Why San Antonio Spurs should go ALL IN for Giannis | Bomani Jones & Tom Haberstroh

Why San Antonio Spurs should go ALL IN for Giannis | Bomani Jones & Tom Haberstroh

I want to ask you this question, Bmani, because someone asked me like, “Hey, you can’t win now with Cooper Flag.” And your point is salient because of the fact that when Tim Duncan was drafted number one overall and joined the San Antonio Spurs, David Robinson was the same age that Anthony Davis is now. Okay. So, could you imagine a world in which they get back into the NBA finals quickly with Cooper Flag? And the answer is Tim Duncan was way older than what Cooper Flag is right now. So in one mind you’re like, hey, David Robinson, the analogy is that David Robinson and AD, it worked for the San Antonio Spurs, but the you got no Kyrie next season. And that’s the thing is if you’re making a trade for Giannis, does Giannis sign off on that in between, you know, behind clo uh uh uh closed doors? Does he sign off on that deal knowing he’s trying to escape that situation with Damen Lillard and he’s going to a team that doesn’t have a go-to ball handler that makes life easier for him because Kyrie Irving’s dealing with a torn ACL. So, we’ll we’ll see on that. But right now, I think the San Antonio Spurs are the front runners for the Giannis sweep stakes. And right now, Wemby is on a 2-year runway of having a mid-level contract, making 10, 11, 12 million a year. And so, you can fit in a Giannis contract in there for only the next couple years. And then it becomes very hard, very cumbersome to build around Wemby in a way that man, if that dude is dealing with a deep vein thrombosis, it’s un unpredictable where this goes. Hopefully, it ends up like what Brandon Ingram had a couple years ago or Assar Thompson had a year ago where he was back after uh a a a procedure in his in his shoulder. Hopefully, that’s the case, but it makes things a whole lot easier if you got Giannis next to WBY and De’aran Fox than it does when you’re just looking at Stefon Castle and Dylan Harper and wondering, “Hey, is it ever going to work for us?” Okay, so I hadn’t given San Antonio that much thought, but now that you brought it up, here are my f here are my immediate thoughts. Number one, tell me a team is going to have Victor and a team is going to have Giannis. You are my favorites to win the title. I just don’t understand how anybody else is supposed to score. I just I just don’t I just don’t I just don’t I just don’t know what you’re how that’s supposed to work. Number two, I know this won’t work, but you have to at least start with you sure you don’t want De’arra Fox first. Like, are you positive you don’t want that? I’m not sure you I’m I’m not sure that dude plays winning basketball. I’m not positive he’s that guy, right? Um but if they can get Giannis in San Antonio, which I mean, I don’t know that much about Giannis. I don’t know how much he wants to live in a city. Different people are built different ways, right? It doesn’t sound like he’s trying to leave Milwaukee because he wants to leave the city of Milwaukee. It sounds like he’ll want to leave Milwaukee because he wants to play for a better basketball team. However, I think the the the the teams that we had seen bandied about for Giannis, what was it? New York, Houston, and Miami. Yeah. And and look, I think the swoosh factor matters here with Nico and Dallas. Like I think it does. I think it does. Um, I I I don’t want to say it’s the thing, but it is a thing in the in the NBA, in the world of business that we operate in. I think it matters. So, I think you can add Dallas to that mix. Yeah. All I’m saying is San Antonio is the thing that is not like any of those that I pointed out. I don’t I don’t Hey, man. I don’t know how much that man like Mexican food. Like, maybe that does it, right? But that’s if there’s a tipping point. They But San Antonio real good at getting these dudes from other countries and teaching them about America via San Antonio and then maybe they want to stick around and they do ATB commercials and all of that stuff. I ain’t leaving Milwaukee just to go to no goddamn San Antonio, man. Like it’s just mil that’s just that’s just cold that’s just that’s cold. I mean that that’s hot walking. You know what I’m saying? I’ll throw this one at you. Golden State. If Kaminga plays this well, can Golden State get in the ring for Giannis and Dmpo? Stephen Curry and Giannis Anadmpo share an agency. Uh you’ve seen them at Allstars and you’ve seen them in the Olympics. They like after the game is over, you can see those two are piling up after the game. And I don’t think that’s nothing. Like we laughed about it with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in Charlotte at the All-Star game, then all of a sudden they’re on the same team. Like you can laugh about that all you want, but man, the the Golden State Warriors by holding on to their young assets and I will I will to the day I die think that the two timeline strategy by Joe Leob and that organization was dumb. James Wiseman, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kamega, but I will reverse course. If that package gets ended, I will I will kiss Joe Lacob’s feet if he gets if he gets Well, it ends well. Yeah. If they if they turn Kaminga and a bunch of picks and get Jiannis into Koopa to play with Steph Curry for the for the twilight of his career, man. Light years. Light years, man. Hey, low key, that’s what Nico’s doing. Nate Silver said the tweet and was like, you know, Luga Dodic and Cooper I mean Cooper Flag and uh Anthony Davis for Luca Donuch really isn’t that bad of a trade when you stop and think about it that way. It’s not. That’s what Nico telling. Now, if there’s anybody that’s arguing conspiracy, it’s Nico. Bro, I told you I I told you I had a plan. Did Did I not Did I Did I Did I not? He’s got it there. No, this is this this is going to be something like I I I think it’s important for the NBA and for fans of the NBA to get themselves out of the place where the transaction market is more interesting to them than the basketball. Right. But we got one last hurrah for Kevin Durant because I don’t know how much I don’t know how much more he has left. But there’s still one last chance for somebody to make a move and get him. He’s going to be in be on the move this off seasonason. How Boston decides to manage the catastrophe that is just falling at their feet. That is going to happen. You look at a team like Indiana that’s got to start looking at things like if Boston falls off, everybody in the East that’s at the top has got to be like, “Yo, we’re a move away, right?” like every single one of them, whether it be Indiana, Cleveland, which still a move, there’s still a guy short. I don’t care how many, they can win 75 games in a regular season. It’s very clear from watching them, there’s still a guy short, right? No matter how good you think Evan Moley is, there’s still a guy short. Somebody in the East is going to be there to make a move. This is going to be one of the most fascinating offseasons that we’ve seen. And you mentioned Golden State. I ask you this, do you think they have any chance of winning this series against Minnesota? Not if it’s preseason Jimmy, not playoff Jimmy. Okay. Like Jimmy Butler, uh, he has to have more than nine field goal. Like, he’s not he’s not here for this anymore. Like, yeah, he’s looking up that mountain at that age and all those miles on those tires and just saying, “Man, I can’t I can’t lead you to the promised land.” Yeah, he had a he had a bad game and and they had he had that po that game where he scored 33, right, and he got that done, but he had a he did not have the game that they needed him to have. Kaminga did play very well. Now, if you’re Golden State, do you give some thought to find a way for Kaminga to go out there and put up about 45 and then see if you can uh saddle somebody with him? Yes. I I think they’re rooting for that scenario. I think that’s the tough thing with the with the Steve Cerr and him being in the doghouse all season long is like the best chance that they get a another star in the league is that Kaminga turns into a star right now. Like if you can get him to have, you know, 30 points here, 25 and 10, like that does a lot for his trade stock. Not just because you can have that player in your coffers. It’s that you can flip him to go get the player that you want. And that’s the thing about Jonathan Kaminga is I think the better that he plays, it’s the more likely that he gets shipped out of there. I got hell for saying that if I were the Warriors, I would not in a hypothetical world where you try to come up with a trade package for LeBron, I’m like, if you’re the Warriors, the guy you don’t give up is Kaminga, right? I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t trade LeBron for Kaminga one one to one. However, he’s still 22. Like, we’re still early in this. The question is whether or not he plays losing basketball, which I think is fair, right? He’s still 22. There’s still a chance that this could really turn out to be a thing cuz he was a guy who was coming out of high school as the number one player in America in a lot of people’s eyes. You could get me to think about this. I don’t know how much I’d give up for the lottery ticket, but at 22, I’m still trying to kick the tires on this. Hey, there’s a lot of teams right now, Charlotte, Utah, Washington, Brooklyn, who are feeling a little butt hurt right now after what happened on Monday night. And so if there’s anyone that can help a team and get a player like like Utah, if Larry Markin who’s tw in his mid20s like Larry Markin is not a guy that is going to be on the timeline of Will Hardy and Walker Kesler, Isaiah Collier and Keonte Judge, whoever they they pick in the lottery this year. But if you’re the the Golden State Warriors and you potentially have seven foot clay on your team, I’ve always said he’s like seven foot clay. He’s an incredible shooter. um and really big for his size. Larry Markinham, a guy who averaged 25 points a game a couple years ago, but he’s 20, he’s turning 28 in a week. So like Utah, I think a lot of teams are going to be calling him, marketing him. I think a lot of teams are going to see what Philly does that they get in, they win that that lottery, so to speak, and they’re able to retain their pick and not send it over to OKC. We haven’t even talked about OKC in this. OKC has 13 tradable first round picks. 13 tradable first round picks going forward. So, if the Giannis sweep stakes, if they want to be number one on that list, we know that OKC can get on the top of that list. But, we’ll see what happens this postseason. Let me just say this last thing. And OKC is like I say, if Yiannis get to Milwaukee OKC pipe, brother, you Hey, man, you must love basketball.

Bomani Jones is joined by Tom Haberstroh of Yahoo Sports to discuss the idea of Giannis Antetokounmpo being traded to Dallas for the 1st pick and why San Antonio may make the most sense to pair him with Victor Wembanyama.

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