00:00Kaminga, by the way, won for nine in that game, in the revenge game.
00:03All right, fine.
00:04Let's just first.
00:05No, let's not.
00:06No.
00:06Let's not.
00:06For a second, I might need Guru to call in.
00:10I wanted to get to this in the crossover.
00:12It never came up, and I didn't want to force myself into that,
00:16like the conversation in that sort of a way.
00:18We were vibing, Stein is first day back, he's tan, let's chill,
00:23let's have some fun.
00:24But like Guru and many others, and by the way, this goes both ways.
00:31I see both sides do this.
00:34But when he scores 27 and does highlight dunks,
00:41and Hawks fans are on social media chanting thank you, Warriors,
00:48and then there's a bunch of this for a week and a half.
00:52Oh, well, it's just one game.
00:58Okay.
01:00Here's what I'm ready to settle with so that nobody wants anybody to get mad at
01:05anybody for taking sides.
01:07My take today is exactly what I did say in the crossover.
01:10I think we as a fan base are a bunch of crazy people.
01:15We're completely out of control.
01:17We have just launched ourselves into a multi-year debate screaming about
01:23mediocre players.
01:25I don't think that other fan bases do that.
01:28I really don't.
01:29I wonder.
01:30I don't know.
01:31Do you think that Laker fans sit there and scream at one another about Luke
01:38Kennard and Rui Hachimura and freak out about who's getting more minutes and
01:46which one seems to be currying favor with the coach and which one of them might
01:51be that dude someday?
01:53I don't think they do.
01:55I think they're like, hey, young fella, I hope you knock down that shot when it
01:59gets into your hands.
02:00But you're really not the center of all of this.
02:03And I wonder if that someday might be where we can all meet in the middle.
02:11Neither one of them is that dude.
02:14And neither one of them sucks.
02:17Neither one of them plays the same position.
02:20Neither one of them have anything to do with one another at all.
02:23But that's my take.
02:27Pods talks a lot, but he's just a, he's a regular guy.
02:31He can be useful, but he's not great.
02:34And Jonathan Kaminga, for all of his raw athletic ability, is also not a great
02:40player.
02:41And please stop telling me he's brand new.
02:44Good grief if I hear another person say, well, he's still just, we haven't even
02:49seen him.
02:50Year five.
02:50Year five.
02:52I think your point is interesting if you think about, like, if you, like, go
02:57ahead and expand that out to what we do with the 49ers, which is, you know, it's
03:01Burford and it's Brendel.
03:03These are the guys that are the problems.
03:04Well, those are your offensive linemen, interior guys.
03:07They're not your quarterback, your left tackle, your edge rusher, McCaffrey, all
03:11the rest of it, Fred Warner.
03:13And if you even go to, like, baseball, if you're somebody who wants to rip, like,
03:16the number four, number five starter, or, like, the middle reliever, they are
03:20those people because they're not very good.
03:22But apologies to any giant who's going to be the number four or the number five
03:26guy, or if you are the swing man out of the bullpen, or if you're the backup
03:30second baseman, there's a reason why you are the 23rd or 24th man on that
03:35roster.
03:35And so I do think you're right about what we do with the warrior team.
03:39We fixate too much on if it's Kaminga, if it's pods, if it's pods, it's
03:44Kaminga.
03:45Either way, if you're a good team, they are your sixth and seventh best players.
03:49And yet, instead of, like, focusing on Steph and Draymond and all the rest of
03:53it, we drill down on these guys who are the role players, right?
03:58Completely.
03:59And look at, I mean, Kaminga's played seven games in Atlanta, and he's playing
04:0223 minutes a game, and he's averaging 13 a night.
04:06And that's basically what he did for his whole career here.
04:09It was about the same amount of minutes and about the same amount of points.
04:12And I know it's a small sample, but he's going to be a guy who is up and down
04:16and inconsistent.
04:17I just think that it's an argument that's gone on for two years, and
04:20everybody's waiting to find out who's going to be right, and the answer is
04:23nobody.
04:25Nobody.
04:27Nobody's right.
04:29He's going to go to Atlanta.
04:31I don't know if he'll stay in Atlanta.
04:34Like, I have no idea.
04:36You know, everyone left all the intricacies out of the actual conversation
04:40because they all just watched it on social media.
04:42And he flies through the air and dunks, and everyone's like, see?
04:46It's like, you don't even know that that was in the fourth quarter of a 20-point
04:50blowout.
04:50And by the way, Warrior fan, he didn't need to be traded to Atlanta for you to know
04:54that he can fly.
04:55We knew that already.
04:57We knew that already.
04:58Pods will have a good game.
05:00Then Pods will have a crap game.
05:02Then Will Richard will get yelled at for something that Pods did.
05:05And we all just, here we go, into this little bucket of muck and come out with
05:11all of these opinions that I just don't think really matter in the big picture of
05:16things.
05:17And it's like, to a level, I'm almost embarrassed by it.
05:22By the way, I'm not pointing the finger at anybody.
05:24We're in this, too.
05:25We talk about this constantly.
05:27But I just, like, this is the Golden State Warriors.
05:32Mark Spears is on our show every single week talking about how this is one of the
05:35biggest brands in the NBA.
05:37And we're all like, we've gotten sucked into this social media warfare about two
05:43players that are never going to have a major impact on a championship.
05:50It's just that that's not who I see either of them to be.
05:53You can say that, but then you can also look at the reality of Kaminga as a hawk.
05:57And you realize that they are 7-0 when he plays.
06:00Okay.
06:017-0.
06:02Okay.
06:02On pace to go 82-0 with Kaminga in the lineup.
06:05And is it because he's impacting winning?
06:08I would say so, yeah.
06:09Is he?
06:10I mean, sometimes.
06:12I mean, they won against the Warriors on Saturday.
06:14What was his impact?
06:15He was a minus six.
06:17He was awful.
06:18Yeah.
06:18Just say it.
06:19He was awful.
06:20He didn't play great.
06:21He was one for nine and he had two points.
06:23He impacted winning.
06:25They won the game.
06:26That's great.
06:26I mean, that's the other sort of debate point that's always been a little bit flimsy.
06:31The whole impacting winning thing.
06:33Right.
06:34That's a really tough thing to stick on any player, especially when that player is not
06:38a one.
06:40Do you know what I mean?
06:41Like, I want...
06:41And he's not really...
06:42He played 22 minutes.
06:43He played 19 the game before.
06:4519 the game before.
06:46Like, what he did against Minnesota in the playoffs last year, sure, they didn't win.
06:52It's all...
06:53But, like, he did some good things.
06:55I don't know.
06:57That's a hard thing to stick on a role player.
07:01Like, get to the end and be like, but they won.
07:03Or...
07:04It's a hard thing to put on any player.
07:06Like, you watch DeBansa over the weekend and he was amazing and they lost.
07:11They lost.
07:11It wasn't because of him.
07:13Right.
07:13Right.
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