← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - How NBA can FIX tanking immediately + rating Adam Silver as commissioner
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- [00:00]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
Malcolm Glauble
This is Lavar Arrington from Up on Game. This message is brought to you by Apple Card It's a great time to apply for an Apple Card. You'll love earning unlimited daily cash on every Purchase. That includes 3% daily cash when you buy the latest iPhone, AirPods and Apple. Watch at Apple through this special referral offer. When you get a new Apple Card, you can earn bonus daily cash. To qualify you must apply at Apple Co. Get daily Cash Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch offer may not be available elsewhere. Terms and limitations apply. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comdisclosures hello, Malcolm Glauble here.
- [01:38]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
We're here in New York City with T Mobile for business recording another episode of Revisionist history about how 5G network slicing strengthens trust and connections across worldwide industries.
- [01:49]
T Mobile / Siemens Energy Representative
Slicing can be used for so many different things. We're here with our friends from CNN from Siemens Energy. The ways that it can be used, frankly are limitless and are really really built to think through. How can T Mobile understand the pain points that our customers have? Smash those pain points and help you deliver very specific outcomes.
- [02:13]
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [02:17]
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [02:20]
Matt Rogers
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- [02:24]
Bowen Yang
Because Xfinity WI Fi can. And what if your WI fi could fix itself before there's even really a problem? Xfinity is so reliable. It does that too.
- [02:33]
Matt Rogers
What if your WI fi had parental instincts? Xfinity WI Fi is part nanny, part ninja, protecting your kids while they're online.
- [02:39]
Bowen Yang
And finally, what if your WI fi was like the smartest WI fi?
- [02:44]
Matt Rogers
Yeah, it's WI fi that is so smart it makes everything work better together.
- [02:48]
Bowen Yang
Bottom line, Xfinity is smart and reliable. You deserve the peace of mind of having WI fi that's got your back.
- [02:54]
Matt Rogers
Xfinity. Imagine that.
- [02:58]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Friday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great end to your week. Today's mailbag day. Got 10 questions. A lot of stuff surrounding kind of Adam Silver and the health of the league. Some other big picture topics from around the league. A lot of fun stuff. You guys know the Drip before we get started, subscribe to Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Make sure you like this video as well as sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. Last but not least, if you guys want to get mailbag questions into our mailbags, drop them in our full episodes on YouTube. In the comments underneath. Right Mailbag, write your question that helps me sort through them when I'm looking for them in the full episodes. All right, let's talk some basketball. First question hey Jason, love the content. What are your thoughts on all the wild ideas for fixing the tanking issue? Seems like the easiest thing to do would be to give play in losers the top four picks in a random order. Then the other 10 non playoff teams get even odds at the picks 5 through 14. This would mean teams would try to win to get the highest picks or actually be in the playoffs. Players don't tank just organizations, so the players probably won't tank in the play in games. So you're, you're kind of in a general thought process that I do agree with. I, I, I would not give the picks to teams in the play in, but I would try to emp. I would try to emphasize tanking in that range rather than the bottom. And I have a specific reason for that. So hear me out. First of all, I don't think there's an easy solution here. The league has tried flattening out the odds. That clearly hasn't worked. We're going to have one of the most epic tanking showdowns to end the season and the odds are flatter than they've ever been. Right. I've seen people talk about abolishing the draft. That sounds great in theory because of like the kind of free market aspect of it. And like, oh, you try to sway teams with competence rather than competence and opportunity rather than, you know, trying to do it through this tanking that we've seen kind of be a weight on the league in recent years. But I think the problem would be the third parties. So like if every team could offer the same thing and then you have your role conversation. So like if you want to be a star, you're not going to go sign with a team that has a star because you want to have your opportunities to handle the basketball. Right. So that's going to knock some of those teams out and then you're just going to have all the teams that have like a clear opportunity that are available. Opportunity plus cap space. Right. But what would end up happening there is you'd end up having these heavy influences, particularly from like shoe companies. But I think agencies in general as they try to drive their clients to areas where they think they'll get more opportunity off the court. Again, any sort of sponsorship opportunity that would potentially apply pressure to players to sign in particular locations, I just think it would create a whole new set of problems. And again, as we talked about, there is no obvious solution. But most of the solutions I've seen pitched also just come with other options. What I pitched to, what, what I like generally think would make the most sense is to just flatten out the odds. And I talked about this with Colin Coward on, on his show the other day when he pitched this to me. But like essentially if you even out the odds completely for every non playoff team, so there's the bottom 14 teams in the league, everyone who doesn't make it into those top eight after the play in tournament, if every single one of those teams had the same odds, there would be absolutely no benefit to losing basketball games towards the tail end of the season, except for teams that are in that kind of range around the play in. Now where that gets tricky is if you're on the play in cusp, so let's say you're a 7, 8, 9, 10 seed. You would have this conversation where you'd go, okay, we have this very tiny chance like literally 1, 1 14th of a, like you literally a 1 out of 14 chance of getting the number one pick if we purposefully lose this game. But we're in the mix. Like in the Western Conference, the play in teams are good. In the Eastern Conference, the play on playing teams are pretty solid. So, like, if you're a team in that case, it's like, are you going to purposely lose or hurt your basketball culture overall to get a one out of 14 shot at the number one pick? No, you're. You're not going to do that, right? And so what I like about the. What, what I like about that as a difference from the current system is for the current system, the best odds are at the bottom. So the teams that are competing for it are at the bottom. They're usually not close to anything. They're usually not on the precipice of a run. Most playing teams are like, we're one move away or one young guy pops, or we hit on one free agent signing. Suddenly we're like a serious playoff team. Right? Like, their conversation surrounding intentionally losing is much more complicated because they're in that middle tier in the NBA, whereas the teams that are in the bottom, it's like, sure, let's lose. Like, what do we have to lose? Nothing. Like, we're just, we're already terrible. Let's just keep being terrible and we'll ride it out that way, right? So, like, by evening out the odds completely to just every team has a 1 out of 14 shot at getting the number one pick, you. You slide the actual tanking bar to the 7, 8, 9, 10 seeds. And those teams are just less likely, in my opinion, to intentionally lose a basketball game because of where they are at in their development. So, again, not a perfect solution. There's no such thing as a perfect solution. That's the best one I can come up with. That's just kind of my overall opinion surrounding that idea. One more tanking question. I'm super excited to tell you guys about our new partnership with Vuori. Those of you guys who are familiar with Vuori have noticed I've been wearing it on the show a lot over the last few years. There's just a level of quality and comfort and versatility and durability that has made it a workhorse for me over the last few years. 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- [10:22]
Malcolm Glauble
This month, iHeartRadio is celebrating the stars of the 2026 Winter Games. Hailing from Vail, Colorado, Michaela Shifrin might just be the greatest alpine skier of all time. With over 100 World cup victories. The youngest Olympic slalom winner arrives in Milano Cortina to form further cement her legacy. Her technical precision in the slalom and fearless speed in the downhill make her a threat in every race as she takes to the slopes to chase more Olympic hardware. For more Winter Games gold, search olympics on the iHeartradio app. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hello, Malcolm Glabel here.
- [11:55]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
We're here in New York City with T Mobile for Business, recording another episode of Revisionist history about how 5G network slicing strengthens trust and connections across worldwide industries.
- [12:06]
T Mobile / Siemens Energy Representative
Slicing can be used for so many different things. We're here with our friends from CNN from Siemens Energy. The ways that it can be used, frankly, are limitless and are really, really built to think through. How can T Mobile understand the pain points that our customers have? Smash those pain points and help you deliver very specific outcomes?
- [12:30]
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [12:33]
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [12:36]
Matt Rogers
Hey, so what if you could boost the WiFi to one of your devices when you need it most?
- [12:41]
Bowen Yang
Because Xfinity WI Fi can. And what if your wifi could fix itself before there's even really a problem? Xfinity is so reliable. It does that too.
- [12:49]
Matt Rogers
What if your wifi had parental instincts? Xfinity WI Fi is part nanny, part ninja, protecting your kids while they're online.
- [12:56]
Bowen Yang
And finally, what if your wi fi was like the smartest W yeah, it's
- [13:01]
Matt Rogers
wifi that is so smart it makes everything work better together.
- [13:05]
Bowen Yang
Bottom line, Xfinity is smart and reliable. You deserve the peace of mind of having WI fi that's got your back.
- [13:10]
Matt Rogers
Xfinity.
- [13:11]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
Imagine that the new Chicken bacon Ran Street Chalupa, the Taco Bell. You can't get just one. Okay, so that's not like some marketing hyperbole. You literally can't get just one. They come in twos. So like, if you want just one, you're gonna need to find a friend who loves slow roasted chicken bacon and avocado Ranch sauce. Or a friend of a friend. Or have an awkward conversation with a complete stranger to see if they're obsessed with chicken bacon and avocado ranch. Or you could just like eat them both because you're obsessed with slow roasted chicken bacon. Okay, you get the idea. The new Chicken Bacon Ranch Street TR Loop is a Taco Bell by participating Taco Bell US Locations for a limited time while supplies last. Regarding tanking as someone who started following basketball after decades of being a soccer slash football fan, I've always thought the lack of relegation or promotion as well as the bottom teams being generally rewarded with a High draft pick has created a void of competitive energy in the regular season. In terms of parity within the league, I believe the salary cap is what exists to level the playing field. So why not reward the better teams with a higher draft pick? I see no reason why the Utah Jazz couldn't have constructed a competitive team over the past 10 years. So why reward them? It might encourage team building and hard work. So I agree with everything you said. That's why I would flatten out the odds completely like I talked about earlier. But I want what your, your question kind of reminded me of a very specific part of this that I want to get into. You don't just build a good basketball team by getting top picks. It helps, but if you're going to have sustained success in the NBA, there's a, there's a multi level scouting kind of success that you need, culture success that you need. What does that mean? There's you got to be bad to get some top picks, but you also have to, you know, because you're not guaranteed to get top picks. There's a lot of teams that tank and end up with the seventh, eighth pick. You know, like that sort of thing. When you're in that range, that's where it becomes a lot more about your scouting department and your ability to turn more of those into hits than into misses. Even top picks can be misses. I talked about this with Colin the other day. We've had so many number one picks bust in the last 15 years. So like the truth of the matter is scouting is a huge part of this. Scouting the top picks, scouting the middle of the first round, scouting late first round. The good teams, a big part of what allows them to have success is they find rotation level talent late first round, you know, early second round, late second round, like the Clippers between Kobe Sanders and Jordan Miller, just two legit rotation players as late draft picks, right? So like there's that, there's the pro level scouting, finding high level talent overseas, finding high level talent within the NBA. Who's going to be the next guy that gets a Javante Green, right? Like a veteran minimum contract that turns into a really high level two way role player for a Detroit Pistons team, right? Like there is a, at every single level there's opportunities to turn your organization around and the good teams tend to be great at all those levels. And so I think in no. 1, I talked about this with the Rob Pelinka thing. No one hits on everything, but you need to generally hit on a higher percentage than the rest of the league in each of those areas to have sustained success around the NBA. That's why I hate the conversation surrounding tanking as if it's the only way to run a quality basketball organization. Just not the case. The best teams tend to be great at every level of their talent acquisition and then talent development as well. Like how's your player development? How are you turning players into pros when they get to your team? Idea for the 2027 All Star Game back to east versus West, but four team single elimination tournament. Top two teams are the All Stars that have been voted in While the other two teams are the 8 to 10 runner ups in each conference. What do you think? Love the show and keep up the great work. This is an interesting idea. So like I generally agree with you that a the I talked about this in the All Star reaction short games is through all of the stuff that Adam Silver has tried, we've discovered some things that work short games and multiple teams. Why? Because then each of the short games is its own entity. You can't just have short games running right next to each other. The league tried that and they got boring. Right. So like you got to have short games that are all their own individual entity. I also talked about how Adam Silver and the league just need to be creative about driving natural rivalry. The world versus the US is a great example. Older players versus younger players is a great example. I think your example is another example of something that could drive rivalry. You get your star, your top tier, you know, voted in All Stars, all on the same team and then you put all the bench guys on the same team or call it the top six or seven overall voting guys in each conference. What'll end up happening is you'll end up with a group of younger, hungrier All Stars that have more to prove. That might bring a competitive energy against the established stars that might drive a response from them and you end up with some kind of great game and then then you get some of that east west rivalry as well. So like I don't know if it's this particular format that you've pitched or if it's one of the formats that I've pitched. But just in general, I think the league needs to keep multiple teams short games, find ways within the roster to drive natural rivalry. Even just guys who don't like each other. Just put build the roster in a way that drives natural rivalry to the best of your ability. Sort of unrelated to All Star weekend. And you touched on this later in the video. But just curious, what are Your thoughts on Adam Silver as a commissioner? On the one hand, there are his recent tunnel visioning about abolishing, tanking, a half hearted attempt to follow through on enforcing foul baiting controls and a lack of action against Kawhi Clipper, Kawhi and the Clippers from the contract controversy this summer, the change to the media contract so that the remote fan viewing experience is now split across several streaming services. On the other hand, there is this in season tournament, the shake up to the All Star Game, the plan, etc. In that vein, if you were a hypothetical commissioner and you can make any as many changes to improve the NBA as a product, what changes would you make? This is a very wide ranging question. I, I'm going to hit it from a couple of different angles here. Adam Silver has been dragged through the mud in the last few months and I kind of land more in the middle. I don't agree with everything that he's done. I certainly think he could be more strong on some things. You mentioned him kind of this half hearted attempt to enforce foul betting. It looked like it was something they were going after a couple years ago and it, it's, it's just, it just hasn't been followed through. I agree with you. I think the main thing you're hitting at there that I think is most important is just how hard he's been on the league, how much of a disciplinarian he's been. I think, I think that a lot of the stuff I've seen from Adam actually is well intended, like he's willing to try stuff. Everyone's been criticizing him for the all star stuff. He's tried a half dozen different things over the last 10 years and yeah, a lot of them haven't worked, but all of them have kind of incrementally led to this format that worked on Sunday, you know what I mean? So like say what you want, there have been some serious wins there. I, I do think the in season tournament adds intrigue to the game. Like you guys talk about the play in tournament in the in season tournament. There's some problems there, right? It's a fundamental disagreement that we have as fans with the league, which is, we think, I, I think it's pretty much a consensus among most basketball fans. We think you should shorten the season. Too many of your stars are getting hurt, too many of your stars are missing games. Who cares if your national TV games are higher volume throughout the season? If stars are missing them, not as many people are going to watch. Might as well have 60, 66 games or something like that and get rid of back to backs and make the schedule easier. And chances are the Stars will actually play in any downside from the 20% loss in in total volume of games is going to be made up for and just a 20% increase in viewership if not more because the games will matter more. They'll be worth more in the standings. The Stars will be playing more often. That's how we all feel. The league disagrees though because they want money. Like to your question about the media contract, yeah, it's a pain in the ass that I had to get a Peacock membership and you know, most of us already have Amazon but like it's pain in the ass that we had to do that. But like ultimately Adam Silver is just trying to make money for the league. That's his job. Adam Silver's job is to drive revenue for the league. It's he that is what the owners want from him. Because the owners want money, right? And the players want money. So like ultimately Adam Silver's just doing his job in that regard. But if the owners and the players go to you and they go, we don't want to shorten the season because we want all this money. We'll just sit out games even though we disagree with it. That's what the league wants from him. And so I admire that. Adam Silver goes, all right, so these guys never want to get rid of games. They only want to add games. So how do I drive more intrigue and interest in the league while also acquiescing to the request of the people that pay me, the people that are have employed me to maintain the number of games. That's what the play in tournament is. That's what the in season tournament is. We don't think more games is the solution, but they don't think less games is the solution. So for them, even though for us we go 20 teams make the postseason out of 30, like and you already have an 82 game season, like all you're doing is getting rid of urgency. And Adam Silver's like, yeah, but this is what they want. So why not at least try to add some urgency at various points in the regular season. So teams do want to avoid the play in. So they're fighting for a seating to get up to that fifth or sixth seed. Right. You do get this week of highly entertaining playing games. We've had some really good playing games over the last few years. I think the in season tournament is a great product to add something different during December. So like again when you are a realist about what Adam Silver's job is, which is to make the league money and to serve his clients, that does that. Don't want to shorten the season. He's at least trying shit to make the most out of what the circumstances are. Don't agree with everything. I 100% agree with you. I do think he needs to be really hard on this foul baiting thing. I think it's legitimately hurting the league. I do think that he needs to be hard on tanking and he's clearly trying shit. He's sending out these big fines. I'm sure he's going to keep attempting stuff over the course of the next couple years to fight this. He's trying. I just think he needs to take a harder line on some of that stuff. The hypothetical commissioner role. If I was in charge again, I would shorten the season to 66 games. That's not going to happen. I would continue to aggressively find any team that deliberately tanks or sits players for national and TV games. I would try to drive player participation as much as possible and I would make a significant effort to get rid of non basketball plays in games. To me, the biggest thing that will drive health of the league is the quality of the basketball. If you can't increase the urgency because you can't shorten the schedule, then you could at least increase the quality of the TV product. And one of the ways you can increase the quality of the TV product is get rid of these ridiculous sequences where a dozen of our best stars are driving into defenders and just throwing up bullshit shots because it gets them to the foul line. And like say what you want about the rule book and you know, guys having to beat people to spots and all of the little details of defense that can avoid grifting. I don't disagree with you guys in principle there that these guys are just punishing defenders for being out of position. But it's just fucking ugly on tv. It's bad. And the league will be better if that doesn't exist. And so I would personally implement a sweeping rule that had a subjectivity that the refs have to kind of work their way through, which is if there's any sort of non basketball play, automatic turnover. Like just oh, you did some sort of crazy low gather that no one would ever do, or you jump into a guy to shoot or you do some sort of janky flop in this way or that way, just like tweet, tweet, we're going the other way. Sorry, that's that, that, that's bald to the opponent. You did that for two weeks, six games for each of these stars. They'd adjust and they'd stop doing that shit. They'd start playing, start playing real basketball. It's, it's. I doubt it'll ever happen, but that's just one of the bigger changes that I would make. 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- [26:44]
Malcolm Glauble
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosure is available@public.com Disclosures hello, Malcolm Glaul here.
- [27:46]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
We're here in New York City with T Mobile for Business, recording another episode of Revisionist history about how 5G network slicing strengthens trust and connections across worldwide industries.
- [27:57]
T Mobile / Siemens Energy Representative
Slicing can be used for so many different things. We're here with our friends from CNN from Siemens Energy. The ways that it can be used, frankly, are limitless and are really, really built to think through. How can T Mobile understand the pain points that our customers have? Smash those pain points and help you deliver very specific outcomes.
- [28:21]
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [28:25]
Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture Resource with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [28:28]
Matt Rogers
Hey, so what if you could boost the WI fi to one of your devices when you need it most?
- [28:32]
Bowen Yang
Because Xfinity WI fi can. And what if your wifi could fix itself before there's even really a problem? Xfinity is so reliable it does that too.
- [28:41]
Matt Rogers
What if your WI fi had parental instincts? Xfinity WI Fi is part nanny, part ninja, protecting your kids while they're online.
- [28:47]
Bowen Yang
And finally, what if your WI fi was like the smartest WI fi?
- [28:52]
Matt Rogers
Yeah, it's WI fi that is so, so smart. It makes everything work better together.
- [28:56]
Bowen Yang
Bottom line, Xfinity is smart and reliable. You deserve the peace of mind of having WI fi that's got your back.
- [29:02]
Matt Rogers
Xfinity.
- [29:03]
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- [30:36]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
Hi Jason, I wanted to know what you think of replacing NBA players from the dunk contest with guys that you see on Dunkademics and Instagram doing all that crazy shit. Id Jordan Kilgannon, Isaiah Rivera, etc. In my opinion. 1. The money that the winners make from the contest is chump change compared to NBA players to what they normally get. To these guys it would mean so much more to them because I don't think any of them are millionaires. 2. I feel like the 2016 dunk contest has spoiled us and the fact that normal NBA players don't even want to attempt to try the dunk contest because the bar is set too high I think. Was that the Zach Levine Aaron Gordon 1. If I remember correctly, I'm not 100% sure. 3. Dunking is what these guys do anyway. So if we see half of the shit that these guys can pull off on Instagram, I think it would break the Internet. But let me know what you think. Thanks for the content. Cheers. Thank you for supporting the show. I'm not gonna go too long on this one because I actually made this exact point on our All Star reaction pod. I 100% agree with you. I'd get rid of the dunk contest. If you still insist on having a dunk contest, have it with four professional dunkers. Have it be relatively short in the All Star Saturday night and just do crazy production quality for really high level dunkers that don't typically get that production quality. I think that that would be a great way to kind of emphasize that form of athleticism on that stage. I would still have another event. I would just have it. I would try to implement the one on one tournament and as I talked about, I would just be willing to accept lesser players and hope that it just kind of gains cachet over time. Next question. I'm stoked to hear you still have Denver at number two. But outside of injuries, can you dig a little deeper into why slash how they've gone from one of the best fourth quarter teams in the past couple seasons to blowing fourth quarter leads over and over again this season? I don't think it's a recent Jokic's back phenomenon. A quick search reveals they've blown fourth quarter leads in 13 of their 20 losses. I'm going to kind of make a similar take to what I made when I was talking about LeBron's on off numbers from last year. When a player has dramatically positive on off numbers for like seven years in a row and then he suddenly has bad on off numbers, I'm going to look at that as a statistical outlier. When it becomes a recurring thing year after year, that's a much more complicated conversation. Right? Specifically in this instance, the Nuggets have, year in and year out been an awesome clutch team. Last year, 127 offensive rating in the clutch, 110 defensive rating, pretty strong on both fronts. That was in a down year for the Nuggets, right? This year they're 14 and 13, a 115 offensive rating and a 124 defensive rating. Some noise in that data there in the form of the injuries, to your point, but for the most part it's been an issue throughout the season and I just. I literally just look at it as an outlier. I personally don't. I think the Nuggets are going to have issues executing on either end of the floor in close game situations at the end when they're healthy in a big playoff series. It's just they have too much experience and too much of an extensive track record of being one of the best clutch teams in the NBA. To me, to overreact to a half season sample size that has as much noise as this one does. Next question. The Eastern Conference has been just as good as the west, especially if you're looking at the top four. I so I want to dig into this concept a little bit. First of all, I actually don't think any of the east teams are as good as Denver, Minnesota or Oklahoma City. The only reason I have Cleveland in that tier and my contenders is because of the weaker East. I just think that the teams there don't present the types of challenges that the Upper west teams do. So I disagree with your point regarding the top teams. However, I do think you're on to something with the conferences being closer than usual this season. As a matter of fact, the west this season in head to head games against the east, it's just 145 and 142. That's a 50.5% win percentage. So barely over.500 last year they were 249 and 203. So huge gap over.500 last year between the west and the East. So there has definitely been a closing of the gap between the two conferences, but it's actually more in the depth of the conference than it is at the top in my opinion. All right, three more Whenever you bring up needing a top tier superstar to win an NBA championship, you always bring up unless you're the Boston Celtics because they had five $30 million contract players on the roster. I don't think there's anyone that would argue that Tatum was as good as those before him. Jokic, Steph, Giannis, LeBron, Kawhi, KD. But how come you only bring up Tatum and not Shay when he was on a different tier in the championship run? This was notoriously when Tatum had that weird hitch in his jump shot that carried over into the Olympics. But despite that, and despite having those five guys who would make 35 million on the or 30 plus million on the open market, he became the sixth player to lead their team in points, rebounds, assists on their way to the championship. Also, Tatum's underrated ability to guard centers during that run is what fully unlocked the Celtics defense. Again, not here to say that he was on the same level as Jokic the year before, but I think it's fair to say that Tatum was as good as Shea or at least on the same tier as him during the Thunders 2025 run when the Thunder also had significant talent advantage and was pushed to seven games twice. So I just fundamentally disagree with the point you're trying to make here. I don't disagree that jokic, Steph, Giannis, LeBron and Kawhi and KD were obviously better than Tatum. I just think Shea was also better than Tatum. Shea had some bad games specifically with like kind of floor game kind of management slash like feel for the flow of the game in the postseason last year, but he had some incredible games mixed in there. There was a dominance factor with Shea that Tatum didn't reach in his title run. I mean, you said it in the stats. You included this in your mailbag question. You said 20, 24. Tatum 25, 10 and 6 on 55% true shooting. Shea 35 and 6 on 57% true shooting. That's really the difference. And it even goes to big moments like it just Shay hit massive shots in the, you know, in the late game sequences in game four and game five against Denver. In the late game sequences in game four against Indiana. Right. Like, like he just, he made all the big plays and carried his team over the finish line. I'm glad you pointed out the, the defensive piece. I think that's why Tatum's play, I do think Tatum's playoff run was underrated by a lot of people who couldn't understand what Tatum was doing. Like you taking out the traditional 1:5 pick and roll and forcing them to run 1:3 pick and roll. That fundamentally alters the geometry of an offense and it broke Dallas's offense. And so I, I agree with what you're saying, but what you're talking about is like a, a role player, defensive kind of impact. It's a huge impact. Part of why Tatum's playoff run was underrated. But when it comes to that superstar half court surgeon type of play that you need, Shea provided so much more of that in his title run than Tatum did. So I, I don't think that there is a comparison between those two in particular. All right, two more. Hey, Jason. It's a bit of a long one, so sorry in advance. I wanted to get your take on the Cam Thomas situation, which feels like one of the most bizarre roster moves in recent memory. We're Talking about a 24 year old who averaged 24 points per game just last season, yet the Nets straight up waved him mid season because they couldn't find a trade partner. How much of this was a contractual checkmate versus a culture cut? By signing that qualifying offer last summer, Cam basically gave himself a no trade clause which clearly handcuffed the Nets front office at the deadline. But even then, waving a guy with that much scoring gravity for almost nothing is unheard of in the league. Is the league wide lack of interest a sign that a. That the bad attitude and empty stats narrative is officially tanked as stock? When a rebuilding team like Brooklyn decides it's better to have an empty roster spot than a 20 point score, what does that say about how the modern NBA values isolation scoring versus a team first culture? Does he have a chance to rewrite that script? On the Bucks or has his reputation as a one dimensional player become a permanent ceiling on his career? Thanks. Love the show as always. Thank you for supporting the show. There is a one dimensional thing with Cam Thomas that is pretty rare. He's actually like a reasonably efficient high level scorer. High volume score I should say. But when you're strictly a scorer, when that is the one thing that you bring to the table and guess what? That's what he is. He has a career 29% usage rate, like for his career, damn near a 30% usage rate. He's averaging 2.2 assists per game. Even like his best playmaking season like last year with Brooklyn, 33% usage, which is like damn near Luka doncic territory. Just 3.8 assists per game. This is not a guy that drives team offense. This is not a guy that is, you know, surgically breaking down a defense. This is a tunnel vision, one on one score. This is a guy that is hunting his shot all the time. When you are that and nothing else, you have to be transcendently great at it for it to make sense or be a buy in guy. A guy who's willing to be like, okay, like I'll come in for two shifts a half or two shifts a game, you know, bridging the second and first quarters and the third and fourth quarters and I'll get my 10 shots up in those, you know, 12 minutes on the court and then I'm, I'm heading out. Like, if you're willing to buy into that and play defense while you're out there, there's a role for you in the league. But if you're, your entire impression of yourself is I should be a number one option, look at what I do. He's just not good enough at it to be a number one option. And I think that is one of the number one things that drives a player to become kind of like a floater in the NBA that has a hard time finding a home. We're seeing this a little bit with Kaminga. It's a gap between what the league sees your role as and what you see your role as. If the league thinks you're this and you think you're that, you're going to have a hard time finding a place to play. If Cam Thomas thinks he's number one option, makes 35 plus million, averages 25 points per game, he's going to have a hard time finding a place to play. If he's going to be a 15 point per game microwave scorer off the bench who buys into his role and plays defense. There's going to be a lot of teams that will sign up for Cam Thomas, but there's been a gap there, right? And I mean, Milwaukee's taking a shot on him because they literally have nothing to lose. And yeah, he had a big first game and, you know, showed that upside in a, in a real way. And I don't have a problem with Milwaukee taking that chance. They really have no choice under the circumstances. But like, ultimately, as they start to build this thing out and as Giannis comes back into the picture, there's going to be a version of this where it's like, okay, Cam, we need you to do this kind of more refined role. And whether or not he buys into that will be the, the driving force of whether or not he can find a long term home in the NBA. Last question. Hey, Jason, I'm curious to know your thoughts about the idea of jdub adopting more of a Draymond esque role with this fully healthy Thunder team. Someone who does what he already does on defense, but on offense, cuts out the difficult mid range shots he takes and uses his handle to create more for his teammates and finish at the rim, slash, take open catch and shoot threes exclusively while being a roaming screener, slash cutter. I understand that on paper he's supposed to be the Thunder's second best ball handler, and I know, I know he dropped 40 in a finals game, but as a fan of this team, I'm tired of seeing him dribble the life out of the ball and settling for those dribble drive fadeaways. I was never in the camp that he should be traded. However, someone in that locker room really needs to tell him he's not Kobe Bryant. With the A.J. mitchell emergence and the J Mac trade, I believe this team can survive and thrive with Shea being the lone high variance difficult shot maker. So I wouldn't go Draymond esque. But I do think that there is a important conversation to have about J Dub attacking the basket. So I don't think you can afford to have J Dub give up the basketball because this is a team that needs more dribble penetration. That's why A.J. mitchell's been so valuable to them. This team really only has three guys that can break the defense down off the dribble. And so you need J Dub, you need J Dub on the ball and you need him to make plays. But we saw a specific difference in his rim volume between the first two series in the playoff last year and the second two series in the playoffs last year, he became one of the best basket attackers in the entire playoff field during those second two playoff rounds. Right. So like ultimately with him it's just about shifting his shot profile more towards attacking and having the jumper be a counter versus him leaning on the jumper too much. Now he does have a little bit of a first step quickness issue compared to some of the other dribble drive guys. So like he kind of needs to operate in semi transition more or face certain types of coverages or kind of have more of a head of steam. But ultimately J Dub needs to be hunting those heads of steam as much as possible and not getting into his just like kind of dribbling in front of his defender just because he can struggle to beat that guy off the dribble. Then he ends up in a being a pull up jump shooter. But I'm not too worried about it. He's. He learned that lesson last year and he's been coming back from injuries. The hammy too. Like anybody who's ever played basketball and has a had a hamstring strain. I've had one. It was when I was younger. I was only like 20 when it happened, but like the specific time I always felt and I actually re injured this hamstring twice at the time. The specific thing that I felt was on aggressive driving moves when I really had to take long strides. And so I think there's a little bit of a mental element, a mental hurdle that he has to get over. But I do think when we get to the postseason that J Dub is going to attack the basket recklessly and I think that he's going to be able to provide that rim pressure element that the Thunder so badly need from him. All right guys, that's all I have for this week. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. I hope all of you guys have an amazing weekend and I will see you guys on Friday morning or on Monday morning, I should say. We'll have our usual power rankings.
- [43:43]
Malcolm Glauble
With Venmo Stache. A taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card from takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more. Pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See Terms at Venmo Me Stashterms Think Verizon is expensive?
- [44:15]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Think again. Anyone can bring their AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. So bring us your bill. Walking, running, hogo, sticking, teleport. If you can ride on the back of a rollerblading yak or flyin on the wings of a majestic falcon. Any way you can bring your AT and T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best Network based on RouteMetric's best overall mobile network performance US 2nd/2025 all rights reserved. Must provide a very recent postpaid consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply.
- [44:48]
Malcolm Glauble
With volley from iShares, you get access to both monthly income and and growth potential in one simple ETF. It's the best of both worlds. Discover Bali iShares Large Cap Premium Income Active ETF iShares the market is yours. Visit www.ishares.com to view perspectives for investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other information that you should read and consider carefully before investing. Risks include principal loss and the use of derivatives, which could increase risks and volatility. Monthly income is not guaranteed. Prepared by BlackRock Investments, LLC.
- [45:15]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.
- [45:25]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.
- [45:28]
Jason (Hoops Tonight Host)
The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing. So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [45:43]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.