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LeBron Calls Out Memphis And Milwaukee And The East Gets Weird · Front Runner Podcast Collective

• 0:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Welcome to FRPC.
• 0:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: On today's show, the old man of the Lakers yells about hotels, and then also he yells about cheese country as well.
• 0:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: LeBron take a took a break from YouTube golf show and dropped a zero-star Yelp review on the entire city of Memphis, Tennessee, and then followed it up.
• 0:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He didn't hold anything back.
• 0:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He was like, any M City can get it.
• 0:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Any M City.
• 0:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And he was like, I'm talking about you, Milwaukee.
• 0:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So we'll break that down a little bit.
• 0:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're also going to talk about the Charlotte Hornets and they're quietly playing with flamethrowers down in the playing bracket.
• 0:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And they are dropping threes like it's 2015.
• 1:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And we'll talk to you about that and why that is.
• 1:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then the other thing, who do we have the most confidence in in the lower part of the bracket, and who we think can do the most damage in the Eastern Conference?
• 1:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You guys stay tuned for that.
• 1:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We got plenty more to talk about.
• 1:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But before that, drop the beat.
• 1:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What's good everybody?
• 1:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Welcome to Frontrunner Podcast Collective.
• 1:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We talk about everything that's NBA related.
• 1:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Anything that you think of hoop heads unite.
• 1:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're going to talk like friends.
• 1:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We are going to argue like cousins and still walk out smarter than when we came in.
• 1:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am Vince.
• 1:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am your host.
• 2:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Your occasional hoops therapist.
• 2:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Your absolute favorite bad influence when it comes to completely reckless NBA over overreactions that are low-key make perfect sense.
• 2:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Twice a week we will come to you.
• 2:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We are setting the table.
• 2:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We are giving you big clear breakdowns.
• 2:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're bringing in film room observations, and we are grown having grown conversations about players, coaches, and the front office that are actually moving.
• 2:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're unpacking it all.
• 2:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: On the court wins, timeline messes, and blank check contracts, the PR spin and the locker room rumors with actual verified receipts.
• 2:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We are bringing the jokes, the advanced math, and that exact barbershop ammo that you need to take straight into your group chat and completely nuke the argument.
• 2:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you are NBA sicko who wants more than highlight talk, if you want content context, numbers, and a point of view, this is the spot for you.
• 3:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: FRPC, let's get into it.
• 3:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Alright, so how we're gonna start this podcast today?
• 3:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Two things.
• 3:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: One, there's a lot, there's a people talking mad junk right now.
• 3:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And one of the per people that are talking this kind of junk is is a gentleman that we now coin as the all-time leading scorer in the NBA, and that is one LeBron James.
• 3:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So, first up, an absolute air assault by LeBron James.
• 3:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He just called out the 901.
• 3:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've seen superstars exert their leverage before, but we just witnessed from a 41-year-old billionaire on a YouTube golf show was a historical low for a franchise dignity.
• 4:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: LeBron looked dead into the camera and said, if the city of Memphis had won the lottery in 2003, he quote might have called an Eli Manning and not shown up.
• 4:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He didn't just insult the team, he he took a flamethrower to the hotel accommodations complaining that about staying in a hyatt.
• 4:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: At 41 years old, on a random Thursday, he is like he's being forced to sleep on a cot in a G-League gymnasium.
• 4:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's acting like he's he yo, he's acting like this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him in his whole entire life.
• 4:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then he says he plays city planner and tells them to move to Nashville, Memphis.
• 4:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You weren't the only one to get this smoke.
• 4:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The city of Milwaukee also got it too.
• 5:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He he doubled down.
• 5:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So when they talked to him about the comments that he made about Memphis, he went on to say that another city that he doesn't particularly like to go to is Milwaukee.
• 5:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What is up with the M Cities?
• 5:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The M Cities are just getting it in, and they're just getting it with double barrels.
• 5:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know what I'm saying?
• 5:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's really crazy.
• 5:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't know what LeBron is doing here.
• 5:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know, I mean I know he's you know spitting his his truth.
• 5:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I'm gonna tell you right now, the thing that you need to watch out for is the day that you actually do retire.
• 5:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The day that you actually say, Hey, I'm thinking about hanging it up.
• 5:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I want to go ahead and do my you know farewell tour and things of that nature, you might get a salty response in these two cities just so you know.
• 5:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, LeBron might be getting to that age just like we saw with old Kobe, uh, RRP, our guy, Kobe Bryant, but he might be getting to that stage of life where he just don't give a shit anymore.
• 6:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Who knows?
• 6:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Who knows what is about to happen.
• 6:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But a salty albron for the playoffs might be necessary, especially as we go through some of this baseline buzz that we need to get into.
• 6:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So, next on the wire, the Wendy City has officially cleaned house.
• 6:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Chicago Bulls have fired executive Arturis Karnesovic and also Mark Eversley.
• 6:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're gone.
• 6:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, we have been very critical of the Chicago Bulls for a period of time, talking about why are we still in the friend zone?
• 6:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Why don't we just rip off the band-aid and go ahead and tastefully tank on whatever?
• 6:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I know we can't use the tank word anymore.
• 6:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's very, very sensitive subject, especially in the NBA offices in Manhattan.
• 7:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Chicago's been stuck in the middle for a long period of time.
• 7:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They completely gutted their core, uh, trading way Zach Levine, Lonzo Gall, Kobe White, Nicola Vusevich, and they failed to acquire a single first-round pick in return.
• 7:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, Levine wasn't gonna give you a lot of value because of the contract and because of the dude puts up numbers, but he doesn't really contribute to winning.
• 7:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Lonzo Gall was always you know hurt, so you weren't gonna get anything there.
• 7:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the one that I would be a little bit salty about is the Kobe White piece of this.
• 7:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't understand why you couldn't get a first-round pay for Kobe White.
• 7:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And to go even further back, if you want to go further, because I got receipts, right?
• 7:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Chicago also traded our guy, Alex Caruso, to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
• 8:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And I then I said, how come they can't get a first round pick for Alex Caruso and taking back Josh Giddy?
• 8:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They didn't get anything for that.
• 8:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, here's the other thing that supposedly was happening with this deal.
• 8:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They've gotten Rob Dillingham from the Minnesota Timberwolves and it part of some of these transactions that they got, and they also got Jay Nivey.
• 8:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, Jay Nivey obviously has come under fire for his comments that he made via Instagram.
• 8:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's been released uh after his social media meltdown last week, and CEO Michael Reinsdorf finally pulled a plug on that situation.
• 8:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Like, you ain't killing my money.
• 8:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're not doing it.
• 8:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So the Bulls are hitting the reset button with$60 million of cap space, and a head coach, Billy Donovan, who might be heading for the exit door next.
• 8:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So I'm gonna tell you right now, it's it's bad in Chicago, but I hope what they have what they will find now is a player personnel guy who has a vision and can lead them in a direction of acquiring talent either A through the draft or B through um trades and what have you, making the right free agent moves.
• 9:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You don't need to hit a home run with your free agency.
• 9:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What I'm asking for are singles and doubles at this point.
• 9:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know, saying that's what we're looking for.
• 9:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're looking for can we find the diamonds in the rough?
• 9:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Can we find the guys who might be a little undervalued, maybe they've been kind of buried by their their bench or whatever the case may be, and we can find some guys that can really give you some asset potential.
• 9:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That is the thing that we're looking for in Chicago.
• 9:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: For the Bulls fans out there.
• 10:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I mean, this has been a long time coming.
• 10:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You guys have had a run, a string of front offices that you haven't been pleased with because they have not come with an actual direction, a actual kind of like this is our blueprint to success.
• 10:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Some of this is at the doorstep of Michael Ryansdorf.
• 10:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've been hard on him, we've been hard on his leadership as a governor of the Chicago Bulls, because I think what happens is that somebody gets in there, whether it's Carnivis, Paxson, whoever, they start off a certain way.
• 10:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know, okay, this is the way that we're gonna get back to success.
• 10:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then a year in, you get Michael Ryan's door starting to tinker, starting to ask questions, starting to under undermine your authority, and then now we're we're spinning our wheels again.
• 11:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: My hope is that there is somebody with a pretty strong personality that can come in and make the right and appeal to his better side.
• 11:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Say, hey, listen, we're gonna take a couple tough years, we're gonna do it, but we'll come out better for it.
• 11:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And that's what you gotta do.
• 11:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's how you get better in the NBA.
• 11:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You don't get better by trading or whatever, I mean you can get better by trading, but usually you're not gonna fall into you know two different making superstars just like that.
• 11:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And here, the other thing is that do you have the assets to even pull that off?
• 11:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So there's a lot to do in Chicago, and we just hope that the right people are chosen, and then the actual ownership group can listen to who they put in in those player personnel positions, and then allow them to do their job.
• 12:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's the hope.
• 12:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now we need to move down to uh Texas and San Antonio to be exact.
• 12:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We gave so much love to Victor Wingwayama and the Spurs, and how we thought they they were actual uh competitor to the Oklahoma City Thunder, and that they could actually contend in the West to go to the NBA Finals.
• 12:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I still believe all of that, but we hit a snag because Victor Wingwayama left the game against the 76ers with a left rib contusion after a hard fall.
• 12:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Here's where the math gets uh fascinating that When we went to the locker room but came back uh out to cross the 15-minute threshold before sitting and resting the rest of the game.
• 13:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Why?
• 13:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because playing 16 minutes counts as his second final near miss exemption for the NBA's 65 game rule.
• 13:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's sitting at 63 currently, plus the NBA cup final, meaning he just needs to suit up one more time this week to lock in his eligibility for defensive player of the year and first team all NBA.
• 13:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That is elite calculated front office management right there.
• 13:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I will say this.
• 13:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Don't bring this dude back until he's healthy.
• 13:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't give a shit whether he is uh going to miss out on the uh the Supermax or not.
• 13:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You got plenty of years with this.
• 13:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Maybe there's something that you could do behind the scenes to like they're doing with Luca, and we'll get into him in a second, but don't bring him back just to get him to 65 games.
• 14:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Allow him to convales, allow him to get healthy because this team as currently constituted has a has a real run in them.
• 14:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And things are around the West are playing out maybe not not to their favor at this point.
• 14:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So you're gonna need the very best of Victor Wing Banyama if we're talking about a deep run in the Western Conference and then maybe ultimately getting to the NBA championship.
• 14:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So I don't think they should bring them back anytime soon.
• 14:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Get healthy, Victor.
• 14:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We love you, we we appreciate all you've done.
• 15:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Listen, if you don't get the defensive player of the year award this year, don't worry, man.
• 15:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's several in your future.
• 15:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We all know you're the best defensive player, bar none in the league.
• 15:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We see how many times you embarrass people, we see how many times other NBA superstars make business decisions by getting out of the lane.
• 15:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So don't worry about it, my guy.
• 15:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Just go get yourself healthy, get yourself right, so then we can have you at full throttle when it comes to the playoffs.
• 15:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, speaking of a team that's going through it right now with injury and things of that nature, that'll be my Los Angeles Lakers, your Los Angeles Lakers, Lakers Faithful out there.
• 15:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Shout out to you.
• 15:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the Lakers have been just absolutely inundated with injuries.
• 15:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Uh Luca Doncic is out, but we'll get to him in one second.
• 16:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Luca has a grade two hamstring strain, and he's uh seeking aggressive uh treatment overseas.
• 16:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's trying to miraculously speed up the recovery process before the playoffs starts in two weeks for him uh to make matters worse.
• 16:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We also lost Austin Reeves.
• 16:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has uh a rib issue, which is terrible.
• 16:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Um so if you're gonna lose both of these guys, and the prognosis is that they're not gonna be back for several weeks, umwhere in he has so he has a grade two oblique strain, Austin.
• 16:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I want to make sure that we get the actual right diagnosis in there.
• 16:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's a grade two oblique strain, and I'm gonna tell you right now, they're in desperate straits at this point in time because if Luca doesn't come back, it looks like they're gonna fall to the to the number four seed right now, could possibly fly to the fall five seed.
• 17:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Either way, if Luca doesn't come back, they're gonna get bounced early.
• 17:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Doesn't look like Austin Reeves is coming back.
• 17:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a real bad strain for him in his oblique.
• 17:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It takes somewhere in between three to nine weeks to cut recover from.
• 17:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And if that's gonna be the case, this is it.
• 17:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is it for the Lakers.
• 17:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And your playoff push just became a desperate race against the clock.
• 17:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because you don't have the firepower, unfortunately.
• 17:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No shade to Marcus Smart and Lou Kennard and Rui Hachamore.
• 17:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But those guys don't put up numbers consistently enough for you to battle against who you're gonna end up going against, which looks like the Houston Rockets.
• 18:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So if that's going to be the case, you're probably an early first round exit, and then it's off to the offseason, and then what happens?
• 18:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We got a lot of decisions to make.
• 18:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What do you do there?
• 18:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is LeBron coming back?
• 18:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Who knows?
• 18:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: How much money is Austin Reeves gonna get?
• 18:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: These are all questions that you have to to to answer in the offseason, and I'm gonna tell you right now, they are tedious questions to be sure.
• 19:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But we hope that Rob Kalinka and his ever-growing front office staff can make the right decisions and put the the collective group around Luca Donces to make a difference and get him to the promised land of the NBA playoffs.
• 19:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So now I got stuff for you.
• 19:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is something that we wanted to do last week, but now we have the time to do it, and what this is is the capability of what we're doing here, is we're looking at teams in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference.
• 19:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And what we're trying to do and what we're trying to come up with is are these teams really scary?
• 19:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or is this a product of TV saying, oh, Philadelphia's back, oh Toronto's good, oh, you can never forget the Miami Heat.
• 20:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're gonna go through the bottom end of the Eastern Conference playoff positions.
• 20:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're gonna go through each team, and we're gonna go through their chances of making a playoff run going getting past the first round.
• 20:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So we're gonna start in Philadelphia.
• 20:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's where we're gonna start at, and we need to have a serious conversation about the 76ers anyway, and we need to do it without rose-colored glasses that the city of Philadelphia currently is wearing.
• 20:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The people that I've been talking to are trying to figure out is this team a sleeping giant?
• 20:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we are we really gonna put all our chips in the middle of the table for Joel Embiid once again?
• 20:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm looking at a house of cards in a windstorm personally.
• 21:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Everyone is looking at that 118 to 114 win over the Charlotte Hornets and acting like Daryl Mori has just reinvented basketball.
• 21:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we serious right now?
• 21:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is this are we really falling for the banana in the tailpipe again?
• 21:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we supposed to just trust the process for a team sitting in the seventh seed right now with a negative 0.4 net rating and an atrocious 116 point defensive rating that ranks 17th in the league?
• 21:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the Philly fans are currently tearing their hair out over Jalen Hurts and and what has dropped with the Eagles, demanding accountability and questioning leadership, but they are given a massive.
• 22:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Pass to a to a basketball team that has been built on hypothetical potential for half a decade or even longer.
• 22:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It is time to stop reading the cover of the book and asking the hard, uncomfortable questions about this roster before blindly picking them to upset the Knicks or the Celtics.
• 22:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So we're about to get into it.
• 22:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're going to start with the absolute glaring red flag at center of the entire operation.
• 22:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Joel and B can have a level of s skepticism when it comes to the 76ers and his health risk.
• 22:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is a franchise player cornerstone when healthy.
• 22:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 38 games with Joel and B.
• 22:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Half the season.
• 23:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Okay.
• 23:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've done it again.
• 23:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Oh, if we can just get Joel and B healthy at the right time, we can make a run.
• 23:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You cannot be a foundational piece of a championship run when your regular season resembles the extended stay at a luxury medical spa.
• 23:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're talking about 43 and 36 basketball team trying to survive the Eastern Conference, and their so-called gravity-shifting MVP couldn't even make it to the floor for half the season.
• 23:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now the analytics uh department, the he's a darling of that, will confidently tell you that he actually plays, he's dropping 26.9 points, his true shooting percentage of 60.5, and his massive 33.5 usage rate completely breaks the opponent's defense tolerance buffers.
• 24:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That is fantastic spreadsheet talk.
• 24:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But what is good about broken tolerance buffer when you're sitting on the bench in custom street clothes watching your teammates garner through 82 games and you only available for half of them.
• 24:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am completely tired of the arrogant narrative that the regular season is just an inconvenient dress rehearsal for the 76ers.
• 24:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've been hearing it for about four years now.
• 24:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It is an absolute embarrassment to the competitive nature of the league.
• 24:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You do not get to use the regular season as a hospital ward, punt half your games, and then expect basketball world to blind grind just blindly crown you as a first-round giant killer.
• 24:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: To be a powerhouse two or three seed like the Knicks or the Celtics in a grueling physical game, you know, seven-game series, you need absolute durability.
• 25:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You need a superstar who doesn't come with a fragile handle with care warning label slapped on his jersey.
• 25:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They want us to believe his needs are magically going to hold up for like two months in the crucible that is the um playoffs.
• 25:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Fans shouldn't shouldn't just be skeptical, they should be terrified.
• 25:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Gracing yourself for the inevitable heartbreaking injury update that derails your entire season again.
• 25:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Doesn't this sound like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football and Lucy pulling it away from him yet again?
• 25:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm just asking the question.
• 25:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I mean, listen, Joel Reed is a phenomenal basketball player.
• 26:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I will not take away as far as his talent is concerned.
• 26:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But we've seen this story play out over and over and over again.
• 26:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And at some point you have to just go, it's not gonna happen.
• 26:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And and you you can be skeptical until proven wrong.
• 26:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, people will say, oh, that's a shitty way of being.
• 26:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's you shouldn't be that way.
• 26:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's shown you enough with his play when he has played.
• 26:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The key phrase there is when he has played.
• 26:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then we get to the grand experiment of the expensive savior, which is Paul George.
• 26:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Paul George sat out for 25 games after a substance of well wasn't substance abuse problem, but he the protocols of the NBA drug abuse program failed that.
• 27:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now he's come back, he's been playing well.
• 27:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now George has played 34 games.
• 27:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He stood in front of microphones apologizing about letting his people down, and now we're supposed to blindly trust him as well as an elite Robin to save a franchise.
• 27:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now you want to hear some you want to hear some pretty good stats?
• 27:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Sure.
• 27:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's do it.
• 27:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His usage sits at a tidy 23.3% while putting up 17 point 17.7 points, 5.4 rebounds.
• 27:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I have a very serious question.
• 27:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we getting a heroic guy who dropped 26 and 13 against the Charlotte Hornets?
• 27:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or are we getting a drifting corner three to steal a win?
• 27:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or are we getting a radic passive version who disappears for entire halves when the defense whistle gets tight?
• 28:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Scraping together a Measley 2.2 box plus minus.
• 28:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You can't be elite with that.
• 28:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Can't be elite with that.
• 28:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's had a lot of playoff situations.
• 28:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've seen him, you know, kind of turn around the narrative on his playoff situation because for the longest time there was snicker, there's snickering going behind his back about, you know, playoff P and what that means and all that.
• 28:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And really, there was a there was a vote of no confidence when it came to Paul George.
• 28:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We all know it.
• 28:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And we just don't know which one is going to show up.
• 28:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, here's the other problem with the 76ers that we need to talk about.
• 29:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Sixers have a Golden State Warriors issue going on, but at least they have more talent when it comes to this.
• 29:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So the Sixers have a timeline that is completely an utter mess.
• 29:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You have a starting five with Embiid, Maxie, George, Edgecombe, and Barlow.
• 29:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They have played less than 300 total possessions together the entire year.
• 29:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Almost two years after Daryl Morin signed Paul George to this massive deal, we still do not know whose team it is when they are fully healthy.
• 29:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: How in the world do you build a championship level connectivity in chemistry with less than 300 possessions?
• 29:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Spoiler alert, you don't.
• 29:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You don't.
• 29:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You just roll the basketball out there and pray for a miracle.
• 29:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This isn't an offensive system.
• 30:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's an incredibly expensive pickup game.
• 30:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: George is supposed to is supposed to be the ultimate safety net.
• 30:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But right now, he's just a massive, unpredictable variable in a franchise built entirely on variance.
• 30:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If he doesn't go, if he does, if he if he decides to go cold, then you're leaning on other other pillars that we need to talk about in one second.
• 30:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now what happens if for some reason Joel and B and Paul George start feeling swagger, start feeling they're like superstar oats.
• 30:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What does that mean for the rest of the team?
• 30:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are you a stabilizer or are you a disruptor?
• 30:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This goes for both Joel and B and Paul George.
• 30:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Which one are you?
• 30:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because here's the thing that I think everybody wants to talk about.
• 30:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're going to shift gears to talk about the guy who really stirs the drinks in Philadelphia.
• 31:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Tyrese Maxie, because this is where the schematic tension is going to hit in its absolute boiling point.
• 31:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The data from uh people that I know is that it says that Maxie is a cornerstone player.
• 31:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This kid has played in 67 games this year, grinding out 38.2 minutes a night.
• 31:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He boasts a massive 29.4 usage rate, and he's dropping 28.4 points a game and dishing out 6.7 assists per game.
• 31:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And he's a monstrous box plus minus of 5.8, which is more than double, you know, like two and a half more than what Paul George is putting out there, who's getting paid a lot of money, by the way.
• 31:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A lot.
• 31:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's objectively become the heart and soul and the engine of this team while Joel MB and Paul George are taking turns sitting in the traders' room.
• 32:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's carried the water for the Philadelphia 76ers.
• 32:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But what happens in the crucible of the NBA playoffs?
• 32:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Will Tyrese Maxie be allowed to be the true leader during crunch time?
• 32:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I will tell you what exactly happens, and it isn't pretty.
• 32:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: When there's two minutes left to go in a brutal game six against the Knicks, and the season's hanging by a thread, the veteran eagle heart hierarchy is going to rear his ugly head.
• 32:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Will Nick Nurse actually allow Maxie to be the true undisputed leader that he is?
• 32:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or will Joel and B, the former MVP, willing willingly set aside a heart, set a hard screen and roll to the rim, or is he going to demand the ball at the high elbow, stall the offense, and freeze Maxie out?
• 33:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is Paul George going to accept standing quietly in the corner while the 23-year-old runs the show?
• 33:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We've seen this tragic movie in Philadelphia way too many times to fall for it again.
• 33:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And they have these dynamics blazing fast, young guards who get completely marginalized and pushed to the side.
• 33:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm gonna tell you right now, I see it all the time.
• 33:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I see it all the time.
• 33:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: When Embiid is on the court, they play a completely different style.
• 33:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: When Embiid is not playing, you know, it's Maxie's show.
• 33:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's when the ball when Embiid is in the game, the ball sticks to Embiid's hands.
• 33:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We get a slowdown game, which listen, in the playoffs, it is a half-court game.
• 34:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But are we trusting Joel Enbi?
• 34:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: When you have a guy who is a who's played damn near 40 minutes a game, played most of the games this year, and has a box plus minus of 5.8.
• 34:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or are we going to succumb to the money?
• 34:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we gonna succumb to your$50 million veterans and get the young kids out of the way?
• 34:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Cause the other thing is this.
• 34:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You also have VJ Edcomb.
• 34:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And VJ Edcomb is 20 years old, and he's continued to play like a seasoned grizz grizzle veteran.
• 35:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Edgecomb had 10 assists against the Washington Wizards on April 1st.
• 35:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Washington Wizards, congratulations, you know, to the Sixers.
• 35:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You successfully carved up a 17-win lottery team.
• 35:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But here's the thing about this.
• 35:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: VJ Edgecomb has played outstanding basketball, shown the athleticism, showed the defensive chops.
• 35:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's done it all for the Philadelphia 76s this year for somebody who is nearly playing 35 minutes a night and giving you 16 points, four assists.
• 35:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But again, this dude right here is your future along with Maxie.
• 35:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So does the future come now?
• 35:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we gonna prioritize what is going to be a decade-long run with Maxie and VJ Edgecomb, or are we gonna give the chance to possible glory?
• 36:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And when I say possible, I say that with a side eye for real.
• 36:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Possible glory of Joel Embiid and Paul George making one more magical run.
• 36:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It could be setting up for a recipe of disaster.
• 36:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you have calming agents like Kelly Ubre Jr.
• 36:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I mean, he can be a wild card, he can be a volatile asset, he can shoot you out of games in five minutes, but he can put you in games too.
• 36:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You also have Cameron Payne.
• 36:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Here's what I will say about all of this.
• 36:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The reality of the culture is trying to build in Philly is that the 76ers have to live with the mistakes of VJ Edgecombe.
• 36:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They have no choice but to let him run the offense alongside of Tyrese Maxie, allow the 20-year-old to who has incredible regular season and look like an absolute lock for all rookie first team, stepping straight into the prime time, and he's supposed to learn.
• 37:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is supposed to learn.
• 37:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But let's keep it, let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
• 37:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we actually supposed to believe that the sheer amount of games missed by Joel Embiid and Paul George leaving them less than 300 possessions together, combined with the drastic style play differences when Embiid is on the court versus when he is off the court, will just resolve itself?
• 38:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or are we going to believe that the 76ers can magically find cohesion and then use it as a weapon against the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference?
• 38:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't buy it.
• 38:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't.
• 38:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You can't simulate playoff chemistry, and the Knicks or the Celtics are coming.
• 38:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you ask me my opinion, the 76ers are going, are not a sleeping giant, they're not taking time bomb of volatility on a big stage.
• 38:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The second they step onto the court at Madison Square Garden and run into a real connected playoff team and say what you want about the Knicks.
• 39:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I think when the when the lights are bright, I think the Knicks are gonna show up.
• 39:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I think the calming presence of Jalen Brunson, I think uh the fire that is Josh Hart, and you got to get something out of Mikhail Bridges.
• 39:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I think the 76ers are gonna have a really nice vacation.
• 39:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: One, two, three, Cancun.
• 39:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Hate to say it, Philadelphia fans.
• 39:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I know it's tough to hear, I know this is not what you want, but I just can't sit here and go, oh, absolutely, Joel MB back, everything's great.
• 39:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're gonna play this style of play that's conducive to the playoffs, and then we're gonna um really take the ball out of Tyrese Maxie's hands in the in the uh in the playoffs with like five minutes ago in the games online.
• 40:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes, if you're thinking of Joel B like five years ago, then I understand.
• 40:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But we can't live in five years ago.
• 40:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Tyrese Maxie is the here and now.
• 40:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: VJ Escombe is today and the future, and those guys need to be represented, they need to be counted upon when the times get tough.
• 40:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes, it's not for this year, but it's for the years after.
• 40:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And it might be a take or it might be a thought process that is uncomfortable for Philadelphia uh 76ers fans, but I know I speak the truth on this, I know what I'm talking about, because yeah.
• 41:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Did y'all really think?
• 41:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I mean, he has played well this year when he has played, but did you really think to yourself, hey, this is what we should be doing?
• 41:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We should be putting our our chips in the middle of the table for Joel and Bede.
• 41:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Sorry, can't do it.
• 41:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now let's move on to the Toronto Raptors.
• 41:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Raptors remind me of a difficult, completely infuriating Sunday crossword puzzle.
• 41:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You stare at it at it for hours, but nothing makes sense.
• 41:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The pieces seem to fit together, but the second you figure out the one crucial word, the entire board suddenly falls into place.
• 41:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Raptors are a team that had has had a great season this year so far, especially compared to what this podcast, this very podcast, thought of them um six months ago.
• 42:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But dragging themselves into April as a sixth seed or a seventh seed, they both won to the top-tier offenses.
• 42:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They ranked sixth in the league, holding teams to 112 points per game, so their defense is stacked.
• 42:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm sorry, not the office defense is stacked, Scotty Barnes is doing a thing, but the offense is sitting at 17, scraping together 114.4 a night.
• 42:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Frankly, it feels generous when you watch them play.
• 42:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They go through these agonizing long stretches where their shooting just gets sucked into a complete and utter black hole.
• 42:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We have the data from trusted rival scouts and the tape breakdown of uh an executive that used to be in the league, and we're creating a picture that this team is squeezing blood from a stone.
• 43:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So let's open up the scouting files on a team that refuses to die.
• 43:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're taking it to the six right now, boy.
• 43:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's go get it.
• 43:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's talk about the Toronto Raptors.
• 43:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: To spearhead this team, we got Scotty Barnes, is the only word written on the permanent ink.
• 43:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A rival scout identified as a chaotic hierarchy in Toronto, but Barnes is the absolute 1A cornerstone and everything and the everything engine.
• 43:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's look at these numbers real quick.
• 43:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're staggering.
• 43:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The kid is played in 76 games, all of them.
• 43:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's playing a massive amount of minutes.
• 43:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His usage is 23.6, which is slightly below traditional numbers of a number one option.
• 43:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But his box plus minus.
• 44:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 3.9.
• 44:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It means that he is the entire system.
• 44:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has supreme processing speed and pure junky DNA.
• 44:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's playing the point guard position in a power forward body.
• 44:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's grabbing 7.5 rebounds a game.
• 44:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's dishing nearly 6 assists.
• 44:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And he's doing it on a career high true shooting percentage of 57.3%.
• 44:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: When Emmanuel quickly went down, it should have killed them, but Barnes stepped in, uh became that primary of facilitation role, which is something that he's adept to anyway.
• 44:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 15 assists against the Orlando Magic not that long ago.
• 44:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But here is a tragic flaw.
• 44:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's the most important non-centered defender in the NBA.
• 44:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But he is surrounded by a broken spacing environment and in the playoffs series, a smart defense just going to shrink the floor on them.
• 45:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So we'll see how it all plays out.
• 45:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But Scotty Barnes is the truth.
• 45:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I love this kid.
• 45:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't know if he's a number one.
• 45:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't know.
• 45:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't.
• 45:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I wish I could say that.
• 45:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I just the shot is the thing that just holds him back.
• 45:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And if Scotty Barnes is carrying the load, you want to talk about a team that makes incredibly hard generated to generate turnovers, elite defense competition.
• 45:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's bring in Brandon Ingram.
• 45:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Right now, and uh somebody that I trust in the league flagged him as an empty calorie risk.
• 45:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The math is brutal when it comes to him.
• 45:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's played in 73 games this year, which is great.
• 46:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because before this, he had never played in more than like 63.9% of the usage rate.
• 46:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's taking all the bailout shots, getting you to 21.3 points a game or night, but his box plus minus is coin one.
• 46:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 0.1.
• 46:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So he is almost break even.
• 46:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's playing through a brutal heel injury, but if you are commanding 27% of the team's possessions in the playoffs, you are absolutely you have to tilt the floor.
• 46:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The mask screens that he isn't, and then you have RJ Barrett.
• 46:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's supposed to be the elite connector scorer, providing some group force and some rim pressure.
• 46:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This team desperately needs that.
• 47:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's shooting a miserable 34.3% 34.4% from three.
• 47:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's a left-handed dominant driver with a bad shoulder.
• 47:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Who can't shoot from the perimeter.
• 47:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a playoff scout's absolute dream when you want to scheme up against this team in your sleep.
• 47:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know what I'm saying?
• 47:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is what you're looking for.
• 47:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Like, yeah.
• 47:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're gonna sag off of that guy.
• 47:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That guy is gonna be able to take all the shots he wants.
• 47:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No paint, he's not touching the paint whatsoever.
• 47:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You let him take that 20-footer or that corner three, and we'll see how it all goes.
• 47:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But if you give if you give them, if you let them get into a track meet, that's where the magic happens.
• 47:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because if they turn you over, Toronto is hell to deal with.
• 48:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Brandon Engle has long arms.
• 48:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Emmanuel quickly can get in your grill.
• 48:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Uh Jakob Purdo is a good rim protector.
• 48:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I wouldn't say he's the greatest rim protector, but he's good.
• 48:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Scotty Guarns is the son that everything orbits around.
• 48:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Okay, he is going to get you in good positions to score the basketball.
• 48:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The problem is that I don't trust his team in the half court.
• 48:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And Brandon Ingram is still that guy who shoots a lot of mid-range jumpers.
• 48:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And yeah, RJ Barrett is grinding out 19.1 points a game over five rebounds a game.
• 48:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I'm telling you right now, I just don't see it.
• 48:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And now the bench is where you get some love.
• 49:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Our guy Sandro Mahmoud Killishvili.
• 49:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This dude plays hard.
• 49:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He gets buckets, he's averaging 11.2 points a game on nearly five rebounds.
• 49:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Um he has a uh a positive 5.9 box plus or minus.
• 49:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His true shooting percentage is 63.7%.
• 49:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He comes in and he provides the spacing that you're looking for.
• 49:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then they gotten something out of uh Jacoby Walter this year.
• 49:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But it's not enough.
• 49:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You don't have enough people on the court where the defense is going to respect what they do and how they do it.
• 49:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Alright.
• 49:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the guy that I'm looking forward to and seeing what he does is our guy, uh Colin uh Murray Boyles.
• 50:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A rival scout literally describes him as a granite cue who can't shoot.
• 50:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But he's uh cultural on the floor.
• 50:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He grabs offensive rebounds at a massive 12.1%.
• 50:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He makes opposing wings absolutely miserable.
• 50:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you provide you you have him and you have Jakarta Pertle, who's holding down the paint, with an absurd 69.8% true shooting percentage.
• 50:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now he has a minute, he has a 1.6 box plus or minus.
• 50:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're paying him way too much money, by the way.
• 50:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I just I just wish they had another shooter, just one more, where it was like, I'm gonna shoot eight threes a game, and I'm gonna shoot 38 to 39%.
• 50:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They just need another guy that when the lights get big, whatever the case may be, I'm gonna go ahead and knock these down.
• 51:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Just chill, it's gonna work out.
• 51:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So my verdict for the Toronto Blue for the Toronto Blue Jays, the Toronto Raptors is uh this.
• 51:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm gonna take it from a rival scout.
• 51:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You say you look at this roster, you look at the injuries, and they told us to reject this team as somebody that you should be scared of when it comes to a first-round knockoff.
• 51:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Um they ranked 22nd in scoring without their starting point guard right now.
• 51:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Um and here's the thing: who are they gonna face in the playoffs?
• 51:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are they gonna face Boston?
• 51:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because if they're gonna face Boston, Steve has no shot.
• 51:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, we can talk about spreadsheets and we can talk about numbers all day.
• 51:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We can talk about the sheer energy and grit of Scotty Barnes dragging them into this big stage.
• 52:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Um, and they might not roll over in five games.
• 52:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And they might get lucky in one of these games, but their offense takes hiatuses seriously, and I just don't think they have the offensive firepower to be able to compete with a team like the Boston Celtics.
• 52:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So Toronto, it's it was a good run this year.
• 52:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It was a positive step because I honestly didn't think that you were going to make the playoffs this year at the beginning of the season, so shame on me.
• 52:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'll say it right now.
• 52:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But to really expect that you do anything in the playoffs right now is it's a little far-fetched.
• 52:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now we need to move down to North Carolina.
• 52:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's a lot going down in North Carolina.
• 52:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Have you guys heard that Michael Malone is the new head coach of the UNC Tar Hills?
• 53:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I cannot wait to see what that looks like.
• 53:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I cannot wait to see that curmudgeon on a college basketball floor.
• 53:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I just cannot wait to see it.
• 53:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's a hard-nosed guy.
• 53:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I want to see how he deals with 18 and 19-year-old kids.
• 53:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's gonna be great.
• 53:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now we talked about fake contenders and we've talked about mud wrestling teams dragging themselves into April.
• 53:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now we need to talk about absolute nightmare scenario for every single top seed in the Eastern Conference.
• 53:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We need to talk about the ticking time bomb currently sitting in Charlotte, North Carolina, North Kakala.
• 53:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because the Hornets are probably gonna make it out of the plan.
• 53:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If not, they if that if not the plan, they might actually be the sixth seed, which would be terrible for the Knicks.
• 53:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Terrible.
• 54:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The data suggests that they absolutely will, and they're going to ruin somebody's spring at some point.
• 54:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Right now they're sitting in the A C under Charles Lee with a 43 and 36 record.
• 54:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Somebody I trust said this.
• 54:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is not your typical 8 seed Hogan for a lucky bounce.
• 54:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're walking into April with a 5 uh plus 5.3 net rating, which is sixth best in the entire NBA.
• 54:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And they have a fourth rank offense, and let me repeat that.
• 54:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let me repeat that.
• 54:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The fourth best offense.
• 55:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You want a comparison?
• 55:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You want to blaze the internet?
• 55:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You wanna you wanna really turn it turn up the heat in your group chat right now?
• 55:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Listen to me closely.
• 55:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Charlotte Hornets.
• 55:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is the closest thing to like the 2014-2015 Golden State Warriors.
• 55:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Maybe like the year before, 2013-2014.
• 55:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I might have the years mixed up, but they remind me of the Golden State Warriors right before they made their championship run.
• 55:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's nothing more terrifying than the young Golden State Warriors, and guess what?
• 55:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We might have another one.
• 56:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And let's give some credit where credit is due.
• 56:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's start at the top with the hierarchy.
• 56:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're gonna talk, we're gonna start talking about LaMelo ball for a second.
• 56:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: For years, the narrative around LaMelo has been all about flash over substance, taking 38-foot heat checks, the careless turnovers, the highlight reel passes that ended up in the third row sometimes.
• 56:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But you look at the tape from this year, and the maturation has been visible.
• 56:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It has been terrifying.
• 56:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has played incredibly, he's played with incredible maturity, and his head coach Charles Lee has finally got through to him, and that sometimes less is more.
• 56:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Just to make the right pass.
• 56:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't need a flashy pass, just to make the right pass.
• 56:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's carrying a massive 31.8 usage rate and generating a 4.4 box plus minus, but the real story is his role discipline.
• 57:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His shot diet of taking a handful of logo threes with 17 seconds on the shot clock has dwindled.
• 57:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's also been valuing possessions.
• 57:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is significantly turned around.
• 57:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The talent was never in doubt.
• 57:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It was ball's ability to harness what he had inside him all along.
• 57:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Kudos to Lamar Ball doing what he needs to do.
• 57:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now the timeline will still treat him like a mixtape player, but he's operating like a surgical floor general right now.
• 57:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: In a seven-game series, yes, his efficiency floor is a concern.
• 57:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is at a 54%, he's at 54.3% true shooting percentage, which flirts with empty calories on, but no, don't don't trip.
• 58:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Defenses will dare him to finish at the rim and see if the maturity holds up.
• 58:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I'm gonna tell you right now, when they swallow the whistle, will he be able to take the physical pounding that goes on in the playoffs?
• 58:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's what we gotta find out.
• 58:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Who else is on this team that we need to talk about?
• 58:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Obviously, we need to go and talk to our guy, talk about our guy, Brandon Miller.
• 58:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His game is just smooth as butter.
• 58:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's doing hyper-functional Paul George impersonation right now.
• 58:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's at a 28.1% usage rate.
• 58:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's shooting 57.4% true shooting clip.
• 58:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His box plus minus is at 1.6, but he's young.
• 58:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's young.
• 58:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Giving you 20.2 points a game a night.
• 58:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Miller's ability to provide mid-range game and his willingness to probe the paint has helped the helped in the explosive nature of the Charlotte Hornets offense.
• 59:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, when teams try to blitz Lomella right now, Miller is a steady secondary release valve.
• 59:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then there is the rookie, Khan Knipple.
• 59:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And I will tell you right now, this podcast was right in our pre-daft scouting analysis of Khan Knipple.
• 59:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are you kidding me with this kid?
• 59:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're talking about a 20-year-old who has torn up the NBA with his long barrage of threes.
• 59:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's shooting 43% from deep on nearly eight attempts a game.
• 59:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's crazy.
• 59:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's given the Charlotte Hornets 18.7 points a game.
• 59:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His true shooting percentage is a blistering 64%.
• 59:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are you kidding me right now?
• 59:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This kid is just incredible.
• 1:00:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Wait, what?
• 1:00:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Fifth overall?
• 1:00:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That's what I'm talking about.
• 1:00:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A rival scout graded him as an elite connected spacing guy with a massive 3.1 box plus minus.
• 1:00:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: By the way, 3.1 box plus or minus for somebody 20 years old in his rookie year is incredible.
• 1:00:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's leading the league in off-ball gravity as a rookie.
• 1:00:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's a historic situation.
• 1:00:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He struggled of late.
• 1:00:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Okay, because now you're you're really people are honing in on you on the whiteboard.
• 1:00:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're one of the top dudes when it comes to what's going on in the game plan situation with the defense.
• 1:00:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But I think he'll find his way.
• 1:00:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's a tough kid.
• 1:00:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He can put it on the he can put it on the deck.
• 1:00:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know, make really good decisions, wise decisions with the basketball.
• 1:00:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I love this kid.
• 1:00:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Lamello runs a pick and roll.
• 1:00:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It is instantly 20% more effective because of Con Kanipple.
• 1:01:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The defender's physicality cannot leave him in the corner.
• 1:01:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It is curry level spacing.
• 1:01:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes.
• 1:01:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Playoff coaches are going to hunt him on defense.
• 1:01:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But the tape says he's not a turnstile.
• 1:01:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And before we give the final verdict on the Hornets, we have to look at the other key producers that provide depth for this team and give them some grit and show us what they're capable of.
• 1:01:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the first person you gotta talk about is Miles Bridges.
• 1:01:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Miles Bridges is a hybrid forward who's providing functional toughness with this roster that desperately needs it.
• 1:01:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is 22.5% usage rate right now.
• 1:01:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Take a sip of coffee.
• 1:01:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's providing 17.4 points a game.
• 1:01:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He is a physical bridge between the finesse of the guards and the grit of the interior.
• 1:02:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: In the bench, one ex-executive flag, this unit is high trust.
• 1:02:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're talking about Kobe White.
• 1:02:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You have Musa Diobate grabbing nearly nine boards a game and boasting a crazy 65.4 true shooting percentage because all he does is dunk the basketball.
• 1:02:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Musa Diabate is a guy who understands his role on his team.
• 1:02:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am going to set hard picks and I am going to roll extremely hard to the basket.
• 1:02:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am going to make that defender make a choice.
• 1:02:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're not going to be able to sit there and hatch.
• 1:02:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're not going to be able to sit there and kind of guard both with your center situation.
• 1:02:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You're going to have to make a decision because if you don't, Musa Diabate is going to be on top of that rim.
• 1:02:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you know what you say after that.
• 1:03:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Watch ahead.
• 1:03:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Watch your head.
• 1:03:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He doesn't need the game, he doesn't need to uh the ball to impact the game.
• 1:03:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He just provides pure rim pressure.
• 1:03:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you have Ryan Cockbrenner, the rookie out of Creighton, providing functional length, and he's oh 1.5 blocks a game.
• 1:03:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What's up?
• 1:03:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you got short bursts of Sion James bringing that ACC all-defensive pedigree to the perimeter.
• 1:03:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a team that is deep.
• 1:03:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And more importantly, Charles Lee has made their mark on defense with his discipline but love style of coaching.
• 1:03:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They play at a 97 a 97 pace, which is 27, which is one of the slowest in the league.
• 1:03:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They value possessions, and that is vital when we go into the playoff situation.
• 1:03:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So what happens when a ticking time bomb goes off in the playoffs?
• 1:04:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A front office cont contact stamp this roster approved for sure.
• 1:04:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This isn't a team hogging the sneak in.
• 1:04:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a team that's probably gonna be close to 50 wins, masking or waiting around as a play-in squad due to its early season's growing pains.
• 1:04:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They are the nightmare matchup for the Celtics or for the Knicks.
• 1:04:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They play slow, they protect the ball, and they shoot the three, and when the three-point swarm hits, they can erase a 15-point deficit in like three minutes.
• 1:04:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No one wants to face the Hornets.
• 1:04:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No one wants to face them.
• 1:05:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And if they make it out of the playing tournament, mark my words, Buzz City is prime to completely ruin a contender's April.
• 1:05:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Just letting you know, I have a lot of faith in the Charlotte Hornets.
• 1:05:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I think they are going to be an absolute nightmare to play.
• 1:05:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I think a lot of people are going to be really interested when it finally comes down.
• 1:05:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'll tell you another team who will get a little bit afraid of them too.
• 1:05:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Boston.
• 1:05:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Not like saying that Boston is like, oh, we're gonna let it run down our leg or whatever.
• 1:05:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But playing a team that has that kind of firepower that can, you know, because Boston likes to shoot a lot of threes too.
• 1:05:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And you know what happens when the threes don't don't go in?
• 1:05:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Long rebounds.
• 1:05:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That means Lomelo is in the open.
• 1:06:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Court.
• 1:06:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That means that Khan Knipple is drifting out into a corner.
• 1:06:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That means that oh, if you attack LaMelo and try to trap him, he's gonna get the ball to Brandon Miller.
• 1:06:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a team that got a lot of answers to the test.
• 1:06:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Got a lot of answers to the test.
• 1:06:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, speaking of a team that answers to the test, we thought that that this team was going to take a huge leap in our preseason situation.
• 1:06:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Orlando Magic.
• 1:06:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And in the famous words of that great philosopher Ferris Bueller, life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop to look around once in a while, you can miss it.
• 1:06:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Well, let me tell you something.
• 1:06:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The Orlando Magic's collective heads must be spinning right now off their shoulders.
• 1:06:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because life just hit them like a freight train.
• 1:07:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's rewind the tape to October.
• 1:07:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Preseason vibes were immaculate.
• 1:07:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The tunnel fits were elite.
• 1:07:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The culture was set.
• 1:07:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We all sat behind these microphones and handed their front office glowing platitudes for acquiring Desmond Bain.
• 1:07:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Sure.
• 1:07:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We gave them a side a slight side eye about the absolute king's ransom they shipped to Memphis to get them.
• 1:07:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But with Bain's shooting and high highly anticipated bounce back of Franz Wagner this year and the steady climb of Anthony Black and the return of Jalen Sus, we were actually penciling in the Orlando Magic as a team that was going to host a first-round playoff series.
• 1:07:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I am one to say that I was wrong.
• 1:08:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We fast forward to today.
• 1:08:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're limping into April, sitting at 43 and 36, barely clinging to the ninth seed in the East.
• 1:08:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The vibes are completely dead.
• 1:08:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Teams are going on 30 31 to 0 runs against them.
• 1:08:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 31-0, I said it.
• 1:08:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: In a professional basketball game, no less.
• 1:08:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This is a disaster.
• 1:08:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The magics are messy, and we are needing to break down exactly how we got this illusion shattered for us.
• 1:09:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Well, let's start with the loudest noise coming out of Orlando right now.
• 1:09:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And that is one inclusion that we didn't see coming.
• 1:09:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Paulo Ben Carroll, who we still believe in this podcast will not be selling any Paulo Ben Carroll stock whatsoever.
• 1:09:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But the Scouting Network has been screaming about this for months.
• 1:09:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That is getting increasingly impossible to fight off the analytics guys about Ben Carroll's inefficiencies.
• 1:09:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And you look at the raw box score numbers, they look great.
• 1:09:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 22.3 points a game, 8.4 rebounds, 5.1 assists.
• 1:09:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It looks like a superstar.
• 1:09:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It looks like what it's supposed to look like.
• 1:09:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But when you look at everything else, the brutal truth is this.
• 1:09:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A rival executive said this.
• 1:09:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: It's like they force fed him as a one.
• 1:09:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has a massive usage rate of 27.6, but his box plus minus is a pitiful 1.3.
• 1:10:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: To be a true franchise cornerstone, the math demands a box plus minus of at least 4.
• 1:10:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: With that type of usage rate.
• 1:10:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 1.3 means Paulo is absolutely grinding his gears into dust just to get those 22 points.
• 1:10:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's operating in a horribly cog clogg lane and taking um taking on an offensive burden that is currently 56.7% true shooting percent right now.
• 1:10:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He can't support it.
• 1:10:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But the leadership aspect is truly alarming.
• 1:10:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Paulo isn't going down without a fight, but instead he's taking accountability.
• 1:10:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Check this out.
• 1:10:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's out here lobbing verbal grenades at his head coach.
• 1:10:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Jamal Mosley is not on the hot seat.
• 1:10:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's on the hottest seat.
• 1:10:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Ben Carroll's out here in post-game crashers just saying this is unacceptable.
• 1:11:04
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The offense needs to be better.
• 1:11:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There needs to be more imagination, whatever the case may be.
• 1:11:10
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You have a 23-year-old kid essentially going to management and complaining about your scheme because he's getting exposed.
• 1:11:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is he the right guy to be your alpha?
• 1:11:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is he is is Paulo Gancaro your Batman?
• 1:11:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because right now he's acting like a diva who wants the coach to be fired because the front office has caught him padding empty calorie stats.
• 1:11:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The tragedy here is not in the front office.
• 1:11:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They made the right decision in bringing in Desmond Bay to do exactly what he's doing.
• 1:11:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: To be a professional.9% in true shooting percentage.
• 1:12:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Box plus minus is only at a 1.4.
• 1:12:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Why is that?
• 1:12:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Well, part of it is Franz Wagner is what play in like 30 31 games or something like that.
• 1:12:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 31 games.
• 1:12:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If it's not one, it's the other one.
• 1:12:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If one's not hurt, the other one's hurt.
• 1:12:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And we haven't even got to Jalen Suggs yet.
• 1:12:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We haven't even got to him.
• 1:12:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Sugs is out here with grit, 13.7 points a game, 5.6 assists a game.
• 1:12:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's your point of attack.
• 1:12:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Uh, watchdog, setting the cultural floor on the defense.
• 1:12:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: His usage is 23%.
• 1:12:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Way too many shots from a guy shooting 55.5 true shooting percentage.
• 1:12:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You haven't gotten nearly enough on Wendell Carter Jr.
• 1:12:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Anthony Black has 61 games.
• 1:13:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's battled abdomen injuries robbing you of that disruptive length that you thought you were gonna have, and his box plus minus is a negative uh 0.6.
• 1:13:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What are you left with?
• 1:13:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Goku Batate?
• 1:13:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: What else?
• 1:13:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This falls at the feet of Paulo Gancaro and Jamal Mosley.
• 1:13:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They need to get their shit together.
• 1:13:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The other thing is this is that yes, Franz has been out for a long period of time, but guess what?
• 1:13:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You needed to figure this out.
• 1:13:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You had enough on your team to get this all figured out.
• 1:13:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You didn't, and now we're here.
• 1:13:44
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So do I think that the Orlando Magic are one of these teams that is going to make a lot of noise in the playoffs?
• 1:13:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They should.
• 1:13:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They shouldn't even be in this position, but they are.
• 1:13:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And yeah, Paolo is 6'10, 250 pounds.
• 1:14:01
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Desmond Bain is a is an absolute long-range assassin.
• 1:14:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Jalen Suggs is an absolute animal when it comes to being on that defensive end of the ball and just absolutely annoying your coin guard who's bringing the ball up.
• 1:14:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But the problem is that they don't play as a team, and Paulo hasn't reached that level of leader where he can just say, okay, we need to settle this down and go ahead and just lock into the things that we can do.
• 1:14:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And some of that has to do with whether he believes in the coach and believes in the philosophies, which he doesn't, because he has expressed that time and time and time again.
• 1:14:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So Orlando making any kind of run in the playoffs, I don't see it.
• 1:14:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I don't see how we can even sit here and deny that.
• 1:15:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the Heat, we're gonna be very honest with you.
• 1:15:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We're gonna have a very uncomfortable conversation.
• 1:15:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The worst place you can possibly be in the National Basketball Association is not the bottom of the standings.
• 1:15:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: At least in the bottom of the standings, you have the chance at the lottery, and that brings you hope.
• 1:15:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The worst place you can be in the NBA is in purgatory.
• 1:15:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And what that means is that you're good enough to make the play in, but you're not bad enough to make like the lottery.
• 1:15:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you're good enough to make the plan, you can't make that leap to the like that next level where you're like a four or five C or whatever case may be, and you're just not getting the draft picks that you that you need to get to make a difference on your team.
• 1:15:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, as of right now, the Miami Heat are the mayors of Purgatory, they've taken that title over from the Chicago Bulls, who try who are now bottling out.
• 1:16:09
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Good job for Chicago.
• 1:16:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, is it commendable to be a bunch of absolute tryhards?
• 1:16:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes.
• 1:16:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Do I respect the fact that they have a generational highly gifted head coach in Eric Spostra who can extract every single ounce of wind equity out of his players' sales?
• 1:16:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Absolutely.
• 1:16:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Heat culture is real when it comes to effort.
• 1:16:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Will they play hard?
• 1:16:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes.
• 1:16:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Will they frustrate their opponents?
• 1:16:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Yes.
• 1:16:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But there's only so much air exposure can do when you look down the bench and you realize you don't have enough, you don't have a true number one option.
• 1:16:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The ghost of Jimmy Butler is gone.
• 1:16:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The safety net is gone.
• 1:16:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And you're left with a 41 and 37 basketball team sitting in 10th place.
• 1:17:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And yeah, you're about to be in the play-in again.
• 1:17:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Well, let's talk about their big three.
• 1:17:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Norman Powell, Tyler Hero, and Damn Alabio.
• 1:17:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We have a roster built entirely on Robbins, and nobody's wearing that Batman cape.
• 1:17:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Norman Powell is having a phenomenal scoring season.
• 1:17:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's dropping 22.1 points a game with a massive 27.1 usage rate, and he has an elite 61.1% true shooting percentage.
• 1:17:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: This dude has really stepped up his game the last couple years.
• 1:17:37
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Norman Powell, I don't know.
• 1:17:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Scholars need to do studies on him.
• 1:17:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There need to be scientists that check this dude out because he was like 14 points a game, and he was like a really good six man.
• 1:17:51
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now he's just put two years together where he is literally a legit number two option.
• 1:18:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know, I don't know what that actually means because we're looking at a bunch of number two or number three options.
• 1:18:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you have our guy squeaking the number two options, or supposing number two options.
• 1:18:15
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Tyler Hero is easily clears the efficiency thresholds to be a high-end stabilizer.
• 1:18:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: 60.5% true shooting percentage.
• 1:18:26
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's giving you 21 points a game.
• 1:18:29
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He provides spacing.
• 1:18:30
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But here's the thing: his defense, not great.
• 1:18:34
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No bueno.
• 1:18:36
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And then you got the heart of the team.
• 1:18:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Bam out of bio.
• 1:18:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's be honest.
• 1:18:40
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Bam.
• 1:18:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Ourselves today.
• 1:18:42
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Bam out of fit great as a number three option next to a flamethrowing wing and an elite guard.
• 1:18:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He grabs 10 rebounds a game.
• 1:18:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He filled he facilitates.
• 1:18:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He anchors the defense.
• 1:18:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But the model refuses to stamp him as a 1A because he his true shooting percentage is 55%.
• 1:19:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: How is this team sitting in 10th in the East with a positive 2.2 net rating?
• 1:19:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: How are they scoring 120.8 points in a game a night, which is second most points in the NBA?
• 1:19:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They're running this offense that doesn't rely on pick and roll.
• 1:19:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's a lot of movement, fast pace.
• 1:19:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: A lot of people are really, you know, if you don't come in prepared, you can get run out the building.
• 1:19:39
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Structurally half court flaws.
• 1:19:43
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You got you got Davion Mitchell.
• 1:19:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know what I'm saying?
• 1:19:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I like Davion Mitchell if he was a backup.
• 1:19:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He shouldn't be starting for you.
• 1:19:53
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Sorry.
• 1:19:54
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He brings toughness, he brings grit, he's dishing out 6.5 assists, but that negative point 0.9 box plus minus lets you know what the hell is up.
• 1:20:06
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We need to provide some real situations going on.
• 1:20:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You have Andrew Wiggins, you have Jaime Highcass Jr.
• 1:20:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They are connected wings.
• 1:20:18
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Wiggins is giving you 15.6 points a game and a 1.5 box plus minus.
• 1:20:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: My guy Jaime Hatkass is chipping in with 15 points a game.
• 1:20:28
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They are nice solid pieces.
• 1:20:31
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But they're not difference makers on that wing.
• 1:20:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Now, the one blue chip that you got, and you still need to extract all of what you can out of him is Khalel Ware.
• 1:20:45
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Khalil Ware, his key statistic is that his interior depth that he has 22 minutes a night, he's bolstering a 61.3% true shooting percentage.
• 1:21:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's grabbing 9.1 rebounds.
• 1:21:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's providing just steady play in that center position.
• 1:21:08
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But Nikola Jovich is a miss.
• 1:21:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has a negative 3.5 box plus or minus.
• 1:21:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He has a miserable true shooting percentage of 48%.
• 1:21:20
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You just don't have enough in Miami.
• 1:21:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's not enough.
• 1:21:25
  FROC Host Vince Carter: On the high end, the dudes who are producing the most points, they're not they're not easy looks, and it's not like people are really like on them.
• 1:21:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They have to run this offense that is movement, movement, movement, just perpetual movement, and they're looking for the best shot, what have you.
• 1:21:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But what happens when the offense or when the defense says enough of this?
• 1:21:52
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And we want to put the ball in this person's hand and uh and say, hey, if you can beat us, fine.
• 1:22:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If that's Davion Mitchell, that's not gonna happen.
• 1:22:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Andrew Wiggins is definitely a guy who can have some connective tissue.
• 1:22:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But if you're saying, hey, go ahead and take 18, 19 shots a game, he's not your guy.
• 1:22:17
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Jaime High Cast Jr., I love him a lot.
• 1:22:19
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He went to UCLA.
• 1:22:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: You know how I feel about UCLA.
• 1:22:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: My whole thing is this is that if he has to take 15, 16, 17 shots a game, the defense is winning.
• 1:22:35
  FROC Host Vince Carter: He's not a high volume scorer.
• 1:22:41
  FROC Host Vince Carter: There's really nobody on your team except for Tyler Hero, and then he will not be as effective as he currently is with a with a small, you know, with a smaller role than he has, because they do have a bunch of dudes that can score.
• 1:22:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: They need better talent.
• 1:22:59
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And that's what it all comes down to.
• 1:23:02
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So, do I think they have a chance of of really like pushing the team to like a game seven?
• 1:23:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: No.
• 1:23:13
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I think if they played the the Boston Celtics or or somebody like that, they get their glow they'd get their doors blown off of.
• 1:23:22
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you play the Pistons, you can't out tough the Pistons.
• 1:23:27
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I know Miami, he it plays tough brand of basketball, but that Detroit team plays a scary tough brand of basketball.
• 1:23:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So I think the teams that I would be like the most like, okay, this team I'll um Charlotte, I'm with.
• 1:23:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm with them.
• 1:23:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And it all depends in Philadelphia which which team is gonna be allowed to play.
• 1:23:56
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Are we banking on Joel and Bede, or are we gonna use Joel Indeed as a as a second option?
• 1:24:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Is Carl George gonna fall into his role as a third option?
• 1:24:11
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Or sometimes even a fourth option to allow VJ Escombe and Tyrese Maxie to do their thing, or is he going to command to be a second option?
• 1:24:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Because if you get the two guys who are making$50 plus million dollars to buy into a situation where they are okay with taking a couple less shots a game, understanding that these other two really athletic guards and wings are gonna be able to get you some easy points and whatever the case may be, then I think Philadelphia has a shot.
• 1:24:49
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But if we're saying that this is the Joel and B Paul George reunion tour, I'm out.
• 1:24:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm out, dog.
• 1:24:58
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm out.
• 1:25:00
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So that is our confidence level on the lower half of the bracket.
• 1:25:05
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I hope you guys enjoyed it today.
• 1:25:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And uh, you know, we just we we got we're glad that we can bring it to you.
• 1:25:12
  FROC Host Vince Carter: So, with that being said, we talked our talk, we emptied our clip, but before we get out of here, we need to say thank you.
• 1:25:21
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We know there's a million hoops podcasts clogging up your feed right now, and the fact is that you chose to spend time in the war room with us, which means everything to Frontrunner Podcast Collective.
• 1:25:38
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you rock with how we do things and you appreciate thoughts over blind takes, do us a favor.
• 1:25:47
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Drop a like, hit the subscribe button or the follow button on your podcast platform of choice.
• 1:25:55
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Send this episode to that one person in your group chat who desperately needs to hear it.
• 1:26:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Pull up on us at on X and Instagram.
• 1:26:07
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Let's keep building this FR FR PC footprint together.
• 1:26:14
  FROC Host Vince Carter: But whatever you're dealing with out with uh with with whatever you're dealing with out there today, I need to leave you with this.
• 1:26:23
  FROC Host Vince Carter: The best part of you is still you, not your win-loss record, not your timeline, nor your algorithm.
• 1:26:32
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Just you.
• 1:26:33
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Surround yourself with people who actually give you just light, the ones who bring the insight, the joy, and the accountability.
• 1:26:46
  FROC Host Vince Carter: That is your real max deal.
• 1:26:48
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Appreciate them out loud.
• 1:26:50
  FROC Host Vince Carter: Don't wait for a later that nobody is promised.
• 1:26:57
  FROC Host Vince Carter: If you are still looking for your hoop family, you got one here with us.
• 1:27:03
  FROC Host Vince Carter: We may joke around, we may get loud, we overreact, but we will always respect your brain, and anyone can yell a take, but very few can actually defend a thought.
• 1:27:16
  FROC Host Vince Carter: I'm Vince, and until the next episode, keep your mind sharp, your heart open, and keep your circles tight.
• 1:27:24
  FROC Host Vince Carter: And remember, protect your peace like cap space, never waste it on bad basketball or bad energy, and we're out of here.