Ethan Strauss

The rules they've passed in the NBA make it very hard to sustain greatness, and the advantage of that is that the New York Knicks win the championship.

They won the championship in part because the rules enticed the Timberwolves to say, hey, we can't pay Cat, and so the Knicks got him.

the Knicks have also benefited from this unusual situation where Jalen Brunson took a massive pay cut.

That might be what has to happen to sustain success if you're not the Spurs or the Thunder who amassed this armada of draft picks, and then they pulled the ladder up and changed the rules so you can't tank anymore.

The only way you can compete in the NBA in a sustainable manner will probably be your star or stars taking a pay cut.

And so...

i agree with you that going forward that might be problematic if there's a lot of just randomness and the idea that everybody gets their turn it could sound better in theory and whereas in baseball people might complain about the dodgers they might say it's what they hate about baseball they might say it's what disenchants them but the only thing they hate more is when i don't know the diamondbacks or whoever in the world series and then they don't watch

So baseball might have a little something going that they're in the process of trying to kill, funny enough, with this more old school view of the resources.

You have an advantage and you can keep it together for longer.

Yeah, but I'm impressed by how big a superstar he is.

I take the other perspective where I go, there's a guy, he does not speak the most English, we will say, and he's a massive superstar in the United States.

That is not easy to do.

It certainly didn't happen with some of the Eastern European stars in the NBA who qualified.

He's the obstacle of the NBA.

Wemby is...

fluent in English it's just a different situation and if anything people think he talks too much they don't like the stuff he says that's a different situation but he's not going to be the face of the NBA he's going to be the mere

that reflects whatever the face is because he's the big bad obstacle he's the goliath and the hero is going to go up against him it's a different situation i think that's a good one the nba has found itself and maybe if you i agree dan lebitard said it best if you're rooting for the spurs you're rooting for a giant who roots for the giant in any story right yeah and okay okay i gotta take i gotta i gotta get this take off go ahead

I think that we in sports media underrate the extent to which Wemby has made himself hated because we're like a fish in water and we don't even understand.

We all look at it in the context of our media channels and what we talk about.

We go, is he a villain now?