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

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Aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö, einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig. Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut. Mit WISO Steuer bis zum 31. Juli abgeben. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Ali, Will Smith, Michael Mann, our 9th Michael Mann movie. That was me and Chris Ryan and Ben Lathan. Next movie we have, it's the 30th anniversary of an Ed Burns movie called She's the One. That is a very important Gen X movie. And, uh, We've been talking about doing this forever. So it is me and Sean Fantasy, because it's a Long Island movie, and a special guest who's not on the podcast too often. So we are doing that. That is on Netflix if you want to watch that one. And then the next movie we're doing after that is Hitch with Will Smith, which is also on Netflix. So there you go. You can find this podcast on Netflix. If you do, Netflix has My List. If you just click the My List, every time I have a new podcast, it will pop onto your Netflix algorithm and much more exciting way.

So wanted to pass that along. I also have a podcast coming. We're gonna go live on Sunday on Netflix. Not sure of the time yet, but stay tuned for that. And I think I'm only doing the Sunday podcast, probably taking a couple days off next week unless something crazy happens, you know, like Kawhi Leonard's trade being postponed, which we're gonna talk about in one second with Joe House. House and I, we talked about Kawhi at the top. We talked about Jalen versus analytics. Um, could Joel Embiid be traded and would anyone even want him? And then we did a whole mailbag and all of that is coming up next, right after we take a break and hear Pearl Jam. 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 Viator, 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. All right, House, this part of the podcast is 12:15. We just finished our podcast, and then as we finished, Gahau told us that, um, there was breaking news in the NBA. It was the Toronto Raptors saying that their trade for the Kawhi— for Kawhi Leonard is on hold. According to the statement, they said, the NBA League Office informed us that as a result of the ongoing investigation involving the Clippers, we would assume the risk of any potential outcome of the investigation impacting Kawhi. In light of this, we will wait until the league's investigation is complete. The Raptors remain eager to bring Kawhi back to Toronto and look forward to a swift resolution for our players, our organization, our fans. So we actually talked about this in the podcast before. I'll just leave it in so we can hear, because Conspiracy Bill came out. What does this mean?

I have no idea. I mean, the league office is doing informing. The league office is responsible.

How much— happened a week ago.

How much more time do they need? What are we getting to the bottom of at this point?

But this seems to indicate that Kawhi could be suspended.

It suggests that there could be Kawhi consequences. This is asinine. What, what is the fucking league doing? The league is responsible for the outcome and, and whatever pronouncement it wants to make. The teams are permitted to do business if this was not a condition.

But why didn't the league say, right, you're not allowed to do— to trade, acquire, do anything until we finish our investigation?

Right. Why didn't the league do that? You tell me. What is the point of this communication now?

This is— how about this?

Finish the fucking investigation.

I know, but it's independent.

July 9th. Who cares? There aren't any more witnesses to be interviewed. There aren't any more fucking documents to be reviewed.

It's been an 8-month investigation.

Months after months after months. September. How many lawyers and how, how many, how much fees is being generated? It's a money grab by this.

Babydoll thinks it's a money grab.

Who thinks it's a money grab?

Well, this is the first time I didn't— all of us thought the Clippers were going to get penalized. This is the first time it feels like Kawhi might also be punished in this. There's no other way to interpret this.

That also really seems out there because the collective bargaining agreement gives the league the right to punish a player for agreeing to an arrangement with a sponsor where the sponsor says—

Well, but this means there's more stuff that maybe hasn't come out yet. It's suggesting that's— there's something— this insinuates that Kawhi could be suspended for a year, 6 months, or whatever, and the team didn't know that when they traded for him.

What would—

because they couldn't assume the risk of any potential outcome. It's like the Raptors would assume the Clippers' risk.

No, you're right.

The Clippers are fine, but now that they have Kawhi, Toronto will have to be penalized. Like This has to be Kawhi related.

But what— you're absolutely right. What, what is the scenario under which Kawhi is individually culpable for something that, that, that is outside the bounds of the league's rules on this? What did Kawhi— and is this the, uh, they want to do something to Uncle Dennis? I don't understand it. What could he do? Like, if, if the sponsor was Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola has an agreement with the Clippers and has an agreement with the league, and does sponsorships and says, we also want you, Kawhi Leonard, to be a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, and we're not going to make you come do anything. You know, it doesn't work out. The circumstances don't work out. We can't— you know, it turns out you can't— you couldn't make any of his appearances.

Can they—

the player can be punished for that?

I think they should go further. I think they should postpone the Jaylen Brown trade. I think all transactions should be postponed until we get to the bottom of this. Jalen Brown is back at the Celtics.

That would be incredible. I'm rooting for that more than anything else.

I'm really shocked by this.

I'm dumbfounded. So this little D, dumb.

This makes me think that, um, oh, there's a full Clippers statement as well.

I hope it says the league can go fuck itself.

The Clippers acknowledge the— this from Mark Stein, our buddy. The Clippers acknowledge that the Kawhi investigation is ongoing, but we expect the trade to be finalized following its conclusion. So was Adam Silver like on vacation last week? Where was he? Why didn't he tell them you can't trade Kawhi until we finish the investigation? Sorry.

Right. No shit. Does he not have the day that free agency and, and, and, and you know, the, the transaction market opened up on his calendar?

Of course he handled.

As usual. What the fuck? He's like, why are we talking about this on—

last week getting offers for our 12 NBA Europe teams and didn't realize Kawhi was traded to Toronto. My bad.

The league is now on pause. We have to assume the risk.

This is—

you assume the risk. It's your risk. It's the league's risk. Eat a dick. Not assuming shit. So we can have Toronto and the Clippers make, make a deal. Why?

So we could have Garland Wagner, Kawhi, Rui, my guy Yannick. Keep Kawhi, cancel the trade, keep them. But yeah, they got 2 firsts and 2 swaps.

It's a good deal. Wow, House.

All right, we'll, uh, we'll find out what happened with this, but, um, in the meantime, let's go backwards an hour and 40 minutes to the rest of our podcast. All right, we're recording this on Thursday morning, um, about 10 hours before the big DeBansa-Peterson Summer League game. I love how every year we forget that Summer League doesn't matter. It's one of my favorite things when everybody gets carried away with, with all of this stuff.

It matters because it's our first look and it's our, our, you know, there is genuine appropriate excitement. I will say Yeah, that at least here in Washington, I encourage everybody to keep expectations in the appropriate level. Like, let's just be calm, cool, and collected about it. Remember, uh, poor Alexander Sarr when he came out and went, you know, 0 for 15 in his first, uh, Summer League game. Um, not a bust. And whatever happens between Peterson and Dabansa tonight, it doesn't set the, the referendum for the rest of their careers.

And by the way, we knew Peterson was incredibly talented and the most talented guy in the class. That wasn't the reason he went second instead of first. There were red flags last year, and, you know, I thought he was one of the hardest guys to peg ever. But man, you watch the Summer League games, like, oh no, I've been taking a lot of bullets, I've been catching a lot of strays. He's already stopped starting.

How's the Wizards? Peterson. And Peterson's gonna look great tonight against the Wizards.

Peterson's gonna look— he Breaking news, he might just look great. Like, he might just— he might have just gone to the perfect team. Might be the right city, right organization, right coach, and he might be awesome. And everybody knew that that was very possible. All right, I have a whole agenda for us today.

Let's go.

Amazingly, we're doing more Jaylen Brown content, but not for the reasons people think. Um, we are also going to talk about Joel Embiid and whether he might be on another team next year. And, and then I have a whole mailbag for you, but I wanted to talk, uh, the old guys have been watching all this advanced metrics stuff coming out of the Jaylen Brown trade, and you and I have kind of straddled the fence. I'm a, I'm a little more advanced metrics friendly than you, but both of us are, you know, eye test common sense guys as well. Just deep diving everything from this Jaylen trade for the last 10 days, I just can't believe how bad he looks in the advanced metrics stuff. And it's almost like I, I find myself going back over all the games I watched and all the Celtics seasons I took in and all the playoff games and just wondering to myself, did I get this wrong? And then I landed on, no, I don't think I got this wrong. I think there are some reasons for some of these stats. You haven't come on and talked about this yet since the trade.

Since your colonoscopy.

Since the colonoscopy.

Yeah.

By the way, thank you for that.

Success.

I'm glad we raised awareness for colonoscopies, by the way. We've talked about a bunch of times. Go get one.

Make that happen. As many as you're allowed to get. I recommend them.

But yeah, so I test going, going big picture on, as you're watching the dialogue about this where everybody has now apparently decided Jalen Brown is actually not an efficient player. There's, if, if he's your number one guy, you don't have a chance to win the title. All that. Like, where do you stand with all this?

I mean, right out of the box, I reject the framing. I don't reject analytics. I think they are great. They are super helpful. It's information. It's, it's, it's really interesting way of, you know, trying to measure guys against one another when their situations and contexts are so disparate. Like, how, how can you measure Jaylen Brown's effectiveness against Jaylen Brunson's effectiveness? Well, there's some ways to slice it and dice it. All of that is fine. I don't reject any of that, but context is super important. Remember, this Boston Celtics team was in a transition year. The, the anticipated number of wins— what was their win total? Was it 41, 42?

41.5.

Yeah, right. So that's where, you know, the, the markets were anticipating. It was hard to say what kind of season this team was going to have. And then through the combination of Joe Mazzulla and the front office, I give him credit, and Jaylen fucking Brown, they won 56 fucking games because he is that guy. He is that dog. He took the standard and made all of those guys— I'm gonna say this without trying to disrespect the rest of the Celtics roster in the most recently completed season, but he took a bunch of bums to 56 wins. And you know how I know they're bums? Because he got rolled right the fuck out of the playoffs. As soon as you got into a situation where you were up against a proper test in terms of a team with talent at all levels, and you know, the front court for the Boston Celtics this entire season was the development of Neemias Keita. Wonderful. Great job. A++, two thumbs up.

Shireman, Hugo, right?

More Pritchard development, development, development. Great. That was the point of the season. And then Tatum came back earlier than expected and immediately, remember again, it was just two and a half months ago. Boston was forecasted as a potential team to not only make the Eastern Conference Finals, but to make it to the NBA Finals out of the East. Right when the playoffs started. They had the second best odds because the expectation around what they were capable of with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, a track record of 10 years, a full decade of those two guys kicking ass when they're on the floor together. Yeah. A slew of Eastern Conference Finals, two NBA Finals, an NBA championship that Jaylen Brown was the MVP of. So I don't mind at all going inside the box and saying, well, how do we sort of measure the impact going forward? But here's the thing that I ask you, and I wonder about for, for Celtics Nation: why did they give up on this season? How can you come into this upcoming season when you've done the thing that was most important, which is bring in Mitchell Robinson, an absolute rebounding miracle of a man, single-handedly contributed that rebounding role to the Knicks, to a— vaulted them right to a championship.

You bring that in, your most dire need, you've addressed it with a guy who's absolutely—

if you can stay healthy, just—

yeah, and healthy Tatum. And we know, we have 10 years of evidence that those two guys plus Mitchell Robinson plus whatever else the front office could do, that's a team that looks to me like a possible Eastern Conference finalist, possible NBA finalist, and we punt. What's the— why did we punt? Why do, why did the front office give up on, on this Celtics team?

You know, there's a lot to unpack here. You gave me a lot there, and I do want to circle back in the advanced metrics. You're talking about overreacting to a bad result in the playoffs, which I think Minnesota did too. Minnesota did that LaMelo trade. I talked about it when it happened. They were banged up last year, right? Edwards got hurt right before the playoffs, wasn't 100%. DiFoncenzo got hurt during the first round. IO got hurt. And I don't, I just feel like they decided, well, we, we don't have a chance anymore based on what the playoff results were, so we have to take a big swing. I don't agree with it. It's funny hearing people remember what they remember about the Philly series. Which basically came down to 3 games, Game 2, Game 5, and Game 7. And in Game 2, Brown and Tatum actually played pretty well. It was the guards. I think Pritchard, White, and Vucevic were like 2 for 20 from 3 in that game. And we just couldn't hit a shot. The pace was off. Philly was, I think, 19 for 39 from 3. They stole the game. It's fine.

They're up 3-1. They go into Game 5. They're up double figures in Game 5. Do you remember what happened in the second half of Game 5?

I don't.

Embiid fucking killed them. Oh yeah, that Embiid killed them and it came out of nowhere and it was, you know, this was this crazy thing that got introduced during the series where all of a sudden you have 2023 MVP Joel Embiid just looking like Joel Embiid again in the second half of that game. He shoots 7 for 10. And 4 for 4 from 3 is 18 points. And Maxie's 5 for 8 and they just play better and they steal the game, right? Game 7, Tatum doesn't play, right? Tatum gets scratched and they do that crazy starting lineup to whatever. And I don't know, I, I didn't mind the way Jaylen played in that game. I, I thought the reasons they lost the series, 'cause White and Pritchard didn't shoot 3 was, well, the Vucevic thing was a terrible experiment. I don't hang that series on Jalen at all. So anyway, they overreact to it. You asked why they did this, and I've talked to a bunch of people, and I know I've talked about it on the pod a bunch of times, but it feels like they felt like there was no going back after Jalen had a taste of being the guy on the team last year, and that whatever they were gonna do with this team this year, with his contract, he wasn't gonna get the extension from them at the end of July.

And did this have a chance to actually go sideways? And I think whether you agree with it or not, I think they evaluated this as like, this isn't going in the right direction. The Tatum-Brown thing's been weird for 2 years. There's been a lot of dialogue about that, about can you play with somebody you don't get along with? I don't know if they got along or didn't get along. They, I know they didn't hang out, but I know also know that they had an unbelievable 9-year run together. Yeah, that they played more playoff games together than anybody. They won a title in 2024. I, I just don't think this was like a Kidd, Mashburn, Jimmy Jackson situation. But what I do think is that they were concerned that there was no going back with Jalen and that after being the guy and now, hey, thanks for being the guy, but now Tatum is gonna be the guy again and we're not gonna give you an extension, that they thought it was gonna go sideways and they got ahead of it. Well, that's a confession.

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

It's not a managing thing though. You're talking about two guys making $60 million a year and the coach who's making 10% of that combined. Like, his voice is only going to go so far. This is a league over and over again when the superstars run the league. And if the two superstars— but if the two superstars about— so this is the voice thing's important because obviously Chisholm bought the team. He's only in the team for like a year and a half. I do wonder if, if Wick was the owner of the team and hadn't sold, I do wonder if he would've handled it differently. And I'm not saying he would've been the hero of it, but would he have been like, wait a second, let's all get together. What we gotta figure that really, this is, that's one piece. And then the other piece is—

people murdered you for the, for the, for the restaurant concept. But that is exactly what was called for.

I mean, people, what people murdered me? Who are these people? I enjoyed it so much, but you know, I was trying to be funny, but it was also true. Like, get these guys in the fucking room.

That's right.

Yeah.

Everybody get in the room and have out whatever you have to have out. This is a team that, that's set a standard with those two guys as, as your, your focal points of getting to the Eastern Conference Finals and possibly the NBA Finals every year that the two of them arrive to the playoffs healthy. Right. And this year, what was po— you know, it was forecasted to be a, a potential repeat, really outta nowhere. There was no reason whatsoever for that Boston team to win 56 games.

And it really was a dopey Philly series. There's never been a situation like that where somebody just comes back midway through the series, plays well for 3 games basically, and then immediately goes back to not being an effective player again. And then they get swept by the Nets.

Well, it was also the kryptonite of the Boston roster because the Boston this roster was, uh, an in-development roster. It wasn't anticipated that it was going to be a team that was going to win between 55 and 60 games and win its division and make a long run to the playoffs.

They overachieved by 15.

Nobody in the front court— that, that's why, uh, Embiid had the success he had. They couldn't defend him.

Well, and we couldn't make threes either. The— so the old guy conversation, there's two things going on. The advanced metrics are bad for Jalen. And this is something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a week. I mailed you, I mailed you, uh, there's 85 guys ever. I went on Stathead. Thanks to Stathead, by the way. I've always enjoyed it.

Great job. Great job.

Um, there's 85 guys ever who averaged at least 28 points a game with a 30 usage rate. And you could put all these different stats like win shares, VORP. VORP is like It's not nothing. I, I don't— like, the thing is, I kind of like these stats. I don't think they should be the determiner of a player's value, but it's interesting. Jalen's win shares were the worst out of all 85 guys. We're talking about like World B Free 1980, uh, Iverson in '05, Mark Aguirre in 1984, like, and he's the worst. And then you go, you go to VORP, which is Also not nothing. I don't mind looking at VORP. Jalen was 3rd to last, and the only 2 seasons worse for— worse than him in VORP were 2010 Carmelo and 2007 Carmelo. And you look at some of the names in this list, House, and it is interesting. It's all these high usage forwards that never were able to really be— or you could never build a Finals team around them, right? Dominique, Adrian Dantley. Mark Aguirre, Carmelo, Alex English, World B Free. You couldn't even build a first-round playoff team around him. Donovan Mitchell now.

But these guys that you could throw a big burden on them and you could have regular season success. But as the levels got higher, that recipe didn't work anymore. And I think that's basically where we landed with Jalen last year. We talked about this like, Let's go back to just us playing pickup basketball a million years ago. At some point you have 5 guys. One of those 5 guys needs to regularly create a good shot for everybody else, right? Just start there. Jaylen was the only guy who could do that on this team. Pritchard once a week.

Oh, he wasn't an offensive engine though, Bill Simmons. I know. The stats, you say create a good shot. I don't know. The stats don't support that.

Jaylen Brown's like, oh, his effective field goal's down. Well, maybe partly because every time they played anybody, the entire defense was like, we gotta stop Jaylen. He's gonna take 16 twos. He's gonna get to the line. Let's throw 2 guys at him. Let's trap him. Let's attack him when he goes to the rim. Like, he had a big burden. He played 71 games. And this is what we've talked about over and over again. Durability, consistency, and can you be the hub of something bigger, which he did last year. And I'm, I can't accept the advanced metrics. Telling me otherwise because I watched the season.

Yeah, well, not only that, again, I mean this as respectfully as possible, he dragged a bunch of fucking bums to 56 wins. Like, he was a really important part in terms of setting a standard. Those guys, the development of Gonzalez and Shireman and Peyton stepping up and Keita, and like, this is a team like roster-wise that was going to win 41 games. That's what made sense. That was the sensible outcome. And Jaylen fucking Brown was like, no, I don't accept that. I'm going to go out. And again, let's also give credit to Mazzulla because the game plan also called for a kind of radical, although not that radical under Celtic circumstances, way of approaching every game. But they ceded nothing. They conceded nothing. They went out and played their ass off. Every night. They gave it all every night.

And he took on the biggest challenge. He's the one. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a reason that they all were able to collectively elevate. One guy took the lead. He took the lead. He was the leader. So I don't care about the efficiency numbers. I don't give a shit. That doesn't help me understand anything about contextually what happened last season.

Yeah. There's burden and gravity and there's some things.

But he also played his ass off on defense, by the way. That's why the MVP conversation had him featured. You know, Wilbon said with, you know, a month left of, of the regular season that Jaylen Brown was his leading contender. Now, whatever he must say about—

yeah, they, they were first in offensive rating for the entire year and they ended up second. Who else, who else were their elite offensive players on this offense? Tatum played 16 games, right? Pritchard, who I love, and I actually think Pritchard could go up a level next year if there's more shots thrown his way. But I didn't know whether Pritchard was showing up night to night. He would have games where he just stunk, you know? Sure.

White was bad. That's who he is.

White was bad shooting-wise all year.

All season.

Even though there's great advanced metrics for him. And then everybody else, you didn't know what they were getting.

I mean, that tells you, there you go. The advanced metrics for Derrick White offensively were very good.

Well, they're always good with him though. He sucked. He sucks shooting. He lost his confidence.

Yeah, he sucks shooting. I'm talking about his offense.

Yeah. But that's the thing.

He was awesome as a shot— as a, uh, remember all the money we made, um, betting on his, uh, the over for his blocks every night?

Oh, that—

well, they— awesome.

Yeah. Fanduel finally wised up to that. But part of the reason his shooting was down, because he had such a big load, I think he wore down as the season went along. And that's another thing, like when you're talking about advanced metrics with somebody like Jalen. And it, and it could be Jaylen, it could be a bunch of people, but the night to night showing up, playing 36 minutes a game. I watched him during the course of the year guard Kate Cunningham in the last 5 minutes of games. Luka, right?

Kawhi, right, right.

Pick a guy, SGA, right? They threw him on like he, yes. And he would accept the challenge. And I don't know, I just feel like in basketball you have to have one guy that's like, well, at least we have this guy. They have that guy, but at least we have this guy. We're probably getting 29 to 32 from our guy tonight. And when you don't have that, you're not gonna win 56 games. So, um, with that said, his plus-minus, if you go through his career, it's like shocking. I, I think he might be one of the great advanced metrics outliers in the history of the league, if not number one. Every single year. Celtics were basically better with him when he wasn't on the court. And I don't have an explanation for that. And I, I'm not gonna be like, oh, the stats are wrong. 'Cause obviously they're not. And I was talking to my dad about it. 'Cause my dad, you know, pre-last season, Jaylen went up a level last season. Like he really like got better as a creator. And you know, his, he, I thought his, he had less turnovers even though it doesn't reflect that he had the ball way more..

But my dad, pre-last season, they would have these two 5-minute sections when they would take— 6-minute sections. They would take Tatum out and Jaylen would get to run the offense. And my dad would either go to pee or go get a popcorn. 'Cause he is like, I can't stand this. I hate when it would be like going to a concert and you know, you're going to see the Rolling Stones and it's like, oh, now we're gonna play the Keith Richards song. You're like, fuck, can't you play Start Me Up? It was like, everybody goes to the bathroom. So that was there, and I— it always felt clumsy when Jalen was in charge of it, but last year was not that clumsy. I'm just telling you.

Yeah, I think it's fine to look at, you know, over the course of the career and, you know, point out these vulnerabilities, these frailties to his game.

But he was a flawed, durable player.

Yeah, but we know from the outcomes what kind of impact he has on, on winning. Like, right. The, the, the, including the title, the 2024 title and being the MVP of that team. The MVP, the Finals MVP.

Yeah.

Well, whatever, whatever.

I thought Jason should have won that.

Enough people saw enough to believe that he earned it.

Yeah. Well, I wonder, like, do they look at that season where they superpowered the role players around them, which is impossible now, but they just added Porzingis and Holiday. They had Derrick White already. Pritchard as a bench guy. Al Horford was still there. And then you have this double forward combo in their mid-20s still, Tatum and Brown. And both of them were just a lot going downhill, shooting threes. And maybe that they felt like that was the peak. They talked a lot about the, in the press conference about the usage, the usage of the two guys together and the salary cap and I get it. The argument falls apart when you also tried to trade for Giannis, and Giannis and Tatum were going to be 70% of your salary cap. Um, I will never for the rest of my life understand why they didn't wait to see if this deal was available until September, October, because I think Philly's saying yes on September 1st, on September 17th, on September 30th. I also feel like whatever happens with Jalen in Philly can't, you can't retroactively go and fit that to your opinion of this trade because I don't know if this is a great situation for him going to this Philly team that's Maxie's team.

And then when Embiid comes back, everything revolves. I just don't think his stats are gonna be the same. He's gonna be, who cares?

He's a winner. They're gonna win. They're gonna be good. I love every, every, every Sixers future. I, I'm in like the idea of them as 8 to 1. To win the East. Okay, I'll have a little taste of that. They're, they're 4-to-1 to win the Atlantic Division between behind the Knicks and the Celtics. Well, I think they're going to be motivated this upcoming season. Obviously, the wild card is do you get 40 games out of Embiid? But those 3 guys were really going to help each other. I think it's going to be a really good fit, like putting good players on the floor. Edgecomb and Maxey and Jalen together. That's a, that's good. That's going to be, it's going to work. I'm not worried about that at all.

These were other things I was saying heading into the 2018-19 Celtics season when I picked them to win 70 games. Kyrie, Brown, Tatum, Hayward, we're gonna be unbelievable.

Wow. There, there was one flaw. There was one.

But you could feel it right away. And this is, you know, this is what you and I have loved about basketball forever. It doesn't always make sense. Like sometimes you can have a team like that last year's Celtics team where it's like we have one guy who can consistently create a shot. We have a bunch of other guys, you called them bums, which I, I, I let it slide. I think they were young guys, role players.

Okay.

Whatever. They were all guys that couldn't be top 3 guys on a team except for White. But they figured out, they figured out how to make it work. And we've seen this over and over again in basketball. There's been teams where the pieces fall into place. With Philly, you have a lot of star power and a lot of money. You have Embiid, who we're gonna talk about after the break. It's just, you know what, I would just be careful with that one. Is it an on-paper team or is it a team that's actually gonna play well together? 'Cause Paul George, whatever you say about him at this stage of his career, definitely knew he was a complimentary player and could kind of pop in and out.

But well, he certainly popped in and out.

I don't know if Jalen wants to pop in and out at this point.

Well, if you were, if you're measuring it by how many games did Paul George play, he certainly popped in and then popped out of the entire season.

He might've popped some things into his body too. Um, yeah, so when, when we talk about like the usage rate and some of these advanced stats, it prompted me to go on this huge deep dive. And you know, I did my book from basically '07-'09. We didn't have a lot of these stats. I didn't have access to them. And there's stuff that like I would talk— like I was looking at Steve Nash, who I had— I forget where I had him, but like in the pyramid.

I don't know.

I think I'm gonna move him.

Okay.

But I, I think I had him like in the, somewhere in the thirties in the pyramid, and now he was in that cluster of point guards. Steve Nash ran the number one offense in basketball. You can go back now to through basically to the mid-'90s and look at all the on/off stats, all the offensive ratings, everything. He was the number one offense every year from 2003 to 2010. 2 last 2 years in Dallas, his first 6 Phoenix seasons, no matter who was on the team, they didn't have Amar'e Stoudemire for all of those 6. Didn't matter. They were still number 1 in offense. They were number 1 in '08 with Shaq when they made that weird Shaq trade. They were number 1 in '09 and '10.

And another Mark Cuban masterpiece.

Well, but then you go and you look at the on-off stats for Nash. And his— when they— he was off the court those last 2 years, they were better without him, allegedly, according to the stats. That must have been one of the reasons they let him go. Anyway, my point is, like, I do think some of these stats are great. Um, I think Jalen might just be an outlier to some of this stuff. High usage guys on a team that's not that good, that probably should have been like a 42-45 win team, and for whatever reason, this type of player was able to pull 10 wins out of the regular season, but in the playoffs it becomes harder.

Yeah. Well, especially with the roster construction that the Celtics had this most recent season, I just think it's a, a, a dumb way to try and capture who he is and the impact on the, the franchise. The, the only aspect of it to me that has a, a, a kind of like, okay, I can see this vibe to it. Is the extension, if he was really going to get bent out of shape about the extension, if there was something that happened in those conversations. Yeah, but here's the problem. The Celtics front office did not prepare its fan base in any way, shape, or form for anything like this. It was either Giannis coming to the Celtics to join Tatum, or we're going to run it back open for business. We're going to run it back with JB, and then we'll see what happens over the course of the season. And by the way, running it back with JB, or at the beginning of the season at least, it's gonna be a bunch of wins for the Celtics because Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum together with the cast of characters and, and inserting Mitchell Robinson into it, they're gonna, they were gonna win a bunch of basketball games.

And I think that should have helped overall. Like some teams, you know, circumstances change as you get to the beginning of the season. Some teams start underperforming right away. And the best you can do is, right, you just wait till December.

Who's unhappy, right?

Yeah, Paul George in July is not the answer. Like, we have, uh, proof. We know for sure, uh, that a GM took a big gamble on Paul George, and that GM is not in the league right now.

It was— so I'll tell you this, it wasn't the answer right after my colonoscopy.

Um, yes, it was.

You know who's the best I think the best example of the kind of Jalen season we're talking about where the advanced metrics actually kind of liked it was Iverson.

Interesting.

His '01 season where, you know, his usage, everything is like just highest possible caliber and he was on the court was +5.7 and his on-off was +4.1. So it was around the same. Now there's also reasons for that. They built that entire team around Allen Iverson. Every decision they made, every player they put next to him was to help hide him on defense. A physical team that can protect him and basically just shoot a shitload of shots and go nuts. You know, and then we get to the playoffs that year and he's basically even on the court and minus 5 when, when he was minus 5 overall in the playoffs. Where he didn't have a lot of good games and they got a lot of foul help when— gets Milwaukee and all that stuff. But it is possible to build around a high usage. More likely it works out like it did with Jerry Stackhouse on that '01 Pistons team. Remember when he averaged like 30 a game and they were 32-50? That's usually the way it goes.

Yeah. What I— the, the— I thought the touchpoint, the reference that, that was closest to what I might've imagined for the Celtics team was Russell Westbrook the year that KD left. Right. And he averaged his triple-double. That was the '16-'17 year, right?

Yeah. They won like, I'm gonna say 48 games, something like that.

I think they won 46.

Yeah.

Or maybe it was 48, but they got, they won one game in the playoffs. They immediately got, you know, and it was similar.

Remember Westbrook won the MVP because there was that one game in the weekend. When he was just awesome in the last 3 minutes. And it was like, all right, fine, you twist my arm, you have it. But the point is, Jalen could at least be somebody that you could, whether the advanced metric stats loved it or not, he could be the fulcrum of a team that could win in the mid-fifties if you put the right types of players around him. I don't know if there's a lot of guys like that in the league. You know, I don't think, by the way, as great as Kawhi was last year, the durability thing's just not gonna be there with him in the same way. You know, and I also wonder, I can't remember if I said this before, but if you're playing 71 games and you're going hard in all those games and you're really trying to guard and do all the stuff that Jalen was trying to do, you're not gonna be 100% for all of those games. Right. Whereas like the, we've, we've seen some guys where they could play the 55 to 58 games and take a couple breaks during the season.

Look at Paul George. Paul George took 25 games off, came back. He was 21 a game the last 10 games of the season. Then he was really good in the playoffs, partly 'cause he took 25 games off in the middle of the season. So I don't, I will never understand why they didn't wait. And I think I'm more confused by the advanced metrics than I was before this trade because I don't, I don't really have an explanation for how they're worse when, when he plays and they were better when he was off the court. And I think it's an advanced analytics team that was like, this is, this is multiple years now where this has been the case.

What multiple years though?

Like, uh, just saying regular, they were making it to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Yeah. The years they were making it to the NBA Finals. Like, there's some alchemy there. There's, there's something about the, the chemistry experiment that's producing more good results than, than not good. Like, you know, the, these, these far runs deep into the, playoffs with, with him as the second most important player, and it's fine casting him that way, that, that tells me a lot about his, his import to the situation.

Yeah, they're basically treating him like a TV show where it's like, this is ER Season 8. We don't really need to pay our number 2 lead $60 million anymore. We can get some other actress and bring, bring her in and basically get the same ratings.

What's your reasonable forecast for the Celtics this upcoming season?

Oh, I, I'd be shocked if they weren't in the mid-50s again. I think FanDuel has them -135 for the 50+. There's more injury risks this year with the team.

No, no, no. There's 49.5 on FanDuel and it's not -135 to the over.

Oh, well it was, it was 4 days ago. 50+ wins was -135. So that's different.

I'm gonna try and pull it up here super quick. They have, they have the Celtics, they opened up, FanDuel opened up. They put 10 teams out with, with the actual over-unders, with, with over-unders. And the Celtics are at 49.5, and I guarantee you the over is not -135 at the moment.

Well, the thing is, Mitch, assuming Mitch can play 60 games and play 20, 25 minutes a game, 20 to 25 minutes a game, he's so much better.

60 is a lot of games for Mitchell Robinson.

I get it, but he's just way better than what they had last year with Garza and Vucevic.

Could not agree more. That's why I thought they should have kept Jaylen Brown. But how many games?

Tatum is in the Jaylen Brown spot and has been a first team All-NBA guy 4 times. So you'd figure they're at least a little up there. They lose Simons and replace him with Paul George. And then you have Hugo's a year older and Shyam is a year older, more Pritchard shots, less minutes for White so he can be a little more efficient. And I don't understand why they wouldn't at least be a 54 to 55 win team for the regular season. That's 3-pointers. They have more injury risk than they did last year.

Yeah, no question. They sure do.

They sure do. Mitch, Paul George, right? But the thing is, couldn't they play Paul George 45 games?

Oh, so it's the exact same price. It's -135. I, I got it wrong. Boston at, at winning 50, is it still at -135? And the over is over 49.5. That's what FanDuel set it for, right? Is it -135? 5. So that's it.

I mean, I would think about the 55 for that. 'Cause you figure Detroit's worse. We'll see what Philly will be better.

Knicks will be better. This is tough.

Yeah.

There's only one team that took a step backwards in my opinion, and that's Detroit. The Pacers are gonna be playing, you know, to, to win this season. The Wizards are playing to win. Now that doesn't translate, but I don't think Charlotte is worse. I, I, I, I like what they did in terms of their machinations this offseason.

I like what they did long term, but this for the season itself. We'll see.

Well, we'll, we'll see. I like Orlando this upcoming season with a functioning head coach and if Franz Wagner can play 60 games. Well, but look, I mean, you know, they were forecasted to have over 50 wins last season.

You would think Atlanta would be a little bit better, right?

The East is tough. The East is gonna be a bitch. There's only 3 teams that suck.

I gotta say the single funniest thing to me about the Jalen, the, the, and listen, and it's been discussed a little in, in different places, but I think Jalen's side and his agent definitely sabotaged a couple of possible teams. There's no question.

There's a couple teams. Like who?

I think there were a couple teams that they were like, yeah, he's not gonna be happy if he goes there.

Name names.

I think there were teams that backed off.

Name— here's the problem with trading him at this moment now especially is like there are not a lot of teams that can take on a $57 million contract. Like, it's, it's, it's under—

but this is, this is the unforgivable one.

Go ahead.

Explain to me in a million years why the Brooklyn Nets wouldn't have traded Michael Porter's expiring for, and 3 of the firsts they have, for Jaylen Brown. What possible answer do you have for this?

You are asking for, you know, the, the, the, the, the solution to the Jesus shroud. This is the functional equivalent. Like, how can you explain?

There's like, imagine I'm Joe, I'm Joe Tsai and I call you. It's a phenomenon. Yo, we have a chance to trade. Michael Porter's expiring a pick down the road. We have like a Houston pick and something else and we can get Jaylen Brown. Wouldn't your answer be like, what the fuck are you waiting for? Take the trade before they pull it off.

The phenomena in the— this is one of those phenomenon in the universe that has no explanation. You just have to accept it.

Would— it's not like they have another Max guy. You can't even blame like this whole—

are you saying that Brooklyn put this on the table?

No, I'm saying Boston thought they had a chance to pull something off with Brooklyn, and at some point in the higher levels— I, I talked about this a week ago— it got squashed. They decided they didn't— they weren't interested in Jaylen Brown.

Which you— oh, okay. I'm saying at the higher Well, Brooklyn deciding against it makes perfect sense 'cause they, they make no sense whatsoever because you can't make any sense out of what Brooklyn is doing.

The Knicks just won the title. Who are you? Who am I selling to Nets fans next year? Please come see Brown, our rookie before he gets hurt.

Julius Randle.

Here's Julius Randle. If I had Brown and Julius Randle and a bunch of shooting and young guys, like I'm, that's interesting. At that point, I'm not, not interesting.

Right.

But yeah, they, what a shit organization. It's really bad.

They, they don't need more teams. They just need to move that Brooklyn team.

We're gonna take a break and then we gotta talk about Joel Embiid. All right, Joel Embiid, $57 million this year, $63 next year, $67 in the final year of his deal.

I mean, we're doing the worst contracts draft all over. I mean, this whole podcast is us, is Paul George and Joel Embiid. Absolutely amazing.

Jalen's $57, $61, and $65, and Maxie's $41, $44, and $46. And the cap's going backwards. This whole thing where the cap went backwards has been— I wish I had been more focused on it heading into, um, the draft and free agency. Like, this is nuts. It's $6 million lower than they projected it for this year. I think next year it's going to be in double figures, and by the time we get to the last year of the decade, I think it's going to be like $25 million less than they thought.

And I remember the most— yes, I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, it's just when they, when they did the Jalen deal a couple years ago, it was like, yep, whoa, we had to pay the whole $304 with Tatum too? Like, why'd we do that? And then everybody— and it was just Celtics— every team was like, cap's going way up. Like, it's like that contract in a couple years, like— and I remember doing pods about these guys are gonna be making $75 million and it's gonna be like they're making 35 now. Well, the cap didn't go up because of all this local TV stuff. And it is one of the reasons that drove the Celtics trade. And if I'm the Sixers and I have $114 million for Embiid and Jalen, and then I also have the Maxey thing going up, who's the guy I want to build my team around? And I have VJ Edgecomb down the road. Um, it makes me wonder, do I need to have Joel Embiid around? I think they're going to trade Joel Embiid, House, and I think they want to. If this is interesting, and I don't care if this gets aggregated, so I think he's available. I think teams think he's available, and I think Philly has been pretty careful about saying we're so excited to build around Embiid, Jalen, Max, and BJ.

You haven't really heard a lot of that. I think Embiid's available. And the question for me, House, would you trade for Joel Embiid? And if you, and if you, if the answer is yes, How much would you give up?

Would the Wizards trade for Joel Embiid?

Pick a team. I'll give you a bunch of 'em. Yeah, I'll give you the Wizards. That would be Davis for 58.4. It's a straight shoot. I think Philly would have to make a second trade to do something with the first apron. They, they, they'd have to do a couple cap mechanics, but my guess is Philly would have to throw picks into that trade to get you to take Embiid.

They sure would.

Would you, would you be interested in that?

No, sir. No, thank you. I'm all set.

So no, thank you.

Yeah. Well, I, I agree.

If you're Milwaukee, would you think about Miles Turner, 26, 28, and 29 next 3 years and Kuzma's expiring for Joel Embiid?

To do what? Milwaukee stinks. What, what's the point of adding a guy that plays 40 games a season at $60 million a year?

So that's, so that's a no.

That's a hard no.

Okay.

They need to stink.

If you're Brooklyn, would you think about Michael Porter just straight up for Embiid? Who knows?

Ask, you have to ask me.

But you're in charge, you're in charge of Brooklyn right now.

Oh, I'm in charge.

You're in charge of Brooklyn. Yes. You would trade Michael Porter's expiring for 3 years of Embiid?

No, definitely not.

You wouldn't?

No, Michael Porter's expiring is worth a lot. That's worth a lot.

I could have Joel Embiid, the 2023— I think it was the year he won— 2023 MVP on my team.

How many games is he playing?

Who's on my team? Let's say you move to Brooklyn. Who you going to see in the Nets this year?

Nobody.

Julius Randle?

The same as ever. It's the Nets. Not going to see the Nets.

Here's the one team I think. Dallas run by Messiah, you Harry, long, long-standing relationship with Joel Embiid.

Okay.

I think would be the one guy that would maybe be a little more favorable about rolling the dice on them. And the other thing is they have contracts. They have Gafford at 17, 18, 19, PJ Washington, 19, 21, 23, and Klay at 17.4. And that can't be the trade. They'd need a third team. So you would have to bring Milwaukee into it and send Turner and Kuzma to, uh, to Philly. You would have to send Embiid to Dallas.

That's not terrible.

Um, and then you would have to send the Gafford, Klay, PJ. You'd have to— you'd need some sort of third team. It'd have to be something like that. If you were Dallas, would you think about it? No.

Wrong. Player, wrong timeline.

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

The situation that makes sense for him, honestly, is a team that is very close to winning the title. And that team looking at, you know, it would be a Western Conference team to me in the first place., and it would be a team that feels like this, we, we can, we can bolster our Wemby stopping power with some number of games from Embiid in the playoffs.

Okay.

That's what makes sense to me.

Okay. What's that team?

Well, the contenders are Minnesota, Denver, and, and Oklahoma City. Those would be the teams that, that I think, you know, have a legit chance.

I don't, Denver.

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

Yeah, but you can't have a $57 million— Denver's out. That's that. Denver's ridiculous. They'd have to trade Jamal Murray for him.

I'm talking Minnesota.

I don't think can because—

and you're saying they have to trade Jamal Murray for him?

Two giant big guys with no point guard. Minnesota, I don't think can do anything because it's the second apron. I think it's too complicated for them.

Even the Gobert bit, they, they can't, they couldn't go for Gobert.

I don't even know if they, they're allowed to package players. That's another thing that's so stupid about the league right now is these, you know, all these restrictions and regulations against being able to trade. What was the third team you had?

Shout out, uh, um, San Antonio themselves could, could acquire him. Oklahoma City though was the third team.

They're not doing that either.

Okay.

It would have to be a team that's like a, a slightly, slightly desperate, you know, like a, I mean, it, it could be Houston, but Houston doesn't do anything that makes any sense.

So they're just gonna waste the end of, of, of KD.

Forget all the teams. Would you even consider taking that contract on in a million years?

Under like desperate kind of circumstances is what you said. Can Golden State fit him? Is the expiring Jimmy Butler, An option here.

House. Now we're talking. Now we're talking.

Yeah, we can get to play off this.

Fuck it. We'll, we'll get, they had Embiid, Kerr coached him in the Olympics.

He played very well for Kerr. He really tried hard for that US team. Embiid did.

And you use them as a luxury. The problem is if you're wrong, you've, you've ruined the last bullet in your gun. For Curry. Golden State's an interesting one though.

Yeah, the bigger point is— What if LeBron's there? What if LeBron helps?

The other one is, what if Detroit says, yeah, this is actually more interesting to us than a Durant sign and trade. I don't think they would do that either.

Okay.

But yeah, there's just not a lot of teams.

I don't hate Detroit. I really don't. I don't hate Detroit. I do think the idea of Cade and Bede Has a kind of logic.

Let me, let me do this exercise in a slightly different way. Give me the over-under of games by year Embiid plays the next 3 years.

39.5.

Per year?

Oh, you're saying, yes, yes, per year. Right. So that's 1—

So if his over-under was 39.5 games next season. Would you bet over or under? Under. Yeah. See, this is why Philly's not gonna be able to trade Joel Embiid.

I think if the Knicks— I think that's what got him to that extension.

If the Knicks had lost the title.

Oh, that's a good one.

There's some towns and Embiid starts to become, but instead it went the other way. But yeah, the Knicks, the biggest mistake Darryl made. I think of this decade, um, was not selling high on Embiid. Much like the Celtics just sold high on Jaylen Brown, which I, I think for different reasons, but it wasn't only just only the not selling high.

It was also the extension that was not called for, was not required. He was cut. He had a murky foot situation. That extension is the most unforgivable extension in all of basketball. All right.

So we think Joel Embiid will stay on Philly, even though I don't think they want him to stay.

That, that would, that, that's where I'm putting it all.

I look forward to them being asked this in a press conference and being like, I don't know where this stuff's coming from. We want, we love Joel. We want him back here. I don't, I think they want to have the team built around Maxie and Vijay and Jaylen Brown. And if they could get out that contract, they would. Anjoel Embiid, Golden State. If they could just manage and they'd have Draymond, they have Yaxel and Curry and you basically, and they have Porzingis, right? They'd have a couple luxuries and basically the goal would be, can we just patch together a regular season and get into the playoffs as one of the 8 seeds and then kind of see how it goes for 2 months? It's kind of funny.

I'm into it. I'm into it.

It's kind of fun.

Let's, let's, let's, let's take a spin.

Well, the other thing that happened to poor Golden State is I think they thought they were getting LeBron and potentially AD, and now it's pretty clear they were being used by leverage as leverage in the, as LeBron goes back to Cleveland.

But I don't understand what that leverage translates into, like, meaning what? Because the teams that are still in the running for him, the Sixers, the Heat, he's going to Cleveland.

The Cleveland thing's done.

He's going to Cleveland. Okay, come on.

But it has to be. First of all, they hired his buddy as assistant GM. That was red flag number one. Red flag number two was they gave Donovan Mitchell that giant extension for no reason. Do you wanna pay Donovan Mitchell $75 million 3 years from now?

Well, here, here's the thing.

That was the, we're paying off Donovan Mitchell so he doesn't get mad when we get LeBron.

You're, you're gonna be shouting this from the rooftops. We, we need to tell all, all the hoops heads out there, all the NBA lovers. It's not just that the salary cap is going in the, in the wrong direction. The percentage of what Donovan Mitchell's salary represents to Cleveland is going— it's going to be nearly 40% of the cap because of the way that the cap is.

Right. If the cap goes, is it any sort of danger going the other way?

It's, it's an incredible miss by the people doing the math. At the time the collective bargaining agreement was negotiated and this second apron, this hard cap was dropped into the situation, they fucked up how much money is going to be available year over year. Yes, in a material way. So we are living in an era now, and you've said this, and we just got to keep telling all our Hoops Head brethren, there are going to be a lot of deals done where it was done for money, not done for, for basketball reasons., but for salary cap reasons, two things, two things might flip this. Let's hear it.

Expansion. Being able to dump— they could make the expansion rules whatever they want.

Okay.

Right. They could say you have to take $8, $10 million and up players or however they want to do it, but you might be able to get off one of these guys. The other thing is And I don't know if they can agree.

Timeline for expansion, does it marry up with how much time is left on the Embiid contract?

No, this is the next couple years are going to be bad. I wonder, could they, could they institute an emergency amnesty clause? Just make that part of like, they add a year to the CBA. They're like, we'll add a year to the CBA, but we, we need a couple things back, including, uh We're going to bring the amnesty clause back. You and I— the amnesty clause—

don't want another year of this CBA. The players hate this collective bargaining agreement.

Well, they should, you know, they should blame themselves because they, they, they had the reps that signed up for it. The amnesty clause brought us more joy than just about anything.

It was the Allen Houston.

Oh, and then just every time they had it, it was so funny to watch teams just, just pay people to go away. Including your team with the famous Andre Iguodala extension, which was my favorite.

One of the all-time greats.

The extension that turned into the amnesty clause. Yeah, I don't— maybe there's not an Embiid team yet, but that's— I feel like that's gonna be a story. And by the way, he's been pretty quiet the last couple weeks, but I, I feel like there's something there with Dallas too.

You haven't seen a welcome to, to Philly JB from Embiid yet? Have we seen that? Maybe he's done it. I'm— I don't— I'm not.

So you're just, you, there's no situation where you trade for him unless you were super close to a title and you had a situation like a Jimmy Butler type contract.

1000%.

You wouldn't do it like if you're Brooklyn and be like, we have Joel Embiid, we have a star, come see Joel Embiid.

How many games can you tell your fans he's going to show up and play? If he only plays 40 games, then come see him for 20 games.

I don't know. How did Philly do it the last 5 years?

Not well. Their fans are, are, are, are besides themselves.

The counter on Embiid is you, you could say, eh, I don't know, his knees look actually pretty good. He had all these other weird injuries and things happen that what if he's just healthy? I don't know. I'm trying to talk myself into it for somebody. Phoenix was the other one that I couldn't even figure out Phoenix's salary cap. I couldn't, but it just felt like a Phoenix thing. They would do it. Yeah. It felt like a Phoenix thing. Kinda move.

Let there be no doubt. I mean, the Miles Bridges thing is fucking bananas. Why, why did they acquire Miles Bridges?

Well, I think— why did they have to go to HBS college?

Yes, he did.

Same.

Seems like that could be an explanation.

All right, well, watch Embiid. Watch is on. Um, we're gonna take, uh— oh, I had another thing for you. Um, teams that have their own picks in 2027. We're gonna do a mailbag in one second. As far as I can tell, it's only 11 teams that just have their own pick in a way that we can understand. Like, oh, they have their own pick. Sacramento, Memphis, Chicago, Washington, Portland, Orlando, Charlotte, Golden State, Indiana, Boston, and Detroit. And I think I'm right. I'm not— don't, don't hold me to it, but I think those are the 11 teams. And then there's a whole bunch of new picks, swaps. Houston has Phoenix's pick. Memphis has the Lakers. Brooklyn has the Knicks pick. San Antonio has the Hawks, etc., etc. I think they need to add this to the CBA too, along with the amnesty clause.

What they—

this is too confusing now. Like, look at that. Look at this document. I have new picks, swaps, and like, this is just the team. This is fucking— how did we end up here?

How did we end up here?

There's two double swaps, and I don't even know if this is all right. Um, like, Brooklyn has Philly's pick, I think, protected 1 through 8 next year, which they're not getting, so I guess it rolls over. Clippers have Toronto's pick. The Celtics have this Clippers pick 2 years from now that might actually be something.

Well, this is— we can't do this.

It's just, it's too— I just can't follow it anymore.

The third week of June 2027, 1 through 30. Somebody will be picking. There'll be 30 picks in the first round.

They have to.

Who the hell knows? I hate it.

Um, all right, we're gonna come back to a mailbag. All right, some mailbag questions. You can send them to BSPodcast33@gmail.com. Actually, speaking of what we were just talking about with, uh, Brandon asked about the repeater tax. Has it run the court— run its course? Teams are treating the second apron as a hard cap, can they just remove it? It was interesting, Stevens mentioned something I had been talking about on my podcast for years about how unfair it was that Tatum and Brown were guys they drafted that grew up in Boston, became star players, and then they basically, because of the rules, couldn't keep both of them and whether they should have stuff built in to protect the teams. And my argument was always like, after 5 years, Maybe you get 2% off per year of the guy's salary for your luxury tax or your cap or whatever. You get some sort of benefit because then that would lead to more stability and fans knowing that they would have the same guy on a team for more than 9 years. You're down with any of those types of ideas, right?

Of course. Yes. You have to persuade the ownership, the group that, that, you know, sits on that side of the table, that this is something that fans want. And so far they haven't been persuaded. It hasn't shown up in a collective bargaining agreement yet. Of course it should make sense.

AJ in Toledo says the everyone wins penalty would be for the NBA to force Ballmer to swap the Clippers for the Supersonics for free. He gets to be the hometown hero in Seattle and run the team. He leaves behind the Intuit Dome and the Clippers, which they then have expansion for. And you get the LA Clippers and is an expansion team. And that's how everybody saves face. I mean, the more interesting thing about the Ballmer penalty and if there's gonna be a penalty, any of that stuff is they traded Kawhi to Toronto. Who was the aggrieved party in 2019? Toronto.

Toronto. I mean, the stories are, are, are out there about all of the extracurricular stuff that, you know, Kawhi's camp was demanding. Yeah.

So yes.

And conspiracy bills are out there.

Conspiracy bill tackled this in a mailbag a week and a half ago about could this be the penalty where they just, Toronto just gets their picks back and we call it a day. But it is interesting that they've removed the one, so they get Kawhi back who apparently loved being there the whole time even though he fled like it was the Amityville Horror House after that season. And everybody's just like, yeah, you know, and we're just good. So does this mean we're never getting a verdict or finding out what happened?

Both. Yes, there'll be a verdict. But finding out what happened, the league is going to say we, we investigated it extremely thoroughly and we couldn't connect any of the dots that suggest that there was, you know, a knowing plan by the leadership of the Clippers to deliberately circumvent the salary cap. It's a lot of circumstantial evidence. So you're going to say we couldn't connect any of the dots. It doesn't look good. The optics aren't great, but there's no, you know, direct communication from anybody at Clippers leadership to Kawhi or to Aspire that says we're going to try and compensate you, Kawhi, outside of the rules of the league.

We'll see how it goes. Jamon from North Carolina. Jamon from North Carolina wants to know why Phoenix isn't being talked about as a legitimate LeBron destination. He could be doing the 2021 Chris Paul with Devin Booker. They have talent, they have flexibility, and more importantly, it's one of the country's best golf destinations. What more could he want?

Intriguing. So here's the thing. Um, two answers. First of all, he's going to play golf wherever he wants to play golf on whatever circumstances he wants to play golf. It doesn't— he's not tied to the locale, right? It would be— it's a nice to have for the locale to have, you know, some, some golf courses on, on the days that he's actually—

right, because he's going to be on the road half the season.

Yes, yes. And even home games, you know, if there's time stretches in the schedule, he can get anywhere. He has a, a private jet that will take him anywhere on earth and certainly anywhere within the continental United States to go play golf when he finds room in the schedule. And by the way, if he needs a little bit of rest here and there, which certainly makes sense for him and for the team, then go take 3 days. He doesn't need to play every regular season home game and he won't play every, every regular season away game. He'll play some number. It probably makes sense for him to play. What do you think? 60 games. Is that, is that the right number?

He has every record. That, this is why I still feel like, I mean, one of my predictions is already coming true, that he's using the entire month of July to milk this. Um, and it's worked. And everybody with a podcast, every TV show has had LeBron segments. ESPN seems to write a piece every 2 days. Like, played brilliantly on that. Um, I still wonder, could he just wait till December, January and, and just keep this going for 6 months and kind of wait for Week 17 football season to strike. Depending on—

didn't he— how many games did he miss at the beginning of the most recently completed season? The first 30? Yeah.

Well, yeah, it was like 20 at least.

Yeah. 'Cause of the sciatica. Got the sciatica.

I got the sciatica.

Got the sciatica. Got the sciatica. Which is— makes sense. Fine with it.

If he called you as his golf conciliare and was like, I'm picking my team. I have every record and I have 4 titles. I'm picking my team solely for the golf courses. What would you tell 'em?

Golden State. It's an all-time no-brainer. The proximity to, to the Monterey Peninsula and Cypress Point. That means you get Cypress, you, you, you get Pebble, obviously you get the other bangers right there. Monterey, Monterey Peninsula Club is, is super underrated. Magnificent. Pasatiempo. Is within a short drive. And then right there in San Francisco, there is banger after banger. San Francisco Golf Club, the Cal Club where, where Curry belongs. Olympic is there. It's just, you know, there, there are a dozen of the greatest golf courses that Earth has to offer in that area.

Plus LA is a short flight, so he's got all of those.

Yes.

He has San Diego and that whole scene.

Like, he wants to go spend, uh, you know, 48 hours at Bandon Dunes down in, in, at North Bend, Oregon. You know how easy it is to get on from a, with a private jet from—

this should be the worst. Like, dude, you already won 4 titles. You're already, you're in everybody's top 3 for eternity.

Like, well, that, he should have fun. Play with Steph Curry. Make this patch. You and Steph, the one making the pitch.

You're selling out arenas. You're gonna get to play golf at every course. Like, what are What are you doing? Just come to us. I don't know what he's— the Cleveland thing, uh, I don't really understand it.

What do you mean?

I don't understand how, like, if winning is the number one priority.

Yeah.

I don't understand how you win a title if you're playing Mitchell, Harden, and LeBron as 3 of your 5 guys in 4 straight playoff series. Why anyone would think that was gonna work.

It's a tough one.

I think LeBron has to be in the Harden spot. And the only case I would say, like, why, if he, if he decided it's Cleveland, why it's taking so long is they're trying to figure out a way to get out of the Harden piece of this when they had a wink wink with him.

Well, I thought they already extended him, didn't they? I thought they were, they're still discussing it.

Yeah. I don't think it's been announced.

Well, they said they were working on the extension. Has it not been announced that the extension's completed? I don't know.

You've seen teams back out of stuff.

The wink wink was Well, that's true. We have seen that.

I'm gonna go—

Daryl Morey is a liar according to some.

That was tough. Poor Daryl Morey. Tough decade. Um, no, he is not. He is not.

Extension's not complete yet.

It is not. There's a lot of could-bes and maybes. Could be 3 years. Like all kinds of stuff.

That's what I saw.

It would be interesting if, if, uh, Harden became the sixth man on the team, like he went back to his 2012 OKC.

The, the problem with Cleveland is Kenny fucking Atkinson. I mean, get, get Grandpa, uh, his smoking pipe and some pudding, uh, and let him, you know, tell you how many games they won according to the, the, uh, Ouija board.

Charlie sends in, it's supposed to be 8 slices of pie. For blame pie. I always do blame pie. I guess I had 3 slices in the last one and he doesn't like that. He said it's illegal. There's no word, no need to have the word pie involved. You don't say, sure, I'll have 10% more apple pie on Thanksgiving. You still have one more slice. And then he writes, I'm a depressed Celtics fan living in the Bay Area.

He wants more explanations.

So how many slices can be in a blame pie? At least 4. 'Cause you could have a 4-slice blame pie.

You could, yes. But I, we, we had 8 explanations for, for how the Celtics fucked this up. Did they apologize to their fan base yet?

The Celtics?

Yeah. They need to apologize.

I'll say this, 'cause there's been some, some weird stuff going on online and people go, you know, doing shitty things to Stevens and all that stuff. Sports, anybody that does that stuff, I just don't get it. Like, you can be mad about a trade, like, whatever, but you start calling in social media handles and stuff, I just think you've got to take a look at a mirror at that point.

I hope— I mean, I didn't see any of that stuff.

Yeah, there's like shit with Brad Stevens' kids.

I denounced all of it. I denounced that. That's horrendous.

Let's keep it in perspective. We won the title in 2024. Settle down. I didn't like the trade either, but If you're going online to try to attack people, settle down. No, Keith Black says he thinks the Matt Fries error from the World Cup game is up there with the worst sports plays he's ever seen in his life. And he said his top 5 are J.R. Smith's Finals brain fart, the Bill Buckner Game 6 error, the Colts special teams play when they put all the guys on the right side and then the snapper got overrun and the punter got tackled. The Butt fumble and Chris Webber calling timeout. He thinks I should have a bracket with all the worst plays ever. That's too mean. The Matt Freeze play was iconic though.

Yeah. And, and you have to separate even that list of contenders. The stakes are radically different for many of those. Like, like the Buckner error is in the same class as Freeze because that's, that's what was at stake.

I don't know how it's called Freeze, Freeze, whatever, however you say it.

I don't know how to say it.

Buckner was just like a brain fart mistake though. The goalie having like basically an AYSO error for the third goal that you would see like in an under-10 game in Norco, California. I'm still reeling from that.

I'm just being like, in terms of like what was at stake and the, the, the, the horror.

The J.R. Smith one's pretty bad.

Well, except for they weren't going to win that series and it was game one and they still were. All it, all it produced was them going to overtime. They still could have won that basketball game. It didn't, the game didn't end on that play. The stupid, you know, giving up that goal. The game was over. That was it. That game.

What about Wemby whipping it off Castle's back?

Go ahead and put that in the list. You can put that in the list. The foul was worse. The foul on him fouling Brunson was worse.

AC in DC says, hey, the Jalen trade is so interesting because of two elements coexisting. How lopsided and panicky the trade appears, how amazing Brad Stevens has been, two things that don't— two things that collide. Um, well, he's been amazing as an executive. Yeah, I think so.

You like the Vucevic, how that went down?

That was a money thing. That was a money thing and then hope. That was it. That was a money trade. That was not a basketball trade.

Again, we have to keep telling the world this because that team was, you know, trending in a direction where they knew that Tatum was a possibility.

They had to save money or the team was going to have $300 million in taxes, which was unsustainable, apparently.

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

They should have said that during the honest thing.

They could have said this at any point.

The thing is, I'm still not positive they were that in on Giannis. They made one offer.

You, you said that they made one offer.

They never made a second one though. It's so weird.

Why?

Why do you feel like if you, if you wanted to get a new house in DC and you're like, I really like this house, you make an offer and then the broker's like, all right, well, they'll do this instead. And you're like, nope, I made my one offer.

Rather not have the house.

You should make an offer. Basketball, that means you're gonna make another offer. But that's the thing, the Celtics are like, yeah, I'm good with that. I don't want the house.

It doesn't make any sense because the, it, it costs them Jaylen Brown.

Yeah. Um, anyway, Keith, AC in DC says, with something like the Luka trade, we could immediately just trash Nico Harrison and not worry too much about eating crow later. But because of how much most basketball fans respect Stevens, we have to entertain the thought that maybe we're the asshole here. Maybe he's far ahead of us on understanding the card cap and how to compete with Wemby and OKC and, and getting rid of Jalen. And then he wonders, has there ever been a bigger self-questioning, wait, am I the asshole trade in the history of basketball? I did think about this. Um, it's probably the Adrian Dantley-Marc Aguirre trade.

Okay.

Because I think our reaction when that trade happened was, huh. Like they almost made the finals last year with Adrian Dantley, and Mark Aguirre seems pretty unhappy in Dallas. And this is a pretty weird trade. Wonder why they did this. And then it turned out that won them two titles. Not saying this is going to turn out the same way. I couldn't think of any other examples though.

How quickly can they trade Paul George? What are the rules now? How long do they have to hold on to him? I mean, you can, Some period of time. Okay. They still, I didn't know if there was like, if this was one of those trades where you have to sit on them for some period of time before he comes trade eligible again.

I liked when New Orleans said they're not trading Trey Murphy. What are they doing? Trey Murphy's going around everywhere saying like, yeah, I don't know where I'm going. I'm definitely getting traded. Like talk to him.

New Orleans and Brooklyn, the two most confounding franchises.

Luke Call and Melbourne. Australia.

Love Melbourne, Australia.

He said, after hearing your list of oh no trades on the podcast with Zach, should we start ranking trades for shock factor the same as earthquakes, like on the Richter scale? The Luka trade would be a 9.5, the largest ever recorded. It's true. You could factor in aftershocks, tsunamis, and more for trade analysis.

It's a 9.9. It's a full 10.

Yeah, I would argue the Luka trade was a 9.7. I think it's a 10. That's like the end of civilization.

Whatever the highest—

I thought 9 was like your whole city's ruined at like 8 and a half. All right.

Yeah. So maybe the Lucas was catastrophic until the league fixed the, the, the Cooper Kupp flag pick.

I think a 10 would be like OKC trading Shea Gildress-Alexander for Kevin Herter. Straight up. That'd be a 10.

What about, what about the Celtics trading Jaylen Brown for Paul George?

And a, and two first round picks.

Yeah.

What do you think of that? Great. I think it's at least a, at least a 7.5.

I would say so. Yeah.

The thing is we knew they were shopping him. So that's what the Lucas trade doesn't attract.

I mean, we've, we've, you know how much mileage we've gotten off of these Paul George contracts the last 3 years?

What was the number 1 Washington Wizards Richter scale trade?

Oh, Googs. Probably Chris Mitch Richmond for Chris Webber. That was pretty bad.

Oh, you were so sad.

That kind of hurt. Actually, you know what? No, it's not that. It was, uh, we traded Ben Wallace for— hold on, I know this— the guy from Orlando. Oh God, I know his name. I'm sorry, I can't pull it right now. It was a horrendous, horrendous trade. Yeah. Cause, and Ben, Ben Wallace went to Detroit and became a cornerstone, the most important player on, on multiple contending teams for them. So, it was, oh, Ike Austin.

Ike Austin.

Yeah, I knew I could pull it.

Tim Legler was in that trade. Legs.

Legs. Wonder how he feels about it.

Ike Austin. I remember.

Jesus Christ. I had the—

what the fuck? I had the Digital City column back then, but no podcast. You were just an occasional character in my column. I don't think you weighed in on the record on that, but I know from phone calls you were absolutely furious and upset because you were going to Wizards games and you were like, this guy Ben Wallace, there's something here.

Yeah.

And then they traded him for Eric Austin. God damn it. Tough one. All right. Um, now that Kyle Lowry is officially retired as a Raptor, I need a ruling. This is from Big Mo in Toronto. Is Kyle Lowry a Hall of Famer?

Hmm.

6 All-Stars, 1 All-NBA champion, Olympic gold. Um, he will get a jersey retired here anyway, but we can't control the Hall of Fame. So I, as you know, I've been constantly tinkering with this pyramid list that I'll probably die and nobody will even know who was in it. I did have him on the extended honorable mention. Second best player on a championship team. He did get third team All-NBA once. 2019 playoffs, 15, 5, and 7 in 24 games with all the defense stuff that he did.

Yeah.

I wrote down best love him on your team, hate him if he's on anyone else's team guy of his era, basically, which is Lambert, Mahorn. Bruce Bowen, those kind of guys. He was probably the most talented of all those types of players. Um, and everyone gets into the Hall of Fame. So the answer is he's in.

He's in. He's in. That's a great point. That's a perfect point.

Did Antawn Jamison get in?

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, he'll get in. He has 20,000 points. He'll be in.

My goodness. The NBA is something.

Jack M writes, I've heard several takes on how LaMelo will fit with Ant in Minnesota. But people aren't talking enough about the biggest problem with this trade. LaMelo Ball will be living in Minnesota throughout the winter. The worst driver of our era is going to be driving on snow and ice for 4 months. This can't end well. You're gonna have to call Khan an Uber and get to Minnesota to protect Ant at all costs. We cannot let him get in an automobile with LaMelo behind the wheel. We— now people have been joking about this, but it's, it's possible we haven't joked enough about it. It's like he couldn't handle Charlotte. Charlotte's nice.

It should be in his contract that he—

Ubers only?

Yes, yes. It doesn't— not an Uber, just a driver.

I think he likes driving though. He likes driving that—

Well, that means he likes driving.

Crazy giant truck.

Because he's gonna drive that giant truck and—

Could be Fargo too. Paul from Liverpool, UK. He said, FAO conspiracy, Bill. My epic new salary cap rules most talent leagues ever had. Not enough max salary slots. Potentially disgruntled players, Adam Silver now trying to rush expansion to open up more salaries and more max slots. What are your thoughts? I don't think they're related.

Yes.

It did make me think though.

I tend to, to agree with you. You think that the expansion will open up this, the cap, that the cap will increase because of the expansion?

The cap won't increase. The ability to take 24 players and move them around and give some cap relief. And then if you're an expansion team, like if Embiid's unprotected.

Yeah.

The last year of his deal, let's say they started in '27, '28, or '28.

That's why I asked you.

Let's say they started '28, '29. If you're Vegas, do you make Embiid like one of your first picks in the expansion? 'Cause you get Joel Embiid for a year.

Right. Okay. I get it.

XF Ramirez in New York says, why is no one in the media discussing just how terrible the Pelicans rebuild is going? Is it a retool, a re-poop? You tell me. Trey Murphy is still on this team. Why exactly? Missy is suddenly feverishly untouchable. Derrick Queen, he's untouchable. Herb Jones, they're letting content with just letting him rot away in a smoothie-coated hellhole. And what in the ever-loving fuck is Zion Williamson still doing there? From the outside, it looks less like a plan and more like someone forgot to hit simulate on the rebuild. What are they doing? What is this team?

Well, he forgot one. They just, didn't they just hire Jamal Mosley to be the coach?

They did. He's hot. He's coming off a 7-game playoff series.

Well, he's hot because he was sitting on the goddamn hot seat for the entirety of that Orlando season. He's still hot. He's hot for the seat.

It's an inferno.

Yeah, so they have—

Think of them in Brooklyn.

I have no fucking idea what they're doing.

Dumas, when he traded McCollum's expiring for 2 years of Jordan Poole, one of my favorite underrated bad trades of the decade.

Bless up. Bless up.

So they still have Jordan Poole on an expiring. They have Murphy, Herb Jones. They did not have the number 1 pick this year, of course. They still have Murray. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing.

That's a team. Who was it? The— Willie Green was the head coach. Yeah, it was just 2 years ago and they were on pace to win nearly 50 games. Um, of course Zion got hurt, but there was a case to be made for Willie Green. Like, he was quietly taking a lot of that talent and here we are with them once again.

They have some sort of, some sort of swap with Milwaukee that I've— I just Yeah, they have—

should be valuable because Milwaukee is going to stink stink. I—

it's either 27 or 20. I don't know, there's been so many things about— I have this document with all the draft picks and I don't even know what's right anymore. But they have a swap with, uh, apparently with New Orleans and Milwaukee where New Orleans gets the best of those two picks, but that Yeah, that's right. I have that correct. So that's not bad.

No, that's—

the Bucks might not be good.

They are not going to be good.

Yeah. Um, all right, couple more. Watching Obsess— this is from Craig from Durham, North Carolina. Watching Obsession. Did you see Obsession?

I didn't. Sign me up.

You should. It's— you can, you can pay-per-view it on wherever.

Okay.

Watching Obsession got me thinking about Kevin Durant. His career has all the telltale signs of a poorly worded wish coming true. That's the focus of Obsession. That's the focus of Wish. It goes badly. All right. After being eliminated in 2016, Durant made a wish that probably sounded something like, I wish I was part of the best team of all time. He then got his chance. Unfortunately, after that, numerous injuries, foot on the line, sabotaged a couple teams, never got the respect he wanted. That's an interesting analogy. He did get what he wanted. He would— that 2017 Warriors team was, I think, the best team of this century. It's either them or the Owen Lakers in the finals. Who do you have in that?

Um, the Warriors. Back-to-back Finals MVP, right? Didn't he get it both years?

Yeah. Patrick wants to know if, yeah, is Jaylen Brown replace KAT now as this generation's 90/10 guy where he's 90% good, but everybody dwells on the 10%. And he said, my other choice was KAT, but I think he washed himself of his sins with the last postseason. I think that's true.

I agree.

So Jaylen, that was that Westbrook column I wrote in 2012 about Everybody has 10% that's not great, and some guys it's more glaring than others. And Russell Westbrook's was always the most glaring. And that's a little bit like what Jaylen's like. Uh, Cal from Ottawa said, after watching Argentina scrape by Egypt, got me thinking about Messi and his relationship with his teammates. I think he has to be the most number one, most loved teammate of all time. Who else would you add to the list? Steph? Et cetera, et cetera. He goes, for basketball, I think Steph and Duncan and Nash.

I'm glad you had Duncan. I agree with that.

I think for, for the last 25 years, and it seems like Brunson might be pretty close to those guys. Yeah.

Okay, good, good. Like that. Like that direction.

And then going backwards, I think Russell is probably the all-time example of this. Jerry West was another good one. Bill Walton when he was healthy.

Magic. Wasn't Magic beloved?

And Magic. Magic, you know, he did get a coach fired there. He, you know, he did get Norm Nixon traded. Like, I don't think it was perfect, but I, you know, I think everybody loved to have Magic on there too. Um, David B. in the, in the, from the Bay Area was listening to me talk to Zach about how I thought they needed a third card in soccer. Um, in Gaelic football and hurling. Oh. In Ireland.

Yeah.

They have similar yellow and red cards soccer, but they also have a black card that works like a power play. Oh. If you get a black card, you're out of the game for 10 minutes and your team's at a disadvantage and then you come back.

Oh, I like this.

I started to think about how this could apply to the NBA and other sports. You get a technical foul, you're out for 2 minutes, your team plays 5 on 4. I, I gotta say, I did think about it a little bit. I think for soccer, like the Balogun red card, if they had just given him the black card instead, he's just out for 15 minutes and you have to play one man down and then he comes back. I, I like that more than just this like do or die with the way it is now.

My complaint with the Balogun red card, it was the, the, the next game. Like I, I, even if he had to set out the remainder of the game in which he'd committed that foul, Um, I could have like kind of understood that, but kicking him out for the next game and having—

it was a game and a half. It was like the Wemby elbow. Who did Wemby elbow? Nas Reid. Uh, Nas Reid, he had to leave that game in the first half, and then if he also missed the next game, that's like you basically missed two games.

That was possible because we wondered whether he was gonna get an expen— uh, a suspension, and there was some discussion at the time around whether or not You know, the league would step up that way.

Daniel from Toronto wants to know, are the Raptors Forrest Gump and is Kawhi Jenny? They unconditionally and deeply love the person, but they walk out on you, cheat on you, dabble in rotten, sketchy behavior, and when it all goes to shit, whisper sweet nothings so you take them back and provide a net of safety and support for their final chapter. I guess Forrest Jr. is the 2000s. 19th title. Um, you don't want to guess what he said aspiration was. Um, but, uh, I do like the analogy of Jenny Gump as Kawhi.

It's pretty good.

The problem is, I love you, Jenny.

This next chapter of him in Toronto, it's not going to go well.

Well, yeah, it ended with them getting married and her dying.

Well, this is Jenny with AIDS, right?

She died.

Yeah.

Jakes never confirmed. We did a whole thing at the Forest Cup. We think it was probably—

yeah, I was there for that pod. I was watching. That's right.

Jake Steiner said, if I could bet on when LeBron James plays his last professional game of basketball, what would the odds be for him to retire in 2028 but after the Summer Olympics gold medal game?

Oh.

Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Two more years plays for the Olympic team, does the last year as the farewell tour, and then the Olympics is the last moment. The question is, do you want 43-year-old LeBron James involved in our gold medal game? This is going to be the greatest Olympics basketball of all time.

Wow.

This could be a house gets divorced.

Olympics.

No, I don't know how you don't come out for all the basketball for like 2 and a half weeks.

Let's start with that. I mean, there's ways to do that and stay married, I feel like.

Okay, good. That was a good answer. But wow.

I do love the idea of LeBron having something to do with that team. I really do love it.

Huge fan of the pod. This is from Darren. I'm a diehard miserable Mets and Nets fan. As a Mets fan, there's a Jaylen Brown comp staring us in the face. Pete Alonso, consistently one of the top RBI guys in the league. The metric geeks all think he's not worth the big money and Mets let him go. Paid all these other guys, all them got hurt and missed time and can't do what Pete did at the plate or on the field. The only thing that makes this comp perfect is if the Celtics shit the bed. Please know David Stern would've made this Jaylen Brown trade in a heartbeat. That made me feel worse. Just, just no question.

Wait, what does that mean? David Stern would've made the Jaylen Brown trade? He's the Mets guy. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Saying like he, as the Pete Alonso.

Oh.

Dan Fahey from the North End thinks that sliding doors for the whole Celtics trading JB saga is not Tatum getting the Achilles injury, but Porzingis getting the mystery illness.

Okay.

In the second half of 2025. Which led to them not being able to beat the Knicks.

Right.

And Tatum getting hurt in game 4.

Okay.

And if Porzingis is healthy, maybe less minutes on Tatum and maybe that is the thing we should point to. I do like this.

There's something to, to, to this, uh, theory. I do like it.

Um, Andy, oh, well, there's a couple more quick ones. Andy from QC. I forgot to mention this to you before the draft.

Andy from QC. Where's QC?

QC Philippines.

Oh, phenomenal. Hello, Philippines.

He wants to know why we didn't make the DeBanzo-Lambias connection. And ironically, AJ was the one that made it. I don't see it. I don't feel like they're— yeah, I don't, I don't see the comparison.

But I do.

I see it.

Yeah, the way they, they present, um, I'll say this with, with no disrespect intended in any way, shape, or form. Towards my guy AJ, um, Bias was a much more physical player.

Yeah.

And he, he, he could bully guys. We didn't see that version. AJ might grow into his body and get there. Right. But, but I mean, Bias was a, a beast on the block. He, he was capable of, you know, creating advantage out of his sheer physicality. And, and AJ, again, he's not there yet.

It's so funny that he was both our favorite college players, but we didn't know each other yet. And you had even bigger ties to him 'cause he was Maryland.

I mean, I was going to games at Cole Field House. Yeah, this at the, at the University of Maryland.

Like, it's a top 5 NBA what if.

It's a brutal—

Alex wants to know, he said his basketball group chat's having the following conversation. How many years would Seth Curry have to play to be considered the better Curry brother? Like from right now? Assuming he maintains his Dallas-level splits. 11 points a game, 43% 3-pointers. How many years to play before the sheer overwhelming numbers of his career become unassailable? 40 more years? If he was hooping at 85, does he not become the best Curry? How do these people come up with these?

That's amazing. Poor Seth. I was gonna say poor Seth Curry. Fuck that. He's had an incredible run.

Yeah, I still think he'd have to go to 85. Jay from Halifax, Nova Scotia said the Big Fondue was a great Wemby name, but can't believe we didn't go with the Choke Mon Chor. Mansour.

Yeah, I saw the choke. Mansour was out there. Yeah, I saw that. I, I enjoyed it. Sacré bleu.

All right, 2 more and then we're done. From Chanson, Oregon. Your segment explaining Truck Robinson and World B. Free and Arisa Milberg was my favorite 5 minutes of the pod this year. As a millennial NBA junkie, it's hard to get the proper sense of good but perhaps not great players from previous eras. You could piece together YouTube, Wikipedia, basketball reference. Um, please make this a regular segment. He lists a whole bunch of guys. He said, so many dudes, I'm on the cusp of understanding their careers. Pick a guy each week you find fascinating. First guy he mentioned was Gus Williams.

Yep.

And I'm happy to do 90 seconds on Gus Williams with you right now. 1979 champs, best guy on the team. I have him as the unofficial playoff MVP for 1979. 26.7 points a game in the playoffs that year.

Yes.

He was 5th MVP in '82. He was All-NBA once, Second Team All-NBA once, Third Team twice. He played in the '78 Finals, best guy on that team, '79 Championship, '80 Eastern Conference Finals, and held out in the '80-'81 season, which I talked about in my book. He had an agent named Howard Slusher who held him out because he was underpaid and and basically cost him a really important year of his prime. He was the best point guard in the league, House, from 1978 to 1982.

So this is—

it's a 5-year span, and then Magic took it, or yeah. And then Magic took the torch.

Lost to history because this was the lowest point in the, in the history of, of the league, right? In terms of—

yeah.

Its exposure, it's the place that it occupied, the league occupied in the American consciousness. So Gus Williams really lost to history. When you say a guy that averaged, what did you say?

20, 26.7 for the playoffs.

No threes. There are no threes in the NBA. Look at the scores of the, of the, of those basketball games and think about how good he had to be in terms of, of inside, outside. And he was an incredible long-range shooter. Like he would've been awesome at, at, if with the 3-point line.

Yeah, he was. And then the next year he was 24 a game in 15 playoff games. That team was— Portland should have been the best team of that era. And then Walton got hurt and then Seattle basically was, and they couldn't— the real problem is Dennis Johnson, who I loved obviously, but I think was a little prickly. And Gus Williams, they—

there's that. They—

it turned into a little bit of a, like a worse version of the Jalen Jason thing. They end up trading Dennis Johnson to Phoenix for Paul Westphal, who plays that one year and then gets hurt. And then Gus ends up eventually on your team for 2 years, Washington.

I remember.

But wasn't really the same version of himself at that point. But yeah, I think, I think he was the best point guard in the league for a 5-year stretch, which ain't nothing. And the games weren't on. I think he's somebody, he was, he was a classic bald guy with a beard, almost looked like an actor. Could dunk on dudes, would do the thing where he would go hard to the basket and wait for the big guy to come challenge it and kind of wait a second, then dunk on the guy. I loved his game. He was one of my favorite good basketball cards. Was really never on TV unless they were in the playoffs though.

That's the point, right?

Like, I don't think they showed Seattle era.

That era that you just mentioned, when we think of him as the, the best point guard in the league. He 49.5%, 48.2%, 48.6%, 47.7% from the field. This fucking guy, that's a bucket. That's a, that's a bucket right there.

He's really good. He was fast. That, that was always like, those were the point guards that are kind of have gone away now. Those John Lucas.

Yeah.

Norm Nixon, Gus Williams, like these Kevin Porter, these fast guys who know how to run it, ran a team, who got to know how to run a team.

That's a great one. Who is our closest in modern basketball?

Like right now?

Yeah. 'Cause I, it's not Bronson.

No, no, no. I don't think we have those guys.

'Cause Bronson's a scorer.

Yeah, I would say, 'cause these guys, the impetus is more to score, but like, I feel like somebody like Acuff could be like that, but it's, it's like, it's the interests are more for him to shoot. Right.

But I'm gonna think on this. Who's our modern equivalent of, of Gus Johnson?

Gus Williams.

Williams.

Yeah.

He, Dennis Johnson.

It's the, he was like a prototype though for those shooting point guards basically. He was never like a highest assist guy. Anyway, I loved him. Go check out his YouTube. Last question for Brandon Richter. He said, 20 years ago in the mailbag, I wrote to you about instances in which day drinking before 10:00 AM is acceptable, and he attached the image. Okay. Um, from my old Page Two column. Yeah, he made it. Um, and he said, today, the day before the Knicks' first ever ticket tape— ticker tape parade, I email you wondering if you need to update the list because this seems like a reasonable excuse for early morning beverage. I've been saving this email for you because nobody loves day drinking more than Joe House.

So, especially morning drinking.

So when I answered this in 2005, I said, uh, here's my official when it's okay to drink before 10:00 AM list.

Great.

While attending football tailgates, college reunions, or the Boston Marathon.

Okay.

3 winners.

Yeah. Good.

During your final 2 weeks of college.

For sure. Absolutely. Because you're pro— there are many instances where you haven't gone to bed. Yeah. Just drinking cuz you're drinking. I'm not going to bed. I'll just stay up. Oh, look, it's sun. That's the sun. Sunrise. Oh, let's toast to that.

During any Vegas trip or bachelor party or guys-only golf outing.

Lot of, lot of time where you lose track of time.

Yeah.

The sun goes down, the sun comes back up.

If you pulled an all-nighter and haven't let us left a strip club yet, that's in there.

Again.

Again, this is 2005 me. Sorry, I apologize in advance. Before any wedding that starts at 1:00 PM or earlier, anytime your in-laws are visiting, any morning, any morning when it's below 10 degrees. This is a good one. I don't know how I came up with this big list. If you're dating an actress and just attended a movie premiere during which she had a graphic sex scene with someone on a 50-foot movie screen in 2005, I don't know how I came up with that. Uh, while living in any town in Canada that's farther than 75 miles from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, or Vancouver. Um, if you've been writing for a late night talk show for more than 2 years, I think that was a joke about writing for Jimmy's show.

For sure.

If your name is Jack Nicholson, before your fantasy football draft, if you're trying to get the ball rolling so some of your other buddies get plastered, I actually used to do this. There's always one guy who got married too soon and falls for it. And, uh, and then I have a mean Vin Baker joke that I'm not going to repeat because he actually had issues. I was way meaner in 2005. What are the other reasons that I didn't put in there?

Well, you, you touched on it briefly. You said the, um, ticker tape. The— well, the ticker tape parade goes in, but really, many rounds of golf. Many, many, many rounds of golf. Like, you know, like a Bloody Mary on the golf course, or a Bloody Mary as you head over to the first tee. That, that's a, a pretty tried and true staple. Like, that, that really Um, lands for sure.

Uh, I had two more that as we got older I thought of.

Okay.

And both involved Bloody Marys. Um, good. Because we were— I wasn't really a Bloody Mary guy in my early mid-30s. Um, the Bloody Mary the next day when you're hungover.

Yeah.

I just think is important and somewhat life-changing. And I think you might have even introduced me to it. You or my wife.

You're good.

Two sub— uh, Suspects.

Yeah.

And then on the plane—

oh, the great call.

I'm— morning— I, I didn't sleep enough last night. I just want to have one drink to get me a little bit more tired so I can sleep a little. Nice little Bloody Mary, and then I get a little sleepy.

Force the rev up to— I'm going to this destination, I want to be loose, going to start drinking now.

6:00 AM flight to Vegas, cross country, and you start drinking on the flight at like 10:30.

Like, I'm on, I'm on vacation. Vacation starts when my ass is in the plane seat. Can I bring you some champagne? Yes, you can.

Well, there's also better alcohol now that they have. Like, my daughter drinks this, uh, I forget what it's called, but it's bottles and it's iced tea and lemonade with something in it.

There's a lot of those out there.

Yeah, she likes one of them.

High Noon, Surfside.

Surfside, that's what she, she likes.

Surfside's very good.

Um, but people have those and they feel like they're not drinking, but they're actually drinking.

Yeah, they're definitely drinking. Definitely nice. One of those over a cup of ice. That, that's a drink that I'll drink on the golf course at 8:45 in the morning. Oh, I've just played 7 holes. Let me get a drink.

You're, most of your day drinking revolves around golf and some sort of golf thing.

That's true. Yes. Before the round, during the round, and after the round.

I don't understand how you're able to play golf when you have drinks in you.

Well, I mean, First of all, I suck. So that's one piece of it.

But is there, is there a point where you feel like you're getting better and then you get worse?

Sometimes it does create, you know, the, the, the taking the pressure off, whatever you're, you're sort of feeling about your game up to that point. There's an element of that to it. And I mean, everything's within moderation. Let's, let's be real. I'm not, I'm not out there, you know, trying to make, walking up the 18th fairway shit-faced. That's not the goal.

Well, plus it's hot.

You gotta be careful.

Hot.

Be careful. Don't wanna end up, you know, having the ambulance come to the Mexican restaurant patio because I was out there for 5 hours drinking a dozen High Noons. Trying to avoid that. Trying to avoid that.

Forgot about that one. All right, House. Have you been enjoying betting the World Cup?

I, I mean, We, we, we haven't—

I don't—

I'm gonna knock on wood. I don't want to say— I have been enjoying it. We've been pretty good. That's what I'll just leave it at, that it's been—

I, I was doing great and then I let my heart carry me with, uh, US versus Belgium.

Did you not hedge out of that?

I should have hedged it. I didn't.

You didn't hedge that 24-to-1? Did you tell America that you had a 24-to-1 ticket, a 4-leg parlay, and the first 3 legs hit?

Yeah.

And then you even put into the thread the hedge And De Bono told you just wait until after— it was Spain was the third leg, right? And then they were set up for a perfect head.

Spain won in regular time.

Amazing head. She would've been a giant winner for you.

I thought it was bad karma. This is why I'm stupid. But this is why I'm stupid.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

It's fricking USA soccer.

I'm sorry.

There's no such thing as bad karma. They, they, they stink. They put a 38-year-old dude with a man bun. This is the thing. I'm not gonna go do the rant. I do understand where everybody's coming from in terms of the rebuttals to the idea that our best athlete, if we had our best athletes. Yeah, we'd be better. And then there's a lot of rebuttal. There's a different thing to it. The skillset, developing the skillset. I do feel like I asked this on, on the pod this week, where, where, where would you put Tim Ream in terms of American athletes right now? I'll give you the over-under of 5,000 fucking athletes in the United States of America. Yeah. Is this, is this guy, uh, inside the top 5,000 US athletes at the moment or, or no?

See, I don't blame Tim Ream because I don't think he probably even deep down wonders why he's the sweeper when he's 38 years old. He's 38 years old and he was our best guy to be one of our, one of our 3 guys who we have back to stop all bad things that can happen against the best countries in the world.

So this is the problem when you win. Guys say, well, there's a fair rebuttal like this, the skill set that gets developed, whatever. This dude's 38 fricking years old. He's a big man, but the 6'4 guy from Belgium just jumped over him. Like what?

Well, the other issue is I went back, I was going through, I was bummed out after we lost. I was going through the 2002, the run they had. Yeah. Where they beat Mexico and then Mexico started cheap shotting everybody in the last 15. It's unbelievable. One guy does like a flying headbutt, like he's in Bloodsport. Vasquez gets kicked out, but then we lose to Germany on a handball play.

Mm.

We lose 1-0. We actually score a goal that hits the German guy's arm. And they don't call it. It would've been called a goal now with the, with the VAR.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

We lose 1-0. But that was, you know, when we talk about like best American teams, that's clearly the best team we've had. That team was actually like, you know, going toe to toe. But when you think about the reasons they were going toe to toe, they had a bunch of tough motherfuckers in that team. Mm. And that's what, when I think about like the World Cup, I've been watching all these other teams, how feisty everybody is now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a nasty side to these things. Did you feel like we had a nasty side? 'Cause we, I didn't see that at all.

We have some great, um, tough athletes, I think. Um, but do we have—

do we have nasty dudes?

Freeman.

Who do—

who do you want to be nasty?

I'm just saying, like, we, we need to send our team to nasty camp because all these other teams, they're pulling arms, they're pulling jerseys, they're throwing elbows, they're starting shit. They're—

so this is the challenge, right? This is the physicality you're describing. We've seen this. This is why there's, you know, this instinct to go to what if we got our, our are better athletes out there, are athletes that are tougher athletes.

It's the—

it's the style. When you— it's my eyes. My eye— when my eyes see, um, Tim Ream, I think you're right, fall down every time somebody touches him. I've seen— I've been watching fucking football. I've been watching college football. I've been, you know, these guys don't get tipped over.

They don't get knocked off the ball. Jaylen Brunson got knocked down.

He just gets up and he's like this tough little dude and also can't get really knocked off the ball, right? There's plenty of physicality and he can't get knocked off of it. That dude deaths The fuck is that guy?

Well, I was thinking the 2022 finals that we went to those games, Warriors Celtics, and the Warriors basically big boyed the Celtics and the Celtics kind of didn't know how to fight back and got pushed around and all. That's kind of what the US is like in the World Cup every 4 years. Feels like these teams, Belgium big boyed us, you know, and Trump danced us in the locker room after the game like that. So I gotta, it's not just that Tim Ream, obviously they had some holes. There was, you know, some speed on the sides. And then can we, can we get an awesome somebody who's a stopper?

I mean, upon reflection, we had, we were sort of lulled into a misunderstanding around what this team's true caliber potential, you know, the true outcome.

Yeah. When you, when you hear like people like the Bundo and CR and these people that watch Premier League and La Liga. And all of these dudes on these other teams have all these guys that, you know, like that number 10 on Belgium who's on Arsenal and is awesome. I don't watch a lot of Arsenal, but they have all these dudes who have been in just big games all year.

Right.

And our guys, you know, so I don't know, there was a little bit of an optical illusion. I still enjoyed the ride. I had a great time. Really fun.

Enjoyed it thoroughly.

But yeah, it's, it's, this is probably where we're gonna max out all the time around, around the 16. Maybe so. Unless we get some—

I'm okay with it. I'm only interested once every 4 years.

House, good luck with DeBonsai and Peterson tonight.

Big night tonight.

I hope your guy—

Peterson and DeBonsai. Peterson and DeBonsai.

Thanks, sir.

Peterson's gonna show up. You know, Peterson's gonna look awesome. Everybody get prepared for that. All right.

I'll talk to you this week. Thanks, buddy. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to House. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. As always, don't forget Ali rewatchables. That is up. She's the One and Hitch are the next two coming. And, uh, I will see you at some point on Sunday live on Netflix. Enjoy the rest of the week. Must be 21+ in President's Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President's 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 877-888- Hope NY, or text Hope NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.