Reaction to Lakers FIRING Buss brothers, LeBron & Luka impact + LaMelo Ball & Jonathan Kuminga sagas
November 21, 2025 • 45 mins
Jason reacts to the Los Angeles Lakers firing Joey and Jesse Buss from their front office, leaving it to Jeanie, Rob Pelinka, and new owner Mark Walter. He breaks down why this happened, what it means for the future of the roster, how it impacts JJ Redick, LeBron James, Luka Doncic, and more. Then he discusses the reports that LaMelo Ball wants to be traded from the Charlotte Hornets and that Jonathan Kuminga feels like the scapegoat for the Golden State Warriors as Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and the team are off to a 9-8 start to the NBA season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, Well, good to Hoop's tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy Friday, everybody, Oh ball, if
you guys had an incredible week. Well, it is mail
bag day, but we got a bunch of NBA news yesterday,
So we're gonna be hitting on three stories at first,
and then we're gonna do a mini mail bag at
the tail end of the show. The Lakers began the
revamping of their front office yesterday with the firing of
Joey and Jesse Buss. At first, it looked like Mark
(00:38):
Walter coming into clean house, and now it's judging by
an interview by Dan Wiki of The Athletic with Jesse Buss,
seems like it might be a little bit more family drama.
So I want to dig into that a little bit.
After that, LaMelo Ball Kelly Ico from Yahoo Sports, who
covers the NBA. He ended up reporting that LaMelo Ball
(00:59):
is looking to potentially be traded away from Charlotte. We've
in his writing he also said that the Hornets themselves
have become somewhat disillusioned with LaMelo, So kind of want
to dig into that concept a little bit. And then
I have three potential LaMelo trades just for fun to
get us started today. There's a bunch of different options there,
but I wanted to dig into three potential options after that.
(01:21):
Anthony Slater from ESPN reported that Jonathan Kaminga feels like
he's being scapegoaded by the Warriors, and so it took
all of about a month for us to end up
back in the same boat that we were in over
the summer. I want to talk about that briefly, and
then again we have, you know, about a half dozen
questions that we'll get through quickly at the tail end
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(02:26):
Pacific time, the Denver Nuggets versus the Houston Rockets, a
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We're gonna do contender rankings next week, but Houston will
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Denver and Houston tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So the Lakers fire Joey and Jesse Buss. This news
(02:48):
broke yesterday while we were on the Lakers Collective podcast,
and while me and Trevor and Jovam were breaking it down.
We initially recovering it more or less as like kind
of Mark Walter's cleaning house kind of thing. This is
the beginning of the new era. Like both Bus brothers
were fired and most of the scouting staff, so it
seemed like, Okay, they're just gonna kind of revamp things.
But then last night Dan Woikia The Athletic published in an
(03:09):
interview with Jesse Buss that painted a very different picture,
something more along the lines of a multi year rift
building between the Bus brothers and their sister, as well
as the rest of the front office, which effectively ended
in them being pushed out. Jesse essentially said that they
had been far less involved with personnel decisions over the
(03:30):
last few years. He specifically cited the twenty twenty three
draft as the beginning of the era where they were
not involved, but rather at that point they just started
being informed of what the team was doing. That's obviously
hilarious and it's very pointed in specific because in twenty
twenty three that was when Jalen Chaffino was drafted, So
(03:53):
it was basically his way of saying, like, yeah, we
had nothing to do with any of that shit. After
the Jalen Chaffino draft. He also went on to say
that he felt like him and Joey had become viewed
as enemies within the organization. He said that he hadn't
spoken to Genie Bus or Rob Polinka in five months,
so instead of looking like Mark Walter was cleaning house,
(04:13):
it's looking more like a family civil war. And then
there was this bar that Jesse dropped at the tail
end of the interview. And I hope that going forward
that Mark can kind of bring a lot of what
he brought to the Dodgers, because I think if the
vision more or less is the same from what I've
seen over the last ten years, then it necessarily isn't
(04:35):
always going to lead to the success that Lakers fans
have become accustomed to when my dad ran the operations
and owned the team. Basically a very passive, aggressive way
of saying, y'all better. Hope Mark comes in and runs
things again soon, because if it stays with Genie, you
guys are going to underachieve. A very very very pointed
(04:57):
comments there from Jesse Buss. I think there are two
ways to look at this situation. There's the oh my god,
Genie Buss is a shit show way of looking at it,
which we'll get into and then there's the this will
all be fine because Mark Walter is going to clean
this up, And I think both of those perspectives are
valuable to look at. I ultimately think the Lakers' front
(05:20):
office will be in much better shape five years from now.
Joey and Jesse were a rare bright spot in that
front office. They had an extensive track record of finding
high level NBA talent, especially at the tail end of
the draft. They brought in Alex Cruso, they brought in
Austin Reeves, they brought in Kyle Kuzma, they brought in
Max Christi, many of the young player hits that have
(05:41):
come through LA in the last decade. According to the interview,
Jesse takes some credit for the idea of the Ruy
Haatcha Mura trade. He kind of positioned it in a
way that the team came to him and basically asked
for his opinion on that deal, and he essentially co
signed it. But beyond those successes, there aren't many successes
to be found in that Laker front office, aside from
(06:03):
the star acquisitions, which appear to have much more to
do with factors that are outside of the Lakers control,
like Lebron picked the Lakers because they were the Lakers.
Clutch strong armed ad to the Lakers because they were
the Lakers, and because Lebron was there, and Nico Harrison
(06:23):
gift wrapped Luca to the Lakers in what was the
most stunning trade in the history of sports. Now, I
want to be clear and fair here. It hasn't been
all bad. I thought Rob Polinka did a nice job
pivoting off of the Kawhi saga to build a championship
roster around the eventual champion twenty twenty Los Angeles Lakers.
I thought he did some nice work this last summer,
(06:45):
finding discounted depth and guys like Marcus smart Deandrayton and Jakelravia.
But even in that discussion, there's some context, like, you
probably don't get Ayton if you don't have Luca in
the belief that he gives Aytan that he can help
rehab his trade vale or not his value, but as
eventual free agent value.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Right, you probably don't get Jake.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Laravio without the connections you have to Austin Reeves and
his agent, right, And in general, over the course of
the Rob Polinka era, there has been a complete lack
of basketball identity in that front office. There isn't a
clear basketball philosophy that shapes their decision making. There isn't
a type of player that they clearly like and consistently
(07:26):
target the way that you see with teams like Golden
State and Oklahoma City and Miami or Indiana. There hasn't
been any sort of consistency and approach from offseason to
off season. They seem to go in a different direction
every year, and as you go upwards in the organization,
it gets even more sloppy. All I've heard is that
the Lakers have multiple hands trying to fly the plane,
(07:47):
so to speak, many competing ideas, not much in the
way of alignment throughout the upper management. You have Kurt
Rambis trying to shoehorn himself into coaches meeting or in
some cases even trying to force his way onto coaching stabs.
Like it's just been a mess. But overall, I'm optimistic,
and this is why I want to kind of bring
(08:08):
it back to a positive perspective. Even with the loss
of the broth of the Bus Brothers, which again they
were a rare bright spot, I think Mark Walter will
be very competitive in this marketplace. I think he's gonna
throw a lot of cash around. I think he's going
to bring in very competent professionals into those roles. I
expect the Lakers to have a very good scouting department
(08:30):
in the near future, with excellent college scouting, with excellent
overseas scouting, with excellent NBA scouting, and then I think
the front office will eventually build out a basketball identity,
a consistent approach from offseason offseason. I think JJ Reddick
really helps with this. I think JJ will really help
Rob come up with a consistent approach from offseason to
(08:53):
offseason in the types of players he wants in his system.
And then I think, slowly but surely, over the course
for the next half decade, that kind of small, parochial,
family business like approach of the Lakers to basketball decisions
will be replaced by dead serious and more professional approach
to decision making in a more competitive NBA like You
(09:17):
can't afford to be weak in those areas with how
good the rest of the NBA is, and I think
the Lakers will eventually be more competitive behind the scenes.
This will all eventually end with the Lakers being a
dead serious basketball organization with a financial and leadership backing
that actually meets the level of the Lakers brand itself,
(09:40):
which again remains the biggest basketball brand in the world. So,
in other words, it's kind of a sad day because
Jesse and Joey don't deserve what happened to them both
over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And what happened yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
But ultimately, I do think the Lakers will be better
off in the long run as Mark Walter just continues
to assert himself and to take more and more control
of the team. All right, let's get into this LaMelo saga.
So LaMelo Ball has grown increasingly frustrated with the organization
and is opened to a trade away from the franchise,
multiple league sources told Yahoo's Sports. That's from Kellyicos, a
(10:15):
national NBA writer for Yahoo Sports. Now, the numbers have
been tricky with LaMelo to start the year. He's got
hurt again to start the year. He hasn't been good
since he came back. He's just five for twenty four
from three over the last eight games. Got benched at
the tail hunder regulation in the last one. He's down
to just a bit over twenty seven minutes per game
over the last three games, but the team has been
(10:38):
flatly better when he's on the floor. Even just in
that three game span where the Hornets went oh to three,
they won LaMelo's minutes by twelve. They have a plus
seven net rating, meaning they're outscoring opponents by seven points
per one hundred possessions. When LaMelo Ball's on the floor,
they have a one twenty four offensive rating according to
Cleaning the Glass. When LaMelo Ball's on the floor, they're
(11:00):
bad on defense, but the offense is so good that
they've been winning of those minutes. And again, I think
the bad defense goes far beyond just LaMelo and his
kind of inconsistent effort and focus on that end. The
offense absolutely craters when he's off the floor. They go
from a one to twenty four offensive rating to a
one zho nine offensive rating, in other words, from transcendently
great to what would be the bottom of the league.
(11:22):
And the defense gets worse too, because again, those two
ends of the floor are connected. When you're constantly missing
shots and turning the basketball over, it puts your defense
in a compromise position. Now, I will freely admit I'm
personally not the biggest Lamela ballfan in the world. But
I do think he's an undeniable offensive talent. He's kind
of the definition of a modern offensive engine, a guard
(11:46):
that can push pace consistently, that generates tons of advantages
basically by just running action and relentlessly making the reads,
the reads that set your teammates up with closeouts and
four on threes. Any sort of advantage that a basketball
player can capitalize on it a much higher rate than
he would if he doesn't have an advantage. That's what
causes the offensive rating numbers you see to be so
(12:08):
much better when he's on the floor versus off. Now,
he's a flawed young player. His shot selection on the
ball can be downright silly sometimes. I think that prevents
him from being as efficient as he's capable of being.
His defensive effort is inconsistent, not super uncommon for a
young guard. I think he can make some plays there.
He's got good size in length, and he's fast and
(12:29):
when he like he can make plays when he's engaged
on that end, But there's not much in the way
of possession to possession discipline, and he needs to get
his body right if he wants to stay on the floor. Now,
let's zoom in on Charlotte real quick. They were getting
a lot of hype from NBA hipsters coming into the season,
and for good reasons, like Conkiniple's a really good player.
(12:49):
I like Conkiniple, and he's hooping his ass off right now,
by the way, in his last nine games, twenty two points,
seven rebounds, and four assists per game on basically fifty
forty ninety forty nine percent from the field, thirty nine
percent from three, and ninety three percent from the line.
I like Sion James, I like Brandon Miller, But I
was personally very low on the Hornets coming into the season,
(13:09):
and I thought they'd be back at the bottom of
the league because they're pretty much devoid of two way
talent relative to the rest of the league, and because
LaMelo just hasn't shown an ability to stay on the floor.
So I do think that if you took LaMelo and
took him out of what is essentially not a good
roster and put him onto a situation with more talent,
I do think he could be a ceiling raizer. Now
(13:32):
before we get into some of these trades. For me personally,
if I was running an NBA team, I would not
trade for LaMelo. The upside is tantalizing, but he's been
around for a while now. This is his sixth NBA season.
He's played more than fifty one games in a season
just once, and while the offensive upside is still as
tantalizing as ever, he's shown basically no progress towards becoming
(13:57):
that more refined version of him. Like he's never really
made an attempt to trim the fat in his shot selection.
He's never become a more diligent possession to possession defender,
and we're not seeing like progress in those directions. It's
not like, oh, he's way ahead of where he was
back in twenty twenty three. That shows that he's progressing
towards becoming this all NBA level type of dude, like
(14:21):
we've seen that with other guys like Tyrese Haliburton, very
similar type of like kind of offensive engine guard, albeit
less of a scorer. With Tyre's Haliburton, we've seen in
the last few years him become a little better each
season at competing in the defense, competing in the scheme,
throwing hard hedges and recovering with his hands up and
sprinting back out to the shooter slipping out of the screen,
(14:43):
like we've seen progress there that we haven't really seen
with LaMelo. So I personally don't think he's worth the
risk if I was running an NBA team. But ultimately
LaMelo Ball will end up being traded again. Kelly and
his report also said that the Hornets themselves are disillusioned
with LaMelo. So if the Hornets don't want him, and
(15:03):
he doesn't want the Hornets, he's gonna be somewhere else
soon enough. So just for fun, and again, there's a
lot of different options. You can go a lot of
different directions, you can go here, but I came up
with just three fun LaMelo Ball trades just to kind
of brainstorm this initial phase. And if I have others,
I'll pitch him when we get further down the line.
But first one here, LaMelo Ball to the MAVs for
(15:25):
Anthony Davis. This one was floating around yesterday a little bit,
and it's interesting to me. So the rough structure of
this deal would be something like Anthony Davis and D'Angelo
Russell or one of the other small contracts for the MAVs.
I know MAS fans are already being driven crazy by
d Lo because he's just been in such a massive
role as the injuries have piled up. But it'd be
Anthony Davis and Dilo or one of the other smaller
(15:46):
contracts for LaMelo Ball and Colin Sexton. I don't think
there would need to be any draft compensation on either
side of this deal. Like Anthony Davis is just a
much better basketball player than LaMelo, and that would counter
any of the additional value get from LaMelo's youth. And yeah,
Anthony Davis has has had health issues, but nothing close
to what LaMelo has had. In this situation, the Hornets
(16:10):
would get this incredible center to essentially be a bridge
between this era and the future. Gives you an opportunity
to see if guys like Musa Diabat or Ryan Kalchbrander
could become that foundational center for them. But in the
short term, you give kon k Nippull and Brandon Miller
a chance to compete with like a legit foundational center
in the long term, and then one of the other
(16:30):
things too, is like Anthony Davis will eventually, over the
next few seasons, have a stretch where he stays healthy
for like thirty games or so, and when that happens,
he's gonna look awesome, because that's how Anthony Davis's career
has been. As long as he's healthy and on the
floor consistently, he eventually gets in shape and builds rhythm.
And when that happens, the Hornets would essentially have an
opportunity at that point to trade a rehabbed version of
(16:52):
Anthony Davis's value. They could flip him at that point
in the future, should they so choose. And then on
the MAVs front, you get two things. You get a
potential young star to pair with Cooper Flag. It would
fit really well with him. I think it more appropriately
slots Cooper in an off ball role playing with an
advantage channeling his efforts on defense. I think they compliment
each other really well. And then you also add a
(17:13):
secondary ball handler and Colin Sexton for a team that
is still, even with LaMelo, really short on ball handling.
And you get kind of excited when you look at
a lineup that has like LaMelo Ball, Max, Christie, Cooper, Flag, PJ. Washington,
and Derek Lively, Like it's pretty damn exciting, right, And
those are all guys like Max Christy can knock down
the three and drive it close out. Cooper Flag, as
(17:34):
we've talked about, is one of the best read makers
out of a young prospect that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
PJ.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Washington when we watched him alongside Luka Doncic when he
was getting spoon fed advantages is a really high level
week side score. And Derek Lively is that screen and
roll threat that's also such a great defensive anchor. On
the other end of the floor. You also have four
really good defensive players there next to LaMelo. I really
like that deal for Dallas, and I think you could
talk yourself into it if Charlotte is getting out of
(18:01):
the LaMelo business, getting a guy that kind of makes
you a more serious basketball team in the short term.
And if you look at both of those guys as
guys with flawed trade value, right Anthony Davis older had
some injury issues, LaMelo, you know, somewhat of a kind
of like a mercurial type of player who also has
injury issues. They both kind of have low value right now.
(18:22):
But if you get Anthony Davis and you rehab his value,
you could potentially trade him for more down the line.
Next LaMelo ball trade the Warriors make up for the
James Wiseman mistake. This one would be a little bit
more complicated to pull off, Like the foundation of the
trade would essentially be LaMelo ball for Jonathan Minga, but
(18:43):
it would get tricky from there. The Warriors would have
to aggregate some salaries, and they don't have a lot
of salaries to aggregate because of their three massive contracts,
so it'd probably be like Buddy Healed and Moses Moody
added to the deal, And you hate to lose a
guy like Moses Moody and a deal like that, but
you basically have to if you wanted to get a
guy like Lamello, and the Hornets would have to clear
some roster spots in order to make this all happen.
But once again, similar to the Dallas trade, I don't
(19:06):
think there'd have to be too much in the way
of draft compensation going either way. Like, if you're Charlotte,
Moody and Kminga's a really nice return for LaMelo, And essentially,
if you look at it from both perspectives, Charlotte would
get a really nice power forward prospect to pair with
Brandon Miller. I think they'd eventually get off of Miles
Bridges in a separate deal. I think kaminga just because
of his first step quickness, and he just has like
(19:27):
a little bit more of that. I'll actually say he
has considerably more like one on one potential. In the
big picture, I think he's a prospect that I like
better than a guy like Miles Bridges and Moses Moody
is like an awesome two way wing to help bolster
them on both ends of the floor. Golden State would
get a legitimate, legitimate secondary shot creator off of Steph.
(19:47):
I think it'd be kind of clunky at first, but
you know, you could argue the short term returns would
not be very good, but at the very least they'd
have a foundational piece to look at for the era
after Steph, the guy you build the offense around when
Steph re tied. Now, once again, to be very clear,
if I ran the Warriors, I would not do this deal.
But I could totally see Joe lakeup stepping in and
(20:09):
making something like this happen, just with some of the
control that he has on the team. The last trade
that I'll pitch to you guys today, the Spurs partner
LaMelo with Wemby. So this deal would essentially just be
deeron Fox for LaMelo Ball. It might involve a three
team construct where deeron Fox gets rerouted. That kind of
just depends on what values Charlotte would see in dearon Fox.
(20:31):
Fox is only twenty seven, so maybe Charlotte would give
it a shot with him, but I could see.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Him getting re routed.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
But I like the idea in theory for San Antonio,
they get a legit offensive engine to pair with Victor
women Yama, they could get the deal done without having
to give up any of the other young guards. You
can keep a Dylan Harper and Steph Castle's essentially insurance.
It kind of like solves your timeline issue in the
sense that, like, I think Steph Castle and Dylan Harper
are both guys that have potential to become All Stars
(20:58):
in this league, but it might be three four years
before they get to that level. And Victor Wemenyama is
ready to be first team All NBA this season. He's
ready to be competing for a championship this season, and
so you have this like kind of upside in the
sense that you get this big offensive engine type of
weapon in LaMelo that can grease the wheels for you
(21:18):
on offense. You can completely support him on the defensive
end of the four because you have such big athletic
guards and because you have Victor Wemenyama underneath the basket,
you can with with Stan LaMelo's injuries. Like you have
strong infrastructure, like that team just won a game without
Wemby or LaMelo theory, you know, in this theoretical situation
right now, I think they have that type of infrastructure
(21:40):
to where they could with Stan LaMelo playing fifty five
sixty five games in a season. And again, the big
thing there is he could be the guy that could
finally be the type of player that sets Wemby up
with easy opportunities, something we've talked about forever, getting Wenby
more advantages from a really high level pick and roll
ball handler. There's potential there with Deer and Fox, to
(22:01):
be clear, but LaMelo would certainly be better in that role. Now,
this is where it gets tricky because, like I said,
in the other two deals, like I wouldn't do these deals.
I mean, Dallas, you could talk yourself into it because
of Anthony Davis, But if I was Golden State or
another one of these more serious teams that I would
have to give up, like a substantial asset wouldn't do
it right. But you know, Anthony Davis is kind of
(22:22):
a distressed asset in and of himself, and in the
San Antonio situation, like if you keep all your draft
compensation and you keep Dylan Harper and you keep Steph Castle,
it's kind of relatively low risk. Like if I was
San Antonio, I think long and hard about that one.
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New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee or Virginia. All right, before we
get to our mailbag, Anthony Slater from ESPN reports that
Jonathan Kaminga is feeling like the scapegoat again. He feels
like the scapegoat again, one team source said, Cominga, team
sources said had voice to cur a desire to be
coach harder. There was even a meeting about it in
the Sacramento Hotel prior to their ninth game of the season,
(24:37):
and Kerr appeared to make it a point during the
King's game to call Cominga over and get on him
constructively several times. But four and one became six and six.
Cominga's knees began bothering him his defensive juice and burst
to the rim lessened. He won one for nine shooting
at home against the Pacers, missing all five of his threes.
Coaches dingdam for his perimeter shot selection as a reason
for his minutes production to a season low twenty and
(25:00):
for the Warriors to reach their ceiling the season. There's
an internal belief that Jonathan Kaminga, even in a condensed
role must shake off some of his built up resentment
and get back to the impact wing from the first
couple of weeks, even if the long term benefit for
both sides is more about a bump and trade value
than a partnership. Again, all that from Anthony Slater from ESPN.
(25:23):
I said right after the Oklahoma City game when those
comments were made, that it felt like they were scapegoating
cominga again. The Golden State Stars themselves all came out
like shit against the thunder, got their butts kicked, and
then they went into the pressers and blamed the young guys.
Now here's the truth. The Warriors are nine to eight
because of their schedule. That's it. After I'm recording this,
(25:44):
I'm recording with Adamars from DNVR. We're doing that all
MBA show. And one of the topics we're doing today
is recovering teams that are better than their record and
teams that are worse than their record. And you know
what team I picked for the team that's better than
their record, The Golden State Warriors. They're nine to eight
because they have a team built around four guys in
their late thirties, and they had seventeen games in twenty
(26:05):
eight days to start the season, so there's no reason
to blame anyone. Steph has been bad in some games
we talked about the Oklahoma City game. Steph was bad
in the Oklahoma City game. Steph was really bad in
the Indiana Pacers game. Is big part of why they
lost that game, the one on the road. Jimmy's been
bad at points. Draymond's been bad at points. Jonathan Kaminga's
been bad at points. So has Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski.
(26:28):
They've all been beaten into the ground by the schedule.
And that's what makes this pump fake from Golden State
so bizarre. Like early in the season, when things are
going good and Jonathan Kaminga is in the starting lineup,
everyone's singing Jonathan Kamingu's praises, and for good reason he's
he was playing well and again, did he tail off
(26:50):
as things got harder? Yeah, but so did everyone else.
And this is where it comes back to the same
damn thing we've been arguing about all damn summer, in
all the last year and a half or so. Is
Jonathan Kaminga a great fit with the Golden State Warriors.
Obviously not. Even with him playing better to start the season,
(27:11):
the on off numbers continue to show that the team
is better without him because he's not a great fit.
But I don't think he's to blame for the nine
and eight start. And again, the Warriors had every opportunity
to move on from the Kaminga era this summer. The
only reason they didn't is because they didn't want to
(27:32):
lose him as an asset for nothing, and because when
they shopped him, they weren't happy with the return they
were being offered in those signing trades. So it's like
this complete disillusionment, so to speak, surrounding his value. So
they decided to bring him back.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And here we are.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
And when things are good, it's coming is finally buying in.
And when things are bad, it's the young guys aren't
all pulling in the same direction as us. And again, like,
I know that both sides have blame in this, but
one of the sides is a bunch of grown ass
middle aged men who know better, and the other side
(28:14):
is a twenty three year old talented basketball player who's
been jerked around for four and a half years, So
of course he's kicking and screaming a bit. I lack
any form of sympathy for the Warriors in the situation,
and I cannot wait for the saga to be over.
All right, let's get into our mail bag. I'll get
(28:39):
to a Warriors question first here. Since we're on the Warriors,
who between Trey Murphy or Herb Jones fits the Warriors fits?
What the Warriors need? Is it the third scoring option
in Trey Murphy or the lockdown point of attack defender
in Herb Jones that will elevate the Warriors into contender status.
So I've had this debate with Warriors fans at various
points over the last few months. I had it with
(29:00):
with Tommy and Sam from the Light Years podcast like
about a month a month or two ago, and you know,
they kind of both leaned more towards the Herb Jones type. Essentially,
they want a big athletic forward essentially, like we talked
about it in the context of like an Andrew Wiggins
versus Jordan Poole, which version do the Warriors need. Do
the Warriors need what Jordan pool was to the twenty
(29:20):
twenty two Warriors, or do they need what Andrew Wiggins
was to the twenty twenty two Warriors. Those are that's
kind of where the path bifer Kate so to speak, right,
And Trey is essentially that scoring forward type that would
add offensive pop to the team. And Herb Jones is
your stereotypical three in D kind of athlete, right, So
they kind of in this mailback question that you're pitching,
(29:41):
they represent both ends of that discussion. For me, I
maintain that I think they need scoring. I think ultimately
the biggest problem the Warriors have is that when the
young guys and everybody down the roster, whether it's Jimmy
being able to score and carry bench units, or it's
Drama knocking down catch and shoot threes, or it's Moody
(30:03):
and Pods going for thirty points on any given night
rather than fifteen. I think it's the inconsistent offense off
of Steph that continues to be a problem for this team.
I always believe in their ability to scale up defensively
when they need to, So for me, I would be
targeting someone more along the lines of a Trey Murphy
(30:26):
that said either player would help the team. I'm not
gonna sit here and pretend like Herb Jones wouldn't help
the Warriors. But to me, you have a guy in
Moses Moody. You provides a rough approximation of that. No,
he's not as good as her, but he provides a
rough approximation of that. A guy who can guard the
opposing team's best player, the guy who's better at it
(30:46):
than Johnathan Kaminga because he's better and more disruptive with
his hands. A guy that can bring some catch and
shoot play attacking closeouts, even bring some movement shooting too,
although Herb Jones has built out some of his more
refined offensive game as well. But to me, you already
have a guy that kind of roughly approximates that. Trey
Murphy represents something you don't have, like a legit heat check,
wing score, a guy that can come in and like
(31:09):
consistently give you in that twenty to twenty five points range.
A guy that's not gonna have as many nights where
he just is a non factor on the offensive end
of the floor. So for me, whether it's Trey Murphy
or it's someone else, I lean towards the Warriors need
scoring pop. They need someone that can come in for
a five minute stretch when Steph checks out of the
(31:29):
game and legit like provide the offensive explosion to carry
those units. That's the kind of guy that I would
be targeting if I was the Warriors. Hey, Jason loved
the show. I had a simple idea of actually increasing
the length of the season while keeping the same amount
of games. Get rid of back to backs, guarantee there's
at least one day between games and two days between
(31:52):
games for long flights. Also make the two playoff series
best of five. But I doubt the league would do
that otherwise, like your idea. So here's the thing. I
think the problem with lengthening the season is it's already
so fucking long. Like I mean, it's legitimately a nine
month journey when you include some of the other details
like summer league and free agency, like it goes from
(32:15):
the beginning of October all the way to the middle
of July. Now, if you zoom in on just the games,
we're going from, like guys are showing up for training
camp in early October, and they're playing basketball at a
minimum to mid April, and in many cases to late April,
early May, sometimes even as far as early June. That's
(32:37):
an extremely long season and when you factor in that
the guy's got to spend a month ramping up for
training camp too, it's already too long. I don't think
you're gonna be able to convince NBA players to be like, hey,
you guys, know how you show up on October first
in shape? How about we show up on September first
in shape? Like, I just don't think you're gonna be
able to get NBA players to buy in to that idea.
(32:57):
That said, I do think like the idea of like
trying to get rid of back to backs and making
the schedule more more tenable for the the for all
of the players is a good idea. I just think
you do it by reducing the number of games. Love
your point about like having long flights cross across country
travel be surrounded around two days off and things like that.
(33:18):
Just find ways to make it much more manageable for
the players. As far as the playoff series go, I
think the NBA playoffs are like especially the first round,
Like I mean we see it in our numbers with
the way we cover the league, Like the first and
second round of the playoffs are literally literally the highlight
of the NBA season in many cases, so I don't
think there's any point in reducing the volume there. I
(33:39):
would keep seven seven seven seven for the four rounds
and just find a way to shorten the number of
regular season games to accomplish the goals you're talking about
with removing back to backs and making cross country travel
more easy to manage. You often mention how you feel
(33:59):
the Lakers need to as athletic starting caliber wing or
three in order to truly contend in the top Western conference.
While I do agree the Lakers could use good wing,
I find that a far more glaring weakness in the
starting lineup is the absence of a true defensive one,
a truly elite point of attack guard with excellent screen
navigation to unlock more coverage, versatility and keep the opposing
(34:19):
quicker guards in check. Replacing Ruey with such a player
in the starting lineup would also push everybody else towards
a more natural defensive role. Austin becomes your two, Luca
gets to defend wings where he's shown some success, and
so on. Why do you feel like replacing Ruey with
an athletic wing would improve the roster when it doesn't
seem to address the most glaring hole true perimeter speed.
Thanks has always loved the show, So to me, I'm
looking for a three that can guard ones. That's kind
(34:42):
of the point. Like there's you know, you mentioned a
very interesting point having to do with, you know, screen navigation.
But there's many ways to defend and drop coverage. So
what you're talking about with the coverage versatility is so
right now with the Lakers starters with Ruey in there,
they want to switch. They want to switch because everyone's
slow and big. So the idea is if you switch
and contain, keep them all in front, and you have
good help recover on the back line, you can essentially
(35:05):
just kind of tilt the defense towards the shots you
want to live with and allow yourself to defend fine
in the large sample, haven't done it well this year yet,
at least not in the short sample we saw in
the Utah game. But I think there's an ability for
that coverage to work. We talked about that a little
bit in the Lakers Collective Pod yesterday, But it gets
complicated because if you want to run drop coverage, you
(35:27):
need to have someone that can get over screens.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
There's multiple ways to do that. Though.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
There's the Cason Wallace, like, I'm attached to your hip
the whole damn way, and I'm like getting over the
top and staying attached and making you uncomfortable. But then
there's the length and rear view contest way of looking
at it. Right, this is like kind of like the
Jaden McDaniels Herb Jones type of archetype, where it's like
(35:51):
they're still fast, they don't necessarily stay as attached, but
they have such good length that when they're back pressuring,
they still get offensive player's head because they feel like
if they rise up in the mid range, they're gonna
get blocked from behind, which then can trick them into
essentially forcing their penetration further into the rim, where now
you have your drop coverage big waiting. It's essentially a funnel, right,
(36:15):
You're funneling them into that big man. Casin Wallace archetype
is going to do it by staying attached. Herb Jones
archetype is going to do it by using his length
pressuring from behind. Right, So like those are like the
two different ways to do it. To me, I still
look at that roster as like needing kind of like
length and athleticism rather than just speed on the perimeter.
(36:39):
You need both, but if you can find a three
that accomplishes a version of both, that is where you're
cooking with grease right or cooking with gas right. So like,
for instance, I've talked about Andrew Wiggins now. Andrew Wiggins
to me is in his thirties now, so like, I
don't think he necessarily makes sense for the big picture
goals of the Lakers, but strictly viewing it through the
(36:59):
sho short term, he's an example of what I'm talking about,
a big, fast athlete who brings speed, who brings athleticism,
who is an excellent rebounder, but that you can also
deploy on the other team's best player and has some versatility.
Because again, the other thing that you're forgetting here is like,
let's say you have a uh more of an athletic
one that you bring in and you have like this,
(37:20):
Let's just use a Davion Mitchell for example, Davion Mitchell
at the one, Austin, Luca Lebron and DeAndre Ayton. What
happens when you run into some of the bigger, you know,
bigger ball handlers in the league, like is Shaygos Alexander
just gonna shoot over the top of Davion Mitchell every
single time, right, Like, there's a certain amount of like
size and position that you deal with there too, the
(37:41):
idea of finding more of a three that is a
like perimeter defender type a la Andrew Wiggins. But the
reason why we keep coming back to Herb Jones is
he's a younger player to where like you can at
least convince yourself if you're making that trade, Like, if
you trade a first round pick for Andrew Wiggins, you're
trading a first round pick for a guy that doesn't
necessarily fit Austin in Luca's timeline. To trade a first
round pick for Herb Jones, you could be like, this
(38:02):
is our starting three for the next five years, Like
this is legitimately a foundational piece next to Austin and Luca.
That's a guy who can guard an opposing point guard
garden opposing like can he guard a Shake Gildess Alexander,
Devin Booker, a bigger forward like a Kawhi Leonard? Can
he guard like all of these different types of players?
(38:24):
Can he guard to Jamal Murray? Can he guard like
like the like? Can he guard to Tyrese MAXI can
he guard like these various different types of ball handlers.
That's where like a traditional kind of like three makes
sense as a guy that could kind of round things
out for that unit. Tim Leigler on the All NBA
Podcast us that the injury spree in the NBA right
(38:46):
now is caused by a lack of preseason prep from
teams and athletes. He remarked that the NBA is much
less physical than when he played, and that players are
just not doing enough to prepare themselves for the eighty
two Do you agree with this personally? I think that's
bogus and surprisingly shortsighted take from a guy at Jenner respect,
I think your take in most of the new school
analysis are are one hundred percent on the money. The
NBA has grown into a far more physically demanding and
(39:07):
taxing game that it used to be due to the
speed and pace of play. Lateral movement in eighty two
games is just far too many for the intensity of
the current game. Love the show man, keep up the
good work.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I similarly, I have the utmost respect for Tim Legler,
but I just disagree with that point of view. There's
there's a lot of I think every basketball player has
a certain affinity for their era, and I think that
that can color everybody's analysis. Like, you bet your ass
that twenty years from now, I will probably be the
guy that's like, back in the twenty tens, you know,
(39:38):
they played this way and it was better. You know,
Like that's just human nature, right. I think, Like the
points you made are all pretty obvious.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right, Like the.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Game is insanely fast, way more possessions in transition, way
more sprinting, even within the half court. There's way more speed.
There's way more attacks on each possession, side to side,
the drive and kick basketball. The amount of times that
you're sprinting, closing out, planting, changing direction, and then all
of a sudden turning it running the other way up
the floor, Like it is just much harder on the body.
(40:12):
And again, we're not seeing dudes, like according to the
physicality that Tim Legler is referencing, We're not seeing like
a bunch of dislocated shoulders and like and like like
broken wrists and like injuries that come from physicality. We're
seeing soft tissue injuries and ligament injuries. We're seeing achilles
acl calf strains, hamstring strains. That's the kind of stuff
(40:36):
that we're seeing, and that is all associated with the
human body of basically just not being able to withstand
the grind of the NBA regular season now with how
fast the game is played and how much body movement
there is in any given game. Next question, help me
make it. We have two more. Help me make sense
of this Raptors team and their success this year. No
(40:57):
superstars and feels a lot like the Pacers last year.
So we did a Raptor segment last week on Friday,
and then we hit them again at one point earlier
this week. So I'm not going to go too far
into it, but the very short version of it is
they've after a kind of a rough start to the season,
they've recaptured some of their defensive identity from the tail
end of last year. They're a very good defensive team.
They're getting out in transition a ton, which is part
(41:18):
of that defense to transition attack that is super successful
in the modern NBA. You get stops, you run when
you run out and transition you're roughly twenty percent more
efficient than you are in the half court. It's just
an opportunity to build additional margin. The surprise has been
they you know, one of the things we talked about
coming into the season is they've got a lot of
playmaking talent. They've got a lot of guys that can
pass the basketball. So we talked about in the half court,
(41:40):
like they got shooting issues, but what if they're just
like surgical in their playmaking ability and that's what's manifested.
They've played really impressive drive and kick basketball. They're a
high assist percentage team. They move the ball well. And
then to your point about the superstars, Like, I know
they don't have necessarily bona fide superstars, but Scottie Barnes
and Brandon Ingram can make some plays. Like they had
a game the other day. I'm trying to remember who
(42:02):
it was they were playing, but we talked about it
on the show. But Brandon, I think it was Charlotte
and Brandon Ingram or Scottie Barnes like back Miles Bridges
down in the post and like dunked on his ass
and then like went down and had a huge block
on I think Brandon Ingram had a huge block on
Mason Plumley at the rim and then or Cale Brenner,
I can't remember one of those the Hornets bigs. I
(42:22):
think it was Cal Brenner. They go down the other
end and brandon Ingram like makes a beautiful read out
of a post up to a guy cutting down the
lane to RJ Barrett, I think who gets a little lay
up and they go down to the other end and
then RJ and then Scotty Barnes gets a huge block
right at the rim that cleans up a play like
Scotty Barnes and Brandon Ingram can kind of leverage themselves
to make superstar esque plays which can help them win
(42:43):
win games on the margins. Lastly, Hey, Jason, great episode
as always, coming up on a quarter of the season played.
Who would be your MVP so far? Do you think
Shay will go back to back because of how transcendent
okay See has been Personally, I have Luca and first
he just has has to keep playing that way he
has all the season. He has the keep playing the
way he has all season and play enough games. What
(43:03):
are your thoughts? So it's interesting because I think all
four of the top guys have had good cases for
different reasons, Like Yannis and Luca have done the most
with the least right like with how often, with who's
been available for the Lakers, and with just the limitations
of the Bucks roster in general, those are two pretty
limited teams that have won at a pretty high rate because
(43:26):
of just how transcendently good Luca and Giannis have been. Now,
Luca has won more. I think he's eight and three
in the eleven games he's played, so I'd probably give
a slight edge to Luca there. Luca has been insurd.
He's averaging like what thirty four and a half nine
and nine to start the year on' like sixty two
percent true shooting, Like Luca's been outrageous. But then the
other two guys are very good cases for different reasons.
(43:49):
Like Jokics very much has the I'm still the best
player in the world case, and I think he's shown
that over the last few weeks.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
He's been absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
He's averaging like a like a I can't remember the
exact numbers, but he's like close to like thirty three
thirty four points per game and like twelve rebounds twelve
assists per game, absurdly efficient, like Jokic has been absurd.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
He looks like the best player in the world, and
Shay's I think like fifteen to one when he plays,
so Like we talked about it, there's so many different
ways to build an MVP case, Like who's doing the
most for their particular team and making the most out
of the least. That's where Luca and yannisland. Who's the
best player on the best team. That's where Shaye lands,
And who's the best player that's Nicole Jokis right. I
think all four players a very good cases. I'd probably
(44:31):
give this slight edge to Luca at this point, but
I think it's roughly a tie between all four of
those guys. And what you mentioned, the big key there
what's gonna ultimately end up measuring all of this is
in the big picture, how many games do these guys
play and how many games do their teams win. Like,
if Shay wins seventeen more games than the second place
(44:52):
team in the West, he's winning MVP. But if the
Lakers are only six or seven games back, lucas getting MVP.
If the Nuggets are only two or three games back,
Jokic is getting MVP.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
If Yannis and the Bucks finished with the two seed,
in the East, Giannis is probably getting MVP, right, So
there's all those different factors that kind of have to
shake out. That's why it's just kind of too early
for this sort of thing. But if you ask me
to give an edge right now, I'd give the edge
to Luca because I think he's done the most with
the least while also combining it with wins to this point.
All Right, guys, it's all I have for today is
(45:28):
always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting
the show. I hope you all have an incredible weekend.
If you're down to watch some hoops tonight, again, we're
hanging out on playback for Nuggets Rockets. Otherwise, I'll see
you guys on Monday for Power rankings.
The volume. All right, Well, good to Hoop's tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy Friday, everybody, Oh ball, if
you guys had an incredible week. Well, it is mail
bag day, but we got a bunch of NBA news yesterday,
So we're gonna be hitting on three stories at first,
and then we're gonna do a mini mail bag at
the tail end of the show. The Lakers began the
revamping of their front office yesterday with the firing of
Joey and Jesse Buss. At first, it looked like Mark
(00:38):
Walter coming into clean house, and now it's judging by
an interview by Dan Wiki of The Athletic with Jesse Buss,
seems like it might be a little bit more family drama.
So I want to dig into that a little bit.
After that, LaMelo Ball Kelly Ico from Yahoo Sports, who
covers the NBA. He ended up reporting that LaMelo Ball
(00:59):
is looking to potentially be traded away from Charlotte. We've
in his writing he also said that the Hornets themselves
have become somewhat disillusioned with LaMelo, So kind of want
to dig into that concept a little bit. And then
I have three potential LaMelo trades just for fun to
get us started today. There's a bunch of different options there,
but I wanted to dig into three potential options after that.
(01:21):
Anthony Slater from ESPN reported that Jonathan Kaminga feels like
he's being scapegoaded by the Warriors, and so it took
all of about a month for us to end up
back in the same boat that we were in over
the summer. I want to talk about that briefly, and
then again we have, you know, about a half dozen
questions that we'll get through quickly at the tail end
of the show. You guys are the joke before we started.
Subscribe to the Hoops and Not YouTube channels. You don't
miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter,
(01:42):
underscore Jason Lts you guys, don't miss show announcements. Don't
forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast
under Hoops Tonight, it's always super helpful if you leve
rating in a review on that front. Jackson's doing incredible
work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for
more content throughout this In the last but not least,
keep dropping mailback questions in the YouTube comments so we
(02:03):
can get to him on our Fridays throughout the rest
of the season. A couple extra announcements too. One of
the things you guys could do that would be really
helpful for us is if you guys could like this video.
It'd be awesome if we could get as many likes
as possible on this video. I'm gonna be announcing that
as we start each show. It's just something that helps
us on the YouTube front. And then lastly, we have
our next playback stream tonight Tonight at six thirty pm
(02:26):
Pacific time, the Denver Nuggets versus the Houston Rockets, a
matchup of two teams that I have in my top
tier contenders. We talked a little bit about this yesterday.
We're gonna do contender rankings next week, but Houston will
be joining that tier. So a fun show down between
Denver and Houston tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So the Lakers fire Joey and Jesse Buss. This news
(02:48):
broke yesterday while we were on the Lakers Collective podcast,
and while me and Trevor and Jovam were breaking it down.
We initially recovering it more or less as like kind
of Mark Walter's cleaning house kind of thing. This is
the beginning of the new era. Like both Bus brothers
were fired and most of the scouting staff, so it
seemed like, Okay, they're just gonna kind of revamp things.
But then last night Dan Woikia The Athletic published in an
(03:09):
interview with Jesse Buss that painted a very different picture,
something more along the lines of a multi year rift
building between the Bus brothers and their sister, as well
as the rest of the front office, which effectively ended
in them being pushed out. Jesse essentially said that they
had been far less involved with personnel decisions over the
(03:30):
last few years. He specifically cited the twenty twenty three
draft as the beginning of the era where they were
not involved, but rather at that point they just started
being informed of what the team was doing. That's obviously
hilarious and it's very pointed in specific because in twenty
twenty three that was when Jalen Chaffino was drafted, So
(03:53):
it was basically his way of saying, like, yeah, we
had nothing to do with any of that shit. After
the Jalen Chaffino draft. He also went on to say
that he felt like him and Joey had become viewed
as enemies within the organization. He said that he hadn't
spoken to Genie Bus or Rob Polinka in five months,
so instead of looking like Mark Walter was cleaning house,
(04:13):
it's looking more like a family civil war. And then
there was this bar that Jesse dropped at the tail
end of the interview. And I hope that going forward
that Mark can kind of bring a lot of what
he brought to the Dodgers, because I think if the
vision more or less is the same from what I've
seen over the last ten years, then it necessarily isn't
(04:35):
always going to lead to the success that Lakers fans
have become accustomed to when my dad ran the operations
and owned the team. Basically a very passive, aggressive way
of saying, y'all better. Hope Mark comes in and runs
things again soon, because if it stays with Genie, you
guys are going to underachieve. A very very very pointed
(04:57):
comments there from Jesse Buss. I think there are two
ways to look at this situation. There's the oh my god,
Genie Buss is a shit show way of looking at it,
which we'll get into and then there's the this will
all be fine because Mark Walter is going to clean
this up, And I think both of those perspectives are
valuable to look at. I ultimately think the Lakers' front
(05:20):
office will be in much better shape five years from now.
Joey and Jesse were a rare bright spot in that
front office. They had an extensive track record of finding
high level NBA talent, especially at the tail end of
the draft. They brought in Alex Cruso, they brought in
Austin Reeves, they brought in Kyle Kuzma, they brought in
Max Christi, many of the young player hits that have
(05:41):
come through LA in the last decade. According to the interview,
Jesse takes some credit for the idea of the Ruy
Haatcha Mura trade. He kind of positioned it in a
way that the team came to him and basically asked
for his opinion on that deal, and he essentially co
signed it. But beyond those successes, there aren't many successes
to be found in that Laker front office, aside from
(06:03):
the star acquisitions, which appear to have much more to
do with factors that are outside of the Lakers control,
like Lebron picked the Lakers because they were the Lakers.
Clutch strong armed ad to the Lakers because they were
the Lakers, and because Lebron was there, and Nico Harrison
(06:23):
gift wrapped Luca to the Lakers in what was the
most stunning trade in the history of sports. Now, I
want to be clear and fair here. It hasn't been
all bad. I thought Rob Polinka did a nice job
pivoting off of the Kawhi saga to build a championship
roster around the eventual champion twenty twenty Los Angeles Lakers.
I thought he did some nice work this last summer,
(06:45):
finding discounted depth and guys like Marcus smart Deandrayton and Jakelravia.
But even in that discussion, there's some context, like, you
probably don't get Ayton if you don't have Luca in
the belief that he gives Aytan that he can help
rehab his trade vale or not his value, but as
eventual free agent value.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Right, you probably don't get Jake.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Laravio without the connections you have to Austin Reeves and
his agent, right, And in general, over the course of
the Rob Polinka era, there has been a complete lack
of basketball identity in that front office. There isn't a
clear basketball philosophy that shapes their decision making. There isn't
a type of player that they clearly like and consistently
(07:26):
target the way that you see with teams like Golden
State and Oklahoma City and Miami or Indiana. There hasn't
been any sort of consistency and approach from offseason to
off season. They seem to go in a different direction
every year, and as you go upwards in the organization,
it gets even more sloppy. All I've heard is that
the Lakers have multiple hands trying to fly the plane,
(07:47):
so to speak, many competing ideas, not much in the
way of alignment throughout the upper management. You have Kurt
Rambis trying to shoehorn himself into coaches meeting or in
some cases even trying to force his way onto coaching stabs.
Like it's just been a mess. But overall, I'm optimistic,
and this is why I want to kind of bring
(08:08):
it back to a positive perspective. Even with the loss
of the broth of the Bus Brothers, which again they
were a rare bright spot, I think Mark Walter will
be very competitive in this marketplace. I think he's gonna
throw a lot of cash around. I think he's going
to bring in very competent professionals into those roles. I
expect the Lakers to have a very good scouting department
(08:30):
in the near future, with excellent college scouting, with excellent
overseas scouting, with excellent NBA scouting, and then I think
the front office will eventually build out a basketball identity,
a consistent approach from offseason offseason. I think JJ Reddick
really helps with this. I think JJ will really help
Rob come up with a consistent approach from offseason to
(08:53):
offseason in the types of players he wants in his system.
And then I think, slowly but surely, over the course
for the next half decade, that kind of small, parochial,
family business like approach of the Lakers to basketball decisions
will be replaced by dead serious and more professional approach
to decision making in a more competitive NBA like You
(09:17):
can't afford to be weak in those areas with how
good the rest of the NBA is, and I think
the Lakers will eventually be more competitive behind the scenes.
This will all eventually end with the Lakers being a
dead serious basketball organization with a financial and leadership backing
that actually meets the level of the Lakers brand itself,
(09:40):
which again remains the biggest basketball brand in the world. So,
in other words, it's kind of a sad day because
Jesse and Joey don't deserve what happened to them both
over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And what happened yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
But ultimately, I do think the Lakers will be better
off in the long run as Mark Walter just continues
to assert himself and to take more and more control
of the team. All right, let's get into this LaMelo saga.
So LaMelo Ball has grown increasingly frustrated with the organization
and is opened to a trade away from the franchise,
multiple league sources told Yahoo's Sports. That's from Kellyicos, a
(10:15):
national NBA writer for Yahoo Sports. Now, the numbers have
been tricky with LaMelo to start the year. He's got
hurt again to start the year. He hasn't been good
since he came back. He's just five for twenty four
from three over the last eight games. Got benched at
the tail hunder regulation in the last one. He's down
to just a bit over twenty seven minutes per game
over the last three games, but the team has been
(10:38):
flatly better when he's on the floor. Even just in
that three game span where the Hornets went oh to three,
they won LaMelo's minutes by twelve. They have a plus
seven net rating, meaning they're outscoring opponents by seven points
per one hundred possessions. When LaMelo Ball's on the floor,
they have a one twenty four offensive rating according to
Cleaning the Glass. When LaMelo Ball's on the floor, they're
(11:00):
bad on defense, but the offense is so good that
they've been winning of those minutes. And again, I think
the bad defense goes far beyond just LaMelo and his
kind of inconsistent effort and focus on that end. The
offense absolutely craters when he's off the floor. They go
from a one to twenty four offensive rating to a
one zho nine offensive rating, in other words, from transcendently
great to what would be the bottom of the league.
(11:22):
And the defense gets worse too, because again, those two
ends of the floor are connected. When you're constantly missing
shots and turning the basketball over, it puts your defense
in a compromise position. Now, I will freely admit I'm
personally not the biggest Lamela ballfan in the world. But
I do think he's an undeniable offensive talent. He's kind
of the definition of a modern offensive engine, a guard
(11:46):
that can push pace consistently, that generates tons of advantages
basically by just running action and relentlessly making the reads,
the reads that set your teammates up with closeouts and
four on threes. Any sort of advantage that a basketball
player can capitalize on it a much higher rate than
he would if he doesn't have an advantage. That's what
causes the offensive rating numbers you see to be so
(12:08):
much better when he's on the floor versus off. Now,
he's a flawed young player. His shot selection on the
ball can be downright silly sometimes. I think that prevents
him from being as efficient as he's capable of being.
His defensive effort is inconsistent, not super uncommon for a
young guard. I think he can make some plays there.
He's got good size in length, and he's fast and
(12:29):
when he like he can make plays when he's engaged
on that end, But there's not much in the way
of possession to possession discipline, and he needs to get
his body right if he wants to stay on the floor. Now,
let's zoom in on Charlotte real quick. They were getting
a lot of hype from NBA hipsters coming into the season,
and for good reasons, like Conkiniple's a really good player.
(12:49):
I like Conkiniple, and he's hooping his ass off right now,
by the way, in his last nine games, twenty two points,
seven rebounds, and four assists per game on basically fifty
forty ninety forty nine percent from the field, thirty nine
percent from three, and ninety three percent from the line.
I like Sion James, I like Brandon Miller, But I
was personally very low on the Hornets coming into the season,
(13:09):
and I thought they'd be back at the bottom of
the league because they're pretty much devoid of two way
talent relative to the rest of the league, and because
LaMelo just hasn't shown an ability to stay on the floor.
So I do think that if you took LaMelo and
took him out of what is essentially not a good
roster and put him onto a situation with more talent,
I do think he could be a ceiling raizer. Now
(13:32):
before we get into some of these trades. For me personally,
if I was running an NBA team, I would not
trade for LaMelo. The upside is tantalizing, but he's been
around for a while now. This is his sixth NBA season.
He's played more than fifty one games in a season
just once, and while the offensive upside is still as
tantalizing as ever, he's shown basically no progress towards becoming
(13:57):
that more refined version of him. Like he's never really
made an attempt to trim the fat in his shot selection.
He's never become a more diligent possession to possession defender,
and we're not seeing like progress in those directions. It's
not like, oh, he's way ahead of where he was
back in twenty twenty three. That shows that he's progressing
towards becoming this all NBA level type of dude, like
(14:21):
we've seen that with other guys like Tyrese Haliburton, very
similar type of like kind of offensive engine guard, albeit
less of a scorer. With Tyre's Haliburton, we've seen in
the last few years him become a little better each
season at competing in the defense, competing in the scheme,
throwing hard hedges and recovering with his hands up and
sprinting back out to the shooter slipping out of the screen,
(14:43):
like we've seen progress there that we haven't really seen
with LaMelo. So I personally don't think he's worth the
risk if I was running an NBA team. But ultimately
LaMelo Ball will end up being traded again. Kelly and
his report also said that the Hornets themselves are disillusioned
with LaMelo. So if the Hornets don't want him, and
(15:03):
he doesn't want the Hornets, he's gonna be somewhere else
soon enough. So just for fun, and again, there's a
lot of different options. You can go a lot of
different directions, you can go here, but I came up
with just three fun LaMelo Ball trades just to kind
of brainstorm this initial phase. And if I have others,
I'll pitch him when we get further down the line.
But first one here, LaMelo Ball to the MAVs for
(15:25):
Anthony Davis. This one was floating around yesterday a little bit,
and it's interesting to me. So the rough structure of
this deal would be something like Anthony Davis and D'Angelo
Russell or one of the other small contracts for the MAVs.
I know MAS fans are already being driven crazy by
d Lo because he's just been in such a massive
role as the injuries have piled up. But it'd be
Anthony Davis and Dilo or one of the other smaller
(15:46):
contracts for LaMelo Ball and Colin Sexton. I don't think
there would need to be any draft compensation on either
side of this deal. Like Anthony Davis is just a
much better basketball player than LaMelo, and that would counter
any of the additional value get from LaMelo's youth. And yeah,
Anthony Davis has has had health issues, but nothing close
to what LaMelo has had. In this situation, the Hornets
(16:10):
would get this incredible center to essentially be a bridge
between this era and the future. Gives you an opportunity
to see if guys like Musa Diabat or Ryan Kalchbrander
could become that foundational center for them. But in the
short term, you give kon k Nippull and Brandon Miller
a chance to compete with like a legit foundational center
in the long term, and then one of the other
(16:30):
things too, is like Anthony Davis will eventually, over the
next few seasons, have a stretch where he stays healthy
for like thirty games or so, and when that happens,
he's gonna look awesome, because that's how Anthony Davis's career
has been. As long as he's healthy and on the
floor consistently, he eventually gets in shape and builds rhythm.
And when that happens, the Hornets would essentially have an
opportunity at that point to trade a rehabbed version of
(16:52):
Anthony Davis's value. They could flip him at that point
in the future, should they so choose. And then on
the MAVs front, you get two things. You get a
potential young star to pair with Cooper Flag. It would
fit really well with him. I think it more appropriately
slots Cooper in an off ball role playing with an
advantage channeling his efforts on defense. I think they compliment
each other really well. And then you also add a
(17:13):
secondary ball handler and Colin Sexton for a team that
is still, even with LaMelo, really short on ball handling.
And you get kind of excited when you look at
a lineup that has like LaMelo Ball, Max, Christie, Cooper, Flag, PJ. Washington,
and Derek Lively, Like it's pretty damn exciting, right, And
those are all guys like Max Christy can knock down
the three and drive it close out. Cooper Flag, as
(17:34):
we've talked about, is one of the best read makers
out of a young prospect that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
PJ.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Washington when we watched him alongside Luka Doncic when he
was getting spoon fed advantages is a really high level
week side score. And Derek Lively is that screen and
roll threat that's also such a great defensive anchor. On
the other end of the floor. You also have four
really good defensive players there next to LaMelo. I really
like that deal for Dallas, and I think you could
talk yourself into it if Charlotte is getting out of
(18:01):
the LaMelo business, getting a guy that kind of makes
you a more serious basketball team in the short term.
And if you look at both of those guys as
guys with flawed trade value, right Anthony Davis older had
some injury issues, LaMelo, you know, somewhat of a kind
of like a mercurial type of player who also has
injury issues. They both kind of have low value right now.
(18:22):
But if you get Anthony Davis and you rehab his value,
you could potentially trade him for more down the line.
Next LaMelo ball trade the Warriors make up for the
James Wiseman mistake. This one would be a little bit
more complicated to pull off, Like the foundation of the
trade would essentially be LaMelo ball for Jonathan Minga, but
(18:43):
it would get tricky from there. The Warriors would have
to aggregate some salaries, and they don't have a lot
of salaries to aggregate because of their three massive contracts,
so it'd probably be like Buddy Healed and Moses Moody
added to the deal, And you hate to lose a
guy like Moses Moody and a deal like that, but
you basically have to if you wanted to get a
guy like Lamello, and the Hornets would have to clear
some roster spots in order to make this all happen.
But once again, similar to the Dallas trade, I don't
(19:06):
think there'd have to be too much in the way
of draft compensation going either way. Like, if you're Charlotte,
Moody and Kminga's a really nice return for LaMelo, And essentially,
if you look at it from both perspectives, Charlotte would
get a really nice power forward prospect to pair with
Brandon Miller. I think they'd eventually get off of Miles
Bridges in a separate deal. I think kaminga just because
of his first step quickness, and he just has like
(19:27):
a little bit more of that. I'll actually say he
has considerably more like one on one potential. In the
big picture, I think he's a prospect that I like
better than a guy like Miles Bridges and Moses Moody
is like an awesome two way wing to help bolster
them on both ends of the floor. Golden State would
get a legitimate, legitimate secondary shot creator off of Steph.
(19:47):
I think it'd be kind of clunky at first, but
you know, you could argue the short term returns would
not be very good, but at the very least they'd
have a foundational piece to look at for the era
after Steph, the guy you build the offense around when
Steph re tied. Now, once again, to be very clear,
if I ran the Warriors, I would not do this deal.
But I could totally see Joe lakeup stepping in and
(20:09):
making something like this happen, just with some of the
control that he has on the team. The last trade
that I'll pitch to you guys today, the Spurs partner
LaMelo with Wemby. So this deal would essentially just be
deeron Fox for LaMelo Ball. It might involve a three
team construct where deeron Fox gets rerouted. That kind of
just depends on what values Charlotte would see in dearon Fox.
(20:31):
Fox is only twenty seven, so maybe Charlotte would give
it a shot with him, but I could see.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Him getting re routed.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
But I like the idea in theory for San Antonio,
they get a legit offensive engine to pair with Victor
women Yama, they could get the deal done without having
to give up any of the other young guards. You
can keep a Dylan Harper and Steph Castle's essentially insurance.
It kind of like solves your timeline issue in the
sense that, like, I think Steph Castle and Dylan Harper
are both guys that have potential to become All Stars
(20:58):
in this league, but it might be three four years
before they get to that level. And Victor Wemenyama is
ready to be first team All NBA this season. He's
ready to be competing for a championship this season, and
so you have this like kind of upside in the
sense that you get this big offensive engine type of
weapon in LaMelo that can grease the wheels for you
(21:18):
on offense. You can completely support him on the defensive
end of the four because you have such big athletic
guards and because you have Victor Wemenyama underneath the basket,
you can with with Stan LaMelo's injuries. Like you have
strong infrastructure, like that team just won a game without
Wemby or LaMelo theory, you know, in this theoretical situation
right now, I think they have that type of infrastructure
(21:40):
to where they could with Stan LaMelo playing fifty five
sixty five games in a season. And again, the big
thing there is he could be the guy that could
finally be the type of player that sets Wemby up
with easy opportunities, something we've talked about forever, getting Wenby
more advantages from a really high level pick and roll
ball handler. There's potential there with Deer and Fox, to
(22:01):
be clear, but LaMelo would certainly be better in that role. Now,
this is where it gets tricky because, like I said,
in the other two deals, like I wouldn't do these deals.
I mean, Dallas, you could talk yourself into it because
of Anthony Davis, But if I was Golden State or
another one of these more serious teams that I would
have to give up, like a substantial asset wouldn't do
it right. But you know, Anthony Davis is kind of
(22:22):
a distressed asset in and of himself, and in the
San Antonio situation, like if you keep all your draft
compensation and you keep Dylan Harper and you keep Steph Castle,
it's kind of relatively low risk. Like if I was
San Antonio, I think long and hard about that one.
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New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee or Virginia. All right, before we
get to our mailbag, Anthony Slater from ESPN reports that
Jonathan Kaminga is feeling like the scapegoat again. He feels
like the scapegoat again, one team source said, Cominga, team
sources said had voice to cur a desire to be
coach harder. There was even a meeting about it in
the Sacramento Hotel prior to their ninth game of the season,
(24:37):
and Kerr appeared to make it a point during the
King's game to call Cominga over and get on him
constructively several times. But four and one became six and six.
Cominga's knees began bothering him his defensive juice and burst
to the rim lessened. He won one for nine shooting
at home against the Pacers, missing all five of his threes.
Coaches dingdam for his perimeter shot selection as a reason
for his minutes production to a season low twenty and
(25:00):
for the Warriors to reach their ceiling the season. There's
an internal belief that Jonathan Kaminga, even in a condensed
role must shake off some of his built up resentment
and get back to the impact wing from the first
couple of weeks, even if the long term benefit for
both sides is more about a bump and trade value
than a partnership. Again, all that from Anthony Slater from ESPN.
(25:23):
I said right after the Oklahoma City game when those
comments were made, that it felt like they were scapegoating
cominga again. The Golden State Stars themselves all came out
like shit against the thunder, got their butts kicked, and
then they went into the pressers and blamed the young guys.
Now here's the truth. The Warriors are nine to eight
because of their schedule. That's it. After I'm recording this,
(25:44):
I'm recording with Adamars from DNVR. We're doing that all
MBA show. And one of the topics we're doing today
is recovering teams that are better than their record and
teams that are worse than their record. And you know
what team I picked for the team that's better than
their record, The Golden State Warriors. They're nine to eight
because they have a team built around four guys in
their late thirties, and they had seventeen games in twenty
(26:05):
eight days to start the season, so there's no reason
to blame anyone. Steph has been bad in some games
we talked about the Oklahoma City game. Steph was bad
in the Oklahoma City game. Steph was really bad in
the Indiana Pacers game. Is big part of why they
lost that game, the one on the road. Jimmy's been
bad at points. Draymond's been bad at points. Jonathan Kaminga's
been bad at points. So has Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski.
(26:28):
They've all been beaten into the ground by the schedule.
And that's what makes this pump fake from Golden State
so bizarre. Like early in the season, when things are
going good and Jonathan Kaminga is in the starting lineup,
everyone's singing Jonathan Kamingu's praises, and for good reason he's
he was playing well and again, did he tail off
(26:50):
as things got harder? Yeah, but so did everyone else.
And this is where it comes back to the same
damn thing we've been arguing about all damn summer, in
all the last year and a half or so. Is
Jonathan Kaminga a great fit with the Golden State Warriors.
Obviously not. Even with him playing better to start the season,
(27:11):
the on off numbers continue to show that the team
is better without him because he's not a great fit.
But I don't think he's to blame for the nine
and eight start. And again, the Warriors had every opportunity
to move on from the Kaminga era this summer. The
only reason they didn't is because they didn't want to
(27:32):
lose him as an asset for nothing, and because when
they shopped him, they weren't happy with the return they
were being offered in those signing trades. So it's like
this complete disillusionment, so to speak, surrounding his value. So
they decided to bring him back.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And here we are.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
And when things are good, it's coming is finally buying in.
And when things are bad, it's the young guys aren't
all pulling in the same direction as us. And again, like,
I know that both sides have blame in this, but
one of the sides is a bunch of grown ass
middle aged men who know better, and the other side
(28:14):
is a twenty three year old talented basketball player who's
been jerked around for four and a half years, So
of course he's kicking and screaming a bit. I lack
any form of sympathy for the Warriors in the situation,
and I cannot wait for the saga to be over.
All right, let's get into our mail bag. I'll get
(28:39):
to a Warriors question first here. Since we're on the Warriors,
who between Trey Murphy or Herb Jones fits the Warriors fits?
What the Warriors need? Is it the third scoring option
in Trey Murphy or the lockdown point of attack defender
in Herb Jones that will elevate the Warriors into contender status.
So I've had this debate with Warriors fans at various
points over the last few months. I had it with
(29:00):
with Tommy and Sam from the Light Years podcast like
about a month a month or two ago, and you know,
they kind of both leaned more towards the Herb Jones type. Essentially,
they want a big athletic forward essentially, like we talked
about it in the context of like an Andrew Wiggins
versus Jordan Poole, which version do the Warriors need. Do
the Warriors need what Jordan pool was to the twenty
(29:20):
twenty two Warriors, or do they need what Andrew Wiggins
was to the twenty twenty two Warriors. Those are that's
kind of where the path bifer Kate so to speak, right,
And Trey is essentially that scoring forward type that would
add offensive pop to the team. And Herb Jones is
your stereotypical three in D kind of athlete, right, So
they kind of in this mailback question that you're pitching,
(29:41):
they represent both ends of that discussion. For me, I
maintain that I think they need scoring. I think ultimately
the biggest problem the Warriors have is that when the
young guys and everybody down the roster, whether it's Jimmy
being able to score and carry bench units, or it's
Drama knocking down catch and shoot threes, or it's Moody
(30:03):
and Pods going for thirty points on any given night
rather than fifteen. I think it's the inconsistent offense off
of Steph that continues to be a problem for this team.
I always believe in their ability to scale up defensively
when they need to, So for me, I would be
targeting someone more along the lines of a Trey Murphy
(30:26):
that said either player would help the team. I'm not
gonna sit here and pretend like Herb Jones wouldn't help
the Warriors. But to me, you have a guy in
Moses Moody. You provides a rough approximation of that. No,
he's not as good as her, but he provides a
rough approximation of that. A guy who can guard the
opposing team's best player, the guy who's better at it
(30:46):
than Johnathan Kaminga because he's better and more disruptive with
his hands. A guy that can bring some catch and
shoot play attacking closeouts, even bring some movement shooting too,
although Herb Jones has built out some of his more
refined offensive game as well. But to me, you already
have a guy that kind of roughly approximates that. Trey
Murphy represents something you don't have, like a legit heat check,
wing score, a guy that can come in and like
(31:09):
consistently give you in that twenty to twenty five points range.
A guy that's not gonna have as many nights where
he just is a non factor on the offensive end
of the floor. So for me, whether it's Trey Murphy
or it's someone else, I lean towards the Warriors need
scoring pop. They need someone that can come in for
a five minute stretch when Steph checks out of the
(31:29):
game and legit like provide the offensive explosion to carry
those units. That's the kind of guy that I would
be targeting if I was the Warriors. Hey, Jason loved
the show. I had a simple idea of actually increasing
the length of the season while keeping the same amount
of games. Get rid of back to backs, guarantee there's
at least one day between games and two days between
(31:52):
games for long flights. Also make the two playoff series
best of five. But I doubt the league would do
that otherwise, like your idea. So here's the thing. I
think the problem with lengthening the season is it's already
so fucking long. Like I mean, it's legitimately a nine
month journey when you include some of the other details
like summer league and free agency, like it goes from
(32:15):
the beginning of October all the way to the middle
of July. Now, if you zoom in on just the games,
we're going from, like guys are showing up for training
camp in early October, and they're playing basketball at a
minimum to mid April, and in many cases to late April,
early May, sometimes even as far as early June. That's
(32:37):
an extremely long season and when you factor in that
the guy's got to spend a month ramping up for
training camp too, it's already too long. I don't think
you're gonna be able to convince NBA players to be like, hey,
you guys, know how you show up on October first
in shape? How about we show up on September first
in shape? Like, I just don't think you're gonna be
able to get NBA players to buy in to that idea.
(32:57):
That said, I do think like the idea of like
trying to get rid of back to backs and making
the schedule more more tenable for the the for all
of the players is a good idea. I just think
you do it by reducing the number of games. Love
your point about like having long flights cross across country
travel be surrounded around two days off and things like that.
(33:18):
Just find ways to make it much more manageable for
the players. As far as the playoff series go, I
think the NBA playoffs are like especially the first round,
Like I mean we see it in our numbers with
the way we cover the league, Like the first and
second round of the playoffs are literally literally the highlight
of the NBA season in many cases, so I don't
think there's any point in reducing the volume there. I
(33:39):
would keep seven seven seven seven for the four rounds
and just find a way to shorten the number of
regular season games to accomplish the goals you're talking about
with removing back to backs and making cross country travel
more easy to manage. You often mention how you feel
(33:59):
the Lakers need to as athletic starting caliber wing or
three in order to truly contend in the top Western conference.
While I do agree the Lakers could use good wing,
I find that a far more glaring weakness in the
starting lineup is the absence of a true defensive one,
a truly elite point of attack guard with excellent screen
navigation to unlock more coverage, versatility and keep the opposing
(34:19):
quicker guards in check. Replacing Ruey with such a player
in the starting lineup would also push everybody else towards
a more natural defensive role. Austin becomes your two, Luca
gets to defend wings where he's shown some success, and
so on. Why do you feel like replacing Ruey with
an athletic wing would improve the roster when it doesn't
seem to address the most glaring hole true perimeter speed.
Thanks has always loved the show, So to me, I'm
looking for a three that can guard ones. That's kind
(34:42):
of the point. Like there's you know, you mentioned a
very interesting point having to do with, you know, screen navigation.
But there's many ways to defend and drop coverage. So
what you're talking about with the coverage versatility is so
right now with the Lakers starters with Ruey in there,
they want to switch. They want to switch because everyone's
slow and big. So the idea is if you switch
and contain, keep them all in front, and you have
good help recover on the back line, you can essentially
(35:05):
just kind of tilt the defense towards the shots you
want to live with and allow yourself to defend fine
in the large sample, haven't done it well this year yet,
at least not in the short sample we saw in
the Utah game. But I think there's an ability for
that coverage to work. We talked about that a little
bit in the Lakers Collective Pod yesterday, But it gets
complicated because if you want to run drop coverage, you
(35:27):
need to have someone that can get over screens.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
There's multiple ways to do that. Though.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
There's the Cason Wallace, like, I'm attached to your hip
the whole damn way, and I'm like getting over the
top and staying attached and making you uncomfortable. But then
there's the length and rear view contest way of looking
at it. Right, this is like kind of like the
Jaden McDaniels Herb Jones type of archetype, where it's like
(35:51):
they're still fast, they don't necessarily stay as attached, but
they have such good length that when they're back pressuring,
they still get offensive player's head because they feel like
if they rise up in the mid range, they're gonna
get blocked from behind, which then can trick them into
essentially forcing their penetration further into the rim, where now
you have your drop coverage big waiting. It's essentially a funnel, right,
(36:15):
You're funneling them into that big man. Casin Wallace archetype
is going to do it by staying attached. Herb Jones
archetype is going to do it by using his length
pressuring from behind. Right, So like those are like the
two different ways to do it. To me, I still
look at that roster as like needing kind of like
length and athleticism rather than just speed on the perimeter.
(36:39):
You need both, but if you can find a three
that accomplishes a version of both, that is where you're
cooking with grease right or cooking with gas right. So like,
for instance, I've talked about Andrew Wiggins now. Andrew Wiggins
to me is in his thirties now, so like, I
don't think he necessarily makes sense for the big picture
goals of the Lakers, but strictly viewing it through the
(36:59):
sho short term, he's an example of what I'm talking about,
a big, fast athlete who brings speed, who brings athleticism,
who is an excellent rebounder, but that you can also
deploy on the other team's best player and has some versatility.
Because again, the other thing that you're forgetting here is like,
let's say you have a uh more of an athletic
one that you bring in and you have like this,
(37:20):
Let's just use a Davion Mitchell for example, Davion Mitchell
at the one, Austin, Luca Lebron and DeAndre Ayton. What
happens when you run into some of the bigger, you know,
bigger ball handlers in the league, like is Shaygos Alexander
just gonna shoot over the top of Davion Mitchell every
single time, right, Like, there's a certain amount of like
size and position that you deal with there too, the
(37:41):
idea of finding more of a three that is a
like perimeter defender type a la Andrew Wiggins. But the
reason why we keep coming back to Herb Jones is
he's a younger player to where like you can at
least convince yourself if you're making that trade, Like, if
you trade a first round pick for Andrew Wiggins, you're
trading a first round pick for a guy that doesn't
necessarily fit Austin in Luca's timeline. To trade a first
round pick for Herb Jones, you could be like, this
(38:02):
is our starting three for the next five years, Like
this is legitimately a foundational piece next to Austin and Luca.
That's a guy who can guard an opposing point guard
garden opposing like can he guard a Shake Gildess Alexander,
Devin Booker, a bigger forward like a Kawhi Leonard? Can
he guard like all of these different types of players?
(38:24):
Can he guard to Jamal Murray? Can he guard like
like the like? Can he guard to Tyrese MAXI can
he guard like these various different types of ball handlers.
That's where like a traditional kind of like three makes
sense as a guy that could kind of round things
out for that unit. Tim Leigler on the All NBA
Podcast us that the injury spree in the NBA right
(38:46):
now is caused by a lack of preseason prep from
teams and athletes. He remarked that the NBA is much
less physical than when he played, and that players are
just not doing enough to prepare themselves for the eighty
two Do you agree with this personally? I think that's
bogus and surprisingly shortsighted take from a guy at Jenner respect,
I think your take in most of the new school
analysis are are one hundred percent on the money. The
NBA has grown into a far more physically demanding and
(39:07):
taxing game that it used to be due to the
speed and pace of play. Lateral movement in eighty two
games is just far too many for the intensity of
the current game. Love the show man, keep up the
good work.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I similarly, I have the utmost respect for Tim Legler,
but I just disagree with that point of view. There's
there's a lot of I think every basketball player has
a certain affinity for their era, and I think that
that can color everybody's analysis. Like, you bet your ass
that twenty years from now, I will probably be the
guy that's like, back in the twenty tens, you know,
(39:38):
they played this way and it was better. You know,
Like that's just human nature, right. I think, Like the
points you made are all pretty obvious.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right, Like the.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Game is insanely fast, way more possessions in transition, way
more sprinting, even within the half court. There's way more speed.
There's way more attacks on each possession, side to side,
the drive and kick basketball. The amount of times that
you're sprinting, closing out, planting, changing direction, and then all
of a sudden turning it running the other way up
the floor, Like it is just much harder on the body.
(40:12):
And again, we're not seeing dudes, like according to the
physicality that Tim Legler is referencing, We're not seeing like
a bunch of dislocated shoulders and like and like like
broken wrists and like injuries that come from physicality. We're
seeing soft tissue injuries and ligament injuries. We're seeing achilles
acl calf strains, hamstring strains. That's the kind of stuff
(40:36):
that we're seeing, and that is all associated with the
human body of basically just not being able to withstand
the grind of the NBA regular season now with how
fast the game is played and how much body movement
there is in any given game. Next question, help me
make it. We have two more. Help me make sense
of this Raptors team and their success this year. No
(40:57):
superstars and feels a lot like the Pacers last year.
So we did a Raptor segment last week on Friday,
and then we hit them again at one point earlier
this week. So I'm not going to go too far
into it, but the very short version of it is
they've after a kind of a rough start to the season,
they've recaptured some of their defensive identity from the tail
end of last year. They're a very good defensive team.
They're getting out in transition a ton, which is part
(41:18):
of that defense to transition attack that is super successful
in the modern NBA. You get stops, you run when
you run out and transition you're roughly twenty percent more
efficient than you are in the half court. It's just
an opportunity to build additional margin. The surprise has been
they you know, one of the things we talked about
coming into the season is they've got a lot of
playmaking talent. They've got a lot of guys that can
pass the basketball. So we talked about in the half court,
(41:40):
like they got shooting issues, but what if they're just
like surgical in their playmaking ability and that's what's manifested.
They've played really impressive drive and kick basketball. They're a
high assist percentage team. They move the ball well. And
then to your point about the superstars, Like, I know
they don't have necessarily bona fide superstars, but Scottie Barnes
and Brandon Ingram can make some plays. Like they had
a game the other day. I'm trying to remember who
(42:02):
it was they were playing, but we talked about it
on the show. But Brandon, I think it was Charlotte
and Brandon Ingram or Scottie Barnes like back Miles Bridges
down in the post and like dunked on his ass
and then like went down and had a huge block
on I think Brandon Ingram had a huge block on
Mason Plumley at the rim and then or Cale Brenner,
I can't remember one of those the Hornets bigs. I
(42:22):
think it was Cal Brenner. They go down the other
end and brandon Ingram like makes a beautiful read out
of a post up to a guy cutting down the
lane to RJ Barrett, I think who gets a little lay
up and they go down to the other end and
then RJ and then Scotty Barnes gets a huge block
right at the rim that cleans up a play like
Scotty Barnes and Brandon Ingram can kind of leverage themselves
to make superstar esque plays which can help them win
(42:43):
win games on the margins. Lastly, Hey, Jason, great episode
as always, coming up on a quarter of the season played.
Who would be your MVP so far? Do you think
Shay will go back to back because of how transcendent
okay See has been Personally, I have Luca and first
he just has has to keep playing that way he
has all the season. He has the keep playing the
way he has all season and play enough games. What
(43:03):
are your thoughts? So it's interesting because I think all
four of the top guys have had good cases for
different reasons, Like Yannis and Luca have done the most
with the least right like with how often, with who's
been available for the Lakers, and with just the limitations
of the Bucks roster in general, those are two pretty
limited teams that have won at a pretty high rate because
(43:26):
of just how transcendently good Luca and Giannis have been. Now,
Luca has won more. I think he's eight and three
in the eleven games he's played, so I'd probably give
a slight edge to Luca there. Luca has been insurd.
He's averaging like what thirty four and a half nine
and nine to start the year on' like sixty two
percent true shooting, Like Luca's been outrageous. But then the
other two guys are very good cases for different reasons.
(43:49):
Like Jokics very much has the I'm still the best
player in the world case, and I think he's shown
that over the last few weeks.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
He's been absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
He's averaging like a like a I can't remember the
exact numbers, but he's like close to like thirty three
thirty four points per game and like twelve rebounds twelve
assists per game, absurdly efficient, like Jokic has been absurd.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
He looks like the best player in the world, and
Shay's I think like fifteen to one when he plays,
so Like we talked about it, there's so many different
ways to build an MVP case, Like who's doing the
most for their particular team and making the most out
of the least. That's where Luca and yannisland. Who's the
best player on the best team. That's where Shaye lands,
And who's the best player that's Nicole Jokis right. I
think all four players a very good cases. I'd probably
(44:31):
give this slight edge to Luca at this point, but
I think it's roughly a tie between all four of
those guys. And what you mentioned, the big key there
what's gonna ultimately end up measuring all of this is
in the big picture, how many games do these guys
play and how many games do their teams win. Like,
if Shay wins seventeen more games than the second place
(44:52):
team in the West, he's winning MVP. But if the
Lakers are only six or seven games back, lucas getting MVP.
If the Nuggets are only two or three games back,
Jokic is getting MVP.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
If Yannis and the Bucks finished with the two seed,
in the East, Giannis is probably getting MVP, right, So
there's all those different factors that kind of have to
shake out. That's why it's just kind of too early
for this sort of thing. But if you ask me
to give an edge right now, I'd give the edge
to Luca because I think he's done the most with
the least while also combining it with wins to this point.
All Right, guys, it's all I have for today is
(45:28):
always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting
the show. I hope you all have an incredible weekend.
If you're down to watch some hoops tonight, again, we're
hanging out on playback for Nuggets Rockets. Otherwise, I'll see
you guys on Monday for Power rankings.
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