Empire of the Suns: Why the Suns will work out Bronny James before the Draft + an NBA Finals preview

Empire of the Suns: Why the Suns will work out Bronny James before the Draft + an NBA Finals preview

Suns fans you know what time it is in the PHX Empire of the suns suns V Suns Empire of the Suns [Music] emps hello there and welcome to the Empire of the Suns podcast my name is Kellen Olsson joined as always by Kevin Zimmerman what’s up Kevin how you doing man I’m good I’m good how are you kind of blown back by this headline I just saw that nil Harry is going to try playing a tight end he’s built for it I guess what whose team is he on do you know man anyone know that’s a that’s a tough uh transition to make the Vikings it looks like wow good for him the Phoenix Suns have done some stuff in the last week or two and we’re going to basically like this is like slop cleanup where we’ve just got a couple of loose parts around like we’ve been putting off cleaning for a couple of days and it’s getting kind of not gross but just like okay if I let this continue for another week then it’s going to get gross around here much too much that that isn’t like a cute metaphor to say with the suns are doing a gross or anything but it’s just like we have a couple of loose parts to clean up around here one of them including a second round draft prospect that is grabbing a lot of headlines and we’re going to keep talking about on the air apparently uh I had to endure that for 4 days didn’t really enjoy that too much but I got through it and we’ll get through it on this podcast today what I’m referring to is mainly draft workouts and then also assistant coaches being added the Suns and Mike buen holer now have nearly a full staff I would say like when you’re talking about the the main assistants on the team you’re talking first row bench good yeah first row bench guys there you go you’re on it Vince larza comes in uh he worked with buen holer in Atlanta and Milwaukee Chad forer comes in he was most recently uh in Utah Gerald we tweet retweeted a tweet from him that was it was like video of Barkley scoring 90 like 50 something points against Seattle in 93 and forer I think had some um Nostalgia or like U attachment to that apparently with like the way he tweeted it he didn’t really provide the context but I guess he’s like booten hoser in some ways and has some Sons attachments there and David fizdale is back um the suns were like hey you should work in the front office and it seems like he was like no I won’t do that you guys paid me all this money so no and now he’s back being an assistant coach um that was in a report from the athletic sham chirania that said that they plan to offer him a front office role to retain him and that added later that fizdale might not take that offer and so now he’s back on the staff fizdale is the most notable guy here to mention one more is Chason Allen uh who was the head coach of the Wisconsin herd who were the g-league affiliate for the uh Milwaukee Bucks where Mike buher used to coach as well um heam was a no also and then darham uh joined the committee of saying no to the Suns the herd featured players such as Phoenix product Tai Tai Washington Jr and Gonzaga Stand Out Drew Timmy how about that well Drew Timmy where TI Tai go to high school you want to play making five bud there’s Dre Timmy I forgot where he went to high school sorry TI I’m not I’m not uh induced in the scene we’ll have Damon alled on next week by the way uh we are you and I are going to do our cramming of the draft which has become a tradition now where in like two weeks time we completely cram we’ve done it every year at this point we did it last year when they only had a second round pick and then the year before that I believe is when they didn’t even have a pick at all and we were just like oh well it makes sense if there’s ever a time to buy a pick this is one so then we turn it into this whole thing they actually have a pick this year so we’ll have plenty to talk about there but any takeaways from the assistant coaches Kevin because my my only one really is that fizdale is back which must mean that the players were big on fizdale and enjoyed him being around yeah that was the big one for me it’s familiarity I think he’s the definition of a players coach the guy who can be honest with people be hard on people um and I I always fight on this like I think there’s a good there’s good value in bringing someone back from the pr staff where they have familiarity they know the touch points of like don’t don’t ask this player that like they don’t react well or they do react well to this um that knowledge already knowledge base I think is really good for a new staff for the most part to come in and um fit in just so Bud knows what he’s working with with the players especially but yeah I mean it’s a lot of connections to Bud um even going to the Darin Hamp thing like obviously they were coaching together for a very long time going back to 2013 um so I understand why he didn’t want it it’s good to have a mental break I think in these jobs but for what the Suns do have yeah nothing nothing big there yeah that was the big thing with Cliff when he left the Cardinals right it was like brother brother go get on a beach somewhere and he was like brother I’m going on the beach and then he spent two months away from football and those football guys they just crave their football they can’t go too long without their football the Suns went really long without a g-league team we should briefly bring this up uh the valley Suns is their name they are going to play at mullet arena in 10p that is going to be a cool deal for both you and I yeah because there are going to be certain days uh around the office here where we’re like well shuck so and so is playing down there in TP we got nothing else going on let’s go take a look down there that’s really accessible for us I think previously uh we were in a different point in our coverage 5 years ago for sure but if we wanted to go see someone it’s like we couldn’t pitch driving up to Prescott Valley for 2 hours to go see someone but now it’s a 20 minute 25 minute drive from where we are currently where where our offices are um that’s where we’ll get into is bronnie James going to be a valley Sun talk but any takeaways from the announcement just for context it just we we expected this we knew that there was a g- league franchise that was going to start up we just didn’t know where they were going to play and what they were going to be called and we got that information uh last week I’m no p branding guy but Valley Suns we want to encapsulate more than Phoenix sure great not the most exciting name but I was honestly anticipating like just an off-the-wall thing for some reason they didn’t do that temp Cyclones yeah just like I don’t get it um the Suns have obviously power here in this state um I do I was pleasantly surprised by the mullet situation obviously a certain hockey team being there might have gotten in the way um whether that’s a minor league or a professional hockey league I don’t know if that would have mattered at all but it’s cool that the Suns get that um opportunity because obviously again location um it makes it really easy to what you wrote about just like the shuttling back and forth even between Tempe and Phoenix is important for the players who play like there’s no traffic it’s like 15 minutes from the facility to mullet uh and then even with traffic it’s a half an hour it’s right there when they would ship guys up and down even when they’re in Prescot Valley it’s like you can’t I don’t think you can fly easily unless you’re on a private plane you’re busing for an hour and a half at least two hours in traffic just doesn’t make sense so this is just convenient they’re actually going to use it which is cool I one of the crazy things about like James Jones’s tenure is he did his best job of selling like oh we don’t need a g-league team we’re conc learned about the 13 players here the 12 players here um we have technology now to Scout and like he made the best out of a bad situation where it was his prior owner who made the decision to sell that team and then the Suns ended up being the last team to not have a g-league affiliate um but now it looks like they’re full bore like hey we need to get our guys like Sav and Lee run um we need to go test things in whether it’s just plays actions like there’s so many things at different levels training staff stuff even maybe that you can do at that level and I think it being close by is only going to help you navigate does it work can we apply to the NBA Squad can we shuttle guys in between that kind of stuff if book sprains his ankle you’ve got a fresh group of bodies that he can go work out with and get even more work in with if he wants to guys can even go down there and like play a quick game if they want to if they just want to get run in that kind of way uh it’s going to be really beneficial the location thing is something I want to Spotlight I did this in the piece so there are 30 g- League affiliates now more than half of them are either in another state or they’re at least an hour away from their uh NBA arena like the difference between the NBA arena and the g-league arena is at least an hour away so this is not an incredibly common thing it was something that Josh bartelstein said they studied they were like okay for the teams that are this far away how often are they making g-league roster moves and they found that it was a detriment to them and that goes back to his experience in Detroit because he was actually part of the um Collective that bought yeah the uh The Naz Suns from the Suns back then we’ve talked at length over the years about how stupid that decision was by the Suns and how cheap it was and how just like disgusting is a really aggressive word but it was just kind of insulting in some ways to their fans like no we’re not going to utilize every single mechanism possible to develop talent for our team because it costs a little bit more money to do it yeah that’s the thing too it was like I I don’t have exact numbers I never looked at it in depth but from what I understood it wasn’t even that much money Matt ishia came in and immediately said it was something he was going to get done he did get it done and you can scoff at the g- league for what it is but I named the players in here Danny Green Pascal seak and Fred Van vet are guys that went in either the second round or undrafted and were identified immediately in the g-league and those teams Toronto mainly were like oh we have a player on our hands let’s get them up would they have found that out if he would have sat 14th on the depth chart and just not played him PR practice probably not Isaiah hardenstein and Derrick Jones Jr were two highle talents hardenstein a guy who like might have gone top 20 in his in his draft had the pre-draft process worked out for him as well as it did and they bounced around there for a couple of years hardenstein had like a couple of legitimate Seasons there where he was playing full games and now you look at both those guys on really good teams contributing you can go through other teams that have won Gabe Vincent or made the finals excuse me Gabe Vincent on the Miami Heat he was their starting point guard in the finals Gary Peyton was a key role play player for them over there you can just go on and on about the importance of there Damen Lee spent some time down there over the course of his career and figured it out so the bottom line on the G League specifically is that it is an asset and you need to be using it do you remember when Jaylen Smith got relegated to the G league and had to fly to like was that the bubble I don’t even know anyway my point was that was embarrassing and also pointless like they needed the rookie lottery pick to get run and had to send him on a plane somewhere not great anyway what what uh bronny James stuff I’ll yeah sham sham Shia reported two a week and a half ago two weeks ago that the suns are among the teams that are going to work out bronny James it was later clarified that he is being selective with his workouts I I get that people are reacting a certain way to this and this is one of those things where it’s happening with K Caitlyn Clark discourse right now where you’re not in in that field and then all of a sudden you’re getting yourself in this field and reacting a certain way when context wise you don’t really know a ton of what’s going on here and this agenting stuff with not only leaking when you’re working out and who you’re working out with but also dictating which workouts you do and which teams you don’t work out for happens all the time it happens with guys you’ve never heard of he’s not just doing this because he’s bronny James and Rich Paul is his agent this happens with those guys all the time Lou Dort is a classic example of a guy who pretty much forced his way into being undrafted so he could sign a two-way with the Thunder that worked out very well for him it was a really good decision but that’s just one of the classic examples that I think of because he’s a guy that people bring up like why didn’t teams draft him it’s like well they didn’t draft him because he wasn’t going to go there he said he wasn’t going to go going to go there and and that’s kind of how it worked that is not stuff that has been like widely reported by the way but it was just Lou was like a late first round pick thought of like mainly and then he slipped all the way to being undrafted you can put two and two together there with bronny specifically this is grabbing a lot of headl because of LeBron attachment I think that you and I can just not Breeze right past that and say you and I both don’t see a world where he takes 47 million less you know what’s really rad when you’re a billionaire is having $50 million more dollars like that’s really cool but I’m not going to sit here and act like I have any insight at all into how LeBron James views his financials nor will you nor will anyone who has spoken into a microphone about this in the last two weeks because the only guy that knows that is LeBron himself and he hasn’t spoken on it at all There’s the link from two years years ago three years ago where he said his goal is to play with his kid he didn’t retract fully but he back stepped a bit lately so there was a thought for years if you drafted bronny James you were going to get LeBron James in Fr agency it was something that was talked about for years now the suns are attached to it attached to it here we are I think the bigger concern here for Suns fans is using the 22nd overall pick on a prospect like bronny James who in my opinion is a legitimate NBA Prospect but is a legitimate NBA Prospect where he’s drafted in the 40s or the 50s mhm like l was a legitimate NBA Prospect but he went undrafted like that happens all the time Vince Williams was a guy who you and I talked about before the 22 draft 23 draft I think 22 as a legitimate NBA prospector who was ranked in like the 90s went undrafted like it it happens and those guys are still legitimate so I I it’s it’s easy for me to like as the like person driving this to be like what’s going on here Kevin is there something funny at play but you just did a story today on a few of the that the Suns have worked out who are in the second round range as well it appears to be the Suns doing due diligence and if you have an opportunity to work out Brony James you should because you should work out everyone in the ranges where you think you could wind up because one of the path paths the Suns can take that was tough that will get to here in a second is they can trade down and they can get multiple picks which would be a really good idea yeah I thank you Kellen I have not seen many trade down discussions I’m sorry if I don’t read your other son’s articles people out there who write them um by the way we’re going to get into it and go hard at this the next 20 is it really 22 days until the 22nd pick is made possibly by the Phoenix Suns yeah so technically if I do the I’m doing the story today it’s June 4th uh up until the day before the draft I’ll have a story every day for the 22 days leading up to the 22nd pick and we’ll explore 22 different angles so I’ll break down Tyler KCK for a whole day I’ll break down trading down for a whole day I’ll break down trading ND little in second pick I’ll break down the history of trading unprotected first round picks and if it backfires or not with like the 2031 pick there’s a lot of different ways to go cool so we’ll get into that where was I going with this I don’t remember you’re just saying we’re going to talk about prospects more in depth like dam is someone who has watched more bronny James and both of us combined we’ll ask him about bronny next week did pass the year on holiday test for me Kev I’m just saying yeah I saw him in Pack 12 play and I was like that looks like an NBA player to me and people will be like he a pton Watson averag like two and he’s a good NBA player right now like it it happens all the time highly regarded five star four-star prospects have a trash freshman year they declare anyway and then they turn out to be solid NBA players it happens all the time yeah I I was going to say though one it’s a good point bringing up the trade down scenario because also with when you look at the names that are starting to pop up about who the suns are looking at and this is for every team you’re looking at first round down two undrafted guys they’re going to look at tons of guys who will not go drafted I bet um and and for the sake of even if they stand pad or they trade away that pick like there’s been discussion from Rich Paul bronny James james’ agent if they do not like what’s going on like he very he basically spoke like into the I’m going to do what Lou Dort did and navigate where I want to go tell people not to draft me all the way through the second round if that’s the case if I don’t get the gued contract I want and 42 Charlotte leave me alone yeah and and I’ll renegotiate Circle back with teams as a free agent basically and you’re in control um after the second round is over on that Thursday night so if you’re the Suns I think there is even value in like okay bronny James is going to fall and their agent likes apparently what you’re doing to at least give you a workout and thinks that you’re not messing around with this and trying to get his dad he if he’s giving you that workout that means he views you in good light that means that it doesn’t matter what happens with LeBron James it’s if bronny goes there it will be a good situation he will learn from Kevin Durant he will learn from Devin Booker obviously if you’re the Suns you need to use your draft picks on guys I think you agree that can help you this year and that’s not Brony James but if he’s sitting there and they have money which Matt ishia has shown he will spend spend money like there’s no reason you wouldn’t consider signing him undrafted so that’s all to say I think it’s it’s good to work him out um for the sake of taking him he fits the Suns as a player he’s smart I think he’s a few years away from even being like a contributing role player in the NBA but um it doesn’t hurt I guess is where I’m going with this you want to play a game really quick yeah Jeremy which one’s the camera is it that one the one above to your right you’re you’re so excited that I’m queuing up to a camera thing right now the way that you just like fidgeted so quickly to the camera imagine saying the camera imagine me saying the sentence 12 months ago are you ready okay the Phoenix Sons would have been in a legitimate position to draft bronnie James had they not tampered in free agency for Drew Eubanks imagine that 12 months ago me saying that sentence out loud that is a thing that’s happened that’s a legitimate sentence I like thinking of like has anyone said the sentence out loud before and never Im 12 months ago never on Earth again will anyone say that trading down it’s an easy thing to say Mr Zimmerman it’s a very easy thing to be like oh they can just trade down Utah has 29 and 32 the Bucks have 23 and 33 like would they give up 33 just to move up a spot probably not that’s more of an NFL draft kind of thing New York has 24 25 and 38 so like 25 and 38 maybe if they want to go to 22 Utah’s a good one there at 29 and 32 there’s Portland who has 34 and 40 Indiana’s kind of eh whether they have 36 49 and 50 like would you really pick three players in the second round I I I don’t really know but there there are a couple of those specifically Minnesota is another one where they’re at 27 and 37 so there are and again you could just trade down from 22 to 30 with Boston and Boston is like we love Tyler coac we need Tyler coak in our life and you can be like okay give me 30 in two future seconds and like the price being two future seconds in the back of their head they’re like fine you’d probably want to do it with a team other than Boston you’d want to do it with a team like Utah 29 for example just because or Washington at 26 because they’re bad because if you get future seconds from Boston you’re looking at the end of the second round and for those who aren’t really familiar with the draft typically what we’re taught is that the top five is by far where the most Equity is for an all-nba player or an All-Star player there’s a dramatic drop off even from like three to five like there there’s a ton there yeah the mid to late Lottery which is 6 to 13 is where you can still find All-Star caliber players and players who you believe have Allstar up side once you get in like the 14 to 25 range you’re talking about more or less the same players where you’re looking at guys who project to be really good Ro rotation players maybe they have some All-Star upside to their own doing as well and then around like 26 to 40 is like okay these guys have chances to be NBA players still and maybe rotation players if everything goes right but then that’s where the drop really really starts from like 40 on typically so just keep that in mind if the Suns do wind up doing something where they trade down to like the 40s or the 50s that’s why the two Kamar pick we didn’t really talk about it too much last year just because it’s so difficult to project guys in that range besides just being like hey we like this random guy anything else on uh Brony or the draft before we go I mean the The Scouting Report which I think no one is talking about I jokingly did a live um draft profile on the air that apparently they’re going to use now um on like who he is as a player he’s 6’2 he’s undersized for a combo guard he’s not a point guard right now he’s not a shooting guard right now he’s sort of a tweener in that kind of way shout out to Eric Williams one of the greatest tweeners of all time forget our King and what he did for us at at some points in beating Duke three and D guy is like the pitch here and I have made the case for five years about the value of a point guard who’s a three and D guy the Javon Carter archetype if you will Javon yeah if Javon had a little bit more off dribble stuff and that’s where with bronnie you get to the that he approaches defense and just the mentality that he has about being a role player I liked his answers at the combine where he was like I’m like a Derek white Drew holiday type and like how many prospects are legitimately saying that remember Desmond Bane had a similar kind of answer and I was like oh look at you he gets it he gets sare and then he turned into an All-Star guard anyway but yeah you have to understand where your role is and he does um he just has to shoot the ball better his shooting numbers were his shooting numbers were way down and that was a problem yeah I mean the shooting was not good honestly um when you look at the numbers and the splits and all that stuff um but that’s something I don’t worry about a ton with him but again it it matters um as far as immediate impact and I think I said this to you on the phone over a radio show at some point possibly on the long weekend but I kind of consider him a lot you look at pel Larson with Arizona who played four years in college transferred once didn’t become a double digit scorer until he was a senior this past year for Arizona but everyone kept saying okay he has the blueprint of being a pro he’s a good athlete plays defense doesn’t make dumb decisions looks for his teammates you insert him on a team such as the Phoenix Suns where you have a bunch of superstars he would fit in great um that’s that’s what Le bronny is like what he is supposed to be as an NBA Prospect is perfect it’s actually exactly what they need but it’s just it’s not that guy another bit of context no one talks about when they talk about his stats is that he went through a major medical issue where it looked like he was never going to play basketball again some scary heart stuff um that happened I don’t have the full context in front of me but if you’re ever going to give a guy a pass for a year it’s going to be that hey guess who read too much into how they played in a terrible situation it was me with Anthony Edwards that Georgia team sucked it was terrible and it was really bad and I didn’t like the way that he like looked or was playing on that team and affected the way that I I evaluated him and it was a mistake because everyone who knows what they’re talking about was like he’s him he is going to be one of the next rising stars and one of the best players in the league coming up very soon everyone saw it um I didn’t see it because I write a lot into a situation I think that’s a dangerous thing that you can do with drafty okay that’s enough actual series bronny James talk we’re supposed to be yelling about LeBron and like how it’s only a two-hour flight to LA or whatever okay finals pick who you got it’s Dallas and Boston we have been not spoiled by the series so far um we’re hoping as basketball fans this is the one where we get a six or seven game Thriller there have been a couple mainly the series the Knicks have been in but other than that kind of been lacking a bit with the way these series have gone I think the game quality like the games have been awesome like Minnesota Dallas had some awesome games but it was just they the number of like intense both teams playing out of their minds competing throwing punches has not necessarily been there I think Den was Denver Minnesota even Denver Minnesota was the best series but there were still some like there was a lot of blowouts one of the blowouts I was yic like punking goar on TV which I thought was awesome um I think I’m on the Universe I thought it was awesome when goar outplayed him in like the game seven which is like total game seven thing to happen who who you going uh I think I’m going Dallas and seven again that’s hoping for a long series competitive series I have Dallas and six sounds like porzingis is back yeah I just I’m worried Boston hasn’t been tested I think there’s a lot to be said for if you get out of it healthy obviously if you’re not worn down and by the way they’ve had like a full week until they play Thursday Kyrie and Luca look really good that team doesn’t look like it’s wearing down like Minnesota you saw some kind of wear down effect I don’t know if that’s mental or just like they hit a wall because of scheme or matchups but that team is deep they’re getting contributions all over the place they’re doing the winning team stuff like a couple of the highlights from the last couple games in that series were like Luca diving on the floor and playing defense and if that’s how your Superstar was averaging a freaking triple double basically is he averaging a triple double I think it’s close for the season if he’s playing that way then and you’re playing on a string on defense otherwise I don’t know how you stop that team underrated thing not a lot of people talked about the week for porzingis to get healthy Luca needed to get healthy too he’s been playing through whatever this knee and Ankle he has a Litany of things I remember it was Breen or uh I think Harlen on the broadcast was like it’s a number of injuries for him because he just like he just started like that we down effect but that didn’t he was still playing out of his mind with he was still awesome and we don’t know how healthy porzingis is going to be when he’s moving around and we don’t know the likelihood of him just tweaking this in game two or three and then being out again porzingis has been that was the whole thing with his trade it wasn’t that he wasn’t great in Washington it was like is he going to play for you in the Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA Finals he did not play for them in the Eastern Conference Finals they didn’t need him yeah but they need him in the NBA finals for sure I was reading off box scores looking just like at minutes allocations and Boston’s Thin Man like Al Horford played for I know it was game last elimination game but Al Horford is 38 playing 40 minutes like if porzingis can’t at least move him to the bench like they have some of the what four or five of the top players like if you go five deep like that’s no team can match that talent wise on paper but their bench is pretty thin so no offense to Hower I can shoot it but I’ve never been a huge fan of Boston’s top two players just in terms of on the James Harden scale of when a game gets tight or a series gets tight how are you responding yeah and those two guys specifically Tatum are evident in that they tighten up yeah and it’s something that they are far beyond at this point considering the amount of experience they have they’re one of the most experienced Duos in league history in terms of just the amount of playoff games they have together as it is and they’re in their mid to late 20s right now as a group but you have Derek white and Drew holiday doing those things for them late in so yeah it’s that’s why they’re that good like they have two other guys who are going to do the winning things to cover for those guys regardless of what you think of them I just think uh again like I when I picked Dallas in the last series if I can get PJ Washington Derrick Jones Jr hitting 35% of their threes I think Dallas is going to win the series I think Kyrie specifically is going to have a huge moment in this series I feel like everything has been building for him to this moment where it’s been inconsistent here and there but I think overall when you watch him it’s the best I’ve ever seen him play over this postseason run and I think that everything that’s there with him against the Celtics and that his um stage specifically and like I I know people are being weird about this being a Redemption Arc for him but I at least for me it is because I thought of him as a negative asset at one point like someone you just wouldn’t want on any team period just because of how everything had spiraled for him over the last couple of situations and now he’s completely turned it around in in those kind of eyes like his legacy the word he’s already secure yeah as it is as like one of the best players of his generation but this would just be another step and he’s one of those guys who was always realized that he hit one of the biggest shots in NBA history with the game winner uh or the go-ahead bucket against Golden State uh and then that’s before even getting to Luca who hasn’t even broken 40 yet in the postseason and he averaged 34 a game in the regular season so that’s coming like I feel like Dallas’s best basketball we haven’t even seen it yet because they’re primary two guys haven’t hit the quite the heights that we’re used to from them so I think Tatum and brown are going to have to be able to match them and I don’t think they will right and look if we take away the Kyrie bad stuff that’s off the court I I think we do real like he and KD were playing really good basketball individually before the Nets blew everything up right like Kyrie was having an insane season so it’s not like he as a basketball player fell off he just was like distracted by all this nonsense in several different topics um but like as far as basketball yeah I mean they are what did I say the two best one-on-one players in the game no question you Suns fans probably don’t like saying that with book and KD on this team but that’s what it is right now um so yeah I have to get them the edge and uh I will turn in this into a positive Suns point I think like the season you saw from Grayson Allen like we don’t talk enough about like yes it’s Grayson Allen being prepared and ready and and improving as a player but the big three for the Suns opened that up for him playing with him and I think Kyrie and Luca kind of do the same exact things for Derrick Jones Jr who’s never going to be an above average three-point shooter but when you make it that easy same thing with PJ Washington he’s gone nuts a couple times just because like the game is just so easy for these role players even the guys who are coming in and are new same thing with Lively and Gafford so I I just think that team something surprising would have to happen for them to get off kilter and look Boston’s really good man um they’re going to give him some good defensive looks I think and hopefully that’s where it will be a really really competitive like entertaining series I think it will be the Dynamics I’m looking at specifically before we go Who does Drew guard CU I think he’s supposed to guard Luca mhm but they might actually put him on Kyrie and then do Tatum and brown get involved there too because I think showing Luca size is ultimately proven to be I think the best matchup for him is actually Tatum for Luca is actually Tatum Drew to get under him and be annoying and all that kind of stuff sure but I actually think Tatum on Luca and then Drew on Kyrie is the best way to go about it and then have white in the RoR spot yeah so you can take advantage of the help more I just don’t know if Tatum and brown are going to be able to the free safeties playing off of Jones or Washington are going to be able to do as much um but then on on the other side I think that’s the thing is like is Washington going to be able to really like his defensive rise is he going to be able to step it up there but I’m really excited I think that there’s a real Case by the way that Dallas has the better functioning bigs in this series I’ll put it that way like what they get out of their bigs is actually what they get more out of them than what Boston gets out of porzingis and Horford like I’ll go I’m not saying they’re better players I think porzingis is the best big in this series but M with that being said like they get 100% percentile 100th percentile in ter they shoot 100% sometimes yeah I mean their job is just easy you simplify the game for them because it’s either that I mean it’s the same thing like you’re going to have to sell out to some degree to stop Luca and Kyrie and you shouldn’t not sell out I don’t think you should play them oneon-one for very long stretches at all so then you’re dealing with empty side stuff Rim rollers that are and I don’t know I just think that team’s tough to stop yeah all right man we’re back next week to talk um fullbore draft thank you for the second apron rule Gods whoever made those rules because if the Suns end up trading their number 22 pick then at least like we had all this discussion time for no reason but at least we pretended and genuinely thought they would pick so instead of them trading it for Landry shamet like right now is what I’m trying to say because they did that once and I was like we don’t have to talk about the draft do you remember that I like talking about the draft anyway that’s me complaining oh no yeah I came back from the finals completely exhausted after a really long playoff run and just went nuts for a week on draft stuff and it didn’t matter at all now you can go for a month is what I’m saying and yeah I’ll do it for I’ll do it for three weeks instead man I’ll I’ll triple that I don’t care I’m reckless all the time asking anyone who knows me you know Jeremy knows right Jeremy all right everyone see you later

Empire of the Suns: Why the Suns will work out Bronny James before the Draft + an NBA Finals preview.

Video: Felisa Cárdenas and Jeremy Schnell/Arizona Sports

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