00:00As far as the Warriors are concerned, well, that was another fun one.
00:04And now we've almost got this growing sort of thing where there are two people with the Warriors who can
00:13take over a basketball game.
00:14Yaxel did it on Monday.
00:15No one needed the reminder that Steph Curry is still Steph Curry.
00:20I actually had a funny moment in the fourth quarter last night.
00:23My lovely Christy is looking up, and the box score kind of pops up, and she sees whatever's doing,
00:28and she goes, oh, man, well, Yaxel's getting blown out.
00:31I go, what do you mean Yaxel's getting blown out?
00:34Steph Curry has way more points than him.
00:36Wow.
00:39Well, yes, that's not a bad thing.
00:43Them two dudes combined for 70 points.
00:46And, yes, I would actually believe that more often than not, Steph Curry will be the one that has more
00:52than Yaxel.
00:53But, look, here's the question to start off.
00:56What is too much too soon with regard to excitement around Yaxel?
01:03And we would love to know, Warrior fans, where that hits you and where you sit on this.
01:09Because, on one hand, you can say, relax, it's been five games.
01:16And, quite frankly, at this level, you know what I mean?
01:19It was 12 points and a fight with Luka the first night.
01:22So, it's not like that was a banner night.
01:24But, it's been two or three games now where he's establishing himself of somebody who maybe even as a rookie
01:29could average over 20 a night.
01:31Remember, it was two weeks ago when he was like, maybe I could average 15?
01:35Dude, you're going to do that.
01:37You're going to do that and then some.
01:38I have no doubt.
01:39On one hand, it's just been a week and a half.
01:44On the other hand, and this is where I land and I keep getting stuck on this, nobody has ever
01:52started an NBA career like this through five games and not ended up in the Hall of Fame.
02:01That's true.
02:02If we look at stats.
02:04Right.
02:04Through five games.
02:05Through five games.
02:06But, no one's ever done it before.
02:07So, I want to be careful to say, I didn't just say Yoxel's going to make the Hall.
02:12But, I do find it to be important.
02:15I hope it resonates.
02:18Nobody in the history of basketball has scored these points, gotten these rebounds, put up these assists, put up these
02:27kinds of numbers.
02:28Five games into their NBA career and not ended up in the Hall of Fame.
02:34The names, depending on the stat you want to pick up, are Wilt and Larry Bird, etc.
02:39And, we can dive deeper if it matters.
02:42But, that's not me saying Hall of Fame.
02:44But, here's what I'll also do.
02:46If you don't want Hall of Fame, fine.
02:48Let's stop short of that.
02:50But, I'll already define there is no way that Yoxel is not going to be a significant player in this
02:58league for a long time.
03:00I don't see it possible that you can do this in the first five times you put on an NBA
03:06uniform and not at least become a very high-level impact player in this league.
03:12Well, you could be, and it depends on how you go about, like, handling the rest of your career.
03:16And so, we can look at a small sample of five games, and we can put him into a category
03:21with all these other people, and it's fine.
03:23It's an incredibly small sample.
03:25It's beyond a small sample.
03:27It's a micro sample.
03:28And, if you talk about Larry Bird or Wilt or the other people you mentioned, they played roughly 1,000
03:34games.
03:34And so, he's five games into a 1,000-game career.
03:38So, yeah, do it 995 more times, and you're a Hall of Famer.
03:42But, in the small sample, is he off to an unbelievable start?
03:46Yeah, I'll give you that.
03:47Remember, the stats I'm talking about, though, are through their first five games.
03:52I get it, but it feels like you're trying to crown him based on a five-game sample, which, it's
03:57a great five-game sample.
03:59Well, define crown him.
04:01I'm not calling him a Hall of Famer.
04:02You're putting him in the category of these people based on a stat.
04:05Well, what I am saying is that nobody else has ever done it.
04:10Right.
04:11It's never happened before.
04:13Sure, it's a small sample, but nobody's ever done it before.
04:17But there are Hall of Famers who've had, like, rough five-game starts.
04:20For sure.
04:20And they're Hall of Famers, like Kobe Bryant.
04:22He wasn't Kobe Bryant for a long time.
04:24No, he left throw air balls, and he was a baby.
04:26And I know that that's part of it.
04:27Like, this kid's 24 years old, and a lot of the guys who come in as rookies are 19.
04:32But, to me, that's looking at it through the reverse lens.
04:34Sure, you don't have to start five games like this to become a great player or an all-star
04:40or a Hall of Famer.
04:41But my rebuttal to that would be nobody else has ever done it.
04:48So, I guess the takeaway for that, for me, is what we're talking about.
04:53If I just say we have a special talent on our hands, how about that?
04:57Because I don't think you can achieve these numbers for any five-game stretch,
05:02particularly your first five games in the league.
05:05I don't think you can do that unless you are a very rare physical and emotional talent.
05:14That's how I see it.
05:15So, he could get hurt.
05:17I have no idea how his career is going to go.
05:20I'm not even comfortable yet saying he's a future all-star, which Joe Lacob famously,
05:25once upon a time, said about Brandon Pajemski, and he made the all-rookie team.
05:29But what I am saying is, I think you have a very rare talent on your hands if you're a
05:35Warrior fan,
05:36because nobody in the history of the game has ever had a five-game start like that,
05:40and not ended up as a very special player.
05:43And again, we don't go all the way back to where they didn't actually count rebounds, which is fine,
05:48and so it's a little bit nitpicking to that extent.
05:51But right now, through five games, he's been awesome,
05:54and what he's done has contributed to winning in two of the five games,
05:58and he's going out there, and even when he has a little bit of a slow start,
06:02and last night he had seven turnovers, which was something that ultimately didn't cost you the ballgame,
06:07but there are things that he is going to learn from.
06:10But yeah, he's off to an amazing start.
06:11I'm not going to sit here and poo-poo that.
06:13Yeah, maybe it's said better by one of our texters.
06:16707 said, nobody's ever started like this and then fallen on their face.
06:22That's true.
06:23Nobody is, you know what I mean?
06:24Where was that name where you're like, sure, remember that guy, and he scored like,
06:28I mean, it's almost like a steroided version of what Eric Paschal once upon a time did with this organization,
06:34when everybody was like, look at this guy, and it was like, actually, he can't even stay in the NBA,
06:40as it turns out.
06:41But this is so, this is so large.
06:46This is so crazy in terms of the impact he's having on a basketball court.
06:51I like, I'm ready to say that.
06:54There is a next to 0% probability that Yaxo will be a bust, that Yaxo will not be a
07:03starter,
07:03an impact player who can fill up a stat sheet for the majority of his career.
07:08That's how I feel.
07:09And again, we can say it's, oh, a five-game sample, except for that does dismiss other things that we
07:16also already know.
07:18I mean, he shined in summer league.
07:20He shined in training camp.
07:21Veteran players who don't normally do this kept coming out, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green, and saying, wait till y
07:29'all see this.
07:30He's very, very special.
07:32Draymond called him the rookie of the year before the season even started.
07:36Guess who's favorite to win rookie of the year right now?
07:38He sure is.
07:39And it's not even close.
07:40So that, I think that's, that's a great way to say it.
07:44Nobody has ever done this and then not, not had a great NBA career.
07:49And sure, health can mess up the whole thing.
07:51Of course, yeah.
07:51But, but I think from a talent perspective, we're damn close ready to, to lock in that this, this is
07:59a rare talent.
08:00Well, hopefully we can talk to Steve Curtin at five o'clock.
08:03That's all to be determined based on their flight back.
08:06And so I do think when you look at exactly what he's doing through five games and the words that
08:11are being said by Steve Kerr and others,
08:13that tells you all you need to know more so than the numbers and some arbitrary, you know, line that
08:18we're all drawing in, in terms of a hall of famers.
08:22I'm being told that the Steve Kerr conversation will happen one way or the other.
08:26All right.
08:26Yeah.
08:28So go ahead and yock it in.
08:30Book it.
08:31Yeah.
08:31Yeah.
08:31So I don't know.
08:33Listen, I'm not trying to knock anybody off of their spot today.
08:36I'm not like, this is not hall of fame.
08:38This is not all star, but I'm ready to say that the warriors have a rare talent.
08:43I'm ready to say that.
08:45And I also think that I'm also ready to say that history is going to shine very brightly on the
08:54draft that the warriors just had.
08:56I understand that a lot of the guys drafted in front of the axel are very young.
09:01I understand that some of them already look really, really good.
09:05Cam Boozer looks fantastic.
09:07We've barely even be able to, I mean, the Bonsa like hasn't really started his career yet.
09:11Darren Peterson looks good.
09:13I, there's going to be some really good players in this bunch of 10 that went in front of them.
09:19But I'm also very comfortable in saying a lot of them, there will be teams that, that years from now
09:26regret not selecting Yaxel Lundenborg earlier than 11.
09:30But we'll see how that goes because, you know, you draft these young guys and you're hoping for the upside.
09:35But right now the floor that Yaxel Lundenborg has is higher than anybody else's in that draft that was taken
09:40ahead of them.
