10 Good Minutes: Trae Young Trade Market and the Spurs Looking Very OKC-ish

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Darius Garland, Brian Winhorse, Donovan Mitchell, San Antonio
2. 5:00 – 10:00: San Antonio, Keiante George
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Brooklyn Nets, OKC Thunder, San Antonio, Trey Young
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Trey Young
5. 20:00 – 22:43: Trey Young

Notable quotes from "10 Good Minutes: Trae Young Trade Market and the Spurs Looking Very OKC-ish"

• Not worked out. And Darius Garland has been up and down, but they get a really nice win last night in San Antonio. I even going back to the Christmas game against New York where they got it big.

  about San Antonio · at 0:42

• If they're fully formed in the playoffs in the East. So, there's probably a little bit too much Donovan Mitchell. If you look at the traditional numbers, they're just massive. 295, five a half.

  about Donovan Mitchell · at 2:09

• Still. And just as an aside, the Utah Jazz are so much fun to watch. This Keiante George thing is incredible. like he's a stud and he's so calm and there's this flow to him…

  about Keiante George · at 5:34

• Thunder. So, we had news over the weekend that Trey Young was, I guess, more available than he's been because this has been kind of a two-year odyssey here during the Dejonte Murray off season.

  about Trey Young · at 14:30

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Trey Young — Person · 6 mentions · first at 14:34
• Darius Garland — Person · 3 mentions · first at 0:42
  Last year to this year. Here are the guys that are out. The Lonzo thing has not worked out. And Darius Garland has been up and down, but they get a really nice win last night…
• Victor Wembanyama — Person · 3 mentions
• Nikola Jokic — Person · 2 mentions
• Zion Williamson — Person · 2 mentions
• Brian Winhorse — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:31
  Know that they've had a bunch of different injury issues, starting lineup numbers that we'll get to. Brian Winhorse was on the podcast and he was terrific just breaking down…
• Donovan Mitchell — Person · 1 mention · first at 2:14
• Keiante George — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:37

Companies & orgs

• Brooklyn Nets — Company · 1 mention · first at 14:25
  The Brooklyn Nets two and a half points better per 100 possessions than the OKC Thunder. So, we had news over the weekend that Trey Young was, I guess, more.
• OKC Thunder — Company · 1 mention · first at 14:27
  The Brooklyn Nets two and a half points better per 100 possessions than the OKC Thunder. So, we had news over the weekend that Trey Young was, I guess, more available than he's been because this.

Places & events

• San Antonio — Place · 6 mentions · first at 0:45

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 10 good minutes on a Tuesday before the new year. So, I want to start with Cleveland. They are the seven seed in the Eastern Conference. They're 18 and 16, 520 winning percentage. Last year, they had a 780 winning percentage. They were the one seed in the East. We know how great they were. For them to match last year's record, they'd have to go 46 and two. That's probably not going to happen. But, I still believe in this team as far as there being a run. Um, we know that they've had a bunch of different injury issues, starting lineup numbers that we'll get to. Brian Winhorse was on the podcast and he was terrific just breaking down like here's the shooting that's missing because the shooting numbers fell off a cliff from last year to this year. Here are the guys that are out. The Lonzo thing has not worked out. And Darius Garland has been up and down, but they get a really nice win last night in San Antonio. I

0:48 even going back to the Christmas game against New York where they got it big. I was like, "Okay, you know, like this is starting to be what it's supposed to look like." But I thought last night against San Antonio is what it's supposed to look like. Mobley only missed two weeks, came back sooner than you'd expected. So he, Allen, Garland, Mitchell are all out there. Hunter, Sam Merrill, and tightening up the rotation a little bit with some of these other names that believe it or not, there's like a lot of guys on this team that I really like. So, uh, the full four last night effect, I guess you could say the full the full five with Hunter. Um, they shot it really well last night. They just they just looked terrific. If you look at the three-point shooting numbers from last year, they were number two in the league at 38%.

1:26 Um, at one point they were 28th in the league when I was tracking it, they're now 22nd from three. It hasn't necessarily been better in December either. You know, the thing about what your three-point ranking is as far as leaguewide. You know, if you go from 34% as a team to 36% as a team, you can find yourself in the top 10. The defensive numbers last year, they were eighth. They were the number one offense in the NBA last year. They're 14th on defense this year. They're 10th on offense. There's probably some rebounding stuff that you could say is an issue, but you just look at some of these stats and you're like, what am I judging? Like, am I judging all these different starting lineups or am I judging what I think the team can be? And that's what I default to was like, hey, look, I'm not picking him to win the title necessarily, but I'd expect them to be a really tough out if they're fully formed in the playoffs

2:11 in the East. So, there's probably a little bit too much Donovan Mitchell. If you look at the traditional numbers, they're just massive. 295, five a half. the shooting splits 4939. It's the highest usage of his Cleveland run. Um it's right around what his careerhigh usage was going back to a couple of those Utah years. But I don't really blame him. Um because I I think there's so much about Mitchell that I like. I think if we wanted to be critical of him, we could all argue that there's maybe a layer to him that feels like he can force it a little, but god, when it's going, it's it's, you know, so, you know, you'd hate to tell a guy like, "Hey, I don't want you having those moments where you're just completely unstoppable um with some of the shot selection stuff, but do you really blame them?"

2:56 And when you look at this team where they've had 18 different starting lineups in 34 games, they had 23 different starting lineups last year for the entire season. They blow that lead to New York on Christmas. They were up 17 in the fourth quarter. Offensive rebounds part of the issue. The Knicks in that spot are going to be a really tough team to kill at home on Christmas anyway. Um, and Hunter, who has been bad, just straight up bad this year, who remember like them trading for him last year, it was pretty obvious the idea was they need or they probably internally talked about like if we're going to be facing Boston in the Eastern Conference playoffs here, we have to figure out a way to have some kind of bigger body perimeter player as opposed to just guys switching into Garland and Mitchell and taking turns. U, especially the way Boston would run their offense and even, you know, hoping to get Jared Allen in.

3:45 think they probably would have benched Jiren Allen, Jared Allen to close a hypothetical boss, but look, both those teams get eliminated, so we don't really have to worry about that. Um, but the idea was at least Hunter from just a body matching size kind of type philosophy was like, can we just have any kind of big wing that also can stretch the floor and shoot because he's not going to have the ball in his hands a ton between what you have with Mitchell, Garland, and Mobley. So Hunter had just been awful um so far this season shooting. So if you look at the splits, 41 31% uh and this is somebody who the last two years shot 41 and 39% from three. So that number has to get better. And again, I thought he looked good last night, plus 14 of the box score. Jaylen Tyson was terrific. I like Dean Wade. I like Proctor. I like Sam Merrill. And I know the Lonzo thing's been a mess, but you know, there's still

4:38 I mean Strus isn't this good, right? He's a he's a nice option to have, but god. So, you know, they've never had a bad record. It's just a disappointing record when you look at what our expectations were for Cleveland, but the inconsistencies, the lack of shooting, trying to figure out who you are night from night. So, it'd be kind of nice cuz this team is really expensive. It's the most expensive team in the NBA. They're the only team in the Second Apron, which just limits anything you can really do in the trade market as far as being able to aggregate salaries or take back more money or send money out. And as of right now, their 2032 first round draft pick is frozen.

5:17 Something that I noticed last night, uh, also with San Antonio, I have a huge San Antonio rant. I maybe do a mild version of it right now, and I mean a real positive thing. It would have been better after the third OKC win where they beat the Thunder three times in 12 days, but then they lost to the Jazz. There was no Fox in that game, but still. And just as an aside, the Utah Jazz are so much fun to watch. This Keiante George thing is incredible. like he's a stud and he's so calm and there's this flow to him where, you know, anybody that's ever, you know, when you look at like fighters and stuff and there's just kind of this this moment where everything just kind of connects and it flows and they're not in a hurry about anything and there's just completely command of what they're doing. There's a similarity in the way I watch Kante George play basketball right now where he's just like, "All right,

6:04 you know that Spurs win. There's a 90-0 run in the fourth quarter by San Antonio and you're like, "All right, this is this is probably over. Like Utah's going to blow this." And Keonte immediately draws a foul, kind of calms everybody down, gets to the free throw line, and it was just like an incredible vet move on top of just how incredibly efficient this guy is with a big spike in uh usage, volume, whatever you want to say. And I I love that Larry Markin was I mean look it's not going to work going at WBY. It wouldn't be a great long-term plan but there was like three times four times where it felt like he went right at him. I mean the one time is humiliating. I mean WBY blocked him where it felt like the defender couldn't even possibly be in position to block him again. Um and then there was another time where he got him late. So look, just an aside, I really enjoy watching the Jazz. Hopefully for their sake

6:52 they're they end up not being too good. uh because it'd be brutal if that pick ends up like at number nine and then OKC ends up with their pick because of a salary dump transaction from before. That's the old favors deal. Um but there's something here with WBY that you know I think all of us that are watching him this much are noticing him. Um if you looked at Wyama against the Cavs, it's basically Moy and Allen. And as great as Moy is defensively, it's still a huge ask for any of these bigger guys. You know, I'm talking about like anyone that could play center, like really play center. Uh, and that would be Moy if Allen weren't there. And maybe they wouldn't want to do that. Whatever.

7:30 That's a different discussion. But the Webyama drives that we were seeing at the beginning of the year, you've seen the league adjust to go to this kind of perimeter dog, you know, that you hope you can kind of assign to him. And, you know, he's going to wreck you, and he's going to wreck you even if he doesn't score any points because of what he's doing defensively. But there are teams now that I'm looking at like certain matchup stuff to be something to look at there with the playoffs where the preferred thing is do we have an undersized guy that gets up and underneath him. It used to be something they used to try to do with Durk and then Durk would just shoot it over you the entire time. But I've noticed it in different matchups because if you look at what he did against Utah when 32, there was no guy that fits that profile for Utah. even with all the things that they're trying to figure out with their roster. There

8:16 isn't the guy that you're like, "All right," and I'm not talking just about Alex Caruso because Jaylen Williams would play on him a little bit as well. Um I'm going back to those Washington games and watching it like Kulabali was the primary assignment. I think Champagne got stuck on him a couple times. He got run over on one play and he's just looking around being like, is this really the plan? But yeah, it it is the plan. But look specifically for like big Webyama scoring nights. um if they if there's a team they're going up against that doesn't necessarily have somebody that that fits the profile that we're talking about here. Again, he had 32 against Utah. So, there's a lot of times it's like, well, Nerkage is just on him. So, now we're back to that early stuff in the beginning of the year where he's going to be driving. He had 26 against San Antonio. That's in 28 and 27 minutes. Against OKC, 22 and 21 minutes,

9:04 12 and 23 minutes, 19 and 26 minutes. Um the Washington numbers were down a little bit. So just something to look at there. But if I were going to do I'll have a chance to do this again. But the overall thing with San Antonio I love. I mean they're letting Castle run the offense. De'Arren Fox is playing off the ball more than I think I've ever seen other than maybe the times he had to watch Zack Lavine decide that the game was his for an entire quarter. Um the Harper part of it when Fox is out it's like okay cool. We have another ball handler here. There's something about this team that feels very OKCish in that if you look at the decision-m that OKC does with their rosters, it's like we want guys if they have the ball in their hands, can shoot, can dribble, and can pass. We want an entire group of people.

9:48 It'd be great if we had five, even better if we have 10. And it feels like OKC wants 15 of these guys where no matter what, you don't get stuck with the ball. And it kind of goes back to some of that early death lineup stuff that you had with Golden State where it felt like everybody was comfortable with the basketball, including Draymond Green, who's playing center back then. uh that Toronto run where they won the finals in 19, you would watch them and be like, you know what, no one really here feels like, you know, this this this dead end with the basketball. Uh it feels like there's multiple options that are open for them. And clearly that's what OKC has done here by design. But when you run out WBY, when you run out Harrison Barnes, if you want to go Fox, if you want to go Harper, if you want to go Castle, um, and then there's my guy Kell Johnson, who I'll admit there's a lot of times in the couch the last few

10:30 years like, why do you like this guy? What is it about Kell Johnson? I don't know if you've seen the numbers, but he's even better than I thought. And he's been terrific and he plays bigger than he is. He's still only 26, I think. And I was looking at the win share per 48 which again you know you can you can attack some of these numbers if you want to but generally when you see Jokic and SGA just off the charts in comparison to the entire league and they are off the charts. By the way up Joic um watching that injury last night live against Miami teammate steps on him hyperextends that knee and I want to emphasize this.

11:06 I want to be nice a truly awful job by the heat broadcast on that injury. We can see he's barely gonna be able to stand up on his own and we already have the replay so we can go to the replay whenever you want. Instead, they cut away from the live part of it where you're on the couch being like I want to see what he looks like trying to walk off of the court and we don't see any of that because they run the injury like seven or eight times. And this isn't one of those like sensitive don't show the player injury thing. That's not what I'm saying at all. We could have watched the replay as much as they wanted to give it to us because we already had it. And instead of watching the live reaction to seeing Jokic get carried off of the court, we're watching a replay like seven or eight times. Horrible job by the Heat broadcast. All right, maybe I'm just bitter because I'm worried that we're not going to see Jokic for an

11:54 extended period of time. So, back to that windshare 48. It's Jokic again. An absurd number. Like, it would be the alltime number. I don't know if he's going to keep that up all year long. SGA is terrific. So then you look at the rest, you're like, "Hey, weren't you talking about Kell Johnson?" He's ninth in the NBA in this number. This is a big boy number. Like this is the number where you're like, "Oh, hey, there's Brunson, there's Luca, there's Durant, there's Kawawaii, who went off again." Um, this this number usually doesn't lie to you very often unless it's a big who's asked to do very limited things offensively. see Mark Williams being third overall, Luke Cornett, Duran, um, Hartinstein. So, if you actually go through this number here and Kell being ninth, he's fourth among guys that are actually asked to do something here on offense and he's asked to do a lot and he's just terrific. So, like I just love

12:49 that, you know, a player that I liked before the draft, a player that I liked a little bit early on and then he just felt like he was in every single trade scenario and you know, you're just like, "Oh, so this guy that we kind of liked and we extended and now he sucks because he's been extended." So, Kellen numbers, the shooting, terrific. Um, I'm curious when we're going to get a Cam Thomas trade request. I know he just got back from injury. He's only played two games this month. last night against Golden State. Watching that one, Brooklyn decided to close without him. They went with the UNCC rookie Drake Powell, who was just a dog trying to defend against Steph Curry off the ball, denial whole thing, just like in his jersey, 35 ft away from the hoop, even if he didn't have like wasn't even looking at the basketball. So, I can't imagine Cam Thomas is going to love that scenario. And MPJ's been great

13:37 for them. And how about our guy once we learn how to pronounce it? 23 points last night, seven of 14 on threes, plenty of practice on threes. If you remember, the first four games of his career, he took 22 shots. All of them were threes. Wasn't until the fifth game where he actually took a two. But the knock on him was, hey, 68 handling. Like when I first first watched him, I'm like, God, there's so much about this guy I kind of like. And then you watch him shoot and go, I don't even know if this is going to happen. He's 39% on threes in the month of December. Again, 68, 19 years old. if he's going to shoot it like that and the way he kind of sees the game, ball handling, that kind of stuff. Um, could be something there with the Nets. By the way, do you know who the best defensive team in the NBA is in the month of December?

14:22 Where Brooklyn at? The Brooklyn Nets two and a half points better per 100 possessions than the OKC Thunder. So, we had news over the weekend uh that Trey Young was, I guess, more available than he's been because this has been kind of a two-year odyssey here during the Dejonte Murray off season. Not the year they brought him in from San Antonio, but the year he went out with the Pelicans. By the way, I can't wait until there's another guard on the Pelicans so I don't have to watch these Jordan Pool threes that I've been watching the last week. Barago, tough spot there. Closing group. They lose the game to the Knicks. Fought their ass off. But if you're running at a lineup with fears, uh, who got really just stuck, screwed up a few times there offensively, OG just kind of ate him up there a little bit. And I'm not even talking like on moves. I'm just talking about standing at the top of the

15:09 three-point line and being like, where's the entry pass? He had a huge turnover one of those games. But if you have Zion Fears and then um, Queen, Jaylen Bruns is like, how do you guys want me to get 20 in the fourth quarter here? Uh, and then they would take out Fears and they put in Pool and you're like, "All right." Um, and Pool is just I mean, he's had three games now in the past week where you're just thinking, somebody asked me like, "Do you think they're showcasing him?" I'm like, "I don't even think that's possible to showcase Jordan P at this point." So, anyway, back to the trademark thing here with Trey because I think that he's been available. There was kind of that year with DeJonte where it was like, look, if there's another deal they like better for Trey, then they would do that one and then keep Deonte Murray. Um, granted Dejante blew out the Achilles but there may be revisionist history like but

15:56 again the market look if the market were really good for him I think he would have been traded already. So now he's available all over again. Apparently Risha is going to be available as well. I do look forward to when I'm watching the broadcast of whatever team Reset is on. If he's traded and then he hits a three in the corner and the local broadcast is like you know the guy was the number one overall pick so and they just sit there and agree and get all excited and he scores 12 points again. Um although I thought he had he had a nasty block last night in a very competitive game against OKC. Trey didn't play last night. Quag contusion I guess. Um he's played in 10 games this year. They're two and eight in the 10 games. You know, he's still 27. He just So again, if a new team does end up with Trey Young, it' be like he's still only 27. But we know what he is. And I did wonder in that Knicks game where Trey

16:39 did play if Quinn Snyder was going to have the balls to not close with Trey Young coming back into the game. But he did. and he brought him back in at 450. I don't really think that was the reason they necessarily lost this game, but we know what it is. We know what it is with Trey. We know that it's a limited thing. You know, I could get really nasty and I talk about this all the time with like when you have this job. Um I think all of us are worse at it in the last 10 plus years talking for a living because very often we'll end up talking to a certain fan base or someone in particular because we're all reading stuff. Um hey, you know, this is what I think about this and you look at your mentions and you're just like, okay. And then you start to like almost take it personally. even if you do a good job being numb to it most of the time. But the Atlanta thing has happened now for me because I was probably I think the

17:21 first guy that was on it that was like, "Hey, these points and everything are cool, but this is not winning basketball. This is not going to be a long-term solution." But it was a short-term solution because he was such a fan favorite and everybody was so excited about it and ownership, I think, is still a little on board. I'm like, are we sure we want to move like our star attraction? And if you want to win a basketball at this point, you have to move on. I don't even know if anybody's even debating this thing anymore. So, I asked somebody in the NBA, we'll do this every week on this. I said, "Just give me a kind of breakdown of the Trey Young trade market." So, quote, "It's hard to think of a team that's trying to win this season that Trey would help, especially once you factor in what that team would be losing from the players they would have to send back as matching salary. He doesn't defend. He doesn't

18:04 rebound. Guys hate playing with him." Um, I asked if there was any understanding of the price. quote, "I have no idea." Um, and essentially just kind of paraphrasing everything here where it's like he sells tickets, he sells jerseys, uh, ownership may be more open to it, but again, I think there's a hurdle there. Um, and then he asked me, can you name one team that's trying to win that Trey would help? And that there in lies the problem. Is is there a reset of Trey Young where he looks around going, "Man, the team I scored all these points and they didn't want me and now I had to go somewhere else. So maybe now I need to figure out a way to fit in a little bit more." And I think we're we may be years or slash impossible number of years away from him having that realization because sure he can shoot. If you pair other defensive players around him a little bit, he breaks the paint really well.

19:02 The lobs and all that kind of stuff. I mean, he's he is an incredibly talented guy. I do think there's like a 25 production 25% production boost based on the way he's been officiated. Like, from the jump, I'm like, this is how you're going to officiate this guy for his entire career. Like, make the plaque now then. This is a [ __ ] joke. Because it's not even the free throw attempts. It's that so I can't do anything around this guy. between he and Brunson. It makes me think that if I were a front office, I'd go, "Hey, are there small guys that we think are pretty good and pretty good with the ball, great shooters that we think are just going to give the benefit of the doubt the way the game is called for some of these smaller players?" Like if you have a second round grade on this guy, maybe he's a firstrounder just because we think the way the big small disparity is in the way they're officiating, like

19:43 some of these guys again are going to have careers that they never would have had decades ago because the officials would have just laughed at you. Um, so that that is the biggest issue here with any kind of Trey Young market. Even if you like the price, kind of back to the Bradley Beal thing where look, the Beal thing for Phoenix is disaster. It wasn't free. I think when I talked about it at the time, even though I've never liked Beal really, I mean, I like him for the draft, but with Beal, you know, you want to talk about somebody who's never been more comfortable being the third option, be like, hell, I'll be fourth option tonight. Um, so like maybe you'd rather have Trey who who would never mentally defer in that way. Um, but even if the Trey Young price is like a real first and then sort of a fake first and you're dumping salary that you don't even need and you go, hey, from an asset

20:35 talent acquisition, all that kind of stuff, like we're marginally better. And that's what this game is about. building your roster, trying to figure out like, hey, I'm grabbing this kind of asset, but I what's the pricing of this asset? Because you're dealing with a lot of [ __ ] You're dealing with somebody who's going to be coming in who's not going to think he's done anything wrong and is immediately going to be out there hoping to get his 30, hoping to get his free throws, bunch of assist along the way, and it is never, it has never been winning basketball for him. So, I did this last night instead of, by the way, hit us up with questions. NBA mailbag rrgmail.com.

21:11 I did this poll last night. Um because I thought it was a better way to do this than than some of the questions. Who would you rather have? 20,000 votes. Here are your options. Jaw, Zion, Trey, Embiid. Zion is winning right now at 37%. Trey is number two at 31%. Jaw is third at 17%. Embiid last at 15%. last at 15%. I actually think that's right. Like at least with Zion, this is kind of the Zion, you know, it's a bigger Trey conversation. It's a it's a jaw conversation, but at least with Zion, I don't necessarily have to hand him the keys. Now, Trey's the healthiest other than this recent stretch. He's the healthiest by far of all of these guys.

22:03 Okay? Embiid has the worst contract probably in the NBA. But if you look at Zion, who was really good last night, you're not he's going, "Okay, you're in charge of all of our offensive possessions on top of us not really knowing like what your deal is." So, that's probably the answer, even though there's a million reasons why you can talk yourself out of any of these guys.

22:33 [snorts]

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "10 Good Minutes: Trae Young Trade Market and the Spurs Looking Very OKC-ish"?

In order: 0:00 Darius Garland, Brian Winhorse, Donovan Mitchell, San Antonio; 5:00 San Antonio, Keiante George; 10:00 Brooklyn Nets, OKC Thunder, San Antonio, Trey Young; 15:00 Trey Young; 20:00 Trey Young.

What is mentioned in this The Ryen Russillo Show episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including San Antonio, Trey Young, Darius Garland, Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokic, Zion Williamson. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "10 Good Minutes: Trae Young Trade Market and the Spurs Looking Very OKC-ish"?

The episode runs 23 min; the transcript is about 4,897 words in 31 timestamped sections.

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