Chris Herring

And now, hello, folks. Welcome to the Low Post Podcast on Valentine's Day, my least favorite holiday in the world. And you know you have a good wife, which he is more aggressively anti-Valentine's day than you. So I got nothing for nobody on this Valentine's Day.

We are five days out from one of the wildest trade deadlines in the history of the league. And this is one of my favorite times of the year, because now it's just basketball. We get to see how all the new puzzle pieces fit together. These first games were in Luca and Kyrie play together.

We haven't seen Durant yet, obviously. You get your first impressions of how this all works. Also, the buyout guys are starting to find homes. So we have a better sense of that landscape.

Justin Holiday, Terrence Ross, other than Danny Green. And it just feels good to get distance from the wildness. Your brain works better with little distance from the wildness. And for the first time and way too long to help us understand this new landscape of the NBA from Sports Illustrated, the author of Blood in the Garden, a best-selling book about the 90s and next of the team.

I just hated growing up. Chris Herring, how are you, sir? I'm really good, Zach. It's really good to be back on with you.

Thank you for having me. Is it though? Is it good? Is it that good?

It is, man. It is. We connect offline. And it's been like you said, it's been a minute.

I've been busy and a lot of, first of all, you were going in about Valentine's Day. You've been very long enough to have that stance, openly have that stance. I just got engaged. So I don't think that I can have quite a hard line of stance on that one.

So I got plenty of flowers, Valentine's gifts, because I don't want to lose what I just gained a month and a half ago. So I'm going to take the opposite side from you. Congratulations. Congratulations.

I appreciate it. I enjoyed that. Before we start with the biggest, most interesting things to us about the second half is the second, the last third of the season. I haven't talked to you.

Now that the dust has settled, I read your initial reaction to it. What is your take on the Phoenix Suns trading for unprotected first round picks, one swap, McHale Bridges and Cam Johnson, and probably something I'm forgetting, and Jay Crowder, two of the nets for Kevin Durant and TJ Warren from a purely sons perspective. I don't want to talk anymore about the nets. Sure.

I think my thing, and I've always kind of felt this way, is I think teams that make deals earlier are smarter. I think the earlier you make moves, the earlier you kind of get a chance to settle in, I think, deals during the off season, deals that happen sometimes like a month before the trade deadline, just why wouldn't you want to take advantage of things a little bit sooner. So I think from the sons perspective, obviously the ground is shifted underneath them with the ownership situation and everything else. So there's all that.

But I say all that to say that getting Kevin Durant is a good thing for where they are team-wise. The window probably would be closing a little bit if you kept Chris Paul as your point guard. So I think this is a good move for them. Like you're not going to argue about the idea of getting Kevin Durant.

I love McHale Bridges more than just about anybody. But I think that from the outside looking in, you were probably always going to have to move him to get someone like Durant and less a team like the nets wanted DeAndre and we even saw during the summer that wasn't going to be possible, given his contract situation at a certain point. So I think it's a great move for them. I think now we're in a situation where they have to make a run at a title.

I'm going to have questions about them. I'm going to have questions about their defense. I'm going to have questions about their health. I don't think that you can help but have that question.

But they're going to be able to score. I have other questions that we'll get into as we talk about kind of storylines or things that we're really watching in the last third of the season that I certainly have questions about with them. But does it make them like the clear favorite? I wouldn't say they're clearly the favorite.

But I do think that they're right there in that conversation. And after a game seven shellacking at home last year, after them not quite having enough to finish the finals the year before that, this is the best you could ask for is to put yourself back firmly in that conversation. You want to have someone like Kevin DeRant there to kind of help with some of the things that went wrong last year. So I think it's a great move for them.

And I think that you hate losing to Kilbridge's, but you kind of had to do it. I don't like losing Cam Johnson either. He's good too. I don't think they're the clear favorites overall.

In fact, I'm not sure that they're even the favorites overall with Boston and Milwaukee just keeps steamrolling people right now. I do think five days out now having shifted through the rubble, I do think they're probably the slight favorites in the West. I think I would probably take them over Denver in a seven game series in these other teams with people getting injured. Zion's out for longer steps out.

Again, the Clippers will see what they get with Plumlee and Eric Gordon. I just think with all these teams kind of scuffling around, I think the Nuggets are the one team you have to look at first. And I think I would pick them over the Nuggets. Here's where I come down on it.

I think these mortgaging the future trades, to this degree, are generally riskier and the downside more likely to hit than people think in the exuberance of, oh my god, we got this guy. And the history of these trades is that the downside is more likely to hit than you are to win a championship. And this is a championship or a bus trade. You have to win the title when you make a move like this.

That said, when you have Chris Paul at 37 years old, and you're not good enough, and I don't think they were good enough. I think they knew despite that they were playing well, I think they were nine and two coming into the win. They weren't going to be good enough to win four playoff series, particularly the way Chris has been so up and down this year. By the way, as you would expect, at age 37 with a gazillion miles of injuries on him, you have three choices.

Number one, trade Chris Paul. And just sort of retool, take a step back to take two steps forward. They didn't want to do that. Maybe they did.

I don't know. They didn't do that. Number one. They were reporting that they were at least looking to report that they were.

We'll see. We'll see what happens with Kyrie in the summer. Like that just doesn't. Can't do it now.

I don't think you can do that now. So let's just move on. The second option is they had this deal that they were working. It was a three team deal reportedly with the Pistons and the Hawks, which the reporting is accurate.

That would have gotten them John Collins. And that's the middle way. We'd have gotten them John Collins without trading anything from their rotation. That's the middle way.

We're like, OK, we're really good. Let's get one more guy and try to really elevate ourselves into we can win three or four playoff series. They decided that that team, the middle way team, just wasn't going to be good enough. And I honestly can't fault that decision.

And so that leaves you with option three, which is go all in for Durant. And even as I say that the downside of these trades, let's just call it the 2013 Brooklyn Nets downside, is more likely to hit than you are to win the title. Even as I say that, and even as that downside is more painful than all the other downsides that are possible. The reality is all three of those paths, the trade Chris Paul path, the keep all our assets and make a small upgrade path.

And then we have all our optionality and flexibility going forward, that path and this current path, they're all unlikely to lead to a championship. No path is likely to lead to a championship. And so I respect taking the highest reward, highest risk route of those three. Because yeah, it sounds cool to be like we got all our assets and we got all our picks.

We can still pivot going forward. And maybe that path is safer. The cushion at the bottom, if it falls out, is probably a little higher. But this path, you are now the favorites to me in the Western Conference, you have Kevin Durant.

The caveat here is going to be the question going to be health, because this is a team where sometimes guys get hurt and you're like, well, James Harden pulled his hamstring. Kyrie landed on somebody's ankle, or landed on somebody's foot. This is like Chris Paul's hurting the playoffs every year already. Kevin Durant has played more than 55 games in four years.

He's hurting now. He's had the same knee injury three times, I think. Like if one of those guys gets hurt in the playoffs, no matter how it happens almost, the sons are not going to be able to say, oh my god, who could have predicted this? Who could have seen this coming?

But that's, and I do think their depth is going to be good. Their bench has been like rugged and tough all year. You add TJ Warren to it. Tory Craig, who's starting has been good, but like Damian Lee has been good, campaigns coming back shortly after the all-star break.

Their backup centers have been good. Josh at Kogi's been like outrageously good for them. Ish and Wainwright, telling shots, they just got Terence Ross. I think they're going to have enough.

So that's my, that's my. And by the way, the underrated part of this, you mentioned him. Deontre Aitin is not some throwaway player. I don't know.

How do you feel? Where are you on the Aitin discourse? Well, I'll say this. And maybe it transitions us into kind of the larger conversation we're going to have on this pod.

I didn't say it by name, but that's exactly who I was talking about, I think, is the idea of, I think he's one of the most interesting players in the league right now, given this trait. I think that there's a couple of ways of parsing it. You can look at him as, wow, this is a hell of a guy to have as a third, a fourth option offensively. Certainly, you know, one of the better big men in the league, a guy that has gotten to spread his wings a little bit offensively.

And just like McIlbridge just kind of saw his efficiency taper off a little bit because of it with all the injuries. How involved is he? And in this offense, at this point, it kind of puts a little bit of even more on the shoulders of Chris Paul to kind of make sure that everybody can stay happy of the guys we're talking about. Durant is going to get his opportunities.

Devin Booker is going to get his opportunities. Chris Paul probably doesn't mind as much if he's not shooting as much because those guys are getting shot. Eightened strikes me as the guy that kind of cares about that, that would care about that. Maybe I'm just off base with that.

Maybe it doesn't matter as much when you're winning at a high level, which is some of what we've seen in the last couple of years, you know, just between the kind of, if you want to call it stand off with him and Monty Williams, maybe that's too strong of a word. He just kind of strikes me as a guy that it could come into play. It could matter. Do you get the exact same effort from him defensively if he's not as heavily involved offensively, which would be understandable if he's not given who they're going to have on his team.

So he's someone that I could see thriving just getting better looks because of the inability to really go and help on him in the post. But I also really, really wonder whether what's his level of involvement going to be offensively with this new look, offensive they're going to have. I think the eightened discourse has taken a turn too far toward the what he isn't discussion, what he doesn't do. And for sure, there has been some well-documented frostiness between DeAndre and Monty Williams and DeAndre and another important people within the Phoenix Suns.

Like it's not just Monty Williams. When DeAndre and catches the ball in traffic, spins away from contact and misses a jump hook, you can sometimes see the other players be like, dude, again, can you just go up strong and get fouled? Like please, you average three free throws a game. Get your seven feet tall in your giant.

Can you get the line a little more in that? All of that said, I think it's a huge deal that he's still on the team. And obviously you're not going to trade him, and Bridges and Johnson. So somebody is going to be on the team.

This dude is 24 years old. He's averaging 19 and 10. There aren't very many big men. We might be able to count them on one hand.

There aren't many seven footers who can chase ball handlers at the arc on the pick and roll, who are comfortable, getting in the stance, moving their feet, the puppies like Perks says, what a puppies. And protect the rim and deal with Nicole Yokoch in the post, well enough that it's not a five alarm fire every time he touches the ball. And he proved he already did that in the playoffs. And I, look, I don't know all the details of why there's been tension between eight and other people within the Suns.

I would hope that the possibility of winning the whole thing and a deep playoff run, just everybody organically starts rolling in the same direction and supporting each other and patting each other on the back. He's 24. The fact that he and Booker are in their mid 20s, gives them some protection even if things go right on the back end of those draft picks. And like, I don't really care what his role, he might care what his role is.

That's my pick. That's my own thing is this. He might take cares. And it's not him getting as many looks as he'd like.

You just wonder how that plays out. I'm just not me saying that I think that he's going to, is me saying, I don't know. I would hope that he doesn't for the sake of like, you probably have become the favorite out of the West, which given where they were, that should be all that matters. I would think I would hope.

So here's my message to the Andre 10. These three other dudes, one's an MVP, one of the 12 to 15 greatest players of all time at worst. One is the point, God, the other guy was on the MVP ballot last year. We're not throwing the ball to you in the post, man.

Like, it's just not gonna happen. If we do, it's probably cause you have a switch and you better can punish the switch. I don't wanna see these fade away jumpers over guards. Like, do something productive with the switch.

Number two, you're urging 19 a game in the NBA, the National Basketball Association. That's pretty freaking good. You set screens for those three dudes. This is the greatest collection of pick and roll ball handling on one team, I think, in the history of the NBA.

I think if we went back and looked at every team, we're in the spread pick and roll era now, obviously. I don't think there's ever been this much pick and roll ball handling on the team. You are going to walk in to 18 points again. Just, you're gonna go screen, you're gonna move toward the rim.

The ball's gonna be in your hand, but oh my God, I can just dunk. Like, you're gonna walk into 18, which means on some nights you're gonna walk into 25. Just be happy, do your job, you have a max contract, end of the Andrei in discussion. If you were at the first game, Luca and Kyrie played together, they are now 0 and 2 as teammates, two high scoring losses.

One to the kings and one last night to the Minnesota Timberwolves with Anthony Edwards and Jada McDaniel's like freaking Venus fly traps at the end of the game. Wow. And Voloping, Kyrie and Luca as they played hot potato with the ball, that came after Kyrie had an absolutely outrageous fourth quarter scoring explosion of 20-something points. Initial impressions of the partnership.

Yeah man, I mean, even before they partnered up, those first quarters with Kyrie without Luca playing were 40 point quarters too. And I saw a couple of those. I mean, I'll put this way, they can score. And I don't know that that was ever gonna be a question, but I want to caution people that are looking at what's happening with them and the O2 start saying, oh, see, it's not gonna work.

Their lineups with those two have been unstoppable, offensively, and have outscored opponents. It's kind of been the bench stuff that has gotten them in trouble. And obviously they're not anywhere near full strength. Hardaway got hurt during the game that I was at in Sacramento the other night.

They've got plenty of healing to do. And once they do that, I think it might be a different issue, but they won't shoot this hot for every, you're not gonna have 26 point quarters from Kyrie every night, which by the way, in that franchise, I just think Dirk had one quarter that was 29 that maybe he had. And then I think they said that Luca had a 28 point quarter, one point. So Kyrie within his first couple of games is already making close to records for the map.

So it's gonna be a force to be reckoned with to try to stop them on offense, particularly once they have everybody back in the mix. Their bench stuff is what they have to figure out. So I've been really, really impressed. I'm still a little bit concerned about their defense when all is said and done, aside from even just their bench, I think that teams, good offenses, good teams are going to be able to take advantage.

I think of Luca and Kyrie being out there at the same time. But the flip side of it is just as true. How do you stop two guys like that? The open shots that they're gonna get, I think really when we watched that possession last night, that as you said, the table was just shut down as one of the most impressive defensive possessions I've seen which is two people in a while, those two still need to learn how to play off each other.

I think they probably will. In that instance, it looked like they were just standing too close to each other. And really kind of doing the table is as good as that defensive possession was doing them a favor by not spreading the floor a little bit more, probably trying to have a two man game, but just being too close together. But I'm really intrigued by what I've seen the first few games.

I don't know how you couldn't be in light of just top-down that they've been offensively. Yeah, more Tim Hardaway Jr. and more Maxi Cleba when he comes back will mean less Theo Pinson and less Jaden Hardy. And that's probably good.

For the Mavericks, I'll just Jaden Hardy has had his moments this year. There's been a lot of Jaden Hardy, but I do enjoy watching him when he's on fire. Yeah, I mean, the lights are just loaded, man. I know they're on two, they lost both of these games.

Offensively, you're just, you're not gonna stop them. Like you're just gonna hope they have a bad shooting night and you score like gangbusters on them. And they've been a bad defensive team all year after being a good one last year. And like you said, they barely scratched the surface of playing together.

They're not really playing together in a cooperative sense. Just them being out there together is obviously enormously powerful on its own. I looked it up on second spectrum this morning. They've only one run three pick and rolls between them total in two games.

And I think, and one of them, Luca got a switch and barreled over Terrence Davis for an end one. And I think that play has to become a powerful tool in their toolbox against the best teams who are gonna take away lots of the stuff. Now those teams will put wing defenders on both of them. You can switch it, but switching is easier said than done on Luca.

He's so powerful. And we've seen things like Kyrie's in the corner a lot. When Luca has the ball up top. They ran a couple sets last night where Kyrie will come off a screen, like fly up from the corner, catch the ball coming off a screen on the wing, curl into the middle, draw the defense, kick to Luca for a spot up three or a drive.

Like we're gonna see more of that. And I just think offensively it's gonna be, and you've seen Kyrie already get them moving, which is what I was most excited about is like, you don't have to walk the ball up the floor every single time. And Kyrie likes to throw hit-it-head passes, likes to get zoom in up the floor and just sort of see what happens, see what chaos I can cause, see how many people follow me into the paint and who's opened in my wake. Like I think offensively they're gonna be unstoppable.

Their issues are gonna be defense. They miss Finney Smith a lot. There's just a lot on Josh Green and Reggie Bullock's great right now. And depth.

And just, but those are high-class problems. And their other high-class problem is that the West is awesome. The top of the West is awesome. And some teams that really have title ambitions are gonna lose in the first round.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's one other team, I think probably on my list of stuff I wanna talk about that, you know, the depth is an issue. You obviously, if you've got these sorts of problems that Dallas has at this point, their privilege sorts of problems that you are banking on the idea that your starters are gonna be playing 40 minutes during the playoffs anyway. And again, if we're talking about the sort of efficiency that they've had so far with these two on the court, which it won't always be that, it'll come down. At some point, I think, you know, you would live with those issues and hope that these guys could just play 42 minutes in a play.

I think Kyrie and Luca together, those lineups should score at a rate that would lead to the league among all teams. Like that's how good the offense should be. It should be as good as the best offense in the league and maybe better. It's everything else that will be a question.

Okay, yeah, so the gimmick for this podcast was, let's pick our five. I just made it up. Five most interesting players or teams for the last part of the season, with sort of an eye on, they all got more interesting in the wake of the trade deadline because their teams did X, Y, and Z. So I will see the floor to you, Chris, here.

And we already talked about the Andre Aiden. So pick somebody else or some other team off your list and let's go. Yeah, okay. Well, why don't we start here?

Since it's kind of, it's analogous, we just mentioned his name in the last segment. Josh Green is a guy. And I have one other guy that I think is a lot like Josh Green, or maybe not a lot like him, but has some similarities to it. So I don't know if throwing both of them out would be too much at once because we've already talked about Aiden as well.

He also named Josh. No, but he does have a color to his name. So we could do that. Bruce Brown?

Is it Bruce Brown? No, no, I feel like we're. Okay, we're off the rails. Talk about Josh Green.

We're completely off the rails. What's the name of that territory? No movie with the Mr. White, Mr.

Pink. I'm like, I'm reservoir. Oh man, come on. You don't reservoir.

Okay, well, I was thinking about that in light of this because the character that I was going to talk about, the player that I was going to talk about, has his point of those names. But anyway, Josh Green is someone that has just been playing lights out lately. He had his first like, not great game yesterday, actually, but he's just been on a heater, basically, for a while now. It's someone that is not going to come in really to the conversation of most improved player.

I think that that is very, very spoken for at the top levels of that award with Mark and in. I think Shea will get votes for that. But just looking at how he's played, I mean, this was a guy that Utah was leaving wide the hell open last season. And rightfully so, I mean, he was a guy that was 21 years old during that series and just couldn't hit anything.

But what I liked about it was that he kept shooting. He had some real athleticism on a roster that had some, but also relied too heavily on guys to be able to knock down their shots because of how heliocentric Luca was. So now you take him and you basically make him a, damn, here, what, a 40-some-percent shooter, 43- Who shoots? Who actually shoots?

Which is a big part of it. Who shoots shoots on volume. So over his last handful of games, career best 29 points on 17 shots, 14 points on 17 shots, 17 points on 12 shots, 23 points on 12 shots. His effective field goal rate is 11 percentage points higher than what it was last year.

He's a 22-year-old. He's a 22-year-year-old that can do more than just that. He had a huge rebound that even offensive rebound that gave the maps a chance to even win the game yesterday or tithing him yesterday, even in light of him not shooting it well. So he's someone that's just kind of everywhere.

He's someone that, like you said, he might have his hands a little bit too full defensively without Vinny Smith there, but he's a good all-around player that could be like one of the best role players in this league. And maybe more than that, when you consider now that he now gets to slot down a peg because Kyrie is there. So I just think the Kyrie trade trades of that nature kind of have to, they shift the whole paradigm for other guys because all of a sudden, how good do their looks become in light of what we're talking about? And so he's someone that I become very curious about, someone that if his game stays at this level relative to just looking back at last season and how he was left wide open last season, last postseason.

This is someone that could be a game changer for Dallas and I think that they'll really need to be a game changer at times if they're going to be an actual contender in the Western Cubs' plays. He's also a great connector, a great screener, passer, handoff guy, which is the skill that rang out even when all the other skills were kind of hiding because he wouldn't shoot and so he couldn't be on the floor to really show off his defense and all that. It's the reason I always like them and the 10 things columns I have the receipts. I was on Josh Green, Peninsula, when he wasn't even playing very much because I just like guys who see and feel the game at a high level.

And that screening connecting thing looms large because he's going to be the hiding place for the weak defender in a lot of these lineups against Dallas now that Kyrie's there. And so if he's the hiding place for the weak undersized defender for Jordan Poole, for you know, Luke Knard, whoever, he's going to be the screener for Luca and Kyrie, hoping to generate switches or get him in rotation. He's going to have to make plays in space and I think you will. Hey sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place.

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Sign up or activate now. Now we need to know who the other guy with the color is his last name is that's on your list. Because it's not Bruce Brown who is. Derek White, Jalen Brown.

Derek White. Derek White. So like I said, I'm giving away too many of these. Because now we've talked about three of my guys situations what have you.

But I mean, another guy that's just been playing lights out in this case, you know, just an expanded role because of the injury to markets. Smart. He's playing the best basketball of his life really. On a team that obviously has huge ambitions.

He's getting more play making opportunities. But he's now developed in such a good shooter recently that I feel like it's opened up even more for him. Where obviously this is a team that at its peak at when its whole has multiple guys that can kind of do whatever they want from one plate of the next, whether it's state of a brown. When you look at White though, him shooting the ball this well and him being in position that he's in now is so often not like I watch him.

And he's already on the move before he catches the ball. And so, you know, if you're just kind of dead on your feet or if you're just standing straight up, he zooms past you. And then at that point, you've got the whole defense and scramble mode and recovery mode. And he's throwing a lot by the way.

What you're saying about catching the ball with a running start is not an accident. Number one, he's an incredibly high IQ player. I love Derek White. Everything I just said about Josh Green applies doubly for Derek White.

Number two, they teach that in San Antonio. Manu Janobly was the king of that being on the move when he catches the ball. It's not an accident. It's a little bastard and Quinn Snyder brought it to Utah that you talk guys do.

It's not an accident. It's a skill that you learn. And why they wanted him in Boston, why it's no mistake that E-mail you Doka would have, you know, like certainly probably been one of the loudest ones about wanting him in Boston because of a skill set like that. But it's just you have so much more ability to use it, a skill like that and really like an IQ like that when you're shooting is top notch.

And when you're starting to put down your threes and your jumpers, because at that point, a defender, it's very easy for a defender to be flat-footed because he doesn't want for you to get off an open shot. So he has to protect against that, but he also can't, like doesn't want to see to drive, but that might be the safer thing to like go up really. So he's just been fantastically, another guy that, you know, can play really, really good defense, does play really good defense. And a guy that I always like, I don't like guys getting hurt, but the one thing I like when other people get a chance to step up while someone is hurt is the idea that that is improvement and skill and stuff that you can kind of take with you for a big playoff run.

Derek White was obviously really impactful last post-season too, but even for him, it looks like he's taken a step forward. The guy's been averaging more than 20 a game, five boards, five assists over his last nine games, 50% overall from the field, 47% from three. Like if you would ask me at any point in the season would Derek White be averaging more than 20 a game for nine, 10 games, I probably would have said, no, this is a team that has so many guys, but again, when some of them are hurt, who steps up and he's obviously done that in a really big way. You know what else he'll do?

You bring some soft-ass into the lane and he will swat it back in your face. He is a rim protector as a guard. Here's everything. A small guy too.

Derek White's a very good all-around player. The only question is, and this is why he's on your list, he's shooting 39% from three. It's a career high. We saw it in the playoffs last year.

When they get into the second round of the playoffs, if he misses five in a row, what's going to happen to him? Is he gonna stop shooting? Is he gonna get, is he gonna, is his confidence gonna get shaken? Because you have to keep shooting.

And his minutes dwindled when he hit slumps. And then when he would start shooting, again, I think it was Game 6 in Miami, almost one boss in that game by himself shooting threes. They just need him to shoot, and the question is always gonna be just sort of, his default mode when he gets into a slump is to become the Josh Green, you know, Ben Simmons, just get off the ball, hand off, and by the way, Ben Simmons. I've reached the point.

Do we have to talk about him? I just wanna say one thing. I just wanna say one thing. I've now reached the point where the only thing I feel now is empathy, because this is what's happening with Ben Simmons is just sad.

He played 13 minutes last night at the game at two points, and they've mentioned him after a couple of turnovers late in the game, which seems to happen every game. He's almost Brooklyn's third string center now behind Clackston and DeRon Sharp sometimes. Let me repeat that. Ben Simmons is sometimes the Brooklyn Nets of Brooklyn.

They're third string center. I just, it sucks. It sucks as a basketball story. The guy's an all NBA level player, and he's not even looking at the basket at any point in the game, other than if he can catch a lot.

It's just very, very sad. And I hope he rediscovers the confidence that made him who he was, because this is, it's not even, it's beyond criticism and analysis. And if you're taking, what is it, shot in Freud, if you're taking shot in Freud or whatever in him, then I'd even be on that. And meanwhile, also on my list, we can talk about them later.

Who would have ever have thought that in February 2023, Mark Helfoltz would be a more productive player than Ben Simmons. Of the two Sixers, number one draft picks who forgot how to shoot or never knew in Ben Simmons. It's really good though. It's a highlight play every night for him.

Every night. The magic are 17 and 14 in their last 31 games. With a top 10 defense in that span, they're starting five with Gary Harris in place of bowl, kind of makes sense. They look like a regular basketball team now, and it's been a very good lineup for them.

I think it's like plus five for 100 possessions. Isaac has come back and, I mean, look, I don't know what he'll be on offense. Some games he's a little too thirsty to take jump shots. Other games he's kind of uninvolved.

That dude is an absolute menace defensively, right away again, guarding, in last night's game in the shot we guarded Levine, Derozin and Vuchavitch, all of them as the primary defender. Something is clicking into place there with Foltz as a viable starting point guard, Ben Caro and Wagner Franz Wagner as a really good young forward combo. And it's beginning to translate into wins. Their defense has been a little lucky in terms of shot making by the other team.

In the last 30 games, but they're a solid defensive team. They do a lot of the fundamentals well. They just play good players. Now that Cole Anthony's back in this last night's game, they play him and Suggs together in the back court.

Suggs is wildly up and down, but he's almost never overtaxed as a ball handler. I don't love what I've seen from him. I don't really know what he is on a good team because he's not a point guard. He doesn't shoot well enough to play off the ball.

He's kind of a chaos engine. But they're on my list because it might be too late for them. They are 24 and 34. They're four games in the loss column back of 10th.

Their win over Chicago last night did kind of feel symbolic given the trade that they made a year and a half or two years ago. I've been a calendar during the pandemic, which is still going on by the way. All got screwed up. I don't remember when exactly that was, it was 2021.

Felt symbolic in that sense and my God, the Bulls. Do you have any magic thoughts before? I just... No, I mean, just some.

There was so much to like about them even last year. I felt like that for a good, good chunk of the season, they had the most efficient lineup in the league and it was their starting five. And that was with Suggs really, really, really struggling. And so there were a lot of things to take away from that where I think so often, just record-wise and I think you say Orlando Magic over the last X number of years and the average NBA fan I think just kind of tunes out because they're like, oh, they're trash.

They don't, you know, what are they doing there? It's just a bunch of guys that you're hoping, you know, developing to something at some point. But they have enough interesting parts and they've had enough young players that have shown flashes that have shown more than flashes quite frankly, they've just been good for a while. Brown's Wagner has been good the entire time he's been in the league.

Don Caro has been the rookie of the year the whole season in my opinion has really been all that close. I did by the way, Caro, some people look at the stats and they're like, well, he's not shooting that efficiently. He's not shooting 30% from three. If you watch the games, you know this guy.

This guy is a dude. He's gonna be really, really good. And he's gonna be a multi-time all-star period. Right.

Yeah. And you take that and you look at folks defensively, they've been solid for a while. They've been good now for, like you said, for really, they're a good defense. The Magic are just a straight up beat.

They're just legitimately a good defense. So I mean, they're a team I'm excited about in the same way that you can look at Oklahoma City early this year. I would say even parts of last year and just watch them and say they've got some skills here that really aren't normal. For Oklahoma City, I would say it's the fact they have so much ball handling on that team.

And they have like the make of that team. They also have a lot of size and that's without even having to get home or not there. You know, regardless of what pick they'll act, what picks they'll get this year. I don't even know what all picks they have coming this year, but that they could really hypercharge this thing pretty quickly is kind of the way it feels.

And there's elements of where Lando's spot now that make me feel the exact same way about them. So where they could be in a playoff race a year from now, if they develop enough, if they truly want to be. And so that's kind of how I feel about them. We're gonna have Gapspace this summer.

We'll see how they use it. They did continue their tradition of trading Bally who draft picks for literally nothing. I mean, it kind of slid under the radar that they picked Obama sixth and traded, I think sixth or fifth at whatever it was, and traded at sixth and traded him for Pat Beverly, who they then immediately weigh. So they traded Obama for nothing, just like they traded more East-Harkless and Shabbat's Napier for nothing.

That didn't end up mattering all that much, but just a thing. Yeah, and I think they're gonna be under real pressure to win next year because this whole cute rebuilding thing and our previous incarnation was this cute 42 win, win one game in the playoffs and bow out thing. Like it's time for them to do some winning. The Bulls, Chris, if I told you that we got to the 57 game market this season and the Bulls had the seventh best defense in the NBA.

If I told you that in October, hey, just so you know the basketball gods came to me in a premonition and said, the Bulls are gonna have a top seven defense, top eight defense in the NBA, 57 games in. You would have probably said, wow, they're gonna be like 30 and, 30 and 20, even better, 35 and whatever the math is. They're 26 and 31 with the seventh best defense in the league because their offense is completely unwatchable. They're 24th in offense.

How you have a team with the Marde Rosen, Zach Levine and Nicole LeBuchovich, and have the 24th, the seventh, the worst offense in the NBA. You're built around offense and your offense stinks because no one will shoot a three. Even Vuch will just pit, pit or pat the ball around half the time. No one ever gets an offensive rebound.

It's like it's freaking illegal for the Bulls to get an offensive rebound. I have wanted them to start Derrick Jones and use him as a screener just to get somebody going toward the basket other than Zach Levine on a wild drive that might end in a make but also might end in a turnover. Their playmaking is, they're a well below average passing team. DeMarde Rosen has improved his playmaking a great deal.

He's not a lead playmaker. He's just not and nor is Levine. D'Sume knew his overtaxed as a point guard. Yes, they've missed Caruso lately.

He never shoots ever. His usage rate is like he's a guard, BJ Tucker. And yeah, all of these issues, everything I just said, let's see, they need a guy who can pass and shoot lots of threes and generate lots of threes for other people. Lonzo is all that.

Lonzo ball is all that. I just don't really, it doesn't pass the smell test to me that a zero time all-star with very little chance of ever being an all-star is the difference between this unwatchable lottery team that's fighting and scrapping to pass the freaking wizards in the standings and a 48 win feel good. Everything's on the right path kind of team. I just don't think he's a 25 win per season difference maker.

This offense is so random and languid and bereft of purpose that you can almost understand why they might talk themselves into Russell Westbrook. You almost can understand it. Cause we get someone out there with some freaking juice. I just don't, I can't believe how bad they are in offense.

They're not even on my list. They weren't on my list either. I was not expecting to talk about them, but I will tell you that I just moved out of Chicago. That's where I'm talking about.

Chase you out of Chicago. Basically, but my best friends have been blowing. I've got two of them that just blow up my phone and we're kind of just like so ashamed that the Bulls wouldn't do anything at the trade deadline. If anybody needed to kind of get out of the middle one way or the other, I kind of felt like, remember, they had that week where all of us, I feel like in the media either had a podcast or wrote a story or had a column about them about just like how bad this team looked.

And granted, some of you guys were earlier, I think you did you podcast with Bontents one week about them. You know, and I know Michael Pina, my former co-worker, as I wrote a column about them that I remember at the time thinking this is almost, it feels a little bit early to write this, but he's like, you know, the Bulls just need to like start over basically. And it was like maybe a month into the season. I was like, I feel a little early to me.

There was a stretch where they had lost, what was it, four or five and or whatever it was. And there was all sorts of pressure in Chicago and the national media like, they just need to tear it down at this point. And then they won like three games in a row. And it so it allows you just enough breathing room to say like, we're okay.

And they are not okay. They were not okay at the time. They were barely speaking out those games just to give them enough faith that, see when we really put our heads together, really work hard, we can do this. If it's taking you that much with the collection of talent that you have, there's enough talent on this team to be much, much better than they are.

If you had told me that they were the seventh best defense this season, I would have said, oh, Lonzo came back. That would have been my response to that. So the fact that their defense last year was Lonzo and Caruso calls in Havoc and one guy's been out for a bunch of games now, one guy's been out the whole year. So what's the excuse?

And I think that's what you're basically saying. So last night, I think what were they three for 21? From three, I watched the game. Three for 21, five for 21, they gave before that.

Five for 26, they gave by the way, seven for 35, six for 22. These are their last five games. They have made, I'm trying to do quick math. They're 13, they made 26 threes over their last five games.

You get teams that hit that many in one game. Maybe a game in the first two minutes of the next game. It's unbelievable considering that they actually have guys that the Rosie is basically the only guy that won't shoot threes. Everybody else, Levine is a good three point shooter.

Yeah, Levine will take three, he shouldn't take and pass up on two, he should take. Absolutely, absolutely. It's not to say that he doesn't pass up on some, but he also is hit like 13 in a game before. Oh, he's a monster sword.

There's no question about that. It's the weirdest team. I thought for a part of the year that he had that title of just like the weirdest team in the league, like a team that runs zone, you know, half the game because they can only defend in zone and that they, you know, that they were so close in so many games, the injuries, but also the fact that you've got so many guys on your payroll that like you can't play because they're not good enough defensively, the heat work, the weirdest team for a while for me, it is hands down the bulls at this point. And it makes the fact that they have now gone what?

Oh, in three since the trade deadline makes not doing anything at the trade deadline even worse because you had guys that would have had value elsewhere, whether it was Levine, then having serious conversations about him, whether it was Caruso, you had any number of guys that other teams would have been interested in and just to not move any of them. And I was telling my two best friends and like our group chat, our group sex, I don't think they're gonna do anything. Like you were already hearing murmurs about the fact that teams were frustrated, that the bulls were asking for like a ransom for Alex Caruso. It's like, why?

I understand he's a good player. I understand that there's value for him. But what are you gonna do with them? Like you're already the seventh best team fence.

I mean, I know for sure that what you're doing. The Warriors really wanted Alex Caruso and I don't think there was anything close to a deal there. And we should probably talk about how the Warriors traded for Gary Payton Jr. Then he's injured and now have accused the Blazers of withholding medical information when they could have just done a two team trade with Detroit and gotten Sadiq Bay and cut everybody out of the deal.

And I said last week, I think I'd rather have Sadiq Bay than Gary Payton the second on the Warriors. You know how I said you get out of the rubble a little bit and your brain clears up? I still think that because I think the size and spot up shooting is more what they need than another guard. On the other hand, I get the reasoning that our Achilles heel all year has been on ball defense.

Guys are just roasting us on the ball. Sadiq Bay is not gonna help with that. Gary Payton Jr. will.

And this is the thing, I thought about this with Anonobi too. And the Warriors were in, let's say semi-serious engagement off and on with the Raptors about Anonobi who again is like the supernova version of the defense and shooting and all that, then I mentioned on the wing, which is really what they need. Another bigger Wiggins is, it takes time to learn their style. And Bay has been on these awful Detroit teams or his role has sometimes been like, you can be Carmelo Anthony tonight, but tomorrow you need to be spot up shooting.

You need to be Olympic mellow. You can be prime mellow one night in Olympic mellow the next night. And Anonobi is a very mechanical offensive player. I just wonder how plopping a guy like that into the Warriors machine with 20 games left.

And like, oh, okay, so here's, we all just like fly around in the ball moves and like, Dremon yells at you and you have to cut. Like that's not easy to do. And like Gary Payton doesn't have that learning curve. But that's a whole big mess.

It's a whole big mess. I can't remember a story like this. Like it would be one thing if Payton hadn't been playing. And then the question was, you hid this from us.

The fact that he can play on it, if it's because of having drugs to help you get through it, or if it's just that he's okay enough to play through it, I just can't remember seeing an accusation. It's just strange. And then stranger in some ways, because it's like, well, what are you gonna do? Not do the deal and bring James Wiseman back at that point.

Like it was just odd all the way around. It was, I feel like the other reporters that were in Sacramento for those Kyrie games and everything else were, we were all just kind of like, can you remember a story like this? Cause we all were so thrown off by it. And I'm also, to your earlier point about sneak bay, I can't remember if it was, well, Joshonzo whoever had the initial report that he was going to, that just initially it was like, he's going to, the Warriors had made a trade for sneak bay.

It was the first thing. And then he realized it was being broadened out to more than that, he was being rerouted. My first thought was like, oh, that's a really interesting trade for Golden State. Like you said, maybe not a perfect bit, but you could see the logic if you were adding him to your roster, if you're Golden State.

It's a young player, a guy that would make sense to bet on it. Just having a down season shooting the ball, a guy that has the frame, you think to be a better defender than what he's been. It wasn't like a weird trade. I thought that trade made a bit of sense for them.

And so the idea of, like you said, if it was just a one to one, as opposed to being the bigger court team deal, that now was thrown off by everything. It was just very, very odd. Yeah, I was told emphatically over the weekend, there is no unwinding this deal. Like it's just too big, it's too complicated and too awkward to bring these guys back into their teams and be like, hey, hey, you, hey, big guy.

Sit down over here. Can we go, can I make a pick now? Am I listening? Have you made any of this point?

I'm just sort of injected my Orlando magic love and other things into it. So that wasn't one of your pick. No Orlando was on it. Orlando was on my list.

I was like 17 people are like, Russ is on my list. We hit that city base on my list. We hit that entity Davis is on my list because the Lakers just keep losing. And it's like you're running out of time, dude.

You're four games out of the freaking ninth seat now. Anyway, I think this is a natural point to talk about the Blazers who are on my list for sure are 28 and 29, 27 on defense, 27. The three teams below them are actively trying to lose games. Fifth on offense.

And at the trade deadline, just leave aside the mess of Peyton. You wanted to know, like, okay, are they gonna be buyers, sellers if they're trying to win now around Dame, how aggressive are they gonna be? Well, out went Josh Hart, a starter who has all of a sudden, he's a little bit like the world. If I did Josh Hart and Matisse Thiebel hit eight combined threes last night has to be one of the most insane fans of either team that just had them have to be like, where the hell was this?

Anyway, out went Josh Hart. Out went Gary Payton Jr. Gary Payton the second, excuse me. Prize free agency acquisition.

We need more athleticism and defense around Dame. Goodbye, you're gone. In came Thiebel unrestricted free agent. Cam Reddish unrestricted free agent.

Nine million second round picks that God knows I'm not gonna keep track of. And a lottery protected first round pick from the Knicks and owned by the Knicks, not one of their extra poo poo picks that converts to a whole pile of second rounders if they don't get it this year. In the aggregate, in the aggregate, that looks to me like, we're sellers, but we kind of don't want you to think we're sellers, so we brought back some intriguing young stuff here, but we don't really, we're not really going not aggressively this season. And it just raises the possibility of like Jeremy Granse free agent.

They're either gonna bring him back or lose him for nothing. If they bring him back, they have no realistic avenue to cap space in the foreseeable future. They have another small guard combination that can't defend. They have a giant question mark long term at the center position, even though Nercic is signed for long term, his play has kind of been in this year.

And it's just like, are they just kind of hoping that Simon's and Sharp like develop way ahead of schedule in time for Dame to not be 37 years old? Which is maybe not unreasonable. Are they hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with another draft pick and like under the radar free agency acquisition and we keep Grant and Sharp and Simon's and then another free agent leaves in the Western Conference and this and all of a sudden we're kind of like, hey, we're back in the conference semifinals mix again. What are we doing here?

Yeah, I'll be honest. I thought the trade deadline day, that the Gary Payton trade, him being involved in a trade, not just a trade, but one to go back to the Warriors was like one of the most eye opening things because I'm like, okay, I understand that he was hurt for, I mean, might still be hurt now given what we're talking about. But I understand he was hurt. I understand that maybe for what Portland was giving him that maybe felt like he didn't quite get enough there.

But if your team is struggling to this extent on defense, that you rebuilt your whole team seemingly around the idea of having athleticism and having speed and having defense on the wings and big wings and stuff like that. And some youth injected into that, what are you doing getting rid of him, not just getting rid of him, but him going back to his old team that just won a title. So that was, it was a little bit confusing. And let's be honest here, like this is a team that has always wanted to make sure that they avoid the tax.

It's still a small market team relative to the teams that we think of as big market teams. I need to get out of this rhythm because it seems like he is very destined to want to stay there. But my first thought whenever I look at kind of the sort of deadline that the blazers had in light of where they stand right now is like, what does this mean for Dane? It just doesn't, there doesn't seem to be a clear path for how they get past this other than what you said, which is just to kind of hope that these guys develop really, really quickly.

And Simon said already taken a leap. And so we all know that. Simon's just taking a leap on offense defensively. It just doesn't work.

It's not going to work. That's what I'm saying is that there's already been a leap to where he's been pretty much what you could ask for offensively in this timeframe. I don't know that there's a leap coming defensively. If there is great, you want that as soon as possible.

But I just don't know that the make of this team and that's what Grant having played so well to where they want to pay the guy now, basically. He's been really good. He's been great. So that's why I'm saying I don't know what to make of it because if he's been great and you know, the other stuff has just kind of been the other stuff.

And sure, you could point to injuries here and there, but I just don't, given what we're saying about Nurgage too, I just don't know where it's supposed to come from with this team. And they've shuffled the deck plenty now over the last year, obviously after McCollum and everything with that. But I just, you know, I thought that maybe at least at the beginning of this, you could have said for a while that they've remade this team and this is the way this team needs to look with more wings and more length and more athleticism and a little bit more youth and spots. They did that and granted the season is not over, but it hasn't worked well enough and it certainly hasn't worked defensively well enough to work around two guards that really aren't known for their defense, not just not known for their defense, but aren't good.

And we'll see if Thiebel or Redish, I mean, they're worth taking a shot on, but what is it amount to? I don't think that's the answer. I mean, like, it's not the answer. They're unreheated.

They could be gone tomorrow or you could resign them and be like, oh, did we just pay that much for that guy? Look, if the stated goal is building a winning, a contender, not just winning team, a contender around Damian Lillard, who by the way, 31 points a game. Isn't that crazy? He's shooting 58% on twos.

His career average on twos is 49%. He is having, he's getting to the line nine times a game. That's a career high. He is having a supernova prime Damian Lillard season and the team is not good.

If your stated goal is building around Damian, who deserves that, and is 32 years old, the record says you're not doing a good enough job of it. You have not built a contender around Damian Lillard. You can tell me that while we're on the journey there, we're collecting assets. Like what assets do you have?

You have one pick out the door to Chicago, one pick in the door from New York. None of either of them are pretty sexy. You have a bunch of second round picks, what do you do? That helps.

It's not bad to have second round picks. It's not going to change your life. You have Grant, who's still in his prime. You got these young guys.

Simon's is 22 or 23, I think. I like this your little quite a bit as a role player. Sharp is just learning the basics of the NBA game. I'm so fun to watch.

I love the side. Like I said it, I set it in the lead-up to the trade deadline. If you are serious about building a contender now, next season, two seasons from now, around Damian Lillard, you have to investigate what you could get for Simon's or Sharp. You have to.

Otherwise, you're just banking on hope and luck, which is sometimes hope and luck hit. And those guys, they know them better than we do. They know their likelihood of developing in time for Lillard. I didn't hear one sniff of them trying to figure out the market for those guys.

And could we get better and X, better and Y better? And see, maybe there were no veterans that they even like, or that fit. Damian Lillard deserves more than hope, though. And I think that's if you're going to keep him and if he wants to stay there, which there's nothing wrong with him wanting to stay there.

I don't think we can want to be clear about that. Damian Lillard can do whatever the hell he wants. He's earned that. He's earned that.

And then you want to collect question his guts, his crunch time, whatever. Like you can't do it. He's proven it 100 times over. Exactly.

And that's the thing is like, we can't want that for him more than he wants it. If he wants to stay there and be a one franchise guy, the guy is still killing it. I mean, not still killing it. He's maybe playing better than he ever has.

This might be the best season of his career right now. Right. But he's not a neutral decision. If he wants to be there and you want him there, you have to find.

You can't just say, we hope that these guys step it up even more than they have, which they've already taken leaps at points. Like you said, with time it's very much been on one side of the ball. But that's now you know what he is. And that should give you even more confidence to at least saw pedal the idea of seeing what you would get.

Because it's pretty clear that that fit, at least right now, is not going to do it. And like you said, with eyeball with reddish, reddish now is on team number three. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think it says something that with teams that are desperately looking for guys that they can develop talent around, because of their cap situations.

Well, not the next necessarily, but just there. It's a team full of youthful guys in the fact that he's an odd man out. Should tell you something. So I don't see it being those guys.

If the eyeball all of a sudden becomes a guy that's going to make four threes at night, maybe he is there. But I think if you're being honest with yourself, is this more likely to change the trajectory and give damn more of a runway to kind of, you know, a contender? If you're being honest with yourself, you're not saying yes, those guys are the answer. Maybe they're part of it.

But I don't, you cannot just rely on hope here at this point in names career. Like I said, I like Sharp. I like little. I like Jabari Walker.

I like Trenden Watford. I might be the captain. I might be the national media champion of Trenden Watford. All those guys will get better.

They're all young, all develop. You know, you can try to make these smart trades on the fringes. They kind of cascade, cascade, cascade into like a bigger move. It's just hard to hit singles over and over and over again and have it somehow lead to like a collective home run in the aggregate.

It's hard to do that. And I just don't. My favorite Portland staff, by the way, they kind of epitomizes their team. If you go to cleaning the glass, which is a site we both love, it ranks where you should rank in effective field goal percentage based on where you take your shots from.

So three rim, mid range, if you shot an average percentage of this, who would have the best effective field goal percentage on offense? Portland ranks number one. They have the best expected effective field goal percentage in the league because they take a ton of threes and shots at the rim. On defense, they rank last.

They allow the worst shot profile entirely. That's hard to do. That is hard to do. I have the best one in offense.

OK, I'm going to give you two more quick ones. Ready? From my list. All right.

Because it's near and dear to your heart and it dovetails from Portland. Just just a quick one, something I'm a guy that I'm watching. RJ Barrett, when is it time to start thinking about OK, so what exactly is this guy that we just paid all this money to? And I think we all agree, RJ Barrett's good.