge part of it. There are all these different things
Speaker 1: that you have to bring to the table consistently over
Speaker 1: the course of the season to build yourself into a
Speaker 1: team that can contend for a title. There are just
Speaker 1: not a lot of examples in NBA history of teams
Speaker 1: wil bs their way through the season and suddenly when
Speaker 1: the title just doesn't happen. So my question would be,
Speaker 1: you know, like I understand the the the the I
Speaker 1: understand the ideology behind like giving Kyrie his space and
Speaker 1: respecting his opinions and understanding that he's, you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with some mental health stuff, and understanding that you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's off like kind of discovering himself or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that he's doing. I understand that, But there
Speaker 1: is a harsh reality of what the team is trying
Speaker 1: to do and and at what point, at what point
Speaker 1: is it time to hold him accountable for that? Because
Speaker 1: again I have no problem with with hire deciding that
Speaker 1: now is not the time to play basketball. But if
Speaker 1: that's the case, he can't be wishy washy about it.
Speaker 1: He needs to get out. And if he's gonna get out,
Speaker 1: like send everybody a text and be like, listen, you know, guys,
Speaker 1: I can't play this year. The virus scares me. I'm
Speaker 1: piste off about stuff going on in the country. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the deal is. I can't be here.
Speaker 1: I'll come back next year, but next year I'm here
Speaker 1: to win a title. Like next year, I'm taking this seriously.
Speaker 1: That's fine, But like, how how do you walk back
Speaker 1: into the locker room next week and be like, Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm here now, I'm ready, Like like when they've been
Speaker 1: working their butts off and trying to build championship habits
Speaker 1: like it just it just strikes to me is deeply
Speaker 1: disrespectful to what they're trying to do. It strikes me
Speaker 1: as flaky. It strikes me as as as a person
Speaker 1: who's so wrapped up in themselves that they're completely unaware
Speaker 1: of the way their actions impact the people around them,
Speaker 1: including one of your best friends that you just swayed
Speaker 1: at an All Star break and to come into joining
Speaker 1: you in Brooklyn, and I have a huge problem with
Speaker 1: his behavior, even though I can acknowledge the fact that
Speaker 1: he may have his reasons for why he's doing what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Yeah, I'm not gonna sit here in question
Speaker 1: the guy's reasoning for doing what he's doing at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is not my place. Look, I understand
Speaker 1: him being frustrated about the what the direction of our
Speaker 1: country and the way that COVID has impacted all of
Speaker 1: us because of the response at a federal level that
Speaker 1: was so bumbled. It's absolutely the fact that we're still
Speaker 1: in this situation is patently absurd. And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really all I'm gonna say about it. And I
Speaker 1: understand being frustrated by the ship that went on at
Speaker 1: the Capitol last week. Like I get all of it,
Speaker 1: I really do. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you have to be accountable with the people in that building, right,
Speaker 1: those are people that you're going to work with every day. Look, man,
Speaker 1: I I stopped playing basketball in my mid twenties. I understand,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a personal choice that I made.
Speaker 1: I could have went and played some small time pro basketball,
Speaker 1: but I was like I'm kind of done with this, honestly,
Speaker 1: Like I'm ready to move on to the next chapter
Speaker 1: of my life. Like it is not abnormal to go
Speaker 1: through like an identity crisis in your twenties, and it
Speaker 1: seems like that might be what he's going through, right,
Speaker 1: kind of going through this path, this path of self discovery,
Speaker 1: which is great, like more power to him, but kind
Speaker 1: of like you're pointing to, you have to at least
Speaker 1: tell the people in that building, and maybe he has
Speaker 1: at this point, but all indications are from like Steve
Speaker 1: Nash and Shawn Marks that he isn't really even communicating
Speaker 1: with them, And like, I don't number one know how
Speaker 1: like you're saying you walk back into that locker room
Speaker 1: and your teammates respect you, and even if they're saying
Speaker 1: they do publicly, there's definitely a little bit of like, alright,
Speaker 1: screw this guy, Like he just comes and goes as
Speaker 1: he pleases and he's not really putting in the work
Speaker 1: every single day to buy into this process. And number two,
Speaker 1: I don't know, from a league wide perspective, how you
Speaker 1: sell people on this product and stuff like this is
Speaker 1: always happening, like like guys just kind of coming like
Speaker 1: it is. It is so detached from reality to expect
Speaker 1: people to buy into your product when people have been
Speaker 1: going to work with COVID issues. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's right with with COVID being president and all this
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the country. People have been going
Speaker 1: to work with this for months and and have not
Speaker 1: been really compensated in any way by the government when
Speaker 1: they weren't going to work right, Like there are people
Speaker 1: with like true, true struggles going on in the country,
Speaker 1: and the fact that that you're complaining about having to
Speaker 1: go work in the NBA, Like come on, man, Like
Speaker 1: the casual fan, like the person that's going to work
Speaker 1: at a construction plan every day, or the social worker
Speaker 1: who is helping the person who just had five people
Speaker 1: in their family die from COVID because they don't have
Speaker 1: the proper healthcare, Like, but you're complaining about going to
Speaker 1: play NBA games, Like, dude, come on you, I don't
Speaker 1: understand how you expect sympathy at that point, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be sympathetic towards that, and neither are
Speaker 1: most like regular people, Like it is just and Kyrie
Speaker 1: has put his money where his mouth is with a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff, right, he's sitting in on on
Speaker 1: Congress sessions with with senators, he's he's donating it a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so like he is doing stuff behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that that has happened thing, but publicly, I
Speaker 1: don't understand how we expect sympathy from anybody when there's
Speaker 1: people who have been hit so hard by this thing
Speaker 1: and he's just kind of brushing it off nonchalantly. From
Speaker 1: a pr standpoint, it just like you're saying, it comes
Speaker 1: off as incredibly disrespectful. Um and and to wrap it
Speaker 1: all up, I'm not mad at Kyrie the person. I
Speaker 1: totally understand what he's going through. I really do. Like
Speaker 1: I've gone through it, Like I've gone through the point
Speaker 1: where I was like my whole identity was wrapped up
Speaker 1: in basketball and now I'm in this weird spot where
Speaker 1: I'm not doing anything basketball and ball thing where I
Speaker 1: get it. I get that part, But as a teammate,
Speaker 1: I would be absolutely furious with the guy, like I
Speaker 1: would want to take his head off, like, dude, you
Speaker 1: can help us win a championship. Be here, like help
Speaker 1: us do it so well. That's the most frustrating part
Speaker 1: about Twitter. Twitter conversations around this too, because it's like
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, Kyrie does something that is completely deserving
Speaker 1: of criticism in the sense that he basically goes a
Speaker 1: wall on his team for a certain amount of time,
Speaker 1: didn't communicate. Even when he did communicate, he won't tell
Speaker 1: them when he's in back and and in there in
Speaker 1: the middle of the season, and he's basically violating his
Speaker 1: player contracts. So that's that's that's thing number one. And
Speaker 1: he's being fined for it. He's not he's not getting paid.
Speaker 1: So from a financial standpoint, they are, I guess handling
Speaker 1: it correctly, yes, but so that income people like you
Speaker 1: and I who go, hey, like this thing Kyrie is
Speaker 1: doing isn't great, And then all these people come jumping
Speaker 1: down your throat and they're like, he's actually a good guy.
Speaker 1: He's given all this money, he's done all this and
Speaker 1: it's like, dude, I didn't say anything about who he
Speaker 1: is as a person. I'm not saying he's not a
Speaker 1: good person. I'm not saying he hasn't been extremely generous.
Speaker 1: And like I saw a thing that he like covered
Speaker 1: all the w NBA players salaries during the last year.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, that's great. However, that does not make him
Speaker 1: immune to criticism. That's ridiculous. Like it's like he should
Speaker 1: get our sympathy in this situation, especially when it looks
Speaker 1: like he's just compared to the plight of like the
Speaker 1: normal American person. Right now, he's doing fairly well, he's
Speaker 1: doing extremely well. And so this is a good time
Speaker 1: to segue into the COVID stuff because I think you
Speaker 1: brought up an interesting point and it's something that has
Speaker 1: been driving me nuts because you know, there, I think
Speaker 1: there is a disconnect between the way NBA Twitter feels
Speaker 1: about COVID in the way that basketball players feel about
Speaker 1: COVID in the for the most part, I think it's
Speaker 1: like media types here, the way media types feel about
Speaker 1: COVID versus how the players feel about it. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: for instance, like the reality is is that, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are some of you out there that can lock yourself
Speaker 1: in your house and never ever go outside and never
Speaker 1: ever risk the virus. But the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: out there, and I'm not even talking about the crazy
Speaker 1: dude who's going through Walmart not wearing a mask and
Speaker 1: in a costing a security guard. That's not what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. I'm talking about like normal people, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people. You know, we wear a mask in public.
Speaker 1: You know, we avoid large gatherings. You know, we we
Speaker 1: we do our best, but we kind of live in
Speaker 1: a gray area. We do take some risk, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's you occasionally go to the him, or you
Speaker 1: occasionally go to a restaurant, or for me, like I
Speaker 1: was playing pick up basketball. Like we all have our
Speaker 1: things that we did because we're humans. And and it's
Speaker 1: in a note. It's a lot easier to say on
Speaker 1: Twitter that you think that you should never take a
Speaker 1: risk than it is to actually never take a risk
Speaker 1: in real life. And that's the way these NBA players
Speaker 1: are and it's the biggest way. And maybe you can
Speaker 1: kind of maybe you'll agree with me, maybe you won't.
Speaker 1: I'm interested to hear your thoughts. But the truth is is,
Speaker 1: like I have had absolutely no understanding of how anybody
Speaker 1: on Twitter could sit there and say, oh, they need
Speaker 1: to stop the season, like what that ideology is or
Speaker 1: where they or what their reasoning is, because what I
Speaker 1: what is so flabbergasting to me and is that they're
Speaker 1: so naive that they think that if they stopped the season,
Speaker 1: it would stop COVID from spreading through the player pool.
Speaker 1: Like these guys literally, if they were left to their
Speaker 1: own devices, the vast majority of them would be out
Speaker 1: there doing reckless stuff, just like all of us are.
Speaker 1: And so the reality is is like and they'll go like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're playing basketball, You're ending on each other, You're breathing
Speaker 1: on each other. It's like, that is true. But you
Speaker 1: know what else is true. They're playing basketball against people.
Speaker 1: They're breathing on people who have been tested for COVID
Speaker 1: twice that day, okay, And there I used to get
Speaker 1: into these arguments with people before the bubble that would
Speaker 1: say something along the lines of like, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: how dare you say that the bubble is safer than
Speaker 1: the real world. That's ridiculous, And I would be like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is because no one in the real world is
Speaker 1: actually doing the things that the people on Twitter are
Speaker 1: asking them to do. They're not doing them. And guess what.
Speaker 1: I was fortunate to be right in the sense that
Speaker 1: there were zero cases of COVID inside the bubble, but
Speaker 1: there's a similar thing here on a lesser scale. On
Speaker 1: a grander scale, I should say, like, the reality is
Speaker 1: is that like playing basketball under these circumstances, if they
Speaker 1: obey the protocols, is actually a lot safer than what
Speaker 1: these guys would be doing in the real world, where
Speaker 1: half of them would be playing pick up basketball and
Speaker 1: strangers and the other half of them will be going
Speaker 1: to They were playing basketball, but they were strangers exactly.
Speaker 1: And so is the thing. If you want to stop
Speaker 1: playing because you don't want to risk it at all,
Speaker 1: that's fine, But don't tell me it's because of COVID,
Speaker 1: because that's not why if you want to if you
Speaker 1: want to stop playing, it's because you don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with the protocols, which is fine. That's also fair.
Speaker 1: You're more than welcome, George Hill, You're more than welcome,
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving, You're more than welcome to not have to
Speaker 1: deal with the protocol It's mentally taxed. I not sure
Speaker 1: you're not getting paid if you do that. You're not
Speaker 1: getting paid to do that. I don't want to tell you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it is very mentally taxing. Like
Speaker 1: I haven't had to go through that, right, I haven't
Speaker 1: had to go through getting tested twice a day and
Speaker 1: kind of always being unders of veilance, and I could
Speaker 1: see how that would not only be very stressful to
Speaker 1: a normal person, but especially to a Black American in
Speaker 1: this country right now with the past history of this country.
Speaker 1: Like I get all of that, like that, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not great, man, it isn't. But if this, if
Speaker 1: they want to continue getting paid and they want to
Speaker 1: continue playing basketball, this is kind of the way it
Speaker 1: has to be for the time being. And it's not
Speaker 1: their fault. It's not the NBA's fault. It's our federal
Speaker 1: government's fault for not handling this correctly. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really hadn't thought about it from the angle of
Speaker 1: if they stopped the season, these guys will just kind
Speaker 1: of do whatever they want, but they will, like COVID
Speaker 1: cases won't stop the only way. Yeah, were recently through
Speaker 1: a big party, someone was telling me, like, the only
Speaker 1: way to do it is you stop the season and
Speaker 1: everybody kind of gets vaccinated, right that that would be
Speaker 1: the way you do it. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: delve into all of that because there is a lot
Speaker 1: of dark history with vaccinating African Americans in this country,
Speaker 1: and that's not something that I feel comfortable touching on.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to get into that, but that
Speaker 1: would be the only way that you stopped the season
Speaker 1: for a certain period of time. You're like, Okay, everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna get vaccinated, or at least anybody that wants to
Speaker 1: can't get vaccinated. So at the very least, we are
Speaker 1: curving the spread to a huge degree, because I believe
Speaker 1: it's like it's of a certain population, you know, of
Speaker 1: the population gets vaccinated, then we're like super on our
Speaker 1: way to hurt immunity. Um and and it's much easier
Speaker 1: to stop the spread essentially. Um But yeah, and they
Speaker 1: literally prepared for this too. They literally see it. If
Speaker 1: they didn't sit down at the table and go like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we're gonna play basketball. Hope it goes well, it's like no,
Speaker 1: they sat down at the table and they said, Hey,
Speaker 1: guess what a bunch of you are gonna get COVID.
Speaker 1: We're gonna end up having to postpone games. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna do half the schedule right now, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna do the other half after so that we can
Speaker 1: make up for lost time, Like like we're gonna expand rosters,
Speaker 1: We're gonna do all these different things. Oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: expand the playoff pool so you can get in as
Speaker 1: a ten seed. So yeah, if you happen to have
Speaker 1: really bad COVID luck and you end up down on
Speaker 1: your luck in the standings, there's plenty of time for
Speaker 1: you to come back and get into that ten seat
Speaker 1: so you can fight for a spot. Like this was
Speaker 1: all planned for, and like it just is like it's
Speaker 1: it's textbook Twitter because someone comes out and tweets something
Speaker 1: and then all of his buddies and his friends are
Speaker 1: patting him on his back and cheering him on on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and I just want to be like, look like, I
Speaker 1: am not anti COVID guy, I had COVID. COVID knocked
Speaker 1: me on my ass. I am a believer in what
Speaker 1: it is. That has nothing to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that I'm willing to acknowledge the realities of the way
Speaker 1: society views COVID, which the society views like the society
Speaker 1: of used COVID, different than the way Twitter views COVID.
Speaker 1: That's just the reality of the situation. And if you
Speaker 1: give those players the freedoms of being outside of the season,
Speaker 1: outside of the protocols, they're gonna run crazy, and it's like, like,
Speaker 1: but Brian Winhorse said the other day on his podcast
Speaker 1: that that already over thirty percent of the league is
Speaker 1: expected to have had COVID judging from positive tests. That's
Speaker 1: not even counting people who are asymptomatic. So what that
Speaker 1: means that's more than the general public from what I understand.
Speaker 1: So it's very clear and statistics that these guys are
Speaker 1: picking up COVID faster than the average person in America.
Speaker 1: So like, I don't know what else to tell your
Speaker 1: average twenty something, especially at twenty something who's in shape.
Speaker 1: I'm twenty nine years old. Like a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends are not adhering to anything, Like they don't care
Speaker 1: because a lot of their friends have gotten COVID, and
Speaker 1: every single one of their friends who have gotten COVID
Speaker 1: has been just fine. Right, We're put in this situation
Speaker 1: by a government that missman, is a situation everybody. After
Speaker 1: a while, it was like, you know what, man, I
Speaker 1: can't stay locked in my house for another six months.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Like I can't. Mentally, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: This is more taxing on me mentally than anything else.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to take the risk, and if I
Speaker 1: get it, then I get it. It won't be great,
Speaker 1: it probably won't be fun, but I'm gonna take that risk.
Speaker 1: And NBA players, if anything, they feel more invincible. These
Speaker 1: guys have millions of dollars. I can do whatever they
Speaker 1: want at any point. Everybody has always told them they're great.
Speaker 1: What would stop them from doing whatever they want right now?
Speaker 1: And they have giant egos about their bodies. They think
Speaker 1: their bodies are like machines. Yes, exactly, Like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just the moral preening on Twitter can just get very
Speaker 1: very annoying, Like it's ridiculous. It's literally so you're not
Speaker 1: you're not floating up of everybody else. Man, Like you
Speaker 1: can sit here and act like you're not doing anything.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're you're attending small gatherings with your friends
Speaker 1: and doing stuff that isn't by COVID protocols, like I
Speaker 1: know most of you are. Don't lie to yourselves, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I stopping this season really wouldn't do anything to help,
Speaker 1: Like I said, unless the unless the plan is to
Speaker 1: get a lot of people vaccinated, then it probably would help.
Speaker 1: Right then, then you can say we're gonna stop it
Speaker 1: and that's why we've we've built in this back into
Speaker 1: the schedule where we can reschedule stuff and every a
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna get vacinated and we will
Speaker 1: be better for it. M So, I'm just a big
Speaker 1: believer in like and like. I think you need to
Speaker 1: acknowledge emotions in the way they can impact people. But
Speaker 1: I think strictly with decision making, it's very important for
Speaker 1: somebody in the room to be practical. And and it's
Speaker 1: always been my it's you know, it works great in
Speaker 1: my marriage because my wife tends to react to things
Speaker 1: a little more emotionally and I tend to react to
Speaker 1: things a little more practically. And then we try to
Speaker 1: hear each other out and meet in the middle, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's like someone in the room has to
Speaker 1: raise their hand and be like, uh, they're these guys
Speaker 1: are literally going to go straight to the club if
Speaker 1: we release them from the protocols, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: someone in the room has to to to talk that way.
Speaker 1: And then, for the record, this whole season is taking
Speaker 1: place as a result of practicality. There's there's no reason
Speaker 1: in the world they should be playing basketball right now.
Speaker 1: They Uh, there's no fans, so they're they're not having
Speaker 1: fun in that regard. The protocols suck for these guys
Speaker 1: because there are a lot more you know, constrained than
Speaker 1: they would be in their normal lives, and they're playing
Speaker 1: under like a condensed schedule, and there's just there are
Speaker 1: a million reasons for them not to be playing except
Speaker 1: for one gigantic reason why they are, and that's money.
Speaker 1: They all came to the table and they sat down
Speaker 1: and they said, Hey, do you guys want to skip
Speaker 1: the season or you or do you are in risk
Speaker 1: losing all that money? Or do you want to try
Speaker 1: to make this work? And literally all of them were like,
Speaker 1: let's make this work. I want to You can't have
Speaker 1: it both ways, you can't. We want our money, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, we don't want to take the
Speaker 1: risk because we're all taking risk right now to make money.
Speaker 1: Like every single person almost in the entire country is
Speaker 1: taking some type of risk every day to make money.
Speaker 1: So it's just the reality of the situation of a
Speaker 1: bad federal government. The last thing that I'll say about
Speaker 1: COVID is that a lot of the stuff that the
Speaker 1: league is doing right now is and I've said this
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It feels more optics than anything else. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're allowed to have two guests on the road,
Speaker 1: why aren't those guests tested? Somebody tell me why we're
Speaker 1: not testing those guests, Like that is the easiest way,
Speaker 1: because they know, yeah, yeah, like like it. It is
Speaker 1: the easiest way to spread COVID throughout the league, and
Speaker 1: they know. I think they know how pissed the players
Speaker 1: would be if you know, you invite a girl over,
Speaker 1: or you just want to have your on the road,
Speaker 1: you're in the city that you're from, and you want
Speaker 1: to have a friend of the hotel and they test
Speaker 1: positive for COVID. They already can't go to the clubs,
Speaker 1: they already can't go anywhere. So now you're telling me
Speaker 1: I can't even have a friend in my room because
Speaker 1: they have COVID. I think they're they're trying to avoid
Speaker 1: just ultimate back lad from the players. But it's like,
Speaker 1: if you actually want to stop COVID, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to test those people too. But I think ultimately
Speaker 1: most of these guys don't really care if they get COVID.
Speaker 1: They don't really care. They think they're going to be
Speaker 1: fine because most of the people that they know that
Speaker 1: are in their age. Rains that have got it are
Speaker 1: entirely line after a couple of weeks, mm and so,
Speaker 1: and like I really think that um people sometimes are
Speaker 1: over dramatic with especially like a George Hill type with
Speaker 1: his quotes from last night. People are over dramatic about
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation because like this is not
Speaker 1: the bubble, you know, because in the bubble, and when
Speaker 1: the bubble was being planned, there was no hope on
Speaker 1: the horizon. There was vaccines were at least six months
Speaker 1: off at that point, if not more like everything was.
Speaker 1: It was so everything was so like vague and distant
Speaker 1: and and there was no real It was like, I
Speaker 1: guess we're going to try to do this, but like
Speaker 1: things are really shipping possible, like they didn't they were
Speaker 1: able gonna they were gonna be able to pull this off.
Speaker 1: And there were all sorts of people on Twitter, Matt
Speaker 1: about the bubble. Why are you even doing this? This
Speaker 1: is putting people at risk. You're not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to get this to work. This is silly, and it's
Speaker 1: like and all those people were just your text with
Speaker 1: people on Twitter who were mad and wrong, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, like the bubble was that I didn't think
Speaker 1: they were being strict enough with the guidelines. I thought
Speaker 1: they were being a little bit too loose. But I
Speaker 1: and I and I did I agreed with that because
Speaker 1: I thought that was it was bad that they were
Speaker 1: letting like hotel workers come in that were not that
Speaker 1: were not tested. There. There's definitely some stuff. It wasn't perfect,
Speaker 1: but they have good job. They probably knew more than
Speaker 1: we did two in terms of spread because the more
Speaker 1: that we learned, it's like you have to be exposed
Speaker 1: for like a good amount of time to actually so
Speaker 1: they probably weren't super worried about like a player coming
Speaker 1: in quick contact with a with a hotel worker and
Speaker 1: and contracting because it doesn't really happen like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the but the reality is is like, hey,
Speaker 1: George Hill, I'm not asking you to lock yourself in
Speaker 1: your house for the next six months. That's not what
Speaker 1: I'm asking you. I'm asking you for at least two
Speaker 1: weeks while things are really bad, to be especially careful.
Speaker 1: And uh, now that we realized that the season is
Speaker 1: on the brink, we're gonna start really digging into this
Speaker 1: vaccine thing to see if we can acquire it in
Speaker 1: the private manner, or if we can speak to government
Speaker 1: officials about that, you know, uh, demonstrating the vaccine for
Speaker 1: the public or whatever it is. You know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: work on this. But but here's the thing. It's January
Speaker 1: twelve or whatever it is, January and uh probably around
Speaker 1: like Fauci is on the record that the general public
Speaker 1: will start getting the vaccine in March end of March.
Speaker 1: And now it may take six months to vaccinate the
Speaker 1: whole public, but at that point, optically, the league can
Speaker 1: jump in and get because at that point they are
Speaker 1: the general public, and they can do things like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're vaccinating, we're vaccinating all our players, and we're setting
Speaker 1: up to vaccination centers in each market or whatever it
Speaker 1: is they can do. I think part of it, right,
Speaker 1: if they're gonna maybe if they're gonna jump the line
Speaker 1: they say, we're gonna send a vaccination centers at our
Speaker 1: arenas are somewhere in the city to where we can
Speaker 1: help disenfranchised communities get access to this thing exactly. And
Speaker 1: so so the realities is like I'm I'm asking George Hill, like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: I need I need two months Okay, I need you
Speaker 1: for two months to do something that is still way
Speaker 1: better than the vast majority of Americans are dealing with,
Speaker 1: and just suck it up. And then everything's gonna go
Speaker 1: more or less back to normal, not completely back to normal,
Speaker 1: but then we're gonna start having fans in Arena does
Speaker 1: and you can actually go to a restaurant because you're
Speaker 1: gonna be immune and they're gonna be all of these
Speaker 1: different things that are going to that are going to
Speaker 1: get better and and so and and to me, that's
Speaker 1: where it gets so frustrating with their attitudes about this,
Speaker 1: because it's like, this is for the players who actually
Speaker 1: went through the bubble where it was like ninety two
Speaker 1: days or something like that, where they were in the
Speaker 1: in the bubble, Like this is a way, way, way
Speaker 1: easier version of that, and you've got guys, and you've
Speaker 1: got guys complaining. It's it's just I'm and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure George Hills on the four year, seventy million dollar contracts,
Speaker 1: so it's like he's not underpaid by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. So I just it strikes me as a
Speaker 1: really tone death. It strikes me as like like someone
Speaker 1: who just is really like lacks self awareness and and honestly, like,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing, dude, Like, hey George, it does suck,
Speaker 1: and it does suck that you can't go see your family,
Speaker 1: but like the reality is is that something that literally
Speaker 1: everyone is dealing with. I'm a single person who's looking
Speaker 1: at their current life circumstances and doesn't think, oh, this
Speaker 1: kind of sucks. I wish you would go back to normal.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't really seen my parents are hung
Speaker 1: out with my parents in six months and my parents
Speaker 1: are like incredibly poor important people in my life. Well
Speaker 1: I've been able to is like go to their front
Speaker 1: yard and sit outside and talk to them with a
Speaker 1: mask on for like yeah, it's it's it is not ideal,
Speaker 1: Like it isn't. And Georgio, by all accounts is like
Speaker 1: a really good dude, like was huge part of the
Speaker 1: protests in the bubble and like it could be like
Speaker 1: a community organizer of some type and somebody who like
Speaker 1: really puts meaningful action behind like his words. Right, Um, So,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to come down on like Georgio
Speaker 1: like he's a bad person, but I think it's I
Speaker 1: think really what it is, it's really hard to see
Speaker 1: the forest through the trees right now, right like the
Speaker 1: end is somewhat near at least, like we should be
Speaker 1: able to return to normal life, hopefully by like late spring,
Speaker 1: early summer, something relatively normal. You know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long it will type for things that be actually
Speaker 1: normal again. Maybe never again. Um but like the end
Speaker 1: is near, like you'r hand, it's gonna be a couple
Speaker 1: of months where it's still gonna really suck, and they're
Speaker 1: not in a situation that anybody else isn't right now,
Speaker 1: and their situation is mostly better. Um So I think,
Speaker 1: like I touched on earlier with Kyrie, it is just
Speaker 1: it is like I understand where they're coming from. I
Speaker 1: really do, because it does suck. But you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get sympathy from most people. And that's the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation. You Like, you're asking people who are making
Speaker 1: like way less money than you and have access to
Speaker 1: way shitty you're health care than you do, to like
Speaker 1: to feel sympathetic for you. Like it's like, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: just I got my own stuff going on right now, man,
Speaker 1: Like I just all I want for the next couple
Speaker 1: of months is to make sure my mom doesn't get
Speaker 1: COVID because if she does, it's not gonna end well.
Speaker 1: Like and that's really that. I think about that every
Speaker 1: single day, every single day. And you know, we have
Speaker 1: my parents have good health care. But who knows if
Speaker 1: if she's in a position to where the hospitals are
Speaker 1: impacted right now in southern California, Like if she has
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital, maybe she doesn't even get
Speaker 1: a bed. And if you're an NBA athlete, you can
Speaker 1: probably get your your your mom, your dad, whoever a
Speaker 1: bet is, sometimes you can get him the correct care.
Speaker 1: Like It's just I don't know, it's a situation for anybody.
Speaker 1: But the complaining is not going to guard any sympathy
Speaker 1: from almost anybody in the country unless around Twitter apparently. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly for sure. And and and for the record, I don't
Speaker 1: want to I'm not coming down on George Hill as
Speaker 1: a person. I think that's something that gets glossed over
Speaker 1: really often with these uh um, with all of this
Speaker 1: discourse that takes place on Twitter. Like here's the thing, dude, Like,
Speaker 1: like sports media and talking about sports is all about
Speaker 1: a combination of criticism in praise, and it's pretty much
Speaker 1: down the middle, because in a world where we only
Speaker 1: said nice things about people, there'll be nothing to talk about.
Speaker 1: And and it's kind of a harsh reality of the business.
Speaker 1: Like and it's like if I, you know, randomly, by
Speaker 1: some fluke chance, got offered a contract tomorrow to play
Speaker 1: for the Phoenix Suns, I would understand when I signed
Speaker 1: on the dotted line, Like, hey, this comes with criticism
Speaker 1: from media and fans, but like that's just that's just
Speaker 1: the reality of what the job, why you're making all
Speaker 1: the money. It's part of what you're making all that
Speaker 1: money percent sure, Like it's it's it's the reality of
Speaker 1: the business. And like, and uh, where where I draw
Speaker 1: the line is when people do really get into character
Speaker 1: stuff and and I really have I avoid that, Like
Speaker 1: it is very rare for me to bring up someone's character,
Speaker 1: you know, as as part of a larger discussion about
Speaker 1: who they are as a person. A lot of times
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm I'm criticizing a specific thing that they did.
Speaker 1: George Hill, by all accounts, is an amazing guy, and
Speaker 1: I particularly like him because he's the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who shows up two games and his team sweats, and
Speaker 1: it just reminds me of the guy from college who
Speaker 1: like just always wore his college gear everywhere he went,
Speaker 1: never really dressed up like that. That to me is
Speaker 1: like the old fashioned hooper. Just that was me too,
Speaker 1: Like the old fashioned hooper, the guy that's like, I'm
Speaker 1: here to play basketball, man, That's what I love to do.
Speaker 1: It's what I want to do, you know at all
Speaker 1: exactly that I I love George lais a player. I'm
Speaker 1: criticizing him for this one thing that he said, and
Speaker 1: it bothers me that on Twitter. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like I said, there's a cycle. It's a vicious
Speaker 1: cycle of like someone does something, whether it's misses a
Speaker 1: key shot in the game or says something off the
Speaker 1: court that's not super smart. You know, some people criticize him,
Speaker 1: and then this army and people jump on you the
Speaker 1: other way around, and then it becomes this thing where
Speaker 1: we're like criticizing them as people. It's like, no, that's
Speaker 1: not what we're saying here, Like we're we exist. Let's
Speaker 1: acknowledge the reality of what are are are not our job,
Speaker 1: but our hobby is here, We're we're talking about sports. Like, dude,
Speaker 1: if you and I got out here and just said
Speaker 1: nice things about everybody would be the most boring podcast
Speaker 1: in history, really easily. The thing about Twitter is everything
Speaker 1: gets taken to the nth degree. Right, you say one
Speaker 1: bad thing about a guy and maybe the way he's acting,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, you think he's a terrible person,
Speaker 1: and that makes you a terrible person. It's like no,
Speaker 1: and it's look, bring it back to my stepf career conversation.
Speaker 1: This is a microcosm of it all. I said, look,
Speaker 1: he might be declining. Maybe I'm seeing some things that
Speaker 1: might be indicating that, and people took that as, oh,
Speaker 1: you think he's washed? Do you think he sucks? Now? Like, no,
Speaker 1: maybe he's not a top three player in the league.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's only top ten. Right, It's just, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the way that the conversation happens kind of organically on Twitter,
Speaker 1: it makes people just make the most ridiculous conclusions of
Speaker 1: all time. They just draw the most absurd things. And
Speaker 1: I think maybe because it's fun to point fingers and
Speaker 1: and call people names and whatever. But yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it's the nature of Twitter, and it's always gonna be
Speaker 1: like that as long as I'm on that platform. So
Speaker 1: for sure, Well before I let you out of here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna nail you down on a prediction for U
Speaker 1: Phil for Brooklyn. What do you think is gonna happen?
Speaker 1: I kind of touched on it earlier. I think they're
Speaker 1: gonna beat the crap out of bad teams, Like they're
Speaker 1: just gonna they're gonna score a hundred and thirty points
Speaker 1: and they're gonna run up the score and it's gonna
Speaker 1: look amazing and people are gonna be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: can anybody beat this team. They're gonna run through the
Speaker 1: East and win the championship. I think they probably end
Speaker 1: up losing in like the second round of the Eastern
Speaker 1: Conference finals, depending on the matchup, just because they're not
Speaker 1: gonna get enough stops. They're just not going to it unless,
Speaker 1: like we said, there's always possibility we get that outlier
Speaker 1: season defensively from all three of their superstars, right, if
Speaker 1: they all commit to it, then yeah, I could see
Speaker 1: them easily going to the to the finals and winning
Speaker 1: the title, even because there is so much offensive talent there.
Speaker 1: But it would take something that isn't the norm from
Speaker 1: all three of them and putting three guys who have
Speaker 1: never really committed on that end truly, and putting them
Speaker 1: on the same team, I don't see how that's a
Speaker 1: recipe for success at all. So my my prediction is similar.
Speaker 1: I believe that they would lose, probably in Eastern Conference finals,
Speaker 1: but possibly in the second round. And the reason is
Speaker 1: really simple. In addition to them not really being able
Speaker 1: to defend, I think they're going to be an offense
Speaker 1: that is easy to stagnate when you're a good defense.
Speaker 1: So if I'm Brooklyn, if I'm silly, if I'm Boston,
Speaker 1: any sort of like good switchy defense that's got a
Speaker 1: lot of wings that can throw it, that they can
Speaker 1: throw at people, they're going to be able to stagnate
Speaker 1: that offense and turn it into an isolation fest so
Speaker 1: fast and while those it'll require unbelievable performances from those
Speaker 1: guys to win some of these games, and uh, and
Speaker 1: I just don't think it'll be enough. I think, like
Speaker 1: I think that in those scenarios, when you stagnate Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and they start missing shots then and then and then
Speaker 1: then on the other end, they're not defending at a
Speaker 1: super high level, I think they're gonna be a team
Speaker 1: that's really susceptible the big runs, and they really are
Speaker 1: at this point like even a crazier concoction version of
Speaker 1: the of the Clippers in the sense that like they
Speaker 1: kind of lack of basketball like you. Overall, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be easy to stagnate and force them into taking a
Speaker 1: lot of difficult shots over contests, and then they're gonna
Speaker 1: have a weird kind of like mentality mix that could
Speaker 1: end up leading to some problems later on. So I'm
Speaker 1: with you. I think I think you and I are
Speaker 1: on the same page. I think they're less dangerous now
Speaker 1: than they were before the trade. Yeah, I agree. So
Speaker 1: before I let you out of here, so um uh
Speaker 1: to all of you guys have been listening. Uh, Tommy's
Speaker 1: gonna be joining us once a week moving forward, I
Speaker 1: want to kind of like find a unique balance, Like
Speaker 1: I don't want to go all in on hot taking
Speaker 1: league wide stuff, but I also don't want to go
Speaker 1: all in on just really nerdy basketball analysis. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be kind of like a combination of the two,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the things that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: working on today. We were supposed to dive into the Pacers,
Speaker 1: the Bucks, and the suns. I would imagine we'll do
Speaker 1: them as well as some other teams next week. But
Speaker 1: that's the idea, and we're gonna kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the feedback from those of you who
Speaker 1: have messaged me privately and for those of you have
Speaker 1: messaged us on Twitter. Like we're trying to build something here.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be something that you guys like and
Speaker 1: that you come back to to listen. I have been
Speaker 1: so amazed. I think we've had over a thousand listeners
Speaker 1: on every single one of these that we done, and
Speaker 1: uh podcast downloads in the several hundreds, and and I've
Speaker 1: I've been really amazed at how this has gone. But
Speaker 1: we wanted to grow. So we wanted to be something
Speaker 1: that you guys like. Like I said, it would be
Speaker 1: a combination of of of different types of things and
Speaker 1: never too much of one thing. I'd love for you
Speaker 1: and I to start digging a little bit into some
Speaker 1: stuff that's not basketball related at some point, not too
Speaker 1: much you want to stick to your to your to
Speaker 1: your you know, your your passion, but something that will
Speaker 1: will dive into. But I'm really excited to see where
Speaker 1: this goes. Definitely, man, no same same here. Give us feedback.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's listening right now, give us feedback. I'm more
Speaker 1: than open to criticism. I'm more than willing to me
Speaker 1: I'm wrong or I'm dumb. Whatever. Tell me that I'm dumb, honestly, Like,
Speaker 1: tell me and then tell me what I can do better.
Speaker 1: This is really fun. This is I love basketball, it's
Speaker 1: my hobby. It's been my passion for a long time.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to like dive into it in a
Speaker 1: fashion that isn't Twitter and you know, something that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more long form and where we can sit
Speaker 1: here and talk about stuff for an hour an hour
Speaker 1: and a half. So yeah, it's been fun. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to keep doing these. Just give us as much feedback
Speaker 1: as possible, because I think we're gonna be at the
Speaker 1: doll But alright, man, have a good weekend. I am
Speaker 1: going skiing tomorrow, so we'll not be back until Monday.
Speaker 1: But I would imagine you and I will be recording
Speaker 1: something on Tuesday as usual. But I hope you all
Speaker 1: have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Al Right, guys, Thanks Jason,