Your afternoon drive just got a little better. Well that's the hope at least. Now back to in the Zone with Brandon Kravitz.
Keep the text rolling in five zero eight five seven is how you can reach us. Also on the iHeartRadio talkback. Just tap that microphone icon and let it fly. So this Kevin Durant trade very interesting, kind of spiced up. It was already a pretty good sports weekend, but this made it even better. The deal is essentially this. The Rockets get Kevin Durant, the Suns get Jalen Green, Dylan Brooks,
and all the second round picks they want. Oh and the tenth overall pick in this year's NBA draft, which is not nothing.
This is a really good NBA draft class.
And I'm excited to hear who Tyler Karen thinks the Sons should now be taking with that pick. But they have the tenth pick, they have Jalen Green, they have Dylan Brooks, and they have all the second round picks you want. I imagine that this is how the negotiations go. Whenever you get down to the second round picks portion of the deal, you go, Okay, we've laid it out. Jalen Green, Dylan Brooks the tenth overall pick, and we'll give you four second round picks unless you need more.
You can have as many as you need. I imagine that's kind of what it sounds like. And then the other side goes.
Can we get six of them?
And they're like, yeah, why not?
You know, let's not let this hold us up. Essentially, the thought comes down to this. It all comes down to how good you think Jalen Green is slash can be. If you are not a believer in Jalen Green, this trade is awful and the Sons did not get enough. The tenth pick is nice, but a slew of seconds. We joke for reason when the Rockets own a twenty twenty seven Phoenix pick and a twenty twenty nine pick swap, it feels like the Suns probably could have done a
little bit better. If you're gonna start over, don't you want your own picks back? I would have said the conversation starts there. We need our picks back, and then we'll work to add other pieces to the equation. But I'm good with it because I think Jalen Green is a good player, and ultimately it's not enough when you trade someone like Kevin Durant to just get a good player back. But when you can get a good young player and other pieces and the tenth overall pick is
that if you do it right. I don't think this is that bad of a deal. And you have to keep in mind this is so different than the Desmond Baine trade because Bain is twenty six, he's under his current contract for the next four years. The Rockets have to immediately start negotiating with Kevin Durant, and if he wanted to, he could leave at the end of the year. He's an unrestricted free agent at the end of the
next season. So if he just wanted to make this a one year trip, which by the way, it's Kevin Durant, so there's no guarantee, that's not the way he's gonna handle this. This is his fifth team.
Let's just the Tiger had stripes.
Okay, let's just call it what it is.
I don't think this is that bad of a deal, but they are getting slammed for it.
Phoenix.
According to everybody out there, Phoenix lost this deal. I feel like they did. Okay, I don't think they killed it, but I think they did fine.
They did the best that they could.
As a whole, they have probably mismanaged and mishandled this whole Kevin Durant experiment in situation of bringing him in and adding Bradley Beale and the truckload of money that he brings with him. Phoenix acknowledged through this process that
they failed with this experiment. So all the reports that we have heard was that Phoenix's asking price for Kevin Durant was simply too So it gets to a point if you are that Sun's front office saying you are going to get swindled, you are going to get squeezed in a way because everyone around the league knows that you are looking to get off of this guy and that he is a veteran at thirty seven years old that comes with a big price tag and that there
is no guarantee, as you mentioned, that he will sign again to play the remainder of his days in the NBA in your jersey. So the asking price was already too high, and if you're Phoenix in that point, you
just have to get the best that you can. So when you look at it from that lens of you are able to get a young star in Jalen Green that if you can kind of get the mentals with him right and kind of get him I don't want to say basketball IQ, but you kind of reel him in a little bit, get the efficiency up, and get him in the right spot. He's an all Star caliber player in this league, has the potential to be one of the deadliest offensive players in this league.
That's a win. The tenth overall p we'll discuss it further throughout the show.
Phoenix has a chance to get a team changing player at that pick. High upside guys will live in that range. You can consider that that has the potential to be two young stars. Then on top of that, a Dylan Brooks is a guy that can contribute in any locker and for any NBA team that you drop him in.
He is a winning player day one.
He gives you all the things that you look for in NBA players when it comes to three and D guys. So considering do you want extra picks for it, absolutely? Do you want your own picks back from the team that you dealt with, Absolutely, But the asking price was too high for Kevin Durant and Phoenix at the end of the day had to settle with what was available, and so that's where you look at it through that lens.
I think they did well for themselves.
I don't think the Suns are going to be very good next year, but they will be fun to watch. Carve out some time next season to watch you some Suns games. Devin Booker and Jalen Green next to each other on the cour Jalen Green is an explosive offensive player. The issue is that I think he's a little immature and he's incredibly inconsistent. And for a team like Houston that was stuck offensively, they were just kind of a
better version of what the Magic were. So when you think about what they need, they and they actually in some ways were more depleted offensively than the Magic were, because at least the Magic could go, hey, Paolo, get us a bucket. When Jalen Green wasn't in the zone. They didn't have anybody that could do that. Just at will, just get us a bucket. They got a bunch of really good players, they have defenders, but they needed what
Kevin Durant brings because now they can go KD. We need a point, you know, late in the game, we got to get a basket. Just give it to Kevin Durant. Now they have that guy, Phoenix has a lot of work to do. But I liked the Houston side of this. Kevin Durant at this stage in his career couldn't just go anywhere and make that team a title contender. All this stuff about Miami wasn't willing to part ways with hime Hakkez and whatever. I don't buy any of that.
By the way, I don't think Miami was serious about adding him, because I think Miami is smart. I would like to give one of the more well run organizations in the NBA some credit that they know they could add Kevin Durant and maybe they sell a few more tickets and they're a little bit better than they were before. That doesn't make them a title contender. I think KD does do that for Houston, though. He's the perfect player to drop in to what they have already created. This
is a really good situation for both sides. I'd really like this from the Houston angle.
Kudos to them because again they took advantage of a wounded animal in Phoenix. Of again, there was only so much of a market for Kevin Durant and whoever they were trading KDI two had all the leverage in the situation because they knew Phoenix needed to get off of them.
So what does Houston do.
You're able to hold onto those future picks that we discussed, and you're able to hold on to your best stuff as a whole.
Jalen Green was the leading scorer for the.
Rockets last year, but alper and shen Gun is your all Star, Amen Thompson, Reed Shepherd, Cam Whitmore, Jamari.
Smith Junior, Tarry Easen.
Those are your great young pieces that you have in your pocket moving forward that can contribute to both winning now, which many of those players did last season for Houston, as well as building towards the future. And then you start to build lineups for this Houston team and what they're going to be able to look like. What does Reed Shepherd? Can he take a year two jump and really be a full time NBA player and a contributing
one at that? Can Jamaris Smith Junior to get to the next level of just kind of it's kind of plateaued at about thirteen points to nine. He's a reliable ish shooter, but can you get him too closer to that fifteen to seventeen range one way or another. Though, you start building lineups of Fred van Vliet and alpri and Shen Gun on the outsides, and then the mid court of Amen Thompson, Jamari Smith Junior, and Kevin Durant.
That's a lot of length.
Right there, not all necessarily great defenders, but that's a problem for teams defensively. I think this Houston team is gonna be able to create a lot of advantages for themselves with some of the interesting.
Lineups they'll be able to throw out there on the court.
They do miss Dylan Brooks though, absolutely.
He was a huge part of why their defense was as good as it was last year. But I'm in Thompson is the real deal and he should be able to anchor things as well. Are you with me that this now for right now? And there's still a lot of moves to be made. This makes Houston the second best team in the Western Conference. They were, by the way, they were already the second best team in the conference
record wise. Now they add Kevin Durant, an up clear upgrade at scoring guard, small forward, whatever position.
Yeah, I mean Kevin Durant. Here's the interesting thing. Phoenix wasn't a playoff team last year. With Kevin Durant at the center of it all, Houston is a much better team around Kevin Durant than what Phoenix was last year. So I think for surely you can kind of pencil them in as a top as a home court advantage
team when it comes to round one in the playoffs. However, when Denver still has Jokich in a full offseason, full year of Lebron and Luca together in La can Anthony Edwards and Minnesota put together a regular season that has been as impressive as what their postseasons have been.
Those are questions that remain.
But right now, on paper, yes, I think talent wise, mixed in with the coaching and the chemistry that you have seen from a year ago, Houston should be one of the top teams odds wise to come out of the West next season.
The Lakers have to do something else. If I'm going to buy into them. Lebron and Luca are a that's a star attraction, then they can win games here and there throughout the course of the season. They can give you a good record at the end of the regular season, it's still not enough. You have to have a team around those guys. Lebron is aging. Luca doesn't defend. That's to me. The Lebron Luca thing is candy. You know, they'd need a little more substance. But Denver's for real
for the reasons you laid out. They have Jokic and they do have a good.
Team around him. The Clippers.
I thought I could trust the Clippers for the first time, and you just can't, So just forget about them. Minnesota is legit. I would say Oklahoma City, Houston, Minnesota right now, and Denver are the teams that I trust. I don't know what's going on with Golden State. They probably have to make another move if you're gonna take them seriously.
Memphis losing bang and they head in the wrong direction.
It's I think the West probably gets too much credit for as loaded as it is, because if you're being honest with yourself, I don't think you can go more than four or five teams into the conference. So you go, this team is a legitimate chance to represent this conference.
Partially because of how impressive Oklahoma City was.
I think this year that the bar is a little bit higher like the bar in the West.
Comparatively to the bar in the East are too completely different stories that you had Indiana representing the East this year and they were on the doorstep last year, and now the Tatum injury and now the Halliburton injury, the question marks in Milwaukee. Cleveland showed that it was good enough to put together a great regular season, but injuries struck as injuries have shruck Cleveland throughout the entirety of this Core four experience.
So the East seems.
Very open, whereas out west you do have that big dog on top, and that is Oklahoma City. So I think it's one of those cases that you drop a couple of those these Western teams in the East and you.
Say, Okay, those guys are closer to contenders and what we give them credit for.
Let me ask you this, then then we'll break how many teams in the West if you drop them in the East to be the number one seed next year, now win the conference. We're just saying regular season, they're the number one seed, home court advantage. I think I'm only gonna go.
Five. That's still that's still a lot.
What there's still so many, so many questions to be answered, But yeah, probably four four.
I think a good number.
It feels like a better number, all right. Just something to think about.
Coming up next our first four things, we've got updated title odds, so we've got an update from the golf event this weekend and a little bit on the NBA draft as well, which is this week by the way. Right now, I am ranked seventy.
Third overall for ROI.
That's return on investment over the past seven days on better