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eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. We are going to be continuing our top NBA players list with number twenty through number sixteen today and we're gonna get right into it. But before we get started. Follow me on Twitter at
underscore Jason lt. So, you guys don't miss any show announcements as well as any video content that I produced. Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our shows and it for whatever reason you do miss a show and you can't get back over to YouTube to check it out. We do release them in audio form under our podcast feed, under Hoops Tonight, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, without any further ado,
let's hop into it. Number twenty Kyrie Irving. Yes, I think Kyrie Irving is a top twenty basketball player in the world. I'd probably have him a touch higher, closer to fifteen if he was a little bit more reliable and dependable. I do believe he's going to have one of his best seasons on that front this year. I think it was a bit of a wake up call for him what happened with his contract negotiation. He very much wanted a five year deal from Brooklyn this offseason,
and he didn't get it. For good reason. He demonstrated over the previous two seasons that he's not dependable as it pertains to fulfilling the obligations of his contract, so he had to opt into his player option, and next year he's an unrestricted free agent and he's going to be seeking a long term deal. The only way he's gonna get that is if he demonstrates this season that the behavior from the previous seasons is over and then he's ready to commit to playing basketball on a regular basis,
which I believe he will. Well, let's get to the basketball. So in this regular season, he averaged twenty seven points, four rebounds, and six assists on fifty percent sur shot, which is excellent, albeit on a small sample size. I think he only played right around thirty games this year. The average twenty one five and five on fifty nine
percent true shooting. In the four game sweep against the Boston Celtics, which we're gonna talk a little bit more about here in the second because I do think that a little bit too much blame is put on Kyrie and Katie in that specific series. So he's one of the most reliable playoff scorers of this era. If you take out that ugly series against Milwaukee in two thousand nine team when he was with the Celtics, you can pretty much reliably independably book him for twenty plus points
efficiently every single night. And it's because, as we talked about in our criteria, I think three level scoring is the second most valuable offensive skill in all of basketball, and that is Kyrie's primary elite skill. He's actually not great at anything else, really, but he's fantastic at that
specific skill. So when you get to the playoffs and you're attacking switching defenses, and you need guys that can attack matchups, and you need guys that can rescue possessions right shot clocks winding down, you don't have anything working, you throw the ball to Kyrie. He's as good as you'll find at those specific things, and so that makes him an immensely valuable playoff player. He's one of my favorite scorers to analyze and to try to take things
from from my own game. When I'm talking to young players as well, I say the same thing like and when it comes to emulating players. Even though Kyrie is very esthetically appealing and he has a lot of flashy elements to his game, he's also amazingly fundamentally sound with his footwork, with his jump shot form, with his ability to change pace and speed his his foot speed and quickness. He's as good as you'll find at those specific things, and and there are a lot of parts to Kyrie's
game that young players should absolutely try to emulate. Obviously, I think he's the best ball handler in the league. Steph Curry's very close, but I think kyr Irving is the best ball handler in the league, probably of all time. That allows him to play reactionary basketball instead of, you know, kind of like predetermining what he's going to do. Because of that, it makes him extremely difficult to guard. He
doesn't predetermined moves. He reacts to what defenses due. He's got an unlimited repertoire of counter moves, so he's kind of just going one way or the other based on which way the defenders leaning, and then what he waits to see what you're gonna do, and then he has
a counter for regardless of what your move is. He can finish short from the rim, he can finish at the rim, he can pull up long twos, he can pull up classic midrange twos, and he has all of the off the jibile three point shots in the game. He's that it's there in terms of versatility and well rounded offensive skill, sets. That's that's what makes Kyrie Kyrie. He's as good as you'll find in the league at that specific thing. His ball handling also makes him excellent
at taking care of the basketball. He's always been a low turnover player. But outside of those things, which that's that skill set at three level, scoring, that that ball handling, all of that, Kyrie's as good as you'll find in the league. But everything else, literally every other area of the game of basketball, he's below average for his position, and that's what holds him back from reaching what Steph Curry can do as a small guard in the league.
He's not a great playmaker, he doesn't move well without the basketball. He's a poor on ball defender, he doesn't do great covering in rotations. When it comes to the physicality areas of the game, like fighting for position and getting contested rebounds, he's not great compared to other guards around the league. Leadership and availability, I don't need to say much. Just look at what happened over the course of the the last two years. So he's got this lengthy
list of weaknesses that kind of hold him back. But his peak skill is what makes him so valuable. Now, it's it's kind of unique because as a number two with a team like Brooklyn that didn't have great role players, his shortcomings become a problem. But then you put him on the two thousand sixteen calves alongside a great list of role players, all of a sudden, his elite three level scoring is the perfect skill set of for for a number two alongside Lebron. I've always thought him and
Lebron's skill sets compliment each other really well. It's one of the main reasons why I think the Lakers should pay whatever it takes to get Kyrie on board. His recent playoff failures are a bit overblown. He was amazing in Cleveland, then in Boston he was a number one, which just isn't the role that he should have. He's not good enough to be a number one. And then he was fantastic before he got hurt in that Brooklyn playoff run where they lost against Milwaukee. And then last
year this this, this last season. You know, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers. Only twenty one points per game, right, but if you actually look at the half court scoring, they fared better against Boston than anybody else did. And remember I said Boston was one of the best defenses I had ever seen. They certainly are one of the best half court defenses that I've ever seen. You guys probably remember me Ray thinking about their transition defense or their inability to take care of
the basketball in the way that compromised them frequently. But in the half court, Boston was unbelievably dominant. And it wasn't Golden State that scored the best against them. It wasn't Milwaukee, it was in Miami, it was Brooklyn. The average about nineties seven points per one hundred half court possessions compared to ninety two for Golden State, who is the second most effective offense offense against that Boston team. And that was with Kevin Durant having one of the
worst playoff series of his career. So Kyrie, you know, it's easy to look at Kyrie and to look at KD for what happened in those series, in that series and that sweep, But Jana struggled with efficiency. You know, Jimmy Butler was amazing, because Jimmy Butler's just a complete anomaly. But like a lot of players struggled against that Boston defense. You can't just specifically point at Kyrie and Katie is the only guys who struggled in the ultimate team goal
of putting the ball in the basket. Brooklyn was better at that against Boston than any of the other teams were the reason why they lost that series. The reason why they got dominated in that series is they couldn't get stops and they really struggled to hold up under the physicality that Boston creates with all of their length and athleticism all over the floor. Kyrie absolutely can be a number two. We've seen it, like in two thousand and sixteen with the Calves. You just need to have
great role players there. It's one of the main reasons why that Brooklyn situation was broken and why they need to blow things up. They just don't necessarily have the requisite pieces to win with with Kyrie Irving as your second best player. Number nineteen James harden So in this regular season he averaged twenty two points eight rebounds in tennessis on fifty eight percent true shooting. Then in the postseason nineteen points per game, six rebounds and nine assis
on fifty eight percent try shooting. His best skill is his playmaking. At this point in his career, used to be scoring now it's playmaking. I call him a second tier playmaker. If you look at like lebron Chris, Paul Yokich, and Lucas like your top tier guys, I think James Harden's in the group right below them. That's his best skill. He's still a very efficient score, just on much lower volume. I mean, nineteen points per game in a playoff series in a playoff runs just isn't gonna get it done.
The reality is that he's lost a step. Now. Some people will play in the hamstring. It's probably a combination of that in his lifestyle, which has led to him being out of shape, often not taking great care of his body. I think push comes to shove. James Harden would probably admit that, but that has led to him losing a step. And him losing a step as affected every single part of his game. You know, I talked about this a lot on this show, especially when we
talk about skill development. But no move or or offensive attack works without the counter also working, because if the counter doesn't work, the defender can sit on your strength. We talked about this with Pascal Siyak him in the last show. If you guys, remember you can't shoot, then players will play off of you and take away your rim strengths. If you can't beat them off the dribble, then they will play up on your jump shot and make it harder for you to get to your jump shot.
So for James Hart, for Pascal Siakim, it was the inability to shoot that affects him as a rim score right. But for James Harden, it's his inability to get a step on defenders into the lane that affects his pull
up jump shooting. So in Philly he averaged two point one restricted area finishes per game on As a comparison, in two thousand eighteen, when he won the m v P, he wont He finished three point nine layups in the restricted area per game at sixty two percent with Houston in two thousand eighteen, So he is half as effective at getting to the rim and finishing as he was
in two thousand eighteen. That's a significant drop off. This past season, he shot thirty three PC on pull up jump shots with Philly on only six point seven attempts per game. In two thousand and eighteen, he shot on pull up jump shots on ten attempts per game. So as you can see that inability to drive the ball to the basket has allowed defenders to step up on his step back more he's not getting as much separation.
More often than not, he's passing on those shots. His attempts are way down, and then when he gets to him, he doesn't have the requisite separation and he's not knocking them down. There's always a given to take to this kind of thing. All areas of the game of basketball are intricate, intricately connected in all of these ways, and James Harden losing a step has directly affected his ability to get to his pull up jump shot, which which
makes it even harder to get to the rim. You know, they all just kind of like compound on each other like that. So and and the place where you see that affect the Sixers so much is guys like Tires, Maxie and Tobias Hairs are really good basketball plays, but they're not great enough to consistently attack a set defense. And it's so important for Philly for James Harden to get initial dribble penetration so that guys like Maxie and
Harris can attack with an advantage. And when those guys attack with an advantage, they are deadly, and so James Harden trying to recapture some of that athleticism is the best pathway towards Philly reaching their ultimate ceiling, because they need James Harden to be able to beat people off the dribble consistently. Again, last couple of nitpicky things. You know, he was great, he turned into a solid defensive player two thousand and eight team, but outside of that, it's
always been pretty bad. He's still a solid post up defender because teams foolishly think that he's small so they can attack him in the post. But he's a very big six five and trunky and has a low center of gravity, so trying to post him up as kind of a fool's Errand my main beef with James Harden has always been like leadership and body language. It's one of the big reasons why I was a huge fan of the PJ. Tucker signing and the Daniel House signing.
You know, toughness and and like remaining competitive in basketball games was one of James Harden's biggest weaknesses. You see it all the time. You saw it again in this Miami series where remember that play where uh, he kind of like was walking the ball up the floor as it was rolling on the ground, and then I can't remember who it was. I might have been Victori La Depot, but they just ran in and grabbed the basketball, win
and laid it up the other way. You remember the end of the two thousand nineteen series against Golden State where he's just throwing the ball all over the court, like when the going gets tough. James Harden's body language is poor, and and that's tough when your best player has that type of body language, because the whole team
will traditionally follow. So hopefully guys like Daniel House and p J. Tucker will help the Sixers in that specific department and make this team a little bit more capable of holding up in some adversity in the playoffs. So last question with James Harden is he washed? I don't think so. First of all, he's still relatively young. He's in his early thirties, is only a couple of years older than me, And I think what he's going through right now is actually kind of similar to something that
I'm going through, just in a different way. Like I always grew up with an incredible metabolism. I could eat whatever the hell I wanted, and I just never put on anyway, And I always I always felt like I
could get away with anything. And as I've noticed, as I've gotten earlier, like my digestive system is a little bit more sensitive, like if I if I do what I did on vacation and eat like crazy and don't work out like I put on twelve pounds in fourteen days on a lake and on a cruise ship, right, Like, It's a lot of you guys who are listening can probably relate to that to a certain extent now, But James Harden, it's a little bit more intense because it's
on the on the level of a professional athlete, right. So he's a professional athlete, and for him, it's more his lifestyle, the clubbing, the late nights, all that kind of stuff, right, And for a long time he could get away with it. But I think over the last couple of years he's had some glaring examples of the fact that he's aging to the point where he can no longer live that lifestyle. He might have to turn away from the clubbing in the late nights until the
off season. And I genuinely believe, based on absolutely no intel I genuinely believe that James Harden has learned that lesson. I believe he will come into camp this year in much better shape. I think he understands the urgency of what this Philly team is capable of. With Tyres Maxie, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiide on the roster. I believe he will come back and have a bounce back season. I expect James Harden to be a dominant top ten
level player this year. He doesn't deserve that recognition now, but I think he's got at least one or two great seasons left in him. He'll just have to take care of his body, and I think he's learned that lesson, that lesson, and I believe we will see a bounce back season from James Harden this year. We'll see if he makes me look stupid for saying something like that, because I mean, here's the thing. When James Harden has got it going to the rim, when he's got that burst,
he is a top ten player. Like in two thousand eighteen, he was creeping into that five or six spot. And he may not be that good again, but if you can get to the ninth or tenth best player in the league type of of production. All of a sudden, Philly becomes a much more interesting championship threat. Alright, guys, I have some big news. Fandel has an all new mobile gaming app called fan Duel face Off. Fandel face Off is where you compete in quick, fun games against
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and conditions. Number eighteen. One that I've been looking forward to talking to talking about for a long time because I do think this is a super interesting topic and it's very, very important to this success of the Los
Angeles Lakers. Number eighteen Anthony Davis. Now I've been for all of these other rankings, I've been giving the last season's UH stats in last playoff run stats for Anthony Davis, I'm gonna give the last two seasons because it's he has been so unavailable that and it's just kind of gives a better UH does a better job of capturing
the way that he's fallen off. So in the last two regular seasons, he's averaged twenty three points, nine rebounds, and three assists on fifty seven percent tur shooting in Games one through three against Phoenix and last year's playoff run because he played two additional games, but he barely played in both of those games because he got hurt. But in games one through three Verse Phoenix, he average twenty seven, nine and three, which is great, but on
forty three percent shooting in from three. I'm gonna compare that to the twenty twenty season for you guys real quick, so you could see how big of a drop off we're talking about. Regular season twenty six points, nine rebounds, three assists on six true shooting in the playoffs twenty eight points, ten rebounds, four assists on sixty seven percent true shooting. It was one of the most dominant playoff
runs that we've seen. Now, a lot of people are gonna say things like, oh, it was the bubble, but I encourage to look at Anthony Davis's production in the month or so leading into the bubble, before the shutdown, and early the very early part of the of the following regular season. His jump shot really was coming around. He really was developing into a better version of himself,
and then something happened after that point. It's funny because I was watching a Tom Brady or saw a tweet come across my timeline the other day of Tom Brady. Someone was quoting something that happened in training camp and Tom Brady was like turning to Leonard four Nett and cussing him out because he got tackled for a loss on a running play in training camp. And I was sitting there thinking, I'm like, man, that dude is such
a psychopath. Like he's got seven championships, he's undisputed the best football player ever, and he's still every bit of a psychotically competitive asshole now that he was back then. And it's so strange to see that juxtaposed with what happened with Anthony Davis, which is after the bubble, you could make a solid case that he was as high
as the second best player in the world. I had I think I had him four if I remember correctly, after that playoff from but he was like unassailably a top five NBA basketball player again, ten and four on six seven percent true shooting on the way to a title, and not so much in the finals, but in the previous rounds he was every bit as good as Lebron James was. That's how good he was. And then he just completely fell off. Now health did play a role, but some of it is controlled and some of it
is out of his control. Landing on someone's foot. Yeah, there's nothing you can really do about that. That happened late in this past season, but there's great intel out there for multiple people that he came into camp in one and in two out of shape. I should yeah, like in the season in two season, he showed up into camp out of shape. He looked big, He visibly looked big on the screen, and then you see things like, oh, he's having achilles tendinosis, which is a wear and tear injury.
You know, you see him getting wrist injuries and things like that from falling down all the damn time. That's stuff that's absolutely under his control. And I mean, like, I can't just sit there and be like, oh, man, Anthony Davis top five player just needs to be healthy. No, he showed up into camp out of shape and then proceeded to get hurt. That that that's that's the thing that tends to happen when you show up into camp
out of shape. There are two Anthony Davis is. There's the defensive Player of the Year candidate who's a knockdown three point shooter who has a deadly high post attack and is a monster around the rim. That guy's a top five player. But then there's the all defense ish level big who can't score efficiently anytime. He's a a from the basket and is basically Clint Capella around the rim, who can roll and dive, and he still is a
pretty dominant offensive rebounder. So Clint Cappela is probably under selling it to a certain extent, but offensively that you know, that's that's the kind of player we've seen the last couple of years, and that's why I call him the Lakers X factor. That's why I think he's the most important piece to whether or not the Lakers can get
back to championship contention. There's two Anthony Davis is that first Anthony Davis the deep, the defensive player of the year, is a perimeter monster and a number under the rim monster. That guy is going to take the Lakers back to championship contention if it's more of the last two years, and it's the guy that doesn't make the extra effort plays on defense anymore, who can't score efficiently away from the rim, who doesn't take care of his body. The Lakers are going to be a you know, a play
in team. So I mean, yeah, I hope the Lakers make some moves to spruce up the roster. Yeah, we hope Lebron stays healthy. Yeah, we hope Austin Reeves takes a leap. None of that matters unless the old Anthony Davis comes back. It's the only it's the only thing that matters as it pertains to the Lakers reaching their ceiling, because when Anthony Davis is that guy and when Lebron is healthy and on the floor, those two guys, it's extremely difficult to beat them in a basketball game when
they're at that level. Now, what do I expect? This has been a lot of noise, and he's been consistently criticized for two years fairly. I saw a tweet come across my feet from some random accounts today it's like, why Anthony Davis is a top ten player in the NBA, And I wanted to be like, you can't make that case anymore. He has absolutely no case to be considered among the top ten players in the league. In fact, it's insulting to the other players that are in that
area to put him there. He has massively fallen off over the last couple of years. I genuinely believe that all of that will lead to him waking up and having a big bounce back season this year, just like what happened with James Harden. But that's in Anthony Davis's hands, and it's up to him to make that happen. And and and again. I know I've just been really critical of him, but he's one of my favorite players, and he's so incredibly dominant when he's locked in. I just
want to see that again. I just I'm trying to light a fire under his butt. Man, I want to see the old Anthony Davis number seventeen. Demarda Rosen. In this regular season, he average twenty five and five on true shooting. Damn good playoff run, albeit in a quick gentleman sweep to the Bucks, he average twenty one five and five on forty percent true shooting. Um. The Bucks are really good, and they were a bad matchup for Chicago.
We talked about this in our playoff previews, uh, you know, several months ago, but the Bulls were basically the worst three point shooting team in the league. They were dead last in three point attempts per one hundred possessions and they were twenty nine in makes per one possessions. And the Bucks, they are a team that sells out to the paint and makes you shoot threes. And so it was a really really bad matchup specifically for the Bulls
and specifically for Demarta Rosen. Like Demarta Rosen average five made field goals in the paint this season, the Bucks held him to three point to Why because it's just completely crowded in there. So a huge part of that is the Lonzo ball injury, and I he's just the
poor kid just can't stay on the court. And he's he's a really really talented young guard, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, and he's turned himself into such a good three point shooter that just a Lonzo getting healthy and getting back into the lineup will go a long way towards alleviating that spacing issue. They need Patrick Williams to take a leap, They need to get a better front court athlete because Vussovitch struggles in some
of those things. So I do think that I want to cut the Rosen some slack in what happened in that uh in that specific playoff matchup against the Bucks. But the reality is is that he does need to get better as a three level score. Demarta Rosen is a great two level score, but he's methodically works as a way closer to the basket as a back to the basket player, and when you're playing against teams like the Bucks that packed the paint, that's just not enough.
He needs to become a dynamic pull up three point shooters so that he can get more slashing opportunities, so that he can actually get downhill a little bit more instead of methodically working his way into the lane. He's always been a very good playmaker, specifically since he went to San Antonio, but that took a little bit of a step back here in Chicago. I think he averaged two fewer assist per game than he did the previous season.
But a big part of that is the role that he's in on this team, and like we said earlier, that lack of shooting to kick out to uh to allow him to make plays for his teammates. Um On defense, he's okay below average comparative most of the better defensive
wings around the league. His confidence has always been one of his biggest issues because the drop off between his regular season production and his playoff production has been kind of consistent throughout his career, and I've always associated it associated it to confidence, Like you just don't see the same you know, like moxie from him on the court in the playoffs and you do in the regular season.
But I did see in this last regular season the last couple actually, he you saw it, like him start to get a lot more comfortable with who he was, a lot more confident. I saw him outduel some really good basketball players in big moments at the end of games. But then that completely faded against Milwaukee after that game, to which he was amazing in Game two and basically shot the Bucks out of their own building. But the rest of the series he really really struggled. And again
it's because they took away his strength. They packed the paint and Dmarda Rosen methodically working his way downhill into traffic just wasn't gonna cut it. And and so he will eventually again, like him being such a great midrange score is uniquely great for this era. Like we've talked about so much, NBA defense is prioritized the three point line and the rim, so if you can operate in that middle area, there's a great deal of value there. But you can't be a two level score. You have
to be a three level score. He did up his uh A usage at the three point line a little bit this year. I think he went from about one point to three point attempts the previous season to one point nine, which is okay, but he really needs to be a guy who's taken at least three or four or three point shots uh per game number sixteen. And this is the guy that I think is the breakout player of this past postseason. Jalen Brown the average six and four ont s percent true shooting in the regular season.
He average twenty three seven in four on fifty eight percent true shooting in the playoffs, so ticking up in the playoffs. Just like I said with Anthony Edwards, I think it's a huge uh indicator of the value of size and strength. He's a big, strong wing, which allows him to thrive in the physicality of the playoffs. I have a couple of wild Jalen Brown stats for you. He led all players in the NBA playoffs and fourth
quarter scoring in total scoring. He shot fifty eight percent from the yield in the fourth quarters, fifty six percent on threes. He's straight up one a bunch of games for Boston and on many nights was their best player. He shot a hundred and twenty six pull up jump shots that was the revelation from Jalen Brown in this playoff run and made fifty four of them, which is
forty two point nine percent. As a comparison, Tatum took a hundred ninety two and only made thirty three percent of him the Nightmare pull up shooting UH playoff run. Thirty players in this playoff run attempted at least fifty pull up jump shots. Jalen was fifth in percentage, seventh in effective field goal percentage which waits threes in sixth in total makes. Specifically, what he's really great at is his pound dribble step back going to the left um.
This is great for players to have a low center of gravity that have a good first step. When you beat someone UH, you drive left and the defenders usually trying to ride you, but you're bigger and stronger. You work him down one or two dribbles and you pound the basketball and take step back. Jalen Brown is excellent at that. Specific pull up jump shot. At me, it's borderline unguardable with how gifted he is at getting to
the rim. And then the other thing that's interesting with his off the dribble shooting is where he releases the shot. Because he's a great athlete, he elevates and shoots at the top of his shot. There's pretty much like three different shot releases that you'll see around the league. Really short players will shoot on the way up because they're not tall and they typically don't elevate, so they have to get the shot off quickly when they have separation.
Classic examples of this are like Steph Curry and Trey Young. Steph Steph Curry is a lightning quick release on the way up. Spot up shooters think like Klay Thompson or any of the other great spot up shooters around the league. They typically shoot just before the apex of their shot, so they get lots of elevation to take away how much they need to use their arms, which makes it
easier to do for muscle memory. Right, if you have to jacket really if you have to throw the shoot the ball really hard with your arm, it's hard to control that. But if you elevate, you get good power from your legs and then you can be really controlled and replicate your release. And then, last, but not least, there's elevating jump shooters. One of the only guard that does this extremely well that I've seen is Kyrie Irving.
But these guys shoot at the top of their shot, and the idea there is they're hanging in the air waiting for you to come down so that they can shoot over the top. And that's the type of pull up jump shooter that Jalen Brown is. He It's it's really really pretty pretty to watch to see the way that he hangs over the defender and shoots. Another great example of that is Mr Devin Booker. He was fifth in total finishes in the restricted area, only six, though
he's struggled to finish through contact. That's something he's gonna have to to get a little bit better at. For a big slashing wing like him, you'd want to be higher than seventy. You want to be around seventy. He had average three point five assists and had three point one turnovers per game. He has a tendency to over complicate his dribble and dribble into traffic now you'd see people on Twitter say things like, oh, Jalen Brown can't dribble.
Jalen Brown can dribble, fine. It's just there's two different elements to ball handling. There's the technical aspect of controlling the basketball, and then there's understanding how to avoid situations where you can lose the basketball. In the NBA playoffs, you're allowed to do a lot of hand checking, hitting
and and and body checking and all those things. And if you're even if you technically in a very sound technical way dribble the ball, well, if someone hits you on the arm and the ref doesn't call it, you're
gonna lose the basketball. And one of the big issues that Jalen Brown ran into is he'd get over complicated with side to side dribbles when he's a better athlete, so he could simplify it and just hit the gaps, and then he would dribble into traffic and keep the dribble alive and people would slap his arms and stuff, and he'd lose the basketball. Simplifying things. Lebron is great at this, simplifying things to where it's a rip through and you gather early and tuck the basketball and take
it strong to the ram. That'll be the next step to him for him to take care of the basketball. So the big question with Jylen Brown can he be a number one? And this is a very relevant question because of a specific trade that was thrown out, a trade possibility that was thrown out while I was on
vacation involving Jalen Brown going to the Brooklyn Nets. I believe he can and I'm so high on Jalen Brown that I think the Brooklyn netshould make this particular trade if they can't get Zion, if they can't get Scottie Barnes, I would get Jalen Brown if I was the Brooklyn Nets. And a big part of that is he's taking care of the basketball and becoming a better playmaker away from being a bona fide star and a guy who's consistently a threat to be considered a top ten player. That's
how good of a basketball player Jalen Brown is. I'm extremely high on him. He's not a number one right now, but he absolutely can believe it can be, and I think it's realistic that he could be one day, and I think Brooklyn should potentially make that move if they can't get something better from Toronto or from New Orleans. Very very high on Jalen Brown. Uh. It's cool to see him this high on the list because I watched
him play in person when he was at CAL. I've watched his career developed and he's become a fine, dependable NBA playoff basketball player, and I'm excited to see what he can do this last year. All Right, that's all I have for tonight. We'll have fifteen through eleven sometime this weekend. As always, I appreciate your guys support, and I'll see you in a couple of days. The volume