The Zach Lowe Show
Giannis Traded! Boston’s Future, Early Signings, Draft Thoughts, and More!
24 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What key events are discussed in the NBA at the beginning?
Coming up on the Zach Lowe Show, it's been a whirlwind for me, but I'm back.
My first pitch at Citi Field got rained out. We're rescheduling it. Then I got to watch Croatia in the World Cup. A lot of stuff happened in the NBA. We are going to hit all of it. Giannis, the Heat, the Bucs. Who won the trade? Who lost the trade? Boston, what is the fallout for them? Should they have gone all the way? Why didn't they go all the way? What happens now with Jalen Brown?
Kurt Goldsberry is here to help me sort through all that. Plus, Trey Young. All the deals that have happened. Austin Reeves just happened today. We talk about that or was agreed to today. We talk about the son's deal. CJ McCollum, Dusty May as a head coach, Mike Inori as a head coach in Portland. Oh, just a whirlwind of stuff already happening in the NBA.
And then Jonathan Gavone, the master of the draft. We react to the first round. What did happen? What didn't happen? Darren Peterson going two to Utah, DeBansa going one to Washington, and on down from there, some of the trade talks that didn't really lead to much, but what was going on a little bit behind the scenes. He picked some winners and losers, some interesting picks.
How did Milwaukee do with their extra lottery pick? We get into all of that as the NBA moves in to off-season mode. Free Agency will be here before you know it. That's all coming up on the Zach Lowe Show. Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, where I am back from a triumphant Croatia win in the World Cup and a nightmare travel day. Finally, ready to talk about all the stuff that's happened in the NBA.
Giannis, the draft, Austin Reeves, the Celtics, tons of other stuff. Kurt Goldsberry is here. How you doing, bud? I'm great, Zach. It's great to be with you. So much to talk about. Not only an MVP caliber player traded, but obviously the NBA draft. It's great to be with you, buddy.
And Austin Reeves news just broke that he is resigning at a four year max deal with the Lakers, a similar in scope and cost, although a little bit lower than to the four year max deal that the wizards have signed with Trey young. We'll get to that later. We have to start with Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was finally traded to the Miami Heat, not the Boston Celtics.
Jalen Brown's still on the Celtics. Oh, God. And not anybody else. It was really those two teams in the end as various playoff fates and team decisions. The Spurs never came in. The Thunder never came in. The Rockets, somewhat surprisingly, never came in. The Magic never seriously came in. And then Giannis and the Knicks obviously never came in.
And then Giannis sort of indicated to anyone who might come in, No, no, no. You might not want to trade your best assets because these are the places that I want to sign. And he put his thumb on the scale, at least a little bit. And the bucks come away with, let me make sure I get all of it.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of Giannis being traded to the Heat?
They get all those picks you referenced. And then they get players like Tyler Harrow can turn into picks. or a pick if they're already getting interest from other teams reportedly on Tyler Harrow. And I think this is about as good as you can get. We've seen high caliber players get traded in recent years for, for less than this. And I think that puts them in a good position to start a rebuild.
It's not going to be fun. It's not going to be great to watch on league pass, but I think it's better than doing the Jalen Brown thing with less draft capital, which was really the only other reported option for them. So I think the Milwaukee Bucks find themselves in sort of a depressed state, but they can look at this transaction very narrowly, I think, and be satisfied.
I think they can look at the last five years with a lot of regret, Zach Lowe. That's how I'd frame it up. Yeah, I mean, a couple of things happened for them. They whiffed in the draft. Middleton, just his body broke down and they traded him for Kuzma. And that was a disaster. And just it was like drip, drip, drip. And then the Dame Miles Turner thing was franchise suicide.
I mean, that that was just like inexplicable the moment it happened. And now they are where they are. They don't control any of their own first round picks until 2031. I do think they made the correct decision between these two offers, given that Boston was not willing to load up their offer with all the picks and young players that Milwaukee asked for. And we'll get to that.
The Miami picks, I think are more valuable than the Boston picks starting with 13 in this draft versus 27 in this draft, huge difference there. And I think just like, Given Giannis' injury history and aging curve and the fact that he and Bam are going to have to kind of work out a little bit of their fit together, particularly on offense, on defense, fine.
On offense, it's going to be interesting. I think those picks in 2031 and 2033, again, depending on who knows what the lottery rules are going to be then, let's say they're similar to what this new system is going to be. I think those picks probably have more upside, even though you can tell me, well, the Heat never tanked, the Heat never rebuilt, whatever.
Boston's in a pretty, in I think a relatively stronger position than the Heat are, but that's hard to project. As for the players... I liked it. They got Yaka Jonas in the end. I think he's interesting. He shot it well last year. He's very creative. You can spin him as like another first round.
I mean, if you spin this the right way and you flip hero for like a pick in three seconds or something, it'd be like, we got like six first round picks out of this hot cause this is fine. He's a good player. I think that's basically what he is. He's a good fifth, sixth, seventh guy, you know, six man of the year, obviously runner up. Where is the swing piece to me?
I've always been higher on Kahlil Ware than Eric Spolstra appears to be. So I'm not in there seeing the work habits and the response to adversity. I do see the occasional missed box outs, the occasional, oh, I shouldn't have chased that block shot. And now my guy's going to get the rebound decision making all that. Maybe a few too many threes for everyone's liking now and then.
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Chapter 3: What is next for the Boston Celtics after missing out on Giannis?
Tobias Harris, James Harden, Harrison Barnes. Is he that old? I don't think so. Harrison Barnes is that old. Okay. But there's a few reasons for this that I think are relevant here. One is the way we're playing basketball, the frequency which we're playing basketball is really hard on bodies. The way Giannis plays basketball is very hard on his body.
And I think it's disproportionately harder on older players. The other thing that I think is very relevant for that stat is it's very hard to achieve depth in this CBA era When you are paying one player over that age that much money, because this is a league that insists on reserving its biggest paychecks for dudes who are on the wrong side of their prime.
And then the second apron and now the aprons that Miami is dealing with. Now you have this big Giannis, you know, big, big chunk on your cap sheet. So finding depth, as you're alluding to, is almost engineered to be very difficult if you have one of these players on your cap sheet. And I couldn't agree more. They need Norman Powell, not just because he's a very good player.
This is a roster now that is a very, very obvious weakness from the three-point line. And if they lose Norman Powell, I don't know who on that team is going to make threes to keep up with any other good teams in this league. They're counting on Larson. And I like Paul Larson a lot. It's just, it's a lot to count on. Just like I like Bruce Smith is a bench guy.
I think he's had snippets of good minutes in the NBA. He's recovered from serious injury and all of that. I I'd like to see him play in the playoffs, right? Like I like Yovitch. I've always liked Yovitch again, more than Spoda. Spoda doesn't trust them. And it's obvious by his rotation patterns. And so people are like, well, they still have Yovitch.
You mean the Yovitch who just, they didn't play in the playoffs at all or the play in or wherever the hell they finished their season. So, you know, I think the depth is I fall on the side of the depth is a little worrisome and they're going to have to do some heat magic to magic up some depth.
Look, they're going to be like, if Yannis is healthy and bam is healthy, they're going to be a good team. I don't think they're as good as the Knicks. And I don't think there is probably as good as Boston, although TBD on Boston and the East is like, you know, Cleveland could go up or down. The Hawks could go up or down. The Sixers could go up or down.
Orlando is probably going to be a little better. Like the Pistons are probably just going up, up, up Indiana's back. Right. I Giannis is a force and he and bam together are just going to put the kind of pressure on the rim that the heat have not. And ironically, the Celtics have not put on the rim in a long, long time. And defensively, it's going to be a beast, but I,
You know, I saw I think Jared Dubin had something like, you know, the baseline for contention is like top 10 offense, top 10 defense in the heat should be able to achieve that. And that's like true in a very basic way. But there's a difference between like number two on offense and number seven on defense and number 10 on offense and number six on defense or number seven on defense.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Giannis trade for the Bucks and Heat?
but just like, we're going to be bad next year, but we don't want to be that, that bad. We don't want to be, we don't want to be very bad. Except the Nets don't control their own pick. The Rockets have the right to swap picks with them next year. Maybe this is two years away. That's what you're the best.
Chapter 5: What is next for the Boston Celtics after missing out on Giannis?
Yeah. But yeah, like, are we starting to see sort of bad teams? Like we, we want to not, not be bad, but I don't know.
Chapter 6: How did the NBA draft unfold and what were the key picks?
What is the point of this from a Nets perspective? What did you just see from Julius Randle that wanted you to get into the Julius Randle business? Now, I will say the second conference finals run, he was outstanding and played the best basketball of his career. And he should at least get credit for that. And when I say the Bulls would be less diverse...
and maybe a little bit worse without Julius Randle. I think his, his regular season stuff matters. You have to play the 82 games. Yeah. And if Nas Reed gets hurt, if Baron J doesn't develop as fast enough, if Terran Shannon junior is yanked in and out of the rotation, again, you're gonna feel the lack of like, Hey, at least we can throw this out there.
Chapter 7: What are the reactions to the early NBA signings and team strategies?
And it's like 21 and five every night, despite the warts and the playoffs, the playoff warts in, in particular. Uh, Trey young, I think is a relegation zone guy before. Like I said, although I forgot even like the wizards, the wizards can't pick number one next year. That's all. At least they, the best they can do is to, because of this new, this new system. Um,
Austin Reeves to me is a different, but maybe he's not. I mean, Austin Reeves just got signed, uh, according to Sean's four year max deal, uh, with the Lakers, uh, at what is it like 48 and a half a year or something like that. Um, yeah. And they still have cap space to work with as much as 40 something million dollars, assuming Aiden opts in.
And if Aiden doesn't opt in, someone should be giving him better advice. Um, And obviously, LeBron, they'd have to renounce LeBron to get to that number. And there are things they could do with that number that are interesting. But I think it's it's it's it's less than 48 a year. It's like 46 a year if I'm looking at SpotTrack. Right. But anyway.
if we're going to talk about these players who are somewhere between the 20th and 40th best players in the NBA making 30% of the cap or whatever it ends up being, I think we have to talk about Austin Reeves too. I think Austin Reeves is really good. Again, he's not as young and rising as people think he is. He's 28 years old. So this pays him through his prime.
It pairs him with Luca, which I think offensively is a proven powerhouse pairing. And it also is going to make it a high wire act for the Lakers to surround those two guys, whether LeBron comes back or not with the kind of personnel that's going to be able to compete with San Antonio and Oklahoma city and on and on in the Western conference as Luca approaches his apex prime as well.
But I mean like Austin Reeves in a vacuum, this is what he's worth. This is what the marketplace was going to say he was worth. He was going to get a match from someone. He's a wildly productive offensive player. Would have made the all-star team last year. He'd have been healthy.
And it's like Luca has already shown secondary ball handler next to him is a very powerful formula, particularly when they can run, pick and roll with each other a little bit because of the size discrepancy in the defenders. It's like, And again, if you're the Lakers, their whole dilemma this off season was use it or lose it.
Like if we don't bring back Austin Reeves, we have to replace Austin Reeves. And I don't know how we do that. And he's a really good player. So you're kind of just doing it because you have to, and you like the player, but I don't, what do you think of this deal? It's, it's, it's a, it's in a lot of ways, it's a no brainer.
You knew it was coming, but I think the construction of the team around them is going to be quite interesting. It reminds me of the old Dame CJ Blazers now. I don't think I had a better idea. I think they, like you said, it's a no-brainer. They had to do this. What are they going to do? Let them go? That's a terrible move. You have to do it. You have the asset under control now.
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