is the reality like there are 26

through three games and that'll be a little bit better but um you know when matt and i were setting up the season the what's the number one concern what's the number one question mark and you you don't pick injuries because that's a boring conversation to have that's all 30 teams could be like well if all our best players get hurt Yeah, it's the it's the not just number of shooters, but you have to get volume of shots up.

And there was a good game on opening day between the Celtics and the Pistons where the Celtics were up huge and the Pistons.

I think it was 22 points and the Pistons who last year were very much not a shooting team.

It was the biggest concern about them heading into the playoffs, even though they won 60 games.

They went out this offseason, and they took from their defense to add shooting.

They added Isaiah Joe, and they added John Collins, and they had gotten Duncan Robinson prior to that and Kevin Herter at the trade deadline.

like do you do you think that there is going to be are they going to give me what i want here like how much is the schedule going to dictate when kawai plays if in fact it is a load management thing which this might not be yeah i mean i

Like that's what it is to trade for Brandon Ingram, but done it in a way that actually makes me feel optimistic and enthusiastic about what the actual ceiling is of this team and what the potential is them for the moving forward.

Yeah, and I think there's a couple things there in what you said.

And one is, like, you know, of those seasons that you're talking about, 2021-22 is the one that I will continue to scratch my head forever of, like, all these guys went on to continually great things and even higher levels.

And you had Scottie Barnes, who you were right, it turns out, to, like, really want to build around and make a core piece.

And it just, whether it's, you know, the timelines didn't work or the personalities didn't work or it was a year too early with Scottie or whatever, that's a question mark.

And I think the other thing is, like, the well we don't want to be in the middle is a fine way to operate when you're winning sure all the time when you start losing the middle looks really really nice again get back to meaningful basketball um but yeah now they're in the point where i think last year you and i set the season up when we did this episode and we were like we can see the path back to being good This team being a 500 team, a back-end playoff team in the East, it wasn't hard to see entering last year, assuming Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes were reasonably healthy.

But our question was, what with that group is going to let you take the jump to being great again? Turns out the answer was the same answer it was in 2018, which is Kawhi.

Part of the reason,

But let's get to Kawhi now and how he fits in with this group.

Yeah, I mean, it's Kawhi Leonard, so obviously there are injury concerns, and the amount of Twitter replies that I have gotten with the obvious jokes about, you know, oh, he took $11 million less, I wonder how he'll make up that money.

You put all of that aside, this was a guy who was a top... eight player in basketball when healthy last year, and we're still talking about a major two-way impact.

If you are someone who believes in some of the underlying impact metrics, I believe he was fifth in EPM when he was available on the floor.

You dig into some of the ways he drove, and I know the Clippers didn't have a lot of success, but some of the ways in which when he was on the floor, they were much better.

This is still a really exciting, really encouraging player.

And you look at what is, and I don't want to do, I don't want to be negative about Brendan Ingram because Brendan Ingram was healthier than we've ever seen.

But I think, yeah, that sort of player we've always seen is going to be a seamless fit.

Right

... trading away Luis Castillo.

Um, but you could, like, squint and see how they would be able to eke out enough ballgames with their pitching.

If they don't have the pitching, and they're doing a bullpen day or a pseudo-bullpen day twice through the rotation, and even when Scherzer's solid, he's giving you five, like, they're not gonna score enough runs.

And I know the Mariners pitching hasn't been awesome lately, but you look at the names and you look at the ERAs or the prospect pedigree, you've got Mariners, Guardians back to back.

Like, how are you scoring enough runs over the next six games to not only hang in it but, like, make up some ground? Um, I know that they got hammered yesterday, and the pitching was the more notable problem in yesterday's game.

But it is just, you know, when you get down four nothing, it still feels over.

Yeah

Yeah

... average-ish with power, and then when you factor in the, how good they were at hitting for average, they're a really good offensive team.

But for like the first half of the year, it was a lot of like 2-1, 3-2 kinda stuff.

Hey, look at the defense, look at the base running.

We're not stealing bases, but we never make a mistake on the base paths.

The Yankees are gonna make an error.

We're gonna take all that 90 feet and maybe another 90 feet, and we're gonna, we're gonna punish them for it.

Yeah

Yeah.

Right? And what'd he hit, pri- high 280s? He hit, uh, 264- Okay ...

with a 345 on base.

Okay.

But I think I, if I recall that season correctly, too, everybody talked about how he was playing through so much stuff.

Yeah.

Like, physically.

It's a good contract.

But really, when you think the middle of the summer, dog days of July, dog days of August, does it really get better than Canada Day for the Blue Jays?

I think it's great for a lot of reasons.

And I think there is, you know, when the team is good, there is a really good baseball reason to be excited about it.

And that it's that July 1st lines up with roughly the midway point of the season.

It's a great time to check in.

If the team's playing well, you're starting to feel very good about how things might look the rest of the way.

That Yankee series last year was right around Canada Day.

Where did this guy come from in the minor leagues? And I'm curious now, how in the world do you find time for playing time with this guy on the roster? How can he stay on this major league roster?

Yeah

...

if you believed in that kinda thing and you were kinda looking at the slow start to the season being like, where will it turn around, I think it was supposed to be last week.

So now you're, now I'm kinda back in the like, well, yeah, you gotta take two steps forward even if it comes with one step back because, you know, like, the division is, m- mathematically, the division's still there, but 10 games back and already losing the tiebreaker and stuff.

Like, you're, you're already into the part of the season where you're just, like, looking at the wildcard standings and-

Mm-hmm.

So does the defensive downgrade or the risk to Springer playing the outfield when he's a 700 OPS guy, but that gets Kirk's bat in the lineup one extra day a week.

Like, the, the net of that might be more than last year where it was just like, "Just don't touch George.

And, yeah, it... wish it didn't happen wish they just played better because we're waiting for them to play better and it just never happened because we knew how talented that group was

van vliet and an obc akam barnes and they they couldn't get past the 500 marker i know they had no depth and nick nurse was you know maybe a little you know one foot out at that point but it's uh it's remarkable that it couldn't barnes wasn't this either though right like no he's taking a lot of strides but he had shown enough flashes that part of the thinking for making those moves was this guy is going to get here.

Maybe in three, four years, I think the, the miscalculation was one that you couldn't figure out Fred and OG and Pascal with Scotty Barnes as a core.

And like, you know, do the kind of last air of the Spurs thing where that's a bridge where both areas are good rather than you have to pivot out.

Um, The other thing was, I think maybe they underestimated how long these guys would maintain their peaks.

Like the fact that Siakam is still an all-star level player.

The fact that OG has only gotten better here in year nine.

But, like, the idea of him maybe taking on more of a role with some other team, has that really manifested? Like, he seems like the same guy, which is incredible.

But yeah, people don't want these just soul-crushing defeats followed up by that business as usual rhetoric.

And that's where, the thing that probably stood out most to me of anything Kenny Atkinson said over the last couple days is, and Matt, this'll probably really frustrate you, is yester- I think it was yesterday at practice, he referenced, "Well, we had 91st percentile shot quality." Um, so, uh, I think that was specifically on, on three-pointers.

So, like again, regression, that'll even out, and it probably will.

Uh, so I, I wanna turn the page a little bit from, you know, the, the energy force kinda stuff to actual adjustments the Cavs m- might make.

Bob, when you hear that, that the threes they generated at least...

And look, the last four minutes of that game, those were not like clean open threes they were missing.

They, they botched a lot of stuff in the last four minutes of the game.

[laughs]

Go back

and look how early they were starting spot starters or we were discussing four-man rotation.

What do they do with the off days? And this year, like, look, it's baseball.

At no point are all eight of those pitchers going to be healthy and good.

This stuff will resolve itself.

But there's so much more insulation against, like, quote-unquote replacement level this year on the pitching side that, yeah, I think they'll be significantly better as a pitching team.

Like, I think the Red Sox are... probably the only american league team that could argue they maybe have a better rotation um when you factor in depth and things like that so um yeah i think they'll be a little bit worse offensively and i think too it helps when you're talking about like where the weaknesses are it helps that like this is a pretty known commodity team at this point which you know whatever that doesn't change your projections or zips or whatever sam he was ranting about and But it does make it like when we start when we get to July and we start formulating through what do they need? What do they not need? There's not going to be very much like we need more sample on this.

So I just wonder how that's going to look.

Is it just happy to be here? Is it potentially, like, looking at this matchup against the Knicks is, like, we have a chance to get even higher in the conference? How are, how are Raptors fans feeling these days?

Yeah, I think mostly it's positive.

I think probably around the trade deadline, maybe the two weeks leading into it, there was a little bit of, "Well, they're overperforming, and it's ahead of schedule, and the East is wide open.

Shouldn't you make your big move now?" And obviously that didn't happen.

Uh, no disrespect to Trace Jackson-Davis.

He is not the big move that's going to push you, uh, over the top.

So I think, you know, probably the, the average or the median opinion is this has been good.

Hmm.

Does that sound about right?

Yeah, it's probably, you know, in having conversations with people around the team and media with their hypothetical ballots and stuff like that over the last week or two, it seemed like Ingram was on the bubble.

And it was going to come down to how out are people on Karl-Anthony Towns, even though he has this big track record, but...

the knicks have underperformed and he's just kind of been okay uh towns ends up getting in so the the kind of body of his work over the last couple years wins out uh there was a chance norman pal and bam out of bio split the miami vote it was likely a coach was going to put a miami person on there but if they split it maybe that opens up a spot and then uh shout out to rick carlisle the former head of the coaches union did a great job and i'm not being facetious He campaigned for Pascal really hard, said, look at what he's doing.

Our situation's bad.

He never misses games.

Look at what he's, you know, he's performing really well.

What do you think is kind of the long-term plan with them here?