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The Zach Lowe Show
The Thunder Win in Seven: Their Place in History and a Look at Their Future. Plus, Haliburton’s Injury, Durant’s Trade, and More With Rob Mahoney.
01:46:25
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- [00:00]
Zach Lowe
This episode is brought to you by Factor. Make this your best season yet with nutritious 2 minute meals from Factor. Eating well has never been this easy. Just heat up and enjoy, giving you more time to do what you want. Get outside instead of prepping and cooking indoors. Factor meals arrive fresh and ready to eat. Perfect for any active lifestyle. Get started@factormeals.com low L O W E50OFF and use the code low50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. All right, welcome in to the Zach Lowe Show. Coming up, we got a whole bunch of stuff to get to with the one and only Rob Mahoney. One of my favorite guests. We got the Oklahoma City Thunder champions. What comes next for them? It's a little scary for the rest of the league, to be honest with you. Tyrese Halliburton suffers a basketball tragedy on the biggest stage. What it means for the Pacers, how to digest what happened last night. It was just a very strange experience watching a game that you were that amped up for and that looked like it was like we're gearing up for an epic right here with Tyrese going crazy and then that turn of events and just sort of how to digest it. And what happens to the east from here? Big off season storylines Rob and I are going to talk about. And one of those is the sort of void in the east that got even deeper. Kevin Durant got traded. We're going to dive deep into that. Is it a good move for Houston and how sad of a move it is for Phoenix. Did Miami miss the boat? Did anyone else miss the boat? Did Minnesota miss the boat? Can Houston win the championship next year? Because that's the bar when you trade for a 37 year old superstar. We're going to get into all of that on the Zach Lowe show coming up now with Rob Mahoney. Hope you enjoy it. You're listening to the Zach Lowe show presented by FanDuel. The NBA Finals might be over, but you can still get in on the action with America's number one sportsbook. It's never too early to look ahead to next season with tons of futures and player specials all season season long. If you want to keep betting on all the other excitement this summer, FanDuel has it all, from MLB to soccer, golf to WNBA. Download the FanDuel app today to make every moment more the ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details must be 21 or over in President select states or 18 and over in President DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem. Call 1-800- GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com welcome to the Zach Lowe Show. It's Monday morning. The Oklahoma City Thunder have capped maybe the greatest rebuild in the history of professional sports with the 2025 NBA title. They are the most well set up, well positioned team to win now, which they just did, and win in the future, which they will keep trying to do maybe in the entire history of professional sports, at least in leagues where like there's a cap on how much you can spend. Sam Presti has done a masterful job transitioning from the Big three era of Harden, Russ Durant to Durant leaving to Russ and Paul George and that thing breaking up. Two down years, Rob Mahoney. That's all they had. Two down years that netted Josh Giddy after a crushing lottery disappointment where they could have had two top five picks and ended up with none. And Josh Giddy, of course, nets the final piece of the puzzle. Alex Caruso. And then another down year where they get lottery luck the other way and get Shed holmgren who blocked 17,000 shots last night in game seven of the finals. And of course Jdub, who is neck and neck for Finals mvp or like maybe not quite neck and neck. And if there's any team in the in the NBA who should understand the fragility of all this, the difficulty of winning just one NBA title, the resistance you have to have to thinking about, well, we could win three and four years or four and five years. It's the team that made the 2012 finals with James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook at about the same age as J Dub and Kayson Wallace and Chad Holmgren and this army of young guys that are coming up and then did not make it back again for 13 years and saw that team piece by piece by piece, broken up by self inflicted trade, by free agency, by other trades, by atrophy, by whatever. And they got a reminder of the fragility of everything last night in the first quarter of game seven, a game that I assume Rob, you like me, were just I was the most hyped for this game of any game, at least since 2016. And Halliburton comes out like a house of fire. Three threes. Oklahoma City's defense, you know they're going to be up to the challenge. And that was the one unsolvable riddle of the NBA this season. This is one of the greatest defensive teams of all time, if not the greatest defensive team of the modern era. And, you know, they're going to be up for it. The Pacers look up for. You know, the Pacers aren't going to be phased by the moment, by the crowd, by the stakes. They just play their game. They're coming out loose, fancy free, launching threes, running, doing all their, like, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. Can you keep up with the ball? You can. And then Tyrese Halliburton goes down again. A reminder of the fragility of all of this, and you can't count on anything. And the reason why, you know, this is a basketball tragedy that happened last night was a. I, I think everybody. Like, when that happened, my first thought was, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm watching this. And actually, Rob, people made the Durant comparison, and we're going to talk about the link between the calf and the Achilles and coming back for the finals with a calf injury or playing with a calf injury and having this happen in my gut, like, in my basketball soul. The moment that immediately struck me like lightning was actually the Klay Thompson injury in game six of that same series. And even that, just because it was like, I can't believe, like, we have to keep. Can we just end the finals? Like, I can't believe we have to keep playing. And even that is not a perfect comparison because, you know, Durant was out for, like, a month before he came back and re injured the calf. Tyrese has been playing the whole time. Klay Thompson was towards the end of game six of the final. So not necessarily, like, everything's at stake for both teams. Game this was at the beginning of game seven. It was absolutely surreal. And I just. It just absolutely sucks for the Pacers, for Halliburton. And I think even, like, look at. Again, we were gearing up for what looked like an epic, epic showdown. And it just. It does feel like, you know, unfair to everyone, that we were robbed of that. And I think even the Thunder would have preferred to win, obviously, against the very best of the Indiana Pacers. And it doesn't take away from the Thunder. There is no asterisk. There's never an asterisk. The Pacers themselves have benefited from injury luck in each of the last two years. Luck is probably the wrong word, but it's just part of it. Just like it was Kyrie and Kevin Love getting injured in 2015. And we can go on and on and on. It's every year. It's part of It. There is no asterisk. This is a 68 win dominant team who, even with Halliburton in the game, the unsolvable riddle of the NBA season was their defense. And yet it's a game that 12 hours later, it's still hard to talk about what happened in terms of just putting all of it in perspective. What is this legacy of this team, that team? I don't know. What are you thinking this morning, Mr. Bohoney?
- [07:40]
Rob Mahoney
I'm thinking mostly that we remember NBA champions and we remember title runs by how they feel. And this one is always going to feel like that. It's always going to feel like we as a basketball community were robbed of something, that we were deprived of this opportunity to see both of these teams at their absolute best going back and forth. That we were deprived of the chance to see Tyrese Halliburton, after the hot start he had go on to see what he could make of a game like this, what he could make of a defense like Oklahoma City's, which, you're right, has been largely unsolvable throughout these playoffs and the season has been tremendous. Is worth every accolade, every bit of any compliment you could pay the Thunder. They are more than deserving of on defense. I just wish we could have seen it. I w. I wish we could have seen that whole process unfold because it's going to change the way people talk about this game and this run. Not. Not to put the asterisk on it that you alluded to, but just in terms of the competitive equity, in terms of the experience of watching it, in terms of what it means to go through this sort of process. Like, it doesn't take trophy away from the Thunder, nor should it. This is an amazing season. They are the best team in basketball, without a doubt. But I would have loved to see that play out in a more organic way and to see it happen to Tyrese Halliburton and the Pacers in particular after the run that they've had. I'm almost still in disbelief that it happened in such a devastating way.
- [09:01]
Zach Lowe
I don't really remember anything that happened between the injury and halftime other than the Pacers were somehow winning and by one point. And obviously, everybody was shell shocked. It's. It's. The Thunder were shell shocked. It's. It's unavoidable. And you just have to keep playing in game seven, where you're also playing for your entire season, for the entire thing. It's an absolutely bizarre situation. And look, Tyrese Haliburton, no One should get injured like this. It's. This is. It's three now in the playoffs between Damian Lillard coming off a calf injury, different leg for Damian Lillard. Jason Tatum, no known calf injury that I can remember, anyway. And this. And it just. It sucks. It sucks. And I think the best way I could put it is when that injury happened, even with the Pacers up one at halftime, my general governing thought was, the Thunder don't even need to play a good offensive game to win now. They just need to play their normal defense in Indiana without their orchestrator, without the guy who is their system. And it was very clear, by the way, how about we just retire the Tyrese Haliburton? Is he a superstar? Is he overrated? Is he any of that talk forever? Because you took him out of that game and everything about the Pacers identity was gone. It was like, okay, TJ McConnell is just going to have to dribble like a thousand times to get a shot off. Pascal Siakam has no cracks, no alleys, no gaps to exploit, because the guy who opens them all is not here. The guy who's a threat to pull up from three from 30ft, who merits a certain kind of a defensive attention, who. Who plays the most unselfish style of basketball that there is in the NBA and empowers everybody around him to make quick decisions, he's gone. And their identity was gone, their pace was gone. Everything was going with it. So Tyrese Haliburton is a superstar. He is not overrated. He was the. I don't think he was quite like the superstar of the playoffs. I think Shay gets that honor for the 30 points and all that. Certainly Tyrese Haliburton was, I think, the defining player of the playoffs. I think the Pacers were the defining team of the playoffs. Not the season. The Thunder are the defining team of the season, but of the playoffs. In terms of what happened to them, was sports magic. Like, something happened to their team. Even. Even if you just isolate, like January 1st, when they started playing really well till the end of the regular season, the numbers said, this is a really good team, really good team. Maybe, you know, a little short of championship contender, a little short of running rough shot over the entire Eastern Conference, that's for sure. Good team. Very good team. Something happened in the playoffs where an alchemy, a chemistry, a toughness, an unselfishness all coalesced into like, oh, yeah, they're just as good as the Oklahoma City Thunder, at least in this setting. They're just as Good as the Cleveland Cavaliers, the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics. Like, this was a real thing. And I said last night with Bill, I was talking to a GM of another Eastern Conference team yesterday about other things, and I just asked him, like, what do you take away, win or lose, win or lose, for the, from the Pacers? Like, what's your takeaway? So much just watching this. What are you guys talking about in the war room when you talk about the Pacers? And he said, hope. Like, hope that, you know, you can do this in different ways. If you find the right players with the right attitudes and the right skill sets that all mesh together, you can create a team that is more than Superstar one plus Superstar two plus Star three equals champion. And I just think it was a really special thing that happened. And you know, I, I, I wanted the Thunder to have to play a complete game to win game seven. And the reality is they just had to play okay on offense in their usual defense, and they rolled to game seven. And by the way, that might have been enough anyway. Cause their defense is this freaking good.
- [12:58]
Rob Mahoney
Totally. I, I think that was always in the cards. You know, we talked a lot about game Sevens, especially the finals are always hyper competitive, always pretty ugly. I think there were hints of that to start. But all honestly, both teams seemed really geared up and really locked in to begin this game. I, I would have loved to see that evolution too. Zach. We didn't get it. And I think what I'm missing too, again, not to take anything away from the Thunder, we need to fully celebrate everything that OKC accomplished and everything, as you mentioned up top, that they are kind of positioned to continue to accomplish. But when I think about the enduring images of this game, there's no blocked by James moment. I mean, that might be a high standard for any Game seven to meet, but the enduring images to me are Tyrese Halliburton on the floor in tears. It's him being helped off the floor with a towel over his head. It's him in the tunnel on crutches waiting for his teammates. That's not where I wanted to come out of this game. I'm sure it's not how the Thunder wanted to come out of this game. And for, for that kind of team of destiny to end in this way is clearly unfortunate. Like, it's almost impossible to talk about the Pacers without sounding like a coach in Hoosiers, without sounding like Hokey in a certain respect. Like there is a degree of collectivism in what they've accomplished. That, yes, is Inspirational for other teams and other front offices that you can look to as there is proof that this can work. There's also proof here, I think, that Tyrese Halliburton is just one of the NBA's great winners. And this proof has been building for a while now. And I wonder one of. One of the things to come out of this run. I would. I was hoping that by the end of these finals, we could be talking about the Pacers as another team of the future, as a team that's going to be positioned very well for the east next year. That's going to change a lot with him probably out for the majority, if not all, of next season, depending on what the specifics of that injury turn out to be. It certainly looks like an Achilles, but I hope if not that, at least people can start to look at last year's Pacers run in which, let's not forget, they just went straight to the conference finals through a bunch of other really good teams with a little less disbelief, with a little less discredit. Like, this is a guy who has been to the playoffs twice and now gone to the conference finals and then game seven of the finals. I don't know how you prove more in your first two playoff runs than that.
- [15:14]
Zach Lowe
Well, I mean, yes, it validates their last, their last year's run to the conference finals. Like, they've been. They've benefited from a little bit of injury help along the way, both as they all do. Yeah, Dame Giannis, the whole Knicks team falling apart last year, the Cavs this year. Guess what? They freaking waxed The Cavs this year. Waxed them. Wasn't even close. Let left the Cavs wondering about their DNA as a potential championship. Like, do we just not have it? You know who has it? The Pacers have it. I thought Oklahoma City was going to win last night in a close game. My Official prediction was 110, 106. Oklahoma City. You know what that means? I think the Pacers could have won the championship last night. I think it was absolutely on the table for them. I think it was like a 60, 40 OKC game in my mind. I know the line ended up at minus seven or six and a half or something. You know, whatever. And Tyrese Haliburton is. There's something. Again, I'll say this again. I was hanging out with an Eastern Conference player at an event last week for like several hours. We were together whose team played the Pacers in the playoffs. And he was like aghast at how the. The television media had largely talked about Tyrese Halliburton and is he a superstar? Is he not? His first thought was like, why does it even matter? Because the team is winning. And his second thought was like, I played against these guys in the most intense moments. They suck to play against. It's so hard, hard to play against them because of him and how the ball moves and how bodies move and how people move because they know he's going to get them the ball and get the machine moving in a. In a speed that is unmatched around the NBA. And it's hard to conceptualize because the best players, the A superstars, look like Shay, Gil Alexander, their bucket. Give me the ball. I will carry us to the finish line. He can play like that. He does. He does now and then. You know, he had the one huge game against the Knicks. He had a huge game in this series where, you know, and the Pacers, like, when he shoots more, there's like a. His high scoring and highest assist. Games tend to go together. It's just. He's a different kind of player. They're a different kind of team, and they didn't win the championship. And, yeah, the east is in disarray. Defense wins championships, I guess. Rob, that's good. Dallas Mavericks.
- [17:41]
Rob Mahoney
I'm glad they have some good news. You know, it's going to be a tough week for them in Cooper Flagland. But I think one thing, as far as that defense goes and as far as the Pacers go, the unifying theme of these Finals, to me, how these teams got here, there's a bunch of things they have in common. There's a bunch of ways in which these were the two most connected teams in basketball this year. I think that played a huge part of it. I think what you're mentioning in terms of the effect of what it feels like to play against the Pacers is not so dissimilar to what it feels like to play against the Thunder, in the sense that these are teams that strip you down to your identity and your core beliefs and your understanding of what it is you think you're running and what it is you think you're doing. Like, the Pacers offense will have you going to your assistant coach, being like, are you sure this is our coverage for this? Like, are you sure this is how we're supposed to be doing this? And the Thunder very similarly will strip down everything you think about the primary creators on your team, about the sets that you usually run, about all the actions that kind of got you to whatever point you're playing the Thunder like these are two teams that force existential crises and it was so fitting that they ended up here in the end. I just hate that now the Pacers have a sort of different crisis to consider as a result of their injury because I love the effect that they have on other teams. I love watching people try to figure out the Pacers and are. You know, we talk about the magic of it. We've talked about their crunch time performance. There's something of that that's inexplicable and there's something of it that's very flesh and blood tangible, that's very psychological in terms of the effect that they have on their opponents.
- [19:12]
Zach Lowe
You know, before we transitioned to the Thunder and their place and did what they did this season, which was 68 wins and then 16 more.
- [19:21]
Rob Mahoney
Tremendous.
- [19:23]
Zach Lowe
As you're talking about their before the series I picked the Thunder in five. So add me to the club who underestimated the Pacers and what the hell was going on with them. Same and the way I framed it was the the Pacers win with frenzy and depth, speed and depth and just pace, pace, pace and they're coming up against the only team in the league who can match them in youth, speed, depth and frenzy. And I think what I underestimated in that analogy was these are two very different kinds of frenzies. The Thunder is just this defensive menace that takes the ball from you just take the. Just like we're in your face, we're going to take the thank you for playing against us. We're taking the ball and going the other way. There's no defense like this that forces turnovers at this rate. And they forced even more in the playoffs than they did in the regular season. The Pacers frenzy is a little more subtle than that. It's. It's a frenzy of movement and cuts and passes. It. It's just sort of. It's like basketball art that is harder to keep up with and at the center of that and I think it cannot be talked about enough and it's part of what makes Halliburton both unusual and hard to talk about is one of the things that he's very best at is not doing something. And the not doing something is turning the ball over. And it's hard to sort of conceptualize the value of the absence of something versus the presence of something. And not only that, the rarity of a team that passes it this much, plays this fast, moves this much and plays so unselfishly being an ultra low Turnover team is almost unicornish. Most of the lowest turnover teams in the NBA are like isolation, boring, slow offenses because they don't pass as much, they don't risk as much, they don't turn the ball over. Even the 7 seconds or less Suns were a pretty high turnover team and it was baked in to. In their view, like, this is the sort of consequence for how we play and we'll take the benefit of it over this and this consequence all in one. The Pacers have the best of both worlds, and that's because of Halliburton. It's. It's hard. Part of what makes them talk about. Hard to talk about, and it's part of what they lost without him in game seven is all of a sudden the Thunder just were like, take the ball, take the ball. And also the Thunder, we're already turning Halliburton over much more than usual in this series because their defense is that good. Man, I'm so bummed about last night. I was so pumped and it just. It just took the whole air out of the game. I know Thunder fans don't want to hear that and they should celebrate and, you know, the buses can run with the. With the paint on them. That. That, you know, was the big storyline before the game. And they deserve it. They're champions. And we can both appreciate them and say that there is no asterisk and also just be gutted by. Like any human would be gutted for what we did not get last night, especially.
- [22:12]
Rob Mahoney
I think the point you made up top is very important about the Thunder. Players themselves and members of the organization and coaches would not have wanted to win on these terms. As opposed to Tyrese Halliburton being healthy, like, that's what any great competitor would want is the chance to have that moment and have that sort of duel. It didn't go down that way. That's okay. Oklahoma City Thunder, the champagne will taste just as sweet. Everything about the celebration will still be terrific. I think it is telling, though, that, as you said, like, it's very difficult to measure in a case like the Pacers. And for a player like Halliburton, measuring the absence of things and the absence of turnovers is always complicated. But it felt telling to me in the series that every time we were talking about what's going wrong with the Thunder, like, why. Why did they have a lull in this corner? Why did they lag during this stretch? Why is their offense underwhelming at this moment in time? It was basically always because they didn't turn the ball over as much or they, sorry, they didn't force as many turnovers during that period of time when their defense is that it lifts everything that's happening in Oklahoma City. It carries that entire entire roster, that entire organization. It is a. It is a team that is guided by their ability to create that kind of havoc. As I look back on this series, I'm. I'm going to think about that and the, the kind of slow stranglehold that the Thunder defense was able to put around at least some elements of the Pacers offense to tamp it down to the point that this bec a defense first series. I'm also not to twist the knife. Going to think a lot about game four and a game that the Pacers, they were right there and we were talking about in the moment how that felt like an opportunity loss. We just didn't understand then the full extent of what that moment may have cost them. But could have been a very different series if a couple of different possessions go differently for the Pacers there.
- [23:59]
Zach Lowe
You know, so much has happened since that game and this, the schedule allows for so many breaks. And then the Halliburton thing happens that, you know, what did they. They won. That ended up winning that game by seven. The Thunder. So they pull away a little bit at the end. I'd like to go back and rewatch the end of the game because obviously that was the game when Shea had 15 points in the last five minutes of the game.
- [24:21]
Rob Mahoney
An incredible finals close.
- [24:23]
Zach Lowe
We should say, like, oh, he won Finals MVP in that. In that fourth quarter.
- [24:27]
Rob Mahoney
That was his moment.
- [24:29]
Zach Lowe
So that's what, two weeks ago now. And finals time is just like. It's like being in a time warp and one catastrophic injury ago. And I almost forgot until you brought it up that I went into that game thinking there's like a 75% chance this is the entire championship going on the line in this game that if Oklahoma City wins this game and it's two, two. I could see. I remember I was talking to people like, I bet the home teams just win out from then and it's OKC in seven, maybe OKC in six, whatever. And the home teams won out and it just happened in a completely unexpected, unexpected way. I just again, I want to repeat about the Pacers and why the hope thing resonates with teams around the league. Tyrese Halburn's an all star and an all NBA player. Pascal Siakam is a three time all star. I think, um, he's a sometime all NBA player, right? Like he's not a no brainer lock. Like they got a big two in a traditional kind of sense. I and I love spicy P. I had him on my podcast six years ago. Like the guy's awesome. And I thought defensively last night, every ounce of sweat and energy he had, he and everybody else. But he was spectacular defensively for the Pacers last night. And then after that, it's a second round pick barely in Andrew Nemhardt, first pick of the second round, but a second round pick nonetheless. It's Aaron Neesmith, a first round pick who busted out in Boston and a center who has been in trade rumors since he got into the league basically. And then the bench is like, you know, here comes T.J. mcConnell basically not in the end, barely in the NBA. I had to scratch and claw for his place in the NBA. Ben Shepard, late first round pick. Obi Toppins, scrap heap, lottery pick, toss it out in New York. It's just. But they all fit. Other than Matheran who showed up and played his ass off last night, they all fit a certain ethos and style and it just added up to something more. But anyway, any parting thoughts on that? And then I'm going to talk about the Thunder a little bit.
- [26:30]
Rob Mahoney
I think just in terms of that construction, I want to talk about the Thunder as far as what we can take away from the team building there. But I think you're right that there is something to identify with the Pacers. I just would put a word of caution out there to any, to fans of other teams, to even people working for other teams. Easier said than done to become the next Indiana Pacers. Easier said than done to identify not just one of Nemhard and Nismith and I mean even Matheran relative to his lottery standing McConnell top. And like all of those guys, finding the treasure in everyone else's scrap heap is very, very challenging. And the work that Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan have done to kind of put this team together in a way that makes coherent sense. First of all, the reason it makes coherent sense is because of Tyrese Halliburton. And the reason it makes sense because of Tyrese Halliburton is because the Pacers identified in trading for him in the first place and targeting him in the first place, that this is the kind of player who can create that sort of unity in a roster. Not every star can do that. There are great one of them just got traded and Kevin Durant. And it's always kind of an open question as far as like is Kevin Durant, the sort of player whose skill set makes other players make sense. I think there's degrees to which that's true and degrees to which he's just a different kind of scorer and he kind of can exist in a silo in a way that Tyrese Halliburton never, ever would. And I want to give Halliburton a ton of credit for that. I think the Pacers deserve a lot of credit for understanding that this combo guard with a funky shot in Sacramento who, yeah, had great, like, advanced numbers and that a lot of scouts seem to like for, like, loose, intangible reasons was something more than that and was something that could be an anchor point for an entire roster and an entire organization. Like, in the exact way that Shay has been for the Thunder, to be fair, like a guy who can be the ethos of your team. Very, very hard thing to find. And then you have to find every single subsequent piece to make the roster work. Very, very difficult work, it turns out.
- [28:28]
Zach Lowe
But I do think both of these teams, obviously, you can't win without elite talent across the board. Like, duh. I do think both of these teams, though, speak at least somewhat to the power of, like, if you have something unusual about your team, lean into that.
- [28:52]
Rob Mahoney
Yes.
- [28:53]
Zach Lowe
If you have, make that your identity. Identity is the great amorphous word of the NBA. These teams each have an identity stemming from their core players. Unselfishness is a shared trait across the board. Both teams, the Thunder drafted just defense, defense, defense and feel across the board and just tenacity on defense. The Thunder or the Pacers, we talked about their identity and unselfishness, and now it springs from Halliburton. Sometimes it's a happy accident. You just get the guy you get and. Or something happens on the court that changes your team. But if I'm. If I'm a team that feels like a young, up and coming team, that feels like there's something a little unusual about me, like, I'm thinking of just randomly of the Pistons, like, just toughness, physicality. Just lean into whatever makes you different. Because both of these teams are different. Adaptable, but different in a way that makes them hard to play against.
- [29:47]
Rob Mahoney
Okay, the Thunder, this one thing about that, Zach. Like, this is. So I went to Indiana at the beginning of last season to do a story on Tyrese Halliburton and the Pacers. What you just described, to be honest, is a lot of, like, if. When I'm thinking about writing a story about any team, any player, specifically teams, though, it's what does your superstar allow your team to do that other teams can't? And that is the sort of guiding principle that led the Pacers to Obi Toppin. That is the sort of guiding principle that brought in Bruce Brown in the first place, who then became Pascal Siakam. It's the guiding principle that made Pascal Siakam a prime target for the Pacers. Right. This idea of if we are playing a 94 foot game where other teams are not, if we are playing a movement style where other teams are not, there are certain players that are more valuable to us and there are certain players that are less valuable to us. And I like, I think you really have to think about your stars in those terms about, like, what is not just like what is unique to this player that can be a little funky in the way that you mentioned, but, like, how does that reshape the market for the players that are actually good for us? And who does that suddenly make available? That wouldn't be to other teams.
- [30:52]
Zach Lowe
I think it's also part of what drew them to Siakam, who was an obvious trade target. Toronto is dangling him. Sacramento looked at him, Atlanta looked at him. They got, I think one of the. Both those teams got down the line at some point with him. And his speed and versatility was an obvious fit for the Pacers and for Tyrese Halliburn. And yet, you know, you, you talk to people who are around Pascal and around the team. When he got there, I, he, he was, I think, a little bit surprised by how demanding the pace actually was and how conditioned he had to be both mentally and physically to play at the pace they wanted. And that there's a. In year two, he looks more comfortable. And we go on and on and toppin. Same thing. Like, as soon as they got him, it was like, oh, so he's just gonna sprint up and down the court and dunk the ball all the time. Like, that's awesome. And he's made himself into at least a passable defensive player. Circumstances. And by the way, one thing about the Thunder and defensive identity and all this, you know, their best player in their MVP just averaged 1.9 steals and 1.6 blocks in the freaking NBA Finals. Like, what is he, Milajuan over here? Like, like that stuff really, really matters. When you see your best guy and even when he doesn't block shots, Shay's at the rim a lot. Hands up, mucking things up. When you're Kayson Wallace and you see that, when you're Aaron Wiggins and you See that? It's like I have no. Like that guy's doing that. I'm amping it up even more. Even more. One point. Like 1.9 steals at 1.6 blocks from.
- [32:30]
Rob Mahoney
That's crazy.
- [32:31]
Zach Lowe
What's happening. Like, that's Dwyane Wade. Akeem Olajuwon. Okay, this episode is brought to you by HubSpot. In the playoffs, extra possessions are everything. Same goes for growing a business. And HubSpot's customer platform gives you more chances to win. Breeze. Their built in AI automatically takes care of marketing, sales and service tasks so you can game plan for growth. It's easy, efficient, and most importantly, it's effective. Customers are cutting sales cycles in half and getting hours back each week. That's like turning those contested jumpers into clean looks at the rim. Visit HubSpot.comai to learn more. The Thunder. Boy, oh boy. You know, here's this. We all know that the Thunder are scarily set up for the rest of the league. And we also all know that this is very fragile and that one injury, one bad thing, can undo everything. And if there's any franchise who know this is a franchise that traded James Harden after making the NBA finals, I don't think they will make any mistake like that ever again with their core players. They do have interesting decisions to make down the line to kind of trim the roster, trim the spending, whatever, around the big three. But to me, when I think about this team going forward, they're obviously very young and it's been a talking point for a year plus now that like, well, J Dub is still getting better. Like, does he have another level offensively to get to? And by the way, everyone kind of pooh poohed the Pippin talk. Like, okay, easy, easy. Premature on the pip. Like, Pippen's a six time champion. One of my favorite players of all time. I've told this story before. I, like, didn't talk to one of my best friends from college for two weeks because we got into an argument about Scottie Pippen. He thought Scottie Pippen was overrated. And I was like, I can. I don't even know if I could be friends with you if you think Scottie Pippen's overrated. What's up, Kevin? I like, I think Jalen. I think J Dub should become like a better offensive player than Scottie Pippen. Like as great of a playmaker as Pippen was. Like, he should. He should be a better scorer and a better shooter than Scotty Pippen was. I don't think that's outrageous. And everyone's like, you know, Chet's just scratching the surface of what he can do offensively. The three point shot comes and goes and is tended to go frankly in the playoffs. Both of those guys will get better. To me, the more interesting question is, and it goes back to they didn't even have to play a good offensive game last night to win game seven is as both of those guys get better as case and Wallace gets better as topic becomes whatever he becomes.
- [34:57]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah, what if he's good? What if Nikola Top just looks like a good meaningful rotation player next season?
- [35:04]
Zach Lowe
I think they think he's going to be in there. You talk to people in the draft, he would have been picked higher had he been healthier. And of course he falls to the freaking Thunder. But the more interesting evolution to me is as those guys all get better, what does that mean for the broader ecosystem of their offense? Because I think we saw in this series an Indiana team who's a good defensive team but not a great one, kind of strangle their offense a little bit and bring it like they, they ended with 110.5, excuse me, points per 100 possessions in the finals. The Thunder, that would have ranked like almost last or like 25th or something in the regular season. It was a little predictable, a little dribbly. Not a lot of passing, not a lot of threes, not a lot of variety other than some out of time out plays. And that's what reminds you of like this is still a young team that is all growing together and learning the subtleties of all that. And to me that's the off season project that I'm already digging into if I'm their coaching staff, if I'm their front office, is we don't want to become the Beautiful Game warriors like no one's asking you to be that we don't want to become the Pacers and whatever they do. But there is a broader sort of systemic evolution that can happen here that can make them even scarier to deal with without sacrificing any of the things that just won them the championship.
- [36:20]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah, if anything it would tap into those things. Right as you're mentioning, the depth and the versatility of talent is what made this championship possible. And further exploring it is what's going to make like sustaining that sort of effort possible. I thought it was, it was fascinating to watch them over the course of the series. You're right that in some ways the Pacers had them sort of under wraps or at least contained in terms of the most explosive elements of their offense. They also brought some things out of the Thunder in terms of Shay and J Dub screening for each other. So I'm talking about, and I thought we talked about this on group chat a little bit coming out of last night's game. But the number of Pacers esque like ghost screens that J Dub was running at Shea, not something you saw a ton of in the regular season from the Thunder, not something that's been like a staple of their offense. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, this is a.
- [37:06]
Zach Lowe
Real weapon for them and why can't that happen 15 times a game if the matchup dictated? And frankly like why can't J Dub and and Shay become better back to the basket players when that actually results in a little guy on them? Why can't. You know, I've talked before about how a lot of the out of time outplays they would run would leverage Shea as a screener off the ball to get him favorable matchups to see if the defense would switch or if they didn't switch, if someone would come open on a cut to get shade the ball at the nail. Like why can't that become more a part of your offense in the run of play and not just out of timeouts? I think all of that is on the table for them and it lifts their ceiling even higher than it is right now.
- [37:50]
Rob Mahoney
And I think Chad is a huge part of that too. Like he's going to have to get better at a couple of different things offensively. I think most importantly his ability as he has this in common with many bigs in the NBA today to leverage smalls when he does get the mismatches inside, when he does have those advantages, like he needs to find whatever his version of that shot or that go to move is, he has it sometimes he's long enough that he can just finish like over and around some people. But we'd love to see that sort of evolve into a more consistent weapon within their offense to turn, you know, even taking what Miles Turner did successfully over the course of this playoff run less so in the finals. But over the course of this playoff run in terms of the duck ins and things like that. Like I would love to see Chet have that kind of overall development. But his ability to put the ball on the floor could change their offense. His ability to attack mismatches could change their offense. Like there's so many different opportunity points for the Thunder that it's almost dizzying to think about Two years out from now, what this team is going to look like. Like this was not a super team construction in the way that like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and LeBron coming together was in which all those guys have to figure now figure out how to play together. But in a way, J Dub is like just becoming a star and learning what it means and what that entails and how that kind of opens things up for him and everyone else. Shay has kind of established himself and leveled up in so many ways that these guys are like still kind of getting used to what it means and what it, what it can be. I, I'm, I'm so curious to see how different their offense could look two years from now. If it's just going to be a night and day comparison or if it's going to be kind of an organic tick forward.
- [39:24]
Zach Lowe
A couple of things. Number one, it can't be emphasized enough like they are. As much as it feels like they're on schedule and the journey has gone step by step to this point they are like wildly ahead of schedule. They won 40 games two seasons ago. They were under 500 and lost in the play and now Chet missed that whole season. That was his rookie year. But to go from 40 to 57 in the second round of the playoffs, that's almost a bigger leap than the one they made this year. From 57 to 68. They are ahead of schedule. Like they should just not be this good this fast. Yeah, on Chet, I think you nailed it on a number of levels. Number one, if there's something it feels like they're just scratching the surface on, it's the spread pick and roll with Chet at the five and how best to leverage his skill set with the three ball. Kind of not being there yet but still being enough of a threat that defenses think about it to should he roll hard to the rim more often in space and what does that do for their offense? Two, how do we start to learn how to respond when the defense kind of stunts a third guy toward him behind the arc and, and trigger our passing sequences and baked into that is. And you know, I don't want to over overdo the sort of long term outlook for the Thunder and the finances. I think they're going to be, you know, largely willing to spend and largely fine on. On, you know, they're going to have apron issues. Someone actually made a good point to me today because once Shays big number hits in 27, 28 along with J Dub and Chet at what I'm going to presume is the max. And if one of them makes all NBA or wins defense player of the year in Chet's case, like it's a super duper max. And then, you know, case and Wallace will be here making $25 million before we know whatever it is. Someone made the point to me like if there's a team that just doesn't care about having their draft pick frozen in seven years, it'll be this team like because they have a million draft picks already. I thought that was an interesting point. But the one pivot point that I do think is interesting is Hartenstein because he makes 20 and a half million dollars next year and they have a team option for the Same number in 26, 27. And I think to be sustainable financially, luxury tax apron, third apron, fourth apron, iron lead apron. I think their plan, and I only concluding this based on the length and structure of his contract is by then or by 27, 28 when Shays big deal kicks in. We don't need to spend $30 million on a starting center. We have a starting center in Chet. Or he's gotten so good that if we do need to spend more on centers, we can find a $10 million guy to play 18 minutes off the bench. I think that's the long term vision, but I think you nailed it. I think he, he is the most interesting sort of pivot point in their offensive growth.
- [42:13]
Rob Mahoney
And I think there's ways in which you kind of need Chet to find his inner Hardenstein. Like it would be great if he could have the sort of short roll passing effect that Isaiah does within that offense. That's not really been Chet's game for the most part. It's not like how he reads the floor intuitively, but he has the ball skills and the general awareness where I think he might be able to get to some version of that place. As as far as like how you deal with the center rotation long term, I think one thing it's like kind of 10. Like it's a little tenuous to go through Western Conference life without the guy who can at least put a body in front of Nikola Jokic. That's always going to be in the back of your mind on some level. So long as the Nuggets are at all competitive. And we saw how far Denver pushed OKC in that series even with Hardenstein. I think guarding Jokic pretty well and fighting and doing everything he could, as did Alex Crusoe, to sort of slow that matchup overall with this team. You mentioned the finances of it. Obviously they have all the draft capital that they do. I'm coming out of this series wondering, clearly they're ahead of schedule. Are the Thunder a historical aberration in that way, one of the youngest champions we've seen at least in the last 50 years, basically, or are they a case study in how to do this now? Is this something that other teams need to be watching for and learning from in the sense that we've been talking for months and really the whole season about the importance of depth in this current NBA landscape? We just saw two teams go to the Finals basically playing nine or ten deep the entire way. I was waiting for the moment where somebody would get excised from the rotation by either the Thunder or the Pacers. It just never came. Like they really just never kicked anybody fully out of the rotation.
- [43:48]
Zach Lowe
Isaiah Joe is sad that you forgot about him.
- [43:50]
Rob Mahoney
He's. He kind of was hanging around though. He's kind of hanging around. He was still getting some scrap minutes here and there. Maybe not in second halves, but he was at least in the mix. One of the core reasons the Thunder were able to build that depth is because, as you said, they're not expensive yet. Chad and Jdub in particular, not expensive yet. OKC was bottom five in terms of total salary. The reason they aren't expensive yet is because they're young. And is there, is there a path here where this is a thing the teams need to be more mindful of? We live in an NBA now where, to be honest, rookies come in and not all of them are total defensive liabilities anymore. You'll see a couple first and second year players almost every year now. It's like, okay, they, they're either a difference maker defensively or at least passive enough defensively. That was always one of the knocks that would favor veteran teams. I'm just looking at the state of the game and the state of all these injuries and it feels like the days of Certainly the Lakers 2020 team being as old as it was are out the window. Even maybe the days of the Bucks plug and playing PJ Tucker might be out the window. The days of like you have your veteran team and you want to make your one or two veteran minimum signings to hold the rotation together. I don't know that that's like a meaningful thing anymore. Maybe this is it. Like again, not every team can do what the Thunder did. But I wonder if we're going to see more teams in the 25, 26 average age range versus the 28, 2930 average age range.
- [45:18]
Zach Lowe
Well, that definitely dovetails with the Durant trade discussions, which we're going to get to shortly. And how teams like the Miami Heat looked at a 37 year old Kevin Dur Durant risk, reward, benefit, particularly having watched these playoffs. We will get there. Durant trade talk is coming. You mentioned injuries and that jogged my memory. You know, look, I'm very cognizant that I don't know what I don't know, right? And I had flashbacks to the durant thing from 2019 last night and I texted a bunch and bunch, a bunch of medical personnel from around the league, like, can you draw a line like from the calf injury to the Achilles injury? Is that a line that exists? And I got even, I got forwarded a couple of studies, like academic studies, did not read them during game seven of the Finals. Read the abstracts at halftime. Okay. And you know, the consensus is kind of like it doesn't help. Like it doesn't help. Surely, you know, every injury is different. Every calf injury is different. Where is it? How severe is it? What are the connected, connected tissue injuries? Whatever there are there. There is I think some evidence that A, a prior injury of some kind on that leg and there was studies that looked at ankle injuries and knee injuries is pretty objectively like not helpful and probably increases the odds a little bit. But I was cautioned by a couple of guys in particular, like A, every injury is different. B, universal praise from all these people for the Pacers medical team. Universal, which did not happen in other cases where I've talked to some of these same people. And C, it's just hard to tell a guy not to play in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. But these Achilles injuries are happening more. They're happening to younger players, players in their primes, and they are happening after other injuries around that area. And you know, look, how could you fault Tyrese Halliburton for playing game 7? How can you fault the Pacers and everyone putting, putting all their brains together and deciding whatever the risk is, we think it's minimal. We think he can play. And now it vaporizes the whole year, next year, like it. Is it worth it? Is it. We're assuming his career, like Durant's career, like hopefully Tatum's career peak. Tyrese Halliburton ain't gone like 100%. Tyrese Halliburton is coming back the same guy, maybe better in some ways, who knows Is coming back. But a year is gone. A year is gone for the Pacers. A year is gone for Him. A year is gone for Tatum, a year's gone for the Celtics and you just. I don't know how to make these decisions but it's, it's impossible to ignore the preexisting injury and what that might have meant. And I don't know what to do with it though. I don't know how to talk about it.
- [48:10]
Rob Mahoney
I don't know how to talk about it. I don't know how to fix it. I do know that we just had a conversation about how taxing it is physically on an elite athlete like Pascal Siakam to come in and play Indiana Pacers offense. And I think there's versions of that all around the NBA. There's versions of that with OKC's defense. This is just like the reality of modern basketball. The dynamic movement that's being asked of these players for 82 games plus some cup games potentially plus a long playoff run, plus or minus whatever your off season responsibilities may be to various national teams or training or whatever. It's just too much like there's just too much that's being put I would say specifically on players lower bodies clearly in terms of the torque and the explosion and the reaction time and it's changed the game for the better. Like the NBA as a sport, as a visual product is incredibly fun to watch and is an open floor game in a way that it really never has been before. And and defense's ability to adapt to that, to close out with even more force to take away so many of those threes like that give and take has been so fun to watch over the last couple of seasons. It is also testing the limits of the human form of the greatest athletes on the planet. I don't think there's a way around that at this point. Whether the NBA cares may be too strong but cares to fix it I think is up to them. There's some pretty like simple solutions on the table in terms of how you reduce that sort of wear and tear. You reduce the games, that's a good start. You space out the games differently. That would help for sure. Right now that is not the number one concern for the league or else it would be changed. The number one concern is how do we keep the financial bottom line more or less intact as it is now. And I don't see that changing anytime soon in terms of the priority structure.
- [49:51]
Zach Lowe
You say the league. I think you also have to say the players union because yeah it's all, it's, it's when it's a money problem, it's everything. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. If there's one thing I'm going to make sure I pack for my summer vacation, it's my Apple Card. I can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including fuel for my car and booking places to stay. Plus, I don't have to worry about fees, including foreign transaction fees, which is perfect when I'm planning to travel abroad. To get an Apple Card for your summer travels, apply on the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2025. Terms and more@applecard.com Psst.
- [50:50]
Rob Mahoney
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- [51:20]
Zach Lowe
Okay, a couple other things about the finals. Number one topic, I think last year's Celtics as a standalone team, not where they're going for the next five years as a standalone single season team, is a very interesting and apt comp for this Thunder team. Because both teams, you look at their statistical profiles going into their chance to win the title and you're like, oh my God, is this like the fifth greatest team in the history of basketball? Then they suffer a blowout loss that sort of ticks them down a notch in the in the sort of final margin of their Finals win or whatever and still puts them into quite lofty territory. And yet both teams, it feels like. Yeah, I'm not sure this is like the 86 Celtics here or the 85 Lakers or the 91 Bulls or the 92 Bulls. But you know how you could really stamp it and stamp yourself is breaking the no repeat streak. The Celtics talked about it openly. Joe Missoula came on my podcast and said, it's all I've been thinking about since we won the title and they learned how difficult it is in terms of physically taxing, mentally taxing luck that you got have to have. The Thunder are best positioned to do it even better position than the Celtics. They will come in as Gigantic favorites to win the title next year. But I do think when you look at their statistical profiles, it is sort of eerie how. I mean, the Celtics lost fewer playoff games. The Thunder lost seven playoff games. They got taken the distance twice. But you want me to take you through some little basketball reference dives that I did.
- [52:50]
Rob Mahoney
I would love it.
- [52:51]
Zach Lowe
Okay, so the Thunder just became the 10th team since I cut it off at 70, 71 because the 71 bucks come up in all of these searches. And I wanted to cut it off at the merger. But you know what? Just give this 71 bucks a little. They become the 10th team in that span. So whatever many years that is to win 60 games in the regular season, win the championship and have a regular season, regular season scoring margin of 10 or more per game. 10 teams. The Thunder 68 wins is in the middle of the pack of those teams. It includes the 69 win Lakers team, a 69 win Bulls team, a 72 win Bulls team. Just a lot of Bulls teams. But they have the number one scoring margin in the regular season of all of those teams at plus 12.4 per game or something like that. Number one Thunder 68 wins, number one scoring margin of all these teams. Then I looked at another club. Okay, so that's 10 teams in the regular season club. Let's look at the playoff club. I looked at this club. Win the championship and outscore your opponents by at least eight and a half points a game. There were 11 teams in that group. The Thunder fell just short of that after their after losing game six, they finished plus 8.3 points a game. There are three teams in both groups. That's it. And the Thunder were about to be the fourth team in both groups. The three teams in both of my categories are the 71 Bucks pre merger, the 96 Bulls who won 72 games and then went 15 and three in the playoffs plus 10 and a half points per game. And the 2017 warriors, which I think is the greatest team I've ever seen. Durant year one, they win 67 games and go 16 and one in the playoffs. Only losing when they're up 3. 0 in the finals. And there are other teams who like barely miss one of the.1 of the. One of the Criteria. Like the 86 Celtics, 15 and 3 in the playoffs plus 10.5. 67 regular season wins plus 9.4. So they're just below my 10 points a game. 85 Lakers 15 and 4 in the playoffs, plus 10 regular season 62 wins plus 7 per game. So they barely miss let's see. 91. Bulls barely miss. They were 15 and 2 in the playoffs, plus 12. 61 wins in the regular season, plus 9. 87. Lakers 15 and 3 in the playoffs, plus 9.3 in the regular season, 65 wins. So, like, I think all those teams are just better. Better than this Thunder team. The Thunder team doesn't belong quite in that echelon.
- [55:33]
Rob Mahoney
That's fair. But.
- [55:34]
Zach Lowe
But statistically this is a great, great team and they belong somewhere in that next tier. Down with last year's Celtics, who kind of, you know, people, because of the injury luck they got in the playoffs. There was a lot of play. Are they really this good or they can't be that good? And I think the Thunder are probably not quite as good historically as that statistical profile. I wonder why we're getting these incredible statistical profiles at a time when there's so much parity in the league. But their dominance is just objectively awesome. Their playoff run was not quite as sort of emphatic as you would want it to be to cap them into this, into this group particularly. I mean, like, they fattened up on the Grizzlies in the first round, that they fattened up their scoring margin. But I mean, that's the territory they were looking at. And the numbers are the numbers. Like we can, we can downplay them and put them in historical context and drop them down to tier or whatever, but like, the numbers are like, holy shit. Yeah, this was an incredible team.
- [56:34]
Rob Mahoney
And the numbers are representative of, as you're kind of highlighting, like two almost very different things. Like, there's a reason those lists have so few commonalities in terms of regular season dominance and playoff dominance. And I think seeing that like the, the canyon between those things drift further and further apart in terms of what it means to be a dominant regular season team in 2025 and what it means to be a dominant playoff team. The Thunder have one of the great unifiers and I think maybe some of the skeptics of Thunder basketball in the regular season who thought, oh, you know, they play super hard. They play like their defense is. Is great for the regular season, but is it going to hold up under the scrutiny of the playoffs? Like, maybe. Are they too undersized? Do we believe in J Dub this and that, like all of that? Sure. The level of disruption that this team creates, plays in all time zones, plays in all arenas, plays against every opponent, even as we've seen some of the lowest turnover teams in the league, the highest functioning offenses out there so long as that is the case, I think they are uniquely positioned to make a run at that kind of list. They're going to be uniquely positioned to dominate regular seasons, maybe not always to a 68 win mark. That's an unreasonable standard for every team to be held to every season. But I would be very surprised if this is not a 60 win team.
- [57:47]
Zach Lowe
Again, like, why not? Other than, you know, now we've won one, do we do the thing or we like take our foot off the gas a little bit like the Celtics did this year. And like did that end up costing the Celtics a little bit of rhythm? A little bit? I don't know. But like you play defense like this and you have the talent they have. I mean, are they going to be favored in all 82 games next year? Like who's going to be? What is the scenario in which they're not favored? Like who, who are they not like at Houston, Are they going to be a one and a half point underdog at the Rockets? Like at who? At who? Now obviously some, some team will get off to like a 35 and 5 start and be a surprise team. But like at what team? Because they're going to be a home favorite in every game. So what away game are they actually going to be underdogs in next year?
- [58:35]
Rob Mahoney
It had to be on the road at Cleveland. Yeah, Cleveland has won eight straight and has a three day rest advantage, you know, versus Oklahoma City. Coming in on a back to back or something like that. But I'm very, I'm very curious to see how Mark Dagnault manages the rotation over the course of next season and who, you know, again how much he wants to push certain guys. It seemed pretty deliberate in terms of like slow playing Alex Caruso in particular over the course this year in a way that really, really paid off for them. And so how. I would assume more or less the same from Caruso, but Chet Holmgren played like 30 games so there's room for them to slow play next season.
- [59:11]
Zach Lowe
Hardenstein missed like 30 games.
- [59:13]
Rob Mahoney
He missed like 30. He missed like 30 games. They could be so much more conservative all throughout next regular season and somehow be as, as much or even more dominant just by result of having a bet like having better health outcomes.
- [59:25]
Zach Lowe
Also they have the 15th pick in the draft and another first round pick after that somewhere late in the first round. Couple other finals related slash future topics. I don't know if you got this homework assignment in time that I gave you, but Bill on his pod last night was saying something to the effect of this is going to be the rare postseason where I remember the runner up more than I remember the championship team. I think that's maybe true. I can remember both. My brain is still functioning at that level. But it did make me think. I want to go back and look at the last 30, 40 years since I've been an aware NBA fan. Who's my most memorable favorite, closest to my heart, Finals loser of the last X amount of years. Did you have time to do this or do you want to just hear my nominees?
- [60:08]
Rob Mahoney
I did. I also have some nominees. I think I would start with the 2009 Orlando Magic.
- [60:15]
Zach Lowe
Not even on my list. Not even on my list.
- [60:17]
Rob Mahoney
Come on Zach, you're just stabbing Richard Lewis in the back. We will not allow it. But to me, one of the signifiers for this, like the Pacers is who has such a distinct style of play, who feels like they have shifted something within the sport and captured something other teams hadn't yet. And that was kind of year two of that particular Magic experiment. But them sort of breaking through the barrier in that way. And I in particular at the time was, I mean just like writing for Dwight Howard as a dominant player. Why are we all talking about it like the level of force he was like exercising on both ends at that time was really phenomenal. And I'm always going to remember that.
- [60:55]
Zach Lowe
Team pre ballot me voted him MVP in 2011, the year Derek Rose 1. Give me another nominee.
- [61:04]
Rob Mahoney
The 2007 Cavs, which were a shitty finals team, they're pretty low.
- [61:08]
Zach Lowe
They're pretty low on my list, but they're on my list.
- [61:10]
Rob Mahoney
To me it is, it's, it's about one thing in particular. LeBron scoring 25 against the Pistons straight is a you remember where you were kind of snapshot NBA moment.
- [61:20]
Zach Lowe
On my parents couch like a true blogger.
- [61:25]
Rob Mahoney
Just out of the basement but still on the couch. Um, so I think living room couch, okay. That combined with proof of concept for one of the best to ever do it, plus just an absurd assemblage of guys to name. Sasha Pavlovich, Larry Hughes, Damon Jones, Booby Gibson, like that should not have been a finals team. And the sheer probability of the fact that they were captured by just how summarily the spurs wax them in that Finals to me captured something and as a team I will remember forever.
- [61:55]
Zach Lowe
I like this, give me another nominee. Because our lists don't overlap very much. I have a clear winner by the way. For me, for me personally, I'm a little older than you, so I have A clear winner. But you go, give me another nominee.
- [62:04]
Rob Mahoney
There's one that kind of dovetails. We've Talked about the 2012 Thunder as Again, what felt like a very formative moment that proved to be quite fragile in terms of the way teams are assembled. Like, it is crazy to think that those things are four months apart in terms of going to the finals and trading James Harden. So it has turned into like a wistful photo of a team of the three of them together. Or the four, if you want to include Serge Ibaka in there, which you should.
- [62:27]
Zach Lowe
Yeah.
- [62:28]
Rob Mahoney
By extension, I wonder if we will have the same relationship with the 2024 Dallas Mavericks and Luka Doncic in a Mavericks jersey in the sense of the team that was like kind of just breaking through that particular barrier that looked like it was going to be positioned to be competitive for an incredibly long time as it was assembled in the grand scheme of things. Luka Doncic barely played with PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford. The guys who kind of came in at the deadline to elevate that group. I feel like they could like that. That moment, their run to the Finals, which again, they were not super competitive in. And the Celtics dealt with them pretty easily. But them getting there in the first place will prove representative of something we hold on to with that team. In terms of like, this was an era of Luka Doncic's career of Mavericks basketball, of a thing that should have been allowed to grow to fruition, but was not.
- [63:20]
Zach Lowe
Yeah, but they only made the finals and defense wins championships. So like, who cares? The 2012 thunder were the. Were my top choice for post 2000 NBA teams. And even they are more of like a what if.
- [63:35]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah.
- [63:35]
Zach Lowe
Than they are about like that particular iteration of that Thunder team. Although they were glorious to watch and they. They won four straight against an incredible spurs team to make the finals.
- [63:44]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah, I feel often these teams have the great conference finals moment and then what makes them a runner up is like they're just not quite there yet. And then we end up wondering what could have been.
- [63:55]
Zach Lowe
So I'm going to just go quickly through my nominees from worst to first 2021 Suns. Just like how the rise from the bubble to the finals to now looking was a very memorable team. A lot of youth. Chris Paul, Point God. And then what. What happened? Like, how did we arrive here in 2025? Okay.
- [64:16]
Rob Mahoney
I was thinking in watching the Pacers players leave the floor last night not to wish this on Indiana by any means. I hope Tyrese Halliburton comes back. I hope the Pacers are back in the finals at some point. Devin Booker at the end of that series, looking around the floor as the Bucks celebrate, untucking his jersey and just having like a God damn it. Like so I have tasting how close.
- [64:36]
Zach Lowe
It was when we talk about the Durant trade. In a few minutes I'm going to talk about Devin Booker's lament that he had after the season where he talked about how close they were just not that long ago. And then I thought should I submit a poem called Devin Booker's Lament to like the New Yorker and see if I can sneak in a little poetry into the New Yorker?
- [64:55]
Rob Mahoney
If Jesse Eisenberg can get an op ed in the New Yorker, I feel.
- [64:58]
Zach Lowe
Like there's a door there I want to pull. Maybe I'll use a pseudonym. Devin Booker's Lament and it'll just I have to work. I have to. I'm not a poet. Like I can't write or read poetry. I'm too like I can't. I literally can't read anything above Shel Silverstein poetry. I don't understand what the poem is about.
- [65:12]
Rob Mahoney
Shout out to Shell.
- [65:15]
Zach Lowe
Okay. Devin Booker is the Met by Zach Lowe 2012 Thunder. You mentioned 2011 Heat only because of like LeBron had a legitimate meltdown at the biggest stage of of basketball but.
- [65:29]
Rob Mahoney
Our lives were the same the next day. You know, he gets to go on living and we got to go on living.
- [65:33]
Zach Lowe
Gotta pay the rent. 2010 Celtics only because like I love a good last gasp team and it wasn't quite the last gasp like 2012 ended up being the last gas when they went up 32 against the Heat in the comp conference finals and lost and LeBron had the greatest, maybe most consequential game, if not the greatest of his career. But that 2010 team, to your point about the 29 magic, that should have been the Orlando's year in the east and Boston was just out guiled them in the playoffs. 2004 Lakers just for a whole host of reasons. 98 Jazz. The second straight loss to the Bulls and that's the full court pass I think from Stockton to Malone. 93 Suns. Just a delightful team with Barkley and then my personal winner for my favorite finals runner up of all time that shan't be forgotten. Ironic that I'm bringing it up today. I hate to do it. The 1996 Seattle SuperSonics of Sean Kemp and Gary Payton and George Carl just trying to throw their different style and freneticism against the greatest player of all time coming back from 30 to make it. Make it a series and just a team that anyone my age loved. The Sonics, loved the green and yellow, loved Kemp, loved Peyton, loved everything about that team. And they just. No one actually thought they were going to beat the Bulls. The Bulls were unbeatable. But that's my, that's my winner.
- [67:01]
Rob Mahoney
One of those teams that. If you just judged history by watching the Last Dance, I'm not sure you would register that the Seattle SuperSonics were participants in that series.
- [67:10]
Zach Lowe
I'm not sure you'd register that. Tony Ku, coach for the Chicago Bulls.
- [67:13]
Rob Mahoney
Probably not. You know, we're, we're writing and rewriting history all the time, but I'm here to insist that Seattle supersonics did in fact exist at one point, and I hope we'll exist again.
- [67:22]
Zach Lowe
According to the Last Dance, the Bulls won game seven against the Pacers because one of Michael Jordan's friends was in the stands and it motivated him to play well. It had nothing to do with Tony Kukoc scoring like 23 points and whatever else happened in the game.
- [67:35]
Rob Mahoney
Zach, where, where are you on the. Is this the first championship in Oklahoma City Thunder history?
- [67:40]
Zach Lowe
Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, it is. There's no other. Does anyone disagree about this?
- [67:45]
Rob Mahoney
I don't know. I guess, like, technically that is not true, but spiritually it obviously is.
- [67:52]
Zach Lowe
Seattle is like throwing an anti parade in the. What's the opposite of a parade? Everyone stays home and nobody does anything.
- [67:59]
Rob Mahoney
That's just a Wednesday.
- [68:00]
Zach Lowe
Okay. Quickie before Durant. I mean, I don't know kind of how else to. To address this, but the east is just a complete mess now for next season and we don't need to go through it all. But my big question is, and this was one of my big off season questions, I did my big non Giannis KD off season topics last week and one of them was, again, this is last week. Are we going to see another moonshot kind of deal? Not that the Desmond Bay trade was a moonshot, because I like that trade for a landup. Are we going to see another team look at what's happening in the east, particularly an east team, and be like, you know what, just go get whoever. And I don't know who whoever is. I have my list of the whoevers it could possibly be because I mean, it just all of these teams are just gone for a year and Cleveland's back, New York's back, and, and you know, Orlando is going to make a run at it. And maybe another team will rise up from the ashes down there. I'm probably forgetting someone off the top of my head, but are we going to see another team? You know, Toronto sniffed. Sniffed around. Durant's a little strong. If you're not. If you're not including Jakob Poeltle in the Durant trade talks, I'm not sure if you're not even if you're. What's less than sniffing around, you're doing that. And I like Jakob Bertl. Big fan, great, very good NBA player. Is there going to be another team? And who would the target even be? Because obviously there's a void here where if like, suddenly the Detroit Pistons went all in and got Lowry Markkanen, you'd be like, oh, wow. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. I don't. I mean, who. You could name a whole bunch of teams.
- [69:37]
Rob Mahoney
I think that is the team in terms of Eastern Conference candidates who are positioned to throw a bunch of stuff and young players into a deal to try to swing up. They're the natural candidate. The regular season success is already there. We've seen that they can at least be competitive and it, like, rise to the intensity of a playoff series, even if they don't have the experience quite yet.
- [69:58]
Zach Lowe
But.
- [69:58]
Rob Mahoney
And I think the Cavs might be, like, too close to where it probably makes sense for them to be a little bit more conservative. The Knicks probably need, like, more moves around the margins to flesh out the rotation more than they do, like, a complete overhaul.
- [70:12]
Zach Lowe
No, I'm talking about the out of nowhere, like, totally, like this awesome player.
- [70:17]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, yeah.
- [70:17]
Zach Lowe
Got traded to this team.
- [70:19]
Rob Mahoney
Well, I just mean, like, if we just want to go down the standings, it's those two teams. The other three of the top five all ended their seasons with Achilles injuries to star players. And then there's the Detroit Pistons and then there's the Orlando Magic. I don't think the Heat are really close enough, although they're obviously always in these conversations. I don't know if they quite have enough. And speaking of, like, there's some reporting that maybe they were hesitant to include Jaime Hawkes in a Kevin Durant.
- [70:44]
Zach Lowe
We'll get there. We'll get there.
- [70:44]
Rob Mahoney
Okay. I don't think the Heat are close enough. I would love to see the Hawks do something fun, but we'll see on that. And I have absolutely zero faith in the Chicago Bulls to do basically anything ever. So I think the Pistons are the team on the board to watch as far as this sort of, like, long shotting is concerned.
- [71:05]
Zach Lowe
How about The Sixers, Are you ready yet to bring them back into your life, into your heart?
- [71:09]
Rob Mahoney
No, I already, like, was holding onto them un. For an unreasonably long amount of time last season. Like, you know what? As a Paul George apologist, I'm just out here in these streets trying to believe in some version of that team.
- [71:24]
Zach Lowe
Are you carrying around a, Like a, A, A cardboard box top with just like, Paul George is good written in Sharpie?
- [71:31]
Rob Mahoney
Just going around your sandwich sign? Yes, literally. I mean, look, the people need to know about it, or at least the fact that he used to be good. Um, I believe in versatility. I believe in the balance of the player he used to be. Was he that player last season? Not often enough, unfortunately. But I, I just can't get there with the Sixers anymore. I'm gonna need to see it.
- [71:48]
Zach Lowe
Cool. It's. It's worth a shot. Like, you have nothing better to do if you're the Sixers than try to make it work with Joel Embiid? His contract is. He's awesome when he plays. Yep. Maybe, you know, what else are you going to try to do? Give up. Like, make it. Try to make it work. Do something. You know, try to load. Manage him through the season.
- [72:06]
Rob Mahoney
But something is like trading Jared McCain and a bunch of other.
- [72:10]
Zach Lowe
Like, I don't know what it would be, but it's. It's like I've already said that nothing should be done on Joel Embiid's timeline anymore. No franchise decision making should be based on his timeline. But I'm kind of probably just, he's going to be on my team. I might as well do some small things to try to win and hope. Like, if that's load, manage him through the season. But again, you watch these playoffs, it's a goddamn grind. It's 20 something games every other day for the middle two rounds of the playoffs. People are dropping like flies left and right. Why would I have any faith that Joel Embiid, even if I load manage him perfectly and he doesn't suffer any injuries in the regular season, can get through that playing 35 minutes a game. Let's limit it to just 32 minutes game, whatever it is, I have zero faith that that's even possible. So that's my Sixer stake. If I were. If I were the Jazz, I would be just waiting for someone to call me and just bowl me over. I even thought, you know, I talked about this with Bill last night. I created the Jeremy Grant line. Like, the player in question has to be better than Jeremy Grant to fit this conversation of like moonshot, you know.
- [73:15]
Rob Mahoney
I think that's very kind to who Jeremy Grant has been for the last two years.
- [73:19]
Zach Lowe
I only brought him up because there, there are just not many teams going to be willing to take a step back next season if you bowl them over with a good offer for a good player. And he's, he sort of fits that description. Sort of like what Memphis just did with Bain. Of like, all right, we're, we're bowing out. A little bit of next season. Marketing is the obvious one. The Kings guys are the obvious ones. I brought up Zion. The other implication is like the Bucks with Giannis apparently just being on the Bucks next year, they must be looking at this like, if I were them, I would be like, can we, can we flip Lillard somewhere where maybe we get someone else's, like, problematic long term salary? But the guy is good and fits with Giannis. I don't know who that would be, but is there any way to accelerate next year for the Bucks? And how about the Pacers quietly trading to reacquire their 2026 first round pick next year? How, how fortunate are they that they did that?
- [74:16]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, my God, I didn't even think about that.
- [74:19]
Zach Lowe
Super wrong for them. They now control that pick and all they did was sacrifice this year's pick to do it. I think they did that largely for financial reasons. There were even agents around the league who were racing for the Pacers to draft their guy in the first round and try to get them for 80% of the rookie scale instead of 100% or 120%. And now they're like, well, thank God we got that pick. Any other thoughts on the East? I mean, look, obviously we know the teams that are just, they're, they're going to go for it. Orlando's just now in the conversation to be in the conference finals for sure next year.
- [74:53]
Rob Mahoney
I think that fit is going to be pretty slick with Desmond Bain. I'm very excited to see, I mean, Jalen Suggs back in healthy and how all those guys fit together. He is so much of exactly what they need and is exactly the sort of elevating piece. Like their, their regular season defense is not quite at Thunder levels, but it's maybe the closest thing outside of Oklahoma City in terms of the consistency of it. And if they're playing that kind of basketball with the offensive juice that Desmond Bain can bring them, I don't see a reason why they couldn't be the second or third seed in the East. I Also take your point about Giannis and the Bucks, whose outlook seems to have changed overnight just by virtue of the fact that they don't have to compete maybe with the Indiana Pacers in the standings quite as much a team with Giannis on it, even if the second best player is like Kyle Kuzma or Gary Trent might be good enough to do something. I don't know what that something is or what it's worth, but it certainly looks better in Milwaukee than it did a week or two ago.
- [75:48]
Zach Lowe
Speaking of Gary Trent Jr. And I'm not even kidding, he's represented by Clutch Sports. Okay, Fred Van Vliet is represented by Clutch Sports and has a team option hovering over him. That is going to be a very interesting negotiating pivot point for the Houston Rockets, who just acquired on the day of Game 7 of the NBA Finals Kevin Durant in exchange for Jalen green, the number 10 pick in the draft, Dylan Brooks, five second round picks and the emotional devastation of the greater Phoenix community. Having traded an entire team of picks and players for Kevin Durant and receives what I just outlined in return, I will join the consensus that I love this trade for the Rockets. For them to be able to do this while keeping Easton out of the deal, while keeping Reed Shepard out of the deal, while keeping Jabari Smith Jr. Out of the deal, while keeping the Sun's own draft picks beyond this season out of the deal is an absolute masterwork and of leverage of playing your leveraging. No, we're just not giving you those things. By the way, I think the Suns could have gotten one of those things at the trade deadline last year. Probably Smith, maybe somebody else. I don't know. I wouldn't miss the I was Reed.
- [77:07]
Rob Mahoney
Shepard not in this deal like I I'm I just am so FedEx at how this was the settling point. Other yeah I get the leverage but.
- [77:15]
Zach Lowe
Jesus Christ I I love it for the Thunder for the Rockets. So I can't believe I just said Thunder. I love everything for the Thunder. I love this trade for the Thunder. It's great for the Thunder. It probably is great for the Thunder. Probably have a drafts pick somewhere in 2031 that got better somehow because of this trade. I love it for the Rockets as a fit. I love it as a short term talent play because it just puts them in a position to like we can win now While sacrificing only one good young player from our team and when Durant's 40, his contract, assuming they sign him to some sort of extension expires and we still have all the young guys here and like, what, what are we, what is it really costing us financially? It's a good sort of reset after that for them. I love it as a basketball fit and I love it for this reason. And this is why the mockery of Toronto for not putting Purdl in the deal and the Heat for not putting Khalil Ware in the deal and whatever else they were not willing to put in the deal is somewhat. It's fun to be snarky. It's somewhat unjustified because here's the reality of trading for Kevin Durant. When you trade for a 37 year old on an expiring $50 million contract who wants maybe 50 something million next year and the year after that as part of the deal, wink, wink, you have to walk into the next season immediately capable of winning the championship. There is no grace period. There is no, like, okay, we traded our starting center who's like a 15 and 9 guy who plays good defense. We'll just figure out who the center on our team is next year somewhere down the line. There is no grace period for any of that. You have to be able to win the title. Now. Miami looked itself in the mirror and said, you know what, no matter what's going out in this deal, if we have Hero Bam and KD and a bunch of guys who are like backups to spot starters, we're not winning the title. It's just, we're just not going to do it. It's not worth it for us. I think both of those teams concluded that correctly and Houston and to a lesser extent Minnesota were the two teams who could have looked at this and said, you know what, we can walk into next season capable of winning the title. And I think the Rockets, assuming Van Vliet comes back on a probably lower salary and a longer deal, having kept all the guys they kept have having the mid level exception possibly at their disposal, which is why I brought up a guy like Gary Trent Jr. I think they can look at it and say, hey, look, the Thunder are the bar. Sure, we can get to the conference finals for sure and we have a superstar score that we didn't have last year and a style of play. Talk about identity. The idea of Van Vliet, Durant, Sengun as the triangle of creativity on offense I think is a beautiful fit. We can talk a little bit more about how you envision those three working together and just surrounded by athleticism and frenzy at every turn is a really good identity and a really good team. I think they walk into next season depending on what Denver does, which is the other big offseason question to me as the second best team in the West. Depending on. Obviously we have a lot uncertainty, but a team that absolutely could make the Finals absolutely could push the Thunder in the conference finals. And by the way, sounds ridiculous. We just saw two teams push the Thunder to seven games. They'll be better next year, but this is a worthy, worthy shot for the Rockets.
- [80:39]
Rob Mahoney
They, the Rockets fuck up a lot of teams in terms of their style of play, in terms of their approach. They make things really, really hard. And that's before they had one of the best individual shot creators that the sport has ever seen. I think they definitely could win the championship next season. Again, it is within that like, you know, less than 5% chance championship odds, maybe a little higher than that sort of range, but like that's what you do this for. You give yourself a shot. As you said, it's not at a very high cost. The Jalen Green trade market was not robust. It's been kicked around for months and months, if not years at this point in terms of them trying to find something that fits their roster a little bit better. We saw in the playoffs what Jalen Green's limitations are as a creator, as a one on one defender, many, many different areas of his game that could use a little bit of work. Kevin Durant is not that. He is someone who you can go to reliably at the end of these half court possessions that are going nowhere and get a lot of bailout offense and so you can run all of the action you want. As you said through Shangoon at the elbows in the post with Fred Van Vliet running pick and roll with Kevin Durant flying off of however many screens you want to set for him makes all the sense in the world. Short term. This makes the Houston Rockets an incredibly competitive team medium term to long term. If you're like forecasting what is actually important here for Houston in terms of the pieces of their roster that will continue to be the pieces of their roster, I don't know that there's like many better fits for Amen Thompson than Kevin Durant in terms of the spacing and the shooting that Durant's game opens up and how it accommodates all of the weirdness, the like delightful productive weirdness of Amen Thompson's game. This is kind of a dream pairing as far as like who I would want on the floor with Amen to facilitate his development and I also think like Jabari is another guy I'm watching very keenly with this because if you think about who Kevin Durant has been, the Kevin Durant who was on those 2017, 2018 warriors teams in particular was one of the best rim protecting fours we've seen in modern NBA history. There is an outline there in which he has a lot to teach someone like Jabari Smith, a lot to help with, a lot to show him. And Kevin Durant isn't thought of as like the cuddliest mentor tour in the world, but he is someone who believes in helping the next generation of basketball players who wants to invest in the young guys around him, who often will speak up in advocacy of the young players who are on his team and vouching for them and wanting them to get more opportunities. I think he has a lot that he could help in terms of the young talent that's already on Houston's roster, not just in terms of who they are on the floor next season and kind of everything he opens up for them, but the players they're eventually going to be.
- [83:14]
Zach Lowe
I. I just. There's something about the Van Vliet, Durant Sengon triumvirate that I really like on offense. I feel like it's just the right mix for Durant of guys who can do enough of the creative heavy lifting, but also not so much that he feels relegated to watching another star on his level just dribble all the time. Van Vliet, yeah, I'll bend the defense. He also gets off of it willingly and fast. Sengun is a super creative big man. Hub Durant hasn't really played with quite a player like that. I mean, Draymond is obviously his own kind of big man hub archetype, but in terms of post ups and drawing attention, they're both unselfish in a way that I think he benefits them particularly. Sengun will benefit from the spacing Durant provides. And Durant is a kickout option. I just feel like it's the perfect role for him in terms of. Of he gets to do a lot, but not too much and a lot on terms that make sense for him. And defensively, look, he's 37. He's not the same defender he was. I do think for the first two months of this season he was defending at a pretty goddamn top level for his age and his ability. And you just wonder how much of the slippage there was just fatigue, malaise, the whole Phoenix thing just not working. And now, you know, in Phoenix he was like, am I the best defensive player on this team. Like how is that even possible that I have to do so much now? He can offload all of those assignments or many of them to Tari Eason and Jabari Smith Jr. And Ahmed Thompson and whoever else he can have. Steven Adams is back to beat the crap out of anyone who dares mess with him and they can switch a lot, which can ease the burden of movement that he'll. I just think it's an absolute perfect fit. And they're starting five. I just penciled in Jabari Smith Jr. As the fifth starter. So Van Vliet, Thompson, Smith, Durant, Sengun, and off the bench I've got Eason, Steven Adams, Reed Shepherd, Cam Whitmore is still around. Maybe I use the mid level on somebody. Do I bring this? Do I bring back Aaron Holiday as a decent backup point card? There's enough there. The Brooks loss is a big one, but you also have Tari Eason and Amen Thompson on your team to make a guy like Dylan Brooks tradable. I think there's enough in the cupboard for this to be a deep enough team, particularly since they discovered the Adam Shangun thing is a real thing. It's not this gimmick to throw out for four minutes a game every other game. They can play that 1012 minutes a game in the regular season if they want to.
- [85:41]
Rob Mahoney
I think that's more of a reason to start Jabari too. Like you want to steal some of those minutes in terms of just like rounding out your rotation to make room for the dual bigs later. I also think in terms of replacing Dylan Brooks, which I'm glad you brought up, is a real concern, just as a like the innings eating quality of Dylan Brooks, especially regular season defense, but even playoff defense against high level opponents is very important. Tari Easton has to stay healthy, which has been a huge difficulty for him over the course of his career so far. If he can stay healthy, the whole rotation is rounded out and makes sense in exactly the way you're describing. You can see the shooting, you can see the playmaking, you can see the defense. You can also see the way that Eason and Amin Thompson in particular reduce the wear and tear on Durant. Because if you're turning opponents over nine extra times a day a game by virtue of having those two guys on the floor just like mucking things up, then all of a sudden there's less half court defense to play. There's more and more opportunities for guys to kind of like space out their intense defensive efforts over the course of the game. In a way that I think Kevin Durant probably needs in order to sustain that sort of early season effort you described from him last season. So there's just so many ways in which all of this talent makes a lot of inherent sense in ways that it did not for Kevin Durant in Phoenix. The Suns, in terms of the way they were eventually designed in particular, was just like a pale imitation of a super team. It was the outlines of what kind of worked for him in Brooklyn, taken down many different pegs creatively in terms of their ability to play together in terms of just like pure shot creation. Like was not on the level of that Nets experiment. And so nothing even worked up to the level of that. This is a completely different idea of a team. It's a team that had everything else to begin with in a lot of ways in terms of that playmaking and defense and needed the one thing that Kevin Durant is uniquely qualified to provide. And how can you not be excited about that combination.
- [87:31]
Zach Lowe
For Kevin Durant? This is the last dance. For Kevin Durant, this is a guy who had a difficult slash, impossible decision to make in free agency after 2016, didn't like any of the other options before him and chose the warriors because they were a glorious basketball nirvana. Won two titles, two Finals MVPs. Was surprised, I think, and so were his people. The degree to which he did not get the quote unquote credit he felt he deserved for being a Finals mvp, in my opinion, he shouldn't have been surprised. He joined a 73 win team and they romped everybody for a couple years. I've reverse engineered that choice a bunch of times. I don't. It doesn't matter to me what he did. I don't know that there was a better option for him then. Obviously everything since then has been wayward and this is a great chance for him to have a last chapter fitting of a player of his stature. Yeah, the Heat. So this was the sentence from Sham Charane's report on ESPN that got all the attention. The Heat made multiple offers for Durant but ultimately turned down the opportunity to place Jaime Hakus Jr. Nikola Jovic, Heywood Highsmith, the number 20 pick and other draft assets in a deal, sources said so that was mocked. The Heat were mocked for like none of those things. You're not willing to trade any of those things. The word. And there is the important operational word, the Heat. From what I've heard and look, people spin and spin and re spin. From what I've heard making calls yesterday, we're willing to include a couple of those things in a trade for Kevin Durant. If not, what are we even talking about, right? I mean, like it was just the totality of them where was out? Like where was out period? The totality of all that to them was, well, we're not, I'm just, let's just make this up. We're not doing Jovic Highsmith, number 20 and two future first round picks. That's too much. Maybe even one future first round pick in addition to all that was too much. Would we do Jovic, 20, Wiggins, Filler, whatever. I think a deal like that, not that specific one because I don't want to throw Jovic's name around like that, but a deal like that was probably available to the Phoenix Suns and they chose the number 10 pick as the best draft asset they were getting and they're excited about that draft asset and Jalen Green as the highest upside player that they could get. A former number two pick in the draft with just 1% athleticism, top 1% athleticism, no doubt. And look, look, I know that all the word coming out of Phoenix is, well, we don't want to trade Jalen Green. Like we like Jalen Green. We got him to play with Devin Booker. I think that door's open. I don't think they're going to reroute Jalen Green right now, but I think they very much are going to listen to trade offers at any point for any of their players, basically. And honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they held talks about trading down from 10, not very far because I think it's going to depend who's on the board. But if they can get, you know, move down four spots, get a guy they like and get another asset in return, I think they'll discuss that. But they're excited about that pick. But that I think the Heat doing that is a very look in the mirror moment for Pat Riley. That was probably difficult because you know Pat Riley wants to go for it and you know that the Heat could beat the offer that eventually got Kevin Durant. And I think calmer, wins prevailed or whatever. The saying that I can't conjure right now and just like, yeah, that team hero Durant, bam. And some like good backup spot starter guys and young guys too, whoever's young guys left over is not going to be good enough. And part of the reason it's not going to be good enough is they like all of us watch these playoffs, the depth, the ferocity, the toll it takes on your body and just ask themselves like can we depend on 38 year old Kevin Durant surviving those playoffs healthy? And not just surviving them healthy, but doing so while playing 38 minutes a game of high level basketball that this team stripped of its death is going to need him to play. And they just said no. And I don't blame them for that decision at all.
- [91:44]
Rob Mahoney
I don't blame them for that decision. I think again, Miami was too far out. That is a team that is in need of a deeper philosophical conversation about what sort of roster and construction they want to have. We've seen pretty empirically the limits of what Tyler Herro as your primary offensive option will be. Really good player, just came off an all star season, did things that I didn't know that Tyler Hero would ever be capable of, like very impressive in terms of a developmental story. He is not a first option scorer or creator. Bam has not turned into the sort of first option scorer creator that I'm sure the Heat hoped he might at some point. And so what do you do with all that? I don't think the answer is bring in Kevin Durant and hope that it ties the whole room together. That I don't think that's a realistic option given not just the lack of depth that you're describing, but even who the stars are. Like, I think those three guys work together okay, but if you're going to invest in making a huge trade for Kevin Durant, you want better than okay, you want something more closely approximating what we're saying about Fred Van Vliet and Alper and Shangoon and the way that there's like a more of a natural balance in terms of what those guys do well versus Tyler Hero, who maybe has more in common with the way Devin Booker plays than with the way other, you know, supporting Rockets play.
- [92:56]
Zach Lowe
You do wonder in a magical world in which they know that Tyrese Halliburton's about to miss the entire season, do they put another asset or two into the trade with the east even more open? I probably still think they wouldn't, but the timing is like unbelievable of all of this and Minnesota, I just think was, was spooked by like, I don't, I just don't think we want to deal with him if he doesn't want to be here and whatever. Like, I just think that and that.
- [93:20]
Rob Mahoney
And they were not even from a not wanting to be there standpoint. When the Suns were talking around Durant at the deadline, there were multiple teams they were talking to that were basically turning them away because they didn't really want to deal with the trouble of Kevin Durant. Like I think there is a lot of hesitation within the league to bring in the Kevin Durant size Persona as much as it is the age concerns and the injury concerns. We should say, like are now kind of a recurring thing for him most seasons he ends up missing like 20 something games. You have to be confident in who you are as a locker room and who you are as a franchise in order to like maintain that sense of identity while adding Kevin Durant. I think the Rockets are pretty well positioned for it. I think IME Udoka is a great coach who's up to that sort of challenge, but not every team is. Not every team wants that.
- [94:10]
Zach Lowe
Before we go last week I did my without context or elaboration, Top three non Giannis KD storylines of the off season Number one to review is the Denver Nuggets, who have a bunch of extensions hanging over their head, including Nikola Jokic's and facing second apron stuff for the next couple years and an absolutely urgent need to remake something about their team even. Maybe it's just the young guys getting better. Number two was who's going to make the home run move, if anybody. I had to cover that already. And number three was where does the Celtics shrapnel end up whether it's Holliday or Porzingis. I asked you to pick a couple without just staying the Mahoney storylines. If there are any leftover that I.
- [94:52]
Rob Mahoney
Left for you, one we kind of just talked about with Kevin Durant, which is how does Minnesota get better. This is a team that Tim Connolly is a pretty inventive executive as far as the things he's willing to entertain. Getting Rudy Gobert, then trading Cat for Julius Randle. There's a lot of stuff on the board for them that could be interesting. What does Nas Reed want? Does he. Is it important to him to start? Is it important to him to stay in Minnesota? Is there any means? I don't think they can bring back Nikhil Al Alexander Walker, but is there a plan to replace his minutes beyond just like elevating Terrence Shannon? I'm. I'm very eager to see what a team that just made back to back trips to the conference finals does to maintain the momentum of the Anthony Edwards era.
- [95:36]
Zach Lowe
Okay. Any others? I mean two, two straight conference finals for the Wolves. Don't sneeze at that.
- [95:41]
Rob Mahoney
Like not at all. And all the more reason why it's like you have to be pushing forward. Like you. I don't think that's a team that would want to or could necessarily afford to just sort of like, like, okay, we're going to sit back and have a recalibration year. Like, they have every reason to think that they can be competitive with the Rockets and the Thunder. Are any of the foregone conclusion guys in this year's free agent class? Not such foregone conclusions. And by that I mean LeBron James.
- [96:09]
Zach Lowe
Player option, Irving player option, smiling somewhere.
- [96:12]
Rob Mahoney
Right now I'm just like, I want to throw Miles Turner in this group too, who the Pacers do not have a convenient means to replace. If Miles Turner, who now is going to be without his star point guard next season, looks around and says, is there another opportunity for me out there? Like, I just don't want to take anything for granted. And I think the stakes for the Pacers are quite high. I think the stakes for the Mavericks are quite high. If Kyrie Irving, who we should say is injured for the like, near foreseeable future, but if he just leaves, what are the Mavericks like? What is their timeline? What are they pushing forward? He could also opt in and extend. I think there's lots of options on the table for him, but I don't take any of this as just like, oh, this is definitely going to happen. Crazy things can change the course of NBA teams, can change the decision making of one player. And now all of a sudden the Lakers are picking up the pieces.
- [96:59]
Zach Lowe
You know, the last I, I think taking nothing for granted is a very good way to approach general NBA fandom and analysis. You know, as we were talking and I was just thinking about this, you know, so two teams that we haven't talked much about in their off season, so, but a little bit I've talked about are the warriors and the Clippers, sort of the old Lions of the West. The warriors have the Kaminga thing and I think they'll very much will be in win now mode around Steph. Like that will never change. Yeah, as I was thinking before about the Jeremy Grant line and, and like big, big name players that could that guy actually be available? I don't think this will ever happen. I'm conjuring out of thin air, but what if a team like Detroit or somebody called the Clippers and offered them the mother load for Kawhi Leonard just like, screw it, we're going to take a shot at Kawhi Leonard for two years, however many years left on his deal. The Clippers would have to consider that. Right. Like you're giving us a parachute to the next era of our team. I just, no one will ever trade for him because he's just this inscrutable injury risk who disappears for months at a time. I, I, I don't know man. He's still goddamn good. Like if we're listing the Jeremy Grant line above those players, I feel like he should come up, you know, I.
- [98:16]
Rob Mahoney
Think he definitely should come up. And if the Rockets hadn't swung for Kevin Durant, I think he probably should have come up for them too. You know, it's those sorts of teams like again these younger teams that are bumping up against the wall of playoff shot creation. If you are the Pistons and you're looking at this Eastern Conference landscape, Kawhi Leonard does check a lot of the boxes of what they need. Will he be that guy every night? Obviously not. But as long as you can keep enough of a regular season winning foundation together, I think he still makes sense for some teams. It's just hard to believe in him as like a holistic dominant every night superstar.
- [98:48]
Zach Lowe
You know, if you just look at the decision Memphis made of like, you know what, we're not good enough. And obviously the Clippers had a much better season than Memphis. 50 games, 50 wins rather. And that seven game series against the Nuggets is I think more a feather in their cap than not other than the game seven, you know, meltdown. But I do think like Ballmer will never do it because he's not wired this way. But I do think there is a version of this exact same Clippers team run by different people who would look in the mirror and say, you know what, chances are we're actually not good enough. And this team's offering us an incredible haul for Kawhi Leonard. And yeah, he's supposed to be a Clipper for life. Streetlights over spotlights, the whole thing. Should we do it? And I don't think they ever would, nor would I think any team is going to to throw the mother a little. I just think he's an interesting name to think about as a trade target.
- [99:34]
Rob Mahoney
You mentioned Memphis in that as well as far as like them looking themselves in the mirror in the way they did with Bane. Sub question off of the foregone conclusions. How certain are we that the Jaren Jackson renegotiate and extend thing is going to happen? Because if it does not, all of a sudden he has an expiring year and then he's an unrestricted free agent. And is that something that Memphis is willing to just sit out or does he all of A sudden join the trade market.
- [99:58]
Zach Lowe
So I said it last week, like, they have to earn that contract. It's not. They have to go to Jaren Jackson Jr. And say, here's our vision for our team and here's as much money as we can give you. And right now the money isn't there. They're going to have to move players to get up more cap room. And even then, I think the idea would not be to get him to his max next season, but would be to get him high enough that 140% off that number gets him to his max going forward. But they've got to do work to get there and they've got to earn his signature on that contract. I also really do believe that they plan to keep both Morant and Jackson. Like, I think that's their plan. Retool, get more salary flexibility. We have all these picks to make trades. We're building around these guys. Yeah, we might sit out a year of like true high level play, but we're setting ourselves up for the next year and the year after that or whenever we think we can get back to this, this 68 win bar that everyone's trying to reach in the Thunder. That said, like, if you just bowled them over, like, it would be irresponsible of them. If you just bowled. If the Pistons were just like, we'll give you everything for Jaren Jackson Jr. Or whatever, like, they'd have to listen. I don't think those guys are like 1,000% untouchable. Nobody is in the NBA. But I do think their plan is to keep them and they're not like making calls or taking calls right now.
- [101:18]
Rob Mahoney
Right. So we'll see how that plays out. Like, I think we just kind of again, write in some certainty with this stuff where it's like, yeah, like the Wolves will just get nas read back and yeah, like Jaren Jackson's gonna sign that extension because, like, there's some logical reasons why continuity makes some sense. But again, I will believe it when it's when the name is on the dotted line, you know, when the team makes that sort of commitment, when they bowl over or win over Jaren Jackson in that way. I don't, I just don't think if I, if I were Jaren Jackson and I'm looking around saying the other selling point is one of the most unreliable superstars in the entire league right now in terms of health, in terms of judgment, in terms of lack of playoff success. Like, John Morant is an inspiring player to watch from my couch I don't know that he's the most like heartening teammate to play against in terms of like I'm going to invest the next stage of my career running with this guy like that. That in itself is a big ask.
- [102:08]
Zach Lowe
Rob Mahoney Group chat ringer.com all over the place. Prestige TV. I gotta get a cameo on that, on that Prestige TV podcast.
- [102:19]
Rob Mahoney
What are you eyeing? Are you looking forward to any off season TV watching?
- [102:22]
Zach Lowe
I haven't. I haven't. I'm still reeling from the Mets 7 game losing streak in terms of my offseason TV watching thoughts and prayers. Any farting thoughts? Would you like to fart out any parting thoughts on the NBA Finals or anything? We didn't talk about today before we move on to the off season.
- [102:40]
Rob Mahoney
Just a resounding call from the mountaintop. This is a pretty cool season. Really fun playoff run overall. Like I think, you know, we hit it with the somber notes up top in terms of where the Tyrese Halliburton injury has left things. But the, the like, the moments of that Pacers playoff run, the anxieties and comebacks overall throughout this postseason. An incredibly unpredictable regular season, even if it was in retrospect underlined by the Thunders like consistent dominance. I've had a great time. Let's do, let's do it all again in a couple months.
- [103:10]
Zach Lowe
Well, the draft is very soon. It's in two days. That's it for today's Zach Low show. We'll be back on Thursday morning after the first round of the draft, the two day draft. So we'll probably have a lot to talk about. Some more trades. Where did Ace Bailey get picked? Is Daryl Morey still waiting for him to show up at the restaurant for dinner? A lot of stuff will happen. We'll be here Thursday morning. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. He's the best. Thanks to Jesse, Jonathan and Mike on production. We'll see you on Thursday on the Zach Lowe show. Must be 21 and over and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and over in President D.C. gambling problem called 1-800- gambler or visit FanDuel.com RG call 1-887897-777 or is it ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or is it mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland? Welcome. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 Sport in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPENY or text hopeny in New York.