FULL SHOW | NCAA House Settlement | NBA Finals game 1 recap and game 2 preview | Jazz hire Austin…
this is Saturday’s show 975V KSL Sports Zone welcome back i’m Christian Esparza alex Napols with us good morning hope you have wonderful plans for your weekend ahead we love to start things off for you it’s great times man it’s great times there’s a lot of news to break and or a lot of news to break down and talk about busy week for a weird just early June week here in the state of Utah man well yeah i mean we had the NBA finals the Stanley Cup finals both start and then uh what seemed like a slow Friday night all of a sudden we got a bombshell breaking news story we’ll get to that in a second uh basically the uh NCAA’s house settlement was approved so we’ve got a lot of information to go through there as far as long story short schools and institutions can now directly pay their student athletes like a professional sports team would so we’ll get to that in a second but first you know we only see each other basically once or twice a week we got to catch up that is true you know we can’t just jump right in alex how was your week man phenomenal week uh phenomenal week i I you know last weekend went out to Vegas had the time of my life watched Kendrick Lamar in concert kind of had a little bit of a Monday the Monday blues the postcon depression you know and then but we got into a good groove and now we’re back and here talking sports man I’m so jealous was it good it was amazing i know it was good one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to actually probably the best concert I’ve ever been really oh yeah wow and this was the second time that you’ve seen Second time I’ve seen him yeah man okay how was Siza she was good she was good oh you know what dude i ran into Siza on my way into the arena i saw Yeah i saw you had it on Instagram or something yeah yeah yeah i our our lift driver dropped us off and I’ve never been to Allegiant so I wasn’t really sure what I was doing or where I was going and so I saw a crowd walking towards a specific direction and so I told my siblings I was like “Just follow that crowd and see where it takes us.” Yeah uh and as we get closer there’s like people freaking out and you know I hear somebody like “Oh my god she’s right there she’s right there.” And I was like “Sis is not out here is she?” And so like I get on my tippy toes to like look over this crowd and like my I have my camera over my head like you know trying to see what the heck’s going on and I pull my phone down to see like what I just took pictures of and sure enough Scissor is right there and I’m like 2 feet away from from SISMA man it was pretty pretty freaking cool yeah there you go and well I’m glad you had a good time i really like Allegiance Stadium um I was telling you last week I went and watched one of the Pack 12 championships i watched the youths play Oregon there uh that was when I was down in college at SU we were able to find cheap tickets and Vegas is like a 2-hour drive from Cedar City so yeah Legion Stadium awesome it’s super nice man it’s huge too it’s intimidatingly large it i see why they call it the Death Star like it makes sense uh when you go in it’s very dark but it’s nice one thing I noticed is it’s very steep you know people say that about Delta Center like it’s very steep you know when you’re at the very top it’s not like you’re far away from the field you’re almost right on top of it right and you look like straight down yeah dude but it’s so It’s crazy dude and then there’s that torch on one of the like one of the end zones i was sitting right by it and you know I got to walk by it and they have like this huge bar under the torch and it was just so freaking awesome allegiance Stadium is is is phenomenal uh hats off to the Raiders for building such a such an amazing arena and uh after the show you go throw some chips down on uh Blackjack no no no no no i’m not a gambling man ah man i’m not a gambling man i don’t I don’t have the good luck you know so I never really I don’t partake in those activities okay whatever whatever i don’t I don’t uh we got Parker this weekend parker what’s up uh how was your week man i haven’t seen you in a bit yeah no it has been a while and Oh it’s been good it’s been good kind of same old same old there’s nothing wrong with that enjoying the summer time oh yeah oh my god i like I I come alive during the summer i like I kind of hibernate in the winter a bit like I don’t want to leave my house i don’t want to do anything i’m like grumpy and then you know spring hits and bam everything’s beautiful there you go it is it is nice parker got a haircut man i did much much overdue looks nice i didn’t even I mean like I said I barely see you so I Yeah right i’m sorry uh well I’m glad this week was nice it was like overwhelmingly hot last weekend and then it cooled down it was uh highlight of my week I guess I would say i went I played uh paintball last weekend for one of my friends bachelor parties uh so yeah we went paintballing it was middle of the afternoon it was like 2:00 p.m last Saturday so it was like 90° um but it was fun i haven’t been paintballing in a while and it it didn’t hurt as much as I remembered but I was also kind of like hiding in the back like making sure didn’t get pelted let’s just say I was not on the front lines oh man I’ve only been paint paintballing once and I was underdressed and it it hurt well I showed up it hurt i I brought like a change of pants and I brought like a shirt that I didn’t care about cuz you know your clothes will probably get ruined and I brought a hoodie oh and uh I was like I show up and I’m the only one with the hoodie and I’m like “Oh man.” And I had I put the hoodie on and it was it was too hot so after like two minutes I took the hoodie off so I was like you know just wearing a t-shirt but it wasn’t that bad like I said it it didn’t hurt as much as I remember it so paintballing the one time I went it was fun it was fun but I I got hurt and I’ve decided that I’m a a wuss and I’m never going back yeah well we’ll see if I get out again i don’t know anyway uh let’s jump into this because there there is a lot of information to go through um this information came out late last night yeah about uh 7 o’clock last night yeah it was kind of weird just out of the middle of nowhere um I want to give a shout out to Ross Dinger uh from Yahoo Sports he has been really on top of this a lot of the information that I’ve been getting that I’m going to go through is kind of coming from him from his articles so we’re going to do our best to explain it um but like I said this is all fresh if you want the best source go check out Ross Dinger again from from Yahoo Sports long story short though uh Judge Claudia Wilin approved an agreement between the name defendants which would be the NCAA and the plaintiffs uh dozens of suing student athletes to settle three consolidated cases all of them are seeking more compensation for athletes yada yada yada uh there’s two parts of this the first part is there’s going to be $2.8 billion in back pay that’s going to go from athletes former student athletes from 26 to 2024 so that $2.8 billion is going going to get distributed between thousands of football and men’s basketball players from 2016 to 2024 because they feel like they missed out on NIL so that’s the first part the other part of this is schools are now going to have 20 was that $20.5 million basically in a salary cap to distribute amongst amongst their student athletes and there are certain breakdowns of that um like 90% of it and a 20.5 million that’s going to continue to go up okay so it’s just like you know the NBA or NFL salary cap it’s going to raise a salary cap that is being implemented in in to to college athletics uh the distribution formula goes as such oh no that’s back pay uh basically 90% of it goes to football because football at any university or most universities is the driving force behind athletics that’s what brings in the most money so I think it was like $16 million of that 20.5 million goes to football another couple million goes to basketball and then the rest is basically distributed amongst the other sports uh going back to the back pay though I think this is funny because 20 I don’t know what the 2016 came from like why start there because obviously there are hundreds of thousands at least of student athletes that played before then maybe even millions right I don’t know how many but it’s like our guy Hance Olsen right legend legend at BYU not seeing a dime in back Okay 2016 it’s a weird year and I would like to know why that was picked because I think NIL’s didn’t really start becoming available to college athletes until 2021 so I mean if they would have picked 2021 that would make sense because that’s when NIL started right but 2016 is a weird number but I do think it’s cool that you know you’re allowing athletes who maybe didn’t get an opportunity to uh you know if you look at the football sense of things you know athletes that potentially didn’t get to have a big opportunity in the NFL and they get to go back now and they get some money out of it 2.3 billion of that 2.8 8 billion it’s going right back to power four football players and men’s basketball players who are getting an average of 100 uh 120k per year or excuse me per player over the next 10 years and that’s going to be that back pay that you’re seeing from that 2.8 billion of that most of it’s going to former football former men’s basketball players it’s a lot of money it’s a lot of money $2.8 billion is a lot of money look man I’ll take 120K uh what I think is funny though Johnny Manzel one of the uh you could say more popular I guess student athletes football players whatever over the last 15 20 years um people talk about how much money he could have made in NIL yada yada yada unfortunately for Johnny Manzel this back pay only goes back to 2016 of course he uh he left college in 2013 so I do think that is kind of ironic almost i mean it would have been even funnier if the back pain went to 2014 and Johnny Manzel missed out by like a year but uh no I I mean we’d have to go through and some of the big names I don’t know like Yahoo I think it was Yahoo Sports tweeted out an image basically announcing the back pay right and they use Baker Mayfield as the uh the the graphic and it’s like okay Baker Mayfield does not need to be the no the representative of this the guy who went who got drafted number one overall and is on like his fourth NFL contract and truthfully I don’t think Baker needs 120K i don’t think that’s going to do much for him right you know there there are so many other names that probably didn’t make it in the pros or whatever yeah man and but you use Baker Mayfield as the as the graphic so I thought that was funny um going to the the revenue sharing side of things this is where we’re going to see a lot of I think there are going to be a lot of lawsuits coming from this um but there are so many kind of caveats that come with it number one I think first and foremost that I thought was interesting there is going to be the implementation of the college sports commission that’s right a group operated mostly by power leagues it immediately takes effect and it is basically going to oversee all of these NIL deals uh and I do want to mention because we haven’t made this clear yet this revenue sharing model does not eliminate NIL deals from third party sources right so the way these kids were making money beforehand can still happen this is just an additional source of money that student athletes can make so this does not wipe out you know donors or Yeah which deals with fast food restaurants or car dealerships or whatever which I think is a good thing right which I think is is is a good thing because you know we’re just going to throw out uh some hypotheticals right school A only brings in $8 million in NIL while school B brings in 15 million when you bring in the rev share and you give every school 20.5 million to distribute amongst the players uh across their across your entire athletics department I feel like that just evens out the playing field a little bit yes obviously there’s still going to be big schools that get a lot more in NIL but at least you’re giving that school A who only brought in 7 million in NIL this past season now you’re giving them a little bit more financial resources to potentially bring in higher recruits and I feel like that should hopefully give you a little bit more parody and allow you to even the field a little bit right even though there is still going to be big collectives who bring in a lot of money but at least now you’re starting at a base where you can go to a recruit and say “Hey look this is what we can offer you even though we’re not the heaviest hitters.” And I think that’s good i think I think that’s a great thing for college well I think obviously that’s better for the quote unquote little guys like Utah State yeah there you go yeah exactly they’re going they’re still going to have that main draw that they can you know for for basketball for example and I know that we talked about only a certain amount of this money can be used for basketball right but one player that gets more of your money is more impactful to basketball than it would be to football so if Utah State wants to kind of focus on that basketball program and say “Okay we’ve got X amount of dollars to use for basketball and let’s use most of that money to bring in one star player.” That’s going to have a big impact and so yeah I I do think that kind of raises the floor to some of these uh smaller schools um also worth noting schools are permitted to distribute this money against uh amongst the student athletes not required that is true so the schools per the settlement agreement could just take the money without giving it to their student athletes now I’m sure that that would kind of dissuade some players from going there but at the same time it’s like 20.5 million is a lot for I’m thinking of like the smaller FBS schools right like that’s a lot of money that they could probably really use and it might not be worth it for those athletic programs the really small athletic programs to distribute the money amongst student athletes you know they’d rather just put that into their athletic athletic budget yeah but then that would I feel like if you’re not distributing that to players and again kind of using this to recruit I feel like that would just put you at a big disadvantage it might um I think there are always going to be good players whether or not they’re getting paid and yeah they might not stick around you know they have let’s say they have a good year at these smaller schools yeah they’re probably going to transfer the next year because they’re going to get noticed by the larger schools who actually have the money but you know that it that’s no different than what we’re seeing right now um I don’t think there’s ever going to be a way to make your Sunb Belt schools as competitive as your SEC schools right um I this is crazy though so 90% of of this budget goes to football and men’s basketball um so in year one under the $20.5 million that’s about 13 to$16 million for football 2 to4 million for men’s basketball and then the the remaining money left over is shared between women’s basketball baseball volleyball and other Olympic sports it’s a lot of money yeah kind of makes sense i I did see some negative reactions towards you know the distribution but at the end of the day no matter where you go the football’s the money maker football’s what brings in the most revenue and so it makes sense to give 75 to 85% of that 20.5 million to the football program and to uh the football players i’m sure you know as as time goes on that might fluctuate and might change but right now it’s it brings in the most money for most schools so it makes sense that football gets about 85% of that so how is this going to be regulated uh again College Sports Commission they have found their guy to lead this Brian Cely he’s a former uh assistant US attorney and the Major League Baseball’s vice president of investigations he is the CEO of this college sports commission so basically they are going to be the ones enforcing this they are going to be the ones trying to regulate this which is crazy to me because it seems like a tall task i don’t see how how that’s even possible so yeah Brian Cely you might have the hardest job in the world right now yes um there’s another group NIL GO they are the clearing house and they have to approve because we talked about how you know these student athletes can still have NIL deals with third-party sources right so the clearing house NILG go has to approve of these deals now so deals can still be agreed upon but they basically have to be approved by this clearing house and that’s for any NIL deal over $600 in valuation that one’s interesting Because you know you go from completely unregulated NIL to now a what was basically going to be a committee giving you the stamp of approval to say yes you can you know use your NIL money to pay this player X amount or no you can’t do that and I feel like that gives an interesting amount of power to some to to this NILGO committee it’s interest it’s it’s interesting but I I’m not sure how I feel about it yet i think it’s gonna this one’s going to be like a little bit of a time will tell type situation um because I’m sure in you know in a few months time you’re going to hear ex player missed out on a million dollars because nil go said h you know what we’re not going to approve this right i think that’s the biggest takeaway from this is it’s so new and people have become so lawsuit happy and that’s how we got here in the first place there are going to be hundreds if not thousands of lawsuits that come from this within the first year or two i would I would think so uh this opens the door it’s a can of worms and it’s Pandora’s box has been opened from the very start it’s like okay what can we do to try to make things better what can we do to get the student athletes more money but it’s like the more the more you give the more you allow the more that they want to take um and the more that so and so feels like he got cheated or she got cheated out of money somebody gets in their ear and says “Hey Sue just sue.” And this is this is where it leads to so I and I mean for a while there like the NCAA did had no power against lawsuits right every lo it seemed like everything and every time that the NCA got sued for something it seems like the player always won um and I think that’s that’s why we’re seeing the trend that we’re seeing and I’m sure there’s going to be some players out there that has some legal advice that aren’t happy with this settlement and there’s going to be stuff to come out of it for sure it’s going to be a mess it is a mess again there’s a lot of information all coming out all at once um this is it’s a big day for college like this decision this announcement it changed it changes college sports forever uh this is well college sports is now officially it’s officially pro it’s pro it’s officially pro you’re giving it you’re you’re you’re putting a salary cap on athletic programs you’re putting a salary cap and you are giving the schools and the institutions the power right to pay their athletes rev revshare contracts are going to be signed you’re now signing a contract to play for a certain athletic college athletic program it’s the days of amateurism is over it’s been over it’s been over and this is officially Yes this is officially kind of pushing it in the pro on the heart monitor yeah there you go uh parameterism one of the things that I’ve that’s been highly debated and highly scrutinized through this whole thing has been the roster limits now football is capped at 105 players men’s basketball is capped at 15 and baseball uh programs are capped at 34 and I saw this for football so 105 roster spots and they can all be scholarship but they don’t have to be yes so that’s an important note is schools can still have walk-ons they don’t have to give all 100 of all 105 of those scholarships but they do have 105 scholarships available um and I’m assuming that it’s similar to basketball and the rest of the sports yes and now because I think it was what 85 for football as far as scholarships went yeah it was 85 but now you go up to 105 which like you mentioned gives you a little bit of flexibility where you’re able to fully to you’re able to scholarship and and give those players that money for academics if academics still matters in all this does it i don’t know but uh it it just again allows you to kind of put a put a contract in front of these players and say “Hey look this is uh your quote unquote scholarship this is how much you’re going to get from Revshare welcome to the University of Alabama or wherever it is you’re going it’s It’s crazy yeah um big day i just I’m like after we get through the initial facts and statements it’s like I’m almost shocked and at a loss for words how crazy how ridiculous this is to think about it’s it’s it’s been a long time coming we knew it was coming everybody was kind of waiting for it now that it’s officially here it’s uh I I think there’s a lot of positives sure um but I think this is one of those situations where we’re going to have to see and wait what what comes out of it i think this isn’t something that we’re going to 100% be sure on if it’s a good thing for college sports or if it’s a bad thing for college sports at least for a couple years until the dust kind of settles and we really the the the committee or commission or whatever it’s called it really kind of gets going and figures out how to regulate all this craziness that is college sports uh another thing because of this donors uh can now be rewarded by schools directly with benefits like uh priority points or parking passes or some sort of perks or whatever so the more so you you can be you can have a greater incentive to donate because beforehand you know you donate to the collective whatever collective and I don’t know what it was like before um because I never did it i don’t think you ever got really anything in return maybe you got some merch or something but this is like now there’s a greater incentive to donate yeah it it it kind of is yeah kind of is a credit card yeah it could be yeah you allow which which again there’s positives you allow you you you incentivize people to donate and then in return you know you slide in if you’re not a season ticket holder you know slide in a couple tickets for the family you know yeah and it because I think like I said it’s awesome that everybody now kind of has like a level playing ground but at the same time because NIL still exists and you’re still able to bring in all this money NIL isn’t going to go away and you’re still you’re still going to need to have those boosters and those donations to the collectives or or through that third party or whatever it is in order to continue to be one of the best right talk if everybody has a 20 and a half million right your advantage still comes from NAL from your donors and your boosters and and whatever and your collectives and the small businesses that want to help out so so I don’t I don’t think it’s necessarily a a a bad thing or anything that you’re incentivizing you know Mario’s Pizza Shop down the street to bring in donations and you know you slide in a couple tickets for the staff or whatever it is to be right uh to show your your appreciation the Mason False Live Shake at Artic Circle that’s where we’re at man what you know a couple years ago that was a big no no and now it’s like hey give us money and we’ll give you tickets well it’s funny i remember so I went to SEU uh for college and I was there from 2018 to 2020 2022 so like basically the very beginning of all this NIL stuff and a lot of the NIL deals that those student athletes had down there were like again with like small businesses like they had an NIL deal with Culver’s there was a Culver’s down in Cedar City and so they were like I remember they shot like this commercial it was like it wasn’t professional at all it was like shot on an iPhone uh you know edited by like a some student like in some Yeah some graphic sitting um but it’s like it was like cute in a way it was like oh yeah like these guys I don’t even know how many meals they get it’s not like they get to eat for free for life at Culver’s but it was like yeah Culver’s is helping SEU basketball uh be competitive and now it’s like oh my goodness these guys are getting like millions and millions of dollars what a pretty ridiculous what a time man and I don’t know how much you know again for the example I don’t know how much the basketball players down at SCU are making now but yeah I would be interested i should check in with some people I know down there to see kind of what the average is um because it’s not like the level of you know the Utah State or BYU that we have up here or even Utah so I I do wonder how this impacts the smaller schools that would Yeah that that would be kind of interesting to to find out because I mean I know you brought it up a little bit earlier you brought up a little bit earlier where you you mentioned like a Utah State who now has a more money to compete and be competitive yeah I I might I might try to get somebody on from down at SEU to to jump on with us next week because he he would probably be able to uh help us out with understanding how this would affect the the bottom of division one right we of course you know Alabama those schools Georgia even BYU for example like this doesn’t really change a whole lot for them because they practically had unlimited money anyways yeah you just give them more money right but for the smaller schools the little guys that’s what I want to know is how does this help those guys so that’d be an interesting We’ll do some digging we’ll do some digging that’ll be good conversation uh yeah that was breaking news as of last night again a lot of information coming out on this so it’s going to be a big topic uh throughout the week but we got to take a break coming up next we’ll get into NBA Finals game one obviously we all know how it went and we’ll get into that next this is the Saturday show 975 the KSL sports zone welcome back to the Saturday show 975 the KSL sports zone i’m Chris Barza alex Napoulos with me some clarification we had to check with the Google machine yes FCS schools are indeed part of this revenue sharing again they have to opt in yes or opt out um I don’t know why they would opt out yes but it sounds like that could be an option so we’ll we we’ve got some digging to do we There’s still a lot that we need to find out and figure out about all this it’s it’s brand new it’s fresh um I didn’t know i didn’t think that FCS schools were going to be involved but it says any NCAA school who opts in is eligible for the 20.5 million which is insane because that’s I mean if you look the reality is FCS doesn’t bring in No I’m looking I’m trying to find like Yeah well I I keep up I keep bringing up SEU because I went there right but this also affects Weber State right yeah um and Utah Valley yes um so I’m trying to find like SEU’s revenue during the 2024 year the Google AI so I don’t know how much you can trust that right off the bat google AI yeah that’s what it is uh it says $18 million $18 million uh for the 2024 year so this 20.5 million revenue sharing would already be more than what they brought in it already be double right what they brought in so anyways that’s enough on that um we’ll talk to talk to some people we’ll have a guest on to and talk about this uh next week but Alex let’s talk NBA Finals uh because this first game was absolutely electric it was probably Well first off it was better than anybody was expecting because people everyone was basically saying “Oh the Thunder are going to win by 20 right?” Uh because that’s what they’ve done at home all year and it it looked like it was going to start off like that because the Pacers played so poorly in the first half but my goodness time and time again Tyresese Hallebertton hitting the game-winning shot right at the I mean I’m going to say at the buzzer but there was 3 seconds left but it was at the buzzer it was essentially at the buzzer and that was his third time doing that this playoffs halib Burton man what the hi big shot bro look you know after you get voted the most under or overrated player in the NBA by your peers Yeah take that personally you take that personally and then you go on this incredible run that we’re seeing not only Hallebertton take but the Pacers well what’s funny is the the two best teams in the NBA since January 1st you know the year of our Lord 2025 have been the Pacers and the Thunder not even counting the playoffs like those were the two best regular season teams so it’s I guess not exactly a surprise that we’re seeing them in the finals but yeah on one side you have the closest thing to a super team that we have in the NBA right now in the Thunder because SGA won MVP uh Jaylen Williams allstar alldefensive team uh I think he was third team allNBA uh and then you’ve got Chad Holgrren a recent number two overall pick with an unlimited ceiling basically and then all these other role players so they’re basically a super team and then on the other side you’ve got the Indiana Pacers you know your blueco collar workers that show up and get it done and just work hard and I I think it’s an incredibly interesting matchup um one thing I thought was crazy about this game is the Thunder did what they wanted to do they really really disrupted Indiana especially in the first half um turnovers were a problem yes the Pacers finished with 24 overall turnovers and I I thought that was the key part of the game if Indiana wanted to win they had to control the ball because that’s what the Thunder do best on defense is they turn you over they get those extra possessions turn those into points and if you would have told me that Indian Indiana would have over 20 turnovers I didn’t think that they would win the game um especially that first half the first half was rough but they they locked in in the second half they made some adjustments and the the thing that I like most about Tyrese Hallebertton you know he’s got the game-winning shot he finished with 14 points and 13 total shots this is not your typical James Harden Luca Donuch Donovan Mitchell who’s going to be taking 30 shots a game um he he’s a true point guard he lets everybody get involved yes and I I also think it’s a massive credit to the Thunder for containing Tyrese Hallebertton for as long as they did right their defense is crazy absolutely suffocating and you know honestly I in the third quarter about halfway through the third quarter it looked like OKC was kind of coasting man it looked like they were on their way to wrapping it up taking the taking game one and then going into this game two with a with a one- nothing lead but instead the Pacers just turned it on man i don’t know if OKC just got lax i don’t know if they they relaxed took their foot off the gas a little bit too much you know or what the deal or if if the Pacers were just I mean that good i feel like a lot of people coming into this series already off Indiana but I think the narrative has completely changed now because they steal game one and I think that one of the best things about this too is the fact that it’s not just Hallebertton and Seakkum had 19 turner had 15 Namhard 14 and Naymith had 10 you have your entire starting lineup in double in in in double digit scoring it’s not one guy it’s not you know Shay Giler sorry to interrupt plus 17 from Toppin off the bench yeah there you go man it’s it’s it’s everybody’s getting involved it’s not just you know your your your star guy putting up 38 points like it was for OKC in this one it’s everybody’s contributing and everybody’s doing what they need to do to to mount the comeback and even on an off night for for Tyrese right he wasn’t by far any means the the leading scorer but you put the ball in his hands in the most vital moment and he makes the moment happen yep and that’s what we’ve seen from Tyrese throughout this entire playoffs you go back to game one against the Knicks that comeback against New York it was Tyrese Hallebertton putting up the shot you there was a couple games against Cleveland right where they were down with 30 seconds left and who who does it tyresese Hallebertton who does it again he did it against the Bucks he’s done it time and time again and it’s a it’s he’s having such an incredible playoffs man but this p this Pacer team is I think people wrote him off too soon it’s hard because the Thunder on paper the Thunder are the better team right but this is why you play team sports um because it’s not just about what happens on paper it’s about what happens in the moment and for Indiana just overcome all those turnover issues i mean Obie Topphen especially it felt like every time he touched the ball in the first half he lost it um but he had a really strong second half and I want to say they don’t win the game without Obi Topp in second half but you could honestly say that about any one of these Pacers players because they truly like you’re saying it’s not just Tyresese Hallebertton which is interesting because most people would say he’s a top 10 top 15 player especially based on these playoffs i mean throughout these playoffs he’s been one of the five best players in these playoffs but it’s again he doesn’t need the ball constantly he doesn’t need to put up 30 35 point performances now he can we saw him have that one game against the Knicks where he had like 35 points 15 assists 12 rebounds and zero turnovers or whatever yes he can do that but that’s not how this Pacers team wins they win the game when Andrew Nemhard takes on SGA one-on-one like a crazy person and hits a James Harden step back right in his face with two minutes left and they’re trailing who does Andrew Nemhard think he is doing that but it goes in that was awesome that was That was awesome i just think I mean the final five minutes of this game were just absolutely incredible because it’s they start the fourth quarter down and like you’re saying it’s like oh yeah Oklahoma City one of the loudest environments in the NBA one of the hardest stadiums to play at they’ve got the lead they’re running away with this and then a few minutes in it’s like okay Indiana’s not going away and then like four or three minutes left it’s like okay they’re they’re kind of creeping back are they actually going to do it again we’ve seen them do it twice already in these playoffs and then that final minute it’s like there’s no way but there is a way there is a way and they do it and it’s just it’s crazy no lead in the fourth quarter is safe when you’re playing this Indiana Pacers team they are okay there was three seconds on the clock when Hallebertton hit that shot that’s the latest in any NBA playoff game that a team has taken a lead for the first time yes and that Yes like you mentioned they didn’t lead this entire game no they didn’t have any sort of a lead up until that shot from Hallebertton and so they led they led this game for a total of.3 seconds man and and and obviously won no lead is no fourth quarter lead is safe with this Indiana Pacers team you you think you think you’ve got them but the reality is they’re going to find a way and it’s led by Hallebertton who is showing and becoming a special player for this Pacers team and in this league teams were 0 and 182 in the NBA Finals entering uh when trailing by nine points in the final three minutes of the NBA of an NBA Finals game and now they’re one and 182 that’s crazy because of Tyrese Hallebertton uh let’s talk game two let’s talk adjustments unfortunately during the finals there’s two days in between every game lame so they’re not going to play again until tomorrow when will then be now right soon i would have loved to see that game today uh but the interesting thing is Sha Eljas Alexander still had 38 points now he he was a shot chucker in game one 14 of 30 um he seemed to fall off in the second half particularly because he had 19 points in the first half and I I felt like he was kind of dominating the game yeah getting to his spots but then you look at Jaylen Williams and Chad Homegrren you know the the second and third fiddle jdub had 17 and Cadet Homegrren only had six points two of nine shooting so awful game from Cadet a pretty mediocre game from JDub i don’t think that you can if you’re Indiana i don’t think you can bank on that happening again i mean those guys are too good to be inconsistent uh to do that again I should say you know they’re they’re going to have bad games but it it’s not going to be backtoback right so I really like N Smith and Name Hart and what they’re able to do and even Hallebertton when he tries on defense they can be good defenders um but it’s like where do you give and where do you take as far as letting SGA get his shots versus trying to dare Jaylen Williams and Chad Homegrren to beat you that’s where I’m curious to see Rick Carile making his adjustments um and and what their defensive plan looks like because obviously for as fun as this win was they don’t want to have to do that again they would rather be in the final few minutes of the game i 100% agree and I think for for OKC you gota it’s a tough loss it’s a it’s a hard pill to swallow but you got to put in the river mirror right don’t dwell on a loss at home especially now here in the NBA Finals don’t dwell on it put it learn from you know you learn from your mistakes probably don’t get laxed in the third quarter yeah and put this game in the river mirror and and and and come back and have better contributions from chat and Jaylen Williams and I think that’s going to be the key to tying it up at 1-1 you can’t allow the Pacers to steal your homecourt advantage no if if the Pacers win the two games in Oklahoma City and I know a lot of people are talking about oh homecourt advantage is not a thing it doesn’t matter it does matter it does yes it does matter absolutely especially in the I feel like especially in the finals especially in Oklahoma City um one thing that’s interesting for as good as OKC defense is you know they forced the 24 turnovers that we talked about it did feel like Indiana was struggling to get the ball up but when they did they shot 47% from the field 46% from three those are great shooting numbers so I mean OKC’s got to continue to pressure them and try and turn the ball over because it felt like whenever they got into the half court whenever the Pacers did there was help defense coming and just swarming whether it was Lou Dort or Alex Caruso it feels like or even SGA at times it feels like there’s always somebody coming in from the back uh just knocking the ball away and so I think that’s that’s the scary part about the Thunder but again the Pacers when they were able to get the shots up they were dropping so those are high numbers i I wonder if those shooting percentages are going to fall back to average or if they’re continue if they’re going to continue to be hot um a lot of keys in game two but SGA over under 35 points um I’m taking the over you think so i’m taking the over 35 is a lot you think he’s going to put up 30 shots oh how many did he have this last game he had 30 he had 30 he made 14 of 30 shots that’s a lot i can see him putting up 30 again i wonder and obviously this all depends on how the rest of your team is shooting uh Lud Dort by the way went crazy from three made five of his nine three-pointers and he was like during the regular season he shot like 27% from three or something so that was kind of crazy yeah uh but yeah it depends on how everybody else is shooting right ideally Chad is shooting a lot better and uh I mean 19 is a good number for JDub but I don’t know 30 just feels like a lot for Yeah I think ideally obviously like we were just talking about with the Pacers you want to spread of the wealth right you want to get Chad Holgrim involved you want to get Jaylen Williams involved um you want to get Lou Dort involved right have him put up another 15 in game two you want to spread the wealth a little bit but I don’t know i feel like I feel like SGA is a clutch enough player that if he has to play hero ball and kind of carry when if Holgra and Williams aren’t sharp or aren’t contributing probably the way that they want to contribute again like in like we saw in game one then I think SGA has that ability to to to be the hero and and and kind of take on that responsibility and have him take 30 shots i think ideally you don’t want him to take 30 shots but if if push comes to shove it pro he’s he’s the guy you want the ball with the ball okc 10 and a half point favorites so Vegas is expecting them to uh respond in a big way in game two game two is tomorrow 6:00 p p.m and then they will play game three on Wednesday so I just love that the it’s lived up to the hype man you know what makes me upset what this is like the lowest rated finals ever since they’ve been tracking it or something oh come on i think that’s ridiculous i think I get why people don’t want to watch but I think after seeing game one go the way that it did I think numbers will probably be better for game two well and this is because it’s it’s it’s proven that it’s unpredictable it’s the NBA’s problem they don’t they don’t want to market their small market teams they don’t care about them boo uh anyways I have some stuff in the technical files we’ll get into sounds good so stay tuned for that we’ll hit that next this is the Saturday Show 975 the KSL Sports Zone welcome back to the Saturday Show 975 KSL Sports Zone i’m Christian Esparza Alex Napoulos here as well time for technical fouls where we get to talk about the wacky things in sports it’s my favorite segment it’s always fun and you know what i will say a lot of our daily shows throughout the week are jealous of this segment no really yeah well particularly Jake and Ben oh okay uh let’s just say they are kind of implementing ways to steal the segment from us and copy it but they’ll never be as good as us no absolutely not never let’s get into it uh I’ve got one it’s okay last week of course we had Stefon Diggs on the yacht with the pink cocaine it’s going to be hard to top that ever so I’m I’m just warning the listeners right now uh you know my technical foul today isn’t nearly as good as that one that was a really good one that was a great one but I want to give a technical foul to the NBA and Adam Silver for the lack of not only like NBA Finals marketing and promotion not only are you burying the small market teams but like you tune into the game i don’t They didn’t have NBA Finals logos on the court yes dude not ridiculous not not having the trophy nothing in you know with the logo like in at center court that’s a crime that is a crime meanwhile why are we getting rid of this for the stupid inseason tournament all 30 teams get a ridiculous Yes eyesore of a court redesign i don’t think any of those courts looked good they hurt to look at because the color saturation is so intense yes you want to pump I can’t imagine how much how much it must have cost to make those courts you want to pump thousands or millions of dollars into that but for the NBA Finals the biggest event of the year you can’t even put a NBA Finals logo on the side and how many YouTube TV logos did we get i saw seven at one point I was watching on YouTube TV ironically enough to be fair uh and uh Commissioner Adam Silver did say uh it’s an ath it’s an article from The Athletic i don’t know if they were interviewing him or that this was just a statement but he said “It’s nice when you’re looking back on highlights and they stand out because you see that trophy logo or some other indication that it’s a special event so we’ll look at it.” You don’t say Adam you have to look at it you don’t say what does the NFL do Christian they make it the biggest event of the year they make it feel like it’s something worth watching they have like five Super Bowl logos on the on the field all over yeah the World Series there’s patches on the jerseys there’s patches there’s everything that’s the thing too is like there was no patches on the jerseys for the NBA Finals there was no There’s nothing to commemorate this special moment right if you took a screenshot of it and compared it to a screenshot from a random regular season game you wouldn’t be able to tell which one was the finals they did people I saw people on social media going back and finding clips from when OKC played the Pacers in the regular season and compared it to how the presentation was for the uh it’s the exact same the only difference and the only way that you would have known it’s an NBA like you knew it was the NBA Finals game was because the score bug said NB like it was golden so they did have marking my bad that’s it no they did have but that’s not even NBA that’s that’s ESPN it’s ridiculous that’s the only distinction that you saw was the gold uh score bug from ESPN do you think it’s because they’re small market teams that the NBA just doesn’t care that’s a great question that’s a the conspiracy theory that I’m willing to buy into um you want to talk about okay you say they don’t care about their small market teams give me some evidence well this is evidence you’ve got the Pacers and the Thunder in the finals okay the NBA is going to do the bare minimum that they have to do to put this out uh you tune in they don’t show any of the pregame presentation it’s just a regular it’s just another game do better NBA i want to feel like you care you can’t tout this as just another game this is your NBA finals but oh my gosh if LeBron James was there oh if LeBron James and the Lakers were there you would know it’s the finals i don’t want to see seven YouTube TV logos i want to see the NBA finals i want to know what the hell I’m watching i want to know what I’m tuning in for yeah I would agree i would agree anyways really frustrates me speaking of the finals okay we have uh we we’re going to stick with the NBA finals for the for the second technical foul for yours that you’re going to give out yes okay uh I think so so there’s a news station uh in Fort Wayne Indiana WPTA that has gone viral overnight uh because so they decided they’re they’re airing the final obviously this is a huge event for for Indiana okay and with a minute 13 left on the clock they decided to tease the news so as the You’re saying like as the Pacers were beginning their comeback exactly there’s one there’s like 113 left on the clock and they decided to cut the game to and throw to a news tease and this is what it sounded like [Music] [Applause] thundering to this three-point lead the drive is eye shot block and throws it back [Music] next on 21 Alive News the man who was brutally beaten at Pikees Pub last week has come forward hear what he wants to have happen now also tonight a big night for Pacer fans as Indiana is in the NBA finals we’ll show you a local business who has seen a boost from the Yes sirers and we could see a little fog overnight tonight we’ll have the very latest forecast coming up in a few minutes thanks for staying up with us i’m Abos fort Wayne’s most watched news start sga guarded by Nimhorn and then they cut And then the best part about it too is they cut off the newscaster to throw it back to the game so he didn’t even finish his he didn’t even finish his tease you know what that was that had to have been a producer hitting a button by accident i think that was a I think that was a pre-recorded thing uh and somebody like bumped a button or accidentally pressed it you know as producers during the week you know we know how delicate those boards and the technology and the buttons can be right right if you accidentally press something and it plays I mean it’s like oh so that’s that has to be what that was man brutally beat brutally beaten and then oh hey by the way it’s a big night for big night for the Pacers um they’re about to make this comeback we just cut out of the game to to tease this but it’s a huge night for the Pacers recap the NBA finals stay tuned it’s like oh they’re still going over it’s not over well and the funny part is so obviously that you know that was on the TV right so they they go in it starts gets the rebound off of an OKC miss yes the Pacers were down 107 to 110 the news thing comes in it comes out the Pacers are down 109 to 110 and the Thunder have the ball so the Pacers made a key shot again that started that comeback right um I believe it was either a Seakkum shot or a Miles Turner shot i think it was Seakum got a rebound and and put the shot up so it only missed one possession uh but it’s it’s a key possession it’s a It’s a Seakum it’s a Pacers shot that got them within one point it’s a huge play to miss uh so technical foul to WPTA for going viral for guys uh I think you know if this if this happens anywhere else we’re probably it’s probably not that like as crazy and as big of a deal but it’s the fact that it’s in Indiana that this happened that I think makes it such a such a blunder if you know your Dallas Mavericks affiliate TV station is playing the game and they accidentally cut out nobody cares but it’s the it’s the actual Pacers market i don’t know if it’s their flagship TV station or what but Oh that’s such a big deal that’s funny sorry residents of Fort Wayne Indiana well at least they got to see the shot at least they got to see the the Hallebertton shot yes if if if imagine if they would have missed the Hallebertton shot heads would roll o heads would roll okay we’re way over we got to take a break coming up on the other side we’ll get into some jazz talk i mean it’s been such a busy week we haven’t even got to the biggest news locally the Jazz hiring Austin A to be the president of basketball operations we’ll give our takeaways on that next this is the Saturday show 975 DKSL Sports Zone for us Austin will be running the program he’s got final recommendation to myself on any decisions that need to be made i think it’s the job of both Justin Danny and and myself to kind of plug into him and so hopefully that alleviates quite a few questions of who who kind of has the final decision on roster and management and personnel his resume speaks for himself uh speaks for itself uh for 17 years kind of growing up uh either playing hoops uh scouting uh coaching and um particularly on on roster management there you go that’s Ryan Smith the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth owner speaking Monday afternoon after they made the announcement that they were hiring Austin A as the president of basketball operations of course Austin is the son of current Jazz CEO Danny Age lot of takeaways from that again it came out the beginning of the week on Monday but there’s Ryan Smith alleviating a lot of the questions as he put it austin will have final recommendation of course Ryan is the owner ryan Smith is the owner anything any decision that’s made has to go through him but it’s basically Austin is the one saying “Hey you should do this hey we should do this.” So Austin is the guy this is huge for the Jazz yes um because this is basically the identity of the team it is the man in charge and you hear that basically Justin Xanic the general manager and of course Danny A the CEO will basically be under Austin austin will have final recommendation on everything so this is big it’s a big hire uh for the Utah Jazz I think as they continue to navigate the rebuild as they continue to navigate kind of the direction of where they want things to go and where they want to end up i think Austin I I think it’s a good hire um Austin was a part of that Celtics front office staff that went through a similar situation right where the Celtics kind of retoled um and re and and rebuilt their roster uh specific specifically you know drafting Tatum and and building that Boston Celtics NBA championship side and so he brings that experience with him now to the Utah Jazz and I’m excited to see what Austin A’s vision for the Utah Jazz team is uh I’m glad you bring that up and we’ll start there of course 17 years in Boston before that he spent some time got to give a shout out again to my T-Irds he was an assistant coach there for like a season parker uh can we keep tally of how many times uh SCU has been mentioned on today’s show i think that’s five or six uh but no I think that the Boston ties are obviously huge because Will Hardy spent some time there danny Ang spent some time there austin 17 years there a few other members of this jazz staff in front office come from Boston and Ryan Smith was on DJ and PK so that was a press conference on Monday ryan joined DJ and PK on Thursday to talk about basically Danny and Austin and the big roles that they had in Boston’s success yeah I mean I think since 2018 they went to the final the one of the finals like five or six times which is incredible given the fact that no one goes there and knocks on the door and it opens that’s it’s almost unheard of everyone’s going there and then having to retool a little bit you know they’ve had to go multiple times to get that championship you know even when I took over and we took over the Jazz you know we had a great regular season but we were clearly far away when we got into the playoffs every year what happens is you go back and retool and you you sharpen the tool to go back again you make some changes you add some pieces ultimately you run out of time and what they’ve been able to do to prolong that run by not only keeping your stars and your players in a good spot so that they still believe and they want to come back keeping your coach and the organization in good spot and not getting too emotional so you take all of the assets you have and then the clock runs out on you it’s pretty strategic and there’s a lot that goes into it and I think they’ve done a good a job as anyone we’ve seen in doing that and then if you look at all their characteristics of those two and kind of how they lead and how they are it really makes sense danny does keep everyone confident in a good in a good spot and he really is just a joy to be around they have a strong belief where they’ll say no to stuff that could come back and and bite you i love that um because yes of course we know that first off for the big swing right the 2008 championship the Celtics had to trade for Kevin Garnett yes and they brought Garnett and Paul Pearson and and Ray Allen and they had Rondo and so they assembled this super team and they went and chased the championship and then however many years later they had to make the decision to blow it up they traded away all those guys and accumulated all these picks and there’s Ryan right there literally comparing the Utah Jazz to that and he he said it’s hard you can’t become emotionally attached to some of these rosters no matter how good you think you are you know if you’re not winning the finals yet odds are you’re probably not gonna make it and um apologies first off that was on that was with Hansen Scotty not DJ and PK Um and I cut some things down from there but I I like him basically admitting like yeah that’s why we had to blow up the Jazz roster when I first bought the team yes we weren’t close no matter how good we were in the regular season we weren’t close and that showed time and time again throughout the playoffs so they felt the only way forward from there was to blow it up and and restart and obviously Danny and Austin have the experience of building that team in Boston that went to the finals or won the finals I want to say three out of the past five years um so that’s huge there that’s that’s some great insight as to why they made that move and of course the nepotism thing was a a big deal but I think I don’t know i wasn’t ever worried about that at all because again this is a guy who was basically the the number two guy the right-hand man in Boston right i think his resume speaks for itself and that’s those were Ryan’s words as well um Austin on some of the interviews he’s done mentioned that he was planning to talk to several other teams this summer and so he took the opportunity with the Jazz it’s not like the only reason he’s here is because of Danny now he might have got his foot in the door in Boston because of his dad yeah but I don’t think this job right now is specifically because of Danny i I would agree i would agree uh nepotism is a thing it is a thing it It’s a thing um and there’s clearly some situations where nepotism and it doesn’t work out right it crashes and burns quickly they’re not meant for the role they’re not meant to you know to be in the league whatever the case may be um but there there are certain times where people crash and burn with nepotism i don’t think that’s the case here i think sure maybe he did get his foot in the door because of his dad um you know all those years ago but even after Danny left he stuck they kept him around in Boston it’s not like they fired him right it’s they saw he didn’t come over with Danny right away in 2022 or whatever it was or 20 had that happened then you know maybe we’re having a different conversation but I think it’s the fact that Boston saw his value they kept him on he helped build that team that won that championship last year for the Boston Celtics right like you mentioned like and like Ryan Smith mentioned his resume speaks for itself it’s a different conversation if you know Boston fired him because he didn’t do a good enough job but here it’s a different story maybe all those years ago yes there was a conversation episotism but I think right now Austin A has the resume to rebuild a team yeah and it’s a little murky on what exactly his title was in Boston because we know that Brad Stevens was in charge there we know that Brad Stevens is essentially the I don’t even know if his title is president of back basketball operations but Brad Stevens is the guy in Boston so as long as he was there Austin was never going to get this opportunity there but as you say he was extremely valuable there um some other tidbits we’ve got to get to you know he made some waves because he was asked about the team last year manipulating the starting lineups right and he gave a a short answer he said “You won’t see that this year.” And so first off and I love the way that fans think there were a lot of fans that were like “Oh we’re trading for Jaylen Brown we’re training for Giannis we’re we’re going all in next year.” I don’t think that’s what that means no that is not that is not uh what that means yeah I don’t think that’s what that means um let’s play okay austin joined and this was on DJ and PK dj and PK asked him about that and I want to play Austin an Austin Austin’s answer first and then we can kind of get into that so this was Austin’s followup to you won’t see that again and I think we have to keep all of those different ways on the table um the optionality we have to find value and we have to make smart moves and so I don’t know how it’ll play out to be honest it’s it’s still too early we’ll have to see what opportunities present themselves to us um but if if you you know go back to the question that was asked before that soundbite it was asked in a specific way and I responded to that um you know we’re going to we’re going to fight to the end we’re going to let whatever group we end up with fight and we’re going to let Will Hardy fight and and try to win and improve and we’re going to do everything we can um every night so that’s kind of the the question I was answering so again the question was basically about manipulating you know the Jazz got fined remember the Jazz got fined for tanking for basically holding Larry Markin out when he wasn’t injured and they did similar things with Colin Ston and John uh Collins so that’s what the question was asking if we’re going to see that again um holding these players out that are healthy but you want to lose games so you don’t want them on the floor he him saying you won’t see that this year and of course and with DJ PK is not going to come out and give their plan right you don’t want to show your hand you don’t want to announce to everybody hey we’re we’re tanking again hey we’re we’re going to make a big move in a month we’re going to try and make a big trade no what he’s saying is just you won’t see us holding out players to lose on purpose now reading in between the lines as you’ve mentioned a couple times on this show if they fall lower than eighth in the lottery that pick goes to Oklahoma City because of a dumb trade that was made years ago sending Derek Favors over to the Thunder um this is the last year of that pick being a threat to conveying so it’s a line that you have to walk you either have to be so good that you don’t care about losing that pick or you have to be so bad that you’re not at a risk of losing that pick and you look at next year’s draft and how good it is with AJ Debansa Cam Boozer Darren Peterson all those guys yeah you want to be picking at the top of that draft again but you don’t want to be middle of the road to where you know say you finish with the eighth worst record and lose one or two spots in the lottery that pick goes to the Thunder right so that would be about in this year’s draft that would be about 25 30 wins um for comparison so you still want to do your best to stay around 20 to 25 wins if you can which taking that plus what Austin said again I’m just interpreting that i’m reading in between the lines i’m making assumptions that sounds like the Jazz are probably going to trade away some vets that would theoretically help them win games because I don’t think that they’re going to want to try and win games next year well and it’s something we’ve talked about too in prior weeks uh here Christian you’re losing value on Larry right the longer that he is not contributing to a winning team whether that’s playing on a 23- win Jazz team or not playing on a 17- win Jazz team he’s losing value right his value was at its highest when he made the All-Star team they had a chance to trade him away la last summer according to reports but the the Warriors weren’t willing to meet the Jazz’s value for Lowry and that’s actually a good segue because Danny A with a lot of interviews to play with danny A joined DJ and PK and they asked him about missing out on big game hunting his iconic quote that people took and ran with and this is what Danny had to say about missing out on big game hunting well so like we have done we have gone after some of the bigger players and bigger names and more star-like players to add to our current roster um but you know in the league now there’s not many of them right now that are available and those that do come available they are there’s eight or 10 teams trying to get them too so I think maybe the most important thing is what you’re saying is that what you have to trade matters a lot and um most of the trades that I’ve made in my career are because the other team really really wanted what I had and that’s why you make trades i mean it’s tough to like call a team and sell them on a player that they don’t want and so they spend all their time looking around the teams they want and call the teams that have players they want and so that’s the most important thing is just having the assets and we do have the draft picks and we do have good players like you mentioned but um if they’re not good players in the eyes of the teams that are that have the star player um there probably isn’t going to be a deal done takeaway number one obviously like Danny said there just wasn’t any big game available on the market to go and get uh takeaway number two teams not being interested in the Jazz’s players which as you’re talking about depreciating value that’s going to happen when these guys are not on the floor absolutely and like Danny says you know you can’t really force someone to take a player they don’t want right so you have to again they have a lot of questions they have a big lottery question that they need to answer this off seasonason well and then you get into you know forcing a a team to take a player you don’t want that’s when you either attach draft picks like the Derek Favors trade which why would the Jazz do that right now um or I mean you look at the Lowry packages that were suggested last year you’re talking about Jonathan Kaminga some picks and Brandon Pajki the Jazz wanted Brandon Pajki included the Warriors didn’t so the war the since the Warriors didn’t want to include him the Jazz were like “Okay well we don’t have to trade Lowry which was true.” And they ended up not trading him and that’s basically showing you know the Jazz have a value on Lowry Markin and they don’t want to trade him for what he what he’s not worth right they want to make sure that they’re getting enough in return for Lowry Mark and to make the trade worth it and with the the depreciating value as far as him being held out a lot of last season it’s going to make it hard to swing a trade that is quote unquote worth it but we’ll see i mean there are people talking about you know insiders like I’m not saying random people on Twitter i’m talking insiders uh saying that this is probably going to be a crazy off seasonason for the NBA as far as player movement yes you know teams are trying to navigate the second apron and all of that so we could see a lot of movement in the NBA number one I think any movement is good for the Jazz because that means you know some of these guys could be available number two as we saw with the Luca Donic trade and several other trades at the deadline the Jazz are not afraid to be facilitators whether it’s just picking up an extra second round pick or a couple second round picks i mean those can be stacked in the future and turn into something right so whether or not the Jazz are involved in any huge trades uh they might be facilitating some things they might be taking on some salary they might be matching contracts and stuff like that um I keep mentioning you know you talk about Giannis you talk about Kevin Durant those are two of the bigger names um but then you’ve got you know the Knicks the Thunder the Spurs uh the Rockets you’ve got several teams interested in those two big guys right literally big guys so whoever misses out on them somebody’s going to miss out they’ll probably be interested in Lowry as a plan B or C so I think the Jazz are going to have the opportunity to make some big moves this summer um I do want to mention we have a poll up on the zone Twitter account right now uh courtesy of Parker he posted that i want to get the wording right what should the Jazz do for the 2526 season option A tank baby tank option option B no Tank same roster or option C make a big trade swing so I’m assuming Tank Baby Tank would be trading away Lowry and or John Collins Colin Ston uh no Tank same roster would be throwing these guys out and saying okay go play ball and that’s where you get into the risk of losing the draft pick right because if you if you trod out the same roster you’re probably winning around 30 35 games I would say um or make a big trade swing try to win you know if you make a big obviously it would depend on who the player is but if you make a big trade like realistically what is your ceiling you know like 40 right 40 wins is that worth it because you’re still losing the draft pick yeah and I was about to say you’ll lose you’ll lose that pick i think honestly I think the tank baby tank and the make a big trade swing right now kind of go hand in hand because I like you said there is going to be movement there is going to be a lot of movement this offseason in the NBA i think the I think we’re we’re about to enter an absolutely wild off season for for basketball and for the NBA and I think Larry Markin is going to be a big part of that the Jazz will make a big trade swing but it’s not going to be bringing somebody in it’s going to be finding a big trade for Larry Markin uh yeah I think in the context of the poll the trade swing would be gaining somebody but I I see what you’re saying the right now tank baby tank leads with 57% of the vote and then make a big trade swing is 27 and a half% of the vote so only 15 and a half% of people want to see the same roster trotted out on the court for you know in my opinion I think that would be the worst option yes uh because you’re not guaranteed a playoff spot but you’re going to be good enough that you lose that draft pick so I think that’s like the least amount of reward at the end of the year uh you either tank and try and get a a top five pick again or you make a big trade swing and position yourself for playoffs either next year or the year after um yeah we’ll see it might suck to hear this Jazz fans but it’s going to be another tank season i think Jazz fans are in for at least one more season of of tanking of of purely truly tanking again getting into the roster manipulation it’s not going to be as icky as oh Lowry Markin and stubbed his toe he’s going to be out today no it’s going to be let’s trade away you know all of our veterans and we’re playing 10 guys under the age of 23 or 24 like that’s that’s what the new tank will probably look like and again we’ll see um we will see we got to take a break coming up next we will get into five minutes of of course we got Stanley Cup playoffs last night’s game was electric and then uh bigname quarterback just signed his deal it’s all official we’ll hit that next this is the Saturday show 975 the KSL Sports Zone it’s time for five minutes of got some uh other sports news to talk about not a ton of time so we will get through it quickly hey Alex let’s start with NHL Stanley Cup finals because last night’s game somehow was even more intense than game one and I would argue even more intense than maybe NBA Finals game one would you go that far i don’t know the game-winning shot at the buzzer is pretty crazy but I would I I would probably say yes uh because like we were mentioning with the NBA finals the OKC Thunder it it looked like it was they were going to run away with it but when it came to game two of the Stanley Cup finals it was literally just boom boom boom boom boom boom back and forth like a a true nailbiter i had no idea who was going to win this right it was back and forth back and forth just high paced hard-hitting action and I truly had no idea who was going to take this game in case you missed it game one goes to overtime uh Edmonton takes it 4-3 in overtime conor McDavid had a beautiful pass to Dry Cidle dry Cidle finds the back of the net i love golden goal by the way i think that is that’s my favorite overtime format in all of sports uh whether it’s soccer or hockey I think that’s amazing it makes it so exciting because anytime they get close to the net it’s like “Oh this could Yeah this could be it this could be it right here.” And and and once you see that goal go in man oh man just the the electricity from I mean you saw it in game one right when Edmonton uh when Dryidle scored the overtime winner and it was in Edmonton as well the eruption of the arena was just absolutely incredible now you contrast it to game two where where Marian goes and he scores the overtime winner and you can hear a pin drop on the ice in that arena right it’s Florida taking game two in double overtime but it was in Edmonton still so you know what i changed my mind parker can you play that this is This is the game-winning goal last night saddle back out push up by missed it in the for moving in on Skinner marian is in he scores marian wins game two for the Panthers in double overtime brad Marian anticipates this puck and takes a fortunate bounce this is exactly the same as his short-handed goal so the first off I want to point out that was off of an Edmonton shot uh Edmonton I think it was Dry Cidle or he might have passed it off to somebody else somebody took a shot and it went past the net bounced off the boards and the Panthers had a breakaway opportunity right and the the winger gets it out to Marshand in front and it’s Marshand he’s one-on-one with the goalie and he’s got somebody draped over his back hitting at his stick and he does such a great job of keeping the puck in possession and he fakes like he’s going to it such an interesting shot he fakes like he’s going to backhand it in and then it looked like he switched it over to his forehand and he was going to forehand it in but it never hit the forehand it went through the goalie’s legs so I don’t know if that was on purpose or if it was just luck but the the puck slipped through in between the goalie’s legs and as you as you were pointing out Alex it’s just it’s quiet in the in the Oilers arena with the away team taking game two in double overtime oh I love it yeah i think the the thing that sticks out the most to me um from that clip is just you can’t hear the crowd man no you can’t they’re like shocked they I I would be too if I was you know in the arena as an Edmonton Oiler fan i would be too because again you have a really phenomenal opportunity here to take game two make it a two nothing series as you head back to as you head to Florida and instead and like you mentioned it’s coming off of an opportunity right you have the excitement and the emotions of Edmonton takes the shot and you’re like taking the shot and again it’s it’s it’s next goal win so you’re like oh and then you know you know it puck goes the other way and just the heartbreak of of the overtime winner for Marian it’s abs man living up to the hype well yeah we talked about last year you know Edmonton no Florida won the first three games Edmonton won the next three games forced to game seven and it was intense uh game one this year goes to overtime game two goes to double overtime maybe game three will go to triple overtime it’s kind of a joke but that would be cool i mean it’s been it’s been so much fun because these are clearly the two best teams in hockey and it’s crazy just you know I loved the Utah hockey club now the Mammoth being here in year one but watching these two teams watching championship caliber hockey these are probably the two best teams in the world right now um it’s it’s just a different animal yes and let’s uh I got to give credit to to the Edmonton um Cory Perry scores with seconds left in 18 seconds with seconds left in that third quarter right to force overtime to Yeah florida had the uh the what was it four it was 4-3 at 4-3 lead florida had the 4-3 lead yep cory Perry scores with 18 seconds left to force overtime yep you got uh MC Jesus carrying the Yeah oilers putting the team on his back and creating and then uh 18 seconds left you score to make it 4-4 and then you head to what has what was one of a phenomenal overtime period uh this series again living up to the hype man cannot wait for game three and I I hope that this goes the distance and goes up to game seven because I think as a neutral watching the Stanley Cup finals it would be absolutely phenomenal so with an overtime and a double overtime we’ve had nine periods of hockey across two games love it oh it’s been great uh again similar to the NBA they have two games two days off in between games so uh the next game will be Monday uh and they will be going to Florida again series is tied one uh NFL news Aaron Rodgers making up his mind we knew sort of that it was coming the expectation was that he was going to join the uh Pittsburgh Steelers but it is official it was announced was that yesterday or the day before uh I think it was two days ago right i think Thursday the initial reports came out signed uh and the contract was signed by Thursday night uh and the deal the reports are come out it is a 1year 13.65 million contract 10 million guaranteed and uh could be worth up to 19.5 million with incentives me I don’t I don’t care i mean no and it’s it’s fine to say you don’t care because it’s been dragged out the entire off season right we knew it was coming we knew it was going to happen it just took forever because Aaron Rogers likes to dance like Yeah likes to be a little diva about things and we knew it was coming now that it’s actually happened I’m like great who cares uh yeah well I was talking to you off air a little bit like Aaron Rogers used to be one of my favorite players in the NFL but his antics over the last probably I’ll say four or five years even going back to the co stuff like that really turned me off yeah of him and I’m I’m kind of sick of him but man watching him on the field like watching his highlights are just magical um and he he’s still got a little bit of touch and I think that’s why why he’s coming back i I think he still believes that he can play at at least you know an average level the problem is you know is he’s not ring chasing because the Steelers aren’t close and they’re the third at best they’re the third best team in their division um last year with the Jets Aaron Rogers went five and 12 the Steelers with Russell Wilson went 10 and seven do you think the Steelers win more than 10 games with Aaron Rogers i don’t think so i don’t think so at all uh because they essentially they brought in DK Metaf but they traded away Pickkins uh yeah George Pickkins um the rest of their offense I mean Jaylen Warren is a fine running back they drafted Caleb Johnson but I don’t think he’s that great tj Watt is an animal the defense is always going to be good i think Mike Tomlin is a good coach structurally the Steelers organization is a much better organization than the Jets so I don’t think that this is an absolute dumpster fire like no like that was with Aaron Rogers but I just don’t see more than 10 wins i I don’t see this improving them at all and the one thing about the AFC North is that comp that that division is always competitive within itself right you hardly see anybody get swept in division most most of these game most of these series go one and one they’ll beat each other all of the time um but I mean if the Bengals are fully healthy I don’t think that that Pittsburgh’s better than them definitely not the Ravens so yeah I you might not even make the playoffs as the third best team in in your division look Aaron Rodgers Green Bay Aaron Rodgers was special um he was phenomenal he was fantastic but I you know the Jets have left a stain on his legacy his time with the Jets have put a a a pretty big stain on his legacy and so I think I think you know this is a good opportunity for him to try to regain some of that respect and regain some of that legacy but truly um I don’t see this I I think I think even 10 is pushing it i would probably say nine or eight is probably the ceiling for this Steelers team with with I agree and that’s where the Steelers have been um for most of their time like you know Mike Tomlin’s whole thing is he’s never had a season below 500 and yes they went to the Super Bowl they won a Super Bowl with him but it’s like for the last I want to say 10 years like yes they barely made the playoffs but they’ve they’ve really been right around 500 and I think that’s the curse of Mike Tomlin and I don’t want to put all of the blame on him because they’ve been playing with an old Ben Rothllessberger they’ve had Kenny Picket uh Mitch Trabiscy Mason Rudolph and uh now a 41year-old Aaron Rodgers it’s like yeah you don’t have your franchise quarterback so I think you’d just be better off at this point either i think they should have kept Justin Fields i think that would have been the better option um I would agree or bottoming out and and trying to get a legit franchise quarterback because these guys aren’t cutting it because what Aaron Rogers is going to play for one year and then what you win eight games pick 16 or 17 yeah like I I just don’t I just don’t think it’s in the Steelers culture to really bottom out no it’s not and that’s and that’s fine right i’m not going to fault him for that because at the end of the day that gives you better football and gives you a better product but truly I think signing Aaron Rogers is literally just a band-aid and it’s not going to even if they do make it into the playoffs um I don’t see them going any further than past game one i think game one is No no no they haven’t won a playoff game in forever game one is their ceiling when is the last time i think it was 2017 if I’m not mistaken really i think so i could be I could be wrong though is 1617 somewhere in that range yeah 2016 there you go that was close they uh beat the Dolphins that’s funny i don’t even remember that if I’m being honest uh yeah I mean again Okay so great you’re going to win nine games with Aaron Rogers yeah pick 16 17 in next year’s draft and who’s your quarterback gonna be it doesn’t you know it it does it doesn’t scream your build and like I said it’s not in this in the Steelers culture to completely bottom out um I just think that they’re going to be stuck in here in the middle until they Yeah until they actually decide what they want to do and if they can actually find a franchise quarterback zach Wilson you are a Pittsburgh Steeler in one year you heard it here first we’ll I like that we’ll see he learned under Aaron Rogers he did they did oh my gosh i forgot they played together they did yeah you know what i just spoke that into existence write it down Parker all right uh we got to take a break coming up next we will wrap this baby up it’s the Saturday Show 975 the KSL Sports Zone wrapping up another edition of the Saturday Show 975 the KSL Sports Zone christian Esparza and Alex Napoulos alex you had something that you were saving for the end of the show uh first of all great show happy to be alongside you as always here on Saturdays um a lot of lot of information that that we got to ingest today but I think my favorite news of the week uh has to be uh so so Little Wayne um one of the most one of the more popular rappers put out an album and gave uh Puka Nikua a shout out and I think it’s great i think that’s awesome for Puka getting a getting a little shout out on on a big uh hiphop rap album but man it sucked the album oh dude it was terrible yeah I’m a big Lil Wayne fan um I think he’s Mount Rushmore of rappers he’s on there right uh he’s got to be but he’s past his prime yeah that’ll that was not good uh yeah but between this you know Puka Nakua getting a shout out on this john Stockton got a shout out from Kendrick Lamar and Not Like Us look man so you know Utah we’re we’re up there we’re making it we’re making waves absolutely and it’s great anytime anytime Salt Lake City or Utah’s mentioned we love it uh because we’re we’re weird and we really we really want people to like our state right we are we are kind of insecure about being liked and I get it because there is a stigma about people from the outside not liking us but yes we treat our celebrities we’re very attached to them because we we feel like that is kind of our what represents us which in a way it is but yeah so anytime that our celebrities get shown love we feel like that is Utah in general getting shown love so And anytime Yeah absolutely and anytime there’s an outsider that comes out we just absolutely cling on to them too like when uh Post Malone comes in and and says how great Utah is we’re like “Yes one of us one of us one of us.” I’m trying to find the lyric exactly what he says do you have it pulled up or no uh from Little Wayne yeah I got it pulled up uh he says “Making catches or we catch him like puka nua.” You catch him like he does catch him in his new song uh moola coming in i think that’s how you say it i don’t know uh don’t listen to the album though it It’s not good um just know that Puka is mentioned in it um and it’s also a little play on you know his whole Pokemon thing uh we got to catch them all like Pukua oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so it’s obviously he’s a receiver he catches them and then his little like love for Pokemon so we were just talking about Pokemon in the break yeah uh as far as here on the station what else we have going on for the day rsl off today um the Royals last night did they They lost right they played and they lost i heard DJ on the call yeah yeah was it a TV game he he uh he calls him i didn’t know that i thought it was our guy JP uh it it was it was uh So for TV it’s DJ yeah yeah yeah oh interesting yeah i tuned in to hear the end of it and I heard DJ talking about a a Royals win i was like “Oh Royals loss.” Yeah royals loss excuse me they didn’t win 3-2 got a red card that’s fun did somebody punch another player no I It was just a double yellow situation oh yeah nothing too exciting uh anyways that has nothing to do with today uh bees only for today rsl is off so the bees will be uh playing at home against Red Rock that game is at seven round Rock uh yes um tough week for the bees too it’s always a tough weekough tough week for the bees uh hey though there’s an awesome event happening at Ricele Stadium uh later today oh yeah the the Mexican national team i’m glad you bring this up yeah the Mexican national team’s going to be there we got my dad tickets uh for Father’s Day to go see the Mexican national team that’s sick so we’ll be up at Rice Eckles catching some soccer so if you see if you see me are playing stop me and say hi switzerland switzerland right okay yeah yeah and that’s cool that it’s at Rice Eckles because it’s a much bigger stadium even than uh America First Field and that’s a big deal as we hopefully prepare and I say we as a country right United States as well as Canada and Mexico to get ready to host the World Cup absolutely so getting some international teams to come in here and play we’re not going to have any games in Utah but uh that’s huge uh and it could open the door for something down the road and then uh team USA is playing team Mexico next week right but not here not here no no so uh so USA is playing Turkey in Switzerland and then Mexico Mexico will play Turkey next so they’re just flipping opponents i was funny enough so I got a haircut the other day and he’s a big soccer fan my barber and he’s going to this game yeah um and I was talking to him about oh how cool would it have been for Team USA to play here in Salt Lake City because Diego Luna’s on the roster that would be amazing uh but unfortunately no they are not that would be here that would be that would be awesome but we are going to go see uh the Mexican national team later today so I’m looking forward to it man that’s awesome i’m kind of jealous uh yeah that’s pretty cool i’m looking forward to it well yeah if you go see if you see Alex there stop by and I promise I’m nice tell them what you think about the jazz yeah yeah we’ll talk about the jazz we’ll talk about our Tell them what you think about Siza and Kendrick i was telling you in the break I don’t know if people actually know who Siza is but we’ll find out we’ll build an audience yeah there you go all right man okay we got to end it uh thanks for listening talk to you next week enjoy your weekend this is the Saturday Show 975 the KSL Sports Zone
Full episode of the Saturday Show with Christian Esparza and Alex Napoles on June 7, 2025
• The House issues its ruling in the NCAA settlement
• Pacers stun Thunder in game 1 of the NBA Finals, what will game 2 look like?
• Technical Fouls
• Jazz hire Celtics front office man Austin Ainge as President of Basketball Operations
• 5 Minutes of Stanley Cup Finals and Aaron Rodgers finally signs with the Steelers
• Lil’ Wayne shouts out former BYU and current LA Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua
