Hoops Tonight - Why Bronny James looks LOST in Lakers NBA Summer League

or any simpler. Baseball, golf, UFC, there's something for every fan of every sport to bet on DraftKings. And I know it's early, but football season will be here before you know it. And the Kansas City Chiefs are currently the favorite to win the Super Bowl on DraftKings at plus five fifty. And if you're new to DraftKings, you got to check this out. New customers, bet five dollars and get one hundred and fifty in bonus bets instantly.

Download the Draft Kings Sportsbook app now and use code coops that's hops, that's code hoops for new customers to get one to fifty in bonus bets instantly when you bet just five dollars only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler or in West Virginia visit www dot one eight hundred gambler dot net. In New York called eight seven seven eight Hope and Why, or text hope and Why to four six seven three

sixty nine. In 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. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. Deposit and eligibility restrictions apply. See terms and responsible gaming resources at DKG dot co.

Slash Baseball, All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume heavy Saturday. Everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great weekend. I'm coming to you guys again from Vegas for NBA Summer League. Got a jampackshow for you guys today. We're gonna hit the Rockets Lakers game from Lafe night. Talk a little bit about BROWNI James's summer League debut. We're going to talk about Reed Shepherd and how impressive he looked in his first game

here in Vegas. I'm gonna tell you guys a little bit about my interview with Hime Hawkes which we recorded yesterday that's going to be airing on our feeds on Monday. And then the biggest story in the NBA yesterday, Jalen Brunson takes a nine figure discount and guaranteed money compared to what he could have made if he waited until

next summer to sign. Something that's going to help the Knicks and something that is kind of complicated as it pertains to the CBA, the relationship between the NBA Players Association as well as the owners. It's a really interesting topic I want to dive into, and certainly is amazing news for Knicks fans as they get set for hopefully a couple of years here where they can be consistently in the top tier of contention. So we're gonna get to all that stuff today. You guys know the drill

before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore json LTC. You guys, don't miss announcement, don't forget about a podcast for you where you get your podc under Hoops tonight, and then keep dropping mailbag questions in those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the summer.

And then, last, but not least, before we get started, I want to talk to you guys about Game Time. Those of you guys who've been listening to the show for the last year know that Game Time has been a consistent sponsor of ours and Game Time just saved me a lot of money today. So on Thursday I went to go see Dead and Company at the Sphere. It was literally the coolest thing I have ever seen. Obviously, I'm a Deadhead, so that makes it a little bit.

It makes me a little biased. But in addition to that, the Sphere itself is just an incredible experience. There's no way to describe it. I'm not even gonna try to do it here on the show. It was just the coolest thing I've ever seen, and it added just an entire different layer in that immersive experience to what the show typically brings. And so I have some family out here in Vegas and my little brother who came with me,

He's like, dude, we gotta go again. We got to go again on Saturday, and so I was like, I want to go where. We got to try to find seats though, and like I'm looking looking around and trying to find something. And you know, I talk a lot about the zone deals from from Game Time, where you pick a seat, you pick a section, and then they give you a deal within that section. But they have these things called flash deals where what they do is they'll take seats and they'll just discount them for a

short period of time. And if you're in a situation like I'm in where it's day of and you have to get a ticket in short notice, you can get a great deal kind of on the spot. And by far the best price I found for a quality seat with a good view of the screen and the and the band was on game time. They saved me a ton of money today. It was literally an incredible experience and I highly recommend if you're looking for a show, especially on short notice, get on game time and try

to capitalize on one of those flash deals. It came through super clutch for me today and now after watching basketball at Thomas and Mack all day. I'll be going to the sphere to watch Dead and Company again, which I'm super super excited about. Would be the perfect cherry on top of a awesome weekend here in Vegas. So take the guess work out of buying concert tickets, Major

League Baseball tickets, Comedian tickets, whatever it is. With game Time, Download the game Time app, Create an account and use code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase terms apply again. Create an account and redeem code Hoops. That's Hoops for twenty dollars off. Download game Time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I told you guys a little bit about this fear.

It was incredible. Excited to go back. The Heimhawkes interview is super cool. So, as you guys know, it's my first opportunity to interview an NBA player. We've interviewed a former NBA player. We interviewed Damian Wilkins, who is the leader of Overtime Elite, but this is our first current

active NBA player to interview. We were at the Brotherhood Deli at the at the Thomas and Macarna so it's kind of like on the concourses, like a restaurant that's there, and I may had done like a meet and greet and some other stuff there. First thing that stood out to me he is huge, Like he's listed at six six with like a six to ten wingspan, but I would venture to guess that because he was at least a half inch taller than me and I in shoes

him about six six six six and a half. So he's probably the better part at six seven six seven and a half when he's got shoes on, and he's incredibly built. And so it was funny because we talked about the uh we talked a lot about his post game and I've read a stat to him on the in the interview about how he was like the third best post player in the entire NBA to have at least seventy five reps during the regular season, And it's not hard to figure out. He's just he's just big.

He's big and strong, and he's capable of like winning those ground battles, and like there's you know how it is with NBA players, It's always different when you see him in person, like I've seen Anthony Davis in person now twice. I saw him in person at the USA game on Wednesday, and like, you watch him just swallow up shots around the rim. There was a kind of

a chase down block he had. I think it was on On Shay, It might have been on Jamal Murray, can't remember who, but where ad like jumped on right in front the rim and brought his arms up around both sides of the rim and like slapped the backboard on both sides. It was like cheating. I don't know how anybody gets a shot off over that guy. Like there's a different level of like appreciation you get for the physical stature of NBA players when you actually see

them in person. That was the first thing that stood out to me about Hime. But he's super nice, super informative. We talked a lot about the Team USA Select team process. We talked about his first season with the Miami Heat. We got in the weeds about his post game. We had an interesting conversation about jump shooting and the and the highs and lows of your process of trying to develop as a jump shooter, and so yeah, like you know, Summer League is a little weird because it's when I

first came here two years ago. I was just like, because I didn't come, I was with the volume at that point, but it wasn't a sponsored trip. I just kind of came as a fan and I just kind of parked my ass in the seats and I just took in the games like NonStop. And that was a really fun draft. If you guys remember that was the Paloboncaro Draft and Jabbari's and that was kind of a fun like there were just lots of like really high

level players playing every single day. But over the last couple of years, obviously with the volume, there's been more responsibility. So we're not going to get to as much Summer league basketball today. We're just going to talk a little bit about Rockets, Rockets, Lakers. But getting to do that experience was super cool. I'm hoping you know, it was interesting. I'd never done it before, so as I went in, I was like, am I going to enjoy interviewing NBA players?

This is going to be something I want to do in the long run, And I genuinely enjoyed it. Love talking hoops with them. That video is coming out on Monday. I'm super super excited to share that with you, guys. That's going to be fun looking forward to it. Lakers Rockets.

First of all, I'm blown away by the Lakers fan base because that place was completely packed for the Laker game, like up into I shouldn't say completely packed, it's probably like ninety five percent full, Like there were some rows in the nosebleeds that were open, but the lower bowl was completely packed and the upper bowl was pretty full.

And then as soon as that game ended, even to see the first and second overall picks and Zachary Rissasche and Alex Sargo against each other, the arena just emptied out.

And like, again, those guys aren't the traditional top picks, right, Like my friend Sam Vessini and his draft guide had both of those guys as Tier three prospects, which means they have all start upside, but they're considered more or less like role player prospects, right, And so it's be unusual for the house to be packed for something like that.

But that just goes to show you too, one thing the power of Bronni and then two the which is basically the power of the Lebron James brand and everything associated with his family. And then two just Laker fans and how they just show up and force to everything.

It's obviously, as you guys know, I did a Lakers podcast before I did Hoops Tonight, and so the Laker fan base has been very good to me and has helped me get to where I've been in the industry, and so it was just kind of a cool demonstration of that yesterday. But in the game, I want to the two guys own a zero in on are Bronni and Reed Shepherd because Read Shepherd was like, like so good, so so so good yesterday. We're gonna get into that. Bronni, it still feels like his feel for the game is

just off right now. Like on defense to start this game, he's guarding Red Shepherd. As we know Read Shepherd is. There's different kinds of shooters, right, There's shooters and then there's like lasers or like the coach that I when I first started coaching high school basketball, Doug da Moore, the coach I coached at Underneath at Accounting the Foothills, who the year after they won the state championship. He used to always tell me there's shooters and there's makers,

and there's two very different things. Right. A maker is like, you cannot leave this guy open or he's going to hit the shot, or as a shooter, it's like maybe he makes him, maybe he doesn't. You know. It's more of a streaky sort of thing. Reed Shepherd is a maker.

He is a guy that you cannot leave open. I can't remember the exact number that I pulled when we did our scout on him around the draft, but he shot an absurdly high percentage on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots at Kentucky and Bronnie James got that matchup to start the game, and what I thought was interesting was immediately off the top in the first shift, he lost him twice. And it wasn't like he lost him because he was running through the blender. He lost him

in off ball defense. The first one, Reid was at the top of the key and he kind of sunk down into the lane and help and it's like, you're guarding this laser shooter. You gotta be attached. Easy swing pass from Cam Whitmore back to Reed Shepherd. Read Shepherd just pump fakes Brownie jumps flying out of his shoes out to try to block the three point shot. Reid

takes a simple jump dribble into the lane. Cam Whitmore cuts along the baseline back door and Reid hits him with the back door pass and he gets the easy reverse layup. And it's like your off ball defensive responsibilities if you're Brownie there are fundamentally different. Because you're guarding a laser. You cannot be digging down into the lane anywhere far enough to where you can't just make a simple drop step move to be right back in the

shooter's pocket, like you just have to stay attached. A couple possessions later, same exact sort of thing. Read Shepherd's

on the left wing this time. I think it might have been Cam Whitmoregan, I can't remember, but one of the Rockets players is dribbling at the top of the key and Bronnie's like digging down at the nail and swiping down at the basketball, easy swing pass out to the left wing, wide open catch and shoot three for Reed Shepherd, who of course knocks it down because that's what he does, right and so like it just right now. It's just you can tell even though the tools are there.

And again I'm a big believer that the tools are there. For Bronnie, his athleticism is real. You saw that on the offensive end, right, like the downhill slashing ability is first bucket driving along that right slot into the lane. There was that transition run out where he like popped up off of two legs like on the move to have that easy one handed dunk. Like he's got the tools, but everything is just so like it just feels so

raw at this point, even the jump shot. Like we know he has the touch because we've seen him get like make really high percentages of his threes in drills, but in games, it's just there's not a fluidity to it. I want to talk about the concept of energy transfer for a second. This is something that I think is really really important in jump shooting that doesn't get talked

about enough. And the general concept of energy transfer is when you're shooting a deep three, for instance, called like a twenty five footer, right Like, Yeah, a good shooter doesn't have trouble getting the ball to the rim or anything, but there is a certain amount of energy that you have to get into the basketball to get that twenty foot foot That twenty foot shot a real chance to get in with the appropriate amount of arc that it needs to have a high percentage chance to go in.

And so that energy transfer process starts at your feet and it comes up through your knees, up through your hips, through your back, up through your shoulders, up through your wrists on the release right. And so that is why in your form you don't want to have wasted movement. In addition to that, you want the ball to flow in a straight line up through to the basket, meaning like you don't want to have the ball swinging around and changing direction a ton in your release because that

disrupts energy transfer. Think of it like this. The less efficient you are with your energy transfer as you come up through your body into the shot, the more you have to snap your wrist at the end to make up for it. The more you have to snap your wrist at the end to make up for it, the more it's hard to replicate that movement in a very

like muscle memory type of consistent way. Whereas when you have excellent muscle memory, or excuse me, when you have excellent energy transfer, it's just a very light flip of the wrist. When you watch the best shooters, when you watch Steph, when you watch Clay, it looks effortless because they're getting perfectly efficient energy transfer up from their feet through the top of the basketball. Bronnie has like a weird dip that he does where he kind of like

gets out of his power line. He brings the ball up like a catapult where he brings it back and then forward. And when you bring it back and then forward, you're basically creating a hitch in the shot. The best shooters, they come up in their shooting pocket, they bring it up along their chest rather than bringing it back this

way and then shooting. And so that's why I think we're seeing a lot of Bronnie leaving the ball short on the front of the rim, not getting enough arc on the shot, having kind of like an inconsistent looking release. It's because of the fact that right now there's just a lot of wasted movement and wasted energy in his

jump shot. All of this comes back to say he's raw, He's got forty years to figure it out, and like that that's going to be that's going to be the challenge for him is figuring out the jump shot form, figuring out some of the reads to make it a higher level, better game plan, discipline on the defensive end. There's one angle to this that that didn't get broached that I want to get into though. So last night, those of you guys who are longtime listen listeners of

the show, remember Raj Chappollo. Raj is a friend of mine who I actually did State of the Lakers with early on, and him and I would go live after Laker games and we would go And I had a dinner last night with a bunch of my friends in the industry and Roj was there and we were chatting, and rog made an interesting point. It was something that I didn't even factor in during the Brawny thing. And this is a legitimate criticism as it pertains to the

Brownie signing. He takes up a roster spot. And the truth of the matter is is he is more or less a two way type of prospect. That's not an insult to where he was drafted. That's typical. The majority of second round guys are kind of like two way prospect type of dudes. On a two way contract. He's not taking up a roster spot. He can play fifty NBA games if you want to, even though you're not

going to use him like that. But he doesn't take up a roster spot, then the Lakers would have two free roster spots, which would give them some flexibility in the trade market. Say they did want to take a they wanted to flip D'Angelo Russell for you know, a

backup center and a two somewhere. Right, Like, say they wanted to bring back two players in a deal, they can't do that right now because of the fact that they don't have the roster spots available right So, like if they had, they have one roster spot available right now.

So in theory, right now, they could trade out one player and bring back two, but they could not trade out one player and bring back three right What if they wanted to sign Gary trade If they want to sign Gary Trent Junior and make a trade that brought back two players, they would be constricted because they don't

have a roster spot. And so there is something to be said about the risk that Rob Polinka and Genie Buss took by signing Bronnie James to a legitimate four year NBA deal, is he is eating up a Lakers roster spot for the next four seasons. Now, the counter to that is they can dump salary, so they could probably send a team a second round pick to take Cam Reddish on in their payroll for a season, just

trade him into an empty cap space. The team that takes it on is getting a draft pick out of it as compensation, So the Lakers could create a roster spot if they need it. But there is something to be said about the Lakers did affect their flexibility by banking on Bronny to be an NBA player. And I do genuinely believe that Bronni has that capability, but I

think he is years plural away. I think he has a lot of ground to make up in the meantime, and there was some risk and lack, you know, kind of affected flexibility by them going that way.

for their favorite teams players over and over again. Everybody hates a homer and every league has one of them. But right now, you can put all that intel to the test by bringing those patterns directly into a mock draft and make your mock draft feel like the real thing. Check out fantasypros dot com slash volume today to get an edge over your league mates right now and forever.

the floor. Step one, Reid had to catch the basketball in position to shoot right away. This is a mistake that I see a lot of young basketball players make, where like they're spotting up, but they're not stand there like standing straight, or they're not really like in an active athletic position to be able to go right away

on the catch. Right What you want to do is you want to be down in your shooting stance with your hands out ready in the shooting pockets, so when the ball comes to you, you can literally on the catch flow directly up into your jump shot. It buys you time, and when you're dealing with NBA level athletes, there's not much time. You don't have all day to load up into your jump shot. This is exactly what we were talking about with Bronnie, which is why he's

getting some clunky releases and ugly misses. Right Reed, Shepherd on that play, he's down in his stance and immediately on the catch, he just shows the ball because he sees Bronnie's out of position. He's making a read as he's waiting there for the catch, he sees the ball coming at him. He's making a read. Bronnie's at a position. This dude's gonna close out too hard. Just show him the basketball. Bronnie goes flying by very simple dribble move

into the lane. Once you get into the lane, you immediately canvass the floor and pay attention to what's happening as Bronnie made the move. Cam Whitmore's man stuttered for just a second because he was watching Reid get dribble penetration. Cam made a read cutting along the back door, and Shepherd hit him with the back door cut. That's not a move that takes thousands of reps in the gym to build out some complex skill set. That is just

simple feel for the game. There was a play along the I can't remember his name, the bald dude for

the Lakers, the bald white dude who plays guard. He was guarding Reed Shepherd on the right wing, and it's like he comes over a ball screen and there's things are kind of congested, and so he doesn't really have anywhere to go, and so he just puts the bald dude in jail, traps him on his backside, kind of just meanders into the elbow, waits for the situation to clear out, sees that there's nothing there, but he sees the bald dude kind of leaning on his left hand side,

and he just does a whip across crossover left to right, gets a ton of separation and rises into a shot. Again. It's one simple move, one crossover. But he got to that spot by virtue of just patiently letting a play develop. And what makes me so excited about Red Shepherd's fit with the Rockets is they have tons of that athletic upside with guys like Jabari Smith Junior, with guys like Jalen Green. They have guys like alburn Sangun who's going

to be able to get the defense into rotation. Reed Shepherd is going to catch with an advantage a lot, and he's going to capitalize on it. I get that the fit is funny here is we're talking about two white dudes. But this is what actually makes him similar to Austin Reeves in my opinion, because Austin Reeves is one of those guys where doesn't really have the athletic upside to like run your offense in super large doses. Austin can run action so will read. Austin can run

ball screens with Anthony Davis. Austin can get buckets. Austin's a dude who's had you know, a bunch of twenty point playoff games in his career. And I'm not trying to sit there and pretend like he doesn't have the ability to do it. But if you put him against an elite perimeter defender and with an elite screen defender. He's not going to be the kind of guy that can take you to the Promised Land. Neither can Read Shepherd.

But the context of these supremely gifted offensive players like Alpa and Shangoun, like Jalen Green, Jabaris Smith Jr. These guys like they are going to be able to set him up with advantage opportunities so that he can play kind of in the flow and be a connective piece. My favorite role for Austin Reeves is I want him to be the second best ball handler on the floor. I want him to be playing off of the other guys because then when he runs action, he has a

favorable matchup because he's a lesser defender on him. And then when he has opportunities to catch in that advantage, he can take advantage of his feel for the game and his really well defined skill set. Right. That's kind of where Reed Shepherd can fit in with Houston. I love it. He showed some real off the dribble pop two. Like I talked about the lefty cross, he had multiple dribble combination pull up jump shots. He had that floater,

although it was double dribble. He at that floater that he hit on Dalton connect He had a super deep three from like thirty five feet away. Twenty three points, four rebounds, five assists on seventeen shots four six three super super impressive Summer league outing for Reed Shepherd. I think that's gonna be a really fun fit there in Houston. And again, guys like I, this year in Vegas, my itinerary has been super full, so I haven't had a

chance to watch a ton of the games. But when I get back into town in Tucson, we're gonna cover Summer League. We're gonna cover We're gonna cover a lot of USA basketball. Monday morning, team USA plays against Australia and then Wednesday morning they play against Serbia. Will be covering those games on the feed. So we're gonna get back into the some of the basketball weeds when I get back to Tucson. After this event, moving on to the Knicks. So Jalen Bruns takes his extension rather than

waiting to become a free agent to sign. His deal ends up being effectively a nine figure difference in the amount of guaranteed money that he could have taken. But this is complicated on several levels, so I want to get into some of the details. First of all, he's a small guard. Do any of you guys remember Isaiah Thomas. Remember when he had that year where he averaged like twenty eight twenty nine points per game, he received MVP votes.

It was an unbelievable year for Isiah Thomas. If you guys remember, he was tweeting like back up the Brinks truck right like, he was like, I want all the money. But then he got into a playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers and he suffered a hip injury, if you guys remember, and he just didn't look like the same guy.

And guess what, he didn't get paid. And it went from him getting the Brinks truck big paycheck to him getting a whole lot of nothing, right compare relatively, He got a tiny fraction of what he would have got had he take in maybe a smaller guaranteed deal sooner in that process, right, he wanted to He bet on himself, He bet on getting all that money. He ended up getting hurt. Didn't get it right, Like that super Max deal sounds amazing, But what if Jalen Brunson gets hurt

this year. What if Jalen Brunson plays in the playoffs while banged up and doesn't look quite like the Jalen Brunson we saw last year and then suddenly like his the the Knicks are looking at the situation like, eh, I'm not sure we can offer that lucrative of a deal. Right. This is not choosing between two deals standing right in

front of him. It's not like he had, you know, a deal, the deal that he signed for one fifty and then this other deal for two sixty right next to each other, and then he like crumpled up the two sixty and signed the one fifty. It's one fifty now or maybe the two sixty next summer, right, So it is it's a lot more complicated than that. It's also a fifth year, so there are opportunities to recoup

their earnings. Yazi Goslin is a guy follow on Twitter does amazing stuff with the cap and he did a really nice job breaking down you guys to follow him on Twitter. I highly recommend you'll learn a lot to help you kind of understand some of the CBA stuff. He did a really nice job breaking down the fact that if Jalen Brunson opts out after his third year, so he just does the first three years of the

deal and then signs the Supermax. It comes out to about the same as he would have made if he took the two sixty guaranteed next year, So like he can recoup the earnings in the long run if his agent chooses to play hardball at that point. Right. Also,

not everyone is as money motivated as other people. Like I understand that it, Like I know, I am, Like I would have a hard time turning down that kind of money, but like, hey, Jalen Brunson is the kind of guy that's like maybe he's looking at the situation, like you mean to tell me right now, I can sign for one hundred and fifty million dollars guaranteed, a contract that seemed kind of like beyond my comprehension five years ago, Like this is right here, I can sign

it right now. Oh and I get to play with all my buddies. I get to play with Dante DiVincenzo and Josh Hard and McHale Bridges. I get to play with my buddies. We have a real team that has a real chance to win the title. Let's just instead of like trying to hold out for something better. Let's just take a good situation that's right here in front of us, and I think that's what he tried to jump on it. And to me, you know what, like, I'm never gonna hate on a guy for doing that.

The other angle is, and this is where it gets a little more complicated. The other angle is the NBA Players Association. Right, So, anytime a player takes less than the most possible money he can earn, he does the owners of favor, right, And there is this everlasting conflict between the owners and players in the form of their collective bargaining agreement that is essentially a battle for the

a battle for earnings. Right. The players are in this long journey to demonstrate that they are the reason this league makes money and they deserve the most. The owners are on this long journey to say that they are the ones that are the reason why this league earns so much money and they deserve the most. They're jockeying for position all the time, right, And I don't know the exact number right now, but the revenue splits right

around like fifty to fifty. Right. But in the CBA, the owners put all these restrictions in they won that battle in a big way because a lot of players are starting to sign for less and less. Now, in the big picture, Mike, it might end up working out because at the end of the day, it's going to be fifty to fifty revenue split anyway. But the players want to be able to earn as much money as they possibly can, and anytime they take a discount it

does a favor to the owners. But once again, that's complicated because of this simple fact that there's no guarantee that the Knicks will offer him that money next summer. If he gets hurt, they probably won't. Jalen Brunson has been fortunate with health health the last couple of years up until he broke his hand in the broke his finger or whatever in that playoff series. I think he

just wanted to take the guarantee that was there. I don't Again, that's his prerogative, and I don't like it how I don't like how it's being framed as like, Jalen Brunson did the Knicks a huge favor. He did. He did the Knicks a huge favor, But it's more complicated than that. I think he also was just taking

advantage of some financial security. To quote, to quote my friend Ryan, who's also a producer here at the volume, he said, there's never a bad time, It's never a bad idea to turn down one hundred and fifty million dollars guarantee. And that's what Jalen Brunson decided to do. More importantly, though, it is a favorite to the Knicks because it's way easier for the Knicks to maintain roster control of their core players now Jalen Brunson, mckel Bridges,

Oh Jane, and Obi. They should be able to retain them all now and retain some flexibility. The second bit of this is like, well, what if they end up in the second apron when this is all said and done, Like, what if they sign McHale Bridges and they sign Mitchell Robinson next year and they end up in the second apron? Well, the second Apron is only bad in the sense of flexibility. As long as you're willing to pay the bill, you

can keep your players. It's bad with flexibility player movement, right, So the question is can you be in the second second Apron with this scroup? If McHale Bridges signs the same type of extension next year that Jalen Brunson just signed. You will have Brunson, Bridges, Annonobi, Dante DiVincenzo, Josh Hart, and Duce McBride all locked up for each of the next three seasons. Right, and if Bridges takes a similar discount to Brunson, you have better chance to retain Mitchell Robinson. Right.

Let's say they retain Mitchell Robinson. At that point, you have two starting caliber guards, right, Brunson and de Vincenzo. You have a good bench guard, Induce McBride. You have three awesome forwards who could all start. Josh Hart could start, ohj Anobi should start, Mchalbridges should start, right, and you have a good starting a caliber center in Mitchell Robinson. Right. So it's kind of like I talked about with the

Boston Celtics. They're a second Apron team, but they have these four core guys and Drew Holliday at Derek White, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum who are consistently healthy, consistently available, consistently great. So they can afford to lack flexibility because they have such a good starting five and six players in counting Al Horford right, So like, as long as you don't need to make a change, then you're fine.

It's like the Lakers. You can't be in the second apron as a Lakers because you desperately need to make some tweaks at the two and three spot. They've needed to do that for years. So for them, they can't operate in that second apron because if they do, they're handicapping their own the ability to address their flaws. This looks like a roster that can be in the second apron,

So do the Celtics. As long as you have a roster that makes sense, in a rotation that you can work with, then the second apron is not as big of a deal. But no matter what, this this deal from Jalen Brunson just gives the Knicks that flexibility, gives him a better chance of retaining all those guys and having a long contention window. Again, as I look at everything, the one thing I'm not trying to say it's a no go because maybe Julius Randall comes into camp and

it's a super natural fit. Maybe Michale bridges like slides to the two and you play Julius Randall at center. Sometimes like who knows how this works out. Maybe it all works great, but I have a feeling he's gonna be the odd man out. And then at that point, I think you try to look to flip Julius Randall basically into a little bit of depth as like at like the guard forward spot in a backup center because now at this point you need a backup center without

Isaiah Hartenstein. So like, we'll see how it all shapes out. But a big day for the Knicks because that just gives it just makes it far more likely that they can extend that window. Just if you paint it as Jalen Brunson doing the Knicks of favor, that is, that's true, but let's not forget that, like there are some complications there. There's some reality to the fact that that we've seen small guards make that gamble before and lose, and I'd

hate for that to happen to Jalen Brunson. And I would imagine if I was him, I would imagine right now, he's kind of resting easy, know that he's secure for the next four years and that he's gonna be happy playing basketball in an environment that he loves. All Right, guys, that is all I have for today. I'm headed down to the Summer League building. I'm gonna be there most of the day. I'm going to the Dead Show tonight, so i'll be there until about five thirty. Come by

and say hi. I'll be around just kind of hanging out in the seat some. I'll be down in the press area some. But come say hi if you haven't had a chance to yet. And then I'll be fine home tomorrow morning and we'll get right back to the grind on Monday. As always. I appreciate you guys, and we'll see you then.