The Ringer NBA Show
Draft Lottery Winners and Losers. Plus, the Knicks Advance and More. | Group Chat
11 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to Group Chat. I am Justin Verrier and joining me, Rob Mahoney, J. Kyle Mann.
Chapter 2: What are the winners from the NBA draft lottery?
Kyle broadcasting live from Chicago, about to go to the Combine. What's the buzz? What's the feeling going on down there?
I'm just raring and ready to deep dish on some draft scuttlebutt, Justin. That was for Rob. There's a lot of chatter going on here. I mean, the biggest thing that I've heard so far is that we're in store for...
major flux like we've talked a lot about the nil i know we're jumping right into it here i think the board that we are seeing it uh now in the like beyond the lottery and maybe even creeping up on the lottery could be vastly different from you know even as high as like 12 to 30. so it's it's a wild wild time in the nba draft world justin how do you feel about flux
I generally like it, like a little chaos. And that's why I love the NBA draft lottery. Anything can happen. And it seems like even more can happen once they flatten the odds even more. But like we got some real turnover at the top of the lottery this time.
Some turnover, some dashed hopes. I feel like a lot of fans being extremely down bad this morning coming off of the draft lottery. So you hate to see it for them. And I think this is the hard part of the tanking experience, right? It's like watching your team be bad all year only to see the lottery odds turn against you.
And so while it's certainly interesting for teams like the Clippers, who I know we're going to talk about, I just, you know, if you're a Nets fan, if you're a Grizzlies fan, if you're a Pacers fan, extremely rough stuff.
Well, why don't we get into some of those winners and losers, but first we have to take an unnecessarily early ad break. So let's do that first. The Ringer NBA show is brought to you by FanDuel. It's been a wild playoff run, but it's not over yet. And FanDuel wants to bring you closer to the court to make more of all the action to come.
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Call 1-888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we're going to get into some playoff action here, go through the four series or three after the Knicks advanced on Sunday. But first, we got to do draft lottery winners and losers. Let's just start at the top here.
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Chapter 3: Who are the biggest losers from the draft lottery?
I don't really have any big picture who got it right in this one.
Well, nobody got it right because it's ping pong balls deciding the fates of many people and many, many millions of dollars. And really, like, I think reshaping some of the league in certain ways, right? If Oklahoma City had hit the jackpot, that would have been a disastrous thing for basically every other team in the Western Conference.
If the Pacers had been able to hold on to their pick and bring in Avicii Zubats next season, that could have been really bad news for the Knicks and the Celtics and the Pistons and anyone competing in the East. So... It's just randomness. And the random number generator has struck again. And we are here to make some sense of it.
But I don't know that there's any karmic balance to literally anything in the universe, Justin.
Don't hate the players.
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Chapter 4: What happened in the Knicks vs. Sixers playoff series?
Hate the game, right? Because the game is existing in a cold and nihilistic universe, it seems. And it seems that the people, not to be too like Cormac McCarthy about it, but the strong win in the week. You know, the teams out there that said, this is the structure. This is the way it works. We're going to work within the structure and do what we can because we're incentivized to get good players.
Chapter 5: How did the Spurs perform against the Timberwolves?
Granted, this is the last year that we're going to see tanking, I think, to this level. That it's not going to look like this going forward. But you mentioned the Grizzlies earlier, Rob, as one of the down and out fan bases. Do you think that, I mean, I think I'd be feeling pretty good if I'm the Grizz. You end up at three.
Yeah, sorry, I misspoke on the Grizz. I meant the Sacramento Kings.
Chapter 6: What insights were shared about the Pistons vs. Cavs series?
The Kings and the Nets being the ones that slid out of the top five.
Yeah.
Yeah, there are definitely some fan bases at the bottom who are just like, we're used to being kicked. Kick us. We don't really feel anything anymore. And I kind of feel like that's where the Kings are at this point and the Nets.
Chapter 7: What were the highlights from the Lakers vs. Thunder matchup?
Yeah, so they have to be among the biggest losers of the afternoon. Kings and Nets both jump out of the top four. Pacers. if we're going to go with losers, have to be the biggest loser of this event. So they slide to fifth, have to fork over their draft pick to the Clippers.
And so the trade for Zubach ultimately ends up being Rob, the number five pick in this draft, a 20-29 first, because they still have an extra first on top of this one, Benedict Mathurick, Isaiah Jackson, and I believe another future second on top of that. You have Kevin Pritchard going on Twitter being like, oh, you know, bad luck, which...
I think he misspoke and probably wanted to dash off something in order to appease the fan base because he knew they were going to be mad. But basically, ascribing a 50-50 chance of this happening to bad luck really just compounded, I think, the misery on this one.
Well, in defense of Kevin Pritchard, he did own it. It wasn't just bad luck. It was like, I took a calculated risk. This is my fault. I appreciate even that level of accountability, which, I mean, we just don't get from front offices, generally speaking. But this is a calamity. To come out of
a season this disastrous, one of, if not the most disastrous season in Pacers franchise history, with only Evita Zubats to show for it. Because in particular, you got like a little too cute with trying to have both things at once. I mean, this is a horrendous outcome for the Pacers. It's the kind of thing that if it had gone right, could have catalyzed their contention for the next five years.
And in its current form, could be the exact sort of move we talk about two seasons from now as a fundamental reason why the state of the team has gone sideways or gone stale or they don't have the resources that they need. They really needed this pick. to accelerate and kind of accentuate everything that they had working for them. And instead, they're going to be a good team.
We know that they were good enough to get to the NBA Finals, but they have to do that all over again against an East that's kind of constantly reforming, constantly improving. It's just brutal to see after historic losing streak upon historic losing streak from the Pacers in the regular season.
Yeah, it's like even if they, you know, you come out of that night, well, when they decided what the protections were going to be, it kind of implied that they felt pretty good about, you know, a certain number of players, you know, the top four.
It makes you, you know, it makes you wonder if maybe they would have reconsidered the types of protection that they put on it or maybe put the screws or the clippers a little bit more. in terms of haggling what that was because, you know, I think the Pacers would have come out. It's not like they saw that top four and were like, that's all we want.
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Chapter 8: How are the playoff performances impacting team strategies?
But AJ is going to be a two-way player and he's going to be really, really good. So it's not like when you choose between Peterson and AJ, you're choosing a lesser thing. It's like he's going to be a really good two-way player, potentially all NBA, potentially first team all NBA. He's going to be able to guard multiple positions. And projects as an offensive primary.
And I think for the Jazz, the thing that everybody's eyes darted to immediately was the Jazz really have had machinations in place for years. Going back to they got his family to go from prolific prep in Napa Valley all the way down to Utah. And he spends his senior year there. And it's kind of like we don't have obvious reasons.
tea leaves or notes or a paper trail that shows that like oh ryan smith enrolled aj it was just kind of like camps were kind of moving him into that space and then he ends up at byu which ryan smith and danny age obviously heavily connected donors and and influence at byu they wanted him so now you're looking at this and you're thinking um How bad do they want him?
How bad do they want to have this final master plan kind of reach fruition? Because it's interesting to me because in the basketball sense, Peterson fits better with the Jazz, I think. I think right off the assembly line, he would be interesting. I don't know what you guys think about from what you've seen basketball-wise, how those two teams would look.
We can get more into the Wizards, but how the Jazz would look in particular immediately.
Yeah, I think DeBonsa, the talent play is clear. I would have no qualms about taking him with the number one pick in general. But for the Wizards' needs, this is a team that's going to look so different than it did this year. And you already have Trey Young and Anthony Davis as the new tentpoles of the organization for the near term. You have Keyshawn George. You still have Alex Saar at the four.
So you're going to play like a dual big lineup. You would love someone at the two who can make like impact plays in tight spaces and also potentially be like a plus, plus, plus shooter for you. And Devonsa isn't really those things necessarily. I think he can do well when given space, at least from what I've seen.
But Kyle, are you so bullish on his jump shot that you would think of a lineup that is Trae Young, whose jumper kind of comes and goes? Keyshawn George is probably the one standout shooter in that group. Can Devonsa be the second best shooter in a five-man NBA starting lineup?
Well, it's funny because this has shifted a little bit. It's shifted in college and it's shifted in the NBA where it's like we were really just banging our fists on the table, screaming, shooting for years there. It's like spacing, spacing, spacing, but really ramming your head with the rim pressure. I'm not saying it's tilted. We've talked about this on the show a lot lately.
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