Thursday: Giannis or no Giannis for the Spurs?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Here we go into our number two. It's just after
five o'clock. I'm Andy Ever along with our producer Michael Bartlett.
Thank you for being part of the show today. Wherever
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(00:22):
app for free on your app store, and you can
also make sure that you preset ticket seven sixty so
that we're always handy wherever you go. The free iHeartRadio
app from iHeart. Yeah, where's we had Venezuela recently? Was
that one in Belgium?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Now Belgium, Germany, Ecuador, South Africa? New one. I'm still
waiting man International Space Station. I'm still I don't know
the app goes that far Mark.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Maybe they just don't log on it, Maybe they have
other things to do other than listen to us.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Andy, you can make calls from the International Space Station.
You've I've seen it on TV in the movie. So
I'm just assuming for those of us that believe that
it actually happened. I am I am a little concerned though,
because our random one person in Hong Kong has kind
of just disappeared.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So yeah, I'm kind of wondering about that one. Maybe
Darryl Moury got to him or something.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
All Right, I'm gonna make a statement here and it's
gonna sound stupid, but then I'm gonna explain why it
may not be. And I think that there is a scenario. Well,
let's put it this way. Are the Spurs a better
basketball team with Janie as part of the team next

(01:40):
year of via trade? Or are they a better team
if he is not part of the Spurs next year?
And it kind of sounds stupid to think that you
could have one of the most generational best basketball players
in the league and Yannis and not think that you
would be better if he wasn't on your roster. So, Michael,

(02:01):
I were doing this exercise today and we're going to
kind of do the same thing that we did when
we were talking about the Cowboys. What's missing from the Spurs,
what's preventing them from going from thirty four wins to
let's get greedy, fifty wins. What's going to make a
sixteen game difference. Well, one of those things is wemb
be playing seventy five to eighty games, no more blood clots,

(02:21):
no more major injuries.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Let's go with that first.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's probably where seven or eight more wins, a little
bit more productive, proficient, dangerous three point shooter. I think
the Spurs have improved their three point shooting in the
last two or three years, not necessarily from a percentage standpoint,
but makes per game. I think makes per game are
just as important, if not more important, than what your
percentage is from wherever you're shooting them from. And if

(02:46):
you've got to shoot more to get to that eighteen
to twenty mark, then shoot more eighteen to twenty threes,
I think is what needs to be the standard for
you to really have a good chance to win games.
If you shoot more and make more, that's even better.
And then so we don't really have that player that
the Spurs have had in years past. I did go

(03:06):
way back, you know, Dale Ellis was probably the first
really good three point shooter the Spurs had. But I
thought Bruce Bowen was really efficient from the corners. Although
he wasn't ever going to win any three point contests,
he made those corner threes well. Tony Parker became a
better three point shooter as his career in the NBA.
Even though the three point shot was big in the

(03:28):
in the Spurs championship runs, it wasn't as important it
is now as we have more and more analytics. So
let's say that the Spurs need a three point shooter,
they need a healthy Wimby, and they need a banging
presence the under the basket to be able to get
weak side rebounds, play defense kind of keep teams at
bay a little bit and at least challenged when Wimby

(03:50):
has his rests. So to me, I would like to
see if they kept the current roster and you're going
to draft it two and fourteen. The two draft picks
that I would like to see this Burds get that
I think would make a huge difference on the team
would be both duke players mallow Watch and Canipple. Now,
mallow Watch may be a little bit green and a

(04:12):
little bit young, but there's several free agents out there
that are pretty cheap, and two of them are Steven
Adams and Mason Plumbley, and they could be the physical
guy that I think this team needs to have some
physicality under the basket. We always say, weak side rebounding
is an underrated thing. You're gonna miss shots. Can you

(04:33):
get five or six or ten offensive rebounds a game?
And you know, fourteen to twenty five second chance points
based on putbacks because you got a big guy in
there and somebody that's got some muscle that's not gonna
you know, as good as Wimby is and even as
good as Giannis is, are you are they gonna win
the battle on every rebound because they're not necessarily the

(04:53):
biggest and strongest. Steven Adams never gives up an offensive
rebound that I ever see. I mean, Steven Adams is
always involved in the play. And he's a free agent,
and he made twelve and a half million dollars. I
think you said plumb Lee was around three or four.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
And so those are good cheap players, and then you
can you can have them groom mallowatch and then you
have Canipple that you can play him. However, he develops
as a good as a good three point shooter. So
I'm going to give you this lineup as a potential
starting lineup next year. Fox Castle, Barnes, free agent, Big

(05:28):
Wimby and your backups would be Paul vassel kJ so
hand uh canippled if you were drafting him and Mallowatch
and I and.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Kelden I think I left. If I left Kelvin Johnson, and.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
You have Champagnee and then you still have your your
twelfth and thirteenth guys in wes Lee and Brandham. So
to me, that's a pretty good lineup if you get
Giannis and and the two players that are going to
be are three players basically that Milwaukee's going to be
off limits for. And again this is based on a
one to one trade. Now you're thinking about do I get?

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Do I have?

Speaker 1 (06:06):
You obviously have to give up Vassil because he's the
only one that's got enough money. Then you're gonna have
to give up a combination of Barnes vassil Sohn because
I'm not letting you have Castle and I'm not letting
you have Fox, and obviously you're not having Wimby. So
in order to make the money match, you got to
give up some commendation of those. I don't know that
Milwaukee would want Harrison Barnes. He makes a good salary

(06:30):
that also is tradable, But I want Harrison Barnes I'm
being greedy.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I want to vet on this team.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
So if you put Wimby into this mix, and let's
say he repeated, then you really don't have room for
the banging big that I talked about with Adams or
Plumbley and you're playing Fox, Castle, Barnes, Wimby, Giannis. Great
starting lineup, but where's your three point threat? You still
got to have a three point threat in this. Maybe

(06:56):
it becomes Castle, maybe it's Fox, but you still have
to get me this guy. You know seven or eight
guys that are gonna shoot two or three threes a game.
And now you don't have the Sel. You may not
have Keldon Johnson, you may not have so In, you
may not have Barns. You're gonna have to give up
a combination of those players, and you're gonna have to
hope that Milwaukee does not want Castle to be involved

(07:17):
in that, because I'm not giving you him.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Castle's the future.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
I think Fox is the is the intermediate future, and
obviously Wemby's long term future as well. So I think
that it's interesting that everybody sees the opportunities because the
Spurs have draft capital and players that could fit for Milwaukee.
But I'm not sure that that's the best scenario for
the Spurs to go from thirty four to fifty plus.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it's talent wise, Obviously you would love to have Giannis.
Talent wise, it would be amazing. But the it's the
return to where you're giving one player and in order
to make the salaries work, you have to give up
multiple plays, right.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Because Milwaukee what Milwaukee's gonna If Milwaukee decides to move
off Jannis, they need immediate players who are young that
are not gonna cost them a lot of money collect
I mean three, three players making fifty million is better
than one when you're trying to rebuild your roster.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
And just go look at Milwaukee's roster.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's it's Janice, and it's now at Aging Lopez and Portos,
and I'm leaving Dame Lillard, who's not gonna play at
least until April next year.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Well Brook Lopez wouldn't even be on the rock.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
He's gonna he's gonna probably retire or if he resigns,
it'll be for cheap. But they really just what the
reason Milwaukee didn't win this year is because it was
mainly Honus, especially when Dame got hurt.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
So here here are the only actual if we're looking
at the start of next season, the twenty twenty five
twenty twenty sixth season. Here are the only players on
the Milwaukee Bucks that are guaranteed to be there. Dame
Lollard at fifty four million, Jannis at fifty four million,
Kyle Kuzma at twenty two point four. Everybody else is
a partial guarantee or a player option, right, and three players.

(09:08):
So they need bodies.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
So Milwaukee needs bodies, and they're gonna ask for three
Spurs players. And it's either it's either kJ vsel Sohan
or Sohan Barns. There's a million different combinations with those players,
but that that's what you're giving up. And that's why
whenever I see you know, Charles Barkley, or I see

(09:31):
Steven A. Smith, or I see somebody say, man, you
honest and Van Weinby together would be awesome. And the
Spurs have tons of draft capitol, and they've got some
young players they can mix and all of a sudden
they could be a championship contender. Yeah they could, but
it's kind of a one hit wonder. You better make
it work right away because you go from you go
from a deep team to a pretty shallow team right away,

(09:54):
and without having Yannis, and you keep all the guys
that you have, and you're you don't have to resign
anybody other than Fox for big money for a while.
And if Canipple and Malowwatch or players like them can
contribute right away, you have an eleven man rotation. And
the one thing I like about Oklahoma City in this
playoff is that they have eleven guys at play and

(10:16):
when Shay goes to the bench and when home Run
goes to the bench, they still get scoring. And that's
one thing that I think that that's a model that
the Spurs may want to look at too, And I'm
sure they are. I'm just I'm just spitballing here, but
a lot of fans are saying, yeah, let's go get Joannis.
That would be awesome. Joannis and Wenby together, great combination.

(10:37):
It'd make a splash, you'd make a lot of headlines,
all that kind of stuff. But now you're giving up depth,
and now you become an eight man team and you
have very little three point shooting. Here's the only issue
with Mallowatch and Canipple. Neither one of them are worthy
of the number two pick. There's players that are better
than they are, and both are better than the fourteenth pick.

(10:57):
So you've got you've got some wheeling and dealing possibilities
where you could trade two and say go to the
six pick and get Canipple and trade fourteen to eight
and get and get Mallowatch or vice versas, yeah, or
some combination of that, because all the Mott drafts have
Canipple and Malowatch going somewhere between five and ten. And

(11:18):
then you have Dairy Queen in the mix, and I
think he's going to be a good player too. But
Mallowatch is a little bigger and a little stronger right now.
Whereas I when I look at when I look at
at Queen, I see a really young kid. I see
a little bit more. And I don't even know what Mallowatch.
I think Mallowatch is twenty one, and I think maybe
I've got him backwards.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
I don't know, but anyway from Queen is twenty because
remember that you can trying to figure out how he
was a fresh minute twenty right, But how old is Malowatch.
I'd have to get grab that one for you.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
But I I just what he does for Duke is
with exactly what I think the Spurs could could use
there whatever they come up. The only thing that I'm
concerned about, or the one I'm concerned about with adding
Yannis to the team. You've got Giannis and Wemby together
and you go, well, you got a six ten or
six eleven yann Us and a seven to four Wimby,

(12:08):
but neither one of them play what I call with
a lot of physicality. Giannis a little bit more than
Wimby because he's older and he's grown into his body
a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Eighteen so so Balla watches only eighteen, so he would
be nineteen basically when the season seas.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
So you got a project there, But hey, he's not
you're not running plays for him, you're not raising, you're
not running plays for Steven Adams or somebody like them,
if that's who you go after in the in free agency.
But I think that when you start thinking about, yeah,
Yannis would be good, but remember you're giving up probably
three players off this roster in three or four picks,

(12:46):
and they don't all have to be first round picks,
and one of them probably has to be this year's
number two. So I would be careful about that. But see,
this is what general managers and el hefe gets to do.
They get to sit around to take and throw out
all these scenarios and go, well, if we do this,
we got this, and if we do that, we got this.
And so that's the cool part of it. They played

(13:09):
general manager for real. We get to play it on
the radio.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah at just and as far as for Derek Queen, yeah,
Derek Queen is twenty and he would be twenty one
around I believe September.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
The one thing I like about dry Queen is that
he's a freshman even though he was twenty. And when
they got in that huddle for that one play where
he won the game in the tournament, give me the ball,
I'm gonna go score and get out of my way. Yeah,
he's got a swagger. I like people that have confidence
in themselves. That's a good thing to see.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
All right.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
The Caleb Williams story has taken another twist. We'll explain
all of that and some thoughts on how he differs
from others that were able to do what he tried
to do. That conversation is next. It's five point fifteen
on the ticket