The Ringer - Rational Conversations With Chris Ryan and Justin Verrier2019-10-02T06:20:00-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/179846752019-10-02T06:20:00-04:002019-10-02T06:20:00-04:00A Rational Conversation on the 2019-20 NBA Season and the Next Wave of Player Movement
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<p>We’re mere days into training camp and Giannis is already getting asked about next offseason. Are we ready for another cycle of rumor-mongering? Or will the conversation finally pivot toward the game play?</p> <p id="yhXPQi"><strong>Justin Verrier: </strong>After the NBA’s Seven Seconds or Less free agency, we’ve reached something of a pax romana on player movement, if only by default. Thirteen of the 27 participants in the 2019 All-Star Game either signed a new contract or were traded this past summer, with all but five of them ending up with new teams. That means nearly half of the league’s best players are off the table—literally, according to league bylaws, until December 15 at the earliest. Actual basketball is the only thing to actually talk about—and given how <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/27/20884231/nba-championship-race-2019-20-season-preview">wide-open</a> the title race appears to be, there hasn’t been a better time to talk about it in maybe half a decade.</p>
<p id="RgGrnb">But don’t tell that to the Rumor Mongers. Because at Bucks media day, the very first opportunity the full throng of Milwaukee reporters has had in four months, Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked about signing a supermax extension next summer. “I’m not gonna talk about it a lot this season, and I’m not going to try to address it,” Giannis said.</p>
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<p id="q9kERs">Cool, cool. But everyone else in the world will be. After a month or two to catch our breath and pretend that Evan Fournier pick-and-rolls are <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/11/20861238/group-chat-france-eliminates-team-usa-from-fiba-world-cup-what-now">interesting</a>, it looks like the player-movement machine is revving back up. Is this a good thing?</p>
<p id="w5MeTQ"><strong>Chris Ryan:</strong> What is basketball fandom in 2019? That’s basically the question we’ve been trying to answer since the beginning of the year, when we first started with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/11/18220634/rational-conversations-with-chris-ryan-and-justin-verrier">these back-and-forths</a>. Does being a basketball fan mean cheering for a certain team? Does it mean you know how to diagram a SLOB action? Does it mean eyeball emoji/“shoot this directly into my femoral artery” reactions to the news that C.J. Miles is out of a walking boot but has no timeline for a return to action for the Wizards? Or does it mean breathless speculation about the future of the league with no real care paid toward the present, and especially no shits given about the game itself?</p>
<p id="h08EKW">I don’t know! It’s October 2, so I don’t expect hard news or analysis to come out of training camps. But I think the question you’re asking is, at this point, are we just feeding a faceless beast? The fact is, Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard have changed the definition of what’s possible in terms of player movement, so while I’m sure we’d all like to think we’re above bugging Giannis about whether he’s committed long term to Milwaukee, it’s actually a really good question.</p>
<p id="vz9LAR">In all likelihood, the Bucks will be very good to great this season, Giannis will make another run at MVP, and the talk around his future will die down a bit. It’s the guys right below him who will have to deal with this on an everyday basis. Because a Bradley Beal or a Kevin Love or a Chris Paul … one of those guys, in this league, in this season, could swing a title race. Doesn’t that make the chatter more legitimate?</p>
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<p id="woqhKx"><strong>Verrier: </strong>It’d be surprising if at least two of those guys don’t end up elsewhere by February. Paul is playing nice in Oklahoma City, working the local media circuit and swinging the “narrative” cudgel at any implication that he already has one foot out the door. Beal, meanwhile, was a bit more forthcoming—the Wizards guard told <a href="https://theathletic.com/1255647/2019/09/30/whats-driving-bradley-beals-decision-on-a-contract-extension-he-says-its-about-the-teams-future-not-money/"><em>The Athletic</em></a> he’s “still not done asking himself” whether he wants to be a part of the multiyear rebuild in D.C. Just give him, say, six games with Thomas Bryant as his second option. That’ll do it. These breakups are inevitable. That’s not millennial culture razing the beautiful game—that’s common sense.</p>
<p id="32jf6S">What’s lost in the discussion of this summer’s free-agent bonanza is that while the scale was bigger than ever, and the speed at which we were given intel was faster than ever, player movement, and our obsessions over the machinations of it, isn’t new. <em>The Decision</em>, which is almost a decade old now, is widely regarded as the tipping point of player empowerment, the beginning of the new NBA. And indeed, the frequency and the volume of transactions has ballooned. But stars have been looking to play elsewhere since GMs were making trade calls on <a href="https://sports.cbsimg.net/images/visual/whatshot/joe-dumars.jpg">Razrs</a>. Kevin Garnett forced his way out of Minnesota more than 12 years ago. Kobe Bryant threatened to cross town and sign with the Clippers 15 years ago. It’s a bit exhausting to reboot the Trade Machine after just deleting the tab, but I think obsessing over the fate of Giannis—or Beal or Paul or Love—is less a sign of the times and more of a default to what we’ve been doing for years. </p>
<p id="qgl31q"><strong>Ryan: </strong>Right, the new reality is this: If LeBron, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Paul George, and Kawhi Leonard have all changed teams in the past two summers, then nothing is sacred, so it shouldn’t be taboo to ask Giannis if he’s a cheesehead or not. What I’m wondering is what role we, in the media and as people who are constantly scrolling through meaningless speculation on these ridiculously expensive rectangles in our hands, have to play in all this. Not to get too mystical about all of this, but at what point does the simple act of asking the question manifest the answer. Let’s say Giannis gets asked … 40 times about free agency in the next couple of weeks. Isn’t it possible, likely even, that on the 38th time, he’s going to say something out of frustration that will just take this to a new place? And even if he doesn’t, does the specter of his hypothetical departure change the prism through which we view the Bucks? Like if they don’t set the world on fire in the first six weeks of the season, don’t the questions to Giannis, and Coach Bud, get a little more pointed? “Is Milwaukee doing enough for Giannis?” etc.</p>
<p id="rHQ0hL"><strong>Verrier: </strong>Media day is one of my favorite media holidays. It’s the time of year when the “news” is that a star player is saying things, not what they said. </p>
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<p id="LB81qm">Pelicans’ Williamson: Turning pro has been ‘crazy and fun’</p>
<p id="DhBJDY">Draymond Green confident Warriors can make NBA Finals for sixth straight season</p>
<p id="w5AzRb">Hawks show definite signs of hope, but still rebuilding</p>
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<p id="mzDNAa">These are actual headlines, but they’re not actual things.</p>
<p id="5rrEKi">So yes, we the media bear some of the burden here. Players have definitely wrestled away control over where they play and with whom, but they can’t dictate the discussion, no matter how many HBO shows they create or confessional blog posts they “write.” But even though I feel like our bar for bullshit is considerably lower these days, to the point where the the ad copy for the Nike Zoom Fuckshit is hailed as the next Faulkner, we’ve also been burned too many times to take stars’ responses at face value. At some point in the past three or four years, every star who changed teams this summer hoped to spend the rest of his career with the team that drafted him.</p>
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<p id="djSA5V"><strong>Ryan: </strong>Has he? You think Kawhi ever really seriously considered staying in Toronto? I guess he may have if they had landed Paul George. He probably wanted to play with a second star, matched to his experience level, and one that wasn’t going to be a pain in the ass on or off the court. It makes perfect sense for him to partner with George. I’ve definitely been staring at my computer for too many years, but I think we’re going to look back and view Leonard as the definitive player of his generation—maybe more so than Durant, Irving, Curry, or Davis. He won two rings, with two different teams, and played poker with all of our preconceptions about how team-player relationships are supposed to go, and he fucking won.</p>
<p id="mx7gZf">He tore the roots out of the San Antonio tree, went to Toronto—the perfect place to hide out for a season—shrugged off and outplayed any criticism he could have drawn, won a Larry O’Brien Trophy essentially by himself, let the NBA tear itself apart for his services, and then orchestrated a league-changing roster makeover of the Clippers in the middle of the night. And he has a really good chance at winning another ring this season.</p>
<p id="5zBWTv">If I were Giannis, that’s the playbook I would follow. It’s business. You don’t need a first-person essay to explain it.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="xlb8PU"><strong>Verrier: </strong>However he chooses to handle it, I’m ready for it. Rumor-mongering is my natural state, and finger muscles started twitching as soon as the Giannis quotes passed by my desk. My automatic alerts are back on. I’m pinging HoopsHype double-digit times a day. And we’re back cooking in the Trade Machine RV. Let the blogs hit the floor. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba-preview/2019/10/2/20894548/2019-20-nba-season-giannis-trades-player-movementChris RyanJustin Verrier2019-05-29T08:39:50-04:002019-05-29T08:39:50-04:00A Rational Conversation About What Happens When NBA Titles Are Not Enough
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<p>The NBA Finals aren’t just the end of the season, they seem like the end of a league era. In about a month’s time, one of the more consequential free-agent classes in history—headlined by NBA finalists Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard—will hit the market, and the complexion of the league will likely change.</p> <p id="bATrrd"><strong>Chris Ryan:</strong> We are about to kick off the 2019 NBA Finals, but I find myself pretty consumed with what will happen during 2019 NBA free agency. The two are related. There’s a good chance that no matter which team wins the Larry O’Brien paperweight, both participants could see their best player leave this summer. Kevin Durant could bounce from Golden State, and Kawhi Leonard might not renew his lease in Canada.</p>
<p id="HvwWwv">What does it mean if the NBA Finals are not enough? Maybe this is a matter of the only two players capable of making whatever team they join NBA finalists. Leonard has just proved how quickly he can turn around a franchise’s fortunes, and a healthy Durant would probably have the same if not greater impact on whatever team he inks with.</p>
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<p id="NLSMo3">I’m not particularly scandalized by the notion of walking away from a winning situation for parts unknown, but it seems different than when Durant left Oklahoma City to get closer to a championship, or when LeBron James left Cleveland for the second time. The reasoning behind a possible Leonard departure would presumably be that he doesn’t like the cold? He never chose Toronto; Toronto chose him? For Durant, it’s even harder to parse. Maybe it’s time to prove he can do it on his own. Maybe he is tired of hearing that he ruined basketball and the Warriors will always be Steph’s team. Either way, neither player will leave for money, and neither will leave to have a <em>better</em> shot at winning. It seems like we’re entering a new era. The Age of Inscrutability? </p>
<p id="sCdysx"><strong>Justin Verrier: </strong>Or maybe we’re resetting to a time before Michael Jordan became the archetype. Titles always mattered—it is, y’know, the point of the game. But Jordan’s single-mindedness, and all of the stories trumpeting Jordan’s single-mindedness, bred a sort of rings masochism, best represented by Kobe Bryant. Even as LeBron James established a new paradigm by teaming up with two other max players in Miami, his decision was being made in service of the same goal: to win as many championships as possible. Not one, not two, not three …</p>
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<p id="1iajM1">But think of how that mind-set is received today. Jordan is a crying disembodied head. Slap an extra <em>s</em> or two on “rings” and the word warps into a term of derision. “LeBron is post-titles” is a real thing that real people say. Maybe it’s the product of something as far-reaching as a shift in culture, but at the very least, the public pressure to stack championships no longer seems all-consuming. As a result, players are beginning to weigh other priorities more heavily. You still play to win the game, but it’d be nice to also play in a cosmopolitan city with all your friends.</p>
<div><aside id="UCinNp"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Can an NBA Champion Be Built Without Homegrown Stars?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/28/18642218/lakers-knicks-nba-champions-homegrown"},{"title":"Entrance Survey: The Biggest Questions of the 2019 NBA Finals","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/27/18641104/2019-nba-finals-warriors-raptors-kawhi-durant-curry"},{"title":"Toronto Rapture: The Raptors Have Broken Through to the NBA Finals","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/26/18640230/toronto-raptors-kawhi-ecf-nba-finals"},{"title":"For the Raptors to Shock the Warriors, Kawhi Has to Play Like LeBron ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/29/18642946/kawhi-leonard-raptors-warriors-lebron"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="WnHqAM">If Durant were to join a blank slate in New York to be near his businesses, or whatever motivations he would have for choosing to work for Jim Dolan, it would seem closer to when Shaq left the Magic, fresh off a second straight Eastern Conference finals appearance, for the Lakers, fresh off a loss in the first round, in no small part because of his interests in Hollywood and interest in extending his endorsement reach. Isn’t that closer to how things work in soccer, too? </p>
<p id="hv5mHE"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Yeah, so, the soccer thing. This is in the air a bit, with Marc Stein’s <a href="https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/MSB_sample.html">interview</a> with Adam Silver about possibly introducing a League Cup to the NBA. Your comparison to Shaq is on the money, but I wonder whether someone like Neymar would be more accurate. Neymar is from Brazil, is one of the four or five best players in the world, and, during his time at Barcelona, was part of maybe the greatest attacking trio in the history of the game, playing alongside Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez. In 2015, Barcelona won the treble (league, league cup, Champions League). In 2016, they won a domestic double. In 2017, Neymar helped orchestrate the biggest comeback in Champions League history against Paris Saint-Germain, and then in August of that year, he pulled what I guess you could call a Reverse Durant, and joined them.</p>
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<p id="V9jFt6">Why? Money? Sure. PSG pay him almost €1 million a week. Maybe he wanted out from under Messi’s shadow. There were lots of reasons, but really the big one was that he had come to the end of his cycle at Barcelona. You hear that word a lot in European football: cycle. A player or manager stays somewhere for a few seasons, then it’s time to move on. It’s hard to get concrete information about why anyone does anything in European football, but in the end, because there is such a multiplicity of experiences available for the talent—at different clubs, in different countries, playing in different leagues, competing for varying numbers of trophies, with assorted levels of pressure—you wind up seeing movement for movement’s sake. It’s not weird to see Cristiano Ronaldo leave habitual Champions League winners Real Madrid, or Paul Pogba leave serial Serie A winners Juventus, or Neymar probably leave PSG in the coming summer or next year … for Real Madrid! The circle of life! Changing teams happens for lots of reasons, but it happens mostly because players see their careers in chapters rather than as one long story.</p>
<p id="p5TTfd">We are still hanging on to an old-school idea of team sports here. I think when this era of player movement first dawned, in the wake of <em>The Decision</em>, we, as NBA watchers, were trying to wrap our heads around why someone would deviate from the obvious narrative laid out before them. <em>It’s his … hometown team! And they’ve never won! And he’s so close!</em> LeBron broke a bit of that, but then he glued it back together by going home. </p>
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<p id="yUyoND">That wishful thinking extended beyond LeBron in the mid-2010s, with people looking for fairy tales in gossip columns. That’s how you get “KD2DC.” In the past, say, 18 months, we’ve been operating under the assumption that players were just looking for the right basketball situation—à la Kyrie in Boston or Durant in Golden State—and that money was almost secondary to happiness. But this summer seems different—the paradigm shift you’re talking about. Maybe happiness is what matters, but maybe that happiness is more complicated than our usual sports media discourse can handle? Kawhi Leonard seems especially pertinent here.</p>
<p id="CkoXVL"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Kawhi’s situation is particularly interesting in contrast with Durant’s. KD carefully manufactured his exit from Oklahoma City, following the blueprint LeBron drew up in 2014 to pave a way back to Cleveland. He disseminated the heartfelt, totally-not-ghostwritten letter to announce his choice. He shrouded his decision in the pursuit of some higher goal (in LeBron’s case, winning the Big One for his hometown; in Durant’s case, reaching basketball nirvana through sacrificing touches in the Warriors’s ball-moving offense). He was instantly hated for it, but he had to expect some immediate backlash. The difference is he’s <em>still</em> hated for it. The hate has gotten worse with each passing year. Winning, it turns out, has not solved everything. In fact, it’s the primary source of fans’ frustration—that the Warriors are <em>too</em> good for anything else in the league to matter. Durant wins so much that he cannot win in the court of public opinion. So while it’s hard to pin down what, exactly, is pushing him toward New York, you can at least understand why he may want something different from the best winning situation in history.</p>
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<p id="HUHXYz">Leonard, on the other hand, is a mercenary. He never chose Toronto, and it has been widely assumed for months that he will leave for the West Coast as soon as he’s able to. The day he lifted the Raptors into the NBA Finals, a video taken by his sister circulated because someone nearby her <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/05/26/kawhi-leonards-sister-deletes-video-saying-hes-leaving-raptors/">insinuated</a> Leonard was gone no matter what: “They know darn well he ain’t gonna be there next year.” And yet, Leonard’s approval rating has never been higher. Maybe the cold terms of his relationship with the Raptors provide a certain clarity—that this is a business partnership, not some journey for fulfillment, with a clear beginning and a clear end? <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/5/28/18642167/kawhi-leonard-toronto-raptors-masai-ujiri-gamble">Masai Ujiri procured Leonard’s services to complete a task</a>, and Leonard is executing his job—really, really, really well. Leonard has exceeded expectations, and, by doing so, has satisfied one of the most tortured fan bases in the league. What can Durant accomplish to bring about that level of satisfaction? He hasn’t lost a playoff series in three years, and yet the Warriors have never seemed happier than in this two-week stretch playing without him. </p>
<p id="0JcPMr">The interesting question heading into this year’s Finals, I think, is how much impending free agency affects the entertainment value of the games. Are you less interested in the outcomes knowing that Durant and Leonard—and Klay Thompson and Marc Gasol and the layup god Kevon Looney—could all be playing for some other team in a few months?</p>
<p id="TFnU6o"><strong>Ryan</strong>: They seem like a necessary step to get to wherever we’re going next. I think there’s a collective desire for the Durant Era of Warriors Dominance to wrap up (with all due respect to Golden State fans who feel like they died and went to heaven, everyone else has had to watch them do it while they all stay down here on a dying planet).</p>
<p id="gHaZNS">I wonder whether more players might try to follow Kawhi’s and Masai’s lead going forward. The less you make it an emotional negotiation, the more favorable the outcome is in your favor. Maybe Anthony Davis should have Uncle Dennis handle his New Orleans exit strategy. As Kawhi’s shown, what’s the worst that can happen? You get booed? Some guy calls you disloyal on TV? If the Raptors had lost in the second round to the Sixers, wouldn’t his value be just as high this summer? He’s also going to have a profound impact on the way teams will be built. If I’m a GM of a Toronto-level team—Utah, Portland, insert a secondary market that’s not a typical free-agency destination—I am making my version of the <em>Godfather</em> offer to David Griffin for Anthony Davis. This is the power of the one-year rental. It <em>can</em> work.</p>
<p id="FNxImV"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Davis did everything wrong for multiple months, and no one outside of New Orleans will care once he’s catching lobs from Spencer Dinwiddie.</p>
<p id="PLtLRl"><strong>Ryan: </strong>Let’s think wider lens than the Finals, though. If we do live in an NBA era when nobody ever seems happy for more than a few months at a time, what impact does that have on the product on the floor and the fans’ relationship to the game? Can we not process Giannis’s losing one Eastern Conference finals without melting down into a pool of will-he-bolt speculation? Does the elite-player quest for some kind of unreachable satisfaction trickle down to our relationship to the league itself?</p>
<p id="ZjsirN"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Giannis himself already seems fatigued by it. ESPN dropped a story about the MVP front-runner’s uncertain future in Milwaukee minutes after the Bucks’ Game 6 loss to the Toronto Raptors. After being asked a benign question about experience (?) by the author of the story in postgame interviews, Giannis stormed off the dais, much to the befuddlement of everyone, but especially Khris Middleton:</p>
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<p id="d4Bz1Q">I feel for Giannis, whether his reaction was a result of the story or not. He and the Bucks smashed preseason expectations, earning the league’s best record and him a spot on the MVP ballot along the way, yet a loss in May 2019 is instantly warped into a footnote for his decision in July 2021. Everything moves too damn fast. But the accelerated timeline is as much a product of his peers’ decisions as it is today’s media culture. Davis can’t become a free agent until July 2020, yet he orchestrated his exit strategy in January 2019; Irving asked out of Cleveland two years before he could enter free agency; and so on. It’s in teams’ best interest to get some sort of payout for their damages, so the process of trading a disgruntled star starts way earlier than you’d think. Next season is the Bucks’ proving grounds, whether they want to admit it or not, and they’re heading into an offseason when almost every helpful player is a free agent. There is a good chance that Milwaukee’s window has closed, just days after we coronated them as the NBA’s next dynasty.</p>
<p id="WsUGPg"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Yeah, it’s a question most teams will have to take really seriously: What do you have to do to keep your best players engaged with your project? And what happens if your best isn’t good enough? Or fast enough?</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="HZaFEt"><strong>Verrier: </strong>It’s no wonder the league has become so star-driven—it’s the only control variable from season to season.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/5/29/18644002/nba-free-agency-kawhi-leonard-kevin-durant-conversationChris RyanJustin Verrier2019-02-11T09:21:24-05:002019-02-11T09:21:24-05:00A Rational Conversation About the Aftershocks of the NBA Trade Deadline
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<p>Are we having fun yet? The new-look Sixers certainly are, but the Celtics, definitively, are not. Did last week’s flurry of deals usher in a new world order?</p> <p id="xeXLPE"><strong>Chris Ryan:</strong> We are through our first weekend of basketball after the boom. We just experienced a different kind of trade deadline—one where by the end of it, it seemed totally normal that so many All-Star-caliber players (Kristaps Porzingis, Tobias Harris, Marc Gasol) switched teams. The only thing surprising was that more of them didn’t move. You and I have been talking about how the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/4/18210111/kyrie-irving-rumors-trades-anthony-davis-nba-trades">NBA transaction economy affects the on-court product</a> for the past couple of weeks, and this weekend was a fascinating illustration. Forget what it does to the circadian rhythms of bloggers: The NBA trade deadline seemed to take a toll on everyone. Kevin Durant ripped into the assembled media Thursday night; LeBron and the Lakers are 1-2 on their decidedly Brow-less road trip—giving up 407 points in three games, including getting worked by an Oladipo-less Indy and a resplendent Philly, and squeaking out a freak win over Boston. Speaking of Boston: Kyrie Irving’s <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25967153/kyrie-irving-day-day-strained-right-knee">hurt</a>, the Celtics were on the wrong side of a historic comeback against a group of Clippers who barely know one another, and Marcus Morris says <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/10/morris-outburst-just-the-latest-a-timeline-of-celtics-angst/">no one is having fun</a>. You know any good hangover cures? I think everyone in the league—from players, to execs, to agents, to coaches—could use one right now. </p>
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<p id="uNWByZ"><strong>Justin Verrier:</strong> The theater of the absurd that engulfed the Anthony Davis derby shrouded a sobering reality: All the teams involved needed a deal to happen, because they were all kind of a mess. With the hope of a deadline shakeup now gone, each is coming to terms with the challenges of their predicament. Rajon Rondo’s game-winner in Boston on deadline night was fun, but the Lakers went right back to looking like a team that didn’t have enough shooting, or top-level talent, to trade blows with the Sixers. The Pelicans popped Davis back into the lineup, to the bewilderment of their <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottDKushner/status/1094066434945241094">home crowd</a> and <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/02/anthony-davis-fines-van-gundy">Jeff Van Gundy</a> and pretty much everyone watching, and are still trying to make sense of it; they somehow beat the Timberwolves on Friday, with Davis going off for 32 points and holding a good-natured Q&A with the media afterward, for the team to score only 90 the next night in a loss to the Zombie Grizzlies. Even the Celtics, who could only hold their breath that the deadline would pass without a Davis deal, now have to face the fact that even the league’s third-best net rating won’t solve the long-simmering problems in the locker room. The only team that’s seemingly better off is the Knicks, because there’s only one place to go when you have 10 wins in mid-February. Them and the Sixers, that is.</p>
<aside id="YMDf9p"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Rational Conversations With Chris Ryan and Justin Verrier","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/11/18220634/rational-conversations-with-chris-ryan-and-justin-verrier"}]}'></div></aside><p id="WA7omC"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Let’s get the Philly stuff out of the way. I’m keeping my enthusiasm at, like, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W2U_1_upp0">British-guy-trying-ecstasy-at-a-1989–Happy Mondays–concert</a> levels. Allowing for the fact all the changing places and faces across the league has created a decidedly “open run” feel to the past few days of games, the Sixers gave off some real Warriors fumes. There is no place to hide a weak defender against that starting five of Ben Simmons, JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid. Sixers GM Elton Brand didn’t just add an All-Star to his team, he added the perfect All-Star. Harris is low maintenance, doesn’t need a ton of touches, and is going to get really fat off relatively open looks, especially compared with what he was seeing in L.A., where he was still shooting 43 percent from behind the arc. Also? This team is fucking enormous now. Unlike the Warriors, there isn’t a super obvious pecking order in Philly, and the only foreseeable problem is when/if there is any internal disagreement on said order among the players. Until that day, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this. What’s your early review of the new Sixers?</p>
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<p id="P1RssZ"><strong>Verrier: </strong>The Warriors should probably just concede now and get it over with. No, but seriously, the Bobi & Tobi–era Sixers have been pretty damn impressive. Embiid basically flossed with the Lakers’ frontcourt, and yet the feeling coming out of the 23-point blowout was not about how great some of their individuals are but how great their offense works in concert. We’ve talked (or at least I have) incessantly about the fit issues on a team whose two young superstars are different mutations of a center. But with Harris, they’ve basically Simmons-proofed their roster. </p>
<p id="a8oEjt"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Joel Embiid agrees with you!</p>
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<p id="QehKPP"><strong>Verrier:</strong> If defenders want to sag off Ben, like LeBron did Sunday, he can now hit two of the NBA’s best shooters at their positions. He can set screens for Butler for some of those pick-and-roll sets Jimmy was <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/31/18204756/jimmy-butler-sixers-isolation">kvetching for</a>. They haven’t even begun to tap into the ballhandling that Tobias brings to the table. It all makes so much sense now. My analysis of the trade when it happened was: good player, bad trade. I still think that’s true; I don’t think co-owner Michael Rubin will be able to take Embiid on any island vacations once the franchise starts making luxury-tax payments. But I wonder whether sometimes we get so deep into the weeds about asset accumulation and draft picks and young player development that we forget that adding a really good player to a really good team can be really helpful.</p>
<p id="AWK2sf"><strong>Ryan: </strong>It’s hard to overstate the amount of turnover this franchise has seen in the past six years. Three front-office regimes, dozens of players. Hell, this is the third incarnation of the Sixers <em>this season</em>. And we didn’t even mention the team trading its latest no. 1 draft pick for a magic-beans late-first-rounder and Jonathon Simmons!</p>
<aside id="WdvGrl"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Markelle Fultz’s Candle Burned Out Long Before His Trade to Orlando","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/7/18216095/markelle-fultz-trade-sixers-magic-process"}]}'></div></aside><p id="NMzQ1u"><strong>Verrier:</strong> I still believe in Jon Simmons, Hustle God. Whatever spirit and good vibes and merch sales were lost in the jettisoning of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba-playoffs/2018/4/30/17300182/philadelphia-76ers-dario-saric">the Homie</a> seem to have resurfaced. I guess winning does solve all problems. Does it feel like the Sixers have reclaimed what they once had? Or does this team read like a brand-new experience through its first two games together?</p>
<p id="qj2844"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Brand-new experience. The campfire sing-along is over, the five-year plan is now a countdown to Ben’s rookie extension, when everything gets incredibly expensive. It turns out the great inflection point in Process history was the Redick signing, because it was a harbinger of things to come: If you want to move up a level, you have to bring in the talent from that level. Two games is an obscenely small sample size, but this doesn’t seem like the 1-2-3-4-5 Sixers, it seems like the not-fucking-around crew.</p>
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<p id="ycakRj"><strong>Verrier:</strong> CLOSE THE FUCKING BRIDGE, DANNY.</p>
<p id="fhPtUV"><strong>Ryan:</strong> The funny thing is, I feel like Brand built a Boston killer, with all the attendant switchability and physicality, but I don’t have a feel for how this new Sixers team will match up with the Bucks or Raptors, who also tooled up for the stretch run.</p>
<p id="SqOxU6"><strong>Verrier:</strong> It’s funny—even though the Celtics already look like the Pelicans when Kyrie is out of the game, I can’t shake the feeling that Brad Stevens with two days to prep is still any East team’s biggest roadblock to the Finals. I watched Marc Gasol’s debut with the Raptors (a 104-99 win in Madison Square Garden) and came away a bit … underwhelmed. Kawhi Leonard was having an off night, and so maybe the takeaways should just stop there, but it seems like Toronto has some work ahead of it in order to blend Gasol’s particular brilliance into its existing machine. </p>
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<p id="w63Lbg">The Raps played Gasol primarily with second units, and, if that’s the plan, he’s going to carve up other teams’ benches simply by standing in the high post and touch-passing to Toronto’s many hustle merchants. But some of the slow-footed closeouts he made on defense had me wondering who he’ll guard when the Bucks throw out a Giannis Antetokounmpo–Nikola Mirotic frontcourt, or whether he can handle Joel Embiid with more space than ever. Serge Ibaka has his flaws, but the Raps look so much more flexible in their usual starting lineup. And while I have high hopes for Mirotic in Milwaukee, his injury issues are already following him to the Midwest. I wonder whether either has a bulletproof five-man combination that can best the Sixers in a playoff series, when something that’s easier to cover up now, like Brook Lopez’s tank mobility or OG Anunoby’s shooting slump, could swing the series. Man, life comes at you fast. Is either more worrisome to the Sixers for you, or is it still Boston?</p>
<p id="dv8sI7"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Piggybacking your “sometimes it just takes good players” koan, sometimes you can have too many good players, or young players on the precipice of being good players, or good players that haven’t gotten their quan back after destroying their leg, or players named Jaylen Brown who scream, “I’VE ABANDONED MY BOY,” every time they have to fight through a screen.</p>
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<p id="iPz1dZ">I think Philly has the best starting five in the conference, but Milwaukee, Toronto, and Boston feel like more complete teams. Philly also might have the least inspiring in-game coach of the bunch. Boston is still the bogeyman for Philly. Like I’ve said before, they remind me a lot of a LeBron Cleveland team, and I learned to judge those LeBron Cleveland teams after the Finals, not after struggle press conferences midseason. Danny Ainge just pulled the front-office version of Gregg Popovich’s “let them play through it” coaching move. You can read that as “We like our team more than Marcus Morris does.” Or maybe he realizes what no one else in the East seems to: Nobody is beating Golden State this season, so you might as well keep your powder dry for Anthony Davis in July. </p>
<p id="drtb2E">The Western Conference teams certainly seemed a little more hip to that concept: There was hardly a move of consequence made by any of that conference’s current playoff teams. The Lakers’ recent on-court capitulations speak to a much deeper institutional schism between LeBron and the front office, but I have to side with Magic and Rob Pelinka here: Anthony Davis is actually not enough to be beat Boogie Down Productions. Durant just put 39 on the Heat on Sunday night … and that’s how he plays when he’s <em>disgruntled</em>.</p>
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<p id="Grl8Vp"><strong>Verrier: </strong>The West playoff field is starting to feel like the <a href="https://vimeo.com/61509220">Five-Timers Club</a>. Two new teams will likely jump into the fray this year, but otherwise it’s the same faces in different spots. Some sort of karmic balance has caught up to the Nuggets after their charmed first half; they lost all three games of their recent Eastern road trip, and even if they bounce back, the feeling of inevitability surrounding even the slightest sign of trouble speaks for itself. The Warriors may not be playing better than ever, but they may have their best mix of comfort, motivation, and talent since the 28-game win streak. Yet for the first time since their dynastic run began, there’s no clear-cut challenger standing between them and a fifth straight NBA Finals. It’s a shame that neither the Jazz nor the Trail Blazers swung for the fences at the deadline. A Mike Conley here or a Nikola Vucevic there would’ve at least made it interesting.</p>
<p id="isLKP1"><strong>Ryan:</strong> If Denver isn’t battle-tested, Houston is playing three-card monte, and the Jazz can’t get back to last season’s heights, then Oklahoma City, by default, is Golden State’s closest challenger. Which I’m sure delights … Golden State fans. That being said, are you getting some San Antonio vibes from the Thunder this season? They may not play with Spursian tactical discipline or exploit on-court inefficiencies, but the way the Thunder have been able to reconstruct a conference heavyweight around two stars and a bunch of mid-to-late first-round picks and reclamation projects is really impressive. Like, what are we doing here with Terrance Ferguson? And is it just my deep personal bias, or does Paul George have as much of an MVP claim as James Harden? </p>
<p id="4vQPVx"><strong>Verrier: </strong>I know Giannis is the best player on the best team, and George is the best two-way player in the game right now, but if we deny Harden another MVP as a way to make up for Russell Westbrook’s it will be a travesty. Harden is having one of the greatest offensive seasons in history, and unlike the Thunder’s league-average offense in 2016-17, the Rockets are surviving in the West because Harden has powered their offense to a rating better than the Warriors’ in their 73-win season. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="vF15h8">I’d have George third on my fake ballot if the season ended today, but I’d also have the Thunder as second-best in the West. Even with Andre Roberson sidelined and Patrick Patterson eating up more luxury-tax money than helpful minutes, OKC has this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWqnZTTRkm4">Crazy 88s</a> band of long athletes that they can relentlessly throw at you. And whether it’s George’s emergence or buying into the team’s defensive identity, Westbrook has become almost the elite version of that OKC archetype; he has never shot this poorly at this volume, but his rebound, assist, and steal numbers have never been better. (Maybe this is the version of Russ we should’ve had all along, but opportunity directed him toward volume scoring.) The old Russ will shoot the Thunder out of an important game or two before this season is over, but the net return is encouraging. The OG Thunder were at their best with Westbrook deferring to a dominant scorer on the wing and backed by a scoring combo guard, and while Russ-PG–Dennis Schröder is hardly Russ-Durant-Harden, the knockoff is passable. Worst case, they’re still the perfect foil for a dynasty. Maybe the West playoffs won’t be so bad after all.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/11/18220055/nba-trade-deadline-celtics-sixers-warriorsChris RyanJustin Verrier2019-02-04T06:00:00-05:002019-02-04T06:00:00-05:00A Rational Conversation About Kyrie Irving and the Future of the NBA
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<p>The Boston star wants off the rumor roller coaster, but is it too late to stop progress? We discuss the Celtics, the rumor economy, and where we go from here.</p> <p id="u7K4vJ"><strong>Justin Verrier:</strong> We’ve officially reached the Seven Seconds or Less era of NBA player movement. In the past week alone, Anthony Davis <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/28/18200988/anthony-davis-trade-request-lakers-celtics-pelicans">asked for a trade</a>, the Knicks decided to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/31/18206127/kristaps-porzingis-mavericks-trade-luka-doncic">trade Kristaps Porzingis</a> faster than it took the details of the deal to leak, the Lakers seesawed between a budding <a href="https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1091385239950278657">dynasty</a> and a budding <a href="https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1091934369500094472">disaster</a> every hour on the hour, the certainty around Kyrie Irving’s long-term commitment to Boston <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/1/18207249/kyrie-irving-boston-celtics-free-agency">shattered</a>, and Carmelo Anthony got <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25901413/bulls-waive-carmelo-anthony-clearing-way-10-all-star-free-agency">dropped</a> for the fifth time in the past year and a half. My head is spinning. The rumors are coming too fast to have a normal, functioning life; the night of the Porzingis trade I ate two packages of Pop-Tarts for dinner. And if you believe Kyrie, the constant rumormongering is having similar effects on the players at the center of all the scuttlebutt. Have we gone too far? What is happening?</p>
<p id="wuucSB"><strong>Chris Ryan: </strong>On Thursday, I had Goldfish and beer for dinner, and I spent the night slack-jawed while staring at Twitter. On another screen, the Sixers were posting one of their most impressive <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/game?gameId=401071441">victories</a> of the post-Iverson era, and honestly, I can’t say I paid all that much attention to it. Granted, my nerve endings might have been a little shot after the Kristacalypse, but just the image of me staring at a social media feed, looking for crumbs of Kevin Durant real estate news, while one of the most interesting games of the year plays out on screen … it was all a little too on the nose. Basketball is dead, long live the NBA. We are all inside the <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2719108-banana-boats-and-emoji-wars-the-day-deandre-jordan-turned-twitter-upside-down">DeAndre Jordan hostage house</a>.</p>
<p id="kKeBWp">The information warfare, four-dimensional front-office chess, and sources-say gossip is always at a fever pitch before the trade deadline, but I don’t think there’s ever been a time when so many of the league’s most important chess pieces have been in play at midseason. And it’s upsetting a lot of apple carts. Even the teams that would seemingly benefit from an Anthony Davis trade demand are in precarious positions. The Lakers went from being the most likely Brow landing spot to having their players and coaches almost get into a fight, all in the same weekend. Players are mad about the role the media plays in all of it, but it is a two-way street. The truth is people care more about where Kyrie might play next year than they do about how he’s playing for the Celtics right now. It’s drama, and it makes the Hamptons Five seem like an episode of <em>Downton Abbey</em>. The off-court reality show may actually, finally, really be eclipsing the on-court product, and I’m not sure the NBA can do anything about it.</p>
<aside id="szRAnw"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Rumormonger: Kristaps, AD, and Beyond in Your 2019 NBA Trade Deadline Tracker","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/14/18181771/2019-nba-trade-deadline-tracker-live-blog-rumors"},{"title":"Bill Simmons’s NBA Trade Value Rankings 2018-19","url":"http://tradevalue.theringer.com/ "}]}'></div></aside><p id="St4vqq"><strong>Verrier:</strong> I don’t know that there’s any incentive for the league to hit the brakes on it, either. While some <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2018/11/21/Media/NBA.aspx">recent data</a> shows that the early national games have taken a hit because of LeBron’s migration to the late shift, ratings have been steadily climbing for years. More importantly, the NBA is dominating the conversation year-round. There’s only, like, two weeks in early September when there isn’t something to blog about—and that will change this year, with the Basketball World Cup. Who needs to watch Bill Belichick wince under interrogation about his favorite breakfast foods at Super Bowl media day when two of the biggest franchises in sports are playing tug-of-war using Anthony Davis’s limbs? The players and the coaches get that, too. During the Super Bowl, noted Rams fan LeBron James was itching for Woj bombs:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Man where Shams, Woj, Haynes, McMenamin at????.... ♂️</p>— LeBron James (@KingJames) <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1092239095621857280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2019</a>
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<p id="R7omqn">Even Brad Stevens broke the fourth wall last week:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Brad Stevens on rumors: “The NBA is what it is because of the scuttlebutt … it captivates everybody’s attention for 12 months out of the year. … The unfortunate part of being in the middle of it is you realize that most of it’s not true. But it’s still fun to listen to."</p>— Chris Forsberg (@ChrisForsberg_) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisForsberg_/status/1090746795817426945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2019</a>
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<p id="XpvADv"><strong>Ryan: </strong>He can say that, but his point guard certainly hasn’t been taking it in stride. On Friday, Irving <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/celtics/2019/02/01/kyrie-irving-address-his-future-boston-kind/XHsdpBZMtTFWqpsKQyBDAP/story.html">addressed the media</a> and basically undid whatever Celtic-4-Lyfe campaigning he’d done earlier in the season, which included an appearance before season-ticket holders to announce his intentions to re-sign with the team, and appearing in a Nike commercial where he talks about wanting his number to hang in the Garden rafters.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">My dad is the reason I wear 11. I want to be the reason no one else will. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/justdoit?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#justdoit</a> <a href="https://t.co/CZiLOsxbA9">pic.twitter.com/CZiLOsxbA9</a></p>— Kyrie Irving (@KyrieIrving) <a href="https://twitter.com/KyrieIrving/status/1065613207581192192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 22, 2018</a>
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<p id="THgF5V">That was the old Kyrie. The new Kyrie praises the Knicks’ team building, and says that he’ll make up his mind about his future in July. He has been aggrieved about the state of things, specifically the media speculation about whether he would stay in Boston, go to New York, reunite with LeBron, or just become a full-time vlogger. He was explicit about the impact that said speculation has on the on-court product: “It’s crazy how stories and things and story lines can seep into a locker room. You guys are part of the destruction of locker rooms. That’s just what it is.” Yes, since you asked, I find it high-key hilarious that Uncle Drew, the Flat Earth Vlogger, doesn’t think that basketball is entertainment, and I’m doubled over with laughter that he and his brother in the school of <em>STFU AND HOOP</em>, Kevin Durant, are the two dudes who are going to be asked the most about their futures between now and the event horizon that is free agency 2019. Ultimately, both can be true: The media scrutiny and fan interest in the behind-the-scenes and off-the-record NBA can help ruin a perfectly good basketball team, <em>and </em>players can play a huge part in instigating that drama.</p>
<p id="M13Fdy"><strong>Verrier: </strong>The “I asked Deepak Chopra for the time and now I speak to Mother Earth” brand Kyrie has crafted for himself makes it hard to take him seriously in moments like this. As does the fact that on the same day AD’s trade request went public, it was <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/nba-star-kyrie-irving-haunted-hotel-movie-1203119709/">announced</a> that Irving is starring in a movie about the haunted hotel known to have a bed bug or two that road teams stay at in Oklahoma City. The game he missed in 2016 because of bug bites became a <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/14828139/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-says-bed-bugs-blame-absence">big story</a>, and now that hotel is IP. He is literally profiting off of the NBA as reality TV. I do feel for him to a certain degree. It’s impossible for star players to wrestle control of their careers away from owners without subjecting themselves to the hordes of content zombies to pick over their sweet, sweet brains, because if a shadow league of agents and backdoor handshakes and friendships is dictating the outcome of the actual league, the public is going to want to know more about that. But Kyrie should get that more than anyone, having seen LeBron manipulate his story arc up close. Irving has already begun to follow his lead with the Celtics, taking his teammates to task through media comments. The spectacle Irving created by revealing in a recent postgame presser that he’d phoned up James played like a LeBron tribute band. </p>
<p id="DiJ19L">Maybe we just know too much now? Or maybe the information is getting out so fast that it’s accelerating drama that would take years to come to a head?</p>
<p id="lFKoaC"><strong>Ryan:</strong> I don’t know if it’s a matter of knowing too much, but I do wonder whether we know enough about who is behind the stories we’re reading. Anonymous sourcing has become an industry standard in sports media, but maybe every Woj bomb or Sham wow should come with a question: Who does this story benefit? </p>
<p id="qaI99D">As for Kyrie, I wonder whether he’d say anything if the Celtics had the Raptors’ record. He’s played 45 out of their 53 games and was nursing a hip injury for most of last week. You’re right, he’s acting like LeBron. And this Celtics team is playing like one of those can’t-get-out-of-their-own-way Cavs teams from 2014 to 2018. Kyrie has never played on a destroy-all-that-comes-before-it regular-season team, has he? Most of those Cavs squads won around 50 games, and there were a lot of broken eggs on the way to the omelette. Maybe this is all he knows?</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="CdHaX8"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"A Rational Conversation About Anthony Davis and the Future of Basketball in New Orleans ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/30/18202991/rational-conversation-anthony-davis-new-orleans-pelicans"},{"title":"Are the Sixers Better or Worse With Jimmy Butler?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/15/18182967/philadelphia-76ers-jimmy-butler-trade-conversation"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="BWl04o"><strong>Verrier:</strong> There’s been a changing of the guard happening in the NBA, too, and it’s more glaring now than ever before. LeBron just had the longest injury absence of his career, Dwyane Wade can make the All-Star Game only in a ceremonial role, and Melo is sitting on the sideline because he bought a ticket. Giannis is the one leading the MVP derby by a mile, Luka Doncic’s front office is swinging the trade to get him a superstar running mate, and Davis and Irving are the former Team USA teammates perhaps conspiring to play together. The generation of stars who came up under LeBron is rising to the forefront, and the most prominent ones are running with the track and tactics that LeBron first laid down. The game is the same, it just got <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwogM2DL99o">more fierce</a>; Kyrie is our Marlo.</p>
<p id="TMpslG"><strong>Ryan:</strong> One other aspect of this that I find fascinating, speaking as a child of the Process, is what this kind of volatility creates for front offices. For the past six months, all my Knicks fan friends have been praising New York’s patient tanking approach, which presumably was done with an eye toward pairing a fully restored KP with Zion. The Knicks were finally rebuilding the right way. The way the Sonics/Thunder did, the way the Sixers did, etc. And then they go full Teddy KGB and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sasg1XmdXOc">pull apart the Oreo</a>. Maybe they’ll wind up with Kyrie, Kevin, and a top-three pick. Or maybe they’ll get Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, and Keldon Johnson. Danny Ainge has been sitting on his overflowing war chest of young wings and lottery picks for what feels like my entire adult life, all with the goal of making the right set of moves to create another Big Three in Boston. But after this season, he could be SOL, with only Gordon Hayward’s ghost to show for it. If guys with a year and a half left on their deals can start calling their own shots, how do you come up with a five-year plan? Maybe the best plan is to have no plan at all and be willing to drop everything at the sound of a Twitter push alert?</p>
<p id="2uTFKl"><strong>Verrier:</strong> For all the talk about player agency, most of our favorite preagents haven’t actually gotten a chance to pick their destination yet. Oklahoma City, Toronto, Boston, and Philly all traded for disgruntled stars in the hope that they could win them over with their winning cultures, and while the gamble worked with Paul George, that might have been the outlier; as good as the Raptors, Celtics, and 76ers are this season, Leonard, Irving, and Butler could all flee to Los Angeles the first moment they get a say in the matter. Maybe all of the trades these unglamorous-market teams have made to prevent stars from exercising their power has only added more kerosene to the situation, because it both adds another layer of player movement before the player’s own choice and forces the players to choose between a proven winner (what we used to assume was more important than anything to a player’s worth) and winning on their own terms. It’s a clash between progress and the teams that will get left behind if they can’t stop it.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="dcPKR2"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"One Man Can Have All That Power: Kyrie Irving No Longer Seems Committed to Boston","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/1/18207249/kyrie-irving-boston-celtics-free-agency"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="2oDll3">Whether you’re Kyrie or Sully from Charlestown, I think there are some legitimate concerns to raise about the future of the Celtics’ core. Jayson Tatum is only 20 years old and will probably figure it out, but Gordon Hayward, the player expected to be Irving’s best teammate, is a shell of who he once was, and Al Horford is starting to show signs of the wear and tear from all of those technically proficient screens he’s set over 872 games. But if Irving does bolt this summer, there’s still going to be a lot of exasperation from places like Boston and Cleveland and San Antonio about the fatalism of a star-driven league. (Who’s ready for another lockout?!) I guess the silver lining is that the Celtics may still have the best assets to swing a trade for the next unhappy All-Star in the queue.</p>
<p id="2TtbKs"><strong>Ryan:</strong> Do you think we’re doing another one of these conversations next Monday as we look at a radically different NBA landscape? I still can’t imagine the Pelicans caving to the Lakers without hearing what other teams have to offer in the summer. If I’m Dell Demps, I’m not doing this trade #forthecontent, I’m doing it to get the best return on a player I cannot replace. Maybe Mike Conley Jr. will get moved, but I think that’s the level we’re going to see on or before Thursday. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="b5uuIx"><strong>Verrier:</strong> The Lakers, based on the <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25904225/pelicans-underwhelmed-lakers-initial-offers-anthony-davis">most recent reporting</a>, are still fucking around and trying to slip Rajon Rondo and Michael Beasley into their offer, so unless AD doubles down and says it’s Lakers or bust, I doubt that he’ll get moved. In addition to letting the Celtics into the bidding, the Knicks’ trade of Porzingis (whom the Pelicans reportedly had little interest in acquiring) makes them an even more intriguing option if this drags past Thursday’s deadline. Dennis Smith Jr., Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, and the no. 1 overall pick would be better than anything the Lakers or Celtics could scrap together; at worst, New York’s three recent lottery picks plus a top-four pick this year could get Boston to throw Tatum on the table. But it does feel like the Porzingis trade turned on the pilot light for all the other middle-tier playoff teams. Houston is always <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinOConnorNBA/status/1091537718289457154">looming</a>. Utah has all of this cap space next summer but no one to spend it on, so they’re probably better off putting their expiring contracts to work now. The Pelicans need to dump their vets, and the Grizzlies officially revved up the tank on Sunday by starting Bruno Caboclo. … I take it all back. I love this. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go mainline the <em>HoopsHype </em>rumors page.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/4/18210111/kyrie-irving-rumors-trades-anthony-davis-nba-tradesChris RyanJustin Verrier2019-01-30T08:05:00-05:002019-01-30T08:05:00-05:00A Rational Conversation About Anthony Davis and the Future of Basketball in New Orleans
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<p>Davis’s tenure with the Pelicans is all but over, but the leaguewide turmoil his trade request will bring hasn’t even started. What does AD’s departure mean for New Orleans as a franchise? And what impact does that have on the rest of the NBA? </p> <p id="M81arB"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/chris-ryan"><strong>Chris Ryan</strong></a><strong>: </strong>A Loomis, a Benson, and a Demps walk into a bar, and that bar is about to get hit by an asteroid. Anyone with even a passing interest in the NBA is aware that Anthony Davis, via his agent Rich Paul, has informed the New Orleans Pelicans that he will not be re-signing with them when he can opt out of his contract in the summer of 2020 and that he has requested a trade. Justin, you used to cover the Pelicans in New Orleans, so let’s start with this: Is this an extinction-level event? Or has this franchise been preparing for this day?</p>
<p id="VyymOS"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/justin-verrier"><strong>Justin Verrier</strong></a><strong>: </strong>I think it’s fair to say that this is the biggest moment for the franchise since Tom Benson took over as owner in 2012, because it is a chance to course-correct every institutional failure that has put them in this position with Davis. The franchise was gifted the most precious natural resource in the sport when it lucked into the no. 1 overall pick the season after trading Chris Paul—a generational talent under team control for almost a decade. But the organization squandered it through a parade of rash decisions and get-wins-quick schemes designed to energize a largely hoops-ambivalent fan base. </p>
<p id="7sNl6h">Dell Demps, their GM dating back to the previous ownership regime, deserves a lot of blame for that. But these problems go core-deep. Davis’s trade request is, on its face, a pretty routine small-market sob story (Star Player Wants Out of Small Market), but it begets a lot of other, more existential questions about this franchise and the NBA in New Orleans. The return they get for Davis, and the people current owner Gayle Benson chooses to make these decisions, will probably define the franchise for another seven years—and, perhaps, the rest of the league if New Orleans’s continued negligence of the basketball side of their local sports empire leads to a sale. Y’know, minor stuff.</p>
<aside id="yOSbUO"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Brow or Never: The Pros and Cons of Dealing Anthony Davis Now","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/29/18201660/anthony-davis-trade-pros-cons-pelicans-lakers-celtics"},{"title":"AD-pocalypse Now: The Five Big Questions About Anthony Davis’s Trade Request","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/28/18200988/anthony-davis-trade-request-lakers-celtics-pelicans"},{"title":"What’s the Wildest Anthony Davis Trade You Can Think Of?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/28/18201074/anthony-davis-new-orleans-pelicans-trade-ideas-lebron-james-kyrie-irving-russell-westbrook"}]}'></div></aside><p id="eKJjly"><strong>Ryan: </strong>Can you tell me a little about Demps? In an era when front-office regimes are arguably more scrutinized than coaching staffs, I feel like he’s pretty anonymous. Is he a survivor? A guy who is working with what he has? Who would you compare him to as a GM? An old-guard guy like Ed Stefanski? A dealer like Neil Olshey? I feel like I don’t know enough about him, even though he’s going to be making one of the biggest decisions in NBA history.</p>
<p id="oax37k"><strong>Verrier:</strong> I think he prefers to remain anonymous too. He doesn’t like dealing with the media, and will often let head coach Alvin Gentry serve as the voice of the executive branch—even though Gentry, as he did on Monday, will usually shrug and tell reporters, “You have to ask Dell about that.” (Mickey Loomis, the GM of the Saints and the executive VP of the Pelicans, is a whole other story; he never did any basketball-related media while I was there, not even on background.) Part of it, I think, is that Demps hails from the Spurs system, which is known for being a bit secretive. I also don’t think he cares much for the niceties of the business—which, as multiple people have told me over the years, extends to his own employees and other teams. I think he has a good basketball mind that isn’t restricted to either an old-school or new-school approach, in a good way, and that’s probably why previous ownership plucked him out of San Antonio at the age of 40. He’s done some good work on the fringes, getting guys like Quincy Pondexter, Lance Thomas, and Darius Miller. The Pelicans don’t have a traditional assistant GM position, so Demps brought in Danny Ferry as a consultant at a time when Ferry was struggling to find a GM gig because of his <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/13107592/atlanta-hawks-had-no-incentive-keep-danny-ferry">unceremonious exit</a> from the Hawks front office. So Demps basically got GM-level advice for a consultant fee, which is pretty shrewd. (The downside was Ferry instantly became the most respected voice in the room, according to multiple people.) </p>
<p id="jdsckP">But I’ve often felt that Demps’s best attributes work against him. He’s known for being headstrong, and it will often result in irrational gut decisions—paying Solomon Hill way more than the get-out price the team set before free agency because he believed in Hill coming out of the draft, for instance—or worse. He clashed with Monty Williams, another former Spurs staffer, and eventually <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/news/sources--pelicans-fire-coach-monty-williams-171709616.html">forced Williams out</a>. He and Gentry clashed in Gentry’s first season in New Orleans, and Demps <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/pelicans-gm-dell-demps-reportedly-undermined-coach-alvin-gentry/">reportedly undermined him publicly</a>. The thing you always hear about Demps—including on Monday, in the wake of the AD shit storm—is that his best skill is surviving. Despite just three winning seasons and a sub-.500 winning percentage overall, he has lasted in New Orleans for eight-plus seasons and through two different owners (three if we’re counting Gayle, Tom’s widow). We’ll see whether he’ll make it through the trade of another superstar; the last one <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25075452/david-stern-dell-demps-new-orleans-pelicans-lousy-general-manager">didn’t go so well</a>.</p>
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<p id="EI2dyu"><strong>Ryan:</strong> OK, so Demps might have a light-years-ahead plan, he’s just not talking about it at the Wynn Tower Suite Bar at summer league. I think there are some assumptions being made by people outside the city that this franchise is basically on life support as it is, and that Davis leaving will kill whatever interest there is in a New Orleans pro basketball team. But … are we sure that’s the case? We could probably spend hours talking about why <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/4/27/17289860/pelicans-new-orleans-postseason">hoops hasn’t caught on in the Crescent City</a>, whether the team is a relocation candidate, and whether folks in New Orleans would be that sad to see it go. But is Davis really going to be the Reaper here? LeBron left Cleveland TWICE, and the Cavs are still in the top 10 in attendance in the NBA (with all the caveats about how teams might goose those numbers). New Orleans may be struggling to maintain a team, but is Anthony Davis’s possible departure going to be the thing that seals the Pels’ future?</p>
<p id="8Qow0O"><strong>Verrier:</strong> So this is where the “learning from your mistakes” part comes in. Some might look at what’s happened and conclude that if they can’t generate interest around a future Hall of Famer, can they ever? I think the truth is we don’t know yet. Because while the franchise did have an MVP candidate in his prime—twice, if you want to throw Chris Paul in there—it never had the sort of sustained success that it needed to get fans involved. The heights were fun—this team was the scrappy, chic upstart as recently as 2015! But there were so many up-and-down seasons and injuries and different teammates. So while it’s a shame that locals missed out on seeing this once-in-a-generation talent, I also don’t blame them. The team is usually struggling to stay around .500, and the arena atmosphere reflected that. </p>
<p id="6c8Mi1">I wonder whether getting a bunch of fun young guys into their fast-paced system and building from the ground up might be a blessing in disguise. Memphis is the most comparable market to New Orleans, and the Grizzlies are revered throughout the league not because they landed Marc Gasol, but because the Grit and Grind brand created a movement that galvanized that market base. (For what it’s worth, NOLA fans instantly embraced Boogie’s snarl from the moment he arrived. AD is great, but he’s not much of a personality.) And if the Young and Fun approach doesn’t work? Then I’m ready to have the doomsday conversation.</p>
<aside id="G7NM5G"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Rumormonger: Your 2019 NBA Trade Deadline Tracker","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/14/18181771/2019-nba-trade-deadline-tracker-live-blog-rumors"},{"title":"Bill Simmons’s NBA Trade Value Rankings 2018-19","url":"http://tradevalue.theringer.com/"}]}'></div></aside><p id="zYMjVX"><strong>Ryan: </strong>Memphis is also similar to New Orleans in how opaque its decision-making can seem; you often wonder who is calling the shots. I think it’s fair to say that how we view the Pelicans going forward—as victims of shadow tampering by a Klutch-Lakers cabal or simply as a franchise that got butterfingers with the most talented player of his generation—will be tied up in what happens over the next few weeks and months. The conventional wisdom is that this request was made now so that the Lakers could get in on the bidding before the Celtics could make their offer in the summer. Davis has probably played his last game in a New Orleans uniform, either way. But there are a lot of things that can happen between now and the start of next season.</p>
<p id="xYwPcM">Could the NBA get involved? There was definitely some language in the <a href="https://www.nba.com/pelicans/news/statement-new-orleans-pelicans-1-28-19">Pelicans’ statement</a> that suggested they were monitoring the possibility that Davis has been tapped up (to borrow a soccer phrase). And the league just <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25879816/anthony-davis-new-orleans-pelicans-fined-50000-public-trade-demand-agent">fined Davis $50,000</a> for Rich Paul’s comments to reporters about Davis’s trade request. Could a third or fourth team—Golden State, New York, Brooklyn, or, hilariously, Milwaukee—throw their hat in the ring along with Boston and Los Angeles? Could Davis go to a non-Lakers quasi contender as a rental? Could that quasi contender be Toronto? My favorite tidbit so far has been the Stephen A. Smith report that Demps consulted with Gregg Popovich, who <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2818208-stephen-a-gregg-popovich-told-dell-demps-dont-cave-to-anthony-davis-lakers">counseled him</a> not to trade Davis to the Lakers. If Demps needs Pop to tell him that, we’re all screwed.</p>
<p id="NIMMVa"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Lakers schadenfreude is one of the great American pastimes, so the 29 other teams conspiring against the Lakers would be the chef’s kiss to this brazen-ass attempt to land every vulnerable star in the league. The league’s tampering investigation into L.A.’s overtures for Davis may still be ongoing, so I guess there’s a chance that they’ll get Joe Smith’d and Davis will have to go elsewhere. </p>
<p id="KZLp9E">My personal favorite dark horse team is Toronto, just because, in an era of pearl-clutching every draft pick, we don’t usually see a team go all in on one season in the way Masai Ujiri has with the Kawhi trade; why not keep going down the rabbit hole? Denver is another fun one, if only for the basketball porn of a Davis-Jokic frontcourt. I’d also love to see AD in a small market with a passionate fan base like Portland, just to A/B test my theory above. What about Philly? Or should we start coming up with AD-to-L.A. headline puns now?</p>
<aside id="7XxZtu"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Are the Sixers Better or Worse With Jimmy Butler?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/15/18182967/philadelphia-76ers-jimmy-butler-trade-conversation"}]}'></div></aside><p id="c9ZTmE"><strong>Ryan: </strong>As a Sixers fan, and probably an atypical Sixers fan at this point, I’m almost more interested <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/29/18202336/free-jrue-holiday-anthony-davis-new-orleans-pelicans">in Jrue Holiday</a> than I am in Anthony Davis. I know I should probably be fired into the sun for that statement. Maybe the Doug Collins era made me damaged goods. I think, like we did with LeBron, we will spend a long time and a lot of energy trying to think of different places for Davis to go, and he will wind up with the Lakers. </p>
<p id="siwTmK">The Holiday bit does lead me to my next question: Would Demps consider what I think would be an unprecedented teardown midseason? Holiday said Davis was 90 percent of the reason he re-signed with New Orleans. Is it worth considering a Davis deal in relation to a possible Holiday transaction as well?</p>
<p id="bSBoFc"><strong>Verrier: </strong>“Teams should actually be trying to trade for Jrue” is definitely a <em>Ringer</em> take. (Literally. I just talked to someone in the office about it.) But I’m here for it. Holiday is versatile enough to fit on almost any roster. And he’d be a great fit on a team like the Sixers, who need someone who can do a little bit of everything more than they need another mouth to feed on offense. Having said that, I would be surprised if the Pelicans were to move him. The team has been reluctant to bottom out since drafting Davis, and it probably doesn’t want to lose what little momentum the AD era created with fans. But bottoming out is clearly the most prudent approach. <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nba-predictions/"><em>FiveThirtyEight</em></a> has them at a 22 percent chance of making the playoffs—and that’s with a healthy and productive Davis. There appears to be a big advantage to selling in this trade market, and a lot of their rotation (Nikola Mirotic, Julius Randle, Elfrid Payton, etc.) can walk for nothing this summer. Backing into Zion Williamson would make for a nice time-is-a-flat-circle moment, I guess.</p>
<p id="5OeLg4"><strong>Ryan: </strong>I think I heard every Knicks fan I know start cutting Lone Star cans into Dell Demps figurines just now. If you had to guess, is there an institutional (meaning: Benson and Loomis) commitment to Demps being the person to oversee the likely complete transformation, if not rebuilding, of the franchise? Or could this be the most interesting, most complicated front-office job on the market come summer?</p>
<p id="8kjHIq"><strong>Verrier: </strong>I feel like Demps has been on the chopping block virtually every season since the Bensons took over. (Including last season, until the Pels went on that torrid second-half run and bought Demps a new contract.) But the same problem that existed then exists now: If not him, then who? All of the Pelicans’ top executives hail from the Saints’ side of the org chart, so I’m not sure whom they can turn to to come up with a list of candidates, let alone choose the next steward of the franchise. In years past, Joe Dumars was widely assumed by people outside of New Orleans to be next in line if Demps should go, but only because (a) he was (allegedly) the one telling everyone that and (b) he’s a New Orleans native.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="yzxvEi">Maybe they’ll turn operations over to Ferry. Or maybe they’ll hire outside consultants, the way a college football program would in this situation. Maybe, just maybe, their naivete will lead them to an outside-the-box candidate with big ideas and they’ll end up with Sam Hinkie. I highly doubt it, considering how conservative they’ve been with things like the luxury tax and their scouting budget, but they need more creative thinking up and down the organization. Otherwise, this vicious cycle may keep repeating itself.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/30/18202991/rational-conversation-anthony-davis-new-orleans-pelicansChris RyanJustin Verrier2019-01-15T05:30:02-05:002019-01-15T05:30:02-05:00Are the Sixers Better or Worse With Jimmy Butler?
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<p>Has a 28-16 team ever produced this many think pieces, Twitter threads masquerading as group-therapy sessions, fake trades, and locker-room gossip? You must be new here: This is how we do it in Philadelphia.</p> <p id="gclAQs"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/justin-verrier"><strong>Justin Verrier</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Jimmy Butler will face off against the Timberwolves on Tuesday for the first time since his trade to the 76ers, and while the jerseys and the names have changed, the Charlie Brown cloud that loomed over his final weeks in Minnesota has followed him to Philly. Virtually every game with Jimmy has shined a light on a new flaw in the franchise’s foundation. Joel Embiid is unhappy about how he’s being used. Ben Simmons doesn’t fit with Embiid. Jimmy is unhappy about everything except for his <a href="https://twitter.com/kurtwearshats/status/1082754450522075136">personalized coffee cups</a> (which are dope). Brett Brown might not be the right coach. The team needs more depth. Is life with Jimmy as great as it sounds?</p>
<p id="KGgyy7"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/chris-ryan"><strong>Chris Ryan</strong></a><strong>: </strong>It really depends on how deeply you want to bore down. It will come as little surprise to you that I am situated somewhere around the earth’s core, and the view kind of sucks. On the surface, the Sixers are 28-16, which is really good. Embiid is having an MVP-caliber season, and they are one of two NBA teams that can reasonably claim to have three top-20 players on their roster. But the deeper you go, the darker it gets. Butler’s arrival hasn’t just caused growing pains, it’s brought about a minor-to-major crisis in confidence in the entire Sixers project. I’m being hysterical, but I’m also being a Philadelphian. Already prone to soap operatics, the team appears to have sprung a few new media leaks ever since Butler hit town. And even the stuff that should feel good—like wins—feels weird, because nothing is coming easy.</p>
<p id="Isy0F8">The biggest thing I am coming to terms with over this last week or so—outside of wondering whether or not Brown can hold this team together, much less improve on last season’s finish—is how much Butler actually cost.</p>
<p id="vLRgHD">There’s a great argument to be made that the Sixers had to do this deal. Elton Brand made it on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgMRAkZ_J-k">Zach Lowe’s podcast</a> earlier in the season, when he told Lowe that the Sixers’ window for adding a marquee player was essentially the remainder of Ben Simmons’s rookie contract. I get it, and I don’t think the sticker price for Butler was that steep. But every day, I feel more and more like Butler might have been the wrong star to trade for.</p>
<p id="9y2HUh"><strong>Verrier:</strong> If they clear Markelle Fultz’s contract, they’ll have enough room to bring back Jimmy <em>and</em> add another high-level player (or the necessary role players to fill in around this Big Three). It was the correct move purely from a logistical standpoint. And as we draw closer to the trade deadline, we’re seeing how sharp the drop-off is from Butler to the next best target (Kevin Love with one hand? <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/14/18181741/nikola-vucevic-trade-deadline-orlando-magic">Nikola Vucevic</a>?). It’s possible, maybe even likely, that we’re in the Sixers’ darkest-before-the-dawn moment.</p>
<p id="uZ9mmv">But there’s also a case that this is the one time the franchise shouldn’t have erred on the side of the cold, hard business decision. (It’s honestly wild how cutthroat the organization has been—from dealing Philly native Mikal Bridges for a future draft pick and Zhaire Smith, to the robotic nature of their PR approach to injury news—since running Sam Hinkie out of town for not being nice enough to agents.) Their core group (Embiid, Simmons, JJ Redick, Dario Saric, Robert Covington) was not only good, it was impervious to melodrama. A year of agonizing Fultz updates, a potential clash of your two best players, the realization that your LeBron 2.0 may be fatally flawed—that monsoon of palace intrigue would’ve crushed most franchises. Yet, somehow, we (foolishly) still picked this team to compete for a title in the preseason?</p>
<p id="MhJ8dU">I think a lot of that stems from the cultlike good vibes of the fan base. “Trust the Process” was not just a rallying call, it became a magic eraser for the franchise’s many screwups. <em>Our no. 1 overall doesn’t have full range of motion over his shooting arm? Let’s make a T-shirt about it!</em> The Butler trade not only dealt away two of the team’s most lovable characters, it let a fox into the chicken coop. As we saw in the weeks leading up to his exit from Minnesota, and as we’re seeing now with stories like <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25684980/jimmy-butler-challenging-philadelphia-76ers-coach-brett-brown-offensive-role">the one ESPN dropped</a> at the top of the month, Butler is an agent of chaos. And the only way to survive in the court of public opinion is to be as vicious as he is. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ben and Jo start backchanneling every gripe they have to the media, too.</p>
<p id="9Avkks"><strong>Ryan:</strong> I mean, there’s speculation that that’s already begun! If Brett didn’t leak the Film Session That Shook the World (or Sixers Twitter), and Jimmy didn’t leak it …</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kendall Jenner courtside for <a href="https://twitter.com/sixers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sixers</a>/<a href="https://twitter.com/cavs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cavs</a>! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBACelebRow?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBACelebRow</a> <a href="https://t.co/xh2QwdIPUq">pic.twitter.com/xh2QwdIPUq</a></p>— NBA (@NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBA/status/1066162379795382273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2018</a>
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<p id="7f38QH">I will say this for Butler: He’s certainly had an impact. We are just approaching his two-month anniversary in town, and I already feel like every postgame press conference has <em>August: Osage County</em> potential. I know he’s supposed to be on his best behavior so as to not torpedo his chances at a five-year deal with the Sixers or a four-year deal somewhere else, but if this is his best behavior, it’s not a great advertisement for what’s to come once he’s locked up long term. Ironically, the things ailing the Sixers since Butler arrived are the very things Butler would seemingly preach against: namely, defensive frailty and lack of competitive fire.</p>
<p id="f1nZJb">Since the trade went down, the Sixers are some kind of inverted peak-Warriors team. Their hot first quarters (they lead the league in first-quarter scoring) are impossible to enjoy because you know what’s coming: a second-half defensive effort that feels like five guys scrolling through their phones rather than helping on D. The Sixers are ranked 18th in third-quarter defense, and they’re even worse in the fourth. The scariest part is these are the numbers after Philly … hasn’t really played anyone yet! Their best wins have come against a Kawhi-less Raps, a struggling Jazz (twice), and the Clippers (twice). They are about to embark on a brutal stretch (Pacers, Thunder, Rockets, Spurs, Nuggets, the always fun <em>American Ninja Warrior</em> obstacle course that is the West Coast, wrapping up back home with … the Raptors and the Nuggets again) leading into the All-Star break, and if I sound particularly moody today, it’s because the team is coming off a run of losing to the Wizards and Hawks and barely beating a Knicks team that they were smoking for most of the game.</p>
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<p id="75M6uk"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Such a precipitous fall-off screams two things to me: They aren’t all on the same page yet—and, to be fair, this core hasn’t even been together for two months—and the team is unable to develop role players to fill the void of the role players they just traded.</p>
<p id="VmCGjY"><strong>Ryan:</strong> I want to get your opinion on this thing that’s been bugging me ever since I heard Bill Simmons on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmYOZkoCBYo">Zach’s pod</a> last week. Is it possible that while the Sixers were engineering their own Big Three, the NBA pivoted away from that paradigm? Bill was talking about how much he likes what the Bucks have built around Giannis Antetokounmpo, with all the complementary pieces playing specific roles. They go 10-deep, with an eclectic ensemble of supporting actors, all of whom seem to be thriving in Mike Budenholzer’s system. This same general blueprint is successful in Denver, Toronto, and, perhaps unintentionally, Houston. Are the Sixers showing us the perils of putting all your eggs in three baskets?</p>
<p id="ETFGeP"><strong>Verrier:</strong> Just look at the teams that recently jettisoned stars in favor of young veterans: The Pacers are better off without Paul George. The Kings are better off without Boogie. The Spurs are doing just fine without Kawhi Leonard. Even the Wolves looked feisty when Robert Covington was healthy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the top three teams in each conference have quality players up and down their rosters. Among the many trends the Warriors have ushered in is putting five capable offensive players on the court at one time without sacrificing on defense, which has made it harder for everyone else to punt a position or two on nonshooters—the Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins spots on the 2007-08 Celtics, basically. The Thunder, who dealt depth for George, and later Carmelo Anthony, are probably the best case study for this idea. They’ve dispersed Melo’s minutes and responsibilities to solid veterans and are thriving as a result, even without Andre Roberson and with their former MVP shooting like he’s Michael Carter-Westbrook.</p>
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<p id="OjTyhl">But it goes the other way, too. OKC is excelling this season because it has someone like George playing at an MVP level. Indy is doing quite well without him, sure, but we’d stop short of calling the Pacers a title contender, specifically because they don’t have a player of George’s caliber (Victor Oladipo may get there, someday, if he stays healthy). It just took a season to get the right players around George—which is the same excuse the Sixers can use about their now-top-heavy team.</p>
<p id="ZicPN6">I’m starting to think this is a new question with the same bottom-line answer we end up at for virtually every existential NBA question: Talent will eventually win out. The Bucks are thriving now, but do they have a bulletproof five-man combination that can hold up against a defense with multiple days of prep work? The Celtics exposed Simmons in one game; can you imagine what Brad Stevens can do against Brook Lopez’s streetsweeper mobility? I would still favor the Celtics, despite all of their recent infighting and Kyrie’s misguided attempts to solve their issues through stern talk and healing crystals, in a series. That feels important.</p>
<p id="GluOAn"><strong>Ryan:</strong> If a couple of things had broken differently (or not broken, in the case of Zhaire Smith’s foot), Philly could have one of those dangerously deep teams, especially if they had kept Bridges on draft night. That really feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth. If the Sixers keep Bridges, and don’t do the Butler trade, they have a 4-10 (after Simmons, Embiid, and JJ Redick) of Covington, Dario Saric, Bridges, Wilson Chandler, T.J. McConnell, Mike Muscala, and Landry Shamet. That’s putting a lot on Joel’s and Ben’s shoulders, but it’s still a sight better than Chandler, T.J., Shamet, Jonah Bolden, Muscala, and Furkan Korkmaz.</p>
<p id="tHHG6g">The Christmas game in Boston seems like a real inflection point this season. With all the caveats about it being early in the Jimmy era, it just felt like the Sixers had done all this maneuvering only to be beat by the same team in a slightly different way. Everything that seemed groundbreaking about Philly last year seems off this year. The only thing Brett has going for him in a playoff series against the Celtics is that it’s unclear what kind of offensive system Philly runs at all. I’m not even sure what Stevens would scheme against!</p>
<p id="XOAJTM">Before we even get to the postseason, we have to get through the trade deadline without doing something stupid. I’m firmly on the Don’t You Fucking Dare side of the Trade Ben debate. Short of blowing it up, do you see any kind of deal that could help the team for the second half of the season? Or do you think I’m being too precious about my nonshooting point forward?</p>
<p id="v09lrf"><strong>Verrier:</strong> I am firmly in the camp that Ben and Jo should be split up, but I’m also in the camp that you don’t trade Ben for anything short of an Anthony Davis–like talent, because he can still be a transformative player in the right context. It’s a very large camp. I still want to see this team with the proper role players around them, and they aren’t going to fall into their lap like they did last season. You’ve already pulled the Band-Aid off and time-warped the franchise to win-now mode. The mistake would to be to stop dealing now.</p>
<p id="JrDqoG">Fultz for Jeremy Lamb—who says no?</p>
<p id="5tPebD"><strong>Ryan: </strong>I’m not a fan of bringing in <a href="http://www.philly.com/news/sixers-workouts-roster-jodie-meeks-corey-brewer-brandon-rush-20190114.html">Brandon Rush, Corey Brewer, or Jodie Meeks</a>, and the time to trade Fultz was before he stepped foot on the court this season. If you’ve come this far with him, I think you have to stick it out at least to the end of the season, with the hope that he accrues a little more value, for Philly or whichever team they can deal him to.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="r03WjM">The real person I’d like to trade is Butler. Spike Eskin, who cohosts the <em>Rights to Ricky Sanchez</em> podcast, <a href="https://94wip.radio.com/blogs/spike-eskin/sixers-should-trade-jimmy-butler">wrote a piece</a> this past weekend that advocated going back to the teams that wanted Butler in November and seeing what Philly could get out of them. Would Miami give up Josh Richardson, if Philly also took on Kelly Olynyk’s remaining three years? The real question is whether or not Philly wants to give up any of the actual assets it has—namely that 2021 Heat pick—to improve the team drastically this season. Or do they play wait-and-see through a postseason, hoping that their best three or four can beat Boston’s or Toronto’s or Milwaukee’s best eight? I don’t know. I just wish we still had <a href="https://twitter.com/JoelEmbiid/status/507237616899870720">the Homie</a>.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/1/15/18182967/philadelphia-76ers-jimmy-butler-trade-conversationChris RyanJustin Verrier