A Knicks Title, "Whaddya Do?" NBA Teams, the QB Pyramid, and a CFB Playoff Primer With Zach Lowe and Todd McShay | The Bill Simmons Podcast

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I had new rewatchables that went up on Monday.

We did High Fidelity 25 years and a couple months after it was released.

Four-person podcast that included the hottest take in the history of the rewatchables from Rob Mahoney.

I won't spoil it to you, but it almost caused Chris Ryan and I to convulse.

So you have that.

And guess what?

There's going to be another rewatchables because we are recording.

I'm recording this on Tuesday night.

We are recording another rewatchables tomorrow, uh, to pay tribute to Rob Reiner.

We've done six Rob Reiner rewatchable movies.

And uh, one of the ones we hadn't done was the sure thing, which is really not available on streaming, but you can find it if you get a little creative.

Uh, but we're gonna do the short thing.

We're gonna put that up on wednesday night as a special bonus edition because uh, we loved rob reiner and everybody is really sad out here in los angeles, so we're doing the short thing.

It's an awesome, Awesome movie.

I actually forgot how much I love this movie.

So we're going to be talking about it in detail and we'll talk about Rob's great career and a whole bunch of things.

It's just going to be me and Chris Ryan.

So stay tuned for that on Wednesday night.

And then on Thursday on HBO, third installment of our Music Box series.

It's Counting Crows documentary.

Have You Seen Me Lately?

It's directed by Amy Scott.

And it's really, really good.

And I would highly recommend, especially if you like 90s music, if you'd like Cannon Crows at all, this is a really good one.

So that is going to be Thursday night.

And then I'll have another podcast on Thursday as well.

So that's the game plan for this week.

Coming up.

Zach Lowe, right after NBA Cup, the Knicks beat the Spurs.

We talked about that.

We talked about what do you do teams.

We talked about the Mets, a whole bunch of things.

And then Todd McShay joined us as well because we had to talk NFL quarterbacks.

We had to talk about the college football playoffs.

We had to talk about Mendoza being the number one guy.

This is a really good podcast.

I don't know what to tell you.

Sometimes we just have really good ones.

This is another one.

We take a break.

Pearl Jam, then Zach Lowe.

This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm.

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809 Pacific Time.

Zach Lowe staying up late on the East Coast because the Knicks have just won their first championship since 1973.

Just like that.

You're going in just like that.

It's a fact.

I'm happy for them.

Did you see them celebrating?

Are you sure it's a fact?

Are you sure they won a summer league championship of some kind?

If we're going to be snarky, you got to be properly snarky about it.

I didn't look that up.

Hey, the NBA Cup was great.

Thumbs up.

Everybody plays hard.

Everybody gave a shit.

The Knicks actually celebrated after they won the game.

It was real. playoff intensity and did the job.

I'm not sure it was the right location, but we had four teams that I thought I really wanted to watch.

The matchups were good.

It was a nice moment for the Spurs and then a nice little hey, look out for us.

Moment for the Knicks.

So what was your biggest takeaway?

The next bench swing in the game, Mitchell Robinson, if he can stay healthy, is just a massive component of everything they do.

Cat sat out some of the game with a little shin thing or calf thing.

McHale Bridges was something happened with him at the end.

Clarkson was huge.

Kolek has earned a real role, which is going to be interesting when Shamit and McBride come back and just

I can't say enough about how amazing Ananobi has been when healthy this season.

Just an awesome game from him.

Hart does what he does all the time.

This is a really good team.

This was my pick to make the finals coming out of the East at the beginning of the season.

They're ahead of schedule, I think, given what some of the sort of lesser stars have done this year.

Yeah, is it fair to say we have four West teams?

And I'm going to include San Antonio in the title contender race, even though they'd be fourth from the West.

But four West teams. and an East team, and then I don't know.

I think we have five teams, because I think San Antonio is a real dark horse.

I don't think they're going to make the finals.

I think OKC is going to, and if they don't, I think it would be Denver, and then I think it would be Houston.

But I think San Antonio has earned dark, dark, dark horse status, right?

And then the Knicks and the East, do you trust any other East team?

It's hard to trust anybody in the East right now.

I mean, the Pistons have earned some level of trust at 21 and five.

And, you know, somebody will emerge like either Cleveland gets right or Orlando gets healthy.

But yeah, it's really it's really the Knicks and the Pistons and kind of everybody else right now.

And the Spurs thing is interesting because that's been the hot question since they beat the Thunder is are they a contender?

And I think people kind of don't know what to do with the term contender.

I hear contender and I think would not really surprise me if they won the championship.

Michael Pina kind of described them as an under the radar contender.

What does that mean?

Conference finals would not be a surprise.

You said dark, dark, dark horse.

I'm not ready to put them down in the same circle as the Thunder and the Nuggets and whoever wins the East by default.

But they're right there in the next tier.

Maybe with the Rockets, I think I'd put the Rockets a little ahead of them.

But if you told me they're in the same universe as the Rockets, I would say yeah, I mean they've earned that.

Yeah, they're fourth in a four-man West race for who could make the finals.

But you got to take them seriously because they have a top six guy in the league who I assume will be playing more minutes.

They hit the jackpot with Castle.

They hit the jackpot with Harper.

These guards are unbelievable, man.

I was going to do this later, but I'll just throw this to you now, because I was really thinking about this on Saturday night watching OKC and the Spurs.

It rarely happened.

We've had contenders.

We've had teams that seemed unstoppable, like the 2017.

Warriors is a good example where we're like oh no, hold on.

But that was a team of guys in the prime, guys that had been in the league for a while.

It rarely happens when you have a young team with guys that for the most part except for maybe one guy in the team aren't even close to who they're going to be yet.

But they gave you that hold down feeling.

And I actually went through all the seasons going back to the merger trying to figure out how many times

Nobody goes back to the merger like Bill Simmons.

Nobody loves going on basketball reference and just looking shit up.

But I thought the 77 Blazers is a great example, right?

Who ended up winning the title.

But young team on the rise, Walton, Mo Lucas, all those guys.

The 86 Rockets with Samson and Olajuwon.

I'm just talking about teams that were like, Oh, this team's really talented.

Wait, they're here?

95 Magic is an obvious one with Shaq and Penny.

That's a good one.

Either the 10 or the 11 Thunder.

The 10 Thunder weren't quite ready yet.

The 11 Thunder were and came really close to making the finals with a pretty precocious team of young KD, young Russ, really young Harden, really young Ibaka, where we were kind of like, oh shit, this could be the decade.

That's conference finals against the Mavs they lose?

Yeah, 11.

And then you know the Thunder, two years ago when they lost to Dallas and that seemed really early.

But we're like man, you look at their guys, the picks they have coming, and now the Spurs, I think, are the next one.

So that's only six teams, Zach, in 50 years.

There's some other ones, like the 85 Mavs.

You could say maybe 92 Sonics, 09 Bulls, the 17 Celtics, but those are the six.

We're like, whoa, we're doing this now?

And what's interesting is we have two teams from the last three years.

And I was thinking about that Saturday night.

I was like, every other team in the league would trade places with these two teams, I think.

It's going to be right now.

It's going to be the defining rivalry of the NBA for the next five years.

I mean, I don't know how many years.

And you know it started with, like the Chet Wemby, always crossing paths and like under 19, under 18,

And there's a little little spice there.

And now it's just you add these young guards, Thunder Young Wings.

Like, I mean, the amount of perimeter youth energy defense tenacity like Harper and Castle.

Even when they're not making shots, and today, as good as they looked at moments they're, You know where are they.

They're... Oh, Harper was 7-14, Castle 5-15.

Like, they're standing dudes up on defense.

They're swiping at the ball.

They're standing up guys that are bigger than they are.

They are in for all the fight and all the guts and toughness you need to win in the playoffs.

Like, they just walked into the league with it.

Yeah.

Harper had he had an athletic stretch in the fourth quarter, like in the, like the four minute range, four minutes left where he hit a three.

He basically made Brunson do a backcourt violation.

Yeah.

He went in the corner and just grabbed this rebound with like the superhuman had the fuck did he get there and then brought it back and then tried to go in and make a crazy layup.

But he can dial it up athletically and

Like I had a 10, a 10 and same for castle, where these are two guys that could actually go toe to toe with all the OKC athleticism.

And then you throw in Wemby as a freak.

And this is a team that could talk themselves into a series against OKC.

I'm not, I don't think they could win that series.

They're not going to be afraid.

They're not going to be athletically afraid.

They're not going to be afraid of the speed of the series.

And then you watch Houston-Denver last night.

It was the same thing.

And Houston, I thought that was... First of all, that might have been the best game of the year.

I know we say that like every two weeks, but that really might have been.

Other than the refs.

Well, the refs weren't great, but that stretch when everybody was sitting threes.

The Rockets have an embarrassment of riches at crunch time now where it's like...

They don't even run the KD Reed Shepard pick and roll with Reed set in the screen, which I don't know if anyone could stop because they have so many other options.

And then, you know, Denver is Denver.

But I don't know.

These are just really, really, really talented teams.

It's a great, great, great, great, great, great regular season, I think.

I really enjoyed it.

Houston being in this group is interesting because we know that Van Vliet is injured, right?

Eason's injured.

Finney Smith hasn't played a second for them.

But Van Vliet in particular... you feel the void of a little extra on-ball juice for them at times.

Like they're going offense-defense late last night with Reed Shepard coming, and then Okoge comes in for Reed Shepard.

It's like, what do we actually need here at this moment?

And they still have an upward offense in the league, and they're still amazing.

Can I just say a couple things on the Spurs?

Yeah, please.

Let's do it.

Let's deep dive it.

Harper...

Just Harper and Castle, I just can't say enough.

We saw the three guards all together at the end of the game.

I think it might have been the first time Fox, Castle, and Harper were all on the floor together.

I think Vassell sat, right?

No, Vassell was like small ball four, which is a very interesting... So Barnes sat, okay.

Yeah, Barnes sat, which is a very interesting gambit because it's a way to make teams guard Wemby with their centers.

And we saw this sort of jockeying to like, who are the centers going to guard?

Are they going to guard Hart on one end, Harrison Barnes on the other end?

And... you know, I just like those guys, those guards are, are so good.

And Fox is just a perfect sort of veteran stabilizer for them.

And the other thing I want to say, when Benyama Should be noted, as we're talking about the Knicks winning the cup and blah blah, blah.

When Benyama 25 minutes, uh, minus 18, still clearly rusty, still clearly on a minute's restriction.

And yet the, the lobs are just comical, just absolutely castle.

And Harper already know just throw them all up.

The defense is there.

Like this wasn't even, I don't even know if this is like 60% of Wemby.

Like this was not the same guy from the first week of the season.

That guy's coming.

And this game is different if that guy's in it.

Yeah, and Harper already.

I mean you don't really watch college basketball, so you're catching Harper over the course of the season.

You should be like, oh, he does that?

Oh, he does that.

I don't even know who my favorite rookie in this class is anymore.

Tremendous class.

Initially, it was Flagg.

I was like, I love Flagg.

And then the season started, and it became infatuated with Knipple.

And then Derek Queen had a moment for about a week where it's like, what's going on here?

They're running an entire offense through him and you have to play five feet off him even though he can't shoot.

And he's just a walking bucket or creation every time he wants to be.

I don't know what this is.

And then Harper, the last week where this kid's 19, he's got footwork that's like a very in the Shea-Kobe vicinity.

It feels like someday.

On top of it, he's got the size.

He's just a really good Teammate, he's not selfish at all.

He'll slash, and he's always feel like he's going to make the right play.

He invents some stuff with some of the moves.

He has some of these little drop step, double drop step, reverse things he does.

And then defensively, he's there.

He's there.

He's playable already.

So...

I don't even know out of those four.

I mean, have we had four like that that are that unique coming out of the gate in year one?

I don't remember that.

Well, and Cedric Coward is like, hey, wait, wait, like I'm doing some pretty fun stuff in Memphis.

Yeah.

And the other thing about Harper I know he's only shooting like 26 percent from three.

Before this game, when he went by his standards, went bananas from three.

He's ahead of schedule, working off the ball like relocating for threes, attacking closeouts from the corner.

And Fox is just spraying the ball out to everybody for easy three for open threes.

And like sometimes Fox will go to the corner, too.

And like you cook, you run the offense out, like they're, they're all ahead of schedule sort of figuring out how to play with each other.

I don't even remember what they gave up for Fox, other than a pick that ended up not being conveyed, and then two other picks and then some players that I don't even remember who the players were.

I think Zach Collins was in it.

Yeah, it's a three-team trade with the Bulls.

No, I remember the three-teamer, but did they give up anybody of substance other than those two picks?

No.

They did not.

No, Collins and Trey Jones has been pretty good for the Bulls.

And they have.

I think there's a 2031 Minnesota pick or swap in there that could be potentially valuable.

And, of course, just like the Spurs got Harrison Barnes from a from a Bulls Kings, depressing for depressing trade.

They get like they just jump into these Bulls Kings or these Bulls king straight.

That should be banned by adam silver.

That should have been the first question at the adam silver press conference tonight.

Are you gonna ban the bulls and the kings from straight?

Forget expansion, forget seattle, vegas and all this and the spurs are?

Things just fall into the spurs laps from the incompetence of these two other teams who can't stop trading with each other.

That would be funny if they just ban teams from trading with each other, like how you had banned people from going out together.

We already had the band teams from like you can't trade picks anymore.

You've traded too many picks.

You're banned for trading picks.

It's like, why not?

I love that he has no answer for the Rozier trade.

It was my favorite in the press conference.

I didn't see the question.

What was the question?

The question was basically, are you close to resolution?

Mark Stein had this.

I tweeted about it.

It was, hold on.

Oh, yeah.

Adam Stein tweeted this.

Adam Silver says in Las Vegas, quote there's no obvious solution here to the trade status of Miami's Terry Rozier and calls it quote unprecedented.

I mean, there is an obvious solution.

He's the commissioner.

He could just make a solution.

Either waive the pick or make it so that you can trade the contract even though the guy is being investigated.

But you can't not do anything.

But story for another time.

Story for another time.

So Flag, Harper, Kahn, Queen, Coward.

You love this draft class.

Edgecombe.

There's a couple other good ones.

Let's talk Knicks, because we weren't fair.

We didn't talk about the Knicks enough, and that was a big win for them.

When they have their five and let's say we know they're going to have their five for four rounds, plus Robinson, plus Clarkson Yabasele at some point Kolek.

Let's say they have their nine.

They don't have any injuries.

Is that a team that you think could actually beat whoever comes out of the West?

I would say no.

I mean look, once you get to the finals, obviously you are a break, an injury, an ankle sprain, a wild occurrence, a flake or a foul suspension, something like that.

Away from you're in the game.

But I would pick the top three teams in the West.

Denver, Houston, Oklahoma city over the Knicks for sure.

And I think it's not, I don't think it's their five.

I think it's their six.

I think Robinson start come off the bench whatever, like he's that important to their team where they have these six starters.

And I do think they're going to sniff around for one other guy.

It's hard for them to do it because of how close they are to the second apron.

But I think they're going to sniff around for one other bench guy, because Clarkson's been up and down.

Yabusele didn't even play tonight.

Shamit.

You know, every time he seems to cement a role in somebody's rotation, something happens and he doesn't have a role in the rotation anymore.

So I think they'll sniff around.

But look, everyone's got a puncher's chance in the finals, but they'd be a huge underdog over against any of those teams, I think.

I still like Yabusele.

I do too.

I don't quite understand what's happening.

Might be the wrong team for him.

There is a team for him.

I'm just not sure who it is.

Wait.

So you, but you, you agree that that you would.

You would not take the Knicks over the over, any of those teams.

I think the top three in the West are levitating over everybody else.

And then I think it's probably next year.

Spurs, Knicks, Spurs, slightly higher ceiling.

Cause of who knows with women Yama, and who knows with those young guys, and who knows what happens with Castle and Harper.

And then who knows if they're going to make a trade.

And we talked about this when, uh, I can't remember.

You were on my podcast last.

I can't remember who was on whose last, but we talked when I was in New York City about what would Sam Presti do applying that philosophy to what would you do if you were like, let's say, the Spurs in this case?

Would you go for it?

I just wouldn't.

I would ride with this team for a year.

I wouldn't do anything crazy.

There are deals...

They could put together contracts for a guy making 50 million a year.

They could, if they wanted, make a run at somebody like Anthony Davis, right?

Somebody of that ilk in that range.

They could make a run.

Not that they would get Kawhi Leonard, because he wouldn't go back to San Antonio, but one of these vets that's in that range.

Yeah, I'm just saying.

I don't think they will.

I think this is, hey, this is awesome.

We're way ahead of schedule.

Harper is already playing real minutes for us.

Castle made this huge leap.

We have a deep team.

Like, why would we do anything?

Let's see how this goes.

The reason you wouldn't do that is because you have these expiring contracts and just like you have tradable contracts right now that you might not have in a year.

And that would be the reason to do it now.

But I would stand pat.

What would you do?

Yeah, I think since we did that podcast a month ago, Fox has come back and made you curious as to what this team could look like.

They thrived with Wemby out.

Wemby watched all that and you can kind of feel him figuring out okay, these guys can all do a lot of stuff.

I could do the most stuff, but how does my stuff fit with their stuff?

The two guards have both gone up a level.

The conversation about a blockbuster involving any of those pieces is over and put aside.

They're just not doing it.

I think I can see something to your point about we've got to do something with these contracts.

Is there a Sohan plus Olenek?

Sohan being a guy who some team might be intrigued by doesn't as a second draft kind of player, you know, and three seconds, does that get us another guy who can shoot a little bit and come in and play 15 minutes for us in the playoffs?

They've reached the status where that kind of trade, that kind of smaller win now trade, could really really help them.

I mean, could it be a Harrison Barnes, Keldon Johnson, Kelly Olenek for Davis and Exum?

Or fill in a max player with another small contract and you throw in some picks and you just make a run for it.

I just wouldn't do it.

I use the word upheaval a lot to describe mid-season trades that are just so gigantic in how they conceptually trade your team that you have to pause for a second and remember what you're asking.

And what you're doing in a trade like that is A you're doing like a two for one or a three for one.

So your depth gets shallower right off the bat.

And B you're being like all right when B in year three with you know a lot of injuries the last two years.

Just figure it out with another guy who's a center and has a broken jump shot.

Just figure that out in 30 games.

Good luck.

It's a lot.

And then C, because I think this is a position Detroit's in, which we talked about in New York.

You also.

You have really good chemistry and you have a team that likes each other and you're trading key guys.

That are a piece of that.

Like Harrison Barnes, you could see a Linux like, as the old veteran towel waiver guy um Detroit Harris has to be in any trade.

I think Harris is important for them.

I think he's a great teammate.

You could see last night in the Celtics game, like he had some really good moments in that game.

That was a good win for Detroit, by the way.

I know you didn't enjoy it, but that was a tough like fired up home crowd, fired up Celtics.

A lot of media coverage chip on their shoulder.

Guys that you talked about, everyone's got something to prove.

That was a nice win for the Pistons.

Yeah, my dad went to that game.

He was outraged by the officiating, almost, which is par for the course these days, but He was saying the Celtics, the way they're put together now, they can basically match anybody's game unless it's like Houston just pounding the boards on them.

They can't really survive something like the Javante Green thing.

Like he just went nuts for four minutes and that tilted the game for them.

Like, all right, we can kind of go toe to toe with Cade and Duren.

But if this is going to happen, we don't have enough at this point.

But my dad, you know Jalen, had his classic awesome Jalen game but then missed the two free throws at the end.

But my dad was like he wasn't even that mad about the missed free throws at the end, because he's like you got to go to the game and see, like how fucking hard Jalen Brown is playing.

He is playing every possession, every minute.

It's like a game seven, and it's unbelievable.

And he's done it the whole year.

I think he's been one of the best 12 guys in the league.

But they're missing that one guy which is like That's why the Tatum comeback, which I know you.

Talked about a tiny bit yesterday, but the Tatum just giving the Shireman and half of the Hauser minutes to 25 minutes of Tatum is going to be worth like five points to this team.

So that's.

That's an.

I know we're going to talk about what do you do teams later, but that's a team where I don't know what they do.

Cause they, they could try to get under the, that last tax and really reset the rest of the decade.

Or they could look around in the East and be like, ah, fuck it.

Like we're not that far away.

Fuck it.

I think the next month is going to be telling like how bunched up the East is right now, from three to nine.

You know you could go on a three game winning streak and suddenly be ninth, and or three game losing streak and suddenly be ninth.

We'll see.

We'll see what things look like.

You know, I don't think they're going to do anything super aggressive regardless of where they are.

It's more like, will they will they sell to try to cut their tax bill?

It's the shaving.

And you talked about this on your pod yesterday, but it's something I think we've both been hearing.

There's no Giannis trade.

There just isn't.

The three teams in the West aren't trading for him and San Antonio is not trading for him.

Those trades aren't happening.

You go around the league, Cleveland can't trade for him.

They're $22 million over the second apron.

They have no chance of trading for him.

There are ways, there are ways.

They're complicated, but they're very complicated, but there are ways.

You need a lot of help from a lot of teams and that leaks as you're trying to get the help.

Well, and their other problem is like Of course they're going to do their best to hold out Mobley in any kind of talks like that.

But like Garland and Allen's trade value is, you know, as low as it's ever going to be right now.

And that's not a good place to be dealing from.

Yeah.

And Allen's at 20 this year, but then it jumps to 30 next year with that extension he signed.

So if you're trading for Jared Allen, you're paying him 90 million starting a year from now.

But well, let's we'll take a break and then let's do some what do you do situation.

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All right, Zach, this game is called What Do You Do?

Excited.

We're running some of these teams.

What do we do?

Let's start with the Clippers.

Every time I think they've hit rock bottom.

It gets worse.

Um, i've never been offered quipper tickets more, even from people who know i have quipper tickets than in the last two weeks.

The it's really.

We're back to 2010 zebo playing with overweight baron davis days of just just dark dark, dark quipper times and there's no move.

On top of everything else, on top of the fact that there's some whispers that this is uh, the bomber punishment Just be ready for a holiday news drop on that one.

Okay.

Some whispers.

Like a Friday 530 day after Christmas type of situation.

They have to get something out.

We're getting closer to the All-Star game now that the Clippers are hosting.

They cannot go to the All-Star game without having announced what happened.

And I think we're moving closer to finding out what the punishment will be, if there will be a punishment.

All right.

That's interesting.

But I don't know what they do.

They don't have their pick.

They have expensive players that I don't think anybody wants.

And I don't know what the trade is.

Like.

Go through the other 29 teams and ask yourself who would want James Harden for 40 million a year.

I can't think of a single team except one.

And I'm interested to know if you would think it's the same team as I did.

Well, it has to be either a decent team or a desperate team or both.

Yeah.

So do we rule out Sacramento in this?

Oh, we just don't know.

Because Sacramento is always available to trade.

So they almost don't count.

The right answer to a lot of these questions is going to be Milwaukee, if they're trying to salvage the end of the honest era.

Guess who coached James Harden in Philly?

Yeah.

That's a no way.

That's Doc just getting on a plane and coming home if that happens.

So Milwaukee is the desperate team, but Milwaukee is also not trading for James Harden.

I think there's one trade.

I'm not going to guess.

You go ahead.

What about LaMelo and Harden in a deal together?

If you're Charlotte and you like your team and you've struck oil with Knipple and Brandon Miller's back and Bridges is good, and you're in the East and you're not going to be one of the three worst teams in the East.

There's just no scenario where you're going to be in the bottom three.

Your team has too much talent.

What if you just turn LaMelo into Harden?

And now you have Harden, Knipple, Bridges, Brandon Miller, and some big guys.

And now you might be a play-in team.

And maybe you just do that.

Overriding this LaMelo rollercoaster for a minute more.

And if you're the Clippers, LaMelo changes scenery.

He's one of the most famous players in the league with people under 30.

I think he has the biggest social media of anyone other than LeBron.

It changes your team.

I thought it was an interesting one.

I thought it was an interesting concept.

Could I hang a banner in Inuit Dome that says second biggest social media following behind LeBron?

Because I need to hang a banner for something.

You could do that.

That sounds great.

The only way that makes sense to me, since the Clippers have no extras to send me or minimal extras to send me.

I have to hate his contract.

And the entire experience of LaMelo ball.

So much that just four years of this contract at 40, plus a year 45, 42 a year whatever it is that I'm, that's a dump.

That's not forget to play in and like all this stuff about.

We're trying to win a little bit now with James Harden.

Like that's, that's a, that's a disguise.

The real trade is a salary dump.

And I am not, I'm not there with as as bad as this year has been, shooting wise and health wise, yet again with the ankle problems.

I'm, I'm not there.

I'm not even close to there.

I'm not even considering that if I'm Charlotte.

Sorry.

Not even considering it.

No, not considering it.

And on the flip side, if you're the Clippers, you're not putting Zubats in that trade.

No.

Yeah.

So we're not working together then.

The Clippers have not been able.

The Clippers have shoved away people calling because the Vultures are circling with Zubats.

Oh, I'm aware.

The Clippers are shoving people away.

I don't know if it's shoving.

I think it's gentle pushing.

Okay.

So let me just get this straight.

I'm trying to figure this out from your end because usually you're a pretty rational guy.

The mellow ball, year six.

We haven't really seen any indication that he's going to be a serious professional who's in shape, affecting a team in all of these winning ways for longer than like two, three week stretches at a time.

Disagree.

He's played 51, 75, 36, 22, 47, and 16 games this year.

And Zach Lowe, the most rational guy I know, is telling me, it's not time yet.

I need to see more.

I think he has the most trade value of the, does anybody really want these guys point guards, Trey young, John Moran, and it's not, and it's, and it's not close.

Um, I was actually talking to a GM about this very thing today.

Uh, another, another guy on the mellow ball still might be good Island with me.

Um, I see you're on the Island.

I'm just not like, look, I've used the word carnival a lot to describe the mellow ball.

Like it's a little bit carnival-esque and he flirts with getting a little bit more serious about time and score.

And yeah, maybe don't do the one-legged three when we're down two, with 45 seconds left in the game and there's 20 on the shot clock.

Maybe don't do that.

We'll have to remind you again in a week.

I get it.

You can't teach the height.

You can't teach division.

And this year aside, I'm ignoring the shooting this year.

It's been an awful, it's been awful, awful, awful.

I trust the sample size.

I'm just not, Like it's, I'm not as optimistic as I was six months ago or whatever.

I don't think it's going great.

I, just I.

Why am I doing this for 36 year old James Harden is what he's going to come to Charlotte and do as his dribble all the time.

You just get dribble, dribble, dribble.

Con can it was going to be like well, he's going to be motivated to do what exactly in Charlotte get paid and demand a trade to another team.

That's better.

Why am I doing that?

Salary dump.

I'm not dumping that salary.

It's not that bad of a salary.

Okay.

I'm standing by it.

You're calling Sacramento.

That sounds like your move is.

You're calling Sacramento and trying to talk Vivek and his team of brilliant front office advisors for some sort of LaMelo where he can get multiple players back.

Do you try to get Sabonis back for LaMelo?

I don't care.

With apologies to DeMontis Sabonis, who's tremendous.

If from this I mean we're like in crazy town now, like the Hornets and the Kings talking about a deal with Sabonis and LaBelle Ball.

We've gone full on into crazyville.

But, with all due respect to the Kings players, the only thing I really want out of the Kings in this theoretical crazy town trade is draft picks attached to the Sacramento Kings with no protections on them, aka the most golden of gold chips in the NBA.

So you're saying LaMelo for contracts and give us some of your picks.

Yeah, just trick the Kings into thinking that they're the ones who are going to bring out all this potential in LaMelo Ball.

Trick them into saying use all the social media data I've got about how this is going to revolutionize.

Get the fans who are so, just done with this Kings team.

Get young fans back in the seats.

He likes cowbells, just whatever stupid sales pitches I can come up with.

So it's like a, yeah, we'll take Schroeder and we'll take Malik Monk.

Take one more contract and we'll take your first rounder this year.

And how about a swap three years from now?

And what about like your 2033 first?

So that's not you.

That's like seven years from now.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Can you just put that in there?

Vivek, you'll have been chased out of town by a mob with pitchforks by then.

You don't care about that pick, right?

Yeah, right.

All right.

I'm glad we talked that out.

I kind of like the idea of Harden.

I liked it more than you.

So you think Harden would just go to Charlotte and just pack it in?

I think he'd kind of like living down there.

Great.

What does it do for me?

What does it do for anybody?

I'm just trying to get out of LaMelo before the stock drops.

I mean, case in point, the John Morant stock dropping and the Trae Young stock dropping, right?

There's an inflection point where, all of a sudden, you don't have the asset in the same way, which brings us to the Grizzlies.

Okay.

John Moran.

So wait, our decision about what are you going to do with the Clippers is just cry, cry and try to get a media job.

Is that the answer?

Yeah.

You said Zubats is untouchable.

I didn't say that.

I said they're shoving away.

That's all.

Is there a team in the league that would trade for Kawhi?

Like would Detroit be like, yeah, let's try Kawhi.

I think you'd have to look at the desperation teams, of which the Clippers are one, and they already have Kawhi.

Maybe they should trade Kawhi out of themselves.

It's going to be tough.

I don't see a market for Kawhi.

The only way is if it went horribly with LeBron.

But then even that doesn't make sense because LeBron's going to want to be on a playoff team.

I can't think of a team for him.

Grizzlies.

John Morant.

Brooklyn.

Doesn't hurt their tanking plan because he doesn't play anyway.

It's like, oh no, he's going to help us win games.

Like, no, don't worry about that.

He's going to be in street clothes.

And you could try to talk yourselves into, yeah, next year we'll put him on the front of Barclays.

Go get some Phoenix pizza.

Watch John Morant.

He's going to displace Tyrese Martin from the five times larger than life billboards on the side of Barclays Center.

He could be the last guy in the Jumbotron thing when they show the five guys with the music.

And no, the Brooklyn Nets with the guys standing next to skyscrapers.

Cam Thomas doing the turnarounds.

All right.

So the Nets just drafted three point guards from And a couple other point, somethings in some ways, whatever Danny Wolf is.

Yeah, probably doesn't make sense.

I'm still bringing in John Moran, who's shooting like 0 from three and a little bit above zero from two.

We do in the NFL.

We talk about, like during the NFL season and like week 15, there'll be a gambling line for a game and it'll be like Patriots seven points over over uh, I don't know Pittsburgh.

It'd be like, whoa, before the season, the look ahead line was Pittsburgh by four.

That line shipped at 11 points.

The same thing with a John Moran trade.

We'd be like, wow, Brooklyn could just get John Moran for nothing.

If I had told you that in August, they would have jumped at that.

But now it's December and Um, but yeah, I think you're, I think you're right.

And that's the only team I could think of because they have the cap space.

They could accommodate any kind of deal.

They have a couple of guys to give back.

Other than that, I don't, where's John Moran going?

The old.

The team that was by far the best John Moran team in every possible way is Sacramento.

Contracts need a point guard.

I mean you could have made a case for a few teams when the first disgruntled John Morant news conferencing happened.

You could have made a case for Miami.

You could have made a case for a couple other teams, Orlando, whatever.

So much has happened.

All of it good for those teams.

Most of it good.

Miami's on a losing streak.

And bad for Morant.

I just don't If he doesn't look substantially better than he's looked in this whole season in the next six weeks.

I don't think he's tradable right now, to be honest.

He's not playing well.

He's a negative for his team.

Yeah, we see this happen in football, sometimes with tight ends and wide receivers that played with a certain level of physicality and then they get a little older and the physicality fades away a little bit and there's not a plan B, which is what I see when I watch him, because the greatest thing about him was also the thing That made us worried that his career was going to be cut short.

Like his just recklessness going to the rim.

It was unbelievable.

And now now that he doesn't quite have the same recklessness, not really sure what's going on.

He can't mention he can't play all the time.

He can't make.

He's shooting poorly from the rim from floater range, from three, where he's always been a poor shooter.

It's just not going well.

If I'm the Grizz, I'll tell you what I am doing.

I'm calling the Warriors.

I'm trying to get Pat Spencer.

And I'm uniting the Lacks brothers on one team.

I want both the Lacks bros on one team.

I'm sorry to my podcast audience that I was so late on this Lacks story.

I think it's one of the great stories of the decade for the NBA.

I can't believe that somebody played lacrosse for four years and came back to college with their fifth year of eligibility and basically walked onto a basketball team and, within a couple of years, is part of the Warriors rotation.

But this is a sports movie.

And these are two sports that don't really have a lot in common.

I could see if it was like he played lacrosse and now he's in the MLS, or he played MLS and now he's playing professional lacrosse.

But going from lacrosse to basketball, it kind of broke my brain.

And he might be the number one irrational confidence guy in the league this year.

The Warriors version.

And his brother might be second.

When he gets going, it's Pat Spencer.

I have to remind myself, Pat's on the Warriors, Cam's on the Grizzlies.

When Pat Spencer gets going, the Warriors, the bench is super, super into it.

They clearly like him a lot.

Yeah, he really carries himself.

Yeah, so Ja, Sacramento, which brings me to the next what he do is Sacramento.

And here's what I wrote down before we even started talking about this.

Kings, you have to roll the dice with Zion, Trey, LaMelo, or Ja.

I think their season is at that point.

Like you just got to, you're not the roulette table and you've already lost a ton of money.

And you're like, fuck it.

I'll put it on black.

And that's it.

22 red.

And you're at that stage of the night.

And I just think if I, out of those four guys, I would roll the dice on Zion over the, over the three guards.

I don't know where you stay.

How do you rank them?

Well, I mean, he's certainly the most interesting and his contract is uh, offers me the most flexible because of how it becomes, it only becomes guaranteed basically, year over over.

It's like non guaranteed until it's guaranteed every year.

Yeah.

Um, But talk about a guy who never plays.

I mean, when I saw his name in the box score the other day, I was like, oh, okay.

My brain just sort of assumed I won't see Zion again for a long, long time.

And now he's back.

He's on the pleasant surprise all-stars when you're on League Pass.

It's like, is that Zion?

Hey, he's playing.

And the thing about this discussion, less so with the other guys, is what's in this for me as the Pelicans?

Yeah, I get off.

This Zion thing, how he never plays and his conditioning is an off and on issue.

And just the whole franchise seems to just be held in limbo because of him.

And I and I get that for the honor of Zach Levine opting into a forty nine million dollar deal next year.

Is DeMar DeRozan involved?

Are you reporting that? what no i'm just i'm not reporting that i'm just saying if i'm yeah i think i think he's opting in uh or you know i mean sabonis is a good player i i but why am i doing that for the kings i'm trading like the only good thing about my franchise for zion williamson i i just it's it's a hard one the guards are more interesting to me because they do actually you could sell the fan base on We overpaid Dennis Schroeder to be the only point guard who plays really on our team, and then we had to get Russell Westbrook to be another one, and we don't play the point guard that we drafted a couple years ago.

This is something.

They really didn't have to sign Russell Westbrook.

You know, what they didn't have to do is trade Tyrese Halliburton and alienate De'Aaron Fox to the point that he also wanted to be traded, and that ends up with no point guards.

They didn't also have to get rid of Mike Brown to hire Doug Christie.

Golden State.

Oh boy.

So my dream scenario for them would be them getting some bonus somehow, but there's really no way to do it without them trading Jimmy Butler.

So I don't want to, I don't think they want to lose his 12 shots a game.

So probably keep him.

I don't know what going state does.

That almost went, that almost slipped by me.

It's like three shots a quarter.

You got, you got to keep him.

Did you see the email story today?

The Joe Lacob email story?

So what was it exactly?

I heard about it.

I forgot to deep dive it because I was busy doing a bunch of stuff.

Was it an email to like owners or to a fan?

A fan emailed Lacob, a fan, Justin Dutari.

I hope I'm pronouncing your name right.

Uh, telling lake up that he needs a quote, real second option that jimmy butler's quote tools are being underutilized and blaming the lack of positional size on the roster.

I am so frustrated.

Dutari ended his email lake of replies.

You can't be as frustrated as me.

I am working on it.

It's complicated style of play coaches desires regarding players, league trends jimmy is not the problem.

And then the guy publishes the exchange on reddit.

Oh no.

See, we can't have nice things.

You can't just have an owner responding to a fan.

Just giving the guy some time puts it on there.

So people dove into the coach's desires regarding players as a... A Steve Kerr dig?

Yeah, yeah.

Not thinly veiled dig at Steve Kerr.

Well, I will say... Oh, yeah.

I saw his press conference where he was basically like, oh, yeah, Joe's being Joe, whatever he said.

I actually watched the last two Warriors games where curry was awesome in both games and they lost and i thought that was alarming.

They should never lose games when he's awesome.

You think curry hitting 12 threes, you should get a w?

That should be a guaranteed.

We're definitely winning this game and the fact that they did and i think would make me super nervous if i was uh paying that money for a warrior's roster, if i was rooting for the team.

I don't think they have a lot of outs other than either trading jimmy or draymond Kaminga's getting DMPs.

The fantasy land of them getting a real asset for him on January 15th is comical.

It's the same thing for Cam Thomas.

The Nets aren't going to be able to trade Cam Thomas right now.

What are you getting for him?

Well, he's injured, too.

Well, that's what I mean.

But they were like, we'll sign him and whatever.

But then he wasn't even playing well before he got injured.

I think it's Kaminga and picks, you know, because the Warriors have picks at their disposal.

But if I'm the Warriors, why am I trading picks?

For what purpose?

I'm going to be one of the three best teams in the West.

There's no trade that fixes them.

Let's give them every asset they have.

They trade for Giannis.

Are they one of the best three teams in the West?

They're not.

I wouldn't do that.

Let's say they could trade Jerryman and Butler and all their picks for Giannis and Kuzma.

Does that do anything for them?

I don't think it does.

Yeah, it gives you a little bit of a better roadmap for like the immediate post-Stef era.

But no, this year.

I mean, not only are they not one of the top three teams in the West, they're going they're going to have to go through the play-in again, which means they're going to have to struggle to get to eighth or the seventh seed and get hammered by one of these teams at the top of the West.

It's just, they're too small.

Looks over, it's been over.

And it's just riding it out now.

I can't say Al Horford has come back to hunt the Celtics.

I don't know what it is with this.

It's a string of coincidences, mostly.

People leaving Boston and then not being good?

Porzingis is sick again.

I know that started in Boston, so it's not quite apples to apples.

I'm not going to trade for anyone from the Celtics for a little while.

Marcus Smart is having a little bit of a vibe.

This is interesting.

Going back to Isaiah Thomas.

From Isaiah Thomas to now, these guys get traded from the Celtics or leave the Celtics.

Al Horford didn't get traded, but it's like buyer beware, i don't know what's going on.

Buyer beware, drew holiday, they gotta like rescind draft picks and it's like another trade.

Robert williams, it's a lot.

It's a lot of guys.

It's pretty good.

Boston's just such a great place to live.

People don't know what to do when they leave.

I had charlotte written down just with the question how do i turn lamello into a guard and a big man?

Can I turn him into two guys somehow?

Sure.

You want Zach Levine and DeMontis Sabonis?

I don't know if I want Zach Levine with DeMontis Sabonis.

But I think that would be their goal.

Do you want Jeremy Grant and Robert Williams?

For LaMelo?

I'm just throwing out.

I'm literally looking at the standings and reading you.

Jeremy Grant looked good the other night.

He's fine.

He's been playing well this year.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, I'd like to see Charlotte improve their team because I like some of their guys.

Cleveland, 22 million over the second apron.

You seem to think they have more flexibility to do some movement than I do.

I think it's been.

People would say other teams are the most disappointing team in the league, like the Clippers.

The Clippers thing makes way more sense to me than Cleveland being basically a 500 team and not looking like they like playing basketball with each other.

I think that's more surprising than the Clippers.

A sea change from the feel good, everyone's sacrifice for the greater good.

Balls flying around, every shots going in, and some of it is just the shots are not going in.

But it doesn't look or feel the same and maybe it's just as simple as the garland.

Like garland appears to be a broken player physically right now, with no end in sight to it.

Yeah, because you figure, if even if they're going to decide, we got to, let's officially decide between mitchell and garland.

It would be crazy to Bet on Garland when physically even though a lot of that hasn't been his fault, but I just I want to see it for four months.

It's there's no decision.

It's Donovan Mitchell's team.

The guy's been a first team level.

I know that I'm just saying like if, if you were like wow, we can get all of this for Donovan Mitchell and we could still keep mobile and all that.

Also, I don't know where Mitchell would go.

Yeah, the Cleveland thing.

So it was the over-under when we did the pot.

It was 56 and a half.

Yeah, you guys talked me into the over.

I'm so mad at myself.

I went over.

It was one of my locks.

Do you remember I went under and you guys were aghast?

We bullied you.

And you were so aghast that you bullied me.

And it's like, this is why you don't take shit from bullies.

Just stick to your freaking... You just were jealous.

We were making really good cases.

I know.

Boston, we talked about.

And then the last team is Dallas.

Dallas.

And I'm in the I don't think Dallas should do anything camp.

And I've been in that camp the entire time.

And I think they're going to be a playing team no matter what happens.

And maybe a little bit better than that when Kyrie comes back.

Well, because that's a team that there's a real ceiling of, Kyrie can come back and play 25, 30 minutes a game.

But I just I like Davis next to flag and I wouldn't want to break that up.

I think he's had a huge impact on flag when they played together.

It's noticeable.

I just wouldn't trade him.

I think you're right on this in part because I just don't think the offers to make it worth my while are going to be there.

What I would not do is entertain extension talks with him, unless there's a discount that is so staggering that I can't even imagine he would entertain it.

But I'm fine rolling into next season with Kyrie plus Davis, plus Flag, plus what's ever left over, because they are aproned pretty severely coming up.

I just don't think there's going to be anything like the optics of trading Luka and for Anthony Davis and the flotsam they got and then trading Anthony Davis for, like Kristaps Porzingis's expiring contract and a heavily protected first-round pick.

It's just whatever the fake deal you want to make is just so bad that I'm not doing it.

I'm not doing it either.

But they traded Luka for Anthony Davis and Cooper Flagg in a number one pick.

That was the vision.

That's what the vision was.

Any other team we didn't mention?

Yeah, there's a team that I... I mean, it's...

It's strange that we didn't mention them in any context.

We didn't mention them among the good teams in the West.

We didn't mention them among teams that could make an important trade, in part because it's salary-wise difficult for them to make a trade.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are just sort of out there and nobody really talks about them, except when they blow a lead in the most hilarious and inept fashion possible, which they seem to do once every two weeks.

And that's just in the DNA of John Krasinski.

And I literally have a text joke that we just text each other.

Nobody melts down like the Minnesota Timberwolves, after every single meltdown that happens.

But they're, they're pretty damn good.

Um, And they're aware, I think that they need another ball handler, because this Dillingham-Bones conglomerate is unproven, to say the least, and Mike Conley is old and out a lot.

I just think for a team that's very good has a top eight player at worst in Anthony Edwards, who I think is getting better every year, and another guy who's played at an all-star level in Randall and McDaniels has made a leap.

I think back-to-back conference finals, I think they're flying a little bit under the radar.

I posited this to Rob Mahoney last week.

Rob Dillingham in a protected pick, like a heavily protected pick for Alvarado.

That's too much for Jose Alvarado.

How about Dillingham for Alvarado?

Yeah, I'm just I can't.

If I'm Tim Connolly and I put in all that equity and this guy's a top 10 pick, I can't do it.

I got it.

I got to give him every chance to succeed.

If what I'm getting back is a backup backup.

What if he was the eighth pick of just a bad draft?

He may well have been still not doing it.

There's nothing more dangerous than overrating somebody who is taken high in a draft that turned out to be really awful.

I don't think it's that dangerous if, I mean, I like Jose Alvarado.

He's one of my favorite little sneaky guys to watch.

I don't think it's that dangerous if all I'm missing out on is Jose Alvarado.

Really hard for them to do anything unless it's the Dillingham deal.

And you have to put Conley in it, who's important to them from a leadership standpoint.

And I don't really know the other player.

I handed in my ringer 100 today.

I have some announcements.

Okay.

Alperin Shengun, welcome to the top 15.

Let me see where I had him.

I'm 14th.

I mean, I can tell you for sure, not unreasonable.

I had him 15th.

So we're right in line.

What was my next one?

Oh, Khan Kanipal, welcome to my top 40.

I had him 40th.

I did not have him 40th.

Yeah, I figured now.

Although I will say once you get down to 30-ish.

The amount of flux in my rankings surprised me from just a month or two ago.

Stephon Castle, welcome to my top 50.

51 for me.

Item 49.

Kawhi Leonard.

Oh boy.

Here's a parting gift.

You've left the top 50 for me.

I'm not sure when you're going to play and your team loses every week.

Adam 54.

Probably lower than everybody else, but I'm had him higher than that because he has played well this season.

And again, like there's a lot of flux, a lot of flux.

Derek queen.

Yes.

He's welcome to my top 60.

I had him 59.

I mean, I can't argue with it.

I had him 72 because I'm being conservative, but all the good rookies are in my top 100 now.

Yeah, I had Harper 89, and I actually think I wish I had him lower than that.

I had Harper 83.

And again, in a month, he could be 48.

That's how much flux there is.

Did you go Jokic, SGA, Giannis, Luka, Wimpanyama?

Or did you have something different?

I did.

And then Edwards, six?

Seven.

Who'd you have six?

Stephen Curry.

I had him eight.

I had Brunson slightly ahead of Curry.

It's fine.

I mean, Brunson, Edwards, Curry, Brunson are six, seven, eight.

Mitchell, nine in some order.

Where'd you have the heart of the Celtics, Jalen Brown?

12.

I had him 12 as well.

All right.

Sounds like we're aligned.

Oh, last one.

Jalen Johnson?

22.

Adam, 20.

And there's a case that he could be I think 16 is probably his ceiling.

But if you wanted to say, based on his recent play, that you have him over some of the guys I have in the 16 to 21 range, which is Booker Towns Siakam, guys like that, I'd be fine with that.

He's been jumping out of the TV this year.

And we didn't talk about Atlanta.

And I'm sure Atlanta is going to do something, especially with the Porzingis contract that is now an expiring

They have a giant trade exception.

And they should make a move when there's a spot open in these finals.

Right now, I feel like next to the Knicks I want to sit and do something.

It's the one Giannis team that could happen.

It's one Davis team that could happen.

It's the one name of star team that could happen, I think, if it's either a big guy um, any sort of uh, more reliable guard or slash swing.

I don't know if they are ready to get rid of Trey, I don't know.

We've heard on that, but I think for the right price for sure.

Not for sure, but I think they would.

I'm glad you brought Giannis back up because, before you said, there's no Giannis trade and the top of the West teams are out.

And I generally, I mean I said on my pod yesterday or Monday that I'm starting to wonder if this is going to be a summer thing after all, like we all thought it was going to be before the season, when he, you know, when they signed thanasis and he sort of recommitted publicly for the year.

Um, that's my bet summer i, i would bet that way too.

But there's a couple of wild cards.

Number one is atlanta uh, and number two is and now there's all this noise.

Is milwaukee going to try to buy to placate yannis one last time or just to try to save the season?

Two contracts, i'm Agreed.

But the other wild card is like he's out for a few more weeks.

What if they're like one in 12 in their next 13 games?

And it's just the season is is over over for them.

Like I the wild card is always that.

Plus, he finally comes out and says it's time.

And then I think anything's possible other than that, other than Spurs Rockets, you know, whatever.

Right.

You know, the problem is not having their pick makes this so much more complicated.

Again, it's why I can't rule out the teams.

I mean, Atlanta's got Milwaukee stuff.

Portland is not going to trade for Giannis, but they've got Milwaukee stuff and would work their way.

I think into some kind of trade, like it's why I can't, I can't close the door completely.

All right.

Have you closed the door in the 2026 Mets yet?

No, I'm not happy.

Not happy, but you know baseball, baseball.

There's a lot of off season left to go.

I'm a little, I'm, I'm a little sad still.

Um, You know what I'm tired of?

I'm tired of Instagram tributes to guys you couldn't even bother making a contract offer for.

How about if you don't make a contract offer to the all-time home run hitter on your franchise?

You don't get to do an Instagram tribute to him thanking him for all the great stuff he did to you.

You just have to move on with life and say good luck with the Orioles.

Baseball will break your heart.

It will.

You've only seen this once?

One time.

Boogie Nights.

Just came out on 4K Ultra.

I paid for this, by the way.

This is not a paid advertisement.

This is my favorite movie the last 30 years.

It's a great one.

It's a great one to be watching on the night that your 10-year-old daughter walks out and has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie and is like hey, what's?

Oh my God.

What are mommy and daddy watching right now?

Yeah, and you have a violence-free house, too.

Yeah.

Though you won't watch any TV shows, movies that cross the line in any way, right?

I mean, I will.

Everybody has to be gone?

Yeah.

I mean, for like, you know.

I did have an idea for you because, as everybody knows, you're Team Croatia, with the World Cup coming.

That's right, baby.

And they're playing England.

Chris Ryan's team.

I think you guys should start feuding now.

Like really build it up WrestleMania style.

Like let's get some angles.

Some bad blood.

It always works out great for England in the World Cup.

Yeah, let's go.

That's what I'm talking about.

Throw some darts.

Does he want to talk about the 2018 semifinals at all?

Or, you know, I don't know.

See, let's go.

You should have him on.

This is what's going on in my life right now, by the way.

So I have Croatia's schedule in the World Cup.

There are three group games.

I have the NBA Finals, the NBA Draft, And fifth grade graduation, end of elementary school.

And that day moves around based on how many snow days we get during the year.

And I'm trying to triangulate all this and figure out which of Croatia's group games is the right one to go to.

And I feel like I need to hire somebody because it's too complicated for me.

Like a personal assistant?

But I'm going for sure.

It's a bucket list thing for us and we're going.

One way or the other, we're going.

My son graduated eighth grade from a school he was at for 10 years, the Willows school that we loved.

And my daughter went there too.

So it was really like 13 years at the Willows for us.

And his last day, the graduation I had to go, it was game four of the 2022 Warriors Celtics finals.

Oh boy.

Which ended up becoming the Steph Curry game.

Yep.

So I knew if I stayed in LA, I knew, I know I have these powers.

I knew the Celtics were probably going to lose.

I had that on my conscience.

And then not only did they lose but um, It turned out to be the most important game of Steph Curry's career.

And I'm kind of glad I wasn't there as the years pass.

Because as you know, he's my favorite non-Celtic.

So watching my favorite non-Celtic murder my team, I probably think I'd still be in my seat.

And it would have made me not like Steph Curry.

So in a way, maybe it was good that I wasn't there.

I don't think it would have.

I was there.

It was amazing.

And I think you would have done a hat tip, a mental hat tip and just gone and had a drink somewhere.

It's crazy how much he needed it as the years pass now where, if that doesn't happen, there's a lot of yeah, but with his career, and that just like took away the yeah but there's no yeah but for him now, I mean Kobe in 2009, same thing.

Like you can, it's going to be the yeah, but no more.

Yeah, but fuck you.

It's a fun and weird championship.

And I sure like people would have nitpicked the how many did he win before the Durant cap spike thing.

But he's averaging 30 points right now for the Warriors.

I know it's like I'm cool with with Steph either way at this point.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how many more years he can be this good, because there'll be moments during these games now where he just looks exhausted like that.

Those two games the the recent two when he was exploding they'll cut to him in the fourth quarter and he's just like he.

He's almost like exasperated how hard his job is.

But he knows he still knows he's great at it.

I just don't know how sustainable that is.

We'll see.

They certainly don't make it easy for him.

No um, let's see jimmy butler take More shots.

What did I say the guy's name was?

Justin Dutari?

That might have been me.

Let's find some place for Jimmy Butler.

Come on, guys.

Sil Bimmons at gmail.com emailed Joe Lakob.

Lakob will never respond to another fan.

All right, Zach Lowe, you got a podcast on Thursday.

Did you get back in your Twitter account?

Not yet.

We're working on it.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Good luck with that.

Say hi to everybody in Connecticut.

See you soon.

See you.

Thanks.

All right.

We're taping this part of the podcast Tuesday afternoon.

The man, the myth, the legend is here.

Todd McShay.

His newsletter is fantastic.

His podcast is great.

This is McShay time right now.

Playoffs for college plus a draft board.

You have a number one guy now.

We'll talk about that in a second.

I wanted to talk football QBs first in the NFL.

I sent you a pyramid.

You did.

First of all... I like it.

First of all, Josh Allen is just right there now, number one.

This is like the least controversial number one argument we've had in a couple years, right?

It's Allen, drop off, next guy.

Who's your next guy?

First of all, I was at the game on Sunday with Allen versus May.

And you know, a quarter in kind of felt like New England was establishing dominance and Drake had rushed for two touchdowns and and the MVP chance are going.

And it just felt like not a changing of guard, but it just, it almost felt strange.

You know, like I'm watching Alan on the sideline and they don't have a lot of answers and and things look easy for doing one.

And then the rest of the game happened.

My takeaway was both can be great and both are great, but As the game progressed, especially in the conditions, it was freezing.

It was mild snow coming down.

You could tell the difference was very clear that Josh Allen is just a more advanced passer at this point.

Now Drake May.

If you go back and look at Allen early in his career I mean some of the inexperience, some of the lack of the pinpoint accuracy you see the same things from Drake May.

But it was very clear when the four quarters were over that one guy is a notch above.

So when I see your pyramid here, I can't disagree with it.

And I would absolutely have Stafford there as well.

I always like to ask myself this question.

I had Stafford too, just so people know.

I had Allen, Stafford, May.

May is the third guy right now.

And I asked myself this question.

I'm kind of curious, your process too, because we do it whether it's in tiers or a pyramid like you have here.

When you think to yourself all right, I got one opportunity and I'm going to go coach, or I get to put together as GM this roster and I get to play one playoff game or Super Bowl, with everything on the line.

Honestly, who am I going to take?

Am I taking Stafford for that game or am I taking Drake May?

And my answer right now is Stafford.

I just lean on the experience.

He's been through the wars.

He's more pinpoint accurate.

May brings mobility to the table that Stafford doesn't.

But I just like my odds with Stafford more than I do, regardless of the supporting cast.

Throw that out of the window.

So I would agree with you.

One, two, three here.

Um, the third, can I stop you on that Stafford point?

Yeah.

I think that one of his best skills and it's certainly gotten better when he's been with McVay and he's had better talent.

But there's a problem solving piece with him.

Yes.

That I think is the last level for may.

And he might be too.

May is great.

He might be two years away from like that game Sunday.

You can feel it slipping away, right?

Buffalo gets the ball to start the second half.

Pat's dude, like a three and out or whatever happened.

Buffalo scores again and you know, at some point they only had one first down in the second half and it was on that long henderson play, i think.

Yeah um, they just couldn't put together drives and there was some point in that game where he had to realize, like it's right now i gotta figure this out and i just think he's a young qb, you know and the game kind of slipped away, whereas alan I think he's been enough of these now where it's like 21-0, we're fine.

Coming back.

I've been here before.

I don't care about the weather.

We should be able to move the ball and come back.

He's the number one guy for that right now.

Did you feel safe when it was 21-0?

Because I didn't.

Not completely for New England.

No, not completely.

It felt like...

Buffalo had to figure out how it was going to attack on offense.

What I didn't expect was the poor tackling and the inability to stop the run at certain points in the game from New England.

But that's, I guess, a different subject for a different day.

And the flags.

The flags were not great.

Even Vrabel complained about the flags today.

He pointed out that they had led the league at offensive holdings during the year buffalo, but they had none on sunday and it's like, that's just curious.

He was doing that thing.

I hate like, and i was there with young kids and you know, i i don't want anyone to think that any of this is rigged, didn't you know like, because buffalo deserved to win.

They did deserve to win.

But two things can be true they deserve to win, but if you are a conspiracy theorist, You're like yeah, the NFL really doesn't want a playoff run without Mahomes and Allen.

You know, now you're speaking my language.

I love this.

This is my mind.

And I'm always the last.

I'm the I'm the defender.

I'm always on that wall.

But it felt like that.

Anyway.

All right.

I do want to get to this.

Quarterbacking is not... The NFL is not fair, right?

In a lot of ways, like to athletes, and how And what the body can, What it can do to your body, and all those sort of.

Where it is fair is with quarterbacks.

And I say this because early in careers, when you have your most mobility whatever that is, whether it's lamar jackson drake may, josh allen mobility or a lesser degree, when you're most mobile, you need that mobility because you don't have the problem solving of stafford or or joe burrow or obviously going back to like manning and and brady and breeze, like so early in the career you You need that mobility to get it.

And Drake may gets himself out of a lot of the troubles that he he still is, you know, working through his young quarterback with that mobility.

But Stafford doesn't need it.

You know, that's, that's kind of the beauty.

And he'll get to a point where he doesn't need it.

Drake may nearly as much.

The third rung though, is where I start to have submissions.

All right.

I'll read it to the audience.

So after Alan Stafford may, I had love Prescott Purdy.

Then had Burrow, Lamar, Stroud, Goff.

And Lamar is really legacy versus what we've actually seen this year.

And then I had Herbert and Nix, 11 and 12.

And I'm happy to move those guys up.

Be my conciliary on this.

Herbert's been the hardest one because he has no offensive line.

His weapons are fine.

The production's been okay, but they keep winning games.

And I just don't know where to put him.

So help me out.

I guess my question was, as I was reading through this is this where we are right now, in this moment?

Is this encapsulating the entire season?

Or is this what we think, what we kind of know?

Burrow is, when healthy and happy and protected, Burrow's up there with Allen.

Right.

In my opinion.

But when he sounds depressed in press conferences and puts up a goose egg, it's hard to put him higher than seven.

It's one thing to sound depressed, to play depressed and to do it against the same opponent two weeks ago that you just carved apart.

Right.

That one you can do an entire show on.

It's scary to think where he is mentally. to put that out on tape on Sunday.

Do you think it's justifiable for him to be there mentally though?

Because between the offensive line and the fact that they just don't spend money, and you're in this conference with all these franchise QBs and you you, basically you have the water pistol and a gunfight.

I mean, it did.

It was all starting to dawn on him.

It did.

Yeah.

I think he had like a, a realization.

Yeah.

And I mean, it did Carson Palmer.

Look at how that finished.

Um it excuse me, I think it was Schefter had a great statistic about what forced Andrew Luck to retire.

And it was whatever number of sacks in X amount of games.

And it was like 13 fewer games and Burrow had been sacked 20 or 30 more times.

Whatever the number was significantly more in 13 fewer games to get to this point.

And so you wonder about his mental state and where he is.

But Purdy at three in the third rung?

So I had him sixth overall, Purdy.

And I do think he's having kind of an underrated year.

But like Mac Jones' QBR was like 12th, you know, based off of... I had Mac Jones on this list.

He's a few rungs down.

No, I know, but I think you have to take into account what's around them to a certain degree.

So you're in the anti-Purdy camp.

I like this.

I am.

Because Purdy is the most polarizing QB out of all of them.

And I feel like I like him, but I feel like this is beyond.

Okay, so would you flip?

Who would you put if I moved Purdy out?

Who would you move into that?

Do you agree with Love and Prescott?

I actually do.

I do.

And I think Love is exactly right at four.

You know what's interesting?

Because this is a pyramid, I can do whatever I want.

I could just have the third rung just be Love and Prescott.

I think it should be.

And then it moves down to a different level.

I honestly don't know.

I might have Purdy down with... I would pop Herbert up to the fourth rung.

Okay.

Because I just don't, you can't lose.

Both phenomenal offensive tackles have that little protection.

I honestly wouldn't mind.

Yeah, I would move Purdy up to the third rung.

I would move Herbert up to the third rung, Purdy down to the fourth.

So you'd have Herbert sixth overall.

All right, I'm going to trust you.

Because I'm admittedly like I don't see Herbert correctly sometimes, because I don't think I'd put, when I evaluate him, I don't think I'd put into account all the obstacles that the Chargers have thrown on him.

And bad luck injuries.

I mean, it's not the Chargers' fault.

Slater got hurt and all got hurt.

But the offensive line is really bad.

I don't know that there's an organization in the NFL that has.

I feel like we're going on a decade now.

Every single year, we get to December.

At some point, is it bad luck?

Or are we evaluating the wrong players?

Or we... I don't know.

Is there something wrong with our training staff?

Can I offer you one more option?

Yes.

Karma.

They moved from San Diego.

There's good people in San Diego.

There are good people in San Diego.

Including Eduardo, who works on our podcast.

Yeah, who you ripped from my show.

I did.

He's the greatest clip guy in the history of clip guys.

I acquired him in a trade.

You did.

I'm just waiting for what I'm getting back.

The San Diego people, what did they do?

It's like, yeah, we have a shitty arena, so you want us to pay for another one?

The teams are all worth $6, $7, $8 billion a year.

Why do we have to pay for this?

Anyway, the charges are gone, and I do think there's some karma with it.

But I think if we adjust the Purdy and Herbert a little bit.

Okay, I'm happy to tweet that.

Burrow, Lamar, Goff is in the right rung.

Yeah.

Stroud, it's nice to see back up in that rung.

So I started him.

I'm in the fantasy playoffs and I had Baker and Caleb and I weighed both of them and just went all in on CJ Stroud against Arizona.

Cause I thought there were real signs that he, you know, he's got his weapons back.

Woody marks when he's actually out there, but they have a bunch of like decent running backs, but Stroud's got his mojo back.

He does like for real.

And I and I think he's a real wild card for the playoffs and somebody I do not want to see in the seventh seed.

If the Patriots are the two seed, they might be the most dangerous team in the playoffs.

Yeah.

I know.

They're 13-1 to win the Super Bowl.

They're not in even the second level of Super Bowl odds.

To me.

I think it's Buffalo, Houston and Denver I would have as the three teams I'd be the most afraid of.

Why am I still not buying Denver?

Well, they answered all the questions last week, though.

Okay.

That Green Bay game was really impressive.

I thought Nick was great in that game.

He was.

But I can still think in the playoffs, I don't buy it.

I don't buy it.

There's some game management shit with them that I think I would be concerned about if I was a Broncos fan.

There's some weird fourth down stuff they do.

They're unnecessarily aggressive sometimes.

And they've had some luck in the end of these games.

I was just going to say, but they keep winning the one-score games.

They keep winning them.

I mean, the defense you can't argue against.

And it's great to see Bo Nix where he is.

And I'll tell you what it was.

One of the all-time as I like to say onions moves to draft him where they drafted him, to go all in and to be like that's my guy.

I don't care if the rest of the league has him in the second round.

So that fifth tier I have now has Purdy, Nix, Mayfield, Hertz, and Darnold.

And the biggest question for me is and I'll throw it to you because I might be glass half empty on this guy too

Lawrence is the next guy at the next rung at 16 and he's had, he's played way better the last couple of weeks.

It's undeniable.

They've been playing bad teams.

I still don't trust it.

Um, some other people do and they're like, finally he's comfortable.

He's got a good coach.

Do you trust this?

No, I trust Caleb more with, with his coach than I do Lawrence with his.

Interesting.

How come?

Um, it's, I think Caleb's buying in.

I mean, Lawrence is as well.

I think Caleb is more talented.

I don't know that I trust trust is the wrong word with either of them.

If we get into a playoff situation, but I just, I'm never going to trust Lawrence.

I don't know that I can either.

And I had such a high grade on him.

These are two.

These are the two guys that, based off of my grades coming out of college, should be up with, like Stafford may love you know, in that range.

And so one thing with Caleb that he has that I don't think Lawrence has in the same way as Caleb just has one wild play, a quarter where you have him on a sack or you and he just gets out of it.

He Houdini.

That's what I'm saying.

There's a little bit more ability game as anyone.

And there's a little bit more FU to his game.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Like in that moment and it can go awry, you know, but he's dialed that in a lot.

And he's capable of making a mistake.

I still in a pressure moment that you just don't know, but I just, if you need one, I think.

I mean, I definitely want Caleb under center more than Lawrence.

If I need one.

You know we don't have to do the second half of the pyramid, but I did want to ask you about a couple of QBs.

Okay.

I love shuck on the saints.

I'm actually, he was my guy last year.

Yeah, I know he was.

And, and it seemed a little crazy because of his age, but you went all in on him.

I think he's for real.

I like, I don't, I think they're done.

They don't need a QB.

They should ride with him.

I think he's legitimately solid.

I was going down to mobile Alabama for the senior bowl.

It was, I think I was the McShay show the first time we went on the road.

Right.

Yeah.

And, I got the list from Jim Nagy, who was the executive director at the time.

And I hadn't watched, I'd seen all the quarterbacks and studied them.

I hadn't done much on Shuck.

So I did a little bit prior to that.

During the week, I really liked him.

And then I came back before the combine and I went in like full on diving in film room.

Then I got to know you know, talk to some people, some scouts about his background what he's been through.

And it just clicked for me.

I'm like, why not?

He's more emotionally mature and has been through more.

He was in Trevor Lawrence's recruiting class.

Wow.

And part of that, like, Elite 11 and was, like, supposed to be one of the next guys.

You know, he was Herbert's... Excuse me, era parent at Oregon.

And then he bounced all around and wound up at Louisville with Brom who kind of Both the Broms who wound up like getting it out of him.

And the light finally, you know, turned on.

And so I just...

And his makeup and his love for the game.

And he's kind of a junkie and he's always around it.

And he's had it ripped away.

He told me a story.

We were talking at the, at the combine.

Like I literally was being carted off the field.

I think it was a Texas tech.

And he's like, I'm my football career is done.

It's gone.

I don't know.

Like, what?

Who am I?

What am I?

You know.

So like there's something about quarterbacks who come in the league and have been through a lot.

And that's what I liked about Chuck and seeing him.

You know, he thought I was with him at the Manning Passing Academy and he was saying you know, I'm going to be the starter.

And we're and to see that that wasn't the case.

And even early struggles, his rookie year.

To get to be put in this spot and to play the way he has is kind of awesome to see.

He has two qualities I really like.

One, in the fourth quarters, he can come back.

There's a resilience to them.

If they're down 17-7 or something, or 24-17, you feel like he's going to make a run, right?

But he's also really tough.

He takes big hits on that team.

It's not like that's a great blocking team.

And even in the game, the Carolina game, which I watched, that entire game.

Um, I just thought he got fucking walloped a couple of times and he just gets up, you know.

And I think there's a, there's something, there's a charisma to him and a and a toughness to him that I think I think works.

I just think they have a QB.

I was excited for them.

Cause it's not like a lot of good things are going on with the saints.

I, I wonder, like you mentioned about these guys, these late bloomer guys who have high pedigree.

This is something I'm always fascinated with, with the NBA.

Yeah.

The Celtics are in this situation now with Jordan Walsh, who's only 21, who's been playing a lot for them as a wing guy and is emerging as this really good defender.

But if you go back and you look at his class, he was like number 12 in the ESPN Top 100 and then played college for like one year on a team that had a bunch of wings.

And they kind of bet on the pedigree, which is something they've done over and over again with some guys.

Some guys have the pedigree, but it just takes three, four, five years to figure it out and then other guys haunt you because you think they're going to figure out they never do so it's a little dance yeah it it is and it's it's interesting with we've mentioned lawrence and and uh and caleb right and they were can't miss you know clearly the number one guy number one coming out of high school number one college Like I said with Chuck, there's something to either having it ripped away or enduring some of those struggles in college where you come in hardened a little bit and it hasn't been all handed.

Nothing's handed, but it hasn't come easy.

So who's the guy in college right now that could be that guy?

Who's the high pedigree, I took some lumps guy?

Maybe bet on me when my stock's a little lower guy.

It's tough.

It seems like we have a bunch of them in the draft this year.

Yeah, I was going to say, you know, like Drew Aller, I just, I can't bet on.

Maybe it's Klubnick, Cade Klubnick from Clemson.

Although I think he's a career backup, but could wind up, you know, pushing through.

Yeah.

But he's been through some stuff.

At least Dante Moore has been through.

He went to UCLA.

He was a five-star, Elite 11, all those things.

Was supposed to be the next great one.

And things went poorly after five games.

Got benched.

Took a sabbatical year, as they're calling it now, at Oregon.

And just kind of sat back and learned with Will Stein.

He comes out this year as a starter.

And everything's great.

And then he kind of hit a midseason with receiver injuries and everything.

Kind of a lull.

Well, but you started blowing them up.

I don't think he could handle the McShay pressure.

I know.

He put the McShay spotlight on him.

He was like blinded.

He's like, ah, yeah.

I do feel like sometimes anytime, when I go all in too early on someone and I think it's more of a jinx than any pressure I put on a player.

It's like buying flowers for a girl after a second date.

It's like, oh right, this is going so fast.

Yeah, i don't know, i don't know um, but but to see him finish the season strong.

And now, all of a sudden, will stein is offensive coordinator.

I was pushing and i talked to some scouts who talked to to dante moore's camp right, his mom, his dad, his agent is the coaches.

Everyone was saying he's going back to school.

But now will stein leaves Dante Moore's playing well.

We're hearing, you know, Arch obviously is going back.

Lenore Sellers going back.

Sorsby from Cincinnati is kind of looking at his draft stock, but probably going to transfer.

I think there's a chance that Moore could wind up reversing course now and wind up in this draft.

And this class, like for all the touting in the preseason, I'm here to you know, I've admitted it before.

Like they just didn't pan out.

You got Fernando Mendoza.

And then maybe Dante Moore and even Ty Simpson, who I love and think he's going to have a great future at Alabama.

He's not ready.

And so maybe there's just two first round guys.

And it's a big dip before.

Potentially we have one of the greatest quarterback classes in the history of the NFL draft in 2027.

You put out a, you're like preliminary, preliminary big board.

You had Mendoza, the clear one Reese, the linebacker from Ohio state tube, and then more three, even though he's 20.

And I mean, out of everybody you had in your top 10, more was the one my eyes gravitated to, because it's such a tough one, right.

It's like clearly clearly hasn't spent enough time in college, clearly has incredible talent and is one of the situations where if he, at 20 years old, went to the wrong team with the wrong coach and the wrong infrastructure, I think it's just a disaster.

But if he went to a team, like a 10 out of 10 would be the Mahomes-Reed situation, right, in 2017.

You go, there's a starter, you don't have to play for him, you sit there.

I don't know if that's a situation that exists in the top six of this NFL draft.

So I don't know.

Almost everyone on the high rungs of this Bills QB pyramid right has got 36 starts in college or more.

Almost everyone.

Is that true?

Yeah, and the ones who don't are in the high 20s, right?

So the move is for him to stay for a year, bank some starts, bank some experience and then cast your lot in a tougher draft class.

Yeah, and so what if you're the third or fourth or fifth quarterback taken next year?

Maybe you wind up going to a better place.

I mean, look at Bo Nix.

You know he goes to Denver with a great defense and a team that you know is not nearly as shredded and dismal as Washington was at the time or Chicago was at the time.

I don't know.

I just.

Well, I mean, think about it.

Like NBA, I think it matters a lot more.

There's a huge money disparity with like the top four picks as it drops down in the lottery.

There's prestige.

In football, all that matters is you're trying to get to your second contract where you can get between 40 and 60 million a year, right?

Right.

I would much rather go $12 than be in a good situation.

If he's the number three pick.

Let's say, if I've got him at three, he's the number three pick in the draft.

He's going to make about $36 million guaranteed over five years, right?

Right.

So you're looking at $7 plus million per year.

Versus like $26 million.

Yeah, but he's probably going to make, I don't know, four or five million to go back to Oregon.

That's the difference now that it's a luxury that players didn't have quarterbacks did not have before.

The only difference though, is that you're starting the clock a year earlier on that big contract, though.

Yes, but when you're 20 and you're like, well, I'll be 21 going into 22, and then I'll be 27.

26 27 at my.

If i wait a year, i'll be 26 27 for my first contract.

That's that.

Those are the discussions that that are being had.

Like i'm yes, i'm pushing it back a year, but it's not like i'm losing that much money in in my final year at oregon, so is it?

This is why agents are awful though, because the right agent is going to tell him and his family like look, he's got to come out now.

Every year he doesn't come out, he's costing himself 50 million.

And they'll just do, they'll Jedi mind trick it.

So it's like, you're leaving so much money on the table four years from now, if you don't come out.

And the business part of it is wild.

We're talking about a 20 year old, right?

Yeah.

Who now has control and is in a leverage.

He's in a position of leverage when he goes and negotiates with Oregon.

Yeah.

With his agent.

You know, through his agent saying, all right, if I do come back A what's the, what's the money?

B, I need this, this, and this guarantee.

I know I have one great freshman receiver who will be a sophomore, but I need a guarantee of two portal receivers and I get to help shoot.

That's something that is brand new to this sport.

I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's a fact.

My son's 18.

I don't even trust him with a Postmates order at this point.

He's going to be hiring multiple staff members and recruits?

Yeah, and who's my coordinator?

It's wild what's going on in college, but it's where we are.

Well, let's, can we talk Mendoza?

Because you've really, he's won you over.

It's like watching a rom-com.

We've hit the end of the rom-com when the couple just ends up together.

Like you're in on Mendoza.

This is that last game.

One, one, one, you over for good.

It seems like it's a rom-com where I fell in love with him early in the plot.

Right.

But I, but I was wary of how am I going to, you know, is this, is this my forever?

Or do I just really enjoy... Is there a lot of fun?

Your friends are telling you, like, no, no, Dante Moore, he's so great.

Lenore Sellers is a better athlete.

And so...

And so early, because remember, back in July, we were breaking down all these quarterbacks.

We weren't even going to do a full show on.

We had done Arch.

We did Klubnick and Aller and Nussmeier and Lenore Sellers and John Mateer.

And we were like, should we do Mendoza?

Does anyone really care about a Cal transfer to Indiana yet?

Or should we just wait?

And luckily, Dan Comer from our show was like, no, we need to do it.

Let's do it.

So I dove into the tape.

And I watched and I was like, oh, this guy's got stuff.

And he's mobile.

And he's got a big arm.

And he's got a little bit of like this charisma about him.

And he kind of doesn't care in big moments.

But he's turning the ball over a lot.

And he should be turning the ball over even more.

And he's making a lot.

So he's got a lot of developing to do.

But I love where he's going, that system.

But then early in the season, it was like RPO stuff.

It felt like he was kind of a robot working within the system.

But then he had the Iowa game.

And then he had the Oregon game.

And none of it was beautiful, you know, top to bottom.

But... there were moments in the clutch and then the Penn state game.

Again, he's with this out without his top receiver.

He's got this like third string young receiver a Baker who's going to, who winds up having a monster game.

And he makes that throw at the end of the game.

Yeah.

And so in the Ohio state wasn't beautiful top to bottom, but this is a deep, this is like a Rocky.

Four

Like there's no, there's no knocking out this, this monster, this giant, you know, and and he found a way and he hung in there and he made that big throw at the end of the game.

And it's like, this is just who he is.

It may not always be pretty.

And so, and I like he's goofy, man.

He's Kirk cousins meets Kurt Warner.

You know like just the interviews and who.

But he knows who he is and he doesn't stray from that.

And he I yeah, I.

I keep falling more in love with him and we're getting towards the end of the rom-com where I'm like yeah, I'm all in on this guy.

Even though I see the flaws, like the eyes drop in the pocket and he gets kind of worked up at certain times.

But that's something that can work out in maturity.

From a skill set and from that clutch gene standpoint, he's got a lot of the traits that some of the top guys in the league have.

Casual fan Bill has one concern.

The interviews?

I've just never really seen it work with superstar NFL QBs when the interviews are that goofy.

I knew it.

We haven't talked about it.

I knew, I know we haven't talked about it.

So that's, that stuff does not fly.

I don't know.

It's so weird and unconventional, his style that it almost seems like an SNL sketch.

And I don't under, I don't fully understand it.

And if he's like this in interviews, is he like this in the huddle?

I just need more information.

Or he needs an interview coach, but something is very alien-y about it.

He doesn't seem like a human being.

This is just weird.

What's he doing?

I think he's just kind of a nerd.

You know, I just think he's kind of...

I mean, it worked for Russell Wilson forever, right?

Russell Wilson.

And Kirk Cousins, man.

Kirk Cousins.

Overly excited.

Warner.

Yeah, it's a little, it's like, is this a shtick or is this who you really are?

So, I don't know.

I felt like it was a shtick.

Hmm.

Interesting.

And so I never bought that one.

And that made some uncomfortable moments in Bristol.

And I just never fully bought that one.

And he wound up having a better career than maybe I expected, but still.

Uncomfortable in what way?

Like in the production meeting?

No, just like be there with his agent.

I had a whole list of players.

My list was pretty close to undefeated.

Anytime someone who I said who I was lower on, sought me out either personally or through an agent, and came after me in Bristol or anywhere else.

Almost every single one of them were busts or failed to live.

Because they cared.

So I kept it on my phone.

It's called The List on my notes page.

And he was one of them.

And he wasn't a bust, certainly, but he never...

Never really totally made it.

Listen, the Mendoza thing from an entertainment value standpoint is going to be really fun, because every time he gives an interview you're kind of captivated.

Yeah, but it's captivated how many cars pile up, right?

It's just different.

It is.

He'll figure it out.

But I knew that's why you couldn't go all in on him.

Well, his teammates love him.

I love that he's come through in, especially the Penn State game.

But he's taken the stuff I've seen.

He's taken some big hits.

He just gets up or if, or if it takes him a couple of plays to get up, he's back.

Um, and, uh, I don't know.

And the team wins.

So if I'm, um, there's only going to probably be one team in the top six that desperately needs a QB in the NFL.

Um, Maybe he's the guy.

I didn't look at the list for who's the team that needs to QB on blanking.

Well, the Raiders need the Raiders.

The Saints.

Now they're out.

The Giants.

I haven't looked at this week.

Tennessee won't Cleveland.

But here's the thing, though.

You've got three teams Bill, with two picks in the first round that were banking on this quarterback class.

You got Cleveland, the Jets, and the Rams.

The Rams are now like, ah, it doesn't matter his age.

We got at least one more year out of him.

So I bet you, the Rams, try to move a piece to get another first rounder in 2027 would be my guess, if they can.

The Jets have multiple in 27 as well.

So it's kind of the Browns that are sitting there that you're most nervous about them.

But I think the Jets if they I mean there could be a war I'm saying for that first overall pick to go up and get And I think you know whoever winds up with that first round pick is going to wind up or that number one overall pick is going to wind up getting a haul for it.

Yeah.

So I mean Arizona, I guess, could talk themselves into.

We desperately need one.

But they could also talk themselves into another year of Kyler.

The only one that's like it's bleak, you know, really bleak, I would say, is Jets and Vegas.

And the Browns.

But even the Browns, what if Shadur looks better the next three?

They could talk themselves into some sort of Shadur.

We're paying Watson anyway.

There's a better draft class coming.

It would be ownership talking themselves into it.

Yeah, let's wait a year.

And getting rid of the GM and the head coach and bringing in... a group that a head coach that believes in shador that's what it would take is from my head coach that believes in a year from now let's go all in on this next draft that's going to be loaded with people vegas needs i mean the vegas thing's unbelievable the carol carol's going to get i think he's going to get pushed out after yeah he's dead man walking right now but they went all in on gino smith who you know he's not going to be the qb next year how great does schneider look in seattle Well, you have that.

You also have.

You're in a division with Denver Chargers and the rebuilding for a year Kansas City Chiefs.

So Vegas could be.

You know, this could be the rest of the decade where they're just in fourth place.

So they got to figure it out.

Can we talk about quickly the college football playoffs?

Yes Oklahoma, Alabama is the closest line.

That's one and a half, Alabama favored Texas AM, Miami and then two higher lines with Ole Miss and Oregon.

Is there what out of those four, what's the game you're fired up for blue bloods Friday night?

Alabama Oklahoma, Oklahoma's offense, doesn't it?

Just, it's not inspiring John Mateer before the thumb injury was tracking to be I'm not saying he's going to be a first-rounder, but like a day-two prospect.

But he brought this grit and playmaking ability and the mature moments and the good and bad.

He hasn't been the same.

The offensive line can't protect.

They don't have any running game.

But I think they can beat Alabama.

Something's up in Alabama.

Ty Simpson was sensational.

Best quarterback in the country, I thought, through like six, seven games.

Ryan Williams, the wide receiver, is a star.

Coming in, it was Jeremiah Smith and Ryan Williams.

And we're talking about already top 10 picks after last year.

And Ryan Williams all of a sudden can't catch the ball consistently.

He's disappeared.

He had one catch for 22 yards or something like that in the final two regular season games.

They had to manufacture a couple throws to him in the SEC championship game.

This is a star.

This doesn't happen to Jeremiah Smith, you know?

Now there's DeBoer and conversations about Michigan.

I think they could get clipped.

And I love Ty Simpson.

And I actually picked Alabama in the preseason to win the national championship.

I'm taking Oklahoma on Friday night.

Interesting.

Norman.

I also think Miami.

I don't trust Marcel Reed.

What's that number?

What's the spread?

Three and a half for Miami.

Miami's getting three and a half.

Fan duels all over it.

They always are.

I think that game's going to be close.

I actually think Carson Beck, with his experience, is... I did this thing, right, on the other day.

Last year's quarter... The biggest difference in the playoffs this year and last year?

Quarterbacks.

Last year, the best quarterback in the entire college football playoff was Dylan Gabriel.

I got the list right here.

That's why I'm looking at it.

Quinn Ewers, Nico Iamaliava, just as a pup still.

Cade Klubnick, Drew Aller, Will Howard, Kevin Jennings, Riley Leonard, Carson Beck, who wasn't even going to be in the playoff.

It was going to be Gunnar Stockton, and we knew barely anything about.

Sam Levitt as a pup, and Maddox Madsen.

Jesus.

I know.

This year it's Mendoza.

More right at the, at the top, julian saying ty simpson, carson beck reinvented um uh matier, who i talked about.

Marcel reed uh, baron morton, who's done a great job at texas, tech kind of flies under the radar.

I say julian saying, as well, ohio state yeah, and uh trinidad, yeah.

So that that's the biggest difference this year.

What about my guy bob chesney, headed to ucla Getting 21 and a half against Oregon for James Madison, the 12 seed.

There's no sports movie potential here, is there?

Not a movie.

The defense is good.

Run game is really good.

Seems like a pretty big step up from the conference.

I'm not counting on my guy.

I know he's your guy.

A lot of rumors and reports about you in that situation.

I bet it helped.

Ohio State is a 2-1 favorite.

Indiana, this is on FanDuel.

Indiana's plus 320.

Georgia's 6-1.

Oregon and Texas Tech are plus 850.

So if you had to pick a team, who would you pick to win this whole thing?

With the odds in mind, I would say Georgia.

Georgia's 6-1.

Yeah, i think you get better money and i think honestly, it's a i don't say coin flip, but i, i could see georgia winning it just as easily as i could ohio state.

I could see ohio state stumbling out of the gate.

I could you know what you want to take a long shot.

Check out in your fan duel app.

I got it.

It's to make the the semi-finals.

Yeah, the semi-finals.

It was high.

It was like plus, I forget, it was 700 or something like that for Miami.

Just to advance?

To get to the final four, yeah.

To get to the final four.

It would be beating A&M and A&M and then knocking off Ohio State.

And then Carson Beck goes to play Georgia.

Miami's talented enough.

Plus 650 to make the college football playoff semifinals.

It dropped after I gave it the other day.

Yeah, that's what you do.

I'm joking.

It was 700.

You dropped the odds and you got in Moore's head.

If you got a couple bucks lying around, a little scratch, throw it at that.

What's your ideal number for the college playoffs for teams?

Is it 12?

Is it 16?

Is it 8?

What would be the happiest?

I could live with 12, but the Bulls are predictably becoming a farce now.

Yeah.

So I'm all for expanding.

Let's just let's go.

I am.

I think 16.

Here's my biggest complaint.

First of all, we have all these brilliant people and all this money and all the investments in college football right.

All the TV back.

How do we why does it take an epic failure every year for for change to be affected?

Last year, we got these these four seeds of conference champions.

And what are we doing?

This year we get that fixed.

And so it's the top four ranked teams as it always should have been.

Yeah.

How did we not read the fine print?

Like literally, did we just get too caught up in all like, how do we not think to ourselves?

You know what?

The ACC or the big 12?

It won't ever be the big 10 or the SEC.

The ACC or the big 12 could have a down year.

And there's no team that represents one of those schools.

And now we've got another conference champion and it could be another group of five.

Yeah.

How did we not get ahead of that?

Well, it sounds like 16 is the right number.

16 is the right number.

It's eight or 16.

12 seems like we can't decide either way.

And if it's at 12, the group of five should not just automatically get it.

They should be ranked in the top.

They have to be ranked in the top.

They have to have a special Boise State Cinderella, upsetting Oklahoma type of year to get a team in.

Because right now we're looking at Like Texas.

With the way Arch was playing, they knocked off the number three team in the country at the end of the year.

How's Texas out?

And I love Chesney, but JM use it.

How is Tulane in and Vanderbilt or BYU, one of these other programs, isn't in?

Now we got a rematch of Ole Miss 45, Tulane 10 from earlier in the season.

No one wants to see that game.

So maybe it's you do your 12 and then you have four.

Wait, how are these guys not in spots?

Yeah.

And then you just get and you just decide at the end of the day all right, these four we can't.

If we're going to do this correctly, Texas has to be in.

So there's one.

And you just go through.

Yeah, in the current system, it's essentially five automatic bids and then seven at large.

So you would expand that seven at large, but you would also, I still think a group of five teams should be in the top 16, whatever that number is.

They should be ranked in the top, that spot in order to earn being it.

Well, you know what they'll end up doing?

They'll go to 14 and emulate the NFL.

That'll be the next move.

And it's just the two ones.

The one in the two seeds will be the ones that don't have to play in the first round.

Everybody else has to play.

And then eventually we end up at 16 and then eventually we'll end up at 24.

I've only heard 16 though.

I can see it getting to 24.

I mean, at that point, what are we doing?

Yeah.

I think 16 will be there to stay for a while.

All right.

Yeah, we'll see.

Good to see you, McShay.

I enjoy your newsletter.

I enjoy your podcast.

I enjoy the fact that you trudged to Gillette Stadium to watch the Patriots.

Rubber match is coming.

I'm not worried.

Campbell's back.

The Williams will be back both in January.

We're going to see the Bills again.

I think we're okay.

I think the Williams thing is just as important, honestly.

That run defense at times, I was stunned.

I'd love to see it.

I think they're 31st in rush EPA since he went out.

I think that was the stat I saw.

You could just see it on the field.

That's what we all want.

The league in general wants to see that.

The May-Allen rivalry, you know?

Yeah, all right, good to see you.

Happy holidays.

All right brother, i'll talk to you, you too, all right, that's it for the podcast.

Thanks to zach and mcshay, thanks to gahal and eduardo as well.

Don't forget rewatchable's high fidelity already up.

Short thing coming tomorrow night, the short thing by rob reiner, and then uh, music box thursday, counting crows have you seen me lately?

And then i'll have one more podcast on this feed.

Uh, enjoy the rest of the day.

I don't know.

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[NBA Power Dynamics, Rookie Standouts, and NFL Quarterback Analysis]-[A Knicks Title, "Whaddya Do?" NBA Teams, the QB Pyramid, and a CFB Playoff Primer With Zach Lowe and Todd McShay]

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The NBA's Emerging Landscape and the Knicks' Statement

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Trade Speculation and Team Philosophies

NFL Quarterback Pyramid and College Football

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[NBA Power Dynamics, Rookie Standouts, and NFL Quarterback Analysis]-[A Knicks Title, "Whaddya Do?" NBA Teams, the QB Pyramid, and a CFB Playoff Primer With Zach Lowe and Todd McShay]

📋 Summary

The NBA's Emerging Landscape and the Knicks' Statement

The Rise of the Spurs and the New Generation

Trade Speculation and Team Philosophies

NFL Quarterback Pyramid and College Football

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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