[Preview] Searching for the 2026 Protagonists, The Six Most Confusing Teams This Season, Surveying the Southwest Division

0:00Hello and welcome to a free preview of the greatest of all talk. Hello and welcome back to another episode of greatest of all talk. I'm Andrew Sharp and I'm the other line. Adamara's what's up man? Man you put me in a good mood every time you do this intro. It's like a low fires me up man. It gets me going. I'm in. I've got the you feel this. You know I was so tired and burnt out at the last at the end of last season. It was just was a very exhausting season. And this off season has been great. You know totally rejuvenated. But I do feel the like low hum of the train coming. You know it's coming. Yeah I think this morning was the first time I woke up and I was like, oh God here it comes again. You know what I've run into is every year I get excited for the beginning of football season. And then I get like four hours into football season. And I realize I don't really like football.

1:01So bring on real sports as far as I'm concerned. Can't wait for basketball. The Broncos unfortunately I watched the Broncos game last night. Might not be their year out there in Denver. I don't know. You know what I like I say every year the media out here is so convinced it is the year. So it's the only thing I have to go on. I'm just like, okay all right they say it's good. And then I watch last night and I'm like, what are they set a record? I don't know if you saw this is like the most missed tackles in 40 years or something. It was crazy. They look horrible. Yeah whoever the announcer I think it might have been Troy Ackman. They were just like, we expected a lot more out of this Broncos defense. So in any event on that note we will turn to basketball. And I want to start with a question that came in before last season that I think is worth revisiting on the way into 2026, 27. John said last year guys on one hand I'm excited as always for the NBA season to start on the other hand as I'm looking around the league.

2:03I'm really struggling to find a team to get excited about. There doesn't seem to be any scrappy young team who could make the leap or a great champion with something to prove etc. Every team seems to be going nowhere running it back or ravaged by injury. And the league doesn't revolve around Steph LeBron and KD anymore. But maybe I'm missing an obvious candidate. So I'll put it to the experts at the goat. Who is the team that's going to drive the story of this season? Could the nicks break through? Will OKC start to crack from the disease of more? Will the clippers and the aspiration chapter seven liquidation proceedings capture America's hearts and minds? Who will the protagonist be for the season to come? Love that the clippers were top of mind on the way into last season and a last that saga has continued. So I thought we could break this into two parts. One, who would you define as the protagonist of last season as we look back at what the year turned into?

3:11First of all, I love this question. It's such a perfect question for this time of year. Because this is kind of how you start to categorize. Like in your brain you start to file away little hierarchies of what you think it's all about. And so I think it's great. But going back to last year, I think I would say it was Wemmy Niyama. Yeah. Because it was sort of the Wemby breakout year. Like we've been getting teased with it. But last year was the year where he sort of fulfilled the promise. And then the playoffs obviously were largely about him. So I think that it is almost certainly he was the protagonist. And I don't know if there was like a great secondary protagonist quite frankly. It was pretty fascinating because he was undeniably the protagonist. And where it really peaked for me was in the NBA cup when he came out and beat O.K.C. and semi-finals. And it was like, holy shit. Is this happening? Is this where it's going? And it just was unbelievable. And called them a bunch of floppers. Right? That's right.

4:11He played the fucking trash. I think on the way into it and then delivered on the court, they get the win. And that was with O.K.C. looking completely unbeatable for the first two and a half months of the season. I think they beat the suns by 70 in the quarter finals of the NBA cup. Wemby comes out, takes them down. And again, it was just like everyone's buzzing. And then they do it again on Christmas and it's like, okay, here we are. The Wemby era has begun. And then he turned into the antagonist instantly in the NBA finals. I've never seen Whiplash like that reputational whiplash like Victor Wimbanyama experienced last season. So that's definitely the most dominant protagonist. I do think it's interesting looking back at last year. Like, first of all, John asking, could the nicks break through? I would have answered that question and probably did. I haven't gone back and listened to the episode. I would have said absolutely not in last September.

5:14Or even in January possible. It's seriously, that's the thing. Even throughout the entire regular season, the nicks were not protagonists. Like they had kind of a miserable whole, not miserable, but a whole home season in New York, where if you pulled nicks fans in March and asked them, is this our year? I would guess 85% would say no, probably not, but maybe we can make a conference finals. And yet they broke through at the very end. Obviously, iconic playoff run. And maybe that's just how the league will work now. Look at the regular season and there were various protagonists and then the entire story changed when we got to the playoffs. And maybe sometimes you don't know the protagonist in the sense until the story's over. It emerges. It's like, oh, that's the main character. I didn't realize. I think the only other challenger would probably be Shay and the Thunder. But the thing is, to me, they kind of occupy the zone that Tim Duncan spurs were in,

6:17which is it was Tim Duncan ever the protagonist of an NBA season. No. You know, and they won a bunch of cheer and they were always in the mix and always this, but it just felt like they were never the protagonist. They were always sort of like, did you enjoy Tim Duncan when you were growing up? I did not. And I regret saying that because he's the type of player that I feel like I should. I feel bad for not enjoying him. But he definitely was. I really enjoyed the late, the late stage spurs, you know, the, the, the 2012, 13, 14, 15 spurs. I thought we're really fun to watch. Yeah. But, but the first decade of Tim Duncan to me out, he was the guy that I was, they beat the nuggets a lot and I found them boring. They would just squeeze the life out of teams and squeeze the joy out of basketball. Was how I understood them and they took pride in it. They didn't have very much personality off the floor. Um, and it's funny. Everyone looks back at that spurs run and says, I love the 2012, 2013, 2014. As soon as they stopped being made in Tim Duncan's image, they became a lot more fun.

7:22Um, but it is. It's one of those things where as the years pass, you look back at everything Duncan accomplished on both ends of the floor. It's like, I should have appreciated Tim Duncan. But if I'm being completely honest, I hated every second that the NBA sort of orbited around him. And he was so boring that it was unacceptable to have the league orbit around him. And we had to find other protagonists during those years. Um, and Shay and the thunder, I do think they provided a standard for the rest of the league to try to attack. And that was compelling in its own way, actually watching the thunder pretty brutal night in and night out. And that will probably continue this year as well. Some of it was how secretive they were as well. Like Tim Duncan by all accounts actually is a really interesting personality. He is. Yeah, he was on like the ringer NBA show. This is now like seven years ago. But you remember it. Because it was so important. Yeah, he never does this.

8:23But he had a conversation with Roger Bell. And he was talking about like the lost art of post play. What he likes and dislikes about the current NBA. And it was fascinating to hear him just hold court and talk hoops for 45 minutes. And unfortunately, we just never saw that side of his personality. You know the thing that Tim Duncan that stands out to me, I think I can't remember if this was after the loss in the finals or a win. Aaron, is it Aaron Baines? How am I forgetting this was on the team and it was just like a TMZ video of them out drinking. You know, it's like one o'clock in the morning. And the media like some TMZ cameras like try to get a beans to like say something. And he's drunk and he's like, hey guys. And Tim Duncan comes up like Papa Bear. It just throws his arm around him is like shut up. Don't talk to them. Like get in the car. You know, and it was just right. I think it was after I think what happened was they were in LA. They had just lost game seven to the clippers.

9:25And then they went out and partied and Tim Duncan was like, no, we're not talking to cameras. Yeah. And it was so great. There was something about it that was like, okay, this guy's kind of like a secret badass. You know, like there was something cool about how he did it all. And I was just like, man, Tim Duncan, what a mystery. It'd be fun to know a little bit more of him. But I'm 100% yeah. Yeah. I regret that I was anti Tim Duncan. I would say through all the. I don't regret it. Those spurs teams sucked to watch. And I hated every minute of it. But I like Tim Duncan as a person. And when you read some of the profiles about the spurs, like from those years, you'll have teammates saying Tim is hilarious behind the scenes. You guys didn't even know. Yeah. People also said that about Kawaii Leonard. Like I was at the 2019 finals trying to write a cover story for sports illustrate. Just looking for any shred of color and character from Kawaii for that story.

10:25And you'd have Raptors players like Fred Van Vleet and Kyle Lowry. They'd say Kawaii is really funny behind the scenes. Like he's a bigger person now than you think. I don't believe that for a second. But I do believe it about Tim Duncan. Oh, I see about Tim. Yeah, I do. And here's the thing. And it's kind of an interesting. I don't know if you saw the Yo-Kits interview that was in Serbian, but got translated this week. Where he basically said, like, I hate talking to fans. I've started telling people, no, like all the time now. And there's a lot of reports of fans trying to get photos, even kids. And him being like, no, I'm not doing that. And Yo-Kits occupies a similar space to Tim Duncan in that there's a lot of mystery around him. Like we know he gives, he goes to the podium. He gives the formal interviews, but he doesn't do a lot other than that. He doesn't show a lot of his personal life. And in this day and age, I feel like we still get more of Yo-Kits than we got of Tim Duncan. Like a lot more. Just because it's inevitable, you know, in the digital age. But there is, there's a weird tension between, we know too much about athletes.

11:26And then there's guys like Tim Duncan, we don't know anything about. And you're like, yeah, well, that might be why we don't like him. Like the game, maybe you could get over the boringness of the slow pace, throw it into the post, grind it out, grind out every possession style. If you knew a little bit more to characterize him. And so I always wonder about this tension because there's a lot of athletes that are giving us way too much of themselves, especially the curated version. And they become interesting. But there is a healthy balance where it's like we need to know enough to be able to have an idea of who the character is that they're portraying when they go out on the court. Yeah, it's true. We don't need Shay Gilchal'sander ending every game with an Instagram caption of the spoke Instagram caption. Was there latest? No, does he have a new one up there? I don't know why they call it the off season. I've never taken a season off. And it's like, come on, man. Come on. Come on. Come on. I mean, like I've tried with Shay. I just can't do it.

12:26I really can't do it. I've never taken a season off. God damn it. Another year. Really like seven more years of that. All right. Well, the other protagonists that I would highlight are looking back at the regular season. Again, not really the playoffs. The Celtics were protagonists with Jalen Brown making a run us against the world. I had fun. You're shaking your head as I said that. I don't think you had as much fun out there in the middle of the country. I actually think they were an enjoyable watch, you know, for the most part. But here's what's interesting about that one is because they were missing Tatum, they too witnessed weird bucket for me of like, well, they're not real. They're not a real story. And maybe that again, it just shows you how we're framed narrative first and actual structure. Rings culture. Yeah. Not even rings culture. It's that that team is not complete. Therefore, they matter less in actuality.

13:26You know, Jalen Brown, we talk about one A, one B. And it's like, that was a whole new I team. And it was really a prologue to the split. And sometimes going in, you just have the narrative of other incomplete. So what really story is there? And I think that was the narrative. I kind of the lens I viewed them through all year. And maybe it was an incorrect one. Yeah. I mean, Tatum was in fact a presence in every locker room and was kind of looming over the season for them. And obviously that wound up ending poorly as far as the J's in Boston, the Tatum Brown partnership. The pistons were another team that I had some fun with during the regular season last year. And really wanted to tear my eyes out, watching them in the playoffs. Sons, another nomination I enjoyed. Sons of the protagonist, Andrew Sharp. What a graphic. Look, they were they were Cinderella story, all right. People were picking on a win like 17 games.

14:27And suddenly they're in the playoffs. That was a team though where I was having fun with it. And then like halfway through the season, I realized I actually don't like watching Dylan Brooks cook for this team. And so I had a sort of downshift as far as Sons optimism is concerned. And then Con Canippell and the Hornets over the final three months of the season really won my heart. Go go listeners, you have to write emails this week because we have to stick to what we're talking about. Protagonists, not good stories. Protagonists, there's no world where Con Canippell was the protagonist of last year's NBA season. Look, all right. John, last year asked, who will capture America's hearts and minds? The Charlotte Hornets and Con Canippell captured my heart and my mind for about two and a half months. That was another one though where we got to the playing round and they took like 83s against the heat in the first play in game.

15:29And I was like, I can't believe I was standing for this team publicly for two and a half months. I fucking hate this offense. And then Lamello ball nearly blows the game at the end. Can't wait to watch more of that Minnesota this year. So I was a regrettable end to that magical journey that I have with the Charlotte Hornets. Well, I like the logical continuity of questions like this because they find it becomes more fun almost thinking on that way. And I will say that and now as we turn our attention to this upcoming season, the NBA is probably more like the NBA. Probably more like Game of Thrones than it is like a typical there's one protagonist and everyone behind them. Like I don't know who the protagonist is of Game of Thrones. Maybe over the course of eight seasons that emerges or something but didn't end well for Ned Stark in season one spoiler alert. Hey, well, yeah, come on, man. We've live and seen it out there. But so I don't think that there is one protagonist, but we can rank these guys in hierarchy of what we think the story will be.

16:29And for me, whether you like it or not, just look at the data. Go on any of the NBA website right now and who has been talked about more than anyone else. It's LeBron James and the 76ers. And so to me, I think this is setting up to where they are entering the season as the protagonist. I don't know if they'll finish it as such, but I think it'll be extremely clear if it's not already that they are the first, second, and third story of the season coming into it. And if that's in and of itself is interesting that LeBron at this stage is still the top story. I still can't believe he managed to do it and managed to go to a team that is actually interesting enough to potentially captivate people. To your point, they may not captivate people for more than the first month to six weeks of the season. But I agree with you. And I would also throw out Jalen Brown as a potential protagonist. I don't think that the story is going to end well for Jalen in Philadelphia.

17:30I think unfortunately the nerds are more right than wrong about some of the holes in Jalen's game. And I think it could get pretty clunky offensively. However, I would be delighted if he went to Philly and played like an all NBA superstar and was just awesome all year and could really stick it to the analytics community on a sixers team that wins 55, 60 games, 60 maybe a bit rich for the Philadelphia blood, considering how infrequently some of their players will play in the regular season. Still though, if Jalen can be that guy, that would be awesome. And he would capture my heart and mind may be a bit strong, but I think people would rally around the sixers story. So that is a good nomination. So the sixers also to your point, Jalen Brown going to his own team, like feels like if this happened two decades ago, that would be a huge story, the split of two stars that now he gets his own team.

18:32But somehow he's the second character in this like sixers protagonist story. And then Joelle and beat as an incredible third star in a feature. This is like Matt Damon in Ocean's 11, you know, where it's like that's a really big name to be occupying the third space. And then Tyrese Maxi as the fourth star. So to me, I think the 76ers are going to be the story. And I think it's actually like with a bullet. If it doesn't work in Philadelphia, is there a chance that VJ Edgecomb becomes a protagonist where everyone is saying free VJ Edgecomb what happened to him? This is unfair. I don't I think he's more a tragic figure because I don't know that he is established. And I know I shouldn't say I don't know he's not established enough to be that. Yeah, I think he almost gets diminished in stature if he gets traded in a tragic way. That's right. At least as far as the downside for the sixers is concerned. We'll see what it turns into. Who can forget Dean Wade also on the sixers this season? I can't even mention it. We're talking protagonists here. Who else comes to mind when you imagine teams, players, coaches, anybody?

19:41Wembe I think still occupies that second spot. And it is possible that he is number one once again. I mean, let's be honest, Michael Jordan was the protagonist for like 10 straight season. So it is possible that Wembe just owns the spot for a while. I do think it the story with him this year though is that he is not you know, like last year might be the ascension. And then the fall. I do think that he'll be very divisive this year. So it'll be interesting to watch in that way. And then he's got in my opinion, a great second star here in Dylan Harper that to me is going to create a very interesting side story this year. We'll just should I if I buy you a Dylan Harper Jersey will you wear it for every Zoom call for the girl. I will do it. And I like I said wearing a spurs Jersey feels weird to me here being a Denver guy, but that's right. Yeah, Dylan Harper. I'll do it. Well on the other end of the NBA finals, I find myself wondering. Because the nicks it's an odd dynamic like they're three for me for sure. They have a massive following and obviously they've been sort of a blockbuster blue blood franchise for years.

20:53And people frequently say the NBA just feels bigger when the nicks are good, etc, etc. Historically though, I don't know that they've been as much of a national draw and you can talk to people who know about ratings and such and they will say that they're not the Lakers as like that it's more a New York thing where New York goes crazy for the nicks. The entire country goes crazy for the Chicago Bulls or the Golden State Warriors or the Los Angeles Lakers. And so I kind of wonder coming off that title, whether there's a sheen now and everybody respects Jalen Brunson because a lot of with Jalen Brunson was doing over the last like three or four years, he would go out and have these incredible games. And I'd be like, well, this doesn't scale in the playoffs. So let's not get too excited. And I wonder whether now that they have the title, people will kind of suspend disbelief and just go for a ride with this team if they can come back and be consistent throughout the regular season, which is obviously a big if.

21:55They they're very interesting to me because the Lakers and nicks are like the two prestige markets, you know, big markets. But the Lakers have had enough sustained success that anytime anything mildly good happens to them. It's the top story. Yeah, the nicks definitely felt this way in the playoffs, but the off season has been a little quiet. It just in terms of people's entry like I haven't heard people talking about the nicks and how excited they are for this upcoming season. Maybe that's just me being on a West the Western half of the US. But I am very curious because to me, they have a case for being number one protagonist just by market size and how good they were last year. They're kind of a cool team like they didn't just win. They won in a way that was I thought like okay, they literally won America's hearts in mind. They did the finals like Jose Alvarado, Landry Shamit, loved all those guys. But I don't know if they have the like narrative momentum that I would have expected from that. Maybe it's just because LeBron swallowed up all the oxygen in the room and so that and that's what happened. I do I could foresee a world where they start like 15 and three and it's like okay, the nicks, you know, like this is everything about the mix.

23:01Yeah, it wasn't a one year wonder situation. Yeah, it will be pretty interesting to watch and to your point on the narrative and the spotlight. It's just funny that that's the way basketball works these days is like a team wins a title. And then because the internet is so central to how any of this is discussed, it's like within 48 hours people move on to off season and trades and free agency and everything else. And that just sort of sucks up all the oxygen in the room. And so the nicks have just been quietly partying all summer and like there's nothing that complicated like everyone's still euphoric. All right, and that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to subscribe to the show, you can go to graceabaltalk.com, Adam and I record once a week every week, all year long, off the court, on the court. Who knows what we'll get into, but we're going to keep it going and have fun with it.

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