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The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from A Dame Trade Deep Dive With Ben Thompson, Plus Seth Meyers and Million-Dollar Picks
"Coming up, Dame gets traded. Million dollar pick Seth Meyers, it's all next. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Get in on the football action right from the opening kickoff with America's number one sports book. The app is safe, secure, easy to use. FanDuel always has exclusive offers. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. FanDuel has lots of ways to play, like the spread, money line, over -unders, team totals, player props, so much more. Jump into the action at any time during the game with live betting. Combine multiple bets from the same game in a same game parlay. Download the FanDuel sports book app today. Make every moment more of this football season. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit TheRinger .com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of this episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit TheRinger .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. I just use this. Here's something every football fan should know. You can get everything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything because you can't get the dream flex for your fantasy team delivered with Uber Eats. But Tex -Mex, yeah, great pass protection, can't get it. Great pizza selection, oh yeah. While they can't help on the field, you can get pretty much everything else you need to watch the game delivered with Uber Eats. So this season, get anything, almost, almost anything for game day by ordering on the Uber Eats app. Uber Eats, official on -demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. I'll call in select markets and 21 plus to order. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did the big chill. It was very, very exciting. I have Kyle Brandt coming on Monday's podcast. I'm just gonna tell you the movie now because it is gonna be the best moment of your weekend if you spent two hours watching this classic. We're doing Toy Soldiers. It really brings everything possible to the table. So if you wanna watch it ahead of time, there it is. That podcast is going up Monday night. If you wanna hear stuff about the debate, we have Tara Paul and Mary's podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win. That reacted to it as well as the press box with Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. So there you go. Our debate coverage has been on point. Also, higher learning. Van and Rachel had Larry Elder on this weekend. It made a lot of noise, man. That podcast is great. I hope you check that out as well. Hope you're checking out theringer .com. And on this podcast, gonna talk about the dame trade at the top. We're gonna bring in Ben Thompson from the Techery newsletter, which he's been on this podcast I think four weeks ago. And he's a huge Bucks fan. He's gonna give the Bucks fan side of things. We're gonna do million dollar picks. And then old friend Seth Meyers talking about a whole bunch of stuff. So really good podcast. It's all next. First, our friends from Pro Jam. What's up? All right, I'm taping this on Thursday afternoon. Normally when there's a big MBA trade, I always do the emergency trade reaction right after the podcast. But we just put up a podcast on Tuesday. So I decided to play it a little differently this time. I wanted a little distance, I wanted to listen to stuff, read stuff, and try to form some big picture opinions coming out of this. So I have four smaller ones, then one big one. First one, I thought Portland did an incredible job with this trade. I really liked this trade, especially everyone was trying to bully them in June and July about, oh, you got to take Miami's offer. You just got to. It's where he wants to go. It's the only offer you're going to get. And guess what? They waited. They played it perfectly. They stared Miami down, and they got a much better deal. First of all, they get the Drew Holiday piece that they can flip into a bunch out of their stuff, which we'll talk about in one second. I love the DeAndre Ayton gamble. As you know, on this podcast, I am a big DeAndre Ayton guy. Not in the sense of I'm the biggest fan of his in the world, but I'm a fan of the asset. I just think I love the valued assets, no matter what it is. Whatever market we're talking about, DeAndre Ayton, 18 and 10 for his career, 60 % field goals percentage, 25 years old. He's played in 45 playoff games. He played four rounds in the 2021 finals. Last year, he got his ass kicked by Jokic. Oh, sorry. Like, that never happens. And Phoenix just sold on him, which I can't wait to talk about. But just from a Portland standpoint, they not only get Ayton in whatever they get for holiday, they get the 29 first, they get the two swaps, and they dump Nurkic. Nurkic hasn't had a healthy start to finish all the way through the playoffs here since 2018, which I'm positive was a long time ago. He's basically 12 and 8. He's, you know, a 50 % shooter. I made a list of the top 30 centers. I encourage you to do this at home, because what's more fun than making lists of NBA centers? I can't imagine anything. I made a list of who I thought were the best assets of the center position for talent, contract, everything. He was 29th on my list. The only person I had ahead of him who's technically a starter, unless you start talking about the Detroit or Charlotte guys, was Zubats on the Clippers. I thought he was the 29th best center asset in the league. And Phoenix, you know, just quickly to go to them, they're trying to win this year. They got worse. They turned Ayton's money into Nurkic and Grayson Allen and Nasir Little. Grayson Allen, we already know with him, he can't play in playoff series. We saw him 22. We saw it last year. I heard and read in some places like that, I got two rotation players. Did they? Is Nurkic a playoff rotation player? Is Grayson Allen a playoff rotation player? Because I'm positive he's not. So for the same money that they were spending on Ayton, they got three guys that I don't think are going to help them. In 25, the money comes down a little bit to 23 million just for Nurkic and Little, which is 7 million less than Ayton. And then in 26, that money goes up to 25 .5. But I don't understand what Phoenix was doing. Why not wait to see if Ayton clicks with Vogel? Vogel has such a good history with centers. He rejuvenated Dwight Howard on the 2020 Lakers. He basically created Roy Hibbert's career in 2013 with the defense verticality thing. I thought he was going to do a good job with Ayton. I'm stunned that they gave up on him. I'm almost waiting for one of those, now they tell us stories when, you know, that's where Brian Curtis calls them, where like a week after something happens, there's this kind of notebook dump where it's like, here's seven terrible DeAndre Ayton stories. So maybe that'll happen. But for Phoenix just to be like, cool, we locked this down, man. We got Nurkic. You're trying to win the title. You have KD and Booker and Beal. And like, what are you guys doing? Anyway, from Portland's standpoint, I love the Ayton thing. I love that they didn't get bullied. And I know they're going to turn Drew Holliday into something. So this to me was at least an A minus for them, for where they were two months ago, where Dave's like, I want to go to Miami. That's it. And if you don't trade me there, that's kind of fucked up. And they made this work as it got reported that, uh, I think in the athletic, that he expanded his list to Brooklyn and to Milwaukee in the last two weeks. And that's what Portland was waiting on. You know, they were banking on the fact that he's a competitive dude. He's one of the best 75 pairs ever. He wanted a situation settled. So, you know, you wait, you wait, you wait, they expand the list and then you go. Uh, there's a Drew Holliday piece to this. That's awesome. He becomes a contender prize. I wouldn't call this a Drew Holliday sweepstakes. I reserved sweepstakes for the superstars, but it's a mini sweepstakes. This is somebody that could have a huge impact on the playoff race. You know, not only the usual suspects, everybody's talking about Boston, ironically, Miami is a really good fit for him. And in some ways, um, I'm a little more scared of them with Miami than Dame in some ways, especially at a much cheaper contract with giving up less and keeping some of their assets. Philly, if they could pull it off, they have to be in there in Golden State, Minnesota. I think I have to mention Sacramento, I think is a team that if they could figure out how to get Drew without giving up their core, which is basically Keegan Murray and Sabonis and Fox, like that's, you know, could Davion Mitchell be in that trade with some, with a salary and some picks, who knows. The team that I love for Drew Holliday is OKC. I have OKC, you know, I started doing my MBA research for the over -under spot and I haven't landed on a number for them yet, but to me, they feel like a high forties team with Chet and with the growth of their young guys. And if you just like, let's say they traded Lou Dort and a bunch of their picks, maybe two firsts and two of their lesser picks or three firsts and a second, whatever it is. And they just say, fuck it. And they get Drew and you put him with Giddy and SGA and Jalen fucking awesome Williams and Chet Holmgren and all these other dudes they have, that might be a top three team in the West. I mean, that, that's starting to give me some early 2010s OKC vibes. So where he goes is going to be important. I just feel like there was so much Drew Holliday slander the last couple of days. You know, he's one of my favorite players. Even Haralabob, who was the chairman of the board of the Drew Holliday fan club for years and would have the benefit dinners there and, you know, just did a lot of yeoman's work on that front. And even he was like, yeah, yeah, Dame's better than Drew. That trade makes sense for Milwaukee. I was hurt, Haralabob. I was 100 % hurt by that. But you know, Drew got his ass kicked by Jimmy Butler in the playoffs last year. I get it. It happens. Jimmy was unbelievable. I feel like he would have kicked anybody's ass. By the way, why is Drew Holliday guarding Jimmy Butler? That speaks more to some of the issues with Milwaukee. He was never supposed to be a point guard and a creator. I think he was always better as an off -the -ball guy. We saw that with Rondo and New Orleans and just in general. I want to see him with a point guard. I want to see him just being unleashed, not having the ball a lot, just worrying about hitting threes, being an occasional, you know, make -shit -happen guy and being like the third or fourth best guy on a team without having the offensive responsibility to have. All their half court issues got blamed on him for the last couple of years. And I get it. They weren't like an awesome half -court team, even the other one in the finals, but I really value that dude. I had him, even I did the trade value list in August and I had him 37th and I had Dame 23rd. I think he's one of the best 30 players in the league still. He's 33 years old, which, you know, I'm going to talk in a second about when guards hit their mid -30s, but just in general, I think he's a real asset. If he goes to a team like the Celtics and they can keep Derek White and Tatum and Brown in the center, it's like, look out, man. So little mini sweepstakes, rarely do we get the trade, but then we still get another asset to talk about. Thank you for everyone involved in the trade. And then the fourth small point is just that, you know, not rocket science, Milwaukee bought some Giannis time here. They have one of the best 20 players of all time. They were staring down the barrel of a situation that was not good. I was talking about it on this podcast in late June and early July. I thought he was going to put them on the clock. I thought Mark Lasry selling his stake was a really bad sign for all of this because that dude is smart. As I laid out in June, that guy is really smart. And if he's feeling like, you know what, it's time for me to sell my buck stock, that makes me nervous. And then all the stuff that Giannis said and did, which I thought he did really fairly and really smartly. And I think that dude's about titles and that's it. And I know we say that about players, but I think in his case, I don't think he cares about, you know, what's my legacy, how do I compare against Dirk DeWhisky, any of that stuff. I just think he wants more rings. I mean, think about the guys who have won two rings out of the best 35 guys on my list of my pyramid. Those are all guys in my top 35 that won multiple wings. You go to the one -ring side, Jerry West, Oscar, Moses, Dirk, Jokic, Giannis, Pettit, Garnett, Kawhi, Rick Barry. That's the list he's on now. I certainly don't think he's looking at that list going, I got to get away from these guys, but it's a slightly different list. I think when you win multiple rings in multiple situations, it elevates you in a certain way. I think he fundamentally understands that at least a little bit. I want to be the best player since LeBron James. I think that's a thing that he wants. How am I going to do that? I need more rings. I need more finals trips. He knew from last year and maybe even the Boston series that they just weren't good enough. Whether this trade is going to be the thing that propels them, we'll find out, but he's been in the league 10 years, two MVPs, five first teams, two second teams, and now we have this little two -year window. Kawhi and the Raptors was a one -year window. This is a two -year window, I feel like. With Giannis, he's got two years left in his deals. So does Lopez. Middleton has two in a player option. Dame's got two, and then this crazy $120 million player option extension thingy that he has that just keeps going and going. It's probably two years. There's a world where this could go terribly this season, at least for what the expectations are, and then maybe it becomes Kawhi, Raptors. Maybe Giannis is like, you know what? That didn't work. Trade me. And the Bucks, who have no picks left and no future, they look at it next summer, and they go, all right. We tried it. Giannis, what can we get for you? Dame, what can we get? And they just do a reboot, rehaul. Remember, they won in 2021, which just takes so much pressure out of this. It's so much different than the Clippers situation, where they went all in on Kawhi and Paul George. They give up all those picks and SGA, and they've gotten nothing out of it. They haven't even made the finals. So it's got to happen. I think they at least probably have to make the finals. If they get bounced in round two, do I think Giannis is going to stay because they made this Dame -Mower trade? Probably not. So that leads to the big question, is how good of a trade was this? So there's a big picture angle on Dame, and it's going to sound negative, but I really don't want it to sound negative because I think Dame, I voted for him for NBA Top 75. I think he's been one of the best guards in the last 15 years. I think there's a ton of great things you can say, and there's a chance that he goes to Milwaukee, and this thing is fucking awesome. I know any Celtic fan I've talked to, including Isaiah, who's helping produce this podcast today, the Giannis -Dame pick and roll is just terrifying. Other than Jokic and Murray, it's going to be the single most unstoppable offensive play in the league. It is. We are conceding that point. The spot Dame is in right now, big picture -wise, it's weird. He's a superstar, but he's not, and we've seen guys like this before. I judge superstars by, do you have the resume statistically, and is your team succeeding consistently at a certain level? You can't totally say that about Dame. He's never been on a 55 -win team. He's missed the playoffs completely four times in 11 years. He said three first -round exits. He made the Final Four once in 2019, which was really lucky because Golden State and Houston were the two best teams, and then they got smoked. He's never been on a true contender ever. Instinctively, you go, well, that's not his fault. Who's he played with? Well, he played with LaMarcus Aldridge and CJ McCollum and a couple other guys, but not really anybody. The reason I'm putting this up is there's a success element that he has not had yet that for somebody with his resume is actually kind of unusual. I went and I looked up how many guards in the history of the league averaged 22 points a game for their career and played at least 700 games. I thought the list would be like 20. I didn't know. I didn't know what I was walking into. Only I think 75 guys have averaged 22 a game. So I went and I looked up the list, and it was 10 guys, 700 games, 22 a game for their career. There were some guys who came close like David Thompson, who I think is one of the best guards I've seen in the last 45 years, but had a short career and had some drug issues. He didn't make it. He didn't play enough games. Pete Maravich, 24 .2 points a game, but he didn't play enough games. Kyrie hasn't played enough games yet. Bradley Beale is five games away. I'm actually kind of glad the cutoff's at 700 so we don't have to talk about him. And then Mitchell and Trey Young aren't there yet. There's only 10 guys that made it, and the 10 guys are all fucking awesome. And again, I mentioned this in the context of Dame, who we think he is versus the success he's had. So the 10 guys, Michael Jordan, 30 .1, Jerry West, 27 .1, Allen Averson, 26 .7, George Gervin, 26 .2, Oscar Robertson, 25 .7, Kobe, 25 .0, Harden, 24 .7, Curry, 24 .6, Wade, 22, barely made it, and Russ, 22 .4, and then Dame is at 25 again. All right, what does he not have that those other guys have? Well, MJ, don't need to talk about him. Don't need to talk about Jerry West, who's the freaking logo. Allen Averson, pretty good comparison, right? Big stats, really memorable player, but not a ton of success. Here's the difference. Averson made the finals once. He won an MVP. Dame has done neither of those things. George Gervin was the best scoring guard of the 70s. He made two final fours. He had some bad luck. He really, in 79, really should have came close. And some of it's on him, right? He could have come through. Bobby Dandridge is the one that ended up coming through for the Bullets. They lose. But two final fours, he had four top five MVP finishes, five first teams, four second teams. He was just unassailably the best guard in the league until MJ. Oscar Robertson, don't need to go through him, but he won a ring and an MVP. Kobe, five rings and an MVP. Eleven first teams for Kobe, by the way. James Harden, three final fours, an MVP, six top five MVP finishes, six first team MBAs. And even though Harden has never made the finals as the best guy, he made it with OKC as the sixth man, you could build a contender around Harden. We saw it. We haven't really seen it with Dame. I think that's a fair thing to bring up. Curry, four rings, two MVPs, you know, the Curry thing. Dwayne Wade, three rings, two top five MVPs, two first teams, three second teams. He's more in the Dame waters a little bit, but he had the 2006 finals and he was the second best guy with LeBron on those heat teams. And then Westbrook, who you would say, well, Dame had a better career than Westbrook. Did he? Westbrook made the finals in 2012. He was second best guy on that team. Almost made the finals in 2016. He won an MVP. He had two first teams and five second teams. It's at least like a real argument. And I think when you look at Dame, he only had that one 2019 round three, got bounced. He's only had one top five MVP finish. He's only had one first team MBA and four second team MBAs. Really, really good top 75 career. But the piece that's missing is, have you been on a really good team? Have you made a real run at it? Which is why, you know, I think this Milwaukee trade is so much fun. This is his real chance. I get nervous about a couple things with this trade. One is that, you know, if you look at the 33 and older guards who average 22 points a game in a season. Jordan did it twice. Curry did it twice. Still going. Kobe did it three times. Jerry West twice. Sam Jones once. Hal Greer once. That's the entire list. Now the NBA is different. We have more three -pointers now. It's easier to score. Scoring is the easiest it's ever been. Guys can play at a longer age. So I'm not ruling out Dane being good for the next three years. But just pointing out, history is saying, be a little nervous. In general with guards, like Chris Paul, we saw from age 35 to 36 to 37, like it just dropped. But that's two years older than Dane. Maybe it's fine. I just worry about guards. We have not a lot of instances with guards in their mid -30s of them either peaking as players or being able to sustain whatever success they had during their prime. It always starts to go down with really no exceptions, except for Steph Curry. He's the only non -exception. So if your case is Dane's as good as Steph Curry, or Dane can be as potent as Steph Curry on a winning team, like, you know, Steph Curry is better than Dane, but I'm not going to argue that he couldn't do a lot of the stuff that Curry did in Golden State. The bigger issue for me, the age I'm definitely worried about. Dane has not been healthy the last couple of years, and we have not seen him play nine straight months at playoff basketball with a big bullseye on his back. Everybody coming after you, you're the best team. We haven't seen him do that ever, much less than the last couple of seasons. So can he stay up? Can he stay healthy? That's one thing. The defense with Dane just got kind of swept under the rug the last couple days, and I don't really understand it because there's five categories of defensive player I feel like. There's excellent, there's good, there's average, there's not so good, and then there's bad. And I think Dane's a bad defender. I think the stats back it up. Like, his defensive rating last year was 245 out of the guards. He's the 245th guard for defensive rating. You know, 117 .4 individual defensive rating is 483 overall. Portland's team's always defensively, it was the Achilles heel for them. Partly because of Dane, because he couldn't guard anybody. He's too small. And, you know, think about what we saw from the playoffs the last couple years. I think about the 2020 bubble Celtics playoffs, not infrequently, because I think that team had a chance to potentially win a title. What happened? Everyone hunted Kemba Walker. It was hunting season. It's like, where is he? Got to get a switch. Got to get Kemba Walker guarding somebody who's bigger, or got to beat him off the dribble, and it just became a hunt session with him. And basically, he got played out of the league. He's not in the league anymore. You know, we had this with Isaiah Thomas, too, in the mid -2010s. I think it's been an issue with Kyrie Irving. The Celtics certainly went at him in the playoff series with Brooklyn a couple years ago. Curry, you saw, who I think is a better defender than people give him credit for, but the And he's a much better defender than Dame is. Jordan Poole is somebody that got hunted in playoff series recently. Chris Paul, obviously, is a big one. Jalen Brunson, remember what the Heat did to him? Mitchell, when he was on Utah, this was a huge issue. And then Trae Young, obviously. My fear with Dame is he's a DH, and I think in Portland, part of the reasons he was able to put up the stats he did was because he wasn't playing defense, right? It was just, how many points can I score? My team isn't very good, and I'm just going to do my thing. He's an incredible offensive player. But how much of a trade -off is the defense, right? Well, you think, all right, well, Milwaukee, they're really good defensively. They'll be able to protect him. Here's the team. Giannis, Dame, Lopez, Portis, Middleton, Conaton, Beauchamp, Crowder. Who's guarding Trae Young on this team? Who's guarding Jason Tatum? Here's a partial list of guys that I don't think this team will be able to guard this season. Devin Booker, Tatum, Butler, Trae Young, Kyrie, Curry. Who's going to be chasing Curry around the screens? Dame lowered? Good luck. SGA, Luca, Mitchell, Murray, Edwards, Brunson, Ja, Garland, Fox, Halburn. Are they going to be able to cover Derek White? I don't know. The way this team is constructed, they are not going to have the ability to guard other guards at all, which means they're just going to have to be in a shooting match with them, right? It's going to be not much different than what's going to happen with Phoenix, where they're just literally going to have to outscore the other team. I've just watched too much playoff basketball over the last couple years, where it's like, if you have that weak link on defense, and you're playing a team that's smart enough, they're going to go after that weak link. Like, think about them against the Lakers, right? The Lakers figure their crunch time. Let's say they make the finals. It's Milwaukee and the Lakers, and Lakers crunch time. They're going to have LeBron and Davis and Austin Reeves and, I don't know, a shooter and a point guard, whatever. All they're going to be doing is trying to find where Dame is on the court and going after him. What about when they play Boston? Boston puts out White and Brogdon and Tatum and Brown and a center, and all they're going to be doing is trying to make sure Dame is covering somebody who has the ball who's now torturing him. I think it's a real problem for them. And what's funny is they gave up Drew's defense and, you know, they, what they gave up on defense, which is significant, and they gained an offense, it might end up just being a wash and they might just be a different version of the same team where they still have a huge flaw. It's just on the other end of the court. I'm just shocked that nobody brought up the defense. I agree he's an amazing offensive player and what's cool about this trade and what I'm excited about as a basketball fan is, can he go up a level? Right? A lot of these stats he put up, especially the last couple years. They didn't mean anything. They were, he was on bad teams. Like, who cares? Ultimately, Bradley Beal scored 30 points a game on the Wizards. Who cares? I think most really good offensive players, if they're on a bad team, can get between 25 and 30 a night. Can you do it nine months in a row? Can you do it when you're getting hunted on defense all over the place? How much can Milwaukee protect him? And what does he have in the tank at age 33 with 900 plus games on the O 'Dominor already? I'm still afraid of the Bucks, but people have, like, FanDuel had them as best odds in basketball and I think most people feel like they're the favorite now. I don't feel like there's a favorite. I think you can go through every team. Boston, I could, I'm scared of Porzingis. What's going to happen with Jalen Brown out there? He has contracts. Can Peyton Pritchard, all these different things. Philly, God only knows. Miami, they're unquestionably worse. Yeah, Milwaukee is going to be really good, but depending where Holiday lands and how this all plays out, I just think it's still wide open. And the other piece, so if you're just talking Boston, Miami, Tatum kills Milwaukee. I have no idea why. Boston is kind of built to at least stay with Dame and, you know, Derek White is about as good of a person you're going to have to try to keep Dame in check, at least. And Boston's done a really good job of guarding Giannis over the years. They don't have Grant Williams this year, but I just don't think, I think there's as many ways this goes wrong as it goes right, I guess would be my final thought on this because for what they gave up, especially with that 29 unprotected and the two swaps and, you know, they are all in on this team. And you know my theory, when you go all in on a team, you better think you can win. Not positive, but it's an awesome trade. It really is. It makes the league so much more fun. Dame and Giannis together. I'm going to enjoy watching Portland. I still have my eating stock. Watching Phoenix fans slowly realize that Derkiszna isn't the answer is going to be fun and then we'll see where Drew Holliday goes. So really fun trade. We're going to talk about it a little bit more with Die Hard Bucks fan, Ben Thompson in one second. Let's take a break.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"He doesn't try to solve the problem, he tries to leave the problem. And that's that's that's not that's not good. It's really it's I think it's really tarnished his legacy. Like he's a great player, one of the all time great scorers in this league. But, you know, the last what was it now, three years of his career, four years of his career dating back to, you know, the end of his time in Houston. This is what he's going to be remembered for, like when the going got tough, James Harden got going as fast as humanly possible and kind of damaged some franchises in the process, franchises that probably could have gotten more for him if he just, you know, did things in a quieter way. You know, didn't make such a stink or make such a scene out of his exit. All right. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last word. I just want to say, no, just as someone who's I think is pro player as they come and I enjoy the movement and don't mind it. It's just depressing, man. It's depressing to see it play out this way. And to slick, frankly, have seen him visibly quit on his last two teams and now do this, like you said, it's just it just sucks. It just sucks, man. There's no other way to put it. It's it's not fun to watch. No, it's not. All right. Well, we will be back if there is a similar situation involving Damian Lillard or other major movement in the NBA over the next couple of weeks. Until then, enjoy the rest of the summer. Since her role as White House correspondent, Caitlin Collins has never been afraid to dig deep. She's a reliable, deeply sourced reporter and is always willing to hold the powerful accountable on her new CNN show, The Source with Caitlin Collins. Caitlin is bringing that tenacious spirit to primetime. She's chasing the facts, connecting with her Rolodex of sources and pulling the threads of a story together right up to the minute she goes live. So viewers are getting the very latest. The Source with Caitlin Collins weeknights at 9 p.m. Eastern only on CNN. For you at CuriosityStream.com. Get yours before they sell out at Wal-Mart.com.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"What do you make of the fact that because. I think you know Daryl Morey better than I do. What do you make of the fact that these two have been joined at the hip for many years now? Wild, wild. The hug. Remember the hug they shared when James Harden got off the airplane when he left Brooklyn? I'm pretty shocked that it's gotten to this point. Nobody, nobody has empowered James Harden more in his career than Daryl Moore. He went out and traded for him. And then not only did he build an entire team around his talents and made him the focal point of that Rockets team, which was the right decision. It led to a level of success. I mean, they didn't win a championship, but they succeeded at a pretty high level. He also paid him every single time it came around. He paid him and then he goes out and gives up a whole bunch of draft picks and Ben Simmons to get James Harden out of Brooklyn. And now here we are summer of two thousand twenty three and James Harden, Daryl Morey are no longer allies. They are now that relationship is broken, fractured, however you want to frame it. And I think look, I think Daryl Morey, to bring it full circle, he's got to stick by what he believes is best for the team. I mean, I think he's got to stop promising things if that's what he's doing. But he's got to stick by what's best for the team. And look, I disagree with you. I don't want Norman Powell. Not that Norman Powell is not a good player, but I want the flexibility. I want to look if they're going to throw Trey Mann some inspiring contracts in that mix, I'd probably consider that. But I don't want Norman Powell's contract. I want I want to be able to be able to maneuver and go out there and maybe get a max level guy via trade to fit into the cap space that fits alongside Maxie and fits alongside Embiid. So do you think the best move for them? I'm genuinely asking, do you think the best move for them moving forward with Harden is to make a trade that prioritizes flexibility next summer? Or do you think there's a trade out there for them that allows them to maybe still be a title? There's nothing like if you there's nothing because mostly because every team in the league with assets is not looking at that Sixers roster saying we want James Harden. They're looking at that Sixers roster saying we hope this continues to implode so that we can go get Joel Embiid like the Knicks are holding on to all their their assets for that handful of other teams are out there doing the exact same thing. Nobody's going to solve this problem for the Sixers. Nobody's going to give them the kind of pieces they want to to see them succeed to a point where Embiid's like, I'm cool. I'll stay here and I'll even resign here. My contract's up in a couple of years. Nobody wants that. They want this to blow up in the 76ers face so they can get Joel Embiid. And I don't I just don't see how Norman Powell and some expiring contracts, if that's even what's offered at this point. You know, there's been kind of fresh reporting. It's like the Clippers really aren't offering much of anything. Just like expiring stuff, maybe some second round capital, whatever it may be. Nothing that comes close to matching the potential productivity of James Harden. So, again, I say you bring them back. And look, this this adds a new wrinkle to everything. It makes it potentially uglier a month, month and a half from now when training camps officially open. But I don't see any other solution. I mean, this is this could be a tough year and it could be one that angers Joel Embiid. But I think Joel Embiid would be placated next summer if they use all this cap flexibility and go get him an elite shooting power forward to play alongside him or go get him an elite two guard or three man, a three and D guy to play alongside him. I think the the potential versatility that this team has cap wise flexibility should say that this team has cap wise has to be the top priority, because that's what's going to get them to a championship level. Has there been a more lose lose trade in NBA history than the Ben Simmons for James Harden? I don't think so, because this is the this is potentially blown up two franchises. I mean, the Nets got picks. I guess that makes them kind of the winner in this situation. And we'll see if Simmons can come back and give them anything. But no, I mean, I mean, those two guys, it's just while Simmons Simmons, at least you can say he's been hurt and there's been that problem. But James Harden, every time things don't go his way.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"Whether he, the way that's played out so publicly, I think that's going to add some pressure to him. And then beyond that, you have kind of the ticking clock on his health where he now has a history of getting injured, unfortunately, almost seemingly, every time he's in the postseason, that this is not like a normal star, a normal situation, quote unquote, that I think adds a layer of complexity to all this. And I keep going back to Philly not to turn this into an Embiid versus Jokic thing. It's really not that. But let's say if you really, really believe in Joel Embiid as the MVP, as the best player in basketball, and as you said, they also believe Maxie is going to take that leap up like the Nuggets didn't have a, quote unquote, second superstar. I mean, Jamal Murray was fantastic, played superstar level in the playoffs, no question about it. But he has never been consistently at the level that James Harden was when the Sixers acquired him, right, as his former MVP. Why not bet on Maxie and get surrounding pieces and let Embiid be Embiid? That's the way I would look at it if I was Daryl Morey. And listen, it's much easier said than done to trade a guy like that for kind of, quote unquote, spare parts or role players. But that's the model I'm looking at, because the way the league is shaking out right now, we don't have we don't have these very top heavy teams. I mean, outside of Phoenix, which is the complete opposite end of the spectrum, entirely top heavy. And I don't think anyone, frankly, believes in them right now. That that's how I would look at it. If I were Daryl is we kind of saw a team win with this model. And I don't know that trying to wait for the perfect hard and trade a second time is worth the potential fallout that could happen with Embiid. You know what I found? James Harden made these comments again at a promotional stop over in China. At the end of his statement, he asked any other questions. And look, I don't know who was there. I doubt there were, you know, traditional like kids. I don't. But there are some people I doubt there was traditional media that was there. But if there was the follow up be what he lie about. And that's what I'm most interested in. I really am like, of course, from an NBA perspective, I'd be interested in as well. You know, the NBA, you know, this is becoming a problem for the league. I mean, the NBA finally stood up and said something when Damian Lillard's agent was out there, you know, effectively confirming all the reporting that Lillard only wanted to play in Miami. Now you get James Harden publicly saying he'll never play for the 76ers as long as Daryl Morey is the general manager, a player under contract next year is not says he's not going to play as long as as the GM is still the GM of that team saying he's a liar. Well, as soon as James Harden's back from his tour, if I'm Adam Silver, if I'm, you know, Joe Dumars, the people involved in those decisions in the front office, I'd want to sit down with James Harden. Say, what do you lie about? Did he promise you a new deal? Well, let's talk about it. Were there text messages? Were there I mean, 76 has already got investigated for this crap. Like they've already you know, this has already become a thing for them, a problem for them in the very past. For what it's worth. This was this was the speculation last summer when he took the discount. It was like, why would he take the discount? James Harden before then had always taken the top dollar. He couldn't make it work in Oklahoma City because they offered him below market value, goes to Houston and every single year he gets topped off. The guys made like a quarter of a billion dollars in his playing career just off of salary alone. Like he doesn't take discounts. That was shocking. Like, why would he? I mean, good for him. Like, take less money. P.J. Tucker comes on board. You give yourself a better chance to win. But that was out of that was unusual. That was out of character for James Harden and taking less money at this point.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"He'll forget about the video game you gave him on his birthday. Wow, thanks grandpa. But he'll never forget how you invested in his future with the U-NEST app. Wow, thanks grandpa. Don't just give them any gift. Give them a gift that can grow with them. Invite grandparents and family friends to contribute to your child's future with the U-NEST app. U-NEST is an investment account for kids that makes it easy to gift funds that can be used for college tuition, their first home, and more just by sharing the link or include a U-NEST QR code on party invitations for birthdays and holidays. For a limited time, download the U-NEST app and use the code IHEART50 at sign up to receive a $50 bonus when you fund your account. That's code IHEART50 when you sign up at UNEST.CO for a $50 bonus. See terms and conditions at U-NEST.CO. Are you the kind of student who's all in until lights out? Then you're gonna love this best in class soundbar deal. The Vizio V-Series all-in-one soundbar is now on sale for just $99. Whether you're blasting your favorite tracks or podcasts on the IHEART radio app or taking your TV's audio to the next level, you can do it all for less than $100 with Vizio, America's number one soundbar brand. And with its space-saving design, this soundbar is 100% dorm room ready for a complete entertainment experience. Get yours now at Walmart and Walmart.com. I think James Harden is counting on is this whole withholding services clause here where he knows the Sixers don't want him beyond next season. They don't want him on the books. They want the cap flexibility that comes with the $35 million. They want the $35 million James Harden is making next year to come off the books. And they want the nearly $40 million that Tobias Harris is making next year to come off the books. They want to go into next summer with $70 plus million in cap space so that they can either sign or acquire a player that fits better next to Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, which are two very good building blocks. Joel Embiid very much in his prime right now, will be for the next couple of years. Tyrese Maxey, not even hitting his prime yet, is still getting there. And there are a lot of people I talked to in the NBA that believe that with James Harden gone, Tyrese Maxey goes to another level, maybe an all-star level. So the Sixers don't want Harden beyond next year. And Harden may be counting on the Sixers not wanting to risk him sitting out, him not being a free agent next summer and being back on their books for one more year. But that feels like a long shot. Like, and what, if Harden's on the books for another year after not getting paid this season, he's going to be a free agent age 36. I don't really understand how that works for James Harden either. I don't think that's a realistic possibility. It's not, but I'm looking at it. I'm trying to point out, I'm trying to point out what Harden's plays here are going to be. Because if he shows up and pulls a Houston in Philadelphia, where he's kind of just going through the motions, puts on the fat suit, kind of goes through the motions. Meanwhile, I saw his agent was out there saying Harden's in the best shape of his life and is going to be an MVP next year. Take that for what it's worth. But he can't do that because he goes, he does that and goes into the summer of 2024. He's a mid-level exception guy, because nobody's going to want him. Nobody's going to want him after he does that again. And he's also going to be a diminished version of himself. So this is a long way of kind of saying, whatever the Sixers plan was before James Harden came out and said what he said about Daryl Morey, it has to be the exact same now. I don't think they change one bit. I don't think they should feel bullied by this. I think no matter how uncomfortable it gets for James Harden and the 76ers come late September, they've got to deal with it. Because I think you've got to bet that James Harden, because he wants the money next year, is going to play to the best of his abilities. And you know what? I know everything is about, you've got to have a perfect situation in order for a franchise to work. That didn't used to always be the case. You used to always have coaches that didn't like players. GMs didn't like coaches. It just happens that way sometimes. Daryl Morey's not around the team every day. He's not the head coach. He's not another player. He's a GM, travels with the team from time to time and operates out of the Sixers front office the rest of the time. So you can envision a scenario where Daryl's not around as much maybe as he used to be and the 76ers still weren't because I go back to what I believed in the last couple of weeks, I've started to talk to scouts going into next season.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"So, James Harden, like you said, he used to thread the needle. He is best, his only way to get that deal next summer is to be traded to a team that wants to keep him and has his bird rights. Because as a free agent, he's not going to get that money. I mean, I wrote this because I think you wrote the piece, correct me if I'm wrong, like the Sixers, your point is that the Sixers can't mess up this trade, like they have to kind of wait out on Harden. My thinking was, and I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I would trade Harden as soon as possible if only not to do what this exact situation could possibly do Joel Embiid. Because Embiid has hinted this summer that he's not necessarily committed to staying in Philadelphia his entire career if they're not able to put a championship team around him. I don't know that you want to put Embiid through another months long circus that you did with Ben Simmons just because Embiid was able to handle it well the first time doesn't mean he should have to go through it again. This is going to sound crazy, but I keep saying it like if I got Norm Powell in pieces back from the Clippers, if I'm Philly, I really considered doing that trade because I think I'm still competitive this year and I still have some of my caps for next year. So you think about that for a second, but I want to read this quote to you, Chris because I think this is really interesting and I want to get your reaction to it because I would say over the last few years, I've heard from players around the league kind of off the record that, you know I think Darryl's negotiating style, his transaction style while I think has been effective as a general manager, I think some players find it a bit grating. I know many players around the league who were kind of very upset with the way the Carmelo Anthony situation ended at Houston. For example, this is a quote Chris Paul gave me on the record by the way and I think it's very relevant to the situation. I just, it's very funny to me and I'm curious your reaction to it. This is what he said to me in 2019, the year he was with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He said, after the season, I reached out to the Rockets and said, hey, if you guys want to go in a different direction, let us know now that way we can figure something out. They said, we're not trying to go in a different direction. Darryl asked me if I wanted to go to Oklahoma City. I said, no, and he said, we won't trade you there because you chose to come to us from LA. He doesn't owe me anything but that's where the whole communication thing was. I do think that there is kind of a mounting, again, we're not privy to these conversations. That's Chris Paul's side of what happened obviously. So take it with a grain of salt but I just found that very relevant today and very interesting when Harden comes out and says Darryl Morey's a liar. Well, I don't, look, if Darryl is out there and use the Chris Paul, he referenced Chris Paul and if he's doing the same thing with James Harden where he's telling him one thing and operating in a completely different way, that's a problem. That's something you shouldn't do. You should be transparent at all times with players. And in today's NBA, you can't commit to anything. You can't say, well, absolutely, possibly not going to do something because too much can change in an instant. And I referenced Danny Ainge all the time. I kind of view NBA front offices through how he operated because I watched that up close for a number of years in Boston. And a GM doesn't owe a player anything. The player gets the contract and because of the collective bargaining agreement, a player is subject to being traded at any given time. What he's not subject to being is having his money taken away. It's a guaranteed contract that he gets. So if you're going to trade Paul Pierce or Kevin Garnett or whoever, that's just the way it goes. You've got to do what's best for your team. And Darryl Morey has to do what's best for his team. Why are more senior citizens using marijuana? Can football ever be safe? And what's it really like for thousands of migrants traveling the dangerous Darien Gap? Every Sunday night on CNN, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper takes a deep dive into unique and compelling stories like these. One whole story, one whole hour. Featuring journalists like Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Christiane Amanpour, and more. Watch The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper Sunday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern on CNN or listen on the iHeartRadio app.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"It just feels like now the natural evolution of where these trade requests have gone, players are just pushing the envelope, seeing what they can do. I know now we're obviously getting these reports, Harden plans to make it uncomfortable, he doesn't want to show up. People posting excerpts of the CBA, I don't think he's literally not going to show up and just forfeit a year of eligibility, so to speak, but I think he's making it pretty clear to Philly, as we've discussed on this podcast, was he gonna kind of just deal with the contract stuff and play and try to play his way out of Philly, hope that he can endear himself to teams that way? That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems he's gonna try to make this as uncomfortable and painful as Philly as possible. So James Harden calls Daryl Morey a liar, and that can only mean one of two things. One, it's that Daryl Morey did not follow through on a under-the-table agreement to give James Harden a big deal after James Harden took a cut rate last summer for the 76. If you remember, James Harden, it took like 10, $12 million less than what he could have made to return to Philadelphia, which gave the 76ers room to sign some of the guys they did, most notably P.J. Tucker. So it could mean that there was a deal in place or an agreement in place to make things right for James Harden this off season. And if that's the case, that's a big-time problem for Philadelphia because the NBA does not look kindly on those types of under-the-table agreements. One of the most famous ones, of course, was Joe Smith with the Minnesota Timberwolves. That one accosted the Timberwolves draft picks. I believe Kevin McHale was suspended for a period of time for doing it. That was a bad situation and one that could be big trouble for the Sixers and for Daryl Morey. The other potential reason could be that Daryl Morey, there was an understanding that if James Harden opted in, Daryl Morey would find a way to trade him. That wouldn't get the Sixers in trouble with the league, but I'd like to learn more about what that conversation may have been like. And look, I can tell you, the 76ers have been trying to deal James Harden. They have engaged a number of teams, including the Clippers, about James Harden. They have found the market to be soft at best. It is not a good market for James Harden right now. The teams that are interested, including the Clippers, have offered very little, in part because they know that the 76ers have virtually no leverage, in part because James Harden, who is either just turned 34 or is gonna turn 34 at some point, doesn't have the kind of game he used to have and is the same kind of player and only has one year left in his contract. And if you are gonna bring him back, you're gonna have to bring him back at a big dollar figure. So there has not been a strong market for James Harden at all, which has led the Sixers to the conclusion that it's best for them to bring James Harden back, at least for the first part of next season. Obviously, James Harden has a problem with that and he chose now to voice those concerns. Now, James Harden, Rohan, is trying to thread the tightest of needles because he wants to find a way out of Philadelphia, but doing it in ways that he's done in years past. And this is the point where we note that James Harden, when his career is over, should teach a seminar at the NBA Players Union, maybe it's an unpublicized seminar, but how to get out of bad situations, at least situations that you don't want. Cause he did it in Houston, he did it in Brooklyn, and now he's doing it again in Philadelphia. He can't do what he did in Houston and Brooklyn, which was, well in Houston, mail it in for multiple weeks. And in Brooklyn, submit a couple of games, including the last one, which was like the ultimate white flag, that game in Sacramento, where he made like four shots in 30 something minutes. He can't do that because James Harden is also trying to convince teams that next summer at age 35, he's gonna be worth a two or three year deal at top dollar. So he's trying to thread the tightest of needles. Any thoughts on how he does it? Any thoughts on how this gets accomplished in a way that James Harden wants accomplished? That is the question. And the more I think about this, the more it feels like a mutually assured destruction type of situation, because I think the more he acts this way, for better or for worse, I guess I shouldn't even use that phrase. I think it's for worse, because I think teams are getting to the point where the juice is not worth the squeeze with James Harden. He might give you great regular season play, but I don't think teams are looking at him as the type of player that takes you over and brings you a championship at this point, considering his playoff struggles the last few years, the way he performed in that Boston series. He had two big games, but otherwise had some really, really ineffective moments and serious struggles in that series. I don't think teams are lining up to pay James Harden. Beyond that, you look at the teams with cap space next summer, none of them make sense for James Harden. The one team with cap space that was floated out this summer was Houston. Credit to you, Mannix, you called this. You were willing to bet your career on the idea, but he wasn't going back to Houston. Not only did he not go, they gave that money to Fred Van Vliet. They had max money. They said, let's give it to Fred Van Vliet instead.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"He'll forget about the video game you gave him on his birthday. Wow, thanks, Grandpa. But he'll never forget how you invested in his future with the Unest app. Wow, thanks, Grandpa. The Unest app makes it easy for grandparents and family friends to give funds to a child's investment account for a limited time. Download the Unest app and use the code IHEART50 at sign up to receive a $50 bonus when you fund your account. That's code IHEART50 when you sign up at UNEST.CO for a $50 bonus. See terms and conditions at UNEST.CO. It's the crossover, Sports Illustrated's NBA show. Breaking down the latest news, rumors, and everything in between. Here's your hosts, Chris Mannix and Rohan Nagraini. This is the Crossover NBA Podcast. I'm Chris Mannix, joined this week by Rohan Nagraini for a mini podcast. They're both powering down a little bit, the month of August, vacation, whatnot, getting ready for training camps to open in September. But we did have some news in the NBA. Some, I don't know what to call this news. Some powerful words, some powerful, a powerful statement from one James Harden, who was over on a promotional tour over in China when he said this. Darryl Maury is a liar, and I will never be a part of the organization that he's a part of. Let me say that again. Darryl Maury is a liar, and I will never be a part of the organization that he's a part of. So Rohan, putting on a shelf for a minute the interesting location of James Harden's comics, which took place in China. Playing to his crowd. Playing to his crowd. China, of course, where Darryl Maury is not the most popular figure because of an earlier tweet years ago now about Hong Kong. Putting that aside for a moment, what did you make of James Harden choosing mid-August on a promotional tour in China to reveal at least a portion of why he no longer wants to play in Philadelphia? It's pretty incredible. Chris, you've been doing this longer than I have. Every time I think we've kind of seen everything when it comes to trade requests, like we were talking earlier, like what Damian Lillard doing this summer, pretty aggressive, his agent at least kind of publicly telling the Miami Herald, I believe, like, Damian really only wants to go to Miami. That was taking on a life of its own. This is really shocking to me on so many levels, only because I think Darryl Maury is probably the biggest James Harden fan, or at least seemed to be the biggest James Harden fan left in the NBA. He's kind of been James' biggest champion over the years. That to see those two have their relationship end up here is pretty shocking to me.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
A highlight from James Harden's VS. Daryl Morey
"He'll forget about the video game you gave him on his birthday. Wow, thanks, Grandpa. But he'll never forget how you invested in his future with the Unest app. Wow, thanks, Grandpa. The Unest app makes it easy for grandparents and family friends to give funds to a child's investment account for a limited time. Download the Unest app and use the code IHEART50 at sign up to receive a $50 bonus when you fund your account. That's code IHEART50 when you sign up at UNEST .CO for a $50 bonus. See terms and conditions at UNEST .CO. It's the crossover, Sports Illustrated's NBA show. Breaking down the latest news, rumors, and everything in between. Here's your hosts, Chris Mannix and Rohan Nagraini. This is the Crossover NBA Podcast. I'm Chris Mannix, joined this week by Rohan Nagraini for a mini podcast. They're both powering down a little bit, the month of August, vacation, whatnot, getting ready for training camps to open in September. But we did have some news in the NBA. Some, I don't know what to call this news. Some powerful words, some powerful, a powerful statement from one James Harden, who was over on a promotional tour over in China when he said this. Darryl Maury is a liar, and I will never be a part of the organization that he's a part of. Let me say that again. Darryl Maury is a liar, and I will never be a part of the organization that he's a part of. So Rohan, putting on a shelf for a minute the interesting location of James Harden's comics, which took place in China. Playing to his crowd. Playing to his crowd. China, of course, where Darryl Maury is not the most popular figure because of an earlier tweet years ago now about Hong Kong. Putting that aside for a moment, what did you make of James Harden choosing mid -August on a promotional tour in China to reveal at least a portion of why he no longer wants to play in Philadelphia? It's pretty incredible. Chris, you've been doing this longer than I have. Every time I think we've kind of seen everything when it comes to trade requests, like we were talking earlier, like what Damian Lillard doing this summer, pretty aggressive, his agent at least kind of publicly telling the Miami Herald, I believe, like, Damian really only wants to go to Miami. That was taking on a life of its own. This is really shocking to me on so many levels, only because I think Darryl Maury is probably the biggest James Harden fan, or at least seemed to be the biggest James Harden fan left in the NBA. He's kind of been James' biggest champion over the years. That to see those two have their relationship end up here is pretty shocking to me.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from Part 1: USAs World Cup Collapse, Basebrawls, Jets Optimism, Life in The G-League and The OC 20 Years Later | with Gabe York and Zoe Simmons
"Coming up, an unexpected two -part podcast cameo from me. It's next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we turned over Sean Fennesey and Amanda Dobbins' big picture feed to Brian Raftery. It's a narrative podcast called, Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War. You can find it on the big picture starting on Tuesday. And it is an idea I'm really excited about because it came from a class that I did as a senior in college in 1992. Me and my friend Horgs talked a movies professor into doing a special Vietnam War movies class where we watched basically every Vietnam War movie that had been made up to 1992 and then tried to write a big picture term paper about it. And the thing that was really fascinating about that class and something that stuck with me was just that whole concept of Hollywood reinventing the entire Vietnam experience under the premise of, Did We Get to Win This Time? So we got Brian involved and he turned the idea into an awesome, awesome podcast. I even went and dug up the term paper that I wrote 31 years ago. I thought it was gonna be horrendous. It wasn't bad. I was kind of proud of myself, retroactively 31 years later. Anyway, Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War. It is gonna be in the big picture podcast starting on Tuesday. So that's one piece of business. Second, new rewatchables on Monday night. It is the 300th movie that we've done. It's a special one. We're doing National Lampoon's Vacation. It was time. Meet Chris Ryan, Van Lathan. Yeah, and Van was pushing for it because we wanted to do Christmas Vacation during the holidays and you can't do Christmas Vacation. If we do National Lampoon's Vacation, super fun. Can't wait for you to listen to it. And we'll be running the video at some point on the YouTube channel, youtube .com slash Bill Simmons, where we put up a whole bunch of rewatchables podcasts in case you missed it. Boogie Nights is up there now. Goodfellas, Independence Day, just a slew of them. So if you're bored and you wanna throw on some rewatchables and watch us make fun of each other, there you go. Last but not least, I don't wanna say this is the most important, but it's certainly the thing I spent the most time on. Our documentary that we did about the G League with Religion of Sports and Ringer Films, we combined, and it is premiering on Tuesday, August 8th. It is called Destination NBA, A G League Odyssey. It's really good. We immersed ourselves into the G League season. We followed Scoot Henderson, Gabe York, Ryan Terrell, Mason Jones, and Denzel Valentine. And the big question was, what is this world like? What's it like to be in the G League? And I am really proud of where we landed with it. And we even have, much later in this podcast, Gabe York is gonna come on. He's one of the five that we followed, and he's gonna tell us what it's like as you're holding on to your dream in your late 20s. We try not to spoil the doc too much with Gabe, but I really liked him. He's probably the guy that jumps out of the doc in the most sympathetic way. So look forward for you to watch it. It is prime video, Tuesday, August 8th, Destination NBA. A G League Odyssey. You love basketball, just watch it, it's good. So there you go. This is gonna be part one of a two -part podcast. Gabe is coming up later. My daughter Zoe Simmons is coming up later because we did a whole bunch of OC stuff on the Prestige TV podcast. I was even on two of the episodes. But I ended up watching season one of the OC. And my daughter was watching with us and loved the show. And she was born a year and a half after it premiered. So me and her broke down season one from the perspective of what is it like when somebody 18 watches the OC, a show that is now two decades old. The anniversary was actually August 6th. And what she liked, what she didn't like, what people aren't doing anymore for her kind of audience. And we just dove into it. So that is much later. First, coming out of the gate, I'm gonna open a six -pack because we have a lot to discuss over the past three weeks, all the stuff I missed. So that's gonna be part one. And then part two, which is gonna go up later on Sunday night, me and Rossello doing this evergreen idea that we've always wanted to do. And this seemed like the perfect time because nothing's happening in basketball. So that's gonna be part two later tonight. Part one coming up. First, our friends from ProJax. What's up? All right, I'm taping this. It is Sunday afternoon Pacific time. And I'm gonna open a six -pack. There's a bunch of stories in sports and culture that happened over the last three weeks. I was just writing stuff down, things that would have been fun for podcast segments. I was just like, man, I wish I could have given my thoughts on that. Just gonna rip through them. So I have six and then maybe a couple bonus ones at the end. The first one, the biggest one, was the US women's soccer team, which lost today in penalty kicks to Sweden, scored zero goals in the last two games, scored one goal in the last three games, and that was off a corner kick. You could feel from the beginning that something was off with this team. It was all the ways. You knew in a checklist of what are the red flags? There were just red flags galore. And the only person who was really calling it out in time over and over again was Carli Lloyd, who was doing the Fox studio show. And she was the one person in the horror movie who knows the house is haunted. And everyone's like, shut up. You're not being patriotic. You just wish you were still on the team. She was right. She was right from the get -go. This team, you could see it before the Vietnam game when it was like, look at the new Nike suits. Look at these new suits. And they're all like styling as they head into the locker room. And they're running commercials. And every player has a commercial. There's players who've never done anything of that commercials. And the vibe was just off. They only beat Vietnam three -nothing in a bracket where goal differential was gonna be super -duper important. And that was a huge red flag. And we did the usual thing that we've been doing since 2019, 2015 of, oh, well, they almost scored a bunch of times. Oh, well, if that had gone in or some bad luck. There was just an arrogance to this team. Like they were carrying themselves like the defending champs, the same way like the Denver Nuggets would go into next NBA season. Like we're the champs. I was like, yeah, you are the champs because the season just happened. The World Cup happened four years ago. Everyone's four years older or wasn't on the team. And you could see they wanted to build the team instead of around the identity of, here are these new up and coming awesome stars that are gonna be in your life. They were really latching on to Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe. Alex Morgan's 34, Megan Rapinoe's 37. I think one of the differences between the discourse with women's sports and men's sports is that in men's sports, we grasp for angles. And if somebody is disappointing in some way, we really go nuts. Like think of how James Harden's been treated over the last 12 years. So he's one of the 35 best players ever and has taken just an incredible amount of shit. Oh my God, the playoffs, look at his game log. Oh, he choked again. Alex Morgan, who scored twice in her first two games in the World Cup in 2011, she scored once in 2015 in seven games. She scored six times in 2019, five against Thailand in a game that was 13 to nothing, one in the other six, and then scored nothing in the four games this time around. If you take away that Thailand game, she has scored two goals in the last 17 World Cup games. This is the striker. This is the one who's supposed to be the most dangerous player in the field, who's supposed to produce goals. And she hasn't produced goals since the mid 2010s on the national level. And yet it's Alex Morgan. She was supposed to be the next one. We got to keep propping her up and pretending she's a superstar. She's not a superstar. She's really honestly never been a superstar. She certainly hasn't been as impactful as somebody like Abby Wambach was. So you have the team built around her. She's got to play. They play her the entire game, game two, the entire game, game three. She plays like 95 minutes in this game today, and they don't score goals. And the announcers just won't talk about it. It's like being on an AYSO team that your kid's on, and the coach is playing somebody at striker, and everyone's like, why don't they play Sally at striker instead of the coach's daughter? It's like, oh, you know, the coach's daughter. She's got to play there. So you have that, and then you have Rapinoe, who's 37 years old, who's just, unfortunately, great career, legendary, true legend, huge big time player. And when you hit your late 30s in soccer, it's a wrap. She looked like Yudana Rapinoe, not big Rapinoe, and comes out for the last 25 minutes of this game and can't do anything, and then misses the penalty kick. That's the thing. If you're beholden to past performance, you can't expect to succeed in the moment. And I did feel like, what were this team's strengths? Speed. They had Sophia Smith, who really was bad the last three games on the left wing. Like, she just, she couldn't even connect passes. Trinity Rodman, who's a beast. Lynn Williams, who's super fast and athletic and had some really nice moments the last two games. And then Alyssa Thompson, who's the prodigy, who's the, you know, potential tiger or LeBron of this team. 18 years old, best high school player I've ever had. They won't even throw her out there. But this was not a team that could connect passes. They weren't, like, especially creative. The coaching was just bizarre, and we'll never see that guy again. But it was like, the one thing they did have was speed, especially the forwards, and they just threw that away. And Alex, you know, couldn't do anything. So now they're out. It's the most disappointing finish of the last 25 years for the women's team. And it reminds me in a lot of ways that 2004 Olympic basketball team that we had, the USA team. And I tweeted this, I think after the second game, because that was a team that was between eras, like this one was, where all the best players on that 2014, the ones in their primes, weren't that good, except for Duncan. And Duncan was completely banged up. He'd played so many NBA games the last couple of years. I think his knee was hurt. But, you know, it was Iverson and Marbury. The talent, it just was a between eras. And you had guys on the bench, like LeBron and Carmelo and Wade, who were four years away. Kobe wasn't on the team. And it just felt generationally, like we caught that team in the wrong time. The style was wrong. And we learned all these lessons and we moved on. 2008, we win. There's a documentary about it. But this team felt like it was between eras. The Alex Morgan, Rapinoe era, which was basically done. And then you have this era coming up with Rodman and Sophia Smith and Alyssa. And, you know, it's just four years from now, we'll probably be fine. But they need to re -imagine this. And I think if you're gonna learn any lesson from this, it doesn't matter what happened four years ago. It's the World Cup. It matters what's happening now. So that's one thing. Second thing. So Jaylen Brown gets this huge contract, $304 million. Some people seem surprised that it was that much money. Chris Ryan even took a shot at it when we did our library watchables. Hurt my feelings a tiny bit. Mainly because I didn't really have a comeback. Rosella did something on his podcast about how this actually makes sense. This amount of money, when you think of how the salary cap has climbed just since 2015, and it's gonna keep climbing. And there's this world you can go into where you think about just how much everything is gonna cost in the NBA four or five years from now, that Jaylen Brown at $70 million isn't actually gonna be that intimidating. The same way we feel about Tobias Harris for $40 million now, or Klay Thompson, $40 million now. Yeah, you don't really wanna pay $40 million for Klay Thompson, but you can survive it. And I think that's gonna be where the Celtics land with Jaylen. Here's why they had to do it. They're the favorites on FanDuel right now. They're plus 470. The thing that made them the most special and has made them the most special for the last five, six years is the Jaylen Brown -Jason Tatum combo. They've been incredibly successful. The team itself has made five conference finals in the last seven years. They came super close to making the finals last year. I have now gone into the what if zone with that Celtics team where what if Tatum doesn't hurt his ankle on the first play? Do we beat Miami? They were close is the point. And when you're that close, you can't fuck around. This is not Bradley Beal resigning with Washington for 50 million a year when everybody knows you can't get past the eight seed with Bradley Beal. This is different. You're trying to win a title. You're trying to keep all your optionality open. The thing that's a little scary about it, nobody seems to totally know if he wants to be in Boston. This is something we've discussed on this pod. It's been floating out there. The fact that he wasn't happy about landing in the Kevin Durant trade rumors a couple years ago. And just in general, where the league is now, where as Woj called it, the transfer portal, where people get their contract first and then they decide what they want to do. And I think for the Celtics, they know they bought themselves a year with Jalen and they are still one of the favorites to win the title. And a lot of it's going to depend on health and Porzingis. You could also, I don't want to make the case, but you might be able to make the case that Brown had a fucked up hand last year. Cause he did. Cause he sliced his hand open. It was bleeding even during the Philly series. And maybe that was why his ball handling went sideways. Listen, you got to do the contract. It just breaks your brain. I remember a million years ago, Sports Illustrated and Inside Sports say every year they would have like a salary issue. And they would talk about these guys are making $1 million a year. And it seemed like so much money. And now where we're heading with the money, plus the NBA is the meteorites deal. The moment any of these guys becomes unhappy, what do you do? Because you're paying Jalen, let's say you're paying him 55 million a year. Plus he is the trade kicker, which the team has to pay. Right? So if he decides after a year, you know what? I'm tired of being the scapegoat. Everybody loves Jason. I'm like the middle brother of this team. I want my own team. I want to go to Houston or Atlanta. You got to trade me. What are the Celtics going to do? On top of who would want out, you don't have a lot of options and you turn into what the situation Portland's in with Deem. And then on top of it, it's so much money. It's impossible to get any sort of a fair trade for the guy. So they had to do it. And optionality the that comes out of it is frightening. I remember in the early 2000s, when the first time the contracts kind of went nuts and you would see that people get signing like six -year, $100 million deals, seven -year, $110 million deals. And the Celtics really, really stupidly traded for Vin Baker. One of the worst trades of the last 30 years for Boston Sports. A trade so bad, you knew it instantaneously. And I wrote a piece that you can probably find somewhere in the ESPN archives about it, where I compared it to the end of Thelma Louise when Harvey Keitel is running toward the cliff trying to stop the car from going off the cliff. That's how I thought about the Vin Baker trade when it happened. Then it happens and you just had this salary albatross. It's a salary cap league. And you're like, wow, we just threw away 20 % of our salary cap on this trade. There's going to be a couple of those that are just franchise killers. And whether that leads to them bringing back the amnesty clause, who knows? I wish, I've made this, I've had this idea before. I wish that they had a rule in there that if you drafted a guy, every year that he stays in the team, you get rewarded in some way from a salary cap luxury tax type thing, right? So Jaylen was 2016 draft, this would be his eighth year. Maybe like after the seventh year, because that's usually like the third contract. The guy stays in the team, maybe each year after that, he doesn't count for 2 % of the luxury tax, up to like 30%, something like that. The point is the Warriors should be rewarded for keeping Draymond and Klay and Curry from a tax standpoint, that they were that smart to draft those guys, keep those guys together. They should be incentivized, the players, to want to stay with them because there's some luxury tax stuff that the team gets. And the team should want to be incentivized to take care of those guys because it's also beneficial to them. I just wish they figured out some version of that rule. Anyway, Jaylen was always signing for $304 million. Talk to me in a year, I'll keep my fingers crossed. Next thing, I missed the running back pity party. This was crazy. The running backs all got together and they were really upset about how much money they made. And I don't know what to tell you. There's too many running backs and not enough running back spots. And I don't know if you're trying to build a responsible salary cap team in a collectively bargained era, why would you spend $30 million over two years on a running back unless the running back was awesome? Nobody even wants to spend more than $11 million on running back. So I knew that this was crazy when Damien Harris, who was on the Patriots, who I thought was really good. He's maybe not an elite running back, but a good running back, right? Somebody that if he had been on the Chiefs, he easily could have started for the Chiefs. And he signed with the Bills for like one year, 2 million. And when that happened, combined with Pacheco on the Chiefs' seventh round pick, they won the Super Bowl with him. It's just, this position's devalued. I work on this player, I've been actually working on it the last couple of weeks where I try to rank the players for blue chippers, red chippers, pink chippers, honorable mention, and have this whole point system. And so quarterbacks, Mahomes, who's the alpha of that position, he's worth 10 points. And you could even see this in the point spread. If Mahomes gets hurt, the Chiefs are 10 points, nine points, whatever, less than what they would be as a favorite. They'd switch to an underdog. And you go on down the line. Jalen Hurts, I had him as an eight. I had Joe Burrow as a nine. And you go on, you keep going down, and it's like, Geno Smith's probably a two. But then you look at some of the other positions and you have to value them the same way the salary cap values them and teams value them. Guards, they aren't worth that much. Running backs, sorry, they're not worth that much. My top running back was three points because ultimately running backs don't really matter that much. In the last like five, six years, I would say Derrick Henry was the only running back that you could definitively say, this guy almost won the Super Bowl. Like he was that good. Other than that, you know, it's plug and play, quarterbacks, it's receivers. It's much harder to find the number one receiver. Every team needs one. It's much more tangible if you don't have the number one receiver. And it's much easier to just kind of scrap together the running back position. And yet people went nuts about this. We ironically had this in the NBA with centers. You know, Vucevic, who's a really good offensive player, he signed for 60 million for three years, 20 million a year. And Jaylen Brown's going to make $52 million a year. Is Jaylen Brown two and a half times better than Vucevic? No, it's just, he plays a way more important position. You can only play one center at a time. You can patch together the center position. You could have like Isaiah Hartenstein for $8 million. You could, you know, get Robert Williams for 16. You don't need to spend what Phoenix did on Eaton where they're paying $8 and $30 million a year at center. And you don't really need to do that. You kind of feel obligated if you don't want to lose the asset. But I think the NBA is going to go this way eventually where unless it is Jokic or Embiid, the center or Bam Adebayo, it's a bonus. You could argue that was already an overpay. They gave him a huge extension. The Lakers just gave Anthony Davis $60 million a year as an extension. I would argue that's a little frightening. I feel like you could patch together the center position. What really matters in basketball is having the creator. And this was the argument five years ago with Luka versus Eaton for the number one pick. And I made this argument. It was like, go look at who wins the NBA title every year. It's always the people who have the creator. There's somebody who's on the perimeter of the ball in their hands. Even Jokic, who wins the title this year, he was a creator. He's not a typical center, right? He's basically their point guard on offense who could post up. So this happened in the NBA. Nobody went nuts. And this is happening in football. And is this where football is. If you want to make the most amount of money playing in the NFL, I don't know why you would be a running back. I would be a cornerback. I would be a wide receiver. I'd be an edge rusher. But if you're a running back, you know your shelf life's probably like five, six years. You know the money is not totally gonna be there. Now they're in this, like you have people like JK Dobbins, like, I might hold out. It's like, really? You didn't barely even play in the field. Barkley said he was gonna hold out. And then, you know, probably looked at it. And the money for Barkley is like 10, 11 million. That's unfortunately the market. So you can't fix this. They collectively bargained it. And until we get to the next CBA, I don't know how you fix it. I thought it was really weird. It felt like people had nothing to talk about. And it was like, ah, let's feel bad for running backs. All right, let's take a break. And then I'm gonna finish the rest of the six pack. All right, picking up on the six pack. We're gonna talk a little more football. I talked about the running back pity party. This is a different kind of party. The Jets optimism, which has just been stunning to me over the course of July. I have Jets fans in my life. These are people that usually have no hope and are very reminiscent of the pre -2004 Red Sox fans, just assuming the worst at all times. Why does God hate us? All that stuff. And now they have this crazy optimism based on the fact that they brought in Aaron Rodgers, who I did not think was very good last year, just throwing that out there. I wouldn't say he was bad, but for Rodgers, he was bad. I mean, we thought Rodgers was, he was the reigning MVP and we thought he was still one of the five or six most impactful players in the league. And I don't wanna read stats to you for the next six minutes, but deep balls, he was bad. Turnovers, he was bad. Leadership, he was bad. And the case for Rodgers coming back would be, well, he's gonna be rejuvenated. The Jets, New York City. This is his team. He got away from Green Bay. He's got Hackett back. I get it, but he's also at an age where we've really only seen Tom Brady succeed at a high, high level at the age that Rodgers is at. I was trying to figure it out. I have my QB ratings and I had, you know, the top tier is Mahomes and Burrow and Allen and Herbert and Hertz. Those have to be the top five. Then it drops off and it's Lamar Jackson and Lawrence. And then Rodgers, probably a hair underneath him with a chance to play himself up with those guys. But from what we saw last year, I'm not ready to put him there. So he's the 10th best quarterback in the league, probably. 10th or ninth best quarterback in the league, probably. Well, they have no offensive line. And I don't understand why people keep glossing over this where it's like, hey, Rodgers and Garrett Wilson, he's one of the best receivers in the league and Breece Hall's going to come back and the defense is really good. And it's like, yeah, the offensive line is terrible. Beckton and Dwayne Brown, sure tackles again. And then you have Robert Salah as the coach, who I cannot say I thought that Jets were crisply coached last year. Whatever he was doing with Zach Wilson was insane. No idea if that guy's even a decent coach. So I'm already worried about your offensive line, the age of your quarterback, and the competency of your coach. And that's before we get into the hard knocks curse, because for some reason they're doing hard knocks, the incredible Super Bowl hype already. And then we have the schedule, which is the AFC East has just got screwed by the schedules this year. The Jets, just for quarterbacks in 17 games, they got to play Josh Allen twice, they got to play Mahomes, Herbert, Hertz, Dak Prescott, and Deshaun Watson. And then they also have to play Miami twice. We'll see what we get out of two this year. And then a really good Pats defense. And then Denver, who knows, they might be rejuvenated. So Danny Dimes, they have to play him. It is a brutal schedule, so you have that. And then on top of everything else, you're the Jets. I was there with the Red Sox before 2004, and this is probably just as bad, where you just think the worst possible things can happen is all the time. You're not allowed to have optimism when you're Jets fans. You can be cautiously optimistic. There was an entire Curb Your Enthusiasm episode once, season 10, episode seven, about being a Jets fan. And it was called, I think, the ugly section. Nick Kroll was the maitre d'. And part of the episode was about, he would put these people in different sections of the restaurant, depending on how attractive they were. But there was this other plot, Larry's buddy who loved the Jets, kills himself. And Larry becomes convinced it was because of the Jets, that the Jets killed his friend. This was only a couple of years ago. So now they get Aaron Rodgers, and everything's good. And they're gonna win the Super Bowl. I don't see it, guys. I don't wanna step on my football stuff too much, but I'd be shocked. And Lombardi points out the defense that everybody's ready to compare to the 85 Bears. Lombardi said they had two turnovers over the last eight games last season. So that means something too. I am dubious, to say the least. If you're gonna tell me a tortured franchise actually turns it around this year, I want a tortured franchise that doesn't have expectations. Because the Lions are another one. Everybody's ready to put them in the Super Bowl or close. And the only case for them is just pretty explosive offense. They couldn't stop anybody last year. And the NFC is terrible. But that's another one where is that a fan base that should be super excited and have a ton of hype? The one that's kind of lurking that fits in this group is the Browns. Because the Browns are actually super talented. They're in a winnable division. Burroughs already hurt. And I think they're four to one to win the AFC North on FanDuel, something like that. Their over -under is, I think it climbed up.
AP News Radio
Tatum sets Game 7 record with 51 points, Celtics beat 76ers 112-88
"A historic game 7 performance by Jayson Tatum has the Boston Celtics headed back to the Eastern Conference Finals. Tatum scored an NBA game 7 record 51 points and the Celtics blew out the 76ers one 12 to 88 to advance to the Conference Finals for the 5th time in 7 seasons. Just being in another game 7, being able to come back home in front of our fans, I was really excited. Just for the moment. Tobias Harris led Philly with 19 points, Joel embiid scored just 15 points and James Harden was held to 9. Boston host Miami to open the Conference Finals Wednesday. Gethin kuba, Boston.
AP News Radio
Tatum's 4th-quarter 3s push Celtics past 76ers 95-86; force Game 7
"The Celtics have earned the right to host a game 7 in the Eastern Conference Semifinals by defeating the 76ers 95 86. Jason Tatum was zero for 6 from three point range before hitting two straight late in the game. The first pudding Boston had 84 83. Besides not falling and things just not necessarily going your way and you want it, you want it so bad. But trying to stay present is trying to stay in the moment, try and do other things. Marcus smarts 22 points led to seltzer, who hosts game 7 on Sunday. Joel embiid and tyrese Maxie each had 26 points and James Harden 13, but the rest of the sixers combined for just 21. I'm Dave ferry.
The Eric Metaxas Show
This Metric Determines the True Pro-Life Stance of GOP Candidates
"I'm talking to John's mirac. John. Again, you've written another article at stream dot org. This one is a little even more disturbing as far as I'm concerned. Let's talk about that one. Yeah, there's a heroic pro life activist named reverend James Harden. And he runs compass care, which is a chain of pregnancy centers that help women save their babies. He his center has been one of the ones most violently attacked by pro abortion activists by James revenge. He decided to do an objective metric to determine how pro life various Republican candidates are. Now that's interesting, right? There's an objective metric. It's not just a matter of arguments. We can actually do the numbers. How could you possibly do the numbers? Well, what Hardin did was he took the proposals, the pro life laws endorsed by various candidates who are running or probably running for president from Nikki Haley to Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis. And he determined how many abortions would be stopped if their laws passed. If they got everything they wanted in terms of federal legislation, what percentage of abortions that are currently perfectly legal would be prevented. And it's called the hardened abortion compromise scale. HARD EN abortion compromised scale. And my friend Jason Jones wrote about it at the stream. The title is, are GOP candidates pro life pro choice or pro grift. Now, by pro grift, we mean people who want to say their pro life, but in fact, what they mean is, I don't want abortions in my town. I don't want to abortion clinics in Texas. Let there be abortion clinics in the airports in California. Let the federal government send abortion pills through the mail to every state in the union, but I want to feel good about myself by saying we've closed a few planned parenthoods in my state.
AP News Radio
The latest in sports
"AP sports, I'm Bruce Morton, high drama in Philadelphia with a sixers series with Boston stands at two two. James Harden's hoop sent the game to overtime, then his three ball with 18 seconds left gave Philip a one 16 one 15 victory. I'm a competitor like I always want to win always want to be aggressive, I always want to do things to contribute to winning. That's just me. In the west, the nuggets met the sons. George Tanner has the story from Phoenix. Devin Booker and Kevin Durant each had 36 points as the sons that he had the nuggets one 29 one 24 to tie their Western Conference semifinal series at two victories apiece. Landry shamit had 19 off the bench, including 5, three pointers. The corolla jokic led Denver with a career in playoff I 53 points. Both series resumed with game 5 on Tuesday. Hockey, the Devils pulled within two games to one by thumping Carolina 8 to four. Jack Hughes, who led the way by scoring two goals and helping on two others was glad to be on home ice. They took it to us. When they were at home for two games, so we wanted to come home and match that same energy in, you know? We did a really good job. The Panthers have a three games to none lead over Toronto. Sam Reinhardt came through with the overtime goal as Florida prevailed three to two, and the kraken went up two games to one by pounding Dallas 7 to two. Baseball, the rays ran their major league best record to 28 and 7 by walking off the Yankees in ten innings 8 7. Meanwhile, the top team in the national league flexed its muscles when the braves got past the Orioles. Atlanta first baseman Matt Olson said it was nice to take a series from a quality opponent. Yeah, they're obviously off to a really good start. And it's played some tight games a series, so good to battle out that one today for the series win. Baltimore has the American League's second best mark at 22 and 12. Bruce Morton, AP sports
AP News Radio
Harden makes winning 3 in OT, 76ers tie series with Celtics
"James Harden in the three point basket with 19 seconds left in the overtime to give the 7 8 sixers a one 16 one 15 went over the Celtics in game four of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Hardin's basket was 16.7 nothing regulation tied to game at one O 7 his game winner enabled the sixers even the series at two games apiece. My friend and today was a door to high for us, you know what I mean? So we found what we found a way to win. And I saw that matter as opposed to hard and finished with 42 points Joel then being at a 34 Jason Tatum had 24 for Boston. Michael luongo, Philadelphia.
AP News Radio
The Latest in Sports.
"ESports, I'm check Freeman, riding the shooting stroke of James Harden who turned in his fight as playoff game, the Philadelphia 76ers, turned back the Boston Celtics in game one of their NBA playoff series one 19 one 15 Hardin had 45 points, including the go ahead three pointer late in the game, the sixers also played without the injured Joel embiid, they learned he was not going to play hours before game time. Out west, Denver has jumped out to a two zero series fleet on Phoenix, Nikola Jokić had 39 points, and Denver's defense holds the suns to 14 points in the fourth quarter to seal the win. On the ice 22 year old Swiss goaltender Akira schmid led the New Jersey Devils to a four zero shutout of the New York rangers, Schmidt had 31 saves to lead his team to the series win, Devils move on to the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the metropolitan division winning Carolina Panthers. In baseball Cleveland knocked off the New York Yankees with the late rally three to two, news off the field, the achy captain Aaron judge has been placed on the injured list with a strained right hip. Check Freeman. AP sports
AP News Radio
76ers finish sweep of Nets without Embiid in 96-88 win
"The Philadelphia 76ers overcame the absence of injured star Joel embiid as they upended the nets 96 to 88 to sweep away Brooklyn four games to zero and become the first team to advance to the second round of the playoffs. James Harden had 17 points and 11 assists while Tobias Harris led the way which 25 points. We've shown through the year different occurrences of state and weight in the look at our record on the road as well in different guys in and out of the lineup from time to time and being able to just find a way to get victories. Spencer Dinwiddie and Nick claxton had 20 and 19 points respectively for the nets who were swept in the first round for the second straight season. Mike Moriarty, New York
AP News Radio
NBA playoff action, Tampa Bay loses again
"AP sports, I'm Bruce Morton. The NBA playoffs are often running. They began with blowouts, Philadelphia got 23 points and 13 boards from James Harden in a one 21 one O one victory over Brooklyn. In Boston, the Celtics raced out to a 30 point bulge at the break and hung on for a one 12 to 99 decision over Atlanta. Meanwhile, there were late dramatics in Cleveland where the Knicks outlasted the Cavaliers one O one 97. Josh Hart's three ball with one 49 left, gave New York the lead for good. And in the west, Sacramento defeated Golden State one 26 to one 23. Baseball Tampa Bay began the season 13 and O. Now the rays are 13 and two, this after falling at Toronto 5 to two. In other American League action, winners included the tigers, guardians, Astros, Yankees, White Sox and Red Sox, among the national leaguers and the W column were the mets, Diamondbacks, braves, Phillies, pirates, and Padres. Bruce Morton AP sports
AP News Radio
Harden scores 23 as 76ers cruise past Nets 121-101 in Game 1
"James Harden notches a double double with 23 points and 13 assists to lead the 76ers past the nets one 21 one O one Hardin drilled 7 of the sixers 21 three pointers to help Philadelphia take game one of the best of 7 series. Something that I was giving us, you know what I mean? They double Joe the whole game basically, you know what I mean? Tried their best to not let him get going. He stood at 20 something, but I think he did a really good job of just making the easy passes and, you know, we knock shots down. Joel embiid had a team high 26 points shooting a perfect 11 of 11 from the free throw line. Mikhail bridges scored a game high 30 points for an ex team that turned the ball over 20 times, leading to 31 sixers points. I'm Denny cop.
AP News Radio
Harden, Embiid lead 76ers to 117-110 win over Raptors
"Joel embiid and James Harden had double doubles in the 76ers one 17 one ten win over the raptors. And beat had 25 points in 12 rebounds as he continues to take aim at an MVP award. He's playing through a nagging calf injury, Hardin had 23 points and 11 assists for the sixers who shot a blistering 77% in the first half and led by as many as 24. Toronto got within one O three one O one before a 7 O run put Philly back in control. Scotty barns dropped in 29 points and OG Anna and obie had 19 for the raptors. I'm Dave ferry.
AP News Radio
Joel Embiid sits out with sore right calf in 76ers 116-111 loss to Nuggets | UNDISPUTED
"Advantage of Joel embiid's absence while leading the nuggets past the 76ers, one 16 one 11, jokic furnished 25.17 rebounds and 12 assists in his league leading 25th triple double of the season. He didn't have to face embiid, who was kept out of the game because of a sore right calf. Jamal Murray finished with 19 points and Bruce Brown 18 for Denver. Philly also played a fourth straight game without James Harden because of an Achilles injury. Tyrese maxi scored 23 of his 29 points by halftime, helping the sixers stay close.
AP News Radio
Embiid has 36 points and 18 rebounds, 76ers top Cavs 118-109
"The 76ers made it 6 straight wins by downing the Cavaliers one 18 one O 9. Joel embiid led the way with 36 points in 18 rebounds. He also benefited from a reverse call that allowed him to avoid a 6 foul with four 12 remaining. Sixers coach Doc Rivers. I thought he'd flopped on the play. So I really didn't think that Joe would be filed out. Joe did. That's what scared me. James Harden finished with 28 points and tyrese max, he had a 23. Caris levert had a team high 24 points, and down of a Mitchell had 21 for the calves. I'm Dave ferry
AP News Radio
Embiid, Harden help 76ers cruise past Wizards 112-93
"Joel embiid and James Harden led the 76ers to their 5th win in a row, a one 1293 pounding of the wizards, and beads scored 34 points, harden added 18 with 14 assists in the wire to wire win. First of all, we did a really good job of being physical with switching. Limited in one shot and off 13 we expect the floor, draw a penetration, finish around a room, and make over shots. So just beautiful basketball. They sat out the final period with Philadelphia already up by 12. Washington fell out of a tie for the final play in slot in the east and lost for the 5th time in 6 games. I'm Dave fairy.
AP News Radio
Sixers overcome 18-point deficit to end Bucks' 16-game win streak
"The buck 16 game winning streak has ended with a one 33 one 30 loss to the 76ers. Milwaukee carried a 14 point lead into the fourth quarter before Philadelphia outscored the bucks 48 31. Bucks coach Mike budenholzer. The free throw line is three point line. You've got to be able to defend those two things. And we didn't do that in the fourth quarter. Three sixers scored more than 25 points led by James Harden's 38 ten assists and 9 rebounds. Joel embiid furnished 31 points in ten assists while tyrese Maxie added 26 points and
AP News Radio
Doncic scores 42, Irving 40 as Mavs outlast 76ers 133-126
"Luka Dončić scored 42 points Kyrie Irving had 40 as the Dallas Mavericks defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in a shootout one 33 one 26. The Mavericks connected on 25 three pointers tying a franchise record. Dallas coach Jason Kidd says Dončić and Irving set the tone for the victory. They were aggressive from the start. They didn't wait. And so as we continue to talk as a team, we can't wait. We're not in that position to wait and so those guys understand that and they set the tone. The 76ers were led by Joel embiid who had 35 points, tyrese maxi added 29, while James Harden had 27. Bob Stevens Dallas
Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"james harden" Discussed on Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"It's two in the morning. Almost done. Okay, I'm a car fanatic. eBay motors. Let's ride. I want to get to one last question today. The fun one. This one comes from Don Knapp. Shout out to Don, who sent us a bunch of questions that will probably get to over the summer. Don, the principle of Pikes Peak school of extradition expeditionary learning, why am I able to say this word? Expeditionary learning in falcon, Colorado. I don't know what expeditionary learning is, but that sounds really cool. Shout out to dawn? I would love to go on an expedition one day. Especially in a city called falcon that's sick. Anyway, Don goes, I've never been to Florida, the great state of Florida, the gunshot state, what a bummer. Which means I've never been to Orlando. I mean, come on, man. You got to go to Disney World. Why isn't Orlando the city more of a draw for NBA players? I get that the front office might have its issues, but I never hear about how great Orlando's weather is or location is. Whereas I hear a ton about Milwaukee and Minnesota and how the weather keeps reagents away. Is it just the front office? I doubt it's because Shaq made sure to get away. Chris, would you ever live in Orlando? No. I'm long winded, but let me just keep it short there. I actually think you said the person's name is Don. I like the question. I kind of feel like you're more likely to have this question if you've never been there. Because yes, I think Orlando like on the surface sounds intriguing. Yeah, on the surface, I mean, not even on the surface. I think it's right there, neck and neck with New York every year for the most visited city. The biggest tourist city. It is the weather's good. Obviously, you're around. State income tax. Yeah, the difference though is that there's not much there outside of Disney World. And I say that with no disrespect to people that are from there that live there that love it there, I've been there plenty, I've spent some time there before. But that's the perception and I think particularly when you're talking about mostly young black men in their 20s, it's not there's not that much to do outside of Disney. Or to go watch like an Orlando Magic game. It's a city that's largely built around the tourism industry as it relates to Disney. So if you were gonna pick cities in Florida to live in, I don't know that it would finish in the top three.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"From ugh. All right, I want to bounce around a little bit on a couple of different things. It was like three days ago, Sarah, that I had like my shovel here, and I was ready to just pour dirt on James Harden's grave. That was done with James Harden. And I was ready to write the column and I still might. Like, what do you do Daryl morey with James Harden? Who has not been the James Harden that Maury had in his years in Houston. Then game four of the series against Miami comes around. And James Harden breaks out 31 points, 8 of 18 from the floor, 6 of ten from three point range. He hands out 9 assists, he pulls down 7 rebounds, he was excellent in that game. And it kind of, as this series shifts back to Miami tonight, I don't know which James Harden's gonna show up. That's a big part of all this. I think MB is gonna be there and motivated when get to why in a minute, but like, do you have any read on what James Harden's gonna look like? Night after night, you saw him for a season and a half in Brooklyn. Like, what version of James Harden is left? Like how close can he get to the player we saw for years in Houston? My instinct to that is James Harden is probably asking himself in some regard the same questions. And after spending what a year and a half or so that he was with Brooklyn watching him come over from Houston, obviously there was a lot of layers and factors to him his time in Houston wants one that style of play coming to Brooklyn that first half a season last year, or sorry this year, the first half of season go into Philly, James Harden is such a cerebral player for as much as we think about him as a scorer and.
Bob Ryan & Jeff Goodman NBA Podcast
"james harden" Discussed on Bob Ryan & Jeff Goodman NBA Podcast
"Bet online, where the game starts. Okay, the trade deadline was a big game yesterday, bob. You know, a blockbuster with James Harden and Ben Simmons. Simmons Seth curry Andre Drummond a couple of pics. They go to Brooklyn harden and Paul Millsap, go do Philadelphia. I know how you feel about Simmons, how do you feel about this deal? Number one, the big winner in the I told you so category was Daryl morey. He listened to people like me and there were plenty of us who said Daryl, give it up, go 50 cents on the dollar, go 33 cents a dollar, do something, get rid of the guy, you're wasting it's a waste of time. Nobody's going to give you what you want. So guess what? He got a high high profile player back in return just as he said, he insisted that he would. So congratulations to you, you got what you wanted. Okay, now I hate to sound like mister wishy washy, but you can make a case for both teams enjoying what they're going to get. All right, let's start with start with to harden to Philadelphia. What if people talking about all the experts in the cognitive diet the last 18 hours? Oh my God, it's going to be a pick and world arrival. The greatest of all time. They're going to put Stockton Malone in the rearview mirror. They're going on, they're going to revolutionize the pick and roll with those two. We'll see. You know, I see why they think it could happen. If harden is playing well, we know me and beat playing at the peak of his game. And he's arguably the most efficient player in the league at doing what he does over the last month. Nobody's played better than Joel embiid. So he's tremendous. Okay, let's see what Hardin does with this. There's no doubt of his technical skill, but there's something missing. You know, first of all, let's go back up, he's never won it. And he's bouncing around now searching wing searching and all that. He's never won it. And there's something, you know, just something that we'll find out. Maybe Doc can solve the puzzle. I was going to say, I think he has the right coach. I think that when James Harden, the reason I think it'll work with Philadelphia is when he arrived with Brooklyn, he bought it. I mean, we found.
NBA Front Office w/ Keith Smith & Trevor Lane
"james harden" Discussed on NBA Front Office w/ Keith Smith & Trevor Lane
"I watched very closely off in the playoffs when the Lakers were taking on the rockets and I watched him just battle just pour his heart and soul into defending Anthony Davis in the second round of the playoffs. The guy that we saw a week ago is not that guy there's something going he is not happy. He is not happy with the situation. Maybe it's the hardest maybe hardened gone equals PJ Tucker's back. I don't know but he would shock me if Fiji Tucker was still a Houston Rocket past the trade deadline. So you're right. There are other moves that they're going to still make here, but long-term, who knows right now, you know draft picks can be something. They can be nothing will find out what they do with them. The pics watch could be something but they those could also really be be nothing. So we'll see what they wind up doing there. But I'll tell you what Keith what I was going down more thing on on Houston before we move I was going to say on Houston and pixel. Absolutely Brooklyn is it's important to remember too. That's how the Celtics got Jayson Tatum that was a pixel there. There was not a pic de owned outright that should swap. So, you know, they landed Brown the year before where the pickup right and then Tatum was a pick swap. So that is you know, that that's you know kind of at this point. That's that's how important those are and those who are several years out from that trade and that's what I think, you know, a lot of people doesn't matter those pics will never be you know, less than you're twenty-eight to Thirty. Well, I don't know that you can say that and you know, twenty-five twenty-six and fifty-seven and that's why you do it if you're the rocket and if you're the Nets again just to kind of close the loop there. That's why you do it if you're Sean marks cuz you know, you're probably not making those pics anyway, no matter what right, right exactly and I am like that NBA teams I feel like are getting smarter with that and they're pushing picks out farther because they're starting to project or bet on when a team is going to start to decline and Target those years for their for the pics that they're getting which is which great okay so the teams that I thought though people ask you to who was the big winner of this traded look yeah then the Nets they're going for it absolutely they're going to get the attention of the Rockets are the team moving James Harden tons of jobs and they're they're going to get some attention but I love with the Pacers did and the Cavaliers did in this deal both teams just we're great let's start because it's the easiest link let's start with with a servers flipping Oladipo who's probably leaving in a few months and getting back Caris LeVert they got back a second-rounder as well I believe a younger player locked up for a few years I liked it I liked what they with the Pacers did hear this was this was great I'm surprised they were able to get a second back in the deal Yeah, I was too and now that one is still meal. I don't like I said before I don't really get it from the Rockets perspective. But just from the baser side, you know Levert is 15.2 this year 17.5 next year 18.82.
Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"james harden" Discussed on Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"Golfer with the washington post. I am joined on the other line by michael. The pod pena of sports illustrated michael michael. Michael nothing beats a big blockbuster trade in the nba. We've got exactly that to talk about. We don't do very many emergency podcast episodes on open floor but i would say this one war and said You know in the case of your houston rockets and era over in the case of the brooklyn nets new era Dawns a a new era is beginning with kevin durant james harden and maybe kyrie irving if anybody can find him so let's go ahead and look at this trade. That happened today four teams. You've got houston you've got brooklyn. You've got indiana you've got cleveland. Basically brooklyn sent every possible pick could muster a total of four first round picks and for pick swabs plus charissa levert and other assorted pieces to houston. Houston takes care sliver and basically turns him around sent him to indiana they grab victor oladipo who you wrote about this week. I know for sports illustrated One of the top twenty twenty one free agents coming up. You've got cleveland in the mix grabbing jared allen because for whatever reason brooklyn never knew what they had with him but i think the biggest headline By far far away is the brooklyn nets. Reuniting kevin durant and james harden teammates for three years in oklahoma city You know and and here. They are together again in their primes. Along with in theory kyrie irving in his prime. Maybe the best collection of three-shot creators and shot makers on the same team in nba history and michael. We're going to talk about the winners and losers of this deal. I gotta tell you though bro. I'm feeling like a winner. I told you this was going to happen. Two months ago in november. You'll remember i blew your mind. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first cases of me breaking your brain on this episode. Do you remember this. Can i get a little bit of credit. I gave you a victory lap earlier this week. But i'm feeling great. I feel like i got that third either. I can see the future michael. No you're you're oracle. I mean it's it's it's cemented. There's really no disputing. I was shocked and in awe when you first throughout the brooklyn nets as a possibility for harden and. I shouldn't have doubted you deep down. I did doubt you raise it. I was also very jealous. That did not come up with the idea first because it was so perfect. But you know. I doubted you because i did not think that an organization would ever be willing to give up the amount the brooklyn nets did to get james harden and i also had faith for the record in hardens ability to Stick it out in houston and You know last night. We saw throwing his teammates under the bus and probably the most unprofessional press conference. I have seen in. I can't even compare it to anything all time. Just an all. Were not good enough. You know no nine games into the season. We're not good enough. And by the way. I'm very out of shape obviously and taking positions my god. We should give and credit. At least he didn't break up with them by text message. You know what i mean. At least he did it in front of a camera. So you know real real classy professional behavior there before we get to the rockets side of this though. I wanna remind you know. Part of my prediction. Michael was that this was going to be good for you..
Debate Amongst Friends With Doc & Prof
"james harden" Discussed on Debate Amongst Friends With Doc & Prof
"The same record as my next. They have a better record in the rockets. I mean song sand. So it's like i can't really say anything right now. I still think there's gonna be lottery team. Have to do something they don't ever nobody wants to go to cleveland. And it really might be time for them to relocate. I mean they have been just drifting. I mean it's really unfortunate that they're still they're better than the pistons right now. And the raptors are to aid wizards at thirty nine or forty seven so at the very bottom. I'm really surprised. They're bound feeding. I'm pretty surprised at the raptors are struggling so much but they had to go through their issues of course So i think what the wait and see with them but huge win for the rockets. I mean i guess it's a win for the nets if that's what they really wanted italy and the the nets are in is in a win now situation which i can understand and to win the east. In fact to use our twenty. Twenty one catchphrase. The nets are down if you if you were in the navy mount them doubling down not definitely did And what a big way and raphael stone double down you know from his free agent acquisitions to this trade. He's really showing that he's the gm of the future and double down. He just really made him really smart mu no eight double down because i think doubling down because of comparative what the former gene did if you're going to be around. He is officially a mauri underlying like he's from the maury tree retreat sorrow. You would think he wasn't underlying you under his. You know A now he's he's been propelled into this unexpectedly propelled into this road. You think about it more. Darryl was still under contract but he chose to step away we went to the toll rant could be around that re be his curls. He's don't black folks okay But here we are couple months later in raphael stone. Who brought in some bigs. you know. Try to to satisfy some important knees that he felt we needed on the tame. Your some shooters you know. Got got into draft. Got some undrafted players that were really good and here. We are now with moving harden restructuring and getting that forty something million dollar contract out the book which is in bring deceived by the way you think about it. He moved both contracts rothe contracts. So you know. That's that's pretty big. You know to forty something made out of contracts. He's moved although we still have one with john wall people right now. There's only making twenty one million dollars yup so somewhere near where we officially. We're back in business. We can if we we don't have cat room. Were closer to being under the luxury tax. Yes now not so much this season but definitely next season so now win that bio market comes in and he was you know waving. We actually might be able to grab a person or two. That doesn't want to go to the lakers. That doesn't want to go to the leykis exactly so the nets this point. Yeah which could happen. It could very well happen. And maybe the rockets say. Hey we'll give all the depot thirty million dollars right now. Give you an extension right now. Four years thirty. Some million abbas kimball. That's still saved them. Fifteen million dollars. Yep so i'm okay with this. If they play a smart. Don't give you a big old anybo. If forty million dollars give him a modest thirty to thirty five over four you know let it let it be what it is. We're not doing. I know max deals or nothing like that. Don't do they call it a day. John wall victor depot. Eric gordon christian. Would you still got. Pj tucker you still got. You still got jason tate. And you got buggy. So i run it the way it is back. All you need to do is add one more big. Maybe a young guy cheap. That can do something. Yeah and run it. I like the people that we have. I liked david wa wa tate is good. I like macklemore when he's not heard. Let's just keep building. I like what he did the high starting to settle. But i'm really excited with what my man raphael dome shouts him. Hope that he likes you tweet especially after the waiver those comments and yeah. This is our breaking news talking about james harden trade. Make sure you likes subscribe. Give us a comment Give us your opinion about how you feel about this straight. You like it you love it. Hate it you despise it. I mean do you feel like you're team should have gotten it on his tray. What team do you go for. Let us know at beta box friends on twitter on facebook as well to in check out instagram. After give you more breaking news. i'm depressed. john. Gotti doc i god we'll keep doubling down the you piece. Not dealing with the usual riffraff here. I guess i have no choice..
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"Know there's <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> still <Speech_Male> this is still really <Speech_Male> about you know. This is the players <Speech_Male> league this stars <Speech_Male> league and it's really still <Silence> about <Speech_Male> what james <Speech_Male> harden wants <Speech_Male> and is willing to do <Speech_Male> what kevin durant wants <Speech_Male> and is willing to do <Speech_Male> what kyrie irving <Speech_Male> assuming he's back on the court <Speech_Male> is willing to do <Speech_Male> like if those <Speech_Male> three to <Silence> make it work it will work <Speech_Male> if they <Speech_Male> want to and the <Silence> good news for them <Speech_Male> is <Speech_Male> durant and kyrie irving <Speech_Male> both have <SpeakerChange> rings <Speech_Male> already. <Speech_Male> So if <Speech_Male> if there's <Speech_Male> if that <Speech_Male> factors in at all <Speech_Male> you could at least make the <Speech_Male> case that they do <Speech_Male> not need <Speech_Male> to to <Speech_Male> do as much. Maybe they'll <Speech_Male> see it as a relief to <Speech_Male> have hardened to do <Speech_Male> some of the heavy lifting <Speech_Male> and they don't need <Speech_Male> all of it because <Speech_Male> they've they've <Speech_Male> had their moments and they've <Speech_Male> had and <Speech_Male> this this could give <Speech_Male> them <SpeakerChange> you know <Speech_Male> another ring <Speech_Male> or two or three. <Speech_Male> Maybe <Speech_Male> maybe <Silence> they look at it that way <Speech_Male> and maybe <Speech_Male> the premise that i floated <Speech_Male> last week in that story <Speech_Male> where i talked to ray <Speech_Male> allen about the celtics <Speech_Male> coming together maybe <Speech_Male> that applies here <Speech_Male> and <Speech_Male> the premise was the idea that when <Speech_Male> you get in your thirties <Speech_Male> and you've been a star <Speech_Male> in this league and you've <Speech_Male> done all the individual <Speech_Male> things and you've got all the individual <Speech_Male> accolades in your <Speech_Male> thirties is when you say okay. <Speech_Male> Now it's time for team <Speech_Male> goals. And i'm willing to sacrifice <Speech_Male> a little and that's what <Speech_Male> ray on paul pierce kevin <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> garnett. Did <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> a kyrie <Speech_Male> will turn twenty nine <Speech_Male> march. <Speech_Male> So he's not quite in his thirties <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> yet. <SpeakerChange> But <Silence> <Advertisement> hardens thirty-one <Speech_Male> katie's <Silence> thirty two <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> and <Speech_Male> again <Speech_Male> two of these three guys already <Speech_Male> have rings so <Speech_Male> may- <Speech_Male> maybe the recipe <Speech_Male> is different. <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> It's not three <Speech_Male> come together at age. Twenty five. <Speech_Male> I will <Speech_Male> say this anybody who <Speech_Male> wants to point to kevin <Speech_Male> to James <Speech_Male> harden kevin durant either <Speech_Male> being teammates before <Speech_Male> or hard <Speech_Male> being sixth man of the year. <Speech_Male> Just throw that <Speech_Male> stuff out. The window. <Speech_Male> Folks that <Speech_Male> james harden was <Speech_Male> like twenty two <Speech_Male> and young <Speech_Male> and sixth <Speech_Male> man of the year <Speech_Male> who <Speech_Male> you know had to <Speech_Male> play behind katie and <Speech_Male> westbrook at that time. <Speech_Male> Because that's <Speech_Male> that's what. The pecking <Speech_Male> order was. He had not <Speech_Male> established that he was <Speech_Male> going to be a <Speech_Male> perennial. Mvp <Speech_Male> and one of the greatest <Speech_Male> scores of all time. <Speech_Male> Whatever potential <Speech_Male> was there. Whatever people <Speech_Male> see. In retrospect <Speech_Male> people did not <Speech_Male> know it. Then <SpeakerChange> <Speech_Male> once you've established <Speech_Male> yourself at that level <Speech_Male> for <SpeakerChange> eight <Speech_Male> years <Speech_Male> it the equations <Speech_Male> different <Speech_Male> so just because <Speech_Male> he's willing to be deferential <Speech_Male> in <Speech_Male> two thousand <Speech_Male> eleven twelve <Speech_Male> does not mean <Speech_Male> that he's <Speech_Male> Gonna <Speech_Male> be willing to do that right <Speech_Male> now. <Speech_Male> Maybe he will. I'm not <Speech_Male> saying you won't. But i just <Speech_Male> i don't i. Don't think the reference <Speech_Male> points of <Speech_Male> what he was <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> in oklahoma <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> as a really young <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> player. Have <SpeakerChange> any relevance <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> whatsoever. <Speech_Male> Now it's <Speech_Male> good point. <Speech_Male> Certainly we'll be interesting to <Speech_Male> watch our. <Speech_Male> Hopefully no more <Speech_Male> trades <Speech_Male> do the show <Speech_Male> regularly scheduled time <Speech_Male> next week. <Speech_Male> But i guess you never know bradley <Speech_Male> beal. Maybe he's next <Speech_Male> on the chopping <Speech_Male> bradley. Beal is out <Speech_Male> there. Your next <Speech_Male> bradley beal. <Speech_Male> Save that for <Speech_Male> the next time. <Speech_Male> Always going gonna talk <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> to <SpeakerChange> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> you chris.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"And get guys like jared allen and kerris laverne and finally these hidden gems and spencer dinwiddie joe harris. And all this. That was a fun team for people to root for because it was built organically. And the you either had cast-offs like dinwiddie and joe harris who you saw built into better players and blossom here or you saw you know. Revert and jared allen late picks blossom and they were fan favorites and just from that standpoint. I always think it's kind of a shame with the fan. Base gets attached to a group. That i don't know what their ceiling was gonna be but when you brought into renton kyri. That was the idea they were the the home homerun swing to then graft onto the homegrown talents. And now it's pretty much all hired guns and if they went title no one's gonna care they'll just love the fact they won. Titles i just wanna say that quick that quick aside on just the idea that for fans i think it's it's tough especially jared. Jared allen was absolutely beloved by nets vance. And i think he really. You know symbolized this mini era of the last five years. Or so. let me ask you this hypothetical. Do the nets go all in on this deal. If kyrie is back and playing well and spencer dinwiddie doesn't get hurt. I is a great question. I i don't know for sure. I will be curious to know like sean marks places so close to the vest. He's never going to answer that question directly either. But i suspect it would've been a much tougher decision. Chris i suspect it would have been a lot harder. If you've got a a fully healthy spencer dinwiddie and kyrie is is is in the mix and everything's flowing near there. Were still going to have their challenges. They still weren't gonna be a great defensive team and they were still going to have. I think some chemistry issues to work out along the way but they would have certainly been that much stronger. And i think missing dinwiddie and kyrie's just the uncertainty of him. At least you have an insurance policy. Now you know i'm not saying i'm not saying that kyrie's never coming back but if that were to happen if he just decided just done with basketball for whatever reason and i'm not suggesting for a minute folks that this is happening but a hardening kevin durant pairing would still make you one of the best teams in the east. So they've given themselves some insurance by the way to you. Know kevin durant is looked great and he's looked certainly like himself but this is way too small of a sample size for all all of us to just declare that achilles injuries are no longer the most catastrophic thing in the nba and it's fine and you can come back from it. Even at age thirty-one like we. We don't know thirty two. Excuse me for kevin. Thirty two achilles like he's played. What ten games. Whatever it's been..
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"I mean he has wanted to go to brooklyn throughout this process. I have to believe that he's going into this with his eyes wide. Open a all that being said it's one basketball and you've got durant who is playing out of his mind right now. Kyri we can get back into him. We did this on the previous podcast earlier this week. You can check that out if you want a deeper dive into that. But if kyrie comes back he's volume score not a pure pass first point guard and you have james harden who having the ball in hands for like eighteen seconds on the shot clock on every single possession during his time in houston. So how do you think this mix comes together. What do you think of this deal on the court for the nets. Look at it two ways. There's the scenario where kyri is still there. And there's the scenario where kyri is. I don't know where we know so little about this carry situation. You know why. He's begun as long as he has. What the all of it we don't know when he's coming back we don't know what his mindset is is. He still completely bought in. So let's put that to the side for minute. let let is for. Let's for the sake of this discussion. Just say kyrie irving is back soon. Totally engaged in his all in and that he and katie are still tied at the hip throwing hard into that mix. I think even the best case scenario is difficult for all the reasons you've outlined. He's one of the highest uses players. We've ever seen katie and career both high usage although not hard and levels of usage as i outlined in the story week ago i don't what james harden will do and none of us really know except for james harden what he'll do when paired with other guys who need the ball a lot and how much he's willing to sacrifice he did not sacrifice for russell westbrook for all the discussion of we're friends. We're gonna make it work and everything else russell. westbrook sacrificed in that scenario. Westbrook sacrificed another guy who a lot of us me wondered. Would russell westbrook ever adapt game. Well he did for harden hard and did not harden's usage rate. I think only went up. He did not make with chris. Paul against somebody who was friends with they went two years and then then couldn't wait to get away from each other and he was the one who wanted that. Deal done. Paul for westbrook. So he's thirty one and is this time where he's going to be willing to adapt where we he's gonna be going to evolve where he's going to give up a little too and kyrie and how much are they willing to give up now..
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"james harden" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"It was funny when george costanza did it because it wasn't real trying to get fire trying to get moved out. What james harden did incredibly disrespectful. And he's not going to live that down anytime soon. You said you thought the rockets did well. I'm not so sure i love. Draft picks. Believe me and draft picks. Ken pay off. They paid off huge for the boston. Celtics in that previous nets trade. They got jason tatum. I think is going to be an mvp in the league. At some point they got jaylen brown who i think is going to be a perennial all star. This league few other guys mixed in they missed some of those draft picks as well but that was a huge success for boston. But i think sometimes we just grossly overweight draft picks yes. They can be enormously valuable when a confluence of events occurs. And your team goes into the crapper the way the nets did in those those years after the trade with boss but more often than not that doesn't happen and granted anything can happen. Kevin durant could get hurt. James harden continue to sink. We'll talk about this. But the chemistry those players might not work out. But i don't know i'm not foreseeing. The nine four x four years being a bad enough team to make those picks super appealing at this point and given that howard. They didn't get a blue chip guy. Depots good. he's all star but he's not like a guy with this enormous upside he might be able to start once again in houston. Maybe john wall discover some magic in that back core. That's a really fun athletic backcourt. They're put together in houston but they didn't get that blue chip guy and for weeks. I was hearing. That's what they want. Teams that talk to houston said. They wanted a star player. That's why boston wasn't getting in the mix with the celtics rightfully said you're not getting jaylen. Brown jaylen brown. For james harden at this point several teams had a similar mindset when it came to discussing a deal with the rockets for the last few hours before the trade on wednesday. There was chatter about philadelphia. I've got to believe that shatter had some some truth to it. That the sixers willing to part with ben simmons if they sixers deal fell apart because the sixers couldn't create enough draft capital or they weren't willing to throw entire east maxi. I think it's a mistake. I think in d like this. You've got to get the blue chip player. And ben simmons at twenty five years old with. I think at least four years left on his contract so he's not able to go anywhere anytime soon. That was the guy to get the got plenty of draft capital. They are now armed to the teeth for the six. Seven years with draft picks they can use to rebuild this roster and maybe raphael stone is a drafting genius. And he and. Stephen silas can put together a roster that way. But i would have preferred ben simmons. Ben simmons or like to draft picks. Give me ben simmons. All day long..