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- [00:00]
JD Skeets
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Sponsor/Shopify Ad Reader
Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure is going to work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith even 20 years in. When we launch a spinoff podcast, we're not sure who's going to listen, but you got to believe. And it sure helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from big names like Mattel, Heinz and Skims to brands just getting started. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style and is packed with helpful tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. If people haven't heard of your brand, Shopify helps you find your customers wherever they're scrolling or with easy to run email and social media campaigns. If you get stuck, Shopify's always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. Not to mention that iconic purple shop pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet, nay the universe. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com nodunks go to shopify.com no dunks. That's shopify.com nodunks whether you're dressing it up or down, staying cozy indoors or layering up on the go, Viori's loungewear pieces prove that comfort and elevated style can go hand in hand or better yet, leg in legend because you know the core shorts come through in the clutch when it's playoff time. Whether you're getting a pump in or relaxing on the couch, the core shorts will hold you down from training to commuting in style, errands to workouts Vuori is built for comfort, performance and everyday wear. Incredibly versatile and comfortable, Vuori is an investment in your happiness. For our listeners. They're offering 20% off your first purchase. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet@vuori.com no dunks that's V U O R I.com nodunks get 20% off your first purchase at vuori.com nodunks and discover the versatility of Vuori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.
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- [04:58]
JD Skeets
And welcome to the no Dunks podcast presented by FanDuel. It's Saturday, June 27, 2026. I'm JD Skeets here in the yard with a little something different today. A deep dive into Ramona Shelburne and Jamal Collier's ESPN article titled behind the Scenes of the Yanis the Restless Final Hours. I am a sicko for these postmortem type articles I've linked to it in the show notes. It's right there. Click on it. Highly recommend you give it a read. There are seven key quotes, key parts that I wanted to dissect with all of y'. All. Humor me if you will. I have no idea if this is gonna be interesting to any of you out there. If it is, hit the like button. Subscribe, comment away, Drop those five star ratings and reviews. We're waiting on the next Emergency podcast for a potential Jaylen Brown trademark. Otherwise, we're back on Monday in the classic factory, breaking down all the NBA slop and NBA transactions that we've had over the last little bit. Hartenstein, new deal, Isaiah Joe to the Pistons and so on. But that's Monday. Today. On the weekend we're looking at this ESPN article. I've got quote boards here from the column for everyone on YouTube. I've emphasized key parts, sort of did like the old bold in a different color, but I'll make sure to read the whole quote. For all of you podcast listeners, I think the plan is to flip this into a podcast. Hell, I'll even do a fanduel ad read. We gotta pay the bills, baby. So let's just get right into it. First interesting part to me from again, Ramona Shelburne's article on espn. I'll add it to the screen. And here we go. So Bucs general manager John Horst had canvassed the league for months, fielding offers and presenting them to his front office and ownership group, then getting feedback from Giannis's camp as to whether he'd be willing to extend his contract with those teams. At least four strong bids had died on the vine after Giannis rejected them, multiple sources with knowledge of them say. I've obviously emphasized there the four strong bids died on the vine. So Giannis and his team putting their thumb on the scale here. We weren't getting a lot of this, but they were doing it behind the scenes, at least according to the reporting and other reporting has said. What other suitors in the past year have included the Timberwolves, the Trailblazers, the Orlando Magic, the Golden State warriors, the New York Knicks, definitely before the championship, the Lakers. So all of this I find very fascinating. And then of course, the Heat make the deal and the Celtics were the other lone team trying to get Giannis for Jaylen Brown. I just love going through these hypothetical teams here, the ones we know of. I mean, maybe there are other ones that have somehow remained quiet. But Minnesota, we can safely assume they were trying to trade Julius Randle or Nas Reed or both of them to get Giannis back after they went and did the Lamello move. Blazers probably are starting with Jeremy Grant's big salary young players which they have quite a few of picks were the Magic consider considering trade, considering breaking up. Excuse me, Paolo and Franz Wagner. Like how serious was that? Feels like it would have to have been one of those guys for a Giannis move. The warriors we know would have had to dealt Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green because of their salary multiple young prospects which they have not a ton of. And then virtually all of their controllable first round draft picks. The Knicks, okay, the Knicks was going to be Cat, or maybe it was going to be Bridges and Hart. They made the right decision there not to do that. And then the Lakers deal with probably would have been a three or four teamer is the best way you could probably got there with like Austin Reaves as a key part. I guess Vanderbilt obviously draft capital. So yeah. But yeah, the interesting part there is again Giannis and his team was shooting down. I think some of these strong bids. Probably just simply saying, I don't want to play there. I'm not going to be signing a contract extension there. Or it was just this whole like respect for one another, trying to please Giannis and get him to a spot of course where he wanted to go and not just screw him over too. And like, who cares? We don't care. That's the best deal. We're taking it. See you later. You figure out your contract extension. So that was the first part. Second, interesting quote from Ramona's column here. During a news conference to introduce new coach Taylor Jenkins and sitting alongside Horst, Bucs co owner Jimmy Haslam had made a declaration. The Bucs would have Giannis's future settled by draft night. Either he would agree to sign an extension to remain with Milwaukee or he'd be traded. But by then, the Bucks had their answer. Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation say Giannis was not going to sign another extension in Milwaukee. End quote. Okay, I feel like this is. This is like an episode of Summer House where the timeline is always so important. That's some dumb reality television for you. People cheating on people, flirting with people. And everybody gets all hell bent on the timeline. Let's match the dates up here. Well, let's go through this. Jimmy Haslam made these comments on May 6th, okay. This is when he did the whole declaration of like, he's either signing the contract extension or he's out of here. But Giannis and his team had already made it clear they were not signing an extension, again, according to the reporting here. So, as the Athletic put it, Haslam and the Bucs are either just bluffing or, at minimum, they're just keeping all of the Bucks cards close to the vest, which is fair and probably what you should do, right? But it's obviously, that was not true when he was saying, oh, like, he was sort of giving maybe Bucks fans maybe this false hope of, like, well, there's still, I guess, could be a contract extension. And of course, Giannis is, like, staying fairly quiet and everybody's going, well, what the hell, man. So the timeline, they knew months prior that Giannis was ready to. To go, and it sounds like they knew as early as late 2025. That's the next quote or that's what it has to do with. Giannis began the season with the Bucks. We're talking about last season here, but missed 14 of the team's first 31 games, and the Bucks were under.500 by December. It was then that Giannis and his agent privately reiterated that two horsed. Again, reiterated, sort of important here, that the team was not good enough and it was time for both sides to move on. But the Bucks believed they could turn around the season when their star got healthy. So, again, timeline things here. We're going back to late 2025. And the quote says reiterated. So maybe even prior to that, hey, we're not good enough. We know Giannis on record as saying, I want another championship. I don't care. Really. I'm paraphrasing, but I don't care so much to stay 20 years with one franchise if it's just one title. I want a second title. Again, paraphrasing, but that's sort of what he was saying here. And here it is in the Ramona article that Giannis and his team were coming to horse and the Bucks like, all right, look, look, what's going on here were bad when I'm not in. In the lineup. And then, of course, he would return, and they weren't much better. So, again, this was a known thing that the Bucks were holding out hope. I think that again, Giannis comes back, he gets healthy, and maybe there's a late run and there's a spark again. But a lot of us were going, it's silly, guys. You know, this is. This is long overdue, and you're just dragging it out. And could they have gotten a better deal? Tbd. Tbd. I'll get into a little bit more of that in a Little bit here from the article, but point is, we had a lot of people saying, I don't know, there's still hope. It didn't sound like. Doesn't like, obviously behind the scenes, it was sort of. The writing was on the wall. Giannis had told them such. They obviously knew it. They're either in denial or just trying to do everything they can to salvage seasons, salvage the idea of keeping them. Not like you ever want to trade away a franchise player. All right, moving on number four here, fourth quote from the article. Horst had always liked the concept of the Heats deal. It was one of the two offers he brought to Bucs co owners West Edens and Jimmy Haslam at the trade deadline in February. But back then, Milwaukee was still torn on whether it had exhausted all options to win with Giannis. If there was a chance, even a remote one, of competing for a title and convincing him to stay, the Bucks had to play it all the way out. It was a gamble. Okay, so this is perfect. This like piggybacks off that last one that we were just talking about. This was the Milwaukee thinking, come on, we gotta try to do everything we can. We have. Before we made the big deal for Jrue Holiday. That worked out. We made big deal for Damian Lillard. That one didn't work out as well. Other moves. I mean, the funny part though here, though, was they signed Cam Thomas and traded for Usman Dang Jang. You know, not, you know, blockbuster moves here by any means. But a source told Ramona in the article, I think we just had to know, or I think they just had to know. They had to try everything. So on one hand, we can easily argue the Bucks waited too long to trade them. And a lot of teams do this. They wouldn't be the first, they won't be the last. Because I'm on record saying the writing was on the wall. Sues, Damian Lillard, tore his achilles, and that's April 2025. It's probably done right then and there. And maybe you're getting a bigger, better, whatever, more exciting package if you just rip the band aid off. Because obviously you would have had, you know, that whole season last year here, this last season of Giannis under contract here. So there's that. But on the other hand, the Bucks gamble sort of paid off because the Heats offer did improve in the off season. That's what people are telling us now in Ramona's article. They just say Miami decided to throw in this year's first round pick. That's sort of all the reporting says so if the backbone for the honest deal was all the players that eventually got moved, it's Tyler Herro, it's Ware, and it's Hawkins. Let's just say those three were always locks and then the finagling was over the other young prospect. You know, I think there's reporting that the Bucks wanted to trade Davion Mitchell, but. Sorry, the Heat wanted to trade Davion Mitchell, but the Bucks wanted Yakotronis instead. I'm sure the Miami Heat wanted to get off of Jovic. They probably didn't want that. Then we get into the pick swaps and stuff like that. So look, that part of the gamble maybe did play play to the Bucks favor. Maybe it got better. It sounds like it got a little bit better. And a part of that I assume was the Celtics coming out of nowhere with the Jalen Brown of it all. So good for Milwaukee there. But again, the whole this is just all fascinating of like either trying to talk themselves into turning everything around and convincing Giannis to sign another extension like they had previously with other moves twice before, or just, you know, just do it and get it over with. So yeah, love this stuff. Let's take a very, very quick break here because again, we got to pay the bills. Vibe coding is everywhere right now, but it's not just for apps anymore. Now it's making its into website creation. Wix has introduced Wix Harmony, a vibe coder for websites that lets you type what you want and generate a site ready to use right away, complete with forms, payments, security and more built in. And WIX Harmony doesn't require AI for everything. You can still click and edit anything manually, or select an element and have Aria, your AI agent, make updates for you. It's a smart solution to the frustration of repeatedly prompting AI just to make a small change. Try it for free@wix.com that's wix.com starting
- [18:28]
Sponsor/Shopify Ad Reader
something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure is going to work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith even 20 years in. When we launch a spinoff podcast, we're not sure who's going to listen, but you gotta believe. And it sure helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from big names like Mattel, Heinz and Skims to brands just getting started. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's standard style and is packed with helpful tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. If people haven't heard of your brand, Shopify helps you find your customers wherever they're scrolling with easy to run email and social media campaigns. If you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. Not to mention that iconic bottom purple shop pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet, nay the universe. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com no dunks go to shopify.com nodunks that's shopify.com no dunks
- [20:06]
JD Skeets
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I think this next one is all about when maybe everything started to go to hell with Giannis in Milwaukee. Quote again from the article link in the show notes Looking back on it, the one thing we did that changed everything was put Jrue Holiday in that trade, a Bucs source said. Drew is such a leader on and off the floor. He would do things like if Giannis was holding the ball too much, Drew would just bring it up, play with everybody else without making it a thing. He was a pro at it. So there's a big portion of this article about that Jrue Holiday trade and maybe that's when it started to, you know, it was maybe just the Wrong move. Simply put, now Holiday was bad in back to back playoff series. Like in his last 12 playoff games for Milwaukee, he shot like a combined 37%. Drew Holiday was not great. I mean, obviously helped him win the title, but he was not great over those last two runs. And the thinking was, we need more offense, so let's go get Damian Lillard. I mean, not many more talented offensive players than Damian Lillard. So let's swap Drew for Dame, for all intents and purposes. So that was the fall of 2023, but the reporting here is once Drew was gone, they just lost their defensive identity for sure. And it just sounds like the intangibles of just a real leader and like sort of a slick pro. Like that quote was all about. It wasn't calling out Giannis, wasn't being the loudest guy in the room. Probably doesn't feel like Drew Holiday at all. Just quietly goes about the business and can sense when maybe you're trying to do too much. Let's get the other guys involved. Just sort of that steadying pro. So I think, look, that's. That's always one. Like within the article it says it wasn't trading for Dame. That was dumb. It was having to give up Drew to get Dame. Like, too bad we couldn't have both of them, right? I mean, obviously you would want both of them and everybody was healthy. That'd be great too. But yeah, maybe that is when there was a bit of the turning point. Was Drew going to the Portland Trailblazers in the Dame trade. Obviously, Drew then finds his way to Boston, he wins another championship. Obviously impactful player. And maybe things changed after he left. Part 6 quote6 It's a quickie here throughout, but especially during the second half of last season, Giannis often lamented the erosion of the team's culture and discipline. Now, this is funny for two reasons. One, it's in the article. After the season, you remember Miles Turner went public with the team's habits and its lack of accountability. And he specifically noted how Giannis took advantage of that. I mean, Miles Turner, he said, quote, giannis is going to show up whenever he wants. Really? I mean, we joked about it on the no Ducks podcast. It's like, what's up with all you Greek guys? You're always running late to everything. Classic tasks. I guess Jan is built the same, but like, he's showing up for like flights that are like three hours late. And we just sitting there on the tarmac or people started going like, what's the point of going to if the flight's at noon, I mean, don't show up till 2 because he'll maybe show up 30 minutes after that. So that's interesting. But. But, but. But I don't think it's just Giannis here, right? Because in a fantastic look at the deadline of the Bucks, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinels, Jim Owassarski. I'm probably mispronouncing that he wrote about how Doc Rivers arrival in January 2024 completely upended the buck's chemistry, which seemed to be sort of like falling apart as it was. This included. This is again, when Doc comes on board. It included misspelled banners in the locker room. I guess they had written in, like, a bunch of languages, the word together, and they spelled together wrong in English. Of all the languages, there was a favoritism for star players. Hello, Giannis. And the best part, Doc rivers installed a $90,000 golf simulator for himself in what was formerly like a communal space at the practice facility. So Docs, instead of, like, trying to iron out all the wrinkles here of what's going wrong, it's like, ah, just gonna. Gonna hit some balls, get some cuts in here. So amazing stuff. And I do think Doc deserves some of this blame, but, you know, it goes hand in hand. It's your superstar and your coach. And so it's weird. It feels like Giannis, you know, it went from Boonholzer to Griffin, who was fired despite an incredible record, right, to Doc here. So we started to get into musical chairs. So it's like, what was Giannis hoping for? What did he, like? What worked? You know, was he starting to get mentally checked out? Sure sounds like it. But then turn around and just blame it on what's going on here. There's not a lot of discipline, structure, coaches just hitting balls all day long. So hand in hand, but very funny, very funny visual. Just Doc Rivers just, you know, hitting some golf balls while everyone else is trying to figure out the season. Hope it's translated to the. To the greens there, to the fairways. Final one here. Horst seemed excited on NBA draft night, refreshed, as they put it, to build anew again, to emerge from the pressure of trying to appease Giannis and ignore the coy passive aggression that had come to define the last year of their relationship. And I wanted to include this because as shitty as it is that you had to trade your superstar at this point, if you're Horst and the Bucks, there must be relief, right? You've done it. You've got young players here. You're going to decide what to do with Tyler. Hero. You've got pick swaps. You've got, you know, this, this future future pick, second rounders, whatever. Is it sexiest trade package? No, not for a guy of Giannis's stature, but, man, just to be done with this. Especially that inclusion of passive aggression. Yeah. Giannis could never really bring himself to just publicly ask for a trade. I think it would have saved a lot of headaches for everyone if he had done it. It's like people started to, like, tire of this turn on him. What are you doing? Then there's the Wolf of Wall street nonsense. Like, it just was so silly and probably. I don't know. I don't know. If you'd asked him, like, if you could have done it any differently, would you have done that like a year ago? Would you have just done that? You know what? This has been incredible. Let's do it. Let's. Let's get it out there and then we go from there. But maybe not. Maybe it doesn't change a thing. But it's got to be a huge weight off their shoulders here. As crappy as the Bucks might be here for the coming years, it's still that. That pressure in that cloud hanging over that, like, organization, it's, like, impossible to get away from. It is. And it's been there for. And they've had it before. And then the. And then the clouds have broke because of extensions or what they did to convince them and all that. But one was this one was no coming back from. So, yeah, there it is. Those are seven things really jumped out to me. Let me know what you think of the ESPN article. There's also a very strange part about Heat general manager Andy Ellisberg's love of movies. This guy loves movies. This guy's like JD And Trey with his love of movies. Within the article, it says, quote, andy likes to tell friends that all of life's answers are in movies, and every answer is. Is in one of the Godfather movies. Okay, interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way, but now I'm going to go back and re watch all the Godfather movies and see if Andy's right. Is there an answer in at least one of the Godfather movies to everything the goddamn FBI don't respect. Nothing. We'll see you guys on Monday, though. From the classic Factory. To recap all of the NBA slop and transactions until then, let me hit you with a Clipper, bro.
- [29:41]
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You heard it here first.
- [29:42]
JD Skeets
Have a great time.
- [29:43]
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Turn up.
- [29:43]
JD Skeets
Love you guys.
- [29:44]
Sponsor/Shopify Ad Reader
Awesome.
- [29:45]
JD Skeets
All right, let me know what you thought of this. Maybe this is something we can add to the repertoire moving forward, the deep dive sort of dissections, I guess, of these big articles. Everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy the World cup action. And yeah, enjoy the slop. To brace the day people,
- [30:05]
OnPlus Ad Reader
onplus nicotine pouches present comfort chronicles. A 10 o' clock tee time. How comfortable you show up in stretchy shorts, a breathable tee and maybe no socks. Let the dogs breathe while other sweat and pleated khakis. You're in your comfort zone. Bombing drives and in your pocket. On nicotine pouches the softest pouch on the planet. Buy a can@onnicotine.com Products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [30:34]
JD Skeets
This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.