Justin Verrier

And with a team like the Pacers, again, they're so heavily incentivized to be as bad as possible to try to keep this pick.

I don't think they're going to be good enough to be in that, you know, the 10 plus range in terms of the odds.

I should say, I think I, in explaining it, flipped it in terms of what causes the Pacers to keep the pick.

They need to be bad.

Like they need to be as bad as they possibly can.

Will that happen to a satisfying degree?

I don't know, but I applaud their willingness to,

to not get cute with the two timeline stuff, to not try to say like, oh, we're just going to draft a young player and put all our eggs in our own unprotected pick.

Like try to have your cake and eat it too.

Try to get a Vita Zubats, as you said, JV, and potentially get a pick in that sweet spot where you're able to add someone of real value to your team.

Zoo is just as good and balanced a five as they were going to be able to find by next season.

Playing any part of the market, trade, draft, whatever for agency, he's already such an excellent positional defender.

He's immediately the best screener of the Tyrese Halliburton era in Indiana.

And I think his ability to just kind of like catch in the middle of the floor and do a variety of things, right?

He's not like a natural facilitator, but because of his size and because of his comfort with the ball on the move, you can kind of set him up for like a higher post-up than you might expect or that kind of like roll into a short roll post-up off of Tyrese Halliburton and get something really good out of that kind of action.

Like I'm already so curious to see what Rick Carlisle does with him because there's just like a lot of skill you can tap into in addition to just being a big hulking man with Avisa Zubats.

Can we just say on that front, Justin, he's right.

Like they should not have waited to the offseason to change this around.

Like I, I,

I like this trade, not because James Harden is like a super perfect fit for everything happening in Cleveland, but pretending that the status quo was okay, wasn't going to be good for anyone involved there.