The Zach Lowe Show
Cavs on the Ropes, Thunder and Nuggets Trade Blows, and Potential Giannis Trades With Rob Mahoney
Mon, 12 May 2025
Just hours from the NBA draft lottery, Zach and Rob react to the Giannis Antetokounmpo news (1:05) and discuss how it might relate to who gets the no. 1 pick. Then they react to a pair of Game 4s yesterday: the Thunder’s gut-check win (27:17), as well as the Pacers' blowout (51:04). Finally, a look ahead to tonight’s matchups between the Knicks and Celtics (1:10:46) and the Warriors and Wolves (1:14:36). Host: Zach Lowe Guest: Rob Mahoney Producers: Jesse Aron, Jonathan Frias, and Mike Wargon The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Get started today at HubSpot.com/AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the latest news on Giannis Antetokounmpo's potential trade?
And the lottery got a whole lot interesting about 30 minutes ago when Shams Charania at ESPN dropped what really sounds like a Giannis trade request soft launch, reporting that he is Open to considering a future that best fits him outside of Milwaukee. Hasn't made any decisions yet. Look, we've been down this road with Giannis before.
He's tiptoed to the edge twice at least and tiptoed right back when the Bucs made game-changing trades for Drew Holiday and then Damian Lillard. The difference now, as we have talked about before, Rob Mahoney, is that I don't see a game-changing trade that exists now that Dame has sadly torn his Achilles and is almost 35 years old. Rob Mahoney, waking up early on the West Coast to join us.
How are you?
I'm doing great. I'm just happy for you, Zach. You know, really, whatever icebreakers you had planned for the lottery room, you can throw them in the trash. You know, you get your easy material right here asking anyone and everybody about Giannis and his future and what's going to happen here. And I think what makes it exciting is that it's anybody's guess.
Yeah, it's going to be Giannis' talk over turkey sandwiches and a little bit of pasta salad maybe they bring in there sometimes. It's not a terrible spread. There will be coffee. If you want coffee at 6 p.m., you can have some coffee. Then we'll all watch together as someone gets their heart broken on live television and someone is elated.
Look, we talked about this after the Dame injury two weeks ago, exactly. And it's just a matter of Giannis and the Bucs, the Bucs and Giannis, whatever order it happens in. just both coming to grips with the fact that it's over. He cannot win big, big, big in the near to medium term future with the Milwaukee Bucks. And the only question that matters is, does he care?
If he cares, do the Bucks care? They surely see the writing on the wall. They surely know in some part of their soul what would be ideal for their long-term situation, even though it's going to be tricky to get any of their own picks back and thus tricky to tank in a time when they should tank. Even if they trade Giannis, that's going to be tricky. And then there's just a conversation to be had.
Do we care? Do you care? Are you OK with this? Am I OK with that? Do I demand this? Do I demand that? This is a pretty big trickle out there that we are heading in that direction. It's lottery day. The lottery could, you know, it's going to be interesting. Like, does Houston move in to the top four? They have the Phoenix pick. Do the Spurs move into the top four? Just keep their two picks.
They have their own pick in Atlanta's pick. Would they dare dip their toe into the honest waters? Who the hell knows what else could happen? But but the lottery could could infringe on this as well. I mean, I don't know. I was going to ask you just first reaction.
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Chapter 2: How could the NBA draft lottery impact the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis?
This is not a full media front. I think it may be a couple weeks old at this point.
Okay. Well, props to Thanasis, who up until now has just been talking shit to everybody from the first row in Milwaukee and annoying everybody and exchanging some fun banter. Well, you'd hit the nail on the head. I mean, this is the dilemma for every team, right? That every time a superstar gets traded, we talked about it with Durant. Yep. Is you got to go. This is a win now situation.
Like, yeah, cool. Charlotte gets the number one pick and trades LaMelo ball in a million picks for Giannis. Like, what is that good? Is that doing Giannis? Nothing. So lottery or no lottery. I think we can like outline the general landscape of teams. And by the way, not only does the lottery matter.
The playoffs matter, and you and I both are absolutely salivating to talk about this delicious Thunder Nuggets series that is now 2-2. And when it looked like the Thunder were reeling in the third quarter of that game before their bench guys bailed them out with zone threes, huge game for those guys. We'll talk about it. Please.
I started kind of just thinking, you know, I'm playing in the podcast, like, if they lose this series... What doors does that suddenly open up for them with the biggest trove of assets in the league?
Yeah.
Now we kind of table that for a day because they got an absolutely enormous gut check road win. But OK, just here are the teams. Houston, they're in the lottery today. We know they just lost in the first round. They can talk about continuity all they want. Giannis is Giannis. Brooklyn, like Houston, Brooklyn has a million picks and a million picks that are on other teams, too.
So Milwaukee can bet against as many teams as it can, which is their best case scenario if they can't get back any of their own picks. Miami, I've said before, I don't know that Miami has enough to realistically compete with these teams if they all get into it. New York has been mentioned. Talk about the playoffs mattering.
They are currently up 2-1 against the Celtics, who remembered how to shoot and run a functional NBA offense in Game 3. Game 4 is tonight. We'll talk about it later. The Towns thing has been mentioned. Yeah. Unless there's like a three or four team trade, I don't really understand what the point of that is for Milwaukee. But whatever. We'll mention the Knicks, Orange and Blue Skies, et cetera.
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Chapter 3: Which teams are most likely to pursue Giannis if he is traded?
roving and covering from each other from all conceivable angles, opens up all sorts of schematic possibilities for how you want to run your defense, but ultimately gives you the sort of perimeter and downhill orientation that you were grasping at by trading for De'Aaron Fox in the first place, but really would hammer home in the most emphatic way possible by trading for Giannis.
And ultimately the point is like Victor Weminyama right now is a top 10-ish player in the league. And if you have a top 10-ish player in the league,
you're accelerating like right the time to move forward is now ultimately so I think they would have every reason in the world to at least get in the room think about it and figure out if some combination of a couple of hawks picks and swaps that they own plus their own stuff and I think they would probably have to hit some lottery luck plus Stefan Castle and Devin Vassell or whoever would be like necessary to get that deal done if that's a plausible thing that Milwaukee would be into uh
I think absent lottery luck, I mean, I don't know. This doesn't seem like a Spurs thing to do. Like trading the farm for a 31-year-old with a shaky jump shot, even if he's the second or third best player in the league.
Let's say a shaky long-range jump shot.
Yeah, his mid-range jumper was good this year. Have some respect for mid-range Giannis. I will. I need another season of it to have really deep, deep respect, but I would say, um, look, he's better than mid range Zach. So like, who am I, who am I to talk? Although my jumper is looking good lately. I'm playing a lot with my, playing a lot with my daughter. It's looking pretty good. Um, uh,
It doesn't seem like a Spurs-y thing to do. My initial sort of nudges have been met with like, it seems pretty hasty. But you're right to think about Castle because I think that's the name that ends up being the centerpiece of any theoretical. And boy, is this like wildly five steps ahead theoretical. But like Vassell. is bye-bye. The picks are bye-bye.
Whatever other salary you need to put in is bye-bye. You want to hang on to Fox. You want to hang on, obviously, to Wimby Nama. And then it just becomes, is Castle semi-expendable, whatever. And that would be like, if you got Cooper Flagg and Stephon Castle and whatever else for Giannis, you're in a great spot. That's not bad.
if you put the Nerf gun to my head right now, I'm saying the Spurs don't do it and they play the long game, but who knows the other team? Well, my, my other team was your beloved former hometown, Dallas Mavericks. Sure.
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Chapter 4: Should teams consider trading the number one draft pick for Giannis?
The last time you had the number one pick, you chose Markel Fultz. It was like, well, maybe not the last. I can't remember the order of Fultz, Simmons, whatever. Your number one picks have not gone well. I just, now they are obviously the best subplot of the lottery because if they don't get into the top six, they lose their pick to Oklahoma City, another asset potentially in the Thunder's quiver.
So those are my least deserving. Do you have a most deserving pick? I think most... Or like most just like I would feel like a nice warm feeling in my belly.
I think Houston would be one as a team that like has built a lot and cultivated a lot and kind of gone for it in an aggressive way where they're spending money, they're participating in the process, they're investing in their future, but they have yet to make that like big swinging move. I think Cooper would be such a fascinating piece for them because he doesn't actually solve their sort of like
inherent flaw, right? Like he doesn't bring them the half court killer that they need necessarily, but he amplifies everything that they are in a way that would force you to reconsider the future of that team and reconsider the shape of that team.
I would love to see Houston rewarded for the way it's steered into having a hyper-aggressive defense, being a more professional outfit, like spending on veterans and creating like a different sort of path forward for teams like that.
we didn't bring up Houston in our, would you trade the number one pick for Giannis? Is that because in my mind, they just have enough other stuff where you don't have to do that. But did, was that your thought process as well? I mean, between all their young guys and all their other picks, like I'm holding onto that and trying to have my cake and eat it too.
And then have an ice cream Sunday and every afterwards.
It's the full dessert bar situation. I think you should go for that if you can get it. And look, Giannis on the Spurs is no more gluttonous than that, ultimately. I feel greedy even suggesting that possibility. But I think it's twofold with the Rockets. One, yes, they have a lot of irons in the fire already. A lot of mouths to feed in terms of good young developmental players.
I don't want to mess with too, too much unless it is the exact perfect fit. And I think Giannis is a really good one because he's Giannis, but not as clean as a shooting option would be. And that's the other part of it is you either give up Ahmed Thompson in a deal like that, or you're playing Ahmed Thompson and Giannis together for serious minutes for the foreseeable future.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the Thunder vs Nuggets playoff series?
It morphs. It's really aggressive. And I thought they broke some stuff open using Alex Caruso as a screener for that zone, which was very like Andre Robertson coded to me. Like, let's bring our non shooting wing up and get him in the action. But that was able to be able to get Shea into the lane that way.
And I asked him, this wasn't the best J-Dub game by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that they're not hard doubling J-Dub at the top of that zone in the way they are Shea allowed him to get into the paint and I thought make some interesting plays. And so there's enough stuff for the Thunder to work with and enough guys who can hit shots and you would trust on a given night.
Some of them will, some of them won't. Some of them are going to Lou Dort it and shoot their way out of the game. Some of them are going to be like Case and Wallace in this game, who I thought was just Fucking nails down the stretch. Really, really important minutes.
Huge shots for a guy who, admittedly, I'm a huge Case and Wallace supporter, is still kind of finding his way into games like this and figuring out where he fits and what he needs to be doing. But they have enough good role players to cycle through to figure out who can play in this moment, who can fit against this zone on this night.
And I thought Shay and Jada both are showing some evolution in how they're attacking it.
Shea's averaging 27 and a half a game in the series, 47% from the field, four of 19 on threes, a 29 to six assist to turnover ratio. That's Oklahoma City. They are plus 20 or I guess minus 20 in turnovers. They have 20 fewer turnovers. Then Denver. Crazy. J-Dub is averaging 19 a game on 37% shooting, 5 of 24 on threes. Had a great game three. Yeah. Almost saved their asses.
I give him some leeway. Let's talk about Chet. My first podcast for Spotify, The Ringer, I was a guest on the Bill Simmons podcast. You may have heard of him. And we did a draft of the 25 most intriguing players for the last 20 games plus playoffs of the season. And I cheated right on pick number one. I picked Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren as one player.
because they were not ready for the moment against Dallas in the second round last year. And they're going to have to be ready because this Denver team is as tough as it gets. Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon, it's just like one balls to the wall play after another. Kudos to, and Jokic is Jokic and Murray is Murray.
There was a stretch of this game where Denver's best offense was just Christian Brown run as hard as you can in transition. And that's literally the only way we're scoring for like four minutes at a time.
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Chapter 6: How is Chet Holmgren performing in the Thunder-Nuggets series?
Should they just play Mobley and Allen together more? I know they want shooting and spacing, but they are two of their four or five best players. They never play the lineup with Hunter at the three with the rest of their starters. They almost never play it, partly because Strews is really good. And I have been thinking a lot about that.
I'm not like, look, that doesn't change a gazillion point loss. It doesn't change the injuries. It doesn't change the whatever. But I have been thinking about it all year and more so as Jerome craps the bed, Okoro craps the bed. Merrill either gets open and makes threes or doesn't and holds up OK on defense. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?
I mean, I agree with you. I think part of the issue is like as the offense, like basically is the game is getting away from the Cavs. It's so tempting to clutch at offense in particular. Not just your cute regular season rotation, but like, oh, we have to take one of our bigs off the floor. We have to get more shooting out there. We have to try to equalize the balance of this game all of a sudden.
It got into desperation mode so quickly in game four that I can understand why some of the swerving is happening in the way it is, but... It didn't feel like the Cavs were very confident in what they were doing. It doesn't feel like they have a lot of resolve in even their rotation at this point. And frankly, again, you flash to the other side of the ball. Indiana's bench has been quite good.
And like TJ McConnell against a zone is not a given proposition. Like TJ McConnell... as we like to say on group chat, McConnellizes every offense he touches. Like it becomes about him getting into the lane. It becomes, you know, kind of a, an uphill battle of him in space against all these bigs. And yet that stuff was working. Obi Toppin. I,
has just been incredible in this series and really incredible as a pacer. Like his development into just a fluid offensive force has given them something that the Cavs don't have in anyone coming off their bench.
So yeah, if the options are trimming your rotation or potentially losing by this much or even more, I just don't see the downside other than the fact that Evan Mobley has a hurt ankle, Donovan Mitchell now has a hurt ankle, Darius Garland is out there limping around, fouling everything in sight because he can't actually move. And Jared Allen had a tough game.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know It's going to be, if they lose at home and it's a 4-1, 4-2, whatever, they lose the series in any kind of dispiriting way. It's going to be very tempting to start building fake Darius Garland trades and fake Jared Allen trades. And look, if I'm the Lakers, I'm calling about Jared Allen. Sure. Like, if I'm the Magic, I'm poking around Darius Garland.
I would, and the Cavs payroll situation is what it is, and I don't know sort of what any pivot would be in a win-now trade. Do you break them into two pieces? I don't know. I would be very cautious if I were the Cavs about overreacting too much to give, they only know the health, they know the health stuff inside and out better than we do, but
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Chapter 7: What are the key defensive strategies in the Thunder-Nuggets series?
We don't want the 82 games to be played like this because players would all be injured by the time the playoffs start. However, the key word in your statement or hyphenated two words or whatever it is, is 82. That's obviously the overarching issue of, oh, it's just too many games. We all know it's too many games. Everybody knows it's too many games.
And yet no one will ever actually dare to propose a real, like, let's actually talk about this. In fact, let's add more games. By the way, congratulations to the Milwaukee Bucks again for winning the Emirates Cup. Like really, you know, really exciting accomplishment that all their fans will remember forever in Las Vegas.
OK, can I see this on that for like I know there's no traction on shorting the season. It's never really gotten off the ground for a variety of reasons.
If we're in like congressional wheeling and dealing mode and the time for expansion comes up and we have these big, juicy expansion fees coming for Vegas and Seattle, is there a way to like tether in an amendment to shorten the season in conjunction with expanding the league so that the financial offsets are a little more concrete?
Well, maybe. And by the way, we shouldn't just make this like it's the league's fault and the teams are stubborn. Like the players also, like everyone's caution about this is if you trim 82 to 68 or whatever, the pool of revenue that we split 50-50 shrinks. And that shrinks for the players and it shrinks for everybody else, too.
And I think the bet would just be like long term with this new TV deal, with the expansion fees, with every regular season game, meaning more and maybe ticket prices go up. Like maybe you can kind of recoup that over time if you're patient. But these guys just get to the end of season and they're destroyed. OK, two series resume tonight. I don't want to overdo them because they are resuming soon.
I asked you for one overarching, not overarching, one thing, small, big, whatever, that you will be watching in these two games tonight. And I'm going to start with Boston, New York, which to me is the other most interesting series of the second round. Boston rebounds from two absolutely horrendous losses at home to the Knicks to win and make some threes in game three and sort of
maybe stabilize themselves. They have taken 47 more threes than the Knicks through three games, which is the math problem. Maybe this series will be long enough for it to tilt back to Boston's favor. One thing Rob Mahoney is watching for tonight in a massive, like New York wins this game. Boston's got home court. Boston and seven is still sitting there as like a decent possibility outcome.
Winning three in a row against the Knicks is going to be tough.
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