Jorge Sedano

KGMZ-FM / 95.7 THE GAME

6/23/2025

Transcript

00:00Welcome George Sedano on the River Islands guest line into the conversation.

00:04He was on the broadcast last night.

00:05George, how are you doing? Thanks for coming on, man.

00:08Great, man. Thanks for having me.

00:10Yeah, what's your reaction to not just Halliburton, but Tatum and Lillard and on and on and on?

00:18Like, what do you think needs to sort of be different with the way that athletes train and the way that they go about the season?

00:27Oh, I think all this starts at the youth level.

00:29I think kids play way too many games, because this is an old man injury historically,

00:34but when you talk about the kind of mileage kids are putting on themselves at a very early age,

00:39like, I know Kobe Bryant, the late great Kobe Bryant, was really not a huge fan of the AAU circuit for a number of reasons,

00:46but this is a byproduct of that.

00:49Like, you can't have kids playing four, five, six games in a weekend.

00:52Like, it's just nuts.

00:53And that's what these kids are doing at a very young age.

00:55And you look at last night, and, I mean, the finals and the Game 7, the hype and all the excitement around it,

01:02and then that happens.

01:03How much did that take the air out of the balloon for you and for everyone when Halliburton got hurt?

01:09Yeah, certainly it did.

01:10And, you know, I think even the audience there in OKC, they didn't realize what had transpired initially,

01:18because he fell down, they were running back the other way to get a layup.

01:22But then when he was still on the ground and banging the floor, you could tell it was serious.

01:27And even the crowd there, very respectfully, got very quiet for a moment,

01:32and then, you know, cheered him as they got him to his one foot and they carried him off.

01:39But, yeah, it stinks, man.

01:41Like, it's not what you want.

01:42I still think, you know, Indiana showed an incredible amount of resilience,

01:45which I'm not surprised by.

01:47But ultimately, you know, I think we would have gotten the same result.

01:51I just think we would have gotten an epic game is what I think we would have gotten.

01:54George Sedano with us on Withered and Dibs.

01:56George, let's zoom out a little bit on the NBA season, too.

01:59I get that the MVP ended up winning the NBA title also.

02:05But at the same time, there's something about these playoffs that felt like it was a little bit more team-oriented

02:10and less top-heavy star-oriented.

02:13What do you think we learned about roster construction in these playoffs?

02:19Oh, you need depth.

02:20I don't think there's any question.

02:21I think the NBA is going to be a lot more like the NFL moving forward,

02:24and you're not going to be able to pay everyone.

02:27And, you know, you need cost-controlled contracts.

02:29I think you need development.

02:32And, you know, whether that's the draft, the G League, both probably, if I had to guess.

02:36Yeah, like I think all that is going to be really important moving forward.

02:39And you look at depth, and the Warriors have, you know, Jimmy and Steph and Draymond and not much else.

02:45So if you look at the Warriors' roster right now,

02:48are you looking at a team that maybe is not going to be able to be suited to compete next year?

02:54Well, I don't know if I'd go that far.

02:57I mean, I think those three guys are a great place to start.

02:59And then you've got an opportunity to kind of, you know, find guys who fit what you want to do,

03:05whether that's in Santa Clara or Santa Cruz, excuse me,

03:09or, you know, guys that you find via, you know, free agency,

03:14maybe some young guys that you trade for under cost-controlled contracts.

03:18It's going to have to be very shrewd maneuverability now moving forward.

03:22I think Mike does a really good job,

03:24and I'm not saying that the Warriors won't be competitive by any stretch of the imagination for a championship.

03:28But, you know, and certainly, again, I think that there's always outlier situations.

03:33But in previous iterations, what we saw from these two teams were the outlier.

03:39And I just think moving forward, that's going to be more the norm.

03:42George Sedano with us.

03:44George, the Oklahoma City Thunder are going to be completely intact.

03:48How would you put into words the assignment for the rest of the Western Conference to dethrone them?

03:54I think it's going to be a little tougher moving forward.

03:59Obviously, you can never predict injury, as we saw last night.

04:01I think that always plays a big part in it.

04:03It's a battle of attrition, professional sports in a lot of ways.

04:07And I think that they, OKC, is certainly positioned, as well as anybody in the entire sport,

04:14to be really good for a really long time.

04:16And I think because of that, they're going to be tough to catch.

04:19But, you know what, the Spurs were in that scenario for many years.

04:22In the early 2000s and whatnot, they didn't win back-to-back ever.

04:27You know, they won five of them, but they never won back-to-back.

04:30So, while I think OKC has positioned themselves to be at the top of the food chain,

04:35it doesn't mean that they can't be got.

04:37Seven different champs in seven years.

04:40It's parity.

04:41Is parity good for the NBA, George?

04:43I think so, for sure.

04:45Long-term.

04:46I think you're dealing with short-term pain from a ratings perspective for long-term gain.

04:50I mentioned the NFL model a moment ago.

04:52I think that's the model you need.

04:54You know, if Jacksonville and Atlanta were in the Super Bowl, they wouldn't have one less person watching.

05:02And I think that last night, even with the Halliburton injury, you had 16, 17 million people watching a game seven,

05:08and it peaked at nearly 20.

05:10So, imagine if Halliburton would have played, you would have had even more people watching.

05:14So, I just think, ultimately, long-term, you want everybody to feel like they're in it.

05:19George, we keep hearing it's going to be a crazy, big-name offseason.

05:23We've already watched Durant get traded.

05:25What else do you think is around the corner here over the next couple of months?

05:29Well, you know, my colleague, Shams Sharania, said that he thought it was going to be the wildest offseason ever.

05:34I still think there's going to be a lot of maneuverability because, again, it's just going to be, you know,

05:40one of those deals where teams are not going to be able to figure out, or they're not going to be able to figure out how to pay everyone, right?

05:46Or owners are not going to want to pay everyone because you don't want to go over the second apron.

05:50The second apron, not to bore your audience, is in essence a hard cap now because in previous iterations of the collective bargaining agreement,

05:57all you had to do was pay, you know, the luxury tax dollars.

06:00Well, that's not the case anymore.

06:02If you're over the second apron, you can't aggregate salaries in a trade.

06:07You can't sign buyout guys on March 1st.

06:11You know, you can't use your mid-level exemption anymore.

06:14Like, it really prohibits you from constructing a proper roster in a lot of ways.

06:19You could probably deal with it for a year, maybe a second year if you have some sort of young generational type team.

06:25But I just don't think it makes a lot of sense for teams to be above it very long

06:30because it just doesn't, it's not going to be able to work out for you in regards to roster construction.

06:35George, great to have you for a few minutes after the big night last night.

06:38Thank you so much.

06:40You got it, guys.

06:40Have a great rest of your show.

06:41Thanks for having me.

06:42Yep, absolutely.

06:43George Sodano, ESPN.

Category

Transcript

Recommended