Hoops Tonight - NBA Mailbag: Warriors trading Chris Paul? Celtics vs. Nuggets, Mavericks next move

Sportsbook with code hoops. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler or visit www dot one eight hundred gambler dot net. In New York call eight seven seven to eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine and Connecticut help is available for problem gambling. Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven, or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill

Casino and Resort in Kansas. Twenty one plus age varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. See dkang dot com slash basketball for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources.

Subscribe to a brand new YouTube channel mean a lot to me if you guys would scroll down hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our our podcast feeds. Wherever you get your podcasts under oops tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT. So you guys don't miss any show announcements or the film threads that I do from time to time in the mornings. And then, last but not least, keep dropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments so we can hit them throughout the rest

of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So first question, Hey, Jason, do you think the Warriors bench will still be as great if they trade Chris Paul? I think CP has to stay because he is organizing the bench offense perfectly, and if he gets traded he I think the plus minus in the non step minutes will decrease drastically. My question is who would you rather

trade next to Kaminga instead of CP? Is Moody enough or would you put someone else in that trade for Siakam love those by the way, best basketball show pod right now, just keep going. Thank you for the kind words and for the support. Here's the thing with Chris Paul, It's about his salary slot. It's just really difficult to reach that number without including him. I do think that there will be some loss of organization and potential consistency

in bench groups as a result. That said, it's far more important for your starting lineup to have more firepower. The main reason why is when push comes to shove in the playoffs anyway, you're playing all those guys thirty eight, thirty nine, maybe even in the low forties four minutes at least your best guys. You need to have five guys that you're willing to go to war with Denver with for seven games over the course of two weeks.

Right that said, like, I don't think it'll be that big of an issue for the bench because of the emergence of pods. Brandon Pitzemski, him being a hit as a draft pick undoes a lot of the damage from the James Wiseman trade. He's just flat out, really really good. And as a result, there's a lot of guys who need touches between Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Brandon Pitzemski, whoever comes back in that theoretical Chris Paul, Jonathan kaminga deal.

I don't think it's gonna be an issue of ball handling. I think there will be less consistency just because there'll be young and Chris Paul is one of the most consistent, you know, decision makers that we have in the game. But I think it'd be worth it to have that upgrade in terms of what the starting lineup is capable of. And again I see Moody as an example here, you

try to make a deal without Jonathan kaminga. But the reality is I just think this is gonna be a real I think this is gonna be a seller's market this year. I think there are a lot of teams that are gonna be looking to make a deal to upgrade there and improve their chances at winning a championship. I think Golden State is likely to make a trade. I think the Lakers are likely to make a trade. I think Minnesota could make a trade. I think teams

like Indiana and Oklahoma City might make a trade. Sacramento, in terms of trying to upgrade a their four spot, they look like a team who could be making a trade. Milwaukee looks like a team that's gonna make a trade. Miami and Philly look like teams that are gonna make trades, and most of them are going to be hunting the

big fish. Sacramento, Indie, Oklahoma City. I think they're all gonna be going after the forwards right Miami and in Philadelphia, I think they're gonna be looking for some sort of additional star level shot creator. I think the Warriors are looking for that type of forward. I think the Lakers could be involved in conversations like that, although I think they'll primarily be targeting role players. But the point is is it's going to be a bidding war in a

lot of these cases. And the bottom line is is like there is no asset that the Warriors have that is valued as much as Jonathan Kaminga is around the league, and so that's where it puts you into these tough decisions, like you could keep Jonathan Kaminga and you could get out bid, and then you could be a good team this year that's not really capable of winning the championship. And with each passing year, Steph will Age and Jonathan Minga will be better, but he at this point he

doesn't project to be a super duper star. He might it's not off the table, but it's at this point some of a long shot, right, And so it's one of those things where to me, everybody has different philosophies, right, Certain franchises are okay, with being really good for a long time, right, But the Warriors aren't one of those franchises. The Warriors, they're trying to hang banners. They're a four

time NBA champion. Everybody who runs this franchise has a big ego for good reason, because they're good at what they do. I don't think mediocrity is the goal here for the Warriors, and so in my opinion, you either lean all in with Steph to try to win the damn Larry O'Brien trophy, or you punt on this era, you do a complete pivot rebuild, and in that case,

you're not looking to trade Jonathan Kaminga. Maybe you convince Steph to stay on board, But for the record, as good as that would be for the community, as good as as important as he is to the franchise, I'm not sure Steph would be interested in some sort of

soft rebuild. And most importantly, he's he's a guy that you could trade and bring back just a shit ton of assets to help spark that rebut build and so to me, given the type of franchise that the Warriors are, it's kind of a crossroads here, and I think we'll see what happens until when we get to the deadline. But when they get to the deadline, they're gonna have a decision to make on that front. Next question, Hey, Jason,

what's next for the Dallas Mavericks. They clearly have nailed their offseason moves and Lively has been a grand slam. With Luca playing at this level, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the next steps for this team. All right, So, in my opinion, once you have the guy which is like a top tier superstar that is capable of being the best player on a championship, championship team, the next step to me is coming up with a like a a very obvious five, like five guys that like we're

going down with, right. I think that's a really underrated element of the Denver Nuggets success last year is like they had their clear five. They knew who they were going down with, right. That to me is that sort of congruency, so to speak. It is just an important trait to a basketball team reaching their app salute potential ceiling.

Porter Junior at that other spot. And so if it's Kyrie, you have to be really really good defensively at the other position.

That said, my preferred construction is I want a skill guard, and then I want an athlete guard. Then I want to slender, tall, like a slender like kind of perimeter oriented forward. And then I want a bigger, stronger like frontline forward, not like an old school power forward like Drew Gooden, but just like a big strong athlete, someone along the lines of like an Aaron Gordon ideally is

what I want in that four spot. And then I want my center to be athletic and capable of working in different coverages because playoff series just they kind of forced you to have to be able to play multiple different ways depending on the matchup. And so having a center that can competently switch and competently run a deep drop and competently run a high drop where he has to get up to the level and back up to the level and back a guy who can blitz with

active hands. You want lots of versatility from that position. Right, So going down the line to me, Kyrie is the skill guard, right, I think Josh Green is actually the guy that could be your athlete guard, and he's been unavailable as of late, but I actually think Josh Green is is a like a good NBA starter, a guy that can be in that spot. Right Next is that slender kind of point of attack forward, the perimeter oriented forward. That's the question mark right now, Right, I think lucas

your big power forward. Now, I know he doesn't really fill that role on offense, he's more of like a point guard. Right that said, I'm more talking about defense. Your position is who you can guard in the NBA, because offense you can play. The geometry is kind of your own, whatever your skill set is, right, Like, like the Warriors play a really weird style, the Nuggets play a really different style. Like every team kind of has a different offensive style depending on their personnel.

Derek Lively could be that guy.

three spot as being their next most realistic target. The thing is is with Kyrie being kind of a skill guard, and with Josh Green being a good point of attack defender but not like an outstanding point of attack defender, and with Luca being a lesser athlete at that four spot, I think it's really important that whoever it is they get at the three is a top tier perimeter defender.

If they want to contend for a championship, it needs to be a guy that at least defensively is capable of reaching that at lou Door, you know, Dylan Brooks, Jaden McDaniels. There are a bunch of different versions of those guys, right, But like a legitimate guy that can, like you, can stick on the other team's best player for seven games

and make his life hell. They can find that type of guy, it starts to make a ton of sense from a lineup construction standpoint, to be like, if that guy is a big six ' eight athlete, then him and Lively provides so much athleticism him and at Josh Green and Lively provides so much athleticism in that lineup that Kyrie and Luca being somewhat lesser athletes is not

a problem. And as long as those guys are bought in like the way they are this season, I think they can get enough stops while simultaneously being extremely difficult to guard. So that's the direction I'd be looking right now. Round out a clear number five, a clear five man group by finding a top tier perimeter defender to put at the three. Next question, what do you think Jason Tatum's peak is? In your opinion? Could he play into

the top twenty five to twenty fifteen all time? I honestly kind of feel bad for Tatum because he's an amazing player, but he rarely gets the recognition he deserves because, like you said in this video or in the video, the league is just so stacked with talent. It's hard to separate yourself. So I was actually surprised to find out this morning that Jayson Tatum is still twenty five years old. Even though we've always known he was young, it just feels like he's been around forever. And he

has a ton of playoff experience. Did you know that Jason Tatum has played in ninety four playoff games. That's more than Carmelo Anthony played in in his entire career. And he's twenty five years old. He plays for an excellent franchise that consistently surround him with talent. Only twenty

five years old, he's played in the conference finals four times. Right, like as bad as he was in the NBA Finals against the Warriors a couple of years ago, it just turned twenty four, Like he's young, and as I've talked about, twenty five kind of feels like that threshold to where

guys kind of starts figure it out. And so my thing is, like, when I really look at how good Jason Tatum already is and some of the things he's starting to learn this season, using his size and strength, more diversity of shot creation, working more uncleared sides, spamming actions that get him advantages. It hasn't been perfect, there have been downsides, still has a long way to go in my opinion. But there's a version of this that from twenty seven to thirty two, he's like a definitive

top three to four player in the league. And if he is, and he's surrounded with the amount of talent that the Celtics I expect will surround him with, there's no reason why he can't win multiple champions championships and enter into those conversations like again, I'm never going to pick the Celtics to win because my fears with them center around what happens with them in the playoffs. But what ends up happening in these situations is like eventually

they break through. It's like Denver. I said the same thing with Denver last year. All season long, I was like, they can win the championship, but I'm not going to pick them because of trends in recent NBA history that tell me that teams that aren't in the top ten defensively and aren't defending champions don't win the title. Right then, Denver broke the trend.

multi time champion. To me, it's only a matter of when. Next question, what do you think Memphis needs to be able to contend? What do you think they should target? I should scroll down here because there was another Memphis Grizzlies question that I want to include here. Here we go with jaw Smart and Canard coming back? Is the sixth seed too far of a goal? And how legit is Memphis's big three of Jaw Bain and Jaron Jackson.

So I actually think it's like, here's the thing. Desmond Bain has continued to make leaps from year to year, which above and beyond anything having to do with his potential as an indicator of what he's got up here. You know, it's funny. I've talked a lot about the difference between him and Dylan Brooks's trash talkers, right, because like Desmond Bain is the guy that, like on the court, he's being an asshole because he just wants to win that game so damn bad, and that mental chess match

piece is part of it for him, right. But Desmond Bain is not the guy that goes into the postgame press conference and is super super performative with his trash talk the way that Dylan Brooks was, right, And that's what I think. I think that's an upside thing with Bain. I think he's just a freak competitor, and I think that drives him in the gym to work harder and harder and harder every year at rounding out certain elements of his skill set. Continues to add, playmaking continues to add,

the ability to score off of the dribble. Desmond Bain's awesome. We've seen as John Moran's come back and they've immediately ripped off a bunch of wins. That dude's just a bona fide superstar.

he can commit a lot of fouls right. One of the things I think that can make it a lot easier for him is putting a legitimate four.

that will help them. But the ultimate version of this team, again going back to our original team construction concepts, it's John, it's Baine, it's Jaron Jackson slotted next to an Aaron Gordon esque defender that can help clean up the defensive glass when he gets out of position right, and then an excellent point of attack defender a la Dylon Brooks right, a guy along those lines, And I get why he wasn't a personality fit with this group. I think we've

learned I was. You know, my issues with Dylan were more about his behavior. I've always thought he was very good. But like, whatever that player is that fills into that spot, that's what they need. They need a guy that can throw out the other team's best player for a seven game series and have success there. Hey, Jason, love the show and think you're doing an amazing job. Quick mail, bad question for you. The Pistons are obviously in a rut and seriously struggling. What would you do if you're

a GM of the Pistons to fix this? What do you think they'll do come trade deadline offseason things? First of all, thank you so much for supporting the show and for the kind words. So I've done little flybys on the Pistons, but let's talk about him for a

little bit longer today. So in my opinion, if you're going to be bad, you got to make it count, which means drafting in the next couple of years is going to be huge, And unfortunately, this is kind of a bad year to be bad because the top of this next year's draft is weaker, significantly weaker than last year's was. Now, there's significant upside here that I don't even think Pistons fans are aware of. Nningham is awesome.

He's a star in the making. Jade and Ivy, in spite of having a really tough role, has actually been pretty good. Here's a crazy stat for you. During the first twenty games of the season, he played twenty five plus minutes just seven times, so very very fluctuating role. In the last six games, he's played twenty five plus minutes in every single game, and now he's started. In those six games, he's averaging sixteen points, five rebounds in five assists. And now for the season, he's put up

some pretty interesting shot creation data. He's run one hundred and forty two pick and rolls in ISOs, including passes, leading to one hundred and sixty one points. That's one point one to three points per possession. I've always been a big believer in Jad and Ivy ever since the

first time I saw him in Summer League. I think he has the unique combination of like star Moxie, but like, no one can keep him in front like I like, no one can keep the guy in front off the dribble, and so I think, especially when he gets into a more in situation and gets more reps, I think that's

a superpower. I think that's the kind of thing like we've talked about with Darren Fox and Malik Monk, Like, when you have a guy who can consistently generate Gerbil penetration, it just makes the game easier for everybody else because the defense is constantly in rotation. So they got to lean into Jade and Ivy the rest of the way and get a better feel for whether or not he

can be the guy next to Kate Cunningham. Right then, Jalen Duran, He's the ideal type of athletic and versatile center that I've been talking about in these mailbag videos, right, the guy that can potentially defend in multiple coverages in

the future. Here's a crazy stat for you guys. According to Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time, when Kate Cunningham, Jade and Ivy, and Jalen durn are on the floor together they are outscoring teams by three point three points per one hundred possessions in three hundred and thirteen possessions, roughly three games worth of data of those three guys on the floor together, and they've been positive. And again, that's not like something to write home about.

But that's like, there's a lot of other stuff. There's a lot of other fluff in here that's kind of disrupting some of the other things going on with the Pistons.

always talk about. Right to me, Jaden is the Jaden Ivy is the athlete guard, and he will have to become an excellent point of attack defender for this to pan out. The skill guard, in my opinion is Kate Cunningham. I know he's kind of six s eight. But like I look at him as the skill guard. Asar Thompson is your primary point of attacker and a point of attack defender and athlete wing and he's going to be able to take the primary, the higher leverage point of

attack assignments. I actually think he's one of the better point of attack defenders I've ever scouted. As I've said on the show many times, right, power wing will get back there and then athletic center is You're is Jalen Duran, right, So it's that big forward spot and you need someone there that has real size because Asar Thompson is a little bit thin, right, you need someone there who can really shoot the ball. Because of sar Thompson is not

an outstanding shooter. I think it's you could look for a kind of player there that's a little bit more flawed because he won't have to be as used on the ball. Because theoretically you want a guy like Jayden to guard other teams quick guards and because Usar Thompson is, you know, a guy that's going to take a high leverage point of attack assignment. You're more looking for a guy with size who can be a help side defender.

So a guy who can play passing lanes, take the low man responsibilities, rotate on the weak side, clean up the defensive glass. I'll give you a random example of a type of player that's not a good point of attack defender that would be really useful in this system. Kyle Kuzma. I think a guy like Kyle Kuzma could be a really interesting player to put next to a Jaden Ivy and a Kid Cunningham if you could target

him in a trade with the Washington Wizards. But that to me is where you start to put together a really complimentary lineup. From there, a couple of things. Empower them and allow them to fail. Give them long leashes, stop tinkering with the rotation. If you're gonna be bad, at least be bad while learning something. It's when you are bad without a sense of direction that it becomes a waste. And then from there you got to pivot

quickly from the bad players on the bench. Bring in G League guys if you have to, are that are young and have potential. But like James Wiseman's not good and I don't think he's going to be Marvin Bagley is not good, and I don't think he's going to be so like that bench piece, at least round it out with guys that are going to fit the overall,

you know, identity you're trying to build. Try something, but like whatever you do, don't put it yourself in a situation where you're giving a significant rotation minutes the guys that are just flat out bad basketball players. Hey, Jason, I want your opinion on the players that played for

Team USA this year. It seems as if all the starters have made really good strides branding Gramas and Reeves, Tyres Haliburt and Jaylen Brunson, etc. Do you think playing some of the world's best with some of the world's best help them raise their ceilings in the NBA And if so, do you think it's sustainable or flucish. I absolutely think it helps raise their sailing and I absolutely think it's sustainable. It's a simple a topic that are lying. I should say that Ryan Brumley is one of the

lead producers at the volume. As always said to me, it's a rising tide that lifts all boats. Surrounding yourself with other super successful people is a great way to find out things to emulate.

super competitive, and they're all desperate to get better. And so when I'm around them, it invigorates me to love the game more and to want to be even though I'm thirty two years old and I'm just playing for fun. It just brings the best out of me as a basketball player to surround myself around other really really good basketball players. And so that's kind of the way I look at it. It's like, imagine that same concept but

translated to the highest level of the sport. Like even within the four hundred and fifty players in the NBA, there are players there that don't love the game. There are players there that have an enormous amount of natural ability, or I should at least say relative to the guys at the top of the league, right, And what ends up happening is you get in an environment like that team USA, and again you don't have the superstars there. You don't have the top, top, top tier guys that

we are accustomed to seeing with Team USA. But all of these guys, especially for their age group, are highly motivated guys that you can pick up real quality traits from right and so I think in general, every single one of those guys gets around those guys, gets around the rest of that group, and they feel invigorated, they feel motivated. They there's obviously we've heard a lot about the famous one on one games right that take place

at these things. I think in general it just serves as a springboard for any basketball player to reach a higher version of themselves. I've seen many fans occasionally call the current Celtics roster a super team because of their top end talent. This team is great when they are working hard together, but it doesn't feel like the KD Warriors era type of unfair. What's your definition of a super team and do you think the Celtics count is one. Are there any teams in the league currently that truly

fit the description. I don't think we've had a team like that since the Golden State Warriors with KD. And most importantly, you could tell that just from championship odds, every single year, we've had championship odds that have positive odds, meaning like even if you bet for the favorite, you're going to make more money than you bet if they win, right, Whereas like those Warriors teams legitimately had negative odds, like you had to give extra money, like you had to bet.

I can't remember exactly what the odds were, but I remember like twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen, it was like what one thirty or minus one forty that the Warriors would win the title, which is like insane like that that think about how crazy that is. The odds to pick one team to win the championship of the NBA at the beginning of the season was better odds than betting a point spread where you get minus one ten, right,

Like it's crazy to think about. But like the reason why that was different was, you know, the Celtics team does have super team level talent in my opinion in terms of top to bottom total aggregate roster talent, but in terms of top end talent between Jason Tatum and

Jaylen Brown, they're just there. Neither of them are on the same level as the Nikola Jokich is, the Luka Doncic the Jannis and Tenna Kumbo's like those kind of guys, right, And so when you get to the furthest levels of the NBA playoffs, the round three, round four, that is where the best players really shine through. And so as talented as the Celtics team is, I don't view them as a super team strictly from the standpoint of like

their star talent. Like if they go, the Celtics, even if they win the title this year, will have to beat teams that have better star talent in order to get it done. They very well might, but I view them as just another one of the content. I view them as top tier. To me, it's them in Denver at the top of the list. But to me, in order to be like a true super team, you have to be a head and shoulders above the rest of

the league. What made that Warriors team different was they were already an excellent team with a ton of talent, and a team that had superstar talent in Steph Curry, and then they added a top tier superstar like Kevin Durant at that point was a much better player than Jayson Tatum is now, and he was joining Steph Curry, who was a much better player than Jayson Tatum is. Now see the difference. That's why I kind of view them as a different tier. Is j dub On OKC underrated?

This may sound stupid, but I can't think of many players who have looked this good in their second year as the second option on their team. His strength, his prowess, and transition and.

of that is he's young. He's figuring some stuff out also playing alongside a ton of other ball handling so is excuse me, So his opportunities are a little bit more inconsistent, right, But I one hundred percent agree that he's underrated in the sense that I don't think people realize that this guy is a star in the making.

It is like a surgical approach that you don't expect to see from a young player, and that's only going to get better and better as the years go by. From there, it's top tier athleticism, which, by the way,

like I picked that up immediately at Summer League. You still go down in my Twitter feeded, I have a bunch of videos of Jaylen Williams dunking and me going like, holy shit, this guy, this guy's a ridiculous athlete, right, Like he was one of the standout guys in Summer League that year, and like, combine that with the high level passing ability, the ability to consistently beat people off the dribble, the shot making from all three levels, and then some of that like higher level flow of the

game stuff. He's a star in the making. It's just a matter of when. Still super young, though, so there's gonna be some growing pains along the way. Next question, if handchecking were allowed again, who do you think would be the best defender in the league and who would be more effect who would be affected more by this change than most I dismissed this question entirely. I have a theory about hand checking. It was actually if you look in the NBA rule book, hand checking was out

lowed in the seventies. And what has happened is is over the years there's been an ebb and flow in the amount of contact that officials have allowed, and there have been slight redefinitions of what it is. But still to this day, hand checking is a thing in basketball. Watch any NBA playoff game in particular, but it happens in regular season games as well. But watch any NBA playoff game. Guys have their hands on guys, they just do.

One of the most common forms of hand checking that goes uncalled all the time, is it's actually what coaches teach. It's inside hand hand checking. So like let's say i'm guarding you. Your camera is the offensive player you're guarding. I'm guarding you. You're driving this way right past my

right shoulder. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lift this arm up and I'm gonna take my inside arm and I'm gonna literally be hitting you like this in your stomach, trying to impede your progress while hold my right arm up, and they're probably gonna let me get away with it. That's one of the most common kinds of handchecking that you see, is that inside hand is being physical while the outside hand is out and for

the most part, you can get away with that. And like just between fighting for jocking for position, fighting over the top of screens, the off arm stuff that offensive players are using, there's way more contact that takes place

in basketball games than people realize. The hand checking thing is purely narrative, based almost entirely from the older generation to try to convince you that basketball's fake now in all honestly, it's just it's literally a load of bullshit, and like just go back and watch any nineteen eighties playoff game, and then watch any playoff game from this era, and you tell me which game was more physical. And

I'm not talking about the hard fouls. I'm not talking about the dude getting thrown into the camera row and the brawl that happens. I'm talking about the possession by possession physicality. The game's actually more physical now than it was in the eighties. The one time it got a lot worse than it was now is in the late nineties early two thousands, which by the way, led to some of the redefinition that took place in two thousand

and three. But like in that stretch, that was when it got to the point where it was too physical and the league literally had to step in because we had playoff games ending in the seventies and that's just not good television. Again, like it can go too far, And now the whistle's making a bad television product on the other side of things, And I wouldn't be surprised if you see some of that legislated back into the game.

Right But the actual concept of hand checking has been around for five decades at this point.

You know what I mean, I have a Star Wars podcast. No one pays me for that shit. I just have so much fun doing it that like, I'm not gonna stop. I don't care if I don't get paid for fu years. I'm still gonna keep doing it. Who cares what anybody else thinks. So, like, if you want to start a podcast, do it. Secondly, there's a lot.

And so it's funny how over the years the methods with which you would get into this industry have changed, you know, Like it used to be you'd go knock on a radio station and be like, hey, can I work the boor or until finally one day you get to fill in for somebody on a Saturday night. Maybe you're good at it right, or maybe you go right for fan Sided or I wrote for fan Sided briefly when that when I thought that was a method to get into it, although right now I don't think it's

a very good method. But like there were, there used to be all these different ways to get in and like now it's different, Like the these tools are available for you to promote your content at your house and from there, if you make quality content, people will find it. That's what the algorithms do. The algorithms are the ultimate meritocracy when it comes to this kind of stuff people watch, there's watch time. It just gets advertised to more people.

And so starting record all your podcasts on video. So like if you're doing a podcast with your buddies, make sure everything's getting videotaped if you need to. Like like zoom calls have video recording built in. Stream Yard has video recording built in. It's easy enough to do that.

built in algorithm. YouTube as your subscriber base builds as your subscribers watch your videos, as they have high watch times on your videos, it continues to push your content out to other people. You can build thumbnails for free with apps like Canva. It's really easy to do. And then from there use social media to your advantage. TikTok

excellent algorithm. I've gained my Star Wars podcast has like four thousand something TikTok TikTok's subscribers because I've consistently or followers I should say, because I've consistently put clips of the show on there, and then I just use that to direct people to YouTube or to the podcast. Instagram reels another great way to do it. Twitter is actually, ironically like the least powerful platform there is, but it is a useful platform in its own way. But like,

that's all free. What I just said, other than the equipment, everything I just said is free. Record, get a video, put the recording on the Spotify podcasters, put the video on YouTube, advertise it on social media. And as long as you're having fun doing it and you're putting your heart and soul into it, you have a really good chance, especially with the tools that are at your disposal. From there, just have a base understanding that you are dealing with

a flooded field. And what I mean by that is, as I've just described how easy it is to actually put podcast content out there, Understand that lots of people are doing it. And because lots of people are doing it, the people that will rise from the group into having success are the people that put their heart and soul

into it. And so, like you, like, if you're gonna do it and do it half asked, just understand that it's probably more just for fun, right, but if you pour your heart and soul to it, you have a better chance. And then lastly, I would just say, lean into who you are. Don't try to pretend to be anybody else. Lean into who you are, because at the end of the day, the only way anyone's going to, you know, embrace your content is if it's authentic. And

so again that's just like a little brief overview. But and you guys, I keep my direct messages open on social media. I can't get to all of them, but I do try. So, like, if you have a question anything specific along those lines, feel free to drop it into my direct messages and we can have a chat about it. Next question, two questions, actually, how do the Thunder win the NBA Finals with the lower market in trade?

And what's your favorite Christmas New Year's traditions? So, first of all, with the Thunder, though I look at it pretty simply, but right now, there are two gaping flaws for the Oklahoma City Thunder in my opinion, a lack of agent experience and a lack of size. And so those two flaws end up being something that causes me to be reticent to take Oklahoma City seriously as a team that can hoist the trophy. They can be dangerous.

I've said this with the Nerdsash guys yesterday. I expect them to be a championship contender for a long time. I just think this year it's a really long shot for them to actually hoist the trophy for those two reasons. So, Lourie Markinen doesn't necessarily give you any more experience, but what he does is it gives you more size, and so it addresses one of your primary concerns there, which would make them significantly better in my opinion. Secondly, what's

your favorite Christmas New Year's tradition. So it's my family, my wife and I actually every Christmas Eve. We I'll give you us two examples. So every Christmas Eve, my wife and I host a party for her family. And that's always been a fun one because when I first started dating my wife, I got in, you know, I started coming to this party, and it was always such

an important tradition for her family. And now we're in a position where we're the ones who actually host it, and so it's kind of cool because it's like an honor in the family, given how important this party is, that we get to be the one to host it. And so this year was actually our first year hosting it, and it went really smoothly, and I was just thankful and it was kind of cool to be on the other side of that after what it was like when

I first met my wife. Secondly, my younger brother. You know, it's funny, I have two brothers and a sister, and my older brother and sister both live here in town, but my younger brother was actually closest to my age, and him and I were the two that spent the most time together when we were kids. And then when

he went to college. My brother was a very good football player, and so he ended up going to West Point and was like a two time team captain, the one of their all time leaders and tacklers, like just a really good football player. And as a result, though, he went to New York and I barely get to see him, and I saw him very literally while he was in college and then immediately had to go into

his five year military commitment. And now he lives in Austin, Texas working for Shell and like just a really busy guy, right, And so he comes home every year for Christmas. And one of the things I do is me and my two brothers get together and we just we're actually doing this tonight, and we did it again last Thursday. But like usually one or two nights while they're in town, while Jeremy's in town, we'll get together and we'll we'll just hang out like old school, like old times, and

we'll play guitar. We'll have because my older brother also plays guitar, and we'll play guitar. We'll drink a couple of beers, we'll watch a Thursday night football game, we'll play some sports bets. We'll just kind of kick back and be brothers, and it's fun for me just because I don't get to see Jeremy very often, and it kind of is just something that I look forward to every year over Christmas. Next question, can you explain to me what power rankings refers to? Is it the team

that has the highest chance to win the championship? Or is it the team with the best form? Is the team that is best on paper? Is the team that you like the most?

pay respect to how good they've been all season. But a lot of the jockeying around is like who's been playing better over the course of the last two weeks. But my power rankings are different from my contender rankings because I am a big playoff focused guy. You guys know that about me, and so I want to find a way to try to draw more attention to regular season teams, and so that's how I do. So why doesn't Steve Kerr play Kaminga and Wiggins to end the

fourth quarter? Everyone keeps talking about their negative net ratings together, but that's because they don't play much together. So how can they get a feel for each other. I'm kind of ranting here, but I think their defense would reach an elite level if they can figure out a way to play them together. So I actually one hundred percent agree.

I here's the thing. Whether or not Jonathan Kminga could be the three to four for a championship team totally different discussion no matter what, though, it's something that I think they should lean into more over the course of the stretch until the deadline, whenever they decide what they want to do. To put it simply, like, I think the reason why Steve Kerr doesn't play the two of them together is Andrew Wiggins is having a really bad offensive season and Jonathan Kminga is a young guy who's

inconsistent in his decision making. And as we've seen with the wanting to play you know, Corey Joseph from time to time, wanting to play Brandon Pizamski big minutes, like Steve Kerr is huge on like the flow of their offense, and like in general, just the like the decision making piece of it, right, And and that's not a big part of that is the five out offense and the bit like Steph and Clay are giving up the basketball a lot, and so they wanted to get back to

them at the end of the play right, preferably with an opening, And so I think that's the reason why. But I agree, I think I think leaning into your athleticism and to put it simply, like our Jonathan Caminga and Andrew Wiggins, two of your top five players, probably yeah, so they should probably play more right to at least two of your top six players, right, So like I would play, I would try to play them more together at this point. Like I understand too, why why why

they're leaning so much into Poziemski. But like at a certain point against the top tier teams, especially in the Western Conference, size would become an issue with that group. Next question, weird male back question. Okay, Jason, you said, get weird with it. Since you're also a huge Star Wars fan. If you were to form your own basketball team using only Star Wars characters. Who would you be your who would be your five man lineup? So just

for fun, I figured why not? We just we got to find tall guys, right, So Chew he's got to be the center. He's a seven footer. H I put Kylo Rennet power forward because Adam drivers big strong dude at the four, he's tall. I put Darth Plagis at the small ford because he's this tall slender Mune Darth Maul at the two is my athlete guard, and then Yoda at the point as my skill guard. There's a there's a fun one for you, Jason Nuggets and Celtics.

What's your take on how they stack up against each other? You know, it's funny. We haven't really talked about this one. It's a really interesting matchup because one of the specific things I've talked about with Denver is you need a team that has a depth of shot creation so that you can attack their entry points. One of the things that Denver does is they try to hedge and recover with Jamal Murray, they keep Michael Porter Junior off the ball.

generate quality shots there. Boston's an interesting team because they will have that ability. Like chances are you're putting Contavious called Pope on you know, probably Derek White, right, You're putting him most likely on Derek White. You're probably gonna put Aaron Gordon on Jason Tatum, right, So naturally there's a really good chance that you're gonna end up with someone like a Drew Holliday or Jalen Brown on Jamal Murray.

And if that's the case, you can use those two guys to just literally bring them ball up the floor and attack Jamal and not have to worry about trying to bring him into the action. And so then from there, they have the ability to space teams out. I also think chrisops Porzingis could cause some problems for them.

clearly the top tier contenders. Your thoughts on the state of the Star Wars cinematic universe. The sequel trilogies, in my opinion, were terrible, but I like what they've done with their live and animated shows since besides Obi I series and Boba Fett and then also any upcoming Star

Wars projects that you're excited for. So one of the things that bothers me about the Star Wars cinematic universe is their obsession with staying within this timeline, and this timeline is already completely butchered anyway, Like the first six movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and his fall in his rise right as he essentially defeats Palpatine at the end, and like ask, if you ask George Lucas, he'll tell you it's not a Luke Skywalker story. It's

an Anakin Skywalker story. That's the whole like point of this, that whole six movie stretch. But because Palpatine survives and transfers his consciousness into a clone, a flawed clone on exicle, and you know, Luke literally just stops being a Jedi

and all this other shit. And then you get to the end and like, now Luke dies, Ben Solo dies, Han Solo dies, Lea dies, Like the Skywalker line is just gone, and so is the Solo line, and now you just have Ray Palpatine as this final remaining character. It's all butchered anyway because of how much they they screwed up the sequel trilogy. That said, like, even within that context, they keep trying to fill gaps within that series.

And one of the problems there is even with what I just described your six episode arc is your Anakin storyline, but which turns into basically a Palpatine storyline, right, So that's your overarching story. Everything else you fit in there

has to be subsidiary. And that's what's frustrating. Like the best movies out there have truly like powerful villains that are interesting and that kind of have a little bit of a good side to them, right, Like it's funny, as we talked about Marvel, part of the reason Marvel's gone down the shitter, in my opinion, is like you had this profound storyline centering around Thanos, and they just haven't been able to figure out like a real crisis that people care about in these movies, right and like,

and that's kind of the issue Star Wars is happening. It is like even as you're going through, like as a Star Wars fan, I'm enjoying the Ahsoka series, right, or did enjoy the Ahsoka series, And I'm really interested

to see what happens with Grand Admiral Thron. But even then, like whatever they do there is trapped within, Like whatever happens here comes the First Order in fifteen years, and they're just gonna undo all because they're trapped under that umbrella, and Star Wars just has so much cool stuff outside of that umbrella, between like the stuff leading into the Phantom Menace with like Darth Plagus and Darth Bain to like three thousand years before that, with like Darth Revin,

and a lot of stuff with the Old Republic to wig in the future that they could do interesting things like if they go outside of that umbrella, then they could start to build an entirely a new and an enticing crisis or villain that they can construct a storyline around. And so I think that's where they've They've messed up an upcoming series that I'm excited for him, really excited

for The Acolyte. Those of you guys who are Star Wars nerds will know that the Sith, one thousand years before the Phantom Menace went extinct, but they didn't really.

Darth Baane basically faked their extinction and then went into hiding, and his plan was to overthrow the Republic through basically subterfuge, right, And so The Acolyte's really interesting to me because it takes place in the High Republic, which is like three to five hundred years before the Phantom Menace, and all the High Republic books have been mostly bad so far because they're trying this thing with the Nile, which is like basically a band of raiders just imagine like the

raiders that you'd run into when you'd play Fallout, right, just just wearing weird clothes and doing drugs and stealing from people, and it's just like not as interesting as like a real motivated villain, right. So, like, some of the High Republic stuff has been shitty, But the Acolyte is allegedly supposed to center around a Dark Side Force user, and so I think it'd be really interesting if they use the Acolyte to try to kind of build out some of the Ancient Sith storyline, which I think would

be really interesting. Obviously, I'm really excited to see what happens with Grand Admiral Thron as well, and just in general, I'm hoping that they get outside of that umbrella eventually. All Right, two more questions. Patrick Bett David posted the Christmas Day ratings for both the NFL and the NBA on Twitter, and the NFL has had five five x what the NBA has. He's a huge fan, has interviewed people like Kobe, Shack and Steven A but said he

doesn't watch regular season anymore because it sucks. What do you think the NBA could do to compete? Even though the event the NBA is worldwide, in the NFL is just US based, and I understand that. So here's the thing I think the problem with this discussion is the

NBA and the NFL are two fundamentally different sports. And what I mean by that is, like, I've actually seen this phrase thrown around online lately, but they refer to the NBA as an inventory sport in the NFL as an event sport, meaning like because there are eighty two regular season games, in n season tournament, a play in tournament for seven game series, playoff rounds, like two months of playoff basketball, there's just so much of it that you're never going to get any singular game, even a

playoff game necessarily to be viewed as a like an event, right, which an event is what you get from NFL from the standpoint of like every game carries huge stakes. Every playoff game is like appointment television because it's single elimination. It's it's just fundamentally different, and so you're gonna get

higher viewership From there. It's important to understand though, from a revenue standpoint, like, even though the NBA or the NFL crushes the NBA in revenue by five x or whatever, the gap in terms in ratings, I should say the gap in revenue is closer by proportion. And part of the reason for that is because the NBA has so much inventory, which is why they will never shorten the

season even though I want them to. And a big part of it is they can continue to drive revenue through things like overseas, bringing the game more and more overseas, which I think will be the case. I would imagine that if we skip to the distant future, the NBA will probably have franchises overseas. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a thing. And so in general, like the way I look at it, like, yeah, if you want to compare the NBA, you're really based on television ratings

to the NFL. They're gonna get their ass kicked constantly. But the NBA is very much a healthy sport. It has some flaws. I've talked about officiating. I think player movement, as much as it is the fair thing to do, it's also not necessarily the best thing for cultivating really committed local fan bases, and I think it can form a little bit of a detached feeling from fans as a result. But at the end of the day, that is the morally correct way to approach it from the standpoint of free agency.

out my hair before. So the truth of the matter is is I don't know what we're gonna do because I don't even know what it's gonna look like. I did want to try. It is something my wife and I talked about for a while. I've been doing the short hair thing forever. Those of you guys have been following the show for a while, know it. I'll probably grow it out for another year or two and just get crazy and then never do it again. So that's kind of the plan. But honestly, it's been a pain

in the ass. Like I like it, just like having a little bit of longer hair is pain because, like it's just it. My hair is super curly and frizzy, so it just constantly I'd like have crazy BedHead, like eighty percent of the time that I'm walking around my house. But like it for whatever it's worth. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

for the Volume. I jumped on with this company at an earlier phase and between you know, adding Richard Sherman, between adding Daniel Cormier, between adding Darius Slay, between adding Shannon Sharp, between adding Chad Ocho Cinco, between adding like, I think I should be careful because I don't want to get in trouble, but I'm pretty sure Shannon Sharp is getting ready to launch a new NBA show with a big name, so I won't reveal it for that sake, but like, like literally now I feel like I'm I'm

so lucky to be in this spot because the Volume is turned into this like significant sports media company, and the company trusts me to be their primary NBA day to day coverage. I just feel super blessed, and quite frankly, I wouldn't be able to be in this position if you guys didn't support the show. Just to put it simply, and like I talked about earlier, when we were talking podcasts. I'm a big believer in being authentic and just leaning into exactly the way you want to do things and

then letting the chips fall where they may. And you guys have embraced that from me, and I just am so thankful, and I hope you guys realize that I don't take it for granted.

can get it together to make a run. We'll see what happens. I will see you guys on Tuesday for some power rankings and some game breakdowns.