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It's time to have the guts. We here to bring the heat. Y'all can hang it up. Welcome to five on the floor. A daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg, Sylvander, and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Fivers and Sports Network. Welcome back to five on the floor here today's floor plan. I'm Ethan Skolnick and follow me Ethan J. Skolnick and Fivers and Sports. We've got Greg, Sylvander. You can follow him at Greg, Sylvander. And today we're going to talk ban and we have to because he's struggling. There's no way around it. We're not going to color that any other way. And part of what we're going to get into is the heat Twitter reaction to him because there were a couple of tweets that came at me last night. I see everything, by the way, I do. I probably shouldn't say that because that will encourage people to send me more ridiculous stuff. But I always scroll through. Okay, it's just, it's a habit of mine for the past few years. And there are a couple of people on there who have this thing where they don't think I criticize BAM. They're like, "Why don't you go at BAM the way you go at Tyler and Jimmy?" Which to me is funny. I mean, let's start with the Jimmy thing, okay? We practically declared him a God. So I don't know, you know, when I tweet out something to be effective, see what happens when Jimmy engages. It's because when he engages, they're really good because he's really good. It's not a criticism of him as a human being or anything like that. Or even as a basketball player, it's more so this is what this team needs. Like they need Jimmy Butler to be engaged as much of the time as possible because he's their best freaking player. Okay, let's start there. Second one, Greg, is on Tyler. I don't know where this is started because I'm the one that literally put my bet for six man of the year out there for him. Okay, the year that he was the sixth man, which thank you, Tyler, for helping me cash. And since then, I've been the one criticizing those who criticize him for being injury prone in quotes when most of his injuries have been as a result of freak incidents, accidents, whatever, or hustling like going for a loose ball. We criticize here when we have to or we feel we have to because we don't want you to feel that we're blind to everything else. We're just carrying water for every player and person in the organization. Okay, but we try to be a little bit more nuanced. So the BAM thing, like I don't think I've been any more critical of Tyler or Jimmy than I have been a BAM when BAM hasn't played well. But Greg, okay, the person who coined no ceiling and I should have worn the shirt and that shirt is in our sight. I think that the BAM stuff has to be put in the context of what he's expected to do for this team that most players around the league are not expected to do for theirs. Okay, no one is expecting Luca Dodgeich to lock somewhat up defensively, call out the defensive signals, make sure everybody's at the right place. Honestly, no one expects Luca to play any defense at all. And the reality is, although I think he's a better defender than people give him credit for, nobody expects that of Yo-Kitch either. And Envy, nobody talks about his defense. Yes, he's a very good defender when he's engaged on that end. But everybody talks about him scoring 33 to 35 points a game and whether or not he's going to be healthy for the playoffs. BAM is a different type of player than other players in the top 25 in the league. And he is in the top 25 in the league. So I just put that into some context. So when I tweet out something like from NBA University where they're talking about the 10 responsibilities that BAM has to hold this thing together, I'm not saying it's okay for BAM to play like crap on the other end, which is what he's done in the past two games, which is a big reason they lost both. I'm just saying like understand, okay, something else comes first for him with this team. Because when he was out, we saw they were giving up like 145 to Indiana. They need him for them. So Greg, I'm going to let you go on your thing. And I'm not going to read out the tweets today because there's one guy literally who came at me last night and then I went through his timeline. And his last 50 tweets or replies are calling BAM a loser, he bleeps. I can't deal with those people. Okay, I can deal with people who want to make a nuanced argument. You want to make a statistical argument, even if it's an eye test argument, I'm fine with that. But there are agendas, and somebody said this today on Twitter, of course, and I agree with this, or maybe it was on our Discord where we tend to have a little bit more elevated conversation. Okay, which is that there is a positive industry of he fans who hate their own players. There is. But there's hate their own players. Like there are, there are hero stands or BAM stands. It doesn't, Jimmy, nobody really hates Jimmy, but there's, there's, there's an industry of people. They just don't lie. And this goes back to the big three era because I, for all the he fans who are jumping down people's throats about Chris Bosch now. Okay, because by the way, Chris Bosch was the most important player. Eris Bosch just said it. LeBron James said it. You've got to have some said it. He was the most important player because there was no do believe it skillset on that team. That's why he was the most important player. It's not because he was better than Dwayne or LeBron. It's because of what UD said that Dwayne, until he went the other way injury wise, could do some of the things that LeBron did and vice versa. Nobody could do what Chris did. So that's where there was. But he fans jumped all over Jeff Teague for that. And some of those same he fans, I am sure were in my mentions for those four years ripping Bosch apart the way that they rip BAM apart because to me, they are the most similar in terms of views of them. So I'll let you go. So everyone thinks I am constantly defending BAM and I do. And part of it is because I remember the Chris Bosch experience and I'm glad that you went there because that's where I was going to start is that there's a reason why Eric Spolstra, why he gets defensive when people ask questions about both of those guys. And when he says things like, you know, that's something that someone with the untrained I would say, or just the different things like that, because I think these two players Bosch in his role in Miami specifically and BAM, what they do transcends the box score. Let's, let me level set by saying BAM is not played well lately. He looks like he's lost confidence. He looks like he is, I will say that although he's lost confidence, he hasn't lost his aggressiveness. And he used to just go into a shell and not shoot and we would be begging for him to shoot. Well, he's still shooting. 15 field goal attempts a game. He's just dipped between behind 20 points per game after last night's loss where he, you know, was abysmal. We can acknowledge all of that and not say, Oh my gosh, Evan Mobley is better than Chris or better than BAM out of bio or BAM out of bio can in no way be the second best player on a title contending team. I just don't think that there's anything that showed us that that's the case. I mean, the heat of if BAM is not good enough to be the second best player on a contender, then what are all these other guys who aren't advancing further than Miami? And where do they rank? And so I just think it gets a little out of hand when we start to get hyper focused on a bad stretch of games by one player. It happens with Tyler. I've been critical of Tyler. And it's I'm more critical of players than I am of BAM because I think there's so much that he's having to clean up for. And maybe this becomes a roster construction conversation. Maybe it becomes how do you help BAM so that he doesn't have to take such a burden on on one end of the floor where there's nothing left on offense on certain nights, particularly if he's lost confidence. And then there's just a part of going through a season where sometimes you have a bad stretch. It's okay to be in a slump and come out of it. How do guys come out of it? They play through it. They're going to continue to play through BAM. He's not a player that's going to get, you know, someone else. You can't duplicate what he does, just like you said about Chris Bosh. So I think that that ultimately means that he's got to play through it. No, no, in no way shape or form am I saying BAM should get a pass. They need him to play better. I just think on the road at Dallas, at Oklahoma City is not when we should get existential as it relates to BAM out of bio. I just think it's completely off the wall. And ultimately, I think that you're going to see him turn this around rather quickly. He better turn it around rather quickly. And to the last point about us not being critical of guys, I feel like we've often, we've been pretty objective about all heat players throughout this season. And I say that because when Jimmy has not given his all, we've called it out. When Tyler has not fit or appears as if there's certain things he could be doing differently with the ball out of his hands, we've called it out. When BAM is struggling, we're calling it out. So I think that there is a perception that we do carry water a little bit more than maybe we did at one time. You know, there's a difference between Lefty Lafe with the godfather Abby and Greg Sylvander on five on the floor. And so I know that I'm going on here, but there is a little bit of a, I think that a reputation precedes me when it comes to just blindly, blindly backing these guys. But BAM is a little bit of a different story for me. Just like Chris Bosch was, and just like Chris Bosch is in retrospect now when he wasn't back at that time. I'm glad you made that point about where we've had to come because you and I started on polar opposites of this thing where I was journalists, objective. You're not supposed to carry water for anybody in that position. I mean, I was a classically trained journalist, as they said. Okay, I went to the journalism school that holds all this journalistic principles up. I went to Columbia, New York, and you're objective. That's the way you do it. Well, the ground shifted under my feet, right? Like first thing, newspapers died. That's part of it. So obviously they were kind of the culture carriers of objectivity or they were supposed to be. I mean, they're basically and no offense to those who were still working at them. I worked at newspapers for 20 years, but we know they're dead entities walking at this point or crawling. Okay, so that changed. And the other thing that changed it was ESPN changed it because they started allowing their commentators to openly root. Michael Wilbon was a Bulls fan. Like we knew that. Skip Bayless, you know, Bruce for the Cowboys. Okay, all that. So the objectivity thing, which I always thought was a little bit stupid, honestly, on the sports end. It's not like, I think objectivity matters when covering political stuff. Obviously, that doesn't exist now either. Okay, those were so polarized. And we've got Fox News on one side and MSNBC on the other. But the thing was always again, you don't root for teams. That's why you don't you can't wear teen gear in the press box. That's why you're not supposed to take pictures of the players. That's why I don't have with the exception of when they were retired. I don't have pictures with any of the players. So I do think that that's changed. The other thing is changing these entities like ours because I think we've kind of gone the direction of and I have this term trademark fan list. Okay, where it's kind of in the middle, right? Where where it's, you know, Brady was a fan. You were a fan. Alex was a fan. Okay, that's where that's where you guys came from. Now you're more analysts. So you've come a little bit on the spectrum here, closer to the middle. And I have two from the other direction. I would say we're probably to say a scale of one to 10. Whereas on objectivity, maybe you guys were a one and I was a 10. Now, maybe you guys are a three and I'm a six or seven. I think that's because I've acknowledged and with this network, and this is the network as a whole of five reasons, is the fans want to hear from people who care. They don't they don't want it to be, you know, just journalists who doesn't, you know, isn't doing anything but reporting what they see and that's it because they want to know that and collecting a check, right? Like they want to know that there's some investment in it. Okay, so I'm invested in this team. I don't root for them. Maybe the way that some of the others in network too, but I'm invested. It's good for the network when they're good. Okay, it's good for the network when they're compelling. And so I'm rooting for a story and I'm rooting for us, to be honest, okay, and we're better when the heat are better, okay, when they're making deep play off front. So I say all of that before we sort of dive into BAM here more specifically to say that I want BAM to succeed. I like BAM personally. I'm sorry. I'm a human being. I like him. I like the way that he carries himself for the franchise. I like what he represents. I love the relationship he has with his mother and then he's so public about it. I love his story. I just like the way he treats people. I mean, I had my daughter with me because I had her one day and they were training up at FAU and I had her with me. And so I asked the heat, could I bring her? And I have a photo of BAM bringing her over to have a conversation with her. He's just a good person. And so, yes, I wanted him to succeed. Shoot me, okay? But we're also going to dive into it. He has sucked the last two games. Like, just sucked. Like, he's been awful. And I don't know if he's, again, he's in his head. Like you said, like Brady has said, it may be some of that and some of it is, there are things that are going wrong and then it leads to something mental. So it starts with the physical and all that. And there are legitimate things and I think this is the discussion we need to have about BAM ceiling because you and whether we're expecting too much, okay? And maybe we are partially responsible for that. So you have coined the phrase no ceiling, right? I see a ceiling in certain places right now, okay? But I see a ceiling he can crash through. But again, like you mentioned, it's not that he's not shooting. His not attempts this year are exactly. By the way, Pat Riley said, and BAM said two years ago, they wanted his shot attempts to be a 15. You know where he's at right now? 15. Exactly. 15.0 on the down last year was 14.9. Okay. So he's continuing to shoot his efficiency is down. And I don't like his shot. Okay, his efficiency is down. He's gone from, he won't shoot the mid range. And so has talked about that. Okay, about the improvements he's made in Brook Lopez and everything that happened with that, right? The catalyst for him changing the way that he plays where now it's like all he does. And he does it even when he's not in rhythm. And I would like to see him do more towards the basket. But if he's going to do more towards the basket, and this is where the ceiling is, well, as our gag Carter Hannah pointed out on playback the other night, we welcome you to join us during the game, because we do this in real time. He needs a left hand like he needs to be able to finish with his left. He needs to be decisive. And you know, around the basket, he needs at times not to hold the ball so low, because teams, I mentioned that a couple of years ago, the teams were, were, were, were, you know, basically, they were locked into that he puts the ball down. They're going to strip it. Okay, and I think he's gotten a little bit better at that. But what I'm saying is, you can say he has a ceiling and he's kind of bumped against it. But there, I do think with work, there are things he can still crash through to get to another level. And I think they need him to. Okay. And, and I think that's a reasonable criticism to have. And I think when he does struggle, he has to stay out of his own hand. And that's what concerned me about this last game was, he just looked like he was forcing everything. Like you say, he goes the other direction. And I think part of it is roster destruction. He does not have a backup center on this team that they trust. Okay. So Kevin Love is the only one. They've had to do it by necessity. They have missed Kevin desperately since he's been out. Okay. So Kevin is a huge part of this team. And they, it's this problem where they can't really survive the non-bam. And it's he went to Yovitch, so went to Yovitch in the game. This last one, which is what Brady and we all suggested that he do. He did that. And they had slightly better results than putting Thomas Bryan out there. And he doesn't seem to trust Orlando Robinson. But ultimately, yes, they do need to address that position. I don't think that I don't, because Kevin's, you know, mid to late thirties. Like, I don't think that it's something you have to draft high for something like that. But they have to do a better job of developing bigs. And I, you know, that's it. I mean, they've managed to mine, they have a certain prototype that they do very well with developmentally. And I'm not talking about the guys they draft like Bam or Tyler. Okay. So I understand they've developed those guys. I'm talking about the guys who were nothing that they create something out of. There's a long line in the organization, particularly recently, of wings and gold, that they've been able to do this with the Highsmiths, Kayla Martins, etc. There's and shooters. Okay, they are very good at that. We'll see what Swider becomes. Okay. They have struggled a little bit more to develop point guards and bigs. And, you know, people are going to point to Whiteside. He would kind of be the last one that really popped before that would be Joel Anthony, I guess, before that maybe UD. There's a long line of those guys, most of them are going to fail. Okay. But they haven't, I don't think they, Orlando Robinson has not become, I think, what maybe they hoped he would be this year. And so it looks like the search continues for that. And I do think that puts pressure on Bam, because Bam's minutes have to be impactful two ways when he's out there, because when he's not out there, and if it's not Kevin, okay, who can come in for him, they're going to lose ground. And so I think a lot of these things have come together. And plus, again, team scouting the fact that Bam won't use his left, hesitate sometimes, brings the ball down too low, doesn't seem to have a ton of post moves. And then we're saying this Greg, and I'll go to you now, we say this doesn't have a ton of moves. And then we were praising him three games ago, it was just three games ago. For this, oh my God, he used that spin late in the game to finish off a game. Like, it's in there some, it's like, it's not like he's athletically incapable of it, but he's not showing you're not a consistent basis. You know, when I said no ceiling, I, there's a part of me that loves that nickname. And I think that it's so applicable for him, because there are so many elements of his game that do not have a ceiling, and particularly on the side of the ball that you can't quantify as easily on defense. But I also understand where people are never going to let me live that down. I constantly get in my mentions, well, Bam has a ceiling. Listen, folks, like, of course, every human being has some sort of a ceiling. Like, what are we doing here? Are you really taking it that literally where you have to come and remind me that there's a chance that this basketball player could potentially have a ceiling? Every player has some sort of a ceiling. You know, like, it's where people get a little bit too literal there, and it just sounds ridiculous, frankly, for me to even have to argue the point. I just think this is a scenario where they got to get him in good spots where he can convert, but he's got to make the buckets. There's also been a lot of bunnies he's been missing lately. And so, there are things that he needs to look inward for, but I think without anybody off the bench for him right now, they've clearly miscalculated what Thomas Bryan or Orlando Robinson could provide. I thought Orlando would pop. When he was on our show, I said directly after that show, that guy's going to be the backup center here, because it appeared as if he really understood what he was supposed to be coming here and doing. It hasn't translated, and I don't know why, but I think that it's just if you look at everyone else in the roster, like, let's look at Jimmy. They have a carbon copy of him that is so close that they're doing commercials together, where they have one following the other. There's nobody like that, like with Bam out of bio. And so, I just think they kind of tried, though, didn't they? I mean, they tried with the guy who actually had a big game for the Knicks last night. They kind of tried with the Precious. Like, I mean, a different and they paid for it, right? Because they didn't take Maxie, which they could have had a carbon copy. Well, it didn't turn except, but in terms of pedigree, they could have a carbon copy of 14, right? In Maxie, who might have, you know, supplanted 14. Yeah. Actually, but they went after him. We were calling him Bam, too. Now, he's a totally different player than Bam as he's evolved. He's more of a three-point shooter. Obviously, he's nowhere near the defensive player that Bam is, but that was, I think, kind of the point was to have, because we weren't even discussing, I remember asking Pat the question, can Bam and Precious play together? And he's like, well, that'll be something for Spo, but that's something that we would look at and all the rest of that. But I think the initial plan was Precious was going to emerge as Bam's backup, at least as a small ball five, you know, in those lineups. And of course, they traded him for Kyle and sort of the rest of his history. But yeah, I mean, they do like certain prototypes. It's just hard to find a Bam prototype like that. That's the thing. And I think doesn't that make the point, like doesn't that make the point that he's a unique special player that like it's very hard to find someone who can roughly be any of the things that he does, right? And it's kind of like, it's like CB, and it's kind of like a quarterback, right? So when you have a starting quarterback, and you want to bring in someone to back him up, or you draft somebody, you know, you try to bring in somebody who does some of the same things so that you don't have to start, you know, you don't have to totally change your own life. Right. Like, I like, I never really understood like the dolphins at McDaniel's thinking on his backups for to because I don't know that Mike White runs stuff the same way that to a does Bridgewater certainly didn't, you know, but you look at like, if I'm Baltimore right now, you got Lamar Jackson, like Justin Fields is out there, like, you know, I mean, probably paying too much to get him, but you got to understand my point, like, Justin Fields maybe goes to a place like Philadelphia, plays behind hurts. Okay, you know, if it hurts gets hurt, which has happened, like, Justin Fields could probably come in and run a lot of that stuff. But it's hard to find these facsimiles. And it's very hard to find one of them. He is in a lot of ways, one of one. And I think, again, when we say stuff like that, fans take it as, okay, we're saying he's the best player on the team, or he's infallible and we're not saying that we're saying it's the same thing with Bosch, okay. No, Chris Bosch was not the best player on the big three heat. He might have been the second best at times. He was not, when Dwayne started breakdown, he was not the best. We know who the best was. Okay, the heat got LeBron at the peak of his powers. I still feel 1213 was the best LeBron ever. You can give me the 16 calves year. I still think it was 1213. And I saw it every day home and road. Okay, but they were lost when Chris Bosch was out. And for those who are making the point, I just want to tie the bow on this because it's been annoying me about Twitter the past couple of days. Like, yes, people are making the point of the Indiana series in 2012. I was right there, okay, where Bosch went out and LeBron and Dwayne went nuts in the last three games. And I've said that's the best I've ever seen LeBron and Dwayne play together. They had to do that because they didn't have Bosch, okay. They had to because Spaux was playing, he tried seven seconds of Dexter Pittman. Okay, everybody else until it was like just effing. Okay, here, LeBron Dwayne and Dwayne had Dwayne was, you know, in his own head, we just got guys being in their own head. Dwayne was in his own head during that series had to go visit Tom Creen. He had to go get his knee shot up, all kinds of different things that he had to do just to get back on the floor. And then he and LeBron went nuts. Don't use that as an example. They didn't need Chris Bosch. Okay, please. Okay, they desperate. That's all we talked about. How are they going to replace Bosch? And they were struggling in that series against Boston in part because Bosch shouldn't have been playing. He was playing with the torn ribcage muscle or whatever. And and they he was not himself at that point. And they tried to get it to the finish line. And then of course LeBron went nuts in game six and then they won game seven. So I don't want out of state heat fans telling me what I saw. I was right there. Okay, they needed Chris Bosch. He was incredibly important and Bamb is important now. I want to go to a sponsor. And then I want to get into something you said earlier, because I want to I'm going to challenge you on this a little bit because you said about Bosch about this, you know, on the Bosch conversation about them being the second best player and whether you can be a contending team in that circumstance. I want to I want to get into that next before we do. I want to mention a great sponsor of the five reasons sports network. Our friends are over at tub culture. You can find them at shop tub culture.com. This is handcrafted bath and body care products. Local business support local business, but it's just really cool stuff. Check out the site. Seriously, before you're done here, if you have a significant other, this is perfect for you. Trust me. Okay, shop tub culture.com and then shop tub culture.com. We're also not that far away from Mother's Day. 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So when you're ready to get away, we're ready to give Denver all of our Mile High Heart. But today at Southwest.com, based on USDOT O&D scheduled daily flights from Denver starting in July 2023, across all prior days of the 512-2023 fair difference may apply failure to cancel a reservation at least 10 minutes prior to schedule departure may result in four-minute travel funds, first and second check bags waiting size limits apply. All right, I want to give you something here. You ready? Let's go. First thing, I'm going to say this at a very start. You cannot argue he can't be a top two player and a contending team because he has been. So that's okay. You're not going to argue that, but I'm saying that for the general public. When you when you made it to two finals and an Eastern Conference finals within a shot of going to a third finals in four years, you've proven you can and you probably would have won the championship if you hadn't got if he hadn't got hurt in in the finals against the Lakers. Okay, if he and Dragotch have been healthy, I still think they win that final. So nobody can argue he can't be a top two, but let's see where he ranks against other number two. Jalen Brown, the second best player in Boston? Yes. Bam or Jalen? I mean, I'm taking bam, but people are going to say that and you'll be surprised. I may not take bam on all these, but I'm taking bam in that circumstance strictly for the defensive side of the basketball. All right, bam or dame? Dame. Although they're not going anywhere by the way. No, not at all. I mean, like, if we were to unpack Milwaukee, I don't think that they have a run in them. But if we're just doing individual players, come on, dame is I mean, he's dame. I don't know how they lost that game anyway. Okay, bam or Maxi? Bam. Bam or Mobley slash Allen slash Garland. Next. Bam or Julius Randall? Next. I mean, we are arguing that Julius Randall is their second best player, right? Yeah, correct. I would think yeah, behind Jalen Benson, he's the second guy. Are there any other contenders in the East that I've missed here? I don't know. Yeah, it's not a contender yet. You're taking bam or Siakam? I'm taking bam. Okay. Orlando, Franz Wagner, or bam? I'm taking bam. Right now. Yes. Right now. Yeah. Right. Franz has got a pretty good upside, but it's a different kind of upside. But yes, right. All right, so we've covered these. Bam or current Paul George? Um, that's a tough one. Never fans want to kill Paul George right now. I don't, he's been in. I love Paul George. I wish I mean, to me, if if Clippers want to get rid of him, they want to make a run in him. I'm fine with that. But current Paul George. I think he's ranked higher than bam if we were to just rank NBA players straight down the line. Okay. Bam or Booker? I think Booker's ranked a little bit higher than bam. And West is where this gets dicey. Well, that's going to be my booker. I would say Booker is their second best player still, right? I mean, yeah. As long as KD is breathing. Right. Correct. Bam or Jamal Murray? Whoo. That's a fun one. Shit. You got to go Jamal Murray because he's won a championship. I would, I would go Jamal. You know why I would go Jamal? It's part of it is fit, honestly. I don't think you can argue as much success as Bamb and Jimmy have had that anybody, any duo in the league fits as well as yokech and Murray do. And it's not, it's not just on the court skill set. Although a lot of it is that it's also just personality. They just are, that's why, that's why I mean, he doesn't know how to cover them. There's no strife. There's no drama. It's just like, they're just two guys who know how to play. They get a long play and be quiet. I'm a big Jamal Murray admirer. I just think I've used great. You know where this is heading? It's almost like Bamb can be the second best player on a championship team, but I don't know that he can be the second best offensive player on a championship team. That's what's resonating with me as you're going through these players. Well, I have another thought on it, but let's finish it because I think you're ahead of somewhere. Bamb or current Chet? I'm sticking with Bamb for now, but that could change in time. Chet is really impressive. So is so is jail in there there. That team is. Oh my god. If they we're talking about this on playback last night, like if they take a press and cash in some of those first round picks for one more store, I wonder what it would be. I mean, people are talking about MB. I don't know what the fit is there, but shoot it. You can trade two first round picks and throw Kawai in that mix or I think there's just, I don't know, they're going to be people better beat them now. I know everybody said that about OKC with Hardin. Obviously with Hardin joined Durant and they hit on all those picks with Westbrook, etc. And they had a baka and for a little while they had Jeff Green, but that was blown up because they already didn't want to pay Hardin and it was cheapness. If they're willing to pay these guys, you better beat them now because we're looking at a lot of Denver OKC, Western Conference finals. And so sorry, Stephen. I agree. Sibonus. He had the worst plot. I've never seen a guy shrink in the playoffs the way he did last year. I'm taking BAM all day and twice on Sundays. Current A.D. A.D. Although BAM is outplayed when they play against each other. He has, but I do know that in the finals and BAM was hurt and also in some matchups. A.D.'s mix of offense and defense. That gives BAM some trouble. I bet if you asked BAM his toughest covers, A.D. would be atop the list. And also, I mean, on Team USA, I think A.D. will end up starting its center with BAM as the primary backup. And so I'm going to try to be objective here and say A.D. They've also won the championship, by the way. No, I'll give you A.D.s above that cat. Oh, you know, I'm never taking Carl Anthony Towns over BAM out of bio. I value defense too much to do that. People will point at stats and offense. And I understand all that. There's no way that BAM doesn't contribute to winning more than Carl Anthony Towns in my book. Ingram. BAM, still. Ingram hasn't blossomed. He hasn't got to that point. He hasn't been on that stage. Or McCollum takes your pick. Kyrie. Perik. Kyrie. Double package too. I mean, everything he brings. Yeah, that's where Eileen BAM because you just have less crap going on. And you would think a team with him and Luca would be the one seed in the West. And they're just not. So I mean, if you're going off talent alone, it's Kyrie, but it's not talent alone with Kyrie. And then the final one. This is a hard one to figure out because they've this guy was never really considered their second best player. But because of the clients of others and defections, I guess it'd be Draymond with the Warriors. I guess right now. I mean, it's coming coming. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm still taking BAM over all those guys. I feel like that's the like BAM is the exact player that if Golden State could acquire to kind of like breathe life back into that, they would love to do that. So I'm saying BAM is probably their perfect player. So there's no one on that roster outside of Steph that I think should be ranked ahead. And those are the 10 teams that are the top 10 in the West right now. Memphis, obviously, and the job was healthy. We'd be talking about Triple J and others and Dams ahead of him also and he's dominating him when he's playing. So I'm going through this. Okay. The only team in these where the number two is clearly better than BAM, a more impactful than BAM. And again, this is if we're leaning towards the offensive part of this is Daine. That's it. Okay. Now in the West, different conversation, okay, where, you know, we would Booker, Murray, Anthony Davis. I mean, those would be the ones that we would talk about here, I guess, right? I mean, others might say Cat or there's might say Kyrie. And sometimes, like in Oklahoma City's boat, they're three and they're four or so good that it makes the two conversation harder to have. And then there one is absolutely dominant. I think he should be the MVP this year. So there is nuance to this, but you're right. You've narrowed it down. I mean, I think Jalen, I end up being their second best player. We'll see. But yeah, they're they're just so loaded. So here's what I here's where I come down. BAM out of my absolutely can be the second best player on the Eastern Conference champion. Like, absolutely. First thing, we've seen it. Okay. Twice. Almost three times. And we're saying even now, he's still the second best number two in the Eastern Conference, right? The issue is the team you're going to see out West, right? You're right. But like, that's not this is not a way to disparage BAM to say he can't be your number two. I mean, like, all these teams of these sort of struggle against who comes out of the West, even Boston, which we just saw what happened when Boston went into Denver. So I'm just trying to add a little bit of nuance to this. Like, to say that BAM has gone through a bad stretch that he's in his head that he needs to learn to use his left hand, he needs not to hold the ball so low. He needs to be quicker and more decisive in the post. Okay, all of those things are legitimate. And he needs to snap out of it freaking quickly. Okay, man. Like now and probably will against Washington. Okay, I know he's been a little banged up, so I'm assuming he's playing, but probably will. And then everybody's gonna say, well, it's just the wizards, but you know, but he probably will bounce out of it. And then he's gonna see Yokish next week. And we're gonna have this whole conversation all over again. But he absolutely needs to be better. And the reason he needs to be better is because they are so damn reliant on him. And they are so damn reliant on him because he's a really good, unique player. Right? Yeah. Okay. And if they get to the finals and they go against one of these teams where he's not the best number two on the floor, they probably will lose. And everybody will say, well, they wasted Jimmy's window and all this. I don't know. Maybe it's the new fan in me. I'll take the finals run. Okay. And if this is a guy who sucks, I'll, I'll live with it. Hey, Pat Riley has everyone always says winning or misery. It's championship or bust. Pat Riley has always said since he's been in Miami, we want to compete for championships, compete for championships. That's what the goal is. It's not obviously there's winning or there's misery. But you just want to be in the conversation where you got a shot at it. And to even argue that you don't have a shot at it when Vam is there is crazy. And I think that that's part of why he is the culture carrier, why he's kind of the torch bearer of the organization to some degree as UD and D Wade file away. It's because they know if you have BAM, you're already got a foundational piece that leads typically to winning basketball. And so that's just where I come down ultimately. There's conversations on whether you need more scoring around BAM or different kinds of players around BAM so that you can ultimately get over the hump once you reach the finals. That's a different conversation. But I think them finals runs, we shouldn't take them for granted. Go ask a magic fan, go ask a Hornet fan about finals runs. And they'll tell you very quickly that they would take BAM out of buy it when the Miami Heat success rate. Well, it's kind of like what Spose said. You mentioned being, I mean Spose said it flat out. He says, we think we're one of those teams. And they think they're one of those teams largely because they're anchored by Jimmy and BAM. And regardless of fit, which we've talked about it, it's rare to have your two best players who are on three point shooters, although Jimmy I guess is trying to change the narrative on that. And I'm okay with BAM's shot diet maybe going down a little bit, even as much as we talked about him remaining aggressive and getting up to 15. But for that to happen, then other guys need to be more efficient to make up for it. We saw Jaime Hakka's last night. Okay, like, if you guys better shoot 10 and 12, 10 and 13, I'm okay with him taking more shots. If Tyler comes back and he can get in a groove where there's a little bit more efficiency there and he's getting to the line more often, then I'm okay with that. If Duncan, you know, who you know, finally kind of had a little bit of a clunker game after he's played so well of late, is going for it. I'm fine with running Duncan, BAM, you know, DHOs that end up with Duncan threes, okay, or even Duncan mitties at this point, or going to the wreck. But what I'm not okay with is the all or nothing nature of these conversations. They just kind of drive me insane. And for those, again, I'm, I don't know if I'll be alive in 10, 12 years when BAM's in the Hall of Fame. But when that happens, ultimately, all these people who are tweeting 50 straight times, BAM sucks, he can't play at this. Don't be defending him against the Boston writers then, okay? Can I say he doesn't belong there? Can I finish the show with one thing? Yes. No ceiling. That's a good day, everybody. 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