The Killer B's: Joel Blank & Jeremy Branham
11/21 Hour 1 - What Would You Trade to Bring Giannis to the Rockets?
"Your child's first step is a big step towards their future. With first step by college invest, every Colorado child born or adopted on or after January 1, 2020 will receive a free $115 contribution to their college invest college savings account. Plus, we'll match a percentage of your contributions in the coming years helping you save even more. Enroll today and start your child off on the right foot. Visit ColoradoFirststep.org to get started, and claim your $115 now. "The Killer Beast!" ESPN 97-5 and 92-5 proudly present, "The Killer Beast." "It's definitely a fan of the Killer Beast." Don't sweat technique. Now from a Veritex Community Bank Studios, bring you the fastest three hours in Houston Sports Radio. Here's Joel Blank and Jeremy Branham. "Ooh, what a big damn, hey, how are we doing?" "He's blank, I'm Branham, it's Brian behind the glass and it's a Thursday edition of The Killer Beast on ESPN 97-5 and ESPN 92-5. What did I miss in the last 15 minutes of The Killer G's? That's my meditation time, as you know, so I was meditating. I wasn't listening to the last 15-30 minutes of The Killer G's. Apparently they went off, they were angry, they were mad at us. "Yes, sir, there's Blake." "When they'd be in a mosque and be thrown around." With the angry G's, Paul was, of course, reacting to the tweet that you put out with who would win the fight. "Yeah, amazingly low for Paul." And then wondering if there would be such a fight. And then Joe decided to put in his two sets. "What was his contention, Joe's?" Joe was pretty fired up around the, let's just say, the style in which Garrett tweets. "Yeah, I mean, he's an aggregator, I mean, he's an aggregator. He aggregates Texans information. There's no doubt about that." And Garrett got mad that Paul called him an engagement farmer, which he is. I mean, we all are, though. Every single time that we tweet, we're farming engagement. Right. It's like, if Brian sends out a show tweet, what are we doing? We're farming engagement. Whenever I send out a tweet about, "Should you resign Alex Breggman? What am I doing? I'm farming engagement." When Paul posts his videos, what does he do? He's farming engagement. We all farm engagement. I think sometimes we lose sight of what that word actually is. But yeah, the Paul, in terms of who would win a fight between Paul and Garrett, was amazingly bad. I do feel like people are sleeping on Paul's athletes in the bed. I voted for Paul. I don't think that it would even be close. Let me, Garrett, is a Division 1 athlete. Paul played flag football tabs. What did Paul get? He played receiver. Oh, did he really? Did he really? Yeah. Yeah. I'm just kidding about Paul's 6A flag football. He was a legitimate high school football player. Yeah, but the fight was Texans' commoner winning 72% to 28%. I think it should be pretty close to even money. That's a heavy, the public's heavy on Texans' commoner. On Blessen. I think that's probably because he farms engagement. He's got a lot of people that like among social media, quite frankly. But yeah, it's turned into- Paul have a lot of followers, too. He should. But I think, I mean, Texas' commoner might have retweeted it. I don't know. I don't know what happened. Paul, he did. Paul, he did. I guess, I heard the guys talking about the fact that he took from what you guys talked about on the air and retweeted it. Okay. Well, there you go. Maybe he had some following that helped boost up the poll. But I'm just happy that we're getting a lot of drama out of this. Alex has been saying that we should have this fight for $1.99 on pay-per-view. I'd pay $1.99 to watch the fight. I'd play $1.99 to watch commoner run some routes on Paul. See who would win the one-on-one match up. Blankers, you could quarterback it. A little lefty, though. Might be tough for some people. Spin might be different, but yeah. Yeah, might be tough for some people. I made coffee. I made coffee, by the way. Oh, did you? Yeah, we're out of coffee filters, though. We used paper towels. Is that okay? No. It's all we had. I mean, the options were either doing it, you know, we're out of coffee to a beer. Doing a raw dog with no coffee filter, doing it with paper napkins, doing it with a paper plate. Like the only choice I had was a paper towel. Paper towel is a definitely plan B, not a paper plate. Exactly. I had no other option to use the paper towel. But at the same time. No, doing things. I hope that the paper towel was of a certain thickness enough to at least hold up and not give way. It wasn't in the trash, but I'm saying if it breaks, it has holes, not the granules get in there. Yeah, it's a point. We'll have to see. Yeah. I'll let you know how it goes. Brian, you stay out of this conversation. You know nothing about coffee. It also got pretty cold overnight. Did you? It was in the 40s. I don't think it was that bad. I mean, cold is a relative term. That is true. Did you turn on the heater? No. You didn't turn on the heater. Well, I actually opened the back door this morning and let the dogs go in and out freely. Be honest with yourselves, Hive 713780 ESPN. Did you use the heater overnight for the first time all year? I personally did not, but when I woke up this morning, Brandon, baby is a little bit cold and I felt like a bad father, so I turned on the heater whenever we woke up this morning at 7 a.m. Like for us at night, we drop it down to 68. Same. So like it's already on 68 with the auto temperature set. Uh-huh. Well, but that only works. Do you have auto or do you have cold heat setting or auto? So so the heater will kick on. But it didn't have to. Okay. See, we were at 60 whenever I went upstairs this morning. It was 60 degrees upstairs, which is why I was like, I feel like a bad dad. Right. So I turned on the heater upstairs. So I admit it, I did turn on the heater today at 7 a.m. in the morning. Hive, did you turn on the heater today? Be honest. 7137803776 rockets played a basketball game yesterday. They look good to beating up on the Pacers. I felt bad for Jarrus Walker, Goku, Rick Carlisle got teed up, but rockets hammering hammering the Pacers yesterday, 130 to 113, Alpe Shingun went off. You were getting your Jersey retired at the halftime ceremony. That was the night though. I had a great time. I really did. It was, it was an awesome experience to catch up with all the guys that made up all those two teams and what they accomplished for the city of Houston and just, you know, I've said this before, but the relationship with everybody in that organization was like a tight knit family. I think you, you have a lot of that going on with your, your Cougs family and, and from Rudy and on down and all the players, it was just like, you know, we didn't even realize how much time had passed and I was talking to like Carl Herrera and Otis Thorpe and those guys and it's like, look back and go, Oh my God, it's been that long. But then you start sharing stories and memories and remember when we did this and when that happened and this and that and it was just the whole night was so focused on just trying to catch up with as many of the guys as you could and, and share stories, but it was cool. Yeah, that was, it was cool to see, you know, they showed it a little bit on the, on the shit as I was watching the broadcast. You see, I couldn't figure out who the guy was on the end. Whatever they had, it was chucky brown with the hat kind of tilt, it was chucky brown. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that was one of two guys and Pete Kilcutt and I go wait, we, we, and we've stayed in contact for a long time, but it was, it was kind of different because we thought we were all going to be in one big, like banquet room and they kind of had us rotating and going from like the Lexus lounge, the PNC lounge to like a, there was a court side sweet dream stayed in Tillman's suite a lot. But they were rotating everybody. And so it was like, well, when we're there and we're here, can we catch up in the hallway or whatever? And the only two guys I didn't catch up with were, uh, chill cut and chucky brown. Oh, really? Yeah. Everybody else. Okay. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool that you're able to experience and I've, I've reading, you know, of course I did experience the rock. It's I was young and who's not with the team. Like you were though, obviously, like everything I've read about them was how tight that they were. No doubt. And then like reading the Akimalaja one book right now, um, they talked about how he was kind of like to himself in the early nineties and then like Kenny Smith is the one that kind of like broke him out of his shell a little bit. Yeah. And like made everybody close knit and tight. And you know, you think about because the end of the bench guys were like, especially the second year was Charles Jones, Pete chill cut and chucky Brown and everybody was like, you shouldn't even be in the league and who are you guys? And then each guy played their own kind of special role in certain games that, that got him victories and dream was also awful with names, but he just knew their numbers and he would, he would just refer to them by their numbers a lot, but was always like giving them credit for what they were able to do. And it was, it was really cool to see all those guys share kind of what their memories were of back in that time, because everybody's different based on if this was your only title. And Mary O'Lade, your point on Kenny Smith, you know, because Kenny's got the busiest schedule now. And Mario said, I was walking out with Mario and he goes, I haven't seen Kenny smile that much in 10 years. Really? And it was like, that's, that's good to hear. That's cool. I'm glad that they got them back together. I'm glad that you got to experience it. I'm sure that was a really fun night. And then they hammered the basers in the process. What do you think of the, the jerseys today homage to the summit in that championship era? To me, it's, it was a little bit shocking because I went through a lot of that where there was like this whole kind of discourse between the Rockets and the summit people. And they were always fighting about things. Interesting. So to see that summit logo and Rudy's son Trey was the first one to go. Hey, man, I got to go get some of that gear and then I saw the summit on a Rockets jersey and shorts. He got that's awesome. And I thought that that was really kind of the kind of like a way to bury the hatchet for all those years where they were nitpicking each other to have the summit be on the warm-ups and the logo and be a primary part of the logo was pretty cool. I bet you, I bet you less wouldn't have done it. I bet you're, I totally believe you're right. I didn't realize the, the feud between the two. Oh, yeah. It probably required that new ownership. I think you're absolutely right on that one. Yep. All right. That's a, that was cool. I like the jerseys too. I thought they're pretty cool. I love the shorts. Maybe a little too much black. Maybe not enough yellow, but that's very nitpicking. You know, why would you take my fashion advice? That'd be the worst thing you would do. I think that's the, the one sediment that most people have said is if you're going to go back and kind of look back at that era, whether you use the summit logo or not, the colors should be the catch-up and muster. Yeah. Yeah. I thought there should be a little bit more yellow, not quite the black that they had, but they're also making it look like the banner, which does have a lot of black. I would you think of the game? I thought it was great. I thought that, you know, the fact that you held Tyree, Tyree's Halliburton to single digits for the majority, you know, just completely shut him down. Just shows you the kind of defense that seems capable of. And you're constantly getting contributions from just about anybody that a duica's number that caused their number. And yeah, Indiana might have been a little bit short handed, but overall, I just think that the effort that the Rockets put forth, it doesn't matter who plays on the other team. If they're able to play that consistent on both ends of the floor and they're shooting the ball at any kind of consistent percentage at all, they're going to compete with most teams on most nights, no matter who's on the other team. And that's what's impressive to me. We've talked about it doesn't have to be just Al P or or green. You're getting guys that are giving you double figures, you're getting the veterans every now and then they're having that kind of game. You're getting contributions across the board and defensively, it seems like the young guys are finally not just the buy in, but they're understanding their how they rotate switch and their roles on defense, which is big. Yeah, they're incredibly deep. Like they're just so deep, like they don't really have a star player. Like you look a lot of the star and scrub teams. You look like the big three, like if you go back to Miami back in the day, whenever they had LeBron and Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade, sure they had some good role players like Patty A even Ray Allen at that stage of his career, like still really good. But there was a massive drop off from those big three. You look at the Lakers now. Yeah, they have some good players and Dalton connects playing good basketballs and rookie all that. But there's a huge drop off from LeBron and Anthony Davis. Jason Tatum, like that's a very deep team. Jason Tatum, I think is the clear star in Boston. Jalen Brown would be in the conversation after that. And then a drop off there. You look at Milwaukee, you got the Greek freak huge drop off after that. Just any of the any team around the NBA, you look at that they have the star, they might have a like a Robin. And then it's this huge drop off. I don't think that the Rockets have a huge drop off from their top player to their second best player. And in fact, I think their best player changes by the night. Alfie Shenguin was their best player yesterday. Jalen Green at times has been their best player. I mean, Thompson, who I actually thought played pretty poor yesterday at times has been their best player. Tari Easton has been their best player. Fred Van Vlietz had nights where he's been their best player. I don't think there's a whole lot of drop off from number one to number two. That could be good. And it could be bad. The good part of that is that, you know, if somebody has an off night, there's plenty of others that can pick up the slack. The bad is that you don't have that true go to guy that might be able to carry you to a victory whenever times are bad. But that's what I like about this team. I think Kenny Smith mentioned in the broadcast, whenever Vanessa interviewed him down on the floor, he said it reminds him of like the early version of the Celtics before they were winning at a really high level. Like they hadn't had a star like a merge quite yet is before Tatum just blossomed. It was before Jalen Brown blossomed. He said that's what it reminds him of. And I can see that a little bit too. But you're getting contributions from pretty much everybody, not every single night because Jalen Green yesterday, not his best game. Jabari hasn't wasn't very good. The start of the year. Fred Van Vliet was in a shooting slump to start the season. I thought Alpe Shinghoon got off to a slow start. But all of like the top seven players have had multiple games already this season, 16 games in where they've been the top player or the second best player. And I think that's why the Rockets are off to an 11 and five star. I had people asking me, you know, who's jock Landale? But at the same time, I said, look, he's a guy that when his numbers called, he's had contributions. He he's able to defend. He's athletic enough. He's got a decent touch. He can do some things. And when Steven Adams is kind of being, you know, nursed back slowly, Steven Adams, when he's on the floor, has done some things too. But that's to your point. Every number that's called, you can say, hey, they've done some things to help you win. And I think at this stage, I think it's a good comparison with the Celtics because of the fact that you don't have to clearly define at this point of the development of this team, who your go to guys are as long as on any given night, if one or two guys have the hot hand, you know, to feed them the ball, ride it. Don't worry about, like, you know, who's supposed to be the star, just go to the guy that's getting buckets. And I think that you can be effective because, you know, some nice Reed Shepherd doesn't play a lot. And then other nights when he's in there, he's knocking down a couple of threes. He's hitting floaters in the lane. And, and that's the thing that's so beautiful about the depth that you have that you talk about is the fact that it doesn't matter who or when you just know you have a multitude of guys that could be that guy when you need someone. Yeah, there's there's deep one through seven. They're deep. And any of the one through seven could be the best player on a specific night. Jabbar has been playing better, which is nice. 23 points yesterday hit three of his five shots rebounding, which is important. Had eight rebounds and a couple of offensive rebounds leading to second chance points in his last four games in the Milwaukee game was a stinker for him. And it's included in this last four games. We're going to throw it in here because it's the stretch of play. In the last four games, he's scoring over 16 points. He's rebounding it more than seven times a game and he's shooting 53% from three. Like he's not, that's not sustainable. 53% three point shooting. And I would also like the rebounds to be up. Like I feel like he should be a double digit rebound guy. But a lot of people were kind of quitting on Jabari Smith after the first seven games of the year when he was in that shooting slump. He's breaking out of the shooting slump. And if the Rockets want to be a 50 win team, I think Jabari Smith has to be a capable starting power for in this league that can be a 40% three points. Look, I think that it was fair early on. And I think if you look at the guys that have been drafted in the last four or five drafts, he's the guy that's going to be scrutinized the most because he's the guy that has developed the least in terms of a lot of the guys that they've drafted to be certain to play certain roles. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have talent. That doesn't mean that he can't contribute to help this team. And a lot of it, I think is put on him by himself. He puts pressure on himself. If he's not a focal point, doesn't get placed called for him, he can get lost real quick and kind of go into the tank. When he gets going, like you've mentioned in the last several games and he gets a bucket or two early, he seems to be energized. And that's what you need. This whole team is predicated on energy on both ends of the floor. If you can get him energized, it can take you to another level because he's active on the boards then because he can run the break because when he gets a chance to get an open shot, he'll have confidence and shoot it well to where I think that you're right. He's a he's a vital cog. And a lot of it isn't just about, you know, matchups. It's about just Jabari mentally saying staying locked in going, I'm a part of this too, whether my number's called or not. Yeah, they're a they're a fun team. They're playing a high level basketball right now. I like the fact that they had 13 offensive rebounds and scored a ton of second chance points off of that too. Because if you're not going to be a good shooting team, you know what you need to do? You need to score off offensive rebounding 713780 ESPN HRNP listener line. We're on Twitch twitch.tv slash ESPN 97 5 on YouTube and ESPN Houston Twitter, ESPN 975 blankers at Pac-Man Joel Brian's at SEGB. I'm a Jeremy Branham. The texture from the from the hive here. I think they need one bonafide star that won't disrupt the chemistry. Well, the Rockets closed the book on one bonafide star. Would you entertain this very specific Giannis Trae proposal? The two untouchables that apparently are out there for the Rockets. And should you be in a rush to buy to be searching for that star? Should you be desperate for that star? 7137803776. It's the bees on ESPN 97 5 and ESPN 9225. ESPN 97 5. You listening to the killer bees with Joel Blanken, Jeremy Branham. On ESPN 97 5 and 92 5. Broadcasting live from the Veritex community bank studios. The uh, the coffee turned out good with the uh, the old paper towel. Look at Branham figuring things out. That's um, what would we call that? Not really intuition, intuition where you'd know. Yeah, but it's not, I don't think it's innovative. Everybody knows what to do that. What's that? Ingenuity. Ingenuity. There we go. Brian from the top rope. Appreciated Brian. Ingenuity. No, he doesn't know about coffee. He knows about ingenuity. There's a difference here. Uh, Paul and, uh, and Joe and, um, and Mapes were out there. They were, uh, I think they were game planning. They were talking fight strategy. Uh, Paulie's Rocky Balboa. I think Joe would be Paulie probably and Mapes is Duke. Joe, the beanie in the stub of cigar. It's a scruff that he's already got. Stick him in the corner. I think he'd be a good Paulie. I think he'd be pretty good. Uh, seven, one, three, seven, eight, zero ESP and HR and P listener line, uh, texture in the hive says, nope, still ran the AC with three fans going in the bedroom. I, three, three feels like a lot. It feels like a little redundant. We use the ceiling fan every night and we are. He's always at 68. We did have our AC on last night, but I don't think it ever kicked on because it was too chilly. Right. Uh, so he had three fans on in the AC, this texture. Here's another hyper. Uh, I turned my heater on this morning. Call me what you want. I did that too because we had a baby in the house. If we didn't have a baby in the house, I would never turn on my, my heater at what temperature. If you don't have a baby in the house because a baby in the house changes things, kids in the house changes things. At what point do you turn the heater on in the house? If you were by yourself, oh man, uh, I mean, I'm also from the Midwest. I don't, so I don't believe that I, I turn the heater on unless it gets like close to in the 30s. Okay. I was going to say 40s for me. Now I might turn it on during the day, just like as I'm like doing things around the house, but at night, I'm not turning the heater on unless it's in the 40s. Uh, unless there's kids at home, because that changes things. Uh, we said it, the AC, it's 60 every night, including last night, 60. That's chilly. That's a little, that's a little low, right? Kids actually, my, our ups in the upstairs are my kids bedrooms are colder than the downstairs level, and they don't seem to mind it at all. Oh, really? Yeah. That's nice. Uh, another text from the hive. My heater got set to 70. My house is old on piers. It gets cold fast. 70s kind of hot though. Yeah, it is. I don't like that. What do you put the temperature on whenever you hit? You said 60. No, 68 at night, but whenever you have it on auto and the heater comes on, well, you turn it down on the winter, whenever the heater's on, because to me, it's two different temperatures. Like if there's AC on, I needed it 68, if the heater is going to be on, I turn it down to 60. That's about right. Yeah. Because I don't need a lot of heat. Just take the, take the edge off. Like if it gets to the point where it's more, you know, even with a sweatshirt, you're kind of like, that's, that's a little too. Yeah. I don't want it to warm either. 2941. I enjoyed this cold enough that I went out in shorts only to put the trash out on the curb. No heat today. Now when we hit low 40s constantly to where the house gets cold to, then the heat will come on. I did take out the trash today in shorts and t-shirt. Oh, barefooted too, by the way, seriously had ceiling fan on us, oscillating fan on and portable AC on too. Come on, three Texas. Yeah. I feel like they're lying. Yeah. We use the ceiling fan and keep it at 68 and it's fine. Yeah. I feel like they're not being truthful with us to be honest. All right. 713 780 ESP and HRMP listener line. Hiver, excuse me. A man is a star. Are you ready to say a man is a star already? No, you don't score enough to be a star. I love a man. I think he's going to be the best Houston rocket by the end of the year. He's not currently a star. Now, do you need to be a consistent score to be a star? It depends. I think in today's NBA, a lot of people's definition of a star is someone that's, you know, going to be close to leading you in scoring and gets, and is the go to guy that, you know, you give bucket gets, can you can not even run a plate, give them the ball and get out of the way and then get a bucket for you? Yeah. But I think that, you know, when we're talking about this specific team, he does so many things to affect a game positively that he can be a star without having to be like the max player type, you know, all star type player. Yeah. I think he can be a star without getting you like, I think he can be a star getting 15 points a game. If he's rebounding at 12 times a game and he's six or seven assists, two or three steals, but yeah, I see what you're saying from the scoring point of view. Corey, they're playing very good complimentary team basketball. Yeah. I would say that they are, they are doing that. All right. Where do you stand on the honest trade rumors? Here's the latest proposal. And this isn't like a report. This is just somebody throwing this out there. And this is one that I'm on the fence about. I will admit, because I don't think that you're trading from your best young players. You're trading draft picks, but the reason you've been collecting draft picks is because when a star becomes available, you're trying to be ready to strike. The latest one that I've seen, you get, honest, you trade away Jabari, Cam Whitmore, Reed Shepherd, Steven Adams, Jay Chante, whatever about the last two. And then you would trade the 25 and 28 rockets first, the 27 Phoenix first and then the 2000, 2019, their Phoenix Dallas pick swap first. I do it in a heartbeat. Me too. I just, to me, the only thing that's, any kind of a concern at all is the picks. If you think that you're giving away too much, many picks, but the fact that you are completely avoiding giving up your four best young players and you're adding Janus with the subtraction of Jabari, which basically he'll play the same position, that is a massive win that if Milwaukee was dumb enough to make that trade, you take it. Yeah. I don't think that they would be dumb enough to do it. I'm with you on that. But you've been collecting all of these draft picks to try to trade for a star. So here is your star. Also on top of that, you can't use all of these draft picks. You can sit there and draft all of these guys. You can't have 30 guys on your roster. At some point, you're going to have to trade from your surplus of either A, these young core of players because you can't keep them on. You can't pay them all. And then B, you're going to have to trade from this huge collection of draft picks you have because you can't carry them all on your roster. So at some point, you're going to have to collect the young players. You're going to have to collect the draft picks and you're going to have to strike. Now, I'll listen to arguments that shouldn't be honest. That's fine. I understand that point of view. Now he is a really good player, but hey, you know, the shooting would be bad. He doesn't really fit in with this team because you wouldn't have shooting these 30 years old. Like all those things are fair, but you do have to come to the realization that at some point, you're going to have to trade from your young core and from that collection of draft picks you are. In this specific trade, you're looking at keeping your best four. Like you're keeping Alpe. You're keeping Jalen. You're keeping a man. You're keeping Tari. And then your rotation, I think, is championship caliber because you got Fred Vamvly. You got Jalen Green. You still have Dylan Brooks. You would have Janis probably playing the four. Alpe Shin goon still is with your team. You're still have a man. You still have Tari coming off the bench too. I think this makes you a championship contender. It would make you an operational and team in the league. No doubt about it. And when you look at the fact that Oklahoma City as an example, like they got really lucky in the fact that they got SGA and he turned into being the star. He turned into being the guy that was perfect for that team that was going to be the star and the unequivocal leader offensively. But if they didn't, they would they also did what you're talking about doing it. They traded you Alpe Shin goon because they didn't have room for any more first round picks. They kept adding young talent and young talent so much so they added the same name on two different guys because they just kept adding and adding and adding as many young guys as they could get. And I kid about the guy with the two guys with the same name, but you don't even know who they are after time. But they're both first round picks and you're like, how do I find time for all of them? That's how you got Alpe Shin goon because at a certain point you got to draw the line and go, I'm going to have to subtract some of these guys because I got to have, I got to have time for them. They want to play. You're going to have to try and pay all of them at a certain point. So you look at the young teams that take that next step, even when Minnesota did, even though they drafted Anthony Edwards, they traded and they worked the deal when they got go bare. They, you know, they they cat and Anthony Edwards were their guys. They, they, at a certain point you do have to start turning the page to look to veterans. And I think that from the rocket standpoint, you can only have so many picks. You look at the rocket's picks. I don't think the guys you add, if they are going to consistently stay in the top, you know, you know, 10, 15 teams in the league, I don't think they get team players you add at that point are going to help you. Yeah, like I'm not helping on Giannis. I just understand that at some point that you have so many young players that you're going to have to package them in a trade or they're going to leave you in free agency. And then the same thing with the draft picks. And I like what Rafael Stone did in terms of kicking the draft picks down the road. Now let's see where Brooklyn finishes in the lottery. But by doing that, you kind of space out how many young players you have at a specific time. And then you also get draft picks with some of these contracts you're going to get like come off the books. So I think that Rafael Stone did a good job of kind of calculating his young players, the draft pick allocation that he has and then trying to spread it out over years upon years. That way you kind of have this revolving, you know, set of resources that you can use to either draft or use them to trade. So I'm not it's not that I'm helping on Giannis. I just know the realization that at some point you're going to have to put some of these resources together and move on from the end. And I in the in the other camp that you in terms of I would have kept the Brooklyn picks. I wouldn't go enough to the Phoenix picks because I think Brooklyn is going to show you that they're going to be a bottom five type team. They've got Cam Thomas. They've got some guys that can play a little bit, but not nearly to the level of the rest of the league in terms of wins and talented teams. So I think their picks are going to be worth more. And if you had a potential lottery pick or two that you could turn into, you know, the biggest centerpiece towards getting whatever you need or whatever player you're after, that might be more attractive. Yeah, I know I I'm not like dying on this hill specifically because I do think like Brooklyn's in the playoffs right now if the season were in today, well, they'd be in the play and they're the eight see in the Eastern Conference. So hopefully Brooklyn does you a solid and like makes that thought like an afterthought because it never comes into fruition. But I think Rafael Stone, what he was trying to do is he sees that he has this core seven, he sees that he has this huge collection of young players. So let me use this asset in a pick that's about to come up and let me get future picks that way. I can always have this foundation of resources that I can use as opposed to using it all at once and building this team as as highly as you can. And also the fact that Brooklyn wasn't going to go into a full rebuild unless they had that first rounder back. So like that was also part of the calculation, I think by Rafael Stone. But Brooklyn can help you like Brooklyn, if Brooklyn like makes the playoffs and it's a better look like when you gave up the Vikings at the time and you thought it was a very, very high second round pick. Now it looks like you made the right move because it's going to be a little bit lesser. Exactly. Then your pick. And I think from a rocket's perspective, if you always have to be looking at right now and also the big picture, the big picture is those Phoenix picks later on down the road, you might not be as good to where you might need them for young players or you might be in a situation where you're ready to really go over the top and then you can go in and do what you need to do, either getting a player when you might be capped out or trading them away to get the player a different way. Like right now you have a course seven. You add a young guy to a course seven. It's going to be very difficult to like a give of minutes, develop all those people. But if you can condense that course seven into this core four that's better, now those draft picks are going to be somebody that either can help you on the on the roster or that you can flip to help that core four build up. So I think that's what was what he was doing. And I see your note here, like why would the Rockets be in a rush to trade anyone right now? I'm with you on that. Like I'm not in a rush to do this. I don't need to do this right now. I just have an understanding that at some point in the not too distant future, you're probably going to have to make this trade of combination of these young guys to try to upgrade your team. I think the biggest thing that's a frustration to me is it's because you see the rumor and then suddenly everybody is hell bent on. They need to do this or they're not going to get to where you think they need to go. Because we just got done talking about how many guys have talent on this roster and no one's really kind of distanced themselves to say they're the go-to guy. They're going to be the man. They're going to be the star. Then why not let it play out and let them all continue to grow together to where when the right guy comes along, then you could address that or say, Hey, here's a younger guy on the cusp of being a star or a team that's trying to get rid of a guy that looks like he's more closer in age range to fit in with your team, regardless of who you keep and who you unload, as opposed to force feeding a guy into your team to try and figure out because he's a star. 713780 ESP. Now I'm on, I'm on your side of it. Like I'm, I want to develop these young players. I'm not in a hurry to do it. I just realized that at some point it's probably going to happen. Let's go out to the HRNP listener line, Keith. You're in the hive with the bees. What's up, Keith? Hey guys, love this show. I absolutely take the honest trade. Absolutely take it. I have a hypothetical trade. Just want to get your thoughts on it. The pelicans are banged up, injured, not very good towards the bottom of the West. Would you hypothetically, with the money matching up, would you package Dylan Brooks, who's owed a ton of money and and Longdale, who's out of the rotation to acquire maybe a CJ McCollum type? Appreciate to call. I, first of all, I don't think CJ McCollum's best days are ahead of him. And I don't, I mean, you're not giving up a whole lot there, but he's also going to play a premium position to where you're developing the young players you already have, because Jaylen plays that position because you've guys got, you got guys that play the same position. He'd probably be a scorer off the bench. Yeah. And I don't think he wants to do that either. So I just, I don't think it's the right fit. I like what Dylan Brooks does to this team. Like, I think that Dylan Brooks is pretty critical to this team. And I know he gets a bad rap, but like look who is talking defensively. Like look who is telling people where they need to be. Like Dylan Brooks to me is the straw that stirs the drink defensively. I'll tell you the main reason why people are dissatisfied with Dylan Brooks is because of the money. Sure. If you got Dylan Brooks at a reasonable contract, everybody would take Dylan Brooks on their team because he does the dirty work because, you know, yeah, he gets under people's skin too, and he likes to kind of push guys, but defensively to your point, he knows where to be. He can guard almost every position on the floor. He can knock down threes if he gets the wide open three look, and he doesn't hurt you offensively to where if he was making a lesser salary, he'd be more likely to be on just about anybody's roster. Yeah, you just, you had to use the money, though. So like, I don't really blame the rockets for paying him this high salary because they had to use it and like look what he does to this defense. I really think he's the glue to this defense, not only because he's a good on ball defender that can defend one through four, but look who the talker is defensively. And I had a great coach once tell me the best defensive teams or the teams that talk. So who is your communicator on the defensive end on a very good defensive team? I think that guy's way more important than we get than we than we stay. Like, I think we undervalue the importance of Dylan Brooks. Yes, he makes too much money. It makes more money than his actual value, but the rockets had to spend it. And I think he's very important to you defensively. I wouldn't do that. I think the biggest thing too, when you look at him is, if you could have kind of tailor made the years of Fred Van Vliet and lessen the money a little bit, because he's not worth the money that you're paying Fred Van Vliet that might have made more sense. But when you go over that $90 million threshold in like a four year period of time, that's where people expect the whole hell of a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have to separate the salary and like what he means to you on the floor. Like, yes, he's kind of like Kirk Cousins. He's overpaid, but he's probably underrated. All right. 713 780 ESPN, Brian Windhorse, by the way, so the two rockets untouchables were Tari Easton and I'm in Thompson. You're cool. I disagree. Yeah, I'm cool with that too. All right. Michael Parsons, he's running his mouth after he got hammered by the Cowboys and Cal McNair, the great owner of the Houston Texans. He had some wisdom today, had some wisdom from Cal McNair. It is the bees on ESPN 97 5 and ESPN 92 5. And I have some wisdom for you. You know, the wisdom that I have for you is to go watch the Houston Cougars take on the Baylor Bears this Saturday night at TD ECU stadium. Did you like the weather today? That's what the weather's always like at TD ECU stadium. It's going to be that way as well on Saturday. It's going to be amazing out there at TD ECU stadium on Saturday. Plus you're going to watch your your H town blue, your cougars where they're Houston blue. That's right. Cougars final home game of the season, your cougars taking on the Baylor Bears at 6 p.m at TD ECU stadium. Last chance to see the cougars at home this year. Tickets are just $15. You can get yours at uh cougars.com/tickets or call 713 go cougs. Don't miss the actions we celebrate senior day, lay in the foundation in the first year, the Willie Fritz era and cheer on our team and their brand new Houston blue uniforms. Bring your friends, bring your family. Let's pack the stadium with cougar pride and again, get your tickets now just 15 bucks at uh cougars.com/tickets or call 713 go cougs. Come early, be loud and wear your Houston blue. Broadcasting live for the Peritex community bank studios. It's the killer beans with Joel Blanket and Jeremy Branham on ESPN 97 5 and 92 5. Calick and Hannah McNair were visiting fire station 33 today, which good on them. Give some love to the first responders, my stepdad's and firemen's who have a high admiration to our first responders. Those are the true heroes, not these pampered spoiled rich athletes, but Cal McNair impressed by firefighters all over the Houston area. Here's some wisdom from cool cat cow. There you go. There's what it takes. You know, he appreciate it. Look, look, game respect game. And that's what that was. Cal McNair respect and game right over there. He gave him the advice. He gave them the pep ups the pep talk before they made a call over. Never. Never quit. Cal, can you come say some words of wisdom to the to the finest in Houston in the HFD? Can you come give him some insight on what it takes to be a hero? Never, never quit. Look at that, man. He's just making the city better. One fire fire and I was completely like decked out all the gear and she was doing the. Oh, what's she? Yeah, I'm. Yeah, she was doing that. Michael Parsons. They, they got beat by the Cowboys or the two. They got beat by the Texans. He plays with the Cowboys, of course, on Monday night, he had some things to say on his podcast afterwards. Check him out. Fall start, delay a game from Micah Parsons. Yeah, he talked about you good now. No, it's a Micah Parsons podcast screwed up on us, but he said that the Texans are a good team, but not a great team. First off, what do you think of a player who got hammered having these takes? Yeah, I think it's a little different. But I mean, look, they got their asses handed to them. So you know, you should give them props. I think that picking them apart is where you draw the line. You should say, Hey, they're a really good football team. But if you want to then start picking apart, say they're not a great team, well, it doesn't matter what kind of team plays you, they rip your doors off and they completely pound you into submission. So yeah, it's a little tough to take him seriously in terms of where they are from good to great when your team sucks. Wouldn't he know though? Like, wouldn't he know? Like, this is, this is a weird modern day in athlete in athletics and in the NFL and in sports, like Draymond Green has his podcast. Here, here is it from the horse's mouth, Micah Parsons. They're a good team. But if I'm looking at some of these other teams, like the Chiefs, the Chiefs, I know, I know they beat the bills. They, they put on, it's just confusing to me, bro. Like they, they are a good team. But I don't know if they great just yet. So I take there. I don't know if they're good. They are really good. They're really good. You look at some of the wins. They should have beat the Lions. They jumped on that undefeated bills team. You know, so a lot of these games, they were in those games, but they lost those games. I think, I think, I think we get the heat. Well, at the very end too, he does get say that they are going to be great. They just aren't there yet. Yeah. So he does at least give them some flowers at the end. This is like, I understand where Texans fans are coming from. Like, what do you do? And dude, you just got beat by 24. Like, you were an on factor, but it's this weird era now where, and I don't mind it, where you have athletes that will then have the podcast and they all of a sudden, like they're going to have their opinions. They're going to have their takes. I think that you can separate the two, though, like, I think Micah Parsons has a pretty good idea of who's great in the NFL and who's good in the NFL. And the fact that you got beat by one of those teams by 27, should that impact your judgment? I don't know that it should. Like beating the Cowboys by 27 doesn't really have an influence between great and good. Like, I think Micah Parsons is a pretty good source here, actually. The only problem is, is that he later on in the podcast basically goes on to say that they're, they're a good football team. Is that, but was he wrong? Yeah. He said that about the Cowboys. Oh, okay. I thought he meant the Texans. Yeah. And then, you know, he goes into a details about them and Zimmer being a good DC. Well, I think that's him saving face at that, but he basically is like, you know, we're a good team. That's why this hurts so much. Are you though? Well, like, I'm not going to ever say anything bad about Houston. You know what I mean? Like, if, if Houston football was 0 and 12, I'm not going to sit here and be like, Oh, yeah, we're, you know, we're so bad. Like, I'd be like, Hey, we got our, we're going to Cougars. Yeah. Like, so we're going to call it like we see it. So I can understand Micah Parsons having that viewpoint, though. Like he's not going to sit there on his own podcast and then give this like his real thoughts about the Dallas Cowboys. Like they're signing his checks. Like they're the ones paying him. He has to be a representative of the Dallas Cowboys. So he's not going to get on his own podcast. Yeah, we're awful. Can you believe what's happening in our ceiling? We should fire Mike McCarthy. Like you can't do that. But you say that, but in a different way, he has come out and basically criticized the organization and criticized the fact that they haven't done the go for it that they said they were going to do and, and been critical of Jerry Jones to the point where he hasn't held back in the past, not to say that I don't get, get what you're saying in terms with your own guys in the locker room that are going to inevitably hear what you have to say. You're not going to crap on them and say they're not a good, you know, they're not a good football team where their running game sucks or whatever it might be. But at the same time, he hasn't held back. Yeah, it's, it's a really weird fine line with athletes having podcasts while they're currently playing. I don't mind it. Like, Hey, it's free country. Do what you got to do. 0 9 7 9. I think he's right. They're good, but not great about the text. I actually, I think he's right too. Another texture in the hive. I don't get how why athletes who are currently playing have podcasts. Like that. A lot of people have that thought. Like it is. It is a bit of a catch 22, like it's a slippery slope because you're going to have honest takes and I don't disagree with this take about the Texans. If you're going to have honest takes about the rest of the teams in the NFL, people are going to want you to have honest takes about your team. But then at the same time, you have to be a bit hesitant with who is paying your money and be a representative of that organization at the same time. You also have to be aware that everybody hears this because I don't know if you saw this or not, you know, because Draymond's got the podcast and Draymond is very quick to talk about what happened the night before. And like he rolled into Zach Edie and then basically Zach Edie rolled his ankle and it was a big deal and he was calling the, you know, the Memphis coach soft and Edie soft and saying this. Did you see what happened? No, they miked him up for the next game. Oh, it's pretty funny. And the referee comes up to him and doesn't realize Draymond's miked up and he goes, I heard the first 10 minutes of your podcast. Oh, wow. You better not be soft tonight and I better not hear you complain. It was like, bam, take that. That's funny. Yeah, that was good stuff. That's pretty good. See, I don't, I like the content and I'm here for the drama. So I'm fine with them having a podcast. Now if I were an athlete, would I have a podcast? Probably not. Probably not. But they're also just taking advantage of the brand and they're capitalizing on their brand too. So I don't blame them for that. It's, it's the ability to get a ton of extra exposure and possibly profit from it. Yeah. But it's the vulnerability of, you say, one wrong thing and it could be catastrophic. Oh yeah. I mean, this was, this wasn't even that controversial. No, Texans are good, not great. And this is like getting all these waves. Like, this wasn't even controversial. Now, Draymond Green, he's been able, he probably would have still been able to get TV gigs without the podcast, but I don't think it hurts. I don't think it hurts you in your post playing career. I at least startling Paramount Sports going to give you some winners next. It is the bees on ESPN 97.5 and ESPN 92.5. Live in the paratex community bank studios, it's the killer beans. Now back to Joel and Jeremy. Sleece Sterling Paramount Sports, our favorite guy because he gives you winners handing out money left and right. Lee, final home game for my Houston Cougars this season at TD ECU Stadium. Weather is going to be beautiful. You get your tickets. You H Cougars dot com seven, one, three go cooks only for $15. And we're wearing the Houston blue. It's going to be great. I like it. Great vibes, Lee. So better something going on with that with the Houston blue. Yeah, they did it last year. Houston did it last year. They looked a little bit too. They looked a little bit too much like the old Euler uniform. So Amy Adams skunk. She threatened a lawsuit. Houston's like, we're not going to cower down. We're from Houston. We're Houston stonians. They went back at it. They worked out a little bit of an agreement. And yeah, Houston's going to wear the Houston blue. They're going to sell all the merch. I got my Houston blue on today. It's going to be great news. Bail is favored by eight. But tell me Lee wrong team's favored. I think the wrong team is so, you know, the problem is then third down. They got to get they got to find a way to sustain some of these drives here. That's set up last week going on the road coming at home. When they beat Kansas State, got the job done on defense. They get takeaways on their and their last couple wins got at least two takeaways. I think that's a difference here. So I think they're going to suffocate this Baylor offense. And like I said, third downs are going to be the difference here to sustain these drives and special teams also. I like Houston wrong team favored. Houston outright 2820. I told you I liked Lee. I told you I did. All right, Lee got another big one. Florida showing signs of life, maybe saving the coaches butt in the process. But they're taking on an Ole Miss team that is very talented and Lane Kibben has them playing good football. It's a double digit. The favoring old miss right now at 10. How do you see this one playing out? I thought it was now. I've been making fun of some about Billy for a couple of years now. But I thought it was actually a good move to keep them. What are they going to start all over? And then it's another two years. It's paid dividend. They beat Kentucky and then LSU totally dominated the second half to that win. They're now five and five. They'll beat Florida State even if they don't win this game and they're going to go to a bowl. And all of a sudden recruiting wise, hitting the trail and doing a pretty good job. Now the difference here is they beat LSU as a quarterback, no running threat at all. Jackson Dart, dual threat quarterback over 3100 passing yards, 22 touchdowns, even another 300 yards running and another three touchdowns running the football. But people sleep on their defense. How about this? They're the number two rush defense allowing just 2.2 yards per carry. And the way Florida motors on offense, they need to have a running game to set up their play action. So if Ole Miss can shut down that running game, get them into third and sixth, third and eighth situations, they turn on the pressure. They are number one with 46 sacks here and they might even get back Trey Harris on offense, who's their deep threat here. Ole Miss here. Sometimes you've got to lay it if you want to play it, even on the road. Ole Miss 34-16. Biting my tongue. Detroit minus seven against the Colts. The Colts have went back to Anthony Richardson. Jared Goff has looked like an MVP caliber quarterback every single game with the exception of when they play the Texan culture, the home team here giving or getting seven is the home team. Lions are Colts, which you got Lee. So I think that sometimes when a team continues to win and stay on a roll, they just keep pushing that belt lineup eventually until they crash. Indianapolis, how about this? They've had one score games in 10 of their 11 games this year. Not saying Anthony Richardson is great, but he's a dual threat quarterback. I think he'll stress this Detroit defense here. I know how good Detroit is. I think they're the best team in football, League High, 159 point differential, and they're running right now on eight game winning feet and seven and one against the spread here. But this is their third game in four weeks on the road. They host the Bears on Thanksgiving. Detroit escapes 31-28. Take the points and into it. And they're playing into it. They might have to hold your nose or hold your breath, but you've got to do what you've got to do to get a win. That's right. Indeed. Now the horror ball is on the horizon as well as Jim and John Square off Baltimore giving three to a Chargers team that looks like they are got everything going in the right direction. Herbert's finally looking like the quarterback consistently that we thought he was going to be. But Baltimore's got all the weapons too. How do you see this one going? Yeah. So here is when you can get a field goal with a better defense at home. You take it. That's going to be about a 64-65% winner over the course of the decade. The Chargers allowing only 14 points per game. Take the blueprint was laid out with Pittsburgh, how to shut down and limit this offense of Baltimore. So they're great in between the 20s. But when that last 20 yards gets tough, they didn't even have Henry. How do you not have Henry in the lineup for those last couple plays, even if you're not going to use him as a decoy? And I like the way the Chargers are progressing here wide receiver, developing some wide receivers here. And everyone thought that was a weakness here. And the horror ball, we're going with Jim Harbaugh here. Chargers straight up 24/20. Last one for you, Lee, at least for me. Houston at home against the old Tennessee Titans arrival in the AFC South. The two owners hate each other. The female owners hate each other. Texans eight point favorites against a good Titans defense. How do you see this one playing out? Yeah, I like the way the Texans ported on late. Just kept coming in the second half. Snap that two-game losing streak here. Also managed a trend to end four straight games decided with a score. They are a team that has won and covered three straight against Tennessee with an average margin of more than 11 points here. Titans defense number 29 and points allowed. Even with, this is crazy, the number one pass defense. So the unit's main problems here are lack of game-changing plays. They're number 30 in takeaways here. Two and eight teams don't all of a sudden start improving the second half of the season. Houston big 31-14. All right, Lee. Well, we love the fact that you give us a handful of picks every week. And we're also even more thankful during this giving-thang season that you also give people a whole lot more if they connect with you and get connected with you on a ton of plays weekend week out. Tell everybody how they get connected with Paramount Sports and the free play that you have got going for them. So free play is going to be Pittsburgh and Cleveland tonight. Anyone wants to get that game for free. Call right now. First five callers. Call 800-409-741. First five callers. We're going to give them Pittsburgh and Cleveland tonight. Think there's a clear right side winner on this game. 800-409-741. And how about this? Our college football game of the year goes to Saturday. This is our first 50-unit play of the year. It is a 50-unit max wager. So you want to hop on board? Just $97. We're 70 and 26 for lifetime on these 40 to 50-unit max wagers. So like I said 50-unit college football game of the year right now. Paramountsports.com or two weeks from now through Monday, December 2nd, just $197. One place. Paramountsports.com. Must have. Lee, enjoy your football weekend. Sounds good. Take care, guys. Lee Sterling. Paramount Sports. Get your winners. Get too good. It's too good. All right. Should DeMico Ryan's rest will Anderson one more week? Kind of similar to what he did to Nico Collins. The old Dusty Baker move, we call it. Should DeMico rest will Anderson one more week? 7-1-3-7-8-0-3-7-7-6. It is the Beast. ESPN 97-5. ESPN 97-5. Food and Red Rule. You're listening to ESPN 97-5. Your child's first step is a big step towards their future. With first step by college invest, every Colorado child born or adopted on or after January 1st, 2020 will receive a free $115 contribution to their college invest college savings account. 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