Shams Charania on KD’s trade preferences and Knicks’ head coaching search | The Pat McAfee Show

Shams Charania on KD’s trade preferences and Knicks’ head coaching search | The Pat McAfee Show

let’s talk about a potential trade you just talked about Durant though go ahead conor yeah there were reports today Kevin Durant he’s going to get traded within the next week i forget who said it but that was what NBA Central and that’s kind of what where I get all my information probably probably your burner if I had to guess se uh what’s the deal central or Sen uh Senel I use sometimes as information i’m not going to lie that account uh I think it was like Tom Thibido getting fired like they put that you know obviously it’s a it’s a parody account and then a week later he actually got fired and then they were like “We said it first.” So yeah I mean let’s just also say for to the WNBA fans they are getting killed by NBA Central right now they need to realize that that’s a fake account and that they’re just it’s so close yeah NBA Central it’s tough these days sometimes it really is tough these days sometimes yeah it’s absurd but where is he going is he going with a like a Giannis type trade is there going to be some sort of combination of the same thing or and when yeah there there’s not going to be a Giannis Kevin Durant intermingling trade going on you said a week i think it could be even sooner than that i think I think I think there’s some motivation with some teams potentially even sooner than seven days you know maybe in the next few days we could get some Kevin Durant trade action u there is some serious traction on conversations on trade scenarios with the Suns uh they’ve had about 6 to8 teams reach out there’s been interest there’s been some offers there’s been been some negotiations but really in the last 24- 48 hours I’m told the focus of the Suns conversation has been on a few of the teams and and here they are houston the Houston Rockets the Miami Heat and the Minnesota Timberwolves i’m told those are the three teams right now where a lot of the focus for Durant lies uh there’s some motivation there sooner than later so that is it’s a great question you ask AJ because he’s on expiring expiring contract about $54 million and so that could also come up as an issue here where I if if there’s a team that for sure wants his extension uh or will there be a team we saw happen with Kawhi Leonard in 2019 where or actually 2018 and then he won the championship in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors where they just literally had no idea whether he wanted to be there probably didn’t want to be there and they trade for him they win a championship then he leaves anyway so will there be a team whether it’s in this mix or a wild card team that just takes a swing and just uh just banks on themselves and hope that they can potentially make a deep run and keep them there uh but that’s going to be the big question you said Houston Miami Houston Miami and Minnesota okay let’s get an answer about Miami right now you would Kevin Durant fit in well in the Miami Heat culture do you think i mean Kevin Durant would fit in anywhere but definitely I feel like he fits in the Miami Heat culture and I can’t speak too much on it but I would say he’s a guy who comes in and just has to be Kevin Durant yo yo yo you speak on it man um I’m the vice I’m the vice president of player development fella so I got to keep I got to keep my coins coming in so what I will say is he he if he comes if he gets he comes into a locker room I get it now i get it now i get what the loyalty this is why I’ll show Kevin first i know you got a couple of these but this last show first but if he happens to come into the Miami Heat locker room he comes into a situation where you have a Hall of Fame coach already Lasra nostra you got a team that has a culture already a team a a team a team that has a culture already so the questions that people have about Kevin Durant can Kevin Durant be your leader he doesn’t have to be a leader in Miami they already have leadership they already have a culture they already have a hell of a head coach who’s who’s a a figure is Kevin Durant going to respect the guy his accolades MVPs uh you know uh Hall of Famers um scoring champions you can’t just have anybody coach Kevin Durant team USA they were together too right yeah yeah team USA so you can’t have a guy that has no experience come in and say “Hey Kevin you need to do this to win a championship.” Kevin going to be like “I got more championship i tell your ass what to do to win a championship.” So you have a coach that has that pedigree and Kevin Durant’s going to respect that so yes the situation in Miami will work but at the end of the day Kevin Durant has put himself in a situation and he’s earned the right to pick and choose where he wants to go yeah I would love to have Kevin Durant here in Indiana it doesn’t sound like that’s a thing that wasn’t even part of the conversation well still I will say I’ve also seen some conversations about Kevin Durant as a player like let’s remember who we’re talking about here he’s about he’s going to be 37 in September we do know this but he is one of the best players still to this to this day he made his 15th straight All-Star uh team this past season in in a year that he’s played he obviously missed the 2019 2020 season so uh all three of these teams I think are looking at this as like if we get Kevin Durant in the fold I mean if you’re looking at it from Minnesota’s perspective Houston’s perspective we can legitimately contend for a championship and the East right now is wide open so if you’re Miami and you have a chance to pair Kevin Durant with Tyler Herro and Bam Adabio so that’s really where the focus has been on those three teams in the last 24 hours and Lasra Nostra that’s a great name him too i didn’t know that was a thing though le supposed wide open you know the Pacers have been to back toback i’m sure the Celtics will still be good how important is uh Wait a minute see that was disrespectful just there what what he didn’t even know it the East is wide open how is it wide open and we got a team right now that’s See how See how it’s See how easy it is to disrespect the Pacers in the city in their building yeah I understand he’s been saying this for a couple days yeah Shams does this corporate i am just saying what teams believe in the Eastern Conference but look at look at the Pacers we didn’t we didn’t expect them to be here right so could there be a team next year you mean we did expect them to be here well did most people around the league expect i don’t know ball did i don’t think so uhhuh how important is Udoka for KD because obviously they have a really good relationship when Udoka was in Boston a lot of KD to Boston i love him too is that why he’s going to Houston yeah for you know players how important because you’re a Boston guy and I tell you every time we were in a series with Boston I would look down to their huddle and it wasn’t Marcus Smart it wasn’t Jason Tatum it wasn’t Jaylen Brown it was Emiloka he was the leader of that team was the guy that followed yes and and he’s the guy who will challenge you not just mentally but physically too like what you want to do you want to square off we can square off but at the end of the day before like I told you before I let you take down these other 12 13 guys I whip your ass that’s Ma Moka’s mentality so he is a guy that Kevin Durant respects and will come in that locker room and will fall in line but now if you bring a first year coach Kevin Durant may be like you don’t really know Sean why don’t you start doing a little bit more research tricky Ricky and Kevin Durant would get along very very well let’s move off of the Kevin Durant story i don’t love that we have Miami Heat personnel here not telling us uh how much they’re trading for Kevin Durant and when that’s going to happen but you got to do what you got to do and I understand r will get a little riled up if you were to give that away aj AJ Amen aj has a question for you sean are the Knicks uh any closer to finding a head coach and did they have a plan in place before they fired Fibs of hey this is who we’re we’re lined up we may have locked in yeah usually when you fire a coach like Tom Thibido that takes you to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years you would hope that there’s maybe someone lined up but we see right there uh they’ve gotten five denials of permission for current They didn’t expect they didn’t expect to get denied all these i I I I I don’t know if they expected you know out of all those Billy Donovan has one year left on his deal so you know that was the most recent one that they requested and that one was denied and Billy Donovan is staying in Chicago so think about it the Bulls the Hawks two teams that that you know you you can’t really consider as contenders the other three can have a case that we’re going into next season and really have a legitimate chance to contend is this normal is this normal cuz uh we have a This is 100% unorthodox okay so we have a Knicks fan in the back his name is Bruce everybody knows Bruce everybody loves Bruce except for if you’re watching a Knicks game with Bruce everybody hates Bruce sure just But that’s how Bruce would like it and that’s how I think a lot of Knicks fans would like it as well he said that he’s flipped his mindset from oh the Knicks have no idea what they’re doing to I kind of like that James Dolan’s treating all these other NBA teams like they’re a mid- major like you know how after March Madness happens some mid- major coach does very well some big school comes in and says “Congratulations you now get an opportunity to coach at a big conference and we get you a bigger deal.” The Knicks are kind of doing calling around to other NBA teams hey we know you got a good thing going but we would like to congratulate your coach he now has an opportunity to come coach in Madison Square Garden is this normal like it sounds it it feels um wild just to call a team and be like “Your head coach listen we want that.” And it’s like stuff like this happens behind the scenes as UD knows but this is as far as since I’ve been covering the league and when I talk to GMs this has never happened like a team is just going to call around go one by one by one i mean at this point if you’re not requested it’s like you’re it’s like disrespect who are some coaches that maybe aren’t being talked about is assistant coaches cuz like in our world in the NFL UD you probably know these people better because it’s a smaller community seemingly in the NBA than it is in the NFL when a general manager is hired we have no idea who this person is they’re like an assistant scout or a regional scout or assistant vice president of personnel we don’t know the people so you just got to hope that they’re good in the NBA do people normally know who the coaches are going to be ud do you normally know of the people that get these head coaching opportunities yeah I think a lot of times you do a lot of times you do you know especially if you’re one of the top guys i didn’t get that luxury they didn’t ask me a damn thing about who they were going to bring in for coaches but when you’re that guy you get to have a t a seat at that table and have those conversations when they talked about the guy that they brought in in Phoenix they said that that conversation was had with De was a big part of that so if you’re an organization I think the times have changed i think now you have to give your star players a seat at the table and have those conversations because there’s a time now where players are getting coaches fired when I came in the league the coach would go to the GM and say “I need this player i need that player this is how we’re going to win.” Now the players go to the GMs and say “We need this coach that coach and this is how we’re going to win.” So it’s completely flipped the script so you have to have these conversations with your players or your ass might be out of there so on that note New York Knicks Jaylen Brunson’s dad I think he’s been an assistant coach for the Knicks jaylen Brunson is the star for the Knicks i watched him seemingly make every shot every time he had an opportunity rick Brunson going to be the head coach no no you can’t play for your daddy that’s not my understanding that’s not deal with that in baseball now with my son that’s cannot do that no no and this is nothing against Rick Brunson but you cannot have that i’m you know you know you got we all got kids we go to these games and the coach and his son is terrible and he getting all the play time you like get your son ass out of here yeah but Jaylen obviously going to be the guy but it is weird if he treated treats him any differently it’s hard to balance but who is who are some of the names for the Knicks but to answer AJ’s initial question I think from the Knicks perspective it’s going to be a very patient search now i I don’t think they feel like Everyone’s saying no and has been patient well I think they didn’t plan on being patient did they the requests as an opportunity to learn whether that coach is attainable whether we can talk to him do more research clearly they were denied on all those fronts so now when you look at the Knicks I think they’re going to look at more uh head coaches former head coaches that are available in the marketplace so you think of guys like Mike Brown Taylor Jenkins potentially others Michael Malone is also out there so so I think now that they’ve gone through this exercise of all these head coaches current sitting head coaches you get they’ve gotten denied by five again in their mind there’s no other vacancy in the NBA it’s just them we have time to see what research can we do with other teams sometimes usually as UD UD knows like let’s be honest a lot of this happens behind the scenes this this one happened very publicly and in front of everyone and they’re calling the team to do their due diligence uh so now they’re g I I expect them to look today tomorrow and over the weekend into some former head coaches maybe even assistant coaches at the NBA level right now i love everything about it good luck to the Knicks they’ll have a coach before next year we assume but this is this has been very public i They will i can break that here now uh they will have a coach before next season put on the seatgeeek ticker you’re right is this public because of him you can stamp it you do his research is this only public because of you Shams like what the fact that they were denied or would this have been behind the scenes if you didn’t report it well you you never know about that but once you call a team once you call a team like they’re not saying it they’re not saying “Hey we like does it have to go through the league office for them to request.” It’s usually team to team but but once you tell a team think about it think all the people that could know it’s the GM it’s his entire front office it’s the ownership level it could be a lot of other staffers the coach himself people around the coach so by the time you’re like the Knicks are reaching out understanding that it’s possible this this is I I I honestly I just thought the pecking order was bad like I know and I’m being honest like you got to go after guys that you really have a chance why are you wasting your time on guys that you have no chance of getting email just sat at the top of the West all year with a young team there’s no way in hell they letting him go jason Fitch just went to the Western Conference Finals last year jason Kid went to the Western Conference Finals last year you know these are coaches that are building something that’s treading in the right direction you’d be crazy as hell to let your coach walk and go to the next you know how hard it is to get a good coach yeah agreed uh last question here for you Shams from Tone sham’s another organization with a really good culture uh the Philadelphia 76ers uh there’s rumors there what you said really good culture culture culture culture i’m kidding i’m being sarcastic culture culture cuz we stopped trusting the process a long time ago we don’t trust that no more uh there’s rumors they’re looking to potentially go up in the draft would that involve one of the Embiid or one of their their star players or what’s the situation going along with that the the I mean every team at this juncture of the season is going to be active to try to go get a player right like like is you know if there’s a player you like in the draft there’s a player you like in trade um but I mean they’re making the normal calls i have not heard any seriousness to you know much much of their draft chatter um I’m sure they’re going to call the Spurs about potentially moving up the two i’m sure they’re going to also get calls from other teams below them at three to move up to that level so these conversations are all going to be very fluid i think if you’re the Sixers though it’s it all starts and ends with Joel Embiid’s health is Joel Embiid going to be healthy how’s he going to be over the offseason he had surgery late late in the season so for for them and and and Joel Embiid it’s making sure he gets through this off season fully healthy can he be himself that’s the only chance realistically they have to compete for a championship anything else we need to think about tonight um I mean this game for me when I watched game two the bench was massive obviously for Indiana like what was the what was the discrepancy 49 game yeah it’s always been the bench it it’s it’s the bench it’s And it’s at the end of day it’s Tyrese when Tyrese Hallebertton plays the way he played in game three you know whoever wins game four I think is in a great position to win the series

ESPN Senior NBA Insider Shams Charnia joins The Pat McAfee Show to discuss:

0:00 Kevin Durant’s trade preferences
2:32 Would KD fit with Miami’s culture?
6:57 Update on Knicks’ head coaching search
13:30 Are the 76ers trading up in the draft?

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