Transcript of The NBA Mega-Redraftables (2012 and 2013 Combined) With J. Kyle Mann and Joe House. Plus: Portland vs. “El Cheapo” for the Blazers With Justin Verrier. New

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I have new rewatchables coming on Monday. Kyle Brant and I did Karate Kid 2, um, a way better movie than I think it gets credit for, but more importantly, uh, the gateway for us being able to do Karate Kid 3 later in the year, which is the funniest movie of the, uh, 1980s, whenever it came out. I think it was late '80s. Karate Kid 2, you can watch on Netflix. You can also watch Speed on Netflix in August. And that's important because the next Rewatchables will be the re-Speed. Speed was one of the first episodes we ever did on the Rewatchables. We had 4 people, and I think it was less than an hour, so we needed to redo this. We blew out Speed. It's the OG crew, me, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan. So that's a week away, and you can watch Speed anytime you want. Coming up on this podcast, it's evergreen content time. What the hell else is going on other than the baseball trade deadline? I have been watching a lot of Red Sox. I've been enjoying the Red Sox, but really nothing's going on.

So it's the perfect time. For the first time ever, NBA Redraftables, we combined two drafts and we had a mega draft of 2012 and 2013. That's with me and J. Kyle Mann and Joe House. And then I brought in Justin Barrier. For a very special one-question mailbag segment about the Portland Trail Blazers who are in flux all of a sudden in Portland. We're gonna explain what's going on there and how El Cheapo factors into all this. That's all next. Uh, we're gonna take a break and our friends from Pearl Jam. This episode is brought to you by SAP. Hello, mid-size business. We see your big ambitions, but how do you achieve the wins you want when your technology is holding you back? Hmm, I wonder. Well, how about SAP Grow? It's built to grow with your business no matter its size, with AI embedded at its core, working across every system, all ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI cloud ERP for any size business. All right, we have done some redraftables on the Bill Simmons Podcast. We have done everything from 1997 through 2011.

We did a couple other ones as well. '18. We did the COVID draft, '20. You can find a lot of these on the Book of Basketball podcast as well. We have never combined two drafts. And Joe House is here and Kyle Maynes is here, and we are combining the 2012 and 2013 NBA drafts because both of them are terrible. And even when you combine them together, you get only 6 All-NBA guys. You only get 3 guys who made my top 100 revised pyramid that nobody's seen but me and House. Only 9 guys won a title, but 4 of them were KCP, Azili, Crowder, and Snell. You have some iconic busts. You have 2 of the 3 worst drafts of the 21st century back to back. You have 14 guys who played a combined 20K minutes. You had 20 guys who started 400+ games. And really, House, the only major thing of this was the last Draft Diary ever was 2012, and then I was on the broadcast in 2013.

Wow. Yeah, that's right. 2013.

And you were in the 2012 Draft Diary. You and Jacoby watched it with me. You were the peanut gallery. My mom came over halfway through the draft with meatballs and rigatoni and all this stuff.

And did the writing, like, slow? Can you chart the writing getting, like, sleepier?

No, because I was smart enough not to eat until after I finished the diary. House was not. You can kind of see House dying during the diary. Yeah. I just started eating and, uh, and that was it. Anyway, Kyle, why do drafts not work? What if you had to give one reason why we have a bad draft? Would you say it's just bad luck with talent? Is there a cluster theory that all of these guys are moving up the ladder and playing together and just not getting better because the other guys aren't that good? Um, is it situation? What is it in your opinion?

Yeah, I honestly, it's probably just the wrong people were having sex, uh, the 19 years prior at the right, uh, yeah, honestly, at the end of the day, you were talking about the guys, for as bad as it is, I mean, we have 2 guys by my count that made the NBA's top 75. Oh yeah. And, uh, yeah, we, and, and then in other drafts, I mean, '09 had Harden and Curry, '84 had Hakeem, MJ, Barkley, Stockton, '96 had Kobe, Nash, Ray Allen, Iverson. So I mean, it is kind of crazy that we got that. And then also just the, the, the incredible defensive talent that came into the league during these two drafts. I mean, with AD, with Draymond Green, with Rudy Gobert. So, you know, is it deep? Absolutely not. My first order of business was just huge, uh, cutting of the chaff of the field. I was like, all right, only these guys are draftable, period. And I just kind of went from there.

Yeah, I remember. So I did see TV for the 2013 one., and my favorite player was Oladipo, who went second. But when you go through 2013, it's probably the bustiest other than the drug draft in 1986. It's the bustiest you're gonna get. Anthony Bennett goes first, which if you go on YouTube, I, I screamed out, whoa, twice, not knowing my mic was on, but it was just so stupefying cuz they already had a power forward there, Tristan Thompson., and then they took Bennett, who played the same position. They're like, you're gonna play him at small forward too. He was, he had been in college for a year. It was nuts. He went first to Cleveland. Oladipo second, Orlando. Joe House's Wizards took Otto Porter. Cody Zeller fourth to Charlotte. Alex Lin fifth. New Orleans' Noel dropped to sixth. He was supposed to go first, all the way down to New Orleans, got traded to Philly. Ben McLemore seventh. Kintavius Caldwell-Pope, 8th, who's the second best player I've mentioned. Trey Burke, 9th, and then CJ McCollum, 10th. House, an all-timer. Although you had Otto Porter stock for a while.

Yeah, he ended up being a good, um, role player, and I— he's still in the league, right? Isn't he a mentor on one of these teams, or is he some capacity?

I'm sure he's around the— he's not playing.

Yeah, I don't think he's playing. So that one, and then that one gets better later, which we'll cover. The other one was just your standard bad draft where Davis goes 1 to New Orleans, Kidd Go-Crest 2 to Charlotte, Bradley Beal 3 to Washington. And then it goes Dion Waiters, Thomas Robinson back to back, Dame Lillard 6, Harrison Barnes, Terrence Ross, Andre Drummond, Austin Rivers, Myers Leonard, Jeremy Lamb. And you're like, oh, when are the good guys coming? Kendall Marshall, John Henson, Mo Harkless, Royce White, Tyler Zeller, Terrence Jones, Andre Nick— Andrew Nicholson. That's our top 19, Kyle. I don't know what our draft guide would've looked like back then, but it really, really gruesome. And I remember the Celtics had 21 and 22, and I was rooting for Jared Sullinger to fall to them at 21, which he did, but he had bad back issues. And then they took Fab Mello, the 22nd pick. Who played a total of 6 games in the NBA and was a center who averaged— yeah, and a center who averaged less than 6 rebounds a game in college. So, so we, so these 2 drafts together, House, you remember them more for Giannis and AD and Dame or for all the busts?

I mean, it's, it's, it's very busty. The true recollection for me going through this exercise of looking at the players or whatever, Didn't feel like at the time there was— I mean, Anthony Davis was humongous at the moment and then he, he delivered, but otherwise it was just a lot of oddity. Upon reflection, I'm impressed by the defense out of these two classes combined, and that's the best sort of attribute out of all of it, in my humble opinion.

And some 3-and-D guys as well. It's right as the league's shifting too. We're not sure what we want.

Exactly right.

This is 2012, '13. Curry takes off in the '13 playoffs basically. And during that season, then next year it goes even up a level. But this is right where, I mean, I gotta be honest, I love Thomas Robinson in that 2012 draft. Like to me it was like, oh, he's a power forward banger who can shoot a little bit.

Yeah.

But those type of guys just don't exist anymore, Kyle. These 6'8" guys who can't really shoot, they're not great rebounders. It's like, what are they? But for some reason, they made sense before this decade.

I guess in one sense, you could, you could say that, um, the analytics movement, which was getting— it had begun, it was getting ready to really explode and be driven by the tectonic kind of shift of the Curry era kicking off, kind of inform— and I think analytics started to inform archetypes of players that we just would never get taken there. Like an energy big, like a Thomas Robinson, just absolutely there's no way. The analytics hate those types of players. Yeah, I was going to bring up the— I don't want to move on from the 2013 broadcast because you were right, you had a ton of wins on that broadcast. I did.

I had a good telecast.

People should just rewatch it because it's entertaining.

There's—

you got to scrub through because it's a long thing, but There were a couple moments where there's a point in the draft where I guess it was between 6 and 10, and the only thing on the board similar to this year's draft where it was like implied that you should take a guard at that spot. And you mentioned that all the teams in that, in that range all have guards, you know. It's like, well, I don't think that they should. And Jay Billis comes at you and says like, well, if they're the best player available, don't you think that they should take, take them if they're a guard? And I cannot imagine a more perfect comedic behind-the-back alley-oop pass to you at that moment than a chance to dunk on David Kahn? Because you did not miss a beat. You were like, that got David Kahn fired. There are just so many good moments from that broadcast.

I mean, it was, it was such a train wreck as it was happening. And it was also David Stern's last draft, which was the other thing. But it was, you know, and Jalen and I did the interview stuff that year. We interviewed all those guys and that made us feel worse about the draft, not better. Joe House was very prominent during this '12-'13 range for a different reason. This is about a conspiracy, Bill. I don't know if we want to bring him in. You want to come in? There were some interesting lottery results all in a row here. Oh, okay.

Now we're talking.

The decision happens in 2010, after the draft, after the 2010 draft. 2011 draft, which we covered, Cleveland, who had lost LeBron, they got the number one pick.

Mm-hmm.

2012, New Orleans, which was owned by the league.

Hmm.

Lockout ends. They have to trade Chris Paul. They trade him to the Lakers. It falls through. They have to do this Clippers deal instead, which, well, it didn't fall through. David Stern blocked it.

He blocked his own people for basketball reasons.

Yeah, basketball reasons.

The legendary, he had, he had basketball reasons.

So they take this Clippers thing, which people at the time felt like wasn't as good of a trade. I like the Clippers trade a little more, but whatever. And then they're trying to sell the team and I, I'm pretty sure they sold it before the draft.

They did. And then they, it was, it was to the Benson family. This is true. That's what happened.

And then they got Anthony Davis.

They, they did. Yeah, they got the number 1 pick in the— wait a minute, the number 1 pick in the draft.

It was just amazing how it worked out. Meanwhile, Charlotte was like -3 and 63 in the lockout season. Like, I think they somehow had negative, negative wins. 2013, who wins the lottery? The Cleveland Cavaliers. 2014, who wins the lottery? Cleveland Cavaliers. Who goes back to Cleveland 2 weeks after 2014 draft? LeBron James. What do they do with the first pick that they just got, which was Andrew Wiggins? They traded for Kevin Love. I'm just saying there was a lot of conspiracy talk on phone calls with House and I during this stretch. It just felt like the result always favored what the league would've wanted, I think would be a way to—

the best outcome for the league.

Best outcome for sure. For the league over and over again. Uh, I would argue Anthony Davis going to Charlotte probably in 2012 probably would've been a better outcome than him going to New Orleans. And even if you look at the, uh, the 2000— you, Washington had 3. I think Davis going to Washington would have been better for you too, right? You end up with Bradley Beal, which was, um, I think for the most part a really good pick, especially when you consider what this draft was.

But, um, but Wall and Davis, that's, that's, that's what would have been amazing.

The 2 Kentucky guys. Yeah. Um, you know, Wall came in in 2010. And then Davis shortly thereafter. And that was the run that propelled Washington into, you know, hey, we make, we're making the playoffs a handful of years in a row. That's neat-o.

Kyle, another thing that I loved about looking back at these drafts, and we talked about it when we all did the, uh, the post-draft podcast on this feed after the, uh, 2026 draft, the Arrowhead teams just made terrible decisions with the draft. Like really horrible where they would just, they had a power forward already. They would just double up with another one. They would take the wrong guard over a guard that goes, you know, 4 picks later who's much better. They would take guys who clearly weren't ready for the NBA and put them in the worst possible city. I gotta say, going through all this stuff, it really made me nostalgic for an era when nobody knew what they were doing. Right. Could you feel that as you went through it?

Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, like Alex Lin, there's some, there's some pretty painful ones. I noted too that, you know, Cody Zeller, which he was okay, but I had this written down. Let's see, in '20, because I charted this for another project I did in 2011-12 in the league, there were 68 guys in the league that were over 6'10" and weighed over £250. And by '22-'23, that number had dropped to 36. So the, so the, the type of bodies in the NBA were really starting to change. Because of the pace and the space movement. And you just, you're just not going to see a Zeller or that type of guy get taken in the top 5. So I mean, that's, that's part of it. But yeah, you just, you just don't see that anymore. And even Kid Gilchrist, I don't even know that he would, would go number 2 today just because of the shoot, the way the shooting issues are. It's just not as, it's like they just didn't see the movement coming at all.

You know, I like Kid Gilchrist. Heading into that draft, and so did House. We thought he could be like this kind of monster defensive something, and it's like this— if he could ever learn how to sort of shoot, it was going to be a bonus. But I, I do feel like— now, he had some injuries, he had some stuff happen. I think he had some bad luck. But, um, I don't know. I, I thought that was either him or Beal was a really good argument for the 2 versus the 3 that year. But you mentioned the white guys and the, and the big guys. So in 2013, Zeller goes 4, Len goes 5, and Noel goes 6. And the Noel thing was a big deal at the time. And I talked about it when I did the telecast, 'cause he was gonna go 1 and maybe, maybe 2. It, it seemed inconceivable he was gonna drop out. And after Phoenix passed him up for Len, it was like an official, what is going on? Like, is there some injury we don't know about? This ended up being the, um, Philadelphia took Michael Carter-Williams 11th and then traded Jrue Holiday for the Noel pick and another pick with New Orleans and officially started the process, which is now, by the way, guys, done full circle.

We are now at the end of the process with the LeBron signing. This is it. The first, first day of the process was 2013. The end of it was when they got LeBron. So that was weird. And then we had this Giannis element to the draft, which I've talked about on a bunch of pods before that he was, first of all, he was 3 inches shorter than ended up being. He was 6'9" and just seemed like little T-Mac-ish, a whiff of Kevin Durant, crazy athlete. But you're also watching these videos of him playing in Greece and these weird places, and he always seemed like 5 years older than everyone he was playing against. I remember Fran Fraschella was the foreign draft pick analyst at that point and was bullish on him, but nobody was like, this guy's gonna be amazing. Milwaukee takes him and the rest is history. Not only was he immediately like, oh, there's something here, but then he grew. And once he grew to 7 feet, so Kyle, if he's 7 feet heading into this draft, is he the first pick? Is he the second pick? What is he?

I, I don't know. I don't know if it's— would, would it be that much different really? I mean, was it that he— I'm forgetting the timeline here. Was he— did he come to the Combine and he measured shorter than they had claimed?

Oh, he was shorter. He was 6'9". And so the feeling was like he was going to be this perimeter, really athletic, like scoring, you know. And that's why all these like best-case scenario names are being thrown around, but nobody kind of really knew what he was. Didn't seem like he could shoot., but seemed like he had this up and down, crazy up and down. He was a good passer, he was athletic. So there was something there, which is when we did the draft, we thought he was gonna be somewhere between 12 and like 16, which is where he ended up. But him growing was, I think, one of the biggest things. One guy I really liked in the draft was Ben McLemore, who just had all the prototypes but was a classic, couldn't handle it. Off the court. And then, uh, Gobert was 27th house, one of your favorites, and came out of the stands to shake David Stern's hand, if that— my memory.

I remember that. Yeah, I think that— yeah, that was really fun.

It was kind of the era when all of a sudden guys started doing that if they weren't invited in the green room. And Denver gets him and immediately trades him to Utah for the 46th pick and cash.

Mm. They didn't have him very high on their board.

Tough one.

Apparently not.

So that was the big one from— Gobert was the big later guy from that draft. And then 2012, Draymond ended up being the guy who fell out of the first round. And that one was weird. I gotta be honest, that one was weird as it was happening. 'Cause we had watched him in college and he was just an excellent college player and was clearly something. Golden State, he falls to 35. It's in, and Golden State takes him. They look like geniuses, right? Well, they passed him up at 30 and took Festus Azili.

They didn't know. I mean, and even the stuff that he was known for in college, he didn't, it, that he reinvented himself in a way where it was just like perfect place, perfect time, and it just clicked. I mean, to, he, he deserves all the credit for being brilliant. We can get into that more later, but. Yeah, even the stuff that he, he was a back to the basket, like crafty big in college, you know, and heavy.

He had a lot of weight to him that he kind of shed. Yeah, look, this is the Patriots took Tom Brady in the 6th round. I was like, what a pick. They also passed on him in the 4th round, in the 5th round. Um, that Jay Crowder was the other one from that draft who went right before him at 34, which was another one where I was like, wow, that feels a little late. But that's what happens when you're taking Fob Mello. I remember at Grantland, we had Grantland that year for the 2012 draft. There's a lot of Perry Jones people at Grantland. We, uh, we, we, we— he had a lot of stock, and, uh, it was like crypto in 2019. It just completely fell apart. But that was when OKC took him. It was like, oh, that's an interesting one. But in retrospect, they could have easily just taken Draymond at they were picking 28th with, you know, coming off the Finals. That would have been a fascinating pick. Any— House, any other things you want to hit before we hit the, the mega draft?

No. Um, I am glad that we combined these two drafts so that we could get to 10 good players.

Okay, we're gonna—

Can I ask a question? Yeah, or just a quick, a quick sliding doors thing. What happens if Cleveland doesn't screw up that pick? What if they— because on the broadcast You suggested they take Oladipo. Oladipo has an All-Star peak at one point. What is that? What ripple effect does that have? Because I'm like, they probably still include him in a trade for Kevin Love, right? I would imagine. Because, you know, Bennett ends up in that swap with Minnesota, and I'm just like, it probably ends up like a brighter timeline for Minnesota, I guess. But then they get Karl Towns. I just was kind of like working through the— because the fact that he wasn't, you know, a glowing prospect at that point made it easier to get off of him so quickly like they did.

Yeah, it's, it's— so I'm going back and looking at the Cavs. So that would've been the 2013-'14 Cavs, the year that they got LeBron. I thought I, I was pretty adamant on every show and all the prep and on the telecast. I couldn't believe Oladipo wasn't the first pick. 'Cause to me he only felt, he felt like the only sure thing in the draft. Like he, he was clearly, he had, he was good in college at Indiana. The team was good. He, he was a little Castle-ish where it was like, I, I feel like he could, maybe there was, there's more there with him on the ball, but he was a good defensive guard, super athletic. They finished 33-49 the next year and got nothing from Bennett. So you could argue maybe he would've knocked their pick like it, like it wouldn't have been as good. Maybe their records, like, a couple wins better, then they don't get the number one pick, then they're not able to get Kevin Love. There is some what-if repercussions, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's, that would be the only thing I said. I thought it was weird. The Bennett thing was nuts. We, we thought Bennett was gonna fall heading into the draft. Like, for real, we thought he was gonna fall into the 8 to 10 range, which was the reason I did the, the whoa thing. All right, we're gonna take a break. During the break, our producers, Gahow and Eduardo, are, we figured out this number system because we're making this draft competitive. We're trying to win this draft. We're gonna have people vote on social media. We're gonna draft 8 guys each from these 2 drafts and try to put together the best possible team. So this won't necessarily be a traditional redraft. There might be some, oh, I need a center, I gotta take so-and-so here. So when we come back, we're gonna do the mega draft. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures. More than ever, America needs a laugh. Enter the Super Troopers to the rescue. The cult comedy classic returns in the most offensive installment yet with Super Troopers 3. A debaucherous bachelor party, an over-the-top wedding, a dangerous drug smuggling ring. All of them are threatening the troops' future.

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All right.

During the break, we figured out a convoluted way to figure out the draft order. Kahow. It's numbers. We shouted out numbers and miraculously I got the number 1 pick. House is 2nd. J. Kyle—

weird how the draft order is favoring the hosts of the show.

Yeah. Kahow. I'll Venmo you later. But you have Snake. Snake, you get 3 and 4, Kyle. Which is key for this draft. All right, so with the first pick of the 2012-2013 two-draft mega draft, Bill Simmons will select Giannis Antetokounmpo. One of the single most amazing draft stories in the history of the NBA. Falls out of the lottery. Philly, who knows they're doing The Process, passes on him at 11. And I think it was probably the right move back then. I think if he went 11, we would've been like, what the— he went 11th? Jesus. OKC passes him in 12. Took Steven Adams instead. Can you—

they had a chance to have Harden, Durant, and Westbrook, and Giannis.

They still had Harden on the team. They— and Westbrook. They could have just said, fuck it.

One of the greatest what-ifs of all time.

Well, they took Adams, which was, I think, the right pick, right? Because player, they needed one more big guy. But, um, Dallas is at 13, 2 years removed from winning the title. It was one of those things where the articles and stuff after were like, we really liked him. It's like, well, if you liked him, you would have taken him. They end up trading, doing some convoluted trade, trading back. Utah's at 14, they pass on him, they take Shabazz Muhammad, which everybody should be fired for that. And Milwaukee takes him at 15. Now what's interesting is Dallas took Olynyk at 13, Boston traded up to 13 for Kelly Olynyk and not Giannis. Who they could have put with Kevin Garnett and the Paul Pierce and the Ray Allen team. So anyway, and you know the rest. He's 10 All-Star teams, 21 Finals MVP, 2-time MVP, 7 times top 4, 7 All-NBAs, has only made the Conference Finals twice. I was, hmm, traded to Miami. Last month. And then, uh, and then LeBron didn't sign with them, and Dan Le Batard tried to do a Fanatics conspiracy thing. That was the single most ridiculous thing I've watched on social media this month.

I'm just saying. Okay, Michael Rubin sold the Sixers stake 4 years ago. Good try. Um, Giannis first. You agree with that, Kyle Mann? Because you don't have the second pick.

Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that. Uh, yeah, Giannis, probably the best handling big guy of all time, I would say. Uh, best driving big guy of all time, I think is fair to say. Uh, 4 players have had NBA seasons of over 30 points per game, over 10 rebounds, over 5 assists, at over 60% true shooting, and he did it 3 consecutive seasons. Um, Embiid is the other one. Yeah, you're just talking about a pretty incredible story about just kind of where he came from. His first rookie deal total was worth $8.6 million, and his current 5-year deal is at almost $230 million. So yeah, and he deserves it, man. I mean, he's just an incredible— he's an incredible player. When I was revisiting the stats, it was making me be like, man, I mean, it was— it definitely made me think like, I should probably go check this Miami thing out a little bit more on a granular level again, because goddamn, he's good, man. I mean, it's— it's a simple thing to say, but it's the right thing to say.

Yeah.

And he, you figure he'll have 2 more. And this was the case as I was trying to talk myself, if Boston got into him, 2 more really high-level seasons if he's healthy. And then after that, history will say he's gonna drop. How's one of the things I was looking at, I was looking at my pyramid, which only you have seen the list of the top 25 guys of which Giannis is one of them. And so many of those top 25 guys are just pedigree guys that we would've bet The ceiling of this was top 25, right? If you, if you go through the top 25, Kobe's the first one where if you had said in '96, this 17-year-old kid coming outta high school and you had just said he is going to be one of the 12 best players of all time, that would've been insane. But he did have the pedigree. He was the number one guy in high school. But then you go through the rest of them. Moses, somebody like Moses was the single biggest high school recruit of the 1970s. Like everybody was, trying to go after him. He ended up going right to the ABA.

Dirk, I would say, is one, and, and Jokic is the other one. Is Jokic or Giannis more unbelievable to you? Jokic was the 37th pick in 2014. What's a more unbelievable— I can't believe this guy was a Finals MVP and is now a top 25 story from you for when you remember them in the draft?

It's Jokic. And the reason for that, part of the reason for that is, do you remember what he used to look like?

Right? Like, fat guy.

Freak has always been a freak. Yeah. And then freak got freakier because he got more muscular and he got taller. But yeah, there was nothing when you looked at the Joker to suggest that the career arc, um, that, that we've all enjoyed. Some people claim that the Ringer enjoys it more than anybody else on planet Earth that there's a lot of Joker love, and I think it's well deserved.

Yeah, we're weird for that.

Sorry, look, awesome basketball.

Uh, but yeah, just throwing a match on that one.

The Joker feels a little less likely. That, that's, that's it.

Yeah, even if I go through the top 30, you know, like Kawhi, who I think is a top 30 all-time guy, and he fell to 15. And that one's a surprising one 'cause nobody saw the offensive side of him coming the way it did. But he was still a lottery, like Jokic I think is the right answer. Yeah. But I think Giannis is second. Even I look at a guy like Barkley, you know, Barkley was a top 5 lottery pick, was the most famous cut from the 1984 Olympic team, was awesome in college and was the only question on him was, is he gonna stay in shape?

So, Yeah, anyway, Giannis, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned something interesting though about the pedigree thing, because in 2012, Anthony Davis was coming off of one of the best American prospect years in history, where he comes out as the number one player, wins every Player of the Year award in college, gets a gold medal, goes number one. And if you had said in the next decade there's going to be a lanky power forward that dominates the NBA and gets, you know, gets an MVP and wins a title he did end up getting one, but he, he didn't— Giannis had the career I think that we thought AD was going to have at the end of the day.

I couldn't agree more. I think out of the last 15 years, I think the two guys I would have bet anything on were Davis and Cooper Flagg. Like, just like, I know those guys are going to be good, but Davis, I remember House and I watching Kentucky that year and we're just like, holy shit, this guy's like McHale crossed with I don't even know what, but it just seemed like the only way I think stopping him was going to be an injury. And if anything, I think it's weird because he's won a title. It's like mildly disappointing he's not first on this list. I think he's a top 75 guy all time that had top 25 potential halves and he never got there.

That's fair and reasonable. Well, I might as well just go ahead and take him right now since we're talking about him. I am going to take him. Second overall in this draft. I'm not going out on a limb. He did arrive with the highest pedigree. We did love watching him immensely in college. He was definitely a can't miss, and yet he's on his fourth team now. Of course, this was a long time ago when he was drafted, but that, that is, that tells you something, right? Giannis, only one team for his, his career until this most recent trade. I do wonder if some number of years removed, just to finish the thought on Giannis, we'll look back and be like, why? Tell me again why Milwaukee had to trade Giannis. Can somebody explain to me why they felt like— because the thing is, he's only 31, Giannis. Now, for sure, you've done the work, the legwork, in terms of when do guys of this size tend to fall off, when does, you know, and it's off of a cliff. But that kind of also applies to Anthony Davis potentially, and he's 2 years older, he's 33, right?

Um, the thing that Davis has going for him that makes him— it's a no-brainer, obviously, for him to be number 2. But the all-defense stuff was really, um, meaningful. I mean, that, that, that's— for him to make that his calling card, because when he arrived, I thought that the inside-outside game was going to be the thing. I thought he might be a prolific scorer. He faced the basket and shot the ball in a way that, that was confident. And, you know, his, his 3-point shooting I don't know if the numbers support this. I'm telling you the eye test, his 3-point shooting early in his career was excellent, I thought. So, um, you know, easy pick for me at number 2 here.

I think during the '17-'18 season when they made the playoffs and upset somebody, I think Portland, but I remember during that year on pods, and I can't remember if I was writing or not, there was like a moment when it seemed like he was becoming the best player in the league. During the basically post All-Star in 2018. It was like LeBron was in his last Cleveland year and was, he had missed some games and he was trying to push them to get traded. And then LeBron took that title back like, like a motherfucker in the playoffs. He was like, no, actually I'm still the best guy in the league. But I don't ever, like if you told me in 2012 Davis is only gonna have 2 top 5 MVP finishes, in his entire career, I would've assumed he had some dramatic major injury. 'Cause he, it just seemed like he was so talented. It seemed inconceivable that he wasn't gonna be an MVP and he never made it. Highest he ever got, he was 2018, he was third in the MVP. And there was that other moment he had in the 2020 playoffs when it felt like he was gonna win Finals MVP halfway through that series, right?

And they were up 3-1 and I think it was Game 5 and it was like if he kicked ass in that game, he was probably gonna win Finals MVP legitimately. But he wasn't good in that game, and LeBron ended up winning it and had a better series. But he never won Defensive Player of the Year. His 4-year peak was 27-11. How's he's played 807 games and missed over 300?

I mean, there's a reason we've called him every other Davis, and it has been, you know, now he's on your team, coincident with the playoffs. I welcome him with open arms.

I do. This is a situational thing. Like, sometimes when we— we all know people with, with kids that we like and families that the kids play in, sometimes you, you're like, oh man, I wish that kid didn't have that mom. I feel like that kid would have had a better chance. You're like, oh man, that guy— that kid's dad sucks. And I do think that, yeah, there's sometimes you're like, ah, I'm not sure how much of a chance these parents are going to allow this kid. Um, I do feel that way with NBA teams sometimes. Like, Davis goes to New Orleans. What's the worst fucking team to go to, to New Orleans in 2012? Like, you're changing owners, they're owned by the football team, they had more weird injury medical stuff than just about any team. And you know, this is a good— put two drinks in Barrier, and Barrier has some good stories about, uh, oh yeah, about New Orleans during that time. But yeah, I just I feel like if you do his career 50 times, this isn't the worst version of it, but I don't think it's in the upper echelon of what I would've said.

All right, Giannis 1, Davis 2. Kyle Mando on the clock with 2 picks in a row. We know who the first pick's gonna be, but I don't know who the second pick's gonna be.

You could probably know and guess who it's gonna be, but my nerdy ass, my pick is gonna, my first pick is gonna be Damian Lillard. Um, Damian Lillard, top 75 all-time guy. Um, I think in this era of dribble shooting that kind of changed basketball in the way that we were talking earlier, it wasn't just shooting, it was ball handlers shooting the ball, changing pick-and-roll coverages, changing the way bigs need to perform. Uh, Lillard just kind of has the misfortune of playing in the same era as Curry because he's just one of the best shooters of all time. Uh, he's a winner. Um, I I'll go ahead and spoil— I kind of had this between these two classes. I had written down like the best moments and the worst moments. And the best moments, I mean, it's hard to argue against Dame's. Uh, he's got two series game winners, you know, we— as we talked about before, you know, he put out the Thunder and then he put out, uh, he— uh, blanking on it, but he's done it twice now.

Um, it was the Thunder twice.

Um, well, it was the— uh, Chandler Parsons was guarding him on the first one, and I was thinking, well, that might have been the Grizzlies.

Maybe it was the Rockets. Either way, Yeah. Never made a Finals, never won a round 3 game. Western Conference Finals once, got swept. All-NBA First Team once, second, fourth, third team twice, fourth MVP in 2018, 5-year peak house, 28-5-7, 38% from 3. I thought it was the right pick. He's also there's a chance, and we're gonna talk to Varier, or I'm gonna talk to Varier later about the Trail Blazers. There's a chance he's Portland's last great player.

Oh yeah.

Like if something bad happens to that franchise, this was their last thing. Oh nice. I'm just gonna read you some highlights from my draft diary because I've got this about as wrong as you can get. I still feel like I had a winning percentage in the draft diary, but forgot to mention the Blazers picked Dame 6th. Because of the Gerald Wallace trade, which might have been the worst trade of the, of the 2010s, all things considered. Brooklyn trading a top 3 protected pick to Portland for Gerald Wallace, who was about to become a free agent. And this was— I killed Billy King over and over again, and he deserved every bit of it. It's, it's like pound for pound the worst trade of the decade., so they end up getting 6. They have to give Damian Lillard that pick to the Blazers, and it, it's like one of the all-time— of course, even if it had been a top 10 lottery protected, they're probably doing that. What are you guys doing? But anyway, I wrote after the pick, we're watching highlights, it's me, House, and Jacoby, and I wrote— these are jokes I had— what conference is Damian Lillard from again?

Has any top 10 pick ever had more highlights that happen against white people? Is it Weber or Weber? Has anyone ever picked a backup point guard this high? Did they just pick Jared Bayless again, or am I crazy? Are these highlights from Division I games? These are all quotes that I wrote down that one of the three of us said. And then, uh, and then I wrote later, I was saying Broussard was saying how they needed someone to stretch the floor for lower, for Aldridge. And I said, Lillard can shoot. I might talk myself into this pick by midnight. At least I need at least 2 more drinks. And then Austin Rivers got picked later and I wrote, I'd rather have a 20-year-old Rivers than a 22-year-old Damian Lillard. Tough, tough draft diary for me and Dame.

Everybody was excited about Austin Rivers pairing with AD though. I mean, to be fair, to be fair to you, I recall a lot of excitement about that combo.

And I think, and Austin Rivers goes back to what I said about Davis before. Like, that's just, he went to the wrong franchise. That guy was the best player in high school. And I think you end up just, you go down a road and then New Orleans quit on him. And I don't know, I feel like his, there's another version of his career that's more interesting. But anyway, what did you think of Dame? Do you remember back then, Kyle, as a prospect?

Oh God, I was working for zappos.com back then. I was just kind of, I was just some dude who liked to talk shit about basketball. Well, I liked him. I mean, you hear stories about him that he had like one of the best workouts. The people acted like they saw Christ when they came away from that workout where they were like, this is, this guy has it. Yeah. I mean, he's an interesting developmental story. You know, Weber State, I guess he was Mountain West. I'm trying to remember what conference they're in anyway. Yeah.

I remember going to see him his rookie year and he was going against Chris Paul at his peak and I had really good seats and Chris Paul just destroyed him. For 2 and a half hours and I was like, ah, I don't know about—

That's what Chris Paul did, dude.

I don't know about this Steve Blower guy. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, he just went to Chris Paul College and a couple years later he's flipping it on Chris Paul. All right, now it gets exciting. So we, the, the top 3 went how we thought, but the 4th pick, there's some good options on the table.

Who do you have?

I'm taking Draymond Green.

Yes, I knew you would.

I had him on my board in the 4th spot as well. Okay, make the case.

Uh, Draymond Green is one of the more interesting, um, we were talking about like a player having a sober sense of who they are. I think he realized what he needed to be in the situation that he was in. Um, he's one of the best screeners, he's an incredible passer. Um, he, he happened to play with— he's high, high level processor on both ends of the floor. Um, he's been He had one of the best defensive stretches for any player in the league, starting from like '14-'15 to 2019. The run that he put together, I think he might be one of the best post defenders of all time, one-on-one. Like, he's really difficult to score on. Yeah, I just think Draymond's one of the smartest players, one of the smartest players that we've had in NBA history, honestly.

I don't have him in my 100 for the Pyramid House, but he came closer than the next guy who I think is going to get taken in this. Uh, I did write down the 5 best non-center defenders ever. Scottie Pippen House.

Okay.

Dennis Rodman.

Sure.

Kawhi Leonard.

No argument.

Andre Iguodala.

Interesting. Okay.

Draymond Green.

Speaks for itself in my opinion.

Would you put Gary Payton above any of those?

Probably have, probably have the glove ahead of Iguodala.

That's the spot. I think Draymond is, has to be one of the first four and Steve Kerr. Has, it's been interesting. He's, he kind of dances around it 'cause he's always been very pro-Pippen, like extolling his virtues all the time, talking about what an unbelievable defensive player. But he's had a couple moments where he is like, I think Draymond might be one of the best, the best defensive perimeter guy ever. He's in the conversation. So I think Kyle, I think that's the right pick. What were you gonna say?

These are, these are different species of defenders though. You're talking about Peyton, he's point of attack guy. You're talking about Iguodala and Kawhi, those are like assignment switchable, like perimeter score matchup dudes. What's interesting about Draymond is he's not a rim protector, but he's a rim deterrent to a certain level that he doesn't really have to be because he doesn't block a ton of shots. He's like a deflection machine. He just plays middle linebacker better than like hardly any player that I've ever seen. Like, he's so, he's so smart. I made a video about this one time. His timing, he could snuff out plays he had a really incredible discipline about like, I'm gonna stay completely still so that this guy doesn't know that I'm about to make a play on the ball.

Yeah.

And then make a play on the ball at the last possible second. Like he's one of the best ever at that. So I'd say he's a little different than those guys, just that he guards up the food chain a little more than, than the Pippens and the Iguodala types.

No question. Made a second team, third team All-NBA, 2017 Defensive Player of the Year, 5 first team All-Defenses. In the playoffs, 5-year stretch, that incredible 5-year Warriors stretch they had where they— he played 104 playoff games, got suspended famously for one of them. 13, 10, and 7, 3.2 stocks, 38 minutes a game. And, uh, I always thought the 25-game winning streak to start the year— I love winning streaks, as anyone who follows this podcast knows. I love the Miami 27-gamer. I love that 25-0. He, you need somebody like him on the team to win that many games in a row. He's just a maniac. He's an absolute competitive maniac. And sometimes it tilts over the line and I think it's had real repercussions for them. It had repercussions when he punched LeBron in the balls, did the flick up. It had repercussions when he punched Jordan Poole. It's had, he's gotten dumb technicals in games, but that's just how he's wired. I'm a huge historical Draymond defender. I think he's right on the cusp of being one of the 100 best guys. Uh, I couldn't get in there just 'cause we've had almost 80 years of great players at this point.

But when you think like, um, OKC passing on him, then Cleveland passed on him at 33 and 34. And when LeBron came back 2 years later, he could have already been on the team. So, all right. Kyle has Dame and Draymond. That's a pretty good start. I'll be really interested to see what House does here at, at 5, because 2 of his least favorite players of the last 15 years are on the board.

I'm dying.

This is going to be great. I'm so glad House is in this spot. What do you have, House?

Um, this is going to come as a surprise in this sense. I actually have come around on this guy.

Um, what is getting ready to happen? Oh my God.

I like Rudy Gobert. I'm a Rudy Gobert fan. I'm coming all the way around. Guess how many conference finals this is?

Like the Tony Romo DUI video all over again.

You know the answer. He's played in 2 Western Conference Finals. You know who else only has 2 Western Conference Finals? Anthony Davis. Rudy Gobert, 8-time All-Defensive First Team member, 4-time Defensive Player of the Year.

Um, would you say he's the best defensive center of the Steph Curry era? I think you would.

Yes. Yes, I would. I would say that.

I think, I think since, since Joakim Noah, he's been the best defensive center since.

I think in a certain sense, Minnesota and Tim Connelly have been vindicated in terms of, you know, that the trade that they made and what it did in terms of propelling Anthony Edwards forward. I do think that there was a role that, that Gobert played there, and he's the face of COVID So of course I'm taking— he's the number one pick in the United States of America. Who announced COVID to America? Rudy fucking Gobert.

Yeah, we had the Rudy Gobert game. Yeah, you're right. One second team, two third team All-NBAs. In the playoffs, 96 games. He's averaging a 3/3 third teams.

3/3 teams.

3/3.

He's been All-NBA 4 times.

In the playoffs, 12-10. 1.5 blocks a game, 96 games, 2 conference finals. So your team right now has Anthony Davis with Rudy Gobert. So you're going size. Yes, size. Jeez.

Yep.

Not great. What'd you think of that pick, Kyle?

Not great for need. I mean, Gobert is one of the, he's a great elite rim protector for most situations. And I think just the thing that he's run up against in his playoff history is that when you're trying to paint a masterpiece, you just kind of need to iterate one step further than Rudy Gobert because he just is problematic. And AD doesn't have the same issues. Like, he can't get played off the floor in the same way. Uh, he's offensively super challenged. Um, yeah, you mentioned, you mentioned just him as a teammate. He's run into that different times over his career. I, I had the best moments and worst moments. We've mentioned two of the worst moments for these two classes. Draymond punching Jordan Poole, Gobert touches all the mics right before COVID The other one is Kelly Olynyk injures Kevin Love. That's the other one.

I had written down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a good one.

I rewatched that one. That was brutal. So yeah, that's Gobert. I appreciate him, but I'm not, he wouldn't be somebody I would reach for.

Yeah.

I am up with 2 picks and they're 2 picks that I actually wrote. This is a great argument. And didn't know who should go first. I'm not gonna cop out and just take them together. And now I'm wavering. Well, I'm gonna end up with both of them anyway. I'm gonna take Bradley Beal with the 6th pick.

Okay.

Um, might be another, I wish he'd gone to a different franchise guy. Um, I got to see a few of those Wizards-Celtics 2017 playoff games and he didn't shoot well in that. Playoffs, but I really liked the competitive spirit he had. And I remember talking to House about that after. I think House, did you go to Game 7? Did I bring you to that?

No, I did not go to Game 7 in Boston.

I just, I thought, I left that series thinking this guy has a chance to be pretty special. Like he was really comfortable. In this game, in this atmosphere. And if anything, the Wizards, I thought, made the mistake, which I talked about at the time, of like, the Celtics just weren't guarding John Wall. They were letting him shoot threes. And I actually thought if they had run stuff through Beal, they would've beaten us. That was also the Kelly Olynyk game, which we'll get to later. But that kind of turned out to be the peak for him as like a competitive player. He's never made it to round 3. He's only played 49 playoff games. His individual peak, he averaged 31 a game and 20 and 21 combined. He's made almost $350 million a year. And, uh, my friend Joe House during the draft diary said when he got picked third, right player, right spot. It was a very unwizard-like pick. We needed a guy who could shoot at the basket and not at his teammates. Was a Joe House joke. Good joke.

Oh, really?

That's a really good joke. I wrote, hey now, after I quoted you on the joke. Um, Look, you pay these guys, sometimes you don't know what's gonna happen. And I think that contract ended up being the worst thing that happened to him, unfortunately. But there's, feels like there should have been more here, Kyle.

The arc of how this has gone down for him, you know, some of this has happened, I know since I've been working at The Ringer where, you know, in the post-John Wall injury, wake that we had. He put together a 4-season stretch that was pretty incredible. You mentioned that— I mean, overall, 27 points, over 5 assists, 1.3 steals, you know, 35.8% from 3, gets to the line a ton. Um, where it was looking like, okay, this guy, we need to get him— find a way for him to play serious basketball. And he'd signed that huge contract, and he had the no-trade clause. He had a no-trade clause in there as well. So that dragged on and on.. And, uh, it's, I just remember thinking about that. I'm like, this guy's developing and improving, but he's just doing, it's wasteful just because he's in such a bad situation. And then the injury stuff starts. So he's kind of had a sad arc. I mean, you know, he'll cry all the way to the bank.

Except financially. Yeah.

Wipe his tears with $100 bills.

But House, you watched him.

It's been an odd arc for him.

House, you watched him a lot. He really was like an absolutely high-level elite scorer for years.

Yeah.

Really hard to stop. Really inside, outside. Yeah. Like just could get 30 basically anytime he wanted it. And I think could have been a scorer on a really good team. Just never had the right team. I'm, I'm, I'm appreciate your restraint though, House. I thought you'd be a lot meaner right now.

No, I mean, in terms of this exercise that we're doing, I have him lower because what was revealed in my own experience with him was that he couldn't drag winning basketball out of a situation. Right. You know, as soon as John Wall got hurt and, you know, the franchise was in disarray because directionally the owner and the general manager were, were kind of stuck about what was the right thing to do.

Right.

So they gave him a once in a lifetime contract. We'll never see a contract like that again. The combination of—

it was a slow-motion car crash. Yeah. You knew when it was happening. It was like, yes. You have to do this, but you shouldn't do it. Which we, we see in football sometimes too with the quarterbacks.

Yeah.

It's like, ah, I don't want to give this guy $50 million a year, but what am I going to do?

It's fine. The no trade is, will never be forgivable.

Yeah.

It will never be. There'll never be an explanation that makes sense.

I'm taking Chris Middleton with the other pick. I almost took him 6th. 39th pick. In 2012, um, went to Milwaukee, played there for a while. His career, like, if you go Basketball Reference, his career is a little better than I even realized, and I was always a fan. 2021 NBA champ, he was the go-to scorer on that team. I know Giannis had more points, but when they needed baskets, they ran through Middleton. 2021 playoffs, Kyle, 24, 7, and 6. For Chris Middleton, 44% shooting. He averaged 20 a game for basically 5 years from '18 to '22 and was, you know, a good defensive player too before his body started to break down. I just thought he was a winning player and he proved it because they won the Finals with him. So I, I really did think about him over Beal, but I couldn't get there 'cause of the talent of Beal. So anyway, that's—

If you swapped places, if you put Middleton, if you put Beal in Middleton's situation, it does make you wonder. He would be great. And he plays next to a Giannis. Assume, because he was the perfect archetype of player to play next. Giannis collapses the, you know, the defense, and everybody's, you know, freaking out as he drives the ball. Middleton just had this incredible— he was one of the best isolation pull-up scorers in the league for 2 or 3 years there. You know, the injury started to catch up with him and age, but man, I think— I honestly feel like people forget kind of how nasty of a scoring bag he had.

People forget. This is a Twitter video. Chris Middleton was a problem.

You want a gold medal?

That's another award I have.

A Team USA selection tells you.

I really like this year. And the Celtics made the '22 Finals partly because Middleton was injured in that playoff series, and that was probably the push over the top. All right, I already won the draft, so we're gonna take a break. I have Giannis, Bradley Beal, Chris Middleton. You guys aren't winning, it's over. We're gonna take a break, come back with House's next pick. All right, House is on the clock. He has Anthony Davis and Rudy Gobert, trying to figure out how to play them together.

And, um, oh, Anthony Davis wants to be out of the paint anyway. I feel great about that.

Are we going to the Patriot League for this next pick?

You know, I, I gave that a nice hard look, and that is one of the things on CJ McCollum's resume that does commend him, but surprisingly, the career of CJ McCollum will outpace the guy that I'm actually going to take.

Okay.

But the high of this guy, if this poor guy didn't get hurt, yeah, um, was superior to any high that, that, uh, CJ McCollum experienced. And so I'm taking Victor Oladipo.

It was going to be a question of where he went. Underrated.

Two-time All-Star.

Yeah. Underrated injury what-if guy.

Right, exactly. The defense is the thing with him, especially made All-Defensive First Team, led the league in steals, made one All-NBA Third Team, one Most Improved Player, um, All-Rookie First Team. So like he came in with that at that number one I mean, number 2 overall pick in the draft. And I think he kind of validated it. Like, he showed us he did lead a team in scoring in a playoff series. So it just was, you know, never promise fulfilled because of the injury situation.

2018, 23-5-5, led the league in steals, 37% from 3. So he gets picked by Orlando. OKC ends up stealing him in the Ibaka trade and then takes him with Sabonis and flips him for Paul George. And Oladipo goes to Indiana and becomes a star. I actually deep— I went on a rabbit hole with the Pacers-Cavs series from 2018. Do you guys remember this series?

The round one? It went 7, didn't it? It went 7 games.

Went 7. There's a Game 5 that's on— the last 5 minutes of it are on YouTube. It's in Cleveland, series tied 2-2. They get a LeBron turnover with like 26 seconds left and they call timeout and it's basically Oladipo to win the game. Oladipo's at the top. They've been trapping him the whole fourth quarter, but they, it's just LeBron and Oladipo. He beats LeBron, goes to the basket, and LeBron fucking stuffs it off the, and blocks it and gets the ball. This was like, I think LeBron in that 2018 playoffs was the greatest version of him. Timeout, comes down, LeBron hits the game-winning 3. Block 3, and then it goes to 7, and they hung around in 7 too, but Cleveland won in 7. But he went toe-to-toe with LeBron that whole series. I think he had 30 in Game 7. But you left that series thinking like, what an incredible trade. They got Oladipo and Sabonis for Paul George. Like, that was an everybody wins trade. But he made the All-Star team the next year, and then he got hurt and started having knee problems. They fucked up the surgery on it and he was never, never the same.

Where'd you have him, Kyle?

Jam around here?

Tore his patellar tendon too, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, just, just because of the arc and the body of work. Yeah, I ended up with him at 13, but I'm kind of, um, it's— I guess it's something about the, the spirit of this exercise is, are we, are we doing this like a, a battle world type scenario where the peak version of this person—

it's whatever you want—

a team?

No, you get the career he had. You can't It's the career that— the career he had, you're basically saying this is probably what would have happened. Now, in his case, bad luck with the injury, but, you know, the, uh—

what's interesting is we were talking about like how many guys are left from this class, like, still active. It's crazy. You go back like 2011, 6 guys still active. It, it was amazing to me as I was going back the years. You mentioned LeBron.

Yeah.

And I got to 2011, I was like, Jesus Christ, we get to go all the way back and LeBron is still it just really hammered home. You were talking about all the different— and like whether or not AD was the best player in the world. There's so many different years where we would argue about like, oh yeah, this guy's the best player in the world. It's like LeBron, it just further cemented it to me. It's just like, goddamn, LeBron's unbelievable, man.

Like, he, he has so many— I'm formulating a LeBron-Zag case for— there, there is a case the career dwarfs The peak of Jordan. I personally— did you read what I wrote? No.

Yeah, yeah, I, I've, I've had the same revelation recently.

Yeah, because you go through and it's— there's just so many crazy games. I was looking through his advanced metrics and there's just, there's years where he's just like +21 on off, you know, like crazy, crazy shit. And a lot of playoff moments. I had so many playoff moments that I literally forgot about the 2018 Pacers series. Like a block to save the game and then a game-winning buzzer-beating 3 in the other end, and then happen in a row. Um, Kyle, you have 2 picks.

Well, let's see. I have good bookends here with Draymond and Lillard. I don't really know what we're gonna do with Giannis if we're imagining these teams literally playing each other. Uh, maybe Draymond could take that assignment. Um, I need some— I feel like I have to take CJ though.

I feel like The reunion of Dame and CJ. They're back. I'm trying to trade them already. Patriot League in the house.

They had a good run.

Here, here will be my argument for this, is that if you look at like the way that, that CJ Dame played with Nurkic, you'd get a better defensive player than Nurkic at, yeah, at the same kind of fulcrum playmaker. You just— because they talked about trading for Draymond at one point, right? Or he, he thought about going there. There was some conversation about that. Yeah, I think if you paired Lillard and CJ with Dame, that would be a good offensive start. I've got other questions to answer, but he's too good to pass up here for me. So I'll go ahead and since House took Oladipo, I'll go ahead and take CJ.

House, I was surprised with CJ, just steady 20 for like 13 years. He's 19.5 points a game, regular season, 20 in the playoffs. Like that's, If he's on the court, he's getting 20, basically.

Yeah. No, no All-Star appearances, no All-NBA teams, a Most Improved Player award, which is not nothing, but you know, the, the coming from the Patriot League, it's a hell of a career. Plus, you know, the esteem that his peers hold him in and what he did with the basketball, you know, the Players Association. And you can see him going from, you know, at these end of career moments, he was awesome in Washington. Not only was he good for the young guys, he was tremendously complimentary of the organization in a way that really, you know, built up excitement in Washington for what Washington was doing. CJ McCollum did that.

I liked him as a playoff guy. I don't like him as a should we have a second apron or not vote. Because, you know, he was involved in that second apron thing, which was really bad. Um, okay, so you took CJ McCollum with one pick, Kyle, man. Who's the other pick?

Oh, I'll go— I, I— well, we can't take another non-shooter. Um, I think I'm gonna go with Harrison Barnes with my pick.

I had him next. All right, it's a really solid career, Harrison Barnes. Um, right place, right time too, in the cap spike. 2016 where the Warriors decide they're gonna go for Durant and Dallas is scrambling and they're like, we'll give you $90 million for 4 years or whatever they gave up. I think it was a sign and trade too. But, but yeah, still around now on San Antonio trying to get a ring. Can I read you what Joe, what Joe House said during the draft diary?

Absolutely.

Harrison Barnes gets taken 7th. So we make a bunch of he's gotta be ecstatic he didn't go to Sacramento jokes. This is what I wrote. Jacoby and I both noticed that Golden State's starting five— Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Barnes, David Lee, and Andrew Bogut— looks sneaky good on paper, right? Until House says, quote, you left out the part that Curry and Bogut will get hurt. They're paying $25 million per year to Richard Jefferson and Andre Iguodala, and their coach was just involved in a sex extortion scandal with a stripper. That was Mark Jackson. And then I wrote, yeah, but still. So, Hass, you were not a Golden State believer in 2012.

I stand by it.

Put it on your resume.

I stand by it.

You stand by it.

Okay.

Dig in.

Well, how about this? Did I know that they were going to acquire Steve Kerr and make him the head coach immediately on the heels?

So, Hass, you didn't believe. The record states for itself.

I didn't believe in Mark Jackson. I could tell you that much.

You have the next pick and I'm going to guess you're not taking Andre Drummond.

I kind of want to, because pedigree-wise, he's impactful. Like, 2 All-Star appearances, 4 times led the league in rebounding. He has an All-NBA team. I was stunned looking at his resume.

He has 4 rebounding titles? Yeah, he's—

Yeah, 4 rebounding titles. I actually think you could be right. I think, I mean, the problem is I'm immediately conceding I have the worst team in this. And then the reason is because the number 2 spot in this draft format that we have is a dead man's.

Here come the excuses.

You guys are getting 2 guys at a time.

Here they go.

And it makes no sense whatsoever for this team, except for Andre Drummond is a 3-point shooter at this stage of his career.

Pretty—

look at, man, he's standing in the corner knocking down threes. I'm taking, I'm taking Andre Drummond. He went—

I mean, I did his—

yeah, go ahead.

He went 9th in 2012 to Detroit, and he's going to house this team right now. And in my draft diary that I wrote, he was dropping a little bit, and they showed him— it's really funny— they, the camera just stayed on him, and he kind of looked at the camera and had this sad smile, and all of us liked him after. Where he had this smile like, I'm a nice guy, can't somebody draft me? Everybody likes him. Um, and we were all kind of in on him. And then from my draft diary, Billis mentions that Drummond shot 29% on free throws last year. What? Jacoby Yelpes with the mouthful of meatballs? Mouthful of meatballs? I'm out on Drummond. Kyle, 29% in college, it's like he Yikes.

He was on a UConn team that should have been a lot better, that had Jeremy Lamb. Uh, yeah, that, that was, that was not a great sign. But, um, yeah, I was gonna say, do we get that youthful athleticism of, of Andre Drummond with the same wisdom of the corner threes? But then, um, House— I was gonna say it's going to be a crowded elevator, man. It's kind of a crowded phone booth you got going there with Rudy Gobert. And you better hope AD's shooting development comes around under you.

I've got all three levels. 'Cause I, I got AD in the, in the mid-range.

Yeah.

Gobert is there for offensive rebounding and Drummond's my corner 3 guy with Oladipo kick and shoot.

Yeah.

Plus there's a lot of perimeter guys left. House still might be in this. I don't think House is done. I'm taking Kentavious Caldwell-Pope with my pick. He went number 8 in the 2013 draft. 2 rings. 2020 Lakers. 2023 Nuggets, in those, the stats for him in those series, in the playoffs combined, 11 points a game, 38% from 3, and basically played like 32 minutes a game, played real minutes. So we know for a fact this is a guy who can be the 3 and D guy on a championship team 'cause he did it twice. 6-year stretch where he was 11 points a game for 39% and somebody that I thought I thought Clutch and the Ringers, Rich Paul, did a masterful job just continuing to get him money and leveraging the Lakers and other people. Um, but I know I can compete with him. And then I'm just gonna do— can I do this? Hold on, let me— oh yeah, yeah. You know what, I, I need— yeah, I'm gonna take Dennis Schroeder here.

Oh, interesting.

Um, okay, only because I need one more guard for my team and there's a couple swings left, but I have swings. Um, Dennis Schroeder, 17th pick in 2013. He's been on 11 teams. Did any of them ever end up liking the experience after the fact? We're gonna find out on mine. Uh, 2 okay years, 17 points a game for them, and pretty good shooting stats. That was kind of the peak for him. And a really great international guard. Um, somebody that anytime we were playing Germany internationally, he was always just terrifying. I've always kind of liked him. And even in the playoffs, he, he's annoying. Like he's got a lot of confidence and he's gonna fit in perfectly with my team. So Caldwell Pope, Schroeder, two guys who have been in a lot of playoff games.

House, yeah, I, I don't mind Schroeder at all. I thought that he was, um, one of the, the more fearless guys on Cleveland in that playoff run just last year. Like, yeah, those, those, um, Schroeder, Struis minutes were kind of vital for them competitive-wise because those guys were like out there getting after it, uh, And I always hold him in high regard for what he did for Germany. I know it's kind of a silly thing, but he's a dog.

We both like him.

He's a dog for Germany.

We both care about that stuff. Your thoughts, Kyle, man?

I just love Al being happy for Germany. I didn't expect that. No, I mean, Schroeder has like the Rod Strickland, Robert Pack thing going on where the IMDb is just like, like it's a different, it's just like an anthology show where he leaves town at the end of every episode. It's like, that was fun.

And then somebody else talks themselves into him. You're right. It's like, it's like the Ted McGinley thing. Even Sacramento was like, oh, you look good on Detroit, here's a weird contract. And almost immediately they're trying to get out of it. Um, all right, House, you're up again.

I have absolutely no idea what to do here because all that's left, um, in terms of pedigree guys that I like are all big guys, and I, I can't, I can't take it. What do you talk about?

There's some other perimeter guys.

I know, but, but I mean, in terms of who it should be and who I'm stepping over, I don't know. Do I really want to do this?

Do it. Do the dumbest thing possible so you can definitely lose the draft.

I think I know what's going to happen, but yeah.

I mean, it's, it's all big guys.

You're doing another big guy.

No, I'm not. But I think that, that there's 2 or 3 big guys I have ahead of who I'm about to take. I can't do that. There's no way.

I didn't realize House was gonna take so much time trying to figure this out.

This is hard.

And I'm the indecisive one. Yeah. Here we go.

Cause yeah.

Well, I, I, I put myself into a corner with this one because I can't even really make—

you might as well lean into the bit.

You mean the same guy? Like, it's either Robert Covington or Jay Crowder. That's where I'm at. I have to choose between one of those two.

That's not what I thought you were gonna say. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

I guess I'll take Crowder. I guess I'll take Crowder. That's where I'm gonna land.

You need a guy that can hit threes and can guard some wings and there's some unanswered questions. But no, yeah, I like Jay Crowder. I mean, yeah, he's, he's got a crazy playoff. I had it written down here, he's 115 playoff games in 11 seasons and over 3,200 playoff minutes. That's, that's near the highest in the, in these two classes. He was just on competitive teams over and over and over again.

Another giant defensive impact guy too. Like, I, I love the defense on my team so far. It's like I have a great defensive team.

So you took Crowder?

I did. I took Crowder.

I, listen, I had him close. We saw him in 4 seasons be a legitimate 3 and D guy for good teams. 2016, '17 Boston. Boston made the conference finals in '17. He was 14 and 5, 37% 3-pointer. He could guard a bunch of different guys. I liked him when he was on the Celtics. And then he was on teams that lost the finals back-to-back years. Miami 2020, Suns '21, and played big minutes. He played 32 minutes a game for those teams, hit threes.

Yeah.

And you know, it was very similar to Caldwell Pope. I thought him and Caldwell Pope, I had trouble trying to figure out who to take between those guys. All right, Kyle, you have the, the, you'll have a starting five after this pick, so you're up next.

I'm gonna take Steven Adams.

Yeah, see, that's who I wanted to take, but it didn't make any sense for my team.

I almost took him.

You should have, House, you should have just done it because that would have just been hilarious. Your team would have been a rugby team that would have been not fun to play.

Well, it's not too late. They're still dragging into that.

Like, no, I, I think if with the shooters that I have, um, especially with Draymond and, and Steven Adams, it'll be a little interesting. But he's like one of the best offensive rebounders alive. So I, I think, I think he's gonna be a good fit with those, with those guards.

17 through 20 was 13 and 9. Somehow he's still only 33 years old. I don't, when he came into the league when he was like 17. All right, so here are our starting fives now as we head toward the benches. Kyle has the first pick of the next round. I have Giannis, Beal, Middleton, Caldwell Pope, and Schroeder. It's a team that actually makes sense together. House has Gobert, Davis, Oladipo, Drummond, and Crowder. So needs, needs, needs some more perimeter. And Kyle has, uh, Adams and Draymond, CJ and Dame, and Barnes. So that looks like a basketball team. But this is a big pick right here. Who you taking, Kyle?

Uh, I feel like I need a wing, so I am going to take— you took J. Crowder.

Um, I really hope you take somebody that I don't want to take when I'm up. There's a guy I just don't want to end up with.

Uh, I, I think I'm picking between two dudes here. I, based on this guy's peak, how good he was at his best.

Do it.

I think I'm gonna take Robert Covington.

Oh, wasn't expecting that.

I don't feel that bad about it.

Yeah, that's a pretty good pick.

That, uh, he's gonna— I think defensively I'm gonna have a pretty good team too. Um, granted he, he fell off a cliff, but at one point, but Robert Covington somehow undrafted in 2013, even though we had a slew of busts.

So he— I didn't remember this. He was 4th in the Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2016. Somehow didn't make an All-Defense team, but then made 1st All-Defense in 2017. And from '15 to '19 was 13 a game, 36% from 3, and was a legit defensive guy. I remember when the Celtics played the Sixers in '18, that was kind of the unraveling of the— Rocco was a really big guy for like the basketball blog community and the advanced man. And then we just left him open for the entire series in '18 and, and he couldn't make anything. And I thought that was where it was like, eh, we sure this guy's good? He ends up being in the Jimmy Butler trade the next year. Never really got it back. But his peak, his defensively, he was a, he was a little Jaden McDanielsy there for a couple years.

I, I'm having a little remorse as you were saying all that, but I think I, I, I still like him.

There's not a lot left. House, please take the guy I don't want to take.

Do we, do we, we're still going with this thing?

Yeah, we have more picks. We're taking 8 each.

Like there's 24 good players for these 2 drafts because, you know, I'm not, I can't do it. I'm not going to take that guy. It would be super funny though. Anthony Bennett? Definitely not Anthony Bennett.

Just take your guy out of Porter.

I know. I just looked at it. The problem is that Covington presents better than Porter over the body of work. And Porter's best trait is a high 3-point average.

Yeah, 40% for his career. I was shocked by that. He's very good. He's going to stay in the court.

Those are the two I was picking between. Yeah. The leaving open thing made me feel queasy, like I'd made a mistake. But yeah, I like that one.

He stuck around a long time.

What—

I don't have it handy in front of me. Well, how many playoff games did he play in?

It wasn't very many.

Not very many.

Played 527 games total.

Yeah. So that, that's, that's the issue.

Had a really good one season on the Bulls after the Wizards traded him.

Yes.

And then it kind of died after that. Who you taking, House?

Otto Porter.

Oh, that's, is your pick? You seem so begrudging about it. Okay. I think that was a fair pick. God, this sucks. I'm just not happy about this.

Ah, crying on the yacht over here with your Giannis number 1 pick and come on.

No, I just hate this guy. I don't hate him, hate him. My sports hate him. Oh man. Goddamn it.

I don't even know who you're, who, who it is. I don't even have a guess.

I'm gonna take Evan Fournier.

Yeah. Okay. I looked at him for a minute. Just what's there to hate?

He, he played 19 playoff games and won 3 in his entire career. He was 3-16 in the playoffs. Just was a classic from '17 to '21, 17 points a game, 37% from 3. And another guy who, when you watched him internationally, seemed way more dangerous than he did in the NBA.

Who was the Knicks GM that gave him that contract?

The Knicks?

Uh, Who was it?

I can't remember.

It was before Leon and—

and yeah, it was whoever that was.

It was it Walsh?

Scott Perry.

Or Perry.

Yeah, that was bad. Well, anyway, we're only asking him for some 6-man stuff.

I had that written down too. He had a few years in a row there where you look at the numbers and if you didn't know about him, you know, I feel like, you know, years from now we'll have to contextualize that for the younger generation. Like this 48 guy seems pretty good.

And then, uh, there's another guy who should go over this guy, but I'm gonna take only because I need, I need another big guy. I've seen him in big games. He killed Joe House's team once. Kelly Olynyk.

He did do that.

From 2015 to '23, he was a 10-5, 37% from 3, and 22 minutes a game. And he was basically the 7th man on a conference finalist in 2017. So you could win with him. Um, I, my daughter, one of her first favorite players, used to call him Father Kelly, thought he looked like a priest in a, in a, in a kid's show. Um, and then he tried to break Kevin Love's elbow for some reason in 2015, which was pretty weird and probably changed the course of the, uh, finals. But, um, I forgot that he signed with Miami as a free agent too. Heat Culture tried to step in on him. You remember this? Left the 2017 Celtics, he, Kulture, came flying in off top rope for him.

Okay. Oh yeah, yeah. In fact, I had him on House of Carbs.

You did?

When he was playing for, for Miami.

Yeah.

And he was very— oh no, it was just after he left Miami. He really liked playing for Spo. He really liked playing for Spo. He's like, that guy is Smart.

Everyone loves Spoh. All right, House, you're up again. You have Davis, Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Crowder, and Porter.

Well, I have a couple guys that have a tendency to miss some games. I have some— I'm not going to do it.

Nope.

I need, I need some front court fill-in.

Oh.

And I'm looking at my list. The guy that's played the most games of anybody on here remaining is Oh, Jonas Bell. No, he's in this.

He was, he was in the '11 draft.

We don't get him.

Oh, okay.

Damn, I knew, I fucking knew House was gonna cheat in this.

It's like, no, you have him on this, this, uh, this board.

I know, but he took a, he took a year. He was in the '11 draft.

We—

okay, he was drafted in the '11 draft. We did.

Yeah, I wanted that team, but, but yeah, can't do it.

Um, okay, then I'll just take Patrick Beverley. That's fine. I have a certain—

he counts either.

Doesn't count either.

Wait, oh, wait a minute, I need to look at who's in these drafts then. He—

it was his first year. House, just take Tim Hardaway Jr. Okay, he's the best guy on the board.

I'll take him.

Another shooter for you.

Weirdest team.

Tim Hardaway Jr., career 14 points a game, 37% from 3. Your team needed some shooting.

He's there to help Miami now. He's the shooter for Miami.

But how did he get to Miami? I'm just asking. Just asking. How did he get there? On a short deal? That's weird.

I'm excited for the response to this.

Kyle Mann, you're up.

Well, Tim Hardaway's off the board. I'm so crestfallen. I don't know if I can continue.

I have 5 draftable guys left, so this is perfect.

Hmm. There's a sneaky one that we haven't mentioned that is on here. I don't think I'm going to take him. I don't think I should take a big, uh, I should probably just go BPA here. I'll go with, I'm going to go with a microwave guy. You would not have expected me to do this. I don't think I'm going to take Terrence Ross.

Oh, you just stole him from me.

I like that pick.

Damn it.

I thought that I was gonna get away with it.

Terrence Ross, this is one of my awards. Yeah, this is most likely to resurface with a social media clip. Was a problem.

Oh yeah, he's always going back. That's true.

And I'm, I actually, I actually started making the highlight reel, so I'm gonna put that out here soon. He had some, he was just a lather scorer, man. He could get going. I'm not gonna lean on him hard. Come in and score some points. You know, spackle for me. That's all I need.

He played 11 years and averaged 11 a game and was a good 36 points, uh, percentage from 3. But I think his most famously was just thrown into every fake trade rumor for like 4 years when he was in Toronto. And it was always like, and Terrence Ross, and if they, and just always seemed to be floating around. His contract was, he was making $10 million a year for like 5 years, and his contract always fit with other contracts and Um, now this is the right time to take him. Who's your other pick?

Uh, with my other pick, this is gonna be your last pick.

You have Dame, Draymond, CJ Barnes, Adams, Covington, and Terrence Ross. One more.

I wanted to take Seth Curry.

Do you have a Kentucky guy yet?

No, I'm not that biased. If it's the right pick, it's the right pick.

Uh, Nerlandz You're taking Nerlens?

No, no, I'm saying you were talking about the draft footage. It was the Nerlens sad face draft footage was pretty, was pretty brutal during that broadcast.

Um, I was, I gotta say, I was not a fan heading into that draft. I didn't, even though I knew the talent was there, I didn't, I just don't like skinny big guys like that. And it didn't seem like he could shoot at all.

He was a shot blocker, not a rim protector. He just chased everything. Um, it's like, Will Barton, I don't think so. Uh, uh, let's see, it's, it's a shit sandwich here. I'll, I'll take Mason Plumlee as my backup.

Oh man, I want to— thank God, I was gonna take him.

No interest whatsoever.

I was gonna have— because then Kelly Olenek would add somebody to live with. Um, Mason Plumlee, and I think we had both Plumlees were available in the mega draft because they were in the— one was in 2012 and the other was in 2013. He was in 2013, drafted by Brooklyn. First 10 years, 9-7, House. 23 minutes a game. Yeah, he would have fit in on your team.

All right, I agree, House. You—

your last pick is what?

Good. Seth Curry. I like the, um, character. I like his golf game. He's the worst Curry at golf. That makes me feel better. I know that he and I would get along great. His 3-point shooting percentage is effing phenomenal. I mean, this guy had a, you know, a single elite skill. Yeah, it was making mostly open 3-pointers. Yeah, that's a really important role, and he played it for, you know, he turned that into a lengthy career for himself. Seth Curry, I feel good about that as a last pick.

Married to our beloved Callie Curry. Beloved son-in-law of our beloved Doc Rivers. Beloved, um, brother-in-law of Austin Rivers, who we also love. But yeah, that's, it's a great spot for him. And, uh, honestly, I couldn't be happier because I like the team that I have. I was really hoping I could take this guy as the last pick. He's lived on beyond his basketball career in other ways. Um, on the Rewatchables, we have a category named after him. The Dion Waiters for best heat check. He was a beloved Grantland guy and a beloved ringer guy for a couple years too. 13 points a game in 8 years. He only played 419 games and won a ring on the Lakers as a bench guy. Dion Waiters. I thought it would be great if he was the last pick in the draft and somehow this worked out. I wrote in my draft diary. Cleveland took him 4th. I wrote, they just tabbed explosive Syracuse guard DeAn Waiter, setting themselves up for an easy anytime you could take the Big East 6th Man of the Year with the 4th pick in an NBA draft, you have to do it joke.

That was kind of it. He was always destined to be a 6th man. And, um, I still like his game. I, I actually think his career should have been better, Kyle. I like physical scoring guard. I remember when, when I was doing all the pods with KD, we, we talked about him for like 5 minutes on one of the pods where I was like, 'cause he played with him in OKC. I was like, why isn't Dion Waiters like, why aren't we talking about him as like an all-star? And I think he was one of those guys all the other players really respected but could just never put it together.

There's like that Chucky Adkins award where you talk to other players and yeah, I'm dropping some random '90s names on this show, but like you would, you listen to other players talk and they'd be like, yeah, Chuck could play. And then you'll hear NBA players be like, Cam Reddish is another dude like that, and then they just don't stick for whatever reason. I feel like the ultimate culmination of all of this for The Ringer is if we could get some film director out there that, that listens to this show to put Dion Waiters in a movie in one scene to be the Dion Waiters where he really goes for it. Yeah, I think it might tear a hole in the space-time continuum, but this is like, uh, it seems like a good idea to me.

Honestly, that's a great idea. So the two guys that didn't get drafted that, um, I thought might were Jeremy Lamb and, and, uh, Will Barton. And Will Barton probably should have been drafted, but it was more fun to take Seth Curry.

Aaron Baines, role player.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, he—

if we'd gone 10-man rosters. All right, here are the final rosters. Kyle Mann, Dame, Draymond, McCollum, Barnes, Adams, Covington, Terrence Ross, Mason Plumlee. So you have, you have size, you have shooting. I guess you're turning the team around. The two, the two Portland guards, Covington as a shutdown guy. I kind of like that team. House has Anthony Davis and Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Jake Crowder, Otto Porter, Hardaway Jr., and Seth Curry. I think he's tanking for the 2014 draft. I play, I want to be in the relegation zone.

Like, like Brooklyn. Oh wait, they can't, they can't get the pick. All right, go ahead.

I have, I have, go ahead, Bill. Giannis. My team is Giannis, Beal, Middleton, KCP, Schroeder, Fournier, Olynyk, and then Dion Waiters as my 8th man. So we're gonna have to, we'll do a social media graphic. We're gonna open up to the people and we'll have votes.

I think my team could beat your team.

I agree. I like J. Kyle Mann's team is the best team.

It's a pretty good team.

And my team is definitely the worst.

We'll see if people agree. I, I think we can get you guys.

You're good.

You're good.

I have a very good defensive team.

This is fun. I mean, how sad is it that we had two drafts together and by the end of it, the last round was Plumlee, Seth Curry, and Dion Waiters. Like we couldn't even get to 25 guys. Then Jeremy Lamb, we forgot to mention, was the linchpin of the James Harden trade. It was Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin, and the 12th pick, which turned out to be, uh, which turned out to be— did I screw that up before? Yeah, Harden was gone already. I screwed that up when we were talking, Kyle, about the 2012 Thunder.

Um, yeah, no, he was on the '12 team. He was traded in '13, right? Adams was in the '12 draft.

I didn't screw that up then. No, Adams, I did screw that up. Adams was in the 2013.

Yeah.

So they had already, they already made that trade because they made that trade in the 2000, after the 2012 finals.

Oh, it was going into the 2012-13 season.

Yeah. That 12th pick was one of the things they got in the Houston trade. So I'll clarify that. All right. Any last thoughts, House?

No, I'm glad to be done with this.

That's it. You didn't have a good time? Jesus Christ.

Huh?

You didn't have fun?

What do you mean? No, I had a great time. I'm just saying we got to a point in this draft, you just read the names off. Like, what are we—

I'm—

we— so is it Cody Zeller time?

Hey, honestly, it could have been.

We're just guys naming dudes.

There was—

it's right, guys.

Can't believe you didn't get taken.

I can, I can believe it.

Michael Carter-Williams won the Rookie of the Year, didn't get taken in a 24-pick draft.

Incredible.

I'd rather have Mo Harkless.

Anthony— Mo Harkless didn't get taken. Anthony Roberson didn't get taken. Austin Rivers didn't get taken. John Henson.

Mike Muscala.

Yeah.

Tomas Santoransky.

Yeah.

Kid Gilchrist. Had a whole bunch of people. All right.

At a minute.

Guys, a true pleasure. Thank you as always for being on the Mega Draft. We're gonna take a break, come back with, uh, Justin Barrier right after this. This mailbag is brought to you by ChatGPT, the Bill Simmons Podcast AI sponsor. Yeah, you heard me. ChatGPT helped me very recently sift through this Portland Trail Blazers situation that we're about to talk about with, um, Justin Barrier. And I was gonna do a mailbag segment just all the way through for this, but I'm gonna read one Portland email and then, uh, and then we'll talk to Varier. Um, this is from Fred. Huge kudos for continuing to call attention to Tom Dundon's extremely transparent plans to cheap out on the Blazers, piss off the good people of Portland, and eventually move them somewhere else. But there's a lingering big question for you. What happened to your regular use of El Cheapo when referring to Dundon? This is one of the most elite nicknames we've ever had for a sports team owner, and every time you used it, you made it laugh. Why did you retire it? Did Dundon send you a cease and desist? Only it was a low-budget lawyer mail cease and desist printed on a square, uh, of single-plaid Charmin.

Uh, just keeps going and going. Uh, I did not retire El Cheapo. I actually forgot to keep calling him El Cheapo. So we're gonna bring Varier in. And I'm going to, um, to make a bunch of El Cheapo comments. But, um, so this was, this is a one-question mailbag 'cause we're covering, uh, the Blazers and El Cheapo.

All right.

Justin Varier is here. You can hear him on the Ringer NBA show. He pops on the Ringer website from time to time. We've been working together for a long time and a couple years ago, Varier moved to Portland, Oregon. And I talked about on a mailbag recently, um, I'm really horrified by this Trail Blazers situation. I'm not against relocation if basketball just doesn't and hasn't worked in an NBA city, and if the history is messed up, or there's real reasons to do it. Portland, I used to call them the soccer moms. It was the only team in town. They genuinely loved them. They won the 1977 title, which I think once you win a title, you You should never have to leave. And they get this new owner, Tom Dundon, AKA El Cheapo, buys the team. Just had a lot of success with the Carolina Hurricanes, wins the Stanley Cup. At the same time, he is seemingly torpedoing his relationship with the city of Portland and trying to get out of a lease that ends basically right before the season would start in 2030. And we could talk about some of the ramifications. Before we get into anything, just give me the mood in Portland right now, because I'm— I know this is a big topic.

Yeah, I mean, the Blazers are obviously a huge deal here, and I think there would be more excitement about the upcoming season if Dundon started to serve dead cat in the concessions, and that was the only option, because he has just taken what was a pretty good momentum going in off of last postseason going into this season where the team is really competitive. We'll see about long-term ceiling, but there is like clearly something brewing after a couple years of just going through the tanking process. And all of that is gone to the point where like on a daily basis at this point, everyone is fearful that not only is this guy trying to screw them over, but also trying to do anything that he can get a good deal. And if he doesn't get it, he's gonna go wherever he can get it.

And he's done all kinds of money-cutting stuff. Which if we did case by case, some of it, it's like, all right, I, yeah, maybe coaches shouldn't make $30 million for 5 years and you fire them after 1. But he zagged the other way and it's like, I'm gonna pay my coach for 1 year. We're not gonna have a lot of assistants. I'm gonna, I don't really wanna pay a lot for my broadcasters. Why do we have this many salespeople? And just goes through and just chops it, which is what he did in Carolina. The difference here is the arena and the language that he's been using. And the, the phrase first-class experience is the phrase we're using where it seems like they're latching onto that as a way to get out of this. And there's a backstory with it where the Allen family that owned it, um, they gave the arena to the city of Portland. They sold it to them for $1. So Portland owns the arena. It's allegedly not a state-of-the-art arena anymore. It's, you've been there a bunch of times. I haven't been there since 2010. You can see, if you see the arena itself, the suites are pretty high.

I don't know. Do they need, do they that badly need a new arena? What's your take on that?

I think it depends on who you talk to. If you're talking to NBA players and people throughout the league who are used to a certain metropolitan lifestyle and like just a sort of class of like new stuff going on. I do think it probably pales in comparison to that. I'm on the same mindset as you probably. I actually think the zag in modern sports is actually to go something with a little bit more history and just like you could feel the weight of previous teams that have gone by because they put new big screens in there last year. Yeah. And certainly that, that adds a little bit of luster to it, but like it's fine. As an arena. I, I just don't know what people expect from an arena experience. You're going there to see the game, not to see all these flashing lights and these big screens there. But if you were to talk to people who are used to going to other arenas, they would say like, all right, it hasn't, hasn't been renovated since I think it was built originally, and it probably is behind sort of where things have been moving.

Right. Mid-'90s. There's a whole new wave of arenas that are better and, and more sweet friendly. I remember, am I rem— I think I remember this correctly. They built it so the seats are closer to the court because they don't have hockey, so it's, it's tight. And I like that there weren't— I just thought like you're surrounded by fans and because the suites are higher, I thought the experience itself of going there was great. But obviously he's not going to care about that. There's, there's been a lot of good stuff written about this, and I've tried to read as much of it as possible. Um, basically Can they relocate and what are the rules to that? And would they, could he just do it and basically be like, come sue me, like Al Davis basically and the Raiders. The biggest thing that seems to be working against him is that that lease expires literally right before the 2030 season starts, 2030, '31. The lease expires on like October 11th, but you have to file for a relocation before that if you're gonna switch teams. And there's all this stuff in the lease that's like, if you file for relocation, huge penalties, we can sue you, all this stuff.

So he'd almost have to figure it out. And I remember Seattle and Oklahoma City were in a little bit of a situation somewhere where you had the limbo year in the arena, but everybody knows you're leaving. And if he's gonna leave, I think that would be one outcome. The other one is he could just be like, make up shit and just be like, we're moving, and then test the NBA. Which nobody has done for a long time. Nobody's just been like, we're moving. This is my franchise. It's a free country. I'll do what I want. We haven't seen that in forever.

Yeah, that's where I wonder where the NBA's position in all of this is. I don't think that they can come out publicly because Adam Silver basically answers to the owners. They are basically his boss and come out and basically undercut Dundon's leverage in the negotiations and basically put out there that he's not going to let them go to Seattle or Vegas. I think the assumption is that those are off the market. Yeah. But, and then the other options just don't seem all that attractive. But I don't think Silver can come out and say that. I'm curious how much soft power he's wielding behind the scenes, how much other owners are saying things to perhaps chill the situation. But in a weird way, I think the, the most optimism I feel is that Dundon has proven to be such a transparent, cutthroat maniac. Because ultimately he's looking for the best deal. Yeah. And I think that Portland isn't in a position— they really don't have any leverage to not give him that. And so there's been a lot of bluster suggesting that they're going to try to push back on certain things. You've seen in recent days this first-class contingency that, like, that became a big sticking point.

It was in the previous agreement, so it really doesn't hold much bearing on things going forward. As you mentioned, it's, it's part of the bridge agreement that they signed in 2024 under the Allen, uh, ownership trust. In order to just get them to the next deal. But if anything, it seems like Dundon is just causing a stir over anything because he just wants them to like be, uh, commit to the deal that he thought that they had a handshake agreement with to begin with. And so it's tough to, to really reconcile because on the one hand, your logic brain's like, well, Portland's going to concede and give him $573 million to renovate an arena that, by the way, he said wasn't first class, which is why he needed the renovations to begin with. But on the other hand, he keeps bringing up these nutso things just to throw them off, like, kilter and to just sort of make things messy and chaotic in order to get his way. And maybe his way is just to go out of town. So it's hard to really reconcile the logic of it and just his general approach to things.

It's tough because ultimately he has the nuclear bomb card.

Yeah.

If I leave, go look at Seattle. Seattle hasn't had a team since 2008. What is Portland if we don't have the Blazers, right? This happened to the Whalers in, in the NHL where the Whalers left Hartford. They moved to Carolina, ironically. And then Hartford, it's like, well, now you have AAA baseball and you're kind of near ESPN. And that's, that's what Hartford is like. Like you need these teams, like they give you this credit. Look at what happened on the OKC just getting the Thunder, like it completely transformed that city. So Portland has that piece. They also have a ton of history. They've had the team since 1970. The greatest sports book of all time was written about the Trail Blazers. They've always had moments of relevancy. They made the finals in '90 and '92. They had some, some fun stuff that happened like during the Dame era. They had Brandon Roy, cup of coffee, maybe something happened. And pretty famously, a lot of bad luck with, you know, Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, Greg Oden. Like they've been in, they've just been in the mix in all these ways. If I was a Blazer fan, I'd be really nervous because there's two things that Conspiracy Bill has noted.

One is that you said the word chaotic, which I think is a good way to frame it. He also hasn't said anything or done anything, like, literally not one thing that would endear himself to anybody in this city, right? It almost seems like he's— it's like watching, like, Marriage Story with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, where they just— both of them want to break up and are just being as mean as possible to each other. Except in this case, it's only him. He doesn't seem to care about perception repercussions. Of anything. And then I think you said the NBA had to stay quiet. I don't know if I agree. Like, I, I, I like, where's Adam Silver being like, look, we don't want the team to move outta Portland. We've had that a team there since 1970 and they have awesome fans. Like, that is not gonna be an acceptable solution for me. He just hasn't said anything. And it's very similar to the Stern thing. Stern, you could see where he was thinking in the mid-2000s and I was talking about it in the moment and writing about it. Where it felt like he almost wanted to make Seattle an example.

Like, if you don't invest in, in your arena and your team, they might leave. That might be how this goes. Like, they kind of did that in Sacramento too. They brought this— Vivek came in and committed to building a new arena or else they would've left. And it just feels to me like a little bit of a hostage situation. How badly do you love your kid? Here's, here's what it will cost, or you might never see your kid again. Right? Like that, this is like really brutal stuff, I think.

Yeah. One of my favorite things about sports is just kind of the, uh, the relationship between the community and the sports team itself.

Yeah.

Like it's one thing if the Grizzlies are successful, it's another team when that team like embodies the spirit of the city and the grit and grind thing. And they're basically have this almost symbiotic nature where like they're playing off of each other. Like, that's a special thing. And especially in modern times where, like, community is pretty fragmented at this point. There really only is internet sort of community and culture and, like, some of the particular quirks of, of food and just the way dialect and everything else have almost been sanded down to, like, you don't really have anything. Like, I honestly believe, and this might sound Pollyannaish, like, sports are really the only thing that we have left. And that matters everywhere. It matters particularly in Portland where the Blazers is really the only game in town. No offense to, like, the Timbers or the Thorns or the Fire who just started playing this year. It's like this is a Blazers town and it courses through the vein of this city, especially when they're good. Like Dame has a relationship with Portland and like I've never seen it before. It's more small market Kobe than it is a typical superstar with your team.

And Dundon has proven that he does not give a shit about any of this stuff. All the things that we all care about as sports fans and his now customer base and his consumer base that he's going to have to If he does decide to stay, try to get them to buy back into the team when he's proven that he doesn't want anything to do with it. He's just pissed off everyone and pissed over all of the history and everything that anybody cares about. And you brought up the Whalers before. The first day after they ratified his agreement, he has the team in his possession. He goes down to LA to watch them play against the Clippers. His first game as the go-to owner. He's wearing a Whalers hat. Which is just like a, such a fuck you symbol to everybody. He wasn't the one to move the Whalers, but anybody who knows, as you just laid out, that was such like a craven pull of, of a team from a city in that got left in the dust and hasn't been able to recover ever since.

I was asking around trying to figure out why would he even buy this team?

Like, that's a good question.

Like, he's rich, right? He has a bunch of money, obviously is a competitive guy, and he's done It seems like a good job with the Hurricanes, which is a completely different league. All these leagues are different, right? The W— the challenges of owning a WNBA team versus an NBA team versus an NHL team. You're just dealing with completely different things. I don't understand why you would buy this team if you weren't buying into the community around the team in this city. It's basically like, it's like somebody buying a house on a street because he likes the street and not the house. He's like, ah, right, as soon as I move in, I'm knocking that thing down. But as you're buying, you're like, no, no, I love it. I love the, I love the upstairs. The backyard's great. But in the back of your mind, you're like, I'm gonna fucking take this thing down. And my fear for people in Portland is that he looked at what the expansion numbers would be, which everybody's saying between 7 and 8, and he's like, ah, I could just steal Portland for 4.25, whatever it ended up being, and then I'll just move them somewhere else.

And yeah, I think Kansas City is— I mentioned them a couple weeks ago, and I think I was the first one to mention it. Um, first of all, Kansas City could make an argument they, they maybe should have a team. Like, they're— they've really grown. They have a state-of-the-art arena. Um, they've hosted big events. I think the city's grown. They're in a part of the country that they don't really have. Like, you know, I think they would help. They'd help with conference alignment, but I wouldn't— wouldn't be Portland. And what's dangerous about Kansas City is they'll take any team, right? Seattle— Portland's not moving to Seattle. Seattle doesn't want the Trail Blazers. They have a long rivalry and a history, and they know what it's like when you lose a team. I don't think they're going to want that. They didn't really want Sacramento either. They want like an expansion team. Um, but I think Kansas City would be the one I'd be worried about, especially one of the minority owners is a St. Louis guy. Um, Dundon's from Dallas. That's another thing that doesn't add up. You're from Dallas, you own Carolina, why are you buying the Trail Blazers?

Right? So the conspiracy bill, there's just a lot to work with with this, and none of it is really that good for the city.

Yeah, it would almost be like if there were only 30 houses in existence And you just wanted one of those houses no matter where it was.

Right.

And he's just decided that, like, I just want one of these and I will take it wherever it best suits my preferences.

That was the KC. That's what they did with the Sonics. They were like, we're able to get in and we'll move them back to this is our master plan all along.

Yeah. And it just like really brings up a really chilling proposition for the NBA where everything has gotten, the money has become so big now where everything is bigger business than it even was when I first started covering the league almost 20 years ago. Yeah. It just, it just feels like we're getting with, especially with all this VC money coming in, all the Saudi money slowly trickling into the league and some of this other stuff happening where it's just becoming more for profit nakedly in a way that I wasn't really ever familiar with in sports. And it's almost like, what do you want from a franchise? Maybe Kansas City deserves a team. Maybe Austin deserves a team. I know that they've been mentioned. I don't see how that would work with San Antonio being right there.

Austin's not getting a team. That I think the Spurs are more likely they expand in Austin and play games there. They're not putting a team 75 miles from the Spurs.

It makes no sense. And, and so like, I, I get that there might be slightly more attractive markets, but what does the NBA ultimately want? Portland has driven revenue when the team is good. These are like diehard fans that support the team. This isn't somewhere like New Orleans where I was for 2 years covering that team where they had to try so hard just to drive interest, to get people out there. When the team is good in Portland, people show up, right? It matters here. And so like, maybe if Seattle is coming, they're just like, oh, we don't need two Pacific Northwest teams. That's the really only case I could make for it. Otherwise, this is a shining example of a small market franchise. And as we've seen with this new CBA coming in, Adam's whole position is like, I want to make it so everybody could win. How can you strip out a small market team and go to your other small market owners and say like, Hey, this is for everybody. It's not for everybody. It's actually then just becomes about the biggest market and the biggest profit.

Yeah, I've had people ask me over the last couple of weeks because they could tell I was kind of mad about this Portland thing, like, well, why don't you stick up for New Orleans the same way? And I think the difference is we still don't have evidence that the NBA works in New Orleans. And you could blame the owners, you could blame the city. It's not a big enough market, whatever you want to say, but it's just never worked. And despite the fact that they have, you know, a good handful, I don't know how many thousand fans, I don't think this franchise has ever been successful there. And we're going back to the '70s. They moved there already. You covered the team, and we've talked about this on pods before together. There's no nothing you can point to and be like, see, no, no, for those 3 years. That's when it was kicking ass. It's just never worked. And I'm not sure they should have an NBA team. I feel way differently about Portland. Even Memphis, you mentioned earlier, like Memphis, if you're doing this over again, Memphis isn't gonna get a team. That team's in Nashville.

That's just the way it's gonna go. But Memphis has proven that they can be a really awesome small market franchise, and that team is ingrained with that city in a really unique way. And I, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't, wouldn't say they should move either. New Orleans would be the one I, I think you have to look at, unfortunately.

Yeah. New Orleans has the pride, but it never really had the bones in basketball or any of the, the success needed to drive any sort of energy in that city. There have been like flirtations with being a good team, but the best they've done is that team with Brandon Ingram where they, they like, they challenged the Suns in the first round and they were fun and scrappy and young. Yeah. But then that quickly petered out. And so they've really never hit the ceiling. The, the stretch of success that they would need in order to get people engaged regularly. And so there have just been a lot of teases that haven't amounted to anything.

It's a football, it's pro and college football is what they care about in New Orleans, which is fine.

Yeah. But when I was there, like LSU gymnastics sometimes would rate better than the Pelicans, right?

It was brutal, right? Portland, but that one thing I did hear was that, um, because I, one of the things I was fascinated by is like Why did they let this guy buy the team? Why, why let El Cheapo get in there? And apparently they only had 2 offers because, because the price of these teams in general have gone up. And then the arena deal was dicey and it's a smaller, smaller market. And then the city's definitely, you know, it's been a little topsy-turvy there for the last 10 years. And I just don't think they had a lot of people that wanted to buy in.

Yeah.

And that gets into the whole conspiracy theory about how much the real villain in the situation is really Jody Allen, who took over for Paul Allen after he died. Yeah. Because she was kind of the steward of the trust here. And there was an offer years ago from Phil Knight, obviously a local guy who wanted to invest in the area and is getting up in age. And as you've seen with Oregon, really wants to inject money into the area, into the sports team. He care— It's really all he cares about, seemingly. And it petered out quickly because the Trust viewed it as a lowball, and it was also leaked to media, and they didn't like the approach that he took. And that was kind of the end of the story. Otherwise, it was just this most recent patch here where it was the Dundon Group and Raj Sports, which also owns, I believe, the Thunder— excuse me, the Thorns and the Fire. And I think they're minority owners for the Kings as well. And they went with with Dundon, and you have to wonder if the bridge agreement lease, which didn't have any protections in it to keep the team in Portland, to make sure the next owners would still be in Portland, was set up so that someone could do exactly what Dundon is doing.

And you have to start to wonder what was really in it for Jody or the trust, because all that money is just going to go to charity. And so why did she set this up so that the team wouldn't just be here in Portland?

Well, they obviously got— they got snookered a little bit, but this is— so similar to me to Howard Schultz in Seattle in the mid-2000s when he just decided he had to sell the team and he was frustrated with the city and he sold it to this group that clearly was a dangerous threat to move it to Oklahoma City. And he said, fuck it, I'll do it anyway. I just want to get out of this. And he, when we did the Sonic Boom podcast, he was the secret villain of the Sonics leaving because he kind of knew what he was doing. It's like if you're selling selling your house or your condo to somebody who's clearly going to knock down the house, you're going to have a moment where you're like, do it. How much do I love my house? Like, like this guy's going to come in and knock it down. I— Conspiracy Bill also enjoys the Dallas piece of this with Dundon and is wondering if there's any possibility at all of a franchise swap, which we have not had for a long time. Dallas and that whole situation, which has been terrible. Maybe it's a, maybe he switches, somebody buys Portland and the Adelson family ends up getting the Vegas expansion team.

But I just, I just wonder if he bought this team partly as like a chess piece for some bigger move, whether it's moving it to Kansas City or St. Louis. I don't see NBA in St. Louis makes zero sense to me. Um, apologies to people in St. Louis. Sorry, but I don't see it. But Dallas is, that's, that's the one that I'm like, huh, this guy's from Dallas. This is Dallas's. Also, why didn't he just buy Dallas?

Well, does that mean that we in Portland get Cooper flagged? Because I can tell you the one thing.

Swap franchises?

Yeah, because one thing that would energize the local economy would be the Great White Hope coming to Portland.

Like Bill Walton 50 years later?

Yeah. Could see it.

That's right.

Happening.

Yeah.

So only 2 people wanted the team apparently. And, and the arena thing is the biggest obstacle. You mentioned something earlier though about the new types of owners that are coming into the league. And this is, this happened in soccer. Football's a little different because it's almost like, it seems like these super rich families are moving in because it's, um, but in basketball, you, if you have the most money, you can basically make this part of your arsenal. This is something the Fenway Sports Group did where they bought the Penguins. They had the Red Sox, they bought the Penguins, they bought Liverpool, and they're just kind of these rich stewards of the team. You saw the Premier League almost get upended by all the money came in of people who weren't like traditional owners. And what you said earlier, like, I do wonder, is that where we're heading in the NBA? People who, they want to sit courtside and seem like a big shot, and they just had a shitload of money to spend, and they know the one thing that always goes up is a sports franchise. And is this just who we're looking at next 20 years?

People that don't care about a connection to a city.

It's also in direct contrast with what Silver is proclaiming he wants the league to be about, which is these small markets. We're putting in the second apron so that you don't have to spend over a certain limit. And that's the thing I don't really understand about this whole Dundon scenario, because they keep proclaiming like that they can't make money here. The, the area is dealing with economic struggles, which is very true and like not something that I think anyone here would dispute. But one, the team has always done reasonably well considering its market size and the passion of its fans. And two, they're not spending money on the team like they brought in Ja Morant in a cash-neutral deal. They didn't spend their mid-level exception. He's not going above and beyond. They're not even at the tax. Tax. It's not like it's not the first apron, the second apron. He's not even at the luxury tax at this point. Wow. And so, and so it's just like his whole thing was coming into subprime money and like, that's his business. He's operating it more like someone that needs to really wring everything out of assets, which is why they went and swung the Ja Morant trade.

They saw someone they can get for cheap, hopefully that he could turn into something down the road. This isn't like big money coming in and we're just going to muscle everybody around. If anything, there were real concerns and rumors about whether or not this guy actually had money to buy into the first place because I believe he had to sell a piece of his NHL franchise in order to do it. And so it's just, it's just really all over the place. And I just don't know who this serves other than Dundon. All of this goes back to him getting what he wants and getting the best deal for himself. I don't see how anybody else, the NBA, Portland fans, Adam Silver, actually benefits from him being in this position.

Hey, it's, it's, it's one of the most perplexing things about professional sports is when people buy a team and either don't take care of it, don't have the proper TLC, or don't seem like they seem like they care how they're perceived by the fan base. And the answer is what we said before, like he probably thought this was a good asset, probably leveraged himself to buy it, and now is trying to wring out all the, all the fat costs so that he can try to make it more profitable. But this is something somebody said to me when the media deal happened that knows shit about like this, these rich guy circles is like, these teams are becoming so prohibitively expensive to purchase. And this person was telling me, I think we're gonna see stuff we haven't seen in the league in a long time. Like the almost like back to the '70s and '80s with some of the cost cutting and weird trades. And by the way, we've been seeing it, and I, I don't— I honestly don't think that's why the Celtics traded Jaylen, because if you look at the money standpoint, it didn't save them money for 2 of the 3 years, right?

It's just they get out of that money in year 3. But it was weird, you know? And, and the stuff with, with the Lakers, even what they just did and the stuff they put together, then the Wall Street Journal reports that Mark Walter definitely seemed like he had a stroke, or who knows how serious it was, 2 years ago. And people are wondering, and that's like a heavily leveraged team. I just, I don't know who's coming into the league. It's the weirdest time for owners since like the '70s, when basically you and I could have bought a team in the '70s. We'd be like, I met this guy at Dantanus, he has money, I think we could buy, I think we could buy the Clippers. Um, but now it's, I don't know, I don't know who these owners are going to be. And then Those are the guys who are on the committees. They're on the relocation committee, they're on the media committee, they're on the expansion committee, they're on the rules committee. And in the old days, they were people that really cared about the league and the sport. And I don't— are we still gonna have that next generation of owners?

I don't know.

Yeah, it was like, it was stark when Para bought the Grizzlies originally because that was like one of the first instances of tech money really filtering in beyond the big markets. And I think people took note of that, like, oh, things are changing here. This isn't a mom-and-pop shop. But I think the Walter deal with the Lakers was like the clearest indication of a family-run business, one of the last few we have in this league, feeding it to a, a guy who is just ungodly wealthy and also backed by other money where we have to really start to question the source of it. And that's the whole thing. Things have been nipping at the fringes of this for a very long time, just kind of under the shroud of darkness. And like, the league has, like, restrictions in place. And so that VC money can't be a certain percentage of this and all this other stuff. But it's clearly eating away at things. And I do have to wonder if we're reaching a tipping point where we have an owner coming in without the money in order to really perhaps do this and then just completely strip mining it in order to run it as if it is a bare minimum proposition.

And then complaining about not getting enough money to renovate an arena, or else he'll just go wherever he wants. Like, this is a pretty bad black eye for the NBA. And honestly, this has been a pretty troubling stretch for the NBA pretty much this entire year with the tanking and everything like that. Honestly, Adam Silver has been at a crossroads for a while. I think this is really the moment where we really figure out if he's long for this position and like really what the rest of his legacy is going to be like. Because he came into this with a lot of fanfare by kicking out Donald, uh, kicking out Sterling and doing a couple things that I think a lot of people celebrated, which were, in retrospect, pretty easy wins. Yeah. He's had a lot of big problems, and frankly, I've disagreed with practically all of them, and this one more than any of them. Yeah.

And it's, as a commissioner, the bigger legacy here is what do you stand for and who do you want to be? Mm-hmm. Right. Goodell and the NFL, It was pretty clear from day one, he's like, we are, you know, the most unstoppable business in America and everything is gonna be about profits. And if we have to add games and, you know, jeopardize our players, we're, we're doing it. If it's 17 games, 18 games, we're going. And that's worked for him. And that's why at least we know who he is and what he cares about. Silver, the first 5 years, I, I really thought was more in the, I'm not Stern. I'm not like David Stern. I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be more of a connector to the players and the owners. And, um, here's my phone number. Ben Simmons.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do, I did the phone conference thing with him in 2018. He was talking about, you know, really being concerned about the players' mental health. And, um, and lately the last couple years, it just seems like finance, revenue, money, finance driven. Is the job. And I don't know if that's the job. I think the job's a whole bunch of things. In this case, you should care about Portland, a team that's about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the title. And, um, and a city honestly that kind of needs the team. You mentioned some of the stuff that's happened the last 10, 12 years. Like, uh, I don't know, this would, this would be a really bad one. And I, I don't have a good feeling about it. I don't have like an incredible amount of inside info, but I don't, I, everything that's happened, this doesn't feel like posturing to me. This feels like somebody who's already decided I either want to get the team outta here or, or bend them over a barrel and get them to pay all this stuff to basically make me want to stay. And those are the two, those are his two moves and neither move is good for Portland.

Yeah. I think the, the only case for optimism is that he's just like sort of a craven carpetbagger who only wants a good deal. Right. That you, I, I do think that the, that Portland will ultimately concede because I just don't see where they have any points of leverage. 'Cause as you mentioned, like, what is Portland without the Blazers at this point?

Yeah, they are.

There's, there are, uh, companies just leaving left and right. Things just haven't been great. Downtown's kind of a ghost town. I still love Portland. It's why I moved here to begin with, but it just seems like that is going to be the inevitable case. And so if they do end up signing the 20-year lease, that will be something. I wonder like what the relationship with the city and the team will be from that point forward. And I also think the I'm most concerned about what pounds of flesh he picks up around along the way, because it's one thing if in 5 years they can be sued for going out. But if he managed to wrangle provisions in this next deal, let's say that they sign a 20-year lease, but there are outs and there's no longer a threat of litigation, and he can leave in 15 years or 10 years, and it's just easier for him. I am starting to worry that that is ultimately his long-term goal. Because ultimately he just wants the best financial product. And if he just doesn't think that's going to happen in Portland, then I think he's going to find his way in order to get that.

Now, I hate to say it, but just fundamentally for your life, it doesn't make sense to own teams in Carolina and Portland and be based in Dallas.

That's right.

Whereas like if you move the Blazers to a place like Kansas City, everything's a little closer to the stuff I care about. So I don't know, just, it feels like he bought the team 'cause the price was, you're buying in $4 billion around a good price for just buying into the league with the media deal, with the expansion fees coming. You're buying up in a league that the arrow still seems to be pointing up and he just, he got in and probably fooled some people. We'll see how it goes. We're staying on this one because, and if you, if you go and you Google the stories about it, there's like new stories basically every 2 or 3 days of like some new revelation or something. We'll see how it goes. All right. What was your favorite move of the NBA move of the summer?

Oof.

I mean, LeBron for the minimum, probably not counting LeBron, not counting LeBron for $4 million. Everything that's happened, I haven't been like, whoa. It's more minor stuff, like the Clippers just getting Rui Hachimura for a 2-for-14. I was like, ah, solid deal. I like that one. But nothing like life-altering.

I mean, am I allowed to mention Jalen Brown going to the Sixers?

Yeah.

That was also, it's a good trade. I would say that's, I would say that what the Sixers did is pretty unimpeachable considering they paid virtually nothing.

And I agree.

From last year where we were wondering whether or not Vijay and Maxi would just be cool together, like that would be a fun product to watch as we waited for Embiid to come back onto the court.

Yeah.

To what could possibly be the best team in the Eastern Conference. So it probably checks that box.

Yeah, there's, there's been, it's really been more of like, I don't understand why that team is playing it this way. I don't understand what that team just did. Like, there's been way more of those than, whoa, I see the vision. I liked what Atlanta did. I thought just kind of building around the fringes and bringing everybody back, but grabbing people from OKC. And now we're in the stage now as we head into, uh, into the, uh, ides of August. What's the, what's the dog days of August? What do we say for August?

Yeah.

Dog days of August. Ides of March. Ides of March. Yeah. Um, we're now in Benetton, Matherin, Benedict Matherin, Peyton Watson territory. Update, Matherin's met with blah, blah, blah. So yeah, it's, it's time for the NBA to go away for a little bit. Um, all right.

Kaminga zone.

Yeah. Kaminga. Can we get Kaminga on the minimum? Um, we'll see how it goes. All right, Barrier, we can listen to you on the Ringer NBA Show with the crew. How did, uh, how'd the first year with Kyle Mango, new guy?

It's pretty good.

Yeah.

I, I thought everything worked out really well. Uh, learned a lot about synergy stats that I never would've been able to uncover.

What is synergy stats?

Kyle's right on it.

Yeah. All right. Sad everybody in Portland for us. Thanks for, thanks for coming on, Barrier.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Today's mailbag, which we will have another good one next week, was brought to you by ChatGPT Work. ChatGPT Work helps you work even harder while ChatGPT works on your projects. You still call the plays, so you're always in control. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Try ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT today. Available in Plus and Pro plans. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and Kyle and Barrier and Eduardo and Gajau. Um, don't forget, new rewatchables coming on Monday. Karate Kid 2, uh, 40th anniversary, by the way. I forgot to mention that part as well. How has it been 40 years since we wondered what the hell was going on with Miyagi and Daniel-san? For real, for the first time. Um, that's it for the pod. I'm definitely gonna have one midweek, so stay tuned for that. And, uh, and we'll slowly ease back into— we'll just start doing some NFL. My prep's feeling really good. If you missed me on Mina Kimes's podcast, that was fun. And I'll be back midweek with one more. See you then. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino.

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