J. Kyle Mann

That has a radical impact on the Pelicans draft future considering they have a swap with the Bucks.

So if the Bucks are going to continue to try to be good, that would mean that the Bucks pick therefore is not as valuable, which means the Pelicans themselves need to tank and lean into being as bad as possible in the present tense, which they're not capable of doing based on recent history, or at least don't seem to want to do, but I think that they should.

If Giannis leaves the Bucs, as we all expect him to do, but also we expected him to leave maybe a year ago, so who's to say, that gives the Pelicans a little more latitude to try in the interim.

So if they wanted to keep Zion, if they wanted to keep DeJounte Murray, there's a little more room to do that if the Bucs are bad.

But it's just frustrating to be a team that kind of should be rebuilding but is resistant to it and also even then is a little bit reliant on another team's draft future to determine what you should be doing.

Well, first question, what algorithmic lane do you think we need to tap into to feed Vivek's phone?

I think you're right, though, that maybe the ultimate market inefficiency in the league right now is AI slop and trying to get ahead of it before everyone fully catches up to being able to identify it at all times.

Just trying to be early adopters, you know?

I think you've got the right idea.

All of which is to say the Pelicans are kind of screwed.

I'm sorry to say, Chad.

It's going to be a minute.

I don't really see a lot of immediate ways for them to just move heaven and earth and all of a sudden be on the right path.

It's going to take some time to untangle.

I do think...

Herb Jones is a part of this.

Trey Murphy is a part of this.

Those guys are constantly in trade rumors.

I don't feel or see any urgency to trade either one of them.

I mean, it's just hard to make sense of the fact that Trey Murphy is this good and he's 25 years old and so you don't want to trade him.