A (52:39)
Or in my absurd wing of absurdity in the hall of Fame when they. When they take my idea and make a wing of just absurd things for the hall of Fame. All right, let's take a little interlude to journey into the nether world of the Jonathan Kaminga Golden State warriors negotiations. ESPN drops the story today inside the warriors stalemate with Jonathan Kaminga. You know, nothing is going on in the NBA when Jonathan Kaminga. And I like Jonathan Kaminga, but when Jonathan Kaminga merits a massive inside story about meetings that took place and where they took place and what was said and Joe Lake up was there and what he say and what did Jonathan Kaminga say back and who was in the room and what color was the couch? What did they drink? Holy smokes. And I also, I was waiting for something like this because I've been dialed into this situation off record, talking to all the relevant parties enough to know that something was going to pop publicly around this time and training Camp's coming up. The warriors still haven't signed anybody. They got all these guys waiting. They don't want to renege on any deals they may or may not have made. And so they have to negotiate the salary with Kamingo very carefully. Because if it's something over like 23, 24 million, depending on all the other contracts for your Horfords and your Meltons and your Seth Currys and whoever else, Gary Payton, the second, the second apron is right there. And if you go back and listen to the first podcast I did after vacation, I just went solo for 40 minutes. Here's all the crap that happened or didn't happen while I was on vacation. And I made predictions for all the restricted free agents, the big four that were hanging out back then. We talked about whether Cam Thomas would take his QO or not. He did. I said three years 75 for Josh, Kitty got 400. I was pretty close. And for Kaminga, I focused the thing on Kaminga because he's the most interesting. He's the spiciest. I've called him in. I mean, the train may have left the station on this already, but I said he's maybe the most important trade asset in the entire league because the warriors so badly need him to turn into something that helps their team have a post Steph Curry, post Jimmy Butler, post Draymond Green, roadmap. And again, that it may be too late for that. It may be too far gone. And my prediction was, boy, doesn't it feel like, you know, the warriors have offered this one plus one with a team option in year two. And by the way, you got to waive your de facto no trade clause. And Kamingo rightfully said, well, that sucks. I'm not going to do that. And maybe he wanted something big. And I said, doesn't it feel like they just meet in the middle? Just like two years, 45 million. I don't know what I said. I think I said a higher number than that because I forgot about the second April. Now it was rusty after vacation. All right, doesn't it just like two years, no options either way? No two plus one. No team option or player option on year two. Two years 48, two years 50. Wrap it up. Done. It works for everybody. He's tradable on a two year contract. More so than he'd be on a one year or one plus one. Because any team that sees him on a one year deal and wants him is good. What are they going to trade for him? He's a he's a flight risk right away, you know, yeah, you can try to do like the wink, wink thing, but it's not guaranteed. And the warriors, that's bad for them because they don't get the trade assets back that they're going to need to get. If and when they trade Jonathan, I think it's a win. I don't think it's a nip. I think it's a win. I, I mean, I would. That's not a hot take. I'd be shocked if Jonathan Kamingka is on the war. Two years, three years, six months. Pick your, pick your timetable. And I said in that pod I'm talking about from a month ago, whenever I said, boy, I could, you know, if you go two plus one, boy, then it gets dicey because they're going to argue over who gets to plus one, whether it's the warriors option or Kaminga's option. And sure enough, inside the warriors statement with Jonathan Kaminga, Anthony Slater and Sham Strania report, the warriors have upped their offer to three years. 75. So it squeezes under the second apron for this year, but it's a team option on the third year. And both sides right now, in what is becoming one of the more contentious free agent negotiations that I can remember at least, like non holdout yet division, are not budging on that option like Kaminga's. We're not taking it with a team option. Warriors, we're not giving you a player option. Whether it's year one or year two, you're not getting it. And so we're stuck in this sort of leverage duel. And the leverage duel for the warriors is, hey, Johnny Kaminga, we're offering you, let's ballpark, $22 million this year. Your qualifying offer, if you dare to take it, is 8 million. You're going to lose $13 million of guaranteed money. We don't think you're going to be able to make that up on your next deal. And they're probably right that he would not quite make all of that up because that's a lot of money to light on fire to get your unrestricted free agency guaranteed in next summer. He'd have to make a lot in years 2, 3, 4 going forward to make that up. And yeah, the cap environment is going to be friendlier next year and I think particularly friendly to a player like Kaminga because a lot of the teams with room will be younger, slash bad, slash rebuilding teams. And he fits the timeline more than he, more than, you know, necessarily for a win now team like the one he's on now, the one he's been drafted onto. Two timelines, baby. That's the worst leverage. Kaminga's leverage is like you want me to take the qualifying offer because it's 13 million dollar hit for me, it's a disaster for you because if I'm on a one year, eight million dollar deal, you're not going to get much for me in a trade. And then I'm walking and you know I'm walking and you can't afford to turn me the seventh pick in the draft. The golden chip you got from Minnesota and what disastrous trade for the Timberwolves turn me into nothing and two timelines becomes Brandon Pajimski and Trace Action Davis and Moses Moody. James Wiseman plays for the Pacers now. Like I've already said, I think the warriors are, I mean, screwed is too strong of a word because they have Steph Curry and Jeremy Butler and Draymond Green. At the very least they're going to be good and competitive and fun as all hell to watch. While that remains the case. I just think they're screwed in the sense that I think the window is closed on them winning a championship with this score. And I don't see the, what the roadmap back to that kind of prominence is. Maybe it's a free agent, maybe it's a trade out of nowhere. Who the hell knows if, if the, if Superstar X's situation ever goes haywire, you know, the warriors will try and get in on it. Do they have enough? I don't know. Both of those leverage plays are interesting. I would actually almost side on, lean toward Kaminga's leverage play more than the words because I do think it is a abject disaster if he takes the QO for the words. Maybe they'll posture that it's not. They'll posture that we'd rather do that than give you a one year $30 million balloon payment, which is mentioned as a, as a, as a sort of structure that's been pitched by one side or the other, I suspect by Kaminga's side in the Shams Slater story. Doesn't make sense for second apron reasons for the warriors to do that. So go ahead, take the qo. We'll still have your bird rights. That's what the words will say. We still have your bird rights. We can still offer you more years, more money than everyone else. Not all hope is lost. Yeah, okay, that seems like posturing to me. I still think there's also the sign and trade Possibilities that Kaminga's side has tried to generate, most notably with Phoenix, a pick and like Grayson Allen and Royce o' Neill and whatever. And the Kings, same thing. And dealing with the Kings, always a smart thing to do for any other team. Try to trade with the Kings. I just. The warriors don't want Malik Monk. They don't want him. That complicates life for the Kings. And they don't want what the Suns have to offer. And by the way, they shouldn't. Those offers aren't good enough. They're not. They don't even outweigh the chance that Kaminga comes back on a short term deal, blows up this season and the warriors want to keep him. And he wants to keep him in his relationship with Steve Kerr as a coach player. I think personal relationship is fine. Coach player, relationship was repaired. Everything's great. That possibility is remote as it seems I'd still rather have that than the poo poo platter the Sons and the Kings are offering me. So this stalemate will continue. I, I'm gonna stick with my prediction. I just think it makes too much sense. Two years, 48, wrap it up. Done. You get a lot of money, we get a second year, nobody has an option. You're pretty tradable. No one's super happy, no one's super upset. The Kaminga side can say the ship has sailed on that. All they want. I mean, that's something you say now. I still think that makes the most sense. If that, if that is really off the table and this situation is that far gone, then everyone is going to have to look back. And I mean everyone. I mean Jonathan Kaminga, I mean his agent, Aaron Turner, I mean Steve Kerr, I mean Joe Lakob, I mean Bob Myers, I mean Mike Dunleavy Jr. Everybody is going to have to look back and say, how did this happen? Where could we have corrected this? And no one is going to be blameless. They're all going to blame the other side. And no one is going to be blameless. Jonathan Kamingo walked into a very tricky situation for a rookie. A score. First score, always go to the rim like gangbusters. Score, veteran team win. Now team finesse, team that, yeah, they need somebody like him, a powerhouse, a leaper. Go get us baskets at the rim, get us free throws, create buckets out of nothing as a one on one score. But you've also got to do that within the not confines, but within the beautiful game system that we play. And I think John, the gaming sometimes bristled against that and went his own way and took some regrettable shots. I also think he made sort of an underrated effort to fit in some of that. If you like, watch them play. He tried to learn the pin in screens for Steph Curry. He tried to learn to get it hand, pitch it, hand it off, pitch it back, screen here, Pass to Draymond. Get the offense moving that way. Pass to Steph. Go screen for him. He tried to learn all that stuff. He wasn't playing selfishly. He was trying his best. And sometimes it looked great and sometimes it didn't. I also think, like part of, part and parcel of being a rookie drafted onto a team that good and with those stakes is I just think the tolerance for mistakes by the coaching staff was really, really low for him as a young player on that team. And I honestly think too low. I think there should have been more freedom for him to play through mistakes, for him to play through bad shots, like, and play through all the stuff that young players who are trying to prove themselves, trying to make their money, all that stuff. I even remember as he was kind of, you know, carrying the offense for parts of the Timberwolves series last year after Steph got hurt, there was a. There was a. If I'm remembering it right, it's in Minnesota. Kaminga is late to close out on Nasrid. He's late, there's no question about it. And once he's late, it's not an urgent closeout, it's a lazy closeout. And on the bench, you can see the coaches, including Steve Kerr, just visibly like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. And it just made me think, yeah, John, the kabing is in the wrong. If there's one thing that he could have done or that the coaches could have coaxed him to do that would have papered over all this. It would have been be a balls to the wall defensive player all the time. Every second you're on the floor, we know that's not the kind of player you envision yourself being. Defense first, defense always switch everything, guard every position. But that's what we need you to do. Sometimes he'd be going pretty hard on defense, and sometimes he'd be closing out late and lazily on Nasrid. Like, I like other warriors, make mistakes of both commission and omission that didn't necessarily get that kind of reaction from the coaching staff. And by then it's obviously, you know, year four of the Jonathan Kaminga experiment, there's all sorts of built in. Like, sometimes you've been a starter, then you come off the bench. And that ankle injury last year when he was fine, when he was moved into the starting lineup and was playing really well, and then he got hurt. Then they get Jimmy Butler. Then the spacing doesn't make so much sense anymore with Jimmy and Draymond and Kaminga, and Kaminga goes back off the bench. That ankle injury will always be a big what if? Because it felt like, okay, we're finally kind of figuring it out. But it just. It's. It's been a tough. There's a lot of baggage, and it's hard for me to imagine that this gets repaired in any lasting way for the Warriors. I think everybody needs a fresh start, but I do think, like, cooler heads should prevail. And there's an easy middle ground here that both sides just has to grab and make the best of it. And by the way, if it is a two year, $48 million deal and maybe I'm just pie in the sky Pollyanna, like, there's no shot, the feelings are too bad, the bridges are burned, whatever that still gives you the opportunity. Like, the warriors still need Jonathan Kaminga. They still need his skill set. They need some oomph, they need some bounce. And there's going to be games where Draymond Green sits out. There's going to be like, Steph could hurt. Jimmy Butler is going to get hurt in sit out games. Like, they're going to need a guy who can put his head down and get you 20 points. It's not always going to look great. It's not always going to conform to how the warriors want to play. There is still a mutual need here. I don't know, we'll see what happens, but I'm sticking with my prediction. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled podcasting. Okay. You nominated the Blazers.
