It's A Great Time To Be An NBA Player

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Rosters to Rings. Alongside Ryan McDonough I am
fad Levine.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We got an action packed show today.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
We're going to dive into the NBA Draft, the NBA
Free agency, and we're going to touch on a few
baseball stories along the way. Ryan, if you would kick
us off by telling us some of your highlights.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
From the draft.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, so that the draft was pretty predictable at the top.
The first two picks went as expected, with Cooper Flag
going number one overall to the Dallas Mavericks. They didn't
work out any other players, they didn't bring any other
players to Dallas, they did not have another pick in
the draft. So this was relatively easy, at least from
the Mavericks perspective. Now we'll see if history makes it
look easy. Cooper Flagg was number one player in his

(00:46):
high school class. He actually reclassified up. He's still just
eighteen years old, doesn't turn nineteen until the end of
the year, which makes it even more remarkable what he
did last year at Duke as a freshman, leading that
team to the four, winning just about every National Player
of the Year award. And as you know that sometimes
these young prospects come in they're so hyped it's virtually

(01:08):
impossible for the player to live up to that hype. Well,
Cooper Flagg not only lived up to it, he may
have exceeded the lofty expectations based on his one year
at Duke. So I think that was a pretty obvious
pick at number one, and then San Antonio at number two.
They attend to get lucky in the lottery. That happened
a couple of years ago with Victor woman Yama. Historically
it happened with David Robinson and Tim Duncan. This year,

(01:29):
they did not move all the way up, but moving
up to the number two pick slot, they got Dylan Harper.
He's a son of longtime NBA star Ron Harper, a
point guard out of Rutgers. And the interesting thing there
that and something I'm still keeping my eye on, is
in season this past year, the Spurs made a big
aggressive trade with the Sacramento Kings to bring in tarn Fox,

(01:49):
the star point guard. They were not anticipating to have
the number two pick and being the Dylan Harper sweepstakes
when they made that move. So one of the things
I'm keeping an eye on. I think this will be
one of the themes we move forward in the offseason,
he is Darren Fox is on an expiring contract. He's
only got one year left, and he does obviously want
to get paid and extended. And then from the franchisees perspective,

(02:10):
you never want to let a player of that caliber
in his prime hit unrestricted free agency, especially given what
the Spurs just gave up to bring him to San Antonio.
So keep in my eye on that that because it's
not a perfect fit. As you know, sometimes it's easy
to say from a fan even media perspective, well they
have all that talent, it's great on paper, and it is,
but the reality of it, somebody is going to have

(02:31):
to sacrifice. Does that mean Fox gets less touches or
his role is diminished, or he's potentially even retraded, which
I do think is a possibility, albeit maybe a slim one.
Or does Dylan Harper as a number two pick in
the draft on a very young, talented team with Victor Wembanama,
Stefan Castle and others, does he come off the bench
which would be rare for a player of that caliber.

(02:52):
So those are a couple of the main things I'm
keeping an eye on that, especially as I look back
at the top two picks in this past year's draft, I.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Think you touch on something very important there, which is
we talked about in the last episode, the importance of
maybe taking the best player available, not always taking the
player that best fits your roster. But if you do that,
you then have to sort it out later. You referenced
last week when we're talking the Phoenix Suns have a
little bit of an imbalanced roster. I think as we
go through our conversation about free agency, I'm guessing you're

(03:20):
going to touch on a few more rosters that seem
to your eye right now a little bit imbalanced. So
we had the draft, we're having free agency.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Maybe there's a trade session coming after this to balance
out some of these rosters.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, that's usually the way it works in the NBA
is like free agency.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
It's the word free.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
If you have money, if you have calf space, which
very few teams this year do. Brooklyn is really the
only team with significant calf space, or you have your exceptions,
the mid level exception, different ways to acquire players without
giving anything up. Teams obviously start there because if you
can improve your roster without giving anything up, that makes
logical sense where you should start. And then the market

(03:58):
does shift and turn a little bit to the trade game,
and that's where we are now. We're recording this show
just a few days into free agency, but the markets
move very quickly this year, and I think that's the
next thing teams we focused on. We'll touch on a
few of the bigger trades here in the show, but yeh,
as the money drives up quickly around the league as
far as available cap space and exceptions, and the available

(04:18):
players at the top of the lists come off the
board pretty quickly. That's going to be the theme for
the rest of the NBA offseason. Are there any more
significant trades on the heels of the draft and then
the start of free agency?

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And you know, Ryan, it's really the same in Major
League Baseball that the free agent process takes a lot longer,
and we'll touch on that in a minute. But you know,
we would as general managers, we'd always rather spend our
owners money than spend our prospect capital. So we go
to the free agent market first, we find out that
the cost are too high, So then we go to
the trade market, find out those costs are too high.
We boomerang right back to the free agent market, and

(04:51):
you kind of yo yo back and forth until you
find deals that you feel are equitable. One cut question
I had coming out of the draft was there was
a lot made the draft day trade between the Atlanta
Hawks and the New Orleans Pelicans, and to a certain extent,
it seemed like the prevailing sentiment was that the the
Pelicans got panned for the deal and the Hawks were lauded.

(05:12):
I just be curious, what was your take of it,
and if you could take the listeners into the shoes
of Joe Dumars, the new senior decision maker for the Pelicans,
how did they view that as a win for them?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah? Good questions that.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
So to recap the New Orleans Pelicans draft, they started
the night with the seventh pick. They drafted Jeremiah Fears,
a point guard from Oklahoma who I really like, very
fast with the ball in his hands, one of the
more explosive guards to come into the league in last
couple of years. He'll be, I think a fan favorite
and exciting to watch. But then they also had the
twenty three pick. They previously had Indiana's pick a year

(05:47):
from now thad and basically they swap picks. New Orleans
wanted another pick in this draft. As you mentioned, it's
a new front office in New Orleans led by Joe
Dumars Troy Weaver. The GM there was recently in Detroit.
So anytime a new front office comes in, imagine this
is a case in MLB two, Generally the group wants
to be more aggressive and make a splash right away,

(06:09):
especially coming into a situation where Pelicans were twenty one
and sixty one last year, second to last in the
Western Conference, one of the worst records in the league.
As you know, it's really usually not a time you
just sit back and say, well, we'll see how this
plays out. There's a reason the previous group got fired
and you're in there. So New Orleans was extremely aggressive.

(06:29):
I do question the value proposition, Thad. More than anything,
I questioned the risk that the New Orleans Pelicans took
because they traded an unprotected first next year in the
twenty twenty six draft that actually is the better of
New Orleans pick or the Milwaukee Bucks pick. And that's
very risky, Thad, because in the lottery, especially since the

(06:50):
league about six years ago flatten the lottery odds, there's
more variance. It's not as slanted toward the teams of
the top winning the lottery, and we just saw the
results of that this year. Dallas, with a one point
eight percent chance, jumped up and got the number one pick.
San Antonio was not slotted second, and we were close
to it. I think they were slotted about eight that
they moved up to get the number two pick.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
So that is the risk.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
And if you're in New Orleans, you're coming off a
twenty one and sixty one year, I think you have
to be worried about your downside and how long this
is going to take. So the thing I didn't like
about it was they're trying to kind of do two
things that are a little bit counter to each other.
On the one hand, they're trying to develop their rookies,
Jeremiah Fears and then the guy that they jumped up

(07:32):
from twenty three to thirteen this year's draft to get
Derek Queen. They're trying to develop those guys, but that
those guys are eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, and when
you're relying on players of that age and inexperience, you're
probably going to lose a lot more games, which makes
the pick value theoretically a lot higher next year, because
you know next year's lottery is only eleven months away

(07:53):
at this point. So that's the risk, and I think
there are times to take risks as a front office.
I want to get your perspective on this from the
MLB side, But in the NBA, one of the things
I think you absolutely can't do is risk having a
bad year or getting an unlucky bounce in lottery. I
guess unlucky in this case because you don't have the
pick and then another team gets to draft a great

(08:15):
player and build around that guy for the next five
or ten years. That's a risk you can't take. I
get it when teams trade unprotected picks if they're right
on the cusp of a championship and they think this
would be the piece that puts us over the top.
Right if OKC did it, or Indiana did it, to
the Boston Celtics, name a good team, New York, Minnesota
trade an unprotected pick, I think we say, Okay, they're

(08:35):
really going for it, and their downside here is probably
a pick around twenty, if not closer to thirty at
the end of the first round that I really don't
understand this one. Next year's draft is loaded at the top.
I won't go through the names, we'll do that on
another show. But there are four or five guys who
are really good, legitimate players, all in the mix to
be the number one pick, and so I just don't
understand why, if you're New Orleans you would take that

(08:56):
kind of risk. I will see how Derek Queen pans out,
but I think that's going to put a lot of
undue pressure on the franchise, especially they're two rookies, Fears
and Queen right away. Pretty much from day one, they're
going to be scrutinized because if they're having a bad year,
people are going to blame them, even though it wasn't
their decision to make this move.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
You know, I think every deal we ever make in
our careers has a risk reward analysis, you know, it
goes along with it, and it sounds like, in your
mind here the risk really doesn't, you know, compensate for
the reward that could be down down the road. It
seems like the risk is way too great here.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
And kudos to the Atlanta New front office there for
being able to pull this type of deal off. Ryan,
what do you make of the Ace Bailey drama? And
is it much ado about nothing or is that something
as a general manager you find concerning if you were
picking high in the draft and he had not attended
your workout, had not you know, conversed with you your

(09:49):
funt office prior to the draft, how would you treat
a player like that coming into the draft.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Well, when I was on the team side, I obviously
didn't like these kind of tactics.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Their agent driven right.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
The agents says, hey, we're only going to work out
for specific places, which happens fairly off in the NBA,
or we're not going to work out at all, which
seemingly was the case with Ace Bailey, which makes this
more extreme. Although there have been conflicting reports that one
report came up for the draft that he did hold
a private workout for the Washington Wizards had the six pick.

(10:20):
I don't know if that's true or not. Really, I
don't think it should matter that much, to be blunt,
because teams had thirty to forty games to evaluate Ace Bailey.
They watched him play in high school. He was a
known commodity. He's from Georgia. He played at Rutgers in
the Big Ten. They didn't have a great year, but
he was one of the most heavily scouted prospects, and
Rutgers was one of the two most heavily scouted teams

(10:41):
because they had two of the top five picks in
Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, along with Duke who had
three of the top ten picks. So basically you have
half of the top ten between two school stats. So
every team in the league had multiple evaluators rotating through
their practices, going to their games, talking to everybody on
staff together as much in as possible about Dylan Harper

(11:02):
and Ace Bailey. So I don't love the strategy. From
the agent perspective, it certainly was risky and I had
more concerns about it until he showed up in Salt Lake.
And once Ah Bailey showed up in Salt Lake, this
was this past weekend, just after the draft, there are
some wild rumors and speculation and maybe that's something we'll
get into on another show that how you manage that

(11:23):
from a team side, Because some National reporters saying, I
don't know if Ace Bailey is going to report to Utah,
is he going to try to force a trade. You know,
all these kind of things were swirling. And as soon
as he showed up in Utah and they had the
press conference, and he said, you know what, it's beautiful here.
I love it here. And the social media team for
the Jazz was clever. They got videos of him, you know,
getting off the plane and dapping everybody up and Duncan

(11:45):
putting his elbow through the rim. We said, oh, my gosh,
how athletic is this kid? You know, all of the
noise kind of quieted down. So I didn't love the process,
but I do think at the end of the day,
Ace Bailey is going to be fine. I think the
Jazz are actually the perfect situation for him because they're
going through a full blown rebuild. They have some young talent,
but they're looking for a centerpiece of that rebuild, and
that going to a team like that as opposed to

(12:07):
the Philadelphia seventy six ers, who have three veteran stars
in Joel mb Tyres, Maxi and Paul George, he's going
to get an opportunity to play through all his mistakes.
There's going to be no pressure on him. They have
a good development program in Utah, so I think whether
he liked it or not, whether he wanted to go
to Washington, stay on the East Coast, all the different
things we heard about as Bailey ending up with the
Utah Jazz was the perfect outcome for him, And now

(12:29):
that we're past the draft, I'm glad that he seems
to be fully committing to what the Jazz want him
to do.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Well.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's an interesting point you bring up. Ryan. We heard PJ.
Tucker talk last episode about how maybe the Toronto Raptors
weren't the best fit for him out of the draft,
and now you're kind of suggesting Ace Bailey landing in Utah,
place where he has little pressure on him, the team
has a little pressure on them, he has a chance
to really shine. Maybe exactly the right fit for him,
despite the fact that he was technically angling to try

(12:57):
to go somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yeah, Ed, and I have a question for you. Does
this happen in Major League Baseball. It's a different animal.
We've talked about the draft, the difference between the draft.
We did that a few sho shows ago, with just
the volume of players in Major League Baseball and how
few players if you're the top decision maker, one of
the top guys. How few players you get to see
in person? Does this happen? Is there a Major League
Baseball equivalent of a player or I would guess his

(13:21):
agent in particular trying to steer him away from certain
franchises and maybe steer him toward one franchise in particular.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
So, you know, Ryan, this happened a lot more before
twenty twelve. Twenty twelve was when the CBA came out
and we started having what we're called kind of soft
slots per draft pick. So before that, you could literally
spend as much as you wanted per draft picked, inclusive
in which you could sign guys to major league contracts
out of the draft, which would allow you to really
give them a ton of money coming out of the draft.

(13:49):
So we were kind of unlimited in terms of what
you could spend out of the draft. So what players
were doing at that time, you know, there are a
few examples I could think of off the top of
my head. Aaron Crow, Luke, Coachivar JD. Drew. They didn't
necessarily say they specifically wanted to go to a team,
but what they did is they said they wanted a
specific dollar amount, and that kind of de facto steered

(14:10):
them to certain teams because there weren't teams that were
going to spend ten million dollars on a player out
of a draft. They were only a finite number of
teams that were going to do that, so they were
more governed by a demand of dollars than a demand
of a team.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Per se.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
As you fast forward and kind of move forward in time,
a few just to highlight that we're a little bit nuanced,
I would say one specifically was was Anthony Volpi in
twenty nineteen. It was largely rumored that he grew up
in New York, he wanted to become a New York Yankee,
he wanted to get drafted by them. He was clearly

(14:45):
a first round talent, and most teams did just steer
clear of him out of perception that he was just
not going to sign unless he was drafted by the Yankees.
And it's just such a risk to take a player
with the first pick, you know, first round pick, because
you know, when you're we're looking at a high school kid,
it takes five years to develop them. If you don't
start the clock now, you're really missing out. And if

(15:06):
you're not building from the bottom up in Major League Baseball,
you're going to get beat. So most general managers weren't
really willing to sacrifice a first round pick. So Anthony
Vaultpi ultimately slides into the New York Yankees, gets selected
by them, and has become a real star in the game.
Two other ones that just just a highlighted, which are
kind of a little bit nuanced. Kyler Murray was a
guy coming out of the draft who you know, is

(15:27):
coming out of your University of Oklahoma, really regarded as
a first round talent in the NFL and Major League Baseball.
Oakland took a shot on him with the ninth pick
in that draft. They selected him. They thought he was
going to be an elite center fielder, and by all accounts,
I think most scouts believed he would be. You know,
that was a risk that they were willing to take
at nine because they thought he was just clearly the

(15:49):
best player on the board. Ultimately, they weren't able to
sign him. I think there was a little misinformation going
into that draft about his aptitude or his interest in
playing baseball relative to footballtimate only where he got drafted
by the Arizona Cardinals. He just couldn't pass up the opportunity,
so ultimately he does not go play Major League baseball.
Similar with Russell Wilson. You know, famously, he went to

(16:11):
North Carolina State, starting quarterback there as a junior, he
gets drafted I believe he's twenty ten by the Colorado Rockies.
You can at that time play one amateur sport and
play one professional sport, so he wouldn't have lost his eligibility.
He approaches the head coach of NC State and says,
I'd like to go work out with the with the
Rockies this offseason. He basically tells him, if you do,

(16:31):
when you come back, you may not have your scholarship.
He doesn't really believe that that's the case. He comes back,
it was the case. He goes on to finish his
career with the University of Wisconsin, and the rest is history.
With Russell Wilson. So you don't see this quite as
often in baseball, I would say, but you do see it,
you know a little bit more in basketball. And then Ryan,
you know, we'd be remiss not to just at least

(16:52):
touch on. The two most renowned stories of this case
were probably Eli Manning and John Elway in the NFL
Draft and how they you don't pretty adamantly refuse to
sign with the teams at the top of the draft
in the name of ultimately angling themselves to what will
become two Hall of Fame careers with the Denver Broncos
and the New York Giants.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, two famous examples, famous names. It worked out pretty
well for both of those guys that we're gonna shift
gears a little bit coming back after this on Rosters
to Rings, we're going to get into NBA free agency.
It was seemingly going to be a quiet free agent period,
but it's never quite in the NBA. Even if on
paper looks like teams don't have cap space, there aren't
big names on the free agent board. Well, the trade

(17:34):
market went wild. We saw a crazy deal yesterday involving
Miles Turner, the Indiana Pacers, the Milwaukee Bucks, Damian Lillard
and Moore.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
That and I we'll get into.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
All of that and more right here on Rosters to Rings.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Welcome back to Rosters to Rings. I'm here with Ryan McDonough.
We're going to tap into all sixteen years of his
expertise as we dive deep into the free agent market
in the NBA ran to do us a favor first,
take us behind the scenes. The draft was just last week,
free agency started this week. How much time do you
have to prepare? What does the war room look like,
and what happens when the clock struck six East Coast

(18:20):
time on Monday.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
That a lot of the preparation is done simultaneously. Because
this year's calendar was extremely condensed. We had Game seven
in the NBA Finals that ended just three days before
the draft started, a two day draft for only the
second time in NBA history. And then I believe they
are only three days between when the draft end and
then when free agency started, So as an executive, you're

(18:42):
simultaneously preparing for these different outcomes. One of the things
that NBA teams have discussed before is potentially flipping the
calendar thad to put free agency ahead of the draft.
That has not happened yet. That would have to be
collectively bargains. But in terms of order of importance to
your franchise, especially in the short term, free agency is
a lot more important than drafting players who usually take

(19:03):
multiple years to develop and have an impact on winning
at the highest levels. That is a process, but the
way it is now that it's the finals end. Then
you have the draft, and then you have free agency,
so teams are preparing for both at the same time.
They did not have a lot of additional prep time
this year with the condensed nature of the calendar. One
change in the new Collective Bardiner Agreement, and we can

(19:24):
debate whether it's good or bad that, but is really
given an advantage to incumbent teams in free agency because basically,
now as soon as the finals end, teams are able
to negotiate with and talk to their own free agents
and try to agree on a contract. It usually can't
be executed then, but it can be agreed upon, so
you have the ability to essentially take a player off
the board in free agency. And the main reason for

(19:47):
that was to try to limit or eliminate tampering what
happened before, because you know, people actually teams have actually
waited till six o'clock Eastern on June thirty at the
official startup free agency at the deals were already done
that and teams, as you can imagine, got frustrated. That
was a situation where people who abided by the rules
and lived the rules to the letter of the law.

(20:09):
They were getting penalized because other teams were going to
the agents, going around them and negotiating deals with players
and taking them off the market essentially before they even
hit the open market. So the league wanted to get
rid of that. So I think it's on the one hand,
it's good for rewarding teams and giving teams a huge
advantage to be able to have days, if not weeks,
to negotiate with and sign their players. But that is

(20:31):
also a barometer that in free agency if six o'clock
Eastern time on June thirtieth comes and goes and you
have not agreed on a deal with your player. I'm
looking at Dorian Finney Smith with the LA Lakers who left,
he's on his way to Houston, and then shockingly over
the last day or so a Miles Turner with the
Indiana Pacers leaving Indiana and in the very controversial waven

(20:53):
stretch with Damian Lillard, which we'll get into here in
a minute. So it gives you an advantage that to
the incumbent team, But yet it is fast and furious
coming out of the gate, and we're recording the show
just a few days into free agency. Fact I think
free agency technically started less than forty eight hours ago
and basically all the cap space around the league or
most of its dried up. The big exceptions are gone.

(21:15):
The top players for the most part are off the board.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Thad.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
So in the NBA, free agency moves fast and furious,
which to me seems a little bit different than on
your side in Major League Baseball. It seems like a
more drawn out process.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Glaciers move faster than we did on Major League Baseball side.
So it was very similar. In one regard, which was
during after the World Series, there was a window of
time and it was usually five business days where the
incumbent team was the only team that could negotiate with
the free agent. During that time, other teams could express
interest to the agent, but not in terms of financial terms,

(21:47):
just in terms of just general interests. So guys would
have a general sense of whether or not they would
have a market out there. But past that point we
would then be able to negotiate with all the field
and what would usually happen is, you know, so this
is late October early November is things would move exceptionally slowly.

(22:07):
There were a few notable date times, which was about
a week before Christmas, you would see a lot of
guys signed, and I think that was in large regard
because when they were going home to see their families
and everyone inherently would ask them the question, so where
are you playing next year or where are you living?
They wanted to know the answer to that. So you'd
see an initial wave of guys kind of signing around there.

(22:29):
The Winter meetings, which is usually early December, used to
be you'd see a few banner signings there, but that's
kind of come and gone.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
What agents have.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Learned is the longer they hold out, the more money
they tended to get, and so you'd see players out
in the market still well into spring training. And so
I just remember a few players of note. In my
last tenure here with the Minnesota Twins, we signed Lanceln,
Marwin Gonzalez, and then ultimately Carlos Korea, all three of
whom were pretty significant contributors on our team. We signed
all of those guys into spring training, so you know,

(22:59):
your team's you're actually practicing, you're working out, and you're
signing players of significance at that late to date. It's
not great, honestly. You know, in baseball, we always admired
what you guys did in the NBA and just kind
of the feeding frenzy that happens right away. It's a
little frenetic. I think fans love it. It's something it
must watch TV for the fans. But then also from

(23:22):
a coaching standpoint and a developmental standpoint, it allows you
to build your team and build team chemistry when you're
dropping in star caliber players in the middle of spring training.
While it's a big boost talent wise, it can be
very disruptive within the clubhouse. So I think it's pretty counterproductive,
honestly in Major League Baseball, something that I think they
would really love to try to shore up if they could.

(23:42):
Having players hold out into spring training and sometimes into
the regular season is not great for the game of baseball.
I can assure you that I ran you touched on it.
I think we'd be remiss not to give you an
opportunity to really give you your breakdown to what happened
in Milwaukee. It seemed as if this was all governed
by a desire to really playcate to their best player, Janis,

(24:05):
and understandably so, did they effectively do that. They ad
Miles Turner, they resign a lot of their existing core players.
But in so doing there's a significant casualty along the way,
and that's Damian Lillard. Can you just give us what
is your assessment of all these moves in aggregate?

Speaker 3 (24:20):
So to remind our listeners what happened a couple of
years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks made a big and aggressive
trade just a few years after winning the championship. They
sent out Drew Holliday and other pieces. Holiday was a
key contributor. He'll never be forgotten in Milwaukee for the
big plays he made fad the strip of Devin Booker,
the lob to Giannis in the finals en route to
the Bucks twenty twenty one championship. But Janis was getting

(24:43):
seemingly a little unhappy at the time. He was up
for a contract extension, So the Bucks wanted to make
an aggressive move in a splash, and they did, sending
Holiday and other pieces out and bringing in Damian Lillard.
Damian Lillard when he joined the Bucks, that kind of
triggered Yanis resigning a contract extension that which people around
the league are requesting at the time. This is going
back about two years or so now, so on paper,

(25:06):
it looked great, but as you know, on paper, it
doesn't always work out the way you'd hoped. The fit
wasn't ideal between those two guys for whatever reason. I
think in Portland, Dame Lillard had complete freedom.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
It was his team. He and CJ.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
McCollum formed one of the best offensive back courts in
the league. And they really didn't have a significant big.
They had use of Nurkics and some guys to screen
and roll, but it was their show and their ball,
and the team was built around them. And just the
fit between those two guys Lillard and Yannis did not
work out as hoped, as evidenced by the loss in
the first round last year, and they never really made

(25:41):
any significant noise in the playoffs. So those two in Milwaukee.
But then the big factor that the reason we're having
this conversation is because in Game four of the first
round this past year, Damian Lillard blew out his achilles
tendon non contact injury. Fortunately, there's been a rash of
those in the NBA, Jason Tatum and Tyre Sallip Burton
to the other stars who have blown achilles as well,

(26:03):
and so now Milwaukee's looking a situation where Lillard's almost
certainly going to miss this entire upcoming season, the twenty
five to twenty six season, and then he only has
one year left on his deal. In fact, I believe
that was a player option, so theoretically could have opted
out and left. So that's one of his positions. You
never want to be in as an organization that. As
you know, sometimes you're dealing from a position of strength

(26:23):
and you have time and leveraging and be patient. This
wasn't the case of Milwaukee. They were desperate, and so
they did something that no team in NBA history has
ever done before. In fact, nobody's even done close to
what the Bucks just did. Damian Loward had two years,
one hundred and thirteen million dollars total on his contract
and they waived and stretched that, meaning they're going to
pay that whole salary, and they spread the salary cap

(26:45):
hit the one hundred and thirteen million out over five years,
which ironically, that is just below the minimum threshold in
the NBA you can only have fifteen percent of your
salary cap space be dead money. They call it money
of players who are no longer actively playing, just sitting
on your books. This is like fourteen points something percent.
It's just underneath it what they did with Dame Lillard

(27:06):
so really surprising. And one of the themes that and
I think you and I will continue to harp on
this on the show is just when you think you
have everything figured out in terms of the marketplace and
you know what teams can and can't do for a player.
And I'm looking at this now from the Indiana side,
they had Miles Turner. I think they're sitting there saying, Okay, well,

(27:27):
Brooklyn's the only team of significant cap space, they're not
using it. We're just going to sit back and you know,
trying to negotiate a fair deal. But we have the
leverage here. Well, that leverage is you know, as a
relative term. Things can change very quickly because all it
takes is one team to do something desperate and aggressive
that we did not see coming. And that's exactly what
the Milwaukee Bucks did when they waved and stretched Damian

(27:48):
Lillard in order to free up the space to sign
Miles Turner.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Ran.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Do you think in this type of instance, was there
any trade market whatsoever for Damian Lillard in his current contract.
I'm sure they exhausted that, but would there be any
team who would have acquired him prior to them waving him.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
No, I'm sure they tried that first ad just because
he's on a max salary and makes fifty five million
a year, that money is guaranteed. The injury is significant
enough where you say, even if he does come back
late in this upcoming season, what's that going to look like?
How much he's gonna have left? And then he has
the player option as contracts, so he could theoretically opt out.

(28:23):
And then the other thing to be blunt is the
Milwaukee Bucks have not done a great job with their drafts.
They've already traded a bunch of picks to try to
build around Giannis. And that's one of the challenges in
the NBA, I think really probably cuts across sports to
MLB as well. When you're so aggressive trying to win
a championship and then keep that championship window open as
long as you can, it's easy to throw draft picks

(28:45):
and young players keep pushing more and more into the
center of the table. Well, sometimes you run out of
chips and you don't have a hand to play. So
I think there are certain teams that are asset rich,
like the OKC Thunder, the Houston Rockets, the San Antonio Spurs,
that if Lillard was on their roster, they probably would
have enough to incentivize a team to take it. That
Milwaukee's not one of those teams. I think they might

(29:07):
have the least amodel at young talent in the league.
They still owe a bunch of future draft picks and swaps.
So to answer your question, no, they tried that. First,
they could not do it, and then they shocked everybody
with what they've done because I mean, think about it
from an ownership financial perspective, eating over one hundred million
dollars in salary, they're paying Dami a little not to
play for the Bucks and having that on your salary

(29:28):
cap for the next five years, that that's going to
impack the franchise until about twenty thirty. So that's the
decision they just made. Is Miles Turner on his own
good enough? I don't think so. I think they still
have significant holes on the perimeter in the backcourt, but
clearly they're doing whatever they can to try to keep
Jannis Kubo happy. Keep in mind that one more year
this time next year, in twenty twenty six, Gianis is

(29:50):
eligible for a contract extension again, so Milwaukee continues to
be extremely aggressive to do everything they can to try
to keep him in a Bucks uniform.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
You know, Ryan, every front I've ever worked in, there's
one guy in the front office who says, Hey, as
bad as this contract is or this trade is, if
we win a World Series, no one will care. And
I would just say, looking at some of the betting
prognosticating sites, this move made the Milwaukee books, I think,
the eighth highest favorite in the Eastern Conference to win

(30:19):
the Eastern Conference. So you know, sometimes we make these
moves and they're super short term, but it is with
the thought of mind that we're putting the team over
the top. It doesn't feel like in this case, per se,
that was what was accomplished. What was accomplished maybe was
delaying yanis demanding a trade for one year or two
years at this point, but it sounds from your analysis

(30:40):
like that may not ultimately lead them to the promised
land that they were aspiring to get to, Which leads
me to my next question, which is Ryan, in these
types of deals, like how much are the owners involved
in your opinion, how much are the head coaches involved?
And then certainly I could share my perspective in Major
League Baseball, But how would you view that perspective in
the NBA.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
It all depends on the organization and obviously the owner's preference.
Does he want to be involved. I think some of
the old guard owners, Dad, the old school guys, are
less involved. I look at Mickey Arrison and his family
down in Miami. They've been doing it for a long time.
They have one of the best front offices and coaching
staffs in the business. They've had a lot of success historically,
so I think he doesn't completely stay out of it.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
For the most part.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
He lets those guys do what they want to do.
The Indiana Pacers, Herb Simon has owned the team forever.
You know, the front office is excellent track record of
success in a smaller market. We saw what they just
did winning the Eastern Conference, getting to Game seven NBA
Finals with relatively low payroll thads. It's kind of a
model in terms of what they've done, and so some

(31:44):
you know, are less involved like that. But frankly, some
of the newer owners and more aggressive owners are more involved.
Even in the day to day basketball decision making. These
guys are paying record setting valuations for these teams. We
know that recently the Boston Celtics I have sold for
six point one billion dollars. The LA Lakers are selling
for ten billion dollars. So I think that that's changing

(32:04):
the game too. Anytime guys are pushing that much money in,
they want some semblance of influence and input, if not
complete control over the situation. So from my experience, and
I want to get your take on it. On you know,
if you and I won the lottery and we could
go buy a team, what we would do. I always
respected the owners who were involved when the decisions were
more important, especially financially that I think like this one

(32:27):
in Milwaukee in particular, a GM does not just go
out and eat one hundred and thirteen million dollars and
spread that money out in the salary cap over over
five years. Right, the GM head coach might not be
there five years from now. So that's one that I
think requires and should require significant ownership input and ultimately
approval to do it. But that I'm interested from your

(32:47):
perspective in Major League Baseball, how much does that happen?
And it is at the case too where owners get
more involved if you're thinking on taking back a large
contract in a trade or signing a player to a
large contract and free agency. Are they more involved in
that than, say, you know, the draft or something that
involves less money going out or taking on less money
in a trade.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
One thing that really jumped out to me about the
Milwaukee situation relative to the owner perspective is, you know,
usually when you eat a contract like that, it's not
also a contract you yourself signed or that you acquired,
which is in this case what what happened in Milwaukee.
Usually you've inherited that deal by way of trade or
by way of your predecessor, and then you can just
kind of convince ownership to cut you know, what is

(33:33):
a sunk cost. But it's rare that the GM who
actually acquired that player and or signed him is the
one that is allowed to do that. So in baseball,
one thing that is exceptionally common is every trade you make,
every free agent signing, at some point you say to
the person you're negotiating, of course, this is pending ownership approval,
and it's kind of a little bit of our get

(33:53):
out of jail free card. Sometimes you know that the
owner's already approved it, but it gives you the opportunity
at the last to make a slight adjustment if necessary,
even though you've kind of negotiated the deal in completion.
But I just remember a few instances of significance in
my career relative to ownerships process. What one was, and

(34:14):
it ties back into a point you made earlier about
the Indiana Pacers and they thought they kind of had
leverage where they did they underestimated the market that could
be for Miles Turner. Well, we did that once when
I was in Texas. We had the opportunity to acquire
Josh Beckett from the Miami Marlins. Larry Binfest was the
GM at the time. He called us up and basically said,

(34:34):
here's a deal that we're prepared to do. We took
it to ownership at that time. We honestly recommended that
we did the deal as was presented to us. But
as is the case in every negotiation, you assume that
you can, you can tweak it a little bit, you
can make it a slightly better for you. So we
went back to them and made a counter proposal, which
was not a significant drop in value, but it was

(34:55):
It was a marginal drop in value. Larry Binfast responded
to us immediately saying, you misunderstood me. We made you
the offer that we were prepared to do. We're going
to trade him to the Boston Red Sox this afternoon,
and they did, and we then had to go back
and talk to ownership, who had already approved the deal
as it was presented to us, and explain why we
didn't get that deal done. I think that was a

(35:15):
significant lesson learned for us in our careers. Another one
that I can't mention names here, but I've had a
few friends who work for owners who will actually literally
go out and just negotiate deals on behalf of the
team and in the worst case scenario, I then called
my friend who was the GM and said, congratulations on
signing this player twitch He said, I had nothing to

(35:38):
do with it. And what's more than that, the owner
called me up afterwards and said, we're now twenty million
dollars over budget. You need to cut payroll elsewhere. And
he said, I'm not twenty million dollars over budget. I
think you're twenty million dollars over budget. But needless to say,
that team didn't actually win too often, so the other
element I would say, just to touch on in baseball
is when I started my career, there was a pretty

(35:59):
pronounced division between church and state, between what happened in
the clubhouse and what happened in the front office. So
just generally speaking, the front office was responsible for acquiring
the talent that then the manager was responsible for deploying
to try to win games, and managers and front office
people maybe went out to dinner periodically, but they really

(36:19):
didn't get involved in each other's business. That really has
changed throughout my career. So now managers buy and large
are involved in the conversation of who we're acquiring for
them to deploy to put on the field, and the
general managers are involved in how those players are deployed.
So there's a lot more synergies between managers and in
front office executives in baseball now. So I think it's

(36:40):
very rare that you would make a significant acquisition without
the consultation of your manager being involved, being on board
with the acquisition. It's not that they have the final vote,
but they do have a prominent voice in that, at
least that's been my experience recently. Right, I think we
would be remiss not to go too much further in
the show without you just sharing who are some of
the big winners for you in free agency? Certainly on

(37:04):
the surface, it looks like Denver has done a ton.
You mentioned Milwaukee already, maybe Atlanta, some other teams out
there that have really made some splashes so far. Who
are some of the big winners and some of the
teams that you may be concerned about talent that they've
lost through this process.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
The first name that comes to mind when I think
of the biggest winners in free agencies so far are
the Houston Rockets that adding Kevin Durant the way they did.
I think the potential availability of Giannis and Dinakombo is
overhanging the NBA to some extent, where teams who are
asset rich, like the San Antonio Spurs, OKC Thunder, maybe

(37:38):
to some extent, the Miami Heat, they're sitting back and
waiting because Giannis is a game changing player. He's a
generational talent, one of the top seventy five players in
NBA history, and still in his prime on a multi
year contract, So teams are waiting to see if he
will push his way out of Milwaukee. Doesn't look like
he's going to do that right now in this re
agent period. But certainly, how are the Bucks going to
do this year? You mentioned the betting. I'd have them

(38:01):
right there too on that kind of play in line,
which is, you know, six seven, eight nine in the
East somewhere there. I think this team's a long way
from being a championship contender. And Yannis, who's an extremely
loyal guy, as he realizes it's probably not going to
happen again as far as him winning a championship Milwaukee,
does he push his way out. So I bring that
up because Houston I think masterfully played their hands with

(38:22):
Phoenix and the Kevin Durant sweepstakes that you know, we
talk a lot about leverage and urgency in the show. Houston,
with a young team, just won fifty two games last year.
They were the second seed in the Western Conference. They
lost to a more experienced Golden State team in the
first round, and I think that really opened their eyes
to some extent. That is, you know, it's different in

(38:42):
Major League Baseball as well, but the NBA, the postseason
is a little bit different than the regular season, and
I think Houston throughout the regular season last year was
putting out there that you know, we're fine. We like
our young core. We don't want to give up any
young guys. Wish they should, which to some extent is true.
But then when you get in the playoffs and you
have to line up for seven games, and on the
other side they have Steph Curry, they have Draymond Green,

(39:03):
Jimmy Butler, three Hall of Famers, and you have a
lot of talent and depth, but you lose.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Historically, you lose to the more experienced group.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
So Houston, I think their biggest weakness last year was
getting buckets in the half court, and they got one
of the best at all time in that and Kevin
Durant that when your offense bogs down, the play breaks down,
Kevin Durant at six to eleven, you can throw them
the ball. He can just go go get a bucket.
He's still elite at that. So I really like that
piece of it. They bring in Kadi and they really
held on to their best young players. That's what I

(39:33):
liked about it. In fact, they also offset some money
because Jalen Green and Dylan Brooks who went back to
the Suns the contracts and the deal going to Phoenix.
That allowed them to do other things. So in free
agency so far, they brought in Dorian Finney Smith and
Clint Capella, so I really like their depth. I think
they might need one more guard. I look at some
of their younger wings, guys like Terry Easton and Cam Whitmore,

(39:55):
were probably a little bit block now given their front
court talent and depth, and I think they'll probably flip
one of those guys for ardor at least they should
think about that. But to me that they're the big winner.
The Houston Rockets number two seed in the West, with
a young core. They keep the best young players intact
and at Kevin Durant, and I think they'll push OKC
in the Western Conference this upcoming season. Ran you talked
a lot about Milwaukee and what they tried to do

(40:17):
to please Jannis. How has Denver done to try to
please Jokic? How would you assess their offseason so far?

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Excellent?

Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah, another offseason winner for me, because I thought they
may have to choose that one of two things, either
salary dumping Michael Porter Junior's contract to get more flexibility
or attaching a number of assets to Porter's contract to
try to upgrade their roster. They kind of killed two
birds with one stone, so to speak, with the Denver

(40:46):
Nuggets and the Brooklyn Nets making a trade because Brooklyn
was the only team in the league with significant salary
cap space. For the first time in NBA history, a
team drafted five guys in the first round and is
going to have all five guys on the roster. That's
what Brooklyn just did in the draft. That's never happened
before that, And frankly, I was wrong doing these different
media appearances on TV radio and the pod. I didn't

(41:08):
think they were going to do that because nobody's ever
done it. And it's a thirty year roster on basically teenagers.
So if you're betting on Brooklyn next year, I think
it's gonna be a long season. So'll probably be in
the high lottery sweepstakes again. So with their cap space,
teams are looking at Brooklyn saying, how can we get
some of their talented veterans led by Cameron Johnson, shooter,

(41:28):
good defender, And the salaries are so important here that
because Cameron Johnson makes about seventeen million dollars less per
year than does Michael Porter Junior, and the Nuggets had
one of the most top heavy rosters in the league
in terms of the talent clustered at the top and
also the payroll. They essentially had four guys who were
on max or near max contracts, then a huge gap
to Zeke Naje. Their fifth highest paid player only made

(41:50):
about eight million, So it was very difficult with the
NBA's trade matching rules and salary matching rules to come
up with deals that worked. So I thought it was brilliant. Yes,
they did have to put a twin. He threw twenty
thirty two first future first in the package along with
Michael Porter Junior, but bringing back Cameron Johnson. He's a
perfect fit in my opinion, for their roster and also
that additional flexibility fad let them go out and get

(42:13):
Jonas Valanciunis from Sacramento. They've been searching for a backup
from Nikola Jokic at the center spot. The team is
really led points when Jokic has been off the court.
Now hopefully Valentiunis can hold the ford and they don't
need to win those minutes, to be honest with you,
they just need to be around. Even because Jokich is
so good, they usually win his minutes when he's on
the court. And then a couple really good free agent
veteran signings guys who I think they got on minimum

(42:34):
contracts with your steals. Bruce Brown, who won a championship
there a couple of years ago, was a key contributor.
And then Tim Hardaway Junior, a shooter from Detroit. So
that's one of the things for that that I think
guys like you and I really appreciate. It's not the
splashy moves necessarily, they get the headlines and are leading
the ticker on ESPN or whatever sometimes.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
That we'd lied. It's wow.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
They got those guys for really good value and they
maximize the little flexibility they have. And I think to
me at Denver is up there with Houston, and this
would be a theme fad like the West is at
the top in particular is brutal. Yes, Okac looks dominant,
but what Houston did, what Denver did, what Minnesota did
re signing nas Reed and Julius Randall, the West is

(43:15):
loaded once again and will be a bloodbath, especially at
the top. It's not going to be easy even for
those teams to guarantee a slot in the top six
and avoid the play in tournament.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Well, hey, listen on rosters to rings. Were willing to
play the long game. But it'll be very interesting to
watch Milwaukee and Denver juxtaposed against each other, both trying
to build a round a star player, both a little
bit compromise in terms of salary cap space, both want
about it very differently, and we'll see which team actually
did a better end. More to the point that you

(43:44):
were making earlier, Ryan, Denver was a better team last
year and is probably predicted to be an even better
team this year. So they did it a little bit
more thoughtfully, it seems, according to you. And also they
have better playoff odds to begin with. But this is
the age old debate in the front office, which is,
what should you do at the end of a wind
cycle to try to hang on tooth and nail to

(44:07):
try to win more one more season or two more
seasons and keep that window open. And how much of
your future are you willing to sacrifice in the name
of doing that. And it's it's exceptionally difficult to make
some of those decisions. And you know the reality is,
we don't sit in these seats forever, and so sometimes
the general manager is thinking along the lines of I've
got to try to hold on for dear life for

(44:28):
one more year, and whatever I do about sacrificing the
future isn't going to be my problem. It will be
the next guy's problem. You know, there's very rare that
these general managers survive, you know, multiple rebuilds, and so
that there's sometimes mixed emotions in the front office when
and mix, you know, directions relative to securing your job

(44:50):
and trying to win that one last and final season. Right,
I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. You've
spoken a number of times on the show about maybe
the way for the now is teams really building out
deep rosters. As we're looking we're so much more sophisticated
on load management across all sports. The depth of your
roster really truly matters. And so as much as you

(45:13):
lauded what OKC in Indianapolis had done and why they
ultimately got into the finals this year, I just would
like to ask your opinion on a team on the
other side of the spectrum, which is the Cleveland Cavaliers.
They're spending one hundred and seventy five million dollars on
their top five highest paid players are they They were
exceptional team last year, but is that a formula for success?

(45:35):
Will they be able to build enough roster depth around
those five players to be able to withstand not only
the eighty two regular season game schedule, but also the
rigors of the playoffs.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I think the Cavs are a perfect example of the
difference in the NBA between the regular season and the playoffs,
because this was a dominant team last year. They won
sixty four games, ran away with the Eastern Conference, which
was surprising given the team that Boston had and the
year the Celtics had year four prior to that in
twenty twenty three twenty four, Celtics dominated the regular season
and the postseason en route to the twenty twenty four championship,

(46:08):
and Cleveland was much better than that in last of
this past regular season. So, but the playoffs are a
little different that and the Calves are a uniquely constructed
team because of the payroll you mentioned, actually similar to Denver,
who we were just talking about prior to the Michael
Porter junior trade. We have four players the top of
your roster who make most of your money, and you
know most of your talent is tied up in those
four guys and then less depth. And one of I

(46:31):
think the real time examples of that in Cleveland and
the financial crunch is Ty Jerome, who played a key role.
I was one of the sixth Man of the Year
candidates coming off the bench, really had a breakout year
last year in Cleveland. Well he's gone now, he's signing
with the Memphis Grizzlies. Cleveland could not afford to pay him,
and so I think one of the issues with the Calves.

(46:53):
They have a ton of talent, but they have two
smaller guards in Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland, and then
two biggs in Evan Mobley and Jared Allen, who were
probably traditionally centers at least a primary position in today's
NBA is center. That's a uniquely constructed team that his
teams are usually going with a bunch of wings. We
know the Celtics one, you know at the highest levels

(47:15):
a year ago, a team led by Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown.
We know the Knicks tried to match that and had
a lot of success in doing so, bringing in ogn
and Ob mckel bridges. They Cleveland Cavaliers really don't have
a guy like that. It's smaller guards and then Biggs
in the front line, like seven footers in the front line.
So I think at some point they will have to
balance their roster out. My guess is it's not going

(47:37):
to be Evan Mobley. I think he's a young star
in the front court, you know, defensive player of the year, versatile,
He's I.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Think the last guy they would trade.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
They're going to build around him, and then Donovan Mitchell
probably secondarily will be off the market. So I keep
an eye on Jared Allen potentially going out at some point,
or in particular Darius Garland. Now Garland has a toe injury,
and it's difficult to trade players in that situation. But
that's it's a tough thing that I want to get
your perspective on it. In MLB, I've always thought it's
easier when the team is going through a rebuild or

(48:07):
when you need to make a lot of moves to
be aggressive. I think one of the harder things is
when you feel like you're right there on the verge
of championship contention to make a seismic move, because you
never want to be the guy who dismantled the sixty
four win team and then has it goes sideways or worse,
it goes down. You just made a bad move and
you set your team back. So it'd be interested to
get your perspective. In Major League Baseball, when you're right

(48:29):
at the precipice of championship contending, are those deals sometimes
harder to pull the trigger on.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Well, you know, I'm harkening back to what you said
about Houston. Houston was the second best team in the
Western Conference and then they miss in the first round
of the playoffs, and they've gotten really aggressive this offseason.
I always felt that the best time to make a
significant move was when you were prohibitive favorites to win
your division. It's not the best time to do it

(48:55):
when the move only puts you into playoff contention. Because
I think there's a finite of those moves you can make.
I think those are finishing moves ideally, some are foundational,
some are ones that you know you could build around
for the future. But oftentimes in baseball, those last moves
were the guy you were acquiring who maybe was the
veteran talent who was not necessarily in his prime, but

(49:15):
it was a piece to put you over the top.
It wasn't necessarily the move you were making to think, Okay,
this guy can help us for the next five years,
but maybe he could help us for the next five months.
And so I always felt the time to do that
was when you were a prohibitive consideration for the playoffs.
Projected to win your division, you're going to play home
playoff games. Now, this guy really helps you win once

(49:35):
you get there. And that was vital with regards to
the payroll distribution. You know, when you're not in the
playoffs in Major League Baseball, the playoffs go a long time,
just like as it does in the NBA. You have
a lot of time to really think about how you
can improve your team. And so we did a study
back in the day, and what we found was that
when Major League Baseball teams spent over fifty two percent

(49:58):
of their payroll on their top five highest paid players,
there was almost no instance of a team winning in
the playoffs and sustaining winning. That these top heavy rosters
in baseball just didn't work. Where you had superstar players
and then kind of more average level players who were
panning out the rest of the roster. The first team
ironically to figure this out, I think was the Atlanta Braves,

(50:20):
and they ultimately went on this exceptional run, and it
started after they traded their two time MVP Dale Murphy,
who just at that time represented too high a percentage
of their payroll. But then a lot of teams followed suit.
The Minnesota Twins traded Chuck Nabloc, Mark McGuire was traded
by the Oakland Athletics. At the time, those guys were
some of the most productive players on their team, but

(50:40):
they just didn't line up from a payroll standpoint anymore
on their club's relative to the production they were making.
So some teams are still kind of minred in that
for a long time. The Anaheim Angels, where they had
Mike Trout, Shoheo Tani, and Anthony Rendon, which at different
years were three of the best players in the American League,
but the rest of their roster wasn't up to standards.

(51:00):
They had Vernon Wells during that time as well, you know,
give or take, and so they had these exceptional stars
at the top, but the rest of the roster just
didn't pan out. In the game of baseball, where your
best players are getting three, four or five played appearances,
your pitchers are pitching once every fifth day. They just
don't make enough of an impact to singularly carry your team.
You have to build balanced rosters, and I think that's

(51:23):
something we saw in baseball, where you know, there's this
kind of notion in basketball, if you have two or
three stars, they can really carry your team. It doesn't
tend to play out that way in baseball. You really
have to have depth because there's going to be injuries
along the way. There's going to be attrition, there's going
to be guys who don't perform as well as you expected.
If your next level of talent can't step in and compete,

(51:45):
you're going to get exposed at some point during the
course of the regular season. At least that's been my
experience when looking at a Major league baseball for sure.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
Yeah, I think you know, teams will look for the
weak link in the NBA, and that's one of the themes.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Now.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I think Golden State masterfully did it, led by Steve Kerr,
the ball movement, player movement. Yes, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson,
and Draymond Green got the attention, as they should. Those
guys are going to the Hall of Fame, but they
did a great job to during that run with their depth,
guys like Andrew bogot Leandro Barbosa, David West, Sehn Livingstone.
I could go on, but they were rock solid. And
I think we just saw the recent example of that

(52:22):
maybe iteration two point zero in the finals with OKC
in Indiana, and I contrast that with some recent kind
of historical failures if I'm being honest, in Brooklyn Kevin Durant,
Kyrie Irving, James Harden, then ironically again in Phoenix involving
Kevin Durant, Devin Brooker, Bradley Beal, and then recently Philadelphia.
We'll see how it works out, but the early returns

(52:44):
are for Joel embiid Tyres Maxi, Paul George, that three
star model are not very good in the NBA.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Because of what you just said.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
If you have too much of your talent and payroll
really at the top of your roster, your depth stinks,
and then you're really not able to overcome any kind
of adversity in the NBA as far as injuries, foul trouble,
or just underperformance from one of your stars, and then
your role players tend to get picked on and you
have weaker links in the chain. The ball movement, player
movement I think is so good now in the NBA

(53:12):
that if you have a weak defender or a couple
guys who can't shoot offensively in a playoff series in particular,
teams will just game plan for that and they'll attack
your weaknesses and then not guard your guys who can't shoot,
and it really makes it virtually impossible for your stars
to operate. So I think, yeah, that is a theme
across sports, and as teams get more sophisticated that I
think that trend will continue where it's a little more balanced.

(53:33):
I mean, look, at the end of the day, stars,
having a star or two at the top of your
roster in the NBA will always win. The real question
now is do we need to pay that third star
the max or near the max or spread it out
a little bit? And I think, frankly that was a
consideration for Indiana with Miles Turner. He did not play
great in the finals. He was good up through the
Eastern Conference finals, struggled against OKC. They said, well, we're

(53:56):
a smaller market team. Do we want to pay this guy,
you know? Close to with Tyre's Halliburton and Pascal Siakamar
Stars get or just run the risk that you know
there is a point where you got to draw the
line in the sand and move on. We talked about
how Milwaukee surprised some people, but for Indiana, they're going
to get criticized and I understand that that, but it
wasn't an obvious thing. It wasn't like Indiana screwed up.

(54:18):
I think there is a chance we look back on
the deal Milwaukee just gave Miles Turner a year or
two from now and say, what were the Bucks thinking?
The Pacers are smart to let him go at that price.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Well, John Hart, who was one of my mentors, he
was the architect of the dominant Cleveland Indians run than
Indians now guardian and one of the things he always
said is don't let a star set on you. And
kind of when you do the research in baseball, I'll
be curious run your take on how this translates in
basketball is, by and large, you should be buying years
thirty and younger for players. You should also be selling

(54:49):
years thirty one years of age and older. And so
one of the risks you have here is this perception
that you need to retain the same players year over year.
And what John taught us, when you're building a rosters,
you want as many stars on your team next year
as or were this year. It just doesn't have to
be the same stars. And that sometimes is unpopular in
the marketplace. But the best gms, I think, aren't really

(55:09):
in it for their own reputation and Q rating. They're
in it to try to win, and so we're trying
to put the best teams we can on the field.
It doesn't mean we're always retaining the same players. Sometimes
the biggest mistakes you can make is signing that second
contract to the player because he was such a value
in the first contract, but in practice he was such
a value because he was playing in his prime, and

(55:31):
we captured years twenty five through age thirty. Now all
of a sudden to double down, and I think Miles
Turner is entering that age frame. I don't know. Obviously,
some of the best players in the NBA are older,
so maybe it doesn't translate quite the same in the NBA,
But in Major League Baseball, the big mistake you can
make is a perception that you have to continue to
retain all the exact same players to appease the fans.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah, Miles Turner was an Indiana Pacer for ten years,
one of the longest ten yured players, not only in
recent Pacers history, but in the NBA. Very few players
last a decade with one franchise. But that this sounds cold,
but from a front office perspective, that really shouldn't matter
that much. All that really matters, in my opinion, is
what are the next three or four years going to
look like? Because you know, you don't get paid for

(56:15):
historical performance. This is not a lifetime achievement award. And look,
if Miles Turner were dominant in the NBA Finals or
even solid in the NBA Finals, I don't think we'd
be having this conversation. In fact, the Indiana Pacers might
be holding the Lariobrian Trophy right now as the NBA champions.
He wasn't very good, So I think that combined with
you know, the salary, combined with Tyres Halliburton having a

(56:37):
blown achilles and missing next year. If you're the Pacers,
there was a line that they drew in the sands.
They probably thought nobody would cross it. But if Milwaukee
crossed it, sure it's a blow in the short term,
but long term, that front office is very savvy and
they're good at doing exactly what you're talking about with
John Hart in the in the Cliff and Indians that
they're They're very good at finding the next guy and saying, Okay,

(56:57):
we're not going to look backward, to look forward. Let's
value in the next guy and structure the contracts appropriately.
Kevin Pritchard, Chad Buchanan a company and the Pacers front
office or some of the best executives in the league
doing exactly that.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
You know, it would be fascinating when we look five
years down the road the butterfly effect of Damian Lillard,
Jason Tatum, and Halliburn all having achilles issues in the
same conference, and all the moves that were made or
were not made as a result of those three injuries,
it seems significant. One last guy I wanted to ask
you about Ryan with regards for free agency, Jared Zack Jackson,

(57:33):
who seems like a star player for the Memphis Grizzlies,
signs you know, quietly a five year, two hundred and
forty million dollar deal that jumped out to me, so
I looked it up. That average annual salary is forty
eight million. That would make him the twenty third highest
paid NBA player in terms of average annual salary. It
would make him the third highest Major League Baseball player paid,

(57:54):
behind only Shohei Otani and Juan Soda. That just goes
to show kind of the disparity and pay. So I
want you to getive us a little taste. How important
is Jaron Jackson to the Memphis Grizzlies. How does it
hit you that he'd be the third highest paid baseball
player relative to the twenty third highest paid NBA player.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
I say, generally speaking, fad, there's never been a time
to be a great or even a very good NBA player.
We know what the new national media deals look like
ESPN with Amazon and NBC coming in that starts a
year from now, starts twenty twenty six. So the money
coming into the NBA is astronomical, and it's reflected in
the franchise values, and you know, there's a more complicated

(58:33):
version of it, but essentially the money that comes in
is split fifty to fifty between the players on the
one side and the owners on the other side. So yeah,
it's a great time to be an NBA star. And
Jared Jackson Junior is a good two way player. It's
amazing he's only twenty five years old that but he's
been in the league seven years. Talented defender was in
the mix for Defensive Player of the Year. And I'm

(58:53):
glad you asked the question when we did, because it
ties into what we were just talking about with the
three star model and the Memphis Grizzlies, as a smaller
market team, they decided they could not pay their three
best players, John Morant, Jaron Jackson Junior, and Desmond Bane.
So a big part of the reason they traded Desmond
Bane to the Orlando Magic was to create additional flexibility

(59:13):
to make sure they locked in Jaron Jackson Junior. And
so Memphis is doing what's called the renegotiation and extension THAD,
where essentially you create salary cap space, and you use
the salary cap space to renegotiate your player's contract up
and then you extend it out as far as the years.
Because one of the challenges you run into, and this
is kind of a quirk in the collective bargain agreement

(59:35):
in the NBA, but if a player outperforms his current contract,
it can be tough to resign him. It can be
tough to resign them because I'll give you a current
example and a team that's going through this right now
are the LA Lakers with Austin Reeves. Austin Reeves making
about thirteen fourteen million a year that he's going to
make a lot more than that next year as a
free agent. So essentially, the Lakers, who do not have

(59:55):
the ability to create cap space to renegotiate and extends
because of the presence of main Lebron James and Luka Donsich,
They're they're kind of stuck right right now. They're in
a tough situation and Austin Reeves is likely to be
an unrestricted free agent next summer and they might have
to get in a bidding war to try to chase him.
Memphis didn't want to do that with Jared Jackson Junior,
so they were creative made the move, which is tough

(01:00:17):
because trading desnt Bang is going to make their team
worse in the short term. But they think the two
star model that we were just discussing with Indiana and others,
they're going to build around Jahn Morant Jared Jackson Jr.
Have more flexibility and more depth. So I understand it.
But then the kicker is that as we do the show,
just last night, it came out that Jared Jackson Jr.
Has a significant turf toe injury that's going to require

(01:00:38):
surge decrey. So you know, two hundred and forty million
is great, but from the team perspective and ownership perspective,
he's saying, well, wait a minute, you know when do
this injury occur? And I'm not suggesting anything on toward
here with that, but it's not ideal the timing of it.
This guy's, you know, signing a two hundred and forty
million dollar contract and he says, oh, by the way,
I have surgery, I'm probably not going to be ready
for training camp and the start of next season.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I think you're illuminating too. It's just it's so tough
for these windows are so small, you know, to succeed
when you have players that are affordable, then all of
a sudden, before you blink your eyes, these guys start
start making maximum level salaries, which means then you have
to make these tough decisions a little bit more accelerated
than you hoped to. So you've built these championship caliber rosters,

(01:01:21):
but that you can't afford them and so that you
have to make moves. Well, this segues perfectly into our
listener question of the week come from a gentleman by
the name of twins Nowher wants to dive a little
bit deeper into the CBAS and the NBA in Major
League Baseball. Stay tuned after the break, we'll get to
that question.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Welcome back to Rosters, to Rings everyone, Ryan McDonough joined
as always by Thad Levine and that one of my
favorite parts about doing the pod with you is getting
feedback and hearing questions from our listener, and one this
week I thought was really interesting. It's actually a two
part question, half of it directed for you and then
half of it redirected back towards meet that. So let's

(01:02:08):
start with your piece of it. This comes from one
of our listeners called twins Knower. I imagine he's a
big fan of your stat if he goes by twins
Knower and he's listening to the pod and asking questions,
So we really appreciate that. But his question, that is,
what are the possibilities of a salary cap in Major
League Baseball?

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Well, I'm a little concerned about all that he knows
about us, but we'll try to stay above board here.
So I'm going to cite an article that was written
recently in The Athletic by Evan Drelich, in which he
interviewed Commissioner Rob Manford of Major League Baseball. Rob sited
a few facts that I think are worth noting here
and trying to respond to twins Knower's question. In two

(01:02:49):
thousand and two, Rob said that the owners spent about
sixty three percent of their revenues on player salaries. As
you fast forward to twenty twenty five in the season,
they're spending only forty seven percent of their revenues on
player salary, so there's been a little bit of a dip.
There's an opportunity for the players to make more money.
We spent the whole previous segment talking about how advantageous

(01:03:11):
the CBA right now is in the NBA, how there's
more of a revenue share between the players and the
owners that's not existing as much in Major League Baseball.
So I think there's an opportunity for real correction. A
few other statistics of note. Rob reference that the top
ten percent of the players are earning seventy two percent
of the overall salary. One thing that I always felt

(01:03:32):
was a little surprising and collective bargaining is it appears
to me that the Union prevails on this concept of
the trickle down economics, where you're forever trying to preserve
the up or earning potential of the players, when in practice,
what we're seeing is this is just a real erosion
of the middle class. Such as it is, there are
more players who are making either more than ten million

(01:03:54):
dollars or less than one million dollars then there are
making one to ten million dollars. So bear with us,
Like we understand that's not middle class in normal worlds,
but in terms of professional baseball, it just shows that
there's a bit of an erosion. So for every superstar
players are signing, they're signing seven to eight guys making
the major league minimum just to balance their payrolls. Another

(01:04:15):
thing just to keep in mind in terms of the
disparity in the league. Right now twenty twenty five, the
Dodgers have the highest payroll. It's about three hundred and
thirty six million dollars. The Marlins have the thirtieth highest payroll.
Also there is the lowest at sixty seven million, So
that's a difference about two hundred and sixty nine million dollars, which,
believe it or not, represents the entire Philadelphia Phillies roster salary,

(01:04:39):
which and they are the fourth highest paid team, so
the difference between the first and last team is the
fourth highest payroll, which is pretty remarkable. And the other
thing just to note here, Ryan is in the last
thirty years, no team in the bottom fifteen payrolls has
won a World Series.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I think that's.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Concerning to the Commissioner of Baseball. So as much as
fans say we all loved last year's World Series, when
the Dodgers and the Yankees are playing two major markets,
in practice they need to know that the smaller and
mid sized markets have a chance to win.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Right now.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
They have a chance to make the playoffs. We celebrate
every time Tampa, Cleveland, Minnesota, Milwaukee to name a few,
make the playoffs, but in practice those teams aren't really
advancing too far in the playoffs. Occasionally they make the
World Series. Tampa's done it recently, Cleveland's done it relatively recently,
but they're not prevailing once they get there. So one
thing just to consider as I try to more formally

(01:05:33):
address twins Knower's question is I think sometimes when we
think of a salary cap, people get fixated on the
suppression of salaries on the top end. I would challenge
people to look at building the salaries from the bottom end.
So if the disparity in payrolls three hundred and thirty
six million to sixty nine million, if you just asked
every major league team to spend at the median salary

(01:05:55):
payroll salary, which is one hundred and fifty eight million,
that's not the average. The average is one to seventy
so the median, and then allowed teams to spend twenty
five percent more so up to about two hundred million.
And so now the disparity would be one fifty eight
to two hundred million. There would be one hundred and
ninety eight more million dollars spent on players per year
in Major League Baseball. So a potential solution I could

(01:06:19):
would consider is the unit get scared off by the
notion of a salary cap, maybe focus more on what
the salary floor should be, the payroll floor should be,
and if we raise the payroll floor high enough there's
actually a lot more money in the game, even if
we do suppress the earning at the top end. Ryan
shifting to the second half of the question that twins
Noer wanted to ask, which was effectively, in your opinion,

(01:06:42):
how much of the new CBA in the NBA affects
free agency so far, whether it be unattended or intended
based upon the negotiations.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Yeah, that I'll get to that just in a minute.
But I want to piggyback on what you just said
about Major League Baseball because what you mentioned is as
far as bringing the floor up, that's exactly what the
NBA has done now in the new Collective Baring Agreement.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
In the NBA, you need.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
To spend ninety percent of the salary cap before opening night,
because it was happening before that as teams would go
into the season and with a ton of cap space,
they wouldn't use it to sign players. They'd use it
as a dumping grounds when other teams wanted to unload
bad contracts with assets attached to either draft picks or
young players. You can't do that anymore, and so I

(01:07:27):
agree with the band it's not necessarily bringing the ceiling down.
Although the NBA has done that to some extent, and
I'll get into that here in a minute, but it's
also bringing the floor up and having teams operate in
the middle in a tighter range where the salaries are
more balanced, and I think the results are pretty pronounced
in the NBA. For the first time in the history
of the league. We've had seven different champions in the

(01:07:48):
past seven years. And if the number of teams who
were in the next next year win it, you know,
if say Houston wins it or somebody like that, we
get Minnesota, we get have an eight different champion in
eight years.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
So that's what the NBA has done.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
To answer your question about creator Twinsnower's question about free
agency in the NBA and how it's impacting it, Yeah,
clearly teams are being stifled from you know, building super
teams so to speak, and the rich are not continuing
to get richer. It is no longer just a financial
decision as far as should we keep spending up into
the stratosphere, which Joe lakeb and the Golden State Warriors

(01:08:25):
did with a lot of success. They won four championships.
They've been probably the best team in the NBA over
the last decade plus. Even Steve Balmer, one of the
wealthiest men in the world, wealthiest owner in American pro
sports with the Clippers, they'd spend and it was just
a financial penalty that in the past, and he had
an owner who was willing to write the checks. What
a luxury, What an advantage for your front office. Now

(01:08:47):
with the new Collective Borning Agreement, there are basketball penalties
as well. So the short list you have frozen draft
picks in the future that you cannot trade. In fact,
if you're a repeater tax team, if you're in the
tax so many years in a row, you're picking get frozen.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
You can't trade it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
And then if you don't get out of the taxad,
it automatically goes to the end of the first round
in the future. That's a new rule in the Collective
Barding Agreement. There are also rules about not being able
to use your exceptions like the mid level exception and
other exceptions. You can't use trader plated exception to absorb salary.
And also in some circumstances, if you're in the second apron,

(01:09:24):
the highest spending tier, you can't take back one dollar
more than you send out in trade. So what this
is doing is making the middle you know, pretty robust
in the NBA, where there's more parody, there's more balance,
and one of the things I'm happy to see that
because you know, one of the concerns among players and
agents in particular, was is the middle class going to
get squeezed? Are the middle class players going to get squeezed?

(01:09:46):
And I think we found that with the non tax
payer mid level, which is the biggest mid level exception
that's available. Not every team has access to it, but
the teams that do that's a fourteen million a year salary,
which I believe it or not, that's the average player salary.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
In the NBA right now, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
So teams are using that, and they're also doing creative
sign and trades and things like that. So business is
booming in the NBA. It's there's never been a better
time to be an NBA player, And I think if
you like dynasties, this probably isn't the time for you.
I think the era of you know, teams winning say
four championships in six or seven years, I think those
days are gone.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
And I know how it looks in OKAC right now
with that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
But what I'm telling you is when they extend Jalen
Williams and Chedd Holmgren, which I think they're likely to
do this year, they'll have plenty of flexibility. And then
starting even a year from now this time next year,
they're going to have some tough decisions about their roster
in the payroll because that's how punitive it is for
the highest spenders. So yeah, if you like parody and balance,
and if you're in a small or mid market in

(01:10:44):
the NBA like Indiana or Oka, see, I think you
like it. If you love the dynasties where it was
Golden State on the one hand, and whoever Lebron James
played for on the other side, or Celtics Lakers, you
probably don't like it. Because even if you build a
championship team fed, you're probably going to have to deconstruct
it pretty quickly because it gets so expensive. We're seeing
that right now, frankly in real time with the Boston

(01:11:05):
Celtics loading Drew Holliday and christaphe Porzingis as they try
to bring their payroll down with Jason Tatum out of lineup.
So the next Celtics team, whenever Tatum is healthy, is
going to look very different than the one who just
toisted Larry O'Brian trophy a little over a year ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
You know, Ryan, I think you're illuminating some things that
are so different in the NBA in Major League Baseball,
and I would have to think Major League Baseball is
looking at the NBA as a potential model to follow.
Some of the challenges in addition to the ones that
are on the surface, is the fact that you know,
in the NBA there's more shared revenue relative to national
TV deals, whereas in Major League Baseball they're still trying

(01:11:40):
to navigate some of those choppy waters, and some of
the major markets just have such exceptionally higher deals in
terms of their actual annual television deals. You know, the
disparity between what the Dodgers have on the top end,
which is in the order of three hundred million dollars
in revenue, versus a team in the mid range with
like Minnesota, which is sort of fifty million dollars, and

(01:12:01):
that's before there are RSN blew up, and now their
revenues is much less than that. So that's a significant problem.
And what that leads to is not only is the
commissioner negotiating against the union's interest, but it's also negotiating
against the upper tier of the payrolls interests, because why
would the Dodgers want a homogenize payroll. Why would the
Yankees and Red Sox and the Cubs when right now

(01:12:23):
they have a massive advantage competitively over these teams. They
look the same numbers and say, hey, these the halves
have won the last thirty World Series. Why would we
want to level that playing field? And then the last
component that you see is there just seems to be
more contention between the union and Major League Baseball and
the Commissioner's office relative to the NBA. And so the
NBA is motivated to market their players and have their

(01:12:47):
players support the league because more revenue generates more money
for the players. As the split is maintained in Major
League Baseball, they're not seeing that same benefit. So you
don't see as many Major League Baseball players being promoted
by the league. They're not the face of the league
quite as prominently as you see in the NBA because
they're not necessarily on the same side of the ledger

(01:13:08):
trying to drive revenues. It creates major problems. So it's
going to be very interesting to track this next collective
bargaining agreement in baseball. It feels like major changes need
to take place. It feels like the NBA is a
blueprint to follow. It'll be interesting to see if they
ultimately do that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
As a fan, I hope they do because I like
the parody. I like the balance, and I like teams
having a chance, especially the smaller and mid market teams
if they're well run and well operate at that. I
love having them having a chance to compete at the
highest levels. I think that's been great for the business
in the NBA and the NFL, and frankly, I think
that's a reason that I look at franchise valuations. Obviously

(01:13:44):
NFL's at the very top of the pyramid, NBA's approaching,
and then there's a huge gap to Major League Baseball.
Just in my opinion as someone who now works in
the media, but as a fan of MLB, I think
more parody would help lift the values, maybe get them
closer to that NBA level. Because now I think the
collective baring agreement and potential lockout that you mentioned in
Major League Baseball, combined with the regional sports networks, the

(01:14:06):
ballet Diamond Sinclair deal was a disaster. I think those
are really depressing the value of franchise in Major League Baseball,
and that overhang obviously trickles down to business, the player
contracts and all of that. At that I enjoyed it
as always. We'll be back again next week. Keep the
listener questions coming. Next week, we'll talk about Mike Brown,

(01:14:27):
new head coach of the New York Knicks. We'll get
into the NBA Summer League that's become a huge event
in the desert, the Major League Baseball All Star Games
coming up, and then Thad's wheelhouse, the Major League Baseball
trade deadline less than a month away. He is Dad Levine.
I am Ryan McDonough. Thanks for listening to Rosters to Ranks.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
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