Hoops Tonight - Why Jaylen Brown deserves max deal with Celtics + unfair attacks on Damian Lillard

a week. And the Portland Trailblazers held up there into the bargain and did not trade Damian Lillard, which allowed me to like really disconnect from work for a little bit, which is the first time I've done that since I started at the Volume a year and a half ago, and it just it felt really nice to be honest. That said, I'm excited to get back to talking basketball. We have a jam packed show today. We have Jalen

Brown's contract extension, a lot of pushback on that. I think he absolutely deserves it and that the Celtics made the right decision and giving him that contract. We're gonna talk about that a little bit. Austin Rivers had some interesting and very critical comments about Damian Lillard's trade request and about all the stars requesting trades with multiple years

left on their deal. I have some thoughts there. And then our guy Carson from nerd Sesh had a just an absolute flamethrower take on Carmelo Anthony calling him the most overrated player in the history of the NBA. So I have a little bit of pushback. I'm going to offer there as well, and then I'll share some notes on my vacation at the end of the day. I am a little jet lagged today. I've had very little sleep over the last couple of days, so bear with me.

But we're gonna make it work. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget. You can find

them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. Last but not least, you guys have heard me talk about game Time, the fastest scoring ticketing app in the United States. I know sports have slown down a little bit, although you can still get out to a baseball game. I saw a Japanese baseball game when I was that was unbelievable. But if you're trying to go see a Major League baseball game, you can still get a great deal there on game time. But this is concert season. Everybody is

out touring around. I saw two shows while I was in San Francisco. I saw Charles Wesley Godwin at a cool theater in downtown San Francisco, and then I saw the final Denning Company show from this tour at Oracle Park. And everybody else is touring around the country right now. There's a lot of really talented artists go and a lot of good comedians as well. You guys can find deals for those on game time. So no matter where you live, get out and have some fun this week.

Download the game time app, enter your email and redeem code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Terms apply. It's a super easy user experience. You're gonna find a great deal, You're gonna know exactly what you're getting yourself into. I highly recommend it again. Enter your email and the code Hoops. That's Hoops for twenty dollars off download game

time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. One last note before we get started, I wanted to quickly tell you guys are planning for the next nine weeks because nine weeks from Monday is the start of NBA Training Camp, and so then we're gonna be talking actual basketball games and how the lineups look and how new players on new rosters look, and it's gonna be all actual basketball

that were breaking down. So we have nine weeks to fill until then, and we're gonna be doing three different three week serieses during that stretch. First, starting on Monday, we're gonna do our annual top twenty five players in the League list. A lot of people really enjoyed that last year. It's one of my favorite ones to do. We're even spacing it out further in doing a ton of deep dives into the top twenty five players in

the league. That's the next three weeks after that, top twenty five players in the last twenty five years, so similar format, just looking at the accomplishments in the grand scheme of things, and for players in their entire careers, how they stack up against each other. With more of a look at modern NBA history. And then last, for the final three weeks heading into training camp, we're gonna be doing our annual top fifteen power rankings, so again

it doubles as power rankings and a seasons. We're gonna go from fifteen to one, and then we're gonna take a deep dive into every team, who they added this offseason, who they lost, what they're gonna look like offensively, what they're gonna look like defensively, projections for the regular season, and projections for the playoffs. So those are the three series we're doing, and then after that it's all real basketball as we head into one more gigantic marathon NBA season.

All right, so let's talk some Jalen Brown. So he signs five year, three hundred and four million dollar contract. This is the richest contract in NBA history, which inevitably led to a lot of pushback from people who thought he either didn't deserve it, that it was a poor management decision from the Celtics, or that just you know, freaking out about the large numbers. Right, So I want to look at that specific question, did he deserve it

and did the Celtics make the right decision? By signing him to that deal, and to me, the answer is obviously yes to both questions. This is a textbook case of recency bias. Jalen Brown had an awful series against the Miami Heat. I'm not saying anything dramatic there. I bet you Jylen Brown will be the first person to tell you that he did not play well in that series.

He averaged nineteen points per game, shot forty two percent from the field, sixteen percent from three, had more turnovers than assists, really struggled handling the basketball, and kind of looked like he lost his mojo, lost some confidence in the process. But again, this is something that people forget, like whenever we see a situation like this, we pretend like this is the only player this has ever happened to. The vast majority of NBA stars are prone to the

occasional bad playoff series. With lower level stars, it happens all the time. Guys in that like fifteen to forty range in the league, they constantly have bad playoff series. It's like every other series. This is not the first guy this happens to. Even when we look at the very best guys, the top tier stars in the league, they are prone to bad series. Two years ago, Kevin Durant, one of the top fifteen players of all time, shot thirty nine percent and had twenty one turnovers in a

four game sweep. Do you think everybody would have freaked out if he signed a max contract after that series? Joel Embiid has had back to back awful playoff runs. Went from averaging thirty and thirty three points per game in the regular season to twenty three points per game in the playoffs, with a dramatic drop and efficiency and

overall impact on the game. Bad playoff series happens. The playoffs are extremely difficult, and we're talking about a Eastern Conference final series against the best coach in the NBA and an excellent defensive roster that played him into his weaknesses and he struggled. But Jalen was awesome for a really long time before that. And that's the reality of the Jalen Brown experience. Two weeks does not define a basketball player, said the same thing after Kevin Durant in

this sweek two years ago. In the first two rounds this year against Atlanta and Philly, Jalen Brown twenty five points per game, fifty four percent from the field and forty seven percent from three in the playoffs for two rounds.

Those are outstanding numbers. This year in the regular season, a career high twenty seven points per game, fifty eight percent true shooting, and yeah, he did most of his damage and transition and in spot up situations, but he also was a slightly above average shot creator fifty third percent tile and pick and roll including passes, fifty first percentile in ISO including passes, all on decent value. So he was really good this entire year up until he

was bad for two weeks. That should not color what you do with him for the next five years when he's twenty six years old. And last year in the playoffs, he was awesome throughout twenty three seven and four fifty eight percent true shooting for the entire playoff run. Obviously, he's fallen off defensively since then, but he had a really good defensive season last year, and he was the second best player on a team that was two wins away from the Larry O'Brien Trophy. He is a flawed player.

It can be a little predictable. Sometimes, he doesn't handle a ball well enough, struggles to read defense. Is not a great playmaker and obviously regressed defensively this year, but he's still easily one of the twenty best basketball players in the world. And I wanted to give you guys a couple of stats to demonstrate that. This year, Jalen Brown was one of only nine players in the playoffs to average at at least twenty points on at least forty five percent from the field and at least thirty

five percent from three. That's a really low baseline. Twenty points, forty five from the field, thirty five from three. Nine guys did that this year in the playoffs. Nine this regular season, he was one of only twelve players in the entire league to average at least twenty five points, three rebounds, and three point five assists. That's not a low, that's not some ridiculous standard. Twenty five points, five rebounds, three and a half assists. Twelve dudes did that. This

is not common. It's not like Jalen Brown just signed this maximum contract that's absurdly large, and there's like thirty dudes in the league better than it. I had him twelve last year. He's gonna drop a little bit from there, but he's still assuredly a top twenty player in the NBA. And again, like you guys gotta remember, in order to win basketball games, you need good basketball players. You need great basketball players. Great basketball players cost money like it's

it's inflation. Sure, the league is contracts are inflating as a result of all the factors with the salary cap and the way that supermax contract works. But that's just what it costs. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, Jayleen Brown's the sixteenth best player in the league. The nineteenth best player in the league's gonna cost the same amount of money. I mean, he made second team All NBA this year. This is just the running rate. This is this is market value, so intimation. Does he need

to polish polish up some things offensively, yeah. Does he need to recommit to the defensive end of the four, Yeah, so does the rest of his team. But he's clearly one of the twenty best players in the world, and he's just entering his prime. He's twenty six years old, and he absolutely can be the second best player on a championship team. Had Jason Tatum played better in the NBA Finals last year, they would have won the trophy. So again, When you pass on him, you pass on

a championship ceiling. You need him. He's a fundamental piece there. So the Celtics had to do it, and that's what Jalen Brown was worth. He absolutely deserves it. It was the smart move and then again really quickly at the end here As for the contract number, don't forget about that new TV deal. Sixty nine million in the fifty year of Jalen Brown's deal. That's a really big number. I get why that's scary, but the salary cap is gonna be like two hundred billion in change at that point.

He's just gonna be another Max player making a third of the cap. Pretty standard stuff there. Again, like I think, I think, we see the big numbers and we freak out, but if you really take a closer look at it, it makes a ton of saeny. It's for both sides. You are in this race, get out the fight. What we're gonna do, what we're gonna do. Shut up, I'm not missing my race. Yes, we're not going to jail.

Oh listen, So you think you're gonna play a stupid video game by cars and you're gonna become a race car driver? All I ever wanted to do is be a racer. I'm doing it. The ten of you are the best Ranturismo players in the world. Now it's your jobs race real cars. It's not gonna work. The guys who race are elite athletes. Your kids are scrawny little gamer kids. That's where you're coming. So you think you can do the impossible. I'm here to prove that you can't.

You get tired, get sloppy, sloppy and get hurt. You get hooked on my lawn. I know what I'm doing, not a face. I've raised this track a thousand times in the game. Let me drop it by way. That was actually pretty great. We have a newcoming this year. His presence is shaking the foundation of the sports system, major leagues, the other drivers, your pit crew are going to hate you. But Jesus with a joystick? Is it? I can't see anything. I'm not sure if I can

do this. Most people can't. I got a feeling you're not most people. If I lose, I lose more than just stop. So I'm not gonna quit. You couldna proved to everyone. He raced it what like a thousand times. Now I just got to do it in real life grant to Resa based on a true story. I won't stop now. That Grand Reso trailer was actually really cool. I had seen some promos for it, but I hadn't seen the trailer yet, and that was the first time I found out that it was actually based on a

true story. And it kind of makes sense to me because I've played video games growing up like everyone else did, and I played Grand Turismo, but I also played the other games I played, like Meat for Speed and the arcade style racing games, and you would just like hold down the accelerator the entire time and then just make

the turns and it was completely unrealistic. And then you'd play Grand Turismo and you'd really have to watch how you break into turns, like your position in the lane as you try to wide and out the turn in

feathering the accelerator in certain situations. It actually makes sense to me that if as a video gamer you had nailed down that concept, that some of it, if not most of it would translate to the operation of the actual vehicle, at least with the level of effort that Grand Tarisma always made trying to make it super realistic. So I'm super excited to see that movie. The new movie Grand Tarismo is based on the true story of one teenager's journey from video game player to real life racer.

The movie follows Jan Martin Borough, a construction worker from Wales who, through his skill at the Grand Tarisma video game, broke into the elite world of professional motorsports. Jan receives the chance of a lifetime when Nissan and Sony host a competition to identify the best Grandarisma players and give them a shot at racing in real life. Doubted by his family, his fellow race car drivers, and even his coach, Jan is an unlikely outsider trying to change the game

and break into an exclusive and incredibly dangerous sport. If you can find a way to win, it'll change the game forever. This state of the art movie you recreate some of the most famous and dynamic racing competitions in the world in breathtaking sequences that need to be seen on the big screen. Directed by Neil Blumcamp, the visceral action, sounds and thrills of the racetrack were brought to life

using actual Nissan GTS drones and practical effects. Those little camera angles directly behind the car were really cool, all shot through the most sophisticated technology and advanced cameras Grant Turismo. It's exclusively in movie theaters on August eleventh. Get your tickets today, rated PG thirteen. All Right, Austin Rivers and his comments about Dame's trade request. I was reading this one while I was in Japan. I thought it was

super interesting. So Rivers said, quote, if you were a free agent, then you could choose where you want to go. That's the business. But when you're not and you sign a deal, man, that's part of the business. Bro. If you get traded somewhere, you've got to go play man, you know what I mean. Like this just started with James and Ben and all these guys doing this shit. It's bad for the league. End quote. So that's that.

The whole Basketball NBA Twitter world on fire the other day, and again, I simply do not understand why the onus is on the players to behave a certain way under a contract when that same onus is not on the owners. For starters, just again framing the whole topic. I get it, star trade suck for the local fan base. Nobody wants to lose their guy. I'm not debating that, but it's never going away, asking out and having one team as your destination and then doing all this stuff behind the

scenes to manipulate things. Yeah, it's not a good look, but it's kind of a fake problem because no one's ever been traded to a team and then at least not in recent NBA history. There hasn't been a guy, a star who got traded to a team and then just didn't play. Why Leonard said all the same shit behind the scenes, not going there, not even gonna report to training camp. You know what, He reported to training camp and he won a damn NBA championship at a

finals MVP. So like, until that actually starts happening, I don't really see that as anything more than just Adrian Morgenowski tweets, right, and then again James Harden showing up to camp way out of shape and deliberately bullshitting through games. Yeah,

that's a big problem. There can be criticism that we offer here on a case by case basis when it comes to the way some of this is executed, But fundamentally I have no problem with players signing a long term deal and then asking out with multiple years left Austin Rivers said, quote, if you were a free agent, you could choose where you want to go end quote. In theory, that sounds great, but you have to do what's best for your family because the team is going

to do what's best for the team. And I want to give you guys an example of this that I think kind of demonstrates that demonstrates the conundrum that this presents. Do you guys remember when Dangel Russell became a free agent. So Dilo gets traded to Brooklyn. I believe he is in the brook Lopez deal, and he has a really good season his final year there, averages twenty one points

and seven assists a game. Looks pretty solid enters free agency, and he's kind of one of those guys that's worth either close to the max or like either the like a rookie max extension or close to it. Right, But the Warriors are losing KD to the Nets, and so Golden states he's an opportunity to salvage the KD asset because if it Kdi goes to the Nets and they don't work something like this out, they lose him for nothing. Right, So they see an opportunity they work out a deal.

They do a sign in trade, right, D'Angelo Russell comes over to Golden State on a four year deal in that trade. Do you guys think Golden State had any intention of keeping D'anngela Russell for all four years of that deal? Do you think he was the player they actually wanted, Like, if they had cap space, do you think they signed d' angela Russell. No, they Katie was

going to the nets. They functionally saw an opportunity to bring back a young player on a reasonable contract number that they knew they would be able to trade in the future. So guess what, D'Angelo Russell gets to be a Warrior now, super high pressure situation. Not only does it not go well, they burned him to the ground on the way out. They basically call him unprofessional or not a good fit in the unprofessionals the wrong word.

They say he's not a great fit there, and they offer a lot of subliminal criticism or you know, reported criticism of what is time there was like And in the process they bring back Andrew Wiggins and two draft picks. So it was a really smart move from Golden State. They should have done that. Great asset management they did what was best for the team and it worked out. Now, dangel Russell ended up going to a good situation for him, right, he went to go play with his buddy in Minnesota

in Karl Anthony Towns. But that was just coincidence. Had Wiggins been playing for the Pistons, they would have shipped his ass to Detroit. Now let's reverse that situation. Let's pretend the Warriors actually wanted to keep D'Angelo Russell and instead D'Angelo Russell after thirty three games goes, I want to trade, get me out of here. Would everyone have freaked out? Then? Is that a violation of the contract

that he signed. Would we look at D'Angelo Russell as disloyal and say that what he's doing is bad for the league, because that's literally just the reverse situation of what the Warriors did to him. It's a problematic double standard in my opinion. The contract goes both ways. Technically, yeah, it's a commitment from that player to play for that team for a set number of years, but it's also a commitment from that team to pay that player for

a certain number of years on that roster. Ideally, they'd be like, hey, I can buy a house here, I'm gonna be here four years. But that's just not how it works. For some reason, the players are morally obligated

to fulfill that contract, but the owners are not in return. So, in my opinion, of you're a free agent and you're in the running for some sort of lucrative deal, you gotta take as many years and as much money as possible, because again, there is absolutely no guarantee that the team is going to fulfill their end of whatever you know agreement you think there is. Okay, let's say I'm a free agent and I'm like, I know I want to play here another year or two, but I'm not certain

if it's four or five. If I sign for one or two, I'm only just putting my money at risk. What if I tear my acl Hell, James Harden left money on the table to help Philly sign guys, and then he became a free agent, and then they didn't give him the number he wanted. You don't think he's like, why the hell did I give them that money back? Again, like, they will do it to you. So you have to look out for yourself, as much money, as much years

as possible. Protect your family first, and then yeah, BA professionally, don't do the antics behind the scenes, don't show up to camp fat and not caring and not trying. There's ugly sides to this too. It's not perfect. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm just saying I'm sick and tired of the players, for some reason, having the responsibility of behaving with honor in these contract situations. Chris Paul just got traded to a team of players and they all

hate each other, like the Warriors hate Chris. Chris hates, the Warriors hate Steve kerr Hey Draymond Green. Draymond Green's openly said I'm not gonna sit here in line and say you know that Chris Paul and I don't have issues. They shipped him there because it was an achievable roster upgrade for the Warriors. Chris Paul had no voice in that situation. You think, if Jordan Poole was a free agent, he's signing with Washington, if he had the pick of

the litter. They decided he's going to Washington, So he gets to go to Washington. Again. You have to look out for yourself as much as possible because the owners are gonna ship you wherever it's best for them. Dame wants to go to Miami, Portland's looking for the best deal for them. You've got to look out for yourself. So again, that's why I don't have any problem with Stars signing a long term deal and then after year one, or after year two, or with a couple of years

left on the dealting a trade. You're not obligated to sign for exactly how many years you're loyal when the team won't do the same for you. And then one last note on the Dame to Miami stuff. I've seen a lot of Heat fans get annoyed with me because I've been talking about other destinations. I want Dame to go to Miami. I think it's great for the league. I love the Heat, I love Eric Spolshra, I love Jimmy Butler, I love bam Anebayo. I want to see

Dame there. I think that's a great fit. I think it adds a lot of parody in the Eastern Conference rooting for that deal. But it's just almost certainly going to happen. So we've already talked it to death. We'll do an even bigger breakdown when the trade goes down, but it's just more fun to talk about other options right now. And that's just more interesting, and it gives us something to do to kill the time until Portland

inevitably sends him to Miami. That's why I was bringing up destinations like Oklahoma City and saying that other teams should get involved. It's just what is most interesting about that situation. Dame is there for the taking, but if he goes to Miami, I'm gonna be perfectly happy with that. Alright, one last topic before we get to vacation stuff. Carson. You guys know it is Carson Breber from Nerd sash As. A video that goes out the other day calls Carmelo

Anthony the most overrated NBA player ever. Quote quote unquote, he said again quote people elevate mellow into conversations. He has no business being in end quote very spicy stuff from Carson. Twitter goes absolutely crazy. It got viewed one point three million times. All the hoop purists were losing their minds and attacking Carson. It was a whole thing. So I think this is a super fun offseason topic,

So we're gonna hit The question was Carmelo Anthony overrated. Now, to be clear, I gotta defend Carson to start with, because everyone's just calling him a nerd who only reads spreadsheets and doesn't watch the game. There are a lot of people in this business who don't watch a lot of basketball and then talk about it a lot. Carson's not one of those guys. Carson puts in a ton of work. He uses a lot of the same tools that I use in terms of film software, and that

dude watches as much basketball as anybody I know. I respect his basketball opinion a great deal. You guys know that because I had him on my show a bunch long before him and Logan ended up getting their show picked up by the volume. I'm a huge fan of Carson. I think he's great at his job, and he certainly puts in the work. So if you disagree with his take, that's one thing. But let's not sit here and pretend like Carson hasn't earned the right to speak confidently with

his basketball opinions. On that note, I very much disagree with Carson and his take on this one. Now, this was Carson's actual take, so he accurately pointed out that mellow has had some pretty rough field goal percentages over the years. He accurately pointed out that Mellow was not

a good defensive player. He accurately pointed out that Mellow was not a very good playmaker, And he accurately pointed out that his teams were only slightly better with him on the floor or versus off the floor over the majority of his career. So that was kind of like his breakdown, his nuts and bolts, his bread, his actual substance to his argument. But there are two main points that I want to push back on. First of all, Mellow's efficiency was actually a lot better than it looks

on the surface. Yes, he was below fifty percent an effective field goal percentage in the Denver and New York seasons. That's kind of what I'm looking at, is like real Mellow before he kind of reinvented himself as a role player, but during those years he got to the foul line a ton. So he actually had a true shooting percentage in New York and Denver of fifty four point four percent. Now again, today you want to be like fifty eight percent or better. But this is a different era, which

brings me to my second piece of pushback. All scores were inefficient in that era because of the way the game was played, so it does not make sense to use efficiency as a barrama of how successful a scorer was during that era there in the late two thousands. First of all, every team had a slow footed center and a big power forward on the floor. Most of them couldn't shoot, like think about like Pau Gasol and

Andrew Bynum. You know, with Carmelo Anthony was nine and Kenyon Martin or with the Cavs like Olgauskis and good and yeah, they could knock down the occasional jump shot, but the floor was absolutely packed around the paint. In general, teams had way less shooting on the floor. It was super clogged up. Guys were constantly facing multiple defenders, and everyone's percentage is suffered as a result. Go look at offensive offensive ratings from that era in the late two thousands.

It was the same type of points per possession that you saw in the mid nineties. Nobody was scoring easily, so having a guy that could take and make tough pull up jump shots over the top of congested defenses was actually super valuable back then, even when even when guys were missing two thirds of them, it was still really valuable. That was how you ended a lot of possessions, rescue possessions and it became extremely valuable at the end of games. The example I want to use to make

this that to make this point is Kobe. Kobe also shot over fifty percent in effective field goal percentage just four seasons. In his entire career, he missed a ton of shots. As we look at his primary stretch, like Melo, I look Denver, New York. For Kobe, it's basically with the Lakers until he tore his achilles. He had a fifty five point five percent true shooting percentage with the Lakers before he tore his achilles. That's one percent better

than mellow one percent. So like same type of issues applied to Kobe. Now he faced the same type of issues terrible spacing, ugly offense, had to take a ton of bailout shots. His percentage is suffered as a result. We are spoiled on efficiency these days. You might have one non shooter on the floor. A lot of times you have no non shooters on the floor. We run super modern offensive concepts with spread pick and roll, with shooters perfectly spaced in the corner on the weak side wing.

We know how to space the floor. Offenses were super chaotic or archaic. Back then, they just NonStop fed the post. There was no pick and roll. Give you this is a great example. Kobe in two thousand and nine ran eight pick and rolls a game with terrible spacing. Devin Booker, who's like the same type of archetype of player as Kobe,

literally tries to copy Kobe. He ran more than eighteen pick and rolls a game this year with a perfectly spaced floor completely surrounded by shooting, and so of course the percentages are better now. Devin Booker sixty percent through shooting this year. Do you think he's five percent better than Kobe or do you think it's a different era. That's why I don't actually think it makes a lot of sense to use efficiency across eras you can use

it within the era. Like that was kind of the cool thing with Lebron is like his ability to pressure the rim allowed him to be really efficient relative to his peers in that era. As we look today, like comparing Steph Curry to all the guys that are around fifty eight percent through shooting, he's in the mid sixties. Like, yeah, that goes to show you in this era, how Steph is so much more efficient than most of his peers.

But it just doesn't make sense to use that when we're evaluating across eras so, like Mellow really was nearly as efficient, only slightly less efficient and slightly less volume scoring than Kobe Bryant. He was unquestionably a top tier scorer in his era. Now, in fairness, I am a huge Mellow fan, a war his number in college, number fifteen, did a lot of stuff to kind of copy his game,

especially in face up situations. But like so, I'm a little biased, not gonna lie, but I do think, especially when we're staring at scoring, I think that Mello is is every bit worth the reputation that he has in NBA history. Now here's where I agree with Carson. Yes, Mellow was close to Kobe's level as a scorer, but Kobe was a much much better and he much much more successful basketball player in the NBA. Why is that? This is where Carson's legitimate criticisms of his defense and

his playmaking come to the surface. Carmelo Anthony was a bad defensive player who consistently cut corners on that end of the floor. Kobe Bryant made the All Defense team twelve times, including nine times First Team All Defense, and he was consistently one of his team's best defenders. It trickled down the roster and he led some of the great defensive teams of that decade, which is why he

won championships. Carmelo Anthony averaged two point seven assists per game in his career and really struggled to impact games when a shot wasn't falling. Kobe Bryant averaged double that with roughly the same amount of turnovers, and despite his reputation of being a ballhog, he actually was a really good playmaker when his team needed him to be, and he consistently impacted games even when his shot wasn't falling.

Everyone talks about the six for twenty four game. In Game seven of the twenty ten NBA Finals, Kobe played his ass off that game and made a lot of plays. It's not all about the shooting percentages as long as you have stuff that supports your game around that. So as much as I love and respect Carmelo Anthony as a player, and I've view him as one of the

best scorers of all time. His weaknesses are a big part of why he didn't achieve as much as you might have thought he should have given how good he was as a scorer, And those are fair criticisms to bring up when we talk about him. I just think his reputation as a score is well deserved, and using shooting percentages to undercut that is something I disagree with Carson about. As for the overrated piece, I think he's

pretty properly rated. I mean, everybody that I talk to seems to think that there's kind of a gap between Lebron and Wade, and then from that draft class, and then kind of a gap between Wade and Mellow, like he's clearly on the third tier from that draft. I don't hear Mello's name being brought up in all time conversations anywhere near the top guys. So, yeah, there's that baldon stop type of crew that kind of romanticizes him because of his skill set. But like so, I guess

you could say slightly overrated. But I do disagree with Carson's take that he's the most overrated NBA player ever. I think that that's overstating it more than a little bit so love Carson, but had to push back a little bit on that particular take and check out the nerds sests show. Those guys are awesome. They do really good work and they hit a lot more stuff in

the weeds than I do. All Right, before we get out of here, some quick notes on my vacation, so again, we went to San Francisco for five days and then we went to Japan for like a week. I went to wine country, mainly in the Sonoma area. It was really cool. It's hot, but it was dry so it was more palatable, easy to handle. The wine was really good. It was super expensive. I can't, like, I don't know

how people regularly drink wine from those areas. We did a tasting at one place that was like ninety two bucks a person, and I was like, Ah, this is this is this is ridiculous. I probably wouldn't pay that much for wine ever again. But it was. It was a cool experience. It was kind of a bucket listening right, especially for my wife. And that whole area is very pretty and I see why a lot of people lived there. San Francisco was a blast. The food was incredible. I

went to Chinatown. I had a restaurant called House of Nanking, which was the best Chinese food I ever had, so highly recommend that while you're down there. I had a sushi place called a Swasabi, which was really really good sushi that was kind of in the northern part of the peninsula there. And then I got to see two

great concerts on a whim. We had a Saturday night free and I happened to see an Instagram or Buddy Sean happened to see an Instagram post about about Charles Wesley Godwin playing there, and he's actually my favorite country singer right now. I'm actually going to see him next month with Zack Bryan, who's another one of my favorites up in Phoenix. But like we just saw, We're like, it's at this really cool theater in the city. It was a pretty late showtime, so it wasn't gonn affect

o our plans the rest of the trip. So we went to see Charles Westy Godwin and there's a guy there opening for him named Whyitet Flores who's actually an up and coming guy who actually I really enjoyed as well. And then on Sunday night, I went to the final show of the final tour for Dead End Company at Oracle Park, sat up in the bleachers, was overlooking the bay. They did a drone show. They played most of my favorite songs. I heard althea is my favorite song, the

Dead Play, I heard my favorite rendition of that. They've ever played. Franklin's Tower kind of stole the show. It was. It was just an incredible show. That was a great experience. That was kind of what the whole trip was built around. I'm so glad I did that. And then lastly I drove down to Palo Alto and got a tour of the Stanford campus. A buddy of mine, Sam Beskin, who used to play there, hooked us up, gave us an incredible tour, got a good basketball workout in with him

as well, got to see the facilities. That campus is beautiful. That was kind of a bucket listening for me as well. So I got to see Stanford. That was fun. Then we literally flew home on Monday, got into about noon, had to turn all of our stuff over, and we left at six am the next morning to go to Japan. So it was a ridiculous turnaround. It just kind of

was the way it worked. Out where the way the Japan trip was booked, and then having to go to that concert on that Sunday and building the trip backwards. It was just kind of the way it turned out. But Japan was cool. I really liked the food. I struggled with the traditional Japanese stuff, and I had more of that than I probably should have a lot of like really bizarre fish and like tofu and stuff that I really struggled with. But I had a Japanese barbecue

place that was to die for. They put the grill right in the middle of the table and they just bring you raw meat and you like just straight up grill it on the table in front of you. So that was really cool. Was great food, great experience. And then I had a conveyor belt sushi place, which was unbelievable.

So they had like these two conveyor belts, you know, like a touch screen, and you like walk in and sit and like you pick your sushi rolls and you place your order, and like really quick, in a matter of two or three minutes, it just appears in front of you on the conveyor belt. Grab the fish off, hit the end button, and then the belt continues. So they can load the next meal on there. But I had like thirteen plates of sushimi or salmon and tuna nigiri there. Tuna was like the best I've ever had.

Super inexpensive there too, Like having a two piece tuna nigiy was like a dollar after you converted it from yend, which in the States that's like six or seven bucks at a reasonable place, and like ten twelve bucks at an expensive sushi play. So that was a really cool experience. I got to see a Japanese baseball game is unbelievable. It's game eighty two of a one and forty three game season, and the stadium was completely packed. They had all these chants and stuff going out. I saw the

Hanson Tigers play against Tokyo. I think they were called the Swallows, and I think the Tigers were actually the team to show hey, a ton of o Tani played for, so they had a huge fan base. They had these crazy chants that they did. I actually tweeted a video of it out on my feed. You can see that

they're really good game too. It was just a shockingly awesome experience for what was, you know, kind of similar to the types of games you'd see in Major League Baseball and have two thirds of the stadium empty, you know what I mean. So I got on the Tokyo Skytree, which is the third tallest building in the world, and I got to take some pictures and see the city from up there. I took the bullet train for the

first time ever. That was a really cool experience. Just in general, I'm so impressed by how efficient Japan is. Like they have about a third of the population or a third of the population of the United States, but they're about one twenty fifth the size, and so in order to make all that work, you have to be remarkably efficient, and just the way that they get around is just incredibly impressive. And then they also keep the country super clean during the process. Super super impressed by that.

Barhopping was really cool down there. It's all these like little tiny bars that are like the size of this studio, and it'll just be like one bartender and like four chairs and maybe one cocktail table, and there's just rows of them, just hundreds of them all over the place. That was a cool experience. I got to see the Fender flagship store. They just built it. It opened on like June thirtieth. That was a really cool experience because they have a bunch of guitars that they actually only

make and sell in Tokyo. Came this close to buying one, but ended up passing on it at the last second. The only thing I'd say is that was the wrong time of year ago. It was hot as hell. It was like ninety seven degrees every single day, super superhumid. I definitely swept my ass off, so I probably wouldn't go back at this time of year again. And then also as a result of that like heat humidity, Mount

Fuji was just constantly covered in clouds. And I'm a big volcano guy, so like I really wanted to see Mount Fuji, had like six opportunities to see it, and it was just constantly hidden. So that was kind of a bummer. But Japam was cool. It's kind of a once in a lifetime type of experience. Recommend everybody tried at least once a really cool country to visit. But that was way too long to be out of town. I'm exhausted, I'm jet lagged. I missed my dogs, I

missed my routine. I played basketball once in sixteen days. You know how that affects my mental health, so I gotta be better. This is back to back years where I did two week trips. I gotta be better about spacing my trips out a little bit. But I'm glad. I'm glad to be back, guys. I'm glad to be talking basketball again. Tomorrow, we're gonna be doing our top five offseasons, and then we'll get into our player rankings next week. The volume