 What's the word, y'all? It's been some time since Kevin and Rhett requested a trade and nothing has really happened yet. I mean, yeah, we found out of some of the teams that were interested, which is not a surprise. I said on this channel that majority of the 29 other GMs are gonna pick up the phone, at least to have the conversation around Kevin because he's Kevin. We found out that the Boston Celtics were one of those teams. Jalen Brown, Derek White in the first round pick in the Brooklyn that's denied it and now they're trying to figure out, you know, what's next. It also came out that that was from a few weeks ago towards the beginning of the Kevin and Rhett sweepstakes if you wanna call it that. And maybe the Boston Celtics have come to terms that they won't get Kevin because they don't wanna give a market smarter one. It doesn't really matter. I think as NBA fans, we've gone extremely impatient with things. Usually if somebody requested a trade, we see them get moved within a week or so. But since this is the off season, I mean, the Brooklyn Nets could take as much time as they want because let's be real. The idea of trying to convince Kevin to stay is way better than a trade package. But as we count down the days to figure out what the heck happens with Kevin, I decided to bring on Tucker, aka sporting logically to talk all things Brooklyn Nets. Shout out to Tucker for taking the time. I appreciate him. The links will be in the description to his stuff. Now it is time to talk about the team that has dominated the new cycle this off season of Brooklyn Nets and I am joined by Tucker, aka sporting logically. What's up my guy? Welcome to the show. What's up man? Thank you, thank you, appreciate it. So I don't even really know where to start. There's just so many things going on within the organization. Actually, you know, let's start with maybe some happier times when the things started, when Kevin Arant and Carrie Irvin signed to the Brooklyn Nets. How did you feel in that moment considering, you know, the Brooklyn Nets have some decent history, a couple of finals appearances, but then that never really had the superstar players wanting to sign there. Right. I mean, it was weird to have expectations. Like last playoffs was the first time as an NBA fan that I really felt like nervous for a full postseason series. Like go in and year before that they were like the seven seed and lose to Philly. And in the past, like even when Vince Carter and Jason Kidd were there, like they were a four or five seed but never really a contender. And I wasn't like really a basketball fan when they were going to the finals in like 01 and 2000. So it to me was just a strange feeling to think, wow, like we could actually be in big time playoff series and be able to go seven games with some of these teams. But when they actually signed, I kind of felt like it was gonna happen because kind of all the odds had shifted that way. And it just made the most sense for them to go there. But it's different when you actually see the notification come through. But then also you have to wait a year to actually see it for real cause you gotta wait on KD. Right, yeah. So everybody knows there's the buffer year by waiting for everything to get healthy. And Vegas odds had the Brooklyn Nets like the champion as soon as things were healthy. And obviously it didn't work out that way. In the years they were together one series win which is so crazy to say allow, considering a team at one point had James Harden, Kari Irvin and Kevin Durant. It had me stressed out as an outsider. So I could not imagine what it had been like for the actual fans of the organization. It's so weird again, cause like I'm not used to having any expectation. And so having to deal with that. But also like it obviously like Carden leaves and things are up in the air now, but it's not because it didn't work. Like when those dudes were on the floor, they were amazing. Like even though none of them are great defensively except when KD really wants to be, they made it work with those three guys. And it was pretty unstoppable when they all played for like however many games that they all three played together. And so it's weird to think about it already halfway falling apart with the Harden thing and now seemingly about to fully fall apart. Even though like when healthy it all worked, there was no like, oh, there's not enough basketball. Like they all played well together. It just is just gonna be one of those what ifs forever. For me, there are a couple where were you moments in Kevin Durant's career that actually have nothing to do with Encore basketball, right? There's a where were you when he joined the Golden State Warriors and for me, I was in my old department and we were putting together like a big puzzle piece to hang on the while it was weird. And then the second where were you moment for me is just a couple of weeks ago when it came basically, I wouldn't say it was out of nowhere, but then again, it felt like it was out of nowhere him requesting the trade. And the answer to that, I was out there mowing the lawn and I think there's gonna be a third where were you moment if it happens. And at this point in time, that's a big if because it felt like it was inevitable after a superstar player requested a trade. It seems like that's gonna happen, but now it seems like it's been almost a month or maybe it has been a month since that moment. And we haven't had any real traction. Right. The fourth July one, I was out of fourth July party when he went to Golden State and then I was doing dishes when the notification came through on my phone that he would request a trade. And the trade request thing was weird because like the Kyrie situation was already strange but given that he was on a four year contract, I thought that maybe they would play this year out with Kyrie and then Kyrie would wanna leave as a free agent next year when teams kind of can have their stuff together to be able to sign him. And then at that point, KD would request a trade. So that one definitely was a surprise to me. And now I'm more of the opinion that unless something changes pretty dramatically either in the next kind of vision of what they wanna get for KD or other teams willingness to give up more, I don't think it's gonna happen. And I don't know what that like, I don't know that that means KD is gonna play or not play or Kyrie is or isn't gonna be on the roster. But if someone had made a really good offer or accept or liked something that the nets were thrown out there, it would have happened by now. And now it seems like all the executives are like on vacation, we're just chilling for a couple of weeks until things start heating up a little bit closer to like training camp and pre-season. In the moment, I thought that this was going to be the biggest trade in NBA history. And I think a lot of people thought the same way. And now we sent a month later and I'm like, if he is going to be traded, it's not gonna be nearly as much as what we saw. And I think the market was kind of tarnished if that's the word I wanna use by the Rudy Gobert trade. If Rudy Gobert is getting five first round picks, Kevin Arrant with four years on his contract must give you 12. You know, that's what a lot of people are thinking. And that's probably what the front office is thinking. And in reality, it seems like a lot of people are turned off by the idea of mortgage in their entire future for a 34 year old player that when he has four years on his contract, it's still willing to say, I want out. Now you mentioned whether or not he'll play if they don't trade him. I think that could be the worst thing that can happen in all of sports for us as fans and for NBA players, for everybody. Because if we have been Simmons who also was under contract and decided he didn't wanna play basketball, for whatever reasons, and then also Kevin Arrant decided, I don't wanna be here, so I won't hoop. This is gonna lead to the biggest lockout ever. And I'm just praying that either the deal gets done or Kevin's like, okay, I'm just gonna hoop because I am a hooper. And the only reason that I even mentioned that he might not play is just because that's become a thing and you can't discount that as a possibility. I'd be beyond shocked if he was like, yeah, I'm just not gonna play until they trade me given that he's, you know, it was an MVP caliber player last year before Bruce Brown fell on his leg and then he had to come back quickly from an injury and just knowing what we know about KD, like he cares about this kind of stuff and he already knows the talk that's out there about him and for him to just dip out for eight weeks in the beginning of the year, waiting on them to trade and it's just not gonna work for him. So, and like I said, unless something changes dramatically in the way that KD thinks about the situation in Brooklyn or some other team steps up that he's willing to go to, I don't think there's any reason for these other teams to step up their offer because nobody can beat what either Toronto or if New Orleans was interested can do and neither of those teams I think are teams that he would wanna go to in the first place. So there's no reason for anybody to step up because like Phoenix doesn't have an offer right now. Miami doesn't have an offer. Those trade packages don't exist on their roster. And so then you just get to like four or five team trades that just fall apart before you can really even make them. And you mentioned two teams that I would be really interested to see Kevin Arant play for, that's Toronto and then the Pelicans. I think the Pelicans are probably number one because they have the things that you would potentially want because it seems like since the Brooklyn that's gave up so much pick equity, they're not really thinking about, let's go get what the Utah Jazz Gap which is like a bunch of nothing in picks. They want to still be relatively competitive and if you can somehow snag Brandon Ingram and then also some other stuff on top of that, obviously that will be interesting for the Pales and also interesting for Brooklyn. But I just got done with the episode with the Raptors with Samson Folk and he was saying like, I think he thinks that a lot of Toronto Raptor fans wouldn't be extremely interested in doing a deal because Scotty Barnes would probably be involved in it. So we got to the point where even like Zach Lone's podcast was talking about, oh, the first team I'm calling is Toronto because I want Scotty. And then Masai's saying we don't want to give you Scotty. So now the value of what Kevin Arant should have been is way lower. One of my favorite things that you had going on your Twitter account is a mock Kevin to rent trade until he got traded and then you stopped it. And I was so excited to be on day 16 and see how your personal value, valuation of Kevin is going to drop depending on how long we went into it. Right. There's so many things there. Like there's so many teams that if you just, you like took the name off of it and Kevin Arant was just willing to go to any team in the league, right? Like Memphis could put together an unbelievable trade package. New Orleans could as well. Toronto could as well. And like, it's not just Toronto thinking, hey, maybe we don't want to give up Scotty Barnes. Maybe that doesn't make sense for us. But it's also like, if we're going to commit to you, you have to 100% commit to us. Like who's just like the four year contract thing leaves everything up in the air because just because he's committed to go there now doesn't mean he will. You're from now just like the last off season when he signed the four year extension. Thank goodness he did. Right. He was fully committed to Brooklyn and now a year later he's not. And that's not a him specific thing. That happens all across the league. But that's something you always have to consider. And so part of me wishes like selflessly as a fan but also for the situation as a whole that he would just go wherever. Cause I think there's some really cool basketball fits for him. Like the New Orleans thing is pretty seamless. The Memphis thing I think is pretty seamless. It's just, that's where we are now. As guys only want to go where they want to go and those straight packages don't exist. And like you said, the go bare thing screwed everything up. I think if the really go bare thing was, you know, role players in two picks, like basically if you just shave like four picks off of what they actually traded, I think not a Mitchell probably would have gotten traded by now. And I think KD would have as well. Like I really don't think that there's, just in terms of how it looks, I don't think there's any way Brooklyn can trade Kevin Rant for either the equivalent of what Rudy Govera got traded for or less than. There's just no way they can do that. And so it's pretty much impossible until we get further removed from that deal. Yeah, especially not in the same off season. No. Cause they're going to compare the two trades all the time. I'm very on record saying that if I was in charge of the Brooklyn Nets, you still do every single thing you've done so far with the idea that we will win a championship. You signed Kyrie and KD, you make the James Harden trade because at the end of the day, those three players should have been good enough. I just think there are so many factors, injuries, vaccinations, you know, so many things prevented them from being the best team possible. And I think a lot of people are looking at the front office like they made the biggest mistake. We're in the moment, every single one of those deals looked okay. The only one is the James Harden one that even in the moment, I was like, that's a bit iffy, but I understood it at the bare minimum. You know, I understood it at the bare minimum. And I'm asking you as a fan, if you were to go back, would you still take the chances that the Brooklyn Nets front office took? A hundred out of a hundred times because if you do it a hundred times, I'd say at least 70 of those, the three guys are still on the same roster. Yeah, in worst case, it's like 70 plus percent of the time, they're all three on the roster right now and they might have won a title, not this past season, but the year prior. If Kyrie doesn't twist his ankle, if Kyrie plays, if the pandemic never happens, if James Harden shows up in shape, if him and KD kind of iron out whatever issues that they did have prior to the trade request. If his foot was behind the line on some on-court stuff, is his foot behind the line? He might be champions already. Exactly. So I think there's a ton of possibilities where it could have gone right. And honestly, like if this keeps going and KD walks back the trade request and was like, you know, I really just wanted Kyrie to get a long-term deal. But for the most part, I see what they're doing here. This is my best chance because I also think that even if you traded him to even Phoenix or Miami, there's a lot of situations where those teams are not better than what he has in Brooklyn right now. If Kyrie's healthy and engaged, if Ben Simmons is healthy, there's ifs there. But so I think there's still a possibility where it does work out, not necessarily in terms of them winning a title, but in terms of still being very relevant for another year or two. And every other turn you would have had to take, whether it be not bringing in Kyrie and KD in the first place, okay. So you've got Dilo on a max and Jared Allen, like that's fun, but that's not where you've been for the last two years. The hardened thing, same thing, like Jared Allen and Keras Levert and those guys were good players, but they didn't want them to be part of the solution. That's why they were upset about Deandre Jordan starting over Jared Allen in the first place, which got Kenny Atkinson fired. And then Jared Allen is suddenly in the trade and ending up in Cleveland is now an all-star. So yeah, there's like alternative avenues here where maybe it works out, but the most likely outcome of success was the things that they did every time, just crazy stuff got in the way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't think that what they were building was going to blossom enough to be championship contenders. It was fun as hell. Game one versus Philly, I was there at Wells Fargo sitting courtside and we were doing a video shoot for House of Highlights and they were like, we need you to buy a 76er jersey. Reality, I was rooting for the Brooklyn Nets. You know what I'm saying? That's how fun that team was for me. D'Angelo Russell was diving for a ball and landed in my lap, you know what I'm saying? Like I was rooting for that team. But with that said, I still think I do the moves that they have done to get to the point to have Kevin and Kyrie and to eventually have James. And I agree with the things you're saying here. We're like, if Kevin and the front office are able to reconcile their relationship and he stays around, they have the pieces to be a really good team in this game. Now, a lot of it is depending on what version of Ben Simmons we end up getting and I guess we don't really know that, but they have the offense and the defense, I believe. And now the depth, if we're counting the Royce O'Neill trade that happened an hour before Kevin around requested a trade. I still don't know the pick protections on that trade because I just refuse to look at it because I'm annoyed by it. I just don't want to know. Don't tell me if it's unprotected. I still don't know. I don't know either, but if they do end up trading Kevin, which is likely and then Kyrie has moved on to his next team, that's gonna be like the worst trade of all time. Royce O'Neill coming to the team that's just deconstructed everything. But yeah, I think that on court what they could work is just about getting the other things to match as well. So my next question to you is, what are the chances that this can be resolved where Kevin is a part of the Brooklyn Nets, not just for the first couple of months as they try to figure some things out, but finish in the season? I think it's tough. Like, basically, KD would have to just decide to rejoin the team out of spite. Like, his issues with the team are kind of unknown. We don't really know if he's upset because they didn't commit to Kyrie long-term. I don't think you can blame them for not committing to Kyrie long-term. They still reportedly gave him an offer that gave him guaranteed money and was basically a max, just wasn't a fully guaranteed one after two seasons, which I think is more than fair. But if his issues are that he doesn't trust the front office anymore, he doesn't like being there anymore, he just wants to be in a different situation, it's gonna be hard to change those things because a lot of the things that you could argue got them to where they are, namely the hardened trade and, you know, bringing in DeAndre Jordan in the first place and things like that and getting rid of Kenny Atkinson were because of what KD wanted when he came to Brooklyn, which was more control over the decision-making and he pushed for those things. He pushed for the hardened trade, he pushed for DeAndre Jordan and then ultimately Kenny Atkinson to be fired. And so like, he kind of has to step up and own it a little bit and that feels unlikely. So to me, like the likelihood of him rejoining the team is pretty good, but really just out of a lack of other options, more so than him being really excited about being in Brooklyn. Now, if they start next year and Ben Simmons looks awesome and they win 55 games, then it's pretty easy to get over your feelings from the year before, but he basically just has to decide to be over it or I guess the Nets can settle for a trade-off or if they get desperate a couple of weeks before the season, but I really don't know what the path would be to either of those. I'm a huge Kevin Arrant fan, but I believe that he got everything that he could potentially ask for with Brooklyn. And I'm not a guy that's a legacy guy, you talk about legacy, like that doesn't really matter to me, but there has to be something said about him having everything he potentially wanted in the organization. It all goes exactly as you wanted to, well, I guess all the moves go exactly as you wanted to, but everything else didn't and him like, ah, I'm dipping. Like something has to be said about that. I don't know what it is exactly, but there has to be something. We spent a lot of time on Kevin. I think we should spend at least some time on Kyrie because initially this is where it all stems from. You mentioned how the Brooklyn Nets gave him a contract offer that was guaranteed money, but he wanted more or the length, it's been reported different ways. He wanted a Max contract reportedly. He basically wanted a Max contract as if everything for the last 18 months didn't happen. He wanted a, I'm Kyrie, I'm a Max player, give me the four year Max and we'll talk about it later, offers, basically what he wanted. There we go. So there's been a lot of conversation about him potentially finding his way to LA. And I just want to get your take on that potentially because to make that work, Russell Westbrook has to be imparted the deal one way or another. It's a big three team or four team or seven teamer. I don't really know. But do you think getting rid of Kyrie, sending him to his next team could potentially help the relationship with Kevin? Because I think everything stems to whether or not Kevin Durant is healthy. I mean, not healthy, but happy. Happy is the way I'm looking for. It's so complicated. The only thing that feels certain is if they're getting traded, either only one of them or both of them, they're not trading Kyrie until they deal with Katie. Like they're getting an answer one way or another. Katie's either, I'm not coming back. You have to trade me or I will come back. And once they have that settled, it seems like they'll deal with the Kyrie thing afterwards because I don't know. You don't know. It seems like nobody knows if he has issues with Kyrie or if he really still wants to play with them. If the issue is Kyrie, I don't think Brooklyn would have any issue whatsoever, moving him somewhere else. Even if that is for Russ and Russ goes somewhere else, they can figure it out. Or he still wants to have Kyrie on the team. Nobody has any idea. If that helps, I think they do it. If he still wants to play with Kyrie, then that's just a conversation he has to have with Brooklyn. One thing I would be very, very surprised of is if Russell Westbrook ends up playing in Brooklyn, that's it for me. I think everybody's on the same page. It's like, that would be incredibly surprising with or without Kevin Ray on the roster. He's probably going somewhere else and Antonio's been mentioned. And it just depends on, pretty much, we're not talking really about the Lakers here, but pretty much the entirety of what the Lakers want to do depends on their willingness to give up the 27 of the 29 pick. And it seems like Brooklyn wants more than one. So if you're the Lakers and you can do Russ in a first for Kyrie, that makes you infinitely better as like a potential championship contender. And it's just up to Brooklyn whether they want to call it quits on the KD Kyrie thing. And that decision really comes with KD more than anybody else. Yeah, a lot of big decisions coming out of Brooklyn. The off season only has a little bit more time. So I guess we'll find out sooner rather than later. Tucker, I appreciate you taking the time to talk some Brooklyn Nets. Let the people know what they can find you. Just on YouTube, sporting logically on YouTube, we're doing three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 3pm Eastern. And we've got a lot of fun stuff coming up, just kind of off season review stuff, you know, ratings, rankings, illogical words, stuff like that over the next couple of weeks. Appreciate you, Tucker. Awesome, thank you, man.