JOHN LIND UNLEASHED Episode 49:
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Chapters 00:00I ntroduction and Show Overview 07:57 Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis Trade Analysis 29:01 Impact of the Trade on NBA Dynamics 36:16 Kyrie Irving vs. Steph Curry: Leadership and Team Dynamics 39:12 The Impact of Recent Trades on NBA Teams 42:55 Warriors’ Future: Finding the Next Superstar 47:07 Jimmy Butler’s Trade Talks and Warriors’ Desperation 50:20 Western Conference Landscape: Warriors vs. Rising Teams 01:01:22 Analyzing the Spurs and Kings: Threats to the Warriors 01:12:08 Navigating NBA Purgatory 01:14:30 The Impact of Major Trades 01:17:15 LeBron’s Future and Team Dynamics 01:20:09 Jmmy Butler’s Toxicity and Team Culture 01:25:42 Super Bowl Week and NFL Insights 01:27:07 Miles Garrett’s Trade Request 01:39:18 Legacy and Winning in the NFL 01:47:32 Introduction and Groundhog Day Humor 01:48:31 NBA Trade Rumors and Player Dynamics 01:49:45 Cultural Shifts in Music and Sports 01:50:39 Food Preferences and Personal Anecdotes 01:52:06 Weather’s Impact on Mood and Lifestyle 01:53:41 Warriors’ Future and LeBron’s Legacy 01:54:10 Luka Doncic’s Impact on the NBA 01:56:26 Warriors’ Challenges and Trade Strategies 01:58:16 Myles Garrett Trade Speculations 02:00:09 NFL Team Dynamics and Player Value 02:02:02 Random Sports Commentary and Player Analysis
John Lund discusses the recent trade of Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, analyzing the implications for both teams and the NBA as a whole. He emphasizes the significance of trading a player like Doncic, who is in his prime, and critiques the decision-making of the Mavericks’ new ownership. Lund also reflects on the historical context of the Lakers’ ability to acquire top talent and the potential impact on the league’s dynamics moving forward. In this segment, John Lund discusses the dynamics of NBA trades, focusing on the contrasting leadership styles of players like Kyrie Irving and Steph Curry. He analyzes the implications of recent trades, particularly the impact on the Warriors and their quest for a future superstar. The conversation also touches on Jimmy Butler’s trade talks and the Warriors’ current standing in the competitive Western Conference, highlighting the rising threats from teams like the Spurs and Kings. In this segment, John Lund discusses the implications of recent NBA trades, particularly focusing on the concept of ‘sports purgatory’ where teams find themselves stuck in mediocrity. The conversation shifts to Jimmy Butler’s toxic influence on teams, and the recent trade request from Miles Garrett. NBA, Luka Doncic, Anthony Davis, trade analysis, sports commentary, John Lund, Mavericks, Lakers, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, NBA, Kyrie Irving, Steph Curry, trades, Warriors, Jimmy Butler, Luka Doncic, Western Conference, Spurs, Kings, NBA, trades, LeBron James, Jimmy Butler, Super Bowl, Miles Garrett, sports culture, team dynamics, player legacy, sports purgatory, NBA, LeBron James, Luka Doncic, trade rumors, sports commentary, weather impact, food preferences, music culture, Myles Garrett, NFL
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TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning unleashed Lund loyalists. Thanks for tuning in live each weekday at 8 a.m. on YouTube, Instagram and X. Remember, please like and subscribe and listen where you get your podcasts. Be on the lookout for Lund loyalist perks by joining the club and if you really want your comments read during the show, you can use super stickers. Now, as close to on time as he gets, here’s Johnny. Here’s Johnny.
GO JOE
Ah yes. Good morning.
I’m still recovering from the weekend, not from a drinking sense, from what uh we just showed. Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning. Just realized I didn’t have enough energy at the open.
GO JOE
Hi Anthony Davis, Luka Dončić and Fox, Zach LaVine.
It’s your turn, Joe. And nobody’s off limits. Luka can get moved. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Yeah, right on time. Got that thing figured out. All right, it’s time to go over uh I did do an emergency show yesterday. You may, if you had your alerts on or may not have seen it. Good morning, good morning. Happy Monday. I’ll do roll call in just a second, but if you’re watching us or however you’re watching us, or potentially listening to us as well, we have a podcast that goes along with this YouTube show. Uh Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your favorite podcast. The best thing you can do for in the John Lund Unleashed world is to just go to my website at johnlundunleashed.com. It’s got everything there. It’s got everything archived, shows, podcasts. Uh I wrote yesterday, I liked the piece that I wrote yesterday, so you can go check that out at johnlundunleashed.com. It’s got the blog, which has a video to go along with it, so it just crushes your senses. You’ve got everything there. So uh make sure you check that out johnlundunleashed.com. Please become a member of the Lund loyalists and at the very least, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can be watching us on X at John Lund Radio and Instagram at John Lund Radio if you want to subscribe to those places and other social media places you can. The easiest way, like I said, is to just go to johnlundunleashed.com. Not only is all that other stuff there, but all the social media as well. As you can see, and we’ll go through the chalk board in just a second. The world famous chalkboard is to the right there, the episode 49 and we’ll go through that and I will try to stay in order and keep things up to date, but you never know because what you people do to me is throw me off kilter, which is fine with me. I’m not mad, I’m not upset with it at all. I love it. Uh 59 50, uh Mr. 84 saying hey yo. Hurley Bird is here today. What’s up West? Good to see you. Sports girl for life. Good morning all. Uh Tacky Joey, great. Hopefully you are doing well today. Gizmo, hello Mr. Lund. Uh John Holmes is here today everybody. Be careful. Simon, good morning to you my friend. Uh Hey Zeus is here today. Uh Kyle, good morning all. I’d love to get your opinion by the way of what happened over the weekend. Hi Kyle. Yes, Chip Kelly to the Raiders. My son is not too happy as he’s uh banter’s about, banter’s about, banter’s about and um,
New Orleans. Jacob is here. Good to see you. Uh Skills Reporter, good to see you. My friend Daniel is good as well and uh boy that’s a good point Daniel right out of the gate. Clutch Sports uh power uh empowerment. The Kings got uh for Fox. My NBA fandom born in 1985, died January 25th. So yeah, the uh Hey Zeus, I will definitely get to Chip Kelly. Since you brought it up, I I just don’t understand what teams are thinking. Um I think Pete Carroll’s a great culture changer with the Raiders. They need a major culture change. There are um tiers of coaches not only in uh quality, but when you need said coach, certain coaches get you over the top. Certain coaches are good with young players. Certain cultures are uh coaches are culture changers. There’s all sorts of levels for a coach as much as people don’t want to acknowledge. Mark Jackson, he was good for that time for the Warriors. And then Steve Kerr said move aside him a championship kind of coach
I’ve won a couple of two, three of these, five things, eight of these,
Spurs, Bulls, etcetera. I think I might be able to help out here,
and he did. So, you know, I don’t know if Steve Kerr is a young team builder because
Steve Kerr really wasn’t a young team builder. He came in here when this team was ready to win. So,
you know, I would say that there are certain levels of coaches,
and Pete Carroll’s a great culture changer, but there are so many great young minds in the NFL,
and to pick Chip Kelly off the trash heap, it is, wow, just blows my freaking mind. So if I’m a Raiders fan, I’m not very happy. But the big story today, obviously,
obviously, obviously, as we go through the uh, chalkboard,
is episode 49, Luka and AD. What A 1 is, I went through this extensively
on my show that I recorded yesterday. In fact, let me just, let me just share right out of the gate here. Let me just share
the screen, and uh, I gotta be careful with what I share, of course, and what button I hit here.
Uh, there’s a lot of stuff, but uh, there it is right there.
Unleashed. There’s the page itself if you want to just go there, but
I put up the YouTube show from yesterday, Mavs ruin the NBA. I did that and wrote the accompanying piece. There’s the podcast and if you click on these little pink things, the bottom it opens up that page.
So for example, there’s the podcast or the uh, the blogs and I write a new blog every single day and even because when big things happen, I do that.
So Mavs ruin the NBA, the Butler thing, um, I got, we got the latest on Butler, etcetera, etcetera. And then if you open up
these things, Mavericks gift Lakers a new post LeBron era with Luka Dončić trade, and I’ve got all these fancy photos and videos and all sorts of stuff like that. So you can go through the whole thing, the A-list, which I’m gonna describe. In fact, I’ll just keep that up
for a little bit later, but you get the idea. So if at any point today you want to go ahead and check that out, there is the long piece, but you and I are gonna talk about a lot of it
uh, today. So let’s get through it and let’s discuss it and I would love your opinion. Remember,
this is not a dictatorship in this room. I love when people have uh,
great chats and a lot of times we have chats if you’re new here about things that don’t even have to do with sports, but
today is a pretty big sports day and as I tell you all the time, one thing I learned in the radio business is about
about 27 years was, you know, people always ask me all the time, you know, what about mix? How do you know what to talk about? How do you know when to talk about it? Well,
when you have a big story like you have today and it does affect the Warriors and every team in the NBA can be localized by this story.
I’ll look at it from a national standpoint and what it means, but also localize it to the Warriors, but you just can’t miss the fastball if that makes sense.
in any sense.
Can’t make the big hit.
So if a fastball’s coming down the middle, you hit it.
That’s the same thing.
You don’t screw around with certain things in a day like today and I know it’s Super Bowl 59 and it’s Super Bowl week.
And as I said, we’ll have our correspondent, my son George in New Orleans uh for the week and talk about the Super Bowl the time, but this is the big story.
In the fact that Jimmy Butler said no to the Warriors and what that means, so there’s just a ton to get to.
So let’s start with Luka and AD.
Um so many layers to this whole thing, but let me I let me just play a little fun video right out of the gate.
So when I worked in Dallas, not only did I do a show and did uh pre and post game for the Cowboys, but I also ran the radio station which was uh ESPN 103.3 FM
in Dallas and we were the flagship of the Dallas Mavericks and as I’ve told you many times, I was on the other end of the we believe Warriors.
Uh they had won 67 games, the Mavericks had
there was a little bit of a buzz in town even though I’ve told you this many many times and if you know uh high school football in Texas, it just dominates.
So Friday night, you could go to any restaurant you wanted in Texas, in Dallas
because everybody was at the football game and I lived right in the middle of all these stadiums that were just absolutely crazy.
So we could go anywhere on a Friday night if because we were going to the high school games, we weren’t from there.
And then Saturday, um we carried TCU when I first got there and then we ended up carrying Texas football and we we’d get
helicopter like down to Austin.
It was it was unbelievable.
Uh the kind of money that that they had.
So Saturday was college football and Sunday was Cowboys and that’s all there was.
Even when the Mavericks won 67 games.
So I learned that the hard way because that was my first year and I went all in on the Mavericks and everybody’s going
as the program director and everybody’s like, what are you doing?
And I’m like, the Mavs won 67 games, they’re the number one seed.
And people are gonna go crazy for it and they’re like, no they’re not.
This is a football town.
Harrison move. It’s not a Rob Pelinka move. This is above those guys. This is Jeanie Buss of the Lakers and this is Miriam Adelson of the Mavericks who actually lives in Dallas and very rarely steps foot in Dallas and in Texas.
She lives in Las Vegas. If if the name sounds familiar, um, her husband who has passed was part of the original team that was people that were gonna bring the Raiders to Vegas. He was gonna actually
Sheldon Adelson. He was going to fund the whole thing and it kind of fell apart and then it went in another direction. They still ended up going there. But if that name sounds familiar, they got a ton of money and last December, December 23rd, they purchased the Mavericks from
Mark Cuban. So let me stick a pin in that for a second and explain something about that. But let me just go local real quick. In Dallas, if you don’t have a Dirk Nowitzki or a Luka Dončić you’re dead in the water. So she doesn’t understand that. Mark Cuban would have never made this move.
And the reason I’m starting this way is because Mark Cuban’s like the rest of us. He knows you don’t trade guys in their prime at 25 and if you’re going to, you sure as hell don’t trade him to the Lakers. So that that’s rule number one and she got fleeced because she doesn’t understand
what a number one is. And what I mean by that is
and I’m gonna pop this this up after I play a couple of videos for you. But what I mean by that is a Steph Curry, a LeBron James, a true number one, which Luka Dončić is at the age of 25 and as scary as this is to say,
Luka Dončić hasn’t reached his potential yet. He’s an MVP caliber player.
He carried the Mavericks to the NBA Finals last year much like LeBron James carried the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals many times against the Warriors. That was not an NBA Finals roster that played against the Celtics, but Luka carried them and he’s only 25 years old, which is the scary part and he’s gonna get to
LA. I’m sorry to say this. This is like the Chiefs last week, but we’re honest around here. He’s gonna get to LA and he’s gonna give up Texas barbecue for I don’t know, a a nice salad. A nice salmon salad and he’s
gonna get some vitamin D, his toes in the sand. Clay Thompson’s world famous, oh you gotta get in the ocean man, it’s magical brother. And all of a sudden he’s gonna get a little tan on his pale skin and all of a sudden Luka Dončić is gonna be that much
better. Book it. That’s what’s gonna happen. Anthony Davis is not a bad player. In fact, Anthony Davis is one of the best bigs of all time. He’s gonna be a Hall of Famer, a 10-time All-Star, a three-time All-Defensive team. He’s matter he’s a member of the 75th
anniversary of the NBA. He’s the first overall pick of the 2012 NBA draft. A no, no, no-brainer. First ballot Hall of Fame,
Nate Smith guy, all right? That’s what Anthony Davis is. It’s no knock on Anthony Davis. It’s just 31-year-old Anthony Davis has always been a super high-end Robin.
He couldn’t carry the Pelicans. He got to the Lakers and he absolutely positively helped Batman, LeBron James to that bubble title whether in 2020 whether we wanna acknowledge it or not. The fact is they did. That was the rule. Those were the rules and they won the NBA title and Anthony Davis is a really, really good player.
And I’ve been guilty of this. Same he’s injury prone. He gets hurt a lot. He doesn’t get hurt a lot. He actually plays a lot now. So he’s a reliable player and in the short term, Dallas is not gonna be a bad team.
In the short term and I’ll and I’ll pop up. I have a bunch of the depth charts in the NBA NBA depth charts and what this all means. And by the way, the Febru the trade deadline isn’t even till February 6th. So we’ll go all through these things, but there’s a reason why
you don’t trade a player like this in their prime and I’ll pop up in just a second. We’ll go through this in in a sec. But let me just play a couple of quick videos and then we’ll move on from this because videos entertain us.
This is a friend of mine. As I said, I was the program director at 103.3 FM in Dallas as well as an air talent and one of the guys that worked for us was the great Mark Followill and Mark is a Maverick through and through. Mark is a Dallas guy. He’s a huge sports fan. He’s a huge soccer fan, big runner and he’s just a great guy and he wears his emotion on his sleeve. He’s by the way, his voice it’s the voice of God. I mean it just really is. But um, this is how he started the broadcast
uh last night after the trade had come down. By the way, they got smoked. It was like 50 to 19 in the first quarter. The uh initial reaction from the players not great. But this is how Mark Followill, the TV voice of the Mavericks uh reacted first time on camera to Luka being traded to the Lakers.
Los Angeles Lakers with Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris for Anthony Davis. Hold on, let me restart that. Hi everyone, I’m Mark Followill. Devin Harris will join me in a minute. I’m sorry if I look a little haggard today like a lot of you. I didn’t sleep very well last night. We’re stunned, we’re shocked, we’re going through it. You all know what I’m talking about. The end of one era, the beginning of another. The news came down last night and reports officially this morning at 10:05 Eastern, 9:05 Central Time. Luka Dončić traded to the Los Angeles Lakers with Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a first round pick in the future.
All right, so that was the reaction from the voice of the Mavericks, Mark Followill. This is um now this is a lesson not in just Mavericks Lakers trade, but this is what a GM has to do nowadays.
Um, I’m not so stupid to think that this is new or anything like that, but owners have I think become more and more involved in all of this. And as I said, Mark Cuban wouldn’t have made this deal. I was wat looking on social media yesterday and saw a bunch of people Cuban this and Cuban that.
Mark Cuban had nothing to do with this. In fact, let me pull something up here that I had in the show yesterday when I when this news all broke. This was two days ago and you’re gonna hear Nico Harrison and and you’re gonna still see the shock on Jason Kidd’s face. He doesn’t say a word in this clip, but this is uh Mark Cuban two days ago.
He owns again, I think it’s 27% of the Mavericks actually. So those TV ratings for All-Star gonna be crazy. Laugh out loud. NBA gonna NBA. Just insane. Luka and Kai aren’t going. Um, so obviously he he he wasn’t even in on the loop on this whole thing and he wouldn’t have made that move. By the way, LeBron and Steph Curry at the All-Star game
ratings are gonna be just fine, Mark. But this is a bigger picture item. This is Nico Harrison who’s gonna get fired because of this move at some point and Jason Kidd who didn’t have any clue on this whole thing talking about how tight they kept their lips and how they
he and Rob Pelinka spoke, which again, this deal was done at the owner level. This was not done at the GM level. A trade like this, but this is how Nico Harrison, the general manager of the Mavericks tried to explain this trade away.
I know the type of players that that um he likes. You know, three or four weeks that started out as a coffee that, you know, was more, hey, would you ever uh I don’t know. Would I? Let me think of, you know, and then it it it built upon that and you know, we it we kept it between us. We had to we had to keep it tight. Um, JK didn’t know about it. Um, but JK and I are aligned and we talk about archetypes and we talk about the culture that we want to create. So I know the type of players that that um he likes without
All right, sorry. I’m vomiting in my mouth wat uh just watching him squirm and know that he’s gonna be unemployed soon because of this move. And this is just a lesson in the way it works nowadays is the owners just maybe it’s financial. He talked about culture.
Luka Dončić carried this team to the NBA Finals last spring. What he did. And they don’t have a great team around him and the scary part like I said is Luka Dončić kind of has a Patrick Mahomes dad bod. He’s not in great shape.
Hasn’t really taken things seriously. Gets by on talent. The guy is awesome. He’s a basketball wizard. He’s only 25 years old, which means he’s not even in the prime of his career. So the thing that it it it’s it’s not that it bothers me. Let me go down to the I don’t know how the Lakers keep doing this for decades and decades and decades ripping off
dumb GMs who might be drinking or ownerships I should say that should be that would be drinking at the time. But this is what pisses off Warriors fans and the rest of the fans in all of the NBA, which is
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lew Alcindor gets traded in 1975 from the Bucks to the Lakers. There’s Luka and Anthony Davis. There’s Wilt going from Philadelphia to the Lakers. There’s Anthony Davis going from the Pelicans to the Lakers and there’s Kobe Bryant going from the Hornets
where he never played in a draft day move in 1996. As Jack Nicholson said, where do they keep getting these wonderful toys in the original Batman. It’s just dumb GMs.
Continuing to allow somehow the Lakers. Now if you wanna say that there’s a um, you know, everybody we did this last week a little bit and everybody got all angry that somehow that the Chiefs there were be some sort of a
conspiracy theory to get the Chiefs who are in the 34th largest market in the country and a tight end dating a pop superstar that that’s where somehow people have conceived in their mind that that’s where the NFL wants to have their Mecca, Kansas City, which has a total of a total of about what, 4 million people in the entire state of Missouri versus 17 million in Manhattan by itself. So there it doesn’t make any sense. I’m not saying there’s conspiracy theory, but what I’m saying is if you wanted to conjure one up, this is what it would look like because
getting all these great players to LA is good for business for the NBA. Now if that were the case, then New York and Chicago would be better because New York’s the number one market and Chicago is the third. So I’m not saying that. I’m just simply saying that if I’m a Lakers fan man, I’m just like, wow, we keep doing this year after year after every 10 or 20 years
getting a team who just doesn’t understand the long term. So if you’re still struggling with it, let me just do this real quick for you. And share my screen once again
before something I started the show off with with which is let me see if I go back to the website. I think this is yeah, this is right because I wanna make sure that I share the right thing with you.
So this is what I mean by a number one, a true number one on and off the court. So to me, this is the list. You see where it says it’s a small A list. So LeBron James, what he’s doing at 40 unprecedented, but he needed to pass the torch. Mavs obliged. Steph Curry, long-time unquestioned number one, but at age 37, he needs a Batman. He’s better served as a Robin at this point. Is there another team asleep at the switch?
which out there who can help, not likely.
Uh, Jokic is a number one. Durant is an alpha number one. Yanis is a number one. Luka at 25 is a number one. So what is that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There’s six of these guys in the NBA and maybe Luka isn’t exactly in terms of
qualifications because he hasn’t won a title and all those other guys have. But maybe there’s five or six in the entire league. A tick below Jayson Tatum because Jaylen Brown is there. Could be someday.
All right, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 26, Wembanyama and we’ll get to De’Aaron Fox in a minute. He’s going to greatly help that. Getting into that A-list, Anthony Edwards, Donovan Mitchell, then was never.
Devin Booker, Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard, really, really good Robins. And then if you go down a little bit further here or maybe it’s up, I can’t remember.
But in the paragraph right there it says the un- what this person has to be. Uh, it says scarce as Batman, many are Robin. A player can carry the burden every night on and off the floor. The unquestioned consistent shiny diamond on the court fans flock to see home or away. Score 30, grab 10, dish 12, explain after the tough loss why the burden is on you without dissing your less talented teammates. Stay off the social media beef list, impress corporate sponsors, crush the endorsements, avoid the traps, win titles, shake hands, kiss babies, love the world in the offseason, all with an easy billion-dollar smile on your face. Not easy.
It’s a small “%” that. That’s what a number one is. That’s what teams expect a number one to be. That’s and so there’s a difference. It’s kind of like when American Idol started. Was the American Idol always the best singer? No.
But they had the um, sometimes hard to find it. And Luka has it and Curry has it and LeBron has it and Yanis has it. There’s just the it. It’s it. That’s just what it is and it’s a true Batman to a to a really good Robin. And Anthony Davis is going to the Hall of Fame and it’s not a diss on him.
But he’s a really, really high-end Robin. And on a lesser team he could be a Batman, but you know, it just depends on who’s around him. But what I mean is it’s not just on the court. You’re not just delivering on the court.
You’re the true leader and lots of guys in the NBA want to be paid like it, but they don’t want to act like it. A lot of guys want the max deal. Well what comes along with the max deal is the max pressure and getting in front of the media and I don’t care what kind of a day you’re having.
Put a you gotta put a smile on your face. It’s it’s it’s being the CEO of a basketball team. And I’m preaching to the choir here because we’ve been so fortunate to have Steph Curry as one of the best, not only now, but of all time.
Steph doesn’t misstep. Steph doesn’t misspeak. Steph you know, you’re gonna have bad nights. It’s not that. It’s not that you have to like every night you’re you’re this, but if you play four games in a week, three better be damn good, maybe three and a half.
Ma- actually maybe three and three quarters. You know, you just you you could have a bad quarter that week or a bad half that week or something, but you better not have much more than that. You carry a team on and off the court. That’s what it is.
And so for those saying just looking at the trade itself and just looking at Anthony Davis and looking at Luka Doncic and saying it’s not that bad. Well the fact that Anthony Davis is 31 and so in four or five years when Luka is in his prime and pissing off the rest of the league because there he is in LA and he ha- he is drinking those kale shakes and he is eating those salads and he is a little bit well he couldn’t be less than.
He’s Larry Bird clear as what he is. He’s so white. But the fact is is that that that’s Luka Doncic. He’s one of those guys who has the it. He’s a basketball wizard. He’s been a basketball wizard since he stepped on the NBA court and you look at him and you go, this guy? This guy with the Patrick Mahomes body? I mean him and Patrick Mahomes are very similar in that way, but it Mahomes has it. You can go through
certain guys on certain teams and they just there’s an it. And there’s really, really good and a super high level that Anthony Davis is at and then there’s just that next level. You know, like the first ballot Hall of Fame types where there’s that really thin line in baseball when you just know that there’s just a guy that’s just those guys are Hall of Famers. Not saying they’re not Hall of Famers, but then there’s that next thin level up.
That’s what Luka Doncic is. And you’re trading him in his prime. So when I see his GM go up there and I see his coach like this. When you make a trade, what it’s supposed to do is it’s supposed to energize your franchise. Dallas is the fifth largest media market in the country. They don’t need to shed the the contract of Luka Doncic. And I’m certainly not saying that Luka is perfect.
That’s the scary part. He’s 25 and he’s going to get better. He’s 25 and he’s gonna get in better shape because now he’s in this fishbowl of LA and they’re gonna demand it. You can’t just sit in Dallas where football is king and occasionally people dabble in the Mavericks when they’re really, really, really good.
They pay attention to the Lakers. They’re they the Dodgers and the Lakers are number one in LA. They’re like neck and neck. And people pay attention to the Lakers. So he’s gonna sit down and this is where Rob Pelinka actually will their general manager actually have a part in this because Jeanie Buss made the move with Miriam Adelson, but where they’ll where he’ll she’ll or where
Pelinka will sit down with him is this is LA and you’re now in a fishbowl and this is a big deal around here. So you gotta get in better shape and you gotta eat better and you gotta come through and you gotta play to the best of your abilities. Think about it. Luka Doncic last year dragged the Mavericks to the NBA finals in the in the tough Western Conference and through the tough Western Conference and he wasn’t even in the best shape and he wasn’t playing any defense and he was whiny and he was diving on the floor and he was flopping like a fish.
He’s going to get better. That’s what’s scary for the rest of the league. He’s gonna get better and he’s already a number one. That’s the difference. It’s not just one for one for Anthony Davis and we all know this. We all know that Anthony Davis is a Hall of Famer, but it’s that thing you can’t always put your finger on the it that Luka has and Anthony Davis doesn’t.
And will the Mavericks be in the playoffs? Will the Mavericks be a pain in the butt? Will the Mavericks beat the Warriors in a series by far? Not saying that. I’m saying that that ownership sometimes has this vision like this. And you gotta have a vision like this. You gotta think about the long-term things.
The Lakers now again have set them and this is the other part that this is probably the part that pisses you off the most if you’re not a Lakers fan because now they’re set up to be that team again. We talked about and talked about and talked about. You’re almost to the end of the line. Almost to the end of the line with LeBron and the Lakers being irrelevant. Wouldn’t matter if they had Anthony Davis. Really nice player. He’ll be the single single player that goes to the All-Star game every single year and the Lakers just aren’t that relevant, right?
In one fell swoop, all of a sudden relevancy for I don’t know, next 10 to 15 years. Luka’s game’s not built on athleticism. So he’s gonna age if he gets into even decent shape. I don’t know, 37, 38 years old, he’s gonna be able to do that. He doesn’t jump out of the gym. It’s it’s based on his brain. It’s it’s based on his basketball brain. That’s why he’s so good.
And so he’s gonna be around, I don’t know, 10, 12 years at least with the Lakers. So they’ve just secured their future. So this is a perfect time to move to the next. They’ve just secured their future. To me that’s the that’s the thing that hurts the most is that the Lakers are gonna be irrelevant in a year or two.
Now they’re gonna be on national TV 82 games, 80. No, I’m just kidding. But still it’s gonna feel like it. Lakers, Lakers, Lakers, Lakers right down your throat. Luka on all the national media, the TV executives or who whomever however the NBA is gonna be presented to you in the future. Luka, Luka, Luka, Lakers, Lakers, Lakers. That’s what it’s gonna be.
They just bought themselves the Lakers and they know it and Miriam Adelson is new to this so she doesn’t understand this. They just bought themselves NBA relevancy for the next 10 to 12 years and the league couldn’t be more ecstatic about it because it’s the number two media market in the country and the Lakers are gold, purple and gold. But they are gold when it comes to TV and the Warriors had kind of taken some of that away with Steph Curry over the last number of years, even with LeBron James.
Steph Curry equaled ratings. So now it was like, oh we’re getting to the end of the line, we’re getting to the end of the line and then they just got like a magical revival thanks to the Dallas Mavericks. They just got revived. Look at us. We’re relevant for 10 or 12 years. That new NBC package that the NBA is gonna have, we’re gonna be on that a lot.
Corporate sponsors, all this, the Lakers just became massively relevant when they were just at the end of the line and they’re thinking to themselves, how do we do this? How do we do this? How do we do this? And it goes back to that thing that I showed you earlier.
They always do it. Kareem did it. Wilt did it. Kobe did it. These are just the trades. They got Anthony Davis and this has nothing to do with the signings, you know, the the Shaq signings or any any anybody like that. You know, somebody that came over because they wanted to. And there’s the other thing. You know those guys who wanted to play for the Warriors, they don’t anymore because you know what? Luka distributes the basketball. I wanna go play for the Lakers. Guys wanna play for the Lakers anyway. They wanna be in LA.
And we’re back to the Warriors being the Warriors right after Steph is gone. So let’s move this to that conversation. Okay, so we’re at episode 49. Luka and AD, what a 1 is, I just explained, the Lakers.
I explained all that. Mavs and cover your ass mode. That’s what their owner just did. Just watch, just real quick, let me just throw this up there one more time. Watch Jason Kidd’s face talking to him. Hey, would you like Look at. So I know that and and Jay Kidd coached him when they won a championship. So
I mean, he’s in shock. He’s just sitting there in shock. You know, it it when you when you have a trade, this is how you know he’s lying straight through his teeth, too, and this was done at the ownership level, which again, when you have players like this of this caliber.
These deals in all of sports are done at the ownership level. These aren’t done with two GMs. We had a cup of coffee together and he asked me, would I ever? Like no, he didn’t. He was talking about something else because he wasn’t talking about a trade because this is done at this level, not at your level, which is a good level, but it’s done up here. This was a person who had just joined the NBA in December of 2023, not understanding the rule that you don’t trade these kind of players to the Lakers in the Western Conference. They didn’t
been traded to the east. They didn’t even trade him to the east, they traded him to the Lakers. Mark Cuban never would have done that in a million years. That’s how I know.
And I don’t want to hear this stuff about culture. You just went to the NBA finals because of that guy. He doesn’t play defense.
He’s not in good shape. I don’t care. I don’t care. He and Jokis, Jokic and Janis are the three best players in the game right now. It’s just that’s what it is.
And each one all tho those three guys you could draw them a hopper at the end of the year and say that’s the MVP. That’s the way it’s going and he’s 25. Doncic is 25.
And here’s the last thing and then I I said I would move over to the Warriors and I will because I’m just ranting about this thing because I’m getting more and more pissed off about it. It’s so stupid.
Um, the other part of this is the Mavericks according to the reports yesterday and not denied by their general manager by the way, Nico Harrison said this, so this is true. This is not reports. I should correct myself.
This is not reports. Nico Harrison said the only team that the Mavericks talked to about Luka Doncic for the Lakers. So let’s just go business 101 here. Business 101.
This is not sports. This is business 101 and you know this as well as I do. If you’re trading something like this, okay, if you got a big piece of business, would you just deal within one company
or would you deal with all the companies? What where would you get more leverage? Would you do it one-on-one with just one company even though there’s in this case 30 plus companies you could deal with or would you just say I got this this thing, all right?
It’s a very valuable product that I could sell to anybody. But I’m just going to deal with this company and whatever they want to give me back is fine. Whatever assets they have to give me in return that will work.
Or I could open it up to all the companies and say who’s going to give me the best deal. Now I understand in we say this all the time.
Sports is not real life. So a lot of times in in real life if you did open this up to everybody, it’d be big no big deal because I don’t care what that company and that industry is doing. It’s not going to make headlines to me and even if it did, it’s like whatever.
But this is done and part of this is done so that un that under the cover of night and everybody shh you heard Nico Harrison there. Hell, my coach didn’t even know. Jason Kidd who’s a point guard and a Hall of Famer himself and an NBA champion
didn’t know we were going to trade Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. He didn’t even know. Now some people are like, oh my god, how could that happen? Because that’s just how it is when the owners talk and not the GM talks. Because the GM had they done it right would have been like, hey bro,
this might happen. So back to my original thought which is you’ve got to open this up to everybody and I don’t care if Luka Doncic finds out. I don’t care if other players find out. I don’t care. That’s not my issue.
If I’m talking about trading Luka Doncic, I have a responsibility to my organization that I don’t own. I’m renting, all right? And if I want to be relevant and this is where somebody should have told her because she’s only owned this Mavericks team since December of 2023,
you will dive not only in the relevancy of the NBA, well you’ll never be on national TV. Anthony Davis does not bring eyeballs to the TV set. He does not sell tickets home and road like Luka Doncic does.
Hey, if do you ever ask yourself, hey, you know Anthony Davis is playing tonight? I want to go see Anthony Davis play? I mean, he’s okay, if but I’m going to see LeBron play. Or I’m going to see who’s on the Mavericks now? Kyrie, the ultimate Robin, Kyrie, like you just fell out of relevancy.
Now if Luka is playing for the Mavericks, Luka might do something that I’ve never seen before and yeah, I’ll buy a ticket to see Luka play. He’s one of those players which again is why he’s a number one.
But back to the point. They didn’t shop him around the league. Now maybe they couldn’t have got a better individual single player than Anthony Davis. That’s that’s possibly true.
But if you’re the Dallas Mavericks and you’ve just made this unbelievably short-term thought deal and you think that Kyrie and we’ll go over it in a minute because I want to get to the Warriors. We’ll I’ve got the rosters like I said and I’ll go over this in just a second, but I’m just on one so I apologize because the adrenaline is rushing through them where I talk about this.
How just utter stupidity it is for teams like this and it’s happened for years and years and years for these teams to serve up players on a platter to the Lakers for some unknown damn reason to just say, oh you want Kareem? Oh hey, we’re Charlotte, you want Kobe?
For New Orleans, you want Anthony Davis? So you could win the 2020 bubble title? Oh hey, you want Wilt? Who else you guys need? Anybody else? Jesus. Unbelievably these guys do this. But he didn’t shop him around the league.
So I I don’t know what you could have gotten, but at least check around the league because if you don’t get better than Anthony Davis, that’s fine. But why would you do that? And again, I’m not going to Nico Harrison who’s soon going to be fired for something that he didn’t do.
I’m going to the own new ownership of the of the Mavericks, the Addison family. You know business, you have to. You’re multi-billionaires. Miriam Addison is worth 32 billion dollars. Now Sheldon Addison, you know, how much I I don’t know.
But she’s got to be a smart business woman to some extent. She’s got to understand business 101, leverage 101. I’m not just doing a deal with one team. I’m doing I’m I’m going to ask around and whatever and if it gets out, it gets out. Sorry Luka, get in better shape.
Sorry Luka, eat less. Sorry Luka, play some defense. Sorry Luka, enough with the frown on your face. Sorry Luka, quit diving. I understand that he’s not the perfect player. But still, his value at 25 as a true number one around the league
is more than what they got as great as Anthony Davis is. It’s more than Anthony Davis who’s a really, really good first ballot Hall of Famer. All right, I think that’s enough on that because I’m going to transition this to the Warriors.
But I just went on like a 20 minute maybe more thing and everyone’s like, whoa, dude. All right, uh, let’s see what else. Kyrie can now run the team. Uh, God help us all.
I’m not a Kyrie guy. Uh, he’s look, Kyrie’s really, really good. But the difference when when somebody another thing that drives me crazy is when somebody says that Kyrie Irving is better than Steph Curry and it’s like you got to again, you’ve got to understand CEO picking order.
Kyrie Irving has never run a successful team by himself. What did he do in Brooklyn? In Cleveland, he had the he had LeBron around. What did he do in Boston? He’s had multiple opportunities. Teams have given him the keys to the car.
They’ve said, here you go. Drive the car and he drives it into the ground and he gets pissed off and he’s not he’s not CEO material at all. He’s pissy and he’s angry and he’s this and he’s that and look, I’m not saying that he that he isn’t a great, great basketball player. Again, another guy that’s going to go to the Hall of Fame, no questions asked.
But a number one is what Curry is. A number one is what LeBron is. A number one is what Durant is. A number one can carry your team and then off the court and look, Durant’s had his misgivings. There’s no question about it. Social media, he’s got rabbit ears. He’s far too sensitive.
Thin-skinned. Not saying these guys are perfect, but there are guys who get it and that’s Steph Curry. I mean, he’s the ultimate. And so for somebody to say, well, you know, Kyrie, Curry, they’re not even the same thing. Like you you wouldn’t let Kyrie Irving run your team. Now hey, we’re going to turn it over to Kyrie.
That’s why Dallas is in a hell of a lot of world of hurt. They got two really good number twos. So we’re going to the Hall of Fame, but they’re not that. They’re just not. All right. Uh,
Scott says he is late in honor of me. Thank you, Scott. I was like 12 after maybe. Uh, yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. They got better they got not better.
They’re good in the short term. Dallas is going to be in it this year, but I’m trying to understand that this versus this, this versus this, this versus this. It’s a big picture thing and I’m telling you right now, it’s this is not going to be good.
By the way, one thing that is bothering me about this trade and I promise I’ve promised you five times I would I would get this over to the Warriors. One thing that’s bothering me is everything has to be the best or the worst or the largest or the this or the that.
They’ve said this is the most shocking trade in NBA history. It’s not. No cream going from Milwaukee to LA. Barkley being traded like it it is the most seismic trade in this era in terms of social media because social media was just going bonkers.
So I’m in bed. I went to bed early. I wasn’t feeling so hot and I and my phone was going off like popcorn and I looked at it in the middle of the night and then I popped up early in the morning and did some stuff yesterday, wrote the piece at johnlundunleashed.com, all that kind of stuff.
And then did the video to accompany it and look, it’s a big trade. I’m not saying it’s not and in this day and age to be able to keep this trade this quiet is a feat in and of itself, but it’s not the biggest. It’s not the most shocking. Like all these writers, it’s the most shocking. It’s the biggest. It’s the this.
You know, Stephen A is like, oh, it’s just incredulous and it’s like, dude, like come on, you’ve been around. You’ve been on the league. So it’s big. I’m not saying it’s not, but it’s just one of those things where everything has to be the biggest, the greatest, the craziest, the most shocking and it’s like, okay.
Okay. All right, uh, let’s let’s transition this because let me transition this and let me just pop this up one more time. Just to say be this is why I did the cover of the show like I did. AD to Dallas, Luka to LA,
De Aaron Fox which we’ll get to going to the Spurs because I know we got Spurs fans that watch and Zach Levine going to Sacramento and then you got Steph Curry there and I picked out that picture on purpose to go, what the hell, bro? Like what what what the hell? And and then underneath it, Go Joe as in Joe Lacob. This is not a Mike Dunleavy thing. This it’s so funny. It’s the same kind of thing of Nico Harrison trying to hem and haw his way about probably traded him because of culture blah blah blah.
It’s like, dude, come on, man. You didn’t do anything. You just you just said, okay, I’ll phone it into the league. Um, for Joe Lacob, this is a Joe Lacob thing. It’s like Mike Mike Dunleavy stand aside.
Because there is one of two ways. They are finally at that cross
as Crossroads. They are finally at the fork in the road that with the Warriors.
to where, you know, are they gonna be young, are they gonna go to young, are they gonna stay old, are they gonna, it’s it’s time.
And this is the ultimate moment for Joe Lacob. Either you’re going to do what the Lakers did,
but you don’t have an Anthony Davis and that therein lies the problem. That Jonathan Kuminga is not Anthony Davis. Jonathan Kuminga plus
Andrew Wiggins plus Brandon Podjemski plus whatever else you wanna throw throw in there.
is not Anthony Davis. So we go from saying, how could you trade Luka for Anthony Davis? And then we look at the Warriors side and we go, they don’t have an Anthony Davis. They can’t make this kind of a move.
They can’t. They they are incapable unless they wanna move Steph Curry. And after after yesterday, did you have the same thought I did
after yesterday? If Luka can be moved at age 25, then anybody can be moved. Jokic can be moved,
Yanis can be moved, Luka got moved, uh DeAaron Fox isn’t on that level, but we’ll get into in a minute. This is I think that’s a huge move for the Spurs which affects the Warriors.
So I just scrawled this down on my piece of paper because I didn’t make a chart of it. But the I mean it I’m just I just threw about around all the names, not that any of them at a certain level. This is just thrown out and there no particular order, but Cam Johnson’s been talked about, Vucevic has been talked
about, what you get in a minute. Uh Randall with Minnesota, they’re not gonna resign him. Zion we’ve talked about at a super high level. And then you go to like Philadelphia and I know Embiid’s hurt but for years Warriors fans like Embiid, Embiid, Embiid.
Kawhi Leonard’s always hurt. I don’t think the Clippers wanna do business, but maybe they’ve reconsidered. Uh Durant, I don’t know if that would ever happen. Would you go back to marketing, Kuzma’s out there, John Collins is out there, like every to me, I just threw a bunch of names down, not that any of those necessarily makes sense.
But I threw those names all out there because if the Mavericks and the Lakers are gonna do a deal on that level, then that’s what the Warriors have to do. Like what they’re searching for and where the pain relief is in this whole thing
is that A, the Lakers just became relevant. So this trade wasn’t with the Celtics or the Knicks or somewhere it should have been if you were Dallas, you would send them to the Eastern Conference you dummies. But they didn’t. Um,
so it hurts because it’s the Lakers because it’s LA and because when Steph Curry’s gone, they’re still gonna have relevance and the Warriors haven’t found that guy and Kuminga’s not it. Kuminga’s not Luka. Kuminga could Kuminga’s not Anthony Davis. Kuminga could be a really nice player,
make the All-Star game a few times, something like that, but there’s nobody in the league that is gonna trade a Luka type player, if that was dancing through your mind. Okay, the Lakers did it, we can do it too.
And I’ve been saying this for months and months and months, years and years and years actually, where’s the bridge player? Where’s that player that’s gonna play now well and then bridge you into the future? Well, Luka clearly is at the top of that list of somebody that just did that.
And that’s what the Warriors are perpetually looking for before Steph runs out of gas. Who’s gonna be next? And we’ve debated it a million times, is it gonna be Jonathan Kuminga, but Jonathan Kuminga’s not Luka. Never gonna be Luka.
And so is there that guy? Could they could they hang on to Steph Curry somehow? And everybody else in the roster is fair game.
Is there anybody that could get Draymond Green is fair game. Jonathan Kuminga is, Andrew Wiggins is, Podjemski is, anybody, Trace Jackson Davis is, any of those guys, throw them all together, all the picks, everything to get a player
that is not Luka because I don’t think that player exists. Jokic is not coming, Yanis is not coming. Although I’d call Milwaukee now and just be like they’re they’re not gonna do it.
But still you’ve got you’ve gotta call now and this is Joe Lacob making the calls. This isn’t Mike Dunleavy or maybe Dunleavy calls and says,
Hi, is the owner there? And then he hands the the phone over to Joe Lacob to actually talk. Let let the adults talk, Mike. We’re trying to get a massive deal done here.
And I’m not talking about Vucevic and I’m not talking about Butler which we’ll get into in a second, which really tells you where the Warriors are by the way, Jimmy Butler.
And what he’s doing. But you know, this this is you’re calling these teams that you never thought, this is where I’m at with the Warriors. You’re calling these teams that you never thought you would call to talk about players you never thought you would call about
because you didn’t think they were available. But maybe the rest of the NBA just said, well, if Luka can get can get traded, so can I or so can our guy. And I don’t even mean Zion. Like Zion was the one where I thought, you know, if somebody’s gonna get moved at the deadline,
who might be a guy who could bridge now and later? Maybe it’s Zion Williamson. He’s only 24 years old, but he hasn’t accomplished near what Luka Doncic has. And Luka Doncic is only a year older than what Zion Williamson is.
He’s only three years older than what Jonathan Kuminga is and we’re waiting for Jonathan Kuminga to explode onto the scene like someday. Luka by 22 was already a superstar in the league.
So it’s you know, that’s not a fair comparison, I understand that. But if I’m Joe Lacob, now I’ve gotta try to say, okay, the Lakers bridged their gap from now to later.
So this is what they did. LeBron James, I don’t know, we’ll play this year out. I don’t know if he’ll play another one. He and Luka are very similar players. Nobody’s talking about that because look, LeBron and Luka can coexist,
but they’re best when they’re distributing the basketball, have shooters around them, they can take over the game. They’re not both neither what you would call a pure great shooter, but they’re just great basketball players and LeBron’s a better all-around player as far as he’ll play defense and all these kind of things that Luka wants, but they are similar in that they want the ball in their hands and they wanna decide.
So it’s not the perfect fit LeBron and Luka, but if you’re the Lakers you’re going we’ve got to get Luka. And it does open up an interesting question of what is this it for LeBron?
I don’t know. But is this it for the run? What about the Warriors calling and saying, okay, you got Luka, don’t you they’re kind of redundant to a certain extent, especially offensively.
How about LeBron for and then you’re not doing the future thing, you’re doing the now thing because Steph Curry has talked about it forever. Like if you’re a Warriors fan, you’d go, hey, you know, you got Luka now, you probably need some young players, only 25, you know, Kuminga at 22 and this and this and this and and we’ll make the salary match and I don’t know.
I I’m just throwing it out there. If Luka can be moved, LeBron can be moved. And there’s already a statement that the Lakers made that said, no, LeBron’s staying here. We’ll see. It’s only February 3rd today. I mean all these fireworks happened before the deadline even happened.
Today’s February 3rd, right? Anyway, all right. I keep saying I’m not gonna talk about that then I’m just like, oh my god, this thing is crazy. Here’s what’s scary for the Warriors. They the what they’re gonna do, go Joe aside.
I don’t know that I don’t think there’s a move out there to this level that can do what the Lakers just did, which is what I’ve been asking for for years, which is the now and the later kind of like the candy, the now and the later. That’s what that’s what Luka is. They don’t have a later.
They don’t have a later like that. All right, uh this has got to be concerning to Warriors fans even more than Luka going to the Lakers, which is this.
And this really tells you that your era is over. Jimmy Butler who’s the biggest pain in the ass right now in all of the NBA and he’s trying to force his way out of Miami.
And to me all he has on his mind is getting that extension at the age of 35 and it’d be nice if he could make a nice little run in addition to that.
But uh my name is Jimmy Butler as you can see on the screen there and for the Warriors that he’s not interested in signing an extension with them leading to a halt in trade discussions with Golden State for the time being according to Windhorst, Windy.
Um, that’s concerning on a number of different levels and I’ll tell you why. First of all,
this guy is um the most toxic player in the NBA right now. He’s just trying to force his way out of South Beach. We know, we’ve had the discussion a million times. So the most
toxic player in the NBA who might just have to end up being released because Miami’s so sick of him. I don’t think so. I think that Pat Riley if it gets to that is gonna pull an AD and just say you’re away from the team. Um, we don’t want you here.
You can get away from us. We won’t talk about you anymore. We’re not gonna answer questions about you anymore once you’re gone. We’re gonna suspend you without pay the rest of the season and then he can be somebody else’s problem at the end of the year. I think they’re gonna try to trade him obviously. There’s not much leverage.
They’re not gonna get much in return. You’ve got to try to match the salaries as I said as I said last week within 25% $100,000 and Jimmy Butler makes nearly $50 million dollars, so good luck with that.
But apparently the with the Warriors despite all this toxicity were ready to potentially bring Jimmy Butler into the fold. That’s how desperate the Warriors are. And obviously that wouldn’t accomplish the goal I think of the now and the later.
But he’s 35 years old and he would help, but not for and I said this last week, I think I said it Friday, not for Andrew Wiggins because that’s where you’d have to start the conversation because Wiggins makes about 28 million.
So the conversation would have to start with Wiggins. Uh certainly wouldn’t include Kuminga given the way that Butler has acted, maybe at one point it would have, but not now.
GP2 would probably have to be in it. Looney would have to be in it. I mean you’d have to gut a large part of your team plus give up Wiggins who is actually better than Jimmy Butler.
So it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, but let me focus on the Butler side of this thing. Jimmy Butler told the Golden State Warriors, Jimmy Butler the most toxic player in the NBA,
told the Golden State Warriors, nah, I’m good. As much as I want out of Miami and as much as I want an extension, which I believe he wants an extension more than a championship because he’s 35 and this is his last big payday, he wants an extension more than the championship, more than the run.
And he told the Warriors, no. If they were in their prime, if this was five, six years ago, Jimmy Butler would be scratching and clawing and fighting to get to the Warriors. He doesn’t want anything to do with the Warriors. Why? Because he sees where they’re going. He sees that they’re in 11th place in the Western Conference and I play on Friday, I showed you all of the NBA just to have you go, whoa.
I mean they’re like 18th or whatever they were in the NBA. I mean this is where they are right now and this is all Jimmy Butler has to see. Jimmy Butler is looking at the Golden State Warriors at 24 and 24,
out of the Western Conference playing let alone the playoffs. But as I showed you last week, 14 13 home, 10 and 11 away, 17 16 conference, 111.3 scored, 111.6 given up, five and five in their last 10,
the dictionary definition of mediocre and middle of the road, which in professional sports is called purgatory. That’s where the Warriors find themselves, not bad enough to get a great player in the draft, not good enough to be one player away unless that player is Luka Doncic, which already went to LA.
So that’s where they are. And then here’s the scary part and we’re gonna put up uh we’re gonna talk about the DeAaron Fox trade in just a second for our Kings fans.
Here’s the scary part. Uh Mavericks short term because Luka was out, they’re they’re not bad. Uh Phoenix, do I expect them to do anything in the oh, possibly. Minnesota’s a mess, shouldn’t have traded Cap, we know that. The Clippers are somehow getting it done because Norman Powell is
having the year of his life even though out Kawhi and uh and you got the James Harden there who’s getting older and the hairline recedes, but they continue to go. The Lakers are gonna get better now, 28 and 19. The Nuggets, the Rockets, the Grizzlies and the Thunder, the the Warriors can’t even breathe that rare air.
But let’s look at the teams around them now because we’re like, okay, well, can they can they catch some of these teams after all? The difference between the Clippers at 21 losses and six and the Warriors at 24 losses. I don’t know, I’m not a math guy, but that’s only three games
with 34 games to go. So it’s not like it’s out of the realm. But Dallas short term with with Davis are they definitely better than the Warriors? The Kings, they got worse.
Um, we’ll get to that in a second. I don’t I don’t get it. They’re perpetually rebuilding and I understand moving DeAaron Fox and I understand he’s pissed,
but I don’t get the returns. Zach Levine’s a nice player having a nice year, but that’s just that’s not worthy in that return. But then the scariest part to me is look what the Spurs just did at 21 and 25. So they’re one game in the loss column behind you
and they just added DeAaron Fox and they really didn’t have to give up anything. I mean they gave up picks in this three-way deal, but that young core that they had in place is still in place and I’m gonna get to in a minute. Don’t be shocked if the Spurs said, okay,
we’ve got DeAaron Fox, that’s nice. They could still add another piece. They could be a dark horse in the Jimmy Butler sweepstakes, especially if he were released. People want to play, players want to play still for Greg Popovich and this is a great move and people are gonna wanna play, players are gonna wanna play with Victor Wembanyama. So
are the Spurs with the addition of Fox better than the Warriors? I don’t know. We’ll go through the we’ll go through the rosters in just a second. We’ll go through the lineups in just a second. But believe me, the Spurs now are gonna be right on the Warriors butt or ahead of them the rest of the season. So maybe,
just maybe they’re in 11th right now, they could be in 12th. They could be the 12th best team in the Western Conference. So Jimmy Butler looks at that and says, why would I wanna go there? I don’t wanna go to the the Warriors, they’re on the downside.
That’s what Jimmy Butler just told the Warriors. The Warriors he should be begging the Warriors. Oh god, I wanna get out of Miami so bad. I want that extension so bad.
Please come get me Warriors, two or three years ago, let alone five years ago. Jimmy Butler would have been just oh my god, get me to Northern California. We were the it place. And now the Lakers have secured that for the ten next 10 or 12 years in the West on the West Coast
and the Warriors are again the Warriors and I mean that in a negative sense. I don’t mean that uh since they started winning championships and being a threat. I’m talking about for some of the younger demographic, you don’t remember this, but they were terrible for years, a laughing stock.
That’s where they’re going. Jimmy Butler who the Warriors should say, do we even want Jimmy Butler? Says, by the way, no. That’s like when you’re in high school, somebody you weren’t even gonna ask to the dance, walks and stops you in the hallway and says, by the way, I would never go to the dance with you.
Don’t ask. It’s like I I wasn’t gonna ask. I wasn’t gonna ask you. Like Jimmy Butler told you, no thanks. And the Warriors like, well, we’re not your antics you you don’t want what do you mean you don’t want us? I you’re firing me, I quit. I mean that’s the kind of thing this is. Jimmy Butler is saying no to the Warriors.
That tells you where the Warriors are right now and that’s gotta be ultra depressing to Steph Curry because if Butler won’t come, who will? Now you gotta come if you’re traded, but if you’re in the last year of a deal or something that range,
where’s the thing themselves, well we can get Butler. I mean God, they have no leverage whatsoever and Jimmy wants the hell out of Miami. But Jimmy’s saying,
I’d rather have this hell that I created in South Beach than go to Northern California. What does that tell you about your organization and where you are and what your team is thought of around the league? Well, all you gotta do is look at the standings. So,
let’s take a breath. And this is the the deadline hasn’t hit here yet. All right, uh let me go down to let’s see where are we on the screen. By the way, episode 49, thanks for joining us. John Lund Unleashed.
Uh getting a little heated about the uh Luka trade to the Lakers for Anthony Davis. And again, if you think that this is a great move for Dallas, you can disagree with me 100%. I’m just showing you the bigger trying to show you the bigger picture and why this is such a bad move.
So what a one is we went through Lakers, we went through they are now relevant again and will be on your TV screen nationally no less than 80 times, especially when NBC gets the news deal. Mavericks trying to cover their ass. That was Nico Harrison, their general manager who had nothing to do with the deal to be honest with you,
except for maybe picking up the phone and sending it into the league. Uh the Warriors side of this thing, Jimmy Butler, I threw a bunch of names out for the Warriors. I don’t know that Joe can get this done, not Mike, Joe.
Uh so we could go to Super Bowl 59 week, but I’m not quite there yet. Let me uh there’s a couple of things we need to do first. Okay, let’s look at um let’s have some fun.
Let’s look at depth charts, all right? So this is what the Warriors depth chart. Now this doesn’t have Kuminga on it because he’s hurt.
But it what I try to do in this is just to look at this and say, let’s be realistic because you can’t really they always say that the eye in the sky never lies when you’re watching like training camp or something and the same thing is here. You can we can sit there and speculate and say, man, this team’s not that bad.
Now throw Kuminga in the mix. So let’s throw I don’t know. Uh well, I guess he’s gonna be coming off the bench in this scenario. So Curry, Schroeder, which we told you about wasn’t gonna have that great of an impact even though people thought he would, but we told you that
around here. Uh Wiggins having a great year, Draymond Green is injured, Trace Jackson Davis is okay. Uh I didn’t think he would make that great big jump and he hasn’t. Podjemski has been better since he’s been back. I’m a Moody guy, Heild it tells you where your team is basically when you have them on your roster.
Uh slowmo just okay. I knew that that wouldn’t be any big deal. I love Kavan Looney as a person, then you go back to the you know, whatever. And you can add Jonathan Kuminga to that, it’s not gonna really change like if Vegas like if you saw yesterday the Lakers,
Vegas odds changed like if you put Kuminga back on this roster when he gets healthy. I mean the to the the odds change in Vegas because Jonathan Kuminga’s on the roster? No. I mean they’re better. Don’t get me wrong. He’s the first guy off the bench or you find a way to start him. Draymond doesn’t wanna play the five, so
whatever. But so you know, he’s gonna get his 28 minutes a night and and there’s that. So that’s the Warriors roster. So then let’s start back up the top. This is the this is the Lakers roster. Now look, they don’t have the most depth in the league
and Luka and LeBron are redundant offensively to a certain extent. So I don’t know who’s gonna play off the ball. That’s gonna be interesting. But Luka, Reeves, Hachimura, LeBron, Jackson Hayes, I’m not a huge fan of they don’t they’re not gonna play him a ton.
Not a great bench. Uh they did lose uh they did lose the kid out of Michigan State Max Christie in this move and he’s he’s come along decently. I would have asked for connecting this deal if I were the if I were the Mavericks, I would ask for a little bit more, but
not great bench. Vincent, connect, Vanderbilt, Finney Smith, what they’re gonna do is because and this is again the part that’s scary is that now with Luka they’re gonna be part of the buyout market. Players are gonna wanna come to LA. So that bench will probably add a player or two.
So that’s the depth chart as far as the Lakers are concerned. This is the Mavericks depth chart now. And Anthony Davis will get his wish because he’s not gonna have to play the five which he doesn’t like playing. Gafford is a nice player, Davis, Clay, Grimes, Kyrie. It’s not a terrible team. In fact, that team could challenge in the Western Conference.
Short term, it’s not a bad deal. You see Christie in there. Dinwiddie’s not a bad player. PJ Washington was a nice add last year when they got him at the deadline. So again, I’m not saying that’s a bad team, it’s not a bad team.
I’m saying big picture, it’s a bad trade. Kings depth chart now. Um if you’re a Kings fan, this has gotta pain you. So Malik Monk, Levine, DeRozan, Murray, Sabonis. That’s not a horrible starting five.
I would debate whether that’s uh better than what the Warriors have. Monk, Levine, having the kind of year he’s having, DeRozan. It was funny yesterday I saw all these people going, Levine and DeRozan are back together again.
They didn’t do anything when they were on the Bulls. Who would be excited about that? Like oh boy, they’re you know on social media they’re showing in their Bulls garb and it’s like, okay, great. They didn’t win anything. They didn’t do anything. Wonderful if I’m a Kings fan.
Um and then let’s go to the Spurs because this is a team that is right on the Warriors tail as is without DeAaron Fox. They didn’t have to give up a bunch of young players. Castle was the guy, Stefan Castle, the rookie was the player that apparently the Kings wanted
and could not pry from them, which is why it was a three-team trade with Levine. So you see Fox there, you see our old friend Harrison Barnes there, but it’s Victor Wembanyama finally getting a true Robin because there’s a bunch of young players on this team as you can see there. Johnson,
but it’s Victor Wembanyama finally getting a true Robin because there’s a bunch of young players on this team as you can see there.
is young, uh, Vassell is young, Sochan is young. Now they it’s a young team, but here’s what they’ve done.
And this is what’s scary again to the rest of the Western Conference, but in the short term to the Warriors.
They didn’t give anything up really of their young players and so what they could do is they could still package some of these young players, a player or two and get another player.
Now I don’t think they’re gonna go I don’t think they’re gonna do that only because they do want to kind of grow this thing and they probably want to have some sort of continuity much like when the Warriors were young.
But Wembanyama at some point in his career, sooner rather than later at the age of 21 is going to be one of those number one players that I discussed. He’s just too talented not to be and he’s polished for a 21-year-old. So Wembanyama and Fox are gonna grow together and whatever those other pieces play like together,
we’ll see. But Castles are really young a nice player that that people like. Johnson’s not a bad player. I mentioned the other guys.
Chris Paul is a veteran presence on that team. So he’s not gonna start anymore. So they’ve got kind of a nice little mix there and they don’t want to screw it up by becoming too impatient,
but I do think that there’s probably another move to be made for the for the Spurs to get them even better, which is scary.
So that’s a nice team and that’s a team that in right behind the Warriors could absolutely push the Warriors out of the playoffs.
So that’s the Spurs side of things. So I’d love to get your thoughts on it. Showed you the Warriors depth chart, showed you the
Spurs, showed you the Kings, showed you the Lakers. This makes me vomit and showed you the Mavericks who are not gonna be a bad team short term. They aren’t gonna be a bad team short term.
And Anthony Davis is a really nice player and having Kyrie to Anthony Davis is nice, but to me those are two really high-end Robins and there’s not a Batman to be found on that team.
So that’s kind of the the the NBA side of things and give me your thought. Is there now that they’ve opened up Pandora’s box here
and decided why not? Luka can be traded, anybody can be traded. Is there somebody Is there I don’t care if it’s honest. I mean it’s been talked about for years. I think the first thing I do
if I’m Joe Lacob, I’m sure he’s already done it because what are we at? 9:13 in the morning. Milwaukee times like 11:13. Just you you’ve got to check in with everybody
because it still blows my mind that Dallas just did business business 101 that Dallas just did business with the Lakers. They approached the Lakers and said, hey,
yeah, we know that there’s 30 other teams out there, but we want to just deal with you guys. We just want to do business with one team. That’s what we think is gonna work best. Leverage, ever heard of it,
but they didn’t. So if you don’t ask, you never get an answer, right? You gotta ask. Everybody knows that in business. It’s the most basic principle. If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no.
Hey Joe and sales, if you don’t ask, the answer’s always no.
So get on the phones. I don’t care if it’s interns. Hi, would you trade so and so? Hi, this is intern Bob. Hold on, Joe Lacob, you know, hand the phone to Joe at that point. Call canvas everybody. Ask about everybody.
Hell, you never know. They just traded 25-year-old Luka Dončić, one of like five franchise pillars in the league. Anybody could be traded.
I don’t know. Maybe someone’s drinking at 9 o’clock in the morning like I always say.
The Lakers must know when people are drinking. That’s all I know. Through the years, they must know when the Bucks were drinking, when the Sixers were drinking, when the Hornets were drinking, when the Pelicans were drinking and now when the Mavs were drinking.
Hey uh, we got some intel. They’re actually the owners. Miriam Adelson, the owner of the Mavericks, she’s uh she’s had eight Martinis. It’d be a great time to call her and ask her about Luka.
Like I don’t know how they keep doing it through the years, but they keep fleecing teams and they keep selling re saying relevant and the NBA is going, woohoo!
Because now they’re relevant in LA again. Now they have just said, hey LeBron, we love you. Hang out for the rest of this year, no problem, but you gotta find another place to be next year if you want to play. Like that was cool playing with, you know, Bronny and everything. We’re moving on.
We need your contract. We need money. We’re building around Luka.
Man, he must feel terrible today. Luka’s gonna, by the way, LeBron, Luka is going to dominate the basketball. You gotta find a way. You go stand in the corner. I’m just kidding.
And you didn’t uh didn’t LeBron in New York have a triple double the other day? Wasn’t it like yesterday? Wasn’t it like 33, 12 and 11 or 33, 11 and 12?
But he’s not done. And I say this all the time. I’m not a huge just LeBron guy off the off the court, the crown, the Taco Tuesday, the whole nine yards.
But you can’t deny what he’s doing at 40. Nobody’s ever ever done.
Oh my gosh, whatever. Uh let’s see. That’s a great call right there.
Can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning. I was in London, like I told you with the Raiders back in 2014 and they had a big sign.
I was going to eat get breakfast and there’s a big sign on a chalkboard that said that and I said, you know what? That’s where I’m having breakfast today.
It worked. It worked on me. It was like 9 in the morning. I go, is right now and they went, you know what?
It said, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning and I thought, okay. All right. That’s what I’m gonna do. That sign worked and I went in there and I had a wonderful breakfast. I don’t remember what I had and I do remember it was really good and I did probably start drinking at 9 o’clock in the morning.
Uh hi Jacob. Yep, this is another problem the Western Conference for the aging Warriors. Spurs is gonna be a problem. OKC is a problem. Houston looks to be becoming a problem.
By the way, they could have had Sengun instead of Moses Moody who I really like, just saying.
Uh yeah, there’s a lot of problems. There’s not only and I’ll pop this up. I I know you don’t want to see it again. I understand.
But if we go through what you just said, Jacob, and you’re right. OKC’s a problem. Memphis getting Ja back, we knew that would be a problem. Houston is ahead of schedule
and has a lot of nice young talent and at some point they’re gonna make a move for a really, really, really good player and trade some of that young talent.
The Nuggets are maybe not at their pinnacle, but certainly a lot better and they have Jokic and I would call Denver about Jokic, but they’ll say no, laugh and it doesn’t matter if they’ve been drinking. They’re not that drunk.
Uh the Lakers we just talked about ad nauseam. The Clippers, Minnesota’s in a weird place. They just screwed up big time trading Cat. I don’t I have no idea what they’re doing. You could call them and ask them about Julius Randle, but he’s not gonna fix what ails the Warriors.
Uh Phoenix is Phoenix. They’re probably the other than the Warriors the most pissed off team today because Kevin Durant’s going, what in the hell, bro?
Uh he’s got Bradley Beal. They’re stuck with him. Bradley Beal and LeBron James, the only two players in the league with with a no-trade clause. So Beal has to uh approve anywhere he goes.
What an awful trade that turned out to be. Dallas short term is better.
Uh the Kings we just showed you their depth chart. That’s an interesting team even without De’Aaron Fox and maybe for some teams it’s addition by subtraction, but long term it’s not.
Then the Warriors and then like we just showed you the Spurs, which it might be this year, but it’s certainly gonna be next year and past. They’re gonna be better than the Warriors.
Uh the De’Aaron Fox deal how they did it without giving up a primary player in their rotation is beyond me, but that’s why they got a third team and they gave up a bunch of picks and so forth.
Uh and Chicago got those picks not Sacramento. So if I was a Kings fan today, I’d be like, what did we just give up or get for De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, whom nobody wanted a year ago.
He’s had a nice bounce back year. I’ll give him tons of credit, but nobody he was the worst many people thought that was the worst contract in the league a year ago.
And now he’s getting he now he’s he’s the main piece back to Sacramento for De’Aaron Fox. So for our Kings fans, I wish I could be more optimistic. I feel the same way
about that trade as I feel about the Lakers getting Luka, which is you have a superstar player in De’Aaron Fox. Now again, he’s not a number one. That’s how rare these are. He’s not a number one.
He’s a really, really nice player, but he’s not on the level of Luka. He’s not on the level of where Steph was. He’s not on the level of where LeBron was. He’s not he’s not any of those, but he’s a really good player
and he’s exactly what the Spurs need with Wembanyama. Can you imagine and we’re gonna see this very soon. De’Aaron Fox jetting through the lane,
drawing the defense and him flipping the ball up in the air to Wembanyama for a for a uh an amazing dunk off an alley. Like
you kidding? And that’s why he wanted to go there. You heard him again. I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. If I’m Sacramento, I’m going, you’re an ass and that’s not where we’re sending you. We’re sending you where we want to
send you. But uh that’s a great move for San Antonio and it’s gonna be a great move for a long time and he’s the perfect complement to Victor Wembanyama. It’s a great move for San Antonio and
it’s gonna hurt the Warriors. So you asked the question, Jacob, you start looking at the Western Conference now.
Thunder on the way up, Grizzlies on the way up, Houston on the way up, Nuggets are probably if we had that plus minus probably right in the middle.
Lakers on the way up. Clippers, I have no idea how they’re doing what they’re doing, but they are.
Minnesota on the way down, Phoenix on the way down, Dallas short term on the way up, Sacramento probably the arrow going down, but not like not down to where like Portland is or Utah is or New Orleans is.
Uh the Warriors arrow going down, Spurs arrow going up. If I played that, you know, the up and down like the stock. So that’s not good. And I’ll go back to one of the original things that I said, which is
how do the Warriors find their Luka? How do they find him? They don’t have an Anthony Davis to give up. Kuminga’s not thought of that way around the league. You can put also we’d like to do this as fans. Okay, if
one player is not worth Luka, then five are. No, that doesn’t work that way. It’s not about how many you give up, it’s about the quality of the player that you give up. And Wiggins and Kuminga and Podžemski and whoever else you want to throw in there, it doesn’t equal a player
that’s the equal to you know, Luka.
Dončić or anybody like that.
Yeah, you’re exactly right. Let me pop this up. Let me get my Let me get that off the screen there.
Um, this is 100% correct and this is why the big deal for Sacramento. They got Fox without giving up two really good players. And if I’m if I’m Sacramento,
I’ve got the leverage. You should have the leverage over San Antonio. They really wanted De’Aaron Fox. Now I know Fox wasn’t gonna sign an extension, I understand that.
Good point M easy because you’ve got to get one of those players.
And I I have nothing against This is not a Zach LaVine rant. This is not an anti-Zach LaVine. This is not that at all.
But I’m I’m simply saying that a year ago, this was an untradeable contract, Zach LaVine.
A year ago was seen as one of the worst, if not the worst contract in the league and all of a sudden it’s not. And he’s supposed to be it’s sold to me if I’m a Kings fan as an asset, as a building block.
I tried to sign him in 2018 if I’m the Kings. This is 2025. That’s seven years ago.
He’s a nice player. He’s an all-star caliber player.
He’s not De’Aaron Fox. He doesn’t have the upside and as the Kings often do, especially under this ownership group,
it’s a mismatch of players. Nobody fits. They don’t fit.
It’s not fantasy basketball. You’ve got to have fit.
And that’s where if you wanna poke a hole in the Lakers deal for Luka, at least short-term with LeBron, it’s not a fit, but long-term, it’s a massive deal for the Lakers.
In relevancy, uh TV executives, winning long-term players coming to play for the Lakers. It’s all those things that I’ve already discussed and you can go back to the beginning of the show
of why even though Anthony Davis is a Hall of Famer, a first ballot Hall of Famer, a ten-time all-star, a champion, whether you won a minute in 2020, all defensive team, all those things, he’s not Luka. He’s not on that elite elite elite elite level.
He’s not a true number one like that. Now short-term Dallas can be good.
I’ve repeated myself on that so I won’t say it again, but from the Kings standpoint,
you just got a contract that was untradeable
and you’re gonna try to sell to your fanbase, which is a knowledgeable fanbase.
Yeah, this is a good move for us. Now a good move for you is to say, look,
this version of our team is just like the version that the Warriors have, purgatory, middle. That’s purgatory in the NBA.
Middle. You’re in the middle.
So when you trade De’Aaron Fox, your goal should be, let’s get the best young players that the Spurs have. Let’s get a bunch of picks.
So uh some bonus is a really nice piece. We still have some really nice pieces here to build around.
But let’s swing for the fences and get superstars. Zach LaVine is not that. What do the Bulls ever want?
Like that’s if I was if I was in Sacramento today, that’s the first thing I’d do is, hey, DeRozan and and Zach LaVine are back together again.
Yeah, they sucked in Chicago. Quit showing me them in their Bulls uniforms.
I don’t want them back together. They didn’t win anything.
It wasn’t a great era. It’s not gonna be remembered as a great era in Chicago. So now they’ve been reunited
on this team, so this team could be mediocre too. You’re in sports purgatory just like the Warriors.
If you’re trading De’Aaron Fox, you’ve gotta get lottery tickets back.
So that you might be able to be really, really good because you’re in the middle now. And where does Zach LaVine put you?
In the middle, but even maybe even a little bit lower. But not bad enough that where you could go back into the lottery with lots of picks that you should have gotten
and a player or two from the Spurs who are really, really young and have talent.
And either they develop that talent, which I suspect they may, but I think there there’ll be one more move for them
to consolidate even a little bit more before the trade deadline today’s February 3rd. The deadline, even though we went bananas on all this
is February 6th, so we’re not even up to the trade deadline.
Let me play this for you. And then I promise we are a minute thirteen into the uh into the show today on a Monday. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for putting up with me. I did this whole show yesterday, a different show
just more about the trade of Luka and Anthony Davis and you can go and watch that one on YouTube. Also I’ve got uh that up on a podcast, Apple, Spotify, your favorite podcast and I have the article to match
at johnlundunleashed.com johnlundunleashed.com on the blog which you should be checking out and it’s got all of our social media so you can
subscribe to everything as you should be doing subscribing to the channel. So I’ll get out to the uh to the
comments in just a second and oh by the way, speaking of comments.
You can leave them on the website, you can leave them here during or after the show. You can hit me up at johnlundradio on Instagram and on X
and I’ll get back to uh all of the best comments. If you just say you’re a jackass,
I get enough of those and I probably won’t get back to you on that one, but anything with some thought behind it,
whether it’s positive, negative, whether you agree or disagree, you know that around here uh I will respond.
Here is Shams yesterday on ESPN with the news. Watch this.
Anthony Davis, LeBron James to play out there and you saw two teams and Rob Pelinka with the Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Nico Harrison there doing this deal and I’m told Luka Dončić, Anthony Davis, LeBron James, the players, coaches, a lot of people on both sides with the Mavericks and Lakers had no idea. I can assuredly tell you, it’s a fact, LeBron James had no idea this was coming. Anthony Davis had no idea this was coming. I’m told Luka Dončić is still stunned about this trade, but when you look at the totality of what just occurred, Luka Dončić is a 25-year-old, like you said, mega star, uh you know, perennial All-NBA player. He’s someone that you think of as untouchable as a guy that’s never gonna be traded. I’m told that the Mavericks actually approached the Lakers and offered Luka Dončić a few days ago in a trade. Uh very recently the Mavericks went out, they knew exactly who they wanted. They wanted Anthony Davis. That’s the player that if they were ever gonna trade Luka Dončić, this was even a thought that was gonna cross. Alright, hang on a second. Uh look at that background by the way. That’s a That’s like a that’s a well-manicured background. And I do believe is that Marcus Thompson’s Dynasty’s book back there? I think it might be.
Alright, a couple of things there.
Uh sorry about that. There we go. Uh a couple of things here. He’s I I know what he’s being told and I understand how the game is done with insiders, but first and foremost,
a few things he said that that are like, what?
If LeBron James didn’t know about the deal, that’s bad news for LeBron James because
LeBron James is the general manager of the Warriors more than Rob Pelinka is and this tells you again, this was done at the ownership level, not at the local level. So anybody who says that Rob Pelinka and Nico Harrison and Raven Coffee and hatched this whole thing, it’s just not accurate.
This is a brand new owner for the Warriors or for the uh Mavericks in the Addison group getting fleeced because they’ve only owned this team since 2023 of December and don’t realize
how important number one players not only in Dallas where football rules is so important, but in the rest of the NBA where they just put themselves out of relevancy and put the Lakers on your television set on national TV
uh now with the new NBC deal, probably 80 times and other platforms and so on and so forth. I’m slightly exaggerating over the 80, but not by much.
And so they’ve given themselves relevancy for the next ten to twelve to fifteen years and that’s why it’s such a bad trade
for the Mavericks. Short-term fine, long-term disaster.
But the other thing, so LeBron didn’t know about the trade. If that is accurate, then they’re phasing LeBron James out and this could be his last year in LA and to the Warriors say, well jeez, since you’ve already got
two ball-dominant players, we’ll give you a boatload for LeBron and then Curry gets what he wants and Curry and LeBron will go for it. Now will that team actually win?
Probably not. But you want a seismic trade that can help Steph Curry be a little happier than he is? Maybe that’s the one. Maybe you wanna puke on that. I totally understand that.
But everything should be on the table as far as the Warriors are concerned and the other thing is I I keep saying that this is not done at a GM level.
Um did Anthony Davis not know? Yeah, you can’t tell Anthony Davis.
Um did Luka not know? Well, Luka didn’t seem too unhappy when he left the a private plane walking down those stairs and he did the LA thing.
He seemed fine with it and I’m sure that his endorsements will go up and his and his uh Q rating will go up and all those things as great as Luka Dončić is.
And as much as you can be a global superstar anywhere now in any sport because of the reach that social media has given everybody. You know, Giannis Antetokounmpo years ago. That’s why Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went from the Bucks to the Lakers because Kareem’s like, I can never be a super a true true superstar in Milwaukee. You kidding me back in the day? He wanted to be in the Lakers. Same thing with Shaq. Shaq’s like, I’m in Orlando. How everybody? Orlando’s known for Disney World. I’m not staying here.
I’m going to LA. So you don’t necessarily have to do that, but there still is an element of Luka’s in Dallas, Luka’s in Texas where football is king and now he’s in LA.
There still is that. So that’s gonna help him immensely and as I said, it’s gonna make you vomit, it’s gonna make you nauseous and it probably already has and it hasn’t even started.
LeBron’s not even gone yet. And you’re thinking to yourself, hey, you know what? The Lakers gonna be irrelevant in three, two, one. What the? And now all of a sudden it’s ten, twelve, fifteen years and you gotta be like, oh my god.
All the Laker fans are gonna invade our arena when Steph is gone, it’s gonna go back to the way it was. Remember how nice it was when it there wasn’t as many and even if there were a lot, they kinda had their head down like, damn, the Warriors are kicking our ass.
Not anymore. They’re gonna be back in droves with their front runner stuff and their starter jackets and their you know all that kind of stuff and LA and and Kobe jerseys and Luka jerseys and and Shaq jerseys and they’re gonna be back. They’re gonna invade everybody’s arena again.
Just when we thought it was close to the end.
Nope, just starting. It’s like a video game and and your the player that you’re playing gets pissed off and hits reset. You’re like, bro, come on, man.
You were like 90% of the way there and then somebody hit reset on you on the video game and you went, uh, we gotta start all over. We gotta go through this again. Yep, again and again and again and again.
Like I said, from Wilt to Kareem to Magic to it is they just they just get moves, they make moves, they get trades, people get
get drunk. They traded with the Lakers, they kept they keep putting that up there through the years just again and again and again and again.
Tries to be crazy.
All right. Am I done yet? Yeah.
Let me let me check what people are saying and then we’ll get into we’re down at the bottom. I already did the Butler thing if you just joined us. Jimmy Butler, the most toxic player in all the NBA who you wouldn’t want to touch. Says, oh yeah, I don’t want to touch you. How about that Warriors?
Oh yeah, you quit, I’m firing you. I’m fired, I quit. Like they’re just like, what? You’re Jimmy you you’re toxic Jimmy. Like you don’t say no to us, we say no to you. Nope.
Sorry. Don’t want to be on the Warriors. I want an extension really, really bad. I’ve acted like a spoiled child for this entire season because I want an extension.
But I don’t want an extension with you. Where does that tell you where the Warriors are?
Not good. Not good.
All right. Take a breath. Oh God, it’s so wonderful to see everybody over here. Look at this.
Skillz Report. Skillz is the best because what he does is he takes this uh this dollar amount that is strange and it always gets me thinking. $3.96 from our good friend Skillz Report.
Word is, AD fell over after learning of the trade. What, you didn’t have a dream? Come on, Skillz.
Um, I’m sure. Uh, the word was is that uh Anthony Davis was all cool with it and all that kind of stuff and I’m thinking to myself, come on, man. He was not cool.
He’s not cool to go from LA to Texas where football is king. You know, he’s not. I mean short term again, it’s not a horrible move short term. Just long term, he’s like, come on, man. I was in LA.
Uh, here we go. See, there you go. Pick 11 for Myles Garrett. I don’t think Cleveland would do that, but the Luka trade just happened. And I know it’s a totally different sport, but now it’s like anything could happen.
I’d offer more than 11. I mean, let’s go over the picks and believe me, I love the draft. I would trade 11, I would trade one and two for Myles Garrett. Myles Garrett opposite Nick Bosa? Yes, please.
There are certain things and and you want to talk about and it’s different the NFL, you you don’t have true ones like that, but you do have true Alphas and Myles Garrett’s an Alpha. Like Myles Garrett and Nick Bosa on teams are going, oh God.
Now financially, yeah, that probably doesn’t work, but who knows? I mean it it the I said this last week that 49ers do as good of a job as anybody in massaging and manipulating the salary cap. They carried over $50 million from last season to this season. Did Parrag Maratha and company. Brilliance.
So everybody’s freaking out over over uh Brock Purdy. I get it and we’re gonna have this conversation again and again and again and again and again and again. But for them to carry over that kind of money,
and I’m not believe me. And this is by the way the best way to change the topic because I I I get to these and I get to everybody, but I definitely get to these, but um I’d do that in a heartbeat and I would I’d give up two. Cleveland wouldn’t do that.
But it depends on where Cleveland is. I mean Cleveland is a hot mess. Hot mess. Jess, man, you’re right. Miriam Adelson asked Mark Davis for advice.
Yeah, look, you know when we have these I’m glad that I’m glad that you’re all here today because every day. But what it does is it sends me on these interesting tangents to me.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, I say this all the time. It’s kind of a there are certain things about the show that are kind of baseline parts of the show.
And this will never change, which is bad ownership, bad leadership in any walk of life, business, uh personal, whatever the case may be, you just can’t avoid it. So if you’re a bad team, just look to the ownership. And that’s just what it is. Look to the ownership group.
Whether you’re good, whether you’re bad, it starts at the top. The Raiders will never be good with Mark Davis. That’s just how it is. I like Pete Carroll and I think he’s a really good coach and I think he could change the culture of the Raiders, but Mark Davis is always gonna screw something up and it’s the same thing.
Mark Cuban would never have made this trade. He gets the rules. You don’t trade anybody like that and you don’t trade anybody like that to in the prime of their career an A1 type of a player, an A plus one player.
Like Luka Dončić at 25 who’s gonna get better to the Lakers. You don’t trade them. You don’t give up relevancy not only in your own market as I said, Dallas is not relevant in its own market now because football is king. Give me a spring game in any college, give me high school football on a Friday night.
Give me the Cowboys, give me the Texans, give me give me anybody, give me anything. And then the Mavericks are down here. When they have Luka, when they have Dirk, when they win championships, when they win 67 games, I was there. And then now it’s like who the who? Yeah, the Mavericks, they played bad, you know, they Cuban used to own them and not familiar. But now the Cowboys, you want to talk about that?
Texans, you want to talk about that? Texas, you want to talk about that? TCU, you want to talk about that? Oklahoma, you want to talk about that? Like they’re all over that. It’s just you don’t get it, lady. You don’t get what you just did. Not to the you did it to the rest of the league.
You did it to your state, you did it to your city. You just Cuban got it. And whoever did make this first call, maybe it was um maybe it was the Mavericks. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, whatever the case may be.
The thing I find so funny and we keep going back to this is that somehow he’s getting knocked for culture all these things. He dragged you kicking and screaming to the NBA finals last year at the age of 24. You had a LeBron Cavs roster and you’ve got to the finals.
Yeah, we can’t have that guy around. What are you kidding? Ridiculous. All right, let’s do a little bit of uh NFL stuff. It is Super Bowl 59 week. And I will go back to the the thoughts here. They’re all right in front of me, so I’ll get back to it, but real quick.
Uh, it is Super Bowl 59 week. We will provide you with tremendous coverage. Uh, we have guests lined up. We have a daily starting tomorrow because I knew it would be NBA heavy today with these trades and everything coming up. And if anything breaks, certainly we will do that. Is anything broken today?
Now that I mentioned it because I’m not even looking at Twitter/X right now or wherever you want to find your breaking news and I want to make sure that nothing is breaking here.
And by the way, we are on X, we are on Instagram as well, but let me just double check because yesterday was so bananas that I’m like I’m not even looking to see if there’s any more trades today. Just want to make sure.
Okay, we’re good. Let me know if anything’s happening. There’s uh there’s Oh, look at this. There you go. Well, you you must have known this.
Uh, okay, we’re gonna put this up. Myles Garrett requested trade from Cleveland. Hold on a second. Hang on, I know we have double audio going. The 49ers. Ooh, hang on a minute. I’m gonna take a picture of this.
I know you hear Adam Schefter in the background. You’re like, what and the what? So I’m gonna put this up on the screen, okay? Hang on just a second. Talk amongst yourselves. The reason you brought up see,
you gotta tell me these things, but you did tell me these things and I and I I wouldn’t say I ignored you, but Myles Garrett has requested a trade. All right, let’s uh let’s shift because that’s more fun to talk about because being pissed off about the Luka trade
and pissed off about the De’Aaron Fox trade is not really doing anything for us, is it? Let’s go to I’ll let me pop this on the screen for you. This news that uh that uh Myles Garrett wants a trade from the
Cleveland Browns, who wouldn’t? Let’s see here. I’m gonna put this on the screen so we can talk about it. And flip our uh discussion back to the NFL. Hopefully this will pop up real quick here. Hang on one second.
I don’t mean to keep you waiting. You like talking in the in the chat anyway sometimes more than listening to me and I completely understand that. Uh, come on, man. Where is it? I gotta find it on my screen here. So I downloaded these things and then they are supposed to pop up on my screen, but I have so many pictures today. Oh, there it is.
Okay, let’s pop this up and discuss because you don’t want to see my ugly face. So on Pat McAfee just now, which I’m sure is the reason that you brought up the could we trade for Myles Garrett, he has asked for a trade officially from the Cleveland Browns.
And the reason why this is interesting and we’ll delve deeper into this tomorrow. I’m gonna do a deep dive into this. Maybe make this the story of the day since I did so much on Luka and Anthony Davis yesterday. Maybe I make this the story of the day and post this later.
Uh, Myles Garrett requested trade from Cleveland. That’s uh of course Pat McAfee on the left and there is Adam Schefter, the rumor monger uh on the right. So teams who can absorb his deal. Uh, the Patriots could Here’s the thing about Myles Garrett.
He’s not gonna approve a trade. It’s kind of like what we’re talking about with Jimmy Butler and if you’re good versus if you’re not good. Myles Garrett’s just not gonna go anywhere. Players today have more and more leverage. I understand what you’re thinking in in in your head is, well, we’ll just go wherever we trade him. That’s not how it works.
So what’s gonna happen here is you’re gonna try to marry the best deal you can get with a team that has cap space, with a team that is gonna give Cleveland as close to value as they can, but again another what would I call it? Another uh base basis conversation, another thing that we talk about on this show all the time is if you get the best player in a trade, you win said trade.
I don’t know, 90% of the time. It’s a show for loss. I don’t know why I couldn’t think of that term or word. It’s a show philosophy. You get the best player in the trade. San Antonio gets De’Aaron Fox, the Lakers get Luka Dončić, even though it was Anthony Davis was really good.
If you get the best player, you win 90% of trades. So he’s not going to New England because he’ll say no. He’s not going to the Raiders because he’ll say no. Washington would be a team he might look at, especially given the fact that remember Chase Young and Montez Sweat were traded from the Commandos last year, so they need edge help there. That scares me.
Washington could be a team, Arizona, I don’t see it, Chicago, they’ve Yeah, I could see it. They they could like him. Uh, the Chargers, they’ve already well maxed a free agent across from Bosa. I don’t know that they would spend it. Minnesota’s got good edge rushers.
Uh, it would scare the hell out of me if the Lions got him across from Aiden Hutchinson, who would be who would be uh healthy next year. I could see him wanting to go there because think about it from a Myles Garrett perspective. Okay, Cleveland wants what Cleveland wants. You gotta have cap space, but also Myles Garrett is gonna want to go there. So Washington’s an up-and-coming team could use edge help.
I’m doing this off the top of my head, so hopefully we’re making some sense. Lions have money, they need edge help. 49ers need every help, but if you put we’ve talked about this a ton. Yeah, I’d like interior defensive line help if I’m the 49ers. There’s no question about it, but if if I get Myles Garrett, across from Nick Bosa, I’ve got two great edge setters and that means the inside doesn’t have to be as good
because they’re never gonna get double teamed. They have to double me on the outside and they have to decide. Am I putting what side am I putting the tight end on? You can’t run max protect all the time. So the 49ers getting getting Myles Garrett would be massive. Here’s the problem and it’s the same problem, but not to the extent of the Warriors problem.
Jimmy Butler, Mr. Toxicity, just said, yeah, I’m not interested in your money, even though I want money, I’m not interested in your money because you’re going the wrong way. After the season that the 49ers just had at six and 11, does Myles Garrett say Lions more appealing, Washington more appealing, just on the very fact
that Washington and Detroit are ascending teams and the 49ers may not be. Now look, the 49ers are not where the Warriors are. The Warriors as I tell you time and time again are in sports purgatory in the middle is where you don’t want to be. You do not want to be in the middle and that’s exactly where they are.
Sports purgatory. So as you can see there if you just joined us, there’s Adam Schefter, there’s Pat McAfee, Myles Garrett requested trade from Cleveland and that’s cap space and it’s brought up there because who can afford Myles Garrett? Where does Myles Garrett want to go and what can Cleveland get?
Those are the three factors. In order, it’s where Myles Garrett wants to go, two it’s cap space, three it’s what Cleveland can get back. So it it’s just the way it is. Powers players have power. So I just didn’t look at the first column.
Washington and Detroit might be more desirable to him, although the 49ers would still be desirable. They’re not like the the Warriors are right now clearly going downhill. No Tennessee, maybe the Bengals, although they’re going the wrong way. Trey Hendrickson, I think is a free agent, maybe’s got one more year.
Giants, maybe he wants to be in a big market. I don’t know, but they’ve already got Burns and uh Tibido on that team. Uh, so I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Packers are interesting. Uh, does he want to be Reggie White and playing in Green Bay in the prime of his career?
I’m gonna say no, but I could be wrong. Steelers run a three four, he I don’t think he would really want to be in that situation. Does he want to be an outside linebacker? Probably not. The Rams, everybody seems to want to go to LA. Do they need edge help? They’ve got a bunch of young players.
Now if I’m Cleveland, I would circle the Rams because give me Jared Verse, who’s a cheaper version. He’s not Myles Garrett, but he’s a cheaper version. I don’t think LA would do that. They’ve got cap space, but I don’t think LA would do that. If I’m Cleveland, okay, you want you want to trade, you want Myles Garrett, I want Jared Verse
and I want Fisk or I want Jared Verse and a first round pick or Jared Verse and a second and a third round pick, something like that. Like if that’s if I’m Cleveland, seeing we’re just kind of doing this off the top of our head. If I’m Cleveland, I I I want to circle LA because I think that I I can get a young defensive lineman to and a pick.
So that makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t know what Detroit would give up just a pick, but it’s the end of the first round. Washington, a pick, but it’s the end of the first round. Niners at 11 and this is what uh somebody brought up a little earlier. Niners appealing to the Browns with the 11th overall pick of the draft, which is probably the best the Browns could do,
but Myles Garrett would would would have to want to go to the 49ers. Third row down there, the Eagles, uh they’ve got money, but they’ve got a bunch of young players again. If I’m Cleveland, I’ll take Jalen Carter, they wouldn’t do that deal. But I’d take some of the young defensive lineman, Nolan Smith, somebody like that from the from the Eagles.
That would be scary as hell if you put Myles Garrett on the Eagles. Panthers, no, Jets, no, Kansas City, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. That would be the equivalent of Luka going to the Lakers even more so.
Um, I could see him wanting to go to Kansas City and they could manipulate that number of 15, but again, if you’re Cleveland, it’s like that’s end of the first round pick. Ravens, I could see them interested, Bucks, I could see them interested, but now you’re getting into teams with no cap space.
No for the Texans, no all that that bot that whole final row including Seattle and Cleveland and one of the reasons why Cleveland would probably move him is because look at that minus 27. That final row nobody’s gonna get and really the Ravens and the and the Bucks at the end of that probably couldn’t do it either, even though
you can manipulate that whole thing. So there you go. We just went through it just because somebody in the uh somebody on the chat line was that brilliant and alerted me to the fact that Myles Garrett has officially requested a trade. He’s gonna get traded.
So to me, if we were doing this, if we were having a little bit of fun, which we are, and I said who is most likely to get Myles Garrett, Washington, Detroit, the Niners, the Rams and the Eagles and maybe Kansas City. That’s six teams.
That didn’t probably help you very much. Washington, the Lions, the Niners, the Rams, the Eagles, those are the six teams to me that it would make the most sense. We’re gonna talk more about this. I’m gonna make this the big story of the day because I’m gonna delve deeper into this and I’m gonna talk to some people.
But I appreciate you taking me off the whole Luka thing. There you go. I’m gonna take this off the screen in three, two, one. What did you think of that? What did you think of my logic or illogical thought and what do you think of Myles Garrett? Somebody look up Myles Garrett’s contract.
I just got that big thing on the screen real fast. Let me look at it real quick. Hang on. I asked you to do it and it gets right here. Let me come on, lazy ass Lund. Let’s go. Myles Garrett contract. Let’s see what we get here.
Okay. Uh, this is why he has leverage because he’s got he wants money is what he wants. He is underpaid by the values of the league right now. So he’s got he’s 30. That doesn’t matter. He’s still very good. Uh, he’s 30 in the 2025 year.
He’s got a base salary of 1.25, he’s got a cap hit of 19 and he’s got one more year at 31 in 2026, cap hit of 20. So yeah, it’s it’s not a huge it’s not a it’s not a huge deal. He’s got a dead cap this year though and the teams will eat this.
I know that’s one of the first things that people gonna say is, oh the Browns won’t eat it. Uh, he’s got a dead cap of 36 plus the as I just showed you, the Browns are way over. They’re like what did I just say? 27 over? He’s gonna be hard to trade from their standpoint because you’re already way over and then you’re gonna have to eat this money.
Thank you, Deshaun Watson for screwing up our entire team. But he won’t sign an extension with anybody. So he’s only got one more year and he won’t sign an extension with anybody and that’s why he has leverage because any team that is willing to give up anything that the Browns want, he’s gonna have to okay the deal because if he doesn’t want to go there, he won’t sign an extension and therefore the the Browns won’t get what they want.
That’s why this all mixes together. Let me pop this up one more time and then I’m gonna get to the the the people. The people. But the reason why let me pop this up.
The reason why this all matters and the reason why the uh the three factors in where Myles Garrett goes are in some order A, where Garrett wants to go. It’s actually first. It’s where Myles Garrett wants to go because he’s only got one more year left on his deal and he won’t sign an extension with a team he doesn’t want to be.
And if he doesn’t if he doesn’t want to be there and won’t sign an extension with said team then they then the Browns can’t get what they want, they can’t maximize his value. So that’s number two. So it’s gotta be where Garrett wants to go because the players have more power than ever now, so it and because he won’t sign an extension anywhere he doesn’t want to be.
So A gets that. B, it’s the Browns agreeing with said team because they’ve gotta send Garrett where he wants to go or they’re not gonna get anything because if he’s not gonna sign an extension then the Browns won’t get anything in return. C, it’s gotta be a team with money, some sort of money, so it can’t be the the Saints.
It doesn’t have to be the most money because I still think the the Chiefs who sit there near the end or the bottom I should say of the third row at 15.7, you’d say to yourself, well they’re not gonna be in it. Well, who knows?
Maybe he really wants to go win and he sits at Cleveland who wouldn’t be and that whole circus show that that they’ve got going on with Deshaun Watson and all the mess that they’ve got because two seasons to go. Remember when they beat the Niners in the regular season, they got to the playoffs, everything’s looking good and now they were a complete dumpster fire as they normally are.
So one of the things on Myles Garrett’s mind, there’s no question on my mind. This is how athletes think. I’m not athletic, but I’ve been around a lot is that he’s 30 years old. He hits the magic number of 30 which he just did and he’s saying, what’s my legacy here? Legacy, legacy, legacy.
My legacy is I’m a really good player who got paid a lot of money and I’ll go to the Hall of Fame because of what I’ve done and I’m one of the most dominant players on the planet for what I do, but I’ve never won squat. I’ve never won squat. So he’s gonna think to himself, I want to win.
So that’s what leads me to and that’s we just threw this all into the equation on the run here. That’s why Washington, money and winning. That’s why Detroit, money and winning. That’s why I still think the Niners, they’re not looked at like the worst
49ers, I brought that up six and eleven last year. The Niners could convince him. That’s a one-off, dude. That’s absolutely a one-off. John Lynch could do it, Kyle Shanahan could do it. It’s a good organization, they could prove it to him.
And they have fifty million. Now they’ve gotta resign Brock Purdy, I get that, but
that’s not gonna hit the cap to that big of a number. And would they lose players because of Garrett? Yeah.
But if you wanna get, you know, that defense is really, really good that the 49ers have. I guess Robert Saleh was really good to bring him back. Yeah, that and Myles Garrett opposite Nick Bosa. That’s big, which makes everybody better.
You know, that’s we we talk about complimentary football. How about complementing Nick Bosa finally with someone opposite him? How about you don’t need as many good defensive tackles
to dominate because Myles Garrett is gonna allow it so that you’re singled inside every single play. And he’s a three-down guy. There’s no, you know, Leonard Floyd comes in on third down. You could still have Leonard Floyd on this team. You bring Myles Garrett on the inside on passing downs and have Myles Garrett, Nick Bosa and Leonard Floyd.
Yes, please. So, Washington money and winning, Detroit money and winning, Niners are gonna put in their money and winning, LA money and winning and exposure.
Eagles money and winning, less money, but still, Kansas City could do it. So, yeah, to me those are the teams. Those are the teams that would be in on a Myles Garrett deal. And it would be Myles Garrett because he wou- won’t sign long-term unless you appease him.
The Browns getting as much as they can because they do appease Myles Garrett. You gotta have some money and I think the the magic the clock turned to the magical thirty when everybody in sports starts to say, man, I am moral. I’m a, you know,
there is morality, I should say, moral. There is morality and I’m going to at some point not be able to play this game and thirty smacks you in the face. It does.
So they’re looking at this he’s he’s looking at this going great. I’m gonna go to the Hall of Fame. I’m gonna be in this, you know, this bust and it’s gonna be great and I’m gonna have all these sacks and I’m gonna have all this money in my bank account, but I’m gonna have nothing. I’m not gonna be among the greatest
and this is where a guy who’s this good thinks, I’m not among the greatest because I never won squat. Say it with me. I never won anything. So now we start to think that way.
Makes a lot of sense. Well we just analyzed the hell out of that and it just happened.
We’re good. We’re good. All right. Now go ahead and punch holes in it. Uh, let’s see.
Uh, what does everybody think of this whole thing? See the thing is, I’m thinking about this because they because of Luka. This all has to do with Luka. I was like, well they could never resign him. Well, the Luka just got traded to the Lakers.
The Niners could could trade for Myles Garrett. I mean, come on, man.
Not enough cap. Maybe. I mean, believe me, man. I know that Brock’s getting gonna get paid a lot of money. But they could fit him in. They could figure out a way. Niners are good at it.
You’re gonna lose guys, there’s no doubt. And they’re gonna lose guys anyway. And you’re gonna lose more, but to me putting somebody opposite Bosa that’s this good, you’re not gonna see the double teams, you’re not gonna see all the tight ends, you’re not gonna see the chips, guys inside are gonna be singled.
Myles Garrett can can go inside on passing downs, you put Leonard Floyd outside of him. There’s no doubt. There’s no doubt uh, that that would be a great move. And that’s not just fantasy land stuff.
Uh, Pine Needle, John if Lynch doesn’t get the Myles Garrett thing done before tomorrow then it ain’t happening. The one thing that’s great about the about the Niners and you have to admit it no matter how pissed off you are that they just had a six and eleven season
is that they look into everything. So I can guarantee you and this is why I can’t wait I’m I love doing the show. I just can’t wait to get off the show today, not because I don’t love you dearly and deeply, but because I can’t wait to start texting and calling and saying, okay, what’s going on because I will guarantee you with this without having texted anyone
or called anyone, the Niners will be in on it. They’ll call, they’ll figure it out. Paraag is good at massaging. I guarantee you John Lynch has picked up the phone today wherever he is, probably somewhere in San Diego.
I don’t know if it’s passed. Wherever John Lynch is and Kyle is probably in Cabo, uh, because they were at the Senior Bowl last week, right? That was played, so they’re gone.
I knew it was coming. And I didn’t hit my cough bush button which I should have. Wherever John is, probably Southern California, wherever Kyle is, probably Cabo, wherever Paraag is, maybe here or he’s running a soccer team too, so he could be out of the country.
They are on a they were on a Zoom call this morning even before the Pat McAfee thing and said, hey, let’s get in on this.
You wanna make our defense better? Let’s get in on this. So, let’s call, let’s get going. Let’s work this out. I know that Purdy has gotta get a deal done, but we can do both. I beli- they can do both.
They absolutely can’t do both because his deal right now isn’t isn’t huge and his deal right now wouldn’t kick in because he’d still have the deal that he has which is reasonably especially for a player of his caliber. So,
we’ve done a lot of stuff, man. Uh, people talking about uh, uh, Grammys last night. I gotta be honest with you, I was so busy uh, doing a bunch of stuff for the show, uh, and there is a there’s a business side to the show as well which I won’t share with you because it’s really not my thing, but I’m doing it. But uh, I didn’t I didn’t get a chance to see the Grammys. I did see some things about the Grammys. I know who won and all that kind of stuff, but I didn’t I know that uh,
Beyoncé this Cowboy Carter thing and I’m not a country music fan and I’m not again this is like ketchup on a hot dog, pineapple on a pizza. If you’re a country music fan, good for you. I’m not, you know, I the music I like is the music I like. If you like country, if you like whatever it is you like, cool, good for you. I’m not I’m not upset with it and I’m not saying good for you in a condescending tone. I’m just saying and live your life. Do what you wanna do. Like I it’s so funny to be I was watching some of the post shows and they’re talking about how people dress, how people look, how their hair is, how they act. Whatever, man.
Like that’s the greatness of being a an entertainer. You can do whatever you want, man. You wanna get tattoos all over your face, you’ve made millions, you can do whatever you want. You’re not working at a bank. Do whatever you want. Do you.
Like I guess I saw Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers had like this suit that had like lips all over it with like a black t-shirt. It was terrible. But that’s him, man. Do what you do. He’s got this mustache going on that’s creepy. He’s got a young girlfriend, he’s got the flavor savor. Like it it wouldn’t be my look, but what do I care? Like do you, bro. Put ketchup on a hot dog, put pineapple on a pizza. Wear whatever you want. Be crazy and outrageous. Whatever, man.
What’s the Marc Stein report? Um, I have a Marc Stein thing here, but Marc Stein puts his stuff on a paywall and I like Marc Stein a lot, but I’ve got paywalls coming out of my ears. Not doing it. Not doing a paywall. What’s the Marc Stein report? Give me it. Give me it. Give me it. Give me it.
Because I’ve gone if you just joined the show, we we went like an hour and a half on Luka and sometime on Darren Fox and we did and and I have a whole show up by the way that I want you to go to because I did a deep dive yesterday johnlundunleashed.com if you go to the podcast or excuse me to the blog page. I have the video and the story to accompany it.
Uh oh, there’s Luka. Luka’s first message. Let’s see. What did he say? I’m already gonna have to hate the I already hate the
I like you. Hi, Laker fans, excited to meet you all. It’s just starting. We’re going ten to twelve fifteen years of that. Thanks, additions. Really appreciate it. You don’t get it.
Uh, where’s the Stein line? Is that new breaking news or is that old breaking news? Oh, did somebody just pop up a Ned Ryerson? Ned? Ned Ryerson. I did see the Punxsutawney Phil
said six more weeks of winter which doesn’t affect us. I always think it’s funny. I looked back there and I’m like, oh, Punxsutawney Phil just gave us six more weeks of winter and I’m like,
when you’re back there, that’s a big deal. Big deal. The best part, I should add this today. The best part of that whole thing is, you know, he sees him every day, sees him every day, sees him every day is when he just finally just punches him right in the face. Ned? Ned Ryerson.
Nails him. Like every day it would be something different. It would be incredible.
Uh, so what’s the Marc Stein report? Is that new or is that is that uh, was that all from last night, Elevated Minds? Because you got the emergencies there, so I’m assuming that something happened because we just did an emergency, we just did a thing on Myles Garrett needs to come to the 49ers.
Yeah, I I don’t I I gotta be honest with it again. I’m not judging people. You can be you can country card your head off. I’m not uh,
uh, KD and Bron Warriors. Let’s see it. I told you LeBron doesn’t fit with the Lakers with with Luka. They didn’t even tell him the trade was happening and he’s the GM. Like they’re like, dude, we’re moving on. It’s like you like when you know that the like the other girlfriend is there and you’re like, well I guess I’m out. Like you’re the you’re the wife of twenty years.
Actually hasn’t been a Laker for twenty years. You you know what I’m saying? Like Luka’s the new blood in town. It’s over. Like it’s over and this is it for him. So,
oh, this is what I was looking at. Like I said, I’m not a country you can do whatever you want. Everybody is buying her S. Everybody. I mean my gosh, man. She like I saw her they what where did she perform?
Not at the Super Bowl. Where did she perform? Somewhere. It was a big deal. I mean it’s like she did it. She she she probably said, you know what? I’m just gonna do this for the hell of it. Watch this. She probably said it to Jay-Z. Watch this. I’m gonna go country and I’ll win everything in country too. And she did.
She just went country decided what watch this. How hard could it be? I lost my truck and I’m drinking.
I don’t know. Is that what? I’m sure she doesn’t sound like that, but I’m sure she’s just like, I could write country songs in my sleep. Are you kidding me? I’m gonna win everything. I’m gonna win all the Grammys and I’m just gonna just I’m just gonna write sad country songs.
I was drinking, my dog died, my four broke down on the side of the road in the desert, but I loved her anyway. Like whatever. Just made that up. It’s a hit. That’s a hit single right there. Is that what she did?
She just wrote sad country songs or no. They probably had a good beat and everything to him, right?
I didn’t watch. I haven’t heard any. I haven’t heard anything that she’s done, but I’m just country songs cannot be that hard.
Uh, actually they’ve evolved past that. What am I thinking? Uh, I’m the ketchup and pineapple guy. That’s what I mean. HurleyBird, live your life, bro.
I have if a pizza’s sitting there. This is where I would say that that people who say no pineapple on pizza are are flat out liars. You know how it is when you go into your uh to your office where at the random part of the show at the bottom here and I haven’t even talked about Super Bowl 59 week. All all uh I’ll go back through the
chalkboard in just a second. The random portion of the show. Let’s say that there’s a bunch of pizzas. We’ve all been there and you’re at um you’re at your place of work, which I don’t have one of those, but if you have your a place of work and it’s got all these pizza boxes and you open them upand there’s one left and it’s got pineapple and and Canadian bacon on it, you’re gonna have some of it because pizza’s pizza and you gotta eat it. Now maybe you’ll pick off the maybe you’ll pick the pineapple off. I don’t know, maybe you will.
But uh I’m just saying like you’re probably gonna eat it, aren’t ya? You’re probably gonna have it. But again.
No, she she I I didn’t see all this stuff, but she was she did. She went. She she uh she won a bunch of stuff, man. What are you talking about?
She did, didn’t she? Uh, I didn’t know that. I I wait a minute. I lived back there. The New Jersey groundhog is more accurate. He says spring.
Like I said, we don’t have to worry about it here. I mean, we’re getting a bunch of rain and it really it sucks and I’ve had it and like all weekend. What does the weather effect? You like it affects me because I’m just I’m a huge weather guy. I go outside. I love being outside. I love eating outside. I love drinking outside. I love you know, I I don’t even mind doing the yard work, mowing the lawn, doing all that stuff.
When it rains and when it’s gray and I lived in the Northwest. I lived in the Northwest. I lived in the Northwest. That part of the country. I lived in Detroit where it’s always gray. I lived in Pittsburgh where it’s always gray. I’m originally from the West Coast. I can’t do it.
I can’t do the rain and the gray. It’s just it just uh there’s no I mean it it’s no accident that that’s where the suicidal rate is the highest in Washington Oregon because it’s just rain, rain, rain. And it’s not just pouring rain. It’s just like you wake up gray, just really it’s depressing and you wanna get outside.
It’s crazy. Anyway, I’ll get off that kind of stuff. Yeah, I’m looking at Mark Stein. I don’t see any Stein line stuff.
But what I’m saying is is and I said this earlier in the show and I say a lot of stuff so I can cover my butt and cover my bases. I wouldn’t be I would not be surprised for one second if the Warriors made made a call to the Lakers and we’ll hear this from Brian Windhorst later in the day.
Oh, the Warriors have called the Lakers. Well, because they’re looking at that going, well look, you already have your LeBron James for the next 12 to 15 years.
So why don’t you just trade us the LeBron? Because those two don’t fit together. They’re both ball dominant players and this probably to me signals the end of LeBron James in LA, maybe not this year.
But if I’m the Lakers or or if I’m the Warriors or anybody else in the league, I’m just gonna call and check. Just make sure that like they’re not you know,
where’s the where’s the real Mark Stein? I’m putting in Mark Stein and I’m getting some sci-fi guy. I don’t know. What’s Mark Stein saying? Anything I need to know about?
All right, let’s uh let’s recap everybody, shall we? It is episode 49. It is John Lund Unleashed. Thanks for joining us on a Monday. Make sure that you have subscribed to the page and
keep your alerts on because I’ll have a uh I’m gonna do a deeper dive into Miles Garrett. We’ve done this is two days of Luka talk and how it affects the Warriors and De’Aaron Fox and trade deadline and it’s been a really good conversation.
I do have a story up and a video to accompany it that I did yesterday right when this broke at JohnLundUnleashed.com, JohnLundUnleashed.com. So make sure you check that out. But uh episode 49, Luka and AD, what a number one is. It’s what Luka is and what Anthony Davis is not, even though Anthony Davis is a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Lakers is on the chalkboard to the right. Lakers is we’re gonna have to endure the Lakers just when we thought it was over. Somebody hit reset on the video game and now Luka Dončić will take over for LeBron James, which is
what the Warriors are looking for ever so desperately for when Steph Curry rides off into the sunset, but it just doesn’t happen unless you’re the Lakers because this happened with Kareem and Wilt and Kobe and on and on and on dumb front offices or owners constantly trade the Lakers these players for pennies on the dollar and I never understand why.
Mavs CYA is Nico Harrison, their general manager who didn’t make this trade. It was the Addison group who clearly doesn’t know anything about the way that the NBA works or what a true number one player is. They’ve owned the Mavericks since December of 2023 and got released.
Fox Lavine, not Adam Lavine, speaking of um the Grammys. Uh, that is De’Aaron Fox and that is a great move for the San Antonio Spurs and
it affects the Warriors in that the Spurs are right on the butt of the Warriors and I don’t know that they’re done. They didn’t even give up any of their best young players and obviously they’re not giving up Wembanyama, but some of those young players I wouldn’t be surprised if they made another move so that they could get even better, but as it is, they might be better than the Warriors with De’Aaron Fox and Victor
Wembanyama. Uh, the Warriors, one thing I didn’t play from the Warriors and let me play this Steph thing just because I know it’s a couple days old and I think we played it either on Friday or on Saturday’s show. We have we have a Saturday show by the way, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. Pacific.
Saturdays, we do a 10 a.m. show. So maybe I played it Saturday and not Friday. But um how this all affects the Warriors, they’re looking for that player to extend not only extend the window, but now and later and they’re looking for that next generational player and that’s what the Lakers just got, which pisses you off.
Um, to me this opens up the door to the Warriors to just swing for the fences. If I’m Joe Lacob, look, the Lakers just got Luka. They just took you out of the driver’s seat for relevancy, especially in the West for the next 12 to 15 years. Your direction has been defined for you by this trade, as weird as that sounds.
Go all in. Go balls out. Now the problem is you don’t have an Anthony Davis. The Warriors don’t have an Anthony Davis because everybody’s scratching their head today going, well why can’t the Warriors do this?
Because they have Jonathan Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins and not Anthony Davis. And you can say those players are great in their own right, especially that season Wiggins is having. He’s not chopped liver and he’s not a bad player, but he’s not Anthony Davis and Anthony Davis isn’t Luka Dončić.
So you have a problem there in that you don’t have the necessary pieces and we hear this about the Giants all the time. You don’t have the necessary pieces and Jimmy Butler by the way, told you, you know, I’m the most toxic player in all of the NBA and I don’t want you.
Jimmy Butler said to the Warriors, I don’t want you. And we’ve been talking about this over the last week or last few days when this got rekindled. You don’t want Jimmy Butler. I said I did a piece at JohnLundUnleashed.com
and I did the video and the and I wrote about it. Check it out where I said they should only want Jimmy Butler if he’s 100% free. In other words, if he gets released, I’m not giving up anything for Jimmy Butler because he makes $50 million and that
conversation starts with Andrew Wiggins who’s better than Jimmy Butler. So I don’t want unless Butler’s coming for free and they’re paying the freight, I don’t want him. And Jimmy Butler got ahead of that and said to the Warriors, I don’t want you.
Where does that tell you where the Warriors are in the pecking order of players and how they think of the Warriors now? It’s the old Warriors. And I don’t mean the championship Warriors. I mean the old Warriors before the championships.
That’s where they are again. They’re in 11th place in the West and San Antonio’s breathing down their neck and San Antonio just got De’Aaron Fox. Sorry to be so depressing
on a Monday. So we did that, the Warriors, the Butler, Super Bowl 59 week, we’ve done nothing of and we did Miles Garrett because he asked for a trade
and I’m gonna do this for story of the day because for me, for I think for the 49ers and for their fans, this could signify something and I’m not just saying this to hype you up after talking about Luka to the Lakers all day and depressing you.
And Jimmy Butler says no thanks to the Warriors and depressing you. And Jack Flaherty said yes to the to the Tigers and the Giants never checked in to depress you.
Um, I do think they’re gonna be with Washington, Detroit. You see the Niners up there at the top of the second row and I know they have to sign Brock Purdy. I think the Rams will be in the conversation. I think the Eagles will be in the conversation. I think Kansas City will be in the conversation.
That’s what I think and I think the Niners could put a compelling case together and Miles Garrett has got to approve it. Remember, only one more year left on his deal. He would have to approve it. Sign an extension if he wouldn’t the Brown he’s not gonna go there and the Browns can’t get their maximum return of value.
Plus you gotta have money and it’s gotta be a desirable place. The Niners do check those boxes despite the fact that there were six and 11 and the other thing I’ll say about that is the Niners under John and Kyle are always
always I tell you aggressive, especially in a Super Bowl window like they are. So I know they have to resign Brock. I know they have to look at Dre Greenlaw. I know they need interior line help. I know they need interior defensive line help. I understand all those things.
But Miles Garrett is different and special. And if I can get him and put him across from Nick Bosa, he solves a lot of my defensive problems even if they’re not directly. Defensive tackle, yeah, you need one of those guys. Miles Garrett makes those guys better. You’re not doubling near as much.
Garrett and Bosa, you can’t double them on every play and those guys on the inside are gonna be one-on-one the entire game. So even though Garrett’s gonna be playing on the outside,
and probably on the inside on passing downs to bring in Leonard Floyd, he would be a massive get along with Robert Saleh. Your defense is fixed with Miles Garrett. I don’t care what the other issues are.
Uh, somebody brought this up a little bit earlier by the way, NFL related. Really? Really? That’s the best the Raiders could do, huh? If I’m a Raiders fan.
I mean I I liked the Pete Carroll trade or excuse me, the Pete Carroll signing as the head coach. I think he’s a guy that can absolutely positively change culture in Vegas.
But that guy is your offensive coordinator. The reason why he was so good at Ohio State and he’s no dummy, I’ll give him that.
Did you see all the offensive talent? There’s gonna be three offensive lineman taken in this year’s draft including by the way, uh Jordan Reed put out the latest draft. In fact, watch this. You wanna be impressed? Boom.
That’s the latest mock draft of the 49ers. I keep having to tell them that they’re not gonna take an offensive lineman at 11. They’re gonna take Miles Garrett at 11. But the Ohio State my point is in popping that up there. That’s the latest thing Jordan Reed is the guy who does the mock or does this mock draft for ESPN.
They’re not gonna take an offensive lineman at 11. And if they do, then I’ll apologize.
But Chip Kelly had offensive lineman coming out his ears. Jeremiah Smith, that great wide receiver. Uh another wide receiver that’s gonna go in the first round. Two running backs that are gonna be really good NFL running backs and Will Howard who had a great season as his quarterback.
But yeah, let’s make sure that Chip Kelly’s the offensive coordinator of the Raiders. It was his talent, it was not his play calling, but whatever.
That’s gonna piss me off. Uh another thing is and you may not like uh Jack Flaherty as we’re at the random part of the show here on the chalkboard. Uh Jeff Passan, Jack Flaherty back to the Tigers. Remember we went Tigers was having a good year, Dodgers signed him, wins a championship and then he just sat around, nobody wanted him.
And he’s on a two 35 that includes an opt out after the first season and uh that’s so 17 and a half a year and it’s got an opt out. If you’re the Giants, I just I don’t get it, man.
You just saved six million dollars for Tyler Rogers. So basically Jack Flaherty’s only gonna pitch for you for a year cuz he’s gonna opt out.
So Jack Flaherty’s gonna cost you 11 million bucks and he’d be your second he’d be your number two starter. Now you can say all you want about Jack Flaherty’s a West Coast guy.
Uh had a nice revival last year, had many good years in St. Louis. I’m not saying he’s a number one starter, but if you told me that he was gonna be the number two next to Logan Webb and then Robbie Ray coming off TJ and Justin Verlander coming off a neck injury at 42, great name, not so sure he’s gonna be great.
And then my other young uh my young pitchers in Harrison and Burns, I don’t have to freak out and rush those guys still, let them still mature a little bit, they need to marinate a little bit longer. Jack Flaherty would have been perfect. Would have been a one year deal, 17 million bucks.
You saved six million by by dumping Rogers of his 12, so you saved six you sent money, so you would save six so Jack Flaherty would have pitched for you for essentially 11 million bucks and you’re far under the tax, which is not prohibitive as I’ve said a million times. It’s not like the NBA.
So we’ll see what Jack Flaherty does, but just put a pin in that one. Cuz there wasn’t a lot out there. I understand that. Uh Max Scherzer went to the Blue Jays, he was never gonna come here. They signed one old guy
who used to pitch for the Tigers. That’s fine. I don’t have an issue with it, but they are short. Robbie Ray being the number two starter or Justin Verlander being the number two starter ain’t gonna hack it. Not in this division and Larry Baer can say all he wants about we’re not really looking at the Dodgers, but you gotta look at somebody cuz if we’re not looking at the Dodgers, then you’re looking at about 10 teams that you’re gonna have to compete with for the wild card.
That guy would have helped. In a in a in a park where pitching wins. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I just don’t I don’t get it. Uh you may hate that guy, they may have some analytics that shows that he’s not good or whatever the case may be.
Whatever, man. Uh that that that to me is head scratching at the best. So there, I threw a bunch of stuff out at you. Can I throw one more thing at you that’s not that is random?
One more random thing is uh everybody watching Severance by the way. Uh I don’t want to ruin anything if you’re not watching it, but it’s such a wild show and I’m watching you know, my wife and I are just on the edge of our seat.
And I don’t know, do you like when these channels, you know, Netflix and all these all these different channels, Apple TV, when they just vomit out the whole season so you can just over one weekend, especially when it’s raining like it is in the Bay Area right now where you can just watch the whole thing and then you’re done.
Cuz that’s what I like. And Severance comes out every Friday and we’re like and it’s I mean it’s a great it’s a great great show. At first you’re like what in the what in the what? Somebody had to be on some serious acid or mushrooms or or a combination of things to to to write this show cuz it’s in wild.
Like I’m not gonna tell you about it cuz a lot of people will grab stuff later and be like what? And this whole thing, Severance star Zach Cherry explains that awkward visitation, playing Outie Dylan and his door factory Doppelgänger.
So I’m not giving away too much in that whole thing if you haven’t watched it yet, but it’s a great show.
Just get through the first couple episodes cuz the first couple episodes you’re going, what’s going on? What is this? And then after a while you start to get it, but then you start to not get it and that’s the best part of the show. Great show.
At least I think so. You could hate it. That’s fine. Anything else I missed today? Myles Garrett, I put that up there.
Mock draft, they love to give Niners offensive lineman. Uh Jack Flaherty, I gave you at the last minute. Chip Kelly, man, if I’m a
Raiders fan, I’d be pissed. Uh I think that’s it and we went over a ton with Luka. Before we get out of here, a couple of quick things and by the way, I’ll go back out to the lines too to make sure we didn’t miss anybody with some great thoughts.
But let me just share the screen one last time with you and show you the um yesterday’s so if you didn’t get enough Luka today or maybe you joined the show late. This was yesterday’s video and piece I wrote at johnlundunleashed.com.
Mavericks gift Lakers a new era post LeBron with Luka Doncic trade. That’s the big part of the story. It was like, well, Davis isn’t bad. Of course he’s a Hall of Famer. But it’s it’s what they just gave the Lakers for the next 12 to 15 years and you can see Steph in the corner going, man, what are you kidding? LA Lukas.
So go ahead and that go ahead and check that piece out. That’s on the blog part. So if you go to johnlundunleashed.com, you’ll see all the blogs and all those kind of things. You’ll see that the A-list guys that I gave and everything like that. So check out that piece and like I do with all these, I do a video around the story.
So uh that’s called being a multimedia superstar. johnlundunleashed.com. Make sure that you check that out and uh I’ve got all that. So you can see at the top there, there’s all the social media so you don’t have to remember all these ones I give you whether it’s John Lund Unleashed.
John Lund uh or at John Lund Radio, any of those things and all you gotta do is you go there and uh you can check everything out. So uh make sure that you check everything out there.
All right, I think that is it. Let me go one more swoop to uh what everybody’s talking about today. Uh we need to cheer John up, everybody start drinking. I’m in a great mood. I’m in a great mood. I’m not mad about the Luka thing. I just get mad when people don’t understand how sports works and how organizations and how business
the Adelson group just gave the Lakers an extension for 12 or 15 years on the annoyance that LeBron James is. I mean that’s just what they did. And you don’t trade people to the to the uh to the Lakers and that’s what I think is so funny is a lot of people were coming out and going, how could Mark Cuban do this? They forget he owns 27% of the team.
The Adelsons did this and it’s out of pure uh inexperience. They got they got they make a ton of money but they’re in Vegas, they don’t know Dallas, they don’t know the NBA, they don’t know the pecking order and the and the Lakers just took advantage of it. I mean that’s just what they did. So
that’s why I was so angry about it. DeAndre Fox we got into how this affects the Warriors and again that thing about Miles Garrett, I’ll do that on a um on a story of the day so that we can delve deeper into that and do charts and fun pictures and all that kind of stuff.
And this is exactly right. Todd just nailed it. Jimmy to the Warriors, it’s not me, it’s you. That’s exactly what it is. For Jimmy Butler to to maybe that’s the story of the day and I just missed it.
For Jimmy Butler to tell the Warriors, hey, you know what? I just no. And it’s like, what do you mean no? You don’t tell us no. We tell you no. No, no, no. I don’t want to go there. It just tells you where they are in then. Same old place. That was fun.
Like you know how we sit here and we say, okay, everybody loves to do this especially on a national level. They want to tell us when an era is over and I’m guilty of this, 100% guilty of this.
So like the Patriots are done, you know, I’m the first to say the Patriots are done or the Spurs were done or the Warriors were done or whatever era it is. That is done. We don’t really need to proclaim it in the media because Jimmy Butler just did.
They’ll tell you when they’re done. The players will tell you when a team is done. Jimmy Butler who has no leverage screams and yells, wants out of South Beach, wants nothing to do with the Warriors.
He’s a child. And yet he goes, nope, don’t want you. Now it’s over. Now it’s over. I don’t have to say it. Screaming A doesn’t have to say it. Kendrick Perkins doesn’t have to say it.
Bob Myers doesn’t have to say it. Joe Lacob doesn’t have to say it. Steph Curry doesn’t have to say it. You know who says it? The players. They say when you’re done. They’re done. They’re done. Uh this is a great point by Joy.
Cuz we’re in the random part of the show if you’re watching on the chalkboard. Pineapple is good if the pizza is spicy. So check this out, Joy and everyone.
I was down in this was last year. I was down in Manhattan Beach. I have family down there.
and I go down to a pizza spot uh right off the pier there and uh they had a pizza special that day and it was so freakin’ good.
So pineapple and pizza, yes, no, whatever.
But it was a spicy tomato sauce with Canadian bacon, bacon, like crispy bacon and Canadian bacon because we do it better than the Canadians.
And um pineapple and sliced fresh jalapeño, so they get it out of the oven and they put the cold fresh pineapple and the cold fresh uh jalapeño on with the cooked with the bacon and the Canadian bacon.
I think you would reconsider. And it has spicy tomato sauce to it and it was like their special pizza of the day that day and had like a um
I wouldn’t call it a Sicilian crust, but it was nice, crispy oh it was so good.
So so good. And I’m not a huge beer guy as you know, I’d rather have cocktails than beer, but I probably sucked down three beers with it, like a light like a logger kinda thing.
So good, cuz it was spicy. You wanted like a crispy cold clean beer.
was so good.
So good.
I don’t know if you wanted to know that and it is 10:22 after all, so we could start talking about that.
That was a great point by Todd. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re done.
I never thought about that. It’s true. The players will tell you when your era is finished and Jimmy Butler unfortunately just told us.
It’s not me, it’s not screaming A, it’s not Perkins, it’s not this guy, it’s not that guy, it’s not Charles, it’s not Shaq, it’s not Kenny, it’s not Ernie.
It’s not anybody. It’s the players telling you and Jimmy Butler just told you.
I am the most toxic player and no one will touch me with a twenty-five-foot pole.
But I don’t want you. You’re going in the wrong direction.
Wow.
Uh glad you brought that up Todd. Uh tomorrow there’s a big meeting. That’s all I’m gonna tell ya. That’s all I’m gonna tell ya.
Uh let’s see I probably shouldn’t even say that cuz that person who’s running the meeting, every once in a while pops in here and I see him. So that’s probably a bad thing I just did.
Uh yeah, uh maybe this week I’ll tell you. I don’t know cuz see I already screwed up. You already asked you already popped it up there and you’re already sucking me into doing it.
I’m not mad at you Todd, I’m not at all. But we’ll find we’ll you will hear something this week. You will hear something this week. I’m very confident in that.
You are 100% right. Mavs owners care about casinos not basketball. Ding ding ding ding. Tell him what he’s wanting.
They’re in Vegas, they’re not in Dallas and they’re gonna find out really quick when there’s even though it’s Anthony Davis a half empty arena. What happened? They love football.
They love Luka’s and Dirk’s and football.
That’s what they love.
That’s what they love.Why does John only show fat guys? Do I only show fat guys? Hello John?
No, I don’t only show fat guys. I show guys all the time.
Uh
What else do we have here? Yeah, the Giants thing pisses me off. I gotta be honest. It’s not a big story today and it was kind of the end of the show type of a thing.
But whatever you think of Jack Flaherty, he had a great year last year. He was over 17 million dollars, 17 million, we you just saved six, so you’re talking about 11 million dollars.
That would have been less than what you would have paid Rogers to be on the team and he’s a number two starter on this team.
Do you know that Robbie Ray’s gonna bounce back from TJ? Do you know that that Verlander’s neck and being 42? Do you know Harrison, do you know Bird Song? All four of those guys are major question marks.
Then you got Logan Webb. Flaherty would have helped a lot. And you know what? If Harrison’s great this year and Bird Song’s great this year and Verlander’s great this year and Ray’s great this year, I will today’s February 3rd at 10:24 AM, I will say I was wrong.
I have no problem. That’s one of the differences in this show versus others. I’ll tell you. I mean I have an opinion on things, but if I’m stupidly wrong or even a little wrong, I’ll tell you I was.
I will. I’ll just come on and go, man, I was stupid, I was wrong.
You you have a through my career I’ve had a million thoughts and told them. And if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I don’t have a problem. I’m not gonna spin it. Like well I said if this if this. It’s like look, I said what I said.
I was wrong. Put me in, you know, freezing cold eggs, I don’t care. You know, but I just I don’t they don’t have enough. They don’t have enough.
And you can say all you want Larry Baer about and we don’t care what the Dodgers are doing. If you don’t care what the Dodgers are doing, then you’re a wild card team. You just you start the the season only looking for a wild card and not trying to win your division, then you’re not competing just with the Dodgers now, you’re competing with ten or twelve teams for the wild card.
So you’re still not good enough.
And I mean look, I like and here’s the other thing too. I like Robbie Ray, he’s older. Even even though throw Tommy John away, he’s he’s still older.
He’s there’s questions. I like Justin Verlander, the guy and the name and the girlfriend or I guess the wife.
But at 42 coming off a neck injury, am I making him my number two starter? It looks like they are.
Or Robbie Ray, one of those two. And then they’re relying on young guys again.
Again, show philosophy if. Show philosophy if as in if your team has questions. If my number two starter, if my number three starter, if my number four starter, if my number five starter.
If my catcher hits, uh if my first baseman, if my second baseman is as good as he was last year in flashes, Tyler. If my left fielder was is more my first half Ramos than my second half Ramos.
If my center fielder coming off a major injury who really is a great guy with a tremendous smile but didn’t show enough in his first year even though I signed him for 112 million dollars, if my center fielder. If my right fielder is more up than down in his peaks and valleys offensively, great defensive guy. If if if if if if if.
Philosophy of the show, if your team has a lot of ifs, you’re not gonna be very good.
The Dodgers don’t have a lot of ifs. The Chiefs don’t have a lot of ifs. The Eagles don’t have a lot of ifs. When the Niners are healthy, they actually don’t have a lot of ifs. The Warriors have a lot of ifs.
If Jonathan Kuminga, if Steph could stay healthy, if Draymond doesn’t blow up. If if if if if. If your team has a lot of ifs, your team’s got a problem.
Or many. And the Giants have a lot of ifs.
And I’m not gonna I’m not putting this on Buster for one second. They said to him, you can have one toy. You can have one big shiny toy this off-season. That’s it.
Okay, are you sure this is the one toy you want? Because this is it. This is the only money we’re spending. But I told him, I told Willie Adomas that we were gonna spend more.
I told him we were gonna get better players.
Sorry. I told ya. Only one shiny toy. Not more than one. Even if it’s a cheap shiny toy like Jack Flaherty, don’t care.
All right. That’s it.
Lots of tangents today. I apologize. Hip hip hip hip. Yep, Jacob, I see you there. If if if if if.
That’s not a good thing. John Lund will sing like a canary bird!
I know all you guys gotta do is like bring up something and then I’m like, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.
Oh my goodness. All right, we did it well today. That was a good time had by all I believe. Neil knows Ned. This is great stuff.
KD and Bron. Yeah, look, there’s gonna be some rumors over the next few days that LeBron’s going. Okay, this ball ain’t big enough for both of us.
So we’ll see. We’ll see. Maybe something crazy will happen. Maybe they’ll get LeBron. Maybe Joe will say hello with it. Did I play this for you today? That I I said I I played this on Friday or Saturday and
Steph’s just depressed. Steve made a comment pre-game that just considering where you are it’s almost like it’s unwise to at least just stay pat.
Obviously Mike’s gonna make the choices. We’ve had these conversations. But are you hoping that something happens? No, he’s not.
Joe is. Something happens. It’s not for me to make those decisions. I mean I wanna win.
So whatever it means to do that. Your second shot attempt had nothing
Put me back on stage there. Uh first of all Steph’s really depressed. I feel bad for him.
That was before the Luka trade. Before. Imagine Steph after or Kevin Durant after. Some of these older guys who are just like can we just get
And then I told I told we’ve been saying this for weeks. The three old man teams. What are the three old man teams gonna do in the West?
The Suns, the Warriors, the Lakers. The Lakers did it again.
They pulled they just they pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Thank you Mavericks with the inexperienced owners. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate it. Thank you for securing us for the next twelve to fifteen years.
That’s where people don’t get it. They’re like huh? What is Len talking about? This is this was my show cover yesterday. Mavs ruined the NBA.
And it’s not because Anthony Davis is bad, it’s because the people who get it, you just gave the Lakers twelve to fifteen years of relevancy.
On TV, on the court, off the court. All of it. Don’t you get it? They’re gonna invade our arenas again.
They’re gonna wear those starter jackets and dumb hats and and Magic jerseys and Kareem jerseys and Kobe jerseys. They’re gonna they’re gonna be back.
It was just a reprieve for a minute. The Warriors had this great run and we didn’t see nearly as many Laker fans. Now they’re gonna over they’re gonna invade the place and everybody’s gonna sell their tickets again and it’s gonna be the Lakers show time and time and time again. That’s why.
That’s why.
All right. I’ll do it. Uh great time had by all today. Much appreciated you hanging out one last time. Please make sure you subscribe. John Lund Unleashed. JohnLundUnleashed.com is where everything is. The YouTube page, John Lund Unleashed Pod. Thank you for watching there. Please put your alerts on because we’ll have more to say and look, it’s NBA trade deadline time. So maybe the Warriors will make a move. They’ll have to do an emergency show and write about it and all those kind of things and if you don’t have your alerts on, you’re gonna miss it. You don’t wanna do that.
So anyway, there you go. That’s
that is the show for Monday. Had a good time and we covered everything. Later on today, I’ll do a story of the day. I’ll do a deeper dive into this Miles Garrett news that he has requested a trade from Cleveland and if it makes sense, well not makes sense because it does make sense for the Niners and the Niners will go after him. But I am going to make some calls, hit some texts.
Tomorrow we’ll get some more guests on. A lot of people were around the NBA, we’re kind of busy today, but we’ll get some guys in the NBA. And tomorrow
it starts from New Orleans. Uh we will have live reports from New Orleans in the Super Bowl. We have a George there right on media row and I told him he had to do a bunch of video and walk around Bourbon Street and give us a feel of the Super Bowl. This is the first one I’ve missed in 15 years. I want to cry. So uh he is we’re going to live vicariously
you and I through him this week because New Orleans is the best Super Bowl city bar none. So we’ll we’ll do all of that the rest of the week. Have a tremendous Monday. Thank you as always for hanging out. Much appreciated.
Subscribe, do all those things, the podcast, Apple, Spotify and for everything wrapped into one little nice package. John Lund Unleashed.com. Have a great Monday.
Thanks for hanging out with John Lund Unleashed. We’ll try to be better next time, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. Please like and subscribe on the John Lund Unleashed Pod YouTube channel. Watch live shows weekdays at 8 a.m. on YouTube, Instagram and X and make sure to have your alerts on for shows throughout the day or night. All things Lund can be found at johnlundunleashed.com. johnlundunleashed.com.