So that jumped out to be the most. You agree?

It is also on my list. I think Clippers bleak watch in general has to be on here. Kawhi on media day said he does plan to be available for opening night. Oh, thank you. He also said he never plans to miss games. So he does often miss games. I don't know that I'm like betting hard that he's going to be available, or maybe he's there for opening night for very political financial reasons, and then quickly recedes into some scheduled rest after that. It could be that kind of situation. I think the problem is it's not just Kawhi. This is a team that also lost Paul George, that I don't know if you caught this media day quote, James Harden's takeaway from watching Luka in the NBA Finals was that actually maybe he should dominate the ball more. That the offense is definitely going to involve a lot of him. Luka basically laid the

blueprint that I believed in in the 2010s, and that could be us. That was James Harden.

How is it that Luka Doncic, whatever your priors are and your view of the world, if you watch Luka Doncic, he will in some way confirm it. I don't know what effect he has on people that makes him do this, but it really works that way. Harden,

everyone else is like, this is too much of a burden for Luka. They probably need a little bit more. He's wearing down and Harden's like, I like this. This is great. By the way, he played with Kyrie and then demanded a trade out of there. So maybe it's hard to replicate. Yeah, it's, you know, the guy I share season tickets with. We're excited to go to the Intuit Dome. I just, this is, I think, year six of, do you want to go tonight? Dot, dot, dot. Kawhi playing not sure let me look that's over a half decade now with Kawhi and I just at this point he was what in the 2011 draft right this is year 15 that sounds right you're 14 or 15 for him I can't imagine whose knees were like yeah I had a lot of trouble with my knees. And then in year 15 of my career, it really turned around. My knees became great. Well,

I mean, the bionic technology might be there. I don't know.

Maybe. It's brutal. So I actually think they knew Kawhi's knees were fucked and that's why they didn't want to give Paul George all that money. Could be. I think that's, especially when you think like he goes to the Olympic team, they kind of gently send him packing in a couple of days. And it's like, yeah, Kawhi's decided to drop out. They fucking pushed his ass out. Like they were like, we need 12 guys and you cannot, you're not in shape to play and we don't think you're going to be healthy. And I just don't think it's going to change. It's sad, but at the same time, he won a title and had made a ton of money and had a really interesting career and he's going to be a Hall of Famer. You look at somebody like Derrick Rose who had that knee injury at the worst possible time in his career, missed two postseasons, was never really the same. Like Kawhi, it's better than that, but it's still a bummer. We just never really got to see it for an extended stretch with the Clippers. It would be half of a season, three-fourths of a season. It just never happened.

Plenty of things have gone wrong for him, but the biggest possible things went right, and so it's hard to really frown on a career like that. I think where I'm stuck with the Clippers right now is Kawhi is going to be whatever sort of wild card health-wise he's going to be. James Harden is going to be, I would suspect, more or less the player we saw last year, give or take, the usage will go up, as he has alluded to. The other part of it that worries me is some of the other chatter out of Media Day for them. Norm Powell was talking about how losing Paul George actually might be an addition-by look at all these capable guys we have and step into bigger roles. I don't know that I personally would be puffing out my chest at Terrence Mann and Derek Jones taking on the mantle of your offense. Two players I like, but I don't like like that. And there's going to be a lot of that sort of thing for the Clippers this year.

Yeah. Well, what do you think their odds are to make the playoffs on FanDuel? Clippers make the playoffs? Yes. What are those odds? Oh, my

God. I don't even think they're going to be a play-in team. Well,

FanDuel says plus 205 for yes, minus 250 for no. Yeah. Which is brutal. Like, the Rockets are even odds yes Yes. Right.

Rockets are going to be a better team than the Clippers.

Golden State are even odds, yes. You go through all these teams, the consensus is after who's the worst team in the West, Portland? Portland,

for sure.

They're in play for that second worst spot if Kawhi's not playing healthy. And then on top of it, which this would be the first of many times I mentioned this on a podcast, OKC has a right to swap first round picks with them in 2025, which could be an absolute all-time, even by Clippers standards, dagger, if that ends up being a top three pick. All right, what other training camp stuff do you have? So

you talked about OKC being the prohibitive favorite regular season-wise. I agree. I think we're all very high on the thunder. That said, how sure are we that the Grizzlies could not steal the top seed in the West? I like this. Something about the photos coming out of media day of seeing Ja and Bain and Jackson and Smart and Zach Eadie, the confidence of like, we're going to pose all these guys together. We trust that it's going to work. It really stoked my sense of like, this team is going to kill in the regular season. And I don't even know if they're going to solve all their half-court issues. I'm not even saying anything about Ja as like, a guy who can crack playoff-level defenses. I just think the West this year could be the kind of conference where you win 55 games and you get first. Just because it's so deep. And the Grizzlies have done that before. I think they could do it again right now.

Marcus Smart watching the Celtics win the title. Chip on his shoulder. There you go. trying to reclaim his best under 30 American superstar title from Anthony Edwards. A

lot of chips.

Triple J didn't make the Olympic team. Brandon Clark coming back from injury. Zach Eadie, nobody believed in me. I'm actually the best player of this draft. I like it. There's a lot of stuff. There's some interesting Ja quotes. I don't think Ja... Oh, there always are. We talked about self-awareness with Towns earlier. I wouldn't say Ja had just a plethora of self-awareness last year with some of the interviews and quotes he did, but this year it did seem like he really just wanted to take back his spot in the league hierarchy. And he had been a little humbled by the last two years. Now, they could be telling him what to say. But it at least passed some imaginary first test for me. We'll see how this goes. If he's on a player podcast two weeks from now saying something crazy, we'll see. But like Verno on the mismatch with Jacoby. Shout out to those guys. I had a fun time listening to that. First of all, Verno said Ja was going to be first team on NBA and then paused and was like, okay. And then he unwound it and he said, I think he's going to be on one of the first two teams on NBA. And I was like, whoa, that's aggressive. And I started thinking about it. He probably will be, if he plays 75 games and looks like jogging, he probably will be one of the four guards. Yeah. Right? It's Mitchell, it's Edwards. Who else is in the Curry?

Well, it's also positionless, too. So he could wiggle his way in any number of ways. My doubt will never

be positionless, Rob.

Well, what position does Luka Doncic play? I'm still unclear on that. I don't know what position... What is he? I guess wing? One thing as far as the all-NBA stuff goes, and I think as you're thinking about the guard hierarchy specifically, we just talked about Kat's impact on the Knicks. I think Jalen Brunson's numbers will come down a little bit, and his overall driving impact may not be seen in quite the way it was at the peak during, say, the postseason. Because he's going to have more help. He's going to have a lot more going on around him in a way where it's not so definitively Jalen Brunson carrying this thing. I think that favors guys like Ja, where if he has a monster season, there's an opportunity here for him to overt overtake where Steph would end up in this kind of pecking order if the Warriors are kind of, you know, underwhelm again. Overtake Brunson potentially, although I think Jalen Brunson's a better player right now. But all the narrative stuff could end up tilting in his direction, weirdly enough, even though he was the one who kind of blew up and then got hurt, like the momentum of this larger Grizzlies run in the first place. 30

to 1 for MVP for Ja. It's pretty intriguing. MVP might be strong. We're not allowed to bet on it because we have votes, but you have to be a top three seed, which I think both of us think Memphis could be. Definitely. You'd have to be the best player in a really good for six straight months team, which I think he qualifies for. I was surprised those odds were where they were. I think there's a lot of amnesia for how good he was. The other one I was looking at him was the points per game title,

which

he was 48 to 1. Who's

the favorite for that?

The favorite is Luka, plus 165. But it's probably around, I don't know, 30, 31 range. I don't know if Jack can get that high, but that team's going to be pretty good. I'm with you on Memphis. The odds have, the over-under for them has been shooting up. It was too low to begin with, and now it feels like everybody's looking at it the same way. Minnesota has this weird trade. The number two seed's available. What do you have for your next storyline?

Which of Orlando, Indiana, and Cleveland can hit another gear? Right, kind of the comfortable middle of the Eastern Conference playoff picture. I think we can say Celtics, Knicks, Sixers, maybe the Bucks with an asterisk are sort of the top of the East right now. Is

the asterisk 37 years old and coming off multiple arthroscopic surgeries? I don't know. I haven't talked to asterisk yet. We're

going to come back. I think asterisk may be in the room here with us. But as far as these teams go, it's so tempting because they're all in that 47-48 win range last season to think, why couldn't the Magic hit to 50? couldn't the Cavs jump to 50 wins next season? Is there any team in this group you feel very confident in taking whatever the next step

is? Well, Sacramento is a good example of this last year where they win 48, but a lot of things weren't right for that to happen. And then the league got a little better last year and all of a sudden they dropped, even though they were kind of the same team. Now they had to make this trade. I look at Orlando as the upside team out of those because I still feel like they have a trade to make. I think there's somebody for them to go and get who can give them a little scoring and take a little bit of a load off of those other two would be where my head's at. You mentioned the guards thing. I forgot to mention this because I was thinking about Hal Burton. He's another one. Will he take the throne back? I'm really interested to see what happens with Booker this season coming off the Olympic experience and not great year by his standards and whether sometimes those guys play with all the great guys and you come out of the Olympics and you're just better. And I wonder if like a career year for him could be looming. So anyway, so you had Orlando, Indiana, and Cleveland. And Cleveland has stability, which they did not have in the same way last year. Complete

stability. Orlando got a taste. Yes,

yeah. Indiana has a year with Siakam. That's

the big thing.

And some continuity for the most part. They didn't do anything crazy. So which one of those three do you like the most? I

find myself kind of leaning Indy. And I think it's sort of the combination. I agree with you that upside swing-wise, Orlando is the most interesting. I think it's the combination of it could be Paolo or Franz, who really makes a big leap at some point.

God

forbid if both of them do, that would put you in a completely different tier. Plus they have a lot of other interesting young players. There's a lot to like there and plenty of room to think they could get better. They also offensively could be the kind of team that falls into, it's a very different case than the Kings because that was an offense first version of Sacramento. But as teams are getting more and more used to how the Magic play and the physicality of their defense and the limitations I think most importantly on offense, is there a solve there? Is there more a way to run them aground? I think that's possible. I think Orlando is still going to be really good. Cleveland is probably the most stable baseline team, but I just don't see them getting a lot better unless you really think Evan Mobley is ready to take that step. Otherwise, it's... The coach

piece could change it.

That could change it. But the team is kind of what it is. Yeah. There's a little lineup flexibility and in the defense of their core guys, a lot of guys who can play multiple positions, which gives you some ability to toggle things around and make a rotation that makes like a little bit more cogent sense overall. But I think with Indy, it's the combination of the full season of Siakam, which is something we know. I feel like I have a good grasp of who Pascal Siakam is as a player, what he can do for that team, what getting a training camp with him coming in, knowing he's a part of everything we'll do for you. Healthy

Halliburton, who wasn't healthy really for four months.

Exactly. Healthy Tyrese Halliburton. And then you have the mix of what you don't know, which is can Halliburton take that next step? What's next for Andrew Nembhard or Ben Shepard? Are they going to get anything meaningful out of Jarris

Walker? Ben Shepard reference. Wow. That was stuck

that

in.

What am I here for? If not to sneak in Ben Shepard. Bring us some stock on the Ben Shepard Express.

I'm

buying it. I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, needless to say.

Well, off of what you said, I had a training camp storyline of, this is one of my favorites, because you went traditional with that, like those three, let's monitor their training camp, see who's going to come out. One of my favorite early training camp storylines, Donovan Mitchell wanted to be in Cleveland all along. Of course. Come on, guys. This is where I always wanted to be. Then there was this article, I think, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Mitchell thought about other possibilities. It would have been a disservice not to at least consider them. But he said his mind was made up early in 2024, either January or February. And when given an opportunity to reinforce those words, he inked the extension, blah, blah, blah. So his mind was made up either in January or February when two things happened. Brooklyn was an absolute dumpster fire. That was option one. And the Knicks were becoming the most popular team in the city with Jalen Brunson as a top seven guy. And that option was out. Guess who was looking awesome? The Cleveland Cavaliers. I love training camp. I'm going to give you another one. Here's another just classic. It's D'Angelo Russell pretending he's not going to be shopped vigorously in two months season. I missed this. What did he say? I just got used to it, he said about trade rumors. Hopefully you'll know what you're going to get from me. This is definitely a new feel, new everything going on with destruction with JJ coming around and implementing what he's trying to do. It's changed the rhythm of things around here. My approach is just to stay steady. D'Angelo, I hope you're running. Hopefully

you know what you're going to get from me out of D'Angelo Russell's mouth. With all due respect, I do not. I do not. D'Angelo,

maybe don't start looking at hoops hype around early December when trade rumor season starts because you're not going to be in the team in March. I'm sorry. Seemed like a nice guy. I

appreciated Zach Levine's approach to this too on media day, which was he kind of had this like big speech about, you know, if you ever need to hear something about my take, you're going to hear it from me or my agent. We're going to be super straightforward with you. Also, whatever's in the past, I refuse to comment on it. We're not going to mention it ever again. It

never happened. Absolutely not. Do you hear me? What else do you have for training camp story lens?

This is where the asterisk comes back. I cannot stop worrying about the Bucs. I want to believe I am a Giannis guy. I think any team that has him on it is destined for a very hard floor. Like his effort level, his play, his dominance can absolutely take you so far. The fact that he said he and Dame did not have a chance to meet up at all this summer is both extremely understandable for a guy who played in the Olympics and also got married. I get it. It also does not make me feel any better about a team that does not seem able to have Chris Middleton to start the season, that already had like a work-in feel as far as the chemistry of those guys, and hasn't done anything in the offseason to change the mix in a

big way. Right. They got 7th, 8th, and 9 men, and they kind of tossed away their draft pick on a 19-year Yeah, I had as a subset of that, the Chris Middleton. Yeah, it's still, but it's going to be fine. It's

all going to be fine. It's

all going to be fine. It's October 1st, guys. Is he playing? Oh, he's not out there yet? This doesn't sound fine. It's not great. And also, he's old by NBA swingman standards. He has been really hurt every year since the 2021 finals. And I have real concerns that he's your shutdown guy against the Jason Tatums of the world. As

you should be. And this is the cross that I bear as someone who thinks Chris Middleton is very good. The idea of him being injured and out of the lineup, to me, I'm like, this is a vital part of this team. And I am now freaked out by the depth chart when he's not out there. That's not where you want to be with Chris at this stage.

Now, and another training camp storyline is Dame, his head's right. Last year was the year from hell. A lot of personal stuff. Traded out of nowhere. Didn't work out before the year because he was afraid he was going to get hurt. And Giannis gets hurt in the playoffs. Everything that went wrong could go wrong. Coach changed. Terry Stotts. But now, in the summer, I worked out. I'm ready. I'm here. I'm ready to reclaim my throne. I don't know if it's true, but it sounded good. I had a cousin of this, speaking of old teams, and I agree with you, Milwaukee. And I'm probably more bullish on Milwaukee than most because I just think Giannis is going to be on just a psychotic tear this year. He's always awesome. We're going to be like, Giannis is psychotic. And I mean that in a positive way for the aggregators. Like, psychotically competitive, wanting to win, being a psycho about winning. Gleefully psychotic. Gleefully competitively psychotic. Jimmy Butler didn't get an extension over the offseason, but it's fine. Yep. That's a good training camp storyline. It's fine. Didn't need the extension. It's fine. I

also have a cousin of this one, which is Jimmy Butler showed up without a perm and actually it worked on me. I am buying serious Jimmy Butler showing up ready for business.

He's not fucking around on photo day anymore.

Absolutely not fucking around. And I say this. Yes, I realize I'm a rube. I realize I'm playing right into Jimmy's elaborate plot and probably like a big face coffee marketing scheme in some way. Like I know I'm being had. But also, Jimmy Butler taking the regular season seriously is a massive fucking deal if it happens for the Heat. Because that is not, like, I know they can make the finals as a seventh seed, but you should not try to do that every year. You should actually try to win games and get into the middle of the East. And there's a reason I didn't even talk about them in that Orlando, Cleveland, Indiana mix. I don't entirely know that they deserve it, but also I feel myself buying back in to what they're selling. Well,

and they also did the thing where they're like, we don't know what our roster is going to be in February and we're not going to kill ourselves figuring it out now. We'll see how it goes. Which I thought kind of the Knicks were doing and then all of sudden they're trading for Towns. But I think they looked around and they were probably intrigued by a bunch of different things. I'm sure they kicked the tires on Markkinen. I'm sure they kicked the tires on, at least had a meeting about Zach Levine. Sure. Right? I'm sure they at least had a meeting about any guy making over $30 billion who was available, but ultimately, they kept their flexibility. We'll see with Hero. I think, I don't know what the trade value, they kind of really needed him to be a trade value guy. And they almost were able to get him in a Dame deal and maybe got a little too aggressive with it. But they kind of need him to be really good this year, either for them or as a trade piece.

And that's kind of related to the Jimmy thing too. I think those are really the only guys, as far as upside goes, that can get Miami over the hump of mediocrity on offense. That's a team that's really struggled to create shots. Jimmy is a guy who can get to the line consistently, one of the only players on the team that can do that. He also has the low-hanging fruit of the cuts and the fast breaks that can juice the numbers a little bit. Hero just has to be flat better than he's been. I think Bam is kind of reaching who he can be and who he is as a player. I don't expect anything dramatically different from him, but they need something dramatically different from Tyler Hero. So you're

not going to write the Bam is expanding his offense in an effort to grow the heat, but it's the same thing every year with BAM? I

was just going to do like a 3,000 Haywood Highsmith feature, but if you want to vet that, we can talk about it. Keep us posted. Joel

Embiid, we mentioned him earlier. He was talking about how he lost weight, and he said, I still got a ways to go. I still want to lose some more. We got to do whatever it takes to make sure that in the postseason I'm healthy. There's no agenda, no all-star, no all-NBA. I'm just going to let that sit there for a second. So Joel is basically saying the postseason is now what matters. All right. Better late than never. He's 30 years old, but maybe he gets it. I don't know. What would you think? This is where,

you know what, my instinct is to say, maybe you should have cared about those things previously. Oh,

yeah. You think so, doctor?

Look, that's my instinct. I'm trying to grow. I'm trying to be a bigger person. I'm trying to be positive. And I think what you're supposed to do is encourage positive behaviors when they happen around you. Not point out, oh, you're the guy who shows up late all the time. I'm so glad you're here, Joel Embiid. I'm so glad that you are here in this way, in this fashion. I genuinely hope that whatever body transformation you say you have had, it suits you and works well. And I hope this whole season goes brilliantly. We all would love to see Joel Embiid in an actual competitive high-level playoff series or just run start to finish. I think that's something that we're all waiting for. So for the sake of wanting to believe in the change, I'm here. I'm here for you, Joel. I'm believing. I'm choosing to buy into this. I

agree. I was on the record as I cannot take him seriously as the best guy on a team that wins four straight playoff rounds until he shows up for a season in shape and understands that it's a nine-month run. It seems like we've checked the first box. So congrats to him. We can skip over the training camp storyline of we want Brandon Ingram here in New Orleans, which I'm sure is going to be said by somebody over at some point. And there's probably, it's going to be like a hostage video. JJ coaching LeBron and his son dot, dot, dot. This won't be weird at all. That's another storyline. No, it's going to be cool. It's not going to be a circus in any way, shape, or form. What is your competitive history

with your son? Do you play sports together against each other? What is the dynamic between you? He

started playing tennis this year, and I was like, you'll never beat me. I will have to be in a wheelchair or using a walker for you to beat me and he's like i will beat you by the time i'm 18 um and he also thinks he he when he was 10 he thought he could beat me in a fight so i would say super competitive yeah um he he said ufc right now he he would tap me out in a minute. Yeah, it's competitive. Wow. So I don't know how that, with LeBron and his son, I don't know how that goes with that. But I would assume the son's just trying to take it to him at all times. That's what sons do with dads. It's the best part about being a son. Yeah.

Is lighten up your dad, throwing him under the bus,

airing out. Making fun of him.

Absolutely. Airing out exactly how lame he is. I think the key here is that all of LeBron's eccentricities are out there. How much is Bronny going to tell us or tell his teammates or tell anyone within their organization about, oh, here's this crazy thing my dad did. Yeah, he put that on Instagram. I saw it. We all know about it. My

son would definitely do that to me. There's no question. The

whole situation is very strange. I think it will be aided only by the fact that Bronny is not in a position right now to threaten by merit to play NBA minutes. Will he play anyway? I guess we'll see. I suspect they're going to get out the let's put him on the floor together, have the moment kind of thing relatively early.

Put them in the G League, yeah.

So that the questions stop coming. It's going to get more awkward if Bronny is actually like a part of this thing in a real way. Whether he's shoehorned into that role, whether he lights it up in the G League or like succeeds so much as a pressure defender and the Lakers need exactly that. That's when it gets weird. I think they're almost helped right now by the fact that no one is really expecting that much of Bronny.

He's either two years away or two years away from being two years away. But I just don't see how he's going to play in a rotation for a team that's trying to make the playoffs. That seems inconceivable to me.

He does not appear to be that for a bunch of reasons. I think, honestly, even though the defense is kind of the strength right now, I think even that needs a ton of work, as it often does for rookie guards coming into the league. Any

more training camp storylines? Honestly,

those are the big ones for me. Is anything else dangling out there?

Celtics. It's all fine. Tatum's head's in the right place. Then there's going to be some story in November about how he had to fix his shot and he couldn't remember how to shoot it anymore. And Drew Hanlon fixed it. That'll happen in November. He had a hitch in a shot. How

do you feel about the relative ironing out of the Zapruder footage of Jason Tatum's jumper?

You saw the hitch, right? Oh, it was there. Yeah. Yeah, I was on a lot of text threads over the summer from how he shot in rookie year, sophomore year for the Celtics versus whatever that stop hitch thing he was doing in the Olympics. And I think he got rid of it. Sometimes it happens. It happens in tennis, throwing a baseball, golf.