Beasts of the East | Ringer NBA Show

it's a special edition of the ringer nba show we are checking in reporting to you live from our respective locations both east coast that's nice whenever i don't have to deal with these west coast wussies it's me and michael pina we both it's got on the zoom call today and saw that we're wearing the same detroit hat um michael tried to change like a coward i said dig in be a man step up we gotta we gotta i thought it was better that we both did it i have no relation to the to the tigers it's a little surprising though that you decided because you actually have a rooting baseball but you still float between teams that's like i don't have a pro team so i can kind of mingle and go wherever i want but you're i mean do you get comments i guess living in new york it's a hodgepodge so probably not really if you were in boston i don't think that would fly comment yeah yeah i you know i i i'm struck by the versatility of this hat and the uh preponderance of outfits i can wear it with which is why i'm a big fan um and also my wife is from michigan so i'm you got a lot of up there yeah you got a lot of outs you got a lot of outs yeah tyler parker and i were talking about the other day the pistons hat i think it's just the the calligraphy kind of thing i don't know what style you would call that but you know i'm a i'm a dilla fan so there's also that going on you know there you go beautiful dilla's the great guy that's that's probably at the heart of why i wear it anyway guys it's a slow time of the year um we were talking about what's going on news wise you know jaylen brown has a presser today and i was like is it because he's he's announced that he's open to love that was the biggest story just to speak to how slow it is we got some outstanding signings that haven't happened but he finally goes on record and outs himself as a sixer now that the dust has settled but other than that it's been uh what i mean have you been crunching tape what are you doing with your with your slow time pina are you being a father what's up i am being a father that's a good call i have two small children um so that is taking up a lot of time reading books books are a huge part of my life in august so i try to absorb as much information that is non-nba related as i can in this in this brief little window of the calendar we have here um where the schedule is nice and and slow um but besides that yeah it's uh it's just easy living kyle it's easy living right now yeah my son started kindergarten this morning i know we'll move on from family stuff because i know people are their eyes are glazing over but way harder than i thought i'm just gonna say any parents that are approaching that uh that that i like took some footage of it and started to review it a little bit and i was just like nope can't watch that absolutely not yeah yeah that was that was rough it was it was tough so uh what we're going to be doing today is uh we're going to be doing some power ranking you know this is a very ringery thing that we we love to power rank i what's the essence of the power rank versus the rank i don't it's not results based right you can like skirt results in the power rank you can just say this is the vibe you can kind of like just ascribe any kind of quality to your methodology that you want right you can it's it's alchemy versus science wouldn't you say i think that's right a lot of vibe um influence uh we're basically going off of like no data or information here because we are projecting into right exactly and the what we are power ranking the the eastern east and super unpredictable right now so uh we're just kind of flying by the seat of our pants on this bud what did this when you sat down initially to look at this group of teams i mean i i kind of you know did the first step of like let's just see the results from last year in general the do you think that this is going to be like a normal year-to-year like board shuffle like the way that this based on your own expectations because i sat down and i was you know last year i kept calling last year the bo gump season because all the other boats had sunk so basically there we got some results that we had crazy injuries you know yannis missed time obviously we had you know tatum missed time halliburton's out for the whole season we're not talking about you know small small potatoes players who are missing time these are guys that really really affect the results i mean when you when you sat down to kind of look at what it looked like last year to what it looked like this year just as a as a teaser before we get going were you surprised at how how much movement there was you said volatile yeah i mean we're gonna go through this and i think that some of the teams where i put them on my list will surprise people uh because i think that there's just a lot of really good quality basketball teams and i'm really interested to see how these new pieces fit and there's just so much talent and a lot of big names moved east and we should say that we are going to uh ranking these teams under the assumption that kawaii leonard is going to be on the toronto rafters this season hope to god that is the case and no small detail yeah no small detail yeah so there's just a lot of talent um in the east and uh everybody's like healthy as you said like the tyrese halliburton's back jason tatum's back um and we have the champion or the new york knicks and they basically kept their team together so it's just going to be a lot of fun i think very surprising yeah yeah yeah we get you know when you said superstars obviously the headline there is julius randall comes to the to the brooklyn who are you know they're the he's the main guy that migrated i just wanted to point that out let's get well that's a good segue in so let's start at number 15 um who's your who's your number 15 team mike i have the milwaukee bucks okay okay yeah i think this team is uh i think zach or rob said um earlier this year that this roster was just a lot of dudes and i haven't been able to get that description out of my head it's perfect um there's like a decent amount of actual talent here um not one but two former six men of the year award winners and tyler hero and jaime haquez um i like taylor jenkins as a head coach and he will his best to um win basketball games and implement a a cogent style of play but i it's just it's a morass i just don't um who's handling the ball on this team on a consistent basis how is their defense going to function what is the depth they just lost janice antetokounmpo it's like yeah so replacing that is it's just going to be it's going to be a tough year yeah it's pretty existential in the in the looking in the broader sense for them just kind of zooming forward and seeing where they're going like where what direction is this headed and usually that's dictated by the things you're talking about like the you they didn't get a primary back that moved the needle like janice they don't so they don't and the the assets you know braden burry's had a good summer league and things like that but i was looking at this roster and i was just like who's starting at one i mean i assume ryan rollins is going to move to the bench i mean i i could see burry's moving up in their rotation um at the three you'd assume it'd be hawkeyes kalel where miles turner could play together potentially you weren't initially a kalel where fan right did you come around on him at all not that i want to spend a ton of time on kalel he's he's okay um definitely not the like prize in a janice trade good i i don't see that um in his future i don't think he'll make any all-star teams or anything like that but i guess like just from an intrigue standpoint yeah watching him potentially share the floor with miles turner two three-point shooting pseudo three-point shooting big men who can also protect the rim like that's that could be something i guess i will watch and laugh i'm trying to i'm trying to think of like big guy combos across the league because it isn't typically you don't typically see for as much as we talk about like room protectors that can shoot threes there really aren't a ton of them and it's like i'm trying to think of guys who were because turner obviously is not the room protector that he was but what where is kind of they're similar archetypical players right i think i think where and turner are and that like when they're younger they're had a lot of upside promise as room protectors i don't know that there's a player combination like that i'm trying to think across the league is there a tandem that's similar to those two dudes because neither one of them being superstars but both are pretty good it's like a high reasonably good floor not super high ceiling combo but there aren't a ton of there aren't a ton of tandems out there like those two guys i don't think i'm like scouring the league in my head and i i have i've got nothing um actually would be another similar one i guess right uh yeah if ad could shoot um that could be something uh so yeah it's it's it's tricky i mean yeah there's really it's very unique it's a singular combination i don't even think they'll play i can't really think of a single combination i don't think they'll play a single combination they actually see them playing together a ton but who knows like yeah it's it's also a situation where i put them at the bottom because a lot of teams are trying to win obviously because we change the incentive with the lottery But this team is in a situation where they should still be just selling off parts. And I don't believe that they have access to their draft pick anyway, so it doesn't matter. So, yeah, I think they'll be very bad. For each team, I wanted to do something where we do, I wanted to say year-to-year movement, which is basically just like stock up, stock down, or push. Would you say this is, where would you say their stock went year-to-year, the Bucs, before we move on? They were terrible last year, and I would still say stock down. I think that this is just like the most, one of the more depressing situations in the league right now. Yeah, it is pretty rough. We should also note, you know, that they got Kasperis Jakuchonis in that deal. They drafted Nate Ament, who, it's a lot of hypothetical. It's funny that you said, it's funny that you like that description of it's a bunch of dudes, but no dudes, you know? It's like, it's really the emphasis of the dude. It really makes a big difference there. I didn't have them at 15. I actually had the Brooklyn Nets at 15, because it's, you might be correct ahead of me on this one, or just more dialed in, because when I was looking at them, I was just like, I don't really know where the direction is here. I could see the Yegor-Michael Brown combo being fun, but I could also see it being an absolute disaster. I could see Julius Randle and Michael Porter Jr. being one of the more, just maddening forward combinations in the league, like individually, you can kind of tolerate them in spurts. Granted, Porter played pretty well this past year. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here. Who, where do you have the Nets, or are they, where, who's your 14? We'll just do that. I, well, I have the Nets. Do you want me to tell you where I have the Nets? Well, just tell me who your 14 is. Let's just follow your list. Okay, okay. 14, I have the Chicago Bulls. Okay, me too. I do too. I may be naive. It feels like the dawn of a new day in Chicago. It has a new general manager in Bryson Graham. It has a new franchise player, hopefully, and guiding light in Caleb Wilson. And I, you know, I like some of the talent here in terms of just how it complements itself more so this year than last year. Norm Powell is awesome. And if he's still on the team for the whole year, that would be cool. Nick Claxton, I think, is an okay player if surrounded by the right type of ball handling and playmaking. And I think Josh Giddey can provide some of that. And I think Boozellis kind of shifting down into, like, you can be, like, our 1B or number two franchise player, where I think there was a little bit too much on him last season. It's kind of perfect for him. So, fun team. And brighter future, much brighter future than I thought I would be saying this time last year. But still going to be pretty bad. Yeah. Pretty fun balance of, I think this is going to be one of the most, like, lanky, explosive teams in the East. Also could be one of the most, like, really, really crazily, spatially challenged teams in the East. If you consider, I was going to ask you, you mentioned Norm Powell. I mean. Josh Giddey was obviously a big move that they went and made and, you know, sending out Alex Cruz so they go get Josh Giddey. Do you think, is Powell the biggest candidate on this team to not be on the team at the deadline? Or do you think that there's a chance that Giddey could be a guy that they pivot away from? I think Norm Powell's contract was, like, signed to trade. That was the intent. He makes no sense in Chicago. By their own admission, they're at the bottom of a rebuild. Exorcisms take time. So if I was him, if I was him, I would, you know, I, my intent was to sign this and get minutes, get a lot of shots. I made the all-star team last year if I'm Norm Powell. That's great. And, you know, lead the team in scoring probably. And then move on to greener pastures at the trade deadline. I think that that is in everybody's best interest. I wonder, is the East the most likely, the most likely best? Bedfellow for a trade like that? Do you think that there's a team that is, I'm trying to think of scoring punch. Because I thought Detroit was the team that made the most sense. I know we'll get to Detroit in terms of the board shifting. They're one of the more interesting teams for this exercise. But I'm trying to think of the most alluring candidates that could use a Norm Powell who at this point, I mean, how would you describe his game? I mean, it's kind of, he's sort of like an overqualified bucket getter who, I'm not going to like depend on to run offense, but he's also credible, you know, because he's not in that six-man category where it's like your, your pursuit of your own offense is so constant that it's destructive. You know, he still has that credibility where it's like we can, we can lean on this guy. He's a guy whose game to me scales up, scales down, don't have to run any actions for him, but we can and we'll get good stuff out of it. Like just run him out of the corner off a screen into a dribble handoff and he's going to make, a play at the rim or he can pull up and he's one of the better movement shooters in the league. So I, I, I think he's just really beneficial and portable and easy to fit anywhere. And I don't, I don't know. He's kind of been banged up a little bit the past couple of years and he's getting up there in age. So that could be a little bit of a concern, but the contract is, is perfectly digestible for whoever wants to take him on. So I just, yeah, I think he could get traded to any contender, pseudo contender, firing contender and, and fit right in. You know, what's interesting is looking at, I mean, honestly, the heat could have used him, but I guess they have like a pretty poor facsimile of him and Tim Hardaway, but, but the, an interesting one would be a return to the Raptors. Cause I could see him helping them. That's a team we can get into their, their needs and things like that. But just looking down through here, the teams that are close, I mean, that could, could use some of what he provides. You have the Pistons. I could see the Raptors. Those are the two main ones that, that kind of jumped to mind if he stays in the East. Yeah. I mean, everybody needs shooting and everybody needs players who don't need the ball, but can still impact the game positively without it. So those two teams are, are, are great candidates to, to take him on. And anyone who, again, is willing to pay the, what is he? 21 and a half million dollars or something, but it's like a team option in the second year. Great contract. The Bruce Brown Jr. Special. Any team would, would, would be happy to have him like the Pacers. He'd be a great fit on the Pacers too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in summer league, I mean, was that your first exposure to the Caleb Wilson experience? Did you have YouTube diving going, going in or what was your, what was your reaction to him? My first reaction was when he was on UNC because someone told me he was like Kevin Garnett, who is my favorite player of all time. And so I was like, okay, cool. Let's check this out. I thought it was, he was, he was fun. I, I big, long cares about defense, um, energetic. That was great. And then seeing him go, what was it? Seven for 11 in that summer league game. And I was like, okay, this is, this is good stuff. Uh, so I, I, I would not have taken him like first overall or anything, but he was my like favorite player coming into this draft. Yeah, that I was, I was definitely more in the, in the Garnetti kind of camp like that, that re that area where the, the ball skills are, are there in like very controlled doses. Like if he's in, I've said these things on draft related shows over the course of the year, but just if he's in a one to two dribble situation from the mid range, it's like he can do some incredible stuff. But if he gets to the point where he's in the teeth of the defense and he's having to like make a decision and see more than one defender at a time, it's like, I'm just, we're not quite ready for that. So like watching him in summer league, it's like, I think we're going to see a lot of highs and lows. Like if, if they hypothetically do get off of giddy or they, and they start to lean on him or just lean into being bad, you know, I think the ups and the downs of him being absolutely unbelievable, athletic can do all these different things. And then a total disaster on some nights where he had, he's going to have some nights where he has like eight turnovers and, you know, goes over six from three and stuff like that. I think that stuff's going to happen, but yeah, they, they are still going to be, it's funny because it's like you, you go into this season as the, as the bulls in the, in the past, knowing the history of their front office and stuff, just the being bad was a lot less digestible because you, you're like, you don't trust the people who are laying down the, the, the train tracks in front of you. And now it's kind of a, it's, it's a refresh to the point where the, if they're bad this year, it's going to be like a lot more carefree than in the past. And it was never their intent to be bad, which was always the worst portion. That's the worst part. When you're knowing, yeah, it's like if Sam Presti is like, we're going to be bad. You're like, okay. And then they got out of it, but that was, you know, that was a little bit different with the, yeah, exactly. Administration. Yeah. All right. Who's your, who's your number 13 team? This may surprise you. I have the Washington wizards at 13. Okay. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I, I, you know, we're talking about vibes, right? Um, I see the talent here. Of course. Uh, I, I just have a hard time disentangling that talent from just how stupid it's been compiled you know what i mean like i i think that this i have no idea what this team is doing i have no idea how many voices are in the front office it seems like there's 35 people and they're all screaming and just yelling out names and we're gonna offer this guy like why is chris middleton here i don't i don't get it i don't i don't understand um i never got the anthony davis trade in the first place and i i bet if you gave truth serum to people in that organization they would say we would not have done that if we knew we were getting the number one overall pick um and then you have trey young is here who got the worst contract in the summer from washington is absolutely mind-numbingly dumb and so i have a just a hard time separating like how everything came together with what this will actually look as a basketball team and i might be selling them short to be fair because of just how upsetting they are that makes sense uh it's funny because like i've written down i didn't do it for all the teams but i kind of wrote down i've tears of uh the the of each team and you know this is my first team that i was like they would beat so we have like title contenders conference contenders scrappy in a series those are the tears and then i made a tear just for the wizards that would be called tickled to just be in a series that's their team that they're in their own and one of the one of the questions that i well i'll do i wrote down a synopsis for them an on-paper tiger of a roster with a cross-section of promising prospects parentheses including the recent number one pick and transient distressed high-level stars that could converge into something entertaining or dangerous uh yes and then my first question that i was going to ask you you already answered which is what is the most promising prospect for you and what is the most promising prospect for you why is chris middleton here uh so we were on the same we were saying we were saying lockstep there um it's i kind of worry about this because you're right like if the games were just being played on paper if we were just playing nba live or nba 2k whatever it is and we were going out there with just the talent we were controlling the brain and the spirit of this team yeah you would think you'd be able to take it somewhere good but it's like you look at the way that aj de bonza projects to develop it's a little different than caleb where i kind of feel like it's a little bit different i kind of feel like he's going to really want to be the high primary high usage player in year one and i think he deserves to have that runway as a player just throwing him in there with and i think it expands beyond aj because you've had guys like bub you've had guys like uh you know quichon george i think it's shown a lot of promise and when you're projecting their starting lineup and when i was like doing their depth chart i was like man a lot of these guys got pushed back in a way in a way where it's like they've imported veteran voices you know trey trey's coming in and i know he's eager to be you know he's calling guys on draft night he's you know wanting to be the the mentor and things like that if you look at trey's history i know you've been a big trey fan in the past i don't we haven't done a status report on that in a while but several years i was gonna say you used to really love to joke with me about him spanking darius garland but because i was a big garland fan but i just kind of wonder about how eager these guys are to be pupils to anthony davis and trey you know i think it's a really good thing to be young because as successful as ad has been not doesn't have a history of like i don't know how are you feeling about that convergence of the youth movement on this team and these and these guys that are coming in none of it makes sense man it just doesn't make sense like trey johnson is another um really interesting i mean i thought he was in what i saw in summer league um took a notable step forward and i don't know in his you know development since the first time i saw him play basketball in the nba um so that's just another guy but yeah there's a lot of there's not a lot of minutes going around for i know sar broke his foot so then they get deandre ayton in another name who's just here we haven't even mentioned that's another that that will be a voice whether you want him to be he's gonna be a voice in the 100 100 and he's playing for a new contract so it's like i just i didn't even think about that that's an added force it's it's a true um and so i i just think that this could be a a nightmare and i could see trey getting hurt i could see definitely ad getting hurt um and then what you have is a very young team that's like supposed to be bad in an organic way that is fine and i just think they tried to unnaturally rush the process here in terms of building something um with their core and if they again if they would have known that they had the number of people that were going to pick which i don't know like they did lose like every game on purpose so it was their intent down the stretch to get the number one pick um but i think if they knew that they that they had been rewarded with it that they would have never made these trades that just don't make a lot of sense and ate up ended up eating up all their cap space this summer as well yeah i i was thinking one one advantage that they do have is because sar and ad like neither one of them want to play center just lie and say the other person is playing center so they could just kind of do a little feedback loop of of deception yeah uh yeah i it would it would have been more fun to just watch this team be organically just adding aj to this group um i think it was interesting enough on its own you know i guess you're hedging or you're just sort of like being a weighing station for these these contracts but um i don't know maybe maybe they'll prove us wrong and they'll be uh their but uh will it will the other question i had is will their starting lineup be their best lineup was another question that i asked there uh i don't i don't know if it hypothetically it is the idea of ad and trey is sort of an nba jam you know template is fun yeah but um they they do they will have a lot of kind of secondary lineups they're going to be i thought will riley i've kind of touted him here and there too i know we're lingering on the wizards here but uh i think he's shown a lot of promise you said trey trey handled his business at summer league in a way where he's just like but but got in got out did well um but i like riley um yeah it's just it's a weird veteran convergence with it with the ascending talent that they have so yeah i'm looking at the depth chart i couldn't tell you what their starting lineup is going to be i i i think it's that's a tough one to kind of project um i'd assume it's keith sean and trey and then the bonds at the three and then sar and davis i would assume but they i guess they i would assume star star is going to start yeah maybe i that your spacing is like kind of effed if you with that look but um again like i don't know what the stakes are here i don't really understand why there's such a a pressure to um win right now and be relevant and i i just think that if they were a little bit more patient things would have kind of worked out for them finally which they kind of never have for the washington wizards but getting to bonsa is amazing so yeah uh yeah debonza gives me big tatum kind of vibes i said that to bill recently i just kind of think people like when they were thinking about his comp i was like i feel like we might just be overthinking it it's a guy that has playmaking development that he needs to do but he's kind of a born scorer he's not he's a up and down shooter things like that anyway he reminds me of tatum uh so i think that leaves us at number 12 i had the wizards at 12 okay who do you have who do you have at number 12 i have the nets okay um i actually higher than the wizards is pretty interesting you really think that's going to be a disaster that's having the nets here really compounds it yeah i think the nets i i think jordy fernandez is like my dark dark dark dark dark horse head coach of the year candidate um i think the expectations of this team are obviously like they will be the worst team in the eastern conference or one of uh i thought that what he did last year with michael porter jr turning him into someone who should have made the all-star team was a kind of amazing um without like bending mpj's game in any way just kind of accentuating him in a way that was like really beneficial to the team as well um and i think that julius randall who i would have not traded for julius randall if i was the brooklyn nets and doing so really confused me but he's kind of like in a perfect space he's like the primary score on a funky but fatally flawed team like that's his basketball destiny to me like i know the fact that he was on the minnesota timberwolves um just never never sat right with me i think that there's like a cap on how good you can be if he is taking a lot of shots and getting a lot of touches in your offense so i think for a team that has no stakes whatsoever that no one thinks can do anything um he's kind of perfect uh and i am also a yegor jamin believer and i think last year yeah i think last year like the way he was able to play off the ball and really show he could shoot was huge for how they view him and um his career frankly because i don't know if he's ever going to be like a primary on ball playmaker uh at a high usage so having him you know they ran stuff for him also um because he's got really good size they ran a ton of stuff for him you know uh off ball actions. just to try to get shots up and it worked for the most part i mean he had a stretch where he was like historically great behind the three-point line as a rookie so i i think there's like young interesting talent here and i just have a lot of respect for the coaching staff i think that jordy fernandez is incredible um so so yeah that's you know 12th in the east good stuff yeah i had them at the bottom but i mean i do have some guys that i like i mean yeah like you said obviously the staff is good i mean they they went out and they you know they add michael brown we should mention that that was their that was their big haul in the in the draft you were not that was not your guy right from what i've been listening to it's a it's one of those i like him but not at a certain spot i have questions about him being efficient just his i i wondered about the bookends of his game i've brought up i've brought up kiante george and anthony simons granted kiante's kind of started to answer some of those questions but i think it's a good way to answer those questions in terms of his paint production which really unlocked a lot of things if michael starts to you know answer those questions about his like poise in the within the teeth of the defense and you know getting to the line and things like that like that'll open up his game and he'll prove me wrong in short order which has happened in the past but i think jaguar jaguar had similar problems like i think you you pointed it out where um coming in it was like jaguar could just he was one of the most brilliant like basketball minds in that class in terms of as a reads were just like yawn boring to him because he could just do it all um yeah but it was a quite he he still has to answer the questions of if he still has to answer the questions of like rim pressure and can he get to the basket and things like that can he score then the conversation will really change for him if he does start to do that but the shooting was huge like you said um and for for now that's enough for him to kind of ride and be like he's probably i've compared him to like sean livingston in the past like where it's like this guy's probably not going to be our high high usage guy that we like run everything through but he's so smart that we can put him next to a star player yeah maybe that's michael maybe you know for if you have guys like julius randall and michael porter jr on your team and you want to outsource some of the thinking and like we'll run actions that are kind of like schemed creation to get those guys shots like jaguar is is a really smart player um uh they also got uh josh jefferson in the draft they added mo bogner uh year to year i'd say this was i had down that this was a push do you think that they got demonstrably better yeah i did i mean they were so bad last year so so yeah they they definitely they shut everybody down it was such a it was it was a disaster um yeah i would i would definitely say that they got better yeah yeah uh the tier that i had this team in was participation trophy because i don't see them in the in the playoffs who is your number uh 11 team all right here's where we're gonna get we're gonna get spicy i told you we're gonna get spicy kyle let me let me preface before you go into this mike and i were texting before and i was like dude this i think i started this tier at 5 to 11 i was like this is one of the crazier 5 to 11s in the east i don't i forget our age range here but i mean i've been following the nba like closely probably since for a while i mean i remember when jason kidd migrated to the west the east like that was kind of the starting point where it was like all right the east is bad yeah it's so dense and like ranking these teams and your spiciness i guess is a response to that so i just wanted to say that as a lead and this is going to get crazy uh so warning to listener buckle up um my number 11 is the miami heat holy fuck okay i did not expect that wow when you said spicy i had other teams in mind but the heat were not who i thought i mean i said yeah just i'll start i mean i sat down and was looking at their starting lineup and i was tempted you know you're doing the thing where you're just kind of moving it around and just seeing how you feel i know with draft boards i do that a lot you do that with top 100 where sometimes i'll make a move and just be like just to make myself feel something i'm dead inside or you know but when i was looking at their lineup and i'm like okay bam and yannis i can kind of i can kind of assume where you're going with this off where you're where you're thinking the depth is the main thing for me even if you believe in their starting lineup it's like how are they going to answer these depth questions in addition to even if you believe in spolstra one of the best basketball minds in the world there's the questions start to stack up to the point where it's just like this is he would have to be a basketball houdini to get out of some of the constraints that he's going to have and he's going to have to be a basketball houdini to get out with this group but go ahead mike tell us why you have them i think i think uh offensively there's just so many questions that i have that aren't great in terms of three-point shooting spacing offensive creativity it reminds me a lot of like well i want to say it like reminds me of the bucks last year and just like trying to but it like doesn't actually at all remind me of the bucks last year just in terms of um how we're going to build around yannis and they i thought how they tried like what their strategy was last year in milwaukee made some sense to me but it just isn't how you win basketball games and in in this era of the nba and in 2025 2026 and and going forward and what the heat have done is like uh i don't know what the strategy is they got yannis they gave up like all their depth or like really key depth pieces um that actually like let that offense function and how they played last year which was like super fast you know make or miss we're taking the ball and we're sprinting up the court and we're making like maybe one or two passes and then we're going to the rim and seeing what happens and like jaime jaquez was a huge part of that tyler hero was eventually a big part of that norm powell was a part of that um and so i just don't like they have one movement shooter tim hardaway jr who had the best three shooting season of his career last year you know nicole yokich was his teammate nicole yokich is not on this team so i just you know if he shoots 34 35 from behind the three-point line it the wheels could just like fall off on this offense and then when you look at like the names and the fact that there's no backup center and the fact that like i cracked this joke that got me banned from the rights for ricky sanchez podcast about simone fontekio go ahead it's like simone fontekio is like on the team and he's going to be in the rotation and he's like they need stuff from him i just i i i think that this is like a not a disaster by any measure but like when pat riley said we don't need shooting we need another ball handler like we need more playmaking and trying to lure lebron to miami i was thinking to myself like what like what do you you you don't believe that like what are you talking about that's like like so i they i'm not even saying that they don't need that because they do but they also need shooting like yannis and bam together is incongruous to the point of me putting them at the 11th seed and i know we haven't talked about the defense yet and i think the defense will be really good and there's potential there but i just think offensively and credit to all the rest of the teams in the eastern conference which i think a lot of teams have leveled up or gotten healthy and that we've talked about so it's also a byproduct of that but i just think they'll really struggle to score the basketball this season in the half court yeah yeah the the depth chart is tough i mean if you're looking down through here i mean portis portis adds just kind of a dissonant quality to what you were talking about i mean they they have a history of mining these dudes or just finding these guys who are on the fringes of the top 450 players in the world and like leaning into they're good at sourcing dudes who can like volume shoot who need to be sort of harangued into doing it more aggressively like they've had a lot of success with finding those guys i will say that um ryan conwell is a guy that um you know he played pretty well at summer league but um is a great movement shooter they're so desperate to for guys like that that he might just get a chance uh to do to play so i don't know if you know a ton about him but um fontekio though you mentioned as another guy i mean yeah it might be the case that their needs are so strong that he just gets sort of vacuumed up into the the rotation he's i like fontekio i think he could add some stuff to them me too yeah you yeah it's like should should tim hardaway jr be starting on this team though if they're gonna have a chance to like even contend in the east i i he i mean they could start pella larson instead you know um yeah so it might not be a given yeah yeah and you know drew smith is still on the team i i kind of like him when he i just like his utility um but these are names that we're saying that are just like like come on like if you look at some of the rosters that we're going to be talking about later on like i just don't think that they compare and also is how many games is gonna play you know like that's also a question that i'm trying to factor in here a little bit um because he is perennially perennially banged up or has a calf thing or whatever so i'm kind of baking that in also because if he goes down i think that it's the wheels completely come off and it's just it's a total train wreck um but like are you expecting like nikola jovich to bounce back and make good on the contract like because i'm not i i just there's not a lot of redeeming qualities here and to your point like i do not know ryan conwell's game i am unfamiliar with it but like you're telling me he's gonna be duncan robinson or max streus level type of contributor i'll change my tune but i'll believe that when i see it i don't know about that but i think that he'll definitely win some fans i think in terms of he's just like a stocky really smart cutter like like a stocky not like in george costanza way but uh just like a sort of a sort of a sort of a bane build he's got he's just a beefy sort of but he's quick um can really shoot it off movement at high volume he he seems like a classic heat guy to me and he may get chances but contributing on that level you talk about yannis i mean the the yannis like potential fallout thing is like such a sore subject and it's been interesting to watch it migrate from milwaukee it's not their problem anymore to like be concerned about that lord knows they have other problems now but like um the idea of like yannis aging because i know bill and i've talked about this a lot it's like we have these archetypes of career the flows of careers where we're like this usually we start you know tapping the watch be like this typically starts to happen at this age you know some of the classic ones are like small scoring guard like around this time you know your you know your advantages start to fall off it's like yannis is a unique case though just because he doesn't play like a typical a guy his size typically does i said on a pod recently like i think he's probably the best driving handling big ever and yeah those that that aging curve for a player like that i don't really know what to compare it to because i know people have said he's like modern shack it's like shack didn't those clips of like shack dribbling and in transition are novel like what yannis does in transition is typical his game that's his game it's it's like it's modeled it's ideal it's like all the time and it's like a guy that has to move like that and take punishment like that it's and just the way that he moves laterally when he's coming downhill to like the big steps it just makes you wonder like how his lower body is going to handle it because this past year i mean he was you know only played 36 games 29 minutes per game the production was still really good um even though you know i'd say per 100 possessions he's probably the same player even though his minutes were like slightly down the line but he's still really good 27 and a half points for per game you know about 10 rebounds about five and a half assists so it's like he's the same dude but i don't know the the combination of the spatial challenges that you mentioned that they're not going to have as much when you think about the wear and tear that could befall him this coming season if if if his curve does start to kind of become a factor here and you weigh that with the spatial stuff that could be a problem i do worry i don't have him as low as you do but i do worry about that those two things you know working together to kind of make a exacerbate the the concerns like he needs spacing it's never been a situation in his life or since he's been like a you know first team all nba type of player where he didn't have a brooke lopez space in the floor at the five they you know the bucks like ruined their organization um by trading for miles turner there was like a real act of desperation that showed yannis's limitations i think are just the way yannis needs to play to be at his best and to maximize him because if you have like if you're just packing the paint which teams will do on the miami heat this year and they will not really care about bam out of bios three-point shooting and um i know he's you know ticked up in volume and accuracy a little bit but he's not like he's not spacing the floor for anybody so um i there's just a lot of things you have to do with yannis there are rules um and the miami heat aren't built to really follow them and i think that it it's not great like i think that this this first season will be bad and then i think that they will have time to like kind of restructure their roster a little bit in a better better way uh next summer and then the heat can be a little bit more formidable but right now i just i don't i don't see it at all yeah and like we were saying like the it's it's not like we have a lot of like padded years of youth to just like throw out the window like that like you were saying it's like if i go to that effort to you know the my synopsis that i wrote for this tv a big big game hunters empty their clip to haul in the most powerful and impactful prize on the market but do they have enough remaining balancing pieces to make their efforts worth it and that's ultimately going to be even more critical in year two where like you're saying it's like we don't really have a lot of uh just extra yannis years to to throw away i'm sure we'll hear from miami fans about that but uh yannis's longevity is just going to be it's going to be an interesting uh case study i think for the future granted there there aren't many if any cases like yannis uh so at the 10 spot like i said team by team this is going to be uh i did not have miami there i had miami at six maybe we'll split the difference and that's oh wow okay but we'll we'll see um yeah i just think granted there's some like things that they could go and do i guess if they go and make a move or and i do think that they're going to like pose interesting problems like if you think about like the softness that philly is going to have at the four or five spot if they choose to start lebron and and uh and imbeed it's like those two dudes i think are younger and healthier than than granted lebron's in great shape for his age but i think they they just have an interesting juxtaposition of like i do think that they could call it a game and they're going to be able to awesome tease problems but they're also going to have their own problems anyway so at number 10 who do you have i have the uh the charlotte hornets okay um at the mid 11 yeah i i i fell in love with this team last year and they obviously lost two starters from like the best starting five in the history of the nba um with lamello and miles bridges i still look at them and i'm like they have so much three-point shooting they have a style of play that i don't think can like i think that it's it's replicable even without lamello next year and if you look at some of the numbers with kobe white on the floor there's like the on-off numbers with lamello were amazing he was incredibly valuable uh once they got kobe white like when kobe white was on the floor without lamello they're often still hummed and they had a great net rating that was in the double digits and a obviously a smaller sample size but i think that that will carry over um and i just think like the gravity that they have with you know adding grayson allen um obviously con canipple taking another step forward and whatever his development path looks like uh i'm just a big fan of the core brandon miller um uh getting even better and potentially getting to an all-star level is is possible i'm not saying that that will happen but it's it's it's a possibility and then adding naz reed who's an awesome basketball player uh and can space at the five and and i think charles lee will do a lot of creative things with him and some of the other names that i've already mentioned uh they just have a lot of shooting and i think shooting is you know that's that's what matters in the nba right now and they have a ton of it so yeah yeah you mentioned um so this exciting young team with an identity built upon kinetic ball movement and dynamic shooting makes it possible for them to be able to do a lot of different things and i think that's what's going to be important for them to be able to be able to do a lot of different things and i think that's what's going to be important for them to be able to do a lot of different things and i think that's what's going to be important for them to be able wisely timed or harmfully premature is what i have so we will see but um year to year do you think this team got better worse or is it a push that's a great question i'm going i'll say push um but i also think that the lamello ball trade was was wise and i think that the miles bridges trade was like a fucking grand slam had to happen yeah that was that was a good one so they add christian anderson who really absolutely fits there i have concerns about him being small and defending but i don't have concerns about him shooting the ball like he's just uh he's a crazy great pull-up shooter uh they had naz read as you you mentioned the five spots going to be interesting i mean i would assume that diabate holds that down and then maybe steinbach grows into it but diabate is just was a revelation last year i mean one of the really cool stories just him his role within that offense and um has really matured it's been fun to watch him go from this dude who was like a fringe roster guy with the clippers and it was sort of a hypothetical maybe this will be something someday um into this guy who was central integral to them so i but you know steinbach is he fits and interfaces with their personality really really great i don't know how much you know about him but he's he was just like a generational rebounding prospect at the college level so um he's gonna be he's gonna be great for them in that sense um and just kind of shore up they're not gonna get bullied as much i feel like that was kind of the big thing you know that playing game was really revealing where it's just they got stuffed in a locker and they you know went out we're just like we can't do this again um i mean that i feel like that was the big question but overall as i'm reading it from your perspective i mean it's just sort of a bet on khan and brandon getting up some of the oxygen that lamello isn't going to be taking up anymore because he's not there yeah i'm interested to see how kind of that flows and i i thought khan knipple was like the best off-ball player in the entire nba last season and that's crazy yeah and i want to see what he does um with it in his hands a little bit more and he he's shown he can do stuff like he's he's he is a truly special player um so i just want to see kind of the the step for i know development is not always linear but i want to see kind of what he can do um with more responsibility in this offense i had some times last year and when i was i remember when i was like writing out his profile just trying to decide what what what images what what sort of uh silhouettes kind of match the way that he plays i think the strongest one that i had that i kind of took a step back from was devin booker where i was like this dude plays like devin not bad and i'm like do you think that that's wild is that i mean what would stop him from becoming a devin booker level production level player if he could you know because devin booker obviously first however many years of his career it was like the ball's in your hands and he had to develop as a playmaker and you know run a ton of pick and roll and read the floor and i think that obviously con is in a way different more beneficial situation for him um just a better environment um but if he were if he were ever able to um handle that type of usage in in the same manner and like not i mean devin booker's struggled a little bit with efficiency and uh you know the advanced numbers have not always smiled on him for some of those reasons but i think if con were able to be as advanced of a playmaker the sky is the limit for him i i because he can shoot the shit out of the ball in off any type of action and yeah so i and the range is ridiculous so i i just i just love con canipple maybe i'm like i'm overdoing it there but he's he's really good and i just i'm so excited for his sophomore season yeah you mentioned quickly before we move on here i mean just another i had this pulled up because i thought this was so impressive like his three main modes of production you know spotting up and transition and pick and roll he's over 42 percent on pretty great volume in all three i mean he shot two over 250 spot up threes this past year and he was at 43.4 percent so this dude's already one of the best shooters in the world not in the league in the world i mean yeah granted if you're one of the best in the nba you're one of the best in the world um so yeah the hornets uh yeah i had them at 11 okay who's your number 19 i have the pacers interesting okay okay um outside of the playoffs yeah yeah it's this was i think this was the i don't know about you this was the hardest team for me to to figure out because like are they just gonna be the team we remember are you just gonna like throw haliburton in and they're gonna you know because in the end they're gonna be the team that's going to be the in the that magical playoff run like everybody made every shot which i think people might forget like they shot the crap out of the ball um in a timely fashion so uh that like was that lightning in a bottle or are they just going to be a buzzsaw and i think obviously like they have a lot of the same parts um you have a really interesting change at at center with miles turner going out and uh zubats coming in and i think zubats is a better player um i am pretty bullish on him being also a better fit but i just want to see what it looks like um and and yeah uh then health is obviously a factor and i don't know if they have the most depth on this team um because guys are just kind of getting older uh but rick carlisle is a great coach and i just i don't know like what what were you thinking when you looked at the indiana pacers they were one of the toughest ones because like you said i ended up having them at seven actually there's another team that i think has is potentially going to have even more interesting movement than the pacers obviously year over year better um this is probably the nerdiest one that i wrote down you can judge me if you want i said the pacers are mid 60s bob dylan they stole the thorny crown in the east and then they immediately sat on the sidelines in a cast so there's a lot of like it's the fucking door case uh an american pie reference in the nba thanks god bless you if halliburton comes back and it physically seems a step slow it could be an adjustment year before they're back you know a year from now and if he's himself they'll be as annoying as they were or nearly as annoying as they were in 24 25 the shooting variance thing is really true i mean that was i don't know but like it's like getting the getting hot like what what types of getting hot are credible and which ones aren't because they get to the finals they almost do it if he didn't get hurt what would be if he didn't get hurt what would be the difference between looking at them and then looking at what the knicks just did because it's like you know are we gonna are we gonna ding the knicks and say well they got they got hot granted their best player hasn't sat out for a year i'm just trying to compare like the the credibility of being hot at the right time is it the same because it's like is it dismissive to just say it was just shooting variance because their style of play their intellect the thing no it wasn't that they were just making crazy contested shots it was like a buy-in it was yeah the full court pressure nemhard was phenomenal uh the way he guarded shea in the finals was like transcendent um no i i think there's a lot of different factors um they were so disciplined uh low turnovers uh playing at a fast pace uh they were just really they were a constant curveball i felt like for other teams that couldn't really go with their speed and their intensity and they were just like they were just like they were just like they were just intensity. So in addition to hitting shots, like a lot of them were open threes, you know, that, that they're created by Halliburton by TJ McConnell, who was just fantastic in that run, obviously. Um, but yeah, they, they, the buy, like a lot of different factors that, that really endeared, um, me to that team. Uh, but I just think like we're all, we're like a year removed and we're, we're an Achilles injury to a torn Achilles to our franchise player removed. So I just, there's just like natural questions that I want to just see on the court, you know? And like, how would Pascal kind of fit in? Not that I have questions about Pascal, but just like, I don't know. Like, it's just, it's just a really weird situation. I don't know what to compare this to. So I just want to, I just want to kind of see how it plays out. Halliburton is like more than a lot, more than gosh, I guess anytime you have a team built around a super, star, like granted their style of play is going to dictate your decisions and everything, but it's like Halliburton's he's like a cult of personality in a way that's like really unique. And I was thinking about this when we were comparing him to Anthony Edwards. And it's like, if you're, if your entire premise for your team is built around, as this guy goes, his brain is like the thing that feeds our style. And like his, his, his 0.5 superstar mentality is the thing that dictates the way that we play. It's like, if he's a step slow, it doesn't feel like it'd be the same as if like Luca had torn his Achilles, like knock on, sorry, just to use him, any player as an example in that, but like, it just doesn't feel the same because like Halliburton isn't a pure, like a Helio offensive player where, where, whether we score is dictated by, by whether or not he can get his own because he can score. But in comparing him to like Anthony Edwards, as we did like a couple of weeks ago, it was like the wolves are, are driven by like, if Ant can go out and in the pick and roll, look for his, and then, you know, get off the ball. It's like, Halliburton is an inversion of that idea where it's like, he gets off the ball so readily. So it makes me wonder if he is a unique case where when he comes back, I hope this makes sense what I'm saying. When he comes back, his like ease back in is going to like, maybe not be the same as like other superstar players, because he's such a great passer. His brain knows when to get off the ball in a way that like so few superstars do in the NBA. It kind of makes me wonder, I wanted to ask you one thing before we move on. Like, where do you see Zubats being a better fit than Turner specifically, since he's not a floor spacer in the way Turner was? Yeah, I think that Zubats making decisions out of the short roll, he's always been really good at that. And so just as a pick and roll partner, someone who can put more pressure on the rim, I think that, you know, if you saw him with Harden, it was like, that was one pick and roll. He's got great hands, great touch around the basket, super physical. I think he's a better rebounder than Turner on both sides of the ball. And I think he's a better defender. Just overall than Miles Turner, and can do different things and would not necessarily get played off the floor like Turner did in stretches of that run to the finals. Okay, who did you I had the I had the pacers at seven. Who did you have at number eight? I have the Orlando magic. Okay, okay. I had them at 10. I think that this just kind of when I was looking at them, I had, I'll say I initially had them even higher than this when I, you know, did the first run through. I'm just a believer, maybe stubbornly in, in just like the core talent, like Paolo, Franz, Suggs, I like that trio a lot. The idyllic version of them. I feel like is is just extremely good. And then I also think that Desmond Bain had a really good year last year and in a kind of an uncomfortable situation. where he's basically the only guy who didn't get hurt and wasn't used maybe in the best way offensively. And so what makes it really curious to me about the number one thing that's really curious to me about this team is basically no personnel changes from last year. And last year was like a noted disaster. So there's just a lot on Sean Sweeney coming in as a first-year head coach, and I don't know. He's obviously known on the defensive end. I'm not saying he can't do things offensively. Offense was their primary issue, just a total lack of creativity, very predictable. It's been Orlando's issue for like eight years. It's been going on since Aaron Gordon was there. It's just they can't seem to shake it. So I think that the other thing that Sweeney can do, which matters, is like it sounds really stupid and redundant. But like get his players to try hard again. And if you watch the Orlando Magic two years ago versus last year, like their defensive intensity is just not even close to the same level. And that is a non-negotiable for this roster based on the offensive issues that they will naturally run up against. So I think that they can have, once again, a top five, top three defense. And we'll kind of see what goes from there. But. The fact that they made no changes to the personnel is like, what's going on, guys? What are we doing? I had a key departures, Jonathan Isaac, key additions, John Sweeney. Year to year, I said they're team wise, they're a push. They have to be because they didn't do anything. But, you know, I said young athletic and huge team makes possibly positive coaching change coming out of their ascendant honeymoon phase as the team after some playoffs. Now, flame outs and looming questions about not only the compatible of their two perceived stars, but also their individual ceilings. Yeah, I had the magic at 10. Well, to keep keep it moving here. But I do. I do agree with you. It's just like it seems like whenever there's like a malaise of this isn't working, like inevitably the effort just gets affected because players can just choose to try harder. And the magic are an interesting team, man, where it's like it feels like we're coming. We're coming to a head in a way. It's like I don't know how much runway these two stars together have. You know, are you a Apollo guy? Are you? What are your thoughts right now? Where are we at with Apollo? He's not my favorite. I mean, it's I wouldn't I wouldn't say I wouldn't say I'm like over the moon in love with Apollo's game, like his inefficiencies like have just kind of and he's not. I've just wanted him to kind of like become a little bit more flexible in his style because he was. On the path to becoming a Julius Randall type guy, and that kind of concerned me, even though I think he's got a lot more stress. Yeah, so that's that's tough. All right. So who's your number 17? The Philadelphia 76ers. OK, well, you kind of like hinted at this with your pod with C.R. Zach Lowe. Yes, yes. Yeah, you have some. I have. I have the Sixers at two. Two. OK. Explain yourself. I mean, all right. I've got I made a list of pros and cons. My pros here for the Philadelphia 76ers are Jalen Brown, LeBron James, Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and Vijay Edgecombe are on the team. That's that's fantastic. Love that talent. I think that there will be a real fit adjustment. I think everyone, all the names I listed need to find a find a new role than they played last season, and they need to sacrifice to various degrees to I wonder how many games those five players I just mentioned will suit up in the starting lineup together. That's another huge quagmire here. LeBron James. Where would you set the over under on that? Like twenty five? Because of Embiid. Because of Embiid. Embiid and also like, dude, like, OK. OK, a couple of things. LeBron's about to turn 42 years old. Like, you know, like. I, I'm not going to be smirched. LeBron, he's amazing. I just. But it's just like. I'm getting killed even in like our comments right now with our. We can't even get out of the pod and our chat is literally on fire. It's on fire. I think that, you know, so so health, reliability, durability, defense, are they going to have a top ten defense? That's a question mark for me. Do they have enough shooting? Do they have enough depth? You have Dean Wade and Anthony Simons are kind of like the sixth and seventh men. And then I'm just not a believer. And I don't know the rookie coming in. You may be able to speak more to that. And. LeBron Phylon. Yeah. And like, maybe he's a rotation player who can impact winning right away. I don't know. I'm discounting it because I've never seen him play basketball, but I could obviously be wrong. OK, go. Whatever. You know, I'm not going to be able to speak more to that. I'm not going to be able to speak more to that. Yeah, I think there's a chance I'm not going to say they're they're one to one in terms of like the exact way that they play. But Phylon could end up having some like mid-2000s like Rajon Rondo vibes, the way that he functioned with those Celtics teams. OK, well, you're touching my heart there. So he's that type of precocious like he's not the same playmaker passer that Rondo is or processor. It's just like how many point guards really are. But he. He's a guy that I think could like sneak in there and become a fan favorite and like run with the with these older lineups and make it make an impact because he's he can just he just fits with what's that fish that grows into the size of whatever tank that might even be not even a real thing. But I just think he's just like folklore. I'm higher on them than you are. I think Wade is a real like a real credible role player. Granted, that's going to get a ton out of KCP. I think he's a great player. an amount um yeah so what are your thoughts on the hawks they're they're they're an interesting team yeah they they definitely i mean the bitch defensively is just adding dort to daniels in a combo is you know they didn't go out and answer a lot of people thought that they were going to go try to answer the room protection question i thought that they might try to do that in the draft with their two picks that they had um i noted this in the draft coverage that they went and basically every guy that they were one of the worst like in the playoffs they had one like the lowest assist rates like they were near the bottom and a lot of those stats so it's just like they needed uh ways to generate good looks a key thing here a question that i had is you know they you know they add kingston fleming's they add zuby edge for and they add inray vasar fleming's could fleming start for this team he was one of the most impressive guards i thought in summer league i just think in terms of adding lubrication to the to getting these big long athletes wow uh wow pause getting these these athletes in transition just getting them easier looks um i think that he could help in that front but cj still uh i don't know i don't know who's gonna get the starting knot at the at the one for the hawks i don't think they'll have a point guard um they also added devin carter from it's true sacramento uh and ryan emhardt in the um the dort zachary research a thing that they did um so i don't i don't know i think they have like some options at backup point guard and then i would like to see kingston fleming's be in their rotation that would be great i think their starting five that they had you know rolling over from last year was really good and like hummed down the stretch and so i i i don't think quinn snyder is going to to to shake that up particularly if dyson daniels can like shoot better than two for 20 every time he takes 20 three-pointers yeah yeah so uh but no i i think that that group kind of coalesced really well and um and kingston fleming's is a really cool player who i'm intrigued by and he did not shoot the ball well at summer league i don't care i think his playmaking his vision just like his instincts he seems like he's going to be an awesome nba player yeah yeah uh it just again man i mean this group like the the five through eleven group it's like you you circle back and you're like i'm not gonna miss the playoffs are they it's like a lot of these somebody somebody is gonna be the odd man out in a way yeah that is surprising um who's your number five team uh toronto raptors that's who i finally we're on the same page yes that's who i is this is the first time we had the same team on the same number it's yeah i mean it's not chalk man i mean it's like it's not obvious like uh let me see for the raptors year to year obviously better um i think the the overall gist the synopsis that i wrote for this team is in all caps kawaii leonard is still very good uh and that was it uh kawaii one of the most effective on ball players in the nba last season uh he was let's see at uh in in pick and roll and transition in iso and in the post uh he was like 90th percentile or higher um you added a guy who has insane he can turn bad offense um he's developed over a pass as a passer over his career um the trio of defensively that they're gonna have now they got rid of brandon ingram that's also a big all caps yippee exclamation point um where do you feel about the raptors of the team that i thought you were gonna come with a curveball just be like they're number two because i know you love kawaii i do love kawaii i thought about it i and maybe that it'll happen i don't know i i am you know living on planet earth and i am aware that he may not play a ton of games this season like i i'm aware that the toronto raptor they have like an infrastructure of like uh you know they defend like they like hellaciously i use that word already to describe the the atlanta hawks but they defend their asses off and they share the ball on offense and they play fast and they get back in transition and they do like really smart things um so i feel like they could tread water and like not baby kawaii um but maybe i i just i have a hard time seeing kawaii play as many games as he did last year let's just say um and maybe he will but he's also like playing for money um so that's a question mark in the air but i think like for me one of the big things one of the big revelations from the playoffs that we don't talk about a lot of the time is that we don't talk about the playoffs because it happened in round one with scotty barns and he was just like my god like total man's man 24.6 boards 8.6 assists per game really efficient for him and generally true shooting above league average got to the free throw line for like the first time really in his career at a consistent basis um and like one of the bigger stats i'll just throw at you not to get too nerdy but like 60 of his baskets in the regular season were assisted and that number dropped to 37 in the playoffs which is like you know what that basically says to me is like i'm gonna take the ball and do stuff with it and what was the efficiency from what to what with his assisted unassisted like how did his true shooting or do you have that in front of you like did i have this the general true shooting went up above 60 which it like never has before for him um and he made his threes basically yeah that's i mean that that's like i think his his it's not like the reason why they traded for kawaii but i feel like they were way more emboldened to give up the draft compensation um because of what they saw to scotty i think like he really showed out in that series that they could have won um and probably should have if emmanuel quickly didn't miss like damn near the whole thing so yeah we haven't even said colin mary boils um i just i i have i haven't even said colin mary boils um i just i i have i like i like a lot about this team i think defensively they'll be awesome and um hopefully they're healthier than they were last year as well yeah i was gonna say scotty also you know obviously one of the best defensive players in the league and the most versatile and he took on tough assignments it played for the first time in his career took on a bigger eight percent eight percent of his minutes were at the five uh this past year so it'll be interesting if he continues to kind of explore that frontier um you mentioned quickly coming back which will help because you down for them spacing handling and pull-up shooting um were some of the bigger things that i thought could help them um they also added alan graves in the offseason um this seems going to be a pain in the ass man i mean just that combination of barnes and cmb and kawaii together you mentioned like it's just it's a big wow uh i'm gonna enjoy the raptors this year uh and number four who's your team cleveland cavaliers same all right okay we're locking it we know we're not the racers but uh talk to me about the calf uh we are assuming that james harden will be on the team um he is currently unsigned as we record this but i think that this is maybe the best this could be like a totally blasphemous incorrect statement that i haven't thought too deeply about but maybe the best offensive backcourt in the nba um depending on like positionally what you think about the lakers like i you know donovan mitchell and james harden are just like really good together um so i think that that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive backcourt in the nba i think that's going to be the best offensive and i think trading him would have probably been a major mistake uh it's good that they did not do that and this team just always has shooting and kenny's a really good coach they move the ball uh losing dean wade and keon ellis who keon ellis wasn't really in their playoff rotation but i think he's like really good and um so i think losing those two could hurt a little bit um but generally speaking i i like the core here i like the talent level i like the possibility of mobily getting even better offensively and yeah i i don't know like it just they they feel like too good to be worse than fourth is kind of where i landed with them i think that's true but i also just feel this like underlying inescapable dread with them where you ran it back with you know i wrote down the year to year it's a push i think in terms of their roster but that's not that doesn't totally cover it just because you know strews missed a ton of time and basically just you know was he was like uh michael mcdonald and that's in that uh in that uh sketch where he's like running into the studio and getting on the mic like he got back just in time to uh you know that's my second random old music reference on this pod but i wrote down a team with two all nba guards who struggled with it offensively and two elite bigs that got humiliated in the conference finals decided that they just want to straight up run it back without one of their most important perimeter defenders in dean wade i don't feel like the common person realizes how important he was to them on that front they add malik thomas who's just a pure spackler bucket getter like he's gonna be a pat him on the head young guy who's gonna be a disaster at times and make bad but he can score like he can score these shit out of the ball but uh it's like kind of jr smith energy my big thing is that james harden absolutely shat the bed in the next series uh they get swept um he went five for 28 from threes he took twice as many dribble threes as he did catch and shoots in the playoffs i'm just kind of like i feel like this team is the ultimate you know they run it back and i just kind of feel like they are the embodied i feel like the response to them should be um the are you sure about that meme you know like are you sure about that i just don't like we're just keeping it going with harden and i just don't know man um i do have them as high as you do but i'm just i don't have a ton of faith in that who do you have at number three number three i have the detroit pistons i did not have them at number three they slid the most for me and i we could talk about it but go ahead okay so this team really interesting offseason in the sense that they changed their identity like they went from like bullies to a team that can actually like shoot i know that it's not like this is this is an optimistic kind of i don't i'm not gonna say it's hot it might just be insightful really honestly because i haven't heard people talk about a ton of people talk about this because the the view has been like oh they didn't do or they just did the wrong things like this isn't continuing with the momentum that they had but you think this is a pivot that's going to be healthy for them yeah i think that um like they were doing 80s era bad boys like pastiche and results that they had last year number one seed i think that there's like a clear ceiling on that homage and what it can accomplish in today's league and i would have and maybe they still will be more aggressive and going out and getting i don't know i feel like they're waiting for kairi irving to be honest with you and that's who they're like they're holding all their that's interesting yeah yeah i think like it's a kairi or i i've said trey murphy a ton he's just like the en vogue kind of du jour name that everyone throws around but he would also make a lot of sense here um kairi more so and in terms of this they need like if i'm looking for a issue with the pistons it's that they did not solve the secondary 1b um high usage playmaker scorer guy we can throw the ball to and kate is not in the game or when we need when kate doesn't have it going or whatever um but i just i i i like the isaiah joe like taking isaiah stewart and making him isaiah joe that's like the the symbolism there for me and like i like that i think that that is like that functionally changes your identity a little bit and your personality as a basketball team and i think they needed more of of what isaiah joe can do and sort of like the the show screens and all the stuff that he did with oklahoma city that really shook things loose for shay in a lot of ways and shay was shay shay's amazing regardless he doesn't need isaiah joe but when those two shared the floor like you saw some of the stuff the actions that they ran together were just like it's impossible to stop and i think that whether he's setting like a back screen on a spain pick and roll or whatever is isaiah's joe's doing he will make others better when he's on the floor um so i just i just i like this team i think they're still tough for sure they still have a sar thompson they still have jalen duran who i will he's not signed but we're gonna assume that he's gonna be re-signed at some point as a restricted free agent um but i just i i like this team i think that you know they they brought back kevin herder who um ideally or theoretically can shoot and jb bicker staff is like not as much of a fan of him as as the front offices but we'll see um and it's just like we're on duncan robinson as being our guy is is what i like and and the last thing i'll say is i think this might be like a this is like the hot take i guess but i think john collins is just like a better player let alone a better fit than tobias harris for this team interesting yeah i i don't know that i trust him as much in the the like scale down like creating you know the sort of like inside the art creation kind of stuff that tobias added but i like he can't do that yeah i was gonna say it's different he's different um but he is sort of the prototypical like 4 4.5 that fits next to a player like cade you know i kind of saw i loved the isaiah joe ad i kind of thought it was underrated honestly but i thought he was more kind of fortifying if kevin herder doesn't give us as much because i'm i'm a little more with bicker staff on herder i'm like i i like herder but it's just he's he wasn't delivering enough like one of the questions that i the big questions i had for it to troy their year-to-year movement i had them as worse it sounds like you have them as better which i i think is a unique take across the landscape or or if i'm reading this right um i think i i might qualify it as a push i think they're just different and i think that sam said this or believes this or i i maybe i'm misattributing it to him but you need to like shake up your identity in the nba even if you've had success with what you're doing because you the league is going to adapt and prepare better and so i think that if they were to just run it back as like we're gonna beat you up and dominate the glass and try to score in transition and and create all these turnovers like i i don't know if that would work this season so i like that they change things up on the fly um before that could happen yeah um the question i had for them was year to year i think one of the big things here is we talked about how last year there were so many guys out and it was like they had this great year where they seized to the you know they seize an opportunity with so many depleted teams and it's like with halbert and zubach didn't play tatum wagner banquero yannis it's like if they run it back and they don't have the same level of success in terms of wins and losses it's like i wonder if we end up in a situation where people see the record and they just think oh took a step back this year but really it was just a function of like everybody's back and it kind of makes me and so they did you know the wins and losses don't kind of they slide a little bit um but uh that's the i think your read is the optimist read we'll see with the optimistic read um talk to me about the celtics you're the you're the foremost i assume this is a bet on tatum being back i saw that your your take about him being a dark horse mvp oh god candidate um cook um you know go i mean this is a team that won 56 games last year top four offense top four defense um they're essentially a team they're essentially the way i'll like reduce it is they're essentially exchanging jalen brown and nikola vucevic for jason tatum paul george and mitchell robinson and a lot of the players who contributed last year who were like unsung and unknown and you know one of the reasons why i i thought that the celtics would be absolutely terrible last season like those guys were actually good and i think that's a good thing and i think that's a good thing and i think that's a good thing and winning players and all super young and getting better and they have one of the best coaches in the league they have a style of play that i think that that's one of the interesting things about um the celtics is how dogmatic will they be this year about three-point shooting i'm interested to see if they are as they have been i think that paul george is really i mean he's kind of just become like really underrated uh he's a better shooter than jalen brown and he makes a lot of sense on this team um obviously health is a factor for him health is a factor for tatum health is a factor for mitchell robinson have you heard me like like doing these rants about jalen brown versus paul george have you caught wind of any of this i i did some there's yeah there i was arguing with some folks about paul george i feel like overall he's underrated and it's great but i'm with you i interrupted you but go ahead no yeah i i just think like i've said this before um this is where like uh cliff is just gonna like stop the recording and murder me in my home but like what when you really break it down like i hope you can understand what i'm saying kyle but like what does jalen brown do at basketball that's definitively better than what paul george does at basketball i'm with you i'm with you dude i'm with you i think people are unbelievably disrespectful to paul george i think he's been a better and more versatile defender high five to you way way better pick and roll processor he's a better shooter i don't even think it's fucking close got very quick stories i know we're going long i was in a bar with some friends watching the playoffs this was probably 2018 maybe but there was a dude there who was a pacers fan and i guess he just had paul george i don't know if he's a pacers fan i don't know if I don't know why Pacers fans would have disliked Paul. He gave them so much anyway. I forget how he left. It might've been on bad terms, but he was just like heckling Paul George to no one. It like kept going on. And we were out in this patio space. He was like, Paul George sucks. And it went on for like a long time. And I was sitting there with my buddies and I was like, I'm going to say something to these guys. And my friends were going, please don't, don't, don't do it. They're like begging me. And it just went on and on and on. And I finally stood up and I went, Paul George is awesome. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's amazing. And I just like rattled off all this stuff. And he was like, couldn't believe that a stranger stepped to him about Paul George on a patio. I just had had enough. Respect. I'm with you. I'm with you. I think he's a, he's a great, he's at his bad playoff moments, but he's a brilliant player. I think he's more of a stretch for now than he was like, he's kind of, he's kind of in a full body cast downhill compared to what he was in the past. But a hundred percent. Don't disagree with that. I just think like the way Boston plays, they don't need a lot out of him. They don't need him to be like, who Jalen Brown was, if that makes any sense. And yeah, I just think like there's a lot of infrastructure still here that, that is successful. Like Peyton Pritchard's really good at his role. He knows his role. He's amazing. That's a key. Peyton Pritchard step up is, is a, is a very good year. He's going to be 29 years old. How much, every time he's been given more leash, he's produced efficiently. Do you think he has a leap? Yeah. I don't know how high that is, but even if it isn't anything like that's great. What he does is awesome. And I think Derek white shooting will come back a little bit this year. And I do too. I think like, instead of him being like the number two option, he's not that because Paul George will be on the team and Jason Tate of his back. So throw in Mitchell Robinson, who is like, I think like a super underrated signing and really, um, we'll just, you know, Boston's all about possession, the possession game, all smart teams are about the possession game. The Knicks were really successful at that because of the second chance opportunities. Mitchell Robinson creates grabbing offensive rebounds, kicking them out to open three point shooters. That is, I can guarantee that's why he was so attractive to them. And, uh, that is a humongous signing for Boston. Uh, so yeah, I just think the Celtics are going to be like really, really good. Um, and I didn't even say Ugo yet. I didn't say Ugo. You didn't do the Celtics cliche. Say, say Ugo. Um, yeah. Um, yeah, this team is good. They're starting five is going to be like an elite catch and shoot unit. Like I'm with you that, uh, our guy, Isaiah Blakely, I don't want to call him out, but, uh, he's pretty down some of the off. I don't want to, I don't want to air dirty laundry here, but he's been pretty down on our guy, Derek, Derek White. And I was, I was like, sometimes, sometimes if you're rooting for a team, you can be too close to it. I think you get like, I do this sometimes where it's like, you just, I'm not saying Isaiah lost perspective, but, uh, I had to kind of be like, it ain't that bad. I'd be, uh, I don't know if anybody calls him. I'd be, I'll do it from now on. Uh, so I think, uh, I think the most boring one in this whole order is the Knicks. I mean, they ran it back. They've got a core that I've mentioned on this show that, uh, they are all kind of like walking into their primes together, which is super unique. They have a chemistry that I suspect will continue. They unlock something. That I suspect will continue. Um, in terms of like notable losses, Mitchell Robinson obviously is a big one and he is pretty key to them. Maybe. I mean, how key, I guess is the question. How much do we think? Cause the drumming for, for, for Mitch, it's a different player type. Yeah. It's a different thing. How big and how, how consequential would that be? Because, you know, we, we talked about the, the, the Pistons, you know, reckoning with, we expect them to reckon with an East that's going to be healthy. The Knicks will, do we think that they're going to be that what they discovered? Was it substantial enough that they're just going to be able to run it back? People are coming for them now. Yeah. But I still expect them to be at the top of the conference. Wouldn't surprise me at all. If they were number one. Um, I just think that they obviously discovered something about themselves in winning the championship and showing that they are easily the most mentally tough basketball team in the world. In the NBA, there's really no debating that. Um, and I think that if they are serious about, uh, I guess like this is kind of more of like a vibes thing for me. Like, are you, how serious are you about the regular season and how serious are you about protecting your championship every single night and everyone coming at you? Uh, just what do you, do you care? Are you like, let's whatever. It doesn't matter what seed we are. We're going to get to the playoffs as long as we're healthy. Like I just want to know what their, their, their mentality is because this has been like an Epic deserved but Epic victory lap for the New York Knicks. I live in New York city. It, I still can never go anywhere without anyone talking about them. Um, so I just wonder like how, what, what their mental approaches as a collective as we head into next season. But they have like all the pieces obviously, and all the time, talent and they've found this beautiful alchemy under Mike Brown and can that carry over for six months? We'll see. But yeah, they deserve to be number one because it would be frankly disrespectful not to have them number one right now. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, they didn't just sort of, uh, eek by in a, in a depleted East. I mean, they absolutely stomped a mud hole in the, in an East, the Eastern conference in the playoffs. Yeah. Very, very impressive. Um, I'll say, I'm not as impressed with, uh, you know, get the bag OG, but OGs like Skechers shoes. I was saying that's gotta be the test. The ultimate test of like championship energy is do you see many New Yorkers wearing the OG Skechers shoes? Pina, I will say I was walking out of MSG. I will never forget this after the tip in game, like the comeback in a, was that game four? Yeah. Game four. And I was walking home, you know, going through Penn station and I saw a giant OG Ananobi, Skechers advertisement on the wall, like a giant poster. And I was like, you were like here, like in terms of like human beings on the planet. And just me seeing that, like when you dropped it, like at least two, maybe three inches, I was disgusted by that. Um, but no, he, he rules. And, uh, that will be like, that's like the greatest thing I've ever seen on the basketball court. So, yeah, man, this is, uh, it's, it's, it's wild. You know, I consider myself an Eastern person. Uh, you know, I guess I don't know Kentucky. Nobody really claims us. Everybody, the South doesn't want us. The Midwest doesn't want us. Obviously the North doesn't want us. Nobody wants us, you know, but this, uh, in my, in my time in the Eastern time zone, like see watching Eastern conference basketball. I don't know that I can remember it looking the way that it looks right now. So it's going to be, it's going to be a heck of a season. So, um, what do you got coming? Are you working on anything big in the off season here during your quiet time? Reading non or reading fiction, you know, what's going on? Yeah. A lot of reading, uh, still, um, but in terms of work, yeah, in terms of work, uh, for people who, uh, are paying me my salary, I am, you know, make something up, make something up. Yeah. We're pseudo crushing tape or preparing for podcasts like this. Uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. August is we're, we're sweating bullets here getting ready for the season. Yeah. We're sweating. Uh, but yeah, check out the site. We've got, uh, I don't know. This is a, I always kind of dial into the, the movie podcasts more this time of year. I get to like really breathe and enjoy them. I miss so much of like the big picture and ringer verse during the season. And I get to like circle back and all. Absolutely. Text Joe me. Hey, I'm finally listening to you. Yeah. So apologies to all our entertainment shows, but check all that stuff out. Uh, yeah. And, uh, other than that, uh, yeah, we'll be back at you sporadically. I know we're going to be kind of ramping back up into our regular schedule and the ringer NBA feed, uh, with our shows and we'll be coming back. So, uh, but Pina, good to see you. Good to hear from you. Love you guys. I'll claim you Kyle, by the way, I got you. I, my God, I appreciate that. Thank you.