 What's the word, y'all? Today I wanna talk about those teams that are stuck in mediocrity. Those rosters that might be a 500 team, maybe slightly below that, maybe slightly above that, but every single season, they are just stuck in this spot and they are okay with it. Cause honestly, I believe it is the worst possible place to be in any sport really, but specifically in the game of basketball because there's really no value in that. So there are a few teams across the league that fit into the spot. One of them is the Washington Wizards. Now, Bradley Beal went on the no-chill with Gilbert Arenas podcast and he says something that perks the people ears up. And I wanna play you one of the clips that is a catalyst for this video because I'm actually surprised at how Candid Bradley Beal was in his interview. Shout out to him. This is not a shot at him because he's a phenomenal NBA player and congratulates to him and his family on the big old bag. But I more wanna talk about the team building aspect and how we can prevent teams from ending up in this spot and what can happen because you are in this spot. So let me play the clip. No, but to have the pieces we have, we have enough to know that we can compete on a 90 basis with no BS, right? We know that we got a job. Everybody's able to be a star in their role and we can go do that. On the flip side of it, the business side of it, there were no teams in the market. Just for the agency wise, just being Frank, right? There were no, there was nowhere else for me to go, right? Where I can, like, oh, I can go win, right? It would have been, it was teams that, strategically, it wasn't what I wanted, right? So it is, realistically, I won't say my hand was forced, but this was my best decision, best option on the table at the time, so. A lot, and I mean a lot to unpack there with Mr. Bradley Beale. Just wanna remind y'all that Bradley Beale signed a SuperMex contract worth $251 million over five years and he was also given one of the few no-trade clauses in all of basketball. Now let's talk about the clip that he mentioned. There's a few things in it that really, really got me thinking. The first one is he said that wasn't really a market. Why? Again, shout out to Bradley Beale for being candid. I don't think a lot of people would have said, hey, nobody really wanted me in the position that I wanted to be in. I'm sure he might be stretching just a little bit. I mean, there might have been teams with a little bit of cash that might have offered him a little sum sum but it was a lot less than 251 amps. But the point I wanna make is, if he is saying that the market for him wasn't great and the teams that did have a little bit of money he wasn't interested in, how the hell do we get to the point where Bradley Beale is making $251 million? How the hell do we get to the point where Bradley Beale is one of the few people in all of basketball to have a no-trade clause if you were bidding against no one? This is 101 when it comes to team building that you don't compete with yourself. And in this instance, the Washington Wizards did that. They might have saw this as, hey, we gonna get Bradley this bag so we get this reputation as a team that take care of the players. Bradley been here since the day we drafted him. He ain't been nothing but great to this city. We wanna give him the most money imaginable. But now we looking back on it, it's been a couple months since this contract gets hit in and everybody like, man, even in the moment, people are like, man, that is a lot of money for Bradley Beale. And what makes it even worse is now with that contract on the books, it kinda pigeonholes your ability to make the roster better. And one thing that I hear all the time with these teams that are in the mediocre field is the word retooling. I hear the word retooling so many times. The Washington Wizards traded for Kyle Kuzma and then they traded for Chris Thelps-Prazengas. That wasn't a rebail, ladies and gentlemen. They retooled the roster, but they're in the same spot that they were in before those trades. And that is good enough to be in the play-in position, good enough to maybe be the seventh, the eighth seed, but not good enough to either be bad enough to get a top five pick because they've been in the lottery, Marie Hachimore, Denny M.D., or Corey Kisper. These are lottery picks that I wanna say to our miss because they're late in the lottery. So they haven't been in the situation where they have a good enough draft pick where you can potentially hit on a superstar player, but they haven't been good enough to warrant the stuff that is going on. They're retooling year after year after year. And that plays into the next part of what Bradley said that was very interesting to me about how he said every single day we put together a roster where we know we can compete and that, yes, they can. I mean, they're doing that right now after Anthony Davis gave them the absolute work. Shout out to Anthony Davis. They're sitting at 11 and 13. They're sitting at 11 and 13. They can compete every single night. You know what I'm saying? They have Bradley Beal to have for his innings. Calcuse is playing really good basketball. They're gonna be in a lot of games, but like, are your fans satisfied with that? Later on in this interview, I'll just take my word for it. They were talking about how Tommy Sheper, who's running the team right now, tells Bradley Beal very, very regularly that no matter what is going on, you are here. I don't like the sound of that. I wouldn't like the sound of that. I'm the watch the Wizards. Not that we wanna trade Bradley Beal, but it's like, we gonna talk about the Chicago Bulls cause they are also in this point where they're nine and 14. There's a report about Chicago Bulls. They're saying that DeMarco Rose and Zach Levina untouchable, untouchable. In my opinion, in my crazy brain, the word untouchable is for a select few type of people. The Yonesis, the, I guess at this point, Anthony Davis, even though his name was in some rooms a little while, go the way he be who be right now, the Jason Tatum's, the Jama Rents, the Zia Williams's, these guys who are superstar caliber players. When you nine and 14 on a team that should be good, that you tried to be able to be good, nobody should be considered untouchable. But for the Washington Wizards, Bradley Beal is untouchable. He literally got a no trade clause. If I wanted to trade him to a random team, he could just say, nah, I'm good. In the Chicago Bulls case, what are we doing? What are we doing? I'm not, and listen, I'm not advocating for trading DeMar or for trading Zach Levine, but the word untouchable in my opinion is just such a strong word when you're bad. You know what I'm saying? If we were sitting at 15 and nine, you can use the word untouchable. Baby, we the three seed in these decals. Hell yeah, they untouchable. When you are a team that, again, that was built to be competitive right now, that you bought into a roster right now and you're five games under, nobody on the roster should be considered untouchable. And that leads to the Chicago Bulls potentially being on the spot of mediocrity. What is next? If you aren't trading those top two dudes, what are we doing? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for retooling. That's what it's gonna be. And with the assets that you have, our retooling maybe gets you a little bit better, maybe it gets you back into the playoff picture, but is that what we should be satisfied for as fans of the Washington Wizards, as fans of the Chicago Bulls, the New York Knicks, all of these teams that are stuck. I'm giving the Knicks a little bit of leeway because they have so many draft picks. We're in the split eye, a superstar player can say I want out and boom, they can go ahead and jump on top of that because they saw that they missed out on Donovan Mitchell a couple of months ago. I think they won't do that twice, but the Bulls and the Y's of Wizards, just the future is just really, really grim. I just don't know. Well, okay, actually I do know, I do understand why teams that are stuck in the spot, why they don't sell. The perfect example of this was the Orlando Magic. The Orlando Magic went through their period of mediocrity where it was Vucovic, Aaron Gordon and some, some, some good enough to take one game away from the Raptors behind who had a big game, a big DJ Augustine game, but continuously was invited to the bubble to be like a seventh AC, but never did anything other than that. And they made a decision, one deadline. It only took one deadline almost two years ago and their future looks brighter than a lot of teams in basketball. They traded their also Calibur player, Finesse the organization. They traded their good role players, got some first round picks back and just like that, they've won the lottery. They got a seventh overall pick that looks great. They got some young pieces, a part of the All-Star Calibur trade and future draft capital. The Orlando Magic fans might not be extremely happy in this second because they're an eight game win streak, but every single day they watch and they'll be like, yeah, palo's him. Yeah, bobo, that was a good experiment and I'm happy that we did it. They're giving their fans something to hold onto as hope with the Washington Wizards. If you are a Washington Wizards fan, what are you hopeful for right now? If you're a Bulls fan, what are you hopeful for right now? Oh, the Bulls have had the toughest schedule and basketball so far, so soon as they start going against those bad teams, they gonna shoot up the charts. They might, but if they get matched up against Philly, who in that series? If they get matched up against Atlanta, who in that series? Cleveland, Milwaukee, and then Boston. You know what I'm saying? So they're just stuck in this realm of good enough to maybe make the playoffs and if they do, we out of there in six, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe, maybe out of there in six, sometimes it's five. And the crazy part of it all is that these are two teams that operate as if they're smaller market teams. They're not, they're not. The Chicago Bulls won the biggest markets in basketball. I think the Washington Wizards was number nine when I just looked up biggest markets. These are some of the biggest markets in basketball but they're ran as if they don't think that anything other than just doing crazy trades and hopefully we hit on some crazy draft picks to make something happen. But I mean, I guess that's the right way to do it because neither roster, neither team has done much in recent history for even free agents to even want to come to. The Wizards haven't had a season where they won 50 games since 1979. They are a team that is perpetually in the realm of, okay, and I'm looking at a stretch right here. From 2013 to 2018, they had some runs. You know, I remember the John Wall game winning the playoffs and everything like that. But once that core was done with, they should have been done done with and not just trading wall away. It's hard, man. It's really, really hard. Because when you have a team like this that again might be good enough to make the playoffs maybe miss but always on the cusp, you're pigeonholing yourself to the 10th overall pick every season. 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th. If you do make it, boom, we got number 15 which is outside the lottery. And yeah, we've had some success stories outside of the lottery. It's a lot harder to hit on that pick. It just is. I mean, the history of both of these rosters in recent history is a bit iffy. I think another thing that contributes to this is the lack of development of the talent once you do get it. And I think the Washington Wizards in Chicago Bulls are not very good at developing homegrown talent. And then you see someone go off to another organization afterwards and they look a lot better than what they did when they were with your team. And it could be just because of time and experience or just could be your staff just doesn't develop the young players good enough. And the young players are the future when you're thinking about retooling in the Chicago Bulls case. You needed a Patrick Williams jump. You ain't got that. You needed to reheat you more than you did to take jumps. And though they look all right, they haven't taken the jumps. So just some ideas and things that are rumbling in my mind when I see that Bradley Beale interview, I'm like, man, that's kind of bad as a team builder. It's kind of bad. I don't know. Let me know what you think in the comment section about teams stuck in mediocrity. Is there another team I haven't even mentioned? I'm just thinking about the, I'm looking at the rosters in the standings right now. Every single one of these teams has something that they're going for right now. And those might be the two. So I'll be in that comment section. Thank you.