NBA Expansion, Clippers Loss & Ingram

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2:06opening happy opening day, if you're a raptor fan, hope you're well rested this morning. Hope you didn't stay up until 1 a.m. like us for a 25 point loss to the Clippers, because that would mean you're well rested and feeling good today. Would also mean that this shows a little more valuable to you because you don't know what happened. Although I'm sure the final score gives it away. This is the rap, the show Blake Murphy and Matt Bonner with you Mike Borkinoff of the Athletical Join us in the second half to discuss Adam Silver's press conference yesterday where he discussed NBA expansion in the 65 game player participation policy, the new WNBA CBA, a whole bunch of stuff. But in the first half of this show, we will talk about another ugly loss before we do all that Matt. How you doing, buddy? Like you said, I'm tired. Game ended around one. My seven year old woke me up shortly after 6 a.m. So under I think under five hours of sleep, I got a terrible sleep score with my sleep ring. And like my gripe with my sleep ring. This doesn't happen super often. It's like a perfect storm of the West Coast.

3:08Kids wake you up early. Its recommendation was to stay hydrated. And I feel like that's that should be like everybody's goal every day. But when you're sleepy, like, why doesn't it be like, Hey, have an extra coffee today? Like something more practical. Yeah, or have a nap. Yeah, take a take a nap. I don't know if you have this. Maybe this because I'm a bad napper. But every time I have a or if I try to have a nap, my battery, my body battery actually goes down because it like clocks the nap as like high heart rate variability. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm not a good napper. I'm a trained napper for 36 year or not 36. When did I get to college? Like 18 18 to 36. Basically, nap every day. Yeah. You know, that's the life of a basketball player at that level. And then once you retire, it goes out the window. Yeah. What do you think of the fact that a certain NBA players took their nap at the start of the third quarter yesterday? Oh, hey, oh, spicy. Oh, I just didn't know how to transition back. I like it. Yeah. Okay,

4:14Raptors lose 119 94 to the Clippers. Look, there were times in that game where the Raptors cut the lead to 14. I believe in the first half they had even cut at the 10. I don't know if you felt differently, Matt, but even when the lead got chipped away at at no point did it feel like the Clippers were like on their heels are worried about this at all. Darius Garland had a ton of fun. Kauai was very surgical when he needed to be. This was for a game that was close enough until the final like three and a half minutes for Dark Oda not, you know, pull the white flag and take his guys out. This never really felt all that close after that big what was a 23 to four or 23 to nine run to end the first quarter. Yeah, exactly right. That run ended 3622 at the end of the first and that was about as close as they got. I think they cut it to 10 at some point. But then the Clippers immediately responded with a run of their own to push it back up and that was it. It was a game of runs and when you see the Raptors play the way they're capable of playing,

5:18it's like, just keep it going, man. But no, just couldn't couldn't do it for 48 minutes. The you mentioned Kauai. I don't know. What do you, my mind's like most right? What do you want to talk about? I got a couple questions for you that we can correct. So we'll do a more interview style today then. So I appreciate that. My first question is the sun's game was like kind of a total no show. This one weirdly, I feel less badly about it because at least they were effortful and they showed up. But I feel worse about it because they were just incapable offensively of putting anything together. Man, they really struggled in the half court offensively and everything seemed to come to the Clippers so easily. I guess my first question then would be like, do you agree with that that this kind of like they were better from an energy and effort perspective than the sun's game, but they looked like a worse team kind of. Yeah, that's a great way of summing it up. Like it just looked like the Clippers had better players. Yeah. I don't think

6:19you can dispute that. How do the Raptors make that up with being a better team? And you have to shoot pretty well. RJ Barrett five for 19 0 for seven from three. They were good shots. They were his shots. He missed his little lefty floaters. He was getting wide open threes. They just weren't falling. You wonder if like he had a normal shooting game. If it would have been a while, definitely obviously would have been more competitive. But if they could have like hung in there and given themselves a chance to win. Yeah, could that kind of had an outlier poor shooting game. Yeah. When they cut at the 10 could have actually been six and then you the game plays out differently from there. Yeah. And it happens. RJ's been on a bit of a heater offensively. It was you were bound to have a off night. He had an off night. But again, the decision-making on offense for him in the shot selection. I had no problem with. Yeah. 19 field goal attempts. The other thing he shot two or five at the line. And this was the Raptors only got to the line 11 times. Four for 11 at the free throw line. Maybe that's a fifth game of a road trip.

7:23That's like a third and fourth grade game. Yeah. That's a weird NBA stat. Like you know how we sometimes reference 50 40 90 like koai is close to 50 percent field goal 40 percent three point shooting 90 percent from the free throw line. It's like the height of efficiency step curry line. The Raptors last night were 42 34 36. Exactly. It's a bad shooting night. Yeah. From everywhere. Yeah. On the floor. I don't know. So offensively. Look, RJ, you liked some of the shot selection. It just it didn't drop there. Scotty Barnes also had an inefficient night as a shooter shot four of 11. Great job with eight rebounds 12 assists. I thought even though koai had a good night, he made it difficult for koai. It was physical with him. Him and columnary boils were physical with koai. We can circle back to the koai part. Brandon Ingram low shot eight of 18. A lot of those possessions that we've talked about where the clock gets eaten up trying to get him the ball or he gets the ball and then eats up a bunch of clock. Chris Dunn off the bench did a nice job on Brandon Ingram denying him the ability to, you know, kind of take those two extra dribbles in and

8:26get into his mid range package and I don't want to hang it all on Ingram because that was a team wide loss. But we're at a stretch here where I don't know if you look at the last maybe 12 15 games. There was those there were those two games where he had 30 pieces back to back and he was really, really efficient. But otherwise you look at that and he's been fairly inefficient over that 12 to 15 game stretch and the, you know, some of the on off plus minus stuff is pretty negative as well. Are you seeing anything kind of like pattern wise with Ingram offensively? That's not working right now. It seems like teams are locked game planning for him more, especially the better teams. The teams that are going to play in the post season and they're just more on point with when and where they double. They make it unpredictable and they do a better job rotating behind them. So it's twofold. It's, you know, Ingram being ready for it, making, you know, the first pass out whoever catches it, that's the most important guy when someone gets doubled. That guy's got to be

9:27in an attack, whether it's swing, swing, good to great or I catch it and drive and collapse and use that past to collapse the defense and now you got a man down week side defense rotation. You should be able to get an open shot that way or RJ is great at slashing. You get someone doing that kind of 45 degree slash cut. Even if they don't get the ball, the defense has to react to that and then that gives Brandon Ingram more options passing out of a double team and then where he catches it on the floor. If he catches it, he's been, feels like he's been catching it in spots that are easy team defense wise for the opposing team to double. He, when he was getting buckets, it seemed like he was catching it more in the middle of the court, like on the nail between the nail and the top of the key and operating from there where it's a lot harder to double team because you haven't declared a side and if someone comes and doubles one pass away from there, it's just like a 10 foot pass to the wing and you're in attack mode. So it's just harder to rotate if you're doubling

10:35when someone is in the middle of the court. And who doubles? Which side doubles? It's hard to communicate that on the backside with the team defense. So maybe that's somewhere like if he's looking to attack, get back into those areas, that's kind of my observation. What do you think? Yeah, it's interesting too. If you look league-wide, some of those Iverson cuts where Ingram, if you think back to the old Lamar playbook, come across two screens along the middle of the floor, like the free throw line extended, get your catch there. We've seen that. I think because of spacing above the break and how good defenses have gotten having seen that for a long time, that's kind of come further up the floor. And I don't think this is unique to the raptors. I think that's a trend that you're seeing. So Ingram is now catching the ball maybe 20 feet away on those instead of 16 feet. And every extra dribble is more time for the other team to load up or double. Yeah, and if you get into your mid range, it's a 20 footer instead of a 16 footer or something like that. So all those little things. The other thing that exacerbated this the last two nights is that Jamal Shed started. And I know he knocked down his three's last night,

11:36he went two for five. But we saw Darius Garland like really help off from the top. This is what I'm talking about. Jamal Shed. So when it comes to Shed, look, the easy answer this is quickly we'll be back. Shed will go into a more natural role where he's the backup point guard. And if he's playing with the starters, quickly we'll be out there. So you have some shooting. In the interim, if quickly he's going to deal with this plantar fasciitis, is there anything that the raptors can do, you know, if they had like a pick and pop five and Scotty Barnes was more of an outside threat, you could maybe get yourself to, oh, drop Jamal Shed into the dunker spot, right? Or have him be a sneaky guy along the baseline or something like that, just to invert things and make it more difficult. Is there anything given the spacing limitations they have elsewhere that you can do with Shed to not let a team help off of them off the top that aggressively? Not when you have that many non-shooters on the court. And this is what we talked about, what was it two days ago? We were talking about Shed's shooting struggles. He hit two-three's last night, two for five, not bad. But if you have two in the raptors, sometimes three guys on

12:42the court that don't shoot threes, you know, the Darko was experimenting with the front line, lineups last night. I don't know if you noticed that. He had Yacht and Mamu out there. He had CMB and Yacht out there. I mean, and then you got Scotty, who is also teams are not going to be scared of him shooting threes. You might have like two, three, maybe four guys on the court that you're not really scared about. Actually, that's not true. You're going to have three guys on the court that teams aren't like, we have to close out and get this guy off the line. Then you can't, there's nothing you can do with Jamal Shed. If it's one, you can make him, you can put him in the dunker. You're absolutely right. We used to do that on the spurs with Tony Parker. Like if me and Tony were in the game together, and I was in the dunker spot, and he makes a post entry pass, he would cut through and bump me to the corner and stay and take the dunker, even though he's a gardener. I'm a big because that's our strengths and weaknesses offensively. If you have two, you can have one guy

13:46slash. And another guy be in the dunker and then have two shooters on the weak side. But that's hard. That's going to clog things up. It's going to take away basically Brandon Ingram getting anything at the hoop if you have that many guys down there. So it's a tough spot to be in. If you have more than one non shooter on the court with an ISO guy, and he's getting double teamed, it just really limits the opportunities out of that. And if all that weren't enough, Jacobi Walter also got in serious early foul trouble last night. So you're one, you're hot as shooter who's hit everything of late and hit his first three when he came into the game last night was early in the second quarter, having picked up three pretty quick fouls. And then by the time you used him again in the third quarter, the game was over. So a tough one there. I guess you could have gone to Jamison battle a little bit more. He played 11 minutes before those were garbage time. Grady dictated they didn't dust off to try to get some spacing in there. So they kind of they kind of just were like, okay, this is what we got from a spacing perspective.

14:49Call him or a boils obviously doesn't help with that, but nice to see him play 24 minutes and see him fine with the thumb. Let's let's I guess they're throwing a ton of positives to pick from this. What did you like how Scotty and CMD handled the Kwai matchup even though Kwai? Yeah, I want to talk about Kwai. Yeah, let's do it because he shot what? Nine of 19 got to the free throw line eight times 27 points. Just it's it just feels inevitable, man. Every time he had one where Sky Barnes tried to pick him up at half court and he like so seamlessly went behind the back. It was I think it was the play where Ingram actually blocked him on the dunk and they reviewed it and called it a dunk, but the like casual behind the back dribble through traffic in semi transition is just I don't know so much of what Kwai does feels inevitable. Yeah, so I did think Scotty and CMB did a great job on Kwai. There was a couple times where Kwai was trying to debo CMB and kind of like when we saw with Wembee and he was just like bouncing Kwai is really strong and he's got old man strength on top of it and he was just kind of bouncing

15:52off CMB's chest couldn't move him, which I thought was really cool. CMB had a good one on the roll to this was not Kwai, but he was rolling to the rim and he looked for a pass first and it wasn't there and he just I forget who it was, but he just kind of laid the shoulder in and then got the buck in the room. Is that the one when he traveled and they didn't call it? Yes, yes, buddy went, I forget who it was, but you were just like flying off of CMB. The refs missed like five, six travels last night. Both sides, they weren't discriminating. They just like, yeah, we're not calling travel tonight. But yeah, I did like that, but it doesn't matter with Kwai. We had law on yesterday who's talking about Kwai getting drawing fouls and getting to the free throw line, something we haven't seen a ton of or at this level in the past and you saw it last night, like he comes in, he's initiating contact, he's putting the ball out there kind of James Harden style ish and he's so strong that no, like there's nothing you can do about it. You're not taking the ball from him and he's using you going for the ball to draw that contact and get to the free throw line. He's playing way more physical. The thing that with him

16:57that was, he draws fouls on his follow through. Did you notice that? Yeah. Like CMB is like right there, he straight up and Kwai like shoots and follows through forward. So his follow through will hit the player's arms after he releases the basketball. And with the new rules protecting shooters, they call that foul pretty much every time it happened two or three times on jump shots where CMB could not have played more perfect defense is in his own airspace, you know, vertical. And Kwai just like follows through with those long arms and monster hands into into his the top of CMB's hands and they call the foul. And so like you almost have to like, if you're CMB and you got to remember this for next time you play Kwai, you have to be like, all right, I got Kwai. All right, he's going to shoot over the top. I'm not trying to block it. You're not going to block Kwai's jump shot when he has his release is insane. Yeah, like he gets to a spy. He shoots

18:01it with like his arms completely straight. I don't even know how he does it, but he does it. So you be like, all right, I'm not going to block it. I'm going to contest. So this shot is as difficult as possible. And then right when he's shooting it, you almost have to spread your hands out. This is what I'm thinking. Yeah, you spread your hands out. So when he follows through, he doesn't come into your hands and get that call. What do you think about that? Yeah, it's like, you think of anything else you can do. No, I mean, that's it, because you can't, you can't keep your hands down or in the contest. Like you got to at least got to get it in his in his line of sight. But you can't put it in his face because then he's going to come through and get the foul that way. It's like we use the term hands in the cookie jar, but this is actually more like a Venus flytrap, or like the cookie jar can grab you too. Yeah, it's like when we used to play James Harden on the spurs towards towards the end of my career, coach pop would would have us like when he comes off the screen, play behind him. Just like stay behind him and rear view contest. Yeah, in rear view contest. And if you remember, Manu got a huge block to win the playoff series doing that

19:06from behind. Yeah. And that it paid off because like if you get in front of him, he's going to draw the foul every single time he can see you. You're not blocking it. He's going to score. But if you stay behind him, it would like throw him off in the way he kind of cocks it back. You could block the shot from the back. So like you got to do these like quirky things against these great players that know how to burn traditional defense every single time. And with Kauai, I think that's I think that's the only thing you do straight up contest. And then as soon as he's right when after he releases, it's spread your arms out so he can't come into your arms. Yeah. That's what I mean. That's what I always say you can do. And you know, last night the rap just tried a couple different things. Barnes and CMB individually. They were early on. They were showing the second body on him, but they got caught a couple of times where Pertle ended up in kind of a switch situation that they gave it to easy. And then like you look at I know they traded away Harden and Zubots. And that is a, you know, a talent change and a timeline change and stuff like that. But you look at the way the pieces fit. And having Brooke Lopez as a like trail slash pick and pop big next to Kauai is really helpful. The fact that Garland obviously James

20:09Harden can draw a ton of fouls and hit the step back three, but Garland being so quick with the pull-up and getting able to get down hill a little bit. It just the pieces seem to compliment each other pretty well in a way that even though Harden is probably better at this point, it didn't maybe there wasn't quite as much synergy with the way the pieces all fit. Yeah, I mean we saw Garland have a heck of a game. Yeah, you hit really tough shots. And he was having fun, man. Like he was put on a show. And I like their bench. Those guys play hard. Mathurin off the bench is dangerous. What a six-man score for your second unit. Yeah, also like I know Benedict Mathurin will want to get paid this offseason. And you make more money as a starter. But given his game, given his shot profile, given the fact that he, I mean, to me, he profiles as like an elite microwave guy, like coming off the bench, get hot in a hurry, pour in some offense. And those guys don't get paid as much as full-time starters. But you see last night what it looks like, 23 points in 27 minutes and like live that the

21:10free throw line going against bench players. I don't know, that's a pretty good like down. I know you don't want to accept that you're first big free agent deal, but like that might be the best use of Mathurin like long-term on this team for sure. Yeah. The other thing with Kauai that was crazy to me is like his handle. He like wraps his hand around the ball. Like I've never know, I mean, Kauai's got a tight handle, but you never think of him like Kairi Irving or like Steph Curry or someone. But you are, once he starts dribbling, you are not getting the ball from him. No, like the though, I think Scotty got it from him once and I was like, whoa, like did I just see that right? The other thing were Kauai, he makes zero effort, does not care to gain any advantage when he doesn't have the ball. He doesn't come off a screen to score. He doesn't backdoor cut. He'll like go all the way to half court. Just give me the ball anywhere on the court. And I'm going to get to my spot and be dangerous and score.

22:15Like you don't have to do anything except figure out how to give him the ball at some point in the possession. Yeah. He's going to make something good happen. And a very methodical way. And you compare him to like other star players like that. And it's like, oh yeah, he's also a 41 percent three point shooter over the last four seasons. So it's not as if you have the option of like wait until Kauai gets the ball. He doesn't want to pick. He doesn't want. Just give me the ball, get out of the way. Let me do my thing. If they double, maybe ready to shoot Brook Lopez. Yeah. And if I need to breather on a possession, oh, by the way, I'm an elite knockdown shooter. Yeah, exactly. It's it's pretty good stuff. Okay, a couple quick ones. The other Kauai thing that I love and I miss seeing all the time, the catch your own dunk. He does it all the time. And he used to he did it when he was here all the time. The dunk, catch it politely handed to the inbounder is just so casual. He is now, by the way, 16 and three all time against the Raptors and nine and one since he left. Bummer. Yep. Bummer indeed. And even bigger bummer.

23:20Here's the key set of the game, Matt. Garrett Temple. Now two games back of Matt Bonner's career time. I knew you were going to say that. And I would just like to reiterate. I know he plays longer. Four years, but despite that, I'm still way up on him in games played as a Raptor. Yeah. There was another one too, but now I care. The true shooting percentage. And if you factor in playoffs, he's way behind me. Oh, playoff games. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. He's played a he's played 31 playoff. Yeah. And I'm I don't know how many I'm like 90. Yeah. You you've played a lot. So you got to keep playing Garrett. Yeah. If you if you really want to catch you're at 94. There you go. So you've got an extra 63 game cushion on him if we include. Yeah. If we include playoff games, but I've been tracking this all years. So I'm going to keep tracking it. I will say with all the records and I know it's only regular season. After playing on the spurs for 10 years, that is like it's it's pointless to me. Yeah, like counting that.

24:23No, yeah, because the spurs the whole focus was the postseason. Yeah. Like the regular season was a vehicle to get to the postseason healthy and playing your best basketball player. And anything beyond that in the regular season is like a relevant like, I don't know, like nobody really cared. Like even the even the spurs fans got spoiled with it. And for like regular season games, just be like, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. But but after they lost for a couple years now, they're like, oh, yeah, like we were spoiled. Let's now it's a back to being a rockest place in the regular season. They got a good team again. Nice. By the way, speaking of the spurs, Kyle Aurey got asked, yes, they're so it's his 40th birthday. And he is one of only 12 players to play 20 years in the NBA. And he got asked, can you name all of them? And he went 12 for 13. He got the only one he got wrong is he guessed him Duncan and 19 years. Otherwise, he like cleared it. He got them all in Tim Duncan has the greatest stat of all 19 years never lost.

25:27Never lost one less than 50 games. Wow. In 19 years. Yeah, that's a pretty good one. Okay, so the Raptors lose last night where that leaves us is that the Raptors down six in the eastern conference because Atlanta beat the pistons in overtime. Elsewhere, we had Philly beat Chicago. Joel and beat return and drop 35 Paul George return and drop 28. They scored 157 on the balls in regulation. The heat also won against the Cavalier. So the Raptors, the Hawks are down fifth. The Raptors are half game back. Then the Raptors are only a half game up on Philly, one and a half up on Miami and two up on Charlotte and Orlando. So that's getting even tighter at the end of sixth. They could they could be in the playing. I mean, by the weekend Orlando feels like they're just slipping off a cliff here. Yeah, calves. Come on, calves. But if for Orlando beats the Raptors on Sunday, suddenly those standings, it's like, Oh, Orlando's got a chance. And yeah, I mean, those two head to heads against Miami. Yeah, gonna be massive. They loom large. And like the

26:31Raptors, I know that they cleared the toughest part of their schedule a little earlier and now they're done this five game trip. But they've got Orlando on Sunday at Detroit, quick home game against the Kings and then their at Memphis embossed and then it's that heat back to back. And then if the Knicks are still playing for seating, they've got the Knicks next. They they they they have Brooklyn, the Grizzlies and the Kings and the Pelicans still on the schedule. So that's four games. Three for probably for sure wins. Yeah, I think four of those you you would say you should have. Memphis Kings, Brooklyn and New Orleans. New Orleans, whoop, whoop, they're but less. But you should want that game pretty bad. I agree. But it's also the get back game. Yeah, it's an 830 start, which is I don't know, weird quirk of. Yeah, but yeah, that's you're right. They should want that game. They should come out. Yes, it's not like New Orleans has been playing better and it's not like New Orleans is weren't scared of the Raptors clearly. Yeah. So I wouldn't

27:32pencil that one is like, yeah, well, we're probably definitely going to win that one and say there's only three and the Kings game is on the second night of a travel back to back and the Grizzlies game is on the road. So it's not like, I mean, you still got to have those games, but come on. I know Kings and Grizzlies like they've lost the they've lost weirder things have happened. I mean, yo, for sure, it's the NBA. Yeah, show up. Yeah, appropriate fear. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a bad thing. Either way, even if we count those ones, it's not great that you only have three like, oh, that's definitely a win of your final 10 games. I agree. That I agree. That's the point I'm trying to make. Yeah. Okay. So we'll keep it on that stuff. We might get to some of the other NBA stuff. A little later Raptors 905 are playing right now, by the way, as they try to lock up a home court in the first round. And congratulations to Mack McCleung, who the other day became the G leagues all time leading score. He's the LeBron of the G league. He sure is. He's crash Davis. If you know your baseball movie lore, let's take a break. Who knows? Maybe Mack McCleung's in the NBA if there are 32 teams instead of 30 teams. Let's talk some expansion. You get in the Hall of Fame for that? No, no, no, I don't,

28:37I mean, three time dunk champion. It's probably his better path to the Hall of Fame than all time G leagues, all time G league. Yeah, Rolando Major is not in the Hall of Fame. He was the previous record holder. So don't think so. Let's take a break. Let's talk to Mike Borkin of the athletic about everything Adam Silver had to talk about yesterday, but the future of the league. That's next, that's the Raptor Show continues with Blake Murphy, a map honor. Staple's presence. That was easy. So I opened a restaurant and needed everything, menus, signage, catering brochures, everything and then some. I went to Staples. They printed it all and even suggested takeout menus. One money pit with a side of fries. But now it's Staples. You get up to $125 off custom print orders. $125 off. Now you're cooking brand your business in a big way at Staples. That was easy. Job Staples and store online or in the app by four or four to unblock. Exclusions apply visit staples.com slash print for details. Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated.

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30:48Welcome back to the Raptor Show, Blake Murphy and Matt Bonner with you. Got a little WNBA news to follow all the WNBA news yesterday. If you are a Toronto temple fan, well, Sunday is a big day for you, the WNBA teams who currently exist have to submit their protection list so that on April 3rd, the tempo will get to do their expansion draft. Finally, they'll have a coin flip at some point to determine whether they or the Portland fire will pick first in the expansion draft or in the actual draft, just like when the Raptors and Grizzlies did the same exciting times. What if you're a free agent? So you can, and this is an important question because a lot of the league is understood free agent right now. Those teams can technically select a free agent to have like an exclusive negotiating window with them to sign them to a max that you wouldn't be able to sign otherwise. However, you can't hit them with the like core player tag, the franchise tag that we talked about before. So it'd be really interesting to see how this all plays out.

31:49Mike Forkinoff had a really great podcast with Sabrina Merchant the other day on business decisions going into a lot of this CBA. Let's bring them on now and talk about all sorts of stuff. Mike Forkinoff of the athletic joins us now. How are we doing, buddy? I'm doing great. Thanks for plugging business decision. That's the biggest publicity it's ever gotten. Well, it's a, it's a great pod. And as someone who doesn't want to, for work purposes, I do not want to learn a third collective bargaining agreement. I've got the basketball and baseball ones already. The WNBA one is not a CBA that I want to learn intimately. So thank you guys for going through most of that. We're going to talk a lot of Adam Silver's press conference yesterday. But to wrap this thought up high level, it's sat in for a couple days now more details of trickle about how do you feel about where the WNBA CBA landed for the players? You know, I think it's, it's a little complicated. That's what we were talking about on the pod is, you know, look, they got huge, huge raises, right? And I think that's great for the players. And they finally got a salary cap that's tied to revenue sharing. So if and when the lead grows,

32:52the amount of money that the players are able to make also grows. I think the downside for the players is that it's at, you know, 20% of revenue, right? In the NBA, it's 50-50. In the NHL's roughly 50-50. And in the NFL, it's I think it's like 48 and a half percent roughly speaking. And baseball and those salary cap, but I think they get about 47% of revenue. And it's also for six to seven years, depending on when they opt out. And I mean, that complicates things too, because if the lead continues to grow, maybe not as much as it has the last few years at that rate. But that deal will probably look better for the league because they only have to give up 20% of revenue for six to seven years so that allows it a lot of breeding room too. So those two things are kind of both true and it complicates kind of like the outcome of this thing for the players. In the NBA, it's BRI, it's not gross revenue. Is it gross revenue or is it their version of BRI? I believe it's gross revenue. The WNBA revenue situation is a little bit more complicated

33:54than the NBA's is from a multitude of different reasons. But so that also kind of impacted just like what they were bargaining over and it had to split up that money. So if you're comparing apples to apples, it would be more than 20%. If you defined it as the NBA would define BRI, correct? I mean, I don't know enough. Mike might have a better handle, but I think what he, what we're getting at here is that there's still a lot less. Yeah. Well, there's also, there's like some vagueness in the, in the WNBA numbers. Oh, he is. Yeah. Those owners. Yeah. Okay. They have a lot more lawyers. Yeah. That's right. Well, so lawyers are one thing. Wizard, Adam Silver used the term bankers more times than I would care for the commissioner to mention and during a press conference yesterday. Don't know why you think that's the messaging fans want to hear. But sure, the important actor in the NBA's expansion plot are the bankers. Adam Silver did a press conference yesterday. There were a lot of topics touched on. Expansion is obviously front of mind. You've written a couple pieces at the athletic going into that.

34:58So Seattle and Las Vegas are the markets. The board of governance is voted to open it up to those. I guess to start, why just those two markets and, you know, what is it? What does it look like from here in the sense that there are only, everyone can bid, but you can only bid to put one in those two cities. Yeah. Look, I think it's just those two markets because, I mean, if you us to what Adam Silver was saying, like, they're looking for markets that can kind of help the NBA and they're saying they want to act strategically. Really, those are the, effectively, the two biggest markets still out there for different reasons. Seattle is the second biggest market, media market that the NBA doesn't have a team in. The other one is Tampa, but obviously they have teams in Orlando and Miami already in Florida. And Vegas is not a huge media market. It's actually relatively, it would be on the small end compared to other NBA franchises. They're 40th in the United States since the media market, but it's also Vegas, right? And so there's a lot of different ways to make money there. And so if they want to expand, they want to go to cities where

36:01you can get a huge expansion fee, but also where, you know, in your big cities that you can draw a lot of fans and that you can get a lot of investment in. That makes a lot of sense. And yes, Seattle, the JD bunkers who host the show right before us grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is still on expense. We've been here in this for like years and years. From him, I'm glad it's finally moving in that direction. When we look at the voting from here, obviously the board of governors voted to, for this next step, which is to explore the bids and let's see. So the language once again, we're into a vague area here. Adam Silver meant reminding us yesterday that it doesn't have to be two. It could be one. It could end up being zero. Do you expect any sort of pushback or hurdles as they roll this out or are those more formalities and more headed to in the next couple of years? We'll probably have 32. Yeah, you know, I asked them specifically, I was like, look, the presumption is that you guys are doing this because there's going to be expansion. There's been presumption of expansion happening for a number of years now. He said,

37:02you know, not necessarily. It doesn't guarantee expansion. Maybe means, you know, as you said, zero, one or two teams, although one team would certainly make things very complicated from the NBA operationally. I think if I had to, you know, handicap this, I would assume that they end up adding two teams in Las Vegas and in Seattle. But the reason they hired all those bankers is so they can gauge what the market is for expansion teams and see if everyone is someone or how many people out there are willing to meet their price in terms of franchise fees and how that then gets split. And, you know, essentially, this becomes a math problem for a lot of people in the NBA ownership group, which is how do we dilute our revenue versus what we get out of expansion fees? To your point about only Las Vegas in Seattle, I think it would be fascinating if somebody's like, hey, I want an expansion team in Kansas City and I'll give you $13 billion for it, just to throw chaos into the mix. But, you know, those are the two kind of biggest markets there. And I think probably I doubt that the NBA would do this, would go this far, would be as public as it has,

38:07and not add, add teams there. Like sure, there are, you know, things that could make this, you know, eventually keep the NBA status quo. Maybe there's just enough owners who decide they're not there and they don't want to vote on it. It seems like there's at least a few. And if there's more than seven, then this, you know, they won't vote to approve it. But, I would guess that, you know, in $28.29 or $29.30, we've got two new NBA teams. Yeah. And based on the timeline from previous expansions, $28.29 seems like a reasonable target for those teams to start. The other thing you pointed out in one of your recent pieces, Mike, is we actually, unless they change things, which I don't know why they would, the CBA doesn't expire or have an opt-up before that. We know how the expansion process will work from a roster perspective. It's laid out in the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. So, we had some real uncertainty around the Toronto tempo on the WNBA side because it was a new CBA and the financial landscape and cap landscape entirely different. With a hypothetical Seattle or Vegas theme, we have an idea of how this will work for the listeners who haven't read that.

39:09Can you give us an idea of what that would look like and what, when you talk about these forecasting retreats that teams are going on, what are they working through when it comes to what roster-wise expansion would look like? Yeah, I mean, look, it says specifically in the CBA, if there's an expansion draft, it's going to work exactly the same way it did for Charlotte in 2003 or 2004, or whatever you're that was. So, you know, you protect, you can draft, at least, say, players, you know, every team can't lose more than one player. You protect eight players, you know, from your roster. And then, you know, the new teams, let's call them, let's say the Sonics and on the Las Vegas, whatever's, you know, they both get their salary cap is set at 66 and 2-thirds percent of the salary cap level for the other teams in year one, and then an 80% in year two. So, there's some restrictions on these teams. If you look at what happened with the Bobcats, when they came in in the 2004 NBA draft, they got the fourth overall pick,

40:10they ended up trading up to two, but they didn't give them a, you know, a top three pick, which you could get with the lottery balls. And so, if you look at what happened with the Valkyries and the Tempo and the Fire, they also did not get top five picks, right, that the lottery gods can reward you with. So, I would assume we see something similar with incoming NBA teams as well. What were the other cities they were considering? They talk about that, or it was always just these two. I think it was always these two. I mean, Adam Silver has said, you know, publicly, and I think there's been some thought maybe exploring Mexico City as well, you know, like I think Vancouver and Montreal have shown interest. But, you know, there's comp, I don't know, you know, that's kind of an interesting question. I don't know if you want to, if you'd be able to put a team in San Diego with two LA teams, like I feel like the Lakers and the Clippers would throw up some hands and try to fight that, you know, like teams that like to have other franchise is too close to their market. And they might actually be a restriction. I don't know all the ins and outs of the NBA rules, but

41:13Vegas and Seattle are just, you know, they're big enough. They're out west, which make things easier when you do realignment and kind of evening things out. And this, you know, the interesting thing about how expansion works, but also just like how much super wealthy people want to pay for teams is that a lot of it just comes down to how close it is to like big cities, like LA and New York or big kind of like travel hubs. And you know, Vegas is pretty close, like it's a four hour drive. I can't, you know, I don't know how close the flight is. Seattle obviously is a huge hub already. And so it's harder to make that cell for Montreal or Vancouver, Kansas City or something like that. Yeah, it's, I mean, I would love to see one in Canada again at some point, but it seemed you're certainly not going to drop Vancouver in Seattle right across the border at the same time. That's not that's not how you're going to Portland Oregon. Yeah, it's not realistic to do the 90s. Yeah, exactly. Let's run it back. Okay. So we'll have two more teams potentially. So we'll have

42:17two more teams that are tanking, right? Adam Silver also spoke yesterday. He got asked a bunch about the current tanking issues. And you know, look, it's a real story. It was a little curious to hear him downplay the 65 game talk of that's not an issue. It's working even though it's a giant talking point and then be like, no, tanking is a talking point. And we really care about this. And we're going to fix it. Obviously, he kept it pretty vague because they have to talk about these things and they'll have to in some cases pass it with the NBA players association if there's a major change. But did you come away with from that with a sense of what and if not what how aggressive the NBA intends to be kind of tweaking the anti-tanking components this offseason? I think it will be fairly aggressive compared to like the recent changes that they made, which is changing the odds. I think they'll probably change like pick protection rules if I had to guess things along those nature maybe things that try to incentivize, de-incentivize losing,

43:18right, which is something we see through February, March and April and try to incentivize winning a little bit. I don't know exactly what that'll look like. And you know, I think from I try to become an Adam Silver criminologist in the sense that usually what he says in public, there's kind of hinting at what he tends to do, right? They've mentioned what the WNBA does, which is lottery odds are tied to two years of records instead of just one, right? I think that's interesting. And I can see those types of things happening and I'm kind of curious to see where the league goes because they're also going to fast track this, right? They're having a special May Board of Governors meeting, which means they want it implemented before this draft, this transaction cycle. And it'll be in effect the new rules, whatever they are for next season. So they want teams to have enough kind of notice to know how all this is going to work. So that part of it is very fascinating to me too. Yeah, it's also fascinating to me that you know, you're fast tracking this. So you want teams to know by next year. But what if it fundamentally changes

44:20the outlook for one of these teams that has just embarked on what will be a multi-er? I know we saw Utah push them chips in to be competitive next year, Washington goes on and gets tray young and Anthony Davis. But there are some teams that we're expecting to be in the wilderness for a little bit. And now the rules are going to change a little bit. So it'll be interesting to see how that works. And then on top of which you mentioned pick protections and things like that, that would like all the picks that are already owed would have to stay the same. So we're going to be operating with kind of two different rules sets, depending on when a trade happened, which is, it's all very interesting to sort through. Mike, the other thing that was a popular topic in the Adam Silver pressure yesterday was the 65 game player participation rule, which has obviously been talked about a lot because Kate Cunningham through no fault of load management might miss out on the cutoff. Tom Haberstrow had a great piece about I think it's half the players who made all NBA over the last two years won't be eligible this year or something like that. Adam Silver pushed back a little bit that he thinks this is the rule is effective. How do you feel about that

45:23when the rule was designed, I think, to curb load management and what it is actually feels like it's doing is highlighting that there is a star player injury issue that is maybe not load management related. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, since it's one rule, but you're talking about different things, right? Like as you said, this was meant to address load management effectively. They just wanted star players playing more frequently, right? Like they want to run on the court fewer rest days, you know, they start to kind of deny in the efficacy of load management and all these types of things. And so the NBA's perspective is that part has worked, right? When players are healthy, they are playing more frequently and not sitting out games for non injury reasons. You also have players who are now not eligible for all NBA MVP awards. Like, you know, Kate Cunningham would not have won the MVP probably, but he would have gotten awards, right? And it's actually, you know, this cave Cunningham one is actually, I think a very acute issue because

46:24if he had played one more game, he might have been able to at least qualify for like the injury exception and to make a grievance case, even though that might have been a little bit difficult. I think, I think probably the NBA is okay with that because somebody's going to make these all NBA teams, right? Like somebody's going to get these honors and they try to make exceptions, especially for like, Kate, it's not going to impact his money, right? Like it's not a situation where he's in the last year of his rookie contract and he's not going to make all NBA and so he's he's going to not get the 30% designated rookie max or, you know, 35% is something like that if he was on an extension. And so I think that's just a tradeoff that they're willing to have, you know, and they're, I think they're willing to take the heat for it because what's most important for them is just that like they play enough games here. Their media partners are happy that the stars are playing and they're nationally broadcast games and having one player maybe impacted every year because nothing happened last year that I can think of, you know, tires Halbert and kind of went on the court for a weird like stint where he's playing

47:2920 minutes a night just effectively qualified. The first year that this rule was in place, I think that's a tradeoff that they're willing to have. I think then there is a separate question of our players getting hurt more frequently as a result of having to play more or because they are playing more. I don't know as much about what the data says there, but obviously the reason that load management was instituted in the first place is that teams who have the most incentive to keep their players happy, bully healthy believe that the rigors of an NBA season now because the style play and how many games there are might invite more injuries. Yeah, it's a tough one. Mike, before we let go here, you also had a piece at the athletic with Stephen S bit the other day. We don't need to do the MLB NBA number stuff, but I am curious, it is opening day. I believe you're a new Jersey guy. Are you a Metsore Yankees guy? I grew up a Yankees fan, then I covered baseball, so I'm just out on it all together. No, I don't root for anybody now. Which is I guess maybe even sadder, I don't know. But I just root for chaos, you know, whatever is the most fun. There you go. That's it.

48:33Were you rooting for the Blue Jays in the World Series last year? I was, that was way I was in there like game seven. I mean, I'm not going to rehash it, that might just be painful at this point. Yeah, I was rooting for them. You know, that you always liked the underdog. Yeah, way to play to the crowd here in Toronto as well. Mike, thanks so much for doing this, buddy. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, buddy. Thank you. Thanks Mike for working off of the athletic and it's the business decisions podcast. If you want more on the WMBA, CBA with Sabrina Merchant, who is also excellent on the WMBA. Couple notes from last night's games that we didn't touch in the first segment. Celtics beat the Thunder. We have Scal on the show tomorrow, so that'll be fun to chop that one up. Okay, C's lead on the Spurs is down to just two. They'll probably hang on there and last in a month, but the Spurs have a tiebreaker. Yeah, and the Spurs don't lose either. So when he's out there making his own MVP case publicly and things like that. So we also said Jamal Murray dropped 53. Yoke Havanon saying Stadline and the Nuggets still barely beat the Mavericks. I don't know, man, I can't figure the Nuggets. Yoke Chumel said a 2020, 2020.

49:36I know. Has he done that? I think so, but I have to double check. Yeah. And then in one of the weirdest games you will ever see, the Rockets and Wolves went over time. Shengoon with a great game-saving block and then bust his face open. Let me go on a 13-0 run and overtime. Go up by 13. The teams that have gone up by 10 and overtime over the last 29 seasons are 180 and 0. What's your source for that? Kierithika. That's right. Yes. Yes. I double-checked it to make sure because I always double-check all my stats, but yes. She's great at that. She's the best. And then so 180 and 0. And then the Wolves respond with a 15 and 0, 15-0 run to win. The first team in like 30 years to blow a 10 point over time. Farch madness. Unbelievable. Yeah. That takes us to. That's right. Brought to you by that MGM, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. There are only three NBA games tonight, but two of them are standing as relevant for the Raptors. We've got the Kings at the

50:37Magic. There's Pelicans at Pistons, which is less relevant and we'll take a look at Nix at Hornets at 7 p.m. The Hornets are one and a half point favorites. On the Nix side, Duce McBride and Landry Shamant remain out for the Hornets. Tijon Salon remains out in Pat Connetson is questionable with an illness. This is a Nix team that's 48 and 25 third in the east. Only a half game back a second. So it'd be relevant there if you're looking at second-round home court advantage in a potential Nix Celtic series. The Nix 117 in a row. They're up to fifth in net rating, third in offense, eighth in defense and OGN and OB making that all defense push with lots of the Nix pushing it on social media and things like that. The Hornets, 38 and 34. They're tied for ninth in these. There are only two games back a six to avoid the play in altogether. As we've talked about a ton, they've won four in a row. They're 22 and six over their last 28 and they are up to seventh in the league in net rating, fifth in offense, 12th in defense. So two pretty good teams that are playing some really good basketball right now.

51:38And of course, Raptors relevant there. Like I said, it's also Kings at Magic. You can probably pencil the Magic in for a win in that one, but they have not been playing very good basketball. Exactly. Exactly. You usually know with the Kings, but you never know with the Magic. So we'll see. That was fast break brought to you by that MGM, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. Does this surprise you? The Hornets are favored in that game a little bit. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I had to double check it because it's, I mean, again, I double check all this stuff when I look at it, but I thought the Knicks would have been. But I guess it's a, it's a nod to home court advantage because one and a half point favorites at home suggests on neutral court, the Knicks would be favored. But yeah, home court advantage and the Hornets just playing really, really good ball lately. Should be fun. Yeah, exactly. Should be a good one. This is a good one. Thanks to Mike for joining us. Thanks to Ahmed Mann, James Wilson and Jake Schultz behind the glass. We will be back tomorrow. I'll do my third happy opening day. It'll be actually opening day

52:38for the Blue Jace tomorrow, which is quite exciting. We will also have Antonio Daniels on to talk about the Pelicans and your pal Brian Scalibri. Big time show tomorrow. Yeah, fun one. In the interim, have a great Thursday. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board. But then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, zippercruder, finds you what you're looking for the needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free. That's right.

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