Transcript of 2026 NBA Draft Winners and Losers With Joe House and J. Kyle Mann

Meditieren, Yoga, Joggen— nichts entspannt mich. Echt?

Mich entspannt meine Steuer total.

Steuer? Wie Finanzamt?

Die Steuererklärung? Ja, ich hab ganz locker über €1000 zurückbekommen.

Hast du geheime Connections?

Nö, nur die WISO Steuer App.

Wow! Und das ist einfach?

Klar, die macht fast alles automatisch. Plötzlich fühle ich mich so entspannt.

Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Tiefenentspannt mit WISO Steuer. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. You know a clutch move when you see one. A no-look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steal. Well, imagine if your wallet could pull off moves like that. That, my friends, is PayPal. Right now you can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, Allbirds, and Viater, and save offers before you check out. Earn unlimited rewards. Plus you can add those rewards on top of credit card points. Now that is clutch. Download the PayPal app today. Save those offers. Start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply. See paypal.com/rewardsterms. Credit card points subject to issuers' terms and conditions. The Bill Simmons Podcast, live on Netflix for my favorite day of the year. It's pretty sad that this is my favorite day of the year, but it's the NBA Draft. I'm with J. Kyle Mann from The Ringer. I'm with the deliriously happy and possibly drunk Joe House, whose team had the number 1 pick and took AJ Dabansa. We'll talk about that later. Uh, we have a little gimmick. It's just for the live Netflix, uh, show only.

We're gonna have some voting. They started this poll thing that they did during, uh, Star Search, and we have borrowed the technology, and we're gonna be able— if you're watching this live on Netflix, you're gonna be able to vote on stuff, including House's blood alcohol level. Wanted to mention we put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Domestic Disturbance, the funniest from hell movie of all the from hell movies. Had a great time with Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan. We have another one coming on Thursday, The Good Son. You can hear House's golf podcast Fairway Rollin', and you can listen and watch Kyle Mann on the Ringer NBA show. Okay guys, winners and losers, and I have mostly winners, and I'm gonna start here, J. Kyle Mann is a guy who works on our Ringer NBA draft guide and does lots of YouTube clips and studies and obsesses over the draft. The draft's become less and less fun over the course of the decade as everybody just makes logical, smart decisions and nobody messes up. And we have no monkey wrenches and no wildcards and no great players falling. I had the first 12 picks, regardless of the order, I thought were the 12 best guys in the draft.

There were no, No stumbles at all. Is this just where we are now? We have too much intelligence. How do you explain this?

It seems like the nerds have taken over and the math has kind of crept into the point where even I just feel like it's created these little guardrails for if you have a wild take, you know, I just feel like we, we have so much more numbers justification. You know, scouting has improved. The information has improved across the board. I feel like we have fewer and fewer just kind of like good old boy network GM kind of front office people out there. I mean, there's maybe one or two left, but they're dwindling by the day. Uh, yeah, but I went through and I was doing my grades on this, and I was like, it was hard to really ding anybody hard for anything. I was like, I don't, I don't really have any like D's or F's, you know. It's— there aren't any like Kentell Woods, or what was the, what was the Juco guy that you guys took? Keith, uh, Keegan Brown, or not Keegan, or what was his name?

Kendrick Brown.

Kendrick Brown. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We don't get those. How about the 20 guys House's team took? Yeah. I mean, I, 20 years ago, I just feel like the Kings would've taken Nate Ayment and we would've been like, what are they doing? And now they just take Darius Aikov House. You don't care 'cause your team ended up with the number 1 pick. And by the way, my team is about to kick the pick at number 27, the Celtics, who have had a tumultuous week. I don't know if we're taking a team psychiatrist or an actual player. But, uh, we're gonna experience my reaction live. House, your reaction. We had a lot of little birdies telling us that AJ was going to DC, um, for the last month, and that's what happened. But were you scared in the moment of truth that that wasn't gonna happen?

No, no, no. And, and honestly, uh, you have to just, just keep the faith. Let all of the stuff happen out on the periphery. Let everybody talk their talk. I do want to set up right away, my blood alcohol content level is, is at equilibrium. I'm at 0.0. No booze or, or boozer. No booze or boozer. I stand with my Mormon brother AJD. I welcome him to Washington, D.C. Me and AJ, the band, where no booze for us tonight because we're setting the the, the, the path for a, a very clean start to, to our careers.

Well, that's not the house I know. And Chris Ryan stepped up for you last night because we brought him on for the— it wasn't an emergency podcast cuz we knew Giannis was getting traded, so we called it an urgent gathering. It was me and CR and Varier, and CR had come home from dinner and had had a couple cocktails.

Yeah.

CR, he was a lively CR and he was especially— oh, here we go. This is the only time I'll do this during our live Netflix draft. The pick is in. They're showing Isaiah Evans. Adam, the Adam Silver's on the clock and he's gonna tell us that the Celtics are taking, oh, a Houston forward. Kyle, man, what do you think of that pick?

Sennak?

Yeah.

He's somebody that I've been a little more skeptical on because I, I said I thought he was kind of in this. Well, caveat, he's, he's a guy that he's one of those conditional kind of dependent guys. It's like if, if he went to a team with like poor developmental structure, I would be worried about him because I'd worry that his offense was just in this weird purgatory that needed to be straightened out where he was like a hypothetical stretch 4 who really only got ran. He really didn't attack the rim even if he got run off the line. He would take these like long 2s that weren't pretty. Uh, he had to kind of be spoon-fed any offense that he got, but he's very big, he's very athletic, he has long arms, good rebounder.

I like defensive— I like him in college.

Yeah, I trust the Celtics to kind of detangle him and make sense of him. So that's a good one.

6 double-doubles last year. House, pick 27.

Okay, you needed size. I mean, it's why you got your asses handed to you by the Sixers, man.

One of many reasons.

One of many.

Including the fact that we started Ron Harper Jr. in Game 7, who hadn't played the whole series.

Maybe overthought it a little.

All right, so winners and losers, and I have mostly winners, and we're going to go through this. I did not send you the list. I'm going to be surprising you guys with all of these, and we can react, and it's a way for us to talk about the draft. As I mentioned, the big winners is just competence. Just, just teams over and over again doing what seemed to be relatively the right thing. Boring.

Here's how you know.

But you just kind of, it was always like, okay, they should take him. And then they would.

Here's how you know. The Kings just sat tight. They didn't do anything crazy. They just sat tight and let the guy that made the most sense for them, the guy they had their eye on, he just landed in there. No, no irrational behavior out of the Kings. Now you know.

You saw what the Clippers tried to do because there's so many, there's so many info guys and newsletter guys and you could basically get any message that you want out. All of a sudden, within 2 days of the draft, there was a, the Clippers are really becoming intrigued by Acuff. They like him. They've spent a lot of time on him.

He could go.

Screenshots of the player development coach's son. That was one of my more, that was one of the more entertaining, like, I don't know if that was an angular approach or what that was about.

Could you play handcuff and Darius Garland together? It might happen. And Vivek, you know, it, it was like, it was just like watching somebody stay disciplined at a blackjack table for the first time ever and be like, nope, I'm just gonna double down on 11 here. Do they keep Vivek in like, like the, like in The Wolfman?

Like they have leather straps over his wrists and he can't touch his phone. He's just like, or Hannibal Lecter or whatever it is.

They definitely like, that article came out and they were definitely like, we can't let Vivek see this. He's gonna trade our unprotected 2029 firsts to move up 2 spots. So yeah, uh, House, I'll start with renewed hope, like legitimate renewed hope in Washington, Utah, Memphis, Chicago, Sacramento. 5 punching bags, 5 teams that have been in the lottery a bunch of times or have rebuilt a bunch of times. Teams that I think during the course of last year were either egregiously tanking or not as blatantly tanking or actually screwing up the tank in Sacramento's case. And now that's one-sixth, one-sixth of the league has hope.

Well, and the crazy thing is, in the context of a third of the league tanking last season, for each of the teams you just rattled off, you can come up with a decent, interesting core of guys, 2 or 3 or 4 young guys all on this kind of trajectory. We're on the same rookie contract. Like, look at this little nucleus that's, that's coming together. The bummer for those teams, and, and this is one of the things I'm looking at from the Washington perspective, the league is good. The league is better. Like, you know, if, if we're— if teams aren't tanking next year, I was going through the Eastern Conference standings trying to find who the 3 worst teams are. You know, is there a pathway for Washington to get to the play-in? Well, yes, But you know what? It's not easy. It's not an easy path. And obviously the West is, is, you know, just nails across the board, especially like I look at that Utah roster. I'm like, wow, look at that.

I can't wait to talk about that. Yeah. That's coming together.

But look at the West.

Your stupid team paid Trae Young, but you have Trae Young. The Nets traded for Julius Randle, but then now they have Julius Randle. So you have the, this whole weird thing that they did, Kyle, with the, with the draft order and the two ping pong balls. If you're in the bottom three, it already seems like it's affected some of the stuff we've seen, right? Like that teams, teams are actually okay getting, you know, basically good stat, bad team guys, which, sorry House, but that's what Trae Young has, has, has been. And that's what Julius Randle is.

Just say sorry to me.

Might be what Michael Porter is, but Kyle, is this where we're going?

Uh, I mean, it seems like it. Uh, well, it's going to be interesting to see how things shake up here now as, um, these teams— like House was saying, it's such a radical shakeup that all these have-nots and hopeless wanderers in the desert are just no longer— it was like quick change. It was like the Jazz just have this like sight unseen team that might be— I know, House, you were talking about being like a playing team. Like, the Jazz might be I was— we were joking about it on group chat where I was like, are they better than the Suns and the Blazers instantly with the roster that they have? Like, and, and they're rolling this out. And I know we'll talk about it more in detail, but pretty, pretty dramatic shift in terms of the competency and the way that these teams are being ran.

Well, let's talk about them first. House, we'll save your team. We can talk about them for a while. Oh, we have the biggest winner of round 1 was the first poll we did on the live Netflix, and House's Wizards, 36%. So maybe the audience wants us to talk Wizards first. That's fine. We'll do that. Winner, the Wiz.

Yeah.

AJ Dabansa. Dabansa. I'm just going to call him Dabansa and Dabansa. I'm going to screw it up for 10 years.

Yeah.

How's your first kick-ass competitive wing since when? Oh, wow. Karan Butler?

Otto Porter. Otto Porter was a pretty, you know, they paid, they maxed him.

Otto Porter. They maxed the poison pill.

Otto Porter. He was a high-quality role player.

He was part of the Big Three. We almost beat the Celtics to make it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals.

I remember you texting me during his rookie year being like, I'm out. You just said like third pick.

The saddest thing is that you and Jalen, that was the era where you and Jalen were interviewing the prospects as they came in. And you fed me some information that wasn't very flattering.

Well, yeah, we were lukewarm on him. We liked McCollum the most. The one, the one we were the most, the one we were the most worried about was the kid who lied about his age, whose name I can't even remember because it was so far ago. But, uh, so favorite AJs ever?

Don Maker, right? Was that right?

No, not Don Maker. It was, uh, it was the shooting guard. I can't remember, blanking. He was a lefty. I can't remember. Anyway, Shabazz Muhammad. Shabazz Muhammad. There we go.

Wow. Incredible.

So AJ Soprano is the worst case AJ scenario, I think. House, right? AJ Feely's in the middle. Okay. I don't know, I couldn't come up with AJ Foyt.

You didn't, you didn't get AJ Foyt. Don't you remember that?

AJ Foyt's a good one.

Maybe this is from our youth.

Now here's where Kyle fills a pot of water and dumps it on your head. Kyle, you think they should take a Boozer? Just make the case.

No, this is a can't lose draft. I mean, I, I gave the top 3 picks all A pluses because how often are you going to get— and they said it repeatedly on the podcast. It is true, you could choose your flavor here of this Neapolitan sweetness of prospect goodness at the top of this draft and come away satisfied. Um, there's a perfectly reasonable case for taking AJ that I understand, that is very sober, like House tonight, unfortunately. But I just thought that, uh, I thought the, the basketball— you know, I said this to you all repeatedly— I just thought in the basketball sense, to make them a competitive team that was going to be very efficient and focused and get the most and elevate their guys I thought Boozer made a lot of sense. But if they end up having Trey on the team, which it seems like they're going to, and if AD hangs around and you think about putting Sarr at the 4 and then you put AJ at the 3 and then you got Trey or Bub or whatever it's going to be at the 2, or Kai'Shawn, or, you know, Will Riley's been showing out and looking good, um, about the 2.

But I, I think they suddenly have a pretty balanced team. Like, it's going to be pretty interesting, I think.

So, so, House, I, I was studying carefully this whole week and all the interviews and then even today, and at one point The pre-show, somebody complimented his outfit and he said, I actually went to France to find this and brought it back. I'm like, I don't know if I love that. Why don't you love that? I didn't, I didn't love it. I was like, how about getting in the gym and working on some threes? Um, but he's, he's very polished, almost a little too polished, like polished enough where I'm like, huh, he almost seems like a 19-year-old.

He's trying.

I mean, this is a very polished 19-year-old, right?

Yeah, that's right. So polished that the league selected him as their sort of youth draft correspondent to go participate and interview people and, you know, be in the playoffs and be kind of a digital media guy for the— that's a lofty role. That's— I loved that. I thought it was very positive reflection on his maturity. By contraddistinction, it was, you know, when you're splitting the hairs so fine, His, his personality coming out was the kind of the opposite of what we saw out of Darren Peterson. Now you're not drafting personality here, but you know, we are trying to come up with a reason to choose one guy over another. And that's part of why I like Dibansa.

Yeah. Peterson seemed a little better after he got picked. He felt like you could see the weight. We'll talk about him in a second. So winner, Dibansa. Who, you know, we've talked about a bunch in the pod. I remember, when was that? Early February I had you on the pod, Kyle, and I was like, DeBonce is gonna go first. Like, this is, this is a wrap. The guy's, he's, he's too filled out already. Like, what's he gonna look like when he is 27? And there's just not a lot of guys like him. He's somebody that could have played in any of the last 3 playoff series we watched. He could have been thrown out there. He would've survived physically. There's, if you're nitpicking, I don't know, he, like, he talked about his off-ball defense. Like, some people don't love his shot yet. It's all stuff that will get better and better as he goes along. But he seems like, at one point, House, he said, I've been number 1 my whole life. I expected to go number 1 in this draft. Kyle, that's just like the kind of confidence I think you would want from your number 1 pick, right?

Yeah, I mean, he's, he has earned confidence. I think an interesting thing about Davonta too that I've, I've been amused by through watching him come up through the grassroots circuit and knowing people that have interviewed him and his family, um, there is just a stern focus about them, you know, as a group. And I have friends who know his dad who were like talking about he would have AJ talk to these different players and just to like kind of get on his ass basically, uh, on purpose to give him feedback, critical feedback. And he, and he, and his dad specifically, I remember said, I don't kiss his ass ever. He was just like on him all the time. So they kind of like that going on.

That's the Rick Brunson strategy. Worked. What's the next title?

And, and I wanted to tell House is I was thinking about this this week. If we watch these playoffs and we think about the way it gets officiated, if you watch your beloved Denny Avdija, if you watch just any of these downhill guys, or whether it be Shea or whoever, you think about DeBonce's specific set of gifts. He's not like, I'm just gonna roast you with a live dribble. He's not like one of those nuclear athletes, but he's— his gracefulness and his balance and his power combined with being a pretty good athlete, uh, getting downhill makes him really potent. And I wanted to throw this stat at you, House. I was looking up at—

listening—

I was looking at this, uh, did you want to jump in, Bill, real quick?

No, go, you do it.

There was, there was, uh, paint touches in Division I college basketball this year, guys that averaged over 20 per game. The top 5 is all point guards. Uh, number 1 is Ibuka Okorie, who got drafted tonight. He was nice, just downhill. We like Darius Darius, this is efficiency among guys that had over 20 a game. Darius Aitkuf was number 2 among these point guards. Number 3 downhill paint touch efficiency scoring the ball, AJ DeBonsa.

So that's, that's, let's go.

That guy's 6'9". So he is, he's set up to just get to the line and score a ton just by the way he plays.

I mean, we could do a whole thing of, of, of effusive praise for what he's bringing to the table. The, of that, how, how easy it seemed like the scoring came, especially after Saunders got hurt, where he became the focal point of the offense. But what I really love is he goes both ways. I love seeing him go left.

We don't care about his personal life.

Oh, pause.

Jesus.

It's like, it's like 11:30. Are you drunk? No, I'm just kidding.

Go.

And 3 hours ago you would've gotten that.

I got it immediately.

The, the, here's the thing with AJ, he's not LeBron. Obviously nobody's gonna be LeBron. We'll probably never see LeBron again. So don't aggregate this. I'm not saying he's next LeBron. How many guys have come into the league since LeBron where you say to yourself, eh, kind of a LeBron body, right? Where you look at him and go, eh, I could see him at age 27 looking a little LeBron-ish. We, That is not a long list, Kyle Mann. I would say that's less than 10 guys that we've had come into the league, and sadly not all of them are good. Like maybe you could have said that about Josh Jackson, like, oh, Josh Jackson when he is 27, he might be ripped. He turned out he wasn't in the league, but physically I think it's just gonna be really easy for him to get his points. And the fact that he produced in college I think matters, which is same thing for Boozer. So the Wiz are a winner. Sadly, they're also a loser house 'cause you gave Trae Young 4 years, $212 million with a player option year 4 that I think he's already picked up.

I don't know who you were bidding against. I don't know why you did it. It was inexplicable. We're gonna do Worst Contracts with Waz in March. I was screenshotting you pictures of us trying with, with the first, second, or third pick next March.

Why?

We have to wait till March. Why can't you have good things? Why can't you have good things for a week? Why did this have to happen?

I, this is what I said with all the local folks here. Like, did they have to announce this on Monday? Why couldn't we just wait till Friday or something? Make it a Friday news dump. Let everybody be in the honeymoon period with AJ. It would've been fine. And I had already wrapped my head around the idea that Trae Young was gonna be in my life for the, the next 3 years. I imagined 3 years, 140, 100, maybe like we're, we're crazy.

How about 100? How about 3 for 100? Sounds great.

All it really, you know, um, but the, you have to like sort of go, oh, Willie, there's a floor to the salary. You have to have a floor to your salaries. And they, it's, you have 7 guys on rookie contracts. You got to pay somebody. You got to pay somebody.

I mean, you sound like CA.

You're just making it. I'm just telling you, I am literally making shit up because it makes no sense whatsoever to pay that man $53 effing million a year. No sense under any— here's my problem with it, and then I'll stop. Give me one example. I need one bit of evidence that this guy at the point guard position has made a teammate better. Give me— yes, he helped John Collins rim run. Yes, he helped Clint Capela rim run. Neither one of those fucking guys are still with the Hawks. He didn't help them, like, you know, extend their careers with the Hawks. And he was just in a situation where they had the number 1 overall pick in the draft and they had a real young stud in Jalen Johnson. And Trey couldn't coexist with those guys for whatever the reason was, stylistically, whatever the vision is, whatever Quinn Snyder's offense was. It didn't work there. So that's a lot of money for a, a, a project by which I mean— I see you over time projecting.

You had 2 minutes, you took 2 and a half.

Done.

It's, it was horrible. It was egregious. It was a crime against the Wizards. And I don't know, this would be the only reason I wouldn't want to go to a Wizards game next year. And Trae Young's not, obviously not a bad player, but I just think we did this when you did Bradley Beal and Bradley Beal was coming off a good season when you gave him the dumb contract. Trae Young was coming off a season where his team gave him away. And the revisionist history of this where it's like, well, Trae Young chose the Wizards. He did? Who wanted to trade for him? Not one person. How's that? I have this friend at CAA, Kyle, who's relatively powerful, and we were texting him like, you guys, why did you do that to the Wizards? Why did you do that? My stuff like that. Yeah, we're congratulating him. Like, you somehow you found the sucker at the poker table. Just hilarious stuff.

Anyway, they— who leads that team, House? Who's the leader of that? I— that's what we were speculating about. I was just like, I could see— I don't want to speculate too much here, but I mean, I could see AJ and Trae being at odds at some point. They like to have the ball. I just— I'm just wondering who— where— that seems like a lot of personalities that I could see.

Well, the biggest problem with Trae is he's this 3-point Curry lookalike, 3-point shooter, but the threes don't go in.

He doesn't play off the ball.

I mean, that's the key thing. Makes sense if the threes go in, but he's been, you know, low 30s now for 3 years.

Well, he's going to set up— Trey Johnson is going to have nothing but open looks. He's going to be— this is the master facilitator, uh, version of Trae Young, the one of the all-time leading assist guys by, by, you know, per game. Um, this is true, he did lead the league in assists, um, in recent memory.

That we were going to do a poll for, do you think the Wizards made a mistake with the Trae Young contract? But, uh, Netflix said we couldn't do polls where it's 100%. Yes, they made a mistake. They, they wanted us to have polls where people had 2 votes. Uh, another winner. So we mentioned this earlier, Utah. They take Peterson. We'll see how this turns out. Obviously the ceiling of this is the highest of all these guys. On paper, and it, it didn't really fully cement itself until they actually took him and he was walking up there and he seemed really relieved and happy. With Triple J, Kessler, Laurie Marketed, George Peterson. It's your starting 5. Ace Bailey is your 6th man. They have Sensabaugh, they have some good pieces. They have an owner who's gonna spend money. And you could see how they would've talked themselves into like, this is actually— Boozer would be an awesome pick for depth, and maybe he's the best guy in the draft, but if we hit with Peterson, this is like the missing piece for us. We could be like a 6th seed next year. So what, what do we expect from him next year, Kyle, man?

I mean, he could average over 20 next year, I think, for sure. That's definitely—

wow, really?

Yeah, I think so. He's like— I mean, you can't say he's one of the generational scoring talent and then not kind of— I mean, I think he could definitely do that.

Um, he's not 20 missed games, right? 20 points a game.

20 points a game. Okay. Um, I, I did— he and Keonte, I think, are the biggest question about just how do those guys find kind of a synergy together, but Man, just the shooting on a 1 through 5 shooting on that team. I mean, it's—

that's what's worked for 8 years when everybody on your, on your team in a playoff series can shoot. House, did you have a moment with him where maybe, maybe like a 1 AM you cheated on AJ and you looked at some YouTube clips and watched a little Darren Peterson and you started thinking about it?

Just your engagement ring off for an hour?

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I don't want to talk about—

careful, stay married, House.

I am married. Super happily married.

Hey, I don't wear one either.

Not a ring guy.

I don't wear jewelry.

I lost 3.

I'll make it 3. I don't either. I lost weight a while back and my ring fell off and I never got a new one.

I lost 3. I wore it 3, 3. I lost 3 different ones anyway. Um, I did flirt with the idea of a, I will say I did. Darren Peterson and I had a like 24 hours.

You had a fling.

We had 24 hours together.

You went to Cabo for 24 hours? I mean, you know, I took a look.

I was I was like, wow, maybe I, I didn't—

Wow, he looks like Kobe.

I didn't give enough— I don't think I gave this guy enough credit. I need to think about this a little bit. It really was the movie list. That's what really pushed me. Like, he's a deep thinker.

It was the most important thing he did. Oh, he looks interesting.

Outstanding.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this would be really fun. Look, great coach, stable owner. He goes with Will Hardy, goes with the stable ownership franchise, goes with a really thirsty fan base, a fan base that has been there for a long, long time since they moved there in the '80s, has had some, you know, really good moments, made two finals in '97-'98, had a nice almost run there with Williams and Boozer. And then the Mitchell Gobert thing just never really played out. But they've been once a decade, they've been relevant, and they were obviously the most relevant with Malone and Stockton. But that's a really, really starving fan base that will show up in big ways. So that might be great. I will say this, Kyle, man, Danny Ainge, really awesome track record with taking elite guys. And if he likes Peterson, that makes me feel a lot better about Peterson, as weird as that sounds, right? This is the same guy that took Durant over, or wanted to take Durant over, Oden. Like, he— I think he hones in on star talent in a unique way and obviously likes this guy. So I think that's a great sign for the Jazz.

He's never going to cower from like, oh, are you going to be able to handle— you know, unless it's just like a— are there examples The examples have just totally— you guys had him for a long time, Bill. I mean, you know the track record really well. Is there a guy that he ever was scared away from? Like, it's just not worth it? Even though you told us—

he went the other way. Yeah, he would take like the J.R. Giddens types, the, the super talented screw-up types, just because they had talent. Like, he kind of couldn't— he couldn't resist those guys. He always saw the talent. So with this, you have talent, work ethic, whole bunch of things. So Utah I don't know. This would be a good Netflix poll. Could Utah be a playoff team next year? House, do you think, could you see them as one of the top 8 seeds next year? Is that conceivable to you or no?

You're basically saying that they're going to replace Phoenix. I think that's, that's how you get there. And at least on paper, like the talent is there.

They're way more talented. Like it's not even close.

The enormous unknown is like. What's Will Hardy capable of? Like, how, how can this all come together with this team actually trying to win? And it feels like we might have the answer in the first 10 games of the season. Like, I, you, you said that you think that Peterson's going to start. I think it's fine to bring him off the bench. Let Ace start. Either way, it doesn't really matter, but it's kind of a, um, an embarrassment of riches and, and, and a really fascinating challenge for them, but the West is so good. It's Portland and Phoenix that they're going to be competing with.

Right. And Portland still has a chance to get better. We'll see with Phoenix. The Netflix audience thinks Utah should have taken Peterson, 69% on that.

Question on, you mentioned the fugitive. I was noting this in our draft grades. I was like, do you think Darren Peterson sees any sort of kinship with, you know, Richard Kimball the way he's in a bus, his, you know, his college season is like a bus crash and it's rolling down the hill and he miraculously escapes it as it explodes and still gets taken number 2. Do you think there's like some, maybe some parallels there?

Shaves his beard, dyes his hair. Yeah. It starts out bad. I mean, there was one game where he told the coach, wasn't that a big game? Like 15 minutes before the game, I'm not playing.

I'm not, not going. Yeah.

That was when I got really concerned. Look, The talent's there. We've talked about it a bunch on the pod. There's no question. If you're gonna pick who has come into the league in the last 30 years who's looked the most like young Kobe, you would pick Peterson. There's red flags though that I can't ignore. I don't know how it's gonna play out. I'd be hesitant to make a prediction, but I will say this is the best scenario I think for him. It's gonna be far away in the, in the Pacific Northwest. Is that where's, where's he from? No, that's not Pacific. Mountain, Mountain West.

Yes.

I mean, it's kind of close. It's like almost 9 o'clock. How's that? I had whole John and Vinny's 2 hours ago.

Come, it's the thing. Vegas, but like 4 hours. It's like sort, it's closer to Vegas than you think out there.

Yeah. Yeah. West Coast, whatever.

Yeah.

Uh, perfect spot for him. Well, I'm gonna take a break and regroup after saying Utah was in the Pacific Northwest.

We're gonna be back in one second.

The rest of the winners and losers. Yeah, there's some good ones. All right. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. This summer, soccer. It's here. The watch parties will be spectacular and they'll be going every day, back to back to back. Don't worry, Uber Eats has your game day essentials covered with 30% off offers from Aldi, Kroger, and Dollar General. Oh yeah. All the snacks and groceries to keep your crowd happy delivered straight to your door, like chips, dips, wings, wok, fresh ingredients for the perfect game day spread. Order in so you can stay locked in on the game. All the hosting, none of the hassle. Order now for 30% off your game day snacks and grocery order only on Uber Eats for a limited time. Offer eligible for 30% off entire order. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Offer valid through July 5th. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. Winners and losers. We gotta hit Memphis. Shout out to our guy Verno. Verno was at a draft party. He said the entire city was rooting for Boozer. No disrespect to Peterson, but I think that city's had a little bit of a rollercoaster ride the last few years with unreliable guys.

And he was basically looking forward to a guy who you could just come into the league and pencil in for 20 and 11 every year for the next 12 years of his career. He actually sent me the video. The crowd exploded at the draft party when Peterson went number 2. So this is like a classic Memphis guy. This is the grit and grind Grizzlies. He would've fit right in. You have him and Boozer, I mean him and Coward and maybe, maybe Eadie.

Wells, I think I like Wells.

Well, yeah, they have a bunch of dudes and I think you just tell 'em coming outta the gate, if, if Jah calls you to go out and celebrate the pick, tell him, tell him you, you have the sniffles and maybe get outta that one. What do you think of Boozer in Memphis, Kyle?

I think it's gonna be great. I mean, like you said, he fits their sort of organizational identity, you know, from the past. But he also, you know, they're big on analytics, they're big on efficiency. Agency and winning players and things like that. So he checks both boxes. And I, I feel like whenever we say grit and grind, I think sometimes we say— we make it sound like, uh, you know, we're prioritizing that over skill, over everything. We're just going to claw you to death. It's like Boozer plays that way, but— and he has all those things, but he's just kind of like a modernized version of his dad. I heard Legler say Kevin Love, that was something we had in the guy. That's something that I've thought for a while, that he's, he's just got all these kind of intangible skills that he can, you know, he space it if they want to play him and Zach Eaddy together. I think he'll make him like Cam Spencer— he'll make Cam Spencer and Cedric Coward better with his passing so they can work off the ball. It's a great fit, man, and it's, it's organizational mouthwash.

Like we were saying, you know, if Peterson had been there at 3, do you think they even would have taken him? Like, would they? You know, it's such an opportunity, maybe you don't pass it up. But wow, I think this is the outcome that they all wanted. You know, I asked for an O earlier in the night. I was like, I mean, is that who in Resounding yes, they wanted Boozer and they got him.

Would've been an interesting one, House, if Boozer goes too. Now you have Wilson, who is the most Memphis-y kind of guy ever. Like, that's a classic, couldn't try harder, great kid. Like, would've fit in with all the different teams they had. Would they have done that or would they have rolled the dice? Then later, House, they deal 16 for 17. And 2 seconds so OKC can take Bennett Sturtz, which is the most predictable moment of the night. And then they go backwards from 17 to 21 with Detroit so Detroit could take Okorie. They pick up 3 more seconds, and I'm like ready to stand on my couch and applaud because I think they're going to take Phylon. And they took Lopez. So I did not stand up on my couch and applaud. I'm going to give them both a winner for picking up 5 seconds to move 5 picks backwards.

But, um, let me ask you, the final thing I don't understand, I thought, um, when they picked for Detroit, when they took Okori for Detroit, I thought he would be an awesome, uh, guy for that young nucleus that they have going in Memphis. What do you think the thought process was?

Not taking a point guard? Yeah, the thought process is probably they're stuck with Ja Morant. They didn't want to bring in another point. I don't think they have a landing spot for him.

Has kind of a similar profile to Moran except Okorie. Okorie's super downhill, but he just leans scoring more than playmaking than Jah. But I mean, yeah, it would have been really fun. I, I think he would have been a nice change of pace from the size and the, the grinding kind of thing that they're going to have going on. Uh, like just an interesting off-speed pitch in the way that Mara is going to be for OKC, who I don't know if we're gonna— we'll probably get to him in a minute, but Um, yeah, I thought Okorie would have been really fun. If people who haven't seen him, I mean, he's just like ultimate jitterbug. I always say he's, he's like if an NFL kick returner was playing point guard. Like, you just can't, you can't stay in front of him and you can't grab onto him. He's just, uh, he's Greased Lightning with a basketball in his hands.

He was one of the guys I was praying— well, I was praying for the one of those guards to fall to the Celtics in '27. Anderson, Phylon, Okorie, like just one of them, just hoping that there was a run on other positions. And sometimes guys get shoved down and it started to happen with Phylon. 'Cause it felt like if he didn't, if Philly didn't take him, it really felt like the next couple teams wouldn't have taken him. And that, but so sometimes that happens, but that never really happens. What were you gonna say, House?

Just that I think it was a sneaky good pick by Detroit.

O'Quarie.

Yeah, really gonna help them.

Yeah, you know what they needed? Somebody who could create a shot.

Greed.

In April and May and maybe even June. Well, great times for Memphis. They end up with the third pick. They don't win the lottery. They might've gotten the best guy. Howser, you'll root for Boozer, but you don't want him to be too good, right? You're hoping he's like a solid A-.

I'm rooting for all of those guys. It's such a good draft. I'm fascinated to see how— Deep down, you don't want him to be better than AJ.

Just admit it, Howser.

No, it's, it's all situational. We're like, it's going to be impossible to like parse who, you know, we'll see, we'll see like from the raw offensive talent, you know, we'll be able to judge some, but like Peterson's going to look incredible in Utah. I'm prepared for that right away in the same manner that Dylan Harper looked absolutely bonkers. But remember, Dylan Harper played in the G League this season. Like, it wasn't right away.

I think we screwed that up. I think Carter Bryant did. I'm not sure Harper did.

We met—

I might have screwed that up, but now you took my screw up.

Oh, why did I—

he—

there was extended stretches where he was not getting minutes. There was—

no, that is true.

Yeah, stretches where he couldn't get on the floor, and it was clear that they were doing something in terms of, of the work. But, um, the— took him a while.

He was a slow, slow burn.

It's— I don't think that's going to be the case with Peterson. I think we're going to see him right away.

I have another winner. This is a quick one. The Knicks being a defending champion at the NBA draft.

It was weird. Was that weird?

Happy Knicks fans. They celebrated the title multiple times. The Knicks were on the clock. Everybody was cheering. They showed the trophy. It was just happy. Nobody was booing. They weren't showing Spike Lee looking like he was ready to have 6 drinks. They weren't booing the pick. You didn't see Nick fans just ready to be angry like the Jets fans are at every draft. It was just, just happiness coming.

Did you wonder for a minute if the booing would continue, or, you know, just that they won and, you know, that would be just like a nice soothing balm on their, on their bad feelings? I wondered if they'd boo Silver, but of course they, they immediately booed him when he came out.

Yeah, they did boo the San Antonio Spurs, which I enjoyed. All right, I'm bouncing around. We, we haven't gotten to Chicago yet, but we'll, we'll get to them cuz I needed a loser. Loser number 10, Brandon Burrus, who I love, probably one of my 3 favorite guys in the draft. Could have gotten drafted by Dallas and played with Cooper Flagg at number 9 and Kyrie and just been in meaningful basketball games right away with a bunch of role players. He could have fallen to 11. And join Steph Curry, one of the 10 or 12 greatest players of all time, on their last run of relevance with 2 years with Steve Kerr and Draymond and maybe LeBron going there and the whole thing. He could have been part of that, playing for Arizona's Steve Kerr, the Arizona connection. What happens? He gets drafted by the Bucks at 10. The crappy Bucks, the, the all-time mediocre. There's never been a more likely 31-win team than this Bucks team. And now he has to fight for shots with a bunch of guys on their team. And I just got bummed out, Kyle.

I think the good thing about Burrys though is that I don't know that he'll necessarily be bummed about that 'cause he's just such a quality, like fits in wherever he is. I mean, it's a missed opportunity for him.

Can I be bummed for him?

You're welcome to do that. Yeah, I'll permit that. He's, yeah, I mean, he missed out on being in a more fun basketball environment in the short term, obviously. I think for the, you can clearly I can see the thinking for the Bucs though. It's just like they don't necessarily— I mean, I hope they're not thinking they know they have a centerpiece right now. They're still going to try to figure out what their direction is. And taking somebody like Burrys will fit into whatever they choose to do, you know. And then they took Amen with their other pick as sort of an upside swing. Um, but I thought he made sense for them to pick because he's just going to be around for whatever happens. Yeah.

And that, that's one of the things with this draft house. I feel like 20 years ago they'd take Amen at 10. And Burrys falls to the Warriors at 11, and then we spend the next 5 years going, are you fucking kidding me? How does this happen? But no, the Bucks wisely were like, you know who we should take? The guy who's by far the best player in this spot right now. So now Burrys has to go to this weird team. I would— if he gets a text that says Kevin Porter Jr. and Kyle Kuzma want to take you to dinner tomorrow night, again, I'd go with sniffles, maybe some bronchitis. Um, maybe some tinnitus. Maybe you went to a concert, your ears were hurting.

That's right. The ringing ears.

Did, did you, were you surprised that the Mavericks did not take him? 'Cause they took, uh, Marez Johnson instead.

All of that whole situation with Dallas changed, I think, in, in a pretty dramatic way with the Dusty May thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, look at that situation that presents itself. And the most interesting thing is Dusty May got to choose his his favorite, who he thought was going to be most impactful at the pro level, and he chose Muresz.

Here's the best part about that, House. He can also say he didn't choose it.

Of course. No, I— you're absolutely right.

Yeah, so I, I just got the job. They were already locked in on Muresz. Obviously I told them he's a great kid, but you know, I, I can't— I just got hired. I can't come in and start telling these guys what to do. Like, I, I just got hired a week ago. Oh, but you know, he probably was like, yeah, because everything, and this is why we all love them, Kyle. Like, this was just the classic. These are the guys that would fall in the draft 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Just the heartbeat of a great team in college, the engine. All the quotes about him were like, we could never have a bad practice because of this guy. Every time we needed a pickup in a game, he'd do something. He was relentless, the most competitive motherfucker on the planet. All the stuff you want to hear, all things that we discounted for years and years and then finally started listening to. But you were, you were a little more down on him in the draft guide than, than where, where, where'd you land on him? Like, were you—

Oh, I ended up with Mures at 13. So I mean, I wasn't like out of it.

So he went 9, 4 ahead.

Yeah. No, I mean, the argument there for him, he's really young too. I think people should keep that in mind. Like Marez played a year of college at Illinois and went and played like FIBA U19 with like AJ and Mikal Brown and those guys. So he's really had a year. So he's young for a college sophomore and just really dogged. I mean, and I think that Cooper being there and making like the playmaking progress that he made, and then you got Kyrie coming back, granted we don't totally know what's gonna happen with that. Because you were thinking maybe they'd make a swing at like a playmaker type guy there. But you talked about it, that like, I think the conventional wisdom has just kind of evolved over the years where you would just see teams get in the top 10 and be like, it's this illusion of being in the top 10 that makes you feel like you have to be in this mindset of like, well, we're here, we gotta like take this chance on an upside pick, right? It's like, and the upside picks year to year can be like pretty volatile. They can be huge risks And you'll see teams take the swing at those guys and end up with like a Kevin Knox or somebody like, oh, you get tantalized.

Like, oh, he's inefficient, but I'm tantalized. And the safer thing to do is to take the dude who can switch 1 through 5, like Mures Johnson, who's a winner, who's going to be on your team. He's not going to be a star, but it's a, it's a safe, smart pick. I like it. Yeah, I think it's—

I told you I did this exercise. I went through the last 5 drafts and tried to separate the guys based on studs, playoff guys, or just wildcards. And wildcards could be upside or small guards or shooters. And the playoff guys year after year, like in last year's draft, it was Cedric Coward, Murray Boyles, Carter Bryan, and Hugo were the 4 guys that are just guys that have that playoff profile that can guard different positions, that have energy. They bring some sort of skillset that seems to matter when it gets to April and May. In '24, The playoff guys were your guy, Sarhouse. I can't give him a stud, uh, but he's, you know, maybe Serge Ibaka in the right situation, better Serge Ibaka, uh, Klingen, AJ Mitchell, Jared McCain, Baylor Shireman, right? So again, like, no, like, small offense-first shooting guards, no kind of upside guys. These are just dudes that play. And then The year before that was Camara, Kayson Wallace, Hawkins, Derek Lively, and Podzemski as like your playoff guys. So I look at Mures and I'm just like, he just feels like he's in those 3 classes. I just, I can just see him in a playoff series.

Everybody seemed to think OKC was either gonna take him or trade up if they didn't feel like they could get him at 12. And I do wonder if they've infected the thinking of these teams a little bit. Back to Milwaukee though. I had as a loser the Giannis trade already 24 hours later, which I didn't like yesterday when we did the, the Urgent Gathering podcast. I usually like to get a blue chipper when I'm trading one of the best 25 players of all time. One of the things they got was the 13th pick in the draft. And they took Nate Ayman, who I think was the most polarizing guy of these first 15. Classic. He, he hits— I don't want to be mean about somebody who's 20, but hits the draft checklist of, well, he didn't shoot last year, but he's a good shooter. Well, he struggled down the end of last year, but he was injured. You could see the upside. It's all like upside and not stuff. If you actually watch the games and you're just like, what is this guy? Is he Brad Sellers? So what is this guy?

Billis was like, he got fouled a lot. He stuck his nose in there. It was just kind of, we were really like—

Yeah, it sounds like he was talking about the coach's kid.

We were really getting creative with it. I mean, I do think there's something there. It's just a matter of where you, what level of investment you want to put in him. I mean, I was lower on him than consensus. I ended up with him at 20 just because of where I was comfortable with that. I mean, I heard somebody on another NBA show say that he reminded him of Perry Jones III. Which is kind of honestly the way people used to talk about Perry Jones. He'd be like, oh, it's so big, watch him move. Oh my God, you just get caught up in these hypothetical vortexes where you're like, oh, the hypotheticals, man. I was like, no, I kind of would like to see something not hypothetical at some point. But he's like Sanak. It's like he's a guy who's a streaky shooter and he's just not comfortable at the rim. It's like maybe you can kind of develop him into like a solid role player. I don't know if they'll be a star, but I role players what I would aim at first.

At least with Sanak, he's— he rebounds, right? He's got one skill that I could be like, well, at least he does that, right? I don't— I don't know if they— amen. I think the Perry Jones thing is a really good— it's a really good one. There's so many of those guys, House. Why do we feel like we had way more of those guys in the '90s and the 2000s?

We probably did.

Maybe just the whole infrastructure for youth basketball is just better now, but Listen, maybe it'll happen. I don't know. But he set off a lot of red flags for me. My favorite though, about the honest trade, Shams, who seems to really want to make it work for the Bucks, that this trade was a good trade. When it was, as I said yesterday, this is a trade you make when you want to keep your job and everyone else's job in the front office for another 3 years. Just a lot of picks that are out in the future. You're sort of rebuilding. You have these guys that you might keep or trade. And at no point does anybody look at you and say, well, why aren't we better? We just traded for Jaylen Brown. Shouldn't we have 50 wins? Why do we have 30? Um, Sham said at one point during the draft, the calls are continuing to come in for the Milwaukee Bucks for their guys. I find this hard to believe. I, I actually literally heard the opposite, that the calls were going out from the Milwaukee Bucks asking if anybody was excited about this.

Has— you never gave your thoughts on the podcast about the Miami Giannis trade.

Um, I, I— my first reaction was, wow, this is a rare lose-lose trade. You don't get a lot of those in the NBA.

Um, now for Miami, Miami had to do it because what the hell else were they gonna do? But yeah, I didn't like the trade for them.

It is Giannis, so yeah, I'm being a little—

I get it from their side.

Yeah. I get it from exactly right, but like, okay, great job. They moved up from being the play-in 10th team to the 5th best team in the East.

6th best team.

Yeah.

What'd you think, Kyle?

You think they moved that high?

Oh, I mean that, that this is the conversation to be had, right?

Well, you're factoring in 5 seed. You're saying Giannis is gonna play 70 games with the 5 seed.

Exactly right.

Which, right. That I am doing.

All, all of their top 6 guys are going to play 70 games because they can't afford for any of those guys to miss 15 or 20 games here or there. They really, they really can't.

When we did the pod yesterday, we're like, well, they'll bring Norm Powell back. And then today it's like, yeah, Norm Powell's not coming back. They don't have enough money to pay him. So we'll see. They can patch it together.

But defensively, Kyle, defensively, I think they could be pretty interesting. Yeah. Oh yeah, I totally agree. They're gonna have to work their magic in the margins and finding guys though. I mean, because you're gonna, you're gonna need some more Shooting. Yeah, you're gonna need some more shooting. I mean, but that's kind of their specialty. They pull those guys just out of the, out of nothing. Like they find them, they target them. And there's a few guys in this draft I think that they could go target, but I'll be, I'll be interested to see if they climb as high as 5. I mean, Giannis being on your team automatically makes you dominant in some capacity and he's always something you gotta deal with. So you guys might be right. I'm, I might be a little on the cynical side.

I'm just sad for the Milwaukee fans. The Milwaukee fans deserved the end of Giannis to be better than, than it turned out. They got bummed out, blown out of the playoffs 2 years ago. They got blown out of the playoffs, or 3 years ago, 2 years ago, then didn't make the playoffs last year. Yeah, I just, it's a bummer. It's a bummer.

And one thing I forgot to say yesterday, and I wish I had been harder on this part yesterday, you know, they should trade Giannis a year ago, which we've covered on many pods, but I should have said yesterday. Not only did they not trade Giannis a year ago, they went all in with that Miles Turner Hail Mary. That involved stretching Dame Lillard for $22 million a year all the way through this decade. And now they've just traded Giannis for way less than they probably could have gotten. Another loser. It's 2026, guys. The NBA still has to do this thing where teams make a trade, but then somebody's on the clock and they make the pick. But we just found out 5 minutes ago that the pick got traded. Why can't we figure this out, Kyle? Why not? How hard is this? We have everybody on the desk just said they flip 16 for 17. It's not— it's OKC on the clock at 16. Now Memphis takes Bennett Sturtz. No, they're taking for OKC. We just heard that. Why do we have to do this?

Is there some kind of legality thing there where they can like speculate about it on the broadcast but on the NBA like can't officially say it? Is it like House, is it something more strict like that? Like, or what is it?

Well, they have to— I, I'm sure there's a process for submitting the trade, and the trade has to be approved by the league office. And until that's done, you know, no, no trade is official.

So, House, they can do whatever they want. They're fucking league. They can make—

do anything.

Speaking of doing anything, you can, you can, uh, you can vote on Netflix right now whether you think Giannis will ever make the Finals in Miami. Not even win the finals, make the finals.

I'm sad.

What would your take be on that, House?

No chance. No chance whatsoever.

Oh, you're—

never—

no chance.

Zero.

Never say never, but unlikely. Can we talk about how it should not be two nights again? Don't— do you not— do you not miss the one-night experience? Because the second round's so bad. Like, isn't it a waste of everybody's time to do it in one— like, in two nights? I just— I want to go back to one.

I, uh, I have always wanted it to be— especially after having done the draft a couple years, just the first 14 picks and take 10 minutes between picks.

Oh, I like that.

That way they can have— this is my next loser, by the way— the, the Lisa Salters interviews when there's real basketball shit going on. Who are these for?

Who are they?

Figure out who these are for. Who are they for?

They do a set with the freaking living room. What the fuck is that for?

Kyle, what does this moment mean to you? It's the same question.

Every family.

Uh, it means a lot. I just got drafted. It's so meaningful to me. Uh, there's my dad.

Really, really cathartic stuff.

Yeah. There's real basketball shit. Like the Clippers took, you know, Wagler at 5 and it's okay. Now what's gonna happen with these next 4 picks? And we, it, it's just, I just feel like everybody watching this draft cares about the basketball stuff, not the, not the family stuff.

Could we get some more in the weed? Like maybe not too far in the weeds, but just could we get a little more like what's this gonna look like on court?

Like go to the screen, show us clip, you know, they had two channels, they had ABC and ESPN, and somehow they had Lisa Salters on both of them doing interviews. Pick one. Have ABC be the one my wife would watch because she likes the interviews. I want to know all the mechanics of the draft as it's happening. Atlanta's on the clock at number 8. It's like, are they going to trade this? There's just been rumors all week that they might trade this. Who would trade it? What are the candidates? Could, could they trade this right now for Trey Murphy? But no, we had to we had to interview Darius Acuff and his family, and I just don't know who that's for. I don't get it.

What's, uh, what's a back-of-the-envelope math guy's name? We could have that feed where they go to him and he just for 30 seconds shows you like the, the analytics or the—

oh, Kornacki.

Yeah, Kornacki, something like that.

Like a little—

but yeah, just, well, we just, we'd run them for this.

Indeed.

Uh, good news guys, the calls are continuing to come in. For Bucks players.

The phones are just ringing.

Yeah, they just got a Kuzma call.

Uh, winner, it was Samsonite, the luggage company.

Oh, uh, the bags are packed. The votes came in too for Giannis, and, uh, 87% of people watching this said no, he will not make the Finals in Miami. Sorry, Miami. Winner, Darius Acuff going to Sacramento is He the most fun Sacramento King we've ever had? What's your top 3, House? Well, see, they were, they were so white chocolate.

I mean, like, dude, yes.

I mean, come on. Mitch Richmond.

Oh, sure, sure. Yes.

Would you put Boogie on that era?

Doug Christie was an endless source of amusement.

Doug Christie wasn't fun, except when he was pointing at his wife.

He was entertaining to talk about. Doug Christie inherently fun is kind of, I don't know about that one.

I'll phrase it another way. Who is the best League Pass guy we've had? I've had League Pass since 2000 or 2001. Who's the best League Pass guy they've ever had? Chris?

That's White Chocolate, end of story, right? I mean, that run, that run, like early basketball internet where they were like the clips where you could watch the top 10. I don't know.

I always joke about this. The White Chocolate is a problem versus what it was like to just watch White Chocolate for 82 games. But that was pretty big disparity.

That was pre-widespread League Pass. So perception was reality. I was seeing those clips and I was like, he's great. And I didn't realize he was not great for Years. It was a long time.

There's a chance Acuff is just absolutely awesome on the Kings and everyone in Sacramento is gonna be wearing Acuff jerseys. I'm all in. House and I have been all in really for the entire college basketball season.

Absolutely loved him.

He, he checks every box for me, including it's not perfect because he's not gigantic. He might get picked on defensively. He's going to a franchise that has had been living under a ladder and has black cats on the front door when you walk in and every sort of bad luck, broken mirrors everywhere and every sort of bad luck thing you can have. I just think the kid's got it. And we'll talk about one team that passed up on him. But Kyle, are you as, on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you compared to me and House? House and I are a 10.

I think I'm, the framing of how I like Acuff is maybe a little different than, I don't know, I don't know what you all are envisioning for him, but I thought of him, if you're riding him as your like primary offensive star who's just always got the ball in his hands and you're living and dying with what he does in the half court, I don't love that as much as I like him as like a very, very good game manager guy who can hit open shots, who can bring stability. Lord knows the Sacramento Kings could use that on in all facets. I mean, it's funny, it's almost been 10 years ago since they took Fox. That was the last time that they, you know, took a Yeah. Took a promising guard who was, you know, bright kid and everything. That's— I'm, I'm with him as not as necessarily like this, our whole solar system revolves around this guy. I think he's probably better as like your third star. I think if you're going to build a team, like a high-level team.

So House, could he be as good as Kyrie in your opinion?

I have a different comp for him that I felt this way for a long time. I really feel like he's the second coming of Dame. I feel like he's Dame 2.0 and I love that.

That's what I'm going to steal it.

44% from 3 as a freshman in fucking college and could just— they weren't easy 3s.

Volume. They weren't open 3s. Yeah, he didn't play high-level 3s.

Pass the ball. He was the only dude on that team. That team was Yakety Sax. They were athletic, but they didn't have anybody. He shot like 51% on catch and shoots. And he barely got any. That's another— I think Dame's way better. The Kyrie—

he's not a wriggle. Oh, as a camper.

It reminds me of the— with the Kyrie part that he reminds me of is just the either hands thing in traffic.

Yeah.

Like his ability to just finish at these weird goofy angles. I don't think Dame could do that. Dame came into the league after, I think he was 22 and was, was good right away. But it, it, it took him, I would say 3 years. Like I remember he had a really bad playoff series in 2015 against Memphis. Took him a couple years to then go up that next level. I feel like Gakup's gonna be further along and he's younger too. But I like the Dame thing. I do. To me, that's the model of like, could he be at 25 points a game? Like 25 and 7, has the ball a lot. Maybe you need some extra offense next to him, but that would be what I see, Kyle.

Yeah.

I said, when did Dame hit the game set, the series winner? Was that 14 or 15?

That was, yeah, it was later. It was, I think the 17 range. It was after KD left OKC. So anyway, the Kings, who, you know, have been— are probably the biggest train wreck in the league, I would say. Do we have a bigger train wreck? Now they have a fun player. I'm excited for their fans. I don't know if this was a winner or a loser, but the Warriors, it seemed like Joe Lacob had an argument with Mike Dunleavy in the draft party. And it might not have been, I'm just seeing what I said on social media, but I thought that was pretty funny. Winner, Kyle, you love this one. The Spurs at 20.

Mm-hmm.

They drafted your guy. You've been riding for somebody. Why don't you tell us about him?

Jaden Quaintance was like a pretty highly regarded prospect. He went to Arizona State last year and everybody that watched his tape from Kentucky this year, I've had people be like, oh, you're just, it's just Kentucky. I'm like, he barely played for Kentucky.

Kentucky.

It's like, it really is not that. All of his tape is from Arizona State. He was 17 years old and was like defensively just ridiculously dominant. Um, I just think that, uh, I had this thought process during the playoffs. He's, he's probably, if he's healthy, that's the big question is that's the thing that happened between now and when he was dominant Arizona State is he, you know, had tore his ACL, came back too early. There's some like real like Time Lord kind of worry about like, is this going to keep happening? With him. But if he's right, I think that he could net out where he could be as high as like 5 in this draft in like a few years from now because he's that defensively special in my opinion. I know people have worry about his offense, but I'm just like, this dude dunks everything. We don't worry about what Mitchell Robinson does around the basket. I'm like, he screens and he dunks everything.

So he's Time Lord-ish. You had this, you tweeted this one in, in May, you tweeted how he'd be the perfect guy for the Spurs. This is like a month ago.

I mocked him to the Spurs in one of our mocks because I was like, I didn't have any intel. I was just like, I think this just makes a lot of sense. It's— he fits their brand in terms of the type of kid he is too. Little soft-spoken, pretty bright kid, plays chess. He's a big chess player. Uh, and then, uh, yeah, after one game with the— during the playoffs when OKC beat the Spurs, I was like, they need Quaytons. They need to draft Quaytons.

Would you rather— would you rather drafted him or a head coach? What a setup.

So rude.

So rude. Why'd you, why'd you make me make that joke? You texted me to set you up with that. No, he didn't. No, listen, Mitch Johnson's a great coach. None of that finals was his fault except for the 43 things that happened that were poorly coached. The whole thing is young. And all the game strategy, that was terrible. The team was young.

For the first time together.

Mitch Johnson, don't blame him.

They're all young.

All I know is we, House and I made fun of Rick Adelman during college and then after the college. By the way, RIP Rick Adelman. He was Hall of Famer. No, he was great. But we would always get mad about his game management. And Mitch Johnson's game management was 100 times worse than all the, all the stuff we had with him or Dunleavy or some of the other coaches we used to make fun of.

So I don't know. Mitch Johnson's younger than Steph Curry. I mean, he's like, he's young.

He's young. That, that whole thing I chalk up. But I think Quaintance is absolutely perfect. Because, you know, that it solves a lot of the defensive challenges that this team— they just need— they need— they still need size, which is a very weird thing to say with Wemby. Who cares whether or not Quinton can score? It doesn't matter. You're not worried about—

you have a year with them too because you have Cornette. Yeah, they have— I think Carter Bryant's going to play for them next year. By the way, they— Netflix did a poll for is Darius Acuff the most fun Kings rookie Basically ever, and 54% said yes.

Keegan Murray had a lot of buzz when they, when he, when they brought him in.

He's gonna be more fun than Keegan Murray. Come on, House.

No, but I'm saying the buzz surrounding him and as he arrived there, there was a big excitement.

Exciting. One more cutting.

Yeah. One more winner before we go to break. Daryl Morey trades Jared McCain for pick 22 in 3 seconds. And then Jared McCain goes to OKC and does really well there. And, and it's, I think, one of the reasons Darryl Murray gets fired. Well, Philly with 22 takes Phylon, who is one of my favorite guys in the draft. I think he's been vindicated. Great trade. Just like that.

Love it.

McCain is a declining asset. He just turned him into Phylon and 2 more years on a rookie contract. Let's go, Darryl! Somebody hire him.

I had it on good authority that they wanted Phylon last year. They might have promised him last year. So Darryl's— wow, Darryl's vision fulfilled. And, uh, yeah, Darryl juice behind him.

Some Darryl sprinkles, Darryl juice. Uh, did you— do I like Phylon too much? Or like, because the knock on him is he's getting too skinny, and there's a whole weight limit thing with point guards where if you go below £175 people get concerned. I don't care.

I was a little more leaning towards the Hornets taking him. I thought that's who they should have taken. You know, I know the Christian Anderson pick that I know our guy Khan is going to have another dude who's a great, uh, dribble pull-up shooter, fits their brand. But I thought Acuff is a tougher player. Like, I thought that he would be a better fit.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought that Phylon would fit with the Hornets better. I was surprised they didn't take it.

I agree. I thought every pick after 14, I was ready for him to go. And Guess what, House? Now he goes to 22. He goes to Philadelphia, a city that takes everything personally and hates everybody else, and he's gonna have a giant chip on his shoulder. He's gonna fit right in.

It's gonna be a great situation for him. All jokes aside, I think that with that backcourt and, you know, what they're capable of— Play all of them together.

Yeah, let's do it. All right, we have a lot more to get to. We're gonna take one more break. It's like gonna be a little bit longer one. We'll have time to look at Twitter for 2 minutes, but, uh, we're gonna take a break and come back with the rest of the winners and losers. And now for a special part of today's episode where we're gonna be talking about the superior matches, teams, and players of FIFA World Cup 26, brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26, and a superior light beer. So let's get into the moments that stood above the rest and made a superior level of impact, at least so far. We're still pretty early in the World Cup. My MVPs right now. Messi has to be number one. Already a legend, already probably leading the GOAT combo. Had 5 goals in 2 games, missed a penalty kick to make it a little interesting in the second game that he played, but, uh, was so great to watch, so special. And, um, I was thinking he might have the highest approval rate of any athlete in any sport right now.

Who doesn't like Messi? If somebody said they didn't like Messi, you would look at them like they were staring at you cross-eyed or something. Like, it's an insane opinion. Everyone loves Messi. That's it. This just reinforced that. So that's one. Second one for me, Team USA, which threw its hat in the ring as a perennial power. It's not perennial because it's the first time it's happened in 2010, but it sounds really good that it's a perennial power. But yeah, this is the first time we've actually thought that an American team could make maybe the Final Eight, maybe even the Final Four, as crazy as that sounds. Since 2010, since Donovan with the Algeria goal. And it's been a long 16 years, really, ever since. And now hope again. Very exciting to the point they're playing their third World Cup game. They can rest most of their starters. So that's been great. Third thing for me, Alexi Lalas, great job getting everybody talking about the Fox studio show. Good job. People are talking about it. Fourth one, the African nations. Um, you have Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, Cape Verde, and, and the DR Congo all probably making the final 32.

I think the record before was 3, but, uh, I just watched today, I watched Ghana tie England. They, they parked the bus. Um, which as somebody who's been involved in a lot of youth and high school and college soccer watching over the years, it's, it's mostly annoying when teams park the bus, but in this case, Ghana did a really good job. They needed a tie, they parked the bus, they knew what they were doing, and they got out of it, and now they're gonna make round of 32. So, uh, just cool though to see like this entire continent kind of make their presence felt, especially with the extra teams. Um, so you have that.

Goals.

We have more teams, which, you know, there's 6 to 8 teams that probably have no business whatsoever being in the World Cup, but it has led to more goals. It's led to, you could do parlays where you have bet somebody to have 2 goals in a game with somebody else to have 2 goals in a game. Like all kinds of fun things. Who doesn't love goals? As we keep going in the World Cup and the games get better and better, it's gonna be a lot of 1-nothing, a lot of 2-1. You're gonna miss some of these goals. Ronaldo, that's been fun. Is he washed up? Well, he scored 2 goals today against a team that wasn't good, but he had 2 goals. But it's, it's fun to watch somebody just, just trying to hold on who doesn't have it anymore. Who can't identify with that? And then last but not least, for me, just out of, out of the, out of the early stuff, it really looks like we're getting France versus Germany. In the round of 16. I like when we have World Cup matchups that also feel like they could have been any sort of major conflict that we've had in the world in the last 400 years, right?

France, Germany just feels weighty. It feels important. It feels like that's a game that should be in the finals. Now we're gonna get it in the round of 16 and it's gonna be awesome. And we're gonna get Mbappé and, and a very, very fun France team who So if I had to pick right now, I, I'm leaning toward Argentina just because of Messi and just cuz they play so great together. But France would be the other one. I think those would be my two and not hot takes cuz those are two of the favorites. But anyway, those are my superior moments. Ultra wants to hear your superior moments from the FIFA World Cup 26. You have the chance to vote after every FIFA World Cup 2026 match for the superior player of the match on the FIFA+ app. That player will get the Superior Player of the Match trophy, representing the host countries of Canada, Mexico, and of course, the US of A. Celebrate every goal, save, and win with US Soccer and Michelob Ultra. So before we continue with the winners and losers, one of my favorite things is to go back and look at the top 100 high school class of all the high school guys who then just got drafted.

Which is the, the Bonsa class. And if you go back, the Bonsa was 1, Peterson was 2, and Boozer was 3.

Wow.

Start there. Can you guess who the number 4 pick was? He was somebody taken in the first 20 picks.

Let House guess, 'cause I follow this stuff.

Oh, you already know the answer. Kyle, Kyle Mann probably knows the answer.

Uh, he went in the top 20.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I'm, I'm scrolling through super fast.

House, don't cheat.

Amen. Amen. Amen. That would be my guess.

House cheated.

No, I— Suspicious.

I have the draft up. I have— this is the draft. I—

how would I know?

Nate Ament was 4th.

Some trackpad action over there I was suspicious of.

Yeah, because I'm looking at the draft.

Caleb Wilson 5th. And number 6, the Celtics pick.

Yeah, baby!

This is something they used to do in the past with Danny Ainge. They would take these dudes that had a weird college year, and I don't think he even had a weird college year, but they would take somebody that They're basically banking on what he was the year before his college year. I remember they did this with Avery Bradley because Avery Bradley was the number 1 pick in the draft. They took him, whatever. Acuff was 7, Brown was 8, Koopiet was 10, Burrys was 12, and we could keep going. And then Kingston Fleming's 22.

Can I give you a good, an example of a good version of a guy falling the way that Sanak did? This is an example of it working, is Jayden McDaniels coming out of high school was a, was a kid who thought— Bill's got to be very happy. Tell me more. Jayden McDaniels was a kid who basically thought he was Kevin Durant coming out of high school and played like he was just like, I'm just a dribble pull-up guy, a tall dribble pull-up guy. Something happened to him when he was in between college and the NBA where someone got in his ear and was just like, hey man, you can make a lot more money if you do this. And it got through to him and he turned, just the switch flipped and suddenly he's this defensive monster. Sanak, I'm just saying there, there are many paths to being successful if you have the right people around you. So I hope, I hope that's what's happening here.

That's what I told House when, when I wanted House to be a competitive eater when he was in law school. And I was like, you can make a lot more money eating. I know you can do this. He didn't listen to me. All right, so more winners and losers. Just quickly, Dusty May, we mentioned, who gets this Dallas job, has Cooper Flagg, and then 3 of his kids get drafted in the top 12. That was pretty fucking cool. Like that. Okay, this is a combo. The Hawks and the Pelicans. Hawks as the winners, Pelicans as the losers, because they traded Derrick Queen for Kingston Flemings. As it turns out, that is the final, um, final haul on that trade from a year ago. So I'll ask both of you, who would you rather have? Derrick Queen— maybe this would be a good Netflix poll— Derrick Queen or Kingston Flemings?

That might be—

who would you rather have for the next 10 years?

I, I, I was amazed by Derrick Queen.

So you would— you, you're pro Derrick Queen?

I think it's cl— it the way it shook out, it's, it's now a closer call. It doesn't excuse the unprotected nature of the pick. There's no excusing that ever under any circumstances. But having seen Derrick Queen play NBA basketball against NBA players, I know that he can play in the NBA. I know he's got, you know, I really liked him too.

I don't, I think he's going to have to be on the right kind of team with the right kind of people around him. And that person is not Zion Williamson. But, but I do think it's— we'll see with Flemings. What do you think, Kyle?

Queen was— I mean, they both have issues, right? I mean, when you weigh them, you get this because Kingston's a little small. Derrick is like, is he a center? You got to put him next to like a stretch 5 for it to really work. So there are a lot of kind of caveats to work through. I personally think, I think I would lean towards Kingston right now just because I think Kingston is going to be additive in that people are like pitting him against these other guys as like scoring guards. Kingston like is very, very fast, like getting off the ball. I think his shot's gonna come around. He's a transition monster. I compared him to like Tyrese Maxey a little bit in transition with his speed. Um, but then, you know, I don't know, I'm still not sure if Queen is going to be like a playoff-level guy. Like the, the defensive stuff just really concerns me. Is the shooting going to come around?

Um, right, could it be a good stats bad team guy basically?

Can you imagine Queen playing in like any of the last two series? Like, I, I just kind of feel like they'd go at him every single time, you know?

I like him. The, the thing I do like about him is he's always excelled wherever he's been. He's one of those guys, which is like the best part of Cam Boozer too. Like wherever he's been, he's been on good teams. He's been the guy. They're putting together a little Netflix poll. We're gonna have the, we're gonna have the people decide Flemings or Queen. This would be one of the only polls ever. The Hawks end up with Flemings. They took Zubie, one of my— at 23, who was one of my favorite. I thought he— I was hoping he would get to the Celtics. And they used their cap space to trade for Aaron Wiggins, basically got him for free. And I really like Aaron Wiggins. It wasn't his fault. He was on a completely loaded team. And they re-signed McCollum. I like where they're at. The one thing they were really missing was somebody like Fleming. Fleming's like, uh, You know, a point guard who could guard other teams' point guards, who could push the pace, create a little offense. I like the pick. I thought that's who they were gonna take. And, and I still really like Burrys.

I, that was the only thing I was thinking was, could they take him, maybe play him and McCollum together? But I, I get why they did what they did. So we do have results. Netflix audience, 67% for Derrick Queen.

There we go.

33% for Flemings. Joe Dumas vindicated one year later after getting pillared on this podcast everywhere else.

No, he didn't. How many of those people have seen Kicks and Pimmings play, do you think?

Yeah, well, we'll see what that poll looks like in a year. No offense to them. Anyway, good night for the Hawks. Good night for the Clippers, who is another winner. They turned Zubats, who I voted for third team All-NBA a couple years ago, but last year was not playing like it. They turned him into a waggler and a 2029 pick.

They—

I thought Burrys made a little more sense, but Wagler had the higher upside. And it really seems like Kyle, it feels like that 46-point game against Purdue was a transformative draft pick thing, even more than the Final Four. Like every time I saw Billis on a show, he was talking about it like he watched a UFO land, like what this kid did against Purdue. And I watched all the highlights from it. It really was great. He was 9 for 11 from 3, but that's kind of the That's the game you point to if you're like, hey, can, can I spend, can you send me 10 minutes on what this kid's like? And you'd send him the Purdue game and be like, this is, this is the best version of him, right?

That was an example of a team that Purdue team was especially like not equipped to check a 6'6 ball screen savvy point guard who has like crazy triple pull-up. Like he, he shot 40% on pull-up threes just in pick and roll on pretty high volume. So if you conceded that shot to him, He made it. And that, that, you know, Purdue had a kid, Oscar Clough, who was just kind of this, like, he kind of looked like a dad in a men's league out there. He was a good player, but he just, he was not, not fleet of foot out there to guard Keaton Waggler. And he lit him up. So, yeah, but overall, man, I think this pick makes sense because I'm putting less pressure on him and Garland, like being on the floor all, you know, together all the time. I think you bring him along a little slow, let Wagler get the reps with the second unit, maybe play with the starters a little bit and be like the secondary kind of guy. 'Cause he's capable of that. Like he has a lot of spot-up chops too. So he'll be a spacer for them until he's ready to kind of take more of the car keys.

I mean, potentially 3 20-point-a-game scorers. I'll, here's the big test for Wagler. I'm gonna ask House. House, you're in town and I have Clipper tickets. They're not, they're not playing anybody. It's not like Golden State or somebody that we would be like, of course we're going. It's, it's like a middle-of-the-road team. It's not Milwaukee either. It's, it's like, uh, it's not Brooklyn. Let's say it's like the Pistons. Well, you'd be excited to see the Pistons.

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's like an 8 or Phoenix. Phoenix is in town and I'm like, we could go, we could drive down the game. It'd be like 45 minutes. This will be We'll eat at the game and you get to see Keaton Wagler. Are you saying yes or no?

Is that pulling you away from a good, from a good meal? How's it?

Or we could just order food at my house and watch games on the 3 TVs.

Oh shit.

Does Keaton Wagler get you to get in the car and go 45 minutes to the Intuit Dome to go see him?

The problem is I haven't—

I have really good seats.

I haven't been to the Intuit Dome yet, so I would definitely say yet, whenever the first time is that I'm there that we can go to a game, I'm gonna go.

You'll wanna go.

Okay. It won't matter. But I do, I am interested in, in whatever this Clippers team ends up being because they're in the midst of not quite, they're retooling. It's, it's interesting to me. Um, and I love Wagner's IQ. The thing I was wondering about, where was he on your high school list?

Because he's, he didn't exist, right? He didn't make the top 150, right? He had one of the great out of nowhere runs in the history of college basketball. Yeah.

What about the Stanford kid? The, uh, the point guard? Didn't he also come out of nowhere?

Uh, yeah, not, not like that. I mean, people knew who he was.

Okay. Well, he was going to Harvard. He was supposed to go to Harvard, so I don't—

The thing with Vogler— Wagler. I'm calling him Vogler like he's related to Franz Wagner. The thing with Wagler, um, if you're just going ceiling from the 5th pick on, he probably had the highest ceiling, right, Kyle? Like, that's somebody that you— like, he might be Shea Gildress-Alexander for all we know. Because if you, if you're talking about just watching— I actually went back and watched Shea's Kentucky, his year, like the, the 15-minute YouTube clip of Shea. And it's like, you could see the pieces of it. You couldn't see the MVP version of it, but you could see the pieces and the footwork and the two-way game. And he was a better two-way player than, than Wagner was. But Wagner offensively was way ahead of where Shae was as at Kentucky, right?

Yeah.

They're, it's interesting cuz they're kind of inverted like in the way that they approach, like Wagner is all like, he's just so methodical, like setting up ball screens to get to his shot and he can just burrow his way into the mid-range. And in college, Shae was the opposite. He was just like, he was just uncheckable getting downhill. Like, and he was just a layup master. Well, a lot different than the, than the way he plays now. In terms of having upside, I mean, upside at this spot, the upside I feel like kind of falls, fell off in terms of like the legitimate swings of they could be stars. It's only like 2 or 3 guys past, past 5, uh, and what I mean including Wogler. So, um, who are the other guys?

We—

Acuff is on that list for you or no?

Uh, I feel like I kind of know what Acuff is. I don't know, I don't know where the levels are that we go that are just like— Brown is, yeah, I think Brown is one of the guys. Another, a sneaky one is Dalen Swain, who the Bulls ended up with. I think he's like a sneaky upset pick.

We have the Bulls coming up. Yeah, 15th pick. So, yeah, I think Clippers had to do it. It's one of those things that if they had the 8th or 9th pick, it probably would've made more sense. They would've taken Burrys and that would've been it. Classic 2 guard. But they had to take a swing. Loser, Steve Kerr. Um, who's gonna have to coach Yaxel and Draymond at the same time. What is this gonna be like? Two of the most passionate guys we've had in the league in 10 years, both winners, both super competitive, and they might fight to the death. I don't know what's gonna happen. What's gonna happen, Kyle?

I kind of wonder what Yaxel is gonna look like in a system that is gonna require his attention to be divided a lot. We will see about that because he played on just a battering ram of a Michigan team and his job was to guard the ball most of the time. So he had everything that was important to him was in front of him. So I'll just be curious to see in the like speed of the read-react Golden State system while it's still there, you know, they're going to have him probably pass this into some other era of a different style that I'm sure he'll do fine in. But in the short term, I'll be curious to see how turbulent his ability to like keep up with the speed of what they do is. Because you could see some like, oh, you want to say Jordan Poole, I'm not saying he's going to like give him a concussion for a punch, but I don't— or to be the opposite, the vets will bring him along and give him like guardrails that'll be good for him. I don't know, it's going to be fascinating to watch.

Well, he's almost the same age as some of the vets, so it's fine. He's going to be 24 in December.

He might be older than Moses Moody.

I 100% agreed with the pick. I thought they would've taken Moras there if they, but you know, Dallas jumped on him at 9. House, Draymond, Yaxel, Curry, Porzingis, and LeBron James. How far am I going? How far am I going in the West?

That changes things. I think you can make it out of the play-in. I think you can make it out of the play-in.

What if I changed Porzingis for Anthony Davis?

Oh, no joke.

Anthony Davis, Draymond, Yaksa, Curry, and LeBron. I just go big. I have size everywhere, and I have two guys, Draymond and Yaksa, who can guard perimeter guys.

He made a face like he'd take KP back.

No, I would not. I would not. There's no scenario. I mean, Kyle, it has to be—

That'd be one way to get in with Jaylen Brown. Jaylen Brown loved them. Be like, we didn't really try to trade you and KP's coming back.

So a three-way trade, all's forgiven.

House didn't seem that excited about LeBron and Yaxel on the Warriors with Anthony Davis. Didn't seem like it changed your finals pick of San Antonio or OKC. Winner quickly, Chicago. They get Wilson at number 4 with a chip on his shoulder. I love Wilson. I just think I'm completely all 100% in. I'm all in. And he's the first legit Bulls star since Derrick Rose. You could tell me that Vucevic was a star or Jimmy Butler pre-Miami. Fine, whatever. This, this kid has it. They'll probably build the team around him. I hope they keep Giddey. They'll be playing up and down and everybody's gonna love him. And then they get Swain at 15. Kyle, would you say this is your number 1 winner of the draft? Swain and Wilson together?

I like it together. I had a funny moment where I sat down and I was like, huh, Caleb Wilson with this Bulls roster. And I started looking down the Bulls roster and I was like, ah, fuck it. I was just like, what am I even thinking about? I was like, what?

You start trying to do the gymnastics of like, what if they had had Io and Kobe White on the team that they just could have brought back with their bird rights on top of Giddy and Caleb Wilson? Probably would've absolutely maybe made more sense.

I got a wild one for you. I think, I think Daylon Swain could be swappable for Josh Giddey because they're similar players. Like, I think he could be, he could end up being a better two-way player than Josh and do similar things, similar size, playmaker, athlete, and then he can play defense.

So, well, to that point, every year there's the Kawhi, right? Where Kawhi in 2011, I sent House a clip today of when the Wizards, Jay Bilas is at the desk., and he's like, I think Kawhi Leonard would be a great pick here at number 6. He's— I think he's going to be a really good player, blah, blah, blah. Fits in with the Wizards. And then it goes to the podium and they're like, with the 6th pick, the Washington Wizards take Jan Vesely. It wasn't Kawhi Leonard. But every year there's the Kawhi Leonard of, wow, this guy could just blank, he'll be awesome. So with Swain, isn't it, if this guy can just, if he can just figure out how to shoot, this kid's gonna be awesome. 'Cause he rebounds and defends, like he runs the floor, he does everything else, but the shot is why he wasn't a lottery pick. So what if he learns how to shoot, Kyle?

He can score, he can really score. He's just got kind of a deliberate wind-up shot. And I don't know if it's a rebuild, it's just he got to the point where if you gave him time, it wasn't like Thompson twins where it's just like, all right, let's just run the other way, this ain't gonna happen. He can score, like, and he has touch. So it's kind of— you kind of can talk yourself into it happening. But somebody was asking me about, like, who has the best handle in this class, and I was just like, Swain has some of the best dribble separation in the class with, like, a Corey. Like, he's, he's nasty. He can, like— you'll watch him get low with the ball, you'd be like, I can't tell if that dude's, like, 6'1", and then when he stands up, you're like, holy shit, he's huge. He's like 6'7.5" in shoes. So I, it's a great bet for Chicago.

Uh, before we do our next winner and loser, we have to wake up House a little bit 'cause it's 12:30. So House, I ordered from John and Vinny's. No, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna talk about food to get you excited.

Okay, good.

It's my wife's away. That means, that means the, uh, food delivery order for the solo, you really have nobody judging you or anything.

Yes.

I did John and Vinny's. I got, uh, the, the chicken cutlets. With the gem lettuce salad that they have with the spicy dressing.

Yeah.

And then you know what else I did? I just got a pizza, even though I don't eat pizza and I don't really eat bread. I got the Sonny Boy pizza, which is bacon and, uh, and cheese, and there's some like caramelized onions on it.

You didn't ask for a gluten-free crust or any of that bullshit, right? I did it.

I did it. I gave the crust to the dogs. They were very grateful.

The crust of the dogs.

I got a big plate. I cut up the chicken cutlet I put it, put it in their spicy little salad. I put a little balsamic on it and, and I just chowed down and it was wonderful.

Rare, special, unexpected where you're, you know, you're, cause you married, you know, you're with your wife and you have your time.

It's a negotiation.

We're dinner.

We're gonna have to do this together.

And JKM, you share. What are we gonna share together?

Oh no.

Just like when you get the time where it's like, I'm gonna order for me. And I'm gonna, I, yeah, I'm gonna have a cheeseburger. I want the hot dog with a little cheese on it too.

See, this is why I always win because I always play the only child card for this stuff. It's like, I don't want to share. I'm the only child. People just leave me alone.

You do have that card, you son of a bitch. I do.

I just say, I don't want to share. I do that with everyone who is friends with me knows like desserts. I don't want to share dessert. I don't want to share ice cream with you. I don't want to share pudding with you. I don't want to share Sunday with you.

I've never tried to share dessert with you. I don't want to share a piece of pie with you.

I don't ask. I might grab the first bite, but I don't like sharing. I'm an only child. I'm not used to it.

It's a great point.

I don't know. House had multiple brothers. He has a sister. Yeah. He's used to sharing food. Anyway, back to the draft. Winners and losers. So Sean Marks, I don't know whether to give him a winner or a loser. I'll let House decide.

Loser. I don't need any more information.

Uh, you just said they show up in the draft room, they're celebrating like they just won the Finals. The whole Nets draft room was celebrating, and it was because they were taking Mikal Brown, who, um, who missed 14 games last year and has a bad back, and high-fives around. I mean, yeah, he's the, he's the guy out of all these top 12 guys, the guy I was worried about the most. I might be wrong. I'm not saying he's gonna be a bust. I just have concerns with the injury-prone stuff, durability, and the fact that he's talking in interviews about, I was in so much pain with my back. Like, you're 19, why do you have back problems? This, this makes me nervous, Kyle.

Yeah, they just kind of slid it in there that they were like, uh, yeah, he played fewer games than Darren Peterson. And the Peterson thing, we were speculating, we still didn't totally know what it was, and we were like, I think we're on the other side of this, it's not really Bad back is like, that's, that's not one that you want coming in. I've like, Michael Porter Jr. came in and had the, what, the microdiscectomy? I haven't had back surgery, but I think that was the procedure. Um, yeah, I don't know if he's out of the woods in the back thing, but even if he was, if we're just talking about him as a player, uh, my whole thing the whole time is just he's super talent, man. I mean, like, he's, he can, he pushes you to have like a high pickup point. He shoot the shit outta the thing. He can really pass the ball with either hands. It's just, he's a little chaotic. Maybe he reins that in in the half court. Like he gets it, he, he seems to drive without a plan a little much for my liking to the point of like, it's, it's a little bit of a LaMelo-esque chaos in a way.

That's, that's, but LaMelo is also—

You think Julius Randle and Michael Porter Jr. will enjoy that or no?

I'm not saying it could happen for him. He's, he really did. He really does have a lot of talent. He has more. It makes sense for the Nets. If you're looking at the guys, they don't have anybody with that kind of upside on their roster right now.

Every year Kyle gets super conflicted with one guy in the lottery and this has been your guy for 3 months.

You're just like, I thought you were saying my guy. Yeah.

No, you get really conflicted because he is probably, if you're building the buildings of all of these guys, he is one of the biggest buildings because his basement goes 10 floors down, but the ceiling goes pretty high too. We're up 20 floors the other way. I don't know. I'm, listen, House, I'm admittedly terrible at analyzing guys like this because I gravitate away from these guys. They make me nervous. And I always am glass half empty on these guys instead of glass half full. These super talented, kind of chaotic. I'm not sure if you're durable. Like, I'm, I just get worried. Where are you on this?

Exact same place. And here's the problem. Uh, I feel like we've earned the skepticism. Like the Nets had, was it 5 or 6 first round? It was 5 first round picks last season. We set the over-under at 1.

Will one of those 5 picks a year ago, we did this a year ago, look like an, an actual NBA plantation guy in April and May and June.

Do we think that they got, got there? Do we think they got one? Maybe that's it.

That's maybe Treyori is a 10th man.

I mean, JKM, are we being too harsh?

No one's Saroff, no one Danny Wolfe, no one, uh, or it was, uh, Drake Powell was the other one from North Carolina, the athletic guy.

Uh, well, here's the thing, this is one of my favorite draft things where you, you do a draft last year. And it's like, well, we took point guards last year. We can't take Acuff. Are you sure? Because Acuff's better than every point guard you have.

Name one who can play.

It's like when teams do this in the NFL with quarterbacks. Like, we can't take a quarterback. We took one last year. It's like, yeah, you took a shitty quarterback last year. What did you still need? A quarterback. Just because you took quarterback last year doesn't mean you still need one. Uh, I just would've taken Acuff. And I would've figured it out and tried to figure out what he looked like with Damon and, and just gone that way. That's, I think the, if you're the Nets, I'm not looking for upside. I kind of, I kind of just want somebody good. I'm, I've just lost the city, which I had lost anyway. I lost it 19 times over with this Knicks finals. And I thought Acuff would've at least solved a little bit of buzz problems. Now they're You know, keeping their fingers crossed with Brown, who has the upside.

There's something bigger than Acuff. And sure, they're past him being good.

Who's your comp for him for if he's actually really good? Who is he?

Well, I mean, I've comped him to Anthony Simons and Keontae throughout because I've said I'm like, I'm not sure that he's like a bona fide, like, I know I can build a team, a basketball team around— Keontae worked towards earning a little more positivity and optimism on that front this past year. Not according to the Jazz, because they were like, hey, we want to see you do it again. But I thought it was interesting that Mikel compared himself to Anthony Simons. So I kind of feel like he's going to be— that's kind of what I expect him to be. Like, this guy could go get 30, 40 on a given night. He's kind of our— he's, he's sort of adjacent to our superstar, but on any given night he could look like a superstar. That's kind of what I expect him to be, because He's super talented. It's— and defensively gonna be a struggle, but the talent's there. How's—

did that make you feel better or worse? Because I feel worse.

Terrible. I feel worse.

I don't know.

Everybody's trying to find a team. The poor guy, like, everybody, well, we tried with Anthony for a little while and, you know.

So the injury, he's injury-prone, the defense might not be there, and he's adjacent to my star.

I tried to get not conflicted for a minute.

Give me—

just give me that. Let me have that.

I don't know.

Well, I'll give you a positive winner we can, we can end on. Uh, Charlotte gets Steinbach at 14, and they take Andersen at 18. They take two German guys. They just said, fuck it, we're double, double Germaning down. And guess what? There's another one tomorrow in the second round that they could take, the guard who's the teammate on the young German team, right?

Jack Kale.

Yeah. Yeah. People kind of like him. I wasn't, I wasn't that impressed with the thing.

They should bring in Rondo while they're at it.

I mean, not Rondo. Schroeder.

Yeah.

Schroeder hasn't played for Charlotte.

The German Rondo.

Yeah.

So other than Khan having to learn German, I think both of those guys are playoff rotation guys. I like Anderson. I just, he was one of another one of those guys I was hoping would miraculously fall to the Celtics where he's just, I know what he is like. He's gonna be able to create offense. I don't think he's, one of your 3 or 4 best guys on a championship team or a high playoff team. But I think he could be the 3rd guard on a really good team, and which is what he would be on this Charlotte team. So I like that. And then Steinbach, House, you would like Steinbach. Now I'm not sure he'll ever be able to play defense successfully ever, but he is a motherfucking rebounder. Holy shit. I really, he was one of the guys I probably spent the most time on because he's definitely an NBA player and he's definitely a rotation guy and he might be a little flawed but has a couple above average skills. Kyle, like, seems like pretty high IQ, played, you know, with adults overseas when he was like 15, 16, 17, just got the shit kicked out of him.

And he is an awesome rebounder, like awesome. So I don't know, I kind of like the pick for them at 14, even though I'm not sure if he's ever the 4th best guy on a really good team.

I think that he— I've said that he's like the spiritual successor to Steven Adams because you can watch him play and he's just an absolute pain in the ass, tedious, like annoys people with his ability to just get his hand on every ball. But the fit with this Charlotte team, it just makes so much sense because you're basically just putting like a garbage disposal at the bottom of— like, he makes so much sense. I made this comparison that I used to— I love to shoot threes. I used to play pickup with this 5'7" dude who was like the best rebounder I've ever played with. His nickname was the Wolverine. His name, shout out to Kenny. But I would literally just shoot threes and he would walk the ball back out to me at the top of the arc and hand it back to me. And I was joking with Varier, I was like, this is the equivalent of that for the Hornets. It's like they've got these guys who want to get shots up. Christian Anderson, 100% in line with that. One of the best pull-up shooters in the country this past year. Steinbach is just going to just inhale Every rebound that comes like him is like a, like a rock near an event horizon at a black hole.

It's just like, it's going in the black hole. Like, that's, that's what Steinbach is like.

I haven't seen that. You gotta check him out.

I haven't checked him out. I love this.

This is so good. He would've been the guy we would've loved to have played pickup with where he's like moving toward where the rebound's gonna be as the guy's shooting it. Oh, he's just like, he's over there. That means the ball's probably gonna go a little long and maybe bounce here and I'm just gonna move here now and then I'm gonna tip it in. Like, like he just, he's, he's gonna be a double figures rebound guy playing like 24 minutes a game and then probably will give up a bunch of shit on the other end.

They need it though. They're dying for that. They, they, they need that size. They need that rebounding. Bullshit.

I wouldn't have liked him 9'10", but I thought 14 was the right range. Then the last team we didn't talk to, which I'll let you guys decide if they're a winner or a loser, but OKC who had 12 and 17 didn't trade up. And they took Maura who was being rumored to be going 6 to 8 range at one point. I did this on my pod last week, the more I stared at it, the minutes per game just weren't there. Like he barely played at UCLA, played 23 minutes a game last year. I think he is who, what he is, which is like he's coming off the bench, maybe Luke Kornet crossed with Porzingis on the Celtics style as like a change the game type thing and giving you 8, 9 minutes in a, in a half. I don't think he's a starting center. Edy was different 'cause Edy played big minutes at Purdue and, and showed the work. Now he already broke down, but I think for what OKC wants, Kyle, this guy comes in, he's certain matchups, 7, 8 minutes, some Hartenstein insurance. Pretty good passer, really good hands. Seems like his teammates love them.

And I thought there was a chance he could fall to Charlotte, which I think would've been great for them. But I think for OKC at 12, if you're not getting Mores and you're not getting Yaxel, this was the logical next pick, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think it checks a lot of boxes. Um, you know, obviously there's that big guy in the West that this is akin to when Shaq was in the West. 6 more fouls just started affecting roster construction in a way that we haven't really seen in a while. That'd be interesting study to do, like which guys cost the most ripple effect of roster construction. But Mara, yeah, the other thing too is that the idea of Mara kind of fits what I thought OKC might do with Edie a couple years ago. I thought that it'd be interesting if they just took Edie and was like, we play this one way, but for 16 minutes a game, we're gonna play in this other way that is going to be brutal for you.

We're fucking you up.

Yeah.

And I think Mara— but also Mara adds, he adds the win insurance, but he also adds his passing adds another— he instantly would become one of their best passers, I think. Like, and you could, you could play him with those movement shooters like McCain, who loves to play on and off ball, get him the— what you, you got Isaiah Joe still, I forget his contract situation, but then Jaylen Williams. Like, I think he makes sense on that front too if they, if they choose to keep him.

You know what he just, what he just laid out, House, reminded me of in the mid-'80s when we had that Celtics-Rockets Finals and it was Hakeem and Sampson.

Yeah.

And Mikhail Parish, Walton Bird. And then everybody in league was like, we gotta get bigger, need centers. And then all of a sudden there were these hilarious draft picks for like 3 straight years. John Conch, Conchak.

Yeah.

Joe Klein, Uwe Blob.

That was the era.

It was just, people were just grabbing centers cuz it was like, oh, we need 'em, we need 'em, need 'em. I don't know if this was the version of that, but you like this pick too for them, right?

Absolutely. For all the reasons JKM just laid out, but, but in addition, it's, it's, it's so consistent with the path that they're on because they have to flip out a couple of these, these guys that they've, you know, they're at the end of the road with. Yeah, it could be. And, and maybe Dort, uh, and now we've got two viable Sturtz and, and Mar both guys who slide in rookie contracts, not in a hurry. We don't have to, like, they don't have to immediately contribute. They can get some minutes. They're sitting on Toppich and the kid from Georgetown, right? Yeah.

And those guys might be, they might be punting on those guys.

Maybe so. Those guys never set the floor.

Well, Sturtz was, thanks to Kyle and Tate's prodding, I became more and more fascinated with Sturtz. The minutes thing is like one of the craziest things I can ever remember in all the draft studying.

He's like an Alabama running back.

The marathon man.

He played over 1,300 minutes in college. It's like impossible.

They saved it to the running backs in Alabama. Travis.

Doesn't come out of games. I don't remember college basketball players, this being like part of the appeal is I don't come out like the way we would have centers 40 years ago. Good shooter. You, you seem to think, Kyle, you thought he could be a little initiated in the offense.

Oh yeah.

In the right system, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he transferred up from Division II. I think it was Northwest Missouri State and they just kicked ass and his coach Ben McCollum and they just leveled up together, went to Drake. Kicked ass, won in the tournament, leveled up to Iowa, kicked ass. And he just carried a gigantic pick-and-roll load. I just kind of feel like Sturtz, when he gets in the NBA, is going to be like, you mean somebody else could handle the ball for a little? Like, oh, what am I gonna do?

I could like catch it and shoot it.

That's okay.

I love it.

You know, I just think that, that, that's going to be a nice breath of fresh air. But he fit— he grew up an Oklahoma City fan, if I'm not mistaken. He's a Midwest kid and Classic Presley. He fits the profile.

He's like, this kid will love it here. He won't complain once. He has one of those haircuts from like the late '50s, not early '50s, late '50s.

Real big chin haircut. Yeah.

He went to his uncle's, uncle's barbershop and he got like a little— but I thought that was a really nice one. It was right around— again, this goes back to the problem with talking about this draft. It was right around where he was supposed to go. You could call out the picks in real time as they were happening. For the first, I don't know, 15, 16, and, and probably be right most of the time. So yeah. Do, so House, do you feel like, uh, you think Wemby's losing sleep over this Mera pick or no?

I think it's no.

Absolutely not.

He's like, oh, another Oklahoma City chump that I'm gonna put into my french fry machine and, and, and slice him up.

He was like, you should have, should have gotten a PEDs dealer for Chet Holmgren. Should drafted that. 'Cause I'm just gonna run all over him again. All right, so before we go on winners and losers, this is a day after the, oh wait, I had one more thing. What was your favorite pick after like last 12 picks of the draft, Kyle, just for a team and matchup? 'Cause some people like the Lakers, that guy they got from Baylor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Karsen.

He's awesome.

He's a good fit with them. 'Cause I think that that's the right, it's the right environment for him. They'll be able to bring him along slowly. He's gonna get the types of shots that are gonna be good for him. Luke is just gonna, you know, baby bird feed him the types of looks that, that'll be good for him. You know, I said I like the Quentin's pick. Other than that, I mean, Josh Jefferson is a good player. You know, that's of course, that's another sort of dubious shooter that, that Brooklyn picked up. Alex Caraban's a good add for, I just actually just now noticed that Sacramento's gonna be, if you want to add two culture guys that are gonna,, you know, maybe start to shift some of the vibe in Sacramento. Caravan's another dude who— that's the last place I would have thought he would have ended up. But, you know, guy played for UConn, one— and I'm really, really winning player. Um, so yeah, here we go.

Maybe things are changing. House, where do you think Hugo would have gone in this draft? Hugo Gonzalez. I call him Hugo. Where do you think Hugo goes in this draft?

Second round.

House, where do you think Hugo would have gone? No, in all seriousness, where does he go? He's 20 years old.

Which version of you, if he had come into this draft as a player that he was on for a year, there's a new rule.

He gets to reclassify and go back in the draft and get drafted by someone else. Uh, top 15.

I don't know.

Oh, thanks, House. Top 15.

I think I would have him much higher than— yeah, like, that's fair.

I think he would have been around Yaxel, honestly. Listen, that's top 15. The national media is having— the national basketball fans having a lot of fun about Hugo potentially being the deal breaker for the honest thing.

Is that what this is about?

It is funny.

I'm just telling you, they value him like he would have been in the top 12 of that draft. Okay. And the thing is, here's the thing, and I don't know if I said this strongly enough yesterday, like, they made one offer 2 weeks ago.. And it was, you know, Jalen and two picks. Did it, was it a firm offer? Was it, we'd probably do this? I don't know what they said. They never made another offer. And I think the Bucks were waiting for them to circle back and they just, they were like, eh, I don't know. It would almost made me wonder if they had buyer's remorse after they made the first offer. Where like a day later they're like, fuck, why did we do that? And then Milwaukee's like, hey, still waiting on that next offer. And like, yeah, uh, maybe tomorrow. And they just like never, they never made another offer. So I don't know how badly they wanted Giannis, but I'll tell you this though, a day later, I'm, I'm, I'm actually really relieved that that didn't happen. Now we have to figure out the Jaylen Brown part, which I think is going to be for an interesting ride this summer.

How do you think it plays out, House?

I think it's completely solvable. I don't know why. I think that, um, if they all say the right thing to do is to bring the team back together and we're going to go in and we're all together on this effort, then that's it. You know, Jaylen can come in and they'll do a team meeting. Like, those guys won a championship together. And I think that, like, you know, it's business that's happening around them on the outside. But I think inside that locker room, JB and Tatum, like, they carry weight. And if those two guys— that the most important thing is, are those two guys on the same page? Does it seem like whatever?

They're both in France right now.

So there we go. All right.

And I don't know if they're together or they spend any time at all.

Go find a bottle of Bordeaux together.

Are you okay with that, Bill? I mean, they're in France. What if they're picking out clothes? Is that— it was a problem with AJ. I'm just, I'm just wondering. I'm just asking.

AJ had to fly to France to get a suit. Now the thing with those guys, I, I think a lot of the times the problems with the NBA is it's not the two guys, it's the people around each guy. That becomes a problem.

Them.

Okay. And you know, you have somebody like House in my life being like, I can't believe ESPN did that. It's fucking assholes. And I'm like, yeah, they're fucking assholes.

You just need me for that.

Mark Jackson.

No, I didn't need—

that was—

they actually were assholes. I actually didn't need House for that. Um, but yeah, I was thinking about the maddest I've ever been at somebody I worked with where I still had to do my job. And it was definitely after I got suspended for 3 weeks, 2 without pay. And then I had to go back and start writing my, uh, my column again and do Grantland Basketball Hour. And you know what, like, I sucked it up and did my job. And that's what Jaylen Brown's gonna have to do because he's making $57 million a year. So I'm sure his feelings are hurt, but what's he gonna do? He's getting paid to play basketball, and he was in a trade, and he's gonna have to figure it out. Now, the bigger question for me is, do the Celtics think it's salvageable? And what happened over the last 6 weeks that made them think that they should pursue a trade with Jaylen in the first place. So only they know that. Uh, we did have a last poll, House, for the Netflix audience. Um, who is the most likely to end up in my will? And the choices were Hugo, Con Knipple, or Joe House.

And Con won 62%. Of course.

I was hoping all three of us might make it. Why can't all of us get a little something?

Go 33, maybe, maybe that's how I'll split it up. I'll split it up. By the results of Netflix.

It's fair.

Listen, Khan and I have to work on our German this summer. We're gonna have a very busy, busy summer. Put him in the car, German.

I wanted to be prepared driving around LA, you know, he's got a little one.

Sauerkraut. What are some of the good German food suggestions? Strussel.

German food is the sausages and the, yeah, Spätzle. It's, it's like, it's very heavy. It's good fall food.

Yeah.

Well, I've, we've ordered, there's a good German place near us that we've ordered Wursthaus.

Yeah, that makes sense.

A nice, it's good, but you feel sick for like 2 hours after. That's why they have to drink the dark beer. 'Cause the key is to make yourself feel even worse.

Soar your stomach.

Yeah. You, you, the food is heavy and it's like, let's, what could we add to this?

I'm, I'm German. We're a brooding, vice-driven people. We want to sit around and, you know, that's what we want to do.

What's your favorite German food?

How's your last in the poll? You're 18% right now.

I don't have one.

Who goes ahead of you?

I got cut out of the will.

I don't know what happened. I was gonna at least leave you some of the uncut.

Carpool Khan.

Uncut sheets of my action in my attic. Um, all right, Kyle, any last thoughts?

Oh man, I mean, we covered a lot there.

I think that draft, I think that draft from a talent standpoint was an A, and from an entertainment standpoint, probably a C-minus.

Little uneventful. Yeah, wasn't, uh, yeah, we got the Laker argument. Be interesting to see what went on with that. I mean, I didn't get to monitor the social media as much as I was writing as it went, but, um, takeaway here, I mean, all like we've said, all three, the, these top 3 teams could come away happy. I really think that's a distinct possibility. I don't know that we're gonna have a secretary gap. We might, but I'd be surprised.

House, last thoughts? Other than AJ Dibonta? Is that on your team?

I want to find a young aspiring writer that we can do Running Diaries with, bring back the Running Diary, but I don't want to have anything to do with it by name. I don't want you to have anything to do with it, and I don't want JKM to— there were amazing, amazing jokes to be made about many aspects of what we observed tonight. Yeah, there were lots of things that we saw. Some have been overtexted.

Yeah, yeah, there was some text.

There was like the sitting down in the living room thing had a ton. There was some very interesting family dynamics. Uh, so there was, there was like, you know, unexpected relations, random aging cameos.

There was, it was, I, I, there was the ESPN cameraman just honing in on the guys who hadn't gotten picked yet. It's like, hey, it's Phelan, and just get out of his face. That's the tradition though. Are you sad? Do you feel sad yet?

Where are the tears? Show me the tears, kid.

He's been at 5 people on the booth, which would have driven me crazy.

Yes, see, that's— we need a burner diary. That's my takeaway. Because we can't have anything to do with it anymore. We can't make the jokes we used to make.

I think you're right. Well, I'm sorry you lost in the pole house. Kyle Mann, great to see you. Great work on the draft. I thought it was one of your best ones.

Loved it.

Joe House. Congrats on The Wiz. Great as always. Thanks to everybody at Netflix. Thanks to Cahal and Eduardo and Jack and Chris as well for helping out with the livestream. Um, guess what? I'm not gonna have a podcast on Thursday, House. Do you know why?

Are you going to Hawaii?

No, I'm getting a colonoscopy. Finally.

Thank God.

I'm doing it.

You have no idea. I know. You're gonna be, you're gonna come out when they wake you up. You're gonna be like, oh no, no, no, no. Just put me back. Let me sleep for another hour.

Give me more of the special.

It's special.

It's incredible.

It's the best.

I, I mean, if, if, if I wish I had a colonoscopy on Thursday, maybe I'll sign myself up for one.

It's the best snap. That's the lesson at the end of this 2-hour podcast. Take care of yourself.

I'm gonna take care of yourself.

I take care of myself in all these different ways. And for whatever reason, this was the one thing I hadn't done. So I'm doing it on Thursday. No, uh, new rewatchables on Thursday though. We have The Good Son going up, and then I'll be back on Sunday with The Good Son and The Good Butter. Brand new live show by you. The only way I will do a podcast before Sunday is if there's some sort of Jaylen Brown trade. Even if it's right after the Colonoscopy, I'm coming on. I don't care if I'm drugged up.

That's the pod I want.

Yeah. Post-Colonoscopy Jaylen Brown Trade Pod.

The drugs are good.

Yeah. All right, Kyle, House, thank you. Thanks everybody at Netflix, and I'll see you on Sunday. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.