Favorite NBA offseason moves: Kevin Durant to Rockets, Cam Johnson to Nuggets, Desmond Bane to Magic

Favorite NBA offseason moves: Kevin Durant to Rockets, Cam Johnson to Nuggets, Desmond Bane to Magic

All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Friday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. It’s mailbag day. Lots of very good questions from you guys. Remember, if you want to get your questions in the mailbag, all you have to do is in the YouTube comments under our full episodes, put mailbag with a colon and write your question. That helps me sort through the comments and find them quickly. We will do be doing mailbags on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jasonlt so you guys don’t miss show announcements. Don’t forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under hoops tonight. It’s also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson’s doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. Make sure you guys follow us over there. And then last but not least, like I mentioned earlier, keep dropping those mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. All right, let’s talk some basketball. So, first question, what is the single most impactful move made this off season for the 202526 season outside of the KD trade? And what is your least favorite move made this off seasonason? So, kind of different framework for both. Most impactful for me, not counting KD and obviously I think KD is the obvious one. He turns a team that is not a championship contender into a championship contender. So much so that like I think that I would even argue the hu the Rockets were more of like a third tier contender because of how limited their offense was. They couldn’t even get through a first round series against a second round a second tier contender, right? So KD vaults you all the way up. That’s obviously the most impactful move. But outside of that, I would go with Cam Johnson to the Nuggets. Just on face value, he’s one of the most talented players to actually change teams this summer. But that is amplified by the fact that he is a movement shooter, an off the-dribble shooter that is playing alongside Nicole Joic. That is a match made in basketball heaven. When you have a guy like we always talk about this idea, one of we talked about it with Desmond Bane. I honestly like if you were asking me for most impactful moves, I think honorable mention or call it third place behind KD and Cam Johnson, I’d put Desmond Bane there. I I think his specific skill set in conjunction with the strengths that already exist on that roster are deeply impactful. It’s that idea of having a shooter, a real shooter, a shooter that you have to account for coming off of screening actions, but then being able to pair the second piece of it, right? one, a guy who can set monster screens to free him up, and two, the probably the best ever in the history of the league in that uh pick and roll partnership as the screener in being able to score and playmake out of the advantages that can come out of that in Nicole Joic. Everything he can do, making floaters on the role, popping above the three-point line, playmaking out of those situations, rumbling down the lane into kind of like quick isos in those situations. He’s just it’s he’s just the perfect player to amplify this archetype of player, a real off the dribble or movement shooter. It’s a little different than Jamal Murray. Jamal Murray is obviously a much better tough shot maker and so that adds another layer of reliability to that twoman game, but Cam Johnson, I think, is going to provide the best twoman game with Joic other than Jamal Murray in the history of this particular core. And I think that that is particularly exciting. I think the Nuggets are going to come out and kick ass this year. I think they’re going to be a top three seed all season. Obviously, barring a significant injury. And I again, we’re going to make that decision when we get closer. I was talking with Jackson on uh Monday about our offseason plans. And we’re going to do the same kind of like power ranking style uh season preview pods when we get into late September, early October. And we’ll make that decision when we get to that point. But right now, I’m very tempted to pick the Nuggets to win the title. I’m just a huge believer in Joic. It’s the best roster he’s had. I’m a big believer in not overthinking things. I’m excited to see that Nuggets team this year. My least favorite move, and again, this is not the most impactful, but or least impactful, but my least favorite, I’m going to go with the Bucks waving and stretching Dame and signing Miles Turner. For the record, I get why they wanted to try to give it another go with Giannis. you know, you as soon as you let Giannis go, you enter into that purgatory of rebuilding. We have a mailback question later today with respect to the Suns where we’ll kind of discuss what that looks like. And that could take years and it can involve a lot of swings and misses. And it’s just, you guys know, everybody who’s ever rooted for an NBA team for over a decade knows what a rebuild is like and how how, you know, dismal that can be. And so I understand why they wanted to give it another go. And within the confines of that situation, them wanting to give it another go with a broken down dame taking up a $50 million salary slot and little in the way of available assets, they’ve done about as well as you can. I want to be clear like bringing in a Miles Turner, resigning the guys they did, bringing in Cole Anthony, having at least the best possible type of of improvement in talent based on an incredibly shitty situation. They’ve done about as well as they can. But as you guys know, I’m a big fan of self I’m a big believer in self-awareness. Ask yourself a simple question. Do the Bucks have a realistic path to true championship contention in the next two years? No, they don’t. I was thinking about it this morning. I think Miles Turner is pretty clearly their second best player. He was like firmly the fifth best guy on that Indiana Pacers team that lost in the finals and periodically throughout that run looked like their weakest link. I like Miles Turner. I think he’s an awesome addition. I think he’s a great fit with Giannis, but just in sheer talent, if he’s your second best player, you’re not going to go very far. Even if they were to package a first round pick with AJ Green and one of these other salaries at the forward spot like Koozma or something and they were able to bring back a highle ball handler, now Miles Turner is your third best player and you’ve got, you know, someone in the type of player you can get with that package isn’t going to be a top 20 25 player in this league. I just don’t think they’re close to contending, which means they’re destined for a rebuild. And when you’re destined for a rebuild, the decision to stretch Damen Lillard, in addition to waiting to trade Giannis until he’s older, both of those will make that rebuild far longer and far more complicated. Again, I admire the effort. I I just think it’s way too little, way too late. And as much as it would suck and it would be a very sad moment in the history of the Milwaukee Bucks franchise, I think you’d be better served acknowledging that reality. And for whatever it’s worth, you got a trophy. There are many examples, most recently with Luca Donuch, of teams losing superstars and having to look back and go, “Man, we just didn’t get it done.” The Cavs in 2010 when they lost LeBron, right? Like there are so many examples of teams that don’t get it done and they have to move on or they do move on or they’re forced to move on, something along those lines. And like this is a situation where at the very least you have an NBA championship that is immortal. It will last forever and Giannis could potentially be the vehicle with which to spring the next era of Milwaukee Bucks basketball. So, like again, it’s I I’m not here just preaching for movement of stars for the sake of having to talk about. It’s just to me about self-awareness. I don’t think Miles Turner as your second best player is going to be contending for much over the course of the next few years. Even when we were talking about our contender tears in the East last year, it’s like the only upside you’re looking at, or I shouldn’t say last year, on Monday, the only upside you’re looking at is well, Giannis is becoming a one hell of a point forward and you’ve got a lot of shooting around him. Yeah, that’s fun. That’s great. But there’s better teams at the top of the East and there’s a lot of teams that are on the rise in the NBA. Oklahoma City is getting better. San Antonio is getting better. Houston’s getting better. Detroit is getting better. the you know that there’s just it’s just really difficult to draw a line between where the Bucks are now and them hoisting a trophy with Giannis and Tenkumbo in the jersey. All right, next question. Nothing says summer like long days, clutch plays, and firing off a few bets on the game. All him coming back to the Blazers. So, I love this move on several levels. First of all, the nostalgia. I know it sounds ridiculous to say because he was only gone for two years, but Dame getting to potentially end his career where it all started is just cool, right? As a basketball fan, you want to see Dame playing in the place where he created all those amazing memories. Secondly, the mentorship. I’ve talked before about the impact that Damen Lillard had on Anthony Simons and how their games kind of are strikingly sim similar and how you can see how Anthony just spent a lot of time with Dame or at least mimicking Dame behind the scenes working on a lot of that highlevel shot making and that crisp quick release off the dribble and all that fluidity and how it turned Anthony Simons into a really impactful player in the NBA. I think Dame can have a similar positive impact on Scoot Henderson and his development specifically in his perimeter skill, the stuff that can weaponize his downhill force and his playmaking. I saw Zack Low report that Dame will not have an impact on Scoot’s minutes or his opportunities much at all. Obviously, that it wouldn’t make sense to bring Dame in for some sort of high usage role in the future. Scoot is playing that position and I think that makes sense. I think it makes sense that Dame would be more of a supporting kind of like behind the scenes mentor guidance type of position than obviously some sort of high usage player for them. And that’s fine. I think that’s where he can have the most impact. And then lastly, the flexibility. Dame God is no trade clause. So if he wants to end his career there, he’s completely in control of that. But his contract is also super tradable. So, if he changed his mind, let’s say that he behind the scenes is feeling great physically a year and a half from now and he’s like, “Shit, man. I got some good serious basketball left in me.” Well, he can approach the Portland front office and be like, “Guys, I think I would like to go somewhere and try to win.” And he has a tradeable contract, very easily tradable contract. So, it just makes a ton of sense for both sides. It’s a great spot for Dame to rehab and for him to end his career, but the contract is set up in a way that he has control over whether or not he wants to end up playing somewhere else if he chooses to play serious basketball one more time before he calls it quits. Next question. What improvements can Oklahoma City make individually or as a team to convince you and others that they can be the team to break the curse, this postwarriors curse, and win back-to-back championships. It’s all about internal improvement. Their margins will shrink over the course of the next few years as it gets more and more expensive to retain everybody. Everyone just got their big deal this last off season, right? But because of the timeline of when they kick in, they won’t actually reap some of the negative effects of that in their payroll for a couple of years. But that will eventually happen. And when it does and they have less depth and they have less surrounding talent, all of a sudden the work of guys like Cadet Homegrren and JDub and Shay Gilders Alexander will become that much more important, right? It was more of like a young flawed group showing a lot of ups and downs. Like even with Shay, we saw Shay play some really bad postseason games this year. We saw Chad face some extremely low lows. JDub early in the Denver series, some really low lows. They were able to get away with that because they had such insane supporting talent which is going to fade over the course of the next couple of years and those cons inconsistencies will become a problem. Right? So internal improvement is their pathway. Now, that’s more of like a big picture thing. This next season, Oklahoma City is more or less running it back. But even within that context, the rest of the league got better. Maybe not in the uh Eastern Conference, but certainly in the Western Conference, right? Houston demonstrabably better. Denver demonstrabably demonstrabably better. the Clippers and Lakers. Obviously, a lot of variance there regarding injuries and some older players playing up to some of their younger capability, but both the LA teams are potentially better than they were last year. Anthony Edwards, if he continues to improve potentially better, right? The Warriors with Horford and uh if they bring back DeAnthony Melton and if they make a trade at some point, they could be potentially better. So, the West is better. Therefore, OKC’s margin for error shrinks, right? Even with bringing back the roster. So, what needs to happen in order for Oklahoma City to make that curse that no one can repeat, no one can even make the finals twice in a row curse go away. For Cadet, I think it’s his offensive polish. I thought he was awesome on defense throughout the majority of the playoff run. Not really a whole lot you can get into on that end of the floor with it, but consistent uh catch and shoot jump shooting, some of his decision-making, some of the ways he was forcing the issue against guys particularly like Miles Turner when he would try to go one-on-one against him and kind of like go away from the flow of the offense. Some of the turnovers and just fumbling of the ball in the middle of the floor, like just becoming a more reliable, higher floor offensive player, I think will be big for Chad Homegrid. JDubb and his consistency. Obviously, he was great for large chunks of uh the playoff run, but he had his moments. He had his moments specifically in the Denver series where he really really struggled. And that inconsistency against a tougher matchup, like let’s just put it this way. Let’s say they face Denver again and the exact same situation happens, but you have a better Denver team. If JDub plays that poorly for chunks of that series, you lose to Denver, right? So JDub’s consistency on the offensive end is going to be big. Shay’s decision-making, we saw massive swings in the way Oklahoma City’s offense operated in the finals based on Shay and just his willingness to take what the defense is giving him early in games and how he can establish rhythm and flow within his offense. him being consistent in that regard. Him learning the lesson, him replicating the successes and cutting the failures. That’s going to be how Sheay becomes a more consistent force. And those three things happening are going to be the key to them actually being able to repeat in a much better Western Conference. Smaller things, too, like spot-up shooting, reliable spot-up shooting from guys like Quesan Wallace and Lou Dor. There’s a bunch of different things we can get into, but for the most part, it’s going to be the improvement of their stars. Hey Jason, you say that Steph is the second best offensive engine of all time after Joic. Does this mean you think Joic is better than Steph as a basketball player, but that Steph’s accolades make him higher all time? Yes, that’s exactly where I’m at right now. I I think that Jokic’s peak is higher than any peak of Steph’s career, but that his overall accomplishments in the NBA for Steph are so greater at this point that you have to have Stephic on all time lists. I I I thought that I thought that Joic staked his claim as the best player in the world in that 2023 playoff run. Right. And here we are going into the 2026 NBA season and he’s still definitively the best player in the world and no one’s really truly threatened that over the course of what will now be the fourth consecutive season. Steph just never had a stretch like that. I thought that Steph was the best player in the world or I think looking back that Steph is the best player was the best player in the world from about the end of the regular season in 2021 until he hoisted the trophy in 2022. That’s the one stretch that I can think of where Steph was the best. But it was never definitive. He just had a case. Like I was in I am in that camp, but I think most folks I’m in the I’m in the minority there. like most folks think it was Giannis or that it was Jokic or Luca or someone like that in that group. The biggest difference between those two guys was reliable variance proof offense, meaning Jokic and Steph. I actually think Steph is every bit as good as like a defense breaking advantage creator as Jokic. I’d argue if you were just strictly talking about the way that a offensive player can generate openings for teammates, I I think Steph is right there at the top with Jokic. The separator for Joic for me is he’s variance proof. His shotmaking ability close to the rim consistently is over 50%. and in many cases over 60%. And so that gives him a certain amount of like there’s literally nothing you can do. Whereas with Steph, there’s a certain amount of like if we defend him well enough, we can kind of cross our fingers and hope he misses. And even on his best night, he’s probably going to miss six out of 10 of these, right? And that kind of just created a certain amount of like a certain amount of like late game issue that Steph would run into. Steph was a better lateg game player than the vast majority of players in the league, but just compared to the best players in NBA history, he wasn’t quite as reliable getting separation and creating shots for himself at the end of games. And I think that that was just kind of a a ceiling difference between Steph and Nicole Joic. But the accomplishments are the accomplishments. Steph has won four championships. And even if we pull out the two where he played with the greatest roster ever assembled, it’s still just too much of a gap for Nicole Joic to surmount at this point without winning at least one more championship, if not multiple more. So yeah, I think Joic’s peak was higher. But with Steph, I I I just think he just has too much in terms of sheer accomplishments for Jokic to lap him on the all-time list at this point. I have Steph pretty high. Now, you guys know how I feel about centers, but the last time I did these rankings, I had Steph ahead of Larry Bird. I have Steph very high in terms of his all-time accomplishments. The big one for me is like he literally played alongside the greatest player to play the game in my opinion. At worst, the second best player to ever play the game, and he was like just barely below him. And so that that’s the that’s the the kind of like claim to fame for Steph Curry in this era. Now that you’re in Denver, what do you plan or do you plan on going to some Nuggets games? I’m assuming you moved for the skiing, but I know you always took trips throughout the year. I’m a Lovelin Fort Collins resident and I was a certified snowboard instructor back in the day. Cheers to some good pow-wow pow days ahead. Uh, yeah, we’re loving it here. We actually just did a trip back into the mountains yesterday. We drove back to Leadville and we saw I’ve always had a thing for super tall mountains, so we went to go see Mount Elbert and Mount Massive is what they’re both called. They’re the two tallest mountains in Colorado and the second and third tallest mountains in the contiguous United States. And you have to kind of drive way back past all the skiing into sort of the middle of nowhere in the Rockies to see them. But uh we got to see them. That was really cool. It was clear day yesterday, too. So, it was super pretty. And then we swung back through Breenidge. We go to Breenidge every year to ski, but we went yesterday just to like have lunch and hang out. First of all, I was like stunned by how busy it was. It was like way busier in Breen Ridge yesterday than any of the times I’ve gone skiing. And so it was just kind of interesting to see it in the summertime and see that it’s just popping with all these people and Main Street’s super busy and I’m assuming just a ton of biking and hiking and fishing and taking the gondola up for views and all that kind of stuff. But we got to hit one of our favorite lunch spots and hang out there yesterday. And then door todo from the where we parked in Breen Ridge, which was right by the gondola to our house was an hour and 22 minutes. So, and that was on a busy day out in the mountains. So, Carly and I were like super stoked cuz we’re like, this is going to be this is going to be so cool during ski season. Like, we’re going to be able to pretty easily hop back and forth and ski our asses off. And our goal is to get 50 days in this season. And so I want to get like a work cadence down too where I can like work in the morning and then like head out there and ski all afternoon and and then come back. That was the whole reason why we came. It wasn’t for anything associated necessarily with my job. It was just my wife and I are looking to take advantage of this weird kind of window in time where we don’t have kids and we have some flexibility and we wanted to ski our asses off and so that’s the main reason why we’re up here. Now I do plan on going to Nuggets games. I think we’ll do it in a couple of different ways. I’d like to get credentialed and go to actually cover a few games uh over the course of the year, but I also like want to enjoy it just as a fan. And so I would imagine specific major Western Conference teams that come into town and stuff uh my wife and I will just look to go and just enjoy the games as a fan. I’ve never I’ve lived in an NBA city, but it was when the Charlotte I lived in Charlotte with the Charlotte Hornets and it was just not the same quality basketball. So, I’m looking forward to getting to see some highquality NBA hoops in person uh over the course of the next couple years here in Denver. Hey man, love the show. What do you think of the ceiling for the Mavericks? I’m a huge Mavs fan and I think with Kyrie coming back later in the season, I think this team has a real chance to contend. I think their ceiling comes down to two things. Kyrie’s return, as you mentioned. I think one of the unique things with Kyrie, I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, but there are certain scoring players, like perimeter scorers, that are somewhat immune to spacing concerns because of how gifted they are at getting to spots in the middle of the floor and knocking down mid-range jump shots, shots that every defense has to concede to a certain extent. Uh, at the high end, it’s guys like Shay Gilders Alexander, right? I thought he demonstrated an awesome example of that in the Minnesota series for example. Um, looking at, you know, Kevin Durant obviously fits that mold. To me, Kyrie Irving to a slightly lesser extent, but I think he also kind of fits that mold is like a spacingproof score because of his ability to shoot over the top of defenses and work in very tight spaces. And so if Kyrie can come back, we already have talked about extensively. I think this Denver or this Dallas team has the potential to be outrageously good on defense. The crazy rangy athleticism on the front line with guys like Anthony Davis and Cooper Flag and Derek Lively and PJ Washington and Daniel Gaffford. They’re just incredibly rangy on the front. Even if they end up consolidating a couple of those guys, they just have an insane like I would imagine it’ll eventually be lively AD Cooper. That’s going to be an insane defensive trio. They’ve got some guards that can defend as well. If they get reliable surgical scoring in big moments with a defense that can keep games close, they’re going to be really tough to beat. And so I think Kyrie’s return is obviously a big swing. The second piece of it is that consolidation trait. Like if they could turn some of their some of their redundancies, so for instance PJ Washington and Daniel Gaffford, they could turn him into a highle offensive player. I think there’s real upside there. Uh, I was trying to think this morning just like a basic example like what if they could get someone like Tyler Harrow like what if they could flip Daniel Gaffford and PJ Washington for Tyler Harrow. I think specifically with D’Angelo Russell who is a very high level like DLO is a wheel greaser on offense like I think you guys are you know for DL having the reputation that he has like I think Dallas fans are going to like him. I actually liked DL as a regular season player. He was very frustrating in the postseason because of his lack of physical intensity and his lack of attention to detail. But specifically within the regular season, he just was a guy that made life easier because he is a guy that can run ball screens and take the types of shots that ball screens concede, but also make all the reads out of ball screens to set guys up with advantages. And then I even think he would compliment a guy like Tyler Harrow in the sense that Tyler Harrow is that like offball scorer but that can also score on the ball in action but primarily a guy that can succeed within action which I think would be would fit really well with guys like Anthony Davis and Cooper Flag that I think could work on both sides of those actions inverted or not inverted. And so a guy like Tyler Harrow, for instance, not as valuable on a Miami Heat team, but could be very valuable on a Dallas Mavericks team that has an outrageously high defensive ceiling and lots of guys that can play in and out of screening action from various, you know, kind of entry points, if that makes sense. So like I I think a consolidation trade is the next thing for Dallas that could put them into a tier of serious contention. All right, couple more questions, guys. Now that so many Western Conference teams have made moves which have improved them considerably, do you think the Warriors will even be able to catch up once the dust settles after Jonathan Kaminga finally gets traded? Or have they kind of fallen behind and there’s little to nothing they’ll be able to do to catch up to the top tier contenders who in my opinion are now Oklahoma City, Denver, the Clippers, and the Rockets. I think they still have a really strong foundation. It’s kind of like the conversations we’ve had about the Lakers. I’ve had my frustrations and I have my frustrations with the my frustrations with the Lakers more in the big picture, but like Luca and LeBron is it’s just such a strong foundation. You’re just going to you’re just going to be a really good basketball team just by having those two. I feel very similarly about Steph, Jimmy, and Draymond. That’s just a really strong foundation. I do think they’ll get Horford. I do think they’ll get Melton. They have a certain high floor. Most of this has to do with just margins, right? An extra three or four wins in the regular season can be the difference between a playin team and the four seed as we know because of how brutal the West is. Four games, four wins could make all the difference. Even in just matchups in the Western Conference playoffs, like the difference between, let’s say you face a Denver in the second round or first round, the difference between beating Denver and losing to Denver can be a move. Just like for Denver, bringing in Cam Johnson could be the difference between them losing to Oklahoma City and beating Oklahoma City. That it’s about the margins with that type of move. But to be clear, you’re going to be good right away because Steph, Jimmy, and Draymond is an awesome foundation for a basketball team. So, let’s talk about it. If they don’t like we we we’ve we’ve talked about how over the years scoring support is the key for Steph, right? Having if you look back, it’s like when when Brandon Pajky would have a big scoring game, they’d win. When Buddy Heield would have a big scoring game, they’d win. When Jimmy Butler would have a big scoring game, they’d win. But then like when all three of those dudes would be cold, it it would be when they would drop some games that they probably shouldn’t have dropped, right? And so that’s where I look at it is like a a more reliable perimeter score could be the difference in them having that extra three or four wins or the difference in their ability to beat one of the higher tier Western Conference teams. And so I want to be clear like they’re they’re still firmly in that second tier for me. It’s just that additional piece, that additional reliable perimeter scoring to me is what it what they’re missing in order to get into that top tier. But I don’t think they they’re in a them not making a move to this point doesn’t drop them down out of that second tier. They’re still a very very good basketball team. Hey Jason, thanks for doing everything you do. If you were the Phoenix Suns, what would you do with this newfound cap space and these roster spots? Seems like we can finally come up for air and have some skin in the free agency and offseason game. Would you go after Kaminga? Kaminga and Green would be just as fun as a basketball fan, although probably not the smartest. Let me know who you’d be targeting to help us this year. So, starting with Kaminga, I think anybody, including the Warriors, who could pull off a Kuminga deal at a discount, there’s value there because all of a sudden he becomes tradable, right? If you could get Kaminga at a discount, but also have the ability to let him develop without winning pressure, that’s the thing with with the Warriors, even if they got Jonathan Kaminga at a discount, he just doesn’t make basketball sense for them. But like in another context, if you could bring Kaminga in and get him like in that like $20 million range, maybe 25 on the high end, and you can give him like, hey, for the next two seasons, you’re going to get these touches. You’re going to get these opportunities. You’re not going to get pulled for making a bad decision. You’re not going to get pulled for losing a game. Just work on your and get your reps for the next couple seasons. I think if you can bring in Kaminga in that sort of situation on that type of discount, I think that’d be smart. Kaminga has his issues. He’s not worth max money. He’s not capable of playing a dead serious role for a winning basketball team yet, but he’s still very talented and he does have potential. So, if the Suns could get in on that and get Kaminga at a affordable deal and give him a long runway, I’m on board with it. As for the Suns and their big picture plans, it all depends on what their timeline looks like. Are you trying to pivot around Devin Booker and stay in contention, or are you going full rebuild? For full rebuild, there’s a proven path. You take on bad salary in exchange for draft compensation. You play young players on rookie contracts extensively so you can see who fits into your long-term vision. And then when you have cap space, you sign reliable role players that you can then flip to other teams for more draft compensation. You use your cap space to obtain the guys that everybody wants so that you can then trade them for more draft compensation. And essentially, your bad money sits, your young money plays, your uh quality role players that you can sign in free agency. You flip and then you slowly turn it over as you find your guys. You find a young player that is a clear foundational piece like one of the clear three two or three players that you’re going to build your team around. You extend that guy. You replace your expensive bad money with the young money you want to keep. Then as your team improves, you shift your draft approach towards in the middle of the first round like lower ceiling but higher floor role player prospects, offball scorers, 3 and D guys, rotation centers, things along those lines. It’s kind of like it’s kind of like what the Detroit Pistons uh the trajectory that they’re on and they’re the Pistons are just now entering into that next phase where it’s like well now we need to start looking in the draft for players that are more supporting talent, not foundational talent. We we know what the foundational talent looks like. It’s Kade Cunningham potentially Jaden Ivy. We’ll see how he fits this year, you know. Uh we’ll see if Jaylen Duran ends up being a big picture center for them. But like Assar Thompson, it like makes sense as like this role player. Ron Holland, they just they’ve got their defensive athletes now. They need to look for some more refined skill, but they’re kind of in a later portion of that trajectory. There is a proven path there. Take on bad money in exchange for assets. Be the team that allows the young players the long runway to work and you figure it out over time, right? But like that is a different pathway than pivoting around Devin Booker. If you’re pivoting around Devin Booker, it’s very different, right? Booker’s your advantage creator. Jaylen Green’s your second option. You already have depth at center from this last off season. So, what do you need? If you’ve got three centers and you’ve got two primary shot creators, it’s all about what fits in between there. What fits in between there? Everything the Atlanta Hawks have been doing for the last few years. drafting guys that run the floor in transition both ways, that can defend multiple positions, that are athletic and can grab rebounds, that can knock down open catch and shoot threes, drive closeouts, and make decisions in the middle of the floor. It’s your classic dribble, shoot, pass, defend, role player. And as long as you have the right guys in your front office that front office that can scout that kind of thing, you find the teams that don’t value those guys and you trade for them. You find them in later draft picks. You find them in free agency. You just hunt those types of players. But as I always say, as we said earlier, I’m a big believer in self-awareness. And I don’t see a pathway for the Suns to contend. Not in this beast of a Western Conference. Not at any point in the next few years. Devin Booker, I think, turns 29 this year, if I’m not mistaken. So, I would trade Devin Booker and I would start the rebuild process. Like what what if you what if you could get in on Detroit and poach a really good a couple of young players? Like what if you could call Detroit and get Jaden Ivy and Ron Holland or man maybe you can get Poachasar Thompson from them. If you could go get some young talent for Devin Booker that could be the thing that sparks your rebuild process and gets you on the pathway to actually contending. I think the worst thing you can do is hang out in the middle with no viable pathway up and and and that that’s a dangerous spot to be in working on the margins like that. All right, two more questions. PJ Washington is due for an extension and the Lakers need a two-way forward. PJ has already has chemistry with Luca and could fit that 20-year-old starter you mentioned. Would you move Gabe Dalton or a pick or Gabe Dalton in a pick for him? No, I would not. I think PJ Washington is a power forward. I think the Lakers need a smaller and more athletic player at the two or three. I think like there’s a lot of like big picture conversations the Lakers need to have in terms of like what type of player they want at at certain position groups. So like if LeBron is your power forward now and he’s going to play two more seasons, you need a big picture power forward plan. But I don’t think PJ Washington fits like that big picture power forward plan, you know, multiple years into the future. You know, maybe Ruy Hachimura is that, but you know, obviously you could potentially look to move him in the short term. I don’t see PJ Washington as a guy that is like a demonstrable upgrade in the short term or in the long term. So, I wouldn’t like like to me I’d be looking for more of like a uh like we’ve been talking about Aaron Nmith, we’ve been talking about, you know, Andrew Wiggins. Andrew Wiggins obviously is a little too old, but a player that fits more of that 23, a better athlete who can guard on the perimeter better and that power forward position I think is a little bit more easy to replace, if that makes sense. So, I don’t think PJ Washington makes sense as the kind of guy the Lakers should be going after. I’ve seen you say over and over the Lakers need to upgrade their athleticism. Does the last three signings help with that? Also, do you think it would help the Lakers defense if Vano played more at the point of attack and picked up ball handlers fullourt instead of being used to rebound because we had so much trouble? No. I don’t think any of these moves marketkedly improve their athleticism. It’s a mild upgrade. Like, if both DeAndre Eaton and Marcus Smart are healthy, they’re certainly more athletic, but they are they’re like they’re still in the bottom tier of NBA teams in terms of overall athleticism. I will say it’s more complicated than that because the Lakers are definitely a better version of what they were, which is a slow down power basketball team. But they just don’t add they have not added athletic versatility. Athletic versatility is what gives you better chance of surviving four rounds against four very different types of teams. This doesn’t mean they can’t win. They certainly can win, but they’re more vulnerable now to certain types of teams, and that makes it harder for them to win four rounds. Like, for instance, one of the teams that I’ve talked about um ever since they matched up in the regular season at the end of last year, I think the Warriors are match up really well with the Lakers in a like advantage Warriors. They’re just so much faster, right? Like that’s a team where if the Lakers got marketkedly more athletic, I think the Lakers would match up better with a Golden State. But as currently constructed, I think they would have some issues with Golden State. Potentially a lot of issues pulling slow perimeter athletes and DeAndre Eaton who can really struggle in complicated coverages out to the perimeter and then having a bunch of iffy defenders on the backline rotating around. like it could get really scary in that particular type of matchup, right? But who knows? Maybe you avoid Golden State, maybe you catch, you know, teams that you match up better against along the way and it doesn’t end up being an issue, but chances are if you play four rounds, you’re going to end up running into a team that can attack your weakness. And right now, the Lakers still have a pretty substantial weakness in terms of that athleticism. And that, by the way, kind of going back to the PJ Washington piece, I don’t think PJ Washington’s a decent athlete, but I don’t view him as like a floor changing athlete for this Lakers team the way that like an Andrew Wiggins would be, for example, or an Aaron Nmith, right? So, like I that that’s a big part of why I don’t think PJ Washington’s the type of guy for them to put real asset um uh put real assets on the table for. All right, guys. That’s all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We will be back. We will be back next week with our player rankings getting started on Monday. I will see you guys then.

Jason answers mailbag questions from fans on topics including his favorite moves of the NBA offseason like Kevin Durant to the Rockets, Cam Johnson to the Nuggets, and Desmond Bane to the Magic. He also answers why he didn’t love the Milwaukee Bucks waiving Damian Lillard to sign Myles Turner, how Nikola Jokic and Steph Curry compare all-time, the ceiling for the Dallas Mavericks when Kyrie Irving returns to join Cooper Flagg and Anthony Davis, what the Golden State Warriors should do, whether the Los Angeles Lakers should try to trade for PJ Washington to add to LeBron James and Luka Doncic, and more.

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