163. Why a LeBron trade makes no sense

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eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. It's been a weird sequence here over the last couple of weeks. I was venting about it the other day. You know, the Lakers have played just twice in the last fifteen days, and in the middle of that has been a boatload of drama. We did have a little bit more drama today, definitely less drama than we've been having. We only had a renowned Lakers writer in Los Angeles advocate for trading Lebron and then a couple of ESPN personalities do the same.

That's pretty low key compared to the way it's been over the last couple of weeks. We are going to touch on that, but I'm gonna save that for the end because I am desperate to talk some actual basketball. We're gonna talk about the Nets. I just want to break down the differences between their situation and where the Lakers are at right now in terms of their hopes of getting out of the play in and and making a run at things. We're also going to talk about

Cade versus Mobili. We're gonna get into the differences between is two guys, which guy I think has a better ceiling, which guy I think has the best chance to win Rookie of the Year as well. And then at the end, like I said, we'll touch on the Lebron trade idea, which I think is ridiculous, but well, we'll save that for the end. You know, there's a couple of similarities between where the Nets are right now and where the Lakers are right now in the sense that they're heading

into a tough part of their schedule. Like the Nets are playing the Bucks next, then they play Toronto twice, then they play the Heat, and they play the Celtics, and they play the Hornets and they play Sixers. That's tough. Like there, it's gonna be hard, even with Kevin Durant Ben Simmons to get out of the play in game in that case. The Lakers are also heading into an extremely tough stretch of their schedule. I believe the vast majority of their games are against over five teams on

the road for the rest of the season. That's tough, right. There's some similarities there. Both teams have had some self inflicted damage, right, Like, the Lakers played some of their worst players to start the season instead of prioritizing better players. They were misaligned in a lot of ways, playing away from their strengths. And then the Nets have done a lot of the same. And then straight up personnel Kyrie

Irving not getting the vaccine, that's self sabotage. James Harden getting a wandering eye for yet another season and looking in other directions and kind of not taking but not playing his best basketball. That's also self sabotage. But there's a very key difference between the situation the Nets are facing in the situation the Lakers are facing. The Nets actually have enough talent from the top to the bottom of their roster to make a run and to potentially

win the title. The Lakers do not. You know, I'm looking at the Lakers roster, I'm getting Lebron, I'm getting Anthony Davis, Russell westbrook Is, you know, all the things that I've been saying about him. Malik monk Is showed a lot of potential, but you know, he's not a great defensive player, and he's inconsistent because he's young. And then a lot of role players, right, a lot of guys that can maybe do a job, but then there's older guys in there that may not even be NBA

players anymore. And I look at the nets. I'm getting Kevin Durant and I'm getting Kyrie Irving back for home games. We had a uh press conference today from the Mayor of New York saying that that's something they're working towards on their end. So guess what, You're gonna see Kyrie Irving as long as he's healthy in all of the important home games the rest of the season. And then I have Ben Simmons, who's way better than the third best player on the Lakers, and a perfect shoe in

fit with that team. It's not like Russ. It's not like this obvious you know basketball, you know, collision course where it's like he needs the ball in his hands all the time. He's not a good off ball player. But meanwhile, Lebron needs to have the ball in his hands. You know, he's the third best player in the team, so he needs to do role player stuff, but he's bad at role player stuff. Ben Simmons is great at role players stuff. It's a great perimeter defender, he's a

great back line defender. He's a great rebounder. He does he can sit in the dunker spot unless it's Game seven against the Hawks. He can do a lot of different things to fill roles on that team, which means he's a more natural fit. Now. I understand that there's a time crunch here right, Like we're looking at like a month and a half until we really get into the playoffs, so it doesn't seem like there's enough time

to build cohesion there. But I'm never worried about that as long as there's something they can fall back on, whether that's a team identity, like the team is a great defensive team and you know everyone else on the team is playing defense a certain way, and you can kind of slide back into that one. Guys get healthy or if there's some you know, continuity, like saying coach, same system, same everything, you know we can lean back

on that. Uh, basketball fit is another big part of it, Like if if Lebron and Anthony Davis are such a natural basketball fit that when they got back on the court together last year after not playing with each other for a long time, it was seamless. There's you know, there's not there's not a whole lot of continuity building that needs to be done as long as there's a natural fit that you can fall back on, and Brooklyn

absolutely has that. Incorporating Ben Simmons is gonna be the easiest thing in the entire world, because he's gonna be the only non shoter in their lineup. It's not gonna be like Russell Westbrook alongside DeAndre Jordan's alongside Anthony Davis, who hasn't been able to make a jump shot since the bubble. It's not that kind of dynamic. He's gonna be alongside Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant and Seth Curry.

He's gonna be alongside a ton of shooting where his spacing concerns aren't going to be that much of an issue. You know, last year, the Lakers predicament was significantly worse than what the Nets were dealing with. I think Lebron came back with four games left, if I remember correctly. I could be wrong about that. It was right around.

It was a small handful of games that Lebron played, and then he walked right into a playoff series against the Phoenix Suns, and the Lakers looked like the Lakers. You know, maybe they didn't shoot as well as they did in the bubble, and that's probably why things were a little uglier in the early part of that series, but they looked like the Lakers. They were defending like crazy. They were physically imposing. They were going through Phoenix to

the basket. Even when they weren't making shots, they were getting a boatload offensive rebounds and putting the ball back in the basket on the other end of the floor. They were wearing down Phoenix with their size and athleticism. They it didn't take long for them to get back to what they were And I don't think the Nets are gonna have that problem either now, with the strength of schedule and with the fact that Ben Simmons and Kevin Durant are still probably a week or so away

from coming back. If not longer, then yeah, it's they're they're probably gonna be in the play in but like we saw with the Lakers, you can still do it from there. They were up to one on Phoenix. Had they won that series, they would have taken the two spot in the bracket, so they effectively become the two seed at that point. That's where Brooklyn is gonna be one of these top seeds in the East, which who knows who's gonna because they're all right next to each

other in terms of games back from each other. But one of those top two seeds is gonna have to face Brooklyn, and Brooklyn is gonna have Kevin Durant. They're gonna have Ben Simmons, They're gonna have Kyrie Irving, They're gonna have Seth Curry. Seth Curry is a good player, good role player. They're gonna have Patty Mills that's a good role player. They have a rim running big and Nick Claxton that's better than any of the centers on the Lakers. There's a lot of talent on this team.

They're just gonna have a tougher path then they would have had if they were healthy the rest of the season. I'm not worried about it. And they still are very, very imposing, and they're a big threat. Even from the plan, there's one thing they have to watch out for, one thing that concerns me with that specific dynamic that they have working over there. When you have three little guards.

So if Kyrie is gonna start, and if Seth Curry is gonna play, and let's say Patty Mills is one of your better options as a player, it just it just in terms of overall talent to throw out there. You can run into a similar problem that the Lakers have run into a lot this year when they've had Russ and Malik Monk and Avery Bradley on the floor.

The aggregate size of the lineup is too small. Then you start losing a lot of these physical altercations on the floor, You start losing rebounding position, you start getting out run down the floor by a bigger, more athletic wing. You start to struggle with isolation defense because guys are just going through, you are shooting over the top. When your aggregate size is that small, you're asking for a lot from Ben Simmons and Kevin Durant and Kevin Durant.

While he's capable of being that like defensive focal point at the center position, we've seen him do it, it's just a lot to ask for him physically, and so that's where it gets interesting. It'll be interesting to see if they have to send one of those two little guards to the bench, someone like Seth Curry or someone like Patty Mills in favor of a either a wing someone like Bruce Brown or James Johnson, or going big with someone like Nick Claxton. Now, when you go that route,

you run into spacing issues. But that's the beauty of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant are very unique in the sense that they're kind of spacing proof. You know, when you're a downhill score someone that needs to get to the rim, someone like Lebron Anthony Davis, spacing can be an issue because it turns

you into a jump shooter. And while you know Lebron is a good jump shooter off of the dribble, even though he's not one of the best in the league, he's capable of operating a little bit in that scenario. But you've seen that be a huge problem for Anthony Davis this season. But when you're Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant and that contested, you know, off the dribble, fifteen foot or twenty footer or even pull up three is actually a good shot for you, Then spacing is not

as much of an issue. So they actually can get away with going big and going with someone like Claxton or another wing instead of one of those guards and still maintaining enough offense. The reason why that's so important is teams like Milwaukee in Miami are so big and athletic all over the floor that you have to have something to be able to compete with them on that front. Over the course of a seven gamer that can cost you. That's what happened to Phoenix last year in the finals.

They came out hot, everything was good. Over the course of that series, Milwaukee's physicality just war on them. And so that's that's the thing that's gonna be interesting for Brooklyn is whether or not, with this kind of current setup that they have, if they can hold up physically. But I definitely like their chances more with Ben Simmons on that front than I would have with James Harden, So I like the next chances. They're not the Lake.

Like I flat out set, I want to I want on another volume podcast earlier this week called The Favorites, and I talked about the Lakers, and I flat outside and I mean this. They do not have enough talent to win. Unless th h Tam makes some massive leap or they have a home run by out signing, they can't do it, not even if Lebron and Anthony Davis play at their very best. Brooklyn does have enough talent, they do have the pieces. They've just signed up for

a tough path, but I wouldn't count them out. For those of you who are just joining us, this is Lakers Tonight, presented by Fandel Here on the volume, we were just talking about the Brooklyn Nets. I wanted to talk about this Evan Mobile versus Kid Cunningham matchup that happened tonight. It's basketball fans dream right, watching two of the best rookies in the league playing the two best rookies in the league. The most interesting dynamic to me

is that perimeter initiator versus big guy type of dynamic. Right. It's the same dynamic that the Lakers have been dealing with, and there's actually some irony there because there are some parallels there because these are two very similar players. Kate Cunningham is averaging over five rebounds and five assists per year. Not many rookies have done that. Lebron's on the short list of keys you have done stuff like that. You're talking about Lebron and Luca, and there's some outliers in there,

like Tyreek Evans. But for the most part, when you see a rookie that's averaging five rebounds and five assists, that's an indicator of that classic point forward type of archetype, and he's already sliding into that that role. And then Evan Mobile, you know, big, long, athletic, you know, rim running center that has a lot of offensive polished that's your Anthony Davis archetype. Right. So you see these two types, and you know, we all obviously points a Lebron is

a better player because he's a perimeter initiator. We just know that you have when you can give the guy the basketball thirty feet from the basket, ten possessions in a row and he can make every decision for you, that's just more valuable than a guy that has to be set up or can only score when he has the right circumstances, when he has enough space, when he has the right matchup, or when he you know, when his jump shot is feeling good. Like that's kind of

the situation you have with Anthony Davis. You can't use him like that. So that's the kind of dynamic we're talking about with Mobile versus Kid. Now, the there's a couple of stuff with Kid that's weird, Like he's not shooting well. He's only fifty percent in the restricted area this season. For for perspective, Russell Westbrook is at fifty five point eight. So as horrible as Russell Westbrook has been finishing around the basket this year, Kid has actually

been a little bit worse. Kaid's only thirty four point five percent in the in the paint, non restricted area, so all those little floaters and push shots in the lane. He's thirty seven point three percent from the from the corner, or excuse me, from uh from mid range, he's thirty one percent from the corner and percent above the break. That's it's not entirely uncommon for perimeter players to struggle

shooting when they get in the league. It's just it's just such a huge increase in defensive length and athleticism. Every shot that used to be kind of open for you is now a lot less open, and even the open ones are more rushed, so like you have to be quicker, you have to get more lift. It just throws off perimeter players. I expect him to figure that out eventually. He's eighty six percent from the free throw line, which, as you guys know, is one of the big things

I look at for shooting. That is a static shooting scenario. You're perfectly balanced. It's just an indicator of your touch. So for him as a rookie to be shooting, he's gonna become a much better shooter. I actually see Cade becoming like a poor man's Luca don Chich. That's kind of the what I what I see, slow, shifty, really crafty.

I just don't think he has the arsenal of moves that Luca has, and Luca's passing abilities obviously at another level, but that's kind of the archetype that I see from him. What makes me so excited about Mobile and the reason why I think he is going to win Rookie of the Year, and the reason why I think he has a significantly higher steeling than Cade even though he's a perimeter initiator, is I think Evan Mobile can do some perimeter initiating. One of the big things that scared me

with Anthony Davis is his first step. He can't look a guy in the face and hit a quick move and get around him. He's not fast enough. Two NBA athletes are way too fast. They slide their feet and they stay in front of Anthony Davis and they turn him into a jump shoe or unless he's going against a slow footed big Evan Mobile. You can see a lot of it tonight, but I've seen it all season. He's so quick with his feet and he can change directions quickly, and he does have a quick first step.

So there's some potential there for him to legitimately be a slasher, somebody that can beat guys off the dribble. That's what makes things exciting is he can bring a lot of what Anthony Davis brings to the table with the quickness and speed and handle to be able to beat people from the perimeter. This year, Evan Mobley is second and shots contested per game. At twelve point four, he is ninth in total blocks in the entire league.

He's already shooting thirty nine point four percent from mid range, and he's already shooting on corner three. So a lot of these indicators of awesome offensive development for a young player. But the most exciting part is he has that athletic upside that I don't think Anthony Davis had. Now, maybe Anthony Davis kind of did himself in by getting too strong.

I saw his footage the other day of him lightening people up with the Pelicans when he was so skinny, and like, maybe that's the thing that Evan Mobley has to watch out for, is don't overly bulk up, but don't do what Anthony Davis did to himself by slowing himself down, by raising his physical profile and becoming too big to be fast. Those are the things you gotta

watch out for. And obviously it's too early. You never can tell with the guy's motor at this age because he's excited and he's in the NBA, like Anthony Davis has become a player that's somewhat finicky with his effort and his focus on a nightly basis, you gotta see whether or not that happens with Evan Mobley. But I see some specific indicators with him that tell me that he can reach a ceiling that even Anthony Davis couldn't reach,

and that's really exciting. He doesn't look quite as tall, it doesn't look quite as you know, long with his arms, but he does have a lot of the same traits that you see there, and it's something that I'm particularly excited about. So I think Mobley is gonna win Rookie of the Year and I think he's got the highest ceiling right now. All right, before we get out of here tonight, I want to talk about this this story.

So Bill Pulaski wrote a story today talking about how the lakershild trade Lebron and then there was a bunch of conversations you know, on ESPN about it, and obviously, you know, I'll set it up like this. There was an old Family Guy bit where where Peter Griffin wins an award and what the guy goes to him and he goes like, Hey, you can have this boat or you can have this box. And Peter looks at the box and he's like, oh, it's a mystery box, like

what's in it? And he goes like it could even be a boat, and then he takes the box and ends up being something stupid. That's kind of how I feel about the idea of trading Lebron or trading Anthony Davis, or trading stars in hopes of what a future draft pick could be. Like, you're just hoping that that first could be someone like Lebron. You're just hoping that that could be someone like Anthony Davis. You currently have Lebron,

you currently have Anthony Davis. You have everything you need except for a good set of role players, which, yes, I get it. You messed it up. You you you've built incorrectly this season. You made a ton of mistakes. A bunch of people made a ton of mistakes, and it didn't work this time. But Lebron, James and Anthony

Davis are still under contract next season. And even if Lebron undergoes a little bit of a decline, slipping from the you know, first, second, third best player in the world to the seventh, ninth best player in the world,

you still have a ton of top end talent. You still have a lot more than the vast majority of the teams around the league have, so it's much more advantageous for you to try to make this work then hope that maybe you get the mystery box that has the next Lebron in it, especially as the l a Lakers with as a free agent destination, you don't need to build organically through the draft. So the primary driving force behind this opinion, the reason why people want, you know,

even consider trading Lebron is the drama. You know. I one of the recurring themes that I've seen from people over the course of the last week is like, Hey, building with Lebron sucks. He gets rid of all your assets. He brings a lot of drama. He you know, all this all all this junk and it he destroys franchise. He always leaves franchises in a worse position than when he starts. And I don't think that's a fair characterization of the Lebron process. So I wanted to take a

second to address that Specifically. Everyone wants a point to Miami and the way that they were they struggled post Lebron and the fact that they lost all their assets and the fact that they went all in on that group, and it blew up in like four years and and it was way shorter of a window than they thought,

and they want to blame that on Lebron. Then they look at Cleveland and they go, oh, look, here we go four years again, blows up again, and they're forgetting about the very specific reasons why those situations went south. Lebron went to Miami to play with someone that was one of the best players in the world, which was Dwayne Wade. He was that for one year, and then about halfway through that second year, he started having issues with his knee, like fluid build up and just general soreness.

He started having to load manage, He started losing that explosiveness. He was very inconsistent on a night and night out basis in terms of how his body felt. And that was just year two. It just got significantly worse and worse as the years went on, and by two thousand fourteen, he was more or less a bench player. He might have been, like the best player in the league at that point, not a bench player, but he was a a traditional role player, not a not a super superstar

at that point in his career. Then you move on to Cleveland and they were incredibly dominant in the two thousand seventeen postseason, just beat the crap out of everybody they played until they got to that juggernaut Warriors team. And after games five, after they lose in the finals, Kyrie goes into a press conference and says all these nice things about how he loves being under Lebron and learning from him, and and then like a month later,

he demands a trade. That's Kyrie's flakiness, which is well documented. Kyrie's flaky nous is what destroyed the has wasn't Lebron cashing in assets. It wasn't Lebron's drama. It was Kyrie irving Lebron didn't mess up the Miami Heat. One of their core foundational pieces got hurt, and then literally they resigned Chris Bosh after Lebron left for like a hundred something million dollars and he got a blood clot and

he couldn't play. That's why those situations went south. They had nothing to do with Lebron in this idea of like, oh, you lose assets, you lose assets every team. Look, the Lakers are as strapped for assets as as any team in the league, and they still have two first and

a good young player to trade this summer. Every team is capable of retooling as long as they don't completely nuke themselves with stupid signings, right, and the Lakers have open cap looking forward, they just have you know, Lebron Anthony Davis obvious. I think they'll get off of us this summer, but all these veteran minimums are off. They can completely redo that next year, you know. I Kendrick Nunn is an interesting situation there because if he opts in,

that complicates things with the mid level like option. But the point is is like the Lakers do have flexibility, and the only reason this window feels like it's ending, the only reason this feels like the next Calves are heat is because Anthony Davis can't stay on the court. I put I pointed this out last week after he's sprained his ankle. If Anthony Davis does not play another game this season, Lebron and a d will have only played together in fifty three of a hundred and sixty

opportunities since the bubble. Is that because Lebron cashed in assets? Is that because you know Lebron's high drama? Or is that because guys got hurt. It's obviously because guys got hurt the Lebron process. I understand that it's stressful, but it comes with a reward. It comes with the championship. This isn't a relationship. You're not going home to a dramatic wife every night. Okay, This is a job. At the job, you put up with anything as long as

the reward is commensurate. The layers are willing to put up with Lebron as long as they get a shot at a championship, which is what they're getting. That is the trade off there. It's like a really high paying job where you're really stressed out and need to go home and have a drink after. Like that's the kind

of thing we're talking about here. This is a normal dynamic that comes with the pressure and expectation of winning, and Lebron is the best winner of this era, so obviously he's gonna have more pressure and expectation than the next guy in the list. But no matter what, trading Lebron solves nothing. All that does is put you in a situation where you're hoping that your mystery box in two thousand seven gives you another Lebron Lebron is not the problem. Guys got hurt, and when guys get hurt,

it's really difficult to win. Now, you made some mistakes outside of that, but they're fixable mistakes. Just fix them this summer and then go back with it with your two top ten players and try to win a championship next year. This is a solvable situation, alright, guys. That is all I had for tonight. I am so so excited to cover a Lakers game tomorrow. I believe they play the Clippers. Will be going live immediately after the

final buzzer in that one. Thank you as always for your guys to support, and I will see you tomorrow. The volume