Tom Haberstroh on Knicks beating Spurs in NBA Cup final, NBA's injury issue, Warriors failing Steph Curry? | 12.17

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Right Time with Bomani Jones

Episode: Tom Haberstroh on Knicks beating Spurs in NBA Cup final, NBA's injury issue, Warriors failing Steph Curry?
Date: December 17, 2025
Host: Bomani Jones
Guest: Tom Haberstroh (NBA analyst, writer for Yahoo Sports and Tom the Finder Substack)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Bomani Jones is joined by NBA analyst Tom Haberstroh to dive deep into the recent NBA Cup final in which the New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs. The conversation explores the evolving importance and stakes of the NBA’s in-season tournament, Victor Wembanyama’s impact and rivalry with Chet Holmgren, the Knicks’ emergence as contenders, the NBA’s growing injury problem—especially with soft tissue injuries—and the turmoil within the Golden State Warriors as they struggle to maximize Steph Curry’s closing window.

The hosts deliver authentic, unfiltered commentary on basketball culture, the league’s attempts to innovate, and behind-the-scenes health crises that threaten the NBA’s long-term product.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The NBA Cup—Raising the Stakes Midseason

• Initial Skepticism to Embracing the Tournament

  • Bomani started as a skeptic: “I didn’t think that you would be able to create stakes around this and I thought the stakes were necessary… But I also think I kind of sort of ignored that. These are still professional athletes… Trophies. It doesn't matter what the trophy is.” (02:16)
  • The games feel more intense, almost like mini playoff games: “It feels like something and I didn’t expect that.” (03:08)

• Prestige, Vegas, and the NBA Cup’s Future

  • Tom notes the break from the 82-game grind and the boost of playing in Las Vegas: “It is an absolute grind… The NBA cup breaks up the season and gives them something with stakes to look forward to and a little bit of respite from the 82-game grind.” (03:26)
  • Amazon Prime’s coverage enhances the event, making it feel “bigger” and direct competition with ESPN.
  • Growing rumors that the NBA Cup finals could leave Vegas for famed college venues (e.g., Cameron Indoor Stadium)—Bomani finds that concept “preposterous… It would feel amateur. This is beneath the standard of the league.” (07:36–08:50)

• Building Tradition

  • The importance of time in building significance: “It takes a generation to build up fans... This is very similar. Take the time, make it such that... the way you do it, summer league.” (10:14)
  • Tom and Bomani agree that “the NBA Cup is awesome; the alternative is just regular season games that nobody cares about.” (11:41)

2. Knicks’ Victory and Victor Wembanyama’s Rivalry with OKC and Chet Holmgren

• The Knicks’ Path and In-Game Strategy

  • Knicks emerging as legitimate finals contenders: “There’s no reason that the Knicks can’t go to the NBA Finals… I don’t have a compelling argument—why not the Knicks?” (20:23)
  • Key to their success: offensive rebounding, especially Mitchell Robinson: “Mitchell Robinson coming off the bench and getting 10 offensive rebounds in 18 minutes and just giving it to Victor underneath the basket.” (20:59)
  • The Knicks lead the league in three-pointers after offensive rebounds: “They have like 20 more three pointers off of offensive rebounds than any other team in the NBA… Clearly that was the differentiator.” (21:55)

• Victor Wembanyama: A Star and a Rivalry

  • Victor “gets it… we need more Victor being spicy with his comments and messy with his comments about ethical basketball… Victor is here for this NBA life.” (14:07)

  • Rivalry with Chet Holmgren is “great theater,” with a history going back to their Team USA vs. France days. (14:07–16:07)

  • Wemby’s emotional performance post-grandmother’s passing: “He was tearing up at the press conference… he found out about [her death] before the game… Victor is playing like he’s doing hero ball on every single play...” (18:28)

  • Notable Quotes:

    • “The best part of that [Thunder] game… was him clapping every time Chet missed a free throw.” – Bomani (16:44)

  • Incredible statistic: “There were zero such shots in the game against OKC when Wemby was near the basket.” – Tom (17:19)

3. The NBA’s Injury Epidemic

• Rampant Soft Tissue Injuries

  • Tom’s reporting: “Two scariest words in the NBA right now: calf strain. We’ve seen more calf strains than we have in a very long time, if ever… Through 20 games… incidence of calf strains up 40% compared to last year. But—the time lost due to these injuries is up by 200%.” (34:41)

  • Harder, faster modern game: “They have to defend 40 feet out now… So much more force on these bodies… A lot of these screens are now being set at half court.” (35:40)

  • “Young” injuries now hitting 23-year-olds: “We’re seeing teams now holding out their guys longer in these calf strains… You saw Jason Tatum tearing his Achilles. These soft tissue injuries are knocking these players out for much longer and stars are not playing nearly as much as they used to.” (37:11)

  • NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is “doing rhetorical sleight of hand” by claiming injury rates are unchanged, but the data shows otherwise. (34:41–38:54)

• Solutions?

  • Bomani: “It seems somewhat unsolvable because they’re not going to dial back the style of play.” (38:54)

  • Tom’s take: “You cut 20 games from the schedule, that’s how you do it.” (40:20)

  • Players are missing 1 of every 3 games; previously it was 1 of 5. (44:33)

  • Long-term ticket sales risk: “If you take your kid to a game thinking LeBron’s going to play, and he doesn’t, that’s a long-term hit.” (44:13)

  • Notable Quote:

    • “We are at a point of what they call Pareto optimality. Like you are trying to figure out how to make this one thing better without hurting this other thing.” – Bomani (42:53)

4. The Golden State Warriors’ Woes—Are They Failing Steph Curry?

• Ownership Meddling and Bad Roster Moves

  • Owner Joe Lacob's ill-advised direct email reply to a frustrated fan, hinting that “Jimmy is not the problem”—implying issues with coaching and style of play. (49:25)
  • Tom: “Anytime you have owner emails going out in public, not a great look… He wants the Jonathan Kuminga experiment to work. They haven't moved off the Jonathan Kaminga thing… He’s making $22 million a year to be getting DNP-CDs.” (50:08)
  • Warriors stuck between timelines, with older core still delivering but youth movement not paying off.

• Steph Curry’s Enduring Greatness, Limited Support

  • Steph is putting up elite numbers at 38, but the team is mediocre.

  • Quote: “Steph Curry is dropping 48 points in a, in a loss. It can't happen. When you have a guy who's at this stage of his career… that is a problem.” (54:30)

  • Both hosts marvel at constantly underestimating Curry: “He just wipes his ass with every single one [of the doubters], and then holds it up to my face and be like, ‘smell it, smell it.’” – Bomani (56:21)

  • Quote:

    • “Everyone in that organization and everyone in the NBA underestimated Steph Curry. And he is still out here in top 10 in the scoring in the NBA at age 38 is absurd.” – Tom (56:40)

5. The LeBron–Luka–Austin Reaves Lakers, and Trade Scenarios

• Lakers’ Defensive Woes

  • “They gotta do something here because that defense is atrocious. They don’t get back on defense. A lot of it is Luka Doncic...” (59:07)
  • Lakers have slowest rotations, three of the top ten slowest defensive players (Austin Reaves, LeBron James, Luka Doncic). (59:07)
  • Tom predicts “a lot of Austin Reeves trade talks,” noting his skill set is “repetitive” with LeBron and Luka already sharing the ball. (60:32)

• Trade Market Speculation

  • Bomani jokes about Austin Reaves being a fan favorite and “the locals” not wanting to see him go, but Danny Ainge and Utah are likely candidates. (61:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater." — Bomani (00:57, outro)
• “Cameron is the single best place for a college basketball game. Hard stop… But get the fuck out of here, man. No, no, this is preposterous...” — Bomani (07:36)
• “Victor Wembanyama… talking about pure ethical basketball. I was like, yo, Victor is here for this NBA life.” — Tom (14:07)
• “I cry for people who got to live in Utah.” — Bomani (63:36)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• NBA Cup stakes and initial skepticism: 01:35–03:08
• Vegas, NBA legends, and venue debate: 05:29–09:19
• Wembanyama’s rivalry with OKC/Chet Holmgren: 14:07–18:08
• Knicks’ victory and offensive rebounding comeback: 18:08–24:32
• NBA injury crisis and “calf strain” epidemic: 34:41–38:54
• Warriors/Lacob drama & Steph’s diminishing window: 47:35–56:40
• Lakers defense & Austin Reaves trade talk: 59:07–62:15

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Flow & Tone

• Discussion is fast, insightful, often humorous and occasionally irreverent, especially when discussing NBA culture and ownership. Bomani’s signature style frames the conversation with honesty and skepticism, while Tom brings deep statistical and medical context alongside analogies and behind-the-scenes reporting.

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For New Listeners

This episode provides a rich, honest look at how the league is adapting to new traditions, the ways star power and rivalries are forged, why teams like the Knicks are clicking, and the grim day-to-day reality NBA players and teams face with mounting injury risk. Behind the basketball analysis is a clear love for the game, sharp wit, and a recognition that every new NBA innovation comes with complicated trade-offs. Whether you care about the stats or the stories, this episode has plenty to chew on.

Transcript

[Bomani Jones]

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[Tom Haberstroh]

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[Bomani Jones]

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[Tom Haberstroh]

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[Bomani Jones]

Chevrolet together, let's drive foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Right Time A Wave original. My name is Bomani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube, subscribe like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is that time of week where we have a guest join us coming to us live from Charlotte, North Carolina to check him out on his substack, Tom the Finder. Tom Haberstro. What's going on?

[Tom Haberstroh]

It's good to be here. Bomani. You, you here for NBA cup action.

[Bomani Jones]

Dude, I have to say. And we're gonna talk. We got the NBA Cup. We got a lot of NBA stuff that we're going to get to, including some really interesting stuff about injuries. Wow, that sounded dark. But anyway, the NBA cup just finished. The Knicks raised that banner. Boys raised that banner. The Knicks got the win over the Spurs. We'll talk about Victor Wyama in particular a little bit, you know, in just a couple. But first, I don't know where you are on this. I was a skeptic of this inseason tournament when it came around. It felt to me to be an example of Adam Silver listening to podcast and Bill Simmons cooked something up and he was like, yeah, hey, you know, why not? Let's go ahead and give this a run. I didn't think that you would be able to create stakes around this and I thought the stakes were necessary But I also think I kind of sort of ignored that. These are still professional athletes and like there are just some people who. Trophies. It doesn't matter what the trophy is. Like the, like you told Michael Jordan that it was a trophy to go out there and win. Michael Jordan is like. They're all championships. What are you talking about? Yes, the NBA championship. Oh, this new one. Okay. It's a new championship. And I. The games feel like they have stakes. Like the Thunder spurs game on Saturday night felt like a game in a tournament of sorts. Right. Playoff game feels like you're going too far, but it felt like a game that mattered. And I don't know what the ratings are. I don't know what ticket sales are. I think that those things, you have to give those time. Like this is a 20 year project. To me, if this is what you're going to do, it doesn't matter what those numbers are immediately. But what I did notice and I felt like this the first couple years of it, it feels like something and I didn't expect that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, there's a level of prestige in this that they've cooked up in three years running and there isn't really any sort of like postseason importance. Like you're not getting kind of any sort of carrot at the end of this season that matters for playoff positioning or whatnot. The, the prize is money. The prize is prestige. It's a, it's a, it's a cup, it's a trophy. And it's also an opportunity to go to Vegas. And I think that's an underplayed element of this, is that in the NBA schedule it is an absolute grind. It's a grind for these teams, like to get up for November games, December games, and to try to do this and realize, man, we got five more months until the playoffs. It is, it is a, an absolute grind for these guys, emotionally, physically, spiritually. It's tough to go through an NBA season and realize, man, I gotta get up for this game against the Wizards on a Wednesday night. The NBA cup breaks up the season and gives them something with stakes to look forward to and a little bit of respite from the 82 game grind where that you go to the Las Vegas and you go to the NBA cup and it's. And it's. You look at courtside, who's sitting courtside, it's a big deal. It's all the greats, the NBA greats. It feels bigger. I think Amazon prime taking this and having their production value on the game is much better. Than I think people realize is when you have, you know, Steve Nash, Blake Griffin, Dirk Nowitzki and Adam. So Adam Silver was I, I think the post game show for Amazon Prime. He's like, I just want to give you guys a shout out. You guys do a great job on this, on this broadcast. And he gave a lot of jabs. He's subtweeting ESPN on this one because I think he was trying to say we need to build up these games. And you do a great job of building up these games and making it feel important. You're on the court. You're on the court pregame. In ways that I feel like the NBA needed the NBA cup to keep people invested in November and December, the NBA schedule, because 82 games. I think we can all agree we'll have this discussion later. It's too many fucking games. It's too many games. And so how do you raise the stakes to make these games meaningful? It's the NBA cup is one of those answers.

[Bomani Jones]

So one thing about professional sports leagues, I think it's fair to say this generally, but I can definitely say this with more firsthand experience about the NBA. The NBA as a league. And when I say the league, I don't just mean the business entity or the people who are playing now. I mean league in a very big, broad sense. Like in the league in the sense that Robert E. Lee, Bob Pettit is still an NBA guy. Right. Like the whole NBA, they love a good weekend to come, hang out with each other. Right. It don't matter if it's summer league. It don't matter if it's the All Star Game, if it's the NBA Finals. Former NBA players love to go places where the NBA is. Because one big thing about being a former NBA player and talk about, I don't know, if you play this game as summer league, it's NBA bingo. There's no telling what former NBA player you're going to see walking around. Former coach.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Right.

[Bomani Jones]

And they just sitting eat at the, at the, at the, the Shake Shack or any other little place that you might be. Right? Just out there hanging out. They love that. And so you tell them, oh, did you say Las Vegas? I think I could find a way to get down there. Vegas might be dead, but not when we show up.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, I mean, well, I think, I think what's also interesting about this is the NBA is moving. Seems to be intimating that they're moving away from Vegas in the future, that it might not be back in Vegas, which is, I I don't know what to make of that, other than Adam Silver said before the game on Amazon prime, gave him a little scoop here, is that the NBA is considering moving the NBA cup to a kind of a hallowed grounds in college, in college hoops, maybe some. A certain arena where the commissioner might have gone to college.

[Bomani Jones]

Oh, no, you gotta be.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And he said some historical venues and college hoops, we might be moving towards that. So, Bomani, as soon as I knew that I was going to be on today's show and we were going to talk about the NBA cup, how do you feel about Cameron Indoor or Alan Fieldhouse? I'm going to guess it's Cameron Indoor that Adam Silver is, you know, intimating here. How do you feel about them hosting at Cameron Indoor in Durham for the NBA Cup?

[Bomani Jones]

So I don't have a great handle on how big Allen Fieldhouse is. And I want to be clear. Cameron is the single best place for a college basketball game. Hard stop, right? This isn't just about me hating Duke, but. Get the fuck out of here, man. No, no, this is Preposterous on like 85 different. First of all, it's a really uncomfortable arena. Like, let's get that part there right now. This is, it is not an NBA arena. It's not up to the standards of what the NBA is.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Also, the hoops come down from the ceiling. Like, it's not a. It's not a standard NBA stanchion hoop situation. This is very. If you put NBA guys in that arena, it's going to feel very different. And I don't think that's disqualifying, Bomani, because we see it in football, they play in very different conditions. Snowing, raining, what, what have you. In baseball, they had the Field of Dreams game in the middle of fricking Iowa. So, like, I don't think that they're really. It would be unique in that the NBA cup and in certain situations might be in a different arena, basket situation, environmentally different. But it is going to be very different compared to like an NBA arena. It's going to feel very different than Madison Square.

[Bomani Jones]

It would feel amateur. Like, it's just not. And again, I would say that about. If it was in the Dean Dome. I would say this if they're going to Poly Pavilion, like, I don't really care. I just don't. This is not. This is beneath the standard of the league to me. But for those of you who don't know, unfortunately for us, Adam Silver did go to Duke. Um, and so.

[Tom Haberstroh]

There'S that. Well, and camera crazies. The NBA doesn't have. Really, really have that.

[Bomani Jones]

Right.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, the.

[Bomani Jones]

Well, the worst part is those jokers might just show up and be rooting against everybody. You know what I'm saying? Just being annoying thinking that it's about.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry to drop that bomb on you.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I'm sorry. But, but it, but it is weird that the NBA is pivoting away from Vegas and, and in ways that suggest to me, look, they're not going to go to Madison Square Garden on this because I, I do think that the NBA doesn't want to really go to an NBA arena that creates necessary. Yeah, yeah. It's just Dolan Dolan getting that little. The benefit of being able to sell out Madison Square Garden for an extra venue, an extra game doesn't seem like the other owners really go for that. Which is why I think the. The Indiana hosting it or somewhere else in the. In the NBA cities doesn't really make much sense. But that's why I think all signs are pointing to this being at Cameron Indoor next year going forward.

[Bomani Jones]

I think, and I said this earlier, this is a slow build, right? Like there's going to be a point where you look up and there are kids who dreamed of playing in the NBA cup, right? Like that's what you like. I always say when you move a professional sports franchise into another city, my favorite example is the Arizona Cardinals. And if you remember for the first 15 years of their existence, especially when they were in the same division with the Cowboys, that was a road game for them every year because that city was full of Cowboys fans. It takes a generation to build up fans. So where your local team is fully local, right. In that way, I feel like this is very similar. Take the time, make it such that the way you do it. Summer league. Summer league is something that for people who like to do it every year, it's like, yo, are we going to go to summer league? Okay, cool. It's in Vegas. You know exactly what it is. Even if you don't sell a bunch of tickets, you could get people to actually wind up turning up. If you put this in an NBA city and the host city is not in it, people ain't coming. Like, you talk about putting this in Indiana. I ain't going to Indiana in December. What are you high? This is ridiculous. Stay here. Build it up. Make it feel like something. It sound.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I.

[Bomani Jones]

My guess is this sounds a lot more like try to negotiate a little bit with Las Vegas or Las Vegas trying to play a little hardball. Because right now times is a little hard down there. I mean, I don't think I, I think the NBA feels like they got a little leverage over Las Vegas right now.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, I also think that the NBA cup is awesome. Like, I just want to say that right here. Like, I was, I was a big fan of this. Because the alternative is what, like you're arguing. The alternative is that they just play regular season games, right? Like, I don't think anybody is out here watching these type of games in the regular season with the same kind of numbers and the same kind of passion and the same kind of pomp and circumstance for a regular season game. That doesn't count for much in terms of, like the actual stakes of the game. Whereas this, it feels big. And, and Jalen Brunson after the game, accepting the MVP trophy and they're celebrating at, at, at. At half court. It felt big. It felt like they really wanted this. They. They stormed the, the court after they won in ways that I feel like the NBA needs to project this image that this stuff matters, these games matter. And last year when Giannis, he won it and he was like, yo, everyone, chill. We haven't won a championship. This is not the NBA Finals.

[Bomani Jones]

I was like, look, yeah, you know who got it right, though? LeBron James. The best. One of the best things that happened to this cup was the first year. Somebody who understands how the money works was like, hey, we're going to sell this. We're going to act like. And they're the Lakers, okay? They've won 7, 18 of these things. They were like, no, we're going to act like this is a thing. And I think that that was important. I think context for me. And I changed the way I looked at it. And it really hit me in the Saturday night game, you know what it felt like? It felt like the great Alaska Shootout or the Maui Invitation. And I mean that in a good way, right? Like every year it would, you know, for those. And I guess they still do these tournaments, but they're not at the deal. They used to be. But over Thanksgiving or over Christmas, you had these holiday tournaments, right? In basketball, and that's where you would look up and be like, hey, Carolina's playing against the Fab Five at the Maui Invitation. Like, I still remember that game on Grainy HSE on cable, but every year it was a thing. And when I was watching that game on Thursday, which felt it had stakes, like those dudes cared about that game. It Was like, oh, sometimes you just got to do a little tweak to it. And now this feels intense. And that game between two teams that might wind up in the Western Conference finals, that game felt intense. Especially since my guy Victor hates the Thunder. I don't know how the Thunder feel about the Spurs. I know Chet hates Victor and Victor hates Chet. I felt like Victor hates the Thunder and the spurs do too.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Oh, Victor gets it, doesn't he? He gets it. Like we need more Victor being spicy with his comments and messy with his comments about ethical basketball. Like after that game, feels good to play pure ethical basketball. And we're about that brand of basketball. I was like, yo, Victor is here for this NBA life. We need more of this. Like we thought that this was going to come from a. An American player like Anthony Edwards. And I'm like, oh, out here, Victor Wembanyama is talking, talking about this as a. In a way that the NBA needs a lot more antiseptic. Talking about trash talk. The other players and Chad Hungren and they do not like each other. Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren, they go back to even before the NBA when they were playing Team USA versus Team France when they were teenagers. They went head to head and it was an arrival. Like watching Chet Holmgren and Brian Winhurst talks about this all the time. He's like watching Chad Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama playing as teenagers against each other felt like the future, right? It felt like this is going to be the NBA future. These long seven foot guys who can play point guard, shoot, can do everything. Super skilled bigs that should be in. In different eras playing back to the basket around the paint. They're playing like guards out here. And it feels like this is the Next rivalry is OKC and the Spurs. And just like, like LeBron losing to the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, sometimes you need your ego just kicked down a little bit before you can really, really take that next step. And I think Victor Wembanyama doing that to Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that he does not like, he, he does not care for. And he's willing to say it out loud. I think that plus the Knicks loss, I think might be the best outcome for the NBA in terms of the story. Like Victor Wembanyama is going to hurt after this one. And I think that Victor Wenyama, what he did against the Thunder, man, it's just great theater. I can't wait to see what happens next in the next chapter between Wemby and, and Chet and OKC also, remember.

[Bomani Jones]

That thought you just had there. But in an analogous situation where when France is kicking our keers in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, remember, 2024 in Paris was a very similar situation to what you were outlining right here. He forgets nothing. I think the best part of that game against the Thunder is when he hit that shot over Alex Caruso. Well, no, the best part was him clapping every time Chet missed a free throw, but him pointing at Alex Caruso and calling him a little bit while he ran down the floor. And I don't care how tired you are, man, ain't nobody from France talking to me like that, brother. Like, that's. That's like you.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You.

[Bomani Jones]

Your passport seeds. Your right to speak to me in such terms, Monsieur.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, yeah. And the. And the block against Chet at the end where he was just like, yeah, this is mine. You're gonna try to back me down, and I'm going to. Son, you and I.

[Bomani Jones]

Yes.

[Tom Haberstroh]

I wrote about this for tomthefinder.com my substack. They didn't challenge him at the rim the entire game. Okc, they try to shoot their way to, try to, you know, go over the top on Wemby. He finished.

[Bomani Jones]

To be clear, as I read this article, when you say they didn't try to challenge him at the rim at all, how many shots did they take with him at the rim in that game?

[Tom Haberstroh]

Zero.

[Bomani Jones]

Literally.

[Tom Haberstroh]

The player tracking cameras, they have this stack called defensive field goal percentage at the rim, and they track how many times you are within 5ft of the basket and 5ft of the shooter in an NBA game. And there were zero such shots in the game against OKC when Wemby was near the basket. Now, there was some quibble with that on, like, was he five feet away or six feet away? Okay. But the point of the matter is that Luke Cornett got challenged eight times in the game in his minutes, and Victor Wembanyama was a zero, zilch, nada in that game. And so what OKC tried to do was what the Knicks tried to do, in a sense, where we're going to shoot and we're going to neutralize Wemby in some ways. But I. Are we ready to talk about this next game? Because I'm. I'm here.

[Bomani Jones]

Let's go. It's right fast. Cause we talked about it. I talked about it on Monday, but the plus 20 that Victor had in seven minutes in the first half of that game was unreal. Like, everything changed when he came into that game. It was kind of the opposite in this game where he was a plus 21 in the. In the. The Thunder game was a minus 18 in this Knicks game.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. And it felt like that I. I felt like when I was watching Wemby in this game, it was a different player. And we learned afterwards, after the game, he was tearing up at the press conference, and he said that he lost someone today. We later find out that his grandmother passed away, and he found out about it before the game on Tuesday morning. And I'll have it in my notes, just as something that I wrote even before I found out that news. I was like, Victor is playing like he's doing hero ball on every single play, trying to block everything and trying to shoot threes and try to play hero ball every time down the floor. And it felt like he was kind of off his game. Like he felt like he wanted it a little too much in the sense that he was out here. There was a play where Tyler Kolek is going, driving to the hoop. He leaves OG Anunoby on the left corner three, and tries to collapse to block Tyler Kulik, who he knows is not going to try on Victor Wembanyama, because that's Tyler Kulik, this guy who's going to have 15 assists and no turnovers in a game. And that's his idea of a good outing. And he leaves OG Open in the corner in a big moment, and OG gets a wide open three. And I'm watching and I'm like, man, it feels like. Feels like he's not making the right decisions out there. Like he's going after everything, and it's kind of like he's over eager to make the big home run play. Took a lot of threes, a lot of, like, hero ball threes in this game. It didn't seem like the same dude that we watched on Saturday night against okc. And I don't want to belabor the point, but I remember when I was 21 years old and I lost my grandmother, I was a mess. I was a mess for a week after that happened. I don't think I cry that hard, like, in my life up until that point when I lost my grandmother at 21 years old. Not to make excuses for Victor Wean's performance, but it explains something. When I'm watching him, I'm like, man, he does not feel like he's making the right decisions out there. And that's how I felt the whole game.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. And not to take anything away from the Knicks, right? Because they, I hate that I missed that game that the Knicks played against the Magic because I was at the Garden on Sunday when they played where Desmond Bane did that weirdo move and threw the ball at OG Like, I was a little curious to see what that was going to look like coming back around. But hey, man, there's no reason that the Knicks can't go to the NBA Finals, right? Every, I feel like every Knicks game is just. That's the question you ask yourself. It's like, oh, maybe I, I mean, I guess you could say that about just about the whole east, because somebody's got to win it. But I, I don't have a compelling argument. Why not the Knicks?

[Tom Haberstroh]

I, I think they're the favorites and I think they're the clear favorites. You know, the Detroit Pistons have not gotten to the conference finals yet with this group. They're a young team. The Knicks are not a young team. And I don't know if you recognize this, but Mike Brown did not play McKella Bridges in clutch situation last night. Did not play him. That is not something Tom Thibodeau would have even dreamed of doing last year. Wouldn't even think of doing last year. And Tyler Kulik was balling. They played Jalen Brunson and Tyler Kulik together in the NBA cup championship for long stretches. And it worked. And it worked because of Mitchell Robinson coming off the bench and getting 10 offensive rebounds in 18 minutes and just giving it to Victor underneath the basket, where again, Victor was out here trying to block everything out of position. And it left him liable for all of these offensive rebounds on Mitchell Robinson who would kick it out to three point shooters. And Jordan Clarkson, Dagger 3. Jordan Clarkson, Dagger 3. OG on Anobi, Dagger 3. This was by design. Clearly Mike Brown was out here being like, I want to be able to play Mitchell Robinson and capitalize on some of these Victor Wembanyama swatting and getting out of position and try to get these offensive rebounds and kick out to shooters. The Knicks do that better than anybody. Have more three pointers made after offensive rebounds than any team in the NBA. They shot 47% on threes off of offensive rebounds. And the re. The reason is it's very strategic. A lot of teams work very hard to get an open three pointer on a given possession. You know, when you get a lot of open three pointers on a given possession, when everybody's crashing the boards and you get that offensive rebound and you kick out wide open threes on offensive rebounds, some coaches don't like to do that because it feels like, hey man, let's try to work a better shot here. But the Knicks, they love this. They love it. They have like 20 more three pointers off of offensive rebounds than any other team in the NBA. And clearly that was the differentiator was Tyler Cook making the extra pass, Mitchell Robinson getting those offensive rebounds, and man, Jordan Clarkson. You think it matters to Jordan Clarkson and Tyler Kolek, this NBA cup, the way that they played and celebrated, man, they loved it out there.

[Bomani Jones]

Something. First of all, a picture of Jordan Clarkson when he first gets to the NBA versus a picture of Jordan Clarkson now is still hilarious to me. Like, you normally see that happen to people in college, right? Like, it looked like he got sent to juvie for a crime he did not commit and then just had to survive and came out like a whole entirely different person. I don't know anything about him at all. I don't know if he talked the same as he used to. But you go look at Lakers, Jordan Clarkson versus this scared straight didn't take Jordan Clarkson. And it is discussion for a different day. Offensive rebound is coming back. People have been writing about this and the numbers are showing. It's not dissimilar to the NFL where running the ball on people has come back, defenses have gotten small, and so now the move at the margins is to get a little bigger and go run over them. Offensive rebounding seems to be coming back as a thing. Crashing the boards where teams like I remember, Boon Holzer was the first person I really remember who was just like, yeah, we're not getting offensive rebounds. We're sending three people back and we're going to stop transition baskets. However, the NBA is more fun with offensive rebounding because the NBA might bring back offensive rebounders. Like all these tall guys who could do a zillion things are great. We need a Oakley, you know what I'm saying? We just need some guys who are like, Mitchell Robinson is a great example. I just run hard and crash the boards. Those guys make life better.

[Tom Haberstroh]

We, we want physicality in the NBA. It's one of the reasons why I think the NBA has gone way too far in the offensive minded philosophy and freedom of movement where it feels like a lot of times the referees are just calling fouls on guys putting their shoulder into you and the defenders. Like, I. I mean, how am I supposed to defend this? And a lot of times I feel like physicality was being rewarded in the playoffs last year and towards the second half of the season. When Adam Silver had admitted, like, yeah, we decided to make a switch with. Which is kind of crazy for a commissioner to admit that they decided to change rules without telling all the teams about how they're going to make a rule change mid season. But I do think that we want more physicality, which is clear, I think from fans. They want none of this grifting to be rewarded when it comes to, you know, driving and James Harden ification of driving and all that. But I also think offensive rebounds and how it gets kind of physical underneath. I think team. I think fans want that. I think teams want to be able to play offensive rebound game and try to be physical out there without fearing that you're going to get called for a foul. So Mitchell Robinson, Victor Wembanyama going at it underneath is good for basketball. It's also good for the sport. And I think fans, NBA fans or casual sports fans, whatever large group of sports fans you want to bring to the NBA back, I think physicality is a big reason why you might be able to recruit them back to the NBA.

[Bomani Jones]

So this is tangential and kind of going backwards before we go into break. It's something I meant to get to, but I lost track of as much as we talked about that is Victor versus the Thunder. The thund. The kids on the Thunder seem to be different young men than many of the kids on the spurs, shall we say? There is a great contrast that's going on right now. Like, those top four teams in the west are fun to me because they're all so different, right? Like, you got Jokic and the guys around. Joke is that's no shade to them. It's just that like, Jokic is. The numbers he's putting up are absurd. The, The. The advanced numbers are absurd. It just makes it hard for me to remember anybody else is on the team. The Rockets, a zillion Condors, right? Everybody's really, really tall. They got a bunch of those dudes and they have Kevin Durant, who's not the old Kevin Durant, but he's still Kevin Durant, right? And with an IME Udoka mentality of a basketball team.

[Tom Haberstroh]

The. The.

[Bomani Jones]

The Thunder, a bunch of really good, nice young men. And the spurs and boys go hard like, like they are. They are. They are coming for you, so to speak.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Hey, did you realize that Stefan Castle is a. A Wake Forest? The son of a Wake Forest player, Stacy Castle, who played with Rodney Rogers and Randolph Childress, transferred out after his sophomore year. But it on the broadcast, I think they. They were Talking about it after the broadcast that his father played in the acc and I was like, oh, oh. So he picked up a couple things from Rodney Rogers because the way that Stefan Castle plays, man, it is just like he's, he's a second year player, won two championships at UConn. But I'm sitting here watching Stefan Castle, I feel total confidence when the ball.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah.

[Tom Haberstroh]

And it is very weird to watch guys that young, even Dylan Harper. Dylan Harper is a rookie out here and he just led the spurs and scoring in this NBA cup championship. I, I love the Spurs. I put them on my title contender list before the season and my title tiers column that I do every Monday before the season, I said the spurs are going to make a huge leap this year and Mitch Johnson, the coach who's replacing Greg Popovich full time, he's going to win coach of the year. And they're making me look really smart with that prediction. Except for on Tuesday night, they kind of fell flat in the fourth quarter and it's. It was the Mitchell Robinson and Tyler kick show.

[Bomani Jones]

By the way, rest in peace, Rodney Rogers. I didn't have a chance to talk about this on this show. And for those of you who are too young to remember Rodney Rogers as a player, NBA Rodney Rogers was cool. College Rodney Rogers was everything, right? Like that's. We no longer. I don't think we. We. College basketball doesn't operate in the space now where you just had these guys that were like your favorite college player. And so the thing with Rodney was he's an ACC legend in the sense that like nobody hates Wake Forest. And so people did not think that he was going to qualify. Therefore, most of the schools didn't really recruit him, but Wake Forest did. They got it together. He wound up in school. So he wound up being this player that nobody rooted against because nobody was mad because he didn't go to their school, for example. And he was a force of nature. He was big. He was a little, little stocky, right? Like, like college power forward size. He was sturdy, he was explosive. He could shoot. He could do 360 dunks in games. It was all of it. And he is Durham North Carolina's basketball player. Like that was. He's the local guy for people in Durham and you see him around and everything. And it was a tragedy, obviously when he got in the accident in the ATV and that left him paralyzed. But when he died a couple weeks ago, I was like, probably more closer to a month or so now, but it was just like, oh, no, no, no, no. For those of you who do not understand, this one hurts because this was a guy that you had to love if you watched him play basketball.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. And. And I gotta say, the Durham Bull, Rodney Rogers. When people say, like, who's Zion Williamson? And we would make the. The comp to Rodney Rogers, people thought we were crazy. But if you saw Rodney Rogers at work for us.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You'd realize there aren't too many people who were built like that who could do the things like he did. And he. He was. He was incredible player, I think a teammate. A lot of people love playing with Rodney Rogers, who is sixth man of the year in the NBA. And I just think it's tragic what happened to him because he was so invincible. Like, that dude was as strong as anybody to come through the NBA. To have the ATV accident basically put him on a ventilator for 17 years. And as someone who has been around a loved one on a ventilator for several years, I can't imagine the strength of he and his wife going through that. And I'm glad we got a moment to talk about Rodney Rogers because talk about beloved players in the NBA and basketball. There are too many people who are more beloved than the Durham Bull, Roddy Rogers.

[Bomani Jones]

Let me tell you this too. My favorite Rodney Rogers detail. I don't know how much this was made to be. Rodney took care of his money. But I'll never forget this once, man. I was at the Circle k on Highway 55 in Cornwallis, and I'm coming out and walking in is Rodney Rogers in his work clothes for the city of Durham. He was a heavy equipment equipment operator. Like, that was just how he decided to pass his time. It wasn't that he was broke or anything like that. He eventually became a supervisor. Right. But that's how, like, that's how Durham Rodney Rogers was, in case you were curious. But yeah, nah, rest in peace to him. Coming up next, we got some more NBA talk.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. So last week I wrote a big feature for Yahoo. Sports about the two scariest words in the NBA right now, which is calf strain. Calf strain. We've seen more calf strains than we have in a very long time, if ever. We don't. Injury data doesn't go back all the way to, you know, historical data, but I can comfortably say that we've never seen more cav strains in the NBA than we have this season. And statistically, through 20 games, according to East street instreaklose.com's Jeff Stotts, who's the best, most preeminent injury tracker in sports, he found that the incidence of calf strains in the NBA through the first 20 games is up 40% compared to last year. But here's the thing. The time lost due to those injuries is up by 200%. Bomani. So what's happening there teams? I talked to coaches around the league, talked to the medical side doc, sports docs, some sports docs that are even on the NBA's payroll, that a consultant to the NBA, Dr. Richard Ferkle, who operated on Klay Thompson's Achilles tear and also on Steph Curry's ankle injuries, DeMarcus cousin's Achilles tear. Like this is the preeminent like foot and and ankle doc in the NBA. They're all saying something's up. And we're all kind of terrified of the idea that today's game is just too much force on these bodies. Too many games, too many FA uptempo games. Like the game is faster and there's so many three pointers now, Bomani, that they gotta defend 40ft out now in ways that you would see a lot of pick and roll actions back in Rodney Rogers days. It was 12ft in, right? You set a screen at the top of the key and then you go try to go downhill at the rim. Now it's, you're going downhill, building up speed. The Runway is 50ft long. A lot of these screens are now being set at half court. And so think about the geometry of the game and the force that These guys are playing with where you get downhill now, Bomani, and you're running full speed for 40ft instead of 10ft instead. And you got to stop on a dime. Like these D cells that you see. Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson, Denny Abdia, Stefan Castle, James Harden was great at this when he was at his peak. The D cells, the step backs, all of this is in the stew for why we're seeing more calf strains and Achilles tears. There were seven Achilles tears last year, which was a league record, and three were on the same team, the Indiana Pacers. Tyrese Halbert and Isaiah Jackson and James Wiseman. Bomani, how many 23 year olds can you remember tearing their Achilles like James Wisman did? It's just a very old person injury that we would hear when we were growing up of like our uncle who went out here and tried to play pickup basketball or your aunt who was going to play tennis and tore their Achilles. We're seeing teams now holding out their guys longer in these calf strains. And the latest ones are Evan Mobley and Austin Reeves. They're holding them out for longer. And I think a lot of it has to do with the kind of PTSD that you see from Tyrese Halbern in the NBA Finals tearing his Achilles after a calf strain. And also Damian Lillard tearing his cap, his Achilles after his blood clot in his calf. You saw Jason Tatum tearing his Achilles. So when Adam Silver is coming out here on the moments before the NBA Cup Final in which Victor Wembanyama is coming off the bench because of a calf strain, he's saying we haven't seen injuries this low in three years. But he is concerned about the soft tissue injuries. And I, I have the data to prove it. These soft tissue injuries are knocking these players out for much longer and stars are not playing nearly as much as they used to. And that is a big problem for the NBA because the stars are what makes money in the NBA. These contracts. Amazon prime, NBC, they're not shelling out billions of dollars to watch the B teams out here. They're shelling out million billions of dollars because Victor Wembanyama and John Morant and Giannis Anetokounmpo. But as of last week, none of those guys were playing because of these calf strains. And it's a big, big problem in the NBA.

[Bomani Jones]

And it seems somewhat unsolvable because they're not going to dial back the style of play. Like we talked about this with Vinny Goodwill last week, that once new technology is introduced into any system or any universe, or people are loathe to dial it back, no matter how much harm it, you know, ultimately proves to cause. This is the smartphone dilemma is that, boy, we sure need to use these a little bit more. But it can do so many cool things, and people are not going to start stop doing the cool things. The game evolved to a place where I think another analogy point that I make that I think is similar on this is the reason they didn't pass the ball in football as much in the past as they did now is passing is really, really hard. And so they figured out ways to make passing easier. But as it goes, they're like, why can't we develop more good quarterbacks? Because this is unnatural, what we're asking for them to do. Right. The technology has gone to a place that the people can't keep up with in the technology of basketball, which is these schemes. And in part, like the size of the players and everything else, it can't keep up. But it's not going to get dialed back. So what do you do? Do you turn it now into a sport that runs like hockey, where you have like three lines of people and they only play like 20 minutes a game? Like, who's the coach? And with the Grizzlies, who's starting off with his this year of we're just gonna play really hard for four minutes at a time. I don't think that's a sustainable way to play. I don't even know if he's still doing that nonsense. But that was his plan coming into it. Like, I don't, I don't know what you're supposed to do now that all these advents have been introduced, how you can get it to dial back.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You cut 20 games from the schedule. That's how you do it.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, well, there's that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You know, in, in Tuesday's press conference, Adam Silver said, you know, we're studying this. We, we, we are concerned that star players are not playing as much as they used to. That's a real problem. But he said, there is no silver bullet here. And I was wondering if that was a lowercase silver or an uppercase s, because there is a silver bullet. And it's to reduce the games in the schedule to build in more recovery days. And I think the NBA has a marketing problem. And rest, it's not rest. It's not like they're kicking back and by the beach, by the pool and resting their bodies. It's recovery. The bodies can't simply keep up with the pace. Of the game and the Travel and the 82 games and you can say, hey, back in the day, look, man, if you stack up the number of possessions that was in the 98 NBA Finals between the Utah Jazz and the Chicago Bulls and you stack up against the Indiana Pacers and the and the Oklahoma City Thunder, it is Mount Everest to Mount McKinley. It is two very different equations. We're talking about the number of possessions that are in every game. So you can say, hey, MJ was out here averaging 40 minutes a game and Shea Gildrus Alexander is averaging 30 and they can't play 82 games. If you look at the number of possessions that these guys are playing running up and down the floor and mind you, possessions is not some ephemeral idea. Possessions is running up and down the floor. It is trips up and down the floor. It's as if we added two innings to a baseball game and wondered why all these pitchers weren't throwing complete games anymore. It's because the unit of Measurement in the NBA, yes, people talk about 48 minutes. It's still 48 minutes, but it's not in the number of possessions. The game is so much faster, the geometry of the game is so much wider that you're asking Bigs to play like guards out here and defend the three point line. When Kevin McHale wasn't out here defending the three point line and pick and roll coverages like they do now. It's so different of a sport and I think the NBA has to get everybody together. I'm talking stakeholders on the ownership side, I'm talking the medical side, the player side and have them come together and figure out a way to reduce games in the schedule without losing revenue. And that as we're both econ guys figuring out a way to lower the supply of games but raising the demand, I feel like there's a sweet spot here. But man, these franchise values are going way up and I don't know if all of these owners are going to be trying to hear that.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, we are at a point of what they call Pareto optimality. Right. Like you are trying to figure out how to make this one thing better without hurting this other thing. Right? And that's, that's their trick bag. And for context, for people, the top five seasons for fastest pace of play in the NBA, top 15, excuse me, are all before 1990. Number 16 is 2019, 2020 season and then number 17 is this season. Currently I bring that up to say the pace of the game in the 80s and seven 70s and 80s was a fast up and down, but the side to side game was entirely different. And I think that's a big change that's happening now is what is what is demanded of you. Not just that it's moving fast, going back and forth, but what you got to do once you get to that other end of the floor. That part has changed a great deal. But you're right, you can't have your best players not just dropping like flies, but they're young players. And this isn't like the NFL where you just roll another guy up and then, oh, suddenly we have another star. Right. Like the NBA. NFL is built for those guys to swap in and out like that. This league ain't that. And you hope they figure it out soon because they got a great rookie class in the NBA this year, a really, really good one. And you can't help but wonder if there's going to be dropping by the time they're 26.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. And, and that's what the worry is, is that not only are you seeing a lot more injuries in the NBA, but when they come into the league they've got a lot of specialization injuries. Right. Is that when we were growing up, Bomani, if you were good, you were a great athlete. You're playing four different sports year round. Not year round, but in seasons.

[Bomani Jones]

Yes.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You're going to play basketball, you're going to play football, you're going to play baseball, you're going to play lacrosse, hockey, whatever it is. But now these guys are coming into the NBA with like way more mileage on those tires and joints than you'd expect given that they're 20 years old. And so that's the worry is like for the NBA. And Adam Silver talked about it. Vinnie Goodwill asked the question, shots to Vinnie on this is like, what do you attribute this to? And Adam Silver said, you know, we have to look at this holistically, not just at the NBA, but coming into the league. It's not an easy problem to solve. I'm writing about it because I'm, I'm noticing the medical data and I'm noticing all the injury data and seeing that star players now, Bomani are missing one out of three games. Whereas just a couple years ago it was one out of five. One out of three games a star player is going to miss in the NBA now, which is not good for ticket prices. And it's not, it's not a short term hit. I think it's a long term hit that fans, when they go and they take their kids to a game thinking LeBron's going to play or that Victor Wembanyama is going to play. And they don't because they're on the second night of a back to back and you're like, I just paid $400 for to take my family to this game and the guy wasn't there. That's a long term hit. That means that ticket buyer is going to think twice the next time he can take his family to an NBA game and he's going to probably spend that money elsewhere. And that's what the NBA doesn't want. They don't want these fans who would punk down 4, $400 to go to a game and take their family and potentially lose that young kid fan for life because they realize, hey man, it doesn't matter to these games. Even though that's not true. It's just the injuries, the bodies aren't able to withstand 82 games like they used to. So it's a real big problem. And I do think that the NBA has the data. They just got to figure out how we negotiate this with the players union and the ownership and all of the facts and the data has to come together to find a solution. This is not easy for Adam Silver. Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

Because most of those players would not give back money to get more time off.

[Tom Haberstroh]

You, you have to make a compelling argument that they wouldn't lose money. And so that's where you got to get the best economist in the room or best salesman in the room to explain to the players union that if we reduce the games in the schedule revenue wise, we can make that up on the back end with at national TV games or with more eyeballs on the games because each game matters more. And there's not back to backs anymore that more people are going to watch and they have the storylines like, like I keep coming back to this in the NFL, in fantasy football. I am constantly looking at my app to the lead up four days before the game to see who's going to play. The storylines are about the Saturday and Sunday football games with college football in the NFL. And they breathe these stories and they talk about these stories and the matchups and the dynamics at play for days on end. We don't have that in the NBA. And I feel like if we reduce the schedule down, we're going to have a lot more energy and a lot more stakes to these games because there's time to talk about it. And that oxygen, I think is going to be a real big part of this equation going forward. All Right.

[Bomani Jones]

I want to talk about another story that is interesting that has come out, which is that Joe Lacop, Joe Lagob, for those of you who don't know, is the owner of the Golden State Warriors. I mean, that's a first class dork right there, but he is a dork that I have to give him this. When they were winning 50 games and they were telling us that Mark Jackson was holding them back and he was making all these faces at him during games, I was like, well, how good do you expect Steph Curry and Klay Thompson to be and score one for Joe Link? He was there, but then he went too far and he said there were light years ahead of everybody else and those light years didn't really last that long.

[Tom Haberstroh]

What's the most viable franchise in the NBA right now, Bomani? And would you have believed when I told you that with Mark Jackson and all the smirks that he was given to Mark Jackson that it would one day be the Golden State warriors by a mile? You would have thought I was crazy.

[Bomani Jones]

No. In a world with the New York Knicks in it.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, right.

[Bomani Jones]

Like, no, that is like, that is. It is crazy. Like, he's pulled this off. He just has this knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Like, remember when they won the championship and he gave credit to whoever it was in the front office for getting guys to all those great contracts. Translation, way to work these suckers and not give them as much money as they probably deserve. I was like, what are you talking about? Right? Said something crazy about Steph. I feel like up there I was like, what are you doing? His latest. What are you doing after, by the way, the two timeline situation where he tried to win for now and later, which was hubris, Just the ultimate hubris. You can't do that in this league. But anyway, now we are here. Some fans sent him an angry email about the current state of the franchise. And for whatever reason, and this happens from time to time, Joe Lacob replied, he, as the kid said, had time. Um, I, I am trying to find a word for word what it is that Joe Lacob said, but the long and the short. Steve Kerr has said that he didn't have a problem with this reply to the email, which I can't promise you that I feel that way. But Lamb said to the person who said that Jimmy Butler was being utilized improperly because the roster didn't have enough size, and he said he was really frustrated. And Joe La replied, you can't be as frustrated with as Me, I am working on it. It's complicated style of play coaches desired regarding play coaches desire regarding players league trends. Jimmy is not the problem. And I felt like Jimmy's the only person to come out of this unscathed.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Man. Steve Kerr can read that and say that's a shot at me. And anytime you have owner emails going out in public, not a great look. It's not, it's not something you as a, an NBA head coach want to deal with at a press conference and have to answer for that. But it's very clear that Joe Lakob wants Jonathan Kaminga and the Moses Moody experiment to work in his favor. Because he was out here bragging about the two timelines and saying, hey, we can win championships and develop players at the same time. The problem with that is if John of the Kaminga and Moses Moody aren't it, you can't go back and redo those picks. Bomani. That's the thing about being right in the draft is you only got those two swings and if you strike out on those two swings then you got to pack it up and say, all right, we made a, we made a mistake and we're getting off of this and we're going to go get some veterans. They still haven't moved off the Jonathan Kaminga thing. They haven't. And we're now here where he's making $22 million a year to be getting DMP CDS. And Steve Kerr does not want Jonathan Kaminga out there. He's made it very clear that by benching him in these games in which they need help. I just did the Blazers game, the Blazer 30 against the Golden State Warriors. And Jonathan Kaminga the other night didn't play a single minute in that game in which Stephen Curry had 48 points. It is not a good situation there in Golden State. Under 500 here with Jonathan Kaminga in the doghouse. And I gotta say, the more that this plays out, I think the Golden State warriors are losing leverage. And this is the problem by bringing back Jonathan Kaminga and everyone knows he's not here for the long haul is the more that this plays out, the larger chance that this is a situation where they're going to lose an extra, they have to give up an extra first round pick to move off of this guy. It's not a good situation. And Joe Lakob, at some point he can't be sending those emails out with those kind of particulars. Cause in this day and age it's gonna get out, dude.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. And Look, Jimmy, you could argue is not the player that he was, but the player that he is is still really good. Steph is not the player that he was, but the player that he is is still really good. Like their top two guys, I mean, Jimmy's putting up 51 from the floor, 44 from three, 85 from the line. Like that's what you're getting out of Jimmy Butler. Like they're, they, they still have it at the top. But if you weren't gonna play Kaminga, then it just had, I mean they, they got off a wiseman a long time ago, right? I am, I have been fascinated by the fact that this one he just can't let go of. And I said last year I got a lot of hell for this. Where I was like, the discussions were coming up about the idea of LeBron going to the wars, which would never happen, but I'm like, hey, don't give up. Best young player in order to make that trade. I was like, I would keep coming under them circumstances, but not if it's gonna be. If this is what you do.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah, it's not. Because I don't think it's, I don't think it's Jimmy Butler's fault that they're at where they're at. I think it's a roster problem. I think right now the Golden State warriors have no athleticism. And the one guy who does seem to have it in terms of like the ability to jump really high and finish at a high level, Jonathan Kaminga can't get on the floor because Steve Curve flat out does not trust that guy. It's very clear that he does not trust that guy to play the kind of basketball. And that's why I think style of play is doing a lot of work in that email. Because I think what he wants to say or the implication is he's not going to be playing the Steve Kerr brand of basketball. The, the IQ that you need on the basketball court to play with Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler and, and Draymond Green. I don't think Jonathan Kaminga is about that life and we're gonna try to figure out the best situation here. But that's the coach and Jimmy Butler is not the problem. It's that they have Al Horford who's, who's hurt and dealing with a very 40 year old injury that LeBron knows very well sciatica. This is a team that does not have much athleticism and they're forced to play a lot of three guard lineups. And in today's NBA man. Steph. It can't be. Steph Curry is dropping 48 points in a, in a loss. It can't happen. When you have a guy who's at this stage of his career, done this much for your franchise and he is the reason. They're a number one evaluation on, on the NBA chart and up there with the Dallas Cowboys, he is the reason. And he can't be out here averaging 30 points a game and being on under 500 team, that is a problem. And the Golden State warriors, man, I believe in them this year. But a lot of it was hinged on a 40 year old Al Horford doing the things he was doing for Boston last year. And he hasn't been MIA for a.

[Bomani Jones]

Lot of this season. Steph Curry turns 38 in March.

[Tom Haberstroh]

We, we, we don't. The thing about he and Chris Paul is we don't typically see guys this small being.

[Bomani Jones]

Yes.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Playing this deep into their careers and still being effective like Chris Paul. Playing 82 games, starting 82 games for the spurs last year is just unheard of. Chris. I mean STEPH CURRY Averaging 30 at age 38 is unheard of. It's, it's unheard of to see him playing at age 38 at the size that he is, much less being one of the top 10 players in the league. But that's where we're at with Steph Curry. And maybe if you give one thing to Joe Lakob is like we had to do the time, the two timeline thing because we could never expect Stephen Curry and Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler to be out here playing at this kind of level. We had to get some young players in here to be, fulfill that, that pipeline. But man, when you have a Steph Curry averaging 30 points a game on 50% shooting and 40% from three, you gotta build for now. And now it's really hard to do that when Jonathan Kaminga has zero trade value.

[Bomani Jones]

I feel like I have always thought the world of Steph Curry, right? Like I covered that tournament in 08, right? The games at Raleigh. Like I've been there for a lot of that. I've seen him play at Cameron Indoor Stadium at Davidson, right? And then he got to the NBA. And I feel like for the last 17 years, without even realizing I was doing it, I managed to underestimate him at just about every turn while also thinking the world of him. And that just continues every year and every day because there's no way in the world that I thought with the type of game that he had that he could still be like this. As it is, I have, I have been able to come up with a yeah, but for just about every portion of his career and he just wipes his ass with every single one of them and then hold it up to my face and be like, smell it, smell it.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yeah. How does it taste?

[Bomani Jones]

But at the same time, these last outside of that championship in 2022, what are we talking about? Post Kevin Durant in terms of the warriors and their performance. And the answer is not really that much. But you, I think you raised the point. It's kind of because they've underestimated him. One could argue.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And when Joe Lakob is out here in a championship speech and saying hey shouts to the organization for putting, putting this roster together and leaving out Stephen Curry and his name and what he's done for the Franchi guys, I think you can, I think you can safely say that everyone in that organization and everyone in the NBA underestimated Steph Curry. And he is still out here in top 10 in the scoring in the NBA at age 38 is, is absurd. But I can't see him being moved. I can't see Stephen Curry not finishing out his career with the Golden State Warriors. So it becomes incumbent on the warriors to put the pieces around him to succeed. And that's why the Giannis EndoDokounmpo sweepstakes is really interesting here because Jimmy Butler was pursued by the Phoenix Suns and his contract lines up pretty clean with Giannis Anadokounmpo. And so you can see a world in which the Milwaukee Bucks say we don't really want Jimmy Butler on this team, but we could want all the picks that you have and some of the young players on the Phoenix Suns. So why don't we just all come together and say, hey Jimmy Butler, I know you couldn't work things out with Phoenix when he was in Miami, but let's get a three team trade here. Giannis Anadokounmpo, Steph Curry and Draymond Green playing for the warriors one last time for Steph Curry to make one last championship push. And he's got Giannis on his team, which got to give Jimmy Butler credit for how well he's played with Golden State when he's healthy. But he ain't Giannis anyt a kumpo and that's why things are really interesting for me.

[Bomani Jones]

I will say this, the Phoenix attempts to get Jimmy Butler were a full on clown show. It was the dumbest I'M fairly aware of what was going on with that one. It was stupid. Like, that's, that's, that's, that's the best that I'll say that I'm comfortable saying right now is I trust that Phoenix will find a way to mess it up if it comes down to doing that. By the way, somehow they are better than we thought that they would be. I want to throw one last thing at you before we get out of here. Um, how do you think this last year of LeBron? Well, maybe it's not the last, but the LeBron Lakers 25, 26 where LeBron can have games but it's obvious he's 40 something years old. Um, it's a world where Austin reeves can average 30 points a game when he doesn't have a calf injury and where Luka, Luka's gotten himself in super duper shape, but it hasn't quite been MVP level ball as I thought that it would be. But what, how do you think this goes for this team?

[Tom Haberstroh]

They got to do something here because that defense is atrocious. They don't get back on defense. And a lot of it is Luka Doncic just, he's, he doesn't have the energy to be the, the 40 point score. And who did, who does have the energy to be 40 point score, 10 assists, a guy, a game guy and also run back on defense. But of the top 10 slowest guys and miles per hour defensively in the NBA, there's only one team that has multiple guys in that top 10. And the Lakers have three of them in Austin Reeves, LeBron James and Luka Doncic. They don't move, they don't play defense in the way that you have to in today's NBA to win championships. And so they got to find a way Bomani, to upgrade defensively because they're gonna get wiped out in the first round if they play the defense that they're having here. I don't think J.J. redick, as you saw with the rotation last year in the playoffs, that he went small for basically 48 minutes last year, did not trust Jackson Hayes, did not trust the bigs to play defensively what they needed to in the playoffs. They got to figure out a way that they can get some actual athletes out there and activity on the wing to cover up for three very offensively dominant players. I, I suspect you're going to hear a lot of Austin Reeves trade talks here in the next few weeks because I don't know if they're going to move off of LeBron, certainly not going to move off of Luca. But Austin Reeves, a guy that is, I think, duplicitous, not duplicit. What's the word I'm looking for?

[Bomani Jones]

Repetitive, I think is probably the best way to put it.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Repetitive where he's a little bit redundant. The. His skill set of being a great ball dominant guy who can score and pass. You already got two of the best all time at it. Luka Doncic and LeBron James on the team. And so there's a lot of diminishing returns here with Austin Reaves. And I gotta wonder if he's the guy that gets moved at the trade deadline to try to upgrade defensively because this, this team, it can't have three offensive juggernauts that don't play any defense.

[Bomani Jones]

Two things. One, I make that duplicitous mistake often. It was relatable content.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Duplicative. It's not the word I'm trying to say.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, I think duplicative is closer. Duplicitous means he be lying. Yeah, I know, you know, but, but, but it feels like it, right? Like, like it feels like it lands there. Number two, they can trade Austin Reeves. I get it if they do. I really do. But they gonna have to explain that to the Lokes. The locals. The locals are some of the. Hey man, they, they had it like this before, baby. Just a good old fret, red blooded, hairy American winning machine. You know what I'm saying? They, they ain't quite, they ain't quite had it like that, boy.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Well, I'm trying to think of where, where would Bomani Jones like to see Austin Reeves play? Like what, what team do you think would be embraced the most by.

[Bomani Jones]

Danny Ainge is on line one. That's, that's, that's. I mean, look, the Celtics of course would enjoy it, but Danny Age is, is, is all that being said, Danny Aids. That's not. I, I'm not casting those versions on Daddy Age because Daddy Age is also the guy that told Ace Bailey, I don't know what you think, but you're coming to Utah, son. Maybe that's the deal, right? To, to counter balance some of that.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Ace. Yeah, man. Austin Reeves, he. He's most improved player of the year candidate. I mean the way that he's been able to ball out over the last year or so, he's going to get a lot of, a lot of phone calls about him and he's on this very low contract when makes you tough for trades and he's going to be up for an extension here and a big contract but you know there's going to be teams and that's the thing about Utah is like Walker Kessler makes a lot of sense on the Lakers but after he had a, an injury that he's out for the rest of the year, you got, he kind of crossed it off the list like Steve Buscemi just be able to scratch the Utah Jazz off list. I don't see them making that trade. But there are other teams that could use Austin Reeves as the fulcrum of their offense and I don't think the Lakers are that team anymore. I think they need to upgrade defensively and JJ Redick, I don't think he's going to do another year of what they did last year in the postseason and just run these guys into the ground because they need, they need to play both ends of the floor right now. They're not.

[Bomani Jones]

Walker Kessler came into league in 2022 and he been on the trade block ever since.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Yep. And he's, he's a restricted free. It's sad man. We're not cry out here crying for millionaire NBA players but when you are out for the season at right before you're going to be a restricted free agent, we saw how that played out for Cam Thomas and Jonathan Kaminga and Quentin Grimes this year. That's a tough situation for Walker Kessler and his agent.

[Bomani Jones]

I cry for people who got to live in Utah. I think I don't, I don't care. I mean shout out to NBA young boy but I just, that's, that's not, it's not what I would do. Tom Haberstro, check him out at substack. Tom the finder, check him out at Yahoo Sports covering the NBA. My man. It's been a pleasure.

[Tom Haberstroh]

Appreciate you Bomani.

[Bomani Jones]

All right now ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this four times a week. Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you sir. He hit the voicemail line. 323-59-667767 Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe like rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.

[Tom Haberstroh]

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