Kawhi in Flux, Embiid’s Next Team, Jaylen vs. Advanced Numbers, and a Mini-Mailbag With Joe House

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We're also brought to you by the ringer podcast network. I put up a new rewatchable on Monday night. We did Ali. Will Smith, Michael Mann, our ninth Michael Mann movie. That was me and Chris Ryan and Ben Lathen.

Next movie we have, it's the 30th anniversary of a Ned Burns movie called She's the One. That is a very important Gen X movie, and we've been talking about doing this forever. So it is me and Sean Fantasy because it's a long-out movie. And a special guest who's not on the podcast too often. So we are doing that.

“That is on Netflix if you want to watch that one.”

And then the next movie we're doing after that is Hitch with Will Smith, which is also on Netflix. So there you go, you can find this podcast on Netflix. If you do, Netflix has my list, if you just click the my list, every time I have a new podcast that will pop onto your Netflix algorithm

and eat much more exciting way. So I wanted to pass that along. I also have a podcast coming. We're going to go live on Sunday on Netflix. Not sure at the time yet, but stay tuned for that.

And I think I'm only doing the Sunday podcast. Probably taking a couple days off next week, unless something crazy happens. You know, like a lie Leonard, straight being postponed,

which we're going to talk about in one second, which I'll have.

How's the night we talked about, why at the top? We talked about Jalen versus analytics, could Joe L. M. Beed be traded. And we didn't anyone even want him. And then we did a whole meal bag and all of that is coming up next. Right after we take a break and hear a program.

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Credit card points subject to issuers, terms and conditions. All right, this part of the podcast is 12.15. We just finished our podcast. And then as we finished, how told us that there was breaking news of the NBA. It was the Toronto Raptors saying that they're trade for the quiet for Quay Leonard's

on hold. According to the statement, they said the NBA League office informed us that as a result of the ongoing investigation above in the cuppers, we would assume the risk of any potential outcome of the investigation impacting Quay. In light of this, we will wait until the league's investigation is complete.

Raptors were made eager to bring Quay back to Toronto and look forward to a swift resolution for our players, our organization, our fans. So we actually talked about this in the podcast people. I'll just leave it in so we can hear because conspiracy bill came out. What is this being?

I have no idea. I mean, the league office is doing informing. The league office is responsible. How much? How much more time do they need?

“What are we getting to the bottom of at this point?”

But it seems to indicate that Quay could be suspended. It suggests that there could be Quay consequences. This is ass-in-ine. What is the fucking league doing? The league is responsible for the outcome and whatever pronouncement it wants to make.

The teams are permitted to do business if this wasn't a condition that wasn't going to win the league say you're not allowed to do to trade Quay or do anything until we finish our investigation. Right. Why didn't the league do that?

You tell me, what does the point of this communication now? This is, how about this finish the fucking investigation? I know, but it's an attendant. July the 9th, who cares? There aren't any more witnesses to be interviewed, there aren't any more fucking documents

to be reviewed. It's been a month after months, after months.

“How many lawyers and how many, how much fees it's being generated?”

It's a money grab. It's a money grab.

This is the first time, all of us that the Quippers were going to get penalized.

There's no other way to interpret this. That also really seems out there because the collective bargaining agreement gives the league the right to punish a player for agreeing to an arrangement with a sponsor where the sponsor says, well, but this means there's more stuff that maybe hasn't come out yet. There's something that there's something this insinuates that Quay could be suspended

for a year or six months or whatever, and the team didn't know that when they traded for him. What, because they couldn't assume the risk of any potential outcome, it's like the wrappers would assume the Clippers risk. No.

Clippers are fine, but now that they're quite Toronto, we'll have to be penalized. This has to be Quay related. But what, you're absolutely right. What is the scenario under which Quay is individually culpable for something that is outside the bounds of the league's rules on this?

“What did Quay and is this the, they want to do something to Uncle Dennis?”

I don't understand it. What could he do? Like if the sponsor was Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola has an agreement with the Clippers and has an agreement with the league and the sponsorships and says, we also want you, Quay Leonard to be a spokesperson for Coca-Cola and we're not going to make you come do anything.

It doesn't work out. The circumstances don't work out. We can't, you know, it turns out you couldn't make any of his appearances. Can they, the player can be punished for that? I think they should go further.

I think they should postpone the J.L. and Brown trade. I think all transaction should be postponed until we get to the bottom of this. J.L. and Brown is back at the Celtics.

That would be incredible.

I'm rooting for that. This is anything else. I'm really shocked by this. I'm dumbfounded. So this little D dumb.

“This makes me think that there's a full Quipper statement as well.”

I hope it says the league can go fuck itself. The Quippers acknowledged this from Mark Stein, our buddy. The Quippers acknowledged that the Quay investigation is ongoing, but we expect the trade to be finalized following its conclusions. So was that him sober like on vacation last week?

Where was he? Why didn't he tell us we can't trade Quay until we've finished the investigation. Sorry. Shit. Does he not have the data free agency and, and, and, and, you know, the transaction

market opened up on his handholds as usual. What the fuck? Are we talking about this one last week? Getting offers for our 12 MBA Europe teams and didn't realize Quay was traded. This is the throat of my bad, the least traded out of us.

We have to assume the risk. This is. You assume the risk. It's your risk. It's the least risk.

Not assuming shit. So we can have Toronto and the Clippers make a deal. Why? So we could have Garland, Wagner, Kauai, Rui, Magaeonic, keep Kauai. Can't sell the trade.

Keep them.

We had, they got two first and two swaps.

It's a good deal. Wow, house. All right. We'll find out what happened with this. But in the meantime, let's go backwards an hour and 40 minutes to the rest of our podcast.

All right, we're recording this on Thursday morning, about 10 hours before the big the Bonsa Peterson Summer League game. I love how every year we forget that Summer League doesn't matter. Some of my favorite things when everybody gets carried away with all of this stuff. It matters because it's our first look and it's our, you know,

there's, there is genuine appropriate excitement. I will say, yeah, that at least here in Washington, I encourage everybody to keep expectations in the appropriate level. Like, let's just be calm, cool and collected about it.

“Remember, poor Alexander Saur when he came out and went, you know, over 15 in his first”

Summer League game, not a bust. And whatever happens between Peterson and DeBonza tonight, it doesn't set the, the, the referendum for the rest of their careers. And by the way, we knew Peterson was incredibly talented in the most talented guy in the class.

That was the reason he went second and said a first.

There were red flags last year. And, you know, I thought he was one of the hardest guys to peg ever. But man, you watched the Summer League games like, oh, no, I'm sorry. He's taking a lot of bullets. I mean, he's catching a lot of stress.

He's already stopped starting house the wizards, Peterson, and Peterson's going to look great tonight against the wizards.

He might just look great, like he might say, he manages gone to the perfect team, might

be the right city, regular, organization, red coach, and he might be awesome. And everybody knew that that was very possible. All right. I have a whole agenda for us today. That's true.

Amazing. We're doing more Jalen Brown content, but not for the reasons people pay. We're also going to talk about Joe well in bead, and whether he might be another team next year. And, and then I have a whole mailback for you.

But I wanted to talk, uh, the old guys have been watching all this advanced metric stuff, coming out of the Jalen Brown trade. And you and I have kind of strad with the fence, I'm a little more advanced metrics

friendly than you, but both of us are, you know, I test common sense guys as well.

Just deep diving everything from this Jalen trade for the last 10 days. I just can't believe how bad he looks in the advanced metrics stuff. And it's almost like I find myself going back over all the games I watched and all the Celtic seasons I took in and all the playoff games. And just wondering myself, did I get this wrong?

And then I landed on, no, I don't think I got this wrong.

“I think there are some reasons for some of these stats.”

You haven't come on and talked about this yet since the trade. Since you're calling us, Capri, since the call on us, Capri. Yeah, by the way, thank you for that success. I'm great job. I'm so awareness for calling us.

Please, by the way. We've talked about it a bunch of times. Go get one. Like that was, as many as you're allowed to get, I recommend them. But yes, so I test going, going big picture on as you were watching the dialogue about

this, where everybody has now apparently decided Jalen Brown is actually not an efficient player. There's, if he's your number one guy, you don't have a chance to win the title. All that. Like where do you stand with all this?

I mean, right out of the box, I reject the framing. I don't reject analytics. I think they are great. They are super helpful. It's information.

It's a, it's really interesting way of, you know, trying to measure guys against one another when there's situations and contexts are so disparate. Like how, how can you measure Jalen Brown's effectiveness against Jalen Brunson's effectiveness? Well, there's some ways to slice it and dice it.

All of that is fine.

“I don't reject any of that, but context is super important.”

Remember, this boss and Celtic team was in a transition year, the, the anticipated number of wins. What was their win total? 441. 41.

And a half. Yeah. Right. So that's where, you know, the, the markets were anticipating. It was hard to say what kind of season this team was going to have.

And then through the combination of Joe Missoula and the front office, I give him credit and Jalen fucking Brown, they won 56 fucking games because he is that guy. He is that dog. He took the standard and made all of those guys. I'm going to say this without trying to disrespect the rest of the Celtic roster and the

most recently completed season. But he took a bunch of bombs to 56 wins and, you know, how I know their bombs because he got rolled right the fuck out of the playoffs, as soon as you got into a situation where you were up against a proper test in terms of a team with talent at all levels. And, you know, the front court for the Boston Celtics, this entire season was the development

of Neemius Kethan. Wonderful. Great job. A plus plus two thumbs up. Simon Hugo, right, that was the point of the season and then Tatum came back earlier

than expected and immediately remember, again, it was just two and a half months ago. Boston was forecasted as a potential team to not only make the Eastern Conference Finals, but to make it to the NBA Finals out of the East right when the playoffs started.

They had the second best odds because the expectation around what they were capable of with

Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown, a track record of 10 years, a full decade of those two guys kicking ass when they're on the floor together, a slow Eastern Conference Finals, two NBA Finals and the NBA Championship that Jalen Brown was the MVP of. So I don't mind at all going inside the box and saying, well, how do we sort of measure the impact going forward?

“But here's the thing that I ask you and I wonder about for a Celtics nation, why did they”

give up on this season? How can you come into this upcoming season when you've done the thing that was most important, which is bring in Mitch Robinson, an absolute rebounding miracle of a man, single

you bring that in, your most dire need. You've addressed it with a guy who's absolutely, and we know we have 10 years of evidence that those two guys, plus Mitch Robinson, plus whatever else the front office could do, that's a team that looks to me, like a possible Eastern Conference Finals, possible NBA Finals, and we punt, what's the why did we punt, why did the front office give up on this Celtics

team? You know, there's a lot of time back here, you gave me a lot there, and I do want to circle back in the events metrics.

“You're talking about overacting to a bad result in the playoffs, which I think Minnesota”

did too. Minnesota did that lamello trade, I talked about it when it happened. They were banged up last year, right? Edwards got hurt right before the playoffs wasn't 100%, deep from Chendsau got hurt during the first round.

I all got hurt, and I don't, I just feel like they decided, well, we don't have a chance to get more based on what the playoffs results were, so we have to take a big swing, I disagree with it.

It's funny hearing people remember what they remember about the Philly series, which basically

came down into three games, game two, game five, and game seven. And in game two, Brown and Tatum actually played pretty well. It was the guards, I think, pictured white and Vusabitch were like two for 20 from three in that game, and we just couldn't hit a shot, the pace was off, Philly was, I think 19 for 39 from three, they stole the game, it's fine, they're up three one, they go in

and game five, they're up double figures and game five.

“Do you remember what happened in the second half of game five?”

I don't. And beat fucking killed them. Oh, yeah, that. And beat killed them, and it came out of nowhere, and it was, you know, this was this crazy thing that got introduced during the series, where all of a sudden you have 2023 MVP

Joe L. and B, just looking like Joe L. and B, again, in the second half of that game,

he shoots seven for 10, and four for four from three is 18 points, and Max is five for eight, and they just play better, and they steal the game, right? Game seven. Tatum doesn't play, right? Tatum gets scratched, and they do that crazy starting line up to whatever, and I don't

know, I, I did mind the way Jayland played in that game, I thought the reasons they lost the series, because white and preacher didn't shoot three was, well, the voicemage thing was a terrible experiment, I don't hang that series on Jayland and all, so anyway, they overreact to it. US, why they did this, and I've talked to a bunch of people, and I know I've talked about

on the pot a bunch of times, but it feels like they felt like there was no going back after Jayland had a taste of being the guy in the team last year, and that whatever they were going to do with this team this year, with his contract, he wasn't going to get the extension from them at the end of July, and did this have a chance to actually go sideways,

“and I think whether you grew through to it or not, I think they evaluated this as like,”

this isn't going in the right direction, the Tatum Brown things been weird for two years, there's been a lot of dialogue about that, about can you play with somebody you don't get along with? I don't know if they got along or didn't get along, they know they didn't hang out, but I also know that they had an unbelievable nine-year run together, that they played more

playoff games together than anybody, they won a title in 2024, I just don't think this was like a kid, mashedburn, Jimmy Jackson situation, but what I do think is that they were concerned that there was no going back with Jalen in that after being the guy, and now, hey, thanks for being the guy, but now Tatum is going to be the guy again, and we're not going to give you an extension that they thought it was going to go sideways, and they got ahead

of it. That's a good fashion, that's a confession, that means, you know, for all the accolades that we've heaped on the Boston front office for a long time, a move like this suggests that they can't, you know, present and maintain peace inside the locker room, that there, there is an inability to manage your personnel, and it's not, there's not an personnel, you're talking

about two guys making 60 million a year, and the coach who's making 10% of that combined,

like as his voice is only going to go so far, this is a legal over and over again when the superstars run the league, and if the two superstars, but if the two superstars about, so this is the voice thing's important because obviously Chism bought the team, he's only in the team for like a year and a half. I do wonder if, if Wick was the owner of the team and had in sold, I do wonder if you

would handle it differently, and I'm not saying he would have been the hero of it, but would

We're going to figure it, really, this is, that's in peace, and then the other person is for you, for the, for the restaurant concept, but that is exactly what was called for, I mean, people who are these people, I enjoyed it so much, but you know, I was trying to be funny, but it was also true, like get these down, that's right, everybody

“getting room and how about whatever you have to have out, this is a team that's set”

to standard with those two guys, as, as your, your focal points of getting to the Eastern Conference Finals and possibly the NBA Finals, every year that the two of them arrived to the playoffs healthy. Right. And this year, what was, you know, it was forecasted to be a potential repeat, really

out of nowhere. There was no reason whatsoever, and it really was 56 games.

And it really was a dopey, silly series, there's never been a situation like that where

somebody just comes back, midway through the series plays well for three games basically. And then immediately goes back to not being going to affect a player again, and then they get swept by the name. Well, it was also the kryptonite of the Boston roster, because the Boston roster was an in-development roster, it wasn't anticipated that it was going to be a team that was going

to win between 55 and 60 games, and when it's the vision, and make a long run, it's to buy off. They were achieved by 50.

“No, nobody in the front court, that's why M.B. had the success he had.”

They couldn't defend him. Well, and we could have made three, see there. The, so the old guy conversation, there's two things going on. He advanced metrics are bad for Jalen, and this is something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a week.

I'd mail you, I mail you a, there's 85 guys ever.

I went on, Stadhead, thanks to Stadhead, by the way, I've always enjoyed it.

Great job. Great job. There's 85 guys ever who averaged at least 28 points a game with a 30 usage rate, and you could put all of these different stats, like win shares, for, forp, forp is like, it's not nothing.

I don't, the thing is, I kind of like these stats, I don't think there should be the terminor of a player's value, but it's interesting, Jalen's win shares were the worst out of all 85 guys. We're talking about, like, World B free in 1980, I ever said a no five, Mark Aguire in 1984, like, and he's the worst, and then you go, you go to Vorp, which is also not nothing.

I don't mind looking in Vorp. Jalen was third to last, and the only two seasons worse for worse than him in Vorp, or 2010 Carmelo in 2007 Carmelo, and you look at some of the names in this list house. And it is interesting.

It's all of these high usage forwards that never were able to really be, you can ever

build a final steam around him, right? Dominique, Adrian Dantley, Mark Aguire, Carmelo, Alex English, World B free, you can even build a first round playoff team around him, down to the Mitchell now, but these guys that you could throw a big burden on them, and you could have regular season success. But as the levels got higher, that recipe didn't work anymore.

“And I think that's basically where we landed with Jalen last year.”

We talked about this, like, let's go back to just us playing pickup basketball a million years ago. At some point of five guys, one of those five guys needs to regularly create a good shot for everybody else, right? Just start there.

Jalen was the only guy who could do that on this team. Pretty sure once a week. Well, he wasn't an offensive engine, though, Bill Simmons. And if that's, you say you create a good shot, I don't know, the stats don't support that. Yeah, exactly.

A effective field goes down. Well, maybe partly because every time they played anybody, the entire defense was like, we got to stop Jalen, he's going to take 16, 2's. He's going to get to the line. Let's throw two guys at him, let's trap him, let's attack him when he goes to the rim.

Like, he had a big bird and played 71 games. And this is what we've talked about over and over again, durability, consistency. And can you be the hub of something bigger, which he did last year? And I can't accept the advanced metrics telling me otherwise, because I watched this season. Well, not only that, again, I mean, this is, respectively, as possible, he dragged a bunch

of fucking bombs to 56 wins. Like, he was a really important part in terms of setting a standard. Those guys, the development of Gonzalez and Shiremen and Peyton Peta stepping up and Keta and all, like, this is a team like roster wise that was going to win 41 games. That's what made sense.

That was the sensible outcome. And Jalen fucking Brown was like, no, I don't accept that. I'm going to go out and again, let's also give credit to Mazula because the game plan also called for a kind of, you know, radical, though not that radical under Celtic circumstances.

They went out and played their ass off every night.

They gave it all every night and he took on the biggest challenge every day. Yeah. There's a reason that they all were able to collectively elevate. When Guy took the lead, he took the lead. He was the leader.

So I don't care about the efficiency numbers. I don't give a shit. That doesn't help me understand anything about contextual about burden. Blast season. Yeah.

There's burden and gravity and there's some things. But he also played his ass off on defense, by the way.

“That's why the MVP conversation had him featured, you know, Wilbond said with, you know,”

a month left of the regular season that Jalen Brown was his leading contender. Now, what are we talking about? Yeah. They, they were first in offensive rating for the entire year and they ended up second. Who else, who else were there or lead offensive players on this offense?

Tatum played 16 games, right? Purchered, who I love and I actually think Purchered could go up a level next year if there's more shots thrown his way, but I didn't know whether Purchered was showing up night tonight. He would have been here. He just stunk.

You know? White was bad, white was bad, shooting wise all year. Even though there's great advanced metrics for him and then everybody else, you know what they were getting. I mean, that tells you, there you go, the advanced metrics for Derek White offensively,

whatever.

They're always getting it.

He sucked. He sucked. He sucked. He sucked shooting. He lost his confidence.

Yeah. I'm talking about his offense. Yeah. But there was a thing as a shot. As a, remember home, a money we made, betting on his, the over for his blocks every

night. Awesome. Yeah, a favor finally went. Why I stepped to that. But part of the reason his shooting was down because he had such a big load.

I think he wore down as a season went along. And that's another thing. Like when you're talking about advanced metrics with somebody like Jalen, and it could be Jalen. It could be a bunch of people.

But the night tonight showing up playing 36 minutes a game, I watched him during the course of the year at guard, Kate Cunningham in the last five minutes of games, Luca. Right. Right. Right.

Pick a guy. Play through him on, like he, and he would accept the challenge. And I don't know. I just feel like I'm basketball.

“You have to have one guy that's like, well, at least we have this guy.”

They have that guy, but we saved this guy. We're probably getting 29 to 32 from our guy tonight. And when you don't have that, you're not going to win 56 games. So with that said, his plus minus, if you go through his career, it's like shocking. I think he might be one of the great advanced metrics outliers in the history of the league,

if not number one. Every single year, the Celtics were basically better with him when he wasn't on the court. And I don't have an explanation for that. And I'm not going to be like, oh, the stats are wrong, because obviously they're not. And I was talking to my dad about it, because my dad, you know, pre-lasties in Jalen went

up a level that season. Like he really got better as a creator. You know, his, he, I thought his, he had less turnovers, even though it doesn't reflect that he had the ball way more. But my dad pre-lasties and they would have these two five minute sections when they would

take six minute sections, they would take Tate him out and Jalen would get to run the offense. And my dad would either go to pee or go get a popcorn, because he's like, I can't stand this. I hate when it would be like, go into a concert and, you know, you're going to see the rolling stones. And it's like, oh, now we're going to play the Keith Richards song.

And you're like, fuck, can't you play, start me up, you're like, everybody goes to the bathroom. So that was there.

And it always felt clumsy when Jalen was in charge of it.

But last year, it was not that clumsy. I'm just telling you. Yeah.

“I think it's fine to look at, you know, over the, the course of, of the career and, you”

know, point out these these vulnerabilities, these frailties to his game, but it was a flawed durable pair. Yeah. We know from the outcomes, what kind of impact he has on, on winning, like, right, that the, the, the, the, the, the, the title, the 2014 title.

And being the MVP of that team, the MVP, the finals MVP. Yeah. Well, whatever, whatever. Whatever. I think Jason should have won that.

Enough people saw enough to believe that he earned it. Yeah. Well, I wonder, like, do they look at that season where they super powered the role players around them, which is impossible now, but they just added poor Zingus and holiday. They had Derek White earlier.

They had Richard as a bench guy. Alhor for Risto there. And then you have this double forward combo in their mid 20s still, Tatum and Brown. And both of them were just a lot going downhill shooting threes. And maybe that they felt like that was the peak.

They talked a lot about the, in the press conference about the usage, the usage of the two

And I get it. The argument falls apart when you also tried to trade for Yannis in Yannis and Tatum. We're going to be 70% of your salary cap.

I will never for the rest of my life understand why they didn't wait to see this deal

was available until September, October.

“Because I think really saying yes on September 1st, on September 17th, on September 30th,”

I also feel like whatever happens with Jalen and Philly can't, you can't retroactively go and fit that to your opinion of this trade. Because I don't know if this is a great situation for him. Going to this Philly team that's Maxi's team and then when he comes back, everything revolved. I just don't think his stats are going to be the same.

He's going to be a he cares. He's a winner. They're going to win. They're going to be good. So every every sixers, um, future, I'm in like the idea of them is eight to one to win

the East. Okay. I'll have a little taste of that. They're there for the one to win the Atlantic division between behind the next and the Celtics.

Well, I think they're going to be motivated. This upcoming season. Obviously, the wild card is, do you get 40 games out of M.B. But those three guys, we're going to are really going to help each other.

“I think it's going to be a really good fit.”

Putting good players on the full edge comb and Maxi and, and, and, and Jalen together, that's like, that's good. That's going to be there. It's going to work. I'm not worried about that at all.

These were all the things I was saying heading into the 2018, 19th Celtic season. When I picked up the win 70 games, Kyrie, Brown, Tatum, Hayward, we're going to be believable. Wow. They're there.

They might happen. But you could feel it right away. And this is, you know, this is what you and I have loved about basketball forever.

It doesn't always make sense.

Like sometimes you can have a team like that last year's Celtic team, where it's like, we have one guy who can consistently create a shot. We have a bunch of other guys. You called them Bums, which I, I let it slide. I think they were young guys, role players.

Okay. Whatever. They were all guys that couldn't be top three guys on a team except for weight. But they figured out if you're going to have to make it work. And we've seen this over and over again in basketball.

There's been teams where the pieces fall into place. With Philly, you have a lot of star power and a lot of money. You've been beat who we're going to talk about after the break. It's just, you know, I, I, I would just be careful with that one that is it an on paper team or is it a team that's actually going to play well together.

Because Paul George, whatever you say about him at this stage of his career, definitely knew he was a complimentary player and the kind of popping out.

“But he certainly popped it and I don't know if you want to pop in and out at that point.”

Well, I, if you were, if you're measuring it by how many games did Paul George play? He certainly popped into support and then popped out of the entire team. Might have popped some things into his body, too. Um, yeah. So when, when we talk about like the usage rate and some of these advanced stats, it

prompted me to go in this huge deep dive.

And you know, I did my book from basically 0709.

We didn't have a lot of these stats that didn't have access to them. And there's stuff that like I would like I was looking at Steve Nash, who I had, forget where I had them, but like in the pyramid, I think I'm going to move them. But I, I think I had him like in the somewhere in the 30s and the pyramid and now he was in that cluster of point cards.

Steve Nash ran the number one offense in basketball. You can go back now through basically to the mid 90s and look at all the on-off stats, all the offense of ratings, everything. He was the number one offense every year from 2003 to 2010 to last two years in Dallas. His first six Phoenix seasons, no matter who was on the team, they didn't have a Maristata

Meyer for all those six, didn't matter. They were still number one in offense. They were number one and 08 was shattered when they made that weird shack trade. They were number one and 09 in 10. And another Mark Cuban masterpiece.

Well, but then you go and you look at the on-off stats for Nash and when they, he was off the court, those last two years, they were better without them, allegedly, according to the stats, that must have been one of the reasons they let him go. Anyway, my point is like, I do think some of these stats are great. I think Jalen might just be an outlier to some of those stuff.

High usage guys on a team that's not that good, that probably should have been like a 42 to 45 win team. And for whatever reason, this type of player was able to pull 10 wins out of the regular season, but in the playoffs it becomes harder. Yeah.

Well, especially with the roster construction at the Celtics had this most recent season. I just think it's a dumb way to try and capture who he is in the impact on the franchise. The only aspect of it to me that has a kind of like, OK, I can see this by to it is the

If he was really going to get bent out of shape about the extension, if there was something

that happened in those conversations. Yeah. But here's the problem. The Celtics front office did not prepare its fan base in any way shape or form for anything like this.

It was either Janus coming to the Celtics to join Tatum or we're going to run it up for business. Back with J.B. And then we'll see what happens over the course of the season. And by the way, running it back with J.B.

At the beginning of the season, at least it's going to be a bunch of wins for the Celtics, because Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum together with the cast of characters and inserting Mitchell Robertson into it. They're going to, they were going to win a bunch of basketball games.

“And I think that should have helped overall, like some teams, you know, circumstance to change”

as you get to the beginning of the season. Some teams start underperforming right away, and the best you can do is, right, you just wait till December. Who's unhappy? Right.

Yeah, Paul George and July is not the answer. Like we have proof. We know for sure that the GM took a big gamble on Paul George and that GM is not in the league right now. It was, I'll tell you this.

It wasn't the answer right. Right after my colonoscopy, yes, it was. You know, who's the best example of the kind of Jalen season we're talking about, where the advanced metrics actually kind of liked it was, uh, Iverson. Interesting.

His O1 season, where, you know, his usage, everything is like just highest possible caliber, and he was on the court was plus 5.7, and his onoff was plus 4.1, so it was around the same. Now, there's also reasons for that, they built that entire team around Al and Iverson. Every decision they made, every poor, they put next to him was to help hide him on defense,

um, a physical team that can protect him, and basically just shoot a shitload of shots and

go nuts. You know, and then we get to the playoffs out here, and he's basically even on the court in minus 5 when, when he was, uh, minus 5 overall in the playoffs, um, where he didn't have a lot of good games, and they got a lot of foul help, it gets more walking all that stuff. But, um, it is possible to build around a high usage.

More likely it works out like it did with Jerry Stackhouse on that O1 piston's team. Remember when he averaged like 30 a game, and they were 32 and 50, that's usually the way it goes. Yeah, what I thought the, um, touch point, the reference that that was closest to what I might have imagined for the South's team was Russell Westbrook the year that, um, KD left.

Right. And he, he averaged his triple double. That was the 16 17 year, right? Yeah, they went back. I'm going to say 48 games, some point.

“I think they won 46, maybe it was 48, but they got, they won one game in the playoffs.”

They immediately got, got, you know, and it was somewhere, remember Westbrook won the MVP because there was that one game in the weekend, and he was just awesome in the last three minutes. And it was like, all right, fine. You twist my arm, you have it, but, um, the point is, Jalen could at least be somebody

that you could, whether the advanced venture stats love that or not. He could be the fulcrum of a team that could win in the mid 50s if you put the right types of players around him. I don't know if there's a lot of guys like that in the league. You know, I don't think, by the way, as great as Kawaii was last year, um, the durability

things, just not going to be there with him in the same way. You know, and I also wonder, I can't remember if I said this before, but if you're playing 71 games, and you're going hard in all those games, and you're really trying to guard and do all this stuff that Jalen was trying to do, you're not going to be 100% for all of those games, right?

Whereas like that, we've seen some guys where they could play the 55 to 58 games and take a couple breaks there in the season, look at Paul George, Paul George took 25 games off, came back. He was 21 a game, the last 10 games of the season, and then he was really good in the playoffs, partly because he took 25 games off in the middle of the season.

So, um, I don't, I will never understand why they didn't wait.

“And, uh, and I think I'm more confused by the advanced metrics than it was before the”

straight, because I don't, I don't really have the information for how they're worse when, when he plays, and they were better when he was off the court. And I think it's an advanced analytics team that was like, this is, this is multiple years now, where this has been the case. What multiple years?

Oh, like, uh, just saying they were making it to the Eastern Conference finals, the years they were making it to the NBA finals. Like, there's somehow coming there, there's something about the, the chemistry experiment that's producing more good results than, than not good, like, you know, these, these

far runs deep into the playoffs with, with him as the second most important player.

And it's fine-casting in that way. That, that tells me a lot about, um, his, his importance to the situation.

eight.

We don't really need to pay our number two leads $60 million anywhere.

We can get some other actress and bring, bring her in and basically get the same ratings.

“Was your reasonable forecast for the Celtics this upcoming season?”

Oh, I'd, I'd be shocked if they weren't in the mid 50s again. I think Pando has them minus 135 for the 50 plus. There's more injury risk this year with this team. No, no, there's 49 and a half on Pando, and it's not minus 135 to the over. Oh, well, it was, it was four days ago.

The 50 plus wins was minus 135. So that's different. I'm going to try and pull it up here. Super quick. They have, they have the Celtics. They opened up, Fando opened up. They put 10 teams out with, um, with the actual overrunners with, with overrunners. And the Celtics are at 49 and a half.

And I guarantee you, the over is not minus 135 at the moment. Well, the thing is, Mitch, assuming Mitch can play 60 games, and that's played 25 minutes. The game 20 to 25 minutes a game. He's so much better than what they had last year with Garza and Moosebitch. Good, not agree more. That's the way I thought they should have kept you.

But how many teams?

Tatum is in the J. Lam Brown spot and has been a first team on B.A. guy four times.

So you'd figure there at least a little bit of extra time. They lose assignments and replace them with Paul George. And then you have who goes to your older and shyrimous your older, more mature shots, less minutes per weight. So he can be a little more efficient.

And I don't understand why they wouldn't at least be a 54 to 55 1/10. For the regular season, that's three punters. Into they have more injury, which they did last year. Yeah, no question. They sure do.

They sure do. Mitch, Paul George. Right. But the thing is, couldn't they play Paul George 45 games? So it's the exact same price.

It's minus 135. I got it wrong. Boston at winning 50 is it still at minus 135.

“And the over is over 49 and a half, that's what fans will set it for.”

Right. Is it minus 135. So that's it. I mean, I would think about the 55 for that. Because he figured Detroit's worse.

We'll see if it flew a bit better. He's tough. Yeah. Only one team that took a step backwards in my opinion, and that's Detroit. The paces are going to be playing, you know, to win this season.

The witses are playing to win now. That doesn't translate. But I don't think Charlotte is worse. I like what they did in terms of their mac and agency. We'll see.

This off season. I like what they did in long term, but this for the season itself we'll see. Well, we'll see. I like Orlando this upcoming season with a functioning head coach. And if Franz Wagner can play 60 games.

Well, but look, you mean, you know, they were forecasted to have over 50 wins last season. You would be a man that would be a little bit better. Right. He's just tough. He's just going to be a bitch.

There's only three teams that suck. I'm going to say the single funniest thing to me about the Jalen. So, and listen, and it's been discussed a little in different places.

“But I think Jalen's side and his agent definitely definitely sabotaged a couple of possible”

teams. There's no question. There's couple of teams. Like who? I think there were a couple of teams that they liked.

Yeah. Maybe if he goes there. Name names. I think there were teams that backed off. Name names.

We're probably trading him this moment now, especially, it's like there are not a lot of

teams that can take on a $57 million contract, like it's just under here.

But this is, this is the unforgettable one. Go ahead. Explain to me in a million years why the Brooklyn nets wouldn't have traded my competitors expiring for, and three of the first they have for Jalen brand. What possible answer do you have for this?

You are asking for, you know, the, the, the, the solution to the Jesus shroud. This is the functional equivalent like, how can you explain? There's like, I'm just, I'm just saying, I call you. It's a, and I'm like, yeah, we have a chance to trade my coporters expiring a pick down the road.

We have, like, a Houston pick and something else, and we can get Jalen brand. Wouldn't, wouldn't your answer be like, what the fuck are you waiting for? Take the trade before they pull it off. But phenomena in the, this, this is one of those phenomena in the universe that has no explanation.

You just have to accept it. I did. Would, it's not like to have another max guy. You can't even blame like this all. Are you happening backwards?

They're Brooklyn put this on the table. No, I'm saying Boston thought they had a chance to pull. Something off with Brooklyn, and at some point in the higher levels, I said, I talked about this a week ago. It got squashed.

They decided they didn't win in Jalen brand, which, you, oh, okay, I'm saying it with the higher ones. Well, Brooklyn deciding against it makes perfect sense, because they, no sense whatsoever.

The next one, the title, who, who am I selling to next fans next year? Please come see Brown. We're looking for a good shirt. If I am Brown and Julius Randall and a bunch of shooting young guys, like, I'm not interested. At that point, I'm not, not interesting.

Right. But yeah, they've turned into fashion. That's really bad. They don't need more teams. They just need to move that Brooklyn to you.

We're going to take the break, and then we get talk about Joe Ellenbeard.

All right, Joe Ellenbeard, 57 million this year, 63 next year, 67 in the final year of

his deal. I mean, we're doing the worst contract strath all over. I mean, this whole podcast is Paul George and Joe Ellenbeard. James. James 57, 61, and 65, and Maxis 41, 44, and 46.

And the cap's going backwards. This whole thing where the cap on backwards has been, I wish I had been more focused on it, heading into the draft and for HC, like, says nuts, it's 6 million lower than they projected it for this year.

“I think next year, it's going to be in double figures, and by the time we get to the last”

year of the decade, I think it's going to be like 25 million less than they thought. So I remember the most, yes, I didn't mean to interrupt. Well, no, I just, when they, when they did the jiggling deal a couple of years ago, I was like, yeah, whoa, we'd to pay the whole 304, would take them to, like, why'd we do that? And then everybody, and then it was just self, like, everything was like, cap's going

way up, like, it's like that contract and a couple of years, like, and I remember doing some pods about, these guys are going to be making 75 million, and it's going to be like they're making 35 now. Well, the cap didn't go up because of all this local TV stuff, and it is one of the reasons that drove the self-extraed, and if I'm the sixers, and I have 140 million for the beat

in jail, and then I saw the max of things going up, who's the guy I want to build my team around, and I VJH come down the road, it makes me wonder, do I need to have Joel and beat around? I think they're going to trade Joel and beat house, and I think they want to. And I don't care if this gets aggregated.

So I think he's available. I think teams think he's available, and I think Philly has been pretty careful about saying we're so excited to build around and be Jalen Max and VJ, you haven't really heard a lot of that.

“I think it beats available, and the question for me house, would you trade for Joel and”

beat, and if you, if the answer is yes, how much would you give up with the wizards trade

for Joel and beat? Take a team. I'll give you a bunch of them. Yeah, I'll give you the wizards. That would be Davis for 58.4, it's a straight shoot.

I think Philly would have to make a second trade to do something for the first apron. They'd have to do a couple of cap mechanics, but my guess is Philly would have to throw picks into that trade to get you to take a beat. There would, would you, would you be right in that, no sir, no thank you, I'm all set. So no thank you.

Yeah. Well, I think you're well in beat. If you're Milwaukee, would you think about Miles Turner, 26, 28, 29 next three years, and Kuzum is expiring for Joel and beat to do what? Milwaukee is stinks.

What's the point of adding a guy that plays 40 games a season that's 60 million bucks

a year. So that's, so that's a no. That's a hard no. Okay. They need to stink.

If you're playing with, would you think about Michael Porter just straight up for him beat? Who knows?

“You have to ask, but you're in charge of Brooklyn right now.”

Oh, I'm in charge. You're in charge of Brooklyn. Yes. You've been my supporters expiring for three years of him beat. No, definitely not.

You wouldn't know, Michael Porter's expiring is worth a lot. That's worth a lot. I could have Joel and beat the 2023, I think it was the year one, 2023 and BPM, I think. How many games is it? Kuzum I team.

What's that you move to Brooklyn? Who are you going to see in the nets this year? Nobody. Julius Randall? The same as ever.

It's the nets. But here's the one team I think Dallas. And by beside you, Harry, long, long standing relationship with Joel and beat. Okay. I think it would be the one guy that would maybe be a little more favorable about rolling

the dice of them. And the other thing is they have contracts. They have Gaffard at 1718, 19, PJ Watched in 1921, 23, and Clay at 17.4. And that can't be the trade. They need a 13.

So you would have to bring Milwaukee into it and send Turner and Kuzuma to Philly. You would have to send MB to Dallas.

And then you would have to send the Gaffard Clay, PJ. You need some sort of 13, it would be something like that. If you were Dallas, would you think about it? No. Wrong player, wrong timeline.

So the conclusion we've come to is that Philly is going to have Joel out and beat on their team next year.

“The situation that makes sense for him, honestly, is a team that is very close to winning”

the title and that team looking at, you know, it would be a Western conference team to me in the first place. And it would be a team that feels like this, we can, we can bolster our Wendy stopping power with some number of games from unbeat in the playoffs. Okay.

That's what makes sense to me. Okay. What's that team? Well, the contenders are Minnesota, Denver and Oklahoma City. Those would be the teams that, that I think, you know, have a legit chance.

I don't. Look at anybody else in the West. Why not? They, they had a, I'm not doing that if I'm Denver. They had balance units as the backup to, to Joker.

Yeah, but you can have a 57 million Denver's out.

That's that Denver's ridiculous. Okay. I'm sorry for him. I'm talking to him. I don't think can.

Because, and you're saying they have to trade it tomorrow. So I'm. I'm sorry for him. Damn. Giant, big guys with no point card.

Minnesota. I don't think can do anything because the second apron. I think it's too complicated for that. Even the go bear bit, they, they can't. They could go.

They could go bear. I don't even know if they could. They're, they're a lot of package players. That's another thing that's so stupid about the league right now. And it's these, you know, be all these restrictions and regulations against being able

to trade.

Well, you're the third team you had.

Shout it. I'm Santa Antonio themselves could, could acquire him. They'll call him a city that was in 13, they're not doing that either. Okay. It would have to be a team that's like a, a slightly, slightly desperate, you know,

like, I mean, it could be Houston, but Houston doesn't do anything that makes any sense. So they're just going to waste the end of, well, KD. Forget all the teams.

“Would you even consider taking that contract down in a million years?”

Under the, like, desperate kind of circumstances is what you said. Can Golden State fit him? Is the expiring Jimmy Butler an option here? House. Now we're talking.

Now we're talking. Yeah, we can get points out there. Fuck it. We'll get, they hadn't been carcaged to me in the Olympics. He played very well for her.

He really tried hard for that U.S. team and beat it. And he used them as a luxury.

The problem is if you're wrong, you've, you've ruined the last bullet in your

gun for carry. Golden State's an interesting one though. Yeah, the bigger to point on there. What if the Brown helps? Yeah, the one is, what if the trait says, yeah.

Matt, this is actually more interesting to us than endurance and trade. I don't know if they would do that either. Okay. But yeah, there's just not a lot of teams. I don't hate the trait. I really don't.

I don't hate the trait. I do think the idea of Kate and, and bead has a kind of logic. The meat, let me do this exercise in a slightly different way. Give me the overunder of games by year and bead plays next three years. Thirty nine and a half per year.

Oh, you're said, yes, yeah, per year. Right. So that's one. So it's over on 27. Thirty nine and a half games.

Next season. Would you bet over under? Under. Yes, see, this is why I feel he's not going to be able to trade Joe L. and bead.

“I think that the net into that extension.”

If the next had lost the title. Oh, that's a good one. There's sometimes a bead starts to become good, but instead it went the other way. But yeah, the next the biggest mistake Darrell made, I think of this decade, was not selling high in and bead.

Much like the Celtics just sold high on J. Lam Brown, which I think for different reasons. But it wasn't just only the not selling high. It was also the extension that was not called for was not required. He was cut. He had a murky foot situation.

That extension is the most unforgivable extension in all basketball. All right. So we think you're going to be able to stay on Philly, even though I don't think they want him to stay. That that was that's.

I look forward to them being asked this in a press conference. I've been like, I don't know where the stuff's coming from. We what we love Joe L. We want him back here. I don't I think they want to have the team built around Max in V. J. and J. Lam Brown. And if they could get out that contract, they would.

On Joel and bead.

If they could just man it and they'd have dream on, they have Yaxel and Curry.

And you basically, and they have poor Zingas right that have a couple of luxuries.

And basically, the goal would be, can we just patch together a regular season and get into the playoffs as one of the eight seeds. And then kind of see how it goes for two months kind of. I'm into it. I'm into it.

It's kind of fun. Let's let's let's take a spin.

“Well, the other thing that happened in poor gold state is, I think they thought they're”

getting a LeBron and potentially a dean. And now it's pretty clear they were being used by leverage as leverage in the as LeBron goes back. But I don't understand what that leverage translates into, like, meaning what? Because the teams that are still in the running for him, the sixers, the heat, he's going and Cleveland and the Cleveland things done.

He's going to Cleveland. Okay, come on. But the hardest first of all, the hardest buddy is Sister GM. That was red flag number one. Red flag number two was they gave out of a Mitchell that giant extension for no reason.

Do you want to pay that of a Mitchell 75 billion dollars three years from now?

Well, here here's the thing.

That was they were paying off down of a Mitchell. So he doesn't get mad when we have the word. You're going to be shouting this from the rooftops. We need to tell all all the hoops heads out there, all the NBA lovers. It's not just that the salary cap is going in the wrong direction.

To percentage of what Donovan Mitchell's salary represents to Cleveland is going. It's going to be nearly 40% of the cap because of the way that the cap is the cap goes. Is it any sort of danger going the other way? It's an incredible miss by the people doing the math. At the time the collective bargaining agreement was negotiated and this second apron,

this hard cap was dropped into the situation. They fucked up how much money is going to be available year over year. Yes. In a material way. So we are living in an era now and you've said this and we're just going to keep telling all our

hoops head brethren, there are going to be a lot of deals done where it was done for money.

Not done for basketball reasons, but for salary cap reasons. Two things, two things might flip this with here. Expansion. Being able to dump, they could make the expansion rules whatever they want. Okay.

Right.

“They could say you have to take $8,000,000,000 out of squares or however they want to do it.”

But you might be able to get off one of these guys. The other thing is, and I don't know if they can keep time line for expansion, does it marry up with how much time is left on the M.B. contract? No, this is the next couple of years are going to be bad. I wonder if they could, they instituted an emergency atmosphere clause.

Just take that part of it. Like they had a year to the CBA. They're like, well, how to year to the CBA, but we need a couple of things back, including we're going to bring the embassy clause back. You and I, the embassy clause don't want another year of the CBA.

The players hate this collective bargain agreement. Well, they just, you know, they're playing themselves. Because they had the reps that signed up for it. The embassy clause brought us more joy than just about anything. It was the Alan Houston.

Oh, I love it. Just every time they had it, it was so fun to watch teams just, just pay people to go away. Including your team with the famous Andre Blacks Extension, which was my favorite all-time grades. The extension that turned into the embassy clause.

Yeah, I don't. Maybe there's not an NBA team yet, but that's, I feel like that's going to be a story. By the way, he's been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks. But I, I feel like there's something there with Dallas.

You haven't seen a welcome to, to Philly JB from NBA. Have we seen that? Maybe he's done it. I don't, I'm not. So you're just, you, there's no situation where you trade for him,

unless you were super close to a title and you had a situation like a Jimmy Butler type contract. A thousand percent. You wouldn't do it like if you're Brooklyn and be like, "We have Joe Lombie, we have a star, come see Joe Lombie."

“How many games can you tell your fans he's going to show up and play?”

He'd be the only place 40 games and come see him for 20 games. I don't know how did Philly do it the last five years. Not well, their fans are, are, are, are, are besides themselves. The counter on NBA is you, you could say, "Yeah, I don't know his knees look actually pretty good. He had all these other weird injuries

and things happened that what if he's just healthy?" I don't know, I'm trying to talk myself into it for somebody. Phoenix was the other one that I couldn't even figure out. Phoenix's a salary cap, I couldn't, but it just felt like a big suit. Yeah, it felt like a Phoenix suit.

Yeah, it could have moved out that there'd not be no doubt. I mean, the Miles Bridges thing is fucking bananas. Why, why did they acquire Miles Bridges? Well, I think they have to, did he go to H.B. his college?

Same seems like that could be an explanation. All right, well, watch, and beat watches on. We're going to take, oh, I had another thing for you. Teams that have their own picks in 2027.

We're going to do a mailback in one second.

As far as I can tell, it's only 11 teams. That just have their own pick in a way that we can understand like, "Oh, they have their own pick. Sacramento, Memphis, Chicago, Washington, Portland, Orlando, Charlotte, Goldstate, Indiana, Boston, and Detroit."

“And I think I'm right, I'm not, don't hold me to it, but I think those are the 11 teams.”

And then there's a whole bunch of new picks, swaps, Houston has Phoenix's pick. Memphis has the Lakers. Brooklyn has the next pick, San Antonio has the Hawks, et cetera, et cetera. I think they need to add this to the CBA too, along with the MSD class. What? They, this is too confusing now.

Look at this document I have. New picks, swaps, and like this is just the team. This is fucking, how did we end up here? How did we end up here? There's two double swaps, and I don't even know if this is all right. Like, Brooklyn has Philly's pick, I think, protected one through eight next year,

“which they're not getting, so I guess it rolls over.”

Clippers have Toronto's pick. The Celtics have this Clippers pick two years from now, that might actually be something. Well, this is, I mean, we can't, but it's just, it's too, I just can't follow it anymore. That's the rate of June, 2027, 1 through 30, somebody will be picking. Let's be 30 picks in the first round. They have to tell those. I hate it. All right, we're going to come back to the mailback.

All right, so mailback questions. You can send them the BS podcast. [email protected]. Actually, speaking of what we were just talking about with Brandon asked about the repeater tax, as it run the court, run its course. Teams are treating the second apron as a hard cap. Can they just remove it? It was interesting. Steven's mentioned something I had been talking about on my podcast for years about how unfair it was that Tatum and Brown were guys they drafted.

That grew up in Boston, became star players, and then they basically, because of the rules, couldn't keep both of them, and whether they should have stuff built into protected teams.

And my argument was always, like, after five years, maybe you get 2% off per year of the guy's

salary for your luxury tax or your cap or whatever, you get some sort of benefit because then that would lead to more stability and fans knowing that they would have the same guy on a team for more than nine years. You're down with any of those types of ideas, right? Of course, yes,

“you have to persuade the ownership that group that sits on that side of the table that this is”

something that fans want. And so far they haven't been persuaded. It hasn't shown up in a click of barring agreement yet. AJ and Toledo says, the everyone wins penalty would be for the NBA to force bomb or to swap the Quippers for the Super Sanx for free. He gets to be the hometown hero and see out on run the team. He leaves behind the into a dome in the Quippers, which they then have expansion for, and you get the other Quippers and his expansion team. And that's how everybody

saves face. I mean, the more interesting thing about the bomb or penalty, and if there's going to be a penalty in that stuff, is they traded quite a Toronto. Who was the aggrieved party in 2019? Toronto. I mean, the stories are out there about all of the extracurricular stuff that, you know, Coise camp. What was the ending? Yeah. So yes. And conspiracy bills are out there. Can conspiracy bill tackled this in a mail bag? We can have to go about could this be the penalty

where they just Toronto just gets their picks back when we call it a day. But it isn't interesting that they've removed the one, so they get coi back who apparently love being there the whole time. Even though he fled like it was the emnival horror house after that season. And

everybody's just like, yeah, it all and we're just good. So this is being more never getting a verdict.

They're finding out what happened. Both. Yes. It'll be a verdict. But the finding out what happened. The league is going to say we investigated it extremely thoroughly, and we couldn't connect any of the dots that suggests that there was, you know, a knowing plan by the the leadership of the clippers to deliberately circumvent this archive. It's a lot of circumstantial evidence. So

great, but there's no, you know, direct communication from anybody at Clippers leadership to coi or

to aspire that says we're going to try and and compensate you coi outside of the rules of the league. We'll see how it goes. Jeban from North Carolina. Jeban from North Carolina. Jeban from North Carolina wants to know why Phoenix says it being talked about as a legitimate LeBron destination. He could be doing the 2020 on Chris Paul with Kevin Booker. They have talent. They have flexibility. And more importantly, it's one of the country's best golf destinations

“what more could he want. Interesting. Here's the thing. Two answers. First of all,”

he's going to play golf wherever he wants to play golf on whatever circumstances he wants to play golf.

He doesn't, he's not tied to the local, right? It would be, it's a nice to have for the local

to have, you know, some golf courses on on the days that he's actually, you know, they're going to have to have the season. Yes, yes. And even home games, you know, if there's time stretches in the schedule, he can get anywhere. He has a, a private jet that will take him anywhere on Earth and certainly anywhere within the continental United States to go play golf when he finds room in the schedule. And by the way, if he needs a little bit of rest here and there, which certainly makes sense for

him and for the team, then go take three days. He doesn't need to play every regular season home game. And he won't play every regular season away game. He'll play some number. It probably

“makes sense for him to play. What do you think? 60 games. Is that, is that the right number?”

He has every record that this is why I still feel like, I mean, one of my predictions is already coming true that he's using the entire month of July to milk this. And it's worked. And he, everybody with the podcast, every TV show has had LeBron segments, ESPN seems to write a piece every two days. I played brilliantly on that. I still wonder, could he just wait until December January and, and just keep this going for six months and kind of wait for weeks,

17 football season to strike. It's pretty easy. How many games did he miss at the beginning of

the most recently completed season? The first 30? Yeah. Well, yeah. There was like 20 at least.

Yeah, because of the sciatica. Got the sciatica. Got the sciatica. I've got to say, which is makes sense. Fine with it. If he's talking to you as his golf conciliary and was like, I'm picking my team. I have every record that I have four titles. I'm picking my team solely for the golf courses. What would you tell him? Golden State. That's an all-time no brainer. The proximity to the Monterey Peninsula and Cyprus point. That means you get

Cyprus. You get pebble, obviously. You get the other bangers right there. Monterey Peninsula club is super underrated. Magnificent Pasatiempo is within a short drive. And then right there in San Francisco, there is the Bangor after Bangor. San Francisco, golf club, the Cal Club where we're curry belongs. Olympic is there. There are a dozen of the greatest golf courses that Earth has to offer in that area. Plus LA is a short flight. So he's got all of those. He has San Diego

and that whole scene. He wants to go spent. He wants to go spend 48 hours at abandoned dunes down in at North Bend, Oregon. You know how easy it is to get out from a with a private jet from the Los Angeles. You're in everybody's top three for eternity. You're in everybody's top three

“for eternity. You should have fun. You're going to get to play golf in every course. What are we”

doing? Just come to us. I don't know what is the Cleveland thing. I don't really understand it. What do you mean? I don't understand how like if winning is the number on priority. Yeah. I don't understand how you win a title. If you're playing Mitchell Hardin in LeBron, it's three of your five guys in four street playoffs series. Why anyone would think that was going to work? It's a tough one. I think LeBron has to be in the Hardin spot. In the only case

I would say like why if if he decided it's Cleveland, why it's taking so long is they're trying to figure out a way to get out of the Hardin piece of this when they had a wink wink with them. I thought they already extended him. Didn't they? I thought they were still discussing it. Yeah, I don't think it's been announced. Well, they said they're working on the extension. Is it not been announced? That the extension is completely. It seems back

at the same time. The way it was, well, that's true. We have to see that. There were warriors

He's not. It's not complete yet. It is not. There's a lot of couldbees and maybe could be three

“years. Like all kinds of stuff. That's what I saw. It would be interesting if Hardin became the six”

man on the team, like he went back to his two separate swans. The problem with Cleveland is Kenny fucking atkinson. I mean, get, get grandpa, his smoking pipe and some pudding. And let him, you know, tell you how many games they won according to the Ouija board. Charlie sends in

it's supposed to be eight slices of pie for blame pie. I always do blame pie. I guess I had three

slices in the last one and he, he doesn't like that. It's illegal. There's no worth no need to have the word pie involved. You don't say, Charlie, I'll have 10% more apple pie and Thanksgiving you sell one more slice. And then he writes, I'm a depressed Celtics fan living in the Bay Area. He wants more explanations. So how many slices can be in a blame pie? Eight. Four. Because you can have a four slice blame pie. You could, yes. But we had eight explanations for how the Celtics

fucked this up. Did they apologize to their fan base yet? The Celtics? Yeah, they need to apologize. I'll say this because there's been some weird stuff going on online and people go, you know, doing shitty things to Stevens and all that stuff. Sports? Anybody that does that stuff, I just don't get it. But you can be mad about a trade like whatever, but you start calling in a social media handles and stuff. I just think you've got to take a look at a merit at that point. I hope I didn't

see any of that. Yeah, it's like shoot with Brad Stevens is. I didn't think all of it. I come on. That's horrendous. Let's keep it in perspective. We won the title on 2024 settled down. I didn't like the trade either, but if you're going online to try to attack people settle down. Keep Black says he thinks the Matt Freesayer from the World Cup game is up there with the worst sports places ever seen in his life. And he said his top five of our jazz business finals brain fart.

The bill buck their game six error. The cult special teams play when they put all the guys on the right side and then the snapper got overrun and the punner got tackled. The butt fumble and Chris Weber calling timeout. He thinks I should have a bracket with all the worst plays ever. That's too mean. The Matt Freesayer was iconic though. Yeah, and you have to separate even that list of contenders. The stakes were radically different for many of those. Like like the Buckner error

“is in the same class as Frees because that's that's what was it Freesayer. I think that's kind”

of Frees, Frees. Whatever you say it. I don't know how to say it. Buckner was just like a brain fart mistake. The goalie having like basically an AYSO error for the third goal that you would see like in an under 10 game in Norco, California. I'm still really from that. I'm just being like in terms of like what was it stake and the the the horror. It's pretty bad. Well, except for they weren't going to win that series and it was game one and they still all it all it produced was

them going to overtime. They still could have won that basketball game. It didn't the game didn't end on that play. The stupid, you know, giving up that goal. The game was over and that was it. That was it. What about when they whip it off? Castles back. Let's go ahead and put that in the list. You could put that in the list. The foul was worse. The foul on him, fouling Brunson was worse. AC and DC says the Jalen trade is so interesting because of two elements

co-existing. How lapsided and panicky the trade appears. How amazing Brad Stevens has been.

“Two things that don't. Two things that collide. Why he's been amazing. It's amazing. I think so.”

You like the vouch of it? How that went down? That was a money thing. That was a money thing and then hope. That was it. That was a money trade. That was not a basketball trade. Oh, again, we have to keep telling the world this because that team was, you know, trending in a direction where they knew the Tatum was possibility. They had to say, money or the team was going to have $300 million in taxes, which was unsustainable apparent.

So this is the expectation management that I'm talking about and why they should be apologizing. They should have said out loud that that, you know, Jalen as much as we love him, we'd love to keep him. We're not sure that's going to be possible. They could have said that at any point in the end. They could have said this at any point. I'm still not positive. They were that in on

Janus. They made one offer. You said that they made one offer. They never made a second one though.

and you're like, I really like this house. You make an offer. And then the broker's like,

"All right. Well, they'll do this instead." And you're like, "Nope."

“I'd made by what offer. Rather than rather not have a house, you should have made it offer.”

In basketball, that means you're going to make another offer. But that's the thing. The Celtics of the game. I don't want the house. It doesn't make any sense because it costs them Jalen Brown. Yeah. Anyway, Keat AC and DC says, "With something like the Luka trade, we could immediately just trash Niko Harrison and not worried too much about eating Kerala later." But because of how much most basketball fans respect Stevens, we have to entertain the thought

that maybe we're the asshole here. Maybe he's far ahead of us on understanding the card cap

and how to compete with Wemby and OKC and getting rid of Jalen. And then he wonders, "Is there ever been a bigger self-questioning way to buy the asshole, trade in the history of basketball?" I did think about this. It's probably the Adrian Dately Marker Guire trade. OK. Because I think our reaction when that trade happened was, "Huh!" Like they almost made the final last year with Adrian Dately and Marker Guire seems

pretty unhappy and Dallas and this is a pretty weird trade. Wonder why they did this? And then it turned out that one, then two titles. Not saying this is going to turn out the same way. I couldn't think of any other examples though. How quickly can they trade Paul George? What are the rules now? How long do they have to hold on to I mean, you can separate the time? OK, they still, I didn't know if there was like if this was

“one of those trades where you have to sit on them for some period of time before he comes trade”

eligible again? I like to wait no more. And then said they're not trading trade Murphy. What do I do? Traim Murphy's going around everywhere saying like, "Yeah, I don't know where I'm going. I'm definitely getting traded." They talked about New Orleans and Brooklyn with two most confounding franchises. Luke Hall and Melbourne, Australia. Love Melbourne, Australia. He said after hearing your list of, "Oh no!" trades on the podcast was Zach.

Should we start ranking trades for shock factor? The same as earthquakes like on the Richter scale. The Luca trade would be a 9.5, the largest ever recorded. It's true. You could factor it after shock, tsunamis, and more for trade analysis. 9.9. It's a full 10. Yeah, how would argue the Luca trade was in 97? Well, I think it's a 10. That's like the end of civilisation. Whatever the highest nine was like your whole cities ruined that. That was straight to half

right. Yeah. So maybe Luca said that was catastrophic until the league fixed the Cooper flag pick. I think a 10 would be like, "Go K.C. trading shade go just Alexander for Kevin Hurder straight up." That'd be a 10. What about? What about the Celtics trading jailing brown for Paul George? And two first round picks. I think it's at least at least a seven and a half.

“I would say so. The thing is we knew that we're shopping them. So that's what the Luca trade”

does. We've gotten off these Paul George contracts the last three years. What was the number one western wizard's Richter scale trade? Good. Probably Chris Mitch Richmond for Chris Weber. That was pretty bad. You were so sad. Actually, you know what? No, it's not that. It was we traded Ben Wallace for hold on. I know this. The guy from Orlando. Oh, God. I know his name. I'm sorry. I can't pull it right now. It was a horrendous horrendous rate. Yeah, because Ben

Wallace went to Detroit and became a cornerstone. The most important player on multiple

contending teams for them. So it was, uh, I costed. I costed. Yeah, I knew I could pull it. It was a net trade. Legs and legs. What do how he feels about it? I cost him. I remember. I had the digital city column back then, but no podcast. You were just a occasional character in my, in my column. I don't think you waited on the record on that. But I know from phone calls. You were absolutely furious and upset because you were going to wizard's games and you were like, this guy Ben Wallace.

There's something here. Yeah. And then they traded them for I costed. God. Good fun. All right. Now that Kyle Larry is official retired as a raptor. I need to ruling. This is from Big Moan, Toronto. It's Kyle Larry Hall Famer. Six All Stars, one on B.A. Champion, Olympic gold. He will get a jersey retired. Anyway, but we can't control the Hall of Fame. So as you know, I've been

who was in it. I did have him in the extended honorable mention. Um, second best part in a championship

team. He did get 13 on B.A. once, 2019 playoffs, 15, 5 and 7 and 24 games with the all the defense stuff that he did. I wrote down best love him on your team. Hey, them if he's on anyone else's team guy of his era, basically, which is land beer, moorn, Bruce Bowen, those kind of guys. He was probably the most talented of all those types of players. Um, and everyone gets into the Hall of Fame.

“So the answer is he's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. He's in. Are you kidding me?”

Yeah, he went in. He's 20,000 points. He'll be in. I get this. The NBA is something. Jack M writes. I've heard several takes on how the mellow will fit with the Minnesota. But people aren't talking enough

about the biggest problem with this trade. The mellow ball will be living in Minnesota throughout

the winter. The worst driver of our air is going to be driving at snow and ice for four months. This can't end well. You're going to have to call con and Uber and get to Minnesota to predict ant at all costs. We cannot let him get an automobile with the mellow behind the wheel. We now people have been joking about this, but it's it's possible. We haven't joked enough about it. It's like he couldn't handle Charlotte. Charlotte's nice. It should be in his contract that he

“Uber's only drug. Yes. Yes. It doesn't not a new Uber. Just a driver. I think he likes driving”

it. Well, that means he likes driving track. He's going to drive that giant giant truck and could be far go to. Paul from Liverpool, UK. He said, FAO conspiracy bill. Myopic new salary cap rules, most talent leagues after have ever had not enough max salary slots, potentially disgruntled players at himself or now trying to rush expansion to open up more salaries and more max slots. What are your

thoughts? I don't think they're related. Yes. I did maybe think that I'd tend to agree with you. You think that the expansion will open up the cap that the cap will increase because of the expansion? The cap will increase the ability to take 24 players and move them around and give some cap relief. Then if you're an expansion team, like if he beats up protected the last year of his deal,

let's say they started in 2728 or 2829. If you're Vegas, do you make and be like one of your first

picks in the expansion because you get Joe L. M. B for you. Right. Okay. I get it. Except for Mirrors in

“New York says, why is no one in the media discussing just how terrible the pelicans rebuild is going?”

Is it a retool or a repoop? You tell me. Traimer fees still on this team. Why exactly? Missy is suddenly feverishly untouchable. Derek Queen. He's untouchable. Herb Jones. They're letting content with just letting him run away in a smoothie-coated hellhole. And what in the ever-loving fuck is that in Williamson still doing there? From the outside, it looks less like a plan and more like someone forgot to hit simulate on the rebuild. What are they doing? What is this team?

He forgot one. They just didn't just hire Jamal Mosley to be the question he did. He's not. He's coming up with a seven-game playoff series. Well, he's hot because he was sitting on the god damn hot seat for the entirety that are less deliated. Yes, they haven't been Brooklyn. I have no fucking idea what they're doing. Do Mars when he traded McCollum's expiring for two years of Jordan pool, one of my favorite underrated bad trades of the decade. Bless up. Bless

up. So they still Jordan pool on an expiry. They have Murphy, Herb Jones. They did not have the number of pick this year. Of course. They still have Murray. I don't know. I don't know. That's a team. Who was it? Willie Green was the head coach? Yeah. It was just two years ago. And they were on pace to win nearly 50 games. Of course, I got hurt. But there was a case to be made for Willie Green, like he was quietly taking a lot of that talent. And here we are with them once again.

They have some sort of swap with Milwaukee that I've, I just, yeah, they have a valuable because Milwaukee's got a stink stink. I, it's either 27 or 20. I don't know. There's been so many things. I have this document with all the draft picks and I don't even know what's right anymore. But they have a swap with apparently with New Orleans and Milwaukee where New Orleans gets the best of those two picks. But that, yeah, that's all right. I have that correct. So that's not bad.

All right, a couple more. Watching upset. This is from Craig from Durham, North Carolina.

“Watching obsession. Did you see a session? I didn't sign me up. You should, it's you can,”

you can pay for view it on whatever. Okay. Watching obsession got me thinking about Kevin Durant. His career has all the telltale signs of a poorly worded wish coming true. That's the focus of obsession. That's the thing. Makes a wish it goes badly. All right. After being eliminated in 2016, Durant made a wish to probably sign it something like, I wish I was part of the best team of all time. He then got his chance. Unfortunately, after that, numerous injuries

foot on the line, sabotaged a couple of teams never got the respect he wanted. That's an interesting

analogy. He did get what he wanted. He would that 2017 wearing scene was, I think the best team of this century. See, Durant were the old man Lakers in the finals. Who do you have in that? The Warriors. Back to back finals on BP, right? Didn't he get it both years? Yeah. Patrick Westanoff is Jaylin Brown replaced Kat now as this generation's 90, 10 guy.

“Whereas 90% good, but everybody dwells on the 10% and he said, my other choice was Kat, but I think he”

washed himself of his sins with the last postseason. I think that's true. I agree. So Jaylin, that was that Westbrook call. I wrote in 2012 about everybody has 10% that's not great in some guys. It's

more glaring than others. And Russell Westbrook's was always the most glaring. And that's a little bit

like what Jaylin's like. Cal from Ottawa said after watching Argentina's scrape by Egypt, got me thinking about messing in his relationship with his teammates. I think he has to be the most number one most loved teammate of all time. Who else would you add to the list? Steph, et cetera, et cetera he goes. For basketball, I think Steph and Duncan and Nash. Glad you had Duncan. I agree with that. I think for for the last 25 years and it seems like Brunson might be pretty close.

Yeah, it's good. Good. Like that direction. And then going backwards, I think Russell is probably the all-time example of this. Jerry West was another good one. Bill Wallman was healthy. Wasn't magic. Magic. You know, he didn't get a coach fire there. He didn't. He didn't get room next to trade it. Like I don't think it was perfect, but I you know, I think everybody loved that magic out there too. David B. from the Bay Area was listening to me, talked to Zach about

how I thought they needed a third card in soccer. In Gaelic football and Hurling. Oh, in Ireland. Yeah. They have similar yellow and red cards soccer, but they also have a black card that works like power play. Oh, if you get a black card, you're out of the game for 10 minutes and your team's at a disadvantage and then you come back. Oh, I like this. I started to think about how this could play the NBA and other sports. You get technical foul. You're out for two minutes.

Your team plays five on four. I got to say I did think about it a little bit. I think for soccer, like the balligan red card, if they had just given them the black card instead, it's just out

“for 15 minutes and you have to play one man down and then he comes back. I'd like that more than just”

this like do or die with the way it is now. My, my complaint with the balligan red card was the the next game. Like I even if he had set out the remainder of the game in which he'd committed that foul, um, I could have like kind of understood that, but kicking them out for the next game and he was the game in a half. That was like a Wemby elbow. If when Wemby elbow, who did Wemby elbow? Nasrid. Nasrid. He had to leave that game in the first half, and then if he had also missed the

next game, that's like you basically. Well, that was possible because we wonder whether he was going to get an expansion and there was some discussion at the time around whether or not, you know, the league would would step up that way. Daniel from Toronto wants to know, are the raptors forest gump and is quite Jenny. They unconditionally and deeply love the person, but they walk out and you cheat on you, dabble and rot and sketchy behavior and when it all goes to shit with

persuading nothing so you take them back and provide a net of safety and support for their final chapter. I guess forest juniors, the 2019 title, um, you don't want to guess what he said aspiration was.

Um, but uh, I do like the analogy of Jenny gump is quite. It's pretty good. The problem is I love

you, Jenny. This next chapter in Toronto. It's not going to go well. Well, yeah, then into it,

fades. Jack, Jake's never confirmed in the forest. We did a whole thing at the forest cup. We think

“it was probably. Yeah. I was there for that pod. Wash it. That's right. Jake's standard said,”

if I could bet on when the bronze James plays his last professional game of basketball, what would the odds be for him to retire in 2028, but after the Summer Olympics gold medal game. Interesting. Hmm. Two more years plays for the Olympic team. Does the last year is the farewell tour and then the Olympics is the last moment. The question you just want 43 year old, the bronze James involved in our gold medal game. This

is going to be the greatest Olympics basketball of all time. Wow. This could be a house gets divorced. Olympics. No, I don't know how you don't come out for all the basketball for like two and a half a week with that. I mean, there was ways to do that and stay married. I feel like, okay, good. That was a good answer. But I, wow. I do love the idea of LeBron having something to do with that team. I really do love it. Huge fan of the bottom. This is from Darren. I'm a diehard miserable Metz and Metz fan.

As a Metz fan, there's a Jalen Brown comp staring us in the face. Peter Lanzo. Consistently when on top of our FBI guys, the league, the metric geeks, I'll think he's not worth the big money and Metz let him go. Payed all these other guys. All them got hurt, missed time and can't do what Pete did at the putter on the field. Doing them the makes this comp perfect. The Celtics, shit, the bed. Please know David Stern would have made this Jalen Brown trade in a heartbeat.

That made me feel worse. Just just no question. What does that mean? David Stern would have made the Jalen Brown trade the Metz guy? Yeah, saying like it as the Piedalonza. Oh, um, Dan Fayhee from the North End thinks that sliding doors for the whole Celtics trading JB saga is not Tatum getting the Achilles injury, but poor Zingus getting the mystery illness. Okay.

The second half of 2025, which went to them not being able to beat the next.

Right. Tatum getting hurt and game four. Okay. And if poor Zingus is healthy, maybe less minutes on

“Tatum and maybe that's what they want to. There was something to this theory I do like it.”

Andy, well, well, there's a couple more cook ones. Andy from QC, I forgot to mention this team before the draft. Andy about the QC, where's QC? QC Philippines, phenomenal. Hello Philippines. He wants to know why we didn't make the bands, the Bots Lombias connection. And ironically, AJ was the one that made it. I don't see it. I don't feel like there. Yeah. I don't see the comparison. But I mean, I see it. Yeah. The way they present, um, I'll say this with with no

disrespect intended in any way shape or form towards my guy, AJ. Um, bias was a much more physical player. Yeah. And he, he, he could bully guys. We didn't see that version. AJ might grow into his body and get there. But, but I mean, bias was a beast on the block. He was capable of, you know, creating advantage out of just sheer physicality. And, and AJ, again, he's not there yet. It's so funny that he was both our favorite college players, but we didn't know each other yet.

And you had even bigger ties to him because it was Maryland. I mean, I was going to games at Cole Fieldhouse. It's a top five NBA would have some brutal. Alex wants to know, he said his basketball group chats having the following conversation. How many years would Seth Curry have to play to be considered the better Curry brother? Like from right now. Um, assuming he hands his dad maintains his Dallas level splits 11 points. Again, 43% three points. How many years

“played before the sheer overwhelming numbers of his career become unassailable? 40 more years?”

If he was hooping at 85, does he not become the best Curry? He's people come up with these.

This is amazing. Poor Seth, I was going to say poor Seth Curry. Fuck that. He's had an incredible

run. Yeah. I still think he'd have to go to 85. Jay from Halifax Nova Scotia said the big fondue was a great one-by-name, but can't believe we didn't go with the choke bond sure, much more. Yeah, I saw the choke, much more was out there. Yeah, I saw that. I enjoyed it. Soccer blue. All right, two more and then we're done. From Chanson, Oregon, your segment explaining truck Robinson and World B free and a recent meal bag was my favorite

five minutes of the pod this year. As a millennial NBA junkie, it's hard to get the proper sense of good, but perhaps not great players for previous areas. You can piece together,

guys. He said so many dudes, I'm on the cusp of understanding their careers. Pick a guy each week. You find fascinating. First guy he mentioned was Gus Williams. Yeah. And I'm happy to do 90 seconds on Gus Williams with you right now. 97 9 champs, best guy in the team. I have them as the unofficial playoff MVP for 1979. 26.7 points a game in the playoffs out here. He was fifth MVP in 82. He was all on BA once, second team on BA once, 13 twice. He played in the 78 finals, best guy in

that team. 79 championship, 80 Easter conference finals and held out in the 80 81 season, which I talked about in my book. He had an agent named Howard Slusher who held them out because he was underpaid

“and and basically cost him a really important year of his prime. He was the best point”

guy in the league house from 1978 to 1982. So this is a five year span and then magic took it or yeah in the magic took the torch. Lost history because this was the lowest point in the in the history of of the league right in terms of yeah it's exposure. It's the place that it occupied the league occupied in the American consciousness. So Gus Williams really lost to history. When you say a guy that averaged what did you say? 20.7 for the playoffs. No threes. There are

no threes in the NBA. Look at the scores of those basketball games and think about how good

he had to be in terms of of inside outside and he was an incredible long-range shooter like he

would have been awesome at if with the three point line. Yeah he was and then the next year he was 24 game in 15 playoff games. That team was Portland should have been the best team of that era and then while I got hurt and then Seattle basically was and they couldn't the real problem as Dennis

“Johnson who I loved obviously but I think was a little prickly Gus Williams state there's a date.”

It turned into a little bit of like a worse version of the Jalen Jason thing. Then I'm trading Dennis Johnson of Phoenix for Paul Westfall who plays that one year and then gets hurt and then Gus ends up eventually and your team for two years, Washington I remember but wasn't really the same version of himself at that point but yeah I think I think it was the best point guy in the league for a five-year stretch with Jane Nothing and the games weren't on. I think he's

somebody he was he was a classic bald guy with a beard almost like an actor could dunk on dudes would do the thing where he would go hard to the basket and wait for the big guy to come challenge it kind of wait a second and dunk on the guy. I loved his game he was one of my favorite good basketball

cards was really never on TV unless they're in the playoffs though. That's the point right. I don't

think they should see how that era that era that you just mentioned when we think of him as the best point guard in the league he had a 49.5 percent 48.2 percent 48.6 percent 47.7 percent from the field this fucking guy that's a bucket that's like that's a bucket right there. He's really good he was fast that was there was always like those were the point guards that are kind of have gone away now those John Lucas. Yeah. No I'm not Nixon Gus Williams like these Kevin Porter these fast

guys right now who was that a run a team that's a great one who is our closest in modern basketball. Like right now. Yeah because it's not brought him. I don't think we have the right because I mean the score. Yeah I would say because these guys that impetus is more to score but like I feel like somebody like a cuff could be like that but it's it's like it's the interest or more for him to shoot right but I'm gonna think on this who's a modern equivalent of Gus Johnson

Gus Williams Williams yeah he Dennis Johnson. It's he he was like a prototype though for those shooting

point guards basically who's never like a high suspect anyway I loved him go check out his YouTube

last question for Brandon Richter said 20 years ago in the mail bag I wrote to you about instances in which day drinking before 10 a.m. is acceptable and he attached the image okay for my old page to go yeah he made it and he said today the day before the next first ever ticker tape parade

“I email you wondering if you need to update the list because this seems like a reasonable excuse”

for early morning beverage I've been saving the female for you because nobody loves day drinking more than Joe House so it's a morning drinking so when I answered this in 2005 I said here's my

college reunions or the Boston marathon okay three winners yeah good during your final two weeks of

college for sure absolutely because your product there are many instances where you haven't gone to bed yes drinking because you're drinking I'm not going bad I'll just stay up oh they look it's sun the sun rise all those toast to that during any Vegas trip or batch or party or guys only golf outing a lot of a lot of time where you lose track of time the sun goes down the sun comes back up if you pulled it on later and haven't let us left the strip club yet that's in there

again this is 2005 being sorry I apologize in bits before any wedding that starts at one p.m. earlier anytime you're in laws of visiting any morning any morning when it's below 10 degrees this is a good one I don't know I came up with this big list if you're dating an actress and just attended a movie premiere during which she had a graphic sex scene with someone on a 50 foot movie screen in 2005 I don't know how to go with that well living in any town in Canada that's

farther than 75 miles from Toronto Montreal out of urban Vancouver if you've been writing for

“late night talk show for more than two years I think that was a joke about writing for Jimmy's show”

if your name is Jack Nicholson before your fantasy football draft if you're trying to get the

ball rolling so some of your other buddies get plastered I actually used to do this there's always one

guy I got married to soon falls for it and then I have a mean bigard jokes that I'm not going to repeat because he actually wishes that's way meaner in 2005 what are the other reasons that I didn't put in there well you you touched on it briefly you said the ticker tape release the but well the ticker tape break goes in but really many rounds of golf many many many rounds of golf like you know like a bloody Mary on the golf course or a bloody Mary as you

head over to the first T that's a pretty tried and true staple like that that really lands for sure I got two more that as we got older I thought of okay both involved bloody bears because we I wasn't really a bloody Mary guy in my early mid-30s the bloody Mary the next day

“when you're hungover yeah I just think is important in somewhat life-changing and I think you”

might have even introduced me to it you were my wife you're two suspects yeah and then on the plane oh the great call the morning I didn't sleep enough last night I just wanted to have one drink to get me a little bit more tired so I can sleep a little bloody Mary and then I get a little sleepy or it's the rev up so I'm going to this destination I want to be loose I'm going to start drinking now to six a.m. flight to Vegas cross country and you start drinking on the flight at like 10 30

my home vacation vacation starts when my ass is in the plain seat can you bring you some champagne yes you can well there's also better alcohol now that they have like my daughter drinks this I forget what it's called but it's bottles and it's iced tea and lemonade with something in it there's a lot of those out there she likes one of those high noon surf side so yeah yeah

“yeah surf side that's what she did but people have those and they feel like they're not drinking”

but they're actually drinking yeah they're definitely drinking definitely nice one of those over a couple of ice that's a drink that I'll drink on the golf course at eight forty five in the morning oh I've just played seven holes let me get a drink you're most of your day drinking of robots around golf in some sort of stuff yes before the round during the round and after the round I don't understand how you're able to play golf when you have drinks in you

I mean first of all I suck so that's one piece of it is there a point where you feel like

you're getting better and then you get worse and sometimes it does create you know that the the taking the pressure off whatever you're sort of feeling about your game up to that point there's an element of that to it and I mean everything's within moderation let's just be real I'm not I'm out out there you know trying to make walking up the 18th fairway shape that's not the goal well plus it's hot you gotta be quiet you gotta be careful don't want to end up you know

having the ambulance come to the Mexican restaurant patio because that's out there for five hours drinking it doesn't hide news trying to avoid that try to avoid that forget about that one all right house have you been enjoying bed in the world cup I mean we we we have I don't I'm gonna knock on wood I don't want to say I have been enjoying it we've been pretty good that's what I'll just leave it at that there's been

I should have had I should have had I didn't I feel like I said 24 to one did you tell

“though America that you had a 24 to one ticket a four leg par leg and the first three legs hit”

yeah and then you even put into the thread the hedge and the bundle told you just wait until after it was Spain was the third leg right and then we set up for a perfect hand one and regular

time the amazing hedge you would have been a judge I thought it was for you this is why I'm stupid

oh my god it's freaking USA soccer I'm sorry so this thing is bad karma they think they think they put a 38 year old dude with a man bun this is the thing I'm not gonna go do the rant I do understand where everybody's coming from in terms of the rebuttals to the idea that are best athlete if we had our best athletes yeah we'd be better and then there's a lot of rebuttals or there's a different thing to it the skillset developing the skillset I do feel like

I asked this on a pod this week where where where would you put Tim Riem in terms of American

“athletes right now I'll give you the over under 5,000 fucking athletes in the United States of America”

is this guy on inside the top 5,000 US athletes at the moment or no see I don't blame Tim Riem

because I don't think he probably even deep down wonders why he's the sweeper when he's 38 years old 30 years old and he was our best guy in the team that guy one of our three guys who we have back to stop all that things that can happen in the best countries of the world so this is the problem when you when guys say well there's a fair rebuttal like this the skill set that gets to develop whatever this dude's 38 freaking years old he's been banned but the 64 guy from Belgian just jumped over him

like what well the other issue is I went back I was going through I was bummed out after we lost I was going through the 2002 the run they had yeah where they beat Mexico and the Mexico started cheap shopping everybody that's 15 it's unbelievable one guy is like a flying headbutt like he's in blood sport basket gets kicked out but then we lose to Germany on a handball play we lose one nothing we actually score a goal that hits the German guys arm and they don't call it it would have

been called the goal now with the with the VA or yeah we lose one nothing but that was you know when we talk about like best American teams that's clearly the best team we've had that team was actually like you know going toe to toe but when you think about the reasons they're going toe to toe they

“had a bunch of tough motherfuckers in that team and that's what when I think about like the”

world cup I've been watching all these other teams how feisty everybody is now there's a nasty side to these things did you feel like we had a nasty side because I didn't see that at all we have some great tough athletes I think but do we have do we have nasty dude for even who do you want to be nasty I'm just saying like we need to send our team to nasty camp because all these other teams they're pulling arms they're pulling jerseys they're throwing elbows they're starting shit there

so this is the challenge right this is the physicality you're describing we've seen this this is why there's you know this instinct to go to what if we got our our our better athletes out there or stop the athletes it's tough it's tough but here it's my eyes when my eyes see to me I fall down every time somebody touches him I've seen I've been watching fucking football I've been watching college football I've been you know these guys don't get tipped over

but they don't get knocked off the ball can't even get knocked out he just gets up and he's like this tough to do and also can't get really knocked off the ball right there's the plenty of physicality and he can't get knocked off of it that dude guessed the fuck is that guy well I was thinking the 2002 finals that we went to those games wereer Celtics

and the wereer is basically big boy the Celtics and the Celtics kind of didn't know how to fight back

and got pushed them around at all that's kind of what the US is like in the world cup every four years feels like these teams Belgium big boy us you know and then there's Trump dance us and the locker room after the game like that so I got it it's not just a Tim Riem obviously they had some holes there was you know some speed on the sides and then can we can we get an awesome somebody who's a stopper I mean upon reflection we had we were sort of lulled into a miss

understanding around what this team's true caliber potential you know the true especially yeah when you when you hear like people like the bundo and CR and these people that watch Premier League and the league uh and all these dudes in these other teams have all these guys that you know like that number 10 on Belgium who's on arsenal and is awesome I don't watch a lot of arsenal but they have all these dudes who've been in just big games all year right and our guys you know so

really fun enjoying it but yeah it's it's this is probably where we're gonna max out all the time around

around the around the 16 maybe so unless we get some of it I'm okay with it all right once every four

years and how's good luck with the bonson uh Peterson big nice night I hope you guys have a chance

“honestly he's gonna show up you know Peterson's gonna look awesome everybody get prepared for that”

all right I'll talk to you this week thanks buddy all right that's it for the podcast thanks to

House thanks to go out and Eduardo as always don't forget Ollie rewatchables that is up

“she's the one and hit her the next two coming and I will see you at some point on Sunday live”

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