Ranking the Best LeBron Fits, and Matchmaking for the Remaining Free Agents. Plus, the Celtics Explain (?) the Brown Trade. | Group Chat

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Hello and welcome to Group Chat. I am Justin Verrier. Joining me, Rob Mahoney. J. Kyle Mann. We're. Recording this in between the two soccer games. So if I start saying that you guys have a brilliant point or like it's a brilliant ball by you, which is what they'd say to every single play, that's why. I mean, most of the time is a brilliant ball by us. We're moving it around. We're keeping it in the air. I don't know what we're doing. Are we doing well? Please, please praise us. You bent that linear thought really well, Rob. Nice. Thank you. Well, I will say one thing. Is that I think we have a lot of good announcers in basketball. Obviously, Mike Breen, the GOAT, glad to see him in the finals with the Knicks, all that coming off probably a halcyon times in terms of announcers in the NBA. But the soccer announcers, they just got it. First of all, they got the accent work, which is great. Sure. And they're also like in on the theater of it all in a way that like even supersedes like what we do in the NBA. There was a goal from a guy named Bellingham yesterday on England. And he was like, oh, Bellingham. He brings up the scoreboard for that one. I was like, oh, I mean, look. Yeah. You're pretending. Yeah. You're pretending I and Eagle isn't capable of that. The Birdman. Come on. He's throwing stuff down like that. That's true. For sure. And better. Do they call him the Birdman? We do now. I will say how I know that Birdman, he acknowledges himself as Birdman in some capacity, which I enjoy. Oh, that's great. The Birdman. That's great. You're right. He would do it, but maybe a little bit more. Maybe we need just a little bit more Cockney accents going on. But we also waited because we also wanted to check out this Jalen Brown press conference at the Celtics gave Brad Stevens Chisholm, the owner, got up front in front of the Boston media, talked about it just quickly. I would say my takeaway from this, and I think the thing that's going to circulate as a result is Brad Stevens basically outright saying that having 70% of your cap plus a lot of your usage into two players. I would say my takeaway from this, and I think the thing that people take away from this is just like, it doesn't seem like they're losing a ton in the short term, but it gave them optionality in the long term because of the way the CBA forces teams into this situation. Yeah, I mean, I do think they're going to get optionality, and I know that because the word was mentioned 85 to 90 times over the course of this press conference. We have options. You don't need a new word. Look, I know we're as guilty of this as anybody. This is a word that gets thrown around on I don't even know how many podcasts, but now we know why. And it's Brad Stevens infecting us linguistically. And here we are talking about the optionality of trading one contract for a similarly sized contract with a worst player attached to it. Here's the thing. I never really heard an argument that, oh, having this much invested in the cap is a good idea, or that you can even build a sustainable long-term team. There's a widespread understanding that in this apron environment, it's really difficult to keep a contender together. Once the salary starts to bloat. The conversation around the Celtics all throughout this process has been, why now? Why for this return? And I have to say, trading for Paul George's contract, when that's just an intermediate step, it sounds like, into getting where the Celtics hopefully want to go, that's not doing anything to alleviate these broader concerns about the timing of this deal. Yeah, I don't think that the thought process of why trade him is all that difficult to understand. You know, especially. I think in the messaging that's come out, and I have to assume that it's gotten out through something close to the team or whatever it might be to sort of sharpen the language that was around the, like, he's the seventh best player. The problem with Jalen was that the distance between the value that he provides as a basketball player and the number that he was going to command in this increasingly, you know, constricted environment that it's so, so hard. It was just going to be really, really difficult. And the apex version of the Jays winning the title, those two guys being the focal point of it, was the product of kind of a unique financial event a couple of years ago when they managed to get Drew Holiday, they managed to get Porzingis. And it's just like, we're not going to end up in those circumstances again. And then you combine it with the fact that Jalen is, like we were saying, you know, when we taped another part of this pod at another point in time, we were discussing this at another point. He's on the process of wanting more, and he got a taste of that. So you're moving towards that. It's like he's not going to scale back into an optimal version of that. And then, you know, even if he did, the money is going to not match up with that. But the thing that's really, really difficult to square is just the win, you know. But should they have done it a year ago and tanked this season so that they'd have a better talent? I think that would have been hard to understand, too. It's just the return is just so, so weird. I think that's the part. And you want to talk about some bloodshot eyes. And it definitely looks – I don't know if before he went on he wanted to look more sympathetic, but Brad had some pretty worn-out eyes. Did you say he got some fake tears in there? Put a little droplets going in there to get a little moist? He was – he just looked like he'd been in front of a computer screen in a dark room for, like, 72 hours to me. But I don't know if he's doing some editing, you know. Just the clockwork orange with Jalen Brown's Twitch stream just to make sure he knew specifically how to reply. I mean – It was funny as the press conference kind of went on there and you got some of the more older guard reporters asking more pointed questions, which I always appreciate because they have no frills and they'll just basically be like, wait, didn't you already build depth? Because you're saying that all this was to build depth in order to compete for a longer term. And I guess you can make the case, as he kind of did, that going forward you will need to replace the depth that you've already built by having these draft picks and basically having to – previously traded a lot of your picks. In order to get the Drews and the Kristaps in the door, you need to – when Jordan Walsh needs to get paid, you need to replace him. It's kind of a really crass sort of thing underneath it all because it's basically like, oh, when your players are good enough to earn a living wage, you then have to trade them. That's a whole separate issue there. I just – I think the bigger question is ultimately the why now. Like, why did you do this now? Why didn't you wait out for even better deals to happen over the course of the next two months? I don't know if we'll ever get a direct answer to that. Rob? I kind of like – the way I read what he was ultimately saying was I don't know if he thinks they're getting appreciably worse in the immediate. Or at the very least, perhaps he thought that this version of the team, the Jalen and Jason-centric team, without the guts of the 2024 title team, without Drew, without Kristaps, without Horford, or a lot of the supplementary pieces that kind of bonded it all together. I do wonder, and what I read from this was like maybe he thought that they would never get back there. And so this is probably – Yeah, I mean, if you're in Brad Stevens' position, you never go on the record and say we're going to be demonstrably worse after you make a big controversial trade. So it was a lot of like, let's see how it goes. Like, let's see where the cards fall, which fair enough. Like, I think most of us expect the Celtics to still be pretty good, even with Paul George as a member of the roster. I think the larger concerns about the makeup of this. Team and the depth and all these things that we're circling, like they do have good ninth and tenth men here on the bench. I think the refreshing that we're talking about is more like where are they going to find the next version of the fourth and fifth guys that they need to replace the Porzingis and the Drews? And, you know, if Derek White continues to trickle downward, what happens there? Like it's this is where if you'll take a drink or pardon it, the optionality comes into play. It's the thing that GMs dread most of all in my experience. is not making this sort of hard decision. It's feeling like their hands are tied. it's feeling like they are so cap stricken that there's nothing they can realistically do to improve their roster. And then they're just kind of stuck because these, like all of these people who run teams are just like fiddlers by nature, right? Like they just want to tinker around the edges. They want to make their machine run a little bit more smoothly. They want to put in the one piece that puts it over the top. And if you feel like financially having these two massive contracts is restrictive to that, I can understand the frustrations that come with it. I do just find it a little odd though, when it's not like the Knicks two biggest salaries are dramatically smaller than Tatum and Brown. They're not Jalen Brunson. Granted, it's Carl Anthony Townsend, OG and Anobi, but there are a lot of teams that are really successful. The Celtics included with giant salaries at the center of them and have still managed to count cobbled together at least enough depth to go on really long playoff runs. I think the depth point that you made at the beginning is really on the money because, and you would have to get to this, you would have, you would have to arrive at this place with a really sober look at your roster. And I think that the Sixers gave that whether they had it or not going into the playoffs, the Sixers gave it to them, that they've, they have really done a really good job of taking dudes who were probably like 12th to 15th type men and bringing them up maybe to like 11 through eight. Like they, they've done a good job, like, uh, growing assets to that point. But it's like, there is a developmental question, I guess that somebody smarter than me could go and delve into, which is just like, can you get beyond that? How often can you get a player to like shoot overshoot? What is kind of a natural range of what they can accomplish with their, with their skills. And I think that they are looking at the guys they have and they're saying like, I don't, we don't really know where the solid playoff rotation guys are like, these are good. These are good regular season players and they have overachieved and you know, they fit in our system. But we saw that once they got strained that they're maybe not quite the types of players that can reach like a championship level. So naturally they're going to be more expendable. So a Jordan Walsh is going to sadly just kind of be like, all right, we're going to have to rotate in the next guy and hopefully find somebody that's, you know, find the pieces that are going to help them win the way they want to. Cause they clearly don't think that they have it, I guess right now. Well, I mean, it's also one way in which this is so directly a challenge trade, not just cause you're swiping like trading out one forward or one wing for another, but this whole idea of like, what kind of depth do you have? Jalen Brown's contract and Joel Embiid's contract, pretty comparable to what you were getting from Tatum and Brown in the first place. It just looks a whole lot different when you already have Tyrese, Maxie on the roster. And when you already have even just some of the supporting pieces that the Sixers do, where you can talk yourself into being bold and swinging for talent when you already have a little bit more of an infrastructure to accommodate it. Yeah. With these press conferences, you're ultimately looking for the trail of breadcrumbs that get dropped in between all of the big long-winded monologues. I wrote down, diversify the attack that really caught my eye there where perhaps wanted something, a little bit less on the ball. As I mentioned up top, like having so much usage into two players, clearly Brad, I think is more of a type of let's share the rock. Let's let's democratize the offense. And so again, that's probably another front office coach sort of thing being like, let's play a little bit more spread out. Paul George probably is going to facilitate that a little bit more than Brown. The other thing, another move isn't coming after this. I think he said that pretty directly where it's like, we don't have anything lined up for the now. I had to sidestep a lot of, of implications about like free agency. Cause those aren't official. So you can't really talk about them. But beyond that, I think he said like, this is it. And so the optionality, the big buzzword of the day, like really is why they made this move. It isn't like a Trey Murphy coming down the road. We'll see like trade deadline or maybe into the season. But for now, like this is the Celtics, which if you're a Celtics fan, you probably have to be feeling pretty sober about right now. But I guess, I guess two years from now, you might be able to flip Paul George's contract, and you might be able to draft some guy with the 17th overall pick. Yeah. Or even one, frankly, because it's not like teams were like lining up to take Paul George back right now at the money that he's paid with all the restrictions that we're talking about in terms of what it does to your team. But one year closer to it, when he's more of an expiring or like even this upcoming deadline going into his expiring year with the player option, maybe then it's at least more of like, you can get some teams on the phone and you can do it without having to attach. Some of these picks that you just got in the jail and Brown trade to begin with. That's that to me is kind of the mystery with all of this. Like Jalen Brown is an all NBA level player who is paid like an all NBA level player, maybe a little more than he's worth on the court. We can go back and forth on that. I'm that that's kind of a separate conversation. Paul George is a good player who is quite massively overpaid, who the Sixers would have under other circumstances had to give up first to get off of in the first place. And the Celtics took him back for the sake of flexibility, but really, what it looks like out of the kindness of their heart. Like I don't see the mathematical play of we're taking back Paul George to make ourselves more flexible financially, other than we're going to sit on his contract for probably at least a year. Well, he comes off in 20. I mean the conversation around what a 39 year old pushing 40 years old Paul George in 28, 29, it's going to be pretty clear cut that like we ain't getting back in the business with this. And Jalen is Jalen would have this, this would have come to a head at some point, I know people are just for us. And obviously justifiably frustrated about it coming to a head now, but I don't, if you wanted to just find any sort of like light gray lining, we won't call it silver. It's not shimmering. It's not going to make you feel great, but it's like Paul George. I honestly feel like I just need to take just a moment here and remind people that the apex of Paul George has been better than Jalen Brown. In my opinion, I think the primes of these two players are not really even close in my opinion. And I think that Paul George, is more role malleable. I think he's an incredible, he's still an elite catch and shoot player who is taller and in a stationary isolation, defensive kind of situation is just as good a defender as you gave it to him at different times. So I want to be really like this dude, isn't a bum he's overpaid, but I just think if you're talking about in terms of the flexibility, you're going to get off the money uncontroversially here. I guess that's a positive if you want one, and then he's going to be able to scale down in a way that basketball wise, I don't know that it'll reach the highs of, but what if we turn around? The Celtics are better next year. That's what if they are, then we'll talk about it. I, do you think that's going to be the case? Is it a 0% chance? No, there's a chance. There's a chance. I think that there, it'll be easier. Some of the offensive complications of the Jason and Jalen pairing, things will just flow a little bit more. And from that flow, maybe they'll have a good regular season, but I do think their playoff ceiling is probably capped. And basically what you're describing is Paul George is just a high level. Role player, which is kind of what we're saying about Jalen. Like won't live up to the super max. Well, Paul George definitely will not live up to his contract. Maybe there's like some way that they rehab his value next season, show that he could be a productive player and then flip them again. The following off season, when he only has the one year, that's kind of the theory that we put into the wizards when they traded for Trey young. And they're going to do that. Well, wait, no, actually they're going to sign him to the worst contract in the league and just keep them for the long run. Nevermind. Yikes. Well, here's, here's the thing. In, in light of Trey young, we're talking about Jalen Brown and Paul George and whether they're worth their current contracts. I fear we may have buried the lead on all of this, which is the Jalen Brown conversation is not that he's paid $58 million this year. It's not even that he has two years left on his deal. I think a lot of it is the Celtics don't necessarily want to be on the hook for his next extension, right? It's the money that's due after. And so if you're not having this conversation now, you're having it closer and closer to the expiration of his deal. It's just still is a big deal. It's a bitter pill to swallow for me in terms of the timing of all of this. I understand the forecasting. I understand the concerns. I understand wanting to get ahead of it. I still feel that if they had waited or if they had played this market differently, that they could have been involved in some other conversations, Giannis or otherwise, this just, it feels incomprehensible to me, given all the reporting that's out there, even with all the pessimism out there, that this was the best that they could do for Jalen Brown. Yeah. Do you really think they were going to be able to sell some team as that extension approached? Do you, do you, do you think how many teams do you think would have looked at that extension and be like, yeah, man dying to sign up for that? Like I just seems, it seems like a tall order. It is a tall order, but I don't know, like teams get desperate. Teams want stars. Like you wait for the right team and squeeze them at the right time instead of, Oh, we have to get off this guy now because we're so worried about, I would presume, although Brad Stevens wouldn't confirm it, the damage that's been done to that relationship that everyone is kind of dancing around with Jalen Brown. You play the market differently. And all of a sudden you get to make the trade when you have leverage and not when the other teams do. It's all about timing the market, not timing the market, you know? Sure. They say, is it? They do say that. Okay. People say that. All right. Let's flip to the next part of the pod. As Kyle mentioned, we, we recorded this earlier in the day. We're going to talk through the best fits for one LeBron James. We gave her one through fives. And then we talked about some matchmaking fits, tried to play a little matchmaker, trying to, trying to put the remaining free agents to a new destination. So hear that right after we. This episode is brought to you by major league baseball. There is nowhere left to go. Two teams, one championship. Watch the world series. Yeah. The world series presented by capital one on Fox and Fox one. No time like October visit MLB.com slash post-season to learn more. Take a break. All right. It's LeBron time. And Kyle, you actually brought your own whiteboard here doing a little rich Paul action. Yeah, there's a board back there I was just gonna to kind of let the public we need we need to like cultivate like a reddit conspiracy conspiracy theory kind of culture right to the pod i think that would sort of up our numbers get people talking you know i don't think we want to stoke anything in any reddits at this point like let's you can doodle on your board as you please it's your home it's your life but i simply can't encourage all that right if anyone wants to watch the video and like really pinch zoom in you can see Kyle trying to find where Rob and I are going this summer, I guess. Is it like vacation? Is it career-wise? Just gauging your all's interests and things like that. Don't worry about how I doodle on my board, Rob. That's my business. I agree. Okay. Well, we couldn't get the rights to the real Rich Paul whiteboard. I asked for the clearance, but apparently I don't have it. Rob, I was surprised that you don't have the access to that. Why would it be me? You're management. Well, you're a big wig now, Juan. And also, you're a Dallas resident. So if anyone knows the advantages of being close to oil, it's you. I do know all about the oil. If you want to know where the oil is literally buried, I'm your guy. I can hook it up. Is there a Spotify warehouse from Indiana Jones where the government keeps all the props from the different shows and the whiteboard's going to be in there and years from now, somebody will run it down? I like the idea of that. Various Celtics. Various Celtics ephemera from like rewatchable sets past, you know, it must be sitting somewhere. I can assure you that there in fact is one. And I know this because a year or two ago, I went and dug out all the stuff I left in my old office from Sunset and Gower in what would have been like early 2020 because we had to vacate the office. We thought we would come back. We never did. And so six years later, I have the New Orleans baby cakes mug that I so desperately was pining for. So there is this whole sort of storage situation. They will watch you as you go into the storage situation just to make sure you don't take anything you're not supposed to. But yeah, it exists. The lengths that I saw you go to save that baby kicks mug. I've never seen you work so hard for anything in your entire life. Years from now and all of this stuff is admitted before a grand jury. I'm sure that's why they were watching you so closely whenever we're held accountable for everything that goes on here. Yeah. Well, all right. So we're going to go through the best LeBron fits on the board here. He's really the last guy out there who could probably make a meaningful difference, like a top 30 player sort of difference on a team. We've all ranked one through five, what we think are the best LeBron spots. I did it without really being beholden to the whiteboard. I factored in every single team. I'm basically looking for what is the best mix of team fit, but also something that's realistic. I don't think he's going to. I don't think he's going to take the minimum to join the Pacers or some of the smaller market teams that don't really necessarily need him. Why are you trying to hurt me? Sorry, but I'm just being a journalist. I'm being beholden to the truth, ultimately. Yeah. No, I think it's a good qualifier up front. Just realistic enough that it's either whiteboard adjacent or you at least have to kick around the idea. The Pacers, for as much as I would love to see it, are just not going to happen for a variety of reasons. So let's get into the ones that at least might. Yeah. I went with narrative value, roster fit, and then fun factor. Just those three categories. Okay. Did you guys factor in anything beyond that, Rob? I know LeBron is talking about happiness is his motivating factor here. I don't know really what that means per se, considering his family is in LA and he went to LA specifically for similar reasons. So it's a little nebulous. Did you factor in anything else? I mean, I think you factor in the finding joy aspect in the sense of like, would LeBron have a good time playing here? Like, would this be an experience that he would chase after or would want in some conceivable way? But that just usually ends up coming down to one of those other buckets anyway. Yeah. So this is like a Marie Kondo sort of thing. Like if you see Tyrese Maxey, like, and he sparks joy, just go toward him. I mean, he always sparks joy. That one's a no brainer. Very true. Why don't we start with number fives here? Rob, do you want to go with yours first? So I have the Golden State Warriors at number five. Okay. Okay. Peak, peak plausibility, perhaps like I can really see this happening. I think it's probably still the favorite on the board, although I know the Cavs have maybe made some inroads just by the inaction out there. Otherwise in the market, I just think that the Steph LeBron connection clearly works so well. And it is one of the most powerful options anywhere on the board, as far as where LeBron could go and who he could play with narratively in terms of basketball, in terms of just like quality of life, mechanically getting through the regular season, what could be better than playing with Steph Curry for a full year and kind of living out that particular dream. I just think we, we all deserve this in a way that transcends Olympic play or all-star games or whatnot. And that includes LeBron and Steph too. Kyle, where do you have the Warriors? I have them at number two, actually, because I feel like the narrative value here is pretty strong where you have the two, arguably the most important players, impactful players of their American players. That is, I guess you should, you could, you could really quibble that, I guess, but we'll just go with it. I'll say that the two most important two guys born at the same hospital in Akron, interestingly enough, not that the same year. Go back to where it really started. Go all the way back, baby. There was some nurse on duty that had, I don't know, maybe it was a situation. We'll see. In terms of the roster fit, it's a little clunkier, I think, just because if you listen to the things that LeBron would want. And you know, myself as a 41-year-old pickup basketball player, I can kind of feel this. There are some days where you get put on a team where you're like, I'm going to end up having to do more than I want to with this group of players. You know what I mean? I'd rather have to be calibrated where I can pick my spots and do the things and feel a little bit like I used to feel, but ultimately I don't want to carry the same usage load. It's kind of like when you look at the Warriors, it's like Steph needs burden taken off of him. Beyond that, who really is going to be the person, you know, who's going to be the person taking the reps to lighten the load for those two guys? So I think it would be super, super fun. Like I went back and I was watching a lot of the actions where Steph and LeBron were involved with each other and like in the Olympics. And it was a lot, a lot of fun in the pick and roll and the handoffs and things like that. But I feel like basketball wise, it might be pretty clunky, like them figuring out how to run this team with their age defensively and then, you know, take, not burn them out offensively because there's past Steph, there's just not a lot of offensive options. I ultimately had them number one. And I did that because I just feel like the fit is like wide open for him. Like if you're looking at the depth charts, as I have up here from ESPN.com right now, the starting five is set up and the, which are always on point, right? Yeah. 100% accurate all the time. Guy Santos is starting small forward for the golden state warriors. And I just feel like maybe that's just like me projecting on here because I see the void right happening. Um, but there's just like, clearly they need him. I think Chris stops coming back, gives them the stretch option at the very least could like, like loosen things up in the offense a little bit, especially once Jimmy returns. But I think Jimmy is really the sticking point here where he's not expected back until February. And you don't know if he's actually going to come back then because he's coming back from a page. And so does LeBron want to like, wait for him to come back? Does he really want to put his probably last year in the hands of the recovery of another player that gets messy. But when he does come back, I feel like this is the type of team that suits his preferences, right? Where it's just like, we're all on the same page career wise. Uh, we all at the same level, star wattage wise, kind of varying. Uh, it just, I don't know. It just feels like you're, you're playing the role of the team. Like this one feels more like something that he would be interested in. It feels right in a bunch of different ways. I think the balance is kind of what we're laying out here, which is, do you pick the team that has players around you or maybe even coaches around you who are kind of at a similar stage of life? Like people you can connect with a community that you can be a part of with the team, or do you pick the team that has the younger legs that could take some of the weight and the responsibility off of you to the extent that LeBron wants that? I think he wants it to a point. He clearly wants to be involved. He wants to be one of the coauthors of whatever team he joins in the season that they're going to have. But I think I just worry about the other part, like between Steph and LeBron and Jimmy Butler are all, are any of those three guys going to end the season completely healthy? It feels like a long shot. Like there's going to be nagging injuries. Some of them could be taken out of the lineup altogether by the end of the season. Like there's just like a lot hanging on their collective age in a way that I'm still down for the season. I'm still down for that team, that team construction. I hope it happens. Frankly, I just don't know if it's like the ideal fit for what he should be chasing at this point. There's a real lack of piss and vinegar in that, in that alignment. That's all I'm saying, you know, because if you watch these playoffs, it was kind of a piss and vinegar playoffs. A lot of these backcourts, very, very physical at the point of attack. I think this will be a recurring thing. And as I was going down through the teams, thinking about what LeBron still can do, like in spurts, in controlled doses, and then also what is going to be in order to get the most out of that stuff. I think you have to have some other balancing factors on the floor, not just the scoring part, but just, I think ball pressure and defensive protection is going to be really key. And I just don't necessarily see it with the Warriors. so and there's there and that factored into some of my my thought process yeah for some of these other teams too that we can get into yeah i think the youth thing is interesting because on the one hand i agree that he needs younger legs in order to pace him through the regular season most teams do not just the older teams at this point on the other hand like how much does like the the established veteran really want to hang out with the interns you know like just in terms of like a vibes like getting through the season is there really an appeal to that and really airing yourself out here justin you know well i don't want to hang out with most people so i'm a little bit of a different case uh i also feel like with pajemski in particular like real mario chalmers lebron is just going to dog him the entire time oh sure and i almost wonder if like we're thinking nostalgia play like there's no throwback like lebron just like yelling at a teammate who's younger than him so there's that so you're telling me like before lebron has his readers on he could look at ghi santos and be like oh that's anderson varajow right lebron's playing in readers it's funny oh yeah get some like goggles horace grant style but they're readers at the bottom of his i think it's beautiful get aging is beautiful you know it really is well kyle what do you think about the young guys on this roster they have yaxal here they have pajemski well richard was pretty good last year yeah and he's he was good in some of the early i haven't checked on the like last day or so summer league returns but he's playing well he's an older player too and i mean i think it's important that we know that he's a good player we at least acknowledge them before people hear us like just roundly dismiss the the warriors youth uh just say you know like yaxal is gonna be he's an older player he's as as we know he's coming in at 24 years old uh and i think he'll be able to you know take a lot of tougher defensive assignments you have a lot of great smart help on this team defensively like would be some of the wiser defensive helpers in the league and i think lebron in terms of like off ball processing and playing that that chess board i still his brain is i mean all time i mean it's arguably one of the best all time that's offense and defense so you have him and then you have uh obviously we talked about you know pajemski and and and will richard i think those are d anthony melton re-signed you know we've been i feel like the hypothetical d anthony melton is sort of like moving away from what he really is more by the day so maybe he'll rebound and have have a better year but i don't know where you guys are on the younger the younger players it just feels like a lot's up in the air with with them yes i just think that there's enough in support of what they have in the structure versus what they tried before which is to try to break that structure to find something that would level them up there are no longer these jonathan kaminga type to must i'm like completely misreading yaksal i know he had some issues with some of the things he would say in interviews but like if he could just play his role at least for this year or they can get him to buy into a role this year then level up down the road like these guys support the team of a lebron steph draymond sort of vision and they're not going to be able to do that they're going to be able to do that and then you could worry about that later in a way that like they probably hadn't before and so yeah that's part of my my understanding here rob is like i just think that it's more balanced than in the past where they're trying to mess with two timelines i it definitely feels more balanced it feels more more cohesive for that reason but it's also not coincidentally why they don't have the kinds of ball handlers that they might need like you do have to walk this tightrope between being the style of team you want to be but also having some pure bucket getters having some creators having some guys who are going to play a slightly different method or else everything is just going to be running steph curry as he rounds into his late 30s sprinting around ball screens every possession like you need alternatives and look lebron gives you a lot of alternatives he gives you a lot of ways to tap into offense he can play his own version of bully ball but really just using him as the trigger man for the greatest shooter to ever live that's just going to make a lot of these guys really good within their roles cutting slicing hitting spot up shots like that foundation is going to be really fun and really good basketball basically no matter how you slice up the rest of the roster well you mentioned scorers why don't we go to number five on my list which is the philadelphia 76ers who now have an abundance of them including clutch client tyrese maxi tm uh i did find it funny when rich paul was going through the the whole exercise there he's like oh tyrese maxi lebron loves him and the calves don't have dearest garland uh that's a big one both of whom are his clients i was waiting him to be basically be like you know what my my intern lucy just is from chicago gotta put that up there really loves the bean have you guys seen the bean first of all the bean can get fucked the bean sucks oh as far as as far as landmarks go come on we can we can do better than the bean man we're gonna get letters there we go what's what's his actual name the millennium arch or something like that i've never been millennium gate oh god what what is the bean fuck the bean wow there we go the cloud gate sorry the cloud gate is the bean worth being like is it worth saying get fucked rob that's a you're really going nuclear on a pretty inanimate object that just looks cool and it's not like well there's your problem i i guess here's the thing when you're of a certain age you just get inundated with photos of your friends in their reflection at the bean and it's like this is so the 700th most interesting thing about chicago a great american city go during the summertime it's unbeatable just don't go to the cloud gate have you ever seen the sears tower he twisted that come on twisted that where he's pro chicago that was i am pro chicago that was a savvy move that's fine that's fine i just you know all right well with the sixers here i there's a lot going on for them i almost wonder if there's too much this is just like a really messy situation to really be vaulting yourself into uh there's the fit there clearly if you just want to take the dean wade spot in that starting lineup it would be one of the most star-studded starting lineups i've seen in recent history uh having said that similar things with mb as with butler where it's just like you're not really sure when he's going to play if he's ever going to play and when he does play just feels like he wants to be pretty demonstrative about how he goes about his business and it's more lurching and slower than ever before and with butler at the very least you know that there's a finish line and it might just be that he'll be back and then we go from there whereas with mb the start stop nature in addition to like how jalen brown is just going to really weave his way into this team rob for me it's an attractive talent package but as a full like fleshed out team i just don't think it's there yet and so i have them at number five yeah i actually had them as kind of an honorable mention for that reason it it could happen ostensible like again they're on the whiteboard for a reason and the talent play for that kind of void at power forward if you want to call it that fair play plug lebron in there his super processing brain would clearly help these guys fit together i also think it might just be over complicating him over complicating it to put him in the position where he's going to put him there when they're already having the jalen brown like massive addition and massive amount of sea change that comes with that to the point that i mean you talked about the fit justin but i kind of think dean wade fits what they need more than lebron fits what they need no one's going to turn their nose up at adding lebron james to a roster under basically any circumstances or at least they shouldn't but like they need perimeter defense they need spacing they need guys who are going to allow jalen brown and tyrese maxi and joel and bead to workshop their way into being a viable team and they're going to be able to do that and i think that's going to be a big part of the reason why lebron is going to be a viable trio lebron can assist in some of that stuff like his standing his reputation in some ways even his ego might be like a little too big for that kind of like honestly like tertiary sort of role even within that setup well i'll surprise you guys here i have the sixers as my number one destination for let's go all right talk us through it make the pitch uh fun factor obviously whatever who gives a shit at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if you're having fun if you know lebron's like going to go anywhere just because of fun i mean he wants to win i think the roster fit here really makes a ton of sense if you were going to allow lebron to sort of sit in a lazy boy recliner for the longest amount of time on any one of these teams and still maximize the things that he does really well i'm not going to make the maxi pun i thought about it for a split second uh this would be the team if you think about all the scoring guards that the scoring tilted guards on this team scoring tilted players you'd be giving lebron a lot of toys i just think that that would be he would be in the position to pick his spots when he wanted to play in movements where you have the kinetic movement of the you could even throw simons and phylon like mix him in with those teams you'd be unburdening those guys he might average 10 or 11 assists a game on this team like i think he would be it would be a really really fun fit there's no real narrative angle here other than the gansey thing but i think basketball wise this would be very very fun uh putting lebron in philly definitely would help them pace out the regular season and so you could play through whatever and bead injuries happen you could play through whatever lebron wants to play and whenever he decides not to i i guess the question is does it force jalen brown into more of a supplementary role because we were already saying brown's arrival probably forces tyrese maxi to do a little bit less is brown in his first year with philly if he wants to do this like revenge tour is this going to force him to be a few years old or is this going to force him to be a few years ago playing off of kyrie style jalen brown where i'm more of like a supplementary defender uh like just attacking off of the the catch sort of guy versus someone who's the main spotlight you know and lebron soaks up all the oxygen in a room is he going to want that but you're right if he's willing to do that then certainly it fits if not it just seems a little clunky to me i just think you need a lot of people who are willing to do things like how little are if you plunk LeBron onto this team. team because now LeBron would be functionally their point guard in a lot of ways Maxie would be unlocked as a scorer but Jalen Brown is gonna get up a lot of shots Joel Embiid is gonna get up a lot of shots I just feel the squeeze coming for too many of those guys where I'm already like wanting to wait and see and eager to see what Jalen Brown does to the makeup of this team and everyone's habits and influences and like the roles that they're playing within the offense adding LeBron it does feel like one ingredient too many to me but also like what I'm not turning it down like I would love to see that I would love to see LeBron try to help these guys along even if maybe it's not ultimately what's best for them yeah I think you could just put this keep putting the spices in there do you put a lot of spice in Baba Ganoush I don't know I'm just saying holy hell I've never made it on top maybe but even that's more of a hummus thing I gotta say I think the the Jalen scaling down thing would be the main variable because LeBron has been his touch time and his dribble time has like been ramping down over the past five seasons so he is obviously whether he's like excited about it or not he has been sort of drifting towards this maximizing the the things like he's really really good in the short roll like I was going back and just kind of watching his actions directly with Luca like how he navigated that like he's still one of the best short roll players ever I think he's one of those guys where they overplay a score like a maxi or a Jalen Brown I think you take pressure off of those two guys being home run hitter passers I think you can let them just kind of be who they are and it's just like Jalen go try to get buckets and pick and roll Tyrese same kind of thing you could even go four or five with Joel a little bit I just think if guys were willing to slide and scale that would make I think it would make Philly the best offensive team in the league arguably if he went there I mean they would be crazy if they kind of maxed out their potential what all those guys can do to make Philly the best offensive team in the league arguably if he went there I mean they would be crazy if they kind of maxed out their potential what all those guys can do if you get them to work in concert would be unbelievable and also I think we might be downplaying the narrative angle a little bit in in the shadow of a season where the Knicks just won the title LeBron going to Philly like a long-suffering franchise in many respects I mean they've had some playoff success but haven't won a title in almost 50 years have had some real low lows LeBron coming at the tail end of like this process era and putting them over the top into into contention if everything went right I do think there's some value there and I do think the Sixers as an institution have a reputation and a standing that is like okay that is a team I could see LeBron actually going to LeBron who wore six because of Julius Irving do they allow him to wear it for the one season that he's there like yeah you could definitely write out the script a little bit yeah interesting do we make much of the golf store thing or the where do you all like the social media sort of campaign thing because he was in he was in Akron right also really high I have to say also in that club just out in plain sight in a club I don't know I feel like it's like just barely shrouded the show social campaign that's going on yeah well I mean who among us doesn't go home for a little summer visit I don't know how much to read whenever LeBron is in Cleveland but they're probably the favorite if we want to talk about the Cavs uh I have the Cavs at three unfortunately I think for all the narrative reasons they probably are top on this list probably the Cavs at three unfortunately I think for all the narrative reasons they probably are the most likely scenario especially if you're factoring in LeBron wanting to be in the east because the easier path to the conference finals at the very least I just don't see how he fits alongside James Harden I also think it's a very girthy front court if you put LeBron Mobley and Allen there like are we trading Jared Allen at that point in order to feature Mobley is Mobley ready for that considering he keeps getting beasted in playoff scenarios but the the ball they're both basically power forwards defensively at this point but also they want to be on the ball and so and Mitchell wants the ball and so it's just like it's very cluttered and so basketball fit wise I almost wonder if they just like erase the past couple months since the deadline and just walk back the Harden thing and just don't sign him that would be great but as long as he's there Rob I just I don't see it yeah I ended I had times where I was making this list and they were not on the list for pure basketball reasons and then I had times I was propulsion that LeBron going back to Cleveland would bring and so I ended up just putting them at three and kind of splitting some of that difference where they are complex in terms of offensively there's just a lot going on between LeBron and Harden and Mitchell for all the reasons you just described defensively all three of those guys need help and should not be chasing around the top scorers in the league on a game-to-game basis like that's kind of a nightmare scenario in terms of trying to manage a functional playoff level defense and yet there are some things that are just bigger than basketball and it's like pretending that these guys especially someone of LeBron's caliber and place in history would think about their free agent decision is like where do I fall on the org chart is just not realistic and not true to the spirit of this kind of exercise and true to what kind of decisions human beings make at this stage in their life like going back to a place where he played his most meaningful basketball a place that is adjacent to his hometown effectively that is his team that to me feels like a better conceptual fit than so many of the other ones that might technically be cleaner or have a vacancy at power forward or like make sense for this reason or that like the Cavs just fit and they would have to figure out the basketball as they go and yeah it would be really complicated but we can't pretend we don't see it or we wouldn't understand why it would happen like it's the most human option on the board for him to just go back to Cleveland I just I have a hard time with the Cleveland one because you mentioned it like the I just think I have a hard time seeing him pick any team where the the opening like the front door to their defense is like it's penetrated consistently if teams are getting into the first and second level and I just think mixing the Harden and the Donovan Mitchell thing there I just think it would be a tough you know you have a nice backstop stop with with Jarrett and and with Evan but I just think I agree with you I think there would have to be some kind of movement there and I think that both of those guys you know we wanted Donovan to kind of move into this you know two smaller guard you know moving off ball more kind of a thing and they would do it here and there but they never fully embraced it when it was him and Garland together and I'm just like Harden is less and less likely to be a part of that I mean it's just it's really clunky to me I I wrote this down this is pretty wild so there are 37 guys in the league we're in the 5,000 touches club this past season and only Shea had a longer touch time and dribbles per touch than Harden so Harden was number two and he had the lowest efficiency in the top 10 so this is a guy who is he's not you know we're talking about LeBron embracing the fact that he's gonna have to engage with off ball stuff be less involved directly with it Harden's going the other way it's like he's he's going towards it's like the only way I can stay on the floor now is if I have it in my hands all the time and I just don't think you're maximizing it's like the worst version of what he was with Luka like I just don't I just don't see it I don't see it working and then the narrative side of it is like I don't see it working I don't see it working I don't see it of it 2016 was just like such a great I know it didn't end it end in 2016 but that's the last thing thing that we remember it's just like can you remember like a tv show or a movie or whatever it is that had a perfect end point and then they came back again it was like you didn't need to come back like leave it there Veronica Mars what are you doing okay again please be respectful please respect our legends did you throw that at Rob on purpose because Veronica Mars feels like why well look guilty as charged didn't they bring it back specifically because the fans like they like put money toward it or there was enough of an outcry or something I'm so glad you asked so Jesus Christ three seasons the third season was already kind of going off the rails a little bit because they were trying to get people to watch it they had to zhuzh up the structure season show gets canceled then they kickstart a movie that is like pure fan service absolute dreck then they revive it again as a hulu series shortly after that it's like it's like it's like it's like a little more like hard-boiled I actually really liked it ends in like the controversial killing I guess spoiler alert for Veronica Mars I'm not going to say any names but the controversial killing of a beloved character people fucking lost their minds let me tell you in my corner of the world this was a huge deal I did not I actually I actually kind of liked it okay well so maybe there's hope for LeBron there I think I think so if this is season four Veronica Mars I'm gonna be happy I don't know how happy everyone else will be I don't see the narrative value there I just don't I don't I don't know what the point is like I feel like it's just better for him to stretch his narrative out in another direction because the Cleveland thing was just so satisfying the end of it like why go back I don't know you don't see the narrative value in a guy going back home to play with people that he may like in a place that he enjoys LeBron so global now it's just kind of like I don't know he transcends time and place he's the Beatles he belongs to everybody it's just there's a point where he he just did that I just feel like his career has crossed over into this like he's not beholden to one place it's more just it's it's so expansive it's like why not just expand it into another area like playing with Steph that's more interesting to me like going back to Cleveland it's like I feel like Cleveland should be satisfied right they can't really be mad it was perfect he just goes to Denver instead and just becomes like a dispensary guy you know just invest in the pot business gets into new terrain well we'll table that they may be coming up on this list okay well Kyle who where did you have the Cavs did you have them on your top five I had them at five okay solid yeah uh rob you had the warriors at five you had the calves at three uh who do you have at four so at four i have a team that i feel like is not being talked about a lot that makes a good deal of sense to me and that's the houston rockets okay i don't i really don't see this option being bandied about i i don't believe they made an appearance on the white board unless i'm mistaken uh but if we're talking about reuniting or in this case uniting lebron with team usa teammates but also like foils of a former life lebron and kevin durant playing together would be pretty rich i also think it's like team up with kevin durant incredible pairing of scoring and playmaking between them play for a contender that so clearly needs what lebron brings to the table and just enter your like late stage magic johnson era uh like you everything that we were talking about as far as like the kind of passer he could be for the sixers i think he could do that and more with the rockets if you just imagine how much they needed and missed fred van vliet and then you make fred van vliet six nine and as good as lebron i just think it could kind of work like he would help these guys run and gun you have amen thompson and tari eason all game to take defensive responsibility off of lebron you're setting katie up possession after possession you have shangoon to short roll help with the playmaking do all those things and then you have lebron and kevin durant playing together with team usa those things like i it would be a little clunky in terms of the spacing sometimes and like a lot would fall on is jabari hitting his threes on this particular night but i kind of like it and i would kind of love to see it a lot of uh a lot of patrons with big stomachs and open mouths that really need a chef and lebron would be an incredible caterer for them like he could come in and just be like hey reed shepherd your life is infinitely easier in all these different ways kd like i mean kd that's one you know kd is an incredible caterer and he's an incredible caterer and he's an incredible caterer obviously just making his life easier a lot of these guys jabari it's that's the kind of character of this roster is they just have guys who can do things but they just need that first step and i think lebron could he'd be just an upgraded version of what shangoon does for them i mean shangoon would be an interesting variable to this though like what would happen with that do you think like does he go to the bench could they play together i don't know well especially because the the clip that's kicking around my mind as rob was laying this out is lebron saying on the foul line to shangoon not you anyone can say it but not you uh which is a tough beat for him i i like the the general thinking you have here where it's like lebron seems best served like bringing up a talented group of young players especially the rockets who seem like they need an adult in the room in the very worst ways like you're talking about jabari smith hitting open threes how about jabari smith recognizing time and place and situation and just knowing what to do with the ball on a given possession because he has so much talent but good god that guy just cannot make any sort of reason to fly and so for that lebron has a history of loving those guys that the loose track of time and situation right yeah that's true that's right it goes well at very least he has 10 000 hours there i think kevin durant is an interesting variable there because on the one hand i i agree with you i think like trying to book end like well if it's not steph maybe it's the other guy on team usa that's a nice little story and how does it feel like kevin durant's like the worst sort of player for this team as we found out not just because of his extracurricular activities on on his twitter accounts or maybe potentially allegedly uh it's also like they need this guy to rear the youth but like whenever you need kd he's just like over in the corner working on his bag with like the big old headphones on he's like i'll see you guys later i gotta i gotta work out my dribble step hezzy pull up it's fine here uh so for the i don't know i just can't but this is what lebron is for lebron is the like let's go to top golf guy and kd can work on his bag you know there can be something for everybody let kd be the brooding one to the side making comments like you gotta stabilize that there was too much power okay it was tipped too much towards kd yeah i just so the front court would be shengoon and lebron or it'd be jabari and lebron i think who's adam's no no i to be clear i'm slotting lebron and is like an actual point guard for this team like i think i think amen is rotating around guarding whoever you need him to guard but you're playing lebron amen thompson katie shengoon probably as your starters i don't hate it as much as i thought i would the defense will be a concern but uh you know it's about as good of a fit as some of these other ones we've mentioned so and i think it's interesting it's not just like who can guard but who can guard flexibly because like amen thompson can guard at least one through three even some power forwards jabari smith one of the best bigs in terms of chasing wings and guards around if he has to do that and so if you have to like cover for both lebron and lebron and lebron and lebron and lebron and kevin durant to try to make their lives easier on defense i think those are two pretty good ways to start okay uh kyle do you want to go with your number four now rocket's not on my list by the way uh number four i have the minnesota timberwolves uh for the for the main reasons i don't i don't this isn't my favorite one i'm not gonna act like because i have a hard time seeing lebron signing up for aspects of this because the the chaos of the lamello and lebron idea would be extremely fun he would be an incredible mentor for those two guys um defensively though i mean so the fun factor very high the roster fit i think they could use him talking about like teams that are going to have a very strong front line of of defense to protect him and not overburden him they can help him on all fronts like i mean you've got a good backstop granted rudy has his issues i think lebron would help rudy um but you have mcdaniel's you have io you have jalen clark underrated i think you have um you know and i just think defensively they'd be in a pretty good spot and i think he could uh fill in there at that spot where the randall naz read thing and do basically everything that those guys did in and and more and more and more and you like quintuple the basketball field and iq i think he'd be a fun fit there but i i there's no narrative angle there at all it would just be him feeling bad for the wolves i guess i don't know or minnesota or why what would be the angle but basketball wise it makes sense i just don't know that i would i could see him signing up to like tutor those two guys this is my favorite option by far it is that's one for you this is my number one and it was it wasn't even close zero hesitation minnesota timberwolves with a bullet i i disagree about the narrative angle first of all i think i really think when you're trying to chart where lebron will go yeah it's can you go back to cleveland i think the idea of going to a team and saving it is like one of the few things he has like left that he could do right like go to one of these teams that has never won a title go to one of these teams that hasn't been able to break through a particular wall like i thought honestly it was instructive and rich paul on the pod talking about why lebron won't sign with the knicks basically because they already won the championship and if they hadn't he would probably be there that's kind of part of the thinking right it's like who who are the teams that really need what lebron brings to the table and lebron is going to be the one that's going to be the one that's going to be the i mean just one of like the i can fix him kings like going going into minnesota helping ant elevate his game getting lamello to play like nails like more focused basketball taking rudy to a place he's never been before but also in the process like i think having the balance of like he can bring a lot to the wolves and they have everything that he needs to do a little bit less and get through a full season and take the pressure off like ant is a score lamello is a playmaker jayden mcdaniels and rudy as defenders and ant when he's really locked in as a defender to say nothing about i agree with you on jalen clark like that's a that's a prototypical lebron teammate if i've ever seen one it just makes sense i don't know if it will make sense in his mind but it certainly makes sense to me see unfortunately for minnesota a place i've never been to but seems lovely especially in the summer that just strikes me as the type of place where lebron would be like minnesota i'm gonna spend my last year in the pros just freezing my balls off trying to get cleveland yeah i was gonna say not that cold tropical cleveland yeah yeah minnesota you're taking the skywalk to get off of the road because you can't be outside when it's a certain time of the year like there are degrees to this sure i just don't know if he wants to do that year i think the other part of this is like on the one hand yes there are young players there that he put his stamp on i feel like the task of trying to breathe life into lamello on a daily basis and like trying to get him to like lock in would just drive he has nothing if not life that's not the issue okay well trying to build structure around our friend lamello ball and trying to get him on task would send anyone to the insane asylum like i just wrote down for for the wolves here on my doc knuckleheads and and like yeah it might be fun to play off of those guys those zany edwards and lamello ball just eating skittles at practice isn't this fun uh but on the other hand like trying to get them to execute at the highest level when you have your last year on the line that seems really difficult i just think historically lebron has been a bring me your knuckleheads kind of guy like that's that's where he lives and breathes is trying is like showing people hey you are wrong about this particular basketball talent he may not work everywhere he may not work in these other situations with these other stars but he will work with me but maybe maybe that's more trouble than it's worth at this point but that does seem like how he likes to operate sure but with his best player like his best player he's got a lot of talent he's got a lot of talent he's got a lot of go-to teammates like the big threes aren't usually where the knuckleheadedness is concentrated well the knuckle headedness in this case is concentrated in one of the best players in the entire world and also like a clearly all-star level offensive talent who just led one of the best offenses in the league like how we're just like full-throated arguing over this hypothetical i honestly think ant needs less help like ant has completely convinced me that he's okay like i just feel like his accountability is like he's been more he's really really impressed me with how like willing he is to be like take inventory of his strengths and weaknesses and where he's his faults and things and when he screwed up um i used to say that it's it's more of a stage of career thing where like lebron in the calves lakers era sort of when he was peak of his powers ultimate floor razor probably of all time i always said that he had this power called contextual healing and at one point i tried to write a parody to that and it failed but um i just think that at this stage of his career i'm like you i just don't know how much he's wanting to flex that muscle like i feel like he wants a little more help even though i think that he could help those guys um i don't know he could it could happen it could i mean that would be a really really good basketball team so i don't have a great argument it's just kind of like does he want to sign up for that it was my main like i don't know i don't know if you're getting much more help than anthony edwards and lamella ball and offense mcdaniels and gobert on defense like that's that's pretty much an ideal balance for a guy like lebron yes that's why i had them for because i think the team fit is probably the best there but in terms of personalities i also like rudy's a very prickly sort i don't know if lebron like wants to gravitate toward this it seems like he wants something like a known quantity and the closest that we have there is ant from the team usa days but it's just like how much is he really on his level he's not really a peer per se he's more of like someone who idolized lebron going up so i i don't know in minnesota factors in here so i don't know i don't know if he's going to be able to do that but i it happening but i agree with you that like in terms of basketball it probably is one of if not the best like options for him um have we talked about the nuggets yet we have not so i have the sixers at five i have the wolves at four calves at three who we've all mentioned in the warriors at one the last team i have is the nugget so i have it number two i do as well okay um i just think basketball wise it makes a lot of sense i think if we're talking about the age range lebron perhaps wants to gravitate toward right there guys who are on the cusp of something clearly last year didn't go particularly well but i almost wonder if we're overestimating how much of a catastrophe it was when they had a pretty clear issue and a lot of it was injury related it was obviously the defense is going to be concerned it becomes more of a concern with lebron in there but the offense can be just so blistering that it might just not matter uh maybe you're worried about aaron gordon's health maybe you're worried about jamal murray not being uh the same sort of player he was last regular season there's a lot of things to like maybe quibble about but just in terms of like a team that's like right there on the edge it just feels like lebron would want to just be the one to push someone over the top uh and also apparently on this whiteboard uh cronky is a factor here given his sure success in the la market and some of his other teams so there's that as well i don't know i just like spiritually it feels like a yokish lebron thing is the type of thing basketball fans want and he's probably one of the biggest basketball fans and so i wonder if he would want to experiment with that as well oh it would be it would be sick i mean yokich lebron aaron gordon jamal murray in particular those guys share a basketball sensibility that i think would just be scintillating to see them play off of each other he would fit really seamlessly into so much of what they do i would quibble though justin with like the idea that their offense might be like so potent enough it's going to be overpowering as it is like i thought if anything entering the saw some of the limitations granted with certain guys injured but like jamal murray was so overtaxed and yokich was had to go so far just to keep them solvent on offense i do think they need to do something dramatic bringing in one of the greatest playmakers of all time is pretty dramatic and i think would catalyze so many of the things that already work there and unlock some things that aren't being tapped into even with yokich there by like playing alongside him so this is kind of the juice that they need this is like the accelerant for everything that you like to do and like about the nuggets without i don't think really taking away those elements at all i had them at number three um i think that the stuff you're all hitting on is when it is true like when i was going through like his superstar fits you know him with a helio guy it's like you can make it work but i think the ultimate version of him is going to be with i keep using this phrase low touch time and i think the two candidates to like really give us the most fun approaching nirvana version of basketball we've would be steph and lebron or yokich and lebron and they'd be different versions because it's like naturally like yokich isn't going to be humming off ball the way steph would but you would have jamal murray granted he stays healthy you'd and cam johnson i think would be a pretty fun option to throw in there too like in terms of you get the off ball movement you get lebron in these situations where you know over the course of the season thinking about how i want to use lebron like i don't want him pounding the ball for three or four dribbles per per touch i don't want him going downhill and taking that contact i want him one or two dribbles in a straight line he's still very very effective like that so i don't want him like accruing and amassing sort of damage over the course of the season that's going to wear him down but when you think about the teams across the league putting lebron and yokich together man it's just incomparable there's no there's no previous thing that resembles it it would be the god like it would be the best like double fulcrum offensive setup i can't think of a better one i i really i don't i don't think that there's anything similar to it in the history of basketball if those two played together yeah what would even be the closest comp as far as like two pass no there's no two passers of this level that have ever played together but on an actual nba team and not like a dream team i don't even know what could come close it would be bird walton i that would be would that's a pretty good one i think that would be the one and both of those dudes are still capable of being elite go get it yourself guys it would be so so so so fun i might move it to two honestly i'm talking myself into it yeah and they also have the peyton watson factor here i almost wonder if as a result of this he probably has to go elsewhere because we should mention peyton watson also a clutch client and so is this a way to get peyton watson somewhere where he could be featured and then slide lebron and is there like a kind of a quid pro quo they're going there i also think like if you look back last year with the nuggets i think part of the problem with their offense was that they were they didn't have guys like that they didn't have watson who was such a critical part of his offense and gordon wasn't there they would be a little hefty in the front court if you're counting on a gordon lebron yokich front line um because you assume it would be jamal murray and cam johnson like complimenting them but i just think there's just so much creation to just put them into a playoff situation and just have them solve problems like you just have two locksmiths like just working in concert together it's just like you're cracking safes left and right depending on whoever the team is and so i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good is and so uh it's an interesting fit and for that reason i have them number two did we mention everyone on everyone's lists kyle do you have anyone left uh yeah we got all mine we haven't talked about the heat that's one that's been thrown we should talk about them yeah that's the only other one yeah i didn't have them on my list in part because i just assumed norm powell was going to be there just to have any semblance of shooting and you look up and down this roster it's just it's lack of a lot of juice outside of there uh you're just hoping and praying that bam is going to be putting up threes more than even last year when he was just like really settling into that being a main part of his offense uh there's it just feels like they're at least a year away from being highly competitive and for that reason i just don't see wasting perhaps your final year in basketball like trying to make sense of something that like you stripped yourself down in order to build something anew rather than lebron wanting to be a finishing piece to something that's already established yeah i just don't really think it would be what he or yannis or bam would really want in terms of the kind of basketball that they would be forced to play like all three of them would have to give up some of the fun things about being a star and just do more dirty work to make their like union make sense for all those reasons especially the lack of spacing like it wouldn't be a disaster i think it'd be totally fine i think the heat are going to be good with or without lebron contending in the east certainly but i i just don't think relative to some of these other options it's really what he would say i think it's going to be a disaster i think it's going to be a disaster sign up for or really what the people there would want i think it'd be helio model superstar without the uphill gravity which i think would be really really difficult for lebron at this stage like yannis and lebron together i mean it would have to be inverted it'd have to be the other way around and we've seen that yannis isn't really excited about playing that style of basketball i just yeah it would be a pretty clunky fit i think wait kyle genuine question uh what is uphill gravity shooting right just you pulling you want the uphill it's just you pull everybody towards the half court line sure i mean like everybody higher pickup points like you're not jumping the level of a screen when when yannis is coming you're you're playing drop you know and i think that'd be tough for lebron yeah makes total sense uh also are we sure that pat riley and lebron are like good well i think that that would be the reconciliation here right like that's some of the narrative value right right my understanding is it didn't end well never got past the point where they reconciled so you're right this would have to be the reconciliation this isn't like they are they're good now and then they had to figure this out everyone's gonna be on the same page moving forward and lockstep i mean bottles of wine would have to be opened dinners would have to be had like tense conversations in pat riley's office i'm sure or like wherever but like that is the prerequisite and so that's some of the appeal of some of these teams it's like what would it take for lebron to want to sign up for that and i just don't know that there's enough here to overcome like having to mend that particular fence for this basketball reason that was a funny one because i kind of understood both of them where it was like i was like riley's perspective i was just like he's not wrong i mean i kind of understand but then from lebron's perspective i was like yeah i'd be a little offended by that too i'd be like buddy this is this is a different era like you know this ain't this ain't the same thing and i'm i'm kind of different from everybody else don't talk to me like that i kind of understood both sides yeah definitely there are 29 other teams that are going to sign up for that so i think that's a good thing definitely definitely there are 29 other teams that are going to sign up for that so i think that's a good thing let's just do that right before the season starts uh i also have the pistons down if only because i lament the fact that they don't seem anywhere near this chase and they felt like the type of team that should have been where they have the young superstar and cade they have this young context clearly they're good without lebron but he would be the old guy like just adding what he does putting a little spice onto the dish and all of a sudden they hit another level but just like one of the most disappointing off seasons thus far maybe they have something in their back pocket that they've been working on i saw like a kevin durant to detroit rumor who knows but like that's the exact type of team that you'd want the narrative potential is there where it's like oh i beat them in the eastern conference finals a couple years ago uh like let's just let me join them now in order to help get them over the top you know i don't hate it honestly i i think lebron clearly could help with a lot of playmaking a lot of balancing out all the pressure that's on cade would bring a ton to the pistons i i don't know that it makes sense again relative to some of these other alternatives but it would be great because lebron going most places would be great do you guys have any other ones i have one other one i mean if we're just going to acknowledge that like lebron isn't going to sign with the knicks because they won the title then why not join the team that couldn't beat the knicks because they were so clearly missing like end of game composure organization to their offense in critical moments i would say tobias harris is never going to get in the way of any team signing lebron james but i think the spurs are a team that we have to at least kind of throw out here as one that he could really and legitimately help in so many different ways and also has a lot of the kind of tent poles to take the pressure off of him yeah you could you wouldn't have to he could really pick his spots i don't yeah the roster doesn't really i mean the pacers were a fun one too i mean that idea halle and lebron together would be a pretty fun you're talking about that'd be another guy another entry on that list of guys i was talking about about him how he interfaces with certain types of superstars i mean that would that would be a pretty fun one i mean balance out the workload on the group project you know like see how it works this time i was gonna ask about the the knicks how many like the ce the caa clutch thing is pretty like stinky on that team in particular right how many clutch guys are on are on the knicks at this point i don't know yeah off the top of my head i think og maybe i think og yeah either way let me let me fact check real quick it's not gonna happen so it's just like what we don't even have to uh okay i think i have an answer horn i believe the answer is zero clutch clients on the there we go roster there we go i don't i don't know that uh the caa stronghold is ready to invite rich paul in i don't know i'm just speculating who knows well it's almost odyssey season you know if not a trojan horse there we go yeah uh all right why don't we take a quick break come back talk about some remaining free agents and where they might go this episode is brought to you by ea sports fc 27 welcome to the world's game fc 27 is introducing the grounds where the streets meet the stadium connect with friends go pro and express yourself on or off the pitch play fc 27 with the ultimate edition september 18th learn more at ea.com rated e for everyone includes in-game purchases including random items the grounds is only available on playstation 5 xbox series x and s pc and nintendo switch 2 versions the mosquito bowl is the incredible true story of four college football stars who walked away from nfl careers after pearl harbor to enlist in the marines from friday night lights director peter berg and starring nicholas gallatin bill scars guard ray nicholson and tom francis comes a story of brotherhood and sacrifice four men who traded the gridiron for the battlefield the mosquito bowl in theaters october 30th all right before we hopped on this podcast unfortunately one of my guys i was going to talk about as we kind of match make some of these remaining free agents with some of the teams still left with cap space in order to make some moves was rui hachimer was one of my guys uh seemed like one of the biggest dominoes left on the board in part because it seemed like he was in concert with lebron where it's like oh if lebron goes elsewhere maybe the warriors who have the mid-level open maybe they'll chase after rui there's just like a mid-level spot with so few teams maybe they would use it on him the clippers were one of the teams on my list for that reason they ended up signing him pretty nice deal i would say overall rob good player showed over the past two years he could play off of stars just like the shot is there in catch-and-shoot situations big athlete doesn't rebound a ton not like an impact defender but just a good solid player and it seems like the clippers i mean they could use as many of those as they can get their hand oh yeah at this point i like the price i like the fit zero problem with him becoming a clipper it's not the kind of signing that like opens up your imagination as far as who the clippers are going to be but the clippers are going to be pretty good i think they're like pretty comfortably in the glut of western comfort zone i think they're going to be conference teams that are going to be vying for the play-in and a move like this to me is a good reminder of the fact that they don't own their first round pick this year like it's invoked in a complicated swap that i think will probably end up going to the thunder but could end up somewhere else so it's like they might as well be good they might as well be competent they might as well bring in rui to kind of replace some of what they were getting from john collins or nico batum and then some like having a spacer who can also guard like why why would you pass up a player like that i'm amused just by that trio of players tobias and john collins and then rui it's just like those guys walk into like auditions in hollywood i feel like they'd look around and see each other in the same in the same waiting rooms over and over i just it's an interesting like big four who can kind of shoot it create it a little bit not going to be a heavy decision maker um i'm just imagining one of them is dylan mcdermott and one of them is wait dermot mulroney is that the guy you know they are just in the same rooms constantly yeah well with rui off the board there really isn't much there outside of a couple of restricted free agents we still don't know about jalen duran obviously peyton watson who i mentioned earlier i do want to talk about watson before we get out of here but um rob which free agent still on the board is catching your eye i think catching our eye is strong given who is left here because really it is there is the lebron and like unresolved business of james harden or just to clarify for the audience rob wanted to do this segment i did no i wanted to do this segment because like i want to dig around in the bargain bin i'm not i was gonna say i'm not gonna pretend that these guys are gonna fix any team but can they give you 15 good minutes i think they can this is like when you go to like mr gaddy's and you you were there for like an hour or maybe i don't know 30 minutes and you you got a few tickets and you're like i want to spend them and you start looking through the case and you're like oh man do i want the army man with a parachute or do i want the pencil topper yeah just like into like a few tootsie rolls like a handful maybe that's what the bottom of this list looks like i'm like who can help oh god it's rough well well let me pitch you on not the army man with the parachute not the tootsie rolls but like the little monster finger puppet with the wiggly arms that you put on oh my son loves that shit man that's don't hate on that endless i'm not hating not hating a bit on that not hating a bit on what i'm about to pitch you which is why are the lakers not blowing up gary payton the second's phone right now if you're a team with only minimums to spend and in desperate need of defense like would that not be your first call as far as who they can afford who could actually help them who has like again the the ability to guard a wide range of perimeter opponents specifically guards i think he kind of represents where the lakers are in their market right now and i think he actually could help rob we've been here before harry payton june the second can only play for the golden state warriors he tried playing elsewhere before we got 20 to 30 woge articles about his failed uh physical it's true he ended up back there for like what was it like a bushel i think it was like five second round picks and won a title immediately right yeah he can only play for the warriors and that's it see i had the same exercise when i was trying to think about like is there a good landing spot for nicholas batum until i remembered that nicholas batum just makes quality of life signings and has signed five consecutive contracts with the clippers even while getting traded in between there somewhere so maybe you're right maybe he is just going to be a warrior he likes his grocery store he likes his you know i i you know he's he's a creature comfort kind of a person it's true gp2 the the rubber glove i don't yeah he could maybe i could see him going down there i could pivot off of that i had a similar kind of thought process about matisse theibel another guy that i'm sure justin has strong thoughts on if i'm the lakers and i'm looking i don't know what kind of market he's going to have because he's had health issues he obviously basketball wise has been you know had little stints where it seemed like he's viable as a spacer he seems like a distressed asset if i'm and i'm the lakers i'm probably playing the distressed asset game now i'm looking at somebody who's disruptive maybe kick those tires i think if you can't get gp2 theibel seems like uh well what's the dollar amount for him i guess he's not going to take the minimum is he he might it's so complicated at this point because in between all of his missed games the past two year which is a considerable list it's like most of them he's played the best basketball of his career like the shooting has been legit and now it is a small sample but it's like not the best basketball of his career that small of a sample he looks very comfortable shooting the ball and it feels like if that was like the one sticking point that he was such a destructive force defensively just like what can you give you offensively like i think he could hang there and he's obviously an intuitive player honestly like one of my favorite players i've ever had to ask a question to because he's like honestly one of the most thoughtful articulate people about basketball i've literally ever met uh i don't know if that's an asset to the lakers but he is a good guy um i just think like how much is the price there because if it is a minimum then certainly but if you have to actually risk your few available dollars for him you're just constantly worried about the injuries because it was like a few things i remember at one point last year like you had an injury and then it changed on the injury report because it was something else it's just these things have just been mounting for a few years now that's where i could see one like a like a flyer take the minimum for one year and guys are loathe to do this we should say players if you depress your market if you take a lower exception if you take a minimum they're so terrified for good reason that they're going to get locked into that price range as far as how teams consider them but if you're someone like matisse theible who's battled all of those injuries who hasn't really been able to answer the questions of who you could be in the playoffs go to one of the most high profile situations available alongside so much offensive firepower and show what you can be like if he went on a run with the lakers where he was a genuine plus in whatever series or however many series they ended up playing in i think that's actually the kind of move that could explode his market a little bit just never wearing socks to that guy it's like 40 degrees it's just wearing like burks no socks on i'm like don't do that that's how you get injured that's how you get like frostbite frankly don't please no i was like in games he's not wearing socks it's like uh the olenek or he's more low he's more like no show low cut i was no show for a long time uh that's i like some no that's that's twisted shit on a basketball court oh yeah yeah it bothered my head coach he came over to me during i have a vivid memory of this he goes you're wearing socks i was like yeah why do you care it looks cool it does not look cool no it did in the early 2000s it looked cool then mid-range socks came we know you want to show off your ankles but like it's it's really not that deep yeah and they got these kids wearing tights just all the way up to their caboose yeah i experimented with those it gets really warm it gets really warm because calf soreness is a real thing man so sure compression compression socks anyway is there any other names we want to hit well should we mention peyton watson here he's a restricted free agent definitely of like a probably a higher class than some of the other guys we're considering but seems like the big domino on the board there was a story recently at that in the athletic where it was like oh they're at an impasse which tends to happen when other teams don't want to sign the guy to an offer sheet because they know that the current team is just going to match it you've seen a lot of that with jalen duran and so i'm skeptical that the nuggets if they're not going to follow this lebron dream scenario like would actually let him go because as long as they're willing to pay the price of not only his contract but also the luxury tax implications and apron complications clearly they need him they need exactly what he brings which is like youthful juice like the type of offense that they're not getting for some of their aging players okay we can't be saying youthful juice on this pod that's not a thing we can say also are we saying impasse that's no i was gonna let that impasse i'm throwing the flag impasse i'm putting a little accent a goo on this stuff because i'm trying to class this shit up all right everyone else is going out there with the world cup and being all euro style i can add a little on boards up there i just don't i can't you're really you're really in your caboose on this one i cannot abide i cannot they're at an impasse all right yeah i'm just like for teams that need exactly what watson brought to the nuggets last year like i get like that it took him a while to get there i get that the injuries stalled them last year like detroit for instance we talked about them before like why why do you not want peyton watson like you have the assets to go do something fucking do something seriously like i think some teams can get in their own heads with guys like watson where he he probably is not best slotted as a as a four full time even though offensively it's tempting to use him use him that way at points because like he just doesn't guard bigs that well he's definitely the kind of ford who guards wings much more effectively and so if you're the piss and you're thinking okay we really need somebody who can fill this like specific tobias harris kind of void if we're not going to keep tobias harris that's how you talk yourself into getting john collins who's just like not as good of a player as peyton watson and frankly didn't require the kind of sign and trade hall that peyton watson might but i i agree with you i think he could help a lot of teams i think that kind of athleticism that kind of defense like who he is as a shot blocker is really valuable really important i i don't know why the market is this way other than the nuggets need to get something significant in return for him if they do trade him or they need to keep him around because he's so useful and so important what they do well is i mean he is on a job market another guy who's similar i guess is kuminga i mean that's the other player i had written down here in terms of what could happen with him um i don't keep gravitating back to the lakers that's another team that i the lakers are the i mean kuminga with the pistons i don't know if they have the money to go get him but another two dudes kind of in a similar lane similar age sure with the pistons i just feel like they're right at the precipice of being something significant and you should be taking this opportunity to level up and watson fits exactly what they're looking for and that he's a defensive first player but he's not a defensive first player and he's not a defensive but brings this sort of offensive pop not juice uh in order to like take what they have and just add a new dimension to it i think like him plus a sar with the length there like would be crazy and then they have the defensive context to support them you get a little like like the matchups and the lineups become a little bit more complicated because they have so much size that doesn't shoot but like you could size down when you need to you can size up when you need to like there would be a lot there kuminga is a little bit different where he feels like more of a lottery like you want to find out what is still buried beneath there and if you have the available minutes to do that i get it but that's typically a team with no stakes like kuminga seems more like a bucks player to me that wouldn't lose anything by playing through him and like allowing him to explore the studio space versus a team like detroit who has a lot riding on next season i just don't know how much of a lottery pull it even is it's like a a school raffle where you can get a dinner with a local celebrity like i just really don't know don't want even what the good version of jonathan kuminga is if i am a team that's playing for something it's so it's so insulting too justin i mean you're basically saying he's i don't know you're just basically saying that you guys are saying different versions of the same thing here it's just like i'd rather send him to a team that has no consequences and give him atrophy reps that are just rough and it doesn't add to anything and it's like is could kuminga is it possible i guess if you were going to play the devil devil's advocate thing here and just say like is it possible that he is just more equipped to be a part of a pick and roll heavy team where he's you know catching and quickly just you know he gets satisfied in those little second side catches he gets or whatever it is handoffs as opposed to a high reed intensive kind of system that he failed in with the warriors it's like i could see i could see him working with the pistons i guess my question about watson with the pistons is do you think they keep leaning towards players when you were talking about watson guarding wings more so he's more of a three four they keep going after these four three type dudes like collins and tobias and things like that it's like are they trying to just protect that ruggedness that they have and if they go with a more sinewy rangy guy like a watson is it just kind of leaning away from their identity more it's like why they keep doing this i don't know because collins could play some five also i don't know yeah i like the mix and match potential i think watson fits their style by adding something a little bit different whereas like i was saying like cominga i think just gives them something something completely different. And I don't know how much you need that, especially because you have the idea isaiah joe types in order to like be the on ball like second unit sort of guy uh do you really need to funnel possessions critical possessions through a guy like that like unfortunately i just think this is where the cominga market is like i don't know who's signing him to like a rui hachimura style mid-level deal because those teams by and large like probably already have their young guys they're trying to develop yeah i think he's probably like minimum make good on a good team or maybe just slightly above that on a team that isn't really competing for anything next year yeah i think the minimum make good market for a potential playoff team is one that i'm eyeing and trying to figure out like okay what is the situation that could even give him a decent chance of success he just doesn't really have a track record of being like a good winning player in almost any circumstances like can be productive can score like we've gone we've we've gone through all this coming stuff so much but like yeah i hear you kyle about is it systemic right like is it is it a matter of put him in something that's a little more straightforward putting him in in like a more of a pick and roll style system which many players have gone through golden state and just like not been able to pick up or find the cadence or lock into that offense like it's not a unique problem for jonathan cominga it's a very particular skill set that i don't think he necessarily has would he be better off somewhere that is just like a little bit more straightforward that suits kind of the athleticism he can lean into and the driving part of his game that is easily like the most potent part of it but how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you find that and how do you without putting him off the ball so often that who he is as a shooter becomes a bit of an issue or who he is as like a stagnant off-ball player becomes a little bit of an issue it's like there's a line we're trying to walk there that i i don't know what the good situation is and maybe it's a team that just ended up giving away a bunch of stuff via trade over the summer and then looks at their bench and says man we could really use like one more creator to help spell some of these guys like the you know the hornets look up a couple months from now and they're just like man jonathan cominga really makes sense for me and i think it's a really good situation and i think it's a really good for what we need right now i could see something like that happening yeah i'm just looking at the options the clippers level project you know but they just gave away their mid-level to rui so it probably have to be a minimum sort of contract just isn't a lot of fits there i think luca makes sense for him i just think what you're talking about is like gary we just said to people who were kind of the inverse it's like gary payton is a point guard who can't shoot but he has a very good basketball mind and you put him with the warrior he has no problem mixing into what they do because he's so athletic and he can guard but you put cominga who's more of a you know he probably is better in a lower movement offense that's more with his physicality so it's just interesting how these guys fit and where they don't it's true and a lot of it is like do you know who you are and i don't know though that's it right there yeah do you know he's like i'm as good as luca uh for the record justin i do not i go through life on a daily basis just grasping at straws but you know some days you get to come in here and talk about youthful juice and everything feels okay i know who you are rob look at the board that's who you are i know thank you for laying it all i've been trying to figure out what my whole deal is but i should have known you'd be locked in i'll send it over did we figure out where where rob is going based off of today's conversation he's following the oil money as we figured out earlier he's really attached to it what's the um what's the appeal of doubt if you were to write down your whiteboard rob and you're gonna say like rob's gonna go back and forth with you and you're gonna say like back to dallas here are the things that he's looking for is it like cool hats uh tex-mex tex-mex is number one let's be real about it okay uh wide open spaces you know i love i love a sprawl personally who doesn't know what the chicks are very important uh absolutely cowboy take me away come on like we're just absolutely peaking there's your trouble come on this is what i'm so i guess the chicks have backdoored their way somehow into being on the dallas list i don't know how that happened but otherwise like food and space and convenience and cost of living i think it's a pretty good package maybe not for a lebron james level uh person although look that money could stretch very far if he wants to live in dallas for a significant portion of the year i would love it personally i would i would love to go back at some point just to clarify the chicks not yeah chicks no the chicks capital t capital c the chicks because changes had to be made just in case your wife was listening to an hour 30 into this podcast and was like whoa rob just going back for the chicks going back to dallas for the chicks as as one does okay uh all right why don't we wrap up there uh thank you to jeff sheeran for filling on production thank you to isaiah blakely we'll be back i believe on thursday we will talk to you then you the mosquito bowl is the incredible true story of four college football stars who walked away from nfl careers after pearl harbor to enlist in the marines from friday night lights director peter berg and starring nicholas gallatin bill skarsgård ray nicholson and tom francis comes a story of brotherhood and sacrifice four college football stars who walked away from nfl careers four men who traded the gridiron for the battlefield the mosquito bowl in theaters october 30th