September 24, 2025 • 29 mins
Jason reacts to the latest information reported by Pablo Torre Finds Out in the Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers, Steve Ballmer, and Aspiration situation—including what he believes to be as close to the "smoking gun" as possible and why the punishment by Adam Silver and the NBA is important in legislating this type of crime for the future.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight. You're at
the volume heavy Wednesday, everybody, Oh love you guys are
having a great week. We are going to break down
some clipper stuff today. I want to go over some
(00:22):
of the latest back and forth that has taken place
in the Steve Balmer may or may not have been
illegally paying Kawhi Leonards fiasco. And then at the tail
end of the show, I want to go over some
of more of our mail bag questions from the last
couple of weeks. You guys have the job before we
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(00:43):
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In the last but not least, keep dropping those mail
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them at our mail bags throughout the remainder of the season.
So there has been a lot of back and forth
in this Clipper situation with the cold heart evidence. Pablo
(01:07):
Torre has continued to piece together a pretty compelling record
of investments and payments that look incriminating to say the least,
but again still mostly circumstantial. At this point, Andre Scherney
came out and defended himself. Mark Cuban continues to send
out these incredibly long tweets, like incredibly long tweets defending
(01:28):
Steve Ballmer. We even had a strange Adam Silver moment
where he said he had no prior knowledge of Aspiration
at all, which he then of course had to walk
back because Pablo Torre pointed out that obviously he would
have to know about Aspiration because of the league rules
regarding team sponsors. So all of this stuff going back
and forth with the evidence, but I keep coming back
to one single piece of circumstantial evidence that I find
(01:52):
to be super compelling, and that every single attempt to
explain away the other stuff fails to ad this single point,
and it's simply the amount of money that Kawhi was
paid relative to the other payouts from Aspiration to celebrities,
especially relative to the amount of work that was done.
The example I keep coming back to is Robert Downey Junior.
(02:16):
So Robert Downey Jr. Is like an absolute a lister
by any measure. He is flatly more famous than Kawhi
by a wide margin. He just got recasted into the
Marvel universe to save it from falling apart, and we
literally all know it's going to work. We're all gonna
(02:37):
go see Avengers Doomsday. I feel very confident that Avengers
Doomsday is going to crush in the theaters and basically
revitalize Marvel after this kind of latest phase, which hasn't
performed super well. That's the power that Robert Downey Junior has.
That's the leverage that he has in negotiations regarding his
paid appearances. Actually appeared on camera for Aspiration, He filmed
(03:02):
a commercial something Kawai never did, extensive voiceovers on camera
appearances again, stuff that Kawai never did, and yet he
was paid only a tiny fraction of what Kauhi was
paid to essentially do nothing. This is where the Leak's
standards approved for this sort of thing come into the equation.
(03:23):
From what I understand, the NBA does not need to
prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Clippers circumvented the salary cap.
The standard is much lower, and that's where this piece
of circumstantial evidence becomes a sticking point for me. The
bottom line is Aspiration, who was in a very intimate
(03:44):
partnership with the Clippers that involved a massive investment from
the Clippers ownership group, paid Kawhi Leonard to do nothing
ten times as much as they paid a much bigger
and more famous star to do way more work. The
payment to Leonard literally makes no sense. Pablo was able
(04:06):
to get a signed statement from multiple high ranking executives
at Aspiration that essentially said, we don't think this payment
to Leonard made any sense, and we voiced our concerns
about it at the time. It may not be the
literal definition of a smoking gun, in the sense that
it's not concrete proof that Steve Balmer paid Kawhi Leonard directly,
(04:30):
but it is an incredibly strong piece of circumstantial evidence.
I was here. I heard Zach Low talking the other
day about how some of his conversations with league personnel,
like people work for teams around the league. They've centered
around the idea that the Clippers essentially have to prove
their innocence here, and I completely agree the Clippers should
(04:52):
have to prove that they are innocent of any wrongdoing here.
The reason is because the integrity of the league means everything.
We all remember how bad it got during the Tim
Donnie scandal. People still to this day talk about the
refs as if they're rigging games. I don't agree with
(05:12):
those people, but a lot of people feel that way,
and they feel legitimized by a scandal that is now
almost two decades old. In order to maintain the feeling
of integrity and fairness within the competitive structure of the NBA,
Adam Silver will need to come down hard on the
Clippers if they can't prove their innocence. The public won't
(05:36):
buy it if you just come out in a few
months and say there's no concrete evidence. If they come
out and they go We did an investigation and we
found no direct ties between Steve Baumer and the payments
to KWHI Leonard from Aspiration, that is not going to
fly in the court of public opinion again. Robert Downey
Junior literally filmed a commercial for Aspiration and got paid
(05:58):
a tiny fraction and of what Kawhi Leonard got paid
to do nothing, and the Clippers ownership group invested enough
money in Aspiration to cover those costs. It reeks the
high heaven of caps or convention, and so the Clippers
have to demonstrate their innocence. And like, it gets even
darker when you start to look at there have been
(06:19):
a lot of players for the Clippers that have taken
discounted deals in recent years. Like if it's a Zubots
like nick batoon, like, it could get even darker. The
court of public opinion is not going to buy just
sweeping this under the rug. Now, let's talk about the
consequences here, because this is where it gets really tricky.
I've seen a lot of talk about, like, oh, what
happens if Kawhi Leonard's contract just gets voided? What if
(06:43):
he goes and signs on a veteran minimum contract or
a mid level exception with a contender? Like what if
Kawhi goes and signs with the Knicks, or signs with
the Calves, or signs with the Denver Nuggets or something
like that. I don't think you can allow that to happen,
because at this point, I don't think the Clippers would
(07:04):
even care if they lost Kawhi. I think they're kind
of done with that whole experience. And for Kawhi, if
he just gets to walk and go compete for a title,
that's the epitome of a slap on the wrist for
both parties. I would make the Clippers keep Kawhi. I
don't think they're a top tier championship contender anyway. I
(07:26):
think they're a second tier contender at this point. I
think the general public is kind of more or less
okay with the Clippers being the Clippers, even if they cheated,
in large part because they aren't particularly scared of them.
They have a puncher's chance shot to win it out.
Like I wouldn't be like completely stunned if the Clippers
were in the Western Conference Finals next year, but like
(07:48):
no one's particularly scared of them in that sense. If
Kawhi jumps to a contender, if you watched Kawhi playing
in the Western Conference Finals with the Denver Nuggets this year,
everyone would be like, this is kind of bullshit. I
think that would actually hurt the league more in the
court of public opinion, so I would just find the
hell out of them, dock him a bunch of draft picks,
(08:11):
something that actually punishes Balmer and the Clippers to the
point of not to the point of stopping them from
doing this kind of thing. And again, I think the
worst case scenario is something that looks fishy competitively in
the league at this point. Yes, it looks, it looks pretty.
(08:31):
It looks very compelling that the Clippers did some cheating,
but they're a second tier contender and they don't appear
to be a substantial threat to win the title this year.
I think the payment at the punishment needs to be
more focused in fines, in draft picks, something to stop
the behavior. I would not allow Kawhi Leonard to walk
(08:51):
and go sign anywhere else in the NBA. That, to me,
I think would would make matters worse in the court
of public opinion. All right, let's hit e'smail back questions
and then we'll get out of here for today. Today's
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Can you break down why Dennis Schroeder is more impactful
(10:38):
than he is in the NBA. I'm assuming this is
in reference to EuroBasket in Germany winning the title and
in general, what do you see is the big differences
in the two styles of basketball. So, first of all,
I'm just a huge Dennis Schroeder fan. Obviously, this success
with Germany is a culminating type of moment for him
in his career. Hit a couple of huge shots down
(10:59):
the stretch of the game. For a while there, it
looked like Shangun was going to get it done. They
had a little lead there in the mid fourth quarter,
but they just went cold late. Dennis took over got
a couple buckets, got to the foul line, and was
able to ice the deal. But like for Dennis, to me,
this is a player that I've been anybody who's been
listening to this show over the last couple of years.
I when I when I was rooting for him with
(11:20):
the Lakers, I enjoyed rooting for him. He was a
flawed player, you know, he had a stretch in twenty
twenty one where he was unwilling to take catch and
shoot threes in the postseason and had a I think
he had a game where he had zero points at
one point in that series. Like, Dennis is not a
perfect player. No one's going to sit up here and
call him a top thirty player in the world. But
like he competes his ass off. He's a good defender,
(11:42):
he could beat people off the dribble. He brings enough
jump shooting to the table. I think he's like a
very very good NBA player, And he's the kind of
player that I'm not the least bit surprised on a
team like Germany, where they have lots of talent to
surround him with and they also trust him with the
basketball at the end of games. The way that they
do that he has found a role where he can
have success. I like, he got a pretty big deal
(12:06):
from the Kings, so that's a lot of money or
that's very Sacramento thing to do. But like, I don't
think Kings fans are going to be watching Sacramento this
year and going like, you know, Dennis is a bad
basketball player. Dennis is a very, very good player that
I've been a fan of for a long time. I
think he is a player that can help any team
win basketball games. I think what you saw with Germany
(12:27):
is a classic example of just people slotting into their
roles perfectly. If you can bring enough talent to the
table where Dennis just needs to make a few plays
in a few big spots. He's a competitive mffort who
can get the job done, and he did it in
this case on the biggest stage in European basketball, at
least in this particular summer, obviously not counting the World
(12:47):
Cup in the Olympics. Now, as far as Foeba hoops
versus the NBA, there's some obvious rule differences in terms
of like the ability to park Biggs in the lane,
the physicality on the perimeter, the big thing is is
like with the physical reality on the perimeter, you have
to rely more on ball and player movement than you know,
singular greatness, simply because it's just much harder to beat
(13:08):
people one on one when you're allowing individual defenders to
put their hands on you. Now, again, hand checking has
always been a part of basketball. It's one of the
most silly kind of talking points surrounding old NBA hoops.
Is this idea that like that there's just no hand checking.
Over the last two decades since the rule changed, It's
always been something that is oscillated up and down throughout
(13:29):
NBA history. They allow more contact, they allow less contact,
they allow more contact, they allow less contact. It goes
back and forth, and like, all that really happened is
the league got so nasty in the late nineteen nineties,
like so ugly and so physical that the league kind
of felt the need to establish a point of emphasis
to free up movement a little bit. And they've gone
(13:51):
back and forth and back and forth even in the
years since then. I wouldn't be like we've all seen
it in the last couple of years that the league
has allowed more physicality. Again, we're legislating back in that direction,
but when it comes to feebobs, they're pretty far on
that spectrum towards physicality, which is going to cause more
emphasis on that sort of that ball and player movement
(14:12):
to free players up outside of those one on one situations.
It's also a game that is less played in transition,
so athleticism factors in less, and half court polish matters more,
continuity matters more over there, Obviously, you've got a lot
of international teams that have players that are constantly bouncing
in and out of the roster versus other international situations
(14:34):
where the players are consistent year in, year out. That's
an advantage. And as you can imagine, as you tilt
the game away from one on one play and away
from transition into half court ball and player movement, that's
going to heavily favored teams that have continuity, and are
going to heavily favorite teams that have lots of half
court polish. And that's the main thing that I've noticed
different between the two leagues or the two professional basketball
(14:58):
situations over the course the last few three more questions.
Longtime NBA fan here, it seems that in the old days,
teams could have less supporting players than two or three
stars while winning multiple titles. Has that really changed or
is that just a perception? If it's real, what are
your ideas on why this phenomenon exists now? So I've
(15:18):
talked about this a lot over the course of the
last year, because this became a major talking point during
Indiana's playoff runt last year. But I think that this
has always been the case. You've always needed really good
players and really good supporting role player talent. Has it
shifted a little bit, Sure, we'll get to that in
(15:38):
just a minute. But like go Beck, look back at
the Miami Heat, they had the three stars. Dwayne Wade
was better in twenty ten than he was in any
of the other seasons by var he just wasn't the
same dude after that season. But they as a team
were better because they were able to round out a
couple of specifics in the roster, right bringing in Shane Battier,
(16:00):
bringing in Ray Allen, bringing in Mike Miller. They were
able to kind of polish things in a way, like
the development of Norris Cole over those years, Like they
were able to round out those guys with really good players,
and they all played huge roles. Mike Miller hit a
bunch of really big threes against the Spurs, so did
reality hit maybe the biggest one of all time? Right.
(16:22):
Shane Battier was a huge part of that team on
both ends of the floor. Over those years, they had
to build out the roster in order to capitalize on
the top end talent. You look at the Kobe Powe
Lakers deep with role player talent, guys that were playing
bigger roles in earlier iterations of the Lakers, but played
smaller roles during the Kobe Power era, and they were
(16:44):
able to thrive in those roles and lift them to
winning the championship. You think about Derek Fisher hitting a
three to tie the game against the Magic in the
NBA Finals. There are so many of these big moments.
Run Our Test hits a huge three, right. You just
you need role play talent to win the title, but
you also need top bend talent. I think a lot
of what happened with Indiana and the way they were
(17:06):
discussed centers around a fundamental lack of understanding of Tyre's
Aliburton and everything that he does to oil the wheels
of an offense. And I just think he's generally super underrated,
and so a lot of people just think it's just
a bunch of really good role players. But it's both.
It's Tyre's Halliburton's advantage creation, it's Pascal Siakam's kind of
(17:26):
supremely gifted one on one talent and a depth of
role player talent off of them. Now the pendulum has
swung a little bit more towards needing depth. Why is that?
I do think this stems from the sophistication of defenses.
We are so good now at getting the ball out
(17:48):
of stars hands and rotating out of it. The league
is super fast, there's tons of foot speed on the floor,
and NBA teams have figured out we can get the
ball out of this dude's hands and make infear your
players make plays, and that is the way defense is
tilted over the last few years. So with that being
(18:09):
the case, it's become more important than ever to have
players that can play with an advantage. If we're going
to blit Steph Curry, we need guys that can quickly
process on a four on three and get layups, dunks
and three and quick easy threes out of it. That
is where the game has shifted in years past, the
(18:32):
defenses weren't as sophisticated at getting the ball out of
stars hands. An easy way to describe this is just
look at the points per game numbers for the Stars
relative to the pace. All of the points per game
numbers have stayed relatively static. It's a little higher, but
it's not like you're seeing like thirty points per game
(18:53):
from a Star. Still feels just as unique and special
as it did in the late two thousand, right, but
the pace of the game is substantially increased, so there's
way more possessions in every game. But we don't have
a bunch of dudes averaging forty points. That is because
(19:13):
defenses are better at getting the ball out of your
star's hands. That produces advantages. That requires you to have
talent off of your stars that can quickly process and
capitalize on advantages. That is why it's tilted a little
bit more towards needing a depth of role player talent. Also,
(19:34):
you don't need as many stars because they can be redundant,
and I think people have seen that. There are examples where, yeah,
like the Golden State Warriors with Steph Catie and Clay
that was a unique group of offensive players that just
fit each other extremely well. But that's rare. Like the
Wade Lebron fit was clunky. It just was. It's what
stopped them from ripping off a bunch of titles in
(19:54):
a row. They were redundant once you have they were
a better basketball team with a lesser version of Wade
because they leaned into the fact that Lebron's our guy,
He's our advantage creator. We're going to play off of that.
That is where, like I talked about my overarching basketball philosophy,
basketball flows from advantage creation, and so yeah, like I
(20:16):
actually think it makes more sense now in team building
to have, you know, a supremely gifted offensive player that
you're built around. But ultimately to win the title, you
still want lots of really good players. You need j
dub to give you a forty in an NBA Finals game,
and you need a huge defensive performance out of Chet,
(20:37):
You need Lou Dort to hit a bunch of threes.
You need a combination of top end talent and a
depth of role player talent to win. That has always
been the case. Basketball has just changed in a way
that has accentuated a little bit more that ability to
capitalize on advantage creation. Two more, Hi, Jason, love the
(20:57):
show and your content has been amazing for the game.
Your channel has been a huge part of me getting
back into the game of basketball. That makes me very
happy to hear. I was just wondering, as an experienced
basketball player yourself, do you have any helpful tips slash
exercises for getting your jump shot back into rhythm after
hitting a slump. Thanks and keep up the great work.
This is a very good question and one that I
have been interested in for a long time because I
(21:21):
take a lot of jump shots. Any of you basketball
players out there that have taken a lot of jump
shots know that it is a mind fuck sometimes and
like sometimes they go in and sometimes they don't. When
I was playing in college, I was a much more
streaky shooter back then. But when I was playing in college,
like I had a stretch in Utah playing JUCO or
during conference play, I shot like forty nine percent from three.
(21:42):
I'm pretty high volume. And then the very next year
I had a stretch where I missed twenty two threes
in a row in one week of basketball. Like that's
that's shooting, especially when you're in the early phase of
your development, and you haven't learned how to become more
consistent through your habit. So the streaks are part of
the game. How do you get out of them? The
(22:06):
truth of the matter is there's no secret sauce other
than you need to go shoot. That stems even beyond
the idea of getting out of a slump, to just
your development as a shooter and your development as a shooter.
The only way for you to get from where you
are to where you want to be, where you want
to eventually be is to shoot thousands and thousands and
(22:28):
thousands and thousands of jump shots. Like I said, I
was a very streaky shooter when I was in college.
I've reached the point now where I believe I am
a good shooter. I only got there because I took
tens of thousands of shots over years and years to
get to the point where I could shoot the ball better.
There is no shortcut. There is no oh, I stop
(22:49):
using my opposite thumb, or I do this with my hands,
or I tweak this thing in my release and suddenly
I become a way better shooter. No, like, there are
proven things which will go over that will help, but
ultimately The only way you're going to become a great
shooter or even a good shooter is by shooting thousands
and thousands and thousands of shots. There is no shortcut. Now.
(23:12):
As far as like the technical side of it, I'm
a big believer in I don't like tweaking releases. I
don't think there's necessarily a uh. I don't think that
you're that you need to go completely throw your release
into the garbage and start from scratch and have the
perfect jj Reddick shooting form where your hand is like
(23:33):
in this perfect slot and you have this exact, this
exact same release that jj Reddick has. No, I don't
think you need to have the a one specific type
of release to be a good shooter. There are things, though,
that every good shooter does. So for example, every good
shooter has a good base, so wide feet, straight up
(23:56):
and down balance. Every good shooter does that they can
make off balance shots. But even on their off balance shots,
they have great lift. They have a wide base. It
starts from their feet, but when they're open. Part of
the reason why it goes in as frequently as it
(24:16):
does is they always have their feet spread wide. They
go straight up and down, they have great balance. The
second piece of it is energy transfer. You don't want
to have any sort of hitch in your shot. You
don't want to have any spot where you lose energy
from the ground up to the release, right your feet
or your starting point. You power up out of it.
(24:39):
The ball is in your shooting pocket and it goes
up through the release. You want a smooth flow of
energy from the floor all the way up through the
release of the shot. If you do that, you won't
have to tax your release as much for power. If
you don't have to tax your release as much for power,
you can get really good at doing the same thing
(24:59):
over and over again, right, And that's the third piece
of it. Just do the same thing over and over
again whatever you're doing. If you're tweaking your release from
shot to shot to shot to shot, you're gonna have
no consistency. So like if you're in a shooting slump,
the best way to get out of it is to
(25:20):
shoot a shit ton of shots and make sure that
when you're shooting, you have a good base, you don't
lose any power up through your release, and that you
do the same exact thing every single time. If you
do that, through thousands of reps you will inevitably get
out of your shooting slump. One last little piece that
I'll say in terms of the uh, the mental side
(25:42):
of it, because that can be a big part of
you spiraling. I especially remember myself as a twenty one
year old kid during that shooting slump, really struggling mentally
with it, Like I'm shooting all these shots, like what
is going on? You get in your head, right, find
something in your shot to focus on that is into
the release. So when you're in a shooting slump, as
(26:05):
you're going into your next shot in a game, just
think about your base. Find something in the shot that
you can focus on that is not tied to whether
or not it goes in, and that is not tied
to your release. That way, you get out of your head. So,
for instance, if I've been a shooting slump, I'm going
(26:25):
to run into that next shot thinking wide base, good lift.
That's what I'm going to be thinking, because it gets
me out of my head, gets me focused on an
easy thing for me to fix, and that allows me
to just trust the release at the end without necessarily
overthinking it. But again, no cheating. The only way to
become a good shooter. To get out of shooting slump
(26:46):
is to take tons of shots. There's no shortcut. There's
never been a shortcut for any player in the history
of basketball to becoming a great ball handler or becoming
a great shooter other than thousands and thousands and thousands
of reps. Last question, it just doesn't make sense to
me to have a key argument point based on the
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four Luca being over shay
going into the twenty twenty five twenty twenty six season.
(27:09):
It makes it feel like this take is just based
off vibes, because what other player would you use their
play two seasons ago for your twenty twenty five twenty
twenty six projections. If Luca was still on the MAVs,
I would get it because that team was built better
for his play style and offensive ceiling. So this to
me is like, I just don't understand this line of thinking, because, like,
we're ranking players for this coming season, do you think
(27:31):
Lucas gonna be bad because he had this one season
where he was overweight, clearly overweight, and dealing with an injury,
and he didn't look anything like himself when we had
a half decade that was one of the most successful
starts to a career in the history of basketball. It's
(27:51):
not like that twenty twenty three twenty twenty four season
was a outlier in Luca. What Luca is mediocre? Mediocre?
Mediocre and then said only thirty four nine to ten
on sixty two percent through shooting takes his team to
the finals and then back to being shitty. The outlier
was clearly last season. So for me, it's actually you're
(28:13):
saying it doesn't make sense to base it on the
twenty twenty four season. To me, it doesn't make any
sense to rank Luca based on last season for the
purposes of my list. Again, if there's a different list
which is more reflective looking at the past for ranking
how last year went, Luca probably doesn't make the top ten.
(28:33):
But that's not how my list works. For the last
two years, we've had consistent criteria October of this coming
season through to the following June. What do you like?
What players do you want to lead your team? And
I just saw Luca before the list playing for Slovenia
looking a hell of a lot like the guy from
(28:54):
twenty twenty four, So I wasn't going to use the
obvious down year to rank him forward based on the
way my criteria works. I hate to break it to you, guys,
but if you're expecting Luca for the rest of his
career to look like he did last year, I just
I think you're gonna be wrong. I think that was
the outlier. All right, guys, It's all I have for today,
(29:16):
as always is sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us
and supporting the show. We will be back next week.
We're going to be starting our season preview series. I'll
see you guys then.
The volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight. You're at
the volume heavy Wednesday, everybody, Oh love you guys are
having a great week. We are going to break down
some clipper stuff today. I want to go over some
(00:22):
of the latest back and forth that has taken place
in the Steve Balmer may or may not have been
illegally paying Kawhi Leonards fiasco. And then at the tail
end of the show, I want to go over some
of more of our mail bag questions from the last
couple of weeks. You guys have the job before we
get started. To subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channels.
You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me
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Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your
(00:43):
podcast uner Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you
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Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there.
In the last but not least, keep dropping those mail
bag questions in the YouTube comments and we'll get to
them at our mail bags throughout the remainder of the season.
So there has been a lot of back and forth
in this Clipper situation with the cold heart evidence. Pablo
(01:07):
Torre has continued to piece together a pretty compelling record
of investments and payments that look incriminating to say the least,
but again still mostly circumstantial. At this point, Andre Scherney
came out and defended himself. Mark Cuban continues to send
out these incredibly long tweets, like incredibly long tweets defending
(01:28):
Steve Ballmer. We even had a strange Adam Silver moment
where he said he had no prior knowledge of Aspiration
at all, which he then of course had to walk
back because Pablo Torre pointed out that obviously he would
have to know about Aspiration because of the league rules
regarding team sponsors. So all of this stuff going back
and forth with the evidence, but I keep coming back
to one single piece of circumstantial evidence that I find
(01:52):
to be super compelling, and that every single attempt to
explain away the other stuff fails to ad this single point,
and it's simply the amount of money that Kawhi was
paid relative to the other payouts from Aspiration to celebrities,
especially relative to the amount of work that was done.
The example I keep coming back to is Robert Downey Junior.
(02:16):
So Robert Downey Jr. Is like an absolute a lister
by any measure. He is flatly more famous than Kawhi
by a wide margin. He just got recasted into the
Marvel universe to save it from falling apart, and we
literally all know it's going to work. We're all gonna
(02:37):
go see Avengers Doomsday. I feel very confident that Avengers
Doomsday is going to crush in the theaters and basically
revitalize Marvel after this kind of latest phase, which hasn't
performed super well. That's the power that Robert Downey Junior has.
That's the leverage that he has in negotiations regarding his
paid appearances. Actually appeared on camera for Aspiration, He filmed
(03:02):
a commercial something Kawai never did, extensive voiceovers on camera
appearances again, stuff that Kawai never did, and yet he
was paid only a tiny fraction of what Kauhi was
paid to essentially do nothing. This is where the Leak's
standards approved for this sort of thing come into the equation.
(03:23):
From what I understand, the NBA does not need to
prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Clippers circumvented the salary cap.
The standard is much lower, and that's where this piece
of circumstantial evidence becomes a sticking point for me. The
bottom line is Aspiration, who was in a very intimate
(03:44):
partnership with the Clippers that involved a massive investment from
the Clippers ownership group, paid Kawhi Leonard to do nothing
ten times as much as they paid a much bigger
and more famous star to do way more work. The
payment to Leonard literally makes no sense. Pablo was able
(04:06):
to get a signed statement from multiple high ranking executives
at Aspiration that essentially said, we don't think this payment
to Leonard made any sense, and we voiced our concerns
about it at the time. It may not be the
literal definition of a smoking gun, in the sense that
it's not concrete proof that Steve Balmer paid Kawhi Leonard directly,
(04:30):
but it is an incredibly strong piece of circumstantial evidence.
I was here. I heard Zach Low talking the other
day about how some of his conversations with league personnel,
like people work for teams around the league. They've centered
around the idea that the Clippers essentially have to prove
their innocence here, and I completely agree the Clippers should
(04:52):
have to prove that they are innocent of any wrongdoing here.
The reason is because the integrity of the league means everything.
We all remember how bad it got during the Tim
Donnie scandal. People still to this day talk about the
refs as if they're rigging games. I don't agree with
(05:12):
those people, but a lot of people feel that way,
and they feel legitimized by a scandal that is now
almost two decades old. In order to maintain the feeling
of integrity and fairness within the competitive structure of the NBA,
Adam Silver will need to come down hard on the
Clippers if they can't prove their innocence. The public won't
(05:36):
buy it if you just come out in a few
months and say there's no concrete evidence. If they come
out and they go We did an investigation and we
found no direct ties between Steve Baumer and the payments
to KWHI Leonard from Aspiration, that is not going to
fly in the court of public opinion again. Robert Downey
Junior literally filmed a commercial for Aspiration and got paid
(05:58):
a tiny fraction and of what Kawhi Leonard got paid
to do nothing, and the Clippers ownership group invested enough
money in Aspiration to cover those costs. It reeks the
high heaven of caps or convention, and so the Clippers
have to demonstrate their innocence. And like, it gets even
darker when you start to look at there have been
(06:19):
a lot of players for the Clippers that have taken
discounted deals in recent years. Like if it's a Zubots
like nick batoon, like, it could get even darker. The
court of public opinion is not going to buy just
sweeping this under the rug. Now, let's talk about the
consequences here, because this is where it gets really tricky.
I've seen a lot of talk about, like, oh, what
happens if Kawhi Leonard's contract just gets voided? What if
(06:43):
he goes and signs on a veteran minimum contract or
a mid level exception with a contender? Like what if
Kawhi goes and signs with the Knicks, or signs with
the Calves, or signs with the Denver Nuggets or something
like that. I don't think you can allow that to happen,
because at this point, I don't think the Clippers would
(07:04):
even care if they lost Kawhi. I think they're kind
of done with that whole experience. And for Kawhi, if
he just gets to walk and go compete for a title,
that's the epitome of a slap on the wrist for
both parties. I would make the Clippers keep Kawhi. I
don't think they're a top tier championship contender anyway. I
(07:26):
think they're a second tier contender at this point. I
think the general public is kind of more or less
okay with the Clippers being the Clippers, even if they cheated,
in large part because they aren't particularly scared of them.
They have a puncher's chance shot to win it out.
Like I wouldn't be like completely stunned if the Clippers
were in the Western Conference Finals next year, but like
(07:48):
no one's particularly scared of them in that sense. If
Kawhi jumps to a contender, if you watched Kawhi playing
in the Western Conference Finals with the Denver Nuggets this year,
everyone would be like, this is kind of bullshit. I
think that would actually hurt the league more in the
court of public opinion, so I would just find the
hell out of them, dock him a bunch of draft picks,
(08:11):
something that actually punishes Balmer and the Clippers to the
point of not to the point of stopping them from
doing this kind of thing. And again, I think the
worst case scenario is something that looks fishy competitively in
the league at this point. Yes, it looks, it looks pretty.
(08:31):
It looks very compelling that the Clippers did some cheating,
but they're a second tier contender and they don't appear
to be a substantial threat to win the title this year.
I think the payment at the punishment needs to be
more focused in fines, in draft picks, something to stop
the behavior. I would not allow Kawhi Leonard to walk
(08:51):
and go sign anywhere else in the NBA. That, to me,
I think would would make matters worse in the court
of public opinion. All right, let's hit e'smail back questions
and then we'll get out of here for today. Today's
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Can you break down why Dennis Schroeder is more impactful
(10:38):
than he is in the NBA. I'm assuming this is
in reference to EuroBasket in Germany winning the title and
in general, what do you see is the big differences
in the two styles of basketball. So, first of all,
I'm just a huge Dennis Schroeder fan. Obviously, this success
with Germany is a culminating type of moment for him
in his career. Hit a couple of huge shots down
(10:59):
the stretch of the game. For a while there, it
looked like Shangun was going to get it done. They
had a little lead there in the mid fourth quarter,
but they just went cold late. Dennis took over got
a couple buckets, got to the foul line, and was
able to ice the deal. But like for Dennis, to me,
this is a player that I've been anybody who's been
listening to this show over the last couple of years.
I when I when I was rooting for him with
(11:20):
the Lakers, I enjoyed rooting for him. He was a
flawed player, you know, he had a stretch in twenty
twenty one where he was unwilling to take catch and
shoot threes in the postseason and had a I think
he had a game where he had zero points at
one point in that series. Like, Dennis is not a
perfect player. No one's going to sit up here and
call him a top thirty player in the world. But
like he competes his ass off. He's a good defender,
(11:42):
he could beat people off the dribble. He brings enough
jump shooting to the table. I think he's like a
very very good NBA player, And he's the kind of
player that I'm not the least bit surprised on a
team like Germany, where they have lots of talent to
surround him with and they also trust him with the
basketball at the end of games. The way that they
do that he has found a role where he can
have success. I like, he got a pretty big deal
(12:06):
from the Kings, so that's a lot of money or
that's very Sacramento thing to do. But like, I don't
think Kings fans are going to be watching Sacramento this
year and going like, you know, Dennis is a bad
basketball player. Dennis is a very, very good player that
I've been a fan of for a long time. I
think he is a player that can help any team
win basketball games. I think what you saw with Germany
(12:27):
is a classic example of just people slotting into their
roles perfectly. If you can bring enough talent to the
table where Dennis just needs to make a few plays
in a few big spots. He's a competitive mffort who
can get the job done, and he did it in
this case on the biggest stage in European basketball, at
least in this particular summer, obviously not counting the World
(12:47):
Cup in the Olympics. Now, as far as Foeba hoops
versus the NBA, there's some obvious rule differences in terms
of like the ability to park Biggs in the lane,
the physicality on the perimeter, the big thing is is
like with the physical reality on the perimeter, you have
to rely more on ball and player movement than you know,
singular greatness, simply because it's just much harder to beat
(13:08):
people one on one when you're allowing individual defenders to
put their hands on you. Now, again, hand checking has
always been a part of basketball. It's one of the
most silly kind of talking points surrounding old NBA hoops.
Is this idea that like that there's just no hand checking.
Over the last two decades since the rule changed, It's
always been something that is oscillated up and down throughout
(13:29):
NBA history. They allow more contact, they allow less contact,
they allow more contact, they allow less contact. It goes
back and forth, and like, all that really happened is
the league got so nasty in the late nineteen nineties,
like so ugly and so physical that the league kind
of felt the need to establish a point of emphasis
to free up movement a little bit. And they've gone
(13:51):
back and forth and back and forth even in the
years since then. I wouldn't be like we've all seen
it in the last couple of years that the league
has allowed more physicality. Again, we're legislating back in that direction,
but when it comes to feebobs, they're pretty far on
that spectrum towards physicality, which is going to cause more
emphasis on that sort of that ball and player movement
(14:12):
to free players up outside of those one on one situations.
It's also a game that is less played in transition,
so athleticism factors in less, and half court polish matters more,
continuity matters more over there, Obviously, you've got a lot
of international teams that have players that are constantly bouncing
in and out of the roster versus other international situations
(14:34):
where the players are consistent year in, year out. That's
an advantage. And as you can imagine, as you tilt
the game away from one on one play and away
from transition into half court ball and player movement, that's
going to heavily favored teams that have continuity, and are
going to heavily favorite teams that have lots of half
court polish. And that's the main thing that I've noticed
different between the two leagues or the two professional basketball
(14:58):
situations over the course the last few three more questions.
Longtime NBA fan here, it seems that in the old days,
teams could have less supporting players than two or three
stars while winning multiple titles. Has that really changed or
is that just a perception? If it's real, what are
your ideas on why this phenomenon exists now? So I've
(15:18):
talked about this a lot over the course of the
last year, because this became a major talking point during
Indiana's playoff runt last year. But I think that this
has always been the case. You've always needed really good
players and really good supporting role player talent. Has it
shifted a little bit, Sure, we'll get to that in
(15:38):
just a minute. But like go Beck, look back at
the Miami Heat, they had the three stars. Dwayne Wade
was better in twenty ten than he was in any
of the other seasons by var he just wasn't the
same dude after that season. But they as a team
were better because they were able to round out a
couple of specifics in the roster, right bringing in Shane Battier,
(16:00):
bringing in Ray Allen, bringing in Mike Miller. They were
able to kind of polish things in a way, like
the development of Norris Cole over those years, Like they
were able to round out those guys with really good players,
and they all played huge roles. Mike Miller hit a
bunch of really big threes against the Spurs, so did
reality hit maybe the biggest one of all time? Right.
(16:22):
Shane Battier was a huge part of that team on
both ends of the floor. Over those years, they had
to build out the roster in order to capitalize on
the top end talent. You look at the Kobe Powe
Lakers deep with role player talent, guys that were playing
bigger roles in earlier iterations of the Lakers, but played
smaller roles during the Kobe Power era, and they were
(16:44):
able to thrive in those roles and lift them to
winning the championship. You think about Derek Fisher hitting a
three to tie the game against the Magic in the
NBA Finals. There are so many of these big moments.
Run Our Test hits a huge three, right. You just
you need role play talent to win the title, but
you also need top bend talent. I think a lot
of what happened with Indiana and the way they were
(17:06):
discussed centers around a fundamental lack of understanding of Tyre's
Aliburton and everything that he does to oil the wheels
of an offense. And I just think he's generally super underrated,
and so a lot of people just think it's just
a bunch of really good role players. But it's both.
It's Tyre's Halliburton's advantage creation, it's Pascal Siakam's kind of
(17:26):
supremely gifted one on one talent and a depth of
role player talent off of them. Now the pendulum has
swung a little bit more towards needing depth. Why is that?
I do think this stems from the sophistication of defenses.
We are so good now at getting the ball out
(17:48):
of stars hands and rotating out of it. The league
is super fast, there's tons of foot speed on the floor,
and NBA teams have figured out we can get the
ball out of this dude's hands and make infear your
players make plays, and that is the way defense is
tilted over the last few years. So with that being
(18:09):
the case, it's become more important than ever to have
players that can play with an advantage. If we're going
to blit Steph Curry, we need guys that can quickly
process on a four on three and get layups, dunks
and three and quick easy threes out of it. That
is where the game has shifted in years past, the
(18:32):
defenses weren't as sophisticated at getting the ball out of
stars hands. An easy way to describe this is just
look at the points per game numbers for the Stars
relative to the pace. All of the points per game
numbers have stayed relatively static. It's a little higher, but
it's not like you're seeing like thirty points per game
(18:53):
from a Star. Still feels just as unique and special
as it did in the late two thousand, right, but
the pace of the game is substantially increased, so there's
way more possessions in every game. But we don't have
a bunch of dudes averaging forty points. That is because
(19:13):
defenses are better at getting the ball out of your
star's hands. That produces advantages. That requires you to have
talent off of your stars that can quickly process and
capitalize on advantages. That is why it's tilted a little
bit more towards needing a depth of role player talent. Also,
(19:34):
you don't need as many stars because they can be redundant,
and I think people have seen that. There are examples where, yeah,
like the Golden State Warriors with Steph Catie and Clay
that was a unique group of offensive players that just
fit each other extremely well. But that's rare. Like the
Wade Lebron fit was clunky. It just was. It's what
stopped them from ripping off a bunch of titles in
(19:54):
a row. They were redundant once you have they were
a better basketball team with a lesser version of Wade
because they leaned into the fact that Lebron's our guy,
He's our advantage creator. We're going to play off of that.
That is where, like I talked about my overarching basketball philosophy,
basketball flows from advantage creation, and so yeah, like I
(20:16):
actually think it makes more sense now in team building
to have, you know, a supremely gifted offensive player that
you're built around. But ultimately to win the title, you
still want lots of really good players. You need j
dub to give you a forty in an NBA Finals game,
and you need a huge defensive performance out of Chet,
(20:37):
You need Lou Dort to hit a bunch of threes.
You need a combination of top end talent and a
depth of role player talent to win. That has always
been the case. Basketball has just changed in a way
that has accentuated a little bit more that ability to
capitalize on advantage creation. Two more, Hi, Jason, love the
(20:57):
show and your content has been amazing for the game.
Your channel has been a huge part of me getting
back into the game of basketball. That makes me very
happy to hear. I was just wondering, as an experienced
basketball player yourself, do you have any helpful tips slash
exercises for getting your jump shot back into rhythm after
hitting a slump. Thanks and keep up the great work.
This is a very good question and one that I
have been interested in for a long time because I
(21:21):
take a lot of jump shots. Any of you basketball
players out there that have taken a lot of jump
shots know that it is a mind fuck sometimes and
like sometimes they go in and sometimes they don't. When
I was playing in college, I was a much more
streaky shooter back then. But when I was playing in college,
like I had a stretch in Utah playing JUCO or
during conference play, I shot like forty nine percent from three.
(21:42):
I'm pretty high volume. And then the very next year
I had a stretch where I missed twenty two threes
in a row in one week of basketball. Like that's
that's shooting, especially when you're in the early phase of
your development, and you haven't learned how to become more
consistent through your habit. So the streaks are part of
the game. How do you get out of them? The
(22:06):
truth of the matter is there's no secret sauce other
than you need to go shoot. That stems even beyond
the idea of getting out of a slump, to just
your development as a shooter and your development as a shooter.
The only way for you to get from where you
are to where you want to be, where you want
to eventually be is to shoot thousands and thousands and
(22:28):
thousands and thousands of jump shots. Like I said, I
was a very streaky shooter when I was in college.
I've reached the point now where I believe I am
a good shooter. I only got there because I took
tens of thousands of shots over years and years to
get to the point where I could shoot the ball better.
There is no shortcut. There is no oh, I stop
(22:49):
using my opposite thumb, or I do this with my hands,
or I tweak this thing in my release and suddenly
I become a way better shooter. No, like, there are
proven things which will go over that will help, but
ultimately The only way you're going to become a great
shooter or even a good shooter is by shooting thousands
and thousands and thousands of shots. There is no shortcut. Now.
(23:12):
As far as like the technical side of it, I'm
a big believer in I don't like tweaking releases. I
don't think there's necessarily a uh. I don't think that
you're that you need to go completely throw your release
into the garbage and start from scratch and have the
perfect jj Reddick shooting form where your hand is like
(23:33):
in this perfect slot and you have this exact, this
exact same release that jj Reddick has. No, I don't
think you need to have the a one specific type
of release to be a good shooter. There are things, though,
that every good shooter does. So for example, every good
shooter has a good base, so wide feet, straight up
(23:56):
and down balance. Every good shooter does that they can
make off balance shots. But even on their off balance shots,
they have great lift. They have a wide base. It
starts from their feet, but when they're open. Part of
the reason why it goes in as frequently as it
(24:16):
does is they always have their feet spread wide. They
go straight up and down, they have great balance. The
second piece of it is energy transfer. You don't want
to have any sort of hitch in your shot. You
don't want to have any spot where you lose energy
from the ground up to the release, right your feet
or your starting point. You power up out of it.
(24:39):
The ball is in your shooting pocket and it goes
up through the release. You want a smooth flow of
energy from the floor all the way up through the
release of the shot. If you do that, you won't
have to tax your release as much for power. If
you don't have to tax your release as much for power,
you can get really good at doing the same thing
(24:59):
over and over again, right, And that's the third piece
of it. Just do the same thing over and over
again whatever you're doing. If you're tweaking your release from
shot to shot to shot to shot, you're gonna have
no consistency. So like if you're in a shooting slump,
the best way to get out of it is to
(25:20):
shoot a shit ton of shots and make sure that
when you're shooting, you have a good base, you don't
lose any power up through your release, and that you
do the same exact thing every single time. If you
do that, through thousands of reps you will inevitably get
out of your shooting slump. One last little piece that
I'll say in terms of the uh, the mental side
(25:42):
of it, because that can be a big part of
you spiraling. I especially remember myself as a twenty one
year old kid during that shooting slump, really struggling mentally
with it, Like I'm shooting all these shots, like what
is going on? You get in your head, right, find
something in your shot to focus on that is into
the release. So when you're in a shooting slump, as
(26:05):
you're going into your next shot in a game, just
think about your base. Find something in the shot that
you can focus on that is not tied to whether
or not it goes in, and that is not tied
to your release. That way, you get out of your head. So,
for instance, if I've been a shooting slump, I'm going
(26:25):
to run into that next shot thinking wide base, good lift.
That's what I'm going to be thinking, because it gets
me out of my head, gets me focused on an
easy thing for me to fix, and that allows me
to just trust the release at the end without necessarily
overthinking it. But again, no cheating. The only way to
become a good shooter. To get out of shooting slump
(26:46):
is to take tons of shots. There's no shortcut. There's
never been a shortcut for any player in the history
of basketball to becoming a great ball handler or becoming
a great shooter other than thousands and thousands and thousands
of reps. Last question, it just doesn't make sense to
me to have a key argument point based on the
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four Luca being over shay
going into the twenty twenty five twenty twenty six season.
(27:09):
It makes it feel like this take is just based
off vibes, because what other player would you use their
play two seasons ago for your twenty twenty five twenty
twenty six projections. If Luca was still on the MAVs,
I would get it because that team was built better
for his play style and offensive ceiling. So this to
me is like, I just don't understand this line of thinking, because, like,
we're ranking players for this coming season, do you think
(27:31):
Lucas gonna be bad because he had this one season
where he was overweight, clearly overweight, and dealing with an injury,
and he didn't look anything like himself when we had
a half decade that was one of the most successful
starts to a career in the history of basketball. It's
(27:51):
not like that twenty twenty three twenty twenty four season
was a outlier in Luca. What Luca is mediocre? Mediocre?
Mediocre and then said only thirty four nine to ten
on sixty two percent through shooting takes his team to
the finals and then back to being shitty. The outlier
was clearly last season. So for me, it's actually you're
(28:13):
saying it doesn't make sense to base it on the
twenty twenty four season. To me, it doesn't make any
sense to rank Luca based on last season for the
purposes of my list. Again, if there's a different list
which is more reflective looking at the past for ranking
how last year went, Luca probably doesn't make the top ten.
(28:33):
But that's not how my list works. For the last
two years, we've had consistent criteria October of this coming
season through to the following June. What do you like?
What players do you want to lead your team? And
I just saw Luca before the list playing for Slovenia
looking a hell of a lot like the guy from
(28:54):
twenty twenty four, So I wasn't going to use the
obvious down year to rank him forward based on the
way my criteria works. I hate to break it to you, guys,
but if you're expecting Luca for the rest of his
career to look like he did last year, I just
I think you're gonna be wrong. I think that was
the outlier. All right, guys, It's all I have for today,
(29:16):
as always is sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us
and supporting the show. We will be back next week.
We're going to be starting our season preview series. I'll
see you guys then.
Host
Jason Timpf
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