Sam Amick

Good morning, gentlemen.

Doing well out here on the West Coast.

We got the coffee that everybody saw in the picture there.

We don't have pancakes, but we're getting rolling here.

Yeah, so I was watching that Clipper game, and to pull the curtain back a little bit, I was in touch with one of our guys who covers the Lakers and the rest of the league, Dan Wojcicki, and Dan had been hearing some chatter about a Garland, Darius Garland in Cleveland and Harden Swap.

So like we tend to do is like, all right, let's make a few calls.

Checked in with a few people, but honestly, like,

I think it was like seven or ten minutes later, a story pops from Chris Mannix at Sports Illustrated that this deal was being discussed.

Our old buddy from the Athletic, Kelly Yiko at Yahoo, had something as well.

You know, Shams reported after that that Harden and the Clippers were trying to find a new home.

It's interesting.

I know we're going to unpack it, but, you know, this year that the Clippers have had, you know, they get off to this 6-21 start.

Um, at that time, you know, I wrote about what are they going to do with the roster?

I talked to people within the organization about like, you know, is it fire sale time?

Like it's, it's really bad.

And they had looked at some things and things were not good.

But then as you guys know, they completely flipped the script.

Um, so the stunning part of it late last night and to your point, Dave, when

When you just think it's a run of the mill game, you know, at the end to a dome is that, you know, it felt like things were better.

But but James, obviously, he's got a different view of the matter.