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hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. Yeah, alright, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. Well, this isn't the first time that this has happened to us on the show, and it certainly won't be the last time. But basically, everything I said yesterday as it pertains to the Kevin
Durant situation, is now completely irrelevant. There was some sort of clandestine meeting yesterday between the NETS ownership in front office and Rich Climate and Kevin Durant, and they've agreed to patch things up and to move forward as though nothing ever happened. This was something I always thought was a possibility. I just saw it as incredibly unlikely. So it's just truly bizarre to me. Um, you guys were
gonna come at this from every different angle. We'ren look at it from the Nets angle, from the Kevin Durant angle, from the c b A angle, from the Lakers angle, since they just lost their biggest trade target from the summer. We're gonna get to all of it today. You guys, know the drill before we get, Before we get started. Subscribe to the Volume's YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements.
And if you miss this episode for whatever reason and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish it, don't forget that we do release these in audio form. Wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops tonight. And then last announcement, don't forget Tomorrow is our mail bag episode about the top twenty five players list that we were working. On my Twitter feed, you'll see a tweet asking for
mail bad questions. You can drop questions about the list there. Also, I will be shouting out two or three of you guys who make the best case for why I was wrong about something. There's a player on that list that you disagree with, just right in one or two tweets, the basketball reason why you disagree, and the people that make the best case. I'm gonna shout you guys out on the show tomorrow, all right. So let's start with the Nets. They were at a crossroads here. They had
a decision to make. And this is not a crossroads that is only relevant this summer. This is a crossroads they've really been facing ever since things started to go south with this partnership, and this partnership has really gone south. Katie missed the full season, obviously coming off the achilles tair. Kyrie only plays in twenty games. Also, due to injury, Katie hurts his hamstring, only plays in thirty five games.
Kyrie takes two separate leaves of absence without telling Steve Nash, and then Kyrie and James Harden both break down in the playoffs and the Nets losing the second round. Katie hurts his knee, only plays in fifty five games, Kyrie refuses to vaccinate, only plays twenty nine games, and both struggle in the first round as they get swept by Boston.
And then this summer, Kyrie threatens to leave and take the mid level exception to play for the Lakers, then Sudden recommits, and then Katie demands a trade, doubles down on that trade by denouncing the head coach in front office, and then decides to recommit to the team. That's all happened in three years, and so that presented Brooklyn with a decision. You can either continue this partnership or you can restart, and you have a ton of assets to
do so. Kevin Durant would have fetched you the largest trade return in the history of the league. Kyrie irvings worth at least one first round pick, if not to the Lakers would have paid to for him. And then Ben Simmons is either a really interesting young prospect in a second phase of his career that could blossom into a foundational piece or someone you can also trade for a good amount of assets. So they had a blow it up button that they could have pressed to rebuild
their way. I really thought they'd choose option two because of how chaotic Option one has been for them, So I'm genuinely surprised that they opted to go this route. I I thought that they would want to get out of this business. For the record, k D is fine as a foundational piece. The dude loves basketball. He's never gonna leave you hanging on that front. That makes him a great foundational piece. His only concern really is his health, but in a vacuum that's not as big of a deal.
He's been available for both post seasons since he came back right, and he played amazing in one and he played poorly in another. But I don't think he played poorly because his body failed him. I didn't think he played poorly because he was old. I think he played poorly because he didn't shoot well against one of the best defenses that I've ever seen. So the reality is is the KD foundational pieces fine. But when you combine him with Kyrie and his flakiness and his injury history.
You can't have both of your core piece is be like that, that becomes the issue, and so I really thought the Nets would acknowledge that and move on, and they decided not to. It's very interesting as far as Kad goes, I looked at this, all is very human and authentic, which I actually will always support on this show. But it was reckless in the sense that he didn't have any concern for the consequences that would come if you went this route, or if he would bounce back.
Wanting a better basketball situation, I won thousand percent support that. Wanting to change your mind when you learn that a decision you made is a poor decision, I also support that. But when you do those things, you have to be willing to take on the consequences that come from them. What Katie did was very human. He was unhappy with his basketball situation. Basketball is the most important thing in
his life. He wanted a better basketball situation, so he demanded a trade, even though he had four years left on his deal. Now, I know people will say things like, hey, he doesn't have any leverage, he has four years left on his deal. I don't see it that way, I thought Katie's leverage was him not wanting to be there. Who who wants to be in business? So somebody who's not whose heart isn't in it? Like if we were business partners and I told you I don't like being
your business partner, what are you gonna do? You're probably gonna be like, Okay, well, we need to figure out some way to end this relationship, because why would we continue to work together even though we don't like each other. It's like we're in a relationship. Like if your wife tells you, hey, I don't like you anymore, what are you gonna do? Stick it out? I mean, if you do, you you you deserve the unhappiness that follows. Right, So I thought Katie had leverage in him simply making it
clear that he didn't want to be their business partner anymore. Obviously, the contract situation complicated at that leverage, but it's not like Katie was absolutely powerless here. So then he doesn't get traded, and he doubles down on it because he still wants to change his basketball situation, and as a result, he denounces his head coach in front office kind of publicly, not super publicly, but it's clear that he's the one who leaked to the report, so he intended for that
information to get out. Then when the Nets didn't budget again, he relented on his decision. He decided, Oh, they really aren't going to trade me unless these teams give up the house. If they give up the house, my basketball situation isn't better. As it turns out, this is my best basketball situation. So again, the pathway is very authentic and genuine. I wanted something better. I realized something better wasn't out there, so now I'm coming back. That's all human.
But if you do that, you have to live with. The consequence is if you tell your wife you want to break up for a little while and go be you, and then you say, never mind, that sucks, I want to come back. Your wife, it's not going to have the same level of respect for you that she had before you left. You and your wife are not going to have the same type of relationship you had before you left. Changing your mind is fine, Wanting something better
is fine. It's human, but it has consequences. So here's where we're at. Everyone's saying the right things, and they will continue to say the right things. They'll say the right things in training camp. As a very well crafted statement there from Sean Mark's right, but everyone knows the reality. The reality is your dirty laundry has been made public. Kyrie didn't get the long term deal he wants, and
he's probably pissed about that. I believe that a lot of his good behavior in the last couple of months has been about trying to rehab his image for next summer to get a long term deal. Will the Nets suddenly give him the long term deal next summer they didn't give him this summer. Maybe I don't know, but let's not pretend like the leftover baggage from that negotiation doesn't still exist. Everybody in the world knows Kevin Durant doesn't believe in Steve Nash and he doesn't believe in
Sean Marks. They that's that doesn't go away, and it's not like he has some massive change of heart. He's just decided to proceed anyway. So not only are we all aware of this, but the locker room is aware of this. The locker room knows Katie doesn't believe in the head coach or the GM. The locker room knows Kyrie doesn't like those guys. That's all just in the air now while they're trying to go about their basketball mission, think about Ben Simmons. Kyrie and Katie both trying to
get out of this situation. Despite Ben Simmons being on the roster, tells Ben Simmons they don't want to play with him, or at least they didn't find that appealing enough to counter their issues from the previous seasons. Do you think that just goes away now they're gonna go to Ben Simmons and be like, hey, buddy, buddy, we're gonna do this together. Right, that's great and it might all work out, but all of this baggage still exists. Those things don't just go away because of one meeting
in Los Angeles or a well worded statement. No matter how much Kyrie and Katie want us to believe that now, how does that matter? It might not matter at all. But an eight two game NBA season naturally has ups and downs. There's gonna be a two or three game losing streak in there. It will be injuries, there will
be dispute, Sky's bumping shoulders arguments. Those things are hard to get through in any circumstance, it will be harder for this group to survive those ups and downs because every time they happen, that baggage will float back up to the surface. If something goes south with Nash this season, you bet your ask there's gonna be conversations behind the scenes with Katie going like I told you, I didn't
like this guy. If there comes a point in the season where the group doesn't buy in, that's probably leftover baggage. And so again, as much as I support Kevin Durant in his authentic pursuit of a better basketball situation, he was reckless here. He did not properly factor in the downsides to his methods, and that again, that's another big reason why I thought this would end differently, why I was so confident that the deal would get done. I thought k D would understand that too much damage had
been done to proceed as though nothing had happened. I thought Brooklyn would understand that this partnership has not worked out for them the way they needed it to. Both of them saw it differently. Now we're going to move forward. Looking at the basketball, it's a really interesting core. They're basically adding four wings that didn't play for them last year, and the wing was where they got destroyed last year. They did not have guys on the wing that did
the dirty work for them. They're bringing in Joe Harris from the ankle injury, Ben Simmons from the James Harden trade, t J Warren a free agent signing, and Royce O'Neil a trade from the Utah Jazz. That makes them a lot more interesting. The idea of Ben Simmons and k D when they're engaged on defense will be very problem attic for teams. They do have plenty of shooting and their two best stars are immune to spacing concerns, so offense should come easy to them. Their immune to spacing
concerns because they can shoot over the top. We talked about this in depth and yesterday's show when we talked about superstar archetypes. So everything looks good on the surface of the basketball situation. Here's the one uh issue that I have, not an issue, but fear that I have for this group health. Their best five player lineup will probably be Kyrie Irving, Joe Harris, t J. Warren, Kevin Durant, Ben Simmons. Those five guys combined to play ninety eight
games last year. It's less than twenty per player, less than a fourth of the season. Now, we're gonna do a much deeper dive into this team at a basketball level when we do our season previews, which are going to start in September, late September, early October. But I just wanted to kind of briefly touch on that. It is an interesting core health will be the biggest problem for them though. CBA negotiations, that's the next thing that
everyone's talking about. Patrick Beverley specifically tweeted about it today. He's not wrong, and this is something we've talked about on the show before. It's not good to have drama like this in the NBA. I think it turns fans off. Also a human interaction. If you're a book Brooklyn Nets fan,
how do you feel about KD right now? I mean, you're obviously happy to have him back, but you're a little like if if you were supporting in before, you're probably somewhere below that now because of this debacle and so many of these ending the player leaving which spurns the fan bases even further. So it certainly is an issue, and it would be better for the health of the league if there was a little bit less player move not even necessary player movement, a little bit less this
type of player movement. I just don't know how you stop it. The players want this mobility because they feel like the owners have the ability to break contracts in a way that they don't, not breaking the contract in terms of payment, but breaking the contract in terms of shipping them off to different parts of the country. Owners have that flexibility. They don't, that's the way they see it. So they see these as evening the playing field. So I don't see a universe where the players relent on
that front. Why would they give ground in what they see as a pursuit for equality in power in the league. So I know, I don't I don't even know a legitimate, um legislative way in the league for them to solve this problem. I mean, you could try play paying your hometown players preposterously more to the point where would be devastating financially to leave. But even then I don't see what would stop them from requesting trades. I don't see
an easy fix here. So the reality is that we might have to just kind of come to terms with this and accept it as an evening of power between the dynamic between the owners and the players. And yes, I believe it's bad for the league. It's just the reality of the situation. Last, but not least, the Lakers
Kyrie Irving's off the table. Now. There are a bunch of different trades that have been thrown out there, Utah Jazz Boy and Magdanovitch, Patrick Beverley type of package, Charlotte Hornets with like Gordon Hayward and Terry Rosie or something along those lines. And then the Buddy Healed Miles Turner trade. I favor the Buddy Heeld Miles Turner trade. I don't think the Lakers are nearly good enough on the wing to play small. I think they're gonna have to lean
into playing big. That means a d at the four. That means having a guy like Myles Turner there is actually more useful to them than he would be in other systems. I think that's the best option for them. Bottom line, don't make the decision the nets are making. Don't try to trudge ahead in a toxic situation. Don't pretend you can fix things by just putting one ft in front of the other. This thing with Russell Westbrook is not salvageable. A move needs to be made, and
I hope they make that move soon. All Right, that's all I have for today. Guys, don't forget go onto my Twitter feed and drop any mail, bad questions for tomorrow's episode as well as your cases for what you disagree with me in my list. As always, I appreciate your guys support and I'll see tomorrow the volume