Paulo Alves

So the Mavs have an incentive to play ball with the Rockets.

I think Kyrie would want to play in Houston because of his ties to Kevin Durant.

I haven't heard anything, but to me, if they need something a little lower cost but potentially big impact, there's a lot of dots that connect there.

So that's the one, aside from Giannis, that I'm sort of monitoring.

Do either of you have suggestions?

I do think from a trade perspective, that 27 Brooklyn swap is going to put the Rockets in a good position to deal with the Nets or anybody else because the Nets are going to be so young.

I don't care if they try to win because they no longer have an incentive to tank.

That pick is still going to be pretty high because they're going to be so young.

They're not going to win games.

So that 27 Brooklyn swap, whether the Rockets keep it or trade it, that's a lot of leverage that they will have on the market.

One last thing I want to address.

You mentioned Shingun taking a bad PR hit this week, and you didn't even mention the post-game press conference that went viral when Imei had to lie about, they've done that since I've been here.

So it sounded funny, and everybody jumped on it.

But just to add some context,

The question was about teams hunting Shingun on switches.

And honestly, I don't think Imei intended it to come across nearly as harshly as it did.

It became, you know, this firestorm on social media.

But I mean, even Shingun at his best defensively, look, big men in the NBA get attacked.

Like every team's base offense is to try and get their lead guard if they have one that's worth their salt.

against a big and just to try and make something happen and then read and react from there.