February 2, 2025 • 34 mins
Nick Wright reacts to the blockbuster NBA trade which is sending Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks, and explains why this is the “single greatest thing” to happen to Luka. Nick also breaks down what this means for AD, and also LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and both the Mavs and Lakers moving forward.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in. What'll drive with the Great Emergency Pod is
what these are called. And let me tell you how
my night went last night. So my dad is in
out of town, in from Kansas City, kind of a
last minute trip because it is my niece's birthday, so
he came in town to see her, and my wife
(00:21):
and I took him out to dinner last night. And
so my dad and I don't get together that often,
but if we do get together, it's gonna be an
incredibly long dinner and a lot of wine. So that
was a three hour dinner my dad, my wife, and
I and then afterwards my dad heads back to my
(00:42):
sisters and my wife says, you know, we haven't gone
out like gone out, gone out like we used to
in quite some time. I was a bottle of wine
in I'm not driving. I'm like, okay, let's do it.
So we end up going going downtown in New York
(01:02):
a couple different spots. And while we are in a
way too loud, far too many people, so much younger
than me, as I am the old guy in the club,
I look at my phone and I read this breaking
The Dallas Mavericks are trading Luka Doncic, Maxi, Kliba, and
(01:25):
Markkeith Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis,
Max Christi and a twenty twenty nine first round pick.
Sources tell ESPN from Sham Sharania, and I have the
reaction that I think, literally everyone has, Oh dude, got hacked.
Definitely not real, impossible that it could be real. He
(01:50):
then follows it up with yes, this is real and
has the full trade. But again that means nothing to
me because if if you got hacked, if you got hacked,
the same person has control of your account. You then tweeting, yes,
this is real. I send the tweet to people who
(02:11):
would be directly involved in such a thing, and before
I even get a response, the main ESPN account tweets it.
And my reaction at that moment is like everyone else's
holy shit, what just happened? Is this the biggest trade
(02:32):
in NBA history? Maybe, but maybe not. You don't want
to be too prisoner of the moment. He I mean,
Kareem Abdul Jabbar was traded in the peak of his prime,
in a decade when he was winning six league MVPs,
So that's a pretty big one. That Shaquille O'Neill obviously
changed teams. We've had, We've had Apex, predator stars changed teams.
(02:57):
So I don't know if it's the biggest trading in
NBA history. It is the most shocking there is nothing.
And when I say shocking, not just to the audience,
to the league. Other teams didn't know, other agents didn't know,
other players didn't know. There is no context for what
(03:18):
we just saw, Luca entering not even yet officially really
technically in his prime, even though it sure feels like
he's been in his prime since his second year in
the league. But age wise, you're prime in the league
supposed to be twenty seven to thirty one, Luca at
twenty five being traded without a trade demand, a preemptive
(03:43):
strike by Dallas, and Dallas's return being a great player
in Anthony Davis. But again, if prime is twenty seven
to thirty one, a thirty one year old Anthony Davis,
and it is just mind blown. So I then tweeted
about it. I went on IG Live from the club
(04:04):
that might have been a that could have been a
terrible mistake, and end up going quite well. And then
something happened on my phone where it's not even it's
not even saved, it's not even posted. You had to
be one of those few thousand people watching me live,
and I don't even know if you could hear me
or else. That's lost to the ether. So here's what
we're gonna do. It's not gonna be the normal hour
(04:25):
long pod. Never done. I think I've maybe done one
other emergency pod. I don't know. Lakers perspective, Luca's perspective,
Lebron's perspective, the MAVs perspective, and Anthony Davis's perspective. Those
are the five angles. We're gonna attack each one individually.
(04:49):
We are going to start with the Lakers. I do
not know. So what does it mean for the Lakers
right now this moment. I'm not sure the Lakers actually
for this year got demonstrably better, and I know that
sounds insane. They're going to have one of, if not
(05:12):
the best offense in basketball. That's going to happen. Now.
You now have two of the best generators of offense
in NBA history in Lebron James who's still and he
showed it to you last night against a good Knicks
team on the road without ad old Man still got
(05:34):
it thirty three, twelve and eleven, just because Yeah, I'm
in the garden, so I'm gonna rev up to still
being able to get to whatever my apex is right now,
I can get there in the biggest spot. You then
add to him a guy who is, with no disrespect
to SGA, a top three player. So offensively, the Lakers
(06:03):
are going to be extraordinary. Defensively, they were already bad
and they lost their only room protection and so for
this year, I don't you know, I know their championship
ods went from like fifty to one to twenty to one.
Everything I know about the history of the NBA says
you can't be as bad as they're going to be
defensively and have a real shot at the championship. But honestly,
(06:27):
it doesn't matter. That's not the point of this trade.
The point of this trade if you're the Los Angeles
Lakers is you now are set for the next half decade,
and that's being conservative. If Luca likes it there, you're
set for the next decade. You have there Again, there
(06:50):
are three guys that are just better than every player
in the league. Jokic, Jannis and Luca and now you
have one of them. And now when we zoom out
(07:11):
for the last half decade for the Lakers, they flipped
Josh Hart, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and what ends up
being four first round picks for a championship in twenty
(07:31):
twenty and Luke ad Ancic the Anthony Davis trade got
you a championship, and then Anthony Davis plus one more
first round pick got you Luk Adncic and the Lakers
probably aren't done. The Lakers have to go get a
(07:56):
big They just have to. Jack Hayes is not like
if they're actually going to try to compete this year,
but even if they don't, it's simply one of the
biggest coups in the history of basketball. And there are
so many ways to try to build a perennial contender
(08:17):
in the NBA. You can do what Okahoma City did,
which is draft exceptionally, take your shot, cast your chips
out at the right time, rebuild picks, picks picks, draft
exceptionally again, and then have your contender make a savvy trade.
(08:44):
See something in SGA the rest of the league doesn't
quite see. That's one method. Another method is what the
Spurs you're trying to do literally, hit the draft lottery,
get a generational talent, hope he wants to be there.
Another method is the Knicks what they've tried to do.
(09:04):
See something in a player in Jalen Brunson the rest
of the league doesn't quite see. Go get him, see
him ascend, be judicious with your draft picks, and then
go all in. There's all these smart, long term ways
to build a contender. The other way is just be
the fucking Lakers and seemingly be mismanaged for a half decade,
(09:30):
and then Lebron James is like, I want to play
for you and get him, and then he helps you
get Anthony Davis, and then a half decade later, the
Dallas Mavericks call you and say they call you and say,
(09:51):
can I interest you in Luka Ancic, to which you say, uh, yeah,
you can. Now the MAVs side of this is far uglier,
and the MAVs are going to try to spin evidently
that they were worried about how in shape Luca was
(10:16):
and they were worried about giving him the Supermax. If
Luca's not worth the Supermax, then then no one is.
Whenever we talk about the best players in the league.
The other thing you got to remember is, even if
you want to include Shae in that top three and
(10:36):
call it a top four in something that is true,
but no one ever believes when you tell them Shae
older than Luca. Luca's twenty five, Shay's twenty six. Obviously,
yokichinyanis considerably older than both of them. So if you're
(10:58):
the MAVs, you didn't hold an auction, you didn't get
a bounty, you got one first round pick, no swaps,
you didn't get Dalton connect, you didn't get Austin Rivers.
(11:19):
Now again, I'm not downplaying who Anthony Davis is. Anthony
Davis is a great player, but he is six years
older and he is not Luka Nacik. And you're doing
it on the heels of Luca. Take the last three
years in Dallas. Luca carries you to the conference finals,
(11:43):
then you have a disaster year, and then he carries
you to the NBA Finals. You pull off a risky
Kyrie Irving trade and it works, and to now have
f And here's the other thing for Dallas. They in
(12:04):
the Kyrie trade and the other trades they've made, they've
traded a lot of their future draft so not to
get two in the weeds. But I'm looking at it
right now. Think on real GM twenty twenty seven, their
first round pick to Charlotte. Twenty twenty eight, their first
(12:27):
round pick can be swapped with Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's
gonna be really good, so I would imagine that's a
swap that'll take place twenty twenty nine, their first round
pick to either Houston or Brooklyn. That's a complicated one,
but they don't have it. Twenty thirty, they swap picks
(12:55):
with san Antonio. So twenty when did it start? Twenty
twenty seven to twenty thirty, you don't have your own
draft pick. You either don't have a first or you're
swapping with san Antonio, who by twenty thirty should be awesome,
(13:17):
or Oklahoma City, who in twenty twenty eight will be awesome.
And now you're leaning on is Kyrie thirty two now
a thirty two turning thirty three next month, Kyrie Irving
and a thirty one year old Anthony Davis, who again
(13:40):
is a great player, and he turns thirty two next
month as well. And what you don't have is a
bunch of these other future picks to replenish all the
picks you traded away trying to win now with Luca.
(14:01):
I don't understand this from the MAVs perspective at all.
I don't understand how you don't hold an auction. All
the reporting surrounding this is that Luca did not demand this,
that they were And again, I'm sure people are gonna
talk about the fact that he mainlined sweet tea or
that he's out of shape. Who gives a shit? He
(14:24):
was just in the NBA finals. He's one of the
greatest offensive players in modern NBA history. And how does
this land for Kyrie? How does this land for Anthony Davis?
(14:46):
Has to be I mean not just shocked, but devastated.
And I do not believe anyone arguing will actually for
this year the MAVs got better, No, they didn't. Luca
(15:12):
in the playoffs is one of the most prolific players
in the last thirty years offensively, and you'd be like,
what about the defense. I don't know, man, they were
in the finals last year. Luca's career in the playoffs again,
(15:33):
I'm twenty twenty thirty one, ten to nine. The entirety
of that series was with Koir Paul George Gardingham. He's
twenty years old or I guess the let me make sure,
would he have turned Okay, No, he's twenty one. He
(15:54):
turned twenty one before those playoffs, So twenty twenty one
again with Koir Paul George guarding him the whole time
in the playoffs thirty six, eight and ten, he's twenty
two years old. Then he carries them to the conference finals,
(16:15):
going through a Phoenix team that everyone loved. He's thirty two,
ten and six. And then last year he carries them
to the NBA Finals forty one minutes per game, twenty nine,
not ten and eight. And you traded him. You traded
(16:38):
him for a player six years older than him who's
not quite as good, Max Christi, and won first round pick.
And by the way, the Lakers first round pick in
twenty twenty nine not going to be that valuable. You
know why, because Luca is on the team. All right,
(16:59):
what does this mean for Lebron again? There will be
It's inevitable. It hasn't yet happened. I tweeted that it
was gonna last night, that it would happen by Monday,
and I imagine it will by Monday, there will be
folks on your television screens explaining how Lebron orchestrated this,
(17:24):
or Lebron ran a d out of town or that
is I can tell you with I don't know if
it's first hand sourcing, but it's close. That's nonsense. And
again I'm not certain I this makes the Lakers such
(17:50):
a different team this year. I don't know how much
it helps Lebron this season from a odds to win
the championship standpoint. What does allow for is Lucas Lebron's
favorite player in the league. There is a great clip
Lebron on the Pod with the road Trip and Pod
(18:12):
Richard Jefferson in Channing Fry and I think it's Ali
Clifton years ago where he says Luca was the first
and only player he's ever tried to sign to be
a Lebron athlete on his shoe line. But Jordan got it,
(18:32):
and he talked about how much he loves Luca's game,
and Lucas talked forever about how he's modeled his kind
of game after Lebron's. Those two guys playing together on
the back the very back end of Lebron's career is
(18:54):
going to be absolutely remarkable to see. Now, is it
possible this year that they realize, well, their skills are
kind of redundant and we need to figure out how
(19:15):
we're going to card wings and this pairing, while fun
from a winning four playoff series perspective, not great. And therefore,
next offseason, for what everyone assumes next year will be
Lebron's final year, that the Lakers and Lebron talk and
(19:41):
figure out do you want to finish here? Should you
finish here? Or is there that Steph Lebron pairing that
everyone's been hinting about for years? Is there a way
to make that happen? Sure, that might be on the board.
But seeing these two basketball savants, true geniuses play together
(20:10):
in what is probably at least the second to last
year of Lebron's career and maybe the last year of
his career just from a pure basketball fan standpoint, is
going to be unbelievable. What does it mean for Luca?
And here is I think the most important piece of this.
(20:32):
Maybe I should have led with it, it's the most important piece.
I think this is the single greatest thing that could
ever happen to luka Anci's the basketball player. He is
going to see first hand the level of professionalism taking
(20:54):
care of your body that it takes to reach his
full potential. And what Luca's full potential is. His full
potential is one of the ten greatest players of all time.
That's what it is. And even without reaching his full potential,
(21:19):
he's going to be one of the twenty five greatest
players of all time. He's going to be a multiple
time MVP. But if he can glean a bit from
lebron On, because the off the court stuff, the way
(21:45):
to really stay in shape, and again, Luca played in
the Olympics, Luca plays. I'm sure Luca's argument is, guys,
I play as much basketball as as humanly possible. Leave
me alone if I you know, enjoy hookah and you know,
some fatty acids. But he's dealt with a few injuries.
(22:10):
He obviously can wear down a bit, and so learning
from lebron On that changes the trajectory of his career.
And I can't listen this for me. I mean, this
(22:30):
is my all time favorite player ever in Lebron now
playing on the same team with my second favorite player
in the league in Luca it's it's the greatest player
of all time and my larger old Slovenian son together.
I can't believe it. I still can't believe it. I
also like, again, what does it mean basketball wise? Because
(22:54):
at the end of games, both Luca and still even
forty years old, there aren't three guys in the world
who you'd rather have ball in their hand, final five
minutes of a playoff game dictating everything, Three guys you'd
rather have more than Lebron. But if there are, one
(23:15):
of them's Luca and so I don't know how they're
gonna sort that out, but that's one of them good problems.
And again defensively, the Lakers, I have to imagine they're
going to make another move. And they're also now have
(23:37):
no size. It's a weird team. But Luca's on the Lakers.
And then then we go to Anthony Davis quickly. I
I think this sucks for AD. I think that Anthony
Davis has done everything right. He did do everything he
(24:06):
could to take care of his body. We saw it
paid dividends last year. I think he thought I'm going
to be a Laker forever and now get shipped to
Dallas with that weird new ownership situation. I think it's
fair to say, based on this trade, a front office
(24:27):
that seems to be out of their minds, and I
I now that people don't understand what kind of a
special player it takes to get all the great basketball
(24:54):
stuff out of Kyrie and not have to worry about
the other stuff. It's to Kyrie's credit, it has really
gone away since he went to Dallas. I wonder how
this lands. Man. Kyrie is a thoughtful guy and the
shock wave of man, this team just knifed Luca, and
(25:18):
knife is the wrong word because Lucas probably happy, but
preemptively traded Luca. I don't know how that impacts Kyrie.
So I say all that to say this, I would
be shocked if the MAVs win a playoff series this year. Shocked,
And that's not listen. I love Ad I think he's
(25:41):
an excellent player, but right now they're sitting there at
the eighth seed, ads injured. I I just cannot believe
the Mavericks did this. And I cannot believe you traded
(26:01):
Luka Doncic under the you know, cover of night. You
didn't come away with young players one hundred draft picks
and a full franchise reboot. Instead, you got an awesome
future Hall of Famer that's about to be thirty two
(26:24):
and one first round pick. It is like, what would now?
Maybe the answer is not as much as you think,
because he wasn't gonna re sign, But what would the
Spurs have given you to be able to pair Wimby
(26:45):
and Luca? Also? Was it not? Was this trade not
gonna be there in six months after? You get one
more playoff run again out of a guy who just
took you to the NBA Finals. I I am beyond stunt,
(27:13):
and I guess I don't know that I want to
give Rob Bolinka credit because I don't think that guy's
been very good at this job at all. But you
just got Luke ad Ancic. You still have picks to trade,
(27:35):
you still have swaps you can make, you still have
Austin Reeves, you still have Dalton connect there's you can
make moves. And the Lakers are sitting there coming off
a great win when Lebron looked awesome. That like, here's
the thing about it, and again it's one game, I understand.
(28:00):
But the Lakers played Saturday night in Madison Square Garden
against the Knicks without Anthony Davis and one. So that
Lakers team that when Lebron gets to that level, is
really good offensively, really good. Just added Luke a Ancic,
(28:24):
And I'm just staring right now at the standings, like
thinking what other teams would have just said take everything.
So Oklahoma City obviously has all the picks in the world,
but they're happy with where they're at, and you know
they so that probably wouldn't make sense. Houston's got a
(28:46):
lot of Pickslake, would Houston have given you Jalen Green
a million picks, others like Dylan Brooks or whatever other
salaries to make it work and then all of a
sudden you have Shngoon and Luca and Thompson. I cannot
(29:10):
believe this is all Dallas got, and I don't think
anyone in the league can and the Lakers now, it's
really unbelievable. If you're a Laker fan, if you're a
MAVs fan, I don't even if you're a man. Kids
that are MAVs fans, If I don't know what the
parents do this morning, explain to them that this happened.
(29:34):
Just devastation. But if you're a Lakers fan. I don't
care how old you are, you have been able. You
have had on your team one of the ten greatest
(29:54):
players of all time without interruption from the mid seventies
until Kobe's retirement. I guess the early well there was two.
(30:15):
You know what, let me do a different way. There
have been with basically from the start of the league
to now, whether it was West and Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Shaq,
(30:39):
Kobe Lebron and now Luca. We can go sixty five
years and there were if I added up all the seasons,
maybe ten total the early seventies, the mid nineties and
(31:05):
post Kobe pri Lebron ten twelve years total. You did
not have one of the historic again ten greatest players
of all time at or near the peak of his
powers on your team. And now Lucas not that yet,
(31:26):
but I think he's going to be and he's gonna
do it in the Lakers Jersey. Good for them, man.
And if you're the MAVs, I mean a year ago
you have twenty four year old Luka, doncic An owner
and Mark Cuban. That's awesome, getting ready to go to
the finals. Cuban's gone, Luca's gone, you're now fighting to,
(31:52):
you know, get out of the play in which you're
not going to do. And your team's built around round
a soon to be thirty two year old and as
soon to be thirty three year old who have both
dealt with injury issues, and you don't have your picks
in twenty seven to twenty eight, twenty nine, or thirty
(32:13):
and you have one extra pick, the Lakers twenty twenty
nine pick, which again is not going to be that
valuable because they now have Luke Anncic. What is the Lakers'
next game at the Clippers February fourth, Luke is obviously
injured home for Golden State Thursday. This is I mean,
(32:38):
I cannot wait to see that first Luke in Lebron game,
their first national TV game, assuming Luke is not playing
this week Saturday February twenty second, Saturday Night on ABC
against the Nuggets, and then Tuesday circle this one Today,
(33:00):
February twenty fifth, on TNT, the Lakers host the Dallas Mavericks. Unbelievable.
So there it is. I'm I don't know if you
guys can tell, I'm still a little stunned, but I
cannot wait to watch Luke and Lebron play together. And
again I joke on the TV show I have a
(33:22):
fake news hat. The hat is fake, the news is real.
Lebron was almost as shocked by this as you guys were.
And again, I don't know that if the only goal,
like from Lebron's perspective, is like win a title this year,
(33:45):
I don't know how much closer this makes the Lakers
this year. But for the Lakers as a team, it's
one of the greatest cups in NBA history. See you
guys on Tuesday for a regular schedule show. It was
what trick
Welcome in. What'll drive with the Great Emergency Pod is
what these are called. And let me tell you how
my night went last night. So my dad is in
out of town, in from Kansas City, kind of a
last minute trip because it is my niece's birthday, so
he came in town to see her, and my wife
(00:21):
and I took him out to dinner last night. And
so my dad and I don't get together that often,
but if we do get together, it's gonna be an
incredibly long dinner and a lot of wine. So that
was a three hour dinner my dad, my wife, and
I and then afterwards my dad heads back to my
(00:42):
sisters and my wife says, you know, we haven't gone
out like gone out, gone out like we used to
in quite some time. I was a bottle of wine
in I'm not driving. I'm like, okay, let's do it.
So we end up going going downtown in New York
(01:02):
a couple different spots. And while we are in a
way too loud, far too many people, so much younger
than me, as I am the old guy in the club,
I look at my phone and I read this breaking
The Dallas Mavericks are trading Luka Doncic, Maxi, Kliba, and
(01:25):
Markkeith Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis,
Max Christi and a twenty twenty nine first round pick.
Sources tell ESPN from Sham Sharania, and I have the
reaction that I think, literally everyone has, Oh dude, got hacked.
Definitely not real, impossible that it could be real. He
(01:50):
then follows it up with yes, this is real and
has the full trade. But again that means nothing to
me because if if you got hacked, if you got hacked,
the same person has control of your account. You then tweeting, yes,
this is real. I send the tweet to people who
(02:11):
would be directly involved in such a thing, and before
I even get a response, the main ESPN account tweets it.
And my reaction at that moment is like everyone else's
holy shit, what just happened? Is this the biggest trade
(02:32):
in NBA history? Maybe, but maybe not. You don't want
to be too prisoner of the moment. He I mean,
Kareem Abdul Jabbar was traded in the peak of his prime,
in a decade when he was winning six league MVPs,
So that's a pretty big one. That Shaquille O'Neill obviously
changed teams. We've had, We've had Apex, predator stars changed teams.
(02:57):
So I don't know if it's the biggest trading in
NBA history. It is the most shocking there is nothing.
And when I say shocking, not just to the audience,
to the league. Other teams didn't know, other agents didn't know,
other players didn't know. There is no context for what
(03:18):
we just saw, Luca entering not even yet officially really
technically in his prime, even though it sure feels like
he's been in his prime since his second year in
the league. But age wise, you're prime in the league
supposed to be twenty seven to thirty one, Luca at
twenty five being traded without a trade demand, a preemptive
(03:43):
strike by Dallas, and Dallas's return being a great player
in Anthony Davis. But again, if prime is twenty seven
to thirty one, a thirty one year old Anthony Davis,
and it is just mind blown. So I then tweeted
about it. I went on IG Live from the club
(04:04):
that might have been a that could have been a
terrible mistake, and end up going quite well. And then
something happened on my phone where it's not even it's
not even saved, it's not even posted. You had to
be one of those few thousand people watching me live,
and I don't even know if you could hear me
or else. That's lost to the ether. So here's what
we're gonna do. It's not gonna be the normal hour
(04:25):
long pod. Never done. I think I've maybe done one
other emergency pod. I don't know. Lakers perspective, Luca's perspective,
Lebron's perspective, the MAVs perspective, and Anthony Davis's perspective. Those
are the five angles. We're gonna attack each one individually.
(04:49):
We are going to start with the Lakers. I do
not know. So what does it mean for the Lakers
right now this moment. I'm not sure the Lakers actually
for this year got demonstrably better, and I know that
sounds insane. They're going to have one of, if not
(05:12):
the best offense in basketball. That's going to happen. Now.
You now have two of the best generators of offense
in NBA history in Lebron James who's still and he
showed it to you last night against a good Knicks
team on the road without ad old Man still got
(05:34):
it thirty three, twelve and eleven, just because Yeah, I'm
in the garden, so I'm gonna rev up to still
being able to get to whatever my apex is right now,
I can get there in the biggest spot. You then
add to him a guy who is, with no disrespect
to SGA, a top three player. So offensively, the Lakers
(06:03):
are going to be extraordinary. Defensively, they were already bad
and they lost their only room protection and so for
this year, I don't you know, I know their championship
ods went from like fifty to one to twenty to one.
Everything I know about the history of the NBA says
you can't be as bad as they're going to be
defensively and have a real shot at the championship. But honestly,
(06:27):
it doesn't matter. That's not the point of this trade.
The point of this trade if you're the Los Angeles
Lakers is you now are set for the next half decade,
and that's being conservative. If Luca likes it there, you're
set for the next decade. You have there Again, there
(06:50):
are three guys that are just better than every player
in the league. Jokic, Jannis and Luca and now you
have one of them. And now when we zoom out
(07:11):
for the last half decade for the Lakers, they flipped
Josh Hart, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and what ends up
being four first round picks for a championship in twenty
(07:31):
twenty and Luke ad Ancic the Anthony Davis trade got
you a championship, and then Anthony Davis plus one more
first round pick got you Luk Adncic and the Lakers
probably aren't done. The Lakers have to go get a
(07:56):
big They just have to. Jack Hayes is not like
if they're actually going to try to compete this year,
but even if they don't, it's simply one of the
biggest coups in the history of basketball. And there are
so many ways to try to build a perennial contender
(08:17):
in the NBA. You can do what Okahoma City did,
which is draft exceptionally, take your shot, cast your chips
out at the right time, rebuild picks, picks picks, draft
exceptionally again, and then have your contender make a savvy trade.
(08:44):
See something in SGA the rest of the league doesn't
quite see. That's one method. Another method is what the
Spurs you're trying to do literally, hit the draft lottery,
get a generational talent, hope he wants to be there.
Another method is the Knicks what they've tried to do.
(09:04):
See something in a player in Jalen Brunson the rest
of the league doesn't quite see. Go get him, see
him ascend, be judicious with your draft picks, and then
go all in. There's all these smart, long term ways
to build a contender. The other way is just be
the fucking Lakers and seemingly be mismanaged for a half decade,
(09:30):
and then Lebron James is like, I want to play
for you and get him, and then he helps you
get Anthony Davis, and then a half decade later, the
Dallas Mavericks call you and say they call you and say,
(09:51):
can I interest you in Luka Ancic, to which you say, uh, yeah,
you can. Now the MAVs side of this is far uglier,
and the MAVs are going to try to spin evidently
that they were worried about how in shape Luca was
(10:16):
and they were worried about giving him the Supermax. If
Luca's not worth the Supermax, then then no one is.
Whenever we talk about the best players in the league.
The other thing you got to remember is, even if
you want to include Shae in that top three and
(10:36):
call it a top four in something that is true,
but no one ever believes when you tell them Shae
older than Luca. Luca's twenty five, Shay's twenty six. Obviously,
yokichinyanis considerably older than both of them. So if you're
(10:58):
the MAVs, you didn't hold an auction, you didn't get
a bounty, you got one first round pick, no swaps,
you didn't get Dalton connect, you didn't get Austin Rivers.
(11:19):
Now again, I'm not downplaying who Anthony Davis is. Anthony
Davis is a great player, but he is six years
older and he is not Luka Nacik. And you're doing
it on the heels of Luca. Take the last three
years in Dallas. Luca carries you to the conference finals,
(11:43):
then you have a disaster year, and then he carries
you to the NBA Finals. You pull off a risky
Kyrie Irving trade and it works, and to now have
f And here's the other thing for Dallas. They in
(12:04):
the Kyrie trade and the other trades they've made, they've
traded a lot of their future draft so not to
get two in the weeds. But I'm looking at it
right now. Think on real GM twenty twenty seven, their
first round pick to Charlotte. Twenty twenty eight, their first
(12:27):
round pick can be swapped with Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's
gonna be really good, so I would imagine that's a
swap that'll take place twenty twenty nine, their first round
pick to either Houston or Brooklyn. That's a complicated one,
but they don't have it. Twenty thirty, they swap picks
(12:55):
with san Antonio. So twenty when did it start? Twenty
twenty seven to twenty thirty, you don't have your own
draft pick. You either don't have a first or you're
swapping with san Antonio, who by twenty thirty should be awesome,
(13:17):
or Oklahoma City, who in twenty twenty eight will be awesome.
And now you're leaning on is Kyrie thirty two now
a thirty two turning thirty three next month, Kyrie Irving
and a thirty one year old Anthony Davis, who again
(13:40):
is a great player, and he turns thirty two next
month as well. And what you don't have is a
bunch of these other future picks to replenish all the
picks you traded away trying to win now with Luca.
(14:01):
I don't understand this from the MAVs perspective at all.
I don't understand how you don't hold an auction. All
the reporting surrounding this is that Luca did not demand this,
that they were And again, I'm sure people are gonna
talk about the fact that he mainlined sweet tea or
that he's out of shape. Who gives a shit? He
(14:24):
was just in the NBA finals. He's one of the
greatest offensive players in modern NBA history. And how does
this land for Kyrie? How does this land for Anthony Davis?
(14:46):
Has to be I mean not just shocked, but devastated.
And I do not believe anyone arguing will actually for
this year the MAVs got better, No, they didn't. Luca
(15:12):
in the playoffs is one of the most prolific players
in the last thirty years offensively, and you'd be like,
what about the defense. I don't know, man, they were
in the finals last year. Luca's career in the playoffs again,
(15:33):
I'm twenty twenty thirty one, ten to nine. The entirety
of that series was with Koir Paul George Gardingham. He's
twenty years old or I guess the let me make sure,
would he have turned Okay, No, he's twenty one. He
(15:54):
turned twenty one before those playoffs, So twenty twenty one
again with Koir Paul George guarding him the whole time
in the playoffs thirty six, eight and ten, he's twenty
two years old. Then he carries them to the conference finals,
(16:15):
going through a Phoenix team that everyone loved. He's thirty two,
ten and six. And then last year he carries them
to the NBA Finals forty one minutes per game, twenty nine,
not ten and eight. And you traded him. You traded
(16:38):
him for a player six years older than him who's
not quite as good, Max Christi, and won first round pick.
And by the way, the Lakers first round pick in
twenty twenty nine not going to be that valuable. You
know why, because Luca is on the team. All right,
(16:59):
what does this mean for Lebron again? There will be
It's inevitable. It hasn't yet happened. I tweeted that it
was gonna last night, that it would happen by Monday,
and I imagine it will by Monday, there will be
folks on your television screens explaining how Lebron orchestrated this,
(17:24):
or Lebron ran a d out of town or that
is I can tell you with I don't know if
it's first hand sourcing, but it's close. That's nonsense. And
again I'm not certain I this makes the Lakers such
(17:50):
a different team this year. I don't know how much
it helps Lebron this season from a odds to win
the championship standpoint. What does allow for is Lucas Lebron's
favorite player in the league. There is a great clip
Lebron on the Pod with the road Trip and Pod
(18:12):
Richard Jefferson in Channing Fry and I think it's Ali
Clifton years ago where he says Luca was the first
and only player he's ever tried to sign to be
a Lebron athlete on his shoe line. But Jordan got it,
(18:32):
and he talked about how much he loves Luca's game,
and Lucas talked forever about how he's modeled his kind
of game after Lebron's. Those two guys playing together on
the back the very back end of Lebron's career is
(18:54):
going to be absolutely remarkable to see. Now, is it
possible this year that they realize, well, their skills are
kind of redundant and we need to figure out how
(19:15):
we're going to card wings and this pairing, while fun
from a winning four playoff series perspective, not great. And therefore,
next offseason, for what everyone assumes next year will be
Lebron's final year, that the Lakers and Lebron talk and
(19:41):
figure out do you want to finish here? Should you
finish here? Or is there that Steph Lebron pairing that
everyone's been hinting about for years? Is there a way
to make that happen? Sure, that might be on the board.
But seeing these two basketball savants, true geniuses play together
(20:10):
in what is probably at least the second to last
year of Lebron's career and maybe the last year of
his career just from a pure basketball fan standpoint, is
going to be unbelievable. What does it mean for Luca?
And here is I think the most important piece of this.
(20:32):
Maybe I should have led with it, it's the most important piece.
I think this is the single greatest thing that could
ever happen to luka Anci's the basketball player. He is
going to see first hand the level of professionalism taking
(20:54):
care of your body that it takes to reach his
full potential. And what Luca's full potential is. His full
potential is one of the ten greatest players of all time.
That's what it is. And even without reaching his full potential,
(21:19):
he's going to be one of the twenty five greatest
players of all time. He's going to be a multiple
time MVP. But if he can glean a bit from
lebron On, because the off the court stuff, the way
(21:45):
to really stay in shape, and again, Luca played in
the Olympics, Luca plays. I'm sure Luca's argument is, guys,
I play as much basketball as as humanly possible. Leave
me alone if I you know, enjoy hookah and you know,
some fatty acids. But he's dealt with a few injuries.
(22:10):
He obviously can wear down a bit, and so learning
from lebron On that changes the trajectory of his career.
And I can't listen this for me. I mean, this
(22:30):
is my all time favorite player ever in Lebron now
playing on the same team with my second favorite player
in the league in Luca it's it's the greatest player
of all time and my larger old Slovenian son together.
I can't believe it. I still can't believe it. I
also like, again, what does it mean basketball wise? Because
(22:54):
at the end of games, both Luca and still even
forty years old, there aren't three guys in the world
who you'd rather have ball in their hand, final five
minutes of a playoff game dictating everything, Three guys you'd
rather have more than Lebron. But if there are, one
(23:15):
of them's Luca and so I don't know how they're
gonna sort that out, but that's one of them good problems.
And again defensively, the Lakers, I have to imagine they're
going to make another move. And they're also now have
(23:37):
no size. It's a weird team. But Luca's on the Lakers.
And then then we go to Anthony Davis quickly. I
I think this sucks for AD. I think that Anthony
Davis has done everything right. He did do everything he
(24:06):
could to take care of his body. We saw it
paid dividends last year. I think he thought I'm going
to be a Laker forever and now get shipped to
Dallas with that weird new ownership situation. I think it's
fair to say, based on this trade, a front office
(24:27):
that seems to be out of their minds, and I
I now that people don't understand what kind of a
special player it takes to get all the great basketball
(24:54):
stuff out of Kyrie and not have to worry about
the other stuff. It's to Kyrie's credit, it has really
gone away since he went to Dallas. I wonder how
this lands. Man. Kyrie is a thoughtful guy and the
shock wave of man, this team just knifed Luca, and
(25:18):
knife is the wrong word because Lucas probably happy, but
preemptively traded Luca. I don't know how that impacts Kyrie.
So I say all that to say this, I would
be shocked if the MAVs win a playoff series this year. Shocked,
And that's not listen. I love Ad I think he's
(25:41):
an excellent player, but right now they're sitting there at
the eighth seed, ads injured. I I just cannot believe
the Mavericks did this. And I cannot believe you traded
(26:01):
Luka Doncic under the you know, cover of night. You
didn't come away with young players one hundred draft picks
and a full franchise reboot. Instead, you got an awesome
future Hall of Famer that's about to be thirty two
(26:24):
and one first round pick. It is like, what would now?
Maybe the answer is not as much as you think,
because he wasn't gonna re sign, But what would the
Spurs have given you to be able to pair Wimby
(26:45):
and Luca? Also? Was it not? Was this trade not
gonna be there in six months after? You get one
more playoff run again out of a guy who just
took you to the NBA Finals. I I am beyond stunt,
(27:13):
and I guess I don't know that I want to
give Rob Bolinka credit because I don't think that guy's
been very good at this job at all. But you
just got Luke ad Ancic. You still have picks to trade,
(27:35):
you still have swaps you can make, you still have
Austin Reeves, you still have Dalton connect there's you can
make moves. And the Lakers are sitting there coming off
a great win when Lebron looked awesome. That like, here's
the thing about it, and again it's one game, I understand.
(28:00):
But the Lakers played Saturday night in Madison Square Garden
against the Knicks without Anthony Davis and one. So that
Lakers team that when Lebron gets to that level, is
really good offensively, really good. Just added Luke a Ancic,
(28:24):
And I'm just staring right now at the standings, like
thinking what other teams would have just said take everything.
So Oklahoma City obviously has all the picks in the world,
but they're happy with where they're at, and you know
they so that probably wouldn't make sense. Houston's got a
(28:46):
lot of Pickslake, would Houston have given you Jalen Green
a million picks, others like Dylan Brooks or whatever other
salaries to make it work and then all of a
sudden you have Shngoon and Luca and Thompson. I cannot
(29:10):
believe this is all Dallas got, and I don't think
anyone in the league can and the Lakers now, it's
really unbelievable. If you're a Laker fan, if you're a
MAVs fan, I don't even if you're a man. Kids
that are MAVs fans, If I don't know what the
parents do this morning, explain to them that this happened.
(29:34):
Just devastation. But if you're a Lakers fan. I don't
care how old you are, you have been able. You
have had on your team one of the ten greatest
(29:54):
players of all time without interruption from the mid seventies
until Kobe's retirement. I guess the early well there was two.
(30:15):
You know what, let me do a different way. There
have been with basically from the start of the league
to now, whether it was West and Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Shaq,
(30:39):
Kobe Lebron and now Luca. We can go sixty five
years and there were if I added up all the seasons,
maybe ten total the early seventies, the mid nineties and
(31:05):
post Kobe pri Lebron ten twelve years total. You did
not have one of the historic again ten greatest players
of all time at or near the peak of his
powers on your team. And now Lucas not that yet,
(31:26):
but I think he's going to be and he's gonna
do it in the Lakers Jersey. Good for them, man.
And if you're the MAVs, I mean a year ago
you have twenty four year old Luka, doncic An owner
and Mark Cuban. That's awesome, getting ready to go to
the finals. Cuban's gone, Luca's gone, you're now fighting to,
(31:52):
you know, get out of the play in which you're
not going to do. And your team's built around round
a soon to be thirty two year old and as
soon to be thirty three year old who have both
dealt with injury issues, and you don't have your picks
in twenty seven to twenty eight, twenty nine, or thirty
(32:13):
and you have one extra pick, the Lakers twenty twenty
nine pick, which again is not going to be that
valuable because they now have Luke Anncic. What is the Lakers'
next game at the Clippers February fourth, Luke is obviously
injured home for Golden State Thursday. This is I mean,
(32:38):
I cannot wait to see that first Luke in Lebron game,
their first national TV game, assuming Luke is not playing
this week Saturday February twenty second, Saturday Night on ABC
against the Nuggets, and then Tuesday circle this one Today,
(33:00):
February twenty fifth, on TNT, the Lakers host the Dallas Mavericks. Unbelievable.
So there it is. I'm I don't know if you
guys can tell, I'm still a little stunned, but I
cannot wait to watch Luke and Lebron play together. And
again I joke on the TV show I have a
(33:22):
fake news hat. The hat is fake, the news is real.
Lebron was almost as shocked by this as you guys were.
And again, I don't know that if the only goal,
like from Lebron's perspective, is like win a title this year,
(33:45):
I don't know how much closer this makes the Lakers
this year. But for the Lakers as a team, it's
one of the greatest cups in NBA history. See you
guys on Tuesday for a regular schedule show. It was
what trick
Host
Nick Wright
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