Danny and Dusty
Cooper Flagg sweepstakes
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With all trails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently. With offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with all trails. Cooper Flag is waiting to stone-cold Steve Austin his way right into college basketball and then the NBA. The highly touted recruit out of the state of Maine by way of Florida, because he went to Montverity. He did play for the Maine AAU team for a long time before going down and playing on what might end up being the best high school basketball team in the modern era. Who else was on the team? It was loaded, I got to pull that up. It's okay, we don't need that, but I'll take your word for it. You know, I saw this today. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander of CBS Sports. They did the anonymous poll of college basketball coaches. They pulled over 100 Division I college basketball coaches. Who is the best player in college basketball for the 2024-2025 season? When you look at the top four, North Carolina's RJ Davis, 15% of the vote. Kansas' 100 Dickinson took in 16% of the vote. Alabama's Mark Sears took 22% of the vote. Tough little guy. And the number one player in college basketball, according to 100 coaches, 36% of coaches said Cooper Flag, who's never played a minute of college basketball. This isn't a surprise. Yeah, because guess what? Every NBA team's doing it too. Looking for the great tank off, Flunken for Flag. Capture the flag, poop or coop. Flail, Flunk, Flunk 4 Flag. That's too many. I just can't do it. Flail for Flag. Flag for Flag. SAG SAGR flag was what was my original one. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, you've forwarded this along. The SB Nation 9 NBA teams in the Cooper Flag sweepstakes for 2025 ranked in tiers. Wow. They have the top tier, which is the worst teams in basketball. Three teams are in that. The second tier is just bad teams in the NBA. The third tier, which has two teams and is Dark Horse teams to tank for Cooper Flag. Those Dark Horse teams are the Toronto Raptors in San Antonio's first two teams that we talked about in being like Toronto is going to be sneaky terrible this year. Very terrible. Yeah, no, they're just not good. But they play in the East and then San Antonio wouldn't put a pass pop to just shut down Victor Windwind Vignama and they will use this. He put a lot of miles on his body, you know, during the Olympics. He played in a gold medal game and had to play more minutes than any of the NBA guys playing for Team USA. We just want to make sure that our long-term investment stays intact with Victor Wind Vignama. Yeah, I don't think the Spurs are going to go anywhere near being bad enough. No. Remotely competent point guard play is going to elevate them to like 38 wins. And they have Steph Castle and Chris Paul. Yeah. And when we, we haven't talked about it much. Yeah. The line he had. Did you hear what he said after the game? No. No. Another defeat by for France. No, it was something along the lines of I feel bad for for feel bad for my enemies because I'm just learning the game. Oh. And I was like, oh, yikes. That's nasty. I like that. Wow. He is only 20 years old. He is only 20 years old and he's already. That's terrifying. He's going to win the fence player of the year. Yeah. That's he probably you can make a very clear argument that he should have won it this year. Yes. He finished that. He finished that argument. And when we went over that, I was like, that makes sense. His on off was like plus 20. Yeah. It was really good. It was disgusting. But because of that, I don't think the Spurs, even if they try to tank because I don't think when B's going to set out 20 games, like unless when B gets hurt, which don't want that, they're just when B's floor is too high. Yes, he is. He's playing at the center spot, like, they're not going to screw around. I'm like, well, maybe he's a power forward and we can play him like Dirk and have that call. No, they're going to play him as a five and he'll be a nightmare and no win 38 games. The second tier of just bad NBA teams are the Detwa Pistons, Chicago Bulls, Charlotte Hornets and the Utah Jazz. Yeah. The weird one here is the Bulls because yeah, they're going to be bad, but they haven't been able to move off. It was of Levine or Vouch. Yeah. So in the east, they're going to be good enough to squeak out some games. Yeah, it's kind of the same situation where you're like, are they going to be as bad as the Raptors? No. No, I mean, that's what I think. But they're in it. They're in a tier below the Raptors in this. Yeah, I think the Raptors are going to be better. I don't. I don't believe it. And then the truly preseason favorites to land Cooper flag, AKA the worst teams in basketball, the Brooklyn Nets, the Washington Wizards and. Well, trailblazers. Your hometown team, everybody. Although in the article, it's spelled trial blazers. Oh, no. Yeah, there it is right there. I'm going to have to spell check doesn't get you on that. No, I'm going to have to text Ricky about that one. Oops. But I think that one thing that is interesting in this and we have discussed this. Um, if you look at this list of nine teams that are in the running for Cooper flag, this is why the blazers are actually good positioned. Well, of the nine teams, six of them are in the Eastern Conference and they're going to beat each other up and they're going to get wins that way. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to lie. Utah is going to be bad. But with Laurie Markin in alone, they're going to be good enough to be better than the Portland trailblazers. Yeah. I mean, it's, it'll be interesting to see how much they steer into the skid because I have a Danny Ainge wants Cooper flag. He does. He wants Cooper flag. The Utah wants Cooper flag. Yes. The state itself, not the organization. The state itself wants Cooper flag. I mean, Caitlyn clock is white. That part. Yeah. Very strong. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, the Philopalski Cooper flag, uh, conglomerate would go pretty hard in Utah. Oh, you think they'd go crazy over that one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That wouldn't be a surprise. One bit. I think out of this, um, there, one thing to kind of caution everybody about is like, we have a lot of people here locally and look, national pundits have been wrong before. Hell, Vegas has been wildly wrong about the blazer before. Remember the over and under wind total? Yes. 26 and a half. Back in, uh, 2016, 17 season. I made a fortune off that. They, they went. It's my single biggest gambling win I've ever had. But people locally were like, I don't think they're that bad. No, they were. And I, I, I at my worst figured them for 33 wins that year, which was when you're talking about a gap of six and a half, seven games, that's a chasm in projections. And this year, there have been people that have liked texting this show. I know you see it on Jack Ramsey's a lot where it is, Hey, I think this talented, this roster is talented enough to make a, make a run at the plan. Mm hmm. I, I think national pundits and local. Those dudes getting that sweet, sweet weed. There is an agreement that this team is not that 2016, 2017 team. No, it's on purpose. And they don't want to be because that 2016 team, you know what they had? Laugh all you want. They had Jamie Lillard. That way they were sure of. But you know what else they had? See Jim McCollum and Myers Leonard who just had come off that Memphis series where he averaged 15 and 10 and they were like, Hey. And we don't like Neil O'Shea here for obvious reasons. People in Portland do not like Neil O'Shea. But he did a really good job of sprinkling in veterans on that roster. That he got Robin Lopez for cheap, you know, for the previous era and for nothing. Alfred Camino stepped on a lot of out of bounds lines, but dribbled the ball off his foot more times than we could count. Evan Turner was a great addition and they just wildly overpaid. Alan Crab was a viable basketball player. They paid through the nose. And then got rid of him. Yeah. Got rid of that grenade real quick. But this in that team. And they got Mo Harkless for a used ball rack. Yeah. I mean the major upgrade this season on this roster was Denny. Denny out of you. Yeah. And then Don McLean is a guy that you're looking at. Like you got two new guys that you're looking at building with going forward. But Donovan needs time. And he's a backup right now. Yeah. Behind DeAndre Aiden. That's okay. It's funny. I've been on with Mike Richmond and locked on blazers this week a bunch of times. It's funny. Him and I have both come to the same conclusion when kind of looking at this blazers team going forward. And it's that when I ask a question about the blazers right now. The answer ends up being Denny Abdea for a lot of the questions. And it shows you number one how important he has the potential to be. But also how good he can be when he's the answer to a lot of different questions. We just hope that doesn't happen too quickly. Yeah. It's, you know, there's, there's, there's a, there's a chance that he ends up being the second best player on this team this year. Trying to figure out what to eat for dinner yet again with nor sides and bullion as you're not so secret ingredient, you can skip the drive through and do dinner at home. Nor taste combos provide a menu of delicious, affordable, and well-balanced meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Visit nor.com to get quick and easy recipe ideas for your home cooked weeknight dinners. It's not fast food, but it's so good.