Pacific Division Reality Check

Summary:

Five teams. One ruthless division. We pull the threads that actually move the Pacific: Sacramento betting on steadiness while Keegan Murray heals, Phoenix living with the aftermath of a fire sale and hoping Devin Booker stays bought in, the Clippers stacking brilliance and bandwidth against Father Time and a league probe, Golden State bending its identity around Jimmy Butler while asking its youth to grow up, and the Lakers putting hard minutes math on LeBron while a fitter Luka Dončić and a motivated Deandre Ayton reshape their ceiling.

We start in Sacramento, where Doug Christie inherits a roster long on competence and short on rim protection. Sabonis runs the handoffs, LaVine hunts numbers, DeRozan supplies craft, and the defense prays for stops. The optimism lives in Malik Monk’s punch and the defensive wiring of Devin Carter and Neek Clifford. Then it’s Phoenix, where Jordan Ott’s creativity meets a roster built by impulses: Mark Williams and Nick Richards at center, a raw teenage big, Dylan Brooks who must live inside a narrow shot diet, and Jalen Green asked to be a grown-up scorer next to Booker. The real storyline is patience and the subtle asset plays that rebuild leverage.

The Clippers might be the West’s most precise half-court offense when healthy—James Harden spoon-feeding Ivica Zubac, Kawhi shredding mismatches, and a bench of veteran problem-solvers like Chris Paul, Brook Lopez, Derrick Jones Jr., and Bradley Beal. But health and the Kawhi investigation hang over everything; their season is a test of availability and composure. Golden State, sparked by Butler’s midseason arrival, embraces a nastier, slower gear when needed. Al Horford’s short-roll reads and defense fit Kerr’s map, while Podziemski’s spacing and a locked-in Kuminga could be the difference between solid and scary.

We close in Los Angeles, where a leaner Luka drives the offense, Austin Reaves feasts on the second side, and Ayton’s contract year promises a dependable 15 and 10 if the motor stays on. Marcus Smart answers ball-pressure questions, and the front office weighs the cost of a real wing stopper. The thread through it all: roles, health, and patience beat slogans and highlight tapes. If this breakdown sharpened your hoops brain, follow, share with a friend who lives on NBA Twitter, and drop your bold Pacific standings in a review—we’ll feature the sharpest takes next week.

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Transcript

Sacramento’s Reset And Keegan’s Setback

Sabonis Ceiling And The Levine DeRozan Fit

Defense, Roles, And Sacramento’s Young Hopes

Phoenix After The Fire Sale

Bigs, Brooks, And Booker’s Happiness Index

Clippers Talent, Age Tax, And Kawhi Probe

Health Math And Win Range For The Clippers

Warriors Add Butler And Embrace Experience

Kaminga’s Role Versus Kerr’s Philosophy

Horford’s Fit And Youth Development

Lakers Identity With Skinny Luka And LeBron Limits

Aiton’s Prove-It Year And Wing Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:13

What is up everybody on this glorious October fifteenth, two thousand twenty-five. Welcome to Front Runner Podcast Collective, where we talk like friends, argue like cousins, and somehow still leave smarter. I am your humble host Vince and occasional therapist and sometimes your favorite bad influence. Where we unpack the wins, the mess, and the middle, grounded in jokes, receipts, and maybe a hot take or two that ages badly. With me is Saraya, our silent producer, who refuses to stay silent. She will be dropping notes in the chat all day long. We'll have the occasional gym to keep everybody honest and maybe make us just better people in the process. So let's get this thing going. We are going to be talking about the Pacific Division. This is obviously the division that the Lakers is in. You're gonna hear about Sacramento, Phoenix, the Clippers, and the Golden State Warriors. Nobody will be left out, but this is where we're going to start. By the way, programming note, we will have two pods today. There will be a part one and a part two. The part two is going to have the central division. And you're saying to me, Vince, why are there two parts to this podcast? That is a cornucopia of information that I must download. Well, the season starts in less than a week, and what we're trying to do is get you to a point where you have a good base of what these teams are going to look like early on in the season. The second thing is that we want to be ready. We're trying to clear the decks next Tuesday. It is prediction podcast Tuesday. Why is that important? If you want to know where we think your team is going to be, you need to join us then. It is going to be a spectacle of all spectacles. We will have your MVP for this year. Who's going to be the sixth man of the year? Who's going to be the rookie of the year? Who's going to be the defensive player of the year? Hint. Hint. He plays in Texas. But Prediction Podcast Tuesday coming to you next Tuesday. Mark your calendars. It will drop early. It will drop early enough for you to consume the product. And then games will start. And we will be off and running and getting ourselves just immersed in the NBA world. And we'll be just better for it. Without further ado, we need to start this podcast. So we're going to start with the Sacramento Kings. Is there a more sad franchise than the Sacramento Kings over like the last couple years? Given the feel-good process that was going on about what three years ago? We had the whole light the beam era that did not last long, right? There was so much promise. You had gotten Keegan Murray, who we'll talk about soon. You had your star, our guy Darren Fox, who is now in San Antonio. And now you become Chicago Bulls West. Which is kind of scary to me. And we'll get into the particulars of that momentarily. What we need to start off with is that Keegan Murray suffered a left thumb UCL tear that needed surgery. He is going to be reevaluated in four to six weeks. Re-evaluated, meaning not gonna play. So we might not see Keegan Murray until late December, maybe January. Tough break for our guy. Because we had built basically this segment around him and how this year was the year we find a lot out about Keegan Murray and what his role will be with this team going forward. Now we must pivot to Chicago Bulls West. And what I mean by that is that we have reunited Zach Levine and DeMar DeRozan together, and they'll be playing off Devonis Sabonis, who'll be in that nail position, just dropping dimes to people, then bullying people to the rim. But this team, after a couple years of going to the playoffs and you know, making some postseason situations, has kind of fallen back into now. Doug Christie, who basically took over for Mike Brown last year, he is now the full-time head coach. Doug Christie has played a ton of years in this league, tremendous with this fan base because he reminds them of the glory years of like 2000, 2001, and 2002 with the Sacramento Kings. You say, Well, Vince, is the cover bare? No, not necessarily. The cover is not bare, but the problem is that your talent or your high-end talent is not as good as some of the high-end talent that's in this division or in this conference. Keep in mind, the Western Conference is going to be an absolute bloodbath this year. There's gonna be a lot of teams who think they're going to the playoffs and they're not. Now you have some of the usual suspects with the Sacramento Kings, you have another year of Malik Monk, you have another year of Keon Ellis, you also got Dario Saric. Now, Dario Saric doesn't provide a lot when it comes to production as far as he's a steady hand, he's a steady vet, he'll be in the right places. I don't know if he'll score a lot for you, and I don't know if he offers a lot on defense for you, but he'll get some cardio in. With that being said, you also have drafted Neat Clifford, one of the guys that I absolutely loved out of this draft, not because of the fact that I think he's going to be box office, but I think he's a steady player. But the problem with the Sacramento Kings is that they have a bunch of steady players, the roster is filled with steady players. Where's the start? One guy is in Indiana, and you say, Well, Vince, why are you bringing up Osta? Well, it's kind of where the problem started, and I know we need to get off of it, but Demonisabonis does not raise your ceiling. He is an incredible player in a sense of production-wise, he's gonna get you 18 points, he's gonna get you 12 to 13 rebounds. Sometimes he's gonna have a game where he scores 25 points and get you 18 rebounds. There are gonna be great games with him. The problem is that he's 6'8 and a half playing center. That's the first thing. The second thing, he's he doesn't offer rim protection whatsoever, so your interior defense is an absolute sieve, it's a turnstile, it's just spectacular dunk after spectacular dunk or easy layups at the rim, and then you don't have the foot speed andor the tenacity at the point of attack as far as the defenders are concerned to stop anybody from getting into the lane. You might have had that with the other guy who was kind of your star, which is De'Aaron Fox. He asked for a trade as soon as you let Mike Brown go. He's like, Listen, I do not want to be known as the coach killer, so I am electing to be traded now. He goes to San Antonio. Now you sit there and think to yourself, well, did Sacramento get a bounty of picks back for De'Aaron Fox? That answer would be no. Did they get a pick, their own pick back to kind of control their draft situation? Yeah, they did. But did it help them? No, it didn't. So the Sacramento Kings are now in a situation where they're in the toughest conference out of the two, they don't have a star. Doug Christie is now playing with the uh the hand that he's dealt, where Demonis Abonis is probably going to be your de facto star, which is not great. And you can sit here and say, Well, what about Levine? What about Zach Levine? Vince, you're a UCLA guy, you love UCLA. Zach Levine is from UCLA. Chicago couldn't wait to get this dude out of town. Remember a couple years ago, there was a point where Zach Levine was going to get traded to the Detroit Pistons. He elected for like season end during ending foot surgery, and the vibes in Chicago became immaculate as soon as this dude elected for surgery. They started to play with a passion, they started to play with an edge, there was more joy going on in Chicago, and now Zach Levine brings his morose to the capital city of California. Now you saw it on full display last year. He is gonna shoot jumpers, he's gonna give you some incredible games, he is going to worry about his stats for sure. He is not going to make any of the his other teammates better at all. He's super athletic, but doesn't really play a lot of defense, which is kind of crazy. I wish everybody well who has season tickets to Sacramento Kings watching Zach Levine. Now his running mate, Damar DeRozan, I like Damar DeRozan. Even though he is a USC guy, I don't have a bad word to say about DeMar DeRozan. And by the way, if you knew about DeMar DeRozan, you wouldn't have a bad word to say about him either. But I do like his game, he is additive, he does help out your other players that aren't stars, he's kind of kind of an underrated playmaker for your team, but remember Demonic Sabonis plays that role more often than not. It's a collective of somewhat talented dudes. If they were in proper roles with other teams, they'd probably be a lot better off. But they thought a lot of themselves and they thought a lot of their talents that they've not put put themselves in those positions. Like Zach Levine for sure is basically like a third guy on a good team, and he needs to have like strong leadership ahead of him. Damar DeRozan is more of a fourth or fifth guy in a rotation. Demonic Sabonis is probably like a third guy normally, probably playing out of position at the five spot. He should be playing at the four spot, and you got like a a huge pterodactyl big with a huge wingspan, and then Demonic Sabonis is like your gritty power forward who's gonna do a lot of your dirty work and things of that nature. So, this is what Sacramento has to look forward to in this season. I hope I give you a bunch of uh you know positive things to look forward to. I know it doesn't sound like it, but we're gonna get there. There are some positives. I'm not gonna leave you Sacramento just empty-handed, I'm not gonna do it because we are a positive podcast. Malik Monk is a guy who will always be the type of guy who can be the sixth man of the year every single year. His production, which is a six foot-one diminutive point guard, that actually he's more of a shooting guard than he is a point guard, he's going to be able to score, he's going to have the spectacular dunk from time to time, and he is going to be productive, especially in a chaotic type situation. He makes the right cut at the right time, he shoots a three-ball pretty effectively, he's around 39% on decent volume as far as that's concerned. So I love that. He's kind of a luxury item for like a core person. I know that sounds crazy, and it probably sounds really, really bad, but think about it. If you are like living in an area that's not at the greatest area on the face of the planet, and you own like a brand new Lexus, you know what, you know what you're doing. It's a luxury item you don't need. You probably need a Honda, right? You probably could go with like a Nissan or something, you don't need the Lexus if you're living like in a more impoverished area. Just saying. So, what to look forward to with the Sacramento Kings? Well, there's two things you didn't get to see Devin Carter a lot last year, and now you do get to see him, and I hope that kid can show out because he was really good in college, he had some great March Madness situations, and he was killing the big East when he was in college. I did make mention of Neat Clifford. The reason why I like Neat Clifford is because of the fact that he's like 6'6, he's 235 pounds, he's kind of a bowling ball type of guy, but he is solid. This dude can play defense, he gives you a little offense, he has a little connectivity, he can kind of fulfill the role that Kevin Herter, basically, what you imagine Kevin Herter to be, he can kind of fill that role. Maybe not the shooter that Kevin Herter was, but he will give you more on the defensive side than Kevin Herter would have. So it's kind of like a give and take. I think he's one of those guys that when you start to build up the higher-end talent, this is one of the connected pieces you want to keep on your team. How will the offense be different this year than last year? Well, Sacramento fans, this is where we kind of get into a little doom and gloom. It's probably not gonna look a lot different than last year. You're gonna have a lot of DHOs from Sabonis, you're gonna have a lot of ISO with Zach Levine, and DeMar DeRozan is still the king of the mid-range. Those are your three leading scorers, those are what they do best, and that is probably what you're gonna see a lot of. The whole problem was is that we were supposed to see Keegan Murray play a lot and see what his overall development was, and if this was some of a kind of a piece that was going to be around and be sustainable for whatever the next next iteration of the Sacramento Kings was gonna be. Unfortunately, we're probably not gonna see until 2026. Now it'll be early 2026. I'm not saying the whole year, it'll be early 2026, but he's coming off a thumb injury. Now it's not his shooting hand, but it's his guide hand on the ball when he's shooting. So I wonder how that affects him. Does it take any time for him to come back? Because it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with the lower limbs, so I think you can go ahead and still get your cardio and what have you. He's still young enough where this shouldn't affect him too much, he should be able to bounce back from this pretty quickly. But these early games are really informative of what we wanted to see out of Keegan Murray, and then as you get into January, your team starts to coalesce into what they are, and then trying to wedge a piece back in to what you collectively have going on is kind of hard, so he's gonna have to pick and choose and find his way throughout the second quarter of the season. So we probably won't get all the data we need on Keegan Murray this year, which sucks because that was the thing that Sacramento had to look forward to. Can you look at Devin Carter and can you look at Neek Clifford as developmental pieces for whatever is going to go on? 100%, those will be your kind of shine shining beacons of light. You might not be lighting the beam in Sacramento light a lot, but you'll have these two pieces that you can look at and kind of go, Okay, I see some things here, or hey, I don't I don't see some things here, and we kind of need to figure out what we need to do on defense. We talked about Sabonis, we talked about what he is as far as how he anchors a defense. It's really not really anchoring a defense, it's just kind of being there, and I told you that you did not have the point of attack defenders to really hold off people. Now you did pick up Dennis Schroeder. Dennis Schroeder is an irritant on defense, he might get into a couple fights throughout the year, but he's not necessarily somebody you can depend on for let's say 70-74 games a year, and say, Hey, that's our point of attack defender. Devin Carter might grow into that, and that might be something where Dennis Schroeder, as a vet, somebody who really understands his role in the league now, and has really been a real nice glue guy the last couple stops that he's been at, that might be the some the thing that you look forward to, is how he works with Devin Carter. You know, how does Damar DeRozan work with Neek Clifford to up his game and and help his development? Those are the things that Sacramento fans have to look forward to. And you also don't have somebody who's going to shoot a volume of threes other than Zach Levine. So, how do you space the floor? And this is where Saraya comes in into the chat. She says, Clarity is spacing for the mind. Yes, it is, and think about it, you don't have a lot of defined roles. You have people who normally were the number one, who are going to be steadfast that they are the number one, and know that you want to run your offense through Demonisabonis. Then you have Keegan Murray, so when he comes back, is he going to jump right back into the fray? Is he going to start taking a bunch of shots? Or is he going to ease his way back in? Now, we know anything about Keegan Murray. We know that he is a very low-key type of dude, so it probably won't be that hard for him. Now, predict I look at this team and you think about what we're doing here. I think Keon Ellis is going to give good minutes, good defensive minutes. Monk is definitely going to provide some offense off the bench. Your backup bigs are Sarich and Eubanks that does not lend itself to a lot of confidence in that situation. You did draft somebody in the second round, um, Renault from Stanford, also French dude. He is 7-1-7-2. He's more of a kind of in the mode of DeMontis Lonis, good passer, able to see the floor, good timing with the passes and things in that nature. I don't know necessarily is he gonna be the the actual deterrent at the rim that you need, and obviously his physicality, he's gonna have to grow into his body a little bit, because what is he, like 20? So he's definitely doesn't have this grown man strength to speak of. So again, in the West, Sacramento, you are looking at a lottery situation. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we are just going to be 100% honest with you. And then the other thing to look forward to, as Saraya says, when Keegan Murray gets back, let him cook, prep the kitchen now, you know, get everybody on board to make sure that we give Keegan Murray a bunch of opportunities to be able to thrive and then see what you have in him. Let's be really honest about the Sacramento Kings. If you think for one second that Zach Levine and DeMar DeRozan are gonna bring you to some sort of promised land of postseason, did you see what they did in Chicago? Just saying. Now, let's move on to another team that is also going through a flux, going through a situation, a season of change, if you will, and that is Matt Ishbia's Phoenix Suns. I did say Matt Ishbia's Phoenix Suns. Now the storyline here to me personally is Devin Booker and what we're gonna call a happiness index. If you saw what Phoenix did in the offseason, cut the umbilical court, Bradley Bill was bought out, he is now a clipper, and we'll talk about him a little bit later. Kevin Durant was traded to the Houston Rockets, and you say you rub your hands together and go, Oh boy, how many picks did we get? How many young pieces did we get back? Well, you got Jalen Green and you got Dylan Brooks, and I'll talk about them a little bit later in this segment, but Devin Booker is the lone survivor. Now remember, four years ago, this team is competing for championships, they are in the NBA finals. They got Cam Johnson, who is now in Denver. Booker will have to go up against him, and Mikel Bridges was there as well, and you also had DeAndre Ayton, and I know how much Phoenix Sun fans hate DeAndre Ayton, and we're gonna talk about him a little bit later because he's in a different place, too. But this team was competing for championships. Yes, Chris Paul was ancient at the time, he's still ancient, he's still playing, which is crazy, but all of these dudes are gone, every last dude is gone. Matt Ispia came in and bought the team and like on some sort of coke bender or whatever he was on, he said, burn the ships, we're trading everybody, we want Kevin Durant. And at the time, I was like, That's a lot, that's a lot to give up for Kevin Durant, who was in his mid-30s at that point in time. Now, nobody's left, no picks to speak of, and Devin Booker is just there. Now, to his credit, he has said, I want to stay in Phoenix, I want to be like my idol, Kobe Bryant, I want to stay with one team forever. We will see how he feels when it's December 25th and the Phoenix Suns are irrelevant again. We will check back in on the happiness index of one Devin Booker. Now, again, I told you that this is Matt Ishpia's Phoenix Suns. Here's another guy who saw the writing on the wall, got a bit of reality, and started to understand that the second apron was real. He also understood that it was very punitive, and this dude starts selling uh assets like the dudes on Wall Street when they got some news that some real bad news was coming down the pipe. Like we selling everything, everything that's not nailed down, we are selling it. Let's go and we're selling it for pennies on the dollar. Keep in mind, you got nothing for Bradley Bill, you got nothing. You gave up a ton, all your second-round picks that you had. By the way, this was also the team that traded their 2031 first-round pick, which, if you think about it right now, with the how the team is without their picks, because keep in mind Houston still has a ton of their picks, and probably gonna need that 2031 pick, but they don't have it anymore. They gave it away for like three middling first round picks to kind of use to upgrade the team last year and then ended up not doing it again. Matt Ishbia's Phoenix Suns. Now, we do have another coaching change in Phoenix. So Vogel comes in first, he's gonna bring you some toughness and some defense that you need, whatever the case may be. Now, you don't have the pieces to run this defense, right? You don't have them, but he gets you to a postseason, he drags that team to a postseason, but the leaders on the team, i.e. Kevin Durant, i.e. Devin Booker at the time, i.e. Bradley Bill at the time, right? Oh, then you get Budenholzer. Gutenhoser comes in, and you're supposed to get a better offense, right? It's supposed to appeal to the Bradley Bills of the world, the Kevin Durant's the Devin Bookers of the world. You'll worry about the defense when you worry about the defense. It was also another disaster. Jordan Knott is now the new head coach of the Phoenix Suns. A lot of great ideas, what have you. We're gonna throw some stuff on the wall, see what sticks. Very known for his creativity on the offensive end, very known for his player development, which you're gonna need. You're gonna, you're gonna need. Also was under the stewardship of one Matt Ishpia. By the way, he's the one who's doing all the press conferences, it's not the player executive guy, it's not the head coach, is not Devin Booker. Matt Ishpia has become the de facto Jerry Jones of the NBA. He's doing press conferences, he's giving you the State of the Union of the Phoenix Suns. Because it's about him, it's been about him. This whole situation has been about him. Again, we're gonna need to check that happiness index on Devin Booker. We're gonna see how long can he stay loyal to the soil in the Valley of the Sun? Now, Phoenix, I am not here to tell you that we're trying to rip your superstar away from you. That is not my deal. But I just wonder how exhausted will Devin Booker be after he has seen a championship team. Not a road, they didn't a road, it was like a nuclear bomb went off, and there were no survivors. Again, you had DeAndre Aiton. Say what you want about DeAndre Aiton. He was a seven-footer with a ton of skill. And due to the prodding of Chris Paul, Devin Booker, and others, you can call it somewhat bullying him. He was actually pretty productive also on the defensive end. He was a basically a 17 and 11 guy. So 11 rebounds a game, nothing to sneeze at. And you gave him away for a bag of beans and Yusuf Nurkic, who basically couldn't move anymore. He was like a statue. He was like a gargoyle statue that you see like in New York City that sits on top of like old libraries. So he's gone. Cam Johnson. He came, he left in the Devin Kevin Durant trade. Mikhail Bridges left in the Kevin Durant trade. And then all your picks. All of your picks left in the Kevin Durant trade. Well, where's the good news, Vince? Glad you asked. Matt Ishfield's cleaned house. We got Jordan at coach. Brian Gregory now in as the player personnel guy. How they did my guy, James, uh James Jones, terrible. But he landed on his feet because now he works in the NBA offices, so good deal for him. I am very concerned about how they're gonna build this team out. What you're hoping for is like people like Dylan Brooks, Grayson Allen continue to be productive members, and then maybe you can sell them off as pieces and kind of slowly do a slow burn build. Now you have a bunch of bigs now. Because this is the interesting thing about Phoenix. You make a trade last year for Nick Richards, who was in Charlotte. Let's hold that thought. So then you make another trade, and you get Mark Williams from Charlotte. Got two bigs, two seven-footers, both from Charlotte. Charlotte's defense hasn't been great over like the last three years. Both of those guys have been there. Well, we'll get into their stories in a second. But you bring them over in the draft. You when you traded Kevin Durant, you got your 2025 pick back from Houston. By the way, Houston is holding all the other Phoenix Suns picks. They got the 2027, they got the 2029. Everybody hold on to that. So what do you do with your 2025 pick? You draft another big who's 18 years of age, I think now 19. Malawak from Duke. Now I love Molowak. I think he could be really, really good. I think he can be a real runner, I think he can be a deterrent at the rim. He is raw as all get out. It's very peculiar that you got Mark Williams. And if you are going, Mark Williams, Mark Williams, huh? Where did I hear that last year? If you're kind of a casual basketball fan, you probably are not real familiar with the the story of Mark Williams. You know, if you want to call it kind of like the saga of Mark Williams. Well, Mark Williams last year during the trade deadline, which traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Lakers sent over first round pick, pick swap, and our flame throwing outside young talent in Dalton Connect. Now you can talk about Dalton Connect and what he's become now and whatever, but at that point in time, Dalton Connect was hitting threes left and right, all this other stuff, and he was traded to the Charlotte Hornets to get Mark Williams. Mark Williams comes to Los Angeles. We had just got Luca here. Mark Williams failed his physical. I know there was a ton of HIFA violations. What have you? By the way, that's just the NBA. Stuff that should stay under wraps, did not stay under wraps. People were saying it's the worst medical that they've seen in like 15-20 years. The trade gets rescinded. Mark Williams goes back to Charlotte. Dalton Connect and the Picks come back to LA. And guess what? Phoenix says, you know what? You know what sounds like a good idea? Let's get the dude who had the worst medicals that physicians have seen in like 15-20 years in the NBA. Let's get him. Oh, and then we're gonna draft a center who's 7-2. Do you understand, Phoenix? What's going on right now? Do you see it? I see it. I don't understand it, but I do see it. What is this team going to look like? Okay, let's do this. So Jalen Green comes over from Houston. Dylan Brooks also comes over from Houston. Now, Dylan Brooks is a very good wing defender, and if his shot selection is monitored, if his shot selection is kind of hey, these are the strict rules for you shooting the basketball. He is a very good player. Problem is with Dylan Brooks is that he fancies himself as something more than what he actually is. You are an occasional three and D guy. You are corner three shooting guy. He should be Dorian Finney Smith. But my man kind of fancies himself as a Mikhail Bridges. Okay. Oh, by the way, Mikhail Bridges, who Phoenix used to have. Dylan Brooks will shoot you in games. Well, actually, no, I've never really seen Dylan Brooks shoot you in games. He will shoot you out of games. If given the green light, he will shoot you out of games. There was a point a couple years ago. This dude was in Memphis talking big trash to one LeBron James. LeBron destroyed him in the postseason. You know, he got sent off to Houston. Now, in Houston, Ime Adelka rules the land. So therefore, Dylan Brooks was not taking a bunch of threes. And if he did, he got pulled. Now Dylan Brooks is with a young coach in Jordan Ott. Now I hope and I am praying that Jordan Ott really follows the book that Ime Adoga set up for Dylan Brooks and yanks him as soon as he makes an ill-advised three. I also hope that Devin Booker says if you take a three-point shot with 18 seconds left in the shot clock, I am gonna put you in the trunk of my car. I am going to drive out into the middle of the desert, and I'm gonna leave your ass there. So we hope these these things happen. Saying Phoenix. Now Jalen Green is a sometimes productive, sometimes not productive as a as a secondary scorer. He will be asked to be a secondary scorer here in Phoenix. That means he's gonna get a shit ton of opportunities. Jalen Green is probably a number three at best on a really good team. He has never been put in that position to do that, and now he's gonna be asked to help bring the offensive production with Devin Booker to a respectable level. Good luck with that. That means Jalen Green and Devin Booker are going to be the de facto point guards. You remember a couple years ago when Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and Bradley Bill uh hooked up and they were talking about oh, towards the end of the year, they were like, you know what, we need a floor general. Who's a floor general for this team? We're back in the same situation that we were a couple years ago. Ark Williams in 164 possible games that he could have played, he's played less than 30. Thank God you got Nick Richards and um Maluac, who is a young stud, but has no business to really kind of touch a court unless in garbage time this year because he is still very green and very raw. This is a level of new owner disease than we've ever seen before, where not only do you make the ill-advalued trade, you make it at such a level that is so punitive to your team that there's no way out. Also, Igadaro, you gotta hope that what you saw from him was real. Now, he's not a real great offensive threat as far as that's concerned, but you're hoping that building blocks, right? We work on a couple things, we get a little better each and every year, and then we can build up his trade value metal. So stay patient, my friends. Stay patient because your triumvirant of centers of Mark Williams, Nick Richards, and uh Maluac from Duke, your veteran wing and Royce O'Neill, these are the guys that you're hoping to have banner seasons, and their track record has shown that not to be the case in the Los Angeles Clippers. Now, the Los Angeles Clippers have had a tremendous off season. A lot of people really love their pickups. I love asking who's paying the age tax. You're saying Vince, this is very negative of you. Now, here's the other thing that's going on with the Clippers. I don't know if you listen to a podcast here lately. The Clippers are in a in a bit of a conundrum right now with uh Kawhi Leonard. And it's not the usual conundrum where we don't know if he's gonna play or not because of injury. It's did Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard somehow circumvent the salary cap? You say, well, Vince, what does this have to do with what goes on on the court? I'll tell you in a second. He's done like a five to six uh podcast deal dealing only with Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, and basically he has come up with from this company company called Aspiration, which was trying to basically cut the carbon footprint of companies and things of that nature. The company goes under. I understand that. I get that. Now, Lawrence Frank, who is the player personnel vice president of the Clippers, says, uh, we'll cooperate. Speak of clouds of fines, suspensions, picks, maybe people getting let out of their contract. This is the specter that hangs over the Clippers right now. Not good, folks. Now, as far as the team is concerned, you still got Kawhi Leonard for now, who, when healthy, is an absolute killer. You know, he is a very efficient sideboard who plays basketball. You also have James Harden. The one thing you can say about James Harden is that in the half court, he can get you a good look. Now he might pound the ball more than you want, he might go into some kind of foul merchant, foul hunting type of situation to be able to boost up his own stats. You can say all those things, but his relationship with Avisa Zubots is absolutely impeccable. Avisa Zubots had an incredible year last year, and you can thank James Harden for that. Kawhi is what 32? James Harden is 36. Okay, so you're starting to see where we were getting at talking about the age tax, right? Bradley Bill is now on this team, so the Phoenix Suns, who need bodies, who need productivity, bought out Bradley Bill, and now Bradley Bill, who is 33, he hasn't played more than 62 games since like 2016-2017. Bradley Bill coming off the bench, Brooke Lopez being on this team. Yes, you got depth. Oh, by the way, Chris Paul is also on this team. There's a lot of olds on this team, a lot of wear on those tires. Their playoff experience level is going to be off the charts. I don't know if it's gonna lead to W's in the sense of in the playoffs, but in the regular season, this team probably is going to be very good if he can stay healthy. So let's talk about this real quick. Chris Crawl, 40 years old, Brooke Lopez, 37 years old. Dadun, 31. The young cats of this group is Avisa Zubats, who absolutely gets mauled every single game. He's 28. They also got John Collins from Utah, and they got Derrick Jones Jr. Derrick Jones Jr. 28, John Collins 27. But you can see the amount of age on this team. It's gonna be really awesome when it's all collected up. Brook Lopez, like I said, is 37 years old. James Harden, who say what you want about him, he's definitely a savant on offense, he doesn't stay in the greatest of shape. So I wonder when there's a hamstring pull or a groin pull or a calf pull or whatever the case may be. Chris Call had a pretty good season in Golden State last year, played a lot of games, and if you're going to put him in the game for anywhere between 16 to 18 minutes a game, you know, he's just he's just not the that same guy. But Chris Call can give you get you into good offense, and if you're limiting his time to like 16 minutes a game, I think you are better off that way. Also, the same thing for Brooke Lopez. If Brooke Lopez is coming in the game and you're keeping a visa zoo box minutes down to 32 a game, and you got 37-year-old Brooke Lopez coming in for 16. Those guys get extended out is when I start to work. If there's an injury to a Kawhi Leonard, which Kawhi Leonard get get hurt well practically every season since he's been a clipper, and then he goes away for undisclosed amounts of time, and nobody knows really what's going on with the injury, which just saying, you know, it and it's good depth. High-end talent needs to stay pretty pristine clean for them to kind of reach the levels that they want to reach. Now, is this the best clipper team that they've had in quite some time? I'll 100% say yes. Do they have an avalanche of stuff about to come down the pike on them? Also, yes. Because the one thing that professional athletes answering questions about stuff that literally has nothing to do with them, you imagine what Chris Paul is gonna be like after a loss in the Intuit Dome, and then with the impending uh sanctions that are gonna befall your team uh due to the investigation by Adam Silver and the crew in the NBA offices about Kawhi Leonard, and what would you do if Kawhi Leonard like this is the situation that is could be coming now? Like I said, Clicker said they will go ahead and be accommodating as much as they possibly can. Now, the amount of evidence has befallen them. I mean, Pablo Torre has put out it it seems egregious what has gone on there. I don't know if you can explain it all the way. Personally, I don't. We will see if the Clippers can hold it together, stay healthy, get them to the playoffs, and then see what happens. That's a lot to navigate in a season, especially an 82-game season, and again, it falls on a visa zubox, it falls on Kawhi, and it's on James Harden for him to have the season that he had last year. But if Kawhi tunes out the noise in cloud with all just the nastiness that's going on off the court, so the baseline view of this team is that with the talent and with the veteran savviness, they should win baseline 48 games, injury, bug, or whatever the case may be. This team is gonna be right around 500. They're gonna win like 42-41 games. Now, I don't know if that gets them into the play-in at all this year. I think you're gonna have to win high 40s to get into the to the playoffs this year. So we will see what the Clippers come up with. State Warriors. Butler coming over to the Warriors during the trade deadline last season, set off a chain of events that couldn't be foreseen. They went on an incredible run. Jimmy Butler redefined what the Golden State Warriors could actually be. Jimmy did a lot of Jimmy, they were 24 and 8 when Jimmy came over. That's not to even talk about Steph Courage being 37 years of age, and then Draymond Green being the young pup at 35 years of age. But here we go, Golden State. Everybody loves your offseason. Now, the youth on this team is Brandon Bazinski, who's 22 or 23, Trace Jackson Davis, who's 24, and then Jonathan Kaminga, who's 23. I'll tell you one person who's not excited, Steve Kerr. Steve Kerr has not been a Jonathan Kaminga truther at all. Not last season, not the season before. They've had a bunch of critical comments back and forth in the media of all places, but he signed a two-year deal worth 48.5 million dollars, so 24.2 a year. He's coming off the bench, and he's gonna provide instant offense off the bench. Kerr is going to have to go away from the beautiful game to unlock what is actually in Jonathan Kaminga. The problem is, does Kerr want to do this? Now I'm not saying he's trying to sabotage the team, I'm just saying there's so many bad vibes and verbal barbs that have been thrown back and forth between these two that I just wonder that's did not play coach's decision, Steve Ker making those decisions. He's like, Well, I just like the way the team's playing right now without him. Like these are words that were said in post-game interviews. Now, Jonathan Kaminga has come back and said, I am not like my developmental process. You don't like your developmental path. Now, also, mind you, this was a team that won a championship a couple years ago, right? Hey, I should be playing 32 minutes a game, I should be able to make the mistakes I want to make or whatever, so I can get better, and those are all valid points. Unfortunately, they had championship aspirations, and in those championship aspirations, you know what they couldn't have? Somebody who is 6'8, 220 pounds, that rebounded at the level that you did. They also couldn't have somebody just turning over the ball all the damn time. By the way, Kaminga is a very good ISO player. That is round the ball, has energy, it finds the person, whatever the case may be. Usually that's Steph, right? Usually Steph. And you know, they get free flowing shots and things of that nature. Now, Jimmy Butler comes in and he's kind of an ISO free throw merchant, and guess what? 24-8 when Jimmy Butler gets there. All the things they wouldn't let Jonathan Cominga do, they let Jimmy Butler do. You know why? He is going to consistently give you effort on the defensive end, he's gonna rebound for his position. Jimmy Butler does. That's why Jonathan Kaminga is gonna be coming off the bench. Does it make sense to people now? Now, we talked about the age of the starting group of players, right? Curry 37, Butler 36, Draymond 35. Now, I don't know if they're gonna start Al Horford, but he would be their length. So could you imagine? You could have a starting lineup, poor Brandon Kozimski, replay reviews. Could you imagine? You got Butler 36, Draymond at 35, Al Horford at 39, and Steph Curry at 37. These dudes are talking about going to NACLA to visit their vineyards, they're talking about property, they're talking about 401ks, stock options, and Brandon Krasinski is talking about Call of Duty. There's a huge age gap between those dudes. It's gonna be fun. Now, what Al Horford brings to the Golden State Warriors, he adds a pick and cop element that they have not had at a height that they have not had. Uh, short roll reads, he can do that, which is the stuff that Steve Kerr loves to do because again, the ball has energy. This dude at 38, 39 years of age was out here playing excellent defense last year for the Boston Celtics. He is where Brooke Lopez, I worry about his movement skills and things of that nature because he's more of a drop big. Al Horford, time, he's just defied it. He's just like, yo, I'm gonna be great at defense, I'm gonna be additive on just frustrated players like Joel, Carl Anthony, but now he's going up against people Nikola Jokic, Victor Wingbayama, different category of cat. We'll see what our guy, Al Horford, old man river, what he can bring to the table. Now, Kozimski is the guy that everybody needs to watch because this is a guy if Golden State wants to go to where they want to go, and his ability to shoot are gonna be so important to how Golden State is able to survive this season. Now, Kaminga can come off the bench and be the good soldier with Moses Moody. We might have something to talk about in San Francisco, they can probably reach that upper echelon of contender in the West, but you're asking for that to happen. Damn sure don't bet against Jimmy Butler. But there's a lot of landmines that Steve Kerr has to kind of navigate throughout this season, and this season is long, and we just talked about the age of this group, but if any group can't hold it together, it's a group that is led by Steph Curry. Because here's the other thing that's a real harsh reality for Jonathan Kaminga, and actually it would be a real reality check for the Golden State Warriors if his attitude doesn't change, if he doesn't provide the things that Steve Kerr asked him to do, he's not gonna play. We've already seen it, we saw it last year. What makes this season so much different? Because they paid him 24.2 million dollars effort and energy, pick and choose your spots wisely, allow Jimmy Butler to set you up, maybe also listen to Jimmy Butler and get into sort of a mentor, mentoring role between those two, and you'll get the playing time that you want, which will help you get the bag that you want to get. Because remember, this dude was looking for like 30 plus million dollars before he finally signed with like three days left to go. Can I get a cup of coffee? Can somebody go to can I get a Starbucks run somehow, somehow? Shout out to the other little people doing the dirty work in San Francisco, waiting on Jonathan Kaminga to make up his mind to sign his contract. Oh, by the way, Seth Curry, brother of Steph Curry, is also on the Golden State Warriors. D'Anthony Melton is back, and I'm gonna tell you right now, I know this dude has not been healthy the last couple years. When the Warriors were they were playing pretty clean injury, non-injury field season. I really like what the Warriors could be, and also he would mitigate any Jonathan Kaminga noise and nonsense that we might expect throughout the season. Now, the drawbacks to the Golden State Warriors, we talked about it. It's the age, it's the it's the basically the chance of injury, and you know how do they navigate those? The team bunch of tough SOBs. So, can this team win 50 games? Yes, it can. Can it be in the upper echelon of the Western Conference contenders? Yes, they could. And for Pozynski to take another step in his development, can the Golden State Warriors avoid injury? But we're talking about Jokic. And we're talking about OKC Alexander, who's 27 years of age. So he's just hitting his prime. Not to also talk about that. Chet Homgren missed half the season last year with a broken hip. So full year of Chet, that's the reality that Golden State is going up against. This is a beast of a conference. And it's gonna take a lot of things to go right to their goal of like getting to the Western Conference Finals. Now we get to the Lakers, and I say the Lakers for last for two reasons. One, if you know me, I'm a Lakers fan, but this is the team that I root for, and uh they got some questions to answer too. First, whether it is something that LeBron James got the most obvious old man injury that you can possibly get. Some people would call it divine intervention, divine load management. Now, sciatica is a debilitating injury because it just shuts down a whole side of your body, just shuts it down. Now, they had described it as a glute injury before. He's missing six to eight. Now you can sit there and say to yourself, hey, this is bad news, whatever. I look at this as good news, and I'll give you the reason why. I think for the first time, JJ Reddick will be able to look at LeBron James as unless something catastrophic happens, 32 minutes a game, eight minutes a quarter, is what you get. You are now 40 years of age and you're gonna be 41 in late December. This is lead. And we want you healthy when the games really matter. I don't want you going to social media telling people I don't like this, I don't like my minutes being restricted, blah blah blah. We don't want any passive aggressive stuff, none of that. We want you to understand that this is at your best interest at heart. We are trying to preserve you for the playoffs for the postseason, and also we want you to be the sidekick, yes, man. It is a new day and age in Los Angeles, boy, because Luca Donce is here and it's not just Luca Donce anymore. We gotta call him Skinny Luca. Okay, skinny Luca has shown up. He is he's arrived thinner, it's the best conditioning since his rookie year. All I know is that Luca equals second side violence. Think about he's gonna be the primary ball handler on pretty much all the plays when he's in the game. That means Austin Reeves and LeBron James, if healthy, are going to eat and talk about DeAndre Aiton. This is where he landed. In the same draft that Luca was drafted 2017, is now the live threat for Luka Doncic. Obviously, we got some things to talk about in as far as who's the point of attack defender. We'll get to that momentarily. This is JJ Reck JJ Reddick's second year. We'll tell you right now. I like the messing. Yeah, don't let all the rabbits out the bag, man. Keep things in your in your bag of tricks, hold those things out until the playoffs. You showed everything in your hand. Everything. Now I understand that you were trying to piece it together. You know, you had a lot of time when Anthony Davis wasn't on the court, then he got traded. You had Luca, you were trying to gel the team together. I get it. But I hope that you can play a little bit closer to the vest with everything you're trying to implement this year. What are the Lakers going to look like without LeBron? Well, we saw a little bit of it last year because LeBron got hurt towards the end of the year. He had a knee injury and a foot. And you saw Austin Reeves and Luka Doncic just absolutely murder teams. Austin Reeves is really awesome when he's the second side initiator. Oh, I don't have everybody looking at me. Cool. This is great. Playing, pump fake, go to the basket, either get a shot, get foul, or give an easy bucket to Jackson Hayes or whoever, Rui Hachamura, whoever. All fantastic. If Luca is in the best condition that he's ever been in since joining the league, does the defense get better? He's still not quick. He's still not like this lap 768. He's still gonna be like 240 pounds. Think about that. Like he was overweight last year. People don't like to talk about it. Also, he had a calf injury that was just catastrophic. So he wasn't able to get the cardio that he needed to get, but now that he's skinny Luca, we had a position now where it's like, hey man, hey dog, can you play decent defense? Just decent. We're just asking you to be medicated B and keep it going. Can you do that? Some of the developing people that they gotten over the summer, Marcus Smart is going to be absolutely important to the Lakers if he stays healthy. They're gonna ask him to be the point of the tag defender. DeAndre Aiton is a real center. No disrespect to Jackson Hayes, but Jackson Hayes is light in the buttocks with 60 pounds. I think Jackson Hayes was like 210 pounds, so he looked like a reed blowing in the wind. Now you got a real center. And here's the best part when DeAndre Ayton even is not like connected, even when the mindset isn't great. This dude is 15 and 10. Now you got this dude on the team where hey bro, right? You got one year deal. That's all you're getting. If you're a max contract dude, and you're this last year of your contract, you got a lot of incentive to play very hard. You got a lot of opportunities where you're sitting there like, man, if I play my cards right, I can get my money right back where it was. Or close. You're playing on the Lakers, you're gonna get a lot of TV time, if you have a lot of standout games, Luke is gonna be throwing you lobs. Get boards, be physical, show that physical presence that you were in Phoenix. If you do that, you'll get paid. Also, if you do that, the Lakers are gonna be good. If you are a dude that's not connected to the team, if you're a dude that pouts, if you're a dude that says, Hey, it's snowing, I can't make it to the game. By the way, that was a real thing that happened in Portland. You called out sick. An NBA player called out sick. My car is not gonna get down the driveway. Bro, you got way too much money to get some hey, throw some salt on your drive in. You got people to do this, right? I'm sure there's a gardener or two to get to the gang. Now he will not have that problem here in Los Angeles, right? We don't snow in Los Angeles usually. We have the occasional you should be able to get to the game. We're gonna need you to board, we're gonna need you to block a couple shots, we're gonna need you engaged. These are the type of things we're looking for out of you, and then you can get paid. It's real easy, man. Genie Bus is a pretty damn good owner. She is now secondary owner to Mark Walter, who got deep deep pockets. This is the owner of the Dodgers. If you remember that, understand this. Group behind group make a lot of money off the court. Now, the big speculation here in Los Angeles is who's gonna be the best starter? Now, with LeBron out, this makes it easier. You can start Rui Hachamora and you can start uh Marcus Smart in the lineup. Now, they can go ahead and have a battle royal of now. Rui is the incumbent. Rui has been here a couple years, Rui shoots a melt on that end, but he is not a true three, he cannot guard your sinewy or more laterally uh gifted. It's really unfair to ask LeBron at the in his 23rd year to go out and say, Hey man, we kind of need you to guard like Kevin Durant, or we need you to guard Devin Booker, or we need you to guard Kawhi Leonard. That's very unfair to LeBron. The point of interest at this point in time is do you do enough Ruby on the rebound stuff as far as the productivity of your offensive game? If not, we'll probably want Marcus Smart to start anyway. There's been a lot of moaning and complaining about can we go out and get a wing that could defend the people that I just spoke of. The problem is that that type of wing is very expensive to get. So if you want to use your first round draft pick that you have right now, and also Rui Hachamura to go out and get the wing that you want. By the way, it's not even gonna be the wing that you want, it's gonna be kind of like the wing that you want. Because here in Los Angeles, we got champagne wishes and caviar drink. Like we want OG and anobi. This is what we want out here. You know, we want a guy of that caliber. What you're looking at in actuality is you're looking at one Andrew Wiggins, and that's where it's kind of going, uh, do we want to give up a first-round draft pick for that dude? Well, that's what it's gonna take to get on, because Pat Riley ain't gonna give him away for free. Can you piecemeal it together? See what else comes up. Is there somebody disgruntled, whatever they think they probably should be in a better station in life or whatever, and see what you get from there. But that is the big situation here, and then the Austin Reeves is in the last year of his deal. If this dude puts up the numbers that we think he is accustomed to, and what he could provide this year, and he's not a absolute sieve on the defensive end of somebody who is a plus 20 point per game dude, shoots the ball, the three ball at a 40% clip, and also gets to the free throw line six to eight times a game. That is the going rate. I don't meet the rules, I just provide the answers to the rules. If you think Austin is not worth that kind of money, you better trade him now. You better trade him now because he's getting the cash from all reports. Austin loves it here, he loves the golf. If he's not he's on the golf course doing his thing, from what I hear, he's also a money game because you're gonna end up broke, you're gonna end up poor. Don't do it. But he wants to stay here, the Lakers want him to stay here. If he does what he's supposed to do, he will be here and he'll be handsomely rewarded with a nice extension, a nice one. But I want I want Lakers fans and I want NBA fans to understand that Austin Reeves next year is going to be a 30 plus million dollar a year, dude. Wrap your wrap your head around that, just understand. And then La Ravia is here, Don Kinect is I don't know what has happened to him. It's like like some kind of body double situation. He he was shooting the ball really well early on last year, and then all of a sudden, it just went away. Jake LaRavia is here to provide wing size, he is the Dorian Finney Smith replacement. I'm saying that sort of facetiously, but actually kind of real. And then there's Jared Vanderbilt. Jared Vanderbilt is finally healthy. Jared Vanderbilt, he would be our best point of attack defender if he could provide anything offensively. Also, he doesn't have the best hands in the whole wide world either. That we need to break out at specific times if the offense is a wagon. Then you bring Jared Vanderbilt out for five to seven minutes, kind of extend the lead, get him out, and then provide, put the better offensive players back in the game. And then there's Bonnie James, you know, get up out of here. But are we counting on him to do anything this year? No, nope, he is not part of the nine-man rotation. Jackson Hayes is Jake La Ravia is Gabe Vincent. Is hell, even Jerry Vanderbilt might be, but it's really gonna be Marcus Smart, it's really gonna be Jake LaRavia, Gabe Vincent, and Jackson Hayes. Bronny is the 11th dude on Maxi Cleveland on what he ends up bringing to the team. This was a wasted pick, all this is terrible, all this. I will continue to pound the table. We are giving a lot of energy to last year's 55th overall selection. Now, in a regular draft, there's only 60 selections. By the way, in the draft that LeBron James Jr. was in, and y'all tricking about he's holding a spot, a roster spot for somebody. Are y'all saying y'all got the same energy for uh Giannis Anthony Takumpo? Because both his brothers are on the team, and you can say that they don't deserve spots either. Cause they don't provide anything. So, I don't want to hear this year about how they wasted a draft pick. I don't want to hear about one of the greatest players that end up being like top five in almost every damn statistical category that there is. Oh, by the way, he's never been in trouble. LeBron James has never been in trouble. What what scandal has LeBron James been in? Oh wait. Right, run. So his kid is on the team, he's getting better every day. He's gonna play a lot of G League games, he's probably gonna play about 30 to 40 NBA games. The Lakers are losing big, unless everything has fallen apart, everybody's injured. That's the only time LeBron James Jr. is going to be in a game at a critical moment. So, I want the noise to die down because LeBron James is being is coming into his 23rd year in the NBA. That is magical, and by the way, it's magical because last year he authored in a performance that is not usual. If you're 40 years old and you're playing basketball, you're like Vince Carter, not me, not this Vince Carter, but the other Vince Carter. Where you're like nice 10 minutes off the bench, you're getting like five, six points you know a game, whatever the case may be, all this other stuff. LeBron James is a starter. LeBron James is an all-NBA candidate as soon as he hits the floor, he is still one of the top 20 best players. So that dude has provided a lot for the NBA, a lot of excitement and a lot of memories that nobody will ever forget. Is he better than Jordan? You know what? That's for everybody else to debate. I don't care. I just know that the longevity, all the points, all the great memories, all the great finals that he was in, that's all I know. If you want my opinion, I think Jordan is the best. He was 6-0 in the finals, he was the absolute killer. But if you want to talk about, then LeBron's the best. And if his son is on the team or his son is not on the team, it don't really make a heel of beans to me. It really doesn't. We should enjoy LeBron Ramon James as long as we possibly can. Because we're damn sure closer to the end than we are to the beginning. And whatever he authors this year is gonna be out of the. And whatever the Lakers do this year with LeBron James on the team is going to be something that we are all gonna want to talk about. So thank you for the content, LeBron. I appreciate you. That being said, so I have to get ready to do two. So the best part of you is you surround yourself with people who give you like insight, joy, and accountability. Appreciate them out loud. That's your real wealth. And if you're still finding your tribe, know this. You got one here with us at FRPC. Until next time, keep your mind sharp, your heart open, and your circle tight. I'm Vince for Sarah. We out.