All-NBA Team

One of my favorite, honestly, two seasons [laughs] of a Bull ever.

Second Team All-NBA.

He was outstanding-

Yep

Right, right, right.

But you have restricted free agency.

You have one contract to get something done, and you're already seeing how, like, a Jalen Duren, who made All-NBA this year, is, like-

Mm

So I think that's good to start the year, that he will be on the team for sure.

What do you make of the way this whole thing has gone? Because obviously the playoffs did not go very well for him after an All-NBA season where he totally breaks out.

And he's also 22 years old, and so maybe you shouldn't have expected him to be, like, a fully formed player, and there's gotta be some runway for improvement there in future playoff runs, one would think.

Do you think the Pistons are playing too much hardball here? Are they being reasonable to not kind of cede to the contract demands? Do you find Duren to be reasonable c- coming off an All-NBA season to be asking for what he's asking for? Like, I, I, I don't know if either side looks awesome in any of this.

But what, what, what's your sort of read on how this has gone, and d- did it have to be this contentious?

Yeah.

So I think that's good to start the year, that he will be on the team for sure.

What do you make of the way this whole thing has gone? Because obviously the playoffs did not go very well for him after an All-NBA season where he totally breaks out.

And he's also 22 years old, and so maybe you shouldn't have expected him to be, like, a fully formed player, and there's gotta be some runway for improvement there in future playoff runs, one would think.

Do you think the Pistons are playing too much hardball here? Are they being reasonable to not kind of cede to the contract demands? Do you find Duren to be reasonable c- coming off an All-NBA season to be asking for what he's asking for? Like, I, I, I don't know if either side looks awesome in any of this.

But what, what, what's your sort of read on how this has gone, and did, did it have to be this contentious?

Yeah, I think my stance has been that Duren's camp is very unreasonable and borderlining delusion with what they are asking for.

Yeah.

So the Pistons aren't even, like, offering him that much lower than what another team could max him out at.

What expectations do you have from this phenom of a player named Cooper Flagg?

Second team All-NBA.

He might be better than a Saul Thompson next year.

Maybe.

I do think Cooper

Flagg,

back to the All-Pro conversation, I think he's going to be in that third-team All-NBA discussion.

I think he's going to be there.

They win 50-plus regular season games.

He's racking up the All-NBA appearances.

They're making the playoffs every single year.

And I just feel like this fan base has become a little bit spoiled, you know, when it comes to that.

And the thing is, the most maddening part about it is that Evan Mobley has shown that he can be that guy.

He was just an all-star in 2025.

He was All-NBA.

He won Defensive Player of the Year.

Yeah, I mean, Koops...

But Koops is not All-NBA right now.

I believe that Koops could be an All-NBA caliber player this year.

Yeah.

Okay, well, that's probably...

But what also stood out to me, watching the Rockets get blown out, the reason they got blown out by a Lakers team that, of course, didn't have Luka, is that all of the Rockets' young guys had bad nights.

And that's where I draw the line between All-NBA and All-Star.

If Alper and Shungun or Men Thompson have a tear jump this year, I'm not going to say they'll never have a bad game, but they probably won't be as bad as they were in that game six.

You'll at least have a higher baseline.

So you wonder, is that something that's actually real? Or is it just regular season merchant thing? But then even the bigger issue with maxing him out, which, look, if the Kings do it, I understand why.

If it got to that point and they do it, I understand it's a 22, 23-year-old guy who made an All-NBA a year ago.

And we can sell this to the fans.

We can sell this like this is the face of the franchise now.

And look, this guy, we got an All-NBA guy at this age.

He's going to grow with us.

Like, I get the PR part about it.

Bob Lanier would dominate.

He'd be an All-NBA first or second team center right now.

Embiid would not know how to guard a guy like that.

He played in the 70s.