J. Kyle Mann

I think I've heard you pronounce his last name eight different ways over the course of the past month.

Yeah, I mean, they're not betting on just one player.

They're betting on the fact that they already have a championship core, getting Halliburton back, getting Obi Toppin back, also getting Ivica Zubats in the mix, who is just like a flat-out better and more balanced player than Myles Turner was, and what that can do for their team.

I think it is kind of a multi-pronged approach.

And I will say, in Zubats' credit, if you are going to bet on one guy, I would say he's been about as healthy over the last five or six years as any center in the league.

And it's tough to bet on seven-footers to stay that way perpetually, but he seems to be a pretty sturdy sort as these things go.

I have one to bring up in part because of a little newsy hook, and that's Kobe White to the Hornets, who, as we learned, I mean, he's been dealing with calf stuff all season, but when he underwent his physical, that calf stuff is apparently so bad, he's going to have to continue to miss time.

The Bulls just decided to not really tell anybody about this, and so what was the three second-round picks they were getting for Kobe White is now just two second-round picks, which means Charlotte, in the grand accounting of some of their moves, flipped...

Colin Sexton, Usman Jang, and basically net neutral picks because they took in two second rounders by taking on Tyus Jones's deal, and they got Kobe White and Malachi Branham.

So good for Charlotte.

Chicago, perpetually, what are you doing?

Arturis Karnisavis is out in front saying, we don't want to be in the middle of the league anymore.

We are prioritizing our flexibility as a franchise.

I would love that.

Where has this guy been for the last five years would be my question.

Follow-up, if the outcome of your flexibility is paying Anthony Simons or Colin Sexton what you were going to pay Kobe White or Io DeSumnu, I don't really understand where that flexibility has taken you.

So I look forward to revisiting in the summer exactly what the Bulls have done or not done and holding the executives to account as far as what they said this was all about.

But one could argue playing Yabu is a tanking measure this season, unfortunately.

And that pains me personally to say.

But Justin, I have to say, you taking this particular anti-tanking bent at this moment in time strikes me as very odd because the singular reason why your Portland Trailblazers are probably going to be in the NBA playoffs, or at least in the play-in, is because literally who is going to compete with them at this point?