Luka Doncic, Mikal Bridges get BIG money & BIGGER expectations!
Luca Donuch is going to be on Hot Ones. That was the big reveal that I got from reading Dan Wy over at the uh Athletic. Uh Luca Donic is, you know, doing this whole like national tour with Jordan Brand. Stopped in in New York. Uh and actually taped with Sean Evans, the Hot Ones, uh the interview show on on YouTube, which I’m obsessed with. uh LA the the list of guys who have been on this show from the NBA. It’s like Embiid, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin. Um LeBron has not been on it. LeBron also wasn’t at Luca’s press conference. That’s neither here nor there. But I kind of feel like Luca Donuch eating hot wings and answering questions about his life and his career. I’m all in. I think the number one pick that I would have, Dan, is Anthony Edwards. I would love to see Anthony Edwards on an interview show where he’s eating increasingly hot wins. Hot wings. He’s from the A, so I kind of feel like he’s already uh had some Hot Wings before. Um, that’s that’s just me talking. I don’t know if there’s any Maybe George Niang would be good on that show. Uh, but I do think that Luca Donuch on Hot Ones is the big reveal from uh Dan Wkey’s Tik Tok, his little like his story of the the the the leadup to Luca Donuch signing the extension. Three years. Um, a lot of money for Luca Donuch, but really it’s all about the 10-year service maximum extension that he’s going to line himself up with. He’s Skinny Luca. I’m I’m excited about Hot Ones. I’m excited to see what Skinny Luca does. And uh I’m just wondering, are you cool with the FaceTime from LeBron James? This is what people need to know, Dan. Are you satisfied by LeBron James not showing up to the press conference, playing golf instead, and actually just going with a FaceTime? Are you cool with that? I mean, uh, I Yeah, I’m I’m personally fine with it. I don’t I don’t feel insulted by it. Um, if if I reup put on a headline, not insulted by LeBron’s decision to not be at the press conference. Sources divine. Okay. Um, which honestly there’s been many many times in my life that headline would not have been reasonable. But, um, yeah, I think uh, the only way to find out, Tom, is when I reup with Yahoo on a three-year $165 million contract, I I What will you do? If you FaceTime me, I will I feel some type of way. Will you make a point of coming here to Brooklyn for me to see me sign it? I guess we’ll have to find out. But the important part is, Yahoo, I’m going to need that three-year 165 million extension. That’s really what this comes down to. Yeah, that’s really the segment and the Hot Wings and also um maybe In Sync at the Spear. What What do you want to do? Like what ‘9s band would I take you to? Because that’s part of the story, too, is that Genie Bus and the Lakers got uh Luca Donuch kind of a suite over at the Backstreet Boys performance at the at the Sphere. So, what is it, Dan Divine? Not just the contract, but what would you like me and Yahoo to get you tickets for at the sphere? I mean, satiate your like 90s nostalgia. My 90s nostalgia. I don’t know. Like if if if Everclear only plays one record, maybe them. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m like I’m like who who would be a lot a lot of my heroes from that time period are no longer around or are really sad and would be really tough to play in the sphere. So, I don’t know. Yeah. Honestly, send set send me up to one of the boy band groups and like I’ll I’ll wear all white. We’ll keep the wings away from it so I don’t get any any sauce stains on the all-white garments. Uh it’ll be like a Michael Rubin party out in the desert for us to celebrate. So um but you know, Luke is one celebration. Anybody else from any other big market sign any extensions this week, Tom? Yes. One that is rumored with the LeBron James next tour. Uh the New York Knicks, Muel Bridges signed a four. We got to just keep, you know, we didn’t say enough about LeBron in the first couple segments of the show. So we got to we got to keep that name. You could see people’s eyeballs going, “Wait a second, LeBron. LeBron, what? What?” Uh, yeah. The Knicks signed Muel Bridges to a 4-year, $150 million extension, which works out to about $38 million a year in average salary. It’s a big deal. Um, it’s one that was kind of expected. If Jaylen Brunson was going to take a pay cut, someone’s going to get that money or benefit from getting that money. And it’s his Villanova buddy, Mikuel Bridges. Same thing with Darren Fox. I think an underwhelming season last year, but does kind of keep some stability with the New York Knicks. And with all of the stars in uh in at the top of the East either hurt or the teams are are being decimated a little bit in the East, the Knicks have a lot of stability there with this deal. Yeah, I mean the the it essentially locks in that top six. Jaylen Brunson, Carl Anthony Towns, Oanna Nobi, Bridges, Josh Hart, and Deuce McBride for the next two seasons. Like those guys are all gonna be fully guaranteed for the next two seasons. Uh Cat also extension eligible can go the the year after that. He’s got a player option, I believe, for the third season there. Um remains to be seen. Like, oh, there’s there’s some other business that the Knicks can do. Deuce McBride extension eligible. Mitchell Robinson, that’ll be interesting because we saw the the level of impact he made during the postseason, but also he’s missed so much time with injuries. So, like is there a sweet spot they can get to that pays him for that impact but also covered the Knicks in terms of his availability? You know, that that’ll be interesting to see what the negotiations look like for that. But they’ve, you know, in addition to the the the depth moves they’ve made in the offseason, adding Jordan Clarkson, adding Yabiselli, like they’ve got that top of the roster secured for the next couple of years. and the the option sort of optionality that they retain with it. The idea like there’s still some flexibility. Obviously, all this comes as like the fruit of Jaylen Brunson signing the extension last summer, right? Agreeing to take the maximum he could have made last offseason rather than waiting to get like a proper max um this, you know, this coming off of this off season. And because Brunson’s on essentially like a similar kind of, you know, 40, I think four year 156, like a similar kind of deal, it allows him and Bridges to combine to take up, you know, whatever 42 43% of the salary cap for the next couple of years. And that creates the opportunities for everything else. The OG deal, the the town’s trade, all that kind of stuff. So Bridges didn’t take a big his max, the maximum he could have made was 156 million. 150 million. It’s like a slight haircut on that, but that still like offers some flexibility below the second apron. And is there more that that Leon Rose can do? And I think the the thing that’ll be worth watching or at least it’ll be worth it’ll be talked about and brought up. Remember last offseason when Lowry Markin waited to sign his extension until it was like after the sixth month period before the trade deadline? Like one day after I would be eligible to be traded, I signed it. So now you can’t trade me this season. Muel Bridges signed his before that deadline. So he will be eligible to be rerouted before February 6th if need be. Yeah. Now, why would they do that? Right. I see your windy fingers over there. Everyone’s going to keep their eyes on Milwaukee. Everybody’s going to keep their eyes on, you know, whatever who the next star is. It’s a monitoring closely season. Uh we’re all monitoring closely what’s coming down the pike next. The Knicks. This way they lock in their core and they also give themselves an opportunity for one more big swing if one’s available. Uh but a lot of is going to ride on can Muel Bridges improve on last season. Can Mike Brown get him more comfortable, find more ways to maximize him on offense, maybe move him off the point of attack a little bit more to make him more of a steals and deflections kind of threat. But yeah, like similar I love that you you connect connected it to the Fox deal. Like a lot of this is do you where’s your valuation on the player? If you think he’s a top 80 player, then that’s a lot of money. If you think he’s closer to a top 50 player, you can make your peace with it and then see where you are moving forward. The Knicks clearly are on the higher end of that and so they get the deal done. Uh a team that said peace to a homegrown or a homecoming, potential homecoming, George Niang, New Englander coming home to Boston, shipping up to Boston already in a trade this summer. and the minivan was going to park his car and habad. Not happening. I I feel bad for I feel bad for George Die. like he was going to come home to Boston and then he just got shipped out to uh to Utah in a deal uh for two second round picks, essentially a salary dump. And then the Boston Celtics brought in uh Chris Buché, the former Toronto Raptor uh NBA champion Chris Buché to basically be their starting power forward/c center. Like I don’t know what is on the Celtics roster that he’s going to be play competing with. uh Xavier Tilman maybe uh starting center for the Boston Celtics next year now that Luke Cornett and it seems Al Horford going to the Golden State Warriors. This um this trade I just wanted to say uh we’re not going to be doing this thing where we’re like cheering for billionaires to save money. Agreed. But this deal like hey this is a great deal for the Celtics has shaved uh $34 million about $35 million in tax penalties. like fans shouldn’t care about this. I I don’t think it’s worth uh spending more time on the whole like tax savings aspect of it. Just want to put this note in there. The Celtics, according to Bobby Marks, have cut their payroll, their total payroll from $540 million this this off season to $239. So that is $300 million that the bosses, the billionaires over in Boston have do not have to pay. But at the same time, that’s not going to be fun for the fans to watch as a team that is going to be gutted to the point where we’re going to like do like laps, the victory laps on how much money they saved. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Anthony Simons. Uh I don’t know what their starting five looks like, but Dan, we are not going to get the minivan in Boston coming home this summer, traded again, but this time going back home to Utah where he spent a bunch of years of his career. I was going to say, yeah, it’s it’s a different sort of homecoming. you know, he goes back to Utah where, you know, George kind of broke into the national consciousness a little bit before taking the circuitous route around the NBA as a lot of like, you know, veterans of a certain tier do. You end up with more, you know, as many years teams played for as years in the league almost or close to it. And he’s approaching award. Yeah. Yes. The god is Smith. He’s approaching that kind of uh, you know, Ishithmith line. But yeah, I mean the Celt this is if you’re going to do this, if you’re going to have to, whether it’s have to because of the injuries, you know, injury to Jason Tatum just, you know, blows up your contending window or because management’s saying or ownership is saying we got to reduce salary or both. you know, if you’re going to do it, do it as quickly as possible and put yourself in position to when you do have that number one star back, maybe you’re out, you know, you’ve you’ve reduced some of the limitations that in terms of roster management that being in the apron can uh, you know, can can impose on you. So, you put yourself in position to maybe reload quickly. The Celtics are now in a spot where like the only real serious money that they’ll have after this season on the books is for Tatum Brown and Derek White. that puts them in position to maybe be able to to pivot quickly there. And then yeah, I think whatever you would, you know, the the the next line to look at is like the Celtics getting all the way out of the tax so that they can actually get luxury tax money in. So, you know, maybe keep an eye keep your eyes on your phone. Anthony Simons and Sam Hower. Uh we’ll have to see where that looks from there. Um, but Chris Buché is a fun dude who wound up going from like the absolute fringes of the NBA to like a, you know, an NBA champion and a like six man of the year contender. Like one of the more unlikely success stories in NBA history. Now he goes and gets a chance to maybe earn one more big uh, like reasonably sized deal if he has a big year in Boston. You know, opportunities abound. You know, like when things go badly for a team, it opens up some doors for other people. So maybe he gets the chance to be able, you know, get back to that like stretch floor spacing, shot blocking, put up some numbers, get one more big deal out of it, and you know, everybody’s happy. Do you think that, speaking of happy, do you think that George Nang would be happy if the Celtics are like, “All right, we can’t bring you back home to Boston, but we will off the books take you to a New Kids on the Block at the Spear when they go.” Speaking of of, you know, Boston faithful. Yeah. I’m saying Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch maybe. Um maybe maybe uh he can go backstage with Mark Wahlberg. Who knows? The the the potential is there that they can satiate or may or soothe uh the wounds the deep emotional wounds that he’s not going to be able to come home to Boston. Maybe they just take him to the New Kids on the Black at the Sphere. I mean there’s there there’s worse uh you know sort of like door prizes to get. But yeah, I guess the main thing is just keep that off the books and keep it quiet. You know, you don’t want to run a foul of the league for cap circumvention based on uh you know related to Wahlbergs. You don’t want forget this segment ever happened. You know, exactly. Let’s delete it all from memory. Let’s delete it all. Uh so you didn’t hear it here first. When you see in 5 years, George in the Celtics booth at uh at the New Kids on the Block. Keep your third eye open on that.
Luka Doncic and Mikal Bridges get their extensions with the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks and George Niang’s homecoming gets rerouted to Utah.
0:00 – Intro
0:03 – Luka signs extension with Lakers
4:01 – Bridges re-signs with Knicks
8:01 – Celtics trade Niang to Jazz
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