David Pivnick
speaker
231 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Jun 2025
David Pivnick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So I think it's an interesting deal more than anything else, because he came completely out of left field. I think it's great for the Lakers to Not that they need help attracting superstars, but this will allow them to transition seamlessly from LeBron to their next generation and keep Luka around and build around him for the next decade.
There's a lot of speculation about how fit he was, whether they wanted to pay him, et cetera. I have no idea what's true or not. I will say seeing video and pictures of him
over the last week after the trade, he looks to be the exact same size he's been at all points in time while in Dallas, which is to say he's been one of the best players in the NBA his entire career at seemingly the exact same size as Ed Dow. So I don't put a lot of stock in that.
It's different than, for example, when Zion Williamson was out with injuries and there were a lot of pictures that surfaced of him where he was visibly heavier and it looked like he hadn't taken care of himself taking care of himself while injured. Luka, you know, to me, it looks like he's fit and that Dallas may have been making excuses, but I do think Charles Barkley's general premise is right.
I subscribe to the notion that Dallas is a better title contender this year with Anthony Davis than they were with Luka. And I recognize that's an odd comment, you know, when they made it to the NBA finals last year. So they were right on the doorstep of a championship. So they were pretty damn close. But they now have an incredible front court with Davis, Lively, Gafford, and P.J. Washington.
It's one of the deepest and most talented front courts in the league. And Kyrie Irving, who I'm certainly not a big fan of, but you can't deny the guy's talented and can play lead guard. So they had two guys who played a similar role with Luka and Kyrie. Now they have a much better complement. And so adding a pick down the road,
and adding Max Christy, who I think will be a decent bench player, you know, whether that's fair value for Luca is in the eyes of the beholder, but I don't understand why, for example, Vegas had, you know, the Lakers title chances have gone down. Like the odds have gone down. In other words, they think.
Yeah, I think it's a legitimate concern. I think, you know, Luka is a guy who expects to have the ball in his hands in key moments. Clearly, LeBron feels the same, and both of them, frankly, have earned that right. LeBron more so, but they've both very much earned it.
So I think that's going to be an interesting dynamic, seeing how they share the ball, how they complement each other, whether it ends up helping with forced spacing because they can both shoot decently, although LeBron is not as elite a shooter as you might hope in that kind of combo situation. But I think the Lakers have some real foundational issues. They don't have much in the front court.
Without being overly critical of guys like Jackson Hayes, their front court is probably the worst in the NBA as it stands right now. And if not the worst, it's certainly bottom five. So I'm sure they'll make some additions to improve it. But they've now got a core that's got two absolute superstars who on offense both ideally would have the ball in their hands
and no front court to speak of, and defensively, there's not a lot there. I mean, Luke has never been a great defender, and LeBron used to be, but at this point, his effort sort of wanes on defense, and he's an imperfect defender at best. So I think the Lakers' build is pretty flawed this year, and I think it's interesting when people, including Vegas,
have been treating them as an enhanced title contender because I think they made a great move for the long-term future of the franchise. I don't know that it helped them today.
Yeah, fair question on both, and I think they're situated very differently. From Zach Levine's standpoint, I think it's more than anything else, it's a talent and ball possession situation. He's not a great defender. He's pretty mediocre on that end.
And he's a guy who's a streaky shooter, doesn't quite get to the hole as well as he used to, although he could still do it, and ultimately takes the ball out of the hands on the bulls of guys like Kobe White and Io DeSumo, who are talented players in their own right and who can really fill that gap and, frankly, are a little bit more diligent. on the defensive end, particularly Io.
And so I think there's a little bit of a Ewing theory, you know, the old belief that the Knicks were better when Ewing was out. There's a little bit of that dynamic going on with Levine where they have guys behind him who are capable of stepping in play and
And it's a little bit more of a cohesive unit when he's not there, not because of any fault of his own, but just because he has so much ball gravity where the ball just keeps coming to him. And defensively, the effort is not great.
I don't think anyone's upset to see him go. I think the criticism that I've seen, which I think is reasonable, is that the Bulls got very little for him. They got three guys that I think it's generous to even describe all three as role players. I think only Jones is likely to play meaningful minutes for the Bulls.
and they got their own first-round pick back, which is great, but it's already heavily protected, so they weren't likely to lose that pick in the next couple of seasons either way, and they got no other picks beyond it.
So I think the frustration is it's a very light return, and ultimately the Bulls have gone through, you know, the Lonzo Ball era because of injury was completely worthless, and they've basically given up DeRozan, Levine, and Alex Caruso for effectively a bag of beans. And so... That's unfortunate because the Bulls should be in a full rebuild, and they don't have a lot to show for it.
I think Bruzella, the kid they drafted last year, looks promising, and they've got a couple other young pieces like Kobe White and Io, and Patrick Williams could be an okay role player. But for a team that's been bad for many years, or at least mediocre, they don't really have a lot of foundational pieces to excite you going forward, which I think puts them –
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