Chris Ryan

It's strange.

It's just like everything we've been talking about this season, one of the narratives about it has just been the increased intensity, full-body intensity the NBA players experience in today's game and how they're expected to cover more ground and it's corner to corner.

So I'll be fascinated to see a guy coming off Achilles immediately get thrown into that fire and to what extent his defensive responsibilities are maybe changed, mitigated by his...

his his sort of like reemergence on this and this rotation.

I I'm just like, if you told me in like five years that Achilles is are going to be like the NBA version of Tommy John, where they're just like, yeah, we're going to do the Achilles so that his calf stops bothering him.

I don't know.

I mean, is that where we're going?

Yeah.

but they got boat raced by the Hornets last night.

So I guess there's a, I guess that, that like paved the way a little bit.

It was kind of like, you know, like we were getting smoked by, by Lamella.

We need, we need a little help here.

What's the state of your fingers?

Have you have you entered into the Bill Simmons rehab plan for finger reconstruction?

I don't have a team captain, but this is probably my number one option.

This is the guy we're looking for down the court every time.

And just to put a little bit of context around my picks...

I always loved this column back at Graylin, and what I try to do is it's a numbers-free evaluation for the most part.

So it's aesthetics, it's competitive fire, it's two-way play, but it's guys who my eyes gravitate towards when I'm watching a screen.

And if you took away all the numbers, the score, their stat line for the season, whatever their efficiency numbers are across the year, I just like watching these dudes on a nightly basis.