NBA Midseason Madness: Jimmy Butler Drama, Anthony Edwards’ MJ Advice, and Trade Deadline Buzz!

[00:00:23] It's Monday, you know what time it is, Front Runner Podcast Collective is back on the air, I am your humble host Vince, and today we had a show planned for you that was completely set up, manicured to the highest levels, but because Jimmy Butler is being Jimmy Butler yet again, we are here.

[00:00:52] According to ESPN's Sham Sharania, Jimmy Butler comes off suspension, goes to practice, he's informed at practice that he would not be starting, Jimmy Butler was incensed at practice, stormed out of practice, and said if I'm not starting, I'm not playing.

[00:01:19] Pat Riley's response to his, I don't know what you would want to call that, his display of competitiveness if you want to call it that, you can call it a professional if you want to go a different route. Pat Riley's response to all of this was, we will suspend Jimmy Butler indefinitely, that means you don't get paid, and if we do decide to trade you, we will.

[00:01:51] Pat Riley's response to all of this is, we will. Pat Riley's response to all of this is, we will. Pat Riley's response to all of this is, we will.

[00:02:27] That's not all. Conduct detrimental to the team is also costing Jimmy Butler $336,543 per game. So folks, let's go ahead and add that up a little bit. We are in the $869,000 range.

[00:02:55] The war on Jimmy Butler's pocketbook continues by Pat Riley. And the NBA charities are benefiting from this. Now, I understand there will be people who will side with Jimmy Butler and say, obviously he's one of the better players on the team. He should start. And I understand where you are coming from. But we got to draw back a little bit.

[00:03:25] Do we remember what Jimmy looked like on the court? You say, oh, he was sandbagging it because he was trying to get traded. At what point do you want him back as a starter? What kind of levels of communication? Because as we've seen over the past couple weeks since Jimmy has been away from the team, the antics have just ramped up.

[00:03:50] So I can understand that Eric Spolstra would not want that nonsense starting for his team. Because he believes it's a privilege to start for his team. He's cut off the same cloth as Pat Riley. And I don't understand why people are up in arms about, oh, this is another slap in the face. And this is Pat Riley being petty. No, this has nothing to do with Pat Riley. This has everything to do with Eric Spolstra.

[00:04:21] Eric Spolstra has a level of professionalism. He has a level of energy. He has a level of tenacity that he is looking for out of his starting rotation. And if you don't feel that you're up to snuff to be able to do that, then he is not playing you. Pat Riley has nothing to do with that. Now, he can rubber stamp that.

[00:04:51] It probably was a pretty easy rubber stamp for Pat Riley to do, right? Now, again, if you're looking at it from Jimmy's perspective, hey, I've carried this team. This team has gone to Eastern Conference Finals and gone to NBA Finals on the back of me. And my energy and my energy and my talents when I was basically with a little help from Bam and some outside shooting from Kylo Hero.

[00:05:21] I was the one. I was the straw stirring the drink. This is all well and good. He is 100% right to feel this way. But acting in this perspective at this present time. This is doing Jimmy Butler irreparable damage. It's killing. And I know he doesn't care about the relationship with Pat Riley anymore. He's burning the bridge.

[00:05:49] And I'm sure vice versa is being done. But at the end of the day, you have put down some roots in Miami. You are part of Miami Heat lore. And this, the way it's ending right now, it's ending with a really bad taste in everyone's mouth. And it might be to the point where you might not get invited back for a very long time once retired.

[00:06:20] People have long memories. People in organizations, when they feel, especially when billionaires feel like they're being disrespected, they have long, long memories. What is it? Dolan up in New York. Is Oakley, is Charles Oakley still, is he allowed in the building still? Is he still not allowed? Yeah. These things happen.

[00:06:51] And now, to go along with all of this, there's still the rumors of whether Jimmy Butler is going to get traded. Is he worth all the noise? To a couple teams? Probably so. For a couple of teams that are in dire predicaments? Could be. Probably. We'll talk about him a little bit later.

[00:07:21] Our front-running thought was to be about Joel Embiid and the crossroad of the Philadelphia 76ers. But yet and still, Jimmy Butler continues to take a stranglehold on the headlines. And every time we talk about it, it seems to be more in the realm of ridiculousness than before.

[00:07:49] There's levels of immaturity on both sides. There's lack of communication and unwillingness to come together and meet each other halfway. Because both sides feel slighted. And now here we are. And here's the best part. Because all of this is done publicly, as far as what Pat Riley can get back

[00:08:18] for Jimmy Butler right now, absolutely nothing. If you're a franchise and you're trying to get Jimmy Butler in your building, you see all this going on from afar. What do you really have to offer? Why would you offer anything of real value? Because you're saying, hey, we're taking this headache off of your plate for you. So Pat Riley is now backed into a corner.

[00:08:48] And it might be exactly where Jimmy Butler wanted him to be. But understand this. Pat Riley is not going down without a fight. And Pat Riley will find options or use the entirety of the time to find the best possible deal that will help the Miami Heat. There will be no

[00:09:18] special accommodations for Jimmy Butler whatsoever. That shit has passed. So I can't wait to see how this all plays out. We're going to stand on top of it. It continues to get even more bizarre every single day. There's just little rumors coming out about what it was like previously and how there were

[00:09:47] many a times of instances of just being late being very differential when it came to practice and video sessions and things of that nature this particular year. And again when we started this journey I said to you how else was Jimmy Butler supposed to act? and I'll continue to say

[00:10:17] that it's not a situation of saying hey it's not a situation of speaking out of both sides of my mouth. What I'm trying to say is I see both sides and the early parts of this is Jimmy felt slighted Jimmy is a self-made superstar and all his hard work in climbing towards the ladder of success in the NBA and getting to the levels that he's gotten to of course he was going to have a chip on his shoulder about

[00:10:47] pretty much everything you pretty much take you wherever you go so if you had a chip on your shoulder in a competitive aspect why wouldn't it be a chip on your shoulder when it comes to the loyalty situation so I understood that part and I understood that there were going to be antics but when you have a situation where we're getting close to the end of the deadline and all

[00:11:17] we kind of need you to do is be a good soldier so we can get you out of here and you can't even do that you can't even acquiesce for one solitary second bad form and I don't know what this does to your earning potential come July of 2025 but best of luck to you Jimmy best of luck to you sir I hope your talent

[00:11:47] outweighs your headaches and you continue to flourish and monetarily set up yourself and all of your family for the next millennia but I don't know if this was the best way of going about it and honestly to tell you the truth what did you think Pat Riley's response to this would be oh you got me back in the corner I'll go ahead and

[00:12:16] get on the phone with James Jones right now and go ahead and trade you to Phoenix for absolutely nothing and some dust yeah that's where we are now we can probably get on with the rest of the show we have some stuff to get to and we're going to start off in Denver so let's dive into it there's been some serious trade talk in Denver navigating choppy waters as the 2025 NBA trade deadline looms

[00:12:45] the potential for moves could either solidify their championship dreams or derail entirely so we need to break this down at what's at stake there's a lot going on in Denver Calvin Booth was pushing the kids for a long period of time but Michael Malone has stayed strong the Michael Malone petty everybody wants to talk about how Pat Riley is petty and Jimmy Butler is petty

[00:13:15] this has been going on for two years Michael Malone has put Zeke Najee in one of the what was it you remember in X-Men they had Magneto in that like plastic like cell I bet you that's where Zeke Najee is being held Zeke Najee can't see the light of day in Denver this was part of the youth movement that Calvin

[00:13:45] Booth wanted Michael Malone to use he also wanted Jalen Pickett used we don't see Jalen Pickett you know we do see Christian Brown so Christian Brown was able to somehow break through and get into the rotation another person might be just out of sheer necessity

[00:14:14] is Julian Strother he's gotten a little burn too because he shoots the ball and they need him because Jamal Murray was awful early on in the season he was truly putrid until pretty much the calendar switched to late in December we started to see the change we started to see Jamal Murray go into form but before then it was all bad

[00:14:43] now we move forward and the saga continues with these two men and you hear names like Zach Levine who is a stellar scorer now the name that would pop up with Zach Levine because the salary situation would be Michael Porter Jr okay let's just give you the case okay losing Michael Porter Jr defensive versatility

[00:15:12] could leave the Nuggets vulnerable especially if Nikola Jokic is not being a rim protector which he's not not as what you would think of a modern day rim protector would be he is somebody who will definitely get in the way he uses his physicality and his body in such a way to negate some of your good looking looks in the paint but he is not somebody who can stop somebody at the rim

[00:15:42] if you're talking about somebody going to the top floor on Jokic Jokic is not getting to the penthouse when it comes down to that so he's going to get yammed on Michael Porter Jr and Aaron Gordon are your deterrents on Jokic get yammed on so if you take Michael Porter Jr away and replace him with Zach Levine your scoring is more consistent between those two

[00:16:11] guys because there's more firepower when it comes to Zach Levine than Michael Porter Jr there's also more offensive creation self creation and or creation for others when it comes to Levine because of the ball in his hands it's not necessarily that he can't play without the ball in his hands and obviously we're not going to turn we wouldn't turn the offense over to him

[00:16:41] because Jokic is there but at the end of the day you could see why this might titillate the brass in the mile high city now I don't think you give up your advantage your height advantage because having a 6'10 6'11 small forward is rare in this league I know Wimby is 7'5 he played

[00:17:10] a small forward all the time in San Antonio I'm just kidding San Antonio just kidding these are jokes let it go it's fine we're good but you have heard names like Levine you also heard names like Cam Johnson but here's the other side if for some reason Michael Malone who has loved his starting unit and Michael

[00:17:40] Malone Nick Nurse and Tom Thibodeau are starting to form like this real alliance in coaching where we play our players a bunch of minutes we're really curmudgeon seems seems seems like we got a chip on our shoulder there's not a real collaborative effort now I know Thibodeau has a different relationship with his front office but there seems to be odds in Philadelphia and there's

[00:18:09] definitely odds in Denver with Michael Malone and Calvin Kwo now I know publicly they've said that everything is cool but there is no way in hell that everything is cool when we draft these players we say Calvin Kwo use the rhetoric of we need to develop these players and then implement them into our system to then be able to keep our sustain our championship winning ways

[00:18:40] and as the other players age out and their contracts get too expensive this is our way of combating that situation so we don't ever get to a point let's say Golden State who we need to talk about later Calvin Boof does all this and Michael Malone says screw that I'll just play my guys 40 plus minutes and then I won't have to young guys because I

[00:19:10] don't trust them so here we are and now not saying that OKC is the biggest team that makes moves within the season they usually like to do their damage in the off season they're a team that says okay these are the needs that we pinpointed in this season this past season and we'll go

[00:19:40] ahead and take care of those now usually within the season they are apt not to touch their teeth Sam Cresti is a big proponent of saying we put the team together this is what we assess our needs to be let's go out and let's see if our hypothesis was right but he does have

[00:20:10] if that happens because the chasm is vast now what happens if Presti decides you know what I am the bully on the block I do have 13 14 first round picks and 37 total at my disposal for the next six years and if I wanted to give three first round picks even though it would be

[00:20:40] a complete overpay I could I could block somebody from getting somebody or I could add more length and shooting to my team if I decided that I needed I don't know another big I could do that this and what does Denver do to combat what

[00:21:09] is coming down the road which is a freight train and that freight train is very young and that freight train has a MVP candidate who is being he's playing as well as we've ever seen him play Shea Gilgis Alexander is exactly what was promised in the two or three years what we saw coming in the last two or three years is here

[00:21:40] he's easily getting 30 like he it's it's not oh I'm trying to keep this streak up because this is what I'm known for this is my bag this is this is my brand no he gets 30 out of rhythm of offense he gets 30 because he is a excellent crunch time performer who hits

[00:22:09] most of his free throws he can get into the lane anytime he wants so again what is to Denver to do to address their depth issues or do they circumvent and get a high talent for the top of their rotation and then a field trace down and everybody gets slid down one notch and maybe they'll feel more comfortable

[00:22:39] in now we're not done with the Denver Nuggets why because Nikola Yelkic plays for this team and I almost feel remiss to not talk about this man

[00:23:09] every time I get on the microphone because the beauty of his game just the crispness of what he does every single day when he graces us on our TV screens with his just greatness is amazing so we're going to talk about him for a second Yelkic is at another level right now he's redefining what it is to be a complete offensive player in the NBA his scoring

[00:23:38] in a myriad of ways be it through crafty post moves mid range jumpers and those slick three pointers that keep defenders guessing but it really doesn't stop there because Yelkic is pulling down rebounds like it reminds me of like the 90s and like you have dudes like Michael Cage and you have other dudes like Kevin Willis and they would

[00:24:08] average like 14 15 rebounds a game and Yelkic is doing that for Denver and then if that's not enough he's orchestrating the offense and he's doing it playing like 40 plus minutes a game and this goes back to the war that's going on between Michael Malone and Calvin Booth this season Jokic is averaging an impressive offensive box plus minus plus 12.4

[00:24:38] anything above nine is legend nine but now the standard might be a little bit different because of how we had the offensive explosion but let's say anything above 10.5 positive you're at the tippy top offensive players like of this generation and this dude is doing 12.4 we've

[00:25:07] always talked about the on-off splits with Jokic that's what we've been talking about the last couple times that we've talked about Denver is that when he's off the court reason why he's playing so many minutes is because they lose like incredible amounts of momentum that they build up and lead they're like a plus 25 when he's on the court and they're they're a minus 19 when he's off the court and he's only off the court

[00:25:37] for eight minutes how is that even it's 15 and his win shares over 48 minutes is

[00:26:07] .200 dude he's effective winning one out of five times this is crazy crazy go look at all of your Mount Rushmore and I understand you guys date you guys debate the LeBron Jordan situation and whatever and you completely dismiss Kareem Abdul Jabbar for some whatever

[00:26:37] reason but this win share per 48 you're gonna see wilt with numbers like this and I know what you so he wasn't even playing against anybody get a load of this guy and get a load of what he's doing and then you tell me

[00:27:07] who the baddest man on the face of the planet playing basketball is because albeit Shea having a great season albeit that Shea is doing some phenomenal things in OKC and they have a stellar record and they are just a freight train but what this man is doing and what the load he has to carry and the

[00:27:36] responsibility level that he has to carry consistently and here's the thing what they need from game to game changes what happens if Murray has a good game oh I can focus on my playmaking and my rebounding Murray and Michael Porter Jr. don't have it that's OK I'm shooting 45% from three point land so I'll just go out and score 45 points oh Aaron Gordon

[00:28:06] is hurt that's OK I'll go ahead and get 1820 rebounds don't worry about it it's not a big deal whatever problem you have he has fixed it that's why he's so you can talk about all Vince you hating because you're not giving proper respect to this person that person what about Tatum

[00:28:36] and what about this dude and what about this dude how much help does Tatum have how much help does Shea Gilgis Alexander now ask that question of yourself and then ask your question about how much Jokic help how much does he have and then that'll be my answer to you so with that being said we need to go around the

[00:29:06] arc around it and we need to go to OKC and we need to talk about what they're doing they're 37 and 8 they're 17 and 5 on the road it's becoming ridiculous now and at the heart of their dominance obviously is Shea Gilgis Alexander SGA is consistently piling up points leading the Thunder to yet another win against the Portland Trailblazers last night what

[00:29:36] makes it so impressive is that the numbers that the Oklahoma City Thunder are putting together on the defensive side of the ball now you you'll sit here and say Vince this is boring that you talk about defense a lot defense leads to those dunks and those those really pretty 3.35 foot bombs that we see too and what makes this so cool about the Oklahoma City Thunder for me

[00:30:05] is that their holding teams took 104 points and they had done this for a good chunk of time without Isaiah Hardenstein and then as soon as that Isaiah Hardenstein was just about ready to come back they lost Chet Holmgren and credit goes to head coach Mark Dagnall for fostering a culture where

[00:30:35] stars like SGA and Holmgren can thrive the Thunder are leading the league in steals for the second straight year it's a testament to their defensive quality their defensive intentionality and what is preached in practice they're handsy they're aggressive with it Jalen Williams does it the other the taller Jalen Williams does it they all do it

[00:31:05] and then we don't even have to talk about Lou Dort and Cason Wallace because they came out the womb doing it you know what I'm those two kids literally came out of their mama's womb and the nurse didn't have to give them bottle they deflected it out of the nurse's hand and they was off to the races and putting the bottle in their own mouth that's how those kids get down but just seeing how SGA has taken

[00:31:35] to it he's leading his team in steals he's leading his team in blocks when your best player is player is filthy nice not just on one end but on two ends so that's why we talk about defense on Frontrunner Podcast

[00:32:05] collected where you can also follow us on Blue Sky follow us on Blue Sky at frontrunner pc dot bsky dot social and you can also follow our trusted producer Sarea at frpc hyphen rea dot bsky dot social and with that being said let's talk about the Portland Trailblazers

[00:32:34] why scoot scoot is he doing crazy numbers no he's not he is not but he's doing enough where I can get excited first of all in a losing effort he scored 35 last night okay he also hit five of 11 threes I have not sold any of my

[00:33:04] scoot stock I know there's like three people in America that have stock two of them work for the ringer I think one owns the ringer but anyway that's beyond that school scored 35 last night and all of what we wanted all of the things that we

[00:33:38] 210 pounds being gift athletic just complete sick athlete that he is he's averaging 12 points a game modest 2.9 rebounds a game and 5.2 assists he's gradually finding his footing the guard position is notoriously tough right out the gate for young NBA players coming into the league so when you expect domination

[00:34:07] from a young guy usually you're going to see it with a guy who's probably a little bit taller and maybe a little more physically imposing but school has found his lane a little bit and again I always want to talk about that these are people too so again let's look at what school went through his first year when he gets to training camp day Dame is still there

[00:34:38] soon after they trade Dame you take a deep breath for a second okay Dame is gone it's my team okay I know what's going on Drew Holiday comes in and now your head is all messed up hold on wait Drew that's an all defensive NBA player right there I'm not gonna get no minutes it's gonna be tough then he gets traded and then Malcolm Brogdon comes in okay maybe not as

[00:35:08] tough Malcolm misses some games here and there but remember Portland also has Shaden Sharp and they also have young Anthony Simons who is all of 24 years of age as well so Scoot was not going to be handed the keys to the castle at all that season so did he struggle yes because he went from a guy who had the ball in his hands the entire time in his existence of his life

[00:35:37] as a basketball player probably since the age of eight to sitting on the bench and only getting like 15 minutes to 18 minutes of burn which Scoot hasn't seen 18 minutes of he either fouled out early got two technical fouls because somebody probably called his mom or something and he didn't take kindly to it three one of the

[00:36:22] so so if you're getting four minute spurts and you're trying to get your stuff in but you're also trying to initiate for teammates and learning the NBA system repetitions you need reps you need game log experience it's all going into the mental computer so then when you see it again it's more automatic okay I saw that last time that won't happen again let's do this so now we're getting a better scoot

[00:36:52] what's impressive is that he's using his frame on in his physicality to get inside the lane he is not scared of dudes that are like eight inches taller than him and he's giving up 20 30 pounds he will go straight into a guy's chest kind of stick that chicken wing out a little bit to give himself some room to go ahead and get his shot up you're starting to see little tweaks little nuances to his game

[00:37:22] that he did not necessarily have last year that he is gained this year so these are the type of things that I like to see out of Scoot and I'm glad that we are seeing them now we need to get to something even more terrifying than Scoot becoming like a real NBA player and Vince having a complete conniption on the mic the other thing we need to get to is this in

[00:37:59] they had this commercial on TV and it was from AT&T and the jingle went as such it said reach out and touch someone and it was like a fun 80s commercial they had grandparents on it dogs they had young people on it smiling on the commercial everybody loved the commercial everybody loved the jingle who also reached out and touched someone anthony

[00:38:29] edwards called michael jordan anthony edwards called michael jordan because he's been frustrated by the double teams that he's been facing he reached out to none other than his airness himself for advice yeah for real i haven't done it for

[00:38:59] indulge me about three minutes of your time i want to go inside that conversation a little bit and kind of reenact how i see that conversation going okay so this is ant talking to mj so i'm thinking mj calls ant because ant gets says hey i want to talk to mj can somebody get to get a word to mj that i like to talk to him because i really need to figure some stuff out so

[00:39:28] this is how the call goes phone rings ant picks up the phone what's up pen pen it's ant hey ant this is michael i heard that you really wanted to talk to me and i'm really glad that you reached out oh yeah what's up how's it and i'm gonna tell you right now that space jam

[00:39:58] that lebron james did it was trash homie that was straight garbage the only one that is real good is yours it's the og space jam i dig the shoes i dig bugs bunny i dig you are my goat well that's really nice to hear from the young people ant is there anything i can do for you today yeah i really got some issues that i really need to get off my chest

[00:40:28] there's some stuff that i need to circumvent and i was hoping that somebody with your athletic prowess that was similar to mine not as good as mine but similar to me you know but not as i jumped higher than you mike just let's keep it real let's keep it a buck let's keep it 100 you know i'm better than you but at the end of the day there's some things that i'm not really getting they double team me and i don't like it and i just can i punch them is that okay can i punch them

[00:40:58] no you really can't do that and okay so obviously we have some some and i listen to a lot of tupac and i listen to a lot of common that keeps on my mentals real straight so my mentals is cool dog all i really need to know is how i need to get past these double teams okay

[00:41:28] i'm gonna help you

[00:42:13] as anybody could figure it out it gonna be ant because ant is shooting threes at a crazy level now and he's shooting almost 40 percent he heard the comments about he needed to step out more and he needed to be more consistent with his three point shooting he heard us and he said okay i'll just be a sniper so one of the most athletic players in the game

[00:42:43] is now taking volume threes and knocking them down at a really nice clip and then he's taking advice from michael jordan so good luck now in his last five games 30.2 points a game 6.2 assists and that's up from 26.3 points and 4.4 assists so basically michael probably told him that you need to share the sugar get off the ball and then get off the ball

[00:43:13] and reroute yourself get off the ball reroute yourself and then present yourself to the ball again coming off a curl action maybe off the baseline those are some of the actions that you are starting to see that Chris Fincher is using for Minnesota when it comes to Ant and getting him the ball and getting him the ball in issues and ways where it's conditional for him to be able to attack the defense

[00:43:43] so these type of things are starting to be utilized Ant is not playing he out here trying to get these buckets and he listened to Michael Jordan so I'm just I'm so excited I'm so excited it just oh my god I can't even I just want to do more skits on it it just makes me tickled inside we also need to get up to some of this baseline buzz and one of the things that I want to

[00:44:12] get to in baseline buzz is Walker Kessler and the reason why I want to get to Walker Kessler is this I'm tired I am tired living in Los Angeles not because I'm tired of living in Los Angeles I am tired of listening to Laker fans cry cry I want to use a more contemporary

[00:44:41] person so I'm going to use Bruno Morris he cry a lot on his songs Adele Adele her songs yeah she cry a lot on her songs I am tired of hearing Laker fans croon like Adele about some scorned lover because Danny Ainge is mean

[00:45:10] and he won't trade Walker Kessler to the Los Angeles Lakers I'm so exhausted can we not do this anymore he's not getting traded they don't want to trade him and the trade proposal that Ainge keeps putting out there lets you know that he does not want to trade him he's like multiple firsts multiple seconds and a young player well that's too much for Walker Kessler well we don't have a deal

[00:45:40] move along go find another I hope this helps I'm almost sad for I guess this is where you can say am I hating or am I being realistic or whatever who has of the world the Trevor lanes of the world the Andy Kemeniski the Brian Kemeniski of the world they have to go through this every single day Walker Kessler Walker Kessler Walker Kessler dude

[00:46:10] he ain't coming you not getting them they want everything from you and do you blame them honestly think about it it's Utah they're in your conference why wouldn't they not want everything from you for a guy that yeah he can help you out he definitely could improve your defense he is a piece that you could have long term potential with for sure

[00:46:40] but if they get your picks unprotected they're like we're betting that at some point you're going to be bad they're not like oh we'll give you Walker Kessler and hope you're good so go for it no Laker fans be just be reasonable but the Lakers pursuit of Kessler doesn't stop there with Kessler

[00:47:09] off the table the Lakers are reportedly out of the running for other top targets like Nikola Vucevic Jakob Pertl and others this leaves their option painfully limited heading into the February 6 deadline so now what the Lakers are already made a small move in Dorian Finney Smith but is that enough no it's not and

[00:47:39] LeBron and AD are still playing AD is playing complementary level but without another big or another wing to solidify their front court it's hard to see them making a deep playoff run obviously we've told you that our predictions for them preseason were they were playing team they are

[00:48:08] they're outperforming that right now and it's good to see but they also added Dorian Finney Smith for that as well so it really comes down to Rob Palenka and it really comes down to performance anxiety and you said what the hell are you talking about performance anxiety the last time this guy was at an inflection point it was the Russell Westbrook trade that trade did not go well for him and ever since that man

[00:48:38] has been risk averse from making a trade or a big trade or bigger or grander trade now we're at a point where it's either and I hate to you I'm not going to use it you got to make a choice Rob okay you can't be male street it's not so he choice you can't have both bro you got to pick it's either give up the first round draft

[00:49:08] picks and get some higher level higher level role players that could really super charge your superstars and also your budding whatever you want to call Austin your third in command or tell us hey LeBronzo it would be

[00:49:37] absolutely a derelict of duty if I trade picks four and six years away when we have a 40 year old superstar who albeit is very good albeit gives us great moments but we don't believe that he can consistently win us 12 games to get us to an NBA finals and 16 to win an if you said that then we would

[00:50:07] know but you haven't said that and all your rhetoric before that was we are championship or bust we are a championship organization we do things championship ways and we will be aggressive at the trade deadline just like you said you will be aggressive during the summer off season at the last trade deadline and at the last off season you said at the trade deadline last year you were going to be aggressive with the picks so so far there's been two years of not

[00:50:37] being really aggressive with picks so I don't understand I obviously don't understand obviously the terminology you're using about aggressive with picks or you don't understand what aggressive with picks mean so one of us is confused and we need to communicate better as two grown men so with that being said that's what's going

[00:51:28] the audience for being here again we do this for you and we do it three times a week and we love doing it so please if you are new to us go ahead and follow and subscribe to to the squadify or apple or whatever podcast platform you use the other thing if you can follow us on x or blue sky at frontrunner pc

[00:51:57] for both for me and then the other thing is that we have a it will have some things on it tonight which is great and we're so proud of that and that is frpc.podcastpage.io and we have a NBA

[00:52:27] draft evaluation for the kids coming out in 2025 go look at that check that out and that's going to be updated this week as well we have more things to come I'm so excited to talk about them but before we do that let's get up on some of these rumors that Bleacher Report put out so first and foremost Chris Middleton this is Greg Schwartz from Bleacher Report this is what he's talking about Chris Middleton Schwartz

[00:52:56] predicts that Milwaukee could move on from the 12 year veteran and three time all star and to stay competitive in the injuries and his 31 million salary make him a prime candidate now are they the Bradley Bill team this would fix the issue

[00:53:26] if you can do a three team trade where somehow Milwaukee trades Middleton to the Heat where he's an expiring contract because that's what Riley wants and then somehow Jimmy Butler gets rerouted to the Suns and then Milwaukee ends up with whatever they get

[00:54:06] as painful as it is to imagine Middleton leaving this move feels inevitable if Milwaukee wants another title run now you know what we're not gonna sit here and talk about how right we are but for our new audience and for some of our audience that maybe have caught on in the last couple months during the summertime we talked about trading Middleton

[00:54:36] and maybe turning him into two pieces or turning him into a younger piece and a couple draft picks for flexibility purposes down the road and I think it's funny now that you got Greg Swartz of Bleacher Report echoing basically the same conversation which means that and this is what I've heard this one this is it came from somebody it came from somebody in the Eastern

[00:55:06] Conference who is on a staff said I don't know why they don't trade Middleton and try to get something for him and try to thread the needle could happen and we're almost there now and I want to tell you once I get done with these and go through it and say hey I think this is cool or not cool or whatever we have some news on February 6 so stay tight so the

[00:55:35] Timberwolves so Greg Swartz talks about this Timberwolves trade Julius Randall the Timberwolves might finally end Julius Randall experiment and honestly it's about time the Randall cat trade wasn't a complete success and the standings have proven that out Randall's numbers are solid but his fit with this roster doesn't work trading him for a wing or for a more

[00:56:04] versatile forward to compliment Anthony Edwards could help the Wolves salvage their season this move makes a ton of sense the problem is who is that person because the person that you're looking for is the person that everybody is looking for and the name that you hear is like Cam Johnson could you trade Randall for to Brooklyn

[00:56:34] for Cam Johnson salaries don't match up okay you might need some depth anyway right Mike Conley Jr you know is Rob Dillingham ready to produce at a decently high level there are worse things in the world the other thing is that you have to get Randall off your team for two reasons one

[00:57:04] you gotta free up the paint for Ant I mean Ant is the most important person on your team you gotta free it up and I understood what you were trying to do when you did the cafe it was a financial situation and I'm sure the owner who's the owner it was not the A-Rod deal Glenn Taylor sorry blanked out for a second

[00:57:35] but now that you're in the season there's gotta be something where maybe in a sense you can get 60 cents on the dollar maybe you don't get exact value for Randall but maybe you can get some younger players maybe a couple players that will just add more depth to what you have and then go on from there since you already traded Kat and it was a mistake go ahead and rip off the band-aid and start to augment your roster a little bit

[00:58:05] to build up for your next iteration of the team that is going to propel Anthony Edwards to the visions of NBA finals that he is looking for now the last one that I want to get to which I thought was pretty spicy is the pelicans entertain Zion talks no shit no shit here's a bombshell here's a bombshell Swartz predicts that the

[00:58:35] pelicans will consider treating Zion Williamson now Zion Williamson is the definition an enigma when and if healthy Zion Zion's recent stretch has been promising but the pelicans are tired of waiting on his availability this might be the time to move while he is rehabbing his value because he's actually going to be playing games a trade could

[00:59:05] open up have space to re-sign Brandon Ingram I probably wouldn't do that and build more of a consistent core it's risky but maybe it's a bold shakeup that New Orleans needs here's the thing New Orleans is plummeting towards Cooper flag any talent tear down would be apropos and welcomed at this point in time

[00:59:35] because the math has changed you're no longer in win now mode you're in okay who of these two or three guys at the top of this draft is somebody who could handle New Orleans handle what we got going on what was ticking inside of him and we didn't figure out a way to communicate what we

[01:00:04] wanted from him or how we could help him to get to the level where we could be a contender so we need to make sure we lock down if we're going to have one of these we're going to have an off season a gap year speak if you want to call it that we need to make sure that whoever this guy is that's coming in the next iteration of superstar the one that was promised to us and could you imagine another Duke player could you

[01:00:34] imagine Cougar flag the basketball gods could not be this kind right they lost AD and then automatically wound up with Zion could you imagine Zion exiting and then Cougar flag ending up in New Orleans that I would call for a full scale investigation because remember the NBA used to own the New Orleans Pelicans the Bensons bought

[01:01:04] the Pelicans as a favor to the NBA so keep that in mind now with all that being said we talked about the traits we talked about how Jokic is awesome Denver fans what do you think do you think the Michael Malone Calvin Booth war do you just want that solved

[01:01:36] so

[01:02:08] Timberwolves fans let me know what you think of this man just let us know hit us up we would love to hear from you and then the thing that we need to leave you with is this the best part of you is you make sure that you are surrounding yourself with supportive people that are looking to be additive to your life make sure that you appreciate those who are exhibiting those behaviors

[01:02:36] and I hope that if you are equipped with that you can go out into the world and do some good and we'll see you back on this feed on Wednesday or if Jimmy Butler gets traded we never know what we're gonna end up doing but anyways keep running forward and keep loving this great game that we

[01:03:00] called basketball I'm Vince and for my producer Soraya thank you for tuning in and we'll see you on this feed on Wednesday deuce