Toronto checks all of Giannis’ boxes + CP3 & Day’Ron Sharpe Raptors targets? + Scottie Receipts

Toronto checks all of Giannis’ boxes + CP3 & Day’Ron Sharpe Raptors targets? + Scottie Receipts

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Giannis Anttompo allegedly asked for a trade or an exit or an exodus from the Milwaukee Bucks this off season. And from what we’re hearing, it seems like his target destination is New York. Now, Toronto Raptor fans should be no strangers to Giannis trade rumors because there was a whole swirling bunch of rumors around free agency Giannis Toronto back when Messiah was in charge. Messiah of course was a huge part of night uh Giannis’s family immigrating to Greece and subsequently there is that long-standing connection between them. But last I checked Messiah Yujuri is not here. So Giannis Toronto dead in the water, right? But actually, I reached out to somebody and this was I had to dig this email back from 2021 and I said, “What is Giannis looking for from the Bucks and from his potential suitor?” And I got back a pretty short answer and he said, “Winning, stability, culture, potential, track record.” And I have inferred that that means that it makes sense that he would want to go to New York. New York has been number one. It is the biggest Greek population in North America. So that’s a starter right there. A lot of people think it’s Toronto. Actually, according to a quick Google search, it is New York. Up above up among the teams or the cities that have major Greek populations is also Boston, is also Chicago, and is also Toronto. So, if Giannis is in fact going to choose his next destination to some degree and the Bucks are going to oblige for a franchise legend to actually not just send him to Charlotte for a boatload of picks, I think it it’s worth exploring the fact that if New York is an option, Toronto is also an option because Toronto has all of those things as well. Toronto is a mediumsized city relative to New York, but it is still a major major North American market. Giannis, of course, knows a lot about the potential of Toronto to accentuate a star’s reputation because he watched it happen in real time. He watched it happen as his team was up 200. These memories plant seeds and those seeds mean that he probably has a pretty high understanding or opinion of the Toronto Raptor as an organization. Of course, he sat home as the team that beat him, then subsequently got a little bit lucky in in the finals, let’s be honest. beat the Golden State Warriors, won a championship, and launched Kawaii into the stratosphere of Michael Jordan talks talks that did not exist before he got to Toronto. And so I think that if I’m Giannis Antmpo, I’m certainly looking at Toronto as a potential destination, but it takes two to tango. Even if Giannis did want to come to Toronto, should Toronto be looking to make a trade right now in a wideopen East? Admittedly, with two borderline max players already on their roster between Scotty Barnes and Brandon Ingram, should they be looking to make a move for the soontobe 31-year-old Giannis Antmpo? And I think a lot of Raptor fans immediately, every single time the Giannis trade stuff comes up, immediately jump to let’s give him Scotty Barnes. Well, there’s good news and bad news, right? The good news is I mean, hold on, let me let me figure out if this is good news or bad news. The good news is a Scotty Barnes ccentric package would be probably the best thing the Bucks can expect to get. The 2021 class has been amazing. I would argue Scotty’s the best player in that class, and I’m going to prove it. Uh, I think Scotty is launching into superstardom, a topic of today’s live at 7:00 where I explore the superstar checklist and why I think Scotty Barnes is a superstar. So, just plugging in the next live during this live when we talk about Giannis Antmpo and subsequently also Don Sharp today. He is trade eligible and in today’s episode we’re also going to talk about Chris Paul. This is going to be a busy 24 hours for me because not only am I going to talk about this stuff here, I’m assuming a lot of this stuff is going to become a topic tomorrow on the panel. So, shout outs to Players Choice. I will be on the panel tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. So, if you don’t get what you want from me here, maybe you get what you want from me at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow on Players Choice. But, let’s stick to Giannis for a second here. What does the trade package for Giannis look like? Well, let’s let’s consider the teams that could make a move for him. Then we’ll consider some tra some trades that fall outside of the checklist. So checklist teams that could make a trade for him among the teams that you know I I feel satisfy all checklists provided the checklist hasn’t changed. Granted this checklist are from when he was 25 26 dudes do change. New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto. Those are the four teams. Those four teams satisfy his desire to stay in the East, which I have heard uh you know through the grape vine that he would prefer to go through the Eastern Conference. Naturally, preferring to stay in the East gives you the best chance of getting to the finals. And once you’re at the finals, anything can happen. Yes, you’re probably going to go up against OKC or Denver, but if Giannis is on a hit squad, then he probably thinks he has a chance. And he is a, you know, he’s possibly the best player in the league. He’s one of the three best players in the league. I think he’s third or fourth, but you can make an argument for one or two. So, when you’re that level of talent and you believe that just with a little bit of help, you can get your team there, I certainly have no reason to doubt him. Uh, he has won a championship before. He has a right to believe that about himself. And so, let’s let’s let’s talk about those four teams. First of all, let’s talk about New York. What would a New York offer even look like for Giannis? Well, I think Cat would probably have to stay in New York for this to actually work for Giannis. And I think that’s probably a sticking point for some people because Carl New Towns is obviously they’re not trading Jaylen Brunson. You need Jaylen Brunson with Giannis. So Milwaukee would probably ask for Cat and a boatload of picks, but that probably doesn’t do it for you, does it? Like is C is Carl Town selling tickets in Milwaukee? Really? This is a guy who got just got traded for Julius Randle a year ago. Like this much cannot have been done for Carl Towns’s reputation. And obviously Cat has come into this season and played, you know, he’s been okay. He’s been okay. He’s not playing like a top 10 player like he was last year. He is also 30ish around Giannis’s age. This is not exactly the exciting offer that I’m looking for. If I’m, you know, John Horst and the Bucks, you have to look at this from the Bucks side. They have to sell this to their fan base. They have to sell tickets. This is a small market team. This is a team that requires something of substance to come back to fill the seats. something of substance to come back to say we didn’t get absolutely fleece. They’re not going to rob Babcock this. Rest in peace Rob Babcock where they trade Vince Carter for, you know, in this case, Giannis Antmpo for Eric Williams, Aaron Williams and a couple first round picks and a and a big, you know, who’s who’s got a big name who doesn’t show up. So, in a lot of ways, I think the deal would have to be Mikuel Bridges and OG. Of course, neither one of those guys are top 20 players in the league. Neither one of them are major bucket getters. Neither one of them are stars or superstars. And so I think the Knicks offer just might not be good enough. Even if they add a bunch of picks to it and swaps, the Knicks are a good team. Their picks are not going to be that good. So you have to look at this from the perspective of if I’m if I’m the Bucks, I have to look at Giannis and say, “Well, what’s your next option?” Well, then we get to Boston. And I think Boston has a better offer where they can probably do Jaylen Brown, Payton Pritchard, and some picks. And I think Jaylen Brown probably a top four, top five shooting guard in the league, a major bucket getter, putting up all NBA numbers this year, a max contract that can match Giannis. And if you’re Giannis, you just hold out hope that Jason Tatum comes back this season and obviously you still have Derek White there. And then you try to fill out your roster. I think that makes a ton of sense. We’ve heard tons of rumors about Jaylen Brown wanting, you know, to have his team, to have his own team. We’ve seen Clunky Fit in the past between him and Jason Tatum. It’s a championship organization. It’s a legacy organization. They have a huge Greek population. I could certainly see Giannis wanting to go to Boston. I could certainly see Boston wanting to buy on Giannis. And I don’t think that they’re completely sold on Jaylen Brown being there long term. Pton Pritchard is a huge, huge get point guard of the future. They already got Ryan Rollins there. Ryan Rollins been hooping. So maybe you run Ryan Rollins at the two, Pton Pritchard at the one, Miles Turner at the five, and you just be a playoff team, and you just hope that Jaylen Brown ages really, really well. It’s not super exciting, but it’s something. What about Chicago? Chicago is interesting because they do have the type of transition offense that would probably suit Giannis. They have the type of spacing big that already suits Giannis. He’s already had a lot of success with Brook Lopez. You could have a lot of success with Nicol Vic. You would have to give up Kobe White. Montas Bzelis would have to be in that trade. Noah Si would have to be in that trade. And every pick that you have has to be in that trade because Montas Bzel is not exactly having the greatest year himself. So, you fill in a whole bunch of roster spots and Giannis basically takes a drive across the border, state border, leaves mil uh leaves Wisconsin, goes to Illinois, ends up in Michael Jordan’s old franchise, and tries to hang up the seventh banner in Chicago. That makes some sense. I think that could make a lot of sense. I don’t know if what the Bulls have to offer is exciting enough, but Kobe White and Montes Buellis is certainly something. I mean, you’re getting two former lottery picks, you’re getting two young players, something to build around. We can talk about Toronto’s package uh a little bit later, but let’s explore a little outside the box. There is Miami and Orlando. No state tax in in Florida. So, we got to talk about the no state tax teams. Miami could certainly make an offer of Tyler Hero and make it at least competitive. Hero is from the area, so that that immediately helps to sell some tickets. He’s a hometown kid. I think you would have to probably throw Khal Wear in there. You might have to throw Haime Hakez. And at that point, you’d have to ask, “Okay, how good are we?” If Bam and Giannis, who you know, kind of a clunky fit if you asked me, but sure, it could work. You you’d form a pretty dynamic duo there with Norman Powell and Andrew Wiggins. Like, what are we doing here? Right? It could make some sense. I think you get into the big big leagues with Orlando because Orlando could offer a star, but not a perfect one, and that’s Paulo Beno. Now, it’s not a secret to me that there’s a couple teams in the South Southeast division that have looked a lot better without their highest paid player, and that’s Atlanta and Orlando. Orlando has looked better without Paulo. And I got news for you. They’ve looked better without Paulo many times throughout the last 3 4 years. Giannis is an upgraded version of Paulo. It accelerates their timeline. They’ve obviously made a win now move for Desmond Bane. I think Desmond Bane plus Paulo plus Jaylen Suggs. Sorry, Desmond Bane plus Fron Jayen Suggs plus Giannis launches you into that’s the favorite to come out of the East easily. Paulo gives Milwaukee a young star to build around. And if Paulo is on the books, if Paulo is on the if on the move, if he’s made available by Jeff Welman, I think that that is a really interesting offer. And Milwaukee would be stupid not to consider it because if you’re comparing Paulo, the youth, the upside, the projections, the potential to be a Giannis type player, you can sell it very easily to your fan base. I don’t think anyone would be super mad in Milwaukee if you know you already won the championship. You won the championship. You know, Giannis is a great player, but you know, he’s 31. We get a 23-year-old ascending star in Paulo Beno. I think you’d have to be happy. And if you’re the Magic, yeah, you you cry a few tears about what could have been with Fron and Paulo. But let’s just be honest, it hasn’t really worked. But does Fron and Giannis solve your spacing problems or Jaylen Suggs and whatever the hell else you got there, Taius Jones, Anthony Black, like this sounds like a spacing nightmare as well. They do have the spacing big in Wendell Carter. Again, in theory, they do have that. So, I think among the options that we’ve explored so far, Orlando definitely has the best offer if they’re willing to put Paulo or France in that deal. That’s a hell of an offer. I just don’t know how it looks for Orlando and how many picks are also attached. Also, it’s worth noting Anthony Black’s having a hell of a season. So, if he’s involved in that trade, that makes it a no-brainer. That’s a mountain of an offer. And I think Orlando has already shown a willingness to be aggressive. Their picks are pretty much gone. They traded most of them away for Desmond Bane. So, this would be doubling down. It’s a good idea. It’s a really decent idea. Moving on to Atlanta. Atlanta has a lot of great young pieces and obviously the move back has to be Trey Young, but it has to be Trey Young and a whole bunch of other stuff because Trey Young’s value right now is in the toilet. And I don’t think Troy Young for Giannis is moving anybody. So you’re probably throwing in Dyson Daniels in that deal and you’re probably having to throw in a boatload of picks. You might have to throw in on Yeka Kongu and you might have to also eat some contracts. Does that give Milwaukee enough to start over? Trey Young, Dyson Daniels, and a bunch of stuff. Maybe. Maybe. You know, you probably taking Bobby Portoris back the other way. You got Chris Tapzingis there. You got Jaylen Johnson. with this Jaylen Johnson plus Giannis work. This is certainly a very very big front court. Jaylen playing the playing the four three but more a point forward. Giannis also playing point forward. Those two demons attacking in transition. It could be very interesting moving out of the Eastern Conference for a moment. You got to look at the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs have dear Fox who has a mountain of a contract. They have Victor Winyama. I think internally the San Antonio Spurs are starting to evaluate that maybe Victor Webeyama’s career is not going to be as long as they think it is. Now again, this is premature. He has only been in the league for 3 years, but he’s already had a blood clot scare. He’s currently out with an injury. He is 7 foot 6, 7 foot 7, 7 foot five, depending on who you believe. And so ultimately it does come down to how long is your window really and are you willing to waste it on development reps for Steph Castle, Dylan Harper, etc. Now Dylan Harper I think has proven himself to be the uh to be the guard of the future. I say guard of the future which is to say he is the most important guard in my future if I am San Antonio. If I’m doing the calculus San Antonio my most important player Victor Mama my second most important player Dylan Harper. third most important player somewhere between dear Fox and Steph Castle and then we can go from there to the you know the the Devin Vels the Kell Johnson’s etc etc. So if Fox and Steph Castle is on the table I have to look at this if I’m if I’m Milwaukee and say this is our chance. We get a proven commodity in Fox. We get a future piece and a former rookie of the year in Steph Castle. How can we say no to this? What about the other Texas teams? Well, there are a couple of other Texas teams that are pretty interesting. Giannis Fitz, too. And again, no state tax could be appealing when you make $60 million a year. Dallas is interesting. Dallas is interesting because they also have a franchise player they’re looking to get rid of, who would probably do similar things to Giannis, and that is Anthony Davis. Now, obviously, Anthony Davis’s value is a lot lower than it was a year ago when he was abruptly traded for Luca Donuch around this time last year. And so, we could probably say it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than Anthony Davis. Cooper flag is presumably off the table. So, it would take Anthony Davis and everything else you got. And I don’t think it’s going to beat the Spurs offer. What about Houston? Now, Houston made a huge win now move to get in Kevin Durant. They’re getting a resurgent second year from Reed Shepard. I think Reed Shepard is very good. I’ve always felt he was very good. Reed Shepard might be the point guard of the future. Fred Van Vleet is I don’t know what Fred Van Vleet is at this point. He could be medically retired this time next year. He could be completely washed or he could be a wonderful comeback story, but right now he’s injured and he is a $25 million contract as far as I’m concerned. That’s salary filler that allows you to trade young players like Tar East. that allows you to trade young players who are not yet extended like Amen Thompson. That also allows you to trade Reed Shepard. They’ve got a very interesting package, but I think if I’m Milwaukee, I’m going to need Alprin Shenhen back. One international star to another. Shenun is nowhere near the talent that Giannis is, but he is a hell of a talent. He’s currently playing like a top 15 player in the league. And this is exactly the type of young player from the 2021 draft that I would actually want back in a trade for Giannis. And so if the Houston Rockets are willing to buy into the idea of pairing Giannis with KD, a pairing that fits very well in my opinion from a basketball synergy standpoint, fits very well. If they’re willing to go that big and they’re willing to double down on their rebounding advantage over the entire league with Steven Adams and Clint Capella and all the big wings that they have with Jabari Smith, even if they were willing to put Jabari in that deal, Jabari plus Alper and Shingen, I think it’s probably overkill, but honestly, how do you beat that offer? The Lakers sound interesting. They don’t really have a great offer. LeBron’s not going the other way. I think he has a no trade clause and quite frankly, I don’t think Austin Reeves makes anywhere near enough money. Although, I think Austin would be a great gap for them. It would be Austin plus every big contract on their book from Gabe Vincent to Rury Hachimura to all those contracts. And I still don’t think you can make the money work. So, it would require one of those two big salaries, which is LeBron or Luca going back and LeBron and Luca are going nowhere. So, I think from a financial standpoint, as much as it’s exciting to see, you know, Giannis plus Luca link up in LA, and I think it would be very good for the league to have that type of dynamic duo in Los Angeles, I still think they probably don’t have the pieces. And I don’t think the Clippers have the pieces either, if I’m being honest. I don’t think the Clippers have the pieces. I don’t think they have the picks, and I don’t think the Lakers have the picks. We look at a team on the West Coast like the Portland Trailblazers and I think that they actually make a ton of sense for him. They do have his former teammate Damen Loader. They do have his former teammate Drew Holiday. That’s kind of interesting. They do have Denny Aia. They do have Donovan Klingan. They do have a boatload of young players like Tammani Kamar. They have Shaden Sharp who could be the type of bucket getting scoring guard that you need to sell tickets. Portland makes way too much sense, which is why I probably think it’s not going to happen. Plus, I don’t think Giannis is looking to go to a bottom feeder right now and try to work his way up the Western Conference. There’s probably a lot of question marks around Dame’s health, Drew’s age, etc., etc. But Tammani plus Denny is a hell of a package. And if I’m being honest, Tammani and Denny is probably a better package right now than OG and Muel Bridges or whatever the hell the Knicks are offering. Especially if you throw in Shaden Sharp with there or throw in Hansen Yang. I have already pitched this uh Portland offer many times. Hansen Yang, if he could even prove, if the Bucks even believe that Hansen Yang could be a starting center at any point in his career, the marketing potential for a small market team to have China’s next big hope is a huge draw. If nothing else, even if Hansen Yang is a bust, even if he amounts to nothing more than a serviceable starting center, the market value alone is huge on a player like that still on his rookie contract. So, I don’t know what Hansen’s going to become, but it’s certainly worth exploring if you’re the Bucks. The Portland Trailblazers are interesting. The Phoenix Suns have a boatload of young assets they could throw your way from Jaylen Green to Kaman Malawatch. There’s like a lot and they may actually be a sneaky offer because they are a pretty big market team. Phoenix is one of the 10 biggest markets in the United States. They have a lot of appealing offers and they also have the perfect pairing with him and Devin Booker. Deon Booker is looking to win a championship in Phoenix, never won one. Giannis can come in and help him do that. So, there’s a lot of options and you better believe when a top five player still in his prime becomes available, every team is going to call with their best offer. So, let’s talk about the Toronto Raptors. We’re 21 minutes into this. Let’s talk about the Toronto Raptor. What can the Raptors actually offer? Well, obviously the one offer that beats a lot of those other offers, if not all the offers, is Scotty Barnes. Like, that’s the obvious one. But you’re on a Pensire basketball stream. So, even entertaining Scotty Barnes hypothetical trades is not something that we do around here. We are not Hello and welcome. We are not Raptors Republic. We are not those channels. those channels, they will and they have in the past explored Scotty Trades. We don’t do that here. We don’t talk about trading dudes that we think are going to win MVPs when they’re 24. We don’t do that. And if I was an OKC fan, I wouldn’t have been talking about trading Shay 3 years ago. If I was a Milwaukee fan, I wouldn’t have been talking about trading Giannis for whoever the hell was coming up five, eight years ago, nine years ago. I think I know what I see with Scotty, and I ain’t trading him for nothing. But what about non-scotty trades? So, a talking point that’s become pretty popular around Raptor space, but I believe, and I could be wrong, originated on this channel is that as you get better, and this see feels pretty logical, so it’s weird that I’m trying to copyright this, but I feel like I’ve heard a lot of people echo this sentiment, and I don’t remember anyone saying it before I did, but the idea that the Raptors pieces become more valuable as they win more games. I think that’s just logic. That just makes sense. The way people talk about Brandon Ingram right now is very different than the way people were talking about Brandon Ingram last year. Is he having a better season than he was having last year? Hell no. He is not. He’s not shooting better. He doesn’t have better analytics. He doesn’t have better lineup data. Nothing has changed. The only thing that’s changed is he’s winning in Toronto. He wasn’t winning in with the Pelicans. He’s healthy in Toronto. He wasn’t healthy with the Pelicans. When you’re healthy and winning and you’re putting up decent stats, [ __ ] changes. The narrative changes. The narrative has also changed hopefully around Emanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett. And so the question becomes hypothetically if those big big big names are not available if the Alprin Shenuns and the Paulo Bankeros and all that stuff is not available. Do the Raptors have a trade package that does not involve Scotty Barnes but involves every pick imaginable? And the Raptors own all their picks. So every pick imaginable literally means all the picks. Does that deal work? Let’s construct a trade. So, I’m actually going to open up the trade machine and I’m going to give you like my best trade and let’s see if it actually works. Okay. So, I promise it’s not going to turn into a trade machine episode. We will talk about Chris Paul. We will talk about Chris Paul because I am actually one of those rare crazy people that think Chris Paul to Toronto is a really good idea. Okay. So, uh let’s see here. Did I freeze up there for a second? Am I good now? Should be good. Okay. Bucks Toronto. Let’s widen this out and let’s try to make this work. So, Giannis makes $54 million. That’s one. One contract is definitely going this way. One contract is definitely going the other way. Emanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett. Now, you’re going to eat some salary. You’re going to need to eat some bad salary. And there’s not a lot of bad salary to eat. So, you’re probably going to eat Bobby Portoris. Pause. Okay. So, 60 million, 67 million coming in. That makes sense. Okay. Now, how do we sweeten this deal? You give them and now unprotected. Sorry, these are not going to be swapped. 2027 swap. 2028 unprotected 2029 swap 2030 quickly. Barrett boils dick five picks. I still don’t think this is enough if I’m being honest. You might have to add more. I hate to say it, it’s probably going to cost you Jacobe and you take back Torian Prince or Gary Harris. One of those guys. Can we get back? Can we just get back Jericho Sims? [ __ ] AJ Green ain’t going nowhere. Amir Coffee. Oh, never mind. Giannis is coming back. So, we got to take Thanasses back. [ __ ] Okay, now this deal is probably going to say failed for one reason, which is 2028 and 2029 missing a first round pick. What did I do here? Hold up. Let’s try this again. Swap 2028 bucks. 2029 swap. Oh, they don’t have a swap. That makes sense. [ __ ] Okay. So can’t trade that. So you trade 2030 unprotected and then you trade a 2031 swap. Does that work? Why are we getting fails? Okay. Oh, Bobby Foris can’t be traded until December 15th and AIS can’t be traded until December 15th. Okay, so this deal can be done December 15th. Okay, this is a deal. Okay, I’m not saying it’s a great deal. Certainly, if you are uh Rob, you are trading the whole team. How the [ __ ] is this the whole team? This is not the whole team. It’s two starters and three bench players. Relax. It’s not the whole team. You got minimum contracts and there just so happens to be a really great point guard uh who’s 40 plus years old right now who just uh might be becoming a free agent. Look, you can fill out a ton of you can fill out a ton of uh your roster spots and [ __ ] with veterans. Okay, so the question becomes, how far does a team with Jiannisko, Brandon Ingram, Scotty Barnes, Yaka Purle, and no point guard? Well, no, no point guard. You got Jamal Shed and potentially Chris Paul coming through. Uh maybe Chris Paul would be welcome to coming on and joining up with the big three of Giannis, Brandon Ingram, and Scotty Barnes. It would be very interesting to say the least. Now, in order for this to work, obviously BI becomes the two, Scotty becomes the three, Giannis becomes the four. You need penetration. Giannis is a great driver. He gets paint touches at will. Scotty has really elevated himself. This would open up Brandon Ingram to be extremely efficient. Right now, Brandon Ingram is not efficient because Brandon Ingram is getting the brunt of defensive attention with Giannis and Scotty on the court. Brandon Ingram would be a third option for the defense or the second option for the defense. Either way, however you want to slice it, Brandon Ingram is never going to be more open in his life than he would be with Giannis and Scotty. You would need elite shooting to fill out the roster. Bobby Portoris becomes a very good backup big in this scenario as a backup four coming off the bench. You don’t really have that right now. Jonathan Mo would need to immediately become a contributor. You would need Oayabaji traded for something. You would lose all of your picks. And so basically, you’re committing to a vision from 2026 to 2031 where you’re going to lose three first round picks and you’re going to get probably a few bad ones, but you’re going to be a really good team. So the swaps don’t matter as much. Like I don’t trust Milwaukee to be great. So the swaps are like kind of like fake picks, right? They look good. When you make the trade, it’s like, “Oh, we got five first round picks.” It’s like, no, you got swaps and you’re the worst team, so you’re not going to want to swap. So it doesn’t really [ __ ] matter, right? So, don’t think of this as, oh, we just traded five first round picks for Jiannis, but think of this as actually you trading three first round picks and two potential disastrous swaps if you end up being really bad and you’re trading away three first, you know, three previous first round picks in Jacobe Grady and Colin Ray Boils and you’re trading away two very serviceable starters in RJ and Quickley. Now, does this type of deal appeal to a small market team like Milwaukee? Probably not. Is Scotty plus Giannis a great pairing? Probably not. But is this deal in theory? Think about this deal. Look it out on paper. IQ is a really good player. RJ’s a really good player. I don’t think either one of these players are in a different stratosphere than Mikuel Bridges at this point. Is OG Anobi worth more than CMBB, Grady, Jacobe, and and a whole bunch of picks? I don’t think so. So, if the going price for for Giannis right now from the Knicks side is Mikuel Bridges and OG Anobi, I believe this deal is better than that deal. Personally, I believe this deal is better than that deal. And I think it gives you a clear window to have the best player in the Eastern Conference. I think it also gives you a window, shout outs to Scotty Barnes, to have a future league MVP on your team. I promise I’m not laughing because I don’t believe it. I do believe it, but I I I understand your I I understand my audience. I I know some of you are having a hard time believing that Scotty Barnes is really going to be that great. I also think, you know, this I mean, in theory, this makes Scotty the third option and Scotty Barnes is the third option setting everybody up. You don’t really even need a traditional point guard because Giannis, Scotty, BI are all kind of point forwards. So, in a lot of ways, I think this deal catapults you into unguardable territory. There is no team this side of reality that can guard Giannis, Scotty, and Brandon Ingram. You just don’t have anybody, I don’t think. OKC can guard this team. So, can this team guard? Yeah, sure they can. Scotty and Giannis on the on on the weak side blocking every single shot. Yeah, it works. The Bucks probably still hold out for Scotty. So, this is my best deal. I don’t know if I would do it if I’m being honest. I’m not the biggest Giannis Ant Kmpo fan. I don’t know if you can tell from my coverage. I would make this deal and add 16 more picks if it meant getting Shay in Toronto because I believe in Shay like that. I might have even made this deal plus two more picks for Luca cuz Luca’s in his 20s even if Nico Harrison would have you believe that he’s on Ompic and is 295 pounds. I’d make this deal for I [ __ ] I might make something like this for chat even, but Giannis being 31 worries me. What about Ingram CMBB and RJ plus picks? Now, that’s interesting because, you know, that makes a lot more sense actually if if we think about it because if I can get over my own emotional need to keep Brandon Ingram in Toronto for some reason, if I just remove Jacobe and IQ and instead add oh, I don’t know, Brandon Ingram to this deal. It probably still works because you’re giving up 69 million. You’re taking back 77. So, it probably still works from a cap perspective. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it works. It works. It totally works. And this deal might be more appealing from the Bucks side as well. I mean, you get two mega bucket getters and Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett. You get two major young pieces and you get all of Toronto’s picks. This could make a lot of sense. and you don’t have to move Ryan Rollins to the bench to pair him, you know, and you already have what possibly is your point guard of the future. So, you would just be getting like four pieces, replenishing all of your depth, getting rid of Bobby Poris’s contract, and getting rid of the onto the Kmpo brothers. This would make some sense. Actually, this would make some sense. Um, Daniel Franklin saying, “The Raptors get under the tax.” Yeah, the Raptors do technically get under the Do the Raptors get under the tax with this deal. Yeah, they do. 67 million coming in, 69 million coming in, 77 million going out. That makes sense. Yeah, the Raptors would get under the tax. Super yayad yad yadded saying absolutely no thanks to a Jiannis trade too much. Well top five players don’t grow on trees my friend. Uh Jiannis Kumbfos do not come up for trade every year frankly you might be lucky every two three years a player like this becomes available. Bad trade. It’s actually a bad trade from the Bucks perspective if I’m honest. I think both teams say no to this, but I think the Raptors would say, you know, this is worth exploring. Scotty plus Giannis, and we get to keep Emanuel quickly, which means we get to preserve the shooting. We move Giannis to the four, Scotty to the three. Giannis is hitting his threes this year to some extent. Your spacing is kind of a nightmare. So, you’re happy to have Bobby Poris. You still have Zandra Mckelish coming off the bench. you can probably just give Danaces uh you know Garrett Temple’s towel to wave and yeah, you lose two two young players you obviously believe in a lot and Grady Dick and Colin Mary Boils and that could definitely come back and bite you in the ass, but I don’t see either one of these guys necessarily becoming like superstars. CB might become an all-star. He might become better than OG and Anobi and you’ll live to regret that like three years, four years down the line, but at which point you’ll still have Giannis Andupo. I think Giannis is gonna be a perfectly good player until he’s about 35, 34 years old. I think after that it’s anyone’s bet. He’s no longer necessarily like that singular force that can lift you to the playoffs by himself, but that’s why you have Emanuel Quickley and Scotty Barnes and Yak Purle and all the players you keep. You’re not totally gutting your team here. I mean, you keep Jacobe Walter here, who would inevitably move into the starting lineup, and he’s been doing a pretty good job in the starting lineup. You’re basically trading a whole bunch of picks and Brandon Ingram uh for a backup stretch big and Jiannisko. I don’t think this is a bad deal at all. Now, obviously, this is delusional and the Bucks would have to be very, very high on Brandon Ingram. Now, the reason I say the Bucks calculus might be a little bit different than you’re thinking because obviously in your mind, maybe if you’re running this on 2K, you’re like, “My god, man. They they’re going to ask for uh I don’t know, they’re going to ask for like 15 first round picks. They can get this and that. They can get 12 young players.” Okay, man. This is a small market team. They need to be able to sell this to their fan base. Now, Brandon Ingram, big name. Big name. was a huge name in 2021 when KD came up and allegedly at the time the Pelicans were not willing to move off of him. Ingram and Barrett have an image problem right now. So the Jiannisko trade allegedly according to Shams Chirania is going to be resolved over the next next few weeks. This is going to be a situation that’s going to be resolved the next few weeks. I don’t know if Shams is right or wrong because what I’d heard previously was this could be something that drags on to the next off season, but obviously with the Bucks losing to the Wizards the way they did, Giannis looking totally disinterested. It kind of feels like a little bit like watching OG and Anobi in his last two weeks with Toronto where it kind of feels like he feels like he’s playing for the opponent right now almost, right? Like like if he thinks he’s going to the Eastern Conference, every win he adds to the Milwaukee Bucks total is just [ __ ] over his next team. So, I don’t know if he’s necessarily that cold, but it didn’t feel like I mean, I didn’t watch the whole game between the Bucks and the Wizards, but I watched enough of it to be able to tell you he didn’t look like himself. So, I guess tonight will be telling the Bucks do play today. They are up against, you know, a winnable opponent in a in a sense. So, we’ll see. We’ll see. You know, I think they’re going up against Dallas if I’m not mistaken. Is it Dallas tonight? Either way, it’ll be very interesting to see Giannis’s performance. And uh Alexander B saying, “Also, Luca is out tomorrow against the Raptors.” What the [ __ ] bro? Why? Cuz we cuz he don’t want to get locked up by Scotty Barnes. That’s why. Luca knows. Luca knows life would be very, very tough. Okay, we actually do need to talk about Detroit. This is a very very good option. It’s not quite the market. And if my friend was wrong, sorry, if my friend was right about, you know, what Giannis wants, I’m not sure Detroit, given that they have been a laughingtock of an organization, you know, prior to last year for almost a decade necessarily fills the quota. But it does fill the quota of him wanting to play with a lead initiator like Kate Cunningham. It would feel the need to have a stretch big like Isaiah Stewart, but it would definitely take Jaylen Duran. It would take Jaylen Duran and it would probably take Asar Thompson. And if Assar and Jaylen and Jaden Ivy and Tobias Harris is the offer, then I have to say, sorry to Raptor fans, the Detroit Pistons have the best offer. At which point, some people would argue they would have two of the top four or five players in the Eastern Conference. They’re already the number one seed. They haven’t won a championship, so Giannis can’t be accused of bandwagoning. Their last championship was in 2004. He would be seen as the best player on that team. Kade would be seen as the best number two option in the league by far. And I think at that point, they would have to be the favorites to come out of the East, right? He has personal reasons for being out according to reports. Well, I hope everything is okay with Luca, but in the sake of comedy, I just want to say that those personal reasons are and 100% are that he does not want to get locked up by Scotty Barnes. Luca Duck and Scotty is my until you tell me why Luca is out tomorrow, that’s what I’m going to believe. Okay, that’s just that’s what I’m going to say. Um Tyler Young saying, “Proud to say I was in the top 0.2% of Pinsire viewers this year.” That’s awesome, man. Uh, Loki King saying it’s the birth of his second child. Well, then I’m sorry to say I think his child is afraid for his future father to be locked up by Scotty Barnes. But for real, congrats to Luca. That’s awesome. Ingram plus RJ plus CMBB plus firsts. I think that’s pretty much right. I think that’s pretty much right. For real. I I think that’s that’s that’s around it. He had nine turnovers last night. There you go. LeBron going to get to smoke that now with Reeves. Well, LeBronto is definitely not coming back and I have full faith that the Raptors are going to mop the floor with the Lakers and dominating and old man LeBron James tomorrow. LeBron does not get back in transition. is the number one transition offensively. Kind of hoping RJ Barrett can start playing soon because, you know, I don’t know if this team keeps winning without him. I don’t necessarily think that necessarily helps his trade value. Uh but, you know, everyone’s saying the right stuff, right? Do the Lakers have good bigs? They most certainly do not. Jackson Hayes and DeAndre Eaton are not moving me at all. But, you know, Eightton’s been having a pretty good season. I talked a lot of [ __ ] about uh I talked a lot of [ __ ] about Aiden and I even said that Gershan Yabaselli was better than DeAndre Aiden on PC and I got laughed off the room for it. I think my personal bias against Aiden is just I don’t like the guy. I just don’t like the guy. Uh Paul Blunt said I’m getting a Pensar tattoo represent you do that, man. Make sure make sure to make sure to tag me on Instagram when you do. Appreciate you. Uh what do you think of Jaylen Dur? I love him. I love him. I think he is uh extremely Yak is out. What? Oh man. Damn, that sucks, man. Yeah, we better trade for Dron Sharp. Well, okay. That that that cues me up perfectly for my next se uh segment. All right, so two two things. Number one, Chris Paul has been sent home. He tweeted out last night at like 3:00 a.m. or something. Apparently, I’ve been sent home by the Clippers. There’s a lot to this story to unpack, so we’ll make it very brief. Allegedly, Chris Paul is a little bit of a prickly [ __ ] when he’s losing. And he didn’t like the way things were going in, you know, LA Clipperland. Who would? Who should? uh that organization is an absolute joke from how they’re run to, you know, their organization to their front office and everything. Just how they work is very amateur. And I understand that the veneer of, you know, we’re going to spend money on the intu dome and we have this super rich billionaire owner and all that stuff. Yeah, it’s great, man. It’s great until the feds catch up with you and your entire organization is subject to, you know, an investigation by the FBI and [ __ ] at which point you’re a clown show and then you sign a whole bunch of geriatrics because frankly the Clippers have been way more concerned with being relevant than they have been with being good for a very long time. This is kind of what happens when you’re the ugly stepchild in your own city. The Clippers are like the Brooklyn Nets. You can’t be in the same market as the Nets. Sorry, as the Knicks. Like I say this as a former New Yorker, nobody cares about the Brooklyn Nets and nobody cares about the LA Clippers. It’s just not how it works. Okay, they may sell out a few, you know, games every now and again. There might have been some incidental hype, but going to the Clippers was such a dumb move by Kawhi Leonard to begin with, but nevertheless, probably should have stayed in Toronto if I’m being honest. But nevertheless, Chris Paul allegedly went after his teammates, was not on speaking terms with Tailoo, and then became very, very critical of his front office. At which point, Chris Paul started to get benched. Chris Paul started to get DMPC CDs. Chris Paul obviously his numbers have fallen off it off a cliff and this is his farewell tour. This is his final year. So Chris Paul has been sent home. He has been asked to stay away from the Clippers. The most professional point guard of my generation that that I have watched play is Chris Paul. The best point guard over the last 20 years in my opinion has been Chris Paul. If not Chris Paul then Steph Curry. But Steph Curry number one, Chris Paul number two. To me, he’s better uh overall as a career than Jason Kidd, Steve Nash. I’m putting him above everybody but Steph. And honestly, sometimes even Steph. I have a higher opinion of Chris Paul than literally anyone you’re ever going to see cover this game. I think he’s a top 25 player of all time. I think his impact has to be studied via documentary crew. The ability of this man to teach the game means that in my opinion once he’s done playing he’s going to become the best coach of all time. Chris is one of the smartest players who has ever played the game. Period. Uh Hova saying John Stockton is better than Chris Paul. [ __ ] no he’s not. No he’s not. No Chris Chris is amazing. And I say this is someone who you know he’s he’s around my age. I mean, he’s a little bit older than me, so that was the cool thing. Like, he’s he’s a little bit older than me, so I got to look up to him. I used to watch Chris Paul. I used to try to model my entire game after Chris Paul. I can tell you Chris Paul has just he has like what he was doing last year for the San Antonio Spurs defies any amount of agedefying logic. I mean, you can say whatever the hell you want about what LeBron do. LeBron’s doing. LeBron’s 69. LeBron’s a genetic freak. Chris Paul is just he’s a mental freak, right? So, I think Chris’s ability to teach the game is so understated. I want you to think about what has happened when Chris has gone to places. When Chris got to, you know, the the Hornets, previously New Orleans Hornets, right, turned that team into a winner pretty much overnight. By his second year, they were a winner. I think he made everybody better. But what does it actually mean to make people better? Does it mean they’re better with you or you make them so much better, which is to say you challenge them in practice? Chris is like a six-foot Michael Jordan. Like the the clearest way I could say it is he’s the closest player to Michael Jordan, you know? He just didn’t win championships. Like sounds crazy when I’m saying it out loud, right? Chris Paul. Michael Jordan. Like, oh my god, what are we talking about? He’s got that. If Michael Jordan was six feet tall, he would be Chris Paul. Basically, he turned the Clippers into a winner. He turned the He’s turned every single organization around. And every time he leaves an organization, they just magically look a lot better. What he did for Shay Gildas Alexander, only Shay can say, but I’ve heard what he’s done for Shay and what he did for Shay as a young player. And I think he fundamentally changed his entire career. I think Chris’s greatest gift, one of his greatest gifts is that he can teach you the game from his vantage point and his vantage point is disadvantaged. Does that make sense? He’s a 6′ guard and if Chris Paul was 6’7, he’d be the greatest player of all time. I 100% believe that. Like he was so athletic. It’s just the size. He’s 6 feet tall. his ability to read the game, see the game, defend the game, read angles, do scouting reports, everything. Like, he is so insane. He made Blake Griffin into a point forward. Blake Griffin was not a point forward before he played with Chris Paul. He turned Shay Gild Alexander into a point guard. Chris Shay was not going to be a point guard prior to playing with Chris Paul. He has like a a transfer gene. I I don’t know how to explain it. Last year he played with Steph Castle and Victor Wbeyama. This year the Spurs are a winner. And I believe that they are a winner because Chris Paul spent an entire year teaching that team how to win. He teaches you how to practice. He holds you accountable. He challenges your lazy habits. And I’ve always believed that functional people do very badly in dysfunctional environments. If there is one wish that I have for the Toronto Raptors right now, it is that when Chris Paul is waved that the Raptors make the first call and say, “Would you be willing to come here and give us what you’ve given all these other teams? We will value you because we have CMBB, Brandon Ingram, Scotty Barnes, Emanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett. We have the most Chris Paul like balls of clay. The Raptors are like a whole bunch of balls of clay. And this dude could come in and literally teach every one of these players how to play basketball cuz I think half this team does not know how to play basketball. Jamal Shed needs Chris Paul. Brandon Ingram needs Chris Paul. RJ Barrett needs Chris Paul. Emanuel Quickley needs Chris Paul more than Jaylen Brown needs turkey more than Jaylen Suggs needs turkey more than [ __ ] Devin Carter needs turkey. Like for real for real. Chucky Hepper needs needs Chris Paul. CNB needs Chris Paul. We Darko needs Chris Paul. Pat Delaney needs Chris Paul. Jamala needs Chris Paul. The Toronto Raptors need Chris Paul. I’m going say it right now. Toronto Raptors need Chris Paul. And you will not feel the impact when he gets here. You will feel the impact two years from now because two years from now, you’re going to have a whole bunch of players who are a lot better because he was here. Jacobe Walter. Okay, first of all, Shay Gilus Alexander in Kentucky, Jacobe Walter in Baylor. I know what Sheay became, but can we talk about where Sheay was before he met Chris Paul? Before he played on the same team as Chris Paul? Now, I’m not going to give all of the credit to to to Chris Paul, but I think Sheay himself, if he was on this podcast, would tell you that no single teammate he’s ever had has had more of an instrumental impact in terms of his ability to slow down the game and help him understand how to find angles. Because everything that I am watching Shay Gildas Alexander do right now on a basketball court like what happened last night. I was on playback. The Thunder were up against the Golden State Warriors who were without Steph Curry. Right. Okay. I was on playback and the Thunder were up 19 going into halftime and everybody on the panel who was up there from Jordan to Ox to Chill said this is about to be a 20point blowout and I said just wait the rubber band effect the Warriors will come back and lo and behold we are in the fourth quarter and the Warriors are up by three and I am sitting there saying please please please please put in put in put in SGA put in SGA I’m a big Thunder fan, by the way, just to heads up. And I don’t like the Warriors. So, obviously, I’m rooting for OKC here. I’m rooting for the Canadian boys, Ludor and Sha Alexander. I’m I’m rooting for my doppelganger, Mark Dagnel. Okay, me and Mark Dagnal, we’re we’re secretly brothers. So, I am rooting for this team and I see Shay sitting on the bench and I see that lead go from two to four to five and I’m just like, “Yo, Mark Dnol, you playing with fire, man.” And I see Shay walk to the halftime to to the scorers table and I say, “Oh, thank God.” Down five, five minutes to go. Shay walked to the scorers table, came into the game, I think it was six minutes or five minutes. And the second he checked into the game, the entire game flipped. And from that point on, I believe it was plus 15. They went from down five to up 10 or 11. They won the game by 11. His ability to do that was not evident at all to anybody who watched him in Kentucky, nor was it evident to anyone who watched him during his rookie season. I was very high on Shay pre-draft. I was not this high on Shay. Never in a million years could I have seen him becoming an MVP. He did not have more natural talent than Brandon Ingram or Scotty Barnes. What he has is honed talent. What he has is slowed down the game to an extreme degree. What he has is worked on his flexibility, dexterity, ambidexterity, proprioception to a level that is almost unfair. What he has done is he has grinded himself Kobe Bryant style into someone that he should have never been cuz he is not what he is because of athleticism. He is what he is because the game is slower for him than everybody else. And you know what I’m seeing? I’m seeing something similar happening with Stefon Castle and I saw something very similar happen with Blake Griffin. not to the same degree. And I just can’t help but notice that this is probably a Chris Paul thing. So having Chris Paul come into this locker room and do that for Scotty Barnes and Jacobe Walter and Jamal Shed and Emanuel Quickley would be insane because all of these players are insanely talented. I think they need that key to unlock them. And I don’t think that there’s ever been a roster that is more primed and ready for Chris Paul than this one. And I think this could be his greatest gift to to to the world of basketball, which is to create a generation of players who understand the game better in a system that is attempting to play pure basketball. Let’s not forget that, too. CP3 also turned Devin Booker into a point guard. Chris Paul’s impact on winning, on culture, cannot be understated. I refuse to let that slanderous, ridiculous, clown show of an organization try and bismerch his good name. Okay. Who had an who has a higher IQ, CP or Rondo? Uh, Chris Paul. But Rondo is very close. Rojan Rondo is one of the smartest players I’ve ever seen in my life. Rajan CP3, Nicola Joic, Jason Kid. These are the smartest players I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s it. That That’s the entire list. Young man said, “Bro, you’re right about all this, but do you really think CP3 would just say, I’mma stay home if you got sent to Toronto?” It’s possible, but that’s why I think the first call would help, right? Uh, no. LeBron, no. I do not think LeBron is on that level. No, LeBron’s smart. He’s insanely smart. He’s very proper receptive, but there’s levels to this. So is Russell Westbrook. So is James Harden. So is Luca. There’s a lot of really, really smart basketball players. I’m saying Rajan is on a different level than LeBron. That’s it. Uh, Kobe’s really smart, too. Michael Jordan was really smart, too. I’m saying in my lifetime, there’s four players, and those are those four players. Okay. There might be a fifth that I’m not thinking of, but it ain’t LeBron. Okay. So, I would make an offer to Chris Paul. I would be the first call to him and I would tell him, “We got a roster spot open for you. We would love to come and have you come here and play. We would love to have you play.” If nothing else, him playing would immediately put Emanuel Quickley in place. It would also help Scotty tremendously. I cannot say this enough. It would it would transform Scotty’s career. Like, you may pay him $2 million to come here, $3 million to come here, and you may pay a little bit of a luxury tax bill because you’ll be over the tax, but I think what he would deliver in return in terms of boosting Scotty’s abilities and making everybody around him better and maybe even changing the course of Jacob’s career, infusing him with confidence, challenging him, etc. I think Chris Paul could deliver $50 million worth of value. And also, let’s not forget, he’s a Hall of Famer. He’s a top 75 player of all time. It wouldn’t be so bad to have a player with that kind of pedigree, that type of knowledge going into the playoffs. I think he would add so much. Uh Kyle Lowry, also a really smart player. I’m just saying, really smart player. Anyways, let’s move on to Deon Sharp. Look, I’ve already devoted an entire live to why Don is amazing. You can definitely go watch it. My my reasons for him have not changed. What has changed is the date. December 3rd is the date today. And on December 3rd, I have to tell you, on December 3rd, Dron Sharp is officially eligible to be traded, which is pretty cool. It’s pretty cool. Uh Don Sharp is eligible to be traded. And I think that the Raptors definitely needed Dron Sharp. And if this chat is to be believed that you know that Yaka Purle is not playing tomorrow, well then Don Sharp is even more needed because if this is going to become a regular occurrence with the Toronto Raptors where Yaka Purle is not going to play games backto backs, etc. Well, I cannot just guarantee myself 10 losses a year because Yaka Purle is not playing do that. So that’s the kind of challenging part at this this is these ads are crazy. So that’s kind of where I’m at on this Don Sharp situation. I mean he’s a former teammate of Scotty Barnes to those who don’t know. Obviously former teammate of Scotty Barnes has a natural chemistry with Scotty. He’s a good screen setter. He’s a he’s an evolving shooter at this point. Dron is an evolving shooter. And I think that he would just fill such a huge need because number one, he would probably presumably I think one of the reasons the Raptors maybe wouldn’t want to do something like this is maybe they’re happy with what they’re getting from CMBB, right? Uh Tariq saying big game tomorrow, Scotty versus Luca. Well, it will be a less of a big game because Luca is not playing according to the chat. And also uh Yaka Ple is not playing which means we might actually get to witness the Dominating show. Scotty Barnes versus uh DeAndre Aton gonna be the matchup tomorrow because the Raptors end up starting Scotty at the five. I mean Scotty at the five might not be the worst idea. I don’t think Deion Sharp can do sorry I don’t think that DeAndre Aen can do draft [ __ ] to Scotty Barnes and Scotty going to clamp him strip him like eight times. So that that should be interesting. Um I was doing a lot of victory lapping on the Scotty Barnes thing man yesterday. I’m going be honest with you. I was and I ended up watching something that was very interesting cuz somebody forwarded me this and it was this video that I had almost completely forgotten about from almost 3 years ago now and it was called the I investigated Scotty Barnes’s work ethic issues. Do y’all remember this video? Do y’all remember this video? Give me a W in the chat if you remember that video. If you have any recollection of it, vague or vivid, let me know if you remember that video saying WW. So, I was looking back at that video because now it seems very absurd to question Scotty’s work ethic. But at the time, apparently I was the one who was crazy. And I ended up watching that video yesterday and I was thoroughly engaged, which I almost never am watching my own videos back. I’ll be honest with you. Like I don’t like watching my own videos. I do it sometimes as a exercise in revision or an exercise in, you know, just attempting to understand like what I was doing wrong. It was a narrative because of Nick Nurse. Nah, not really. So, what I want to do right now, uh, hold on. Let me see if I can actually download this. That might be more useful than potential of running ads. Let me just see if I can do this. Actually, going to check. Can I do this? I could do this. We’ll see. Uh-uh. It won’t let me download it. Damn it. My own video and it won’t let me download it. That’s sad. Anyways, 2025 and no ad blocker. Yeah, probably should have ad blocker. Could just turn ads off on that video. It definitely could. Cindy saying, “What that was a very interesting video because it it brought me back to that time. It brought me back to that time. It brought me back to the narratives. It brought me back to the video clips. It brought me back to what was actually happening. And I realized, my god, I’d forgotten so much of this. I mean, not that I’d completely forgotten, but I’d forgotten the details. I’d forgotten who did what. I’d forgotten who said what. I’d forgotten the quotes. It was a very interesting refresher in terms of just understanding YouTube Premium is $13 a month. $13 a month. Dude, do you want to know my favorite streaming app? My My favorite movie streaming app is, you guessed it, it is uh TubeB. Okay. Ad Blocker is free. Ad blocker does not work on YouTube, dude. Okay, I got you. Anyways, so as a random bonus, because I know that a lot of you have forgotten, what I’m going to do right now is I am just going to let this run for the next hour. This video is over, by the way. So, at 1 minute and four, 1 hour and 4 minutes, I am done talking about what I wanted to talk about. This is a clean break right now. Okay. You’re using the wrong ad blocker. Can you email me and tell me what the right ad blocker is? My email is in the description. Can you do that? Okay. So, what the next hour is going to be is a rerun. I’m doing that thing that old stations used to do when they ran out of content. They’re going to run a rerun. I would also like to let you know that this live will end exactly around when the next one starts at 7:00. So, I got you covered. If you were looking for Rob to carry you through 4 hours, I got you covered. But the next hour is going to be a rerun. It’s taking a And the camera is worse. The lighting is worse. I lot of work. Look older. I don’t know how cuz the camera is so bad. I I almost cringing at the at the look of this this version of myself. I’m like, why why do I look so disheveled? I I know I know for a fact that something really bad was happening in my life at this time, but holy crap. So, anyway, this is going to be and there’s a little bit of a faint buzz, but this is going to be a hell of a hell of a playback for people who have forgotten this moment in time. So, shout outs to previous Rob from three years ago. Caveman Rob as a super yadded setting is saying here. And this is going to be a throwback to when the entire Toronto media was going at Scotty Barnes and I investigated the work ethic issue there. The amount of investigative journalism that went into this video is actually had me a little bit caught me a little bit off guard. So, shout outs to former me. I will chime in at some point occasionally to come in and just kind of accentuate a point, but this is old me with my new mic and this is me talking about the ridiculousness of the Scotty Barnes takes. You look older because of the goatee. This is not a goatee. I have facial hair right now. I think it’s the lighting. Shout outs to the people who got me the lighting, man. Rob, you must have been filming a Kurasawa film at the time. What internet browser do you use? I use Chrome like a noob. Should I not be using Chrome? Anyways, okay. Take it away, old. It’s taken a lot of work to put all of this together. So, please do hit the like on your way in. Really appreciate it. So, if you’ve been following this channel for six to seven months, you have seen this entire story unfold. I wanted to take about 40 minutes today to use detailed clips, timestamps to explain how this story came to be and how I believe that three to about six individuals in the Toronto media have systematically, calculatedly assassinated the character of Scotty Barnes by questioning repeatedly his work ethic, his professionalism, his maturity. I will also after much digging and a lot of conversations present you with what I think actually happened and hopefully we as a fan base can correct the record on this story. Let us start first with the situation. The situation was that the Raptors were facing off against the Philadelphia 76ers. Scotty Barnes, triple double watch on. Scotty Barnes gets injured. Joel Embiid steps on his foot. Two days later, it doesn’t look so good. He’s in a walking boot. A lot of people speculate that Scotty’s playoffs are done. But we get some good news ahead of game four. Not only has Scotty Barnes been named Rookie of the Year, not only was he presented that Rookie of the Year award by Vince Carter via video conference, but Scotty is going to be back. He’s going to be back. He’s going to come in and he he put he put his he put this team on his back. He hustled. He defended. Yeah, he came up Gimpy a few times. You could tell he wasn’t even close to 70% shot struggled, but he tried. The Raptors win game four, win game five, push it to game six, trying to become the first team in NBA history and one of very few teams to push it to a game seven after being down 03. Doesn’t happen. He struggles in that final game. Shot after shot. The Sixers give him and the Raptors season ends on a somewhat high note. They overachieved. The vibes in the postgame were to say the least optimistic about what could happen for this young team, this blossoming team. There were a lot of players who seemed to be on the upswing and our minds as Raptor fans started to dance about what would be possible with another offseason of development. with the benefit of hindsight. Now, looking back at the press conference that Scotty Barnes delivered, this 11minute press conference, some of the questions seem to make a lot more sense. Some of these questions when painted in the context of what would come suddenly start to make they start to have a different meaning. But I want to play a clip for you from Scotty Barnes after his team was eliminated in his exit interview for the 2022 season, talking about what he planned to do in the summer. What did they want you to do? Of course, it’s really just about what what you feel like you need to work on and improve on. and they have the same mutual uh agreement. I really just come back stronger, get my develop on my shooting, keep continuing to work on my body, uh get bigger, stronger, um just keep building. just seems to due to the terrible audio during um these postgame scrums. I just want to say that this question was posed as you know everything happened so fast for you from you know high school you go to college there’s a co year and you know is there a sense of just having you know this moment to sort of step back and take a breath and this was his response I don’t know just keep putting the foot on their neck keep going um I don’t know Keep winning. I already took my deep breath. It’s time to keep going. I already took my deep breath. It’s time to keep going. Put a foot on their neck. I think that it is a very important thing to realize that when a lie becomes so prevalent, it’s good to trace the genealogy of it. you know, after I watched that interview, my biggest concern and I and I forwarded this concern on um was he needs to take a break. He needs to relax. He’s coming off of a, you know, an ankle sprain. It’s a very severe one. He obviously played through it. I did not agree with that decision. Him playing in game four was not something I was thrilled about, but you know, he pushed through. He showed toughness when his team was down 03. I mean, how many players come back with their team down 03? I think most people would have thrown in the towel. not 100%. No one would blame him for not coming in. He comes in and, you know, instead of taking these months off after a rookie season in which, let’s let’s just be real here for a second. M season ends, he works insanely hard during the season. He comes back to Florida State, a different player. Florida State season ends, he continues his studies, then he goes right into pre uh pre-draft prep. He comes into the pre-draft process a much better player than he left Florida State. That’s why he shot up the draft boards. People were impressed by the progress that he had made since Florida State season ended. Florida State season ended, you know, March Madness, right? When was he drafted? June. That’s a few months. This was the growth trajectory of a Scotty Barnes. This was the work ethic of a Scotty Barnes. And this is what impressed the Raptors so much. His willingness to be great, his willingness to put in the work, and his desire to win, the competitive spirit. So during the summer, we heard lots and lots of updates about Scotty Barnes. And this is the summer in question, the summer in which he apparently didn’t put in the work in the summer in which he didn’t show the professional attitude. So throughout the summer, we heard from various Raptors, uh, insiders, we we heard from Scotty, we heard from his trainer, we heard from other players, and everything was pointing to Scotty is about to take a massive leap forward in year two. He’s put in crazy amounts of work. The entire off season, my entire worry was, is he pushing himself too hard? He’s going to crash. He’s going to crash. He’s going to get injured. Something is going to happen. And every time that I presented this concern to somebody, it would be, well, you know, Scotty’s a special athlete. Scotty doesn’t, you know, he’s young. He can recover. He has faster recovery. He’s a very special human, etc., etc. My entire insistence was that he take a month off. He didn’t take that month off. He never stopped. He kept going. I think he took maybe 8 to nine days after the season ended and he was back in the gym. He was working. Same guy, by the way, who got drafted and was in the gym the next morning. That same guy has work ethic issues. I call bull. So, this is Nick Nurse talking after the draft about Scotty being in Toronto. You know, regular roster players just around the facility today. Uh why was it important for them to be here today? Well, um first of all, it’s important for us. Um and it’s good for us. It’s good to see him around, right? I think that um there has appeared to me um this summer, not only today, but a lot of these weeks here uh since we’ve broken up, there’s a uh pretty good closeness with this group. Um and um it was good today. We had uh Pascal and OG and Scotty all on the floor today working out with each other at the same time and and um that was exciting to to kind of watch them kind of go at it a little bit and I think that’s you know both sides of the ball. Um that can only help them playing against each other similar sized athletes and similar sized positions and they’ve got to guard each other and they’ve got to try to score on each other and things like that. So that’s good. But um mostly it’s just listen our guys our guys like rightly so they they’re proud to be Raptors. They love love the organization. They love to be here and and I think it’s cool that they’re here and poking their heads in wondering um who’s going to be joining them, right? Who’s going to be joining them? So it’s um good good team spirit. Team feels really good right now. So it’s exciting to see. Everything was going perfectly. Everything was going to plan. Nick Nurse himself would later say that when observing Scotty Barnes, he said, “Wow, he looks like a completely different player. He looks great. He’s impressive. He looks great.” This was just a month and a half or so after the season had ended, 2 months. So, the work was there. Scotty’s trainer, Brian Min, went on Aaron Rose. I believe when he’s speaking to Aaron Rose, he said a month after the season, he was already a completely different player in terms of his body, in terms of his physicality, and he reiterated the same thing with me. So, the work was done. Was it the work they wanted? That’s we’re going to get into that. Now, one of the frequent critics of Scotty obviously has been Doug Smith. I think he’s been beating the drum the hardest. There have been others obviously JD Bunkis, uh, David Thorp, William Louu, Blake Murphy, you know, he repeated some stuff, although he and I cleared the air on that one for sure. Um, Sid 6, Jack Armstrong. There have been a lot there have been a lot of people who have, you know, stoked the flames, so to speak. But I think it’s important to realize what did they say at the time and how did their opinion change. I think it’s important for opinions to change as evidence changes. But it’s one thing to say, you know, hey, you know, he worked really hard, but I’m not happy with the season he had. That’s okay. That’s not that’s not saying much. You know, in that in Nick Nurse’s, you know, I think he had a Nick Nurse Foundation golf interview and he was talking about various players. He talked about the work that Delo Banton was putting in, how much he loved Justin Champeni. Oh, I love Justin Champeni. Same Justin Champenny who was asking out a few months later. Same Justin Champeni who couldn’t get on the court. He talked about the growth that these guys had had. He said, you know, there’s so much depth. There’s so much depth. You know, Malachi looks great. Atlanta looks great. David Johnson’s got to keep working. It it really gave you this this hype that oh my god, all these young guys are developing. Nick Nurse was on record saying Precious Aua was working so hard, so hard. He was going so hard. He’s approaching this off season with reckless men. Y’all remember this? You remember this, right? That was the observation then. But with the benefit of hindsight, observations change, memories change, history changes, but it doesn’t really change, does it? For instance, you meet somebody, you’re mystified by them, you’re smitten, they’re beautiful, right? You go on a date with them, you love them, you you you tell all your friends, “This is the girl I’m going to marry. This is the girl I’m going to marry. She’s so beautiful. She’s so charming. These are all her great qualities.” 3 4 months later, it’s on the rocks. So, what is what do you say? You know, I always knew something was wrong about her. Always knew, you know, something was off. I got that feeling early on. Why don’t you talk about it then? That is revisionist history. That’s [ __ ] too. You shouldn’t do that. You never learn from your lessons if you always do that. This is Michael Gr’s article. I’m going to go into some quotes. This is a 22minute read in which he glowingly talks about Scotty’s off season for Sportsnet. Faster, Higher, Stronger, Happier by Michael Grange. Can you hear me laughing? Here are some select quotes. I’m going to read them out for you. Barnes’s willingness to do the work only captures one part of what makes those familiar with him so excited about where all of this can lead. At the Raptors training camp in Victoria, one head coach Nick Nurse’s one of head coach Nick Nurse’s guests was former University of Victoria and Canadian men’s team head coach Ken Shields. Now 76, Shields is one of the most accomplished coaches Canada has ever produced in any sport. He won seven straight titles with UIC, and had several players represent Canada internationally, was pivotal in early development of a promising local kid named Steve Nash, and was a sought-aout clinician and consultant for years after his retirement. He suffers no fools and sees everything on and off the court through the prism of how it affects team success. After 4 days of watching the Raptors practice behind closed doors on the floor that bears his name at the university’s athletic center, Shields shared his thoughts on Barnes. And tellingly, it wasn’t Barnes’s size or athleticism or skill that impressed. Instead, it was the harder to measure attributes that are so crucial to elite performance. Quote, “Sometimes talent gets in its own way.” Shields told me, “It’s not getting in Scotty’s way. He’s devoted to learning. You can see the concentration is very very high in practice. His mind’s not drifting. He’s attentive. He tries to do what the coaches are asking him to do. He’s committed. That’s what I think is so important. His work rate, his concentration. He’s taking charge of his own talent by the quality of his effort. He wants to excel. And with this talent, the universe is open to him. It’s beautiful to see. Another quote. From the beginning of May until the end of the NBA finals, Barnes trained twice a day. Let me repeat that. Twice a day with Brian Min. On top of strength workouts he did separately. It was a heavy load, but then again, Barnes had a lot on his to-do list. The beauty of Barnes is that talent and his mentality lend themselves to so many different oncourt possibilities. He’s been compared to everyone from Magic Johnson to Scotty Pippen to Draymond Green. Min uses another Hall of Famer, Jason Kidd for reference. Quote, “Training Scotty is fun,” says Min. “It’s like training a point guard, a small forward, and a power forward all at the same time. We just had to be very organized in how we approached it. But that’s what’s exciting about it, because in two or three years, how do you defend a guy like this? How do you stop him?” Especially since at his core, he’s an energy guy. He’s an offensive rebounder, run the floor type guy. You can’t just double him in the post or trap him in the perimeter and get the ball out of his hands and forget about him. He’s He’s got so many ways in which he can contribute to his team. He doesn’t need the ball all the time. I encourage you to read that article. If you follow us on Twitter, I did reference that article and link it and I’ll definitely link it in the comments afterwards. It is a glowing review which is full of quotes from people in the inside of the Raptors including Fred Vanble Bleet who cited Scar Scotty Barnes’s work ethic. Um said professionalism he he has he doesn’t complain about anything. So it seems like these are all really glowing reviews about Scotty Barnes, right? Like so far so good. Like we’re in training camp right now. That’s that’s that’s where that was from. That was training camp. Uic Raptors held their uh held their training camp in uh in BC. So that’s where we were at training camp. That means the offseason work had already happened. They had a chance to look at him. It wasn’t like those Zion situations where, oh, he came into, you know, the offseason, yeah, he came into training camp out of shape. Nope. None of that. That never happened. He came into camp looking great. Everyone was glowing. Nurse was glowing. His teammates were glowing. Michael Graange is glowing. So what happened? How do you attribute something that happened after the fact, which is, you know, the struggles that admittedly definitely did happen to work that was done before the fact when you reported on before the fact as being great? That’s my question. Let us continue. So Barnes gets injured in training camp. This was my big fear that the overload and excessive workload coupled with the fact that he’s had a a series of ankle injuries already would eventually result in him burning himself out or potentially getting injured. He gets injured. He gets the injury in training camp, but in a rush to come back as Scotty always does want to rush to come back. He always wants to play hurt. He played hurt so many times this year. He played through tendonitis. He played through things this year that most players would not play through. And if you got him into a room and said, “Is this true or is this not?” You know, gun to your head. Is this true or not? I think he would agree to that. I really would. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I believe he would tell you that for much of this season, he was not healthy. Didn’t complain about it. Referenced it afterwards a couple times. You know, he mentioned, “Yeah, I had titis. I had this. My body didn’t feel right.” But he always told you when he felt good. He always told you. He’s like, “My body feels right.” Well, what does that mean? It means there’s a lot of times this year when his body did not feel right. So Scotty goes down with the injury against Miami. We all remember it. He comes up writhing in pain. He, you know, tried to jump over someone’s head. He falls awkwardly. I think he was on pace for a monster game. I think it was like the first quarter, beginning of second quarter, he already had 10 or 11 points. It was looking like the best game of the season for him. He’s going hard. Home crowd, you know, for him. His family’s in attendance. Mom’s in attendance. And he goes down with that injury. He comes up writhing in pain. He leaves the game. He does not come back. And I gotta tell you, for the next month, it just didn’t look right. He didn’t look right. Did he try to rush back from it? I don’t know. But on November 16th, Will Lou decided, hey, resident Scotty Barnes expert, who’s never met Scotty Barnes, never trained Scotty Barnes, let’s bring David Thorp on to assess Scotty Barnes. And this right here, this date, November 16th, 2022. Mark it down because this is the date that everything changed for Scotty Barnes because of one reckless threeminute commentary. It doesn’t just happen because he’s a McDonald’s All-American and that he was rookie of the year. None of those things matter. None of those things help him score a single point, get a rebound, or pass for an assist in a game. You have to earn all of those things all the time. And as a as amateur psychologists, which it is what my degree is in from college, uh I think we all know that human nature is our species tends to relax after success. And uh I I don’t have any clue. I’ve never met Scotty. I have no clue what he did this summer. Bingo. I have an inkling that it wasn’t what like what Pascal Seakum did. You know, it it’s not an accident that those those players that run the league are killing themselves in the offseason. And and I know Will, you know, that I was able to see a little bit of what Pascal did this summer. I’ve witnessed other all-star level players and and including work with some in the summers. I I can almost guarantee you that’s not what Scotty Barnes was doing this summer. I think he was hooping a lot. Uh that doesn’t five on five in the summertime where no one’s really guarding anybody. it just isn’t the same. And so what we’re seeing, I think, is a reflection of of that lack of urgency in his offseason work, whatever it was that he was doing. And then the other thing I think’s happening is I don’t remember anyone complaining about Scotty in the first three weeks of the season. No, no, not at all. But, uh, it’s it’s a lot easier, you know, you you can be going 160 miles an hour in a Lamborghini if a professional driver is driving you. Well, that’s what you had with Seakum and the way he was playing. He you’re talking about a guy that was legit MVP candidate and he wasn’t one of those MVP candidates like an Embiid, for example, who was destructing everything in his path, destroying it. Uh, and getting a couple assists here and there. Seakum was carrying everybody with him just because that’s the way he plays. Giannis is the same. In some of LeBron’s years, he’s been the same. you know, Kawhai, you would never really say that, although I think Kawhai for for some years became a very good passer. And so, I think Scotty was just alongside that. And all of the Raptors have had to deal with that adjustment in his absence. He, you know, he’s such an irre irreplaceable force on both ends. Pascal is a as a facilitator, not just a score. In fact, I would argue he’s probably more of a facilitator than just a score. And now you got to do it on your own. And I have not seen a couple things with Scotty. I’ve not seen the same passion and love for the game, the same energy. Uh his ball handling skills to me have not progressed and I thought they needed to. And then you could get down to the nitty-gritty. Will he he’s even though he’s made a few more threes, he’s not finishing nearly as well. Maybe that’s a product of his increased uh muscle, which means he a little bit maybe more gravity bound. Although that that could change. Maybe he had I know he had a little ankle issue. I heard that that maybe he was sick for a couple days. The Raptors are dealing with some of that. I heard. Yeah. So, those things can be factors, too. But I’m definitely not seeing the same incredible zeal for the game that I fell in love with the one year he played at Florida State. And that’s really what made me, I think, look mildly smart last year is that’s exactly what he did. He just isn’t able to do that. He can’t get by people the same. He’s not finishing at the rim the same. His mid-range mid not mid-range, his what I call second box scoring isn’t the same. And um I feel like he’s trying to be he wants to be an all-star. Well, who doesn’t want to be an all-star? But what are you doing in your off seasonason and then what are you doing daytoday now and then in games to earn that? It takes a lot of work and I don’t know that he’s putting that time in. Wow. This is so irresponsible. So many thoughts. So many thoughts now. I I glossed over a part of this that quite frankly I shouldn’t have and it’s my bad in the off season there were rumors, not rumors, confirmed rumors that Kevin Durant wanted out of Brooklyn and that the Raptors were interested. First person to say it was me. Scotty Barnes was not on the table. phoned a friend literally the day the rumor came out and I said, “Tell me they’re not thinking about Scotty.” He said, “Not a chance.” I went on Basketball Zone and I said, “Scotty is not going to be included in this. He’s not on the table.” Week later, 2, three days later, I started hearing everyone say, “Scotty’s not included. Scotty’s not included. Scotty’s off the table in all Durant talks and we all breathed a sigh of thank God.” Some of us did, not all of us. Some of us went on the record and said, “No, I I would include Scotty Barnes, including William Lou.” William Lou said, and I quote, “I would lose three nights of sleep, but come on. It’s Kevin Durant. It’s Kevin Durant. It’s Kevin Durant.” Or Waistfeld. No disrespect, Orin. You know, if you ever watch this, someone says, “I’m calling you out.” Not calling you out. This is just an opinion. You had an opinion that Jaylen Suggs was the pick initially. Then you had a you had an opinion that you know I I this is a direct quote from Orin Waistfeld Raptors um media guy I believe for Raptors Digest said I would include Scotty Barnes. I wouldn’t feel good about it but I would do it. Okay. So obviously there were some in this media space that said that the Raptors were overvaluing Scotty that the idea of potentially getting a Kevin Durant and all that stands in your way is this rookie there who put up 15 points per game. you don’t know what the hell he’s going to be, but you still think he might be Draymond Green or something like that. That’s not worth holding off on Kevin Durant. It also created a massive controversy in my opinion. And if you really want to understand what happened between the Kumbaya vibes of the offseason and the season, the reporting on Kevin Durant and all the rumors that leaked out from Clutch Sports and the Brooklyn Nets are, in my opinion, what happened to this team? Because suddenly, think about it. You’re Fred Van Vleet, your Pascal Seakum, your OG Anobi, Gary Trent Jr. You’re looking around, you’re saying, “So we’re on the block, but he’s not.” You average more points than him. Been here longer than him. Why is he not on the block? You don’t think there’s some sort of huh look looking around? Imagine if tomorrow a rumor came out, you know, um everyone is on the block for the um everyone’s on the block for the Detroit Pistons except for Jaylen Duran. Everyone. Suddenly Kade’s like, “Wait, I thought I was the franchise guy. What what happened here? I’m on the block for Kevin Durant, but he’s not.” Suddenly, everyone’s going to look at Jaylen Dur a little bit differently. Like, why are you everyone’s favorite? Why are they holding you above us? It’s important to realize that these these news cycles, they do have an impact. Players do read this stuff. They do read Twitter. They do read Instagram. Regardless of what Fred Vanble says of shutting down the media and shutting down social media and stuff, he hears all of it. and he knew damn well that if it if it came down to who the Raptors were going to prioritize him versus Scotty, he lost that war before it even started. I think some people were a little bit shocked that given the season that Pascal had that he would go out the door for Kevin Durant before Scotty Barnes. Now, how true that any of that is, I I can verify it’s true, but you know, we’ll never know for sure unless you get Messiah Juri and Shawn Marks on an interview one day together and say, “What was the hold up on the Kevin Durant deal?” And Shawn Marks says, “We wanted Scotty.” And Messiah’s like, “I wasn’t going to give you Scotty.” Then you’ll have your 1,000% confirmed proof. But up until you know that happens, this is exactly what happened. All right. Now, I say this to say that what follows next is a lot of media people looking at Scotty Barnes as you’re the reason we don’t have Kevin Durant. Okay, that’s a lot of pressure to put on any secondyear player. Okay? Because I’ll tell you right now, if this story was, hey, Cleveland Cavaliers fans, Evan Mobley is the reason you don’t have Kevin Durant and Evan Mobley comes out and averages what he was averaging earlier in the season. He was struggling hard to start the season. People weren’t talking about it because Donovan Mitchell was carrying that team, right? But he struggled mightily. And suddenly you’re you’re Darius Garland, you’re Isaac Aoro, you’re, you know, um Jared Allen. You’re looking at this guy like you’re the reason we don’t have Kevin Durant. You, Mr. 11, 12 points per game, haven’t taken a big step up. You are the reason we don’t have a top three MVP candidate to start the season. The guy who’s carrying the Brooklyn Nets every single night. What? I think that would rub a lot of people the wrong way. Here’s proof. Listen to this. Start the clock, please. Here’s what’s on my mind this morning. The Raptors don’t mess around, man. They don’t. Couple of seasons. This is This is And then Scotty Barnes, who returned from a left knee issue a few nights ago, did not start the game, which is weird because the reigning NBA rookie of the year usually starts games. Uhhuh. It was a little different for sure. It was all right. I don’t know. It was It was all right. I guess it’s all right. I’m sure the Raptors were easing him into the lineup slowly. Is this a major story or much to do about nothing, do you think? I think it’ll say it. And as you point out, Scotty Barnes has never not started an NBA regular season game or any game when he’s healthy. The only time he’s ever come off the bench was in the playoffs last year when he’s coming off an ankle injury. And the uh you know, the logic at the time was that they were bringing multiple people back from injury. um Pascal Seakkum most significantly and they didn’t want to have a starting lineup with multiple people uh having not been playing very recently. They thought it would be bad for the kind of cohesion in the rhythm. Gary Trent Jr. uh also didn’t start and that was very much I think a performance related issue with him. Um we’ll see how long this this iteration lasts. I suspect in Scotty Barn’s case it’s not going to last very long. uh there’s there’s message sending and then there’s let’s be real he is one of our best players. So, um, to the extent that it’s it’s a big story, I don’t think so. I think, um, you know, what we have heard regarding Scotty is, and let’s be clear, he’s not having a bad year. You match up his season this year over last year, it’s roughly comparable. Weaker in a few areas, stronger in some others. Um, but has he picked up? Has he kind of taken his game to uh another level in year two? He hasn’t. And I think, you know, the Raptors are demanding that way. They want they have a lot invested in this guy. They have their future tied around this guy. They didn’t trade Kevin Durant uh because of they they believe in Scotty Barnes, trade for Scotty Kevin Durant, I should say. So, I think they’re not above uh taking some steps to make sure they they they get him playing at the level they believe he can reach. For sure. Let’s always remember the Kevin Durant thing that didn’t happen that some people thought would happen, but they love Scotty Barnes. Let’s always remember the Kevin Durant thing that didn’t happen because they loved Scotty Barnes. That’s the condescension, right? That is the we told you so. That is the this is not what you promised us. That is exactly where this was. Now, very shortly after this, when Scotty came back, he did not play well. He obviously struggled against the New Orleans Pelicans. There was a, you know, all this talk. So, what happens when things go bad for the Raptors is Doug Smith happens on December 22nd, Doug Smith writes an article about Scotty’s offseason work, cites, various insiders within the Raptors organization were upset about the work Scotty put in the offseason. This tweet gets so much traction. It was hundreds of thousands of impressions of people sharing, blasting, supporting, saying, “Told you so, saying piss off.” Kyle Koosma. Then he he retweets it. That one gets even further cuz he says when he talks about, you know, uh people not having patience with younger players, um it becomes a talking point for the entire NBA. And what really shook me was people talking about Scotty Barnes’s work ethic who were opposing teams broadcasters. You know what shook my world? There was a game where the Raptors weren’t even playing and they brought it up. Scotty Barnes became a poster child for not putting in offseason work around the NBA because of one ridiculous person’s opinion who had never met him and one even more ridiculous person’s assertion that this was true in a major publication like the Toronto Star. I was very upset on December 22nd. Honestly, it was highly irresponsible. Reading that article was disgusting and I got very upset about it. So, what did I do? Did I sit on my hands? No, I didn’t. On January 3rd, uh, Blake Murphy Tuesday, I believe, or Yeah, I believe it’s January 3rd. Blake Murphy goes on Blake Murphy Tuesday. He and William Louu site, you know, Scotty’s improvement over the last few games that he’s playing more center, he’s playing more like he did last year. Then they once again reference, you know, Coach Thorp and, you know, his interview with JD Bunkis and his interview with Willoo in which he said, you know, maybe he didn’t put in the work. I get upset. I blast Blake and Willu on Twitter. Um, someone messages Blake and tells him to come on and have this discussion with me. We hash it out. We hashed it out. We talked it out. And I genuinely felt with the number of let me put it this way with the number of people in control who watched that interview and I can confirm independently without going into names that a lot of the people who needed to watch that interview watched that interview. I can tell you that. Okay. And it was 30-minute chat. And in the end, I just basically said, “If you’re gonna talk about it, I just want to know how you know because I can tell you with certainty that he worked very hard in the offseason.” Now, why can I tell you that he worked with a lot of certainty in the offseason? Well, number one, I tracked his offseason work very carefully. And, you know, I was kept a breast of a lot of stuff that he was doing. And of course on January 13th I released my interview with Scotty’s trainer Brian Min. And we talked about his, you know, we talked about his ascent. We talked about how he’s worked with Scotty. We talked about Scotty as a prospect, Scotty as a kid, Scotty in youth, Scotty at, you know, AAU, Scotty of Florida State, why he chose it was a great interview. And if you haven’t watched it, if you’re one of those people who just kind of got intimidated by the 50 minutes or 56 minutes that it was, definitely watch it afterwards. It’s a good one. And he talks about the work that he put in in the offseason. And it was, you know, when I asked him directly, I said, you know, people talking about his work ethic, saying work ethic issues. What is your response to this? He said, “That’s absurd. It’s absurd.” And he’s been consistent about that. So, the people who were there think it’s absurd to question how hard he worked. Michael Graange in the preseason thought it was pretty abs I I imagine at that point if you had said, “Hey, Scotty didn’t work hard enough.” I think he would probably call it absurd. So when did it become not absurd? Let us continue on. So Scotty turns around his season. He has a much better second half of the season. The Raptors don’t do well. And I thought, you know, maybe stupidly it, you know, ignorant me, stupid me, childish me. I’m a big kid, you know, at heart. I thought, okay, we put up, you know, this one, it got like 6,000 views. We put up this one, it got 7,000 views. I can independently confirm 100% that every single person in the media space or not every single person but a lot of people in the media space and a lot of people in NBA media that I personally forwarded this to watch this interview got the other side of the story and this is not going to become a talking point ever again. But I underestimated one man’s resolve to double, triple, and quadruple down on a dumbass take. And that of course is Doug Smith on April 14th with the Raptor season over and a lot of questions about why it went so bad. There’s Doug Smith again with his whole Scotty didn’t work hard. You know, he’s not professional. Here’s some quotes. Here are some direct quotes. So, to those of you who watched live as we did the, you know, exit interviews and we broke them all down, you remember, you know, players were asked about Scotty and, you know, what their message to him would be and if they support him or whatever. And I remember, you know, telling you during that video that this is going to be source feed for an article that is going to be, you know, put out that is going to be like he didn’t work hard. And Scotty, to his own silliness, you know, and because he’s such a I think he’s just a good person who doesn’t assume malicious intent. He’s not political. So when he’s asked, you know, how have you gotten better? He says, I’m pretty much the same player. I don’t know if he’s trolling them because he knows the story they’re going to write anyway. But I’m like the minute you say that because it’s not true obviously like it’s his own standards. He can say like you know like yeah I haven’t you know taken a step up. It’s it’s it’s him putting the onus on himself. He’s not gassing himself up and saying look I got a MIDI package now. My post works better. You know I’m stronger. He’s not going to sit there and you know pat himself on the back. He’s not Fred Van Vleet. You know he’s not going to be like my assist went up. My playmaking percentage went up. Uh basketball university thinks I’m one of the 12 most improved playmakers this year. He could have said that. He could have said all of that. He definitely should have, man. He should have. I wish he could have, but he didn’t. He just, you know, he just blunt bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bl bluntly said, you know, um kind of the same player like do a lot do some things better. But so the the quote was um just get in the lab. That’s it. That is the only thing I ever tell him. Guard Fred Van Vleet said of his advice to Scotty Barnes. I can confirm that is not all you tell him, but okay. Scotty is going to be as good as he wants to be, as good as he wants to be as a player. I don’t think there’s anything he can he can’t do on the court, but just be a gym rat. Stay in the gym. This will speed up the process. And he’s doing that. And he’s doing that. So, what what’s the deal? What what what is the story? OG Anobi, just be himself. Work hard every day. It’s almost like this guy went, you know, control a find all all references to work and Scotty and just publish them all in succession. misrepresent everything that everyone said in order to write my stupid ass story, right? He’s got to Nick Nurse, the the now fired Nick Nurse, quote, “He’s got to get a lot of time in the gym and continue to work on his offensive skills, ball handling, shooting, finishing, all the things he can do to really put the pressure on teams as a scorer.” It was a bit eye opening to hear Barnes admit Thursday that he wasn’t in good enough shape this season. Quote, “I probably need a different level of conditioning for the way I want to play.” He said, um, there is no question that Barnes Barnes possesses the physical attributes to put him among the top players in the league, but between now in September, we’ll need we’ll see if he’s got the mental toughness to do it. No one has a clear answer to that question yet. Really, no one. Not Not a soul. No one who watched him beast on on the Milwaukee Bucks in the fourth quarter. No one who watched him come out in every high leverage game this season and put it and put the team on his back in fourth quarters. No one who watched him, you know, flex on Kevin Durant. No, no one. There’s no mental toughness there, right? Play through a bum ankle. Doug Smith, you wouldn’t come to work on a bum ankle. Are you kidding me? He We don’t know if he has the mental toughness to put in the work, right? He just by osmosis became the player that he became. It’s just it’s a complete fluke. He won rookie of the year. Just we don’t know if he has the mental toughness to do anything, right? We don’t know. We don’t know. It’s like it’s like like you don’t know that I can walk. You’ve been watching me sit for 40 minutes. You don’t know if I can walk. Maybe I can’t walk. This is It’s ridiculous, right? And I wasn’t going to make this video, but honestly, this was the final straw for me. The Raptors will trade anyone. Nothing is off the table on April 22nd, which I believe is yesterday. That includes their best players, all of whom will be in play for the right offer. Fred Vanley, Yaka Purle, and Gary Tren Jr. are going to be free agents. OG Anobi and Pascal Seakum will be eligible for contract extensions before the season begins. And Scotty Barnes, the NBA rookie of the year in 2022, is coming off a so- so season. Ujuri expects him to take a more professional approach to his second off season. Quote, I think there’s going to be a lot of adjustments he’s going to do this summer and how he comes back in the future for the Raptors. U Barnes, you see the propaganda machine. Do you see how they did it? We’re talking November 16th to April 22nd. They have systematically over this period of time by peppering in a tweet here, a tweet here. Trust me, there’s like hundreds of other examples. I did not want to make a 16-hour documentary about this. These are just some of the most glaring examples of how they did this. So to recap, we have a guy who has shown you the mental toughness to accelerate his development to the point where this zero level scorer, sorry Sam Bassini, you’re just always going to have to own that quote. zero level scorer, comes out, averages 15 points per game, wins rookie of the year, plays hurt multiple times throughout his rookie season, leads the team in minutes, is second as a rookie. Second in distance traveled on defense per the charting data, plays one through five, shuts down Nicole Joic in a fourth quarter as a rookie. As a rookie, averages allstar, if not superstar numbers in head-to-head matchups against LeBron James. saves all of his best games in his rookie season and his sophomore season for some of the best teams, becomes one of the top fourth quarter scorers in the league and on his own team. He is the best fourth quarter scorer on your team as a 21-year-old. Plays hurt repeatedly throughout this season and last season. Leads the team in minutes again his second season. But we don’t know if he has the mental toughness. We don’t know if he works hard. We don’t know if he has the conditioning. This is when you are so delusional, so irresponsible, and quite frankly so stupid that you don’t stop and think, is what I’m saying potentially wrong, kind of wrong, or blatantly false? It’s blatantly false. Now, as I promised, as I promised, I am going to I’m going to tell you what I think happened. Okay, the Raptors have a history with second round guys, undrafted guys, late first rounders. If you look at the track record of players picked 20th to 60th or let’s call it 61st which is undrafted right from 20 to 61 there are no guarantees about your NBA future. There is a bit of a sad thing which happens in the NBA draft every single year, which is that the amount of patience and the amount of leeway that a team is usually willing to put into you is directly correlated to where you were picked in the draft. Okay? It’s just kind of how it goes. This is the nature of the beast. It’s the nature of the contract, right? If you are picked first overall or second overall in the NBA draft, like a Jaylen Green who has not had a good first two seasons, like a Kate Cunningham who has not had a good first two seasons, like a Jaylen Suggs who has not had a good first two seasons, injury riddled, inefficient, turnoverprone. These five guys, three guys, you can add Marvin Bagley and James Wisman to it to to to complete, you know, um the five person, you know, situation here. These five guys are high lottery picks. Not only were they buil as very hyped prospects, not only did they come in with a whole great deal of buzz from the AEU circuit, college circuit, but the teams also invested a very serious asset. The value on a let’s say a rough value of a first or second overall pick is about $28 million. In a generational draft like this one, uh, where Victor Rambanyama is at stake, it could be as high as 60 million. I’m talking open market value means if a team could just outright sign the player, what would they be willing to give in a first year? That’s the value. The value of a second round pick in most cases is sub 2 million. So with every draft, it doesn’t go like this. It actually goes a little bit like this. And if you find yourself on the other end of the slope, you don’t have a lot of chances. Case in point, the New Orleans Pelicans, Dyson Daniels, Herb Jones. I could argue that Herb Jones was a better rookie than Dyson Daniels. They’re both hell of a prospect, right? But I can also tell you that if Dyson Daniels really struggles next year, there’s almost no chance he’s not going to have his third year picked up. If Herb Jones had struggled as a rookie, add to the fact that he’s a second round pick. He’s on his last leg in the NBA on that second year. That’s how short the leash is. Consider, for instance, how many chances the Raptors gave to Andrea Barnani or Hafar Rujo or Terrence Ross, Charlie Binova. There are a lot of guys. Ed Davis. These are all lottery picks, right? None of them popped for the Raptors. None of them were great. They were okay. Some of them were more than okay. Some of them were less than okay, but they were given endless shots, right? Charlie Venuevo, of course, he was traded after his, you know, rookie year and he was traded for TJ Ford. I understand that because he didn’t fit with Barnani and Bosch and whatever. But in all honesty, in most cases, when you invest a high lottery pick, typically, not only is there a first chance, there’s usually a second chance. Sometimes there’s a third, fourth chance. Consider the fact that we have guys like Josh Jackson who were picked fourth overall. We have guys like U Michael Kidd Gilkchrist who was picked second overall. Neither of these guys achieved anything close to what we considered lottery value as players, but they were picked really high and they kept getting chances. Anthony Bennett, if Anthony Bennett was not the first overall pick, instead he was like the 20th overall pick, 24th overall pick, he’d be out of the league within two years, right? If Malachi Flynn, this 28th overall pick, who has been given diminished and sometimes no opportunity within the Raptors offense, if he was the eighth overall pick or the 10th overall pick, there’s no chance he’s getting DMPCs this year. That is the nature of the asset. So, when you play when you pick a player fourth overall like a Scotty Barnes, there is a certain leeway that is given to that player. And I think that it’s important to realize that Scotty has exceeded the value of an average fourth overall pick by a lot already. I think it’s worth noting that just because he’s a lottery pick, it it’s not that things were just given to him. Yeah, he started on day one. He deserved to start on day one. There’s no doubt, no doubt that he was one of the five best players on the Raptors team as a 20-year-old. None. He didn’t start over something. He didn’t take anyone’s spot. He hasn’t given pref preferential treatment. I say all of this to say that the Raptors have not actually dealt with a top five pick in Messiah Jur’s entire tenure. There’s not a single player. Case in point, the Raptors did not have a single lottery player on their championship team. They were the first team in NBA history that won without a lottery talent. The only two lottery players on their team were the guys they shipped out, Demar Rosen and Yonas Valenunis. Ninth overall, fifth overall picked by Brian Kangelo. Kyle Lowry was not a lottery player. That’s why he was shipped. He was shipped out of Memphis, shipped out of Houston. Not a lottery talent, right? Lottery talents tend to stick around a little bit longer than they should. So, when you have guys who are just scraping by and just dying to stay in the league, typically they have a lot more invested in just trying to do what the team is asking them to do, right? You just don’t want to piss off your one employing option. You don’t Delena Banton. When you go to Delano Banton, you say, “Hey, Delano Banton, this is what we want you to do. We want you to work with this guy. We want you to be in Montreal this day. We want you to be in Houston this day. We’ve got a clinic for you in in this. We’re going to ask you to work with this player, that player, this development player, that development player.” You know what you say if you’re Deleno Banton? Yes, boss. Yes, boss. Because if you say no and you think you know better, you you have a time commitment issue, whatever, you might not be on the team next year. You might not get your option picked up. You might be playing in Turkey next year. Okay? So, when you’re a top four pick, top five pick, you do tend to have a little bit more leeway. what I think happened. And this is just me reading the tea leaves. Me basing this on about 14 different conversations that I’ve had over the last seven or eight months. No one has directly just come out and said it. But I think if I’m understanding everything correctly and just trying to find the overlap in the message, here’s what I think happened. I think the Raptors had a certain plan for Scotty. I think they expected to control his entire off season in the exact same way that they’ve been able to control Pascal’s entire off season in the past, OG’s entire offseason in the past, Fred’s entire offseason in the past, Christian Koko’s offseason for the next three years, Jeff Doutton, whoever. I think this is a team like a San Antonio Spurs that has gotten so used to drafting lower-end talent and developing lower-end talent that they don’t know necessarily how to deal with someone who doesn’t fit into that box. Now, this is a fair debate. Who should be in charge of Scotty’s offseason development? Fair question. Why do we assume that the Raptors know best in all situations? Now, there is no illusion here that Scotty did not do what they asked him to do. They asked him to get stronger. They asked him to put in work uh getting jump shots up. They asked him to, you know, go to the Rico Hines runs. He was there. He was there. He was there. They asked him to come to Toronto. He was here. So, he did meet them on a lot of their demands, right? But maybe, just again, this is a maybe. I’m not I’m not reporting this. I’m just saying. Let me read the tea leaves here. Maybe there were a couple of situations where he had pre- booked himself for an engagement somewhere else with a particular trainer that the Raptors don’t know. Maybe they didn’t agree with that. Or maybe they wanted him to be one place, but he said, “No, I’m already booked to go with this person, and I really believe in this person’s track record.” Now, I just want to clarify. He’s not getting worked out by me, yo. Like, I’m not working out Scotty Barnes. You’re not working out Scotty Barnes. He’s not some some bum, you know? He’s got NBA trainers who are qualified, have worked with other NBA athletes. And some of these people are known to him and have helped him get better from stage one to stage two to stage three. These are people that he’s worked with. The Jaylen Green camp that he attended, right? The the some of the runs that he attended, you didn’t see other Raptors there, but these were his personal things. Jaylen Green and him go way back. So, if you’re going to ask him to be in the Rico runs the same day that he’s already agreed, you know, 3 4 months in in advance to be the Jaylen Green charity thing, then you as the Raptors are now facing a complete black swan situation situation relative to well, OG never ever told us no. Pascal never ever told us no. Now, if Scotty comes out and averages 24 points per game after the offseason that he had, and he very well could have. I think he definitely could have. I think his skill work has developed so much. I think if put in situations if he was healthy, he easily could have come out and averaged 20 to 24 points per game. See no no reason he couldn’t have. His skill work definitely took off. I I see improved handle, improved bag, improved everything. It wouldn’t have been the most efficient 24. Yeah, fine. But he could have put up big numbers at which point I think the entire narrative would have been, look at how great the offseason development work is for the Raptors. Look how great they are at developing players. This is a team that’s developed Pascal, Yakum, OGN, and Obi, and now Scotty Barnes. This is the guy that we thought was going to take, you know, need I remind you that at the time of the draft, people genuinely had a question if he would ever average 15 points per game ever. Ever. They’re like, he can’t score. He doesn’t know how to score. He has not one move. This guy can’t score. He can’t shoot. He can’t score. How’s he going to be on the NBA court? He was drafted for his athleticism, potential, downside, you know, upside down the road. down down the road like maybe by the time he’s 24 25 he’ll develop into a Draymond Green type. Really? That’s what we’re talking about, right? So now he’s come out two straight years and averaged 20 points, you know, average 15 plus points per game. Efficiency dipped a little bit this year. Volume of three-point attempts went up. I see flashes of development and great work ethic that have come out. But let’s just say he had a really successful year. What would the entire story have been? Would would the story have been, “Wow, Scotty just worked so hard.” Or would would it would it have been another notch in the belt for the Raptors offseason development camp? Another notch? Need I remind you that Pascal Seyakum has been working with Rico Hines for like his entire career. Rico Hines was not an assistant coach for the Raptors. He was an assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings. But the Raptors get all the credit for Pascalakum’s offseason development. Maybe because they okayed the Rico thing. Maybe because they knew Rico. And you know, Rico is very well known through the ‘8s, ’90s, you know, 2000s with the basketball circles, not the ‘8s, ’90s, ’90s onward. He’s very wellknown. So maybe there’s some of that. So Scotty struggles, and the immediate thing is, see, we told you to work this way, you didn’t work this way, and now you’re struggling. So next season, we want you to, you know, become an OG and and become a Siakum and become a a Vanble Vleet. compound the rumors that he was the one guy held off the table for the Kevin Durant stuff and you might start to see a lot of these undrafted second round late 20s guys start looking at him like why is he not doing the same thing that we did well simply put he’s pretty much a max player right now if he was to hit free agency tomorrow he’d be a max player I can’t say that about any other Raptor player on this team in their second year Fred Van Vleet would be lucky to catch on with a second contract. He was in the G- League. Pascal Seakum was, you know, averaging six points per game. He was also in the G-League, right? OG Anobi started. He was great. I think he would have definitely, you know, some some competitive offers after his first year, but none of these guys were rookies of the year. None of them. So, I think that this is a two-way problem that requires a mutual solution. And the solution is you cannot treat him the same way that you treat DJ Wilson, Justin Champen, David Johnson, Malachi Flynn, Del. He’s not that type of prospect. He’s not that type of talent. Teams have to learn how to balance in the modern NBA. This is not the 80s. You can’t just yell at guys in the public space and, you know, um blast them that way. Very few players are that coachable. I think Scotty Barnes is a remarkably coachable player and I think that he has shown over and over again that he is definitely committed to getting better. But you’re going to have to work with him, not against him and not over him. You’re going to have to work with him because every single team every single team that has drafted a rookie of the year type a potential superstar and and let’s agree to let’s agree to disagree if we don’t think that if we don’t all agree right now that Scotty’s going to be a superstar. I’m open to that. I don’t there’s not one part of me that thinks he won’t be. But let’s assume for a second that he’s not going to be a superstar. Let’s just say he’s going to be like a four or five time all-star like a maybe an eight time all-star. Okay, he won’t be a superstar. Won’t be a top five player, whatever. But as a super high lottery pick, as a guy who’s a McDonald’s all-American, three-time all, you know, um three-time gold medalist, a guy who comes in with all this pedigree, all this hype, whatever, I think you have to appreciate that he’s so humbled that he was willing to play fifth option. He never complained about it. He’s willing to guard hard. You never complain about it. How many young players don’t play defense? Seriously, look around. Shaden Sharp, does he play defense? Ben Matherine, does he play defense? Paulo Ben Cara, does he play defense? None of these guys play defense. Scotty’s trying, man. I think you guys really, you know, if you’re if you’re among this fan base and you feel like, you know, this guy’s spoiled, does too many commercials, I think you’re spoiled. I think you’re spoiled. I really do because it’s a very rare breed of a guy who is this highly touted coming into the draft, wins rookie of the year, and just wants to just work. I think the Raptors will have to find a way to adjust their approach and he’ll have to meet them halfway. But you’re never going to be able to control his entire off season the way that you control, you know, Christian Kos. They don’t they aren’t the same players. They don’t. They haven’t. You just can’t. And the Raptors should know this. The Raptor should know this because you know what? They treated Kawhi Leonard very differently than they’re treating Pascal Seakum. Very differently. With Kawhi Leonard, it was, “What do you need, sir? Oh, you need a game off? You need two games off? Okay, sir. Okay. Why? Because you’re not dealing with a sometimes all-star like Demar Rozan. You’re not dealing with a guy. You’re dealing with a an all-time great in Kawhi Leonard. You’re dealing with, you know, a finals MVP in Kawhi Leonard. You’re dealing with one of the five best players in the league. You had to adjust. So, the Raptors, it’s not a foreign concept to the Raptors that based on who you’re dealing with, you’re going to adjust your approach a little bit, right? All of these players, they have their trainers, they have trainers, they have nutritionists, they have friends, right? The only question I ask is, did he put in the work or did he not put in the work? He put in the work. He 100% put in the work. two a days, no break. Come on. Scrimmages all over the world, you know, doing with this trainer, that trainer, that trainer. He put in the work. You can argue it didn’t go your way. Okay, here’s my question to you. Fred Vanble’s your guy. He probably did exactly in the offseason what you wanted him to do for the most part, right? You pre-approved everything. He shot 33%. From the three. How do you explain that? He did all the work you asked him to and he shot worse than probably he’s ever shot for most of the season. It was the worst he’s ever shot in his career. So, did your offseason work develop him? OG Anobi in five years you’ve had this guy, six years you had him in your system in all the, you know, we, you know, Raptors developed OG Anobi, you still haven’t fixed his balance issues. You haven’t fixed his ball handling issues. He still can’t dribble the basketball without charging over somebody or, you know, losing it. So, so maybe Scotty Barnes, the guy who was a zero level scorer who ended up winning rookie of the year, most of it without your assistance, most of it working with Brian, working with his, maybe this guy knows a little something too about his development. And maybe you need to work with him and maybe there needs to be more of a partnership and less of a dictatorship. So, this is where I’m going to leave it. Thank you to the 1882 of you who watch this. I have a lot to do today, but I wanted to talk about this. I wanted to explore it and I just wanted to say that Scotty is easily my favorite player in the league and he not become that by accident. Is not some blind favoritism. I genuinely appreciate everything he’s about not only as a person but as a teammate and a basketball player. He is a very hard worker. I know that initially there was some shock, maybe some disappointment about how he was being reported and now it seems to be very blasze. It seems nobody cares anymore. They’re just used to it. They’re used to getting him getting slandered, used to his work ethic, maturity, offseason work being questioned. And I think that that’s incredibly irresponsible. And I would like the people who keep doing this to stop. I would like you to stop. I would like to ask you where you’re getting your facts and I would like you to stop it because the facts are on the wall. He worked very hard last offseason. We’ve gone over this six different times on this channel. I wanted to present, you know, it’s it’s one thing for me to say, “Hey, Brian, did he work hard?” Yep, he worked hard. Well, of course he’s going to say that. As his trainer, I say he worked hard. Of course, you’re going to say that. You’re a Scotty super fan, right? Scotty’s going to say he worked hard. Of course he’s going to say that. He’s not going to. So, when you’re going to lie about somebody, usually it’s it’s beneficial to lie about something that can’t be proven. Nobody other than Scotty Barnes knows how hard he worked last off season. Nobody. There’s not one person who was with him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, went on every there there are training sessions he had without Brian. There are training sessions he had without another trainer. their training sessions like but when you start piecing it together when you start talking to all the people that were around him in the offseason from this trainer to that trainer to his friend to this person to that person you piece it all together this coach that coach Rico Hines runs this that and I’ve reached out to a lot of people yo I didn’t just come to this conclusion half-hazardly asking one person I asked a lot of people what was his focus level like it was great he come in early he was there he was there 40 minutes So everything I’ve ever heard from anybody who was around him was he worked really hard. And the only time I ever heard that he didn’t work hard is from people who weren’t around him. Okay. Thank you, man. Um This is a very meta experience. Thank you. Wow. And congratulations on your last video, man. I loved it. Go check out um check out um quickly. Let me just plug this. Uh this screenshot is very old. He’s obviously come a very long way over the last 3 weeks and he’s even added a new video since then or two videos since then. Um, two videos since then. He’s up to four videos. Go check out Goat Goiology on YouTube. Um, helped get this guy to 1,000 subscribers. I haven’t checked your subscriber count in a couple of uh days now. Maybe you’re already at a thousand. I apologize if you are, but um yeah, go support that guy and check out in the same video. I’m sitting here like saying Scotty’s going to be great. Scotty’s going to be great. And then I plug this channel, Goiology. Shout outs to Goat, my guy Goat. And talking about how this channel is going to be great. I should probably like just tell you what the Powerball numbers are going to be this week. Uh, check out this awesome video which has like I mean honestly at this point the untold story of Sky Bars I think has crossed 60,000. Who gets 60,000 views on their first you know get out of here man. you you’re too good too good to be uh you’re too good to be a first- time YouTuber, man. Um so definitely check out check out that if you’re looking for more. Obviously, if you want more insight into Scotty’s work uh work this off season, check out the truth is the truth the video that I have with Scotty uh Scotty Barnes’s trainer. And of course, big shout outs to Queensway Automotive Group. No shout outs to Queensway Automotive Group. Not sponsored by them anymore. Okay. Um, in exactly 5 minutes we will be doing this live, which is me basically lining up what it means to be a superstar in the NBA. What I look for ultimately, how did I come to the conclusion that I thought this guy was going to be a superstar? Why do I think AJ Debons was going to be a superstar? Why do I think Scotty Barnes is going to be a superstar? Why do I think Shay Gilders Alexander was going to be a superstar? Why am I so consistently high on these guys? Why am I lower on some? Why was I lower on Paulo? Why do I remain a little bit lower than superstar consensus on Cade even though I will 100% acknowledge I’ve been wrong about Cade? And basically, what unites superstars mentally, emotionally, physically, what is it about them? So, yeah, I understand there’s still some people, you know, in the Toronto Raptor space that do not believe that they have a superstar on this team. And some believe they do have a superstar, but they don’t think it’s Scotty Barnes. I think it’s RJ Barrett or uh you know Brandon Ingram. So we’ll talk about superstars. We’ll talk about you know what what it looks like and maybe a little bit like what what did Scotty show yesterday. Uh shout outs to all of you for going through that nostalgic blast from the past. Man, someone forwarded me forwarded me that video yesterday on X and I think it was Jonathan Convoy if I’m not mistaken. And I think it was Jonathan. And I totally had forgotten about that video. And then I just very curiously just clicked on it. I was like, I wonder what I sounded like. And I saw that Yeti beard and I saw the angle and I was just like, should I go back to kind of like looking down on the camera? I look so much more author authoritative, you know, now. Now I’m kind of like more like down from the camera. But nevertheless, it was a very interesting listen and I was just looking back at it and I’m like, man, this all ended up being true. So, people will forget what you say. They will never forget how you made them feel. I will forget how you made me feel, but I probably won’t forget how you made what you actually said. And personally, I think what you said actually matters a lot more than how you made me feel. And hopefully that video was full of chalk full of receipts. I’ll talk to you’all later. I’ll add timestamps to this video just in case for anybody watching it after so they can avoid the entire second half, whatever. But I’m actually curious to hear how people feel about this because I think a lot of people have forgotten what people did back then. And this is me just saying even if all is forgiven, all is not forgotten. Peace, guys.

Giannis has formally begun his exodus from Milwaukee, Chris Paul has been sent home, and December 3rd marks the first official day that the Toronto Raptors hopes and prayers for a backup center CAN be answered in the form of Day’Ron Sharpe.

00:00 – Intro
04:35 – Giannis trade options
23:30 – Toronto’s BEST package for Giannis
43:20 – Chris Paul to Toronto?
58:00 – Day’Ron Sharpe would be a dream
1:04:00 – Retro Victory Lapping on Toronto Media

SUPPORT PENSARE BASKETBALL: e-transfers to pensarefilms@gmail.com
FOLLOW US on IG : https://www.instagram.com/pensarebasketball/
FOLLOW US on X: https://x.com/PensareBBall
BECOME A MEMBER: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcPZQ9WmdyAwnvK-NCxemOw/join
VIP – Members Susan Garrett, Springer, Stanley WK, Pepperjack, Karen Hall, ApexGlassOn, Disc Revered, ESPNNeedsIKD

#Raptors #WeTheNorth #nba

🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://streamyard.com/pal/d/4544317991682048