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Chapter 1: What topics are covered at the beginning of the episode?
Coming up on the Zach Lowe Show, we got Michael Pina from the Ringer to go around the NBA. The Knicks rebound from their rock bottom against Dallas the other day by whomping the sad sack Brooklyn Nets, who it feels like haven't beaten the Knicks almost since they moved to Brooklyn. I know that's not true, but sorry, Nick Claxton. It's been quite a while. Giannis.
More troubling comments after yet another Bucs loss. They're just six and six with Giannis back from injury and the trade deadline is exactly two weeks away. What's going on? What should we read into any of this? And then a deep dive into the weirdest team in the NBA, the Houston Rockets. Now dealing with a bad Steven Adams ankle sprain that's going to keep him out a long time.
What is this team? Has any team ever played like this before where their best offense is missing a shot? What does Steven Adams' absence do to all that? He's the best offensive rebounder outside of Mitchell Robinson on planet Earth.
Baxter Holmes from ESPN joins to go inside his mega feature on the sale of the Los Angeles Lakers and the sibling rivalry among the Buss siblings that destroyed their ownership of the team, or at least got it down to 17%, allowing Jeannie Buss to remain a governor for five years. And then Mets corner. Holy cow, the Mets. We're back. We're going for it. A lot of stuff happened.
That's all coming up after this on the Zach Lowe Show. Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show. We got a lot to talk about today, including these guys, the New York Mets. We're back, baby, but we're not going to start with that. This is a basketball show after all.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Giannis's recent comments?
Michael Pina, how are you, sir? I'm doing great, Zach. How are you? Oh, baby. Irrational fandom. I really missed it. I really missed it. OK, let's bounce around the NBA before we take a deep dive into the strangest team in the league. Are you ready to bounce around some news? Let's do it.
Chapter 3: How does the Houston Rockets' performance impact their title chances?
Do you care that the Knicks followed up their players only meeting slash? Maybe it was just a chat, according to Josh Hart. I don't know where we draw. What has to happen for it to be a players only meeting? Do you have to tell everyone else explicitly? Get the hell out of here. Lock the door. Search for bugs if this is MSG. You got to sweep for bugs and kick everybody out. I don't know.
Do you care that they beat the Crosstown rival Nets by 4,000 points last night at MSG?
I don't care.
I don't think they care that much either, based on the comments that were made after the game by Carl Towns, by Jalen Brunson, by Landry Schammett, who made 6-3, 6-4-6, I think, from minus three-point line, basically just kind of tamping it down, not trying to make too much of a big deal out of the fact that they beat the Brooklyn Nets, one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference, in a game that they should win.
And it doesn't change the fact that they're 3-9 in their last 12 games or whatever it is. But I will say that if they did lose that game after the Mavericks rock bottom performance, I would say like anything was on the table so far as changes, big picture changes that could have happened over the next several days. So a win is important in that regard.
But no, it's not changing like any big picture things for them.
I wouldn't, despite the drama and the noise and all of this and Kat's limbs flailing all about and hitting people in various sensitive spots in seemingly every game, including the high kick last night. Was it Claxton that he almost got with a Rockettes level? Not to use another James Dolan property, but a Rockettes level high kick. I don't think anything...
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Chapter 4: What family dynamics influenced the Lakers' sale?
Super seismic would have happened. You never know, though. I said before, I like that there's been some buzz about like, are they is there a cat non Giannis cat possibility trade wise? It's just so hard with the salary and their wind now mandate. And Mike Brown just got there. I will say, I thought they looked pretty good last night.
The Brunson-Katt two-man game looked like they leaned into it in the right ways. The Bridges-Katt two-man game, they leaned into that in the right ways and got Bridges going a little bit. You mentioned Shamit. I think it's interesting that Clarkson is now out of the rotation basically for meaningful minutes or to the fringes of it. Shamit has kind of supplanted him.
You can see Mike Brown trying to land on like, okay, if I'm doing a nine-man rotation in a playoff game, who is in it right now. And he's made some interesting choices. Um, I don't know if you saw the, uh, Tuesday's episode. I, I smacked the gavel down and I said, the wolves have won the cat trade. Um, got some feedback that was like unfriendly feedback about that from some interested parties.
Um, And, look, I understand, like, if the Knicks win the championship, as Brian Windhorst says, when you win the championship, every trade is an A+. You never have to apologize for anything. If they win the championship and Towns has a good finals and makes a big shot, that clip is going to come back to haunt me and it's going to look foolish.
I'm just saying right now, at this moment, we can do this thing where we hedge and hedge and say, oh, in two years and three years and four years, you never know, and this and that, and there's truth to that. I stand by it. I think the Wolves won the catch trade. What's your take?
I think it's fair. I would say the biggest shots Cat hit in a Knicks uniform were probably game six against the Pistons when he hit those two shots near the end. I think that was game six. I can't remember. Maybe it was the Hart foul on Tim Hardaway Jr. game. I don't recall, but he hit some big shots in crunch time of that series. Crazy ones too, like crazy shots.
Yeah, that was a nip and tuck series. Very competitive. Could have gone either way, I think. And so in that regard, he was big. He was pretty big in the Celtics series in some ways. To your point, Dante DiVincenzo and Julius Randle have been pretty, very good for the Minnesota Timberwolves. And I think the Timberwolves are a...
Um, I don't know if they're, yeah, I think that they're a better team also. Uh, so I would say that it's, it's fair to, um, to say that just on a basketball level that the Minnesota Timberwolves won that trade. And then when you throw contracts into it, it's kind of a no brainer.
Uh, We'll see. I mean, look, it was flirting with win-win because I do think Cat, as a talent play and as a shooting play, is just undeniable. I mean, he's taken a lot of flack for referring to himself as the greatest shooting big man of all time. It's either him or Dirk, and we'll see who else comes along at the end of the day.
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Chapter 5: What were the private negotiations behind the Lakers sale?
Yeah, well, first of all, I should say that the Lakers declined comment and multiple interview requests for Jeannie Buss and a host of others, including some of the people mentioned who I was told receives the payments you mentioned.
When I first heard about it, and certainly when I was talking to Jeannie and to Johnny Buss about it, the underlying theme kind of leading into that was that there were, they believe and said that that it seemed to be that there were private discussions or even negotiations that happened between Jeanne Buss and Mark Walter. And there were questions that some siblings had, I'm told, about whether
a sibling could have private negotiations about a sale of the team and then present that as an offer.
And Mark Walter's offer was presented as an offer, but certainly when some of these details came out and people understood that, you know, as I reported that like a Linda Rambis stood to make 24 million or a Kurt Rambis stood to make 8 million, those numbers I'm told are a nod to Kobe Bryant's Jersey numbers. that, well, wait a minute, why are these people getting paid out?
They're people that are close to you.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the Buss family's dysfunction?
Why are these figures? It started to, in some ways, seem that this was not an offer and more of a negotiation. And there were questions of, well, does this violate the trust potentially? Was this done behind closed doors and you're trying to present it as an offer? And so there were a lot more questions about that. And I'm told that Joey and Jesse considered for a time whether to take legal action
to have a judge potentially suss out you know what's in the trust was this done above board so on and so forth um they didn't do that ultimately as you mentioned a majority of the bus family agreed to sell the team they and it was a unanimous vote ultimately um and
Chapter 7: How does LeBron factor into the Lakers' future?
That's it. I think also it's probably daunting in some ways to go against Mark Walter in a long legal battle. But at the end of the day, you know, the votes were the votes. And I'm told that Joey and Jesse understood that. But there's still some of those questions remaining, certainly about the payments. And I heard from others close to the team who those figures stuck out to them.
Chapter 8: What are the latest developments in Mets Corner?
I'll put it that way.
Yeah. Honestly, we can go relitigate the sale. Why then? Why now? Was the Celtics selling at a $6 billion valuation? How much did that spur it? And on and on. My general takeaway was this is all really sad.
This is just all... To see a family just broken apart like this and siblings at each other's throats and siblings orchestrating potentially the firing of other siblings and the two youngest ones who... thought that the Lakers were going to be their life forever getting boxed out of it. The whole thing just made me sad, honestly. I think the sadness has been...
I think people look at these people, well, they're all billionaires, billionaires, like their problems aren't real problems. And I get that. But family is family, man. There's some stuff in there that's like, that stuff is sad.
So that was a defining piece of feedback that I got from people around the team, close to, you know, who work there, things like that. Like, this is just really sad.
Even for the winners, it's sad. Like, no one wins when you just lose your family like this.
Totally. And, you know, obviously people on the outside would say, well, they're all rich in the end, but it's like rich. But it is a fractured family. Some of these things are really hard to kind of process. You know, the idea of, you know, you mentioned Joey and Jesse wanting to.
carry on their father's legacy and lead the Lakers into the future, which was something that a number of people had told me, including people who were with Jerry Buss in the final days of his life, that he had articulated. And it's all over. And I don't, I mean, look, I'm not in the position financially that any of them are, so I can't speak to it. But the sadness was definitely something
that a lot of people from all walks and around the league said to me was just a takeaway of how this whole thing ended.
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