Will Cain
speaker
275 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 2 Apr
Will Cain’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So I guess you could say this is where the Max Christie piece comes in, and maybe they close with Max Christie defense. He's been pretty good lately. And then you have Kyrie at the one. I thought this Dallas team, with Luka, was a pretty good team. OKC on, to me, it's a toss-up if everybody were right and everybody were healthy. That's a big it because Kyrie's got a back issue.
PJ's got a knee issue. Gafford missed a game recently, not that big of a deal. Lively's out indefinitely with a stress fracture. So maybe it works or maybe they never get fully healthy and we can't judge Dallas on this trade anyway. I think all of those possibilities are on the table at this point. I also worry a little bit about the dynamic of Kyrie as the true one. I think he loves the role.
I think he likes being mic'd up. I think he likes it kind of being his team, despite staying all the right things and playing some really good basketball and being drama-free here for two years. But The weird part about Kyrie's playoff run last year is that when it was great, it was just universally praised as great, and when it was bad, it didn't really matter because Luka was there.
Where Kyrie could have bad stretches and big playoff moments that just kind of became hidden because he was the two and not the one, and the one gets... the brunt of all that criticism. When you're the one and your team doesn't win in the playoffs in the NBA, it's like, oh, what's wrong with this guy? And Kyrie's able to avoid a lot of that stuff because Luka was there. Now he won't.
And to be honest with you, it's not going to be because AD can overshadow. Kyrie is the focus of attention here because AD is kind of the same way. As great as he is, he's a deferential personality. He probably works better with somebody else who's perceived more as the face of a franchise, a popularity superstar like LeBron James, despite the fact
Look, the last two years, Anthony Davis was the better basketball player between the two guys. For the Lakers, it's a franchise reset, and it should be. Who cares about 2025? I don't like their defense on the perimeter right now. Who cares? Because once Luka becomes available to you, you trade for Luka, and you worry about the rest of it later.
Some have said the Lakers got sick of LeBron and Clutch.
I'll hear you out. But, you know, you were so sick of Clutch and LeBron that, what, you gave LeBron a two-year, $100 million extension with a player option? You drafted his son. You hired another new coach, this time it being J.J. Redick. And I don't want to be dismissive of J.J. by saying, oh, you hired his podcast co-host, because I love the J.J. Redick hire. And again, I'm biased. I like J.J.
Redick. But, Recent history tells us you weren't that sick of them. So this week you got sick of them? You got sick of AD? You got sick of LeBron? You're going to take some power back? No. You can say those things to people and be like, ah, you know, it's starting to get a little old here inside the building. No, Luka was available, and that's why you did this.
Because play it out on the other side. What if everybody got along? What if the Lakers are the front office and ownership and everybody was like, we love Clutch. It's awesome. No complaints. You would have turned this offer down? Of course not. You would have traded for Luke because you can't believe Luke is available and available only to you. Why would Dallas do this? sure.
We can talk about his conditioning, his injury history. Fine. We can talk about the contract. He was eligible for five years, 348 million super max. He's not eligible for that now that he's been traded. There's a way if you were to opt out after 10 years in, he can make some of that money back. Um, did they maybe offer him less?
Did they kick the tires on like, Hey, since we can pay you more than everybody else, could we potentially do some of that kind of stuff? Um, Did Lucas say that he didn't want to sign it? Did he hint at not wanting to be there? Like none of that's really come out. Right? Did new ownership think this contract could be potentially a bad deal? Man, it's not like any of these new owners are broke.
And if the first thing you would want to do, like the transition of power from Cuban to the new group, like, yeah, let's get rid of Luka. I can't believe a new ownership group would even sign off on something like this. I still can't believe Nico didn't talk to other teams. I can't believe he brought up that he was worried about other teams loading up for Luka.
Because if there's one thing that I keep reminding you about, like, think of all of the players, like, you know who the Heat are going after. Let them worry about their cap space that doesn't really work out. Run through the rest of this year. Call other teams. See potentially what could happen this summer. Dallas had to be so sick of him, man. They had to be so sick of him.
And Nico had some telling quotes in his availability. He said, quote, as we turn the page, I think it's important to know that Jason Kidd and I, we've had a vision and the culture that we want to create since we've been here. The players that we're bringing in, we believe, exemplify that. We think defense wins championships, and we're bringing in one of the best two-way players in the league.
That translates as we're really sick of Luka. And maybe it's a bit like that relationship of like, they broke up. It's like, you're not living with that other person. You don't know what it's like. Maybe all of us on the outside who are not living with Luka don't know what it's like. But here's what I do know. It's not great basketball business to get sick of guys like Luka Doncic at 25 years old.
Nico also said, quote, I don't do anything scary. When he's talking about transactions, you traded for Kyrie two years ago. That was the single most available scary transaction to make in the league at the time. But it worked. And I think that's another important thing if we're talking about Nico here, because there's a lot of quotes from like, God, they must have just hated Luca.
People around the league think Nico's terrific. They think this front office is terrific. It's been nothing but praise. And a consistent deal of Nico loves Anthony Davis. And the relationship keeps going back. I get it. But I still can't believe they didn't at least call other teams. There is a kind of like, as everybody agrees, like, I can't believe this trade happened.
I can't believe this is the way that was executed. Why would you do this? You don't want to trade a guy like Luka. This is a generational talent. You've helped out the Lakers, all these different things. I guess there's a version of this that ends up on like some page. It's like, look at all these idiots getting this thing wrong.
Where if everybody's healthy and the Mavs make some kind of run and say they get to the NBA finals, say they win the whole thing. And it's like, look at you morons. Niko was right. You're like, yeah, maybe. But you know what they never do? You know how like when they'll show a playoff
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